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“TV comedy writer” isn’t a job that people typically associate with a lot of intensive research. After all, it’s not like anyone’s burning the midnight oil at the 24-hour college library in order to churn out a script for the latest Tim Allen sitcom. But writing for The Simpsons, on the other hand, has occasionally required a more studious approach.

Legendary Simpsons writer and producer Josh Weinstein recently pointed out that one 28-year-old joke took a surprising amount of effort. In Season Eight’s Frasier-coded episode “Brother From Another Series,” Sideshow Bob is reunited with his snobbish brother Cecil (played by guest star David Hyde Pierce). As the two catch up over dinner, Cecil brags that he’s now “Springfield’s chief hydrological and hydrodynamical engineer,” years after a failed audition to become Krusty the Clown’s sidekick.

While Bob inadvertently stole his brother’s dream job,...

Dan Erickson's freaky dystopian drama "Severance" takes place in the perpetually snowy town of Kier, a remote city located ... well, it could be anywhere in the world. Fall we know, Kier a remote, deliberately isolated village under the control of Lumon Industries, a mysterious corporate monolith located in the center of town. The work that Lumon does is mysterious and important, but "Severance" has remained coy about just what it does, exactly. The show follows a quartet of workers in the "macrodata refinement" department, and it's their job to scan an unexplained database of numbers looking for clusters that make them feel fearful. They then sort the fearful numbers into a file. This, it seems, is contributing to Lumon in some way.

Of course, the premise of the show is that the Lumon workers have been medically "severed," that is: when they enter their basement workspace, they lose all memories of their outside lives.

Muhammad Ali is among the American national heroes whom President Donald Trump wants to honor with a statue at the National Garden of American Heroes. Trump’s administration plans to create statues of presidents, activists, soldiers, and even pop icons under this new initiative. However, Ali’s widow is not on board with this idea and respectfully condemns Trump’s move.

Muhammad Ali in a match against Jürgen Blin | Credits: Comet Photo Ag, licensed under Cc By-sa 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lonnie Ali shared that Ali’s religion prohibited any form of idolatry and therefore, a statue honoring the boxer would go against his religious teachings. Besides Ali, other sportspersons like late NBA star Kobe Bryant have also made it to Trump’s national heroes list.

Muhammad Ali’s widow doesn’t want President Donald Trump’s gesture to honor the boxer Muhammad Ali with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Good Morning America...

The “now” in “Deaf President Now!” refers to the second week of March 1988 — when the students of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., united in protest of the board’s choice of a non-deaf candidate to lead the school. But the activism depicted is still relevant to identity-centric struggles today. For 124 years, the school had operated under an ableist set of assumptions, treating deaf and hard of hearing people as needing “help” from patronizing outsiders. But in the seven days depicted here, the students took charge, teaching their elders — and anyone who would listen — not to underestimate them.

A collaboration between deaf actor-advocate Nyle Dimarco and “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim, the propulsive nonfiction story feels as inspirational as any scripted feature, reuniting the four Gallaudet grads who organized the movement to describe events in their own words — words of passion, dynamically signed on-screen and spoken aloud by unseen actors.

A couple of weeks back, apropos of nothing, a small cadre in the cesspool formerly known as Twitter decided that the most important cultural irritant of the moment was the rise of visible Asl interpreters at press conferences and public events.

It was a brief moment of directionless outrage that offered a reminder of how eager some people are to marginalize even small traces of accommodation and to erase even incremental traces of progress.

Look no further than Nyle Dimarco and Davis Guggenheim’s new Apple documentary Deaf President Now! for an efficient and inspiring primer on how hard-won and important that progress truly was and still is.

A fine entry in the generally prolific “Birth of a Movement” documentary genre, Deaf President Now! illustrates what is and was distinctive about the Deaf rights movement, but also the elements that connect it to many recent campaigns for visibility and recognition.

The legend is well-known to Trekkies. When actor James Doohan was first hired to play Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on the original "Star Trek" series, show creator Gene Roddenberry asked the actor to perform his audition using multiple accents, a talent Doohan had always tried to cultivate. After cycling through his catalog of regional dialects, Roddenberry asked Doohan which of the voices he liked best, and which one was most befitting of a futuristic engineer. Doohan said that he liked his Scots accent best, saying that he felt Scotland created the best engineers. Perhaps Doohan was thinking of Alexander Graham Bell, James Watt, or, most likely, Sir William Fairbairn; Doohan cited Scotland's many notable shipbuilders as his primary inspiration. Once the dialect was settled, the character emerged. Doohan claims to have named the character Montogmery Scott himself, after his own grandfather.

Some Scottish "Star Trek" fans have noted that Doohan's accent,...

It's one of those things that we could all just do without, right? Just as you've sat down for a nice meal (usually dinner) the phone rings, and it's a telemarketer trying to sell you something or to donate to a cause you didn't even know existed. The savviest of you probably have a screening system in place on your cell for unrecognized numbers, but occasionally, these nimrods will get through, and you're left with the choice of being rude and hanging up, or politely telling them to go kick rocks. Maybe you donate to the cause. Whatever the case, you definitely need to check out the new Safdie Brothers docuseries on HBO Max called Telemarketers. It's an unapologetic look at the cutthroat and corrupt nature of the ubiquitous business that has been the bane of our existence ever since Alexander Graham Bell invented this thing called the telephone.

Once upon a time, in a world not so far away, if you wanted to make a phone call, you would have to find a claustrophobic box that housed the invention of Antonio Meucci, Elisha Gray and the one who actually owns the patent on the invention: Alexander Graham Bell: We’re talking of course about the Telephone. For many of you the idea that you couldn’t just reach into your pocket and grab your own personal device that allows you to communicate with anyone and everyone on this big blue planet is unfathomable, yet as recently as just twenty years ago, the sight of someone walking on a street talking to themselves was actually quite the peculiar spectacle. It is with that bit of knowledge that an idea thought up in the 60’s was given a modern day twist to focus on the last remaining telephone kiosk...

While many of the gags featured in The Simpsons are fairly straightforward, some are so complex that they are still being debated decades after they initially aired. During the show’s heyday, The Simpsons was a critical darling. The so-called Golden Age of The Simpsons (roughly seasons 3–12) was so acclaimed that many cultural commentators and writers still cite this period as some of the medium’s best comedy writing. As Matt Zoller Seitz noted when writing about the series, at its best, The Simpsons was “ambitious, intimate, classical, experimental, hip, corny, and altogether free in its conviction.” Seemingly endless rewrites contributed to this well-earned reputation.

According to The Simpsons writers, scripts from this era often underwent over 30 sets of rewrites. While The Simpsons season 34 repeated stories from this period, the Golden Age was celebrated for its endless invention and creativity. However, these rewrites and ambitious attempts to outdo the show...

History of the World, Part I is far from the most beloved Mel Brooks movie, even if “It’s good to be the king” is one of the more enduring lines he ever wrote. It is, however, by far the most in need of a sequel. After all, it’s been 42 years since Brooks concluded the film with teasers for History of the World, Part II, which was to include the sketches “Hitler on Ice,” “A Viking Funeral,” and, most memorably, “Jews in Space.” Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein are stone-cold classics,...

Mel Brooks' long-awaited sequel, History of the World, Part II, has recently been accused of plagiarism. The upcoming Hulu series is a follow-up to his 1981 movie, History of the Word, Part I. The farcical comedy classic featured an all-star cast included Dom DeLuise, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, and Gregory Hines in fictionalized comedic retellings of important real-world events.

Something Rotten! writer John O’Farrell took to social media to call out Brooks' History of the World, Part II for using one of their jokes. In a recent trailer, Josh Gad portrays William Shakespeare who uses a writer's room to develop his plays. One writer suggests actors sing a portion of their lines to music, an idea that Shakespeare shoots down. O'Farrell claims the show "ripped" off Something Rotten!, pointing out his Broadway play used the same premise in 2015. Gad defended the series in a Tweet calling the joke a "one off...

Over 40 years after Mel Brooks had the presence of mind to title his epic 1981 comedy History of the World, Part I, the film’s sequel is finally set for release with a similarly all-star ensemble and factually loose portrayal of historic events.

As opposed to its predecessor — which crammed centuries into 90 minutes — History of the World, Part II will be a four-night event, kicking of March 6 on Hulu.

Nick Kroll, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes and Brooks himself lead the cast, which also includes Quinta Brunson, Seth Rogen (as Noah, of “The Ark” fame), Zazie Beatz,...

Four decades after Mel Brooks recounted the History of the World, Part I, a sequel is on its way.

Hulu has released a trailer (watch it below) for History of the World, Part II, an eight-episode sketch series that will take a tour through the past with Brooks’ distinct comic sensibility. The 96-year-old stars in the series along with Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz; all four are also writers and executive producers along with David Stassen (The Mindy Project, Central Intelligence).

The series, which will run over four consecutive days beginning March 6, also has a huge and star-studded guest cast. Among those making appearances are (deep breath): Pamela Adlon, Tim Baltz, Zazie Beetz, Jillian Bell, Quinta Brunson, Dove Cameron, D’Arcy Carden , Ronny Chieng, Rob Corddry, Danny DeVito, David Duchovny, Hannah Einbinder, Jay Ellis, Josh Gad, Kimiko Glenn, Brandon Kyle Goodman, Jake Johnson, Richard Kind, Johnny Knoxville, Lauren Lapkus,...

Recently, there have been loads of headlines about all the shows and movies being pulled from HBO Max. W​hen HBO Max launched in 2020, it promised a robust library of content from the Warner Bros. vault to entice subscribers to become early adopters. One of the big sells was the release of the 4-hour cut of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Fans had been craving that version of the movie since the theatrical made its way to the big screen. Since the studio had so much content to choose from over its nearly one-hundred-year history, it could easily offer subscribers a lot of content to choose from for one low price.

I​t seemed to work. HBO Max took off really well once it debuted. Fans flocked to the service for its original content. Comics fans waited for the new cut of Justice League but could sustain themselves on original...

On Thursday, while on Alex Jones’s show Info Wars, Kanye West repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Conspiracy theorist Jones had Nick Fuentas, an open white supremacist, and West on his show to discuss the controversy surrounding the two following their dinner with former President Donald Trump last week.

The rapper showed up to InfoWars wearing a black face mask and gloves.

In Memoriam 2022: 100 Great Celebrities Who Died This Year!

As the interview went on, the infamous rapper, became more and more unhinged, saying at one point, “Every human being has something of value that they bring to the table, especially Hitler.”

“The Jewish people are not going to tell me, ‘you can love us and or you can love what we’re doing to your contracts, but this guy [Hitler] that invented highways and invented the very microphone that I use as a musician – you cannot...

Jimmy Kimmel railed against recent remarks Kanye “Ye” West made during an interview with InfoWars host Alex Jones.

“One of our most talent and deranged pop stars, Donald Trump dinner companion Kanye West sat down for three hours of complete insanity with the despicable Alex Jones,” Kimmel noted during Thursday night’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “It was just two guys who lost a billion dollars each, hanging out.”

Also Read:

Kanye West’s Twitter Account Suspended After Swastika Tweet, Elon Musk Says

During the interview with Jones, West said that he “sees good things about Hitler,” incorrectly claiming that the Nazi dictator invented highways and the microphone. He also said that “every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”

“Especially Hitler?,” Jimmy Kimmel said, shocked. “I think he’s wearing the wrong color hood.” Ye, as it were, was wearing ski...

The animated series “Xavier Riddle and The Secret Museum” shares the misadventures of Xavier Riddle and his two best friends. The PBS Kids’ show follows the trio as they tackle the everyday problems that children tend to face by traveling back in time to learn from real-life icons and inspirational people.

The show, which is based on the “Ordinary People Change the World” book series by author Brad Meltzer, has been popular among children five to eight years old since it first aired in 2019.

This story will walk you through everything you need to know about the show and its key characters.

Who Are the Main Characters of “Xavier Riddle and The Secret Museum?”

Let’s meet the show’s main characters:

Xavier Riddle:

Voiced by Aidan Vissers, Xavier is the show’s namesake and the leader of his friend group, which includes his younger sister, Yadina, and their friend Brad.

In September 2018, AT&T summoned the big players from the worlds of media and advertising to a beachside resort in Santa Barbara. The company had finally closed its 85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, after a protracted fight with the Department of Justice, and wanted to celebrate — and to mark its place at the center of the media ecosystem.

The three-day AT&T Relevance Conference, at the lavish Ritz-Carlton Bacara, featured appearances by Derek Jeter and Issa Rae, as well as AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. The centerpiece of the event was the unveiling of Xandr — the company’s new platform that was designed to revolutionize the ad business by bringing Facebook-style personalization to TV.

In many ways, Xandr was the fulcrum of the AT&T/Time Warner merger. The idea was that AT&T could combine its scale and customer data with Time Warner’s content to supercharge the value of its TV ads.

HBO Max closed 2021 with 46.8 million domestic subscribers when combined with linear HBO, up 5.3 million over 2020, parent AT&T disclosed in its fourth-quarter earnings report.

Globally, subscriber levels increased 13.1 million to 73.8 million by year-end, as the company had reported earlier this month. It was the biggest subscriber growth in a single year in HBO’s 50-year history, AT&T said. In that early-January report, the company had not provided a domestic-international breakdown for HBO and HBO Max, though it does provide that on a quarterly basis. Domestic revenue per subscriber was $11.15.

AT&T is about to combine WarnerMedia with Discovery in a $43 billion merger that is awaiting the final blessing of regulators. In its earnings release, AT&T said it now expects the transaction to close in the second quarter, which is sooner than the mid-2022 guidance it had given since proposing the deal in May 2021.

The parent company beat Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter,...

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Vintage magazines make a great collector’s item (or gift idea) for movie lovers, and anyone looking to capture that Old Hollywood aesthetic. But you don’t even have to leave the house to get your hands on these collectibles. If you’re not in the mood to visit a garage sale or thrift store, we put together a list of rare magazines that you can buy online.

From Photoplay to Movieland magazine, you might not be familiar with some of the publications listed but if you’re a fan of Hollywood’s Golden Era, then you’re likely to recognize some (if not all) of the screen legends captured on the covers,...

Exclusive: Cargo Film & Releasing has acquired sales rights to The Conductor and Father of the Cyborgs, a pair of documentary features premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June.

Directed by Bernadette Wegenstein, and produced by Annette Porter of Nylon Films, The Conductor tells the overdue story of world-renowned conductor Marin Alsop, who was the first woman to serve as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as well as the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. After years of overcoming various obstacles and proving naysayers wrong, we see how Marin was able to succeed against all odds, and break the glass ceiling for women conductors around the world. The film notably utilizes stirring musical segments conducted by Alsop herself, to accentuate the highs and lows of her life, and reflect for the audience her inner world.

Marking the directorial debut of award-winning filmmaker David Burke,...

History is doubling down on its “That Built” franchise with four spinoffs.

This comes after A+E Networks cable net launched the second season of The Food That Built America.

Elsewhere, the network has ordered a protest documentary from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and moved its Bill Clinton series to 2022.

History is launching The Machines That Built America, The Toys That Built America, The Engineering That Built the World and The Titans That Built America. All, except the latter, come from Six West Media, the non-fiction producer owned by A+E Networks.

The Titans That Built America, which premieres on May 31, is a three-night miniseries that chronicles the rise and fierce rivalries of industrial heavy hitters William Boeing, Walter Chrysler, Jp Morgan Jr, and Pierre Du Pont. It is produced by Stephen David Entertainment with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson exec producing via Appian Way Productions. Other exec producers include Stephen David, Tim Kelly,...

The History Channel is building out its popular “That Built” franchise with three more spinoffs: “The Machines That Built America,” “The Toys That Built America” and “The Engineering That Built the World.”

It has also ordered a new batch of “The Men Who Built America” episodes, though the cable channel has rebranded that one to be the gender-neutral “The Titans That Built America.”

With these new spinoffs, another in development and the currently airing Season 2 of “The Food That Built America,” the franchise now boasts six series.

“The Titans that Built America,” executive produced by Appian Way Productions’ Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson and Stephen David Entertainment, will air across three consecutive nights beginning on Monday, May 31 at 9 p.m. Et/Pt.

The updated “Men Who Built America” will detail the rivalry of the next generation of American titans: Henry Ford, Jp Morgan Jr., William Chrysler, William Boeing and Pierre DuPont,...

Walt Disney, Frank Capra, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash and Alex Trebek are among the entertainment industry figures who have been added as proposed honorees in the National Garden of American Heroes monument project unveiled by President Donald Trump in July.

As he began his final 48 hours as President, Trump issued an amended executive order Monday that added dozens of names slated to be honored in the the planned statuary park. The location for the park has yet to be determined. Trump first announced the plan on July 3 during his speech at Mt. Rushmore.

Among the entertainment-related names making the cut are Louis Armstrong, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Irving Berlin, Humphrey Bogart, Kobe Bryant, Frank Capra, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Woody Guthrie, Charlton Heston, Alfred Hitchcock, Bob Hope, Elvis Presley and Jimmy Stewart. The monument will honor those deemed to be “historically...

AT&T CEO John Stankey continues to express no misgivings over the launch of HBO Max in May, citing the unforeseeable impact of Covid-19 as its only real blemish.

During a keynote session today kicking off the Wall Street Journal‘s Tech Live conference, Stankey pronounced himself “very happy” with the debut of the streaming service. Citing WarnerMedia Day, a gathering for investors and press last October, he maintained, “We have done exactly what we said we were going to do.”

He went through a range of deliverables, noting HBO Max has reached one hour of daily viewer engagement and has a younger audience skew. The service is “ahead on subscriber counts” of initial targets revealed last year.

Asked by moderator Matt Murray, the Journal‘s editor-in-chief for updated subscriber numbers, Stankey declined to offer any, citing AT&T’s third-quarter earnings report on Thursday, which will include those stats. On...

In today’s Global Bulletin, All3Media lands “All Creatures Great and Small” in several major territories, Limonero Films strikes a deal with Disney on two factual series, HBO Max picks up two Blue Ant International series, “Les Misérables -The Staged Concert” returns to London for the holidays and Gobstopper launches new sister company Flying Saucer TV.

Distribution

All3Media has announced a raft of global acquisitions for “All Creatures Great and Small,” produced by Playground for Channel 5 in the U.K. and PBS Masterpiece in North America.

Adapted from James Herriot’s bestselling novels, the series has been Channel 5’s highest rated drama of 2020 so far. It is produced in association with All3Media International and Screen Yorkshire, written by Ben Vanstone (“The Last Kingdom”), directed by Primetime Emmy and BAFTA winner Brian Percival (“Downton Abbey”) and produced by Richard Burrell (“Silent Witness”).

Deals for the series have been closed...

AT&T, which entered the second half of 2020 with $152 billion in net debt, is said to be shopping its Xandr advertising unit.

The sale talks were first reported Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal. The company declined to comment when reached by Deadline.

The detachment of Xandr from the company would mark a dramatic reversal of the company’s strategy and undercut a key element related to the $81 billion acquisition of Time Warner in 2018. Reports in recent days have also identified satellite TV operator DirecTV and anime outfit Crunchyroll as other assets marked for potential sale by AT&T.

Advertising is expected to play an important role in the future of HBO Max, the general entertainment streaming service launched by AT&T’s WarnerMedia in May. The company plans to introduce an ad-supported tier of the service in 2021, a key part of its effort to hit subscriber targets of 50 million U.

Xandr, the advertising unit of AT&T, is merging with WarnerMedia in order to create what the company calls “a better advertising value proposition for brands, publishers and consumers alike.”

As part of the move, Gerhard Zeiler, WarnerMedia’s chief revenue officer and international president, will oversee all advertising responsibilities across AT&T. Kirk McDonald, Chief Business Officer, Xandr will continue to lead Xandr, reporting directly to Zeiler.

The reorganization follows the abrupt exit in March of former Xandr CEO Brian Lesser. It is also the first major strategic play by John Stankey since he took the reins as AT&T CEO. Stankey’s predecessor, Randall Stephenson, oversaw the acquisition in 2018 of ad-tech firm AppNexus, which was renamed Xandr, a flippant shorthand for Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone and AT&T founder.

The business units are combining less than a month before WarnerMedia launches streaming service HBO Max. It will be an ad-free subscription service initially,...

AT&T said it would fold its stand-alone Xandr ad-tech unit into WarnerMedia, just weeks after the CEO of Xandr abruptly departed.

Gerhard Zeiler, who was named chief revenue officer of WarnerMedia last year, and oversees advertising, distribution and international operations, will supervise all ad-sales outreach across AT&T going forward, the company said. Kirk McDonald, chief business officer of Xandr, will continue to lead the unit, reporting to Zeiler. The Xandr team will operate separately from WarnerMedia’s ad-sales efforts, but the two units have been working more closely in recent months.

The move represents a reversal of hopes for Xandr, which was formed as a separate business in 2017 just as AT&T was pursuing its $85.4 billion purchase of the media conglomerate previously known as Time Warner. AT&T hired Brian Lesser, a top executive at Wpp’s large GroupM media-buying operation, to build a business aimed at helping advertisers...

MacGyver RSVPs for a very exclusive, timey-wimey shindig in this exclusive sneak peek at Friday’s episode (CBS, 8/7c).

In “Tesla + Bell + Edison + Mac,” the series’ titular problem solver is put into a dream state in order to help him recall key evidence that he glimpsed in Nikola Tesla’s secret lab, while on the hunt for Codex intel, prior to being caught and knocked out.

More from TVLineBrandon Micheal Hall Breaks Silence on God Friended Me Cancellation, Says CBS Axing Was 'Out of Our Control'Survivor: Winners at War Recap: Who's Ready for Some Love?God Friended Me Star Expresses...

I contend the world changed more between 1875 and 1900 than any other quarter-century in recorded history. From Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone to Thomas Edison’s phonograph and motion pictures, the masses were suddenly able to communi9cate and entertain in new ways. The world shrank and night was eliminated thanks to the light bulb.

It’s a fascinating period and one that has been overlooked until recently. First came, Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night, a historical novel from 2016 that carefully detailed the battle between Edison and George Westinghouse for setting the electrical standard for America. Of course, alternating current won, but not without losses on both sides.

A year later, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon tackled the same subject matter in The Current War, pitting Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) against Westinghouse (Michael Shannon). In both stories as in history, the mad genius of Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), is a naïve innocent,...

With a voice as deep as his pompadour was high, Conway Twitty scored 55 Number One country hits by 1990, with his biggest, “Hello Darlin’,” released 50 years ago on March 23rd, 1970. Its spoken introduction — delivered in a come-hither tone by Twitty — remains one of the most iconic opening lines in country music. Penned in 1960 by the Mississippi native born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, the song was relegated to the storage bin at the time because he had no outlets for his country material. But after signing to Decca Records’ country division by the end of the decade,...

For 36 years, Alex Trebek has been the purveyor of obscure facts from the archeologist who opened King Tut's tomb in 1922 (Who is Howard Carter?) to the device Alexander Graham Bell tested out on Civil War vets still riddled with bullets (What is a metal detector?). But for the past year, the longtime Jeopardy! host has been educating his followers on something infinitely more important and far more personal. "Just like 50,000 other people in the United States each year, this week I was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer," he shared in a shocking March 2019 video message that has been viewed by upwards of five...

As the Athena Film Festival gears up for its latest edition later this month, the female-centric event has unveiled the winners and finalists of its annual script competition, The Athena List. The competition aims to select “exceptional scripts with women leaders at the heart of the story” and its “goal is to raise the profile of the scripts and the writers within the industry with the purpose of getting these movies made and elevating their careers to the next level.” “The introduction of the Athena List has made women-driven narratives about female leaders a priority, and we are pleased to present this year’s list of dynamic scripts,” said Athena Film Festival co-founder Melissa Silverstein in an official statement.

The program has already enjoyed big successes over a few short years, and previous winners include Chinonye Chukwu’s “Clemency” (which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival...

At Xandr, the ad-technology firm that is part of AT&T, the time to start talking about the advertising of the future is now.

The AT&T unit is best known, perhaps, for selling commercial inventory related to the company’s DirecTV. But Xandr CEO Brian Lesser expects to be recognized soon for taking part in many other areas of the telecommunications-and-media giant.

Already, Xandr is in talks with the ad-sales team at AT&T sibling WarnerMedia about how best to team up and sell to Madison Avenue during the TV industry’s annual “upfront” sales session next year. “We are working together to go to upfront next year. We are working with them now to figure out how we are going to do that,” says Lesser, during an interview Friday in the company’s midtown headquarters. A WarnerMedia spokeswoman declined to comment on the format of the company’s upfront...

In the streaming wars to come, WarnerMedia will rely on sheer tonnage of heavy artillery.

That much was clear Tuesday as the AT&T media arm unveiled to investors its plans for HBO Max, the direct-to-consumer service that is the fruit of the telecom giant’s acquisition last year of the former TimeWarner. On a soundstage at the historic Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, AT&T president John Stankey led a parade of execs and occasional talent revealing details around the long anticipated streamer.

Over the course of more than two hours, the emphasis was on content — both library and original, with a heavy lean on established brands such as “Game of Thrones,” “Friends,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Sesame Street,” as well as known stars like Nicole Kidman, Ridley Scott, and Mindy Kaling. The scope of content on display was vast. The emphasis was so much on volume rather than...

Washington — At&T CEO Randall Stephenson defended his company’s $85 billion plan to merge with Time Warner as he took the stand in one of the most anticipated moments of the antitrust trial.

Stephenson, often speaking directly to the judge as he gave his testimony, emphasized that At&T wanted “wide broad distribution” for Time Warner content, implicitly pushing back against the government’s claim that the combined company would use “must have” channels like TBS, TNT, and CNN as a “weapon” to extract higher fees from rivals.

“A $160 billion company doesn’t buy a $30 billion company, hoping the $30 billion company can make its value greater,” Stephenson said, adding that the situation was the opposite. “It’s a matter of math.”

At&T-Time Warner’s lead counsel Daniel Petrocelli introduced notes that Stephenson had taken in the summer of 2016, just after he and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes first talked about a combination,...

The Science Channel plans a documentary series from Ross Greenburg’s production company that will explore the minds and lives of the people who have changed the course of humanity.

Pairing historical and contemporary figures from similar business arenas, the three-part series with the working title Innovators will aim to show reveal surprising connections between modern business leaders and their predecessors. The Discovery-owned network plans to air the series in the fourth quarter of the year.

The three hour-long episodes combine in-depth profiles of two individuals. Richard Warren Sears, the businessman who founded Sears, Roebuck and Co., will be paired with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Alexander Graham-Bell, who patented the first telephone line and founded AT&T, will be matched with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. And John and Horace Dodge, who challenged the Ford Motor Company’s automobile industry dominance, will be linked with Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors...

NEW YORK -- Canadian hockey legend and broadcaster Don Cherry will be part of a cross-border cooperation that will put Cherry on NBC's playoff telecasts and send Brett Hull to the CBC for their broadcasts.

The "Hockey Night in Canada" star -- who was coach of the Boston Bruins and Colorado Rockies when his playing career ended -- will join the NBC Stanley Cup coverage. Hull will appear during the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts as well. Details are still being worked out, NBC Sports said.

The often controversial Cherry is an institution in Canada, where he has been a part of the CBC's NHL telecasts since 1980. He was also rather surprisingly named one of the top 10 "Greatest Canadians" in a 2004 poll that also included insulin discoverer Dr. Frederick Banting, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and athletes Wayne Gretzky and marathoner Terry Fox.

NBC, which recently announced it had renewed its revenue-sharing deal with the NHL, will televise its first 2006-07 playoff games this weekend with games Saturday afternoon (Pittsburgh Penguins-Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers-Atlanta Thrashers on Saturday afternoon and Detroit Red Wings-Calgary Flames on Sunday afternoon).