Nielsen Co. has wrapped an important meeting with 80 clients from companies that included CBS, NBC, ABC, Microsoft, Time Warner, Comcast and Hulu where the topic was how best to move ahead with developing a single-source system that will measure both television and Internet media consumption in the home.
The push from some clients is to get such a system up and running by late 2010. Nielsen has been pushing for the middle of 2011. Putting the squeeze on to move up the timeline are cable giants Comcast and Time Warner Cable, according to a person at the meeting. Both are pushing new online viewing services and have lined up several major cable networks to provide content.
Currently, Nielsen has people meters in about 18,000 homes. It'sthose meters that provide the ratings responsible for billions ofdollars' worth of ad sales. As more and more people start to watchcontent online on sites such as Hulu or YouTube, content providers and distributors wantsolid numbers to sell advertising. Nielsen has been testing measuringfor both TV and Internet viewing in about 395 homes. Nielsen measuresonline usage in a separate sample that tracks about 200,000 people. Ifyou are wondering, like I was, why the Internet sample is so big,that's because while Nielsen only tracks about 100 channels, it follows20,000 websites.
There was a "broad agreement" of adding Internet measurement in the households that already have people meters," said Sara Erichson, Nielsen's president of Media Client Services, who ran the get-together at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan.
The challenge, Erichson said, is finding homes that will allow for both the people meter and the software that goes inside the computer to measure Web watching.
"Tens of billions of dollars are transacted off of these numbers; we want to make sure that by asking people to do both, you don't have fewer people saying yes," she said. "Can we do it faster without negatively impacting quality" is the issue, she added.
-- Joe Flint
Photo: Nielsen's Sara Erichson. Credit: Nielsen Co.
Think of the 'Children'! Let's talk about last night's 'Supernatural'
The following episode discusses "I Believe the Children Are Our Future," last night's "Supernatural" episode.
Before I get to my thoughts on the episode, some housekeeping: 1. Next week the CW airs a repeat of the season premiere, so obviously, I won't be reviewing that again. If you want to know what's coming up in some of the episodes after that, look here. That post has pictures and episode summaries from the next two episodes, as well as a "Coming Soon" video clip. (All my other "Supernatural" stories and reviews are here.)
2. I'll be out of town Oct. 29 and unable to do my usual review.
3. I've thought a lot about how to make commenting on this site something that doesn't melt my brain. Now, don't get me wrong, the vast majority of "Supernatural" fans are intelligent, thoughtful, insightful and respectful of my views and the views of their fellow commenters. But some people make me a little crazy (or crazier, depending on your view).
So before you think about commenting here, keep the following guidelines in mind.
And I've wavered on this, but I've come to this conclusion: If you can't follow the common-sense guidelines below, you will be banned from commenting on this site. You won't get a second chance, you won't get a warning. I know, it sounds harsh. Maybe it is harsh.
But this site functions according to Mo's Grand Theory of Commenting, which is: The environment here should be so accepting, so calm and so non-screechy that most timid lurker should feel it's safe to comment. I simply won't let angry, vicious, annoying or repetitive people hijack the comment areas.
The upshot? Don't tick me off. I'll ban you. Or turn you into an action figure.
So, here are the common-sense guidelines:
OK, on to the main event -- if anyone is still reading, that is!
I thought it was especially important to go over the commenting rules before starting this review, because, in my view, "I Believe the Children Are Our Future" had some significant weak spots. If I were a teacher, I'd give the student a C, or maybe a B- if I were feeling charitable, and I'd write this in the margin of the paper: "I know you can do better."
So I'll try to abide by my own rules and go through my issues with "Children" respectfully and with a minimum of snark (ha).
Last week's episode, as many of us remarked, didn't do a great job of tying the brothers' story to the monster-of-the-week plot. The two elements of that episode seemed disjointed. "Children," I thought, had the opposite problem. The story of whether Jesse would "make the right choice" and the way that element was tied into Sam's history was about as subtle as an anvil to the cranium.
Actually, I found the writing for both brothers somewhat simplistic. Dean was portrayed at times as an immature chucklehead and Sam was obsessed with guilt over the choices he'd made. If we didn't understand Sam's first speech about making good choices, we got almost the same speech from him a few minutes later. Really? Ouch. That anvil hurts when it lands on my head.
The most interesting part of the episode had to do with the nature of truth and lies, and whether the truth, in some cases, a harsh truth is kinder than a well-intentioned lie. But there seemed to be a bit of a mishmash in "Children" -- it started out exploring the idea of belief making things real but then segued into whether telling the truth is better than lying. These ideas are related, of course, but they could have been tackled a bit more subtly. For instance, the conversation at the end -- the attempt to tie the brothers' story to Jesse's plight -- felt tacked-on.
And I wouldn't have minded the juvenile humor (Dean's hairy palm? Cas on a whoopie cushion?) if it was just one element of an otherwise solid episode. But "Children" had some problematic plotting.
There was too much of the "what's happening in this town?" introductory material, in my view. Now, part of the problem there may just be my problem -- I had known since Comic-Con that "Supernatural" would be doing an anti-Christ episode. So the first couple of acts were fairly anti-climactic for me, given that I knew where they were leading. But then I asked my husband, who is never aware of spoilers, what he thought of that aspect of "Children," and he said the beginning dragged a bit for him as well.
Your mileage may vary, but for my money, the first couple of acts recalled (or simply swiped elements from) superior episodes such as "Playthings" and "Bedtime Stories" without really introducing anything new or compelling.
Once we got to Jesse and his mother, things improved. I thought Gattlin Griffith, the actor playing Jesse, was great -- he had a kind of presence that child actors often don't have. I could completely buy Jesse as a very evolved, very powerful being inside the body of a smart, independent child. And Ever Carradine, who played Julia, the woman/demon who gave birth to him, did a great job in that role (but my God, the extreme closeups on her face this week were almost as annoying as the Random ShakyCam last week).
The premise of a powerful child who doesn't even know the true extent of his own powers and isn't intrinsically evil but could become evil -- it's an exceptionally tantalizing idea. Seeing Jesse discover what he was capable of was interesting, and the suspense of the episode derived from not knowing whether he would side with his demon!Mom or the Winchesters.
The outcome had to do with respect, in the end. Julia was telling Jesse the "truth," but she was spinning it to her own ends. When the Winchesters finally told Jesse what was really going on, they left the decision about what to do up to him. They respected him enough to let him make his own choice, and hence he didn't kill them or turn them into action figures (sidebar: Cas action figure! Pretty cool!) 

But I was left with a lot of questions about this kid, which the mother's exposition didn't fully explain. How did a virgin birth come about in a demon? What, if anything, did Lucifer and his henchmen have to do with the birth of Jesse? Why is a human-demon hybrid so powerful? How is it that no demon ever figured out that finding the adoption records could have helped in the quest to find Jesse? His powers kept him disguised? Huh?
Sam, of course, somehow got hold of the adoption records with no problem (normally I buy pretty much anything about the show's "investigations" if most of the plot points have been earned honestly, but this was just one more "huh?" moment for me).
And after giving up this child and "running," the mother helpfully gave the adoption authorities her new address -- and then never left that place? I know we saw that the demon who had been inside her watched her for 11 years, waiting for her to supply a clue about the kid's whereabouts. But we were told several times that there were multiple demons who wanted to figure out where Jesse was. Are we to understand that not one demon was smart enough to look into birth-records angle and try to find Jesse that way?
And finally, wasn't it convenient that demon!Julia showed up by herself to Jesse's house? Jesse could have probably overpowered a demon army, but why not bring backup or at least tell her superiors where Jesse was? Because the plot required her not to, that's why. All in all, the things I liked best about the episode were the performances of Gattlin Griffith as Jesse and Ever Carradine as Julia, as well as the tortured look on Castiel's face as he attempted to kill the child. The last few scenes in Jesse's house, as the boys were explaining what was going on and later, as Jesse trudged up the stairs to take a final look at his parents -- all that was poignant. For some reason, the image of Jesse flopping on his bed -- a tired kid unable to completely understand why he had to leave home -- was the most effective moment for me.
Still, while it had a few good moments and scenes, elements of "Children" seemed rushed or sloppy. It felt as though corners had been cut in a few too many places. When it comes down to it, I judge an episode of "Supernatural" by how much I want to watch it again. I wasn't in any great rush to watch "Children" again, but I did watch it twice, to make sure that I was judging it as fairly and as honestly as I could.
I hope we see Jesse again; he clearly looks like he could be a player later in the season. And perhaps at that point we'll get some more information and/or clarity about his origins and how he fits into the bigger picture.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect "Children" to fully supply all of that information this time around. But I think this fitfully interesting, occasionally quite frustrating episode could have done a better job of explaining who and what he is and how he came to be.
Review: In 'A Serious Man,' the Coen brothers go to their roots
In 'A Serious Man,' the Coen brothers offer a dark and delicious homage to their roots.
R. Crumb's Awesome, Affecting Take On 'Genesis'
The godfather of cartoon counterculture takes on the Bible in his new comic, The Book of Genesis Illustrated. Reviewer Susan Jane Gilman says R. Crumb's latest effort is serious — and brilliant.
Q&A: Africans Won’t Just Be on Receiving End of Arts and Culture
CE TOWN, Oct 15 (IPS)Global initiatives have in recent years stressed the contribution that arts and culture can make to development. This has led African and European artists, bureaucrats and policy makers to increasingly confront the unequal relations in North-South cultural and artistic exchanges.
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