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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years ago

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Xbox Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month

At Xbox, from game development to hardware design, representation and the diversity of our teams positively impacts the way we create and bring products to life that make gaming possible and accessible for everyone. As a community, we believe our pledge to inclusivity relates back to our roots. Where we come from and how our families and communities have contributed to our growth is reflected in our work, and we bring that lasting commitment with us wherever we go, with whatever we do. What unites our culture is our sense of belonging that spans the diverse regions and languages we all come from – Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and beyond. We are united in what we share and strengthened by how our unique contributions can impact the world around us.

Growing up as enthusiastic consumers of U.S. pop culture, media and content, it has been so rewarding to see more Hispanic and Latino creators be recognized for their work, and see increased representation in media, movies, TV and, of course, games. One example is Xbox Game Studios’ upcoming Forza Horizon 5, which authentically creates a vibrant and diverse Mexico that celebrates the culture, beauty, and geography of the region.

Members of the Hispanic and Latino community are becoming a stronger part of the tech industry and we are increasingly able to tell our own personal stories through our work. We want to encourage future generations to pursue careers in the gaming industry and continue this meaningful journey of creation and authentic storytelling.

As we honor Hispanic Heritage Month at Xbox, it is our hope that we can showcase our unique voices and our endless pursuit of inclusion, representation, and community. Below are a few ways that Xbox is celebrating and how you can engage and make impact.

Microsoft Rewards on Xbox

Microsoft Rewards members in the United States can earn points for donation in support of Latinx in Gaming, a nonprofit that connects Latinos across the gaming industry, promotes cultural appreciation and representation in games/game-related content, and provides a platform for the Hispanic and Latinx community to elevate each other and themselves. Rewards members may also choose to contribute their points to CARE, an organization that works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice in 100 countries including Latin America and the Caribbean. As part of its humanitarian work in the region, CARE is currently responding to the devastating aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti with cash support, food, temporary shelter, and other services.

Xbox gamers can earn Microsoft Rewards points in various ways, such as playing or purchasing games after downloading the Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox. Earn points and redeem them for real rewards. Join today and donate through Xbox.

Discover Games, Movies, and TV Curated by Hispanic and Latino Communities at Microsoft

During September and beyond, we are highlighting games, movies, and TV selected by Hispanic and Latino communities at Microsoft that bring focus to Hispanic and Latino creators, experiences, protagonists, and more.

Check out a few highlights from the full games collection featuring games made in Latin America, games with audio, interface, and subtitles translated in Spanish and Portuguese, protagonists, playable characters, and games inspired by Hispanic and Latino locations and culture.

Forza Horizon 5 (Available for pre-order now) – Explore the vibrant and ever-evolving open world landscapes of Mexico with limitless, fun driving action in hundreds of the world’s greatest cars. Releasing November 9, 2021 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC on Windows and Steam, and Xbox Game Pass including console, PC and Cloud Gaming (Beta). And available on November 5, 2021 via the Forza Horizon 5 Premium Edition Early Access.

Cris Tales – Cris Tales was developed by Colombian development studio, Dreams Uncorporated. Cris Tales brings to life a charming fantasy world inspired by the cities and culture of Colombia. Peer into the past, act in the present, and watch as your choices dynamically change the future — all on one screen as you play!

Gears Tactics – Play as the defiant soldier Gabriel Diaz (the father of beloved Gears 5 protagonist, Kait Diaz), in this fast-paced, turn-based strategy game. Players can enjoy this title with translated audio, interface, and subtitles in Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Retro Machina – Retro Machina follows the adventures of a small robot looking to reclaim the past across a vast world. This game also won “Best Game from Brazil” in Brazil’s Independent Games Festival.

Forager – This exploration sandbox game from Argentina includes puzzles, crafting, fighting, and resource management, all in an adorable 2D world.

Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break – Developed by ACE Team in Chile, is a competitive tower defense and arcade action game rolled up with quirky, Monty Python-esque humor!

Standouts from the full movies and TV collection featuring creators, movies with Spanish and Portuguese audio, leads, educational views, and family entertainment include:

“Dora and the Lost City of Gold” – This film features a talented Latino cast and follows Dora’s quest through Peru to save her parents while exploring the history of Incan civilization.

“Pose” – MJ Rodriguez plays one of the main characters in this Golden Globe-nominated drama and her Afro-Latina identity is also reflected in the show. Following the iconic house mothers of New York’s underground ball culture, this show also features the largest recurring cast of LGBTQIA+ and trans actors for a scripted series.

“La Llorona“–Written and directed by Guatemalan Jayro Bustamante, La Llorona is based in Latin American folklore and explores powerful themes relevant to Indigenous culture.

“Book of Life” – A colorful tribute to Mexican culture, this beautifully animated, family friendly movie follows a love triangle through the trials and tribulations of going against family expectations, unrequited love, and even coming back from the realms of the dead.

View the collections on the Microsoft Store on Xbox and the Microsoft Store on Windows in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Visitors to both the Xbox and Windows Stores can find Hispanic and Latino community picks at any time by searching for “Hispanic”, “Latinx” and related terms. Content is subject to availability by country.

Forza Franchise Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month

The Forza team joins Xbox in celebrating the rich cultural history of Hispanic and Latino communities.

Join us by using #ForzaHHM to share your livery designs inspired by Hispanic and Latino heritage. We’ll feature our favorites in-game (both @ForzaMotorsport 7 and @ForzaHorizon 4 are eligible), and featured designers will receive in-game credit rewards. Entries close on September 29 at 11:59 PM PDT.

Xbox Ambassadors Share Their Stories

In the Xbox Ambassadors community, we are dedicated to sharing and amplifying community voices. So, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, we are spotlighting stories about representation in gaming from Xbox Ambassadors that are of Hispanic and Latino heritage. Here are their stories.

Xbox Plays

The Xbox Plays team will continue to integrate cultural moments into our content in September and October by celebrating all the various communities represented during Hispanic Heritage Month. We will feature games connected to these communities, as well as invite prominent live-streamers and content creators onto our channels.

Each week will feature a different theme:

1st week – Hispanic/Latino Game Creators

2nd & 3rd week – Hispanic/Latino Community Streamer Takeover

4th week – Hispanic/Latino Protagonists

5th week – Hispanic/Latino Characters

Join the fun at https://www.twitch.tv/Xbox!

Celebrate with Xbox Avatars Hispanic Heritage Gear

Xbox Avatars celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month with new collections! Show your support with these festive and free t-shirts, hoodies and more! Get your free Hispanic Heritage Avatars gear now.

Xbox Community Game Club Celebrates Hispanic and Latino Creators, Lead Characters

The Xbox Community Game Club is a weekly way to play, share, and discuss games together as a community. In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re featuring games by Hispanic and Latino creators and those with Hispanic and Latino characters in leading roles! Check in weekly to discover your next favorite game and use #XboxGameClub to tell us about some of your favorite Hispanic and Latino characters in video games and their impact on gaming. Discover Xbox Community Game Club!

Play. Connect. Impact: Learn more about all that Xbox and Microsoft are doing in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month at the Xbox Hispanic Heritage Month Community Hub and Microsoft’s Hispanic Heritage Month hub.

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tvserieshub · 7 years ago

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History Channel’s original show SIX came out swinging last year, delivering fantastic action and emotional content hand in hand. SIX grabbed audiences in the first episode and delivered through the entire first season. With season 2 premiering Monday, May 28th we wanted to take this opportunity to remind you why you should be watching this military-themed show.

10. Olivia Munn

Olivia Munn is joining SIX as a shady CIA Operative…need I say more? Ok, maybe just a bit more. Munn is great in everything she does and from what I’ve seen this is no exception. The addition of Munn throws an already ticking time clock of a team into near meltdown. Going into season 2 look for her to be both help and foil to our team.

photo credit @SIXonHistory

9. Troop Support

Even in real life, the cast of SIX has taken their military connection seriously. The actors participated in a Tough Mudder Run as a team to fundraise for the charity Student Veterans of America in 2016 and 2017. They also recently participated in the Flag and Flower challenge created by Preston Sharp. The challenge asks people to visit the grave’s of veterans, leaving flags and flowers to honor them, in particular NOT on holidays. Even as I write this, some of the cast are preparing to participate in The Murph (a physical challenge meant to honor LT. Michael Murphy, a SEAL who was killed in combat). Whether it’s in interviews, or on social media, you’ll find this cast expressing a constant respect for the warriors they portray.

Flags and Flowers event @SIXonHistory

@BarrySloane

@Jaylen_Moore

8. Locations

SIX uses it’s time wisely. It’s no cookie-cutter action show with all the fights taking place in dingy lighting, creeping through underground tunnels. Instead, you’ll see this team on land, in the air, on the water. You’ll see them at home (some of the hardest hitting scenes), trekking through the forest and busting down doors. I love never knowing where the team is going to end up next, there isn’t any sense of repetitiveness.

7. Complex Villains

Forget blah, zero backstory villains. SIX allows it’s bad guys to be every bit as interesting and dynamic as it’s heroes. Tell me, how many other military shows can say that? Dominic Adams spent last season playing Michael Nasry, the American-born terrorist who’s out for revenge. Although we loved to hate Michael and the tortures he planned for Rip (Walter Goggins), you never impatiently wished him off the screen. In fact, I’m happy to say that Adams is back for season 2, although we’ll find Michael in a very different set of circumstances this time around. SIX is also introducing “The Prince” (Nikolai Nikolaeff) as the big bad of the season. Nikolai spent months preparing himself for the role, diving deep in background so that he could best honor the role. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

6. Diversity

When the U.S. military is 40% PoC it’s completely unrealistic to have a military show with no (or a single token) non-white person on the team. Unfortunately, for some networks that continues to be the trend. SIX threw that nonsense out the window, showing a true picture of what a SEAL team would be. We have an African American member, Hispanic member and, my personal favorite, an Afghani American. Yes, that’s right. The first Muslim SEAL portrayed on American television. If that alone isn’t cause for celebration I don’t know what is. And yes, if you’re keeping track – that’s 50% PoC. Thank you SIX.

photo credit @SIXonHistory

5. The Action

The cast of SIX brings it full force physically. Training with former Navy Seals helped the actors hone their physicality and bring realism to their fight scenes. SIX doesn’t have the big budget of network shows and instead relies on the details instead of huge explosions. Although, no fear, you do get your fair share of those as well. The precise shots and killer hand-to-hand combat are impressive in every episode. Whether it’s taking down terrorists or rescuing school girls, you’ll believe every minute. I’d highly recommend checking out the Instagram accounts of the actors, there are lots of BTS videos detailing the grueling preparation they went through to get ready for these roles.

4. Characters

You can tell from episode one that these characters have been fully fleshed out, loved and thought about. Whether you’re watching Bear mourning his daughter, Buddha struggling with a changing family dynamic or Caulder being forced into parental responsibility, each of these men has some serious backstory. One of my favorites from last season was Fishbait, portrayed by Jaylen Moore. Even without the screen time to explore his family life, Fishbait never felt 1 dimensional and Moore was able to grab some of the spotlight. I’m happy to say we’ll be getting more Fishbait this time around! Bill and David Broyles as the writers/creators clearly love their show and it shines through. They’ve lovingly crafted complex 3D people that you will be captivated by.

Jaylen Moore @sixonhistory

Eric Laden @sixonhistory

Juan Pablo Raba @SIXonHistory

3. The Families

This military drama spends a significant amount of time on the effect that this job has on the home life of our SEAL team. These men go through hell and back on a constant basis and that takes a serious toll. SIX addresses this with respect and honesty. Seeing the inner turmoil of the team and the families around them connects you to the show in a way you might not feel if the focus was all on the action side. I’m partial to a good shoot ’em up show, but SIX is an action show I can recommend to everyone. The issues of home life for these warriors are addressed with a frank simplicity that’s stunning.

Brianne Davis as Lena Graves, and Nadine Velazquez as Jackie Ortiz, bring a warmth and personal touch to the show. As a Navy wife, I couldn’t ever watch dramatized shows like Army Wives. It felt nothing like my own experience since it was essentially Desperate Housewives on a base. SIX, however, shows the good and bad of being a military family in a way that I could immediately connect with.

2. The Cast in General

There are some serious heavy hitters here. Juan Pablo Raba plays Ricky “Buddha” Ortiz. Buddha is one of the most compelling characters to me personally because of the strain he feels between his work and home life. Raba brings his experience and acting chops to show that push/pull of warrior/husband powerfully. Walter Goggins is good in everything he does and SIX is a compelling argument for him as one of the best actors out there. Jaylen Moore has been in a lot – but hasn’t had a lead role in a hit tv series. I predict great things coming out of SIX for him, we didn’t have a chance to see a whole lot of background for Fishbait last year, but that will be changing in season 2.

Brianne Davis adds a level of heart and connection to this show that just blew my mind. She was one of the first cast members I wanted to interview because I felt that honest connection from the start. Kyle Schmidt is charming, funny and still manages to break your heart. Edwin Hodge brings a gravity and intelligence to his role and I look forward to seeing where that takes him in this much darker season 2. There isn’t a miscast actor in the bunch, and to honest, I could have written a paragraph for each one and why we love them. From interviews we’ve done we’ve learned that several of the characters were created AFTER meeting the actors who would play them. Juan Pablo Raba and Jaylen Moore in particular. The writers saw potential and they know exactly how to make their stars shine.

1. Barry Sloane

I’ve been a fan of Sloane’s for years, but in SIX he’s a totally different actor. From the bad boy romantic on Revenge to the deputy on Longmire, Sloane has always been good on screen. But in this? In this he’s great. As Joe “Bear” Graves, Sloane brings a power and complexity that shows what a truly phenomenal actor he’s become. Bear is ripped apart, suffering PTSD and struggling to balance home and work. He’s following the path of his mentor Rip (Walter Goggins) in all the worst ways, something the audience hopes and prays he can pull away from. He’s a leader on and off screen, the rest of the cast referencing him in every interview we did. To be honest, I’m really amazed Sloane hasn’t been nominated for an Emmy for his work in this series. Here’s hoping it happens in the future

Interviews

I’ve been fortunate enough to interview several of the hard-working actors from SIX. Check out what they have to say about the upcoming season:

Barry Sloane Interview

Joshua Gage Interview

Brianne Davis Interview

Eric Ladin Interview

Jaylen Moore Interview

Nikolai Nikolaeff Interview

Juan Pablo Raba Interview

We have more interviews coming, check back soon!!

Get Watching!

All told, SIX is a standout series worth your time. If you haven’t seen Season 1, get binging! Season 2 premieres Monday, May 28th at 10/9c and then moves to its regular time on Wednesday, May 30th at 10/9c. This season promises to be darker, more emotional and explore new sides of our team. It’s going to be great!

I’ll be live tweeting from @tvserieshub all season, check back after the episode for my reviews. Hit me up anytime @nolenag03 to chat about SIX

10 Reasons You Should be Watching #SIXonHistory +Cast Interviews @BarrySloane @EricLadin @TheBrianneDavis @JuanPabloRaba @Jaylen_Moore @EdwinHodge @NNikolaeff @iamKyleSchmid History Channel's original show SIX came out swinging last year, delivering fantastic action and emotional content hand in hand.

#10 Reasons #Barry Sloane #Brianne Davis #edwin hodge #Eric Ladin #History Channel #Interviews #Jaylen Moore #Joshua Gage #Juan Pablo Raba #military #military drama #Must See TV #season 2 #SIX #TV Series #tvseries

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jess-dw-sherman · 4 years ago

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Media Switch-up: YouTube

Why I chose this platform

For this week’s media switch-up I selected YouTube. I don’t use the platform that often, pretty much only to see clips from shows like The Daily Show (Trevor Noah), Last Week Tonight (John Oliver, The Late Show (Steven Colbert), and the Graham Norton Show. I've used it for some yoga and workout videos during Covid, and occasionally when bored for outtake videos for shows that I like. I don’t browse the platform for other content and I only use it overall when I specifically want to watch one of these shows. Recently, I’ve watched all three 2020 election debates live on YouTube. I’ve also never used it from a corporate or professional standpoint, so I think there’s a lot for me to learn.

As you can see from my homepage, my feed is very much targeted to the type of videos I watch regularly:

User Demographics

I was a bit surprised that YouTube is one of the most popular video platforms for video content on TV. According to Sprout Social, YouTube is the second most preferred platform to view video content as of 2019 for users age 18-34 - Netflix came in first place, Hulu in third, basic cable fourth, and broadcast media. I guess that considering the variety of videos that are available on YouTube, it makes sense that it would be so popular. Also, unless people pay for a YouTube Premium subscription, the platform is free and available on mobile devices. This makes it more accessible for people who can’t/don’t want to pay for streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu, and for people who don’t have TVs or don’t use TVs to consume content like you would need to on basic cable and broadcast media.

Use by country

The platform has over 2 billion users worldwide. Interestingly, In 2020, the top five countries with the most users are (from most to least) India, the U.S., Brazil, Japan, and Russia.

Use by age, gender, environment, and education

Overall, it seems that user percentages seem to be surprisingly equal across groups, with mostly a difference of a few percentage points between categories. A majority of people in all the locations - urban, suburban, and rural - all use YouTube. A majority of people with some college or complete college degrees also use the platform, though the percentage of people who have a high school degree or less is lower. I’m wondering if this was asked exclusively to people over high school age or if the same people were polled for all the categories because it’s understandable that a portion of children may not have their own accounts or use it that often. While this is likely becoming less and less common, as someone whose TV was severely restricted to 3-4 hours a week and to channels like National Geographic, I think it happens.

Age of users: It’s notable that the use of YouTube by age bracket is pretty diverse, with a maximum difference of 6 percentage points between the top three: 91% for 18-29, 97% for 30-49, and 85% for 13-17.

Gender: while the study does not address non-binary users (which is disappointing, to be honest), it does seem that people who identify as male seem slightly more likely to use YouTube, but overall the percentage of people who use it and identify with one of the genders are both high.

Income: the platform also seems to be used pretty equally across income brackets. As mentioned earlier, it’s free to use to upload content, so I do think this is at least a contributing factor for why it is so equally used by different socio-economic groups.

Users by race

I had some trouble finding user statistics by race specifically for YouTube, but I did find the below graph from Stastica.com useful from a general digital communications perspective if you’re looking at multiple platforms. Facebook remains the most popular platform, but YouTube is a close second for African Americans and Asians. The largest gap between the two platforms is for non-Hispanic Whites, with a gap of 25 percentage points.

Content and on YouTube

At first glance, and from the Explore and Trending Now pages, the main categories seem to be music videos and gamer streams, which is pretty much what I expected.

I did really like that in the Explore section had the option to explore by specific categories. Users that are interested in Music may have no interest in Gaming, so I appreciate that you can explore by your preferred category rather than having to scroll through an entire feed of random topics. If you do want to see everything, you can use the categories Trending Now or Hot to see what is most popular at the moment.

My feed has overall been overwhelmed by election news, though that is probably because I’m doing this analysis during the week of the last presidential debate before the 2020 election. On a personal note, while I was browsing for this assignment I found a video that was really interesting. It was on why public transportation is set up to serve mostly suburban populations, and how it contributes to the overuse of private vehicles. The video was possibly suggested to me because of my browsing history since I do a lot of work in the DEI space. However, it took a few clicks for it to appear on my screen and I was pleasantly surprised and interested.

Format of YouTube content

I debated whether or not to put my comments on this topic under their own header, because I feel like it’s pretty clear that the format of content on YouTube is videos. I don’t really see it being used for other formats.

However, I decided to make it a separate section because I wanted to highlight the varied success of different types of ads that Sprout analyzed. I think this is helpful for companies if they want to do paid advertising on YouTube. I was pretty surprised that non-skippable video ads were not the least effective, because I personally find them pretty annoying...

I also found it worth noting the difference in video lengths for different types of videos. While the average length is a little over 11 minutes, that average varies greatly by category with gaming videos being the longest and music videos the shortest.

Companies that use YouTube

There is a huge range of companies that use Youtube, so I decided to search for the most successful ones. From an analysis by the Social Media Strategist Summit, there seems to be a pretty significant variety, although a good amount are in the retail industry. The top 10 listed in the article are, in order, Lego, Disney, BMW, Google (note: they own YouTube), GoPro, Nike, RedBull, Victoria’s Secret, Chanel, and surprisingly WWE. I honestly had no expectation that WWE would be that popular considering the international usage of the platform.

Interestingly, some big companies in the financial industry are very active on the platform, although they can’t and don’t try to compete with retail brands. Goldman Sachs has a variety of different playlists, ranging from market news or commentary to daily check-ins from employees. BNP Paribas’ page seems to be more international with a majority of content in French or English and playlists about the different regions in which they operate.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think I definitely gained insight into useful aspects of Youtube, including the diversity of users, the success of different formats paid advertising, and the average length of videos by topic. I also learned more about navigating the platform to see new content and discover other users. In the future, I would like to look further into the use of this platform within the finance industry. It would be interesting to see what content is most successful, who the main followers are, and who engages with their content and how often. I personally don’t use YouTube to find information related to my job, but it’s worth looking into. I don’t think that it will become one of the main tools that I use for employer branding, but it is worth looking into if we want to share long videos publicly.

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mikethemovieguy · 5 years ago

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ANA DE LA REGUERA’S COMEDY SERIES “ANA”

SET TO LAUNCH NEXT MONTH

The Series Will Premiere In The U.S. and Puerto Rico On PANTAYA and

Throughout Latin America Via Comedy Central and Amazon Prime Video

“Ana” is Created, Produced, Written By and Stars Ana de la Reguera

Santa Monica, CA, March 5, 2020 – Ana de la Reguera today announced that Ana, the comedy series inspired by her life, will launch next month across the U.S. and Latin America. Ana will premiere on Monday, April 20th on the broadcast networkComedy Central (Latin America) and on the Spanish-language streaming service PANTAYA (United States and Puerto Rico), and on Tuesday, April 21st via streaming on Amazon Prime Video (Latin America). The series is written, produced and created by Ana de la Reguera who also stars in the lead role.

Ana is an inspiring, unreserved comedy series that brings down taboos and old-fashioned concepts about the role of women in society. Hilarious and honest, Ana takes us without apologies through a journey of love, professionalism, sex, marijuana, self-discovery and the pressure of meeting everyone’s expectations. In each episode, Ana explores each one of the many “Anas” she had never dared to be.

Reguera is joined by Tina Romero as her mother “Nena,” Andres Almeida (Narcos) as “Check,” Paulina Davila (Luis‪Miguel - La Serie) as “Chock,” Tom ‪Parker ‪ (Superstore) as “Chic,” Carlos‪ Miranda (Vida) as “Papasito,” ‪Lalo España ‪(Pastorela) as “Manager,” Paly Duval ‪(Mrs. Acero) as “LatinTuber” and the leading actor Salvador Sanchez (The Perfect Dictatorship) as “Bellboy.” ‪Ali Gardoqui ‪ and Augusto Gardoqui, Reguera’s sister and father in real life, will play their own roles of “Sis” and “Guti” in the series.

Each episode of the series features a musical number. Ana’s powerful soundtrack includes original music and tracks by artists such as Rosalia and C. Tangana, Residente, Francisca Valenzuela, Fito Paez, Kany García, Naty Peluso and Ali Gua Gua, among others.

Reguera is recognized for her roles in multiple Hollywood films and hit television series, including her starring role in David E. Kelley’s acclaimed Amazon Prime Video original series Goliath and her recurring role on the STARZ hit show Power. She also made special appearances in Narcos and Jane the Virgin. Reguera is also known for her performance as “Sister Encarnacion” alongside Jack Black in the feature film ‪Nacho Libre and her role in the critically acclaimed HBO series Cappadocia. Reguera has three major upcoming films: Army of The Dead, The King of The World, and the new installment of Purge. She previously worked with Comedy Central by participating in the Mexican adaptation of the brand’s successful original format, Drunk History.‪

Ana was produced by Viacom International Studios (VIS) and will consist of 10 half-hour episodes each.

# # #

About ViacomCBS Networks Americas

ViacomCBS Networks Americas, a unit of ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAC), is made up of many of the world's most iconic consumer entertainment brands. In Latin America and Canada, it has: MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Comedy Central, Paramount Channel, Telefe and Vidcon. The brand portfolio also includes Tr3s, a Hispanic cable network in the U.S. ViacomCBS Americas also owns Viacom International Studios, Viacom Digital Studios International and owns a majority stake in Porta dos Fundos and Backdoor, the creators of comedy content, leaders in Brazil and Mexico, respectively. The company's cross-platform business includes PlutoTV, Noggin, Paramount+ and the Mobile Apps MTV Play, Nick Play, Comedy Central Play, Mi Telefe and Telefe News; products on demand such as Nick First and My Nick Jr., as well as multiple content websites.

About PANTAYA

PANTAYA is the first-ever premium streaming destination for world-class movies and series in Spanish, offering the largest selection of the biggest blockbusters and critically acclaimed films from Latin America and the U.S. as well as bold never before-seen original series.

PANTAYA is a joint venture between global content leader Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF.A, LGF. B) and Hemisphere Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HMTV), which targets the high growth U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets with leading broadcast, cable television and digital content platforms. To learn more about PANTAYA, visit www.pantaya.com.

About Prime Video

Prime Video is a premium streaming service that offers customers a vast collection of digital videos—all with the ease of finding what they love to watch in one place.

Included with Prime Video: Watch thousands of popular movies and TV shows, including our critically-acclaimed Amazon Originals such as the Emmy Award-winning comediesFleabag and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Boys, Homecoming, Hanna, Good Omens, Carnival Row, Donald Glover’s Guava Island, exclusives, live sports including Thursday Night Football and licensed and self-published content available in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Instant access: Watch where and when you want with the Prime Video app on your smart TV, mobile device, Fire TV, Fire tablet, Apple TV, Chromecast, game consoles, Comcast X1 or from the web. For a complete list of compatible devices, visitamazon.com/howtostream.

Enhanced experiences: Make the most of every viewing with 4K Ultra HD- and High Dynamic Range (HDR)-compatible content. Go behind the scenes of your favorite movies and TV shows with exclusive X-Ray access, powered by IMDb. Save it for later with select mobile downloads for offline viewing.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

#ana #comedy #series #pantaya

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rickhorrow · 5 years ago

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10 To Watch : Mayor’s Edition 112519

RICK HORROW’S TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 25 : MAYOR’S EDITION

with Jacob Aere

Millions of Americans are counting on Airbnb this holiday season. So is the IOC. The International Olympic Committee booked a reported $500 million, nine-year, five-Games partnership with Airbnb, designed to create “a new standard for hosting that will be a win for host cities, a win for spectators and fans, and a win for athletes.” According to SportsPro, the agreement includes accommodation provisions that will reduce costs for Olympic Games organizers and stakeholders, decrease the need for construction of new accommodation infrastructure for the Olympic Games period, and generate direct revenue for local hosts and communities. The IOC and Airbnb will launch Airbnb Olympian Experiences to provide direct earning opportunities for athletes in addition to making at least $28 million worth of Airbnb accommodations available over the course of the partnership to athletes competing at the Olympic and Paralympic Games for competition and training related travel. The Olympian Experiences also encourage current and former Olympic athletes to sell personal experiences and access to their training regimes to fans via Airbnb, establishing a new revenue stream for them.

The NBA is reportedly eyeing big changes. According to ESPN, the NBA is "engaged in serious discussions" with the NBPA and broadcast partners on "sweeping, dramatic changes to the league calendar that would include a reseeding of the four conference finalists, a 30-team in-season tournament and a postseason play-in.” Sources said that these scenarios "would come with the shortening of the regular season to a minimum of 78 games." They added that discussions are "progressing with hopes of bringing a vote to the April meeting" of the league's BOG that "would introduce some -- if not all -- of these proposals into the NBA's 75th anniversary season" in 2021-2022. The NBA "still has work to do coordinating with constituents on the myriad implications involving the proposed changes." Commissioner Adam Silver has been "driving this agenda of change -- especially the in-season tournament cup modeled after European soccer -- for years.” The NBA has long been at the forefront of innovation – expect these novel ideas, championed by Silver, to hold the attention of owners, broadcast partners, and the players’ association.

After a $31 million opening weekend debut, "Ford v Ferrari" retains its Number One box office position and aims for $120 million total prize. “Ford v Ferrari,” perhaps the best thing to happen to motor sports marketing this calendar year, tells the remarkable true story of American car designer Carroll Shelby, played by Matt Damon, and British-born driver Ken Miles, portrayed by Christian Bale). Together, Shelby and Miles built a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company and took on Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966. Car and Driver notes, "The 24 Hours of Le Mans is auto racing's Boston Marathon, a brutal test of endurance where competitors race stunningly fast cars for 24 straight hours at speeds that can exceed 200 mph." Movie review service Rotten Tomatoes gave “Ford v Ferrari” a high 91% approval rating, which bodes well for its box office success (unlike most other motor sports movies). November not only ushers in the holidays, but also Academy Awards season – “Ford v Ferrari” gives a sport-themed picture a solid pole position in the Oscars race.

On the menu this Thanksgiving week: football and…Pop-Tarts. According to Crain’s Chicago Business, the Kellogg Co. brand is slated to air its first Super Bowl commercial as it looks to position the breakfast pastry as a game-day snack. Kellogg reportedly worked with New York-based creative agency MRY on the 30-second spot, which will run right before the two-minute warning in the first half of the NFL championship game. "As a beloved brand known for bold marketing, the big game provides an opportunity for Pop-Tarts to share our story and exciting product portfolio with a massive audience," Philipp Schaffer, senior director of marketing at Pop-Tarts, said in a statement. "Advertising during the big game is a natural next step for the Pop-Tarts brand, which is always looking for new ways (and craveable flavors) to excite our fans." Fox Sports has sold 60 of 77 available Super Bowl LIV spots, “pacing well ahead” of plans, Seth Winter, Fox’s EVP for sports sales, told Bloomberg. The price for one 30-second spot is a record $5.6 million, with a possible price hike for the last few slots. To paraphrase “Ghost Busters,” that’s a big Pop Tart.

U.S. Representatives’ letter to MLB opposed contraction of baseball’s minors. Last week, several members of the U.S. Congress signed a letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stating their "firm opposition" to the league's "radical proposal to eliminate numerous Minor League Baseball clubs." According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the letter argued that the "demise of dozens of minor league teams would undermine talent development and fan loyalty, and take away an affordable form of entertainment in areas far from professional sports teams." The letter also threatened the withdrawal of the "long-term support that Congress has always afforded our national pastime on a wide variety of legislative initiatives.” Elsewhere, the league announced that the MLB minimum salary will rise to $563,500 next season, an increase of $8,500 from last year‘s $555,000. In the minors, the minimum for a player’s first contract jumps from $45,300 to $46,000, while the minimum for a player's second or later deal jumps from $90,400 to $91,800. Baseball’s winter meetings convene in San Diego in two weeks, and the congressional support for the good work minor league teams do in American communities should bolster MiLB’s case for keeping their structure intact.

Minor League Baseball has announced the continued long-term commitment to its U.S. Hispanic fans and communities with the return of the 2020 Copa de la Diversion campaign and event series. Next season, each of the 92 participating MiLB teams covering 34 U.S. states will transform its on-field brand to a culturally-relevant Hispanic persona, representing an extension of the team’s and community’s identity. MiLB’s Copa-specific website features each team’s unique identity, including the story behind its Hispanic on-field persona, and links for fans to purchase available apparel for select Copa teams. As the New York Times noted, “the local embrace of a professional baseball team is ingrained in American culture.” MiLB performs critical community outreach through programs such as building youth sports facilities and sponsoring creative initiatives in schools. As American communities continue to become more diverse, events like the Copa de la Diversion campaign only serve to cement MiLB’s role as communal centerpiece across the nation.

The top 100 most valuable U.S. brands are worth a total of $3.81 trillion dollars, more than the GDP of Germany, according to WPP and Kantar’s 2020 BrandZ ranking. Among the fastest risers were Instagram, at $28.88 billion, which grew 98% in brand value, followed by Pinterest, Salesforce, Chipotle, and Cisco. The U.S. leads all other markets on innovation, with 36% of all U.S. brands ranking highly on this measure; the most innovative brand is Uber, followed by Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and FedEx. According to consumers, Uber, FedEx, Pampers, UPS, and Amazon provide the best customer experience. What’s the takeaway for U.S. advertisers? Victoria Sakal, Associate Director, Kantar, told Cynopsis, “Mattering more to consumers comes from being more relevant – meaningfully different – to them through greater insight on the things they care about, and also from playing a more active yet strategic role in more aspects of consumers’ lives: in advertising, on the retail shelf, and in our daily regimens.” According to related data analysis, total brand spend on U.S. sports sponsorship will grow 5.4% year-on-year to hit $15.5 billion in 2020. This represents an increase on the previous year’s growth of 3.5%.

LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan confirmed that he has signed a long-term contract extension. Whan is "completing his tenth year as the LPGA’s leader, the longest tenure of any commissioner in tour history," according to Golf Channel. During his tenure, Whan has "rebuilt the LPGA with a healthy, diversified foundation, with 33 events" and more than $70 million in total prize money.” When Whan was named LPGA Commissioner, the organization had only 23 events on the 2011 schedule in his first year. “Ten years ago, I’m not sure many of us would have been bold enough to predict where we are our today,” he wrote in an update to members. “Events like the KPMG Women’s PGA, Race to the CME Globe, UL International Crown and Founders Cup weren’t even an idea back then. In fact, 19 of the 33 official events on the 2020 LPGA Tour Schedule weren’t on the LPGA Tour just 10 years ago! Now we have an official team event, five strong majors, multiple events played with men, exciting season-long competitions, events staged in 12 different regions of the world, and TV coverage in over 160 countries.” Well done, Mike – we are proud to call you a friend.

The 2020 MLS All-Star Game presented by Target is heading to Los Angeles where, for the first time, the MLS All-Stars will face the Liga MX All-Stars on July 29 at Banc of California Stadium. The match will be broadcast on ESPN and Univision networks in the U.S., TSN, and TVA Sports in Canada, as well as on ESPN throughout Mexico and Latin America. “We are so pleased to bring the 2020 MLS All-Star Game presented by Target to Los Angeles, one of the great soccer markets in North America,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber in a statement. “As we celebrate our 25th season, we wanted to deliver a unique and unprecedented format for our annual All-Star Game. Our first ever game between the best of MLS and Liga MX’s top players is the perfect way to build on the growing relationship between the two top soccer leagues in the region.” The MLS All-Star Game will unfold in the same timeframe that SoFi Stadium, the new home of the Rams and the Chargers, will roll out inaugural concerts before it hosts its first official NFL games. Next summer, it seems, all eyes will be on LaLa Land.

A $50 million soccer fund has been put aside by the U.S. for the 2026 World Cup. According to Bloomberg, part-owner of the Philadelphia Union, Richie Graham, is leading a $50 million investment in the sport. Graham and a team of former executives from Adidas AG, ESPN, U.S. Soccer, and soccer-focused digital media company Copa90 have established For Soccer Ventures, a $50 million investment fund focused on growing the game in North America. The ultimate goal is to create a one-stop platform where those invested in U.S. soccer -- including kids, parents, casual fans, professional players, and coaches -- can reach the sport and its culture. Graham said the world’s most popular sport is benefiting in the U.S. from a rising Hispanic population and a tech-savvy, millennial, and Gen Z fan base. The venture will comprise two principal components: the Soccer Collective, a multimedia content producer aimed at promoting the culture of American soccer, and the Soccer Alliance, meant to build on Graham’s existing holdings through a network of clubs, leagues, and tournaments. For Soccer Ventures will be part of a larger initiative to spur further interest in soccer across the U.S. while a number of marquee international teams, featuring such icons as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Neymar, are also staging exhibitions in the U.S. for the same reason

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Richard Courchesne presents research about households relying on over-the-air antenna television for information, 12/6/2010.

vimeo

THE DAY STATIC DIED AND LEARNING BEGAN: Might digital antenna television become the cure to America’s failing education system? by Richard Courchesne MC5308 – Seminar in Advertising & Public Relations Dr. Jinbong Choi Texas State University – San Marcos [email protected]

November 22nd 2010 2010 Texas State University School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Fall 2010. Introduction: The following is a sociological experiment of the effective influence of broadcast television sub-channel communication: O + K.2 [CPM= GRP x 1000/aHH + s] = n (participant HH). Knowledge is power; the power of knowing how things work, and how to work them, is power at work. Humans are creatures of routine habits, mostly seeking the simplest means of accomplishing things while using the least amount of energy. Society’s lessons learned by those who grew-up with TV: Television is the greatest persuader, then and now. People want what’s seen on TV, the manufactured desires of ease, that causes people to drive rather than walk, Google rather than searching through an alphabetical directory, microwave rather than bake, and use an electronic calculator rather than a pencil. What’s a phonebook used for, anyhow? When people want to learn about something, they ask someone to “show them, or teach them how,” or learn from watching a television set. People prefer to learn any other way, than reading the words of written manuals with time-consuming boring in-depth instructions or directions. Relaxing by reading a good book is no longer the culturally favored leisure practiced by many in American society, today. Some researchers believe this phenomenon is a byproduct of an American school system that focuses on the “right answer, and pleasing authority figures,” or are media creating behavioral-engineered responses of human desire conjured-up by spin-masters hell bent of selling products not needed (Choi, 2010; Goldsworthy & Morris, 2008; Huffington, 2010; Pink, 2010; Wadsworth, 1998)? If television truly influences behavior, then allow it to help educate society on demand.

Purpose of study: The purpose of this qualitative and quantitative study is to identify the efficiency and effectiveness of advertising on sub-channel broadcast television stations in San Antonio, Texas area of dominant influence (ADI), by performing an analysis with valid empirical data and qualitative interviews approach to an informal research methodology in testing a hypothesis (Stacks, 2002): HQ: If a grocery provider “O” and a single broadcast station, “K.2,” (limitations) were to offer cardholders of redeemable government food stamps program (the dependent variables), special discount offers exclusively for ‘sub-canal’ watchers – “aHH + s,” (stimulus) who saw the ads watching a single sub-channel during a 60-day period (latency), and called-in or logged-into website (reaction) with special word (trigger) to receive a free magnetic discount coupon tracking card (incentive) from the broadcast TV station. This experiment is testing the effectiveness of promotional communication between a station and merchant to an audience and consumer in order to determine a count that could be calculated into an estimate cost per thousand (CPM), for the sub-channel “K.2.” Note: Possible collateral effect may cause station branding to occur. Therefore, O + K.2 [CPM= GRP x 1000/aHH + s] = n (participant HH).

Research Questions: RQ1: Does advertising or promoting a product on a broadcast OTA sub-channels prove to have a better cost per thousand (CPM), and greater value to a social-economic minded-audiences who rely on TV to keep informed, during the aftermath of “The Great Recession of 2008?” RQ2: Is the present national economic status causing households to abandon pay TV to seek alternative sources for television programming acquisition? Is American households tuning-in to over-the-air OTA television signal (antenna), or watching streaming Internet TV (broadband), or capturing smart-phone downloads (podcast)? RQ3: Has the influence of the Internet help change viewers perspective about conducting business using digital television? What is the future of OTA broadcast sub-channels, and fulfilling its promises from the past?

Methodology of quasi-experimental disposition. Phase I, Area of study: It is important to understand the unique characteristics of the demographics of the areas of dominant influence (ADI) selected for this experiment. San Antonio, Texas is a unique market because its inhabitants consist of the fasting growing minority in the country with the highest degree of spending power (U.S. Census, 2010). Hispanic-Latinos are the majority in the San Antonio ADI making up 53.79% of its population. Hispanic-Latino households consist of 16% of the nation’s population, in the other two selected ADI’s, Seattle-Tacoma’s Hispanic-Latino citizens are 7.76% of its populace, and the Austin ADI reports 29.23% of its households being of Hispanic-Latino decent (SRDS Media Solutions, 2009; U.S. Census, 2010). Therefore, the San Antonio ADI provides a naturally unique ethnicity dependent variable for the center of the area of study, which is not realized by any other U.S. metropolis, and its conveniently location for the researcher. Reportedly, the American Hispanic-Latinos are the fastest growing minority adding 3% each year to the national average, and are attributed with over a trillion-dollars of combined annual spending power (Hinojosa, 2010; Pew Hispanic Research, 2010). In a NPR radio report, Guy Garcia, a media consultant for Mentamentrix says that Univision, the largest Spanish-speaking network has overtaken English networks in the primary 18-49 demographic categories. “Univision is moving beyond bilingual, bicultural into a contextual identify” for the Hispanic-Latino audience, says Garcia (Garcia, 2010). The Hispanic-Latino market is desperately in need of research, being the smallest group without the means (credit rating), or operational knowledge (education) to gain access the Internet, information about this minority group is scarce (Najera, 2010). Without Internet access, the Hispanic-Latino household cannot easily provide comments or feedback about products or services, they relatively speaking, having no voice (Huffington, 2009; Najera, 2010; Subervi, 2008).

Methodology – Phase II, Sample group of study: This study is quasi-experimental research using a qualitative & quantitative methodology for analysis by identifying the independent variables as nearly the most current empirical demographic information available concerning the ADI of Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. Dependent variables include the number of digital converter boxes redeemed, and the volume of Hispanic-Latino ethnicity in each ADI. SRDS Media Solutions reports San Antonio, Texas Market Profiles Report of Lifestyle Ranking Index Category of Electronics & Computer indicates price is an issue for most households in the San Antonio ADI in purchasing “Hi-Tech” equipment, and accordingly the Internet is not the family’s primary entertainment source, even though nearly two-thirds of households own a PC (SRDS, 2009). During a radio interview with host Maria Hinojosa on the National Public Radio program Latino USA, Lolda Rosario, the director of the Multicultural Marketing Program at De Paul University, reports that the Hispanic-Latino market “is very young” and “very tech savvy,” while the older generations tend to avoid technology they cannot or do not understand. Rosario says many marketing strategies have tried to attract Latino dollars, but “too many strategies show no consistency,” and therefore fail to establish relevant integrity with its target audience (Hinojosa, 2010; Subervi, 2008). At the 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing System Proceeding of the 27th international conference Louis Barkuus states that “Television is increasingly viewed through computers in the form of downloaded or steamed content, yet computer based television consumption has received little attention” (Barkuus, 2009). In San Antonio, this trend is less obvious due to lack of personal Internet access. Barkuus, research study found that the uses and practices of subjects who have a higher than normal degree of technology knowledge and Internet access provided at school (students), download or stream “their television consumption through the Internet“ because they have the means. While nearly half the households in the San Antonio ADI may desire and “love to buy new gadgets and appliances,” only a quarter of them are early adopters with the means to be the “first to have new electronic equipment” (Barkuus, 2009; SRDS, 2009). The National Telecommunications and Information Administration Customer Service department received 51.7 million toll-free telephone calls requesting approval to receive a voucher to participate in the digital TV converter box coupon program. Out of the nearly 52 million calls, 35 million coupons were approved, a successful campaign of phenomenal response with a 54.4% redemption rate. Fourteen point seven million calls requested the information in Spanish or were part of the 7.5 million group who talked with a live representative agent (Locke, 2009). A New York Times article headline on June 13th 2009, the day after the ‘switch-over,’ reads “Changeover of Digital TV Off to a Smooth Start.” The report says that 112 million households out of the 114.5 million who rely on antenna television were prepared for the final switchover. This appears evident by the small number of phone calls television stations received after the end of analog TV and the beginning of the digital age (Locke, 2009). The Seattle-Tacoma market represents an average American city, and the Austin ADI was selected because of similar population size and its location in Texas.

Methodology – Phase III, Identifying the variables: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 76% of the 9.1 million American-Hispanic children living in one of ten counties in Texas speak Spanish at home (U.S. Census, 2010). A Magnaglobal report indicates 60% of households are using television for background noise, 20% are genre-driven, and the remaining 20% are watching appointment TV. The ‘genre-driven’ audience refers to household viewers who are fond of viewing television, but are indifferent about scheduling a routine program time (Magnaglobal, 2010). In a national November 19th through 21st 1993 Gallup poll, entitled “Survey of the future functions of television;” movies on demand (21.99%) and television shows at your convenience (17.67%) were of the highest interest to households, while banking through TV (7.67%), buying groceries (5.36%), playing games (3%), and buying expensive items (1.1%) ranked in the bottom percentile (Gallup Brain, 1993). Today’s digital television stations have many of the capabilities, but have not offered these functions to its viewers as of date. This study is suggesting targeting a viewing audience consists of bilingual households of a lower social-economic stratification; this action may provide an opportunity for grocery providers to target an audience whose primary media source of communication is in over-the-air (OTA) antenna television. Broadcast stations could test this theory by offer magnetic tracking discount cards rewarding viewers of sub-channel programming who use monthly guaranteed food stamp funds with great savings . The Market Profile of Food & Beverages Lifestyles of households in the San Antonio ADI reports a significant number of people “often snack between meals” and are “swayed by coupons” to purchase “easy to prepare” food “regardless of calories” (SRDS, 2009). Discounts could be focused on products that correspond to this profile.

Methodology – Phase IV, Content Analysis: According to the Nielsen Company and KSAT-TV general sales manager and research team, the San Antonio, Texas market television consists of 844,910 households, 11.8% (99,699.38) or nearly 100,000 households are using over-the-air (OTA) antenna to receive free-HDTV and SD programming while nearly two-thirds of the households own a personal computer (SRDS, 2009; Schmidt & Carnezale, 2010). Households using an OTA outdoor amplified antenna are also able to receive additional programming, not presently seen on cable, satellite, or Internet. This programming is narrowcasting to a specific audience on local sub-channels using the point two, three, four and five of digital television (DTV) assigned frequency (Schmidt et al, 2010). There are ten (10) primary DTV stations and sixteen (16) sub-channels in the San Antonio area of dominant influence (ADI). As far as San Antonio lifestyles regarding finances, most households “know nothing about investing” and “prefer to pay cash” for the things they buy. While there are slightly more females in San Antonio ADI than males, “family and faith” are the two primary influences in most households, and everyone is looking for a bargain. The average family households income is $68,355 earned mostly by white-collar workers who travel 15 to 29 minutes to work (SRDS, 2009).

Results of the analysis: The following is a disquisition of the demographic, psychographic, lifestyles of households in the San Antonio area of dominant influence (ADI), determining specific characteristics related to the social-economic nomenclature of a target audience and specific merchant product requiring the use of over-the-air (OTA) antenna to receive television signals. Research data was gathered from the International Journal of Digital Television, CQ Researcher, The AWA Journal, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings, The Toronto Star, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, SRDS Media Solutions (including The Nielsen Company, Experian Marketing Solutions, Inc., and PRIZM), The U.S. Census Bureau, and the Television Digest with Consumer Electronics. Interviews were conducted with General sales managers and research directors from the local television stations to gather data for the qualitative portion of the study.

Summary of research: Granted, most products are tools designed to save time, making living simpler, and paralyzing people. Where do the perspective consumers learn about places to go, to get the products they see, and obtain service or repair the things they have? Media. But, which ones, there are many: Newspaper, magazines, radio, television, cable, or the Internet? It’s a common fact that every household in America has at least one television in the house and a radio in the car, while not everyone has the convenience of Internet access (SRDS, 2009). Since many households in the ADI cut coupons for saving in groceries, the ‘Sub-channel coupon magnetic card‘ project can automate that task. Consumers benefit saving, grocers benefit with sales, and manufacturers benefit with tracking information. Internet TV is an independent variable based on the degree of video programming watched online. “As of the end of the second quarter of 2010, approximately 82.9 million households were online,” which calculates to 49% of TV households (Magnaglobal, 2010).

Conclusion of study: RQ1: Does advertising or promoting a product on a broadcast OTA sub-channels prove to have a better cost per thousand (CPM), and greater value to a social-economic minded-audiences who rely on TV to keep informed, during the aftermath of “The Great Recession of 2008?” Answer: Using Media Math’s formula based on the cost of commercial spot being $25 divided by one-eight (1/8) of the OTA antenna audience in the San Antonio ADI, approximately 12,500 households, the CPM is two dollars (Media Math, 2010). In the San Antonio ADI cable companies (Time-Warner and Grande including AT&T U-verse) make up 60% of the viewing audience with 506,946 households. Satellite television viewers using Dish network or Direct TV is equal 28.4% percent, or 239,954.44 households in the market ADI. The combine total number of households paying to use an Alternative Digital System (ADS) is 88.2% of the market, or 745,210.62 households. OTA antenna viewers make up 11.8% of the market representing 99,699.38 households (SRDS, 2010). Just as in the past when “Amplitude Modulated (AM) radio was still an important entertainment medium. AM radio reception was easily accessible to anyone,” so is OTA television (Thomas, 2008). “The days when antennas dotted the skyline of middle-class suburbia are gone forever, with cable and satellite dishes fulfilling the desires of an increasingly sophisticated television audience that will no longer settle merely for formulaic sitcoms, once-nightly national news and Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons (Kulig, 1997). This however, does not mean OTA television is dead, on the other hand it’s a feasible market with specific characteristics related to specific audiences. It may be a smaller target, but the broadcaster’s aim is much closer. Depending on your location in the GTA (General Transmission Area) , there are up to 25 channels of over-the-air uncompressed HDTV. Not all channels currently offered on cable or satellite is available, but the major broadcast networks are represented. The same programming that is on the standard channel is on the HDTV channel, often in high definition.” “There’s a secret in the air above the GTA. HDTV is being broadcast right now. Neither cable nor satellite is needed, just an amplified UHF antenna and a high-definition television with a digital tuner. And the best part: It’s free (Elston, 2008). Are there more and more households cutting cable off to watch free HDTV with an outdoor antenna? RQ2: Is the present national economic status causing households to abandon pay TV to seek alternative sources for television programming acquisition? Is American households tuning-in to over-the-air OTA television signal (antenna), or watching streaming Internet TV (broadband), or capturing smart-phone downloads (podcast)? Answer: Surprising, as it may seem, there remains a group of viewers committed to the antenna. “Attribute the phenomenon to nostalgia, stubbornness or a philosophical opposition to anything high tech, but those who work in the antenna installation field say business has been improving of late” (Kulig, 1997). Of course the cost of tuning-into digital television is an outdoor antenna and $0 per month. The average cable/satellite television subscription cost households approximately $50 per month. Cable Company’s subscriptions have been declining but according to Time-Warner Chief Operations Officer (COO) Landel Hobbs, he says, “the company doesn’t see any evidence of people dropping cable in favor of the Internet,” because, “the biggest subscriber losses” are “among people who don’t have cable broadband services.” Craig Moffett, an analysis for Sanford Bernstein, says “poor people have an excellent motive to cut cable and simple replace it with an antenna, or nothing at all.” Time-Warner has lost 155,000 subscribers during the 2010 July to September quarter, “compared to the 64,000 a year ago” (Svensson, 2010; Wright, 2010). According to Nielsen National Three Screen Report of the 1st Quarter of 2010, there are 286 million monthly viewers watching TV in the home (+.06%) for 158 hours and 25 minutes (+1.3%); 135 million viewers, mostly adults 18 to 49 years of age are watching Online video for 3 hours and 10 minutes (+3.3%), and 20.3 million viewers, who are mostly teens 12 to 17, are watching 3 hours and 37 minutes of downloaded video on a mobile phone (+51.2). “Consumers are adding video consumption platforms and not replacing them” (Nielsen, 2010). RQ3: Has the influence of the Internet help change viewers perspective about conducting business using digital television? What is the future of OTA broadcast sub-channels, and fulfilling its promises from the past? Answer: “We find that users personalize their viewing but that TV is still a richly social experience – not as communal watching, but instead through communication around television programs. We explore new possibilities for technology-based interaction around television” (Barkhuus, 2009). On June 2009 America made the switch from analog to digital television, the day static died, there were very few households loss in the transition (Locke, 2009). The National 1993 Gallup poll surveyed 376 participants (sample group) between November 19th and the 21st regarding questions about the future functions of television. This survey was taken during the introduction of ‘America On-line’ and pre-Windows 95 graphic user interface (GUI). Many of the promises made in the 1993 Gallup poll have not been honored. Results of the 1993 National Gallop poll question ask about a future functions of televisions which was offering households to “buy expensive items” using the TV is compared to the 2009 survey question that “Price is not an issue for Hi-Tech” found in the 2009 Media Solutions Lifestyle Category of Electronics & Computers Market Profile Report (SRDS, 2009). While some markets are willing to purchase high-dollar items over the Internet, DTV station don’t seem interested in targeting that market. According to the survey future digital stations were offering viewers movies on demand in 1993, however, today Netflix and pay TV offer this function at a premium price. Perhaps DTV stations, have not developed a scrambling method to block non-payers from receiving a signal, or the infrastructure is too expensive and difficult to maintain. With the advent of TiVo, DVD recorders and DVR, households can watch their favorite television shows at their own convenience. Yet another function has been taken over by a third-party operator, and not by a DTV station. Banking through TV is not offered today, but many of today’s Internet users conduct commerce and bank online, surely an adaptation that could easily be offered by DTV stations, but it isn’t. Q3: Buying groceries or Q2: playing games through the TV functions has also been replaced by online merchants who can fill grocery lists and deliver perishable foods products, instantly without any spoilage. For the gamers there are hundreds of first-person scenarios users can join into a networks with hundreds of game players the on the Internet simultaneously (Gallup Brain, 1993; SRDS, 2009).

Limitations of the study: The greatest limitation of this study is persuading a broadcast digital station to invest and participate and in the proposed ‘Sub-channel coupon magnetic card test’ to determine a seemingly accurate account of households using OTA antenna television in the ADI of study. Other limitations include the relatively short amount of time, framing for research, no survey information about sales of converter boxes from 2007 to 2010 in San Antonio ADI, unobtainable. David Walker spoke of a ‘Digital spectrum,’ methodology in measuring over-the-air antenna households, but did not receive the data within the latency of this research (Walker & Guzman, 2010). The researcher requesting information about the count of digital-converter boxes redeemed at their grocery chain in the San Antonio ADI, H.E.B. Public Relations department says because their company is a privately owned company, they were not able to disclose sales information.

Future Research & Recommendations: It is the recommendation of this researcher to propose a Federal feasibility study for public interest in a government funded pilot program to educate America using bilingual-education broadcast television stations. David Pink says it worries him that students “have been so indoctrinated into a school system that is focused on the right answer, and pleasing authority figures, that they have not allowed their intrinsic motivation to blossom” (Pink, 2010), thereby killing innovation and independent thought. According to Adrianna Huffington’s book Third World America, “If America’s school system was a horse, it would be shot,” but she doesn’t offer a viable solution, other than getting rid of bad teachers (Huffington, 2010). Academia wants to blame parenting, parents want to blame teachers, and everyone wants to blame TV. But, TV may be the answer to America’s education problems. School administrators want students to attend 2nd period , and students want to socialize rather than learn about anything. There are of course the exceptions to the rule, the overachievers, the teacher’s pet, and nerds. KFED-DTV network can educate those who cannot attend classes and the community. Viewers can watch or record daily classroom lectures. Those with Internet access can download an app to view practice exercise and homework assignment paperwork on a mobile device. TV stations across the U.S. started cutting their analog signals Friday June 12, 2009, ending a 60-year run for the technology and likely stranding more than 1 million unprepared homes without TV service. The Federal Communications Commission put 4,000 operators on standby for calls from confused viewers, and set up demonstration centers in several cities (Amendola, 2009). A $150 million literacy & educational federal grant is suggested to fund the project for 5 years, housing in operations in renovated buildings & side-mounting antennas. The planned KFED-DTV network daily programming transmissions begin at 600am SDT until 10:00pm Monday through Friday, continuously year round. Students & underwriters submit recordings of thirty-minute productions of Texas certified teacher follow standard TEAC curriculum. KFED network broadcasting day begins at 6am Monday thru Friday until 6pm. Each of the five (5) standard definition (SD) channels could be dedicated to a specified subject. In other words, channel .1 might teach English from 1st grade to 12th. Programming will stagger with the first half-hour in English and the second half-hour in Spanish. English will be taught in Spanish. The second sub-channel could teach Math, the third the Humanities, and so forth. Each KFED DTV stations can lease and move into abandoned buildings in the heart of the 15 selected areas of dominant influence (ADI) cities & towns for the pilot program once it receives a retrofit to operate a broadcast television station. Antennas (including microwave link) can be side mounted to existing television towers and the transmitter shack can be constructed at its base. Priming the pump to truly educate America. Prospective underwriters to support KFED annual budget after federal grant is exhausted: Valero Energy, H.E.B. Foods, Red McCombs Automotive, Kinetic Concepts and many more. Underwriters can immediately sponsor segments of educational program blocks and/or provide video productions for broadcasting. News updates, governmental messages, statewide educational scholarship and grant information. Weekend broadcast programming can consist of recordings of independent school district athletic events and/or theatre art plays and productions. Each station has autonomy for ADI of broadcast. Completion of this experiment can only work if a broadcast station and grocery provider can reach a mutual agreement to participate, and that would be OK.

References Barkhuus, Louise (April, 2009). Television on the Internet: new practices, new viewers. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. CHI 2009: Life, love, death. pp. 2479-2488. United States: ACM New York, New York.

Choi, Jinbong (2010). Seminar in Advertising & Public Relations. [Lecture]. Texas State University in San Marcos.

Elston, Brian J. (October 23, 2008). Look, up in the air! It’s 25 HDTV channels for free; if you can see CN Tower, indoor antenna should pull in most networks. The Toronto Star, Television pp x04.

Gallup Brain (November 19, 1993). Survey of the future functions of television. Retrieved November 19, 2010 from

Garcia, Guy (2010). [Podcast]. Latinos and the media. [Podcast]. Episode 921 18:50. NPR: Latino USA Podcast.

Goldstein, M. L. (2009). Digital Television Transition: Broadcasters Transition Status, Low-Power Station Issues, and Information on Consumer Awareness of the DTV Transition.

Goldsworthy, Simon & Morris, Trevor (2008). Spin, Public Relations, and the Shaping of the Modern Media. PR: A Persuasive Industry. From PR to Propaganda: The persuasive industry’s problem with definitions. Palgrave Macmillan.

Greenblatt, Alan (February 16, 2007). Television’s Future: Will TV remain the dominant mass medium? CQ Researcher v17 n7 pp. 145-168.

Hart, Jeffrey A. (2010). The Transition to Digital Television in the United States: The End Game. International Journal of Digital Television v1 n1. Indiana University.

Hendrix, Jerry A. (1998). Public Relations Cases, 4th ed. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.

Hinojosa, Maria (2010). Attracting Latino dollars. [Podcast]. Episode 921 18:50. NPR: Latino USA Podcast.

Huffington, Arianna (2010). Third World America: How politicians are abandoning the middle class and betraying the American dream. Crown Publishing.

Jost, Kenneth (June 20, 2008). Transition to Digital Television: Are broadcasters and viewers ready for the switch? CQ Researcher v18 n13 pp. 529-552.

Kulig, Paula (March 15, 1997). The Globe and Mail. The Arts: Television p. C23.

Locke, Gary (Secretary) (December 2009). Outside the Box: The Digital TV Converter Box Program. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration and TV Converter Box Coupon Program.

Magnaglobal On-Demand Quarterly (October 2010). Updated Internet Access, DVR, VOD Forecast: Introducing Over The Top Story Forecast.

Media Math, NTC Publishing (2010). Finding CPM from CPP.

Nielsen Three Screen Report (2010). Multi-Screen Insight: TV, Internet and Mobile Usage. 1st Quarter. United States: The Nielsen Company.

Najera, Marcos (2010). VozMob: Turning day laborers into citizen journalists. [Podcast]. Episode 920 18:50. NPR: Latino USA Podcast.

Pew Hispanic Research (2010).

Phillips, Mary Alice Mayer (1972). CATV; A History of Community Antenna Television.

Pink, Daniel (February 19, 2009). A Whole New Mind. United States: Penguin Group.

Senuta, Pamela (November 19, 2010). KENS TV Channel 5, San Antonio, Texas. [Interview]. Research Director.

Schmidt, Randy & Carnezale, Greg (November 19, 2010). KSAT-TV channel 12, San Antonio, Texas. [Interview]. General Sales Manager & Research Director.

SRDS Media Solutions (2009). Market Profiles Reports: Designated Market Area, San Antonio, Texas compiled by Experian Marketing Solutions & The Nielsen Company.

Stacks, Don W. (2002). Primer of Public Relations Research. The Guilford Press.

Subervi-Velez, Federico A. (2008). The Mass Media and Latino Politics: Studies of U.S. Media Content, Campaign Strategies and Survey Research: 1984-2004. United States, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

Svensson, Peter (November 8, 2010). Cable Subscribers Flee, But is Internet To Blame? Tech Trends. Retrieved November 20, 2010 from https://ift.tt/2s58Jsl.

Television Digest with Consumer Electronics (June 9, 1997). New antennas coming for digital TV v 37 i23 p13, 2p.

Thomas, Ronald R. (2008). Television Reception in the 1950’s: A Coming of Age. The AWA Journal, On-line Edition, Antique Wireless Association, Inc.

U.S. Census Bureau (July 15, 2010). Newsroom. Retrieved November 20, 2010 from https://ift.tt/1Bw4HEI.

Walker, David & Guzman, Elizabeth (October 14, 2010). WOAI TV Channel 4, San Antonio, Texas. [Interview]. General Sales Manager and Research Director.

Warren, Ted S. (2009). Associated Press.

Wright, Judy (November 19, 2010). Time-Warner cable San Antonio, Texas. [Interview]. General Sales Manager. Likes: 6 Viewed:

The post Richard Courchesne presents research about households relying on over-the-air antenna television for information, 12/6/2010. appeared first on Good Info.

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thebestify · 5 years ago

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Money Moves: How to Raise Money for Your Latina Owned Small Business - BELatina

If you’re a Latina with a small business take note that investors tend to take interest in LOBs with a Latina behind the project. What are LOBs and why is it better if a Latina is behind it? A LOB is short for “Latino Owned Business” and a 2017 study done by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Fund, found that Latino-owned businesses not only composed a significant percentage of U.S. businesses compared to other minority groups, but not surprisingly Latinas owned 40% of these firms. If you are looking to raise money for your dream business, here are some tips on how to raise capital. Entrepreneurs usually find funding from banks, friends, family, and nowadays crowdfunding sites. They also go to non-bank lending sources, such as private funding sources which are essentially family members, angel investors, venture capitalists or other private lending institutions. Investopedia defines an angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) as an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. According to the Stanford Report, when Latino entrepreneurs start a business, 70 percent of their funding comes from personal savings, while just six percent comes from commercial loans.Take the success story of Ana Bermudez, the founder and CEO of TAGit the mobile app that TV viewers use to buy items from their favorite TV shows. If you have ever found yourself watching your favorite TV show and wanting to buy what they’re wearing TAGit was created for you by Bermudez. TAGit identifies the show that you are watching, and it presents you with a list of merchandise related to the TV show. If you watch it on TV, and you want it, all you have to do is TAGit. It was a brilliant idea, but finding the money to start her business was a hustle. Like most Latinos, Bermudez used all of her savings and retirement accounts to start TAGit, but at the point when most people turn to either finding another job or getting financial help from family and friends, Bermudez opted for another option. When asked by Ufront Media how she raised money to create TAGit she said she also had to thank angel investors for getting her dream business off the ground. What Bermudez was referring to as her angel investor was her mentor-like collaboration with Accion, one of the largest microfinance organizations, funded in part by U.S. government grants and by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Since banks and the U.S. Department of Treasury are not charities, they support nonprofits like Accion in hopes that startups will build a foundation for a stronger national economy. Accion was founded in Venezuela, operates in more than 30 countries, and offers guidance to entrepreneurs on how to navigate the small-business environment begins with advice on micro-finance and how to get a loan. In Bermudez’s case, Accion managed to get her funding from the Eva Longoria Foundation. In an interview with JP Morgan’s news channel Bermudez said, “Had it not been for Accion, I probably would have had to go back to work, which is a big no-no for entrepreneurs. It paints a negative picture with investors.” While there are advantages to working with private lenders in having access to quicker capital, the disadvantage is that the interest rate may be higher, and you may have a demanding payment plan. Regardless, private funding sources serve to help small businesses that may not qualify for a bank loan get up and running. “Obtaining sufficient capital could literally be the factor that makes or breaks a business’s ability to grow,” said Simon Goldenberg, an attorney who specializes in financing law for small businesses and individuals, in a Business News Daily interview. “Without private funding, many of those businesses could struggle to get off the ground or keep their doors open.” Different Routes to Take: Small Banks, Business Loans, and Grants What tends to hold back Latino business owners’ economic growth? Having poor credit scores, limited funding sources and inadequate business knowledge according to a report titled, Latino-Owned Businesses: Shining a Light on National Trends. And when it comes to whether you’ll have a better chance of a big or small bank giving you a loan, it seems small business owners have greater success with small banks for getting approved for a loan, a line of credit or a cash advance. In fact, 60% of Latino firms had their loans or lines of credit approved by small banks, compared to only 34% by large banks, according to the same report. They list grants such as the Amber Grant for Women, which provides $2,000 in funding to 12 lucky recipients each year as well as the National Association of the Self-Employed, where small business owners can receive a grant of up to $4,000. As for loan options, Fundera recommends: SBA Microloans, a government-backed business loans come with low interest rates and six-year terms. SBA Community Advantage Loans, they can provide up to $250,000 in capital, by showing good credit and a strong business plan. Accion, a microfinance organization that can provide loans of up to $50,000 and offers low-income business owners access to financial education and capital. Opportunity Fund, another nonprofit organization similar to Accion that can offer loans in as few as five days, and there’s an easy online application. Camino Financial, aims to specifically help Hispanic entrepreneurs and if you meet those requirements you can get funding in as little as two business days. Kiva, their unique business model offers as much as $10,000 with zero-interest loans where applicants must market their business to the community of 1.6 million individual lenders with three years to repay them. Remember, securing financing is the toughest part about starting a business, but fortunately, there are plenty of options for Latina small business owners. Keep in mind that loans are easier to get when you’re first starting out and that grants are highly competitive. Don’t give up and follow your dream of becoming an entrepreneur with a great idea. Read the full article

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manabingu · 8 years ago

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ManaTagged! Heyoo~

tagged by the sweet ♥ @rainbow-galaxy-supernova (sorry its overdue)

The last:

1.) Drink: Raspberry Milk Tea w/Lychee Popping Pearls

2.) Phone call: to @tyrestgwa earlier today via skype

3.) Text message: to @crystalwoodsart

4.) Song you listened to: Phoenix Ash’s Cover of JAP by Abingdon Boys School & Fome’s Cover of Count Zero by T.M. Revolution (SO FCKN GOOD)

5.) Time you cried: yesterday 8D during Wonder Woman ;U;o

6.) Dated someone twice: Tyrest is the first & only official dating. But me and @crystalwoodsart have been married practically since 6th grade. She is mY WAIFU!

7.) Been Cheated on: Thank Ra No!

8.) Kissed someone and regretted it: Nah.BUT I mean- iN DREAMS YES.

9.) Lost someone special: It’s a universal thing. Namely pets for me

10.) Been depressed: 8) Story of my LIFE! But I’ve been makin progress

11.) Gotten drunk and thrown up: I REFUSE to consume alcohol/drugs

12-14.) LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS: Turquoise,Galaxy Print,Pastels/Silver tie

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU…

15.) Made new friends: I’ve been blessed thanks to YT Idol w/new singer pals!

16.) Fallen out of love: Yeah...in high school I had so many talent crushes. Which I think is normal for theater kids. But I think I ended up with the correct person. He truly understands me. And though I sometimes wonder what would my life be if I had confessed my love to those others, I’m happy I waited for the person who accepted me just the way I am ;w;o

17.) Laughed until you cried: AS AN ABRIDGER, I am privileged to be surrounded by INCREDIBLY hilarious people & I love it!♥

18.) Found out someone was talking about you: YES. And BOY is it a trip when I find people are horrible trolls. I find out about sweet people who say super kind things about me or my work all the time. But when I get a heads up about backstabbers or people who get close for the wrong reasons, I put my guard up around them & just do my own thing. Because a path of jealousy, hatred & vengeance isn’t for me. Bullies can talk, but I’ll always ignore them.

19.) Met someone who changed you: Namely Tyrest,Crystal,Panda,Wraith10, @cozymochi (bows to her greatness), LordMoonstone, @kittykatsandbox, (FAB SENPAI) @ahsimwithsake & @laurathia who are 1 of 2 sets of adoptive internet parents I have XD and MOST RECENT OF ALL CEONN. If I hadn’t met Ceonn, my singing career journey wouldn’t have taken off.THANX

20.) Found out who your true friends are: YEP 8)! Sadly, just recently too...

21.) Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Well, hispanic people greet each other by cheek kisses so I will say yes.

22.) How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: Everyone cuz my FB is family & IRL friends only ^^; BUT my ZEXAL Abridged has a FB

23.) Do you have any pets: My pet cockatiel Patchos 8D

24.) Do you want to change your name: No, but don’t mind having a stage name to be honest. I love stage names ^_^

25.) What did you do for your last birthday: Probably sang,drew & other stuff

26.) What time did you wake up: 9 or 10ish? I had to meet some friends today

27.) What were you doing at midnight last night: GAWKING at Gal Gadot

28.) Name something you cannot wait for:Anime Idol @ Metrocon, finally getting out more song covers/abridged stuff. And being stable again.

29.) When was the last time you saw your mother?: a few seconds ago

30.) What is one thing you wish you could change about your life: I wish that ONE thing didn’t happen & my family had the same wealth we shoulda had if luck was on our side. That & I wish I wasn’t afraid of certain things so I could progress faster.

31.) What are you listening to right now: Fome’s Covers,& MY own covers

32.) Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: yeS?

33.) Something that is getting on your nerves: Hypocrites lately 8)

34.) Most visited website: Tumblr,Instagram,Twitter & YT are tied tbh

35-37.) Finished all of school: yeppers

38.) Hair color: Dark Chocolate Brown (I used swatches at Sally’s XD)

39.) Long or short hair: I enjoy having long princess hair, but I cut it recently QuQ woops. Mostly cuz I wanted to try a T.M. Revolution hairdo XD

40.) Do you have a crush on someone: I HAVE ANIMAY HUSbANDs/WAifUS

41.) What do you like about yourself: My voice range! I used to be SO self conscious as a kid, but eventually it became my greatest strength because it’s SO versatile it honestly I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my unique voice QuQ

42.) Piercings: My ears have been pierced since birth. Mom wanted it

43.) Blood type: O? I think was what it was? It’s been years lol

44.) Nickname: Mana & Ginga (to my singer friends)

45.) Relationship status: Taken by Tyrest (with Crystal on the side ;D heh)

46.) Zodiac sign: I am a proud Sagittarius ♐

47.) Pronouns: Her is fine, but I don’t mind He if I’m crossplaying (mostly Ginga). It’s kind of a weird thing for me cuz I’m genderfluid ;w; but if anything to avoid confusion, just go with feminine one XD cuz whatvs???

48.) Favorite TV show: ITS HARD. I like too many things.Non-Anime TV Show wise I watch mostly Trail & Error & Fresh Off the Boat. But Anime-wise: ZEXAL (but YGO in general), Darker Than Black, One Punch Man/Mob Psycho 100, Uta no Prince-sama, Saint Seiya/Omega, Tokyo Mew Mew, Kaleido Star, anything by CLAMP, Kamen Rider Gaim/Fourze, Death Note, Attack on Titan, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, FMA...too many...I know I have more...

49.) Tattoos: NoPe

50.) Right or left hand: Righty

FIRST…

51.) Surgery: In 8th grade I almost died 8D! Ruptured appendix, 3 consecutive operations & all because the first time I went to the emrgency they sent me home & misdiagnosed me with stomach flu 8D HAH.HAH.HAAAA ;~~~;...

52.) Piercing: Ears only as mentioned previously

54.) Sport:I don’t do any.My fave is figure skating tho. I love Yuzuru Hanyu♥

55.) Vacation: Technically me comin to the U.S for the first time counts

56.) Pair of trainers: Is that slang for shoes???...uhh??

MORE GENERAL…

57.) Eating: I ate sushi at a Chinese Buffet called Giant Panda today

58.) Drinking: finished all the boba tea ;w;

59.) I’m about to: Sleep cuz it’s 1am xD

61.) Waiting for: Good news, & replies from a few emails I sent this week

62.) Want: To make my YT Channel flourish & master my voice

63.) Get married: With luck but I think a paper doesn’t dictate if you love a person or not. BECAUSE i wanna pursue singing/acting, I know I’ll always be traveling ;w; so that decision is hard. I mean we can be OFFICIAL via the paper thingy but like, I already know we’re together XD ffff lol

64.) Career: Singer/Actor/Voice Actor & Internet Personality maybe

65.) Hugs or kisses: Both ^o^...cuz honestly I’m a fluffy person ;w;o

66.) Lips or eyes: Both again...I Can’T HElP IT (deep down my thoughts are as swirly with flirtatious things...proly explains Ginga’s mannerisms)

67.) Shorter or taller: I’m short ;w; sniffs 5′1. Everyone else is a tree

68.) Older or younger: Depends on relationship type? Like I think having a partner at a relatively older age because I am anxious af & need someone older to guide me when I’m struggling, but don’t mind younger (but MATURE) person by 2 years max. But when it comes to friends, I befriend anyone who is kind-hearted. Because we can learn a lot from elders/ our youth

70.) Nice arms or nice stomach: I don’t mind either or but TMR is @U@

71.) Sensitive or loud: I’m drawn more to sensitive people because they have higher levels of compassion & kinder hearts.

72.) Hook up or relationship: Relationship cuz I’m loyal AF

73.) Troublemaker or hesitant: Egh...both have downfalls. Hesitant is safer tho

HAVE YOU EVER…

74.) Kissed a stranger?: Nope BUT if I become an actor, that is a thought that keeps me up at night XD cuz ...again...I’m loyal af ;-;

75.) Drank hard liquor?: EWW >_>

76.) Lost glasses contact/lenses?: YES. During a musical in 10th grade (Suessical I was Cat in the Hat) I was on a trampoline and THEY FLEW OFF MY FACE! And ....we never found em O_O...they vanished....

77.) Turned someone down?: Yeah...a bunch of creepy fanboys throughout the years... 8) unfortunately the downfall of being an internet person

78.) Sex on first date?: DEPENDS. I’m demisexual, so I’m attracted to personality/emotional bonds not physical appearances. So IF my emotions towards them is high enough, I dunno if things could happen? But usually I stay reserved cuz I need to feel like I honestly love the person THAT much.

79.) Broken someone’s heart?: Probably ;w;...2 old buddies. I knew they had crushes on me...but I just didn’t feel the same way towards them -actually someone ELSE admitted they had a crush on me last month so the count is now up to 3...AGH. I WISH they can find someone who will make em happy because I think they deserve it tbh. They’re good dudes.

80.) Had your heart broken?: Once yeah, an old childhood crush was honestly insensitive when I asked him if he ever felt something for me & he said “ehhh not really?” in a way that came off as insensitive XD?....yeah. But the MORE I thought about why I liked him, the more I realized I could NEVER be in a relationship with them cuz they were immature & didn’t know how to be serious.They don’t balance goofiness & sensitivity & I need a balanced person

81.) Been arrested?: NO

82.) Cried when someone died?: waterfalls of tears cuz I’m an emotional wreck

83.) Fallen for a friend?: yeah =w= a bunch of abridgers/singers hah. I get talent crushes ALL the time, but don’t act on it cuz I’m shy AND taken XD

DO YOU BELIEVE IN…

84.) Yourself?: Usually...but I have many moments where I question if I’m good enough or worthy enough to be here ;w; gotta work on my Kattobingu

85.) Miracles?: Shining Draws should be real. But yeah miracles CAN happen

86.) Love at first sight?: FUYA OKUDAIRA 8D...and Takanori Nishikawa...and Mahiro Takasugi and Aoi Shouta tbh

87.) Santa Claus?: Elf is my favorite Christmas movie

88.) Kiss on the first date?: IT DEPENDS. But if it happens? AIGHT????

89.) Angels?: Yes \QwQ/! angels are real. @rosey-ballerina is one

OTHER….

90.) Current best friend’s name: Crystal is my bff & waifu but Tyrest too but honestly Kimmy, Panda & Ceonn are also tied with those 2

91.) Eye color: Brownies eUe

92.) Favorite movie: Finding Nemo, Big Hero 6,Lion King (all 3), All 3 Yu-Gi-Oh! Movies,The Emperor’s New Groove,Mrs. Doubtfire, Moana, Wonder Woman, Mary Poppins, Arrival, The Mummy, Matilda, Harry Potter, Pokemon 3,Hercules, Grave of the Fireflies, Antman, The Producers....and a few others

I tag: @t-chan @sylphwriter @eleanorose123 @ivmysterynumbers @zexalfangirl @shybunny @galaxyeyedphoton

#Mana Tagged #I HAVE A HARD TIME WIT FAVES TBH #I LIKE TOO MANY THINGS HONESTLY AGH ;w; sowies eeehhh I am indecisive AF

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neptunecreek · 5 years ago

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Streaming Is Laying Bare How Big ISPs, Big Tech, and Big Media Work Together Against Users

HBO Max is incredible. Not because it is good, but because of how many problems with the media landscape it epitomizes. If you ever had trouble seeing where monopoly, net neutrality, and technology intertwine, well then thanks, I guess, to AT&T for its achievement in HBO Max. No one knows what it’s supposed to do, but everyone can see what’s wrong with it.

For the record, HBO Max is a streaming service from AT&T, which owns Warner Bros. and, of course, HBO. HBO Go, by contrast, is the app for people who subscribe to HBO through a cable or satellite provider. And HBO Now is a digital-only subscription version of HBO. HBO Max is, somehow, not HBO. It’s a new streaming service, like Disney+, offering both the back catalogs of HBO and Warner Bros. and new exclusives. The name, which emphasizes HBO and doesn’t alert people that this is a service where they can watch Friends, has been a marketing problem.

But the marketing problem, while hilarious, is not where the biggest concerns lie. The real problem is with AT&T offering HBO Max for free to customers with certain plans, not counting it against data caps for its mobile customers, and launching without support for certain TV devices.

Let’s go through what’s happening here piece by torturous piece. First: HBO Max is free if you are a subscriber to certain AT&T plans—high-speed home Internet, unlimited wireless plans, and premier DirectTV plans, to name a few. But Americans pay more for worse Internet than their peers in Europe and South Korea. With high-speed home Internet, most Americans have two or fewer choices. The most meaningful choice an AT&T home Internet subscriber in the U.S. makes is between expensive low-speed service or very expensive "high-speed" service.

This lack of choice means that there is no reason for AT&T or any of the other large ISPs to have a better quality product or better customer service. They know we will pay because in 2020, nearly all of us need Internet access at home. Any Internet service will sell just fine, and it's more lucrative, in the short term, for ISPs to offer slow, expensive Internet than fast, good Internet.

Given these high prices, HBO Max isn’t “free.” AT&T is already making money hand over fist on you, and now it gets to report AT&T premium customers as subscribers to its new streaming service to its investors, inflating growth.

Second: AT&T isn’t counting HBO Max against the data caps on its mobile plans. Data caps are artificial: they exist so that there can be more expensive plans, not to manage capacity. Not counting the data used by an app against a data cap is a practice known as a “zero-rating.” When an ISP zero-rates its own content and applications, or that of its favored partners, that violates the principle of net neutrality.

Net neutrality is the principle that all data online is treated equally by Internet providers, so that they can’t manipulate what you see online by blocking it, slowing it down, or prioritizing the data of privileged apps and services. In the case of AT&T and HBO Max, AT&T has a “sponsored data” program that allows companies to pay it to zero-rate their data. But when HBO Max does that, AT&T is just paying itself though a meaningless accounting convention that costs it nothing (unlike competitors who give it money for equivalent zero-rating treatment). AT&T does this all the time.

So if Disney+ or Netflix—or, more importantly, a smaller company trying to compete with the big guys—wants their content to be on a level playing field, they will have to pay a fee that HBO Max does not.

This does not mean HBO Max is a better deal on an AT&T phone. You are paying too much for data already and, again, this trick helps drive AT&T’s subscriber numbers while not costing the company anything. It’s manipulative, too. It funnels AT&T customers who want entertainment but have artificially low data caps into AT&T’s own content. And according to Pew Research Center, those who rely on smartphones for Internet access are more likely to be young, Black, Hispanic, low-income, and rural.

Finally: HBO Max was launched without support on certain TV devices. Managing all these streaming services and subscriptions is a pain, and a lot of people do it with devices like Roku or Amazon Fire TV. Sometimes these are separate devices, and sometimes your so-called “smart” TV just came with one built-in. And guess what? If you have one, you weren’t watching HBO Max when it was launched. AT&T hadn’t made deals with those companies, so HBO Max won’t play on those devices. Remember how cable and satellite companies fight with TV networks over fees, sometimes leading to programming blackouts? Well, the same thing is now happening between streaming services like HBO Max and the makers of hardware and software for viewing them. So even if you have a “free” HBO Max subscription, you might not get to watch it on your Roku TV.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Cable and satellite TV services have almost always required subscribers to rent special hardware—that ugly, power-guzzling set-top box that you pay monthly rent for. In 2016, TV hardware and software makers asked the Federal Communications Commission to “Unlock the Box” by passing rules that would require cable and satellite services to make their channels available through whatever hardware and software the customer chose, using a set of industry standards for connecting those devices. TV studios and networks fought vehemently against that proposal. They argued that new rules were not necessary, because services delivered “over the top” through the Internet, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and now HBO Max, would automatically run on all the consumer’s devices.

The outcome was easy to predict: Unlock the Box rules never came to be, and “over the top” apps like HBO Max don’t run on all devices—only the ones whose makers made deals with AT&T.

In the cord-cutting era, Roku and Amazon Fire TV have 70% of the market share for these kinds of devices. Users are stuck in the middle of a fight between giants just to watch content they supposedly get for “free” or have already paid for.

We need more choices for our ISPs, so they can’t keep charging us more for bad service. We need more choices so they can’t leverage their captive audiences for their new video services. We need net neutrality so these giant companies can’t create fiefdoms where they manipulate how we spend our time online. And we need our technology to be freed from corporate deals so we get what we paid for.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/3dVxCKi

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nancydramirezl-blog · 5 years ago

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Alone, Afraid But One Dream :

Like many young immigrants Vallery Maravi faced extreme vulnerability and isolation to chase her dream. Thousands and thousands of immigrants come to the United States to seek a better life and they leave their native country. Research Analysts estimate that the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. are from 10.5 million to 12 million.

Kids also come to this country in search of higher education. Now she is achieving the dream and she recalls the journey that brought her here.

“ Tough Moments, very tough moments ” is how she describes those years, that she was forced to leave her mother’s home in the US , not long after she arrived from Peru, initially in an effort to reunite with her. They had not seen each other in 5 years .

As she sipped on her coffee , she reminisced about these moments. Her face turned serious and her eyes watery but you could still see how strong she still was. Her golden retriever passed by the sofa bed she was sitting on and she pet her. Her dog’s name is Roxy. Despite the tension in the room, the sun’s rays stretched in from the window and shined across her face.

Originally From Lima Peru, raised by her grandparents 16 year old Vallery Maravi found herself in the United States homeless, with no money or support but still holding onto a dream. .

According to data from the Latino Adolescent Migration, Health, and Adaptation (LAMHA), “Latino [first generation immigrants] youth are more likely to feel sad or hopeless (36.3%), to seriously consider suicide (15.9%), and to attempt suicide (10.2%) than white”

Being 16, homeless and broke , Vallery says this was a reason for her depression . However, she did not allow it to consume her .

“ I went to a church.I guess I like to watch a lot of movies , when kids run away from the house, they go to a police station or church. I felt like they would help me, and they did. I felt more than alone. It wasn’t just being physically alone in a country, but emotionally as well. I came here to spend time with my mom and things happened, conflicts rose and then there I was.”

After seeking help at a church, Vallery’s passion for acting and news reporting is what kept her going.

At 18, her aunt opened the doors to her home where she lived for 2 years . She attended Westchester Community College while working three different jobs :she worked full time at a CVS pharmacy where she continues to work, a restaurant where she earned minimum wage and at a school. The smell of freshly cooked food would spread through the restaurant’s kitchen as she would study for her Journalism Exam the next day.

The awards hanging on the wall and black cabinet only added more to the story and reflected her academic success. The certificates and the trophies contrasted with the red wallpaper. By the tv you can spot a picture of her family. Vallery could be spotted in the middle of the picture frame, slightly a few younger but with a vibrant smile.

Shortly after, she won a scholarship that would allow her to study abroad in Italy.

From the seas that surrounds the peninsula to the fashion filled streets of Milano to the recognized basilica and the canals of beautiful venice,

“You hear music in the streets, homeless people singing and acting on the streets. It was an artistic moment and I was like , that's what I want to do, A few human relation themes that I would like to incorporate into my life is just this, to be comfortable dealing with change(getting out of my comfort zone), social awareness and emotional intelligence. These themes play a role in the success of anybody’s career “

So, once back in the United States, she took matters into her own hands and went back to school full time, with a passion like never before.

“ You need people along the way, and you never know what will motivate you, for me , traveling is my healing. It is getting to know cultures and stories”.

Vallery talks about how challenging it was to work three different jobs, to pay rent and school while keeping up her grades. [ Everyone would ask ] “How come it took you 8 to 10 years to finish school?’ You really think , you are going to get a job in that field? It’s not going to happen, you are a woman and hispanic- do you really think you can pull this off?”

Despite all the obstacles put in her way, she never gave up, Vallery graduated from Westchester Community College and received her Bachelor's Degree in Journalism and Film & TV Studies from Lehman College.

She currently interns at BronxNet a , a news tv channel that serves people from the Bronx. As she showed off one of her report packages, she laughed and said “ This was one of my first stories, Time has really flown, I promise I am so much better now”she joked. It was a report on soccer clinics for children with disabilities from the Bronx.

Although she is 31 now she is not shy to admit that she still struggles with depression till this day and believes that this is something that she will always have to live with but not giving up on her dream is all that matters. “It comes and goes , but one needs to have control, there’s an essence that makes you . Grab that. And always remember who you really are, I wanted to end everything but I was here for a reason, it was all about a dream. My dream saved me”.

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bharatiyamedia-blog · 6 years ago

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'Central Park 5' inform Oprah of ache and redemption after Netflix sequence

http://tinyurl.com/y6zb6dtm LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The 5 males wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989 stated on Sunday {that a} new Netflix Inc sequence about their case revived the ache from their ordeal however, for some, introduced a way of redemption. Oprah Winfrey talks on stage throughout a taping of her TV present within the Manhattan borough of New York Metropolis, New York, U.S., February 5, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Picture In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the boys who turned often called the “Central Park 5” stated they had been grateful that the four-episode dramatic sequence referred to as “When They See Us” humanized them and used their story to highlight injustice. “It’s bittersweet,” stated one of many males, Kevin Richardson, as he sat on stage with the others. “Watching that is painful, but it surely’s crucial. It must be watched.” The 5 males – Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Korey Sensible – had been 14 to 16 years previous on the time of the rape and confessed after prolonged police interrogations. The sufferer was white and the defendants all black or Hispanic. Every quickly recanted, insisting that they had admitted to the crime underneath coercion from cops. However all of them had been convicted and served jail phrases of six to 13 years. Their convictions had been overturned, in 2002, after one other man confessed to the crime and DNA checks confirmed his guilt. In 2014, they settled a lawsuit in opposition to for $41 million. “It introduced again lots of ache,” McCray stated of the sequence. “I assumed I used to be over it.” McCray, who broke into tears in the course of the dialogue, stated he didn’t really feel any sense of redemption and nonetheless suffered from the trauma of being falsely accused and imprisoned. “Even to today, I’m broken. I need assistance. I do know it,” stated McCray, who added that he has rejected his spouse’s request that he go to remedy. “The system broke lots of issues that may’t be fastened.” Requested if had forgiven his father, who urged him to admit to the crime, McCray stated: “I hate him. My life is ruined.” “No, it’s not,” an viewers member shouted. The interview, a part of a Netflix marketing campaign for tv’s Emmy awards, was recorded and can premiere on Netflix and on Winfrey’s cable channel OWN on Wednesday. Salaam stated he believed the sequence was serving to folks to “understand that we didn’t need to undergo this. That is how the system, regardless of the wheels of justice, mowed us down.” He stated he used to really feel like he was strolling round together with his head down. Now, “I’m proudly elevating my head,” Salaam stated to applause. Winfrey, an govt producer of the sequence, stated the world had recognized the boys as “a derogatory headline for many years” however now she hoped they’d be often called “the exonerated 5.” Our Requirements:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Source link

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survival0001-blog · 6 years ago

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10 Amazing True Survival Stories Too Incredible To Be Real

New Post has been published on https://outdoorsurvivalqia.com/awesome/10-amazing-true-survival-stories-too-incredible-to-be-real/

10 Amazing True Survival Stories Too Incredible To Be Real

These true survival narratives will leave you in awe of the unbelievable human spirit and sheer will to survive whatever the odds.

RELATED: A Story of Personal Survival | Survival Lessons From The Field

In this article :P TAGEND

Ricky Megee Joe Simpson and Simon Yates Aron Ralston Mauro Prosperi Douglas Mawson Marina Chapman Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight Andes Plane Crash Survivors Sully Sullenberger and the Crew and Passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 The Chilean Miners

True Survival Stories: Narratives of Surviving the Impossible

1. Ricky Megee

We’ve watched survival movies you wouldn’t suppose possible in real life until you come across well-documented true survival stories from random people.

In 2006, employees in a cattle station in one of the most remote the sectors of Australia came upon a man named Ricky Megee. He claimed to have been stranded in the Australian outback for 70 days.

Megee said the last thing he recollected was his vehicle breaking down during his cross-country drive. There is some speculation that he was the victim of a violent assault during which he was perhaps medication. When he gained consciousness, he realise his demise.

For over two months, Megee survived on only frogs, serpents, lizards, and the water he found in a nearby dam. He lost over half his body weight upon rescue.

Check out the Geo TV video below via AwKahoot to find out more about Ricky Megee’s survival narrative :P TAGEND

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2. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates

Together with Joe Simpson, Simon Yates climbed Siula Grande in 1985, via the hitherto unclimbed west face. On the descent, Simpson fell through a cornice, breaking his right leg and heel.

To continue descending, Yates then utilized ropes to lower Simpson down the mountain in stages. While descending in the night in bad weather, Yates lowered Simpson over an unseen cliff edge.

This meant that he was hanging over a deep fissure with only Simpson’s hold on the rope to prevent him falling. To avoid falling off the mountain himself, Yates cut the rope.

Simpson thus fell approximately 50 feet into the fissure. He survived the autumn, unbeknownst to Yates, who presumed he died.

Simpson managed to climb out of the crevasse and reached base camp four days later. Some mountaineers were very critical of Yates’ decision to cut the rope on his partner.

Yates argued that he could not rely upon an army of people to help since they were far on the mountain flank with a raging cyclone in progress.

Despite this decision, his rescue try contributed significantly to saving Simpson’s life. Simpson has always vehemently defended Yates, saying he would have done it himself given the same position.( via Wikipedia)

Watch Today’s interviews with Simpson and Yates below for their true survival narratives in this video by the World Expeditions :P TAGEND

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3. Aron Ralston

In 2003, a young climber named Aron Ralston set out to conquer Bluejohn Canyon in Utah. When an 800 -pound boulder changed, Ralston observed himself trapped against the canyon wall with his hand crushed under the boulder.

After six days of what he calls” sleep-deprived, meandering thinks ,” Ralston built the difficult decision to use his multitool to amputate his own limb and free himself. He then repelled to safety.

Ralston’s story inspired the movie 127 Hours. Learn more about his survival narrative in the video below by TLC via Sirtoppim :P TAGEND

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4. Mauro Prosperi

In 2014, an Italian athlete named Mauro Prosperi set out to complete the Marathon des Sables — a brutal six-day run in the Sahara desert. By day four, he was making good time in the race( he was in fourth place) and had begun to fall in love with the desert landscape.

Prosperi’s luck changed when he found himself in the middle of an eight-hour sandstorm that left him disoriented, lost, and alone.

With just a few furnishes and MREs on hand, and after trying and failing to catch the attention of two pas aircrafts, Prosperi survived for 10 days by drinking his own distilled urine and eating bats.

Learn more about his amazing survival tale by watching the video by 20 th Century Fox below :P TAGEND

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5. Douglas Mawson

Douglas Mawson is now an Australian hero due to his historic Antarctic exploration mission in the early 20 th century. According to Cracked.com :P TAGEND

On December 14, 1912, Mawson and his two colleagues, Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz, were returning to base after successfully not dying for a few days … when Ninnis fell into a fissure, dragging their sledge, their renders, and most of their puppies down with him. They were around 310 miles from home.

Eventually, Mertz died from cold and exhaustion, leaving Mawson to soldier on alone … Then, unbelievably( or perhaps entirely believably ), Mawson’s sledge get wedged in the snow.

He also fell into a crevasse, where he” dangled helplessly above the abyss, with his sledge behind him edging towards the lip .”

After pulling himself up from a frozen grave and surviving 32 days in the harshest environment on countries around the world, Mawson ultimately reached his hut.

He was then told that he would have to wait 10 more months in Antarctica. The ship meant to take him back home had sailed off only a few hours earlier, believing him dead.

Learn more about Mawson’s journey and survival in the video below by Today I Found Out :P TAGEND

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RELATED: Man Survives Yukon Winter in Camper Van

6. Marina Chapman

Of all the true survival stories here, Marina Chapman’s story might be the most unique and unbelievable. True survival narratives in the wilderness don’t get any more amazing than this.

Though there is some speculation that her survival tale may be untrue or embellished, Chapman states she was kidnapped from her Colombian village. At four years old, she was then abandoned in the jungle.

Unable to fend for herself, she began to follow a group of capuchin monkeys. She said, they “raised” her rescue by hunters around age 10.

During her time in the jungle, Chapman took shelter in trees and lived off of wild berries and bananas. After her rescue, Chapman says she was sold to a brothel and lived as a street urchin.

She was also enslaved by a mafia family before finally adopted around age 14.

Do you think her survival narrative is true? Check out the video by Buzz Sourse below :P TAGEND

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7. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight

Between 2003 and 2004, Ariel Castro kidnapped these three young women in Cleveland. They expended the next ten years captive in his home.

They suffered harsh living conditions, starvation, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. One of them( Amanda Berry) was even impregnated by Castro and dedicated birth to a daughter during her captivity.

In 2013, Berry’s young daughter “ve noticed that” her father’s car was not in the driveway and alerted her mom. Acting fast, Berry grabbed the child and ran out into the street, crying for help.

She called 911 from a neighbor’s telephone, and the three women were finally rescued. These women’s story is a true evidence to how much a human being can withstand and just how strong the will to live is.

Watch this interview by BBC Newsnight with two of the kidnapping survivors below :P TAGEND

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8. Andes Plane Crash Survivors

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby union team. With them also were their friends, household, and associates.

The plane crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972, in an incident known as the Andes flight disaster. In the Hispanic world and South America, it is also known as the Miracle in the Andes( El Milagro de los Andes ).

More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash and several others rapidly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the 27 who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight died because of an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage.

Rescue came for the last 16 survivors on 23 December 1972, more than two months after the accident. The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 3,600 metres( 11,800 ft) altitude.

Faced with starvation and radio news reports that search and rescue stopped, the survivors fed on the dead passengers preserved in the snow.

Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10 -day trek across the Andes, discovered Chilean arriero Sergio Catalan.

He then, devoted them food and alerted the authorities to the existence of the other survivors.( via Wikipedia)

Watch this video documentary about the Andes Plane Crash by History Channel via ro7477 :P TAGEND

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9. Sully Sullenberger and the Crew and Passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549

On January 15, 2009, U.S. Airways flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia airport in New York, heading for Charlotte, North Carolina. After just a few minutes, the plane struck a flock of geese, causing both engines to fail.

In an act of gallantry, quick reasoning, and exceptional airmanship, the pilot, “Sully” Sullenberger alerted air traffic control that he would be landing the plane on the Hudson River.

And he did just that, saving the lives of his entire crew and all 150 passengers on board the plane.

Learn more about the historic flight in the video below by AIRBOYD :P TAGEND

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10. The Chilean Miners

The 2010 Copiapo mining accident, also known then as the” Chilean mining accident”, began in the afternoon of Thursday, 5 August 2010 as a significant cave-in at the distressed 121 -year-old San Jose copper-gold mine.

The interred humen, who became known as” Los 33″ (” The 33″ ), procured themselves trapped 700 meters( 2,300 ft) underground and about 5 kilometers( 3 mi) from the mine’s entrance via spiraling underground service ramps.

The mixed crew of experienced miners and technical support personnel, with less experience working underground, survived for a record 69 days deep underground before their rescue.( via Wikipedia)

The video below by CBS tells the astounding tale of the Chilean miners’ survival and rescue :P TAGEND

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It’s truly amazing what human beings are capable of under pressure. We don’t truly know what we’re able to withstand or how far we’re willing to go to survive until we’re in a situation where we don’t have a choice.

Do you have an inspiring #survival tale to share? Tell us about it use the hashtag #truesurvival!

— Survival Life (@ SurvivalLF) April 12, 2016

The truth is, most of us will never be in these kinds of survival situation, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare. By learning from these inspirational tales of survival, we attain ourselves better survivalists. Try to learn some sea, dessert, or jungle survival abilities before you find yourself in a survival situation.

Do you have other unbelievable survival tales to share? Do share it with us in the comments segment below!

Up Next:

True Survival Tales: The Miracle In the Andes True Stories Of Survival: The Shackleton Antarctic Disaster 7 Military Disaster Survival Tips | Survival Life

Editor’s Deal: This is the newest blade, hand picked for our outdoor loving mob !

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on June 28, 2018, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

Read more: survivallife.com

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spynotebook · 6 years ago

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In 1993, before the magical girl anime Sailor Moon was released in the U.S., there was an alternate vision for it. It was an American vision. A total remake of the show with Saturday morning-style animation, intercut with footage of real-life, all-American high school teens.

“Politically correct,” in the words of its creators, the proposed Sailor Moon would star Hispanic, black, Asian, and handicapped Sailor Scouts. The girls rode surfboards that rocketed them into space, to the tune of a bubblegum pop soundtrack.

A little psychedelic, the miscellaneous artifacts of this Sailor Moon together form either a pitch-perfect vision for a ‘90s American children’s show or, to die-hard anime fans, an irreverent Sailor Moon funhouse mirror straight from hell’s grimy content buckets.

This red, white, and blue Sailor Moon plan never got into orbit, and in 1995, the original, Japanese Sailor Moon anime began airing on U.S. television. 25 years ago, the Americanized version was a narrowly-avoided disaster, but a disaster that apparently left behind a 17-minute pilot episode, which I decided long ago that I had to try to find.

A live-action scene from Toon Makers’ version of Sailor Moon.

Image: Renaissance Atlantic/ToonMakers (Sam Moreland)

Sailor Moon’s road to global success was a long and somewhat tortured one. In 1991, manga artist Naoko Takeuchi premiered a shōjo (girls’) comic called Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon in Japan. It follows the adventures of a group of teenaged girl superheroes who fight villains and save the world. They’re led by Sailor Moon, the alter ego of Usagi Tsukino, a ditsy but good-hearted girl with two meatballs of blonde hair atop her head and a feline companion named Luna. Usagi’s time is split between her extra-planetary adventures and typical teen antics, like playing video games, blowing off homework, and chasing cute boys. It was a runaway hit in Japan, and behemoth studio Toei Animation quickly adapted Sailor Moon into an anime in 1992. It ran for 200 episodes and so far has generated well over $5 billion in merchandise sales, including toys by Bandai—the company that explored an Americanized version, as a way to sell toys here.

Decades later, the pilot for the American Sailor Moon show has achieved mythological status. That pilot—the only episode ever made—vanished into thin air, its remains scattered across the internet like animated ashes. Fans have labored to piece together the show’s history on Geocities-style websites with infinite-scroll Sailor Moon fan art and labyrinthine lost-media wikis. For over two decades, they’ve searched for its only episode with no success. I was unable to play bystander to a piece of lost anime ephemera. Immediately upon hearing about the legendary American Sailor Moon pilot, I knew I had to try to find it. I would not rest until I’d exhausted every lead.

After speaking with the dead show’s creator, animator, biggest fans, and haters, I think I have finally uncovered the full history of anime’s white whale. It involves a quarter-million-dollar unsuccessful investment, a drugged-up cat, no shortage of corporate intrigue, a Storage Wars-style drama, several eBay bidding wars, and, finally, a dusted-over DigiBeta reel in a retired millionaire’s Florida garage—which brought its own surprises.

Illustration: Viz Media

In the early ‘90s, American television was not fertile ground for Japanese animation. Sure, Japan’s most popular cartoon, the kid-friendly Astro Boy, had made its way over through NBC Studios in the ‘60s. But when it came to what we think of as anime today, mainstream America simply didn’t have an appetite for it yet. Thrice-ripped VHS tapes fell into the hands of small, passionate groups of enthusiasts who’d subtitle anime for friends and pen pals. It wasn’t until 1997, when Cartoon Network launched an anime programming block called Toonami, that anime began to resonate powerfully with American kids and teens. A generation of children—myself included—grew up alongside Dragon Ball Z, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star and, of course, Sailor Moon.

Japanese kids’ entertainment had made some major inroads into American kids’ culture, but it was live-action, rubber-suit superheroes, not animation. It all got started one day in 1984, when kids’ TV producer Haim Saban was relaxing in a hotel room in Japan on business. He flicked through the channels playing game show after game show until, as he told the LA Times, he landed on something that caught his attention. “All of the sudden there were these five kids in spandex fighting monsters. Don’t ask me why, but I fell in love. It was so campy!”

The show was called Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, and after 8 years of rejections, Saban was finally able to bring it to the U.S. as Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. He hired American actors, spliced in some of the original explosions and monsters, and aired it to an audience of millions. It was proof that in the U.S. there was an appetite for campy Japanese superhero television. (Saban, who is chairman of the board of Univision, which owns Kotaku, did not return requests for comment.) The American version of the show was produced by a company called Renaissance Atlantic, and its president Frank Ward was on the prowl for a similar hit.

Sailor Moon toys released by Bandai in the U.S. in 1995.

Photo: Ken Faught/Toronto Star (Getty Images)

Ward was the former president of Bandai’s American division. The Japanese toymaker was currently raking in American dollars from Power Rangers toys, and Ward saw similar dollar signs when he looked at the toys Bandai was making in Japan of Usagi and her sailor friends.

Ward was unflappably confident that Japanese cartoons would find an audience on American television—and, more importantly, a consumer base for merchandise. For Power Rangers, it worked; I possessed two complete sets of Power Rangers bedsheets as a child. In the ‘90s, Power Rangers paraphernalia was inescapable. Ward, age 50 back then, figured that he could do the same with Sailor Moon, a similarly campy superhero show with a girl audience in mind. At that point, American investors believed it was a big risk to air a girls’ superhero show on American television. Didn’t only boys like superheroes? Ward believed that wasn’t the case.

I had never heard of Frank Ward until well after I kicked off this investigation. He has essentially no internet footprint—on purpose, he’d eventually tell me. I only found his name at the end of a long, unraveling string of what felt like dead-end internet investigative work.

“I don’t think it’s been shown before. And may it not be again.”

I heard of the American Sailor Moon pilot scrolling through Reddit in a trance-like state one afternoon at work. Accompanying the post was an image of a whitebread Barbie-like heroine in the Japanese sailor suit of an anime magical girl. Huh, I thought. That’s wacky. I cover anime for Kotaku, but was never in on the Sailor Moon hype. It was not my thing as a kid, and Sailor Moon’s 2014 reboot, Sailor Moon Crystal, wasn’t my thing as an adult. It was always more of a curiosity to me than something I enjoyed watching. In elementary school, I’d occasionally stow away in the basement to peep an episode before tuning in for Dragon Ball’s Toonami slot with my brother. In my tomboy-kid estimation, the show was very girly, a little incomprehensible, and conflicted with my self-image. Unquestionably, though, Sailor Moon is powerful to a generation of American girls my age.

Sailor Moon fandom is unquantifiably enormous. Its most extreme end has obsessed over the American, live-action Sailor Moon show for decades the same way diehard Twilight fans might hate-read the entirety of Fifty Shades of Grey. On scattered Sailor Moon fan sites, true connoisseurs have collected the detritus of the never-aired show. It’s blasphemous. And it’s hard to look away from. Most infamous, and complete, is what appears to be a music video attached to it. The only time it was ever shown publicly was at 1995’s Anime Expo, a small convention held at the Los Angeles airport Hilton the year that Sailor Moon, the original anime, debuted on U.S. television.

It opens with a plucky xylophone pop beat, a pan through the solar system, and, suddenly, the white-toothed smile of some high school Betty, who we must presume is Sailor Moon. The theme song kicks in, and it is of that classic overexplain-the-plot type typical of the 90s.

Sometimes she’s a fun-loving 16-year-old girl

Sailor, Sailor Moon

Her animated incarnation then appears in the uniform of the Sailor Scouts, which she pirouettes from within a pillar of sparkles.

Sometimes she’s a superhero for the world

Sailor, Sailor Moon

Then—whiplash—we see her giggling with her friends at school. And, next, an animated cat with a moon on its forehead. The girls are gliding around space on sailboats. Now, blasting away monsters. The live-action Sailor Scouts, are doing the monkey dance next to their bunk beds. In the recording, the crowd laughs riotously.

“I don’t think it’s been shown before,” said the presenter after the crowd settled down. “And may it not be again.”

As far as anyone can tell, it was not. The only versions of this opening that you can find on the Internet are a handful of audience recordings, taken from odd angles, with crowd noises polluting the soundtrack.

Scrolling through an endearingly archaic site called MoonSisters, which tells the story of this rogue Sailor Moon in bold white text against a blocky blue background, I read an amateur cartoonist named Koriander’s retelling of the show’s creation. As she tells it, bootleggers in America were already dubbing the Japanese Sailor Moon show in the early ‘90s when an animation and advertising company called Toon Makers decided to make its pitch to get in on the Sailor Moon action. They made the pilot, which failed for unexplained reasons. Below the short history is Koriander’s salty commentary—she hates it—and some scans of animation cels that were created for the production.

An animation cel from Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon.

Toon Makers’ version of (L-R) Sailors Venus, Mercury, Moon, and Jupiter.

Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon, about to transform.

Sailor Mars on her sky flyer.

Sailor Mercury, who used a wheelchair in the live-action portions of the show, rode a sky flyer in the animated action segments.

Toon Makers’ take on Sailor Jupiter.

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My first task toward uncovering the pilot was to call Toon Makers, the company whose name and contact information appears at the start of the video. It felt like a longshot that someone who’d worked on this short-lived, one-off novelty a quarter century ago would be around to pick up the phone. And yet, he was, and his name was Rocky Solotoff, the head of Toon Makers. It was the day before a long weekend, but Solotoff, in a hummy baritone radio voice, was still happy to explain his side of the story to me. Back then, he said, they called it “Project Y.”

Toon Makers created a 17-minute long pilot episode of the show, Solotoff said, something they could shop around to networks. “It was not for broadcast. It was literally proof of concept. We wrote it. We designed it. It was live-action and animation. It has lived longer than we ever thought it would,” he said.

Toon Makers was hired by a company called Renaissance Atlantic to cobble together a pilot, Solotoff said. (Sure enough, Frank Ward’s company name appears at the end of the video.) He found American actors and animators, although as was the standard in those days, some of the animation was created in Korea under the supervision of a man named Raymond Iacovacci.

Solotoff said that his crew scripted, designed, and shot the pilot, all as work for hire. He had 15 staffers, plus the Korean team, working on the pilot, which he said cost $280,000 in 1993 dollars. Solotoff spent six months making the proof-of-concept video. The video shown at the anime convention, he said, was a part of Toon Makers’ animation reel, something they’d send around to drum up new business.

“You guys are in for it. And if I break a nail, you’re really in for it.”

I wasn’t the first person to call Toon Makers asking about the pilot. Solotoff said that he receives two or three inquiries every month from Sailor Moon hunters hoping to track it down. Eventually, he just stopped responding.

Even if Solotoff didn’t have the video I coveted, I wanted to ask him more about the show. “It was a time when ‘politically correct’ became ‘politically correct,’” he said. “We just wanted to keep the flavor of Sailor Moon and make it something where people who had no idea what it was could identify with these characters.” Solotoff recalled designing Sailor Mercury’s character to be a red-headed girl in a wheelchair. “We created a flying machine for her when they went into the animated world,” he said.

One actor for this American Sailor Moon was a cat who played both Luna and Artemis, Sailor Moon’s talking feline guides. Working with cats on-screen is notoriously difficult. “They drugged the cat so much it kept peeing on everything,” Solotoff said.

“It basically just died on the vine,” Solotoff said of the show. “The people who actually owned the concept sold the rights for the original anime.” The powers that be decided that dubbing the original anime into English was the way to go, and the American version was summarily axed. But what Solotoff didn’t, or couldn’t, answer was nagging me. Who funded the $280,000 pilot? Who had the idea to do this in the first place? What was the intended audience? How did the animation cels for this never-aired project make their way onto the internet? And, finally, where the hell was the pilot today?

Solotoff said he didn’t know where the pilot was, and even if he did, he didn’t own the copyright and could not allow me to distribute it. Disappointed, but invigorated from having found Solotoff, I decided to take a more grassroots approach.

On Deviantart, I found Koriander, the curator of that Sailor Moon fan site MoonSisters. Shortly after, I gave her a call. Perhaps, I thought, her story of how she got the animation cels could lead me to the pilot.

“I remember seeing this and being totally aghast,” she said of the show. “But while my initial reaction was very negative, it was also very serious. It seemed like someone put a lot of effort into it. How many episodes were planned? What was the thought process for the design?” After reading about the show in a short blurb in Animerica, a now-defunct anime magazine, finding out everything she could about it “became an odyssey.”

“The television industry was all boys’ stuff.”

Koriander collected the cels in the same place everything turns up, these days: eBay. Around 2012, somebody on a Sailor Moon forum alerted users that the animation cels had hit the auction block site. Another fan who purchased some cels, Sam Moreland, told me he paid $100 for an image of Sailor Moon on her glider. Another cel, with images of Sailor Moon’s transformation, sold for $500. The owner of SailorMoonNews.com purchased some pages from the script, which he posted online. It opens on the moon.

We begin with Sailor Moon’s betrothal to Darian, the prince of the Earth. “Oh Darian, I’ve so looked forward to this day,” says Sailor Moon, who, according to the script, is “obviously in love.” “As have I,” Darian responds. At last, we will be together.” Then, a chill breeze. There’s a solar eclipse.

“Suddenly,” says a narrator, “the dark galleon of Queen Beryl appeared on the horizon.” The princesses hasten to their “sky flyers.”

“So this is what I missed the dance for?” asks Sailor Venus. “You guys are in for it. And if I break a nail, you’re really in for it.”

The script is completely bonkers. It’s impossible to picture the lines being recited without dramatically furrowed brows or evil-damning finger-pointing. The corniness is palpable. The world-building is questionable. And yet, if this aired when I was in elementary school, I would have eagerly tuned in, just as I tuned into Power Rangers.

The question remained: How did this stuff get out of Toon Makers’ vault? “From what I had heard, there was a storage locker that had been owned by Raymond Iacovacci,” said Moreland. According to his LinkedIn, Iacovacci is a writer, director, producer, and graphic designer who has resided in Los Angeles, Sarasota, Sydney, Manila and Seoul. After the project failed, Iacovacci was apparently made custodian of the cells, the script, the footage, and everything else, and put it all in a Los Angeles storage unit. Iacovacci apparently slipped up on paying rent, the unit was auctioned off, and the buyer sold the contents on eBay. I wondered whether they knew what they had.

For me, hearing that that everything left over from the American Sailor Moon show had been scattered to the four winds was immensely demoralizing. If the original tape of the pilot was in there, it could be anywhere, now. Iacovacci, proved impossible to reach. The Japanese corporation Toei, which owns the rights to Sailor Moon, did not return a request for comment. Saban’s company proved unhelpful.

Lead after lead turned up nothing, and things were looking hopeless. Unless, I thought, there was another copy. And perhaps, I thought, that copy might be in the possession of whoever helped fund the crazy thing: Renaissance Atlantic, the now-defunct production company that worked to bring over Power Rangers.

Renaissance Atlantic’s internet presence exists in small whispers and cursory mentions on film sites and aggregators. The only thing I could find with a name attached was a 1994 Los Angeles Times article about the Power Rangers toy supply chain, and that name was Frank Ward. Unfortunately, Ward turned out to have zero Internet footprint, no contact information, no personal website. One of the only other mentions I could find on the Internet about Ward was a children’s book that he’d co-authored called Moville, which was published in 1999 by Renaissance Atlantic. No copies were available on Amazon, but there was a scan of its cover, which credited one Stephanie Fortel as the book’s illustrator. She did have an Internet presence, and I emailed her.

One day later, I received an email in response—from Frank Ward.

Great detective work Cecilia.......you found Frank Ward, he of Sailor Moon infamy. I was the founder and President of Renaissance Atlantic and expended an enormous amount of time and $ trying to bring Toei/Bandai’s Japan’s hit series to the US. My concept was to produce a live action series to the US. Both Fox and Saban (with whom I had worked on Power Rangers....and other shows) were all for it and planning had progressed.........until we hit the great wall of Japanese intrigue and enigma.

Woah, I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Ward and I soon connected on a call. Now a 77-year-old retiree, he resides in Florida, and makes a point to say that he lives near the former senator George McGovern, who famously said: “You know, sometimes, when they say you’re ahead of your time, it’s just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.” Ward paraphrases McGovern slightly differently: “The worst thing a politician can do is to be right too soon. Sailor Moon was a case of being right too soon.”

As the president of Bandai America in the 1980s, Ward was like the Cassandra of anime: He saw the potential for the Japanese cartoon medium to spread its seed—and Bandai’s toys—in the U.S., but nobody who could help believed him. “Japanese anime was viewed as a joke here in America,” he said. “There wasn’t a network that would go near them.” After working on Power Rangers, Ward started looking at Sailor Moon. In addition to its being anime, Sailor Moon had another count against it in the eyes of American television networks: “The television industry was all boys’ stuff,” Ward said.

Sailor Moon cosplayers at 2014's Amazing Arizona Comic Con.

Photo: Gage Skidmore (Flickr)

Bandai had the rights to Sailor Moon toys, but no show to sell those toys in America. Ward wanted to share Japan’s beloved magical girls with superhero-obsessed American kids and sell Usagi dolls at Toys ‘R’ Us. He didn’t think simply dubbing the anime would work: Some scenes, like Sailor Moon in the bathtub, were too risqué for Saturday morning. A lot of cultural context would be lost. Also, Ward said, Toei wouldn’t agree to change anything significant in the show for American audiences. “We could take that animation or not. I just said no.”

“I had this bright idea to take that series, if I can get the rights, and work with Saban as a producer and make a show,” Ward said. “I went out to make a pilot all by myself and spent too much money doing it. It mixed live action with animation. You’re using real American girls doing American things—going to high school, talking to each other. When crises emerged in the world, they morphed into their animated versions.”

Ward contacted Rocky Solotoff at Toon Makers to make the proof-of-concept pilot—17 minutes of American Sailor Moon psychedelica. He says he invested $50,000 of his own money in it. Once the pilot was complete, Ward flew to Toy Fair in New York to air it. To hear Ward tell it, Fox was interested. Saban was interested. Bandai, apparently, was interested. Then, he says, “out of nowhere, came this little morsel from Toei: ‘Well, sorry, but we gave the animation rights to someone else.’”

That “someone else” was Dic Entertainment, whose name Ward relays with a small sigh. Dic, a familiar brand name to kids watching Saturday morning toons, would air Sailor Moon in its original form. It did make several changes—removing nudity, rewriting gay characters as straight, taking out some violent scenes—but by and large it was the real thing.

To Ward, this was a betrayal. He felt he’d been reeling in a catch potentially the size of Power Rangers, and had nearly gotten it on shore, but had the line cut on him for a cheaper option that he felt wouldn’t succeed. That was the end of Ward’s pilot, but it wasn’t a big success for Sailor Moon. The original airing of the show was a failure, cancelled quickly after low ratings and sluggish sales of Sailor Moon dolls. It wasn’t until later that the show became popular. Ward was surprised to hear that in the meantime, his own failure—the American Sailor Moon bastard pilot—was now a sought-after artifact.

“I do hope after all this there is something worthwhile on the film. Maddening if zip.”

After Ward described the whole story, I put the question to him: “Do you have the original? Do you have the copyright? If so, can we air it?”

It was possible, Ward said, that the pilot was sitting in his garage. And yes, he controlled the copyright. Gold.

Ward and I corresponded over the next few months via email. I checked in with him every week. Hey, hope you’re well. Did you find it? Hey, sorry to bother you. What’s the status on this? Eventually, he got back to me with good news: He’d found a tape reel in his garage that he believed contained the pilot. He didn’t have a player that could view it, but he planned to take it to a “local recording studio” that could transfer it to a modern format.

Kotaku could do the transfer, I suggested. “Much obliged,” he wrote back. “I do hope after all this there is something worthwhile on the film. Maddening if zip.”

A month later, Frank Ward and I met in New York City. He’d come up to visit his wife’s family, and brought the reel along for an in-person hand-off. Kotaku video producer Chris Person called up his media transferral guy, a video archivist, at whose office we all met up.

As Chris and I walked over from Kotaku’s office, we discussed the possible outcomes: Either it’s on the reel, or it’s not. If it was, that would be exquisite, a true victory for bullheaded journalists with dumb ideas and, of course, Sailor Moon’s hugely passionate fandom. If it wasn’t, we’d be disappointed, but happy to have met Frank Ward in person. Chris and I ascended the building’s elevator and, after opening a glass door, saw Frank Ward, a very tall and serious-looking man holding a tape with a hand-written label. This, he said, was “Project Y.”

Frank Ward.

Photo: Chris Person (Kotaku)

We shake hands. We filter into a back room stacked high with vintage video transferral hardware and three glowing screens. We pop in the tape.

A flute plays, bells tinkle. A jungle appears. Then, rainbow doves. “Created by Frank Ward,” a title card reads. The camera moves through the bushes and happens upon a glistening hot tub of angelic women in Greek-goddess attire. Suddenly, it cuts to two small girls playing in front of a speeding train. The women spring into action.

Wooo-ooooo

It’s time to fly

Team Angel.

“This is it,” Ward says.

This is not it.

Person and I stare at the video, slack-jawed and speechless. Just like in Sailor Moon, the women’ shoes, fingernails, jewelry and costumes transform into glistening magical girl attire. Now they’re saving a cat. Now they’re rescuing a family from a hurricane.

“We invented this music,” Ward says. The theme song, in classic Frank Ward style, sets up the plot and, of course, makes reference to numerous props and accessories that Ward could sell at Toys ‘R’ Us. Danger don’t scare us / We’ll keep our cool, use our magic gold dust, goes one line. Stop trouble on the double, be peace providers / Zoom to Earth on our Rainbow Rider.

It was vaporwave psychedelica, pastel-pink-washed weirdness so burdened in kitsch it hard to see anything else. Two minutes and forty seconds into it, the screen went black. “Copyright 1998 BANDAI AMERICA,” read a final title card.

My first reaction was utter bafflement. While this show was clearly inspired by Sailor Moon, it was clearly a separate project from the hybrid animated-live action show from 1993. Hell, it was an entirely different set of actresses. And the copyright date was five years later, after the Sailor Moon anime had already been aired, and cancelled, on US television. Frank Ward didn’t have what I was looking for. But he had something just as weird—something nobody on the Internet had ever even heard of.

“So that’s not the whole pilot,” I began.

“It was a promotion to try and sell the show,” Ward replied. “You don’t do pilots unless someone pays you to do them. This, we did on our own budget.”

“What do you mean, um… what do you mean that there’s no pilot?”

“A pilot, to me, is a complete episode,” Ward said.

“Uh, huh,” I said slowly. “Rocky said there’s a pilot. The fan community says there’s a pilot. You’re saying there’s no pilot. 17 minutes—Does this ring a bell?”

Ward sat back in his chair. “I don’t want to say that you’re wrong, but you’re wrong,” he said. “I would know. I did this. I don’t know what you mean by ‘pilot.’ This is what we had.”

But I had proof. I took out my phone to show Ward some of the American Sailor Moon animation cels that Toon Makers worked on. “I have no idea,” said Ward. I loaded up the YouTube recording of the American Sailor Moon show’s pilot from that anime convention years ago, the one that even has the name of his company on it. He said he’d never seen it in his life.

A scene from the Team Angel proof-of-concept video.

GIF: Renaissance Atlantic

“The only way we can clear this up is to call Rocky on the phone and say, ‘What in the world were you talking about,’” Ward offered. So, right then and there, we called Rocky Solotoff. Always dependable, he picked up. I put the phone on speaker.

“I’m here with Frank Ward,” I said into the phone. “Frank told me he had some artifact from the American Sailor Moon show you two worked on together. . .what we were shown is something completely different from the live-action-slash-cartoon show you worked on.” I described Team Angel to him.

“I don’t remember Team Angel,” said Solotoff. “The piece that was on my reel is on the internet. That’s what we did—what I did.”

“But you didn’t do that with Frank,” I said.

“Yes, I did. I did it for Frank,” Solotoff responded.

“Frank, have you seen that before?” I asked.

“No,” said Frank.

“Well,” I said, “Frank is sharp and has a good memory…”

“And great blue eyes,” Solotoff said.

“Yes, and great blue eyes,” I said. “So either Frank’s memory is very poor, or... ”

“Or mine is very imaginative,” Solotoff said.

Playing the theme songs to both live-action Sailor Moon shows over the phone, both Frank and Rocky agreed they didn’t know what the other was talking about.

The next morning, Ward called me up. “We’re talking about two different things,” he said. Half-asleep, I started taking notes.

“I must have tried to resurrect it as Team Angel. The Sailor Moon idea—we didn’t want to use that name. By 1998, maybe I was trying to talk Bandai into resurrecting it and we’d call it something else,” he said. While Sailor Moon’s then-small group of fans saw the show’s cancellation as a disappointment, Ward saw it as a vindication of his belief that the show wouldn’t succeed without a major revamp. So he thought he’d try again, six years later, with Team Angel, a live-action show produced without Toon Maker’s involvement. 25 years later, Ward had forgotten what he refers to as his “failure.”

One thing Solotoff and Ward could agree one: They didn’t know where the original pilot was.

“No one lies like an eyewitness,” Ward said, finally.

As I was walking Frank Ward down the street to help him hail a cab, I thought about the old Donald Rumsfeld quote about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” The Sailor Moon pilot was the known unknown, the thing we knew we didn’t have. Team Angel, though, was the thing we never even thought to look for, because we didn’t know it existed.

I embarked on this wild goose chase with the confidence and candor of a reporter who’s used to finding what she’s looking for, no matter how obscure. Court documents? Check. Interview subjects? Double check. I did everything right, and yet, I couldn’t find these 17 minutes of video no matter how doggedly I tried. The emotionally tidy ending here is “I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I found something just as valuable.” The truth is that, aside from Bandai’s $280,000, the value of the American Sailor Moon was granted solely by the anime’s fandom. Hell, even Frank Ward had forgotten about it. Is Team Angel as good a discovery, without the decades of mystery and ridicule that preceded it?

Waiting along 9th Avenue for a taxi, I asked Ward whether it was hard to know, deeply and with confidence, that anime would be a hit in the U.S., but to know it before there was a market for it. I wondered how it felt to know that American girls wanted a girls’ superhero show about friendship, about strength, about magic—but to misinterpret when, and in what form, they wanted it. He said it was very hard. I described modern anime conventions to him—not rinky-dink ones in airport Hiltons but massive events, packed with fans volleying between booths stacked high with anime figures, spending hundreds of dollars on Sailor Moon toys.

He’s been out of the business for decades, he replied. He said he’d never heard anything about that. I couldn’t tell whether it made him happy.

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Miami. - Free Online Library

Miami. Joan Didion has written a superlative account of Miami, beginning with what she has been able to ignore.* She ignores her own drama as Gringa in Latinland, a fascination to which she succumbed in Salvador. Beyond one or two cocaine anecdotes, necessary to prove that this is Miami we're talking about, she says nothing further about drugs. Unless she is scratching for ethos, she is indifferent to the new Miami architecture, the nightlife, the weather, the revitalized art deco district, or "Miami Vice.' She overlooks the fact that Miami has been discovered by New York as a place to be seen. She takes no part in the nervous Assimilation Watch--that is, do the Cubans prefer to drink Coke and watch TV in English, or do they prefer to drink Yerba Mate soda and watch TV in Spanish? * Miami. Joan Didion. Simon & Schuster, $17.95. Of George Gilder and George Will, wide-eyed observers who came to Miami's Little Havana and saw in its ebullient plantain vendors the colorful tropical reenactment of the Ellis Island story, Didion writes: "Fixed as they were on this image of the melting pot, of immigrants fleeing a disruptive revolution to find a place in the American sun, Anglos did not on the whole understand that assimilation would be considered by most Cubans a doubtful goal at best.' Instead, Didion tells the serious Miami story, the Miami story as understood by 700,000 Cubans, which is to say, a story of exile and not of immigration, of intransigence and not absorption, a story whose essential elements have not changed since the terrible defeat at the Bay of Pigs, a story that began with a single villain, Castro, but where villainy has spread to the Democratic party and The Miami Herald, a story with only one acceptable ending: revenge. John Kennedy, traitor Miami's influence as a city goes far beyond its economy and its character in situ. That Miami has a foreign policy is the kind of detail that arouses Didion's curiosity--no other U.S. city outside Washington has so single-mindedly pursued an international crusade. It took the Irish and the Italians in the northern neighborhoods a couple of generations to work up through the wards and the sinecures and into national power politics, while Miami exiles were admitted into the Oval Office, into clandestine discussions, since the earliest days of the war against Castro. Not all Miami was there of course, but Cubans, such as Jorge Mas Canosa, a director of the Cuban American National Foundation, have been prominent in Washington for years. Didion points out that Mas Canosa is still generally unknown to Miami's Anglos. Since the bitter lesson of the Bay of Pigs, that the U.S. government only can be trusted while it plots in secret, Miami has engaged in a series of open defiances (the Mariel boatlift, launched against President Carter's orders) and abetted the various subterranean missions (Watergate, the contra supply network) that have changed the rules of politics. Miami as a staging area interests Didion, Miami at the action end of the CIA plastique and the C-5A flights, Miami as the most unofficial of official channels. In and out of the trap doors of Washington sneak two decades of khaki-clad intriguers. The Bay of Pigs is old news, as is the CIA's original training of the exiles, especially in detonation, which led to a busy decade of free-lance political bombings in this country. It is no secret that perhaps half the Cuban male exile population was naturalized on covert action, trained in undercover operations. What Didion adds is a context, a method of presentation that gives the Miami story a sombrous continuity. Names appear and reappear, incidents for which Anglos have short memories are, in the Cuban community, ritualized in the procession of "la lucha,' the struggle:

"For most of them as children there had of course been the formative story of la lucha against Spain, the central scenario of 19th-century Cuba. For some of their fathers there had been la lucha against Gerardo Machado and for some of them there had been la lucha against Fulgencio Batista and for all of them--for those who had fought originally with the 26 Julio and for those who had fought against it, for barbudos and Batistianos alike, there was now la lucha on the grand canvas of a quarter century, la lucha purified, la lucha in a preservative vacuum, la lucha not only against Fidel Castro but against his allies, and his agents, and all those who could conceivably be believed to have aided or encouraged him.' The litany of la lucha demands a careful choice of words. Words are taken very seriously in Miami--people have been killed for using the wrong words. From Didion, we learn that a recent conference entitled "The Future of Hispanic Theater in Miami: Goals and Constraints' required a metal detector at the door to guard against a retaliatory strike against one of the panelists, playwright Dolores Prida, who years earlier had been connected to "dialogo'--a word that suggested communicating with the devil, Castro. Where else but Miami would Luciano Nieves have been shot dead in a parking lot merely for having raised the possibility that Castro could be brought down "politically'? It is this potentially fatal Cuban lexicography that Didion explores, safe words and unsafe words, subtle distinctions with unsubtle consequences. The recondite staking out of political positions that nobody can seem to fathom but for which everybody seems willing to die is baffling to Anglos, who prefer to dismiss Cuban exiles simply as "right-wing.' "A man who buys a Browning and Beretta and an AR-15 and an UZI under his own name does not have as his first interest the successful evasion of http://www.waterandfirepros.com/mold-removal American justice.' "Right-wing' simply does not capture the wildest elements of la lucha. We learn from Didion that the owner of the above-mentioned arsenal, one Eduardo Arocena, did not see any necessity to hide his ownership nor his intentions to use weapons domestically. The jury that convicted Arocena on 71 counts of bombing and one count of assassinating a Cuban attache at the United Nations must have thought he was a terrorist, but to Miami at large, Arocena will always be a patriot. The mayor said so in a speech. We learn from Didion that the second most hated man in Miami, after Castro, is John Kennedy--hated forever for his handling of the "disposal problem' of Cubans at the Bay of Pigs, for withdrawing U.S. air support at the precise moment the hapless brigade hit the beach, the primeval example of Anglo betrayal.

youtube

Truths are not self-evident in Miami, at least not the ones in Mold Abatement Miami our familiar Declaration, and politics is taken too seriously for there to be any casual political conversation of the kind one hears in Houston or Chicago or Atlanta. After hanging around the popular Cuban radio stations, and listening in at various exile functions, Didion observes that Miami is the second city in this part of the world where people actually look over their shoulders before they speak. The other is Havana. Paella in the paper "The Cubans will not read it,' Bernardo Benes reassures his wife, who is worried that what he is telling Didion will appear in a book. Benes is probably right. Cubans generally do not buy Anglo books or Anglo newspapers, which has been a problem for The Miami Herald. As the city has doubled in size, the Herald's circulation has remained flat. The editors first thought there was a language problem and put out an edition in Spanish, but El Herald never really caught on, and the editors have since learned that beneath the language problem there is the philosophy problem, a basic difference of opinion with a majority of the city's inhabitants over elemental questions of the First Amendment and the role of the free press. Didion's book appears just at the time that the editors of the Herald have been trying to put more paella into the paper, more stories about beans and rice, Cuban quince parties, guayabera shirts--all part of the effort to be Good Neighbors. Just this month, the Cubans countered with a full-page advertisement blasting the Herald for betraying them politically, a betrayal that all the paella stories in the world can't absolve. All Cubans didn't support this ad, of course, just the Cuban American National Foundation. Among the directors is Mas Canosa, whose importance is noted by Didion. "A political approach implied give and take, even compromise, an unthinkable construct in a community organized exclusively around the principle of implacable resistance.' There is general agreement among Miami exiles that the best way to defend democracy is to disallow it. This hasn't happened, of course, but one has a suspicion that the tape on the Watergate doors could just as readily be slapped across the mouths of local liberals, which is to say, anyone to the left of Pat Buchanan. Anglos, for their part, privately suspect that if the exiles had their way we'd soon have a dictator for mayor. Pick up the Herald these days, and these serious differences of opinion are lost in the local burlesque. A conniver named San Pedro goes on trial for offering bribes to half the local power structure, a few cocaine cops have metastasized into a cocaine brigade, the county manager and other notables have been caught buying stolen suits, and the simple investor who gunned down his stockbroker turns out to be an ex-con with an alias, a gun bought with a credit card, and a curious pile of cash. One wonders if the exile viewpoint will win over the Herald. Is it possible that this winner of numerous Pulitzers will be forced to enlist as official cheerleader in la lucha? Perhaps not, but some reporters tell me privately that their work is being questioned by certain editors, who themselves have been told they must be more sensitive to what the most vocal--which usually means the most fanatical--exiles have been saying. Columnist Carl Hiaasen, the great Herald gadlfy, and probably the most hated Anglo in town after President Kennedy, labors under increasing pressure. Didion writes: "Revolutions and counterrevolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player.' Miamington One wonders, also, if the exile politics will win over the nation. As Didion has said, her book is as much about Washington as it is about Miami, about the long-standing connections between operatives here and there, connections between the back rooms of Washington and the airstrip at Opa Locka, where Miami and Washington converge into some murkier Miamington. If anything has changed from Watergate to Irangate, it is that the perpetrators have learned to better protect themselves and to provide deniability, and one foresees in their actions the frightening possibilities of private cadres with official blessings doing the work of the Argentinian or the Chilean death squads. "This particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States.' Didion leaves us at the edge of the secret contra supply flights, but the future is not exactly unknown. There is the reverberative effect of certain ideas. All the decades of our clandestine adventures in Latin America have been turned back against us, and if there is any such thing as the sins of intrigue being revisited on our shores, then Miami is the gateway to that revisitation. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Miami.-a06198313

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