Format Change [NOT 19/7/24]

19/7/24 blue dogcollar 25
Freshman clothes change
The Freshman Before and After / N.P Hall / ca. 1908 / source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2006687050

When Does A Format Change Work? Or Not?

The AV Club was finally sold by Spanfeller Pork and Internet Byproducts Inc., and now www.avclub.com has been de-Kinjafied. The layout is different, it uses Discus for commenting, and there is no more of the clunky gray/ungray system.

Archer would regularly switch formats, ranging from fake spy thriller to fake Magnum-esque private investigator drama to fake sci-fi. Fans took it all in stride.

But obviously not all format changes are winners.

The movie Private Parts shows a scene from early in the career of Howard Stern when an overnight format change at his radio station turned him from a rock DJ to spinning country music records.

New Coke was a famously messed up switch to a sweeter, blander formula. Coke did very little to convince customers why it made the change, and quickly backtracked.

What Are Good Format Changes? Which Ones Stink? And Why?

Tons of things change formats. Jeeps used to be little clunky military cars, and now Jeep means big, vaguely rugged SUV. Windows has gone through a ton of format changes, including a lot of awkward attempts to integrate the internet and now AI. Phones and their apps are constantly shuffling layouts, restaurants change from pizza carryouts to offering full sitdown Italian meals, shopping malls switch from luxury stores to big box offerings.

I think one key thing is people in charge need to get customers used to some changes and lack of continuity from the beginning. Otherwise early choices that weren’t based on any strong reason get locked into place, and people will freak if a button is moved, a non-selling menu item is dropped, or a character who had a brother suddenly becomes an only child.

But of course they also need to avoid change for the sake of change. A lot of rebranding is a silly exercise in changing colors and fonts.

So tell us, Deadsplinterrearrangers, about format changes you’ve liked, or hated. Any store remodellings which made it impossible for you to find your favorite widgets? Any shows which took off after sending a bad character to a job in Alaska? Any games which you now hate because they changed the screen layout? Any bands which pulled off a good switch of styles?

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25 Comments

  1. Not exactly what you are talking about but when Macromedia was bought by Adobe, they fucked up Dreamweaver & the other software they didn’t smote.  It used to have a button that was called “strip useless code from MS Word”.  It basically got rid of so much code it made web pages run 10x faster.  I worked in the MS Office group building as a contract worker for awhile & every software engineer was responsible for writing some piece of code for each product no matter how useless it was.  It was fun back in the day when they would try to reverse engineer popular products & when it failed they would just buy the company & fuck up their product.

    • Didn’t Microsoft have some cruddy program in the 90s for reformatting Word docs into HTML?

      I seem to recall they just jammed tags like <B> around every single letter in a bolded paragraph instead of putting one at the beginning and a close tag at the end.

      It’s probably because the code for Word itself was a disaster.

  2. They did a Windows update on our work computers a few months back and now the same spot the VPN app opens is where the private key app opens that is needed for the VPN app and if you are only using your laptop monitor our messenger app also opens in the same spot.

    Like it’s fine, it’s manageable. It’s just annoying to have to close a bunch of shit to then reopen it in a different order compared to where the toolbar tab opened up with the previous Windows iteration.

  3. The first format change I ever dealt with was the 2nd season of Space 1999. Instead of Euro style metaphysics, weird shit happening and the funky kickass theme we got aliens wrestling, dumber plots, a bombastic theme replacing the funk and Fred Freiberger ruining another show.

    I watched S2 because there wasn’t many other SF TV shows I could watch in the SF desert of mid 70s TV.

    Even I knew it sucked.

    Same applied to Wonder Woman. I loved her fighting Nazis. Not chasing spies in the late 70s.

    The worst was work related where the sales geniuses changed the SW tools we developed to something I knew was going to fail and horribly. I did my damnedest to fight it but all it got me was booted off the development team which wasn’t a bad thing as I had no responsibility for it failing. Three years later the flaw cost Nortel 110 million on a bid and the execubots fired everyone involved. I got the assignment of fixing it. I claimed it would take 3 months and finished it in 1 because I had already worked on a passable solution three years earlier as a demo for an alternative to the cluster fuck.

  4. switching from kinja to here wasnt all bad

    i mean sure we has a canadian in charge now…..but shit works yo….and theres no greys

    fucking winner in my book.

    workwise…you know format changes little

    any changes are just a pretense we pay the office for a reason

    with the exception of sales..they have a vital job

     

    • So Farscy, doesthat mean that one of your competitors would be Franke?

      Just curious, because the other video made me wonder if it was *youz guys* who make the Karuba Gold machines that Kwik Trip uses in their gas stations–the cool little gizmos that can make *everything* from fancy cocoa to lattes, cappuccino, and Chai lattes with flavors (we customers *do* need to add the ice, for the iced drinks, and put in the tea for the Chai lattes, of course!).

      Google tells me that the Kwik Trip machines are made by Franke…

      Which was what made me wonder if y’all compete with them, or if you guys have “*your* corner” of the world market, and they have *theirs*?

      Sorta like the way smaller Egg Producers in the US can tend to have “niches” in certain sections of the US, where “it just isn’t worth it” to try and break into the market, because there isn’t *quite* enough space *in* that niche sector to bring any real competitors, along as prices remain mostly stable.

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