Tag: Mass media

It Will Be Cold. The World Will Not End.

DRUDGE REPORT 2014®

Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post

Drudge and Huffington have the same lead. This can’t be good. In breathless prose they build the tension. “Coldest Game in History?” asks Drudge. The cold air will “SMASH RECORDS,” yells HuffPo.

It’s 2014. We have advanced warning. We have central heat. The vast majority of us have appropriate clothes. And, we have shelter for those who need it.

The cold in the Eastern half of the country will be a pain. Few will find it fun. But, with a little preparation, even the folks at Lambeau Field will make it through none the worse.

Respect the cold. You’ll be fine.

hfd

The Big Lebowski: One Weird Movie

The movie is quirky, interesting, off the wall and more than a little unfocused. “Imagine a young screenwriter came in with this script?” Helaine asked.

I took tonight off as a trade for working Sunday. It was a day at rest around the house. I asked Helaine if she wanted to see a movie and so began our search through the channels.

HBO – nothing. Actually a handful of nothings. We have multiple HBOs.

Comcast On Demand – not working! Then after a support call, working. Still nothing.

“I can bring the Roku box downstairs,” I said.

I’ll write more about my so-so Roku thoughts later.

I unplugged the tiny Roku box in my office, plugged it in downstairs and turned on the TV. A few minutes later we were searching Netflix.

How can there be so much stuff and nothing you want to see?

We settled on “The Big Lebowski.” It’s a late 90s Coen Brothers movie starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore. That’s a helluva pedigree!

Jeff Bridges is Jeffrey Lebowski, aka The Dude. He drinks White Russians (nine during the film), smokes enough pot to have lived in my freshman dorm, and says “dude,” “man,” and the “f” word in most sentences. He is detached, often nonplussed and always charming.

John Goodman as Walter Sobchak is tightly wound, loud and intense as a presumed Vietnam vet who brought a little too much of the war home with him. Think Fred Willard, but bigger, more boisterous and very macho.

Walter Sobchak: You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don’t wanna know about it, believe me.
The Dude: Yeah, but Walter…
Walter Sobchak: Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon… with nail polish.

I like Goodman as an actor. I’m not saying he’s never been in a hit film, but he has made some ‘interesting’ career choices.

The movie is quirky, interesting, off the wall and more than a little unfocused.

“Imagine a young screenwriter came in with this script?” Helaine asked. The implication was he’d be laughed off the lot… but these were the Coen Brothers and they were hot off Fargo. They were indulged.

I’m glad I saw it, but confused and a little disappointed.

Is Unstoppable One Of “Those” Movies?

When this movie hits cable guys will watch it enough times to memorize the dialog (and I expect there really won’t be much of that anyway).

I seldom fish for comments in the blog. I will today. “Unstoppable,” the new runaway train movie that’s had nearly as many commercials as Linda McMahon (remember her?) is now in theaters.

This is a guy movie, right? Women will have little desire to attend.

Seriously, there are guy movies and there are… oh, hell I can’t think of a good non-sexist euphemism for chick flick.

The opposite sex attends the other’s movie to be social. How many guys saw “Sex And The City II” willingly?

When this movie hits cable guys will watch it enough times to memorize the dialog (and I expect there really won’t be much of that anyway).

I see “Unstoppable” in the “Under Siege,” “Die Hard” genre, no? No matter where the movie is when you tune in it’s perfectly OK to just pick it up. Not much is lost if you’re not there for the opening credits.

Give it a few years. This will be on TNT every twenty minutes.

Peter Graves: Have You Ever Seen A Grown Man Naked?

The part Peter Graves is probably best known for is the one he played against type: Captain Clarence Oveur in the 1980 movie Airplane.

The sad news came tonight Peter Graves has died.

An actor with a reasonably distinguished career he is remembered for his roles as the German plant in “Stalag 17” and the leader of the Impossible Mission Force in TV’s “Mission Impossible.” With a beautifully deep voice he was often used as a narrator including A&E’s signature Biography.

The part Peter Graves is probably best known for is one he played against type: Captain Clarence Oveur in the 1980 movie Airplane.

From Airplane: Captain Oveur and crew welcome a young visitor to the cockpit.

(After this was posted Paramount requested YouTube take down the video… and so they did – Geoff 3/23/10)

[pro-player]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmHOteBVqKI[/pro-player]

They Fired Joey Reynolds

Whereas most radio stations and disk jockeys had jingles cut in Dallas by Pams or TM (or now by my friend Jon Wolfert at Jam) Joey had a jingle sung by the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons!

Word came last night WOR radio let Joey Reynolds go. I can’t help but feel bad because Joey is one of the reasons radio attracted me so much and why I made it my career for 11 years. Though I lived in Queens and had both WMCA and WABC at my beck and call I gravitated to WKBW in Buffalo, a station I could only hear after dark.

Joey was having a party in the studio and I was invited night-after-night. As good as Dan Ingram, Cousin Brucie and Gary Stevens were they were never as approachable as Joey seemed. I sent my self addressed stamped envelope off to Buffalo to get my purple membership card in the Royal Order of the Night People. I wanted in!

I remember hearing about Joey at other stations as his career bounced up-and-down after ‘KB. At one point he was selling jingles (or so I remember) made to be sung over the intro to records. There are some songs I can’t hear today without hearing some now defunct station’s call letters sung over the front!

A few years ago Joey went to WOR New York where he held down the free form all-night talk show. He’s still that party guy I remember with an infectious laugh that’s instantly recognizable.

Even in the best of times you don’t make money keeping a radio station on-the-air 24/7. Nowadays all-nights are a liability in an otherwise awful economic time for radio. Joey was replaced by a syndicated show–one host for scores of stations across the entire country.

Among the things I remember most about Joey is a jingle from his show. Whereas most radio stations and disk jockeys had jingles cut in Dallas by Pams or TM (or now by my friend Jon Wolfert at Jam) Joey had a jingle sung by the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons!

I’ll bet you I haven’t heard this in 40+ years–until now.

[pro-player height=”30px” type=”MP3″]https://www.geofffox.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/joey_reynolds.mp3[/pro-player]

Desi Does Chromakey!

Desiree Fontaine normally isn’t around when I am. Usually, in the evening, I’m the only person ‘working’ the chromakey at the TV station. With tonight’s slippery roads Desi was here and I got a chance to shoot some video so you can see how the chromakey works.

I’ve Come To An Internet Epiphany

People are computing with devices like BlackBerrys and iPhones. They’re versatile bits of hardware without being all that powerful. Slowly but surely these smartphones have been pawning off the heavy lifting to ‘the cloud.’

Recently I’ve come to an Internet epiphany. Don’t worry about the word. I looked it up to make sure I was using it correctly.

An epiphany is a moment of sudden insight or understanding.

old_computer-pic.jpgI’d always thought as our use of the Internet progressed we’d need beefier hardware (aka more powerful computers) to get the job done. And certainly, that’s what the last few decades have shown us. Better computing experiences followed better hardware.

Recently there have been all sorts of changes to that conventional model. People are computing with devices like BlackBerrys and iPhones. They’re versatile bits of hardware without being all that powerful. Slowly but surely these smartphones have been pawning off the heavy lifting to ‘the cloud.’

Cloud computing means data travels the Internet and gets processed remotely. A Google search takes place in the cloud. My Gmail account lives there. So does the real work that enables the Dragon Dictation app for my iPhone. I downloaded the Siri app this weekend. That doesn’t fly without the cloud either.

This new era of cloud computing is only available because data pipes are fat. In a few years I may look back at the last sentence as a naive observation, but today we’ve got many multiples of what we had a few years ago. Most of us have all the bandwidth we think we need&#185.

When bandwidth and cloud computing are heavily involved the power of user hardware becomes less critical. Tablet computing like the iPad or tiny netbooks with weak processors survive because there’s less for them to do to get the job done. Most of the job is accomplished in the cloud.

In light of this Wednesday morning’s announcement from Google becomes strikingly important.

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 and gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections

That much bandwidth and speed means cloud computing can lift even more weight while the user hardware becomes less critical.

Telcos and cable companies must be quaking in their boots. Certainly this kind of bandwidth can open up new communication devices and methods for delivering video and audio. Even Google who’s come up with the idea expects “uses we can’t yet imagine.”

Mass media has been turned upside down within the last decade by advances in computing. Which sector will pay the price now?

&#185 – In reality bandwidth is like closet space. There’s never enough.

Rupert Murdoch From Both Sides Of His Mouth

Murdoch blames the search engines, but the truth is the entire business model for advertiser supported information is broken.

My friend Farrell forwarded an article from Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News:

Rupert Murdoch has warned internet search engines the time has come for them to pay for news content.

The News Corp chief executive said sites such as Google and Yahoo, which take content from a range of sources, would soon be charged for the service.

This is totally within Murdoch’s right and if he wants to put his content behind a paywall he should. The New York Times used to do this with much of their exclusive content, like columnists, but later relented.

If taken at his word, Murdoch could implement a change to cut off search engines now.

To stop search engines from indexing your site you simply add a tiny text file to the root directory. It’s beyond simple and can be totally accomplished with one line of code. The Journal, or any news site, could do that in a few minutes.

Not only is that not what Murdoch’s doing–he is doing the opposite!

If you go to the Wall Street Journal site you’ll find many (not all) stories run for a few paragraphs and then stop with “…” Here’s an example I found in a link from the Journal’s home page:

As of July, nearly 90% of U.S. households paid for television either from cable, satellite or phone companies rather …

It’s obvious the story continues, but it only continues for subscribers.

However, if you enter that same sentence fragment into Google you get a link to the full Journal story!

As of July, nearly 90% of U.S. households paid for television either from cable, satellite or phone companies rather than getting it free from broadcast stations, according to Nielsen.

The Google link and the direct link from WSJ’s home page produce the same URL link. I believe WSJ’s website is configured to deliver the full content when the referrer is Google or Yahoo!, etc.&#185

The URL for the Sky News story I quoted at the beginning of this post is optimized to make it more visible to search engines. Many of the story’s key words are embedded in it: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/News-Corp-Chief-Executive-Rupert-Murdoch-Tells-World-Media-Summit-Search-Engines-Must-Pay-For-News/Article/200910215402865?lpos=Business_First_Buisness_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15402865_News_Corp_Chief_Executive_Rupert_Murdoch_Tells_World_Media_Summit_Search_Engines_Must_Pay_For_News_.

The Journal and Sky probably do this because search engines drive traffic to their sites. Without the search engines wsj.com and sky.com would see a lot fewer hits. They are making money from those hits–though certainly not as much as they want nor probably not enough to survive in their current business model.

Murdoch blames the search engines, but the truth is the entire business model for advertiser supported information is broken. The type of journalism the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other ‘classic’ news sources provide is dependent on selling high cost advertising.

Unfortunately, the same eyeball on the net is worth a lot less than in the paper or on TV. It’s a matter of supply and demand. The Internet has opened up the supply so there’s nearly an infinite number of places to run your ad.

Murdoch will grouse and yell and flail like the bully he’s always been–but he’s screwed and he knows it. He’s not in that boat alone. Mass media as we know it is terribly ill.

&#185 – My research on this is less than voluminous. How they do it isn’t as important as the fact they do it.

Michael Jackson

Martin Mull tells a joke about the saddest thing in the world–high school with money. Michael Jackson was that on steroids!

off-the-wall.jpgAs we sat on the couch yesterday afternoon Helaine said, “I’m surprised you haven’t written about Michael Jackson. I checked a few times looking for it. Don’t you remember sitting on that ugly couch in Buffalo watching Thriller?”

I do. It was quite an event. The world gravitated to MTV on December 2, 1983 when the video was premiered. There was as much hype and hoopla as I can remember surrounding a cultural/musical happening. It didn’t disappoint.

This was Michael Jackson’s second pop career. His first was as the front man for the Jackson 5.

When the J5 was at its peak they were being marketed in a way that made them seem unhip to me. It’s only now I appreciate songs like “I Want You Back&#185.”

When I speak to people who’ve only seen Michael as a grotesquely reconfigured weirdo, I point out that he was genuinely cute pre-surgery. It’s tough to believe.

I’m not a psychiatrist, but I still have my theories on what made Michael Jackson the truly strange person he grew up to be. I don’t doubt he enjoyed the time he spent performing. Unfortunately, that time is surrounded by more dedicated time. As a child his life was full of adult responsibility and discipline.

Look who he’s friendly and linked to–other grown child stars. They’re the only people who might have a true understanding of his childhood… or lack thereof.

On top of that, imagine a life where money is truly no object. Martin Mull tells a joke about the saddest thing in the world–high school with money. Michael Jackson was that on steroids!

It’s all really sad. I don’t feel especially bad for the family whose motives have always seemed a little sinister to me. I do feel bad for Michael who never had the ease of life that his level of fame is supposed to provide.

Last night I decided to look and listen to some of Michael’s stuff. That took me to youtube.com where loads of performances can be seen. Actually, there’s more! I have no idea where it came from, but within youtube are the original Motown tracks for some of the Jackson 5 songs minus the lead vocal. It looks like these were mastered to allow Michael to appear on TV or in person actually singing, but without the expense of the sending a full orchestra (actually the Funk Brothers) and the rest of the family. It’s amazing stuff to hear.

As we change from the vinyl to digital era and radio fades from its glory there may never be another artist capable of aggregating the outlandishly huge fan base Michael got. Mass media is become narrow media which doesn’t play into this kind of over-the-top fame.

Saturday afternoon word came the physician in Michael’s house when he died has ‘lawyered up.’ People will go to jail for this tragic death.

&#185 – The piano glissando in “I Want You Back” has reached iconic status.