Once again, the Qatari media company, Al Jazeera has announced it is in the advanced stages of launching a French-language news network. It has already confirmed a 5-hour news block to be aired on its English language network aimed at the UK. In the US, the Qatari media company has also bought Current TV, and […]
Television commercials can be pretty annoying. With the exception of the few that make you laugh. Quite often it’s the good commercials of which you forget what the company is actually trying to sell. However the annoying ones, that is a different story. Their tunes, actor and catch phrases crawl into your head, triggering a […]
In the past decade the international media first focused on China’s economic boom, which was then followed by the ‘Africa is rising’ narrative. The latter partly as a result of China’s investments. Many have wondered whether China’s interest in Africa would trigger a new wave of colonialism and exploitation of mineral resources, needed to keep […]
Botswana’s heavy metal scene has been covered before on photography blogs (mostly posts on the work of South African photographer Frank Marshall) and there’s a few music videos (like this one) floating around on Youtube. But there’s little actual video reports/profiles of the scene, until now. (I stand corrected, of course.) Now Dutch TV channel VPRO made this video report (for […]
Sean has blogged here before about the American sketch comedy duo Key and Peele. Around the same time I also came to learn about them after a friend had introduced me to the show. Before giving it to me, he said “it’s like Chappelle’s Show but for today.” These words rang in my ears for days. Dave […]
He performs to packed-out theatres and is a regular correspondent on a satirical television news show, Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola (LNN) on South African private TV channel, Etv. He’s at times raucously funny and almost always on point. He writes, he tweets and he tjunes white okes (for the non-South Africans: he gives […]
“Key & Peele” (the comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) are considered the next generation of top black comedians (that’s a link to The New York Times endorsement). Their sketch comedy show on the American channel Comedy Central is supposed to take over from where Dave Chappelle left things when he went on vacation to […]
Last week, on “The Tonight Show,” US President Barack Obama joked that his combative relationship with rightwing businessman Donald Trump (who claims Obama wasn’t born in the United States) goes back to their time playing football together in Kenya. In what is not a joke: A play on Trump’s brand of reality show is now heading […]
I’ve been puzzled and not a little disturbed by the lack of empathy on South African social media with the horrific events at Marikana, where 34 protesting miners were killed by police on August 16th. Yes, someone has posted a few links here, a few comments there, but given the magnitude of this event, and what […]
Last year, BET introduced a category into their annual awards show called “Best International Act: Africa.” I wasn’t that surprised. We’ve been heading down the road towards a mainstream acknowledgement of #InternationalBlack-ness for a while. I chalk it up to the purchasing power and cultural influence that African immigrants in America and England have been able […]
