television

television / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on One where I tried to tie the day together
8
Oct 19

One where I tried to tie the day together

Students I know created this show:

Other students I know produced two shows this evening, and they’ll be online tomorrow. And in between this and that, on a hectic night of shooting, where I might have just been accidentally getting in the way on purpose, I did get one of the better jokes I can make in a studio …

We got one in last spring, too …

The infinity effect is a classic joke. Maybe I appreciate it more than other people, but that’s OK. There was a great cartoon, probably from the 1960s or 1970s, that I can’t find today, but I’ve never forgotten and it probably predisposed me to the bit. At some point you have to be able to amuse yourself in the course of your day.

Elsewhere, this evening, I saw a presentation from the great Doc Searls, who has been a fellow at Harvard, NYU, UC-Santa Barbara and a widely published journalist. He’s also a best-selling author. One book he co-wrote, The Cluetrain Manifesto, was an important component of a class I used to teach. So this was a great opportunity to hear an important thinker. I could say a lot more about the guy, but you’d think I was overselling it.

Isn’t it interesting how well that applies to everyone, except for those to whom it does not apply? And then, for fun, go live in that lifestyle for about 12 hours, or try to conduct your daily business therein. Where is the water that fish asked us about?

I remember the first time I said this, in a political communication panel at a little regional convention. The room was full and there were some seriously accomplished scholars in the room. The looks I got when I said “We should stop differentiating between the real world and our time online.” This would have been immediately after Barack Obama’s first presidential election, when online strategies had been so critical to many of the campaigns we saw the previous fall. I can only assume it seemed an odd thought to the more accomplished scholars because they were of a vintage that, when they thought about it, were still thinking of other mediated formats.

The bigger problem, tonight, is that more people should have heard him speak. But that’s a problem for a different day.

I made a joke today about the vulnerability of the Internet, one demonstrable weak spot, of course, being …

Then The Yankee and I went to lunch. She dove into her purse to pay and pulled out … cash. I saw an Out of Order Post-it on the little loyalty card sticker. As I am convinced the societal part of our world will come to an end just after the adhesive of hastily scrawled notes on carefully applied squares of paper gives way, this was not a good sign. Especially after that joke I made this morning.

But she just wanted to pay with greenbacks today. Sometimes you go with the classics. It was only the loyalty scanner device which was down. We won’t put too much thought into that as a metaphor. All of this, I guess, made sense, given the moment (the moment is the message, by the way) wasn’t typified by people stacked up at the cash register how they were going to get by this guy who was between them and their noontime habits.

If you know anyone looking for a project …

Someone out there is thinking big thoughts about the intersection of sports media and geo-policy and geopolitics. With the world getting smaller and sports getting larger and the money … well, the money is just a form of communicating these days. That’s the moment we live in. That’s the adtech that Doc Searls was talking about tonight.

And it won’t be going away any time soon, no matter how I mangle the spelling of Silicone Valley.

More important than all of these things is this beautiful expression:

You go have yourself a wonderful Wednesday tomorrow.

Monday / television / video — Comments Off on A TV show’s trailer is the high water mark here. Really.
7
Oct 19

A TV show’s trailer is the high water mark here. Really.

It was a low-key weekend. Oh, there were plans, goals even. There were tasks to be performed and achievements to be met. It turned into one of those days where you have the big ambitions and then meet none of them. It turned into a weekend of those days.

But, hey, I did have a lovely dinner with friends one night and at least I got all the laundry done and the dishes washed.

This trailer came out. Perhaps you’ve seen it already:

And then someone at Gizmodo broke the whole thing down in almost frame-by-frame detail. The people doing that should get an advance screening, just as a reward. It’s OK, I can wait another day.

Mostly I’m relieved the Data bit is a dream. It’s going to work out better that way.

So maybe CBS All Access is the service I’ll pick up. At least until someone does a skin service for all of these things. There’s a marketplace for that, legalities be damned.

Anyway, today was a long day that just kept getting longer, somehow. It concluded with a meeting that began at 7 p.m. An important meeting, and I was happy to be a part of it. But I left the office at 8:15. Then I went to the wrong place, because it was that kind of day, before going to the right place. It’s the same store, on basically the same street, just 2.8 miles and a 12-minute drive apart. That’s good franchise planning, and accounts for my general confusion in this instance. (But only this instance.) After that, the next place I had to go closed precisely one minute earlier and the people inside just looked at me as if they were struck dumb by the prospect of a customer, in general, let alone the hour. If I’d chosen the first stop correctly I could have made it to the third place prior to the store closing. But that’s Monday for you.

Very well, then, back tomorrow, when the morning side crew will be no less surprised, because who stops by a store on a Tuesday morning anyway?

After that failed customer experience we finally had dinner, about an hour before the chosen restaurant closed. So there were two tables filled, which was nice. A quiet restaurant for two! The nice young lady who served our table (better than the humorless lady who would just rather … not) really wanted to do her cut work and go home, so she was happily elsewhere. And, happily, we’re a pretty low maintenance table.

Anyway, in a few minutes I plan on trying to fall asleep. Perhaps I’ll fall asleep reading some news site. I just hope it’s not the comments. Or maybe it will be the comments. What a thing to fade off, too, comments on some news story that seemed like a good idea at the time when you opened the tab, but now that nine tabs are open, you start to question the choice. And so you read the comments. And then you drift off.

That’s how you get a head start on Tuesday.

books / Friday / memories / television / video — Comments Off on At least three decades are referenced here
4
Oct 19

At least three decades are referenced here

Another morning in the studio. We talked news and guests — and I had an incredible flashback moment to newsroom meetings from 2006.

Back then we were tasked with writing promotional material about news at a 9 a.m. Friday meeting for a Monday morning newspaper paper advertisement. Every Friday I somehow managed to forget my crystal ball at home. And there was a similar dynamic in the conversation this morning. It made me question everything about my career.

Not really, but I did enjoy the idea of how some things can’t change, because they are realities. The reality is we simply haven’t yet found ways to predict the news three days in advance. Maybe the students I work with will do what I have not, and invent a way to accurately predict such a thing and retire fabulously wealthy and incredibly young.

Probably they’ll be having the same sort of conversations in 2035 about what to beam into people’s brain pans.

I used to think, maybe even during those 2006-era meetings, that was a novel idea. Wouldn’t it be great to have the web in my brain. Everything there with a flick of the eye, because the typing was too tedious, I guess, and we didn’t yet really think in terms of a flick of the thumb.

We also didn’t think about all of the data collecting the smart house features would do, or the listening in that the big companies would do, you know, in the name of improving the customer experience.

Around here the customer experience is just fine. And today we’re looking at the advertising experience of 1966. Today there are three new ads from Reader’s Digest. Click the book cover to see the new additions:

Or you can see all of the best ads from the October 1966 issue by clicking here. This was my grandfather’s magazine, and I’ve been irregularly putting some of the more interesting things that I find in his books on the site. You can see the full collection here.

The rest of the day? Well, there was a late meeting, and another, later meeting. And lunch at my desk. There was also breakfast at my desk. The experience was an experience, to be sure.

Tonight I’m having chili at home, like a normal person.

Have some sports!

And, if that’s not enough, here’s a bunch of guys talking about baseball.

And have yourself a lovely weekend, as well.

More on Twitter and on Instagram. Also, Catober continues tomorrow as well.

IU / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on On Wednesdays we share videos
2
Oct 19

On Wednesdays we share videos

Isn’t Phoebe cute? Scroll down right after this post if you missed her Catober debut. You can, of course, see all of the Catober photos at that link as the month continues.

Phoebe loves to be in the room with you, but she’s not too keen on being held. Unless it is on her dime, and then you should put everything down and get ready to have paws in your face. When she does want to cuddle she’s wholly invested in it. Even if she doesn’t like being held, she has become very receptive to our pets. She was a bit standoffish at first, and maybe there was a story there, but even then she always wanted her belly rubbed. So she gets a lot of belly pets. She also loves playing with her toys, and I think she’s trying to tell us right now we should play more. For the most part she only scratches the things she’s supposed to, and she does a pretty good job about not being on surfaces a cat shouldn’t be on. She’s also taken the top level of this very involved cat structure as her own and she likes to roll over and see the world from upside down up there.

Also, we are waiting on her to absolutely lose it on her brother and beat him up. Poseidon is kind of mean to her, but we’ll hopefully get that sorted out soon.

And now for some videos! We’re in award-nominating season right now, and some episode of almost all of these shows is getting pushed forward for consideration. Won’t you keep your fingers crossed with us until finalists are announced in December, or until your hand cramps up, whichever comes first.

This week’s episode of Not Too Late:

If you’re more of a morning person, here’s the Breakfast Club:

And we’d welcome you to the news, as well:

They shot that episode last night. One of the anchor’s entire family was in the studio watching, and it was also her birthday. No pressure, right?

This one is also from last night:

And we are all caught up again. Until Thursday, which is tomorrow. I’ll definitely be behind by tomorrow.

Friday / IU / television / video — Comments Off on Sounds like a productive production day
27
Sep 19

Sounds like a productive production day

Three different trips into the television studio today. One for a simple Q&A recording, then students had their morning show, of course. That episode will come out … sometime between now and then. I think they’re still honing in on their editing system. Somewhere right in there I had to duck into an audio booth, because sometimes you’re asked to deliver all of the finer points of audio production in under half-an-hour.

(You can’t deliver all of the finer points of audio production in under half-an-hour. But I can give you some of them. So you get some, and I will hope they are the right ones and enough.)

After that, Jonathan Banks — of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Airplane! among others — stopped by to talk about acting. It’s a program they call “Expert Workshop” and it does get great experts. I’m assuming this one will wind up online at some point. Most of them do. Aside from the famous name, this one was special in that it was entirely student produced, which is something I first suggested three years ago, and we’ve been working slowly toward ever since.

I see students produce programs every week as a part of the student television station, for example. There’s no reason other students couldn’t be producing for classroom projects or special events such as the Banks visit.

Here are the two shows the sports side of the student television station produced last night, in fact. First, the show with all the highlights and updates you need:

The Award-WinningTM sports crew also put together this talk show. New host, new hijinks, same fun:

An interesting thing happens every year. They start off and they build a little momentum, and then there’s an episode or two where they struggle with this or that, or a key piece of gear goes on the blip, throwing a wrench into things. Then they bounce back and find a groove they’ll hold all year. That might have been last night. And despite that sort of thing, they still put together two nice little shows. which means that in a week or two they’ll really be rolling.

And you? How are you? Are you rolling into your weekend yet? You should be. Get to it.

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