TV/Movies

Category Archives:

TV/Movies

Statistical aftermath

by cimddwc · 2008-11-17

Now what are the results – as far as they concern myself – of the incredible TV muck, erm, “experiment” called “Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens” about which I reported more or less live?

A new record on Saturday that didn’t last long: WP.com-Stats counted 2826 page views (probably not 12am CET being their limit, but UTC), including 768 for the pre-report and 1120 for the live report. The best value since the start of my blog, even better than the 2549 in February – also thanks to Uri Geller.
The visitor run continued on Sunday: 3068 total, 1126 for the pre-report and 809 for the live report. On early Sunday afternoon, the average of the last 6 months was already reached in November.
Almost all searchers arrived at the pre-report initially – which I expected and placed a big link there. (And of course this also contributed to the high total page views.) The pre-report was also in Google.de’s top 5 for several search word combinations, sometimes even ahead of ProSieben, the show’s TV station. And the highest-placed blog.
Bloggerei.de counted on Saturday until midnight 423 unique visitors1 for the live report, which was enough for no. 12 in the top topics list; there were a total of 1295 visitors on Saturday. (Which also means that another estimated 350-400 visitors were satisfied with the pre-report. Or unsatisfied and left again. Or didn’t notice the link after all.)
On Sunday, I temporarily reached no. 5 in the top topics and rank 28 in the top blogs list, as far as I noticed (there’s no history) – 2110 unique visitors total, about 700 for the live report.
Addendum: Originally I had left out the data from browser-statistik.de in order to not overload this post with numbers, but since Jan, who operates the site, cried so heart-rendingly (“ ”), I added them now: 2751 pages accessed by 1111 visitors on Saturday, 3061 pages by 2002 visitors on Sunday. Which put me on no. 9 on the charts there.
According to whos.amung.us, there were up to 53 online at the same time – even if that tool isn’t known for its reliability, it rather has outages (sometimes for hours) than counting too much.
Originally I had planned to update my report in every or every other commercial break – but when there still was none on 9pm (there apparently were rather few commercial customers), I quickly uploaded the first part (in German) anyway; after all, there were already several readers and a few comments.
13 commenters wrote 35 comments during the show; more were added later on – thanks!

The ratings were surprisingly low, rather disastrous for ProSieben – here’s the top 5 of Saturday’s primetime (source: teletexts):

Station	Show	Viewers aged 3+	Marktet share	Viewers 14-49 years	Market share
Sat.1	Chronicles of Narnia (movie)	5.56 Mio.	18.9%	3.25 Mio	27.6%
RTL	Das Supertalent (casting show)	5.55 Mio.	18.8%	3.09 Mio.	26.2%
ARD	Musikantenstadl (“folk” music)	5.32 Mio.	17.8%
ZDF	Unter Verdacht (TV movie)	4.57 Mio.	15.2%
Pro7	Uri Geller live	1.40 Mio.	4.8%	0.85 Mio.	7.3%
Rerun on Sunday morning		0.54 Mio.	6.1%	0.38 Mio.	8.6%

Now does ARD being that far ahead of Pro7 speak for the intelligence of the TV audience or against it…?

423? 42 and 23 blended together? Conspiracy!!!! [↩]

“Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens” – Report, opinion…

by cimddwc · 2008-11-15

…criticism, grumbling, call it what you want. At any rate, here I’m writing about today’s show “Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens – Das unglaubliche Live-Experiment” (“The incredible live experiment”) on ProSieben (Germany).

You can even have your own message sent into space – but if you’re hoping for a real reply, you’re hoping in vain, the distances are just too long, and if there actually are intelligent beings “out there”, they’d have to understand the messages in the first place. No matter how pretentious the chief spoon fiddler’s talk is (my translation):

“Anything can happen”, Uri Geller says. He, too, has a personal message for the aliens: “We open our hearts and out thoughts for you. We strongly believe that you are somewhere out there. Please show yourselves in the night of November 15. The people will look out their windows and wait for your signal.”

Be careful, Uri, when the people look out the windows, they miss the commercials, and ProSieben won’t like that!

Guests

Mysticism eccentric Nina Hagen – present despite her recent virus illnes.
Ancient astronaut dreamer Erich von Däniken.
“The Next Uri Geller” (Germany) winner Vincent Raven.
“A man and a woman who, according to their own statement, first met in a spaceship. Today they are a couple and will be asked about their experiences with aliens during the show under hypnosis.” Oh dear.
By telephone from the USA: Edgar Mitchell – Apollo 14 astronaut and ufo believer. Note that the former is no basis of a higher credibility of the latter.
Host will be the same as for “The Next Uri Geller”: Stefan Gödde.

Beginning

What did ali comment at Florian’s live blogging (German) who’d also have liked to read along (translated):

But I’m already appointed for a fondue. Lots of cheese, too, but better.

Well then bon appetit – which I also wish my readers with this nice mess. After commercials with aliens in them in talk talk talk for accomodation, they’re starting overly punctual with Gödde’s and Geller’s prerecorded introduction and the Ukrainian radiotelescope, Geller promises that some of us will receive a reply, and the raven guy will take care of the soul contact – but somehow I’m missing the warning message “Don’t try this at home!” from the magic show…

A pale head with alien face tattoo on its back was briefly seen, then Gödde alredy starts with a lie by saying there will be messages sent into space for the first time – more respectable people have done so already via radio and space probes as well as more or less intentional all radio and TV stations for a long time.

But first a little film as introduction with some “c-lebrities” and Geller himself saying a few sentences. Geller says we’d deserve a true answer. From him? Impossible. Impossible in a different sense, too, the amount of applause he gets when entering the stage and reporting about his large ball of light as a child. The biggest experiment of his life is what is supposed to happen tonight – I rather think that was the test whether his cheap spoon trick would bring him success back then – and us viewers are to get pen and paper ready.

Switch to the Deep Space Center in Evpatoria/Ukraine, brief introduction of the radiotelescope – no money left for 16:9 in the recording, apparently, the presenter colleague Daniel Aminati looked quite fat. Direction of the ‘scope will be the star Hip 4872, 310 trillion kilometers away from us (32.8 lightyears, in the area of the Cassiopeia constellation). And the speed of light is “absolute madness” for him.

Ufo films

Batman in Batman?

by cimddwc · 2008-11-05

Bats + Moon

One could start to believe that Turkey is apporaching America (and somehow also Germany, unfortunately) regarding the utilization of lawyers and courts: The mayor of the city of Batman in south-east Turkey wants to sue the producer of the Batman movie – that is, the comic hero movie – because the name was used without agreement from the city.

Apart from the wee fact that Batman, the comic hero, is almost 70 years old and the Batman man is a little late – why sue at all? Why not use the homonymy touristically, for advertising? How about a Batman amusement park in Batman?

Oh, no, probably the Batman people are afraid that those owning the comic rights sue them – or demand horrendous license fees – if they’d use Batman just like that for Batman…

Hopefully he manufacturers of baseball and other bats don’t jump on the bandwagon. Or pet shop owners. Or Dracula.

Illustration: weirdvis/sxc

“Extraterrestrially galactical” or rock-bottom gall?

by cimddwc · 2008-11-05

I Want To Believe

If you believe, the German TV station ProSieben is content with “Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens: The incredible TV experiment“ (about which, as I announced on Sunday, I will report here), you’re mistaken, because Nina Hagen, only by her own description “half human, half angel” and already a guest in Uri’s transgalactical telepathy take-in show, gets a timeslot for a “documentary” afterwards (all quotes my translations):

”Nina Hagen’s ufo hunt – Searching aliens in Roswell”, on Saturday, November 15, 2008, at 22.30 on ProSieben (Germany) (assuming the spoonbender and his aliens finish on time).

In her baggage: A small sunshade, a peace banner and a big load of curiosity.

And an even bigger load of prejudice. Were she really curious, she’d also be interested in the counter-arguments – but that’d be nothing to write home about for the target audience, of course.

Was there really an alien crash in 1947? Did the US Air Force really possess an “unknown flying object”? And was all that covered up by the government afterwards?

The skeptical–sensible reply, of course, is 3x no. But who are the people the shrill Berliner is asking?

Answers to her questions are given by nuclear physicists, ufo authors, visitors of the current ufo festival, and a man who claims he’s half man, half alien.

What qualifies a nuclear physicist for an alien answer? That he, Stanton Friedman, wrote a book about it and…

… frankly admits:

“I’m jealous of Nina, because I never met a ufo. For 50 years I’m examining evidence for flying saucers. Because there is overwhelming evidence that Earth is being visited by extraterrestrial spaceships.”

Nina Hagen “Evidence”? I doubt that. “Evidence” only for those who desperately want to believe and almost obsessively ignore real evidence and critical, more plausible explanations. Which surely also applies to the other people mentioned above who were asked, including the “documentary” author herself who says about her own “ufo encounter”:

“Back then I was living in Malibu when I saw a ufo in the middle of the night. I was totally flashed.

Before or after?

Beautiful lights were beaming at me, I had not the slightest feat, magnificent energy overwhelmed me. Three beings were standing in the ufo, but none of them was moving. It was an overwhelming experience.”

Other people call things like that either (drug) intoxication – now I don’t want to allege something illegal here, but from an impartial point of view, you couldn’t rule it out –, dream or hypnagogic/hypnopompic halluzinations. Quote from SkepDic:

These states may be associated with sleep paralysis or other forms of sleep disturbances, including mild brain seizures. Sleep paralysis occurs in the hypnagogic state or the hypnopompic state. The description abductees give of their experience–being unable to move or speak, feeling some sort of presence, feeling fear and an inability to cry out–is a list of the symptoms of sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is thought by some to account for not only many alien abduction delusions, but also other delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences.

So what will be the essence of this show? Surely not an objective documentary. In the style of Nina’s comment on the half-man-half-alien guy, I’d say: The viewer is absolutely manipulated. Totally nasty story.

Link tips:

Skeptic’s Dictionary: UFOs and extraterrestrials, alien abduction, Roswell.

Uri Geller live, three “Aliens” and no UFOs

by cimddwc · 2008-11-02

Dies ist nur der Vorbericht zur Sendung.
» Zum Live-Bericht hier klicken!

This is just the preliminary report for the show.
» To go to the live report, click here!

At least that’s what I expect from the show “Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens: The incredible TV experiment” on Saturday Nov 15, 2008 at 20:15 on ProSieben (Germany). For the guests can be labeled “aliens” in a way:

mysticism eccentric and (as ProSieben calls her) “world star” Nina Hagen – who really can be called “not of this world”;
Ancient astronaut dreamer and “Swiss success author” Erich von Däniken – in his “theories” also floating a little too high above reality (and also, being Swiss, an alien in Germany);
and “The Next Uri Geller” winner Vincent Raven – with his really alien performances.

Well then, as I did for the magic shows with Geller’s gibberish called “The Next Uri Geller” I will have a look at this concoction (and hopefully survive it) and report live or at least shortly after the end of the show, maybe with an intermediate update or two. (Though the English version will probably take a little more time.)

ProSieben writes about this show (all quotes my translations):

Uri Geller doesn’t doubt the existence of extraterrestrials:
“All my life I believed in ufos and aliens. Everyone should look up to the sky in a cloudless night and ask himself: Is it really possible that we’re alone? I think nobody can tell.”

The chief spoon bender, however, forgets to distinguish between life somewhere in space and actual visits here on earth – he probably thinks that everything is “just around the corner” and can be reached easily.

In a unique experiment, he wants to try to establish contact

That’d better be null-ique – certainly it won’t be an experiment that deserves this name, but instead the next of Geller’s dumbing of the masses. With an audience in the millions. Where “The Next Uri Geller” still had the somewhat entertaining magic tricks from the contestants, this show can only become some kind of “freak show”…

Together with the audience, the world-famous mystifier will send messages over a radio telescope into space. What will be the replies?

None. At any rate, not in the next few years. Anything else can only be tricks. The TV DIGITAL magazine writes about this teensy-weensy problem (emphasis mine, translation too):

In 1974, the astrophysicist Frank Drake in Arecibo sent a message towards the star cluster M 13. However it will only arrive there in 20000 lightyears[sic!]. Since Uri Geller doesn’t want to wait that long, he will rely not only on radio waves in the show, but also other means: “I need the viewers’ assistance”, the mentalist living in England says. “With the collective power of our thoughts, we will be able to establish contact. This has never been tried before.”

Never tried before? Geller indeed came up with a new trick after all those years?? A miracle! But probably all that’s new is that it’s pretended aliens instead of people who are the pretended telepathy transceivers.

But no matter how they will stage that, I had received the true greetings from the aliens back in September – thanks to spacetime loops.

Let’s have Erich von Däniken give the last word (from an interview in the TV DIGITAL):

You believe, like Uri Geller, that aliens exist. When will we be able to meet the aliens?
“The Maya in Central America have given a date for the return of their gods, i.e. the extraterrestrials. If you believe in this calendar, then it’s December 21, 2012. But you have to convert their date to our calendar. A very insecure thing.”
What a luck for you, for you could be nailed down to it otherwise, couldn’t you?
“Yes, and then everybody says: Neener-neener! [Ätschbätsch!]”

Which is also what all these guys can say whenever they find more people who believe their balderdash…

This is just the preliminary report for the show.
» To go to the live report, click here!

» List of all posts in this archive