Last month we visited Disneyland Resort Paris (DLP) for two days. The park is celebrating its 15-year anniversary with new shows, new attractions and new decorations. Unfortunately they did not take the opportunity to improve the dining experience at the parks, which remains dismal. More »
After Germany and Poland, Comedy Central will now also start in the Netherlands. The new TV channel, owned by MTV Networks, will start on 30 April and will broadcast on an existing channel only from 8pm to 5am every day. They have just launched their website at comedycentral.nl where you can see their TV schedule. This includes That 70s Show, Saturday Night Live, The Office US and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. More »
Until today, European law dictated television channels across Europe to have no more than twelve minutes of advertisements per hour, and in no more than three separate commercial breaks per hour. Today, EU countries decided to let go of this rule and allow commercials to be spread in more, smaller breaks, but still with a maximum of twelve minutes per hour. The change still needs approval from the European Parlement. More »
The Monkey Island adventure games were some of my favorite games ever. I loved to play the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood in the original Secret of Monkey Island back in 1990. Now Disney comes out with Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man’s Chest this summer, and the designer of Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert, is struck at the resemblance of his Monkey Island’s LeChuck and the bad guy Davy Jones in Dead Man’s Chest. More »
One of the headlines in today’s paper read “Exodus na WK-Verlies” (Exodus after World Cup Loss). Since Holland’s loss to Portugal Sunday night, Dutch soccer fans (almost everyone) can forget about following the World Cup and finally move on to more important things: VACATION! More »
The news headlines on page 101 of CNN International teletext here in the Netherlands sometimes don’t make any sense. It seems that they are just grabbed from cnn.com and stop whenever the space on the page runs out. Have a look at this strange and unclear story that was one of their leading teletext stories this week. More »
For the Soccer World Cup in Germany this month, Dutch grocer Albert Heijn has started an immensely popular ‘wuppie’ campaign; for every €15 spent at the grocery store you get a small red, white, blue or orange wuppie, a small woolly ball with two eyes, feet and antennas. Each wuppie comes with a saving stamp, and with three stamps and an additional €2.49 you can buy a large wuppie. Albert Heijn had 700,000 so-called ‘mega wuppies’ made in China, but most of those have already sold. Now customers are fighting for the last remaining mega wuppies. One wuppie has already sold online for €100 and there have been reports of wuppies being stolen from cars! More »
Unsurprisingly, Disney announced today that it’s free online broadcasts of ABC shows, including Desperate Housewives and Lost, were a big hit. The shows were watched more than 11 million times online in the first month of the test, and an online exit survey showed that 87 percent of respondents could recall the advertisers that sponsored the episodes they watched. A retooled version of the free site, with more shows and features, will be launched in the fall. Unfortunately the free site is only available to Internet users in the United States, but there are easy ways around this.
MLB season started this week, and for the first time we are able to watch the games here in the Netherlands, on NASN (which is great, except for their extremely annoying self-promoting commercials). But what strikes me and what I want to write about here is all the commercial product placement in these games. More »
Oh no! It’s officially over for my favorite TV comedy; Arrested Development will not be picked up by Showtime next season, as rumors circulating for months had suggested. More »