Television’s Crap, So Let’s Pay the Writers More?

I have a problem with idiots, but I have a big problem with greedy idiots. Meet the Writer’s Guild of America. They are the union leading the American writer’s strike. I want to say upfront that I strongly support unions, and I support strikes if they are the absolute last step in negotiations. Over on the sister blog Get it Straight, I always cover and praise when a First Student yard joins a union.

Here’s the unfortunately under-covered part of the strike: the low-paid show staffers who are being laid off because the writer’s aren’t working. The news is semi-good in the late night comedy show area: All major shows are paying their show’s staffers through this strike, making sure they can put food on the table, in fact, NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly had to return to the airwaves in order to insure that their staff wouldn’t be fired.

Compare this with some of the writers (Note: SOME. I know not all writers are this well off), which have salaries nearing $100,000 a year, and are even getting residuals (or money for each time a show is aired) for reruns airing during the strike!

I know they are trying to get money from sales of shows online (e.g. in the iTunes Store) and DVDs; and I agree that they should get residuals from those sales. But should they have been so quick to strike, and put the people who make their writing come alive’s jobs at risk?

There’s good TV. There’s better TV. Then you can read this blog.

DIRECTV continues to top the ACSI’s index of cable and sattelite broadcasters. So I decided to decode the DIRECTV press release for you.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May 15, 2007–For the seventh year in a row, DIRECTV, the nation’s leading satellite television service, received a higher score for customer satisfaction than all cable TV companies in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

They forgot to turn it right side up.

In this year’s ACSI survey, DIRECTV posted an index score of 67, reflecting customers’ overall satisfaction with the service, compared to the cable and satellite TV category, which scored a 62 overall.

Funny, 67, eh? My DIRECTV Plus DVR records 67% of what I tell it to.

Customers surveyed by the ACSI in the first quarter of 2007 were asked about such issues as perceived quality, perceived value and their expectations prior to subscribing to the service. The ACSI also measures customer loyalty and retention.

Retention? I called Retention last week and they gave me a free 3 months of Showtime. Something about a contract…

“Once again, no other cable or satellite provider has a higher customer satisfaction rating than DIRECTV,” said John Suranyi, president, DIRECTV Sales and Service. “We take great pride in that knowledge and our employees are to be congratulated. While we improved in some areas, we still have work to do in others to bring our performance levels up to where we believe they need to be to consistently exceed the expectations of our customers. We have initiatives in place to achieve that goal and further distance ourselves from the competition.”

DIRECTV has exceeded my expectations. I expected their DVR to suck… and boy has it sucked! I see a new slogan: Exceeding your expectations… DIRECTV!

ACSI was developed by the National Quality Research Center (NQRC) at the Stephen M. Ross Business School at the University of Michigan.

Oh, I see now… it was designed so that bad American cars would rank above better imports (Go MINI!)

Last year, DIRECTV was ranked “Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Satellite/Cable TV Subscribers” in the 13-state Eastern region of the United States, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Residential Cable/Satellite TV Customer Satisfaction Study(SM).

The 12 state Southern region approved a merger of BellSouth | AT&T. I don’t trust what one section says.

Now, I want to see where Cingular/AT&T ranked in satisfaction of cellular companies.

"Slacker Radio": Are they offending me?

Ya know what’s great about radio? It’s free. Ya know what’s bad about radio? Hold on, we’ll be right back…

THIS WEEKEND, VARIOUS FLOOD DAMAGED CARS WILL BE SOLD AS NEW AT A CERTAIN MAZDA DEALER!

If you didn’t get it, I was talking about ads. So when I heard about Slacker Radio, which is free with little to no advertising, it seemed good. Then I used it. It was excellent! I love it. Here’s how it works (and I’m getting a clarification about a couple of things from Slacker, Inc.’s PR guy):

You choose an artist, or a genre. (In this case Evanescence)
There is probably a radio stream with them. You click play. Not only do you get MP3 quality music from the artist, but you also get music from similar artists (You can skip music tracks up to six times in one hour on one station).
But the coolest thing is custom stations. If you sign up for a free account, you can choose artists and songs to add to a custom radio station. You can see my station here in this screenshot of the service. (It changed a little bit later on) But, if you don’t like certain artists, or a song or two from a station artist, you can block them. It’s really cool. I just wish I could share my station with anybody, so I could put a link on this blog and you would be transferred to Slacker and listen to the music I like. Then again, I don’t want to be responsible if anyone dies, so maybe not…

Anyway, it’s really cool and someone is going to sell this to some Web 2.5 company and get rich. Well, they deserve it!

By the way, if you noticed I said “Web 2.5″ not “Web 2.0″. I’ll explain that tomorrow.

From the people that killed the DIRECTV/Dish Network merger of 2003…

…The Carmel Group, the research firm whose analysis helped kill the 2003 merger of [DISH Network's parent company] EchoStar and DirecTV, will release a new report today that outlines the strongest arguments yet against merging satellite radio companies Sirius and XM. Read the full thing here.

Read the last line: With all due respect, this proposed merger [of XM and Sirius Radio] should not be approved – under any conditions – by the U.S. government.”

With all due respect, the US government needs to realize that this is a free and open market… and companies should be able to merge and buy each other out as much as they want and any legislation against that is stifling freedom.

And if you’re going to bring up the 1980’s AT&T breakup, may I remind you how well that went?

An Open Letter to the Discovery Channel…

What the hell is wrong with you? Stick to what ya’ll do best. MythBusters.

An Open Letter to Jesus…

Hello Lord Jesus. I wanted to write this open letter in regard to the recent publicity stunt, err, “documentary” from the so called “Discovery” Channel. We at Kevin’s Word and Yo.media, of course, only watch Mythbusters on “Discovery”, but, the channel does many, um, “things” to get viewers to the network. The Democrats, err, “people” running the network know about as much about documentaries as a digested potato chip. This does not excuse them from airing the filth documentary which is about as true as Fox News.

Don’t take whatever these brain-dead coma patients do personally.

Have a nice day,
Kevin J Dupuy,
Kevin’s Word

I saw this and thought of DIRECTV…

HD Like video? Isn’t that what DIRECTV has in their HD package, HD like video? I shouldn’t be too hard on DIRECTV though, I’ve been a customer since ‘02, and aside from my new R15s, I’ve liked them. Then again, I don’t have HDTVs.

Smell that? Smells like Trump’s hair…

Now, I hate to drive stories I’ve heard enough about, but I figured I just interject something real quick like. I was just now watching an episode of Late Night from a while back, and Conan was making a joke about the feud at that time between Trump and Martha Stewart. So, what exactly is the common denominator between these two feuds? They both happen right before a new season of The Apprentice, Trump’s show that he likes to Trump anywhere that Trump goes and somebody Trumps him. Trump.

Remember NBC’s 2007 midseason line up moto: Save the combover, save the world.