Recently in television Category

Let's see how many videos we can post on this page in one week, shall we? And this one is from the same site as the last video. How many can I post from one site before I'm considered a syndicator?

Nevertheless, I missed the debate and found this to be a great recap. Enjoy!

I was of the opinion yesterday that McCain pulling out of the debates to "save the economy" was a brilliant political move. At a time when his poll numbers are dropping, he basically plays yet another wild card and puts Obama in a no-win situation. If Obama says, "WTF? We're doing the debate!" he comes off as a guy who doesn't want to help the economy and save the common man. If he says, "You're right, Johnny, let's go into session and get 'er done," he's then following McCain's lead and admitting McCain is the voice of wisdom in a time of crisis. There's nothing he can do without the Republicans spinning this to make Obama look bad.

Then again, there's always the mass media to contend with. Already liberal-skewing, according to the conservatives, and not restricted to saying what the Republicans want them to say, McCain now risks comments like Dave's, below:



So wait, McCain should keep campaigning, even though the nation's in crisis? Is that sort of like how I keep coming to work, even when the tiles have fallen off the wall in our shower at home and our house needs a ton of work before we put it on the market in a few months? Or how my wife still takes the girls to ballet class even when she has a cold? Or how both of us do the day-to-day stuff that needs to get done, even when we have other emergencies pop up, like cars breaking down, illness, etc.?

I know I'm oversimplifying things, but dude needs to learn to multitask if he's going to lead the free world. If you need to be in Washington to work on saving the nation, I can get behind that. But maybe you could do the debate that night, from DC? Or maybe the debate now becomes a perfect opportunity to present your economic plan to the nation? After working on a bailout plan behind closed doors with Congress and the Pres, why not discuss it on network television Friday night? Sounds like a great opportunity to talk about real issues while you work to fix them.

Come on, McCain. You can do better than this.

I know I try not to talk about work on this blog, but I'll try to keep this mostly anonymous.

1. I was on my way to work this morning when I got an email on my blackberry. It was from the person in charge of tracking our traffic on the websites. She had one question:

"Are there any viral videos on tbs.com?"

Seriously? Are there still people out there who don't know that a "viral video" is an organic happenstance, not a category you assign during digitization? I've been getting the "we need to make a viral video" request from marketing for years, but even that noise has died down by now. We've had to explain a million times that "viral" just means that people like it and pass it around--it's not something you can force onto a video with marketing mojo. It's much the same as the term "hit show". You can make a good show. You can even make a great show, but you can't make a hit. Only the fans can do that.

It's sad to hear a person who actually works in the digital field showing such lack of understanding of such a familiar concept. I expected the next question to be, "Is there anything funny on tbs.com?"

2. With as much traffic as the Family Guy videos on our site get, I'm amazed nobody's written in about this, yet. You tell me: Is this a good thumbnail to use for a video on an "all audiences" site?

We had to let our video guy go last week due to financial and structural reasons, and I was absolutely sure he must've done this to get back at us. I was starting to worry that there may be a whole bunch of pornographic thumbnails buried in our video player. But then I checked the "submitted by" tag on the image. It came from a former coworker who's now a designer for an agency that does websites for major studio movies, and who happens to occasionally read this blog.

Hey, Eugene, thanks a lot! If I find images of Peter naked on our site, I'm coming to LA and tracking you down, man! ;)

I'd been sitting on this info for a few weeks while budget, reservations and travel were all up in the air and indefinite, but I just booked my flights and consider it safe to announce that I'm going to the 2008 Comic-Con in San Diego next week!

As geeky as this is to admit, attending the world's largest comic book convention has always been a dream of mine. Some people dream of traveling the world--I dream of attending mega geekfests. And this one is the king of them all. Even better, it's not just a comic book convention anymore. There are no less than thirty TV shows and over two dozen feature films parading their cast and crew to the convention to show off sneak peeks, meet the fans and try to gain eyeballs for upcoming seasons/releases. It really has become a multimedia extravaganza, drawing celebs from Hollywood as well as game developers, toymakers, and anything else that would remotely appeal to the young male demographic.

I've only looked over the schedules for Thursday and Sunday in detail, but I've already seen a ton of sessions I'd love to attend. Just on those two days, some of my favorite shows (Dexter, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica) are hosting Q&As with their stars. And those aren't even the big days--I can't wait to see what they've got planned for Friday and Saturday.

Turner will have a pretty big presence at the Comic-Con this year, as they always do, but it will once again be mainly Cartoon Network. Cartoon is sending a TON of people to show off all of their kids' shows and their Adult Swim properties. TNT and TBS won't really have a presence--we sort of missed the boat with at least one or two of our new shows--but maybe we'll make a better effort next year.

If you're also going to Comic-Con or you just live in the San Diego area, let me know before next Wednesday and I'll look you up. As excited as I am about the convention, I am a little nervous about being totally alone out there. I have friends at Cartoon Network who are going, but the Cartoon group is notoriously cliquey and (with the exception of my friends, of course) a little stuck up. I think they hear way too often how cool their jobs are, because a lot of them won't give you the time of day, even on campus, where we all work for the same company, eat in the same cafeteria and get our checks from the same source. It will be interesting to see if even the nicer Cartoon people will give me the time of day once they're off-campus, among their snobbier coworkers and surrounded by adoring fans who continue to kiss their feet and tell them how great they are.

Heck, I might even become a snob if faced with that level of worship.

Anyway, I could spend four days wandering the floors of the convention center all by myself, followed by four nights of sitting by myself in screenings before taking a cab back to my lonely hotel room. It could be a very lonely time--despite the hordes of people. If you'll be around that weekend, let me know. I'll be glad to see a familiar face.

I'll post more details when I have more time. I'm anxious to look over the Saturday and Sunday schedules to try to plan my weekend. I'll probably write a post about the sessions I plan to attend, just to get myself organized. If you have recommendations, let me know. This is sure to be an exciting--if overwhelming--event!

Sometimes I bookmark things that I find funny, with the intent of posting about them at a later date. But then I forget about them completely, thus depriving the Internet of more hilarity. Or sometimes, I do post about them, then forget to delete the bookmark.

I'm not sure which is the case here, but I just found a link to the following in my bookmarks. I think it's very apropos of what I do for a living:

Five ways to leverage the mobile thinkosphere

1. blogmobisodes
2. webmobinars
3. telestreamanogisodes
4. lividmobipostiscussions
5. netconvermomomobomasations

- from 5ives

It reminds me of that commercial for DirecTV where the corporate cable wonk suggests that the solution to overcoming their competitor's claims is to "Blog it out!"

...here you go.

I love every one of Jimmy's "unnecessary censorship" pieces, but this one is an instant classic.

Currently recording on our DVR:

Masterpiece "Cranford" (2008) A three-part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford," about life in an 1840s Cheshire village. Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins star as sisters Matty and Deborah Jenkyns who, in the opener, welcome an old friend (Lisa Dillon) to live with them.

and...

Iron Man "Hands of the Mandarin" (1994) Tony Stark, billionare and technological genius, wages a war against his arch rival, The Mandarin. In his secret identity as the armored avenger, Iron Man, Stark has a vast range of weapons at his disposal, and is aided by his trusted teammates, Force Works.

Bet you can't guess which one of those is for me.

It's en episode from the 1990s animated series, being shown on Toon Disney's Jetix block of programming. They're showing six straight episodes (obviously riding this weekend's movie premiere buzz), calling it "Iron Man: First Strike." The series sucked--bad writing, bad art, and terrible, mullet-filled character design--but who am I to turn down a free shot of superhero nostalgia?

Now available at TBS.com: Upcoming Episodes widgets!

Coming soon: Video widgets!