LOST And The Art Of DVR Etiquette!

Season five of LOST (the best show on TV) debuted last night on ABC, and I devoured it eagerly! It was virtually the first new thing on my TiVo since the middle of December when the first half of the TV season dried up for the holidays.

The season premiere was a 2-hour event packed full of new twists and turns, and I would love to tell you all about it, but I have already been waved off by some of my Facebook friends who have yet to watch it. Here's how the exchange went, starting with my status update:

John is still trying to wrap his head around last night's episode of LOST! 7:07am

Claire Meyerhoff at 7:28am January 22
Do not say another word! It's on my DVR and I haven't seen it yet!

John Matthews at 7:32am January 22
Claire - I'm not doing any spoilers this morning, but if you want to avoid them, I'd log off NOW. This place is rife with LOST fans!

Ann Wog at 7:32am January 22
SAME HERE!!!!!!!!!

John Matthews at 7:32am January 22
Is it a spoiler to say it was GREAT, by the way?

Claire Meyerhoff at 7:36am January 22
I'm going to watch it with my coffee instead of watching Morning Joe!

Don't worry, folks - I am not going to spoil anyone's day just yet, but it kind of makes me chuckle over how the fast-changing digital world we live in today has really changed the way things are done.

Back in the day, TV shows were the top watercooler topic at school and in the office... People couldn't wait to get to work to share thoughts about what happened on their favorite shows the night before. Now, it's the exact opposite... Someone will want to strike up a conversation about LOST or "American Idol", and they'll be stopped dead in their tracks by someone who has the show waiting for them on their DVR at home!

So now, there is apparently an embargo on discussing anything on television... I know this has been a point of contention in talk radio, where the hosts need to be current and timely - especially in morning drive. How can these hosts wait an extra day to discuss what was on TV the night before? The thing is - they can't! So if you missed last night's TV show, you need to miss this morning's radio program and stick to the ipod. Bad business for radio!

So how long is the appropriate chat ban on a popular TV program? I would think that it's certainly no longer than 24 hours, though your mileage may vary.

Ironically, just as we're building this "24-hour" delay into the social fabric, our world of social media has completely erased the concept of waiting to strike up a conversation with friends. Why wait until the next morning when you can text your reaction to a friend tonight, or get on Facebook and post your reaction on your wall?

Because you'll get messages from your time-shifting TV watching friends telling you to shut up, that's why!

So I won't chat what happened on LOST last night, but I will play a cool clip from the episode. Click on it at your peril! And buy a TiVo - the greatest invention EVER!

Hail To The Redskins - And TiVo!

The first thing I did when I got out of bed this morning was read every single word of coverage in the Washington Post about the Redskins' impressive 26 - 24 win over those no-account Dallas Cowboys. If you are neither a Washingtonian nor a football fan, there is just no decent way of describing what it feels like to see your team go on the road as an 11-point underdog and beat not only their most hated rival, but the COWBOYS!

Under normal circumstances, I would have been glued to the television to watch such an important event, with the rest of the family banished to far corners of the house. But in my current state of underemployment, I felt obligated when ABC News beckoned me to work on Sunday. Having no fear, I set the trusty TiVo, and went off to DeSales Street. The only thing I needed to worry about was getting through the day without seeing or hearing how the Redskins were doing - that was easier said than done!

Thankfully, no one at ABC had any apparent interest in football, so I was not subjected to having to avoid any TV screens... However, because I was editing audio feeds from Capitol Hill, I did face one interesting challenge to keep my Redskins "cloak of silence" intact. One of my jobs yesterday was waiting for Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) to appear before the microphones at a stakeout on Capitol Hill. I had to make sure I did not miss the feed, so I was forced to listen to the "room noise" as the reporters awaited Rangel. Unfortunately for me, one of the cameramen at the feed site had the Redskins game on - so I found myself dipping in and out of the room noise in order to maintain my ignorance. Fortunately, ignorance prevailed!

Finally, 6:30 pm arrived, and I was able to leave, after ducking the security guard at the front desk, who was, of course, watching the game, which by that point was in the 4th quarter. I hopped into the car, and played my Hendricks Chapel Choir tape all the way home, lest I listen to a music station and hear a DJ announce the game's final score!

As I was driving up Connecticut Avenue, I was trying to figure out how things were going based on the road traffic. Whenever the roads were clear, I imagined it was because everyone was home watching the game. When I ran into heavier traffic, I suspected that fans were out and about because the Skins were being blown out. There was a time when you really COULD have gauged how the Skins were doing based on game-time traffic, but pragmatically, it's too early in the season for that.

To make a long story short, I made it home in a state of blissful ignorance. After a nice dinner with the family, I finally sat down in front of the TiVo, and was just settling in, when 10-year-old Spencer walked in and said, "The Skins did great, didn't they, Dad?"

The funeral is tomorrow.

Reality TV Roundup

I have always found myself on a bit of the defensive because I am a dedicated consumer of reality television. In fact, I've avoided discussing it on this blog so far out of worry it might forever stain me as some sort of cultural idiot. The fact IS that television is entertainment... and whatever floats your boat is OK by me. My wife has her own TiVo filled to the brim with every cop show on the air... Never mind the fact that THOSE shows are about as far from REALITY as you can get - that's what she enjoys.

What really sticks in my craw are the people who insist on dismissing any program that is placed in the "reality TV" category out of hand. My brother-in-law, Todd, is one of these people. He won't tolerate 10 minutes of "Dancing With The Stars", but he'll watch every single Yankees game! Can you really tell me that three hours of baseball on TV is either more exciting or more entertaining than one hour of celebrity ballroom dancing? Again - whatever floats your boat.

Now - just a couple of quick riffs on current and future reality TV programs...

We're down to the final three on "Dancing With The Stars", now that Marissa Jaret Winokur has been shown the door. I was a big fan of the Tony-winning actress ... Like me, she is loud and fat... but she didn't let that get in the way, and she obviously enjoyed every minute that she was on the show. The great thing about Marissa is that she knew she probably should have been gone several weeks ago, and she appreciated that America kept her around as long as it did. As for the remaining stars, if Kristy Yamaguchi doesn't win, it will be a crime!


I've never been a big fan of American Idol... To me, it's always taken too long to go from early auditions to the finals, and there's something about all three judges that bug me. Having said that, I have dipped in and out of Idol this season... and I believe it's David Cook's competition to win.





If Reality TV is uncool, "Survivor" must be downright frigid. Just a few years ago, the granddaddy of reality programs was standard watercooler conversation in the office, but I knew almost no one at WMAL who would admit to watching it in recent years. The TV ratings are starting to bear that out. The finale of the latest season, "Fans vs. Faves", failed to finish in the top 10 programs for the week. That's a shame, because for those of you who snuffed the torch on Survivor years ago, I can tell you that this season - number SIXTEEN! - was one of the most entertaining seasons ever, including a four-week streak of tribal council blindsiding that has never been matched in the show's history! Again - I'm a big football fan - but you can't tell me that some of these shows are not just as competitive as TV sports!

Finally - I'm happy to hear that the Mole is making a comeback on ABC this summer. "The Mole" is almost as old as "Survivor", but it never achieved the same kind of ratings success. The original series was hosted by Anderson Cooper, who at the time was an overnight news anchor on ABC, and not yet a CNN megastar. The show itself is kind of hard to describe. There are about a dozen contestants who are given missions to perform... However, one of the contestants is a mole... someone whose job it is to spoil the missions without being detected. The winner of the program is the person who survives the longest, and who can identify the Mole. This show, more than others, was an acquired taste, but I highly recommend it. The new version will be out next month, but you can catch a marathon of the original series this Sunday on Game Show Network! Here's a promo for the original series:


By the way - a big shout out to my friend Ann Wog, who produces the Grandy and Andy Morning show on WMAL - She is my one and only true reality confidant! If it's reality TV, it's on Ann's TiVo!

Unwanted Nostalgia- Remembering Life Before The Internet!

Even as I write this, my internet service is fading in and out on me this morning. It's really incredible to note how quickly I have come to depend on the web as my lifeline to everything... in fact, if I had to choose between keeping the web or keeping the TV and TiVo, I think I'd have to choose the internet! When my service went out at around 6 this morning, I knew I had to contact Verizon immediately - the problem was, I couldn't get the Fios webpage up on the internet, so I had to find a PHONE BOOK! Verizon tossed a couple of them on my driveway a few weeks ago, and luckily, my wife refused to let me throw them away, so I was able to call Verizon and after a few minutes of voice mail hell, get a technician on the line. Thank God my wife is a luddite!

Friday Odds and Ends (Mostly Odds!)

If you have school age children, you know there's nothing more "fun" than "helping" your kid finish up a major school project. Our 10-year-old son, Spencer, had a social studies project due today - the class is doing biographies, so who do you think he chose? You get one guess, and here's a clue. It's a Matthews family obsession. OK. So we (sorry, I meant HE) had to make a lifesize representation of Walt... Most kids pulled out the crayons and went to work. Mrs. Matthews, being the perfectionist uberMom she is, pulled out the construction paper, and together we (HE) cut a suit for Walt... I tied one of my Disney ties, and scanned it at real size for the chest, and Robin gave him suit pockets and cuffs for the pants... Oh, and his "shirt" was real fabric, too. We spent the entire night constructing it on the island in the kitchen. So, what do you think of our creation? We (HE) better get an "A", that's all I've gotta say!

After more than a year of being pestered by me, my friend and former work associate Jen Richer, has joined the TiVo universe. As readers of my new website already know, I consider TiVo to be one of the great turn of the century inventions. Note, I endorsed TiVo, not your generic cable company DVRs... TiVo is simply more user-friendly and has better search functions than brand X, and those enlightened enough to have it connected through wifi also have access to a full array of nifty features, including the ability to send and receive home movies, view snapshots on your TV, download movie rentals, listen to internet radio and a bunch of other stuff you can't do with other DVRs. If this sounds like a paid endorsement for TiVo, unfortunately it isn't. It is an endorsement, but I wasn't paid!

Finally... When we moved into our current house four years ago, I made Robin get rid of all of our old record albums, because we had not played a single one of them in the 13 years we lived in our old house, and we had long ago replaced most of them with compact discs. However, I did save ONE album... a 1981 recording of Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel Choir (Hear a clip of the 2007 version of the choir here). If you look at the liner notes on the album, you will see my name in the choir directory, along with that of Jonathan Greene, one of my best friends and the guy who introduced me to my wife! My friend, John Patti of WBAL has one of those turntables that can hook up directly to a computer, and he has agreed to transfer that old album to digital music files for me, so I can annoy the family by playing 18th century music on road trips. And I'm sure you'll soon be able to hear some old clips here at Life on The Beach as well! Lucky you!