Ruby Rose Genderqueer Intro Cut

Ruby Rose
Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer /  
Foter / CC BY-SA

As a host of the MTV Europe Music Awards, Ruby Rose (Orange is the New Black) took the opportunity to make a brief, inclusive introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between.”

Of course the the US version of the show was cut down to ensure valuable advertising time was not lost, and they chose to cut this statement.  I don't think there was necessarily any anti-genderqueer reason for the cut per se.  But the US editors clearly failed to understand why this intro was in fact important and being widely discuss worldwide.

This is yet another example of the US TV industry's penchant for taking world class programming from overseas, especially Europe, and just loping bits off haphazardly to get it into predetermined time slots.  (i.e. butchering Sherlock just to keep the smarmy and unnecessary Masterpiece into.)

Surely it is time to treat the US audience with respect and adapt the schedule so they can enjoy the same full-length, international version of programs from around the world--not the pre-masticated Readers Digest version that our cable overlords like to treat like interchangeable lego bricks, assuming we will neither notice nor care.

Alas Poor WW

It seems the pilot for NBC's new Wonder Woman series landed at the feet of test viewers like a large star-spangled turd.  The series appears to have been canceled before it even got a chance to air.

Wonder Woman Costume

...now slightly less terrible. I guess.

Wonder Woman Fails to Take Off

Sadly it seems that every TV network turned up their noses at the notion of a new Wonder Woman series. It does make me wonder.  Do the networks suffer from a congenital lack of imagination? Or is David E Kelley's pilot script a total dog?

Because I think a secret agent amazon for the new Millennium would kick serious ass.  But only if they resist "re-imagining" the costume too much. More sleuthing, less romance, ditch the invisible plane, keep the lasso and the star-spangled knickers.

Oh, and keep it off NBC.

O'Reilly's Last Laugh

An employment tribunal found that when the BBC fired a female "Countryfile" presenter (one of four women fired) because of her age, but retained a similarly aged male, their actions were not sexist.  The seem to feel that either agism is a trump bigotry, or that agism only applies to women? 

In any case, they were found to be ageist. The show moved to prime time and executives clearly decided that age does not go before beauty when they dumped Miriam O'Reilly (53) a 25-year BBC veteran. That decision will cost them something in the range of tens of thousands of dollars.