Tag Archives: television

Russia’s RT and Venezuela’s Telesur

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Some thoughts about comparing/contrasting Russia’s RT to Venezuela’s Telesur.

There are three countries which have both international TV channels and U.S.-oppositional foreign policies: Russia’s RT, Venezuela’s Telesur and Iran’s Press TV.

But what I’ve noticed is that Venezuela’s government is not trying to play both sides of U.S. politics like Russia’s is doing. I’ve never seen any reports of right-wing reactionary activists collaborating with and holding conferences in Venezuela under the auspices of Venezuela’s government. I’ve never seen right-wing conspiracy theorists brought onto Telesur English as guests and correspondents like RT has done frequently.

While RT boasts an ideological grab-bag of American talent like Thom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, Larry King, Max Keiser, Peter Lavelle and Lee Camp, Telesur English boasts consistently American hard-left talent like Abby Martin (who left RT in disagreement with Russia’s annexation of Crimea), Bill Fletcher and Laura Flanders, the types who you’d encounter more often on Free Speech TV.

RT channels their content through live video, on-demand episodes and interviews, and “no-comment” raw footage, while Telesur (which had live video in English for a brief period of less than a year, but may have cut back due to loss of funding) primarily relies on on-demand episodes and “share this” video.

RT has a more economically-stable backing state than Telesur. RT’s politics are somewhat reflective of Putin’s hard-right United Russia Party, while Telesur’s politics are wedded deeply to Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

RT combines the visual on-screen graphic sense of Fox News with journalism qualities which are below that of Al Jazeera English, while Telesur may as well be ran out of a basement in Miraflores Palace.

Telesur, like RT, was very critical of Hillary Clinton during the election and boosted Bernie Sanders as the better candidate, but diverged from RT on Trump. Telesur’s English-language posts are vehemently critical of Trump, and may as well have been written by writers from Truth-out or Alternet. RT, by comparison, has boosted Trump.

Telesur, finally, is unique among the power players in international broadcasting – both state-controlled and state-influenced – in that it is situated in the Americas in critical opposition to U.S. foreign and even domestic policy, and is perhaps the most representative international outlet of hard-left politics from the Americas. Telesur is state-controlled, partisan and ideological, which emanates unabashedly in their support for the Cuban regime, their critique of the politics of Israel and Turkey and their overt pro-government bent on Libya and Syria (which brought an end to Telesur’s collaboration agreement with Al-Jazeera). RT, meanwhile, speaks more for Russian interests against U.S. interests with more regard to United Russia’s nationalism and expansionism.

But Telesur also focuses greatly on events in Central and South America in ways that I’m more likely to find from, say, the BBC than from U.S. or other international outlets. I’m more likely to see coverage of Ecuadorian or Peruvian politics from Telesur than I am from U.S. outlets. I think Central and South American politics, especially as they affect Aboriginal and Afro-American interests, should be covered more extensively, and not just the bad, trainwreck stories like impeachments and plane crashes.

If one who is a U.S. citizen is hard-left and U.S.-critical in one’s politics but wants to reach for a more international audience than Free Speech TV or Link TV would allow, I would suggest the more consistent Telesur over the more opportunistic RT.

List of Late-Night Talk Shows Ever Hosted by Women

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After reading about the all-male Vanity Fair profile of late-night talk show hosts, and reading about how upcoming talk show host (and Daily Show alum) Samantha Bee criticized the profile, I looked at the full list of all late-night series ever hosted on American television to find just how many have been hosted by women.

This is quite a glass ceiling. Most series hosted by women, usually veterans of stand-up comedy, have been cancelled within two seasons or less, with the exception of Chelsea Handler’s multi-season run on E! Network. And this is out over a hundred or more series hosted over the decades by men. Here’s the full list:

  • Joan Rivers (The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, 1986-1987)
  • Dr. Ruth Westheimer (Ask Dr. Ruth, 1987)
  • Whoopi Goldberg (The Whoopi Goldberg Show, 1992-1993)
  • Stacy London (Fashionably Late with Stacy London, 2007)
  • Chelsea Handler (Chelsea Lately, 2007-2014)
  • Wanda Sykes (The Wanda Sykes Show, 2009-2010)
  • Mo’Nique (The Mo’Nique Show, 2009-2011)
  • Kathy Griffin (Kathy!, 2012-2013)
  • Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer (Nikki and Sara Live!, 2013)
  • Grace Helbig (The Grace Helbig Show, 2015-)
  • Samantha Bee (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, 2016-)

The Forward March of Black TV

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Reading this history of African-Americans in television by the late J. Fred MacDonald, I think his history only goes up to around 2000. It literally ends during the latter day of dominance by cable/satellite/PPV. I would say that his fourth era of African-American television, marked by narrowcasting, niche channels, competing providers stacking channels upon channels, would be better timed as lasting from 1983 to 2007.

There’s this yawning chasm which occurs over the decades as the AfAm-featuring content on terrestrial broadcasting remains woefully static and focused on family comedies and police procedurals while subscription channels like HBO and Showtime push furthest for African-American leading casts and characters. I recall “Soul Food”, “The Wire”, “Oz” leading the way, while “Everybody Hates Chris”.

This period ends c. 2007 with the rise of social media, Internet-based video-on-demand, mobile devices, binge watching, digital subchannels, web series and Shonda Rhimes. It is also accompanied by a slow progression of terrestrial television networks toward more diverse casts, crew and target markets in more genres, as previously pushed by subscription-driven networks.

The Chicago Defender just asked if, thanks to the works of Rhimes and the series “Empire” as well as the Emmy noms for Henson, Davis, Aduba and Washington, we are in the “Golden Age” of Black TV. If anything, we are in the 5th age of Black TV representation (and of TV in general).

We are no longer satisfied by the steady diet of/participation in music, comedies, and police procedurals. We are no longer satisfied by tokens. We are no longer satisfied by reality shows, even though they glut much of the schedule among the dilapidated cable schedule.

Following up on African-American children’s TV

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Following up on my past post, I just sent this email to the contact emails of five African-American-oriented TV channels: TV One, BET, Bounce TV, Soul of the South and Aspire. 

To whom it may concern,

I am an African-American who is concerned that there is little programming on African-American TV channels that is dedicated to children and youth.

There are several channels on television which offer children/youth blocks of shows, both animated and live-action, and the lack of such content on African-American television channels is disappointing due to the alienation of that audience in their daily lives.

Would it be possible for your channel to feature a children/youth’s television block featuring Black lead characters? I think oncoming generations of Black TV-viewing youth will benefit and be positively impacted by such an action.

Sincerely,
Harry Underwood
Fort Benning, GA

Steamfunk, Sword-and-Soul and Afrocentric Fantasy

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While reading about Black characters and authors within the speculative fiction genres, I came across two terms: “Afrofuturism” and “sword-and-soul”.

I was more familiar with the first term, at least in reading about how African-descended writers incorporated vivid and challenging mishmashes of aesthetics and cultural experiences into their science-fiction writings, including Samuel Delany and the late Octavia Butler. But the latter term – “sword-and-soul” – was something less familiar to me, but it appealed to me a bit more.

“Sword-and-soul?” As in, “sword-and-sorcery”, but with Black people in it, set in Africa?

Then I searched into it, found several articles which helped to explain what is meant by sword-and-soul: “fantasy fiction which involves African/African-descended people and their mythologies in the same way that ‘sword-and-soul’ revolves around people of European descent and their mythology.”

This intrigues me. Finally, a term for the type of fantasy fiction I was looking for, even though the genre has only been revived and expanded from just one writer – Charles Saunders – to an entire publishing label – MVmedia – thanks to an Atlanta-based professional chemist and part-time writer, Milton Davis, who has taken strategic advantage of the e-book era to publish Afrocentric SpecFic.

Finally, we have “sword-and-soul” as another fiction genre to geek out over!

Steamfunk and the Question of Continuity

While we’re on the subject of Black SpecFic, I looked at the subgenre of “steamfunk”.

Again, it’s similarly set in the “steam” era of the 19th and early 20th centuries, just like the pseudo-Victorian “steampunk”.

But that’s it, though. Unlike the striking visual difference between Sword-and-soul and Sword-and-sorcery, the art used in current works of Steamfunk largely harkens to Steampunk’s Victorian-era European aesthetics. Why?

Instead, shouldn’t there be a continuity between steamfunk and African-themed sword-and-soul?

I cite Nickelodeon’s Avatar franchise for its setting in a pan-Asian fictional universe. The first series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, takes place during an earlier period that’s wedged somewhere within ancient/medieval (“sword-and-sorcery”) Asia with a bit of steampunk mixed in at certain points. The second series, The Legend of Korra, takes place 100 years after the Avatar, in a world that is between steampunk and dieselpunk, but still within a very pan-Asian setting and with harkenings to the “past” of sword-and-sorcery.

I think the way that Nickelodeon’s Avatar franchise handles this historic continuity from the medieval to the steam era within a thoroughly pan-Asian fictional universe is a model that can be followed for an “Afrocentric” fictional universe. Avatar, which I guess could be described as “sword-and-chi”, has a sense of alt-history chronology and technological succession that those who write Afrocentric SpecFic really need.

Simply placing Black characters in pseudo-Victorian-era garb, or medieval armor, is not enough. Let’s start with the aesthetic of Sword-and-Soul and work our way forward.

Sword-and-Soul in Fantasy Art

Finally, when talking about aesthetics, I feel that Fantasy Fiction Artworks, especially works which are commercialized, are seriously lacking in the inclusion of People of Color (PoC). The artistic depiction of sword-and-sorcery themes, at least here in the U.S., are typically steeped in medieval European culture and aesthetics. But I think there is precedent in works like Avatar for the medieval aesthetic to be shaken up and made more diverse.

The issue raised by the Racebending.com initiative against the “whitewashing” of lead characters in Nickelodeon’s Avatar franchise brings to mind just how non-diverse that modern fantasy fiction tends to be, or at least the commercial challenge faced by artists and writers of fantasy fiction which is affirmatively diverse in skin color. Avatar is perhaps the most groundbreaking Western-authored fantasy fiction franchise in terms of PoC inclusion, as the story universe of the franchise is set in a highly-inclusive pan-Asia-Pacific setting, pulling together anagramic ethnicities, languages, kingdoms, topologies, geographies, climates, skin pigments, clothing, cuisine and so on from the entire continent and almost all ends of the ocean.

With its ongoing realization of a newer pan-mythos from the entirety and vicinity of Asia, Avatar and other similar franchises have ship-tons-plenty of written history and mythology to draw from.

Unfortunately, as a PoC of African descent, I feel incredibly jealous for this pan-Asia-Pacific setting. I don’t feel that Africa, as a continent, lends as well to such an expansive pan-mythos as does Asia or Europe. Africa doesn’t have the the sort of geographic or climatological expanse that is endemic to the Asian continent, nor does it have the heritage of written language which is endemic to both Asian and European peoples, nor do its peoples – including our ancestors – have the best experience or history of relaying their own mythological, spiritual or artistic canons on their own terms, nor do Africans have the history of mass settlement outside of the continent like Europeans (the slave trade still constitutes the primary historic source of the African diaspora in the Americas).

Hence, for developing a fertile space for fantasy art and fiction, African-descended artists and writers who are conscious about PoC inclusion have more of a reason to improvise and derive. I guess that’s where Sword-and-soul kicks in.

On the Internet

These galleries provide good sources for PoC-affirmative fantasy fiction, and I’ll add more links in the future:

And MVmedia, Milton Davis’ publishing label, is the premiere house for Sword-and-soul fiction. Please check it out.

My Fantasy African-American Children’s TV Block Lineup

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To date, I have not heard of anyn African-American-oriented television network (BET, Bounce, Aspire, TV One, or Song of the South) having a children’s television block.

I find it rather sad that there is a dearth of African-American lead characters in children’s, teen’s or YA television, or at lest not enough to fill a morning or afternoon block on these television channels, particularly because of a lack of presence for characters to which young African-Americans can relate, or be inspired, or find character narratives which they can follow with avid interest. 

But really, if television channels which talk of catering to an African-American audience are not building a gallery of titles aimed toward children within this mandate, then what room does any person have to bemoan the state of self-esteem among African-American youth, or of education, or of culture?

So I’m posting this list to raise awareness of television series which should be considered for inclusion in any of these channels’ hypothetical, nonexistent children’s/teen’s blocks:

  • Static Shock
  • Gullah Gullah Island
  • The Famous Jett Jackson
  • That’s So Raven
  • Corey in the House
  • A.N.T. Farm
  • Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
  • The Proud Family
  • Little Bill
  • True Jackson VP
  • Men in Black: The Series
  • Gargoyles
  • Mister T
  • The Super Globetrotters
  • The Jackson 5 Cartoon
  • Class of 3000
  • Reading Rainbow

And heck, I’ll even throw in an import from South Africa: URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, as well as an obscure, realistic-without-being-offensive web series titled Blokhedz. 

I purposefully exclude the following:

  • live-action “family” sitcoms which only focus on the goings-on of a family (there’s plenty of those nowadays). 
  • animated sitcoms which are aimed toward an adult audience, content-wise (i.e., The Boondocks and The P.J.’s).
  • animated action series which are aimed toward an adult audience, content-wise (i.e., Afro Samurai and the short-lived Black Panther)

After those are excluded, one has too look through much of the post-1970 history of animated and live-action children’s television just to find such shows as listed above. Maybe those who take the depiction of African-American lead characters seriously might use the above viewing list as a starting point. 

List of non-Christian Roku religion channels

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Because I have a strong interest in seeing devices like the Roku and Chromecast allow for cheaper access to television distribution (both on-demand and live), and especially in seeing greater religious diversity on television (even though I criticize religion on a regular basis), I’m making this list of non-Christian channels on the Roku platform that I’ll continually update with more information in the future.

This list involves channels which fall under the Religion and Spirituality section of the Channel Store as well as similar subchannels on Nowhere TV, plus private channels found through Rokuguide and other guides. I also include “Alternative Health”, “Occult” and “Conspiracy theory” channels because they also tend to involve religious woo.

Paranormal/Mystical

Alternative Medicine

Jewish

Muslim

Buddhist

Humanist/Atheist

Interfaith

Other sects

Thoughts on video editing

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When I started my Journalism class this Spring semester, I did not anticipate the complexities, or the range of emotions which one can feel when creating and perfecting a video project.

It was not easy, as I had to learn the operation of a video camera for the first time. I also learned (the hard way) that I should be prepared with at least 120 minutes of tape.

When I had to edit the video in iMovie, I initially had to read Apple’s tutorials and ask questions from other colleagues in order to get a grasp of the software (and work around its limitations, which became more apparent as time moved forward).

All of this was done by myself, as my partner had to withdraw from the class due to scheduling conflicts (a necessary thing for any student to do).

However, through the course of the semester and a number of mistakes, I gradually became acclimated towards the process. I took inspiration from years of viewing the cutaway and editing styles of cable/satellite news television programs, but I also managed to work around flaws in my raw footage in order to make sure that the footage tells a story to the viewer, or puts the viewer into the recorded event for however long a duration I can manage.

It’s an exercise which I would encourage a lot of people to at least try once in their lifetimes. Multimedia narratology is a trying but worthwhile process which tests one’s capacity to portray a story for other people to view and forward to others.

You can see my videos for MSC-TV in my portfolio section.

Sky Angel and the fragmentation of television providers

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I read the Wikipedia article on Sky Angel, an IPTV television provider which only offers channels and networks which pass a Christian-family threshold. 

Basically, this is the first time that I’ve heard of a television provider, rather than just individual channels, catering to specific niche demographics of viewers. Perhaps IPTV, as a medium, potentially allows for that ability to forego packages of all types of content without taking serious dents into the financial bottom line of the provider (at least compared to cable, satellite, terrestrial or fiber). 

But I wonder if Sky Angel could be the first prominent example of entire television providers fragmenting themselves by the type of content which their carried channels (VOD, live streaming, or playout) offer.

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