The first problem is they used a real company name. This just smacks of sleazy promotion. If you really wanted to make a high tech comedy you would create a fictitious company  that could morph into anything. By sticking yourself with one specific company, you’re bound by those company aspects.

There is already one successful geek comedy, the Big Bang Theory and I doubt you’re going to outdo that one. Geeks aren’t really all that funny and working in Silicon Valley isn’t a laugh riot, although they have moved the show to L.A for just that reason I suspect. Oh, geeks out on the town in Hollywood.  And the hilarity ensues.

You can smell the stench all over this one. Groupon isn’t even that popular of a company. It would have made more sense to model the show after Facebook and have a quirky Mark Zuckerburg-like CEO.

The only thing i’m surprised about is that it took this long. Unfortunately, they’re going to have to bend reality pretty hard on this one as anyone who has lived in the valley knows. It’s no Jersey Shore. People take their dogs to work, stare at computer screens all day and talk geek. The show would have been much better if done during the Internet boom days when people got millions of dollars for an idea scribbled on a napkin, literally. Paper millionaires were being minted daily, and then, just as quickly, poof, it was all gone. Now that was drama.

We moved yet again. We’re still here in the greater Portland area but a little more south. Along with the general pain of moving is getting all your services transfered to the new house. For Internet, I was able to negotiate a killer deal with Frontier who runs FIOS fiber in this neighborhood. The house was not connected with fiber, so Frontier installed a new line to the house and hooked us up. So far, so good. Unfortunately Frontier decided to price itself right out of the TV market, so we tried for DirectTV. Fortunately and unfortunately, we are surrounded by lots of tall trees and there was no good line to the sky where DirectTV need to see. We could have tried Dish Network as their satellites are in a different part of the sky, but I have a long running beef with Dish Network and I wasn’t willing to give them my business again. So, reluctantly, we went back to Comcast. Reluctantly because Comcast was ridiculously expensive. No satellite available at the old house either. Damn Portland and all it’s trees

After once missed appointment which I will admit was my fault a Comcast guy came out and we realized there was no cable from the street to the house. These owners we bought from were decidedly low tech indeed. So, the friendly Comcast installer arranged for a line to be installed underground. Same drill as Frontier. Here’s where it starts to get weird. He drove off without checking back with me. Never came back to say everything was setup for the line install. I assumed everything was in order, but I was left a little confused and in doubt. I didn’t even know what day or time to expect the line install.

The next day came and I called to ask about the line install. The person on the phone said it was going to be that day between 6-8pm. “Really?” I asked. That seemed very strange to me as it would be dark by then. “Oh, yes”, I was assured. “We work whenever we need to.” Sure enough nobody came that night and no phone call or communication of any kind about the status. I called the next day, which was today and was told the install would be today and it was an open ended time, so it could be anytime. The lady I talked to said she would put in a notice to have someone call me with a better ETA or at least an update on status. I called back after a few hours and was told it could take up to 4 hours for a call back. Four hours? Really? That seemed odd too. It was getting on to late afternoon and I was getting that sinking feeling so I called yet again. This time the answering system told me I couldn’t be connected to anyone and I should check the website. By early evening, obviously nobody is coming and I’m starting to get really frustrated. I do get through to someone this time and she tells me there’s nobody coming because they have not gotten approval from the city to dig and that could take up to 10 days. Ten……days…..

It took absolutely everything I had not to go ballistic. Calmly, I asked why I was repeatedly told the install would happen, first on Friday, than on Saturday. She finally gave my an answer that kind of made sense but in a very stupid way. Why didn’t the other reps know what she knew looking at the same data? The Comcast installer I had originally talked to mentioned they might drop a temporary line on top of the ground before they dug one underground if needed. So, I asked about that and was told that would not be a viable option as the first available date for that would be four days away and by that time they would be very close to having the dig permit. “Yes”, I said, “But you’ve really messed up here with repeated missinformation and when you screw up a situation, I would think you do something extra for the customer.” No, I was told, that was not going to happen and they would not, as I suggested, get someone to my house first thing Monday morning to run a line above ground.

A few years ago, former Comcast employee Frank Eliason did something remarkable. He created the @ComcastCares Twitter account and started handeling frustrated customer requests online. People were blown away. It was a pioneering act of customer service. Case studies were written and presentations at social media conferences given. Frank single handedly did more for Comcast’s reputation and brand than anything Comcast ever did for itself. But here’s what I have learned from my experience. Comcast doesn’t care, they never cared. Frank Eliason and the small team he built cared. Comcast was and is a shitty company and Frank covered for them remarkably well. Now Frank is gone and even though some of his team remain, the scars are showing. Comcast screwed up my situation, caused me lots of time and grief and ultimately didn’t give a crap about it. They never so much as apologized for it nor made any attempts to make things better. It’s not even like I was a new customer. I had been a customer for nearly two years and was trying to transfer my service.

Now I am going back to Dish Network. That beef I had with them seems like nothing compared with Comcast. Interestingly that beef with Dish also had to do with deference to a long standing customer. I don’t care where they have to stick the dish to get a signal. I may have to put up with some inconvenience when it comes to that, but at this point, I’ll deal with it.

Why is it so hard for companies to treat customers well? They all talk the talk in their board rooms and managers meetings, but where the rubber hits the road, it doesn’t happen. I’m calling bullshit on every company that says they care about the customer, that the customer is everything. 80% of the time, in my experience, it’s not true when it comes to the daily reality. I can count on one hand the number of companies that have truly treated me exceptionally. At the end of the day, the employee works for the company and their job is to protect the company, not advocate for me. And there it is.

Once you have sold plenty of HDTV’s, what’s next? How do you get consumers to keep upgrading their televisions? I understand the motivation but 3D is completely the wrong answer. It’s a gimmick, and not a very good one either. The same thing is happening with movies in theaters. Way too many 3D movies that have no reason to be 3D and they don’t even look better. Read Roger Ebert’s great article on why 3D movies suck.

We may have a solution, however. What will propel the televisions in 2012 and beyond will not be the evolution is so-called “smart” tv’s. These are televisions with Wi-Fi and Internet applications built in. We have been waiting for this convergence for a long time and it’s looking like 2012 is the year it will happen. Apple is driving this change with their still rumored TV product. Even before the rumors are confirmed, other manufacturers are racing to get their own smart tv’s out. I will write more on smart tv’s later but for now let’s hope the smart tv technology will spell the end of the great 3D TV scam.

It’s hard to describe how wrong the show is. The kinds of pressure they put the kids under, the complete obsession with “winning”. I literally make me upset just to talk about it. I suggest you watch an episode yourself to fully understand. I can’t stand watching the kids on this show, no matter how much they seem to enjoy it at times. I’m sure an elephant at a circus thinks it’s got it good at times, but we all know he would be just as well and probably better free on the safari.

The general objectivity of beauty at such an early age, the mothers who often act horribly and yell at the kids. The pounds and pounds of makeup, the mouth inserts to change the jawline. This show literally makes me want to cry. I cannot watch it. There is nothing cute or funny about it. These are real kids who deserve to just be kids and not parade around and win crowns to make their moms feel better about themselves.

“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”

The simplest user interface you could imagine. Some people are theorizing about a gester interface like the Kinnect on XBox, but this is wrong. The interface revelation is Siri. What could be easier than talking and simply telling your tv what you want. “Change channel to ESPN”, “Record this program”. “When is the next episode of The Walking Dead on?” Sounds like giving commands to an iPhone. Build your television with iOS and you have it all. iCloud/iTunes integration, Siri, apps, everything.

Trust me, Apple will have a television in 2012 and it will be built on iOS and you will talk to it via Siri, and you will die to have one.

Now Almost Famous is coming out in blu-ray and fortunately its the full directors cut version which is much better than the original theatre version. There are a number of little extra scenes and other scenes that are longer than they were in the regular theatre version and adding all that back really ads to the movie. If you haven’t seen the directors cut, you haven’t really seen the movie yet. Watch it again.

Mad Men was a breakthrough when it came out. A beautiful period piece set in the world of Advertising in the 50′s and 60′s. The writing is superior and the attention to detail in the show is remarkable. What is sad is once something becomes very popular, people in TV rush to copy it. So it’s no surprise to see these two new shows. Frankly I wonder what took them so long. There is such a void of creativity in television, truly great shows only come around once and awhile and most of what is out there are rip offs. CSI became popular and what did they do, replicate it several times. Same for Law and Order.

I guess it’s been this way for quite awhile though. Television goes through phases. For one period, everything is a cop drama, than a hospital one. Lately, the traditional cop drama has morphed into more of a psychic cop drama like Medium.

I predict both The Playboy Club and Pan Am will be failures. People do see through this pretty well and neither bring anything original or interesting to the party. None of the actual creativity comes from the major networks anyway. Virtually everything that is decent now comes from networks like AMC, FX, and HBO.

For the record, here are the only shows I watch these days that I think are worth watching.

Breaking Bad – I came late to this show but I’m hooked now

The Walking Dead – I have read the comic and it’s awesome. I was very worried they would mess it up, but so far the show is great.

Sons of Anarchy – How can you not love crusty Ron Perman as the head of a rough and tumble motorcycle gang?

The Daily Show – When the actual news is so insane you want to tear your hair out, this is the only thing that may keep you from completely loosing it.

I’m sure there are some shows I have missed but with three kids, I only have time for so much. Add your favorites in the comments below.

I don’t know what happened to Netflix but they have lost their ever loving minds in the past few weeks. First, without warning, they drop the bomb that they are going to effectively more than double the price for the same service we have always been enjoying. I understand price increases, sure, I also understand highway robbery. Customers universally flipped out and today an email direct from the CEO says he is sorry the communication didn’t go so well. He is not sorry about anything else and he’d do it all again, but they did not communicate well enough. The classic non-apology apology.

Let’s break it down because it’s really quite simple.

Netflix wants to and needs to move to a streaming only service, no more DVD’s. You don’t have to convince me of this and I am 100% behind this move. There is nothing more I would love more than to have a Netflix streaming only service. Mailing DVD’s back and forth in the mail is archaic and slow. BUT there is one big, big problem with all this. The selection of movies available on Netflix streaming is horrible. It doesn’t even come close to what is available on DVD. Now why would I move over to your streaming service for the same money for a massively reduced amount of content? That just doesn’t make sense. There is a fantastic Mashable article that explains this as well as anything I have read. My favorite line from the article “…you’re about to get whipped by the Long Tail. Good luck with that.” If you don’t know, you need to read the book The Long Tail immediately. It is still one of the best primers on the economics of the Internet.

It has actually been two days since I started writing this post and I will give you the update, I officially did cancel my Netflix account just a moment ago. One of the only effective things I can do is vote with my feet and that’s what I have done.

I will be using Amazon.com and iTunes for my replacement. Amazon remarkably has a fantastic library of movies and content available, far, far greater than Netflix streaming. The only difference is you must pay for each item rather than the subscription model. You about break even if you only watch about two movies per month. Heck, even if you watch three, it’s only a little more and you do have the big library available. I say it’s well worth it. Netflix will have to get to at least 75% of their DVD library available on streaming before I will think about coming back to them. By then, someone else may have come up with an alternative subscription model with the content to match. Netflix has made themselves so vulnerable I think they are about to have their lunch eaten.

This news, that Heroes is the most pirated television show, is very disappointing to me for many reasons. It violates my personal primary rule for downloading. I will only download content if I cannot legitimately find it online for a fair price. I am happy to pay for content and/or watch ads and I do so all the time via iTunes and Hulu.com. If you do not make your content available to me online I feel like I am forced to get it another way. I guess I held out hope that many people felt this way. But Heroes is available on Hulu as well as NBC.com. In fact, I would argue it’s a hell of a lot easier to watch shows this way than try to download them via BitTorrent.

Those of us that argue for a digital future need to understand and respect that some kind of business model must follow. Likely, it will not be the same model that exists today, but producing television costs money and many people need to be compensated. Either the audience needs to pay for the content outright or watch some kind of advertising. I don’t know nor care at this point what model wins out but what I do know is that if shows are pirated and people are not compensated, the digital future will not happen. When networks make shows available online as NBC, ABC and others have done we need to reward that behavior as much as possible. If we can work with the entertainment industry and stop spitting in their faces, together we can carve out a future where everyone wins.