Chris Holmes Online

My father-in-law just lost all his major channels (ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS) on DISH Network. This is not a glitch.

I hopped online to see what the scoop was, and ran across this article and this article. It turns out that U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas of Florida has issued an injuction against EchoStar, the company that owns DISH Network.

For years, DISH Network and its competitor, DirectTV, have been beaming the four major networks across the U.S. to subscribers who normally wouldn’t receive them. This is called Distant Network Signal, or DNS.

For instance, I receive feeds from New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta and my semi-local station. This provides me with a lot of choice when it comes to viewing network television shows. Under normal circumstances, if I were only receiving my local network stations, I might have to make a choice between watching one show or another on a given timeslot for a given night. As a consumer, that really sucks, especially in the current age of Digitial Video Recorders, like the TiVo.

As a consumer who receives multiple network feeds, I can program my TiVo to record CSI in one timezone in Thursday nights, and Grey’s Anatomy at a different time on the same night. Normally those shows would compete head-to-head in the same timeslot, but with multiple network feeds and a good DVR, I don’t have to deal with that problem.

This is apparently a bad thing in the mind of the local affiliates because they are worried that subscribers will watch the beamed-in network feeds and not the local feeds.

Umm… Do any of you local affiliate losers realize why people have multiple network feeds? If not, please reread the first part of this post.

If I didn’t care about television, I’d just get receive my local network feeds and call it good. I subscribe to DNS because I do care about television, and I want to watch as much of the good shows as I can. I don’t want to make a choice between CSI and Grey’s Anatomy – I want them both. That means that not only am I watching the DNS feeds, I’m watching the local feeds. I’m watching it all.

You are taking away my options FOX (it is the FOX affiliates that are responsible for the injunction, since they didn’t want to go along with a $100 million settlement. Typical FOX. First they give Bill O’Reilly a television show, then they pull this shit). And what’s really bad about this is that you’re taking away my options without thinking first. If you realized that those of us with DNS channels are watching a lot of television, including the local television, would you still make this decision? Isn’t it better if you provide people with more hooks to get them seated in front of the TV? Don’t you understand how channel surfing works?

To me, this situation is really about consumer choice. It’s the year 2006 and we should be focusing our efforts on providing consumers with more choices, not less. This isn’t the stone age of television anymore. But to hear the FOX affiliates tell it, they’d rather you be limited to Al Jazeera with a FOX logo slapped on it. What’s next? Big Brother telling me to stretch further during the morning calisthenics routine?

I’m tired of corporations and people with small brains deciding that reducing my choices as a consumer is a good thing. DirectTV already has a monopoly on NFL Sunday Ticket, and now they’re going to get a monopoly on DNS channels as well (because woudn’t you know it, DirectTV’s DNS service isn’t affected by the injunction).

This sort of corporate fornication is about all I can take. I’ve emailed my senators and congressmen. You should too. Because the next thing you know, it won’t just be your channel choices they’ve taken away.

Halloween is just around the corner, and so is daylight savings time (for those of us in such unfortunate time zones), or as I like to call it: eternal night. When I can arrive at work in the morning in the dark and get off work in the afternoon, still in the dark, something is very, very wrong with the way the clock is setup.

But enough about that. It’s time to hand out the award for the best new television show this season.

Every year the networks flood us with a bunch of copycat programming designed to ride the wave of successful shows from the previous year. Most of the time, what they give us is crap. That’s what happens when you clone something; the second version is always worse. If Michael Keaton’s horrible Multiplicity movie taught us anything, it’s that a copy of a copy of a copy usually ends up retarded.

Thankfully, however, there’s usually at least one person in Hollywood willing to take a risk, even if it’s small. Two years ago it was Lost, which is now must-see programming for the TiVo. A few years ago it was CSI.

This year, two months into the new season, I think it’s safe to say that show is Heros, the comic-book-meets-real-life drama about a bunch of “ordinary” people discovering “extraordinary” powers.

I have to give full disclosure here. I’m a huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. In that film, Bruce Willis discovers that he has a superhero type of power: he can’t be hurt. In Hollywood-speak this is known as an “origin film”, because the central story is about the discovery and development of the hero; how he or she came into being. Unlike a lot of other “origin stories” though, Shyamalan’s movie wasn’t the typical superhero fare: all costumes, special effects and explosions. Instead, the film was crafted like a standard drama, paced with a slow and deliberate hand, treating the material seriously, as if it had nothing to do with comic book heros at all. It was the most unique spin I’ve ever seen on the “super hero” genre, and it worked brilliantly.

If CBS’s failed Smith television show, which they yanked this season after only three episodes, was the television counterpart to Michael Mann’s Heat, then Heros is most certainly NBC’s answer to Unbreakable.

Hero’s gets the same sort of treatment that Unbreakable did. There are no men in tights and capes, no Fortress of Solitude, and no Batmobile. Instead, there’s just normal people from various walks of life who happen to be experiencing some really fantastic changes within their own skin.

A Japanese man who can bend space and time to his will. A teenage cheerleader who can regenerate her own cells, and thus escapes from her own autoposy after her chest has already been cut open. A man who can paint the future, revealing a nuclear attack on New York City. Another man and his brother who can fly. A cop who can hear the thoughts of those around him. Neat stuff eh?

But also easily turned into a pile of corny crap in the wrong hands. And that’s the real fear with anything emminating from the genre of the “super hero”. In the right hands, you get Batman Begins. In the wrong hands you get Batman Forever.

So far, NBC and the creators of Heros have done things right. The show feels more like Unbreakable than it does Fantastic Four, or any number of poorly executed super hero films. The cast is larger than for most shows; an ensemble that reminds one of a Robert Altman movie if he were the kind of guy to do American television. And that helps move the pace of the show along. We’re never exposed to scenes that drag on too long or feel forced to fill air time. Instead, we get a show has what I like to call The Lost Factor.

The Lost Factor is when the writers and directors of a show can architect the episodes in such a way that they do three things very well. First, by virtue of the way the a show is written, directed and filmed, with a certain style and pacing, it seems to move quickly; it doesn’t seem like you’ve just spent an hour of your life watching TV. Second, the writers construct the show in such a way that for every question answered, two more questions are raised. Third, the thing these sorts of shows do better than any others on television is leave the viewer begging for the next episode.

We’ve witnessed this phenomenon before with serial television shows like The X-Files (main story arc) and Twin Peaks. Sometimes everything comes together – cast, writing, directing, network support – and the whole thing works to create something that cannot be better described other than to call it “Must See TV.”

Heros is on the verge of staking that claim. After watching the first few eposides I find myself reaching for Heros almost as quickly as Lost or Grey’s Anatomy on my TiVo. And considering the sheer volume of television shows that my wife records on our TiVo, that’s saying something.

The good news is that, unlike Smith, NBC has ordered the full season. Heros gets to stick around, at least for this year. I recommend watching it, even if super heros (and villians) aren’t your thing. Because like Unbreakable, Heros transcends the comic book genre. And whenever a television show or movie does that, it’s worth paying attention to.

CNN.com is reporting that CBS is cancelling Smith , it’s cops & robbers show that emulates a lot of Michael Mann’s Heat. I blogged about this show less than four days ago. Talk about a quick hook.

But the real travesty here isn’t that this show got cancelled; it’s that it exposes television executives for the morons they really are.

What I didn’t realize until I read the CNN.com article was that Smith was also going head-to-head against NBC’s Law & Order: SVU and ABC’s Boston Legal in the same Tuesday night time slot. I didn’t realize it because I own a TiVo and a satellite dish, which means I don’t have to choose; I can record competing shows by setting my TiVo to record one show on an east coast feed, another on a mountain timezone feed, and another on a pacific timezone feed.

But while I can do that, not everyone else can, which shows how stupid television executives are. For some reason they think there’s only one or two good hours a week to air their stuff, so they all stick their shows on the same nights at the same time. Thursday, for whatever reason statisticians have come up with, appears to be a huge night, with Survivor, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI and ER all jammed into a couple of hours of competitive television. If I didn’t have a TiVo I’d be downright upset about this.

Newsflash for the mentally handicapped in the television industry: there’s 7 days in the week. According to the Wikipedia, prime time television is considered to be a three-hour block, Monday through Saturday (although anyone watching television knows Sunday counts too, otherwise shows like Grey’s Anatomy, X-Files, Desperate Housewives and The Amazing Race wouldn’t be there).

Let’s do some math. Seven nights a week times three hours per night equals… 21 hours of television. Which means there no flippin’ reason you stupid bastards have to put all the good shows on at the same time, scratching and clawing for the same viewers.

Did any of you dummies watch A Beautiful Mind? Did you not learn anything from the Nash equillibrium? Let me spell it out for you in simple terms: when you try and win everything, you shaft everyone, including yourself.

There’s 21 hours of primetime television, yet all of you doofuses stick the same types of shows on during the same timeslots. You pit your dramas against each other, and your comedies against each other, and your news shows against each other. Did you ever stop to think you might make a killing on a good drama if it’s not going head-to-head against the other network’s great dramas? Why weaken your viewership by putting your show in a position of competition?

Bottom line: You’re screwing viewers over. This is why on-demand is going to kill you. Because you’re too stupid to recognize that viewers don’t want to be forced to make a choice between two shows they like. You think because you “won” a given timeslot that you’re doing the right thing, but in the end you’re just alienating viewers. Eventually it’s going to come back and bite you.

Finally: Memo to HBO - pick up Smith and retool it please. Good actors, good premise… And it’s about 100 times better than the lame Lucky Louie…

In 1995 Michael Mann hit me with a sucker punch. I never saw Heat coming, his cops and robbers film starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer, about a “crew” of professional thieves who live by the code, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”

The movie was brilliant.

I remember my wife and I going to see it based on the strength of the cast alone. We knew very little about the rest of the movie. And I remember walking out of the theater some three hours later completely blown away by the sheer virtuosity of the film. It was like nothing I had ever seen before; devoid of cliches with intelligent characters that were exceptionally well spoken. The film’s events were driven by the motivation of the characters, not by clunky plot designs. And the whole thing was shot and directed with a master’s hand. I remember how fast my heart raced during the entire bank robbery sequence; I caught myself clutching my wife’s hand rather tightly, and she mine.

Since that time I’ve wished for more Heat. I’ve wondered what it would be like to see some of those characters, or characters like them, in another movie. I wanted to see more of that world.

CBS has answered the call with it’s new drama, Smith.

The show stars Ray Liotta who is familiar with this sort of character, having played a mobster in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Joining Liotta is a pretty strong cast: Jonny Lee Miller, Simon Baker, Virginia Madsen (Liotta’s character’s wife), Amy Smart and Franky G. The bulk of them team up to form a professional “crew”, much like the one lead by De Niro in Heat. Together they plan and execute risky heists. These are people who are not wired like the rest of society; for them, a 9 to 5 job is no different than a prison sentence. They’re lifestyles and tastes require a large influx of cash, and stealing is the only way for them to accomodate their desires. On top of that, some of them are adreneline junkies. For them, the cash is only part of the reward; the thrill of the heist brings its own benefits.

The show is well acted, as it should be with the cast it has. The directing leaves a lot to be desired (as does some of the writing) but that’s where we get into the real problem with the show. You see, “Smith” has almost everything necessary to be successful, except for the one thing that it really needs to thrive: a cable network developer.

Why this show is not on HBO or Showtime is something my brain still hasn’t grasped. The objective of the show is to take viewers into a world they don’t get to see – into the criminal world. Films like Goodfellas and Heat were perfect vehicles for this sort of endeavor because there are basically no constraints. You can say or do anything, as criminals often do. You get to see that world completely unedited.

But with a major network as your home a lot of the details have to be left out. It’s an edited version of Heat. There’s no cussing, for one, which comes across as highly unlikely given the characters and their backgrounds. No sex either, and the violence is toned down to extremely low levels. Are these really criminals we’re watching? It’s hard to tell at times, because it all seems a bit too sterilized. There’s something very dissatisfiying about watching the show and knowing that nothing really extreme is likely to happen because a major network distributor has hamstrung what can be shown. It’s the complete opposite feeling you get when watching a film like Goodfellas, where you have no idea if one of the character’s is going to go berserk at the drop of a hat. That “edgy” feel that most great cops & robbers/gangs/heist movies have is completely missing here.

It becomes even more disappointing when you compare it to a show like HBO’s Deadwood, which just concluded it’s 3rd season, just as bloody, foul and violent as it ever has been. But that’s the reality of the time, place and characters, all of which lend the show a certain authentic weight. That, in turn, makes the drama all the more interesting.

And that’s what is ultimately disappointing about Smith: the show is not driven by the reality of it’s characters. Instead, it’s driven by a television network trying to sell ad space. Nothing feels authentic or real. The whole thing feels like it has been censored by Big Brother before we’ve received the feed from CBS.

That said, there’s a ton of potential here. The cast is great, for one. And the developers, hamstrung as they are, have come up with a creative and interesting opening stanza of episodes. With the proper freedom the show could be exceptional. I can see Smith being yanked by CBS after less than one season if the ratings are low. And that would be a blessing if someone like HBO decides to pick up this show and give it an extreme makeover.

This show, with the creative powers of the folks at HBO, who have produced shows like the Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire, could be dynamite television.

Right now, it is simply in the wrong hands.

Last week I lameted the passing of HBO’s Deadwood, which returns in June for the third, and what appears to be final, season. In closing that post I said, “At least there’s still Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and Conviction. TV-Land isn’t totally doomed yet.”

Well, apparently I was wrong. TV-Land just took one more step toward doom. NBC announced that they are cancelling Dick Wolf’s latest series, Conviction. Everyone who appreciates the scant few good shows that exist on network TV should be crying in their beer right about now.

Conviction is one of those rare television shows; it’s smart, well-written and the characters are interesting. It’s that latter quality that makes it Tivo-worthy. Much like other character-driven shows, such as Grey’s Anatomy, I find that I can’t miss a Conviction episode. I’m too interested. I have to know what is going on with these characters. After the first episode aired it immediately made its way onto my Season Pass Manager.

I’ve always been a fan of Dick Wolf’s shows. I discovered Law & Order late into its run, and couldn’t believe I had dismissed it as “one of those dumb cop shows.” NYPD Blue it was not (thank God, because that show just about gave me epilepsi with it’s stupid handheld camera technique). Then came Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which tweaked the formula slightly by focusing more on the cops investigating the crimes. Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay are great on that show and keep me coming back. When Wolf brought Law & Order: Criminal Intent into the picture I thought he was nuts; would I really have time for another Law & Order show? Would anyone? But Vincent D’Onofrio’s character, Robert Goren, is by far the most interesting cop on any of Wolf’s beats. He alone made that show worth watching. It was too bad he fainted from fatigue and had to be hospitalized last year. I don’t watch the show anymore because every other episode they split time with Chris Noth. Talk about black and white. D’Onofrio is smart and creative. Noth is boring and dull.

I can understand if people have Dick Wolf overload. I’ve certainly reached my saturation point with his Law & Order series as well. So I think it was a smart move that they didn’t bill Conviction as Law & Order: Conviction. Still, NBC plugged it as a Dick Wolf show, and maybe that was its downfall with viewers. Maybe people just didn’t want to see yet another series from the Czar of Courtroom Drama. Whatever the reason for the ratings slump I don’t think the show’s lack of success can be attributed to the program itself. It’s one of the best shows on television.

What surprises me most is the quick hook that it got. It’s not 1999 anymore. This is the era of the Tivo. Not everyone watches a show on the night it airs. We’re too busy. We Tivo the things we can’t afford to miss and then we catch up when we have the time. I was about six episodes behind on Conviction and spent this past Sunday afternoon catching up. After about four episodes I wanted to track down NBC executives, tie them up with duct tape, put their bare naked feet into a bed of hot coals and interrogate the hell out of them so I could figure out why they were cancelling such a great show. I can understand cancelling a mediocre show that doesn’t have potential, but have they seen this cast? Have they watched any episodes?

A show this good sometimes needs time to draw everyone in. Some people will get attached right away. Others are busy watching their regular programming and just haven’t been introduced yet. It’s a shame that it’s being cancelled so soon. It’s just wrong.

This is why I hate TV.