CES: It should be short for "Can't Even Sit!"...

I guess you can say that I've seen a lot and NOT seen a lot at CES so far. Seen a lot in the fact that I've roamed most of the convention center already. But not seen so much 'cause it's hard to keep my attention at any one thing for very long. My brain is on complete overload from all the gadgets and flashy TVs that inundate me left and right. Seriously folks, my head is drowning in a sea of tech-induced euphoria.

Though I've been keeping up with CES coverage online and basically following whatever the heck Gizmodo and Engadget are posting up, it is an entirely different thing to walk around with a mass of people all pushing and shoving in an orderly fashion to check out tech that they might not purchase, but drool over all the same.

As always, I'm learning a lot from this experience. For instance, no matter how super-flat that HDTVs are this year, someone in the crowd always asks "Is THAT really how thin they can get it? I thought it'd be thinner."

You find out that the "Booth Babes" aren't only pretty, but they know EVERY product that they are demonstrating. At least they sound like they know what they're talking about, which I can't quite say the same about the sales guys on the floor.

Places to sit down are scarce. Sure, they have couches and chairs smattered about somewhere, but they're never around when you need them. And when you do find a chair, albeit missing an armrest and looks like the Incredible Hulk left an imprint of his ginormous ass-cheeks in the cushion, you collapse in it anyway, relishing in the fact thay you're off your feet for the briefest of moments.

Some gadgets have unusual selling points. Samsung has created a camera that can withstand hot desert climates up to 112 degrees. That's great, 'cause It's good to know that if I'm trapped in Death Valley while on a shoot, I'm sure to die long before my camera does.

And most of all, I've discovered that for a technology convention that is forward concious about the environment and trying to be as "green" as possible, it sure as hell goes through A LOT OF PAPER! For maps, maps for the maps, books, the CES Daily report, Starbucks cups, and even paper printouts for registration, someone is printing and collating enough tree material so supplement a small industrial nation. There's also the electronic maps that people download, don't get me wrong, but don't think they aren't grabbing a dead-tree edition as a backup.

And there's 3 more days of this.

I'm putting in 2 more days myself before I cut-myself off cold turkey. Though I'll continue to explore the convention floor, I will probably leave this event still wondering:

Do we really need any of this junk?

Well, I guess a 90 inch flat plasma HDTV could be swell for "some" things... ;)

Shanghai: Flipping through channels on the 'ol Tube...

If you were to bring together Kung Fu and UFC, this is what you might get:

I’d Never Expect Christmas Sung By M.J.B...

Ever since I've been on this kick to catch clips with my DVR, The Today Show manages to amaze me with the musical guests they have on so early in the morning.

Although Mary J. Blige was on to promote her new album, she also did a rendition of an old classic Christmas tune that just simply blew me away. And I'm not even a big fan -- but if she ever decides to put out a Christmas album, I'll be in line to grab a copy.

Without further ado, here's MJB giving us a little holiday tune... ;) :

2007 Emmys: My Strange Highlights Of Last Night...

As some of you may or may not know, I sometimes attend the Emmy Awards.

Highlights in my mental scrapbook:

1. I accidentally walked right into Robert Duvall -- twice. "Excuse me," he'd say, as I apologized profusely. That man is a true gentleman -- to put up with my curse of clumsiness.

2. While finding an empty spot during a commercial break, Ron Jeremy sat behind me. I thought about introducing myself, but then I'd have to shake his hand, and sadly, I KNOW where it's been.

3. Watching Tony Bennett perform live -- on the award show and then at the Governor's Ball. That was a real treat.

4. Running into Jerry Ferrara (Turtle, from Entourage) at the Men's restroom. Hey, even stars have to tinkle sometime. But you don't always believe it until you see it for yourself.

5. And finally, trailing behind Chandra Wilson (Grey's Anatomy) while exiting out of the Shrine Auditorium. While she took some photos with a few crazy-obsessed fans, I was behind her in the photos -- it looked like I was part of her entourage. It made me feel "special".

Well, I think that's enough name-dropping. Thanks for allowing me to indulge my inner "Hollywood douchebag".

Back to regularly scheduled programming in a bit... ;)

o.g. 9/16/07

My TV P.O.V.'s: We Hardly Knew Ya... But Glad We Did

A question was posted at my site last week that asked why some good shows just never seem to take off. In my opinion, Firefly was one of those shows, and Mr. Whedon, I'd like to apologize for not catching on sooner. You were onto something, and I was too proud to give it a chance when it came around the first time. I won't make that mistake again.

Let me start from the beginning...

About two years ago, I'd heard that they were going to make "Serenity", the big screen adaptation to the canceled show Firefly, along with the original cast and a story that both welcomed the fans from the show and newcomers like me.

When the film came out, I was curious to see it because of all the hype I'd heard on TV, the Internet, Radio - what was this phenomena with such a devoted cult following? I went into the theater expecting to be entertained. But I didn't expect to come out of it in love with the rag-tag crew, who wanted nothing more than to carve a niche for themselves in the great grand universe.

I was hooked, bad. I went out and got the Firefly box set and watched it from start to finish, sometimes re-watching episodes just to see all the nuance that was injected into the scenes. And the dialogue flipping between English and Mandarin? It was fan-boy fantastic!

I couldn't stop wondering why this show never really caught on. You'd think with hits like Buffy and Angel underneath Whedon's belt, this "Neo-Noir Action-Adventure Space Western" couldn't possibly be that much of a hard sell. But indeed, it was.

Here's what I think happened - again, this is just my opinion:

1. Time Slot. Airing on Friday nights at 8 didn't seem to help it at all. The last successful Sci-Fi serial to air on a Friday night was the X-Files. Even Battlestar Galactica has moved out of Fridays, and it's following is pretty deep.

2. A Plethora of Mixed Genres. Is it Sci-Fi? Is it a Western? Is it Action/Adventure? Is it a Drama? Pulling from many different elements made the show interesting to watch, but to those that prefer a simpler template to frame their state of mind found the mixed genres confusing. One minute its funny, and another it takes on the seriousness of a Shakespearean tragedy. This show was definitely a roller coaster that suit a very niche audience.

3. Airing episodes out of sequence. For instance, episodes made after the Pilot aired BEFORE the Pilot episode, which made jumping into the series a bit difficult. Without a solid foundation of exposition, the audience is left to scramble as to who is who, and what they are doing there. A slow reveal is fine, but when relationships get muddled, that's when you get into trouble.

4. Low advertising support from the Network. Early ads for Firefly seemed minimal, as if there was a lack of support for the fledgling program. Although a fan base was building, it might not have been raising the ratings fast enough - a warning sign that the show might be costing more money than it's worth. Then again, putting up a few ads to let people know what time it's on could have helped.

5. Just plain ahead of it's time. Mixed Genres and Extended-family dramas is now fairly commonplace i.e. Desperate Housewives, Lost, Jericho, etc... At the time, tastes in television skewed toward subject matter that is more grounded in reality than in Sci-Fi Space epics (of course, Battlestar Galactica is proof that you can be ahead and at the right place at the same time).

Although Firefly never completed a season, it continues to live on outside of the television medium - it's already been a film, further comic book series' are planned for it, and a RTS video-game is still in the works.

This all kind of reminds me of a show 40 some years ago that got canceled at its peak - it was a show about explorers venturing into the far reaches of space while exploring the inner depths of humanity along the way. It had a pretty strong following, but just not enough pull to keep it on the air.

That show, was called Star Trek. And look how that concept turned out... ;)

My TV P.O.V.'s: ABC could learn a thing from FOX...

Momentum in serial dramas is crucial, if not only for marketing and advertising concerns, but simply for the fact that people like their shows to play as continuously as possible with very little reruns, except when shows take breaks between the holiday season and for special events.

I was thinking about this recently, concerning the show Lost. Lost demands a great deal from the viewer - commitment, reasoning, perception, and a whole lot of patience when it comes to deciphering clues each week as to the mystery behind what is happening to the people trapped on the island. The fans have spoken, and they really dig the show - they just don't dig getting 3 episodes at a time, followed by 6 reruns.

Fickle as we are, we sometimes forget that creating television takes a lot of hard work, long hours, and tons of creativity that doesn't come easy to the writers who have to come up with this stuff. However, Network programming schedules do influence this flow a bit, and that's why I think ABC could learn a thing about how FOX does their programming.

For instance - 3 years ago, the show 24 was running into the very same problem - it would air about 4 episodes, and then go into repeats for 3 weeks. With a show where each episode represents one hour of the day that's taking place, by the end of the Season, one feels like they've been watching 24 for 2 years! FOX also noticed a decline in viewership because of this, and realized that if they didn't do something soon, this flagship drama was going to set sail very quickly toward "Hiatus Island".

So to keep the energy of the show flowing, FOX rearraged the time slot and the season's start date to January so the show would play CONTINUOUSLY all the way through to May, with zero - count'em, zero - repeats. That means they would air 22 episodes (they've figured out that they can air two-hours back to back to count as one long episode, and this year the Season Premiere actually lasted 4 hours but it counts as only two episodes) that could keep the audience excited about what is happening, and ultimately, make sure that the action and suspense didn't wane as the season progressed.

FOX's strategy worked. New fans were being drawn to the non-stop drama and action and old fans were coming back 'cause they could feel the high stakes again, just like in Season 1. People started caring whether or not Jack Bauer was really going to make it out alive, and how he was gonna save the day.

In ABC's defense, I do believe that they heard the gripes about Lost's constant reruns that were occuring in Season 2. ABC's current fix of airing 6 episodes last fall and the next 16 this Spring - uninterrupted - is a step in the right direction, but will it be enough? Can the show capture back our interests as if time hasn't passed at all? I guess we'll just have to wait and see, if we can really "find" ourselves "Lost" again... ;)

SO -- What do you think? Are there better strategies that the Network execs have missed? Or am I just dreaming when it comes to "Network Scheduling Utopia"?