Psalm 23 Memorial day tribute
We Will Always Be Grateful
Thank You!
May 27, 2012
May 20, 2012
Dog Stays By Deceased Friend In Traffic
A two-year old black lab stayed next to another dog that was hit by a car while both were in the middle of a busy street. In the video you can see what appears to be a golden lab, or maybe a setter lying on its’ side next to the black lab just two or three feet away. Cars are whizzing by as if nothing has happened. The incident took place in La Puente, California about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. A witness found some traffic cones and placed them in front of the two dogs to direct drivers around them. The deceased dog suffered fatal head injuries. It wasn’t entirely clear if its death resulted from a hit and run accident.
The black lab appeared to have been taken care of, but so far no one has come forward to claim her, so she has been taken to a shelter and is up for adoption. Let’s hope her loyalty and heroic behavior are not rewarded with euthanization.
This story is reminiscent of the situation in Japan after the earthquake, where a dog stayed beside its injured companion. Eventually rescuers found them. –Care2
The black lab appeared to have been taken care of, but so far no one has come forward to claim her, so she has been taken to a shelter and is up for adoption. Let’s hope her loyalty and heroic behavior are not rewarded with euthanization.
This story is reminiscent of the situation in Japan after the earthquake, where a dog stayed beside its injured companion. Eventually rescuers found them. –Care2
May 13, 2012
"50 Shades of Grey" Is Freaking Everyone Out-A Review
The erotic lit-sensation is nothing new, but a collection of classic archetypes about gender and sex.
Have you heard? Women across the country are passing around an erotic book under the anonymous cover of their Kindles and Nooks. Originally written as one of many adults-only pieces of Twilight fan fiction, the BDSM-lite romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey threw off the teen-vampire shackles and has become a media hot topic, prompting dozens of trend pieces as well as the now-notorious Katie Roiphe insistence, on the cover of Newsweek, that the books' chronicling of a submissive kinky relationship is proof that women have advanced too far in the workplace, and want to be punished for it. (Shira Tarrant debunked this handily earlier this week--most feminists are in a longstanding sadomasochistic relationship with Roiphe, let's face it.)
Whenever a book for women gets labeled a "sensation," I try to read it--particularly if it prompts scoffing or bemusement from the critical establishment (usually amounting to: "Those women and their trivial womanly obsessions"). I decided to read Fifty Shades of Grey on my Nook while using public transportation, in an attempt to experience that furtive feeling that has been described in so many major news articles.
After I finished, I decided that this new novel lacked the narrative pull (or the fascinating, deeply problematic elements) of previous lady literary blockbusters like The Help and Twilight. Instead, it had the essential narrative drive of many a middling novel of its genre--the audience's desire to get to the next sex scene already. Confession: my thumbs got tired from the e-book equivalent of "skimming" over the parts in which the characters were fully clothed. I have to largely agree with Katie Baker's assessment: "If you've ever read the book, like I unfortunately have, you were probably as shocked as I was at how boring the whole (loooooong) thing is."
Still, it's not hard to see the appeal, the reason the book has clicked. Fifty Shades is the story, if one can call it that, of a young, clumsy, virginal, cipher named Anastasia Steele and her newfound attraction to the impossibly handsome and rich tycoon Christian Grey. Grey is the perfect guy in all respects except for the fact that he has a "red room of pain" and wants Anastasia to sign a contract to become his "submissive" in the bedroom. She indeed experiments with submissiveness, but never signs the contract. Still, after her spanking, whipping and plain old "vanilla sex" sessions (all of which she enjoys very much, as does the reader, at least until partway through when author E L James starts getting quite repetitive, linguistically) are over, she watches her domineering lover sitting melancholy, at the piano, and realizes that beneath the kicks he gets from her pain, there's a profound loss on his part, a childhood nightmare that left him unwiling to be touched, but very into touching her. In all sorts of ways. And her heart melts.
There's nothing new here. It's a story as old as time.
"They told me he was bad/But I knew he was sad." -- "Leader of the Pack," the Shangri-Las.
When '60s classic "Leader of the Pack" came up on my Spotify this week, it solidified my thoughts that this book's success arises out of a combination of some old standbys. It simply combines two fantasies: a sexual one involving riding crops and cable ties, and a social one involving taming the dominant alpha-male and getting to live in his awesome apartment while he submits to your wifely interference. Stir the two together, shake, and you've got a hit.
Put it another, more literarily provocative way, Fifty Shades also combines elements of the two archetypical 19-century marriage plots: the pragmatic desire for the wealthy master of the house of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with the fraught, sexy male-female power dynamics of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. (For instance, one of Christian and Anastasia's arguments is right out of Mr. Rochester and Jane's playbook: "I will buy you nice clothes!" "No you won't!" And the "red room of pain" obviously and perhaps clumsily references Bronte's famous red room.) But, to make an obvious point, Fifty Shades lacks the astute social commentary of either of those brilliant works. It's just got the cheapest thrills that readers find in each.
If you want to go back even further into literary history, you'll find this story echoes even more classic tropes; the seduction plot is an essential part of the English novel's long life. You can certainly find echoes of of Samuel Richardson's Pamela in Fifty Shades' ploddingly written pages. Pamela is one of the most important early English novels, whose plot consists entirely of our virtuous servant heroine writing letter after letter to her parents relating her master's repeated attempts to rape and seduce her (over and over again for hundreds of pages). Her ever-successful resistance results in her falling in love with him despite the whole rape attempt thing, and finally convincing him to marry her.
Around the same era as Pamela made pages turn throughout Britain, the underground literary sensation was Fanny Hill: Or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, the first mainstream porn novel, all about an innocent country girl's eventually willing corruption into the sinful libidinous lifestyle of the big city. It all sounds familiar, doesn't it? A less kind reviewer might say that Fifty Shades is a combination of clichés rather than archetypes, but clichés are common for a reason--people like them.
Fanny Hill's spot in the literary annals, along with sexually explicit gothic novels like The Monk, demonstrates what snobs who dismiss Fifty Shades don't want to remember: readers have always read for pleasure, in its most literal sense, as well as for edification. There's nothing unexpected about readers of all gender persuasions liking their obvious fantasies--or as Maya Dusenbery points out, fantasies that interact with social rules and norms. As any sex expert will tell you, domination and submission are common fantasies with both men and women. As "Leader of the Pack" and its ilk reminds us, women finding the lost boy beneath the hard man is an ever-present cultural theme. And there's a correlating fantasy out there with gender roles reversed--think about that age-old genre of male-penned rock songs about mysterious women who are really just sad girls (Cat Stevens' "Sad Lisa" or anything by the Counting Crows).
But here's the thing: when fantasies cater to readers who are not straight white men, they're treated differently. Imagine a thousand concern-trolling pieces about James Bond and spy novels: "Do men just want to be spies and seduce women because of the recession?"
As Ester Bloom notes at the Huffington Post, the hubbub is a gender thing:
Ultimately, the BDSM buzz around Grey seems like a red herring. What shocks the media is not that women are paying to read about a naïve college student submitting to a relative stranger; it's that women--even adult, married women with children--are jonesing to read about sex at all.
As a society, we tend to ignore Harlequin's massive success, or treat it as some kind of anomaly; and we seem more comfortable with the long-running joke that Porn for Women is men doing housework than the idea that women also like their raunch, including material that's less-vanilla and more Karamel Sutra.
Exactly. And as for the sex scenes in the novel themselves, author E L James gets to have her sex-positive feminist cake and eat her patriarchal normativity too. Anastasia loves a lot of the kinky sex--loudly and repeatedly, and even has dreams about it. But she also repeatedly claims she's mostly submitting out of love, or should I say passionate "lurve" for Christian. To which I say, this is unsurprisingly exactly like the reason readers love Fifty Shades' parent YA novel, Twilight: it's selling women a titillating read that comforts and reaffirms socially prescribed gender roles at the same time.
It's my hope and belief that a future big novel sensation will combine the badass feminist heroines of The Hunger Games and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with the sexy currents of Twilight and Fifty Shades. If both these elements can be bestsellers, their combination is inevitable. Shake, stir, and get a hit.
And if not, I can always go back and read Jane Eyre again.
By Sarah Seltzer-AlterNet
Have you heard? Women across the country are passing around an erotic book under the anonymous cover of their Kindles and Nooks. Originally written as one of many adults-only pieces of Twilight fan fiction, the BDSM-lite romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey threw off the teen-vampire shackles and has become a media hot topic, prompting dozens of trend pieces as well as the now-notorious Katie Roiphe insistence, on the cover of Newsweek, that the books' chronicling of a submissive kinky relationship is proof that women have advanced too far in the workplace, and want to be punished for it. (Shira Tarrant debunked this handily earlier this week--most feminists are in a longstanding sadomasochistic relationship with Roiphe, let's face it.)
Whenever a book for women gets labeled a "sensation," I try to read it--particularly if it prompts scoffing or bemusement from the critical establishment (usually amounting to: "Those women and their trivial womanly obsessions"). I decided to read Fifty Shades of Grey on my Nook while using public transportation, in an attempt to experience that furtive feeling that has been described in so many major news articles.
After I finished, I decided that this new novel lacked the narrative pull (or the fascinating, deeply problematic elements) of previous lady literary blockbusters like The Help and Twilight. Instead, it had the essential narrative drive of many a middling novel of its genre--the audience's desire to get to the next sex scene already. Confession: my thumbs got tired from the e-book equivalent of "skimming" over the parts in which the characters were fully clothed. I have to largely agree with Katie Baker's assessment: "If you've ever read the book, like I unfortunately have, you were probably as shocked as I was at how boring the whole (loooooong) thing is."
Still, it's not hard to see the appeal, the reason the book has clicked. Fifty Shades is the story, if one can call it that, of a young, clumsy, virginal, cipher named Anastasia Steele and her newfound attraction to the impossibly handsome and rich tycoon Christian Grey. Grey is the perfect guy in all respects except for the fact that he has a "red room of pain" and wants Anastasia to sign a contract to become his "submissive" in the bedroom. She indeed experiments with submissiveness, but never signs the contract. Still, after her spanking, whipping and plain old "vanilla sex" sessions (all of which she enjoys very much, as does the reader, at least until partway through when author E L James starts getting quite repetitive, linguistically) are over, she watches her domineering lover sitting melancholy, at the piano, and realizes that beneath the kicks he gets from her pain, there's a profound loss on his part, a childhood nightmare that left him unwiling to be touched, but very into touching her. In all sorts of ways. And her heart melts.
There's nothing new here. It's a story as old as time.
"They told me he was bad/But I knew he was sad." -- "Leader of the Pack," the Shangri-Las.
When '60s classic "Leader of the Pack" came up on my Spotify this week, it solidified my thoughts that this book's success arises out of a combination of some old standbys. It simply combines two fantasies: a sexual one involving riding crops and cable ties, and a social one involving taming the dominant alpha-male and getting to live in his awesome apartment while he submits to your wifely interference. Stir the two together, shake, and you've got a hit.
Put it another, more literarily provocative way, Fifty Shades also combines elements of the two archetypical 19-century marriage plots: the pragmatic desire for the wealthy master of the house of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with the fraught, sexy male-female power dynamics of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. (For instance, one of Christian and Anastasia's arguments is right out of Mr. Rochester and Jane's playbook: "I will buy you nice clothes!" "No you won't!" And the "red room of pain" obviously and perhaps clumsily references Bronte's famous red room.) But, to make an obvious point, Fifty Shades lacks the astute social commentary of either of those brilliant works. It's just got the cheapest thrills that readers find in each.
If you want to go back even further into literary history, you'll find this story echoes even more classic tropes; the seduction plot is an essential part of the English novel's long life. You can certainly find echoes of of Samuel Richardson's Pamela in Fifty Shades' ploddingly written pages. Pamela is one of the most important early English novels, whose plot consists entirely of our virtuous servant heroine writing letter after letter to her parents relating her master's repeated attempts to rape and seduce her (over and over again for hundreds of pages). Her ever-successful resistance results in her falling in love with him despite the whole rape attempt thing, and finally convincing him to marry her.
Around the same era as Pamela made pages turn throughout Britain, the underground literary sensation was Fanny Hill: Or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, the first mainstream porn novel, all about an innocent country girl's eventually willing corruption into the sinful libidinous lifestyle of the big city. It all sounds familiar, doesn't it? A less kind reviewer might say that Fifty Shades is a combination of clichés rather than archetypes, but clichés are common for a reason--people like them.
Fanny Hill's spot in the literary annals, along with sexually explicit gothic novels like The Monk, demonstrates what snobs who dismiss Fifty Shades don't want to remember: readers have always read for pleasure, in its most literal sense, as well as for edification. There's nothing unexpected about readers of all gender persuasions liking their obvious fantasies--or as Maya Dusenbery points out, fantasies that interact with social rules and norms. As any sex expert will tell you, domination and submission are common fantasies with both men and women. As "Leader of the Pack" and its ilk reminds us, women finding the lost boy beneath the hard man is an ever-present cultural theme. And there's a correlating fantasy out there with gender roles reversed--think about that age-old genre of male-penned rock songs about mysterious women who are really just sad girls (Cat Stevens' "Sad Lisa" or anything by the Counting Crows).
But here's the thing: when fantasies cater to readers who are not straight white men, they're treated differently. Imagine a thousand concern-trolling pieces about James Bond and spy novels: "Do men just want to be spies and seduce women because of the recession?"
As Ester Bloom notes at the Huffington Post, the hubbub is a gender thing:
Ultimately, the BDSM buzz around Grey seems like a red herring. What shocks the media is not that women are paying to read about a naïve college student submitting to a relative stranger; it's that women--even adult, married women with children--are jonesing to read about sex at all.
As a society, we tend to ignore Harlequin's massive success, or treat it as some kind of anomaly; and we seem more comfortable with the long-running joke that Porn for Women is men doing housework than the idea that women also like their raunch, including material that's less-vanilla and more Karamel Sutra.
Exactly. And as for the sex scenes in the novel themselves, author E L James gets to have her sex-positive feminist cake and eat her patriarchal normativity too. Anastasia loves a lot of the kinky sex--loudly and repeatedly, and even has dreams about it. But she also repeatedly claims she's mostly submitting out of love, or should I say passionate "lurve" for Christian. To which I say, this is unsurprisingly exactly like the reason readers love Fifty Shades' parent YA novel, Twilight: it's selling women a titillating read that comforts and reaffirms socially prescribed gender roles at the same time.
It's my hope and belief that a future big novel sensation will combine the badass feminist heroines of The Hunger Games and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with the sexy currents of Twilight and Fifty Shades. If both these elements can be bestsellers, their combination is inevitable. Shake, stir, and get a hit.
And if not, I can always go back and read Jane Eyre again.
By Sarah Seltzer-AlterNet
Foot Note: Sarah Seltzer is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has been published at the Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Jezebel and the Washington Post. Follow her on Twitter at @fellowette and find her work at sarahmseltzer.com.
Prime-Time Ratings Bring Speculation Of A Shift In Habits
"American Idol" is a live show but has lost viewers this year, perhaps affecting other shows on the schedule that night.
It is the police procedural that has network executives scratching their heads this season: The Case of the Disappearing Viewers.
Also losing viewers were, "Community," pictured, "Missing" and "Touch."
Across the television landscape, network and cable, public television and pay cable, English-language and Spanish, viewing for all sorts of prime-time programming is down this spring — chiefly among the most important audience for the business, younger adults.
In the four television weeks starting March 19, NBC lost an average of 59,000 viewers (about 3 percent) in that 18-to-49 age category compared with the same period last year, CBS lost 239,000 (8 percent), ABC lost 681,000 (21 percent) and Fox lost 709,000 (20 percent).
In the last few weeks, new viewership lows for network series have been recorded nightly among 18- to 49-year-olds, the group that still commands the highest advertising prices.
The declines have not discriminated. The bad news has been the same for hits, like ABC’s “Modern Family,” which had its lowest rating for the season (4.0 or about 5.2 million viewers) and less popular shows, like NBC’s “Community,” which descended to 1.3 (about 1.7 million viewers). Several other shows, like “Glee” and “Touch” on Fox, and “Missing” and “Suburgatory” on ABC, all hit their lowest ratings ever last week.
The losses could not have come at a worse time for the networks, which are about to enter the television upfronts, the traditional season when advertising dollars are committed for the fall season.
“These numbers are going to affect the upfronts,” said Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media. “These numbers represent billions of dollars in sales.”
Though there seems to be no one reason for the decline, many executives say they are concerned that long-term changes in watching habits are taking a significant toll on viewership.
The broadest explanation is the time of year. Each spring, viewership tends to decline because of factors like daylight saving time, which hurts the 8 p.m. shows especially because outdoor light discourages indoor viewing. And many television research executives said “nice weather” this spring may be encouraging people to spend more time outdoors.
But the clock changes every year without such a severe decline. As Mr. Adgate asked, “How many more people can be out smelling the roses this year?”
Network television, of course, is accustomed to being down. As noted by Michael Nathanson, the United States media analyst for Nomura Securities, the live ratings for network programs (that is, the ratings for people who watch shows when they are first broadcast) have declined for 14 straight quarters.
In the past, the network drop usually meant a bonanza for cable networks, which inherited those viewers. But over the same four weeks beginning in March, cable networks combined lost an average of 409,000 viewers, about 2 percent.
And yet, overall television viewing is flat this spring, according to Nielsen research. That means viewers are using their television sets just as much this year as last year.
So bring on the detectives. What is going on here?
Mr. Nathanson suggested one obvious suspect in the overall ratings decline has been the steep ratings drop for “American Idol” this season — more than 30 percent. He contends the struggles of “Idol” have had a disproportionate impact on the overall ratings for the live viewing of prime-time shows. “Idol,” which is a competition show broadcast live, “has in the past gotten you into the live ecosystem,” he said.
Many millions of people watched television live on “Idol” nights, he said, and with “Idol” declining, fewer people have the incentive to sit in front of the television on those nights.
He cited the much stronger numbers for shows last fall, when the N.F.L. dominated the ratings. “The N.F.L. brings people in live,” Mr. Nathanson said. He suggested that live television benefited from the interest in football in the fall. Spring sports do not have the same impact, he said.
Ratings fell for both hits and less popular shows, like NBC's "Awake," which declined to slightly more than one million viewers.
Another explanation behind the steep decline in network shows is the way networks now parcel out episodes of their more popular offerings. Around March, they begin inserting strings of repeat, which, more than ever, viewers avoid. Jay Sures, a partner in the United Talent Agency, said his company’s research found that “the disruption of the ordered pattern of episodes is a big issue.”
Viewers can go weeks without seeing a new episode of a favorite like the comedy “Modern Family,” he noted, and they do not know when a new episode will be shown. Last week a new episode of “Modern Family” scored the lowest rating of the season.
At the same time, viewers who scheduled the show on a “season’s pass” on a DVR will learn later that they have a new episode to watch — and when they do, they will not be watching something else on live television. And that, many television executives say, may indicate a fundamental shift in how viewers consume television programming. They no longer watch nearly as much of it while it is broadcast.
Mr. Nathanson said the playback of prerecorded shows is so extensive, no show can be judged fairly by how it fares on its first night. He cited Nielsen figures that indicate recorded playback of shows would average a 4.7 rating in the 18-to-49 category for those four weeks this spring. That would make playback the second-highest-rated show on television for that period, just behind “American Idol” on Fox.
Two years ago at this time, Jeff Gaspin, then the head of entertainment at NBC, was trying to find television shows that would attract viewers and advertisers, and perhaps finally turn around the decade-long slump that afflicted the network.
Now Mr. Gaspin looks at the recent news of lower and lower ratings across the board and has one conclusion: “We are seeing the cumulative effect of nonlinear viewing.”
That is attributable, he said, to what he called the “built-up libraries” viewers can now watch. “I think we are at a tipping point in how people are going to watch shows,” he said.
Mr. Gaspin said that this year he and his 13-year-old son decided to try out the AMC series “The Walking Dead.” Hooked by the first two episodes, they set aside an hour at 9 each night to watch the first two years, hour by hour, which Mr. Gaspin had collected through every means available — some episodes from Netflix, some from iTunes, some recorded on the family DVR.
“We learned a new behavior,” Mr. Gaspin said. Finally they caught up to this season’s finale.
“We watched that live,” he said. “It was not nearly as good. The commercials broke the tension. We had watched the other episodes with blankets over our heads. I hate to say this to the AMC executives and everybody else in the business, but I will never watch ‘Walking Dead’ live again.” -New York Times
It is the police procedural that has network executives scratching their heads this season: The Case of the Disappearing Viewers.
Also losing viewers were, "Community," pictured, "Missing" and "Touch."
Across the television landscape, network and cable, public television and pay cable, English-language and Spanish, viewing for all sorts of prime-time programming is down this spring — chiefly among the most important audience for the business, younger adults.
In the four television weeks starting March 19, NBC lost an average of 59,000 viewers (about 3 percent) in that 18-to-49 age category compared with the same period last year, CBS lost 239,000 (8 percent), ABC lost 681,000 (21 percent) and Fox lost 709,000 (20 percent).
In the last few weeks, new viewership lows for network series have been recorded nightly among 18- to 49-year-olds, the group that still commands the highest advertising prices.
The declines have not discriminated. The bad news has been the same for hits, like ABC’s “Modern Family,” which had its lowest rating for the season (4.0 or about 5.2 million viewers) and less popular shows, like NBC’s “Community,” which descended to 1.3 (about 1.7 million viewers). Several other shows, like “Glee” and “Touch” on Fox, and “Missing” and “Suburgatory” on ABC, all hit their lowest ratings ever last week.
The losses could not have come at a worse time for the networks, which are about to enter the television upfronts, the traditional season when advertising dollars are committed for the fall season.
“These numbers are going to affect the upfronts,” said Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media. “These numbers represent billions of dollars in sales.”
Though there seems to be no one reason for the decline, many executives say they are concerned that long-term changes in watching habits are taking a significant toll on viewership.
The broadest explanation is the time of year. Each spring, viewership tends to decline because of factors like daylight saving time, which hurts the 8 p.m. shows especially because outdoor light discourages indoor viewing. And many television research executives said “nice weather” this spring may be encouraging people to spend more time outdoors.
But the clock changes every year without such a severe decline. As Mr. Adgate asked, “How many more people can be out smelling the roses this year?”
Network television, of course, is accustomed to being down. As noted by Michael Nathanson, the United States media analyst for Nomura Securities, the live ratings for network programs (that is, the ratings for people who watch shows when they are first broadcast) have declined for 14 straight quarters.
In the past, the network drop usually meant a bonanza for cable networks, which inherited those viewers. But over the same four weeks beginning in March, cable networks combined lost an average of 409,000 viewers, about 2 percent.
And yet, overall television viewing is flat this spring, according to Nielsen research. That means viewers are using their television sets just as much this year as last year.
So bring on the detectives. What is going on here?
Mr. Nathanson suggested one obvious suspect in the overall ratings decline has been the steep ratings drop for “American Idol” this season — more than 30 percent. He contends the struggles of “Idol” have had a disproportionate impact on the overall ratings for the live viewing of prime-time shows. “Idol,” which is a competition show broadcast live, “has in the past gotten you into the live ecosystem,” he said.
Many millions of people watched television live on “Idol” nights, he said, and with “Idol” declining, fewer people have the incentive to sit in front of the television on those nights.
He cited the much stronger numbers for shows last fall, when the N.F.L. dominated the ratings. “The N.F.L. brings people in live,” Mr. Nathanson said. He suggested that live television benefited from the interest in football in the fall. Spring sports do not have the same impact, he said.
Ratings fell for both hits and less popular shows, like NBC's "Awake," which declined to slightly more than one million viewers.
Another explanation behind the steep decline in network shows is the way networks now parcel out episodes of their more popular offerings. Around March, they begin inserting strings of repeat, which, more than ever, viewers avoid. Jay Sures, a partner in the United Talent Agency, said his company’s research found that “the disruption of the ordered pattern of episodes is a big issue.”
Viewers can go weeks without seeing a new episode of a favorite like the comedy “Modern Family,” he noted, and they do not know when a new episode will be shown. Last week a new episode of “Modern Family” scored the lowest rating of the season.
At the same time, viewers who scheduled the show on a “season’s pass” on a DVR will learn later that they have a new episode to watch — and when they do, they will not be watching something else on live television. And that, many television executives say, may indicate a fundamental shift in how viewers consume television programming. They no longer watch nearly as much of it while it is broadcast.
Mr. Nathanson said the playback of prerecorded shows is so extensive, no show can be judged fairly by how it fares on its first night. He cited Nielsen figures that indicate recorded playback of shows would average a 4.7 rating in the 18-to-49 category for those four weeks this spring. That would make playback the second-highest-rated show on television for that period, just behind “American Idol” on Fox.
Two years ago at this time, Jeff Gaspin, then the head of entertainment at NBC, was trying to find television shows that would attract viewers and advertisers, and perhaps finally turn around the decade-long slump that afflicted the network.
Now Mr. Gaspin looks at the recent news of lower and lower ratings across the board and has one conclusion: “We are seeing the cumulative effect of nonlinear viewing.”
That is attributable, he said, to what he called the “built-up libraries” viewers can now watch. “I think we are at a tipping point in how people are going to watch shows,” he said.
Mr. Gaspin said that this year he and his 13-year-old son decided to try out the AMC series “The Walking Dead.” Hooked by the first two episodes, they set aside an hour at 9 each night to watch the first two years, hour by hour, which Mr. Gaspin had collected through every means available — some episodes from Netflix, some from iTunes, some recorded on the family DVR.
“We learned a new behavior,” Mr. Gaspin said. Finally they caught up to this season’s finale.
“We watched that live,” he said. “It was not nearly as good. The commercials broke the tension. We had watched the other episodes with blankets over our heads. I hate to say this to the AMC executives and everybody else in the business, but I will never watch ‘Walking Dead’ live again.” -New York Times
May 6, 2012
Kinkade: Artist Drew Many Fans, Few Critical Raves
To fans and the countless collectors who helped build painter Thomas Kinkade's commercial art empire, his idealized vision of the world usually served as a simple, soothing addition to the living room wall: a soft depiction of a churning seascape or a colorful garden or a cottage brimming with warm light.
Kinkade's vision, and the artworks he prolifically created from it, paid off handsomely for the self-described "painter of light," whose business grew into franchised galleries, reproduced artwork and spin-off products said to fetch at their peak some $100 million annually and adorn roughly 10 million homes.
Kinkade, who died Friday of what appeared to be natural causes in Los Gatos, Calif., embraced his popularity even as he drew less than appreciative attention from those within the art establishment who derided him, at least in part, for appealing so brazenly to the widest possible audience.
"In their minds, he represented the lowest type of art," said Jeffrey Vallance, an artist who hosted a show of Kinkade's artwork in Santa Ana, Calif. in 2004. "He was different from other artists. You kind of felt like he was giving people what they wanted."
Kinkade's art empire included reproductions of his numerous paintings in hand-signed lithographs, canvas prints, books and posters, calendars, magazine covers, cards, collector plates and figurines. As his art drew wider and wider attention, Kinkade didn't shy away.
"It is clear that everyday people need an art they can enjoy, believe in and understand," he wrote in a catalog to the 2004 show.
For Kinkade, such art meant light-infused renderings of tranquil landscape scenes, homes and churches that evoked an idealized past, some of which included religious iconography.
As word of Kinkade's untimely death at age 54 spread Saturday, fans flocked to some galleries to buy his work.
"It's crazy beautiful. We're struggling with our own emotions, yet the public is coming in and just buying art off the wall," said Ester Wells, gallery director at the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery in Pismo Beach, Calif. "Right now, people are just coming in and buying everything in our inventory."
Many customers bought art as a tribute while others said it was a smart investment: They feel his work will now be worth more down the road, Wells said. Others stopped by just to say how sorry they were to hear of his death.
"We're going to lose a great artist to the world but we'll never forget him," Wells said, adding that she thinks Kinkade will be remembered as another Norman Rockwell
Kinkade regarded Rockwell as his earliest hero. His mom had a big collection of copies of Saturday Evening Post magazines, he said in a biography on his website.
"The scenes were nostalgic and brought back very happy memories for people," said Marty Brown, who owns four galleries in Southern California that sell Kinkade paintings. Brown's galleries had already had a record sales day by noon on Saturday, he said.
The customers ranged from curious people who'd seen news of Kinkade's death to longtime collectors purchasing a few more pieces.
"Some people are coming and buying a couple or buying their first piece, or just buying something. But they all feel pretty bad, to tell you the truth," he said.
Kinkade had a fan base that was unprecedented, and he made collectors out of the many people who brought his art into their homes.
"That's market penetration that we've never seen in art, for sure," Brown said.
Yet some of the qualities that made Kinkade's art popular and accessible to everyday consumers also led to its criticism from art experts.
"I think the reason you probably aren't going to find his work in many museums, if any, is that there really wasn't anything very innovative about what he was doing...," said Michael Darling, chief curator of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. "I really think that he didn't bring anything new to art."
Kinkade was also criticized for selling reproductions of his works, not the originals.
"That was something that drove the art world crazy," Vallance said. "You were never really buying the real thing, you were buying something made by a machine."
In the 2004 catalog to his California show, Kinkade offered an answer to his critics, saying he didn't look down upon any type of art.
"As to the myriads of products that have been developed from my paintings, I can only state that I have always had the attitude that art in whatever format it is accessible to people is good..." he wrote. "All forms of art reproduction have meaning to some body of people."
But Alexis Boylan, who edited a 2011 book of essays, "Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall," said Kinkade presented his art as value-driven and contrasted it with rap music and other forms of art that he was less fond of.
"He saw his art as antagonistic towards other forms of artistic expression," she said. "He was very antagonistic towards modern and contemporary art."
Amid the success, though, Kinkade had run into personal difficulties in recent years.
In June 2010, he was arrested outside Carmel, Calif. on suspicion of driving under the influence. That same year, one of his companies also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing came as the company had started making payments on an almost $3 million court award against it in a lawsuit filed by a Virginia couple, Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello.
The Virginia gallery owners sued Kinkade and his company in 2003, arguing that he'd fraudulently persuaded them to invest in a licensed Kinkade gallery, according to the Los Angeles Times. The couple alleged that they were being undercut by discount sellers whose prices they were barred from matching, and they had merchandise they couldn't sell.
The court eventually sided with the couple. Kinkade faced similar lawsuits from other owners as a number of Kinkade galleries failed from 1997 to 2005.
Brown said he hopes people remember Kinkade not only as a commercially successful artist, but one that raised millions for charity by auctioning his works.
"We've got a lot of people out there today that are a little sadder today because Thomas Kinkade passed away," he said, adding: "I just hope that he's in a better place." -Yahoo News
Kinkade's vision, and the artworks he prolifically created from it, paid off handsomely for the self-described "painter of light," whose business grew into franchised galleries, reproduced artwork and spin-off products said to fetch at their peak some $100 million annually and adorn roughly 10 million homes.
Kinkade, who died Friday of what appeared to be natural causes in Los Gatos, Calif., embraced his popularity even as he drew less than appreciative attention from those within the art establishment who derided him, at least in part, for appealing so brazenly to the widest possible audience.
"In their minds, he represented the lowest type of art," said Jeffrey Vallance, an artist who hosted a show of Kinkade's artwork in Santa Ana, Calif. in 2004. "He was different from other artists. You kind of felt like he was giving people what they wanted."
Kinkade's art empire included reproductions of his numerous paintings in hand-signed lithographs, canvas prints, books and posters, calendars, magazine covers, cards, collector plates and figurines. As his art drew wider and wider attention, Kinkade didn't shy away.
"It is clear that everyday people need an art they can enjoy, believe in and understand," he wrote in a catalog to the 2004 show.
For Kinkade, such art meant light-infused renderings of tranquil landscape scenes, homes and churches that evoked an idealized past, some of which included religious iconography.
As word of Kinkade's untimely death at age 54 spread Saturday, fans flocked to some galleries to buy his work.
"It's crazy beautiful. We're struggling with our own emotions, yet the public is coming in and just buying art off the wall," said Ester Wells, gallery director at the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery in Pismo Beach, Calif. "Right now, people are just coming in and buying everything in our inventory."
Many customers bought art as a tribute while others said it was a smart investment: They feel his work will now be worth more down the road, Wells said. Others stopped by just to say how sorry they were to hear of his death.
"We're going to lose a great artist to the world but we'll never forget him," Wells said, adding that she thinks Kinkade will be remembered as another Norman Rockwell
Kinkade regarded Rockwell as his earliest hero. His mom had a big collection of copies of Saturday Evening Post magazines, he said in a biography on his website.
"The scenes were nostalgic and brought back very happy memories for people," said Marty Brown, who owns four galleries in Southern California that sell Kinkade paintings. Brown's galleries had already had a record sales day by noon on Saturday, he said.
The customers ranged from curious people who'd seen news of Kinkade's death to longtime collectors purchasing a few more pieces.
"Some people are coming and buying a couple or buying their first piece, or just buying something. But they all feel pretty bad, to tell you the truth," he said.
Kinkade had a fan base that was unprecedented, and he made collectors out of the many people who brought his art into their homes.
"That's market penetration that we've never seen in art, for sure," Brown said.
Yet some of the qualities that made Kinkade's art popular and accessible to everyday consumers also led to its criticism from art experts.
"I think the reason you probably aren't going to find his work in many museums, if any, is that there really wasn't anything very innovative about what he was doing...," said Michael Darling, chief curator of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. "I really think that he didn't bring anything new to art."
Kinkade was also criticized for selling reproductions of his works, not the originals.
"That was something that drove the art world crazy," Vallance said. "You were never really buying the real thing, you were buying something made by a machine."
In the 2004 catalog to his California show, Kinkade offered an answer to his critics, saying he didn't look down upon any type of art.
"As to the myriads of products that have been developed from my paintings, I can only state that I have always had the attitude that art in whatever format it is accessible to people is good..." he wrote. "All forms of art reproduction have meaning to some body of people."
But Alexis Boylan, who edited a 2011 book of essays, "Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall," said Kinkade presented his art as value-driven and contrasted it with rap music and other forms of art that he was less fond of.
"He saw his art as antagonistic towards other forms of artistic expression," she said. "He was very antagonistic towards modern and contemporary art."
Amid the success, though, Kinkade had run into personal difficulties in recent years.
In June 2010, he was arrested outside Carmel, Calif. on suspicion of driving under the influence. That same year, one of his companies also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing came as the company had started making payments on an almost $3 million court award against it in a lawsuit filed by a Virginia couple, Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello.
The Virginia gallery owners sued Kinkade and his company in 2003, arguing that he'd fraudulently persuaded them to invest in a licensed Kinkade gallery, according to the Los Angeles Times. The couple alleged that they were being undercut by discount sellers whose prices they were barred from matching, and they had merchandise they couldn't sell.
The court eventually sided with the couple. Kinkade faced similar lawsuits from other owners as a number of Kinkade galleries failed from 1997 to 2005.
Brown said he hopes people remember Kinkade not only as a commercially successful artist, but one that raised millions for charity by auctioning his works.
"We've got a lot of people out there today that are a little sadder today because Thomas Kinkade passed away," he said, adding: "I just hope that he's in a better place." -Yahoo News
To View Kinkade’s Paintings
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