Note: This posting is safely spoiler-free. If you’ve seen all, some, or none of “The Wire,” read on.
It’s been several years since I wrote more than a paragraph about “The Wire.” Despite my unlimited adoration for the show — which is one of the best shows in the history of the medium — my mention of it has been mostly limited to occasional name-dropping. Read the rest of this entry »
After two years, the war is finally over. I’m talking, of course, about the format war between rival high-def next-generation DVD formats HD DVD (manufactured by Toshiba) and Blu-ray (Sony).
The writing has been on the wall for about a month now, as media companies — some that had remained neutral until recently — have been slowly aligning themselves into Blu-ray’s camp and tipping the scales of the stalemate. But today Toshiba made it official with their announcement that they will discontinue all manufacturing operations for HD DVD players. Read the rest of this entry »
Although I’m of the opinion that someone is, in some way, helping to write late-night TV despite the supposition that there are no writers during the strike (I simply have a hard time buying that everything is improvised, or that the hosts are writing all their material with no help), there is a certain amusement in seeing what zaniness can become possible when one is forced to put on a TV show while hamstrung without one’s WGA-card-carrying staffers. Read the rest of this entry »
The Super Bowl has become so overhyped as to become ridiculous (Fox had five-plus hours of pregame coverage on Sunday). And there’s always the overhyped halftime show, which I never give a damn about, in which some band (lately more has-beens than fresh acts) gives a performance on a stage that is rushed by an audience which is rocking out with the kind of enthusiasm that can only have been bought. Call me a purist, but I watch the Super Bowl because I truly like to watch, you know, football, not because it’s the biggest self-indulgent media event of the year. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve long known that the FCC — or specifically their censorship arm — is a joke. This was especially confirmed in the months after the 2004 Super Bowl and its crappy MTV-produced halftime show starring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake and the infamous “wardrobe malfunction.” Read the rest of this entry »
With some technology, for some reason or another, I end up being a slow adopter. This includes two of the most mainstream and useful media technologies of the past decade: RSS and DVR. Read the rest of this entry »
After my last blog post, where I said that the longer the late-night TV hosts go sans writers the more polished they will get, I must now perhaps eat those words. Maybe it’s more of a hit-or-miss affair, where some nights they’ve got it and some nights they don’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, Conan, Leno, Letterman, et al, all went back on the air, and this week, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” came back. All these shows, with the exception of the Letterman productions, whose production company struck an independent deal with the WGA, are back to work without their writers.
My question: Who’s currently writing these shows, and how do you define “writing”? Read the rest of this entry »
The WGA has been on strike for nearly two weeks now. How long will it go on? Who knows? But I figured I’d chime in here with a few thoughts on the writers strike while it’s fresh in everyone’s mind. (Or, less likely, before it suddenly ends.) Read the rest of this entry »
NBC, in its infinite wisdom, made some sort of marketing pact with Jerry Seinfeld and Dreamworks Animation to promote their upcoming “Bee Movie.” The promotion has turned into a series of lame sketches that are shown during “The Office” and other NBC series. This is marketing whorism at its most basic, but I simply have a question:
What the %$#@ is a “Bee Movie TV Junior”? Who came up with the concept, let alone the name?
And why, why, why?
