Jim Connelly

NBC: Getting Smarter

July 25, 2006 by Jim Connelly

When faced with the world of 21st Century Television, different networks do different things to bring audiences to their shows. In the past couple of weeks we’ve learned that FOX will continue to ruin the baseball playoffs; ABC wants to disable the fast-forward button on DVRs and CBS is going to advertise on food.

Lame lame lame. (Actually, I recognize that the FOX/MLB partnership is shrewd from the marketing standpoint; it’s just that I’m a lifelong baseball fan who recoils in horror at being faced with Tim McCarver, those dopey “Sounds of the Game” and sitcom stars in box seats every goddamn October until 2053 or whenever it is.)

So just when you’d figure that NBC would also come up with some kind of dumbass stunt or idea of their own, they actually go in the complete opposite direction and do something very very smart.

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Bloggers Just Wanna Have Fun

July 24, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Last week, I ran across an print ad in Newsweek for Technorati, probably the major blog-tracking service. The ad copy went like this:

Behind every breaking story, there’s a Blog
Behind every emerging trend, there’s a Blog
Beind every big scandal, there’s a Blog
Find it.

Every single day, the blogosphere gets blamed or credited for some world-changing event or another. Hell, this very blog has done it at least twice in the past week. Given of all of the coverage of the “blogosphere,” you might imagine it as one of those amorphous clouds in an old Star Trek episode, lurching this way and that, firing laser shots of truth and opinion at various politicians, athletes, tech companies, and the entertainment industry.

And you would be wrong.

The Weekly ‘Loper – July 23, 2006

July 23, 2006 by Jim Connelly

While you were watching the Weather Channel in disbelief — 111 degrees, WTF!?! — here’s what we were looking at:

Graying, Balding, Is The Record Store Ready For Retirement? – Probably, but I’ll always have fond memories of the amazing amount of time I spent in places like Tower, Ragin’ and Amoeba, pouring over the racks, trying to find something that was new and different and surprising and maybe even life-changing.
CBS Eggvertising: The Yolk’s On Us – Are there any surfaces that aren’t covered with ads anymore?
The RIAA and the Blogosphere – Like Oil and Water – The RIAA really needs to just pull its head out and realize that criminializing your customers might not be the best way to keep those customers.
Reaching Operatic Heights — Why isn’t Opera reaching a wider audience?
CinemaNow Steps Up (A Little) — After Movielink announced that they were going to let people burn movies to DVD at some point in the future, CinemaNow just went ahead and offered the ability. Just once. And not with new releases. And for Windows XP users only.
Blogosphere Without Pity — In which another hotshot TV producer professes to be shocked — shocked! — at the speed and fury of internet conversation about his show.
That’s What I Like: Robert Christgau – Jim discusses his favorite rock critic. In case you assumed that it would be Lester Bangs, that’s a good guess, except Bangs has missed the last quarter-century, and who knows where he would be right now. I’ve always figured that he would have quit writing about music eventually.
How Can I Get My TV Pilot Picked Up? — This may mark the peak of YouTube’s power. Especially if Nobody’s Watching doesn’t live up to the promise of the pilot. They’ll have to reshoot it anyways, and that’s where it will get interesting.
Hong Kong’s Anti-Piracy Sweatshop – My understanding that the merit badge for this like a bootlegged “Pirates of the Caribbean” DVD case with a circle slash over it.

How Can I Get My TV Pilot Picked Up?

July 21, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Dear Lopy:

I just made a pilot for a big (OK, big-ish) TV Network, and it was rejected for being different from other TV shows. How can I get it picked up by another network?

Signed,

Hapless in Hollywood

Dear Hapless,

Here’s how to get your rejected pilot picked up by another network, in six easy steps.

That’s What I Like: Robert Christgau

July 21, 2006 by Jim Connelly

I first discovered Robert Christgau in the hallowed pages of Creem Magazine. It was nearly 30 years ago, and I was a music-crazy high school kid trying to come to terms with not just the two decades of rock ‘n’ roll I’d already missed, but this punk rock thing I was reading about, but not hearing. You gotta remember that, back in the day, not only was there no internet, there were no radio stations in Fresno that were playing anything more adventurous than The Cars, and everybody I knew were on a steady diet of Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Kiss and AC/DC. So I bought album after album without hearing a note; based entirely on what people wrote about them. That’s just what you did.

Punk Rock changed my life, for sure, but Creem was the catalyst. (And The Clash was the agent, but that’s another story.)

Since I spent every penny of disposable income on records, I didn’t have the money for a subscription, so I went to Thrifty’s Drugs (Tower Records wasn’t selling magazines yet) every day during the middle of every month because that’s when I noticed it would show up.

There was no doubt that it was just about my favorite thing in the universe. I devoured each issue, over and over again, month after month. And my favorite thing of alll was Christgau’s Consumer Guide.

CinemaNow Steps Up (A Little)

July 19, 2006 by Jim Connelly

A couple of days ago, I discussed the announcement by the film download service Movielink that they had licensed software to allow downloaded films to be burnt to DVD. Of course, there was still the tiny little hurdle of getting the studios to go along with their plan. Maybe by the end of the year.

Enter CinemaNow. They announced yesterday that they have not only licensed DVD-burning software and gotten a studios to take a flyer on the concept, but they have actually started offering the service. Naturally, there are issues.

CBS Eggvertising: The Yolk’s On Us

July 18, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Mention the 1960s and 1970s to broadcast TV execs, and you probably get sad sighs, as they reminisce dreamily about a time before the internet; before TiVo; before VHS; before original cable programming; before the remote control; when people would turn the TV to one single network and leave it there all night, watching the commercials and everything. It was the “Golden Age of TV,” for sure. Because TV got all of the gold.

Those days are gone, of course, but it doesn’t stop the broadcast networks from devising plans to once more grab, trap and have their way with a mass audience. Last week, ABC reportedly wanted to disable the fast-forward buttons on DVRs, and this week, CBS has announced their bold new marketing strategy: they are going to advertise on eggs.

Movielink Steps Up (A Little)

July 17, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Some good news for those who are interested in legally downloading film: Movielink, one of the major services originally created to sell movie downloads, is going to allow consumers to burn their downloads to DVD.

Will this be the magic steriod that will kickstart the mostly-ignored film downloading service? Probably not, but it is a start.

The Weekly ‘Loper – July 16, 2006

July 16, 2006 by Jim Connelly

While you were wondering when you were going to get indicted for Tax Evasion because they couldn’t pin anything else on you, here’s what we were looking at:

Hyping The Music, One Song At A Time – Communities that form around online blogs are different — smaller, but more passionate — than communities that formed around radio stations.
The Perfect DVR – My Wish List For the Ultimate Television Machine – Kirk tosses out a wish list for what will tempt him to dumpt his venerable Series 1 TiVo.
Only Spielberg Can Mess With His Movies, Dammit! – A judge rules that self-selected censors can’t remove the good bits from movies prior to renting them to the public.
More Fun In The New World – How will AT&T’s foray into the online concert world fare? Hopefully, it will work better than the phone “service” they provide me.
ABC: Always Being Clueless – Yeah, because the viewing public is clamoring for DVRs with disabled fast-forward buttons . . .
Baby Eisner Is Losing His Grip On Reality – Two words: Baby NASCAR.
Fools Go Forth: Digital Distribution And Artist Compensation – Since digital distribution is significantly different from physical distribution, how long will it take artists to rebel against digital distribution deals that are essentially the same as the physical deals?
That’s What I Like: Marketplace – Kassia finds an actual reason to listen to NPR: a show that is smart, educational, and has some snark.

ABC: Always Being Clueless

July 12, 2006 by Jim Connelly

ABC, the network that has been at war with DVR owners for the past several yearrs may be going nuclear. According to at least one report, they are in talks with cable & satellite companies to disable the fast-forward button on future DVRs. Somehow, I doubt this is one of the features that Kirk had in mind when he wrote about his ideal DVR.

Even better, they claim that consumers will be OK with this, that people don’t actually want to fast-forward through the commercials. That the only reason they use DVRs is for the time-shifting aspects. And that we’d all be willing to put up with commercials to continue to time-shift, so there would be no backlash whatsoever.

Holy Jesus Frack! Do these people even use DVRs? There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin.