Michael on Media

Michael Rosenblum has been writing about the media since 1988. His work and ideas have appeared in The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Ilkeston Life and many other publications.

He has been blogging regularly for the past 35 years on this subject. Having taught media studies at Columbia University, NYU and now the University of Oxford, he is considered an expert on this subject.

The Curse of the Focus Groups

Look out Grommit! It’s Hollywood ! The Guardian reveals today that a)Nick Park is back in business on his own terms, about to release another Wallace and Grommit feature and b) things did not work out so well with...

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My Birthday Surprise

Taken with my iPhone.. needless to say, not the Hasselblad My wife just surprised me with my birthday present – a new Hasselblad H4D digital camera. It is quite literally the best camera in the world. It gets a...

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OK Go Video Beats Robert Altman

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w[/youtube] A few years ago I read In The Blink of an Eye, by Walter Murch. It’s the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. Murch was the editor. In the book he talks...

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What I Learned at BET

Pretty  much everyone knows that television news is terrible. It is unwatchable. It is crap. The people who know this the best are the people who are actually in the business. They aren’t kidding anyone, least of all themselves....

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Video Saved His Life

Now we’re democratizing the medium… All this week we have been working with BET, the Black Entertainment Television network. Like always we’ve got a group of producers and reporters that we’re teaching to shoot and cut their own stuff....

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Grads At Sea

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T687IdXpCwc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] could be on Nickelodeon or an After School Special… Two years ago, David Besemer took our TCA course in Santa Barbara. He did a pretty good video on Toot, the water taxi in the Santa Barbara harbor. When...

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By The Numbers

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz OK Here’s a sobering statistic The average American spends 4.5 hours a day watching TV. And as video migrates to iPads, iPods and the web, that number is going to increase. Good for us video makers Now, here’s...

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BET News VJ Bootcamp Starts Today

Tiffany Tate and a dozen others… Today we start another intensive VJ bootcamp with BET News. The journalists at BET are going to work as VJs, shooting and reporting and editing their own stories. This is a four-day professional...

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Before There Was Twitter There Were Telegrams.. STOP

When every word cost something. Long before there was Twitter there were telegrams. They were the physical child of the telegraph, the first rapid communications system in the world. Those who wished to send telegrams paid by the word,...

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Why Current TV Failed… and what they’re not doing about it

Currently in trouble…. OK Before I start, full disclosure. I am a shareholder in Current TV Which makes me hope that new CEO Mark Rosenthal’s strategy for success will work. But I am not so sure. The intitial idea...

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