Author Archives: Ralph Hanson

In The Heights, Returning to Theaters, and the Importance of Representation

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

While I’ve always been a big fan of action and sci-fi flicks, the movie I’ve been most excited about seeing this summer has been Lin-Manuel Miranda’s (Hamilton) and Jon Chu’s (Crazy Rich Asians) musical extravaganza In The Heights.  In the Heights … Continue reading →

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Riding with Team Strange – Fun with Motorcycles

Posted on June 9, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

For the last six or seven years, every summer I do a national-scale motorcycle scavenger hunt run by a  motorcycle club out of Minnesota known as Team Strange. Each year it has a theme. One of my favorites was “On … Continue reading →

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Bezos, Jeff Bezos Meets Bond, James Bond – Reconfiguring the Media Landscape Part 1

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

Huge transitions and consolidations are happening in the media business right now as the COVID pandemic winds down.  We’re going to take a look at a number of these changes over the next week or so. Today we start with … Continue reading →

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Time to reboot after pandemic spring

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

For the last few months I’ve been down to posting about once a month with everything going on. Now that the semester is over it’s time to get back to thinking about where our media have wandered off over the … Continue reading →

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Guest Blog Post: The other George Floyd story: How media freedom led to conviction in his killer’s trial

Posted on April 23, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

Editor’s Note: Thanks to my friend Dr. Michael Socolow, University of Maine, for letting me reprint his article from The Conversation. Near v. Minnesota is such an important media law case that highlights the importance of defending unpopular speech. When … Continue reading →

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Is Broadcast TV Done and Over? Or is it Just Awards Shows?

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

Last evening I was reading reading CNN’s Brian Stelter’s nightly media news newsletter that had just shown up in my mailbox. The lead story was about how television habits have changed during the pandemic. Stelter notes that one of the … Continue reading →

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Director James Gunn takes on critics of “cancel culture”

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

Movie director James Gunn has had his own personal run-in with the so-called “cancel culture,” aka being held accountable for things you have said. As you may recall, long before Gunn became a big-time Marvel Cinematic Universe director of the … Continue reading →

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Is streaming the new a la carte cable? Or is it just more of the same?

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

Back in the the late 1980s, early 1990s, the television business started going through some big changes. For the first time ever, the original Big Three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) started changing ownership, going from the founders to … Continue reading →

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

Why did it take so long for Quaker Oats to abandon Aunt Jemima as a pancake brand? Aunt Jemima has a new name: the Pearl Milling Company. Quaker Oats announced it would drop the name Aunt Jemima last summer after … Continue reading →

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Bernie and his Mittens

Posted on January 22, 2021 by Ralph Hanson

With all of the awful news over the last few weeks, from the more than 400,000 people dead from the pandemic, to people out of work, to the insurrection attack on the U.S. Capitol, we’ve really needed something wonderful as … Continue reading →

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