Jim Connelly

Are TV Show Promos Mostly Evil or Pure Evil?

February 28, 2007 by Jim Connelly

Great story about angry Lost fans (though to be sure, is there any other type of Lost fan these days?) pissed off at ABC’s marketing department for what they are calling “false advertising.” Hee.

Apparently ABC had a promo before last weeks ep that promised that “answers to three of Lost’s biggest mysteries are finally revealed.” The angry fans have decided that decided that the mysteries that were revealed by that episode weren’t big enough. So they are claiming that ABC’s marketing department are a bunch of lying liars who lie.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but these people are idiots.

What I Learned From The Oscars Last Night

February 26, 2007 by Jim Connelly

I usually watch TV for one of two reasons: to be entertained or to be educated. Last night’s telecast of the 79th Annual Academy Awards certainly couldn’t qualify as entertainment, so therefore, it must have been educational.

Therefore, I present what I learned from watching the Oscars with some of my fellow ‘Lopers last night:

See Ya Later, Studio 60

February 19, 2007 by Jim Connelly

From the beginning of this TV season, Rox had planned to write a review of Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. See, she went into it as a pretty big fan of Aaron Sorkin’s TV shows. She loved Sports Night, and I would guess that the Sorkin years of The West Wing would make her short list of favorite shows ever. So she was really looking forward to it.

But I don’t think that she could ever figure out what to say about Studio 60. Every single week, we watched, waiting for what shoulda been an unbeatable combination of premise, writers and actors to coalesce into the great show we pictured in our heads. Instead, the best that we could consistently come up with was that Matthew Perry was awesome (because he — and yeah, OK, Steven Weber — has been the one great thing on this show), and after that . . . bupkis.

So, unlike a lot of people who are writing Studio 60 obits right now, I came in liking both of Sorkin’s previous shows — even if I would occasionally yell “stop beating me around the head with my own beliefs!!” at them — and really wanting it to succeed.

Well, after tonight’s episode, it’s going on hiatus — quite possibly forever — in favor of a show about those crazy Irish-Americans mobsters with the wrong consonant in their last name and I have some thoughts about what happened. While I still haven’t figured out exactly what went wrong, I can pinpoint a moment that epitomizes the difference between kind of the show that Studio 60 should have been and the show that it ended up being.

The Weekly ‘Loper – February 18, 2007

February 18, 2007 by Jim Connelly

While you were getting ready to report for Spring Training, here’s what we were looking at:

Viacom vs. YouTube – Guess Who Lost? – Right now, that would seem to be Viacom.
I Was An Adult-Aged Arbitron Diarist, Part 1 – Next week, on “I Was An Adult-Aged Arbitron Diarist,” the diaries arrive, and are used!
Exclusive: The Story of My Night of Passion With Anna Nicole Smith – I mean, why not try to get into the sweepstakes?
How Would You Deal With A Global Bandwidth Shortage? – We’re still trying to figure this one out, actually.
That’s What I Like: Remastered Analog Music – Sherilyn learns to trade warmth for clarity. But she really should give Presence a spin. For some of us, that may be the best Zep of all.

Exclusive: The Story of My Night of Passion With Anna Nicole Smith

February 14, 2007 by Jim Connelly

It’s a special Valentines Day exclusive from Medialoper! There is nowhere else in the world where you can read this exact story!

Coming up later in this post, the story of my night of passion with Anna Nicole Smith!

I Was An Adult-Aged Arbitron Diarist, Part 1

February 13, 2007 by Jim Connelly

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.

Top 10 Other Things The RIAA Wants You To Believe

February 10, 2007 by Jim Connelly

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?

Robots Roundup: February 6, 2007

February 6, 2007 by Jim Connelly

Because in the future, our descendants will want to figure out when the tipping point happened where Robots went from harmless playthings to — well — our new masters, we present our Robots Roundup, an occasional look at robot news.

The Weekly ‘Loper – February 4, 2007

February 4, 2007 by Jim Connelly

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

Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part Two: Grief’s Interjection – In which we deconstruct the Web 2.0 phenomenon of griefing as it relates to Second Life and giggle at the phrase “armies of marching willies.”
The Web’s Next Get Rich Scheme – YouTube is going to start sharing some of that ad money wealth with the content creators. It probably won’t make anybody rich, but it’s still pretty cool.
In Which A Marketing Campaign Stops A City – As great as this story is turning out to be, it isn’t making any of us rushing to TiVo Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
My Life in the Slow Lane – In the latest edition of our “That’s What I Like” series, Tim Gaskill explains how he survives his mind-numbing commute.
Harry Potter and the Gynormous Spoiler – Like I said, just don’t kill Hermione.
How To Copyright An Atomic Bomb – One of the funniest things about watching this story is whether or not the TV channels reporting on it blur out the extended middle finger of the little Mooninite guy. Also, “Mooninite.” I wonder if it’s related to “Solaronite.” If so, then perhaps the city of Boston didn’t overreact.

Harry Potter and the Gynormous Spoiler

February 3, 2007 by Jim Connelly

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.

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.