this animation by Sugimoto Kousuke is sikk

via | Lost At E Minor

First of all, there is a website to combat liberal bias? Is that because Tracy Morgan is able to find the humor in the fact that this country isn’t as racism-free as it likes to think?

Meh whatever. The kinda of a-hole that needs to contribute to a site like that just promotes the fact that controlling the media is more important than the issues.

They warn their readers that the following quote from Tina Fey on SNL a few weeks earlier contains sacrilege:

And maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. And let me say something about that: yeah, she is, and so am I. And so is this one (pointing at Amy Poehler). And you know what, bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams, and they sleep on cots and are allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year, you hated those bitches, but you knew the capital of Vermont. So, I’m saying it’s not too late Texas and Ohio. Get on board. Bitch is the new black!

Is that not conservative bias toward Jesus-y stuff? Or perhaps prejudice toward the truth leaking out through comedy? Anyway, professional comedians sometimes use an old literary chestnut called “hyperbole,” I’m sure non ALL nuns are psychos. Sorry if you don’t have a sense of humor or a world view based on real life, and don’t tell me “mean old clams” isn’t an awesome phrase.

via | News Busters

btw: News Busters’ tagline is “Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias.”

Yay. I’ll admit I enjoyed the exclusivity of being able to use hulu.com in beta mode, but I’m glad it’s opening up. Nice to be able to watch a little Conan when you feel like it.

from AdAge:

The oddly-named site represents the two media companies’ quest to capture some of the consumer attention that has gone to other video-sharing sites, most notably Google’s YouTube. Hulu features clips and full-length episodes of well-known programs including “House” and “Chuck,” as well as some movies. NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker has described Hulu as a potential lure for advertisers who like online video, but are more comfortable with professionally produced content as opposed to the grainy, edgy and wacky material that makes it to YouTube and other sites of its kind.

via | AdAge

a super-secret advertising research project in Australia has set up a test facility with mock living rooms where 3,000 people have been closely monitored as they are exposed to radically new kinds of TV commercials

via | AdAge

http://adage.com/article?article_id=122803

With presidential caucuses set for next Thursday, candidates have bought every local spot in ABC’s telecast of the game on Des Moines station WOI-TV. That’s 10 30-second spots, some of which are being combined for 60-second messages.

…

TV-station and cable execs say candidates’ last-minute buys combined with the usual post-Christmas slowdown in other ad categories means far more Iowa TV spots are political ads. Even when nonpolitical advertisers do want in, in some cases federal requirements give precedence to the political spots, meaning some regular advertisers get pre-empted.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122386

Published: December 04, 2007 NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Top executives from two of the nation’s five broadcast networks sounded pessimistic notes this week about prospects for an early resolution to the writers strike, even as they tried to suggest substitute programming in the interim would please both viewers and advertisers.

…

Both TV executives suggested it was hard to come to terms on an issue that was still taking shape. “We are trying to figure out what the world of new media will be,” Mr. Moonves said. While content producers are entitled to a share of the pie, he continued, “right now, we don’t know what that pie is.”

There is no fucking way they don’t know what the pie is. You’re telling me that NBC and CBS don’t have well schooled business and market analysts telling the execs what the profit projections are in which sectors? Then how are those networks still in business? WB and UPN may have hobos working in their marketing departments, but NBC and CBS wouldn’t even have content on sites like hulu.com or any content on iTunes without information from those professionals. Not knowing what the pie is would have left those networks asunder long ago. There is NO WAY you could be in the dark about Youtube’s prominence as a video entertainment channel. And there is NO WAY you could know about Youtube and not think to use your television broadcast revenue to develop an internet broadcast channel of your own.

This is 5 start bullshit. Rock on, writers. Show the world how crappy TV is without you.

To deflate my point, no offense writers, but sometimes there is crappy content even WITH you there.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122153

Tina Fey had just one request for the packed-to-the-walls crowd at a live performance of an upcoming episode of her NBC sitcom, “30 Rock,” last week at New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

“Please don’t post anything about tonight’s show on any blogs or anything. Our plots are very complicated, like ‘Heroes,’” she said. There was a beat, then the real punch line: “We’ve been doing this [show] for almost two years now, and we’ve managed to keep it a secret anyway.”

…

XM is not something I currently subscribe to, but I think their ads campaigns are excellent. I just saw a new one while watching current.tv, but could not find the clip. It’s something reminiscent of a slaughterhouse, but it has normal people on a conveyor belt which moves them through a music playing machine. When they come out the other side, they have customized musical tastes and lifestyles. I think it is a commercial ad that supports the diversity of cultures. But the one I listed here also conveys that sentiment. Checkout the gold tooth at the end, ha.

XM obviously makes money by celebrating the diversity of music, but still it is something to be celebrated. What really is cool is when a new genre is invented as fusion genres inspired by existing genres. Off the top of my head I will say Ratatat is a good example of this with their fusion of hip-hip, rock, end electronic funk. Another obvious example is Led Zeppelin getting their sound from blues and rock.

It’s a shame when one genre gets ridiculed by another. I for example, like to mock the song “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister because I am a jerk. Let me just pose this question: why wouldn’t he just rock instead of repeatedly exclaiming that he has inclinations of rocking? It just doesn’t make sense, people. But yeah that is bad because Twisted Sister does indeed rock – don’t base your decision on the quality of their music on that gaping hole in logic.

I am just saying that I enjoy the musicianship demonstrated by artists like Indian classical musicians including Zakir Hussein, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Ravi Shankar, and Shiv Kumar Sharma as much as I enjoy good pop hooks & lyrics. Adult contemporary can shit themselves to death at an Oprah taping for all I care, but who knows, maybe I will enjoy that genre when I am dying or dead?

Right, anyway, rockon ad agency who did this ad.

try it now!

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=122056

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — NBC’s late-night schedule may be the first real victim of the ongoing writers’ strike, with viewership among advertisers’ most-coveted audiences — viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 — down in the double-digits for both “The Tonight Show” and “Saturday Night Live,” according to media buyers.

As part of a company-wide green initiative, Jack has come up with the idea of creating a green mascot for NBC.

This episode has Al Gore and David Shwimmer, who is sort of annoying. When Alec Baldwin’s character admit’s that Greenzo is the first name that came out of his head, why do I feel like that’s the first thing that actually came out of Alec Baldwin’s head? So many great great lines by Tracy Morgan — “People are like Lemmings, Harvey Lemmings, my lawyer.”

http://news.awn.com/?&newsitem_no=21467

 Fox has decided to move forward on new episodes of FAMILY GUY without striking creator/exec producer Seth MacFarlane…

MacFarlane has been quoted as saying, “I hope they don’t do it” …

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121925

NBC Universal and News Corp. are the majority owners of online-video site Hulu, the better to burnish programs running on NBC and Fox. But that doesn’t mean rival networks CBS and ABC are being shut out.

http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2007/11/videos-the-offi.html

includes: B.J. Novak, Mindy Kaling, Paul Liberstein (Yeah, Toby!), and show runner Greg Daniels

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121862

Overall, network-TV comedy has an ever-shrinking audience — and sitcoms have an ever-shrinking share of prime time, thanks to cheaply made reality TV. As USA Today’s Bill Keveney recently noted, “The broadcast networks [are airing] fewer than 20 live-action, 30-minute sitcoms, about half as many as five seasons ago. … No sitcom has finished in the top 10 since ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ in 2005.”

The article goes on to talk about how viral-videos are part of the problem as well as the writer’s strike.

Comedy, as Steve Martin says, is not pretty. But in a disintermediated economy, comedy with that kind of executive-suite overhead is, as a business proposition, not only not pretty, it’s hideously ugly.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121924

The longer a writers strike continues, the more cause advertisers have to worry. The problem is few viable solutions seem to be in the offing.

…

“What the networks are doing is the obvious thing: They are trying to take care of the more time-sensitive advertisers, but they are very limited in what they can do,” Mr. Berger said.

http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2007/11/tina-fey-on-the.html

I think Tina Fey describes it pretty well here. Like she said, I’m not sure a lot of people will get why the writers are on strike. But it’s true, when writers are gone there will be a major influx of shitty reality television. Conan is gone!!!!!!

Dmitri is so good at delivering deadpan silliness.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=127638&title=martin-the-sat

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/05/stewart-to-pay-his-writer_n_71164.html

In a show of solidarity with his fellow scribes, the Daily Show host has told his writing staff that he will cover all their salaries for the next two weeks, according to a well-placed source. He has also vowed to do the same for writers on The Colbert Report. A Comedy Central spokesman referred my inquiry about this to Stewart’s personal publicist, who has yet to respond.

what Jon is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch