A couple of weeks ago I ranted about how my favorite shows all end up getting the axe, despite loyal followings of millions of viewers as evidenced on the ‘net. I specifically mentioned Jericho as being one of these unfortunate victims. Well, it looks like Jericho’s rabid fan base just won’t let the thing die.

The second season of this riveting drama ended a few weeks ago, barely getting a chance to finish it’s seven-episode run before being cancelled — again.

Now, it looks like Jericho’s producers at CBS Paramount are starting to realize that it may not be in their financial best interests to simply pull the rug out from under the 8 million-or-so loyal Jericho followers. They’re apparently working on a deal with cable television giant Comcast to revive the series yet again, and produce a third-season with Comcast footing a part of the bill. Comcast would then gain first-to-air rights to Jericho, before the networks at large have their opportunity to cash in. This is both out-of-the-ordinary, and quite revolutionary in what it proposes.

I’ve long wondered why networks don’t believe they can make money with properties bringing in millions of viewers. Why not shoot the show and put it online interspersed with ads or direct-to-DVD if the viewership doesn’t meet expectations? There’s got to be a reasonable way to profit from all of those unwavering eyeballs.

In this case, it’s certainly nice to see the industry start to reevaluate their funding and distribution options for content, and instead of dropping brilliant episodic material for more rehashes of “Survivor” and “American Idol”, finding an alternate means of bringing in revenue from the shows that we think truly matter.

To the corporations that control what we see, it all comes down to the dollar. Finding these new avenues for profit will allow for greater creativity and quality to survive, and maybe even flourish, in a market that is all-too-often about dumbing things down.

There may yet be hope for television. Until then, there’s Graboid Video.

Why is it that so many of my favorite television shows, thriving like no others online in forums and other Internet avenues, are always given the axe? First it was Buffy and Angel, then Firefly. Next up was Veronica Mars, and now one of television’s most well-crafted dramas, Jericho. This also seems to go for my preferred political candidates, so popular in the online “cloud” yet so obscure outside of it.

From the popularity of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, to an audience for the now-cancelled CBS show Jericho, online phenomenon rarely transfers from the world of bits and bytes into the world of atoms. Because of this, being an Internet citizen can be disorienting and downright disappointing when it comes time to step away from the monitor and back into the “real world.”

When I discover my friends and family have never heard of Ron Paul or Jericho or countless other Internet fads that are destined to disappear into obscurity, I can only sigh and look forward to a time when this new online generation can start to gain some serious clout and make a dent in the mainstream media and ultimately the reality in which we all live.

Until then, I’ll just have to live with the fact that what happens on the ‘net stays on the ‘net.

As front-runner in the “who’ll get crushed by McCain unless he dies first” sweepstakes, Barack Obama doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands. But for those nights when he’s up at 3am and the phone isn’t ringing, he’s probably watching these shows on his iPod (so he doesn’t wake everybody else up).

1. Feb 24th episode of Saturday Night Live. Where Tina Fey supports Hillary. Barack loves a good laugh.

2. The Oh in Ohio - Priscilla Chase clearly a metaphorical Ms. Clinton, although I’m sure Hillary had at least one orgasm.

3. The Stupid Pastor. Just because it’s not really a movie doesn’t mean Obama’d wouldn’t want it on his iPod.

4. Family Guy episode 31. Inspiring. Even if Barack isn’t a fat, stupid white guy. I mean, if he was a stupid white guy, he could never be president, right? Right?

5. Battlestar Galactica (2003) 1st season. Despite the surrealism of a female president, still entertainment at its finest.

6. Aug 22 2007 Daily Show. He’s so vain. And waaaay overdue for another go.

7. Primary Colors (John Travolta, 1996) movie. Maybe he could learn something. But probably not.

8. Big Brother 9. Feb 26. The gang is given “news from the outside”. Political news overshadowed by Britney Spears’ loss of custody. Even Barack needs to get his mind off politics by… watching a bunch of dysfunctional adults bicker with each other in a house.

9. The Jerk (Steve Martin, 1979). A white man who thinks he’s black. If Steve really was black, he could’ve been President by now, given all the tailwind that black guys are getting these days. Chris Rock, shut UP.

and of course….

10. March 15th episode of SNL. Who doesn’t want to hear Hillary called a bitch on national TV?

You can get some of this stuff on Hulu if I haven’t provided a link. Or somewhere…

Nothing bad ever happens on Tuesday at 10am when it’s easy to work on. Since our server “upgrade” on Thursday night, we’ve had an unrelenting series of problems that are all tied to our changes in hardware configuration. The worst of these are only showing up now (Saturday) and while we’re working hard on them, it’s also the worst time because so many ancillary support services - technical support for the components we use to make Graboid work - aren’t available.

Please recognize that we’re doing our best to solve the problems. If you have specific error details, please post in our support forums. If you’ve been able to get it to work, then please post as well, because from our server load stats we know that the service is working for most people on 1.0.

Here are the known issues:

1. Cannot log in to 0.95
2. Download manager not starting properly in 1.0
3. Cannot log in to 1.0 (not sure how many this affects, but it’s a minority as our bandwidth utilization is normal).
4. Preferences are disabled in 1.0 because of some internal errors, we’ll have this fixed later today.

there are other, more minor, issue that were raised as a result of the hardware cutover. Everything is addressed in the user forums - please read past posts before writing new posts.

please direct support-oriented posts to the Graboid User Forums. This blog is for general commentary and rants that aren’t rude. Other posts will be deleted.

In general, people who’ve used both, prefer 1.0. When there are issues, here they are, and here’s our take on it.

1. 0.95 does not have better control over video playback because it’s an external application? No, 1.0 has the precise same functionality, just click on the title once it’s downloaded, hit reveal, and doubleclick the downloaded file. It will still open up in VLC player. You can’t do it for streamed files, but you couldn’t skip around the video in 0.95 either when streaming.

2. 0.95 automatically loads the IMDB information in a window in the browser. While some may prefer this, it slows down the title loading process (because it auto-loads the web page every time). Most people prefer the ‘more info’ approach.

3. 0.95 allows streaming of files > 1GB. Yes, this is a limitation of 1.0, but it will be removed in a future patch. In the meantime, it removes a major source of frustration for the majority of users who could never stream larger files anyway, and stops the ubre-annoying issue with movies stopping halfway through because of multi-disc/file 1.5 GB movies or tv shows.

We appreciate your input on what you prefer and why, because it helps us evolve the product. But we just wanted you to understand why we’ve done it the way we’ve done it.

My wife and I watch a fair bit of TV. Almost all of it recorded on the hard drive (PVR or DVR) of our set top box. As a result, I watch almost no commercials. The problem is that I realize I’m missing out on some commercials I actually like, not to mention network promo ads that tell me about new shows that I might want to watch and skip the commercials for.

I feel really bad when friends talk about the latest Mac/PC ads and I don’t know what they’re talking about. I can’t even get them on YouTube because apparently even showing a commercial somehow violates someone’s rights… I guess Apple thinks the ads are so good that they’ll be running in syndication on Nick at Nite 20 years from now. So then I end up fast-forwarding commercials more slowly for a few days until I run across the ad, grin and feel a slight frission of glee (I already have a Mac), and then get verbally assaulted by my wife. “What the hell are you doing!?” Huh? She gets really upset if I watch commercials because she just loves the fact that she can skip them. She actually feels offended when I fail to use the technology to its full effect. Also, the Mac’s mine. She has to live with XP.

I actually don’t mind commercials so much - they’re a good opportunity to get a drink or go to the loo. Now that we have a PVR, you can go to the loo whenever you want. Kind of spoils it. Reminds me of living in San Diego where I never went to the beach because it was *always* a good day to go to the beach. Unlike most of Canada, where a good day to go to the beach is when Air Canada has a seat sale to Cancun.

Now I’m stuck. If I skip the commercials I feel (a little bit) guilty of subverting the intent of the studio/network/cable mafia. Not that I feel bad for them per se, but that somehow they’ll come after me because I missed a decade of Head and Shoulders ads. If I don’t skip the commercials, I get my wife taking away my remote control. Damn PVR. I can’t even enjoy my trips to the loo anymore.