Category — Television

The Weathermen by Clay Risen (from The Morning News)

You know, I thought Sam Champion was a pretty funny name.

Venezuela axes The Simpsons (from ABC News)

How is it a bad influence on children? How about the dictator of the country - Hugo Chavez? He’s even worse than anything Homer can muster up.

The replacement isn’t much better - Pammy’s big boobs and The Hoff - I wouldn’t be putting children through that!

But then again, what else do you expect in a country where it replaced a popular channel with a government owned station which isn’t as popular as the channel it replaced (RCTV was forced off the air last year, replaced by TVes, although RCTV is now on cable and is still popular).

TV technician airs porn movie (from NEWS.com.au)

I know it was an accident, but heck, aren’t you thinking, isn’t that a good way of getting the punters back to free-to-air TV?

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, especially since I posted this to The Spy Report today - CBC to distribute show via BitTorrent.

While some broadcasters are happy to offer shows free of charge online, which is fair enough, what if they wanted to put ads in their shows? Say they put the ads at the start, middle and end of the file.

Or what if they wanted you to pay, say, $1 or $2 for a non-DRM file, in high resolution and in any format you wanted, minus the ads.

What would you do? I cannot see them sitting on their hands about this for much longer.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to know…

TV Tonight are reporting that the bane of Australian television, The Mint, has been given the arse by the Nine Network.

About bloody time too! You know you have an out and out dud on your hands when your major affiliate (WIN) drops it, people are complaining left, right and centre about A ) the show, B ) your puzzles and C ) your dodgy practices. They’re replacing it with movies and other shows. Let this be a warning to everyone else.

Oh, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about when I’m “1-Upping”, basically it’s a good thing, and I’m giving it a plug - hence, a one-up. Plus I wanted to use the Mario 1-Upping Peach animation somewhere…so this was perfect.

Also - thanks Frankster!

I’ve heard her character isn’t well liked, but cor blimey, she’s a stunner. She can arrest me any day of the week.

Here’s Ali Bastian aka PC Sally Armstrong from The Bill. Photo is from this week’s Zoo magazine.

Moment Jeremy Clarkson was caught chatting on mobile while doing 70mph (from This is London/Evening Standard)

Whoops!

Looks like it’s not driving like a maniac on the road that’s caught Jez Clarkson out - it’s his big fat mouth!

While my computer was undergoing the 9,999,999th crash cycle (and not at a good time, I was preparing to start summarising the midday news bulletins), I decided to figure out how to record these shows on my two PVRs for tomorrow night, since last week was an absolute schmozzle, missing out one show and having to use a tape to record another show.

Because I’m at darts of a Thursday, I need to tape shows so I can watch them later (I don’t subscribe to this channel BT nonsense either), and the shows in question are:

• 8.30pm Out of the Question (Prime)
• 9.00pm Family Guy (Prime)
• 10.15pm UEFA Champions League Hour (SBS)
• 10.30pm American Dad (Prime)
• 10.30pm The Nightcap (7HD via Prime HD)
• 11.15pm The Late Show with David Letterman (Southern Cross Ten)

Now, I happen to have two PVRs, both 160GB, but one of them is a twin-tuner HD PVR, and the other is a twin-tuner SD PVR, but you cannot record two shows at the one time with the latter. You can watch one and record another, but not record two shows.

So…I had to sit down with a TV Week, piece of paper and a pen and figure it out. Basically, here is the main points of note:

• The Nightcap can only be recorded on the HD box.
• Out of the Question and Family Guy can be recorded on either.
• Again, the SD PVR cannot record two shows at once.

I came up with this solution, and so far, it all appears to be locked in:

On The HD box…

• 8.30pm Out of the Question (Prime)
• 9.00pm Family Guy (Prime)
• 10.15pm UEFA Champions League Hour (SBS)
• 10.30pm The Nightcap (7HD via Prime HD)

On the SD box…

• 10.30pm American Dad (Prime)
• 11.15pm The Late Show with David Letterman (Southern Cross Ten)

Of course, this doesn’t take into account the shithouse programming practices of the commercial networks. But we’ll see. There’s no live programming tomorrow night, so it shouldn’t delay any programs.

Yes, I was bored. And decided to mash buttons. But it could work!

See? Playing around does come up with some good solutions…