SUMMARY: HBO's blockbuster series, "Game of Thrones," broke records for Emmy nominations and wins [59] before it ended this year. But in the small Croatian city of Dubrovnik, the series lives on. It was the backdrop for much of the fantasy thriller, helping its tourism numbers to explode. But some say the swashbuckling series has been a double-edged sword. Special correspondent Christopher Livesay reports.
SUMMARY: For the millions of viewers around the world addicted to HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” winter is coming, this weekend. The television phenomenon, which upwards of 17 million people watch per episode, concludes its eighth and final season with no shortage of attention or critique. Jeffrey Brown reports on how the series became a sensation, where it fell short and what it means for the fantasy genre.
SUMMARY: In our series My Music, singer-songwriter Lera Lynn talks about gaining fans from the HBO show "True Detective" and channeling her Texas roots.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally tonight, a new occasional series here on the “NewsHour” that gives artists an opportunity to talk about their work. We call it My Music.
We start with Lera Lynn, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter featured in the HBO series “True Detective” who recently completed her U.S. tour.
Take a listen:
LERA LYNN, Singer-Songwriter : There is something really attractive about darkness to me.
I have read studies that listening to sad music actually creates positive emotion, so I’m just trying to change the world.
(LAUGHTER)
LERA LYNN: Just kidding.
(LAUGHTER)
LERA LYNN: My name is Lera Lynn. And I’m an independent musician.
A lot of people that come into the shows these days have find out about me through “True Detective.” Thankfully, they have dug a little bit more. I think that’s the best possible scenario for me.
My family is Texan. And I think, especially now, I’m really starting to feel the impact of their upbringing on me, because it’s coming out of the music in a big way. There’s been a lot of country music, a lot of classic rock, even jazz. My mom loved Joni Mitchell.
There was even, you know, a lot of Van Halen in the house.
SUMMARY: Sesame Street, the beloved children's television series and PBS staple since 1969, will have a new address coming this fall. A five-year partnership with HBO means episodes will air first on the premium pay cable channel before appearing on public television nine months later. Judy Woodruff discusses the changes with Gary Knell, former CEO of Sesame Workshop.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally, big changes at “Sesame Street.”
Yesterday, the long-running PBS children’s television series announced a new five-year partnership with HBO starting this fall. New episodes of the show, a PBS staple since it premiered in 1969, will appear first on the premium pay cable channel. Then it will air for free on their traditional public television home nine months later.
To help us explore what led to this change, and what it means, we turn to Gary Knell. He was CEO of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit group behind the show, from 2000 until 2011. Then he was head of NPR, before moving to his current job as president of the National Geographic Society.
Gary Knell, great to have you with us.
GARY KNELL, Former CEO, Sesame Workshop: Thanks for having me back.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, tell us, what was behind this? Now that we have a day to digest the news, what do we attribute this to? What were the forces at work?
GARY KNELL: Well, I think you have got to look at this three ways, Judy.
For HBO, this is about streaming. They’re competing with Netflix, and for them — and Amazon Prime — and this is a way of getting a number-one quality brand onto their streaming platforms.
For “Sesame Street”, this filled an economic gap. And their economic model for many years has really been filled by home video and toys and books and other things that they were able to monetize off the brand to pay for the production in a lot of ways from — for PBS. And this is a way of plugging that gap and giving them running room.
And I think, for PBS, it’s a little bit of an admission that maybe they’re a little bigger than “Sesame Street.” They have 19 preschool and kids shows on PBS. And PBS KIDS has become a robust network that is bigger than “Sesame Street” now. It includes “Sesame Street.” That’s an important component, but it’s bigger than.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But why HBO? We think of this as a — frankly, a channel that appeals to adults. It’s a premium pay cable thing. It’s something people are going to have to pay for. Why — couldn’t it work at PBS?
GARY KNELL: Well, it could, but I think, for HBO, this is quite a brilliant move, I think, to go after millennial audiences and young parents who grew up with “Sesame Street.”
(like I said, it's all about the money, for HBO)
And, again, they’re in a fight to the death now, not so much about their cable channel, so to speak, but it’s much more about streaming. It’s this a la carte world, where we’re now competing against every piece of content ever invented, from a cat video to “Gone With the Wind,” every night, and unless you have great a la carte programs, you’re going to be in a competitive disadvantage to the Netflixes and the Amazon Primes of the world.
JOHN OLIVER, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”: If we let cable companies offer two speeds of service, there won’t be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motorbike.
(LAUGHTER)
JOHN OLIVER: They will be Usain Bolt and Usain bolted to an anchor.
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN: The highly divisive debate over who controls Internet speed and access, so-called net neutrality, is hardly standard comic fare.
JOHN OLIVER: The point is, the Internet in its current state is not broken, and the FCC is currently taking steps to fix that.
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): But it’s just the kind of policy and political subject that John Oliver tackles, often in surprising depth, on his new HBO comedy program “Last Week Tonight.”
JOHN OLIVER: We need you to channel that anger.
JEFFREY BROWN: His admonition to viewers to write to the FCC even briefly shut down the agency’s comments section of the Web site. Born in a suburb of Birmingham, England, Oliver studied English and joined a comedy troupe at Cambridge University. He performed stand-up in festivals, pubs and clubs around England, before coming to this country and joining “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” in 2006, eventually sitting in as host while Stewart took time off.
The new program has probed, poked fun, and raised serious questions around a variety of news topics, from India’s elections to Supreme Court decisions.
In the video above, Brantley Bryant, associate professor of medieval literature at Sonoma State University, shares what he and others in his field see of the Canterbury Tales, Le Morte d’Arthur and Beowulf in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Spoiler alert: If you haven’t watched the first three seasons, you will learn what happens to certain characters.
The land of Westeros may seem far off for fans of “Game of Thrones,” but as season four of HBO’s successful show is gearing up to start on Sunday, (NewsHour's) Art Beat learned it may not be as distant as one might think.
According to Brantley Bryant, an associate professor of medieval literature at Sonoma State University, George R.R. Martin, the author of the fantasy series that inspired the HBO show, “has read deeply into medieval history.”
“Sometimes people who haven’t had a chance to read a lot of medieval literature have this idea that it’s a kind of fairy tale world, that medieval literature is this kind of thing where everyone is always very chaste and everyone is very pure and nice,” said Bryant, who specializes in Chaucer and writes a blog in the meter and style of the poet.
“Some of the most sensational, violent aspects of ‘Game of Thrones’ are actually also present in medieval literature.”
From Ned Stark to Jaime Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, the violence, the conceptions of justice and the use of monsters and mythical creatures hark back to the worlds of Geoffrey Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory.
Are Stannis Baratheon and Melisandre a new version of King Arthur and Morgan le Fay? How are the characters of Beowulf and John Snow similar?
