Media

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I’ve always loved to read, beginning when my parents and grandparents would read to me. I always looked at the page trying to figure out how they got those great stories from the funny marks on the pages.
When I went to school and officially learned to read, I also began my addiction to libraries.
At an early age (I can’t remember exactly — maybe 2nd grade) I started walking the paper route. At first, I was apprenticed to my older brother (2 grades ahead of me) and when he got to Jr. High School (7th grade), he quit to participate in after-school athletics. I took on the paper route full time.
I had a ritual — starting my route from the newspaper plant, I walked past the Coke bottling plant and got a nickel bottle of Coke (this was LONG ago), and stopped at the Rexall Drug Store and bought a comic book. That’s five days a week (the newspaper wasn’t published on weekends).

You’ve heard of The Golden Age, The Silver Age, and the Bronze Age of comics. This was the Stone Age!


I would read the comic while walking along and delivering the papers. I was rather notorious, as people commented to my parents and grandparents that I always “had a book in my nose” (as one person put it). My preferred brand was DC — Superman and Batman, the Justice League of America, and some of the spin-off books. I wasn’t so much into Marvel, except for the occasional Spider Man. Comics cost a dime!
The cost of that habit was 15 cents a day, but I was earning paper-route money, so I could afford that an a movie ticket on Saturday (35 cents).
Then, the dirty birds raised the price of comics to 12 cents! Horror of Horrors — and then it didn’t seem too long before the comics were 15 cents!
Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve. My family spent most weekends in Almena visiting my mother’s side of the family. Denny’s Drug Store had comics for a nickle! How did he do it? Technically, it was illegal. He tore the top few inches off the cover (the title and issue numbers of the book) and gave them to the distributor who gave him credit as if he had sold the comics back to them. He was supposed to dispose of them, thereby saving costs to the distributor for shipping the whole book. But his shady business practices were a boon to comic book lovers!
Over they years, I changed as much as comic books changed. Superman went through weird changes. Clark Kent started reporting for a TV station instead of a newspaper. Robin and Batman broke up, and I think there was a NEW Robin to replace him. And comic book prices kept going up. Eventually they became Graphic Novels and were sold in boutique comic shops.
But my love of comics really never waned. The movies starting doing more adaptations, some became TV shows … and I remain a fan to this day.

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Norman Lear offered a terrific take on fake news in The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Among the points he made:

  • False stories were more likely than real news articles to go viral on social media
  • We’re more likely to pay attention to the final source of an article — the person who calls it to our attention — than to the original source.

The answer, Lear claims: “There is an urgent need for more and better civics education in our schools, and that must be joined by efforts to foster media literacy and critical thinking.”

There in lies the rub — to quote a source whose authenticity is still in doubt.

People are not all rational human beings like Mr. Lear is. Humans are selfish, greedy and needy. We believe what we want to believe, what makes us comfortable and what is believed by the

Read more on Unfairness In Public News…

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Do you enjoy public radio?

I drive a lot and prefer PBS — mainly because these kids and their modern music with the hipping and hopping and …. but back to topic.

It bothers me that public radio now has commercials. Isn’t it supposed to be non-commercial? Oh yeah, their are contributors and grants and such. But when revenue started falling off, they started giving more detailed credits to their contributors to convince them to sink money into what is supposed to be a public service. Yes … now instead of one sentence like, “Funding for this program was provided by the Ford Foundation” they give you a full 30 seconds of, “Ford — where the rubber meets the road. See your local Ford Dealer for the new Escalade 9Mz, the going choice of drive-by shootings!”

Then, on their free and unfettered news, they have health spots by Kaiser Wilhelm Permanently Al Dente news service — which is always about what is going on the the Kaiser’s hospital. Did you really think that was NEWS?

And they STILL do their week-long fund drives. But instead of twice a year, they do them monthly.

Do you like public TV? Did you know they show infomercials? And Advertainment? Oh yeah

Every time fund drive comes around (again and again) they show Dr. Whizzbang and his miracle cure for tongue warts — a 90 minute infomercial …. and then Dr. Whizzbang is on during the “break” when they overtly ask for money and give you the 9 DVD collection of Dr. Whizzbang’s entire miracle library.

So has this cut down on listener/viewer contributions to public media? Well … it has cut down on at least this one donor’s contributions (fair disclosure — I used to be one of the dweebs on the phones in the studio — but no more!)

Now … back to classical music. {CLICK}

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Stephen Colbert will succeed retiring David Letterman — and I think there is no better choice.

After growing up with legends like Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Steve Allen, I have been very disappointed by the choices networks have made for late night show hosts.

For years, David Letterman was the only one I really could stand.  When NBC chose Leno over Letterman, I was bummed out, but I came to understand that NBC is the National Bland Company and couldn’t handle the edgy Letterman.  He flourished on his own terms in his own show.

I really don’t want to get into criticisms of Leno or Conan O’Brien or Jimmy Fallon or Seth Myers.  I find Craig Ferguson watchable and enjoyable — in occasional small doses.  I like what Jimmy Kimmel does with his skits — occasionally.

The real talk shows and the real talent in the past decade have been on Comedy Central — Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

The faux-conservative character of Colbert was such a delight and always fresh.  But I was amazed to discover the depths of his talent over the years (did you know he sang — on Broadway?).

Colbert will be worth watching, and we know he can keep up the quality every night.

Jon Stewart may stay at his current post until he retires — he has built a wonderful experience.  I just wish he could get the viewership Colbert is going to get on a major network.

Vive la Letterman, vive La Colbert!

 

 

 

 

 

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Oscar host Seth MacFarlane performed a comedy song 'We Saw Your Boobs' The 2013 Oscar telecast was newsworthy for many reasons — both the obvious and some unique reasons. But the most visible result (at least right here) is that it spurred me to post something new for the first time since December.

Face it — Network TV is a dinosaur.  It is a Dead Man Walking.  It doesn’t know it has died and has not yet laid down in a grave.  The networks flail around trying to attract a public that is more interested in something that respects their intelligence and gives quality instead of pandering to advertisers.

One example is the three yearly broadcasts of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes awards Gervais is well known for his snarky style, and the producers obviously thought he’s got that “edgy” attitude that would bring about some excietment and some buzz to the awards show.  It did — and the feedback was usually that people were outraged by his behavior.  Perfect!  The awards show got attention and people would turn in to see what the bad-boy would do next.

Oscar producers tried the same strategy with Seth McFarlane.  He is far from an unknown quality.  McFarlane is one of the most prolific producers of multimedia comedy working today. He has at least three television shows in production and scored a huge hit with the theatrical film “Ted.”  So getting him to be host was obviously done with eyes wide open.

Looking at the resulting headlines tells the stories.  His opening number “I Saw Your Boobs” was offensive to women.  His “Ted” presentation with Mark Wahlberg was offensive to Jews.  His irreverent attitude toward Hollwood and Movies and Oscars was basically offensive to to everybody.  Or so the Outrage-Press would have us believe.

In other words — the strategy worked like a charm  Look for other programs to try this tactic now that it is well-proven.

WBW

 

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Has Network TV lost so much of its audience during the past decade (or two) because it can’t show nudity?  Because it only grudgingly and inconsistently allows “strong” language?  Because it doesn’t dare to attempt to cover really deep, raw, gritty story subjects.

cartoon of people riding a TV set over a waterfall

From the New Yorker, June 2006

Part of the problem stems from the above reasons.  But ALL of the reason boils down to the reliance on commercial sponsors.

Since the dawn of TV, the sponsors have owned the programming and — as a result — the networks.  None of the major networks will dare to cross the advertisers.

How about the FCC?  No — networks challenge the FCC all the time.  Sometimes they have to pay fines.  But they seem to be OK with that.

The biggest problem is satisfying the advertisers that there will be people watching the programs that a Network puts on the air.

And not just any people — the RIGHT people.

Dividing the audience by sex, income level, age and other factors is called “demographics.”  TV

Read more on Why Network TV Is Dying Out…

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In the past few years, we’ve seen collections of popular serial media collected all in one place at one time — and it is a treasure trove for the consumer (fan).

For example, I bought a multi-CD-Rom set of every MAD magazine published from the very first issue up to about the year 2000.  It not only included all the pages from the magazines, but all the extras that came in those mags over the years — sound files from the flexi records and other great stuff.

I also bought the collection of the entire history of National Lampoon.

In both cases, I bought or subscribed to these magazines at one time, and of course I read them.  However, the originals are long gone.

I’m not a collector.  I don’t care if I have the physical specimen in mint condition.  I’m just that kid who enjoyed funny magazines — all growed up — and I’m able to look at, cross rerference and enjoy them all in so many ways.

Movies are also terrific — all the sequals and originals (Godfather, Star Wars, whatever) and TV series are great to watch a whole season at one time.  I’m several years behind on some of them, but I’m catching up (now on season 3 of “House, MD” and just starting “Weeds.”)

As I often tell my wife, “Ain’t it wonderful to live in the future?”

Wade

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