Insight

This deal with the women finding a finger in her chilli totally throws me for several loops.  The main being, who cares about the women or the damage Wendy’s has suffered-I want to know where the hell the finger came from.  I mean is someone going to look down one day while trying to type in the ‘a’ button and ask where their finger ran off too?

They know the finger couldn’t have been cooked in the chilli, since via even the local cops CSI departments can tell if a finger was cooked at 150 degrees for three hours.  I’m assuming the finger also didn’t come off of an old corpse, since the rate of decay most likely could be measured as well-and I’m sure they would have announced if the women had been going digging through graveyards.

I don’t care if she’s convicted of grand larceny, or if Wendy’s makes a come back-I just want to know where the damned finger came from.

A trend ongoing since the creation of print is for niche markets.  Target audiences though small, become very specific.  When only several television stations were available, there could not be a history channel; no gardening or news stations-and especially not music television.  The net takes this growth to unheard of levels.  The difficulty is with providing content.  As production costs decrease, as demand and expection is lowered to the point where hobbyists can entertain-niche markets will grow exponentially. 

This is one reason that I believe censorship is not needed.  There is no need to worry about prime time programming using sex and violence when there is no limit to prime time programming.  Mass media and advertisers may wish to limit market access so as to have a generalized audience to target, but this will not always be possible.  Eventually programming can be accessed on demand on very specific levels.  This is especially true when copyrights run out (if the FCC ever stops extending protection for unused media) and we can host streaming media from the 50’s-70’s via our webpages/servers. 

Either standards viewers demand is lowered, or the tools necessary to produce good content become affordable and easy enough; the end result will be the end of mass media-and the birth of niche media.

Todays world and technology come with a host of challenges to advertisers.  Tivo allows people to skip commercials altogether, the net poses an entertainment alternative that is not always easy to market products on.  Current solutions are posting little advertisements on popular web pages, and now product placement is making a come back.  Personally I don’t mind product placement when it’s not overdone, but unfortunately shows will be forced to point out the product to the audience.  Simply drinking a coke or driving a Jetta won’t be enough.

People fight technology.  Industries do not want to change with the time, for it means an overhaul of the business structure and often some initial investment.  It is a risk when one fits into a market already and is forced to find a new niche. 

The solution I believe is that today it is becoming as (relatively) cheap to generate content as it is to sponsor content.  Rather than seeking to create commercials, companies today should try to release virtual goods and services with their logo on it.  Certain companies have gotten into the game a bit with offering free music downloads via digital money that is on candy wrappers or beer boxes.

Eventually companies will have to go a step further.  They can sponsor small net projects such as games, cartoons, mp3’s and comics.  Advertisers can release mp3’s from known bands with a quick sponsored by Pepsi or a logo on the screen.  The player and the mp3 can be packaged together to make it more difficult to crack, though this would probably be undesirable to most users.  Small games can be released on the net with corporate logo’s on it.  Net cartoons can be made, probably for about the same cost of advertising on a popular show-that carries the products information.  Many techniques are available, the face of the entertainment world is changing; this allows for many niche markets that may not have a large target audience-but also won’t have as large a cost to advertise too.  At the end of the day, generating content will drive advertising.  It could be as simple as five minute downloadable comic sketches or music videos.  The corporate site could release digital version of novels and games.  Content is the solution, why force product placement into a show when creating the media itself is just as cost effective?

There is a lot of discussion (in certain circles) as to why Star Trek Enterprise failed as a show.  This is to be the last season and despite admirable efforts at raising the 50 million necessary to give the show one more year, I do not believe UPN will go for it.  There is talk about Sci Fi Channel (unlikely) and Spike TV (more talk of it) picking up the series, but I don’t think UPN wants to part with the liscense. 

UPN wanted the best sci-fi show on t.v.  They kept the show on Friday nights, even though Sci-Fi channel had much higher rated shows on during that time slot.  One thing that UPN could have done to cause the show to flourish, would have been to give up the friday nights and choose another day of the week.  However that isn’t the biggest reason the show failed in my opinion.  What has gone wrong with near every star trek series since Star Trek The Next Generation is they have too many multi-part episodes.  Season Two of Enterprise may as well have been one long episode.  You miss one, you’re out of the loop.  UPN I think did this intentionally to try to pressure fans to watch it constantly.  However it totally turned off the casual star trek fan.  Voyager at least incorporated the mission home throughout the series in such a way that each episode was independent.  I’m glad I’ve been able to get Deep Space Nine on DVD, because it had the same problem (though not as bad as Enterprise)-I couldn’t keep up with the series and eventually didn’t worry about watching it.  Each show should be a self contained episode as much as possible.  There is a whole misguided marketing idea based on season finales being half of a two part episode to ensure viewers being watching it again the next season.  They took that concept and extended it to running multi-part episodes within a single season.  That is why Star Trek Enterprise failed, not just because Sci-Fi channel had a better line up with Star Gate, Star Gate Atlantis, and Battle Star Gallatica.

Todays viewing public are all A.D.D.  We are hit with stimuli from all over, people use the net more than they watch television.  Reality T.V. shows bloom, demanding an audiences attention for a limited period of time-and end.  Expecting to hold an audiences attention by a television show versus reality t.v. programs is rediculous.  UPN constantly has been making this mistake.  Their simple comedy shows make it because they aren’t demanding on the audience.  People don’t have to tune in every week, but nor are they likely to be reward winning shows.  The powerhouses that UPN has presented have all failed because UPN kept trying to expect the same level of audience that had before the net and reality t.v.  I enjoyed the New Twilight Zone, more than the attempt back in the early 90’s that also ran for one season.  I finally got into Jake 2.0, only to have that show cancelled as well.

Television stations have to adapt and stop trying to force people to watch a show without missing a single episode.  What ends up happening is people who do miss that one episode can’t get back into the program.  Watching shows should be entertainment, not work.  I liked Enterprise, wasn’t the best series but it really began picking up.  I especially enjoyed learning more about Vulcan mysticism.  So long as UPN expects too much from their programing, using serial episodes (like soap operas) to ensure an audience-their potential hits are going to fail.  The same goes with Fox.  Arrested Development might be cancelled because it only has an average audience of 6 million people.  The show does depend on what has happened in previous weeks and would be very hard for someone to get into who has never seen it before-or has missed a number of episodes.

At any rate that’s my rant.  Eventually I hope that being able to sell DVD box sets of a show will cover cost of production, then it doesn’t matter if you have a 10 part episode or not.  I don’t think with Enterprise it was so much the story had to be told over several parts, I think it was an intentional ploy by UPN execs to make their audience watch the show-to work at watching the show; just like how having a two part season finale has people tune in for the next season.