Thoughtnami™

I've been watching television just as long as I've been reading, which is practically all of my life. What I have learned in my nearly three decades of television viewing are the following: - Network programmers and executives cater to the lowest common denominator and rarely think of anything original for a period of seven years. - Networks are explicitly cheap when it comes to programming. The whole point of NBCU 2.0, as NBC Universal are calling their cost-cutting efforts, is to develop cheap, non-scripted programming for the next three seasons. - Aside from rare occasions, the most popular show isn't always the most watched show and gets cancelled quickly. Or else, Arrested Development wouldn't be rotting on G4 while The War At Home remains on Fox. - Shows built around diverse, urban audiences are rarely seen on broadcast television (quick, turn to CBS, Fox, or NBC, or The CW on any night but Mondays) and quick to be be cancelled. - International, non-Spanish progra...

. . . but when exactly did credits become evil and intrusive? I remember a time when credits didn't get squished down nor sped up to fit in an advertisement for another show. Heck, I remember a time when they did vocal promotions for other shows during the end credits without having to invade the credit space. The credits, mind you, are placed to give those fine men and women the credit they deserve (thus, that's why they're called "credits"). Now, credits are squished down to microscopic sizes or with such distortion, barely visible to the naked eye, to make room for commercials and promos for shows they heavily promoted during the duration of the show, you know, in case you missed it during the show. E! scrapped end credits altogether, speeding them up in little-bitty type in a light, barely readable font at the beginning of their original programming. And even though their Friday night lineup is the best collection of shows on a single night on television today...

The best show on Monday nights is NBC's Heroes. I could end the post there and have a Coke and a smile, but if you've never seen it (either because you're pumped on RAW or watching bland things like Monday Night Football or the CBS "comedies"), you really owe it to yourself to at least catch the replays on Sci-Fi Friday nights at 7 PM inbetween one of last year's best sci-fi shows Night Stalker and new episodes of the awesome as hell Doctor Who followed by a show I'm really getting into, the new Battlestar Galactica. Seriously, Sci-Fi hasn't had a powerful lineup like this since . . . ever (as much as I'm a Farscape fan, it didn't have any good shows backing it up [sorry Stargate fans, but that show seemed too "Trekky" for me]). Anyway, the skinny on Heroes is that these random individuals from all points of the globe. A struggling comic book artist paints the future weeks in advance. A younger brother of a politician who has dreams t...

Hey kids, guess what 2005 animated movie from Warner Bros. makes its US television premiere this Thursday? If you guessed Corpse Bride, then you guessed right. Now, for the $20,000 question. What network will debut the movie? If you guessed HBO, oooh, sorry, but thanks for playing. You guessed Cinemax? Eeeh, bummer, wrong answer. The correct answer is ABC Family. Okay, now wipe that soda off your computer monitor and wall. It'll make everything sticky (at least, I hope that's soda). Yes, the big movie attraction for October for ABC Family is the US television premiere of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. This is an ironic point because Touchstone's The Nightmare Before Christmas made its US television premiere on HBO, many years after it came out. The fact that the Oscar-nominated film would come on basic cable a little after a year it made it theatrical debut is kind of a surprise. People knew about the deal that Time Warner made with ABC Family to air some of their movies, b...

Canada. Our neighbor to the north. Pretty kickass country from what I heard about it, and I hear a lot. I celebrate Canada Day every July 1. I'm a big supporter of Canadian animation, despite its limited airings here in the States (I miss Eek! The Cat and ReBoot), and live-action fare. And Doctor Who . . . thanks for co-producing it CBC (though I can say with pride we got the new English-language episodes before you guys did!). Sure, they could be a little xenophobic at times (seriously, the whole 70% Canadian programming requirement is a bit limited, isn't it?), but hey, thus is the price for keeping the legacy of Albion, um, Canada alive. And considering I have a significant readership here and the terrordome that is TXB that comes from that great land up there, I thought I'd drop a some Canadian knowledge to share my love for the land from time to time. Here goes. MTV Canada doesn't show music videos. Now, the American crowd looking at me saying "MTV USA doesn...

The world is ready for a new animation channel. Okay, scratch that. The world largely has this animation channel. It's just the United States that's missing this channel. Of course, I'm talking about Animax (the title of the post gives the identity away), Sony's animation channel that's spreading throughout the world like ivy at Wrigley. In 2004, after Sony and Comcast forged an alliance that helped them buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (and such lucrative properties like James Bond, the Pink Panther, and Rocky), they planned to many many cable networks together. Over the decade, Sony has been slowly introducing the Animax brand to the Western hemisphere by sponsoring numerous events, putting Animax-branded programming on certain anime DVDs, and prominently placing the Animax logo in the end credits of Astro Boy, which sadly failed on broadcast and cable (though for the life of me, the cable channel that aired the series no longer exist, with some odd live-action/animation m...

I feel kind of bad for G4. No, bad's not the word. That's not even the phrasing I'm looking for. I think it's the opposite. Why do I feel this way and why do I feel the need to talk about a channel that has been nothing more than a joke since they absorbed a great channel like TechTV a couple of years ago? Because of the following newsbyte: E! and Style chief Ted Harbert, the CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group (a guy who could become a very powerful individual if he made the right decisions), adds G4 to his oversight. He will continue to report to Comcast Programming Group President Jeff Shell. G4 President Neal Tiles, who joined the network in September 2005, will now report to Mr. Harbert. G4's executive staff will move into E!'s Los Angeles offices. Sources said layoffs among the G4 staff are likely, though Mr. Harbert said it's too soon to tell. In other words, G4, a channel that was once dedicated to video games that bought TechTV only for X-Play and ch...

Let me get this straight. About a year or so ago, Nickelodeon presented the basic cable premiere of the live-action Scooby-Doo movie. It got good ratings because, hey, not all kids have access to HBO. A few months later around the summer of 2006 up until around a couple of weekends ago, the movie was on rotation on the ultralame ABC Family Channel (aside from Kyle XY, which will return sometime this spring, they have nothing). It got so-so ratings because there was already a been-there-done-that atmosphere among the channelscape of kids. Now, tomorrow, The Network presents the film based on a franchise that they showcased heavily on their channel from 1994 until about 2004 but wouldn't touch today with a 39 and a half-foot pole unless it was a movie version of it. Let it be reminded that the channel no longer wants to connect to the past that actually gave them much love in the animation community and this is a live-action movie on a cartoon network. You know what? Frak this. I giv...

I read something on Cartoon Brew that kind of irked me a bit. No, it wasn't another slam on 3D productions not made by the almighty Pixar, but rather the comment made by Michael Ouweleen about that idiotic live-action movie they just finished producing at The Network: "[E]ven though we are featuring live-action characters, it still had to be done the Cartoon Network way." Now, I know Mr. Ouweelen by what he does and who he is. He seems like he has some sense and some of the things he does are, to put it mildly, is okay. Naturally, he wouldn't bite the hand that feeds him and wouldn't condemn what The Network is doing. Afterall, he has a job and has to tow the corporate line. Afterall, for a year (remember, we first got wind of the live-action movie airings about a year ago), The Network has been under heavy criticism from people who feel that they're deviating from their original purpose of airing 24 hours of cartoons every day until the end of time. So, guys ...

While trying to avoid the Pokemon virus that has infected every corner of Cartoon Network (including Toonami Jetstream, which means that Sean and Jason don't have control of what goes on there, sad to say), I noticed this other deviation. You know, I used to like TV Land. I did. I mean, back in the day, it was like old-school Nick At Nite (when they actually spelled out "At" instead of using a damn @ sign), and they do tend to show some good retro favorites like The Jeffersons, Good Times, Benson, The Addams Family, The Munsters, Three's Company, I Love Lucy, and perhaps one of the most perfect sitcoms ever produced, The Dick Van Dyke Show (a title that could get censored in this overtly sensitive world of ours). Like nearly every channel on the dial, TV Land has deviated from its initial concept by airing more "popnost" and "celebreality" programming over the years (what's next? Schindler's List on Comedy Central? The Man Show on Lifetime?...

I like Scooby-Doo. Anybody that knows me either from my frantic postings at the "gated community" known as Toon Zone or the angry, yet somewhat comical updates at The X Bridge knows that I'm not a fan of Scooby-Doo, and yet, for my 100th posting here at Thoughtnami, I never thought I'd utter those words at the beginning of a post. Let's rewind to the point of my original disdain. Afterall, from the time the show premiered on Cartoon Network in 1994 (yes, it's a little-known fact, but Scooby-Doo wasn't always on CN since it was basically licensed to USA in what would be the last hurrah for the late, great Cartoon Express) until late 2004, Scooby-Doo has been a boil on nearly every CN fan with its almost total dominance on the lineup. Of course in 2006, I would actually kill to see something other than Camp Lazlo, Foster's, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, or Billy and Mandy on the lineup whenever they have an open slot, even welcoming Scooby-Doo with open arms. Scoob...