English Entertainment
Star World’s new sitcom examines life in a radio station
MUMBAI: 50,000 watts of pure comedy! That is the tagline of the new sitcom that Star World has lined up for 2005.
NewsRadio will air Monday to Friday at 7:30 pm and 11 pm from 3 January.
The sitcom explores office politics, relationships, and crises through a group of co-workers at WNYX NewsRadio, New York’s number two news radio station.
Dave Foley stars as the haggled news director, Phil Hartman and Khandi Alexander portray sniping anchor people, Maura Tierney is the ambitious supervising producer, Stephen Root is the station’s eccentric owner, Vicki Lewis is a wacky secretary and Joe Rogan is a tech-happy electrician.
Foley’s character is an enthusiastic young man who has just moved to New York City. He finds that his first assignment at his new job at the station is to fire his predecessor. Thrown into the job of news director, Foley must interpret the signals his eccentric boss is sending out.
He also has to come to terms with Tierney’s character a very attractive longtime newswriter and loyal employee who thought that she was in line for his job.
Looking to add variety into the mix the broadcaster will also introduce the reality show The Casino from the Fox stable. The show will air every Monday at 10 pm from 10 January with a repeat on Tuesday at 11 am. It offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of one of Vegas’ most venerable gambling dens, the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino.
It follows the daily travails of Thomas Breitling and Timothy Poster, two young entrepreneurs who cashed in on their Web startup and decided to sink their millions into renovating the joint. The show was produced by reality guru Mark Burnett.
The Casino’s new owners take over the business and attempt to bring back the glory of its “Rat Pack” heyday. Poster said, “Our goal is to provide customers with the type of service that they cannot find anywhere else in Las Vegas. We intend to give our patrons the type of service that was so common in years past, but has been slowly disappearing with the growth of the mega-resorts. Vegas casinos used to be a fantasy land for gamblers and this is what we intend to provide.”
Each episode will focus on two or three guests of the Golden Nugget as they try their luck at the tables and occasionally bump into Breitling and Poster’s celebrity investor pals. They including tennis player Andre Agassi, the pop group Barenaked Ladies, pop star Jewel and crooner Tony Bennett.
Viewers will also be introduced to colourful casino denizens like Frank Sinatra wannabe Matt Dusk, card-counting regular “Big Chuck,” and officials from the Gaming Commission, who think there’s a link between one of Poster’s pals and the Mafia.
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.
