Press
2024
Docuseries producers on Aaron Carter's warmth, who refused interviews and what accusers face post-Johnny Depp trial. "You're now seeing a new wave of people being accused who now are affirmatively going after their accusers," Michael Hirschorn, executive producer of "Fallen Idols," tells Salon. "And this story, I think, is pretty remarkable in terms of the degree of aggression and vitriol in the responses."
"Eight years into #MeToo, so many women are fiercely refusing to believe that anything about their idols could be less than perfect," says executive producer Michael Hirschorn of the two-night docuseries.
"One has been accused of very tragic things and one is no longer with us, which is tragic as well," says showrunner Elissa Halperin about ID's new four-part docuseries.
2023
The Harlem-based national nonprofit, Black Public Media (BPM), has awarded a grand total of $1.75 million in production funding to 20 projects since launching the PitchBLACK initiative in 2015. Filmmaker Luchina Fisher and Producer Shan Shan Tam were awarded first prize and seed funding of $150,000 for their film produced in partnership with Ish Entertainment.
2021
Nominations for the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards were announced today by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) including the HBO documentary "Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Election" from Ish Entertainment.
2020
In advance of the 2020 Presidential election, a new documentary, Kill Chain: The Cyber War on American’s Elections, debuting tonight on HBO, takes a deep dive into the weaknesses of today’s election technology, investigating the startling vulnerabilities in America’s voting systems and the alarming risks they pose to our democracy.
Even as much of America grinds to a halt, coronavirus has yet to derail the date of the 2020 election. Which introduces a perhaps underestimated terror, as explained in one of the more deceptively scary documentaries to drop in recent weeks: the vulnerable voting machine.
Though the November 2020 election has probably never felt farther away, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thinking about how we’re going to protect its integrity and ensure that this vital aspect of democracy runs smoothly. Then again, considering what we’ve learned about Russian interference in 2016 and beyond, and how routinely voting issues crop up every cycle, what if America is already behind the eight ball on that front as well?
If you don’t want to know how easy it is for a canny individual—or a malicious state actor—to hack into the electronic voting technology used in the U.S., don’t watch Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections. In this unnervingly persuasive HBO documentary, directors Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale marshal cyber-security experts, statisticians and lawmakers to expose cracks in the system that could easily allow hackers to affect voting results.
Filmmaker Sarah Teale joins us to discuss the new documentary, “Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections.” She is joined by the film’s subject, Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer expert and former hacker turned elections security expert. "Kill Chain" premieres on HBO on Thursday, March 26. This segment is part of our ongoing 'Protect the Vote' series.
What can be done to prevent a repeat of 2016 when, according to US intelligence agencies, the Russians breached the election systems of all 50 states and potentially accessed voter registration and other databases in 21 states? Using paper ballots would be a start, argue many of the experts and politicians from both parties interviewed in the film.
The U.S. election system continues to march toward November as long-known security weaknesses remain unpatched while newer systems added to the mix since 2016 likely have created additional attack paths, despite some states adding paper ballots as a backup measure.
For readers of this space, many of the lessons and events of “Kill Chain” will be familiar, if no less alarming: the VR Systems hack, the myth that voting machines aren’t connected to the internet, the Senate’s inability to enact election security legislation. But the storytelling is still engaging.
A new documentary makes crystal clear how little time remains to protect the 2020 election.
2019
The year was 2007, and Myspace was king. With more than 300 million registered users, it was the world’s largest social-networking platform by a mile and, since overtaking Google the previous year, the most visited website in the United States. Friendster had been thoroughly eclipsed. Google’s first attempt at a social network, Orkut, was a domestic flop. Twitter, founded in 2006, still hosted only a fraction of a percent of Myspace’s user base. Snapchat and Instagram weren’t even a twinkle in Silicon Valley’s eye.
2018
When I call him to talk about the new series, This Week at the Comedy Cellar, Ray Ellin (who is known to many as Aruba Ray) is sitting in Aruba, enjoying a short break in an intensive filming schedule, right before Thanksgiving. Along with Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman, Ray is the Executive Producer of This Week, a new intense stand up series that is unlike any that has been televised before. The week off gave us a chance to catch up about the Comedy Central Show that Ray has been working on around the clock since it debuted in late October.
This Week at the Comedy Cellar debuted Friday night on Comedy Central. The show zeroes in on comedians performing at the famed New York comedy club and telling jokes about that week's events, just as audiences of the venue see on a nightly basis.
As Hurricane Florence headed toward the Eastern Seaboard in September, Ted Tremper, the showrunner for “This Week at the Comedy Cellar,” realized he had a problem, and it wasn’t damage from the storm. He needed jokes.
The hottest of hot takes served faster than ever. In a world where comedy is more necessary, more urgent than ever before, Comedy Central provides audiences with a groundbreaking new series during which comedians sort through the noise to deliver the freshest jokes through a topical filter. This Week at the Comedy Cellar, a new, weekly, half-hour stand-up series filmed at the legendary New York City comedy club, premieres Friday, October 26 at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT and delivers stand-up comedy as has never been seen before.
Comedy Central said it greenlit two new series and ordered five pilots as part of its 2018-2019 development slate, readying a stand-up series centered around New York’s Comedy Cellar and preparing a new showcase for Latino comedian Arturo Castro.
The year was 2007, and Myspace was king. With more than 300 million registered users, it was the world’s largest social-networking platform by a mile and, since overtaking Google the previous year, the most visited website in the United States. Friendster had been thoroughly eclipsed. Google’s first attempt at a social network, Orkut, was a domestic flop. Twitter, founded in 2006, still hosted only a fraction of a percent of Myspace’s user base. Snapchat and Instagram weren’t even a twinkle in Silicon Valley’s eye.
2016
Documentaries from Oscar-nominated director Nanette Burstein (pictured, center), first-time filmmaker Michelle Sinclair (right) and Idiom Films’ Mohanad Yaqubi (left) are among the films set to enjoy their world premieres at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
2015
Future's confidence sitting on Pluto right now. He's been in a zone for months, and it all comes out in his prolific hip-hop catalogue. Leading up to today's (July 17) release of his highly-anticipated DS2 album, Future Hendrick filmed a five-part documentary titled Like I Never Left as a way of promoting his second round of Dirty Sprite.
Future is releasing his new album, DS2, or Dirty Sprite 2, at the end of this week, and as part of the promotion for the anticipated project, the Atlanta MC is rolling out his new documentary, Like I Never Left, exclusively on Complex. In part one of the documentary, Future sits down with Elliott Wilson to talk about his last album, Honest, and how he felt that he took too much advice from people while making the project. "I feel like I'm losing by myself," Future said.
The nominees for the 2015 Daytime Emmys have been announced and LGBT talent, characters and programming aree well represented. Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, Logo TV’s in-depth look at the lives of young trans people in America, received a nod for Outstanding Special Class Special yesterday—appropriately enough, Transgender Day of Visibility.
U.S. cable network Lifetime has set a February air-date for the docu-sitcom Kosher Soul(pictured).
The Series Follows Jewish Stylist Miriam Sternoff and
African-American Comedian O’Neal McKnight, Proving Opposites DO Attract
If Dan Gasby closes his eyes, he can remember it clearly. He was standing on the beach next to his wife, restaurateur and lifestyle ace Barbara “B.” Smith, in Bay Head, New Jersey. It was the mid-1980s, and a woman was running down to them.
2014
Male viewers whose tastes run more sophisticated than gaming and wrestling can take heart: Hearst's Esquire magazine is getting together with NBCUniversal to launch the Esquire Network for intelligent and stylish men.
Avery Grey — a transgender woman from Long Island City who began identifying as female at 15 — was often discriminated against when she tried applying for jobs or went shopping when she started transitioning.
When she was 13 years old, Andreja Pejić googled the word "transitioning." Puberty was approaching, and she was loathe to see her body grow into something even further away from what she wanted to see in the mirror. Google helped her find the answers she needed. "I discovered it was a national community, and there were doctors, and medical help. It wasn't something 'freaky' or 'bizarre'; there was a system." She describes herself as a "geeky boy" eager to become physically female.
Andreja Pejic, who stands 6-foot-1 in stocking feet, and a good deal taller than that in heels, looks every bit the model. She is possessed of bottle-blond hair that falls past her shoulders, full lips, a wasp waist and a pair of Cindy Crawford beauty marks just north of her upper lip. (Even Ms. Crawford has only one.)
If the last page of a magazine is supposed to be a good-bye, then New York Magazine's Approval Matrix is a smack and a kiss at the same time.
The Approval Matrix, New York magazine’s weekly guide to cultural phenomena, is a systematic but lighthearted way of judging specific people, places and things in the news, such as Pharrell’s hat at the Grammy’s. Sundance TV’s new talk show adaptation takes the concept and makes it broader, looking at issues like whether political correctness is helping or hurting the public, or “has technology made us the worst people of society?”
“The Approval Matrix” is inspired by the back page of New York magazine, one of the better recurring magazine conceits of the last decade — a grid on which pieces of cultural effluvia are plotted according to their quality (Brilliant versus Despicable) and their smarts (Highbrow versus Lowbrow).
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's investigation of delays in newborn screening programs captured top honors in the annual Associated Press Media Editors’ Journalism Excellence Awards.
Lifetime is expanding its foothold on unscripted programming with four series orders: two docuseries, one reality competition from Project Runway producers and one makeover show.
With every new issue of New York Magazine, the first thing I do is turn to the back page and read the Approval Matrix to find out what’s highbrow, lowbrow, brilliant, and despicable that week. Maybe you do too. And why not?
The transgender Orange Is the New Black actress has partnered with MTV and Logo on a forthcoming hourlong documentary, Trans Teen: The Documentary, that will air simultaneously on both Viacom-owned networks in the fall. With Cox hosting, the doc will take viewers inside the lives of four trans youths ranging in age from 14 to 24.
2013
Male viewers whose tastes run more sophisticated than gaming and wrestling can take heart: Hearst's Esquire magazine is getting together with NBCUniversal to launch the Esquire Network for intelligent and stylish men.
2012
To say Jay-Z has had a busy year would be an understatement, and now the rapper/entrepreneur is adding a new venture to his crowded plate: a YouTube Channel.
Six decades ago a maverick entrepreneur named Allen B. DuMont set out to establish a risky venture called a television network. His initial schedule was cobbled together with niche programming — a bowling show, a fishing and hunting show, an Arthur Murray dance show, etc. His neophyte network was actually pulling in advertisers and building an audience before the vastly better-funded CBS and NBC pushed him aside in the late ’50s.
Oxygen’s previously announced Girlfriend Confidential: LA and My Shopping Addiction are receiving fall air dates, while Hollywood Unzipped: Stylist Wars has been pushed back.
With her new reality series Empire Girls: Julissa & Adrienne premiering tonight (at 9pm ET/8pm CT) on the Style Network, Adrienne Bailon chats with VIBE about what drama will unfold with her BFF Julissa and her future musical endeavors
NEW YORK – April 25, 2012 – Oxygen today announced a 50 percent increase in original programming with five new series joining the 2012 schedule, including: “Girlfriend Confidential,” a new programming franchise which will have New York and Los Angeles editions, “All the Right Moves,” “My Shopping Addiction” and “I’m Having Their Baby.”
Oxygen is taking a cue from its sibling cabler Bravo in greenlighting a multi-city reality franchise dubbed “Girlfriend Confidential,” which will bow with Gotham and L.A. editions.
Style has shined a greenlight on five new series, including skeins featuring Betsey Johnson and Bill Rancic, while moving forward on developing six others.
U.S. cable network Oxygen will next month debut Brooklyn 11223 (pictured), a reality series set in the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of Bay Ridge.
2011
YouTube’s new premium content push featuring the likes of Madonna and Ashton Kutcher spurred speculation that the Google-owned site is issuing a direct challenge to the television industry.
U.S. net Oxygen has greenlit the Eva Marcille Project (w/t), starring the former America’s Next Top Model winner, and LA Style (w/t), focusing on four celebrity stylists.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Under a featureless, cloud-ridden sky in early May, Michael Hirschorn was sitting in an empty room on a fold-out chair, the kind more typically reserved for unexpected dinner guests. He had commandeered a corner den in the new New York offices of his TV production company, Ish Entertainment, and was tugging on the ear cord of his BlackBerry, his head bobbing in tune to the conversation.
Rainbow Media’s WE tv has greenlit three new series and announced the U.S. premieres of two popular Canadian docusoaps for its 2011-2012 slate.
As TV Guide Network continues its transition to a full-fledged programming channel, the cabler announced a half-dozen series and minis in development.
Mildly disgraced New Zealand television “presenter” Paul Henry, who resigned from his seven-year gig hosting the morning news show Breakfast last year after a racially insensitive—albeit amusing—riff about the surname of an Indian government minister, is getting a second chance in America.
2010
Michael Hirschorn is taking the wraps off his newly reconfigured Ish Entertainment, which already has several projects in the works at multiple networks.
Says Michael Hirschorn: "If women didn't want these shows, they wouldn't get made."
That's Michael Hirschorn, mastermind behind reality shows like Flavor Of Love, Paris Hilton's My New BFF, Gone Too Far, TI's Road to Redemption, A Shot Of Love With Tila Tequila, and Celebrity Rehab. He agreed to sit down for an evening to talk about what it all means, in particular for the ladies. (Whiskey was involved).
2009
On the face of it, "T.I.'s Road to Redemption: 45 Days to Go" seems like the ultimate PR move. Arrested last year on federal weapons charges, rap artist T.I. (born Clifford Harris) reduced his sentence from a possible 30 years to an expected one year by agreeing to house arrest and logging 1,000 hours of community service. Much of that service was working with high-risk kids, which is, conveniently, also the theme of "Road to Redemption." Counting down the days to his incarceration -- "45" will change to "44," and so on -- T.I. attempts to scare straight a handful of these youngsters.
2008
Lionsgate is making a splash in the reality TV world, forming a joint venture with the man who put “Flavor of Love” on the air — VH1 alum Michael Hirschorn.
Under the deal, Lionsgate will provide financial, production and distribution support to IshEntertainment, the shingle launched earlier this year by Hirschorn and Stella Stolper.
Michael Hirschorn is stepping down from his post as executive vp in VH1's programming department. He is launching his own company, Ish Entertainment, which has inked an exclusive first-look deal with MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo.
Michael Hirschorn‘s days as the executive vice president of original programming for VH1 are over. Today, VH1 announced that Mr. Hirschorn was leaving to form a new entertainment company, called Ish Entertainment, along with Stella Stolper, the senior vice president of celebrity talent development at VH1.