It's too bad it's not fashioned more like an actual diary, though.
LOST is back! Listen below to hear our first podcast, or subscribe to “Geronimo Jack’s Beard” on iTunes to hear all of our podcasts as they air each week.Um…this first one was um… a little bumpy since um… we were new to the whole um… podcasting thing. We recorded this on August 31, 2009. We accidentally lost a chunk of the recording, but hopefully what is there is entertaining. Enjoy!
Listen here: GJB 601602 LA X
And don’t forget to become a fan of GJB on Facebook by clicking here
Actually, it’s Jorge Garcia and his girlfriend Beth. I’m looking forward to hearing what Jorge Garcia has to say about his character Hurley and the other crazy goings-on during the final season of Lost. After all, Jorge is not only an actor on the show, but also a fan like the rest of us. I think it’ll be a unique perspective!
I love rewatching this clip from Community on NBC, Kids… Had to share it. 
Now, as I blogged before, I loved the movie Snakes on a Plane. It had a great online “cult” presence and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it was far from being best movie of the year. Anyway, I just found out a little while ago that Fox has started a little viral campaign of its own for the fall 2009 season premiere of House, M.D that riffs off of “Snakes on a Plane”. They sent out a bunch of awesome black t-shirts with this logo:
And you can see this same t-shirt on snakesonacane.com. I first read a tweet about this from Kath from Give Me My Remote, and that’s how I found out about the viral site Fox put up. So far it has a countdown clock indicating how much time is left before the season premiere (I presume). Clever! At this moment the premiere is 36 days, 19 hours, and some odd minutes and seconds away. It does get me excited for the season premiere, especially thinking about how last season ended (won’t go into detail so as not to spoil anyone). Why do the TV bloggers get all the cool schwag? Hey Fox PR people, how about throwing me a House t-shirt?
P.S. Hugh Laurie…swoooooooooon…
As I was browsing my Twitter backlog I saw this tweet from Steve Isaacs:
“I’m totally gonna watch the Bollywood Hero mini-series on IFC because of that awesome Times Square stunt. #nyc #win” Then I scrolled down more and saw what he was talking about: “This RULES! Indian dance flash mob in Times Square for Chris Kattan’s “Bollywood Hero” on IFC: http://bit.ly/ZnAN3 #nyc” Great video! And like he said, now I’m interested in watching the show, simply due to this one short video. Good on you, IFC. You guys know how to take advantage of viral marketing in the way it was intended. Now hopefully Bollywood Hero is as entertaining as this video is.For the first time ever, every week/weekend in the month of May features a new movie that the hubby and I want to see. The movie industry is getting plenty of money from us this month. This week brings Terminator Salvation, yeah!
Anyway, last weekend the hubby and I watched Angels and Demons. It was alright. We probably could’ve taken last weekend off and waited to rent the movie. It wasn’t really necessary to see it on the big screen. At least we were able to see it during the afternoon at matinee prices.
Getting to the point of this blog post, we saw that one of the characters in the movie was played by Cosimo Fusco, the actor who played Paolo on Friends, one of my favoritest TV shows ever. When we saw him on screen, I whispered to the hubby, “he’s a huge CRAPWEASEL!”, a famous quote from the show, paraphrased. BTW, if you want to see the scene where Ross tells Paolo this, pull up this video and go to minute 4:45. Well, when I checked out IMDB for Angels and Demons to see the rest of the cast list (I do this a lot), I happened to notice a very funny Friends-related discussion thread on Cosimo Fusco’s IMDB page. Since it requires registration to view it, I took the liberty of screencapping the thread for your viewing pleasure:
Bwahahahaha! It’s not really fair to the actor to only be known to the majority of American audiences as “Paolo” on Friends or as a crap weasel, but the IMDB thread is still frickin’ funny. **sheepish grin**
The Sci Fi Channel wants to change their name in order to appeal to a broader audience. Talk about totally missing the point… You should go *more* niche-y, not less. Podcasts are a great example of this. There are tons of podcasts out there for just about any niche. Yes, they aren’t making anyone millionaires or anything, but the advertising that those podcasts have are ultra-targeted to willing audiences (for the most part). Making the Sci Fi channel more accessible to people who claim they don’t like sci-fi is absolutely stupid. You’ll just end up with lowest-common-denominator programming which will alienate your core audience. Do you think you’re doing your fan base any good when you quote things like this?
“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network.
Mr. Brooks said that when people who say they don’t like science fiction enjoy a film like “Star Wars,” they don’t think it’s science fiction; they think it’s a good movie.
“We spent a lot of time in the ’90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it’s called Sci Fi,” Mr. Brooks said. “It’s somewhat cooler and better than the name ‘Science Fiction.’ But even the name Sci Fi is limiting.”
How do clueless idiots like this get as far as they do? It’s unfathomable. Once Battlestar Galactica is gone, I doubt there’ll be any programming on Sci Fi that will appeal to me, name change or not. They’ve already pissed off BSG fans by jerking the schedule around and prolonging the end of the show for no good reason. Combine this with their misguided notions that a name change and “more accessible” programming will make them profitable, and you can see that Sci Fi is going to meet its maker sooner rather than later. Hit up the article link and read the comment thread. A lot of people are making my arguments for me, in more eloquent terms. 
I know my post title is inflammatory. But it’s the first thing I thought when I heard that the cable companies are trying to make online TV shows available only to people who subscribe to cable. What I said in my post title is certainly not a new idea. The only people the networks are hurting here are the people who are trying to do the right thing by buying content on iTunes or Amazon, or by watching streaming video with ads.
How many ways are the networks earning money? There’s the normal broadcast TV way, with the ads that they sell. I think that’s still the major way most people consume TV. Then there’s iTunes and Amazon and whoever else sells shows a la carte and by seasons. There are DVD box sets. There are cable subscriptions. There are online streaming sites that have ads. How many other ways do they need to sell their content? Don’t even get me started on how little the writers, actors, and crew of huge money-making shows actually get from the total revenue raked in by the networks…
Cable providers might be losing money from a downturn in cable subscriptions, but only providing online content to those who pay for cable is both stupid and arrogant. Do they really think that the people who currently have shifted to services like Hulu are going to pay for a cable subscription just to keep getting what they used to get for free? I don’t know why I keep getting surprised by the stupidity of these TV networks. They’re all motivated by blind greed and that’s all they’ll ever aspire to. Duh! But the lows to which they stoop in order to maintain their current business model are always surprising and frustrating to me.
I have limited buying digital content like TV shows or movies because in general I still like to have the physical media, mainly because Blu-Ray quality is still a lot better than iTunes quality. And TV/movie studios still put a lot of extras on the discs that you can’t get when you buy the TV show/movie digitally. The studios know that extras draw people in. So why don’t they do something similar for online video? If they want to reward people who subscribe to cable/satellite, why don’t they produce original content that only subscribers can get? Or heaven forfend they lower cable costs so that it’s more affordable for more people and draw new customers simply because it’s cheaper than using iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, and the like. Merely providing the shows that you can watch for free over-the-air or online is not enough to entice subscribers. That is just the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard from the networks yet. And of course it would be the idea to win out. The networks want to do the least amount as possible in order to get the most ROI. Instead of rewarding people for their loyalty, they continue to screw us over. It’s disgusting. I can’t wait for major TV producers like Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, Carleton Cuse, and Damon Lindeloff to start producing shows and distributing them directly online without the TV networks. That day can’t come quickly enough.
Yesterday I posted a rant about how the TV networks were completely clueless when they made Hulu take their content off of Boxee. Well, it was inevitable; here is a workaround from Jake Marsh. He has an alpha plug-in for Boxee on Macs and an RSS feed to add to Boxee on Apple TVs called TV Library. It doesn’t just add Hulu, though. It also adds Veoh, YouTube, Google Video, Tudou, 56.com, Guba, MegaVideo, YouKu, and Tu.tv. Many of these I haven’t even heard of, so I am interested to see what shows they offer. The timing is great, and I look forward to seeing the finished product. In the mean time, the TV networks can *bleep bleep bleep*. Have fun filling in the blanks. **smirk**
***Gold star to anyone who knows what movie quote I altered for my post title.
In yet another display of “not getting it,” TV networks which provide content for Hulu strong-armed Hulu into dropping out of Boxee’s line up. Hey network execs, you guys are complete morons. >:-|
One of the main draws for me to use Boxee on my AppleTV is for piping shows on Hulu to my big screen with little effort. How is this a bad thing for the broadcast channels? I still see the ads on Hulu, so what’s the big deal? Because of Hulu’s stupid “wait period” for some shows, I still buy TV episodes on iTunes from time to time. I did that just recently for the latest episode of Damages. I also bought the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica on iTunes not because it was delayed in being released on Hulu, but because I like the HD quality of the iTunes download.
I’m actually more surprised that Boxee’s other more questionable features (awesome for TV-watchers, not so awesome for the networks) weren’t attacked. I shall not spell aforementioned features out, so as to help keep them alive and well…Google is your friend.
Anyway, I’m not going to dump Boxee, nor will I dump Hulu. I can still use Boxee for its other features, and if I have to, I can run Hulu on my Mac mini (though it’s long in the tooth and can’t run HD content…phooey). They’re both great products/services. It is shameful how the TV networks are penalizing Hulu and Boxee. The networks are just grasping at straws, trying to prevent the inevitable. More and more people are watching TV shows online and there’s nothing the networks can do about it. And it’s not like this is the beginning of the exodus. This has been happening for quite a long time, so they shouldn’t be surprised that people are taking to watching TV shows online. Hey, network execs push us further and we might just stop watching your shows altogether. You already had a close call with the writers’ strike, or did you already forget?
AWESOME!
After years & years of wishing there were season box sets of Top Gear available to purchase here in the US, I just now found out that iTunes has Top Gear, series 10 available for purchase! I can’t wait to see more seasons show up for sale. Very cool. The Stig approves.
Hi, Kids!
Quick TV programming note for this week: both Heroes and The Office are coming back! Heroes’ premiere is tomorrow at 8PM Central time. The Office’s premiere is on Thursday at 8PM Central. Get your DVRs ready!
Hi, Kids.
A couple of the shows I watch have already had their premieres last Monday. I’ve been looking around for a listing for the premiere dates for other shows I’m interested in and found a couple good resources:
1. A printable PDF calendar of premiere dates from TV Addict.
2. A prime-time broadcast schedule on epguides.com that lists the premiere dates in the line up.
Hope this helps!
Just check out the banner at the bottom. :-/
Just saw an article on Ars Technica that says NBC wants Apple to tighten up their DRM on iTunes so that they can control whether or not their shows can be transferred to iPods/iPhones. And they want to be able to charge more per episode. The NBC executives on board with this kind of thinking are all IDIOTS. If pirated media ends up on devices like the iPod, it’s not because iTunes doesn’t have strong enough DRM. And AFAIK, there aren’t any hacks out there to strip the DRM off of iTunes video purchases. So basically, whenever I buy videos from iTunes, I can only play them on my computer via iTunes, or transfer them to an authorized iPod to watch on the iPod itself. This is not good enough for NBC?
I appreciate that NBC is putting their shows out for free (only selected shows and selected episodes, though) on Hulu.com. I have watched some stuff on Hulu a couple times and it was fine. And in the past, when I missed a show on NBC, I have gone to their website to watch the video directly from there. But I do not like to be chained to my computer when I want to watch certain videos. I really like to rip my DVDs of The Office or other TV shows and transfer them to my iPod (or other portable media device) to watch while away from my computer, NOT so I can put them online to distribute to other people. We are growing increasingly used to time- and placeshifting, and the more NBC or any other networks try to fight it, the more they’re going to lose out on money. Period. NBC easily forgets how one of their most popular shows, The Office, was essentially saved by its placement on iTunes. I’m sure they got quite a significant ROI from all of their shows on iTunes, which, BTW, they didn’t want to pass along to the writers and actors; let’s not forget that major point.
I don’t even understand this argument from NBC, considering they have their shows available for download/purchase on Amazon Unbox, and these files can be transferred to portable players like the Zune. So how is it different from iTunes? Clearly they want to be able to choose their own pricing, but they’re playing up the whole piracy bit so they don’t look like greedy bastards. Hmm, too late, NBC.
