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Nova ScienceNOW - General Information
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Status: Break -- Between Seasons
Premiere: January 04, 2005
Classification: Documentary
Genre: Anthology | Discovery/Science | Educational | Family
Network: PBS ( USA)
Airs: Wednesdays at 10:00 pm
Runtime: 60 Minutes
Season 5 -- 6 episodes -- Jan 19, 2011 to Feb 23, 2011
5x01 -- Jan 19, 2011 -- Can We Make It to Mars?
5x02 -- Jan 26, 2011 -- Can We Live Forever?
5x03 -- Feb 02, 2011 -- How Does the Brain Work?
5x04 -- Feb 09, 2011 -- How Smart are Animals?
5x05 -- Feb 16, 2011 -- Where Did We Come From?
5x06 -- Feb 23, 2011 -- What's the Next Big Thing?
Sesaon 6 -- A sixth season has been ordered - Air Date Unknown/TBA
Episode Information & Lists:
http://www.tvrage.com/NOVA_scienceNOW/episode_list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOVA_ScienceNOW#Episode_list
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About the show
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Nova ScienceNow (styled NOVA scienceNOW) is a newsmagazine version of the long running and venerable PBS science program Nova. Premiering on January 25, 2005, the series was originally hosted by Robert Krulwich, who described it as an experiment in coverage of "breaking science, science that's right out of the lab, science that sometimes bumps up against politics, art, culture". At the beginning of season two, Neil deGrasse Tyson replaced Krulwich as the show's host.
Unlike the parent program Nova, Nova ScienceNow has a whimsical production style. It is not unusual for the show to explain topics as arcane as RNA interference using cartoons, or a solution to a two-thousand-year-old math problem related in song. Whereas Nova covered a single seamless subject in each hour-long episode, NOVA scienceNOW covers several related, but distinct, story segments during the course of each program. The show also features 30-60 second short segments between each story segment, taking the place and pace of commercials in an otherwise uninterrupted program flow.
The show's humor turns on cultural references aimed at viewers from a broad spectrum of age groups. These references, for example, come from movies, TV, music, history, literature, and of course, science.
Following the whimsical format, the show's animators often place jokes or sight gags into the show's background via humorous or incongruous bits of text in signs, newspapers, etc. These gags are intentionally subtle and meant to be difficult to recognize, presumably as a challenge to the viewer's observational skills.
When Tyson took over the show, he added a final segment in which he would add his own observations on the topic. At the end of this editorial, he always states, "And that... is the cosmic perspective."
The series has been nominated for four Emmy Awards and won a CINE Golden Eagle award.
The fifth season premiered January 19, 2011. A sixth season has also been ordered.
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Date of last review or update: April 24, 2012
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