20 Funny Minutes of C-SPAN

Last Friday comedian Wanda Sykes entertained at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. This is by far the funniest thing I’ve seen on C-SPAN in years. She poked fun at President Obama and the first lady. The result is something more similar to a Comedy Central Roast than a presidential event. Even if you’re not a fan of Wanda, she pretty much lampoons the president over many of the recent fluff stories and rumors (Michelle’s sleeveless dresses, Obama giving the Queen an iPod, always being photographed shirtless).

Some of you may remember Steven Colbert’s roast for President Bush in 2006, which was a bit more surreal than funny. Its nice to know that this administration has a sense of humor too. read more

Cable TV Ala Carte: Who’s in Your Top Five?

Does anyone, who is not a coma victim, watch the Golf Channel?  Is anyone without insomnia watching HSN or QVC?  Isn’t the need to buy useless crap fulfilled by the Internet now?

There are at least 15 channels in everybody’s cable TV lineup that are completely useless. Admit it, for $60 a month, you are paying for a lot of content that you’ll never watch.  Ratings are sinking since the web has arrived. Ratings have even taken serious blows since the highly adopted use of TIVO and DVRs. Most people in the know don’t watch a talking head for 20 minutes to find out which mission critical toxin “might” be present in their cupboards. Anyone with half a brain knows that real content today is delivered on-demand and chosen to reflect your interests.

Gone are the days of spending a half an hour with your eyes glued a scrolling marquee on the lower portion of ESPN. Today you check your phone or ESPN’s own web site for the score.  Today you can use your computer or mobile phone and have all of of the day’s news fed directly to you.  So why are we still paying for cable as a complete service when we only want the programming we actually watch? read more