Medialoper

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The Office

Medialoper Bebop Episode 26: Washing Your Mouth Out With SOPA

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The week, Kirk, Jim & Tim take a look at the Stop Online Piracy Act, and how its destroy-the-net-to-save-it approach towards internet piracy (or “piracy,”) threatens pretty much the entire internet as we know it.

Thank the gods that the United States House of Representatives is on the case!! (05:19 – 13:29)

Meanwhile, Louis CK (whose name I inexplicably mispronounce) shows exactly how stupid the screams of “piracy is killing our business” are by releasing a DRM-free, consumer-friendly concert. (13:31 – 24:22)

Then, it’s my latest Barry Bonds theory: he’s the Gaius Baltar of MLB! (24:23 – 27:06)

Finally, what’s in my mix? Real Estate, Wild Flag and a great single by Yuck. (27:07 – 30:36)

All that, and pot-smoking raccoons!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:43 — 55.9MB)

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NBC’s Insidious Plot

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Last week, NBC Universal announced that, as part of a cost-cutting measure, that they were going to totally abandon the 8:00pm hour to game shows and reality shows. No more sitcoms or dramas with their pesky and expensive money-wasting frills like “actors” and “scripts.”

In the age of TiVo, YouTube & iTunes it doesn’t really matter when or where a show airs as long as it does air. So the worry here is mostly if this means something like Nobody’s Watching will ever make it to the airwaves. Also, how much longer NBC will be considered a “major” network when the fracking CW ends up carrying more scripted shows just because NBC doesn’t think it can have a sitcom hit at 8:00pm? Bill Cosby must be spinning in his grave.

Anyways, I thought it would be ironic to get some comments from fans of NBC’s low-rated freshman drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — which has spent a lot of time and energy railing against this exact type of situation — but I had a helluva time finding any. And when I did, I was very much surprised by their reaction to this news. They weren’t at all upset. As a matter of fact, they supported NBC’s move.

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That’s What I Like: The Office

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About a week ago, I received a severance package. It was completely unexpected. You know, I thought I’d been doing a good job, so this blew me out of the water. However, if I keep getting packages like this one, I’m probably not going to be inclined to change my attitude or even work harder.

Yep, I received my boxed set of seasons one and two of The Office. All the deleted scenes, Dwight Schrute’s business card (you can call him), helpful swag. We’ve been training for season three with a vengeance, and it’s been fun catching up with the gang these past weeks.

For all my snark about not needing appointment television, you can bet that I was planted on my couch last night. Last night was the season premiere of The Office, and no way was I going to miss it. The Office, after all, is one of the smartest, funniest, most painful shows on television.

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What is a “Webisode” Anyways?

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With only a month left before the launch of Season Three of what is probably our consensus favorite show around here, Battlestar Galactica, Sci-Fi.com has launched a series of “webisodes” — internet-only episodes with brand-new content.

Obviously, Battlestar isn’t the first TV show to do this, but the webisodes were actually delayed for a month or so because of controversy over compensation. It’s the latest variation of the “new media meets old contracts” meta-issue we’ve seen played out over and over again.

In this case, the legal issue can be boiled down to this: what is a “webisode” anyways? Is it strictly promotional? Or is it brand-new content for a brand-new medium?

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How Not to Do A Character Blog

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One of the topics that has been discussed a lot at our recent Medialoper staff meetings is character blogs. Character Blogs are written from the point of view of a fictional character in a film, TV show, book or what have you. The internet is rife with these blogs, and when done well, the can be a powerful tool for promotion, backstory, or just to get deeper into a particular character’s head.

Booksquare just did a recent series of pieces looking at this phenomenon in the literary world, so I’m going to focus on a different medium, Television. (All of you who aren’t surprised, raise your hands . . . nobody? right.)

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NBC: Getting Smarter

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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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Blogosphere Without Pity

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Let us speak, for a moment, about a new phenomenon: the Internet. As some of you may recall, it slipped quietly into the room way back in, what?, the seventies? For many years, it cruised along quietly, picking up fans via discussion groups and bulletin boards. Somewhere along the line, they added pictures and clickable links and sound and motion and more users than you can imagine. All of this is the stuff of legend and only included to make a point: the Internet is not this brand new thing that just showed up yesterday!

In a thinly disguised promotional piece about the upcoming Studio 60, the Los Angeles Times tries to focus on the rapid-fire response of the blogosphere to every bit of news about the show. Hello? We’re bored out here. It’s summer and they don’t seem to be rerunning anything good but The Office. You can only watch “The Injury” so many times, you know?

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Television Networks Plagued By Online Usability Issues

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It’s no secret that all of us at Medialoper love The Office. The program is brilliant on a consistent basis, and NBC has been innovative in extending the show’s reach to the web with blogs, MySpace profiles, and online video. In many respects, The Office is the embodiment of the type of media convergence that we cover here on a regular basis.

There’s just one annoying problem that keeps The Office from being perfect in every way. I almost always have problems watching the video extras on The Office website. At various points in time I’ve tested just about every combination of operating system and web browser known to mankind, and most of them fail.

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What The Office Will Do on its Summer Vacation

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While other TV shows will be taking their summer vacations, much of the cast of The Office will  be participating in a series of webisodes that will be available from NBC.com this summer.  According to an NBCU press release, there will ten eps: a story arc centering on a missing $3000, and the attempt to locate it. 

And in keeping with this season’s emphasis on the secondary and tertiary characters, the webisodes won’t have most of the big names: Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer and B.J. Novak.  Those people will be getting to take actual full vacations.  Sounds more and more like a real office, doesn’t it?

Conspicious by his presence is Rainn Wilson, which causes us to make a prediction: Dwight done it.  No doubt to finance the purchase of a of a brand-new Prism DuroSport 6000.

 

“I heard that we’ve sold over a million downloads”

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That, my friends, is a million downloads of a television show — the U.S. version of The Office, which in its second season, has come into its own, both critically and commercially.

It’s always great when quality and popularity intersect, especially when they intersect in a show that nobody really gave a chance to succeed. So how did the U.S. version of The Office get to be so great? In a long interview with Television Without Pity’s co-founder Wing Chun, writer and actor B.J. Novak (he plays Ryan, the temp) holds forth on such topics as:

  • Living in the shadow of the Ricky Gervais version
  • All of those downloads.
  • Improvisation on the set.
  • Michael’s man-crush on Ryan.
  • Why their move to Thursday nights makes sense.

Nothing, alas, on the Prism Durosport. Nevertheless, from my standpoint, it’s beginning to look like The Office is going to end up being the greatest cover version of a stone-cold classic since Husker Du’s “Eight Miles High.”