So it takes something really special for an advertising campaign to start to piss me off consistently. Congratulations channel 10… You’ve done it.

I’ve not read anything about The Good Wife, I’ve not paid particular attention to the teasers given in the ads, I’ve not looked for the small print on the billboards around town. I know that Julianna Margulies – the nurse from ER that was going out with George Clooney – has straightened her hair and is playing the titular character and Chris Noth – Big from Sex and the City - plays some sort of political public figure character who has been shamed by some sort of shenanigans. Not once have I bothered sitting through the entire “Sneak Peek” without turning the channel off or hitting the 30 second skip button twice. And yet I’m confident enough to call this one of the major flops of 2010. A bigger disappointment than FlashForward or even Commander in Chief.

There are sure to be parallels with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojovic, caught out trying to sell a Democrat held seat last year, and Hilary Clinton standing by Bill through the Lewinsky saga, probably peppered with inappropriate campaign-trail type press conferences on the front lawn of the family house or on the steps of a courthouse, proving the passionate attention given our hero by the entire nation. The magnitude of girl-power is likely to be off the scale as Margulies triumphs almost impossibly in the career that had only been simmering while she kept the home fires burning in support of her previously legitimate, successful husband. I don’t, however, see the skeptical audience turning off their sense of disbelief for more than a couple of weeks.

This show seems likely to be a fusion of a couple of recent genres we’ve seen: the latest hopeful to try to capture the loyal Sex and the City bloc, who like their women sassy and crave someone they can really relate to in a weekly drama; and the genius working in a professional capacity story – think House, Shark, Leverage, The Mentalist, Eleventh Hour - undertaking and conquering tasks that nobody else anywhere could possibly accomplish. I’m not sure it’s a fusion that can work. US TV has been desperate to get another SatC up for 3 or 4 years now – Women’s Murder Club, Cashmere Mafia, The Starter Wife - but they just don’t take and there seems to be a lack of ensemble in The Good Wife. The genius professional always tends to be a little odd, which is lateral, spontaneous and occasionally fun from a guy working with a team of minions or a federal handler but very quickly shouts ‘Bunny Boiler’ in a woman.

I could be completely wrong on all of this but the saturation promotion that 10 has been giving this show over an extended period has my Boxie senses tingling. We’ll have to wait and see.

Come September, Foxtel will be rebroadcasting Ten’s digital signal which also means they will publish the Ten EPG.

Now we just have to wait for Foxtel to open up their system to allow other pieces of software and hardware to have access and we might actually have a choice over how we watch our television.

Just imagine an openly competitive marketplace. A place where we can buy whichever PVR we want, subscribing to whichever EPG we choose (Ice TV really does have the best service out there), rather than being tied to one system. Alas, I seem to live in a dream world.

Still, I’ve now signed up for an IQ. I’ll be sure to keep the Boxcutters listeners/blog-readers posted on the ups and downs.

via The Age: Foxtel nabs Ten rights

I guess after 18 months of claiming it was ‘building’ when there was no real change in the ratings Nine had to do something. Like the whole Rowe departure you just have to wonder why it has taken this long.

“Last week, subscribers to pay TV spent 60 per cent of their viewing time on the multiple channels it offers, with free-to-air channels Seven, Nine, Ten, SBS and the ABC receiving just 40 per cent of their attention.”

I thought that this was fairly interesting, there has been much discussion of the ‘ratings war’, but not much on the numbers that Pay TV are getting.

I wonder what the breakdown is within Pay TV for the Channels. I will add, that I would think I watch closer to 80% Pay TV.

Obtained from a AFL Rights article at The Age.

Any thoughts?

TV program delays ‘turning viewers into pirates’

Huge delays in airing overseas TV shows locally are turning Australians into pirates, says a study conducted by technology lawyer and researcher Alex Malik.

It took an average of 17 months for programs to be shown in Australia after first airing overseas, a gap that has only increased over the past two years, the study found.

The findings were based on a “representative sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series or specials”, said Malik, who is in the final stages of a PhD in law at the University of Technology Sydney.

He was previously a legal counsel for the Australian Recording Industry Association, as well as a senior legal officer at the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Malik admitted there had been some signs of progress recently – programs such as The O.C. air within days of being shown in the US – but he insisted the overall delays had become longer.

“Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.6 to 16.7 months,” the study reads.

Malik also studied comments by TV viewers on various internet forums, and concluded: “These delays are one of the major factors driving Australians to use BitTorrent and other internet-based peer-to-peer programs to download programs illegally from overseas, prior to their local broadcast.”

He goes on to criticise Australian broadcasters for their apparent unwillingness to allow shows to be downloaded legally online.

“While film and music content owners have increasingly attempted to cater for digital consumers … Australian TV networks continue to appear to be unable or unwilling to change their programming policies or provide new digital based options for consumers unwilling to wait to view their favourite TV programs.”

Overseas, services such as Apple’s iTunes Store offer downloads of numerous shows from most of the major US networks, but this is not yet possible in Australia.

Network Ten is making some headroom here – its recently revamped website will soon offer entire programs for download as soon as they air, said Damien Smith, the network’s general manager of digital media.

“For some programs there will be the availability of full episodes, for others it will be highlights and short clips, for other programs it will be additional web-only content,” he said.

Ten has already experimented with TV show downloads, recently offering the series two premiere of Supernatural as a free download five days before its first airing.

ABC also offers a number of its shows for streaming through its website.

I was most interested to discover that the average delay had increased, from 7.6 to 16.7 months in just the last two years. The impression is that the networks have been aware of the problems of the world becoming a smaller place with increasing connectivity – and I’m sure this is at least in part due to the crowing they do about showing episodes so soon after they go to air in the US – but it seems the opposite is the reality.

BB

A report in the Australian outlines how the 3 Major stations are handling HDTV and how they see it in the future.

CH 10 have been heavily advertising that the Saturday night AFL match will be in HD, and that the major sports events will also be in HD (Rugby World Cup, Formula 1), most of the shows 10 show from the US are shown in HD here.

CH 9, well they have no sport, but again, most shows from the US are now shown in HD here.

Now to my Boxcutters style rant.

Ch 7, Barely show anything in HD, and don’t plan on doing so, not with the AFL (on the home of AFL ), most likely not with the 2008 Olympics, but more importantly, the HD that they are showing is in the lowest spec that they can possibly get away with, what jerks!!!

And, then, as I read on, I’m told that the stations are now allowed to multi-cast, show more than one show on the different channels, which then makes me think, why didn’t ‘Hair on Fire 9′ when it was not showing us the cricket, and make us watch ‘Some Advertising Affair’ not just say, switch over to Channel 91 to watch the Cricket? All I can see is TWO advertising streams, and ALL the viewers are happy (excluding those without a HD or SD Set Top Box!). It certainly makes sense to me, but what little hair I have isn’t on fire!

So, in true Boxcutter’s Style, F&^k YOU Channel 7 for not promoting HD and for showing the lowest quality HD you can get away with, and F*&K YOU Channel 9 for not just stiffing us on the cricket, but actually having the ability to show both programs at once and not doing so!

The Australian Article that got me started.