English Entertainment
National Geographic Explorer wins broadcast journalism award
MUMBAI: Documentary series National Geographic Explorer will receive a coveted duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in television journalism. The ceremony will be held on 13 January at Columbia University. The event will be telecast on 23 November on MSNBC.
The documentary is a two-hour eyewitness report on civil war in Liberia and the overthrow of president Charles Taylor. In covering a violent, breaking news story in Liberia, National Geographic’s team showed both courage and insight. Just when most news organizations started pulling out of Monrovia, correspondent Michael Davie and a film crew led by Scott Bronstein traveled to Liberia to investigate firsthand a civil war at its most intense, informs an official release.
The Explorer series will begin airing on the National Geographic Channel in January 2005. Earlier this year the program was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award for best television documentary on international affairs by the Overseas Press Club of America.National Geographic Explorer has earned more than 400 awards, including 52 Emmy Awards and 13 CableACE awards, as well as being nominated for two Academy Awards.
Additionally, Explorer received eight News & Documentary Emmy Award nominations announced today by NATAS – more than any other program on broadcast television or basic cable. The series premiered in 1985 on Nickelodeon, and moved to TBS in February the following year. In September 1999, the series moved to CNBC and relocated to sister-network MSNBC in October 2001. The series re-launched as “Ultimate Explorer” in June 2003 on MSNBC, adds the release.
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
