http://futuretense.publicradio.org/blog/index.php?id=1049339963

A Japanese seaside resort is teaming up with Konomi Digital Entertainment to create a vacation getaway for young men and their virtual girlfriends.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/removing-ovaries-breasts-cut-cancer-risk-mamectomy-mutations-gene-doctors-radical-procedure-11528187

Some doctors advise the radical procedure to women with genes that increase risk.

http://futuretense.publicradio.org/blog/index.php?id=1021600424

No more evenings wandering around Blockbuster amidst popcorn-y carpet smells and confusion about which recent movies are worth taking home. The video rental company is apparently getting ready to file for bankruptcy next month. The idea is to shed bricks-and-mortar stores during bankruptcy, and those expensive leases along with them.  Blockbuster could still emerge from the ashes with branded kiosks, like Redbox has. And the company will expand in digital space.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/27/earlyshow/leisure/main6810971.shtml

Entertainment Weekly's Dalton Ross Gives His Picks for TV's Big Night.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series: Will win? Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy, "30 Rock" Should win? Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, "The Big Bang Theory"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129496882&ft=1&f=1020

Hardly anyone these days admits to watching soap operas, but they once dominated the daytime TV schedules.  Forty years ago, there were 18 soaps airing on the major networks; today, there are only six. Next month there will be one fewer when As the World Turns signs off after more than five decades on the air.

Peter Brash, a staff writer for As the World Turns, tells NPR's Audie Cornish that the soaps are really victims of their own success. "The serialized format has spread out just about everywhere you look," he says. Four decades ago, most shows presented a self-contained story every week. But now, "it's all branded to hook you in, to tune in tomorrow."

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2010/08/the-last-days-of-the-soap-opera/59580/

http://www.slate.com/id/2264927/pagenum/all/#p2

Another summer weekend, another 3-D blockbuster (Piranha 3-D), and yet one more round of industry speculation: Will newfangled stereographic technology save Hollywood ? Or has the 3-D revival run its course?

Just a few months ago, Tim Burton's three-dimensional Alice in Wonderland pulled in $116 million in its opening weekend, and a few months before that, Avatar started its 3-D fueled, $3-billion rampage around the world. New 3-D projects were flushed into the pipeline, and industry executives joyfully asserted that the format brought with it a 20 percent boost in revenue. But in recent weeks, some observers have started wondering whether the 3-D bubble has already burst. Critics may have liked Piranha 3-D well enough, but the new creature feature earned just $10 million in its opening days—putting it in sixth place at the box office, behind flat-screened flicks like The Expendables and Eat Pray Love. Is 3-D dead in the water?

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-facebook-teens-20100825,0,6890331.story

 

Nearly a third of children on the social networking site are ready to unfriend their parents for nagging chats and clueless comments, according to an AOL survey.

http://newteevee.com/2010/08/23/the-future-of-tv-is-not-on-cable/

The $100 cable bill is dead; the cable industry just doesn’t know it yet. What killed it wasn’t just a combination of ad-supported online video sites and cheap subscription video services, but a fundamental inability on the part of TV programmers and cable companies to reach the next generation of consumers.

It’s still heady days for the cable industry. Cable, satellite and IPTV companies have continued to draw in new consumers to their pay TV services, and have even been successful in convincing existing subscribers to pay more for premium video content. However, one needs only to look at audience demographics to see that big cable’s ability to draw in new viewers is waning, and that spells trouble for the TV industry as a whole.

http://www.torontosun.com/life/2010/08/23/15111506.html

"Welcome to reality," is the greeting on the latest entrant in the world of online dating sites. But this one is special: it's an exclusive club for ugly people.

Theuglybugball.co.uk is a British dating site that claims only 15% of the general population is pretty, and "pretty people generally aren't very nice and are often a bit shallow."