March 2008 Archives
That’s the Discovery Channel’s new slogan – who knew the network was aimed at 8-year-olds?
John Ford, president of the network, explained: “No other network delivers on the wonder, optimism and thrill of life on planet earth quite like Discovery. Our viewers are true fans of the world and this campaign is their cheering section.”
“Fans of the world” – does it have detractors? (Outside of those who are down on the Kyoto Protocol, that is.) As opposed to fans of Jupiter or Mercury? Let’s look at the bracketology:
Elite Eight
Mercury (No. 1) vs. Neptune (No. 8) (Sorry, Pluto, you got demoted, so you’re not in the playoffs): An unimpressive match-up; Neptune wins thanks to the methane in its atmosphere and its 1,300-mph winds.
Venus (No. 2) vs. Uranus (No. 7): Another listless face-off, won by Uranus thanks to the titters of schoolchildren everywhere.
Earth (No. 3) vs. Saturn (No. 6): A hard-fought battle between the scrappy smaller planet and a powerhouse giant. Saturn boasts 60 moons and, of course, those photogenic rings, but is 93% hydrogen. Earth meanwhile, has intelligent life – Earth wins!
Mars (No. 4) vs. Jupiter (No. 5): Another tooth-and-nail battle for dominance; Mars’ mythology, Marvin the Martian and land rovers vs. Jupiter’s vastness and legendary Great Red Spot. Jupiter is just too large for Mars to surmount.
Final Four
Neptune (No. 8) vs. Jupiter (No. 5): Jupiter in a rout.
Uranus (No. 7) vs. Earth (No. 3): Earth in a rout; smutty gags just aren’t enough against life itself.
Championship
Earth (No. 3) vs. Jupiter (No. 5): A veritable clash of titans (but not of Titan, Saturn’s moon), this climactic battle pits David vs. Goliath, life vs. hydrogen, the Solar System’s highest surface gravity vs. a density of a mere 1.326g/cm3 – and, again, Earth’s living ecosystems help it vanquish its foe! Life rules! Well, that and Kevin Love’s domineering presence in the paint.
Back to our regularly scheduled blog post:
Anyway, as part of its new awareness campaign, Discovery has cooked up a song celebrating Earth’s awesomeness. It’s set to the tune of an old children’s song I’ve never heard of, which further underscores the network’s 8-year-old mindset. Here’s the song; keep in mind someone got paid for this:
I love the mountains,
I love the clear blue skies.
I love big bridges,
I love when great whites fly,
I love the whole world and all its sights and sounds
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
I love oceans
I love real dirty things
I love to go fast
I love Egyptian kings
I love the whole world and all its craziness
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
I love tornados,
I love arachnids,
I love hot magma,
I love the giant squids,
I love the whole world, it’s such a brilliant place
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
Boom de ah da, boom de ah da
This song just incrementally diminished our world’s awesomeness.
ABC announced the detritus that will be filling its airwaves come the summer, and all I can say is shoot me now.
Actually, “Shoot Me Now” would be a pretty good ABC reality show: Contestants, placed in a hermetically sealed dungeon armed only with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a firearm are subjected to the following programs; surviving family members of the one who lasts the longest gets $1 million.
“The Bachelorette:” You know the drill on this one. DeAnna Pappas, who got dumped by the bachelor who figured living a life in solitude was preferable to hooking up with someone more interested in face-time with reality-show cameras, will troll for telegenic dudes. Debuts Monday, May 19, 9 p.m.; thereafter, 8 p.m. Mondays.
“The Mole:” You probably know the drill on this one, too: Contestants do “Amazing Race”-style challenges, but one of them is trying to undermine their efforts. Anderson Cooper won’t be hosting anymore, alas. Monday, May 26, 10 p.m.
“Wipeout:” “American Gladiators” without the added expense of gladiators. Contestants traverse an obstacle course and try not to die. Tuesday, June 24, 8 p.m.
“I Survived a Japanese Game Show:” Japanese game shows are amongst the most surreal, most brutal things TeeVee has to offer us, so why don’t they just reinvent one here? No, they have to go and make a TV show about people going on yet another TV show. Added bonuses: Culture clashes and xenophobia! Tuesday, June 24, 9 p.m.
“ABC News’ Hopkins:” Eight years ago, ABC News did a documentary series on Johns Hopkins Hospital. Now, they do the same damn thing again. Thursday, June 26, 10 p.m.
“Dance Machine:” Because there simply aren’t enough dance-competition reality shows on television. Friday, June 27, 8 p.m.
“High School Musical: Summer Session:” In which they finally go to the well one too many times. Reality competition with people singing and (yes!) dancing to songs from the Disney Channel phenomenon. They haven’t figured out what the winner’ll get, so they’re acting like it’ll be some big surprise; here’s guessing it’s a roll in “High School Musical 3.” Sunday, July 20, 8 p.m.
“Wanna Bet:” A combination of “America’s Got Talent,” “Secret Talents of the Stars,” “Oprah’s Big Give” and just about every other reality show ever made. Monday, July 21, 9 p.m.
That’s NBC’s big strategy to lure you back to the network, according to this story in Variety. Marc Graboff, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment alongside Ben Silverman (who will unveil the networks new fall – and year-round – schedule on Wednesday), declares:
"People need to escape. Ben's programming strategy is to find some shows where people can tune in and then mentally tune out. That's his directive, and I think you'll see that reflected in the programs."
Given that we could all use a breather from the impending financial apocalypse (not to mention if Cheney decides to invade Iran as an October surprise), and given that the brain-dead “Deal or No Deal” outperformed the dour “Journeyman” this past season, you can’t really argue with Silverman’s strategy. The question, of course, is whether the programming will be up to snuff. Some of the series that may make the schedule include the “Knight Rider” retread and shows about a telepathic paramedic, an “adrenaline-charged” “Robinson Crusoe,” a sexy former FBI agent and “My Own Worst Enemy,” starring Christian Slater as a suburban man leading a double life as a spy (which sounds like the Schwarzenegger vehicle “True Lies”). Draw your own conclusions.
(Aside: Do you think advertisers will be lured by the image of slack-jawed viewers mentally tuned out? Or is that their target audience?)
NBC’s other bold initiatives are to cycle out failing shows quickly with similar new series in the same time slot and to try to whittle down the number of repeats to just about none – which, naturally, will mean a lot more reality shows plugging holes in the schedule.
"Repeats don't work anymore, but we have a finite amount of money to spend," Grabhoff told Variety. "We're trying to do some things that are cheaper so that we can have more original programming."
The other networks, meanwhile, will unveil their fall schedules during the traditional May upfront. It’s gutsy for NBC to move its announcement up so early, particularly given how pilot season was left in tatters by the writers strike. One just hopes the schedule that results isn’t obviously slapdash. We’ll find out Wednesday – if I don’t mentally tune out during Silverman’s phone press conference.
* That buzzwords and jargon are the stuff of high comedy.
* That Fox has higher standards that The CW. (Well, Amy Sherman-Palladino learned that, anyway.)
* That “Prison Break” is just going to keep jumping the shark until it finally gets it right.
* That phone press conferences don’t really invite news per se.
* That I can cobble together a blog entry out of a walk down a street.
* That the man most responsible for Bush Administration policy was “X-Files” creator Chris Carter.
It’s one of the dumbest – and cheapest – plot twists in all of entertainment, particularly ongoing TV series: Killing off an important character, then realizing you’ve run out of stories so you better bring him/her back.
Here’s how executive producer Matt Olmstead tried to explain it to TVGuide.com:
“(O)nce we realized that the emotional hook of Season 3 was going to be the death of Sara, when we didn't get the actress to do it, as soon as we wrote it and shot it, we realized that there was actually a way she could still be alive. Lincoln glanced at the head in the box for a split second. That could've been anyone.”
Not buying it … (if it was someone else, why would the bad guys have sent it to Linc?)
“I don't think it was unfair, because it gave us some real juice storytelling-wise — it put teeth in the antagonists. Obviously they were now capable of killing somebody. It also gave us a couple of episodes where Lincoln withheld the information from Michael, and that gave us conflict with the brothers. But also, what were we really going to do? Were we going to see Sarah Wayne Callies tied to a chair for 13 episodes? And then if she broke free, what is she really doing?”
He’s kind of making my arguments for me. Why would the bad guys want Michael and Lincoln so p!ssed at them? And his “what were we really going to do” sounds a little like “We painted ourselves into a corner where we didn’t have much of a story.”
“(W)hen people who are fans of the show — and of Sarah — are asking, ‘Is she really dead?’, what they're saying, essentially, is, ‘I hope she's not dead.’ And then it became a kind of groundswell.”
How nice of them to be thinking about the fragile psyches of their fans at this point. Of course, they didn’t seem to care about that so much when they stuck her head in a box.
Olmstead also revealed how Michael will discover Sara’s still alive. He’ll get up one morning, head to the shower … and there she’ll be, with Patrick Duffy.
At a Paley Festival event promoting the upcoming “X-Files” movie (which – as spoiler as the “X-Files” guys are going to get – is not going to address the show’s never-resolved mythology), since there wasn’t much to talk about regarding what happens in the new film, talk turned instead to the pilot of the short-lived spinoff series “The Lone Gunmen,” in which someone inside the government, in an effort to boost sagging post-Cold War arms sales, plots to fly a 727 into the World Trade Center.
The show aired in March 2001, six months before the events of September 11.
“It was freaky, and one of the weirdest things is no one really asked us about it," series creator Chris Carter said at the panel. "It had been imagined before, by many others."
"Condoleezza Rice is saying its an unimaginable crime – hello, my pilot!" "Lone Gunmen" actor Dean Haglund added.
"It made me angry," (series executive producer Frank) Spotnitz continued. "It was not unimaginable. My first thought was ... 'Oh my god, I hope they weren't copycatting the Lone Gunmen,’ which they weren't. My next thought was: 'Why weren't we prepared for this?'"
Two reasons I’m guessing why no one ever asked Carter about this: 1) Everyone was too traumatized and had more important things on their mind to remember a little-watched and quickly cancelled TV show; and 2) even if someone had wanted to ask them, Fox would’ve turned down interview requests flat – they had a worse problem on their hands with the impending premiere of “24,” which also featured terrorists blowing up a plane in the pilot.
Nonetheless, with its portrayal of a sinister shadowy government, “The X-Files” today certainly seems to serve as a blueprint for the Bush Administration. But I think they cribbed their playbook from the episode “Humbug,” in which members of the Jim Rose Circus portrays a closely-knit group of circus freaks who conspire to cover up the crimes of one of their own.
Though the New York Times reported that the networks’ promos for scripted shows returning post-strike are all warm and fuzzy (“Far from going negative, many of the post-strike commercials take a triumphant tone, seeking to play off the affection that most viewers feel for their favorite shows”), the folks over at “My Name is Earl” decided “screw that” and even got NBC CEO Jeff Zucker to play along.
When “Earl” returns on April 3, it will be preceded by a “Previously on…” recap provided by Zucker himself, mock-mocking the writers: “Earl gets hit by a car, just like he did in the pilot episode,” Zucker explains. “Writers refer to that as a ‘callback.’ I call it getting paid twice for writing the same thing.”
Last week, we discussed Tina Fey seeming to dis Jon Stewart in an interview in Reader’s Digest magazine. Yesterday, while I was intrepidly uncovering what The Future Of Television was going to be like (and coming up vexingly short), Fey had a phone-press conference touting the return of “30 Rock” in which she was asked about her comments.
TINA FEY: “Well, you know, that thing was edited kind of weird because I was really talking about audiences and how, you know, audiences respond weirdly to things. And when I was talking, I said, like you know, on Weekend Update or anything.
“And then that kind of went away, so it seemed like I was saying something bad about those guys. And I think they know that I think their show is great and would absolutely never be disparaging of their show.”
Fey deserves a pass because the piece, in fact, was edited pretty awfully. But then, another reporter asked her about her “Bitches get stuff done” endorsement of Hillary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live,” and was almost shot down by a network flak:
CAROL JANSON: “We would like to keep the questions more to ‘30 Rock.’ Next question?”
This is Exhibit A in why I don’t do these things: This sort of micro-management of what reporters can and cannot say and the brazen effort to prevent interviewees from saying anything remotely political or controversial. Heaven forbid any news emerge from a news conference.
The reporter then neatly turned it into a ‘30 Rock’ question by asking where Liz Lemon, Fey’s character, would stand on the issue. But Fey got Janson’s point:
TINA FEY: “I think, you know, ‘30 Rock’ especially, we like to sort of just put things out there that hopefully spark discussion. … Liz Lemon also said last year that -when she was confessing her secrets to Floyd, she said, ‘I might tell everyone I’m voting for Obama and secretly vote for McCain.’
“And so I think there’s just a level of - I think there’s a certain small section of - sector of people that do think that and so we just kind of like to put that stuff out there.
“I think the - our role is more to spark discussion and to try to clarify and point out what we’re observing more than to really endorse or campaign for anybody.”
Aw, Tina. You were so much more fun when you actually said what was on your mind. Even if it was dissing Jon Stewart.
Ah, poor, foolish, idealistic, naïve me: I figured that as soon as we exposed the Great Evil that distracting network logos sitting endlessly in the bottom corner of a TV screen and in-show promos truly are, the networks would come to their senses and recognize such graphics as the passive-aggressive, semi-sociopathic phenomena that they are and immediately send them the way of the dodo and rational discourse in America.
But, no. They’re still around. As are complaints about them from readers:
*
There's an old Laurel and Hardy comedy wherein Mr. Hardy develops a phobia against bells. He keeps yelling BELLS....BELLS....BELLS! I've developed a similar phobia against television logos and have started yelling LOGOS....LOGOS...LOGOS!!
You missed a key problem with TV logos and that's the threat of "burn in," especially to the very expensive plasma sets. I have a friend who has a $6,000 plasma set. If you look carefully in the lower right corner you can see the remains of several logos. I won't buy a plasma set for that reason.
If you hadn't guessed, the logos and animations drive me totally crazy. I frequently turn off programs I'd like to watch because of the constant barrage of little happy feet dancing across the bottom of the picture. I keep a black piece of cardboard to cover the bottom portion of my TV screen when it gets out of control.
I've recently dropped Starz, Showtime, Encore, etc because they too feel it's okay to place logos in programming that I'm paying for. As far as I'm concerned, logos and animations are advertising but the F.C.C. turns their back and claims they have no control over logos.
A stationary object in a "moving" picture is a constant irritation, draws the eye and ruins the pleasure one gets from watch a movie. If you know of anyone trying to get the F.C.C. to step in and stop this insanity, let me know and count me in. If the logomania isn't stopped, we will soon see logos in movie theatres!!!
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Not sure if this was already mentioned, but when SciFi (and other channels, I must admit, but I am big on watching "X-Files" reruns and noting some of the actors who had small parts back in the day) burns a blurb for themselves across the entire bottom of the screen at the start of a show, they seem clearly not to care about allowing viewers to see guest star names which I find annoying as well as unfair to those actors. Sometimes, you may catch a glimpse of the top parts of some letters that makes the practice even more frustrating - like they are teasing us as well as insulting the actors. They are so busy advertising what will be on "later tonight" they lose sight of the fact that what is on "right now" is important to some of us.
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I along with most other people hate the network logos in the corner of the screen. It detracts from the show/movie you are watching. There is no earthly reason to keep a network logo on the screen for a 2-hour movie or even a 30-minute sitcom.
In addition the “bottom line” with scores on ESPN is also very distracting. It is OK during SportsCenter or other news show but when they are showing a game of some kind please eliminate the “bottom line”.
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I strongly agree with Jan Brown's comments regarding those annoying logos and messages shown on TV screens during various shows. They are very distracting when trying to concentrate on dialogue and interrupted by these promos that flip by so fast that you can't even read them. If so important show them before or after all the commercials. We usually know what channels we're watching anyway.
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No one likes Elizabeth Hasselbeck. With 37%, she is the host that makes you most want to hit the mute button. With 35%, she also beat out Tyra (25%) and Dr. Phil (23%) as worst interviewer.
Larry King is not! King gets the dubious honor of being the most unsexy host with 54% of the vote, beating out Whoopi Goldberg (25%).
*
Oh, wait, that last one came from an unrelated Email. Sorry.
Nonetheless, we shall continue on our bold and quixotic quest to end eyeball strain and banish on-screen clutter during television programming. In the meantime, we can take solace in the fact that those who create the shows really hate them, too, and in the fact that for all its sins, at least The Future of Television conference did not have a panel titled, “Onscreen Logos: How Can We Make Them Even More Conspicuous?”
Amy Sherman-Palladino is no doubt currently scratching her head over Fox’s abrupt yanking of her show “The Return of Jezebel James” after only three episodes: “Over on The CW, three million viewers is considered a megahit!” she’s opining.
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The stuntcasting of Britney Spears on “How I Met Your Mother” (gee, what a nothing-burger role, as this cut-down proves) did the trick, earning the sitcom 10.6 million viewers (meaning it got about 2 million people who otherwise would’ve been doing something, anything else to tune in) and its best 18-49 demographic showing in a long time.
*
Fox, surveying the miserable numbers for its midseason shows “New Amsterdam,” “Canterbury’s Law” and the aforementioned “Jezebel James,” has no choice but to renew “Prison Break” for a fourth season. I forget: Is there anyone left in prison that anyone cares about to break out? Or will Michael just get himself thrown into a local pokey just for grins so he can pull off a hat trick?
*
Did Sinbad of all people torpedo Hillary Clinton’s campaign over her comments on sniper fire when she went to Bosnia?
It gets worse: Your Mayor has does some investigative journalism of his own, and has discovered that that phone call in that TV commercial in fact did not come at 3 p.m., but at the far more reasonable hour of 10 p.m.
This Future Of Television technofestival is taking place in the very same ballroom in the Roosevelt Hotel that housed the very first Oscar ceremony and, also where, legend has it, some distraught actor offed himself after losing an Oscar and still haunts the place to this day. (In the form, we’ve been told, of chill air that suddenly and inexplicably appears in the room; coincidentally, there’s an air-conditioning vent just above that spot in the room.)
No one has killed him- or herself during this conference – yet – but there do seem to have been a lot of missed opportunities here. By focusing on emerging technologies and narrowcasting and advertising, the event’s organizers have betrayed an interest in those who will profit from all of this. But there are those in the TV industry who have some rocky years ahead of them, and even if their futures aren’t nearly as rosy, they probably merit discussions on how to survive the coming tumultuous years.
Nonetheless, there was no panel discussion on how the broadcast networks can best weather the storm as their viewership dwindles – or what the effect of their diminished stature means for everyone else. (With fewer mainstream programs succeeding, other sites that cater to fans of those shows will be affected, and the volume of traffic lured to sites based on their appeal would shrink, meaning there will be less people to sample the other wares being offered at such sites, and so on.) Nor was there a panel discussion on how local affiliates will be impacted, how all those local news teams will be bankrolled as the broadcast networks rely less on them and more on other platforms to disseminate their programming. Nor was there, say, a panel on the broader sociological implications of viewers grazing across the Internet in search of the latest viral video and utterly ignoring current events, or what happens when news sites, catering to audience demand, lean more heavily on entertainment coverage (The Associated Press recently announced a new division dedicated to infotainment) and moving away from hard news – there’s stuff we want to see or read about, and then, there’s stuff we need to know, but if our choices are completely in our hands, will we know about corporate or political corruption, or will we base our votes in elections on Obama Girl or those three daffy biddies singing “It’s Raining McCain?”
Nope, none of that, but plenty on just how even more f@%&ing impossible it will be to avoid commercials in the future (yay! Not a moment’s peace for oneself!) and why the kind of throwaway material produced to be watched on cell phones merits an entire panel discussion unto itself).
And then, there was Keynote Speaker Carson Daly.
Introduced as “someone who really does sit at the center of what’s going on in pop culture,” Daly – wearing a baseball cap, a sweatshirt and sneakers – announced, “You’ve had a lot of very smart people talking about the future of television, and I’m not that. So what am I doing here? It’s a good question.”
The answer probably wasn’t as good. “The answer is passion,” Daly declared. “I’m passionate about entertaining, passionate about television … passionate about finding out my future stake in it.”
Daly posited himself as someone studying new media while working in traditional media, and concluded, “If I live in both of these worlds, maybe I can introduce them to one another.”
He then discussed a few of the projects that he has been involved in attempted to combine traditional TV and interactivity. Almost invariably, he concluded, “It was an idea ahead of its time” or “Ultimately, it didn’t pan out.”
Daly’s speech wasn’t ahead of its time, but in the end it didn’t pan out, either. Truth be told, it wasn’t a bad speech if you were a neophyte in this realm, but no one in attendance was a neophyte.
(Psst. Shh! I’m outside the ballroom writing this and Daly is standing about four feet away. Don’t look over here, Carson! It’ll only break your heart! Though I did say it wasn’t a bad speech! Keep looking at the brunette! Or the old guy with the mustache and the plaid jacket!)
(OK, now he’s been shuffled away to do an interview. “Are they gonna talk about the strike?” he asks; “No, we’re not doing that,” a handler answers.)
One last thought from Daly’s speech: “TV is nowhere near dead. That’s just a bunch of crap.”
As are, I’ve decided, the rest of the panels today. There’s your Future Of Television, kids: People dazzled by shiny objects and favoring jargony buzzwords over discussions on how to create the sort of programming people might want to watch.
Joel Hyatt, co-founder (with Al Gore) of Current TV and current.com, committed an act of heresy Tuesday morning before the missing-the-forest-for-the-trees sorts attending this Future Of Television conference that we’ve been writing about so much that it’s become all the rage with the kids: He took a polite but firm dump on the conference’s obsession with technology.
“I think we can get bogged down on the technological changes which enable people to watch TV on more platforms – it’s interesting, but it’s not a big idea,” Hyatt told his interrogator, Fast Company’s Ellen McGirt.
“People say to me, ‘Isn’t it exciting that you can watch ‘Desperate Housewives’ on your laptop? No, that’s not very exciting. I’d rather watch it on a 60-inch screen. … Why is that exciting? It’s convenient if you have no bigger screen, but it’s still a diminished viewing experience.” Snap.
He continued, “I have no idea why anyone would want to watch a movie on a cell phone unless you’re stuck in an elevator. Now, there a lot of things you might watch on cell phone – including, sorry for the ad, a lot of our programming – but not a movie.” You mobile geeks just got pwned.
Now, Hyatt’s anything but a Luddite. Current has integrated TV, the Internet and viewer interactivity far beyond anyone else. (Current viewers contribute about a third of its on-air content and even more at its website. They also create commercials for the network’s advertisers; viewers, Hyatt said, prefer the homegrown spots 9-1 over slicker Madison Avenue ads.) The new technologies are “tools, but they’re just tools,” he told Your Mayor after his session. “What’s important is how you use them.”
And to that point, Hyatt told the crowd, “The exciting thing to us is the exact opposite of where all the attention has been. Interactivity is the magic of the Internet, and if you can bring that to TV, that’s a big idea, and that’s what we’re working on. We’re trying to give Internet users the 60-inch experience, and have great content, and have a great viewing experience. Content still is king.
“People keep asking, ‘Is the era of television over?’ I don’t think so at all,” he concluded. “The new technology enables users to access content, and that’s good. … But it’s still a content-driven business, and it’s still important to ask, ‘Do you have content that people want to watch?’”
Next panel after Hyatt’s appearance? You guessed it: “New Television Technologies You Need to Know.”
Outside the Roosevelt Hotel, where The Future Of Television conference is continuing (and, mercifully, concluding) today, that venerable tourist attraction the Hollywood Walk of Fame includes stars for Jack LaLanne, James Brolin and Cybil Shepherd, and the street is redolent with the aroma of glamour and bums. Those stars implanted in the sidewalk honoring TV personalities feature little TV sets with giant rabbit ears – already plenty outdated.
In the future (imagine an imposing if somewhat dated sci-fi-y echo on those words), if we’ve learned anything here at The Future Of Television conference, when LonelyGirl15 and Fat “Star Wars” Kid and Bulldog on a Skateboard and Melodramatic Prairie Dog all receive their Walk-of-Fame stars, the TV will look completely different. But will it look like a plasma screen or a laptop or an iPhone?
Hmm. Given that the Walk-of-Fame stars boast very little detail in their graphics, it’s safe to say it’ll just look like a generic rectangle.
(The TV stars aren’t as outdated as the recording-industry stars, however, which are represented by a vinyl record with a tone arm laid across them (younger readers – ask your parents about this mythological “vinyl” and these oppressive “tone arms”). How will music-industry stars be represented in the future? By iPods? A record label’s bankruptcy papers?)
Currently, the Walk of Fame honors artists in five categories (fun fact: Gene Autry is honored in each of them): Live Performance, Radio, Recorded Music, TV and Movies. This would seem to be a pretty egregious oversight on the behalf of whoever’s in charge of issuing stars: You’d think they’d want to honor the stars of the new-media and digital age, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and everyone who has made entertainment that much easier to access. But again: What kind of image would grace these stars?
1.
For a conference all about exploiting the emerging technologies, the folks running The Future of Television conference at the Roosevelt Hotel still haven’t figured out how to get microphones to operate smoothly. Lots of “Is this thing on?” (as I type this, the current speaker’s isn’t, in fact) and the occasional howl of feedback or sputter of static.
The networks, broadcast and cable, are pretty much an afterthought here, as the conference is all about digital media, online, broadband, mobile – everything but that large piece of furniture in your living room. Even a panel discussion on reality TV skittered away from its topic to bring up hulu.com and iTunes and mobile content. Conference moderator Ned Sherman said, “Television may not be the right word for this industry anymore: We’re all content creators.”
2.
Steve Canepa, Vice President of Global Media & Entertainment Industry at IBM, made my head explode, first panel out. The man – if “man” is the right word; I suspect “ambulatory artificial-intelligence unit” might be more accurate – appears to be pathologically incapable of speaking in anything but Jargon.
Some things he says are simply impenetrable ways of conveying simple concepts. Canepa recommends “Putting product and customer master records at the center of your business model,” but all he’s saying is, your business is what you sell to your customer. And when he notes that the “Key to innovating in their business model is access to skills,” he’s merely suggesting you hire people who know what their doing.
Here, but a sampling of snatches from his bewilderingly obfuscating but no doubt forward-looking speech:
* “Harvesting out of those transactions an analysis of preferences and behaviors.”
* “Finite marketing spend (to gain) influence over those clusters.”
* “Very proprietary structures that are bolted together in a hard way.”
* (from a graphic during his presentation) “Media hub enterprise service bus – transformation, mediation, persistence, dynamic routing.”
* “The infrastructure was componentized. … we integrated those together with an open architecture.”
* “Having a mini to mini relationship in each piece of that value chain.”
* “Segmentation, interactive-oriented experience.”
* (Speaking of Hulu.com) “Traditional programming in open platforms; there’s a movement toward the center.”
* “Core competencies must evolve.”
* “The value proposition you can offer us is probably a lot less.”
3.
There seem to be precious few panel discussions on the actual content of programming; content, apparently, is not part of The Future Of Television. But there was one panel on Reality TV, and for a brief few minutes, there was a little injection of personality amidst the earnest techno-chatter.
Panelists included Andrew Cohen of Bravo, who basically just talked up Bravo shows; David Lyle, Fox Reality Channel president, the one forthright and funny guy to appear all day (noting that reality is usually dismissed as a guilty pleasure, he said, “We don’t feel guilty and we pleasure ourselves daily”); John Saade of ABC and Ryan O’Hara of TV Guide Network, who didn’t really seem to belong on the panel but what’re you gonna do?
Moderator Ken Rutkowski asked members of the audience who said they didn’t watch reality TV why. One woman opined, “It’s contrived.”
David Lyle: “Yeah, so?” (Cohen, by contrast, fumbled around, trying to say that his shows weren’t manipulated but in a way that wouldn’t sound like a complete lie but gave up and just talked about how great they were.)
Another person complained that early reality TV was so bad, citing the first season of “The Bachelor.”
Rutkowski: “I worked with him at CNet – he wasn’t looking for a woman.”
One audience member delivered a brief screed on the fact that reality isn’t real, that it’s manipulated by editing and even the mere presence of the cameras.
Lyle replied, “The only way we can have this discussion is in a bar.”
There was absolutely no discussion of the creative component required in putting together a television show. Rutkowski apparently got bored with the topic of the genre itself, instead asking questions about hulu.com and iTunes and maybe creating reality shows for cell phones.
ABC’s John Saade, speaking about “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Oprah’s Big Give,” theorized, “Watching those shows on a Sunday night is a collective penance for the country.” If that’s the case, then clearly it’s not enough.
4.
People can text message during the panels; their thoughts show up on a large screen to the left of the stage in real-time. Some of the texts become part of the panel discussions. An interactive conference about interactivity: Have I blown your mind yet?
One unimpressed attendee texted: “Only 2 women on all the panels – proportionate to their power in this space?”
No, just proportionate to their ability to digest jargon and self-aggrandizing b.s.
5.
Marshall Herskovitz bailed as keynote speaker due to a death in his family, but his partner Ed Zwick showed instead. I believe he just compared the computer screen to a movie screen. He also threatened to do another "quarterlife."
Your Mayor will be inordinately busy today and Tuesday, taking in a conference on The Future Of Television. Given that right now, no one has any idea of what Television’s landscape will look like even a year from now, if these people actually reveal any spoilers, it will represent quite the scoop.
The event is billed as “a 2-day executive conference, unlike any other, that brings together key decision-makers from cable and broadcast networks, cable and satellite operators, high-tech and advertising to focus on the future of television.”
Then again, it’s also hawking: “2 Days – 70+ Speakers – 300+ Attendees (and) Innovative Exhibitors = !!Unrivaled Networking!! Breakfast, Lunch, **Poolside Networking Reception**”
Obsession with fierce and unbridled networking, of course, got Television into the sorry shape it is today (Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman are great networkers, but look at NBC); nonetheless, it’s also apparently the key to The Future Of Television.
Looking at the agenda, it seems the event is more about TV aimed at your laptops and cell phones than your actual TV, so if that really is The Future of Television, you might want to rethink buying that $3K plasma screen and just stick with your iPhone. Also, the event has panel discussions on reality TV and advertising and user-generated content, but little if anything on actual scripted programming, so if that really is The Future of Television, you might just want to invest in a nice clean and true straight razor.
Keynote speakers include Marshall Herskovitz, whose latest project, “quarterlife,” tanked majestically not only on NBC but also proved underwhelming in its online iteration, so clearly he knows what he’s talking about; the Alex Toffler-like Carson Daly; and Joel Hyatt, who, as co-creator of the forward-looking Current TV, actually probably knows what he’s talking about, but he’s speaking at 9 a.m. Tuesday, long before I will have been able to fully caffeinate myself, so I won’t likely understand a word he’s saying.
Just a guess, but The Future Of Television is no doubt going to be filled with a lot of jargon. “Interlaced multi-platform threnody stratagems” and “interface modality conceptualism paradigms” and “interactive real-time target-demographic cyber-viral-marketing integration loops” will make damn sure the rest of us haven’t a clue as to what’s going on.
If the Roosevelt Hotel has free WiFi access (big if) and if the blog server isn’t going into one of its paroxysms of petulant-teen pouting (bigger if), I’ll be issuing interactive real-time target-demographic dispatches as events warrant. If not, you’ll find out what The Future Of Television is when it actually happens.
We've invited a bitch-session over those pesky network logos you can't seem to escape when watching TV. Another reader, Bob Johnson, points out that not only are mid-show logos distracting, annoying and no doubt created by a spawn of Satan, they can also be hazardous to your TV’s health:
“Here, here. Those $#@& logos sure kill the moment. Shows and movies try to capture an audience within a scene and then BAM up comes some yahoo jumping through a hoop at the bottom of the screen. Aside from that is the technical problems of today's televisions. Plasma TV's are everywhere. What's their main concern? Screen burn-in.
“Anything displayed for too long of a time or always in the same spot can eventually burn in the screen permanently. Even if it doesn't right away, you can see ghosting images left behind temporarily. I fail to see the purpose of the distraction. If we want to watch something, we'll look it up. Also, I've read the color blue has the shortest life span in a plasma. So, why are ch7's news side bars (which side bars can burn in also) are blue? I wish you luck on your venture and hope to see more crusades on the subject.”
I don’t have a plasma screen, but I have heard worries about screen burn-in. It never occurred to me (probably since, as I just said, I don’t have a plasma screen) that these network logos could burn into one’s screen, but if that’s the case, perhaps we can work up a class-action suit or something. Any takers?
Shockingly enough, peanuts are not a predictor of a TV show’s well-being. This afternoon, CBS’s Entertainment president Nina Tassler issued this sad decree:
“The March 25th episode of Jericho will be the series finale. Without question, there are passionate viewers watching this program; we simply wish there were more. We thank an engaged and spirited fan base for keeping the show alive this long, and an outstanding team of producers, cast and crew that went through creative hoops to deliver a compelling, high quality second season. We have no regrets bringing the show back for a second try. We listened to our viewers, gave the series an opportunity to grow, and the producers put a great story on the screen. We're proud of everyone's efforts.”
Translation: “Last time we listen to our viewers.”
But, hey: Every new or midseason scripted show that has premiered in 2008, mid- or post-writers strike, has tanked. (Except for “Lost,” but fewer than 12 million viewers watched it last night, so even it’s further on the decline.)
Fox’s “New Amsterdam” is doing kind of OK, but only in comparison to everything else that tanked, including Fox’s “Canterbury’s Law” (newly consigned to Fridays, where it can die a quiet death) and “The Return of Jezebel James” (always scheduled on Fridays, as its death was preordained). Fox’s “Unhitched” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” performed underwhelmingly, as well.
ABC’s “Cashmere Mafia” and “Miss Guided:” Toast, or soon to be. CBS’s “Welcome to the Captain:” Already gone. NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle:” The final nail isn’t in its coffin only because NBC is doing so poorly otherwise.
Instead, the midseason’s middling successes are reality shows: Fox’s “Moment of Truth,” NBC’s “American Gladiators” and ABC’s “Oprah’s Big Give” (though it’s on a steep ratings slide, as well).
Some downer news to end your week, but then, Good Friday has always been about bad news. Unfortunately, I don’t see the networks resurrecting themselves any time soon.
“Futurama,” Matt Groening’s second series after “The Simpsons,” always had a great concept and an impressive visual style but always seemed lacking in the laughs department, which made it all the more disappointing. It may have been due to the characters, which just weren’t as inspired as those on “The Simpsons” – Bender, the crass robot, always felt like he was sort of being crammed down viewers’ throats as a cult character, a tin-plated Bart Simpson of sorts.
So the show got cancelled, but, as the title sequence notes in “Futurama: Bender’s Big Score,” It Just Won’t Stay Dead! “Bender’s Big Score,” a four-episode movie, was released earlier this year on DVD, and Comedy Central will present the whole thing with the added bonus of lots of commercials on Sunday.
The thing parodies time-travel movies that invariably get mired down in their paradoxical illogic. But first, Groening takes a shot at Fox for canceling his show – it’s announced that those responsible were fired, beaten up and killed, then ground into a fine pink powder which doesn’t actually seem to do anything.
Anyway, a group of nudists called the Scammers, through a series of spam Emails, take control of Earth. Then, using a tattoo on Fry’s butt that has a code that enacts time travel –
Leela: What’s the secrets of time travel doing on Fry’s ass?
Fry: It was bound to be somewhere.
– they dispatch a newly compliant Bender to go back in time and rob the planet of all its historical riches (he returns with the Mona Lisa before da Vinci finished her face).
Meanwhile, Leela falls for a guy named Lars, much to Fry’s chagrin. And, employing the time machine, a number of different Benders and a couple of Fry’s are created. “Jeez, this is confusing – and I’m sure it’s going to get a lot more confusing,” says a Bender back in the year 2000, just before he destroys a cache of Florida election ballots for Al Gore. (Gore turns up in the climactic battle sequence, exulting, “Finally! I get to save the Earth with deadly lasers instead of deadly slide shows!”)
“Bender’s Big Score” is funny enough to keep you watching but not quite funny enough to convince you that Fox made an egregious error when they cancelled the show. There are gags involving the word “handjob and the phrase “I’ve wiped Fry’s butt clean” that don’t mean what you think they would but still veer perilously close to being single entendres. And then, there’s this exchange on a Nude Beach Planet:
Bender: You know, it’s funny.
Fry: What?
Bender: Your wiener.
Ah, not that funny. But at least Fry is able to put things in perspective when, the planet impoverished but the Scammers stripped of their time machine, he declares, “The present may stink, but at least we can look forward to a better yesterday!”
– “Futurama: Bender’s Big Score:” 8 p.m. and midnight Sunday, Comedy Central.
(Oh, and the headline is a line from the film that I found amusing.)
Last fall, we discussed the insights of the media-buying firm Rubin Postaer and Associates regarding their take on the then-impending 2007-08 TV season. I pitted my thoughts on upcoming shows against theirs, and if you take a look at that post, you’ll see I did pretty well in my prognostications, suggesting that “Journeyman” and “Cane” wouldn’t do as well as they expected (both: since cancelled) and that “The Big Bang Theory” and “Samantha Who?” would do better (both: since renewed).
My one mistake was in believing “Bionic Woman” might be critic-proof. (In my defense, it was critic-proof initially; it just wasn’t shlocky-execution-beyond-the-pilot-proof.) If this whole newspaper racket crashes and burns (like that’s ever gonna happen), perhaps I have a career in advising media-buying firms.
Yes, there is a point to this.
RPA has just released its Midseason Update, and while it notes the gloomy ratings numbers of the past season, it has some particularly tough words aimed at the networks regarding their behavior during the strike. Now, we’re not the sort to kick the networks when they’re down – oh, who are we fooling? Of course we are – and so here’s the summary from the report, written by Chuck Bachrach and David Scardino:
“Regarding the strike, anyone paying even some attention to entertainment industry labor relations knew a strike was very likely, the writers operating from heated emotions and embittered by the bad deal they made in 1988. As people who work primarily from their emotions, this was understandable. What wasn’t was the equally emotional reaction of the networks and studios – the supposed ‘business people’ at the table – when, having virtually resolved two of the three major sticking points, they left the table in a huff when picket lines appeared, on schedule, on the East Coast. That overly emotional reaction, when they could and should have just let it pass, caused the strike to continue for two more months.
“In the strike’s aftermath, the networks seem to have given no thought to at least an attempt to make an event or series of events out of the return of their scripted shows, in the process, throwing away their medium’s one remaining strength: the potential to gather large audiences for special events. Maybe such a strategy would have failed, but at least it would have show the networks’ audiences and advertising partners a recognition of having put both through a trying time as well as an intention to try and make up for it. instead, shows will dribble back at irregular intervals and all will be competing for promotional time. We think a huge opportunity has been missed.
“Likewise, all the brave words about radically overhauling the way the network business model works largely evaporated the minute the writers’ new contract was done. The fact of the strike provided the networks with a great opportunity to reform a business model all agree is broken. That they didn’t grasp that opportunity but instead rushed furiously to reconstruct the old (broken) model indicates a huge failure of vision and to a conclusion that the networks are run by people with little imagination. It should come as no surprise then that so much television programming feels generic.
“That having been said, the audience reaction to the reappearance of original programming should be telling. For those of us immersed in the business of television it is sometimes easy to forget that the average viewer basically just wants a couple of entertaining hours at the end of the day. Since the middle of December, many of those average viewers have had to find that entertainment on platforms other than broadcast network. So, as original episodes slowly reappear on the schedule, how will they be welcomed back? The answer to that question will probably tell quite a bit about the coming 2008-09 season and, possibly, beyond.”
And this comes from a segment of the industry usually tries to be bullish about the networks.
I recently interviewed Richard Zoglin about his new book, “Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America” (Bloomsbury, $24.95), and apparently granted him my own equivalent of the “Colbert Bump:” Documentarian R.J. Cutler, who won an Emmy for “American High” and was nominated for an Oscar for “The War Room,” announced today that he’ll adapt it into a feature film. (Oh, great, all those comics Zoglin interviewed for hours at a time are thinking; now we have to go back and tell those stories all over again, and this time, we have to look good for the cameras.)
Boilerplate press-release-ese courtesy Cutler: “‘Comedy at the Edge’ has captivated readers across the country with the most candid account yet of this seminal moment in comedy history. No one has covered this topic more extensively and in-depth than Richard Zoglin, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to work with him and bring the story to life on screen.”
In case you’re wondering, “Changed America” is an awfully portentous but relative term. But the comics Zoglin profiles – George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Robert Klein, Richard Lewis, etc. – did change the face of comedy, and comedy’s part of America, so I suppose you can make the case that the title isn’t utter hyperbole.
Reader Jan Brown appears to have touched a nerve among TV viewers. Yesterday’s screed on the craven network practice of filling their screens with logos and advertising while people are trying to watch a program ran in today’s Daily News, and already, the Emails are pouring in:
“I read your piece this morning and cannot tell you how glad I am that you gave me a chance to vent my total frustration at some of the practices that these TV stations bestow on the viewing public.
“I know there is nothing you can do personally about it, but it's nice to at least tell someone closely connected to the business about my pet peeve.
“I don't mind so much the pale station logos at the bottom of the screen as I do the "crawl" advertising banner across the bottom of the screen advertising their own programming, and my very, very utmost infuriating practice of a lot of stations, (Sci-Fi in particular), of shrinking the credits or covering them up with their own advertisements at the very end of the program when I have been waiting for the whole darn program to find out a performer's name that I could not remember, or wanted to know who they were.
“You would think that the geniuses in broadcasting could find an additional 10 to 20 seconds out of an hour program to edit enough to allow us to see all of the information without shrinking it down to microscopic print size that no one can read. (Not to mention the speed in which some credits are run at).
“Oh well, you just may have saved my big screen LCD TV from a painful "death by shoe" because without anyone to gripe to about this stuff, I have upon occasion felt like throwing one at the set out of frustration!!” -- Gary Saar
*
“The logos on NBC are the worst. In fact we will no longer watch any programs aired on NBC. It is a real nuisance to try and view a program with not only a logo popping up but over the logo other advertising is also being implemented. If other stations follow this format they will also lose out.”
*
“I hate them, they are distracting and I do hope you can do something to stop them.” -- Anna Wilson
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“We have gone to reading books as the logos and other "chatter" at the bottom of the screen is so intrusive. At the very least they could put the junk in the upper right hand corner and not block whatever words are appearing at the bottom of the screen. More and more, TV is a crashing bore. It is good of you to do this and allow us to vent!”
*
"I would like to add my 2 cents regarding those pesky Station Logo's that block our view of the TV screen. I find it especially annoying when I am viewing a show that has subtitles, and half of the subtitles are blocked by that darn Logo. Most people have TV's that have a remote control that will allow one to view what channel they are watching with just the push of a button. If I want to know what channel I'm watching, I'll just press that button."
*
So, that’s the first volley in the war, though, like the war on drugs, it may never be won.
Feel free to vent further, however. Also, if you’re with a network, feel free to share your feelings as to why logos are necessary or harmless or if you think they’re a Faustian bargain that prevents you from sleeping the sleep of the just at night.
Oh, and Jan is, in fact, a she.
A shocking development in the otherwise harmonious world of TV comedy: Tina Fey suggests in an interview that “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart panders to his audience:
“My friend, ‘SNL’ writer Seth Meyers,” Fey is quoted as saying, though one doubts she would employ such a stilted, journalism-friendly turn of phrase, “coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, ‘Woo-hoo.’ It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] ‘The Daily Show.’”
Someone with the brass to take a poke at Jon Stewart? Stop the presses! Incredibly, the interviewer doesn’t follow up or ask her to elaborate.
But then, the questions are awfully canned and insipid: “Your humor has been described as biting. Are you a mean girl?”, “What's the difference between male and female comics?”, “Your mom was one of your comedy inspirations. Did you play to her at the dinner table?”, “What TV shows influenced you?” “You costar (in the upcoming movie ‘Baby Mama’) with former ‘SNL’ castmate and good friend Amy Poehler. Did you make each other laugh on set?” “Where did you get your drive?” and, of course, “Which of the Three Stooges do you like best?” So clearly, our intrepid journalist conducting the interview was charged by her magazine (Readers Digest, BTW) with being as drab and colorless as possible.
Still: Tina Fey is calling out Jon Stewart for kowtowing to his audience? Is this the same Tina Fey who sat behind the “Weekend Update” desk at “Saturday Night Live?” The same “Saturday Night Live” where laughs at the “Weekend Update” material often comes more from the anchors (currently Meyers and Poehler, BTW) than the studio audience?
Remember during the writers strike when Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Conan O’Brien had a mock brawl that wasn’t really all that funny, but at least killed a lot of airtime for each of them? I’m thinking a serious catfight between Stewart and Fey would be even better. Who’s with me?
You know that Britney Spears we’ve all been hearing about ad nauseum for the past year or so, the one in a downward spiral who refuses to listen to reason and is so crazy that not only did she lose custody of her children, she briefly lost permission to even see them?
Apparently, she has been replaced by the sweetest, kindest, humblest, most professional person on the face of the planet.
TV Guide has a story (on newsstands today) about Britney’s stunt-casting appearance on an episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” a show that could use a ratings bump if it’s going to survive into another season, and everyone in the cast lovedlovedloved her, and only because she was such a consummate pro, not because she’ll provide them with that much-needed added viewership.
The piece immediately vaunts to the top of the very large pile of entertainment puff pieces. It seems to have come from a distant planet where no one has ever heard of strife or challenges or unhappiness. Consider these quotes, and vote for the one you consider most obsequious!
* Josh Radnor (Ted): “She’s friendly, shows up on time, knows all her lines, nails all of her jokes. The only thing scandalous about all of this is how nonscandalous it is.”
* Craig Thomas (executive producer): “She wanted to work on her acting chops and play a specific comedic role. (Editor’s note: Yeah, I’m certain that at this point in her life, what Britney wanted most was to “work on her acting chops and play a specific comedic role” on a nominally rated sitcom.) She seemed nervous at first. [But] when she started getting laughs she started having a good time. We don’t have a high-pressure environment. We don’t shoot in front of a live studio audience so we can do as many takes as we want. I think that atmosphere really appealed to her and she felt comfortable.”
* Alyson Hannigan (Lily): “She was so funny and she already had her character down pat. I had no idea she had such great comic timing.”
* Jason Segal (Marshall): “Her improvs were really good. Sometimes at table reads you play around with lines and try different things. She came up with stuff that had everyone laughing. She’s definitely a comedian.” (Editor’s note: This one gets my vote for most obsequious.)
For her part, Spears merely issued a bland statement: “I’m having a blast. Working at ‘How I Met Your Mother’ has been so terrific. Everyone has been wonderful.”
*
In other stunt-casting news, Robin Williams will the villain du jour – and no, we don’t mean “Patch Adams” – on the 200th episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” which will air April 29.
Those distraught over the impending conclusion of “Battlestar Galactica” can take solace in the fact that the Sci Fi Channel has OK’d a two-hour prequel, “Caprica,” with the idea of taking it to series.
“Caprica,” about sentient paprika plants on a distant planet where they’re call caprica, set 50 years before the current series, follows two rival families – the Greystones and the Adamas – who are thriving because the Cylons haven’t been created yet. But they’re clearly on their way, as the technology is ramping up for that fateful disaster.
Sounds sorta like a sci-fi “Cane.” But can it really be “Battlestar” material if people aren’t suffering the entire time?
“Battlestar” executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick will be running this show as well; production begins in the spring.
Sci Fi announced some other TV movies that could become ongoing series, as well:
“True Believer:” Actress Rosario Dawson cooked this one up, an oddball dramedy about a comic-book nerd who hires a washed-up superhero to teach him the crime-fighting ropes.
“The Stranded:” Based on a comic book Sci Fi sponsored, it concerns five otherwise ordinary people who have been brainwashed and therefore don’t know they’re from another planet and have secret powers until aliens show up to kill them.
“Deputized:” Sort of sounds like a combination of the above two shows: A dramedy about an ordinary guy who suddenly gets stuck in an alien exoskeleton he can’t wriggle free from and so he has to become a superhero saving the universe in sundry ways.
“Alice:” A six-hour miniseries from the king of cheese, Robert Halmi, Sr., who last did “Tin Man” for Sci Fi. This one, obviously, is a ramped-up reworking of “Alice in Wonderland.”
“I’Raqiran:” An Elder seeking to rule the planet promises a 100-year-war against mystical, ululating tribes. How can he promise such an enduring battle? Is he … immortal?
Oh, wait; sorry, my bad. That last one is being developed for CNN and the Fox News Channel.
Jan Brown, a reader, sent Your Mayor the following Email:
“At a Television Academy event the other night for ‘Mad Men,’ a number of us were enjoying the after-show munchies when I brought up the subject of how irritating it has become to have to watch all TV shows with some giant network logo always in the picture. Everyone within earshot immediately chimed in – everyone is sick and tired of having to try to focus on a program with some obtrusive logo superimposed over up to 1/4 of the screen, made even more obnoxious by the recent addition of animated figures and little people and titles and messages jumping in and out of the picture.
“What can be done about this? Can you run a poll or something or see if others are as bothered by this as we all are??”
Clearly, Jan struck a nerve amongst her (or, maybe, his; I neglected to ask) fellow Television aficionados. I explained that the logos “are for the benefit of those who are channel-surfing but to the detriment of those actually watching the show. And don't get me started on those promos that take up the bottom third of the screen. The only good thing about those is that ‘The Simpsons’ has done some funny parodies of them.”
Contemplating this further, it occurs to me that it would behoove some networks to not run their logo at the bottom of the screen, as it would serve as an automatic warning to viewers to flee immediately: The CW, for example, or A&E or, for straight males at least, Bravo. Ditch the logo and you might sucker a viewer or two in until the next commercial break.
Conversely, there are shows that one would think that networks really wouldn’t want to splash their logos across, as they really shouldn’t want to take credit (or blame) for them: NBC’s “My Dad is Better than Your Dad,” CBS’s “Big Brother,” Fox’s “The Return of Jezebel James” and, of course, ABC’s “According to Jim.”
So: What do you think? Do networks owe viewers respect and logo-free programming? Or do they not bother you because you’ve learned to ignore them?
And: What other TV irritants really bother you? As that logo (oops, sorry) above declares, we’re here to solve every problem in Television, but we can’t until we know what they are. Leave a comment and if the blog server gives you grief, don’t be offended – it does it to me all the time. Just let me know at david.kronke@dailynews.com.
America has lost almost 4,000 soldiers in the Iraq war, which is now five years old. The cost of the war has surpassed $503 billion. That’s $16 billion for those living in Los Angeles County alone, money that could’ve provided health care for 6.8 million people or 49,000 affordable-housing units or 237,000 school teachers. Our grandchildren, wondering why their taxes are so high, will still be paying for it. John McCain has said that American soldiers might be there for another 100 years.
Kind of a downer, huh?
Well, don’t worry: The Associated Press reports that if you’re watching TV news, you’re no longer being reminded of the debacle:
“Statistics clearly illustrate the diminished attention. For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for 3 percent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's survey of news coverage. During the same period in 2007, Iraq filled 23 percent of the news hole.
“The difference is even more stark on cable news networks: 24 percent of the time spent on Iraq last year, just 1 percent this year.”
Veterans of the war are noticing the war fatigue, says the San Deigo Union-Tribune:
“The military's all-volunteer force means only a small segment of the U.S. population is directly affected by the war, said former Marine Capt. Nathaniel Fick, 30, who commanded a Camp Pendleton-based infantry unit in Afghanistan and Iraq and later wrote a best-selling memoir, ‘One Bullet Away.’
“The Pentagon continues to forbid the photographing of service members' flag-draped caskets. That makes it easy for the public to forget the war's toll, especially as casualty counts have fallen in the past year, Fick said.
“‘There's been a concerted effort, in some ways, to keep the war out of the headlines,’ said Fick, now a graduate student at Harvard University.”
Barack Obama’s tough, personal, galvanizing speech on race in America in the wake of his former pastor’s controversial statements gives his supporters just another reason to love him and conversely probably won’t change the mind of anyone who’s already written him off. But it should be considered something beyond that – a sane, thoughtful walk through one of the country’s most dangerous minefields, an issue that is perpetually kept on the back burner out of fear of missteps or resignation that things can never change, one that is forever dealt with in simplistic terms. Until today.
On this issue at least, there’s Obama, and there’s everyone else over at the kids’ table. Predictably, the news networks, particularly Fox, have focused on whether the speech will rescue Obama (naturally, the white-man oligarchy over at Fox thinks not so much). But it’s obvious that Obama’s intentions with this speech weren’t so one-dimensional.
Obama continues the dialogue tonight with ABC’s Terry Moran on Nightline at 11:35 p.m. If Moran would keep questions about the horserace to a minimum and explore the larger concerns of Obama’s speech, I’d consider it a personal favor.
*
Ah, so that’s why they’re always so cranky on the Fox News Channel: Its New York newsroom was suffering from a bedbug infestation. Per the New York Times:
“But the source of the bugs was not determined until the exterminator inspected the homes of about 20 employees. … (T)he exterminator later described one employee’s home as having ‘the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business.’”
My money's on Alan Colmes.
On April 8, CBS is uncorking the awkwardly titled reality-competition show “Secret Talents of the Stars.” This is what they plan on subjecting you to (all of this is real, per CBS’s press release):
* Clint Black will perform stand-up comedy.
* George Takei – Mr. Sulu! – will croon country tunes.
* Malcolm-Jamal Warner, accompanied by “a Hip Hop Orchestra,” will play bass guitar and perform an original song.
* Marla Maples – the former Mrs. Donald Trump – will perform a gymnastic routine with The Anti-Gravity Troupe including aerial flips and bungee stunts.
* Sasha Cohen (the Olympic medalist figure skater, not Borat) will perform contortionist moves with the New Shanghai Circus. Which seems to me a bit of a cheat – she was a gymnast before turning to figure skating.
* Wrestler Ric Flair, apparently spurned by “Dancing with the Stars,” will dance the salsa.
* Former boxer Joe Frazier will sing rhythm & blues.
* Model Bridget Marquardt will perform trapeze stunts with ex-Cirque du Soleil acrobats.
* Sheila E. will juggle with The Flying Karamazov Brothers.
* Boxer Roy Jones, Jr. will rap.
* “Spokesmodel” Cindy Margolis will perform magic. Can she make my TV disappear while this show is on?
* Mya will tap-dance. Yes, a broadcast television network will devote some of its primetime air to an actress/singer you’ve heard of but can’t quite place tap-dancing.
* Actor/radio DJ/reality-show addict Danny Bonaduce will ride a unicycle with members of The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Oh, geez – bring Mya back.
* “Pop culture personality” Ben Stein will dance The Jitterbug. Bring back Bonaduce.
This shouldn’t be allowed to happen in a nation where firearms are readily available.