David Letterman Is Retiring

David Letterman autographed photoSome presents are meant to be remembered. While we were dating, Helaine got me an autographed photo of David Letterman. This was at the beginning of the morning show era. He was my hero.

What a caring gift. Thank you again, baby.

David Letterman has done some of the funniest off-the-wall material seen on TV. Not recently.

Since the heart attack? Since his affair? Since the birth of Harry? At some point his TV spark went away.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d see him tomorrow. I’m still a huge fan. He is not doing his best work today.

letterman-ticketWith Leno gone and Jimmy Fallon very strong out of the gate, it’s time. He said so a few nights ago.

So, who? The NY Post says CBS likes Colbert.

Are they talking the character he currently plays or legit Stephen Colbert? Is either a good choice? With the real Stephen, you risk fans who might not like his actual persona as much as his alter ego and feel cheated.

I like Jon Stewart a lot. That choice would make me happy and I think he could be a force.

letterman-studioHoward Stern is a good choice too. He’s intellectually curious and a great interviewer. Does he play close to the line a little too often for CBS? Maybe.

Stern had major public battles with Les Moonves who runs the network and its attendant empire. It got very nasty.

Does money trump personal animosity? Here? In SoCal? In show biz? Survey says, yes!

CBS needs to hit a home run. Late night is fabulously profitable in an era of pinched bottom lines. They will suffer greatly without the revenue Letterman brought.

This will be interesting to watch. Dave said his run ends in 2015.

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?

Seinfeld And The TV Model

Louis C.K. Comedy  Sex and The Blue Numbers   Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee by Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry Seinfeld has an Internet show, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” Season three began today.

It’s a very funny show and very formulaic.

Start with Seinfeld. Add a quirky car. Fetch another comedian. Get coffee. Return.

This show is a radical assault on the conventional model for program production.

No network. No TV station. No cable company. They’ve all been eliminated from the food chain.

All Seinfeld’s show has is a website (and great word-of-mouth). Over time, as the net becomes our primary means of consuming media, will stations/networks/cable be needed at all?

CiCGC is sponsored programming. Acura wraps a commercial on either side of this 20’ish minute production.

The cost of production (not the quality) is well below network levels, but so are expectations.

I want to see more of this boutique programming. Media driven by creatives is good.

The Job My Computer Was Built For

editing-screen

Back in Connecticut my friend Peter Sachs has become infatuated with a utility quadcopter. It has an onboard camera. Really cool video (see below).

He’s in on the ground floor.

I though the video was a little shaky, so I asked him send it to me.

Here’s the power of the net. He sent me this high quality, full HD video in just a few minutes. That’s when my computer took over.

This PC was built specifically to edit video. It has a fast and powerful CPU with a video card chosen to make it even speedier.

I fired up Premier, Adobe’s video editor and dragged in Peter’s video. A couple of clicks later I’d installed a filter which dampened movement. Very math intensive. It worked in the background as I moved on.

On a separate channel I brought in the original video. Diagonal wipe. Font. Render. Lather. Rinse.

I sat back like the chief engineer on a large ship. My feet were up on the desk. On screen graphs showed my CPU working at 100% on all four cores. 11.5Gb of RAM, the max I allow for Premier, was fully in use.

You should be awed by this technology. I am awed by it. Video production has been democratized. Anyone who wants to make video can make video. The cost barrier has been shattered.

In the late 80s Channel 8 put in a room that could do most of what I’m doing today, but in standard def and on video tape. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This setup is a hundredth the price with the ability to render work at today’s professional standards.

It’s just crazy. My career in TV started as film was moving out. Tape beat film for ease, but today’s technology blows away everything that came before.

Don’t be confused. I can’t edit like a professional editor. I don’t have the chops. The equipment itself only takes you so far.

I’d like to get more involved with video production. I’m fully equipped.

The TV Model Is Broken

I love television. I’m a student of the media. It was incredibly important in shaping who I’ve become.

TV’s model is broken.

There were seven channels in NYC when I grew up. Most cities had less.

No remote control. No DVR or VCR. You watched it when it aired. If two shows you wanted to see aired simultaneously–tough.

In 1960, Gunsmoke finished the season in first place:

1 Gunsmoke CBS 40.3 rating 65 share

That’s 40% of all homes and 65% of those homes where the TV was turned on!

Last week’s number one entertainment show was “Big Bang Theory.” It had a 5.1 rating.

In those more innocent days you had to be careful not to get hit by the falling bags of money! Not today.

Before WTNH was sold in 1985, Geraldine Fabrikant wrote this in the New York Times:

The jewel in the ABC-Capital Cities package is WTNH-TV, the Capital Cities station affiliated with ABC, that covers the New Haven and Hartford markets. Its 1984 net revenue was $24.9 million, and operating income was $14.6 million. That meant operating profit margins of 58 percent. During the past five years, the margin has never been lower than 58 percent, and it has been as high as 62 percent.

They took in $25 million at 8 Elm Street for an operation that cost $10 million to run!

Those days are long gone. Though the broadcast networks and their affiliates are still the dominant force, their audience is a fraction of what it was.

Technology has been the difference. The pie has been sliced into many more smaller pieces.

Whether they take advantage or not, most people are currently equipped to see shows without benefit of television. We’ve got computers and tablets and smartphones and they’re all very capable of video playback.

I knew Saturday Night Live was going to be good last night because I read tweets from the East Coast. Why did I have to wait to see the show? Only because it breaks television’s business model!

The same with this afternoon’s Cowboys/Redskins game. It wasn’t on in SoCal. I wanted to see it and did… don’t ask. Free and easy access to all the games breaks television’s business model.

We need local TV. We need local news and other local programming (scant as it is), but won’t have it for long unless TV stations find a new business model.

I can see a future where shows will stand on their own without a station or network. Netflix productions are a step in that direction, but why do you even need Netflix?

TV’s current model is broken. The more viewers realize it, the harder it will be to hold back the tide.

Stuff You See While Flying: Sky Ranch

sky-ranch-airport

On a recent trip from Orange County we flew over a community that looked unusual. As you can see from the attached photo (click to enlarge), there’s one main street running right down the middle of the development with no homes or businesses on it. All the other streets feed off the main drag. Though they do have structures, none of them is near the intersection with the main road.

Puzzling.

I took a closer look and realized that’s no regular street, it’s a runway!

Runway 03-21 is the center of action at Sky Ranch Airport in Sky Ranch Estates. Sky Ranch is in Sandy Valley, Nevada, within feet of the California line.

Internet sleuthing says 75 planes are parked under the hangars that accompany most homes on the ranch. I also learned…

ARPT IS A RESIDENTIAL AIRPARK; AUTO TRAFFIC IS ON & ACROSS RYS.
OCNL LIVESTOCK ON AND INVOF ACFT MOVEMENT AREAS.

No control tower. No lights on the runway, except at the thresholds. But, you can fly home!

This is not the promise of the Jetsons. It’s as close as we get so far.

Why TV As We Know It Is Doomed

old televisionGrowing up in Queens we had seven TV channels to watch. In the general scheme of things the Fox family had it good. Most folks could only get three or four. Some got fewer.

In the early 50s the world came to a halt when Milton Berle was on. If you didn’t watch Uncle Miltie Tuesday at 8:00 PM, you were out of luck!

Dependence on schedule began to change with the VCR in the late 70s. Enter time shifting, plus you could buy or rent a cassette and watch on-demand.

There was an impact on TV, but not much. VCR technology was good, not great. Programming a VCR complex, as Billy Crystal demonstrated in City Slickers.

DVRs changed that. Schedules began to lose importance. Even live TV could be paused.

Viewers liked and embraced DVRs. Schedules were inconvenient. Video on demand was what they wanted, even if they couldn’t always verbalize that desire.

According to Nielsen, 50.3 million of the nation’s 114.2 million homes with a television have a DVR — nearly half of all homes with a TV set. Although DVR penetration is starting to slow, people are using the devices more. CBS research indicates DVR usage has grown 6% this television season compared with the same period last season. – rbr.com November 2012

In my mind there was always a roadblock preventing us from moving beyond the DVR–bandwidth.

One broadcast station can serve thousands or even millions of consumers. Random access, video-on-demand requires a full individual stream for each screen.

Never in my wildest dreams did I believe there would be enough bandwidth to support this profligate streaming. I don’t feel that way anymore!

It’s true all the major Internet providers have imposed or are considering imposing caps, limiting how much bandwidth you can consume. But a funny thing has happened in the last year. Their grousing has quieted.

Yes, Internet providers want to charge for bandwidth, the way the electric company charges for kilowatt hours. But I no longer hear anyone talking about bandwidth shortages, even as bandwidth skyrockets.

When you can watch any show. any time on any device, will you still need traditional television? Going forward, why will we need any network, cable or broadcast? TV stations are expensive relics with huge institutionalized overhead. That’s not a formula for continued success

They’ve already reacted to reduced audiences by upping their spot load–carrying more commercials per hour. Against on-demand content that seems like a fool’s errand. Unless their business model changes radically, TV is doomed. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Back in 1999 this Qwest commercial probably made no sense. It’s actually a prediction of the reality I’ve just written about.

I love TV. I will be sad to see it go.

When TV People Fly The Coop

In broadcasting people come and go all-the-time. Upward mobility is the implied promise that makes working in tiny markets for slave wages seem reasonable. It’s still sad.

Today is Jenn Bosworth’s last day. She is a reporter/anchor at FoxCT. She will now work for a new “golf lifestyle” channel, The Back9 Network, founded by her husband.

It’s always sad to see someone move on. Jenn’s a good person. She and I sit in facing cubicles. She has learned to not hear my loudness. Someone new must now be broken in!

In broadcasting people come and go all-the-time. Upward mobility is the implied promise that makes working in tiny markets for slave wages seem reasonable. It’s still sad.

Sometimes there are going away parties. I never go. I’ve missed hundreds… maybe thousands.

Years ago the general manager of my station in Buffalo forbade going away parties. “They just encourage people to leave,” he said.

A Brave New World And Glenn Beck

Forget Beck’s off-the-wall TV theatrics. What he’s doing here is bold and innovative.

Glenn Beck is leaving Fox News Channel (not connected to FoxCT… have I mentioned that?). Instead of moving to another network he is starting his own. Beck won’t be on cable. He will broadcast on the Internet via GBTV.

Wall Street Journal: GBTV, an online-only channel, is available to subscribers for $4.95 or $9.95 a month, depending on the package, similar to the model for premium cable-television channels such as HBO or Showtime.

In addition to Mr. Beck’s new show, GBTV will also stream a six-camera simulcast of his three-hour radio show and a behind-the-scenes show about the making of the new network.

Forget Beck’s off-the-wall TV theatrics. What he’s doing here is bold and innovative. If successful he’ll have eliminated a string of middlemen and changed the future of TV… or maybe just killed TV!

In 2011 TV stations and networks make a big difference. A great show on a thinly watched channel will probably also be thinly viewed. Sad, but true.

Are viewers organized enough to find every show ala carte without having a station to act as “the mall?”

Will Beck make more money and have less power? That’s my read on what’s happened to Howard Stern since his jump to satellite.

It’s a brave new world and Beck is ballsy enough to take the first step. This is a move worth watching.

For Me This Is American Idol Season One

I am an emotional lightweight. So far I have cried every time I’ve heard, “You’re going to Hollywood.”

For 26 years I’ve worked second shift. Lunch time was around 8:00 PM. I’m not used to being home at night nor having unfettered access to prime time TV. What I’m getting at is I’m hooked on American Idol!

It may be Season 10 to you. It’s reasonably close to Season 1 for me.

I’ve seen bits and pieces of Idol. I knew enough to dislike Simon Cowell and be glad I never married Paula Abdul (her greatest disappointment I’m sure). That was about it.

This season I have watched every frame of video. What a great show!

Let’s establish one thing first. I am an emotional lightweight. So far I have cried every time I’ve heard, “You’re going to Hollywood.”

The show is masterfully structured, written and edited. For sure there is a faux reality element. The majority of contestants are nowhere near as well documented on camera as the tearful or comical stories we see with the auditions. I’ve taken to asking Helaine for a pre-singing “talented or not” judgement on some contestants based on their back stories.

The producers will not tug at your heart strings with a tear jerker set up then deliver a contestant who doesn’t follow through vocally. There are surely people who are compelling without talent but that would be unsatisfying to the viewer.

The choice of Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez alongside Randy Jackson seems perfect.

After decades of sitting with anchors some of whom liked me and others who did not I consider myself a decent judge of sincere camaraderie. Don’t burst my bubble, the judges seem to like each other.

First surprise–I never expected the warm and approachable J-Lo I see on set.

Last night while chatting with a friend who’s a Hollywood insider I mentioned, “She gets it.” Not every air talent understands how you benefit by making those around you look warmer and nicer. She does. Could she actually be Jenny from the block in real life?

I didn’t know what to expect from Steven Tyler. He was the wild card. He’s very genuine, very funny and a bit of a ‘lech.’ I’ll wait and see if his lecherous side becomes endearing or creepy over time. Right now he’s the dominant personality, but without Simon’s bite.

Another surprise to me was Ryan Seacrest. Remember, I’d never seen an audition show before.

Seacrest also gets it. If you watch carefully he’s throwing batting practice pitching to contestants and families. He doesn’t get the laugh. He doesn’t get “ah” moment. He’s the set-up man. That’s harder than it looks.

Maybe it’s better for me as a new viewer than those who’ve been there since the beginning. My Hollywood friend also noted:

the bit you are seeing is fresh….is getting very old

That’s a judgement I can’t make.

The season runs until May. I’d like to think I’ll be back working before then.

As the credits rolled I told Helaine Idol will be on this season’s must DVR list.

I’m More Highly Defined

Almost nothing that worked in an analog standard definition world works in a digital high definition world.

Yesterday was the day we switched to high definition at work. We’d already been passing network programming that way. Now nearly everything that originates inside our building is in high def too.

It wasn’t a painless transition. No one expected it would be. All things considered it went pretty well.

Because we were still on-the-air with our old control room some equipment couldn’t be tested fully until we made the final switch and things went to the transmitter. 99% of yesterdays problems should be solved today.

What most people, myself included, are stunned by is we needed to change virtually every piece of equipment! Almost nothing that worked in an analog standard definition world works in a digital high definition world. Runs of coaxial cable were pulled out and replaced by digital “Cat5” cable.

Our equipment room with its own air conditioning system and rack upon rack upon rack of gear is now loaded with PCs. The majority of our new equipment is powered by reasonably standard PCs configured for special use.

As a techno guy it’s all pretty exciting to see. Much of what I knew about how TV works is now wrong! Systems I understood thoroughly have been replaced. The learning begins again.

Do you really want to see me that clearly?

Bewitched And My Changing Perceptions

Larry Tate (played by David White), the guy with the white hair, was around ten years younger than I am now! Seriously, that’s worse than sobering.

Our sister station WCTX MyTV9 is running a slew of Bewitched episodes this afternoon. It was serendipity Helaine and I found them We’ve become hooked on watching. You don’t often get a chance to feast on 40-45 year old TV shows.

“Everyone we’re watching is dead,” I offered up. On TV they’re forever young. Life isn’t as forgiving.

It was a different TV landscape back then, I’ve yet to see my first black, Hispanic or Asian actor. I thought the sixties was the era of enlightenment? We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

How old was the cast? In the mid-60s as I watched they were grown-ups. Some, like Darren’s boss Larry, seemed downright old. Perceptions change.

Larry Tate (played by David White), the guy with the grey hair, was around ten years younger than I am now! Seriously, that’s worse than sobering. He was cast specifically to be the old guy!

There were no serious issues raised. There were no contemporary social references. These sitcoms existed in their own walled garden without continuity from week-to-week and where a principal character like Darren could be re-cast without blinking an eye.

It’s still fun to watch.

Ask Me Anything–A Few Weather Questions

How has weather casting changed since you came to WTNH?

I’m currently answering all your questions. Read more about it here.

Jim writes,”How has weather casting changed since you came to WTNH?”

Immensely! Computers are the difference in two ways.

First, faster computers and better data networks have enabled better computer modeling. The forecasts I make now are light years ahead of what I did when I got here.

We have an eight day forecast and even though I admit eight days might be pushing it, back in the beginning there was no way to even attempt it!

Second, better computer graphics. We can show you things visually to help make our point. These computer systems are renderless, meaning as soon as we have data we can display it on-air. Sometimes the data changes while we’re on-air, so what I saw when I ran through my sequence is now different.

Next.

David asks, “Do you keep in touch with Bob Tirado?”

No. I have no clue where he is or what he’s doing.

Keith is wondering, “Why News 8 didn’t have a little fishing report in the weather forecast. There are lots of fisherman not just boaters and it would be helpful. Do you think you would be able to relate a fishing report in with your weather?”

Keith this is a shortcoming of broadcasting. It’s tough for us to spend time on things that are unimportant to the vast majority of viewers. Only a tiny sliver of our viewers would care. The rest would be running to the exits.

This is a place where the Internet with its limitless capacity might serve us well. I’ll think about it seriously.

From Bud, who has a webtv email address! “Geoff – I’ve always been under the impression that wind doesn’t affect the reading on a thermometer. On tonights forecast you said that the wind coming on shore from the south will make the temp there about 5 degrees cooler.”

Bud, first congrats on hanging in there with webtv. I seriously hadn’t thought of that service in years.

You are correct. The wind doesn’t affect the reading. It’s where the wind takes the air–over the cool water of Long Island Sound.

During the winter the water is warmer than the land and the opposite takes place.

Boys And Makeup

No eye stuff. No jowl enhancement. Nothing but the stuff in the photo. It takes me around 30 seconds.

There are a few surprises in my adult life. I never thought I’d wear a shirt and tie much less a suit. I never thought I’d wear make-up. I do every working day.

Richard Nixon was the first to find that TV without make-up is problematic. It was worse in those black and white days with extremely harsh lighting. Any stubble was darkened and exaggerated by the shadows cast on your face.

When I first went on TV I wore Max Factor pancake. I was hosting PM Magazine/ Buffalo, a show always shot on location. I figured I’d look good with a tan year round. As it turns out pancake is somewhere around SPF one million! I worked outside and was pale as a ghost.

Nowadays I just rub some make-up on with a sponge. It’s a creamy goop from a company called Celebre. That’s it. No eye stuff. No jowl enhancement. My lashes and brows are left alone. There’s nothing used but the stuff in the photo. It takes me around 30 seconds to apply.

I used to work with a male anchor, a reasonably plain man from the Midwest, who had a regimen of stuff he’d apply before going on-camera. I remember getting in after he’d begun and leaving long before he was finished. He looked the same to me before and after.

I’m sure a professional make-up artist would cringe at my final result, but it works for me. And if I’m a few Benjamins short of a million bucks, so be it. No one’s watching me because I’m eye candy.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because I was astounded to walk into our little make-up room today and find what’s pictured below on the counter! A guest was taping a segment for our 12:30 PM show and they had a lot to hide or enhance or…. I really don’t know. Do people really use all that stuff?

Mind boggling!

Do-It-Yourself DVR

Working on computers is a lot simpler than it sounds. Cards only plug in where they’re supposed to plug in. I’ve yet to fry one!

You know the guys who used to have cars up on blocks customizing and tweaking them until they performed exactly as the tinkerer wished? I’m that tinkerer, except with computers. That probably explains why last night when Helaine went to bed I went to work on an old PC–my DVR.

A few months ago I started recording my shows on the Comcast DVR we rent. The homebrew DVR was powered down. What I discovered was viewing video on the laptop while I’m doing other things is much more satisfying. That’s what brought this rebuild.

First an admission. Working on computers is a lot simpler than it sounds. Cards only plug in where they’re supposed to plug in. I’ve yet to fry one!

This computer was state-of-the-art years ago. It’s a P4 with 512mb RAM and a 150 gb hard drive. Even if you don’t recognize the stats, just think slow.

Luckily as a DVR it’s just fine. The secret here is the video capture cards which themselves contain a small computer specifically made to manipulate video. They do most of the heavy lifting. My two PVR-150s are the only pieces bought especially for a DVR. Together they cost around $100.

The standard program for this type of thing is MythTV. It’s an free open source program which runs on Linux. I chose to install Mythbuntu which combines MythTV and Ubuntu Linux in one distribution. I downloaded an iso file and burned it to a CD.

Surprisingly the installation went very slowly–over two hours. Then came the real tough part, configuring.

MythTV is meant to run on many different types of hardware so it needs to be custom configured. Unfortunately, as a free project put together by volunteers the documentation is a little lacking and the program’s interface non-intuitive. It took a while to understand exactly what was needed.

By 4:00 AM the box was built and everything was working. I downloaded the next fourteen days of TV listings into a MySQL database and selected a few shows to record.

This version of MythTV has some rudimentary streaming, but mostly I watch the video on my other computers using MythTV Player, another freeware program. Perfect!

What is tantalizing now is the thought of streaming my DVR to my iPhone. There are a few ways written but they all seem too complex. I’ll keep looking.

I’m also thinking of buying one more TV tuner card. This would be an ATSC, QAM card for recording HDTV digital cable (only the few unscrambled channels, unfortunately).

Like the guys with the cars on blocks this job will never be done.