TV Guide Evolves

Last100 put a post up yesterday on TV Guide’s new online video guide, so I decided to check it out myself. Given all of the video search sites available, I didn’t have high expectations for something novel, but I was suitably impressed. TV Guide’s layout is fantastically simple and gave me exactly the information I … Read more

10 New Pilots Headed For A Crash Landing

marketing-shift-logo.pngIt’s not very politically correct, but I’ve always been fascinated by dead pools. I’ve never actually participated in one, but there is something about wagering on life and death that appeals to the degenerate gambler in me.Since I’m pretty sure that participating in a dead pool is illegal in San Francisco, I suppose that I will have to live with the next best thing, dead TV pools. Marketing Shift is putting on a contest where they are asking readers to try and pick ten of the new shows, that you think will be off the air by the end of the fall season.

The winner of the contest will be the first person to have all ten of their picks canceled. The winner will receive a little bit of link love from MarketingShift.com, but the loser ends up with an internship at Cat World the CW ;)

If you want to see a list of all the candidates for the pool, you’ll find it on Marketing Shift’s website, but here are my picks for their first annual TV dead pool contest:

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Free Fall Season Online Premieres Reviewed

It was a long and boring summer for television this year, but with the fall TV schedule just around the corner, I’m starting to get excited about some of the new shows that are popping up. At the start of the summer, I thought that I would have lots of exciting new shows to check out, but with the exception of Burn Notice (which is freaking awesome), this summer’s crop of new shows was a major let down for me. Too much reality TV and not enough compelling fresh content.

Normally, the start of the Fall TV schedule is a pretty busy time for me. If I don’t catch a show from the very beginning, there is a good chance that I’ll never tune in, so I try to catch as many of the pilots as possible. I won’t end up subscribing to all the shows, but I like to check all of the new ones out, so that I can figure out which ones deserve a season pass. This year, this task got a little bit easier because a couple of the studios have been making some of their pilots available early.

Last week, NBC released free pilot downloads on Amazon’s Unbox service, for 4 of their upcoming shows. Not to be outdone, CBS decided to release an episode of the Big Bang Theory early. Over the weekend I checked out all five of the early releases and had some mixed reviews on the new shows.

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Web-Only “Quarterlife” to Debut November 11th

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This is what I’ve been waiting for. Something good to watch on the Web. Seriously, with the amount of bad television churned out by the networks these days, I’m all for having a few professionals take the plunge to produce for an online-only audience. Last week, MySpace announced that producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (Thirty Something and My So-Called Life) will debut Quarterlife on its site on November 11th. The show will not be seen on regular networks, only online.

While I don’t know if Quarterlife will live up to my TV-watching criteria (it doesn’t have Timothy Busfield after all), I’m extremely happy that professional producers are willing to give Internet-only distribution a try. Zwick and Herskovitz are almost sure to lose money, but they have a chance to convert some key TV-watchers to the Web and make the platform viable for other producers in the future. I could care less about watching TV online per se, but I’d do almost anything for good content, and it’s clear that producing quality TV for the networks is getting harder and harder.

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More Mall-time Fun

We hit the mall today to run a few errands (and fondle the Nano “fatty” again) and ran across a Wii kiosk with 6 stations. They’ve been here (Montgomery Mall) about a week as part of a nationwide 25 mall tour. I got some hands on time with the new Metroid… Let me tell you … Read more

I Saw Bionic Woman (and I’m not impressed)

In case you haven’t heard, Amazon Unbox is offering free downloads of various NBC fall premieres. Being a TiVo owner, I opted to watch Bionic Woman on television (versus PC or portable) and as the title indicates, I wasn’t overjoyed. Perhaps a two hour premiere or two-parter would have served the plot better – things … Read more

Fall (and beyond) Television Premieres

Brent Evans has put together two comprehensive lists of TV show premieres: new and returning shows, new shows with synopsis. I’ve been down on most network television series for awhile now… Between premature show cancellations and crazy multi-week/month breaks, I’m afraid to invest much time in new series and generally have felt used. Brent pretty … Read more

TiVo.Com Survey

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I was chatting with one of my blogging buddies who mentioned I should check out The 4400. We had caught the first season on DVD and enjoyed it, but I heard or read something that implied the later seasons weren’t as good – and we moved on. However, he said he’s enjoyed all of them… So we’re going to give it a shot and before we miss more episodes, I headed on over to tivo.com for some online scheduling action.

As you can see from the image above, I was hit with a survey. Before getting into the nitty gritty of it, they asked why I was visiting the site. Apparently I gave the wrong answer because the survey abruptly concluded. Bummer.

So what could tivo.com use? We had an interesting suggestion the other day for some badge creation tools that hook into our units and display our top Season Passes and such. I think we could even go a little simpler by displaying our model(s) — though, they should be customizable. Everyone wants to brag about the size of their hard drive, right?

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