TV ads are upsetting and confusing as we discover in I Don’t Buy It.

Then we have a discussion about the death of episodic television. Does everything have to be a long story? Whatever happened to just having everything wrapped up in a nice hour of television? We get to the bottom of it.

Notes

One Thing

• Outland: 10:30pm Thursday 23 February on ABC2
• The Amazing Race: 9:40pm Wednesday 22 February on Seven
• Woodley: 8:00pm Wednesday 22 February on ABC1

Live at ACMI

John and Josh will discuss sex and violence on television with Djoymi Baker and Emily Maguire. Thursday 23 February is this week. Get your tickets!

Sex, Lies and Television Screens, Live in the Studio at ACMI

SXSW Sponsors

helping us get to SXSW in Austin, Texas and specialising in fresh cut fries accompanied by a variety of internationally inspired sauces.

Then, Glenn Peters has seen two foreign language series, Spiral and The Killing. He sets them head to head in the BoxcuttersDome.

There’s a great Letter to Boxcutters from a famous person who’s been on the tele.

Notes

One Thing

• Sherlock – Wed 15 Feb, 8:30pm, Channel 9
• Men of a Certain Age – Tue 14 Feb, 11:35pm, Channel 9

SXSW Sponsors

helping us get to SXSW in Austin, Texas and specialising in fresh cut fries accompanied by a variety of internationally inspired sauces.

Slap Yourself Into Laughter

Paul Ireland talks to us about being a young actor in The Bill and an older actor in Outland.

There’s One Thing and Pork and News and what else do you need to know?

Notes

One Thing

• Outland: 9:30pm, Wednesday 8 Feb, 2012 on ABC1
• Outland: 10:30pm, Thursday 9 Feb, 2012 on ABC2
• Outland: ABC iView.

Our SXSW Fund

Go to our Pozible page. There are still Crumpler bags and other goodies to be found. Donate and help us show the world how great Australian podcasting can be.

Notes

One Thing

• The Straits: 8:30pm Thursday, ABC1
• The Office – BBC version: DVD

Raywatch

You can play along at home with these videos:

There’s a whole heap of news and some great Trotters thanks to Toby Halligan.

Don’t forget there are still Crumpler bags and other rewards up for grabs by supporting our SXSW efforts on Pozible.

Notes

One Thing

• The Office – Tuesday 9pm on Eleven

So here’s a funny thing. We recorded a One Thing for you all to enjoy but it somehow fell out of the episode. Still, there it is, just above us, for you to see and watch or not.

See John Richards Live!

Talking Outland

Friday January 27th 8:00pm
Melbourne Science Fiction Club
St. David‘s Uniting Church Hall
74 Melville Road, West Brunswick

Queer Nerd – Spoken Word

Thursday February 2nd 7.30pm
Bar Nancy
61 High St, Northcote

Sex, Lies and Television Screens: Live in the Studio

Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Thursday February 23rd, 7pm

Also, Josh spent some time in New York and discovered just how intrusive television can be in daily life.

Courteney Hocking is our co-host for this one and Brett uses his best reading voice for news and letters.

Notes

Errata

There’s a point, during “If You Watch One Thing”, in which we discuss the new series of Absolutely Fabulous and talk about it like that’s the one that’s on Wednesday nights on ABC1. It’s not. Those are repeats.

The new 20th anniversary episodes of Absolutely Fabulous will air on ABC1 in February.

One Thing

• The Thick of It Season 3 – 9pm Wednesday, ABC1
• Nigella’s Kitchen – 8pm Tuesday, ABC1
• Movie: Coffee and Cigarettes – 11:05pm Wednesday, SBS One/SBS HD

SXSW Funding

This year they have chosen Boxcutters to present a live version of our podcast to a room full of people who might never have heard of us before.

This is huge.

We’re really excited to have been invited and we’re looking forward to showing the world how great Australian podcasting can be. Also, the number of interviews we’ll be able to conduct at SXSW to bring you more unique perspectives on television is enormous. Everyone wins.

But we need your help. We have to make our own way over to Austin, Texas and it’s expensive to get 3 people over there.

All we ask is a little bit of help to cover some of our costs. We will deal with accommodation and meals, etcetera, but the airfares alone come to close to $6,000.

We just need $4500 and we can take care of the rest.

We set up a project on Pozible, the Australian crowdfunding site, to help us get there. You can pledge at http://boxcutters.pozible.com.

The great thing about Pozible is that you only spend the money if we reach our target. The other great thing is that there are rewards for donating.

You’ll always be able to come back here and see how we’re doing.

Thanks for your support. This is definitely going to make for a wonderful Boxcutters 2012.

Update: Crumpler Comes On Board

The very generous people at Crumpler have given us some of their high-quality and much sought-after bags to add to our reward schwag.

The Crumpler SoupanSalad (RRP $155) can fit a whole bunch of stuff including sandwiches and puppies. In Boxcutters speak, you could probably fit 2 roast chickens in it easily.

Because of Crumpler’s generosity and the great value of this bag, we’re now able to offer it as a complete bargain $100+ reward.

You can put your Boxcutters iron-on patch or metal badge right there on the bag. There’s a zip-up pocket into which you can put your postcard from Austin.

Q: How much would you love this bag?

A: A lot.

Q: What do you need to do to get one?

A: Pledge to donate $100 or more to our Pozible project.

Also, marvel at Lee Zachariah’s excellent knowledge of film makers who have crossed over into television.

There’s also a taste of what to expect from this year on Boxcutters

Notes

One Thing

• Psychoville, Thursday 12 January. 2012. ABC2
• Commercial Kings, Tues ABC2 9pm

*It might not be the best we’ve ever done.

If you’ll remember back to last year, Optus’s TV Now product reopened the whole time-shifting/personal recording debate with the notion of “platform/location-shifting”.

Justice Rares of the Federal Court understands the implications for future commercial and technological advances and is taking a number of days to put them on the scales:

“All of this [technology], nobody really contemplated it, but the idea is to ensure that there is the balance made between the act and the reality of what people do [in their lives].”

We wait for his judgement and the inevitable High Court appeal.

Read more in the Age.

Lucy Battersby discussed the most recent AFL TV rights agreement on episode 264.

We’re not concentrating on the bad stuff. We do that all year ’round. Nope, this is just the stuff we enjoyed so maybe you can enjoy it too.

It’s hopefully less messy than our previous end of year shows, but who knows?

Sit back and listen to Dave Lawson, John Richards, Glenn Peters, Brett Cropley and me talk until we get bored and go home.

Notes

You May Have Missed

Glenn really just sped past this one so you might have missed him mentioning Appropriate Adult in his highlights for the year.

Stocking Stuffers

Looking for a last minute gift for that someone special? Well, check out our recommended stocking stuffers:

• The Almighty Johnsons: Series 1
• Cloudstreet, the miniseries
• The original Twilight Zone series
• or get in early for next year’s with Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror

Special Treat

As a special treat, why not check out episode 2 of Dave Lawson’s chat show, Dave’s Shed Show?

It’s called Dave’s Shed Show and it’s the thing that will make him too big for Boxcutters.

In case you missed the first episode, we’ve included it for you here:

To precis, the audience ticket and loading procedure took twice as long as the taping itself and the overall event was hand-clappingly cultish.

During this latest visit, I managed to obtain tickets to the Colbert Report. This single act is no mean feat. Trying to get ticket through the website itself presents a page that apologises and promises to email when tickets are available. I don’t know if the emails are ever sent out or if the addresses are even collected. I’ve never received one and I’m reminded of that Simpsons scene in which the message tubes are used in beaver dams.

The excellent Rilestar pointed me to a Twitter feed that announces when a few extra tickets become available. Sometimes these are very short notice: as in, for that day’s taping. There are no quiz questions to answer and no other hoops to jump through. Being at the right place at the right time is, apparently, difficult enough.

There are still a number of steps from being on the audience list to getting into the studio. Names are checked off lists, queues are formed, names are checked off more lists, tickets with numbers are handed out. People wait in the cold for over an hour. Less bureaucracy and checkpoints are required for entry into government buildings.

Once inside the building and through the metal detector, there was more waiting. The entire audience is only about 130 people strong and we were packed into an antechamber featuring portraits of Colbert, propagandist posters and a video-screen showing highlights of previous episodes.

A staff-member/intern jumped up onto a table to tell us all to remember to laugh, turn off mobile phones and not take any photos. Then another staff member yelled, from near the doors, instructions on how to hand back the numbered tickets when she counted up to that number.

Listening to someone else count up to 130-something is not as fun as it sounds.

Once we were finally admitted into the studio, we found, under each seat a copy of Richard Branson’s latest book about why he’s the best person he knows and how he is single-handedly saving the world by being friends with Peter Gabriel. Branson was to be the guest that night.

After the warm-up comedian, Pete Dominick did a tight fifteen minutes to get the audience laughing and happy. Colbert came out to answer questions out of character. And then they started the show rolling.

It wasn’t just the smaller audience that created the intimacy of the event. There was a very real feeling of us being a part of the Colbert Nation. We were in on the joke. We were witness to a very talented man doing his job exceptionally well and we were also witness to the bloopers and the humanity behind the show.

The Late Show audience is indoctrinated upon entry and treated like ignorant TV viewers, to an extent. To make a taping of the Late Show successful, the audience has to believe that David Letterman is the funniest and best host on TV and that the CBS Orchestra is the greatest collection of musicians who never tour (and never change their hair-styles). The lengthy audience-loading procedure works to dumb-down the audience and fill them with awe at what they are about to see.

The Colbert Report encourages its audience to be smart. It has to be smart to follow the news and get all the jokes. So the show approaches the audience members differently. It builds up a confidence in them that the jokes will not go over their heads. Rather than an awed response to the host, the crew pushes a supportive role onto the audience. The repeated theory is that the show is intelligent, its audience is intelligent, and television needs the show to be successful so that television provides more intelligent content. By the end of this, the audience in the Colbert Report is not filled with followers so much as co-conspirators.

Everything that happens inside the studio is designed to make the audience members feel like they are part of something special. This is their chance to help make a difference.

The set is constructed to keep the audience on-side with Colbert. During the interview portion, which takes place stage left, Colbert sits largely facing the audience, able to gauge whether or not they are with him in a particular line of antagonism. The guest, or subject, is left entirely vulnerable, their back almost entirely to the audience, with no idea of whether or not they are winning. And yes, an interview on the Colbert Report is almost always a competition and it is very definitely rigged. Watching someone like Richard Branson, unaccustomed to losing, enter this arena was almost Roman in its inherent Schadenfreude.

In a way, for the Colbert Report to have a live audience is strange. The programmes it parodies (The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity on Fox News) do not have live audiences. They say outrageous things without any audible response from within the TV set. People watching at home are forced to either think for themselves or just accept what the angry voice in the box just said.

The Colbert Report’s live audience is the knowing wink that the programme requires to make the people at home realise they are watching a comedy show and not just another right-wing polemicist. It’s a compromise that the programme makes to the medium and it’s a lot of responsibility to entrust to 130 strangers.

Also, Courteney Hocking is in to talk about those guilty pleasures we think we shouldn’t watch.

Then, Nelly Thomas tells us about the passion and drama that goes on in her head when she watches Lost.

Listen and enjoy.

The show takes place in the jungle. The jungle has never looked so much like the smoking balcony of a minor Asian airport. The setting allows the two hosts, chirpy leprechauns staggering around under the weight of their own foreheads, to pretend to be real people.

If only there was a standard British box hedge in the background, the audience would have a frame of reference, realise that these men are damaged and get them the help they so desperately need. Their names are Ant and Dec, being too small to operate under the weight of real names.

They must be complete arseholes, because their hairdresser hates them. Instead of trying to mask their bulbous foreheads with a polite curtain of hair, it is styled up to the sky to add 2cm to their stature. The effect is experimental frigate chic. The wardrobe department has so far avoided pinstriped suits, platform shoes and tiny dogs, but who knows how long they can hold out.

With those powers combined, the Irish pre-teen boy band/Morecambe and Wise mash-up may be able to one day walk among us in defiance of god’s will. Here’s a zucchini from my pants – oh, he’s not eatin’ it! What are ya like? I don’t know Ant and/or Dec, what are you like? I don’t think either of us really wants to know the answer to that question.

Their biggest fan sent them a crude drawing which they criticised because it was coloured outside the lines. Alan, 46, from Cheshire, hanged himself three days later. He is survived by his wife, which his mother knitted for him from drain hair. Amazingly, this event fails to make the show any sadder.

The campers or celebrities or whatever they are, go through challenges designed to make them throw up. Tonight they sent a camp ex-soap actor down a dark slimy tunnel filled with cockroaches, frogs, worms and filth, looking for cheap plastic stars nestled in piles of shit. A stirring recreation of the casting process for the show itself. Meta.

These challenges are all foils for the most difficult task, which is the brutal chit-chat each contestant is dragged through by Ant and Dec. They strain to find the larrikins as delightful as middle Britain apparently does. They laugh too late, too hard and stop whenever they sense an impending close-up, aping the joy that eludes them.

I was going to write a bio for each contestant to inform the Australian audience of what the show assumes we know about them. But I realised that this would be pointless: You know as much about them as anyone else does.

The girls under 30 take a lot of long, giggly showers together. I’m so glad they’re raising awareness of the burden that women under 30 must suffer. Years of my life were wasted taking joint showers, up to 40 minutes at a time, at least three times a day. My doctor informs me that most of my skin is gone and that the giggling has done irreparable damage to my diaphragm. It really is crippling, all that involuntary tit bouncing and ass soaping. Their mouths are smiling but their eyes whisper, “Where is the cure for this disease?”

Tonight, an ageing DJ tried to watch them shower by offering to ride the shower bike (a Gilligan’s Island-style bike that makes the shower water flow). He said it was OK, like an uncle thing. Meanwhile, in London, his niece and nephew take turns stapling their underpants to their bodies in preparation for his return to civilisation.

The ranks of celebrity have swelled to an army. One day there will be more people on TV than actually watching it. On this day, every Nielsen box will simultaneously explode, showering us all with prizes and we will have a nice party where we will talk endlessly about ourselves and our feelings and the attractive people will shower to great applause.

It sold out very quickly and chances are you missed it. Never fear, though. Through the magic of modern technology we’re able to bring you an edited audio version of night that most people have already forgotten.

It becomes episode 286 of our little show and you can listen along and pretend like you were actually there.

In the show notes we’ll include a bunch of clips that we played so you can listen and watch at the same time. Enjoy.

Videos

Play these videos along with the audio to help you pretend like you were really there!

Some Backstage Shenanigans

Alan Arkin and the Bun Bun Bros.

What Kermit was doing before the Muppet Show

Pitching The Muppet Show

A Pilot: “Sex and Violence”

Over-thinking the Muppet Show I

Over-thinking the Muppet Show II

Warning: This clip contains a lot of blackface

Puppeteers and their favourite Muppet Show characters

An Example of Muppets Tonight

The Legacy of the Muppet Show

embedding is not available but you can see it on YouTube.

Statler and Waldorf at the movies

Muppets TV

A Little Bit of Kylie

Courteney joins Brett and Josh to discuss what it’s like when we watch TV with our parents. Which shows survive the intergenerational divide?

Then John and Glenn, proving they are different people, discuss the concept of abandoning TV shows.

We’d love to hear your experiences with these issues in the comments.

Since recording this episode, radio station MTR has faced closure and it looks like Sam Newman might loose his job there.

So the lesson is: don’t mess with Courteney Hocking.

John Richards is cohost and he tells us tales of his journey to Seattle where Outland premiered.

We finally get around to your letters and Toby Halligan brings us some fascinating and frightening news from China.

Notes

• Download and read the whole Screen Australia Drama Report.

One Thing

• Bazura Project, Ep 6 – ABC2, Thursday, 9:30pm
• Q&A on Twitter – ABC1 & Twitter, Monday, 9:30pm
• The books John has to read for his appearance on the Writer and the Critic podcast.

According to BellevueBusinessJournal.com:

Audience Award — Special Recognition: OUTLAND

In addition to rave reviews from audiences, the two-night run of the Australian TV series OUTLAND scored some of the highest votes in the festival.

We’ll hear all about the international response to Outland next week on the show.

Image from Where’s Outland.

Also, with Glenn Peters in the co-host seat, we discuss the new Showtime drama, Homeland.

Notes

One Thing

• Jeopardy! – 6pm weeknights, One HD
• Holy Flying Circus – Channel Internets
• Unforgettable – 9:30pm & 10:30pm Wednesday, 8:30pm Thursday, Nine

Today Tonight

The host of Today Tonight on the East coast is, indeed, Matt White.

Star Trek

See John and Josh at ACMI, Live In The Studio, talking about Star Trek.

Also, John and Brett speak to Christos Tsiolkas about the TV adaptation of his controversial novel, The Slap.

Notes

Update

This episode has been updated to fix the interruption during the interview with Christos Tsiolkas. Thanks to everybody who alerted us to the issue. Unfortunately it happened while John was away but thankfully he had enough raw files with him to get us a fix. Feel free to download the episode again if you want a “clean” version. (It will still have the swearing.)

One Thing

• Gruen Planet
• The Slap
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

See the Outland premiere in Seattle, WA

You’ve waited a long time to see John Richards’s writing on Australian screens in the form of Outland, a sitcom about gay and lesbian science fiction fans, co-created with Adam Richard. Well, now you have your chance.

The 16th Annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival will screen the world premiere of Outland.

On Tuesday the 18th October you can see episodes 1-3. And then, the following evening, see eps 4-6!

John will be there and he will let you touch him.

Glenn Peters is in the co-host seat and we talk about the Boxcutters Rule of Three and question its validity. That segment may also constitute a review of Hart of Dixie, although I wouldn’t bank on it.

Notes

One Thing

• Compass: Christos Tsiolkas: on iView
• The Slap “Anouk”: 8:30pm, Thu 13 Oct on ABC1
• Happy Days “Hot Stuff”: 1:30am, Wed 12 Oct on Eleven

In further investigation of How We Watch, John went into a cinema to watch some Doctor Who.

Notes

One Thing

• The Bazura Project – Thursday, 9pm, ABC2
• The Hamster Wheel – Wednesday, 9:35pm, ABC1
• Episodes 2 of all the shows downloaded last week.

See Toby Halligan’s Comedy Show

Don’t forget that Toby Halligan’s show in the Melbourne Fringe is currently on. You can see his show for free by sending him an email and being one of the lucky ones.

Then late at night, well after they’d cleaned up Lateline Business set, the bigger idea thudded into my mind. The real reason I love the Brownlow is that it’s boring. Then I thought back to other monumentally boring things on TV, and realised that the more producers start messing around with their perfectly working show to make it less boring, the more the show fails.

Whether it’s the Oscars or the Logies, every awards show tries really hard not to be boring. But the very reason they hold an awards ceremony, that is, to justify lucky though irrelevant people’s lives, killing that boredom is almost impossible. Not even Baz Luhrmann, with a cast of 300 monkeys shooting firecrackers out of their arses to the tune of Hello Dolly, could do it. But we’re into the stuff they award show’s rewarding, whether it’s sports, movies or the Air Conditioning Industry’s Night of Nights, the Captain Caveman in us wants to know who will win.

At the Brownlow Medal we’re transfixed to the monotone of the AFL boss reading the votes. Because that’s all he does – after announcing that the show is “an officially sanctioned meeting of the AFL”- he just reads the votes. This is just like the incredibly long bit during the Eurovision Song Contest when all the countries read their votes. But Eurovision has 25 representatives reading for a minute or two. The Brownlow just has one balding bloke, reading the names of vote winners in each of the season’s 194 games.

But to an obsessed football fan stricken with Finals Fever, this is all we want. We think back to Round 17 and wonder how Chris Judd could get votes in a losing side. This is very important to us.

Notice all the things we really hate about The Brownlow? The hideously sexist “This-is-really-the-girls’-Grand-Final” Blue Carpet bullshit. Voice over guys reciting ridiculous chest beating amateurish bush poetry over endless super-slo-mo action montages. These are things the producers reckon will break the supposed boredom of a balding man reading votes. But they don’t get it. These (marketing-tards call them..) “features” are just tedious. And yes, there is a difference.

Let’s look at Big Brother. I think it was the first series that had a daily up late show where the cameras would just sit in on a bedroom for hours into the early morning. If you watched hard and long enough, you could be lucky or unlucky to catch a hellish cat fight or a housemate having a toss under the covers. But most of the time, the household was asleep. Things happened. Very slowly.

This was genius to the power of Eno. Turning on the TV to see that nothing’s happening on TV. Man…dude….professor…that’s art. But once Mike Goldman came in with his cynical 1800 number word games and tooth-brain talkback interaction to make it less boring, the show got tedious and died. The less said about Hot Dogs, the better.

What I’m probably trying to ask people making these things on TV is, please let your story breathe. There’s no need to chuck brainless shit in just because you think you’re losing your audience. With the new ways we’re watching TV now, as talked a lot about in the podcast lately, you’re already losing your audience to a growing number of shiny lounge room distractions. Be confident. You’ll hold our attention if the story’s strong. It’s okay, real footy fans are losing their minds, waiting for round 22’s votes.  Maybe think of making captivating TV as slow cooking. Is there anything better than when the meat falls off the bone?

Cue monkey firecracker montage.

We preview some shows in the new US Fall season, go through some Letters to Boxcutters and give you all the News you want.

Notes

One Thing

• The Bazura Project – 9:00pm Thu 29 Sep, ABC2
• Later with Jools Holland – 1:00am(ish) Mon-Fri, ABC2
• United States of Tara, Series 3 – 9:30pm Tue 27 Sep, ABC1

Shekilda

Find out more about the Australian Women’s Crime Writers’ Convention and go along to learn more about women in the craft.

Adding Ads to Shows

You can find out more about the technology Channel 7 has licensed and see all the ways they plan to possibly ruin every single memory you have and your very understanding of reality. Remember, technology is never evil, only the people who use it can be evil.

It’s like a whole 55 minutes of Trotters about his life and Australian politics, with heaps of jokes and LIVE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.

If you missed Toby’s hit debut solo season at MICF earlier this year, don’t miss this for two reasons: 1) It’s potentially 10% cheaper than the Comedy Festival show* and 2) The Baillieu govt might make it retrospectively compulsory so it’s best to be on the safe side.

Two for one offers are available for the 23rd September and 1st October! CHEAP!

Here’s some details:
Venue
Fringe Hub – Son of Loft, Lithuanian Club
44 Errol St
North Melbourne

Time
9.00pm, Sun 8.00pm (55min)

Tickets
Full Price: $ 18.00
Concession: $ 14.00
Tuesday: $ 14.00
Group: $ 14.00 (per person for 4 people)

*compared to Friday and Saturday nights.

Optus has a service called “TV Now” that works as a kind of mobile phone PVR for its customers. At the end of last month, the AFL and NRL started questioning the copyright issues related to the service.

Of course, what the two football codes were always worried about was how Optus’s service would affect its deal with Telstra.

Now that question will be for the Federal Court to decide, as Boxcutters friend and Age journo, Lucy Battersby reports:

The Federal Court will tomorrow hold a hearing on a request by Optus to restrain the AFL and NRL from suing it for breach of copyright for its TV Now service, which was launched on July 19. The service allows Optus phone and internet customers to watch AFL games on an effective delay of as little as two minutes.
It could prove to be an important test case for content rights in the era of internet television and multimedia devices.

This is a tough one for TV fans. The Telstra deal was vital for the promotion of portable TV viewing. That is, it was vital until TV Now came out.

The concept of TV Now is nothing short of brilliant and hindsight tells us it was bound to happen. Telstra may have used bad judgement but, more realistically, may have just been unlucky: Bad judgement because it did not do due diligence in researching technologies that would undermine its deal and unlucky because Optus chose this moment to remember that telecommunications is a competitive industry.

What is most confusing here is that the AFL and NRL are defending Telstra in a copyright claim rather than supporting the idea that their games will become available to an even wider audience.

If TV Now is stopped in its tracks, it will not be because Telstra made a bad deal and failed to remember caveat emptor. It will be because AFL and NRL are monsters of greed that don’t care about their fans or the games they represent. As such, it will be a loss to sport and television.

(Yes, we are aware that the title of this post might be a little too dramatic. -Ed.)

We brought everyone into the studio to help celebrate. We take a trip down memory lane to when we were six years old. What are our great childhood television memories? How has that shaped our viewing today?

It’s a very special episode of Boxcutters that no person who was ever a child should miss.

Notes

One Thing

• At Home With Julia, “Date night” – 9:30pm Wed 7 Sep, ABC1
• The Shield on DVD
• Wild Boys – 7:30pm Sun 11 Sep, Seven
• How Not To Live Your Life – 9:00pm Thu 8 Sep, ABC2

How We Watch

Here’s an easy link to all the posts involving comments about how we watch.

Buy Some Stuff

Feeling nostalgic? You might want to pick up a copy of the complete series of Family Affair and enjoy the way things were.

Or, if you want to see some good guys and bad guys, why not get yourself The Shield on DVD?

Every time you buy from Amazon using our links, we get a little bit of money and you get to enjoy your life.

The Channel Nine news website still lists him as a reporter but it also lists his age as 34 (he was born in 1975) and has not changed the name of one of their reporters who married and took her husband’s name (or so we understand). It also still features a page for reporter Amy Parks, who moved to Channel Seven in 2009.

We wish James the best of luck with whatever his future has in store for him.

Aside: Punctuation pedants will enjoy the line in the Jacqueline Freegard bio page that lists her outside interests as spending time with “Jack Russell Hugo”. Is that three people, one person or a dog? (Yes, I had a lot of fun looking at the Channel Nine News website.)

Courteney Hocking is our co-host and she tells us how she watches TV with more updates from listeners.

Josh gives us his first impressions of life with Fetch TV.

Keep sending in your examples of How You Watch or maybe tell us something you enjoyed watching when you were six by sending us an email.

Notes

One Thing

• Quantum Leap ‘Lee Harvey Oswald Pt 1’ – 2am Wed, 31 Aug, 7mate
• Australian Story ‘David Hicks’ – 8:30pm Tue, 30 Aug, ABC1
• Louie – Thu 10:30pm FX (in the USA)

Yes, I watched Four Weddings. Actually, to be correct, I watched it twice. Once was the UK version on a channel I barely knew existed: Lifestyle You. The other was the Australian version on Channel 7.

The premise is to take four of the whingiest, most self-centred and borderline pathological brides-to-be available and send them to each other’s weddings to judge and score them.

At the end of the show, the bride with the highest score wins a trip to the cheapest international destination without a current civil war (or an annulment to equal or lesser value).

If you’re thinking: Hang on, is this really a show in which four women get to judge each other’s celebration of love and commitment, taking something personal, making it public and then metaphorically beating it until it metaphorically bleeds all over the hired, starched, linen chair covers? You’re right.

I’ve always had a problem with the concept of “Reality Television”. It’s always been either documentary or game show to me. Reality has nothing to do with it. Four Weddings, for all its glimpses into other people’s wedding receptions, is just a very boring and low-stakes game show. The only attempt at entertainment value comes from how horrible any of the women can be about other women’s dreams.

Men are either forgotten in the entire process or made to look like useless appendages who have added nothing to the concept of the celebration. So maybe it’s not just misogyny. Maybe it’s an exercise in full-blown misanthropy.

Nobody leaves Four Weddings with their dignity. As soon as people opened their personal dreams to the concept of performance and competition, they sold the specialness of their day and will need to wear that as a memory of their lives together for as long as that lasts.

Forget Wipeout. Four Weddings is the show that brings us closer to Stephen King’s Running Man than ever before. It’s not car crash TV. It’s the mass-slaughter of societal decency.

Is that too dramatic?

As a result, the next few episodes of the Boxcutters podcast will be released on Tuesday afternoon after we scan them for gremlins and make it sound even better.

Again, we’re sorry to mess with your Tuesday morning commute, but just think how much more tasty Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning is going to be.

Really, it’s going to be great. You’ll thank us for it.

It’s quite possible that we answer that question in this week’s episode and there’s only one way to find out.

Also, John went to ACMI to (s)talk David & Margaret. He made a recording of his (s)talking and shares it with us.

There’s more about How We Watch and an absolutely great bit of Trotters.

Notes

One Thing

• The Brady Bunch, “Kelly’s Kids” – 5:30pm Wed, 24 Aug 2011, Eleven
• Insight, “Tampa” – 7:30pm Tue, 23 Aug 2011, SBS ONE (repeated on SBS TWO on Friday)

Can’t Stop The Serenity

The Melbourne Browncoats host their annual charity event this Saturday. They promise “heaps of prizes to give away”” plus see Serenity and Dr Horrible’s Sing-along Blog on the big screen! Tix are $18 online or $20 at the door.

For more info, see the facebook page or the Melbourne Browncoats wesbite.

Sorry about that. We’ll republish it soon.

Also, sorry to the people who already downloaded it and now have a less good version. You can download the new version when it’s ready and do a compare and contrast.

Thanks for understanding.

According to the Australian, the Committee is to report back by 12 October 2012.

Meanwhile, the ABC itself reports on the situation with the following par:

Earlier this month Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said he wanted answers from the national broadcaster’s managing director, Mark Scott, over the decision to axe the The New Inventors [sic]and Art Nation.

(Source: ABC News)

There is an issue here about how much influence any government can have over the ABC and where the line of that influence is drawn. Are specific matters of programming and the axing of shows smaller issues than a government should concern itself with? What about when it comes to regional jobs?

Years later, and the Smug People of the Land Of Smug and their idiot cousins have broken into my lounge room through their twitter accounts.

TV shows are encouraging it. Watch this. If your job title has the any of the words “digital”, “social media” and “interactive” in it, you might want to apply some of this wonderful stuff after looking at those links so you can concentrate on the rest of this article.

But who really cares what @frogface78 has to say about The Block‘s Josh & Jenna’s performance on Millionaire Hotseat? And as far as we at Boxcutters know, you don’t get a Season’s Pass to the Canberra Press Gallery just because Q&A printed your Oscar Wilde-like witticism on the screen about Penny Wong’s supreme debating skillz. No matter how smartly you tweet, you’ll never be as famous as Jeff Jansz.

Nope, nobody cares. Not even the three or four people who retweeted you.

It’s just a ploy by the marketers behind the shows to make you feel like you’re a loving part of their terrible product. And hopefully while you’re feeling loved by their terrible product, you’re more likely to swallow another hour of their terrible product the same bat-time, same bat-channel, tomorrow. Why would I know this? Because I work in advertising. It’s what we plot in our offices almost everyday. Not that we know what we’re doing or exactly why we’re doing it, but the going wisdom is that we need more @frogface78s talking about our terrible products. It makes us money.

Which brings me to this funny little thing that happened this time last year at the footy… (Yes, every thought I ever have brings me to something that happened at the footy. Deal with it.) This time last year, I was talking to the CEO of an AFL club at his corporate lunch. He was proudly telling me about a brand new thing where supporters like @frogface78 can get their tweets shown on the big scoreboard during the game. The conversation went something like this.

CEO: “Twitter during the game can bring fans closer to the game and their fellow supporters. It’s interactive!”

Me: “Isn’t yelling HOLDING THE BALL YOU WHITE MAGGOT SCUM with 70,000 other like-minded fans interactive enough?”

This Twitter at the footy thing lasted one more week, only to be replaced by more betting ads.

I just fell asleep while I was typing that slightly endearing anecdote. And I had a dream. And the dream was set in the 1980s. After school. I was tweeting. Here’s the seven tweets that were selected by the station producers to be put up there on the screen.

1. They’re so gonna do it!! #purrrrfectmatch
2. Here’s an idea Professor. Build a boat. #gilligansisland
3. Marcia, Marcia, Hell yeah! #pickofthebradybunch
4. Johnno & Danno have the coolest jobs eva! #wavelength
5. I’ve never seen so many logs. #beachcombers
6. Is that Bud Tingwell in Catweazle? #deadsetlegend
7. This show never lives up to the theme tune. #nannyandtheprofessor

So have I convinced you to put the computer down and give your television the respect and undivided attention it deserves? Probably not. Have I given you enough argument holes to tweet or point out in the comments box below? Definitely have. Will I, even though I’ve written over 600 words against the idea of tweeting at the TV, stop tweeting at the TV? Of course not.

I’m as sucked in as you are.

* I know. Married With Children was on Tuesday nights.

We’ve fixed the issue but if you’re stuck at work and just want to listen to the show, you can always download it directly by clicking on the MP3 icon on the post or, for your convenience, we’ve replicated it here.

Once again, sorry. We hope it didn’t anger up your Tuesday morning blood.

Also, we take the opportunity, with the chatty Dave Lawson as our cohost, to talk about our television watching habits and the effects our friends have on us.

If you want to subscribe to 3RRR and be in the running for all those great prizes, give them a call on +61 3 9388 1027.

Notes

If You Watch One Thing

• Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey – 9:30pm 17 Aug, on ABC1
• The Thick of It – 10pm Thursday 18 Aug, ABC2
• Wallander: The Joker – 11:30pm Sunday 21 Aug, SBS2

Audience Participation

How do you watch TV?

We want to hear from you about your television watching habits. Do you watch alone or with friends? Do you have more than one television set? Do you watch on your computer? Do you read email or make macramé belts while viewing?

Please send us an email via the form (or to “hooray” at this domain) and let us know.

Things We Forgot To Mention

• The Young Talent Time judge we think Dave was referring to was Evie Hayes or maybe someone else entirely different about whom we could find no record.

News Items

• Bert and Ernie will not get married to each other because they are puppets.
• Good News Week might become Good News World and nobody cares.
• Ten’s ill-conceived The Renovators is going to cost it heaps of bucks.
• Young Talent Time might be coming back.
• Shaun Micallef might leave Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and Amanda Keller might be in charge.

Twitter

We mentioned our Twitter handles last night on the show but in case you missed them:

• Josh is @sealfur
• Brett is @bbox
• Courteney is @courteneyh
• Toby is @toby_halligan
• Dave is @davewlawson
• John is shouting random comments out of his window onto the street
• Glenn is @nightwatchman.
• Nelly is @MsNellyThomas

Franklin & Bash is a show from the US about frat-style lawyers.

We take a deeper look at last week’s announcements of ABC cuts and discuss the positives and negatives.

John wants you to come up with a punny and more memorable title for Franklin & Bash.

If you think that Winners & Losers isn’t as bad as we found in the first three episodes, convince us.

If You Watch One Thing

• Suits, 9:40pm Monday, 15 August, Seven
• SLiDE, 7:35pm Tuesday, 16 August, Fox 8
• Man Fixes John’s Television, sometime this week at John’s House

The wonderful 3RRR need all of their studios for their excellent radio training programme. If you want to learn how to make great radio, we can highly recommend this course.

However, it means we have to wait until Wednesday before we can record Ep 274.

We promise it will be worth the wait.

In the mean time, have you seen what we look like?

So, if you’ve wondered what we all look like, here is your chance.

This report in the Age outlines all the details.

We’ve covered this concept a lot in the past on Boxcutters and the trend to euphemise suicide has definitely waned in TV journalism.

We wonder if there will be an official statement instructing TV and radio journalists to be more explicit about suicide.

Considering that the statistics show increased suicides after a suicide report, will we see a spike in the number of suicides? Has the euphemism of “no suspicious circumstances” become so well-known now that it’s a bit ridiculous to continue with the ruse?

How good was that French bike race? Cadel Evans, an introvert, so insular that he loves his team members because they leave him alone, only to speak to him if it’s ‘work related’, put his head down and won the three week European torture orgy. It was a win for the quiet nerd who’s happy to go the knuckle if you walk too close. Don’t believe me? Look up “angry Cadel” on youtube.

And when it comes to three week European torture orgies, the Tour de France is by far the prettiest. On my big fat and thin LED television (yeah, I’m proud to be an effluent suburban boy with his suburban toys and if you got a problem with that, I’m happy to arrange an after-school appointment outside the Glen Waverley station, knives optional), the French countryside is so gorgeous it makes me want to weep.

But it doesn’t. It only makes me angry.

Why? Because, right now, the Tour De France is the only sporting event broadcast in high definition on free to air television. Channel Ten dropped their One HD broadcasts of the footy when they lost the bidding war, Channel Seven uses their HD capacity for Hogan’s Heroes reruns and the ABC’s VFL and lawn bowl coverage is shot on Super 8.

I was at the MCG a couple weeks ago with mates, watching another game on one of the TVs in a bar at half time. Seven’s standard definition telecast was embarrassing: So pixellated you’d think we were watching the game on a Super Nintendo. One of my mates started hitting the TV thinking it was the reception, leaving me to explain to the security guard that the beer all over the screen was Kerry Stokes’s fault. This time, we were lucky. The security guard was similarly angry at the horribly pixellated coverage of a recent Rajasthan Royals cricket game. In the end we had to pull him back from, Michael Douglas Falling Down style, smashing all the TVs in the place.

We know why the channels serve us this pixellated rubbish. It’s because they prefer to use their share of a limited amount of spectrum/signal on more programming, looking to get a snare of the audience that doesn’t like footy with Hogan’s Heroes reruns, or in the ABC’s case, News 24. The Green Guide’s Paul Kalina explains why so much better than I can.

What’s interesting in Kalina’s article is the differing in opinions between ABC’s Kim Dalton who thinks the difference in broadcast quality is marginal and Foxtel’s Patrick Delany who told Kalina that 80% of new customers sign up to their HD service, so much so that they’ve stopped ordering SD set top boxes from their supplier. And they’re listening to their big television owning sports fan audience with many HD channels and a promise to play all games of AFL next year in HD.

And what annoys me most is the emptiness behind the bragging that has always come with sports broadcasting. Race Cam, Hawk Eye, Super Tedious Slo Mo, that ridiculous camera that buzzes above the players during an AFL finals game and 3D – none of us really care.

If you really care about your audience, open up your pocket, hire some HD cameras (last year’s Grand Final replay was shot in SD because all the cameras were double booked for the Commonwealth Games), and broadcast the game in HD. It’s not too much to ask.

I’ll leave you with a bit from an amusing article from 2007 proclaiming the exciting new era of HD TV.

“Besides spectacular vistas and shockingly real playing fields, hi-def clarity puts any and all wrinkles, pimples and pores on display in well-lit bathroom-mirror detail.”

Hogaaaaan!

Courteney’s been watching some Australian classic television. She talks about Phoenix in Things You May Have Missed and it causes us to reminisce a bit about the good Australian TV of the past.

Then, while we’re in the mood, we take a look back at Angry Boys and try to work out whether or not it was successful.

You can watch Falling Skies on Fox 8, Thursday nights at 8:30pm.

If You Watch One Thing

• Breaking Bad, 10pm Sunday, 7 August, AMC (in the USA)
• Gruen Transfer 9pm Wednesday, 3 August, ABC1 (in Australia)
• Malcolm Turnbull addressing the National Press Club, 12:30pm Wednesday, 3 August, ABC1 (also in Australia)

In I Don’t Buy It, Brett has problems with McDonald’s.

If You Watch One Thing

• Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, 9:30pm 27 July, on ABC1
• Guerilla Garderners, 5pm Weekdays on One HD
• Hot Docs: The Confessions, 10pm Tuesday on SBS

Also, you can catch up on the previous episodes of Wilfred on Eleven’s website.

Double jeopardy laws are being reworked in Victoria. Brett was right.

Toby Halligan has provided us with more information about very large numbers and information about the television popularity of AFL vs NRL.

Sue Spencer is the Executive Producer of the long-running investigative journalism programme, Four Corners. Josh spoke her to find out if people still want investigative reporting. Do they? You’ll find out by listening to the episode. That’s how this thing works.

There’s some news in which we’re flippant about death, there’s some hating on MasterChef and religious figures, there’s some things to watch if you were going to.

Why don’t you spend some time finding out what else is a prime number?

In memory of Sherwood Schwartz, here’s a nice little article of appreciation from the LA Times.

If you are interested in applying for the next series of the Amazing Race, don’t forget to read the terms and conditions.

In a great episode of Radio National’s Future Tense we get to hear about the after-life of the soap opera.

It kind of gives more credence to this idea that the soap opera is an important part of television’s childhood and that in a lot of countries that’s exactly where television still exists.

In Australia, Neighbours has be moved to a “non-core” channel and in the US shows including All My Children and One Life to Live have been cancelled.

The question remains, though, if this is the end of our childhood then what sort of adolescence are we expecting for television? Is it going to be another 50 years? What is that 50 years going to look like?

Have a listen to the episode and then please leave your thoughts in the comments.

If you live in regional Victoria or the NSW border areas currently undergoing the switchover to digital television, you can take your old TV to certain collection points.

In a media release, Senator Conroy said: Most analog televisions will be able to receive the full suite of free-to-air digital TV channels by adding a digital set-top box, so people don’t necessarily need to replace their televisions for the switchover. We are conscious, however, that people may take this opportunity to upgrade their technology,

Too Little Too Late

Throughout Australia televisions have been piling up on nature-strips for the last couple of years. It’s not because of digital television but because of the push towards flat screen TVs in general.

Only some city councils allow e-waste drop off. There is general confusion about what to do with an unwanted television. There is no secondary market and many people lack the ability to transport such a heavy piece of old technology.

Something is Better than Nothing

Still, that’s no reason to not take the governments up on their offer. If you live in the areas mentioned in the media release, find out about your local recycling scheme. If you don’t live in one of these areas, call your local council and find out if they have a service that will recycle your old television.

Australia’s streets are like a postcard to the free-to-air networks about their outdated business model. While it’s poetic it’s not the best use of old technology or nature-strips.

What you’ll see here is part of our new direction with Boxcutters. It’s not really a change in direction but filling out some ideas we’ve had for a long time.

We want to have more reviews that you can read at your leisure. Some of these will be shows we’ve already covered in previous episodes, some will be shows we never quite got around to reviewing in the podcast.

Also, we felt it was important to be able to highlight news stories from time to time and also have a place to announce live events, competitions, and things that relate to what the Boxcutters team is doing and when.

Most importantly, we wanted it to be easier for you to see the latest episode, listen in your browser, know exactly where to click to download or subscribe, and look at the site on your mobile device.

What else? Well, we’re making it easier for you to just go straight to an episode. Instead of all those pesky dates and confusing titles in the URL, you can just go to http://boxcutters.net/epsiode##. For example, if you want to listen to or comment on episode 268 you could just type in boxcutters.net/episode268 and the site will automatically take you there. We haven’t converted all the episode to act like that, but we’re getting there.

None of this would have been possible without the hard work and sheer brilliance of Peter Wilson from Soupgiant (who put in all the hard hours of coding) and Christa Lopez-White from Zepol (who did all of our graphic design).

Please, let us know what you think and if there’s anything else we can improve on the site.

They do a great job (much better than we’ve done) of explaining how simultaneously simple and complex the concepts are. People really have no idea what is going on around them and yet technology companies keep pushing out new products.

It’s interesting to hear people say things like: “ Perhaps you’ll just do [internet banking] while you’re sitting around in the lounge room. And you won’t get up and go and get your laptop out and connect to the internet.” It’s a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.

The attempts by the companies that make television sets to stay relevant in a culture that is moving towards constant and portable access to everything seems so transparent and shallow. There’s the stench of desperation around it. They’re trying to make it sound like convenience but it really just comes across as being ill-conceived and reactionary.

Have a listen for yourself or read the transcript.

John’s done a special Just Don’t Bother about the late 70s failure, Supertrain.

There’s an Amazing Race Minute, an I Don’t Buy It, some Quotes and more mentions of Channel 11 than ever before in any other episode.
What else could you want? Nothing. It’s perfect. Don’t touch it. Just listen.

Want to tell us about some outrageous thing we said but shouldn’t have on the show? Go ahead and send us an email.

Bruce Jenner won a gold medal for the decathlon at the 1976 Olympic games.

John and Josh wanted to investigate the reasons behind Australia makes so much acclaimed television science fiction and fantasy for children but never attempts to do anything for families or adults.

Sitting on the panel were: Chris Gist, ABC Commissioning Editor in Melbourne;
Philip Dalkin, writer on Sea Patrol and Stingers, amongst others; David Napier, director of K9; and Mark Shirrefs, co-creator of Spellbinder and The Girl from Tomorrow.

It’s an interesting conversation about budgets, audiences, networks and risk taking.

The goose drank wine:

• Listen to episode 269
• Subscribe to the RSS Feed
• Subscribe using iTunes

Want to tell us about some outrageous thing we said but shouldn’t have on the show? Go ahead and send us an email.

Photo courtesy of Nalini Haynes, editor of Dark Matter

Thanks to David Ashton.

Part of this episode was recorded at Outland Studios (John’s Loungeroom).

Remember how good the Press Gang and Degrassi show was back in February? Oh, you wanted to get tickets but couldn’t because it sold out? Well, don’t make that same mistake this time.

There will be surprises. There will be laughs. There will be intellectual discussions about pop culture that may change the way you think FOREVER!

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel justified in buying this t-shirt.

7pm 28 July
Studio 1 at ACMI
Full $14, Concession $11, ACMI Members $10
Get your tickets now

Everybody sing:
It’s time to something something, it’s time to something la. It’s time to start the music and la la la la la.