For some reason, the copy of Better Off Ted, season 1 that I picked up for $10 at the Target yesterday included a coupon on the outside for $10 off a purchase of both Better Off Ted and the first season of Mental.
The only ad at the beginning of Better Off Ted is for Mental – a minute-long introduction to the show by the actors in it, who describe the premise in the kind of unremittingly positive language that indicates they’re selling their own show.
Other than the fact that these shows were on the same network, and debuted at the same time, they have nothing at all in common. One is a half-hour comedy-satire about the modern American multinational workplace and the funny/evil things they sometimes do and make; one is an hour-long drama about a mental healthcare worker who “shakes things up” by suggesting the patients participate in their own diagnostic session, and who has a kind of mind-meld thing going on when it comes to diagnosis.
What is the deal with this? Mental seems like a sure bet, the way any show based on every other successful show would be, so maybe hitching Ted’s wagon to Mental was to make Ted, Better Off, but if that were the case, Mental would have the coupon, and the jingly actor-promo in the front. I can’t speak for actor-promos, as I didn’t buy Mental, but when I saw the show at the Target, it didn’t seem to have any equivalent coupon.
Seems this promo could have used a bit of finessing from corporate overlord Veridian Dynamics.
Friday, April 30, 2010
PSA: Parks and Recreations
For the past week and a half, I’ve been watching Parks and Rec’s first season. Because it’s only six episodes, that means I’ve had to watch it three times.
It’s delightful, though, a fact which hits you somewhere around the middle of the season, and which sustains easily through three viewings. I woke up this morning with the theme song in my head.
Karen from The Office (Rashida Jones) is much more likeable as Ann, and Amy Poehler is more hilarious as an optimistic small-town bureaucrat than she was even as Tina Fey’s Baby Mama. Nick Offerman as Ron may be the most hilarious character on multiple viewings, as the libertarian head of Leslie Knope’s department who doesn’t believe in “big government,” but even deadbeat boyfriend-of-Ann Andy grows on you after awhile.
So go watch it, and laugh and then watch the commentaries. Then watch it again, and if you’re like normal TV-watching people, by then it will be about time for the second season to come out on DVD.
Tell your friends.
It’s delightful, though, a fact which hits you somewhere around the middle of the season, and which sustains easily through three viewings. I woke up this morning with the theme song in my head.
Karen from The Office (Rashida Jones) is much more likeable as Ann, and Amy Poehler is more hilarious as an optimistic small-town bureaucrat than she was even as Tina Fey’s Baby Mama. Nick Offerman as Ron may be the most hilarious character on multiple viewings, as the libertarian head of Leslie Knope’s department who doesn’t believe in “big government,” but even deadbeat boyfriend-of-Ann Andy grows on you after awhile.
So go watch it, and laugh and then watch the commentaries. Then watch it again, and if you’re like normal TV-watching people, by then it will be about time for the second season to come out on DVD.
Tell your friends.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
PSA: Dramas I’m planning to buy the next seasons, probably when they come out, in alphabetical order.
Chuck
Dexter
Gossip Girl*
Grey’s Anatomy*
Heroes*
House
Lost*
Mad Men*
Weeds
*Shows I will probably wait to buy until they’re on sale, unless the pre-order price is low enough
Dexter
Gossip Girl*
Grey’s Anatomy*
Heroes*
House
Lost*
Mad Men*
Weeds
*Shows I will probably wait to buy until they’re on sale, unless the pre-order price is low enough
PSA: Half-hour comedies I’ll need to buy the next seasons of this summer, in alphabetical order.
30 Rock
Big Bang Theory
Flight of the Conchords*
How I Met Your Mother*
Parks and Recreation
The Office
*Shows I may wait until Black Friday to buy, because I’m less obsessed with them than other shows.
Big Bang Theory
Flight of the Conchords*
How I Met Your Mother*
Parks and Recreation
The Office
*Shows I may wait until Black Friday to buy, because I’m less obsessed with them than other shows.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
PSA: Celebrities cut their hair!!!
Oh -- well only the female ones, because those are the ones whose hair we should be obsessed with. And only two of them, really, though another few get mentions at the bottom of the "article."
Seriously, why do women get fashion and men get politics? Why do we get to read about Obama's soaring rhetoric and Hilary's "cankles" -- or men's fashion buffoonery alongside women's quiet (always quiet/understated/self-possessed) elegance?
Is this a holdover from the time when the whole point of women looking good was to charm their husbands' bosses? Or is it because now that the consumer-not-citizen bandwagon has turned into a semi that will mow you down if you get in its way, and because it spent so much time working out the in-roads to women's body insecurities that fashion has become a huge, sustainable market, that it is now actually too profitable to stop it? Is this how patriarchy is perpetuating itself -- by making us read about Hayden and Renee's new short haircuts?
If you do read the "article" (and critically), you should note how condescending it is toward Hayden Panetierre, a 20-year-old "girl next door" actress dating a 34-year-old. It theorizes that she's flighty (since she already changed her hairstyle a little while ago), and desperate to be seen as older and "grown-up" for her "grown-up relationship" with 34-year-old-guy, whose main attribute seems to be his 34-year-oldness.
Well, no offense to the guys who may read this blog, but I'd say being 34 doesn't guarantee that a man is a grown-up. Personally, and speaking from the "matures faster" gender, I'm pretty sure I was more grown-up at 20 than I am at 28.
The assumption that Hayden wants to move beyond the "girl next door" parts she's had recently -- cheerleader in both I Love You, Beth Cooper and Heroes -- also seems condescending in this context, as though she really IS the girl next door and trying to exceed her reach. Dating an older man? Haha, so cute! Look, she can't decide which haircut to get -- we assume, because we didn't ask her WHY she got it cut, we only want to speculate! Look at her pretending to be older! Look at her standing up on her hind legs like that!
She thinks she's people!
But probably, other than my intense, awesome queer studies class this term, what's got me all up-in-arms about this is my own reaction: the fact that I clicked on the link, and that when I did, one of my first thoughts was "wow, Renee Zellweger looks equally unhappy in these two pictures. I wish she would frakking smile. She'd be a lot prettier if she did."
Seriously, why do women get fashion and men get politics? Why do we get to read about Obama's soaring rhetoric and Hilary's "cankles" -- or men's fashion buffoonery alongside women's quiet (always quiet/understated/self-possessed) elegance?
Is this a holdover from the time when the whole point of women looking good was to charm their husbands' bosses? Or is it because now that the consumer-not-citizen bandwagon has turned into a semi that will mow you down if you get in its way, and because it spent so much time working out the in-roads to women's body insecurities that fashion has become a huge, sustainable market, that it is now actually too profitable to stop it? Is this how patriarchy is perpetuating itself -- by making us read about Hayden and Renee's new short haircuts?
If you do read the "article" (and critically), you should note how condescending it is toward Hayden Panetierre, a 20-year-old "girl next door" actress dating a 34-year-old. It theorizes that she's flighty (since she already changed her hairstyle a little while ago), and desperate to be seen as older and "grown-up" for her "grown-up relationship" with 34-year-old-guy, whose main attribute seems to be his 34-year-oldness.
Well, no offense to the guys who may read this blog, but I'd say being 34 doesn't guarantee that a man is a grown-up. Personally, and speaking from the "matures faster" gender, I'm pretty sure I was more grown-up at 20 than I am at 28.
The assumption that Hayden wants to move beyond the "girl next door" parts she's had recently -- cheerleader in both I Love You, Beth Cooper and Heroes -- also seems condescending in this context, as though she really IS the girl next door and trying to exceed her reach. Dating an older man? Haha, so cute! Look, she can't decide which haircut to get -- we assume, because we didn't ask her WHY she got it cut, we only want to speculate! Look at her pretending to be older! Look at her standing up on her hind legs like that!
She thinks she's people!
But probably, other than my intense, awesome queer studies class this term, what's got me all up-in-arms about this is my own reaction: the fact that I clicked on the link, and that when I did, one of my first thoughts was "wow, Renee Zellweger looks equally unhappy in these two pictures. I wish she would frakking smile. She'd be a lot prettier if she did."
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
"'No, not in my mouth!' he'd say..."
[P.C. pokes my stomach as we are each lounging on the futon.]
Me: Oh, I think I feel kind of sick. Not quite like I might throw up, but almost. It's weird.
P.C.: Uh oh. Don't get sick!
Me: Well, I wouldn't throw up on your face.
P.C.: I don't want you to throw up at all!
Me: You're so picky.
Me: Oh, I think I feel kind of sick. Not quite like I might throw up, but almost. It's weird.
P.C.: Uh oh. Don't get sick!
Me: Well, I wouldn't throw up on your face.
P.C.: I don't want you to throw up at all!
Me: You're so picky.
Stuff I've Been Forced to Learn About Early TV: The FCC screws up again
TV started for realz in 1946, though the technological legwork had been going on since the 1920s. When RCA pulled its "sell TVs and then blame it on the consumers when we corner the market in VHF" stunt with the FCC, the company got almost no blowback from its behavior.
In fact, the FCC decided to encourage more TV competition in 1948 by doing the obvious: giving out more rights to broadcast channels in popular city markets.
Unfortunately, they did this by altering the engineers' recommendations on how far apart broadcasting stations should be when they were on the same or adjacent channels. Where before stations on the same channel had to be a couple hundred miles apart, and 150 miles apart if they were adjacent channels (i.e., channel 2 and channel 3), the FCC decided to reduce those mileages, to 150 and 75, respectively.
According to reports, the Detroit stations experienced interference within two miles of their broadcasting center, thanks to Cleveland.
This caused the FCC to panic. Even though it was obvious -- at least to the engineers, who had apparently resigned themselves to never being listened to again -- what had caused the malfunctions in TV stationing, the FCC decided to halt the approval of all new TV stations until the matter was cleared up.
Because the FCC was a government agency, that took four years.
In April of 1952, the FCC finally lifted the "freeze" on new TV stations; the committee also decided to allow for UHF broadcasting, opening some markets as exclusively UHF while supplementing already-existing markets with established VHF stations, with a mix of UHF stations to complement them.
Unfortunately, the networks that had a toehold in the most desirable urban markets when the freeze had begun (NBC, CBS, occasionally ABC) had turned those into chokeholds on the markets most likely to sustain competition, like New York, Chicago and L.A. They held unmitigated dominance in those urban markets the entire four years, and with most markets only able to sustain two TV stations, NBC and CBS in particular had locked down most of the country in a duopoly that lasted through the 50s.
In addition, consumer demand for TVs -- in the postwar era that gave us the consumer culture we dwell in so fondly today, when disposable income demanded to be disposed of -- had increased exponentially, and in the absence of already-established UHF stations, those buyers were buying VHF receivers. UHF stations were doomed from the get-go in mixed markets, and they wouldn't recover as competitors until the All Channels Act of 1961.
All of this contributed to the downfall of early TV's ill-fated, fourth major network, DuMont, in 1956. Of the markets open at the beginning of the FCC freeze, only about 11 could sustain three major networks, ABC being the third, and only two or three markets could sustain four networks. DuMont had no choice but to expand into the financially ridiculous ultra-high frequencies after the freeze, and the network went down along with countless independent stations.
In other words, the FCC, spawned itself by a two-party system, inadvertently stamped out competition at just the right time in network TV history to practically guarantee we'd be limited to two or three major networks. (And ABC saved itself from certain doom only thanks to some fancy footwork poo-poo'ed by contemporary critics in the late 50's.)
It wasn't until cable began in the 1970s that all was right in the world once more.
It's not so bad, though; you should hear what the same FCC did to FM radio.
I'd tell you, but it would keep you up at night with the sheer stupidity.
In fact, the FCC decided to encourage more TV competition in 1948 by doing the obvious: giving out more rights to broadcast channels in popular city markets.
Unfortunately, they did this by altering the engineers' recommendations on how far apart broadcasting stations should be when they were on the same or adjacent channels. Where before stations on the same channel had to be a couple hundred miles apart, and 150 miles apart if they were adjacent channels (i.e., channel 2 and channel 3), the FCC decided to reduce those mileages, to 150 and 75, respectively.
According to reports, the Detroit stations experienced interference within two miles of their broadcasting center, thanks to Cleveland.
This caused the FCC to panic. Even though it was obvious -- at least to the engineers, who had apparently resigned themselves to never being listened to again -- what had caused the malfunctions in TV stationing, the FCC decided to halt the approval of all new TV stations until the matter was cleared up.
Because the FCC was a government agency, that took four years.
In April of 1952, the FCC finally lifted the "freeze" on new TV stations; the committee also decided to allow for UHF broadcasting, opening some markets as exclusively UHF while supplementing already-existing markets with established VHF stations, with a mix of UHF stations to complement them.
Unfortunately, the networks that had a toehold in the most desirable urban markets when the freeze had begun (NBC, CBS, occasionally ABC) had turned those into chokeholds on the markets most likely to sustain competition, like New York, Chicago and L.A. They held unmitigated dominance in those urban markets the entire four years, and with most markets only able to sustain two TV stations, NBC and CBS in particular had locked down most of the country in a duopoly that lasted through the 50s.
In addition, consumer demand for TVs -- in the postwar era that gave us the consumer culture we dwell in so fondly today, when disposable income demanded to be disposed of -- had increased exponentially, and in the absence of already-established UHF stations, those buyers were buying VHF receivers. UHF stations were doomed from the get-go in mixed markets, and they wouldn't recover as competitors until the All Channels Act of 1961.
All of this contributed to the downfall of early TV's ill-fated, fourth major network, DuMont, in 1956. Of the markets open at the beginning of the FCC freeze, only about 11 could sustain three major networks, ABC being the third, and only two or three markets could sustain four networks. DuMont had no choice but to expand into the financially ridiculous ultra-high frequencies after the freeze, and the network went down along with countless independent stations.
In other words, the FCC, spawned itself by a two-party system, inadvertently stamped out competition at just the right time in network TV history to practically guarantee we'd be limited to two or three major networks. (And ABC saved itself from certain doom only thanks to some fancy footwork poo-poo'ed by contemporary critics in the late 50's.)
It wasn't until cable began in the 1970s that all was right in the world once more.
It's not so bad, though; you should hear what the same FCC did to FM radio.
I'd tell you, but it would keep you up at night with the sheer stupidity.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
PSA: VHF, UHF and the FCC
Alright. Here's my first post in a series of lectures on stuff I've been forced to learn about early TV...in fact, I might call the series by that name, just so you're properly warned when one's coming.
Before it went into bankruptcy ten years after Robert "Bobby" Sarning left as president, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was the big pig in electronics. Bobby's father, David, known as "the General" in scholarship about his influence in RCA, had been at the helm of RCA when it more or less invented the concept of networks -- radio networks on AM channels, since this was 1926.
RCA had government contracts through the 1960s thanks to the General's focus on beating competitors in electronics -- including an ill-fated attempt to oust IBM in the early 60s -- and had started the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC...yes, that NBC) out of the desire to educate and, heck, to make profits while they were at it.
This is all background for the fact that RCA owned most of the patents that functioned in TV on VHF (very high frequency) when the FCC began to decide whether to set standards for television before it followed in the footsteps of radio as a broadcast medium and went public.
What patents RCA didn't own, it purchased the rights to from Philo Farnsworth after a legal battle in which RCA claimed to have already patented the technology Farnsworth had invented and patented (which it hadn't). RCA essentially had a monopoly on television equipment that received VHF signals at that point.
CBS, which had a "friendly rivalry" going with NBC on radio, also had plans for television. Because of RCA's monopoly on VHF, CBS worked on developing technologies for UHF (ultra high frequency), which would also allow for color, since the ultra high frequencies would be able to support the broadcast broader signals, and could potentially be higher quality than the VHF receivers RCA was already selling.
But the FCC had not ruled on specifications, instead opting for a wishy-washy statement saying they hoped that the fledgling television industry would be able to turn a profit while still doing the R&D necessary to make increasingly better TVs. RCA interpreted the wishi-washiness as weakness and began to sell TVs with force. By the time the FCC made a serious attempt to curb the sales, RCA claimed that so many TV sets had been sold that if the technology was changed, the obsolescence experienced by consumers would be prohibitive, even though only about half a million television sets were in use at that point, in only a few major city markets.
Thus, RCA had a monopoly on television set sales until the early to mid 1950s, and CBS's plans for UHF and color TV were stymied by RCA's corporate machinations.
More on corporate monopolies and the network system in future "Stuff I've Been Forced to Learn About Early TV."
Before it went into bankruptcy ten years after Robert "Bobby" Sarning left as president, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was the big pig in electronics. Bobby's father, David, known as "the General" in scholarship about his influence in RCA, had been at the helm of RCA when it more or less invented the concept of networks -- radio networks on AM channels, since this was 1926.
RCA had government contracts through the 1960s thanks to the General's focus on beating competitors in electronics -- including an ill-fated attempt to oust IBM in the early 60s -- and had started the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC...yes, that NBC) out of the desire to educate and, heck, to make profits while they were at it.
This is all background for the fact that RCA owned most of the patents that functioned in TV on VHF (very high frequency) when the FCC began to decide whether to set standards for television before it followed in the footsteps of radio as a broadcast medium and went public.
What patents RCA didn't own, it purchased the rights to from Philo Farnsworth after a legal battle in which RCA claimed to have already patented the technology Farnsworth had invented and patented (which it hadn't). RCA essentially had a monopoly on television equipment that received VHF signals at that point.
CBS, which had a "friendly rivalry" going with NBC on radio, also had plans for television. Because of RCA's monopoly on VHF, CBS worked on developing technologies for UHF (ultra high frequency), which would also allow for color, since the ultra high frequencies would be able to support the broadcast broader signals, and could potentially be higher quality than the VHF receivers RCA was already selling.
But the FCC had not ruled on specifications, instead opting for a wishy-washy statement saying they hoped that the fledgling television industry would be able to turn a profit while still doing the R&D necessary to make increasingly better TVs. RCA interpreted the wishi-washiness as weakness and began to sell TVs with force. By the time the FCC made a serious attempt to curb the sales, RCA claimed that so many TV sets had been sold that if the technology was changed, the obsolescence experienced by consumers would be prohibitive, even though only about half a million television sets were in use at that point, in only a few major city markets.
Thus, RCA had a monopoly on television set sales until the early to mid 1950s, and CBS's plans for UHF and color TV were stymied by RCA's corporate machinations.
More on corporate monopolies and the network system in future "Stuff I've Been Forced to Learn About Early TV."
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Local Trivia: Hartford AM radio
In all my peregrinations through Variety microfilm, I found several references to a man named Paul Morency from Hartford, CT, who stood up for himself as an AM station-runner in 1951 -- for himself and many other stations around the country.
Morency apparently stood up for freedom of speech on radio when the government declared that "the first ammendment...does not apply to facilities which operate under a government license" (such as radio and television, which are assigned broadcast rights and channels, etc.) a few years before our fave Wisconsin junior senator started holding hearings on TV, on things like whether the Army was Communist or not. (It was.)
Morency was basically the Edward Murrow of the airwaves, but without all the "good night, and good luck"-ing. Also, apparently "editorializing" was already banned at his station, WTIC.
Ah, the good old days. Life is so much simpler now...(when everything on the radio is editorializing, and the FCC sticks to censoring bad words and body parts).
Read all about his claims in 1949: "Radio Edit Freedom Fake, Says Morency."
Morency apparently stood up for freedom of speech on radio when the government declared that "the first ammendment...does not apply to facilities which operate under a government license" (such as radio and television, which are assigned broadcast rights and channels, etc.) a few years before our fave Wisconsin junior senator started holding hearings on TV, on things like whether the Army was Communist or not. (It was.)
Morency was basically the Edward Murrow of the airwaves, but without all the "good night, and good luck"-ing. Also, apparently "editorializing" was already banned at his station, WTIC.
Ah, the good old days. Life is so much simpler now...(when everything on the radio is editorializing, and the FCC sticks to censoring bad words and body parts).
Read all about his claims in 1949: "Radio Edit Freedom Fake, Says Morency."
PSA: Obama tax credits
Apparently, a lot of people are having trouble with their taxes.
Lucky for me, two weekends ago, when I didn't realize that I had another Museum Ed paper due, or that my Queer Studies annotated bibliography and abstract were coming up so soon, and when -- good Lord -- I had no idea how much work "Dangerous Assignment" would be, I already did my taxes.
I took the education credit for Lifelong Learning, and I got away clean and free -- totally taxless.
Thanks, Obama. I knew all those "he'll tax us to death!"-ers were just h8rs.
Lucky for me, two weekends ago, when I didn't realize that I had another Museum Ed paper due, or that my Queer Studies annotated bibliography and abstract were coming up so soon, and when -- good Lord -- I had no idea how much work "Dangerous Assignment" would be, I already did my taxes.
I took the education credit for Lifelong Learning, and I got away clean and free -- totally taxless.
Thanks, Obama. I knew all those "he'll tax us to death!"-ers were just h8rs.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
PSA: On why I never write, never call.
Well, allz, I'm sorry I've been away from CU so long. The problem is that I haven't thought anything funny in two weeks.
In part, the funniness has been sucked from my brain because I've been working on my "Dangerous Assignment" project, and some other projects.
If I get a chance, I'll post an account of everything I know about "Dangerous Assignment" -- making you experts as well. (And allowing me to work out how to write a publishable article about it.)
You can look forward to it...or dread it.
Readers' choice.
In part, the funniness has been sucked from my brain because I've been working on my "Dangerous Assignment" project, and some other projects.
If I get a chance, I'll post an account of everything I know about "Dangerous Assignment" -- making you experts as well. (And allowing me to work out how to write a publishable article about it.)
You can look forward to it...or dread it.
Readers' choice.
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