Schreiner’s Media Landscape

August 28, 2009

TV Networks, Fox News Audiences Older, Angrier Than Ever, In Desperate Need of Hobbies

Filed under: America, Internet, media, television — Ken Schreiner @ 8:52 am

The people who watch network TV, all-news channels are older than ever, according to the latest numbers. This trend has continued for decades, even before the Internet explosion. It also explains a number of American social phenomena.

First, the “angry” old, male, white people showing up at health care reform town hall meetings. These fanatical viewers of Fox News ARE their audience- a median age of OVER 65!. Fox News has become the information ghetto of right-wing America with Sean Hannity and the rest the smiling ringmasters of one of the greatest media circuses of modern history. If there was a happy, young, minority news channel exhorting that demographic to come to these meetings, the turnout would not be nearly as predictable. That’s because THESE PEOPLE ARE BUSY DOING OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE WORKING. Fox News’ audience is mostly sitting in front of the TV all day because THEY DON’T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO. They’re retired, unemployable and, most importantly, addicted to TV. They’re ripe fruit for revolution. These people need healthier hobbies: skydiving, grand prix racing, rock climbing and bomb-defusing come to mind.

While the ghettoization of America’s white, right wing is good news for Fox News, it’s bad news for television in general, especially the networks. With the average audience member now over 50, and the Internet the preeminent information and entertainment choice for anyone under 30, it will be tough luring younger people back into the fold. And who can blame them. After seeing “Two and a Half Men”, fifteen minutes of Glenn Beck, a Sarah Palin rally or health care reform town hall, it’s easy to see what you can become if you watch too much TV.

August 27, 2009

Looking for a Better Browser: Explorer vs. Chrome vs. Safari

Filed under: Internet, Schreiner Productions, media, video — Ken Schreiner @ 9:16 am

It’s amazing how most of us take our Internet browser for granted. What’s even more amazing is we don’t realize how many options we have. I was browsing through an airport somewhere last week looking for something to read. Being desperate for anything that didn’t have Michael Jackson or Jennifer Aniston on the cover, I let my geek flag fly and got a copy of Maximum PC’s  Digital Media guide. OK, I’ll admit I was sucked in by the free CD inside.

Not only was it a great mag and a fast read. It opened my eyes to 1) How bad Internet Explorer is and 2) how many other better alternatives there are. It took me a week after I got back, but I finally started on my campaign to find a better browser yesterday. I downloaded Google Chrome (bundled with DivX). The first thing I noticed was a big, colorful display and that it was about 50% faster to load. The Google Search template comes up of course, which is fine because that’s what you use Google for. After reviewing the stats on Chrome in Maximum PC and other places, I found out Chrome performs better in virtually every test than Internet Explorer- as does just about every other browser. And it’s free.

Searches, videos, everything ran faster than I’d been used to after 1,000 years of using Internet Explorer and not even thinking about it. What really made me smile was seeing my own Schreiner Productions website structured the way I designed it in Dreamweaver. In just about every version of Explorer I see it on, the titles are offset, the videos pop up slower and it doesn’t pack consistently. In Chrome, it looks exactly the way I made it. My Wordpress blog loaded faster, edited easier and the typeset looks much better. Making updates to the blog is a drag and often fails with Explorer. With Chrome, no problem.

Safari’s next on my list. In most reviews, it gets the highest marks but it hasn’t been available for Windows (Mac only) until a few months ago when iTunes started offering it to download with its updates. I brushed it off then. I won’t anymore.

August 25, 2009

Michael Jackson Homicide Ruling Teeters Between Recklessness and Lack of Responsibility

Filed under: Hollywood, dualism — Ken Schreiner @ 8:25 am

When is overdosing your responsibility or your doctor’s? We’re about to find out after the LA County coroner’s finding that Michael Jackson’s death was a homicide. From the timeline of events, Jackson could not sleep despite repeatedly requesting increasingly powerful sedatives from his doctor (who else would have a doctor living with him 24 hours every day?) which sent him on a downward spiral toward his sad and solitary end.

The doctor appears to have been acting on orders from Jackson, who may have been so out of it that his judgement was clouded. Which begs the question: with a rich, celebrity patient like Jackson who has you on the payroll 24/7 WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO KILL HIM? And if the patient requests more and more drugs and you don’t give them to him, AREN’T YOU RISKING YOUR BIG, FAT, LUCRATIVE JOB?

The coroner may just be making the ruling to continue the investigation which often happens in celebrity or high-profile questionable deaths. But in so doing, the coroner also appears to be attempting to protect the reputation of a man who was obviously demented, among other numerous mental and self-inflicted health problems, and trying to solely blame someone other than Jackson for his own demise.

It’s clear Jackson’s reckless behavior with children, money, his body and life in general is a pattern that seems to have been ignored by the coroner to this point. His dependence on endless amounts of powerful sedatives just so he can make it through the night is indicative of the real cause of death here, whether the doctor was trying to kill him or not.

August 21, 2009

Breaking Irony: Visual Media Inescapable and Why More is Better

Filed under: Children, Internet, Schreiner Productions, media, television, video — Ken Schreiner @ 11:02 am

All you have to do to see how pervasive TV and other visual media are is go on a business trip. I just got back from two hit-and-run days in Charlotte NC and Charlottesville VA shooting four videos for my machine tool software client Delcam in the UK. Besides US Airways- the WORST airline to inexplicably emerge from bankruptcy- losing my tripod in Denver on the way to my shoots then mysteriously returning it to me as I was returning home from Charlottesville, the highlight of this trip was experiencing how video is truly everywhere.

It’s in the waiting areas, on the plane in your face, on your computer, at the store checkout counter. These environments are particularly tough for me because I have great difficulty hearing in noisy places and screening out ambient noise. But the basic question here is- IS TOO MUCH VIDEO A BAD THING? The answer: NO.

The reason it’s not a bad thing is it’s forcing us to look at all the things going on around us if we choose. Since TV’s inception, our eyes have been attracted to it- from the backs of taverns and stadiums to our phones and iPods. Now, after sixty years the novelty’s finally worn off- perhaps even the innate allure of that tiny illuminated rectangle. We’re looking at things we can touch again- things that have all their molecules assembled outside of an electron stream behind a protective glass barrier.

That’s why Internet video is so promising. People are watching it because THEY CHOOSE TO, not because they’re forced to because they can’t get away from it as in an airport or airplane. Customers, viewers, fans and others are searching for and finding the videos they want to see, not settling for watching something they don’t care about, and not feeling compelled to sit glued to a noisy, droning public monitor when they plug in their earplugs, fire up their PDAs and watch what they choose.

It’s a big and exciting media landscape out there. You just have to be able to screen out what you don’t want and tune into what you want to see and hear. It’s taken me years to do this and I’m still not very good at it. It’s a good thing most everybody else is.

August 17, 2009

New Solar Hot Water System Brings Schreiner Productions Closer to Net Zero Energy

Filed under: Environment, Power Grid, Salt Lake, Schreiner Productions, Solar, conservation, renewable, water — Ken Schreiner @ 3:09 pm

active_closed_loop_solar_waThey started tearing up our master bedroom, bathroom, closet: about one-quarter of the house today. We’re starting a major remodeling of our home which not only makes it more efficient through the use of more ventilation, passive solar and other conservation efforts, but we’re also installing of what can only be classified as the most incredibly, unbelievably fabulous solar hot water system in the world. Okay, on our block.

For those of you not familiar with solar hot water systems, they are used extensively in sunny parts of the world like Hawaii, Florida. They not only heat your water for cleaning, cooking, etc. They can be used to heat your floor, your driveway- anywhere you can run a pipe. Ours is what’s called a closed-loop system (see pic above). It’s fairly typical. But ours is different in that we’re installing an 80-gallon water tank that can be converted into a solar-PV electric-powered heater with just a hookup.

What that means is that when we get rid of our gas-powered water heater, we will be that much closer to being a “zero energy” or “net zero” home: essentially, one that produces as much energy as it uses. We’ll have to install two large solar panels on our roof and run a little pipe but that’s basically it. With rebates and incentives, we’re getting about a quarter of the price back right off the bat.

It’s amazing what you can do to make your home sustainable these days. Of course, conservation is still the key to making any sustainable system work. In other words, if we weren’t so used to using much more energy that we need, we wouldn’t need to invent things like solar hot water systems. So consider this our contribution to the common good: now everyone else on the block can take ten-minute showers every day without feeling guilty.

We have a long way to go.

Liberal vs. Conservative Bloggers: Right Wing Discovers “This Internet Thing”

Filed under: America, Internet, media, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 10:39 am

“The Internet is a great place for people to turn when they want to get involved. And people really want to get involved when they’re locked out of power.” – Erik Telford, executive director of RightOnline

In a true LOL moment, Republicans, right-wingers and other Beer Hall Putsch wonks apparently have discovered that the Internet is really, really cool and useful for all sorts of stuff like totally communicating. It’s only been true for about ten years that free-thinking, independent and well-read Americans have dominated the Internet through blogging, tweeting and general interaction while dittoheads, right-wingers and Republicans sat hypnotized by Rush Limbaugh and taking their marching orders from Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and other onerous orbs.

The recent health care reform “tea parties” aside, it’s just another indication of how behind the times America’s so-called “conservatives” choose to be while the rest of the country and the world have blasted waaaayyyyy past them into a new era of freedom and equality.

That’s what the Internet is or at least used to be about: freedom and equality. The stuff right-wingers hate. Now that they’ve awakened to at least THIS reality- forget about all the others- I’m sure we can expect all sorts of new and ridiculous propaganda campaigns gumming up social networks and blogs and taking away valuable broadband from the democratic process that the Internet has morphed into to ultimately establish the truth.

Which is maybe the Right Wing’s real plan. Surely it can’t be “the truth.”

August 16, 2009

P.J. O’Rourke’s Classic “All the Trouble in the World” Sadly Stupid Now

Filed under: America, Bush, Cheney, Earth, Environment, dualism, journalism, media, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 9:20 am

As a fan of satire, I actually like the writing style of P.J. O’Rourke even if I don’t agree with his politics. Never mind his sometimes-right-wing, sometimes libertarian, anti-left and anti-environment views. Because they’re almost always- and admittedly- written in a state of alcohol or drug induced mania, they can be easily dismissed as nonsensical and politically-not-logically motivated. His motto appears to be the long-standing credo of TV news: I know what I know. Don’t confuse me with the facts.

When I was going through some airport somewhere a couple of weeks ago, I saw his tome to conservatism “All the Trouble in the World” on the shelf. Having run out of solar power magazines and weary of Aldo Leopold, I decided to give it a go. I’d forgotten it was written during the 1990s: the post-Reagan recession, high-rolling Clinton years when America was prosperous and peaceful and the Republicans hated every minute of it.

When you read it now 15 years later, it seems as if O’Rourke was living in a fantasy world where the world’s “problems” were easily explained as natural and that the U.S. should not only not do anything about them- we should actually exploit them. Overpopulation, environmental destruction, economic and political oppression were all easily dismissed as stuff that just happens and that anyone who was concerned about it all was just an idiot and a sissy. I’ll give him an A for effort: he went to Bangladesh, Bosnia, the Amazon, even Vietnam and all sorts of places to try and find faint reflections of his virulent capitalist and militaristic worldviews.

Even as he spewed his sort-of-right-wing-mostly-contrived-pre-Fox News bile all over Hillary Clinton (apparently, she wouldn’t sleep with him), Al Gore, environmentalists and anyone who actually cares about anything, he tells the reader that he’s been drinking or doing a lot of drugs and that it was probably better to be like that than to be sober and know what you’re talking about. If I want to read the ravings of a drunken bonehead, I’ll take Dylan Thomas.

Ironically and in 20/20 retrospect, the 1990s and the Clinton years were the last when America was considered the strongest nation on Earth, the most benevolent, we led in high tech, education, wealth- heck, Muslims even still liked Disney (to borrow an O’Rourke sentiment). O’Rourke, it turns out, was so wrong that his attempt at satirizing those times is even funnier now, especially when we ALL know what happened after them. His struggle to find a niche as a “cool” Republican has failed miserably just as his fellow right-wing nutbags found out during the disastrous Bush-Cheney years that they had virtually everything wrong: so wrong that even Dick Cheney is attacking Bush now to apparently distance himself from the tragic truth, a lifelong ambition of The Dick’s.

If America’s right wingers would just come back to Earth out of their heavenly hazes, they would see that their brand of oppressive, dictatorial Christian-capitalist autocracy is not only wrong, it’s bad for everybody especially themselves. And P.J. O’Rourke- former hippie, writer for Rolling Stone and disavowed leftist- might be persuaded to switch affiliations again, this time from irrelevant crank to credible commentator.

Truthfully, at this point in his career, he’s probably better off drunk, sitting in chair watching TV, with his typewriter (which he still uses to write) safely out of reach.

August 14, 2009

Obama vs. Bush: 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, Economic Collapse, Corruption- Ah, the Good, Old Days

Filed under: 9/11, America, Bush, Cheney, Iraq, Obama, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 8:41 am

Personally, life for me is better than ever. I’m beginning to believe that it’s actually been just as great for several years but that what happened to our country from 2001-2009 was creating the illusion that my life was suffering. I succumbed to what is now the number-one American pasttime: complaining.

We went on a cruise of the Colorado River in Moab last spring. All the tour guide did was complain about the federal government (no kidding). We went on a raft trip down the Weber River a couple of weekends ago. The weather was perfect, the water was fast, and the tour guide did nothing but complain about all the people who drank too much, hollering and littering as they floated their troubles away. Then of course, all the Obama supporters who’ve been complaining about Bush the past eight years are now forced to listen to all the right-wingers now loudly whining about health care reform, immigration- you know, the same stuff they whined about even when they were running things (albeit into the ground).

Even though life is much happier for me now that Bush is gone, I decided to think back to the Bush years and determine if things really are better now than they were then. To listen to Obama’s detractors, you’d think 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, the numerous economic diasters, Hurricane Katrina, scandals, corruption were the good old days. If someone can explain to me how America is not better now than we were just six months ago, I’d love to hear it.

Because to listen to Fox News Channel, Lou Dobbs, Sarah Palin, the health care nuts and other idiots yellling and screaming about “death panels” and “socialism”, you’d think we were all headed straight for hell- instead of just emerging from it.

August 13, 2009

Collapse of Indie Film Promotion Industry Creates Truly Independent Film Industry Again

Filed under: Hollywood, Internet, documentary, media, television, video — Ken Schreiner @ 7:44 am

This article in the New York Times about the death of the non-independent independent film industry is only about five years too late. But it is accurate. Independent films began when the major studios refused to listen to small producers so those producers went out, made their film, then did all the promotion, marketing- well, everything themselves. When the film became popular, the major studios stepped in, bought the thing for zillions and the recently-deceased “independent” film system was born.

After a few years of “seed money”, “development deals” and other luxuries, things have pretty much gone back to the beginning. With one big difference: the Internet. In the past ten years, the quality of web video has increased dramatically with the improvement of compression algorithms and more bandwidth. Now, as the NYT article details, a filmmaker can be their own marketer and distributor and at a fraction of the cost of a major Hollywood campaign.

While this might not bode well for Hollywood’s continued support of independent documentaries, features, or the wild stuff we’ve come to love and expect from small producers, it does reestablish independent producers as truly independent. That should hopefully stem the endless wave of horror movies, gay and shark docs, teen exploitation, and other pandering platitudes independently made but intended solely for pickup and distribution by Hollywood fat cats for showing to the same viewers who made “American Idol” number one.

August 12, 2009

Utah Four-Day Work Week Saves Energy, Money, Employees are Happier; Where are the Republicans to Bash It?

Filed under: Legislature, Oil, Solar, Utah, coal, conservation, geothermal, mining, nuclear, politics, renewable, wind — Ken Schreiner @ 11:09 am

Utah’s not known for being a hotbed of conservation, workers’ rights or anything that looks like a Democrat, Easterner, federal agency, woman or non-white person thought of it. But one such idea looks not only like it’s working but that Utahns actually like it.

It’s the four-day work week for state employees that started one year ago and has now been shown to do what it set out to do: save energy, money, increase productivity and make Utah an even better place. It was the idea of outgoing governor Jon Huntsman who just became ambassador to China. Huntsman was popular among Democrats and most Republicans. But the wacko, right-wing faction of “conservatives” led by a host of clowns never really liked Huntsman because he wasn’t as far right on the spectrum as they require (somewhere between Francisco Franco and Genghis Khan).

To be fair, Utah’s Republican-led government has been admirably fiscally responsible and helped create what is a great place to live, work and play. Where they fail us is in the fields of energy and the environment(continuing to push coal, nuclear and gas use when we have incredible renewable resources and the air here keeps getting worse) and social issues like abortion, homosexual rights, immigration, liquor laws, to name just a few.

I hope Utah’s Republicans step up this time and take credit for doing something that is progressive, environmentally, economically and socially, and improves the efficiency of an already-highly-efficient state government. They may like it so much they stop attacking those who came up with the ideas and take Utah in the direction it should be going- instead of back to the ’50s- the 1850s.

And I hope that Gary Herbert, the former lieutenant governor who’s now the big kahuna, remembers why we elected Huntsman governor and does the right thing by Utah voters.

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