Crime + Investigation and FYI Coming to Canada

It's bittersweet news to hear that Mystery TV and Twist TV will be rebranded as Canadian versions of FYI and the Crime and Investigation network. On one hand, Twist TV will FINALLY kick the bucket. On the other hand, Mystery TV, the only network where you can find all of Global's crime dramas all in one place, will be replaced by the crime genre's equivalent to reality television. It won't be a total lost since we still have Bravo, which pretty much does the same thing nowdays. Furthermore, the rebrand might help skew the channel back towards actual mystery and suspense shows. Plus, with a name like Mystery, branding is a bitch.

Meanwhile, lifestyle dump Twist TV will changeover to the newly launched FYI. If it were any other network, I would have pointed out the bad idea of launching a Canadian version of an American network before said network even launched! We're not talking about FXX, a young adult-oriented entertainment network and spinoff of an established brand both north and south of the boarder. We're talking about yet another lifestyle network, as if we didn't have enough of those already. But, hey, maybe lightning can strike twice.

You don't need to see how Lifetime Canada turned out, to know that CI and FYI will be treated very fairly under Shaw's umbrella. Ignoring IFC (which is the way it is because of the Americian version changing formats), Shaw Media has a very good track record with imported channels. History and Lifetime actually aired the Bonnie & Clyde miniseries in simulcast with the American channels and A&E! If that doesn't show dedication, I don't know what does.

Ultimately, while I'm a bit saddened to see Mystery TV go and couldn't care less about Twist TV, I'm more concerned about what Shaw is doing with Action. It looks like the channel will stick around, anchoring itself to TruTV shows. As the only pure-entertainment network for guys, I hope Action will stick around for a LONG time.

Metacritic Reviews Suck

So far I've counted DMC, Most Wanted 2012, Watch Dogs and every Call of Duty game after Black Ops. It's pretty obvious that this trend of "gamers" vandalizing Metacritic pages out of spite is never going to stop. You'd think they'd know that some people actually rely on honest reviews to save their money. 

So what? Just because Most Wanted 2 is nothing like the original Most Wanted, I should avoid it? I should condamn DMC just because of a friggin redesign. I'd expect this from the Sonic fanbase but, last I checked, Devil May Cry wasn't for little boys and spoiled brats. I'd go on but, I think I made my point.

This isn't about people having different tastes or opinions, this is about so-called gamers abusing the system just to besmirch a game they don't like. And you wonder why people like Spike TV paint the image that gamers are a bunch of basement-dwellers? Not exactly proving them wrong, aren't you?

Starting to Really Dislike Cable

You never really know what you have until it's gone. At first I thought Canadian's had it good when it came to television. What with genre protection preventing something like Nickmom from coming to Treehouse or Teletoon not going overboard with live-action programming like Cartoon Network did. It helps that most of said programming wasn't as bad as Cartoon Network's was (Mudpit > Anything on CNReal). Then, just yesterday, we had to downgrade our cable package because it was too expensive. I now have around 220 channels...AND THEY ALL SUCK!

Television nowadays panders to women, tween girls and men; everyone else gets the finger. Young adults, like myself, get the worst of it. There are only 4 or 5 channels of non-vanilla television we can enjoy. Everything else is just reality shows, dramas, lifestyle shows, sports, and teen pop trash. No wonder we spend more time on the internet. As much as I love to babble on about how crappy Canadian speciality services have become, my beef is with Rogers and other television service providers.

Back in my day, we had theme packages: channels of different subjects and genres grouped together. But now we 3 or 5 packages with a mishmash of channels and, ultimately, you're gonna buy the most expensive package because they have the channels you actually want to watch. It has dawned on me that, out of all the channels I have, I only watch about five. But now I only have two, and we have to pay an additional $14 on top of $60 our current package costs if I want to watch them again. Not all of my channels are available a la carte, so we'll still have to pay $10 or $20 just to get them back.

The annoying noisy non-existent-but-would-be protesters have lobbied for more pick-and-pay channels. That's good, run along and complain to the CRTC like you do for all of your problems. Meanwhile, I'm going to find an immediate alternative.

Turning Point [Update Summer 2014]

...So, I lost everything. Well, not everything, but most of my stuff is all gone. Music, videos, pictures, collected articles and websites, guilty pleasures. Almost all of it is gone. More importantly, all my machinima-related files, inducing Brawl hacks, are gone. Luckily, I STILL haven't gotten back to work on Reycralibur nor The Abridged Knights of Brawl. Plus, my laptop is still functional, and I haven't thrown out my old laptop, the one I used before, yet. On top of not losing all my stuff, there's a chance some of my older stuff, the movies and files I thought I lost forever, can be recovered at a future date. So, it's not that bad, for me at least.

But I shouldn't get my hopes up for getting my current stuff back, so now it's time for me to figure out where I'm headed, as far as online entertainment goes. I now have an SD Card which I can use to softmod my Wii U and possibly return to making Brawl machinima. Meanwhile, I'm becoming more disillusioned with Reycralibur and, without my laptop AND my stuff, it's gonna be a while before I can get back to making SSB64 machinima. I've decided to see what I can do to get back to doing the latter, while shifting my focus towards doing the former.

Last year, I began writing a new Smash machinima, one that I have gotten really attached to. Like The Abridged Knights of Brawl, it's based on a really crappy web series..., or rather, a really crappy webcomic. Unlike Knights, this was going to be an adaptation, a re-imagination, in machinima form. I was going to do it in Melee and, like Reycralibur, it would have showcased hacks that were NEVER used in a Melee machinima before.
But, now I've decided to make it a Brawl machinima, and a back-to-basics one at that. Nothing too fancy. Don't worry, it would have at least had voice actors...besides myself.

So there's that and, since I've already uploaded the entire Knights of Brawl series to one of my YT channels, I can continue work on The Abridged Knights of Brawl by downloading those episodes. Knights is another series I've grown attached to. I'm actually planning on turning that into a Brawl machinima adaptation as well after I finished "Season 3".

Like I said, it's not that bad, for me at least.

Update (and short)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ycuba_falcon-run-ssbb-machinima-short-update_videogames

[This video was] Originally going to be included in a collab..., until I realized that the deadline has already passed. That's not the only bad news, I'm afraid. Something's wrong with my laptop...again. If I can't get it fixed, I don't know what I'm going to do.
I'm looking into using my family's computer for making machinima. Windows 8's start menu is about a threat to me as a cockroach. In the meantime, I'm getting ready to start recording for "The Abridged Knights of Brawl: Bjohn's Quest." There's a chance I can film Reycralibur, episode 11 here too, but we'll have to see.
There is some good news to this..., Mortal Kombat X and Homefront 2. Street Fighter and Battlefield be damned.

TNA and Zippcast

Total Nonstop Action and ZippCast have a lot in common, don't you think? They're both better alternatives to PG-WWE and CoperateTube, they actually listen to their fans, and they actually focus on wrestling and video-sharing. In short, they're awesome! ...At least that's what I would say if I was drinking the Kool-aid.

Here's the reality. ZippCast has a better layout then YouTube, every update they make actually improves the site further. Plus, while every video on YouTube is treated like some original web show or movie, hence the advertisments and copyright bullcrap, ZippCast is all about video sharing. They don't do it to get famous, they do it because they don't want to keep to themselves. On the other hand, the layout is so outdated and hard to navigate, the actual site is buggy, help and support is pathetic...AND IT'S ALWAYS SHUTTING DOWN!!!!

From the beginning, TNA was in WWE's face; whether it was playing the sports entertainment card or actually focusing on wrestling. It's also helps that TNA is very, very, VERY innovative. But let's recap: they had a video game, a developmental territory, a relationship with Bellator MMA, live TV tapings on the road, a roster made up of modern day legends and icons of the past, and a very different atmosphere. All of which they could use to compete with the WWE...and they blew all of it with terrible booking, repetitive invasion angles, and, allegedly, terrible treatment of their superstars and talent.

Meanwhile, the PG rating, 3 hour Raw which nobody can finish in one sitting, and supershow format - which almost killed off the exposure for mid and low card performers - have only hindered WWE in recent years. And while YouTube continues to be Google's personal money-making machine, while giving the finger to it's users and the community, they're still doing what they did before Google bought them out: creating viral hits and turning niches to mainstream entertainment.

At this point, ZippCast and TNA's respective fanboys fanbases look more like brainwashed mooks. Clearly, ZippCast and TNA aren't as "good" as they think they are. They're underrated, yet overhyped; great ideas, horrible execution. They only time when they should get the applause is when they actually beat WWE and YouTube at their own game, which they have done many times, but that's not the point. The point is, at some point, we need to stop giving them a pat on the back every five seconds and start giving some criticism.

We need to stop wishing that they were better and actually try to make them better.

In Spike We Trust? The Prelude to Spike's Gaming Coverage

From what I heard, I was right about VGX being an improvement but McHale absolutely ruined it. As far as criticism goes, if McHale didn't co-host, last year's revamped event would have been the turning point for Spike. Something that would give them a bit more credit as a gaming broadcaster.
But sadly, that isn't the reality. The reality is, once again, they blew it. I said it before, I'll say it again, online networks like Machinima.com have replaced television networks like G4 when it comes to gamer entertainment. They know who their audience is and they know how to cater to them. Television offerings just don't cut it anymore.

And yet, between video game adaptions and tie-ins like Defiance and the surprisingly positive reviews for the Need for Speed film, I still believe there is still some hope that TV and movies can actually get it right. Why else would Spike be named the official broadcaster for E3? Because, while Spike at least gave a crap about gaming, G4 was apparently too busy with Cops, Cheaters, and Lost reruns! Whether gamers like to admit it or not, Spike is the only network left on North American airwaves to bring gaming to their TV sets.

If the team behind VGX wants to solve their "PR problem", all they gotta do is find people who will actually treat gamers with some respect. Spike's demographic and the gaming community are two different beings. You can cater to the former, by all means, but at least treat the latter with some dignity. Meanwhile, I notice that GTTV is off the air, leaving Spike without a gaming news show. Whether or not they've cancelled it and will replace it something else, I'd like to see the show at a more accessible timeslot.

I'll admit that I never got to see VGX or last year's E3 All Access, I just scrambled around news articles and hoped for the best. This year, I'll follow Spike's coverage of E3 2014, then I'll check out VGX at the end of the year. Now that we know for sure that G4 is dead, I want see for myself if Spike can learn from it's mistakes and take G4's place, not as a gaming network, but as a network that at least casual gamers can trust.

Gamers can dismiss it, but the rest of us won't. Spike is the last frontier for gaming television; they need to start acting like it.