the 5 best (and a couple of the worst) TV news music packages

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I love movie and TV scores.  I also love news music.  Which makes me a giant nerd.  I also know everything there is to know about news music, so you should just basically assume my opinions are as ironclad as the Ten Commandments.  Or just realize they are only my opinions, whichever works for you.

The best:

5) Right Here, Right Now (615 Music)

At once warm, friendly and intense, this theme package was developed for CBS San Diego.  One of only a handful of contemporary packages with a substantive image campaign song, it successfully conveys investigation and intimacy.  Normally I don’t care for themes with a lot of electric cues, but this one is pretty much perfect.

4) WNBC News Redesign 2003 (Rampage Music NY)

This theme now seems to be relegated to Spanish language newscasts on Univision O&O’s, which is unfortunate because this is one of the most haunting and beautiful news themes I’ve ever heard.  Featuring sweeping and swelling cinematic orchestras and the integration of the NBC chimes, this package includes every image you would want to convey in a newscast: integrity, tradition, accuracy and compassion.  I honestly am not sure why it isn’t used by more NBC stations or why NBCU feels that 615′s The Tower is more appropriate.

3) Impact (615 Music)

I’ll try to avoid the bad pun, but I don’t think any other news music package has had quite the same reach since the “Cool Hand Luke” themes of the 1970s.  The various versions have branding signatures for three of the four major broadcast networks and cover every possible type of newscast and market size, and you’ll even hear traces of the Impact theme signature in other 615 packages like The Ignitor. WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee commissioned a brassy, orchestral take on the package which really enhanced its versatility in my eyes, but also introduced this puzzling war-at-sea cut.

2) Overture (Stephen Arnold Music)

I am obviously biased, since KSTP commissioned this package in 1999, but this is one of those themes that sticks with you, and even seven years after they stopped using it, I still associate that station with this theme.  There’s just something about the SAM themes; I believe they are the only TV music production company that uses only studio musicians and do no electronic programming, and the Overture package is a great example of what a rich, organic sound that setup can produce.

1) Third Coast (Stephen Arnold Music)

I think this is the best example of a news package that would play as well in New York City as it would in Montana City, MT (pop. 2,094).  Full and brassy, but unpretentious, with a dynamic hook, this package would fit in well with any station’s visual branding.  As a SAM suite, like Overture, it was recorded with 100% live musicians, which means that tracks like this AM news open get authentic touches like hearing the guitarist’s fingers rub on the strings between frets as he noodles.  As with any news package, there are missteps, like the sports rejoin that sounds like ti has no business in this suite, but in Third Coast they are few and very far between.

Honorable mention goes to the Fox O&O news package (OSI Music) for not deploying mass suckitude to a station cluster like Gannett. (See below.)

The worst:

2) CBS Enforcer Collection/Enforcer New Generation (Gari Media)

Maybe it’s a little unfair of me to pick on a package that’s been around since 1994, but 615′s Impact and In-Sink have been around for almost as long and have held up much better.  It’s also hard to take a news show seriously when its main theme sounds so much like Sim City SNES.  This package is one of the reasons I am against broad-based applications of branding mandates, but it pales in comparison to…

1) Gannett News Music Package (Rampage Music NY)

It’s really hard to believe that a music production house that turned out something as beautiful as the WNBC package could also poop out something as universally terrible as this.  As with The Enforcer, there’s just nothing terribly special with this package and it lacks a definitive hook.  I can understand the desire to have a one-size-fits-all music and graphics package for your cluster to make it cheaper, but you should invest at least some money into it., especially when you have a presence in two top-10 markets  As the theme sits now, it’s over-synthesized, and it can’t decide if it wants to be hard-hitting, urban, contemporary or folksy.  Accompanied by that awful pulsating present in every cut except the orchestral ones, this is easily my least-favorite news music package.

Big thanks to News Music Now and the SouthernMedia News Music Archive for providing the audio sources.

five terms that need to die

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There’s no preface for this. Just words/phrases I hate.

1) Celebutante The sooner this gets put to bed, the better.  I am so goddamn sick of hearing about the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, et al.  For some reason, the bulk of television right now consists of reality shows about people that are famous because they’re rich, or because they were born into money.  Remember when fame was the end result of talent?  Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.  Now, all you have to do is like to party, or take your clothes off on camera, or act like an overgrown six year old in a public setting, and you are set up with a 13-week deal in which MTV, Bravo or TLC will broadcast your exploits.

2) Mommy blogger Not sure where this one came from, or why it caught on like wildfire, but this phrase also needs to go.  I see this in print or the web and my mind’s eye conjures up an image of neglected kids doing possibly-dangerous things with little supervision while some chick hammers away at a keyboard about DSW coupon codes.  I’m sure that’s the exact opposite of what happens, but I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.  This made-up title is just something to prop up flagging egos, much like if I decided to call myself a culinary husband.  That just glosses over the fact that I am unemployed and my chief duty is coughing up some pasta for the wife and myself.

3) i[blank] killer Dear Andriod/Windows/RIM boosters and tech writers: Until such devices are actually demonstrating said killing, let’s refrain from using this.  Especially when most of these devices being touted are in the throes of development and half the time ship sans features touted in the many press releases (I’m looking at you, PlayBook).  I say this not just as an Apple fan, but as someone who is incredibly sick of overhype and finger-pointing, particularly about vaporware.

4) Lamestream media See?? They replaced “main” with “lame!”  That’s some biting satire right there.  This phrase, based on the completely erroneous assumption that the majority of journos in this country write from a leftist, Socialist standpoint, and all the newspapers of record in the United States are simply puppets of the Obama administration.  And to compensate, the zealots of the right have coined this terribly unique and creative colloquialism.  It’s right up there with “O’Bummer” and using Barack Obama’s initials to highlight his middle name, Hussein, which on its own is also completely stupid and unconscionably childish.  When I was asked about the so-called liberal bias when I was still pursuing journalism as an actual, serious career, I was forced to come up with a canned quasi-answer on the spot.  But after thinking about it for quite a while, I realized that while there may be a teensy bit of left-leaning material out there, its quantity is more than made up for in earnest by the right.  Just think about it: before Al Franken and Michael Moore came along, who was the voice of the left that dared go up against the booming lunacy of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly?  Because I sure can’t think of one.

… Okay. I think that I could put up an entire post about that.  So I’ll stop with this train of thought for now, and maybe next week I will resume it.

Moving on:

5) Indie So, who decides exactly what is “indie?”  Also, where does this committee meet, and can I possibly get on it?  It really seems to me that this term has been so overused and genericized that it can really be slapped on pretty much anything as long as Zooey Deschanel or skinny jeans are involved.  When it gets to the point that major movie studios are forming production houses with highly imaginative names like “Warner Independent Productions” and gobbling up scripts, then labeling them as indie and entering them in film festivals, where does the little guy stand a chance? I mean, I am no film director, nor do I play one on TV, but it has to be incredibly hard to put together a film knowing that it will be crushed by Universal’s or Paramount’s arthouse arm and their seven-figure production budgets.

I have no way to wrap this up.  Go Twins!

10 things I hate about iPhone OS 3

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If you couldn’t tell, I’m a big supporter of Apple, Inc. Slightly more than a fanboy, but less than a devotee. One thing I’m not, though, when it comes to Apple is an apologist. And when they screw something up, I’l be the first to point it out.

One such case is the latest release of the OS X based operating system that drives all iPhones and iPods touch. In its first incarnation, it was slightly buggy, yet beautiful, and lacked some features a lot of people wanted. When iPhone OS 2 came out last year with the App Store, it was a remarkably stable release with a ton of added features. But then this past July they rolled out version 3 while CEO Steve Jobs was on the DL with a liver transplant, and it fucked up the entire works. Usability declined, it started crashing more often and it took on some unfortunate design elements that detracted from its presence.

Obviously my opinions are just that, but here are ten things that I think suck really badly about iPhone OS 3 and how I would change them:

iPhone OS 2 iPod controls1) Spotlight The feature itself is great and long-awaited, but its access implementation fucking blows and is very un-Apple. I mean really, swipe left from the first home screen? So, unless I configure it differently from the menu, I have to exit an app to get to the home screen, then possibly double click the home button to then swipe left to arrive at Spotlight. Ridiculous. Here’s what should happen: You can press and hold the power button to shut the iPod off. You can press the power and hold buttons concurrently to take a screenshot. Well, make it possible to press and hold the home button to bring up Spotlight within an app, like the in-app iPod controls. There, you could get some rough global results and with a click you can go to the full results page. It can’t be that hard.

iPhone OS 2 iPod controls2) Landscape mode This is more of a personal thing and has been around since the first version, but I would really like a way to turn off landscape mode sometimes.. I’m not sure about anyone else, but I like to lay down on the couch or the bed and peruse the internets, and it is close to impossible to do so in portrait mode, which is my preference for reading blog content and single-column news as found at the New York Times and MinnPost. This could be a simple switch in the Safari preferences. Please? This could also apply to other apps like Mail. While you’re at it, please extend this functionality to iCal. Thanks so much!

iPhone OS 2 iPod controls3) RSS? I know a lot of tech media types swear by outside news readers (Google Reader, NetNewsWire, et al) but I favor simplicity and have my RSS feeds in a folder in Safari. So can I pretty please have more-than-rudimentary MobileMe RSS support in mobile Safari? Like the landscape thing, it’s an age old problem, but maybe it can be fixed very simply. And maybe then Apple can retire the deprecated .Mac name they tagged the mobile “reader” with.

4) “Now Playing” and play list tracking Now this is something that worked flawlessly, and then OS 3 completely broke it. Since my library is so large (about 60 GB of music and close to 250 GB of movies and television shows) I sync fresh content to it everytime I connect it to iTunes and just let my iPod cycle through songs on perpetual shuffle. This worked great before; whenever I picked up my iPod I just double clicked on the home button, hit play and I was right back where I left off. Now, though, whenever the iPod is put to sleep or not played for a while it’s treated as a new session and the shuffle starts over from the beginning. That is super lame and increases repetition, the very thing I was trying to avoid! The only way to fix this behavior is to Command-Z everything done to it in OS 3.

5) Shake to shuffle One word: gimmicky. Thanks for giving me the option to turn it off though. I actually forgot this feature existed until the other day when I was walking downtown and that beepbeepboop noise went off and my songs shuffled. It’s all good though, I hit the toggle and it won’t bother me anymore.

iPhone OS 2 iPod controls6) That goddamn Genius icon As a design nerd, there are several things that grate on me about the current look of the iPod screen from its previous brethren. The one thing that sticks out more than anything is that Genius button, inelegantly sandwiched in between the shuffle and repeat icons. Isn’t there some other way it can be implemented? By like, just making it smaller? Or even eliminating it completely and just having it accessible from the play list menu? (In fairness, Genius was added in 2.2; before that version the song count was below the scrubber.)

7) Speaking of the scrubber, who needs precision scrubbing for a five-minute song? While this feature may be useful for movies, TV and long podcasts, all it does is infuriate me while I try to scrub to the end of a track. Seriously, guys.

iPhone OS 2 iPod controls 8) Display foibles Why the hell are there leading zeroes on the ticker all of a sudden? That is so Windows it isn’t even funny. Get rid of them; they aren’t needed. Remember the Apple mantra: less is more. Also, why was it necessary to reduce the point size on the track display? The readability has been reduced severely, in addition to looking sloppy, just for the display of a few more characters? Again, ridiculous.

9) Lyrics on videos The last gripe I have here is an oddity that doesn’t appear often: I have some music videos that have lyrics data in the tag before that ability was locked out in iTunes 8, and it is very hard to get them to go away on the iPod if they are inadvertently brought up. If you don’t want lyrics in video tags, please disable them globally. Thanks in advance.

10) No downgrade path I want my version 2 back. That is all. Make it happen.

Agree? Disagree? Indifferent? You know how to reach me. Or sound off in the comments below.

let’s make a cellphone deal

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I’ve had a few cellphones in my day. Since I got my line in the winter of 1998/9 I’ve used at various times a Sony CMD-500, Qualcomm QCP-800, Sony CMD-Z1, Nokia 8260 (in all three colors), Samsung SCH-850, LG TM-510, LG-VX10, Kyocera SE47, Samsung SCH-a670, Motorola RAZR v3c, and LG VX-8700. Whoof. That’s probably 3% of the earth’s electronic waste right there. And you know what? The only phone I was actually truly happy using was the 8700. The other ones all had their flaws: the Sony/Qualcomm phones were all the same chipset and based on mid 90s tech, the Nokias kept on fucking breaking (I had three in the span of 10 months), my first Samsung inexplicably had no texting capability, my first two LGs were the cheapest-feeling phones I ever owned, the Kyocera was awesome except for its weird egg shape and nub antenna, the external display on the a670 clouded up so bad it wasn’t readable, and the RAZR was great for about two months till its shitty build quality let me down completely.

But what the Mac mini did to my computing habits amd attitudes, my VX-8700 did to my cellphone tastes. You could tell once you picked this beast up that it was built well and was meant to last. I loved that thing to death and swore that I wouldn’t get another till I was able to get a non-ATT iPhone.

Until the screen started glitching out.

Sure it still makes calls. And as long as you don’t do anything requiring a lot of graphics (games, fast menu navigation or mobile internet) the screen is mostly okay. But my experience in electronics has taught me nothing if not that when one part fails, the others are doomed to follow. So I bit the bullet, called Verizon and used my contract expiration credit to order an env3. I hope this one lasts.

it’s a funny thing, that technology

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Happy June! It’s pretty hard to fathom how fast the year is going by. Just think: in January I was still thinking of putting a ring on it, and by next January a wedding will be mostly planned. Unreal.

Anyhoo, waaaaay back in the day I was rocking a Windows PC I built myself. Hard to believe, right? But you know, when I got out of high school, I had zero money for a Mac. They had those slick blue G3 towers that I wanted so bad, but they were so out of reach it wasn’t funny. So with my brother’s help and a couple of parts from a friend, I cobbled together a cheap beige box with a 750MHz Athlon chip and a 20GB harddrive. Oh man, that thing was a beast in 1999. And I put that thing through the wringer too.

Fast forward to 2004: On my third homebuilt rig, I have about seven years worth of data on my harddrive when I tried to install the Windows XP Service Pack 3. For some reason it didn’t take, and I tried to dial it back to SP2. When that didn’t work, I tried reinstalling Windows over the existing files. While that did work, it also resulted in my user folders being locked away in some weird-ass glitch so that I could no longer get to them. While I wasn’t very forthright about what happened (who wants to admit they’d fucked themselves?) it was still pretty traumatic. My digital life was over! So I started anew, my lesson learned: back up religiously. And about six months later I got a Mac and it’s mostly been smooth sailing since then.

Now, in 2009, I’m cleaning out my stuff in preparation to move in with my fiancee. And my brother, who now does IT for a company that makes artificial anuses (anusi?), lends me his dongle that turns any IDE/ATA device into a USB- mountable drive. On a whim, I hook up my old drives that I just never parted with and am able to pull up every single file I thought lost. It includes old photos, music, almost everything I’d written from 1997 to 2004, and old versions of my website! All this stuff that I thought I’d never see again is now available to look at and edit, and I’m made close to whole again.

So guys, let this be a lesson to you. Back up your shit. Like, four times if you have to. And if you don’t, and your data gets corrupted, don’t get rid of the old drives. You may be able to get at your old files one day. And if not, at least you have a long-winded blog post to write, and some ridiculous clip art to attach to it.

memory lane

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Note: This is the fourth (and possibly final) post in a series of unfinished thoughts that I hastily tacked an ending on to to bridge the gap between the past and the future of ES.com. I started this one almost exactly a year ago, on May 21, 2008. Thanks again for reading. –ES
Time Machine
I always felt that reminiscing was for douchebags, and it’s a belief I still hold on to. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I do it frequently, albeit on the whims of whatever is going on around me. The latest round of wistfulness that was foisted on me came courtesy of the depths of ES.com, as I tried to find that perfect Joe Smiley picture I could use on my Twitter page but then got distracted by all the other random web stuff I have done since 1996.
The nine-six was good to me, in retrospect: I found the Open School, the Purple Press and a writing voice I didn’t know existed within me (thanks, Leo). I also found GeoCities and how to make my own webpage. Now I had fooled around on the internet the year previous in Mr. Ryan’s computer graphics class at Como Park Senior High (I even had an awesome CPHS email: estemme@como.stpaul.k12.mn.us) but had zero idea that I could actually create my own content on it. The ‘Cities changed all of that forever.
Granted, my first effort wasn’t very impressive. Coupled with that awful “ZombieMan2006″ moniker, it’s a wonder that I wasn’t forced to quit the internet entirely. But, as I started to poke around in HTML and learn the code, I was able to branch out a bit, resulting in the not quite so unfortunate Aerosmith Tribute. It all snowballed from there, resulting in the DISH Network Tribute (?), Open graduation packet, and, finally in 1999, the first vestiges of an actual personal homepage.
I feel like over the years I have done some great work (GOTW!™) and some not so great work (The Probe) here at the .com, but the entire time I was freely expressing myself. Integrating a weblog greatly enhanced this and hastened my move away from the free website model, but without that fall of ’96 I might not have had that opportunity. Or at least I would have socialized more.
Endnote: Yahoo! decided in April 2009 that GeoCities wasn’t worth the billions in stock they had paid for it and is shuttering the service by the end of the year. As an internet fashionista I breathed a sigh of relief, since hundreds of horrid designs are now going away, but I still feel pangs of sadness, as GeoCities truly was ahead of its time and helped to usher in the “personal” aspect of the internet. Goodbye, old friend.

musings from an abesntee blogger

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Note: This is third in a series of draft-level posts I’ve had in Blogger for ages that I am finishing and posting. I originally started this one August 26, 2006, and have kept up my odd writing style to maintain post integrity. New content should follow this series, get excited! Thanks for reading. –ES

it’s August!

during the later days of this month, the State Fair happens, which is pretty much accepted by Minnesotans as the last desperate gasp of the summer. soon, it’ll be time for shedding trees, hay rides and them pesky trick or treaters… all sings of autumn, the absolute greatest season ever.

as I sit here and write this, my window is open and the crisp cool evening air is blowing in, and with it comes the aroma of a neighbor’s fireplace. the scents af autumn are among the reasons I love this time of year. I also love the look of Como Lake as I bike around it, with the runners starting to wear a little heavier clothing, and the oak and maple trees in front of the stately lake houses starting to show off their color. the geese are preparing for their migration south, and the park and lake start to wind down to a peaceful calm. a lot of times, my memory takes me back to my grade school days, and I think about the anticipation of the new school year: new clothes, new supplies and new friends to make. I also remember all those glorious Sunday mornings playing football with the guys at church, and all the fall activities we’d do like haunted houses, hay bale mazes and the like.

it seems a tease, though, because like spring, autumn in Minnesota is fleeting, and if you blink you miss it. soon, the crisp air will give way to sleet and wind chills, the branches will be covered with ice and snow, and parkas and shovels are required equipment till next May. I guess my point is, get out and enjoy the fall while we have it, since like everything else in life our time with it is perilously short. and don’t forget to try the apple cider!

#34, 1961-2006

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Note: This is another in a series of posts from the “unfinished” heap, originally intended for publication on March 8, 2006. I have retained my odd writing style from that period to make my thought seem more seamless. A thousand pardons for the not-so-new content as I figure out this blog’s direction. Thanks again for reading. – ES

on Sunday, [March 5, 2006,] one of my very favorite baseball players was felled by a massive stroke. the next evening, after compulsively checking the Star Tribune and ESPN for updates all day, I found out that Kirby Puckett had finally passed from us without ever regaining conciousness. I couldn’t believe it; things like this aren’t supposed to happen to your heroes.

in 2000, I worked at an Audio King in Edina’s Centennial Lakes Plaza. Kirby was a frequent customer, and one fall Sunday afternoon I visited the store just as he was finalizing the purchase of a bedroom television. I was there with my family, and he looked over and recognized my dad from some work he had done on one of Kirby’s vehicles. we all walked over to him where he was standing with his son and daughter, and my dad shook his hand and said hi. he then introduced my sister, my brothers and I and Kirby introduced his kids to us. the only problem: my mom was standing a bit behind us kids and my dad failed to introduce her to him, which she has never let him forget to this day.

the reason I bring this anecdote up is to show what kind of guy Kirby was in my interactions with him. I ran into him a few more times in my two years at that store, and though he didn’t recognize me all the time, he always had a smile on his face and joked around with everyone around him. and this is what I will choose to remember about him as I go forward in my life. we all have things in our lives that we have done and regret, but we shouldn’t let those things define us. Kirby Puckett was a shining example of this. while the final years of his life were controversial, he did a lot of good for the community and remains one of the premier role models of a sport that seems to have lost its way.
RIP, Puck. don’t forget to touch ‘em all up there.