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Hansika Bhagani's Daily Top 5 Picks: Thursday

1. Tickets are quickly being snapped up for Sydney Theatre's production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Directed by Simon Phillips, the wit and playfulness of Tom Stoppard's writing will be front and centre with comedian/musician Tim Minchin and the irrepressible Toby Schmitz. This season runs from August 6 to September 14.

2. Former Four Corners reporter Chris Masters' new series The Years That Made Us premieres this Sunday 23rd June at 9.25pm on ABC1. The three-part historical documentary series looks at Australia's formative years in the 1920s and 1930s.

3. Vogue and GQ's Online Shopping Night did damage to credit cards yesterday as consumers snapped up hot bargains from online retailers. Readers shared their buys via hostage #VOSN including hot ticket items from Yeojin Bae and Gail Elliot.

4. 'A win for Australia' is how team captain Lucas Neill described the Socceroos World Cup Qualifier win against Iraq this morning on Today. It was also a win for SBS as it became the highest-watched program on SBS so far this year. Audiences are set to roll into SBS as they have the exclusive rights to broadcast the World Cup from Rio, Brazil next year.

5. Some of the best covers we've seen this year have come from Bauer Media's Real Living and NewsLifeMedia's delicious. The July delicious. cover we'd venture is the best food cover this year with a striking red background and tantalising chocolate chilli tart adorning it.

Lauren Barripp's Daily Top 5 Picks: Wednesday

1. British fashion house Burberry have partnered up with Google to create the ‘Burberry Kisses’ campaign, which uses clever touch recognition technology to seal cyber love letters with the users very own kiss. The consumer puckers up to their touch screen or webcam and an image of their lips is stored on the site. They can add a layer of virtual lipstick, with a personalized message, and then Burberry will send the letter to anyone, anywhere on the planet. The aim of the campaign is not to drive sales, but rather to provide a sensory experience, where technology has the potential to replicate emotion and experience. 

2. The SMH Good Café Guide Awards 2013 were held on Monday night. The winners? Best café went to Circa Specialty Coffee in Parramatta, Coffee Alchemy in Marrackville for best coffee, and Kepos Street Kitchen in Redfern for best café food, amongst many other winners on the night. Jill Duplex gives us the hottest cafe trends for 2013: non-traditional milkshake flavours, suspended coffee (involves buying a cup of coffee which is ‘suspended’ until it is redeemed by someone less fortunate), shakshouka (spiced baked eggs) overtaking the traditional bacon and egg roll in a breakfast sense, and bearded baristas.

3. Ok I’m going to admit something embarrassing, really embarrassing. I am completely and utterly obsessed with a reality TV show. Now before you make any judgments about my choice of television viewing, let me tell you that its about a group of friends (socialites) in South West London, doesn’t sound too bad right? Ok, it’s Made in Chelsea. I don’t think you could find a bigger fan in Sydney. I’m such a fan that I even made my way to an event sponsored by Foxtel’s Lifestyle You over the weekend where we had the opportunity to meet two of the ‘stars’ of the show who are currently in Australia. Needless to say I was totally star struck, and managed to get my photo taken with the British pair. Apart from the fact I have shared this obsession with the World Wide Web, I will be keeping it as my own little secret from now on.

4. Over the years, beauty pageants have produced some fantastic one-liners, and today we can add another to the very top of that entertaining list. Although Miss Connecticut took first prize in this year’s Miss USA competition, it was third placed Miss Utah, whose answer to a question regarding the gender pay gap had millions perplexed. “I think we can relate this back to education, and how we are continuing to try to strive … to …," she began, before pausing. " .... figure out how to create jobs right now. That is the biggest problem and I think, especially the men are … um … seen as the leaders of this, and so we need to try to figure out how to create education better so that we can solve this problem. Thank you.” Sorry, what?

5. The Voice grand final brought in the ratings on Monday night, with an audience of 2.3 million viewers for the announcement of Harrison Craig as the winner of The Voice Australia 2013. Ratings were down from last years grand finale which had approximately 3.3 million viewers, however, this was partially due to the novelty factor of the show’s first season, as well as Harrison Craig’s status as the favourite going into Monday’s announcement.

Neil McMahon's Daily Top 5 Picks: Monday

1. Here we go. One of the television events of the year is on tonight - but while the ratings will no doubt be huge for the finale of The Voice, the show has its issues. One thing is clear: after enjoying a warm media embrace in its first year, it's been a tougher ride in 2013. And never more so than over the past week, with the somewhat absurd Joel Madden weed controversy prompting a media backlash against the show's judges. Personally I found this modern exhibition of the old cultural cringe excruciating - the greater curiosity being not the joint joust, but how the nation's hacks managed to type so many cranky Twitter missives to Madden and Seal while weighed down by chips on both shoulders. More credibly, Sydney's Daily Telegraph posited a more serious question this morning: in global terms, why does The Voice franchise have such a poor track record of picking winners? The Tele intro: "It's a program built on backstories, but The Voice itself is suffering from its own problematic backstory, with the show yet to spawn a major star in the world despite being one of the biggest new TV brands." After tonight, we will see whether this applies to the Australian version this year.

2. The Sunday People in London scored one of the biggest tabloid shocks of the year with its astonishing weekend pictures of TV food queen Nigella Lawson being physically assaulted in public by her husband, advertising maestro Charles Saatchi. This is one of Britain's - indeed, the world's - great media power couples, but the shocking pictures suggest a union defined by the grotesque rather than the glamourous. Invasion of privacy or necessary press intrusion? You be the judge.

3. In it's decade on top of the ratings tree, Seven's Sunrise hasn't given station bosses much to worry about - but if you were looking for reasons to frown, the failure of Kochie and Mel to conquer Melbourne audiences as completely as they had the rest of the nation had been among the obvious worries. But in one of the year's most notable, yet low-key, strategy shifts, Seven has set about targeting the Melbourne ratings dominance of Nine's Today. What was initially planned as a one-off Friday broadcast from Docklands in early May has now become a semi-regular event for the show - on the back of ratings numbers showing a significant response from Melbourne viewers when the show is done locally and loses its trademark Sydney-centric, Martin Place focus. Expect this to remain a regular thing. There have now been four Friday broadcasts from Docklands and Seven is stoked, citing an average of 113,000 viewers in Melbourne for those episodes. That compares to a typical Melbourne audience this year of 90,000 viewers – meaning relocation delivers a 25.5% increase on the yearly average.

4. Never a dull moment in newspaper land these days. What is going on at News Limited? Last week saw the sudden departures of a bunch of heavy hitters - including the Herald Sun's Phil Gardner, which came a day after the company announced editor Michael Crutcher and editorial director David Fagan were on the way out at News' HQ in Queensland. Who's next?

5. Fresh from its unwanted recent publicity splash courtesy of Eddie McGuire, King Kong - the musical - is today enjoying a burst of attention rather more welcome. After its world premiere on Saturday, the critics are raving. The Age declares: "It's a show that will leave a colossal footprint. You can taste the future in this unique and visionary theatrical event, and it's mind-blowing." The Herald Sun: "When King Kong first emerges from the dim mists of Skull Island, roaring and beating his chest, he has the audience gaping in awe. The six-metre Kong is the runaway star of this new musical and the most fully developed character on stage because of his expressive, almost human face, imposing physicality, majesty and grace." Looks like a sure-fire smash.

Lauren Barripp's Daily Top 5 Picks: Wednesday

1. The 67th annual TONY Awards were held last Sunday in New York’s historical Radio City Music Hall. Hosted this year by Neil Patrick Harris, the awards honour the achievements of Broadway theatre. The big winners of the night included the British musical version of the Roald Dahl children's classic Matilda, which received four awards, and Kinky Boots, the musical adaptation of the 2005 British comedy film, which picked up six trophies.

2. There was controversy on the set of Britain’s Got Talent this week, as viola player Natalie Holt pelted eggs at judge Simon Cowell during the finale of the series. It is believed that Natalie did so in order to take a stand against Cowell’s dreadful influence on the music industry. Cowell later tweeted “I really don’t like eggs”.

3. The MasterChef clan have checked into South Australia’s gorgeous Barossa Valley for the week. But this will be no time for relaxation, the Barossa boot camp has begun and it will be the final few days for 2 of the 21 remaining contestants. Famous foodies Maggie Beer and William Wood feature in this weeks MasterClass.

4. Aussie comedian Rebel Wilson can now add covergirl to her growing list of achievements. The 27 year old has been featured on the cover of UK’s Glamour magazine, posing in a bubble bath dripping in gorgeous jewellery. She later tweeted “Thank you Glamour UK for making me a covergirl . . . My first ever magazine cover.”

5. Actor Vince Vaughn has defended his new movie, The Internship, after it received backlash over claims it is just a 2-hour ad for Google. The Wedding Crashers actor has defended this statement claiming the comedy is deeply rooted in social realism and Google did not give them any money for the brand to be featured in the movie.

Brian Watson's Daily Top 5 Picks: Friday

1. The shockwave that ran through viewers of this week’s episode of Game Of Thrones seemed to me something like the feeling generated by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) when the star was unexpectedly killed off early in the action. The surprise was more shocking than the violence – GoT’s special effects weren’t particularly convincing. Suddenly the show no longer seemed to be about what I though it was about. If you managed to avoid the abundant spoilers that were all over the social media, congratulations. I hope you were as thrilled by the episode as I was, and are looking forward to watching Monday’s season finale for clues about what direction the show will take in season 4.

2. Wrote A Song For Everyone is this week’s new tribute album, this time to John Fogerty. He’s enlisted a lot of big name rock and country stars (Foo Fighters, Keith Urban, Alan Jackson, etc) to join him in remakes of the songs he made famous with Creedence Clearwater Revival. Many of these are over-familiar and the lyrics don’t stand close inspection but he wrote great hooks and here it’s all about the performances. My favourite is “Hot Rod Heart” where he trades licks with guitar virtuoso Brad Paisley.

3. Gatsby was everywhere in the multiplexes last weekend so, looking for something a bit different, I checked out Colin Farrell’s latest role in Dead Man Down. He costars with Noomi Rapace, the original Dragon Tattoo girl, playing neighbours who join forces to pursue their own separate revenge scenarios. It’s a decent enough thriller with an improbably happy ending (should I have warned you of this spoiler?) but the highlight was seeing French superstar Isabelle Huppert, much more interesting than bland Rapace, playing her mother.

4. It’s not a highlight of anyone’s media week when news breaks of the death of a major Hollywood star, especially when it’s one as beloved as Esther Williams was back in the 40s and 50s. On the plus side, it produces a slew of media tributes to remind us of her appeal. You’ve never heard of her? Check this one out here.

5. It seems I can’t leave The Rock out of this column. Last weekend Dwayne Johnson’s latest movie Fast & Furious 6 was #1 again in the US, marking the 15th consecutive week he’s had a movie in the top 10 over there. Of the four movies he’s had released (total domestic grosses are well over US$900m), we’ve seen GI Joe: Retaliation and Snitch, Pain & Gain is coming here in August, and Fast & Furious 6 has just opened, so expect an update next week.

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Thursday
Mar222012

Former Foxtel boss Kim Williams is ASTRA Pioneer

DateMarch 22, 2012

The Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association (ASTRA) presents the third annual ASTRA Pioneer Award to former Foxtel CEO Kim Williams today for his contribution to the industry. The award will be presented by the Hon Steve Bracks, Chairman of ASTRA at the 2012 Conference being held in Sydney.

Now CEO of News Limited, Williams is being recognised for his role in driving Foxtel into the digital age, introducing a slate of new products and services across his 10 year tenure as CEO. He was instrumental in the launch of Foxtel Digital in 2004, which allowed for greater interactivity for viewers and saw half a million Australian homes sign up within eight months of the launch. Williams’ commitment to new and ground-breaking programming, ongoing investment in Australian content, countless community initiatives and the development of talented and committed employees has ensured the success of Foxtel as an industry leader and innovator.
“I am delighted to receive the reward. It recognises that we have built a company and sector that is bigger, better and stronger than we found it.  We’ve created thousands of jobs for great Australian talent, and awarded both our viewers and our shareholders,” said Williams.
“The ASTRA Pioneer Award acknowledges the outstanding achievements and contribution made by individuals in the subscription television industry. The legacy of this year’s recipient will live on through the vast array of content and services that are enjoyed by countless Australian consumers, making him a true pioneer in the industry,” said Steve Bracks, Chairman of ASTRA.
Along with the launch of Foxtel Digital, Williams was involved in the introduction of cutting-edge products and services including Foxtel iQ, Telstra Mobile Foxtel, Foxtel HD and Foxtel iQ2 and other innovations such as the ability to order Foxtel box office movies via the phone and online, Foxtel Next Generation, the Foxtel iPhone app, Foxtel on XBOX360, Foxtel on Demand and Foxtel on the Telstra T-Box.
Source: ASTRA

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