After a long string of my favorite artists and bands either dying, retiring, or breaking up, I finally get a couple pieces of good news. First, Kepano Green is back together again and are working on a new album. This band is the acoustic pop duo of Josh Kauffman and Paul Duncan. They got together at Wheaton College nearly seven years ago. It’s funny, because Josh lived next door to me in the same dorm, and I’d hear him playing guitar all the time. So it’s no surprise that I became a huge fan of their work. They got together in the fall of 1997 and recorded their first album, which was a live project recorded in the Chatlos TV Studio at Wheaton. I had the chance to help with the project, and videotaped the whole session. It’s a great album that brings back a lot of great memories for me. Well, Josh and Paul graduated, released another album, moved to LA, added a third member, and promptly broke up. But now their back together. I’m looking forward to the result.

The other good news that I read was that Smalltown Poets are putting another album out this fall. They’ve been dormant for a long time, and I thought they were finished. Apparently not. Their self-titles debut album is still an amazing effort. I had the chance to interview these guys way back in 1996 or 1997 and hear them do an acoustic set at WETN. They were awesome.

Now, if only the Waiting would put something new out, I’d be happyy.

Might as well finish these off with CBS and FOX:

CBS:

Mondays …
8pm ET “Still Standing”
8:30pm ET “Listen Up” (Jason Alexander and Malcom Jamal Warner in a sitcom based on sports columnist Tony Kornheiser)
9pm ET “Everybody Loves Raymond”
9:30pm ET “Two and a Half Men”
10pm “CSI:Miami”

Tuesdays …
8pm ET “NCIS”
9pm ET “Clubhouse” (A 16-year-old boy gets his dream job as a batboy for the New York Empires)
10pm ET “Judging Amy”

Wednesday …
8pm ET “60 Minutes II”
9pm ET “The King of Queens”
9:30 pm ET “Center of the Universe” (A happily married couple of 20 years deals with the eccentric family of the husband, played by John Goodman)
10pm ET “CSI:NY”

Thursdays …
8pm ET “Survivor”
9pm ET “CSI”
10pm ET “Without a Trace”

Fridays …
8pm ET “Joan of Arcadia”
9pm ET “JAG”
10pm ET “dr. vegas” (Rob Lowe as the in-house doctor for a high-end Las Vegas casino.)

Saturdays …
8pm ET “48 Hours”
9pm ET “The Amazing Race 6″
10pm ET “Crimetime Sundays” (Reruns of CSI’s, Cold Case, and Without a Trace)

Sunday …
8pm ET “Cold Case”
9pm ET “CBS Sunday Night Movie”

Not a lot of changes. The return of both John Goodman and Jason Alexander to primetime TV. Also, we’ll see how long CBS can sustain 3 CSI’s.

FOX is doing their whacky summer season with a late start in the fall, so I won’t go through the day by day. Some highlights … A lot of knock-off reality progams including “The Partner”, “The Next Great Champ”, and “The Billionaire” and nut much else to speak of. The summer schedule looks interesting with “The Jury” and “The Casino”.

Ahhh, May is such a wonderful time of year. There is such hope for the start of the fall TV season. All these new shows ready to break-out and score huge ratings. Here’s what’s on tap for the fall –

NBC:

Mondays …
8pm ET “Fear Factor”
9pm ET “Las Vegas”
10pm ET “LAX” (Flashy airport drama starring Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood)

Tuesdays …
8pm ET 1st half of season”Average Joe”
2nd half of season “The Contender” (from creator Mark Burnett, with Sly Stallone)
9pm ET “Father of the Pride” (Animated comedy, think Shrek for TV)
9:30pm ET “Scrubs”
10pm ET “Law & Order: SVU”

Wednesdays …
8pm ET “Hawaii” (Cop drama)
9pm ET “West Wing”
10pm ET “Law & Order”

Thursdays …
8pm ET “Joey”
8:30pm ET “Will & Grace”
9pm ET “The Apprentice”
10pm ET “ER”

Friday …
8pm ET “Dateline NBC”
9pm ET “Third Watch”
10pm ET “Medical Investigation” (Drama featuring doctors at the National Institute of Health)

Thursday nights will be a big question mark with “Joey” anchoring the night. It’ll also be interesting to see what happens with “The Apprentice” in the 9pm ET timeslot for a whole season. Tuesday nights which had been comedy, is now more reality, which is an indicator of the world we live in.

ABC:

Mondays …
8pm ET “The Benefactor” (Mark Cuban’s answer to Donald Trump’s “Apprentice”)
9pm ET 1st half of season “Monday Night Football”
10pm ET 2nd half of season “Grey’s Anatomy” (Female medical student drama)

Tuesdays …
8pm ET “My Wife and Kids”
8:30pm ET “George Lopez”
9pm ET “Acccording to Jim”
9:30pm ET “Rodney” (Middle class white guy pursues career in stand-up comedy)
10pm ET 1st half of season “NYPD Blue” (no reruns)
2nd half of season “Blind Justice” (Blind cop drama)

Wednesdays …
8pm ET “Lost” (Plane crash survivors attempt to make a new life on a Pacific island)
9pm ET “The Bachelor”
10pm ET “Wife Swap” (Two wives swtich places)

Thursdays …
8pm ET “Extreme Makeover”
9pm ET “Life as we Know It” (Three teen boys come of age)
10pm ET “Primetime Live”

Friday …
8pm ET “8 Simple Rules”
8:30pm ET “Savages” (Single dad tries to teach rowdy sons domestic tasks)
9pm ET “Hope and Faith”
9:30pm ET “Less than Perfect”
10pm ET “20/20″

Sundays …
8pm ET “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”
9pm ET 1st half of season “Desparate Housewives” (Dead housewife explores her world from the afterlife)
2nd half of season “Alias” (no reruns)
10pm ET “The Practice: Fleet Street” (David E. Kelley’s spin-off of The Practice with James Spader and William Shatner)

Well, ABC has the return of TGIF, more comedy on Tuesday nights, no reruns for “NYPD Blue” or Alias”, and some really cheesy new shows. Sounds about right.

The WB also announced their new fall lineup this week. I won’t torture you with the full line-up, but here are some highlights of their new shows:

“Jack and Bobby”, Sundays, 9pm ET, An eccentric single mother raises two teen boys, one of whom is destined to be president of the United States.

“Blue Collar TV”, Wednesdays, 9pm ET, Taking a “Blue Collar” perspective, each show begins with a standup routine by Jeff Foxworthy. The rest of the episode then continues with skits based on the them set up at the beginning.

“Commando Nanny”, Fridays 8:30pm ET, A 20-year-old ex-commando for the British Special Forces moves to Beverly Hills and takes a job as a nanny for three spoiled rich kids

Gotta love the WB!

Like most users of Moveable Type, I love the software. I went from GreyMatter to MT about 2 years ago and have never looked back. Ben and Mena have done a great job developing powerful software that meets the needs of its users. Furthermore, they’ve made a business ouf of it, and after all, that’s the American dream, right?

The problem they’re creating for themselves now with the release of MT 3.0 is that they’re overestimating the willingness of their users to pay for their software. The new licensing scheme real prices most users right out of the game.

I have no problem paying for good software. I think most users feel that way. The problem is that for so long, so much software has been free or close enough to it that the concept of paying for it after a while, no matter how good it is, seems foreign to some people. This is especially true when the licensing structure does not reflect the how most people use the software.

I’d guess that many, if not the majority, of the MT users run personal blogs. They aren’t making (much) money from their sites. Therefore, it’s more aking to a hobby than anything else. Now, some probably do make some money from donations or ads or affiliate programs, but most are just having fun. They are not going to pay $70 for a 3 author/5 weblog license. That’s just ridiculous. That’s not understanding your market. I’d imagine the free version of MT 3.0 is so limited for what most users will want that most users will begin migrating to a free or cheaper alternative.

This is really kind of sad, because as much as I want to see Six Apart succeed and MT prosper as an application, I don’t think it should happen at any cost. MT has enjoyed a long run of user loyalty, which is all about to be flushed away by this move. I hope Six Apart takes some time to re-think this model and comes up with something more realistic.

For now, I’ll keep running my perfectly accetable and free version of MT.

I am amazed that this man has remained in office as long as he has and has ascended to positions of power and authority in Congress. Here are Sen. Ted Kennedy’s words about the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq:

“Shamefully we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.”

Any attempt to draw a moral equivalency with what happened in the prisons in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and what’s happened in the last year is either woefully ignorant of either situation or is simply out to demean and belittle any American effort in Iraq.

There is no comparison between Saddam’s treatment of Iraqis and the American military’s treatment of them. Sen Kennedy ought to be ashamed of himself for even suggesting that the U.S. government has engaged in anything even remotely close to Hussein’s behavior. Perhaps Sen. Kennedy sees his sad, pathetic political career fading quickly, as old age and irrelevancy overcome him. He continues to lose his grip on power, and his last hope to leave a lasting mark on American politics is a desparate ploy to play the role of John Kerry’s hatchet man.

Sen. Kennedy, you are a disgusting man.

I ran across a very interesting article by Salem chairman Stu Epperson regarding the recent FCC crackdown on indecendy. Epperson argues that the FCC should keep its hands off the content of radio broadcasts because he’s concerned that while today it’s Howard Stern and Janet Jackson in the spotlight, but tomorrow it might be Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson:

Sure right now an FCC dominated by reasonable people wouldn’t do anything drastic. But let us suppose that with this bill on the books the nation has elected Hillary Rodham Clinton as President. And let us suppose - and it is no stretch of the imagination to believe this - that President Hillary appoints radical liberals to the FCC. With the precedent established that the FCC can revoke licenses over obscene content, these Commissioners determine that conservative views constitute hate speech - and hate speech is obscene.

I think Epperson is taking a very bold position, but it’s a position that comes from his experience in radio, having fought many battles for access to the airwaves during his career. I don’t know how well his message will resonate with other conservative and religious broadcasters, but I think he presents a position that should be considered.

Asbury College (actually, Asbury Seminary) in Wilmore, KY. I think the humidity here is like 100 percent.

By brother Nate is brushing the grass off of the chair next to me because the previous user must have been rolling around in a hayfield.

My sister graduates tomorrow, so the entire clan is down here partying. Well, not so much partying as spending an hour browsing in a huge bookstore in the town next door.

Nice campus. Haven’t seen any signs that there’s wi-fi around here. Then again, I didn’t bring any wireless devices, so it doesn’t matter. The seminary apparently has a very active blogging community. Time to get some sleep.

There’s been a lot of talk today about how NBC really screwed TiVo users during last night’s series finale of Friends. Basically, TiVo, for those of you that don’t know, uses third-party program data to schedule various recordings. Most American TV programs start and end on the hour or half-hour with little deviation. (I can remember when TBS began starting programs at 5 minutes past the hour way back in the 80’s sometime).

This season, NBC has really tried to exploit some of TiVos idiosyncracies by starting and ending their shows at odd times, just before or after the ttop of the hour. The idea is that if you schedule TiVo to tape CSI on CBS at 8pm CT and want to catch ER on NBC at 9pm CT, if NBC starts ER at 8:59pm, it will conflict with your taping of CSI. If you are aware of this problem, then you are forced to make a choice about which program to tape since TiVo doesn’t have the intelligence to make adjustments. Besides, do you really want to miss the last minute of CSI to catch the first minute of ER? TiVo doesn’t know. If you simply have season passes for these programs and don’t pay close attention, then the program with the higher priority will record while the other one won’t.

Well, last night, NBC ran a clip show Friends at 7pm CT and started the actual finale at 7:59pm CT. Now, the program data that TiVo displayed indicated that the show would end at 8:59pm CT, but the show actually went to 9:06pm CT. This is made worse by the fact that the climax of the episode (does Rachel come back for Ross?) occurred at 8:59pm CT. If you TiVo’d the program and didn’t make adjustments (or record ER) you missed the climax. Luckily for you, the episode will be out on DVD next week. Hmmmm …. coincidence?

It will be interesting to see if there’s any backlash from this ploy, either directly through complaints by TiVo users to NBC or indirectly by TiVo users not scheduling NBC programs in the future.

Either way, this serves to illustrate that media audiences are changing quickly as technology evolves and that programmers need to react and adapt to these changes. I don’t know if NBC has the right idea, but at least they acknowledge the trends.

One of the great promises from the Bush administration that we were told would come out of our involvement in Iraq was a Middle Eastern domino effect. By liberating Iraq and putting a democracy in place, it would trigger a series of likeminded reforms in nearby countries. There has been some evidence that this has begun to happen with the disarming of Libya. There has also been some civil unrest in Iran that seems to indicate a growing desire for democracy there.

At the same time, critics of the war argued that singling Iraq out among all the ruthless dictatorships in the world seemed arbitrary and rather suspicious. Why not North Korea or Iran, the critics wondered. Well, now it seems as if the North Korea domino is beginning to wobble a bit:

North Korea, probably the world’s most secretive and isolated nation, has offered an olive branch to the US by promising never to sell nuclear materials to terrorists, calling for Washington’s friendship and saying it does not want to suffer the fate of Iraq.

…

Although their statements will be treated with scepticism in Washington, they suggest a reasoned view of international affairs in sharp contrast to the simplistic, bellicose and anti-American rhetoric used by junior officials and relayed to the world by the North Korean news agency.

In Mr Harrison’s first-hand report, published in Tuesday’s FT, North Korean leaders explicitly condemn al-Qaeda, and categorically reject US accusations that they would be willing to transfer nuclear technology to the Islamist terror group - or to anyone else.