Now that the week is winding down, all of Letterman’s jokes have been told, and we don’t have to live tweet Mad Men anymore, there are a few good things we missed this week. Nothing too heavy for the holiday weekend.
1) Matt Zoller Seitz wrote in Vulture this week about the “rise of fast tv.” It’s the opposite of Mad Men, it’s the Empire way, and he might be onto something:
It’s a reaction to increased viewer sophistication — and impatience. TV writers live in constant low-level fear of being outguessed by fans, with reason. In the age of recaps and Facebook instant reactions and live-tweeting, everyone is a student of storytelling. They know the tropes and tricks because they’re a constant, often humorous topic of online chatter…It’s no longer about what happens, or how, or why, but when. You predict what’s coming and at which moment, you discover whether you called it right or wrong, and you go online to crow or eat crow.
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That’s how Shonda Rhimes keeps people coming back every Thursday and why Empire was such a huge linear hit. Fast TV can’t be missed.
2) Not to toot our own horn, but over at AdWeek’s TV pages we have an amazing video from USA that explains all the acronyms that we just throw around. Dynamic ad insertion? We must sound ridiculous to normal people.
3) Apple TV is starting to get very complicated, Recode reported this morning. They want local TV in its Apple TV offering, which is all well and good, but that means the launch might be delayed.