Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, co-authors of the Game Change book, gave a 55-minute interview to C-SPAN that aired on Wednesday. The video is not embeddable, so you’ll have to go there. The authors have talked about the book on C-SPAN before, but with the HBO movie premiering in a week, it’s very much back in the news.
If you are mostly interested in the juicy Palin bits, as the screen adapters were, skip to 33:00 or so. The whole interview is good, though, and is supplemented by several clips from the 2008 campaign. I enjoyed the book, and think it made sense for HBO to focus on just one of the storylines from it. If it had been a mini series, that would have been a different matter, but for a two-hour movie, some honing in seems appropriate. Of course Palin fans are outraged that HBO had the nerve to adapt only a part of the book. Apparently that particular creative choice should not be allowed.
Check out Halperin’s new Twitter avatar based on a 2010 Archie comiccover.
The media blitz is upon us
Get ready for a packed week of promotion running up to the March 20 debut. Heilemann was on Bill Maher’s panel last night. Howard Kurtz will do a panel about the movie on Sunday.
Update:
Here a take on the movie from David Frum, every liberal’s favorite conservative. He will be on Kurtz’s Reliable Sources program on CNN too, not sure if it will be to talk about Game Change or Limbaugh. He’d be a likely candidate for either or both segments. I shouldn’t link to this dumb Reliable Sources show page. CNN doesn’t have a page of RS video that I can find on its otherwise decent news site.
New York Times article by Brian Stelter, who addresses HBO’s choice to focus only the Palin story
Blog post by Time magazine TV watcher, James Poniewozik. He thinks Game Change is a bad movie but counters Palin’s assertion that it is based on a false narrative by saying he “doubt[s] that every reporter who’s covered the McCain-Palin campaign has falsified things.”
HBO and the net
How about post-premiere scraps for the internet crowd, HBO? Have you thought about trying something special online—like organizing a watch and chat event? (After the Saturday night debut, please; first-time viewers will want to give it their full attention.) Or how about allowing embeds of selected longer scenes, so bloggers can offer teasers as entertainment, not just your promotional trailers?
HBO can tend to the clumsy and greedy in its social media tactics. A few months ago I tried the “Tweet this” feature from the excellent HBO Go iPad app, and was horrified and embarrassed to see that I’d tweeted not a pointer to the program I was watching but a pitch to my followers to download the app. I’m sure I was expecting to send a friendly GetGlue sort of message like “I’m watching [so and so].” But that’s how brands learn what not to do in social, because they will get loud and instant feedback about missteps. Then there’s that all-Flash site of theirs. And pointers from iOS devices take you to the mobile home page—not to the specific page you were trying to read.
But I adore HBO, generally, as TV, honestly I do. It brought me The Wire (David Simon gave it to me), and that’s impacted my life as much as my passion for Jane Austen and George Eliot books, which is considerable.
You have to wonder if HBO is planning for the inevitable pirating of the movie by people who don’t subscribe but really want to see this movie. I hope they’ll go easy on the thieves, realizing they will be mostly extremely interested viewers and prospective subscribers, not resellers. We can’t all afford premium channels, though a lot of us 99ers scrimp in other ways to compensate for the luxury. Scheduling a free access period while the movie is in heavy rotation would serve the channel’s image best in the long run—far better than meting out punishment, or even considering black avenger countermeasures.
As a huge fan of several HBO original series, which are eminently rewatchable, I like having access to the complete archives of favorite shows. Comcast’s OnDemand chooses for me—only letting me at selected episodes of selected series, while HBO Go allows me to dip into whichever season of The Wire I might be in the mood for.
I’ve so fully embraced the whole streaming thing that I rarely watch DVDs anymore, and recently switched to the streaming-only plan on Netflix. I’ll choose to watch something that can be seen instantly and without the physical encumbrance of a DVD. In fact, I’ve developed an active avoidance of DVDs. I can’t quite account for this odd behavior when it means I miss watching things I know I would like, but DVDs have become almost distasteful to me.
There’s one thing I miss: listening to audio commentary tracks, and the studios will have to do something about that. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to provide a commentary version of selected online videos, and while they’re at it, I’ll take an MP3 of the audio for my commute, please. (I might even pay, a little.) With well-loved movies and shows, I already know what’s on the screen. I can see it in my head. And so often the commentary doesn’t necessarily map to the action anyway.
iTunes helped kill innovation in podcasting
In the early days of podcasting we saw some experimentation with amateur commentaries to videos, and I think Battlestar Gallactica even produced an official audio commentary podcast. But podcasting has settled into a rut just generally. There hasn’t been a lot of innovation in recent years. I blame iTunes’ dominance as a podcatcher, which meant iTunes became podcasting’s Billboard top 100 ranking and a main discovery method, which led to elevating the MSM podcasts, and possibly caused amateur efforts to ape old media style and production conventions.
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Also, there are a ton of podcasts about TV shows. They could mix it up a little, break from their predictable formats and offer commentary tracks, maybe just on occasion, like for season finales.
Of course I like the new PBS iPad app. I like all of that socialist media stuff. My car radio dial doesn’t know there is a station other than WBEZ until my younger kid comes home from school and compulsively hits the scan button to drink in the nicheyness of the Chicago music radio market compared to the less specific range of options in his college town.
But about the app. The rage on the right to defund public media suggests that PBS/NPR fans are a sub-culture (that must be thwarted). We may be a “type,” it’s true, but it’s a loose type, and I think the ideal would be a collection of PBS iPad apps carving out more specific niches. Why not make several apps for different communities of interest and bake social media features right into them? I think they could be supported, just as larger radio markets can support more narrowly programed stations.
I might like PBS but I love literary adaptations. An app devoted to Masterpiece classics could allow users to watch the latest productions and talk about them with each other. (Would they be into talking? Oh yes, yes they would.) I may not care much about migration patterns of bison, but fans of Nature would love an app just for them, too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if contributions would flow in, just because people appreciate it when they have been given a space that celebrates their passions and interests and provides an opportunity to revel in their obsessions in the company of like minds. Engagement follows when it’s all about the affinity group in relation to the provider of the media—not just about the provider.
In fact, I really believe that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the “Here is all our stuff” approach will come to be perceived as an egocentric stance. TV “channels” won’t be established by their creators; they’ll be determined or defined over time based on the density of followers on a scatterplot.
This notion of increasing specialization of social media by affinity and interest has been a minor recurring theme of Gillmor Gang discussions in recent months.
Eureka. Armor All is the only thing I’ve found that keeps my rubbery iPad case from looking all nasty. I’m hoping it also may prevent the attraction of all the gunk it seems to invite to its surface. A few people in a Mac forum thread recommend it but advise using it sparingly.
I’m still happy with my iPad. I bit the bullet and decided against taking a netbook along on a trip last week. The iPad was a champ. My son and I used Google maps on it for navigation and 3G coverage held up in probably 99 percent of every spot from Brooklyn to Woodstock. I’d heard AT&T’s 3G is not as reliable outside the Chicago area, but no problem. It’s nice having a screen larger than a phone’s screen so the navigator can zoom in on a map section and quick give the driver a visual idea of what’s coming up. I’m not sure it would be a safe substitute for a real GPS device if you were driving alone in unfamiliar territory—no voice cues and too much fingerpainting needed.
No problems at all with our all-Apple devices except one that must have been caused by the airline’s wifi restrictions. My son missed most of the Bear’s game, having found a radio station’s .pl streaming file that worked until we got on the plane. He had to settle for ESPN’s live web coverage, which is pretty cool. It gives text updates and illustrates the current field position.
It was hard not to notice that my iPad is just the size of a composition book when I was carrying the two in a stack.
So I couldn’t help but think an iPad cover/case that looks like a comp book would be cute. You could scan a book, maybe cartoonize it a little, and have the fabric printed up by Spoonflower. Then probably pad it and wrap it around an actual comp book.
The fastening part, I don’t know. Maybe elastic at the corners, but it would have to be really tight. You wouldn’t want the device to slip out. I’m constantly afraid of dropping mine and cracking it. (I dropped an iPhone on a concrete patio once and it nearly broke my heart.) Thing is I don’t take mine out much. It seems to like staying at home with me.
The rubbery iPad case/folder is a little tippy for sitting the device upright, and you do want to take your iPad to bed to watch Netflix. I tried a beanbag pillow on my first day with my little prize a month ago, and darned if I’m not still using it.
One nice thing: you can rotate it to something other than a 90-degree angle. If you’re not a bed watcher or reader you won’t understand the sovereign importance of this feature.
Another discovery in the what-will-I-use-this-thing-for department: the iPad is perfect for reading long magazine articles online. I’ve found that I tend to abandon nice meaty stories if they go on for pages and pages; I’ve even been known to *gasp!* buy a print magazine if there’s a particular long article I want to luxuriate in. Not anymore.
I signed up for the 3G plan: limited bandwidth, $14.95 for a rolling 30 days, no contract. It seems quite fast in suburban Chicago, even loading a movie on Netflix.
Netflix looks beautiful. I hadn’t really tried to predict what I might want to do with the device, except that I thought I would like curling up in bed to read books and watch movies. I’m not sure how I’ll prop it up. The case is nice for creating a school desk slant angle but you need something more like an easel to watch it. Right now I’m using a sort of beanbag pillow.
Public domain books in the iBook store are much nicer than the PD books made for Kindle.
I synced all of the audio in iTunes. Will I listen to audiobooks using it? I have no idea. It might be safer for driving, with the larger controls.
After specifying Gmail in the device settings, it accepted my user/pass, but the inbox never did fill up after several attempts.
It’s a little smaller than I imagined it would be.
I got the keyboard, not Bluetooth, the accessory that the iPad mounts on vertically. The keyboard has a nice touch. The ensemble looks extra sweet. I predict it will be used in many a home magazine or furniture ad.
After using it constantly for the first three hours following unboxing, I wanted to do something else. I can’t afford it, so I’m going to be biased toward loving it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t actually love it. I may already love it a little. We’ll just have to see what it’s good for—maybe something I can’t foresee. I want to make a web app for it to really learn how what its middle ground position in the universe of devices is all about.
Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, co-authors of the Game Change book, gave a 55-minute interview to C-SPAN that aired on Wednesday. The video is not embeddable, so you’ll have to go there. The authors have talked about the book on C-SPAN before, but with the HBO movie premiering in a week, it’s very much back in the news.
Check out Halperin’s new Twitter avatar based on a 2010 Archie comic cover.
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
But about the 
It was hard not to notice that my iPad is just the size of a composition book when I was carrying the two in a stack. 
It’s a little smaller than I imagined it would be.
