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Hit US sitcom 30 Rock is to come to an end, following an abbreviated seventh series, amid falling ratings.

The critically-acclaimed comedy, which debuted in 2006, won a string of Emmys but has been overshadowed by the success of Modern Family and Glee.

Created by comedian Tina Fey, the show revolves around the production of a late night sketch show, and stars Fey alongside Alec Baldwin.

However, audiences have dwindled to an average 3.5 million viewers in the US.

Fey plays Liz Lemon, the head writer of fictional series TGS, who has to deal with dysfunctional stars and a disastrous love life.

Baldwin is Jack Donaghy, the gravel-voiced neo-con boss of TV network NBC, who becomes Lemon's unofficial mentor.

The show is partly based on Fey's experiences of working on long-running US sketch show Saturday Night Live.

'On the horizon'

Last month, Baldwin appeared to suggest on Twitter that he was leaving the show, but Fey rebuffed the rumours on US talk show The View.

"As far as I know, he's not leaving the show. We're all in this together 'til the end," said Fey, in April.

"I think that he just maybe means that the end of the show – we're in six years – that the end of the show is visible on the horizon."

The final season will run for just 13 episodes, and will be announced as part of NBC's forthcoming primetime schedule next week.

The comedy was dropped from British terrestrial TV following its second series in 2009, after a run of poor viewing figures on Channel Five.

It has since been shown in the UK on Comedy Central.

Story By: by Claire Daly

The Fringe is Bob Gullotti, drums; John Lockwood, bass; and George Garzone, saxophone.

An old publicity photo of The Fringe. Left to right: Gullotti, Garzone, Lockwood.

The Fringe in early 2012. Left to right: Gullotti, Lockwood, Garzone.

Eventually, Michael’s closed, and The Fringe moved on to The Willow in Somerville for the next 17 years. By that time, I was on the road with a rock band six nights a week, but any Monday I was home, I was at The Willow.

Over the years, I’ve seen many wonderful players sit in with the band, notably saxophonist Joe Lovano, pianist Kenny Werner and bassist Scott Lee. I always thought that these three world-class musicians were the only ones who could keep up with The Fringe. Usually, if someone sat in with them, it just slowed the band down — or, worse yet, got in their way. I suppose this makes me a bit of a “Fringe purist,” although I recently heard Lovano sit in (all these years later) and it was still delightful. Joe is tuned in to the band’s wavelength.

Saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi’s quintet shares Mondays with The Fringe at The Lily Pad in Cambridge now. He and Garzone have a great mutual admiration, and I’m told Jerry sits in with them sometimes. I can’t wait to hear this.

I’ve lived in New York since 1985, but I still try to see The Fringe when I can — I’ve made the journey twice in the last two months. Really, I’ve gone to hear The Fringe every chance I’ve had since 1976, and I expect I’ll continue doing so as long as I’m physically able. In fact, I expect that when my time on earth comes to a close, my personal soundtrack will be the music of The Fringe.

But I have no plans to leave this planet now. The Fringe’s 40th-anniversary concert is this weekend, and I’m driving a contingent of New Yorkers up to see it.

Claire Daly is a saxophonist and composer. She is touring the Pacific Northwest with her quartet in early June. You can follow her on Twitter at @cdbjazz.

Story By: by Felix Contreras

La Santa Cecilia

Gustavo Arellano writes the weekly syndicated column “Ask A Mexican!”

We here at Alt.Latino are big into the idea of obliterating borders while maintaining cultural pride, and our Cinco de Mayo collection is no exception.

Take Radio Jarocho’s track “Café, Café” as an example. It’s part of a larger turn to jarocho (music from the Mexican port city of Veracruz) by bands trying to stretch the sonic boundaries of that music. Radio Jarocho does it very much by the numbers but infuses this track with an edgy attitude.

Songwriter and vocalist Alejandro Escovedo comes from a musical family with roots in Afro-Caribbean music, but he’s blazed a trail all his own through Austin’s alt-country scene with echoes of Mexican music. He dusts off his Spanish this week with a classic bolero that has Jasmine ordering a shot of tequila to wash down the melancholy.

And a 1960′s tortured love song redone by an ’80s techno band, then reinterpreted by a group of Mexican-American musicians dedicated to folk? That’s “Tainted Love” by La Santa Cecilia, an Alt.Latino favorite from Los Angeles.

Genres are just starting points for Alt.Latino. And to bring it full circle, so is Cinco de Mayo. It’s become a time of year when activists lobby for rights of all kinds within the immigrant communities and second and third and fourth generation Mexican Americans connect to their culture, if for only one day a year. It’s also a chance to market Cinco de Drinko parties.

What you make of the holiday depends on your own beliefs. While you contemplate them, turn up the sound on our show to give you some music to think or drink or celebrate by.

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English / Spanish

Esta Semana En Alt.Latino: La Verdad Acerca Del Cinco De Mayo

(Y Escuchamos Nueva Música Mexicana)

Esta semana estamos observando Cinco de Mayo, un feriado sumamente bicultural. Pero tal como hablamos en el programa, existe la pregunta constante de si en realidad se trata de una oportunidad para que los comerciantes hagan campañas publicitarias y los bares vendan más tragos.

El Cinco De Mayo se siente muy distinto aquí en la costa este de los Estados Unidos que en California. Creo que existe una desconexión del orgullo cultural que implica esta fecha- más bien parecería ser una excusa para tomar margaritas.

Pero ni modo. Es un feriado que es existe para que uno haga con el lo que quiera: ocupar un parque, bailar, comer y escuchar música.

Orale, dale gas vato.

Iniciar una clase de ballet folclórico en el colegio de tus hijos…. eso suena aún mejor.

O escuchar buena música hecha por artistas mexicanos y mexicano-americanos. Ahí es donde entramos nosotros.

Aquí en Alt.Latino nos encanta la idea de borrar las fronteras pero mantener el orgullo cultural de cada pueblo, y nuestro programa especial para Cinco de Mayo no es ninguna exepción.

Por ejemplo la canción “Café, Café” del grupo Radio Jarocho. Hay un resurgimiento de la música jarocho (música de Veracruz, México), liderado por bandas que buscan ampliar sus horizontes musicales.

Por otro lado el cantautor Alejandro Escovedo viene de una familia de músicos fuertemente arraigados en la música afro-caribeña, pero ha sido un pionero en mezclar la música alternativa, country y tradicional mexicana. Esta semana estrenamos su interpretación de un bolero clásico… que tiene a Jas practicamente tomando tequilas para apaciguar su melancolía.

Además tenemos una reinterpretación de una drámatica canción de los años 60, popularizada en la década del 80 por una banda de synth pop.

La canción “Tainted Love” suena muy distinta, pero bellísima en manos de La Santa Cecilia, una de nuestras agrupaciones favorites de Los Angeles.

Los géneros musicales son tan solo puntos de partida en nuestro programa, y podríamos decir lo mismo acerca de Cinco De Mayo. Se ha convertido en una fecha que les permite a los activistas una plataforma para sus causas, y también una oportunidad para que las personas de herencia mexicana se conecten con sus raíces, aunque tan solo sea por un día. Y es cierto, también se usa para hacerle marketing a las ventas y el consumo de alcohol.

Lo que cada uno hace con sus feriados tiene que ver con sus creencias personales. Mientras lo piensas, subelé el volumen al show: tenemos mucha música y conversación para estimularte.

A Wisconsin couple who appeared on the reality-TV show The Amazing Race outlasted 10 other couples to claim top honours and a $1 million (Dh3.67 million) grand prize.

On their way to victory, Madison’s Dave and Rachel Brown raced across five continents, nine countries and 22 cities.

The show pits 11 two-person teams against each other in a trek around the world in which they must overcome a series of physical and mental obstacles.

Some of this season’s challenges required strategic thinking and the ability to read terrain, which proved to be an advantage to Army veteran Dave Brown. The former helicopter pilot has a background in military intelligence.

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Story By: All Songs Considered

Clockwise from upper left: Tu Fawning, The Ting Tings, The Memorials, Yann Tiersen

On the latest episode of All Songs Considered, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton take a circuitous route through this week’s recommended listening, starting with two randomly paired videos from the WFMU blog, and ending with angular electronica from Squarepusher. Along the way we hear a brash tale of love, loss and the Guggenheim from The Ting Tings; a mix of soul and dubstep from The Memorials, French artist Yann Tiersen‘s beautiful “Monuments,” and a little bit of eerie blues-rock from one of Robin’s latest discoveries, Tu Fawning.

Also on the show: Last week Bob challenged listeners to guess what The Mynabirds song “Generals” reminds him of. You’ve been tossing and turning in your bed trying hopelessly to figure it out. This week, Bob and Robin talk with The Mynabirds singer and songwriter Laura Burhenn about the song and play a few of the listener guesses. Did anyone win a date with Bob? All answers will be revealed in this episode.

The films War Witch, a sensitive drama about a 12-year-old girl abducted by vicious armed rebels in sub-Saharan Africa, and The World Before Her, a non-fiction film that examines the plight of women in modern India, won the top awards at the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday.

War Witch picked up the jury prize for Best Narrative Feature and Best Actress for Rachel Mwanza, who plays the girl forced to become a child soldier, while The World Before Her, which parallels women in the Miss India beauty pageant and a fundamentalist Hindu girls’ camp, won Best Documentary.

But in a continuing strange saga of life imitating art at Tribeca, a Cuban actor starring in a film about defecting to the US, who went missing in real life while en route to the festival, shared the top acting award.

Actor Javier Nunez Florian, who was last seen at Miami’s airport and disappeared along with his female co-star Anailin de la Rua de la Torre from the film Una Noche, did not show up to split his $2,500 (Dh9,180) award.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hollywood may be seeing a turnaround in a seven-year decline of home video sales, thanks to double-digit sales growth of Blu-ray discs and online movies and TV shows, an industry trade group is expected to announce on Sunday night.

The Digital Entertainment Group, a trade group whose members include studios, consumer electronic companies and others, will report that U.S. consumers spent $4.5 billion on home entertainment in the first quarter this year, an increase of 2.5 percent from a year ago.

That’s the second quarter of growth in the last three quarters for home entertainment spending, which includes purchases and rentals of DVDs, Blu-ray discs and online, as well as subscriptions to services like Netflix.

Overall spending declined on those items by 2.1 percent in 2011, to $18 billion, the seventh consecutive year of decline, according to data on the group’s website.

“The business feels as if it has begun to stabilize,” said Ron Sanders, president of Warner Home Video and DEG president. “Hopefully, we’ve hit bottom.”

Sales of Blu-ray discs surged by 23 percent, the group said. That growth was spurred by strong Christmas sales of Blu-ray players, continued video sales of holiday releases like the hit “Kung Fu Panda 2″ and the February release of the blockbuster “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.”

Blu-ray growth partially offset the continued decline in DVD sales. Packaged good sales, which include both formats, fell by 0.6 percent from a year earlier, to $2.1 billion.

Home sales of film and tv shows reversed that decline, and increased by 0.5 percent if sales through electronic outlets such as Apple’s iTunes service are included. Consumers purchased $165 million of those so-called electronic sell-through products.

The industry’s largest growth engine continues to be online subscriptions, such as those offered by Netflix, which grew five-fold in the quarter, to $548.6 million.

Most of that online subscription growth appears to come from Netflix customers who chose subscriptions for streaming over its traditional DVD by mail service when the company split the two options last year. Nationwide, DVD subscription sales fell by $322.8 million in the quarter.

Industry officials expressed optimism that growth will continue, based on continued sales of Blu-ray players and introduction of the studio-backed UltraViolet service by which consumers can buy movies that are shared among several cloud-connected devices. Nearly 2 million users have signed up since the serviced was introduced late last year, DEG said.

“We believe we’re at an inflection point,” said David Bishop, president of Worldwide Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “We’ve created an installed base that will grow, and which we think will continue to give us momentum.”

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by Sandra Maler)

(An earlier version of this story was transmitted in error.)

Independence Day director Roland Emmerich has won six awards in his native Germany for his Shakespeare mystery Anonymous.

The film questions whether William Shakespeare was the true author of some of his most famous works.

Cannes winner Stopped On Track won the top prize – the Golden Lola – as well as prizes for best director, best actor and best supporting actor.

The annual awards are voted for by the German Film Academy's 1,300 members.

They are among the most lucrative film awards in the world, with a total of €3m (£2.4m) given as cash prizes.

Director Andreas Dresen and producer Peter Rommel collected the Golden Lola at a ceremony in Berlin.

"This is not the European Cup, this is the Champions League!" said Rommel, on receiving the award, which includes a cash prize of €500,000 (£408,000) to invest in a new project.

Stopped on Track (Halt Auf Freier Strecke), the portrait of a man dying from a brain tumour, was joint winner in Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

Cultural achievement

Anonymous won six out of a possible seven nominations, including awards for cinematography and costume design.

The film, which played at the London Film Festival last autumn, marked the first time Emmerich had filmed in his home country for more than 20 years.

The Hollywood-based director is best known for effects-laden blockbusters such as Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and, more recently, 2012.

Anonymous starred a host of British actors including Rafe Spall, as William Shakespeare, and Rhys Ifans, as the Earl of Oxford – purported in the film to be the real author of Shakespeare's works.

It was the subject of some criticism – particularly in Britain – from Shakespeare scholars who claimed the theory was nonsense, but despite a lacklustre performance at the box office, the film was well received in Germany.

The Lolas are intended to reward cultural achievement rather than box office success, with the prize money underwritten by the German government.

Story By: by Will Shortz

On-Air Challenge: You’ll be given a two- or three-word description of a famous person. The initial letters of the description are also the initials of the person.

Last Week’s Challenge from listener Sandy Weisz of Chicago: Name an article of clothing that contains three consecutive letters of the alphabet consecutively in the word. For example, “canopy” contains the consecutive letters N-O-P. This article of clothing is often worn in a country whose name also contains three consecutive letters of the alphabet together. What is the clothing article, and what is the country?

Answer: “Hijab” is the clothing article, and “Afghanistan” is the country.

Winner: David Corriveau from Lebanon, N.H.

Next Week’s Challenge: Name a famous novel in two words. The first word has five letters, and the second word has 11. If you have the right novel, the initial letters of the novel’s title, reversed, are the initials of its author. What’s the novel, and who is the author?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week’s challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern.

Calico Joe by John Grisham

From ebooks.com
Price Dh90
John Grisham is the master of the legal thriller, but he’s also a baseball superfan, so this novel hones in on the world surrounding the sport. The story is about a fateful day in 1973 when, during a major league game, one baseball player hits another and that one action changes both of their lives forever. While there is baseball jargon that many won’t understand, the story overall tackles the human condition.

Can We Still Be Friends by Alexandra Shulman

From Dh46
After 18 months of early starts and weekends of writing, Vogue UK’s Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Shulman has released her first novel, and it’s upmarket chick-lit. Set in the summer of 83, it revolves around three friends who’ve left uni and are ready to start their lives. There’s Sal, the aspiring journo; Annie the domestic goddess and Kendra, a liberal free spirit – all spectrums covered.

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