by Willy Franzen on December 2, 2009

As a Yankees fan I am obliged to hate anything and everything related to the Red Sox—and even Boston sports in general. That’s why it pains me to cover NESN (New England Sports Network) today. They’re one of the most successful regional sports networks (RSNs) in the country ratings-wise (#1 for 6 straight years), and they do it in the 7th biggest media market. NESN is jointly owned by the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins, whom they cover along with the Celtics, Patriots, and plenty of local college teams. They were launched in 1984, which makes Watertown, MA based NESN one of the oldest RSNs in the country, and they now reach more than 4 million homes. I still don’t understand why anyone would want to watch Boston sports on tv.
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by Willy Franzen on January 26, 2009

This weekend my Dad e-mailed me about a company that had just moved to Connecticut (where I’m originally from). Connecticut has been working hard to attract the movie industry to the state – they even have what is called a “Hollywood East Task Force” in Hartford – so it’s big news when a company like Blue Sky Studios makes a move to Connecticut because they’ve been bribed by tax credits. It certainly brings a lot of jobs to Connecticut (even though New York loses just as many.) As interesting as it is that Connecticut is trying to become “Hollywood East,” it’s not nearly as interesting as what Blue Sky Studios does. They “pioneer creatively superior photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation for the feature film, television and entertainment industries.” Put more simply, they’re behind feature films like Ice Age, Horton Hears a Who, and Robots, and some pretty cool shorts too.
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by Willy Franzen on June 26, 2008

In case you couldn’t tell by our post about Apple’s entry-level jobs, we’re really big Steve Jobs fans. That’s why we’re going to look at another one of the Steve’s projects (one that you probably didn’t even know was his) for exciting career opportunities for new grads. Steve Jobs started Apple, but left in 1985 after some disagreement with the board of directors. That left him with a lot of money and a lot of free time, so he did what any creative genius would do and purchased Lucasfilms’ computer graphics division from George Lucas for $10 million in 1986. It eventually turned into Pixar, which has put out computer generated classics such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. Pixar was bought by Disney in 2006, which made Steve Jobs Disney’s largest individual shareholder. Now that you know that Steve is even more of a genius than you previously thought he was, let’s look at what kind of entry-level opportunities Pixar offers.
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by Willy Franzen on April 4, 2008

Finally, we’re talking about entry-level jobs in show business. Bright lights. Movie and television stars. Glitz and glamour. Not so fast! PostWorks (and Orbit Digital, their sister company) may be in the entertainment industry, but everything that they do is behind the scenes. Since they specialize in post production work, they’re not even on the wrong end of the camera, they’re nowhere near it (until the film needs to be unloaded and processed, that is). In the end, though, it’s all worth it, right? You get to be that guy or girl who sits in the movie theater until the bitter end, just to see your name in the credits.
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