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Is Daytime the New Primetime?

December 01, 2006

Ah, the modern age:

Coffee breaks are becoming the new primetime, with the number of people who stream their television growing and shifting into Daytime. It turns out that the hour of noon is the leading time for viewers to download streaming video downloads of their favorite shows.

According to ComScore (a digital measuring service), 70% of streaming at home is done when the sun is still out, and more than 80% of videos at work are also streamed during daytime. Although no one can tell yet if people are devoting their lunch breaks to actually watching entire shows or simply using high-speed connections at work to transfer them to iPods, one thing is clear – TV networks need to start looking at video streamers as a viable and important part of their audiences.

Here is my TV Lover run-down of other important things to know about the technological revolution:

Google/YouTube
Just as we all feared, Google has begun to seriously crackdown on copyright infringement, taking down thousands of videos from illegal episodes of South Park to spliced music videos of Disney Princesses. Though some shows, like the internet sensation Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager may survive through parody clauses, we see this as a disaster for YouTube. Google runs the risk of driving away the very audience it paid so much money to get.

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Catch A Phrase... Both Endearing and Annoying

November 28, 2006

TV Land released its list of the top one hundred TV catchphrases. Reading through the list, (that the AP so carefully alphabetized for us; see below) – I found myself slipping back into those heady days when my goony junior high friends tried to do impressions of all those bozos they saw on television. It’s a set of memories just as endearing as they are irritating.

A catchphrase is not the same thing as the TV-in-joke. My sister and I once shared a laugh over Lily Tomlin’s cheerleader on “Laugh-In.” We still say it to each other, do the little dance, and laugh hilariously, “Touch-a-touch, touch the floor. Touch-a-touch. Touch the sky, touch-a-touch- that’s enough…”

The catchphrase is something that you find funny until the jerk behind you in line at the bank says it into his cellphone. It’s the line repeated either over and over by a character (“Whatchu talkin’ bout willis?” from “Different Strokes”) to the one-liner that sums up an entire series, (“Kid, you’ve got spunk!” from “Mary Tyler Moore.”) to famous advertisements or political speeches replayed endlessly on television.

According to TV Land, the greatest number of moments, 26, come from the 1970s. TV Land identified nine moments from this decade. Ten are from commercials, and 28 from comedies, including six from ''Saturday Night Live.''

In alphabetical order, TV Land's list:

''Aaay'' (Fonzie, ''Happy Days'')
''And that's the way it is'' (Walter Cronkite, ''CBS Evening News'')

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