Charlie Brown Commercialization

Do you think Charlie Brown would object that his own little tree has been commercialized? $20 for a replica—and plastic no less—tree.  I’m sure he would be appalled.  You can buy yours on Amazon.

Commercials

I think there should be a rule put in place about commercial repetition. I get tired of the same commercial playing over and over and over. A specific commercial should only be able to run once every 2 hours on a given channel. Also, they should have a short expiration date. Think of the Superbowl – all new commercials that people actually watch and you don’t see the same one twice.

If ABC has to run 6 minutes of commercials to pay the bills, at least give me some variety.

Attempting to watch Discovery Channel videos

Has anyone else noticed how terrible The Discovery Channel is about it’s online videos?  Want to catch an episode of Mythbusters you missed?  Well, you can watch a few portions of it, in the form of a 13 clip playlist – with a 30 second commercial between each one.  Oh, and did I mention that the video clips are as short at 17 seconds?

Perhaps, if you could actually see the whole episode this way, I could deal with it.  You would be able to jump to the part you care about – but no.  Half the time the necessary portions of the show aren’t even available.

What’s the point of posting twenty 20 second clips that don’t resolve the show?

NBC Lied To Us

Tonight an entire lineup of new episodes will air for NBC primetime, EXCEPT for The Office. All last week promotions ran about the new year, new comedy and showed Kat & Kim, My Name is Earl, The Office, and 30 Rock as new shows starting January 8th. However, today I come to find out that The Office is a repeat tonight and actually starts with new episodes on the 15th.

What a way to ruin my Thursday NBC, I hope you’re happy.

The Price Is Right CONTINUES to Disappoint

This is nothing new, but in an hour long episode of the Price is Right you have at least nine commercial breaks. One after every individual game (6), one after each showdown (2) and one in between the showcase showdown bidding and results. This show is probably shorter than most half hour programs, which only run 22 minutes after you take all the commercials out.

And Drew Carey, well he just hasn’t gotten any better.

Charmin: Just Not Right

I saw this commercial last night and it didn’t sit well with me.

Falling asleep with the TV on will cost you

Ever fall asleep without setting the Sleep option on your TV? I do, a lot. I started to wonder how much not setting the Sleep was costing me. Here’s my calculation for a 19″ color TV. I know, time for an upgrade. (Watt info found here, prices here).

1 Hour of usage = 70 Watts = .07 kilowatts

.07 * 4.5 (average amount of time before I wake up and turn off the TV) = 0.315 kW

Michigan Average price per kWH (1000 watts per hour) = 11.65 cents

$0.1165/kWH * 0.315kW = $0.0367

Yep, that’s right. Every night I leave my TV on for an extra 4.5 hours, I pay another 4 cents. Assuming this happens every night, thats $1.10 per month.

A 25″ LCD takes about double the power, so now you’re talking $2.20 a month in extra charges and wasted electricity.

Fringe and TV Extras

I caught Fringe on Fox last night and noticed in almost every scene there was a multitude of people milling around in the background. I’ve never worked in a Federal agency, but I’m guessing that much like any other place of business people are usually more at their desks doing work, then wandering aimlessly.

I’ve noticed the plethora of extras in other shows as well. For some reason directors/producers must feel that the scene won’t feel real if there aren’t a bunch of other people wandering around. I think The Office is one of the only shows that actually keeps people sitting at desks (at least until Michael calls for a meeting in the conference room).

Scrabble on ESPN

There has to be something other than scrabble that ESPN could have on at 3 PM on a Sunday. Maybe if scrabble was on ESPN2 I could understand a little more. Or maybe if it was the National Scrabble Finals, like the Spelling Bee, it would merit being televised. As I type this, Lindsay asks “Isn’t there football on?”

FOX’s Fringe Review

Episode #3, “Ghost”

I’ve watched the first three episodes of Fringe on Fox. Overall I like the show, but I have one main issue with it. The timeline.

The show starts with an attack on a city bus. When the agents arrive on the scene, they are told that the attack took place at 8:14 this morning. So we know that best case, it may be as early as 9 AM. The climax of this episode, disregarding plot setup for next week, ends at approximately 5:30 PM. However, our agents know where to find the bad guys an hour before they are set to meet, which is at 5 PM. Therefore, between approximately 9AM and 4PM, the Fringe agents only have to accomplish the following:

• Move the bus to a secure area
• Remove all the passengers from their ‘frozen’ state
• Identify each person
• Watch video from a passengers camera to determine that a bag was missing from the bus
• Analyze the substance from the bus
• Recreate the substance
• travel to Massive Dynamic to follow up about the three exclusive chemicals used to make the substance
• Alert the DEA that one of their people had been killed and have them ID the body
• Obtain a search warrant for a person who has had ‘visions’ of the attack
• Search the visionaries house
• Interrogate the suspect
• Setup and give the suspect and MRI
• Determine that the suspect is not lying and may be part of some long lost experiment
• Convince the suspect to go to a lab, drill into his head and use his visions to solve the crime
• Drive across town to the Dr.’s old house, break in, and find an old piece of equipment he hid in the walls
• Hook up the suspect to the equipment, dial into the messages being sent, and translate Latin phrases that give away the location of the next meeting

I know there are bigger things one could argue as plausible with this show, for instance, most of the science. But, for some reason I have less of a problem with that than the pace that the show takes.