Most of my peers wangled tickets to Cannes. There’s no reason for them to be at Cannes — we get screeners and free tickets, despite our lowly status on the motion picture totem pole — but it’s important to be seen. And you see a lot at Cannes, if you know what I mean. After Cannes, as we all know, the summer season begins in Hollywood.
Things are a little shaky, schedule-wise, now that Thursday are the new Fridays. It’s common knowledge that you can’t schedule anything on Friday. Now you have to navigate around “doctor’s appointments” and “leaving early because I can” issues on Thursday. Also, you cannot make any sort of solid plans for Mondays. Things happen.
Needless to say, a lot of meetings get squeezed into the Tuesday/Wednesday schedule. Luckily, not much is going on during the summer months. Someone has to keep an eye on the rerun ratings (we all know they’re declining, but since we have an entire group devoted to gleaning meaning from the numbers, there will be staff on hand). I’m going to catch up on a few programs I missed during the year. And I’ll take a brief vacation.
If I can figure out how to work this assignment my boss (who left Thursday at noon without so much as a “Call me on my cell if you need anything”). She has laid down the law: by the end of the summer, my group, my whole group, is to know how to work the Internet. All of it. Even the parts that nobody else uses (odd since it’s apparently called something like the “usenet”). We are to figure out why we keep launching new projects that nobody seems to notice.
Marketing, naturally, has already weighed in with their thoughts. They need a bigger budget. With a bigger budget, they’ll be able to bring more users to our website. They’ll be able to change our website. They did a Powerpoint on how our website could be improved for a cool $10 million. Personally, I think it’s going to cost a whole lot more, but that’s me. I think Marketing should learn the Internet as well.
I’m simply not sure what my goal is here. I use the Internet all the time. I hang out at YouTube. I have a MySpace page. Obviously, I’ve been using Facebook forever. I check out the headlines on Google News almost every day. If something important happens, my friend texts me. Heck, I even had a conversation about Lonelygirl15 at a party. I still don’t get the whole Lonely movement, but I’ve never actually seen the thing. Seems to me that it’s a waste of time.
But maybe that’s all I have to do while my boss is away (rumor: serious surgery with recovery at a killer spa). Watch all the Lonelygirl15 episodes. I can then pitch a version of the show for our network. We’ll call it something else, of course. And change the plot. The characters. The setting. The credits.
Have a great summer! I look forward to catching up with you all next year — we have some awesome programming coming down the pipeline. I hope you watch it before it gets cancelled!