美国国家公共电台 NPR Gather 'Round The Screen To Enjoy The Warmth Of The Streaming Yule Log

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Over the past 50 years, one of the most widely recognized holiday TV programs has been the WPIX "Yule Log." In case you're unfamiliar¹, it has no actors and no plot. It is a seven-minute looped video of a crackling fire. Now the "Yule Log" has been reinvented for the age of streamed videos. Oliver Whang reports.

OLIVER WHANG, BYLINE²: Mitch Thrower recalls that in 1966, his late father, Fred, president of the independent New York City television station WPIX, was watching a Coca-Cola commercial with his wife when he had an idea.

MITCH THROWER: I think Santa was there, and there was a fireplace. And he said, oh my. Oh my, have I got an idea.

WHANG: There was a three-hour hole in the Christmas Eve programming on WPIX that year, and Thrower's idea was that they might fill the time with a looped video of a fire uninterrupted by commercials.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED TV ANNOUNCER: The WPIX "Yule Log."

WHANG: It was the start of an annual tradition on WPIX.

LAWRENCE ARCURI: Virtual fireplaces - I mean, this is the ultimate one. This was the granddaddy of them all. I mean, this - there's nothing before this.

WHANG: Lawrence Arcuri owns a fan site for the original "Yule Log." He says that after the program's surprise success, ratings declined over the years. It was canceled in 1990. But WPIX brought it back in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Ratings rebounded³ in a spectacular way. Mitch Thrower.

THROWER: There's something very special about the fact that you're watching the same burning fireplace that someone else is. I think it was, I think, a statement beyond just, you know, a burning fireplace on TV of, you know, us kind of being a connected society.

WHANG: Millions of people would tune⁴ in every year. And then in 2008, George Ford⁵ was watching and wondered why the fire hadn't been adapted to widescreen HD televisions and why it couldn't be filmed in one shot without any loops.

GEORGE FORD: I decided⁶, hey, you know what? I'm going to challenge myself and make the best fireplace anyone has ever seen.

WHANG: Ford had no prior video-making experience, but two years, 200 fires and $35,000 later, in 2010, he got what he was looking for, a fire that burned perfectly⁷ for an hour. He called it "Fireplace For Your Home" and sent it out to some local television stations.

FORD: I'm kind of the dreamer type, so I always thought, hey, this could be big. This could be big.

WHANG: But what Ford didn't realize was just how big streaming platforms were about to become. So when Netflix asked if they could include his video on their budding streaming service, he wasn't quite sure what to expect. But...

FORD: It went crazy. And the next thing I knew, it was just everywhere. People just had never seen a fireplace that was made like that.

WHANG: "Fireplace For Your Home" is now consistently one of the most popular videos for Netflix's 160 million subscribers, a perfect fire on demand. Millions watch it every day, just as they did Fred Thrower's "Yule Log." It appears a new age of virtual fireplace has begun.

For NPR News, I'm Oliver Whang.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 rebounded   

弹回( rebound的过去式和过去分词 )； 反弹； 产生反作用； 未能奏效

参考例句：

• The ball rebounded from the goalpost and Owen headed it in. 球从门柱弹回，欧文头球将球攻进。
• The ball rebounded from his racket into the net. 球从他的球拍上弹回网中。

4 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

5 Ford   

n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过

参考例句：

• They were guarding the bridge,so we forded the river.他们驻守在那座桥上，所以我们只能涉水过河。
• If you decide to ford a stream,be extremely careful.如果已决定要涉过小溪，必须极度小心。

6 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

7 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。