Bent Corner

Ubisoft has announced that they are no longer planning on producing a Heroes video game based on the NBC television series.

The game was officially announced back in July of 2007 and it was supposed to be released this year. Being that “this year” ends next month, I already figured the game was dust. Computer games based on TV shows usually always suck. In fact, other then the MMORPG based on The Love Boat, I can’t think of one other computer game based on the TV show that didn’t make me want to drink Draino.

Maybe Ubisoft could still make a game loosely based on Heroes, but instead of having it mimic what’s happening in front on the camera, it could mimic what has been going on behind the cameras. Players could write crappy stories involving new, boring characters and then try to avoid getting fired by the executive producer.

That actually sounds like it might be fun.

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This Sunday’s game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seattle Seahawks will have one less old guy at the game. NBC’s NFL color analyst John Madden will be taking the night off.

Madden hasn’t missed his analyst duties in 476 games. Why is he missing this one? Because of Madden’s well documented fear of flying, he travels to games in a tricked out luxury bus. Madden was bused from his home in northern California’s bay area to Jacksonville on October 5. He then bus trekked to San Diego for the October 12 game. The Bucs-Seahawks game on October 19 would have required yet another cross-country bus trip.

John Madden is 72 years old. The amount of bus travel NBC is subjecting him to is stupid and unnecessary. It’s nice that they decided to give him a week off, but why they make him schlep from game to game is ridiculous.

It’s 2008, not 1968.

With the magic of modern technology, Madden doesn’t need to travel to games to provide color commentary. He can do it from anywhere. NBC could set up a remote booth near his home in northern California. It would allow him to call games and sleep in his own bed every night. [Washington Post]

Yahoo’s Olympics blogger Chris Chase is ticked off that NBC is showing some of the Olympic events in Beijing on “tape delay”. Not that they still use magnetic tape to record sporting events or anything else for that matter. How old is Chris Chase? When he wants to make a phone call, does he “dial” the number? When he wants to listen to music, does he grab his Walkman? Does he write his blog on a manual typewriter? Is his car powered with steam?

Chris Chase wrote:

Tonight’s swimming finals with Michael Phelps, Dara Torres and Katie Hoff were not shown live in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, nor will they be shown for the entirety of the competition. NBC will instead run the east coast feed three hours later; at 8:00 p.m. PT. So, at the moment (midnight on the east coast), viewers on the other side of the country still haven’t seen Phelps shatter his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley.

The day I feel sorry for sports fans on the left coast is the day alien lifeforms have taken over my body. The ones that look like worms and embed themselves in your brain stem and make you say and do kooky things.

I don’t get to watch many Big Time sporting events. The reason? Two reasons actually; I work for a living and I live on the east coast.

To make viewing optimal for people living out on the west coast, most major sporting events don’t start until after 9:00 p.m. on the right side of the country. They do this so the folks out on the west coast can watch the event on TV after they get home for work. They don’t care that people on the east coast — people like me — have to stay up past midnight to finish watching. If you’re unemployed, retired, or sell drugs for a living, it’s really no big deal. If you are none of the above, it sucks.

So people out of the west coast don’t get to watch it live when Michael Phelps sets a new record? I don’t get to watch the World Series, NBA Championships, Monday Night Football, or the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship final.

Consider us even.

Looks like Dan Patrick has got himself a new job.  From the New York Times:

Dan Patrick, who left ESPN last year to create his own syndicated radio program and write a column for Sports Illustrated, will join NBC Sports where he will be reunited with Keith Olbermann to call the NFL highlights on “Football Night in America.” NBC is scheduled to make the announcement at 2 p.m. Eastern.

NBC is looking to recreate the chemistry and quirky humor that Patrick and Olbermann demonstrated when they were co-anchors on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” which they dubbed “The Big Show.” Olbermann joined “Football Night” last year, but is best known now as the host of MSNBC’s nightly “Countdown” program.

Recreate the chemistry?  I’d argue that any chemistry the two co-hosts had was before people realized Olbermann could be such a narcissistic, misogynistic douche bag.  He didn’t have any of his politically polarizing “Special Comments” back when he was on ESPN.  I’m not sure adding Patrick to the mix is going to help.  Olbermann is clearly not the same person he was in during this stint at ESPN.

Not that I really understand the attraction of NFL football on Sunday night.  I don’t get to watch NFL football on Sunday night.  I live on the east coast and I work for a living.  I can’t stay up till midnight on a Sunday night to watch football.

NBC’s Meet The Press host and Washington bureau chief Tim Russert is dead. He died today in his Washington office. They are innitally saying that it was a heart attack. He was 58.

I’ve spend many a Sunday morning watching Meet The Press. I’ve also done my fair share of yelling at the TV at some of the stuff Russert asked. Sometimes it was about the stuff he didn’t ask.

Not only would I watch Meet The Press almost every Sunday morning, I also subscribe to the audio podcast of Meet The Press. I would sometimes listen to an episode if it was an important interview. I think I listened to the Ron Paul interview twice.

I sometimes found his habit of always pointing out his blue collar roots to be annoying. The “Go Bills” at the end of Meet The Press during football season could get really old.

To say that he was the best at what he did is giving too much credit to the others in his profession. When it came to interviewing politicians or government officials, he stood alone. He will be missed.

The New York Post is reporting that NBC has fired nearly the entire production staff from “Saturday Night Live”. The people that do all of the behind the scenes work on the show each and every week are now faced with a holiday season without the benefit of a job.

It must suck not being able to provide Christmas presents for your kids. That doesn’t matter though. What’s important is that the writers get their fair share (whatever that is) of all that Internet streaming video money the networks are raking in. It doesn’t matter that the paid advertising doesn’t even cover the bandwidth costs associated with streaming video on the Internet. It doesn’t matter that the networks only stream episodes on the Internet as a way of promoting the show and that they are not streaming them as a revenue source. That’s something for the accountants to figure out. The writers aren’t really good with numbers. They are much better with words.

Speaking of words, The New York Post included the following words in their article about the layoffs:

Despite being scrooged out of their Christmas-season paychecks, the “SNL” crew still has a big heart. Playbill reports that the cast plans to perform a nontelevised show tonight at the New York Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on West 26th Street. Ticket proceeds from the sold-out performance, which was produced by Lorne Michaels, will benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund.

The proceeds went to benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund? They could have given the money to the people that now don’t have jobs because of the strike. That actually would have been the decent thing to do. I’m not saying that the Writers Guild doesn’t need money in their strike fund. You don’t expect Julia Louis-Dreyfus to buy her own red WGA strike t-shirt, do you? Now that would just be silly.

It’s a known fact that streaming video on the Internet is worth billions upon billions of dollars. Look at all the people that are now millionaires because of videos they posted on YouTube. I heard that Chocolate Rain guy bought his own island in Dubai and he’s even thinking of adopting a baby from Cambodia. The vast fortunes that can be made from streaming video on the Internet are without limits.

A percentage of this limitless streaming video Internet wealth is clearly worth fighting for no matter who gets harmed in the process.

I think I’ve finally given up on NBC’s new fall television show Bionic Woman. It’s just too stupid. Not the concept, but the execution. I was a big fan of The Six Million Dollar Man when I was a kid, but then again, what kid wasn’t? I don’t remember watching that show’s spin off and this show’s predecessor the original Bionic Woman. I don’t need to have ever watched it to know that it was better then this show is.

It bothers me to admit this show stinks because I really had high hopes for it. There is something about the concept of a bionic woman that trumps the concept of a bionic man. It’s interesting to see the supposed weaker sex be able through the power of bionics to kick some major ass. In The Six Million Dollar Man, the main charactor Steve Austin (played by manly man Lee Majors) already looked as though he could more then take care of himself in a physical altercation. The addition of bionics only added to his already perceived physical strengths. You might not guess that Steve Austin could pick up a custom van, but you probably had an idea that he wasn’t a weakling.

With a bionic woman, you wouldn’t guess that she was strong, let alone super bionic strong. She doesn’t look like she could open a jar of pickles, let alone pick someone up off their feet and throw them 30 feet.

The problem with this show is that they have gone too far with making her look the part of the dainty female.

They constantly have the title character Jamie Sommers (played by British actress Michelle Ryan) wearing high heeled boots. They then put her into one physical altercation after another. The only thing more ridiculous looking then a woman running in high heels is a bionic woman running 60 miles an hour in high heels.

The show is called the Bionic Woman, not the Bionic Lady.

Apple has removed NBC Universal television episodes from the iTunes Store.

The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.

Personally, I think even $1.99 is actually a bit too pricey for TV episodes that you can watch for free on television. But $4.99 for a 22 minute sitcom? Thats just silly. Its especially silly when you stop to realize that this was free money for NBC Universal. These were television shows they produced for their network. Allowing Apples to then go and sell the shows on the iTunes Store after they had already appeared on their network was a win-win for NBC Universal.

Greed and stupidity are a dangerous mix.

Its not like people wont be downloading NBC Universal programing. They just wont be paying for it. People will simply download NBC Universal television shows on bittorrent.

Link (marketwatch.com)

NBC Universal, the No. 1 supplier of digital video to Apple’s online iTunes Store has notified Apple that it has decided to not renew its contract to sell of television show downloads on iTunes. Supposedly NBC Universal wanted to have more control over how the television shows were sold to consumers. They evidently didn’t like how consumers had the option of paying $1.99 to download an episode. They wanted to force consumers into purchasing an entire season of a television show.

I’m a big fan of the iTunes $.99 music downloads and $1.99 television program downloads. I appreciate the ability to purchase only the media that I want. If I want to watch the first of Heroes, I shouldn’t have to purchase the entire season. That is what NBC Universal wants the power to do. They want to be able to force consumers into buying product they may not want.

What NBC Universal did is really quite laughable. This was free money for them. Apple was selling product that they had already used for programing on their television networks. They didn’t produce anything new for the iTunes Store. It was stuff that had already gone out over the air or through the cable. People were actually paying for media content that they themselves had been distributing for free. Leave it to NBC Universal to screw that up.

Greed is an awful thing. Now people who want to download digital episodes of The Office, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica will have to do it the old fashioned way - they will have to bittorrent it.