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Rendered at 15:02:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The channels refer to specific radio frequency allocations. Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency", and anything above that is "Ultra High Frequency". The Channel number was basically arbitrary, but went up in frequency in numerical order, so Channel 5 had a higher frequency than Channel 17.
The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and in general the smaller the area of coverage. Fewer viewers. The big networks dominated VHF, megawatt transmitters that could reach the entire metro area and beyond. In the Atlanta area, we had all three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC on Channels 2, 5, and 11.
UHF was the domain of independent operators, who filled airtime with anything they could get. Mostly old TV shows and movies from syndicate distributors. Channel 17 was mostly old movies, while Channel 36 featured old TV shows. "Superman" and "The Lone Ranger". "Star Trek". Later in the evening, 1950s schlock horror or flying saucer films...
With an uneven format and transmission range that limited viewership and advertising revenue, it could be more challenging for the UHF stations to make ends meet. When Channel 17 ran into financial difficulties, Ted Turner pumped it up. UHF stations typically signed off at night, went off the air, but the Turner Superstation was 24 hours a day.
Apparently, Ted Turner was playing a long game.
(Also apparently, I watched a lot of television as a 1970s latchkey kid.)
VHF covers up to and including channel 13
It's actually something people across the country may feel familiar with because "Channel 13" is New York City's PBS channel (WNET) and they export programming like Sesame Street out to PBS affiliates everywhere (not as much as WGBH in Boston, but a lot)
Going from memory, and didn't verify.
We also had PBS at Channel 18, I believe.
(I tried to read what I wrote for errors, as autocorrect can smash any attempt at careful writing. But I didn't catch this.
Was invisible to me because I was reading the meaning of what I was attempting to say.
I think I just learned about semantic typos. Meme-os?)
I am now administering the secret '70s latchkey quiz:
- Ricky, I want to be...
- This is Jim Rockford...
- Ladies, please don't...
- Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and...
- Missed it by...
- We can rebuild...2. Rockford Files (with James Garner)
3. ?
4. ?
5. Get Smart (created my Mel Brooks)
6. the Six Million Dollar Man (with Lee Majors)
I watched a lot more movies than TV shows as a kid. I miss the time when my idea of a real-life villain was Turner for colorizing B&W movies. God speed. RIP
1. ...in the show! -- I Love Lucy
2. ...at the tone leave your name and number and I'll get back to you. -- Rockford Files opening.
3. ...squeeze the Charmin! -- Charmin toilet paper commercials
4. ...and Irving. -- The Mosquitos on Gilligan's Island
5. ...that much! -- Get Smart
6. ...him. We can make him faster... -- the Six Million Dollar ManI don't know much else about the man, but as a supporter of Bison I can commend that part of his legacy. An impressive vision and execution.
He's responsible for rejuvenating Atlanta. It grew into a reasonable city after he built the TBS, CNN, and Turner Broadcasting empire. Without him, Atlanta may have been closer to a Charlotte in size, and definitely could not have pulled the Olympic games.
He gave Atlanta a media presence and those that came after him turned it into a media production hub.
He also created Captain Planet, which raised millennials on environmental causes.
We wouldn't have had Cartoon Network, Toonami, or Adult Swim without his William Street studios.
He briefly owned the Atlanta Braves and was their owner during their 90's World Series win. He funded their stadium, which doubled as the Olympic Stadium during the games (and which is now a part of Georgia State University).
He may have created the Georgia Guidestones (sadly they were bombed) and reportedly recorded a secret message not to be played until WWIII / nuclear annihilation.
He did a lot of good.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2015/jan/06/cnn-end-...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/06/cnn-apocalypse...
Go on.
I'm not sure I've run into a 'supporter' of a particular type of bovine before.
Why?
Bison are surely pretty comparable on a lbs mass to methane released ratio when fed with the same diets that cattle are.
The bison aren't roaming free on the land. It would be nice if they were, and there are efforts to restore wild bison herds, but these are commercial herds. Far better than cows and CAFOs.
Or like owning a mountain or a centuries-old tree. Does that even mean anything?
See also: Is it possible to own a cat?
Do I own this T-shirt if it can burn? Do I own this stick or am I just carrying it for a while? Is this my banana, or does everything belong to the universe?
Do you and they not have any vague understanding of how ranching works? Indeed, there seems to be misunderstandings here.
The philosophical question is interesting, but eating them once in a while is not what ranching is, and ignorance of where your food comes from isn’t cool.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/politics/trump-buffalo...
If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?
If he had not created a profitable enterprise, there would not be 45k wild bison roaming free with the same amount of dollars.
It's not like I want bison to die, but if an American is going to eat a bovid, it's much better for it to be a bison. The American great plains are big enough to support vast wild herds and sustainable, profitable enterprises, but in order for that to happen, Americans need to eat bison, not cows.
Nobody was arguing about what is best for humans.
If the choice of existence for all pigs (randomly selected as an animal commonly used for food) was to live in factory farming conditions or for pigs to go entirely extinct, I'd rather they go extinct. Not for the benefit of humanity, but because never existing is a better outcome for those would-be pigs than living lives full of nothing but suffering.
I wasn't specifically talking about the bison here which is why I randomly selected some other animal to talk about and made the choice more binary than it is in the real world.
I was just making a point that what is best for humans is hardly the only criteria to use to make these sorts of decisions for some people (myself included).
Meat is super efficient for protein - thats why every successful Civilization does it
Because they wouldn't exist otherwise.
Side note, for those of you that enjoy biographies, his autobiography “Call Me Ted” is a real page-turner (pun intended).
A highly inspirational story of entrepreneurship, which includes a raw and authentic account of his flaws.
A true legend.
Rest in peace Ted.
Wonder what's going to be done with it now that he's dead.
https://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/winter00/murk...
We would not be in the pickle we are if she didn’t mindlessly scare and misinform people undermining a whole industry based on her misunderstanding.
Made me spit out my coffee. Hanoi Jane Fonda isn't very cool, and does not have a great head on her shoulders.
The idea that she passed POW secrets to their captors has been debunked to my satisfaction. But the other stuff she did, calling our POWs liars and touring to support the army we were fighting, is beyond the pale.
Like, you can say we shouldn't be attacking Iran and I won't argue against you. But if you actually went to Iran in support of their soldiers and armies over ours, except maybe as a journalist who documents bad stuff you discover us doing, then I'm going to invite you to stay there.
Let's imagine an alternate universe where Russia didn't invade Ukraine. There were rumors that they were considering it, though, and Europe was not feeling particularly secure, afraid that Russia would not stop with Ukraine. This Ukraine is, like in our universe, nominally an ally of the West, though not the closest of terms. Poland, a US ally and NATO member, afraid that Russia would invade Ukraine and use it as a forward base to attack Poland, decides to preemptively invade Ukraine in order to establish its own forward base, a buffer zone.
I think many people in the US, myself (half Polish from my mom's side) included, would think this was a horrible thing for Poland to do. A bunch of us decide we're going to support Ukraine, protest on their behalf, and donate to their cause. Would you object to that? If not, then that's hypocritical. If so, that's... not a great look for you either.
I'm a vet. My default setting is to support American troops unless they're shown to be acting wrongly.
> even if the actions the US military are taking is wrong,
That's a bizarre little strawman. No. I can support the soldiers, sailors, and airmen while believing their leadership is wrong. By civilian analogy, I support the employees of HHS even if I think their boss is an idiot.
> the support and reputation of "American forces" should still be protected at all costs, and the people they're doing wrong things to don't get to have any support.
Your words, not mine. I don't feel that way. American leadership orders all kinds of jackassery. The people doing their jobs, presuming they're not committing war crimes (sorry if that was going to be your next gotcha), have my support. I've not heard any accusations that the POWs Fonda "visited", as though Hanoi Hilton was a zoo and they were wildlife on display, were legitimately war criminals. If they were, I would not support them. I for damn sure would not have supported the North Vietnamese government against our own solders, though. If our guys were in the wrong, it would be perfectly possible to prosecute both sets of people.
> Let's imagine an alternate universe
Let me stop you right there. We don't have to invent increasingly contrived scenarios to debate the core case: is it OK to provide aid and comfort to the enemy? It's not. It doesn't mean you have to automatically say your own military is flawless, either. But in the common case, I'm vastly more likely to support the general actions of the US military over those of the People's Army of Vietnam. I don't think that's an especially hot take.
You just described Hitler. Hanoi Jane Fonda is repugnant in her support of the Viet Cong.
What she did was not that.
What Hanoi Jane Fonda did was that.
⸻
1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.
Actors: Gary Burghoff Alan Alda Wayne Rogers Jamie Farr Loretta Switt Harry Morgan Mike Farrell David Ogden Stiers McLean Stevenson Lary Linville Cast of Gilligan’s Island Crocodile Dundee
Musicians: Pete Best Stuart Sutcliffe Frankie Avalon Annette Funicello
Politics: Henry Kissinger Geraldine Ferraro Jane Byrne Michael Bilandic Eugene Sawyer Eddie Vrdolyak
> (…) audacious vision to deliver news from around the world in real time, at all hours (…)
And thus marked the beginning of the end. 24-hour news, like social media, are a net negative for society. Networks have to keep making shit up to pad the never-ending run time, and they’re always bad news, making the world seem worse than it is and radicalising more people. It’s a version of doomscrolling where you don’t even have to scroll. It’s social media where only one a few people can post and their only goal is engagement.
Seems like he did good things in his life, and even here I don’t think he could’ve predicted (or even intended) the negative effects of this invention, but it doesn’t mean it should be celebrated (though this is on CNN’s website, so of course they will). I wonder if, like Nobel, he eventually realised the thing he created did more harm than good.
Of course there's enough news; they simply choose not to report on it. This is true both domestically and certainly around the world. Presumably this is a mixture of highly dubious editorial decision and some reasoning that this doesn't make money.
They had a web subscription product around 2006 that gave you access to just watch all these raw feeds from CNN Affiliates all over the world. It was like Periscope but all "professional" feeds.
My memory is hazy, and I accepted it as-is at the time, but the idea that American news could be watched live shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union seems entirely wild.
- CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux was married to Karine Jean-Pierre (Biden's press sec, 2022-5)
- CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour is married to James Rubin, (was Clinton admin asst. secretary of state for public affairs, 1997-2000)
- Jen Psaki's 2017 revolving-door when she was said to be actively shopping herself for a job at CNN while still Obama's WH communications director (no 12-month "cooling-off" period). Left WH 1/2017, joined CNN 2/2017.
- for decades now, CNN seems to function like a retirement home for Clinton-era operatives like James Carville and Donna Brazile. In particular this was a blatant conflict-of-interest in the 2016 primary (Hilary vs Bernie, and the DNC shenanigans). I've seen many bloggers say that TV loves these commentators not because they're that relevant or insightful, but because they steer candidates and their budgets towards big wasteful traditional media spends (and not more targeted internet campaigns, like Obama 2008 or Trump 2016).
- the legendary 2004 takedown of CNN's Crossfire debate show (a younger Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala) by Jon Stewart ("You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls! What is wrong with you?")
I don't find talking heads persuasive, and one simple antidote is to flick between coverage of the same issue on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, PBS, ABC/NBC/CBS, BBC, DW, RT, foreign channels, etc. to see conflicting narratives, or sometimes conflicting facts.
Maybe the better converse question is: when did CNN stop being any more credible and up-to-the-minute than other news sources (incl. internet ones, or SM)? Maybe late 1990s. Its rise and fall parallel the Clinton admin.
Orthogonal to whether people find print vs video trustworthy or authoritative, which I think is conditioned by what each person grew up considering to be trustworthy or authoritative.
Once you get a taste of "bad" it dominates.
I have no clue how you could ever even estimate this sort of ratio. How do you even quantify the "number of things going on", let alone confidently split them into good and bad?
Mentally you tend to equally weigh both good and bad news over a long time span, but negative news gets a much quicker and stronger initial reaction, thus it gets priority. Just an evolutionary trait, don't wait to see if the shadow is a tiger just assume it is about to attack.
This is why social media ends up the way it is, that quick reaction is what the algorithms pick up on even if long term it isn't any different. It is a hard issue to overcome especially when it is a free market race to the bottom.
I think it's strongly related to the market for "reaction videos" on youtube, or even the early-2000's VH1 shows where a famous/popular person would react to music videos. Perhaps people want to project their emotions onto an avatar?
I used to live in Newport, RI. I love sailing and introducing people to the world of sailing. When I had guests I asked them to watch this NBC video about Ted's 77 campaign [1]. It really captures the history of Newport, sailing, and Ted
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr7-BwzceYI&list=PLXEMPXZ3PY...
Does The Giving Pledge still exist? Will this happen?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/business/the-billionaire-...
It stopped giving the wealthy so much positive PR so a lot of them have simply stopped talking about it. Whether or not they still go through with it, who knows. I somewhat doubt they will.
The other problem people are quickly becoming aware of is that charities are ineffective ways to solve social problems. And, particularly for very wealthy and well connected people, the charities seem to be much more of a tax dodge with a glossy pamphlet rather than anything real.
The majority of people who have died since making the pledge did not meet the terms they agreed to and the vast majority of people still alive who made the pledge are on track to fail to meet the terms as their wealth is growing significantly faster than their charitable donations.
This is not to say everyone who has made the Giving Pledge is bad, there are some people on the list who have legitimately done a lot of good, but being on the list has overall been a meaningless indicator of actual outcomes.
there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".
that doesn't quite capture it... but in this context: the people receiving the money/help do not care if they got it because of "reputation washing" or "real public good". they get the help in both scenarios, and that's what matters.
as long as the money is going to actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes... who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
We can argue all day about motives, but what really matters is action.
I do. I will accept the donation either way, but in terms of so much else, I fucking do.
if you want to be mad about other things, like how wasteful super yachts are or whatever, by all means go for it. but that is outside the scope of my comment.
The idea that you have to do good deeds without expecting any kind of reward or recognition seems distinctly Christian to me. For Christians, the intent of this requirement is to ensure people remain humble (pride is a sin, of course) but this clearly contradicts the (imo much more relevant) principle of self interest. You can't really expect people to do something for other people without some kind of reward -- be it the promise of eternal salvation, some kind of social credit, or simply an internal sense of satisfaction.
As long as people aren't merely simulating charity to receive it, I don't see any downside to allowing people a bit of social reward for their giving.
The rest of your comments confirm what I said. I am really unclear how you think I have misinterpreted your comment.
But I'm happy to conclude this exchange with your feeling satisfied on that point. I don't imagine you're interested in an actual debate on substance, given that your only argument is essentially that I'm ignorant, and I don't know what I'm talking about.
Thank you for lending your expertise in this matter.
I would be happy to discuss the topic in more detail but your responses have so far consisted of telling me I don’t understand what you’re saying, but without clarifying your position further.
To be clear, what I see as distinctly Christian is the idea that charity must be purely altruistic -- it's not seen as Christian to desire recognition for your charity, or to perform charitable acts with the hope of being rewarded with eternal salvation. They must be done purely out of duty to God, and love for others (which are essentially identical requirements, since "God is love").
But if there's ignorance behind that thought, I'm open to being educated.
A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.
> who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
It matters when the scope of their giving doesn't match the PR-generating pledges they make, which is the real point of my post.
If someone gives their money away to a good cause, I don't care what their real motivation is, but if they say they are going to give >50% of their wealth to charity to generate PR and then they never do that (true for the majority of Giving Pledge pledgers) that is behavior I think it contemptable and worthy of being called out.
this is covered by the "actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes" caveat in my comment.
Yes.
He was everywhere in the late 70s and early 80s. WTCG -- The Super Station.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBS_(American_TV_channel)#Turn...
The winner was Daniel Quinn’s “Ismael”. Quite a remarkable book that probably never would have been published without this.
No one can say he didn't live a full life.
Turner Classic Movies is, in my opinion, the only TV channel actually worth paying for. Curation, curveballs, and great commentary by fans and experts -- that's what you won't find on streaming servies.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planete...
Oil price shock and a curiously delayed hostage situation displaced Carter in the 1980 election. And we've debt-financed trillions in oil commodity market manipulating wars since.
From "The surprising story behind the making of 'Captain Planet'" (2021) https://grist.org/culture/captain-planet-planeteers-real-sto... :
> “Our mission was to inspire and to educate the next generation of environmental activists,” Pyle said. She and producer Nicholas Boxer made it a point to slip as much planetary realness into the show’s fantastical plotlines. In fact, Pyle says many ideas were taken directly from the Global 2000 Report to the President, a 1980 paper commissioned by Jimmy Carter that warned of environmental disaster should policies fail to account for the world’s booming population growth.
The Global 2000 Report to the President (aka "The Doomsday Report") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_2000_Report_to_the_...
Looks like it was predictively close on population estimates, but the 100% increase in food price production wasn't accurate (though we do have soil depletion and foreign mineral depletion instead).
FAO Food Price Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Food_Price_Index
Unknown how much affect there was on the indicator due to calling attention to the indicator with such report.
/? oil disasters prior to 1980: https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+disasters+prior+to+1980
Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979 (2nd after Deepwater Horizon, which also resulted in dying dolphins and fish and birds on the beach) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill
Earth Day (April 22nd) was created in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#1969_Santa_Barbara_o...
Big oil lobbyists haven't paid their bills for foreign wars.
Over the estimated interval of 1980 through 2000, Gross National Debt to GDP ratio grew from 35% to 59%. GND-to-GDP is approximately 120% in 2026.
The Carter plan for renewables would've saved trillions of dollars and many lives compared to the 1980-1992 Reagan-Bush debt-financed oil wars.
FWIU the Limits to Growth report is more accurate than the Global 2000 report that - TIL - led to Captain Planet and the Planeteers for us kids back then.
https://theonion.com/ted-turner-sends-self-back-in-time-to-p...
He essentially created the modern “billionaire giving to global causes” movement by deciding to donate a billion dollars during a speech.
This was a pivotal time for news coverage. The only thing that is at the same level was the JFK assassination. Until then, newspapers were the main source of news. The JFK coverage is where TV took over with live coverage instead of reading yesterday's news. Throw in the live coverage of Oswald being shot, and it was pretty much a standing 8 count with the internet being the final TKO for newspapers. PBS did a special on this called "JFK: Breaking the News"[0]
Growing up, TV stations shut off around midnight. Quite the sea change.
If anyone wanted to hear interesting Ted Turner anecdotes, they're found throughout Keith Olbermann's podcast.
Here's to you, Mr. Turner. Captain Planet was blatant propaganda, but you were largely responsible for my nerdy interest in animation.
> In 1996, Turner admitted, "For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster. ... As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, it did well."
When's the last time you heard a billionaire say something like that?
> "We're the only first-world country that doesn't have universal healthcare and it's a disgrace."
> Iran's nuclear position: "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel — they've got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia."
> dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos"
> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror
> in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and "the rest of us will be cannibals".
There's more than wikipedia covers, but you get the idea.
That's a funny thing to mark as "progressive" as I don't think that'd have been considered progressive until fairly recently. Plus, he walked it back.
> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." He apologized for that and the remarks in 2011 about the 9/11 hijackers, but also defended himself: "Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word ... I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.
He was also uncomfortably concerned with population growth.
> Turner also said in the interview that he advocated Americans having no more than two children. In 2010, he stated that the People's Republic of China's one-child policy should be implemented.
I'm not sure I'd call him progressive. Thinking Iran should have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to make sense from any perspective unless you want them to use them.
Frankly, he seems like pretty standard anti-natalist environmentalist to me.
Maybe the point is that the logic applies to literally every country having them, including the US, but that doesn't imply that starting a war to try to stop one of them from getting them will end up with a better situation.
That was kind of my point. I doesn't belong on that axis at all, especially trying to transpose a comment from decades ago onto the current political dividing lines between "left" and "right" when so many ideologies have shifted sides over that period.
> Worrying about overpopulation means worrying about the quality of life of future generations, whereas "natalism" à la Musk is basically worrying about how they can keep making themselves richer, while not giving a damn about what happens to the world or humanity afterwards.
One can be natalist or anti-natalist for a variety of reasons. There's no one ideology that leads a person to each conclusion. People have come to (anti-)natalism from both humanist and anti-humanist arguments (and a variety of other arguments).
> So Turner's concern about population growth, if not necessarily progressive, strikes me as very fitting and in line with the humanist, philanthropic positions shown by the other points mentioned about him.
Again, avoiding the left/right/conservative/progressive labeling as those terms are dynamic over time. He's essentially a Malthusian for humanitarian and environmental reasons. Which makes sense, given his age. He'd have been in his mid 20's through the 60s and that was a fairly popular viewpoint at the time.
When I learned about this, the story was very applicable to me at the time, as my startup had acquired licenses for content that was historically sold directly to libraries by a salesman who would negotiate with each library individually. He used a standard contract. When we contacted the company to license content for display on the internet, they gave us a ridiculous contract with a small one time fee and access to display the content forever. Only after reasoning through their business model and history did we understand how this occurred, which was exactly the same type of gap that Ted Turner had exploited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_TBS_(American_TV_ch...
It was originally "Tech Broadcasting Service" and run by an MIT student group.
For the $50k purchase, the newly-named WMBR purchased a new transmitter.
https://wmbr.org/www/history
Also if you're in the Boston/Cambridge area, WMBR is a fun and weird listen and clearly sounds like college radio when compared to something like WERS.
Guess we’ll still have Ted’s Montana Grills for a while…
Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.
The notes they could read in the movie credits about it being a colorized version simply told them that all of the colors in that movie had been added later.
I was so convincing that one of them interrupted his teacher in class to let her know she was wrong about the rainbows and where color came from. I had made it clear that everything that we saw as colored had the colors that were assigned by international agreement after people had become tired enough of the BWG palette to sit down and make it all change.
In the end, the teacher told him he was wrong and he argued about it so I got a call one day that he had been in trouble at school and that the teacher was not thrilled to hear his explanation so I needed to clear things up for him since he was not inclined to believe her at all. I'm not sure that I ever got that completely cleared up because, to me, it was just too funny that I was the most trusted source.
Thanks TED. R.I.P.
That said, I agree with you!
We'll eventually do that for all of history. At least the history we have samples of or can plausibly recreate.
I'd imagine playing one of those might be like living your life right now. Punctuated by lots of mundane, lifelike moments. Like reading an "internet forum" full of other period appropriate "humans".
(maybe they do that now?)
Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.
https://www.bustle.com/articles/30501-i-tried-a-vintage-film...
At that point if you've already decided you want to colorize the film, there's a real question of how do you approach it, because being true to what was on set definitely isn't the right choice. So now you're playing with skin tones regardless.
It wasn't just skin tones. Wardrobe was picked for the resulting look on B&W film vs what it looked like in real life. Here's a pretty in depth article: https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-39-first-release/desi...
It would be interesting to know if, in say, 100-200 years, there is some alternative technology that could de-render todays CGI perfectly, and then replace it with some alternative, perhaps insert some form of practical effect in a convincing way? Would being able to do so be better to do just because it can be done?
Like, suppose that one of the more recent big budget movies, Transformers or whatever, could entirely have all of the CGI stripped out of them instantly, and then be replaced with some form of "less fake" effects in a different way. Would it be good to do so, if that were possible? For me personally, I'm very much in favor of rubber suits and fake blood over sticks with ping pong ball overlayed with graphics. [1] In spite of my preference though, I don't know if however many hundreds of people who had worked the digital modeling for all of those scenes would appreciate essentially deleting all of the thousands of hours they had put into the movie.
Bringing that back to B&W films, I think that if someone was really excellent at doing the set design for B&W films, it makes me wonder how they might react if someone insisted on "fixing" the film by colorizing it, and showing their set pieces in a way that they never intended for those pieces to be seen by the audience. Like, if they weren't outright upset with even the idea of doing it at all, perhaps they might insist on some sort of creative control on how each of those set pieces were colorized and portrayed in the final product. Obviously, that would then extend out to all of the other things too, like wardrobe, makeup, etc. I could see the complexity ballooning out to be as complicated and involved as making the movie was to begin with! For example, maybe the guy that scouted the original location for the film wouldn't have chose the spots he had chosen if he knew that people would be able to see it on giant TVs that they could pause every single frame of, and perform all kinds of upscaling and digital zooms in and out on.
[1] I am firmly in favor of practical effects over digital for everything, except small technical errors like a boom mic or a coffee cup in a shot, because I think that the constraints a movie set faces will demand either: incredible innovative solutions by the crew, or, those constraints force directors to scale their vision back to something more contained and manageable. It helps to show where the scope creep for a movie is, and where it's simply unnecessary. For example, Jaws has a great backstory regarding the constant issues of the mechanical shark, it really forced Spielberg to rethink how and when the shark would be shown, and when it would be better to let the viewers mind fill in the blanks.
I mean sure, some people do, the same as some people used to complain about overrepresentation of caucasians in some old movies set in what was then called “the orient”. I think the only ones who put up a fight are the Japanese who don’t like their productions ethnically misrepresented as much.
B&W highlights the stories better. With color you get more ambient context and sometimes that’s interesting.
This isn't exactly the same thing. Colorizing historical footage decides what the color is. A remake is an interpretation with nowhere near the same claim of accuracy and the audience 100% knows this. The social politics of this are incredibly important.
Or they are incredibly transient, fashion-led and led either by the least intelligent people available, or those who stand to gain from them.
Ps. Another memorable media portrayal of Turner, he was clearly the basis for the boss character in the 1994 cartoon The Critic.