Theater TV: An Old Idea That Still Rocks

The best time in front of a big screen may be watching college football games with a bunch rabid fans. But when the screen is REALLY BIG that fun is amplified by about twenty fold. My local theater, the great Studio 35, lets OSU Buckeye fans watch their beloved team along with 400 other or so nuts for free. They sell the beer, the pizza and, if the team is throttling the opposition, cheers of "OH-IO" careen throughout the theater. It's a blast and reminds me of Anna McCarthy's book, Ambient Televsion, where she discusses the way that closed-circuit television broadcasts of Ali fights in theaters operated as a an alternative public sphere of television viewing for African Americans. The difference is, of course, that the games I see have to do with "state pride", an underappreciated phenomenon in the US, but a real one nonetheless. In TV scholarship we see a lot of discussion about nation building and "National culture", but little about the local. While that deserves a longer piece than I can offer now, I just wanted to note that this might just be a good place to start.

Oh, and for my GF... "Go Bucks!"

Democracy TV Rules

Man, the release of Democracy TV, a kick ass open-source player with built-in bittorrent capacities made my week. Best yet, it's free! Go get it now and download Ze Frabk, Homestar Runner and all kinds of cool videos that you can't see on MTV2.

The Daily Show on MySpace via You Tube

This is where the whole value of the internet shines -- you get a clip, in flash, about a website that is from a TV Show...

I love this whole digital technology thing!

Digging YouTube... Again

I love The Office. IMHO it's the best sitcom on American TV today. Like a lot of fans I know, I am obsessed with the Dwight/Angela romance that, well, I don't get enough of... if you are like me, check the video that is posted below...


Simply wonderful I tell you!

Chuck Berry and Gerry & The Pacemakers at TAMI Show - PT 1

One is cool -- the other, not so much -- you figure it out!

The TAMI show on YouTube

YouTube... some call it silly, some call it narcissistic, I think YouTube can be a real public service. This is a super rare clip from a number of clips on the TAMI show, the greatest rock and roll film of all time, IMHOP.

Hey, Bush had a Solid Lead In for his SOTU

I wanted to title this post something about how the kids are hep, but I find American Idol absolutely unwatchable. Anyways, here's the scoop...

Officially, Nielsen doesn't put out ratings for individual broadcast networks on the State of the Union address. That's because it runs on those networks without advertising and, like that whole Tree in the Forest Thing (you know, no one around to hear it fall, did it make a noise? that you discussed at great length in some middle-school class the day you had a substitute teacher looking to keep you quiet for an hour with as little effort as possible), Nielsen maintains that a program run without advertising on an ad-supported network did not actually happen, or something like that.

Nielsen, however, did note late yesterday that the speech accumulated that audience of 41.699 million viewers across ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNN, FNC, MSNBC and Telemundo.

That's about 3 million more than last year, when Bush suffered the embarrassment of scoring SOTU's second-smallest audience in the past 12 years or more, not far ahead of President Bill Clinton's post-impeachment audience of 32 million.

Though Bush clocked his biggest numbers on the Fox broadcast network, that's not to say he did such a hot job retaining the "Idol" audience. In its final half-hour, Tuesday's episode -- set in Las Vegas and featuring auditions of the above-mentioned Idol wannabes -- the singing competition logged 33 million viewers.

In his first half-hour of speechifying, Bush averaged about 9.5 million viewers on Fox. That's a lousy 29 percent retention rate, which would get him canceled faster than he could say "Emily's Reasons Why Not" if he were a TV series.

But, thankfully, he's not. And, by 9:30 p.m., which is how long it took another 3 million Fox viewers to realize the president wasn't just another bad audition for "American Idol," that network's contribution to the SOTU audience had plunged to 6.9 million viewers.

Well, the question stands: is Bush a TV series or is he not? Maybe he would getter better ratings if they let Simon criticize his performance...

WVA + DDR = Gym Class

I can just hear my old wrestling coach and health teacher, Jim Hess, screaming out loud, what in the world have we come to as he this article...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Like many 11-year-old boys, K.D. Jones loves sports. But at 5 feet, 175 pounds, he found his weight and the asthma it caused an obstacle to enjoying many activities. His doctor wanted him to lose 50 pounds, and he's hoping a new health study using video games to fight obesity will help him get down to 125 by the end of summer in time to play football.

Jones is one of 85 children being recruited by the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency to participate in an at-home study using the video game Dance Dance Revolution to increase activity.

He lost about 10 pounds by changing his diet. Now after two weeks playing the game, he's lost another 10.

"I feel a lot better," he said. "It's a lot easier to play basketball now."

His enthusiasm has his mother, who struggles with her own weight issues, giving the game a try.

"It's a lot of fun," Joyce Jones said. "But I can only do it about two times for every four times he does."

Hey, whatever works you know...

And then there was five...

Looks like the WB and UPN are closing shop to become the CW network. Hmmm, the CW network huh? Any chance of bring back Hee Haw? Probably not. Here's what the article says...

The new CW network, to launch in September 2006, will be a 50-50 joint venture of UPN parent company CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc., which controls the WB.

Tribune Co., which holds a minority stake in the WB, will not have any ownership interest in the newly merged broadcaster, which will combine such shows as UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris" and the WB's "Gilmore Girls" under one roof.

The WB practically invented the 12-to-34-year-old demographic of teens and young adults, with an emphasis on female viewers, though 18 to 34 is considered its advertising sweet spot. Besides "Gilmore Girls," its prime-time lineup includes "Smallville," "Everwood," "Supernatural," "Reba" and reality show "Beauty and the Geek."

UPN likewise has focused on a female-oriented 18-34 crowd, with many of its shows -- including current shows "Everybody Hates Chris," "Girlfriends" and "Eve" -- aimed primarily at an African-American audience.

Ehhh, so probably no Hee Haw then...

Free Delwin!

I got a kick out of this column on a student who is being sued by the RIAA. They want $5K and now there is a website built by his friends and is dedicated to raising money for Delwin. T-shirts for sale and donations are accepted. The lesson: have smart friends if a lobbying group holds your feet to the fire and tries to make an example of you.

Yet more PR was given to US to go to war... and you didn't even know it, did you?

So my student, Claire Marshall, sent me a link to the NPR story on Joh Rendon and "an effort to sway public opinion that Rendon dubs "perception management."" I like euphemisms for the words like "lying" don't you? Anyways, this is an piece that broke in Rolling Stone of all places. I may hate that magazine for having bad taste (don't get me started), but at least it has journalists who investigate, uh, you know, stuff, unlike Faux News. Anyways, here's a snippet about John Rendon and his PR factory

It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

Indeed... one of his major coups? Getting Judith Miller to take much of his information from a disgruntled Iraqi.

So when do you think Roger Ailes hires Judith?

I'm with the Deadheads on This One

The New York Times reports that the Grateful Dead are shutting down a website of its live recordings. Why is that a big deal? Well, as many of you may know, the Dead always allowed fans to make and distribute live tapes from their shows for many years. Bootlegging and trading has been a longstanding part of Deadhead culture. However, as the article notes,

The band recently asked the operators of the popular Live Music Archive (archive.org) to make the concert recordings - a staple of Grateful Dead fandom - available only for listening online, the band's spokesman, Dennis McNally, said yesterday. In the meantime, the files that previously had been freely downloaded were taken down from the site last week.

Now, don't worry, there are ways to capture streams, but this is more about what it means to be a Deadhead...

To the fans, the move signals a profound philosophical shift for a band that had been famous for encouraging fans to record and trade live-concert tapes. The band even cordoned off a special area at its shows, usually near the sound board, for "tapers" - a practice now followed by many younger jam bands.

David Gans, who is the host of a syndicated radio program, "The Grateful Dead Hour," said in an interview yesterday that the battle is rooted in the band's "historically lackadaisical attitude toward their intellectual property." He added: "When they were making $50 million a year on the road, there wasn't a lot of pressure to monetize their archives." Now, however, it may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. While the move to revise the Live Music Archive may deal a blow to what many fans considered an organized library of material, "the idea that they could stop people from trading these files is absurd," Mr. Gans said, adding: "It's no longer under anyone's control. People have gigabytes of this stuff."

Genie... bottle... please jump in. Pretty please.

Can you say, "Law of unintended consequences?"

The news that Sony was stopping their employment anti-priacy CDs made me happy. Happier still since it seems to cause problems with viruses...

The move came after security firms said hackers were exploiting the software to hide their creations.

The software has been used by viruses to evade detection by anti-virus programs and infect computers.

Sony said it had a right to stop people illegally copying music, but added that the halt was precautionary.

"We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use," the company said in a statement.

That's right. You wouldn't want the next Bruce Springsteen to make your computer explode, no would you?

Sox are Champs of the World!!!

It's fall and the Sox rule! For the first time in 88 years we can say that and with new pumpkin-related technologies, we can display excellence in gourd fashion. Muchas gracias to the great Levi of baseballrelated.com. Check it out. It's good for you!

First Cookie Monster, Now This!

As if the idea that Cookie Monster had to back off of carbs to set a positive image for obese American children was not sad enough, now Spongebob, Dora and President Bill are in on the act...

Bill Clinton is teaming with SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer in a campaign to nudge kids to eat healthy foods and to get up off the couch and move, the former president and Nickelodeon television executives announced Thursday.

Depressing.

Fomer Marine PR Guy Joins Al Jazeera

I thought this was just too interesting to ignore. So here you go...

Is he a modern-day Tokyo Rose, the nickname GIs in World War II gave to the womenthey heard on Japanese radio trying to turn them against America? Is he a propagandist set to tear down the country he once served? A collaborator aiding the enemy?

Rushing, 33, has taken a job reporting for a new channel for Al-Jazeera. That's the Qatar-based network that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said is "perfectly willing to lie to the world" and has "a pattern of playing propaganda over and over and over again" for its 50 million viewers, most of them in the Arab world.

Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly branded it a "propaganda network ... bent on encouraging violence and sympathetic to terrorists." And Iraq's new government temporarily closed the network's offices in Baghdad, saying that Al-Jazeera incites insurgents by showing video of attacks and statements from Osama bin Laden and his deputies.

But Rushing, who will appear on a global, English-language news channel the network hopes to start by spring, considers his decision to work for Al-Jazeera noble, not seditious. "I've given my entire adult life to the health and well-being of this nation," Rushing says. "I wouldn't do anything to threaten that.

"What the Marines trained me to do was to represent the best of what America stands for to a foreign audience. That's exactly what I'm going to do."

And if you saw Control Room the whole thing is even odder. Truth stranger than fiction, indeed!

Sox Win The Pennant!

At least it aint the Cubs. Ozzie Guillen is a minor deity, though I fear there is Major Karma to pay due to Jerry Reinsdorf's cancellation of the World Series in 1994. And Jerry, don't deny you did it... you did! Garland, Contreras, Konerko, oh my! If only Big Frank could get healthy and they could turn the outfield of US Cellular Field toward the downtown, all would be perfect. And Shoeless Joe, you can lift the curse now.

Articles about Internet Control... The US don't wanna let go!

I thought the following portion of this article was interesting...

A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium's principal overseer.

"We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. "Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable."

Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development.

Well, geez, let's see, what would be the counter proposal? How about International control...

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important "because the Internet is a global resource."

"The EU ... is very firm on this position," he added.

A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world.

At issue is who would have ultimate authority over the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic.

Well, this ought to get interesting. More on this later....

Gas Prices Makes More Mass Transit Riders Out of Us After All

I have an interest in mass transit that goes beyond curiosity... it borders on a minor obsession at times. Mainly trains since buses just don't do it for me. But put buses on a power line and I get all excited. I don't know why, something that has to do with my childhood I am certain, but this isn't the time for that. It turns out that in a town where we are supposed to get trains in the ever distant future, perhaps $3 a gallon gas may quicken our demand after all. In places like Dallas and Losa Angeles mass transit ridership is up...

In Dallas, an increase in ridership in the past month on DART has resulted in "incredibly creative parking at some outlying stations," and the service received a growing number of complaints from motorists demanding to know why the system doesn't serve their destinations, according to DART spokesman Morgan Lyons.

The Trinity Railway Express, a commuter rail service between Dallas and Fort Worth, has benefited even more from high gasoline prices, posting a 15 percent increase in ridership so far this month, Lyons says.

In famously car-addicted Los Angeles, ridership on city buses and subways jumped 7.82 percent in August, while ridership on the Metro-Link, the regional commuter rail service for the metropolitan area, rose 6 percent, the largest monthly increase since last November.

15% and 6% increases... that is meaningful and let's hope that we begin to realize that we need zoning that demands density, a return to car pools for commuting and every metro area needs an adequate light rail system. And as the song goes, some may say I'm a dreamer, but I am not the only one...

Nano Nano - Pogue Goes Batty Over New iPod

David Pogue, the NYT technology columnist went nuts over the iPod Nano this morning in his review. While skeptical, there was one part that really struck me...

What's so clever about the iPod Nano ($249) is that it merges these two approaches. It contains memory chips, so it's dazzlingly tiny - 3.5 by 1.6 by 0.27 inches, to be exact, about the size of a folded playing card and thin enough to slip under a door. Yet because Apple stuffed it with four gigabytes of memory, it holds as much music as some hard-drive players - more than 1,000 songs. (Apple also offers a $199 model with half the capacity.) Because it contains no moving parts, the Nano is less delicate than full-size iPods and virtually skip-proof.

Did you catch that last part? "Skip proof". Wow, now that is appealing. Coming from a professional klutz, getting four GB of hard drive that doesn't include moving parts is amazing. I'm still thinking about that 60GB model, but that is damn tempting. Besides, I think 1,000 songs around my neck is more than enough... well, ok, maybe I do need 15,000 songs...