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is he underestimating?

Chronicle / SFGate TV critic Tim Goodman on the impact of Mad Men's $25 million advertising campaign in advance of Season 2:

Now, to the worry and the inherent challenge of growing the audience: If all the advertising pays off and new fans flock to Season 2 of "Mad Men," what are they going to think when they find a very intelligent, somewhat slow moving, exceptionally shaded character study? In other words, this isn't "The Sopranos." The brilliance of "Mad Men" is that the drama is mostly in the words. Actions are subtle. Many times the interior dialog of a character like Don Draper isn't explained.

Goodman's characterization of the show is right on (see the last bit in my last post), esp. if newcomers don't initially understand the backstory of Draper. (After all, it took most of the first season to explain it.) But is Goodman underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public?

(Or should we be more worried that AMC's spending the $25mm because they've dulled the sharp edges and know season two can attract -- and retain -- a mass audience? And since when does Goodman use The Sopranos as a comparison like that? He's already deserted Tony and the guy's not even in the ground a year?)

upgrading your television is too hard

So I'm in the market for a new television.  This should be a good thing -- I love television, I love watching television, and I'm looking forward to a bright, shiny future in widescreen HD.  But instead, it's become a decision-making nightmare.

Our current setup is pretty simple:  plain vanilla cable (no digital, only up through channel 72 or whatever), piped into a Series 2 TiVo, and then to a big Sony CRT trinitron.  But what I've discovered is that if I want to upgrade, I basically need to upgrade the whole kit and kaboodle.

• I need to go from basic cable to digital cable.  So OK, it's more expensive, I get that, but there's also some sort of box involved.  With a new remote.  And I'm pretty damn sure that that won't work with our TiVo.
• So then I need some sort of TiVo device -- preferably a real TiVo device.  But an HD TiVo is insanely expensive, and I keep hearing something about cable cards, which some people hate and some people love.  Also, I hear now that you can DVR functionality directly in your cable box, but that the UI sucks. And frankly, the whole point of TiVo is the UI.   
• Then there's the screen itself.  Plasma or LCD? I've discovered that you can't just Google said question, because the rate of change is so high that any article comparing the two technologies is pretty much out of date by the time it gets transmitted down the Intertubes. And a visit to your local electronics retailer doesn't really help, since they're all mostly LCD now, and they're all lined up side by side by side, which I suppose in some platonic world should aid in the decision making process, but actually just confuses the hell out of you.
• Oh, and 720p or 1080p?  I keep hearing more p is better, right?  

So basically right here my decision-making ability goes straight to hell.  Because not only are there decisions to make on all of these axes, there's also the process of executing on said decisions, and timing them right so that I'm not out of luck without any television for two or three weeks.  (What happens if Comcast delivers a digital cable box before I have the flat screen?  Or vice versa?  I'm at risk of missing an entire summer of America's Got Talent!)  And right here is where I marvel -- frankly, upgrading to a new computer is a much simpler proposition than upgrading your television.  (Just buy the fastest chip, most RAM, and most storage you can afford.  What else do you need to know?)

You'd think that the folks who have the most to gain from this transition -- the cable companies -- would want to make this decision process easy. But they're too focused on trying to sell combination voice + internet + television services to make it easy for me to upgrade the service I have to something better...and to guide me through the process.

All I want is to be ready for Season 5 of Lost.  Because if next season Claire's gonna be all Jacob's-cabin-happy in a "I just got high and found the stash of chocolate chip cookies" kind of way, then I need to experience it in all of its HD glory. Seriously, any help / advice on how to make this transition is welcome. (And yes, I know this is a ridiculous problem to have, in the grand scheme of all problems to be had.)  

an in-depth analysis of the writers' strike, complete with footnotes

This whole "no Daily Show" thing[1] really sucks ass.[2]

[1] I mean, seriously. There's a whole new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and all of us self-satisfied armchair liberals are stuck looking for the humor in Tom Friedman columns. Shoot me now.

[2] Classy, eh?

so long, series 1

  Purple tivo 
  Originally uploaded by mathowie

Our beloved Tivo Series 1 kicked the bucket this week, dying a wheezing, whining, hard-drive clicking death after more than seven years of reliable service.*

Normally I'm not the type to mourn the passing of a device -- after all, how many have I willingly tossed recycled in the same period?  But there's something to be said for that simple, well-designed box that changed the way we watch television.  It paused while we went for popcorn, treated us to the entire back catalog of Sports Night, reliably delivered hundreds if not thousands of hours of season passes week after week, and kept us sane and entertained during countless 3am feedings.

Rest in peace, old friend. The house may be quieter without the constant whine of your tired, old, underpowered and undersized hard drive, but trust us -- we'll miss you.

* Don't panic, though, we have a Series 2 in the living room; the Series 1 was the luxurious second Tivo that lately was responsible for recording endless episodes of Arthur and Mickey's Clubhouse. Sorry, kids.

strike day

Must watch: Ze Frank, strike day.  (Related, this overheard.)

a moment, bookmarked

The Emmy's were a complete disaster. Sure, the Sopranos won the big one, but the wrong James picked up best actor, and Sally Field? Are you serious? Good for 30 Rock ("dozens and dozens of viewers" was a nice touch) and for Stewart and Colbert having Carrell accept the award he didn't win. Basically, +1 to Tim Goodman's liveblogging commentary which we were reading in kind of this weird asynchronous way while we skimmed the awards on Tivo.

But. But but but. The award to current.tv was the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while. Twitter is extremely useful for bookmarking moments (and look, now that moment has a permanent URL), and last night was a perfectly bookmarkable moment:

Guy from NBC's heroes on a mac talking to myspace tom presenting an Emmy to al gore. Dissertation fodder.

At some point in time somewhere some doctoral candidate in media studies will dissect all of the multilayered richness of those 30-40 seconds of video. My head is still spinning.

must find out what happened next

Had a long conversation yesterday with someone about what happens to media when the only thing that's different between delivery devices is the size of the screen (small, medium, large), and the continuing power of story telling and narrative. You know, the normal "over coffee" bla bla for the pattern recognition generation.

But it reminded me that I needed to mark in the permanent record how much I'm enjoying FX's Damages. It's a great mix of over the top acting, a completely unbelievable story, delicious art direction and a fragmented narrative that is working forwards and backwards through the story at the same time. Every week I have to watch to find out what happened and what happens next. [1]

Plus, Ted Danson is brilliant. Who knew?

[1] I wonder if Tivo is collecting / sellling aggregate viewership data on not only what gets recorded and what gets watched, but how it gets watched. I can imagine a television engagement metric that measures the mean time between when a program is recorded and when it gets watched. Meaning even with the benefit of time shifting, the sooner someone sits down to make their way through a particular show, the more engaged they are.

with me, it's all about the drummers

Via (the consistently great) Very Short List comes this brilliant ad for Cadbury Dairy Milk. Wait for the payoff; it's worth it.

tony orlando = snake pliskin?

From Tim Goodman's coverage of Death March with Cocktails:

Alright, so I'm just going to confess this. I thought Tony Orlando was dead.  Orlando: "I was canceled with a 32 share." Great line. And probably true. I'm too stunned that he's alive and breathing to look it up.

and sorkin didn't

So there's apparently an indeterminate future for Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60, where "indeterminate" means that the show most likely won't get renewed for next year, and it's currently unclear whether NBC will even air the remaining episodes. (Yes, the ratings have been that bad, and the show reportedly costs more than $3mm an episode to produce.)  Tim Goodman (linked above) does a good job outlining the problems with the show (a flawed premise, a show about comedy that wasn't funny, a series of bad casting decisions), but  I have to give props to Hugin on the Television Without Pity forums for his take...

If you launch with an extended Network-esque rant about the state of TV (including actual namechecks of Paddy Chayevsky), then proceed to repeatedly declare your main characters brilliant saviors, then go on several extended riffs on your disdain for reality TV and every small mind that slighted you, the writer, in your professional career, make dozens of pedantic (if not always actually correct) references to drive home just how smart everyone is, and generally dump a steaming truckload of hubris on your show's front yard and then plant your flag, then you'd better fucking bring it.

And Sorkin didn't.

I'm hoping Sorkin finds another TV vehicle soon, lest our national broadcast airwaves go without their recommended weekly allowance of  pediconferencing.