Clarkaggedon

Rumor is he's in. More posts later. But get used to constant Clarkage, because the General is the shit. Go take a look, do some reading, and find yourself nodding. A lot.

Bue Beetle #11

Preview up at Newsarama. Jaime and some New Gods team up in space to fix a planet.

New Blogger

Just upgraded, and so it'll be a while before the sidebar is reconstructed. If you're one of my regular sidebar inhabitants, drop a line at kfmonkey@gmail.com and remind me.

... Ninjas

I am completely convinced I will never write anything even vaguely this interesting again.

My Ninja Tale -- Einstein and Feynman vs. Ninjas. And it gets weirder. Available from finer comic shops. Please, go forth and exchange filthy monies for it. You will enjoy.

Scrivener Software

I've been a bit giddy since I downloaded Scrivener, the "writer's workspace" software. Are my pdf's on tactical nukes now linked to the Apocalypse essay? Yes. Do I now have reference photos as I design my storyboards? Woo yes. Did I just break my new screenplay outline into segments, write the individual scenes, then rejoin them effortlessly when exporting? Oh yes.



The screenwriting functionality is primitive at best, but I'll tweak it a little and see how an export to Movie Magic Screenwriter goes. Report on that in a day or two. But generally, this thing has me giggling like a 12 year old girl sucking on a My Little Pony hash pipe.

Check it out here.

(h/t Lifehacker)

STFU SOTU

Did some of those claims of success during the State of the Union sound a little ... odd? The fine fol at, surprisingly, the Washington Post take you through the speech and point out where the President may have been, errr, stretching things a a bit.

In his speech, Bush argued that "free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies -- and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance." He also said that terrorist groups "want to overthrow moderate governments."

In the two of the most liberal and diverse societies in the Middle East -- Lebanon and the Palestinian territories -- events have undercut Bush's argument in the past year. Hezbollah has gained power and strength in Lebanon, partly at the ballot box. Meanwhile, Palestinians ousted the Fatah party -- which wants to pursue peace with Israel -- from the legislature in favor of Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction and is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department.

(h/t AmericaBlog)

Hagel-heads

And hey, let's never say we at the Kung Fu Monkey aren't bi-partisan ... gotta love the Chuck.



If you've read Petraeus' new COIN Manual, the escalation is not enough to make a difference (you need 120k troops just in Baghdad). That is, the manual written by the guy running the escalation contradicts the escalation. If you even read Kagan's original plan for the escalation, he said we'd need twice as many troops as we're sending, and they'd need to stay longer than they're staying. I hope I'm wrong, but once again we need to repeat the great truism of military history:

Hope.

Is.

Not.

A.

Plan.

Webb-head

Credit where credit's due, I bitched and moaned about Democrats constantly wearing the Frasier Crane mask. Webb brings it old school. Strong narrative, two and only two points, lots of emotional connection with the audience in order to fix those two points in their minds. It's like watching Yastrzemski hit.

And yeah, sure he's a "conservative" progressive. The man's practically wearing a "No War But Class War!" armband.

Dibs on coining "Webb-heads" as the moniker for the inevitable "Draft Webb" members, for those pushing for a VP slot in 2008 or his run in 2012. Hmm, I wonder if I can start making t-shirts now ...

(EDIT: To clarify, I don't actually support Webb in a run at this time or even 2012. I'm a big believer in "This is my rifle", and having Senators and Congressmen who stay Senators and Congressmen form part of the ideological fusillade is vitally important. A man with these priorities is desperately needed in the Senate, and I hope he enjoys a long career there.)

Repost -- The Crazification Factor

I had my head down, so I missed that Bush apparently, in one poll, broke the 28% approval mark. I only know this because I got a shitload -- and that is the proper term -- of e-mails requesting a repost of this post. And, seeing as I blew off the night actually with Tyrone, watching The Devil's Backbone, and Obama declared this week ... well, it seems like synchronicity's come a'callin'

From Oct 7, 2005, the original "Crazification Factor" post:


John: ... I mean, what will it take? That last speech literally made no sense. It was crazy drunken bar talk! Islamic radicals are like COMMUNISM?! (gets speech on laptop) If we don't fight terrorists in Iraq they'll build a fundamentalist terrorist state stretching from Spain to Indonesia? What the fuck? Even assuming Spain, which last time I checked is 95% Roman Catholic, goes down, you gotta assume France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, all eight hundred million Hindus in India, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore would be somewhat of an obstacle.

Tyrone: To be fair, you're going west-to-east. Maybe he meant a fundamentalist terrorist state stretching from Spain to Indonesia going east-to-west. Going that way, there's only the U.S. The President could be warning us that if we don't prevail in Iraq, the United States will become a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist state.

John: ... a little oblique, isn't it?

Tyrone: The man is nothing if not subtle.

John: (calling up map on laptop) You know, I guess if you start in Spain, swing hard south through northern Africa, you got Algeria, Libya there, Egypt, cross the Red Sea and you're in the Middle East ...

Tyrone: From there, if you spot him the Indian Ocean and India, you're in Indonesia.

John: I am not spotting him eight hundred million Hindus. I call shenanigans.

Tyrone: And again, I must point out Bush said "the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, allowing them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region." That's what the militants believe. They may just be delusional. He says that himself: "Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme -- and they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed."

John: But he's citing that desire as a basis for our strategy. You can't cite your enemy's delusional hopes as a basis for a rational strategy. Goals don't exist in a vacuum, they're linked to capability. David Koresh was utterly committed to being Jesus Christ. See how far that got him.

Either Bush is making strategy based on a delusional goal of his opponent, which is idiotic; or he's saying he believes his opponent has the capability of achieving this delusional goal, which is idiotic. Neither bodes well for the republic.

Tyrone: Reading here, the speech boiled down to two points --

John: Who cares? The Spain-to-Indonesia thing should automatically invalidate the whole speech. I don't care how good your investment advisor is, he can spend three hours reviewing mutual funds, as soon as he says "And of course, we can put your money into the Easter Bunny's Egg Upgrades", he is out of --

Tyrone: -- two points. First, Iraq is the keystone in the struggle between the West and Islamic Fundamentalism.

John: Which, if we accept the Administration's own argument, means that invading and destabilizing Iraq with insufficent post-war planning (and all that entails), not enough personnel, and shitty equipment for that personnel was the biggest screw-up in the War on Terror.

Tyrone: He's the President: if he says it, it must be true. Second, Bush says we have made a lot of progress in stopping al-Queda plots. Look: "Overall, the United States and our partners have disrupted at least ten serious al Qaeda terrorist plots since September the 11th, including three al Qaeda plots to attack inside the United States. We've stopped at least five more al-Qaeda efforts to case targets in the United States, or infiltrate operatives into our country."

John: What are they counting for those wins? Are they counting guys like Padilla?* This is all very gooey, like how we've killed like, nine of Osama Bin Laden's #3 guys.

Tyrone: Being #3 in Al-queda is like being a "creative vice president" at a Hollywood studio. There are dozens of them ... and they are expendable. Listen, don't do this, you're just getting worked up. Have another mozzarella stick.

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is --

Tyrone: 27%.

John: ... you said that immediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgment. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?

Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.

John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?

Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?

John: ... a bit low, actually.

Tyrone: (shrugs) Probably right, then. Speaking of Obama, I need to get t-shirts printed up to sell.

John: I can do that on the web. What do they say?

Tyrone: Don't You Dare Kill Obama

John: How about Don't You Dare Kill Obama (... and we know you're thinking about it)

Tyrone: Niiiiice.

John: Or You Kill Obama and WE WILL BURN SHIT DOWN

Tyrone: Even better. Nobody wants their shit burned down.

John: Glad to help.

Tyrone: I'm having you taken off the list for when the revolution comes.

John: ... there's really a list --

Tyrone: Oh yeah. Hell yeah.

Seanachai, and How to Succeed in Evil

Only recently have I been lured into the podcast section of iTunes, primarily for more Spanish lessons. But an interesting email's led me to the Seanachai and his stories. Seanachai is the Celtic word for "storyteller", a term I've both used and had tossed in my lap more than once in the finest bar in Montreal, Hurley's. Finest. Bar. In the CITY. When I die, heaven is Hurley's with Liam Callaghan on stage. (Jesus, Liam, get a goddam webpage up)

Although the bite-sized stories are intriguing, the interesting bit concerns How to Succeed in Evil, Patrick's tale of a business consultant in the world of supervillains. He developed it first as a podcast primarily to get interest in the comic he was planning -- it zoomed past that, though, and is being developed for television by actual Suited Humans with Bags of Filthy Monies. All from wee three minute, well-produced podcasts.

Warren, a while ago, took submissions from musicians. I'll open up the comments to any and all pimpage of storytelling podcasts. We'll do a post later this week, after I've had a chance to sample, and throw up a few recommendations.

I sat tonight in the screening room of CAA's massive new Death Star headquarters and watched Wil Wright explain the new laws of content and community. I then listened as no less than ten people walked past me, shaking their heads and declaring, almost proudly, that they didn't get it. I get it -- places like CAA and Hollywood will always have their place, like great money seas. But you can fish the rivers and make a living, soon, I think.

R2 and Chewie for teh Win

This is Geek Level Nine, but damn. Thanks to Phillylist, I find this, and I gotta say -- wow. Just ... wow. Star Wars Episodes 4-6 re-examined in context of 1-3, and much like the legendary recut of Episode 1, this guy's take on the Star Wars mythos is AU's more satisfying, particularly from a screenwriter's standpoint.

Anyone who can convincingly argue R2-D2 is the mastermind of the Rebellion is aces in my book. Nicely done, Keith.

The Doctorow is In

Sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow's new short story collection, Overclocked is out and is a one fine piece of science-fictioning. My Lovely Wife's enthusiasm for it is so blatant that it actually triggered the long-dormant "hey, are you reading another writer in our bed?" twitch. I urge all of you to buy the book. But, then again, you don't have to -- as usual, Cory has offered the entire text in downloads and in some cases podcasts. For free.

Hack it, remix it, make mini-comics, send them to your friends. Write songs using the dialogue, make machinima -- whatever. Why does Cory do this? Because he believes, as I do : "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

Downloads here. My favorite is Anda's Game. Enjoy.

Going ... Going ... Gonzales

Attorney General Gonzales got hauled in front of the Senate Judiciary committee this week. Ahhhh, Senate committees actually doing their jobs of oversight. It's like I'm living in America again. I'm sure the feeling will pass.

Anyway, my beef is not really with Mr. Gonzales. It just, when you look at the news that we'll now try terror suspects with hearsay and coerced evidence, without allowing their defense to see government evidence --

-- or the weird mid-term purge of prosecutors who were all, coincidentally, investigating political corruption --

-- or his bizarre position on habeus corpus:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

(See Article 1, Section 9 for why this is vaguely insane) --

-- or how the warrantless wiretapping system that was so vital it needed to be done outside FISA has now, lickety-split, been brought under the court's jurisdiction ... except that Congress isn't allowed to see the conditions under which it's legitimized. And all this just two weeks before the first case regarding the program goes to court (seriously, there are like five just crazification level contradictions in there) --

-- it's just that, as we all know I don't care for the electoral college. I also favor public financing of elections. And several commentors made it clear that wanting these changes shows such reckless disregard for the Constitution, I might as well roofie the document, have my way with it and dump it in a ditch by the highway. The outrage!

Yet Cheney and Gonzales have dropped the Constitution into a hole in the White House basement and are currently dancing naked around the pit, penises tucked between their legs, screaming "It rubs the lotions on its Amendments!" at the shuddering, terrified document, and there's nary a peep.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Bonus points for Senator Pat Leahy on the Arar case:

Leahy: "We knew damn well if he went to Canada he wouldn't be tortured. He'd be held and he'd be investigated. We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured."

Syria, of course, being our enemy for helping insurgents in Iraq and backing Hizbollah, but not so much our enemy that we can't send people to get tortured there ... damn this makes my head hurt.

4GM: NATPE Notes and mini-DVD's

The wonderful Alice in Wonderland -- who made me eat raw frikkin' rutabagas last Friday, which my Irish red-meat-and scotch-trained stomach is just barely digesting now -- is at the National pow-wow of panicking television producers and executives. Some interesting notes on tech and snippets of a keynote by Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame.

EDIT: Mad Bill over at DISContent has pointed out that the first four episodes of 24 are out today on DVD. Such mini-issues -- Bill cunningly calls them "bump" releases -- have long been a crucial part of what I saw as the new model for television in both release and financing. The short-term financial bumps will replace the long-term massive cash infusion that's ordinarily fronted for the long, dinosauric 22 episode seasons.

This is why I'm never stumped by the question "who will pay for the TV of the future?" Markets will out, and savvy mainstream producers will adapt, intentionally or not.

Salvage

It's flying by on TMC, but I want to toss a compliment to the little indie horror flick Salvage. Worth putting on the Netflix queue -- surprisingly well acted, a great play-fair mystery. Not monstrously complex, but a nice little jab to the gut. Couple really great creep-out scenes. That's the point, actually, they manage to pull off what very few American horror movies have any feeling for -- creepiness. Has a Session 9 vibe to it ( not quite in the same league, but hell -- Session 9 remains one of the great under-rated horror flicks of the last ten years).

Salvage won't change your life, but you'll come out the end wondering who the hell the Crook Brothers are and why they're directing in West Virginia. Well done.

Brave & Bold #3

Won't mean much to most, but this is a frikkin' George Perez cover, folks.

January Index-Fu

Starting off a new year, so let's update the index page:

The Semi-Famous Posts:
Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factor (Koufax nominee)
"Wait, Aren't You Scared?"
Bar Talk: A Bartending Story
Lions led by Donkeys (the most viewed post here, I believe)
I Miss Republicans (nominated for a Koufax)
LOST: You Uncurious Motherf*ckers

Now the updated general list

Stand-Up
Stand-Up is Tricksy
Boats Johnson and the Standing Ovation

Conversations with Tyrone (yep, we now get requests):
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
#436: I Love Lucy -- Issue Zero! The Origin Issue!
Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factor (Koufax Finalist)
Lunch Discussions #213: Canaries and Meth
Lunch Discussions #349: And Sometimes The're Non-Starters
Lunch Discussions #463: The T-Shirt Sales Alone
Lunch Discussions #115: Better than Milk and Cookies
Lunch Discussions #450: "I Know How to Treat a PetroPower, Baby..."

Comics and Movie Geekery:
How to Save the Movie Theater Industry
America at 24fps
Fandamentalism
The famous "Geek Hierarchy" Chart
Moral Advantage: Gamer
Comics: Year of the Bummer
Comics: Womb Crazy!
Comics: Sweet Four-Color Vengeance
SPOILERS -- the Interview with God

New Media Writing (Rage against the Studio Machines, Baby):
4th Generation Media
Video Ipod: 4GM Baby Steps
Where Anime Gets it Right
4GM: Perception Wars
4GM: And Network Television Dies Right ... Now
4GM: Nobody Gets Rich, Everybody Gets Paid

Writing:
Writing Life
Writing: Beginning
Writing: Whose Viewpoint?
Eternity Has Residuals
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.1)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 2)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 3)
TV: Corner Gas
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.4)
Writing: Software
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 5)
Writing: Plot and Story
Writing: How Small a World?
Writing: Q&A #1
Writing: Q&A #1 Followup
Writing: You Don't Need Pg. 11
Writing: Agents & Managers
Writing: The Pitch
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Background
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Prep
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - The Room
Writing: Screenwriting The Sequence Approach - Book Review
Writing: Action Sequences
Writing: Characters and Race
Writing: The Freelance Episode #1
Writing: The Freelance Episode #2
Writing: The Freelance Episode #3
Writing: Crafty TV - Book Review

Our attempt at screenwriting academia:
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt.1)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 2)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 3)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 4)

Global Frequency
It's a "Global" Frequency Now
Miranda is ... annoyed
One Last GF Question
GF wow
GF Reviews and E-mails
GF Update #1

The True Geek Conversations(tm)
#3892: Batman vs. Punisher
#651: Catwoman Edition
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
#436: I Love Lucy -- Issue Zero! The Origin Issue!

Politics:

The "Liberal Hollywood, Not Quite" Series:
I WISH Hollywood Was That Organized
Just. Stay. Down.
Path to 9/11

The Latest Rants:
George Bush is Leeroy Jenkins
"Wait, Aren't You Scared?"
Bar Talk: A Bartending Story
Lions led by Donkeys (the most viewed post here, I believe)
The Murder Rate in Baghdad
Flunking Out of the Electoral College
Electoral College #2: I Hate That Goddam Map
Electoral College #3
FISA in One Syllable Words
Colbert Commentary: Why Tell the Jokes?
Pull-Out in 2007
Defense Against Celebrity Marriage Amendment
Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factor
One Angry Feingold
Rule of Law? Over There, Behind My Socks
Al-Quaker
The George Who Cried Wolf
Oversight
New Year's Resolution
The Half-Assed President
This is Technically Child Abuse
Dissent

The Rest:
Who's Your Daddy, Broward County?
I Miss Republicans (nominated for a Koufax, spiffy!)
Spongiform Sexuality
Win Kamchatka, Win the World
Oh. Oh, Canada.
Gay Marriage
Activist Judges
Will of the People - (the inter-racial marriage/gay marriage polling stats)
I will Punch Florida in the Goddam Neck
SPOILERS! -- the Interview with God
Swearingen for Senate
You Can Know Jesus ...
Learn to Say Ain't
Senate Quicksand
Learn to Say Ain't - Feedback & Criticism
That Ironic Smell
"Toxic Spiritual Nature" ...
The Groom Grinds a 360!
The President and Intelligent Design
Hybrids and Hypotheses
Iraq and Roll
Booming Babies Still Want Bidey
57% of Americans are Traitors
I'm All Out of Reasonable
'ellllooooo Clinton!
Somehow We Have Grown Too Small for our Britches
Commander in Chief
"You are on the Global Photoshop"
Bernard McGuirk is a BIG MAN

Fundraising
Army Emergency Fund - Total
Katrina Relief - Total
Pakistan earthquake Relief - Total
Fisher House - Total

... and, just because it was always my favorite:

Top 10 John Wayne Titles That Could Also Be Porn Titles.

Thanks for visiting. And leave with the assurance that anything you find interesting or amusing -- that was an accident.

Shorter Bush

You know, some people are rattled by this:

Pressed on why he thought this strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back: “Because it has to.”

They search for the best way to describe a President who engages in military policy opposed by his Joint Chiefs and contradicted by his own brand-new counterinsurgency policy, who doesn't seem to understand the difference between goals and strategy, recycles last year's "Plan for Victory" with more troops, and is apparently hell-bent on starting a war with Iran ... a man incapable of calculating risk versus reward, or even understanding that hope is not a plan ...

The geeks have it cold. The rest of you just won't get it, but --



George Bush is Leeroy Jenkins, baby.

I so want the t-shirt with a picture of Bush and Leeroy's name under it. That video summarizes in two minutes what's it felt like watching Bush for the last six years.

Bonus serious links:

Juan Cole comments

US Troops hit an Iranian Consulate in Kurdish territory

Troops for the surge will come from Afghanistan

Now the number of attacks on troops is "classified"

There seem to be issues with equipment for the new guys, too.

(UPDATE: wow, heavy linkage. Here's the latest Index Page for you new folk. Welcome to the geekery)

4GM: Nobody gets Rich, Everybody Gets Paid

I think it's worth pulling some of the comments out of the last post and using them to springboard forward. I'm still beating one last rewrite into the ground, so this essay'll be a bit rambling. Apologies in advance.

First off, let's not think that the digital storage TV is going to be an immediate replacement -- it'll be a long, loooong side-by-side evolution with whatever the hell else will occur in the medium. I mean, look, it was only this year that there are more DVD players than VCR players in American homes. Barely. Like you, when I saw that stat, I pulled a full-on Jon Stewart "WHAAAA?" And those are two techs that are -- from the consumer standpoint -- practically identical.

So much of this, of course, is personal perception. While I don't think that most people care about DRM, Doctor Memory and Kirk raise good points -- most people don't care about DRM until it bites them in the ass, and then they care a lot.

I would counter that a.) they don't seem to have cared enough to stop Apple from hitting one billion downloads and b.) I think you'll see DRM taking some heavy hits in the industry, as fewer jobs depend on defending old models. A fairly big part of the industry's change will come from the changing nature of the online entertainment execs in the studios as time passes. DRM that interferes with standard (and I say standard) consumer usage is inefficient, and as a good capitalist I believe in markets. The abandoned Microsoft "Play-for-Sure" example given as a mark against Microsoft success is actually, I believe, illustrative in the opposite direction. Even Microsoft couldn't cram cripplingly bad DRM into the entertainment system.

Chester, Impworks and Dan raise questions about who will pay for the new shows if broadcast networks die -- that is, without ad revenue, will everything be so low budget that our entertainment becomes all You-Tube-y?

Dan notes that television quality suffers from falling advertising revenue, but that's not quite true. Network advertising revenue has been slightly rising or flat for a while now. There was a recent, hinky embargo on announcing last year's Q4 revenues, but I'll assume things haven't catastrophically collapsed since September.

Not to hump the free market again, but I will assure you, if there's one industry that ain't going under anytime soon, it's advertising. The big advertising agencies, and the individual advertising departments of large corporations, are way, way ahead on the curve. There are a couple of New York ad agencies Who Shall Remain Nameless, who fly execs up to MIT every single month for updates and briefings on new media technology.

So regardless of whether the network middlemen stay in business, the advertising filth will still need to buy attention depending on whatever equation they're living-and-dying by this week. However they do it -- direct sponsorship or product placement or whatever model arises from stochastic tinkering -- there will still be humans paying money for eyeballs.

This is actually a good moment to break down how television actually works, as Dan's completely understandable misconception is quite common. Networks don't make shows. Networks buy shows. And they don't even buy the whole goddam thing.

Studios make shows. They usually, as I've noted before, deficit finance a show, where they pay the bulk of the production costs and the network pays a fraction of the per-episode expense. It is a symbiotic relationship -- the studio retains ownership, and so can reap the benefits of a popular show through (not so much now) syndication and (the only thing keeping Hollywood alive) DVD sales. The network got the advertising revenue, and could jack up those prices if a show was popular.

The laws changed a decade or so ago, allowing studios to own networks. This altered things in some hinky ways: NBC television, for example has a production arm, colloquially known as NBC-P, that should in theory make shows for NBC but at the same time it's really a part of the greater NBC Universal Television development in league with what was (and still is, technically) Universal studios. So their product can sell to any other network but in practice develops primarily for the NBC Universal family -- that is, not just NBC proper but SciFi, Sleuth, and USA. And vice versa, hence the flirtation with Galactica winding up on NBC this year, and the sudden appearance of Heroes on SciFi.

I have had a day with three meetings -- NBC network execs, NBC-P, and Universal -- and wound up in three different buildings. And let's just say the pecking order at any of these hybrids ...
NBC Universal/NBC
Disney/ABC
Fox News Corp(20th Century Fox, effectively)/Fox
Warner Bros. & CBS Corp/CW
.. is a bit unsettled, while only the CBS Corp/CBS chain of command is completely established. Les Moonves is chairman of CBS and president of CBS Corporation. He can also crush your head through the sheer power of his gaze.

Confused yet? Well, so are we. When your nominal buyer becomes your employee, things gets weird. We've already seen situations where a network's continued a doomed show up through 13 episodes so that the box set will recoup some expenses for the studio. Whedon's Angel very much died because the WB realized they were just advertising for 20th Century Fox's box sets. Although the network in theory has final say on what shows they pick up, there are stories in recent years about one network where the network execs weren't even allowed in the room while the studio suits did the fall schedule.

(Let's leave aside the fact that currently there are a limited number of broadcast entities and owners. There is no free market for American television, really. That's a different --and generally terrifying -- conversation.)

Networks dominated because of information asymmetry and branding. That is a.) we know who makes television, and we'll select the shows worthy of your attention and b.) when you come "here" every night, you'll see the types of shows you like. Both those ideas are deader than dead Mr. Deady Deaderson, winner of the County Dead All-Dead Dead-off. (ahhh, Blackadder. How I love you so.) The networks' financial claim to prominence was, simply, ratings which were a result of this asymmetry. If you wanted to get a bunch of eyeballs on your ads or show, you had to get on network television. However, the rise of cable television has flattened out this claim. I say "flattened" for a reason. According to the Cable TV Facts from the Cable Advertising Bureau, the "networks" pulled a 27 share in '05, and all other basic cable pulled a 54 share. To put this in perspective, looking at the Nielsens for last year -- once you're out of the top 10 shows, audience share hovers between 10 and 15%. for he rest of the top 50.

The network system depends on creating hits. It's like wildcatting, with on the average 3-6 million dollars spent on each of the hundred odd pilots made every year in the desperate hope that one will be a big enough hit to justify big ad revenues for the network and a good syndication sale for the studio. But with the flattening shares, how do you even define a "hit" anymore? No, that model's always been a creaky bastard that Hollywood just can't quite seem to quit despite its ferocious inefficiency. Something like peak oil, if you get my drift.

And let's add recent psychological shifts in viewerships. People don't tolerate reruns anymore, not with a flooded market. If they break viewership habit, it can be damn hard to get them back. I think Lost's problems are deeper than the awful two-up-three-down-one up-two down stagger season they had last year, but I'll cede that their 25% drop in viewership is not unrelated to the issue.

Yet, ironically, people WANT to be committed to a show while it's on. "Content is community" is finally coming true. My mom and her friends get positively giddy waiting for 24 to come back. I got her the damn Tivo, but she insists on watching it on the very Monday night. But this attention, this more personal relationship, comes with a price. People just don't have the time, attention, or habit of hanging about for the whole damn year anymore. I've argued for 6-13 episode seasons before, and the split-seasons that the networks are adopting are basically the baby steps; the networks backing into that structure while still dragging their old habits with them, chained about their ankles.

DVD sales are the financial engine of Hollywood now, but there are problems here, too. First, how do you sell a show without network exposure first? Second, what happens when a show is the type to encourage dedicated fans who will buy the boxed set but isn't widely appealing enough to generate ratings and hence stay on the network schedule? Whose standards of success will come to dominate, the network's or the studio's? Now, the difference between myself and certain people who wear ties to work is I believe that just because we don't know the answers to these questions doesn't mean these questions don't have answers. Again, stochastic tinkering. There's nothing inherently stable about the current network situation. Remember, television as it exists is the tail end of government-leased invisible space. Network television is executive welfare.

Further complications will involve the difference between the internet, the pipes that carry yoru net, and the FCC control of the now truly mythical "airwaves." That's even headier stuff, and frankly requires far more research than I'm capable of churning out right now. But my point is, the current networks as concepts are not crucial to the studios and advertisers finding ways to make entertainment and sell things through said entertainment.


All this to get back to my point -- this Xbox play may not be the end-point transformative moment. But it's monumental, perhaps even more so than when Apple started selling videos -- no, wait, I take that back, because getting people into the habit of paying per show/movie was a crucial bit of mental conditioning. Ahem. Where was -- oh, yes. I'm one of those people who strongly believes viewers link to an "entertainment space" in their lives. People are already in the habit of having video games in their entertainment space. They're in the habit of having cable boxes in their entertainment space. They are not in the habit, yet, of setting up wireless routers to stream product into their entertainment space.

In retrospect, even the download's not all that interesting -- it's the promise of VOD. Now, download's nice, but VOD is where it's at. That's where the pipe overlords reign, and seeing that Comcast just cut a deal with Tivo is very interesting indeed. How many people just watch a show once, but want what is essentially limitless time-shifting? Why store shows or movies on your hard-drive when you have access to them in your entertainment space anyway?

So the Xbox IPTV concept alone is not transformative. But how it links several crucial elements in reshaping our perception of access to entertainment, that's the score right there.

Rough pencil sketch of the future. The major generic networks fade as old people who just want something on in the background die off. Branding restructures along two paths, with a.) occurring before b.), but then running parallel.

a.) networks become even more genre or style defined. SciFi, Sleuth ... even now, look at USA with its genial detectives, or FX with its gritty dramas. Some of the networks remain, but specifically as distribution arms, and not particularly effective ones. That is, CBS may still be around for decades, but the name "CBS" will have limited marketing value, if any.

Competing youth networks arise. There will be a brief problem with monopsomy behaviour -- companies like Disney control X number of channels on your cable box, and therefore control access to that market share and can deny intransigent producers broadcast opportunities. You could argue monopoly, too, but that'll change, I think. As we swing to the internet rather than cable "channel" systems, this force will self-correct. The internationalization of media will help there too, as will lowered production costs through technology. But seeing as cable is currently at twice market penetration as broadband, we'l be dealing with broadcast "artifacts" for a while.

b.) new sources of information assessment will emerge. This is right out of my ass, but as new communities form, prevalent media personalities of today and the near future will become more important as "guides" for that community.

Let's take Warren Ellis, for example. Assume Warren's dark heart improbably beats on, allowing him decades to build his awful ideological army. There will come a day when Warren will say "behold, people, this thing is good, and not at all testicle or piercing oriented. If you pay a dollar for a download of it, you will not be disappointed." Granted, the profit margins will be small, but that's the direction we're heading in anyway. The massive scores off network hits were inflated, a brief, beautiful Golden Age of Filthy Money which I doubt will naturally recur. In the future, nobody gets rich, but everybody gets paid.

Yes, I basically just said that Oprah is a neo-network. Go ahead, argue with me. Is Dick Wolf a network? JJ Abrams? Is Kiefer Sutherland? Who do you trust to entertain you?

Take this one step further. Several humans of like intellect or taste -- Warren, say Joss Whedon, maybe Charlie Stross, toss Cory Doctorow in there -- they might cut deals with producers. (Are Tarantino and Rodriguez now a "network"? Hell, how are they not?) New "networks" -- which will rarely, ever again be separate from linked production entities -- new networks will evolve in the free market. The natural aggregation points will be branded creative entities, individual creators or otherwise, who engender personal loyalty. We may well see "schools" of like-minded entertainers evolving in television, the way we had in art, or even in film in the 60's and 70's. Different (and probably unpredictable) models will evolve, but those will be the seeds.

There'll be no more consensus media, which some people even now mourn. But again -- the last fifty years were a unique moment in history. What we're looking at now is a correction. It's famously said said that one in ten Britons who could read, read Dickens when he was alive.

The most popular writer in the history of the English language ... had a ten share.

4GM: And Network Television Dies Right ... Now

Back in this 4GM essay I talked about the perception wars -- that is, that the entertainment pipe would not change significantly until "the place we download" and "the place we watch our TV" intersect. On the tail end of all the portability and Apple stuff, I banged around the "console factor" -- rumors I'd heard that the XBox 360 was a stealth set-top box. This was the Monster in the Dark for Network television as far as I was concerned. The Networks, as arms of larger entertainment corporations, keep looking at downloadable content and DVD as downstream extensions of their identity. That made sense as long as there was no unified identity to supplant them down the pipe.

Well, game over. Gizmodo today leaks that new XBox 360 services will include full IPTV, downloadable content, video on demand, DVR functionality ... smack. When somebody smarter than I am writes the book ten years from now, this'll be the opening chapter hook. Chimp-easy download, no Bittorrent clients, no futzing with Divx files and home networking, that content smacks into my living room and the living rooms of, by the end of this year, somewhere around ten million people (assuming the 360 sells the projected 4 odd million this year.)

I've been skeptical of broadband as the newest solo pipe -- broadband's smacking around 3/4 of internet connectivity now, but internet connectivity's still around 65%, pegging broadband households at around, oh, 45%. DVD penetration's still at 81%, and we're not taking enough advantage of that. Download's still pig-slow for any file of reasonable size -- although for streaming VOD, well, it should be fine.

This was a (somewhat terrifyingly) masterful piece of work. For men 18-24, their XBox is their total entertainment hub. Microsoft created the perception first, and then tuned it in the direction they wanted it to go. It's typical Microsoft, too -- let Apple do all the fancy footwork, then come in and glom onto the concepts that work the best. Within a few years (and by "few years" I mean as soon as 18 months) we'll see Microsoft take advantage of the positive buzz from happy gamers -- the fine wedge of tech love - and offer a broadband entertainment box for non-gamers.

I'm in a bit of a rush this morning, so I'll jump back onto this on Monday. I just wanted to call dibs -- when you see the Joss Whedon channel on your XBox 360 Media Interface, remember this day.

The Triumph of Butt's Huge Head

I don't know how I missed this the first time, but Denis McGrath wrote a helluva thing about Canadian TV and in particular the fine spawn of Brent Butt's massive skull Corner Gas. Seeing as how I will soon be trying my hand in the Canadian TV market, it's good to get the heads-up.

For the uninitiated: Corner Gas 3-pack.

And the other fine Canadian show that's actually melted Warren Ellis' black heart ... in the extradimensional nullspace pocket where he stores the accursed thing: Complete Trailer Park Boys.

5 Answers

#2 is indeed false although, as guessed by Jacob Weinstein, only slightly. When in Boston I hacked around regularly with one band -- in Montreal I'd sit in on some random sets, but nothing organized. I can still, if pressed, hack my way through 12 bars of crossharp.

"1) Not only have I been to Las Vegas with Hilary Swank, but we went to a Star Trek convention together."

Promotion for The Core. We did San Diego, and then the two of us flew to Vegas together to do a big Star Trek convention (hello Paramount synergy). Spent the day together, had a lovely time. She's ridiculously sweet.

"3) I once wore a slinky green dress and sang Lisa Loeb's "Stay." And not on stage. "

I then slept with the person I sang it to. That's all you get of this story.

"4.) My first produced script was a murder mystery set on a cruise ship, ending with a swordfight."

My first produced script was actually a play, written while I was still in college for a friend teaching at my old high school. She wanted something original for her kids to perform that year, and I obliged. On the reread it's ... regularly amusing, if abominable in all other respects.

Yes, Pam, this is the one with the exploding seagulls.

"5.) During one of my TV specials, the camera cut to an audience shot and randomly, out of 2000 audience members, landed on my Dad and Lovely Wife."

The Just for Laughs special on Showtime, '94. The St. Denis Theater show which essentially got me my sitcom deal and launched my career proper. At least they were laughing. Would have been awkward if my Dad had been shaking his head, Lovely Wife agreeing.

Not technically about me, no, but there's not all that much more about me that I care to discuss.

There. I'll reserve the Swank/paparazzi story and how I owe Janeane Garofolo for my sitcom for another day.

5 Things You Don't Know About Me

I ordinarily don't much care for blog-memes, as I've said before, primarily because they're not memes. And that drives me a bit insane. Also, blogs are obscenely self-revelatory by nature, so it seems like guilding the matzah.

As I'm cleaning up the post-holiday rush, however, I'll take five to give one a shot. Been tagged by investigative reporter Dave LaFontaine to post 5 things you reader folk don't know about me. To make it even mildly interesting, I'll use Ezra and Neil's variation: 5 statements, one of which is not true. A fib. A prevarication, suh.

1.) Not only have I been to Las Vegas with Hilary Swank, but we went to a Star Trek convention together.
2.) While doing comedy, I also played harmonica in a blues band in Montreal for five years.
3. ) I once wore a slinky green dress and sang Lisa Loeb's "Stay." And not on stage.
4.) My first produced script was a murder mystery set on a cruise ship, ending with a swordfight.
5.) During one of my TV specials, the camera cut to an audience shot and randomly, out of 2000 audience members, landed on my Dad and Lovely Wife.

Guess away, and no cheating from the RL friends. I ain't tagging anybody -- if it's a meme it will replicate.

BSG Podcasts: My New Year's Resolution ...

... is even more screenwritery goodness. But hey, I'm still carrying the extra twenty pounds from last year, so my track record's not great.

Even so, our friend Denis reminds us that Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica podcasts are up on iTunes (also here). Episodic commentary? Spiffy, yes, but even more amazingly, he threw a recorder into the writer's room while they broke the end of Season Two. That shows an enormous amount of trust in both the writers and the audience. Personally, I cannot imagine a recorder in any of my writer's room, primarily because my beloved actors would be distressed at finding out how often they're called "theFUCKINGactors" or alternatively "the camera meat." If you want to write television, this chance to sample the room process -- the most weirdly indescribably element of TV -- is invaluable.