Global channel-in-a-box manufacturer PlayBox Technology UK Limited has named Mike Provancha to serve as its managing director.
Provancha has over 40 years of video experience in engineering, sales, and management. In addition to his engineering degree, he holds a bachelors degree in marketing. Starting his sales career with Ampex and subsequently Grass Valley Group, Provancha has held management positions at Abekas, Pluto, NVP and Masstech–where he was managing director of EMEA. He most recently was co-founder and managing director of LS Global Partners, an international business development firm.
With full responsibility for the growth and management of PlayBox Technology, Provancha will play a key role in meeting the company’s goals, as well as building on its reputation for service and providing superior products. PlayBox Technology has provided over 17,500 TV and branding channels worldwide.
Provancha will be based at the company headquarters located in Brookmans Park Teleport, just north of London.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More