Brad's blog

It turns out there may be more to the Charlotte Dawson Twitter abuse saga than she’s letting on.

While it has been reported that Dawson and one of her followers were the victims of abuse from others, several Twitter users are pointing out that Dawson has been giving as good as she’s getting.

Dawson is an ambassador for the anti-bullying program Community Brave but has been criticised for re-tweeting abuse sent to her as it leads to her followers turning on the user who sent the abuse. Continue reading »

Remember those horrible “You wouldn’t steal a car” ads at the beginning of the movies and DVD’s you forked out honest cash to watch legitimately? It looks as though someone has figured out that was totally the wrong approach.

A new anti-piracy campaign from the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation is looking to put a more positive message out there than other campaigns have done in the past.

The ‘thank you’ theme aims to praise audiences who chose to watch content via the official and intended channels as opposed to illegal ones.

The campaign, which features several prominent Australian TV and film personalities, breaks away from the usual themes of fear and punishment of previous anti-piracy messages.

This was someone’s thoughts of the Fawlty Towers script before it was eventually produced.

Cartoon Network is launching a new online game Conqueror of All Worlds, the game around which Cartoon Network’s brand new comedy series, Level Up, is based.

In the show, four friends, Wyatt, Dante, Lyle and Angie, players of Conqueror of All Worlds, accidentally create a portal between the fictional world of the game and their real life neighbourhood.

The foursome may be gamers extraordinaire but defeating trolls, squashing barbarians and annihilating ghouls is very different IRL (in real life). Continue reading »

So it was revealed (not surprisingly) last week that Game of Thrones is the most-pirated TV show of the year. But which country is behind the majority of the pirating?

Statistics from TorrentFreak show that Australia tops the list of Game of Thrones downloads, with Aussies making up 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode).

One of the reasons for this may be the international delay in screening, with Aussies having to wait a week between the US screening and their own.

In terms of cities, London takes the lead when it comes to Game of Thrones downloading, followed by Sydney and Melbourne in the second and third spots.

So what’s makes Game of Thrones so popular on BitTorrent sites?

The show is only available to HBO subscribers in the US, which means a large amount of Americans (which ranks second on the most downloads list) turn to torrents to get their Thrones fix.

In most other countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, the show is also only available for viewing on pay TV channels.

In some ways, it’s HBO’s fault for the high number of Game of Thrones downloads, due to the fast they are trying to keep the series “exclusive” (even Netflix was unable to buy the rights to the series).

Top 10 countries:

Australia 10.1%
United States 9.7%
Canada 7.7%
United Kingdom 7.6%
The Netherlands 4.4%
Norway 3.7%
Spain 3.2%
Poland 3.0%
Greece 2.8%
Philippines 2.7%

Top 10 cities:

London 3.0%
Sydney 3.0%
Melbourne 2.9%
Amsterdam 2.2%
Athens 2.2%
Perth 1.8%
Istanbul 1.6%
Brisbane 1.5%
Budapest 1.3%
Madrid 1.3%

Source: Torrentfreak

The winners of the Australian Directors’ Guild Awards for 2012 were announced tonight at a gala ceremony in Sydney, which also celebrated the ADG’s 30th anniversary.

Each ADG Award category is judged by a panel of Director peers.

Matthew Saville won two Awards tonight – Best Direction in a TV Drama Series was for The Slap (Ep 3 – Harry) and Best Direction in a TV Mini Series for Cloudstreet.

Julia Leigh has won the Award for Best Direction in a Feature Film for Sleeping Beauty. Two winners were announced in the Best Direction in a Documentary Feature category – Tony Krawitz for The Tall Man and Bob Connolly and Sophie Raymond for Mrs Carey’s Concert. Continue reading »

One of the largest international events for television –INPUT – comes to Sydney next week with hundreds of delegates from across the world attending, including significant numbers from Australia’s neighbours in the region.

Senior program makers, commissioning editors and acquisitions executives from Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tonga, United Kingdom, Uruguay, USA, Zimbabwe have registered to attend the conference, being held in Australia for the first time in its 35-year history.

Dubbed the most free thinking television event in the world, INPUT begins Monday May 7 at Hoyts Cinemas, The Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park (next to Fox Studios) and runs through to Friday May 11. Continue reading »

Veteran US television presenter Dick Clark has died, aged 82.

Clark suffered a heart attack at a hospital in Santa Monica a day after he was admitted for an outpatient procedure.

Known as “the world’s oldest teenager” due to his youthful appearance and enthusiasm, Clark hosted the popular music series American Bandstand and over the years was instrumental in the creation and success of the likes of the American Music Awards, TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes and The $25,000 Pyramid. Continue reading »

The Australian Directors Guild today announced nominees in the 2012 ADG Awards.

Nominees for Best Direction in a TV Drama Series are Matthew Saville for The Slap (Ep 3 – Harry), Peter Andrikidis for East West 101 (The Price of Salvation), Jet Wilkinson for Crownies (Ep 22) and Peter Duncan for Rake (Ep 1 – vs Murray).

Nominated in the Documentary Series are Ivan O’Mahoney for Go Back to Where You Came From, Paul Scott for Outback Fight Club and Jacob Hickey for Immigration Nation. Nominated in the Documentary Stand Alone category are Phoebe Hart for Orchids: My Intersex Adventure, Celeste Geer for Then The Wind Changed, Robert Nugent for Memoirs of a Plague and James Bradley for Ochre & Ink. Continue reading »

To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium, they placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text “Push to add drama” invited people to use the button…