Fans of Jason Castro, the third runner up in the 2008 season of American Idol now have two new ways get their fix and pass the time until his debut album is released…
Continue reading at Blogcritics.org
Published at BC today: HBO’s True Blood Soundtrack/DVD to Hit Shelves May 19
April 16, 2009 by
All the details on the season one DVD set, the soundtrack and the permiere of season two are here in this little newsflash article. Read all the details…
Crab Fisherman the New Cowboys?
April 15, 2009 by
I’ve been waiting for months for the new season of Deadliest Catch. So, the very moment Simon was done giving it to Lil’ (undeserved I might add) I flipped the channel and settled in for my guilty pleasure — High drama on the Bering Sea.
I quickly remembered that no one is better at teasing and raising the stakes than the Discovery Channel. In those opening moments, they had us believing The Wizard was going down and taking its captain –Keith Coburn–with it, as well as his crew. We still don’t know what the deal is with the orange life suit floating in the water and the coast guard guy yelling about their being a body in there. They never got to the part where we hear Captain Kieth telling his wife over the phone “thanks for waiting with me,” but we did see that he, in fact, got hit in the head with his boat while diving to make a repair himself. But it’s that kind of self made, do it yourself, grab life by the horns attitude that attracts me to this show–and its captains.
Capt. Sig of the Northwestern
It occurred to me as I was watching last night these guys are really the perfect romantic hero. You know, sort of like the cowboy of the old west. Braving the forces of Mother Nature and the mechanical pitfalls of thier boats as well as their arch nemesis the Bering Sea just to make a living. They may blow up at their crews (most of which contain family) but beneath all the gruff we often get peaks at their hearts of gold. They comprise more than a fleet, but a family. They care about each other and support each other whether they are fighting blood clots and embolisms (Captian Phil) or waiting for biopsy results (Captain Keith).
Too bad most Captains are superstitious about having women on the boats, hu?
Now… I’m sitting on the edge of my seat, waiting for next week so I can see what all those teases were really about.
The (Non-)Changing Face of Daytime Television
April 2, 2009 by
When I saw the first reports that Guiding Light was ending its 72 year run, my first thought was what an awful April’s Fool joke. It just couldn’t be true. Could it?
Not that I’ve ever been a particularly big fan of this show in general, but I’ve been a daytime fan since I was teenager. The daytime drama has been around since before television—many of them, like Guiding Light, started on the radio. How is it that they are in such serious trouble now?
I touched on these issues last year in the MTR@GH column I used to write at Blogcritics.org. The gist of the article was that if Daytime really wanted to succeed in the ever changing television market, they needed to look to their prime-time counterparts, and in particular what General Hospital did with their Soapnet spinoff General Hospital Night Shift. In short, they needed to pick up the pace and respect the time and intelligence of their viewers.
Back when soaps got there start, the audience was the same as it is now: women. The difference is, 72 years ago most women were housewives, caring for their homes and raising their families. It’s why the show’s sponsors were soap companies (and how the serials got the still-popular nickname.) These women had one ear on the radio, or one eye on the TV, while they cooked, cleaned and did laundry. The programs were a combination of engaging stories and background noise to fill the day. It didn’t matter that the plots crawled along at a snail’s pace, or that they sometimes concluded with back-from-the-dead scenarios.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to insult the intelligence of those early viewers, quite the contrary. Life was slower, so the stories could be as well, and viewers were looking for an escape from everyday life. Remember the popularity of Dark Shadows and its vampires?
Time passed and the audience changed. The number of women who stay at home has dramatically decreased and those who do have the luxury have busy days to correspond with their children’s now faced-paced lives. Between soccer practices and ballet classes, there is little time for anyone to sit down in the afternoon and indulge. Thank heavens for Soapnet, VCRs, and DVRs, but even with the extravagance of fast-forwarding through commercials, today’s audiences want shows that are as fast paced as our lives, stories that are engaging, realistic, and are first and foremost about what women care about: romantic and family relationships.
What GH:NS did that was so revolutionary was took a basic plot line, that would run for a 13 episode duration. Within each hour long episode they moved the main plot forward while running a b-plot line that would begin and end within that hour. It’s very similar to what is done with the medical and crime dramas that fill prime-time TV and it works.
Am I saying that if Daytime tried to adopt a prime-time theme, the ratings would shoot up? It couldn’t hurt. And with ratings dropping like rocks with every quarter, something has to change.
