The Inquisitr » me.dium

My Name Is Earl, Without A Trace and Medium Canceled

Duncan Riley — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:31:24 +0000

Show renewal and cancellation season is in full swing with US television networks announcing their fall lineups.

Following on from the news that Sarah Connor The Terminator Chronicles has been canceled (no great surprise), is a range of new cuts. Among the cancellations announced today are My Name is Earl, Without a Trace, The Unit, and Medium.

Without a Trace, My Name is Earl, and The Unit aren’t great surprises, with the first two in particular having seen better days in their ratings. The surprise in the pack in Medium, which both rated well, and was critically acclaimed.

Producer CBS Television (the show was on NBC, but produced by CBS) said in a statement that

Despite inconsistent scheduling, MEDIUM, under the creative vision of Glenn Gordon Caron, one of the most preeminent producers in television, has always performed with distinction both creatively and commercially. Multiple award-winning actress Patricia Arquette and the cast have delivered a stellar series for five consistent seasons. The awards and ratings speak for themselves.

The good news for Medium fans is that the show is likely to be picked up by CBS, with speculation it will be added to the CBS Friday lineup.

TV Briefs: Gary Unmarried, Worst Week, Medium and Monk all renewed

Duncan Riley — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:53:00 +0000

Renewal season is in full swing, with some shows being axed, and others being renewed.

Fresh off the renewals list today:

CBS gave an additional seven-episode to “Gary Married” which starts Jay Mohr, Paula Marshall and Jaime King. The new order is on top of a previous 13 episode order.

CBS also extended situational comedy Worst Week, the American version of the UK sitcom The Worst Week of My Life. The show only has a short reprieve, getting only a 3 episode order, after initial strong ratings have fell away mid season.

NBC has ordered a half dozen more episodes of Medium according to THR. The show is being positioned as a mid-year replacement. More episodes may be ordered.

USA Network has picked up the eighth, and what it calls the final season of “Monk.”

USA has ordered 16 episodes of Monk for its eight seasons, but is billing the order as the final season.

(in part via Variety)

Why social browsing as a startup idea needs to die

Duncan Riley — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:02:28 +0000

Another day, another new social browsing service. Mashable reports on the launch of Socialbrowse, a Y Combinator funded service that offers social browsing. Despite Doriano “Paisano” Carta arguing (and I don’t know how) that somehow this is a “unique” service, it’s not even close. It’s yet another entrant in a space that goes back to the first web boom, and has had so many entrants I nearly crashed Firefox with the tabs I had opened on just the ones I could find that have launched in the last two years.

For those not familiar with the idea, the general theme of social browsing services is to offer shared surfing and sharing. That might be delivered by a plugin, or be native to the site, and it may or may not included a friends list or broader community recommendations. Often there’s a live element, so you view the same page at the same time as a friend, and lately that’s included a chat functionality as well…and I may have even seen one that included video.

Not all social browsing services are the same, and some are better than others. Me.dium is fairly impressive, and I had a play with Browzmi earlier this year. Although I didn’t write about Browzmi, it was only due to my inability to not completely trash the underlying idea, even if the implementation (which didn’t involve a plugin) was solid.

With Socialbrowse, the only point of differentiation I could spot is that they’ve copied Twitter and added microblogging to the list…because the world lacks microblogging sites, or something like that.

YooNo, a Cluztr or Swarm may result in a Reko, but a Me.dium to well done Slingpage delivered in Browzmi may compete with Flock, but Thatsmymouse isn’t half a Ginza Walk, and even eBay is trying to flog Stumbleupon. PS: that’s only the recent list.

At its root, the idea of social browsing, particularly at a time social networking is more popular than ever and we connect in new and different ways, should be a good idea, at least so you’d think. And yet, StumbleUpon and Flock aside, both of which don’t embrace the shared surfing/ buddy experience typical in many of the others, there hasn’t be a major break out in 10 years. The reality is, people don’t want to surf webpages with other people, not at least in large enough numbers to sustain one of these startups, let alone dozens. Social browsing services are chasing a market that on the whole doesn’t exist beyond a niche play, and most of these services are not going to make it.

What I do find staggering though is that new ones keep popping up, and better still with funding. Are VC’s so bereft of investment ideas that they continue to back one of the oldest ideas in the playbook over and over again? Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Social browsing as a new startup idea needs to die. There may room for a small, unfunded startup to sustain something close to a real business, or one or two slightly bigger player from the existing services, but for everyone else, there isn’t room at the inn. Many may have chuckled at the 4th or 5th social browsing startup, but now it’s just getting plain stupid. Enough! Please!