Articles for New York Emmy Awards

Alethea Hokum sat quietly, barely breathing. Her glazed eyes showed a faint reflection of the video monitor that had lulled her into semi-consciousness. Startled and just a bit confused, she reached down to silence her vibrating PDA. But something caught her eye. It was a text message offering her an additional 15 percent off if she would like her carpets cleaned this week. Of course the text message was just a few seconds out of sync with the sponsorship message she had just seen, but ...

By Shelly Palmer Chairman - New Media Committee The term "demo" is having an identity crisis. In the old days (from the dawn of time until about 3 years ago) "demos" were what you did when you didn't have money to do "finals." The term applied to every kind of creative project: music, video, film, flat art, graphics, etc. The package designers call them "comps" but it's basically still a demo. Whole industries emerged to meet the needs of demo ...

By Shelly Palmer Chairman, New Media Committee Less than a decade ago, if you wanted to get into the television business there were of course certain barriers. The obvious ones were talent, skill and willpower…but there were "technical" ones as well. The gateway to success was zealously guarded by a few "gatekeepers" with large capital investments, armies of engineers, and platoons of their very own technically oriented artisans.  ...

By Shelly Palmer Chairman, Advanced Media Committee After the Wright brothers did their "proof of concept" flight circa 1903, the fledging airline industry hit the road in search of development capital. They brought their proposal to America's richest, most successful businessmen: the railroad barons. According to legend, they were summarily dismissed. It seems the railroad tycoons didn't think much of the technology and felt it would never attain ...

By Shelly Palmer Chairman, Advanced Media Committee The government granted you a bunch of digital bandwidth. Pundits are saying that HD is the future, and you should think seriously about using most of your big pipe for HD. It's sort of a Field of Dreams argument. "If you build it, they will come." Perhaps. Some, less popular engineers, have been advocating the multiplexing of a few dozen digital SD channels instead … maybe they're on to ...

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language" - Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost, 1887 The idea for this dictionary began during a survey/scout of a theater/theatre in Brussels prior to an Anglo-American television production. The director selected camera locations. Two were to be located towards the rear of the lowest level of audience. I wandered off to discuss technical issues with the stage crew. My French is poor and my Flemish ...