Month: July 2017

Everybody Remembers Floyd the Barber…and if You Don’t, You Should!

by Doug Snauffer

In October 3, 1960, TV viewers were introduced to the fictional small-town of Mayberry, North Carolina—home to an oddball assortment of lovable characters on a new CBS comedy, The Andy Griffith Show.  The pleasant hamlet quickly became as definitive a depiction of rural America as Norman Rockwell’s classic Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations.

There were few lawbreakers in Mayberry.  In one episode, the town was even recognized as the most crime-free community in the country.  Andy never even carried a gun, and Barney kept his one and only bullet in his shirt pocket. read article

Web Series: ‘Stupid Idiots’

So how damning is it if I say that the two leads in this very funny web series aren’t merely perfect recreations of people I know but in true fact are perfect recreations of, well, of me, dammit? Me!

Writer-director-editor Stephanie Koenig, you know me, don’t you? You’re the one who’s been following me around with that long, long lens and the shotgun mic. You’re making me a star, girl! I owe you bigtime and will get around to rewarding you properly right after you settle the lawsuit I’m filing against you for $50 million.

Please consider the official looking bunch of papers the next stranger who comes to your door and says, “Stephanie Koenig?” hands you just my opening salvo of “Thanks!” read article

Pay-TV Subscriptions are Falling, Falling, Falling

To misquote a legend: Is this the end, my friend?

Pay-TV Subs to Drop by 10 Million Viewers by 2021
by Daniel Frankel

S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Kagan is the latest research company to come out with bearish subscriber-growth projections for the traditional pay TV industry, predicting that U.S. cable, satellite and IPTV operators will lose another 10.8 million customers by 2021.

The total U.S. pay TV subscriber base will stand at only 82.3 million at that time, off about 20% from its peak. read article

John Ostrander: Holding Out For A Hero

by John Ostrander

Bill Maher, noted iconoclastic and increasingly misanthropic host of Real Time on HBO, announced about ten days ago that he was taking July off because, after six months of President Trump, he really needed it. I sympathize. Not before he took what I regard as some ill-informed and gratuitous swipes at comics, comic book movies, sci-fi/fantasy books, movies and TV and anything else I assume that he considers intellectually lowbrow.

Among his gripes that the stupid summer movies were increasingly infiltrating into fall, the time for more serious, adult movies. His biggest gripe is that they make us, the unwashed public, stupider because it makes us want a savior, someone who will descend from on high and rescue us instead of getting off our duffs and doing what needs to be done (i.e. deal with Trump) ourselves.

Except they’re not. read article

Cartoon: ‘Meet a Real Writer’

How “normal” people live their lives:

How writers live theirs: read article