TV SUCKS...WHY?

It's Easter Sunday, and TV sucks! It doesn't even really matter that it's Easter, TV sucks all the time anymore. Why? For as long as there has been television programming, and movies, why does TV have to keep re-showing the same crap all the time? Why have I been seeing the same twenty or thirty movies being played over and over and over and over again! My GOD! How many times do they have to replay Batman Begins? How many times do they have to have a Battlestar Galactica marathon?

The real problem is that there are only a few wealthy people/organizations that own the rights to too much of the media for the last 50 years or so. There might be 150 channels out there, but 99% of them don't have any "rights" to show some of the great things that have been produced over the years. So we get stuck with the same few things they do have the "right" to show, and sucky reality TV programming.

In my opinion, the whole concept of copyright needs to be re-thought. I think the copyrights to anything, should last no longer than twenty years. Once you create something, you get the exclusive rights to it for twenty years, then after that, it's fair game. After all, twenty years gives plenty of time for a whole new generation to come along, and for the most part, they're not going to care about what was created by the generation before them anyway. Just because a new medium comes along and someones work gets transcribed to it, does that automatically mean they should be entitled to make people pay for it all over again just to see it on the newest device? I think not.

I hate to think about the fact that I've had to buy the original Star Wars movies on just about every medium they've come out on. VHS, DVD, digital, etc. etc. If I've bought them once, shouldn't that give me the right to see them from then on in whatever format they're in? I mean, it's not like the content changes...well, in the case of the Star Wars movies, I guess the content does change since George Lucas can't seem to leave well enough alone, but you get my point, right?

The death of television as we know it....

Believe me, this is not a bad thing...it's a good thing! How many times, especially in recent years have you sat there flipping though the channels and said, "there isn't crap on TV!" Come on, you know you've said that a million times, just like I have. Recently though, I realized that I've only been watching about two hours of TV a week for the last couple of months. That's right, a week, not a day.

I've just recently realized that probably about 90% of my entertainment these days is coming from the web, not broadcast television. I've been watching classic TV shows on great websites like HULU and IN2TV. HULU is the better of the two, but both offer classic and new programming. I've been watching favorite old shows like Johnny Quest, Buck Rogers and the Partridge Family, and there are hundreds of others available. They stick four or five 15 or 30 second commercials in there, but they're less bothersome than commercial breaks during network television.

Even better, is the burgeoning amount of original user-created content on the internet. I now never miss two of my favorite shows, DIGGNATION and THE TOTALLY RAD SHOW. Both these shows are created by regular people like you and me about things that get them excited.

It's shows like these that are sounding the final curtain call for television as we've known it. Now, anyone with a camcorder, computer and high-speed internet service can create their own unique television program and put it out to a world-wide audience. No longer do we have to sit back and watch only what a select few think we need to see. The greed of television executives who only see the bottom line are hastening the death of traditional television. Like CBS canceling the fantastic show "Jericho", simply because six to eight million viewers weren't enough for their liking. For network television, if it's not a blockbuster hit week after week, it's just not good enough, and they dump it like yesterday's trash. I've become so fed up with that mentality, that I've decided it's time to abandon ship, and swim towards better shores!

I myself participate in this new entertainment medium, through YOUTUBE, making my own short pieces which I share with the world. More and more people are finding out every day that we can entertain each other, better than Hollywood can entertain us.

Flash Gordon on Scifi channel

Once again, Flash Gordon is being resurrected for the small screen. I'd like to say it's a great thing for science fiction on TV, but I'd be perjuring myself. The Scifi channel's incarnation of Flash has been "re-vamped" for the modern era, and it's not good news.

What we end up with is not the dashing, heroic figure out to save Earth and Dale Arden from Ming the Merciless, instead we get a slightly goofy, ex-olympic athlete whose only true interest lies in getting his father back, who may or may not be held hostage on Mongo by Ming. So far, at least, Dale Arden isn't Flash's love interest, she's his ex-girlfriend, who is engaged to a nerdy, no-nonsense cop that so far we've only seen about five minutes of. Dr. Zarchov is now a geeky under-graduate student who used to work with Flash's father, and is about as incompetent a scientist as you can be.

Don't look for any rocket ships in this show either, all transport between Mongo and Earth is accomplished via "wormholes" that are called "rifts" on the show. The special effects are under-whelming, especially considering how accessible high-end sfx is these days thanks to computers. That would be forgivable if the story plots were better, but they're not. Every episode so far has been a hackneyed compilation of plots from other, better science fiction shows of the past.

The best thing that could happen to the Scifi channel's Flash Gordon, would be to put it out of it's misery before it's forced to suffer through much more!

STOP THE PRESSES!!

It has just been announced that George R. R. Martin, author of the fantasy series "A song of Ice & Fire" has signed a deal with HBO to bring his acclaimed series of books to life as a dramatic series!

Each book in the series will be broken down into individual episodes that will make up an entire season. The first season will be based on the first book, "A game of thrones."

Television will once again have meaning!!!