Arts & Entertainment Videos and News

You Can Waste Hours Watching Television, Video Clips on the Web

By mid-2007, there will be all kinds of television fare to appear on Internet video "dials" because Hollywood is finally starting to license its content to Web sites, The Washington Post reports.

Technology columnist Leslie Walker reviews current online video services from Google, Apple, Blinkx.tv, Youtube.com, and Iwatchnow.com.

Google and Apple's I-Tunes are offering television shows for $1.99 each. More interesting, Walker says, is "Google's second and third tiers of wacky and unpredictable (free) content, where you could waste hours."

Video Interviews With Television Stars Now Available From Google

After sealing a deal with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, Google has started offering free viewing of videotaped interviews with some of television's biggest celebrities.

The Foundation is giving Google, and consequently the public, access to 284 biographical interviews. Among the Google "narrowcasts" are interviews with Alan Alda, Sid Caesar, Norman Lear, Steven Bochco, Diahann Carroll, Ossie Davis, Phyllis Diller, Michael J. Fox, Andy Griffith, Robert Guillaume, Florence Henderson, Angela Lansbury, William Shatner, Dick Van Dyke, Betty White, and James Garner.

Also included are interviews with producers and creators, including Carl Reiner and Dick Clark.

With a broadband connection, the interviews are crisp and run an average of about 30 minutes each. An interview with Andy Griffith, for example, discusses how he got his start in show business, how he met Don Knotts, and the terror he felt the first time he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Since the interviews are not edited, viewers accustomed to television clips running a few minutes in length may not find them terribly interesting. But film scholars and the stars' biggest fans will find a treasure trove.

So far, about 75 films have been posted on Google. To get a list, enter the query "academy of television" into the Google Video search box. The Foundation's collection covers the last 75 years in television, Tech News Web reports.

Television of the Future Is Here

A vast library of entertainment on demand, on your schedule, essentially a merger of television and the Internet, is in your future, predicts Adam Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University. You'll be able to watch "every movie ever made, in every language, any time, day or night," from the comfort of your room, Penenberg writes in Slate."You'll not only be able to watch every film, but also every TV program, news show, documentary, music video, and video blog, and all of it will be playable wherever you go. Great, you think: Thousands of channels, millions of choices, and still nothing worth watching. Nevertheless, "nonlinear TV"—watching the tube on our schedule, not the broadcasters'—is our destiny." The emergence of a peer-to-peer distribution system called BitTorrent is the beginning of the end for traditional television, Penenberg writes.

Google TV Launches With 'Everybody Hates Chris'

The search engine Google is preparing to launch a service to broadcast television shows over the Internet. It plans to "build up a massive online database of programs that can be searched and watched from any computer, with users able to search for episodes of any show from broadcasters who sign up to the service," The Scotsman reports.

Danny Sullivan, a search-engine expert, told The Scotsman that "Google wants to become the world's biggest video recorder, and they are meeting with all of the major broadcasters to make it happen. It could allow us to catch episodes in a series we may have missed."

The debut episode of "Everybody Hates Chris," a comedy based on the childhood of comedian Chris Rock, is already online at Google video. The series is broadcast Thursday nights on UPN.

Streaming video of "Everybody Loves Chris"

UPN page for "Everybody Hates Chris."

Network News Web Sites Offer Tributes to Peter Jennings

For all the television reportage on the life and death of ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, some of the best coverage is online.

ABC News, as might be expected, devotes a sizable chunk of its home page to coverage of the life and career of Jennings, who died Sunday of lung cancer at the age of 67. The ABC News web site includes video clips of Jennings' most dramatic reporting, plus links to a message board where viewers can post their own comments. Rival networks CBSNEWS and MSNBC give Jennings his due, with lead-in coverage.

Filing from Beirut, Dan Rather called Jennings a "great pro...a loyal friend," with a passionate curiosity and an intense desire to compete. MSNBC contributor Michael Ventre in his report on Jennings noted with irony that "the last trustworthy American was born a Canadian." Jennings did not become a U.S. citizen until 2003, but he "was an honorary American, one of the small handful of people we went to for the truth. And he came through. He never lied to us. He always gave it to us straight."

Jennings had an amazing career, especially considering he never completed high school or college. He joined ABC News in 1964, and was recruited at just age 26 to anchor the ABC Evening News in 1965. “It was a little ridiculous when you think about it,” Jennings told author Barbara Matusow, according to the Associated Press. “A twenty-six-year-old trying to compete with Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley. I was simply unqualified.”

As anchor during his first stint, he was panned by critics. In 1968, to challenge and test himself, he moved to the Middle East, to Beirut, Lebanon, to open the first network news bureau in the Arab world, where he reported from for six years.

Except for a brief hiatus as the host of the predecessor of "Good Morning America," he remained ABC's chief foreign correspondent until he became anchor and senior editor of ABC's World News Tonight in 1983.

From MSNBC.com, you can also watch free video reflections of Jennings' rival Tom Brokaw, first broadcast on NBC's "Today" show. "Peter...was our prince. He seemed so timeless. He had such elan and style,” Brokaw said.

Christopher Reeve Continues to Offer Inspiring Messages

For all the messages of courage and hope that the late Christopher Reeve gave in his life, he is still giving. He directed a made-for-TV movie, "The Brooke Ellison Story," which airs on A&E, and is also available on DVD. Despite suspicions that it would be a gooey, sappy, cliché, the movie, in the words of the Boston Globe’s Matthew Gilbert, “is Reeve's final note of affirmation, and as such it has added weight. After all, he managed to direct movies -- and act and lobby and raise money -- despite the obvious obstacles.”

There's a lot of commonality between Brooke Ellison's story and Reeve's. Brooke's story is based on a book she and her mother wrote. Gilbert writes:

“Ellison is hit by a car at age 11, on the way home from school. She fights for her life in the hospital, while her devoted parents Jean and Ed (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and John Slattery) wait by her side, refusing to give up. Once she emerges from near death, she begins to obsess about returning to school -- almost more than she seems to worry about spending her life in a wheelchair and requiring round-the-clock care. Like Reeve, she is driven to overcome.

“But Reeve isn't telling his own story so much as paying homage to a fellow soldier, one who's dealing not only with the loss of her bodily functions but the loss of her youth. He also seems particularly interested in the secondary characters. The movie is tinged with affection and respect for those who surround Brooke, most notably Mastrantonio's Jean, who gives up her teaching career to nurse her daughter.”

Caution: Television Viewing May Be Hazardous To Your Child's Health

July 19, 2004...Children who watch more than two hours of television a night are more likely to become obese, out-of-shape smokers as adults, researchers in New Zealand have concluded.

In a study tracking 1,000 people from birth to age 26, researchers from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit in New Zealand analyzed participants to determine whether there was an association between childhood TV viewing and body-mass index, cardio-respiratory fitness, cholesterol level, smoking status, and blood pressure.

They determined that having an average weeknight filled with one to two hours of TV-watching between the ages of 5 and 15 was linked to higher body-mass, lower cardio-respiratory fitness, increased smoking, and raised cholesterol.

"Television viewing might be a marker for some unidentified determinant of adult health, and individuals who have a natural tendency to obesity and poor physical fitness might prefer to watch television than do other activities," the researchers wrote. The study was reported by The Associated Press.