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Who knows TV better than us? As America's largest online DISH Network dealer, we've got the inside dirt on the channels, shows, and events that keep you tuned in.
 Simultaneously palatable to contemporary country, top 40, and rock stations, Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” isn’t just an impressive charter; it’s a clever melding of samples and evocative lyrics. Country Music Television (DISH Network 166), which has been marking the industry's slow but steady shift away from traditional twang- country to more popish sounds, aids in the flowover by airing the song's low key video.
A song about a song, “All Summer Long” is underpinned by riffs from “Sweet Home Alabama” and significant appearances from “Werewolves of London” and “Take the Money and Run.” Backup singers deliver further callbacks to the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic. While it clearly evokes the best of the era, “All Summer Long” stands on its own, referencing the Internet (or lack thereof), drinking on the sly, and first love. In compiling it, Kid Rock has studied a staple of hip hop and rap and brought it to southern rock.
His last hit, “Picture,” a duet with Sheryl Crow, was also a crossover, but leaned more on the pop side. “All Summer Rock” tilts back the other direction, returning Kid Rock to lakesides, upbeat riffs, and “smoking funny things.”
Although the song is set in the summer of 1989, the wrappings of “Sweet Home Alabama” manages to create an aura of another decade entirely. The video, too, is refreshingly literal; two teenagers bring the lyrics of the song to life as Kid Rock finds a moonlit lake to strum next to. By stepping so far away from a more pop-influenced, abstract interpretation, the video solidifies the song’s southern rock roots.
It’s always an interesting trip when modern music cross-borrows, injecting new life into genres which might otherwise stagnate. I look forward to 50 Cent’s first single in praise of line dancing.
I'm sitting here in front of the Travel Channel (DISH Network Channel 215) trying to figure out if the thing is outstanding or depressing.
Outstanding because it's somehow managed to glue my in front of the television set in spite of a massive to-do list. Depressing because at the moment, it's featuring outrageously expensive hotel suites in Las Vegas which go for perhaps fifteen grand a night. Amenities include television sets which rise up out of the floor, 24 caret gold picture frames, VIP bowling lanes, and a rotating couch which ensures guests don't actually have to work to enjoy the view.
This is the same channel which offered me and my husband the only non apocalyptic entertainment in the world during the market meltdown. While the rest of the world focused endlessly on the bottoming Dow Jones, we sank into an hour long special considering the best places in America to go for ice cream. Included: The home of the first ice cream cone, as well as a restaurant which serves gold leaf with its sundaes. It was comfort food at its absolute finest, and we didn't put away a calorie or spend a single dime.
It's hard to know whether the channel is a twenty four hour resort ad or a vacation in your living room; visceral reactions range from mild amusement to exasperation to raging envy to "Can we leave for there yesterday?'
Shows range from documentaries on Vegas to studies of food in Paris to documentaries on Vegas to discussions of "America's Sexiest Beaches" to documentaries on Vegas. The channel also dips into tropical getaways, the World Poker Tour (don't ask me) and the occasional anthropological special or paranormal tour. It makes for a good mini vacation, if an occasionally frustrating one-- oh, why can't we afford the ten thousand dollar one night stand atop the Strip? You will, however, avoid any and all airport security lines.
I was watching TV with my Protestant husband when we clicked past EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network (DISH Network channel 261). He was briefly fascinated, especially when a prayer for the network itself flashed across the screen. Sitcoms and reality TV ain't got nothin' on EWTN's product placement. I mean, NBC has GM at its back, but EWTN? Don't tick off that sponsor.
It's the most Catholic network that ever Catholiced. Since it's funded by donations ("Remember to keep us between your gas and electric bill!" viewers are exhorted), the network runs entirely without commercials, except for promotions concerning upcoming programs on the channel itself. EWTN's website features whichever saint the Catholic Church honors on that particular day of its feast day calendar.
EWTN is truly homegrown, with 1981 Wayne's World-like beginnings in a monastery garage. Mother Mary Angelica of the Poor Claires of Perpetual Adoration, now the face of the network, broadcast four hours a day to about 60,000 homes. By 1987, the little station, which was first encouraged by the Christian Broadcasting Network's Pat Robertson, had gone national. Mother Angelica Live became a staple, and sometimes the brown-habited nun advertised religious articles such as books, statues, Rosaries, and Bibles for sale to support her mission.
Today, EWTN is the global place to be during major moments of American Catholic life; coverage of Pope Benedict's visit earlier this year was wall to wall, a phenomenon only matched by the puff-by-puff coverage of his election in 2006. Looped broadcasts of Pope John Paul II's funeral and the following installation of his successor allowed Catholics around the world to witness the goings-on in Rome. And this summer, correspondents and crews were sent to Australia to cover World Youth Day.
Daily Mass is broadcast as well, and although Mother Angelica is unwell after suffering from a series of strokes, her advice is still distributed via reruns of Mother Angelica Live. Oh, and you can still buy a Rosary or two.
When I teach technical writing, I trot out a skippy, cover-weary VHS tape of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf briefing the press on the state of the Gulf War in 1991. I don't fire it up to teach military strategy-- I am often outwitted by the spider which insists upon making a home in the living room corner-- but to illustrate that back in The Day, all that was needed to tell a story was a couple of maps and a great big pointer.
I use the tape in media classes, too, to illustrate how significantly news coverage has changed since the Internet made us a twenty-four hour society. For what truly strikes my students about the tape, which many view as a historical curiosity, not unlike a flint arrowhead or humanoid skull, is the gleaming nakedness of the screen. You see Schwarzkopf, you see an ABC news logo at the beginning of the broadcast, and you see a very occasional chyron noting the time and the location of the briefing-- which then goes away. He commands attention not only through his public speaking skills, but... well, there's nothing else to look at.
Those crawls which skitter across the bottom of every news channel were posted on 9/11 to track several developing stories at once and to transmit important information-- and they never went away. Now, any minute deemed necessary for modern pop culture survival, including one actual "breaking news" item that Madonna had fallen off a horse in England, invades everyday life.
The reliance on MTV-inspired visual candy is almost beyond parody; during last night's Vice Presidential debate, Fox News didn't even wait for the end of the thing to invite viewers to vote in a texting poll in an enormous banner across the bottom of the screen. CNN panted after poll junkies by superimposing a focus group tracking graph as the candidates held forth. And nearly every channel opened its broadcast with loud, flashing rampups normally seen prior to football games.
And that's why I watched most of the debate on C-SPAN (DISH Network channel 210), which invaded its visual space with a comparatively non-invasive small ribbon of text across the bottom of the screen reminding the viewers of the question the candidates were currently addressing. May God bless it; C-SPAN, with its almost utter lack of commentary and delightfully non-existent 3D graphics, stands virtually alone in its plodding instance on presenting information unfiltered. Representatives address the chamber about resolutions concerning International Migratory Bird Day; all you see is the party and state. Bills pass or fail; only the roll call appears on the screen. Nobody informs the electorate what to think about what just happened.
As this election gets closer and louder, C-SPAN functions as more than an accidentally amusing throwback. It's a calming invitation to make up your own mind about the international importance of migratory birds.
Maybe I'm a bitter old Florida refugee who's seen one too many feeder bands, but I seem to remember a time when the Weather Channel (DISH Network channel 214) didn't even need a space in the newspaper's TV schedule grid-- which should tell you just how long ago this was. We got our TV information from the newspaper.
I'm married to a pilot and air traffic controller-- I mean, I'm married to one guy, who is both a pilot and air traffic controller-- and he minored in weather systems. He knows every website there is to know about radar and wind shear and temperature differentials. I haven't had to gather my own planning forecast since 2005.
But today, as my computer sat dormant, I peeked out the window to see cloudy skies while putting on my shoes for a jog, and thought to return to my old friend, the ever-scrolling Blue Screen of Forecast, with occasional radar appearances.
Oh. Well. Sorry, you're getting the temperature, and a little picture of a cloud, and an endless tornado footage shot from the back of a pickup truck. Enjoy! I waited through the destruction of several ranch homes, then gave up and logged on. Boom, radar and plenty of little green splotches. No running today.
What is the Weather Channel, then, if not a source of... you know... weather? It's a jazz CD, people; a global warming controversy flashpoint; and a five-part miniseries, 100 Biggest Weather Moments, hosted by that pinnacle of meteorological expertise, Harry Connick Jr.
At some point, between Forecast Earth Headlines, mini-documentaries on floods which took place two centuries ago, and Full Force Nature, the Weather Channel ceded the forecasting high ground to the Internet, and perhaps wisely so: The powers that be were wise enough to grab the weather.com URL, and the site offers a downloadable bug for one-click access to maps and forecasts.
The Weather Channel, then, in its shift to infotainment, broadcasts as a radar-flecked cultural indicator. That blue screen and that all-caps white type isn't enough for us anymore; we need flying debris and weather as politics. And you know what, part of the problem is typing in this here little white box... if I had perhaps waited around for six more minutes to see the forecast, I probably would have seen what I was looking for: The channel still offers "Local on the 8s."
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