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Yahoo
09-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
UNCG student teacher spending year in High Point classroom
GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — It's sometimes hard to tell what you want to do with your life until you've tried it. Alyssa Olmedo had a good idea of what staying in a classroom beyond being a student might be like. 'I just love history and social studies in general, and it seemed like a cool opportunity to just get to talk about that all the time,' Olmedo said. To complete her education major at UNC Greensboro, Olmedo has to spend a year student teaching. She's doing that year at High Point Central High School. A lot of what she's done during that year hasn't surprised her. 'It has been what I thought it would be, which is challenging, so it's been good,' Olmedo said. 'But I've had a lot of support. Ms. Ranew is wonderful, and she's been really, really helpful … Sometimes, I need her to tell me it's OK … Some days are hard, so that's really helpful.' Kayla Ranew is overseeing Olmedo's time in the classroom. As a veteran teacher, she understands the challenges new teachers face. 'She had to teach two lessons that she filmed and sent back to her professor at UNCG,' Ranew said. 'She's at the football games, did homecoming with me and really got herself involved with the school … Starting second semester, they're all in, so she's planning. She's grading. She's teaching every day.' Ranew understands the value of having young people buy into the profession. She said that UNCG, which is her alma mater, has about half as many education majors as it did when she was there a little more than a decade ago. 'When I was at UNCG, my program for social studies was somewhere between 20 and 30 people, and now her program is less than 10 people,' Ranew said. Meanwhile, Olmedo is learning that teaching in a classroom isn't even the majority of where she'll spend her time and energy. She'll also be doing events and other things that help students get through their day. The team of teachers that HPCHS has developed helps make it all work. 'I never realized until being here all day, every day, how much you really do interact with the other teachers around you and how much of a support system they can be … Sometimes, it really is just nice to have a conversation with other teachers on the hallway about stuff that's going on. I guess I never considered how much of teaching is team-based,' Olmedo said. See more in the latest Saved By the Bell edition of The Buckley Report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Politico
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Politico
The New Faith-Based Hollywood
BUFFALO, New York — In the middle of April, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Mario Lopez of Saved By the Bell fame is shivering outside on set, periodically bundled in a down jacket. Crew members and Los Angeles-based actors mill about in winter gear. Behind them sit a close-to-frozen pond, barren trees and a row of identical light blue homes. Lopez is the star of A Christmas Spark, an upcoming film about a middle-aged lawyer who returns home around the holidays to become a firefighter — and, spoiler alert, finds love along the way. It sounds, looks and feels just like a Hallmark movie. But peek behind the cameras, and A Christmas Spark is part of a new media boom, funded largely by conservative donors, that's reshaping entertainment in the Trump era. It's produced by Great American Media, a company focused on family friendly, faith-based content and led by Bill Abbott, the former CEO of the parent company of the Hallmark Channel who left amid a nasty political split during Donald Trump's first administration. Despite the stars and the sets, we're far from a major studio production. And for GAM, that's on purpose. Most Hollywood studios and streaming services are dealing with turbulent financial waters and concerns about looming tariffs. But in an era in which Americans are interested in living their politics in the companies they support and the media they consume, outfits like Great American Media — which consists of a streaming service, multiple cable networks and produces much of its own content — are growing. GAM is part of an expanding network of faith-based production companies and streaming services that are finding success in an increasingly polarized country. They're both slowly building dedicated audiences and have cashed in with big hits, like the Angel Studios movie Sound of Freedom, which made $250 million on a less than $15-million budget. These companies insist they aren't partisan, seeking only to create a brand associated with family and amorphous American values that parents can feel comfortable watching at home. But GAM and like-minded companies are able to succeed where secular alternatives struggle by using a sense of conservative aggrievement with Hollywood to their benefit. Bad review in a mainstream publication? It's the liberal media, even more reason to support their offerings. Themes like same-sex marriage or pre-marital sex offend you? Try faith-based media. For decades, many of the same concepts could be applied to Hallmark or Lifetime films. While not overtly political, they espoused generally culturally conservative values and a moral tradition that appealed to conservative viewers, with an emphasis on small-town living and heterosexual love stories. But as Hallmark has begun making some content about gay couples and hasn't committed to promoting unambiguously religious themes, a swath of its fans have gone looking for something else that more directly conforms with their politics and their values. That's where many of them find GAM and a growing slate of faith-based or avowedly conservative production companies. Longtime president of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo, for example, helped to bankroll Wonder Project, the Texas-based studio that produced House of David, the wildly popular retelling of the biblical shepherd's story that found a home on Amazon's Prime Video. Leo received a $1.6-billion gift that he's using with the express purpose of making culture more conservative. 'You're only going to accomplish so much in shifting American cultural and social life through politics and public policy if you're not dealing with the cultural institutions that are at the choke point of American opinion, American sentiment, American thinking,' Leo tells POLITICO Magazine. 'So entertainment, of course, is a really important part of trying to rebalance the culture.' GAM leaders don't state their ambitions as quite as directly political. But they also believe there's money and cultural influence in serving people who are tired of what they're getting from Hollywood. 'We're focused on meeting the needs of an unmet audience,' Abbott wrote in an email to POLITICO Magazine. 'Our viewers are multigenerational and value content that reflects faith, family, and country.' Abbott, a spry, 63-year-old Long Islander by birth, has been working in family entertainment since 1988. He worked at big networks like CBS and Fox before he joined the Crown Media Family Networks in 2000 and was named CEO of Crown Media — the parent company that operates Hallmark programming — in 2009. He oversaw the launch of the Hallmark Movie Channel, got Hallmark into the scripted series game, and presided over decades of sustained success for the brand. Everything looked rosy before a tumultuous breakup during President Donald Trump's first term spurred by a White House Christmas event, an ad for a wedding registry website and a public outcry. 'In 2017, you could see the change in the chairman and the management at the parent company and the family to become much more woke,' Abbott said in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, when asked why he left Hallmark. 'And DEI driven, very DEI driven. They were in DEI before it was cool to be in DEI.' According to Abbott, in 2017 the Trump White House chose Hallmark to host a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. After the network hosted the show, he says he was told by his bosses at the Hallmark Channel's parent company, that 'you're either for humanity or you're against it,' chastising him for agreeing to host the event. Hallmark did not respond to requests for comment. Then, in 2020, Abbott departed the company after a December 2019 ad for wedding website that depicted a same-sex couple exchanging vows and kissing. After the conservative group One Million Moms objected to the ad, Abbott and his team pulled the ad from its programming — a move that prompted swift backlash. #BoycottHallmark trended on X, then Twitter, and public figures including Ellen DeGeneres called out Abbott directly. The company ultimately reversed course and reinstated the ad, and Abbott stepped down a little over a month after the fallout and the intense backlash to pulling the ad inside and outside the company. 'We made a decision to not take one commercial and that blew up everything on the planet,' Abbott said in April on the podcast of Moms for America, an organization that recently presented Trump with the 'Man of the Century' award at a gala held at Mar-a-Lago. He noted Hallmark was careful about the ads they took in general, not running ads for political campaigns, alcohol or drugs or feminine hygiene products. In his email, Abbott wrote, 'I am very proud of what we built at Hallmark, but their priority became creating content to align with political and social counterculture rather than staying focused on celebrating tradition and delivering what viewers wanted. My goal has always been to serve the audience with uplifting entertainment that creates trust.' So Abbott pivoted into the world of faith-based media. As Abbott tells it, actor Jon Voight — now Trump's Special Ambassador to Hollywood, who starred in the Hallmark film J.L. Family Ranch in 2016 — introduced Abbott to Tom Hicks, a Texas-based private equity investor who runs Hicks Equity Partners. In 2020, Hicks Equity Partners looked to raise $200 million for conservative alternatives to Fox News and explored buying Newsmax, as they sought to put their political imprimatur on American media. (Hicks' son, Thomas Hicks Jr., is a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee and a national finance co-chair for Trump's 2016 campaign.) The Newsmax acquisition never came to fruition, but Hicks Equity Partners helped Abbott get Great American Media off the ground, aiding in his acquisition of the cable network Great American Country in 2021 from Discovery which was subsequently rebranded to Great American Family. Their original programming airs on both linear cable and streaming. According to Great American Media, Hicks Equity Partners has been joined in their initial investment by several other sources, including Deason Capital (a Dallas-based family office run by conservative activist and donor Doug Deason) and Sony. Hicks Equity Partners did not respond to a request for comment. 'Right now, we're going through a period where religious conservatives are increasingly assertive and very energetic in funding and expanding their own cultural space,' said Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. While it rejects an explicitly political label, Great American Media receives much of its funding from sources that also fund politically conservative organizations and candidates. They and other similar production companies believe they can power their growth through servicing a large swath of viewers who sound a lot like how Republican candidates describe their voters. 'We have people in our culture who very much want all aspects of their life to be consistent with family-centered values,' Leo says. 'When they're in the marketplace, or when they're in the political world, or when they're simply doing what people do in life to engage in leisure and entertainment, they look for that kind of family-values centered thinking and approach to life.' In the world of faith-based television and movie content, business is booming. Sound of Freedom, a 2023 thriller distributed by the faith-based network Angel Studios about child trafficking that critics called a vehicle for promoting conspiracy theories, minted over $184 million in North America. That made it one of the most successful independent movies ever. His Only Son, another 2023 Angel Studios film, made over $13 million on a $250,000 budget. The Chosen, an ongoing television series about Jesus by filmmaker Dallas Jenkins, claims to have crowdfunded almost $100 million and reached a quarter of a billion people via streaming. Crowdfunding is a popular tool for faith-based production companies that use their audience's enthusiasm — often around a particular political point — to raise cash. Since 2022, The Daily Wire, a conservative media company co-founded by commentator Ben Shapiro, has also produced multiple successful television shows and films and has become a big player in this space. House of David was a huge crossover hit for Wonder Studios, and a starting point for Leo's mission to get more traditional studios and streaming platforms to promote these types of stories. 'I don't see this as being in competition with big Hollywood. I see this as being an opportunity for big Hollywood to make targeted investments that make them money at a time when it's hard to make money in producing movies,' says Leo. Great American Family, meanwhile, grew its viewership by 20 percent between the fourth quarters of 2023 and 2024, making it one of the few networks achieving that sort of rapid growth, according to internal documents from GAM shared with POLITICO Magazine and Nielsen ratings. (Others include conservative media networks Fox News and Newsmax.) Over the same timespan, Hallmark's audience shrunk by 9 percent and Lifetime's by 13 percent, according to Nielsen ratings. Hallmark and Lifetime still maintain larger audiences in total than Great American Family, though. On the business side, many faith-based production companies follow a similar proposition to a channel like Hallmark: build out a slate of movies and TV shows that follow a tried and true formula of simple love stories and moral lessons. 'The reason the model works is because you keep budgets down. These are not genre films. These are not films that require an awful lot in terms of location. Often they're reusing actors,' says Adam Nayman, a Toronto-based film critic and professor at the University of Toronto. 'You kind of build up your own star system where these people are not stars, but they become recognizable to your audience.' GAM's streaming service is currently advertising 'Summer Romcoms' like Sweet Maple Romance, 'Military Heroes' like Peace River: God, Country & The Cowboy Way, and 'Stories of Faith' like Disciples in the Moonlight. The company also launched a specific childrens' hub on their streaming service this week. They are trying to build a catalog of films that fit together in one neat, Christian package. 'Sometimes you'll say, 'I love that show, but I don't know where it is — is this on Max? Is this on Netflix?'' said Kristen Roberts, Great American Media's chief revenue officer and executive vice president of programming, in a recent interview at GAM's New York offices. 'We want to be the complete opposite of that. We want people to say, 'I watch Pure Flix, I watch Great American Family,'' referencing two arms of GAM. The goal, she said, is for viewers to say, ''I watch that service' more than 'I watch that particular show.'' Faith-based networks also have the benefit of being able to position themselves in direct opposition with what they argue is a liberal agenda in Hollywood. The community of faith-based filmmakers can set themselves up as the antidote to cultural products that they see as inappropriate for children and adults alike. 'When you look at White Lotus and you look at situations where they're creating storylines that have incest in them and they're being applauded by the entertainment community, that's an intentional way of taking aberrant behavior and trying to normalize it,' Abbott said on the Moms for America podcast. 'We see it all the time in entertainment — every day. You can turn on almost any movie, any network, go to any movie, and I know it's a very intentional strategy.' The success of faith-based media companies is in large part a reaction to the kind of frustrations that Abbott elucidates. The industry is buoyed by the very thing that it rails against — and it's the response that drives some of the success. 'They've really not ever tried to pretend that they're for everyone,' says Nayman. 'Instead, they say, 'isn't this what you've been missing.' And if you're the one getting that message, and you're the one being reached by that advertisement, then your grievance is being stoked, even if it's underneath the guise of a warm hug.' 'You're assuming that people are fed up with anything that resembles something mainstream or something secular,' Nayman adds. 'And I think they really, really take advantage of a polarized moment.' There's tension between faith-based content and the rest of the media landscape. The faith-based films and television shows — when they're reviewed at all — are regularly panned by critics. Sound of Freedom, the film from this universe that was recently reviewed by the most mainstream critics, has a Metacritic score of 36 out of 100. 'It's bizarre, unsettling and yet — in the filmmaking equivalent of turning wine to water — bracingly dull to boot,' read a review in The Telegraph. 'The quality is a really big issue,' Leo acknowledges. He argues conservatives need to invest in incubating talent that can make family-values movies and shows that are more slick, better produced and appeal to a wider audience. The art in this space often has no real aspirations towards acclaim as it's connoted by an Oscar or Emmy. In fact, in some ways they've created a parallel industry, with their own critics and markers of success. The Movieguide Awards, which are held every year and which largely honor films and television that Movieguide — a service that brands itself as 'movie reviews for Christians' — believes connects with their values. In 2025, winners included the movie Reagan, actor Candace Cameron Bure for A Christmas Less Traveled and Americans With No Address, a documentary about the country's homelessness crisis narrated by actor William Baldwin. Movieguide rates Hollywood films and gives them a 'family content' rating. In the company's annual 'Report to Hollywood,' they argue that films with strong Christian values perform better at the box office. Their formula relies on the often strong performance of children's films and doesn't include every mainstream hit; both Barbie and Oppenheimer had low 'family content' ratings, for example. 'We have a new generation that's having kids, and they want faith and values, their generation does not want sex and violence.' says Ted Baehr, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Movieguide. He cites this year's Academy Awards Best Picture winner Anora, about a New York sex worker, which made a little over $20 million at the domestic box office. 'In Hollywood [that] is pathetic,' he says. 'It's worthless. And all the Academy Award winners were pathetic.' (The film was generally considered an indie success; it was made on a $6 million budget.) While Hollywood has long been a bastion of liberalism, there wasn't always such a stark divide between mainstream Hollywood and religious fare. But in today's political climate, the gap is widening. According to April 2024 research from Pew, 59 percent of Protestants align with the Republican Party compared to 38 percent who align with Democrats, and among white Evangelical Protestants, 85 percent lean Republican while only 14 percent lean Democrat. Christians of all faiths are more likely to be Republicans, where Jews, Muslims and anyone unaffiliated with a particular religion are more likely to be a Democrat. The large partisan split among white Evangelical Protestants in particular has grown steadily and significantly since the start of the Reagan era. And that gap has been reflected in available entertainment options. In the Facebook group 'Great American Family (GAC) Fan Community', users post every day about how the network is one of the only ones that represents their interests, values and politics. In a recent post, a fan wrote, 'GAC SEEMS TO HAVE SOME GREAT PROGRAMMING COMING UP FOR GOOD FRIDAY INTO EASTER. THANK YOU! I SAW SOME DISTURBING STUFF ON A MOVIE WITH HALLMARK OVER THE WEEKEND. ONLY TUNED IT IN WHEN IT WAS ALMOST OVER AND IT WAS 10 MINUTES OF AGENDA!' Her post was flooded with supportive comments. 'Stopped watching Hallmark movies when they cowered to the masses allowing same sex couples. Don't miss it and LOVE Great American Family!!,' another member of the group replied. Abbott uses and cultivates that sense of cultural alienation to market his content. Along with A Christmas Spark — where after two days on set Lopez's character has moved from a big-city office setup to charming small-town USA — GAM's offerings include the upcoming Home Sweet Christmas Wedding starring Cameron Bure and a slate of released Easter-themed productions including Forty-Seven Days with Jesus. Watching GAM is not only an escape from Hollywood, but also a signifier of your own values or politics. While spending your money or time with a Great American Media product, you're voting for something. It's not about artistic innovation or form, it's about sending a message. 'I think that 'Christian' is used by the media to downplay or to stereotype,' Abbott told Moms for America. 'It's reverse racism or however you want to define it. You get stereotyped and put in this box. And that's what they want to do, they want to put faith in a box and make it go away. And we will never let that happen.' — Tessa Berenson Rogers contributed to this report.
Metro
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Star-studded Netflix series that you can 'binge in one night' soars up chart
A star-studded Netflix series that viewers have been binge-watching in just a few hours is on its way up the streaming service's charts. Co-written by Mean Girls and Saturday Night Live star Tina Fey, The Four Seasons dropped on Netflix on Thursday, May 1, and has immediately shot up the charts. The eight-part miniseries is also written by Never Have I Ever co-creator Lang Fisher and Saved By the Bell producer Tracey Wigfield. An adaptation of the 1981 film of the same name, The Four Seasons follows a group of six college friends who meet up at a lake house for a reunion holiday. Kate (played by Tina) leads the character billing alongside her on-screen husband Jack (Will Forte), while Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) play a couple whose future might be in trouble. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. The series also features couple Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani), and Ginny (Erika Henningsen), a younger woman Nick dates at a point during the series. Each episode has a run time of between 27 and 35 minutes, meaning that some Netflix viewers have been able to get through the entire thing in just a night. And those that have are coming away from the eight-part series with glowing reviews, urging other Netflix subscribers to jump on board. @BrookeOnAir came straight from watching the show to ask her followers: 'The Four Seasons on Netflix is kinda great. Why aren't we talking about this?!' To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video @SoliloquiyRaven concurred, saying that the series is 'highly recommended,' calling it ideal for 'light viewing' over a weekend. One person who was presumably more excited than most was @PinkDiscoBall77, who watched the entire thing in one go: 'My family and I just watched The Four Seasons in one sitting! I loved it so much!' All the positive feedback has contributed to The Four Seasons becoming the second most popular show in the UK over the last 24 hours. However, one viewer – @NeekoC18 – urged people not to watch it with their spouses, with the series giving an unglamorous look at the conflicts in a marriage. They cautioned on X: 'Yeah, don't watch this with your significant other – [this is] not a couple's TV show.' On Facebook, Tanya was surprised but pleased to learn the 1981 film had been remade: 'Wait they remade this? I randomly watched the unhinged original a couple years ago lol.' The original film, from 1981, was written by, directed by, and starred M*A*S*H legend Alan Alda, and earned $50m at the global box office (equivalent £130m in 2025). It became a cult classic with a growing fanbase over the years, even renewing interest in Antonio Vivaldi's 18th century composition series of the same name. More Trending That same year, it received four Golden Globe nominations and won a Bodil Award for best non-European film. To date, it has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 76% based on 17 reviews, both retrospective and contemporary, and a solid audience score of 75%. As for the Netflix series, critics have reacted mostly positively, with the series also boasting a 76% score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, fans have it a little further down their pecking order at 59%. View More » Watch The Four Seasons on Netflix now. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: David Beckham 'happier than ever' at 50 with two of his biggest achievements MORE: Netflix viewers rush to binge 'gripping' sci-fi series racing up chart MORE: Iconic Sega composer retires after 41 years, is immediately rehired
New York Times
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Eric Dane, McSteamy of ‘Grey's Anatomy,' Says He Has A.L.S.
Eric Dane, the actor known as the handsome plastic surgeon nicknamed McSteamy in 'Grey's Anatomy,' told People magazine that he has been diagnosed with A.L.S. Mr. Dane told the magazine that he was grateful for his family's support and was excited to return soon to the set of 'Euphoria.' His representatives did not immediately respond to emails and phone calls seeking additional information. A.L.S., also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurological disorder that degrades a patient's ability to control muscles, speak and eventually breathe without assistance. While A.L.S. patients often die within five years of being diagnosed, clinical trials for potential therapies have generated hope about extending a patient's life by several months. Mr. Dane began acting in the early 1990s with small parts in television shows, first in 'Saved By the Bell' and later in 'Married With Children.' Over the years, his charm and boyish good looks earned him recurring roles on 'Gideon's Crossing,' where he played a doctor, and on 'Charmed.' Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane played two handsome doctors in 'Grey's Anatomy,' one of the most popular television franchises of all time. Credit... Eric McCandless/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty Images His breakout moment came in 2006 in another medical role, this time as a leading man in 'Grey's Anatomy,' which was renewed for a 22nd season this year, making it one of the most successful televisions shows of all time. Donning a white lab coat and sporting a well-kept beared and perfectly messy hair, Mr. Dane portrayed Dr. Mark Sloan, the head of plastic surgery at the Seattle hospital where the show was based. The hospital was later renamed after his character, who died on the show. Mr. Dane's most prominent role recently has been on the television show 'Euphoria,' where he portrays the father of Nate Jacobs, played by Jacob Elordi. Although he usually plays a handsome supporting character, he has played a range of roles that deviated from that, including as a hired killer in the movie 'Bad Boys: Ride or Die.' 'Television is the land of pretty people,' Lynn Hirschberg wrote for The New York Times in 2009. The article went on to quote George Clooney, another handsome man, as he waxed poetic about Mr. Dane. 'He's good-looking, and he has a sense of humor. That's rare,' Mr. Clooney said.
Boston Globe
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Eric Dane, McSteamy of ‘Grey's Anatomy,' says he has ALS
While ALS patients often die within five years of being diagnosed, clinical trials for potential therapies have generated hope about extending a patient's life by several months. Dane began acting in the early 1990s with small parts in television shows, first in 'Saved By the Bell' and later in 'Married With Children.' Over the years, his charm and boyish good looks earned him recurring roles on 'Gideon's Crossing,' where he played a doctor, and on 'Charmed.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up His breakout moment came in 2006 in another medical role, this time as a leading man in 'Grey's Anatomy,' which was renewed for a 22nd season this year, making it one of the most successful televisions shows of all time. Advertisement Donning a white lab coat and sporting a well-kept beared and perfectly messy hair, Dane portrayed Dr. Mark Sloan, the head of plastic surgery at the Seattle hospital where the show was based. The hospital was later renamed after his character, who died on the show. Dane's most prominent role recently has been on the television show 'Euphoria,' where he portrays the father of Nate Jacobs, played by Jacob Elordi. Although he usually plays a handsome supporting character, he has played a range of roles that deviated from that, including as a hired killer in the movie 'Bad Boys: Ride or Die.' Advertisement 'Television is the land of pretty people,' Lynn Hirschberg wrote for The New York Times in 2009. The article went on to quote George Clooney, another handsome man, as he waxed poetic about Dane. 'He's good-looking, and he has a sense of humor. That's rare,' Clooney said. This article originally appeared in
