Brandon Notices

Before I watched Monk last night, I caught the end credits at the end of Elf on USA Network.



They seemed to rush by pretty quickly. By my observations, any given line of text is on-screen for about 13 frames, which means you have 0.43 seconds to read it. One line is scrolled onto the screen per frame, so you must read 30 lines per second.

Also, the credits are shrunken down so much that they're practically unreadable. Does USA expect people to kneel down in front of their TVs, squinting and speed reading these credits? I bet that most people don't usually read the credits after movies, but even those who wanted to would be unable to under these conditions. Why does USA even bother showing them?

I reached the peak number of hours I spent in front of the TV about a year and a half ago, when the TV networks came out with five great, funny, exciting shows: Samantha Who, Back to You, American Gladiators, Million Dollar Password, and best of all, Pushing Daisies.

These shows were all cancelled. Back to You and Pushing Daisies were both cancelled mid-season, and were not allowed more episodes to allow plot lines to reach a conclusion. This is not a satisfying way to tell a narrative.

Unfortunately, TV networks these days are in it all for the money, and this requires them to continually air new shows in the hopes that they'll be huge hits. If one show quits doing so well in the ratings, another potential hit takes its place. When the number of viewers die down, so does the show.

The networks consider their viewers only as a huge mob; they give little consideration as to how their various individuals feel. I tuned into each of the above shows every time they aired, but I alone wasn't enough to keep these shows going. What else can an individual do? After seeing all my new favorite TV shows cancelled, I don't think I can trust the TV networks anymore. I don't want to invest my attention and devotion in new shows that I might fall in love with. How can I trust that the networks won't cancel them?

I think it was great that ABC took the risky decision of putting Pushing Daisies on in the first place. Taking risks is a great, but scary, thing for such a huge network to do. Most of the time, it seems that networks don't go for the risky shows because they know what their audience likes already. But when a network takes a chance and goes with a risky decision, it can pay off.

That said, I'm disappointed with how you, ABC, are handling the consequences of the risk you took when you chose to air Pushing Daisies. I really appreciate the risk you took: I really love the show. I'm sorry that Pushing Daisies didn't get the large number of viewers you were hoping for, but it's wrong for you to pull the plug on the show.

Your actions have consequences! Cutting the show short, mid-season, is a cowardly thing to do. You gave the show the go-ahead in the first place. In doing so, you created a contract not only between yourself and the studio making Pushing Daisies, but also innately with your audience—especially the show's greatest fans. You should be obligated to allow the season to run its course. Cutting the show short is disrespectful to the production companies and the audience who also went into this risk with you.

You need to give Pushing Daisies some more episodes, not as a chance for the show to pull in bigger numbers, but as an opportunity for the show to reach a conclusion. (Kristin Chenoweth, who plays Olive on the show, has reportedly said that the show, as is, will end with a cliffhanger and loose plot ends.) You allowed the show to be on TV in the first place. Shouldn't you give your viewers the chance to watch the full story to its narrative conclusion?

My understanding from what I've read is that one of the problems with Pushing Daisies is that it isn't the kind of show that a person can just sit down and zone out to. A viewer really has to be paying attention in order to understand and appreciate the show, especially when the characters talk fast. It's a show you really have to think about. And thinking, unfortunately, seems to be something which is lacking in the United States these days. This means that large numbers of people might watch Pushing Daisies, but they won't get it, so they won't tune in next time. The show's ratings were good to start with, but they started to drop.

The problem is that if these people aren't watching Pushing Daisies, then ABC isn't getting the ratings the advertisers want. In other words, Pushing Daisies is too smart for television. So ABC cancels it and replaces it with something that the masses can understand, like more reality shows, or perhaps another spin-off featuring characters from poorly-written car insurance ads. Television becomes a reflection of society: it airs what the masses want to see. This is bad because people want to see stupid stuff. I know that America's Funniest Home Videos shows a lot of stupid stuff, like old women falling down, or men getting hit in the groin.

I'm reminded of an episode of Dinosaurs, which aired on ABC. The lead character, Earl, becomes a network executive and since he's a pretty stupid dinosaur, he chooses to air only stupid programming, such as The Happy Colors Show (and maybe a show about cavemen... I don't remember). As a result, all the dinosaurs become stupid and they quit thinking. Earl decides that he should air smarter programming. He airs educational programming, and everybody learns new skills and puts them to good use. (Also, everyone stops watching TV...) I guess my point here is that society becomes a reflection of television, as well.

So it's a vicious cycle. Stupid programming leads to stupid viewers, which leads to more stupid programming. As I mentioned above, thinking seems to be a problem in this country, which means that stupid programming will likely prevail on television. But adding some smart programming, like Pushing Daisies, can certainly help to avert this problem, and it also lends ABC the credibility of maintaining intelligent programming. ABC needs to make the decision between airing smart programming or stupid programming.

It seems that ABC is going with the stupid decision.

I had little doubt that Michael Phelps would be able to score his record-setting tenth Olympic gold medal tonight. I was expecting to sit down tonight and see an exciting and dramatic race. Instead, I got this:



I saw this horrible spoiler at the top of MSN.com (Internet Explorer's default home page). I live on the West Coast; footage recorded live is actually delayed three hours before being broadcasted here. So the 200m butterfly race has already happened, even though the Olympics footage hasn't even started on TV here. It makes me upset that I can't even open Internet Explorer without ruining my evening.

I was looking forward to watching the Olympics tonight. I've watched them every night so far. I even told my family that I wasn't going to go out with them to dinner tonight so that I could watch the games. But it's been spoiled for me. There would be no suspense in viewing the races tonight.

I'm going out to dinner now.

In case you don't know, by February 17, 2009, TV broadcasts here in the US will be digital only, which, if I understand correctly, means that televisions with analog receivers won't work anymore without some kind of digital upgrade box or something. I'm not too concerned about it because we have digital cable already, but the television stations want to make sure that everyone is ready for the digital switchover:

  

Tonight, during both Wheel of Fortune on KOMO and Quantum Leap on ION, I got warnings about how some people's TVs will eventually stop working.

The irritating thing is that KOMO has been putting this irritating scrolling banner on the bottom of the screen during Wheel every day for the last month, if not longer! Today, it repeated during the entire third round! Okay, KOMO, I get it! A lot of people probably don't understand the digital switchover, and their TVs will suddenly quit receiving a signal, and KOMO wants to make sure that they are prepared, but come on! Enough is enough! I've had it with these stupid messages!

KOMO wants us all to be ready for the future, but it still isn't providing Wheel of Fortune in HD! Come on, KOMO! How can you be concerned about the future of TV when you don't even care that your present programming isn't the highest quality possible?

Oh, jeez, I just saw another one of these banners on KSTW/CW, right now! I'm watching Frasier in the background, and a little lower third popped up. Fortunately, their banner was so brief that I didn't even have time to take a picture of it (I couldn't get the SD card in my camera fast enough).

The digital switchover isn't for about 270 days, so I suppose we'll have to get used to seeing these messages every day until February 17, 2009.

By the way, I never post a puzzle without giving the solution. The solved puzzle above is A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE.

It's a little after 11 o'clock in the morning, and I'm here to post something slightly disturbing I just saw on the Game Show Network. (I've also noticed this on QVC.)


Password Plus is next, but note what time it's scheduled for: 2:00 PM. Obviously, they mean Eastern Time. They also mention that it airs at 1:00 Central Time. Notice, however, that Pacific Time is not mentioned at all. What gives?! Why aren't they listing the airtime for our time zone? Since when is Central Time given more priority than Pacific Time (and Mountain too, I guess)?

My cousin must have thought that I would like the episode of Monk that aired on Friday. He sent me an e-mail with a link to the USA Network's website where I could watch the entire show online.

Overall, I enjoyed the episode (it was about everyone hating Monk for shooting Santa Claus), and the best part was that I was able to watch it for free! Except I had to sit through an occasional, uninterruptable advertisement. This would be fine, because it's something I should normally have to do while watching TV anyway, but the problem with watching it online was that I was presented the same commercial repeatedly. I saw the same ad for Pledge lemon-scented cleaning spray at least six times.

We have a problem when it comes to viewing content online. Advertisers lose out on lots of impressions when viewers go online to watch shows instead of watching them on TV, but the "beauty" of advertising online means that you can present certain ads to different groups of people—something that can't easily be done when you're broadcasting one feed to televisions everywhere. With the Internet, specific ads can be targeted to relevant people. The problem here is that this just isn't happening. I saw six ads for Lemon Pledge—don't tell me that I'm the kind of person who is most likely to buy Pledge. I don't see it happening. Why aren't they designing these sites to present relevant ads to me?

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess cleaning supplies might not be too far off topic if you're a fan of Monk. The character is afflicted by obsessive-compulsive disorder and a phobia of germs, among many others.

I'm not a huge fan of advertising, and I know that right now, it's basically the only big thing anyone in the entertainment business gets any money from, and therefore the only reason we don't have to subscribe and pay money to watch anything on TV. But when will be the day when I don't see the same ad twice?

What do you think when I show you this picture of a pair of raggedy, non-corn-fed puppet chickens?



If you thought of Foster Farms, then you would be correct. But isn't there something a little odd here? You saw a picture of two disgusting, inferior chickens, and you thought of Foster Farms? I'm sure that this isn't the image that Foster Farms wants to portray, so it's a little unfortunate that I think of Foster Farms when I see this chicken duo.

Today, I picked up today's issue of the UW's newspaper, the Daily, only today, I noticed that it was called the iDaily. The top story was a news story about how President Emmert lost the university to Steve Jobs in a poker game and that the UW was now renamed the iUW. Suspicions flared within my mind until I realized that this must be the April Fool's Day issue. But wait, April Fool's Day was yesterday! I looked at the top and the paper and saw that it's dated Monday, April 1, 2007. They put the wrong date on there to allow themselves to publish such an issue! The nerve! Isn't that cheating? I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "April Fool's Day is over!" The articles were humorous in and of themselves, but in comedy, timing is everything. I'm sorry that the Daily didn't have the chance to publish it on the right day (The Daily doesn't circulate on weekends), but changing the date to desperately publish a few funny articles is taking a step too far. You're the fool, Daily!