Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, John Perich, and Jordan Stokes to overthink the tragic ends of Michael Jackson, D.J. AM, Ted Kennedy, and Reading Rainbow.
Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, John Perich, and Jordan Stokes to overthink the tragic ends of Michael Jackson, D.J. AM, Ted Kennedy, and Reading Rainbow.
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i always saw celebrities dating djs as a subset of the celebrities dating rock stars, which is an easy phenomenon to understand. most of us grew up idolizing musicians, wanting to either be or sleep with one, so landing a musician is maybe the ultimate status symbol (after all, there are way more maybachs out there than rock stars). it might even be explained by the even larger subset of celebrities dating celebrities, since only other famous people really understand what it means to be famous.
Problem with that is that DJs *aren’t* really famous in the same way. Well, some of them are, sure, but if there was an “Emma Watson spotted poolside holding hands with new sweetheart Fatboy Slim” headline, I missed it.
Still, there is something to what you say.
Random question about the podcast itself. Why is it that there so much distortion when people other than Wrather talks? Like at the 45:37-45:40 mark you can hear two different people sounding all robotlike. Does it have something to do with how the podcast is recorded?
Yup! We do the whole thing through Skype, so it’s subject to the vagaries of our internet connections. The reason Wrather never sounds distorted is that he’s the one recording it.
Our private joke is that whenever someone sounds particularly distorted, we become the “Overthinkingit Podcast feat. T-Pain”
@take: It’s a recent issue and we’re working to resolve it. In the meantime, enjoy “Auto-Tune the Overthink, Vol. VII”.
On the subject of the cancellation of Reading Rainbow…
Really, shows like Reading Rainbow to the large extent and Mr. Rogers to a lesser extent have been on the chopping block before. “Why?” you might ask. The answer is marketing, plain and simple.
PBS as a big entity and the people that produce the content (like Sesame Workshop) know that while the money that they get from PBS stations is nice, the outside product licensing (Tickle Me Elmo, Dancing Elmo, Vibrating Elmo Hands) is where the real money is. Even if a show is popular, if there is no possibility (or desire, in Fred Rogers case) to sell T-shirts, toys, concerts, books, etc. the production companies have no incentive to continue making the show, no matter how popular or critically acclaimed it is.
This is one of those cases where I’m not going to blame the Bush Administration. I don’t care what kind of circumstantial evidence people can dream up. I can’t see Bush and Cheney sitting in a undisclosed location dreaming of ways to kill a show like Reading Rainbow. PBS as a whole, yes. One kids show in particular, no. I place the blame solely on PBS’s shoulders. I can’t believe it was a high cost show to make (well, except maybe for the animation, but it wasn’t that high tech, and they could have dropped that part if it was too expensive). And I certainly don’t believe that publishers were charging them high licensing fees for what would be essentially free advertising to their target demographic. To me it smacks of the same kind of arguments that PBS stations would make during pledge drives claiming that the show you were watching was the most expensive show in their library and if you want to continue to see it, you have to pledge now, otherwise they’ll have to stop showing it. But that’s a whole other rant…
I think you can blame the cancellation of Reading Rainbow on the Bush Administration the same way many school districts blame their problems on No Child Left Behind. They are right and they are wrong. NCLB probably affected the funding by setting certain directives that the producers of RR did not know how to demonstrate that they had achieved. It’s sort of bureaucracy at it’s worst. I have a 2 yo niece and watching her shows I question the intellectual stimulation of the programming, however they each have their little bullet points to demonstrate what skills the children are expected to learn from the program. Nowadays, they usually also market research the programs to bits before they are even put on air. Unfortunately, “teach the children to love books” doesn’t not directly correlate to “teach the children how to read.” If they can’t prove that kids can read better after watching the show than before, then funding gets cut until the show is no more.
I’m in the same age group as the boys, but I do remember a few bits of RR other than the song. I think it was on RR that I first saw the animated “Where the Wild Things Are,” as well as “Chicken Soup with Rice.” I also vaguely remember a series of animated stories about a girl named Ramona Quimby (?), who sounded like she was voiced by Lorraine Newman.