DramatistDreamer

The American tennis bodies seem to have forgotten that when tennis reached its highest peaks of popularity, it was accessible to the masses on television. Tennis is the only sport I have heard of which seemingly goes out of its way to alienate both longtime fans and potential fans. They are probably waiting for the Saudis to tell them what to do. I tell you another thing, the USTA needs to stop ceding exclusive streaming rights to ESPN and the Tennis Channel, for that matter. When the US Open streamed matches on their website, the streaming quality was a sure shot better than ESPN’s site. If the USTA had any sense, they would have kept the rights to streaming, and court sponsors to air ads directly on their website. Do something similar to Tennis Australia, make the streaming of the U.S. Open available to stream to people in the U.S. and its territories on the U.S. Open website and run ads and get corporations to sponsor the streaming. Like I said before, maybe they’re waiting on Saudi money.

Yes, I forgot about that. And these are the same people who call everyone else sheep.

Maybe the content of the article is better than the stupid headline but I just don’t care enough to read the actual article. Most books about Trump are steeped in the scandalous years of his administration and often goes further back in time than that. Obama wrote his own books and those were best sellers but most books about Obama that were written by other writers didn’t do such big business either. When it’s time for Biden to write his own post presidency book, that will likely do well. Too many of these other books are rushed to press for a cash grab anyway.

Is anyone surprised by this? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/04/twitter-saudi-arabia-human-rights-abuses

What an appalling man. I don’t regret leaving Twitter last year. I won’t judge those who have elected to stay but I just couldn’t allow that man to capitalize in any way off my intellectual property. He and his apartheid mentality suck.

Oh my, I wasn’t able to see any of today’s matches so I have no idea. Maybe someone can give some detail. Who won the match anyway?

John was like a father to Dusty. Their relationship added a dimension to John’s personality, who could otherwise easily been seen as an ogre, or at the very least, a curmudgeon, on the verge of a misanthrope.

ICYMI a bit of good news for Democratic voters in the state of Florida. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/florida-judge-rules-desantis-redistricting-map-is-unconstitutional-orders-it-redrawn

If you ask me, I think McCouch looked more like a long lost Snyder than anything else. Had they cast him as Caleb, I could only imagine how the sibling rivalry between he and Holden could have played out. Why did they bring McCouch on as a wannabe thug version of Dusty when Caleb was right there to be cast? And Caleb had something of a shady past, so McCouch could have played the role with almost the exact choices as he did for the role of Dusty and not only would it not have mattered but it might have resonated more as well as made more sense. Oh well. ATWT had talented enough actors in the last decade of the show’s run but the casting process was a mess.

Does Ostapenko basically “own” Swiatek now?

Honestly, I don’t know what to say or think about the musical chairs of broadcasting platforms when it comes to tennis. So wildly unpredictable and unstable-you never know what will happen, which broadcast network will be airing what tournament from one season to the next.

^^Good for Swift, who has proven to be a savvy businesswoman. In addition to her obvious celebrity, her main medium is the stage, not the screen, so presumably she would have so much more bargaining power than the hundreds of writers and acting extras whose names people don’t know, who are regarded as nonentities in their industry. Even the best known screenwriter is going to have less leverage and clout than Swift.

Many of us will remember the horrible Grenfell fire. This fire in Johannesburg is like the long-running nightmarish saga to that story. A slow-moving tragedy that the city and national governments knew was happening. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/life-inside-hijacked-johannesburg-building-where-scores-burned-alive-2023-09-02/

Sorry, I meant to edit a previous post. Can this be deleted? I wish there were a timer option on posts, where if you change your mind, you can.

Also the fact that, over the past 20 years, new writers who care about the future of our careers don’t actually want to write for a daytime soap, not even as a stepping stone. It’s one thing if it’s someone who has always wanted to write for one, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone under 50 who wants to write for a daytime soap. Many of the writers writing for daytime soaps are Fi-Core anyway and don’t care about the strike or the unions.

He did indeed make some valid points. As for the studios, it seems like they took an “if you can’t beat them..,then join them”, mentality. It was a fool’s errand, because the studios obviously operate and are structured differently from the streaming industry—they also have different business models. The studios should have tried to hire some people who have insight as to the direction of the technology industry and how it was poised to evolve and intersect with the film and television industries, to gauge if they can prepare and adapt to how their industries might be affected. But they were so rooted in their ossified vision of the industry and how it should function that they failed to see oncoming trends (A.I., for instance, the popularity shorter seasons brought about by orders of fewer episodes). But their greed took over and they looked to get what people on the street refer to as “that short money” aka, fast cash. Another mistake that the studio bosses made was not building solidarity with the directors, writers and actors through their unions. From previous strikes, I know the relationship between them has been strained, if not combative but the possibility of catastrophic consequences to their industry should have been enough to build some sort of solidarity, even temporarily. The studios bosses are so used to bullying the talent that I guess, they could not conceive of a scenario in which they would have to work with the talent as equals, even if that meant saving and improving the foundation on which their entire entertainment ecosystem stands. Such a shame that greed and short term thinking should persist this way.

OMG, this story.😂 ‘Like Snoop Dogg's living room': Tennis players complain of marijuana smell at US Open court

Rarely am I on that hell site but today, I went on that alternate site to check if there was a free link for an article I wanted to listen to. As handy as the archive is, it doesn’t contain links for any audio component. That’s when a ridiculous tweet caught my eye. I’m glad not to be anywhere near that site long enough to see the other awfulness that you just described. I will definitely stay away from here on out. As for the train wreck that is Trump and his trial, initially, I expect people to tune in/click on, many out of mere curiosity. What I don’t know, is how long this will last or how long they will continue to click on. I am also curious to see how much coverage the broadcast networks will provide, especially since they won’t be the primary source of the livestream-they will be relying on the courthouse feed. Why would people tune into cbsnews website, when they can tune in directly to the dedicated YouTube channel? It would make even less sense to tune into CBS (or ABC), unless you’re craving to hear an assortment of talking heads go on about poll numbers and all manner of irrelevant details.

So far, it seems like only the Fulton County court YouTube channel will be live-streaming this. Did you mean that, this will take viewers away from watching the soaps live? With streaming, I would imagine that ratings from live viewing might not have the “end all, be all “significance it once had. These soap production companies better work out a more effective strategy than they used in the mid-1990s, a time during which a number of soaps presented a number of episodes that were stuffed with filler, with the hope that they could placehold stories and wait for the viewers to return.

Barry Diller, a former studio executive, has been making the interview/podcast rounds. He thinks that the studios need to cut the streamers out of the negotiations and cut deals with the unions. He has other thoughts about the possibility of things to become catastrophic for the studios if they continue on this path. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/31/barry-diller-hollywood-strikes-netflix.html

Has anyone else seen this interview? https://www.gq.com/story/andy-roddick-us-open

The GOP is only performing at sympathy anyway. They would gladly feature McConnell in their own version of “Weekend At Bernie’s” if he can carry on their bidding. He is probably more useful to them now than he ever was before. The people of Kentucky continued to keep him in office in the first place so I’m not sure where their thoughts are on all this. On another note, I can observe that the trolls and bots in blackface have already descended upon Elon Musty’s Twitter, likely hoping to trick people into believing they are actual Black posters, just ahead of election season.

Normally, I am not one to post memes but this image struck me as a perfect illustration of DeSantis as a governor, as a presidential candidate and well, as a human being, in general.

The first return of James Stenbeck, which coined the infamous “Hello Barbara” scene and became a big umbrella story involving a large portion of the cast.

This would be an interesting topic for a different thread. Most people don’t even realize these daytime soaps are still on the air.