I realized today that I may have been subconsciously avoiding watching the recent Frontline program on Wikileaks partly because I just didn’t want to be bummed out, wasn’t in the mood for a somber lecture with emotional audio prompts. Part of Frontline’s formula in explicating a big troubling issue is to dramatically recount all of the warning signs, and they use portentous music and a great grave voiceover announcer to heighten your concern about the topic. I find I don’t care for being manipulated like that anymore.
I started thinking differently about music in film and TV after hearing David Simon talk about why he prefers not to use music to make viewers feel a certain way. I’d never really thought about it before, but once I did I started to resent that type of persuasion—in newly made media anyway. I’m happy to grant exceptions to classics and allow myself to be emotionally led by the score in North By Northwest.
Later: My friend Hil points out that a program in Australia does this too, and that ominous lighting is a part of the effects package.
@Amyloo I also dislike tendency for ominous lighting, like almost interrogation style interview, black shadowy bgd & lighting only on face.
@Amyloo I think it is. Our equivalent #4corners changed to this style & it undermines my respect for them. The info itself usually enough
As a huge fan of several HBO original series, which are eminently rewatchable, I like having access to the complete archives of favorite shows. Comcast’s OnDemand chooses for me—only letting me at selected episodes of selected series, while HBO Go allows me to dip into whichever season of The Wire I might be in the mood for.
I’ve so fully embraced the whole streaming thing that I rarely watch DVDs anymore, and recently switched to the streaming-only plan on Netflix. I’ll choose to watch something that can be seen instantly and without the physical encumbrance of a DVD. In fact, I’ve developed an active avoidance of DVDs. I can’t quite account for this odd behavior when it means I miss watching things I know I would like, but DVDs have become almost distasteful to me.
There’s one thing I miss: listening to audio commentary tracks, and the studios will have to do something about that. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to provide a commentary version of selected online videos, and while they’re at it, I’ll take an MP3 of the audio for my commute, please. (I might even pay, a little.) With well-loved movies and shows, I already know what’s on the screen. I can see it in my head. And so often the commentary doesn’t necessarily map to the action anyway.
iTunes helped kill innovation in podcasting
In the early days of podcasting we saw some experimentation with amateur commentaries to videos, and I think Battlestar Gallactica even produced an official audio commentary podcast. But podcasting has settled into a rut just generally. There hasn’t been a lot of innovation in recent years. I blame iTunes’ dominance as a podcatcher, which meant iTunes became podcasting’s Billboard top 100 ranking and a main discovery method, which led to elevating the MSM podcasts, and possibly caused amateur efforts to ape old media style and production conventions.
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Also, there are a ton of podcasts about TV shows. They could mix it up a little, break from their predictable formats and offer commentary tracks, maybe just on occasion, like for season finales.
Your market may vary, and maybe they’ll dream up some specials by the time Keith Olbermann shows up on air. But upgrading to a higher tier of channels for an extra $16.95 a month isn’t a priority for me, much as I like and admire Keith, so I hope the show is online or they don’t try to prevent fans from putting it online.
Later: Ha! Just realized I wrote “called Comcast” in my headline when I really chatted. Reminds me of my kids saying “Let me show you a song.”
Neat idea: Whitehouse.gov is hosting an “enhanced video” of the live State of the Union speech tonight. Charts and things, I gather.
I may try watching it that way, if only to distract me from watching the VP and speaker. Congress can re-seat itself, that’s fine, but what I really wish they would change is the camera angle or the presence of those two players immediately behind the president. I can never help but watch them deciding when to applaud, and when to really show approbation by standing up to applaud. Drives me nuts.
I’ve been thinking for years that TV shows owe it to fans to properly wind up a story, and I don’t really care how they do it. John Milch could have sent me an e-mail explaining what was going to come next in Deadwood and John from Cincinnati. A radio play would be nice too. Comic book, any medium, really.
Fringe, one of only two shows I make sure to watch every week, will be moved to Fox’s death slot next month, so it doesn’t look real good for a fourth season. Pity too, because Walter is one of the most unique characters I’ve seen on any kind of screen for a long while—a brilliant crazy scientist in his sixties who still loves recreational drugs.
In the case of Fringe they already have a comic book series made mostly to explicate character backstories, so they really should use it to tell us anything at all they have in mind about the future storyline, whether or not they make an attempt to wind up the story in the spring.
Speaking of story, with whatever amount of time they have left, I think something more must be said about Walter’s ownership of Massive Dynamic. He’s one of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world now, yet he carries on pretty much as he always has. Let’s see some wild spendthrift behavior by Walter. I’m talking islands and towns, space shuttles and zoos.
You know how blogs, news sites and entertainment sites put “Sarah Palin” in a headline (which often also puts the words in the URL) to rack up page views? Liberal, conservative, small blogs, big media—it works for everybody for different reasons.
Well, there’s a fair chance I am completely full of shit, but I think the TLC Channel’s new supplemental site for the Sarah Palin’s Alaska show is purposely courting controversy. The site provides four blogs and a podcast to serve as a newer-media add-on to the traditional network show site. One of the blogs, called Not Taking Sides is the place to talk about politics, because, even though the TV series is non-political, politics are going to come into it, the inaugural post sort of explains.
It makes sense for TLC to do this from a marketing perspective. It’s true that the show is going to be political no matter how it’s positioned so why shouldn’t the very entity that’s creating the buzz get in on some of the discussion action? Negative comments about Palin are not scrubbed, and call me cynical, but some of them almost look like seed comments—they’re too well punctuated and use proper capitalization rules.
Head blogger for the politics section will be Matt Gagnon, Deputy Director of Digital Strategy for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He’s busy working on a recount, they don’t say whose—maybe Joe Miller’s? So he will show up later.
It’s a funny old world out there in new media land, when commercial interests get in the game and the genuine might be genuine, or it might be a hustle, or might be a little of both.
You have to wonder, though, if Sarah is down with stirring the pot. Admitting there is a political angle runs counter to every description she has applied to the show. She might be OK with it, since the environment is somewhat controlled.
Of course I like the new PBS iPad app. I like all of that socialist media stuff. My car radio dial doesn’t know there is a station other than WBEZ until my younger kid comes home from school and compulsively hits the scan button to drink in the nicheyness of the Chicago music radio market compared to the less specific range of options in his college town.
But about the app. The rage on the right to defund public media suggests that PBS/NPR fans are a sub-culture (that must be thwarted). We may be a “type,” it’s true, but it’s a loose type, and I think the ideal would be a collection of PBS iPad apps carving out more specific niches. Why not make several apps for different communities of interest and bake social media features right into them? I think they could be supported, just as larger radio markets can support more narrowly programed stations.
I might like PBS but I love literary adaptations. An app devoted to Masterpiece classics could allow users to watch the latest productions and talk about them with each other. (Would they be into talking? Oh yes, yes they would.) I may not care much about migration patterns of bison, but fans of Nature would love an app just for them, too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if contributions would flow in, just because people appreciate it when they have been given a space that celebrates their passions and interests and provides an opportunity to revel in their obsessions in the company of like minds. Engagement follows when it’s all about the affinity group in relation to the provider of the media—not just about the provider.
In fact, I really believe that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the “Here is all our stuff” approach will come to be perceived as an egocentric stance. TV “channels” won’t be established by their creators; they’ll be determined or defined over time based on the density of followers on a scatterplot.
This notion of increasing specialization of social media by affinity and interest has been a minor recurring theme of Gillmor Gang discussions in recent months.
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
I’ve been thinking for years that TV shows owe it to fans to properly 
But about the 