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food Funny TV Websites

It’s easy to laugh at the Food Network, if you know where to look


The Next Food Network Star
The Next Food Network Star

Web Watch is a fan of Food Network.

We like to cook.  We like to eat.  We like to learn about new places to eat, new cooking techniques, and maybe have some fun along the way.  

We’ve eaten at a number of Food Network-related restaurants: Guy Fieri’s JOHNNY GARLIC’s, Keegan Gerhard’s D BAR DESSERTS, Robert Irving’s EAT, and at any number of Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, and Wolfgang Puck locations across the country.  Sometimes the food at the celebrity restaurants is merely adequate; other times it’s been phenomenal and has lived up to the hype.  But the journeys to eat at each location are always worth the trips.

Web Watch is not alone in our enjoyment of Food Network.  Over the years, Food Network has developed so much cooking- and food-related programming that they were able to program a second cable offering, Cooking Channel.  Obviously, there’s a demand for Food TV.

But with the growth that Food Network has had, there had to be some speedbumps along the way to trip them up. 

Categories
Travel TV Video Websites

Video Fun: Travelogue Parodies of PURE MICHIGAN tourism campaign

Backroads and Byways of Michigan

Video and filmmaker John Kerfoot knows funny when he sees it.

And when John first saw the PURE MICHIGAN ads that were put together to promote travel throughout the lovely state of Michigan (as voiced by Tim Allen), it was just a matter of time before John was able to put his own spoof videos together.

NOT SO PURE MICHIGAN is a collection of those parody spots, highlighting… or low-lighting, if you will… some of the not-so-pleasant sides of visiting Michigan’s tourist destinations.

Categories
Gadgets News TV

Confirmation that TiVo Doesn’t Hurt TV Advertising


TiVo 4.0 Premiere XL DVR
TiVo Premiere XL DVR

Longtime readers should recall when Web Watch shared TiVo Viewing Statistics that listed what types of programs TiVo users were watching when skipping through commercials.  Those metrics indicated which were the most common shows to be watched live (such as American Idol) vs those shows that viewers would store up on their TiVo to watch later (such as Grey’s Anatomy).

There has been a long-standing debate among broadcasters and advertisers as to whether TiVo, DVRs, and the ability to skip commercials hurts advertising.  The belief was that if the viewer didn’t watch the commercial, then why bother to buy the advertising in the first place?

In the past year, we’ve seen more creative advertising pieces be put together, in an attempt to “TiVo-proof” the commercial.  Some movie trailers, for example, display static content in a black bar above the trailer being played — so even if the commercial is being fast-forwarded through, the viewer can still see the name of the film being advertised.

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Funny shopping Websites

Just in time for Mother’s Day: the HUG-E-GRAM

Hug
Hug

Are you tired of trying to find your mother that perfect Mother’s Day gift? 

Aren’t you sick and tired of always sending her the same old flowers and singing telegrams, thanking her for being your mother for all these years?

Why not send your mother what she really wants to have from you:  A BIG GIANT HUG.

Categories
News TV

Today’s Fun Fact: By the time a child finishes elementary school, they will have witnessed over 8,000 murders


Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill
Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill

According to a STUDY ON TELEVISION VIEWING HABITS by A.C. Nielsen, by the time a child fnishes elementary school, they would have watched over 8,000 murders on TV.  By the time they reach 18, that number grows to over 200,000 violent acts.

If it helps, the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV every day.  If that person lives 65 years, they would have spent at least nine years – about 13% of their life – simply watching TV.

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10 Things TV Websites

“50 things that every person should learn in life” can be applied to reality TV


Esquire's A Man's Guide to Life: The Rules
Esquire’s A Man’s Guide to Life: The Rules

Esquire’s book, A MAN’S GUIDE TO LIFE is just like THE MODERN MAN’S GUIDE TO LIFE or Denis Boyle‘s A MAN’S LIFE: THE COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS – books filled with rules and helpful instructions to let any man prove that he is, in fact, A Man.  Web Watch highly recommends offering any of these three books to graduating high school seniors (or even as bar mitzvah gifts, since that is when A Boy Becomes a Man).

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10 Things Movies TV

Can You Name the Top Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Characters of All Time?

The Gay Cookbook

Web Watch admits that we watch a lot of TV.  And frankly, we’re willing to watch practically anything that the networks and various cable channels decide to fill our TiVo automatically-recorded suggestions queue with.

Which is why we don’t understand what all the kerfuffle is that some have about the types of characters that TV anf film writers and producers decide to use on their scripted shows.  Web Watch doesn’t care about the sexual orientation of the characters on the shows or films we watch – we just want what we’re watching to be good in the first place.

Categories
Internet TV Video

Update to our Discovery Channel “Boom de ya da” Post

Earlier this month, Web Watch posted about parodies of the Discovery Channel’s BOOM DE YA DA commercial.

How could we not include THIS TRIBUTE TO WEB COMIC xkcd featuring online favs like Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton, which was based on THIS xkcd cartoon, based on the Discovery Channel commercial (shown below).  Whew!

xkcd loves Discovery Channel