web site-related stories
Posted May 25th 2009 3:29AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Episode Reviews, Breaking Bad, Reality-Free
(S02E12) Walter White, be careful what you wish for. That's the thought that occurred to me watching this penultimate episode of season two. Is it possible that Walt might actually make it through this bizarre journey to the dark side and actually come out the other side in one piece? For a time, it sure seemed possible.
For starters, there's Holly. Sky finally has the baby and she's perfect. The scenes of domestic bliss at the White's contrasted with the wreckage at Jesse's bungalow. Vince Gilligan may make Walter's perfection of crystal meth seem like a noble achievement -- the best ever cooked in New Mexico -- but seeing how Jane and Jesse's lives have deteriorated in just a few weeks of shooting heroin seemed like the ultimate anti-drug message. They were as gross as the meth couple with the ATM machine that Jesse found so disgusting.
Continue reading Breaking Bad: Phoenix
Posted Jul 30th 2008 1:43PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Food/Home/DIY
A couple of week's ago, I noticed -- and ranted here -- about the
Food Network showing a promo for the penultimate (or nearly penultimate) episode of
The Next Food Network Star which revealed who would be eliminated in the show that I was viewing. It seemed like bad form to me, but some people defended FN and advised me to get a DVR and use it. Just to be clear, I have two and use them extensively. This was a case where I was watching a rebroadcast a day after the airing, commercials and all. My point was that FN should know better than to schedule a promo for that reveals so much about the show you're watching even on a rebroadcast.
Anyway, now it turns out that Food Network has made yet another flub that's spoiled the surprise of
The Next Food Network Star reveal. This one occurred on their web site. D Magazine reported that a week before the finale of the competition reality show, video interviews with the three finalists were broadcast on the web site
and the winner was clearly indicated. In case you have the finale on your DVR and haven't watched it yet,
The Next Food Network Star will be shown after the jump.
Continue reading The Food Network flubs again
Posted May 7th 2008 3:25PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: OpEd, Web, TV Squad Lists
The Hollywood Reporter has always ranked high on my list of entertainment sites, but that might change with the site's new makeover. Or rather, makeunder. It's awful! Let's break it down:
1. The Header. They've ditched
the classic logo with "Hollywood" in script font for a blocky, robotic logo (see picture). Say what?! As my TV Squad buddy,
Joel, says, "It's like changing the Ford or GE logo ... shouldn't be done." And as my other TV Squad buddy,
Bob, says, it looks like the logo for "some generic Internet business newsletter." Agree on both counts.
2. The Colors. Bland, bland, bland. Are they harking back to that old saying, "What's black and white and red all over?" Those colors just don't do it for me. Yes, I realize the old design included those colors, but not in such a "plumbing and heating business" kind of way.
Continue reading Five reasons why I hate the new HollywoodReporter.com
Posted Jun 21st 2007 5:21PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, The Daily Show, Web
Comedy Central's election coverage, "InDecision [insert year]" began, if I recall correctly, before The Daily Show ever hit the airwaves. Of course, it seemed perfectly reasonable that Jon Stewart and the gang would take the reins, and they did. They took those reins like you wouldn't believe. Boy howdy hoo.
So anyway, now Comedy Central has launched a companion site for InDecision 2008, which is scheduled to launch Wednesday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The article also reads that the election spoofery began in 1992 and was always associated with The Daily Show, which I find hard to believe since The Daily Show began in 1996.
Also, you can go to the site now (http://www.indecision2008.com/index.jhtml), and I must say, for not having launched there's a lot of stuff there. There's clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Lil' Bush, and some funny blog entries: did you know Ron Paul is more popular than iPhones and crotches? He is.
Posted Apr 6th 2007 9:01AM by Adam Finley
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live
Over on NBC's site for SNL, there's a new (I'm pretty sure it's new*) section called Saturday Night Live Backstage. The section includes backstage videos (natch) and an interactive feature called "Star in Weekend Update" that allows registered users to edited together clips from the "Weekend Update" segment into an annoying, confusing mess that's not even remotely amusing.
Continue reading Go Backstage at Saturday Night Live
Posted Feb 16th 2007 1:01PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: TV on DVD, Web
TV Shows on DVD has long been my favorite site for finding information on both recent and upcoming DVD releases of television series, and I've linked to it on numerous occasions. After five years of providing quality content, the site has been acquired by TV Guide. In a message on the site, co-founder Gord Lacey explained that not much will change with the site itself, other than some integration between the site and TVGuide.com.
I always thought the site did pretty well on its own, but as Lacey points out, being part of TV Guide will hopefully give the site even more visibility and access to studios, resulting in even better coverage.
If the acquisition helps to raise the profile of TV Shows On DVD, I say "cheers" to my fellow TV-centric blog. It will remain my preferred choice for TV on DVD news and new releases.
Posted Feb 9th 2007 3:02PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, ABC, PVR Wire, Video, Web
If you've ever caught yourself scrolling through YouTube and thinking "This is just like
America's Funniest Home Videos, but funnier because there's no voice-over commentary," you're not alone. Well, it looks like the pioneer making money off of user-generated video has finally embraced new technology.
Starting this summer, ABC will launch a new site for
America's Funniest Home Videos, allowing visitors to upload their own movies. Users will be able to search through uploaded videos as well as content seen on the television program. This comes a couple of years too late if you ask me, but it's something. I'll be curious to see if ABC also chooses content for the program from user-uploaded video.
[via
Lost Remote]
Posted Feb 4th 2007 7:00PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, CBS, Commercials, Super Bowl
Huh?
Not sure I get what SalesGenie does, but then again I haven't been involved in sales and marketing for quite some time. You go to their site and you can get sales leads? What type of sales leads? Any industry, any business? How do you qualify those leads? Are they up to date?
Then again, if I'm asking the question and I'm not even into sales anymore, I'm sure a lot of business types will be going over to their web site and checking out exactly what this is all about. Is the ad effective? If you want salespeople to go to your site, I guess it is.
Posted Dec 19th 2006 6:04PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Video, Veronica Mars, Supernatural, Web, Podcasting, The CW
Welcome to the mid-2000's, CW Network! You've finally figured out that people don't just watch your shows on that big glowing tube (or LCD or plasma screen) in the middle of the living room!
That's what I thought when I read that the CW has decided to make its shows available for sale on iTunes. According to
today's Cynopsis, the network will make episodes of
Supernatural and
Veronica Mars available. The network is also working on an embedded video player, which will play full episodes, including commercials, on the
network's web site.
VM and
Supernatural seem like the most natural choices to be made available online, given their fanbases. What I wonder is: given the relatively tiny audiences for CW shows, why didn't they jump on the online bandwagon sooner? As others have seen, it's a great way to get a little-seen show out to more people.
Posted Nov 10th 2006 4:04PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, HBO, TV on the Bigscreen, Celebrities
Remember the '90s, that golden age of the internet when hamsters danced, there were mullets galore, sexually ambiguous men dressed as Peter Pan, all our base were belong to somebody, and
a man from Turkey offered his lips to the online world? Those were good times. Now one of those long lost remnants of Web's past have returned, and we can thank Borat for it. It seems that Mahir Cagri of "I Kiss You!" internet fame feels that Borat, the character created by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for HBO's
Da Ali G Show, and the star of the new film,
Borat: Culture Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, is based on him. In an e-mail and brief interview with
Wired, Cagri said he planned to seek legal action against Borat, and that "sometimes, I been no mustache." I think that goes to show that no matter how separated we are by geography, there are still some things that unite us all, for I have also never been a mustache.
Posted Aug 1st 2006 12:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Cable, News, Video, Web
CNN, like any news organization, has always taken viewer-submitted videos and photos and used them if they thought that a) the submission was newsworthy, and b) neither they nor any other news organization has the footage. The submission procedure was always a bit of a kludge: call the network, say you have something, send it in, wait to see it on TV. Now, though, the cable network is making it easy for people to submit videos and photos.
Called
CNN Exchange, it allows viewers to upload videos, photos, audio, and graphics. They will also take submissions via e-mail. Selected "I-Reports", vetted and verified by CNN staffers, will be shown on the site, but viewers will not be paid if their submissions are used. The site, in the works for months, is debuting just as YouTube videos of the devestation in Lebanon have been shown across the web, so CNN's timing is pretty good here, to say the least.
Posted Jun 23rd 2006 9:18AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Talent, OpEd, American Idol, Commercials, Web, Celebrities
Yesterday on AdJab,
I complained that Kelly Clarkson's catchy new song for Ford's "Bold Moves" campaign, "Go", was infiltrating my brain and settling in like a mooching brother-in-law. I thought I could get rid of it by listening to the sound of brick being scraped by nail or any Yoko Ono CD. But then kindly commenter
Steve passed along a link to a new page on the Ford web site where you can listen to a stream of the full version of the song. (Just go
here and click "Go").
Against my better judgement, I went over and clicked on the stream. The damn song is even catchier than I thought. Now it's in my head for-freakin-ever. Thanks, Steve, wherever you are. I'll see you in hell.
Posted May 18th 2006 8:33PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Programming, OpEd, Web, The CW
Now that the CW has given us a look at their
upcoming fall schedule, the only thing that was left in order for them to become a real network was
a web site, which went live today. The site is fairly extensive, with individual pages for all the shows and a list of affiliate stations. And it's flashy as hell, with a preview video and everything.
Oh, and see that ugly green color behind the network's ugly '70s-era logo? It's... all... over... the... site. So if you missed the shag carpeting you used to sit on before your kindergarten nap time, go check the site out for a nice reminder.
[thanks to Jeff for the head's up.]
Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
Have any questions for Vik Sahay of Chuck? Ask them here!
Mike Henry and Daryl Hall on a Cleveland Show Thanksgiving
