The Immigrant Song

My summer TV agenda

This is as much for my own benefit as anything else, but here's what's on tap for me this summer: so many good things to watch.  Where is HBO in all this?  No new Entrourage this summer, which breaks my heart, but I'll see you....in September....

Weeds (Showtime, Mondays at 10, already begun) Nancy's new beginning looks to be fantastic, and what a ride.  A consistent favorite, and I'm so glad I have Showtime.
This American Life (Showtime) I pretty much watch this on-Demand only, but it's fantastic.  Just so insightful sometimes it shocks me.
Mad Men (AMC Sundays at 10 beginning July 27): LOVE IT.  I can't say enough good about this series, its dark and light elements especially provide a great look at the beginning of our media-permeated culture.  And, who doesn't envy 3-martini lunches (even in caricature)?
Eureka (SciFi Tuesdays at 9 beginning July 29):  I am getting happy just thinking about this show.
Burn Notice (USA Thursdays at 10):   This show hooked me last summer, for it's great camera work, fun technology, witty dialogue, awesome protagonist, and of course Gabrielle Anwar.  Bruce Campbell is awesome in this as well, and I might be watching even if he was the only good thing about it.  Fortunately this is not the case.
Breaking Bad (AMC) gotta catch up on this in re-runs- I only saw 3 episodes but they were fantastic.
Out Of Sight (USA Sundays at 10): This is a new show I'm auditioning.  It doesn't have me hooked, yet, as I don't really find the recurring plot elements very compelling.  I am thinking that I am just not enjoying the writing enough to watch this non-serialized drama.

Is Lost’s Island Electromagnetic Enough to Move Itself Through Space? Time-Travel Expert Says It’s Not Impossible - Popular Mechanics

In the last episode of LOST, Locke finds out from Dr. Shepherd that the only way to save it is to move the island.  I think they would probably attempt this by altering the electromagnetic field surrounding the island- we've seen how the helicopter faces a reasonably serious challenge just trying to find the island due to some kind of weird spacetime fluctuation.

Could they be thinking about something even more exotic, like actually moving the physical isl;and fgrom pone place to another?  Here's the Popular Mechanics story, Is Lost’s Island Electromagnetic Enough to Move Itself Through Space? Time-Travel Expert Says It’s Not Impossible.

List of headlines ripped for Law and Order Wednesday night

1. Larry Craig and the wide stance sting
2. Norman Hsu, fugitive bundler with blonde female politician
3. contributions made in poor people's names

And my friend Kristen was in it and she rocked the screen!

Green is Universal- Follow-up

Evidently part of NBC's Green is Universal means showing The Arrival  on SciFi.  Awesome.

The End of the Diversified Media Company?

How valuable is is to have assets over a variety of businesses?  Do economies of scale and especially scope really exist?  I think it is interesting what is happening this week.

Previously I blogged about IAC breaking up- essentially this is a vote for "yes" and a vote for "no" because the breakup into five separate companies suggests that the value of the parts individually is higher than the value of the whole.  Barry Diller also said that IAC

needed [the transactional businesses like Ticketmaster] earnings to allow us to invest in emerging Internet businesses. Now that we have real scale in the pure Internet units, it makes nothing but sense to me to reorganize the whole.

So essentially, having TV, internet, real estate, and retail assets all together under one roof wasn't maximizing shareholder value after all.

What are other firms doing?  Try GE. General Electric's NBC Universal unveiled a sweeping campaign last night during the Sunday Night Football broadcast of the Eagles-Cowboys game aimed at  "entertaining, informing and empowering Americans to lead greener lives."  But was anyone watching?

I would be surprised if this was not one of the top games in ratings this season.  The campaign, NBC Green is Universal, will turn the NBC logo on virtually all of its TV channels (cable and broadcast) Internet properties(excluding MSNBC),  green for one week to coincide with eco-awareness programming.  I don;t know what Matt Lauer was doing near the arctic circle, but apparently the earth is getting warmer :)  It's "Green Week" at Claire's high school on Heroes. 

The models on Deal or No Deal will be  wearing recycled parachutes.  Jay Leno shows you how to clean a green sink in an eco-friendly way.  Even as CNBC was reporting that Citigroup stock was probably headed lower, there was Eco-Awareness brought to you by NBCU. GE announced this on October 23, apparently.

It's going to be hard to avoid all of this, as NBC is everywhere, but I think the only thing this proves is unified campaign launches across platforms can be done well, with the added benefit that we decide to tell all our bosses to buy that $2,000,000 GE HVAC unit for the office park because it's 20% more efficient and uses 16% renewable resources (i made those figures up- all of them).  GE  named Ann Klee Vice President for Environmental Programs today!  All this seems more to be happening for corporate PR value and brand equity than any DR/commerce advertising.

Times are just as challenging for other large media companies.  The AOL/TW merger never produced the kinds of scale and scope ecomies and leverage promised to investors. Viacom spun off CBS radio in an apparent loss of faith  in the radio business's  fit with its other assets. 

Maybe all of these are examples of businesses with strong positions but weak strategic frameworks.  Are software/tech companies like Microsoft and Google doing this better than others?  In some sense, it seems like their model isn;t much different- using a cash cow (Windows OS/office software for Microsoft, search for Google) to lever into other lines of business.  Time will tell.

Flying around my mind this morning...

Can we call it "Don't tase me bro"-gate at CSU Fort Collins? [NYTimes]

"Um, yeah the thing about our news show is, it's like, not news." Thanks, CW 11! The Best TV News, All About Us

14 year old pop/TV star not pregnant. Phew. Viral marketing taking lessons from F/X's Dirt? It’s Pimples, Not Pregnancy, for the Teenage Star Miley Cyrus 

Last but not least, Tell Me you Love Me is entertaining only if you like to heckle.  Are we heckling because the content is so overtly sexual?  Maybe, but with writing this awful and some very weak and annoying characters, I think I'm in good shape.

Bush Iraq Strategy = Charlie Brown kicking the Football

This is not just hilarious use of the Peanuts, but a great analogy for George Bush's Iraq "strategy."

Lost Season 3 Finale [spoiler alert]

I thought it was kind of fun for things to be a little happy for a minute.  Hugo saves the day with the van. Actually I can't figure out why there was beer left in it- I though Jin and Sawyer drank it all?

The flash forward was kind of cool too, but a bit like burning a rope at both ends...over the long run, is that their vision?  Connecting the dots for 3 more seasons? My thought at the time was, didn't "The 9" kind of flop? Also, I agree with what some people have said that not everyone gets off the island.  I think that's why Jack wants to go back. There are some screencaps of the clipping that Jack carried around and it looks like a man from NY dies- isn’t Michael from NY?

I think it is worth focusing on the whole idea of the island giving people purpose/ requiring them to act upon it.  It gave Desmond visions, Locke healing, super virility to Jin, etc, and maybe in some strange way the survivors are better off on the island, with all its mystery, than returning to the mainland.

My last thought has to do with Ben being right about Naomi not being who she says she is. She had the pic of penny and Desmond, and we know that penny is looking for Desmond, but what the hell was Naomi really doing? Who was the guy on the other end of the phone?

Reason Enough To Get Tivo, Almost Justifies Watching The Pro Bowl.

Brian Moorman gets "jacked up"-just awesome.  This was so much fun to watch, and then Dan Dierdorf does us one better and gets a clip of the NHK broadcasters calling the game.