Primetime TV
The Dangers of DVR with Live Television
Friday, May 25th, 2007We recorded the American Idol finale last night on our DVR, and watched it back about a half hour after it started. Great show. Excellent musical acts, such as Tony Bennett, Gladys Knight, and Smokey Robinson (who, I’m sorry, looks like he went to a plastic surgeon one day and said, “I’d like to look surprised for the rest of my life.”). Anyway, the show ran it’s allotted two hours. At the end, they went to commercial, and when the commerical was over, the recording ended! They didn’t announce the winner!!!
Turns out the show ran about 6 minutes long, so anyone who DVR’ed, TiVo’ed or otherwise recorded it using some automated, Guide-based system entirely missed the announcement of the winner. We had to go out on the web & find out who won (for those who still don’t know, it was Jordin Sparks).
Of course, through the wonder of YouTube, I can watch those last 6 minutes at my convenience. And now, so can you:
First of all, it’s worth noting that more people voted for this year’s American Idol than voted for George W. Bush for President in 2004. About 10 million more!
Given the final two, I think it was the right choice. I also think it doesn’t matter much at all. Last season produced three big stars (Taylor Hicks, Katherine McPhee, and Chris Daughtry) and two smaller ones (Elliot Yamin and Bucky Covington). This season will produce four big stars (Jordin Sparks, Blake Lewis, Melinda Doolittle, and Lakisha Jones), two smaller ones (Chris Richardson and Phil Stacy) and one bizarre one (Sanjaya Malakar). The winner has a small advantage with promotion, but not that much.
That said, if you ask me who the best singer was, though, I think my vote would have gone to Melinda. C’est la vie…
Categories: Primetime TV | 1 Comment »
The Unluckiest Game Show in History…
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
My wife and I are big fans of the Deal or No Deal game show, despite Defective Yeti’s accurate assessment of the show:
A contestant comes on and is given an amount of money between one cent and a million bucks. That’s it. That’s the entire program. Everything else is suspenseful music and reaction shots.
Lately, though, I’ve found myself rooting for the show itself, and for it’s host, Howie Mandel, rather than for the contestants.
As the Yeti points out above, there is no real way for the contestant to lose. Everyone walks away with some amount of money between $.01 and $1 million. But the show is trying like hell to create those “very special moments,” and every time they do, it falls flat on it’s face.
There was the special Valentine’s Day show, where everything was in pink and someone proposed marriage to the contestant. I think she walked away with $50. There was Ladies Night, where all the cases were held by men and the contestants were female. Again, no one won a significant amount of money. A couple of weeks ago, they had their 100th Episode Special, with dozens of former contestants in the audience and guest spots by some celebrities (including Jay Leno & Regis Philbin, who pooh-pooh’ed the 100th episode as no big deal…). They picked their favorite past contestant (who won $10 the first time) to play the game again. Big dramatic build up, right? In his second chance, he won $50.
But the ultimate blow was this past week. In a “Salute to Heroes” show, they had Wesley Autrey as the contestant. Wesley, you’ll remember, dove under a New York City subway train to save a total stranger who had fallen onto the tracks. President Bush called him a national hero in the most recent State of the Union. Models and audience members alike were in tears over the story. He started picking cases, and eventually worked the bank offer up to more than $300,000. But no matter what they offered him, he kept saying “No Deal” in hopes of winding up with one million dollars. Eventually, he picked the million dollar case, and wound up leaving with $25. Both Howie Mandel and the audience were so stunned by his lack of success (and his unwillingness to take the money and run), that there wasn’t even that much of a crowd reaction when Howie revealed that Chrysler had given him a free car in addition to his “winnings.”
Next week, they’re going to do the entire show on some unsuspecting contestant’s front lawn. Another “must see” episode. Another chance to give away a couple of bucks…
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Some Thoughts on Idol Gives Back
Friday, April 27th, 2007OK, I’ll admit it – my wife and I are American Idol fans. For what it’s worth, we’re not Fanjaya fans; we’re the kind that actually looks for some high quality music from the contestants. So there’s that…
Anyway, last night’s show, Idol Gives Back, was clearly something special. It’s great to see a pop culture behemoth finally do something with it’s marketing potential other than just selling soap. And of course, when the show was over, they got some help from my family as well.
The show was obviously designed to make us think, but the thing it made me think about most rather surprised me.
We’ve all seen many (too many? not enough?) pictures of the African poor – the young mothers dying of AIDS, the children living in mosquito-ravaged conditions, dying of malaria, malnutrition, or just basic neglect. We’ve also seen many pictures of the American poor – particularly since Hurricane Katrina created so many more of them on a single day.
This is the first time in my memory, though, that these two sets of images were set side by side in this way. Watching it, I couldn’t help but notice how much better off the American poor were than the African poor.
The African children were dressed in rags. The American children were wearing clean clothes. The African children had crooked or missing teeth. One of the American children was wearing braces on his teeth, and several were wearing eyeglasses. The African food distribution center was a large room, empty except for a large table in the middle, where dozens of kids were each given what appeared to be a clear broth with some kind of meat in it (hard to tell exactly what it was). The American food distribution center was a modern warehouse with food stacked on palettes, literally reaching up to the ceiling. The facility was staffed by dozens of volunteers, who distributed nutritionally balanced grocery bags to hundreds of families at extremely low costs (e.g., $1/bag). The African school was a group of children in a relatively empty room with a few adults, sharing materials. The American school was well-lit, fully furnished with desks, bookshelves, educational materials on the walls, books, pencils, etc.
This is my third draft of this post, because I’m desperately trying to avoid minimizing the plight of the American poor. I realize that they’re struggling, and acknowledge that they need help to achieve the very basics of life (and, indeed, they received some of my help last evening). What I’m discussing here is the contrast between the two. When discussing the American poor, the goal is usually to elicit sympathy in some form or another, and so there’s never a mention of how much better off they are than those in other places. But the fact remains, each of the African kids in those film clips would trade places with any of the Americans in an instant, and consider themselves blessed to be living with so many riches.
One of the great things about America, I believe, is our insistence on raising the bar. We don’t compare our quality of life to other countries and then rest on our laurels because we’re so far ahead. We set high expectations of ourselves based on what the average American has achieved, and then strive to bring those below that average up to par. It’s an attitude that leads to constant improvement and constant growth.
Bashing America has become a bit of a sport lately. Despite this malaise, and despite that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach as I logged on to make my pledge, I must admit that I felt a bit of pride seeping in. Our poor have it rough, but not that rough. And yet still, we rally together to make their lives better. That’s an American ideal that seems to have thrived when many of the others have been so severely tested…
Categories: Money Talk, Primetime TV | 6 Comments »
Some New Steven Wright Jokes
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007I happened to catch him on Letterman’s show tonight. I’ve heard his old stuff so frequently, that it never occurred to me that he’s still writing jokes. Anyway, here are the ones that stuck in my memory. Same old Steven Wright. Absolutely classic:
In school they told me “Practice makes perfect,” and then they told me “Nobody’s perfect,” so I stopped practicing.
Imagine if you could see an itch?
Imagine how weird a phone would look if your mouth were nowhere near your ears?
A friend of mine has a trophy wife, but apparently it wasn’t first place.
Categories: Primetime TV | 1 Comment »
2007 Superbowl Ads
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007For those who dis the commercials in public, but then really want to watch them over & over again in private, here’s a site that contains all the 2007 Superbowl Ads. Go ahead, I won’t tell a soul. I promise…
And as long as I’m here, I might as well run through my own personal awards show:
Funniest Spot goes to the short clip of Oprah & Dave sitting on the couch together. Subtle, but hilarious.
Most Clever goes to the Chevrolet ad, for mixing together all the songs with the Chevy products in them. Although, I gotta admit – the first song I would have thought of if they asked me would have been American Pie (“drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry…”). You think maybe they left it out to avoid mentioning levees post-Katrina? Billy Joel’s got a Chevrolet mention too (Captain Jack: “You got your tapedeck, and your brand new Chevrolet”). Probably too obscure for most people, though…
Most Disturbing was a tie: the naked guys washing cars and the comeover beard dude. Shudder…
Categories: Primetime TV, Sports Talk | 8 Comments »
Go Wil, Go!
Monday, January 8th, 2007I’ve been slowly catching up on blogs this past week, since I was away on vacation at the end of December (how dare the blogosphere not stop updating while I’m away? Now I have all this stuff to read…). Anyway, Wil Wheaton’s blog is always entertaining, but over the last couple of weeks, he’s pointed out some pretty cool stuff:
First, we have Gregory Wester, who scaled a security fence at Raleigh-Durham International Airport at 3:30AM one night, and calmly boarded a Delta 737 jet, which was scheduled to take off at 6:35AM. Authorities arrested him on various charges, and after thinking about it for a while, cancelled the flight & booked all the passengers on other planes. Here’s the money quote:
“It blows my mind that you can’t get 3.5 ounces of toothpaste on a plane,” [said Steve Shaw, 27, a passenger on the plane], “yet somebody can sneak on a plane and take a nap.”
Next, we have the Magic Eye website. This kind of thing was hot for a while when I was a kid, and I remember getting quite good at it, although I wasn’t able to see any of the 3-D images on the computer screen. That could be that I’m so out of practice (it must be 25 years since I last tried), or something to do with looking at the image on a screen and not on paper. Probably the former.
On a somewhat related note, Wil linked to a site called The Image Mosaic, which will let you update dozens of your personal photos, and then use them to re-create another photo. I might try this with various pictures of my kids one day, but the site claims it’s down until February. Check it out, though, the samples give you a good idea of what it (claims it) can do.
And then finally, we have Wil’s review of the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m not sure if I blogged about this before or not, but rather than shunning his iconic early role as Wesley Crusher on ST:TNG, Wil has taken a paying gig at tvsquad.com to occasionally review one of the episodes. They make great reading because a) he’s often brutally honest about what he did and didn’t like about the episode, and b) he reviews it both from the perspective of a Star Trek fan, and also as an actor who was there during shooting. So you get to hear both sides of the story, so to speak. Tvsquad.com has a categorization feature that will let you look at all the ST:TNG reviews if you’re so inclined. I recommend you do…
Anyway, that’s the list of cool stuff I found on Wil’s blog lately. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogosphere…
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The Donald Trumps Kramden, Kennedy
Thursday, December 7th, 2006TV Land is airing a five-day special, beginning this Monday, on the Top 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases. Here’s their Top 10:
1. Heeere’s Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
2. One small step for man … (Neil Armstrong)
3. You’re fired! (Donald Trump, The Apprentice)
4. Baby, you’re the greatest. (Ralph Kramden, The Honeymooners)
5. Ask not what your country can do for you … (John F. Kennedy)
6. D’oh! (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)
7. Where’s the beef? (Wendy’s)
8. Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis? (Arnold Drummond, Diff’rent Strokes)
9. Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
10. I’m not a crook (Richard Nixon)
Now, I realize these lists exist solely to promote debate among people who read them, so apologies for taking the bait here, but am I the only one that sees one of these as standing out from the rest like a dead roach on a vanilla ice cream cone? (Steve Walsh: If you’re reading this, thanks – I knew that would come in handy one day). I mean, seriously, is Trump’s “You’re Fired!” from the (now flailing) reality show, The Apprentice, really in the same league as “Ask not what your country can do for you…” and “Yabba dabba do?”
I’m guessing that in 50 years, people will still know where “Yabba Dabba Do” comes from, but The Apprentice will be the answer to a relatively tough trivia question.
Thoughts?
Categories: Primetime TV | 1 Comment »
30 Rock – Starring Tina Fey, Jane Krakowski, and ME!
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006As attentive readers already know, I work at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, which is right next to NBC’s New York headquarters, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Which, of course, is the namesake of the new sitcom, 30 Rock.
So, a couple of months back (before the show had aired), I’m walking into work one morning, and I see a film crew filming a television show. Tina Fey was there, and while I recognized her face right away, I couldn’t place the name until I saw some film equipment with the “30 Rock” label on it. Jane Krakowski was there too, but she’s much thinner (and more blonde) than she was on Ally McBeal, so I had no chance to recognize her. Anyway, I watched the taping for a while, and then headed into the office.
Fast forward to this past Thursday night. I’m watching 30 Rock (my wife and I are fans now), and I recognize the scene I saw filmed as the opening of the show. Knowing where I was & what they were doing at the time, I was able to pick myself out of the crowd. To wit:
Yup, there we are. Tina, Jane and I in our first scene together. I know Tina & Jane are the stars of the show & all, but I don’t think they got my good side. The things us supporting actors put up with…
Categories: Primetime TV | 7 Comments »
John Kerry: Still Crazy After All These Years
Friday, October 13th, 2006I blogged recently about how intelligent Bill Clinton sounds today, now that we’ve spent the last six years listening to George W. Bush mangle the art of public speaking. So imagine my surprise when I watched Bill Maher interview John Kerry on his HBO show, Real Time, and began longing for the content-rich, issue-oriented nature of a good Bush speech? Seriously. Many things have happened since the 2004 election that made me uncomfortable with the fact that I voted for Bush, but listening to this interview removed any “buyer’s remorse” (Maher’s words) that I might have felt. Not that I’m suddenly pleased with Bush’s performance, but I had forgotten just how vapid and digressive Kerry could be.
Let’s walk through it, shall we? News Busters has posted the transcript.
Maher: You took the high road [in the 2004 campaign], and lost. If you took the low road, do you think you would have won?
Kerry: I thought Americans really wanted to hear more about health care, the environment, energy independence, the real war on terror. And, obviously, [Republican] attacks make a difference. The great lesson is, and it’s a lesson for everybody in ’06 is don’t give ’em an instant. Don’t give ’em a breath of daylight, and if I ever do anything again I never will.
Really? Kerry thought we wanted to hear more about health care and the environment? Could have fooled me. I guess he’d claim that the Republican attacks on his character/war record forced him to constantly debate Homeland Security and the War on Terror, and ignore issues like health care and the environment. Fine. Let’s set aside the concept of “controlling the message” as a qualification for being President, and assume that’s true. Then certainly, in an interview with the left-leaning Bill Maher, he’ll take the opportunity to discuss these things, right? All he needs is for Bill to ask him an open ended question, so he can segue into one of these important issues…
Maher: So, what can you do differently when you run in 2008?
There it is! Here comes the platform speech…
Kerry: Look, um, we’re in a very different place from where we were two years ago. We were one year away from the start of the war. Katrina has just torn away the curtain, and all of America is seeing that there clearly isn’t any wizard behind the curtain. This is a failed policy beyond anybody’s imagination. And I think everybody understands that now. We have a Katrina foreign policy. I mean how can these guys possibly protect the United States of America from terrorists when they can’t even protect us from Congressman Mark Foley. These people are incompetent. I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, you have the Dubai ports, you have Katrina where CNN is broadcasting what’s happening at the Superdome, and they’re sitting there trying to pretend to America we didn’t know people were there. Every step you go here, there’s a disconnect to the real lives of Americans, and I think the American people know that now, so that we’re going to have an easier time making a clearer, simpler message.
OK, you know that sound that cartoon characters make after they’ve been hit in the head with a piano, and they need to make all the stars that are circling their heads disappear? Please imagine that sound now, because I don’t know how to spell it.
In one paragraph, Kerry has revitalized every flaw in his failed 2004 campaign. He was asked how he would differ from President Bush, and he spouted forth a laundry list of “bad for Bush” talking points. He never mentioned himself once, never mentioned a policy proposal, and never suggested a course of action. He also strayed away from the facts just enough to give even a below-average Republican spin-meister room to discredit what he’s said (examples: two years ago, we were one year into the war, not one year away from it. Also, Katrina was one year ago, so two years ago, it hadn’t torn anything away from anybody). For a guy who just finished telling us what he thinks we want to hear about, he is sure in no hurry to tell us. And this is what he calls a “clearer, simpler message.” Moving on:
Maher: What’s wrong with being like Western Europe in the ways they’re better than us? For example, you mentioned Katrina, I think if we could build levees like they do in Holland…
Kerry: I’m with you. I think that Americans have really realized that they’re not going to fall prey to the games these guys play anymore. I think the card has worn thin. You know, every time something happens in America, that begins to nibble away at the perception that these guys know what they’re doing they trot out the fear card. And they play the fear card again and again, and every time we did something, you’d turn around and there was an orange alert, there was a red alert. I don’t think there has been any fundamental alerts since the election. But, more importantly, I think what Americans really care about is what’s happening here. They don’t worry about Europe, they don’t need to worry about Europe. They’ve seen an administration that’s screwing up the marketplace, they’re losing jobs, their health care is disappearing, their pensions are disappearing, they see executives walking away with unbelievable golden parachutes while the average worker is struggling to pay the tuition, pay the gas bill and make things work. So, I’m not worried about what’s happening in Europe. I’m worried about what’s happening right here. And I think that’s what most Americans are concerned about today, Bill. And, I think there’s going to be a profound shift in about five weeks when we have the elections.
More of the same. A question about Katrina provides a good opportunity to talk about investing more in levee construction, improving the Army Corps of Engineers, or even restructuring our emergency response to natural disasters. Instead, we get “the fear card,” “screwed up marketplace,” “losing jobs,” “disappearing health care & pensions,” “golden parachutes” and “struggles paying tuition and the gas bill.” Vote for me because Bush is awful! At least he’s consistent. And again, the facts are suspect: The threat level at airports just went to “Red” for the first time in history this past August (when the London bomb plot was foiled). The economy’s added 1.7 million jobs in the last 12 months (and 6.6 million since August, 2003). And gas prices have fallen 74 cents since early August (source).
When is Kerry going to realize that the only votes he’s winning with this stuff are the people who already believe in President Chimpy McBushitler? When the campaign comes around, the Republicans will have answers prepared for each of these charges. Right or wrong, true or false, Kerry and his Republican challenger will debate these arguments for weeks on end, keeping the debate squarely where the Republicans want it. And at the end of the day, no one will have any idea what Kerry plans to do as President, and they’ll vote for the other guy (gal?). Then the moral outrage will begin, followed by claims of voter fraud, and we’ll spend another four years talking about the “stolen election” and Karl Rove’s dirty tricks. Yawn…
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The Daily Show: Where Presidents Come to Play…
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006Last week, I marveled at The Daily Show’s ability to book Bill Clinton as their guest.
Last night, John Stewart announced that tonight’s guest will be President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. I’m quoting from memory here, but Stewart said something to the effect of:
Our guest tomorrow night will be President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. The actual President of Pakistan. Why this is, I have no idea…
When I think about the planning that went into Musharraf’s book launch, it absolutely boggles my mind that a sitting president of any country, let alone one that is deeply allied in a war with major world powers like the U.S. and Britain, could possibly have this kind of time on his hands.
First, he wrote the book (or at least we assume he wrote it), and included salacious details that would play well to American audiences. Then he coordinated its release with his trip to New York for the UN General Assembly. Then, he recorded an interview on 60 Minutes, leaking one of his salacious claims, and got them to air it right around the time he made his keynote speech to the UN. Then, after creating the controversy, he remained in New York long enough to do several additional interviews after the book’s release (including The Today Show and The Daily Show with John Stewart), guaranteeing that the interviewers would say something like “there has been much controversy lately about your claims regarding Richard Armitage,” followed by quotes from the book itself. All he has to do now is sit in his chair, smile, and make tell a few stories, and his book will sell millions of copies. Not only that, but he’s probably also improving the American people’s perception of Pakistan in the process.
Impressive piece of marketing. The guy should run for office one day…
Categories: News and/or Media, Primetime TV | Comments Off on The Daily Show: Where Presidents Come to Play…