MagneticMediaFed

One year ago I spent the entire upfronts week feverishly clicking my refresh button looking for the latest information on the coming fall television season. What a difference a year makes. After the 100-day writer’s strike left most of the network’s schedules flopping on the dock like a hooked but forgotten flounder, no one (not the advertisers, not the networks, and certainly not the audience) seems particularly thrilled about the network announcements (or lack of announcements) for their future plans. This week is, after all, FOR the advertisers, and since network television is no longer viewed as being all that lucrative those advertising dollars are looking for something more than the typical slate of potential prime-time disasters. Take ABC, for example. The network plans on adding a whopping TWO new programs to its fall prime-time line-up, choosing instead to bring back almost all of it’s fall ‘08 slate (minus, Carpoolers, Cavemen and October Road). But who cares, especially this early in the process? More after the jump…

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Let me describe my current situation: I have just moved from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee. To make the move as streamlined and economical as possible I opted to leave behind several things. One of those things was my trusty 20″ Panasonic tube standard-definition television. Televisions are (or rather, were) quite the bulky piece of equipment. Because of this decision I have been keeping myself up-to-date in the world of televised media by watching whatever I can on my computer. Because we now live in a world where there are myriad legal (and perhaps a few legally dubious) options for television content on computers I have to assume that this is not a method of consumption unique to me and my current situation. I have to assume many thousands (millions?) of viewers watch video on their computers or, frankly, it probably wouldn’t exist.

This leads me to a very interesting development that I believe to be unique to the process of watching video on a computer monitor. Tonight I was catching the most recent episode of FX’s stellar drama The Riches when the screen dipped to black where the commercial would have been had I been watching on legit cable (let’s just gloss over the fact that it wasn’t). Well, because one sits so much closer to the screen while watching video on a computer, when that video dips to black it is not unlikely for the viewer to catch a rather revealing glimpse of themselves in the reflection of the suddenly black monitor. It is one of those rare moments when one sees themselves as they actually are, completely unencumbered by pretense. For me, during this episode of The Riches I two-times caught myself grinning like an idiot as the drama of the episode escalated to the point of cliffhanger just before cutting away to commercial. It is rare in life to see oneself with this degree of utter realism. In the morning, while looking into the mirror while brushing our teeth we know what to expect. It’s an image we’ve seen millions of times before. In the presence of cameras we may believe the image being captured is reality, but more often than not what we see is the adoptive presence of someone who knows they are about to be seen and recorded.

But those unexpected flashes of black, where we suddenly see ourself as an active participant, that’s where the truth lies. Smiles, grins, looks of horror, boredom, curiosity, these are the most accurate reviews for any program on the air. Next time you start streaming something to your computer, don’t be surprised if what you see if yourself.

USA Today recently named Britney Spears as “Celebrity of the Year.” If you were unsure up to this point just how awful 2007 was, this should be the last piece of evidence needed. How this decision was reached seems dubious at best and probably should be avoided at all costs. Whatever the methodology, the result is sadly spot-on, and goes to great lengths to not only summarize 2007 but the entire decade.

To really understand why 2007 was the way that it was, and why it is the year that best represents the aughts, we need to revisit the previous decade, some would say the better decade: the nineties. More specifically, we should take the Way-Back Machine to see where our “Celebrity of the Year” was so that we can better understand where she is now and by extension where we are now. If we focus primarily on mass culture, Britney Spear completely embodies what we often think of as being “the nineties” (or at least late-nineties) despite the fact that she didn’t really explode in the music industry until 1999. Because of this we have to acknowledge that cultural eras aren’t particularly concerned with the Gregorian calendar. Need proof, look at that photo of you from 1991. Those tight-rolled jeans and neon bracelets scream 80s far more than grungy 90s. More after the jump…

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First of all, I feel I’m not going to be able to write nearly as much in this post as I should given the amount of notes that I’ve been jotting down over the past three days. I suppose that’s the problem with not posting everyday. Ideas build up and then the getting them out begins to seem overly daunting for something that’s suppose to be fun.

But anyway.

Tonight, MTV will be airing a documentary called Iraq Uploaded at 8:00pm EDT. The subject of the doc is about the videos that have been uploaded to sites like YouTube by soldiers who were or are currently in Iraq. More so, its a doc about unfiltered news video (I haven’t seen it yet, but this article does a good job of setting things up).

Thanks to the ease of both uploading and watching web-video, it has suddenly become possible for people all over the world (specifically in war zones) to shoot and distribute first-hand accounts of these wars– sometimes (oftentimes) in a way that is exponentially more raw than anything the nightly news would dare broadcast. Keep reading by clicking below…

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Here is an e-mail I received Friday afternoon:

Here’s the deal. Sci Fi.com has posted a pilot episode of The Amazing Screw On Head on its website. Its an animated show based on a comic by Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy) produced by Bryan Fuller (creator of Wonderfalls) and features the voice work of Paul Giamatti as the title character. Its damn hilarious and looks amazing to boot. Now here is where the readership of MMF comes in. After you watch the pilot, Sci Fi wants everyone to fill out a survey about the pilot and based on viewer reaction, they will then decide whether or not to pick up the show and make it into a series. Crazy, no? The suvey itself is only 9 questions and takes about a minute to fill out. So please, for the love of God, post about this on MMF Rick. This might be the only chance I get to care about the Sci Fi channel.

Also, it might be wise to remind people that the pauses in the show (I thought my comp froze) are just where the commercials would be. It is a full 20 minute pilot.

http://www.scifi.com/amazingscrewonhead/

AK

Who am I to say no to that?

So I went to the site and watched the pilot. It was good. It was really good. Its the type of animated program that is cool for the same reasons Batman the Animated Series was cool, but funnier. In fact, it continued to get funnier as it went along. After the first minute or so it just appears to be an action show (though with an amazing look and feel), but then there’s this monkey with a gun and…

Look, just check it out.

Though what struck me about this whole thing is that it seems illustrate the exact trend Chuck Klosterman wrote about in this month’s Esquire (even if his take on the issue was suspect at best).

I’m curious what everyone else makes of this idea– the idea being that of media companies attempting to give the people EXACTLY what they want instead of just guessing blindly.

More from me after some sleep (and some rock and roll).