How the fuck did this happen?
No, I don't mean someone giving Jimmy Fallon a show, though that is a perfectly legitimate question. How did he land The Roots? ?uestlove? God? Anyone? I might have to TiVo just to watch The Roots most nights. Wonder who is going to fill in when they go on the road? It can be a large step down from them Jimmy...just thought I would let you know.
_John
Showing posts with label Television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Television. Show all posts
09 December 2008
National Boring Company
And the Network yawned.
First David Gregory gets appointed to moderate Meet the Press and now the announcement that Jay Leno is going to host a five night a week show in the 10 o'clock time slot that is sorta kinda like The Tonight Show. Here are my thoughts if you really care.
On Gregory:
I think NBC news wants to stay FAR away from anyone who has a sniff of partisanship, which Mike Murphy or anyone from the MSNBC roster has in oodles -- not that that is in and of itself a bad thing. Gregory is a safe, if completely uninspiring, choice. His show on MSNBC is/was forgettable, and I don't ever see him rocking the boat with any of his guests. In fact I don't see him putting a new spin on MTP at all. My bet is that he will just use the Russert model with little innovation or distinction. I give him 5 years.
I was hoping that they would return to the old version of MTP with a moderator (say Gregory) and a few reporters/press who get to question a the guest(s). You could have press from the right and left asking tough questions with (gasp!) follow up questions. For God's sake the fucking roundtables need to be executed from MTP post haste because theirs are exceptionally dreadful. They are mind numbing and provide little to no information. If I wanted the convential wisdom from the Washington establishment I would just shut down my brain and read David Broder. (And yes that is me taking a giant swipe at the old windbag of conventional beltway sages who's time passed decades ago.)
On Leno:
Please NBC. This was a purely defensive move. You green light shitty programs that no one wants to watch (like the much hyped My Own Worst Enemy or Knight Rider...seriously Knight Rider?), and you were pissing your pants that Leno might take his star power to ABC. So you gut your 10 o'clock slot for the weekdays. In essence then you totally giving up on edgy programing then because you really can't air anything adult before 10. So you put too many eggs in your basket with 1990s Must See TV and ran it into the ground. You let a few shows run just too long, like Fraiser, and you kept shocking e.r. with defibrillation paddles for an extra 5 season trying to resuscitate a show that should have slipped into death due to natural causes. You expanded from one Law & Order to three -- all of which I still watch on an irregular basis, and though some of the actors have been unwatchable the current casts are actually really good again, but just stop the "Ripped from the headlines" bullshit and pay your writers to come up with original stories. I do give you kudos for show patience with some shows in the recent past, such as The Office, and currently with Life. I do wonder how my two favorite shows of this year eluded your gasp: The Emmy award winning Mad Men (on AMC), the somewhat violent Sons of Anarchy (F/X), and another one I am trying to catch up on is Breaking Bad (again AMC, and again winner of an Emmy). All three of these shows are 10 o'clock shows, as is e.r. Are you going to stop developing adult approriate shows and just ceded that audience to ABC, CBS, and cable networks? If so you are sadly playing your hand on the wrong side of history.
Young people don't regularly watch late night teevee. I am sure you will hold the baby boomers, especially the tailing end of it, and that generation right before Gen X. But Gen X and onward are not drawn to the late night shows like previous generations because we never really lived during a time of nearly infinite channel choices. Our choices after the nightly news were not Johnny Carson, NightLine, or whatever else used to be called late night programming. There is no mystique around that time slot for us and I bet a lot of the younger viewers are like me in that when we watch, it is because we want to see which entertainer is on to be interviewed or perform and not to enjoy the pleasure of spending an hour with the host and his witty repartee. Yes, I still watch Letterman on occasion -- I was never wild about Leno -- and do check out Conan and the Late Late show once in a while, but that is rare and usually on TiVo.
NBC made the boring and easy choices. Their slow slide in their viewership will continue unabated, and I let out a giant yawn in their honor.
_John
PS. NBC's sports department are still morons. Losing the NFL all those years ago only to overpay to get the Sunday night game? You have the NHL, but treat it like a red-headed stepchild. If you didn't want it than you didn't have to pay for it -- I know it came relatively cheap (Gary Bettman I am looking at you), but come on how about a little exposure and marketing? The NHL was near third place as a sport in terms of ratings before lock out. (The lock out was good and bad for the sport, but I will get into that later.) You are the sports channel of the Olympics and golf (and maybe NASCAR, I can't remember and don't care about four left turns), and other random "sports" that I don't watch most weekends of the year on your desert of a sports broadcasting. How is all of this working out for you? Seriously you can't be happy about that. No MLB, lost the NBA, and your only college football is Notre Dame. Notre Dame football got you to pay how much to watch them get destroyed every week?
After writing all of this I have to ask: Who the hell is making decisions at that network? Seriously, have you made any good financial decisions recently with your programming? Seriously.
First David Gregory gets appointed to moderate Meet the Press and now the announcement that Jay Leno is going to host a five night a week show in the 10 o'clock time slot that is sorta kinda like The Tonight Show. Here are my thoughts if you really care.
On Gregory:
I think NBC news wants to stay FAR away from anyone who has a sniff of partisanship, which Mike Murphy or anyone from the MSNBC roster has in oodles -- not that that is in and of itself a bad thing. Gregory is a safe, if completely uninspiring, choice. His show on MSNBC is/was forgettable, and I don't ever see him rocking the boat with any of his guests. In fact I don't see him putting a new spin on MTP at all. My bet is that he will just use the Russert model with little innovation or distinction. I give him 5 years.
I was hoping that they would return to the old version of MTP with a moderator (say Gregory) and a few reporters/press who get to question a the guest(s). You could have press from the right and left asking tough questions with (gasp!) follow up questions. For God's sake the fucking roundtables need to be executed from MTP post haste because theirs are exceptionally dreadful. They are mind numbing and provide little to no information. If I wanted the convential wisdom from the Washington establishment I would just shut down my brain and read David Broder. (And yes that is me taking a giant swipe at the old windbag of conventional beltway sages who's time passed decades ago.)
On Leno:
Please NBC. This was a purely defensive move. You green light shitty programs that no one wants to watch (like the much hyped My Own Worst Enemy or Knight Rider...seriously Knight Rider?), and you were pissing your pants that Leno might take his star power to ABC. So you gut your 10 o'clock slot for the weekdays. In essence then you totally giving up on edgy programing then because you really can't air anything adult before 10. So you put too many eggs in your basket with 1990s Must See TV and ran it into the ground. You let a few shows run just too long, like Fraiser, and you kept shocking e.r. with defibrillation paddles for an extra 5 season trying to resuscitate a show that should have slipped into death due to natural causes. You expanded from one Law & Order to three -- all of which I still watch on an irregular basis, and though some of the actors have been unwatchable the current casts are actually really good again, but just stop the "Ripped from the headlines" bullshit and pay your writers to come up with original stories. I do give you kudos for show patience with some shows in the recent past, such as The Office, and currently with Life. I do wonder how my two favorite shows of this year eluded your gasp: The Emmy award winning Mad Men (on AMC), the somewhat violent Sons of Anarchy (F/X), and another one I am trying to catch up on is Breaking Bad (again AMC, and again winner of an Emmy). All three of these shows are 10 o'clock shows, as is e.r. Are you going to stop developing adult approriate shows and just ceded that audience to ABC, CBS, and cable networks? If so you are sadly playing your hand on the wrong side of history.
Young people don't regularly watch late night teevee. I am sure you will hold the baby boomers, especially the tailing end of it, and that generation right before Gen X. But Gen X and onward are not drawn to the late night shows like previous generations because we never really lived during a time of nearly infinite channel choices. Our choices after the nightly news were not Johnny Carson, NightLine, or whatever else used to be called late night programming. There is no mystique around that time slot for us and I bet a lot of the younger viewers are like me in that when we watch, it is because we want to see which entertainer is on to be interviewed or perform and not to enjoy the pleasure of spending an hour with the host and his witty repartee. Yes, I still watch Letterman on occasion -- I was never wild about Leno -- and do check out Conan and the Late Late show once in a while, but that is rare and usually on TiVo.
NBC made the boring and easy choices. Their slow slide in their viewership will continue unabated, and I let out a giant yawn in their honor.
_John
PS. NBC's sports department are still morons. Losing the NFL all those years ago only to overpay to get the Sunday night game? You have the NHL, but treat it like a red-headed stepchild. If you didn't want it than you didn't have to pay for it -- I know it came relatively cheap (Gary Bettman I am looking at you), but come on how about a little exposure and marketing? The NHL was near third place as a sport in terms of ratings before lock out. (The lock out was good and bad for the sport, but I will get into that later.) You are the sports channel of the Olympics and golf (and maybe NASCAR, I can't remember and don't care about four left turns), and other random "sports" that I don't watch most weekends of the year on your desert of a sports broadcasting. How is all of this working out for you? Seriously you can't be happy about that. No MLB, lost the NBA, and your only college football is Notre Dame. Notre Dame football got you to pay how much to watch them get destroyed every week?
After writing all of this I have to ask: Who the hell is making decisions at that network? Seriously, have you made any good financial decisions recently with your programming? Seriously.
06 August 2008
Entertainment round up: July edition
I didn't finish any non-dissertation related books, so no Literature section this month.
Music
It was a good month for me an music. Maybe this year is turning around. Here is the music from my shuffle in alphabetical order.
Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight
One of the best albums of the year so far this year. A complete album where the songs seems to flow effortlessly into each other that helps tie together the large themes of the album, namely relationships from a decidedly male perspective. At times the album is hard driving and other times hauntingly soft, with a couple of the songs containing extremely raw lyrics. Best tracks include "The Modern Leper" (the best opening song on an album I have heard in a long time), "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms," "Backwards Walk," "Keep Yourself Warm," and "Poke." I now regret missing their recent show in dc.
Bottom line: 4.5/5, Strongly suggest you go get it.
Mike Doughty, Golden Delicious
The lead singer of my beloved Soul Coughing produced a much more organic album than his past solo efforts. Although I applaud him for going back to his roots, this album contains more bad songs than good. The good ones are really good, but just aren't enough to warrant buying this album. Those tracks are "Fort Hood," "Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)," the very danceable (and I don't dance) "I Just Want the Girl In the Blue Dress," and the haunting "Like A Luminous Girl." I think I might be skipping his appearance at the Birchmere this fall.
Bottom line: 2.5/5, Purchase by songs only.
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
This album took me a while to understand and fully appreciate. The initial reviews I read trashed the album because it was not as good as their previous album Z, which it isn't. It isn't because the band clearly decided to go in a new direction. A Rolling Stone review compared the album favorably to Kid A and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as albums that took their respective bands in such a new direction as to alter the genre that they helped create. (Note to RS: Evil Urges is no YHF or Kid A for that matter.) After reading the RS review, I decided to do what I did with YHF and listen to it over and over again, and I had a similar reaction as the album grew on me. My initial disappointment in the album diminished, but I realized that the album was not the clean break that YHF or Kid A represented. Evil Urges points to a new direction, but does not fully commit. I am glad that the entire band was used more to create atmosphere and sound than in past albums. The tracks flow nicely into each other with the end of the album flexing it muscle. If I were to ever own a bar this album would be in high rotation at the end of the night. It has a classic rock flavor with moder sound. There are very few tracks that I would continually skip, and the best tracks include "Evil Urges," "Sec Walking," the rockin' "Remnants," and my favorite "Smokin from Shootin." (Smokin from Shootin actually blends seamlessly into the last two tracks, "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2" and "Good Intentions," for a potent ending to the album.
Bottom line: 4.5/5, Great album if you love good music and alt country and/or classic rock. Make sure you give it a few spins before making your final decision on it.
N.E.R.D, Seeing Sounds
I must be upfront and admit I am not a huge N.E.R.D. fan, but I appreciate what they do musically. This album is an improvement over their last effort, and points to the different directions that hip-hop can go. Their performance of "Spaz" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last night was amazing. The best tracks are "Spaz," "Yeah You," "Sooner or Later," and "Lovebomb."
Bottom line: 3.5/5, Good, but a bit uneven for me.
Cinema
Didn't have a lot of free time for the cinema this month.
The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan
This was a fantastic movie, and all of the reviews about Heath Ledger's performance were not over the top. Ledge deserves serious Oscar consideration for his portrayal of The Joker. The reinvention of this genre has been great for Batman, but I worry about all of the the other comic and graphic novel based movies. Hollywood seems to have run out of new ideas again, and their is nothing like too many sequels and copycats to kill a genre, bury it, dig it back up, and then kill it again. I fear that is what is happening now with this genre.
Bottom line: 4.75/5, Go see it. If I have a to see this in IMAX, I will post an update.
Television
This category will appear sporadically if I see something on the boob tube of note.
Mad Men, AMC, Sundays at 10pm
I have been trolling for a show of my own after the unexpected and untimely death of Deadwood. I think I have just found it in Mad Men. The show recently began its second season on AMC and I was lucky enough that Comcast has season one On-Demand. (Season one is also out on dvd if you don't have it On-Demand.) I am all caught up now, and have to say that this show should sweep the Emmy's and Golden Globes. It is by far and away the best written and acted show on television at the moment. It amazes me that the networks don't have a show like this on their schedules. A pitch perfect period show (set in 1960 NYC), with no violence or foul language. Yes, it has some adult movements, but no more than other shows at 10:00pm. Guess they need a new reality show more.
Bottom line: 5/5, Go watch it. It is on basic cable, so what are you waiting for?
Music
It was a good month for me an music. Maybe this year is turning around. Here is the music from my shuffle in alphabetical order.
Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight
One of the best albums of the year so far this year. A complete album where the songs seems to flow effortlessly into each other that helps tie together the large themes of the album, namely relationships from a decidedly male perspective. At times the album is hard driving and other times hauntingly soft, with a couple of the songs containing extremely raw lyrics. Best tracks include "The Modern Leper" (the best opening song on an album I have heard in a long time), "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms," "Backwards Walk," "Keep Yourself Warm," and "Poke." I now regret missing their recent show in dc.
Bottom line: 4.5/5, Strongly suggest you go get it.
Mike Doughty, Golden Delicious
The lead singer of my beloved Soul Coughing produced a much more organic album than his past solo efforts. Although I applaud him for going back to his roots, this album contains more bad songs than good. The good ones are really good, but just aren't enough to warrant buying this album. Those tracks are "Fort Hood," "Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)," the very danceable (and I don't dance) "I Just Want the Girl In the Blue Dress," and the haunting "Like A Luminous Girl." I think I might be skipping his appearance at the Birchmere this fall.
Bottom line: 2.5/5, Purchase by songs only.
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
This album took me a while to understand and fully appreciate. The initial reviews I read trashed the album because it was not as good as their previous album Z, which it isn't. It isn't because the band clearly decided to go in a new direction. A Rolling Stone review compared the album favorably to Kid A and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as albums that took their respective bands in such a new direction as to alter the genre that they helped create. (Note to RS: Evil Urges is no YHF or Kid A for that matter.) After reading the RS review, I decided to do what I did with YHF and listen to it over and over again, and I had a similar reaction as the album grew on me. My initial disappointment in the album diminished, but I realized that the album was not the clean break that YHF or Kid A represented. Evil Urges points to a new direction, but does not fully commit. I am glad that the entire band was used more to create atmosphere and sound than in past albums. The tracks flow nicely into each other with the end of the album flexing it muscle. If I were to ever own a bar this album would be in high rotation at the end of the night. It has a classic rock flavor with moder sound. There are very few tracks that I would continually skip, and the best tracks include "Evil Urges," "Sec Walking," the rockin' "Remnants," and my favorite "Smokin from Shootin." (Smokin from Shootin actually blends seamlessly into the last two tracks, "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2" and "Good Intentions," for a potent ending to the album.
Bottom line: 4.5/5, Great album if you love good music and alt country and/or classic rock. Make sure you give it a few spins before making your final decision on it.
N.E.R.D, Seeing Sounds
I must be upfront and admit I am not a huge N.E.R.D. fan, but I appreciate what they do musically. This album is an improvement over their last effort, and points to the different directions that hip-hop can go. Their performance of "Spaz" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last night was amazing. The best tracks are "Spaz," "Yeah You," "Sooner or Later," and "Lovebomb."
Bottom line: 3.5/5, Good, but a bit uneven for me.
Cinema
Didn't have a lot of free time for the cinema this month.
The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan
This was a fantastic movie, and all of the reviews about Heath Ledger's performance were not over the top. Ledge deserves serious Oscar consideration for his portrayal of The Joker. The reinvention of this genre has been great for Batman, but I worry about all of the the other comic and graphic novel based movies. Hollywood seems to have run out of new ideas again, and their is nothing like too many sequels and copycats to kill a genre, bury it, dig it back up, and then kill it again. I fear that is what is happening now with this genre.
Bottom line: 4.75/5, Go see it. If I have a to see this in IMAX, I will post an update.
Television
This category will appear sporadically if I see something on the boob tube of note.
Mad Men, AMC, Sundays at 10pm
I have been trolling for a show of my own after the unexpected and untimely death of Deadwood. I think I have just found it in Mad Men. The show recently began its second season on AMC and I was lucky enough that Comcast has season one On-Demand. (Season one is also out on dvd if you don't have it On-Demand.) I am all caught up now, and have to say that this show should sweep the Emmy's and Golden Globes. It is by far and away the best written and acted show on television at the moment. It amazes me that the networks don't have a show like this on their schedules. A pitch perfect period show (set in 1960 NYC), with no violence or foul language. Yes, it has some adult movements, but no more than other shows at 10:00pm. Guess they need a new reality show more.
Bottom line: 5/5, Go watch it. It is on basic cable, so what are you waiting for?
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