Holiday TV specials, ranked

It's been a busy week on the blog and I am pretty much out of good any ideas for today, so let's get topical and unnecessary and sound off on a very important issue - holiday-themed TV specials.

We all grew up with them, perhaps still have to suffer through some of them if we have young kids, but no matter where you come down on holiday TV specials you likely have a favorite. Or perhaps not. Doesn't matter, because I present here your unscientific, incomplete, subjective, yet 100% accurate ranking of holiday season TV specials.

Here we go...

10. Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer - Completely unwatchable. Santa is kind of a jerk in this one as well. Only after Rudolph can be of some use to him does he give a hoot about him.

9. Frosty the Snowman - Equally unwatchable. Wow, you mean snowmen melt when the sun comes out? Who knew!

8. John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together - The presence of John Denver makes the Muppets a little more tolerable in this otherwise grim affair. And that is not saying much.

7. Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July - When the 'crossovers' start that can only mean the writers are officially out of ideas. Please don't watch this. 

6. Mickey's Christmas Carol - Featuring the excellent casting of Daffy Duck as 'Scrooge McDuck'

5. Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol - I confess to not really remembering this one, but Mr. Magoo always seemed cool and half-drunk all the time so that has to count for something.

4. The Year Without a Santa Claus - Notice a theme here? How the kind of boring Santa character can never seem to carry a special on his own? Snow Miser and Heat Miser are the stars of this forgettable special. And Mrs. Claus was a real let down in this one too. Step it up Ma Claus!

3. How The Grinch Stole Christmas - Should really be higher. I never had any sympathy for the stupid Whos. I always felt like they deserved to have their Christmas stolen from them.

2. Santa Claus is Coming To Town - Two words: Burgermeister Meisterburger.  That is all you need to know. Epic character.

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas - Hits almost all the right notes. Lucy is at her apex predator best. Snoopy steals every scene he is in. And the best musical score of all time for a TV show from jazz legend Vince Guaraldi.

Honorable mention - Nick Offerman drinks whiskey in front of a Yule Log.

You might disagree with the rankings, perhaps even feel like I made some terrible omissions from the list, but as is the case with all of these 'ranked' posts, you would be wrong.

Have a great weekend!

CHART OF THE DAY: In a world of infinite choice, we choose very little

How many apps do you have installed on your smart phone? 50, 60, maybe more?

How many TV channels does your cable or satellite TV subscription offer? A couple hundred, give or take?

How many websites are there on the internet? Way, way too many to count I bet. Probably something in the order of tens of millions at least.

So after thinking about those questions, let's ask another set of questions. How many apps, websites, and TV channels do you regularly use/visit/consume? What it the number of these apps, etc. that tend to dominate your time and attention?

Take a look at the chart below, taken from a recent presentation given by business strategist Michael Wolf at a recent Wall St. Journal conference, for some insights into these questions, and then as you have come to demand, some FREE commentary from me after the data.

Interesting data, let's unpack it a little here and see what it might mean for HR/Talent/anyone trying to get attention in a busy world. 

The average person uses 27 apps in a month, but about 80% of that time is spent in only 5 apps. I will offer up my top 5 - Gmail, Twitter, Zite (a news aggregator), Feedly (an RSS feed reader), and The Score (a sports news and scores app). But whatever your Top 5 apps may be, chances are good they dominate your time on your phone to a significant extent.

This same self-selected narrowing of almost endless choices also is seen with the general internet, and with TV content. We have tons of options, almost too many, yet we end up gravitating and focusing on those very few choices we seem to enjoy and identify with the most. And again, those lists are pretty small. 

What should this data make us think about in more general terms as we try to pry precious attention and eyeballs towards our bright shiny new things?

1. We choose very little, but the 'pie' is so big, even a tiny sliver is huge. With the continued growth of market penetration of smart phones, broadband connections, and wifi everywhere - more and more time is being spent online in all of its forms. Your app or website or internet show or podcast doesn't have to break into anyone's Top 5 to still be a huge success. You just have to identify, target, and create value for that small group that will be open and ready for your message. The HR Happy Hour Show that Trish McFarlane and I do is a great example of this. We may not be 'Serial', but we have a fantastic and growing audience of HR and HR tech fans and have built a really cool thing.

2. Habits are really hard to change. You, me, everyone - we check the same 5 apps, the same 8 websites, watch the same 10 TV channels week after week after week. If you can't easily get folks to change their consumption habits then you have to find a way to better integrate with these habits. No one hates email more than me, but I still spend more time in email every day than I care to, and I still get plenty of news and information from this old habit. So it makes sense to focus at least some on getting your message better read in email or in one of the other 'Top' apps today (LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, Snapchat, etc.), instead of creating something brand new that requires users to adopt a new habit. 

3. Don't 'break' things that are working. Once you have an audience, or a set of fans/followers etc., you have to be careful not to mess around or experiment too much all at one time. It is hard enough to initially earn the attention of the audience you seek, it is even harder to have to try and earn them a second time. As your audience grows you want to be sure you are growing along with them, but not leaving them behind if that makes sense. I'd like to run 'Ranked' posts every day, but if I did I am pretty sure I would drive away just about everyone who I have spent 7 or 8 years trying to connect with. But the occasional Tom Cruise or Ranked post is fine I think.

No one has time for all the choices that are now available to us on our phones, the web, and our TVs. That doesn't mean there is not any room or any opportunity for something new to break through, it just means that the ideas that can break through are rarer than ever, and the people that can conjure up these ideas are more valuable than ever.

Ok that's it, I am out. Go back to the sites/apps you really enjoy. 

Have a great week!

I'll trade you a Carl Sagan for your double of Niels Bohr

I am out at HR Technology Europe in Amsterdam the rest of this week, and working on about 2 hours of dodgy sleep on the overnight flight from New York last night, so today's post is totally being mailed in. If you are disappointed, please feel free to fill in the complaint form and ask for a refund.

I am pretty sure my favorite non-reality TV show, and really the only TV show that I actually try and catch semi-regularly is Big Bang Theory. If you are not familiar with the show, it is a comedy that features as its main characters a group of four friends that all are highly educated university level scientists.  They also happen to be a bit geeky, are irrationally focused on comic books and Star Trek, talk often of how they were, (and in some cases still are), mocked and picked on by 'cooler' people, and often struggle with a world that at times seems kind of stacked against them. The good looking, socially confident, and outgoing people seem to get most of the breaks in life, while their incredible intellectual capacity seems only valuable in the workplace, and kind of a hindrance everywhere else.

So when I stumbled upon this post on the It's Okay To Be Smart blog titled 'Scientist Trading Cards - Collect the Whole Set!', I immediately thought about the guys on Big Bang Theory, and the probably thousands of science students everywhere that look up to and hold in extremely high regard these legends of science that are depicted in the set of Scientist Trading Cards. 

The trading cards, each one representing a legend of science, ranging from physics, to chemistry, to astronomy, are purposely designed to mimic the styles of famous sports trading cards of the past, (the Isaac Newton shares a design with baseball legend Brooks Robinson for example).

Why bother taking note of these scientist trading cards? Why not just look at them as an amusing bit of fun and an interesting bit of design completed by someone clever with photoshop?

Well, here's why I think they are worth thinking about. In the HR/Talent/Recruiting industries we seem to have been talking for ages about hard to fill roles in the technology fields, and the seeming lack of suitable, trained talent for many of our most technical and scientific jobs. And while lots of potential remedies for this problem continue to be suggested, things like getting more training for displaced workers, loosening up the H1B visa process to welcome more foreign workers, and even increasing the numbers of 'smart' automation in our businesses, we never seem to attack the problem at a basic, more fundamental level.

Namely, convincing the next generation that science, technology, engineering etc. are not just important, but they can and should actually be careers to aspire to, and possess incredible legends, heroes, and role models - just like the professions that we routinely train our children to idolize - athletes, entertainers, and reality TV personalities. What if we could convince kids that being a great scientist could actually get them there own trading card?

I dig the scientist trading cards. I wish they were actually real. I think I'd like the kinds of kids that would want to collect them.