Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
I’ve avoided Crazy Ex-Girlfriend so far for the obvious reason. Without any context, the series’ advertising and its title makes the show seem like ableist, sexist, cliched nonsense. Even though I knew the series almost had to be better than surface value indicated (surely no one would greenlight a show using that title sincerely now,…
Americans love TV, that mistress who gets to camp in the living room. We spend a quarter of our waking days with the TV on, maybe the biggest lode of human attention in the country. Advertisers pay for most of it — they know where you’ll be sitting, so they have ads meet you there….
Now that Nielsen has unveiled total audience measurement details, what does it all mean, and more importantly, when will you be able to get your hands on it? Here are the answers to some of the biggest questions surrounding total audience measurement: Why wasn’t Nielsen measuring these other platforms previously? The company has but says…
A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. The central media currency is not audience, but trustworthy measurement. The television business was built on wide adoption of such a single standard. Nielsen’s sampling method determined the size…
I was on a call Monday when I got a text from Kevin: “DUDE”. This generally means good news – no one follows up a “DUDE” with, “sorry about your grandma”. Kevin and I cohost a Gilmore Girls podcast called Gilmore Guys, where we discuss each episode, sometimes for up to three hours at a…
Before you tweeted it Tuesday night, Saturday Night Live was thinking it: yeah, Senator Bernie Sanders does resemble Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David! So David turned up on tonight’s SNL cold open, managing the rare feat of overshadowing an Alec Baldwin cameo. We urge you all in the future to tweet how…
Producer Stephanie Foo speaks to Nasubi, a Japanese comedian who, in the 90s, just wanted a little bit of fame. So he was thrilled when he won an opportunity to have his own segment on a Japanese reality TV show. Until he found out the premise: he had to sit in an empty apartment with…
Screen grab via Angry Beavers opening credits In 2001, Nickelodeon’s slapstick cartoon series The Angry Beavers was facing cancellation after four seasons on the air. “We were significantly over budget, behind schedule, and had generally worn out our welcome [with the network],” series co-creator Keith Kaczorek says over e-mail. In light of this certain demise,…
The mass murder of nine people on a community college campus in Roseburg, Oregon last week was the 45th school shooting in 2015. And to illustrate how often stories of gun violence cycle through news broadcasts, Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams revealed to new host Trevor Noah that she “pre-tapes” discussion of “these terrible, unending stories.” “I’m sick…
For the past five years, an anonymous mother and father duo in Arnold, Maryland have obsessively documented their three young children for millions of YouTube fans. Last Thursday, one of them died at 13, and no one knows why. Caleb Logan Brataley isn’t his real name, but it was known across the infinitely expanding YouTube-verse…