Tag: the Oscar

The Oscars As A Synergistic Social Media Triumph

oscar selife

Did you watch the Oscars? We did. I suspect numbers will be up this year. It has little to do with Ellen’s performance or anything on-the-show, though she and it were very entertaining.

The Oscars has written the playbook on leveraging social media. It is the synergistic wunderkind! Truly a two screen show.

If you’re on Twitter you can’t not watch the Academy Awards. It our common experience. We’re watching TV together as a family. Welcome back to the sixties.

Of course the Oscar telecast has to bring something to this stew. It’s live. It’s unpredictable. It’s enthusiastically embraced its marriage with the second screen.

Don’t underestimate that last move. Few have done it as effectively or with the ease shown by Ellen tonight.

There were Twitter references everywhere. Ellen set up the selfie you see atop this entry during the show.

Long before midnight Sunday, the photo had been retweeted more than 2 million times, breaking a record set by President Barack Obama with the picture of him hugging First Lady Michelle Obama after his re-election in 2012. Twitter also sent out an apology because all of the retweeting disrupted service for more than 20 minutes after 10 p.m. ET. – AP via npr.org

She took another with Liza Minnelli. And then there was the (real) pizza oscar pizza guydelivery guy. It’s a good night to be @BigMamasNPapas.

My last few years in TV saw a push to engage viewers via social media. We were trying to make you more ‘sticky.’

The fact I have so many followers on Facebook and Twitter speaks to my belief in that. We never did it this effectively.

Has anyone?

It’s The Googlemobile In Connecticut

Not to be confused with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, this vehicle cruises America taking photos for Google Maps street level view.

google-streetview-I91.jpgMy friend Peter Sachs (who originally installed the software for this blog–five years ago) was driving westbound on I-95 near the Q-Bridge yesterday when he saw an odd looking vehicle. Since Peter spies for a living he had no choice but to speed up to get a better look. It was the Googlemobile!

Not to be confused with the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, this vehicle cruises America taking photos for Google Maps street level view. Unfortunately, I can’t embed a map with the street view turned on, but it looks like Google has been shooting and posting street view photos from much of the Hartford area and north.

Memo to Sergey and Larry: Is this how you want people to think of Google–as a company that sends out guys driving underpowered, bland Chevys?

The fun part will be going through the images frame-by-frame trying to see if Google was shooting Peter while Peter was shooting Google. That will be fun, right?

Blogger’s addendum: Peter has sent me the photo of his car taken from the Googlemobile. It’s not Earth shattering, but in the interest of completeness it’s posted here.

Jon Stewart On The Oscars

My friend Farrell has already written me four or five times on this subject. The last time, attaching an article, he wrote the single word, “Ouch!”

Jon Stewart was a major disappointment at the Oscars.

I guess the good news is, he was a disappointment because he’s normally so good. The bad news is, for many people, this is their introduction – and possibly their final impression.

Tom Shales was brutal in today’s Washington Post – but Shales specializes in being brutal&#185.

It’s hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year’s Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by.

I wonder what’s going through Stewart’s mind today? Is he having second thoughts about he approached the broadcast? Has he just tossed it off and moved back to his ‘real’ life?

&#185 – After I put this online, Farrell called and questioned my characterization of Shales.

Shales does not specialize in being brutal. He writes better than anyone on the subject of television period. He’s honest, frank. Likes TV and when he sees something good, he praises it. When he sees something bad, he’ll write and say so. And you can quote me, WeatherBoy&#153!

Continue reading “Jon Stewart On The Oscars”

Best of New Haven

OK – it’s not the Oscar for Best Picture, but this is the ground on which I compete. I was thrilled to, again, win the “Best of” readers’ poll from the New Haven Advocate in the “Local TV Personality” category.

Best Local TV Personality

Geoff Fox

WTNH-TV, 8 Elm St., New Haven, (203) 784-8888

It’s raining, it’s pouring, Geoff Fox is winning the “Best Of” award for

Local TV Personality again. And why not? He’s been “local” for two

decades. He’s on TV, and he’s so damned personable. Whenever he walks

into a room, people want to chat with him, and not just about the

weather. Maybe about his incessant poker-playing, or his wife’s

obsession with soap-rocker Rick Springfield, or the computer he built

himself, or how he looks like he’s lost weight (He has–15 pounds, with

the goal of dropping 10 more).

Most of the time, Fox is the one starting the conversations, and he’s

out and about constantly–at charity events, school programs or holiday

gatherings. “I’ve probably spoken individually to every schoolchild in

Connecticut,” he grins. And they constantly come up to him to remind him

of those fleeting, yet important, encounters. Amid all this, he still

finds time to report the weather on Channel 8 weekdays at 5, 6, 10 and

11 p.m. , which makes his nice-guy-ness all the more amazing. (He

doesn’t go to bed until 3 or 4 a.m.)

This month marks Fox’s 20th anniversary with Channel 8. Before that he

worked in Buffalo, N.Y. a market where it’s pretty easy to predict the

weather, at least in the winter: SNOW. Geoff Fox is a guy who just keeps

shining and is never partly cloudy.

2nd: Dr. Mel (WTNH-TV)

8 Elm St., New Haven, (203) 784-8888

3rd: Ann Nyberg (WTNH-TV)

8 Elm St., New Haven, (203) 784-8888

Before anyone who was passed over, in any category, gets bent out of shape, let me point out that Quinnipiac University beat out Yale University for “Best Local 4-Year College.”

Blogger’s note: I am now down about 23.5 pounds and hoping to lose another 5 or 6 by July.

Glad I Said Yes

A few weeks ago, I was asked to emcee an event at the Garde Arts Center in New London. It was the Asbury Shorts of New York, a traveling festival of short films – many former award winners.

I hate doing things on weekends – especially when I know I’ll be going with Helaine or Steffie. That would be the case tonight. As it turns out, the shame was that I didn’t bring them! The show was excellent.

First, a bit about the Garde. Many cities and towns have venues like this. It’s an older theater – in this case a former vaudeville theater built in 1926. It has been lovingly restored to its former beauty and is now run as a non-profit; featuring plays, performance and what are commonly known as cultural events (though those two words will never help them sell a ticket).

The theater’s walls, whitewashed over the years, have been restored to their original beauty. The stage and screen are large, and there’s a good sized balcony.

Asbury’s stock in trade are short films. They’re the kind of thing you hear about at the Oscar’s, when an award is given out, but never hear of again. Unlike a ‘real’ film festival, these shorts have been chosen over time. They represent a mix much less eclectic and more mainstream than what you’d see at a ‘standalone’ festival featuring all new work.

My guess is the films reflect the taste of Doug Le Claire, the director. They are often funny, always quirky, with loads of surprise endings and plot twists.

Though short, the films are well shot with excellent production values. The scripts were good. In many ways a movie benefits from not being two hours long!

I think the audience enjoyed the show. I certainly did.

New Haven Advocate – Best Of

I am thrilled to have been voted “Best of New Haven” in the TV personality category. OK – it’s not like winning the Oscar (or the New England Emmy – ouch), but it’s the best I can do from here.

I enjoy going to the New Haven Advocate’s offices. They used to be in Long Wharf, but have moved to an office building atop the now closed Chapel Square Mall. They really do belong in Downtown New Haven (this is not a pejorative statement), considering they’re the pulse of local entertainment, dining and a bit of really good muckraking.

What makes going to the Advocate fun is hanging with people who write for a living. Writing good prose is not easy. Plus, there’s the jealousy factor. In a newspaper, the printed word is pretty close to permanent. TV is gone in an instant.

There’s another advantage to print, which you didn’t see, but I just used in the last sentence. I was able to revise my words and make decent writing a little better. Computers in general, and word processors specifically, have changed the skill of writers in much the same way the Hubble Space Telescope changed the astronomers!

I mentioned, to one of the reporters at the paper, how envious I was of writers . She said if I were writing, I’d miss television. There’s no doubt TV is the most powerful medium of expression ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public. It’s just not as elegant as the printed word.

The Advocate offices, on the 11th floor, have a commanding view of New Haven. It gave me the chance to get a good photo of a sad artifact of the city’s past. On a tower, atop the abandoned and derelict Macy’s Department Store building, is a broken TV aerial.

It’s from an era when there was a department store, with a TV department, in a pre-cable city. Macy’s has been gone since 1993. The fallen antenna lives on as sad testament to what was.