"For some children, watching "Dora the Explorer" on television is becoming passé. Now, they want to be Dora." Mother. Fuckers. They want to be Dora because multinational corporations are pouring millions into online games that masquerade as harmless diversions while actually indoctrinating children into brand…
Virtual worlds and big tobacco hold one strategy in common: hook 'em young. It's estimated some 20 million kids will congregate in virtual playgrounds by 2011. To capitalize on their addiction, a growing percentage of virtual architects are focusing on kiddie fare modeled after Webkinz and Club Penguin. Disney,…
Faced with perhaps their trickiest PR dilemma since it was discovered that Jimmy Neutron's true boy genius was for producing some of the most potent meth in the western United States, Nickelodeon now has a star of Zoey 101 on their hands who was apparently absent for the lecture on how to not to be impregnated by…
MTV Networks employees are planning a walkout for Monday afternoon, and are spreading the word: "What do we do? Suck it up and deal? Leave the company? There is a third option—50% of the company stands up and says 'WE DO NOT ACCEPT THESE TERMS.'" Walking out is generally associated with student protest groups, like…
David Puttnam, a member of Britain's House of Lords, said virtual worlds targeted at children are doing little more than to make them "think of themselves as not that much more than consumers," during his keynote at the Virtual Worlds Forum. Too many of them are backed by product-hawking companies like Viacom's…
In today's Variety Youth Impact Report, a special section in which the trade publication spotlights the precocious performers who will one day either rise to Fanningesque domination of the industry or challenge Lindsay Lohan's Herbie: Fully Loaded record for most hangover-induced missed call times, experts from…
Here at Gawker, we don't do much celebrating. It's always "Joe Morgenstern is a lazy piggy" or "Man, whoever made this slideshow on the T website is so lame." Never a kind word to be heard around here—see below, generally speaking—the posts never not poker-faced and always possibly reactionary to the point where it…
As part of our continuing mission to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of potential Apocalyptic disasters unfolding at the studios where your industry peers thanklessly toil, we pass along this photo and distress message just transmitted from a cameraphone over at Nickelodeon:
This just in: Network executives are impatient, either cancelling or giving full-season orders to shows based only on a couple of weeks of ratings data. [Variety]
It's nice to see Mira Sorvino breaking out of TV movie jail and getting a part in an Actual Feature Film, joining Mark Ruffalo, Joaquin Phoenix, and…
It wasn't that long ago that Paramount announced that it was "restructuring" and "upgrading" its MTV Films and Nickelodeon Movies production companies inside The Happiest Studio on Earth and handing them over to producer Scott Aversano. This morning, though, we're hearing that new president Aversano's "upgrade"…
