Month: January 2011

Telephone Hatred

customer-service-sucks-ass.jpg

Anyone who really knows me well can tell you that I hate the telephone. I always have and probably always will. Why? You may ask.

Because I am a writer, that’s why.

Telephones make noise. They break your line of thought just by ringing. It can be an intrusion into a delightful storyline that you just lost track of because..the GD phone just rang!

Many of my friends laughed at me when I accepted a job as a customer service rep for a medical supply company simply because they knew of my animosity for the telephone. “Why on God’s green green earth would you accept a job that heavily relies on you answering a telephone?” my girlfriend at the time asked. As she can still attest, getting Mike on the other end of a phone was tricky at best.

When someone calls you on a telephone it forces you to turn your attention towards them. To hell with what you were doing previously, you must now completely change your train of thought to deal with whomever has called. We go from a developing story about an interstellar battle to a conversation about dinner plans for Saturday night. For someone who has trouble with multi-tasking (e.g. me), this can be a big problem.

That is why I hate the telephone.

Random Thoughts

This morning (first post of 2011 huh?) I got to thinking about what was wrong with Caprica.

Why did the Sy-Fy Channel cancel it?

Of course, they’ll site viewer numbers and say that people weren’t watching it. I think that would be partially accurate. People didn’t watch it because they didn’t know when it would be on. One of the common problems of networks in general is that they advertise the hell out of everything on their networks which means you have to be watching their networks to see when certain shows will be on.

At least, that’s how it used to work.

Now, I don’t watch any of your network nonsense. In fact, I didn’t watch a single episode of Caprica on Sy Fy. I downloaded the shows from iTunes. I never had any intention of watching Sy Fy to see the show nor did I ever do so. That makes me wonder if Sy Fy ever included those folks when they factor in the numbers?

What about Hulu or TV.com?

(Update: I just stumbled upon this great article about people leaving their cable and television providers in favor of internet based solutions.) The whole story link is here.

The proliferation of viewing devices — including a new generation of TV sets that connect to the Internet — could boost the chances that viewers will do what cable and satellite companies fear most: cancel their $70-a-month subscriptions in favor of cheaper Web options.

People want to watch your shows just like they always have except now they want it delivered their way and not yours.

They are not going to watch your channel but they do want to watch your shows and that is what you need to monetize.

As I said in a couple of paragraphs above, we never knew when the show was going to be on. That is bad. It’s the same rule for podcasts. People stop listening when you stop delivering your show on some kind of schedule. Caprica was horrible in this regard. Do you remember when TV seasons were about 24 episodes long and were fairly dependable? I miss those days.

I could write a big long post about this. Maybe I will.