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Listen ever earlier – and plan!

2007-10-02

In times of TV stations changing their schedule more often and on shorter notice – especially ProSieben is notorious in Germany for series – I’m generally wondering how useful TV magazines are that cover two or even four weeks, plus the period between release and first schedule day.

But even weekly magazines may have a problem, especially if this period becomes longer, and so I was surprised to find the latest edition of the HÖRZU (title translates to “listen”; for me, still the best of the “big” German TV magazines) in my mailbox today – with schedules from 13 October, i.e. 11 days in advance (including 1 public holiday, though). Already in the recent past, it arrived mostly on thursdays (9 days in advance), earlier it was fridays, like (still) on public sale in shops. Well, since I use electronic means more and more, it’s only a matter of time until I’ll do without any printed schedule, anyway. But I digress.

In this issue, they included a “channel planner“, a 8×21 cm large card where you can write down your individual channel numbers next to the station name and logo and then use it as bookmark for the magazine. However, this planner seems not properly thought out to me:

(1) The stations are not listed in the order they appear in the magazine: below “main stations”, Arte and Vox are swapped, and the order and the colors of the “thirds” are completely mixed up.

(2) Under “familiy stations”, there’s not only that church stuff (the inclusion of which into the magazine I consider a waste of space, anyway – but for all I care, well, let the beleivers have ther station, it kicked a call-in channel out of the magazine ), but also a shopping channel. Now that really doesn’t belong there.

(3) On the back side, there’s room for program numbers for Kabel Deutschland and Premiere, two big digital channel bouquets. Room for one program number. That may only be useful for people who have stored the channels of the respective broadcaster en bloc in their receivers (for the first number of each), be it because they are unable to make it better, be it because they use castrated receivers (as KD likes to provide ) which do not allow a re-ordering…

Serial Questions

2007-10-01

A questionnaire circulating among German blogs:

Are you regularly watching TV series?
Yes. Currently on TV mostly Bones, Stargate (just ended), Prison Break, NCIS (forgot that one), Ghost Whisperer, Veronica Mars, Simpsons; and with less attention (e.g. while surfing/reading blogs) the CSIs and the older Simpsons episodes.
What constitutes a good TV series for you?
It should have good characters and be exciting (or funny), and a continuous story arc can help a lot if it’s good (Prime example: Babylon 5).
Is there a series that you’d leave everything else for as it is?
Thanks to hard disk recorders/receivers that allow convenient time-shift viewing, that didn’t happen for years.
And which series is a no-go?
All that telenovela and daily soap stuff will not pass my liquid crystals.
Do you buy series on DVD?
Yes – especially those that you don’t get (properly) on German TV and/or I’d prefer in English and which are most important to me:
24 (you just have to watch multiple episodes in a row – Season 6 is on its way), Supernatural (Season 2 has just arrived), Babylon 5, Hex, and especially Buffy & Angel.

Now my Blog has fever…

2007-09-30

This is about Blogfever.de, a new (and hopefully better) German competitor to a German would-be version of BlogRush for German blogs only.

Blogfever-Screenshot Daniel from the ChaosZone informed me (and others) via comment on my post about BLOGspeed and BlogRush about a new German service for link exchange with topically related blogs (German only): Blogfever.de – if you switch to German in my blog, you can see it in the middle of the sidebar. Daniel has beta-tested this service extensively and reports about it (German), incl. comparison with BLOGspeed.

The major advantages – might be a hint for American services, too – are that you get credits for clicks and views to have your links displayed on other blogs, that you’ll get (soon extensive) statistics and that you can set individual colors and width from the very beginning. Since the service is so new, there are hardly any blogs registered yet, especially outside the “Computer & Internet” category.

Update: I forgot to mention that you can also specify tags to facilitate better correlation of the link displaying than is possible with categories alone. And it seems to work fairly well (as far as you can tell that already).

Let’s see how this will develop – hopefully there will soon be other links than from ChaosZone in my widget… In a few weeks, I guess, I’ll kick the then inferior of the two (BLOGspeed and Blogfever). (Of course, with the English setting, my blog will display only BlogRush.)

Envious World Cup Final

2007-09-30

The Brazilians’ envy of the German’s 2:0 victory in the women’s football (soccer) world cup final that has just ended in Shanghai, who could defend their title from 2003 – congratulations!
Other goalies’ envy of Nadine Angerer who was able to keep her goal clean throughout the tournament
The men’s national team’s envy, maybe, who reached “only” 3rd place last year;
The women’s envy, maybe, of the higher audience interest in men’s soccer;
And, since “Neid” is the German word for “envy”, of course Silvia Neid, the German coach.

They shoot with demonstrators!

2007-09-28

As if it wasn’t bad enough what the military regime in Myanmar/Burma (now what’s the name?) is doing – and not just during the current demonstrations –, now the ZDFtext reports about shooting with demonstrators:

ZDFtext: Rangun: Sie sollen auch wieder Demonstranten geschlagen und geschossen haben. Es soll sich um Warnschüsse handeln.

Translation: “They reportedly have beaten and shot with demonstrators again. They say it was warning shots.”

They must have quite big cannons… and how does this work, a warning shot of demonstrators – are they shot only slowly or a low height so they don’t die when falling back down?

Alright, it may be just a typo – one little letter in the German text so it would read “…have beaten and shot at…” Bad enough.