Did you know...

Here are a few interesting ideas/tips/thoughts I have procured during the research I have been conducting for our Mi1 Project:

1. A new trend in television set design is moving away from physical sets to digital. Shows from entertainment to news and sports are using computer graphic backgrounds...
There are two major drawbacks to virtual sets. The first drawback is that they have a tendency to look artificial. Sets that look real with rich textures and light gradients that can move and zoom push current processing speeds to the limit. However, the loss of realism can be a benefit to some programs looking for an alternative to a realistic set.
- Computer Graphics Quarterly, Vol 42, No. 2, The Future of Television Graphics, Edsall, Sam.

2. The most important element of our television is the work that is produced here, by us, about us, reflecting our values, our foibles, our weaknesses, our history. Australian television drama is fundamental to our culture. And it’s a fragile creature. It doesn’t happen because of free market money, it happens because of government regulation and funding support. Those regulations and that funding support are vital. At its best both film and television is inspirational, it reflects the sort of people we would want to be and the people we would not want to be. It is in itself a moral narrative of the times.
- Margaret Pomeranz, Hector Crawford Lecture, SPAA Conference 2011

3. The Australian Content Standard requires the three commercial networks to ensure 55 per cent of the programs screened between 6am and midnight is locally made, with subquotas for adult drama, children's programs and documentaries. The ABC is expected to screen about 14 hours of Australian drama this year, down from a peak of more than 100 hours in the early 1990s.
-Miller, Kylie. "Warning on Future of Australian Drama." The Age [Melbourne] 15 Aug. 2005: 86. Print.

4. As they reconfigure themselves as cross-platform media content providers, public service broadcasters enter new territory with regards to their audience, their content, their relations with producers and their status in the marketplace, invoking more exacting requirements for governance and accountability, and new commercial enemies. As a result of these complexities difgital innovation by public service media is becoming a growing area of study…As a group, they(the BBC, Channel 4, ABC and SBS) also illustrate the wide-ranging new inititves emerging across the digital and online platforms of public broadcasters; cross platform programming: user-generated content (UGC); audience participation; the delivery of linear programming with opportunies to interact on an on-deman basis; and the generation of social networks and communities, connected to resources and activities of other public institutions. (pg 185-186)
-Reinventing Public Service Television for the Digital Future. Mary Debrett. 2011.

5. With so many channels and technologies of distribution and circulation, it has been increasingly impossible for any hit show, no matter how successful, to register the kinds of ratings achievable in earlier phases of television. In turn, several responses to this situation are now evident. One of these is stagnation, if not a drop, in the system’s demand for more expensive forms of prime-time programming.... In other words, in characterizing the present era of New Television as one of abundance, it has to be borne in mind that this tendency only occurs with certain programming genres, indeed occurs at the expense of other types of content. (pg 281 – 297)
-Wasko, Janet. A Companion to Television. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. Print.