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SEC Network to Feature a Record 47 Hours of Original Studio Programming for 2023 SEC Kickoff Presented by Regions, Live from Nashville July 17-20

July 19, 2023 Audrey

Documentary debuts include Roy Kramer: A Vision for the SEC and Them Dawgs
SEC Nation primetime special airs Tuesday on SECN and ESPN2 with live guests
More than a dozen on-air personalities to provide commentary and perspective from Music City

SEC Network will boast 47 hours of original programming surrounding the 2023 SEC Kickoff Presented by Regions, the most in the network’s history. SEC This Morning, SEC Now and The Paul Finebaum Show will showcase complete coverage from the annual media days event, set in Nashville, Tenn., for the first time – the third city to host the event, and featuring a special edition of SEC Nation on Tuesday night.

An expansive roster of college football analysts will contribute to SEC Network’s presence in Nashville at the Grand Hyatt, including Jordan Rodgers, Greg McElroy, Roman Harper, Paul Finebaum, Takeo Spikes, Benjamin Watson, Chris Doering and more. Studio hosts for the four-day conference media day kickoff include Joe Tessitore, Dari Nowkhah, Peter Burns, Alyssa Lang, Marty Smith and Finebaum.

SEC This Morning
SEC This Morning, hosted by Burns and Doering, returns for its fifth SEC Kickoff. The duo delves into all things SEC, with all the headlines, highlights and hijinks from around the conference. The show will be simulcast on SEC Network (and Sirius XM channel 374) live from Music City, and will air at 8 a.m. ET until the start of each day’s podium action.

SEC Now
SEC Now: 2023 SEC Kickoff Presented by Regions will have full coverage from Nashville beginning Monday, July 17 at 11 a.m., with analysis and insight of the day’s proceedings. Coaches and players from all 14 SEC teams will stop by the set during their time at the media event. Tessitore, Nowkhah and Lang will rotate duties in the anchor chair, with nearly two dozen hours of SEC Now surrounding all 14 coaches’ podium trips.

The Paul Finebaum Show
The network’s coverage will also be anchored by The Paul Finebaum Show Presented by Regions each afternoon, with various coaches, players and media cycling through the SEC Network set. The show, which will have reaction to the latest news and buzz of the annual college football kickoff event, will also air on ESPN Radio.

SEC Nation
GRAMMY-nominated band Midland will headline a free concert on Tuesday, July 18. The event on Lower Broadway will activate at 6 p.m. and will be part of a special edition of SEC Nation Presented by Regions on ESPN2 and SEC Network at 7 p.m. The street concert will follow at approximately 8 p.m. Regions will host fan engagement opportunities on site throughout the evening, and SEC Network will have its own brand activation featuring a photo booth, free swag and more. Full details.

Planned in-person guests for the SEC Nation primetime show include comedian Nate Bargatze, SEC head coaches Josh Heupel (Tennessee) and Clark Lea (Vanderbilt), and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. Head coach Kirby Smart of two-time defending champion Georgia is also expected to join

Disney Pixar Exec Confirms Studio “Not Making Children’s Programming”

June 26, 2023 Audrey

Credit rating: Walt Disney Pics/Pixar Animation Studios

Disney Pixar has had a difficult operate in its latest string of movies.

Pixar, which is recognized for its beloved animated movies, was at first founded in 1979 as the Graphics Team, a division of Lucasfilm. In 1986, Steve Careers, the co-founder of Apple Inc., bought the studio and renamed it Pixar. The studio’s first element-duration movie, Toy Story, was released in 1995 and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. In 2006, The Walt Disney Company obtained Pixar, and it became known as Disney Pixar. Less than this collaboration, Pixar ongoing to create primary and beloved animated movies, even though Disney offered distribution and advertising assistance.

Pixar Place at Disney's Hollywood Studios — Credit history: Disney

From there, Pixar continued to create alone with quite a few extra preferred movies and franchises, like the Toy Tale franchise, Discovering Nemo (2003), Obtaining Dory (2016), The Incredibles (2004), The Incredibles 2 (2018), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Monsters University (2013), Cars collection, Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008), Up (2009), Within Out (2015), Coco (2017), and many other folks.

As of late, Pixar has fallen on rough periods. The studio just observed numerous big layoffs soon after the latest budgeting failures coming from The Walt Disney Business. Pixar saw a string of a few movies– Soul (2020), Luca (2021), and Turning Crimson (2022)– all introduced on the streaming system Disney+, rather than heading to theaters.

The animated studio premiered its 1st movie in theaters in around a few many years previous summer time when Lightyear premiered on June 17, 2022. The movie, which was intended to tell the tale of the “real-life” Excitement Lightyear voiced by Chris Evans instead of Tim Allen, had a huge budget and faced plenty of controversy. The outcome observed it definitely bomb, bringing in a pedestrian $226.4 million compared to a price range of above $200 million. For reference, Univeral’s Illumination Studios produced Minions: The Increase of Gru (2022) a issue of weeks later, and the motion picture skyrocketed to the best, bringing in $935 million on a budget of considerably less than $100 million. Lightyear Director Angus MacLane was permit go previously this calendar year adhering to the film’s failure.

Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) in 'Lightyear' — Credit rating: Disney/Pixar

Now, as Pixar releases its new movie Elemental, the film is projected to hit an all-time small for an opening weekend in the studio’s heritage. These new failures in animated information have propelled Disney to announce numerous sequels to proven IPs, like Pixar’s Toy Story, which will see its fifth installment.

Not too long ago, Imaginative Main Officer Pete Docter sat down for an interview with Assortment, the place he elaborated on his thoughts on the studio “not generating children’s programming.” Instead of on the lookout at it from child’s viewpoint, Docter revealed that the studio “makes stuff we want to see ourselves.”

“We’ve often looked at what we do as we’re the initial audience,” Docter explained in the interview. “We make stuff we want to see ourselves. There’s a Chuck Jones

Sony Leisure to Acquire Jade Raymond’s Haven Gaming Studio

March 23, 2022 Audrey

(Bloomberg) — Sony Group Corp. claimed it’s purchasing Montreal-dependent video game improvement studio Haven Leisure Studios Inc., led by industry veteran Jade Raymond. Conditions of the deal weren’t disclosed in a statement on Monday.

Most Go through from Bloomberg

Established a year back with an original financial commitment from Sony Interactive Leisure, Haven incorporates recreation creators with more than a decade of working experience operating on some of the industry’s most common games. Raymond, who earlier launched Ubisoft Leisure SA’s Toronto studio and led Google’s Stadia activity advancement endeavours, is one particular of the innovative forces guiding the Assassin’s Creed franchise. She begun her career in gaming with Sony back in 1998.

Sony shares have been up as substantially as 1.6% in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Haven Studios is already operating on its 1st venture for Sony’s PlayStation, a multiplayer sport that Sony described as a reside expertise “built upon a systemic and evolving entire world targeted on delivering flexibility, thrill, and playfulness.” Bringing the artistic team in-home extends Sony’s method of obtaining exceptional information for its system.

“With Haven, Sony is making nevertheless a further wager on are living-support game titles — one of PlayStation’s Achilles heels until just not too long ago,” explained Serkan Toto, an analyst in Tokyo. “With Raymond, Sony is also securing one particular of the, unfortunately, continue to comparatively rare feminine celebrity creators in the field.”

The video clip recreation sector has been going through a wave of consolidation this calendar year. In January, Sony acquired the developer Bungie Inc., the U.S. video game developer at the rear of the well known Destiny and Halo franchises, for $3.6 billion. Microsoft Corp. is scooping up Activision Blizzard Inc. for $69 billion in its greatest-ever acquisition, and Choose-Two Interactive Software package Inc. has agreed to obtain mobile match maker Zynga Inc. for $11 billion.

“Joining PlayStation Studios offers Haven with the artistic flexibility and unparalleled guidance to concentration on developing the greatest high-quality video games,” Raymond reported in the announcement. “We intend to absolutely embrace the remarkable abilities of the PS5 to make new worlds that encourage players and allow them to connect in new approaches.”

With a staff of far more than 60 personnel, Haven Studios will be the 18th studio to be a part of the PlayStation Studios household, in accordance to Sony. The studio operations will carry on to be operate by the management staff at Haven in close collaboration with PlayStation Studios’ leadership group.

(Updates with analyst comment and share rate reaction)

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Apple Mac Studio review: finally

March 21, 2022 Audrey

The Mac Studio is the computer everyone wanted the Mac Pro to be.

Apple’s 2019 desktop release was supposed to be the computer that professional Mac users had been waiting for. It was endlessly configurable with powerful Intel processors and AMD graphics chips, and its top-end configuration hovered around $52,000. After the abject failure of the trashcan 2013 Mac Pro, it was poised to be the first Apple machine that could legitimately provide the power that professionals in creative fields — historically, the folks who turn out in droves to buy these Apple machines — really need.

But while it was a gorgeous and powerful computer, it also had some issues. We bought a $16,599 model, and while that wasn’t the most specced-out option, it was one that creative professionals around The Verge and Vox Media felt could handle their heavy editing workloads. We gave that computer to all kinds of artists, producers, and designers. And they didn’t love it. They didn’t feel it was any faster than their years-old setups, and they ran into all the same issues they always did. In particular, not enough software was optimized for that Mac Pro’s approach to high-performance desktop computing, especially when it came to GPUs.

Since then, Apple has committed to making its own Apple Silicon chips, moving away from Intel and AMD. The first line of those chips, the M1 series, has been a smashing success in Mac laptops, the iMac, and the Mac Mini. And now it’s in the new Mac Studio, which comes in configurations with the M1 Max and new M1 Ultra chips. The Studio is Apple’s first professional computer running Apple Silicon, and with it comes a new way of designing chips that makes it easier for apps to access all the performance available.

I’ve, once again, given this device to a host of professionals on The Verge’s team, and the reactions I saw couldn’t be more different from those we saw in 2020. They were impressed. For their workloads, it’s faster than anything they’ve ever used. It’s changed what they can do.

So I’m relieved that I can finally, finally write this in a review: the Mac Studio is the computer professional Mac users have been waiting for.

The Mac Studio is a nice-looking, compact computer. Someone mentioned to me that it looks like two Apple TVs stacked on top of each other, and now I can’t unsee it. You might also see it as a taller Mac Mini — either way, it’s a design Apple fans have seen before.

Like the Mac Mini, the Studio is designed to sit on your desk — it has the exact same footprint, just about twice as tall. It’s not like the Mac Pro that lives on

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has led to extensive crunch at development studio TT Games

January 26, 2022 Audrey

In late 2017, development studio TT Games began work on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga at a time when dozens inside the company were at odds with management. Citing frustration over tight development schedules, the company’s crunch culture, and outdated development tools, more than 20 current and former TT Games employees tell Polygon that calls for change over the years had largely been ignored.

Multiple people who worked at the studio remember breaking down outside of work hours because of the workload and some of the stresses they were under.

“It was a very soft-spoken blackmail,” one former employee says. “‘If people don’t start doing overtime, there’s going to be problems,’” although the problems were never specified.

Some former staff even came up with a term to describe their experiences at the studio, referring to them as “PTTSD.”

With The Skywalker Saga — an adaptation of all nine main films in the Star Wars series — management promised employees a longer development timeline and a new engine. Unfortunately, this did little to improve the situation, according to employees. Multiple staffers say that management ignored warnings about switching to NTT, a new engine being developed internally, and say that the longer time frame was unsuccessful in alleviating crunch.

Over the past few months, Polygon has spoken to more than 30 current and former TT Games employees, all of whom spoke anonymously due to nondisclosure agreements and a desire to avoid negative repercussions. They opened up about the studio’s challenging work culture over the last decade and a half and The Skywalker Saga’s difficult development cycle. Two years have passed since TT Games and publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced The Skywalker Saga, and the game has been through three delays. Meanwhile, TT Games, which employs hundreds, has seen high staff turnover and has undergone a change in management since development on The Skywalker Saga began.

A giant machine walks through the forest — *Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga* screenshot

A Lego empire

The company’s challenges started well before The Skywalker Saga. According to staff, the culture of crunch at TT Games goes back to the company’s formation in 2005. That was when, following the success of Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, British game studio Traveller’s Tales acquired publisher Giant Interactive, forming what we know today as TT Games.

Over the years, TT Games has found tremendous success with its line of Lego games, producing well-reviewed titles that have sold millions of copies and won awards. These days, they are commonly referred to as some of the most family-friendly games available, due to their simple and approachable gameplay. But former employees say that the company’s decision to release new Lego games annually resulted in a culture of crunch.

Six former employees who worked under Jon Burton, co-founder and creative director at TT Games, say he would often yell at staff to return to their desks if they tried to leave work on time, and that he regularly

Anchorage gets a new brewery and a simulated golf studio, and a longtime electronics store closes

December 31, 2021 Audrey

Open & Shut is an ongoing series looking at the comings and goings of businesses in Southcentral Alaska. If you know of a business opening or closing in the area, send a note to reporter Alex DeMarban at [email protected] with “Open & Shut” in the subject line.

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Brewerks: Chad Ringler brewed beer out of his house for close to two decades, dreaming about one day opening his own brewery to bring people together over his craft beer.

Brewerks owner/operator Chad Ringler opened his craft brewery and tasting room in November. Photographed on Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. (Bill Roth / ADN)

But he stayed focused on his civil engineering career at a private company in Anchorage.

Until about a year ago.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, like a lot of people, he decided it was time to reset his priorities and pursue his life’s passion.

“It’s scary in the middle of a pandemic to say, ‘I’ll leave a wonderful job and strike out on my own,’ ” he said. “It definitely kept me up at night, but you never know until you try it.”

“I think just in the middle of everything going on around the world in general, I decided it was time to do something I always wanted to do,” he said.

Brewerks opened last month at 625 W. 59th Ave., units A and B, in a newly built collection of warehouse buildings.

The lone employee for now, Ringler is open Fridays and Saturdays from 4-8 p.m. He’ll slowly expand hours as he finds his operating rhythm, maybe adding a day in January, he said.

Brewerks sports an open-concept design with exposed rafters, round tabletops on beer barrels, and two seating areas including an upper loft.

Brewerks brewery, photographed on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021 in Anchorage. (Loren Holmes / ADN)

“It’s my version of a hole in the wall,” he said. “I like the laid-back feel.”

Ringler said he sometimes gives customers tours of the sleek brewing and fermenting tanks in the back.

He’s already serving a variety of beers.

The Wicked Pissah! is a New England IPA. The Blacksmith’s Breakfast is made with coffee from Goldie’s Coffee Roasters in South Anchorage. The beer is named for his brother, who shoes horses for a living.

Other beers are aging in old wooden barrels along a wall. He’ll tap those next November, on his one-year anniversary.

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Pho Lotus: During the pandemic, Brandon Sundara said he realized it was time to “step up” and seize more opportunity in life.

Surangrak and Brandon Sundara opened Pho Lotus over a month ago at 3826 Spenard Road, where they serve Thai, Vietnamese and Laotian cuisine. Photographed on Tuesday. Dec. 14, 2021. (Bill Roth / ADN)

So he left his job as a chef at Benihana restaurant in downtown Anchorage and opened Pho Lotus — a Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian diner in Spenard — with his wife, Surangrak.

“No work, no