New Link List update 3.23.07

1. The powers that be anticipate that Google will buy spot runner. I think this makes sense.

2. New site offers your desktop from anywhere. Cool.

3. You know a jerk at work. Send them an arsemail.

4. Remember the ancient times, search old newspapers from turn of the century, yes the other turn of the century (1900).

5. Huge news this week, pay per action ads from google go into beta.

6. Swami searches everything. We’re not kidding.

7.  Make TJ Drink a fun viral site from Sonic.

Software Developers are Gods

Not!

Ok, that was childish. Very childish infact, but I’m really getting annoyed by the amount of software developers that think they are gods and think they are going to start the next microsoft, google or youtube. It’s true there have been a number of innovative sites in the past 10 years that have changed the way that people go about their lives, but not every developer is going to become a billionaire and the arrogance about them is really innapropriate. What is scary is that they get this idea from other people’s examples and this is widley accepted to be the only growing and evolving industry where people can make a good living and possibly a fortune anymore. Our economy has changed and these developers have the knowledge of code and databases and p2p networks that make the economy grow. As a result the few old men with more money than they will ever be able to spend are buying companies like this, that they don’t really understand, in an attempt to keep making more money that they will never spend. Many of these developers live to manufacture a company just so it can be bought by a VC and they can “sell out” for a huge payout. It seems fake, contrived and disingenuos all at the same time. And both you and I know that no life-changing, paradigm-shifting, or popular site was ever started that way.

2 things come to mind when I encounter this arrogance.

1. These guys are going to be sorely dissapointed someday. These are 30 yr old geeks, with honda civics and they talk business strategy like they are Donald Trump. Not only are they not equipped with all the information to make good business decisions, they sure aren’t qualified to brag about it. They all look for the holy grail of VC and dream of all the gadgets they will buy with their first million while consuming feeds on Digg, Reddit and Ycombinator while getting a buzz. Its as aggrivating as it is pathetic. What happened to moderate levels of success in America? What’s wrong with a good salary and a good job that lasts over a good career? Why does everyone think they have to make $1 million by age 30 and be into $10 million by 40?  Just to show off? That’s a huge pipe dream. Even in Silicon Valley.

2. I can’t help forsee change on the horizon. If you grew up in the 1950′s you became an engineer because machines are what made, moved and produced everything. Hmmm. We don’t manufactre widgets anymore in this country do we? What happens when we don’t produce software or web aps here anymore either? What happens when the VC money goes to other countries? I can’t help but think that at some point just like gear and lever powered machines aren’t the backbone of our economy anymore, that software won’t be at some point either. I think these people should be open to learning about a lot more than just software businesses. There are impactful innovations that can be huge outside the web world. Things that can impact daily life for millions of people. Why aren’t the smart people interested in working on those?

AT&T, Cingular and the Cell Phone Wars

The marketing world scratches its head every once in a while when they see a blatant waste of money in advertising. No agency is going to turn down money to do what a company wants, even if its a complete waste, but you know they are going to laugh behind your back. This is what happened when last fall AT&T Wireless was bought by Cingular and they spent hundreds of millions on the “raising the bar” campaign where they re-branded ATT wireless to Cingular. Hey, I even made $100 bucks off that ad buy. Then this January they announce that after wiping the name ATT off the phones, sites and people’s minds, they were being bought by AT&T and they would change the name BACK again with their largest campaign EVER. Which was because they are beginning to confuse the fuck out of their customers. We don’t know how much these campaigns spent, but we do know that in 2005 Cingular spent 1.3 Billion and ATT spent 1.6 Billion on advertising. So combine those, add in a little more and Voila! 3 Billion to advertise in 2007.

I think all this renaming stuff is bullshit most of the time, and companies do get suckered into buying a lot of untrackable media under the guise of getting more “brand awareness” but after you’ve done the direct response, pr and local relevance type marketshare aquiring, there’s nothing left but branding to do to go national, global, and rule the world. And that takes a lot of clams. So this name change snafu was a huge waste of money they could have used to pad their executive’s pockets, or possibly return to customers by lowering their rates for a few months. What a crazy marketing plan that might be?

On a personal note, I got my first cell phone in 1999 and it was a Nokia like this one on the left and it was from AT&T Wireless. They had fantastic customer service then, and I bought different faceplate covers for my phone. We thought we were so cool. Next, I bought the smallest phone ever Nokia model in 2002. It was only about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide and you didn’t know if it picked up your voice from your ear and people would put it by their mouth to talk if they were new to using it. Then I traded up in 2004 to this style Nokia which had a flip lid with a 2 thumb texting querty keyboard and my first cameraphone. Very swish, and it impressed people for 2 years. Then in 2006 I chose a Treo 650 (from a gagle of smart cingular phones) for the email and web access and the querty keyboard again. All in all I’ve never switched providers even though they’ve switched on me. I know that’s rare, but I haven’t had serious issues yet, just minor annoyances. But I really would like them to keep a name (any name) for a while.

Update: Apparently AT&T’s yearly media spend is 3.4 BILLION

 Bonus! If you want to know why ATT is evil and sucks ass see my latest post.

Important news in Search Marketing

I saw this bulletin from the center for media research, and initially thought, ok thats logical. Search is a pretty common strategy for finding more or new information about something. And I didn’t think more of it. Then I read some of the buzzy posts floating out in the media-blogosphere and realized that we just verified a hunch that many of us have about search engine marketing. Which is that to find your information from an offline ad, people don’t type in your site address, or even the URL listed in the ad. They search.

This affects any and all media strategies in the way that you’ve got a huuuge break in the chin of events that someone goes through to get to your product/company if you don’t have SEO and SEM practices in place. Unless you expect people to go directly to your store, people will most likley use their computer/internet to evaluate and make decisions about your products and getting them there is the first challenge. Having good organic SEO rank (top 3) for brand, product name and generic product names is good for catching customers in this web/net. But what if you released a new product and your site isn’t optimized for those keywords yet? What if you’re a small site without enough rank to come up on top? Then your best bet is Keyword buying (SEM) on those brand, product names and product category (and location if that is another factor) keywords.  People really do use these links, because its above the clutter and they may match what the user wants more than the orgainic listings.

So if you’re planning a marketing push, an advertising campaign, or just about anything…keeping your company/product above the fray on search is essential to getting people to your site and achieving your goals. We’ve suspected that people search after seeing newspaper ads, tv ads and magazine ads, but this proves it for real. Make sure your campaign includes this essential element.

Top Gear Marathon

I would like to interupt the usually scheduled marketing posts for a minute to thank the powers that be, for TopGear. I just had a topgear watching marathon weekend and it was fantastic! I had a friend of a friend that had the shows, and was kind enough to let me borrow them. Its just such a good show. And I am not even the most technical with cars. I just likle the humor, the great camera photography and the excitement of all that driving. And they give such good detail about the cars and why they are good or bad for very solid reasons. They really do their research. And I look forward to a few more weekends of fun watching it.

Thanks for the show; Ze Frank

I watched the last show in Ze Frank’s “The Show” video podcast project this weekend and like thousands (~150,000) other people I am sad to see it go. I genuinely hope that Ze can find a project that keeps his lighthearted approach to political analysis and daily random humor on-line. 

A few things you may not know about Ze’s show. According to an independent 3rd party data company, it gets more women visitors than men. You’d never know that from who submits the videos and participates. Also, the largest percentage of people are in the 45-55 age group. I don’t think this is completely accurate. Its partially from the web 2.0 techie groupies that watch him daily, and partially also from the younger viewers that view from mom & dad’s computer, which registers the parent’s demographic information for tracking.

I sincerely hope that Ze gets hired for another video-casting gig. I think his style is better suited for the web than TV, and with the amount of time people are spending entertaining themselves on-line these days, there’s no point in going to TV or Movies anytime soon. There’s plenty of entertainment on the web, and that’s only going to grow in 2007.

But thanks again to Ze for his year long experiment (which I think was profitable as well as fun) and all the great fun it has been to watch and be enthralled with this year. I’ve pretty much told everyone I know about this show, and we’re all still watching.

Which one of the sports racers will pick up the baton and run with it next?

Diet Coke

I’ve noticed a new campaign floating around on Outdoor ad space for Diet Coke and the Coke Zero this week. I specifically like the 3 outdoor ads I saw on bush shelters this week.

One shows a diet coke can with a starbucks style cardboard ring around it, titled “good morning”. This is great because it expands the use of the product beyond the lunch-dinner times. I’ve drunk diet coke in the morning when coffee isn’t available before, so this isn’t that much of a stretch, and its a lot cheaper than a $5 coffee.

The second has a diet coke can upside down and says “yoga class”. To me this is kitchy trend humor. I don’t think diet coke has anything to do with yoga, or is relevant to it at all. But the yoga demographic might be close to the diet coke demographic.

The third has 3 diet coke cans and says “3 hr meeting”. This is also very true. If you’re locked in a conference room for 3 hours with your coworkers on a meeting all afternoon, you’ll need 3 diet cokes to get through it. So true indeed. Or you could have a mt dew or redbull. Those work faster and stronger. So diet coke has more to worry about than just coffee.

I think these are nice branding/awareness/product expansion ads. I hope they help meet the sales goals that Coke has for them.

Crazy

The online and interactive advertising business is booming right now. I have gotten 4 emails from people interested in my resume (this week) and its not even current. I can’t imagine they think I’m looking for a new job when the resume they have hasn’t been updated in years, because I’m happily working where I am right now. They’re contacting me because its so hard to find online marketers when everyone is looking for people who understand this medium as it expands. I think online marketing strategists and analysts must be as hard to find and hire as nurses right now.

If you work in this field and have any interest in a new position, post your resume online and check out the listings on the job boards. There seems to be a lot happening right now. And its all a bit crazy. The bottom line is, that if you’re looking for a new opportunity in the online advertising (sales, analysis & client relations) space now is the time to make your move.

3 Google AdWords tips

I hear companies complain about search and SEM every day. I sit next to someone who does this for a living, and I can’t believe these companies can’t do it themselves. It would save them a ton of money rather than outsourcing it. Here’s some tips whether you are a little company looking to understand the web better or a big company that hasn’t gotten the memo about search yet. These suggestions only apply to Paid Search Marketing, not organic or what is called SEO. (search engine optimization)

1. Do some research on how the Google and Yahoo ad networks work. The best sources are usually the sites from these ad networks themselves. Google has different rules than Yahoo. Google is easier to get up and running self serve style instantly, gives real time stats, has more liberal ad policies, a shorter creative space and is more expensive on a cost per click basis. Yahoo has a lower cost per click (better ROI) and longer text allottment for your ad creative, but is sooo hard to get set up (it takes days and days through a live person and same for changes) and they have a strict policy that if a keyword is not on your landing page, you can’t buy it. So, if your page is all about cars, you can’t buy autos, unless its in there somewhere.  If you’re a small company that wants a good self serve product, go with Google. If you’re a behemoth company that needs a big impact, go with both. (forget ask.com and msn keywords for now)

2. Do some research on the search engines themselves. Start searching on the engines and look at what comes up. Look for your company name, are other companies buying it? Look for your category, with and without location, verticals and other product related keywords. make a list of these words, each one is going to become a google ad group and possibly a campaign. You will use the google keyword generator later to develop great keyword campaigns. Also, look at the creative. Which would you click on? Its a start, after you get some data, you will know which ads are best based on the data. But you have to start  your creative somewhere.

3. Hire a recent grad out of college. One who is addicted to the internet and likes search. Doesn’t have to program anything. Give them the keys to the ad system and a reasonable salary, and they will deal with the details. (this is less expensive than outsourcing it) So much of these systems is common sense, and if you link your clicks back with tags so you can calculate cost per conversion metrics by campaign, adgroup or keyword,  you will be able to make changes with turning keywords on and off, based on what converts good, bad, or not at all.

And that’s about it. It may take a long time to set up if you are a big company with a lot of products, but the actual tasks are pretty easy.

Real Estate Rules

The bubble may be close to bursting with Real Estate values, but if you’re looking for a home to live in and not to flip property for profit, you can still get a good deal on a home you love.

1. Use an Online Morgage Calculator to find out how much of a morgage you can afford. Different people use different percentages for the percentage amount of your pre-tax income you can put towards debt like a morgage, but it seems to be about 35-40%.

2. Get your ducks in a row, financially speaking. This means if you have any outstanding debt that you can pay off easily, do it now. If you have a lot of credit cards you don’t use, close them too. All this factors into your credit score and how much you have to pay in interest on a loan. The more risky you are, the higher rate you will pay. Then you can go ahread and get pre-approved for a loan through a lender. Ask friends and relatives for referrals on banks or loan companies they’ve used, rather than just looking in the phone book, online or going through a piece of spam email you’ve gotten. There are a lot of sams out there, so checking referrals is very important.

3. Research the area you want to buy in. How much is the home you need going to be in the place you want to live in? Sites like realtor.com are great for doing zip code searches and seeing what the going rate is for a home with specific criteria like the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, garage, yard. All the requirements you need. Also, many have pictures, so you see what condition different price ranges are in.  You can sometimes get a good deal on a place that needs work, and negotiate the price down, and do the work yourself for a big cost savings. Otherwise, you might find rehabbers and flippers that are willing to cut prices now that the market has gone soft.

4. Start scouting sites, and go looking with a realtor. Also, if you’re selling your own place, now would be the time to list it. Make sure every piece of clutter is gone, and everything is clean when you show your home. (same for pictures of it for the web listings) And be consious that your neighbors may look online at homes and see yours for sale. So don’t be suprised if someone asks about your mauve carpet in the master bathroom from 1991 if you think its your little secret. 

5. Hopefully a sale for your place and a contract buy for your new place will happen within a few weeks of one another because they are usually contingent. If you think this may be a problem, you may have to  sell your house first, put any equity in the bank and rent until you find a new place.  This way its easier financially, but harder because you have to move all your stuff twice.

Happy House Hunting!

New web metrics from ComScore

ComScore is one of the leading web metrics companies which has a sample of around 2,000 people participating in allowing them to collect their web surfing data anonymously. Then they take that data and multiply it out to reflect the total population. They release/publish the top statistics monthly as well as sell access to their database of history. This month they have crunched those numbers in a new way, not only giving us their stats for the most visited (popular) sites on the web, but the most re-visited sites (repeat visits) as well. In this industry we call a site that either keeps people there for a long time (more than 5 minutes), or brings them back again and again, as Sticky. So this could be considered a stickyness index.

Its no suprise to see who is tops on both of the lists.

 Top 10 Properties by Unique Visitors (000)

February 2007

Total U.S.– Home, Work and University Locations

Source: comScore Media Metrix

 Total Internet Users  175,653

1  Yahoo! Sites  128,559
 
2  Time Warner Network  117,942

3  Google Sites  114,694

4  Microsoft Sites  114,155

5  eBay  79,559

6  Fox Interactive Media  77,969

7  Amazon Sites  48,905

8  Ask Network  48,722

9  Wikipedia Sites  43,656

10  New York Times Digital  39,769
Top 10 Properties by Average Visits per Visitor (000)

February 2007

Total U.S.– Home, Work and University Locations

Source: comScore Media Metrix
 
 Total Internet Visits  64.2

 1  Yahoo! Sites  28.6

 2  Facebook.com  23.6
 
 3  Microsoft Sites  21.8
 
 4  Time Warner Network  19.4
 
 5  Weatherbug Property  17.7
  
 6  Google Sites  17.7
  
 7  Fox Interactive Media  16.9
  
 8  Comcast Corporation  16.9
 
 9  EA Online  13.6
  
 10  Earthlink  12.1

Yahoo tops both lists because they have functional purposes to their sites such as search and are top the sticky list because of functions like email and flickr. Search, research, news and shopping seem to be the top functions of the most visited sites, where as social networking, email, news and gaming seem to drive the top sticky sites. Stickyness is not as prestigious as having the most visitors, but its an important milestone along the way.

This does provide some insight into what funcions you choose for your site and how it will impact traffic and therfore your monetization and revenue models. If you have tons of views and a smaller number of visitors, your CPM is going to be lower. (MySpace) But you do have a strong relationship with your users. If you’ve got more unique visitors and views & visits, your site has a larger reach and footprint so you can charge more for CPM. (Yahoo & Google) So its still hard to get new people to your site so you can prove the value of reaching a large audience to your advertisers. In any case, sharing ROI type data with advertisers will help show your value in their marketing/advertising plan.

In general also, I think the more relvant the ad and the placement is to the site, its demographics and its purpose, the better recieved it will be.

How wikipedia is in the top 10 most visited sites without selling ads, I don’t know. Some have recently suggested that Google chip in to help pay their bills, since Google sends them so much traffic, but I think they want  to just keep going on user contributions. Which would be amazing if their trust in people not only carried the content, but the business model long term as well.

Twitter

About this Twitter site. I have known about this site for a while, and I didn’t sign up (and I’ll sign up for any beta that seems half way interesting) for 2 reasons.

1. The interface reminds me of 1997.

2. I am not interested in blogging (twittering) what I am doing every moment of my day.

I think that’s too intrusive into my privacy, and those of others. (even though they choose to give up that privacy) Plus, I’m not trying to become an internet celebrity by promoting my life. I’m also not interested in trippling the number of posts I have to read in a day because people twitter much more frequently with much less depth and analysis than they blog. I’d rather get the more thought out information on blogs and not have a million twitters to distract me from what I have to do every day.

Marketing Plans

Marketing plans (which lead to media plans) are highly overlooked as an important part of achieving your company’s marketing goals each year. Many companies just “wing it”, “do what feels right” or “don’t have time” to plan out their strategy and steps to achieve the sales goals they have. I’ve seen this happen too many times and I’d like to salute 2 companies that have done it right latley.

1. The movie 300.

This movie is going to become a case study for reaching the highly coveted 18-24 demographic and giving this incredibly gory movie a huge 70 million dollar opening weekend. About 3 months ago I got a message on myspace along with everyone else saying that some movie 300 had sponsored the site and paid for the storage so we could all upload 300 photos each on myspace. People had been complaining about wanting to host more photos there, and this took care of their need instantly. It also introduced them to the movie for the first time and increased its awareness instantly. I didn’t know what this 300 was and no one else did either. But, they had a fully decked out profile linked from the message and not only did people preview clips and the movie there, they signed up as friends to the tune of 2 million people. 

2. FX Premier of The Riches Show.

I’ve been hearing about The Riches for a while now, because I am a fan of Eddie Izzard’s work, but I am well aware that he’s not a household name in the USA and I wondered if people would find out about this show and if they’d like it. First off, the premier is tonight, and its great. So, no problems with the show itself. How would they get the word out though? Especially in the younger demographic, and somewhat cost efficiently since FX isn’t known for crazy big budget spending. Here’s what I’ve run across, I’m sure there’s more, but its a good diversified media plan, good creative execution, good concept for the creative and commercials and I hope it works:

1. Preview the premier online at MSN, Yahoo and AOL. This is a big deal. Previewing Heroes this year made a huge difference in that comic-book-like show’s initial awareness and cutting through the clutter to prove it really was a good show when there were so many new shows to choose from at that time.

2. A Riches Profile with previews/commericals/promos on Youtube. AND home page prime $$ ad space for their promo on Monday, they day of the Premier. No full episodes here, because of upload limits and probably copyright & legal stuff.

3. Monster.com banner ads – Get Rich – On a site where people’s sole motivation is money, perfect. I am sure they’ve got banners all over FX.com, Fox sites and other media I haven’t run across yet. Typically these banners get below .5% ctr though, so I wonder how successful they were at getting people to click?

4. Radio ads -  I assume a national buy, or possibly top 10 DMAs? Yes, some cool people aren’t always on the internet. Plus it seems they used the exact voice overs from the TV spots for the radio, saving $$ on creative is smart. Also, just leading up to the premier in the last few days was enough, you don’t need weeks and weeks, just strategic buys.

5. Press Blast – a TV reviewer in every newspaper in every city has gotten to see the first couple of episodes and the reviews seem to be about 80% good and 20% iffy.

6. The View appearance daytime TV (I hope there are more appearances for Minnie & Eddie in coming weeks to keep the ball rolling)

7. Sweepstakes contest to see the premier live from FX.com (generating email signups for relationship marketing)

8. Promos on TV - FX & I assume FOX also. 

9. No perezhilton sponsorship like with Dirt, but then again, Eddie’s shows aim for a little more educated demo, I wonder if they did any ads in The Economist?

10. They do have a tricked out skinned MySpace page, which looks nice (psychadellic), but I’m not sure how they were driving traffic there because I never saw any sponsored promotions on MySpace or banners or emails of them seeking out people with the demographic that they were targeting. So, that could have been better… and now that they’re there, they should send out weekly bulletins to the “friends” about a preview of the next upcoming show. Best on Monday at about noon, when people would be likley to read and remember to watch that evening. But then again, they need more than 187 friends (with nielsen boxes - joking) to make an impact.

11. And a very flash heavy microsite for the show, with everything from wallpapers and downloadable stuff to quizzes about how suburban you are. I like the concept and execution of the creative, I’m not wild about all the flash and the non-full size window it defaults to. (in a popup of all things, you loose pop-up-blocking people there)  It runs slow on my 3MB per min DSL, how do dial up people view it?

What they didn’t do:

1. Google ad words/Yahoo text ads - people don’t really search for TV shows on Google and the content and site targeted network are not efficient anyway.

2. Outdoor media – at least not in Chicago. This is pricey though, and hard to prove results. For some reason I always see cartoon network and HBO buying this.

3. Other network TV buys – they might have had some, but I didn’t see them on free tv, and they’re expensive and hard to prove direct results from. Nothing gobbles up a media budget faster than network TV spots in prime time. It would have been nice to have seen them on the Super Bowl, but that was a lot of clams.

4. Print – They may have in NY & LA, but I wouldn’t know though…since I don’t read newspapers. I didn’t see anything in TIME either, but I did hear they got a PR blurb in People, which is nice.

So now that I’ve over analyzed their media buy, I have to get back to analyzing my own. I hope they have a good premier night and get some good ratings.

UPDATE: Looks like things went well for the premier’s ratings, this was just sent out in the daily email from the media insider:

Rich Start for FX’s The Riches:
The debut of new FX drama The Riches was off and running on Monday, with 3.8 million viewers and 2.5 million adults 18-49 at 10 p.m. Comparably, that more than doubled the recent time period average, with the second biggest delivery among adults 18-49 historically (behind The Shield) for any series premiere

Yay for team FX, Good Job :)

Amazing, what you can get for free these days

I am amazed at what companies will give away to you just to get you to sign up for a monthly service. Even if what you’re getting for free is worth more than the monthly service is itself. Take free cell phones for example, they are commonly given away with cell phone service, and now even the new and recent styles of phones are free with a sign up. I guess they calculate the value of you staying with them for a year or two, and it nets out ok, but for us its great, because you have to pay for the service anyway, so why not get a new phone for free? Yes, its a marketing technique, and sometimes an affiliate marketing strategy, but in this case I think the consumer wins when they really get something of value that they need. And that’s when marketing plans work, when they re relevant to the consumer.

Right now wirefly has 3 of the hottest phones out ight now available free with signup. Which is cool. They have the razr V3, the blackberry pearl (great for texting and text messages) and the sony w300i. They’re all cool, but I like the razr the best. Its so thin! And they have connections with other cell phone providers so you can get on a network that you know and that you have all your friends on. Hello, free anytime minutes within network!

If you are someone who likes to get good deals on cell phones, and doesn’t want to go from store to store looking and comparing all the different phone plans, wirefly seems like a great site. They have everything there in one place, and you can choose your phone, your service and your extras and options. Its kind of the google of the cell phone world. They have 9 cell phone providers and 13 cell phone manufacturers to choose from. I think most anyone could find something there to fit their needs.

The Riches and You – tonight on FX

the riches show fxThe Riches, is a new TV drama (with comedy undertones) on FX that premieres tonight. Its about a family of travelers (gypsy like people in the south) that end up taking over a family’s life who was killed in an auto accident. It’s a struggle to adapt to suburban life as well as pull of the biggest con they’ve ever done with being believable indefinitley as this dead family. Its a show that instantly draws you into the characters because its easy to indentify with them and the american dream idea we all struggle to achieve.  Some of us achieve more of it than others, and these people have figured out the shortcut. (one long ass short cut, they say) 

As a special treat, FX has made this premier episode available online to view for free on MSN and it the premier is tonight (in its regular time slot) Monday March 12 on FX at 9pm central/10pm eastern time. 

http://tv.msn.com/tv/tvbuzz I think its worth a look more than any other show this season. I can’t name any other show that combines the irony of the american dream, the competitive apathy of suburbanism,  the legal and illegal manipulations people stage and a transvestite child.  I actually didn’t notice the transvestism in the episode until I watched it a second time, and saw the boy in the opening scene in the pink dress. You see it later in the episode, but somehow it didn’t connect the first time I saw it. There’s a lot going on, and it comes at you fast.

There are a coulple continuity issues, like after Eddie (Wayne) gets beat up, he is seemingly fine, and doesn’t show any sign of pain. The youngest boy is the secret squirrel in the “pulled over” scene and goes into the police car but they never show the result of his tinkering and why he went in there or what a secret quirrel means to them. (but I love the false TV for hiding things, how fun) They never explain if the people who die had kids or not, (they aren’t shown in the crash) and if they did, why haven’t they shown up yet to contest these stragers living in their home?  More of these questions may be answered in the following episodes, but I’ve only seen the first one.

Basically with these few continuity things aside, its a great show that has you gripping the edge of your seat as you see the family come upon each hurdle in their journey, and you laugh at the comic reality and irony of these people’s lives because we’ve all been there too, in some way. Its a series that I think has a lot of potential to go places, and I plan on tuning in for the season. You should too. Hope you enjoy the show…

Make sure to stop by their psychadelic site to check out the weekly updates and extras there too. http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/theriches/