And for those LOST fans that haven’t yet discovered the “after LOST roundup”, do yourself a favor and check out Doc Jensen.  Each week he gives his interpretations, dissertations, and thoughts on the latest episode in his column TOTALLY LOST on EW.com.

By the way did you notice the faces in the poster?  Seems as though there are several”losties’ returning this season.  Hmmmm…

“First Love, Second Chance” is a new six-episode original series on TV Land.  It’s a great title and accurately describes this docu-drama-reality series.  Each episode will feature a different couple who were once emotionally involved but who have since broken up.  They may have been apart for as long as 20 years.  Personally, if I broke up with you 20 years ago, I’ve probably moved on.  But that may not be the case in this series, as the viewer takes a week long journey with each couple as they try to go beyond their past and rekindle the romance that once was.  The series premiers on Wednesday, March 10^th at 10:00 p.m ET/PT.  The executive in charge of production is Marco Bresaz who I’d had the pleasure of working with and for my money there’s none better – so I’ll absolutely tune in and find out what this series is all about.

You bring the peanuts, I’ll bring the crackerjacks

I’m a baseball fan, I admit it.  Well to be honest, I’m a Yankee fan.  Nothing better than watching a game at Yankee Stadium, even if I am in the nose bleed section.  But if you can’t get to the game, there’s always television.  From April to October you can watch a baseball game across many channels several nights a week.  But for some fans, that doesn’t seem to be enough.  For the real die-hards who need their fingers on the pulse of every hit, run and error – there’s Major League Baseball TV (MLB.TV), one of the largest subscription based internet sites with over 2 million subscribers.  And to make watching baseball even easier, MLB.TV now offers mobility – you can watch games through your iPad, iPhone or iTouch, with more streaming options coming before opening day.  So, fans if you’re at a wedding and the Yankees are playing the Red Socks – no worries, you can whip out your iPhone and pretend you’re reading urgent messages from the office.  MLB.TV’s subscriptions begin as low as 99.95 for the year and that’s cheaper than a couple of tickets to Yankee Stadium.  Hmmm… now there’s an idea.

Now that deserves a standing Ovation.

Over the years arts education has been slashed and then slashed some more.   I’m all from STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math) and it’s certainly important for us to create the next scientific leaders – but technology without the human spirit is in my opinion folly.  When you don’t balance science with the humanities – one could create a future we’re now seeing in so many movies and books – a post-apocalyptic barren waste land. Sorry, was that a tad dramatic?  No, I don’t think so.  The arts must be supported for any culture to survive.

The new arts education program created by Ovation TV and Cable in the Classroom is a fantastic way to enhance young people’s education.   The network  worked with NYC area art teachers and students in developing the  lessons and selecting programming clips from Ovation TV documentaries.  This project and its outcome will serve as the cornerstone of Ovation TV’s free web-based initiative.

Social Media is TV’s Last Hope

According to Broadcasting & Cable, Elisabeth Murdoch, who is News Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, told TV producers and distributors at the annual National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) convention in Las Vegas:

We in the TV business have to catch up with what our audience is doing. We can no longer afford to be one-screen business. Social networks are finally the interactive dimension of storytelling. We now need to evolve with our audience. To resist this would be like resisting Technicolor.

Ten minute newsreels aired before the ‘double feature’ and began with world events, followed by stories of national interest.  Typically a segment on fashion, entertainment, or the latest pop culture craze like the hulu hoop or ping pong would round out the reel before ending with a sports segment.  Sound familiar?  It’s the news format of today, or if you separate each segment you’ve got YouTube.

Considering there were no PDA’s, no internet and Twitter was a word associated with a bird – newsreels were a surprisingly swift way to get visual information.  In 1927 when Charles Lindberg took off from Roosevelt Field for his historic trans-Atlantic flight it was captured on film.  The negative was then rushed back from Long Island and later that evening audiences at the Roxy Theatre in Manhattan were able to relive that moment on film.

There wasn’t anything newsreels didn’t capture.  From the Wright Brothers first attempt at flying in 1903¸ to the Great Depression, on through to WWII, Babe Ruth, The Duke of Windsor’s abdication and the Dionne Quintuplets – the men behind the cameras were recording it all and it was being watched by millions in theaters across America.

Today, many cringe at what is posted on YouTube, or seen in the news. Some complain that we’ve become a culture who glorify ‘gore’ and that images are too graphic, but it’s not a new trend and it’s not a result of the internet.  This type of visual, in your face graphic recording was captured by newsreels long before TV News, YouTube or the Internet was a thought in any one’s mind. The assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia was explicit, yet it was shown in newsreels throughout the country.  Every moment of the shocking Hindenburg disaster was watched by horrified theater goers.

The technology of YouTube is new, the idea – not so much.  We’re a people that want information, as fast as we can get it, and that’s been going on since man could communicate.

For example, when Tiger Woods’ infidelity scandal was front page news, everyone weighed in on it including The Huffington Post.  The headline of their article, Susie Ogren: Tiger Woods Took Ecstasy, Hoped To ‘Get Me Into Bed‘  was enough to make anyone click and read – I did.  Once reading I discovered there wasn’t much fact to this supposed fiction.  In fact, the article was written by The National Enquirer.  In fact, Susie Ogren and Tiger Woods didn’t have sex.  In fact, the reporter searched Facebook to find a photo of Susie Ogren and posted the photo in the article.  In fact, they weren’t even sure it was Susie’s Facebook photo they posted.

After posting the photo, they were careful not to ‘mislead’ the reader by saying:

A Facebook search for Susie Ogren, meanwhile, produces a profile that may belong to the woman who says she took ecstasy with Tiger Woods in 1999. According to a Google search, the profile belongs to someone claiming to be in Las Vegas. In addition to sharing the same name and city, the profile picture appears to resemble the photo from the Enquirer, given that the two pictures were presumably taken approximately a decade apart. Again, though, it is not a certainty that the Facebook profile below belongs to the same woman who claims to share a history with Woods.

This is journalism?  We all know NOTHING gets erased from the web ever, ever, never, ever.  So if this photo is really a photo of another woman – it doesn’t matter, because from now until eternity on the indelible web, her photo will be linked to Susie Ogren.

Am I the only one who is shaking my head, and tsk, tsking?  Am I the only one just a tad outraged?

By the way, I purposely didn’t link to the article, because I would be one more person spreading a photo around that was in question.

What’s right with this picture?
This is the obvious next step in the evolution of using technology to your advantage.  News organizations can now present stories they wouldn’t have had the resources to cover themselves.  It allows them to get breaking news the millisecond it happens without ever sending a reporter or crew to the scene.

What’s wrong with this picture?
If you know me you know I’m not enamored with the news media in general.  You’ll know that I don’t think we receive fair and balanced or even accurate reporting from many ‘respected’ outlets.  You’ll know that news journalist often misquote their sources, and that the more horrifying the headline the better.  What passes for news today in the alphabet soup of 24 hour news stations like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC,  straddles a very thin line between fact and  the ‘host’s’ viewpoint. This is not news; this is cooking up the news.  Its opinion wrapped in a fact or two, with a dash of hubris, a sprinkling of humor, and a smidge of weightiness thrown in for credibility.  Citizen journalist is just the very next step in the evolution of 24 hour news coupled with 21st century technology.

However, I believe citizen journalists may take a step that many journalists wouldn’t– and that’s ‘creating’ the news.  Do I need to remind you of the Balloon Boy fiasco?  His alleged disappearance spread on Twitter faster than you could type 140 characters.  Most people just hit the retweet button.  It was ‘news’ that was spread to hundreds of thousands of people before anyone realized it was TOTALLY MADE UP.   It’s sad, but people do want their fifteen minutes and they want to be heard.  Millions of blogs are proof of that.

As citizen journalists enter the lexicon of our ever increasing all media world – what can we count on to be true?  Considering how far we’ve come from the Walter Cronkite days – how far will we go?  Will we each have our own channel as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook merge?  Will our channels have news we create?  Will I be able to friend someone half way around the world and get their viewpoint of the news, news that is happening in their country?  If so, then we’re creating a world where the news is all about someone’s viewpoint and opinion and not about facts.

We all have opinions, and some of us even have cameras.  It’s a perfect combination for home grown news.  Welcome to the 21st century Citizen Journalist.

What’s your thought?  How do we keep the news from becoming a potpourri of individual opinions? And do you want to?

In truth very few things are free. For example, there is no free TV.  If you want reception you at least have to pay for basic cable.  It you want original programming and movies with no commercial interruption you have to pay for a premium service. The same is true to varying degrees with the internet. We’re all paying, whether it’s for basic cable, an internet connection, WiFi, or a mobile device.  We pay because we want to be connected and we want to be entertained.

Hulu won’t be offering “The Cat That Licked Himself” for money or for free – that’s not their style.  Instead, they’ll continue to offer broadcast shows and movies for free, in addition, they’ll offer a premium service that you can choose to pay for or not.  The question I ask is will they take internet television to the next level the way premium cable channels have boosted cable?

When HBO first started their pay service it seemed like you could watch one of two things; the movie “The Jazz Singer” starring Neil Diamond, or live ball room dancing from a studio in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  It wasn’t much; in fact it was ridiculous to charge for it, but we purchased it in order to get cable reception.  Eventually premium cable gained subscribers by offering well scripted original programming you couldn’t find anywhere else.  Sex and the City,The Sopranos, Weeds, Dexter, The Tudors and Entourage to name a few.

Hulu already has an audience, and if they can deliver something new – they can capture the market.  Perhaps they’ll offer niche programming channels that are interactive or a new breed of branded web series.  The question isn’t whether they will morph and change, the question is what will they morph into. Call it change, call it growth, heck – call it capitalism.  Whatever you call it, I see it as a good thing for those of us that enjoy being entertained.

So the question remains.  When content hubs like Hulu or Fancast  or TV.com do morph and provide us with original, interactive programming we can’t get anywhere else will you pay?  I ask myself the same question and the answer is yes.  But I’m posing the question to you – Would you pay for Hulu and what type of service would they have to provide in order for you to whip out your credit card?

Network is a scathing satire about a fictional television network UBS. This Oscar winning screenplay was written by Paddy Chayefsky. It was unbelievable then and today it’s still almost unbelievable. It’s the story of a news anchor, Howard Beale who after many years of reporting the news with integrity finds his ratings slipping. In an effort to boost the ratings, UBS decides to combine entertainment with news. The once lone anchor reading from a teleprompter looking straight into the camera is replaced by fortunetellers, evangelists, and urban terrorists. Distraught by what he now sees as passing for news, Beale delivers his famous on camera speech urging the viewers to open their windows and scream out into the streets – “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

When I saw the film in 1976, I loved it. But I never, in my wildest dreams thought we would see anything like what was portrayed in Network on real television. I was wrong. You only have to see what passes for Reality TV to know we are living the film Mr. Chayefsky penned more than 30 years ago.

I bring this up because — well frankly, I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore! Really. What passes for news media should really be called ‘bad news’ media. We’ve always lived in a world of,  “If it bleeds, it leads”, however, I think they’ve taken it to the point of,  “If we can scare the bejeez out them, let’s run with it.”    There are too many people on the news today offering me their opinions instead of the facts.  And those opinions are designed to make us afraid.  What happened to solid journalism?  Where’s the reporting?  Where’s the investigative non-biased journalism?  Not much around these days.  What I do see are more blogs, more opinions and more people telling me to crawl under my covers, it’s a dangerous world out there and you may not make it.

Well – guess what.  I’m not crawling under my covers.  I say get some people who can just give me the facts, and I’ll live my own life thank you very much.  Carpe Diem!