Archive for the &;Television&; Category

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LA Times Brings BackTV Listings

June 11, 2010

Gary Scott reports that the LA Times, after three years, is actually bringing back the Television Times weekly listing section.  Cutting it was yet another bad decision for the Times, as with a universe of hundreds of channels broadcasting 24 hours a day, (and no Cable Guide for your $100 a month) one has little ability to determine what one wants to watch or record days ahead. The Times seems to have realized that telling readers to create and print out their own listings was a non-starter. The impenetrable prose of the press release claims that starting June 13, in a &;tiered roll out,&;&;newstand and eventually subscription readers (wrong order of things, Times) will get a &;44-page tabloid section&;with 24-hour daily grid listings spanning morning, afternoon, primetime and late-night programming, four pages of alphabetized TV/cable/satellite movie listings, a full-page cover story, a TV-related crossword puzzle, episode highlights and synopses, and a dedicated sports programming page.&; Did they admit they made a mistake when they killed the section 3 years ago and left thousands of angry subscribers?  Nah&; But then, the barely alive print TV Guide apparently had to be shamed into putting back the daytime (&;I want my stories!&;) listings, so stupidity loves company.

Tags:LA-Times, TV-Guide, TV-listings Posted in death-of-magazines, death-of-newspapers, Television | Leave a Comment &;

Oprah Winfrey to End World in2011

November 20, 2009

Forget 2012.  Clearly that&;s why her talk show ends then.  Her power is awesome.

Tags:2011, 2012-The-Movie, death-of-television, media-frenzy, Oprah-Winfrey, Public Relations Posted in Television | Leave a Comment &;

FyreTV&;s Wireless PornServer

January 27, 2009

There seemed to be plenty of leakage at the Consumer Electronics Show this year from the Adult Entertainment Expo.  (And vice versa; Fox Home Video was promoting the &;legit&; release Choke, starring Angelica Huston and Sam Rockwell, by distributing faux anal beads at the adult show.) A case in point is FyreTV (www.fyreTV.com) which used one of the press parties at the &;legitimate&; show to demonstrate what it proudly called &;the world&;s first wireless IPTV set-top box (or BoXXX, as they would have it) for streaming DVD adult content.&; The wireless &;BoXXX&; ships with any new subscription, which starts at $9.95.   The company signed to provide content from such stalwarts of the industry as Vivid, Wicked Pictures, Evil Angel, Seymore Butts and Sin City, among many others.  Is there a catch?  According to one spokesman I talked to, it&;s no &;all the porn you can eat&; plan.  The $9.95 basic service offers just 100 minutes a month, giving users an incentive to limit their &;viewing&; to 3 minutes a day.   Just don&;t fall asleep&;

Tags:Adult-Entertainment-Expo, BoXXX, CES, Choke, Consumer Electronics, FyreTV, porn, Sam-Rockwell, technology, technology-journalism Posted in 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, CES, porn, porn-industry, Television | 2 Comments &;

Things We May Have to DoWithout

December 11, 2008

Things we may have to do without:  newspapers, American cars, television dramas, retirement savings, books. Their replacement: PerezHilton.com, Twitter, Kias, unemployment benefits, five nights a week of Jay Leno. It&;s change, all right, but not change I want to believe in.

Tags:death-of-books, death-of-newspapers, Jay-Leno, Kia, Perez-Hilton, Twitter Posted in Television | Leave a Comment &;

Want TV Listings? Do It Yourself, Times TellsReaders

August 27, 2008

The LA Times recently encouraged readers of the print edition to &;Print your own TV TImes with a simple click.  Go to latimes.com/tvtimes and print out a week of TV grids.&; Sounds just like the old TV Times magazine in the Sunday newspaper, that people like my mother, who&;s not on the Internet, still miss.  But as newspapers cut off their own fingers and toes in a twisted effort to survive, they push the printing of a week of TV programming onto the readers. But if I have to print out my own TV listings, why do I need to go to the Times website at all?

Tags:death-of-newspapers, Television Posted in Journalism, Television | 4 Comments &;

CNN&;s Jack Cafferty Blasts Bush,McCain

August 19, 2008

Didn&;t know he had it in him; Jack Cafferty just took aim at John McCain on his blog, particularly his lack of curiosity about the world.  Cafferty, who is 66, doesn&;t have to worry about his perceived lack of objectivity, now that&;s he&;s more of a commentator than a straight CNN talking head, but it is interesting to see him joining Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper and others with his viewpoint&;not just reading the news. Fiery quote: I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin&;s eyes and see into his soul. George Bush&;s record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself. He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens&; faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been. I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

Tags:Anderson-Cooper, CNN, George-Bush, Jack-Cafferty, John-McCain, Lou-dobbs Posted in Journalism, Television | Leave a Comment &;

Space Travel Dangerous Even If You&;reDead

August 11, 2008

The LA Weekly is running my story  on the new private space race, a battle between billionaires like Elon Muske (SpaceX), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and of course Richard Branson (Virgin everything.)  Bill Gates is more focused on curing malaria around the world. One of my points in the story is what would happen if private space travel had the same safe flight rate as NASA&;s space shuttle program.  The shuttle has suffered two cataclysmic crashes in 123 flights despite NASA&;s spending $150 billion of our money. &;If the 18,000 monthly aircraft departures from LAX suffered from the same 98.4% arrival rate experienced by the Shuttle, a staggering 288 airliners a month would crash.&; Space travel is hazardous&;even if you&;re already dead. The ashes of James Doohan (Scotty on Star Trek), fun-loving astronaut Gordon Cooper and 200 other people were destroyed last week, rather than achieving space orbit, when a SpaceX rocket crashed on takeoff.    Doohan&;s son wrote, &;While there are many complicated reasons why this is a disappointment, mine is simple: I&;d like to finish saying goodbye. Every launch attempt is like reliving his funeral. There’s a lot of pomp and ceremony, and a retelling of his deeds in life. But at the end of these funerals, something goes awry, the body doesn&;t get buried, and you know you&;re going to have to come back to do it over again.&;

Tags:bill-gates, James-Doohan, Jeff-Bezos, LA-Weekly, Michael-Goldstein, NASA, private-space, Richard-Branson, space-shuttle, SpaceX, StarTrek Posted in public-relations-disaster, Space, Television, Tribbles | 2 Comments &;

FoxNews Fairest on ChinaOlympics?

August 11, 2008

This morning I was watching Fox and the other cable channels.  Only Fox had the story of three Americans who were roughed up and summarily deported from China for protesting.  In fact, they had one of the protestors, Rev. Patrick Mahoney, live in the studio.  Certainly, Mahoney&;s anti-abortion viewpoint (he is head of the Christian Defense Coalition) was anathema to the one-child-focused Chinese government&;but in a democracy like the U.S., he would have been allowed to protest and say his piece. The writeup in Israeli daily Haaretz, titled &;The Chinese jump for joy &; as if they had a choice&; describes the incident. Three Americans &; Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Brandi Swindell and Mike McMonagle &; were sent back to Los Angeles after unfurling a banner &;Jesus Christ is king&; in the Square for two consecutive days, criticizing the government&;s handling of issues ranging from forced abortions to pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989. Fox is also covering, both on the Web and cable, the story of the Americans stabbed (one was killed) in Beijing during the Olympics.  Fox&;s critical coverage of China&;s crackdown on protestors is even more impressive when you consider this; according to reporters at the (pre-Murdoch) Wall Street Journal, “News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch has a well-documented history of making editorial decisions in order to advance his business interests in China and, indeed, of sacrificing journalistic integrity to satisfy personal or political aims.” One could say Fox is merely continuing their right-wing agenda or is a spoiler (they don&;t have the Olympics broadcast rights), but they&;ve been a lot more up on China&;s downside than MSNBC, which doesn&;t want to kill the Olympic goose that lays the golden eggs for NBC and its corporate parent, GE. Would Jim McKay would have just covered the fun and games, when the secret police were breaking heads?

Tags:Fox-and-China, Fox-News, GE, Jim-McKay, MSNBC, Olympics-coverage, Rupert-Murdoch, Wall-Street-Journal Posted in Journalism, Television | Leave a Comment &;

Gossip Girl Gets &;Plug&; fromHaters

August 6, 2008

Movies have long been advertised  with short blurbs from critics &;It&;ll make your hair stand on end,&; &;You&;ll thrill to this special love story,&; etc.  But the producers of Gossip Girl have the best blurb of all, from the conservative Parents Television Council.  Their mission impossible: &;protecting children against sex, violence, and profanity in entertainment.&; I saw the Gossip Girl ad on a billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, where thousands of Valley Girls see it as they drive by: Parents Television Council: &;Mind-blowingly Inappropriate&;

Tags:censorship, gossip-girl, indecency, parents-television-council, Television Posted in Sex and Society, Television | Leave a Comment &;

Signs of the AmericanApocalypse?

May 27, 2008

Defamer thinks the &;bad mom block&;  tagteam combo of Denise Richards and Dina Lohan is the end. &;On a day meant to honor the heroes who have protected our country, last night’s series premieres of Denise Richards: It’s Complicated and Living Lohan showed just how little there is left to protect.&; And just like the 70&;s, the gas thieves are out; got locking gas cap? But our eyes are really wide shut when they start stealing manhole covers and even 512-pound bronze statues with impunity.

[Image via Cinema Treasures.org]

Tags:1970's, American-apocalypse, Defamer, Denise-Richards, Dina-Lohan, locking-gas-cap Posted in apocalyptic-movies, Television | 1 Comment &;

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