Wednesday, Featured Post day.
The best of the best, or rather the longest of the longest.
I would say it’s the pièce de resistance.
But Tarantino would put it as:
A bunch of those Featured Posts have mainly been personal opinions on various subjects. For instance my first real one was about French TV, which I have said pretty much early on I hate.
When I disagree with someone/something though, I might go overboard and write a long post.
Case in point with Heroes.
I don’t particularly care anymore about the show, but I still strongly disagreed with an article from the THR Feed saying setting an end date for the show would save it.
I wrote one of my longest post ever replying to James Hibberd on why I thought Heroes should not set an end date.
I also used this post to talk a bit about what I thought of Lost and Battlestar Galactica and their end dates for those interested.
Moving on to another show, Dollhouse, which was very recently renewed for a surprising second season.
Incidentally, my most popular Featured Post is actually one I wrote back in February where I listed Four Reasons why Dollhouse might be Renewed. (I then wrote Four Reasons why Dollhouse will get Canceled, but don’t tell anyone)
Continuing on that, I gave a few ideas regarding television and how to save it.
One of my most talked-about post was one I wrote back in September.
Yes, I still think it’s relevant (now more than ever).
I was back then giving nine ideas to kind of “help” the main networks in a way, or nine.
Part One is here (Ideas 1 through 4) and Part Two is here (5 through 9), though it can be summed up as:
1. Shows all year long
2. VOD
3. Fewer ads
4. Shorter seasons
5. Cost efficiency
6. Webisodes
7. Re-develop ideas and pilots
8. Big names for big shows
9. Take chances
Like we saw again on Monday, we’ve had a lot of NBC talk this year, thanks in part to some stunning moves from Dumb and Dumber as I like to call them, with mainly Jay Leno being moved to 10PM.
TV drama, who doesn’t love it?
I wrote back in December two posts where I dabbled around two ideas:
Or rather: Are Dumb and Dumber slowly destroying original content?
The merge-move and Leno in primetime makes perfect sense business-wise.
After all, it cuts cost, and the show will most likely do better than what is currently on at 10PM.
But is it a good entertainment-move?
Me think not.
Or rather: Are Dumb and Dumber indirectly boosting creative content?
As I pointed out yesterday, the 10PM slot is begging to be changed.
Well, not really “begging”.
CBS’ Les Moonves himself declared the other day that “Taking a third [broadcast] competitor out of the marketplace will make us even stronger”, though he said that for different reasons (“‘CSI: Miami’ on Monday at 10 o’clock will beat Jay by a lot. Remember that. By a lot.”).
The Leno-move should not be without consequences for the 10PM slot on the other nets.
I am not talking about drastic schedule changes here (even if I’m guessing it’ll unfortunately come to that — affiliates anyone?).
I am talking here more about quality changes.
We have in one corner C.S.I., and in the other Jay Leno.
Bring on the alternative!
Extremely interesting stuff.
And by that I just mean me babbling about the Industry and what-not.
There’s no answer at the end of the day to neither question.
I still think the NBC execs are bringing upon themselves the future of TV, whether they want it or not.
Movie-wise we’ve seen some nice posts I’d like to think.
There were a whopping total of 5 movie reviews in the last year.
In chronological order, they are
The Box (October 2008) – Released on October 30, 2009
Watchmen (March 2009) – Released on March 6, 2009
The Cabin in the Woods (March 2009) – Released on February 5, 2010
Star Trek (April 2009) – Released on May 8, 2009
Inglourious Basterds (June 2009) – Released on August 21, 2009
For those interest, I wrote down above the U.S. release dates for the aforementioned movies.
Interesting to note that two of the reviews are only based on the scripts of the movies (The Box and The Cabin in the Woods) and none of the two have yet come out in theatres.
This is especially surprising regarding The Box, given that the review dates back to last October, and the picture used is from February…2008.
Going back to Star Trek for a second, I posted before the movie officially came out an article on ways to prepare for the new movie.
Even though it’s highly likely you’ve already seen it, I would still advise re-watching some old Trek episodes that are not as obsolete as one might think.
Also, you should definitely try to get your hands on the Star Trek prequel comic before seeing it (again).
Very briefly, I’ll also just point out for the sake of it that there were also a bunch of Breakdowns about the ’08 Fall and ’09 Mid–Season arrivals as well as an Upfront Guessing Game
They are kind of obsolete now that the Upfronts are done and ’09 Fall season is upon us though.
I think we’ve seen the most important posts, save for a few.
But we’ll talk about them in the next post.