Odds and ends..

[shadowkat]

Am avoiding doing the quizzilla things which have apparently taken over my friends list - have they taken over live journal as well? Can't tell. Would have to hop around other's friend's lists to do that and who has the time or the energy? Anyhoo - don't expect to see any here - takes far too long for me to do them on this dial-up now, the test takes forever to process and the images download slowly...not mention the fact that I get disconnected from the internet at least twice while doing them. Just too aggravating. Much better to skip.

Time...ugh. Feel as if time is passing me by and far too quickly. Probably because I have a birthday coming that I sort of don't want to come. It's not that I don't want to celebrate it (don't mind that)so much as I just wish it would not come. I'm not ready to be 37, damn it. Along with my mother visiting, a brother's baby shower (which she's coming for), and well...this is going to be a very tough two weeks, we'll see if I get through them. Especially since my mother has decided to go on the South Beach diet - which means she can't have any bread or carb products. Which wouldn't be a problem, except I'm sort of living off pasta and crackers right now - because it's cheap. Plus I'm terrified she'll take one look at my apartment and how I live, actually she's staying with me for five days...so it doesn't have to be limited to one look, and think, okay that's it, we're moving you in with us until you find a job. (Like I'm going to have an easier time finding a frigging job in human resources management on Hilton Head Island, SC? Ugh! I'm too old for this nonsense. How many frigging jobs do I have to apply for and interview with to find one? A billion?)

I'm just grousing because I had yet another nightmare about the evil company. This time, I had been rehired by them on a part-time basis and was brought in to the evil boss's office where he derided me for not bringing in content. I still had 0 budget to bring in the content. But he didn't care.
And I was demoted or something. Lots of long hallways in this dream and cave-like offices. No wonder I'm loving Angel S5, I completely identify with the situation. Methinks my subconscious is reminding me that no matter how bad things get, quitting evil company was a good thing.

Oh a bit of humor for anyone following the whole Caveman vs. Astronaut debates on the fanboards. Origin of the cavemen vs. astronaute debate.
Apparently the debate originated with the Mutant Enemy writers specifically David Fury and Stephen De Knight, who mentioned it while doing the Comic-con 2003 Writers Panel and actually launched into the debate right there on stage. Apparently in real life the ME writers argued over this for an entire hour. (This according to a reviewer at Dark Horse who was there.) Now, what I want to know is which writer was arguing cave-men and which astronauts? My current guess? Fury was arguing for the cavemen and Deknight for the astronauts. I can just see Whedon explaining all this to JM and DB while directing them for this episode. Oh to be a fly on the wall during that one. Hmmm...so Deknight and Fury are fighting over it. Whedon comes in and asks the Wes question: "do they have weapons..." after Bell warns him to stay far away from it. (Anyone else really want Whedon to do commentary for Hole in The World for S5 ATS DVD?)
What's even funnier...is I can totally imagine this fight, and they probably had it around the time they were co-writing either Awakenings or Destiny. Possibly Destiny. Since they argued during the writing of Destiny about who should win the Angel/Spike fight. Pretty heatedly. Fury won that one. (Being co-showrunner does help.)


In other news? A shred of hope for us Angel fans, according to whedonesque 19 of WB's affiliates are as pissed off about the news concerning Angel's cancellation as we are. And they are major league ones - in big urban areas. Hee Hee.

Comments

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

In other news? A shred of hope for us Angel fans, according to whedonesque 19 of WB's affiliates are as pissed off about the news concerning Angel's cancellation as we are. And they are major league ones - in big urban areas. Hee Hee.

I read about this! I wonder why the affiliates have different views than their PTBs--maybe their ratings in local markets get a greater percentage share for AtS than over all?

At any rate, http://www.savingangel.org/ has targeted the WB for the postcard campaign again.

Makes me feel all... cheerleadery!

PTBs and Affliates

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I read about this! I wonder why the affiliates have different views than their PTBs--maybe their ratings in local markets get a greater percentage share for AtS than over all?

Hard to explain. I have a hunch that I know what's going on. We have a PTB that's busy hunting viewer patterns and wants to form a schedule that fits a pattern to pull in the most viewers as possible, but we have affliates who don't pick up all the PTB's shows and can choose which ones to interrupt for ballgames, basketball games, news events, which to exchange with other PTB shows. We also have affialates who based on their subscribers and viewers can choose which PTB's to broadcast.

So it's all very well and good for WB to decide - wait we want to be the hip, young family-oriented network - ditch Angel, it doesn't fit our model and it's in its fifth season any way, keep the old foggies who are family shows and use them to launch new programming that is similar.
Charmed can be used to launch Dark Shadows, which is basically Charmed with vampires (in WB's head), plus has that OC element. Smallville can be used to launch Lost in Space. Gilmore Girls - One Tree Hill. Seventh Heaven builds Everwood. And build more hip situation comedies and reality shows which are similar to the other networks, but geared towards a younger hipper demo. (That's what's in Jordan Levin's head.) Unfortunately for Levin, he has to deal with the fact that this is *not* an exact science - affialates don't have to carry *all* his shows. Statellites or Direct TV doesn't have to pick up his signal. People are paying for television now - which means they want a little more control and since networks like HBO and Showtime are giving it to them, along with Tivo...they are being just a tad less like the audiences in the old model that Levin is *still* going by. In the old model - this worked. In the new model - XYZ viewer programs their TIVO box to pick up these shows, regardless of when they air, and can watch them whenever they want to. In the new model - a subscriber can call their cable provider and say - I'm cutting my cable this year because you're not providing the shows I want. In the old model, we didn't pay for the shows - so it didn't matter if we called and complained. In the new model, we do pay for the shows (or at least 85% of us do, I do) and we can cancel our 49, 54, 67 dollar a month subscription to XYZ provider, who has a contract with each network to provide that network to its viewers. This is something Disney/ABC discovered in 2000, when Time Warner Cable considered dropping their contract. Disney/ABC wanted more money and more channels on Time Warner Cable - for about two weeks viewers in NY Area with cable didn't get ABC and wrote angry letters to Time Warner threatening to discontinue cable if ABC's contract wasn't renewed b/c they wanted their Nightly NEws with Peter Jennings, and General Hosptial, etc...ABC won because of the customers.
So...how do you think Time Warner Cable, DtV, Dish, Comcast, etc will feel if they get people sending them post-cards stating -"if Angel isn't renewed? I'm discontinuing my cable subscription - just letting you know. Reason? It's the only show I enjoy right now and I'm sick of reality shows." Sort of puts a crimp in WB's desire to reach as many viewers as possible, if the cable company is losing viewers do to cancellation of a tv series. Of course, what are you going to do if you are the affliate or cable company? Stop broadcasting WB?
Can't do that - what about the other viewers? What you can do is encourage the Save Angel campaign and let your content provider know that your customers are dissatisfied and they better do something to correct it or this will come up during contract renegotiation time.
Complicated business television. Becoming increasingly more complicated.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

TV isn't "free" the way it was when I was growing up, is it? I've thought about that from time to time. "I pay for TV. Why do I even have to watch ANY commercials at all?"

Do you think you could cut and paste this info into the thread on the board marked "this week's post card campaign"? It will give people the appropriate back ground info. I know you are avoiding posting on boards, but I'd really, really appreciate it.

And it also gives me something to write in my post card to Tribune Broadcasting Company: "if Angel isn't renewed? I'm discontinuing my cable subscription - just letting you know. Reason? It's the only show I enjoy right now and I'm sick of reality shows." Because that is literally true of me!

Re: Actually, that makes a lot of sense

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Do you think you could cut and paste this info into the thread on the board marked "this week's post card campaign"? It will give people the appropriate back ground info. I know you are avoiding posting on boards, but I'd really, really appreciate it.

Did it. Hope it helps.

TV isn't "free" the way it was when I was growing up, is it? I've thought about that from time to time. "I pay for TV. Why do I even have to watch ANY commercials at all?"

Sounds like you have the same problem I do, only can get reception if we have cable. It's what goes through my mind when I get that damn Time Warner bill which seems to keep going up. I already nixed the premium channels, HBO, Showtime - which cost 12$ etc together. Ugh.

Yep, that last line:"if Angel isn't renewed? I'm discontinuing my cable subscription - just letting you know. Reason? It's the only show I enjoy right now and I'm sick of reality shows." Is the comment I keep thinking in my head whenever I get that cable bill, maybe I should call Time Warner and tell them...nah, I still watch NY1 and other stuff...but am sorely tempted. Particularly after this week, in which the only show that touched me on an emotional/mental level was Angel, ER came close but not like Angel did.

Thanks!

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I'm not really hip to the television industry and how it works, so that was very enlightening. People talk a lot about ratings and advertising revenue in discussions like the one's we're having around the cancellation of "Angel", when that's just one facet of a very large, complex business. In the age of pay-cable TV, it's not all about ratings and advertising anymore, is it?

I know it's probably very low-brow of me that the only thing I actually watch my cable for is to get decent reception of "Angel", thereby missing out on all those other cable offerings out there. But I really have become a DVD enthusiast, and I catch up on other shows (Smallville, Alias, etc) years after they've "aired" by watching DVDs.

That's another way television is changing, isn't it? Just because I don't tune into a show while it's "on the air" (an old-fashioned term, if there ever was one), doesn't mean I don't watch it and pay money to watch it.

Interesting.

You're welcome ;-)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The only reason I know so much about this is I considered pursuing a career on the business side of TV this past year. After a few interviews, research and a marketing class - I decided to go the human resources route instead. What I learned was Neilsen Ratings are just one of many gauges they use to figure out what show to promote and what show to cancel. It's a method of gauging the audience's reaction to things. And the reports they get from Neilsen's aren't just how many people in what demo watched what, they also find out what those people buy, whether they bought a new car this year, went on a vacation, etc. That's info the advertisers buy. Now all of this is great - if the viewers aren't paying for the show to be broadcast to them, don't have VHS to tape it, and don't have Tivo. Then advertisements matter. But if the viewer is someone who waits for DVD's to come out, only watches a taped version so they can fast-forward through commericials or has something like Replay or Tivo that can cut out commericals...then you have a whole new world and the Neilsen's don't tell you anything.

Another item, DVD, Tivo, VHS taping all effects is when the viewer watchs the program. So Levin wants to use Smallville to launch Lost in Space...and beat out The OC. Good luck. Today's viewer may not watch Smallville on Wed then whatever comes after it. With Tivo they can watch Smallville whenever they want. They can program Tivo to deliver Smallville, Enterprise, The OC and West Wing. And if they have Replay, they can cut all the extranous material including promos for Lost in Space. So Lost in Space could air any night of the week and do just as well. Of course not everyone can afford Tivo or Replay. But everyone can afford VHS and tape shows. They also have computers to download stuff.

Meanwhile cable stations like HBO are offering viewers an option to just pay to watch the show they want on HBO. HBO on demand - allows you to pick say Sex in The City and watch only it on HBO at any time you want. Then there's the idea HBO came up with and F/X is copying: the 13 episode tele-novel series shown all at once, each year. Sopranos is 13 episodes - shown each week, no reruns, complete season arc. Then goes on hiatus. You get the DVD's. Next year book two - 13 episodes. Same with Six Feet Under. F/X does it with The Sheild and Nip/Tuck -it's cheaper -because it's 13 episodes. They appear in an arc without breaks between. And then you sell a DVD right after the season airs. That's the new model and it's the one that WB/Fox/ABC/CBS/NBC have been too slow to figure out how to take advantage of. (Fox and F/X by the way may be part of the same parent company 20th Century Fox, but they don't talk to each other and do not share profits and really operate as two separate entities and networks. They might as well be Fox and CBS.) Fox had a perfect opportunity to try this new model with Firefly - Firefly was even set up for it. Do 13 episode arcs like Sopranos, sell DVD's. Perfect. But they were too busy focusing on the old model, and forecasted the cost of Firefly within that old model's formula, thus let the opportunity slip through their fingers. Dumb move. But typical of this industry. They don't understand the popularity of DVDs- they really don't. It astonished me when the guy I was interning with told me this. SMG once said:"Why spend money on DVD's when you can get them for free in reruns?" Which is a really stupid comment and shows how little she knows about television viewers. We do pay for the reruns-because we pay for cable. The DVD's aren't just episodes, they have commentary and are digitally enhanced. Also reruns don't last forever nor does tape. DVD lasts longer. But her comment is very typical of the network brass. Also television has changed so rapidly. DVD technology is relatively new. It was just introduced three years ago. So you can't blame these guys for being slow on the up-take. That said? As I learned this summer - being slow in the TV industry is the kiss-of-death. You have to be quick or someone else will grab that pot-of-gold opportunity.

Evil company

[hankat.livejournal.com]

Yup it was a good thing and you will continue to dream about it til you work it out enough to make the old subconscious move onto new dreams. I worked for an evil company where I was sexually harassed and treated badly cause I refused to sleep around. Never did I know that if you don't sleep with someone they will tell all their buddies you did then the story goes on and gets better if not more remote from reality. What most folks didn't know is I was just starting my battle with an auto-immune disorder and sleeping around was the furthest thing from my mind....survival right up there. Add insult to injury I was going through a nasty divorce from a stalker type guy with a gun collection. Well, I proceeded with the divorce even if it meant going on Welfare, quit the evil job and dreamed about all that crap for a long time. To show how far I got I saw my ex years after the divorce and he was still fixated even though he got remarried. His thing was if I wasn't with him he would tell everyone I was.....you quessed it...sleeping around. He told me that men from the evil company still spoke about me 10 years later. Well this is where all those dreams paid off. Instead of falling for his crap I told him that he had some serious problems if he was talking about me after so many years, that also extended to anyone real or imagined who would find me interesting years after the last time they saw me.

Those years aren't happy ones as my illness left me under a hundred pounds for years, unable to do much more than sleep and eat. People can do horrible things to you but in the end they only hurt themselves. I know what the truth is and anyone who ever took the time to get to know me do as well. The hurt lessened after some years but to this day I'm very uncomfortable around men. Turning 50 soon has been great for me cause I can become just an invisible old broad. What would have happened to me if I stayed with the evil company...I don't even go there cause I'm dead certain that I did the right thing. You did too. You will find a job that time just isn't right now, but you will find one. As for your mother moving in with you, you're on your own.......;)

Rufus

Re: Evil company

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.

That's why I call my journal In A Nutshell; I have bad dreams too. I wonder what the dreams of these horrible people are like. I suspect they're even worse than ours because we can wake up and have our better lives, while their nightmare never end. Which is a really good reason to let our dreams wrestle with past and let our waking ours enjoy the present. It's far from perfect (or even good sometimes) but at least we're not as bad off as we used to be. And nobody's messing with our heads anymore, which is always the worst part.

Re: Evil company

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

"waking hours" lol

Re: Evil company

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

What an incredibly horrible experience, thank you for feeling you could share it with me. It's inspiring as well, since you survived and did not allow yourself to sink their level.

My situation was *very* different, I wasn't sexually harassed for one thing (at least not as far as I'm aware, but I'm a *extreemly* hard person to sexually harass, since I tower over most people and have an intimidating physical and personal presence, b/c of my size and tendency to feel claustrophobic I tend to be *very* careful about personal space), partly because there's a little voice inside me that still wonders if I wasn't to blame, if I didn't do enough, if I was *too* emotional or *too* rude as the evil boss claimed. I know it's not true, a colleague, who is still with the company, informed me that he was doing all that in order to get me to leave so he could downsize the position - which he would have done anyway. But...the feeling of failure haunts me. And I keep worrying if the reason I haven't been hired is they've called evil boss and well...(I know that's silly, he has 0 motivation to do that, one of my references is a good friend who still works at the company along with a former boss who liked me and well no one really checks references any more any way...). Why all these thoughts? Well, see this isn't the first time I've gone through this. It's not a *new* experience for me. I *really* do identify with Angel in that way. No, I didn't necessarily have evil bosses in the past, just situations that didn't work for a host of reasons which led to me being without work for close to 14-23 months at a time. In fact I've *never* in my life gotten a job easily or gotten the job I really wanted - usually I end up grabbing whatever gets offerred after 14-15 months of hunting. Which may be my mistake, so I'm trying not to fall into that trap this round but it's hard not to. It's hard not to wonder if there's something wrong with me, if I'm doing something wrong...not sure any of that makes sense. Because like I said, it's a *very* different situation from what you described.

Thank again for sharing your experience. It was inspiring - not what happened to you, how you made it out of it.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

My mom's on that South Beach thing too! It's so annoying trying to cook or dine with people in the grips of this low-carb fanaticism.

Visits from my mother are always tense. I have qualms even letting her use the bathroom in my apartment because she always ends up re-folding and rearranging all the towels. Good luck to you! :)

Thanks!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

My mom's on that South Beach thing too! It's so annoying trying to cook or dine with people in the grips of this low-carb fanaticism

Ah yes...

Me: So Mom, what can you eat...
Mom: Oh anything but pasta, rice, bread and potatoes. I usually eat fish and chicken. But I can eat meat.
Me (thinking about the sparse contents of the fridge..):
No pasta, huh. Uhm okay maybe we can eat out?
Mom: I can eat vegetables and now I can even add some fruit.
Me: right...okay what about breakfast, can you have cereal?
Mom: I can eat cereal. Have oatmeal all the time.
Me: Oh...I can get some instant oatmeal then.
Mom: I don't like instant oatmeal. Don't you make the regular kind...

Ugh. Thanks for the luck. I may need it. ;-)

Re: Thanks!

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

Wow, that would eliminate 80% of what I eat. There are a lot of dishes that use chicken and fruit, as well as things like kebobs, which are very economical, although not the same without rice. Hmm, you'd have to substitute salads or a hefty vegetable, like stuffed squash as a side dish instead of rice or pasta or potatoes. Or a pot of filling soup, made with vegetables and a little chicken, also with salad instead of bread. And since it's Lent, it's a little easier and cheaper to buy fish.

For breakfast she might like yogurt and granola-a little goes a long way.

I figured out once that I've made well over 3,000 dinners in the past 10 years. I spend a lot of time writing menus. :)

Re: Thanks!

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

Wow, that would eliminate 80% of what I eat.

Hee! Me, too! Even worse though a family friend visited a few months back, and she's a strict Vegan. She'll not only not eat any meat or fish, and any dairy products, either, or anything coming from an animal. So, no meat, no dairy. I sometimes wonder how she finds anything to eat but pasta, bread, and salad!

Re: Completely unrelated

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And yes, of course...you may friend me. ;-)