James Wynn

This will be reality. When the nerds win. I probably know the name of more Nerd Stars than Rock Stars any ways.

I recently got a cable TV package when I switched my service and decided to try it out. Mind you, I never watch TV and haven't watched it regularly since I was a kid. After playing around with the service for a few minutes I became convinced that the product is faulty and here is why.

1. There are over 500 channels listed, and I only have access to around 50. This is fine in itself, but there is no way to determine if I have access until I try to view the channel. There is no option to filter out the channels that are inaccessable
2. There is no way to search through the shows except manually. Scrolling through pages upon pages of listings just to find one thing to watch is extremely tedious, especially when trying to relax.
3. Once I finally found a show, I had to watch it from somewhere in the middle. Why is it starting halfway through? Wait, I need an additional, expensive piece of equipment to fix this? Bad business. Sell a broken product, and then sell another product which fixes the original flaws.
4. Commercials are far too long, I have to watch about 5 minutes of commercials for each 20 minutes of show. There is something wrong with this.
5. Overpriced. I'm paying ~$25 / month for this service with all these failings and I still have to watch commercials.

How can such a service compete with the likes of Hulu, youtube, megavideo and sidereel? I suppose it will die off as soon as people realize how broken it is.

Apparently I totally missed this little pile of gold. Nobody's Watching's premise is not quite as amazing as the effect it has had. It's a sit-com mocking a reality tv show where two guys from Ohio are making a sit-com. It's freakishly funny and produced by Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, with two actors who worked on Family Guy. Sadly it hasn't really gone anywhere and it looks like it may not. If they don't get picked up I hope they can still manage some sort of internet distribution. If they scaled it back a bit, they may be able to have the first really good internet syndicated sit-com.

They've also done a few other small videos just to keep people watching. Here's the pilot (part 1, part 2, part 3), a Mentos and Coke skit, 'Til Death' (abridged), and a bit from the Emmys.

As I mentioned above, the effect this show has had is also quite interesting. It shows (yet again) that the internet can be harnessed in ways that has not occured to the industry. Distributing Pilots for show over the internet so that the audience can actually say what it likes, as opposed to showing whatever the studios think we want to see.

Goodluck Nobodys Watching, can't wait to see more of your stuff.

The greatest holiday of the year has finally rolled round, and it is time for some preparation.  Thats right, pull out your rum and cutlasses, we've got some scurvy dogs to drown in swill.  YAR!

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