webOS Lives On

Yesterday, HP made an announcement that would end, and begin, a new chapter in the webOS saga.  Over the next few months, HP will release webOS to the open-source community, with leadership guidance along the way, as well as development contributions and monetary support for the new development community.  HP maintains its decision in August to discontinue manufacturing hardware for the mobile operating system.  However, in order to encourage uptake of webOS, HP will be fully backing its adoption by other vendors and pledges to eventually return to the tablet hardware market.  On the other hand, HP remains adamant about avoiding getting back into the smartphone hardware business.

This effectively ends the long-questionable future of webOS since its initial launch three years ago in January 2009.  Originally the future mobile operating system developed internally by Palm for use in their own products, webOS became one of several highly coveted assets when HP acquired Palm in April of 2010.  Since that time, HP committed to releasing successors of the Pre and Pixie series smartphones, as well as new model variations like the Veer.  Ultimately, HP would modify the smartphone OS to power their Touchpad tablet computer as well.  As sales of all webOS products remained below expectations, a series of erratic moves in HP management led the company to cut retail prices on the Touchpad and many first-party accessories, including a unique wireless charging dock and fitted case.  This set a fire-sale into motion that swept brick-and-mortar and online retailers by surprise.  For nearly a week, the Touchpad tablet sold for as little as $99, while other peripherals were discounted by more than 60%.  Ultimately, the discount that led HP to sell the Touchpad at a loss also spurred interest, as it was low enough to drive demand for the webOS ecosystem on a tablet.  However, rumors still left the future of support for the hardware and its operating system in question, as well as whether or not HP would even continue to participate in the manufacture of personal computers at all.

With millions of dollars of losses now recorded, and the replacement of HP’s CEO and other officials in upper management, the company is now attempting to put the debacle behind them.  The transition to an open-source project is the first step they are taking to keep webOS alive.  Ideally, the open-source community’s contributions and support will make it possible to sustain webOS in a more cost-effective manner.  Additionally, making the source code of the OS openly available and modifiable should promote its adoption by allowing other hardware makers the ability to change and improve the software, and make it a cost-free alternative to Android.  Android is also an open-source project, but commits to the code base are tightly controlled and applications for Google services are still licensed for a fee.  Now, it’s just a matter of time before we begin to see the new future for the operating system that continues to survive. Long live webOS!

Not So New Girl Anymore

With two months now under it's belt and the World Series now long-since passed, New Girl is settling in and finding its permanent audience.  The nearly one month hiatus through October makes New Girl still feeling like a new premiere with only 6 episodes having already aired.  Consequently, there was no Halloween episode, though a Thanksgiving show aired last week.

The month off is also evident in the declining ratings that I expect many FOX sitcoms have experienced in the past few weeks. "Thanksgiving" carried a 6.91 rating, a slight increase over the previous week's 6.84.  Both of these are a drop from my birthday late September when the series carried a rating in the low 9's.  Regardless, this still seems like healthy viewership for a sitcom, at least to me when it is competing on a network full of reality and content shows, which also happens to represent FOX's primary audience.  That being said, we already know New Girl has an order in for a full season, so it's looking as though the series could easily pick up a second season if ratings stabilize over the next few months.

Gannett Announces Third Quarter Finances, New Girl Still Waiting Out World Series

Last week, Gannett reported its third quarter financial results. Net income fell as a result of reduced ad revenue. Overall net income fell one cent per share to 41 cents/share, or $99.8 million from last quarter. Revenues from digital properties are stemming the losses occurring in print ad sales, but not enough to instill confidence in investors nor reverse declining income. And while this may seem pessimistic, this is a situation being faced by many media groups currently operating newspapers.

Meanwhile, New Girl continues its hiatus while FOX brings us the World Series. Be sure to watch when it returns November 1, and read what's new here on November 4.

Gannett Company

In addition to covering FOX's New Girl, I'll be discussing Gannett Company for my Telecommunications Programming class here as well starting today.  Just to provide some background, you are probably most familiar with Gannett through its national newspaper publication, USA Today.  However, Gannett does much more. Gannett owns more than 90 newspapers, including 12 in Ohio alone.  Gannett also operates 23 television broadcast stations, with one being Cleveland's NBC affiliate, WKYC.  Additionally, Gannett now owns about 10 online properties.  Among the most notable are CareerBuilder and and Cars.com.

Gannett Company was started by Frank Gannett in 1923, after he bought and merged several competitors into the Star-Gazette in Elmira, New York.  Despite the decline in the popularity of newspaper as a medium in recent years, today Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the United States by circulation.

Since the World Series will postpone new episode of New Girl next week as well, I will be discussing the television and online operations of Gannett next Friday.

Full Season Pickup

With last week's airing of New Girl picking up 4.5/11 in 18-49, FOX ordered an additional 11 episodes to make New Girl the first new series to fill out its season to a full 24 episodes. This past week's episode continued that trend with New Girl leading Tuesday night for 18-49 with a 4.3. New Girl is quickly looking to be one of the best performing sitcom premieres of the Fall.

For those of you who missed it, in this week's episode Nick brings Jess to a wedding, because he suspects that he will run into an ex-girlfriend there, but Jess plays the part a bit too well. Likewise, Winston is enlisted as an usher and takes his role seriously, as well. Meanwhile, Schmidt is torn between two women at the wedding. You can see this episode on FOX.com now.

Finally, while it's looking like New Girl is getting settled in for a permanent stay on FOX, the network has begun reshuffling its schedule to accommodate the end of the Major League Baseball season. Next week's episode of New Girl will air Wednesday, October 12 at 9:30 PM instead of 9 so that MLB Playoffs can air through most of Tuesday's primetime hours. The following episode will move back to Tuesday, but still at 9:30 instead of 9.

Week 1 Results

With the first week of premieres now behind us, the Nielsen ratings are in!  With a 4.8/12 share among ages 18-49, New Girl took first place among Tuesday's primetime lineup.  10.28 million viewers tuned in to see New Girl, an excellent performance for a new comedy, but was easily "out watched" by two of the NCIS franchise, Dancing With the Stars, and CBS' premiere of Unforgettable.

Nevertheless, New Girl seems to have had no trouble finding an audience and I'm looking forward to this upcoming week's episode and the introduction of Winston as Coach's replacement.

It’s Jess!

FOX’s new comedy line-up seems poised to compete well with this season’s new network comedy offerings.  Personally, I was not entirely surprised FOX is bringing this quirky comedy to the air.  ABC has had success with Modern Family for a few years, and CBS has ridden a long wave of excellent ratings with Two and a Half Men, as well as The Big Bang Theory.  Even NBC has done well with 30 Rock and The Office.  Thus, New Girl seems to be a good fit for the only network lacking a traditional situational comedy with a strong following.

Zooey Deschanel plays Jess Day, a slightly-awkward, but charming girl who recently went through a sudden break-up and now finds herself trying to get back on her feet.  In need to a new place to live, she meets with a group of guys looking for a roommate from an ad in Craigslist.  The show follows the four as they live and learn about themselves and each other.  FOX’s promotions for the show include some of the quirky behaviors and traits of Jess and her interactions with her new roommates.   These clips include several key interactions from the pilot, character traits like Jess’ near-constant singing to herself, and some out-of-episode content, such as Jess explaining her difficulty in choosing a new ringtone.  As characters, much remains to be seen about the three roommates, Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Coach (Damon Wayans, Jr., who will be replaced after the pilot episode), and Nick (Jake Johnson) before the pilot airs.

I’m looking forward to seeing the direction FOX takes this comedy, as it seems to have a lot of potential.  If the writing is as well-done as the acting we’ve seen so far, New Girl will easily find a place in TV viewers’ primetime “watch-list.”

New Girl will be premiering directly after Glee, on Tuesday at 9 PM.

New Girl–First Look Trailer