The New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square is one of the holiday's most cherished traditions, and this year might be its best one yet. Fiskars Living's Tom Brennan joins Cheddar to reveal what makes this year's Waterford New Year's Eve Ball so special. The master artisan explains the painstaking process of creating the iconic scene as the clock strikes midnight.
Brennan reveals why Waterford chose "Gift of Serenity" as this year's theme. He says it represents the spirit of balance and composure heading into the new year. The ball features 288 new crystals that make up the pattern representing the theme.
Finally, Brennan shows off some of the other ways that Waterford is celebrating the holidays. The crystal company is using the New Year's ball as inspiration for some new products including champagne flutes. He says it's a creative way to bring the spirit of the Times Square celebration into your own home.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday Jan. 31, 2019.
Rapper, entertainer, and activist Michael Santiago Render, a.k.a Killer Mike, is helping rival gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, start rival soda brands ー and he says there's no shame in that. The conceit that outlandish stunts can lead to teachable moments is the basis for Render's new show, "Trigger Warning with Killer Mike," on Netflix.
On Super Bowl Sunday, the Hallmark Channel will be home to the sixth annual Kitten Bowl, the annual matchup of cat-letes held to benefit the North Shore Animal League. Beth Stern, host of the Kitten Bowl and spokesperson for North Shore (and wife to Howard), brought a pair of 12-week Siamese kittens to Cheddar Thursday to help promote a new event this year: the first-ever Cat Bowl.
'Empire' star Jussie Smollett is receiving an outpouring of support from Hollywood and beyond following news that he was the victim of a horrific attack in Chicago. Everyone from Ellen Degeneres to John Legend took to social media to offer their well wishes to the actor. Chicago Police say they are still investigating the attack as a "potential hate crime," but entertainment correspondent Micah Jesse says, "call it was it is: a homophobic and racist attack."
Filmmaker and commercial director Lauren Greenfield spent the early part of her career critically examining how media and advertising shape youth culture. But it wasn't until she was hired to do her first ad ー a Nike campaign ー that she realized marketing can actually change public perception for the better. "I realized if you do something positive or different in advertising, you can have this incredible effect," she told Cheddar.
As digital advertising is increasingly beholden to the Google/Facebook duopoly, Glamour is experimenting with what it sees as the future of the industry: a multi-faceted revenue model that uses a combination of traditional ads, metered or niche paywalls, events, audio and e-commerce, even as it kills off its one-time moneymaker, the monthly print edition. Samantha Barry, Glamour's editor-in-chief, told Cheddar in an interview Wednesday that she sees the 80-year-old iconic brand as a "service for women."
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019.
Young Americans face a double burden from crushing student debt and the ballooned federal deficit that is the result of President Trump's tax cut, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin in an interview that aired Wednesday. Pelosi called the economic position many millennials find themselves in, even as the economy remains strong, "unconscionable." "Republicans foisted onto future generations [an] economy that is unfair, that is not really lending itself to growth in a strong, predictable, confident, certain way," Pelosi said.
Oregon has too much pot. In the three years since cannabis became fully legal in the Beaver state, deliberately lax regulation and a confluence of outside factors have created a glut of product that is threatening small businesses across the state.
The cannabis business is budding across the United States, and one company is hoping to take hemp mainstream. Socati just announced a new $33 million round of funding. The company's CEO Josh Epstein talked to Cheddar about how that investment will help Socati expand is business.
