Author: TVWriter.Com

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

As interesting as this sounds, this can’t be a good thing (certainly not for the audience):

‘Suburgatory’ Character Jumps From the Show Into Ad Breaks — Is This the Future of the TV Business? (Ad Age/TVWeek.Com)

As part of a trend designed to get viewers of television programming to stick around for the commercials, ABC’s “Suburgatory” is letting a character from the show stray into commercials for Lowe’s, Advertising Agereports.

“TV networks are allowing characters from the shows to stick around for a while and hawk product,” the piece reports. “On Wednesday, Sheila Shay, a butt-insky neighbor known for the attention she dollops on her garden, home and the lives of those living around her in the sitcom’s fictional suburb of Chatswin, will hold forth on the advantages of buying goods at Lowe’s and using the home-improvement retail chain’s MyLowe’s tool to track purchases and organize their homes.” read article

Stop Passing Judgment and Let Us Write!

…At least, that’s what this article says, and we sure as hell agree:

Unsolicited Evaluation Is the Enemy of Creativity – by Dr. Peter Gray

Non-directive, Non-Judgmental Parenting Predicts Subsequent Creativity in Children Longitudinal research has shown that children raised by parents who are relatively non-directive and non-judgmental exhibit more creativity later on than do those raised by relatively directive, judgmental parents.  In a classic study, conducted in the 1970s and ‘80s, David Harrington, Jeanne Block, and Jack Block assessed the child-rearing beliefs and practices of the parents of 106 preschool children (3.5 to 4.5 years old), and then, when the children were in 6th grade and again in 9th grade, asked the children’s school teachers to rate them on a number of characteristics pertaining to creativity. [1] read article

Our Favorite 1-Eyed Sailor

…Lookin’ not at all like Robin Williams but a lot like the Goon:

Fascinating art by Lee Romao of Vancouver. He’s worked on everything from THE ELF KING TV series to the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ARMADA OF THE DAMNED video game, but this, which he did for himself, is the best we’ve seen of his work.

The TV Networks Are Trying to Understand Women

…But it isn’t any kind of gender bias that keeps them from getting it, it’s just that, well, let’s face it…if there’s one thing the networks have proved over the last 50 years it’s that they pretty much don’t get anything.

Network TV Attempts To Figure Out Modern Feminism, Might Just Be on to Something – by 

Television is a trend-driven business:Bridesmaids does well and suddenly, everyone’s looking for funny women, Modern Family is a hit, and suddenly, multicamera comedies are in and single-camera comedies are out. Most of the time, these trends are big, broad attempts to chase increasingly rare success stories. But this year, network TV, in its own halting way, is going after something a little more unusual: network TV is trying to figure out modern feminism.

The first attempt was Next Caller, a sitcom starring Dane Cook that NBC put into production to start airing in the midseason. On the surface, the show’s premise is disastrous: Cook was set to play Cam, the host of a shock-jock satellite radio show called Booty Calls, who’s paired with a feminist co-host, Stella (Collette Wolfe), promoted from a local NPR station to the big time because, as his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) puts it “Your show sucks and your ratings are garbage.” But apparently NBC lost faith in the concept, which many of my fellow critics hated in the first place—the network canceled Next Caller before it even assigned the sitcom a time slot for January. read article

A Wandering Mind is a Creative Mind…

…No matter what our elementary school teachers said:

Want to get the creative juices flowing? Let your mind wander – by Sian Beilock

There is no denying it, whether at work, school, or in everyday life, we often encounter situations where thinking outside the box is necessary. It’s also true that sparks of insight can be somewhat hard to pin down. You just never know when creative thought will arise. read article