Retired

While you were standing in line to see The DaVinci Code, here’s what we were looking at:

• Why I Hate The Sunday Paper – And of top of all that, it’s 2006 and the LA Times still hasn’t figured out how to keep newsprint from melting in our hands.
• Upfronts: Will Studio 60 Be The Greatest Thing Ever? – Is NBC hoping for too much from Aaron Sorkin?
• See You Next Year! – With 45,090,999 shows on 98,909 networks (not an exact count), not to mention the Internet, DVDs, and all of the other choices for your ever-dwindling mindshare, Season Finale Season is becoming increasingly anachronistic.
• Hillary Rosen vs. the RIAA – Though she’s currently on the side of the angels, it’s amazing how some people’s principles shift with their paychecks.
• Upfronts: CBS? More Like CBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ – I was trying to remember the last time CBS put out a drama that I was interested in, and I seriously can’t. Is it me? Or is it them? It’s them, right?
• No, No, Let’s Wait – Remember how Radio replaced Newspapers and how Television replaced Radio and how the Internet replaced Television? Me neither. So why do people insist on thinking that these choices are “either/or” instead of “and/or”??
• BEA 2006: News Embargo Broken – A report from BookExpo America in Washington, DC., where oldest of old media is quite possibly having the most trouble adapting to the newest of the new media. Also, erstwhile National Nanny William Bennett? Whalelike.

While you were wondering when the NSA was going to contact you about that “harmless” joke you made on the phone that one time, here’s what we were talking about:

• Riding The New Innertube — Maybe not so much riding, but more like sitting in the water, waiting in vain for a current.
• TiVo’s Ad Finder – Sometimes, people go looking for ads. No, really, they do.
• What About eBooks? — While everybody else is rushing headlong into the digital era, the publishing industry is taking its own sweet time.
• Ode To The Simple Television — Of course, the headlong rush by the nets to provide all of their content digitally means that they are creating foolish hobgoblins of their own UI inconsistencies. They should do well to remember how easy it is to use the device that their websites are trying to emulate/replace.
• Requiem For Cody’s – Just another indie store biting the dust, that’s all.
• When DVDs Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Send DVDs — How much you wanna bet that the drug-sniffing dogs make fun of the dogs who have the job of sniffing out counterfeit DVDs?
• That’s What I Like: TiVo — Kassia talks about the most revolutionary content-oriented invention of the new millenium, which is only now beginning to really take off. Hopefully TiVo itself will end up being more than just the verb.

While you spent your week dissecting Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner joke-by-joke trying to determine if it was funny and hit a nerve (it was and it did), here’s what we were looking at:

• Yahoo’s 21st Century Entertainment Network — Yahoo! is making the transformation from a 20th Century Web Portal to a 21st Century Digital Lifestyle Entertainment Network.
• Are the Browser Wars Back? Nah. — But there is a bit of a to-do between Microsoft and Google over a little tiny search box that could lead great big revenues.
• ABC’s Online Programming – First Impressions — By the time that Kassia finished jumping over all of the obstacles ABC kept putting in her way, she was too exhausted to watch an actual program.
• The Real Reason iTunes Songs Are Still Only 99 Cents — A good conspiracy theory should always start with the accountants.
• Today, I Am Cranky — What part of “World Wide Web” does NBC not get? With their Today Webcasts, pretty much none of it.
• That’s What I Like: Drive-by Truckers — Jim takes a look at his current favorite band. A very very very long look, so bring a bottle of whiskey and the live version of “Free Bird.”

While you were busy emptying your savings account to buy another tank of gas, here are some of things that we were discussing:

• Is The Future Of Magazines Glossy? – Turns out that the future of magazines might just be email, baby.
• Television As A Hunter-Gatherer Experience – Why we’d all be better off if the networks decided not put their shows on their own websites, and stuck to using portals.
• Dancing About TV – A look at TV critics who blog about TV on the side.
• ‘Loper Challenge! Test Drive Pandora – Check out Pandora and let us know what you think — you could win a Medialoper T-Shirt: suitable for wearing!
• That’s What I Like: eMusic – Kirk discusses what just might be the only online music download service that looks at things from the perspective of the music lover who wants to listen to anything, anywhere, anytime: eMusic.
• This Lawsuit Isn’t Just A Cheap Trick – Why The Cheap Trick / Allman Brothers lawsuit against Sony Music could be a heckuva lot bigger than say, Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers.
• Google’s Puzzling Move – Are those “Crack the DaVinci Code” ads at the bottom of every search results page the precursor to the decontextualization of advertising on Google?

While you were busy losing your job at The White House, here’s what we were paying attention to:

• Will Online Programming Kill Local Television Affiliates? – If the networks put all of their content on the Net, will that kill their local affiliates? Perhaps they’ll have to concentrate more on, you know, serving their communities.
• Video iPod Delay Not Such A Bad Thing For Apple – At this point, the only thing that would kill Apple’s market share in this category was if the “true” Video iPod was as bad as the Prism Durosport 6000.
• Vivid Gets It Up For Movie Downloads – The first movie studio to make their movies available for download and easy to burn to DVD? A porn studio. Of course.
• RIAA Attempts To Outlaw Shared Folders – Next up for the RIAA? Outlawing carpooling: after all, multiple people might be listening to the same song at the same time. But since only the owner of that car is licensed for that song, the rest are thieves and scofflaws. The RIAA checkpoints are obviously just around the corner.
• A Bar With No Closing Time – Perhaps the only type of iPod mix that the RIAA won’t try to outlaw . . .
• Death Of A Station – The sad, slow decline of the Bay Area’s KRON, who lost their network affiliation a few years ago, and haven’t yet found their direction. Still, they are trying to serve their community. The next step is serving it well.
• That’s What I Like: Oxford English Dictionary, Online – Kassia waxes poetic on a nearly bottomless pit of words, glorious words.

While you were recovering from taking part in the final battles in the War on Easter, and already planning your renewed assault on Christmas, here’s what we were looking at:

• When Good Things Happen To Good Television – Kassia discovers Scrubs. The rest of us (especially the ones who discovered it last year) wonder what took so long.
• Don’t Look Back: Start Over Might Be Gaining On You – Time-Warner’s “Start Over” might be a little bit too appropriately named: they want us to start over at the beginning of TV, when there was no way to fast-forward through commercials.
• Apple Does Windows – Big Deal (maybe) – Apple’s latest method of getting people to switch involves putting XP on a Mac. So they prove how sucky XP is to people who already believe that it’s sucky? Hey Apple, you want more people to purchase your machines? Lower your prices!!!!!

[Read more…] about The Weekly ‘Loper – April 16, 2006

While you were busy rationalizing leaking classified information in order to embarass your critics, here are some of the things that we’ve been covering on Medialoper in the past week or so:

• The Prism DuroSport 6000 – Worst Digital Audio Player Ever! – The controversial review that put the heretofore little-known DuroSport Electronics company on the map. Considering their response to our reviews of their player and accessories, I have a feeling that we haven’t heard the last of them.
• Why People Download Shared Music – The thought process, broken into four easy steps! Also: The Replacements!!
• Piracy, Perks, and DRM – How buying used CDs hurts artists. The solution: no more physical promo copies, and DRM for downloadable promotional music. Whaaaa?
• Why People Steal Movies – At least partially because the much-touted movie downloads are more hat than cattle at this point.
• Why Google Music Won’t Matter – iTunes has the lead, and the only way to really break that lead is to offer something different to the consumer by doing things that the Music Industry doesn’t like. Different things, BTW, than the things that iTunes is already doing to piss the Music Industry off.
• Podcasting Versus Fundraising: The Public Radio Challenge – How podcasts can help public radio stations build audiences who will give during fundraising.

While you were trying to figure out what exactly the deals were with Tony Soprano and Chef, here’s what we were talking about:

• LaLa Love You You can’t swap digital musical files that you have legally purchased, nor can you swap digital musical files ripped from physical CDs that you have legally purchased. But you can swap physical CDs that you have legally purchased. For now.
• The New Music Model: DIY – Let’s all give a big amount of applesauce applause for Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, and other bands are totally doing it their way.
• Press Room? I Said Rest Room! – A hard-hitting investigation into the need for a Press Room at SXSW. Never underestimate the importance of comfortable chairs.
• Radio Killed The Radio Star, Part One – A deep long look at a SXSW panel called “The Future of Radio,” and how the music industry and the government continue to find ways to make that future seem bleak, at best.
• Radio Killed The Radio Star, Part Two – Who needs radio, when we have become our own musical gatekeepers. And: Signs of life, but are those exceptions or precursors to a new way?
• TV Shows on DVD I’d Like To See – And why, sadly, we might never see any of them. As usual, rights issues (read: the need to squeeze every last penny from something) get in the way of consumer desires.
• Television Without Potty – Finally got to use that headline!! And for exactly the type of post I knew it would accompany: the FCC continuing to run roughshod over free speech.

While you were figuring out ways of getting around your Network Admin policy of cutting you off from March Madness, we were dissecting the panels we attended at this year’s SXSW:

• Librarians vs. The Search Giants – Sure, that sounds like a particularly bad Monty Python skit, instead, it’s a spot-on recap of a SXSWi panel about the issues surrounding the digitialization of books.

• My Sony Settlement, Part 1 – Is there anything more disheartening than being part of the winning side of a class-action settlement against a evil multinational?

• Fast, Cheap, and Redefining News: Rocketboom – Can people still create quality content without being backed by huge corporate infrastructure? Duh!

• The Darknet Panel: Meet the Consumer – Wanted: a way to be anti-piracy without being anti-consumer.

• Nick Denton is the Most Generous Man on the Internet – Another report from SXSW, but less on a hard-hitting panel discussion, and more about free drinks and pool playing Roombas. Really.