Bruce's Blog

Archiving - now that’s cocktail-party conversation!  But something may be on the horizon that could make it sexy.

I’ve spent the last week digesting everything I saw at this year’s NAB show, from products great, like full-tilt video production trailers, to small, like AVCHD camcorders that record to SD flash memory.  But one of the truly remarkable products I saw isn’t even specifically a video product – it’s a utility lifesaver. 

If you have HBO, you should be watching the amazing miniseries “John Adams.” It’s wonderful to see important American history re-created in such a dynamic manner.  And, as with so much in life, what you see is only about 10% of the story.

Last year at NAB there were two products that I felt could really change the biz - but sadly, neither actually came out last year.  Apparently, that’s changed.

First thing to know about NAB:  Las Vegas is probably one of the last cities in the world where you can routinely expect to pay exorbitant money for Internet service in your hotel room.  However, at McCarran Airport, wifi is free.  That probably explains why I’m posting this now, as I wait to board my flight home.

Swearing:  It’s something we all do.  OK, not all of us, but a hell of a lot of us (oops, I apologize if the “hell” in the last sentence offends.  I’ll try to do better, dammit.)

Word today from Broadcasting & Cable magazine that Microtune, a manufacturer of digital TV tuner components, has been sampling the competitor’s wares and finding them lacking.

It was only about ten years ago when a stunning announcement came from the west end of the campus of the University of Wisconsin:  In the wake of the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, UW scientists had successfully created a cloned cow egg.  Well, it was a no-brainer that we at Wisconsin Public Television would go all the way across campus to cover this momentous event.  And we weren’t alone.

It’s funny how after a vacation, all kinds of things seem to happen at once.  I was taking a short week of skiing with my family in the north end of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan (where they still have great snow, BTW) and was trapped in a condo at night...with only dialup Net access.  What is this, Siberia?  In any event, I let a lot of email pile up.  This morning, as we were driving home, I read a message from Jim Feeley asking,

Have you seen THIS?

I’m not a very sentimental guy, usually.  The trajectory of people’s lives is fairly common - we get born, we live, we pass away.  It’s what we fill the middle part up with that matters.

Greetings from sunny Florida.  The family has run away from the 90+” of snow in Madison for a mini-family reunion this weekend.  Of course, it can’t be a family reunion without some kind of weapon of mass distraction…

So I’m sitting around the house Sunday night after a nice day of skiing with the family, and the Oscars are on.  I’m kinda listening with one ear, peek in once in a while, but after about twenty minutes I just turned the set off.  Didn’t miss it much, either, and for me that’s odd, because I used to go to Oscar parties pretty regularly with my movie-cognoscenti friends.  For some reason, this time I just couldn’t find it in me to care.  Turns out I wasn’t alone.

It’s really easy to fall into the mindset that “TV production is TV production.” Hey, I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and I make that mistake all the time.  But it really couldn’t be farther from the truth.

It is a ritual almost as clockwork as Jimmy The Groundhog or George W. Bush trying to de-fund PBS - questions as to whether PBS itself is still necessary.  The latest one comes in this article from this week’s Sunday New York Times. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have worked for the last 20 years at a statewide PBS network in the Midwest, but believe me, I’m no blind flag-waver.  PBS - and our organization - each does things I find silly at best, and just plain dumb at worst.  But let’s try to take a quick peek at both sides, shall we?

I went to CES 2008 last month in part to get a sense of what was happening in the BluRay-vs-HD-DVD war.  Of course, I wasn’t even in Vegas by the time Warner Brothers announced that they were joining the BluRay camp, leaving only two out of seven studios - Paramount and Universal - exclusively HD-DVD. Well, it might be time for those two to make other plans.