Tag: Television

Lehrer and Hart

The list goes on and on. As if they could fit another Vietnam War memorial wall, but this one, for broadcasting.

Someone observes that on campus, the dorm lounge during news hour is a quietest place to make a phone call.

I still remember when Peter Jennings, Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson  shared the ABC newscast.

NBC got two anchors, PBS two and CBS, just one. That’s 8 talking heads sharing pre-CNN Evening news prime time.

America has always had an appetite for news (and TV dinners) besides eating while driving.

Over-the-top pay services such as Netflix and soon, Apple and Google will take us, the audience, further down the road of our self-initiated programming. Combo number 1 (Panda video, consists of hard news, soft porn and targeted advertising etc…).

This paradigm shift is telling us that even seasoned broadcast journalists still can’t command digital native audience. TV viewing used to be a family affair. Now, news is what being sent and recommended by friends. We are transitioning from broadcasting to narrow-casting,

one-to-many to many-to-many (“followers”). Bin Laden raid was announced via a Tweet by, of all people, an engineer who wanted to take a vacation away from it all “can I catch some sleep now”!

My guess is we will end up getting the information via aggregators like Facebook or Alltop.com, the new priesthood of the information age.

BTW, LinkedIn starts publishing its own news headlines.

Black-and-white TV used to be the only “game” in town ( I grew up waiting for the sign-on at 6PM. The whole country turned on their TV sets to warm up with the Indian-head poster – I found out later, used by studio engineers to calibrate their white balance, and align broadcast signals).

As portrayed best by William Hurt in Broadcast News “what do you do when your life exceeds your dream”, we can now wish farewell to those veteran broadcasters with “what do you do when your retirement exceeds your entitlement”. They know when to hold, and when to fold. After all, they are the ones who have set the tone and the pace of conversation in America. Now the burdens are on those who try to sell soup, soap and cereal to know exactly which half of their marketing dollars fails. Again, someone observed that they should at least try Gagaville, a private-label site from Farmville before having bouncers on the set like Jerry Springer .

Before signing-off, I just want to quote Ishiguro through the observation of Madam (dean of “clones” in Never Let Me Go) “When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world.And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.” “That’s the way it is” once a nightly sign-off by Walter Cronkite,  America’s most trusted man.

Use it

Safeway doesn’t feel safe. Desert is now full of people ( from the media to law enforcement).

Last weekend Arizona shooting reminds me of “Under The Banner of Heaven” which revealed the intersect of religious occult and gun culture in the region.

It also highlights young people’s plight to make a name for themselves (in this case, committed a high-profile act of violence). On the contrary, it brought to mind an already high-profile figure trying to go the way of Buddha.

At least, Prince William tried to go rough even just for one night (to draw our attention to the plight of homelessness a year ago).

http://abcnews.go.com/International/prince-william-sleeps-streets/story?id=9401023

Whatever makes you sleepless at night, use it.

In “Unwanted”, a Vietnamese-American dentist-turned-author recounted his plight as a half-breed coming of age in post-war Vietnam. He turned tragedy into triumph (instead of having the raw stuff floating around day in and day out at his dental practice), rejection to acceptance.

We have heard of constructive criticism, tough love etc….

Now we hear about civilized discourse.

Immediately after a crisis, American went shopping, this time, for the same gun (sales went through the roof).

Hello? we each have our own hangup. Use it!

After being dropped cold-turkey into the 76 winter storm at Penn State, and got added into a Journalism class, I was told I would never make it (thanks prof!). Use it!

The closing shot for “the Social Network” (the movie) shows our protagonist press

“Send request” to friend his own girl friend. He built Facebook hoping to sign up just that person.

With all the energy (boosted by Energy Drink), the cheering at Superbowl

(and toilet Bowl), we as a nation have a lot of pent-up passion. Use it.

And for the 15%, mostly men,  the majority of whom in the now over-saturated construction sector, we can use the muscle. We have read about floods in Haiti, Australia, Vietnam, Brazil … which need infrastructure rebuilding. Can we put 2 and 2 together: we buy your stuff, but you hire our men.

Use them. Was it just me who see dots unconnected, and people unlinked?. I will turn on the TV to hear what President Obama has to say at the memorial service for the victims. I hope to hear his constructive ideas on how to turn tragedy into triumph, hopelessness into helpfulness. Tragedy? Use it.

Edit 1: The President concluded with “in the child’s eyes” inverse pyramid speech structure. He helped the nation to visualize a possible America, a new American Century, worthy of our children’s expectations. For me, it just seemed like yesterday that I watched the Twin Towers collapse live, on TV. Today they are burying a 9/11 baby. What a waste! Unless we all conspire to “use it”.  At least, we had a precedent in Mothers Against Drunk Driving movement (remember exhibition of  what’s left of a DUI car wreck?) That’s the power of visualization. The transforming power of “use it”.

Maggie, I still have something to say

Saw Rod Stewart on TV, mute out sound at the gym.

Still with the spiked up hair, shiny suit and swaying.

Staying power and loyal fan base.

My daughter asked “what’s that word to mean someone who because of him/her, you model after”. I tried “influencer”, “role model“, “mentor” and hit the note with “idol”.

Those are people we project ourselves onto. They sing for us, say for us, and hopefully act on our behalf.

In this wikileaky time, it’s harder for idols to go un-dethroned.

Traffic cameras at every stop, pop up ads at after every click and commercials followed after Rod Stewart (Dr Gregory, plastic surgeon). See I remember. The demographics (middle age women with purchasing power parity).

Saw a young blond girl holding the sign “homeless and hungry”  on 95 Highway.

New economy and old wound.

Two-tier society in Colombia exhibited in two Misses Colombia, one from the slum, the other the society.

Yet we still have the one and only Rod Stewart, still with something to sing (I got a kick out of you). Boombox or I-pod, his hoarse voice still comes through, assuring us that despite our ups and downs in life, there is still room for celebrating our humanity, starting with the heart and working our way out. When the center is right, you can rest assured that everything else is alright. That’s all our parents could ask from us, and I from my children. The rest, we say a silent Serenity prayer, “grant us wisdom to know the difference between that changeable and unchangeable nature within us”.  Maggie, love is unchangeable. Just its expressions. That’s what I want to say to you.

the art of showing

In Impressive First Impressions, author Vu Pham introduces the concept of “reset”.  By that he means, we constantly need to reset our first impressions according to each context and situation:  at work, at play, at home.

The same guy.  When he was at the top of his game, generated a different impression than when he is at the bottom. Still, in either case, he needs to press reset. (He who appears to be a winner often has the ball passed to him).

As Jackson Brown Jr. puts it, “opportunity dances with those already on the dancing floor”.

Showing up is difficult. Woody Allen went even further to ascribe 90% of success to showing up. The” Road Less Traveled” opens with a single sentence ” Life is difficult”.

When the book came out, it was a sensational bestseller.

Before the screen (first, second and third screen) permeates our lives. Another book came out to advocate a screen Sabbatical. e.g. turn off your TV, your computer and your phone on Saturday, for instance.

Our addiction to the screen fueled the economy of Asia Tigers, just as our addiction for oil, the Middle East nations.

These days, we don’t talk about being telegenic (reserved for the likes of  Peter Jennings). Instead, we talk about web presence,  our digital footprint, our online reputation etc..

As men traveled through the centuries leaving behind traces and tracks on the sand of time, so will our descendants with their digital fingerprints.

This is an exciting time to be alive. To show up, on and off-line. You need to press reset every time, to cultivate that impressive first impressions. Here is our chance to self-reinvent which only made possible this side of the web.

white balance

Digital TV is here. Selected reality represented by a series of 1’s and 0’s. I miss the Indian-head
poster TV studios used to put up to “white balance” and signal align their cameras before each broadcast. The jump from analog TV to digital TV will be more significant than the jump from B/W to color TV. This time, we got mobility and speed, not to mention
accuracy and security. In the old days, opera houses hired claque professionals to start a string of applause. With digital TV, Nielsen will have less work to tabulate audience response (and advertisers with collection) .

With digital TV i.e. 24/7 news cycle when you want, where you want, one no longer has to warm up the TV dinner and wait for Ted Koppel at 6:30 PM to tell us how many days (444)  there had been since US hostages were taken at the embassy in Tehran (79).
One of these days, I might even upload some digital video on YouTube, by far, the best of  Web 2.0 apps, in my opinion.
After all, it’s a tech-enabled global society, isn’t it? Satellite transmission (vertical upload) renders the concept of gatekeepers (one-way information flow) kind of obsolete (well, I purposefully left out fire walls and all that IT stuff. Go IT go!). Just make sure that what’s being uploaded meet the standards of public decency i.e. tasteful and respectful.

Whatever the means, we still abide by the Golden Rules: air that which we ourselves would like to view.