Captivating Connections.

how did you become so addicted to games?

Anyone who has played me in Scramble knows it's all gameface when it's time to connect those tiles. However, I'm also proud to admit that I've never played Angry Birds. Fruit Ninja, though, is another story....

The real question is, how did we go from being gaming geeks hanging out at the arcade to all of us now keeping our heads down and we play away on our smartphones and tablets? How did we get so addicted?

The NYTimes has a great article looking at the history of addicting "stupid games," and how, "in the nearly 30 years since Tetris’s invention — and especially over the last five, with the rise of smartphones — Tetris and its offspring (Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Fruit Ninja, etc.) have colonized our pockets and our brains and shifted the entire economic model of the video-game industry. Today we are living, for better and worse, in a world of stupid games."

For something considered "stupid," there's a lot of interesting thoughts. For example, "game-studies scholars (there are such things) like to point out that games tend to reflect the societies in which they are created and played. Monopoly, for instance, makes perfect sense as a product of the 1930s — it allowed anyone, in the middle of the Depression, to play at being a tycoon. Risk, released in the 1950s, is a stunningly literal expression of cold-war realpolitik. Twister is the translation, onto a game board, of the mid-1960s sexual revolution. One critic called it 'sex in a box.'" Aggressive.

Wait! Does this mean our "stupid games" come from our culture of stupidity? Did reality TV win?!

This is my favorite idea from the article: "Stupid games, on the other hand, are rarely occasions in themselves. They are designed to push their way through the cracks of other occasions. We play them incidentally, ambivalently, compulsively, almost accidentally. They’re less an activity in our day than a blank space in our day; less a pursuit than a distraction from other pursuits. You glance down to check your calendar and suddenly it’s 40 minutes later and there’s only one level left before you jump to the next stage, so you might as well just launch another bird."

What do you think about "stupid games" and how most people love to call them stupid but wouldn't dare give them up?

does (screen) size matter?

According to Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB), when it comes to content, consumers aren't so picky about their screen size. This is quite different from research we have seen the past few years, which note that consumers have been increasing their comfort around different sized screens but still had their preferences.

CMB found that "58% of people who viewed programming on a tablet did so in their homes -- and of these, 63% did so even though the program they were watching was available on their televisions." Meanwhile, while "74% of consumers ages 16-29 had watched programming online, 39% of consumers 50-75 had also watched a television program or movie online. And their preferred method of watching such programming is either through a network Web site (27%) or Netflix (24%). Only 12% of consumers said they watched through their TV provider’s Web portal (such as Comcast’s Xfinity.com)."

What does this mean? Peter Fondulas, founder of Fondulas Strategic Research, which worked on the project with CMB, explains that “the big media companies have been comforted in this notion that the biggest available screen is always going to win in any situation. That may have been true a while ago, but people have become more open to devices and may even prefer [smaller screens] in some situations.”

What do you think?

is Xbox Live really a challenge to the cable box?

According to the NYTimes, "the old-fashioned cable television set-top box — long the hub of living-room entertainment for most people — is about to become less relevant." The article makes the arguement that, thanks to Microsoft's "face-lift to its Xbox Live online entertainment service that will allow subscribers to watch a wide array of mainstream television programming from the Xbox 360 console.

In addition, rather than fumbling with traditional remote controls and the primitive program guides of cable boxes, Xbox Live users will be able to search for shows using voice commands and hand gestures, if they also have the popular Kinect peripheral for the Xbox."

But the reality is, you still need your cable box (just maybe not as much). 

"People will still need to pay the cable providers to get channels through the Xbox. They will also have to pay the roughly $60 a year Microsoft typically charges for a premier membership to Xbox Live. And the Xbox won’t be a true substitute for everything viewers can get through their cable boxes because content rights will have to be negotiated for some shows before they can be watched through the console.”

What do you think? Are you sold?

youtube & disney make magic.

Disney & YouTube are coming together for an interesting partnership:

"The deal, set to be announced on Monday, is small on its surface: Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, a division of Google, will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series; those shorts will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. The channel will also include amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube daily.

But the alliance is striking because of what it tacitly acknowledges about each company’s weaknesses.

Disney, currently working on yet another overhaul of its Web site, is conceding that its own brand is not a powerful enough draw among children looking for video online; YouTube is viewed as being cooler.

So in a reversal of a go-it-alone Web strategy, Disney will go fishing for youngsters on YouTube in addition to making YouTube a prominent part of its own site — something that the company hopes will coax children to stay longer."

LGBT-inclusive shows (finally) mainstreaming.

It's great to see progress being made.

"Audiences and advertisers alike are flocking to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT)-inclusive programs. Representing 24 percent of broadcast primetime scripted and reality shows last season, these series garnered 28 percent of broadcast primetime TV viewing and 22 percent of ad dollars, according to Nielsen data. According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the presence of regularly-appearing LGBT characters accounted for 3.9 percent of all scripted series regular characters during the 2010-2011 season, reaching a record high."

What are the biggest winners? Scripted shows.

"Teen and Millennial viewers in particular dedicated over a third of their primetime scripted TV viewing to series depicting at least one regular or recurring LGBT character. Females 50 and older were attracted to realities featuring LGBT cast-members, hosts, judges and/or competitors, dedicating a significant share of their reality TV time to these programs. Overall, one in four scripted series and one in five reality shows were LGBT-inclusive."

 

TV streaming on the ups.

In a not so shocking finding, research from Horowitz Associates has found that "over half of broadband Internet users --54% -- watch TV content streamed on the Internet or on an alternative TV platform on a weekly basis."

Here's where it really isn't very shocking:

"The largest group is -- no surprise here -- 18- to-34-year-olds. Seventy-four percent are doing this activity weekly, amounting to 10% of their overall TV viewing. Young viewers also spend more time with traditional TV, at 167.7 hours a month, than the average viewers -- some 18-plus hours."

when life get you down, comedy can get your spirits up.

A great article in the NY Times this AM looking at how comedies are having a comeback moment mirrors the exact conversation my friend Matt and I had on our early AM run this morning...

Let's compare and contrast:

2008: "Only two comedies ranked among the top 10 shows at this point in a new television season. Two years earlier, the total was zero."

2011: "So far this season, sitcoms occupy seven of the top 10 spots among entertainment programs (not counting football) in the category of most financial importance to network executives — viewers ages 18 to 49."

While drama (Law & Order, etc.) has dominated TV, at a time when the economy is depressing people and people's attention spans are shrinking, comedies are a great way to lose yourself and turn your brain off for a bit. It's also nice to just be entertained, vs. the shock of reality TV.

Chuck Lorre sums it up pretty well:  “Comedy thrives during economic downturns. You know, if you’ve had a bad day, laughter is a better remedy than watching a coroner pick shrapnel out of some poor guy’s private parts.”

Obviously it's also an advertising moneymaker, given the usual comedy audience (young people).

What do you guys think? What are you favorite new comedies this fall? So far I'm digging, or at least giving a chance to, New Girl, 2 Broken Girls, Up All Night, and Whitney (I mean, come on. I have to with a title like that, right?).

 

reality TV programming still kills it (and kills me).

Say what you want about. Cop to whatever shows of it you do or don't watch. One thing is for sure: Reality TV programming is still dominating TV.

"A report from The Nielsen Company says in the 2010-2011 season, sports programming commanded 20% of the 187 million U.S. viewers ages 2 years and older. This is up from 19.4% the year before, and 9.4% and 8.1% in the two preceding years.

Reality television still commands the biggest share of U.S. TV viewing -- now at 56.4% for the 2010-2011 season. This is up from 47.9% the year before. The high spot for reality came in the 2007-2008 season, where it had a 77.3% share of all U.S. TV viewing. The year before it had a 68.3% share."

what else are you doing when you're watching TV?

If you're like the one-third of U.S. TV viewers who multitask while watching TV (live or time-shifted programming), plenty!

According to a Harris Interactive poll with Adweek, "surfing the Internet is the biggest activity -- 56% of all multitasking. But other activities earn high scores as well -- reading a book, magazine, or newspaper (44%), social networking (40%) and mobile phone texting (37%)...[also] the survey says about one-third shop online while watching TV (29%). A smaller number of TV multitaskers -- 7% -- read a book on an electronic device."

those who stream a lot of video may be watching less TV.

According to Nielsen, "streaming of Internet video may come at the expense of some traditional TV viewing, especially among young TV/video users."

Their latest report, "State of the Media: Cross Platform Report," claims that "the new trend among TV and Internet homes shows the lightest traditional television users streaming significantly more Internet video via their computers, and the heaviest streamers under-indexing for traditional TV viewership. This behavior is led by those ages 18-34."

This is big, especially since "the typical research view had been that the heaviest TV/media consumers are big users across all services and platforms. Previous research has shown, for example, that TV viewing and usage did not suffer because of new platforms like the Internet."