Media

HBO, Netflix, And Bad Relationships

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Well the whole “Twimance” causing a stir on the internet isn’t the only confusing relationship.  Closer to less good-looking is the fact that HBO won’t be partnering with Netflix.  Considering they have some major properties, this isn’t good for Netflix, which is having it’s own problems as of late – and though I have confidence in them, they are in a rather rocky industry.

But hey, HBO has their own streaming, right?  And then there’s Crackle.  And Hulu, and . . . well we’re up to our armpits in various streaming services all of a sudden.  Of course they don’t all carry each other’s stuff, or in the case of some anime, everyone carries it (Really, do THIS many services need to carry “Queen’s Blade?” Wait, nevermind.)

So it’s some not-quite-walled gardens, battling it out.  This misses a larger factor near and dear to this cable-cutter’s heart.

Namely, after awhile, some people may not give a damn about series if they have to go through a lot of rigamarole to get them, or get a specialty service they don’t want, or watch something drop off of a service.  It’s like taking all the annoyances about cable and adding brand new ones.

So at some point do people stop caring about The Hot Thing?  Or waiting for the DVDs?  Or pursuing alternate media (I can just read Game Of Thrones, even if it lacks the awesome of Dinklage).

I see this as a possible danger because in trying to keep up with big things, you have to face all these service annoyances.  If you get cable, you face cable annoyances.  Really, at some point people may just not care and buy eps on iTunes, get DVDs, or just give the hell up (which in a way I kind of did). There’s enough media out there that the Big Thing is only big because others say so.

I see this re-dilution of media access actually being bad for the media companies.  It looks bad, creates ill will, and diminishes interest.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

In Silicon Valley, The Line Between Humor And Reality Is Thin

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That App Was a Joke . . .  now it’s not.

I work in Silicon Valley, and trust me there’s a lot of weird stuff here.  That’s part of the charm.  We get fish curry tacos, monuments to water towers, and people who make apps that were originally jokes – like those mentioned in this article.  Yeah, you laugh at iPoo . . .

There’s many ways to look at this phenomena, but I’d actually like to add a different point of view – the insane stuff that becomes all to real is a good thing:

It reminds us that there is a market for almost anything.

It’s a demonstration of how fast something can be developed.

It’s a reminder that you CAN make it with a seemingly crazy idea.

It’s a reminder there’s still a lot of VC sloshing around.

It’s a celebration of the pure crazy that we can produce – and that means even if some of this crazy is, well, stupid, we can make the good kind too.

So let’s not decry iPoo, or the infamous Wesley Crusher sex novel, or any of this other stuff too easily.  Let’s remember right now that we have the tools, technology, and often cash to go completely bugnutz in our technology, media, and more.

Now that you remember that, let’s go make it happen, because if someone can seriously discuss Tacocopter . . . .

– Steven Savage
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

 

How Hollywood’s Unoriginality Could Revive Great Ideas

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Hollywood is adaption-crazy. This is somewhat understandable: Hollywood is risk-adverse and adaptions build buzz. Could you imagine “The Hunger Games” done without the book buzz behind it? The recent spate of “Fairy Tale” adaptions is a case of a seemingly safe trend, one that delivers and gets people’s attention (“It’s Hansel And Grettel In SPACE!”)

However at some point, Hollywood is going to tap a lot of big adaptions out as well as strip-mine our culture. Admittedly I see it taking 5-10 years, but somewhere in that point they might start looking at “lesser” properties. Such properties may be easily available, have enough buzz/mindshare to be worth it, and after awhile people may just be sick of “remade from something I heard of before.”

This is something I think could be a good thing.

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