Last week a survey that found 18% of Americans, when asked to name Barack Obama’s religion, incorrectly said he is Muslim. That’s up from 11% in 2009.
How could a growing number of people get a basic fact so wrong? I don’t believe it’s because 18% of Americans are fools. I think it’s because we are just beginning to see the effects of a radically new way of communicating. The strategy involves a mix of broadcasting and the Internet. Here’s the formula:
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“Lost” was the only TV series I’ve ever watched start-to-finish as it aired. The finale yesterday was superb television—keeping the mystery alive, adding a few life lessons to chew on, and remaining a textbook study in how to craft a powerful narrative from pictures, words, sound effects and (especially) music.
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Item! ESPN and Discovery launching 3-D TV networks.
There’s lots of buzz this week about 3-D TVs at CES. I don’t buy the hype. Here are 5 reasons 3-D TV is a non-starter.
1. The Internet. Barring any huge leap forward in technology, 3-D video (which requires a steady, high frame rate) is incompatible with Internet streaming (which adjusts frame rates depending on your connection speed). As such, 3-D TV is a naked ploy by the entertainment industry to push viewers back toward buying DVDs and cable subscriptions, rather than enjoying free online video. It won’t work. Trying to steer the freeloaders back to paid video once they’ve figured out Hulu and Netflix and torrents is pushing water uphill.
2. Glasses. Nobody has solved the 3-D glasses problem. Are you and your buddies going to hang around a sports bar watching football, drinking beer, eating wings, while wearing identical sets of flimsy plastic glasses? No. Glasses are for squares.
3. Production costs. It’s waaay more complicated and more expensive to produce TV shows in 3-D than in 2-D. Amateurs can’t do it. But for years, the trend toward digital video has meant cheaper TV shows, often with user-submitted content. This has been both good (CNN’s iReport) and bad (“Jon & Kate Plus 8″) but there’s no sign that really expensive television is due for a rebound.
High school bands. Lip syncing. Matt Laurer. Yeah, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is cheesy. Three hours of schlock is hard to take. It fills a lazy block of holiday morning time, when most of us have slept in late and, at best, have just begun to preheat the oven and chop yams. Still wearing our slippers and sipping coffee, we feel sorry for the NBC people who had to wake up early and go to work. Many adults find the parade telecast boring, and it’s doubtful any Pixar-raised child could invest more than 10 minutes in it.
But the Macy’s parade delivers a single, visual quality that towers (literally) over the sloppy choreography and humiliating celebrity appearances. The balloons! Round and colorful, they bob like hallucinations past the flat, stone edifices of the city. Tiny ants at the ends of guylines ease these cartoon behemoths around the corners of Midtown office buildings. The feat has become so routine—this is the parade’s 83rd year—that our eyes miss seeing it for the remarkable spectacle it is.
Some of my earliest, dimmest impressions of New York—before I ever visited the city—are of the Macy’s parade on TV. At no point did I ever imagine being there. As childhood impressions go, New York City was similar to the Land of Oz—vivid, fun and purely fictitious.
Now this is my 8th November in New York. I have never actually been to the parade, since I always travel to Maryland to spend Thanksgiving with my family. But I always catch a few minutes of the parade on TV, or I see the photos later. Don’t let familiarity spoil how cool those images are. Balloons and buildings, speaking to one another: A pairing of color and monochrome, soft and hard, fleeting and permanent. The Macy’s balloons are a perfect artistic response to the canyons of Manhattan.
Item! A gym patron in Columbia, Maryland, named Ann Geddes (not the photographer!) is trying to get her gym to remove Fox News from the TV lineup in the exercise room. — The Baltimore Sun.
Geddes and I disagree on this point. As I wrote back in November, I enjoy watching Fox News at the gym because it makes me angry, and anger helps me exercise harder!
Since November, however, I have changed my mind about something I wrote.
If you’ve never seen the 1960s TV show “The Prisoner,” now is the time: AMC is streaming all 17 episodes for free here. (A remake of the show is supposed to air on AMC this summer.)
Be seeing you!
Ever wonder where The Colbert Report gets all that source material for their show? From reporters like me. A story I wrote got the briefest of mentions on The Colbert Report Thursday night. Watch the clip below for the story with the “PDN” logo at the top of it. That’s mine. These things happen once and a while and it’s nice, though it’s not really why I do my job.
(If you can’t view the clip above, you can watch it here, at about the 1 minute mark).
I’m on a boat! ‘Nuf said!
“Flight of the Conchords” comes to the Slope Wednesday: No parking!
(These signs were up around 5th Ave and 13th.)
“All static, all day, forever!” – Channel Z by The B-52′s
This election season, I picked up an odd habit. At the gym in the mornings, I’ve started watching Fox & Friends. I’m totally obsessed with this show. I know, weird.
Fox & Friends is beamed from a newsroom in another galaxy where everybody is batshit, spit-flying, crazypants. There is an election happening in this parallel universe, but it bears no resemblance to any election happening on planet Earth. For one thing, there only seems to be one candidate.
This candidate, Fox & Friends tells us, is a closet socialist, a terrorist sympathizer and a con artist. His head is so clouded by messianic ambition that he spins outrageous lies about his own tax plan. An endless loop of talking heads appears via satellite every morning to denounce him as a conniving snake. But alas, everyone agrees this candidate is predestined to win, thanks to the all-powerful and all-biased mainstream media. His opponent is practically irrelevant, seldom mentioned, never pictured.
Occasionally, the Fox & Friends storyline drifts from this villainous character to the world’s only other news story – The War. In this war, proud generals strut through hallways, helicopters fly low over sand-hued cityscapes, and important men shake hands. A well-oiled defense machine hums with purposeful confidence. It is a great war. May it never end.
I have been trying to psychoanalyze why I find Fox & Friends such compelling television. For one thing, it is broadcast live and has shockingly sloppy production, so watching for goofs is part of the fun. It also stokes my ego when I realize I know more about the news than a professional news anchor. But those are superficial satisfactions. Bottom line, I think it helps me exercise better. As I watch this show on the elliptical or the treadmill, I am thinking: I have to be faster, smarter, stronger and better than the schlubs who take Fox & Friends seriously. I owe that to my country.
So thank you Steve, Brian, Gretchen, and friends for helping me stay fit!
Below, please enjoy some Fox & Friends video from this morning’s show – a conversation about the rich and the poor that practically could have been written by Joseph Heller.