Whimsy: January 2019 Archives
"When in Doubt, Play Insane": An Interview with Catherine O'Hara | The New Yorker
"When you're writing, you're putting thought into what you want to express, and then you come up with it--it comes to you. When you're improvising, it's the same thing. You're writing. You just say it out loud right then, instead of saying, 'You think this might work?' The best improvisers, all the people that were great in the Chris Guest movies, are all great writers.
"....Every one of them writes, because you have to have a sense of the scene. It's not just standing there doing jokes. You're working with everyone else. You have to listen. You have to be ready to move in whatever direction the strongest character's taking you. You have to have a sense of where you're going and what needs to be accomplished."
There are very good reasons why the BBC can't just load iPlayer with archive content
This would also likely explain why BBC America is loaded up with modern American content (e.g., Star Trek: The Next Generation) rather than classic comedies from the BBC archives.
"There was another reason for all these rules: both government and the various entertainment unions wanted it to be as hard as possible for the BBC to reshow and reuse old programmes. Repeats, in an era of three television channels, literally meant putting members out of work, so making showing a repeat almost as expensive as making a new programme was considered a wise move across both the industry and the political spectrum. (Later, most contracts had a clause allowing for a single repeat of the material without payment, as long as it was made within two years of the programme's original transmission. The result, predictably, was tabloid anger about the TV schedules most summers during the late 1970s.)
"How does all this work in practice? Let's take an example. Dad's Army was a BBC series, and the corporation owns the finished programmes of its 80 episodes - even, in theory, of the three that are not known to exist. Yet the programme concept belongs to its writer/creators, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, as do the scripts, even though Croft was a BBC producer: that means copyright payments are due whenever the programmes are exploited in any way by the BBC. In addition, several cast members and/or their estates will be due payments - often a percentage of their original performance fee - when the programme is shown. So will some crew who were not BBC staff.
"This is why, when older programmes are reshown on BBC television, they do not always go onto iPlayer in the way new programmes do. This is because this additional use, and any remuneration for it, was not covered by contracts made at the time of the programme's production, for the obvious reason that no one had yet invented iPlayer.
"And so, putting such programmes online, even when they've been repeated, requires new negotiations. Dad's Army itself was notably absent from iPlayer for several years, even when repeated on BBC Two: presumably someone was either refusing permission or holding out for more than the BBC could offer."
FAA Publishes New Phonetic Alphabet - Aviation News That Matters
"The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today published the much anticipated update to the phonetic radio alphabet. With English as the official language of aviation, the updated alphabet is meant to encourage easier global communications.
"'This state-of-the-art enhancement will improve flight safety and increase efficiency with regard to radio communications,' said FAA Assistant Administrator Bailey Edwards .
"The new alphabet will go into effect on 01 JULY 2019 as follows: A - Aisle, B - Bdellium, C - Czar, D - Django...."
(Yes, it's a joke.)
