I have been hooked on Lost for quite a while.  For the first two seasons I enjoyed the ensemble cast, the flash backs, the puzzles, and the inexplicable.  I forgave some of the aimlessness that crept in for a while.  Season 3 things started to slide into a nagging doubt that the writers were just making stuff up.  Now, part way through Season 4, I am pretty much done.  The show has turned into a soap opera with inferior writing and storylines.

During the writer’s strike, I discovered the Wire which I had somehow missed.  That show is arguable one of the best ever and it may have raised the bar so much that Lost was doomed this season anyhow.

The final straw is ABC’s new promotion for the upcoming show.

“week to week lost only gets better and better”

“thursday an all new Lost is one of the most unforgettable hours of television you’ll experience this season”

Really? I am pretty sure I am not alone in watching and thinking lost is only getting crappier and crappier.

Honestly, this type of faux testimonial should not be allowed by the FCC.

Tags: tv, lost, abc, fcc

After years of doing the remote control shuffle including some failed attempts at having one remote dominate the other, I picked up a Harmony 880.

To my astonishment, this thing actually works and I have put my tv remote, av remote, dvd remote, comcast remote, and apple tv remote all in a box on a shelf.

In my hand is one remote to rule them all.

Harmony has created an excellent web application to help you build up your remote around activites (e.g. watch tv, listen to the radio) and it has the nuance to handle even tricky stuff like getting apple tv on board and even including the 30 second skip for a comcast dvr.

For those of you who know my Mom, she is rarely at a lack for words.

Well, she has managed to corral many thousands of them into an extraordinary book about life, love, business, and art. I have watched in awe as she has refined her story over the past several years, undaunted by the process and steadfastly determined.

Indefatigable.

Together with her friend and talented collaborator/editor (Lavanya), she has produced something truly memorable and moving. I encourage you to pick up a copy. It is a story about relationships and perseverance, and about a singular garden with exquisite photos in accompaniment.

Available at Amazon (your reviews are encouraged)

Some local recent newspaper coverage

and, here we have a bit of the surreal — my Dad on the Martha Stewart Show!

Martha Stewart Show (turn your volume way up!)

Recently, I have found myself wanting to share reviews of different things like movies, books, restaurants here on No Soap but I realized that I need a consistent ratings system and one that would apply accross categories. Obviously there are lots of ways that people have devised scales but under my jurisdiction here his how I do it!

4 STARS – a classic that requires multiple viewings (etc.) to merit such a rating.

3 STARS – good to great. Something very enjoyable that stays with you and you would happily repeat. It may have some minor flaws.

2 STARS – entertainment, or a way to pass the time. It could be outstandingly bad but have some odd redeeming quality. You wouldn’t necessarily repeat the experience.

1 STAR – not worth your time.

That’s it. I felt that any more granularity (e.g. out of 10) would be hard for me to keep straight. There is one other RULE. If you have any doubt about which category something belongs, you must choose the lower one.

I first saw slingbox at the D conference more than 2 years ago. Today, I got one at BestBuy and managed to get it up and running in 44 minutes. That’s it. To get it going on your local network is trivial. I did have to tweak my router to use it remotely but it works, even over Verizon EVDO with mediocre reception.

Now, I want a SlingPlayer for Mac!

I am watching Anchorman right now from my Comcast DVR. Very cool.

“my apartment smells of rich mahogany”

Tags: slingbox

After investing 9 episodes of time into the FOX series Reunion they have pulled it because of mediocre ratings. I liked the show, it was like 24 as a murder mystery soap opera and it had a very good hook (advancing one year every week) which conditions nostalgia.

When are the networks going to figure out that the whole concept of “word of mouth” is becoming altered and stretched? The movie studios are digging up anything with remote brand currency because it is cheaper than building something from scratch (e.g. Bewitched, Starsky and Hutch, etc.) and the networks are going to ride reality sequels until they collapse.

What real hope does a new show have? The chance of an initial hit is miniscule now with the options available to people and the entire ratings foundation which determines these things is flawed and measuring a system that is entirely in flux.

Someday soon networks need to understand that their brand is now undeniably tied to the community that they build around their products and ultimately that is where they must find out how to both add and extract value.

All this is prelude to what I really wanted to say which is: Why in the world would FOX pull the Reunion website before the ink was dry on the freaking press release!? Are these execs just plain ignorant? Is your Web product director obsessively tidy?

Instead of possibly cultivating a relationship with all these people who committed to your product you are pretending like they don’t exist instead of possibly building on them for the future. Pure genius. N’t.

The day after I got the parking ticket I was able to pay a visit to Andrew Michael Baron, who with Amanda Congdon have created Rocketboom. This videoblog is the first to break into mainstream coverage (BusinessWeek and the local CBS affiliate) and they are working hard to define this new short form medium.

Someday the internet will be home to zillions of small channels. Rocketboom is showing that you can inform and entertain with production costs about that of a tank of gas.

A nano-debate has developed between Mark Cuban and Chris Anderson around the future of broadcast TV as predicted by George Gilder. Why would anyone chose TV as entertainment when a newsreader provides dynamic instapundrity (can I coin that?!)

Sarcasm aside, there are major issues with unmoderated controversies, the most significant being terms. It appears that Cuban has not read either of Gilder’s works but was commenting about this quote from a cable trade site:

“Does it still die?” He [Gilder] said, “TV is still dying. Followed by Hollywood. It fed a scarcity of a few channels. Advertising has collapsed. TV is living on fumes. TV’s strategy with ads on the Internet will also fail. You can’t push an ad on a consumer. In the future, no one will watch what he doesn’t want to see. The user becomes the producer.”

There is no time frame mentioned. This debate strikes a chord with Cuban because it centers around the R&D of his former company broadcast.com and (my hunch) his passion for sports which is a lynchpin in an argument for “live” events broadcast to millions of people (not currently possible via the internet). True to competitive form, Cuban has drawn a line in the sand with “Broadcast TV will never die.”

Anderson brings his own biases, most notably his longtail model enamored of infinite choice.

What is amusing is that when you get someone blunt arguing with someone subtle there are communication issues and a lot of what is being said is either not up for debate or truism.

My own two cents:

It looks to me that traditional tv is, in fact, on the decline. There has been a massive migration to cable and satellite and today’s most acclaimed shows are not coming from the traditional networks. In fifty years, we have seen the steady migration away from “live” television and with PVRs a new migration to time shifting from channel programming to personal programming and further erosion of “live” events as people record sporting events.

If we look to younger demographics, broadcast tv is simply one of many many entertainment choices (music, dvd, video games, web, instant messaging). The splintering of content has ripped apart the cultural bonds of what past generations held in common (e.g. the theme song to Giligan’s Island). We only hear the faint echoes of that unity in Hollywood remakes who see the quick hit of market share akin to Madison avenue co-opting the music of their target demo for a commercial.

The remarks by Gilder (above), he appears to be speaking about the traditional tv business model (with advertising) and not specifically about a delivery medium. If that is the case, I agree with him. I also think that the “Super Bowl Scenario” has a compelling allure as a socialized behavior, but when people are watching what they want to watch, 80mm people aren’t going to watch the Super Bowl and the ones that do will pay for it.

No Need to Click Here – I’m just claiming my feed at Feedster

Entourage (HBO) is delivering solid entertainment in season 2.

“First of all, there is no ‘we’ in ‘I’.”
~Ari Gold

Can’t seem to get this song out of my head so I am paying it forward.

Dooot doo de doo doo…