2947-09-02 – Announcement: All Cosmic Background Personnel Safe After Yaxkin City Blast

To all who have sent this network concerned and well-wishing notes in the past few hours, we are happy to announce that all of our staff and personalities have reported in and are safe.

Sovanna Rostami and two producers were in the city conducting an interview not far from the epicenter, and were shaken but uninjured. Two of our studio technicians were in town for the day on other business, and neither was closer than three kilometers from the affected area.

As an update on the incident, the blast which rocked Yaxkin City here on Planet at Centauri is still being investigated, but the fact that it took place in the government center only a few blocks from the Confederated Congress office complex suggests that it was meant as political terrorism, but we are not aware of any political figures injured or killed.

Dedicated Centauri news outlets will have complete coverage of this disaster. Our datasphere outreach hub is currently hosting links to several sources we recommend. Prayers and well-wishing are to be extended to the injured and to the families of those killed.

2947-06-26 - Notice: Cosmic Background Coverage of the Sagittarius War

With Admiral Tosi's announcement that the Navy considers the Sagittarius Frontier to be a theatre of war and a declaration of war aims working its way through Confederated Parliament, Cosmic Background Studios has decided to accept an Admiralty offer of embedded reporting with the Fifth Fleet.

The obvious choice to lead the embed is our own Sovanna Rostami, but she has recently experienced a medical scare which makes us all hesitant to ship her off with the Navy into a war zone. Other notable personalities both inside and outside our organization have come forward to volunteer for this role, making our final decision a very challenging one.

While we will continue to provide variety entertainment on our vidcast episodes, we will be replacing some of our content with war coverage for the duration of hostilities. On the vidcast episodes, we will be replacing the Mercenary Logs and Accidental Legend feature segments with update segments recorded by our team with the Fifth Fleet. The weekly Tales from the Inbox text feed series will be on hold for the duration of hostilities, to be replaced with a compelling story culled from the fleet's records. Obviously, we will be working with Naval Intelligence to make sure no secret information is released.

As the loss of Tales from the Inbox might indicate to most of you, we have decided that Duncan Chaudhri will lead the embed team, as he is nearer to the Fifth Fleet's current headquarters than any of our other leading personalities. He won't, of course, be handling this big job alone - datasphere legend and veteran explorer Nojus Brand has agreed to work on contract as Duncan's partner for the duration of the embed assignment. Their support team behind the scenes will be composed of Sadie Leclerc, Koloman Gotti, and Toal Yoxall, three experienced multimedia techs who have been working with us in various behind the scenes roles for some time.

We're excited to see the reporting this team can bring to Cosmic Background.

2947-02-02: Notice: Cosmic Background Opens Håkøya Studio

There have been rumors circling for some weeks in the community about a potential downsizing here at Cosmic Background, partly due to the fact that this astute audience discovered the emigration form-files Duncan submitted early last month. We kept quiet about this controversy until now, partly to protect Duncan's privacy as he makes this transition, and partly because we were required by arrangements made with some of our partners not to publicize our effort until today.

Cosmic Background has not downsized, nor has Duncan been laid off. In fact, quite the opposite. Duncan's role as editor of Tales from the Inbox on this text feed has not been eliminated, and this feature of our content, which has acquired a modest but quite vocal following, will not be phased out. Duncan is relocating off Planet at Centauri, but he is doing so in order to take charge of a new studio which has been completed aboard Håkøya's Argyris spaceport.

The purpose of this new facility is to take advantage of the expanding Naval Survey Auxiliary presence in Håkøya, and to put some of our staff close to the effort to open a new Frontier across the Sagittarius Gap. Cosmic Background's studio, centrally located in Centauri, has placed us increasingly farther from what we consider our core audience - those of you out there pushing out the edges of the Coreward and Rimward Frontiers. For some time we've been looking for a good way to establish a presence closer to the Frontiers, and when the Naval Survey Auxiliary approached us and several other interstellar-community media outlets with the proposal that we build out our presence in Håkøya simultaneous with Survey's own expansion there.

Most of you know that Duncan is the youngest member of our publicly visible staff, but he is also the one with the fewest local family connections, who is most able to take responsibility of a branch facility at this time. When this effort began, we were expecting Sovanna to relocate as well and to take charge of the operation of this new studio, but she has had a change in personal circumstances which prevents her joining the Håkøya team at this time.

Duncan and the other members of the new studio team departed for the Frontier this morning, and the next few issues of Tales from the Inbox have been prepared ahead of his travel. He will likely dispatch at least one text feed item while en route, which we will of course publish whenever his content arrives here in the flagship studio. His departure the same day as the very public departure of the Arrowhawk squadron for the same destination is not accidental; Duncan's team and staff from three other datacast media outlets have been allowed to make the journey aboard Arrowhawk. While we have no doubt that this is part of the ongoing public relations effort to undo the Navy's loss of face following New Rheims and The Great Purge, traveling aboard a Naval cruiser has allowed our staff to cut its transit time to Håkøya by nearly half.

2946-12-09 - Upcoming Events: Cosmic Background Team at Planetfall Day Festival

As a reminder, the entire Cosmic Background team is traveling to Yaxkin City for the Planetfall Day celebrations. No programming interruption is anticipated; the vidcast programs for the next few days were pre-recorded over the past few days. Duncan has also prepared a Tales from the Inbox post for audience ingestion at the usual weekly time.

We hope to see many of you at the Thompsett Tavern meet-up on that day.