BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Tag: tv

  • The condescending interactivity of network news

    14 comments on The condescending interactivity of network news
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    When the networks try to interact with us, the result is too often condescending: They tell us to give them our news images (rather than just linking to us). They put on a ‘Free Speech’ segment but quickly tire of it. Or they read insipid letters from us and act is if they have heard the voice of the people — they haven’t. And they don’t even give us the respect to enter into a dialog. In my latest video experiment, I show you excerpts from the letters Brian Williams read last week on the NBC Nightly News and add my two cents:


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  • Media mogul moment

    15 comments on Media mogul moment

    John Bracken says I may have made it onto South Park:

    Tonight’s South Park episode, Stanley’s Cup, opens with Stan applying with the South Park Gazette’s grey haired “Mr. Jarvis” for a job as a delivery boy. There is no indication that the South Park Jarvis “gets it” or if he is as concerned with the future of newspapers as is the real life Jersey version.

    If it’s me, I’m honored. I hope they have me laying off Stan soon. Cutbacks, you know. Market realities.

    My previous brush with prime-time infamy: The network executive on Murphy Brown warned her away from that critic Jeff Jarvis, when I was one on TV Guide: “That Jeff Jarvis,” he said, “he’s a bottomless pit of hate.”

    I’m so proud.

  • Al Jazeera TV

    4 comments on Al Jazeera TV
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    I’m watching the new Al Jazeera English channel but it’s not easy. Go here and keep refreshing the 15-minute free sample.

    It’s foolish that they try to charge a monthly fee for watching the stream and even more foolish that they based the business on getting cable carriage. If they’d just put the channel up online, they’d be getting a huge audience today.

    The channel is quite slick and certainly comes from a different perspective. And, oh, they’re trying so hard to go against stereotype — in the first few minutes I watched, I saw some travel piece going through a Jewish neighborhood in Israel/Palestine, I think, and a promotion flashing images of Katz’s Deli in New York. I’ll have to watch a lot more to parse the political and cultural references and news coverage. But they’re not making that easy.

  • What could possibly go wrong?

    12 comments on What could possibly go wrong?

    On the day of the worst air crash in years, the Emmys begin tonight with Conan O’Brien crashing on an airplane and ending up on Lost. “What could possibly go wrong?” he asks. That. Otherwise a cute gag: dropping in on Office, House, South Park — where Tom Cruise is in the closet — and Dateline catching predators (proving that Dateline is nothing but entertainment). Bad timing, nonetheless.

    : LATER: LostRemote says the GM of the NBC station in Lexington was horrified. They should have at least warned him.

    : Also on Lost Remote, Steve Safran wonders whether the FCC will go after the Emmys for being “ass over tit.”