Category: Television

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The Crazy Canucks sneaking on to the CBC

I got a pretty interesting text message from J.J. last night while sitting at home with Rebecca. “Whoa cbc was just over my apt and taped a piece on the rory thing“. I got excited and asked if he said anything about The Crazy Canucks because I’m a marketing sucker like that.

The piece turned out pretty great, but at the 49 second mark of the 2:38 long clip, that’s the last you see of J.J. Still, it’s a pretty sweet shot of the Canucks Hockey Blog in the background on his screen. You can also see The Crazy Canucks logo just a tad. This aired last night on CBC: Canada Now at 6PM. Way to go, J.J.!

By the way, did you vote for Rory yet? I know I’ve done my fair share, and you should, too.

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Can’t escape the fire

Seriously, you stand no chance of avoiding it.

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) – Back by popular demand…

Shaw’s holiday fire log is celebrating its 20th anniversary and will be rolled out again this holiday season.

No need to chop or haul wood or stoke the fire.

For those who don’t experience the crackling of a warm fireside hearth over the holidays, Shaw Communications is once again comforting TV viewers with its yuletide fire log.

Beginning December 23rd and continuing through to December 27th, fire log fans can cozy up in front of their television sets for what’s become a holiday tradition for many viewers. [cknw]

Ah geez. Alright, I can’t quite say why I’m waging my own personal war against this. Maybe it’s because I would love more than anything to have our own fireplace. I don’t know. All I know is that this bugs me to no end.

Seriously…

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Fake fire on demand

20061220
Oh for the love of god, make it stop. The thing that kills me is that it costs $1.99 for a 24 hour purchase. There are three flavors; music only, sounds of fire with music, or just the sound of fire. Classy.

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This American Life going to the little screen

It almost seems like a trend right now. First, Garrison Keillor[wiki] took A Prairie Home Companion and turned it into a movie[imdb]. Now it’s This American Life, probably one of my most favorite programs in the world of public radio that I hardly listen to. But hey, it’s a podcast now, so I think I’ll have to subscribe.

That’s just one of the many odd discussions that took place in the process of transforming a radio program into a television series. The show is This American Life. The host is Ira Glass. The TV series will debut in March on the Showtime cable channel.

There’s a certain simplicity to the art of radio. At its heart, it’s all about storytelling. And This American Life is a radio show that revels in storytelling — quirky stories, sad stories, scary stories.

This American Life seems so wedded to the medium of radio that when the Showtime cable network first approached Glass about turning it into a TV show, he couldn’t imagine it.

“We basically said ‘no’ for a year and half,” Glass recalls. “And we kept saying we have no idea how to… be filmmakers. You have to hook us up with people who could design something that got across the feeling of the radio show.” [npr]

I’m not too sure how I feel about it. The beauty of radio is the theatre of the mind and how it comes across the airwaves. Being an audio junkie, you would think that my gut reaction would be to hate the whole concept, but I take comfort in the idea of Showtime(or potentially in Canada, Showcase) being the network to throw this on the tube.

Audio Doc - Ira Glass
Photo credit: transomradio on Flickr

I’ve had the brief, but not the most up close, pleasure of working with Ira Glass[wiki] during my days in public radio. In fact, it was just a one day sort of thing, but he really is a fascinating guy. Not in the omnipresent, starstruck sort of way, but he is a person that knows what he’s trying to do and how that should be done. Based on that, I know that he wouldn’t make a venture into television without making sure that the end result was going to be good.

I’ll say what I have always said about television. It’s five times as expensive and takes just as much time to produce worthwhile content. That’s not to say that working solely with audio is easy. Both mediums are their respective art forms, but you should never compare the two. If you don’t believe me now, then start listening to the This American Life podcast now and see how it compares to the TV program when it comes out. The effect will simply not be the same. We have yet to see if we can call it good or not.

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Fall finales makes good television suck

Now that horribly laugh tracked sitcoms and over-written medical dramas don’t completely over populate the digital cable bandwidth, I’m finding more content that is actually entertaining. The writing is good, the camera work is enjoyable, good editing, worthwhile effects, and, most importantly, the availability of more programs shot in widescreen. If there is anything that has made television better, it’s the forcing of HDTV[wiki] upon the networks. It’s made the suits actually produce something worth watching, and they gotta pay for that conversion somehow.

I guess I haven’t been paying much attention to the television landscape in the past few years because when the hell did they start doing “fall finales” and “fall breaks”? Seasons for some programs are now broke up between fall and winter? When did they start doing that? More importantly, why?

Heroes - Hiro

This is winter time. This is the time in which we need something to entertain us while we stay warm inside or, as it goes in Vancouver, stay out of the rain. In the summer, I could care very little about anything else other than being able to get to the beach on the weekend and enjoying dinner on a patio somewhere at night. If Hollywood thinks that I’m going to be sitting on the edge of my chair while I wait for the next episode of Hereos[wiki] or Jericho[wiki] to premiere in January… then… they’re probably right. That doesn’t mean I like it.

Heroes - Sylar

I had a conversation with a friend not too long ago, and he kept saying that he doesn’t understand how anyone can wait for a new episode of any television show to come out from week to week. I initially disagreed with him, but he kinda has a point now. Marathon nights of watching a single season of some show on DVD sounds appealing opposed to this “clever” marketing technique that networks are pulling now. Oh how I loathe them.

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Fake fire

Faux FireI see this on TV every morning when Rebecca is heading off to work. Yes, it’s a DVD of a fake fireplace. Faux Fire[amazon]. This is nearly as stupid as those Head On commercials. I realize they show things like this during the holiday season, but are you serious? Do you really want to spend money on crap like this?

I say take that money and do something better with it.


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24 – Season 6 Prequel

Vanmega mentioned it, but I’m going to post it here. I’ve become quite the 24[wiki] fan over the past few seasons, losing track of it in its debut season do to lack of time in college. There’s parts that are hooky, but sometimes you just want that action where a hero might be able to save the day, even if it takes another week to wait for the next episode to come out. I guess these prequels are nothing too new, but it is to me. Looks inviting.

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When Canada needs more Spanish speaking channels

I’ve discovered the UEFA Champions League[wiki]. They’ve been showing the games on TSN lately, and it’s picked up where the World Cup left off for me. Right now, Manchester United is taking on Benfica, and it is 1-0 Benfica in the first half.

When I used to have access to Univision, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to leave a futbol game on TV in the background at home. Spanish speaking announcers, as we all know, are some of the best sportscasters in the business. You don’t have to really watch the game to know that when the announers gets really excited, something is happening and you should pay attention. We could probably pay for extra coverage on cable for some wicked play by play in Spanish, but the greedy folks at Shaw already get enough of our money.

The TSN coverage and their announcers are pretty good though. I like it a lot better when they have someone doing the color commentary with a Scottish or Irish accent. For that reason alone, they could be telling me a load of crap about anyone on the pitch, and I’d believe them. I mean, they have that accent. They must know what they’re talking about, right? Well, at least that’s the feeling that I get because I’m so lacking on any knowledge about who is who in the sport.

The 2006-07 tournament[wiki] wraps up in Athens come May. Hockey, futbol, and then the baseball season kicks in. That’s good stuff. And if you don’t believe me, tell the other billion people who are all about the UEFA tournament.

Update: The Guardian has some great coverage of the Champions League on their site. Very much worth checking out.

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Feeling as good as the weather

Right now, I’m just staying awake for the sake of not sleeping all day and then not sleeping tonight. Just been an all day endeavor of pains in my stomach area. It would be easy to say that it’s the water, but Rebecca has been fine all day long. Don’t know what the deal is, but I hate being sick.

Been a series of things that I wanted to highlight today. Northern Voice is ramping up. They officially opened up registration for the event, and we’re looking at going. The worst thing about the timing is that it’s the weekend of our first anniversary. NV is something we’re all about checking out, but we’ll have to really see how it works for us. I’ve thought about tossing my hat into the speaking ring regarding podcasting, but there is probably someone out there that could do something much more impacting than myself.

Rebecca setup another interview for this Saturday for RadioZoom. This time around, we’ll be talking to Wintersleep from Halifax, Nova Scotia ahead of their show at The Plaza Club. Should be a lot of fun, and I’m all about learning more about bands on the fly. I know the library a bit, but outside of that, I like taking these interviews as they go. Having a formula sounds like we have a formula.

Speaking of Saturday, we’ll have to miss the Canucks game that night, but what a good game against Columbus last night. It was a little disheartening to hear people boo Anson Carter, but I get why it was happening. Even better that we held on to win. Even at 1-0, there was enough action to keep me into the game. I could have really done with some more scoring though. Geez!

I’ve also been getting back up to speed with what’s happening with Iowa Public Radio. It’s been a little over a year since I left the radio world, and the process of consolidation was just starting to gather. I’ll be completely honest. Everything I am seeing makes me very unhappy.

I’m hearing things from the inside that are less than stellar. They even have a blog as the mouth of IPR now, WordPress and all. Sure, statewide public radio networks are nothing new, but everything that made all of those stations great, in their own respective ways, is being systematically dismantled. This is a topic I’ll expand more on in the future, I’m sure.

That’s all from the couch. Combined with some podcasts in my headphones and CNN on the tube all day long, I’m ready to feel better. You can only see those Head On commercials so many times, and that goes for the newer ones that rip on the original ones.

That does remind me that I need to touch on some of the TV shows we’ve been keeping tabs on and enjoying this fall. Jericho, Heroes, Law and Order: SVU, CSI, 20 Rock, Studio 60… I can’t remember liking to watch TV in a long time, not to mention on the major networks. Give me widescreen and that makes me interested in anything. Take away the commercials, and I’ll like it even more.

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All a guy wants is some entertainment

Rebecca had to work late tonight, and I had hoped to catch something on TV to entertain me. I didn’t want to watch Hereos or Studio 60 tonight so that we could catch those together later. I did catch some Corner Gas tonight, but that was only a half hour of wackiness.

Hockey on TV!What I didn’t get was hockey. The Canucks don’t play until tomorrow night, but I thought, at the very least, that some other game would be shown. Out of what we do get on our cable package, there wasn’t a single game on the tube. There was Monday Night Football, but out of the six games played in the NHL tonight, none of them were televised in our area. All I could get was Sportscentre recaps.

Geez. I live in Canada, right?

Speaking of the Canucks, we have got to beat the pants off of Detroit tomorrow night. The last game against Calgary was painful. I would nearly say embarassing, but it was one of those nights that make you sick from the collapse we saw on the ice. The Flames are making me eat my words from the last episode of The Crazy Canucks.

Luongo is still my boy, but if it takes pulling a J.J. and calling him out to start playing better, then let this be it, loud and freaking clear.