Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Today's Video Link

I hope you're enjoying these. Today, we link to a one minute commercial for a company called EDS. This is a great commercial in the sense that it's well-shot and funny and memorable. It may be a bad commercial because I have no idea what they're selling or who they think they're selling it to. But now, experience the tale of the Cat Herders...

• Posted at 11:05 PM · LINK

Humble Howard

Last night, David Letterman's show with Howard Stern discussing the lawsuit CBS has filed against him got a 4.2 rating whereas Jay Leno, with no big guests, got a 4.9. That's got to be disappointing for the Letterman people, especially since Monday is usually one of their strongest nights. Perhaps it was because CBS barely mentioned Stern in the promos for the show but I don't think that was it. I think it was because America doesn't care about outrageously wealthy people and companies suing each other.

Stern has a problem. It's one that we'd all love to have but it is a problem: His money has become too conspicuous. Johnny Carson used to wince when guests remarked on how much money he had. It was fine to make fun of his suits or his monologue bombing or even his many divorces. But when they mentioned that he was the highest-paid performer in television, they made it that much harder for him to keep audiences liking him, as opposed to resenting him, and laughing at remarks about the things that annoy us all. It was funny for a while there when Johnny was kvetching about how he'd gotten stuck with a DeLorean automobile that didn't run and which no one wanted to buy. It was a little less funny if you remembered that Johnny was making enough money to buy five new cars a week.

The last time I heard Howard Stern on the radio, he was complaining about all the potholes in New York City streets. Once upon a time, this kind of talk was articulating the gripes and concerns of his listeners. But now there's been so much written about his contracts and deals that there must be people thinking, "Poor Howard...has to ride over a few potholes on his way to get paid a few million dollars a week for talking airhead strippers into taking their clothes off for him." At some point, a multi-millionaire complaining about little things sounds very much like Marie Antoinette or Leona Helmsley. People who can't afford to pay off their Visa cards sit there muttering, "What are you bitching about?" A lot of people, I gather, listen to Stern because they think, "He's one of us." Well, he won't be "one of us" for long if people keep getting reminded that he makes more money in one day than they'll see in five years.

• Posted at 11:01 PM · LINK

Forgotten Funnybook Firm

This is for those of you interested in comic book history: Run, do not walk, to this link where Ken Quattro has written the definitive article on the long-defunct comic book company, St. John. Actually, that's faint praise since there have been so few articles about the firm so let me ratchet up the compliment a bit: It's a terrific, well-researched article on a publisher about which little has been known. Unlike a great many outfits that vanished and left no remnants behind, St. John published titles which other companies grabbed onto, and material which others later reprinted. The work for them by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer alone guaranteed a high standard for the firm and many other titles lived up to that standard.

There's a lot of wonderful "scholarship" (I'm using that word loosely) being done these days about comic book history — much of it, alas, begun after too many of the participants have passed away. I'm sure glad someone decided to research St. John, and Ken did a first-rate job of it.

• Posted at 6:50 PM · LINK

Recommended Listening

Let's all thank Marty Golia for sending me this link to an NPR story about Allan Sherman.

• Posted at 5:46 PM · LINK

Time Tampering

Here at news from me, one of our recurring complaints about network television is when they lie about start and stop times. If you TiVoed Deal or No Deal last night, you lost the last three or four minutes of the show. It was supposed to run from 8:00 to 8:59 but it actually ended around 9:03. This was not a huge loss since they were in the middle of a game. But if they'd been at the end, it might have been like sitting through an entire murder mystery and then getting robbed of the scene that tells you whodunnit.

I'm still a little fuzzy on why they think this helps their ratings. Let's say you're watching Deal or No Deal on NBC. It's followed by The Apprentice but you'd planned to switch over to Fox after Deal or No Deal and watch 24. When you do, because of the overage, you find you've missed the first few minutes of 24. Is the idea here that you'll go, "Shucks. Well, I don't want to watch this now so I might as well switch back to NBC and watch The Apprentice"? Do people actually think that way and switch back? Especially since in the process, they've probably also missed the first minute or so of The Apprentice"?

Or are they presuming you won't even switch at all; that you'll get to the end of Deal or No Deal, look at your watch and realize 24 has already started so you might as well stay put? I don't recall ever watching TV with an eye on the clock. I figure that when one show ends, the next ones are just beginning. Is the idea here to eventually disabuse America of that presumption? If so, to what end?

Is there evidence that this fudging of start and end times works? I'm trying to think what kind of testing or surveys a network could conduct to determine if this helps or hurts them. It seems pretty obvious it can only piss off folks who TiVo or tape a show for later viewing. How might it help the ratings enough with those who watch live to more than make up for that?

I asked one network person a few months ago and got back a shrug and an "I dunno." It may be that it's all anecdotal; that there's no proof it helps but it's been tried and some ratings are good, so someone sees a connection. Television programming is the most inexact of sciences, and there have been plenty of seemingly-successful strategies that turned out to be silly superstitions. This one may rank up there with rubbing a rabbit's foot, kissing a horseshoe or even hiring Tom Arnold to star in a new sitcom.

• Posted at 10:54 AM · LINK

March 15, 2006 • Current • March 13, 2006