Splitsider

 
Robots
12

The Ballad of @Horse_ebooks

by | January 9th, 2012

Of the accounts that follow me on Twitter, half are spambots. About 15% are companies or organizations whose social media interns found me on a list somewhere, and another 15% are something in between: not definitely bots, but not exactly humans. Whatever they are, they're not "listening" in any meaningful sense. Among the remaining group are some people I like, some people I like a lot, some people I don't know, and a bunch of technology PR professionals who don't really have a choice.

My "Follow" list, in contrast, is cultivated with great care — it’s almost exclusively people I think are funny. But the funniest account I follow doesn’t belong to a comedian. It isn’t a parody account and it doesn’t tell jokes. It’s a spam bot that sells shitty ebooks about horses, and it might be the best Twitter account that has ever existed. READ MORE

Ratings
34

Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They'll Stay That Way

by | January 31st, 2011

It's easy to understand why people are ambivalent, or even hostile, toward ratings. The thinking goes something like this:

1. People love the shows that they love, a lot
2. Some of these shows get canceled "too soon"
3. They get canceled, almost invariably, because of what some mean old bully named Nelson said. Nielsen. I mean Nielsen.

To intensify your heartburn, the validity of these ratings is seemingly taken for granted. When you find out that your favorite show is getting canceled for having a 1.1 rating, there's never any "but" — just the number. A network might keep a show around for prestige, or on the hope that it'll grow, but that's the executives' call. There is no real defense against The Number.

And it feels terrible! Comedy fans know this better than anyone else, or perhaps they just suffer with the least grace. Talk to a diehard Arrested Development or Party Down fan, and you'll hear anger; at the greater public for not watching the show, then at the network for canceling it, then, perhaps, at the people who provided the ratings in the first place. READ MORE

Advertising
2

Can Branded Content Be Funny?

by | October 27th, 2010

When Chuck did it, we laughed at them, not with them. When 30 Rock does it, or pretty much every other capital-G Good show on TV right now for that matter, we laugh at them, but with them, too. We've learned to take the licks, and writers have learned to give them: Product placement on TV is as knowing and wily as it is ubiquitous, and it seems to work fine. But what about the Internet?

You could make the argument that indirectly sponsored jokes deserve to be judged on their merit, not their medium. A good argument, actually! But you could make a better one — an easily demonstrable one — that this just isn't how people act.

Among other things, it comes down to momentum. Let's say that I don't particularly enjoy being advertised to (I don't), but also that I've also long accepted my queasy role in the exchange of Funny Things on television for my cruelly overestimated spending power (I have). I wouldn't change the TV channel if a new show were openly Presented By Clearasil. But that same night, the video badged with "Presented by Clearasil!" would be the last one a page to get my click, if it ever did. Bam: disconnect. READ MORE

Servicey
29

Where (On the Internet) To Watch Every Comedy This Season

by | September 8th, 2010

Maybe you don't have a TV. Maybe you don't want to pay for cable, or rent a satellite dish. Maybe you don't like accommodating the odd and conflicting schedules of competing armies of shows, or maybe you just slip out of sync every once in a while. Sometimes you can't watch what you want to watch, and it would be nice to just be able to catch up online, preferably for free. Here's how to do that. READ MORE

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