Friday, November 26, 2004

Recommended Reading

And here we have Frank Rich, who I seem to link to every week. This time out, he's talking about the ginned-up controversy about that segment on Monday Night Football. The modus operandi of the protesters is that they spot something on TV they think they can hype into an object of protest. And even though no one objected when the "offending" material was originally broadcast, a few days later it looks like a groundswell of outrage that demands satisfaction. Someone's gotta stop these people.

• Posted at 10:19 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

I rarely link to articles over on Salon since reading them requires either being a subscriber (which I am but you might not be) or watching some commercials. If you don't mind one or the other, this article by Joe Conason is a pretty good summary of some of the economic problems we may be in for due to four more years of George W. Bush. The brief summary is that tax burdens will be shifted from wealthy folks who make most of their money via investments to poor and middle-class people who hold more conventional jobs; that folks in so-called "blue" states will pay more than folks in so-called "red states;" and that the plans to privatize Social Security could amount to an incalculable disaster.

• Posted at 5:12 PM · LINK

Trio Troubled Again

Last year at this time, we were reporting that DirecTV, the system via which some of us receive our satellite television programming, was about to drop Trio. This is the eclectic cable channel that runs old episodes of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Late Night With David Letterman and many intriguing specials and shows, as well as occasional airings of a "lost" TV series like Cop Rock or The Ernie Kovacs Show. At the last minute, a deal was struck to keep Trio on the satellite, which was fortunate for us but also fortunate for Trio. Trio has never been on a lot of local cable line-ups and was getting more than half of its viewers via DirecTV.

Well, it's happening again: DirecTV has announced that they're dropping Trio, effective at the end of this year. A friend in the business thinks there will be no reprieve this time, and doubts that Trio will survive the massive loss of viewers. NBC Uni (as the parent company is now called) has stated that they're nearing a decision to shut the thing down and this looks like the moment. I'll be sad to see it go. It ran some odd things but that's good. I'm still amazed that with so many channels to choose from, there are still hours when there's nothing on I want to watch, and I wish we had more diversity in the programming.

This morning, I watched a documentary on Trio entitled Final Cut: The Making of "Heaven's Gate" and the Unmaking of a Studio. It is, of course, the tale of how in 1980, writer-director Michael Cimino made a movie that just about bankrupted United Artists. Based on the book by Stephen Bach (one of the U.A. execs fired as a result), it presents a fascinating, albeit one-sided view of the situation. Mr. Cimino declined to be interviewed, which is of course his right but also a shame, in a way. We've heard about how he was a megalomaniac who wanted to make his movie his way and didn't care who or what got trampled under to achieve this. It would be nice to hear the other side of story, assuming there is one.

It was a pretty good documentary and I was going to recommend it to you all. Alas, I see that its next Trio airing is on 12/31, and then it's supposed to rerun often during January of 2005. By then, the channel will probably be off the satellite...and possibly off the air, altogether.

• Posted at 1:41 AM · LINK