I’ve been following this whole Leno/Conan/NBC debacle online, as I don’t really have NBC to actually watch it all unfold.  After hearing all the details I can’t help but feel kinda similar to another recent retirement situation, the one between Bret Favre and the Green Bay Packers 2 summers ago.

Brett Favre
On March 4, 2008 Brett Favre gave a teary eyed announcement that he was in fact retiring from the NFL after 17 years in the league. He’d had a long and successful career, but now he was stepping aside to let his successor in waiting Aaron Rodgers take the reins of his longtime team, the Green Bay Packers. Announcing this in March gave the team plenty of time to prepare for the transition to their young quarterback.

Jay Leno
On September 27, 2004 Jay Leno announced that he was leaving the Tonight Show in 2009 after having hosted the show for 17 years. It had been a long and successful run as host, but now he was stepping aside to let his successor in waiting Conan O’Brien take over NBC’s flagship late night talk show. Announcing it 5 years in advance gave NBC plenty of time to prepare for the transition to their new host.

Aaron Rogers
Drafted in 2005 by the Green Bay Packers after sliding from being a potential first overall pick to number 24. He became the heir apparent to Brett Favre in Green Bay, their longtime, future Hall of Famer quarterback. For 3 seasons he bided his time as backup, learning the Packers system and honing his craft. Finally after 3 seasons of waiting he was to get his chance to be “The Man” in Green Bay.

Conan O’Brien
Starting in 1993 he started as the host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, after David Letterman had defected to CBS. For years he was the heir apparent to Jay Leno at NBC, their longtime Tonight Show host. For years he bided his time in the 12:30am timeslot, building his following and honing his act. Finally, after years of waiting he was to get his chance to be “The Man” at NBC.

Favre
From the time Favre retired there were rumours of his desire to play for the hated Minnesota Vikings. As summer rolled on these rumours began to grab more traction and Favre announced that he wanted his old job back or to be traded to the Vikings. After showing up in training camp and generally creating an awkward situation for Aaron Rodgers and the entire Packers organization, Favre was traded to the New York Jets. This avoided the problem of trading Favre to their hated rivals the Vikings and facing him twice a season and at the same time gave Brett a fresh start with a new team.

Leno
After Jay had announced that he was stepping away from the Tonight Show rumours started popping up that about his desire to jump to broadcast rivals Fox. In the months preceding his departure from the Tonight Show NBC announced an unprecedented move, they were going to give Leno a primetime 10pm talk show 5 days a week. This avoided the problem of Leno competing head to head with NBC 5 nights a week and at the same time gave Jay a fresh start in a new timeslot.

Favre
After 7 unsuccessful months with the New York Jets, Brett retires again and asks for his unconditional release from the team following the season. At this point Brett is now a free agent and the rumour mill cranks up again about his going to the Minnesota Vikings. After a few months of waffling Brett finally signs on with Vikings and will now face how old team the Packers twice in the same season. In the end Brett got exactly what he wanted, to play for the Vikings.

Leno
After 7 unsuccessful months in the 10pm timeslot, NBC cancels The Jay Leno show. NBC decides to reorganize their late night lineup, attempting to shoehorn Jay Leno between the evening news and Conan’s Tonight show. In the end it looks like Leno will get that he wanted all along, his old show the Tonight Show back.

Conan O’Brien has refused to be part of moving the show to a later timeslot and at this point it looks like he’s the one who’s going to be moving to another network.  Sad really as NBC never really gave Conan a chance to grow a following for the Tonight Show, as Leno’s show offered a poor lead-in to the nightly news, which in turn weakened the Tonight Shows ratings.

It’s been about 6 months since my wife and I decided to go cable free after moving to our new house.  At first it was an experiment to see how we’d fare without the $60 cable bill.  After 6 months I’m to the point I would question why I would ever go back to subscribing to cable.

We are currently subscribing to Rogers Express service, which allots us 10mb service with a 60GB download cap.  The bonus to having Rogers internet without having cable is the fact that we actually do get a handful of channels, as Rogers is unable to shut off all of the channels and provide us with internet.  We get Global, CTV, CBC and Omni 1 and 2, along with a smattering of other channels.  This is great since much of the syndicated primetime shows appear on Global or CTV in Canada anyways.  Then we’re just left to fill in the gaps.

Our current setup in the house has a HTPC Hackintosh setup in the living room, then an Xbox running XBMC in the bedroom.  When I want to watch something on live TV that isn’t on our TV, I typically turn to Justin.tv.  Quite often you can find a live stream of popular shows just by searching their listings.  I find this is pretty indispensable for live sporting events.  Even if I had cable I would rarely be able to catch Senators or 49ers games because I live outside their broadcast market.  You have to pay for $250 packages like Centre Ice or Sunday Ticket, and even then you’re paying for tonnes of games you’ll never watch.  The football season has started and I’ve probably watched more 49er games this season then I have in the last 2 combined, even with the ability to timeshift and watch west coast NFL broadcasts.  No more suffering through Buffalo Bills games anymore for me.

If you want to watch episodes of shows that have already aired, you can’t really go wrong with a site like SurfTheChannel.  You can pretty much watch back episodes of pretty much every show on television.  There are also quite a few sites out there that allow you to stream DVD quality movies too, many of which are still in theatres.  Watch Movie Links has all sorts new releases, ready to watch.  No downloading or anything which is pretty sweet.  I think my favourite for doing this is NinjaVideo, always has quality streams and is organized really nicely.  They even have every documentary you might ever want to see which is awesome for those who might miss content from channels like Discovery or National Geographic.

The compromise to using online feeds is that you can’t always count on great quality for these feeds.  Some of them are fantastic, others are pretty crummy.  Going cable free isn’t for everyone, as sometimes it does require patience to find what you are looking for online.  But once you get used to how to use online streaming there are a world of options as to what to watch online.  I find nowadays I watch TV I actually want to see instead of being tied to TV schedules and whatever garbage might be on right now.   Not spending $60 a month on cable has been a great decision for us.

Last week I caught the premiere of the new ABC show FlashForward.  Now being a big LOST fan I was instantly interested in the show, mainly because I’m a sucker for serial dramas. Since LOST is ending this season you know they are working overtime to keep that fanbase engaged with new programming.

FlashForward Cast

The concept behind the show is interesting, as it pretty much works on the premise of what if everyone in the world blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and saw a glimpse of their own lives, 6 months into the future?  It definitely brings up some interesting plot quandaries.  What if you saw something bad?  Would you work to actively see if you could change the future?  What if you saw something you really wanted to see come to pass?  Would you do anything to make sure it would happen?

So far the show actually reminds me more of Jericho then LOST.  Given everyone in the world blacks out, there is loads of calamity and death that occurs, as planes and cars crash and there is just general chaos set upon the world.  Then the world is left to piece together what the hell actually happened, which is very similar to how Jericho started out. The show definitely has some mysteries to reveal right from the get-go, but I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near the depth and scope of intrigue that LOST has had.

So far I’m interested in it.  I know I also fall into this “once bitten, twice shy” when it comes to serial dramas.  I watched the post episode webcast on ABC.com with the producers of the show. Seems they have a similar 5 year plan alike to what LOST had. And they know where the whole story arc is going and how it’s going to end. I find this is pretty key information given how aimless a show like Heroes has become.

If it sounds like something that might interest you, I’ve embedded the Hulu video of the first episode, along with a Canadian link as well so you can get caught up before Thursday.

Canadian link from CTV

Awful acting, awful use of slang, low budget graphic overlay, awkward kissing, it’s all there in this commercial. This commercial is so awful I had to watch 5 times.

Last week a clip from the show late night comedy show Red Eye was posted on YouTube. The segment poked fun at the Canadian military’s planned 1 year break from deployments after we finish our commitments in Afghanistan.

With rather good reason Canadians have responded with virtually universal disgust over the whole thing. Obviously Canadians would be offended when someone implies that even though we’ve been supporting US war efforts for 8 years that they weren’t even aware we were at war. Canada is 1/10th the size of the US population-wise, so our 184 casualties would be comparable to 1840 US casualties, so demeaning our war efforts really tends sit rather poorly with Canadians. This is especially true given many Canadians feel that we’ve been left holding the bag, so to speak, in Afghanistan while the US went to pick a fight in another country.

But I’m not writing this blog to register my moral outrage on the matter. I’m writing it because I’m proud of how Canadians have reacted. Us Canucks are a rather passive bunch. We don’t get too fired up for anything collectively as a nation outside of hockey and yeah, well hockey. We generally have a good, self-deprecating sense of humour with regards to our national identity. There are so many pockets of Canada that are different and diverse culturally that we are rarely, if ever on the same page. So when someone manages to light a fire in the bellies of 30 million Canadians you know you really did something wrong. When you get a reaction like this out of someone like Tom Green, who is rarely, if ever serious, you can definitely say you managed to cross a line.

So to my fellow Canadians, I salute you. I never knew we had so much collective moral outrage.

Makes you realize how formulaic those CSI shows are. I’m still waiting for them to come out with CSI: Pinball Wizard.

Heroes is finally coming back from its long hiatus tonight. It was last on in the fall of 2007 before the writers strike, so it really has been awhile. I have to say I am so torn on this show, and from the people I’ve talked to about it, they feel the same. Heroes was so good in its first season, but in the second season it was pretty awful. Being a fan of LOST I know sometimes you have to wade through bad spells in the show to build to the good stuff, but really the writers strike cut the legs out from under Heroes at a really bad point. But the way the show ended last year it left such a bad taste in my mouth. So tonight I am putting the burden on the writers to draw me back in. Here is the NBC trailer for the new season, so make your own call on it.

The other day I just had an errant thought enter my head and threw it on Twitter.

I was pretty sure none of them had died, but I did have to Wikipedia and IMDB this fact just to make sure that this was in fact a true statement. I then get up this morning and hear on the radio that Golden Girl Estelle Getty, everyone’s favourite Sicilian Sophia Petrillo, had died.


According to her website she died at 5:35am Pacific Time, which if we do the math here and adjust PST to EST, it was 19 hours and 50 minutes after I made the comment on Twitter that she died. This is pretty freaky. I know before I posted it I thought I would probably be jinxing them, but 20 hours later? Guess it’s kinda like in baseball, where when you’re pitching a no hitter nobody on the bench is supposed to talk about it, just in case you jinx it. Guess this same rule now applies to old celebrities. And before I Twittered I didn’t have any idea of what the health of any of the Golden Girls was aside from reading the Wikipedia article that said Estelle Getty was too ill to appear on the 2003 reunion of the Golden Girls cast.

Peace the fork out Estelle, you will be missed.

In the last week there have definitely been a lot of people riled up about the Hockey Night In Canada theme. CBC announced that it was going to part ways with the company that licenses the iconic theme, which over the last 40 years has become part of the national fabric of this country. I understand why people would be upset, but in the end it’s just a song. You will still be able to tune in every Saturday night to see the Maple Leafs bungle their way through another game. That won’t change. What will change is now that iconic theme has been sold to the network with the deepest pockets, as today CTV ponied up the money to get the rights to the song for use on TSN.

The problem I see at hand is that this is a glaring example of what is fundamentally wrong with copyright here in Canada and around the world. How is it that something that was commissioned 40 years ago, by the CBC, has now been priced out of the grasp of our national network? Why is Dolores Claman, the composer of the piece, still getting paid our tax money 4 decades after she did any kind of work for the CBC? As a designer copyright has long irked me. I get payed, or commissioned, to do design work for clients. I’ve designed websites, brochures, stickers, pamphlets, wall hangers, pole signs, multimedia CDs, calendars, magazine covers and many other things where I have created custom art of my own creation and photography for my employers. I get paid a salary and that’s the end of it. I don’t get royalties when a client prints a logo I designed onto some letterhead. An artist, no matter how famous, doesn’t get a chunk of the action when their work goes to auction after they have originally sold their work. While I understand the purpose of copyright when it was initially created, it just now exists solely to line the pockets of licensing companies.

To me, the saddest part about all this is that Dolores Claman still made a mad amount of loot from all this. Do you think the person who designed the TSN logo is retired somewhere living off the ongoing profits generated from that? I doubt it.

There is a trend on television that I’ve been meaning to blog about for quite awhile. I am so fed up with shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Oprah’s Big Give. Corina was watching Oprah’s Big Give yesterday and it only reaffirmed what my thoughts on the show having just heard the premise and not the having actually watching the show. It’s all just a bunch of self-congratulation and corporate product placement.

I’ve watched a few episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and it never ceases to irritate me. While it’s great that they are helping needy people with their problems, it feels so phony when they go on shopping trips to Sears and everything in the show is just a product placement and an opportunity for corporations to write off charitable donations. They always build these bohemoth additions onto the house or just knock them down entirely and build an entirely new house. It borders on ridiculous. I can only imagine in these neighbourhoods how well that goes down when the television trailers leave and the 10, 20 or 30 other families in the same area wonder why they couldn’t get on the corporate handout gravy train. Most of these families just need a helping hand, not a million dollar home tricked out with HD televisions and industrial sized BBQs.

Part of what really grates on my nerves is all the self-congratulations and patting on the back. To me you shouldn’t need a marching band and free trips to Disney World to do something nice for someone. But then again it wouldn’t make for good television. The talking head segments where the team of builders say how good it feels to help this family out, or when they are moved to tears by the whole thing are just baloney. These people are just cogs in the corporate machine making fat cash. I’m sure it feels great to be well reimbursed for being professionally generous. And at the end of the day everyone feels good about themselves, especially the corporations and television networks for all the money they made in the process.

Related Links
The dark underside of Oprah’s Big Give
Lessons learned from ‘Oprah’s Big Give’