Category Archives: Television / Movies

The End (of the secret)

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It’s been much longer and more drawn out than I anticipated posting all the things I wrote about being a Neilsen Family. I think this final post is a fair comparison to the entire experience. If you’ve been reading along you might think, “Huh, I kind of forgot all that stuff…” and by the end that’s kind of where I was with plugging the number into the remote every time I watched TV. It sort of became this afterthought rather than some kind of actual, accurate tracking thing in my mind. We’re close to a year since all the equipment went away and I can say that while intellectually I might miss the influence, I most certainly don’t miss tracking stuff and having extra buttons laying about.

Another interesting note? The amount of television watched has fallen back off a cliff. People will say, “have you watched…” and generally speaking the answer is no. There just isn’t enough there for me. Sure, there are quality shows out there and things I want to watch, I just don’t feel the need to rush out there to see any of them. I never did get to that ‘one more’ entry I thought I would get (unless you count this one). Here’s the final entry in the ‘secret’ series:

June 27, 2017

Habits are hard to break. Going cold turkey is certainly a way to break a habit. I was told last night by my wife that the folks from Neilsen called. They will be stopping by the house today and unhooking all the monitoring stuff from our home.

That’s it, we’re done. Cold turkey indeed.

It’s actually difficult to believe that it has been 2 years already. In that same breath I also find myself thinking it’s a good thing to stop now. We’ve gotten into a routine with the monitoring equipment and there are a lot of days when I actively question the accuracy of what we’re showing. How many times have we not had the right folks listed compared to who’s actually sitting in the room watching (or listening) to what we’re playing? Hard to say.

How many times have I come home to find that the music I had been playing when I left (and allowed to continue to play for those staying at the house) was done and everything had just been sitting there waiting for me to come back and “check in” for the purposes of ratings?

How accurate are those ratings when we switch to a streaming service and avoid the regular TV channels? We are well into the worst part of the year for television in my opinion – it’s terrible. More terrible than I normally find it. We have the system on, but most often are playing music via a streaming service. Does that count?

What I would love to know is what our profile has looked like over these 2 years. I have no doubt that we’ll never be able to see or know any of that, but I think it would be fascinating. What did we say we were doing / watching vs. what we were actually watching in terms of hours on the system? Information that is up for sale…

And that’s the reason for the big secret all this time. What we’ve sold to Nielsen is something they’ve packaged and sold to somebody else. We’ve had our time, we’ve tried to show what our preferences would be and in the end we’re just part of the larger numbers that broadcasters are aiming for.

I hope the few shows I really like survive. I don’t believe for a minute that the shows we don’t care for will suffer for us not watching them. I would hope that, but we are still clearly not the target demographic for a lot of stuff.

I suspect there will be one more blog entry after this. The post departure impressions and how things have changed after all the monitoring equipment left the house. How the kiddo will deal with the change (or if she’ll notice). Hopefully all this will prove to be interesting reading (if only there were a way to track that…).

Ready Player One – A Review

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Ready Player One

I went back and looked. I didn’t realize that it had been almost 5 years since I read the book. You can read my old review of the book here.

IF you’re interested in a synopsis of the book from a slightly different point of view (with spoilers), feel free to check this guy out (he’s really clever and I like his work) THUG NOTES.

The movie itself.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet – yes, there will be spoiler stuff in here. There has to be in order to cover my specific thoughts on the film. Before I get to that part, here’s the short, non-spoiler version:

It was a well done movie. There’s a lot of visual stuff that’s worth your dollars to see it on the big screen. I didn’t see it in 3D, but I bet that would actually help this movie. Go see it and support it, we want stuff that isn’t a sequel or a remake of TV shows from the 70s or 80s.

After this is the spoilery bits – you are warned.

I really did like the movie, but I went into the theater completely prepared to be disappointed. That might have helped my outlook by the end because it was better than I was afraid it was going to be when we got to the end. A number of my fears DID happen to come true and that made me more than a little sad.

There are a number of things that were different from the book. Yes, we know this and it happens to every film. The book ranged over worlds and games and took a really long time to cover certain ground. It wasn’t descriptive so much as pointed out pop culture from the past. There were going to have to be changes in order to make the movie work. The problem is changing or tweaking just the right thing and not losing the tone or message that made the book the success it is. There were three parts to that in my mind – the pop culture, the challenges and the characters. One at a time, in reverse order –

The characters. I know the story centers around Wade. The book has had some criticism about how his character plays out. The movie actually doesn’t do badly with him, and helps to get away from the stalker aspects of his character as he is shown in the book. The rest of the characters however have been ‘adjusted’ by Hollywierd. Wade gets taken to work for the sixers, not Art3mis. The movie takes her instead. Aech’s story is mostly background, but the part in the book where she’s playing as a white guy because she gets more respect didn’t need to be chopped out. Her avatar for the game should have still been a white guy. That bothers me. The movie hints at danger for the characters, but this is the movies – none of the main team actually dies. That’s not the case in the book. I don’t know if it was a ratings thing or if it was deemed to be bad for the story – I’m not sure. Whatever it was I think it weakened the movie when it didn’t need to. I loved that Simon Pegg was in there. I could have done without the changes to Og’s character, but it was less noticeable. His part was small but very good. The portrayal of Halliday was exceptionally well done. Much more than I had hoped for. That part of the characters was fantastic.

The challenges. I know there was some effort made to engage with people who don’t remember the 80s and don’t particularly care about any of the nostalgia related things in this story. I get it. You need to make the money back that you put into the product. WHY would the Dungeons and Dragons portion of the challenges have to be dumped? They only call outs – despite appearing to have the go ahead from WoTC (and I watched for that in the credits) – were a t-shirt, a couple of posters on a bedroom wall and the face on the back of the van. Yes, that face is from the original art in the module that is the challenge in the book. WHY? I fail to understand that. It can’t be some leftover garbage from the days of the satanic panic can it? Has the film maker in this case fallen back onto news from the 80s in the decision making process too? The Shining wasn’t even in the book! IF there was going to be a movie that would be referenced it should have been Ladyhawk. Cannon! IF the argument for removing the dungeons and dragons references is some attempt to connect with a modern (non-80s) audience The Shining sure isn’t the way. In fact, since Stranger Things hit there’s been a resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons. It would in fact make MORE sense to include it than not! That leads me into the last of the three portions.

The Pop culture. Fine, I’ll give you Iron Giant over Leopardon for a giant robot. Fine. We got Rush music in one trailer and then it wasn’t in the movie. Sure, there are scads of background things that you could pick out – but get them right. Atari 2600 plays a central role to all this AND THEY GOT THE DETAILS WRONG. The controllers on the one game console they show are for the Colecovision! IF you’re going to send people looking for Easter Eggs expect to be called out on that sort of thing. People are going to be pulling this apart for a long time. Again – a little bit of effort and it’s soooo much better. There were a lot of things that just dragged at my willingness to go on this ride and tried to pull me out of the story.

In the end, yes this is a good movie. It should be supported on the big screen so that we all continue to see many and varied offerings like it on the big screen. If you go in with low hopes, no nostalgia hooked into your brain nor any desire to see a particular portion of the book displayed ‘just so’ then you won’t be disappointed. I did like it, and I will own it at some point but maybe not until it falls into the discount bin or the clearance shelf with all the other nostalgic things that got put back in the closet.

The Secret Counted

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Well, it counted a little anyway.

This is another in the few remaining posts of my thoughts from when I was part of the Neilsen rating system. I’ve mentioned before about the company’s request to keep this a secret. This was one of those times when I didn’t want to, but it would have felt entirely self serving. It in fact feels entirely too self serving to “tag” the person I mention in this post. I did what I could, when nobody was watching.

April 4, 2017

Miraculously, when the end of our trial period came up in late December / early January the company we get our TV from extended our ‘bonus’ time for signing up out another year. I did not call them to complain. I did not call them at all – they simply did it.

I can’t say they know, but doesn’t that seem suspicious? When has a cable company ever given you anything for free without you demanding they make up for being shitty?

Suspect I say. Suspect.

It’s been longer between my entries here than before. I think it’s because we’re coming up on the two year mark for this and it has just… faded. I still know it counts, I still log in when I start up the TV but there’s no enthusiasm. There’s nothing on the program schedule that I really want to see. There’s very little I’ve been really interested in supporting. I can say the one exception to that is when Myke Cole started promoting a show that he was going to be on. THAT was exciting. I tuned in live and logged in to have my ‘vote’ count for as much of the season as I possibly could. Anything I couldn’t get to live because of my schedule I went back and looked at on demand via the television provider service (rather than an on-line service). I have no idea if I made a difference or not. This was another one of those times when I desperately wanted to say something – but had to keep it to myself. I tend not to watch, like or enjoy reality television, but the CBS show “Hunted” fell into the exception category. It was very interesting. If you can still dig it up on demand someplace it’s worth some of your time to check it out.

The End Is Nigh!

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I know there’s at least one person out there actually reading these posts and the stuff I’ve been pushing out here about my time as part of a ratings family has been uneven in its release. Honestly, it was uneven when I was writing it and more so when I was actually clicking the box. I think I’ve only got 2 left after this one. From football / election season, it’s interesting to look back.

November 11, 2016

I ran for cover since the last time I wrote something for this. It was election season. It was such an acidic, nasty and overpowering beast of a race that I just couldn’t watch. If I was watching something, it was an on demand show where I could hide from the commercials. I attempted to watch some football, but the commercials that bombarded me approximately every 3rd play were horrific. I turned away.

Along those lines there have been any number of news articles lately about how the ratings are way, way down for the NFL this year. The NFL regularly draws big numbers, but not so much this year. Guess what? Part of that is me. Most people say that, but this time it’s actually kind of true. I’ve tuned out. I couldn’t stand the political stuff grating on my last nerve after long days. The games themselves have become slow, angry affairs where grown men argue like children in the playground. Multi-millionaire players dance and flash finger symbols and whatever else after every play. EVERY PLAY. How about be a professional and just play the next play. Don’t dance. Don’t gesticulate or gyrate. Nobody gives a flaming bag of dog shit that you made your 53rd tackle of the season. Do you job and shut up. Nobody working double shifts wants to hear how a 6 year 48 million dollar contract wasn’t enough and you had to do right by your family. Shut UP.

The NFL also suffers from the old contracts it’s got with television stations. I say this because it was another reason I turned the games off. I was watching a team that I like and don’t get to see very often. They were winning. Rather than letting the game play out somebody decided to go to a game that was tied and likely to head to overtime. More competitive, more exciting. I was angry that I wouldn’t get to see my favorite team, but a more exciting game would be good. Fine. The teams were in the same conference and one of them was likely to end up in the playoffs against my favs so worth a look.

THEN THEY STOPPED PLAYING THAT BROADCAST JUST BEFORE THE POTENTIAL FINAL SCORE BECAUSE THEY HAD TO SHOW THE LOCAL TEAM THAT CAN’T WIN A DAMN THING AND COULDN’T BEAT A SOLID HIGH SCHOOL TEAM.

Needless to say, I was somewhat upset. I simply shut it off and walked away. My voice actually counted this time though. At least a little.

Along those lines, this is supposed to be a secret. Secret so that our family is not unduly influenced in any way about what we watch or how we interact with sponsors. Well, if everything about this is supposed to be a secret – why would Nielsen plaster their name all over the remote controls they left here? Like it’s a brand somebody would shop for. I ask this because it’s difficult enough trying to get the data put into the little box on the TV when we have guests without arousing suspicion about what we’re doing. I have some very clever friends. Nobody has to be clever when they are over for an evening, pick up the remote and say, “Huh, Nielsen. So you’re doing the TV ratings thing, right?”

So much for secret.

I’m supposed to let the company know when somebody knows, but I have become suspect of this whole ratings thing. It has become something that is so routine now as to be defaulted to where it was when we turned the TV on, no matter who is here or what’s going on. My ID has become the one that gets left on when my wife walks away and doesn’t want to change the music channel we listen to. I’ll have taken the kiddo out to the dojo and will come back 2 hours later – but my ID is still the only one logged in. I hit the button and it’s all logged, even though I wasn’t actually here. Suspect at best. Flat out skeptical most of the time.

We’re coming up on the end of our promotional (free) time for the TV channels that we have. It’s actually the only reason we have TV beyond what we can stream from the internet or Netflix. It will be interesting to see what happens once that changes.

Incredible(s)

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I went back and searched to see if I had mentioned anything about The Incredibles before and it turns out I hadn’t. I should have mentioned it because it is easily my favorite Pixar movie.

I relate to Mr. Incredible WAY too much. No, I’m not a super, but I totally see myself sitting in the cubicle at the insurance company (been there, done that). I see the exhausted parent parts and could just watch a well written movie about nothing more than parenting as a super.

I can’t say I’m usually excited by “Part II” of any franchise really. It didn’t feel like a great idea to make another movie with the family, even if Jack-Jack would be hilarious. I could be wrong. IF you haven’t had the chance, go and check out the trailer. It looks like this might be a sequel that will work.

The Winter Olympics

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That’s it. They’re done. No more Olympics. We’re done for another couple of years. Did you watch? Did you catch highlights? Did you just look for the medal count on a web site someplace?

I will admit that I watched an exceptionally small amount of Olympic coverage. There were a number of things going on in my life and television just wasn’t on the list of things to do – no matter what the athletes or teams were doing. I’ve been scanning headlines and one that jumped out at me was about NBC. The network is claiming that they’ve made money, but that viewership is down yet again.

At this point I’ve got to believe they’re down to like just the ski teams moms and that guy named Murray that really wants to talk to you about curling brooms the way they report it. I’m not buying it. They were quiet upset about viewership when I was clicking the ratings box back in 2016. Here’s another of my writings from my Nielsen time:

August 22, 2016

I keep thinking it’s been longer since I’ve written here last. It’s been a little less than a month. I couldn’t keep away from this one though. I hope the ‘permanent link’ works.

Did Millennials Ruin The Olympics?

The title about millennials wrecking the ratings? How about the broadcast being something I can’t be bothered with? It’s worse than the NFL when it comes to commercials and over-killing the ‘feel good’ story of whatever athlete was coming up next.

Look, I get it. The Olympics are supposed to be the pinnacle of athletic achievement. Once you wade through all the cheaters and poorly behaved morons there are some really wonderful stories out there. There were some amazing things accomplished this year. I read the news articles, watched the highlights and only tuned in a handful of times. I don’t care about Spain’s beach volleyball team. I’m sorry, I don’t. I’m not going to watch them play against Abiza or whatever country has a qualified team.

So – I took my ratings and watched something else. I’m at the top end of that rating category, but still in it. I just wasn’t moved to watch 900 hours of program. When I did take some time and sit in front of the mind sucking machine – I generally watched something that didn’t challenge me (and then I ended up falling asleep most times because 5 am gets here early). There was no way I was staying up until midnight all week to see the results of a 30 second competition that I could catch any important highlights of the next day.

I know there are likely advertisers and tv people out there that want to know *why* I wasn’t interested. I’m not sure I can put a finger on it exactly. I just wasn’t interested. I didn’t tune in. Ratings were down 20% compared to the last Olympics – and I suspect the next games will have even worse ratings… but I won’t be part of the ratings “officially” then as I’ll be past the end of the time I can be a Nielsen Family.

Not For Me

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The family and I went to see Black Panther tonight.

A movie that is part of the Marvel cinematic universe gives one high expectations. It brought a lot to the table in an attempt to meet those expectations.

My wife loved it. She wants to see it again and has told me that we will own the film.

BUT you might be asking, what did you think of it? You’ve said what it is, but not what you thought of it. True.

This movie met all those expectations. It was a gorgeous film. The costumes, the backgrounds, the action and the colors were all a treat for the eyes. It was a good story. All of the characters were believable people (with some leeway for the fact that this IS a comic book film of course). The emotions, the love, the ferocity shone through. No pandering, no excuses, just an excellent cinematic work.

I believe all of what I just wrote there, but I also believe something that might not sound like an endorsement when it truly is. This film was not for me. I thought it was great. I’m crazy happy that it’s killing the box office. The women in the film were stunning. There was so much to see that I’ll watch it again and again without doubt – but this film was not for me.

And that’s great. It’s fantastic. That’s exactly the point. There is so much stuff out there in movie land that IS for me and fits with all the things I’ve always seen in the movies that this film was long over due. There needs to be amazing movies out there for everyone. As they say in this movie, the world is getting smaller. Seeing and learning about something that isn’t you is going to be a vital tool moving forward. It matters that the characters never apologized for the times they didn’t just speak English so everyone could understand. Not having hair that works the way yours might – or not having hair at all is not a detriment to beauty.

It also matters that my daughter went to see this. She’s not viewing this with a jaded eye. This is the sweet spot for story telling for her. She’s at the exact age where films and big event things like that will stick with her into her adulthood. I remember to this day all the amazing films that came out when I was her age. All the characters that blasted onto the screen for me. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Rocky, Superman… seeing the connection with them? Yeah, they’re all “for me” being powerful white guys. I asked my daughter who her favorite characters from the film were. Who was the hero of the film? She said the general, or the king’s sister. She liked the warrior and the scientist. Not some person just waiting about to be rescued or randomly fall into love at first sight and get married, but people of action and determination. Strong, caring and intelligent people that do what they need to for their home and their family.

This movie was not for me – and that is what matters the most. Go see it. Support the diversity and the connection that something like this can represent.

Click away!

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I am actually really glad I don’t have any monitoring equipment hooked up to the computers any more. I suspect I’m still “lost” as far as tracking and being tracked goes, but that little thing seems to help.

July 31, 2016
I’ve picked out a show that I like and I’ve made an effort to see it “live” rather than recorded. I really enjoy Killjoys. It’s fast paced and has interesting characters. They’re working on building up a long term story arc. I’m interested in where it goes.
I’m genuinely hopeful this will have an effect on programming. I’m not sure how much my little contribution will help, but I’m hopeful. I can say that having the rating box connected to my TV has made me more cognizant of tracking shows and when they’re on. There aren’t many things on TV I like, so I really want the ones I like to survive. I’ve also specifically stayed away from things I think are terrible. Even if I’m interested I won’t go and watch them if I don’t want them to get any kind of bump on the ratings. I know the monitoring is working. I know this because we switched my daughter over to her own computer. When we did this we didn’t think to notify the Nielsen people. See, there’s also a little tracking thing that’s plugged into our computer so they can tell if we watch something on a network then go run to an advertiser site we just saw. Well, my daughter spends a fair amount of time on the computer – and when she wasn’t clicking the little computer check box and signing in all the time like she was before, they noticed. They called and asked what was up. Then they set up an appointment and came over to install the same little tracker thing on my daughter’s new system.
I’m thinking about it now and I’m not sure if I’m amazed or horrified at this technology. You’re not clicking away like you used to. We’re coming to your house to check on you. That sounds like 1984 (the book – not the year).
This is one of those incremental shifts. You don’t really notice or worry until one day you’re so far down the road that when you look back you’re not entirely certain how you’ve arrived at your current location. When our promotional TV subscription ends, I wonder if we’ll actually shut it off.

Cold Enough for Television

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It’s cold enough outside right now that staying in and doing NOTHING other than staying warm and watching TV sounds like a great idea. It’s been a while since my last installment of my “big secret” posts.

May 13, 2016

Friday the 13th! Lucky for me – I had some free time. I’ve got friends coming over again tonight and you know what? I’m totally not adding them in on the rating box thing. It’s a pain and then they ask questions about it. I have clever friends – I suspect they’ve got an idea of what’s going on but are polite enough to not ask.

I’m also trying to remember the terminology when you’re aware of the results being studied during scientific experiments… because that’s totally the case here. We’re all aware of the fact that people are looking at what we watch and don’t watch. It skews the data. Can’t be helped. We’re aware of the study, therefore the study is changed.

It’s also interesting that as we get further from the “new” feeling of the ratings thing that we seem to be reverting to our old habits and watching less and less television. We put music up (streaming via our smart TV) and then we just let it go. Sometimes even when I go out and leave it running my wife won’t actually be listening, but will just absentmindedly hit the ‘refresh’ button whenever she walks past. I’m not in the house and still contributing to the ratings. I wonder how much they account for that.

I also can’t wait to be able to publish this stuff. Keeping a secret this long is difficult.

Bright

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In a rare moment of timeliness I’ve actually had the opportunity to watch “Bright”, the new film from Netflix. It was released yesterday (December 22, 2017). I watched at home with a couple of close friends. I think that’s the most telling thing ~ this is a movie production with a number of well known Hollywood actors that I didn’t go to the theater to see when it opened, I went to the couch. Best seat I’ve had for a new movie in a while. That was a good thing because this movie felt like it was longer than the listed two hours it was supposed to be.

Spoilers ahead ~

I thought it was a very interesting choice by the storytellers to just dump us into a modern day society where elves and orcs simply live. There was no long text explanation about why or when this happened. There was no “this is when things changed”, it was simply the way things are. Interesting, but maybe not the best choice. I get it, you can’t do a LOTR thing where you’ve got 6 hours of movie… OH, wait. It’s Netflix, so yes that totally could have been done. Netflix routinely posts entire seasons of shows all at once. People then watch when and where they can. I hear some folks out there, “but this is a movie…” and I will counter that with the abomination that was a string of special effects and made up romances supposedly based on The Hobbit. Those three awful things are one film. As much as I dislike the result, the example stands. Netflix and the storytellers could have really expanded this world and given a deep, rich background that wouldn’t leave people looking at light up milk bath trees and thinking “what?”.

I will actually compare this to a role playing game / series of novels from the 90s – Shadowrun. Shadowrun did the world building behind the change. They brought magic and magical races into the world and then shook society up to make the changes in the world understandable. In Bright ‘Elves run the world’ really felt like a cosmetic application that allowed for comparison to how “gritty” the part of the story we’re dealing with really is. In Shadowrun Native Americans gain power based on how the world changed. It’s explained in terms relative to the story. It mattered and followed through. Bright felt like they wanted to paint over a things as they are today with a makeup brush and say “it’s allegory” without explaining what happened to bring us there. Telling me you’ve got 2,000 years of history isn’t the same as making me believe it in the story without being told. We never learn anything about the background that makes a “prophecy” believable in this context.

On to that portion of our program. OF course Will Smith was capable of picking up the wand with his bare hand and not blowing up. Saw that coming all the way. That’s why we’re riding with these guys. OF course they were going to win, there was very little doubt of that.

I will say I didn’t see the resurrection of the orc coming. I thought it would have been really interesting if they’d just let him die and deal with the results of that. OF course that would have meant a movie that went a very different direction and that’s never where we were headed. Now ANY future show or movie in this franchise will be required to deal with the idea that people who were dead can be made NOT dead by waving the magic stick around – even if the person waving the stick has only a “new recruit” level of training. The cost looked totally survivable, although that was tossed directly into the “obscure character death” category so we didn’t need to deal with what that meant in this world.

The other thing that bothered me was a standard thing with films. It’s so standard that I’ve actually taken to trying to avoid watching movie trailers altogether. I used to love to see what was coming out. Now all those trailers do is spoil all the best parts of any movie. The same was totally true for this film. I saw all the best parts in the previews. That was the most disappointing part of it all. Not only was the story predictable, but the best and funniest moments were all shown before I started watching. There were really funny parts that still landed in context, but I knew they were coming.

All of this might sound really negative, but I did actually enjoy watching the film. I don’t think I’m rushing back to watch it again but I will be interested to see how this all plays out ~ will there be more from this world? Go, check out some urban fantasy and see if you think this will be the next trendy thing in film or if it will just die and go away… and maybe be brought back by magic wand.