Roger Catlin | TV Eye

Gone Fishin'

I'm taking some time off, have you noticed? I've taken a vacation to sunny climes, and escaped the cold, and managed to pry myself away from TV and the laptop in the process. For the most part.

Now that the writers' strike is over, and the fruits of their renewed labor won't be in evidence for a few weeks, isn't this the perfect time to take a break? Also, your faithful correspondent needed a break. Most important of all, it was school vacation week. And I do what I'm told.

So far, besides the sunburn, I've found time amid the leisure to catch up on "Project Runway" (picking four runners-up helps nobody), had an enjoyable rainy afternoon watching the international trick pool shot competition on ESPN from back home at the Mohegan Sun, and caught this and that of the NBA All Stars weekend.

Also caught the craziness that is "Big Brother." After Jen and Ryan's previously existing relationship was revealed, Amanda had the great idea of having everyone swear on a Bible that nobody else was connected. I kept thinking: Where exactly did they get this Bible? Especially in a show where books never appear (except as decor). And those "American Gladiator" winners (sorry already forgot their names) -- do they really want to become Gladiators themselves next season?

Ah, but these are questions deserving of consideration during times of work, not vacation. Please, check back at the end of the week. I'll be back with pencils sharpened, ready to tackle all those comments from those poor misguided people who think this is Steve Wilkos' website.

The Blogger Strike

In a show of solidarity with the Writers Guild of America strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, more than 20 people who blog about TV have agreed to have their sites go black today (save for a statement of support).

The industry, unfazed by a nine-day walkout, a second week of late night reruns and the shutting down of a half dozen shows and counting, will doubtless now come to its knees without the words of Glowy Box, organizer of the event, along with fellow travelers The TV Addict, I Am a TV Junkie, Pass the Remote and, now I can announce to the world: TV Eye as well.

Yeah, that's right, studios and networks: How do you like them apples?

No more blogs today thanks to your greed and unwillingness to go back to the bargaining table!

And back on Saturday, when I didn't post any entries? That was a protest, too.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

Metromixed Up

The new website for entertainment and nightlife is up and running today.

I know, you’re thinking: We’ve had a website for entertainment and nightlife for years and I’m looking at it right now, CtNow.com. But sharp-eyed internet viewers may have noticed that ctnow, for all the promotion it once received, was summarily dismissed without fanfare some weeks ago.

No, it didn’t take the buy-out.

It went the way of the Fax Paper and the Call-to-Hear-A-Columnist-Read-A-Column.

In a decision that didn’t that wasn’t first told to, for example, people who write for the page every single day, it was phased out, as they say.

Its replacement is now just the Entertainment page of the Courant.com website. As usual, there are updated headlines about entertainment round the clock, lots of information about nightlife, restaurants and weekend events, movie and music reviews and the like, and even blogs from people like me.

But apparently it wasn’t sufficient for all our readers.

Instead, The Courant has glommed onto Metromix, a national website in gloomy dark colors and a name that sounds like a snackfood for city folk.

Unintended Audition Bureau Closes

Through the mysterious confluence of word sequences or intensity of replies, this blog has become the unwanted repository of would-be new stars for “High School Musical” sequels three through infinity.

Type “High school Musical 3 auditions” on Google and this humble TV blog comes up third -- after a fake “open casting” via YouTube set up by a publicist who wants some business (but no apparent connections to anyone at the movie) and a Wikipedia listing about the original “HSM” describing the scene with auditions.

This has also meant that the blog has been inundated by comments from bad spelling young hopefuls everywhere, as if I were the talent scout and not a lowly regional TV writer who has covered the phenomenon of “HSM” but not as much as he has covered “The Sopranos,” “American Idol” or “24.”

There’s been more than 150 comments on one item from back in February 2007 that reported on the announcement on “High School Musical 3”; scores more on items like an update on plans for 4 and 5 from last month. Most all the comments lately have been along the lines of the e-mails that I am also getting, like this one just tonight:

Hello. I'm Pia. I'm 15 yeard old and I'm from Norway. I've heard that there's might going to be HSM 4-5.

Is there going to be any auditions for the HSM 4-5? I really want to audition, so if you know if there's going to be any auditions for the next movies, you might tell me were the audition's going to be? You can answere me at this e-mail adresse …please answere me.. (i might write something wrong but i hope you understand)

This e-mail was unusual in that it did not proclaim how much luvvv the writer had for the movie. Nor was there the usual mention of OMG and a general lack of exclamation points. Anyway, you get the idea.

And though I tried to point out that this site has nothing to do with “HSM” other than occasionally report on it, and that auditions were never posted for “HSM2” and they still had 1,800 show up, the e-mails and comments didn’t stop.

So, reluctant as I am to cease the open exchange of ideas on the internet, I’ve cut off comments on that posting.

The kids’ll have to find somewhere else to go to pester for audition information I will never have.

Being a Better Blogger

So PBS had this weird session the other day at press tour. In a day otherwise dedicated to presenting the press with information to tell our readers about their upcoming shows, they paused to show us how to be better bloggers.

It was something many of us needed, no doubt. And not something our newspaper editors necessarily taught us when they gave us the blogs we must constantly feed.

But it was strange we were depending on a network to help us out this way. (Will they be teaching us helpful interview techniques in the future?).

If I am being offhand and casual here, I’m doing something right, according to these suggestions from Kristen Taylor, who talked to us about things like driving traffic, search engine optimization and other terms best left to marketing directors.

According to Taylor, who writes her own blog that her grandmother likes, we must bare our soul and share our lives with our readers, let them know about our glamorous lives and let them in on our charmed circle.

(She seems to be misinformed about the life of a TV critic).

Anyway, she knows a lot about blogs, citing a figure that there were 71 million blogs last time anybody checked, and about 7 percent of them are about TV.

Also, she said, of the 100 people on your site at any given time, 90 of them are lurkers, who read but never comment, nine may comment from time to time and one of them are so active on your site they practically it.

The idea is to get people involved, she says and do everything you can to get people to send a comment. (Even though the last couple I remember getting are: OMG! I Luv High School Musical' and 'I Think You are Retarded.'

No, comments are actually vitally important. And all it takes in many cases is to ask for such input.

Asking “what do you think?” makes comments jump 20 percent, she says. (So consider yourself invited).

The point of blogs is not to make statements –- which may be a shock to TV critics constantly declaring something the greatest show of the year and something else the worst. Rather, it’s to initiate discussion.

I don’t know if that’s the case with newspaper-based blogs, like this one. We’re used to getting information and getting it out to readers. Or giving our opinions on things. Not necessarily to open up the floor for comments. Although certainly, again, such things are invited (hint hint).

But ultimately I sure don’t know. Uh, what do you think? 

Abroad

Well I haven't been posting recently, patient readers, because I've been off.

I'm in jolly old England for the week and I can report so far that it's been very warm here - 79 degrees yesterday -- and sunny and spring is very well along, with the flowering trees in bloom, vast beds of tulips around Buckingham Palace and fields of already spent daffodils.

Watching the changing of the guard this morning was a kind of exasperating experience. All that marching and pomp. It seemed like an especially busy day there, with lots of police, a van of army soldiers and satellite trucks from CNN international and elsewhere. Something big happening? No, we were informed, just another day. The band, once the guard changed played various brass martial music and a number that included the theme to ''Star Trek.'' So that's my TV connection so far.

There is a TV show though that's just like ''American Idol'' that tries to find the lead to the West End revival of the musical ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,'' with Graham Norton as host. It's called "Any Dream Will Do." Pretty bad.

More later.

Santa and Guns II

Who says the blog has no power?

Last week I complained about the full page gun ad on the Courant’s TV Week Sunday section.

Rifles were stuck in the chimney; “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was rewritten to boost handgun sales, such as a Smith & Wesson .22 pictured. How could they mix Santa with firearms -- even if the gun shop is the major advertiser in a section whose other ads tend to plug Courant columnists like me.

Well my comments apparently had a result: In Sunday’s TV Week, the gun ad returned with a vengeance and the house ad plugging my TV column was reduced by a third.

It’s sort of what Santa said about guns in “A Christmas Story” – “It’ll put your TV Eye out!”

The Blog Turns One

Hey, the blog turned a year old today, just a few days after it also marked its 1,000th post.

I’ve learned a lot doing the blog. First off, it’s an entirely different audience than the one for columns or stories in the paper. In fact, there may be no overlap at all among the two groups of readers.

But while I never knew who reads what I write in the paper, the blog has a little counter that keeps track of every page view. It’s a humbling thing at first to realize how few people do. It was gratifying, though, to watch the number grow.

Blog Clog

At the TV Critics Association summer press tour, we ink-stained wretches don’t just sit around scribbling in our notebooks or thrusting our tape recorders to the TV stars. We spend half the press conferences pounding on our laptops, not to take notes at what’s happening at hand, but to blog, blog, blog.

Blogs are the hot new thing for the young people, we have been told. This is how we capture the next generation. It’s essential we’re atop the curve in this instance (nobody expects us to be ahead of the curve at least). Anyway, all this blogging means more than essentially an unpaid second job; it means we have to file a lot. Many, many items each day from an event that seems built for emitting such bites of information.

So when TypePad, the service that publishes this blog, went down on Wednesday, it couldn’t have been a worse time: All these journalists blogging simultaneously may have well caused the blog clog.

At any rate, it never got cleared up in time for anything to get filed in a timely fashion. So while there’s usually several items a day filed from press tour, today there will be way way too many items from the past two days.

And once it’s all up here, we’ll have to get back to our real jobs.

Further, What Happened to Walter Scott's Personality Parade?

The idea was to promote the blog and get into the Sunday paper, one day of the week there’s little or no presence of TV coverage (and after the dreaded changed to the TV Week section that’s more true than ever).

And with the Sunday Arts section having to fill with wire stories in recent week, it’d seem the proposed “Best of the Blog” feature would fill their bill too.
Oh well.