I’m A Republican (And I Didn’t Even Know It)

I’m a pretty liberal kind of guy. I vote for the NDP (I’m Canadian) and I take for granted things like single payer government health care, gun control and allowing Syrian refugees to immigrate into Canada. However, according to a survey done by E-Poll market research, my TV viewing shows that I am a raging Republican who should be wearing a Trump-Pence T-shirt and be denouncing Ted Cruz for not endorsing the party’s nominee at the convention. Well at least I can get that part right, although probably not for the same reasons as a “real” Republican.

The E-Poll Market Research Poll listed the Top Ten shows preferred by people self-identifying as Democrats and Republicans. According to the methodology section of the survey’s report:

E-Score analyzed more than 750 prime time broadcast, cable and streaming programs among Americans of voting age whose political affiliation is either Republican or Democrat and ranked the results for shows described as "One of My Favorites" by each group.

E-Score Programs is a monthly tracking survey that measures awareness, viewing and perceptions of more than 3,000 US television programs. Surveys are conducted monthly among a representative sample of US viewers with 1,200 respondents per show.

 

I’m not entirely sure how this particular survey was conducted but I suspect it wasn’t under the most rigourous conditions. Nevertheless it did come up with some interesting results.
 
Here is a table of the shows preferred by Republicans (in Red) and Democrats (in Blue). Shows in Purple are in the top ten lists of both parties. The shows that I watch regularly are in italics.

Democrats                                          Republicans

Rank	Show	Network	Show	Network
1	Game Of Thrones	HBO	Supernatural	CW
2	The Haves and the Have Nots	OWN	The Walking Dead	AMC
3	Supernatural	CW	Scorpion	CBS
4	The Big Bang Theory	CBS	Arrow	CW
5	Suits	USA	The Flash	CW
6	The Walking Dead	AMC	The Big Bang Theory	CBS
7	How To Get Away With Murder	ABC	NCIS	CBS
8	Doctor Who	BBCA	Blue Bloods	CBS
9	Empire	FOX	Grimm	NBC
10	Nashville	ABC	Last Man Standing	ABC

Fifty percent of the shows that I watch are exclusively on the Republican list, while the only Democratic show that I watch is actually bipartisan. Ergo, I am a Republican. Heaven help me. There’s probably a reason for this which I’ll get into later.
 
The poll offers some findings, the validity of which I’m not sure I can get behind but here they are.
Democrats prefer programs that are:

• Sexy: The top three shows described by Democrats as “sexy” were Game Of Thrones, The Haves and the Have Nots, Suits
• Edgy
• Emotionally involving
• Ethnically diverse or have strong characters: 3 of the top 10 shows: The Haves and the Have Nots, How to Get Away with Murder, and Empire all have a racially diverse cast and have powerful lead roles for women. This reflects the Democratic viewer who is also typically more diverse, with higher concentration of black and female supporters.

Republicans prefer programs that are:

• Family-friendly: Half of the top ten shows on the Rebuplican list had more than 25% of respondents describing the shows as "Family Friendly" and air on broadcast television.
• Funny: Although there are only two outright comedies on the Republican list and one of those is also on the Democratic list.
• Plot driven or have storylines that involve "good vs. evil": Republicans enjoy clearer "good vs. evil" characters and storylines. They prefer shows featuring superheroes like The Flash, Arrow and the super intelligent team on Scorpion. Two procedural programs – NCIS and Blue Bloods – also have the "good vs. evil" component, as well as skewing slightly older than some other programs in the list.

So here’s what I take from the data as presented:

• Republicans prefer the broadcast networks almost exclusively – nine of the ten shows on the Republican list are on broadcast networks. The exception is The Walking Dead which is on AMC. By contrast half of the shows on the Democratic list are on broadcast, and one show Game Of Thrones is on premium cable.
• Republicans prefer shows that are “one and done”; in other words shows where the primary focus is not on a continuing arc, although such an arc may exist in a secondary or tertiary focus. Only one show that the Republican list has an ongoing story arc. At least half of the shows on the Democratic list have ongoing story arcs as a primary focus (Game Of Thrones, The Haves and the Have Nots, Walking Dead, How To Get Away With Murder, Doctor Who, Empire, and Nashville).
• The question of diversity is an interesting one. The Democratic list has probably the more diverse group, with The Haves and the Have Nots, How To Get Away With Murder and Empire either having a predominantly African-American cast or African-American leads, while How To Get Away With Murder and Nashville have female leads. None of the shows on the Republican list have African-Americans in leading roles, and of the shows that I watch on the Republican list, Scorpion, The Big Bang Theory, and Blue Bloods don’t have any African-Americans in their regular cast (I can’t speak to the shows I don’t watch). But is that an indictment of the taste of Republicans or is it a problem with the casting of these shows.
• The “law and order” shows. This is a bit of a stretch, but there’s a high percentage of shows that deal with “law and order” in the Republican list. NCIS and Blue Bloods are both overtly about law enforcement; NCIS is about a law enforcement agency while Blue Bloods is about a family of New York cops, including the police commissioner. Scorpion is about what are essentially private contractors working for the Department of Homeland Security. The lead characters in Grimm are cops dealing with supernatural threats, while the leads in The Flash and Arrow are costumed vigilantes working with the police. I think you could even argue that the characters in Supernatural are involved in some sort of protective operation, while The Walking Dead shows what happens after order breaks down.

So that explains, or at least investigates some aspects of the lists. So why do I watch the “Republican” shows that I do? Well Arrow and The Flash are easy. I’ve been a DC Comics fanboy since I was old enough to connect the words and the pictures together. DC, not Marvel. For some reason Spiderman and the Fantastic Four never did it for me. As for Blue Bloods and NCIS, that’s a bit more complicated. I’ve been a fan of both Mark Harmon and Tom Selleck since Selleck did Magnum and Harmon did, well probably Centennial (so not his earliest work in other words; I’m sure I never saw Sam and probably missed 240-Robert and I know I avaoided Flamingo Road on general principle). They were my gateways into their current shows but I’ve stayed because I really like the shows. I like the ensemble cast in NCIS and the way they’ve expanded the Gibbs character to give him a reason for being how he is. I like the ensemble cast in Blue Bloods as well and the fact that the show makes the personal, family lives of the characters not only visible but vital to the show, in repudiation of the Dick Wolf/Law & Order formula in which the characters have no lives outside of work – or at least no lives that we are permitted to know much about. In a way Blue Bloods is a family drama that just happens to be about a family of cops.

The reasons why I don’t watch more “Democratic” shows are a bit more complicated. Game of Thrones is of course on a premium channel although this summer, to coincide with the Olympics, CTV will air the complete first season – uncut – on broadcast TV. The Haves and the Have Nots doesn’t air up here, even though we have our own Oprah Winfrey Network here in Canada. Suits is another basic cable show in the US that I might like if I saw it, but the ways shows like that air in Canada it’s very difficult for me to find where and when it is on. I gave up on How To Get Away With Murder early in the second season when I came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no one on that show that I had any sympathy or empathy for. The subject matter of Nashville simply doesn’t interest me, Pretty much the same thing is true about Empire, and while I tried the first episode of Supernatural (and it has featured one of my favourite character actors, Jim Beaver, who is a scholar and a gentleman in so many ways) I had no desire to stick with it. (By the way, is it just me or are Supernatural and Grimm basically the same show?) As for Doctor Who, I love the series but I share my TV with someone who loathes it, and as most politicians eventually learn – though I’m not sure about some Replublicans in recent years – you’ve got to go along to git along, so I don’t get to see Doctor Who.

So there you have it. My viewing habits say that I’m a Republican, even though I’m just Canadian.

Well That Was Embarassing

So last night I posted my evaluation of the new FOX network shows to go along with my NBC evaluation. I THOUGHT! What actually happened was that my NBC evaluation vanished.
I think I know what happened. When I started writing the FOX material I decided to use the NBC post as a template. Using Open Writer I opened the posted NBC material, changed the title, removed all of the text that I didn’t want and then wrote in the new material. Simple. I’ve done it before although maybe not with Live Writer, the Microsoft product that Open Writer is a continuation of.

What I think happened is that when I posted the draft FOX article to Blogger to do a final edit, either OpenWriter or Blogger thought I was posting a revision of the NBC post rather than a new post. And since I was kind of tired last night I didn’t pick up on the warning signs that I wasn’t posting something new, like the little orange box saying "Update" instead of "Publish".

I’ll rewrite the NBC article later in the week and make sure it goes up as a new post. Now you’ll excuse me, I have to go spread some sheep manure.

Check Out My New Blog

Check out my new Blog First Against The Wall Come The Revolution. It's a work in progress, which you can tell because there are no ads on it yet. but I'm having a bit of fun with some of the dumb things that people - and Donald Trump - say and do.

Streaming Boxes–A Biased Overview

I should start by stating a few things that should really disqualify me from writing about this subject, but really when has this ever stopped anyone. I have a third generation Apple TV. I don’t have any of the other devices that I’m going to mention and I have very limited exposure to the fourth generation Apple TV (I asked a guy at an authorized Apple store a couple of questions about it but didn’t get to play with it extensively) and the Roku devices. Another big thing is that I’m a Canadian. If you don’t think that has a lot of implications, then you are in for a learning experience. It restricts the hardware that’s available, the services that you can get and even the programming that is available on many of those services. I intend to discuss services and the differences between Canada and the US, and vent my spleen a bit about the way Canadian TV is set up, in another article.


So let’s start with hardware. What I’m discussing here are set top boxes (though with flat screen TV’s no one can actually put any of these on the top of the TV set) that stream video from Internet providers generally using Wi-Fi. In Canada you basically have three companies to choose from: AppleTV, Roku, and Google. Amazon doesn’t sell its Fire TV (or the Fire tablet for that matter) in Canada and doesn’t offer the Amazon Video service in Canada. Western Digital also sells the WD TV Live product here but it is primarily a device for streaming video from your computer to your TV, and has limited connectivity to Internet sites. It doesn’t do what the devices I’m focussing on do.


Here’s what’s on offer in Canada (prices are in Canadian Dollars, from Best Buy Canada):
Apple

• Apple TV 3rd Generation – $89.99
• Apple TV 4th Generation 32 GB – $199.99
• Apple TV 4th Generation 64 GB – $269.99

Roku

• Roku HDMI Streaming Stick – $59.99
• Roku 1 Streaming Media Player – $59.99
• Roku 2 Streaming Media Player – $79.99
• Roku 3 Streaming Media Player – $109.99

Google

• Chromecast 1st Generation – $39.00 (online only)
• Chromecast 2nd Generation – $45.00

Let’s start up with the Chromecasts and the Roku Stick (Amazon has it’s own contender in this field the Fire Stick). Their big advantage is portability. You could easily keep one in your luggage when you travel without having to loose any item, although with the Roku Stick you need to take its remote too. The Roku and the first generation Chromecast look like USB keys, albeit a bit larger. They plug into an open HDMI port on your TV so if your TV doesn’t have HDMI you’re out of luck (and should probably get a new TV) with one of these devices. The second Generation Chromecast looks a bit like a smaller than regulation hockey puck on a leash, which is in fact a short cable plugging into the HDMI port. HDMI ports aren’t powered so they need to get power. All three can draw power from the TV’s USB port (if it has one) using a detachable USB cable which can also plug into an adapter to plug into a wall or power strip.

That is where the similarity ends. The Roku Stick comes with a remote and has the capacity to store apps for services like Netflix onboard. In short it sort of acts the other Roku Media players in a much smaller package. Although it is also possible to use your phone as remote, it’s more cumbersome than using the Stick’s own remote. The process with the Chromecast is far different. Your phone is not only your only remote, but it is an essential part of the process. If a service has a phone app then you can use that to select programming and then, if the app is compatible you can tap an icon to send that information to the Chromecast via Wi-Fi. You can also “cast” material that doesn’t directly support Chromecast onto the device using your phone, and can even mirror what you are doing on your phone – browsing a webpage, listening to music, playing a game etc. – although there can be lag problems with game play.

The Chromecast seems like a great device from what I’ve been able to find out, but if what you want to do is watch TV with a familiar interface, either because you’ve got a Roku (or even an Apple TV) at home, or you just want something that is relatively simple to use, you are probably best to go with the Roku Stick.

Turning now to the set top boxes, we should start with the Rokus. Roku has done a very interesting and important thing with this device. Each version fills a particular niche. The Roku 1 works for older TVs; it has composite as well as HDMI connections to the TV, supports analog audio, and works with TVs with 480p, 480i, 720p and 1080p resolution. So if your TV doesn`t have HDMI (like my old CRT in the dining room) you can use the wired connections on this without problems. The current Roku 2 does 720p and 1080p, does not have analog audio of any sort, and only offers an IR remote. The Roku 3 does most of the same things as the Roku 2 but has an analog audio output on the remote through headphones that plug into the remote and allows users to use “WiFi Direct” (basically any device using WiFi including your phone, tablet or – presumably – your laptop) to control the box. The Roku 4, introduced in October 2015 but not offered at Best Buy Canada, supports 4K TVs, offers an optical audio output on the box, and has voice search.

The competition in this field is the Apple TV. The 3rd Generation of the Apple TV (which I own) has an HDMI and Optical Audio output. It supports TVs with 720p and 1080p resolution although the product details section at Best Buy claims it can do 480p. There’s no option to control the box with a wireless device like a phone. The 4th Generation Apple TV drops the Optical Audio output and supports 720p and 1080p resolution, but to the surprise of many does not support 4K. The 4th Generation remote has the standard buttons but also has a touch screen and some voice commands using Siri. You can, for example, tell Siri what sort of movies you want to see, and it will report back movies that fit your search…on some services that support Siri. You can then refine the search by naming a specific star or director etc. There are some other tricks like skipping forward or back by telling Siri how far ahead or back you want to go. Another trick is that by saying “What did he/she say?” Siri will skip back 30 seconds and put up close captioning of the dialog in that particular scene. This is some of the stuff that you can do with the 4th Generation Apple TV that you can’t do with the 3rd Generation device or on the Roku boxes.

Of course what makes these boxes isn’t the hardware, it’s the content. In a very real way “content is king” with all of these devices and that’s where the difference between the United States and Canada comes into play. There are something like 63 to 66 services available to American users of the 3rd Generation Apple TV and only about 33 available to Canadians, and two of those are only available to Canadians. It is possible to get around these restrictions using a VPN (Virtual Private Network), but I’ve been given to understand that at least some of those services are cracking down on customers who use a VPN for that purpose.

Of course, even if you do use a VPN in Canada to get channels available in the United States, you’d probably still see all of the available streaming services. Slightly under a third of the services in the U.S. require you to subscribe to cable channel and in some cases not all cable companies are support Apple TV for specific services. While the number of streaming services available on the Roku is greater (one commenter to an article I used to research this piece commented “63 apps? That's it? Rook (sic) has hundreds and Apple's answer is 63 apps?”) a number of those apps will also have restrictions requiring you to have the cable TV version of the service. A number of the other services require some form of monthly subscription. In some cases – notably HBO Now – this is a “good thing” as it allows you to access premium content without having to have HBO on cable. Of course the price of HBO (in Canada at least) is about $18.00 (Canadian) but it’s the principle of the thing I suppose.

The complaint of the commenter I mentioned, that the 3rd Generation Apple TV had only 63 apps while his Roku box had hundreds is is negated by the 4th Generation Apple TV. There are now hundreds if not thousands of apps available for the new Apple TV. And while most of those are games (and most of those games are of the sort that you play on an iPhone or iPad rather than on a full console) it does represent a major sea change for the Apple TV. On the 3rd Generation Apple TV the only way you could watch material from Leo Laporte’s TWiT network was on the Apple TV’s podcast app. On the new Apple TV there are at least four TWiT apps and one of them is even free (the other three are $0.99). And there are at least four apps from Canadian media companies in addition to Shomi and Crave: CBC News, The National Film Board, the Weather Network, and Sportsnet.

Of course the biggest argument for buying any version of the Apple TV is that it is the only streaming box that includes iTunes, and specifically movie and TV series purchase or rental from Apples iTunes store. There’s also the Apple Music presumably including Beats 1 radio, although this hasn’t been offered to me on my 3rd Generation Apple TV (because I’m Canadian?) There is something to be said for owning content such as a copy of a movie even in these days of streaming media and services. Movies appear on Netflix but they also disappear, and there are certainly things that rarely appear on the streaming services that I can watch (I’m thinking older movies, like from the 1960s and before, and stuff shot in black & white; you won’t find the classic John Wayne movie Red River on Netflix) that are available for sale or rent from Apple.

When most reviewers are asked which streaming device to buy, they usually come down strong on the side of the Roku box in some version. I don’t necessarily think that they’re wrong, in spite of the fact that I own a 3rd Generation Apple TV. I won my Apple TV in a machine at the local mall, and even when I factor in all of the money that I had spent over the previous months to win it, it was still less than the current price of the box, let alone the price at the time ($109). At the time that I won my Apple TV I was actively looking at set top boxes as my next purchase after the soundbar that I was close to getting. I was leaning towards the Roku 3 based on everything that I had heard about the two devices. If I were paying full price and the choice was between the Roku 3 and the 3rd Generation Apple TV, I think that even though the Apple TV is about $40 cheaper I might go with the Roku 3 because of the ability to customize the experience. However, even though the 4th Generation Apple TV is about $90 more than the Roku 3 I’m not totally sure that I wouldn’t have waited a bit and spend the extra money.

An Apology

I seem to apologize a lot on this blog and most of the time those apologies are about my not posting on a more regular basis. This isn’t going to be any different, so I suppose I should apologize for that first.

(Hey, I’m Canadian. apologizing is in our genetic make up. Step on a Canadian’s foot and he or she will apologize for having their foot in a place where you were able to step on it.)

So I haven’t posted anything here since the piece on the first drama to be cancelled and before that postings were pretty sparse as well. Here’s what’s been going on. In addition to the usual household chores and doing the shopping for my elderly mother and myself, the months from August to the end of November were a stressful time for me as I had to cope with my dog, Chelsea, getting ill. I was quite frankly engaged in a process whereby hope was confronting reality in that I desperately hoped that she had something that her body could overcome when deep down in my guts that whatever it was was something she wasn’t going to recover from. I’m afraid that she probably suffered longer than was necessary because I simply didn’t want to acknowledge what should have been obvious, that she probably had cancer and wasn’t going to get better. At the end of November my brother and I took Chelsea to the vet to be put to sleep.

Probably no more than a week after that visit to the vet I got something that was suspiciously like the flu. It was the first time in years that I’ve vomited without inducing it myself. I thought I had overcome the illness after a few days and went back to my normal activities. I hadn’t. After one trip downtown to do some Christmas shopping I was basically out of it for the next ten days or so. It was so bad I quite literally completed my Christmas shopping as the store I was in was closing on Christmas Eve.

Of course all of this is ignoring maybe the biggest problem I’ve had in writing the blog and that is quite simply in motivating myself to do the writing in the first place. I’ll start off writing something and find that it is taking me much longer to put my thoughts in order than I had thought it would. I have several half-completed reviews of shows that are going to remain exactly that: half completed. The good news – I hope – is that I think maybe I’m about to come out of my creative funk and put some stuff together that I can be at least a little bit proud of. I’ve got a couple of ideas that will take me beyond the realm of pure review as well. Time, I guess, will tell whether or not I’m right about this. Or maybe it’s another case of hope confronting reality.

Sometimes A Crude Word Is The Right Word

A few days ago I got two comments on an older article that I wrote. Normally any comment about an older article indicates Comment Spam. The two comments I received on the older article were exactly the same and from the same person, which is usually a bad sign, however when I get a Blogger notification on something like that I at least read the notification before I delete the comment as Spam. But then I read the comment.

It came from a woman with the username Cindybin (and since I’m using her comment I think it’s only fair that I link to her site) and here’s what she had to say about the title of my Dick van Dyke Show Blogathon entry, In Praise Of Laura Petrie’s Ass:

It is terrible you used the a-word in the title of your article! how crude and offensive. I won't even read it now. And what gets me is that people are PRAISING you?? They don't even chastise you for using this crude language

Now normally I’d run the comment and because it is an older article no one would acknowledge its existence. But it’s been a bit quiet around here; my current Flash game obsession is getting a little stale, and I finally got that pesky leaky tub faucet in my bathroom fixed, so I was in the right place to take on something. And the topic of crude language is one I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I will grant that “the a-word” is a crude term, though I hesitate to say that it is an offensive one to the bulk of my readers. “Ass” has certainly ceased to be regarded as offensive by TV writers and producers, and indeed TV censors. The word is used in both contexts; as a reference to a person’s buttocks and as a contraction of the word that you can’t use on TV, which is created with the addition of the word “hole.” Oh yes, and as a contraction of Jackass, although that has nothing to do with what we're discussing.

Here’s the thing though. In this case “ass” is the right word to use, and probably the only appropriate one. I am writing an article on the (apparently unintended) sexual attractiveness of a TV character – and I make it clear in the article that Cindybin refused to read that I don’t feel the same way about the actress who played the character. The key to Laura Petrie’s sexual attractiveness was Mary Tyler Moore’s body shape, which I describe as a dancer’s body, lean and tautly muscular. Her body shape was emphasised by the snugly fitted clothing she wore, and in particular the Capri Pants that became her trademark in the role, as well as the dancer’s tights she occasionally wore when the character was dancing “professionally.” And guess what part of the body those clothes emphasized.

Yes, to be sure there are words that could have been used instead of “ass;” buttocks, butt, bum, booty, tush, fanny (though that one can get you into trouble in Britain; its a slang term for a woman’s vulva). They’re all “good” words (well I’m actually not that fond of “booty” but that’s just me) but they just don’t carry the same sort of sexual connotation that “ass” does. And since my post was about what I find to be sexually attractive about Laura Petrie – something that I was also emphasizing by deliberately adapting the title of Stephen Vizincey’s novel In Praise of Older Women for what I think should be fairly obvious reasons given what I was writing – a word with sexual connotations is the right word.

Words have value. It’s something that Robert Heinlein pointed out in his short novel If This Goes On---. The character Zeb Jones is working on using language in a way that will inflame people to revolt. He gives an example to the lead character, John Lyle (about Lyle’s paternity) that has Lyle ready to throttle his friend even though it is entirely accurate. It’s literally not just what you say, it’s the way that you say it. In this case the word “ass” has the right value for what I wanted to say. It’s the right word because it is vaguely crude without being truly indecent. I stand by my quite deliberate choice of that word and wouldn’t change it to satisfy anyone even if I could.

Update: Cindybin has responded:

Oh it figures. Instead of feeling guilty and embarrassed that you used crude language, you write a BLOG about it and make me out to be the one in the wrong, and then you say that you wouldn't even change a word of it. This only makes me angrier and more determined to speak up. I plan to write a ton of blogs about how people use profanity online. 

Right. First of all, I don`t think that I made her out to be the one in the wrong, except maybe for the part where I mentioned "the article that she refused to read." I feel that I defended my position on why I used the word I did. I stand by that defense. I would have been happy if Cindybin had offered a well thought out defense of her position that would have been the basis for a debate. She didn't. Instead she sent me something that was the equivalent of "you didn't repent; I intend to speak out against you and your kind."

Let me just reiterate. I chose the word I used quite deliberately because I felt and still feel that it was the best word to express what I wanted to put across. I did not use it off-handedly or gratuitously. Therefore I do not have any feelings of guilt or embarrassment over using it. I didn't even use it to shock; titilate maybe but not to shock or provoke in the way that a site like the Parents Television Council routinely does. And if that provokes Cindybin to write "a ton of blogs about how people use profanity online," well that's fine. I'll defend to the death her right to do so. Just don't expect me to agree or publicize it.

With that I am finished responding to Cindybin publicly.

Crisis!

I’m having a problem with my PVR. I’ve had the Pace Tahoe cable box and PVR for about four years (I bought it from Shaw Cable shortly after they started selling them) and bought an eSATA PVR Expander a month or two after that, Well, within the past few days the Tahoe has stopped recognizing the Expander and taken a huge number of the shows I’ve recorded with it. The indicator light on the Expander lights but I’m not sure if the Hard Drive is still functional. I’ve done the various things that you’re supposed to do to reinstall the expander to no effect. I don’t know if this problem will resolve itself but I’m not counting on it.

 

And before you ask, I would love to buy a new cable box – the new ones that Shaw offers has a larger hard drive capacity – but I can’t afford one.

An Apology

This is for those of you who have bookmarked this site or who have it on your blogrolls and the like. I haven’t been writing a lot over the past few months. I can’t say it’s been ripping me apart but it has been very frustrating for me not to post when I have something to say.

What’s behind this? Well there are several things. I have been quite busy in my non-blogging life, and it usually comes at the same time when I do some of my writing; in the afternoons. Other things happen at night when I also write a lot.

But of course, If being busy was the only problem it wouldn’t be too bad. I could make the time to do the writing. A bigger problem is that I seem to be undergoing some sort of massive writers block which I really haven’t been able to get around. I start writing something and start to get a good flow and then after a while I’ll read what I’ve written and quite literally get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. What I’ve written feels like utter crap, and I give up on it. This happened earlier this week. I was writing a piece about why Smallville “worked” and became the longest lasting science fiction style show on TV (I attribute a lot of its success to it being about Superman and that it was on the right network, which is to say not one of the “Big Four”). The problem was that as I got deeper and deeper into it, the less happy I was with it, and as the time to run it became less and less my displeasure with it became greater and greater.

Finally I feel a rising sense of frustration with what effect I can have writing about TV. I love TV and I love writing about the medium. I don't recap shows because the medium seems to me to be a rich smorgasbord and there’s so much to try. The problem is that as I don’t get any of the preview materials that professional critics do – particularly screeners of network shows – I have to write my reaction after I see the show as an ordinary viewer. And really that’s too late, particularly if I don’t get my review written overnight. Even if the review of a new show is finished by the next afternoon – and remember I am sometimes busy or otherwise distracted in the afternoons – any ability I or anyone in my situation has to influence anyone who is reading this is gone. Television is a slave to the ratings numbers and those come out in the morning. Someone like Marc Berman of AdWeek – for whom I have a certain amount of respect even though his is a purely scientific measure of determining whether a show deserves to survive or not – is able to tell me that that show that I liked last night is doomed to die in a little while because the ratings say no one is watching it. It makes it all feel frustrating and pointless. Why bother analysing the dramatic qualities of a show; just print the numbers and declare that “this is a bad show.”

I can’t do anything about the whole ratings frustration. TV isn’t about art; it is about getting people in position to watch commercials, and the only way you can define if a show does that job is with ratings. And maybe that’s at least partly the source of the writers’ block – I don’t write because of the apparent futility of writing. Still, I can at least try to beat the writer’s block in the only way I know how: by forcing myself to write through it. To that end I intend to do a recap of episodes of a single season show from a few years back that intrigued me to the point where I want to share my views about it. Let’s see if I can power through my problem. In the meantime I’ve got another article that I could be writing, and upfronts are next week, so I’m going to have to write about those – if I can find the time.

Troubles

I was fully intending to review Skating With The Stars tonight, the latest American version of a British reality-competition show, but I can't do that this week because of problems with my Digital Cable Box/DVR. It's difficult to describe what's been happening – though I'll have to when I call Shaw Cable in the afternoon – but the adjective that comes to mind is "jittery." The sound is fine, mostly, but the images don't flow the way that they're supposed to. It's worse when there's a show with a lot of action like a sports event or a show like Dancing With The Stars or this new series Skating With The Stars. It's even worse when you try to watch a show that you've recorded on the DVR. Resetting the cable box, aka unplugging the box waiting a minute and plugging it back in again, did clear up the problems...for about 50-60 minutes. It is, in simple terms, not a practical solution.

Trying to watch Skating With The Stars came close to making me feel nauseous. Now under normal circumstances feeling nauseous part way through a show might be considered a clue about the show's quality, but in this case it wasn't because of the quality of the show it was the way that the images jumped around on the screen. It reached a point where I just couldn't watch the show anymore and turned the TV off. In all good conscience I can't review the show if I haven't seen a complete episode and under conditions where I'm not wondering if any problems I have with the show are the result of the medium rather than the program.

There are a few things that I could say about the show (or rather the judges and hosts) but I'm going to wait until I can (hopefully) resolve this problem with my DVR and can actually watch a full episode (I was going to say "enjoy a full episode" but I'm not holding out that much hope for this show).

 

A Small Warning

Just so that you know, I might not get anything posted this weekend. I do want to write about the new CBS series Miami Medical and of course there's my "Weekend Videos" - though I haven't got anything in mind for this weekend - that should be done, but there are a couple of problems.

First up, I seem to have come down with a spring cold. It's not too bad, but it is slowing me down a bit.

Next - and I promise you this is bigger - I pretty much have to back up everything and reinstall Windows Vista. About ten days to two weeks ago when I was trying to downlod some Windows Updates something went wrong. It said that the download had been successful but when it restarted afterwards the computer wouldn't start. System Startup Repair "fixed" the supposed error - a corrupted file called ntoskrnl.exe. Except that the "fix" only lasted until the next time that the Update - which failed to be properly installed - tried to download... the next day! When I contemplated simply ignoring the problem by upgrading to Windows 7 I was informed that the computer hadn't downloaded SP1, and oh by the way, Microsoft will no longer support copies of Windows Vista that had not had SP1 or SP2 installed. Insert heartily frustrated sigh here!

Anyway this weekend is going to be given over to backing up my data - which I should have been doing more frequently anyway - to my new 1 Terabyte Drive, and then reinstalling Windows. I do not anticipate this being a happy experience.

Oh, and by the way, my brother Greg is getting married this weekend in Wetaskiwin Alberta. I won't be attending - someone has to look after the dog - but our mother is.

Suffice it to say that I probably won't be doing much writing this weekend. I will probably be reserving much of my vocabulary for my other activities this weekend.

Update #1: (12:18 CST/MDT) Backup finished at Midnight local time. It took about eight hours to complete! Not going to do the Windows reinstall until the morning. Fortunately Dell includes an image file of the system as it left the factory so that might make it easier than going completely from scratch. I hope I hope I hope.

For Linda: Truth Is I've never really had problems with Vista except for a few teathing pains, like programs that didn't work with it and for which the manufacturers steadfastly refuse to provide patches. A full Windows 7 Home Premium disk would set me back about $225 Canadian here, and I would still have had to buy the backup drive so reinstalling Vista is the better decision financially (particularly when you check the relative values of our two currencies; why such a huge difference?!).

Update #2: Well, I'm back - still not up to 100%; more like 60% - and there were a few things that went wrong. I had to reinstall a second time on Monday but that was because I screwed up when I set things up the first time. Still need to get the drivers for my monitor, printer, wireless mouse, and a couple of other peripherals installed, and then various programs installed - mostly games on disks, and applications to be downloaded, but it's better than it was before the reinstall.

Apology Time Again

It's been a while since I've written anything for the Blog. Bad me, because while part of this has been due to circumstances beyond my control, part of it has also been a deliberate policy on my part which has been exacerbated by circumstances beyond my control.

I made a very conscious decision before the start of this TV season that I would not review a new show based on watching the pilot. There are good reasons for not reviewing a show based on the pilot. Inevitably the first episode of any new show is atypical, and that is true for a number of reasons. Pilots are inevitably about introducing people to the characters and situations that they encounter. I won't say that story comes second but the emphasis has to be setting the characters and the premise. Later episodes, after we know who's who and what's what, are inevitably truer to what the show is going to be like than the pilot.

Another thing about pilots is that they really aren't intended for those of us at home. Believe it or not that's true. In most cases pilots are made to sell the shows to the networks. They have to attract and hold the interest of the network executives who choose the shows they're going to air. And to a degree they have to sell it to the professional TV critics who get show screeners (and assorted press kit swag – I wish I could get either one!) well ahead of the premiere date so that they can tell the world how great the new show is (or not; I'm guessing that a lot of this is calculated risk). Often the episodes that they use to "sell" the shows are more spectacular than what appears in the following weeks. Don't believe me? Think about the pilot for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. The critics raved about the pilot to the point where they were calling it the best of the season, but once the second show aired the critics were picking nits like monkeys grooming each other. Another example: Bionic Woman. That show had a spectacular pilot including the rooftop battle in the rain with Katee Sackoff's evil Bionic Woman. Fabulous pilot but what came afterwards was a steaming pile of crap – and that's insulting steaming piles of crap. Time and again you will see pilots with tons of bells and whistles, explosions and car chases which are never seen again after that first episode.

Pilots are also problematical because of changes in casting and, often more importantly, behind the scenes, with changes in writers, directors, and showrunners. Often these people have a different mindset than the people they're replacing, sometimes taking the show off in a direction than was anticipated in the pilot. So you can review the pilot and discover that the show you reviewed has changed in subtle – and not so subtle – ways. And maybe the result is a show that you like better than the one you reviewed. But maybe the result is not as good if not downright bad.

So that was the reason for holding back on reviewing pilot. It's a good idea... and an experiment that I won't be doing again. Because I wasn't reviewing pilots I got caught up doing other things. Real world concerns intervened. I was sick for a week; felt like crap, and not the good kind but the "Hershey Squirts" kind. There was work that needed to be done in the garden, and then there was the garden produce to deal with – including the tomatoes that my brother grows in his garden but doesn't actually eat himself because he doesn't like tomatoes. And when I actually had time to do some writing I sort of found that I forgot how to write reviews without having that base of mutual discovery that reviewing pilots gives you. It's not quite writers block; I know what I want to say and I know what I like and I don't like about the shows I've seen, I'm just having a problem setting it up. Worst of all I think I've settled into a comfortable pattern of what to watch on a given night. Not good!

I will be back to writing reviews again, probably with some stuff coming out next week. And from now on, I'm reviewing pilots.

Soup Can Post Minus The Soup Can

Mark Evanier created the "tradition" of posting a picture of a Campbell's Tomato Soup can on his blog on those occasions when he knows or believes that he won't be able to post for a while. Well even though I haven't been posting all that often this summer I'm posting the Tomato soup can. Except that I can't post the image, and here's why.

A few days ago I got an email from my ISP, Shaw Cable telling me that because of changes they were making that would make my Internet faster, but to make this work I'd have to replace my modem which wasn't being supported by the manufacturer, which was reaching the end of its expected life span. So yesterday – Saturday – I took my old Motorola Cybersurfr modem down to the soon to be closed office in the mall and replaced it with a brand new SB5102 Surfboard Modem. I took it home and hooked it up... and I've been hating it ever since!

Downloads have been significantly, observably, slower. Images in particular have slow in downloading. Running Speedtests – including Shaw's own Speedtest – revealed download speeds hovering around 1 mbps and upload speeds of about 450 kbps. For the service that I'm paying for I am supposed to be getting download speeds as high as 7.5 mbps. Podcast downloads, which usually take about a minute now take up to ten. The breaking point came when I was trying to play poker online at Full Tilt Poker. It was a nightmare. The client kept disconnecting and at one point crashed entirely. I had to restart the program and when I did it took about five minutes for it to actually connect get me back to the tournament I was playing in. I think I can safely say that this has cost me (a small amount of) money. I've done everything that I can think of – short of calling Shaw, which is the next step after I finish writing this post – and nothing has changed. And since I don't how long this is going to take I post the Tomato Soup Can.

Ah, but of course I can't. That would mean uploading an image file and with the way things are going, who knows how long that would take. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to post the Tomato Soup Can without actually posting the Tomato Soup Can.

P.S.: It took me three tries to get this posted from Word. Wholly unacceptable.

Update: Apparently the problem has remedied itself without my having to call Shaw. Well not quite remedied itself. Turns out that for some unearthly reason best left to wizards and gurus, all it all had something to do with my power bar. I plugged the modem into the power bar as I have with just about every electronic device on my cluttered desktop. The exception is the printer because the cord won't reach. In a last desperate move I pull the printer plug from the wall socket and the modem plug from the power bar, plugged the modem into the wall socket and Hocus Kadabra, Alika Pocus (as a certain Wascally Wabbit would put it) everything is working as advertised, although I haven't tested it yet with Poker. Makes me wonder if maybe I should get a new power bar though.

40 Years Ago

It was forty years ago today that man landed and walked on the Moon. Everybody is going to be posting about this of course, particularly we old farts, who remembers seeing it when it happened. I think we want to share our memories.

I don't know that my memories are much different from most people. Back in those days Saskatoon was a one channel town. CFQC was a CBC affiliate – as was every station in a single station market. What CBC did was to take the CBS coverage pretty much in its entirety and intercut some of their own material into the coverage. Lloyd Roberston was the CBC news anchor, but the face of it that we all remember was Walter Cronkite working along with Wally Schirra. In fact I remember very little about the CBC's own coverage beyond a very strong memory of a sort of three sided interview involving writer Isaac Asimov and (I believe) Abbie Hoffman, and the only part of that I remember was Hoffman "explaining" to Asimov that "obviously" no one with a name like Asimov would ever walk on the Moon, because a name like that didn't fit the WASP white-bread vision of America that NASA was designed to promote. Which of course has turned out to be true but certainly not for the reasons that Hoffman imagined.

I watched the Moon landing with my grandfather, and I'm pretty sure that we saw it on a black & white TV (which I still have by the way). As you'll see from the clips it didn't make too much difference. While the show was in colour, the important bits – the events from the surface of the moon – were in pretty low definition black & white. Apollo 12 was the first Moon mission with a colour TV camera; not that it did them much good after Alan Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun which burned it out. The parts that were in colour were the clearly labelled animations and simulations. Thus we saw Neil Armstrong step on the Moon live, but thanks to the positioning of the camera (which dropped out on a shelf on the side of the descent stage of the Lunar Module, deployed when Armstrong pulled a lanyard on the "porch" of the module) we could barely tell what we were seeing. It got better.

My grandmother wasn't watching. She hated the idea of men walking on the moon, as if the very fact of their presence changed it somehow. In fact, at the time I remember her saying, "It's not the same Moon." In a way I guess she may have been right. A bit of the mystery had been taken away. Later flights would take away more of the mystery, but they would add more as well. As it turns out, the Moon Rocks weren't just gifts to be handed out to foreign dignitaries, they reveal a considerable amount about the formation of the Earth and the Moon and have led to at least one new theory about how the Moon was created (the Giant Impact Hypothesis which is currently the leading theory on the formation of the Moon). Still, when I was watching the Moon Landing as a 12 year-old kid I wasn't worried about the Moon being somehow changed by the event, or even about the science of the thing. I was excited by the sheer joy of the exploration in the one place where it seemed there was still the chance to explore. We knew our world (or thought we did) now there was nowhere else to go but up and out of the cradle. Little did we know how brief the time out of the cradle would be.

Regardless, here are the key events of that marvellous (in the true sense of the term – full of marvels) day forty years ago, mostly as I saw it. There are eight 10-minute parts to this playlist.

I Lost A Friend

A friend I never met died on Tuesday. Sam Johnson of Savannah Georgia was 42.

I was away from the computer for most of the day so it wasn't until a few minutes ago that I checked Ivan Shreve's blog, Thrilling Days Of Yesterday. When I read the top item a nasty chill ran through my body. Ivan had received the news of Sam's death from a commenter on his blog. Apparently Sam's older brother Anthony found him dead in his apartment.

Sam, along with Ivan and a handful of others was one of the first people that I encountered when I started this blog. In fact I can't remember when I first encountered Sam because the comments from before I went over to Haloscan seem to have disappeared. It doesn't matter. Sam always always knowledgeable and usually had something interesting to say when he commented on what I wrote.

The real revelation was when I started reading his blog. Sam's writing was more far ranging in subject matter than mine and touched on just about everything. I learned a lot about Sam and his life, the mother he loved and the father he hated, the illnesses that be battled, his love for working in radio which he only recently gave up, his feelings on life the universe and well, everything. He was an interesting writer and he could pull you in. What turned out to be his last post was an open letter to Miley Cyrus about how to treat his city. Sam had rules about how to behave in Savannah and you damned well better not disrespect his town.

Sam suffered from severe kidney failure. Every few days he went for dialysis which sometimes didn't always go as smoothly as it might have. He raised money for the National Transplant Assistance Fund Southeast Kidney Transplant Fund, and was hoping to get a transplant. He needed to lose some weight before he could get the transplant and of course he needed money to pay for it. As a Canadian the latter part breaks my heart. While Canada has one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the western world, cost would not be an impediment. Finding the kidney might, but for someone whose need – in terms of the seriousness of his case – was as great as Sam's the other impediments (money and the waiting list) probably wouldn't have been as great. For those of you who read this, maybe consider giving a bit of money in Sam's name either to the National Kidney Foundation in the United States, The Kidney Foundation in Canada, or to your local fund of the National Transplant Assistance Fund.

Sam Johnson loved radio, comic books, old cartoons on TV, bacon, and his town, and he had opinions on all of these subjects. I was interested in reading about what interested him. I'm really going to miss you Big Man.

Another Apology

Those of you who follow me on Twitter (and if you're not please, please do) know this already but for those of you who don't here goes. I was hoping to get a post on The Unusuals up on Friday, but I ran into a problem in that my Internet connection went out for most of the day, and given that it was Good Friday, I didn't even bother to try to call customer service (which is actually located here – stunning). So instead I did things that didn't involve the Net (and I confess that I loved it, at least as a change for a while). I suppose I should finish the Unusuals post today, but after that I'll probably revert to my regular post on the TV Guide Preview comments and save the reviews of Southland and Harper's Island for next week. In the case of Southland that's probably not such a bad idea, because I really need to get a better handle on that show. As for Harper's Island, it's still unviewed on the DVR (which desperately needs some content pruning and a DVR Expander, but will probably need another airing to get a real sense of it (but it features one of my favourite character actors, Jim Beaver, so that's a mark in its favour in my book). But this sort of thing (as well as what I laughingly call real life) is really throwing my TV reviewing out of whack.

Christmas Cancelled!

Well the eighth through twelfth days of it anyway. I'm still not feeling up to my best or even an average level thanks in no small part to decongestants, antihitemines and other cold and flu stuff, and while I just might be capable of banging out a piece tonight on the latest bit of reality TV crap from Ashton Kutcher (prejudged only slightly) I wasn't capable of much of anything the past few days except perhaps sleeping. And let's face it, the moment has kind of past for what I was trying to do.

Read Me Like A Book

They gave me three choices. This is the one I thought fit best. Okay, the one I liked the best. Hey, it's better than 008 - Unassigned!

Brent McKee's Dewey Decimal Section:

771 Techniques, equipment & materials

Brent McKee's birthday: 8/15/1956 = 815+1956 = 2771


Class:
700 Arts & Recreation


Contains:
Architecture, drawing, painting, music, sports.



What it says about you:
You're creative and fun, and you're good at motivating the people around you. You're attracted to things that are visually interesting. Other people might not always understand your taste or style, but it's yours.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

What’s On My iPod

I haven't been posting much of late. I'm not going to say that it's because of my iPod Shuffle because it isn't. There are ... issues. And no, I'm not going to go into details. Suffice it to say that younger brother loves the HD TV for ball games and there always seems to be a ball game, and now that he's back with the City he's working conventional hours. I hope I might be able to at least see the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on the big screen but for just about everything else I'm stuck with my 25" CRT.

I do love my iPod, but there are things that I hate about the Shuffle. The big thing is that there isn't a screen which has an impact that I'll explain in a moment. It's not the capacity – I got the 2 Gig – it's that the Shuffle is smaller than the screens on either the Nano or the Classic, let alone the Touch (and the iPhone). Now when most people think of the screen on an iPod what they're concerned about is watching movies, TV shows, Video Podcasts, and probably YouTube videos. But for me the thing that I'd like to do, and which is possible on an iPod with a screen, is to go through a list of what I've got on the iPod and pick out what I want to hear rather than hitting the Forward or Backward buttons on the ring. That's truly inconvenient when you have something that has a definite order in which it should be listen to. I'm thinking of some podcasts and old radio shows, which appear with the most recently released item first. Annoying as all hell.

So here I am on the third paragraph, so I suppose it's time to tell you what's on the iPod. Well, what there isn't is music. I want to rip some music from some CDs I have but I haven't gotten around to that yet, and I don't have an iTunes account. So basically what I have on the gadget is free material, which is to say podcasts. The podcasts really fall into three or four different topics. First up is some tech related podcasts. They're all from Leo Laporte's TWiT network: This Week in Tech, The Tech Guy, and Windows Weekly. The reason for these shows is that I was a long time follower of Leo Laporte when he was on TechTV, and later when he had his revived Call For Help (which became The Lab with Leo) on G4-TechTV Canada. The latter show suffered because it was an advice show where people got the answers a month or more after they got the question. I loved the show (past tense - Rogers, which owned the Canadian version of the show, pulled the plug on it) but that sort of annoyed me. The Tech Guy and the Windows Weekly podcasts are really useful for someone interested in tech, and This Week In Tech (which I'm listening to as I type this) is a great gathering of friends to talk about tech news stories.

The next class of podcasts are podcasts about DC Comics. DC has its own "official" podcast which is really recordings of panels at various cons. There's been a huge influx of new posts following the San Diego Comic-Con, some of it fascinating, some of it totally irrelevant to anything that I'm interested in, so at least I'll know what not to get next time around. The other podcast is the Raging Bullets podcast. The podcast itself is great, but the damned thing is incredibly long...and most of the time it's just two guys talking. Most of the episodes have been two hours long and the last two episodes were five and six hours long respectively. Let's just admit that this is shocking and leave it at that.

Then there are the TV related podcasts. Marc Berman's Programming Insider podcast has what is almost an industry insider's feel about it. Berman does the Programming Insider column for Media Week which is indispensible for coverage of the previous day's ratings. The podcast is an extension of that but with added news and even commentary on shows. Compared to Raging Bullets, Marc's podcast is mercifully short – usually about ten minuteslong – though by now I've practically memorised his ad for Programming Partners and their new syndicated talk show Marie featuring Marie Osmond and debuting in September 2009. Still, once you get past the ads, Marc has an informative podcast. Sure he has opinions, some of which don't agree with mine (he says he refuses to watch Greatest American Dog because he can't bear to see an innocent dog evicted from a reality show) but that's part of why I subscribe. Then there's the podcast from The TV Addict featuring Daniel and his sidekick Ariel. Not as professional as Berman's podcast there's a lot of back and forth between the two...some of it even relating to TV shows. And it's Canadian which is always nice. It's a better podcast than I think I could have put together. Speaking of Canadian, there's also a podcast from the Canadian science fiction channel Space: The Imagination Station. There's discussion of shows on the network and interviews from actors on the network's shows, including Battlestar Galactica.

The biggest group of podcasts by far on the Shuffle are Old Time Radio podcasts from something called Humphrey/Camardella productions. They have a large number of podcasts from a variety of genres – westerns, thrillers, mysteries, comedies, suspense and the like. There are also a couple of podcasts from them on specific shows. There's a series of podcasts for The Adventures of Superman and another for The Jack Benny Program. The latter has shows going back to his time on the Canada Dry Ginger Ale show. Of course I'm not sure of the rights situation for some of the material that Humphrey/Camardella is presenting. Indeed the Superman podcast hasn't been updated since May, and there's only been one episode of the Jack Benny material added since May as well. Their other podcasts are updated two or even three times a week.

In a strange sort of way these Old Time Radio shows are relevant to TV today. Oh, to be sure the subject matter is different, but some of the trends and concerns resonate today. In some ways we're in the realm of "everything old is new again," even though we seem to regard these things as bad. Take reality shows. The grand daddy of reality shows – not the competition ones but the ones that purport to show "real people and real events" – is probably FOX's series Cops. It debuted in 1989 and has been running ever since, despite an effort by FOX to kill it and its partner on the night America's Most Wanted. Well, what would you say about a show that followed real life cops on patrol one night and we heard the cops doing their job. It sounds exactly like Cops but in fact it was a 1954 radio show called Nightwatch. In fact we even got to hear the cops violating a suspect's civil rights when they forced entry into a car without a warrant because they suspect the owner of using the demon marijuana – which as we all know is a gateway drug to heroin. Or so they said on Nightwatch.

How about this one: a show where contestants are sent out tasks which are supposed to earn them prizes but have a surprise twist that the contestant isn't aware of, and which tend to involve people who don't even know they're part of the gag. Sound like a great idea for a reality competition? Maybe, but if anyone tried it they'd have to make sure that copyright on People Are Funny isn't owned by anyone. Indeed the threat of "non-scripted" programming isn't even new. The legendary Fred Allen's show was knocked of the air in part by a game show hosted by Bert Parks called Stop the Music in which people were called at home were called to participate. Naturally if they were listening to Fred Allen they couldn't answer the questions on Bert Parks's show. Of course not many thought about the odds of being called by Parks, though Allen offered $5,000 to any person listening to his show that was called by Parks – he never had to pay up.

And then there are "product placements." Reading comments from professional critics and bloggers alike, you'd think that product placement was both new and a huge threat to the "sanctity" of television. And while it's true that the practice today is more blatant than it has been at times in the past, it is hardly new. There was always a big box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes in the kitchen of the Clampett mansion in The Beverly Hillbillies, and most shows had a credit acknowledging that a specific car company provided the cars for show. And of course in an era when shows were sold to single sponsors, it was quite common for the shows to include mentions of the product in the episode. Desi Arnaz was particularly adept at this sort of thing. Not only did the Ricardos and Mertzes stop smoking Philip Morris Cigarettes when the company stopped sponsoring the show, but Ricky Ricardo extolled the virtues of the new 1955 Pontiac convertible that they'd be driving to California in Season Four to Fred Mertz. But the practice wasn't even new then. Radio shows like Fibber McGee And Molly and the various incarnations of The Jack Benny Program thoroughly integrated their commercials into the actual shows with their commercial announcers, like Harlow "Waxy" Wilcox (for Johnson's Glow Coat), and Don Wilson actually becoming members of the show's cast. In the case of Jack Benny's shows this integration of product announcements into the actual show goes back at least as far as 1933 and '34 when the show was sponsored by Chevrolet. And there was always the way that Benny greeted his audience when he was sponsored by a particular desert from General Foods – "Jell-o again, this is Jack Benny talking."

One thing – and this really has nothing to do with any other show than the Jack Benny material – is just how long it took for Jack Benny to develop his on-air persona. Listening to the material that is available in these podcasts from the beginning (they have a couple of Canada Dry shows, and what seems to be most of the Chevrolet shows before he went to Jell-o, and up to late 1936 and the miserly persona hasn't really come into play. To be sure there's reference to Jack's ego, and to a lesser extent his bad violin playing (but even that isn't being pushed too strongly). Most of the people were in place with the exceptions of Mel Blanc and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (and Dennis Day but Kenny Baker had the same personality that would later be adapted for Day). But maybe this does relate to TV today insofar as it represents something that doesn't really happen anymore. The show adapted, and more importantly had time to adapt. To be sure this may be that the immense popularity of the show allowed Benny and his writers to develop new ideas, and it may be that this option to change and adapt was restricted to the largely extinct comedy-variety type show. What I know is that most TV shows today, be they dramas or sitcoms, are remarkably static. Cast members may come and go but the premise of the show stays the same, and for the most part there isn't a growth or development in the characters.

So that's my rambling account of what's on my iPod. Maybe it give you a bit of an idea about me and my tastes, to the point where you can offer some suggestions about what I'd like, or maybe it will give you a few ideas.

My New Channels

Most of what follows isn't going to make much sense to many of the people who are going to read this, but it illustrates a number of things. Or maybe I just want to do some writing. And if, by doing a bit more writing I get some of you off your hands and voting in the poll then that qualifies as a good thing. The little tale that I have to relate today is going to ramble around a lot because this post is positively designed to go off on tangents.

On Friday I was finally stirred to action by my mother and added some new channels to my Digital Cable service. I've had Digital Cable since a couple of months after the digital specialty services were introduced in September 2001. It has been an interesting ride. The first three months were a trial period that let you really get your feet wet. There were a number of stations that were mandated as "must carry services" by the CRTC, meaning that cable companies that were offering digital specialty channels had to carry them. These "Category 1" services earned that by programming a high percentage of Canadian produced content – somewhere in the 70 to 75 percent range. It didn't take me too long to figure out that most of these services weren't anything that I really wanted. These were networks like FashonTV – all fashion all the time; iChannel – TV about public, social and current affairs; One: The Body Mind and Spirit Channel – focused on the issues of "natural health, personal growth, new ideas, holistic lifestyle and intriguing possibilities"; BookTV – TV devoted to books and literature (which is broadly defined enough they can show The Paper Chase and Batman).

I made my initial selections based on a deal Shaw has that allows customers to great their own packages. At the time you could take individual channels or you could pick five, ten or all of the channels for less that the base priceper channel. That's essentially what the Parents Television Council wants every cable company in the United States to provide for every cable channel, but it isn't practical for every channel unless the system is entirely digital –no analog cable signals at all – where every subscriber has to have a digital cable box to receive a signal. That's because the cable box essentially a computer that can be programmed to block or allow through specific signals, and changes can be made from the local office while you're on the phone with them. For analog systems such changes would require individual mechanical connections made at the point where the cable to the house connects to the main line – impractical both in terms of time needed to customize each customer's order and in terms of cost. Based on other sources I am given to believe that there are no Canadian cable systems that 100% digital, and presumably the same holds true in the United States.

At the time that I got Digital Cable the 10 pack of channels suited me just fine. It allowed me to pick and choose the individual stations that I wanted without being bound by "theme" packages that forced me to take things I didn't want. Indeed at the time Shaw didn't offer themed packages, (today they only offer two – one for sports and one for movies) beyond what you get automatically when you got Digital Cable. Indeed, Shaw didn't even require you to subscribe to their premium movie channels to get the four US Superstations (WSBK, WPIX, WGN, and KTLA) which virtually every other cable and satellite company in Canada requires. For the most part, over the years I've been happy with the channels that I picked (particularly when they've accidentally given me channels for extended periods of time that I haven't paid for). So here's what I've been getting over the past few years:

• Independent Film Channel – the place where I saw Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman and parts of some of Ingrid Bergman's Swedish movies.
  
• The Documentary Channel – where I made the acquaintance of Dennis Hof, Air Force Amy and the rest of the gang on Cathouse not to mention Taxi Cab Confessions (those people have no shame).
  
• BBC Canada – where I lusted after Anna Rider Richardson, was amazed at Charlie Dimmock's denial of undergarments, and watched the complete run of Coupling and knew that the Americans couldn't do it justice.
  
• Tech TV – where Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton made me a geek and I lusted after Pat Boone's granddaughter (Jessica Corbin). But Patrick, Leo (and Jessica) are gone now.
  
• Deja View – Canwest Global's answer to TVLand...but not as good. The only choice in Shaw-town though.
  
• Discover Civilization – allows me to indulge my interest for archaeology and other bits of esoteric knowledge.
  
• Fox Sportsworld – This used to give me the world of Soccer and other non-North American sports but these days most of the games are on tape, there's no cricket, no Aussie Rules, and "International Fight League" is inflicted on the viewer.
  
• Lonestar – I bought the channel with western movies and TV shows. More on this shortly.
  
• Showcase Action – mostly action movies and TV series.
  
• Showcase Diva – mostly chick flicks and romantic movies (just remember, chick flicks have the best nudity).
  
• BBC World – BBC's world news service.
  

In addition, over the past few years they've added MSNBC, the National Geographic Channel, NFL Network, American stations from Spokane Washington, and Cosmopolitan TV (hey, it's a place where I can see Veronica Mars) to the Digital Basic line-up.

However over the years Shaw's packages have changed. Today they offer 7 and 14 packs instead of 5 and 10 packs for the same price. Of course they haven't exactly made a lot of fuss about it – like telling people that the changes have been made. Unless you've had reason to contact Shaw Customer Service you've literally gone on paying more for less. About a month ago when my mother contacted Shaw about a problem with her bill after we got the HD-PVR box. During the course of the conversation, the Customer Service rep mentioned that we really could be getting more channels for the same amount of money. My mother put me in charge of selecting the added channels. I finally got around to it last Friday.

The first thing that I decided to do was to rid myself of Lonestar. As I mentioned the network had started out as a western oriented network – showing things like The Big Valley and Bonanza. Despite an abundance of product they never seemed to show a lot of the shows I expected – no Maverick or half-hour Gunsmoke. More recently they stopped showing westerns altogether and started showing action movies and TV shows. I already have Showcase Action and they do the genre better. So, once I was clear on the deal that was available to me I told the Customer Service rep that I no longer wanted Lonestar. The conversation went something like this:

She (shocked and amazed): You don't like that channel?!

Me (shocked and amazed that she is shocked and amazed, but not showing it): No I don't. What I signed up for was a channel that showed westerns. It's become a cheap knock-off of Showcase Action and I already have that.

She (no longer shocked or amazed, rather fully understanding and even showing some sympathy): Ah, I understand.

After that the whole procedure went just fine. I named the stations that I wanted and she added them. And best of all, when I got off the phone and was able to turn on the TV less than a minute later, the stations were all activated. My new stations are these:

• Bold – When this was called Country Canada and focused on the rural lifestyle I wasn't interested. But CBC, which now owns it outright, has converted it with sports including rodeo and equestrian events, arts and culture programming, and programming that includes the current Doctor Who and The Lone Gunmen.
  
• Travel & Escape – the name pretty much says it all. Travel to places you aren't likely to go to on your own and see and do things you're not likely to see or do on your own (probably because you can't afford to).
  
• BBC Kids – I didn't order this channel just to watch Liz Sladen on The Sarah Jane Adventures...but it didn't hurt. The network not only provides content suitable for my nephew but after about 8 o'clock (my time at least) it starts showing more mature shows including Little Britain, Blackadder, Hollyoaks, and classic Doctor Who.
  
• GSN – It used to be The Game Show Network and it's probably the only channel I know of that is proud – to the point where they actually promote the fact – that one of their shows was awarded the PTC's Seal of Approval. Me, I watch the network for the Poker, and the classic game shows like I've Got A Secret and What's My Line? are bonuses.
  
• Gol TV – I am a soccer fan and this channel has a number of the Central and South American leagues as well as both the German Bundesliga and the Spanish La Liga. It doesn't have everything I'd want, but I'm not paying $14.99 a month for the English Premier League – heck I wouldn't pay that for porn.
  

I think that I've got the best stations – at least for me – that I can choose from. But there's a problem, because of the channels that Shaw makes available to me. I have nothing but good things to say about Shaw Cable's local service. When they schedule an appointment they show up on time which I'm given to understand isn't always the way it is with cable companies. Where I do have problems is with the upper levels of the company's management. The big thing in this story is the way that Shaw decided to pick and choose the Category 2 stations that they would accept. Of forty-nine Category 2 English language Digital Cable channels (not counting the HD channels) Shaw carries twenty-four. There seems to be little explanation of why some channels were taken and others weren't. Only one digital music channel is available (not that that matters to me). Only one Category 2 station originally owned by the CHUM group was included, a Canadian version of Court TV that was only added because Shaw carried the American network until the Canadian version replaced it. Only one of the three stations formerly owned by Craig Media was offered. On the other hand four of the five channels owned by Canwest Media were offered (and the exception, the jazz channel CoolTV was offered in Manitoba) as were all of the channels in which Alliance-Atlantis owned a majority stake – those channels are now owned by Canwest Media as well. I'm not suggesting that I would have made different choices if a fuller range of stations had been available. After all I only picked two Category 2 stations the other day, and I'm not unhappy about the choices that I've made. My major concern however is the paternalistic attitude exhibited by Shaw Cable in deciding what I, the consumer, should be allowed to choose from. Of course, given the attitude of company CEO Jim Shaw towards the Canadian Television Fund and what amounted his demands that "his money" because it doesn't produce programming he thinks is suitable (he has long complained about the funding that goes to the series Trailer Park Boys) not to mention his repeated demands for the "right" to bring in more American services without restriction (notably HBO and ESPN), this probably shouldn't be unexpected.

Soup, I’m Nuts

I'm hoisting the Campbell's Soup Can flag, probably for the weekend. I've got a ton of stuff I want to post about (Swingtown and Fear Itself are on the PVR and I've got a post about the PTC half done) and there may be a couple of other things to write about on the weekend, but I've also got a living room to help paint and that's taking precedent. I might get something posted before Sunday, but don't bet the mortgage payment on it.