July 2007 Archives

New Study Shows Pervasive Inaccuracies in Television Storylines Cost Lives

Well, the mind reels.

One wonders how seeing a fat lout with a hot wife on "According to Jim" actually leads to innocents dying, or how the fact that no one can really bend the time-space continuum like they do on "Heroes" takes a toll on precious human beings, or how the mismatched-buddy comedy "Hannity & Colmes" turns Hilary Clinton into a flesh-eating chupacabra results in mass graves in remote desert regions.

But you know what? It's even stranger than that:

"(O)rgan donation appeared as a primary storyline on entertainment television in more than 80 television episodes. ... (N)one of these appearances presented organ donation in an accurate or positive light. The most commonly portrayed inaccuracies are black markets for organs, doctors not saving a potential donor's life, organs being stolen from people and people with money receive higher priority on waiting lists. ... (I)naccurate storylines about organ and tissue donation stop people from registering as organ donors. ... Thousands of people are waiting for a life-saving organ and we have to assure they are not waiting longer and dying at higher rates because of inaccuracies on television."

Here are the shows included in the study: ER, Law and Order, Grey's Anatomy, House, CSI, Crossing Jordan, Lost, Medium, As the World Turns, All My Children, One Life to Live, Malcolm in the Middle, The Simpsons, Yes Dear, Will & Grace, and Just Shoot Me.

All of which, coincidentally, are personal sources for consultation when making my own organ-donor decisions.

“Don’t Forget the Lyrics” will look at and listen to you Thursday between 4 and 8 pm. at Jillians, 1000 Universal Studios Blvd., Universal City. If you’re enough of a train wreck, they might even put you on the TeeVee.

If humiliating yourself isn’t the way you want to go to achieve international stardom, you might want to direct a short horror film and send it to chillertv.com. Contest starts tomorrow; entries will be online from Sept. 5-21; voting thereafter; winners announced on Halloween. Winners in the categories of Best Picture, Creepiest Character and Scariest Special Effects will win $5,000 each. But don’t bother with Creepiest Character: I’m submitting C-Span footage of Alberto Gonzalez testifying – or whatever it is he was doing – before the Senate. Surefire winner.

“You should remember all that talk earlier this week about the terrorist dry runs at airports here in the U.S. Well, just kidding.”
-- CNN anchor T.J. Holmes

Yes, turns out having cheese on airliners is not, as CNN reported last week, part of a terrorist plot to destroy America. Kudos to CNN for taking their alarmist B.S. in stride. Because, you know, reports on terrorist plots are the new NewsLite.

The bad news is, the TSA and NSA have added people with bad backs to their lists of possible terrorists.

Some Reuters guy was absolutely devastated to discover that reality TV isn’t really real.

Bear Grylls, star of Discovery Channel’s “Man Vs. Wild,” apparently doesn’t drink his own urine as frequently as the show might suggest:

“This British adventurer is now the subject of an investigation by U.K.'s Channel 4, which already has confirmed that Grylls checked into motels on a few occasions when he was depicted on TV having slept under the stars. Other allegations have been made suggesting that the crew that records Grylls in action isn't as hands-off as it might appear to viewers.

“Knowing what we now know, it will be a challenge to watch 'Wild' with the same zeal again.”

Look, if you have a camera crew trailing you, the most danger you're gonna get in is getting bonked on the head by a boom mike, and even that has a foam filter on it so it won't hurt that much. And anyway, how much "zeal" did this guy watch "Man Vs. Wild" with in the first place?

Will someone kindly break it to this guy that there’s no Santa Claus, either? Because I personally couldn’t stand to see his heart broken yet again.

Here’s all you need to know about what HBO thinks about David Milch’s new series, “John from Cincinnati:”

It’s not sending out screeners of episodes, beyond the initial three, to critics.

What this means: HBO sends pretty much everything out. Every episode of every series. The last time they bailed on a show, if memory serves, it was on “Lucky Louie,” which died after its initial season under the oppressive weight of incessant critical excrement.

I was one of the very few critics who liked, for all its artful obfuscations, “John from Cincinnati.” Clearly, I might've been able to more convincingly convey to viewers the show's positives had I access to whatever it Milch was smoking when he created the show. (An aside to David: Got Milch? Just sayin’.)

The more pressing issue for Milch fans, of course, is what will become of those proposed “Deadwood” films should HBO ignominiously cancel “John From Cincinnati,” as well. HBO’s conundrum is: They want to hold on to Milch, but they don’t want to air the kind of recherché material he’s become keen on. (Arcane material only going so far, yet jettisoning “John,” to suits’ minds, automatically means no “Deadwood,” and they know they can’t boast about that.)

This sort of became apparent during HBO’s recent TV Press Tour executive session, when recently installed co-Presidents, Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler, circumnavigated the issue of a “Deadwood” reunion:

Plepler: “We’re just finishing ‘John from Cincinnati.’ David [Milch] is, needless to say, exhausted. We haven’t had a conversation with him. It’s always been our intention to do them, but it’s complicated. We don’t have a hold on the actors anymore. But we’ll know more after we know what the future of ‘John’ is. It’s definitely something we’re interested in doing.”

Lombaro: “We have to bring back an array of actors, many of who have gone on to a variety of projects. … It’s doable. But it’s daunting.

“We haven’t talked to David since ‘John’ has wrapped. If David’s game for this and we can figure it out, we’ll figure it out. … If we pick up ‘John,’ David will have to go back to working on that immediately for next summer. … We’re in business with David Milch and we intend to be in business with David Milch for the foreseeable future.”

Pleppler: “It depends on whether or not the actors can be pulled together and whether David is fully committed to the project. … You could probably put it at 50/50.”

They actually let Stephen Colbert into the White House.

Colbert, whose injury to his wrist last week escaped the notice of this blog due to the blur that was TV Press Tour, declared that he came to the White House to raise "wrist awareness." Colbert wanted his wrist cast signed by Tony Snow so that "the nation will be healed." Snow obliged, as did Tim Russert and Nancy Pelosi.

We previously discussed ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson’s thrilling dust-up, dissing NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman as “clueless or stupid” (it’s only either one or the other?), but somehow managed to egregiously neglect the money quote, in which McPherson challenged his peacock counterpart to “Be a man.”

Problem is, McPherson didn’t specify which kind of man he thought Silverman should be. Two new shows provide bookends in defining the male experience: “Mad Men,” AMC’s series on ’60s Madison Avenue advertising executives who define their existence via booze, cigarettes and banging their secretaries (have we mentioned that you should be watching this series just enough times that you get the point but not enough times that we sound like religious nuts? because you should be), and ABC’s “Big Shots,” about four befuddled guys pretty much in full wussy mode as they bemoan their woes and their women (its thesis is neatly summed up when Dylan McDermott, one of the guys, sighs, “Men - we're the new women”).

McPherson, it’s safe to say, probably aligns himself more with the guys in “Mad Men” (even though he’s airing “Big Shots”): He’s the most straight-shooting of the broadcast network executives and earned stud credentials by performing, at ABC’s 2006 upfront, a credible tango with the sultry Edyta Sliwinska, one of the dancers from the network's “Dancing with the Stars.” (Later, he recalled, “Right after that happened, my wife had obviously knew I was rehearsing for that. Never had met the dancer, never seen the dancer, was in the audience and came backstage and said, ‘Honey, you were fantastic. You've never been sexier. You will never dance with her again.’”) (Note: We're not implying that McPherson indulges in the sundry bad behaviors that the characters in "Mad Men" do, just that his XY chromosomes are more old-school than New-Age.)

Silverman, on the other hand, dissembled like a madman (his only tie to “Mad Men”) during his Press Tour session and “brings a small set of chimes along with him to meetings so he can play the three-note N-B-C jingle whenever a happy moment occurs,” so we’ll put him at the other end of the spectrum.

Interestingly, those working on both shows seem to have similar takes on the evolution of the Contemporary Male:

“Mad Men’s” creator Matthew Weiner: I wonder how adrift it is, you know, how adrift this concept of what being a man is. It's so crude right now. It's not like it's so much better then, but I look at that and say, “Okay. I was in my 20's. I remember not knowing who to emulate or anything like that.” I wanted to be like my dad to some degree, but not really, or I wanted to be like some actor or something like that.

“Mad Men” star Vincent Kartheiser: The roles were just more defined back then. I don't know if that's for positive or for negative, but the man kind of -- I don't know if you would say it was less wussy. You just knew – you just kind of knew where you fit more. I think, for both sexes, the line has been crossed a little bit.

“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm: You look now at what it means to be a man in 2007. Matt talked about who are your role models. I mean, it is virtually impossible to say what the definition of being a man in today's society is. … What we had in the era that the show is depicting, some sense of -- formality might be the wrong word, but just a sense of propriety and feeling like -- yes, Matt talked about it a little bit before, but yes, these people were objectifying and taking advantage in a lot of ways. But, then, there were rules. There was a sense of, you can't just be a bore and be this horrible douchebag, for lack of a better word. You have to kind of have a little style. You have to kind of have a little grace about you. You have to have a little bit of formality, or you are going to fail.

“Mad Men” star John Slattery: I heard someone say, "A man is only as faithful as his options," which can be true. And certainly, in 1960, the options for a man in regards to drinking and fidelity and race relations and interoffice politics, I mean, although there were these strictures, the world was a man's oyster, and some took more oysters than others.

“Big Shots” creator Jon Harmon Feldman: I think men have taken on a mantle of sensitivity in my understanding of how the sexes have evolved. I think women have succeeded in the workplace to a great degree. I think the genders have evolved. I think men are far more sensitive than people give us credit for, although we're also the guys who don't want to admit that we are. And I think that's sort of the paradox of being a guy. We have these feelings, but we don't want to let anyone know we have them. And I think that's what the show explores.

“Big Shots” star Christopher Titus: In today's society, there's a constant fighting the old guy. The first James Bond movies, those guys, the real men, the men that took no prisoners guys -- women really liked them. And now in society it's become very politically incorrect to be those guys, and yet every guy really is that guy. And you know, the John Waynes. I think it's kind of hard for men right now to be men because if you try to be a guy and you're too much of a guy, then you're an A-hole. If you try to be too sensitive, then, you know, you're metrosexual.

Why wait for fall? TV Week is reporting that you can find “highly anticipated broadcast network fall pilots” online now:

“Copies of NBC’s ‘Bionic Woman,’ ABC’s ‘Pushing Daisies,’ The CW’s ‘Reaper’ and several other shows were available Friday for illegal download via sites such as Torrent Spy, The Pirate Bay and Mininova.

“Most of the titles appear to have been uploaded within the past week. The first copy of ‘Bionic’ was listed as uploaded two days ago, while the earliest ‘Reaper’ file was date-marked seven days ago. Other leaked shows include Fox’s midseason ‘The Terminator’ spin-off ‘The Sarah Connor Chronicles,’ ABC’s ‘Cavemen,’ and NBC’s ‘Chuck’ and ‘Lipstick Jungle.’”

“Cavemen?” “Highly anticipated?” That’s funnier than anything in the show.

Jimmy Fallon, the guy best known for laughing at his own jokes on “Saturday Night Live” and an extremely and mercifully short movie career, is expected to replace Conan O’Brien on “Late Night” when Conan replaces Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” in 2009.

NBC created this predicament a while back when Conan’s contract was about to expire and, in order to keep him at the network, they promised him the 11:35 timeslot, with a whopping $40-million payout if the network were somehow to renege on the offer. Meanwhile, Jay Leno continues to garner extremely strong ratings in the timeslot, meaning NBC can do one of two things come 2009:

* Stick with Leno and pay Conan handsomely to go away to another network (Fox or maybe ABC – fare thee well, “Nightline”) and ply his trade there.

* Let Leno move to another network, where he’ll probably still pull better numbers than Conan.

Either way, NBC has shot itself in the foot.

Well, there’s another scenario, explicated by NBC co-chairmen Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, but even after they explained it during their Press Tour press conference, no one seemed to be sure what it was:

BEN SILVERMAN: We love Jay Leno, and we're very interested in -- we're beyond interested. We want him to stay at NBC for life. And we're talking to Jay all the time about what does he want to do, and what opportunities are there for him. And Marc and I are aggressively trying to come up with ideas that would make Jay happy.

QUESTION: But if you can follow my logic here, he's not going to be on "Tonight." He's probably not going to go later.

MARC GRABOFF: Sure.

QUESTION: Is bringing him to primetime something you're already talking to him about?

MARC GRABOFF: Primetime is a definite alternative, clearly, I mean, because you're absolutely right. In a scheduled world, where you have distinct dayparts, like primetime and late night, and people that tune into their shows at set times, yes, that is something that we're talking about. Now, again, Conan doesn't do his show every week, 52 weeks a year. There's a whole number of ideas -- I think, as Ben said, the point is we want Jay Leno to be with NBC for as long as -- forever, if possible. And I think Jay would want to do that.

QUESTION: Marc, you left the door open by mentioning that Conan doesn't work 52 weeks a year. Are you suggesting that there would be some sort of job-share with Jay Leno?

MARC GRABOFF: No, no. "The Tonight Show" will be the Conan O'Brien "Tonight Show" with Conan O'Brien.

QUESTION: Would Jay be available for some of those weeks that he wouldn't be working? Is that what you're suggesting?

MARC GRABOFF: No, I'm not. We haven't had any of those conversations, nor, most likely, will we because when Conan takes over "The Tonight Show," he will take over "The Tonight Show."

Hope that’s clear.

We’re back where we were when Johnny Carson was preparing to retire – two guys want one timeslot; nothing else will suffice for either and the loser will take a chunk out of NBC’s audience when he moves to another network. The biggest loser, of course, will be anyone who tunes into Fallon’s show. Somewhere, Tom Snyder is having a good, robust laugh.

Leave it to People Magazine to soften the blow for Lindsay Lohan. The thoroughgoing boobs at the magazine’s website suggest her latest bomb, “I Know Who Killed Me,” “strongly divided the nation's movie critics,” while only being able to dredge up one favorable review amidst a plethora of pans.

In fact, the scorecard at rottentomatoes.com suggests the exact opposite – critics were united in a way they rarely are in excoriating what one review called a “sleazy, inept and worthless piece of torture porn.”

We must really be getting weak when the media not only has to filter coverage of the burning issues of the day, but a gossip rag has to sugar coat our celebrity news.

TV Press Tour rather thoughtlessly ate severely into my surfing-the-web-in-search-of-really-embarrassing-things time, so I’m a little late in catching up to this scorchingly penetrating interview with Holly Hunter by what might just be a manatee in a human costume, but if you haven’t seen it yet, by all means, you must.

This is an absolute clinic in what not to do in front of TeeVee cameras. In four short – or agonizingly long, if you’re Hunter – minutes, our hostess with the leastest manages to:

* Mispronounce the word “Academy” right out of the gate, visibly causing the confidence to drain from her face and initiating the first in a series of awkward pauses.

* Say with insincere jollity, “Holly, thanks so much for joining us,” pause awkwardly, returning with another “Holly, thanks so much for joining us,” followed by yet another awkward pause, at which point you can hear the director in her earpiece imploring her to ask a question already, fer chrissakes.

* Squint long and hard at that teleprompter (yes, that is the English language there, young lady).

* Gush incessantly about how much she loves “Saving Grace” to the point of gibberish.

* Say, erroneously, that production has wrapped on the series. (Hunter corrects her gently.)

* Pause awkwardly twice again as the interview concludes.

* Get the premiere date wrong.

* Promote nbc.com even though she’s with ABC, prompting a squeal (of dismay?) in the background. (In all, however, that’s probably not such a bad thing for ABC, since anyone sitting through this is no doubt making a mental note to never visit nbc.com.)

Next up for our hapless interrogator: A job with the White House Press Corps.

“I’m in the middle of a divorce right now. … I lost 20 pounds in my divorce – because that’s what a soul weighs.”

That’s Christopher Titus addressing those assembled for the “Big Shots” TV Press Tour session, the – mercifully – final press conference of the summer tour. Going into the session, critics were fairly skeptical of the show – ABC has a lot of wry soaps focusing on upscale characters (“Dirty Sexy Money,” “Private Practice,” “Cashmere Mafia”), and this one seemed the least of them. The pilot plays, and not just a little, like “Desperate Husbands.”

But Titus (a comic and former star of a fairly edgy Fox sitcom) – and co-star Josh Malina – were so funny during the session in their insults of one another, and they and their co-stars Dylan McDermott and Michael Vartan exuded such great chemistry amongst one another that a lot of the critics who had written “Big Shots” off were won over, or at least willing to give the show another chance. It’s fairly rare that a Press Tour session can resuscitate a show like that, particularly given how late it came in the game, when those who have endured three weeks of this nonsense are running on fumes and in need of resurrection themselves. What could’ve been a dead press conference was instead a spirited and lively affair; “Big Shots” would do quite well if it can capture that energy in each episode.

Later, Titus was extremely gratified to hear that his appearance had won over the room.

“We came in and they told us, ‘You’re the last session,’ and I thought, ‘Wait! You mean after three weeks of this B.S. we’re the last session?’” he told Your Mayor. “I knew we had to be funny, and then I saw (a scene of Malina shirtless in a love scene in the reel introducing the show), and I thought if I start ripping on him, and get him to start ripping on me, and if people see us all together, things would be OK.”

Herewith, some moments from the “Big Shots” press conference:

The first thing out of Titus’ mouth: “I want everyone to know that we are getting Joshua Malina a trainer.”

And later: “Obviously, just seeing Malina with his shirt off that many times just creeped me out.”

Later, Titus caught himself dissembling on something or other at length:

“Holy crap, can I please stop? Somebody stop me. (Gets up out of seat and faces the panel) You guys don't even stop me. Just stop me. You're sitting right there. Just go, ‘Stop, shut up, Titus!’”

A question arose about alternate titles suggested for the show (Titus had complained a little about the title earlier in the session).

JON HARMON FELDMAN (executive producer): "The Chris Titus Show" was one.

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: That was one. "Dylan Has Pretty Eyes." That was another one –

(Laughter.)

-- which I thought, a little too light for me. "Josh Needs to Do More Curls." That was one.

(Collective "Ohhh.")

I don't know. These questions are like -- I hate that everyone's blogging right now and people are hearing me say stupid crap right now across the country.

QUESTION: That happens a lot.

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: Yes, it does.

To a question about McDermott ripping Titus while shooting a scene in which the men play golf:

JOSHUA MALINA: Most of the early discussion was
about -- he has a giant head.

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: I have a giant head.

JOSHUA MALINA: And if you don't block the scene correctly, none of the rest of us can be seen.

(Laughter.)

My memory is that most of the discussion the first day was, "Where are we all going to stand?"

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: Oh, Josh.

JOSHUA MALINA: Not an ego problem, mind you. The
organ itself –

(Laughter.)

-- is very large. … Easter Island.

QUESTION: I really -- I was curious, on a more
serious note --

JOSHUA MALINA: More serious than that?

(Laughter.)

And, apropos of nothing:

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: … We start talking about shows, and I go, "You know, we're like 'Happy Days.'" We all agreed that Dylan is Fonzie, and then Vartan is Richie Cunningham, because he’s the moral center. And then we had an argument over who was Potsie or Ralph Malph.

(Laughter.)

It turns out I'm Ralph Malph.

(Laughter.)

So, not happy about it.

JOSHUA MALINA: It is what it is. Then we started casting "The Godfather," and he was still Ralph Malph.

(Laughter.)

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: I was consigliore Ralph Malph.

Lindsay Lohan’s utterly convincing “It’s not my cocaine” excuse - despite the fact that the stuff was found in her pants (what, so celebrities carry for their assistants these days?) - reminds me of this anecdote from the press tour session for “K-Ville,” about New Orleans cops trying to rebuild and reclaim the city from rampant crime:

COLE HAUSER: We saw some unbelievable stuff as far as just how people are. I mean, this guy -- there was a guy who had pants on, who had drugs in his pocket. The cops said to him, "Why do you have, you know, what is this?" And he goes, "These are not my pants."

After his press session today, ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson went after new NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman like Dick Cheney on Harry Whittington.

Speaking to reporters, McPherson implied Silverman knifed Kevin Reilly – former NBC Entertainment and current Fox Entertainment president and McPherson’s close friend – in the back.

“Kevin Reilly is the guy who stood up for ‘The Office’ (produced by Silverman's company Reveille) against all opposition,” McPherson said. “That made Reveille."

Silverman, when asked about Reilly’s firing 10 days ago, deflected the question. His colleague Marc Graboff said, “He wasn't fired. What happened was when Ben became available, about three months
after we made Kevin's new deal, we jumped at the opportunity to bring Ben on board to the company. We thought he would be able to be the person that was going to take us to the next level. Kevin, when that happened, realized or determined, frankly, that there was just no role for him at the company and decided to move on.”

"I got as big a laugh out of that as you guys did,” McPherson said.

Silverman also deflected questions concerning the controversy surrounding his hiring Isaiah Washington. “He's a wonderful actor and a great performer, and he became available,” Silverman said before being interrupted by reporters’ derisive laughter. “I started talking to him before he was available -- to deal with the laughter,” he added, defensively. “And the idea when he told me he was available, I was like, ‘You are? Wait. They let -- I don't understand. What do you mean? You're a huge star on a star television show.’ I didn't quite understand what had gone on there.”

Again: McPherson: "If that's the case, he's either clueless or stupid."

As the esteemed and thoughtful members of the Television Critics Association prepare to discuss the sociological ramifications (and lack of humor) of ABC's upcoming "Cavemen," an event so earth-shattering in its cultural significance that Your Mayor felt the need to live-blog on it, some background:

Earlier today, ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson announced, "We're doing lot of work" on retooling the show. "We recast one of leads," he said. "The pilot will not be the pilot. We felt it jumps way too far in the development of the characters and into the frying pan. They tried to do way too much with that. It'll end up being episode 5, episode 6 in the run. ... We have to develop the characters and the dynamics so that we're not diving into relationships you might not understand." Oh, yeah, right - the relationships in "Cavemen" are so complex that maybe an Australopithecus may not quite get them.

And, in fact, someone noted that maybe the relationships weren't the problem with the pilot and wondered why all the thinly veiled racial subtext was added. "The commercials are literally a one-joke thing," McPherson said. "They're about a group that's not that bright. They decided to explore a group that's a minority, with all the stereotypes. That was a decision made in development. If you do the commercials on a 30-minute basis, I don't think they'd work."

Memo to McPherson - reread your quote above very closely, particularly the "one-joke thing" part and "doing the commercials/don't think they'd work" part. Now, think about it a little. Are you beginning to see the error of your ways?

Anyway, beyond just not being funny, "Cavemen" is anthropologically befuddled. Though the characters refer to themselves as Cro-Magnons, morphologically, they actually look a little more like Neanderthals. (For compleatists, here's a look at an Australopithecus afarensis.)

And so, we're about to begin:

* The cast and executive producers were the only ones applauding the clip.

* First question: Where are the cavewomen? Honestly, someone asked that.

Episode five is the answer.

* Question: You had to know that making a show from a TV commercial would earn you all sorts of hell from us. How do face that you have to prove yourselves?

Answer: We knew we'd be under a lot of scrutiny, but it makes our job a little harder. ... When making the commercials, we felt there were more stories to tell.

I never guessed we'd catch so much hell.

* Cro-Magnons existed between 40,000-10,000 years ago in the South of France. They vacationed in Italy, usually around Tuscany.

* By contrast, proto-Neanderthals first appeared in Europe 350,000 years ago. They became extinct 24,000 years ago in order to avoid being around once they became the butt of jokes.

* Fending off charges of implicit racial stereotyping on the show:

What's sort of fun is we can create rules for this race that doesn't really understand their place in this world, which gives us a flexibility to make that a broad experience that's universal that everyone can relate to.

Could it be an issue? Yes. But that's our job to make sure it doesn't become one.

And now, the pseudo-pretentious take on the show: This is a show about acclimation, which is what we pitched it as. ... If race relations leads to a story like that, that's great. But this is about acclimation, which is something everyone deals with.

* Neanderthals had many adaptations to a cold climate, such as large braincase, short but robust builds, and large noses -- traits selected by nature in cold climates. Their brain sizes have been estimated to be larger than modern humans, particularly the writers on this show, although such estimates have not been adjusted for their more robust builds.

* Another hard-hitting question: Why don't they just shave and go to a decent barber?

* Blah blah blah on the makeup. "I was blown away," says one of the actors.

* Cro-Magnons had a diet of meat, grain, wild carrots, beets, onion, turnip and other foods. Many of them were volunteers for PETA.

* "If the show works, it will work because people care about these three guys and can relate to their problems."

* And more pseudo-pretentious ruminations: "We asked ourselves, 'Is it authentic and is it reflective of authentic behavior?'"

* This is how you would read "Cro-Magnon" in another language: kʀomaɲõ and kɹəʊ'mægnən

* Question: Will the gecko be a guest star at some point?

Answer: Depends on what our ratings are.

* Yet more on how amazing the makeup is, which it isn't.

* A disappointed panelist: "Someone told us there'd be a laugh track in this room, which there isn't."

* Question: I'm still wanting to know what the show is going to be. You say the show will be subtle, and the show we saw is anything but subtle. You say it won't just be dealing with racial stereotypes, but the episode we saw is nothing but that.

Answer: (long pause) Well, I mean, look. (Then lots of dissembling.)

Followed by more pseudo-pretentious rambling:

"Where we want to take the show is to make these distinctive stories about three friends in their 20s who happen to be cavemen and that grafts a filter onto their lives."

* Question: "I don't want to beat a dead horse..."

Answer: "That's episode two."

(More kvetching on the implicit racial stereotyping in the show.)

* Cro-Magnons are credited with killing off the Neanderthals and, now, comedy. A warrant is out for their arrest.

* UPDATE: After the session, a critic grumbled, "They have no f#&%ing idea what they're doing."

Your Mayor has been the go-to source for all things “Cavemen,” from the exclusive scoop that the series in fact would not be a comedy to the grim confirmation that comedy and “Cavemen” exist in mutually exclusive epochs.

Everyone covering TV Press Tour that I’ve spoken to shares my utter lack of enthusiasm for the show – one research project in which I participated for Johns Hopkins University (or USA Today Weekend; in the frenzied blur that is Press Tour, I forget which) declared it the worst show of the upcoming season.

And so, today should be fun: ABC’s portion of Press Tour begins, and the “Cavemen” session is scheduled for this afternoon at 2:15 p.m. Participants will include stars Bill English, Nick Kroll and Sam Huntington, executive producers Bill Martin & Mike Schiff, executive producers/directors Will Speck & Josh Gordon and co-executive producer and writer Joe Lawson.

I’ve already been offered $20 from one critic to ask, per my explosive breaking-news story, “When did you decide not to make this a comedy?” Were others to ratchet that figure up exponentially, I’d be tempted, but I figure that question will figure rather prominently in the proceedings this afternoon. Particularly in light of the cavemen break-dancing sequence.

Hence, I’ve decided to live-blog the “Cavemen” press conference. This will require a certain amount of wherewithal and discipline since, unlike the wonkette.com folks who live-blog Presidential debates and Bush press conferences or the defamer.com folks who live-blog awards shows, I’ll have to be doing this without the requisite 1.5-liter of Scotch necessitated by such soul-sapping events.

Nonetheless, tune in at 2:15 with your trigger finger poised on the “reload” icon. It should be fun. Or mortifying. Or both.

TV Guide, eschewing Us Magazine’s “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” rhetorical horse dung, offers a “Stars: Their Outrageous Salaries May Be The Harbinger Of A Civilian Uprising That May Usher In An Era Of Socialism!” report revealing celebrity incomes.

Here’re the ones intended to scandalize you the most:

OPRAH WINFREY: $260 million per year (including other shows she produces) (That’s an awful lot of self-empowerment.)

SIMON COWELL: $45 million per year (for American Idol and other projects) (Being mean pays well.)

JUDGE JUDY: $30 million per year (Yes, being mean pays extremely well.)

KATIE COURIC: $15 million per year (Being beleaguered pays pretty well, too.)

ZACH BRAFF: $6.3 million (for 18 episodes of Scrubs next season) (Or, roughly, $1 per viewer for an average episode).

The most surprising of these, to my mind, is Judge Judy, because her show is the most throwaway of the bunch and all she does is bully the poor boobs who appear before her. And she blows it all on Dolce & Gabbana judicial robes.

And more:

NETWORK PRIME TIME (all salaries are per episode)
William Petersen (CSI): $500,000
Charlie Sheen (Two and a Half Men): $350,000
Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU): $350,000
Chris Meloni (Law & Order: SVU): $350,000
Hugh Laurie (House): $300,000
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (New Adventures of Old Christine): $225,000
Ellen Pompeo (Grey’s Anatomy): $200,000
Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives): $200,000
Jeff Foxworthy (Are You Smarter Than…): $150,000
T.R. Knight (Grey’s Anatomy): $125,000
Chandra Wilson (Grey’s Anatomy): $125,000
Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters): $100,000

The shocker here: Ellen Pompeo’s paycheck, which is twice two-time Oscar-winner Sally Fields. At least the others on this list capably service their roles. A Johns Hopkins University study found that Pompeo’s watery simpering has provoked an alarming uptick in cutting and other forms of self-mutilation amongst “Grey’s Anatomy” viewers.

And more:

Apparently, appearing on “Dateline: To Catch a Predator” has its upside – not for the perp (OK: alleged perp), obviously, but for his aggrieved family: The sister of a man who killed himself while the police were knocking at his door to question him about his sexually explicit online chat with what the guy thought was a 13-year-old boy is suing NBC for $105 million.

Most critics have been giving “To Catch a Predator” a pass because no one in their right mind would defend the dirtbags the show humiliates and helps put behind bars. (Besides, watching these guys squirm while host Chris Hansen turns the thumbscrews on them is spectacularly quease-inducing TV, even though Hansen of late appears to have become more theatrical in his self-righteous cudgeling of his perverted dupes; it’s hard to shake the feeling that “To Catch a Predator” plays more like a reality show than a newsmagazine report.)

What places this case in a somewhat hazy area are the facts that the D.A. handling this round of cases didn’t prosecute any of them, feeling that the evidence was tainted (and that NBC didn’t obtain the permission of the local mayor or city council for the sting) and that the dead guy in fact didn’t show up at Sicko Central, the home to which the pervs are invited during the online chats. Granted, the content of the online chat itself constitutes a felony. And it’s impossible to imagine a jury that’d be sympathetic to a 57-year-old guy who was willfully flirting with underage kids, particularly if NBC’s attorneys can find others victimized by him.

But, really, it was only a matter of time before this happened. Those nabbed in these stings are obviously diseased, but might be sane enough to understand that being exposed on national television as a likely child molester is about as bad as it gets, and there’s not going to be a whole lot in life to look forward to afterwards.

And while it’s difficult to feel much remorse that there’s one less bad guy (OK, OK: alleged bad guy) walking amongst us, NBC and the folks at Perverted Justice who set up these stings (just a thought, but perhaps the group might want to come up with a new moniker) should’ve considered the potential residual blowback on the innocent bystanders in these creeps’ families. And perhaps installments of “To Catch a Predator” should expend some energy on encouraging those who feel such urges to get psychiatric help in addition to jazzing audiences with the depictions of debasing these demented deviants.

Dan Rather, post-CBS News, isn’t particularly bullish on the future of the network newscast. He backed off criticism of his replacement, Katie Couric – though he noted “the odds are longer now” as to whether she can succeed in the anchor’s chair – but offered a grim assessment of the network newscast in general.

“I think we’ll see the time when someone at the top (of a network) says, ‘We can give this (air) time back to affiliates,’” Rather declared.

With network news on the skids (except over at ABC) and newspapers gasping for air (key quote: “(C)apital markets (are) increasingly skeptical about the newspaper industry's ability to generate cash from operations”), are we looking at a future in which journalism – that solid, serious kind, with investigations into corporate and governmental corruption, not the kind tracking Victoria Beckham’s whereabouts – will be sporting a toe tag? Does our culture so devalue information that could save our lives, avert future crises and maintain a sense of fairness and justice in society that we’re simply --

Holy sh!t! Lindsay Lohan got another DUI!

So, during Fox’s Press Tour session for “Canterbury’s Law,” a midseason legal drama starring Julianna Marguilies, this curious question was posed:

QUESTION: Why are TV writers so fascinated with men's bathrooms? Virtually every drama, especially courtroom dramas, has a scene with men in the bathroom.

Your Mayor, not being as utterly obsessed with human elimination as the querying journalist, had not noticed this before, but upon reflection, entertainments focusing on the legal process – from “Ally McBeal” to “The Runaway Jury” – have, in fact, featured key expository scenes in restrooms. Not sure I’d really want to know the answer enough to posit it before a large group, but I respect the interrogator’s moxie.

Herewith, the response:

WALON GREEN (executive producer): Well, the urinal is actually an ideal place to shoot something, because it's not a stall. It's not enclosed. It's open.

(Laughter.)

It offers opportunities for different angles and good coverage, and there's also sound potential so --

(Laughter.)

JULIANNA MARGULIES (Clapping): Walon, you rock.

Indeed, Walon, you do rock. You have keenly explicated a once-unheralded genre cliché that no one probably really wanted to know about but now understands fully.

Plus, a lot of actors probably have prostate problems, so if their bladders ache in the middle of a scene, they’re good to go.

Amy Sherman-Palladino, on hand at the TV Press Tour to tout her midseason Fox sitcom “The Return of Jezebel James” and wearing a big white hat that looked as though it had been swiped from a Dr. Seuss book, had this to say about the roundly reviled series finale of “Gilmore Girls,” the show she created but left before the seventh season, thereby denying herself the chance to conclude it with the final line she had long said was gestating in her head:

“I didn’t watch it. I just got very drunk that night and sat in a corner. I couldn’t watch it because it wasn’t going to be my ending and had in my head forever. You know, go with God. I love all those people; I love that cast. I’m friends with Lauren (Graham).”

On the possibility of a TV movie bringing about more closure:

“We’ve talked about maybe sometimes doing a little song and dance together. I’m not ruling it out.”

And just what was that final line?

“You’re adopted.”

(Her joke, not mine.)

Smells like pre-teen spirit: The altruistic people of Disney, who have never turned down an opportunity to exploit the young citizens of America for cash, have created a market that probably doesn’t really need to exist: They’ve developed a series of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and Buzz Lightyear fragrances aimed at Latino boys ages 4-11.

“The market is driven by gift-giving, so we will target moms and grandmothers—the primary gift-givers,” says a Disney spokeswoman who apparently has absolutely no qualms about the fact that any boy who would open up a wrapped gift hoping for a PSP game and instead discovering a dinky bottle of cologne no doubt faces years of therapy in the future.

And does anyone, even a 4-year-old, want to smell like a pirate? Couldn’t a kid manage to stink like that simply by running around in 90-degree temperatures without any deodorant? A plastic toy astronaut isn’t the first thing one’d associate with aromatic pleasures, either. And why they haven't marketed a Mickey scent is beyond me: What little kid wouldn't want to smell like a rodent?

So allow me to suggest further Disney-inspired liquid odors for parents to douse on their unwitting progeny:

* Lady and the Tramp
* The Gnome-Mobile
* Operation Dumbo Drop
* Uncle Remus
* Bambi’s dead mom
* Darby O’Gill and the Little People
* Country Bear Jamboree
* Scrooge McDuck’s bank vault
* Flubber
* The Barefoot Executive
* Million Dollar Duck
* The Apple Dumpling Gang
* The toilet scene in “Trainspotting” (granted, that was a Miramax film, but Disney owns Miramas. So there.)

And, of course, feel free to add your own.

Peter Liguori and Kevin Reilly worked together before, elevating the cable network FX to its current acclaimed status. So it only seemed natural that when NBC booted Reilly in order for Ben Silverman to cheerlead that network to success, Fox chairman Liguori would bring his old friend aboard to serve as the network's Entertainment president.

But few of the reporters attending the TCA Press Tour in Beverly Hills were prepared for the bald mutual admiration society that emerged during Fox's executive session.

Oh, but first, a bit of news before proceeding: Tony-winner Cherry Jones will play the President next season on "24."

OK, that out of the way, perhaps the best way to describe what happened is to get out of the way and allow the official transcript of Liguori and Reilly's press conference tell the story:

ALL TCA PRESS TOUR TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREPARED IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING PRESS CONFERENCES. DUE TO THE SPEED WITH WHICH THESE TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREPARED, COMPLETE ACCURACY CANNOT BE GUARANTEED.

QUESTION: For both Kevin and Peter. You've worked together before, but this is kind of an odd situation. Can you shed a little bit of light on what the style is going to be? You walk into a situation -- how do you guys sit together and work out something that you're essentially adopting and something you created? And then going forward, how is that style?

PETER LIGUORI: We're all one team. Kevin doesn't come to the office today saying, "Okay. I'm ready to develop my shows. Peter, you take care of this season."

This relationship has worked very, very well because, first of all, we can laugh at each other. We have certainly healthy egos, but we can -

(Laughing.)

KEVIN REILLY: His has gotten much, much bigger since cable. I can tell you that.

PETER LIGUORI: Yes, and not stopping. We know who we are. We know how we complement each other. I think the single biggest thing that Kevin and I share, other than a specific creative DNA, is just kind of a bit of a life philosophy, which is, let's succeed and go home to our families. There is not any ego competition or "your shows versus my shows." They're FOX shows. Frankly, that's why I really enjoyed working with Kevin when we were at FX, which is a way smaller pond to be playing in.

I just have to tell you, over the course of the last three weeks, mostly my talking to Kevin, and then one week of really getting down to business, on a personal basis, I don't think I've ever been happier in the offices within FOX. It's comfortable. It's collaborative. The energy is raised up in the place. It's like an old love. We finish each other's sentences.

KEVIN REILLY: Kind of like -- wow.

(Laughter.)

PETER LIGUORI: Maybe that was a bit of a stretch.

KEVIN REILLY (referring to a small coffee table on stage between the executives' chairs): Should we move the table out from between us?

PETER LIGUORI: Yes.

(The two men toss the table aside roughly, then fall into one another, each man's arms frenziedly exploring the other man.)

KEVIN REILLY: Oh, Peter (gasping), I've missed you so!

PETER LIGUORI: And I, you!

KEVIN REILLY: Why did I ever leave you for Jeff Zucker? He's brutish - all hands, clumsy and simian-like - and a lousy kisser!

PETER LIGUORI: Don't ever leave me again, Kevin Reilly! Just don't ever leave me again!

(As their embrace becomes ever more impassioned, a couple of stagehands wheel a large Jacuzzi onto the platform. Liguori and Reilly kick their chairs into the audience to make room for the giant tub, then, tearing one another's jackets and shirts off, tumble headlong into the steaming, bubbling water.)

PETER LIGUORI: Let me see that "American Idol!"

KEVIN REILLY: It's time for "Bones," and I'm not talking about Emily Deschanel!

(Reporters sheepishly sneak out of the International Ballroom.)

(Honest -- about thee-quarters of this is true, which is pretty good as far as blogs go.)

There are the obvious trends you’ll see when the fall TV season rolls around in September – the Rise of the Geeks (“Chuck,” “Reaper,” “The Big Bang Theory”) and the Foreign Menace Invades Hollywood (honestly, if Lou Dobbs is so concerned about foreigners taking our jobs, all he need do is plant himself in Hollywood, where our hard-working American actors are being told "Come back when you're more talented" and getting beat out for roles by scads of actors from England, South Africa, Denmark, Australia, etc.

(Some of the shows featuring foreign-born actors in lead roles: “Viva Laughlin,” “Aliens in America,” “Chuck,” “Bionic Woman,” “New Amsterdam,” “Moonlight,” “Pushing Daisies,” “Life,” & so on & so forth.).

But there’s another trend afoot, less obvious but more significant when it comes to how TV will be made in the future: The emerging reliance on online promotion on network programming, to the point of dictating what actually may get on the air. Given two shows, with all other things being equal, the show with the more compelling online component will get on the air; the other probably won’t. Of late, the success of “Heroes” and the resurrection of “Jericho” has given this notion greater urgency.

This notion was first floated at the January TV Press Tour, with this exchange with then-NBC chief Kevin Reilly:

QUESTION: Kevin, in the future will how you can promote shows online and develop audiences online --
will that actually affect the way that you develop series, and will it have an effect on what actually gets on the air?

KEVIN REILLY: “Yes. I mean, you can't have the cart pull the horse, you know. If you're doing something because you think it's a good Web show and not a good television show, that's going to be a problem. But the -- our Web folks have a seat at the adults' table. They're not locked away in the back room.

“It is a daily conversation about how can we exploit, how can we further market, push the tentacles of exposure out in the public? How can we change our distribution methods to best benefit the shows, the product, the company? How can we make all of the above an asset for the company? How do we make money on all the above? It's an exciting but trying time. There are moving parts on every front. …

“You're going to see all sorts of experimentation, and we already have. So yes, and any -- the second we pick something up, even as we do it, we say, "Oh, this one" -- we're starting dialogue right now with our sales department to figure out some innovative ways to integrate and work with advertisers in a special way. We're talking to our Web people right now -- what are the Web extensions of this? What's the opportunity? – and identifying the ones that can really be the leaders, like "Heroes" was last year. We know almost at this time last year that "Heroes" was going to be a big Web play for us. And Tim Kring was completely embracing it. That's one of the reasons there's been so much success there.

Your Mayor was getting around to doing a story on this when three things happened:

* Kevin Reilly was too immersed in May upfronts to pursue the conversation further.
* Kevin Reilly got canned at NBC (he’s now at Fox).
* The computer with all the interviews previously conducted on the story went into a deep, Terry-Schiavo-type coma (and hasn’t yet been taken to a data retrieval service).

Seems like each network has a different strategy for doing this, but it’s clearly on their minds:

* NBC is continuing the sci-fi/fantasy theme (with “Bionic Woman,” “Chuck” and “Journeyman”), knowing fans of the genre have nothing better to do than troll the Internets all day long and these sorts of shows lend themselves to such online applications.

* CBS is trotting out some controversial or at least provocative programming (“Kid Nation,” “Viva Laughlin” (sort of) and the midseason show “Swingtown”) intended to stir online debate on message boards.

CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler explained her thinking and strategy:

“It's one thing when you've got an audience communicating to someone at the network. But (with “Jericho”) you really had a chance to see the way they talked to each other, the way they communicated about characters, the way they talked about storylines. That gives you a very unique opportunity right now. So I think we are looking at a shift and a change. …

“Maybe it comes out of "Jericho." What I think is so amazing is being able to listen and learn and watch our audience really connect with a show and really talk to each other, and I think what I'm hoping from "Kid Nation," from some of the shows, from "Swingtown," you're finding that audiences are personalizing, they've got very strong opinions, and we at the network are, we're really listening. We're responding, and I think that -- it's that debate, and that public discussion is positive, and it allows us to gain greater insight into who is watching our shows and what do they have to say about our shows. So I'm finding that personally very, very rewarding.”

* The CW is keying into the blogging plot point in its new show “Gossip Girl” to invite fans to come to their site and start their own (as well as buy the crap that they wear and use on the show).

So, it’s a story that bears following, and one that we will indeed revisit later, if the Daily News ponies up to resuscitate my old computer.

CW Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff mentioned this morning during her TV Press Tour session that the network has an executive who does nothing all day but spend her time trolling the Internets for trends, etc.

Not that impressive: Every business has someone like that. Only difference is, they don’t call them “executives.” They call them temps, secretaries, sales personnel, comptrollers, TV critics, etc., etc.

In the wake of some of the head-scratching choices announced in the Emmy nominations yesterday, Howstuffworks.com attempts to explain the process for you.

It’s entitled “How the Emmy Awards Work.” Spoiler: They don’t.

CBS’s TV Press Tour session for “Viva Laughlin” seemed to be fairly evenly divided between two camps – those who had never seen the BBC’s “Viva Blackpool” and therefore didn’t get where the show was coming from, and those who had seen its inspiration and loved it, and were none too comforted by the blasé responses from the panel about their listless adaptation of that really kind of brilliant miniseries.

Honestly, in all Your Mayor's years of covering TV Press Tour, I’ve never emerged from a press conference for a show I wanted to like with such negative feelings (Quietus®, anyone?).

“Viva Blackpool” was a hilarious and energetic six-episode pseudo-musical British miniseries about a delusional dreamer (played with unbelievable charisma by David Morrissey) who thought opening a casino in a dying, seedy British port town would reverse that city’s fortunes, not to mention his own. Of course, many obstacles lay in his way, such as an inopportunely placed corpse and a lady-killing detective investigating that ostensible murder.

By contrast, “Viva Laughlin” boasts virtually no sense of humor. Hugh Jackman plays the evil casino owner with spectacular dash. But his appearances are being scheduled capriciously – what good is a drama if the antagonist rarely shows up?

And here are some more concerns, from the press conference:

THE MAYOR OF TELEVISION: In the BBC series, while the actors were singing, they were playing directly to the cameras, sort of winking at the audience as they were singing along, and that sort of gave the show a sort of cheekier sensibility. How much discussion went into deciding that the actors shouldn't eye the camera while they're singing, and why did you decide they shouldn't?

BOB LOWRY (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): We didn't want to break the fourth wall. We didn't want the audience -- I don't think being in on the joke, because it's not a joke. We didn't want the audience to be taken away from the story. We wanted them to remain engaged, and we felt that breaking the fourth wall was -- sort of removing the viewer from the actual story that we were telling. ... In looking to the camera, it sort of removed the actors from the actual story.

Bad move. Because the BBC version understood that characters breaking into song was a kind of joke. Lowry spoke a lot about “teaching the audience how to watch the show,” until, at some point, he realized how condescending that sounded, and then he said, “I don't think it's so much teach them how to watch a drama with music as much as it is allowing them the opportunity to become engaged and still tell a good story.”

(Someone else at CBS suggested to Your Mayor that the consensus at the network was that American viewers were just too dumb to get the humor from characters winking at the camera. Well, in defense of that point of view, George W. Bush won the Presidency twice.)

And then, another question:

THE MAYOR OF TELEVISION: The BBC series was only six episodes, so how much of a challenge has it been to break stories and extend that? And how long can you extend the murder mystery or the preparation of the hotel before it opens?

BOB LOWRY: The challenge is enormous. … I needed to create characters that didn't exist in the BBC version. The phrase I often use is I had to crack it open for 22, so we had to create different characters to play off of each other and to be intertwined in each other's lives, and we hope to keep the -- I don't have an answer for you that the murder mystery will be resolved by 13 or by 22. But as a writer, I can tell you that the murder mystery will be resolved after we have exhausted every possibility of examining all of the suspects who could have killed the character.

… which sounds like more obfuscating on a level that most TV viewers won’t kindly accept. “Lost” dragged out storylines to the point of stretching them to death, much as Lowry seems to be vowing to do; viewers abandoned the show. Lowry sounds like he’s content with picking at a scab until the entire continent will be bored.

Too bad. “Viva Blackpool” moved with an effortless grace; “Viva Laughlin” sounds like it’ll proceed at a glacial pace without a smidgen of the wit of the original. It almost sounds as if “Viva Laughlin” will make viewers nostalgic for NBC’s remake of the British sitcom “Coupling.”

Understanding that TCA members have better things to do than fill space on this blog, I nonetheless throw out the question - has anyone else been soured on a show they liked after hearing the cast and creators discuss it during a press conference? If you blog on it, I'll offer links to your thoughts here.

On Saturday evening, winners of the Television Critics Associations awards will take the stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, smile profusely and thank the group graciously, noting that this award is really meaningful, coming as it does from people whose life’s work is given over to watching and championing quality television. They do all that, but in their hearts, they’ll be thinking one of two things:

* “I hope I can parlay this into an Emmy now.”
* “How meaningful is this award if it can’t even score me an Emmy nomination?”

Emmy nominations were announced this morning, and winners in the major categories will be announced Sept. 16. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced today that after consultations with the Federal Trade Commission regarding reservations registered over trophy safety and to alleviate production costs of the televised ceremony, ATAS has entered into an agreement with Apple and, for the first time, the spiky-winged angel holding aloft an empty globe will be replaced with a large, gold-plated iPhone.

Anyway, it was the usual mixed bag of nominations announced today, with the requisite perennials, a couple of mildly surprising inclusions, some heartening fresh blood and the usual vexing snubs. (Memo to self: Save this paragraph for use next year.)

“Sopranos:” You know the drill: 15 nominations, including three in the writing category alone, most of any series; 111 overall; show to beat. Otherwise: HBO, 11 fewer nominations than last year.

“Ugly Betty” and “30 Rock:” first-time comedies do swell, with 11 and 10 nominations overall, including Outstanding Comedy Series. NBC is praying “30 Rock’s” strong showing will translate into actual viewers next season, but look how well winning the Emmy worked out for “Arrested Development.” Go ahead and hand America Ferrera the acting trophy right now, just on the sheer likability factor (Emmy voters know just how difficult it is to fake being that sweet and kind and lovable.)

“Boston Legal:” Emmy voters love this show more than any other demographic on the planet: Six nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, a nomination that people who care enough about this sort of thing to fume over snubs charge could’ve and should’ve gone to either “The Wire” (boyoboy, when the history of Television is written, Emmy voters will look awfully stoopid for never giving this show its due) or “Friday Night Lights.”

No, really: I’d like to hear from someone who voted in this thing and watched “The Wire” and thought, “You know what? No. I’m voting for something else.” What do you want, for heaven’s sake?

A fairly reliable measure of what got snubbed in the Outstanding Series categories is to look at the writing and directing categories. Nominated in those categories: “Battlestar Galactica,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Extras,” “Scrubs” and “Lost.”

Ricky Gervais: Three nominations, for writing, directing and starring in “Extras.” Start polishing that “It’s an honor just to be nominated” speech now. Or, since he’s up against two scripts both from “The Office” and “30 Rock” in the comedy writing category, perhaps he’ll win as those cancel one another out.

An utter, jaw-dropping shocker: The two stars appearing this morning to announce the nominations – Kyra Sedgwick and Jon Cryer – went home with nominations themselves. Quite the gift bag.

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” got the most nominations of any production this year – 17 – and was also named “Worst TV movie or miniseries” in a critics’ poll in a trade publication. Both of which are wild over-reactions.

Three miniseries nominations – “Broken Trail,” “Prime Suspect” and “The Starter Wife.” What this means: Emmy voters couldn’t be bothered to pop their DVD screener of “The State Within” into their players for even five minutes, because otherwise it would’ve been on this list.

T.R. Knight got nominated for Best Supporting Actor/Drama for “Grey’s Anatomy.” Wonder if he’ll thank Isaiah Washington if he wins?

Funny how no one's talking about how Lauren Graham got snubbed this year.

“Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” got 5 nominations!

And “Saturday Night Live’s” song “Dick in a Box,” an ode to Vice President Cheney and his undisclosed bunker, just might walk off with the highest honor the Television Arts has to offer.

“I'm starting to sense in the room what I'm going to call mild reservations about the show,” one reporter dryly observed near the end of a particularly contentious TV Press Tour session, for CBS’s upcoming reality show “Kid Nation.”

In it, 40 kids, aged 8-15, settle at a New Mexico “ghost town” and try to establish their own society. More we cannot say, because CBS has not made an episode available for preview. But we know what you’re thinking, and series creator/executive producer Tom Forman wishes to allay your fears:

“I don't think any of us were unaware of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ And to answer about how quickly did it come up, six seconds. The minute we started talking about it, we stopped and said, ‘Are we making a reality “Lord of the Flies?”’ and said, ‘Well, there will be elements.’ I'm not going to deny the comparison -- these are kids living on their own. That said, like every reality show, there are adults off-camera waiting to step in if kids got violent.”

The show has come under fire because it apparently exploited a loophole in New Mexico child-labor laws (the series passed itself off as a summer camp, which meant it could shoot the kids for as long as it wanted, as opposed to a TV production, which limits the hours kids can work and insists upon on-set tutors), a loophole the N.M. legislature has since reportedly sealed.

The Television Critics Association has been a world leader in decrying unfair child-labor practices since 1988, when the embarrassing Ritz-Carlton Shoeshine Scandal was brought to the public’s attention. Since then, the TCA has championed the cause of eradicating child labor – except, of course, for those critics who wear Gap clothing made in Cambodia.

Herewith, the transcript from the “Kid Nation” press conference, in which the intrepid men and women of the TCA seek the facts as to whether the children participating in the show were in any way exploited in order to produce low-budget programming to entertain an undemanding American viewing audience:

ALL TCA PRESS TOUR TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREPARED IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING PRESS CONFERENCES. DUE TO THE SPEED WITH WHICH THESE TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREPARED, COMPLETE ACCURACY CANNOT BE GUARANTEED.

QUESTION: Does it trouble you at all that, if I follow this correctly, that the way that you filmed "Kid Nation" would be illegal in a number of states? Does that give you pause in any way, like "Okay, we can do it in these certain states. It's legal”?

TOM FORMAN: First off, I'm not trying to dodge the question, but I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really know the answer to the legality of it -- of other states' laws. But speaking to the ethical part of it, does it give me pause? Is it something I think about? Of course. I think we made a decision early on that we were going to give these kids an incredible experience, that we were going to find kids who wanted this experience, kids that went to things like Scout camps and model U.N.’s. This was going to be a little higher energy, and it was going to be on television.

QUESTION: OK, then, let’s speak to some of the participants on the panel. How do you regard your experience on “Kid Nation?”

JACK: I thought it was great. I started out as the leader of my choir group, and from there, I amassed power, and finally, I was able to crush my chief foe, Ralph.

RALPH: Initially, it seemed kind of fun. I was trying to maintain a sense of order, but a lot of the kids ended up not really thinking that was necessary, and they sort of got behind Jack, and then there was that thing with Piggy, and Jack prevailed.

PIGGY: Ralph was nice to me. A lot of the other kids weren’t. Well, let me put it another way – none of the other kids were. I didn’t like it when they took my inhaler. That was mean. I mean, what good is adherence to social strictures established by adult a posteriori mores when you don’t have an inhaler?

ROGER: Exactly, lard-butt. A social structure based upon a priori theories works for those of us who like to cave in skulls with large rocks, and “Kid Nation” had lots of rocks.

JACK: Oh, and don't forget the entrail dance. That was cool.

SAMNERIC: We liked making waffles.

SIMON: I liked the waffles. Look, it wasn’t a perfect system, but it was a whole lot better than serving as an altar boy in Cardinal Mahoney’s Archdiocese.

QUESTION: Why this idea? Who's the audience for it?

TOM FORMAN: I think I'm the audience for it.

By the way, Forman added that if “Kid Nation” is successful, the sequel, which will be shot in Jakarta, will be entitled “Kid Shoe Factory.”

Matthew Weiner, former "Sopranos" writer now in charge of his own show, AMC's new acclaimed "Mad Men," which premieres tonight at 10 p.m., describes how he came upon the idea of exploring '60s mores via slick, womanizing Madison Avenue advertising executives and their wives, mistresses and credulous and conniving secretaries:

"I love this period, and I was always interested in advertising. In a way it was like, to me, some of the greatest entertainment in my life. But what really happened is I reached a certain point in my life where I started thinking about myself as a man and where I was and what I was feeling, and it just intersected with this period in the United States and I said, 'This is what I feel like.' And it had to do with New York at that period, and it had to do with the fact that I was a television writer. And I looked at these guys, at this world, these men who were overpaid and drank too much and smoked too much and were glib and cynical and bit the hand that fed them all the time and showed up late and had no respect for authority and I thought, 'These are my heroes.'"

Herewith, some sweeping sociological treatise courtesy Weiner and his cast members:

QUESTION: This may be one of the most politically incorrect shows on television right now simply because it does just -- it shows the mores of the country less than a half century ago. So in that way it's kind of about how our society has evolved. And so, to anyone out there who wants to tackle this: We know what gains have been made, but what has been lost and are men more enlightened or are they just more wussy these days?

MATTHEW WEINER: I would say something about this, but I would love to hear what they have to say also because I don't think men have any role models at all and -- just in the casting process, especially like Vincent's character Pete, people coming in -- the concept -- I said to the casting director afterwards. I said "I know he" -- I kept saying to the men coming in -- these are men in their 20's. "I know that you're saying horrible things to her, but you have to act like this is working because you are noticing her" and it's a very strange dynamic, but there's a lot of seduction in the show, and it's based on the fact that you can't come up and like -- all this ass-grabbing and stuff like that, there's talk about that, but this is not a frat house. There are actually rules and there's actually a lot of language that's respected and achievement that's respected. And of course there's no respect for the person who's receiving it, but I said, "These men come in here and I don't think they have ever had sex with someone without another guy in the room and like a high-five at the end." They could not keep from saying "Dude." They did not have any sort of -- and I'm not saying this is a measure of masculinity or anything like that, but I wonder what sort of -- how adrift it is, you know, how adrift this concept of what being a man is. It's so crude right now. It's not like it's so much better then, but I look at that and say "Okay. I was in my 20's. I remember not knowing who to emulate or anything like that." I wanted to be like my dad to some degree, but not really, or I wanted to be like some actor or something like that, but the characters of these -- what has been lost I think is that you certainly -- I don't know -- I mean, one of things I'm trying to do in the show and I would love for you guys to talk about this -- and of course it's not that they're so distant in age or anything like that, but they are three different generations of men at that time and three different levels of success and three different levels of achievement and John Slattery's character and Jon Hamm's character are both veterans --
and as the line says about Pete, "I know your generation went to college instead of serving." So that's already an issue in there, but would you like to talk about this, Vincent?

… so you won’t have to fight them where you live.

Reporters covering the TV Critics Press Tour in Beverly Hills were unnerved today by a report in the New York Times about the resurgence of al-Qaeda, including within the entertainment industry:

“President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s leadership of Al Qaeda had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures.

“The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years. … The report concluded that the United States would face a ‘persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.’”

Most chilling was this passage:

“The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) reported that DHS agents had discovered that a Qaeda sleeper cell had embedded itself in A.C. Nielsen, a marketing research firm that tracks, among other things, the national TV ratings for the broadcast networks. Operatives were distorting data to ensure that high ratings would be reported for such terrible TV shows as ‘Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?’, ‘The Singing Bee’ and ‘Rules of Engagement,’ thereby ensuring that such programming would not be cancelled and continue to terrorize – or, at the very least, seriously annoy – American viewers.

“‘This is a finding we take very seriously,’ Robert Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, declared. “Americans want – and deserve – to be able to turn on their televisions without seeing something like ‘Men in Trees.’”

Critics in Beverly Hills today called a special emergency meeting instead of attending the “Kids Nation” press session to discuss how to combat the encroaching menace. As the thin, ink-stained front line between America’s TV viewers and the forces of evil that wish Television harm, the Television Critics Association takes its duty to protect our homeland from “Cavemen” quite seriously. Pray that we are successful.

Warning: Spoilers ahead. Sure, they’re all crap I made up, but they’re spoilers nonetheless.

When “Heroes” returns for Season Two in September, “The pressure’s on,” Jack Coleman, who plays the once-sinister, now kinda-good-guy HRG, Claire’s dad, who began the season busily rounding up the heroes and now is helping defend them, said Monday evening at the NBC TV Press Tour party.

“The second season’s very important,” he said. “Having said that, we’ve established ourselves in the marketplace, but it’s not clear everyone who watched will return. We have to give them a good reason.”

Of his character, Coleman, naturally, couldn’t say much, but he did offer, “He may be on the side of the angels, but that doesn’t mean he’ll behave like one.”

Adrian Pasdar, whose character Nathan ostensibly died in the first-season finale, was also at the party. “Poor Adrian,” Coleman sympathized. “He’s here and there’s not much he can say.” Referring to the show’s relatively high body count amongst regular characters, Coleman said, “Adrian put it best – he said, ‘I thought I signed up to do a show called “Heroes” and instead I show up to do a show called “Survivor.”’”

For his part, Pasdar described his role at the party as providing “subterfuge, misdirection, tap-dancing,” adding, “It’s funny – last year, they encouraged us to talk to anyone about everything. This year, they’ve told us not to say anything.”

So, he offered a few scenarios that might account for how they’ll manage to get Nathan back on the show:

* dream sequences
* scenes taking place in the future
* special “What-If?” episodes

Notice he didn’t say that Nathan might still be alive. So that’s probably the case. Milo Ventimiglia, whose character Peter died with Nathan (or so we were led to believe), will be back, as well.

Pasdar was wearing a full beard, hence a query as to whether it was for the show, followed by “Can you even answer that?” “Eventually, I’m gonna be worn down,” he said, adding, appropriately cryptically, “Typically you don’t see characters with beards this thick on TV.”

He could talk, however, about his wife, Natalie Maines, and her once-controversial dis of our Decider-in-Chief. “It’s kind of a bitter pill – you never want to say ‘I told you so’ for something so devastating. The world today is more of one mind – it wouldn’t be a shocking thing to say today.

“It was prophetic in its wisdom, but it was a tough thing to go through. But for a little, five-foot-three, barefoot girl from Lubbock, Texas to elicit such an international reaction is pretty remarkable.”

Oh, and he did say that Mohinder turns out to be evil, Claire turns out to be a space alien scouting for her race’s impending invasion and Hiro will get kicked off the show for making a homophobic remark. Masi Oka, who plays Hiro, will argue that Hiro made the remark because it was in the script, but creator Tim Kring will cite a strict zero-tolerance policy and that Masi should’ve known better than to utter the line in the first place, so Hiro will end up as a character on “Bionic Woman.”

There were other people from “Heroes” at the party, but they wouldn’t talk to me.

Gary Dourdan allegedly went all Mike Tyson on a TMZ.com cameraman last night, not that those boors may not have had it coming (and the resulting footage is pretty lame). (And, really -- Gary Dourdan? Would anyone’d been remotely interested in the footage had he just walked by and smiled and waved?) After Dourdan calmed down, they started filming him again, and the resulting footage proves not much more than that TMZ.com needs to hire editors to cut this stuff down.

The cameraman filed a police report. CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler, by happy coincidence (for us, not so much for her), was on hand at TV Press Tour to avoid commenting on the incident: “I just heard about it this morning,” she said, declining to comment on what it might mean for Dourdan’s availability on “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Regardless, as we've noted below, there's always work to be had for unhinged celebrities over at NBC.

The NBC Press Tour party was going so well. A lot of stars, from shows new and old, were mingling with journalists (even Adrian Pasdar, whose character seemed to have been killed in last season’s finale of “Heroes;” though he had to walk a fine tightrope between explaining why he was on hand and not giving away any spoilers).

And then, they had to go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like turning the event into a promo for “The Singing Bee,” the network’s recent summer-reality-competition success featuring awful karaoke singers. Two stars from upcoming NBC series competed against a couple of hapless (or near-hapless) TV journalists. Women who had to have been paid handsomely to wear “Bee” outfits buzzed through the crowd. (Zachary Levi, star of the network’s most promising new show, “Chuck,” won, though it didn’t seem to have been rigged; afterwards, he was vaguely sheepish about his participation: “If Jeff Zucker calls and says, ‘We want you to do “Singing Bee,”’ you do ‘Singing Bee.’”)

But not everyone was so sanguine. Far from the stage, Keith Olbermann, who anchors MSNBC’s highest-rated show “Countdown,” and will be a co-host on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” pre-game show next season, was appropriately appalled. As these self-styled crooners began bending the aggregate eardrums of those in attendance in strange and unnatural ways, Olbermann again proved himself a true champion of the people by calling out to a nearby publicist, “Jeremy! Can you stop this!?!”

Alas, Jeremy couldn’t.

More on Olbermann – and Levi and Pasdar – soonish.

We've delighted in using NBC's new creative head as a punching bag since he took the job (and will continue to do so in the future), but would be remiss in pointing out that Silverman, much as his rep would promise, has been making himself very visible and very available to reporters. Now, network heads generally are visible during their portions of press tour, but a lot of them also sort of give off this "unless-you're-Bill-Carter * -please-consider-finding-someone-else-to-talk-to" vibe. Silverman, on the other hand, is sidling up to groups of journalists, introducing himself and sticking around to chat.

Of course, he's asking a lot of the questions, such as what series they think Michael Richards might be a good fit for.

No, seriously, think about it: NBC has become the YouTube Celebrity-Meltdown Network. Hamburger aficionado David Hasselhoff's on "America's Got Talent." Australian media terrorist Jon Stamos stars on "ER." And now, Isaiah Washington's going to appear on "Bionic Woman," and the network's ostensibly interested in Rosie O'Donnell, too. Soon, NBC could stand for Nothing But Crazy.

* New York Times TV reporter with a Rolodex probably as large as the CIA database in "Chuck's" brain.

The Independent Film Channel (IFC) featured a TV Press Tour panel on its two industry satires, “The Business” and “The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman,” and the stars of each were asked if they had witnessed anything too heinous or blitheringly stupid to incorporate into their shows because viewers might not buy them. Their responses:

KATHLEEN ROBERTSON (“The Business”): I have a really nasty one. I probably shouldn't be saying it without thinking about it. I did a movie in Bulgaria, and I showed up for the first night and there was a huge party that the producers were throwing and there were about eight girls that walked in, and they were about 12, and they were -- they were basically gifts to the actors. Not particularly funny, but pretty gross.

QUESTION: What was the movie?

KATHLEEN ROBERTSON: I don't remember the movie or the actors.

(Laughter.)

(Note: Robertston just might be discussing “Control,” which starred, among others, Ray Liotta, Willem Dafoe and Stephen Rea.)

LAURA KIGHTLINGER (“The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman”): I have a story. I went on a
-- I found out that -- back when I had written a few screenplays, and I went in to meet a few, you know, execs. I'm not even sure who they were. But anyway, this guy said, "You know, we really like your screenplay a lot. The problem is, it seems like it's from a women's point of view."

(Laughter.)

Oh, sh!t, that's what I forgot: Somebody to write it that would make it completely different.

In NBC-Land, no one ever gets "fired." * They either "become available" or, when someone else is given one's job, "determined, frankly, that there was just no role for him at the company and decided to
move on."

That's what I learned today at TV Press Tour during the NBC executive session. Marc Graboff and Ben Silverman, co-chairmen of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, conducted their first press conference before America's crack TV reporters, and already they were prevaricating like old pros.

(Another thing I learned: Executives have poor spacial skills. We were handed seating charts for attendees in advance of each press conference, and although there were only two of them, Graboff and Silverman sat in the wrong chairs.)

We've previously discussed Isaiah Washington's reprieve from Governor Silverman, getting added to the cast of "Bionic Woman." From the transcript:

BEN SILVERMAN: Yes. He's a wonderful actor and a
great performer, and he became available, and we
thought he would be --

(Laughter.)

-- we thought he would -- I started talking to him
before he was available -- to deal with the
laughter. And the idea when he told me he was
available, I was like, "You are? Wait. They
let -- I don't understand. What do you mean?
You're a huge star on a star television show." I
didn't quite understand what had gone on there.
But the bottom line is he's a wonderful actor, and
we think inside "Bionic Woman," the character
that's been created for him is really strong and
one that he'll do a great job at, and that's what,
I think, people will respond to, and we're excited
to see come to fruition his portrayal of that character.

QUESTION: You're not worried at all about
potentially alienating a segment of the audience
of a new show that you kind of need to work?

BEN SILVERMAN: You know what, I think people are
tuning in to the "Bionic Woman," and whatever
support we can give to the "Bionic Woman" as
possible, we will give, and I think that he is a
wonderful actor. I think he is really talented.

As we've noted, Washington was dropped from "Grey's Anatomy" before Silverman joined NBC, so what he was doing talking to Washington before he had a network at his disposal to offer him a job is anyone's guess. Perhaps they were arranging a golf date.

As for Kevin Reilly's ash-canning, here's the official NBC-Land version of events:

QUESTION: Ben, what would you say about a company
that hires somebody for $6 million and fires them
after a month? Is that a good company or a bad
company?

BEN SILVERMAN: Do you know what, I hope that our
shows and our results speak for what we're doing.
And, you know, I only arrived, so all I can say is
we're really excited about what we're doing today and
what we're going to be doing tomorrow and what you'll
be watching in the Fall.

MARC GRABOFF: Let me address that, if I could,
because I think you're obviously referring to Kevin
Reilly, and I just want to kind of hit that on the
head a little bit. He wasn't fired. What happened
was when Ben became available, about three months
after we made Kevin's new deal, we jumped at the
opportunity to bring Ben on board to the company. We
thought he would be able to be the person that was
going to take us to the next level. Kevin, when that
happened, realized or determined, frankly, that there
was just no role for him at the company and decided to
move on.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: Thank you for that clarification.

(Laughter.)

Any questions? If so, don't bother directing them to NBC, because the above underscores what sort of answers you'd get.

* (Unless, of course, they're on "The Apprentice," which NBC has decided to renew with a special "celebrity" version.)

Mandy Patinkin was a no-show last week for the table read for the first episode of next season’s “Criminal Minds.” (He was also a no-show for a PBS press-tour session on Jewish-Americans, but that’s another story -- or is it?) 
Today, the other shoe dropped, as the following statements were issued:

ON BEHALF OF ABC STUDIOS AND CBS PARAMOUNT NETWORK TELEVISION: 


Last week, Mandy Patinkin asked to be released from his role on Criminal Minds. We have honored this request, which was not in any way connected to contract renegotiations or salary issues. His departure from the series will be explained to audiences in an episode to be filmed in the near future and broadcast early next season. We thank Mandy for helping to make Criminal Minds a strong and successful series, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors. A new character will be added to the series for next season.




ON BEHALF OF MANDY PATINKIN: 


Due to creative differences, Mandy has asked not to return to Criminal Minds this season. Mandy would like to thank the studios and network for releasing him from the series and he wishes the cast and crew continued success in all of their endeavors and looks forward to continuing to work with the Disney and CBS companies in other capacities in the future.


ON BEHALF OF THE GOOD PEOPLE OF TELEVISION: 


Due to creative differences, the Good People of Television have asked to be released from their role of watching “Criminal Minds.” Good heavens, what a pervy show. Did you see that episode after the Super Bowl? Jeez. We wish the show and Mandy the best in all of their future endeavors and look forward, sort of, to continuing to work with the Disney and CBS companies in other capacities in the future.

Phoenix-like, Isaiah Washington has survived T.R. Knight's insidious plot to have him ousted from "Grey's Anatomy:" NBC has cast him in its upcoming remake of "Bionic Woman."

Ben Silverman made the announcement today at TV Press Tour, and seemed oblivious to - or at least extremely unwilling to discuss - Washington's penchant for controversy. "He's a wonderful actor," Silverman declared. "He became available."

When critics laughed at Silverman's euphemistic way of putting things, he became a tad defensive. "To respond to the laughter," he said, "I started talking to him before he became available."

Well, sure, because network executives are always trying to poach stars off hit shows. Of course, Washington was bounced before Silverman took over at NBC.

* UPDATE: Silverman didn't say this at the press conference, but the press release is now only touting his appearance as a "guest-star in an arc of five episodes." Just a guess, but that might be subterfuge to justify not presenting Washington at the "Bionic Woman" press conference tomorrow, where he'd become the story and no one else'd be able to get a word in edgewise.

Other goings-on at the NBC executive session, but we'll discuss them later.

About a week into TV Press Tour, and the largest consensus vote for the show critics like the most is "Mad Men," from AMC (American Movie Classics). This is doubly impressive given that cable networks that specialize in one subject usually humiliate themselves when they branch out to different types of programming - does anyone remember Lifetime's first original series? Animal Planet's first original movie? - and AMC has but one prior original series, "Hustle," which was good, but that was a co-production with the BBC, which has been at this business for a while and therefore should know what it's doing. "Mad Men" is all AMC's doing. And it's great.

"Mad Men" - premiering Thursday - is set in the world of Madison-Avenue advertising in the year 1960, where men were men (as long as they were WASPs) and Scotch was their drink and women were their playthings who understood their place in the world and cigarettes were inhaled almost as often as oxygen. Part of its genius is that it may be the most politically incorrect show now on TV - and simply because it honestly portrays American society a mere half-century ago.

"Mad Men" comes from Matthew Weiner, a staff writer on "The Sopranos;" in fact, it was his original "Mad Men" spec script, written seven years ago, that won him the "Sopranos" gig. He confirms the story that David Chase told him that even if he were ever to fire him off his show, he would still try to help him get "Mad Men" made. (Weiner tried to cajole Chase into directing the pilot, unsuccessfully; instead, "Sopranos" director Alan Taylor took the helm.)

Oddly, HBO, though it obviously had Weiner's "Mad Men" script, never even broached the topic of airing the series. That's a particularly damning fact, particularly given how HBO has foundered a bit in recent years: Shows like "Rome," "Big Love" and the upcoming "Tell Me You Love Me" have had their merits (or not), but coverage of them has invariably focused on their salacious aspects - ancient Roman decadence, polygamy and NC-17-level sexual frankness - rather than on their actual quality. With "Mad Men," most that has been written about it focuses on its quality and its ideas.

Which made some of Sunday's "Mad Men" press conference kind of frustrating at times. Questions during press conferences can be kind of stupid, but in general, critics in attendance step up to the level of play of their adversary. They'll largely ask fairly intelligent questions at PBS press conferences, and invariably ask dumb ones at press conferences for Fox reality shows - more or less, what the shows involved deserve.

But it seemed to me that the questions for "Mad Men" were missing the point. There were questions about all the smoking on the show and questions for the actresses about what they thought about the show's sexism. But if a show has big ideas, you're doing them a disservice if you ask them about small ideas: Allow them to elevate the level of discourse, even if most of entertainment journalism can't be bothered to elevate itself beyond the vacant insights of Victoria Beckham these days. Honest: There're worse things than inviting people to think.

So we got highfalutin: "To expand on those past couple of questions, this may be one of the most
politically incorrect shows on television right now
simply because it just shows the mores of
the country less than a half century ago. So, in that
way, it's kind of about how our society has evolved. And
so, anyone out there who wants to tackle this: We know
what gains have been made, but what has been lost? And
are men more enlightened or are they just more wussy
these days?"

From there, Weiner generously moderated a mini-panel discussion amongst his cast on the overarching sociological themes the show, by nuanced extrapolation, explores (none of these themes are directly addressed, as the show is too busy being vibrant and funny and subversive - you just have to pay a little attention to see what it's really getting at). The panel talked for four transcript pages before another question was posed, and afterwards, Weiner actually thanked me for my question. (And, yes, of course we'll delve into those issues, when the print story on the show breaks. So be patient, already. Do you really expect a blog entry to reveal to you the mysteries of the universe?)

Sunday night, AMC hosted the evening's press-tour party, at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills (which apparently has yet to pay its air-conditioning bill, but otherwise served as a great kitsch place to celebrate old-school attitude), featuring a performance by Jeff Goldblum's jazz combo (marking perhaps the first time in Press Tour history that the performer at a TCA party was more famous than the stars on the show the party was feting).

Want a trip through the TV-Press-Tour looking-glass? No? I didn’t think so.

Nonetheless, here are a couple of blogs on the blogs covering TV Press Tour:

This guy doesn’t like the TCA or Press Tour (understandable enough), but for some reason he likes me. (No accounting for taste.)

This guy liked me so much that back in January he essentially called me the “conscience of Press Tour” (could there be a scarier thought?), particularly when I ask questions involving masturbation.

… would be me. I’ve been running the numbers, and if the Disney Channel’s original movie (a sequel will premiere next month) is not the most phenomenally profitable piece of entertainment in history, I’d be interested in finding out what is.

The show is currently being licensed to theater groups (both professional and high-school) for live productions across America. The licensing fee generally runs somewhere between $500 and $2,300, depending on the size of the theater and the number of performances. Disney expects that there will be 2,000 licensed productions through the end of this year. Using the conservative estimate that the average licensing fee is $1,000, there’s $2 million in found money off the bat. (Barbara Kopple – a two-time Oscar winner, mind you – has made a documentary about a couple of Texas high schools mounting productions of the musical; it, too, will debut next month on Disney Channel).

The film cost $4.2 million to produce. It has been seen by 160,000,000 people worldwide, which is 50,000,000 more than watched the final episode of “M*A*S*H” (unfair and completely misleading comparison, since those “M*A*S*H” viewers all watched on one night, while the “H*S*M” viewers have accrued over a year and a half, but still, that’s a huge stinkin’ number – no other recent film or TV show has been seen by that many people).

Last November, Disney said it had made more than $100 million off the movie, and that’s not counting the ancillary merchandizing – the toys and games and books and touring production and other things (cast member Ashley Tisdale says she’s heard tale of “High School Musical” underwear – “It’s weird to think of people wearing you,” she says – while Kenny Ortega, the film’s director, has gotten wind of “High School Musical” wallpaper – fans can convert their bedrooms to one of the movie’s iconic sets; coming soon (no fooling): “High School Musical On Ice!”) have amassed another $600 million in profits. And it’s not over yet: After next month’s movie, there’s talk of a third film to play theatrically.

Which means that Disney has earned a staggering 166 and 2/3rds times more than its initial investment. On something even its stars admit they initially dismissed as a simple made-for-cable TV movie. Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway can’t even get a return like that.

No jokes here, really. It’s just that – damn, that’s just a lot of money for a thing like that to have made.

David Duchovny and Evan Handler are appearing together in Showtime’s “Californication” – Duchovny stars as a burned-out writer slutting his life away; Handler plays his sympathetic if frustrated agent – but they have projects from their pasts looming in their futures.

Handler may or may not be appearing in the upcoming “Sex and the City” film. He artfully obfuscates his answer during his TV Press Tour session, but gives you a pretty good idea of his future plans: “As far as whether I've been approached, I know that if I had been approached, I would have been asked not to say that I've been approached. I really couldn't say why I would be asked such a thing, but I know that I would have, and so I'll leave it at that.”

Meanwhile, Duchovny is expecting to see a script for the next “X-Files” script any day now: “Chris (Carter) has written it with Frank Spotnitz, and Chris will direct it. And Gillian (Anderson)'s on board and I'm on board, and that's all I can tell you. I mean, I'm looking forward – I'm looking forward to seeing what he did.”

Handler jokes, “It's going to open the same weekend as the ‘Sex and the City’ movie.”

Duchovny returns the volley: “We're going to crush 'em.”

At the “Weeds” TV Press Tour session, Mary-Louise Parker was answering a question about women “of a certain age” on TV, giving an “older-women-are-sexy” kind of response, when Justin Kirk, her co-star, interrupted: “Not too much older.”

"Don’t listen to him,” Parker said. “He’s always trying to get in my pants.”

“I didn’t know she was over 40,” he replied.

(Erase from your mind momentarily the fact that on the show, Kirk plays Parker’s brother.)

Parker forged on, discussing the wealth of rich roles for women her age on TV now, rather than TV roles available when she was in her 20s.

At which point, Matthew Modine, who joins the cast in the upcoming season playing an oily evangelist, likewise interjected: “Plus, back then television was weird for women – there was ‘Bionic Woman’ and ‘Wonder Woman.’”

At which point Modine was asked, “How old do you think Mary-Louise is, anyway?”

Someone else then asked Modine his response to the fact that the “Bionic Woman” is returning this fall.

“I think it’ll be cool – she’s going to have all sorts of parts she never had,” he replied, inspiring a sizable inadvertent laugh.

Not long thereafter, Showtime executive Robert Greenblatt came to the stage and announced: “Time for one more question – hopefully not to Matthew Modine.”

Boy, the critics can’t seem to get enough of this whole graphic-sex-on-“Tell Me You Love Me” thing. We here at TV Press Tour are currently talking with Showtime CEO Matthew Blank and entertainment president Robert Greenblatt, and one critic, citing “TMYLM,” asked if Showtime has any policy regarding actors “doing it” during a production.

Yes. That was a question.

Greenblatt: “You mean while the cameras are rolling?”

The two agreed that they would never ask an actor to do anything of that nature. (Of course, I’d think no one at HBO has made such a request, nor has any actor offered.)

Blank: “Sometimes simulated (sex) looks better.”

Greenblatt: “Even in your own life.”

Repercussions over Katie Couric’s sideways mea culpa in New York magazine continue to reverberate throughout the industry. OK, probably not the industry. Probably just amongst the verbose pundits who like to pick at these sorts of things until the scab comes off:

MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman dropped the article into his tea in order to read the tea leaves:

“Was it Couric's opening salvo in her exit strategy from "CBS Evening News?" (Lots of people at CBS think so.)

“Was it her way of expressing anger at her bosses for what she might call their mismanagement? (I think so.)

“Had she finally had enough abuse from the media and wanted to tell her story? (Can there be any doubt?)”

Of course, that’s not enough for an entire column, so Friedman spends the rest of his time comparing/contrasting New York magazine with the New Yorker.

With Katie’s departure in mind, media blog TVNewser is already picking her replacement. Scott Pelley, Russ Mitchell, Harry Smith and Bob Schieffer – who turned the anchor’s chair over to Couric – were named, as was one Dan Rather.

Not so fast, insists CBS News president Sean McManus, decrying all this speculation as “insulting” and “absurd.”

Insulting? Absurd? Well, what did he expect? We are discussing TV news, after all.

In honor of the Beckham hoopla splashed all over the front page of today's Daily News, we present some Beckham FQAs (frequently questioned answers) that somehow didn't manage to get into the paper.

1) Posh has a piercing at the base of her cerebral cortex.

2) "A Beautiful Mind" was originally supposed to be about Posh but after the filmmakers initially interviewed her, they thought it'd be more commercial if they made it about a scientist.

3) It's impossible to refer to "Bend It Like Beckham" without it sounding tasteless.

4) The Beckhams' media orgy was a plague left over from when God was trying to get the Pharoah to release the Jews from Egypt, but the Pharoah was weak and caved in after the Death of the Firstborn.

5) Quietus®, the suicide drug featured in the film "Children of Men," was initially developed for British journalists who had to cover the Beckhams.

We've previously discussed HBO's upcoming controversial series "Tell Me You Love Me," which features more explicit sex than any American TV series heretofore. For the show's TV Critics Press Tour press conference, Your Mayor invited a couple of his constituents - Beavis and Butt-head - to provide commentary.

NOTE: ALL TCA PRESS TOUR TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREPARED IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING PRESS SESSIONS. DUE TO THE SPEED WITH WHICH THESE TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREPARED, COMPLETE ACCURACY CANNOT BE GUARANTEED.

HBO PROGRAMMING CHIEF CAROLYN STRAUSS: "Tell
Me You Love Me" is a show that gives you three, three
and a half, maybe four chances to pass judgment on other
people's relationships because it is a show that gives
you the most intimate look into relationships that we
probably ever seen on television. It's raw. It's
provocative. And it's honest. It takes three couples,
one in their 20s, one in their 30s, and one in their
40s, and really looks at the language of intimacy. All
the tools that we use to stay close, to keep apart, and
to keep our relationships going or stop them in their
tracks.

BEAVIS: Heh-heh: She said "tools."

QUESTION: Question down the center here, and it's for
the esteemed creator of the show. ... We're all distracted
by the sex. Are you worried that the public will be,
too, when the show finally sees air?

BUTT-HEAD: Heh-heh, he said "public."

BEAVIS: That's not a bad word, dillweed.

BUTT-HEAD: Oh.

SERIES CREATOR CYNTHIA MORT: No. Once they watch it and
connect to these characters -- and I think they will --
I'm not that worried about it. I was never worried
about it, not from the very beginning. But it's
certainly turning out to be -- to get a lot more
attention than I thought it would.

BEAVIS: Heh-heh, she said "wood."

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: Close enough.

BUTT-HEAD: Is "turning out" naughty? If so, heh-heh.

SONYA WALGER (discussing sex scenes): It's a cinch. I love doing it.
It's awesome. I wish there was more. Don't quote that.
It's hard. It's as hard as it is to watch. It's
uncomfortable, which is why you know you're doing
something good, because the sex scenes are essentially
scenes that have no dialogue but say as much as if they
did, which is what makes them so interesting to play.

BUTT-HEAD: She said "hard."

BEAVIS: She said "log."

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: Actually, she said "dialogue." She said "interesting to play," too, but then, everyone at Press Tour says "interesting to play."

QUESTION: Question, kind of a follow-up to that. For
the actors, did anybody actually do it?

CYNTHIA MORT: Next question.

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: Hey, guys, did you know that in French, Mort means death, and that the French phrase for orgasm is La Petit Mort, which means, "the little death?" Interesting, no?

BUTT-HEAD: What makes you think French is interesting, Dillweed?

BEAVIS: But he did say "orgasm," Butt-head. Heh-heh.

BUTT-HEAD: But he tried to make it educational! Crap!

MICHELLE BORTH: I think, you know, the sex scenes in
any of the episodes are a pretty integral part of the
storyline. We are not porn stars. We're actors. And I
think part of our job in any scene, whether it's a sex
scene or, you know, a fight scene or, you know, an
emotional scene, you do the best that you can to do it
authentically and honest. So, you know, we were doing
the sex scenes. We were doing them, yeah. To make you
ask that question, basically.

BEAVIS: Porn?!?

BUTT-HEAD: She said it's not porn, Dillweed.

BEAVIS: Ah, crap!

ALLY WALKER: I think also -- I don't mean to interrupt.


BUTT-HEAD: Heh-heh, she said "erupt."

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: Actually, she said - oh, never mind. Pipe down.

ALLY WALKER: I think it's very brave.
I think it's brave in the fact that it isn't -- you
know, Cynthia didn't write it to explore what a great
sex scene could be. She didn't write with, like, "This
is going to be the kick-ass sex scene of the century.
I'm going to make it hot and steamy. And we're going to
be grabbing walls."

BEAVIS/BUTT-HEAD: Whoa!

ALLY WALKER: We're not doing that. We're
having, you know, sex where you're trying to get
pregnant, which is not hot. We're not having sex, which
is depressing.

BEAVIS/BUTT-HEAD: Ah, crap! Serious discourse on complex interpersonal communications!

ALLY WALKER: So it's not really there to
titillate you ...

BUTT-HEAD: Heh-heh, she said ...

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: Actually, she didn't.

QUESTION: Question for the producers back here. I'm
not even sure how to word this, and believe me, people
for the last two days have been trying to figure out a
way. Is there anywhere in this that there's, I don't
know, CGI, prosthetics?

GAVIN PALONE: I'm not sure, and I don't think you need
to get into it.

BEAVIS: He said, "Get into it."

QUESTION: Cynthia, here in the middle. You said
earlier that you were surprised at all the attention
that the sex scenes were getting. Were you being
disingenuous?

BUTT-HEAD: Heh-heh, he said "disingenuous."

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: Your point being...?

CYNTHIA MORT: I'm rarely disingenuous. I was not. I
am surprised. And, you know, again, when I wrote the
pilot and whatever episodes, the sex always was there,
in service of intimacy and in service of love. So that
people are pulling it out, I understand but I am
somewhat surprised.

BUTT-HEAD: Heh-heh, she said, "Pulling it out."

CAROLYN STRAUSS: I know that the sex is getting
enormous amounts of attention, but you really cannot
tell the story of intimacy without using sex honestly
as part of your tool kit.

BEAVIS: Heh-heh, she said "tool" again.

BUTT-HEAD: That chick's wild.

QUESTION: Perhaps the reason that everyone is
sort of talking about this so much is you say these
people are in love, well, the characters are in love
but the actors aren't, and because there seems to be
so much verisimilitude in the sex scenes. Perhaps the
people who have watched this so far are getting taken
out of the show because they know that they are actors.
And do you think that that might be part of the reason
that you're getting this response today?

GAVIN PALONE: I think that you're going to get that
initially.

BUTT-HEAD: He said, "get that."

GAVIN PALONE:
I find, and the people that I've talked to who have
watched the show, is once you're involved with the
character you're not thinking about that anymore.
Because, I mean, I think that's part of the experience
of watching filmed entertainment. I mean, if you see
Robin Williams, you know, for a moment you're thinking
oh, there's Robin Williams but eventually, hopefully --
well, maybe that's a bad example.

BEAVIS: He said "Robin Williams!" Dillweed!

GAVIN PALONE: But Tom Cruise and
then eventually you're supposed to be paying attention
to the story and the character not be thinking oh,
that's Tom Cruise who is riding a horse.

BEAVIS: He said "Tom Cruise!" Dillweed!

BUTT-HEAD: But he also said "whores." Cool...

MAYOR OF TELEVISION: No, he said - oh, never mind.

BUTT-HEAD (removing the "Tell Me You Love Me" pillowcase from the HBO gift bag): What's this? Huh? Heh-heh: It's a spunkrag. Cool.

“Deadwood” fans have pestered critics (in a nice way, that is) to demand some answers from HBO as to the fate of the two previously announced “Deadwood” films. So we did that this afternoon during HBO's TV Press Tour session.

And we got bupkis.

Michael Lombardo, president of HBO’s programming group and West Coast operations: “We’re just finishing ‘John from Cincinnati.’ David [Milch] is, needless to say, exhausted. We haven’t had a conversation with him. It’s always been our intention to do them, but it’s complicated. We don’t have a hold on the actors anymore. But we’ll know more after we know what the future of ‘John’ is. It’s definitely something we’re interested in doing.”

So someone pressed the issue.

Lombaro: “We have to bring back an array of actors, many of who have gone on to a variety of projects. … It’s doable. But it’s daunting.

“We haven’t talked to David since ‘John’ has wrapped. If David’s game for this and we can figure it out, we’ll figure it out. … If we pick up ‘John,’ David will have to go back to working on that immediately for next summer. … We’re in business with David Milch and we intend to be in business with David Milch for the foreseeable future.”

We kept at it, and this is the best we could manage:

Richard Pleppler: “It depends on whether or not the actors can be pulled together and whether David is fully committed to the project. … You could probably put it at 50/50.”

So that’s as definitive a “maybe” (with a side order of “don’t hold your breath”) as you’ll ever hear. No news, in this case, sounds like bad news.

Chris Albrecht, HBO’s former head, may be gone but his legacy of adventurous-often-to-the-point-of-crazy programming endures: In September, “Tell Me You Love Me” will premiere. “Tell Me You Love Me” concerns three troubled couples and their oft-aggressive (or, by contrast, non-existent) sex lives, and their therapist, played by former National Endowment for the Arts head Jane Alexander.

It’s an instant provocateur thanks to its extremely frank depiction of sex and lack of timidity when it comes to displaying its characters’ naughty bits (or, at least, nominally convincing prostheses). Sex, here, however, isn’t intended to be titillating, at least not completely; it comes from a place that seems borne more of desperation to connect to something, someone, than out of good, old-fashioned porn-level lust. (Alexander’s character, with her husband, has the show’s most satisfying trysts.) The show offers HBO’s best, most obvious transition from its smart, primetime programming to its late-night, “Cathouse”/“Real Sex”-style shows.

Think Ingmar Bergman’s devastatingly bleak “Scenes from a Marriage” meets the short-lived but hilarious Bravo couples-therapy comedy “Significant Others,” and you’ve got “Tell Me You Love Me.” Albeit with precious few, if any, laughs – hell, my life is far grimmer than these characters’, and I can still manage a few jokes a day. Still, viewers should find it an evocative, provocative show.

But here’s the rub (using the term ill-advisedly, given that several characters engage in auto-eroticism): Watching this show can be hazardous to your reputation. A friend told me of his wife (an entertainment journalist) watching episodes of the show at their home; since they don’t have central air, she left windows open. The frequent lurid auditory emanations from the show’s soundtrack actually forced her to explain to her neighbors that she’s not a pervert. He also said he watched a women’s match from Wimbledon while she watched an episode and the orgiastic grunts from both shows seemed to echo/comment upon one another.

Worse, consider my situation: I share a duplex with my landladies. Imagine my having to explain to them that what I was up to was actually professional, not prurient, lest I flirt with eviction (hey, we run a clean ship in Echo Park).

Yes, it’s that time of year again. PBS is presenting today, and it turns out that “Masterpiece Theatre” has gone without a corporate underwriter for so long that the reporters pretty much don’t expect it to get one. Consider this exchange from today’s “MT” session:

QUESTION: … is there any sort of corporate underwriter in the wings …?

REBECCA EATON (series executive producer): No.

QUESTION: OK.

Later, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger was asked what’s up with that, anyway?

PAULA KERGER: “Masterpiece Theatre” will stay on public broadcasting and we are continuing to look for corporate underwriters.

No follow-up. You’d think one of the shiniest, most colorful feathers in PBS’s cap would be able to track down someone in that big soulless corporate universe to gain themselves a little cultural cachet by tossing them some pocket change (I hear Halliburton is pretty flush these days). Or, you’d wonder what it says about the state of culture in America that advertising dollars pour into the coffers of “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” but a nominally highbrow, usually middlebrow show like “Masterpiece Theatre” is reduced to Dickens’ Oliver Twist, pleading on street corners for a ha’pence.

Your Mayor would’ve posed such a query, but I think I’ve been banned from asking questions since asking Courtney Cox if she was glad that San Francisco TV critics have declared her worthy of self-gratification fantasies.

And herewith, I have stumbled from “Masterpiece Theatre” into discussions of masturbation in a mere one paragraph. Such is one's state of mind during TV Press Tour.

CourtTV is soon to be tossed into solitary, with the key thrown away; come 2008, it will be renamed truTV.

Just imagine the hundreds and thousands of dollars expended on the marketing research to come up with that moniker (after “a yearlong process of rebranding the network”), which strikes me as pretty vague. As CourtTV’s programming became more generalized, its name became increasingly too narrow, so something needed to be done. Still, truTV sounds like anything ranging from a romance network to something like Current to, heck, YouTube.

But wait: It gets worse. They decide to slather us with all sorts of marketing jargon:

“Through a dynamic original programming line-up that has been providing the network with strong and consistent audience growth, truTV will target a highly coveted psychographic known as ‘Real Engagers.’”

Blessedly, they’re vague on what constitutes a “Real Engager,” except for this nugget:

“The compiled data showed that the line-up attracts a dual-gender audience that loves programming with real people in exciting real-life situations and a strong interest in compelling stories and characters.”

Dual-gender? Loves programming in exciting real-life situations? Strong interest in compelling stories and characters? Damn, this is some earth-shattering research. No, wait: Sounds pretty much like everyone with a TV. Some marketing firm sure took someone at CourtTV for a ride. But there’s more:

“In truTV, we now have the ideal name that fits both the programming and the target audience. The network will be top of mind for Real Engagers seeking real-life action programming, real-life emotion and access to places they can’t normally go.”

I’ll bet the phrase “top of mind” cost them at least an additional $75K.

Yesterday’s phone-press conference with Victoria Beckham, whose move to Los Angeles with soccer-star husband David is being followed with a curious rabidity 'round these parts, made me long for the probing intellectual curiosity displayed in Larry King’s interview with Paris Hilton.

The press conference – to promote her upcoming NBC special “Victoria Beckham: Coming to America” (the network paid her something around $20 million for a projected series, but decided an hour of her was plenty) – was only a half-hour long, and it wouldn’t’ve even gone that long had Posh, after unveiling every thought in her head, not repeated herself repeatedly.

I lost count as to the mentioned that the Beckham Empire has “always loved America,” without really mentioning anything specific about America that they loved. She was similarly vague about L.A., twice noting that one can both surf and ski in sunny Southern California: “There’s so much to do there, the sky’s the limit,” she enthused, though beyond surfing and skiing, she remained mum.

On the subject of the Spice Girls, which is threatening to reunite if its demands that Turkey formally admit to the Armenian Genocide are not met, Ms. Beckham twice noted that the group in its heyday sold 55 million albums and twice insisted that the upcoming reunion tour was all about “giving back to the fans.”

There was one SCOOP! – Posh declared that a Los Angeles Times story mentioning that David had given Victoria a $1.8 million diamond-“encrusted” sex toy was inaccurate.

“It isn't true,” she said. “We do buy each other nice things, but I don't have a diamond-encrusted vibrator.”

But she quickly changed the subject to the possibility of starting a children’s charity: “That’s something we’re very passionate about.”

Another reporter asked where all this misinformation about her comes from. “Oh, you know the media – you’re one of them,” she said, essentially accusing the reporter of being a charlatan hack and a barnacle on the hull of society. I’m not sure what more depressing – that she can’t distinguish the L.A. Times from The Sun or that she thinks it fine to insult a group of journalists to their faces or that the guy posing the question didn’t bother to defend himself.

If Ms. Beckham used the word "passion" once, she must’ve used it 20 times during the press conference. Her clothing and sunglasses lines are “where my real passion is.” “David is so passionate about soccer.” “That’s my passion – my family and fashion.” You get the idea. This, after insisting that she’s a “normal girl;” normal people don’t have “passions,” do they? Don’t they just have “hobbies,” or “something I’m vaguely interested in,” or “something that kills the time,” or “something that pays the bills?”

On the project itself: Two times, she said of “Coming to America,” “This is a documentary more than a reality show.”

And I may be wrong on this, but I believe Ms. Beckham may have broken certain laws of physics in using the words “fun,” “exciting” and “creative” more times than is actually possible in a 30-minute period. Those appear to have been the only three words that occurred to her to use in describing her show, which NBC has thoughtfully seen fit not to provide to critics for review.

“Simon Fuller (who also cooked up the Spice Girls) is my business partner – it was his idea,” she explained. “He’s incredibly creative and has been successful with everything he’s done.” (Translation: If he could make me wealthy and famous, just think what he could do with someone of substance.)

Finally, a moment of honesty: “I’ve had fun doing this. At the end of the day, if people like it, it’s great, and if they don’t, they don’t. I’m not losing any sleep over it.”

The puff-piece version of this will appear Sunday.

Alert: Paula Abdul will battle “exhaustion” on the next “Hey Paula!” And she misses the beginning of a charity event. And she does more of that QVC nonsense. And she just might miss a scheduled appearance on “Late Show with David Letterman.” High drama, indeed.

Bravo, realizing the windfall they have with Ms. Abdul, is now offering an online quiz in which you get to guess the speaker of a series of quotes – Paula, Winston Churchill or Mohandas Gandhi. This is, of course, the only place those three names will come in such close proximity.

Idea for a new reality show: Place Kevin (“Lose with Quality Programming”) Reilly and Mike (“Win with Endtimes-Accelerating Shlock”) Darnell in an enclosed cage and see what happens.

Which is exactly what Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Liguori did today, when he installed former NBC executive Reilly as Fox’s president of Entertainment. Darnell, of course, creates sh!t like “The Swan” and “Who’s Your Daddy?” Should be fun.

For Reilly, who moves from the No. 4 to the No. 1 network, this is a case of failing upwards almost as impressive as that of his former boss, Jeff Zucker, who made NBC No. 4 in the first place and then got kicked upstairs.

The folks over at “24” have reset their clocks, jettisoned their seventh-season plotline and are starting over from scratch, TVGuide.com is reporting.

Apparently, they wanted to shoot some episodes in Africa, but Fox said nope, that’d be too expensive. (Well, and the whole Jack-flies-back-from-Africa-in-45-minutes thing just might stretch even this show’s credibility.) But isn’t a three-week delay pretty pricey, too?

Knowing these guys, however, they only had about three hours’ worth of plot cooked up at this point anyway. And since the show doesn’t return until January, this shouldn’t effect the production all that much. Still, it bodes ill for a show that was widely perceived to have gone completely off the rails this past season – patching together something urgent and, more importantly, coherent in a mere three weeks doesn’t really seem to be in this group’s skill set.

Hence, I’ll offer up a season shocker: Jack Bauer, sick and tired of being routinely underappreciated by the government for routinely saving the world, and sick and tired of being routinely ignored or disbelieved by his know-nothing superiors every single damn time he unearths a plot-twist in every single damn conspiracy, goes rogue in the ultimate fashion and assassinates everyone who ever gave him grief in his work. Then he discovers he suffers from multiple personality disorder, so when CTU calls him to help them hunt him down, he complies. But then it turns out that the Chinese had implanted a microchip in his brain that holds him in thrall to them, while Chloe had implanted a microchip in his brain that makes him her love slave, and the competing microchips are short-circuiting his brainwaves, and meanwhile actual terrorists surface, Chechnyan rebels who accidentally took the wrong plane and ended up in Los Angeles instead of Moscow plotting to blow up some airports, starting with Santa Monica’s and working their way up, but the guy holding the suitcase nukes sees this TV show that trucks in disparaging portraits of terrorists so he decides to try to blow up the Fox lot, which is being visited by Congress and the President of the United States on a fact-finding mission to see if torture as depicted on TV actually works.

In the “this-isn’t-really-news” category comes word that ABC’s “Cavemen” really is the steaming pile of merde we knew it to be way back when it was first announced.

You know the drill: reshoots, recasting, new characters, pushing the pilot back to an airdate that may never occur and replacing it with another, less-sucky episode, etc.

Your Mayor was the first to reveal to the world that “Cavemen” would, in fact, be a drama and not a comedy, and how prescient those words were: Having seen the pilot, I can reliably report to you that it must be a drama because it’s certainly not a comedy.

Instead of continuing with the conceit in the auto-insurance commercials that the cavemen must battle the stereotype of being slow-witted, “Cavemen: The Embarrassment” slow-wittedly repositions our Cro-Magnon brethren to serve as an unspoken but unmistakable stand-in for another ethnic minority. They call one another “Maggers” and debate the appropriateness of using such epithets on one another. They are barred entry into a country club and distrusted by wealthy white men. White women, having heard rumors about their sexual prowess, covet them.

And they breakdance. Yes, the climactic comedic scene in the pilot (where it’s really considered a very good idea to bring your A-game, not your running-on-fumes game) features a caveman breakdancing. Would that have even been funny in the ’80s?

“Cavemen’s” pilot dramatically underscores what most people (except, of course, some network executives) were saying all along, that TV commercials really shouldn’t be mistaken for TV shows.

Oh, and the makeup sucks, too. You don’t really have time to notice that in the commercials, but sitting through 21 mesmerizing minutes of soul-punishing “entertainment” provides you with all the time you need to figure that out. You also have plenty of opportunity to ruminate how lucky it is for the actors’ future careers that they’re virtually unrecognizable under all that Latex, to consider whether the color of paint on the walls of the set might work well in your own home and to philosophize whether, after Iraq, Katrina, global warming and now “Cavemen,” God is trying to tell us something or has just abandoned us outright.

Hey, Katie Couric’s starting to rethink that whole anchoring-the-“CBS Evening News” thing.

“I'm human,” she revealed to New York magazine. “I'm not going around, ‘Dee-da dee-da dee.’” Well, so far so good – humans, in fact, don’t do that sort of thing.

She added, “I have days when I'm like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do?’ But for some weird reason, they don't happen that often.” If she’s actually admitting that much, one can just imagine what’s actually going on inside her head.

“I’ve gone through a bit of a feeding frenzy and there’s blood in the water and I’ve got some vulnerabilities,” she says of her media coverage. “This person who’s been successful isn’t so great, and finally she’s been put in her place—that kind of mentality. I think it’s fairly primal.” Great – now even members of the media go to the blame-the-media card.

Couric said had she foreseen the scrambling to find a workable format for the newscast, her current gig “would have been less appealing to me. It would have required a lot more thought.” A lot more thought would’ve been a good idea in any case.

NBC, sweethearts that they are, distributed the following waiver to journalists interested in participating in a scintillating 30 minutes of discourse with Posh Spice:

“I, ___________________________ (journalist) with ____________________________ (outlet) hereby certify that my interview with Victoria Beckham on _______________ (date) will be published/broadcast for the sole purpose of publicizing “Victoria Beckham: Coming to America” for said outlet just prior to but no later than Monday July 16, 2007. Resale of the contents of my interview with Mrs. Beckham is prohibited without approval from Mrs. Beckham and/or her representatives.”

Of course, they later rescinded the demand for a waiver, just as Angelina Jolie was forced to when promoting her pro-journalism film “A Mighty Heart.” (So, for those seeking some sort of comparison between Posh and Angelina, there it is.) When will Hollywood realize that it’s embarrassing enough for a journalist to give the rich and famous free publicity without having to sign away one’s soul to do so?

My first encounter with the celebrity-interview waiver came during a press junket for the movie “Bugsy” – studio publicists pressed them into journalists’ hands mere minutes before the interviews were to begin. (This, for a press event that many journalists’ papers had paid for them to travel to Los Angeles to attend.) No problem – I signed a fake name and went about my business. (The paper I was working for folded later that week, so I never actually wrote about Warren and Annette’s furtive fling during the production of the movie and subsequent family life.)

My second encounter was during the “Far and Away” junket. I declined to sign, so when Tom Cruise entered the room for his roundelay of questioning, I was escorted from the area as if I were some chuckleheaded baseball fan who had just run onto the field to pester Barry Bonds.

The point of these waivers, far as one can tell, is to bottle up the interview into a tidy little vacuum of publicity for one project, so that it can’t be used against the celebrity later when the particulars of his or her personal life run in stark contrast to whatever gushing statements were made about a significant other in happier times (or, in Ms. Jolie’s case, to try to prevent gushing statements in the first place).

Ironically, most of these waivers come for the expediency of interview subjects who don’t have a lot to say. Warren Beatty is notoriously reticent. Unless he’s condemning psychiatry and anti-depressants or jumping on couches, Tom Cruise speaks in bland generalities. And Victoria Beckham – well, you’ll just have to wait for a future blog item to get a taste of her erudition.

So, memo to Hollywood: Cut it out already with these waivers. They don’t work, they just make interviewers tetchy and just accept the fact that there remain one or two things that you can’t utterly control. Contrary to popular opinion, the media is not your personal assistant.

Performance artist/“John from Cincinnati” staff writer Alix Lambert, one of the more interesting people you’d want to interview, also has two books coming out in the next year:

* “Crime,” a fairly fascinating-sounding rumination on crime and its depiction in the arts, exploring how much the real thing inspires the artist – and vice versa.

* “The Silencing,” in which Lambert may have risked her life to tell the stories of five of the many Russian journalists who have “mysteriously” died after crossing the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

“I got chased out of Russia; it was quite a dramatic couple of days,” Lambert says, typically droll and deadpan.

When she went to photograph the apartment where journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had written extensively and critically of the war in Chechnya, had been gunned down, even her local fixer was spooked, and being spooked is not part of the fixer’s job description.

“There are surveillance cameras everywhere, and the guy who was driving me around wouldn’t go in,” she remembers. “When you’re taking pictures of where she was killed, they’re taking picture of you.”

And yet, curiously, Lambert says she’s not responsible for “John from Cincinnati’s” upcoming Polonium-210 subplot.

We’ve previously discussed the mysterious resurrection of “According to Jim” to ABC’s lineup, to the point of beating a dead horse (well, the problem is that the horse isn’t dead).

Finally, however, ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson issued a statement regarding renewing the sitcom for a seventh season:

“I have said throughout this process that it would not be appropriate to comment or intervene in this case until Mr. Belushi’s appeals have been exhausted. But with cancellation being upheld and incarceration imminent, I believe it is now important to react to that decision.

“From the very beginning of the investigation into how ‘According to Jim’ ever made it on the air, this sitcom has generated significant commentary and debate. Critics of the sitcom have argued it never should have aired, nor should it have been renewed after initial reviews came in.

“Others point out that despite low ratings for several seasons, neither Mr. Belushi nor anyone else associated with the situation comedy, including Courtney Thorne-Smith, has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which traditionally can be considered grounds for cancellation for a low-rated sitcom. Yet others say the punishment does not fit the crime: Mr. Belushi was a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service, including such wonderfully inspirational films as “Taking Care of Business,” “Mr. Destiny” and “Curly Sue,” and was handed the harsh sentence of cancellation based in part on those who had seen clips of the show.

“I respect the verdict. But I have concluded that the sentence of cancellation given to Mr. Belushi is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting that portion of Mr. Belushi’s sentence.

“My decision to commute his cancellation leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Belushi – further low ratings and critical gougings. The reputation he gained through his years in the public spotlight is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely by having to watch their breadwinner subject himself to such low comedy. Such consequences on his life as an entertainer, public servant and private citizen will be long-lasting.

“The Constitution gives ABC’s Entertainment President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of cancellation in Mr. Belushi’s case is an appropriate exercise of this power.”

Apparently, the upcoming "Simpsons" movie will be irreverent toward sacred-cow subjects.

Who'da thunk? From the story:

"The Simpsons also turn up late at church, where Homer's father has a seizure and warns of trouble to come.

"When asked to explain this behavior, Homer flicks through a Bible, and mutters: 'This book doesn't have any answers.'"

That's the best they can do? I remember an episode some hundred-and-twenty or so back where Homer sued his church and won it in a settlement and turned it into a party house and played air-guitar with a cross on a pew in his underwear.

And no one complained. And the Republic stood. Well, sort of.

Talk about being part of the story: Telemundo’s Mirthala Salinas has been put on leave while her superiors try to figure out how long she has been dating L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – whose separation from his wife she reported on TV last month.

The Daily News noted today that Antonio’s not the only local politician from whom Salinas had been getting scoops, so to speak, either.

Poynter, the site for all things journalism, pointed out just why this is so unethical, forgetting that Salinas, as a TV reporter, is exempt from anything remotely resembling true journalism (or, for that matter, ethics).

Obviously, this is hardly the first time something like this has happened. Two years ago, Fox Sports reporter Carolyn Hughes trysted with Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe, ending Lowe’s marriage much as Salinas and Villaraigosa seem to have managed with his.

Some lowly print journalists even tie the knot with those they cover. When award-winning New York Times reporter Bernie Weinraub married Sony Pictures studio chief Amy Pascal, he was moved off the entertainment beat, sort of; he later retired from the paper, which then thanked him for his years of service by dumping on his play “The Accomplices” (the pan was one of the few it received). When Variety TV critic Brian Lowry was with the L.A. Times, he married a then-UPN publicist, presumably to get out of having to write about UPN shows.

Problem is, not allowing a journalist to cover a specific person or entity (such as Sony or UPN) doesn't necessarily result in fair and balanced coverage. Weinraub could cover turmoil at other studios, just not his wife's. And say the Times hadn't had a coterie of writers covering the TV industry - that could've meant that UPN would've (albeit deservedly) ignored.

Nonetheless, seems like Lowry had the right idea. Hence, Your Mayor issues the following decree: If there’s anyone at E! or Oxygen or Spike or A&E or SOAPnet or working on ABC’s upcoming sitcom “Cavemen” who’s unethical (c’mon – you work in Television) and beneficently wants to spare me from even thinking about your contributions to the culture, please contact me before TV Press Tour begins next week.

We’ve previously discussed Paula Abdul’s new reality show and her thoughts on what constitutes an “everyday girl,” such as draping millions of dollars of jewelry over her pet Chihuahuas and dressing down her two personal assistants before TV cameras in the back of a limo.

Paula books another ride on the Delusion Express in the current TV Guide, where, the magazine reports, “Paula insists that it is her aides who come off looking bad, not her.”

“When I look at that scene, I feel bad for my assistants, ’cause they look like they’re not on the ball,” Abdul tells the magazine. “And I’m forgiving enough and kind enough to not be inappropriate in front of the cameras. … I wish I could work for someone like Paula Abdul. Honest to God, I am the kindest-of-kind human beings.”

Abdul also says she decided to do the show because “I know my life purpose: Having the uncanny ability to tap into the heartstrings of people and make them feel they’ll be OK.” Unless, of course, you work for her.

You know, Paula, we wish you could work for someone like you, too.

… at least according to this website, to which a fan of Your Mayor directed me. (The construction “a fan of Your Mayor” sounds so much more satisfying than “Your Mayor’s sole fan.”)

All you do is type in your blog’s website address, and they spit out your rating. Mine read:

“This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
death (8x)
kill (6x)
dead (4x)
hurt (3x)
punch (2x)
drugs (1x)”

So, thanks are apparently due to my thoughts on Farfour, the Palestinian kids-show TV rat who was brutally beaten to death by an actor portraying a Jew, and Chris Benoit, the WWE wrestler who killed his wife, his child and then apparently text-messaged a fan about his exploits so Wikipedia would know more about his exploits than the local cops, which are the subjects of recent blog entries that seem to have contributed to my NC-17 rating.

In order to maintain this rating, I promise to feature more ruminative essays on cunnilingus in the future. After all, cartoon characters – whether they be anti-Semitic rodents or TV rasslers – can’t be dying every day, can they?