When Jay Leno leaves The Tonight Show in 2009, he won’t be leaving NBC after all.

It has been known for quite some time now that Jay Leno would be leaving his post on The Tonight Show in 2009.  This was going to allow Conan O’Brien to move up from the 11:30 EST spot to the far more lucrative 10:30 EST spot, kind of like being called up to the major leagues in baseball, this was a sign that Mr. O’Brien had made it.

Now, image if after all this shifting and maneuvering you come to find out that the major leagues are actually just another farm team as the real “show” will now be in prime time.  While Mr. O’Brien has not yet said anything, that is what I imagine ran through his head yesterday when it was leaked that Leno would be getting a new show at 10 PM EST when he leaves The Tonight Show.

Essentially NBC has completely changed the rules of the late night talk show game, and it will either end up badly hurting the shows that remain in those late slots, or Leno’s show will crash and burn like nothing you have ever seen before.  The people who enjoy Leno will no longer have to wait until after the 11 PM EST news to see him, they will be able to watch him at 10, then their news, and be in bed before Conan even comes on… just as things are now with the current set up.

When Johnny Carson prepared to leave the show in 1992, he had appointed David Letterman to be his successor.  Depending on who tells the story, Leno somehow ended up usurping Dave as the annoited one, much to Carson’s displeasure, and got the show.  This caused Letterman to leave NBC for CBS, where he ended up finally getting his desired 11:30 slot.  (and unknown until Carson’s death in 2005, where Carson secretly sent Dave monologue jokes.  If that wasn’t a flip off to Leno, I don’t know what was)

With the 12:30 slot, Letterman’s old slot, vacant, O’Brien was hired to take over the show with the promise that he would someday inherit The Tonight Show.  Well, as Leno’s latest contract expired, it was decided it was time for that to happen, but it seems Mr. Leno wasn’t quite as ready for it.  This is when rumors started circulate that Leno may jump ship for a new show on ABC, much to Jimmy Kimmel’s displeasure, and NBC started frantically trying to come up with a way to keep Leno at NBC while still giving O’Brien his promised show.

Rumors circulated that Leno would host the American version of the popular British car show Top Gear, but he opted against it.  Rumors went quiet for a while as to what NBC would do, but then news came out yesterday that NBC was going to cut down on scripted dramas due to budget concerns.  Some specualted they would go to 2 hours of prime time a night, or even cut a whole night, but then this rumor broke, and this appears to be the true solution.

Five nights a week Leno will be on at 10 PM EST.  This will keep NBC filling 3 hours or prime time a night, will keep them on every night and will keep Leno from going to another network.  Leno’s show will cost less to produce than even reality shows, and far less than scripted dramas which run, at minimum, $1 – $2 million per episode.  This is a win-win deal for NBC, but I fear it is everyone else who loses.

NBC will have three hours of talk shows a night, which will probably lead to talk show fatigue amongst viewers.  The A-list guests who went on The Tonight Show will probably opt for the primetime show, leaving O’Brien back with his b & c-list celebrities, and who knows what Jimmy Fallon will come up with when he takes over O’Brien’s old show.

Let me make no bones about this… I despise Leno.  I think he is a talentless hack who rips off his material from everyone under the sun.  His comedic bits are horribly outdated and he has the interviewing skills of a chimp.  In short, I don’t watch him at 11:30, I’m such as heck not watching him at 10.  My only dog in this fight is that he was easier to avoid at 11:30, now I may run into him.

I also think O’Brien has gotten the very raw end of this deal.  When all of the attention should be on him and his success at taking over the lognest running show in late night… he is now back to being the second fiddle.  True, NBC kept their promise to him, but when you devalue the promise in the 11th hour, it still sucks.  I have not been a big viewer of late night talk shows in some years, but I may start back up just to give Conan support.

As I said up front, Leno is either going to crash and burn like no one has ever seen before, or he is going to take down the whole late night circuit just from the sheer fatigue of this many talk shows.  This whole thing stinks from top to bottom, and all of the blame is squarely on the shoulders of Jeff Zucker, head of NBC.  He has green lighted horrible show after horrible show, and now he is desperate for anything that will save his job, and damn the consequences.

I could be wrong, it’s been known to happen, and this whole scheme may just work out fine and dandy for all the parties involved… but I doubt it.  NBC is in a shambles, and they need a Hail Mary move, there is no doubt about that, but this just isn’t it.  Honestly, can anyone point out one single person in this world that has ever said, “Gee, I’d watch late night talk shows if they would just put them in primetime!”

My guess to the answer to that questions is a big old, “no”.

What is with the surge in teenagers loving vampires?

I talked about this sudden love of vampires in Scattercast episode 20, but then when I spent my day in Hastings, I found even more evidence of it.  As I sat in one of the reading chairs to flip through a magazine, I found myself sitting across from the teen novels.  As one girl in a letterman’s jacket with “10″ on the sleeve (oof… I feel old since mine had “89″ on it), I noticed she was picking up one of the Twilight novels.  I just shook my head and went back to my magazine.

After the girl departed, I started scanning the racks and noticed another series of vampire novels for teens, Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schrieber.  I knew nothing of this series, so I looked it up and Amazon pointed me to this summary from Booklist:

Gr. 7-10. Sixteen-year-old Raven is a Goth surrounded by “lesser” folks: her parents have transformed themselves from hippie to corporate, and her only friend at school is an outsider everyone picks on. In Raven’s rich imaginary life, she is bold and special and in love with the idea of meeting a vampire. Schreiber uses a careful balance of humor, irony, pathos, and romance as she develops a plot that introduces the possibility of a real vampire–in the form of an extra-handsome boy, of course– while exploring how a girl like Raven finds ways to cope with a bully who is both class- and gender-conscious of his supposed superiority. Raven’s voice is immediately charming, in spite of her alleged bravado and coldheartedness. Her hometown could be any Small Town, USA, and its possibly haunted mansion just lightens the scene rather than making the story silly. This tale slides down easily and will be welcomed by Goths willing to look on the lighter side of their own culture as well as by readers who have an openminded appreciation for the vagaries of their peers and, perhaps, of themselves.

When I went to Ms. Schrieber’s site, I discovered a sixth book is scheduled for Summer ’09 and the seventh is on track for Summer ’10.

What in the world is going on?  What is this sudden teen obsession with vampires?  True, I understand they are romanticizing the concept to a ridiculous degree, but at the end of the day you are romanticizing creatures that are mass-murdering blood suckers!  Oh, yes, they are misunderstood and are outsiders like you… not really, no.  They drink the blood of people.

South Park sent up this whole craze in their 12th season finale, “The Ungroundable“, and as they do with many subjects, they seemed to boil it down to its essentials: It’s a fad for some, a way to empower others, such as Butters used it.  In the end most of it can be blamed on the clothing store chain Hot Topic… a concept I don’t wholly disagree with.  As I said in Scattercast, I can remember my gothy moments from my own teen years, but I certainly never went around putting in fake vampire teeth and drinking clamato juice.

As with all fads, I am sure this too will pass, and I am certainly not saying there is anything that horribly wrong with teens trying to find themselves, but why vampires?  Is it the immortality?  I would hope it isn’t the drinking blood angle, but maybe it is.  And what would these kids do if they ever met a real vampire?  It reminds me of a second season episode of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer entitled “Lie To Me” when Buffy’s fifth grade crush comes to town and takes her to a bar filled with kids obsessed with vampires who dress like them, or how they think they would dress.  When the real vampire’s show up, namely Spike’s gang, all of them freak out and want to go home realizing just how truly evil the real things are.  This episode should be required watching for this new generation of Vamp kids.

So, what say you?  Why is this the new fad amongst teens?  What do you make of it?

Ever gotten to spend an hour in a store just watching how it operates? It can be interesting.

I’ve been cleaning my house lately, and decided to get a large chunk of DVDs out of my life, along with some older video games. Seeing as I wasn’t interested in spending a lot of time putting them on eBay, I decided to take them to the local Hastings to sell them. Let’s just say I got the distinct feeling they would have much rather not seen me come in.

Before I say anything else, I need to mention that Hastings has a large banner outside their store saying you should sell your used items to be able to afford gifts for Christmas.  This says to me that they are still welcoming used items during the month of December, and I honestly did take into consideration if this was the best month to do this trade-in, but with the banner there I figured why not.

So, I walk in with my two boxes and some loose DVDs and set them on the trade-in counter.  The woman was checkign out some customers, no problem, and she finally turned to look at me when done.  She scanned the stack with her eyes and went “Oh… a buyback” and she starts looking around for another employee immediately.  I told her I was sorry for the hassle, “Ohhh… that’s fine… let me find you someone.”  She pawns me off on to another employee who also goes, “Oh… I love buy backs” and rolls her eyes.  Again, I aplogized for the hassle, “Oh, that’s fine…”

Okay, look, I get the point, you don’t want to do it, fine, but you have a banner up saying you will, so suck it up and do your job and don’t make me feel like an ass for making you do it.  Yeesh.  They told me it would take a while process, that I should look around or do whatever.

As I wandered around the store for the next hour, stopping only once so they could ask if I wanted store credit or cash, I was amazed by not only their pricing, but how busy they were.  I mentioned this on StarterTech today, but I saw the newest version of The Nightmare Before Christmas marked at $29.99. If you go over to Amazon, it is $20.99.  This is just one of many examples of the pricing I saw, but yet if you went up to the check out, it was ten people deep almost the entire time I was in there.

How?

How is it people can not be aware of much lower pricing out there in the world?  Heck, even Walmart is cheaper and it’s only a few blocks away!  Here’s another great example, Gilmore Girls season 1 is $14.99 just about everywhere now.  Amazon, Walmart, Target all have it at that price.  Hastings had it at $45.99.  Admittedly that is below the original suggested retail price of $59.98, but still, it’s insane.

After my walking around for an hour, shaking my head, I finally got called back up to the register and was informed they couldn’t take everything I brought in, but they would give me $223.08 in store credit for what they would take. Believe me, you don’t want to know how much stuff that covered.  I agreed to it, used every cent of my store credit (mostly on sale items so I didn’t feel like I was being take advantage of), and left.

I think my days with shopping at Hastings are over.  If this was an isolated day of snarly customer service, I would excuse it as the season, but I don’t think I have ever been in there that the staff didn’t snarl at least once.  Think it’s just me?  Wish it was, but it isn’t.  The Kirksville store has a horrible reputation in town, and just about everyone has similar stories of the service from them.

Oh well, just another place I don’t have to worry about wasting my money in.

Is it just me, or is there just no sense of Christmas spirit this year?

Maybe it’s the economy, and the never ending bad news that seems to come with it, but I just have no Christmas spirit this year.  I had to go to Home Depot today to shop for a new shower faucet set, and even looking at their Christmas decor, it just didn’t seem as bright or enticing as usual.

I think it may also be partially that I am slowly finding myself turning in to Clark Griswold from the Vacation movies, specifically Christmas Vacation.  Each year I am hoping to recapture that sense of wonderment I had as a child about Christmas, and with the ever more depressing news, like the lose of 533,000 in November, it’s just hard to feel cheery about much of anything.  I’m not in the mood to shop for gifts, no matter how hard I try.

Maybe it will finally click once I get around to watching my normal bevy of favorite Christmas movies, but I sure hope something kicks in soon and gets me excited about it.

It’s episode 20… Scattercast is considering dropping out of college and “finding itself”!

- Sorry for the one week hiatus everyone. I couldn’t breathe, and could hardly talk. I’m back this week and full of rants!

- Let turkey be turkey! A rant on turkey alterations.

- Vampires are fascinating, but are they THAT fascinating? Why do people fixate on them and romanticize them?

- Some plugging for my spot on TENtech News

Here’s

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for those who wish to download it.

The Kids in the Hall are heading back to TV, but not in the way you would expect.

The Canadian comedy troupe had their own self-titled series on the Canadian Broadcasting Company from 1989 – 1994, and they then released a movie, Brain Candy, in 1996.  Since that time they have reunited for a few reunion tours, but have mainly worked on their own projects, most notably was Dave Foley’s stint on News Radio.  Now comes the news that the Kids are ready to do a new project as one team again, but it won’t be sketch comedy this time.

According to The Star, the troupe will be doing an eight episode mini-series for the CBC tentatively entitled Death Comes to Town.  As opposed to the old format of sketches, this series will have a continuing narrative, but we will see the five members playing multiple roles throughout the run.

For those of you unfamiliar with their work, even though Kids in the Hall were taken under the wing of Lorne Michaels, the long-time producer of Saturday Night Live, their sketches tended to run more in a vein similar to Monty Python.  While they did some very obvious comedy, they also tended towards the absurd and surreal on numerous occasions.  It sounds like this new series may be similar in tone as Dave Foley mentioned in the article that it would be somewhat similar to England’s League of Gentlemen in tone, which for those of us who saw that, you know how out there that series was while being able to funny.

I really couldn’t care less what format this new project takes so long as they are working together on something every one can enjoy again. So, welcome back Kevin McDonald, Scott Thompson, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Dave Foley, you have been missed.  I leave you with one of my all time favorite sketches… the Fur Trappers.

Apparently you just can’t keep me away from making podcasting and videos these days.

Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins, whom I worked with on the Machable Conversations video show, has launched a new tech news videocast named TENtech.   Besides Mr. Hopkins, you can expect to see weekly appearances by people like Art Lindsey, Steven Hodson of WinExtra, Mona, Saha, Paisano, Julia Roy, Alana Taylor and, yes, me.  I’ll be appearing each Wednesday and talking about the type of news stories I do on StarterTech.  So besides my personal series of podcasts, Scattercast, you will now get a second dose of me a week, but with video!

I’ve embedded the first episode below for you to see (yes, I am in this one), and you’ll be able to find the latest episode each day to the right of this post in that little window.  Make sure to give us feedback on the show, and do remember the one in this post is our very first episode, so it may be a little rough around the edges (especially my portion).

I don’t think in the entire history of this blog I have discussed one my advertisers blatantly.  It hasn’t ever been a hard and fast rule, it just hasn’t been anything that needed addressing.  Suffice it to say that if there is an ad on this site, it is a company I’ve dealt with, or a site that I enjoy.

The reason I bring this up is that as soon as I sort out some graphic layout problems, hopefully within the next few days, I will be adding my absolutely favorite clothing store to the ads on the right.  The company is called Big Dog Sportswear, and I think I can safely say that 95% of the clothing I own is from there.  The picture shown here is just what I have on from them as I type this.  (a polo shirt and a fleece jacket)

I’ve been wearing their clothes for the better part of 10 years now, and I can’t say enough good things about them.  They’re comfortable, wash beautifully, hold up over time, they are just some of the best clothes I’ve ever owned hands down.  I have several polo shirts that lasted multiple trips to Japan, washed there, worn again, and then came back with me for even more everyday wear.  Considering I have always gone to Japan in August when it runs about 95F and 95% humidity, this is saying more than you think.

They carry just about everything you can look for from shorts, house pants, athletic shorts, graphic tee shirts, polo shirts, button down shirts, coats, pants and on and on.  The only draw back to them is that, yes, every item does feature the dog logo in some way.  Some items are more subtle than others, but in general, he’s always somewhere on the clothes.  The added bonus is that not only are the items reasonably priced, but they almost always have some sort of giveaway or sale going on their site: free duffle bags, 75% off this or that, lots of Buy One, Get One free offers and so on.

So, yes, I am shilling one of my advertisers, but if you ever were to walk in to my bedroom closet, you would see why.  I am truly that happy with their product and their brand.  Please go over and take a look at www.bigdogs.com , I think you’ll be glad you did.

Isn’t that headline scary?  Yes, Pownce is shutting down… now, for the 99% of you who have no idea what/who Pownce is, I’ll fill you in.

Kevin Rose, the man behind Digg, hinted for a while back in 2007 that he was working on a secret project, and on June 27, 2007, it was revealed to be a new microblogging service named Pownce.  The new competitor to, the then growing in popularity, Twitter started off as an invite-only Beta that people were desperate to get in to and try.  With Rose connected to it, people were sure that this was going to be the next big thing in Web 2.0.

As people got in to Pownce, many people were heard to utter, “Er… it’s just like Twitter”, and they opted to stick with the service they had already invested so much time in.  The clamor for invites didn’t die though as everyone wanted to take a look at it for themselves.  When the service went public on January 22, 2008, you pretty much heard all the chatter about Pownce died down with the exception of one of the other people behind-the-scenes.

Besides Rose, the face of Pownce was a programmer named Leah Culver.  Ms. Culver’s personal life became bigger than the service itself as it was revealed she was dating Daniel Burka, an employee of Digg.  This led to much speculation that this was how Rose had become involved with the service.  Shortly after the service went live, Culver and Burka parted ways.

Ms. Culver’s next love interest was Brad Fitzpatrick of SixApart, the company behind the blogging site LiveJournal.  When that relationship didn’t last, she then moved on to Cal Henderson from Flickr… then MG Siegler from VentureBeat.. and then Nick Douglas, formerly an editor at Valleywag and Gawker.  Essentially Ms. Culver was dating her way through the entire Web 2.0 community.

All of this brings us to today where it was announced that SixApart had purchased Pownce… and promptly killed it.  Effective December 15th the site will be no more, and the creative team, including Ms. Culver, will be absorbed in to the SixApart team.

Initially I had no interest in going in to Ms. Culver’s personal life, but when Valleywag laid it all out, it was fascinating to see how things had come about.  It also shows you just how small the current Internet community is behind all of these companies with non-sensical names really is.

While nothing is known for sure about if the Culver/Burka connection is what brought Rose to the table, you do have to wonder.  If it was that got him to attach his name to it, are people in Silicon Valley now going to have to ask someone before they invest in a company, “who are you currently dating?  Is it serious?”

Pownce really didn’t have much to offer against such an established user base as what Twitter had.  Their claim to fame was the ability to share media, and that isn’t why most people used microblogging services to begin with.

So now we are left with questions if the people who invested money made anything back, and will the dating antics of people behind companies will become under my scrutiny before Internet superstars lend their names to a startup.  The whole ordeal feels sordid and dirty to me, and just not the way to conduct business.  Was Pownce really worthy of starting up in the first place, or was it all based on who was wearing whose Varsity jacket and been asked to the Homecoming dance?

Mind you, these are all just my random thoughts and opinions from the details that are available.  I could be totally off base, or I might be dead on, who knows.  What I do know is when running in the big leagues and playing with millions of dollars of other people’s money, perhaps you should keep your dating life out of the virtual tabloids.