Yo!
Yeah, I really need to work on thinking up funnier titles. ....Anyway, hands-down, among the top chatter this week is the ever-increasing hype about both new syndicated network TV channels, replacing The WB and UPN: The CW, and MyNetworkTV. Apparently, The CW will be replacing both The WB and UPN simultaneously, serving as a near-perfect fusion of the two networks (Show of hands, who seriously thought this time two years ago that eventually Smallville and Veronica Mars would be on the same channel? Yup, I didn't think so.), while MyNetworkTV will be shown on the former WB/UPN channels that don't become The CW next week. Example: In Los Angeles, MyNetworkTV will be taking over former UPN channel 13, while the CW will be dominating what once was WB's KTLA, channel 5.
What surprises me the most about this merger isn't the selected programs between WB and UPN that will be renewed and carried over to the CW, despite certain programs' threat of cancellation constantly looming, yet never striking fully (C'mon, Brenda Hampton, just let 7th Heaven die already!!!!!!!!!!!!!), but rather what's happening with MyNetworkTV. As you can easily tell from their official site, HERE, the only thing these guys have going for them, I found out from another website because they don't have a full zip code-searchable schedule on the official site yet, is the 22 hours a day of syndicated programs. Which basically means the 48 contiguous United States at least (I'm not sure about Alaska and Hawaii) will be given a complete grab bag of programs practically at random, with almost every MNTV outlet getting a different set of programs in near-constant rotation. All day. Every day. Not an ounce of decent originality in sight.
Speaking of, the only original programming these guys have happens to be a pair of ripped-from-Univision primetime soap operas, "Desire" and "Fashion House." Go on, I triple-dog-dare you to tell the discernable differences apart. If this is the kind of pompous drivel we'll have no choice but to expect from the sister company of MySpace, of all things (yes, THIS MySpace.), I can't help but believe that this'll be one more nail in the coffin of network television in general as we know it.
Bottom Line: If this is supposed to be a decently competing alternative to cable TV, frankly, I'm not impressed. The CW is renewing crap that doesn't need renewing (Except Smallville, Everybody Hates Chris and Supernatural. I'm happy about that. Also, I'm hearing good things about this year's Veronica Mars...), and MyNetworkTV doesn't even have an animation block! Just syndicated sitcoms and dramas all the time! Personally, I'm betting on most of the major broadcast networks dying out when everything goes exclusively Hi-Def. Even then, it'll only be a matter of time before the only burning question won't be "CSI" or "Law & Order" anymore. 'Cause their native networks will be dead as the dodo. Besides, Spike and TNT handles those two syndicated shows, respectively, just fine. ....But that's just me. Any thoughts/comments on this, readers...?
See ya next Monday!
-D.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Monday, August 21, 2006
Entry 23: "When You Wish Upon A Stargate..."
Yo!
Well, well, well. Apparently, the series MacGyver helped build just celebrated its WELL WORTH TAPING 200th episode last week, which officially cemented its well-deserved place next to "The X-Files" and "Star Trek"as one of the greatest sci-fi series ever. Period. Furthermore, because of the series' continually high ratings and popularity, even during the past year, despite certain cast replacements (Thanks Browder and Bridges, for not ruining the show!!!), there are rumors running rampant around the internet right now that a second and THIRD Stargate movie will come to fruition... Except the sequels will reportedly be taking the Superman Returns route and completely ignore the more recent incarnations of the franchise (read: SG-1 and Atlantis) in favor of picking things up right where Kurt Russell and James Spader left off back in '94... By getting Russel and Spader to come back and pick up where they left off personally! Meaning NO LEAD REPLACEMENTS IN THE SEQUELS!!!
And here we were supposed to be under the assumption that SG-1 was supposed to be the "sequel." A 10 year long, extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely dragged-out version of what should've been a real theatrical sequel, but a follow-up nonetheless. Okay, first off, if the rumors are true, and by this time in 2010 we'll have a full Stargate Trilogy on our hands, where does that leave SG-1? Are we, the fans, supposed to instantly shelve that alongside "Lion King 1.5" as the dweeby younger sibling, or "in-between-quel", as it were, of the entire Stargate franchise? And don't even get me started on Atlantis. The instant I heard about SciFi making that show, I immediately knew it was the beginning of the original franchise creators trying to make up for approving Infinity.
I suppose if this does happen, here's hoping that SciFi won't do what Fox is supposedly about to do with The Simpsons: Make a movie, and pull the plug on the series. Not that I'm complaining about the cancellation of the series, mind you. How that show is existing post-1998, I'll never know. I'm just trying to create an analogy here. Also, if SciFi does end SG-1 because of the new movie(s), they better find a way to squeeze at least a couple more seasons past this point in the show before they cancel it. because as big and bad as these newer, post-Richard Dean Anderson episodes claim these "Ori" villains to be, that might dampen their massively evil image in the eyes of the show fans just a bit. Please, SciFi. At least stretch this to Season 12.
Think about it. It took seven years for SG-1 to dispose of Ra (also the villain from the movie, no less) once and for all, and to have a story arc that's strikingly reminiscent of the current conflict in Iraq (supposedly, it's America vs. The Evil, Oppressive Autocracy That Kills Thousands In The Name Of Religion, last time I checked Fox News) go from start to finish in less than half the time it took Ra and the Goa'uld to go down, that just seems a tad anticlimactic to me. Bottom Line: SG-1 show crew, I hope you guys know what you're doing. The way you guys have been building up to the inevitable end of the Ori, and the entire show, the finale had better not have a cheap ending. Especially if the movie sequel reports are right, because we, the fans, won't buy, or be able to buy, a copout excuse of "Everything'll be explained/wrapped up with the new movies." I don't think that's a very appropriate send-off/thank-you to the fans that supported you for so long. ...But that's just me. Anyway, readers, what do you think about this situation? As always, comments and kudos are more than welcome... That's all for now, though. 'Til next time...
Later!
-D.
Well, well, well. Apparently, the series MacGyver helped build just celebrated its WELL WORTH TAPING 200th episode last week, which officially cemented its well-deserved place next to "The X-Files" and "Star Trek"as one of the greatest sci-fi series ever. Period. Furthermore, because of the series' continually high ratings and popularity, even during the past year, despite certain cast replacements (Thanks Browder and Bridges, for not ruining the show!!!), there are rumors running rampant around the internet right now that a second and THIRD Stargate movie will come to fruition... Except the sequels will reportedly be taking the Superman Returns route and completely ignore the more recent incarnations of the franchise (read: SG-1 and Atlantis) in favor of picking things up right where Kurt Russell and James Spader left off back in '94... By getting Russel and Spader to come back and pick up where they left off personally! Meaning NO LEAD REPLACEMENTS IN THE SEQUELS!!!
And here we were supposed to be under the assumption that SG-1 was supposed to be the "sequel." A 10 year long, extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely dragged-out version of what should've been a real theatrical sequel, but a follow-up nonetheless. Okay, first off, if the rumors are true, and by this time in 2010 we'll have a full Stargate Trilogy on our hands, where does that leave SG-1? Are we, the fans, supposed to instantly shelve that alongside "Lion King 1.5" as the dweeby younger sibling, or "in-between-quel", as it were, of the entire Stargate franchise? And don't even get me started on Atlantis. The instant I heard about SciFi making that show, I immediately knew it was the beginning of the original franchise creators trying to make up for approving Infinity.
I suppose if this does happen, here's hoping that SciFi won't do what Fox is supposedly about to do with The Simpsons: Make a movie, and pull the plug on the series. Not that I'm complaining about the cancellation of the series, mind you. How that show is existing post-1998, I'll never know. I'm just trying to create an analogy here. Also, if SciFi does end SG-1 because of the new movie(s), they better find a way to squeeze at least a couple more seasons past this point in the show before they cancel it. because as big and bad as these newer, post-Richard Dean Anderson episodes claim these "Ori" villains to be, that might dampen their massively evil image in the eyes of the show fans just a bit. Please, SciFi. At least stretch this to Season 12.
Think about it. It took seven years for SG-1 to dispose of Ra (also the villain from the movie, no less) once and for all, and to have a story arc that's strikingly reminiscent of the current conflict in Iraq (supposedly, it's America vs. The Evil, Oppressive Autocracy That Kills Thousands In The Name Of Religion, last time I checked Fox News) go from start to finish in less than half the time it took Ra and the Goa'uld to go down, that just seems a tad anticlimactic to me. Bottom Line: SG-1 show crew, I hope you guys know what you're doing. The way you guys have been building up to the inevitable end of the Ori, and the entire show, the finale had better not have a cheap ending. Especially if the movie sequel reports are right, because we, the fans, won't buy, or be able to buy, a copout excuse of "Everything'll be explained/wrapped up with the new movies." I don't think that's a very appropriate send-off/thank-you to the fans that supported you for so long. ...But that's just me. Anyway, readers, what do you think about this situation? As always, comments and kudos are more than welcome... That's all for now, though. 'Til next time...
Later!
-D.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Entry 22: "Oh Podcast, Where Art Thou?"
Yo!
SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! It seems to me that the good quality audio podcasts are getting more and more scarce, not in terms of general quality, but in terms of regularity, as far as releasing them on a schedule. Those of you who regularly use podcasts know what I'm talking about here, no doubt. Apparently, either these guys are all really super-busy around late summertime, or they're starting to slack off.
In case you don't know, "podcasting" is a special kind of blog, like this one you're reading right now, my "BTJM" Monday blog, but in a special spoken-word audio format: MP3. MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group [class 1] (or MPEG-1), Layer 3 Audio, which is an extremely popular and common audio format used by millions of people to store lots of music without taking up a lot of space on their computers, and due to the varying audio quality rates, or "bitrates", people can choose to copy, or "rip" songs off of their existing CD collection onto their computers with a diverse choice of bitrate between a very low bitrate (which produces a very low filesize, taking up much less space on your computer), or a high bitrate (producing significantly better sound quality, but getting a very high filesize in the process). The most commonly used bitrate currently is arguably 128 Kbps (Kilobits per second; 128,000 "bits" of audio information copied from original audio source per second. Pretty good sound, depending on content).
As far as where the format came from, back in the early '90s, a group of European engineers were tinkering around with special hardware and software in a special digital radio research program, and eventually discovered several different file formats alongside MP3, including MPEG-Layer 1 and 2, and used different compression programs to find one bitrate compression method and file format that would work well with large audio files and require very minimal hard drive space and computational power (remember, this is circa 1990. Hard drive capacities were less than half a CD's worth back then), and used the song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega, because of its softness and simplicity, to hear imperfections in the resulting audio test files easier. Guess which one came out on top. Because of this, some people (read: the Wikipedia community) sometimes refer to Vega as "the mother of MP3."
Also, "podcast" is a phrase coined by Apple Computer, meaning when people produce audio recordings of themselves talking about different topics for varying time lengths, usually from 30 minutes (roughly 25-28MB of 128Kbps MP3, or 4 percent of a CD) to an hour (50-60MB, 8 percent of a CD), then submitting it to Apple's iTunes Podcast store (which isn't the only source of podcasts anymore. More on that in a second). iTunes users would then download the audio files ("podcasts"), for free, and (ideally) play them in either their computer, or Apple's iPod MP3 device, hence the term "PODcasts". There's another couple file formats, M4V (basically MP3s with embedded pictures, or iTunes TV Show downloads use this file extension too) and MP4/MPEG-4 video, which are used for VIDEO podcasting, but that's another blog entry.
Phew! Now that this week's little history lesson is out of the way, those of you still awake and reading can enjoy the real rant. I don't know what the heck is going on lately, but it seems a lot of people are taking the last couple of months or so off from sticking to their own weekly or biweekly podcasts, or at least the ones I listen to, and I'm not talking about the iTunes users. Websites like IGN, GameSpot and TV.com alll have podcast shows I personally subscribe to and listen to regularly, thanks to my PlayStation Portable (Thank you, Firmware 2.60!), and The Podcast Network has gobs of categorized podcast content you can listen to as well, as does Yahoo! Podcasts Beta, but the underlying problem again is consistency.
Case in point: TV.com's guys haven't done anything since July 6th, and they haven't updated their RSS feed (for Really Simple Syndication readers like My Yahoo and NewsGator, and Firmware 2.60 PSPs, of course) since May 25th! Another one I use, ToonZone.com, hasn't done jack since June 1st! Maybe it's just these TV-related sites that are really getting lax, though, because most of the others are fairly regular. Well, except for Podcast Network's "The PSP Show". (Hey, Ewan Spence! July 18th is long gone! What's the deal???) Maybe they're just waiting until the September Fall stuff starts before they come back. But the fact that they don't even say they're going on hiatus sends up a red flag to me. Bottom Line: Hey, TV Podcasters! If Thanksgiving rolls around and your early-mid summer stuff is still "current", we're gonna have a problem here. Please get with (your) program and don't leave your listeners hanging! As for you other, more consistent podcasters out there, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! Just please give some advance notice before you go on a 90 day mini-sabbatical. .......But that's just me.
See you next Monday!
-D.
SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! It seems to me that the good quality audio podcasts are getting more and more scarce, not in terms of general quality, but in terms of regularity, as far as releasing them on a schedule. Those of you who regularly use podcasts know what I'm talking about here, no doubt. Apparently, either these guys are all really super-busy around late summertime, or they're starting to slack off.
In case you don't know, "podcasting" is a special kind of blog, like this one you're reading right now, my "BTJM" Monday blog, but in a special spoken-word audio format: MP3. MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group [class 1] (or MPEG-1), Layer 3 Audio, which is an extremely popular and common audio format used by millions of people to store lots of music without taking up a lot of space on their computers, and due to the varying audio quality rates, or "bitrates", people can choose to copy, or "rip" songs off of their existing CD collection onto their computers with a diverse choice of bitrate between a very low bitrate (which produces a very low filesize, taking up much less space on your computer), or a high bitrate (producing significantly better sound quality, but getting a very high filesize in the process). The most commonly used bitrate currently is arguably 128 Kbps (Kilobits per second; 128,000 "bits" of audio information copied from original audio source per second. Pretty good sound, depending on content).
As far as where the format came from, back in the early '90s, a group of European engineers were tinkering around with special hardware and software in a special digital radio research program, and eventually discovered several different file formats alongside MP3, including MPEG-Layer 1 and 2, and used different compression programs to find one bitrate compression method and file format that would work well with large audio files and require very minimal hard drive space and computational power (remember, this is circa 1990. Hard drive capacities were less than half a CD's worth back then), and used the song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega, because of its softness and simplicity, to hear imperfections in the resulting audio test files easier. Guess which one came out on top. Because of this, some people (read: the Wikipedia community) sometimes refer to Vega as "the mother of MP3."
Also, "podcast" is a phrase coined by Apple Computer, meaning when people produce audio recordings of themselves talking about different topics for varying time lengths, usually from 30 minutes (roughly 25-28MB of 128Kbps MP3, or 4 percent of a CD) to an hour (50-60MB, 8 percent of a CD), then submitting it to Apple's iTunes Podcast store (which isn't the only source of podcasts anymore. More on that in a second). iTunes users would then download the audio files ("podcasts"), for free, and (ideally) play them in either their computer, or Apple's iPod MP3 device, hence the term "PODcasts". There's another couple file formats, M4V (basically MP3s with embedded pictures, or iTunes TV Show downloads use this file extension too) and MP4/MPEG-4 video, which are used for VIDEO podcasting, but that's another blog entry.
Phew! Now that this week's little history lesson is out of the way, those of you still awake and reading can enjoy the real rant. I don't know what the heck is going on lately, but it seems a lot of people are taking the last couple of months or so off from sticking to their own weekly or biweekly podcasts, or at least the ones I listen to, and I'm not talking about the iTunes users. Websites like IGN, GameSpot and TV.com alll have podcast shows I personally subscribe to and listen to regularly, thanks to my PlayStation Portable (Thank you, Firmware 2.60!), and The Podcast Network has gobs of categorized podcast content you can listen to as well, as does Yahoo! Podcasts Beta, but the underlying problem again is consistency.
Case in point: TV.com's guys haven't done anything since July 6th, and they haven't updated their RSS feed (for Really Simple Syndication readers like My Yahoo and NewsGator, and Firmware 2.60 PSPs, of course) since May 25th! Another one I use, ToonZone.com, hasn't done jack since June 1st! Maybe it's just these TV-related sites that are really getting lax, though, because most of the others are fairly regular. Well, except for Podcast Network's "The PSP Show". (Hey, Ewan Spence! July 18th is long gone! What's the deal???) Maybe they're just waiting until the September Fall stuff starts before they come back. But the fact that they don't even say they're going on hiatus sends up a red flag to me. Bottom Line: Hey, TV Podcasters! If Thanksgiving rolls around and your early-mid summer stuff is still "current", we're gonna have a problem here. Please get with (your) program and don't leave your listeners hanging! As for you other, more consistent podcasters out there, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! Just please give some advance notice before you go on a 90 day mini-sabbatical. .......But that's just me.
See you next Monday!
-D.
Monday, August 7, 2006
Entry 21: "Movies Killed The Real-Life Story"
Yo...
...I'm feelin' really sad this week... Not just because I couldn't think of a better title-pun this week than that attempt at a parody of that Buggles song about radio stars getting killed by videos. If you care enough to want to know why, well, thanks for your concern. You see, it's all because of Hollywood's new obsession on the events of September 11th, 2001. I'm using this as a topic this week, because I find it very interesting how it wasn't very long until we started to see big-screen slightly fictionalized takes on the life- and almost country-shattering events that transpired only five short years ago, on a seemingly average Tuesday morning that September. It seems to me that when I see things like this happening, people making money off of tragedies like this, it's the ultimate injustice, if for no other reason than it's way too soon to come out with this many screenplays documenting the same day, I don't care how many victims' families' approval the studios claim to have.
When the "Titanic" movie came out in 1997, we had about 85 years worth of recovery time from that disaster. That plus the rather majestic musical score and the immersably believable effects (by late-90s standards anyway), of watching the whole cruise liner go down the way it did, of course those guys got awards and acclaim by the wheelbarrow-full. Flash-forward four years. The real September 11th happens. People were almost literally crapping their pants out of the sheer gripping realization that there was no "stop" or "eject" button on this movie. The way the news media covered it, you'd swear it actually did feel like the "War of the Worlds" Orson Welles radio show redux, in terms of the believability of it. But it didn't take long for us to realize that this was no movie, and we were in for one helluva ride in the blossoming 21st century.
Flash-forward again to today. Almost five years after the day that defies description. Earlier this year, we got our first taste of what Hollywood could do with this story by delivering a made-for-TV movie about the famous "flight that fought back", United Airlines Flight 93, in the form of A&E's "Flight 93" in January. Then, we got a "24"-ish real-time retelling of that day, in late-April, again from the perspective of United Flight 93, but this time using the title "United 93." Now, here it is, August 7th. Not even the full half-decade anniversary has actually happened yet, and this weekend will see September 11th movie #3, "World Trade Center." For shame, Oliver Stone. You know better than that.
BOTTOM LINE: It's my humble opinion that more time needs to have passed for ANYONE to start crafting fiction on majorly tragic historical events like this, let alone "the 'biz", or it dampens the seriousness of going through the movie-like tragedy of that day, by actually making a real-life-like movie about a movie-like event from real-life. ..........I think that came out right. Anyway, you get my point. .....But that's just me. Oh, by the way, with my blatant promotion of that free Xbox 360s offer at the end of last week's post, again, I apologize for throwing that on, but I don't have anywhere else to post that kind of stuff where it'll get seen. Don't worry, though, it WON'T be commonplace. Anyway, as usual, please feel free to post your responses or comments on this week's topic, and I hope to see you here again next Monday night.
Later...
-D.
...I'm feelin' really sad this week... Not just because I couldn't think of a better title-pun this week than that attempt at a parody of that Buggles song about radio stars getting killed by videos. If you care enough to want to know why, well, thanks for your concern. You see, it's all because of Hollywood's new obsession on the events of September 11th, 2001. I'm using this as a topic this week, because I find it very interesting how it wasn't very long until we started to see big-screen slightly fictionalized takes on the life- and almost country-shattering events that transpired only five short years ago, on a seemingly average Tuesday morning that September. It seems to me that when I see things like this happening, people making money off of tragedies like this, it's the ultimate injustice, if for no other reason than it's way too soon to come out with this many screenplays documenting the same day, I don't care how many victims' families' approval the studios claim to have.
When the "Titanic" movie came out in 1997, we had about 85 years worth of recovery time from that disaster. That plus the rather majestic musical score and the immersably believable effects (by late-90s standards anyway), of watching the whole cruise liner go down the way it did, of course those guys got awards and acclaim by the wheelbarrow-full. Flash-forward four years. The real September 11th happens. People were almost literally crapping their pants out of the sheer gripping realization that there was no "stop" or "eject" button on this movie. The way the news media covered it, you'd swear it actually did feel like the "War of the Worlds" Orson Welles radio show redux, in terms of the believability of it. But it didn't take long for us to realize that this was no movie, and we were in for one helluva ride in the blossoming 21st century.
Flash-forward again to today. Almost five years after the day that defies description. Earlier this year, we got our first taste of what Hollywood could do with this story by delivering a made-for-TV movie about the famous "flight that fought back", United Airlines Flight 93, in the form of A&E's "Flight 93" in January. Then, we got a "24"-ish real-time retelling of that day, in late-April, again from the perspective of United Flight 93, but this time using the title "United 93." Now, here it is, August 7th. Not even the full half-decade anniversary has actually happened yet, and this weekend will see September 11th movie #3, "World Trade Center." For shame, Oliver Stone. You know better than that.
BOTTOM LINE: It's my humble opinion that more time needs to have passed for ANYONE to start crafting fiction on majorly tragic historical events like this, let alone "the 'biz", or it dampens the seriousness of going through the movie-like tragedy of that day, by actually making a real-life-like movie about a movie-like event from real-life. ..........I think that came out right. Anyway, you get my point. .....But that's just me. Oh, by the way, with my blatant promotion of that free Xbox 360s offer at the end of last week's post, again, I apologize for throwing that on, but I don't have anywhere else to post that kind of stuff where it'll get seen. Don't worry, though, it WON'T be commonplace. Anyway, as usual, please feel free to post your responses or comments on this week's topic, and I hope to see you here again next Monday night.
Later...
-D.
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