IBM’s Watson represented a lot of things, including a missed opportunity for Jeopardy

Thanks again for all the great feedback everyone! New content is coming soon, but in the meantime here's an old post I wrote for my work blog that I thought was really interesting and am putting up to get your thoughts on:

I sat back one night and turned on my DVR to watch Jeopardy for the first time in recent memory.  

I was tuning in to see IBM’s Watson, an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, square off against two of the quiz show’s top champs. It was a battle reminiscent of Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue. 

The show was fun to watch, and while Watson had a hiccup or two, (watch two examples of Watson struggling here and here if you haven’t seen them yet) he very quickly put humankind in its place by racking up nearly $80,000. This was more than double the total of his two competitors combined.  

Throughout the three episodes Watson appeared on Jeopardy, one thought continued to strike me. What an incredible media and communications opportunity this was for Jeopardy, and boy did someone drop the ball! While the show did see a slight uptick in viewers (about a 2.1 percent increase from its average ratings) it was nothing compared to what could have been. 

Watson tapped into a very simple human emotion: fear. The fright of computers taking over and doing things better than us is very old, and Jeopardy could have taken advantage of this to push itself back to the forefront of pop culture. It would have also been a great opportunity to reach a new audience, similar to the way Ken Jennings, one of Watson’s competitors, did for the show years ago during his legendary run (which ironically inspired IBM to develop Watson).  

Jeopardy seemed to choose not to promote the challenge between a computer and two humans. Instead, the show relied on IBM’s commercials to get the word out. It also decided to air the three days of programs starting on Valentine’s Day, which is never a great day for TV. 

The end result: great TV with no buzz. Jeopardy loyalists who saw the shows will keep watching like always, and they are probably hoping that Watson doesn’t come back to crush anymore humans. For the rest of us, the competition may as well never have happened.

The under appreciation of Starz

I recently finished the second season of Magic City, a show about Miami Beach in the late 1950s. While many might think of it as just another mob show, it’s about much more and delves into the building of South Beach, Castro’s takeover in Cuba and its impact on Miami, an untraditional family marriage between a Jewish hotel owner and Cuban dancer, etc... The show has a compelling and conflicted anti-hero as well as a great villain (a mobster named “The Butcher”).

I say all this because you probably haven’t seen Magic City. I don’t blame you, because I don’t know if anyone but me watches it. I had to buy my father the DVDs for the first season just to get him to watch it. This is because Magic City seems to exist in a programming black hole called the Starz network.

While not on par with Showtime in the “quest to be HBO,” Starz was responsible for Party Down, a comedy that in my opinion is as funny as any show in recent years. It was home to Boss, a powerful drama about a corrupt mayor of Chicago who learns that he is going to go insane then painfully die but holds onto power in an attempt to finalize and preserve his legacy. Starz also made Torchwood: Miracle Day, an original mini-series spun off from a hugely successful BBC show.

Both Party Down and Boss were critically acclaimed and loved by me. Party Down had host of wonderful, emerging comedians in it and Boss’ Chelsea Grammar won an Emmy for his portrayal of Tom Kane. Yet neither lasted past two seasons. Yet Party Down’s season two finale drew a 0.0 rating and total audience of 74,000 (called “miniscule even for pay cable standards” by Deadline). Boss ended with promises of a movie, but I remember from Deadwood how well those work out. Torchwood too, never even seemed to register here in the US or UK despite its following and the madness associated with Doctor Who lately (the show is a spinoff of Dr. Who, and in fact Torchwood is an anagram for Doctor Who…).

Other attempts by the network that I’ve committed to, i.e. DVRed, only to see fizzle include Camelot, an Arthurian series starring Joseph Fiennes as Merlin. The show had its moments, but in general was good. Yet it was seemingly a victim of bad timing, as I have to imagine if it premiered today maybe some Game of Thrones fans would accidentally watch it long enough to earn it a second season.

I also have the network’s ambitious White Queen on my DVR right now, and am looking forward to checking it out as I tried to do so with Pillars of Earth, another bold endeavor that featured Ian McShane but got little fanfare, and DaVinci’s Demons, which I did not understand or make it more than a few minutes into.

Yes there’s been some misses, but they’re clearly trying and putting out quality programming. All of this leads me to wonder how can such great programming go unnoticed? These shows literally have no buzz! How, after an Emmy for best actor, does a truly great drama like Boss get cancelled with no fuss? How can it be that Starz programming is probably best known for its surprisingly successful Spartacus series?

I can’t answer these questions, but I can leave you with one more. What does this mean for two more shows I am very excited about (and you should be too)? The first is from Ron Moore, creator of SyFy’s successful Battlestar Galactica reboot, who is currently adapting the Outlander book series for the network with Sony Pictures Television. Starz has ordered an initial season of 16-episodes. The show begins filming this fall in Scotland and is slated to premiere in 2014.

The other show is Dancing on the Edge, another BBC partnership production (along with Torchwood and White Queen) that just began airing. It will follow the Louis Lester Band, an all-black jazz ensemble playing the club circuit in 1930s London, during their rise to fame amidst racism and a murder mystery.

Will anyone even notice these shows though? Will Outlander make it to season two? Perhaps most importantly, will I have anyone to talk to about either program?

Welcome to Original Programming, a blog about TV’s second golden age.

For most of my life, I was never a big fan of TV. I watched comedies like the Cosby Show as a kid then Simpsons as a teenager, cartoons (for me it was GI Joe and Transformers), sports and all sorts of other random stuff growing up. I was never glued to TV though or really followed anything on the “boob tube” closely.

I didn’t even have cable for several years following college (to tell the truth I couldn’t really afford it) and then spent several years watching sports on mute while listening to music after I finally got it.

I didn’t understand the premise of “Must See TV,” I hated sitcoms and was bored by procedurals. So basically, I didn’t watch TV.

That was until Dan (my good friend and collaborator on this blog) introduced me to Lost in 2005. Now I have the same criticisms of the show as others, but I will argue that seasons one and two are as entertaining as anything you’ll ever watch on TV. After watching the DVDs for season one and two then missing an episode of season three, I realized I needed a DVR. The rest as they say, was history. I quickly discovered and fell in love with shows like The Wire, Mad Men, Deadwood and more.

Many people talk about right now as a golden age of TV. It’s interesting to note though that we’re actually in a second golden age for TV. I mention this not because this understanding is necessary to understand what’s happening and possibly predict what will happen, but to simply draw comparisons.

In the 1950s TV, which was still a new medium, rose to critical acclaim because of live dramatic anthologies such as The Philco Television Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre and Playhouse 90. These episodic endeavors captured a nation’s attention and revealed what TV could be just like James Gandolfini did again in 1999 when he ushered in an era of dramatically-driven, thoughtful and intelligent anthology programming by portraying Tony Soprano (though to tell you the truth, the DVR played a big role in this as well. That however, is a subject for another day).

Original Programming will discuss this new era of TV and pay tribute to it by delving into trends, discussing the types of programs that are emerging, analyzing how we are interacting with TV (as well as talking about some fun stuff) and pondering the fate of this golden age of TV. This is not a blog for episode recaps and show reviews though.

It’s written by two guys who love TV from Cincinnati, Ohio who have known each other for 30 years and somehow both married Texas girls then ended up in Austin, Texas.

We’ve never done anything like this before, but we love TV and promise to try to keep things interesting by talking about topics like Battlestar Galactica's continued struggle for relevance, the remarkable transformation of Netflix, integrating TV shows and video games, importing programming from overseas and more.

We invite you to join us, let us know what you think of what we write and share your suggestions.