Latest news with #television
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
MTV Divides Gen X Fans With Unexpected Announcement
MTV Divides Gen X Fans With Unexpected Announcement originally appeared on Parade. It's been a common refrain among Gen Xers (and elder Millennials) for years: "Remember when MTV used to play actual music?" Now it seems the iconic network is finally listening to the complaints of their earliest audiences — but not everybody is convinced. In a press release this week, it was announced that MTV will air a week of 24/7 music videos across MTV2, MTV Live and MTV Classic leading up to the 2025 Music Video Awards on Sunday, Sept. 7. According to the release, the selections will include "both classic and current" videos "in a revival of the brand's early DNA reimagined for today's audiences," curated by "past VMA winners and legendary MTV personalities." In the comments on an Instagram post sharing the news, some fans seemed thrilled to hear about the planned programming switch, while others remained skeptical. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kolten Lindsey (@ "MTV will make the greatest comeback if they went back to music videos," one person declared. "This should be ALL THE TIME," agreed a second commenter, adding, "The 90s were lit with music videos!!! That's how it should be! 'Music television' 🤦🏾♀️" "Or here's an idea…they could just do it permanently to get all that viewership back," somebody quipped, with another fan rejoicing, "Gen X is here for our first babysitter 😂" "But is it 80s and 90s? Because if it's current music, no gracias," declared a nostalgia-hungry music lover, as others offered their suggestions. "'Video Killed the Radio Star' should be the first again," one fan pointed out, referring to the first-ever music video played by MTV in 1981 (for a song by The Buggles). "Take On Me by A-ha ❤️," added another commenter, with still more people name-checking such classic MTV staples as "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, "Thriller" by Michael Jackson, "Touch of Grey" by the Grateful Dead and "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer, among others. Whether or not MTV's throwback experiment will be a hit with viewers remains to be seen, but hopes are high for this year's VMAs, which will see the return of producer and CEO of digital media company Gunpowder & Sky (linked to such iconic VMAs moments as Beyoncé's pregnancy reveal and the Madonna-Britney Spears-Christina Aguilera kiss). "We're not just producing a show. We're launching a celebration of music that spans one week, every screen and every generation," Gunpowder & Sky CEO Van Toffler said in the press release. The VMAs are scheduled to air live on Sunday, Sept. 7 at 8 p.m. ET on both CBS and MTV, and will be available to stream on Paramount+.MTV Divides Gen X Fans With Unexpected Announcement first appeared on Parade on Jun 27, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 27, 2025, where it first appeared.
The Independent
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
This Panasonic deal gets customers a £100 food delivery voucher for a limited time
Panasonic has remained one of the biggest players in the television manufacturing world for decades. The brand is known across the world for a high-quality, broad range of home appliances, cameras, and, of course, TVs. Here at IndyBest, we rate Panasonic's TVs so highly that the TV-55Z95A OLED model (was £2,999.99, now £1,599.99, was named our best buy in tech critic David Phelan 's round-up of the best tried and tested 4K TVs. David found that 'Panasonic's OLED TVs have picture quality so rich and detailed it can take your breath away,' and praised the model's smooth and realistic imagery: 'from faithful skin tones to detailed shadowy areas – and it's still good for vibrant colours and deep black levels.' If you've been toying with the idea of upgrading your current TV, now's the time. There's a deal that not only gets you a discount on a great TV, but also grabs you a whopping £100 voucher on a takeaway. Two Panasonic TVs have big discounts coupled with a £100 food delivery voucher for Uber Eats, Just Eat or Deliveroo. It's the perfect deal for a big night in with your favourite takeaway, all while watching your favourite film on a picture-perfect TV. On top of that, use the code 'Z6015' at checkout and save an additional 15 per cent off your purchase, in addition to the food delivery voucher, and already existing up to £500 off. We think that's a pretty impressive deal. This huge 65' TV sees a massive discount in this deal, with £500 deducted from the list price. This exceptional TV offers bright 4K clarity, and it's compatible with Dolby Vision and Atmos for the ultimate viewing experience. If the large TV is overkill, you can get a similar deal on the 55' TV. Best of all, this TV is even cheaper, coming in at under £1000. If you've got your heart set on a different model, fear not, as there are other ways to save. Those who have access to Student Beans, a Blue Light Card, health service discount, defence discount service, discount for carers, discount for teachers or charity worker discounts can also enjoy 15 per cent off select purchases across Panasonic.
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Carol Vorderman stumped by 'easy' showbiz question on new quiz show Celebrity Puzzling - but can YOU solve it?
Carol Vorderman was stumped by a showbiz question on Celebrity Puzzling - but can you solve it? Hosted by Jeremy Vine, the new Channel 5 quiz show sees stars take on mind-bending puzzles with Sally Lindsay and Carol as team captains. During Wednesday's instalment, Carol was teamed up with Ore Oduba and found herself stuck during the Cinema Cipher round. The segment had the stars figure out the title of the film from a code consisting of symbols. Carol and Ore were presented with animal pictures that could be deciphered into the title of a Jack Black film. Ore asked the TV star: 'Do you know any Jack Black movies?' 'No,' she replied. After deliberating for some time, they were given a clue that butterflies symbolised the letter O. Ore exclaimed: 'Oh, I was just listening to it this morning!' He then gave the correct answer, School Of Rock. It was revealed earlier this year that Celebrity Puzzling would be hitting screens. Puzzling first launched last year and was hosted by Lucy Worsley before being shelved. Since then, Jeremy has fronted the new series with Carol and Sally. Carol commented on her new TV role and revealed she 'loves' brainteasers. 'I'm so excited to be a team captain on Celebrity Puzzling,' she said. 'Finally, all those years of loving numbers, words and brainteasers are about to pay off! Well, I hope that they are.' The broadcaster added: 'Joining forces with my brilliant and really good mate Sally Lindsay, and with the ever-clever Jeremy Vine keeping us all in line, it's going to be a battle of brains… and I'm going to be fighting all the way, of course!' Host Jeremy said: 'It's amazing to do a quiz that's so simple and yet feels so fresh in every way. 'Celebrity Puzzling is one of those shows where, from the very first edition, everything fell into place with our amazing 5 team, with Carol and with Sally, and we just had the greatest fun in the studio. 'Not to mention burning through quite a few brain cells as we all tried to solve those beastly puzzles!' While Sally admitted she was apprehensive at first and shared: 'I was honestly a bit nervous about this challenge as I'm more your general knowledge type but even though it was really competitive at times I surprised myself on some rounds!
The Sun
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I won thousands on The Chase – the casting process took THREE years and producers coached us on how to act
A CONTESTANT on The Chase has revealed that it took him three whole years to complete the casting process for the quiz show. Steven Sneade, 69, from Liverpool, was one of the contestants on the programme but getting to the TV studios was a lengthy and complicated process. 4 4 He took part in the show in 2017 and faced-off against Chaser Paul Sinha back in 2017 and ended up walking away with £5,700. As The Chase reaches its 16th year on air this month, Steven spoke to OLBG about his time on the programme. In the interview, Steven said: 'It was three years from doing the online application to the show actually being broadcast. It was the very first programme I applied for. "I applied online and heard back about a telephone interview very quickly, it was only a couple of weeks. It was very speedy. "In the telephone interview they asked questions about my likes and dislikes, what I would do with my money, and various personal details. They asked if I watched the show. "Then I had to answer 20 general knowledge questions, but they couldn't tell you how many you got right. At the end of the call they invited me to the in person audition." Steven then went on to reveal how he had to face-off against 10 others in mock rounds of the show before undertaking a solo screen test. He continued: 'There were a lot of people at the in-person interview, so we were broken up into groups of 10. "We played a few little games to try and relax people, then we played a mock up of The Chase which went well. "We also had to do a minute piece to camera, just introducing ourselves and saying a few bits - we had to make ourselves stand out. And there was another general knowledge test, where we had to answer another 20 questions." The Chase fans left screaming as player gets 'ridiculously easy' question wrong - but would you know the answer- Steven went on to confirm that only two of the ten people in his group made it though to the next stage but it took a further TWO years for them to contact about moving forward with his application. Steven said: 'After about two years I got a call and the production person they were thinking about casting me, but they asked if I had been on any other shows. "I had been on Tipping Point, so they said they would be back in touch next year. "They don't want people being on those two programmes so close together - apparently they get a lot of backlash for having the same people on different shows.' After a further year had passed, Steven eventually managed to make it onto the show but admitted that show bosses gave the contestants tips on how to come across. He revealed they were shown examples of good and bad contestants on-screen with producers encouraging then to be lively and outlandish during filming. 4 4 Steven said: 'They showed you a video of someone who wasn't a very good contestant, and then they showed you one of someone who was very lively - and they said they would rather we were lively. "They gave us tips and tricks - like telling us they can edit bits out if we said something we shouldn't have." Steven's time on the show proved lucky as he was able to walk away with one third of the £17,000 prize he won with two of his teammates. He also received his winnings just a week after filming despite being warned that it could take up to three months. Steven confirmed: 'If you win you have to sign another contract as you're accepting money from them. "They told us not to give money to the contestants who didn't win money just because you feel sorry for them. They can't stop you, but I think they just don't want you to have that in mind. "They said [the money] could take three months, but I had it in a week.' Hardest Quiz Show Questions Would you know the answers to some of quizzing TV's hardest questions Who Wants To Be A Millionaire - Earlier this year, fans were left outraged after what they described as the "worst" question in the show's history. Host Jeremy Clarkson asked: 'From the 2000 awards ceremony onwards, the Best Actress Oscar has never been won by a woman whose surname begins with which one of these letters?' The multiple choice answers were between G, K, M and W. In the end, and with the £32,000 safe, player Glen had to make a guess and went for G. It turned out to be correct as Nicole Kidman, Frances McDormand and Kate Winslet are among the stars who have won the Best Actress gong since 2000. The 1% Club - Viewers of Lee Mack's popular ITV show were left dumbfounded by a question that also left the players perplexed. The query went as follows: "Edna's birthday is on the 6th of April and Jen's birthday falls on the 15th of October, therefore Amir's birthday must be the 'X' of January." It turns out the conundrum links the numbers with its position in the sentence, so 6th is the sixth word and 15th is the fifteenth word. Therefore, Amir's birthday is January 24th, corresponding to the 24th word in the sentence. The Chase - The ITV daytime favourite left fans scratching their heads when it threw up one of the most bizarre questions to ever grace the programme. One of the questions asked the player: "Someone with a nightshade intolerance should avoid eating what?" The options were - sweetcorn, potatoes, carrots - with Steve selecting sweetcorn but the correct answer was potatoes.
The Guardian
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Did The Simpsons really just kill off a major character?
The Simpsons is getting experimental in its old age. With 36 seasons complete and a renewal through a 40th secured, the show has entered territory previously occupied mostly by non-prime-time stalwarts like Saturday Night Live and Meet the Press – television institutions that run for much longer than the typical sitcom or drama. Perhaps conscious that the animated comedy has now lasted five to 10 times longer than a normal sitcom, the 36th season has repeatedly toyed with the idea of what a series finale might look like, even though no such thing is anywhere in sight. For the season's premiere back in the fall, it created a fake series finale, hosted by Conan O'Brien, that featured forever-10-year-old Bart turning 11 and reacting badly to a number of finale-style abrupt changes to the status quo. And in the last episode of season 36, Estranger Things, the show flashed forward to a future where family matriarch Marge has passed away and a gradual estrangement has developed between now-adult Bart and Lisa. (Homer remains alive, with the show repeatedly underlining how unlikely it seems that he would outlive his patient, cautious and seemingly healthy spouse.) As fans caught up with the season on streaming, the finale has created a mild headline-generating controversy over whether Marge is 'really' dead, most likely among less consistent viewers who might dip back in occasionally (or get their news about the show from the internet, rather than watching it). Of course, she's not; Estranger Things is one of many flash-forward episodes the show has done over the years, generally understood to be alternate versions of the future, not pieces of a vast and interconnected timeline. The show's flashbacks are similarly intentionally contradictory; early on, Marge and Homer were young parents in the 1980s; as the show got older and they stayed the same age, subsequent flashbacks were brought further and further into the timeline. None of this makes headline news, even on a slow entertainment day. But one reason 'Marge is dead' has seemingly caught fire as an internet curiosity may have to do with the unexpectedly mortality creeping in around the edge of the show. Anyone who has watched The Simpsons in recent years, especially if they've seen a new episode juxtaposed with an older one, would have to take note of how different the characters sound. Animation may be able to preserve a character's basic look and inure them from ageing (apart from the shifts in animation technique that present subtle changes in design or movement). Animation still can't defeat, however, what the show once called the ravages of time. The Simpsons has employed a core of voice actors for nearly four decades, and who among us sound precisely the same as we did 40 years ago, if we're so lucky to have that comparison point? Marge is the character where this is most noticeable – more so than characters whose voices have been replaced by new actors for reasons of racial sensitivity. (This just means that Black actors now play Black characters, and so on.) Those newer performers bring their own style to the character, however subtle the change. But Julie Kavner, the distinctive actor who has given one of the great long-term voiceover performances of TV history, turns 75 this year, while Marge is forever on the cusp of 40. Certain line readings will sound very close to the 'original' Marge voice. More often, though, we're getting a raspier, scratchier version that sounds more like Marge's occasionally seen mother (also voiced by Kavner in a more whispery register). Harry Shearer, who voices more than a dozen major supporting characters including Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders, also sounds deeper and older in recent years. That's all on top of the show's creative changes – some of which have been quite good. Under showrunner Matt Selman, the show has upped its game in recent years, actively pursuing more ambitious, format-challenging and emotionally resonant stories. Not all of them are golden-years-level funny. (Few episodes of anything are.) But the creators feel engaged with their institution, and sometimes they've even taken advantage of the modified vocals; in one recent holiday episode, Ned Flanders sounded genuinely grief-stricken in part due to Shearer's inability to hit the higher range of his usual tone. Even when the actors' changes do sound jarring, obviously it's not anyone's fault. People age – and IP, at least lately, seems to insist on defying that process, creating a difficult-to-resolve conflict. The show obviously isn't ever going to permanently kill off any of the family members, but at some point, they may be in the position of hiring someone new to voice Marge, or augmenting the performance with AI. The finale already introduced a new voice for Bart's best friend Milhouse, following the retirement of longtime voice artist Pamela Hayden. She reasonably concluded that continuing to play a 10-year-old boy well into her 70s wouldn't make much sense. Maybe that's why the most poignant element of Estranger Things isn't the death of Marge, which is handled lightly, avoiding the immediate devastation of grief with just a brief cursory shot of her funeral, and ending the episode with a short scene of her happily looking down upon her family from heaven, where she clinches with longtime crush Ringo Starr. Rather, the emotional core of the episode is the sequence in which Bart and Lisa abruptly grow out of their beloved Itchy and Scratchy cartoons after realizing the show is now also marketed toward babies, with cutesy versions of the characters adorning little sister Maggie's pyjamas. In true Simpsons fashion, this is also the funniest passage of the episode, with spot-on observations about marketing, kids' shifting tastes in popular culture and defensiveness about liking stuff that's for 'babies', complete with a spoof of a memorably emotional scene from Toy Story 2. Despite the show's jokes, the idea of the Bart/Lisa bond breaking over Itchy and Scratchy, and Marge's distress over it, is a potent one, maybe because it's precisely the kind of uncharacteristic change alluded to in the season premiere. The Simpsons has been lampshading its ability to reset its characters for decades at this point; that's the connective tissue between its heritage as a sitcom from another age, and as a cartoon across the ages. In Estranger Things, it's depicting a natural process less seismic but no less constant than death: letting go of once-beloved media and the real-world habits that accompany it. Plenty of fans will have the opportunity to let go of The Simpsons, whether by chance or by choice. The show itself, good as it sometimes is, can only play at that farewell process, experimenting with what-ifs typically subsumed into the status quo. I'm not personally eager for the show to end; my daughter still eagerly watches it, and that brought me back into the newer episodes. But there does seem to be a denial of impermanence, maybe even some frustration with that, under the show's surface. The real question isn't whether Marge Simpson will live on, but how long the show will keep contemplating endings it can't have.
