Media

Do I HAVE to Be A ‘Personality’?

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I recall when I was first called an "Internet Personality."  It was at a convention, and that was how I was described in the program booklet. That was quite a few years ago, and it seems that over time in the age of the internet, megamedia, and 24-hour news cycles the world is filled with "personalities."

Personalities are everywhere.  News personalities.  Internet personalities.  Writers are personalities.  Colorful local personalities.  It seems some of the most successful (or at least famous) people we know are, well . . . personalities.

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Reboots, Remakes, and The Total Tolerance of The Public

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A new Superman movie.  A new Spiderman movie.  New Star Trek.  Reboots and remakes raining down rapidly on us in a seemingly endless procession of "let's do it over again."

Now I'm not necessarily against remakes.  I find them appropriate at some times, and at other times at least intriguing – seeing how material is handled by different people.  But it seems like we're really getting swamped in start-it-over stuff as of late.  This led me to a question.

"What are the limits on remakes?  How many years can you go between remakes?  How many times can you remake something?  In short, when does this not become profitable and accepted and just becomes a joke or worse?"

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Media Size and The Changing Media Environment

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(Last week I posted to a link on an article about rejected SF and Fantasy novels, and one of our regulars noted that Dune had been rejected for length at one point – and then noted how some series and books seem to be overlong.  That got me thinking and this column is the result).

What is the ideal length of a book?  A series?  A TV episode?  A movie?  A movie series?

You have an idea in mind.  Publishers, TV executives, authors, and everyone has an idea in mind.  I daresay you could, with little prompting start quite a conversation – or argument – about the ideal length/duration of any form of media.  We all have ideas about such things, some held quite passionately.

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