MagneticMediaFed

It’s Thanksgiving (at least it was an hour and twenty minutes ago) and I’ve been wracking my brain all day about something I could be thankful for this fall in the television universe. The fact of the matter is there’s nothing there, so I was just going to forgo it.

Then I got off work (yeah, I had to work… blarg!) and went over to a friend’s place to drink pumpkin ale. While we surfed the channel guide looking for something to watch we ended up on HBO On-Demand (a place a lot of us end up when we are confused and in need of comfort) and as most voyages to this, the queen-bee of the instant-access universe, end we settled on watching The Wire — season three to be specific.

I’m going to keep this short: The Wire season three is THE SINGLE GREATEST SEASON OF TELEVISION EVER. We watched three episodes, each better than the previous. As I watched I tried to figure why this show was so much better than everything else. My conclusion was in the obvious stuff (the characters are brilliantly written and fun to watch, the arcs are subtle but important and long-running, the plotting is brilliant and plays better with each viewing), but also in the fact that each season of The Wire, while all set within the same universe, is completely different from the previous season. A character that may have been a supporting role in season two might be the primary focus of season four. Great dramas on the networks, like Friday Night Lights, have had brilliant first seasons but then had no where left to go. The Wire is one of the few shows ever that has realized there can be dramatic success built around original plot, not simply character and repetition. Less than two months left until season five!

Two great scenes from season three:
A forty degree day
The brown paper bag

Better to burn out or to fade away?

This thing is killing me. We all knew the writers’ strike was going to be a major inconvenience, but I never suspected it would have the effect it’s currently having on my psyche. Ever since the writers took to the picket line three weeks ago, television has kind of sucked, and not just because my beloved late-night shows immediately went into reruns. Despite the fact that we’ve still been getting new scripted episodes these past few weeks, the strike has, in a way, highlighted just how solidly mediocre this fall has been. The new series, while marked by very few cancellations (honestly, who would have thought Cavemen would still be airing new episodes three weeks into November?), have generated no significant hits (with the exception of Samantha Who?, but it’s hard to say if it is the show that is successful or its Dancing With the Stars lead-in) while our favorite returning series from years past have either been wildly inconsistent (How I Met Your Mother), shockingly awful (Weeds) or just kind of a mess (Friday Night Lights). To top it all off the two series that have been consistantly good and occasionally great in The Office and 30 Rock are the first to run out of episodes. The whole mess can put your average television viewer into something of an existential conundrum: if interesting stories can vanish as quickly as they appear, what’s the point of it all? More after the jump…

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Pic via Flickr

I’m going to forgo the usual episode recaps today as I 1) haven’t actually watched anything from last night and 2) feel like dedicating some space to the WGA strike as tomorrow night will mark the first significant casualty of the work-stoppage. Thursday’s episode of The Office entitle “The Deposition” will be the last new episode we can expect from the show until the strike ends. The Office was one of the first series to close up shop due in large part to the fact that a good chunk of the cast happens to also write for the show.

The Futon Critic has a really handy guide with the amount of episodes each show has left to air before going dark. Most of the networks biggest series will have trouble making it past the first week in December (which, luckily for them, is traditionally dark). We should expect little (if any) scripted programming come 2008.

In the meantime, treat yourself to the endless supply of strike blogs popping up on the internet, the most informative being the guild’s official blog United Hollywood. Here are some others:

Late Show Writers on Strike
Scribe Vibe (Variety)
Show Tracker (LA Times)

One last note: since the major sticking point for this strike is writer’s compensation for ad-supported material posted on the web, I would encourage everyone to avoid using the networks’ video services until a deal is made.

Today a deluxe DVD Box Set of My So-Called Life, the apparent king of teen dramas, is being released. Being far more interested in movies and getting speeding tickets in 1995 I have never seen a single frame of this series. So I’m going to use this forum to ask for your opinion. Is this show worth my $40? Years ago, based exclusively on being unemployed, completely bored and freezing I decided to buy the Freaks and Geeks box set and it was one of the best purchases I’ve made this decade. Will My So-Called Life deliver the same television bliss? Did you watch the show when it originally aired? Have you seen it since? I’m curious as it’s definitely one of those “Brilliant But Cancelled” shows you often hear about, but is it really that good?

Let me know in the comments.

You know that guy at the rock show, the one that’s maybe pushing 40 and has lost a good deal of his hair? He’s a good guy. He likes to rock, and rocking out is all that matters at a rock show. The problem is he also wants to be cool, and sometimes rocking out isn’t cool — which is what makes it cool in the first place (rock and roll is very complicated). But see, coolness is and will always be based on the degree of effort put into being cool. Think about it. All of the coolest people you know, or even don’t know but know of, those people don’t try to be cool, they just are cool. And you know some people who are kind of cool, but seem to want to be cool perhaps more than they really need, and it’s a shame because they could have been so much cooler if they just quit focusing their attention so much on the coolness of those around them. More after the jump…

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I don’t want to get too political here, but I just finished watching this week’s Meet The Press (my favorite of the Sunday morning Yack-shows) and Tim Russert had on President Clinton as a guest. During the conversation the issue of torture came up. On a previous appearance Clinton had said he supported sanctioned exceptions to the country’s current anti-torture policy. Here, he said he had changed his mind on the issue — and this is where the connection to television starts to take place.

Clinton spoke of the “Jack Bauer” scenario. On 24, he pointed out, whenever the President gives the OK for Jack to torture a suspect, the result is always negative for the President and for the country, but when Jack acts alone, knowing the consequences of his actions, things tend to work out for the best (or whatever definition of “best” you want to go with when nuclear annihilation tends to be the consequence). In short, Clinton thinks that a country shouldn’t sanction torture, but if the agent actually involved with a situation chooses to take action for the greater good, knowing the legal repercussions of those actions, it might not be a bad thing.

Policy aside, it’s always interesting to hear someone in politics so directly references the actions of a fictional television character. The question I wish Russert had followed up with would be whether President Clinton thought last season of 24 was as lame as most of the rest of us. I’m also curious if he thinks the relocation of the series to Washington D.C. in the upcoming seventh season is a good move. (It is.)

I assume many, many people, tuned in to the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight to see what they would air of the “multimedia manifesto” sent to the network by Cho Seung-Hui, the man who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday. I was one of the people who watched.

I’m no ethicist, but it seems journalistically irresponsible to air the ravings of a madman. Yes, even if the video is delivered to your doorstep. Would NBC (or any network, really) air a tape if it was sent to them from Osama bin Laden? Actually, they probably would.

I guess that’s the big question. At what point is a news organization providing legitimate information and at what point are they giving a platform to someone who absolutely doesn’t deserve it?

I’m of the opinion that in the current climate of “all media all the time,” everything should – and eventually will – be released for public consumption. That being said the platform has become more important than ever. I’m not saying that NBC shouldn’t release this content, but television is the widest possible audience and is a closed format. The viewer doesn’t have the choice of to what they’re being exposed. They either watch or don’t. Releasing the content on the web, however, gives the viewers and users alike the option of seeking out the information that they want without giving the creator of that content the satisfaction of knowing that the message was carried out as planned.

The thing is, there is certainly news in this story. The fact that those two hours between the first shooting and the second are now accounted for is worth broadcasting the story. But that story can be told without, in essence, giving a murderer an audience of twelve million people.

I’m curious what the newscasts would have looked like if the package was sent to all three major networks? Would some have taken the stance that they wouldn’t air the photos and videos?

Decide for yourself if you want to read (and see) more at MSNBC.com

Now that baseball season is in full force, and now that I’m watching games during every free moment I have (right now I’m watching last night’s Mets victory on a replay), I’ve started to notice something about baseball broadcasts that isn’t sitting well with me: the on-screen scoreboard.

Here in New York, the Met games are broadcast on Sportsnet New York. Last season they put the scores in the upper left hand corner — where a score should, nay, MUST be in any baseball broadcast. This season they followed ESPN, FSN, and recently YES (the Yankees broadcasting station) by replacing the very practical score-box with a score bar that stretches across the top of the screen. Here is why I hate the bar:

Baseball is a static sport. There isn’t a lot of movement. Because of this you can place the on-screen score in a such a position that it stays completely out of the way in 90% of all situations. The upper-left hand corner of your screen is that location. Think about it. Most of the game is shot from behind the pitcher. He is in the lower left and the batter is usually in the upper right. That upper left hand corner is completely empty.

The bar, on the other hand, covers the entire top of the screen and shrinks your viewing area because they’d never frame the shots in such a way that the score would run over a player or the action.

I asked a friend at work why this was. His response made perfect sense, “Now that the games are being broadcast in HD,” he said, “the wide-screen format doesn’t work with the box… only the bar.” He went on to explain that having the score box on a wide-screen TV would actually position it NOT in the upper left hand corner, but almost a third of the way across the frame (so that it works on both HD and SD TVs).

I now understand “why” but it still doesn’t make it any better. The bar is good for speed-based sports like football and basketball and NASCAR. Baseball should stick with the box. Maybe once everyone is watching TV in 16:9 they’ll be able to return the box to its former glory: in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Yes, that 2032 season is going to be so sweet! GO METS!

It’s 1pm on a Wednesday so far the only television I’ve watched this week was Monday’s How I Met Your Mother. This is problematic for reasons two. 1) Watching television is kinda sorta necessary for me post on this site (something I enjoy doing). 2) With each day that goes by the list gets longer and the likelihood for watching these programs gets slimmer and slimmer.

The problem is (in addition to having been sick for what seems like weeks and just wanting to go to sleep) we’re at that part of the TV season when things are starting to drag. Let’s think about this. Since September we’ve all ready seen eighteen episodes of The Office. Heroes has aired seventeen episodes. That, my friends, is a lot of television, but the season isn’t even close to ending. Isn’t that right — month of May?

I think we can all agree that 13 is the right number of episodes for any television season. It’s long. It allows time for significant character development and the development of complex plot lines. When you start getting longer than thirteen, you run the risk is losing your audience — not because the audience can’t take it (history has shown us they can), but because people can grow restless. People like me.

The fact of the matter is while I enjoy watching television during this time of the year (it is cold as hell outside), its starting to get a little harder to press that PLAY button. It doesn’t help that February sweeps (which ends today) is absolutely unrelenting (American Idol thrice weekly!).

Look, I’ll watch the programming (natch), but network television really needs to cut down the orders on some of these shows.

Television isn’t much of a director’s medium. This is due to many factors, not the least of which being television’s need for uniformity and the production schedule being so tight. Still, we’re starting to see more and more episodes of our favorite shows being directed by some of the more prominent filmmakers (or perhaps more accurately, filmmakers with rabid fans).

Take this season of The Office. A few weeks back Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day) directed an episode. Last night Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) was at the helm with J.J. Abrams to follow next week. Upon hearing this my initial reaction is always, “Oh yeah? Awesome!” or “Oh, that’s going to be so great!” Then I watch the episode, and yes, it’s frequently both awesome and great but it has absolutely nothing to do with the direction. Any competent filmmaker directing The Office lives and dies by the script and the performances of the cast.

Take for example, last night’s episode. What was I expecting? Should captain Mal have walked in, fired his laser gun, grabbed Pam and then run off to the parking lot where they board the Serenity and take off for worlds unknown? Hardly. Guest direction sounds like it’ll be loads of fun for us, but the truth is that it’s really just loads of fun for them.

This past weekend my half-roommate and I were watching some old episodes of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Those two shows succeeded for many reasons. Like The Office and Arrested Development a lot of the praise should be placed squarely at the feet of the cast. Judd Apatow may not have ever figured out how to create a television show that wouldn’t get cancelled, but he has developed a keen eye for actors and casting. Along with Seth Rogen, one of his greatest finds was Jason Segel, who played Nick on Freaks and Geeks, Eric on Undeclared and is currently seen as Marshall in the exceptionally charming (and often downright hilarious) How I Met Your Mother.

While watching last night’s HIMYM something struck me about Segel and his presence on the show: it’s solidly underwhelming. This isn’t to say that he isn’t great on it. He plays the character as good as anyone would, but that’s just it: anyone could play that character. Well perhaps not anyone. Tom Sizemore, for example, would be horrible in that role. Marshall needs to only be adorable and lovable. Segel can pull this off in spades, but it hardly utilizes his most significant asset: his bizarre and sometimes freakish intensity.

What’s funny is that his three most significant roles have all been essentially the role of “Boyfriend.” The difference with his Marshall character is he’s madly in love and that love is being reciprocated. In Freaks… Nick loved Lindsay more than Lindsay loved (or even liked) him. In Undeclared Eric loved Lizzie to the point of obsession all while she was in the process of dumping him. Jason Segel needs that edge. He can deliver the creepiest and most hilariously penetrating stare you’ve ever seen. It’s a silent and completely internal performance. Which is all the more fascinating when paired against these over-the-top moments of compulsive energy (like Nick singing “Lady” to Lindsay in his parent’s basement or Eric manically assembling valentines at a copy shop for Lizzie).

How I Met Your Mother has given Segel some room to show Marshall’s crazier, more intense, side (last week’s episode featured a great sequence where he blackmailed a seven-year-old out of his pudding cup). Unfortunately, more often than not he’s being relegated to the silly — not a terrible fate, but in a cast as great as theirs its a shame he can’t let loose more often.

Ten days ago (or so) I posted about how Nielsen Media Research was finally going to start monitoring college dorm rooms. I found this news amazing as I was under the impression that kids in dorm room actually liked watching television. But what do I know? I don’t work for Nielsen Media Research.

Well the first wave of numbers are in, and guess what? The ratings for several “on the bubble” shows 50% increase in viewers in the 18-24 demographic. Obviously this is great news, but its also like trying to treat a severed limb with a band-aid. The television ratings system is so arcane and inaccurate its frightening that these numbers are affecting board room decisions.

I have an interesting solution to the problem. The idea initially came to me while reading the cover story in this week’s New York Magazine. It’s about the new generation gap that exists between those people who are just older than me and those who are just younger than me and their desire or lack of desire for privacy. Basically, the average plugged-in high school student is blogging their life and posting Flickr streams and a are, in a way, archiving their existence. Privacy isn’t a concern.

I understand this lifestyle and embrace it. Some would argue that the more personal information you give out the more advertisers will try to target you. Well, good. We’re going to be slammed by advertising one way or another, so why not have it targeted.

Here’s an example. Last.fm allows users to track everything they play through their iTunes and then creates a personalized radio station based on the types of songs of which you like to listen. This could be perceived of as being kind of creepy, and that’s really the whole point of the NYMag piece. Those who use technology like this get it, love it and wouldn’t have it any other way. Those who don’t see it as a breech of privacy.

Well, what if you could voluntarily have your cable box or computer logged by Nielsen in exchange for, say, a break on your broadband bill? I’d imagine they’d end up with a pretty decent sample size (and one obviously comprised of those viewers who are more likely to watch content away from the typical appointment television framework.

The problem, as I see it, is in trying to collect data from people who don’t want to give it up. Web 2.0 works* because the users are submitting the content, and those who are submitting the most content are reaping the biggest rewards. In the world of television, those people who allow their patterns to be tracked could be rewarded with higher ratings for their favorite shows (even if the country, as a whole isn’t watching those shows). Shouldn’t the people who are giving the data, the people who are basically saying, “Find a better way to advertise to me,” be the ones who control what is actually ON television?

I’m ready to sign up.

Web 2.0 might not actually work

A friend has been living with my roommate and I for the past month. Often when I wake up in the morning and go over to the television to start working my way through the previous night’s DVR’d content, I find the cable box tuned to The Weather Channel. To me this is endlessly fascinating. The Weather Channel harkens back to a simpler time when “having cable” meant tens of channels, not hundreds. In 1987 having a channel that ONLY gave you the weather seemed both completely asinine and ridiculously posh. Today TV-snobs talk down to their less fortunate brethren by saying things like, “Eh, I’ll just check it out On-Demand,” yet back in the 80s a real jerkface might say something more along the lines of, “What’s that? The eleven o’clock news? No thanks, I can get the weather anytime because I get THE WEATHER CHANNEL.” (It sounds better if you imagine that guy with velcro shoes and wearing two neck-ties.)

But that was then.

Today The Weather Channel is a prime component of any cable systems and yet it is almost completely unnecessary. Almost. Sure, there are people whose livelihood is impacted directly by sudden changes in the climate (farmers, people who do a lot of traveling by plane, polar bears etc.), but for the rest of us how hard is it to find out what the weather is going to be? Unless you’re a really big fan of weather-men (or persons) the internet has made the televised forecast obsolete. Who cares what some guy in front of a green-screen has to say about low-pressure systems when I can go to Weather.Com* and not only get the forecast for next ten hours broken down into highs/lows/precipitation but the next ten days as well. Why would I want to have to wait around, reading screen after screen of dew-point-ratios** for this information to come up while listening to soft rock?

Whenever I go back home and visit my extended relatives, there are two things I can guarantee being on the television in my grandparents living room: Wheel of Fortune and The Weather Channel. I can’t say for certain if their frequent viewing of The Weather Channel is really to find out what the weather is going to be like (often it is, as snow and ice seems to have a tendency to favor more rural communities) or simply because flipping on The Weather Channel is an easy way to say, “I have no idea what to watch and this soft rock is quite pleasant.” In a way, the channel has ceased being the definitive location for weather information (was it ever?) and has become the Flying Toasters of the new millennium. It’s the perfect solution for that person who simply can’t sit in a quiet room. As a tool its utterly obsolete. As a friend, its right there by your side.

MAX: Your attention span is, like, half a music video.

OTIS: There are many dull parts in the music video…
-Kicking and Screaming

While reading an article in Wired magazine about the slumping music industry, I started to think about television (that’s usually how things work, right?). The article initially discussed how 21 of the top-100 selling records of all time were produced between 1996 and 2000, and how this period of time was so ridiculously profitable for the music industry they actually thought this was the norm. Yes, sales have been down every year since N*Sync released “No Strings Attached,” but the decline isn’t so noticeable if you remove those last five years of the 90s from the equation. This raises an interesting question: why, exactly, were those years so damn HUGE for music.

My theory (glad you asked), is that music sales were driven almost exclusively by media synergy at its peak. More specifically: the late 90s juggernaut that was MTV. This, as most people my age would agree, is frequently referred to as “The time when MTV started to suck.” Of course, it didn’t suck for millions and millions of pre-tween girls who camped out in fromt of TRL [note: I almost typed URL, because I'm a total nerd] and quickly absorbed the endless barrage of videos, making-of-videos, behind-the-scenes-of-the-making-of-videos, and retrospectives-on-the-behind-the-scenes-the-making-of-the-video, all while hosted by the subjects of the videos in order to sell THE RECORDS. And everyone bought it. The brilliance, and what gets me back to my original point, is that MTV at the time (really, since they launched), where the number one purveyors of content for kids with A.D.D. MTV catered to an audience with short attention spans and used that clout to move units.

But then something happened: short attention span content (the content loved by the little ones — and many adults as well) jumped platforms. When the internet started to soar at the beginning of the century, it stole those viewers looking for quick fixes. In turn, MTV seemed to have completely (and ironically) given up on music. Now, they’re almost exclusively a “reality” network — and that makes sense. If you want to watch a three minute music video you turn to YouTube or iTunes or MySpace any of the myriad places one can turn if they crave short video content designed to sell records (many records, not specific records). Where you don’t go is MTV.

This echoes a larger trend in television: it is no longer a medium for the easily distracted. Television has become, strangely, a medium that demands attention. Shows are more involving and, dare I say, less passive. This is an evolution of the medium, and one we probably wouldn’t have expected ten years ago. BUT. If you’re easily distracted, why wouldn’t you spend your time clicking away on the web… not buying records en mass.

When I first moved to New York City I had few possessions. I was sleeping on the floor by night and playing solitaire and listening to internet radio courtesy or an errant wifi signal by day. It was also the dead of winter, and I had no job. I would have killed to have had cable, let alone an actual television in which to watch the cable programming. At the time, my day was spent online going from media outlet to media outlet looking for whatever content had been uploaded for streaming the night before. I watched everything The Daily Show posted (which amounts to most of the good bits from the show), listened to just about every Terry Gross interview of the 21st century (and many of the 20th’s as well), and checked out whatever video-of-the-day was popular at CNN. There was enough content to keep me from going crazy, but hardy enough to stay entertained (that’s why I’d go to Barnes and Noble and read graphic novels without paying for them — devilish!).

Today, things have shifted in favor of the poor-kid with broadband. Even without cable television, there’s enough video online right now to completely pass as a TV junkie, and I’m not just talking about YouTube. There’s more on internet TV (and cartoons) by clicking below…

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