Hulu

I finally got on Hulu, suckers! I'm so excited. It has a lot more shows than Joost or VeohTV and a better picture. Good luck to you all who are waiting for the email.

Wikipedia: Hulu

My So-Called Quarterlife Crisis

My parents used to watch the show 'My So-Called Life.' They wouldn't let me watch it because I was too young. My parents have always picked the most random shows as 'their' shows. From what I can remember, they have been: ER (until after George Clooney left, my mom had a crush), Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, and 24. Of course, 'My So-Called Life' being outside the boundaries of what they would let me watch, it has always held an appeal for me.

Well, now they have it on ABC.com (here). The first two episodes, anyways. It is a good show. The writing is fantastic, and Claire Danes rocks my face. They talk about amazing things. I wish I could have been friends with her in high school or be a youth leader and work with her now. She's brilliant.

Looking around Slate.com today, a video started playing that talked about the new online-only mini-drama called 'Quarterlife Crisis'. Apparently it's from the creators of 'My So-Called Life.' The quarterlife crisis is an interesting idea in of itself. People freaking out at age 25 (or younger, I guess, it's right after you stop school, so 22? or 18?) about all the choices ahead and how they are going to get a house that looks like their parents'. My favorite book on choice in today's global society is The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz which talks about how as humans we can't deal with infinite choice. We need boundaries on our possibilities. It's great, skim it.

But don't look up the webisodal 'Quarterlife Crisis.' It looks like it sucks. But do look up this Current video on the crisis, it's interesting: 'The Quarterlife Crisis'

Current TV

My brother, who teaches Media Literacy at a high school in Chicago, always has his finger on the pulse of the new media technology scene. Yesterday he showed me and my Dad Current TV, which is kind of like a TV on the internet made up of better-produced YouTube-style programs. Looking at it briefly, it looks like the future of TV news. Each story is presented on the front page and you click on it and watch a 3-18 minute video on it.

The reason Steve's interested in it is so that he can give his students the assignment to make a news story for themselves and submit it to Current. It's awesome. They post a bunch of topics that they want covered (see them here) and you can choose which one you want to shoot and submit it. They also pay you. I think this is perfect for my friend Dan, who's in film school in LA, but he always views my ideas with skepticism.

This type of news journalism is the new frontier, I think. Some Journalism Grad Students gave a presentation on this in my Social Change and Trends class. They talked about a thing Minnesota Public Radio (NPR) is doing called Public Insight Journalism. Instead of interviewing "experts in their field" for articles, Minnesota Public Radio interviews actual normal people who deal with the issues on a daily basis. It's all very postmodern.

Oh, and did I mention that Current TV is the brainchild of Al Gore and Google? Figures. Here's the wikipedia article on it.

Hey and here's another online TV service...

Pioneer's Sync TV (read the article here)

you have to pay $2 per channel. boo.

TV on the Internet

Well, as I mentioned before, my friends and my favorite illegal TV/Movie website got shut down (TV Links) and so I have been shopping for a new one since. Here are a couple promising (and legal!) candidates:

Veoh - A little clunky. It's mostly a flashy guide to all videos currently on the internet through YouTube, Google Video, etc.

Joost - my favorite so far. Joost has bought rights to some TV shows, especially old ones like 'Charlie's Angels' but I haven't quite figured out the system yet.

Hulu - very flashy and secretive. They're only in the beta stage right now and won't even let me get on. They bought more rights to TV shows (actually the ones you want) like the Office and Scrubs. Cool. But according to the NYtimes article on it (here) there will be tons of advertisements. Boo. But, hey, it's the future.
And, reason #2 that Hulu is the future? This vision: "Hulu has a unique agenda: to marry the largest collection of professionally-produced video to the widest audience possible. “We don’t have to worry about showing TV schedules or letting fans get to know the actors,” he said. “All we have to worry about is the video.”
In the age of TiVo, this is all that a TV provider can do.