Thoughtnami™

Whatever happened to reruns? It’s like we have to be bombarded by new episodes on television every week, and if we don’t get repeats, we don’t see our favorite shows. Yes, I know shows are instantly repurposed on cable because that’s where the old media feels the money is. Of course, as the old media migrates to the new media, they’re placing reruns at your fingertips, either “on-demand” or on broadband channels. If you don’t have access to “on-demand” services or broadband access (myself included), you’re scat out of luck. The old media once proclaimed that content is king, which is why they went on a buying spree purchasing smaller and, in rare cases, larger libraries and studios. Instead of Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros., New Line, and Castle Rock, there is Time Warner. Instead of Greengrass, Disney, Capital Cities/ABC, Miramax, Saban, and PIXAR, there’s The Walt Disney Company. Instead of Jay Ward, Filmation, Rankin-Bass, Big Ideas, and UPA, there is Entertainment Rights. MGM is owned...

I think we're approaching some strange age in the coming months. Over the next 24 months, everything we see and realize as the world will be gone, replaced with something exciting, confusing, and entertaining. Media as the world knows it will be a thing of the past. Television, as we, our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents knew it, is history in 2009, replaced by some digital device that'll look pretty and add more places for infomercials because network execs are idiots. Well, they are. 98% of entertainment executives are clueless morons trying to find the next great fad rather than creating something that'll last longer than they do. They'll spend and spend, but 98% of what they'll make will end up being not worth making. The traditional studio system is on the outs because those in power are becoming greedy and stupid. And you know what? The producers have nobody to blame but themselves. And the people, their consumers, aren...

I'm writing about a sitcom that hasn't seen the light of day in almost two decades in the US for my first real post in 2008? Yup. I noticed that everybody is reporting that Showtime's popular crime drama Dexter is coming to CBS's strike-ridden lineup (go Writers!) in February. Everybody that reported that are saying that Dexter will be the first premimum cable series to air on broadcast television. And those people are wrong. Although Dexter will be the first premium DRAMA series to air a complete season, the very first premimum cable series to air a complete season on broadcast television was It's Garry Shandling's Show. Like Dexter, the popular sitcom was an original production of Showtime. It premiered in 1986 on the cable network and made its broadcast debut on the young Fox network two years later, where the channel ran four of the five seasons of the series. It left the Sunday night lineup in 1990, just catching up to the Showtime run and right around the ...

According to the currently used calendar in the Western world, it is now 2008. Happy new year, my friends. I'll be back after the Epiphany.