2008-10-04

Dr. Phil Needs To Get Over his New Toy

...his new toy being "being broadcast in HD". Today featured several shots of him standing next to a large display, and while the content on his display was readable, the right half of Dr. Phil wasn't.

This is my new favorite thing to complain about: TV producers and directors who see all their friends with shiny new plasma widescreen TVs and assume that the average man in the street has the same gear.

I'm sure that on a wide screen TV, Dr. Phil looked stunning -- but on my TV, the shot looked like crap.

Memo to TV producers: you are not shooting a movie. If your content falls off the sides of my screen, my viewership might fall off the side of your ratings.

Remember: for widescreen, stage wide, but frame narrow.

(Or letterbox. But we all know that if Dr. Phil got letterboxed, half of $STEREOTYPE's trailer parks would call in demanding to know why Dr. Phil looked all funny with them black bars on the screen.)