PBS: Anyone who gets cable TV or satellite in the U.S. has noticed a pronounced trend over the years: their monthly bill keeps going up. Sure, you can get lots of channels, plus HD channels and DVR functions, but those usually cost extra. According to research from Centris (PDF), the average digital cable bill was nearly $75 last year, and the average monthly satellite TV bill was $69. What’s causing those bills to skyrocket? A lack of competition among cable and satellite providers, and the rising costs of programming. Like other traditional media, TV networks (both cable and broadcast) are […]
Q&A: Meet Richard Lloyd, The Man On The Marquee Moon
Richard Lloyd & The Sufi-Monkey Trio play Johnny Brenda’s TONIGHT! BY ED KING I owe the Philadelphia Free Library (Cottman Avenue branch, to be exact) an apology. And some money. I used to transfer SEPTA buses to and from school at that spot. There was a pretty cool record store next to the library with punk and new wave records. A couple days a week I’d stop in the store and marvel at the records, posters, and buttons. It was at this store I’d buy the latest copy of Trouser Press, which was tapping me into a way out of […]
TMI TV: Kidnap Victim To Host Chat Show
(CNN) — Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who was held prisoner for eight years in a basement, will have her own television chat show, her media adviser confirmed to CNN Thursday. Natascha Kampusch gives an interview in August 2007, a year after she escaped from her captor. The 19-year-old made headlines around the world after she escaped from a subterranean bunker below the house of Wolfgang Priklopil in a suburb of Vienna 16 months ago. Her captor killed himself by throwing himself under a train only hours after she fled. Kampusch will be hosting a show on the Austrian television […]