TV Times

Chris Norton, May 23rd 2006, 12:38PM

This year Big Brother rolled out its uber-trashy all-seeing televisual eyes amidst a welter of warnings - 'kiss goodbye to your summer' cried everyone from Heat magazine to BB's own increasingly cartoonish Davina McCall. There's a grain of truth in that, at least for those of us who can't be bothered putting up an impenetrable, culturally cool acceptable front... in fact half of us round these parts of the office are already discussing Shahbaz every morning, like the bunch of gossiping old fishwives we really are.

The real-time nature of BB, and the fact that it generates those 'water-cooler' conversations (you know, the sort all the media journalists were going on about a few years ago), well it makes me think. There's all this buzz online about iTunes selling episodes of Lost (another of our favourites, especially now the plot seems to revolve around people sitting in a room doing inexplicable things with computers) and the new plan to sell 24 (yeah, we love Bauer too) on myspace.

But this narrowcasting approach, treating TV shows like music, seems a little foolish - TV is completely different, and nowhere near the solitary experience the naysayers wibble on about. In fact, I think it's the most social of modern media. Discussion of last night's crop of big shows is a vital office bonding experience... Daz got quite annoyed with me because I missed Lost the other week, and fair enough, I was a bit miffed myself. Not because I missed it, but because we all need a bit of fuel for talking outside of the world of SQL queries and web form design. OK, and because I missed it.

Hey, if you can't gossip openly about your colleagues, at least you can gossip openly about the people on TV - and to do that you need to be tuning in as it happens, in synch. Now where's my copy of Heat?

Tags: bigbrother, conversations, media, myspace, office, tv, video
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iTunes does me a favour

Chris Norton, May 11th 2006, 11:45AM

This morning I was sitting on the bus, listening to <nme mode>Wildhearts' frontman Ginger's confessional rock opus Valor Del Corazon</nme mode> (because nothing says 'commute' like a double album about your wife leaving you on account of your heroin habit), thinking about the differences between CDs and mp3s. And how heroin habits are a bit of a bad idea. And various other stupid things... but mainly about CDs and mp3s.

Last night iTunes suddenly decided to delete half my carefully downloaded album artwork. At first I was quite irate, because I'd spent ages finding it all so it would show up on my ipod. But after some thought, it started to feel like iTunes was trying to enlighten me. I still buy CDs, even though I just rip them straight onto iTunes and stack them up in the corner. It feels somehow more like I've got a handle on the music if I physically own it, and getting the artwork onto iTunes felt like a link to this physical medium.

Well shame on me for trying to cling to the old ways! Shame on bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers for moaning about people downloading their music, instead of embracing the new ways! When we get fixated on album art, sleevenotes and so on we're just not getting it - CDs and record sleeves aren't music, music is music and it's something that only ever really exists in the air and in the mind. That's why the abstraction of going digital is so appropriate - it frees the music.

So maybe next time I get the urge to download more album art and lyrics for my collection, I'll just stop and listen to the music itself.

Tags: downloads, media, mp3, music
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IT vs The Media

Chris Norton, April 10th 2006, 10:22AM

I spend a lot of time in the company of computers. I'll happily profess that I know a thing or two about how they work, and then more often than not will regret doing so because whoever's on the end of my professing will immediately ask me to fix the problem they've got with their wireless router. At this point I will try to move the conversation on to on area in which I like to think I'm even more at home, popular culture. As long as they then don't start going on about Truffaut films (not seen any) or Desperate Housewives (can't stand any), I can happily chat away about modern music, film and TV for ages.

Now aside from that introduction putting you off the idea of inviting me to a party, there's a link in there between my two conversational subjects (I have more, but don't get me started on the boring travel stories). Computers are great at media; digital techniques are all important in film (most blockbusters couldn't survive without CGI), people like Mike Skinner and Daniel Bedingfield can record hit songs on their PCs without even leaving their bedrooms (some may wish they never had left), and now that most of us are up to speed with broadband we can access all this stuff in the proverbial comfort of our own homes.

But media? The media is rubbish at computers. Well, to be fair, it's more accurate to say fiction is rubbish at computers. Almost without fail, the portrayal of computers - and those magical people who work with them - is incredibly unrealistic. OK, so I'm not expecting to turn on Hollyoaks and see realism. But it gets hard to suspend my disbelief when I see these computers that make wooshing, beeping, bubbly little electronic sounds every time someone clicks the mouse. Every time! It's not just sounds, it's the way every single window has to flip round, zoom in and out and do a little dance instead of just popping up like real windows do. Hollywood computers are the worst for this - Sandra Bullock's computer in The Net? It'd have been out the window in five minutes if I'd had the lead role. Maybe I'd have then escaped all her identity-theft problems and the whole film would have been much more relaxed.

On the other hand, it would be very nice if PCs started up instantaneously like they do on TV. It'd also be quite cool if there were as many Macs knocking about (I'm sure that comment's going to get me into trouble). Macs are everywhere in film and TV because: a) the people who make film and TV tend to use them in the first place and b) they just look cool. In real life, you can throw a stone and a dozen Windows boxes will be in range, but the only shiny, translucent Macs around are the ones in the special section of the department stores. And the ones on the BBC's inexplicably popular Hustle.

As for the people who work with computers, in TV and film they range from simply disfunctional to absolutely repulsive. Most of us in the office enjoyed Channel 4's hit-and-miss sitcom The IT Crowd, but come on, we're all a bit cooler than that. Aren't we? We certainly aren't like Jurassic Park's treachourous, egg-stealing, obese, magic-word-demanding Dennis Nedry. Then again, if someone could point me towards an IT department staffed by the improbably glamourous likes of Antitrust's Lisa Calighan and Goldeneye's Natalya Simyonova... well, let's just say that my blog posts could well come to a sudden end.

Come on media types, we all use computers these days. We know how they work. We know they can be exciting, and the people who work with them are often saints, but we also know that they tend to be simply useful, relatively non-flashy tools. The computers, I mean, not the people.

Tags: film, macs, media, tv
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