Category: Television

A Proposal for a TiVo, iTunes, Podcast Ad Formats

30 seconds is way too long. On the TiVo, we’re fast-forwarding through the commercials and other boring bits. We’re still watching as we fast-forward (we get the brand-impression, just more quickly and without sound). Same with podcasts. As I’ve mentioned earlier, we’re not skipping the ads, just getting through them more quickly. I know one […]

Audio is to Books as Video is to Car Crashes

A conversation at last night’s PodcastMN meet-up got me thinking about the difference between audio and video. As I see it, the goal of writing is to use the fewest words possible to illustrate the most to the reader. Density. In fact, I’m pretty sure the job of an editor is just that. In the […]

TiVo’s Future is in Videoblogs Not in Network Television

We’ve been a TiVo household for about a month now. Excellent service, I’m glad we got it. What we don’t have is a satellite or cable service. As I mentioned on my other blog, this omission is very challenging for TiVo. To me, the most interesting television isn’t on television. It’s the videoblogs or video […]

Deal? No Deal.

I’m not a big fan of games of chance and tonight’s debut episode of Deal or No Deal confirmed it. The promos declared this most pointless of all game shows is sweeping the globe. Yes, that’s the same sales pitch used with Big Brother and the Weakest Link. Premise in a nutshell: 26 briefcases held […]

Sports Night – Still Best Show Not on TV

Sports Night on DVD finally bubbled up our Netflix Queue. More than 5 years later, it still has the best dialogue of any television series ever. It’d translate perfectly to the video iPod also; audio that doesn’t need video and very basic video (people talking, generally not moving quickly). Hopefully, iTunes will become a strong […]