Television

Half-time controversy

February 11, 2005

This year's Super Bowl half-time show is causing complaints for the FCC. By Monday the FCC had received four complaints about the half-time show amongst 33 comments overall. Last year's Janet Jackson half-time show generated only three complaints compared to the four about this year's show. According to MediaWeek people complained about the reference to California grass in McCartneys' song, suggesting it is a reference to marijuana and two others felt the show was boring or unimpressive.

We the people

February 10, 2005

It is not too uncommon to see the West Wing television show have some important points about governance and the process of governing. With the help of Lawrence Lessig last evening's show made a very important point about constitutional democracries. It is the culture not the document that matters. There is a critical lesson here for Iraq. One country, group of people, military, etc., no matter how well-meaning can choose the form of government for another people. Perhaps the most important phrase in the United States Constitution is "We the People," not you the former subjects of an evil dictator, not you the people of China, but We the People.

Super Bowl

February 7, 2005

As has been noted elsewhere, yesterday's Super Bowl had by far the best halftime show. There is some irony that a year ago CBS was exposed to one of the worst ever FOX, which is much more likely in general to have some questionable programming, has the best ever.

On the other hand, perhaps scared away by the titillating half time show last year the advertisers were anemic at best. Ford's Mustang Convertable and FedEx's Ten things required in ads weren't bad, not great either, CareerBuilder.com's ad(s) might have been better if it was one instead of a repetitious series that was old by the second version of the ad. And what is it with the Olympus creative team, I mean photo-copy team, whose ads are amongst the most blatant wanna-be-rip-off ads. Great way to launch a new product.

A new low

February 3, 2005

The first season of The Apprentice was pretty good. The second not so bad. The third is rapidly becoming a bad melodrama. Now comes word that in addition to casting for The Apprentice 4 and The Apprentice 5, NBC executives are looking for people apply for The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.

What's next The Apprentice Dennis Kozlowski or should we just have The Apprentice Enron Eddition? Does the fact that a business leader doing time in prison for crimes that involve violating the public trust not bother any of the executives at NBC? Maybe somebody should be looking into the finances there, or even at General Electric? If they openly promote dishonesty and encourage financial shenanigans perhaps we should be taking a second look at the financials.

More TiVo bad news

January 6, 2005

An announcement that has been coming for a while finally arrived today. The bad news is that DirecTV is making the switch from TiVo to their own brand of DVR. The good news is that there are at least a couple of more years for the DirecTV TiVo boxes. The bad news is it might cause TiVo not to enhance their TiVo/DirecTV boxes which are already lagging sell behind their second series of boxes for other customers.

Maybe Fear Factor isn't so bad after all...

January 6, 2005

Sometimes it takes a truly terrible experience to make one appreciate the mediocre. Until a few minutes ago I thought that Fear Factor ranked amongst the worst of shows on television. But the new series that the Boston Globe calls mediocre sets a new low. Wickedly Perfect has an incredible power. After just 10 minutes the prospect of lying down in the middle of Interstate 15 on a busy holiday weekend seems marvelous. At least it will mean the show will be over. My prediction -and they are so often correct this should really matter - this show will sink in the ratings faster than the XFL.

Nonfiction TV?

December 28, 2004

So here's a bit about a pet peeve of mine for a while. CourtTV bills itself as "The Investigation Channel" and purports to be a channel of non-fiction programming. One of these non-fiction programs is Psychic Detectives. It is nothing but fantasy and "The Investigation Channel" does nothing to investigate the absurd claims of these crackpots. It would be wonderful to see CourtTV really take on the mantle of being an investigative channel and pursue the likes of psychic detectives as well as countless other money grubbing crooks out there. Where to begin how about kinesiology for a place to start after debunking the psychic detectives? The really sad part is on the National Geographic channel is Seconds from Disaster which does an excellent job of doing real research into incidents and finding out what happened in those critical seconds (and minutes) before disaster.

A last NBC Olympic gripe....

August 25, 2004

In what will probably be my last gripe about the terrible job NBC did in botching the Olympics.... Where did they find the sing-song bozo for the sailing coverage. I'd love to watch some of it but getting anything meaningful from the snippets with the TV muted is next to impossible. The only thing worse is listening to NBC's commentator.

Just how stupid do they think we are?

August 22, 2004

NBC just set a new record with their announcement tonight that they'll bring the lucky viewers "uninterrupted" coverage of the men's 100 meter finals. WHAT--- You mean you're not going to show a commercial in the midst of a race that is run in less than 10 seconds? Let's see it's only a 12 hour tape delay, but you'll be so gracious to bring us 10 seconds "uninterrupted". Amazing. Thanks NBC. I take back all the things I said before about how terrible your coverage has been. Since it is a political year maybe we can vote in the BBC to replace NBC... it wouldn't be the worst constitutional amendment being proposed.

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