via Boing Boing

Wife Swap is part of ABC’s primetime line-up and we are currently casting families for its second season. The premise of Wife Swap, which generated a lot of buzz in its inaugural season, is that one parent from each household swaps places for ten days to experience how another family runs their lives. It is an incredible family experience and opportunity to both learn and teach different family values. Wife Swap is a fascinating story of what happens when two married couples see themselves, and their spouses, in a whole new light.

Potential families can live anywhere in the United States, but we ask that families who apply consist of two parents that have at least two children, over the age of 5, living at home.

All participating families receieve a $20,000 honorarium fee too!

Wow, $20K – I wonder if this begins to set the bar a little too high for the ordinary incentives we pay households for user research!!!

In some ways, it’s amazing that TV Guide has hung on this long; I can’t remember the last time I used any sort of printed television guide, and I’ve never paid for one, going back to when they’d come free with the weekly paper (I guess they still do, but that goes right into the recycling in our house). The story is interesting, if not particularly shocking, because it marks a sharp transition point in a slow and inexorable change in technology and associated consumer behavior.

full story

TV Guide is slashing the circulation it guarantees advertisers by about two-thirds and relaunching itself as a large format magazine with far fewer TV listings and more emphasis on lifestyle and entertainment, the magazine announced Tuesday.

The radical changes to TV Guide come as it struggles to remain relevant in an age where many TV viewers get their listings from on-screen guides provided by their cable companies or online.

The new TV Guide, which will launch with the Oct. 17 issue, will contain just 25 percent listings and 75 percent stories, versus the 75 percent listings and 25 percent stories it has now, the company said early Tuesday.

Rich Battista, the CEO of TV Guide’s parent company, Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc., said in an interview that the company’s research found that readers would be more interested in reading a magazine with fewer listings and more stories about TV shows and their stars.

Plus, we get the standard PR-speak where the company explains that their business decision was purely informed by research about consumer preference. These things write themselves!

HBO’s The Comeback got some unkind press when it launched, but I finally checked it out. The show is a mock documentary about a semi-faded sitcom star who is cast in a new sitcom (“Room and Bored”) but struggles to get respect. Kudrow’s character is making a reality show (which is the same as a documentary, sometimes, isn’t it?) about her career, and calling it The Comeback (which is also the name of the show that we are watching – how PoMo).

Kudrow is amazing – you almost won’t recognize her. She has twitches and tics and hair and smile and nose that seem light years away from Phoebe. The show is funny and excruciatingly uncomfortable. And gives absolutely no credit to the very similarly-toned Lisa Picard Is Famous (a mock documentary about a never-say-die up and coming young actress who is dealt near-fatal blow after near-fatal blow). (note: there was an actual movie site for LisaPicardIsFamous but they let the domain registration lapse – guess there was no budget a few years post-release).

NYT op-ed piece relates what happens when a near-emergency on a flight turns into fodder for reality TV

Flight 1004 made its careful descent. Later, a Southwest official would explain to me that after takeoff, the control stick in the cockpit had begun to shake violently – the universal warning to pilots that a plane is about to stall. To the captain, the jetliner seemed to be flying fine. But the shaking stick would not stop. We had reversed our course; it would turn out that an angle-of-attack measurement vane on the exterior of the plane had broken, and the pilots were receiving a false indication of the impending stall. But neither the crew nor the passengers knew that at the time.

We landed, to the audible relief of those on board, pulled up to the gate, and – before the captain could tell us what had gone wrong – four people entered through a jetway. One held a television camera; another began handing out release-permission forms.

The captain – referring to the camera crew – told us: ‘They’re ours.’

The television people were from an entertainment series called ‘Airline,’ which runs on the A&E cable network. The program is one of the many so-called reality shows – nonfiction. Highly stylized, accompanied by a soundtrack of guitars and percussion instruments, ‘Airline’ weaves in and out of several stories at Southwest Airlines each week.

Five minutes earlier, we had been holding our breaths. Now the camera was rolling; as the captain stood in the aisle and explained to us about the aborted flight, the lens pointed over his shoulder, catching our expressions.

We had already become a plot point – it had happened just that swiftly. The realness of the trepidation we had felt in the air had seamlessly been turned into reality, that parallel but separate new state. The clammy uncertainty that had filled the plane was even now being packaged as entertainment, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

We hadn’t been given permission to stand up yet, and no one had aspired to be a part of this, but the production had commenced. It felt oddly familiar, and it was, because permutations of it have been around us for a while now: 911-call audiotapes with the anguished sounds of people in the worst moments of their lives, their recorded voices involuntarily played on TV and radio for the divertissement of strangers; surveillance videotapes from brutal convenience store robberies and shootings, routinely televised for all to watch; children being beaten by school-bus bullies, caught on video, broadcast nationwide if the images are gripping enough. Life as a carnival sideshow.

Back in my younger days of television watching, this was Richard Hatch on Battlestar Galactica.

But now this is who they mean by Richard Hatch.

And this is what they mean by Battlestar Galactica.

I’m sure there’s something clever and French I could cite here (la plus ca change, etc.). Isn’t cultural reverse engineering a lonely game?

From Cooter’s Place

THE DUKES MOVIE:
DON’T GO UNLESS THEY CLEAN IT UP!

Hey Y’all,

I thought this would be a good time to let everybody know my feelings about the upcoming ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ feature film, since if it weren’t for the ‘Dukes’ fans, our show would have been long since ‘put out to pasture.’ The folks who love our show have kept it alive and well, despite the lack of respect it has been shown by ‘Hollywood.’

Websites like ours have been an extraordinary means of communication for the ‘Dukes’ community. The power of the internet has enabled us to not only keep the show viable, but to help make it a hit show all over again. CMT is getting record ratings and the kids of America think it is a new show. In our business, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Like our fans, those of us who worked on the show have a special affection for it. For over 25 years we have cared about it, nourished it, and fought for it. And it seems to me that it is time for us to have our voices heard again. From all I have seen and heard, the ‘Dukes’ movie is a sleazy insult to all of us who have cared about the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ for so long.

You probably know that the creators of this film wanted absolutely nothing to do with the original members of the cast. Doesn’t that seem strange to you, given how popular our show is right now, and how popular our cast still is? After all, our huge success for so many years is the reason they are making the film, and the film, after all, is about us.

In the last few years I reckon I’ve done many hundreds of interviews around the country on radio and television and for dozens of newspapers. I always tell them that ours is a classic family show with positive values, great action, wonderful slapstick comedy, mighty fine country music, and a very gifted cast who had great chemistry. America could tell that we were clearly enjoying what we were doing and for that hour folks could forget their troubles and just have fun along with us. It is exactly the kind of entertainment that families crave right now.

Lately most of the interviewers want to know my opinion of the ‘movie’ version that is coming out in August. I’ve always tried to be candid with my opinions, and when it comes to this film, I think it would be a mistake for me to pull the punches. Like you, I haven’t seen the film, but I have read the script, I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked on the set, and I’ve seen the raunchy t.v. commercial. Frankly, I think the whole project shows an arrogant disrespect for our show, for our cast, for America’s families, and for the sensibilities of the heartland of our country.

Unless they clean it up before the August 5th release date I would strongly recommend that true blue Dukes fans hold their noses and pass this one up. And whatever you do, don’t take any youngsters to see it. As plain as I can put it, the only thing this movie shares with our show is the title. Oh, they do have the General Lee flying through the air, although according to the New York Times, they didn’t even use stunt drivers.

Sure it bothers me that they wanted nothing to do with the cast of our show, but what bothers me much more is the profanity laced script with blatant sexual situations that mocks the good clean family values of our series. Now, anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a prude. But this kind of toilet humor has no place in Hazzard County. Rather than honoring our legendary show, they have chosen to degrade it.

When CMT brought our series back on the air in February of this year, 23 million viewers tuned in on that first weekend. Very few, if any, movies have ever matched those kind of numbers for an opening weekend. Our show is a hit right now! Very young children have fallen in love with the ‘Dukes’ on CMT, just as their parents did 25 years ago. They love the positive values of our show, its wholesome friendliness, and the fact that Bo and Luke are heroes who always make the right moral choice. How can the producers of this film be so cynical, so jaded, so out of touch with America’s heartland as to trash a great family show in this way?

Well, there may not be much we can do, but we have to do all we can. Let’s send them a message: ‘If you don’t clean it up, we’re not going to see it.’ Maybe a kick in their pocketbook will get their attention.

Also check out the events

Fri July15 – Sun July 24-Rick Hurst,”Deputy Cletus Hogg” will be appearing at Cooter’s Place in Gatlinburg,Tn.

Sat July 16 – Sun July 17- Ben Jones “Cooter” and Cooter’s Garage Band and the General Lee will be appearing at The Eastern Connecticut Car Show in Norwich, Conn.

Fri July 22 – Ben Jones, “Cooter” and The General Lee and Cooter’s Garage Band will be appearing at Constants Wharf Park in Suffolk,Va.at 6:30pm

Sat July 23 – Ben Jones “Cooter” and The General Lee and Cooter’s Garage Band will be appearing at The Orange County Fair in Orange County,Va at 3pm

Sat July30 – Cooter’s Garage Band will be performing at Pickin’ by the Pond at Toms Creek Farm and Nursery in Farmer, NC. Come see the The General Lee and take a picture with Ben “Cooter” Jones. (The appearance will be in the evening)

And finally

DUKESFEST 2005 LARGEST FAN GATHERING EVER

Hey Y’all! Miss Alma and I owe a humungous “Thank You!!” to everyone who came to DukesFest 2005 and made it the biggest gathering of fans for any television show ever. It was amazing. Some estimates said that about 40,000 folks spent those two hot days in “Hazzard County”. So thanks to everybody who made the trip, and thanks also to the folks who worked to make the event special, to CMT for bringing the show back on and for helping us get the word out about DukesFest, to all our other sponsors, to our vendors, to the crew at Bristol Motor Speedway and Dragway who hosted the event, to the really fine musicians who played, to the amazing stunt drivers, to our great cast, to everyone who brought General Lees and other “Hazzardous” vehicles, and to the Confederate General Lee Fan Club and the Arkansas Special Olympics. And let’s hear it one more time for the Hazzard County Stunt Team. The stunt show was the culmination of months of work from some very dedicated friends of our show from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Above all, the credit belongs to all of you who have kept the “Dukes”, America’s great family show, alive and well for all these years. Y’all are the best.

As you know, when that many folks congregate there are going to be frustrations and inconveniences. For whatever problems there may have been we promise to learn from them and we thank you for your patience. It seems to me that the Good Lord blessed our event as He has blessed our show and for this we are very thankful

What’s wrong with Six Feet Under? In May 2001, Tad Friend had a long article in The New Yorker (not that I can find online anywhere) about the impending premiere of this show. Alan Ball talked about all the typical TV-writing tropes and how they would stay away from them. I’m pretty sure he mentioned the example of an elderly black or Asian man projecting wisdom, and I’m sure there were others. The point of the writing, he stressed, was to move away from that, into something that was not television. That is the HBO slogan, isn’t it?

Now we watch this week’s episode. A separated wife hires a nanny, and emphasizes that she plans for her to carry in the bottles of water. The nanny arrives and instructed by the wife that the bottles are indeed too heavy for her, so if the nanny could please bring them in when they arrive. Naturally, the nanny doesn’t work out, but the estranged husband appears on the doorstep to drop off the kids, and he’s dutifully carrying the bottled water.

We’ve known these supporting characters for several seasons, through the ups and downs of their relationship (mental illness, meddling siblings, financial struggles, infidelity, lying, etc.) and this particular need – the bottled water – has never been mentioned. It was introduced in the episode purely so it could be wrapped up by the end of the episode. Indeed, the need that the bottled water symbolized was pretty much out of left field as well. Now this kind of lame trickery is exactly what Hollywood is good at. Tell you how to feel, set it up, deliver it. Bang, boom, payoff, done.

Hey, elsewhere in the episode a group of grieving/celebrating women chanted anti-men slogans, but then began to sing. One woman began to sing first, in a quavery and not-very-musical voice. But then others picked up the song, and it gathered strength, musically, as more women joined in, their voices joining together in a lovely and uplifting moment. The voices got better, the initially-quavery singer begins a call-and-response, the camera circles around their candle-lit and Womanly Faces as the song grows.

I think there’s nothing more Hollywood-in-the-past-10-years than that scene.

It seems that they created some founding principles, or a mission/values statement, but they chose not to stick to them. They might have done well to have read Built to Last, a now-classic management book that explains how other business efforts stayed successful, and if I recall, that values statement was part of the common thread.

Dove has been making a big splash with its recent advertising campaign based on showing Real Women with all their flaws (i.e., a range of body tapes and ages that aren’t typical hair/skin care models), so it’s not surprising that a recent ad for Dove used the aesthetic of ethnographic interviews. This has been done a zillion times, especially in the last few years as ethnography becomes a more common touch point in our culture (and as the producer and the consumer collapse further). I’ve written about this many times, but I’m still struck whenever I see an ad doing this.

The Dove ad involved women being interviewed while they were bathing, and it cut between lower-quality video clips of several different women, with half of the clips being about the product, and half being about the process of being interviewed: “Oh, I’m in the tub, isn’t this a bit awkward?!”; “You’re all up in my armpit now.” were two examples.

I know a fair amount of research does get done in seemingly impossible settings such as the bathroom, but I’ve never been directly involved in such a study myself. I did see a Whirlpool presentation many years ago about how they did such a study (i.e., people wear bathing suits) but overall it sounds pretty fun just for the added challenges of establishing a comfortable rapport in such a socially awkward setting.

NYT piece compares and contrasts the feminist cultural issues at play in two TV series’ – Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie

Where ‘Bewitched,’ with its tales of a housewife who doesn’t exercise her full talents, seemed attuned to Betty Friedan’s landmark 1963 book, ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ ‘Jeannie’ came straight from the orbit of Hugh Hefner. Set in the world of swinging bachelor pilots on Florida’s Cape Kennedy beaches, the show seemed like a 14-year-old male’s fantasy: a scantily clad girl-woman, played by Barbara Eden, who calls our hero ‘master’ and can be shrunk to doll size, placed in a phallic bottle and stashed next to the hi-fi.

Unlike Samantha’s brand of benignly empowered womanhood, Jeannie’s magic was capricious, often performed in fits of childish pique. Samantha cast spells with an adorable nose-twitching marimba trill, but Jeannie’s petulant arms-folded nod came with an accompanying ‘sproing’ that was only a tad less audibly priapic than the ‘schwing’ from ‘Wayne’s World.’ Jeannie represented wife as plaything, harpy and sexual menace.

Yet Samantha and Jeannie had something important in common: both came under the thumbs of not just men, but pointedly poor specimens of manhood. The implication was clear: even the most powerful woman comes in second to a marginal man, who dominates the household solely through patriarchal privilege. That genie bottle has a glass ceiling.

‘Here were women with enormous powers – zapping Major Nelson to Antarctica or turning Darrin into a parakeet,’ said Susan J. Douglas, author of ‘Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media’ and a professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan. ‘But what was important was that at the end of the episode, Samantha was standing there in her little shirtwaist dress, holding a martini for Darrin.”

On West Wing they are trying to create an international coalition of peacekeepers to send to the middle east. CJ says something to the effect of “Canada? What kind of military do they have, anyway? Are they going to throw bottles of maple syrup?”

Very lame, for a few reasons. Wouldn’t CJ be a bit more informed, or is the fact that it’s Canada actually excuse an American official from having to be informed – when slagging off Canada will suffice? And of course, extra ironically lame because Canada has made an enormous contribution to peacekeeping, perhaps even larger in scale given the small military capability that Canada has.

And really, it was just offensive, and unnecessary.

Airing 9/10 on ABC Family. “Wait until his family finds out…”

The New York Times , in (a very good) article about reality tv validates the thesis of my recent FreshMeat.

‘Technology has taken down boundaries between the ones producing and the ones receiving,’ said Betsy Frank, executive vice president for research and planning at MTV Networks. ‘Young people have an incredible need to use the media to connect with their peers, to validate their choices. After every episode of `Real World,’ they’re on the Internet talking about what happened.’