Jumping The Shark
George Vernadakis writes about pay TV programming and other issues impacting the industry.
A Rise From 'Ashes'
I’ve seen the future, and it’s set in 1981. That’s the year that modern-day policewoman Alex Drake is transported back to in the new BBC America series Ashes to Ashes. Ironically, the show’s Stateside debut on March 7 comes just days after ABC announced that it was canceling its Americanized version of another U.K. import, Life On Mars - the original time-travel-meets-p ...... Read More
Comments (0)Curtain Call for a Soprano
The New York Times recently cited Norman Mailer’s description of HBO’s The Sopranos as “the closest thing to the Great American Novel in today’s culture.” If that’s the case then, to borrow a bon mot from Balzac (not to mention Woody Allen), there goes another novel. You’d have to be oobatz not to know by now that cable’s great American seri ...... Read More
Comments (0)I’ll Have the Same
According to Herman Melville, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Well, Melville may have been a great writer, but he obviously would never have made it in cable programming. In fact, when you consider what’s passing for “new” and “original” these days, the phrase “original cable programming” now seems d ...... Read More
Comments (0)Stop Moving My Cheese
No question about it: Video-on-demand continues to be very much in demand heading into 2007. MAGNA Global Research predicts that 90% of all cable subscribers will be able to get VOD services by 2010. That’s a mere 10% less than the sum total of people who know that Michael Richards has some serious anger-management issues. But what’s their POV on VOD? According to a Leichtman Researc ...... Read More
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