The Liberal Order

Old TV on Demand

Dozens of old television shows including ``Welcome Back Kotter'' will be available online and free-of-charge under a deal between America Online Inc. and Warner Bros.

In the latest alternative to traditional TV viewing, a new broadband network called In2TV will be launched in early 2006 by AOL and Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution, the companies said Monday.

Story here.

Joel Stein on De-Funding PBS

If we got rid of PBS, cable TV would gladly pick up the few good shows. Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel would be in a bidding war for "Sesame Street," and they'd be willing to produce a lot more episodes than the 26 a year that PBS has squeezed it down to. Same with "Arthur," "Postcards From Buster" and "Bob the Builder." CNN and MSNBC would fight for "NewsHour" and "Frontline."

But the problem isn't just that in a 300-channel universe, PBS doesn't crack the top 20. The problem is that it's another upper-class subsidy, like tax breaks for mortgages, the NEA and Tom DeLay's vacations.

There is no other station so obviously aimed at rich, well-educated, white people. Should our government be responsible for providing Edith Piaf documentaries, 98-hour histories of jazz and baseball, Broadway shows, discussions between Charlie Rose and Yo-Yo Ma and rich people figuring out how much their antiques are worth? This is a demo that was clamoring for Alan Alda before his gig on "The West Wing."

Sure, there must be some poor people who don't have basic cable and really enjoy "Sesame Street" and "Nova." But for $400 million we could have Big Bird fly to their houses every morning and teach their kids how to count in Spanish.

The idea that market forces cannot produce shows of as high quality as the government is patronizing. We don't need the government to get Thomas Pynchon to write books or Alexander Payne to direct movies. Besides, if we have to let one medium devolve artistically, I think TV is the way to go.

So let's untether PBS from our government, freeing up not only the $400 million but the time spent each year arguing about the $400 million. PBS could move to cable and live off money it would get for selling off its broadcast-spectrum space to those new sucker networks that believe low-number channels still mean something in a TiVo world.

Op-ed here. (Free registration required.)

Hacked Bank Account

What Lopez calls his nightmare began April 6, when he logged on to check on a wire transfer he was expecting. As head of Ahlo Inc., a five-person company in the Doral area of Miami-Dade that buys and sells printer ink and toner, Lopez often wires money to and receives transfers from U.S. and Latin American companies.

When he checked his account, Lopez found that $90,348.65 had been wired to Parex Bank in Riga, Latvia -- without his approval. "I thought I was going to throw up," he said.

According to the complaint filed on Thursday, about $20,000 of the money was withdrawn by the fraudulent recipient in Latvia. The rest, roughly $70,000, was frozen by Parex, where it remains.

The U.S. Secret Service, which investigates computer-based attacks on banks, sent Lopez a letter in November saying its "initial examination" had determined that a variant of a virus called coreflood had existed on his computer systems.

The letter noted that coreflood is malicious software code that can give an attacker remote access to the infected system, but it did not explicitly say coreflood was the cause of the loss. Representatives of the Secret Service Miami office were unavailable for comment Friday, and have previously declined to talk about the investigation.

The allegations in Lopez's complaint against the bank include breach of contract, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and deceit, and intentional misrepresentation.

In this important case the court will decide the responsibility for the protection of online banking accounts. Lopez's computer was hacked and enabled the hacker access to his online bank account, from which he withdrew $90,000.

Florida courts are a bit flaky, but given the information provided, the bank has the responsibility to secure its customers' deposits. The court will have to determine if the bank is the least cost avoider of this breach, thus it had a fiduciary responsibility to safeguard his deposit, or whether Lopez was negligent in safeguarding his computer from hackers.

More Cowbell

In one of Will Ferrell's more memorable SNL skits, the Washington Post discusses Blue Oyster Cult's "Fear the Reaper," including a link to the actual skit. Here are transcripts of the skit.

The Good Ol' Days

Four decades ago there weren’t many serious  discussions about television because there was little serious  television to discuss.

Newspapers were still the dominant information medium.  TV News, though in cases excellent, modeled itself to some degree  after radio, where its roots were, but it followed the leading  papers for guidance in its coverage of national events.

It was the dawn of what TV historian Tim Brooks has dubbed  the idiot sitcom era.

The prestigious anthology shows of the ‘50s (“G.E.  Theater,” “The U.S. Steel Hour,” “Playhouse 90,” “The  Twilight Zone”) had fallen out of favor. So-called socially  relevant dramas such as “The Defenders,” “East Side, West Side”  and “Naked City” were also on the wane.

In their place were comparatively simplistic shows  ranging from the bucolic (“The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Andy  Griffith Show”) to the fantastic (“Bewitched,” “Jeannie,”  “My Favorite Martian”) to the bizarre (“The Addams Family,”  “The Munsters”) to the absurd (“Green Acres,” “Gilligan’s  Island,” “My Mother, the Car”). These were the sorts of shows  then-FCC chairman Newton Minow had railed against so famously in  1962 when he denounced television as a “vast wasteland.” TV was  mostly viewed as a vehicle for entertainment, a temporary escape  from the worries of the everyday world. It was not the world.

Now TV is the world, or at least the primary medium  through which we see the world. Instead of three broadcast networks,  we now have six, along with slews of cable networks.

TV has shot to the center of popular culture, with  thousands of books now out about the medium and about its impact on  society.

So in 2005 bring on the debate about TV and its proper,  or not so proper, role in American society. But be aware that in  some ways that, as old as the issue may seem, it is really still a fresh one, certainly for these times.

Rest of the Medialife Magazine story here.

Wal-Mart Has Made it Big

Forget that Wal-Mart had $256 billion in sales last fiscal year, more than the next three largest retailers combined. Forget that they operate more than 4,000 stores worldwide, employing more than 1.2 million "associates." And lastly, forget that had you purchased $1,650 worth of Wal-Mart stock in 1971 it would be worth more than $11 million today. Wal-Mart has proven itself a huge success because they finally made it to South Park. (Subscription to Wall Street Journal Online required.) Or you can download the episode here. (Bit torrent download.)

This month, Comedy Central's ever-irreverent cartoon "South Park" built an entire episode around a "Wall-Mart" coming to town. Originally met with wild enthusiasm, the new arrival turns the town folk into consumer zombies lured by cheap prices to buy massive quantities of products they don't need. It also turns Main Street into a bombed-out ghost town.
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Wal-Mart does no advertising on Comedy Central, but the chain's Ms. Williams thinks the channel's "South Park" was "right on target" in its episode featuring "Wall-Mart." Desperate to stop their town from total collapse, the main "South Park" characters -- Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman -- go to the store's headquarters to learn where the heart of Wall-Mart is so they can kill it. The heart, it turns out, is a mirror. And the local store the town decides to support instead grows from a mom-and-pop to a Wal-Mart-like behemoth.

ABC Dissing the FCC (and Its Audience)

I believe that free speech is absolute. (Read the second paragraph. I successfully sued the state of Virgina to protect my right to state this.) I also believe that the uproar over ABC's airing of Saving Private Ryan lacks substance. On the other hand, I believe that critics of ABC's opening to Monday Night Footbal have a valid complaint that it was over-the-top.

In the scripted introduction to "Monday Night Football," Nicollette Sheridan, who portrays the serial divorcée Edie Britt on the popular ABC series "Desperate Housewives," wore only a towel as she flirted with Philadelphia Eagles receiver Terrell Owens in an otherwise empty locker room. After asking Owens to miss the game, Sheridan dropped the towel; the camera showed her upper body from behind. Owens, smiling broadly, said the Eagles would have to win without him, and Sheridan leapt into his arms.

Yesterday, a league spokesman called the sketch "inappropriate and unsuitable for our 'Monday Night Football' audience," and the league office expressed its displeasure to ABC executives. ABC Sports apologized, saying in a statement, "We agree that the placement was inappropriate."

It's not that saying f*** and s*** on television has no adverse social consequences while Nicolette Sheridan bearing her back does. Saving Private Ryan was a scheduled movie with ample warnings about its content. That being said, I am a unapologetic advocate of free speech, but I am also an advocate of adhering to social norms and standards. This film, however, was of historical value, and the fact that it included content--albeit controversial--relevant to historical accuracy (even if not absolute accuracy it certainly expressed the reality of specific historical situations) makes including the objectionable content largely unavoidable. It was beneficial that it aired on broadcast television as a means of teaching a historical episode to households lacking access to cable or satellite television. If you regarded the known content objectionable you could have easily switched channels or left the television off.

The Monday Night Footbal opening, on the other hand, served no other purpose than to generate publicity for ABC's newest hit show. And generate publicitiy it did. But it crossed two lines:

1. It defied community standards without any social merit. (ABC indeed has a right to air what it pleases within FCC standards, but it also has a responsibility to the community that it serves.)
2. More importantly, it was unexpected. Much like the Super Bowl halftime show, young kids were likely exposed to content that parents would otherwise have blocked had they known beforehand that it would be aired.

ABC, in its desire to promote its other show, did so at the expense of viewers who they had to know would find it offensive. I found it idiotic rather than offensive, but I can certainly understand and side with the critics.

The Daily Show Jumps the Shark

The Daily Show and Jon Stewart have produced great entertainment since he took over the show after the departure of Craig Kilborn in 1999. (Kilborn, as you may or may not have noticed, has gone on to next to nothing since leaving the show.) The Daily Show, however, has officially jumped the shark.

Once Jon Stewart began taking himself too seriously (scroll down to the Monday, October 18the entry) he crossed over into a critic who takes himself seriously and out of his role as a comedian. This is too bad because he has a comparative advantage in being a comedian. And he must not recognize that his audience tunes in to watch Stewart and his cast ridicule self-serving pundits and politicians, not because they want to see him become one of whom he is paid to ridicule.

This is the exact same mistake made by Bill Maher, former host of Politically Incorrect. The show began as an entertaining venue where stars, comedians, and pundits poked fun at each other and their political views. (Today, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn has stepped in to fill the void left by Politically Incorrect.) Maher mistakenly thought that his celebrity status meant that people were suddenly interested in hearing his poorly informed political opinions. They were not, and the same goes with Stewart: He is not being watched because people respect his political and economic views, notwithstanding how well or poorly informed they are. They are watching because, at least until now, he does a pretty good job of poking fun at others, especially media critics, pundits, and politicians.

Stewart, who has called the Iraq war a mistake, is more likely than Jay Leno or David Letterman to ridicule Bush while going easy on Kerry, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. "He's an outstanding comedian, but clearly he does comedy from the Democratic left perspective," says Republican strategist Mike Murphy. "A lot of people who watch Stewart and howl at the jokes already have their minds made up in the presidential race."

The secret of Stewart's appeal is that he mocks the conventions of journalism, with self-aggrandizing correspondents like Stephen Colbert and Rob Corddry standing in front of phony backdrops or making faces while interviewing unsuspecting citizens. In a sound-bite culture, Stewart uses video clips to highlight the absurdity of political spinners and media talking heads.

After playing a clip of Bush hitting Kerry on taxes by saying "the rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason, to stick you with the tab," Stewart said, "Let me get this straight: Don't tax the rich because they'll get out if it? So your policy is, tax the hardworking people, because they're dumb-asses and they'll never figure it out?"

There is a difference between what he is doing in this first paragraph and what he does in the last two paragraphs. The first, again, is using his pulpit as a highly regarded comedian to bore us with his political views, while in the latter he makes fun of others who bore us with their political views.

The Seinfeld Curse

Jason Alexander's newest role is apparently another flop by a member of the Seinfeld cast. As I noted here, the writing of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David is what made Seinfeld the show it was. Absent this writing talent it appears that the actors are lost.

Great Comedic Talent

Stephen Colbert is one of the wittiest on one of the wittiest shows.