An Open Letter To CBS

Dear CBS:

You suck!

Sincerely yours,
The Tech Curmudgeon

P.S. - This seemingly harsh critique is not being dispensed lightly. I will, for example, give you credit for coming up with a few reasonably entertaining shows, some of which have actual comic (e.g., Big Bang Theory), dramatic (e.g., The Good Wife) or intellectual (e.g., Jeopardy) appeal. (You do, however, owe humanity an abject apology for Two Broke Girls.)

But you persist in pre-empting or, worse, randomly re-scheduling the quality shows in order to accommodate any programming that might remotely be considered a sport, including tiddly-winks, paper football and coin tossing. In fact, you’ve given the reigning best show on television, Jeopardy, the boot for some idiotic football pre-season talk show! It’s not even football season. What is the pre-season? The whole rest of the year?

Worse, when Sunday night programming is delayed by some late afternoon game, your programming execs (That has to be an oxymoron … or some kind of moron anyway.) move the entire evening line up. Instead of simply dropping the utterly useless and civilization-eroding Amazing Race so the other programs could stay on schedule, which would irritate only those who want to watch a group of desperate idiots perform humiliating and degrading stunts, you insist on pissing off your entire audience.

Technology has given viewers more and more control. People expect to be able to watch whatever they want whenever they want. At the very least, they should be able to watch what they want when it’s supposed to be on. Your approach of blithely ignoring your own schedules is like saying to viewers: “We decide what your going to watch and when.” Yeah. Good luck with that.

P.P.S. - And please stop showing those stupid ads for yogurt that makes you poop.

Elementary, My Dear

Those of us fortunate enough to be alive at this moment are witnesses to an incredible event.  (Others will have to watch it on YouTube.)  The event is nothing less than the end of human domination on this planet.  Or at least, the end of human domination on TV game shows.  IBM's Watson technology has beaten some very formidable human challengers to become a new champion on Jeopardy!  Following a brief sojourn at Disney World, Watson will begin preparing to face its opponents on Dancing With the Stars and Survivor. Then, after the usual talk show circuit, Watson will compete on Project Runway and may literally throw down Bobbie Flay.  (Iron Chef was thought to be redundant.)

Of course, the talk show appearances may be the most demanding --

Leno: Travel Plans for $2000 ... Disney World.
Watson: What am I going to do now?
Leno: Technology for $2000 ... Medical Research
Watson: What is my next career move?

You see, that's really all it knows how to do.  Did you notice that Alex Trebek failed to chum up to Watson and get any amusing anecdotes?

The fact is that Watson was built just to play Jeopardy!  It doesn't get coffee or answer phones.  It doesn't do your taxes or balance the budget.  It plays Jeopardy!  And it took a team of nearly 50 people to make it do that.  (I know that from counting the faces in the pictures on the IBM Web site.  Could Watson do that?)

I'm not trying to belittle the accomplishment.  Watson is certainly a technological breakthrough, and some of the problem-solving techniques that were developed for Watson could be used in other areas.  In fact, I suspect technologists are much more in awe of Watson than the average TV viewer.  I think most people would say, "Of course a computer would win on Jeopardy!  It's a computer!! Duh!"

In fact, there are rumors Microsoft is working on a rival computer, to be called Bill.  Bill will not only understand questions and answers in the English language.  It will automatically find words in English and register trademarks on them.  And remarkably, Bill is not named after a founder of Microsoft, but rather after its widely acknowledged talent for sending out invoices.

So let's not throw in the towel just yet, humanity.  After all, there's still Wheel of Fortune and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?