Entertainment

The ABC is creating a new Triple J radio station dedicated entirely to playing unsigned and independent Australian music.

Triple J Unearthed started as a band competition in the 1990s, turned into a music sharing website and is now becoming a new ABC digital radio station.

Launched in Melbourne on Thursday night by the ABC’s managing director Mark Scott, Triple J Unearthed will begin broadcasting 24 hours a day from 5 October — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier, he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn’t the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian’s ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name United States of America v Ebony Wood in Various Forms

What a funny old bear market. The insolvency firm BRI Ferrier seems to think the time is finally right to attempt an asset sale of the faded television star Humphrey B Bear.

More than two years since the Adelaide production company Banksia went into liquidation, BRI has called for expressions of interest in the assets tied to Humphrey, the 1980s kids science program The Curiosity Show and several other programs. The main asset up for sale — and previously valued at $500,000 — is the intellectual property behind the big brown bear with a boater hat and other shows devised by Banksia.

The IP includes the trademarks for various Humphrey B Bear devices including computer software, DVDs, binoculars, spectacles and phonograph record players — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Two of George RR Martin’s scripts have been stolen, according to a report from Reuters. The two scripts, for the last two episodes of the first season of the HBO show Game of Thrones entitled Baelor and Fire and Blood, have disappeared after being mailed from Northern Ireland, where the second season of the show is filming.

The scripts are signed by the series creator and episode directors, and were to be auctioned off at WorldCon later this week, with the money (which would have been significant) going to charity — via redwolf.newsvine.com