After many years of sharing an apartment with roommates and a requirement to have enough cable TV to be able to watch all of the local sports teams, a little over two and a half years ago I moved into my own apartment for a planned limited stay. Since it was just me, I decided to forgo television service, something I'd done in my own room of the apartment years before. What I had found was that, if there was a TV that could be turned on, it often was -- and only the tiniest fraction of content on it was actually worth watching.
While I've missed lots of things on broadcast TV over the past two and a half years, live sporting events, the last Jon Stewart Daily Show, Letterman's retirement, I've never really felt like it was a great loss, particularly given what I've seen when I have tuned in. Meanwhile, I've had Netflix, Amazon Prime video and HBO Now, all of which provide service that makes up for crappy TV and way too many commercials. But I've always wished for just a little bit more.
Which brings me to Dish's SlingTV. Last week I came across an article about how they were expanding the promotion on this service -- essentially a way that you can get a limited number of channels delivered OTT (Over The Top, i.e. through your Internet Connection). Paying for a limited number of HD channels seemed like an interesting prospect. Not giving Comcast stupid money for crappy TV also seemed like a win. Best of all, the site offered a free 7-day trial of the service.
Sling TV offers one bundle of channels for about $20 per month, one for $25, and then a whole block of what they have available for $45 per month. Their options include ESPN if you're so inclined, plus a bunch of Food channels and others. You can also add Cinemax for $10 per month, something I wish they would do like the HBO Now app, but anyway -- that being said, I decided to sign up.
The Results
I really wanted to like SlingTV. I really did. But my experience with the service has been colossally frustrating. Of course, sign up was a breeze. A quick plug in of my information and a credit card and I was on my way. But that's where the joy of the experience ended.
First, the bad: SlingTV offers apps for the iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV. Oh, but not the old AppleTV, only the new one. Want to watch on your older AppleTV, you need to use the iPad app and mirror it through Airplay. That took a bit to work out. They also offer an App for the Xbox One -- which we tried, but the performance was worse than the iPad through Mirrored Airplay. Specifically, the movie that we started to watch appeared to only run in stereo, not surround, and it had more frame drops than an oversubscribed online game. Even the iPad App has suffered through frequent lock-ups and buffering issues. Contrast this with Netflix, Amazon Prime, or HBO Now, and you'll quickly realize that you don't want to pay for this service.
But it get's worse. The app is so poorly designed that, every time we've tried to use it, we've been frustrated. Take the Cinemax channel as an example. We were trying to binge-watch our way through an on-demand series and every time you launch the app, it jumps to the live broadcast. You then have to work your way through the interface to get to the show you were watching and relaunch it. Pop out of the app for just a second, like to check your email, and when you return, you're dumped back into the live TV feed.
But wait, there's more. The entire interface is set up on a layered set of scroll wheels. At the top is the channel selector, below that, the programs that appear, first live, then on demand below that. When you want to choose a channel, you need to move the slider from left-to-right or right-to-left, and whatever it lands on in the center, it will pause a few seconds for in order to attempt to buffer in the info on what's live. If you're trying to scroll through the channel list, this can take a while. And with all of these delays and buffering, you can probably imagine that the app hangs. A lot.
Perhaps the worst was, on one of the iPads we were watching SlingTV on, the app just crashed at one point and would no longer function. We tried rebooting the app, rebooting the iPad, nothing. We restarted it on a different iPad and everything worked again, but if it you didn't have a second iPad, I suspect you would have had to delete the app and reload it... maybe.
Over the seven day trial, we barely managed to get through binge-watching one series. And it goes without saying, not once were we wowed by the app -- unless it was being wowed by how bad the software was.
Also funny was, in the process of canceling the service, they offered to give me a Roku2 if I signed up to a 3-month commitment. Unfortunately, my blood pressure couldn't handle 3 months of the service, so I had to opt out -- but your mileage may vary.
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Friday, September 9, 2016
Friday, February 20, 2015
Friday Night Lights vs The Wire
Recently, I finished binge-watching Friday Night Lights
on Netflix. While I made it through the entire series, there were several times when I came really close to abandoning it. While I felt like it captured some interesting elements of the small town America story, what I had the most trouble with was the overall narrative structure. For me, Friday Night Lights stands in sharp contrast to The Wire
, which we just finished watching for the first time last year. In contrast to Friday Night Lights, we didn't really binge-watch The Wire. Instead, we watched that show together, savoring each episode like the rich deep flavors of a complex dish.
My biggest problem with FNL was that it quickly became very predictable -- and not in a good way. Essentially, the story runs on a sort of sign wave, with the set-up for a character with a personal issue or a struggle, rising tension, then a resolution that returns the character to the root "good person" that we know they are. Put into a different framework, you might say good person, troubled by sin, then they face their moment of crisis, resolve and absolved. The underpinned framework is that all of these characters are good at the core, it's just these sin events that take them to bad places.
Contrast that with The Wire. In The Wire, we see characters that all have very dark sides. We have a plot line that gets set with problems and challenges. In the flow of a season, we often see a large story arc with characters thematically trying to do what they think is best for the larger good, only to see these efforts actually undermine a larger good -- one that we, as viewers, know was just around the corner. And the characters, we learn to like aspects of them, but also understand that they are not good. There is no black and white morality in The Wire; instead, it's rich with ambiguities that underscore the complexities of humanity. It's original sin. We are all tainted. It is inherent in our humanity.
For me, the contrast between these two series was so palpable, I began framing my thoughts on the two works a couple of weeks ago. But what struck me more was when I was reading the article I referenced in this previous post. In reflecting on the differences between conservative and liberal experiences with comedy and nuance, I could see more clearly why one series might be better for conservatives and one for liberals. FNL has a clearly defined moral structure. There is story and resolution. There is no nuance. In contrast, The Wire is all about nuance. There is no grand moral hand at play in The Wire.
It's not unusual for people to dislike things that we love. Opinions and tastes are diverse. At the same time, it can be challenging to internalize the idea the these same people may be experiencing those things in a completely different way. As marketers, we often draw upon empathy to imagine that we understand the thoughts and the brains around us, to experience the story through another's eyes. This is a reminder that, even as we step into another's shoes, we may be stepping into a wholly different universe where the logic and physics that we understand do not exist.
on Netflix. While I made it through the entire series, there were several times when I came really close to abandoning it. While I felt like it captured some interesting elements of the small town America story, what I had the most trouble with was the overall narrative structure. For me, Friday Night Lights stands in sharp contrast to The Wire, which we just finished watching for the first time last year. In contrast to Friday Night Lights, we didn't really binge-watch The Wire. Instead, we watched that show together, savoring each episode like the rich deep flavors of a complex dish.My biggest problem with FNL was that it quickly became very predictable -- and not in a good way. Essentially, the story runs on a sort of sign wave, with the set-up for a character with a personal issue or a struggle, rising tension, then a resolution that returns the character to the root "good person" that we know they are. Put into a different framework, you might say good person, troubled by sin, then they face their moment of crisis, resolve and absolved. The underpinned framework is that all of these characters are good at the core, it's just these sin events that take them to bad places.
Contrast that with The Wire. In The Wire, we see characters that all have very dark sides. We have a plot line that gets set with problems and challenges. In the flow of a season, we often see a large story arc with characters thematically trying to do what they think is best for the larger good, only to see these efforts actually undermine a larger good -- one that we, as viewers, know was just around the corner. And the characters, we learn to like aspects of them, but also understand that they are not good. There is no black and white morality in The Wire; instead, it's rich with ambiguities that underscore the complexities of humanity. It's original sin. We are all tainted. It is inherent in our humanity.
For me, the contrast between these two series was so palpable, I began framing my thoughts on the two works a couple of weeks ago. But what struck me more was when I was reading the article I referenced in this previous post. In reflecting on the differences between conservative and liberal experiences with comedy and nuance, I could see more clearly why one series might be better for conservatives and one for liberals. FNL has a clearly defined moral structure. There is story and resolution. There is no nuance. In contrast, The Wire is all about nuance. There is no grand moral hand at play in The Wire.
It's not unusual for people to dislike things that we love. Opinions and tastes are diverse. At the same time, it can be challenging to internalize the idea the these same people may be experiencing those things in a completely different way. As marketers, we often draw upon empathy to imagine that we understand the thoughts and the brains around us, to experience the story through another's eyes. This is a reminder that, even as we step into another's shoes, we may be stepping into a wholly different universe where the logic and physics that we understand do not exist.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Analyzing the FAIL of 'Conservative' Political Satire
This is probably the best analysis of humor and why there is no conservative version of The Daily Show. Waiting for the Conservative Jon Stewart: A unified theory of why political satire is biased toward, and talk radio is biased against, liberals in America by Oliver Morrison is truly a worthwhile read. It explores theories of humor and the differences in the kinds off storytelling that work for liberals and conservatives. If you're a marketer and you tell stories, it's probably worth reading it for that reason alone.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Celebrity News: Lessons for a Polarlized World
Some time ago I was thinking about politics, our news media, and the stupider aspects of polarization. In politics, the news about politics, and the media that surrounds it, everything seems to pull to one pole or another. Often, this need to align with a pole will transform positions and reasoning into an idiotic farce. What I mean by that is, if you start with a basic story like "President Obama Kisses Baby", before ink has hit the presses groups of people will find the need to author "How dare he kiss a baby", "Presidential baby kissing is destroying our economy", or perhaps even "Obama kisses baby and ignores the dangers of Ebola pandemic". It's a constant game of "I'm Rubber, Your Glue" and for most of us, it can be exhausting.
It's particularly relevant as we swirl through the election season. As election season nears, the madness of all of this polarity comes to a boil. If one candidate uses a serial comma, there will be widespread backlash against serial commas and anyone that uses them. Soon you'll find yourself needing to align with the comma users or against them -- but choose carefully, because the other side is hell-bent on evil.
What makes it worse is that there are ecosystems devoted to echoing and amplifying the two poles. From the cable channels to the papers and the radio stations, the media aligns with an audience and, before you know it, your feed is saturated with one pole or the other. And these ideologies live like religions, with us in the midst of an epic, never-ending holy war. It's so pervasive, that it seems almost a natural part of our existence.
But it's not.
I realized that one day while reflecting on lessons from the celebrity/gossip media. In the celebrity gossip world, you don't really have poles. There is no liberal/conservative split in the news about celebrities. When you get "Justin Bieber Arrested for DUI in Florida," you don't see a knee-jerk response from some other side. There are lots of "Bieber is an asshole/jerk/idiot" stories. Perhaps some teen girls with the "Leave Justin Alone". Even a certain number of publicist-driven, "Ah come-on guys, it wasn't like that" stories. But there is no "other half" of the media saying, "Justin Bieber is not an asshole/jerk/idiot" or "Why do they always bust white Canadian men, nobody says anything about Rihanna being drunk" stories. Or even the "They're just trying to destroy our traditional street racing culture. This is a classic American value. Did everyone forget about American Graffiti? American Graffiti should be mandatory in every high school."
Regardless of where you look in the celebrity media coverage -- if you parse it by celebrity, by communications outlet, or even as a broader sort of survey -- you won't see the kind of polarization that you see in anything that touches politics. That's probably why politics and political news is so disheartening. Put a different way, if every time you opened a story about your favorite celebrity, you knew that somewhere, there was a corresponding series of stories from the side of a "competitive" celebrity" saying that you were an idiot for showing interest in the first celebrity. Odds are, you'd probably buy less product, go to fewer movies, download fewer songs -- and you'd certainly only want to buy, download, or support the appropriate side.
The world we live in... strange, but not as polar as you've been lead to believe.
It's particularly relevant as we swirl through the election season. As election season nears, the madness of all of this polarity comes to a boil. If one candidate uses a serial comma, there will be widespread backlash against serial commas and anyone that uses them. Soon you'll find yourself needing to align with the comma users or against them -- but choose carefully, because the other side is hell-bent on evil.
What makes it worse is that there are ecosystems devoted to echoing and amplifying the two poles. From the cable channels to the papers and the radio stations, the media aligns with an audience and, before you know it, your feed is saturated with one pole or the other. And these ideologies live like religions, with us in the midst of an epic, never-ending holy war. It's so pervasive, that it seems almost a natural part of our existence.
But it's not.
I realized that one day while reflecting on lessons from the celebrity/gossip media. In the celebrity gossip world, you don't really have poles. There is no liberal/conservative split in the news about celebrities. When you get "Justin Bieber Arrested for DUI in Florida," you don't see a knee-jerk response from some other side. There are lots of "Bieber is an asshole/jerk/idiot" stories. Perhaps some teen girls with the "Leave Justin Alone". Even a certain number of publicist-driven, "Ah come-on guys, it wasn't like that" stories. But there is no "other half" of the media saying, "Justin Bieber is not an asshole/jerk/idiot" or "Why do they always bust white Canadian men, nobody says anything about Rihanna being drunk" stories. Or even the "They're just trying to destroy our traditional street racing culture. This is a classic American value. Did everyone forget about American Graffiti? American Graffiti should be mandatory in every high school."
Regardless of where you look in the celebrity media coverage -- if you parse it by celebrity, by communications outlet, or even as a broader sort of survey -- you won't see the kind of polarization that you see in anything that touches politics. That's probably why politics and political news is so disheartening. Put a different way, if every time you opened a story about your favorite celebrity, you knew that somewhere, there was a corresponding series of stories from the side of a "competitive" celebrity" saying that you were an idiot for showing interest in the first celebrity. Odds are, you'd probably buy less product, go to fewer movies, download fewer songs -- and you'd certainly only want to buy, download, or support the appropriate side.
The world we live in... strange, but not as polar as you've been lead to believe.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Jeff Weiner and The Voice of a Public Company
So last night's Pando Monthly was another interesting experience, notable for both it's similarities and differences. Previously, I attended the Max Levchin event in part because I really wanted to see the guy I'd read about in Juice and Founders at Work
and in part because I happened to be in the city that week for a conference. The audio that night made it a bit of a struggle to hear some of what was being said, but all in all, it was quite enjoyable.
The driver for last nights event was Linked In. Having burned through The Alliance book
recently, I was curious whether Jeff Weiner would share any additional interesting insights on the culture at Linked In -- sort of a third party window into values and ideology.
The event was hosted at Rackspace in San Francisco. As with many of these events that take you into the offices of businesses in the city, it's always amusing to see the office itself. Near the bathrooms there was the bike rack room, filled with bikes hanging there. And in the hall on the way into the bike locker, they had a bike stand and a complete set of bike tools -- now this is an office I could work in.
The Pando Monthly experience is also a great chance to see the embodiment of the writers you often read. While you feel like you know Sarah and Paul from their published content, there's still sort of an eery celebrity vibe that it's hard to let go of when you're in this kind of event environment. And whenever I look at Sarah, I can't help wondering whether I might have seen her at the P&H -- or whether I was already here in the Bay Area while she was hanging there.
So Jeff Weiner made for an interesting Pando Monthly event. It's always a strange and amazing story, the path that brings us to where we are at this moment. And while Sarah is often able to bring the interview to unusual places with some unexpected topics and questions, it was also kind of funny watching as Jeff Weiner remained consistently professional. Even. The voice of a large public company. Everything he said, every response felt measured. Within the lines. On the record.
Not that that was a bad thing. It just makes for an interesting contrast to what we sometimes see in public figures -- or people from the start-up world aspiring to be big. Instead of inflammatory comments or some level of churned up drama, Jeff Weiner delivered in the thoughtful spokesperson role. He was personable enough that you felt like you were listening to him -- not a sanitized presenter version -- but still careful and precise. A benchmark representation of how to be the voice of a public company.
and in part because I happened to be in the city that week for a conference. The audio that night made it a bit of a struggle to hear some of what was being said, but all in all, it was quite enjoyable. The driver for last nights event was Linked In. Having burned through The Alliance book
recently, I was curious whether Jeff Weiner would share any additional interesting insights on the culture at Linked In -- sort of a third party window into values and ideology.The event was hosted at Rackspace in San Francisco. As with many of these events that take you into the offices of businesses in the city, it's always amusing to see the office itself. Near the bathrooms there was the bike rack room, filled with bikes hanging there. And in the hall on the way into the bike locker, they had a bike stand and a complete set of bike tools -- now this is an office I could work in.
The Pando Monthly experience is also a great chance to see the embodiment of the writers you often read. While you feel like you know Sarah and Paul from their published content, there's still sort of an eery celebrity vibe that it's hard to let go of when you're in this kind of event environment. And whenever I look at Sarah, I can't help wondering whether I might have seen her at the P&H -- or whether I was already here in the Bay Area while she was hanging there.
So Jeff Weiner made for an interesting Pando Monthly event. It's always a strange and amazing story, the path that brings us to where we are at this moment. And while Sarah is often able to bring the interview to unusual places with some unexpected topics and questions, it was also kind of funny watching as Jeff Weiner remained consistently professional. Even. The voice of a large public company. Everything he said, every response felt measured. Within the lines. On the record.
Not that that was a bad thing. It just makes for an interesting contrast to what we sometimes see in public figures -- or people from the start-up world aspiring to be big. Instead of inflammatory comments or some level of churned up drama, Jeff Weiner delivered in the thoughtful spokesperson role. He was personable enough that you felt like you were listening to him -- not a sanitized presenter version -- but still careful and precise. A benchmark representation of how to be the voice of a public company.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Lessons from Streaming TV
Since moving from Mountain View last year, I have joined the cut-the-cord crowd. It wasn't just that I couldn't see giving Comcast $100 a month for hundreds of channels of crappy content. The worst part of having access to all of that crappy content is that it's easy to get sucked into watching it.
While I've maintained a relationship with Comcast for Internet, I have no TV. No TV as is, not just no cable TV box, but no TV. Since that time, most of my video experiences have been things that I found online or streamed through online services. If found a number of take-aways from the experience, so I thought I would share a few of them.
Netflix Streaming is Not Equal to Their Traditional Media Business
Netflix may offer one of the best streaming media experiences, but their service rides on an illusion that their library of streaming content is equivalent to their DVD media library. For a business that epitomized the Long Tail, Netflix vast library of DVDs available for rent was unparalleled. From new releases to virtually anything in the vault, if it is on DVD, Netflix rents it. But they don't necessarily stream it.
The library of what content is available for streaming is governed by different licensing rules. As a result, the content oligarchs still seem to be of the mind that if they just limit the availability of certain content -- say The Good Wife Season 5, that you'll run out and buy a DVD because unlimited free streaming is unavailable. And while all of the new release movies come out on DVD or Blue Ray -- even with the 'negotiated' delay between sales and rental -- you may never see some of them as a subscription streaming offering. And yes, you can 'rent' a streamed version of the movie from iTunes or Amazon, but don't expect all of the content that you want to watch to appear in the "all you can eat" streaming packages.
My Number One Complaint Against Amazon Prime
One of the things that I liked the most about when I had a Netflix subscription was that you could actually stream content over the cellular network to your phone. This meant that I could watch streaming content during lunch or if I found myself eating alone. While the phone isn't an ideal platform for watching TV and movies, sometimes it was better than no dining companion.
Amazon Prime's streaming client seems similar to Netflix, but they've built a hard block against using the app on the cellular network. While that won't cause you any issues at home, it makes it unusable for my primary phone-based streaming video use case. As a result, I went for seven or eight months without watching any Amazon Prime streaming content.
Content Differences Between Netflix and Amazon Prime
As you would probably imagine, there is a lot of content available that overlaps across the two services. The same movies, the same TV shows. But there are differences. Netflix seems to have a larger library of streaming content available, so you might be more likely to find something there than on Amazon. At the same time, Amazon recently obtained an exclusive license to stream many HBO series. This means access to old seasons of True Blood, The Wire, Band of Brothers, the Sopranos, and more.
iTunes Outdated Content Licensing Approach
There is no unlimited video content streaming available in iTunes. Instead, when it comes to video content, iTunes operates more like Blockbuster than Netflix -- happy to rent or sell content on a per piece basis. While that matches the rest of the market for new release content, it leaves a gaping hole when it comes to the rest of the content library. This means that, even though we use Apple devices like the iPhone, iPad, Macbook and Apple TV, we seldom watch video using iTunes. It's kind of funny when you think about it.
In fact, over the past couple of years, the only time that Apple got money from me for streaming video content was when I bought seasons of Misfits and, even then, it was because the DVDs were unavailable here in the states. And then, as the last season of Misfits was airing, Apple applied geographic restrictions to the show so that it was only available in the UK version of iTunes. No content for me, no money for them.
While I've maintained a relationship with Comcast for Internet, I have no TV. No TV as is, not just no cable TV box, but no TV. Since that time, most of my video experiences have been things that I found online or streamed through online services. If found a number of take-aways from the experience, so I thought I would share a few of them.
Netflix Streaming is Not Equal to Their Traditional Media Business
Netflix may offer one of the best streaming media experiences, but their service rides on an illusion that their library of streaming content is equivalent to their DVD media library. For a business that epitomized the Long Tail, Netflix vast library of DVDs available for rent was unparalleled. From new releases to virtually anything in the vault, if it is on DVD, Netflix rents it. But they don't necessarily stream it.
The library of what content is available for streaming is governed by different licensing rules. As a result, the content oligarchs still seem to be of the mind that if they just limit the availability of certain content -- say The Good Wife Season 5, that you'll run out and buy a DVD because unlimited free streaming is unavailable. And while all of the new release movies come out on DVD or Blue Ray -- even with the 'negotiated' delay between sales and rental -- you may never see some of them as a subscription streaming offering. And yes, you can 'rent' a streamed version of the movie from iTunes or Amazon, but don't expect all of the content that you want to watch to appear in the "all you can eat" streaming packages.
My Number One Complaint Against Amazon Prime
One of the things that I liked the most about when I had a Netflix subscription was that you could actually stream content over the cellular network to your phone. This meant that I could watch streaming content during lunch or if I found myself eating alone. While the phone isn't an ideal platform for watching TV and movies, sometimes it was better than no dining companion.
Amazon Prime's streaming client seems similar to Netflix, but they've built a hard block against using the app on the cellular network. While that won't cause you any issues at home, it makes it unusable for my primary phone-based streaming video use case. As a result, I went for seven or eight months without watching any Amazon Prime streaming content.
Content Differences Between Netflix and Amazon Prime
As you would probably imagine, there is a lot of content available that overlaps across the two services. The same movies, the same TV shows. But there are differences. Netflix seems to have a larger library of streaming content available, so you might be more likely to find something there than on Amazon. At the same time, Amazon recently obtained an exclusive license to stream many HBO series. This means access to old seasons of True Blood, The Wire, Band of Brothers, the Sopranos, and more.
iTunes Outdated Content Licensing Approach
There is no unlimited video content streaming available in iTunes. Instead, when it comes to video content, iTunes operates more like Blockbuster than Netflix -- happy to rent or sell content on a per piece basis. While that matches the rest of the market for new release content, it leaves a gaping hole when it comes to the rest of the content library. This means that, even though we use Apple devices like the iPhone, iPad, Macbook and Apple TV, we seldom watch video using iTunes. It's kind of funny when you think about it.
In fact, over the past couple of years, the only time that Apple got money from me for streaming video content was when I bought seasons of Misfits and, even then, it was because the DVDs were unavailable here in the states. And then, as the last season of Misfits was airing, Apple applied geographic restrictions to the show so that it was only available in the UK version of iTunes. No content for me, no money for them.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
HBO's Silicon Valley: I expect better
Just so you know, I started this review of HBO's Silicon Valley after the pilot episode which, btw, I hated. Initially, I found that it was so disappointingly bad that it actually spurred me to write a review. But I keep wanting to give it a chance, to let it breath and open up -- this is, after all, a series from the same guy that did Office Space. Plus, there's something about watching movies or TV programs that are set in the place that you live, whether it's just watching for landmarks or looking for geographic continuity, it draws you in.
Silicon Valley delivered little over the course of it's seasonal run. Overall, there were maybe or four moments in the series that seemed amusing. And for those few moments which I would be hesitant to call gems, you had to endure the rest of it. Back at the first episode, here's what I started to write. I can't say that my opinion changed much.
Another one that was surprising, one of the guys over on the Pando Daily staff really seemed to like Silicon Valley. He actually wrote several rather positive reviews. It's actually one of the reasons why I put my initial review on hold -- I looked at his review and thought, "am I missing something?" It's a good reminder that, like restaurant reviews and various other opinions, to each their own.
The One Moment
Looking back over the course of it's season, there was just one moment for me, one brief gag that spoke to a deeper truth of Silicon Valley. It was in episode 8, the season finale. It was like an actual cameo of authenticity. No spoilers, but let me just say that it starts as little more than a dick joke, a predictable bit of humor that flows through the season. But, in this one moment, there is a difference. The joke twists and the "engineer" takes over. Suddenly, you have an entire room working analytically to solve a theoretical problem without regard to the plausibility of the initial premise. This really is Silicon Valley in it's essence, this free-form willingness to throw resources and processor cycles on what-ifs, to engineer a world on a foundation of imagination.
If the rest of the series had been like this, Silicon Valley might be content I would recommend. Instead, the sum of its parts is about eight hours of wasted time.
Silicon Valley delivered little over the course of it's seasonal run. Overall, there were maybe or four moments in the series that seemed amusing. And for those few moments which I would be hesitant to call gems, you had to endure the rest of it. Back at the first episode, here's what I started to write. I can't say that my opinion changed much.
So I worked my way through the first episode of HBO's Silicon Valley show yesterday. I say worked my way through because I've had root canals that were more pleasant -- at least I was medicated for the root canal.Over the course of it's season, Silicon Valley was ripe with cameos. This seemed like yet-another Hollywood device to make it feel authentic, "if we just use real personalities, it will be more real". In that way, it almost seemed like it was more interested in making it seem real than making interesting characters and an interesting story.
More than amusing me or making me chuckle, Silicon Valley just made me angry. It was 50 minutes of time wasted not just because it wasn't good, but because it was a series of "funny" takes on "modern" Silicon Valley culture that have been done multiple times in other places. They trotted out the stylized tech company campus meant to be like Google or Facebook complete with the multi-person bike "used for meetings". Hollywood loves them some multi-person bike.
For me, there were so many tired Silicon Valley tropes that imagine a mythological world that we supposedly live in:
Admittedly, we live in an amazing place and it would seem like there is the framework for a great story here -- perhaps that's why it's so disappointing to deal with the same old tired cliches.
- The doctor pitching investment in the device he's developing; why, because I guess people in Silicon Valley people are supposed to be like people in Hollywood pitching their scripts.
- Technology people describing their product with a long string of meaningless techno-babble keywords and phrases.
- The universal 'demographic mix' of programmers
- The great core technology breakthrough that will revolutionize the world.
Compare Silicon Valley to Amazon's now cancelled Betas series. There were a lot of things that I didn't like about Betas, but there were aspects of it that were way more authentic. Instead of being so Hollywood-formulaic, Betas felt more start-up, exploring territory that conventional movies and television don't go. The thing that actually grabbed us into that first episode was the bit with the Asian female character and the texting prank, something that never would have made it on network TV. And that's sort of what makes Silicon Valley so maddening. This is HBO. They aren't bound by the lowest common denominator decency rules and limitations of network TV. But clearly, they are still bound by its conventions.
Fundamentally, I think that Silicon Valley falls down exactly because it tries to find the humorous aspects of Silicon Valley.
Another one that was surprising, one of the guys over on the Pando Daily staff really seemed to like Silicon Valley. He actually wrote several rather positive reviews. It's actually one of the reasons why I put my initial review on hold -- I looked at his review and thought, "am I missing something?" It's a good reminder that, like restaurant reviews and various other opinions, to each their own.
The One Moment
Looking back over the course of it's season, there was just one moment for me, one brief gag that spoke to a deeper truth of Silicon Valley. It was in episode 8, the season finale. It was like an actual cameo of authenticity. No spoilers, but let me just say that it starts as little more than a dick joke, a predictable bit of humor that flows through the season. But, in this one moment, there is a difference. The joke twists and the "engineer" takes over. Suddenly, you have an entire room working analytically to solve a theoretical problem without regard to the plausibility of the initial premise. This really is Silicon Valley in it's essence, this free-form willingness to throw resources and processor cycles on what-ifs, to engineer a world on a foundation of imagination.
If the rest of the series had been like this, Silicon Valley might be content I would recommend. Instead, the sum of its parts is about eight hours of wasted time.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Are We Finally Done With 3D Movies?
And I thought I was the only one who thinks that the 3D format sucks! Here's a story I came across this morning that gives me hope...
A DYING FORMAT? PERCENTAGE OF GROSS FROM 3D REACHES NEW LOW.
A DYING FORMAT? PERCENTAGE OF GROSS FROM 3D REACHES NEW LOW.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Celebrity and Story: Marketing at the Intersection of Fantasy
Several years ago while I was riding my bicycle up a lot of hills, I changed the inner chain ring on my bike from a 30-tooth gear to a 28-tooth gear. This makes it easier to pedal up hills. In the days leading up to installing it and actually riding, I had dreams of effortlessly pedaling up mountains. Not just sleeping dreams -- my idle moments were often filled with fantasies of easily spinning through the steepest sections of Old La Honda. Of course, that first time when I actually road up Old La Honda with my new chain ring, reality came crashing in -- climbing the hill was work. It was still work with 28-teeth, and when your body and your mind are loaded with physical labor, it's really not possible to say whether it's easier or not -- it just feels like work. This is reality.
Sales and marketing is all about selling the dream. It's about connecting with the customer's imagination and helping them live their fantasy. It's the customer, imagining themselves in that new car, enjoying the road. It's them walking into the casino, feeling like James Bond on his way to the Baccarat table. It's them, gloriously unifying their global business and solving all of it's communication problems with a single piece of enterprise software.
People don't dream about features and specifications. Sure, I was dreaming about a chainring with 2 less teeth, but I wasn't dreaming about teeth. People don't dream about two more megapixels; instead, they're more likely imagining clearer pictures or capturing more image detail. While they may fixate on 2GB more RAM, what they are probably imagining is a faster system and not waiting for screens to load or things to process.
At the same time, a powerful fantasy has roots in reality to help make it tangible. Try selling someone on the idea that the system is faster or the camera takes better pictures without giving them a reason why, and they'll have trouble connecting with it. That specification provides an anchor for the fantasy, something to tell them that this can be real, that this is not simply a fantasy. Features and the believability of a fantasy are closely related, and it's why it often helps to attribute benefits to a branded terminology.
The Celebrity Narrative
As I mentioned in my previous post on celebrity and story, most of what we imagine that we know about celebrities springs from the characters that they've portrayed. Perhaps you fell in love with Kate Hudson in Almost Famous
or Natalie Portman in Garden State
. While we all know that in real life these actresses may not be anything like the characters that they portrayed, our understanding of the actress is filtered through a lens of that character. So when we see pictures of Kate Hudson or read interviews with Natalie Portman, we focus on the parts that reinforce our expectations that the actress and the character are the same. We forge our archetypical hero.
The entertainment industry understands how powerful this fantasy engine is, so it directs a lot of effort into reinforcing these fantasy structures. That's why actors and actresses are often cast in roles that echo characters that they've portrayed in the past. Everyone knows the word typecasting, but we always usually think of it in terms of the limitations to an actor's career -- we don't usually think of it as a branded narrative.
Some of these narratives are so powerfully entrenched that they become intertwined with the celebrity. Take the recent example of Harrison Ford at Comic Con -- he can't escape his Han Solo / Indiana Jones narrative. Sure, he's acted in many other movies and played many other roles, but many public expectations of him revolve around that narrative center.
Selling the Dream
At the end of the day, if your product or service doesn't connect with an audience and inspire them to dream, you are going to have a hard time selling. In some ways, your role as a marketer is about finding the dreams, understanding the fantasies, and reinforcing them. But this is not just attention-grabbing image we're talking about -- this is about the deeper elements of the narrative. It's not just features. It's not just fantasy. It's the intersection of the two. Something that seems both impossible and plausible at the same time, a reality that is just a couple of simple steps away.
Sales and marketing is all about selling the dream. It's about connecting with the customer's imagination and helping them live their fantasy. It's the customer, imagining themselves in that new car, enjoying the road. It's them walking into the casino, feeling like James Bond on his way to the Baccarat table. It's them, gloriously unifying their global business and solving all of it's communication problems with a single piece of enterprise software.
People don't dream about features and specifications. Sure, I was dreaming about a chainring with 2 less teeth, but I wasn't dreaming about teeth. People don't dream about two more megapixels; instead, they're more likely imagining clearer pictures or capturing more image detail. While they may fixate on 2GB more RAM, what they are probably imagining is a faster system and not waiting for screens to load or things to process.
At the same time, a powerful fantasy has roots in reality to help make it tangible. Try selling someone on the idea that the system is faster or the camera takes better pictures without giving them a reason why, and they'll have trouble connecting with it. That specification provides an anchor for the fantasy, something to tell them that this can be real, that this is not simply a fantasy. Features and the believability of a fantasy are closely related, and it's why it often helps to attribute benefits to a branded terminology.
The Celebrity Narrative
As I mentioned in my previous post on celebrity and story, most of what we imagine that we know about celebrities springs from the characters that they've portrayed. Perhaps you fell in love with Kate Hudson in Almost Famous
or Natalie Portman in Garden State. While we all know that in real life these actresses may not be anything like the characters that they portrayed, our understanding of the actress is filtered through a lens of that character. So when we see pictures of Kate Hudson or read interviews with Natalie Portman, we focus on the parts that reinforce our expectations that the actress and the character are the same. We forge our archetypical hero.The entertainment industry understands how powerful this fantasy engine is, so it directs a lot of effort into reinforcing these fantasy structures. That's why actors and actresses are often cast in roles that echo characters that they've portrayed in the past. Everyone knows the word typecasting, but we always usually think of it in terms of the limitations to an actor's career -- we don't usually think of it as a branded narrative.
Some of these narratives are so powerfully entrenched that they become intertwined with the celebrity. Take the recent example of Harrison Ford at Comic Con -- he can't escape his Han Solo / Indiana Jones narrative. Sure, he's acted in many other movies and played many other roles, but many public expectations of him revolve around that narrative center.
Selling the Dream
At the end of the day, if your product or service doesn't connect with an audience and inspire them to dream, you are going to have a hard time selling. In some ways, your role as a marketer is about finding the dreams, understanding the fantasies, and reinforcing them. But this is not just attention-grabbing image we're talking about -- this is about the deeper elements of the narrative. It's not just features. It's not just fantasy. It's the intersection of the two. Something that seems both impossible and plausible at the same time, a reality that is just a couple of simple steps away.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Celebrity, Image & Story: On Lainey, Gossip, and Branding
It is with a touch of reluctant embarrassment that I must confess... that I often find myself reading certain celebrity gossip blogs.
It's not that I find the lives of celebrities that interesting. In my early years in the corporate world, I started reading through the entertainment news in order to expand my awareness of pop-culture topics -- basic research into the things that the people in the office seemed to be interested in. Now I think of it as light reading to build your marketing vocabulary -- without some pop-culture awareness, it can really be a struggle to communicate across generations. Left to my own interests, my cultural vocabulary would be even more alien and disconnected than it was 20 years ago.
Perhaps now, as you read this, you're thinking that it's just me, my dirty little secret. In reality though, an interest in celebrity is everyone's dirty little secret. But rather than just me providing an explanation, here's Elaine Lui, Lainey from Lainey Gossip, with her TED talk The Sociology of Gossip (here's an amusing profile of Lainey). If her presentation doesn't sell you on why you should consider reading her blog -- or at least not feel guilty about your interest in gossip -- let me connect a few more dots for you.
First, let's start by looking at the entertainment industry as Lainey relates aspects of it in her TED presentation. Behind the celebrities there are a host of publicists and programs, all designed around marketing an image, a brand, a project, or a media product. The entertainment industry is PR, advertising and promotion every day, 24 hours a day. It's a story that is also business, full of messaging strategies that succeed and true tales of tragic messaging failures.
From a business perspective, a perfect current events example might be the story of Paula Deen. From her ascent, to her food and her brand identity, Paula Deen rose through the Food Network promotional engine to become a significant national brand. While the style of food that she promoted wasn't particularly healthy, her brand image was used by a number of businesses to endorse their products. When it came out publicly that she had diabetes, it was a problematic PR moment, a speed bump for the brand, but it didn't cause the entire brand to collapse. Likeable and homey image continued to sell. Until the more recent revelations of her 'racial' past when the brand suffered a catastrophic shot and the endorsement deals began to collapse.
On Lainey Gossip, Lainey sometimes refers to the idea of the school for "celebrity studies". They've also put together several "career prospectus" pieces that take a look at specific actors, their image and their entertainment business activities, then speculate about their career and possibilities. Celebrities and their image are wrapped in story. Take Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the stars of the Twilight series. The gossip blogs (and perhaps the promotion arm of the movie franchise) built them out to be a couple. Demographically speaking, it was very popular with their fan base. At the same time, other gossip blogs characterized the relationship as fake, a PR construction to help promote the films. Then there was the "affair" prior to the release of the final installment and the controversy that surround that. On one level, there is the story. On the other level, there are the questions that should be running through your mind as a marketing pro -- how much of this is manufactured? How is it shaped? What are the elements that work effectively and why?
The Illusion of Brand Identity
Brand is a story. It is an illusion. It's the conceptual framework that makes something seem special or more unique than something else. Paula Deen's brand was a friendly, down-home, comfort-food image. But how about the real Paula Deen behind that image? What is she really like? Perhaps the court depositions and the racist phrases are closer to reality -- or maybe they aren't. In reality, it doesn't really matter whether they are true or not; rather, that they had enough energy in them to change the narrative, to shift our perception of the story. At the end of the day, do we really know Paula Deen any better or do we simply have new brand story, a new image wrapper?
Perhaps because it is such an integral part of their business, the entertainment industry understands how important narrative is to celebrity and brand. Whether it's a crafted persona for an action hero actor, fake relationships or controversies and meta-news, a broad range of techniques and practices are used to increase visibility and awareness. Sometimes they are used to mask product aspects, like the straight publicity relationship of the gay actor, while sometimes they are simple promotion devices designed to raise visibilty -- like the 'leaked' nude sex tape.
But what is really interesting, and Lainey addresses aspects of this in her TED presentation, isn't just the details or the execution, it's the story outside of the story. This larger story framework, the narrative that encompasses the details, is the story of culture. It's a cross-section of demographic beliefs and expectations, of social values. This is the story that we want to believe.
Every day we willingly consume a diet of lies, half-truths and illusions, all with the purpose of supporting an existing internal narrative. We romanticize actors and actresses, idolizing their mythical persona with no real connection to the actual person in that role. And whether it's a carefully managed media or simply a case of selective hearing, we only absorb the things that support our narrative.
Take the story of Lance Armstrong and professional cycling. For whatever reason, we imagine that we know and understand the world of bicycle racing. It starts with the narrative that we know -- individuals, teams, and equipment, with the story of the event taking place through a snapshot of one or two hours of video clips. We build a framework of characters, personalities like Lance Armstrong, who we imagine we know. As we watch the race clips, our character, Lance Armstrong, acts and performs in expected ways. When we read interviews, he says the same kind of things. Even his books support the character that we know. And, as we watch him perform in the video race clips, we imagine that there is a competitive event taking place. We gloss over the business, the traveling theater being orchestrated around a cast of hundreds of paid performers and a media infrastructure that helps sell the show.
But we don't really know what it's like behind the surface of the illusion. We don't know what it feels like to get up in the morning with sore knees and a sore butt and a 100+ mile race day to look forward to. We don't know what it's like to work in a job where your performance is on display, when you're told to ride hard at this point or go slow at another point. We imagine the world of performance enhancing substances to be one like Popeye eating spinach magically crushing his competition, and not a standard part of the day-in-day-out body maintenance for performers that play the contenders. We imagine a lot but there is so much more that we really don't know. Was Lance Armstrong a rule breaker or a legendary figure-head an industry? Did he play the role that he did, say the things that he said, solely for personal gain or was that his job supporting the business, the industry? Dots of information from the media machine allow us to imagine much, but we really know very little.
Imagination + Fame = Tremendous Value Multiplier
In the world of infomercials, we're familiar with seeing the product that slices, dices and makes julienne fries, but the real sell comes when we start imagining how we would use the product. In that moment, the product has become real in a very special way inside your mind. In your head, the product moves into an idealized version of reality and plays a role in the narrative that you construct. In that same way, 'celebrity' connects with the imagination part of your brain.
One of the things that I found rather amusing when I first came across the Lainey Gossip site was Lainey's 'Freebie 5'. Here's the basic description:
But, over time, one the thing that you'll notice as you read Lainey discussing her list, is how it changes and shifts, often centered around events or movies or public activities. Across a broader cross-section of people, you'll also find celebrities who capture the spotlight, only to see that spotlight fade from the public interest some time later. We all know the idea of 15 minutes of fame. But why is it that excitement from the attention rises and falls? Why is it that someone can appear on the list despite little, if any, direct knowledge of the person -- no idea whether they smoke, whether they smell bad, or whether you can share a conversation with them.
The reality is that we aren't enamored with the actor or actress, we are excited by the story. When Lainey is crushing on Robert Downey Jr., it's not the person, it's the media presence. It's a persona assembled in her mind from bits and pieces like Ironman, red carpet events, interviews and stories. It's a idealized character that doesn't include the ugly bits of reality that we all carry in real life like snoring, garlic-breath, or whether we remembered to put the toilet seat down.
We need to build these stories. We look for the pieces to construct our world. It's part of the reason why Playboy needs to include the Playmate profile, so that you have the framework to connect the photos and the image to a character, to make it human in your imagination. It's a lot like the perceptual processes that take place with change blindness and the invisible gorilla -- taking the perceptual moments and building them into something that seems tangible and coherent.
Celebrity, Modern Mythology and The Hero with A Thousand Faces
In his works on mythology, Joseph Campbell explores the idea of the monomyth, the hero's journey, a basic pattern that is found in many narratives from around the world. Campbell held that numerous myths from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces
as "The Hero's Journey". While the structure of the monomyth exists in many books and movies today, the same kind of concept can be more broadly applied to celebrity gossip and popular culture. Examples of this can be found in some of the themes explored on Lainey's blog, aspects like celebrity relationships, motherhood, career strategies and public appearances.
As you watch the tides of celebrity day to day, what you can see is that these themes are more than just the minutia of life in the spotlight, they are often components in a media strategy, carefully played in order to paint the dots in a larger narrative. Some, like the announcement of Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy, are masterfully managed, while others can be seen as blundering media missteps. Others, like the efforts to address the media after photos of Kristen Stewart and Rupert Sanders were published, were not so well managed. Sometimes, celebrities shape a story and it resonates. Other times it fails.
Here is a great post on Jessica Biel posting a photo on Twitter before the Met Gala. Essentially, Jessica Biel published an image of herself getting dressed and talks about having a tough time zipping her dress. As Lainey summarizes sarcastically, "Jessica Biel, she’s just like us! She has dress and zipper problems too!" From a messaging standpoint, Biel has attempted to shape audience perception of her, but her message didn't align well with her existing narrative. Minutia, yes, but it's an equally important reminder about message -- imagine if Larry Ellison tweeted images of himself putting gas in an SUV and complaining about $4 per gallon gas.
At the same time, there's another media at work here. The Biel image was posted on her celebrity blog site. While Lainey picked it up and commented on it unfavorably, it's possible that there is another audience in the general population, fans that follow her, that go to her site. An audience where this message resonates. Traditional celebrity gossip was subject to the filter of publications and media outlets. Now, the celebrity is able to reach out to their audience and connect directly.
This actually underscores an important change that has been taking place with the increasing importance of social media. While most of us could probably care less about the relationship between the two leads in the Twilight movies, the series built a particularly rabid fanbase, commonly referred to as Twi-hards. More than just passive fans, this audience channels their energy into aggressively communicating their expectations for the narrative back to the studios, the media outlets and the broader public. They campaign like a media tsunami. Here's an example. But, perhaps more important than this type of audience behavior, is the impact that it has on the narrative. Did Kristen Steward and Robert Pattinson get back together because they romantically reconnected or because their Twi-hard fan base demanded that their relationship hold through the final movie? And if it conflicted with their personal values, how much pressure did the studio put on them?
But This Is Business. Who Cares About Celebrity?
We all want to imagine celebrity as this mythical cast, performing in a pantheon of media and activity that is removed from our real world. In that same way, when people encounter celebrities, they are often interested in taking pictures, getting autographs, and documenting their encounters with their legendary figures. Celebrity is also relative. Your CEO may be a celebrity in your business, but virtually unrecognized outside of your company. Many Silicon Valley people might recognize Marissa Mayer, Mark Benioff, or Eric Schmidt, but how many people outside of the business world would recognize their names or know if that sat next to them on a flight?
At the same time, celebrity is a valuable commodity. Notoriety can help you command a larger salary, be hunted by recruiters, or have your opinion be considered. While lots of friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, or people in your LinkedIn network may not be a real measure of friendship, it does speak to some measure of communication influence. It is a measure of celebrity. How often to people turn to you for answers at work? How highly do the people that work with you in your industry regard you? You, the influencer -- this is an aspect of celebrity.
Celebrity is related to your personal brand. Your celebrity status is about who you are, how you promote yourself, and the narrative that people use to understand you. This is possibly the bigger lesson to understand from celebrity studies -- that the way people understand you, that the way they think of you is, essentially, a story. That story is a synthesis of who you are, and the role that you play in the narrative of the encounters that they have with you. Maybe it's your handshake, or when you talked about restaurants, golf, or wine. Maybe it's your cluttered desk, or the phone conversations with your girlfriend that everyone can't help but overhear.
Are you painting narrative dots that increase your celebrity status or making you seem like a trainwreck? Do you seem genuine in your interaction with others, like the stories of Robert Downey Jr., or do you seem nice when the cameras are on but hiding a mean, unpleasant personality like Reese Witherspoon's recent public drunkenness arrest in Georgia.
The Story and the Narrative Dragon
Here's something even more important to understand -- sometimes the narrative takes on a life of it's own. Sometimes you can't control the story, you are simply subject to the effects of being blown around by it. Take this example from the story of Sean Parker's wedding. Here, the story of his wedding started to catch fire as a story published by another media outlet. In several places, the Internet celebrity has attempted to change the narrative, to explain the events and shift the story away from "Sean Parker, anti-hero, eco-wrecker, redwood crusher and all around bad guy". What's more, while this story grew into a media storm, it started with an attempt to keep it private. According to Parker,
Ultimately, that's why you need to see yourself in terms of your brand, to understand yourself in terms of a media strategy. Because as much as people may want to imagine a world where our private life is not exposed or struggle to understand why Kim Kardashian is seen as a celebrity, this is our modern media. This is our modern reality. Sometimes you control the story. Sometimes, one little narrative dot can change the story and the story controls you.
Wrapping it up
If you've made it to the end of this long post, I hope that one of the take-aways has been an increased understanding of some of the interesting aspects of the celebrity industry. And, while it may feel a bit embarrassing to admit to reading about celebrity, you don't have to think lesser of yourself for it. If you do follow it and spend some time reflecting on the processes, themes, and aspects outside of the specific individuals, I think that you'll find yourself in a far better position to market in the modern world of social media. And should you become famous, you may want to keep these celebrity behavior tips in mind.
It's not that I find the lives of celebrities that interesting. In my early years in the corporate world, I started reading through the entertainment news in order to expand my awareness of pop-culture topics -- basic research into the things that the people in the office seemed to be interested in. Now I think of it as light reading to build your marketing vocabulary -- without some pop-culture awareness, it can really be a struggle to communicate across generations. Left to my own interests, my cultural vocabulary would be even more alien and disconnected than it was 20 years ago.
Perhaps now, as you read this, you're thinking that it's just me, my dirty little secret. In reality though, an interest in celebrity is everyone's dirty little secret. But rather than just me providing an explanation, here's Elaine Lui, Lainey from Lainey Gossip, with her TED talk The Sociology of Gossip (here's an amusing profile of Lainey). If her presentation doesn't sell you on why you should consider reading her blog -- or at least not feel guilty about your interest in gossip -- let me connect a few more dots for you.
First, let's start by looking at the entertainment industry as Lainey relates aspects of it in her TED presentation. Behind the celebrities there are a host of publicists and programs, all designed around marketing an image, a brand, a project, or a media product. The entertainment industry is PR, advertising and promotion every day, 24 hours a day. It's a story that is also business, full of messaging strategies that succeed and true tales of tragic messaging failures.
From a business perspective, a perfect current events example might be the story of Paula Deen. From her ascent, to her food and her brand identity, Paula Deen rose through the Food Network promotional engine to become a significant national brand. While the style of food that she promoted wasn't particularly healthy, her brand image was used by a number of businesses to endorse their products. When it came out publicly that she had diabetes, it was a problematic PR moment, a speed bump for the brand, but it didn't cause the entire brand to collapse. Likeable and homey image continued to sell. Until the more recent revelations of her 'racial' past when the brand suffered a catastrophic shot and the endorsement deals began to collapse.
On Lainey Gossip, Lainey sometimes refers to the idea of the school for "celebrity studies". They've also put together several "career prospectus" pieces that take a look at specific actors, their image and their entertainment business activities, then speculate about their career and possibilities. Celebrities and their image are wrapped in story. Take Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the stars of the Twilight series. The gossip blogs (and perhaps the promotion arm of the movie franchise) built them out to be a couple. Demographically speaking, it was very popular with their fan base. At the same time, other gossip blogs characterized the relationship as fake, a PR construction to help promote the films. Then there was the "affair" prior to the release of the final installment and the controversy that surround that. On one level, there is the story. On the other level, there are the questions that should be running through your mind as a marketing pro -- how much of this is manufactured? How is it shaped? What are the elements that work effectively and why?
The Illusion of Brand Identity
Brand is a story. It is an illusion. It's the conceptual framework that makes something seem special or more unique than something else. Paula Deen's brand was a friendly, down-home, comfort-food image. But how about the real Paula Deen behind that image? What is she really like? Perhaps the court depositions and the racist phrases are closer to reality -- or maybe they aren't. In reality, it doesn't really matter whether they are true or not; rather, that they had enough energy in them to change the narrative, to shift our perception of the story. At the end of the day, do we really know Paula Deen any better or do we simply have new brand story, a new image wrapper?
Perhaps because it is such an integral part of their business, the entertainment industry understands how important narrative is to celebrity and brand. Whether it's a crafted persona for an action hero actor, fake relationships or controversies and meta-news, a broad range of techniques and practices are used to increase visibility and awareness. Sometimes they are used to mask product aspects, like the straight publicity relationship of the gay actor, while sometimes they are simple promotion devices designed to raise visibilty -- like the 'leaked' nude sex tape.
But what is really interesting, and Lainey addresses aspects of this in her TED presentation, isn't just the details or the execution, it's the story outside of the story. This larger story framework, the narrative that encompasses the details, is the story of culture. It's a cross-section of demographic beliefs and expectations, of social values. This is the story that we want to believe.
Every day we willingly consume a diet of lies, half-truths and illusions, all with the purpose of supporting an existing internal narrative. We romanticize actors and actresses, idolizing their mythical persona with no real connection to the actual person in that role. And whether it's a carefully managed media or simply a case of selective hearing, we only absorb the things that support our narrative.
Take the story of Lance Armstrong and professional cycling. For whatever reason, we imagine that we know and understand the world of bicycle racing. It starts with the narrative that we know -- individuals, teams, and equipment, with the story of the event taking place through a snapshot of one or two hours of video clips. We build a framework of characters, personalities like Lance Armstrong, who we imagine we know. As we watch the race clips, our character, Lance Armstrong, acts and performs in expected ways. When we read interviews, he says the same kind of things. Even his books support the character that we know. And, as we watch him perform in the video race clips, we imagine that there is a competitive event taking place. We gloss over the business, the traveling theater being orchestrated around a cast of hundreds of paid performers and a media infrastructure that helps sell the show.
But we don't really know what it's like behind the surface of the illusion. We don't know what it feels like to get up in the morning with sore knees and a sore butt and a 100+ mile race day to look forward to. We don't know what it's like to work in a job where your performance is on display, when you're told to ride hard at this point or go slow at another point. We imagine the world of performance enhancing substances to be one like Popeye eating spinach magically crushing his competition, and not a standard part of the day-in-day-out body maintenance for performers that play the contenders. We imagine a lot but there is so much more that we really don't know. Was Lance Armstrong a rule breaker or a legendary figure-head an industry? Did he play the role that he did, say the things that he said, solely for personal gain or was that his job supporting the business, the industry? Dots of information from the media machine allow us to imagine much, but we really know very little.
Imagination + Fame = Tremendous Value Multiplier
In the world of infomercials, we're familiar with seeing the product that slices, dices and makes julienne fries, but the real sell comes when we start imagining how we would use the product. In that moment, the product has become real in a very special way inside your mind. In your head, the product moves into an idealized version of reality and plays a role in the narrative that you construct. In that same way, 'celebrity' connects with the imagination part of your brain.
One of the things that I found rather amusing when I first came across the Lainey Gossip site was Lainey's 'Freebie 5'. Here's the basic description:
A concept inspired by Friends which I’ve called the Freebie Five - a list of 5 'unattainables' you’d have permission to tap without consequence from your significant other should the opportunity arise. The key to the Freebie Five is fantasy, whatever turns your crank. My criteria, however, is also determined by celebrity. Two bit no-names, no matter how hot they are, don’t rank. Because while intelligence is optional, fame never is.While I'd never heard of it prior to finding her site, I've since found references to the same core idea in other areas that suggest that the basic theme is more common than you might think.
But, over time, one the thing that you'll notice as you read Lainey discussing her list, is how it changes and shifts, often centered around events or movies or public activities. Across a broader cross-section of people, you'll also find celebrities who capture the spotlight, only to see that spotlight fade from the public interest some time later. We all know the idea of 15 minutes of fame. But why is it that excitement from the attention rises and falls? Why is it that someone can appear on the list despite little, if any, direct knowledge of the person -- no idea whether they smoke, whether they smell bad, or whether you can share a conversation with them.
The reality is that we aren't enamored with the actor or actress, we are excited by the story. When Lainey is crushing on Robert Downey Jr., it's not the person, it's the media presence. It's a persona assembled in her mind from bits and pieces like Ironman, red carpet events, interviews and stories. It's a idealized character that doesn't include the ugly bits of reality that we all carry in real life like snoring, garlic-breath, or whether we remembered to put the toilet seat down.
We need to build these stories. We look for the pieces to construct our world. It's part of the reason why Playboy needs to include the Playmate profile, so that you have the framework to connect the photos and the image to a character, to make it human in your imagination. It's a lot like the perceptual processes that take place with change blindness and the invisible gorilla -- taking the perceptual moments and building them into something that seems tangible and coherent.
Celebrity, Modern Mythology and The Hero with A Thousand Faces
In his works on mythology, Joseph Campbell explores the idea of the monomyth, the hero's journey, a basic pattern that is found in many narratives from around the world. Campbell held that numerous myths from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces
as "The Hero's Journey". While the structure of the monomyth exists in many books and movies today, the same kind of concept can be more broadly applied to celebrity gossip and popular culture. Examples of this can be found in some of the themes explored on Lainey's blog, aspects like celebrity relationships, motherhood, career strategies and public appearances.As you watch the tides of celebrity day to day, what you can see is that these themes are more than just the minutia of life in the spotlight, they are often components in a media strategy, carefully played in order to paint the dots in a larger narrative. Some, like the announcement of Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy, are masterfully managed, while others can be seen as blundering media missteps. Others, like the efforts to address the media after photos of Kristen Stewart and Rupert Sanders were published, were not so well managed. Sometimes, celebrities shape a story and it resonates. Other times it fails.
Here is a great post on Jessica Biel posting a photo on Twitter before the Met Gala. Essentially, Jessica Biel published an image of herself getting dressed and talks about having a tough time zipping her dress. As Lainey summarizes sarcastically, "Jessica Biel, she’s just like us! She has dress and zipper problems too!" From a messaging standpoint, Biel has attempted to shape audience perception of her, but her message didn't align well with her existing narrative. Minutia, yes, but it's an equally important reminder about message -- imagine if Larry Ellison tweeted images of himself putting gas in an SUV and complaining about $4 per gallon gas.
At the same time, there's another media at work here. The Biel image was posted on her celebrity blog site. While Lainey picked it up and commented on it unfavorably, it's possible that there is another audience in the general population, fans that follow her, that go to her site. An audience where this message resonates. Traditional celebrity gossip was subject to the filter of publications and media outlets. Now, the celebrity is able to reach out to their audience and connect directly.
This actually underscores an important change that has been taking place with the increasing importance of social media. While most of us could probably care less about the relationship between the two leads in the Twilight movies, the series built a particularly rabid fanbase, commonly referred to as Twi-hards. More than just passive fans, this audience channels their energy into aggressively communicating their expectations for the narrative back to the studios, the media outlets and the broader public. They campaign like a media tsunami. Here's an example. But, perhaps more important than this type of audience behavior, is the impact that it has on the narrative. Did Kristen Steward and Robert Pattinson get back together because they romantically reconnected or because their Twi-hard fan base demanded that their relationship hold through the final movie? And if it conflicted with their personal values, how much pressure did the studio put on them?
But This Is Business. Who Cares About Celebrity?
We all want to imagine celebrity as this mythical cast, performing in a pantheon of media and activity that is removed from our real world. In that same way, when people encounter celebrities, they are often interested in taking pictures, getting autographs, and documenting their encounters with their legendary figures. Celebrity is also relative. Your CEO may be a celebrity in your business, but virtually unrecognized outside of your company. Many Silicon Valley people might recognize Marissa Mayer, Mark Benioff, or Eric Schmidt, but how many people outside of the business world would recognize their names or know if that sat next to them on a flight?
At the same time, celebrity is a valuable commodity. Notoriety can help you command a larger salary, be hunted by recruiters, or have your opinion be considered. While lots of friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, or people in your LinkedIn network may not be a real measure of friendship, it does speak to some measure of communication influence. It is a measure of celebrity. How often to people turn to you for answers at work? How highly do the people that work with you in your industry regard you? You, the influencer -- this is an aspect of celebrity.
Celebrity is related to your personal brand. Your celebrity status is about who you are, how you promote yourself, and the narrative that people use to understand you. This is possibly the bigger lesson to understand from celebrity studies -- that the way people understand you, that the way they think of you is, essentially, a story. That story is a synthesis of who you are, and the role that you play in the narrative of the encounters that they have with you. Maybe it's your handshake, or when you talked about restaurants, golf, or wine. Maybe it's your cluttered desk, or the phone conversations with your girlfriend that everyone can't help but overhear.
Are you painting narrative dots that increase your celebrity status or making you seem like a trainwreck? Do you seem genuine in your interaction with others, like the stories of Robert Downey Jr., or do you seem nice when the cameras are on but hiding a mean, unpleasant personality like Reese Witherspoon's recent public drunkenness arrest in Georgia.
The Story and the Narrative Dragon
Here's something even more important to understand -- sometimes the narrative takes on a life of it's own. Sometimes you can't control the story, you are simply subject to the effects of being blown around by it. Take this example from the story of Sean Parker's wedding. Here, the story of his wedding started to catch fire as a story published by another media outlet. In several places, the Internet celebrity has attempted to change the narrative, to explain the events and shift the story away from "Sean Parker, anti-hero, eco-wrecker, redwood crusher and all around bad guy". What's more, while this story grew into a media storm, it started with an attempt to keep it private. According to Parker,
We chose a setting for our wedding that was a literal expression of our search for sanctuary — a place that was safe, private, and intimate. We chose a remote location (Big Sur), invited no press, and did our best to conceal that location from the press. We didn’t court attention — quite the opposite, we asked guests to check their cell phones and cameras at the door and we didn’t sell our photos to tabloids.And yet, the story blew up. What may have started as the simple story of an ultimate nerd fantasy wedding,
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to force 364 otherwise self-respecting adults to dress up in elaborate fantasy-inspired costumes, a feat of mischief that we were delighted to attempt. The Academy Award winning costume designer (for “Lord of the Rings”), Ngila Dickson, was our co-conspirator, and her brilliant designs exceeded even our wildest dreams.transformed into a media dragon, a narrative monster. Here's how he describes what he took away from the experience:
The biggest mistake we made in wedding planning was forgetting about the media: that silent, invisible dragon breathing down our necks all along. Nothing has been more shocking to me than the media’s handling of this “controversy”: there were hundreds of articles written, and yet — incredibly — there was only one reporter who bothered to ask us for comment prior to publishing their story.It's a story of dots, of tidbits crafted into a narrative. As noted earlier, we don't know the reality, we assemble a story from the pieces that we have available. In his critique of the media near the end of the piece, Parker talks about how, "social media has collapsed the traditional media roles of content producer, editor, publisher, and consumer into one and assigned those roles to literally everyone". This also holds true for what it means to be a celebrity, a public figure. As Parker notes, "the more we depend on social networks and other online services to share content with friends and family, the more we risk that our content inadvertently becomes public."
Ultimately, that's why you need to see yourself in terms of your brand, to understand yourself in terms of a media strategy. Because as much as people may want to imagine a world where our private life is not exposed or struggle to understand why Kim Kardashian is seen as a celebrity, this is our modern media. This is our modern reality. Sometimes you control the story. Sometimes, one little narrative dot can change the story and the story controls you.
Wrapping it up
If you've made it to the end of this long post, I hope that one of the take-aways has been an increased understanding of some of the interesting aspects of the celebrity industry. And, while it may feel a bit embarrassing to admit to reading about celebrity, you don't have to think lesser of yourself for it. If you do follow it and spend some time reflecting on the processes, themes, and aspects outside of the specific individuals, I think that you'll find yourself in a far better position to market in the modern world of social media. And should you become famous, you may want to keep these celebrity behavior tips in mind.
Friday, June 14, 2013
XBox One - Celebrating Microsoft's Design Arrogance
As the news surrounding the XBox One comes pouring out of E3, the details of features and implementation on the platform are seeing some serious PR backlash and groundswell dissatisfaction among their existing XBox customer-base. From stomping on the used game market to the must-connect-and-phone-home once-per-day or the always on Kinect monitoring the room, Microsoft has implemented a lot of features that seem more closely aligned to the interests of Microsoft than those of their customers.
It's not uncommon for products to suffer a misstep or two at launch. For as much time and effort as is put into development, it's still difficult to interpret applied uses. And the are always bugs. But with the XBox One platform, it's difficult to envision a product that has done more to take aim at their existing market and customer base, line up their most sensitive parts, and fire not once, but multiple times. Full disclosure: the XBox game that I'm currently playing is a first person shooter.
Seriously though. Consider some of the design changes that have been implemented on the XBox One platform:
In that way, you kind of feel sorry for the businesses in the used game market. Like Microsoft's notebook and tablet partners with Surface, they are the latest ecosystem to get oops-ed upside their heads. Classic.
Opportunity Lost
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about XBox One is that it really was an anticipated platform. Microsoft really does have a strong foothold in the living room with the XBox360 console. XBox One could have been a contender. If they had simply made it a consumer friendly, not always-on-nanny-cam that worked with any media, they might not have alienated a huge chunk of their core.
What's more, most hardcore gamers will tell you that, while Kinect can be an amusing accessory, it doesn't really add to or improve their experience for the games that they play the most. It's more of a Wii-wannabe that's makes the platform more accessible for families -- anything but a "Must Have". In that way, must have, always on kind of spits in the eye of some of current platform's most passionate evangelists.
Some of these problematic features could be easily corrected, simply by making them optional. Imagine if they had kept Kinect as an accessory but did a "look what you can do with this" presentation. My guess is that, given the option and enough benefits from having always-on enabled, you would build a large base of users who ran that configuration.
In conclusion, here's a little thought for take-away. With many approaches to technology, there are trade-offs. But a lot of idea acceptance comes in the way something is framed. During some of their presentation materials, Microsoft reps talked about smart phones and always on connectivity. In that way, it's easy to think about the privacy that we give-up by opening geo-location features on our smart phones. But in asking people to adopt this, do we say:
It's not uncommon for products to suffer a misstep or two at launch. For as much time and effort as is put into development, it's still difficult to interpret applied uses. And the are always bugs. But with the XBox One platform, it's difficult to envision a product that has done more to take aim at their existing market and customer base, line up their most sensitive parts, and fire not once, but multiple times. Full disclosure: the XBox game that I'm currently playing is a first person shooter.
Seriously though. Consider some of the design changes that have been implemented on the XBox One platform:
- While the XBox360 always tries to connect to XBox live when it's turned on and there is a network available, it will function without an Internet connection. Now the platform is being changed so that it won't work without phoning home? What problem does this solve for the user?
- While the XBox360 can operate without the Kinect and a user has the option to connect the Kinect or opt out, the XBox One will not operate without the Kinect, and the Kinect is always on. Was it really necessary to eliminate this option with the system? What problem does this solve for the user?
- While killing physical game media may simplify Microsoft's distribution network and reduce costs, killing the used game market essentially takes aim at long tail game market, gives it the finger, then fires both barrels. Again, what problem does this solve for the user?
- Start with 'what would be best for Microsoft'.
- Make it the standard on all of our stuff so that it only works this way, our way.
- Tell everybody how awesome it is and how they are fools if they don't recognize the Microsoft genius.
In that way, you kind of feel sorry for the businesses in the used game market. Like Microsoft's notebook and tablet partners with Surface, they are the latest ecosystem to get oops-ed upside their heads. Classic.
Opportunity Lost
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about XBox One is that it really was an anticipated platform. Microsoft really does have a strong foothold in the living room with the XBox360 console. XBox One could have been a contender. If they had simply made it a consumer friendly, not always-on-nanny-cam that worked with any media, they might not have alienated a huge chunk of their core.
What's more, most hardcore gamers will tell you that, while Kinect can be an amusing accessory, it doesn't really add to or improve their experience for the games that they play the most. It's more of a Wii-wannabe that's makes the platform more accessible for families -- anything but a "Must Have". In that way, must have, always on kind of spits in the eye of some of current platform's most passionate evangelists.
Some of these problematic features could be easily corrected, simply by making them optional. Imagine if they had kept Kinect as an accessory but did a "look what you can do with this" presentation. My guess is that, given the option and enough benefits from having always-on enabled, you would build a large base of users who ran that configuration.
In conclusion, here's a little thought for take-away. With many approaches to technology, there are trade-offs. But a lot of idea acceptance comes in the way something is framed. During some of their presentation materials, Microsoft reps talked about smart phones and always on connectivity. In that way, it's easy to think about the privacy that we give-up by opening geo-location features on our smart phones. But in asking people to adopt this, do we say:
- Imagine the power of being able to know exactly where you are?
- Then imagine if, when you are somewhere you don't know, the information was appropriate for that place -- like finding a nearby restaurant? If you open your geo-location information to Yelp, then they can help you when you're someplace you don't know.
- Imagine if we knew where you were all the time?
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
New Xbox360 Announcement Scheduled for Today
So the next generation Xbox360 announcement is scheduled for today, and it's going to be interesting on several fronts.
From a hardware platform perspective, there are all the questions about processors and such, but a bigger deal might be whether the platform is online only. Today's software is distributed through the cloud, enabling businesses to reap larger profits and avoid costly distribution infrastructure expenses, but not everyone is wired with a fast broadband connection. There have also been rumors that you wouldn't be able to play unless you were connected online. If this turns out to be true, it might be an issue for some as well.
Perhaps a broader question relates to the overall roadmap of the platform. While Xbox360 and Xbox Live sail along, the Surface tablet series has been dragging like an anchor. There have been rumors that Microsoft might use the new Xbox platform to try and raise Surface out of the depths. Will the new XBox be the savior and driving engine for some of the other product lines? Only time will tell.
From a hardware platform perspective, there are all the questions about processors and such, but a bigger deal might be whether the platform is online only. Today's software is distributed through the cloud, enabling businesses to reap larger profits and avoid costly distribution infrastructure expenses, but not everyone is wired with a fast broadband connection. There have also been rumors that you wouldn't be able to play unless you were connected online. If this turns out to be true, it might be an issue for some as well.
Perhaps a broader question relates to the overall roadmap of the platform. While Xbox360 and Xbox Live sail along, the Surface tablet series has been dragging like an anchor. There have been rumors that Microsoft might use the new Xbox platform to try and raise Surface out of the depths. Will the new XBox be the savior and driving engine for some of the other product lines? Only time will tell.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Misfits, Mutant Powers and Brilliant Story Telling
If there ever was a golden age for broadcast television, that day has long passed. For all of the channels of content available, most of it is virtually unwatchable. Beyond the endless reality shows and voyeuristic adventures in train wreck family soap operas, the crafted story shows invariably combine recycled ideas with unimaginative vision and predictable story exposition.
But it's not like that everywhere. Consider some of the television shows that we get as spill-overs from the UK, shows that were so good that the US entertainment industry takes them, rehashes them, and serves them back as pabulum. The Office, Being Human, and Sherlock are three perfect examples. You could probably lump movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo into that category too.
Misfits probably falls into a different category. While the show is awesome, it's hard to imagine it being rehashed for television here in the States. Beyond the language and the adult themes, there's a level of Britishness that seems essential to the feel of the show.
One aspect of the show that also seems very British is the killing off of main characters and cycling through new sets of actors in the show. The show is currently airing season four and the cast looks quite different from season one. For audiences that grow attached to actors, characters and story-arcs, this can be challenging.
Personally, I feel like season four is struggling, hampered in ways that also left season three a bit weak, and not simply because some of the cast has changed. For me, it's more about some underlying aspects of the story. In season one, we have our cast imbued with mutant powers. While this is pretty common story line, these powers are part of what really carries the story.
Fundamentally, this aspect of changing powers disrupts what I think is an important aspect of the story. Where once you had a potentially interesting window into the underlying character, the mutant power as a story-telling vehicle becomes more of an accessory with potential for good and bad. In season three, the Misfits team was able to use the accessory fairly effectively, juxtaposing powers in some hilarious ways -- I can't recall any story that explored the downside of being a brilliant rocket scientist in such a unique way. And yet, since aspects of these powers were essentially arbitrarily assigned, there's a disconnect.
With season four, powers have become an almost throw-away element in the show. Recognition of powers and exposure to them seems like it's become commonplace, lacking surprise. And since it's treated that way, it seems like it's lost that powerful thematic character exposition element. What does weak telekinesis say about a character?
One of the good and bad aspects of Misfits is that the series is short by US standards. The first season is only six episodes, seven in the second, and eight in the third. This probably helps keep them from beating an idea beating an idea to death just to support a story arc, and when it's good, we always feel like we could have used more episodes. But short may not save them from hitting the cliche wall. We're up to episode seven in season four, so by historical standards we're closing in on the end of the runway. Me, I'm still waiting and hoping for this season to really take off.
Epilogue
I started writing this post while I was still watching the season. Since that time, we reached episode eight for season four, and that appears to be the end of season four. In that way, season four was a bit of a letdown. I expected more. I don't know what the future holds for this series, but I'm worried that we may have already jumped the shark. All that being said, it's a great show and I recommend it highly.
But it's not like that everywhere. Consider some of the television shows that we get as spill-overs from the UK, shows that were so good that the US entertainment industry takes them, rehashes them, and serves them back as pabulum. The Office, Being Human, and Sherlock are three perfect examples. You could probably lump movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo into that category too.
Misfits probably falls into a different category. While the show is awesome, it's hard to imagine it being rehashed for television here in the States. Beyond the language and the adult themes, there's a level of Britishness that seems essential to the feel of the show.
One aspect of the show that also seems very British is the killing off of main characters and cycling through new sets of actors in the show. The show is currently airing season four and the cast looks quite different from season one. For audiences that grow attached to actors, characters and story-arcs, this can be challenging.
Personally, I feel like season four is struggling, hampered in ways that also left season three a bit weak, and not simply because some of the cast has changed. For me, it's more about some underlying aspects of the story. In season one, we have our cast imbued with mutant powers. While this is pretty common story line, these powers are part of what really carries the story.
- The heroes are essentially young delinquents, improbable heroes
- The powers are not classic super-powers, instead they tend to be odd, sometimes bordering on useless
- The powers tend to be manifestations of personal issues or dreams, from the probation worker with anger issues to the old woman who dreams of reliving her younger days. Part of the magic of this is that element of character reflection and development -- what does this power say about the underlying issues that the character has, and how does power over that effect their behavior.
Fundamentally, this aspect of changing powers disrupts what I think is an important aspect of the story. Where once you had a potentially interesting window into the underlying character, the mutant power as a story-telling vehicle becomes more of an accessory with potential for good and bad. In season three, the Misfits team was able to use the accessory fairly effectively, juxtaposing powers in some hilarious ways -- I can't recall any story that explored the downside of being a brilliant rocket scientist in such a unique way. And yet, since aspects of these powers were essentially arbitrarily assigned, there's a disconnect.
With season four, powers have become an almost throw-away element in the show. Recognition of powers and exposure to them seems like it's become commonplace, lacking surprise. And since it's treated that way, it seems like it's lost that powerful thematic character exposition element. What does weak telekinesis say about a character?
One of the good and bad aspects of Misfits is that the series is short by US standards. The first season is only six episodes, seven in the second, and eight in the third. This probably helps keep them from beating an idea beating an idea to death just to support a story arc, and when it's good, we always feel like we could have used more episodes. But short may not save them from hitting the cliche wall. We're up to episode seven in season four, so by historical standards we're closing in on the end of the runway. Me, I'm still waiting and hoping for this season to really take off.
Epilogue
I started writing this post while I was still watching the season. Since that time, we reached episode eight for season four, and that appears to be the end of season four. In that way, season four was a bit of a letdown. I expected more. I don't know what the future holds for this series, but I'm worried that we may have already jumped the shark. All that being said, it's a great show and I recommend it highly.
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