Archives for May 2006

The Daily Loper – May 5, 2006

May 5, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

NBC’s ‘Saturday Night’ Fever: How Many Series About a Sketch Show Can It Run?
Considering that one series comes from Aaron Sorkin and the other comes from Tina Fey, why not both? Let the Great American Viewing Public decide. It’s OK to do a zillion Lost ripoffs, but only one SNL show??
Star salaries coming down in Hollywood?
Noted only because it’s one of those things you know cannot be true. Which makes it funny.
Microsoft Ballmer: To Invest Rapidly As Other Big Net Cos
If you’re reading this, then you’re already part of the future. Words go online. Hmm, that sounds familiar.

That’s What I Like: Drive-by Truckers

May 5, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Patterson Hood writes the greatest death songs. That’s was always going to be the begnning of this piece. And it was the beginning at the House of Blues in Hollywood last night, as the band he leads — the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world (my current favorite anyways), Drive-by Truckers — kicked off a killer set with the greatest of all their death songs, “The Living Bubba,” about a musician they knew who died of aids, but who spent the last year of his life touring.

“I can’t die now, cuz I got another show to do.”

Of course, the secret to Patterson Hood’s death songs is that they’re really about life: something that’s always been there, but I really never figured out until recently. Maybe he didn’t either.

And the secret to the the greatness of Drive-by Truckers is that they’ve not only figured out to make the three guitars work, but also how to make three singer/songwriters work.

The Daily Loper – May 4, 2006

May 4, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

YouTube sees user rebellion
Uh oh. Looks like YouTube’s attempts to be a "good corporate citizen" are alienating their base.
Microsoft Teams Up With Hollywood to Offer Original Web Shows
Sigh, who isn’t teaming up with Hollywood these days? All this Microsoft news makes one wonder if they have a new product to push or something…
Book of Lost found
Good twin, bad twin, television show. Everything here is absolutely fiction. We await a trailer refuting everything contained between the covers — or at least a protest about the .95 price tag.

Apple Calls the iTune

May 4, 2006 by Jim Connelly

We love our iPods and iTunes here at Medialoper, so here’s some team coverage on one of the bigger stories of the week. As you probably know by now, Apple won its latest round with the music industry by refusing to move from their flat-rate pricing model to a more tiered model where new releases are significantly more expensive than long tail catalog product.

And while yesterday Kirk had a real nice insight as to why the record companies backed down, I have a slightly different take.

Today, I Am Cranky

May 4, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

I know, I know, the networks are still trying to figure this whole Internet thing out. Ten years were not enough. Okay, fine, I understand that paradigms don’t shift easily. Better to try to move a mountain.

But let’s talk about audiences for a moment. So that we’re all on the same page, I’m going to toss out a working definition: an audience is a group of people who consume programming. In the television world, they’re also called “viewers.” In the olden days of television, audiences were a monolithic block — figures glued to a couch staring at the box in the corner. They’d laugh when the box showed something funny; they’d cry when it showed something bad. The networks, way back when, defined our lifestyle by setting programming at specific times.

[Read more…] about Today, I Am Cranky

The Daily Loper – May 3, 2006

May 3, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

Talkin’ bout a media revolution
If the web is the new rock ‘n roll, does that mean we have to live through new wave, Internet style?
Songs Of Energy Crises Past (MP3s)
Music for your next long bike ride.
Yahoo & Microsoft Have Talked Partnering, Merging
It turns out that buying Yahoo may be Microsoft’s best hope of competing with Google. Does this mean I’ll have to reboot my fantasy league more frequently?

The Real Reason iTunes Songs Are Still Only 99 Cents

May 3, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Yesterday Apple announced that it has renewed its contracts with the four major record labels and that iTunes pricing will remain 99 cents for individual songs.

It would appear to be yet another victory for Steve Jobs in his battle against the “greedy” record companies. Or maybe there are more practical reasons the record companies backed down in their demand for variable pricing.

Buried near the end of today’s LA Times coverag is this tidbit:

The Daily Loper – May 2, 2006

May 2, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

Air America vs. Reality – Part 1
Air America may have pioneered mainstream progressive talk radio. Now Clear Channel may be looking to make money off the format. That could spell doom for Air America.
Amazon ditches Google for Microsoft
Microsoft is serious about this search thing, but there’s still no indication that they’ve actually improved their search technology. Amazon’s A9 will continue to be "Powered By Google".
French DRM law gutted
Since they’re French they also de-boned it. It’s now more like Petite Filet of Consumer Rights.

Are the Browser Wars Back? Nah.

May 2, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Hey kids, remember the Browser Wars? They took place wayyyyyy back in the mid-1990s when Microsoft realized that the Web as experienced via Netscape could steal the desktop right out from under their thumb. So they figured, “we gotta get us a piece of that action,” and launched Internet Explorer.

Which totally sucked for a couple of iterations, until IE 4, which was good enough to combine with their natural monopoly on the business user and eventually lead to Netscape’s downfall.

This all took a few years, and anybody working on the Web at that period had to do QA testing for about a dozen different Browser/Operating System combinations. My guess is that many were somewhat happy for MS to win the browser wars, even as they mourned a technology that essentially changed the world.

The Daily Loper – May 1, 2006

May 1, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

ABC.com: Full Episode Streaming
ABC begins streaming prime time programming today. They’ve got a crazy spinning program interface that’s sort of like that carnival ride where you stick to the wall. I’d review the whole experience, but I’m too dizzy to say much.
Apple sets tune for pricing of song downloads
The major labels give in to Apple. iTunes will change it’s pricing when Steve Jobs says so.
Stephen Colbert’s Speech
Stephen Colbert’s full speech — absent the audition tape – at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. "Reality has a well-known Liberal bias."