Vivendi Sale Paves Way For Comcast Takeover Of NBC

Prepare for a new player to enter the television and movie arena, as Vivendi and General Electric have finally reached a deal that will see the French company selling its share in NBC-Unversal, paving the way for a Comcast buyout. More »

The Little ARG That Failed

Between the giant banners advertising the D-9 alternate reality game (ARG) with anti-alien slogans, beyond the Dharma Initiative recruitment booth, there was a little stack of postcards at Comic-Con that read "You are being deceived — www.youarebeingdeceived.com." It was the calling card for an ARG that nobody saw. How do I know? Because io9 built the You Are Being Deceived ARG, complete with a phone number you can call and two mysterious linked URLs, as an experiment in marketing and mass deception. What happens when you try to deceive people but your lies are drowned out by better-funded lies? Allow me to recount our strange tale. More »

What Chicks Don't Like About Science Fiction

I love when clueless humans tell me to my face that women don't like science fiction. Usually they tell me this at a science fiction convention, after we have talked about scifi for an hour and I have said that I edit a science fiction blog. These humans have an amazing ability to not believe their eyes, which is the only way I can explain what's happening when somebody says to my face that women like me don't exist. And unfortunately, the SciFi Channel seems to have the same problem: There's an article in the New York Times today about how the channel boosted its ratings among women by de-emphasizing spaceships in Battlestar Galactica ads and airing supernatural horror movies. I cannot believe the stupidity here. More »