September 7, 2009
The Walt Disney Co. says it plans to buy Marvel Entertainment Inc.—the media conglomerate that owns Spider-Man, The Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man and about 5,000 other comic book characters—for $4 billion. Current Disney stars such as Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers appeal primarily to young girls, and industry experts say the company's acquisition of Marvel will help Disney connect with a more elusive audience: teen and tween boys. "This helps give Disney more important exposure to the young male demographic that they have sort of lost some ground with in recent years," said analyst David Joyce of Miller Tabak + Co. [Reuters, 8/31/09]
When it comes to comic book sales, Marvel reigns supreme. Nearly 41% of all comic books sold in the retail marketplace in 2008 were Marvel titles. DC Comics, home of Batman and Superman, accounts for another 30%. Dark Horse Comics ranks a distant third with a 6.5% share. [comicbooks.about.com, stats]
Singer Chris Brown recently appeared on Larry King Live to offer a public apology of sorts for his physical abuse of fellow pop singer and former girlfriend Rihanna. When showed a picture of Rihanna's bruised and bloodied face taken after the incident, Brown said, "When I look at it now, it's just like, wow, like, I can't—I can't believe that—that actually happened. It's—it just really like took a toll on me. Like, I was just like wow." [salon.com, 9/3/09]
QUOTE: "Having never beaten anybody myself, I don't know what the appropriate response is or how much I'd block out. But I do know this—despite his repeated insistence on taking responsibility for 'the incident' and stating that 'I really regret and I feel totally ashamed of what I did'—not once during the hour did [Chris Brown] just come out and say it's not cool to hit. He danced around the topic, he called it something he wishes he could take back, and he said he wants to be a role model. But the man who said, 'Sometimes, in a way, you lose your temper or arguments get heated,' and that in the future he wants to handle problems 'differently and better,' never came out and simply said the words that real men don't hit women." —Salon contributor Mary Elizabeth Williams [salon.com, 9/3/09]
In the interest of giving parents the help they need to keep their children safe from questionable entertainment, the Federal Communications Commission plans to study the various television and Internet content-blocking technologies available to consumers. The inquiry may also lead the FCC to adjust its rules regarding children's programming. "We must offer the tools and policies that make it easy for people to be good parents and oversee the viewing that goes on in their homes," said FCC chairman John Rockefeller. "We must do more than simply gather information and hope this alone protects our children." [msnbc.com, 9/1/09]
The cable network Showtime has announced plans to air a nine-episode reality show based on the lives of lesbians. The Real L Word: Los Angeles is expected to debut next year. [nypost.com, 9/2/09]
QUOTE: "It's hard to pinpoint what's most disturbing about TLC's creepy reality series [Toddlers & Tiaras] chronicling the pint-size-pageant circuit. Is it the fact that the competition showcased in this week's episode is called Dazzling Dream Babes of Summer? Or that it has a division for newborns? Or that there's a division where the beastly mothers can compete as well?" —Entertainment Weekly's Tanner Stransky [Entertainment Weekly, 9/4/09]
Even at age 10, children have already begun to feel pressure to have a "perfect body." A new study of more than 4,000 Canadian children to be published in BMC Public Health journal has found that girls' happiness with their body image is clearly linked to how thin they are. Researchers also found that girls with less education and those who live in rural areas are more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies. For every one unit increase of Body Mass Index, girls indicated roughly an 8% increase in body dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, boys' positive self-image is based on being average—neither too thin nor too thick. [time.com, 8/27/09 stats]
QUOTE: "I don't think a naked body is particularly shocking or interesting. It's not the culture I was raised in. I was not brought up in the United States. I don't share the [attitude] that you can have graphic violence, but God forbid you see someone's nipples." —27-year-old Canadian-born, New Zealand-raised actress Anna Paquin (X-Men, The Piano), on her attitude toward nudity as one of the stars of HBO's vampire drama True Blood [msnbc.com 8/24/09]
Teens' abuse of attention-deficit drugs has soared in the last decade, according to a new study from Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Researchers analyzed data collected by the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 1998 to 2005. During those years, the number of calls to poison control centers involving ADHD drugs rose 76%. And 42% of those calls resulted in teens being taken to emergency rooms to be treated for moderate to severe side effects due to overdosing on these prescription medications. From 1998 to 2005, the number of children ages 10 to 19 being treated for ADHD doubled, from 4 million to nearly 8 million. [huffingtonpost.com, 8/24/09 stats]
Tobacco sales to minors have plummeted in the last 12 years. In 1997, 40.1% of tobacco buyers were younger than 18. A decade later, fewer than 10% were. Furthermore, only 9.8% of minors have used a tobacco product in the last month, compared to 13% five years ago. [usatoday.com, 8/10/09 stats]
Parents have a huge impact on how their children view alcohol, tobacco and drugs. According to a new study from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, kids ages 12 to 17 who have witnessed their parents drunk are twice as likely to get drunk themselves in any given month and three times more likely to smoke or use marijuana. The study also suggested that fathers are particularly influential. Teens who believe their dads are OK with underage drinking are 2.5 times more likely to get drunk than peers who have more restrictive fathers. Researchers also found that it is quite easy for teens to find and abuse prescription drugs. One-third of teens polled said they could get such drugs within a day, and 20% said they could get them within an hour. [casacolumbia.org, 8/26/09 stats, c&e]
The average teen sent or received more than 35,000 text messages in 2008—163 times the number of messages sent or received by the average 65-year-old. [blog.nielsen.com, 8/28/09 stats]
QUOTE: "In the past two decades, we have witnessed one of the greatest breakdowns of the barrier between our work and personal lives since the notion of leisure time emerged in Victorian Britain as a result of the Industrial Age. It has put us under great physical and mental strain, altering our brain chemistry and daily needs. It has isolated us from the people with whom we live, siphoning us away from real-world places where we gather. It has encouraged flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise. It has made it more difficult to read slowly and enjoy it, hastening the already declining rates of literacy. It has made it harder to listen and mean it, to be idle and not fidget. ... We may rely heavily on the Internet, but we cannot touch it, taste it or experience the indescribable feeling of togetherness that one gleans from face-to-face interaction." —John Freeman, editor of Granta magazine and author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of E-Mail [wsj.com, 8/21/09]