My take on the not-so-rockin’ New Year’s Eve set from Mariah Carey

For New Year’s Eve this year, I stayed home and kept the TV on channel 13 (KTRK-DT) to watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest. Most of the show was enjoyable. Mariah Carey’s set set started with “Auld Lang Syne” which. If only things didn’t go completely sideways right after it…

Mariah’s next song, “Emotions”, was marred by technical problems; according to her on-air commentary at the time, she couldn’t hear the audio in her in-ear monitor well enough to sing along with it. She sort of just stood there on stage for most of it, letting the crowd sing along for a bit. The song after, “We Belong Together” also appears to have been affected even though Mariah was able to either sing along or lip-sync to some of it.

Unfortunately the YouTube copies of the videos have been blocked by Dick Clark Productions on copyright grounds, despite the fact that a clip of just Mariah’s performance for commentary purposes quite clearly qualifies as fair use under US copyright law. Fortunately, I found someone with a copy of the broadcast and was able to make my own clip of the performance, which will be available via BitTorrent shortly after this post goes live. The clip starts at the introduction to “Auld Lang Syne” and ends at Ryan Seacrest’s great ad-libbed commentary about what had just happened, which also happens to drive home that clearly things did not go as planned.

Indeed, it wasn’t long until USA Today labeled the performance “a disaster”, US Magazine asked “What Went Wrong?”, Complex referred to it as “awkward” and said “Twitter let her have it” during the following number, “We Belong Together”, CBS News said she “botched” the performance, and many others.

Mariah herself tweeted a very candid, if slightly profane, summary shortly after the performance:

Shit happens 😩 Have a happy and healthy new year everybody!🎉 Here’s to making more headlines in 2017 😂

During an interview for Entertainment Weekly (EW), Mariah issued this response to a question about her feelings of how the show went now that some time had passed:

All I can say is Dick Clark was an incredible person and I was lucky enough to work with him when I first started in the music business. I’m of the opinion that Dick Clark would not have let an artist go through that and he would have been as mortified as I was in real time.

Perhaps most telling, however, was this EW interview with Stella Bulochnikov, Mariah Carey’s manager. Stella runs through the events leading up to the disastrous moment. In summary: Mariah arrives at the stage for the rehearsal at 2:30pm, which winds up being almost an hour early. The rehearsal runs 3:20pm to 3:50pm, and during the sound check the sound is coming in choppy to Mariah’s earpiece, but she was reassured it would be working by the evening. The sound was choppy again during an interview Mariah does with Ryan Seacrest at 10:30pm. They try a different set of equipment and a different battery pack, which also do not function correctly (the sound is faint) and Mariah is told “it will work on the stage” so they go to the stage. I’ll quote from here:

It’s now four minutes to showtime. She says, “I hear nothing in my ears, my ears are dead.” The other stage manager says, “It will work right when we go live.” Then things start to get chaotic. They start counting her down — four minutes, three minutes. Mariah: “I can’t hear.” Them: “You’re gonna hear when it goes live — two minutes!”

So, right when it goes live, she can’t hear anything. The ears are dead. They’re dead. So she pulls them out of the ear because if the artist keeps them in their ears then all she hears is silence. Once she pulled them off her ear she was hoping to hear her music, but because of the circumstances — there’s noise from Times Square and the music is reverberating from the buildings — all she hears is chaos. She can’t hear her music. It’s a madhouse. At the point, there’s no way to recover.

On the third song when she could hear her track playing it was so bad she said, “F— it, I’ve had enough.”

Stella goes on to describe the conversation she had with Mark Shimmel, the producer at Dick Clark Productions, in which she asks Mr. Shimmel to cut the West Coast feed to limit the damage. He refuses, and then:

So I’m like, “You would prefer to air a show with technical glitches so you can have a viral moment rather than protect the integrity of your show and Dick Clark Productions?” He said, “We just won’t do it. Do you want to do a joint statement?” And I said, “No, I want you to go f— yourself.” And that was it. I don’t think it was an unfair ask to ask them to cut [the segment from] the West Coast feed after they had this huge mechanical glitch.

And now for my take on all this…

Regarding Mariah being “mortified”: I think most of us, myself included, would be mortified as well, if our own national television appearance had gone sideways as badly as this one did. In fact, Mariah’s personal brand equity has a better chance of recovering, I think, because her past fame gives her a bit more room for error. Personally, if I went on national television tomorrow, it would be my very first time, and I’m not sure I’d ever recover from a disaster like this. While there are some who expected better, Mariah probably maintained poise better than I would have in the same situation.

Regarding Mr. Shimmel’s refusal to cut the performance out of the West Coast feed: were I the producer of a program similar to this I would have refused as well. Unless there’s a danger of a lawsuit or fines from the FCC by letting the program air unedited on tape delay, I would lean towards not tampering with the part of the show that’s already aired to half of the country. However I should note, were I the one in Stella’s position, I’d have asked for the cut as well, but realistically I would have expected a rejection. (There’s nothing to lose by trying to do what’s clearly in the best interest of the artist.) I would have left the decision on what to do regarding the joint statement up to the artist I was representing instead of saying what Stella did. (Though for all I know, Stella knows Mariah would have just said “he can go (screw) himself” so she didn’t bother.)

So for the most part I take Mariah’s side on this, and I can’t really blame Stella for getting heated. A lot of the blame here has to go on the side of Dick Clark Productions if the majority of the story as told by Stella is true. However, Hanlon’s Razor definitely applies here: never assume malice that which can be explained by incompetence. I would say those in charge of the audio equipment, including the earpiece monitors, are most to blame here. As much as I can understand how personnel matters are usually kept relatively private, this is a well-publicized incident that happened on live national television and there just isn’t any putting the genie back in the bottle. In that vein, it would be good to see a press release from Dick Clark Productions acknowledging that someone responsible, even if not named, is no longer working for them as a direct result of what happened.

And then there are the accusations that Mariah’s performance was sabotaged by staff at Dick Clark Productions. For those who either never watch television or who are unfamiliar with American television, Dick Clark is a legend in the television industry. In addition to his own production company, he was a fixture on television shows ranging from several incarnations of Pyramid (with changing dollar amounts in the title as the years went on), TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes (now just known as Bloopers), American Bandstand, The Challengers, Scattegories, Winning Lines, in addition to the New Year’s specials which bear his name. Yes, some of these were shows that he also produced, but many were not. Now, I concur with Mariah that Dick Clark would never have let this happen on his watch, but as a fan of Dick Clark’s work over the years both in front of and behind the camera and thus of the legacy he has left behind, I find the accusations that the current staff at Dick Clark Productions did this on purpose to have a viral moment quite offensive, egregious, and tasteless (see above regarding Hanlon’s Razor). This will remain my standpoint on the accusations until evidence surfaces to indicate those accusations may be justified.

That said, even if this was caused by incompetence and not malice, I still think Mariah is due an apology, as are the viewers who were disappointed by what we got instead of what could have been a great performance. And again, even if this was caused by mere incompetence, this looks quite bad on Dick Clark Productions and the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve brand. I hope I’m not stuck at home again next New Year’s Eve, but if I am, this is enough for me to possibly rethink where I tune the TV, or for that matter, maybe even if I bother watching TV at all.

National Stalking Awareness Month 2017

For those of you who don’t know about it, this January is once again National Stalking Awareness Month in the US. I’ve never highlighted this before on this blog, but there’s a first time for everything. I’m not going to make a whole bunch of posts about stalking and related subjects, but I do plan to make at least one post per week exclusively about stalking, plus a couple of related tie-ins in other posts (as I do have some privacy- and cybersecurity-related posts to make this month as well).

For those of you who wish to learn more (or who may not even have realized this particular awareness month existed), I’ve linked the website above and I’ll be leaving a banner up at least through January if not a bit longer.

Garbage in, garbage out: unintended consequences of regulating homeless aid

A recent story on theantimedia.org is probably the most absurd event I have read about in the last eight years and change that I have been posting to this blog.

Flash back to 2012, when Houston’s city council approved an ordinance to regulate the distribution of food and other necessities to the city’s homeless population. It was a law that doesn’t sit well with many in this city, myself included. I understand what the city is trying to do, but I have doubts this law is working the way it should. And the story linked above is one of the most fitting examples as to how these types of laws should not be used.

In an apparent response to someone calling in a complaint, several HPD officers arrived on the scene of a handout to some homeless people in the area along with a garbage truck. In complete disregard for not only Texan and Houstonian values, but also basic compassion and concern for human beings who are stuck in this city without a roof over their heads, they forced the homeless people who had received gifts from well-meaning people to throw them away.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t name the officers involved. I have to wonder though, what kind of person, cop or not, could take away food and survival items from people who have already lost their homes, and still look themselves in the mirror and sleep at night. How could a cop do something this disgraceful and still feel proud to put on the uniform and badge afterwards?

I would actually understand a bit more if they were to ticket or arrest the people handing out food, clothing, blankets, and other survival items. The reason being, is that gets this law in front of a jury, and the sooner we actually get a jury to nullify this bunch of legislative excrement, the better. Either way we get rid of it is fine by me–either an outright repeal by the city council, or by juries refusing to convict (or even judges refusing to convict, but I’m not exactly holding my breath for that).

I voted for Annise Parker, who was mayor when this excuse for a law was passed. Annise had a mostly great tenure as mayor of our fine city, and accomplished many good things. However, to say the least, this law was not one of them. I hope that our current city government can recognize the errors the previous administration made passing this law, and that doubling down on it is a huge blunder. Honestly, if this episode and similar anti-homeless actions are about “cleaning up” the city prior to hosting the Super Bowl in a few weeks, then I would rather Houston never host a Super Bowl again than have any more of them. And remember, it is cheaper to provide housing to the homeless than to maintain the status quo. (The linked story is not the only example.)

The Evernote two-step: a tale of caution regarding privacy and data ownership

This recent story from PCWorld about Evernote changing its privacy policy followed by this story covering a very abrupt about-face from Evernote say pretty much all there is to say about why it’s a bad idea to blindly trust companies like Evernote with the privacy of your data.

Basically, Evernote changed their privacy policy on a whim to allow employees to snoop on user notes ostensibly to assist efforts to train its algorithms. Originally, individual users could opt out of the algorithm training, but not out of the part of the privacy policy still allowing Evernote employees to snoop on their data; businesses could opt out but would not get the benefits of the new features if they did.

Evernote was quick to backpedal and change to an opt-in model following the fully justified outrage of its users. It’s quite possible some users no longer trust Evernote with their data after this two-step, and it would be hard to blame them. It is possible to store data locally with Evernote (by creating a local notebook instead of a “synchronized” notebook) and they intentionally make it easy to get all your data out of Evernote if you want to leave for what you believe are greener pastures. This gaffe might be the impetus for quite a few users to do just that.

The lesson here is a very powerful one: there’s very little stopping other companies from doing this tomorrow, and there’s no guarantee the CEO of that company will even give the appearance of giving a tinker’s damn about its users. This is a rather direct reminder to take a look at the companies you trust with your data, and how easy it would be to get your data out of those services/products should you decide you want to leave. Of course, it would be wise to remember the best time to find out how easy it is to get your data back out of a product/service is before you put your data in it.

I’ll add a personal angle to this. At various times over the past year and change, I have considered moving this blog to a static site updated with Pelican, among other possibilities. The hard part is not getting the data out of WordPress–that’s actually about as easy as they get. Even the free-of-charge wordpress.com platform makes this relatively easy, even if one is not moving to self-hosted WordPress (a.k.a. “wordpress.org” to differentiate it from shared-hosting wordpress.com).

No, the problem comes if I find out Pelican (in this case) doesn’t work out and I have to move entries back into the last backup of the site as a WordPress site. That might be easy if I make no more than about five posts before finding out it’s not going to work out. But what if that’s ten? Twenty? Fifty? One hundred? Two hundred? It’s a potentially painful process because I don’t see an easy way to automatically make even a WXR file with the new posts in it. Sure, I could ease any future transition by keeping a local install of WordPress and add the new posts manually as I make them, but that is an implied admission I have no confidence in the new platform–and that would be the case even if it was something besides Pelican.

Of course, ideally I want to change platforms only once. There’s always the chance the first change doesn’t work out. There’s also the chance I would want to later switch back to WordPress after making this change, or switch to a future WordPress fork or even to something like b2evolution (which forked from the same blogging software that WordPress was forked from).

Another great example of what not to do, unfortunately, is what the WordPress Foundation (at the time) did when they struck a deal with Meetup.com regarding the online presence of local WordPress groups. The thing to remember about Meetup.com is that they intentionally make it difficult to impossible to change platforms. Vendor lock-in, combined with the (justified) fear that organizers might lose some members (in fact, almost certainly will lose some members) when transitioning to another platform, is the business model of Meetup. It’s a huge departure from the Meetup that I used as an early adopter and that’s sad.

Anyway, it was and still is really disappointing to me that the WordPress Foundation (at the time) deciding to just pay a bunch of money to Meetup. The first reason is it’s been sort of an informal goal of the WordPress community to do everything with WordPress that can be done with WordPress. As an example of this, WordCamps aren’t ticketed with Eventbrite or other such sites; they use a WordPress plugin called CampTix written for the purpose. Thankfully the deal with Meetup.com is about the only time WordPress was intentionally eschewed for a function central to the local WordPress communities around the world.

Adding to it, of course, was the unfortunate experience we had with the Houston WordPress Meetup in most of 2012 going into the early months of 2013 and the response from Meetup (at the top of the post). Basically, Meetup’s standpoint was that the people (community) in the group didn’t matter as much compared to the organizer paying their dues on time. The only silver lining to this cloud is that the WordPress Foundation (the entity paying Meetup which is the nominal organizer of the actual group; maybe this, too, has changed to WordPress Community Support, the new PBC) has a bit more skin in the game and can replace inactive or unresponsive organizers. Then again, they would still be able to do that using a home-brewed WordPress-based solution, without paying Meetup one bloody cent.

Regarding the use of Meetup, it’s hard to see which is the chicken and which is the egg. A lot of groups were using Meetup.com prior to the WordPress Foundation deal. Still, the better move for the community would have been to start a WordPress multiuser site similar to wordcamp.org with a plugin to replicate the Meetup-like functionality in much the same way CampTix fills in for Eventbrite. Better yet would be a fully free software alternative (GPL, if need be Affero GPL) to Meetup.com; even if it is not built on top of WordPress, that would be a step in the right direction.

Examples are plentiful, but the lesson remains the same:

  1. Know how to get your data out of a platform before you need to. If unsure, ask questions. If you don’t like the answers, use a different product or service instead, after getting satisfactory answers to the same questions.
  2. Trust your gut. If a privacy policy change rubs you the wrong way, raise hell about it, and minimize the damage by taking your business and your data elsewhere (see #1).

Phone usage billing over the years: revisiting “A truly embarrassing truth”

Around eight years ago, back in this blog’s infancy, I wrote a post about wireless phone billing practices entitled “A truly embarrassing truth for wireless phone companies”. A lot has changed since then, so I thought I would go back and revisit the original article.

Text messaging hasn’t really gone anywhere in eight years. Despite the rise of smartphones and that feature phones (sometimes called “flip phones” or “dumb phones”) are now the exception instead of the rule as they were about a decade ago, a lot of people still use text messages to communicate. The billing has changed too: most if not all plans in the current era are keyed around smartphone data usage, with the voice minutes and messaging thrown in for free.

(And a quick aside here: unfortunately, the quality of voice calls over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) has changed to match that “thrown in for free” bit. Early in the wired phone network’s history, dropped and misrouted calls, particularly long distance calls, happened on occasion. By the 1990s, though, such occurrences were unacceptable and had been engineered out of existence. I still consider it unacceptable in 2016 for calls over the PSTN to be dropped or fade out. It’s one thing for calls over an unregulated, strictly VoIP network to have this happen (Facebook Messenger, Skype, Ring.cx, etc), but the PSTN is simply supposed to be more reliable than that.)

The only phones where voice minutes and message aren’t “thrown in for free” as said above, are prepaid pay-as-you-go plans. Even on these, text messages have dropped back down to the slightly more reasonable level of 10 cents per message, even though a one minute phone call costs the same (at least on T-Mobile, the last provider I checked).

Thankfully, rates have more or less held steady and wireless phone companies have begun actually giving more for less as technology allows. This could be largely in part due to T-Mobile, which jolted the industry a while back by getting the handset subsidy *out* of the monthly rate, and as a separate line item where it belonged to begin with. This is fairer to everyone, and has opened up the realistic possibility of buying unlocked phones from third parties (at least on GSM networks). Now, one can upgrade phones when one desires (and one’s finances allow), rather than being stuck in a never-ending series of two-year contracts. It also means if one really likes a phone, one can keep it until it literally wears out or falls apart.

Who knows what the next eight years will bring us?