Damien Mulley

So this writers strike in Hollywood/America. No shows can be made if they don’t have writers. Heroes, Lost and loads more are going to be delayed. While Letterman has done a deal with his writers, the main strike is going to go on and on. Where is the IDA on this? Why are they not showing ABC, NBC and CBS what we can offer them. Let’s export all the quality shows we have out there and even create spinoffs.

Fair City L.A.

Bella, Leo, Jimmeeeeeeh and whoeverthefuckelse is on that show take a trip out there. And fit in. But all written and filmed in Ireland. The setmakers already make it seem like Carrigstown is realer than real so L.A. should be just as easy to copy on to shaky wooden frames.

But there’s more!
But hell, with P.S., I’m an eejit doing so well and Irish accents being all hot again, let’s give them quality stuff. Glenroe. Dinny and Miley and Fanny and Biddie and endsinYie and their Billy Barry kids with D4 accents.

Then to feed their habit, let’s unleash Bracken on them. No, not the fella, the show.

And the game shows
Where in the World (book still available for 200 sterling) and Head 2Toe should be exported out to Lala land too. (Aside: I would have thought Fustar had some Theresa Lowe stuff but alas no.)

We have tonnes of stuff that we could ship over. What else could we send over? We’ve not even started on the quality from TV Three.

Start your engines.

New nomination system, new judging system and a restriction on the number of categories you can be nominated in. This means there’s more chance for smaller blogs to get through and combined with no public vote this year, it means it’s not a popularity contest that gets you to the second round. So, to be clear, all nominated blogs will get judged in round 1 and whittled down and some will go forward to round 2 where the judging gets a lot tougher. Good luck!

As a Christmas treat I bought Thank you for Smoking:

And then I read this on the tobacco industry going all social-networky and deliciously evil too. They’re making videos of celebrities talking about why smoking is great and building a social network so employees all around the world can exchange ideas on how to market cigarettes.

The first video shows a series of photos of celebrity smokers before posing a blunt question: “And your thoughts on the smoking ban?” A young woman with wispy blond hair gazes back solemnly toward the camera: “It’s brilliant because people will stop smoking as a habit.”

Seconds later, she appears again. “If you smoke,” she adds with a faint smile, pressing a cigarette to her lips, “it’s for pleasure.”

Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is meant to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The intended audience for the site — which started in the fall — is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as cafes and restaurants around the world continue to push users of the company’s products out the door.

“The cigarette market is very difficult to work with all the legal restrictions, and we have very few tools to communicate with our brands,” said Karine Boure, the marketing manager for Altadis. “One objective of our project was to bring more insight to our marketing team so that they could be more effective, and we saw the lab as a way to pick up more ideas. That’s why it’s important to find innovative ways of working.”

Read the full article.

The Learner Driver’s Facebook group I set up now has 613 members. Let’s see can we get it to 1000.

I’ve put a post up over on the Awards website about the Blog Awards sponsorship slots. €300 to sponsor a category this year. Last year’s sponsors pay the same price of €270 if they want to go again. Headline sponsor for the Best Blog post pays a lot more. Top award of night and all that. You can also sponsor the podcast and a few other things and as I mentioned before I’m looking for merchandise for the Goody Bags as well. Remember too that this event is run at cost. All door takings go to charity. No meal or any of that stuff, go to a €200 a plate awards gig for that. 🙂