film at 11
film at 11: [MIT: in parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in
conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic
implication that these events are earth-shattering. "ITS
crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11." 2.
Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional information
will be available at some future time, _without_ the implication of
anything particularly ordinary about the referenced event. For
example, "The mail file server died this morning; we found garbage
all over the root directory. Film at 11." would indicate that a
major failure had occurred but that the people working on it have no
additional information about it as yet; use of the phrase in this
way suggests gently that the problem is liable to be fixed more
quickly if the people doing the fixing can spend time doing the
fixing rather than responding to questions, the answers to which
will appear on the normal "11:00 news", if people will just be
patient.
The variant "MPEGs at 11" has recently been cited (MPEG is a
digital-video format.)
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