Blog Posts About: television

CBS is starting to integrate whiteboard-based explantions into the news.  We first heard about it  being used on the show Sunday Morning, where I imagine the lighter content seemed more appropriate.  Thanks to Ron for the pointer to this video.

Just recently, the same team of Josh Landis and Mitch Butler were paired with Katie Couric on the Evening News to explain the superdelegates.  You can see the video on this post.

It will be interesting to watch how the mainstream media reacts to these presentations.  The New York Times published an article today called "Dumb or Just Fun?" and started the article with this paragraph:

Critics who regularly bemoan the dumbing down of television news would most likely have been enraged by the sight, on a recent weekday, of animated characters on an evening newscast explaining the political power wielded by superdelegates.

 Dumb or Just Fun? Those are the only two choices?  What about effective? What about innovative? 

Personally I'm happy to see CBS experimenting with the whiteboard-based style. Of course we wonder if Common Craft was an inspiration, but we're not going to assume anything. If anything we're excited to see the format take shape.

We're believers that we all (including the evening news) need better explanations and more levity.  Josh Landis and Mitch Butler, whose speaking style reminds me a bit of "Troy McClure" from the Simpsons, are raising the visibility of simple-yet-powerful explanations.   

What do you think? 

Ratings, reputation, recommendations, etc. all have problems when it comes to trying to discover the most accurate/helpful/interesting/compelling content. One of the biggest problems is "gaming" which means working to produce results that diverge from the results the system was designed to produce.

Well, it appears that some are on a mission to game American Idol and actually try to enable one of the lesser-talented performers to, as the BBC reports win the whole thing. Enter: Sunjaya.

Now, I have seen American Idol, but not this season. What I know of Sunjaya comes from the Seattlest blog, that is head over heels in love. He is from Federal Way, a Seattle suburb.

Two resources are leading the charge to game the system:

Howard Stern is an advocate for Sanjaya and hoping to make it easier to vote for him and a website called "vote for the worst" is on a mission to disrupt the results. They would love to see him win simply because he shouldn't and his winning would bring into question the already controversial American Idol system.

I think this highlights what makes rating systems so hard - they are often popularity contests when the goal is quality/accuracy. Popularity and quality are not the same thing and people are motivated by a variety of things. American Idol wants to create the next big recording star, but the voters might actually give them a joke instead. Wouldn't that be funny.

Speaking of funny, if you want a Friday laugh, check out Sanjaya Gonna Set You on Fire.