Speaking of moms, can we talk about how offensive that Proctor and Gamble Olympic campaign is? Not because it completely ignores the contributions of abusive, overbearing fathers in the creation of great athletes or glamorizes the most annoying tendencies of stage/soccer parents, but because the underlying message of every single ad is, “Thanks for supporting me, Mom. Now go clean my socks.”
Laundry detergent is for ladies. Don’t ever forget that.
Category: Television & Radio
Best line of the day, so far
NBC anchors, including those paid by the news division, glom onto the glamour and reflected glory of winsome champions, as per Matt Lauer’s no-boundaries embrace of the skier Lindsey Vonn on “Today” after she won the downhill race. He draped a chocolate gold medal around her neck, gave her flowers (“just because we adore you”) and hugged her tight (“we are so proud of you”) — as if he and Meredith Vieira had spent the last 15 years rising at dawn to drive her to training.
Nothing But Commercials (NBC)
An analysis of NBC’s 3 ½-hour program Friday night showed that there were 56 minutes, 41 seconds of commercials over 24 breaks—that’s three more minutes than actual event action that was showed. Ski jumping, which took up about 30 minutes of the broadcast, featured less than two minutes of action, compared with four minutes, 46 seconds of replays (there was, on average, more than one replay per jump). More than half the time during the compulsory-dancing segments showed action, but good luck getting into a rhythm watching the sport: A commercial break separated each routine.
NBC (Nothing But Communists)
“NBC punctuated its video introducing Yevgeny Plushenko, the Russian figure-skater, with the iconography and symbols of the Soviet Union—Lenin statue, hammer and sickle—a country that ceased to exist when Plushenko was nine.”
HBO on your computer.
It’s beta and you have to subscribe to HBO to use it, but it’s a another step away from cable.
I hate Olympics TV coverage
Always have. Always will I’m afraid. Just hate it. Roone Arledge, the creator of all this highlights-based, personality-featured sports coverage should rot in hell forever IMHO. All those channels; why can’t we (if we wanted to) see every performance by every athlete from every country LIVE?
Henry Blodget agrees with me. This is part of a longer rant:
What NBC Sports apparently doesn’t understand (because it has done this to us before, again and again) is that we don’t care who is televising the Olympics.
We don’t want to watch NBC’s “Olympics show”. We want to watch The Olympics. And like every other connected sports fan on the planet these days, we know exactly when the Olympics is taking place and what’s happening there–in real time.
So, right now, for us, NBC isn’t the network that brings us the Olympics. It’s the network that prevents us from watching the Olympics. And we hate NBC for that.
Questions for NBC
Henry Blodget has some Questions For NBC, The Network That Prevents You From Watching The Olympics. Among them:
3. How much money would you lose (or do you think you would lose) if you showed the events live on a subsidiary network and then showed highlights again in your prime time broadcast? To us, this seems like the best solution. If you did this, sports fans could get their fix, and the “general audience” you’re obviously trying to appeal to in prime time with segments on polar bears can watch the “Olympics Show” you put on every night without wanting to throw their remote controls through the TV.
The most unlikely Super Bowl ad
Super
Adam Gopnik has the best writing you’re likely to see about watching the Super Bowl.
The last Conan Tonight Show
Don't blame Conan
'Let's be careful out there.'
Hard to believe, but it’s been 29 years.
Hill Street Blues, the first network series to include long shots, handheld camera shots and continuing story lines, debuted on this date in 1981.
The Late Night War
Great segments last night with Leno and Kimmel, O’Brien and Letterman. Gawker.TV has the clips.
Reality TV at its best.
Got 44 minutes? It's enough for all four NFL games this weekend.
According to this report at the Wall Street Journal, NFL telecasts have 11 minutes of action (but 17 minutes of replays and 75 minutes of commercials).
Today
… is the 58th anniversary of Today. The morning show premiered with Dave Garroway, Jim Fleming and Jack Lescoulie on this date in 1952. When it began it was broadcast for three hours, but shown for two only. The overlap allowed the program to be seen live from 7-to-9 in both the Eastern and Central time zones. (The Eastern saw the first and second hour, the Central the second and third.)
The Tonight Show began on NBC on September 27, 1954. Both programs were created by Sylvester L. “Pat” Weaver Jr., father of Sigourney (actually Susan Alexandra Weaver).
Letterman Top Ten
Time for an Executive Email Carpet Bomb
“Our inbox has spoken: due to popular reader demand, it’s time to harness the power of the EECB, the executive email carpet bomb, for its most important mission ever: saving the Conan O’ Brien show.”
The Consumerist has the email addresses.
Caveat: I don’t watch Leno or O’Brien.
Best TV of the Oughts
Salon’s I Like to Watch picks the best 15 TV shows of the decade.
The list begins with The Wire, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Sopranos.
Well, duh.
Interesting, very interesting
Comcast has about 62 million viewers (numbers are from July).
DirecTV around 47 million.
Time Warner about 34 million.
But guess what? Hulu has 38 million.
Why A Comcast/NBC Merger Is Bad News
Among other isssues, Comcast will now own:
NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Chiller, CNBC World, mun2, Oxygen, Sleuth, Syfy, Universal HD, USA Network, The Weather Channel, E! Entertainment Channel, G4, Golf Channel, PBS Kids Sprout, Style, TV one, Versus, CN8, Exercise TV, FEARnet, AZN Television, a portion of MLB Network,
NBC owned and operated stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Bay Area, Dallas/Fort Worth, Washington, Miami, San Diego, Connecticut.
Telemundo owned and operated stations in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, Las Vegas, San Francisco/San Jose, Phoenix, Fresno, Denver, Boston, Tucson, Puerto Rico.
Film: Universal Pictures, Focus Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Internet: Hulu, iVillage, NBC.com, CNBC.com, Weather.com
Clicker
Katherine Boehret of The Mossberg Solution reviews Clicker. An excerpt:
This week, I’ve been testing Clicker, a free Web site that aims to be the TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the Web. It searches over 1,200 sources, so it can index some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Results include television programs as well as “Web originals,” or shows that are native to the Internet and are of broadcast quality. Clicker either plays the video on its site or links you to where this content is shown on another hosting site—like NBC or Hulu. If a show isn’t available online, Clicker tells you so you don’t have to keep hunting all over for it.
I like Clicker and found it to be a quick resource for finding all sorts of shows online.
Click above for the review.
The Wire
The Wire — 100 Greatest Quotes.
NSFW (due to language). And probably not suitable for people who haven’t watched the show (their loss).
Really, really well done.
Yesterday I failed to commemorate
… one of the great days in my life.
It was on Tuesday, November 13, 2007, that I first viewed the opening episodes of the greatest TV drama series ever, The Wire.
Late Night of the Soul
The New Yorker’s Nancy Franklin has as good a take on Letterman as you’re likely to find. It includes this:
Then, in a hilarious but very smart take on Letterman’s … what? peccadilloes? ethical breaches? bad behavior? shameful power trips? … [Craig] Ferguson used the word “situation.” Well, for lack of a better word—I’m not saying there aren’t better words, but, as a deeply admiring fan of Letterman, I admit that I’m reluctant to come up with one—that will do. For the time being. We watch and wait. We shall see.
Key point: “I noted in a piece last week that Leno, O’Brien, and Letterman have no women writers on their shows. Fifty men, and zero women.”
Special second best redux line of the day
“If you watch bad television because you think it’s good, you’re screwed up. But if you watch bad television because you like the feeling of watching bad television, you’re OK.”