Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2008 November 10

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November 10

NFL records

If the Detroit Lions lose the next three games and Tennessee wins the next three games, Detroit will be 0-12 and Tennessee will be 12-0. What is the NFL record for an undefeated playing a winless team? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.226.211.71 (talk) 00:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

In my research, the most lopsided meeting ever was between the 15-0 New England Patriots and the 1-14 Miami Dolphins last year (2007). I am not sure that there has ever been a 12-0 meeting a 0-12 before. The 1972 Dolphins at 12-0 played the 2-10 Patriots as another gross mismatch. During the 1976 season, the 11-1 Oakland Raiders played the 0-12 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Tampa Bay would go on to a "perfect" 0-14, the only winless team ever). Never found the 0-X team playing a X-0 team much past week 5 or 6, so this meeting may be historical. Of course, 3 games is a LONG time on the NFL time scale; it seems unlikely that all three games will go exactly that way for both teams (i.e. Tennessee will likely lose or Detroit will likely win). --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Art Songs

Can anyone provide me with examples of an art song? Is there an archetypical art song (especially one written for a baritone)? I have referred to the article here on Wikipedia, but the few examples by Schubert and the list of composers is not sufficient for my need. Cheers, --Think Fast (talk) 02:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

If I had to pick one as the archetypical art song for a baritone, I'd probably choose Schubert's "Der Erlkönig" (already mentioned in the article). Probably some of the songs in Schumann's Dichterliebe also qualify - perhaps "Ich grolle nicht". This from Art Song Central gives a list of many collections of songs. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:34, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

television movie

I am looking for the name of a black & white movie about nuclear war that aired on 5/5/1957. My father who worked for NACA (NASA) insisted my sibs and I watched it. It was on at 7:30 - 9:00pm EST in the Cleveland, Ohio area. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.96.238.3 (talk) 03:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure about the date? Cuz the first thing I thought of was Fail-Safe (1964 film). --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's another idea IMDB has info on a short-lived TV series named Panic!. There's not much info on it, but it looks like it was about "high stress" sorts of moments, and one could see nuclear war fitting into the style of the TV series... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Check the IMDB for "A Day Called X" (1957). They give the date of broadcast as December 8, but that might conceivably be wrong or you might be misremembering that part. --Anonymous, 05:48 UTC, November 10, 2008.

According to Steven Scheuer's syndicated TV Key for Sunday, May 5, 1957, the series Air Power, narrated by Walter Cronkite, showed a "frightening documentary" that evening about "possible nuclear destruction". The episode title is "The New Doctrine". The Air Power series was released on DVD in 2002. The six-hour boxed set is available on Amazon, but it's not clear if "The New Doctrine" episode is included. Pepso2 (talk) 11:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at Category:Cold War films and Category:Doomsday films and see if anything jogs your memory. Astronaut (talk) 17:56, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

indian television industry in the 1980's

when did the first television broadcast began in india? which were the first daily programmes on it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kunal pdj (talk • contribs) 07:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

You may look at our article on Television in India as well as these links:[1], [2] which cover the history of Indian Television expansively . Unfortunately, I couldn't find too much information on the first television show, though on a site by the name of indianetzone.com it is stated that the first television series (note the difference between any show and a serial) was Hum Log.Leif edling (talk) 12:42, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Basketball game in China featuring NBA sides

I remember watching a basketball game featuring NBA sides a few weeks back (a live telecast). It was held in China (either at Beijing or at Shanghai) and the game also had quite a close finish. Now, I've forgotten about it completely. Does anybody know what event it was?Leif edling (talk) 12:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

NBA China Games to Feature Bucks and Warriors --Onorem♠Dil 12:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like both games had close finishes. Could have been either one. --Onorem♠Dil 12:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's the box score for game 1, here's the box score for game 2.--droptone (talk) 12:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. As I said, I remembered the game taking place at Beijing or Shanghai; turns out there was no game at Shanghai. So it was the game at Beijing, i.e. the second one.Leif edling (talk) 12:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Why is TV closed captioning so bad ?

I can understand why closed captions for a live TV program might be iffy, but why is CC for a pre-recorded show so pathetic ? I've identified many types of errors:

1) Using the wrong word ("a proxy war" becomes "epoxy war", get your glue guns ready !). I would guess they just heard it wrong. Having somebody check their work after would likely catch this.

2) The wrong spelling. In cases where they are asked to spell a name or chemical or something else they may be unfamiliar with, I can see why they would have to go with the phonetic spelling. However, they should have time to look it up and correct it after the show.

3) Gaps. There are often sections of the show which aren't closed captioned at all. Perhaps they went for a cup of coffee ? But why don't they go back and fix it later ? I'm not talking about intentionally shortening the text so people can follow the essence of a rapid-fire conversation, that's fine, as in "I can't believe that you ever loved me at all !" might become "You never loved me !".

4) Random characters. I'm thinking this is some type of technical issue, not the fault of the person who does the closed captioning.

One area where I've been pleasantly surprised is the name and artist listed for pieces of music. But why can't they do a decent job with the rest of the closed captioning ? Is it just that they don't have the budget to do a decent job ? StuRat (talk) 17:04, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I imagine that the issues you list, particularly #4, point to automated speech-to-text processing. If you assume that a computer is doing the job without human oversight, then the rest make sense. — Lomn 20:28, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I think a portion of CC is done that way, but most appears to have been typed by humans, as "human error" type mistakes crop in, like them typing a common phrase that was close to what was actually said. For example "see your labor" might become "see you later". StuRat (talk) 21:27, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• I once saw a news item or documentary about people who do closed captioning and from what I remember they are under a lot of time pressure. They simply don't have the time to check their work. I don't have an answer for your other questions. - Mgm|^(talk) 20:32, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• I figured that was the case, but the real question is then why they have so little time. Assuming that's because the budget is tight, the deepest question is why there are such limited budgets for CC for a show which is otherwise quite extravagant. Perhaps the management feels that those who need CC are not in their target market for ads, so don't matter ? StuRat (talk) 21:27, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• I would imagine that's exactly the case. As you point out, producing a show can be quite expensive, even if there isn't some huge star or flashy special effects. Keeping that in mind, how much would you expect them to spend after having committed all that money to getting the thing filmed? Now consider what percentage of the population requires the use of the CC and what percentage of that percentage are demographically less important for ratings, like old folks? The target audiences of most shows are young adults, teens, and kids, probably in that order. Not a whole lot of them require the CC. What I'd be curious about is whether shows that specifically target an older audience do a more thorough job. I don't watch TV anymore, but I'm sure there's some modern equivalent to The Golden Girls or Murder, She Wrote out there. Matt Deres (talk) 15:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

• Well, some news shows attract an older audience, especially 60 Minutes. Younger folks get their news from the Internet, CNN, or not at all, it seems. For most shows it seems they put just enough effort into CC so they can claim they have it. Another factor may be that TV shows aren't rated on the quality of the CC. If they were, and especially if that went into the overall rating, then TV producers might see competent CC as a cheap way to up their ratings. StuRat (talk) 17:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

What kind of rating are you referring to? As I said, I don't watch TV anymore, but I'm only aware of content ratings ("not-suitable for children", etc.) and popularity ratings like the infamous Neilson ratings system (among others). Your last two sentences imply that TV shows get some kind of quality rating and I'm not sure that they do, other than the writings of TV-critics. As I think we've agreed, the basic problem is that most target audiences don't require the CC, so rating the CC-quality would still only affect the watching habits of a group whose opinions TV producers are ambivalent to.

But let's follow the logic through. Let's say there are 10 channels, with unique news coverage on each channel. Each of them has a rating as to how good their CC is and each of them has an overall rating, which is what you're proposing (I think). Well, as a non-CC viewer, I would look through the overall ratings, perhaps finding 3 stations with an 8.0 out of 10 (or whatever) as their rating. My next step would be to pick the station with the lowest CC rating because that option is irrelevant to me; if all three have the same overall rating and two have 1.9/2.0 for closed captioning while the third has a 0.5/2.0 CC-rating, then that third channel must be doing better work on things I care about to make up the difference. As a member of the coveted white-male-age-18-to-39 demographic, my viewing habits would actually monetarily reward the stations that did poorest in closed-captioning their news. I may have misunderstood your comments, but I think the point more or less stands anyway; TV networks care about their own target demographics and really aren't interested in anything that doesn't directly affect their ad revenue. Which is probably what drove me to just read books instead. :-/ Matt Deres (talk) 21:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Various sites provide ratings of TV shows for quality, such as IMDB. As for your method to compensate for CC considerations in ratings, that wouldn't reward them for poor CC, unless you somehow overcompensated for it's contribution to the overall rating. StuRat (talk) 08:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

trivia

Hi I'm invited to a sort of trivia contest in our community, but the problem is I've attended this sort of thing before and they usually ask about older stuff like Magnum PI and The Cosby Show that I have no idea about. But all the adults seem to chuckle at my lack of knowledge and say it's pop culture. This time I want to be prepared-so please help me out Wikipedians! There's sooooo much to learn, how do I even start?

a) jump in your time machine and go back and live through the time periods from which they draw the questions. or b) get on the committee that makes up the questions and force them to include questions about something more recent. --LarryMac | Talk 20:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

You could read our articles on those topics to get an overview, or you could watch those shows on Nick at Nite, TV Land, RTN, or some other network that shows "oldies but goodies". You could also rent them from Netflix or Blockbuster Inc.. Here's a trivial Q from each: What was the character's name which Rudy called "Bud" on The Cosby Show ? Did Magnum, P.I. ever commit a murder ? If so, why ? StuRat (talk) 21:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

If you can get your hands on an older version of Trivial Pursuit, flipping through the cards and reading the entertainment category might be helpful. Parents and other older relatives and neighbours would be a good place to ask to try and find someone who might have it. Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I do very well at trivia games for two reasons. First, I have studied a lot of history. History repeats itself, so learning the chain of events in one time period will make it easy to come up with a logical (and correct) guess about another time period. That continues into learning to guess at plot lines in movies/television shows without seeing them. "What happened when Joe and Barbara on Some Fake TV Show snuck into the Some Fake Restaurant kitchen at night?" Logical answer: "They were locked in the freezer until morning." The second tool for trivia is learning to recall what you hear. Practice with songs first. They are easy. Listen to a song and attempt to sing it through without playing it. Then, make the move to commercials. They are usually easy to repeat. Then, start on the hard stuff - repeating anything you hear. This will build up a tool specifically for trivia. You'll be asked a question with a couple key words. Those key words will trigger memory of some documentary you saw a few years ago. The audio of the documentary will play in your head and you'll get the answer. Of course, none of this will help in a trivia contest coming up soon. These are skills you build up over many years. -- kainaw™ 15:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If your community contest allows teams or partners, the obvious thing would be to hook up with somebody older. However, i was quite serious in the "b" part of my response above. If the people creating the question list are focussing on a narrow range of available pop culture, then they are not being fair to all participants. I ran trivia nights for a couple years at a couple different pubs - I made up the questions (which is what led me to Wikipedia in the first place) and I presented them - and I was always quite concious of needing to appeal to a large cross-section of patrons. Left to my own devices, I'd have had endless questions about 80's bands and songs, but that would have gotten me fired rather quickly. More directly to te question, I don't think you can learn pop culture of a certain era if you haven't lived through it and shared the experience at the time. I'm not sure that knowing Mary Richards broke out laughing at the funeral for Chuckles the Clown is going to stick with you unless you saw that show and discussed it with others. Last week I changed my Facebook status to say "Larry is up and at them" which I think a not insignificant subset of my friends would recognize as a Simpsons reference, but one of my younger friends wrote me to say 'shouldn't that be "up and at 'em"?' Guess he never saw that episode . . . --LarryMac | Talk 15:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The goggles do nothing! -- Mad031683 (talk) 22:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say you need to watch the shows to know about them, but that doesn't mean you need to have been alive at the time. Although it's not exactly something to brag about, I can recite the cast and theme song from Gilligan's Island, due to reruns, despite that show having ended before I was born. StuRat (talk) 16:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

There are some trivia questions that no amount of life experience will ever prepare you for. Such as the one I encountered last year: "What body part did Alfred Hitchcock lack?". Nobody in the room knew the answer. The supposed answer was "one of his ears". We asked the question master where that information came from, and he said "The internet" with a completely straight face as if anything and everything on the internet is automatically and unquestionably correct. Poor soul. I went home and googled it just in case it had escaped my notice or maybe I'd heard it and forgotten - but in vain, so just precisely where on the internet they found this is still a mystery to me. I checked on Hitchcock's WP talk page, and confirmed it's a load of rubbish. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't be so sure, this picture shows him with only one ear. ;-) But now you've mentioned that question, it's definitely ringing a bell with me. I'm sure I've heard or read that there was a body part Hitchcock lacked; I'm thinking belly button, but that just sounds more stupid the more I think of it. Anyone know, or maybe whatever it was was just a variation on the "load of rubbish"? --AdamSommerton (talk) 22:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

This is put to rest at Talk:Alfred Hitchcock#Missing Ear?. The supposed story is in a link at Talk:Alfred Hitchcock#Belly button. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Tooth. He lacks a tooth. Julia Rossi (talk) 09:17, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

And being male,there are several female-only body parts that he lacks. Lemon martini (talk) 14:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)