The 27 Best (Non-Super Bowl) Commercials of the 2000s: Balls [Bravia] - Birthday [Got Milk?] - Bubble Boy [Volkswagen] - Bus Station [Starburst] - Carousel [Phillips] - Cog [Honda] - Dangerously Low [Levi's] - Diorama [Halo 3] - Evolution [Dove] - Freestyle [Nike] - Gorilla [Cadbury] - Grrr [Honda] - Hello Tomorrow [Adidas] - Lamp [IKEA] - Like [Volkswagen] - Mountain [Playstation] - Noitulove [Guinness] - Odyssey [Levi's] - Rabbit [Comcast] - Sheet Metal [Saturn] - Stork [Monster] - Swear Jar [Bud Light] - Tag [Nike] - Tea Partay [Smirnoff] - Touch [Skittles] - Wedding Toast [Budweiser] - Yes We Can [Dipdive]. Part of Adweek's "Best of the 2000s" competition, which also includes rundowns of the 22 Best Super Bowl Spots and the 15 Best Print Campaigns of the last decade, among many other voting categories.
posted by Rhaomi on Nov 23, 2009 - 72 comments

"Long thought to be lost or destroyed, this complete recording of one of the few hour long interviews of Alfred Hitchcock has been found." [more inside]
posted by dhammond on Oct 12, 2009 - 17 comments

Andy Richter destroys Wolf Blitzer in Celebrity Jeopardy (twice, if you count the rehearsal show). Of course, Richter is no stranger to the game.
posted by Rhaomi on Sep 17, 2009 - 78 comments

"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty: Library - Diner - Church. Together with more positive ads like Remember Freedom and I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their freedoms and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism (seven years previously). The campaign was the work of the Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including Rosie the Riveter, Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all effective PSAs on everything from student invention to global warming to arts education to community service.

Additional resources: A-to-Z index of Ad Council campaigns - Campaigns organized by category - Award-winning campaigns - PSA Central: A free download directory of TV, radio, and print PSAs (registration req'd) - An exhaustive history of the Ad Council [46-page PDF] - YouTube channel - Vimeo channel - Twitter feed
posted by Rhaomi on Sep 11, 2009 - 69 comments

Soul! New York City PBS affiliate WNET have digitized 9 episodes of Soul!, a early 1970's live music program, providing a groovy video interface with chapters to break down each hour long episode. [more inside]
posted by myopicman on Apr 23, 2009 - 20 comments

To celebrate its 40th birthday, PBS has loaded - and continues to load - tons of content into its new, slick, Coverflow-ish on-demand site. Full episodes of American Experience, American Masters, Frontline, Great Performances, Masterpiece Theater, Nature, Nova, the NewsHour and a bunch more are now online.
posted by jbickers on Apr 22, 2009 - 44 comments

While Adult Swim is generally regarded as the pioneer of irreverent short-form animation -- especially for 'toons that reimagine past hits -- it wasn't always the king. In fact, the late-night programming block arguably found its birth in a series of short toons and interstitials that ran in the heyday of its daytime alter ego, the venerable Cartoon Network. The brainchild of C.N. Creative Director Michael Ouweleen and Hanna-Barbera chief Fred Seibert, these cartoons reinterpreted the network's properties through stock footage, indie music, and original animation in a wide variety of styles, as well as introducing prototypes of characters that would become some of the most famous in the history of American animation. (warning: monster post inside) [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Dec 30, 2008 - 80 comments

Television technology explained. By Bjork.
posted by davebush on Nov 3, 2008 - 100 comments

The Early Television Foundation and Museum Website covers the nascent days of the nation's pastime, with interesting items like mechanical TVs and programming schedules from 1939.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Sep 9, 2008 - 11 comments

Spiegel TV has tracked down rare Nazi TV footage, complete with everything from bizarre cabaret acts to interviews with people like Albert Speer. Pop culture done by Nazis, the banality of showbiz evil. [more inside]
posted by hortense on Aug 28, 2008 - 29 comments

The Black and White Minstrel Show was a (very cheesy) British variety series that ran Saturday nights on the BBC for twenty years. Hard to believe that it was still on the air as late as 1978. A live show, "Memories of the Minstrels ," toured the UK to packed houses in 2004 and 2005. The show was performed white-faced and featured the stars, medley's and costumes from the original TV series. Previously. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Jun 4, 2008 - 43 comments

"My name is Mike Wallace. The cigarette is Philip Morris." Before there was 60 Minutes, there was The Mike Wallace Interview. Thirty minutes with Steve Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Kirk Douglas, Pearl Buck, and Salvador Dali, to name just a few.
posted by steef on Apr 4, 2008 - 16 comments

2007 has come to a close and so we now conclude our broadcast day. [more inside]
posted by dhammond on Dec 31, 2007 - 31 comments

Wayne White's paintings [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Dec 20, 2007 - 19 comments

Laugh tracks making things funny: Friday the 13th | The L Word | Mitt Romney | Star Trek | The Wire | FOX News
posted by dhammond on Dec 16, 2007 - 27 comments

Bill Clinton on Charlie Rose - on display: Thoughtful Visionary as well as Political Animal; cf. Howard Dean and Jimmy Carter.
posted by kliuless on Dec 16, 2007 - 55 comments

Essential Video Resources - primers, guides and links for the video editor and technician [more inside]
posted by Gyan on Dec 14, 2007 - 6 comments

"[Game Center CX] is comedic, dramatic, even a bit mental, but altogether it’s an unforgettable show about what sounds like a forgettable concept: a guy trying to beat old Nintendo games." [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Nov 16, 2007 - 12 comments

TV-Links website shut down, site creator arrested. Says David Rock, who awaits charges, "It was just a hobby." [more inside]
posted by SassHat on Nov 7, 2007 - 32 comments

TV in Japan. A hyper representation of what airs, or has aired on Japanese TV. Ranging from action packed to truly awesome (and from monkeys to ninjas), set your eyes to "dazzled" and brain to "frazzled".
posted by myopicman on Apr 13, 2007 - 7 comments

Spots Before Your Eyes, an award-winning series of animated shorts promoting tolerance and human relations, produced in the 1950s by the American Jewish Committee (at AJC Archives)
posted by LinusMines on Jan 6, 2007 - 4 comments

Oodles of past and current interviews with both living and dead celebrities and interesting nobodies over at the support website for Andrew Denton's Australian television show Enough Rope. You will find video excerpts, some full interviews as audio downloads (the more recent ones), and lots of transcripts.
posted by sjvilla79 on Nov 7, 2006 - 11 comments

neave.tv is an experimental use of video over the web... To watch, you'll need a broadband connection (>1mb) and a fast computer (1GHz or higher).
posted by crunchland on Sep 19, 2006 - 23 comments

BULLSHIT! Penn & Teller present their rational, libertarian bent views on diverse subjects, now available for free download on Google Video ::: profanity; creationism; alien abductions; conspiracy theories; recycling; gun control; endangered species; religion; the bible; family values; the apocalypse; signs from heaven; the occult; 12-step recovery programs; exercise v. genetics; environmentalism; hypnosis; ghosts; the war on drugs; feng shui / bottled water; college; PETA; and abstinence.
posted by crunchland on Aug 11, 2006 - 114 comments

MTV turns 25 today. Music Television, otherwise known as MTV, was launched with its first broadcast on 1 August 1981, 25 years ago today. Famously, the first video broadcast was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." Ironically, MTV evidently isn't going to acknowledge its anniversary on-air in any way, with a spokeswoman saying that "We made the decision when MTV was founded to always stay young and evolve with our audience. To do that, it has been important to serve our audience at that moment, not our audience of yesterday." This is about par for the course, though, since when was the last time that MTV actually broadcast music videos? A broader question: does anybody who wasn't weaned on MTV (or anybody who was, for that matter) care anymore?
posted by blucevalo on Aug 1, 2006 - 121 comments

'In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife. But this method doesn't work with a tomato". Finally, a blade worthy of Hattori Hanzo, so sharp it can slice a bullet in two.
posted by jonson on Jul 23, 2006 - 55 comments

Nam June Paik passed away on Sunday. We'll read educated commentaries in the next few days, but what I most affectionately remember about him is how his work made me laugh happily during the 70s and 80s. A precursor of video art, he was the first to use plugged tv sets as building blocks in the most playful ways. His TV Buddha is arguably an unsurpassed classic (a motionless moving image, an outside observation of an inner meditation, even -why not?- a premonition of a blogger) (this last one is a joke: I told you Paik made me laugh). R.I.P.
posted by bru on Jan 30, 2006 - 34 comments

Ultra scary puppets sing hymns of love Via Boing Boing, the scariest tv show that I have ever seen in my life. The poor puppetry, the references to God, the organ sound it all comes together to burn into your brain. Children subjected to this will remember it forever. I think I may even have cold sweats about it in the night. Its long but worth it. (Quicktime movie)
posted by ClanvidHorse on May 30, 2005 - 56 comments

Steven Levy and Mark Pesce on the future of television. Oh and Conan O'brien! :D [via]
posted by kliuless on May 23, 2005 - 6 comments

Watching tv on the internet With daily tv-video news.
posted by halo7879 on Feb 24, 2005 - 5 comments

Insecure Weatherman vs. Confident Weatherman (Windows media)
posted by Robot Johnny on Jan 24, 2005 - 39 comments

Conan follows John Stewart: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog conducts interviews in Spin Alley.
posted by Tlogmer on Oct 22, 2004 - 27 comments

Pancake Mountain presents Ian MacKaye performing "Vowel Movement" for the kiddies. As a friend said, this site has "pancakes and indie rock and bob mould as a corporate goon all in one package." [via sullivan]
posted by ifjuly on Apr 8, 2004 - 14 comments

The Open Video Project offers nearly 2,000 videos from various sources and collections, including such gems as 34 reels from the 1930s and 40s in the Digital Himalaya Project, a series of classic television commercials, and, from the Library of Congress, some shorts from the early 1900s, including the popular 2 a.m. in the Subway and A Ballroom Tragedy ("Vaudeville" is a good search term for finding more like this). Also, especially for MeFi, Johnny Learns His Manners.
posted by taz on Oct 12, 2003 - 17 comments

Domo-kun! Domokun is "a small brown open-mouthed monster hatched from an egg who lives with a wise old rabbit underground." In Japan, he's the mascot of the NHK BS2 channel and is the star of a series of stop-motion shorts (100MB .mov), the fun and warmth of which aren't lost in translation. In the western world, Domokun is better known as the monster chasing that cute little kitty.
posted by adrianhon on Oct 11, 2003 - 13 comments

Skeletor and Gang: What is it about the combination of stop-motion animation, He-Man action figures, and sped-up heavy metal that makes me laugh until I hurt? "Skeletor, Mantenna and Grizzlor are having a party! Oh no! Moss-Man attacks! Defend us Squeeze!"
posted by emptybowl on Apr 5, 2002 - 7 comments

BBC 2 are axing their current channel idents One of the pleasures of this UKtv channel is seeing how they'll be banging, crashing or stretching that little number two. Is this a revolutionary development or just another example of meddling from a channel which is having trouble finding an identity within the UK's multi-channel future?
posted by feelinglistless on Nov 14, 2001 - 17 comments

White House instructs TV networks not to air bin Laden videos
posted by andrew cooke on Oct 11, 2001 - 50 comments

ShadowTV is tomorrow's technology today -- its "TiVo on steroids," according to Joachim Kim, a creator of a new technology that enables users (which may at sometime include the public on a subscription model) to pull up video-quality or better streaming footage of any television show that aired or is currently airing, including (or not including) the commercials, all in a handy web application.

The limitations are endless.

Such a technology could prove deadly for the big TV networks (down the road sometime), although ShadowTV seems optimistic to work with content providers. [Thanks to Professor Michael Rosenblum at NYU for introducing our Televison and the Information Explosion class to tomorrow' technology.]

Now, let me begin planning that 7-season Star Trek: Voyager marathon...
posted by nyukid on Apr 20, 2001 - 45 comments

Well, this won't last long. It appears to be streaming video of every single Simpsons episode. Ay, carumba!
posted by luke on Feb 28, 2000 - 24 comments