Medialoper

We're Not Who You Think We Are

Jim Connelly

I Was An Adult-Aged Arbitron Diarist, Part 1

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It was just a bit of serendipity that it even happened, actually. It was the day before the Super Bowl, and Rox was at the store, picking up supplies for our yearly way-too-much-food party. Normally, I’m conscripted to go to the grocery store with her, but since I’d been out of town of a couple of weeks, she felt pity on me.

Which is a short way of saying that I shouldn’t have even been there when the phone rang, and since I thought it was her calling from the store, asking about whether or not we had enough brown sugar or something, I actually answered the phone. Which never ever never happens.

But it wasn’t Roxanne at all, it was Arbitron, and they needed me. It was about fracking time.

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Top 10 Other Things The RIAA Wants You To Believe

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Via PopMatters and TechDirt I was led what looks like an older page on the RIAA’s website which posits that we have actually been underpaying for CDs for the last decade. Apparently, by their math, we should have been paying $33.96 for a CD in 1996. Hee. Imagine the downloading if that was the case. The internets would have been shut down from the traffic by 1998.

The page also contains this supposedly guilt-inducing gem:

The creative ability of these artists to produce the music we love, combined with the time and energy they spend throughout that process is in itself priceless. But while the creative process is priceless, it must be compensated. But while the creative process is priceless, it must be compensated.

Translation: art is priceless, but we can put a price on it. So remember that beautiful, poetic thing that we just wrote about the whole pricelessness of the creative process? Don’t.

But I digress. My subject was the RIAA’s assertion that CD prices have been a total and utter bargain for lo, these many years. And while I will leave it to people much smarter to me to point out why the RIAA’s logic is so terribly wrong, it got me to wondering: what else does the RIAA want you to believe?

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The Weekly ‘Loper – February 4, 2007

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While you were prepping for your Super Bowl (not “Big Game”) Party, here’s what we were checking out:

Harry Potter and the Gynormous Spoiler

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As you’ve no doubt heard, the final installment of the Harry Potter series — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is set to publish on July 21.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

The series, which started off as harmless child’s fare, has turned into something quite different, maturing and darkening as its protagonist tumbled into his teens and learned just how fracked-up his situation really was.

In a weird way, it’s of the literary equivalent of 24, where there is so much plot going on at all times that you don’t really have time to think about it — it’s more fun to immerse yourself than it is to harp on details and influences. (And BTW, if you don’t think this analogy won’t wash because Jack Bauer doesn’t have magical powers, then how is it that he can convince anybody to do anything when he needs them to? Magic!)

In any event, the question that is on everybody’s lips, of course, is what Harry’s ultimate fate will be, but it has struck me that I’m actually less worried about whether or not Harry will live or die than whether or not I will be spoiled about whether or not Harry lives or dies before I get to read it for myself.

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I Hate The Cable Company: January 2007

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As a public service, Medialoper offers the latest installment of I Hate The Cable Company, our monthly(ish) roundup of some recent stories where ordinary citizens have had issues with the service and/or pricing of their local cable company.

The Weekly ‘Loper – January 28, 2007

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While you were looking outside and realizing that the winter hadn’t gone anywhere, but had just been stuck in traffic, here’s what we were looking at:

  • The High-Definition Problem – Is essentially the 21st Century version of the same problem that happened with certain stars when the talking pictures were invented: some actors don’t translate, er, very well to the newer version of the medium that made them a star. Now playing across the nation: the horror of your local newscast in HD.
  • Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part One: Anshe’s Ascension – Remember those jokes about selling you the Brooklyn Bridge? Or Swampland in Florida? At least those people didn’t have to worry about server crashes . . .
  • Will Labels Join Party A Decade Late? – Just this once, we’re gonna be optimistic and say “yes.” (And don’t worry, the optimism will pass.)
  • Washington Tries Its Best To Kill Internet Radio – Sigh. Those of us from California are embarassed to have a senior Senator who has been hating on the internets as long as DiFi has.
  • Major League Baseball Hates Me – If I go over to Kirk or Tim’s place to watch games because they have DirectTV and I don’t, aren’t I, in effect, stealing that content from Major League Baseball? After all, they are in essence sharing those games with me.
  • My Life As An RSS Junkie – Y’all will be glad to know that we had an intervention for Kirk this weekend, sending him off to the same rehab that is going to cure Isaiah W’s homophobia; Mel G’s anti-semitism and Michael R’s racism. Because that’s, you know, what rehab is for. Just ask Kirk’s new best friend: Lindsay L.

Major League Baseball Hates Me

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Dear Major League Baseball,

As you know, I am a lifelong San Francisco Giant fan. Since the days of Mays, Marichal and McCovey. However, I now live in the Los Angeles area, so my access to their games is much more limited than it was when I lived in the Bay Area. Boo-hoo for me.

So a couple of years ago, missing you a lot, I came very close to getting your “Extra Innings” package, but in the end, I didn’t. You were very expensive, and I wasn’t quite there finanancially. I was stuck with whatever I could get from the great ESPN broadcasts and those brutally awful FOX broadcasts. But I missed my Giants broadcasts — Krukow and Kuiper, especially. Now I have the scratch, but I can’t, because you — Major League Baseball — have decided to limit the availability of your package to a single provider: DirectTV.

Why? I can only conclude it’s because you hate me, and don’t want me to watch my beloved Giants on a regular basis.

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Will Labels Join Party A Decade Late?

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We are now a decade into the digital music revolution, and everybody is on board. Everybody, except of course, those who have stood to profit the most from this — the major record labels.

Instead of realizing that this was the future in the same way that their customers did, the labels have ignored, sued, restricted, and DRMed digital music while futzing with CDs in a zillion ways (except, of course, significantly reducing prices) trying to stem the tide. Nothing — outside of iTunes, which was pared with the iPod — has worked. And iTunes has worked more for Apple than the major labels.

But now, there are rumblings that they are ready to throw in the towel, and embrace the 21st Century. And to be fair, we’re only 7 years into that century: they still had 93 years to go.

So the question on the table is this: are the major labels ready to start allowing unrestricted downloads of .mp3z? Files that will play on any device? Files that I can burn and rip and copy and trade and play on anything and open edit and do all of the same things that I was able to do with cassettes and albums and 8-Tracks and CDs?

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The Weekly ‘Loper – January 21, 2007

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While you were busy announcing your bid to become the next POTUS, here’s what we were looking at: