Title says it all.

Appropriate since it will have been an astounding 525 days since the season 4 finale. 

Oh and Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm, directs the first episode.

This is interesting, a new Roku box that’s not a box at all, it’s a stick — essentially a thumb drive. Yes, that’s insanely small for a set top box but perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t require a power cord.

This is possible thanks to MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) which is integrated into newer HDMI ports. This also allows you to control the Roku with your standard TV controller. 

Imagine a cable box that worked like this? Instead of a gigantic, overheating piece of shitty plastic, it could be a tiny stick that you pop into the side of your TV. DVR capabilities might be an issue, but that’s all moving to the cloud anyway. 

Sadly, unless you go to Best Buy (and who wants to do that anymore?) to pick up an Insignia TV, you’ll have to wait until the fall to buy one of these bad boys. Too bad, Roku could use it now.

Jeremy Toeman responds to my letter to HBO (to let me pay for HBO Go without requiring that I pay for cable). He makes a number of solid points as to why the economics simply will not work right now.

But the keywords are “right now”.

I have no doubt that HBO is in no hurry to walk away from their cable partners who not only send them billions, but handle all the logistics (collecting the money, customer support, etc). But it would be very unwise to think that this model will continue in perpetuity.

The cable model is going to get disrupted. It may not happen next year, it may not even fully happen in five years, but it will happen. And as I said in my original post, HBO has a chance to lead this revolution instead of being run over by it. Right now, they hold the key: killer content.

If they’re actually worrying about things like not having the infrastructure to take payments or handling customer support, they may have already lost. They’re allowing themselves to be held hostage by a middle man that is not aging well (the cable companies). Again, one day he will die. And where does that leave HBO?

Scrambling to figure shit out while new competitors they never considered to be competitors eat their lunch — that’s where.

After my post last night about HBO breaking its cable addiction, a number of you pointed out that this will never happen because HBO is owned by Time Warner.

That’s true — but remember that Time Warner Cable hasn’t been affiliated with Time Warner since 2009. They share a name (which they use under license), but they’re a completely independent company. Time Warner owns HBO, not Time Warner Cable. 

If you want proof of just how unaffiliated the two are now, look no further than the fact that Time Warner Cable is only now getting HBO Go access. Comcast and a dozen other cable providers got access first as TW/TWC negotiations dragged on. 

So while it’s a bit confusing, HBO’s Time Warner parent shouldn’t hamper my plan. Time Warner should be looking towards the future, not their old cable subsidiary. 

The smoke around the Apple Television continues to billow, ever-thicker. But this latest report by Jessica Vascellaro and Sam Schechner for The Wall Street Journal sure makes it seem as if things are still in the fairly early stages. It sounds like Apple is putting a lot of options out there in their talks with the media companies to see what sticks.

If that’s correct, I say there’s no way we see an Apple Television until mid-2013 at the earliest. But perhaps Apple is farther along and is just holding their cards really close to the vest (likely knowing that the media industry is just about the worst when it comes to the leaking of information).

But despite years of skepticism by many, I continue to believe this is happening. You don’t have to look past this paragraph in the WSJ piece to realize why:

The pace of change puts media companies that make TV shows and program TV channels in a dilemma. On one hand, they hope that they can increase their profits by selling new services on new devices. But they are worried that a proliferation of new services could undermine the existing TV business, which brings in more than $150 billion a year in the U.S. in advertising and consumer spending on monthly TV subscriptions from cable, satellite and telecommunications companies.

They’re throttling innovation so as not to disturb their current cash cows. That’s not a winning strategy, it’s a losing one. And someone is going to come along and hand their asses to them eventually. It may be Apple, or it may be someone who can do it sooner. 

March 19, 2011, an article entitled: “Another Netflix Content Idea: Saving Cancelled Cult Hits”:

Would the economics ultimately work out? It’s hard to say for sure. Even the House of Cards bet is still very much a bet for Netflix as well. But I do think that a proven cult hit like Firefly would be much less of a gamble (and could likely be secured for cheaper than House of Cards was).

And that’s just one example. Arrested Development. Battlestar Galactica. Twin Peaks. These are all things that could succeed where they failed on television because it’s an entirely different model.

Bolding mine. Actually, entire article mine.

You’re welcome, Netflix. Next bring back Firefly and we’ll call it even.

If you haven’t watched yet, now you have no excuse. Seasons 1 through 3 are available (season 4, the current one, is not yet). This is going to kill a lot of productivity. 

I can’t fully argue this because I’ve only seen a handful of episodes of The Sopranos — shocking, I know. But I do agree with the basic premise that Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, and Breaking Bad are the four shows that most consider to be the “four horsemen” of this generation of television.

Removing The Sopranos for now, I’d personally rank them:

1) Mad Men

2) The Wire

3) Breaking Bad

I’d argue that Mad Men has seen a small amount of backlash in this discussion because it is the most mainstream-friendly of the shows. As Klosterman notes, it’s the only one what doesn’t regularly feature threats of death and/or violence. This may make it seem “soft”, though I’d argue that the subtlety in many episodes outweighs this. But, as the word implies, most overlook it. 

Also worth noting that Klosterman has argued that Lost is the best show on television before, but he rules it out here because it’s a network show, so in a different category. The others in this category that I think you could make an argument for are Deadwood and the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica (the re-imagined SciFi version, obviously).