Watching TV all day is a perfect job for David Onda
David Onda says he was not the type of child likely to “scuff a knee” on a sports field.
Unless, that is, his TV remote or game console fell on the floor, and he clipped himself on a bedpost or TV table.
Onda says firmly he was an “indoor guy.” His interest was not in scoring touchdowns, making baskets, or hitting home runs but in watching hours and hours of entertainment,
Onda, who was raised in Lancaster and now lives in Havertown, says he would bet that he has spent more time watching movies and television programs that anyone his age, which is the early 30s.
Lucky for him, his love for entertainment led to a dream job, a curator for Comcast Xfinity whose commitment is to review the endless rivers of content Xfinity offers and pare it down in a neat chart to help Xfinity subscribers find programs that might interest them without having to read through hundreds of pages of information.
Onda is one of five curators, likely to expand soon to more, whose recommendations and favorites are quickly accessible to Xfinity X-1 customers. Viewers can compare the individual guides the curators assemble and choose the right navigator for them.
In addition to curators sharing their personal picks, Onda says they lead viewers to the unusual program that is worth attention but is being overlooked among the “Watchmen” or “Marvelous Mrs. Maisels” that might be popular at the time. One show I’m going to sample based on Onda’s recommendation is “On Becoming a God in Central Florida,” which Onda describes as being darkly arch and which stars one of my favorite actresses, Kirsten Dunst.
Curation, or having on-staff entertainment gluttons who can help viewers cut through reams of program muddle is becoming popular today, but Xfinity has been doing it since 2012 and escalated to having specific on-line curators like Onda in 2018.
“The objective is to bring editorial content to life,” says Brynn Lev, Xfinity’s Vice President for Programming and Editorial.
“Once the X-1 interface was developed in 2012, we wanted to supply more imagery so customers had a convenient way to navigate all the offerings open to them.
“This evolved to having human curation, a better way to make the X=1 experience more direct and more personal.
“One of our biggest challenges is to organize all the content we offer in a way that is accessible and efficient for the customer. From the beginning, we’ve had network and cable programming. We’ve had original programming and sports offerings. In recent years, we have the streaming networks and even YouTube. We needed to curate that into bite-size groups so viewers would be able to find their favorite shows and the shows they’ve been hearing about as well as giving them a chance to explore. Directories are a help, but we wanted to make the discovery process easier and geared more to the individual customer.
“As an editor, that meant categorizing. People can go to TV shows and games and movies and sports to find what they wanted. We even have subsets such as Westerns, comedies, and dramas. The objective is to organize everything available in a way that will be meaningful to the person who sits down to watch television. We wanted to bring all we offer to life.
“That led to individual editors and creating a page for each of our editor, who became curators because they build their own collections that can be guides for viewers.
“Each curator lists his or her favorites, so each list is different. David’s, for instance, is different from Scott’s, whose is different from another curator’s.
“Customers following David will see a lot of nostalgia, comedy, fantasy, and, yes, wrestling.
“All an X-1 customer had to do is use his or her vocal command to say “Find David,” and David’s page will come up.”
Onda is ready for when that happens. His collection is organized by category, and there is a lot to see.
Onda has been watching television in volume, and conscientiously, for his entire life. He has built his tastes, but like any good commentator, can listen and recommend to someone who describes what he or she has liked.
For now, curators communicate to viewers through their on-line lists, but based on Onda’s, they are thorough and suggest a lot for customers to sample.
“I grew up watching TV and movies. Entertainment is my life,” says Onda. “I don’t remember any time in my life I wasn’t immersed in television. It was a natural offshoot of my interest to write about them. Then there was this job in which I could recommend and talk about shows. Then it led to being a curator.
Onda, who is called only David in his curating role, continues to eat, breathe, and discuss TV. He makes me sound quiet on the subject, and that is quite a feat.
All of his watching made him an expert in general but a connoisseur of several fields. It also meant developing likes and dislikes, a critical eye. He enjoys being able to pick out special programs Xfinity customers should particularly know about. He says he serves his own taste, but that helps others have richer TV experiences.
David, whose exact title at Comcast is Manager of TV Entertainment/Curator, likes categorizing. He also likes balance. Since one of his categories is “Happy stuff,” he also has a collection of “Sad stuff.”
Like many who come to write about television, and present ways to cut through the volume to make program selection easier for others, David was attracted to entertainment at a young age.
Being a child of the ‘80s, he is drawn to ‘80s programs. His first attraction though was “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Naturally, he wanted to be a Ninja Turtle when he was a kid. He wanted to be a lot of characters he saw and began collecting action figures of his favorites.
A critical breakthrough came when David’s father took him to see the first “Ninja Turtle” feature at a Lancaster movie theater.
“I was so impressed with everything, especially the way the turtles, which I had only seen in animation, looked so real. You could see warts and defining marks. This was before computer generation, so the feat is even more remarkable,” David says.
Just a remarkable, hearing the story 25 years later, is how impressed David was by what he saw on the screen and his ability to differentiate the characters in the movie from the ones he saw on TV. That’s a critical eye developing. It reminded me of when I was four and wondered how someone knew a gun would be in a particular drawer and discovered, thereby, what a director and prop person does.
David’s appetite for movies and TV was endless and kept him in front of his screen non-stop, although there was time for video game screens and interacting with his action figures.
David noted more details as he watched. He enjoyed movies that had some comic science fantasy involved, such as “Ghost Busters” and “Gremlins.” On TV, he liked programs about families, such as “Full House” and “Boy Meets World.”
He also developed a love that lasts to this day from wrestling.
“I enjoy the athleticism of it as well as the classic pitting of a good character against an evil one, the basis of most entertainment through time.”
David’s expertise and absolute sense of fun about what he does helps in Xfinity segments in which he interviews celebrities. In “Hang Out with David” installments, Onda gets to talk to people with new shows coming to the Xfinity roster.
Friday was the debut date for “His Dark Materials” on HBO. In preparation, David interviewed cast member Lin-Manuel Miranda, famous mostly for writing and starring in “Hamilton,” which continues at Philadelphia’s Forrest Theatre through Nov. 17.
For his “Hang Out” program,
David doesn’t just talk to Miranda. They have a wrestling match with action figures and sing the theme song from the “Chip’N’Dale Rescue Rangers” cartoon series from the ‘90s. He has similar fun when talking to Anne Hathaway and, via his Xfinity work, was able to meet his celebrity crush, Jennifer Connelly.
Remembering Ann Crumb
Time must be taken from television to talk about the passing of one of the great figures n international theater, new music, and animal rights activism, Ann Crumb.
Ann died on October 31 following a two-year bout with cancer. Her loss to local stages, and to the world that thrilled to her extraordinary voice and brilliant intensity, is incalculable.
In a kinder era to actresses, Ann would have been a huge star known to more than people in the musical theater and classical music worlds.
Broadway changed as she was emerging, so that the star diva was not as prevalent and she was in the ages of Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Gwen Verdon, and Barbara Cook.
In spite of that, Ann built a admiring following and earned lasting fame among theater folks for her performance as the captivating Rose Vibert in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Aspects of Love.”
Local audiences benefited greatly by Ann being from Media, where she grew up, the daughter of Pantheon American composer, George Crumb, who in his 90s survives the daughter that could make his music especially haunting and alive.
Because Ann was often in Delaware County to tend to her family, she established an association with the Media Theatre. She and artistic director Jesse Cline combined to create some of the most magnificently memorable stage experiences of the last 15 years as Ann graced the Media state in stellar performances of Broadway quality.
Cline, Media executive manager Patrick Ward, and Media allaround factotum Roger Ricker visited Crumb in hospice on the day before she passed.
One of my idiosyncrasies is to issue an annual accolade called the Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Award. In most years, more than
125 plays compete for the top place. Ann Crumb was given the award on three separate occasions, for her stunning work in “Souvenir”
(2008), “Master Class” (2010), and “Sunset Boulevard” (2014). She received nominations for “Wings,” in which she played a woman in the throes of dementia, and “Spamalot,” as well as for shows at the Wilma and Walnut.
Crumb was a consummate performer who had much to give. Her passing at age 69 is sad beyond measure.
Rest in peace, Ann. You made a contribution to this world. You made it better.