April 2008 Archives
"It was really a half-assed idea when I pitched it to Carol," says Chuck Lorre, adding, "It's mind-boggling that it's happening."
Lorre is the co-creator and executive producer of "Two and a Half Men." "Carol" is Carol Mendelsohn, executive producer of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." The "half-assed idea" was for the two shows to swap out writers for an episode.
And so, Mendelsohn and "CSI" EP Naren Shankar put together an episode of "Two and a Half Men" (airing Monday) in which a dead body turns up and forensics investigators try to figure out if Charlie Sheen can add murder to his celebrated list of other vices, and Lorre and his colleage Lee Aronsohn cooked up a "CSI" episode (airing May 8) involving the murder of a sitcom star.
"Burning inside of me was the desire to do an autopsy on a sitcom diva," Lorre said in a phone press conference this morning.
"I wanted to fulfill Chuck's fantasy," said Mendelsohn, and we won't pursue that one any further.
When Lorre first suggested the cross-over episodes - which won't involve the casts, but will feature what he calls "Wonderful little cameos that are a wink at the audience" - Mendelsohn said she took the idea to Shakar, whose response was, "What a nut."
"We took it to the network and no one really took us seriously," she added.
Shankar recalled the shows' stars' responses:
Bill Petersen: "Are you crazy?"
Charlie Sheen: "Are you serious?"
Shankar confessed that he and Mendelsohn learned something about writing comedy: "We learned that puns are the lowest form of comedy."
"We learned it again and again and again," Mendelsohn added.
So, which show is funnier?
Mendelsohn said, "The 'Two and a Half Men' episode is one of the funniest I've seen."
"We're not patting ourselves on the back," Shankar quickly adds. "That's a tribute to Chuck and Lee. They did an incredible job."
"I laughed myself silly," Mendelsohn continued. "I loved their cast."
"It's a good thing that the comedy's funnier than the drama," Shankar conceded.
Aronsohn said, "It's safe to say that this is one of more dramatic episodes of 'Two and a Half Men,' and one of the funnier episodes of 'CSI.'"
"We managed to make a mutt out of both shows," Lorre semi-boasted, adding that this has given him a case of crossover fever that Katie Couric's current woes might help cure:
"If there are any changes in 'The CBS Evening News,' I'm throwing my hat in the ring."
- "Two and a Half Men:" 9 p.m. Monday, CBS Channel 2.
- "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation:" 9 p.m. May 8, CBS Channel 2.
What's this world coming to if you can't pose for a few pictures without getting a world of grief? Poor Miley Cyrus has had to apologize and blame herself for a Vanity Fair photo in which she appears to be topless and her hair is kind of frazzled, and people who can do the math know what that's supposed to mean.
Disney, who has been down this road before with former Mouseketeer Britney Spears and "Fully Loaded" Lindsay Lohan, launched an immediate crackback. Vanity Fair, in that Vanity Fair sort of way, issued a desultory yawn at the very idea that people who might be offended at something actually exist. And Jamie Lynn Spears complained that, like, why was Miley getting all this attention for a silly picture when Jamie herself has gone to all the trouble of getting knocked up?
(To be honest, I find Annie Liebowitz's work insufferably smug in general, and that one shot with pop Billy Ray busted my Ick-o-meter. And what's Vanity Fair doing, profiling the star of a Disney Channel show, no matter how rich?)
Anyway, to celebrate her bold new career direction, Cyrus announced her spectrum of upcoming projects and plans:
* A remake of "Chinatown," with her taking Faye Dunaway's role and Billy Ray essaying the part of Noah Cross.
* New single: A cover of The Andrea True Connection's "More More More."
* Dating Marilyn Manson.
* Striding the catwalk introducing Jean Paul Gautier's new leather collection.
* The inevitable online video, "Hannah Mountana."
The CW may not care about "Reaper," even though it's getting about the same number of viewers as "Gossip Girl" without any of the marketing hype, but ABC Studios, its producers, do, so they sent out a screener of tonight's episode.
In it, Andi (Missy Peregrym) sees Sam (Bret Harrison) behead a demon. As you might imagine, this is not good. Sam makes a deal with the Devil (Ray Wise) to get permission to explain his job to Andi. This is worse. Ben's (Rick Gonzalez) social life experiences an uptick. This, believe it or not, could be even worse.
"Reaper's" one of those shows that started out charmingly enough, what with the beheadings and all, but sort of crumpled under the demands of churning out a full season of episodes. There are a couple of laughs, but the plotting is sloppy and the direction that tries to distract you from the low-budget production in fact underscores the clunky way they avoid, um, executing certain maneuvers. Tyler Labine, amazingly enough, has not grown tiresome as Sock and in fact remains amusing, even though his punchlines aren't as sharp.
If The CW cancels this - which looks likely - ABC Studios should just move the show over to ABC Family. Its ratings couldn't get any worse, and could just possibly improve.
- "Reaper:" 9 tonight; The CW (Channel 5).
By the way: All the Coachella coverage has been diverted to the Daily News music blog. First entry: The Raconteurs save the day, plus the Verve, Fatboy Slim, Swell Season and Vampire Weekend; also, the exasperating ineptitude of every single Coachella employee on the face of the planet, why more old people in Palm Desert need to get cell phones so the phone companies will improve their crappy coverage in the desert, semi tanker trailers cuddling as art and the scourge that is marijuana.
Expect little in the way of Televisionary insight from me today (as if you have ever expected any) as I am soon to be en route to the Coachella music festival, just so I can discover what a true clusterf@%& of a traffic jam is like from which I will issue dispatches on the whole crazy hippie-vs.-Yuppie scene, what desert-sun-induced third-degree burns feel like, the resonant moral lessons to be cadged from a mob mentality … oh, and, yes, the music. There will be music.
We’ll also discuss how just how much tinier the already sizably tiny Prince looks from a football field or two away.
And what a 75-year-old or so man is thinking, performing Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” 30 years after the fact.
And what Sean Penn’s doing there onstage. (Really!)
Slow news day:
Since the economy’s bad, a cable-TV trade magazine thoughtfully suggests things you should cut from your budget before you axe your cable: Food, clothing, gasoline – you know, inessentials. But not subscriptions to cable-TV trade magazines.
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Even though The CW ceased screening episodes of “Gossip Girl” online in an effort to force viewers to actually watch the show the old-fashioned way, it had the same old lousy ratings it usually has: 2.4 million viewers, just as many as it gets for “Reaper,” except “Reaper” doesn’t have an expensively ambitious marketing campaign behind it.
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That p!ssing match between Viacom and CBS we discussed yesterday is stepping up: Viacom hired a former Showtime executive to run the cable network it created to show its movies on instead of selling them to Showtime.
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Yet again, the definition of the word “celebrity” trends downward as NBC announces the participants in its upcoming reality show “Celebrity Circus:” Antonio Sabato, Jr., former soap star and professional underwear wearer; Blu Cantrell, who made a record earlier in this century; Christopher Knight, who has made a career out of having played Peter Brady once upon a time; Janet Evans, who played in the Olympics back during the first President Bush’s Administration; Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, a “Jackass,” and Rachel Hunter, a woman who poses for pictures in various states of undress.
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“Criminal Minds”’ season finale proffers a real head-scratcher for the Feds, per the press release: “(P)eople who seem to have nothing in common are being killed at random.” Uh, doesn’t that happen, like, all the time?
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And it’s a good thing this “Scarlet” TV show is advertising like crazy on the Internets, because otherwise, I wouldn’t know it exists: No one has sent me anything about it. It’s about some chick with a red eye. Honest, even its website doesn’t tell you anything about it, except to inform you that it’s a “hit new TV series” (before it has even aired) and it will change the face of TV forever, which is not true because plenty of incomprehensible television has preceded it.
A couple of months ago, I turned up on imdb.com, thanks to appearing in a Spanish documentary on Hollywood (I’d provide a link to that initial incredulously gloating entry, except that yet another problem with this blog server is an inability to distinguish Permalinks to entries older than a month. Boy, you get what you paid for).
I thought, hmm, this is interesting, and then, when my STARmeter jumped more than 1000% the following week – more than George Clooney, who at the time was nominated for an Oscar – I thought, momentarily at least, wow, this is exciting, and expected scads of big-bucks offers to come pouring in.
And, of course, they didn’t, and I quit looking at my imdb.com page. But in a rare idle moment this week, I returned, only to discover that my STARmeter rating has leapt 34% from last week, even though I have done absolutely nothing to merit this (not that I did anything to deserve an imdb.com listing to begin with). How did my rating ascend this late into my cinematic irrelevancy? No idea, since I don’t subscribe to the site’s deeper information. Anyone who does who can explain this to me might just get a cheesy TV-promo tchotchke in the mail.
Here we were, all convinced that if anyone’s bullet-proof in the Television industry, it’s Les Moonves, and then along comes this story about someone who sounds even more bloodthirsty than CBS’s COO: Philippe Dauman, who wants to rule Viacom once Sumner Redstone keels over or steps down or whatever it is media moguls do to create raging turf wars.
Recently, Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures flipped Les the bird, refusing to take his lowball offer for showing its movies on Showtime and announcing its own cable-TV channel. (They may have been hacked off by Les’s announcement of a CBS Movies division that obviously hasn’t come to anything yet.) CBS and Viacom split up their assets in 2005, but Dauman want’s to … well, let’s let the New York Post explain.
“(D)auman's ultimate goal, which factored into the Paramount-Showtime negotiations, is to continue driving CBS' stock price down to the point where Redstone can justify booting Moonves. … ‘Dauman's dream is to get rid of Moonves and put Viacom and CBS back together again,’ said one source who has worked with both execs.”
Chinks in Moonves’ Tiffany-encrusted armor have been showing in the past year. As with all the networks, ratings are down, pretty seriously; CBS hasn’t had a new hit in a while (the one new show from this past season that has been renewed for 2008-09, “The Big Bang Theory,” has sort of limped along since returning from the writers strike) and it recently had a show, “Secret Humiliations of the Stars,” cancelled after but one airing. And we probably don’t have to bring up that whole Katie Couric thing again.
So time to hire that food taster and get someone besides your chauffer to start your Town Car, Les. We’d prefer Les to stick around, even if he does keep “Big Brother” on the air, because he’s good with the insults aimed at his competition.
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You know what else may be in trouble? “American Idol,” that’s what. Well, not really, but people do like to be drama queens and so any downtick in the ratings for such a colossal ratings behemoth apparently merits a measure of hand-wringing.
But also, it’s a pretty significant downtick – in past seasons, the show generally got, like, 30 million or so viewers an episode; last week, just a hair under 23 million watched the world’s splashiest amateur hour. These days, if a lot of network shows lost 7 million viewers, they’d have negative ratings, so that’s a fairly significant drop. Nonetheless, it’s still the most-watched show on TeeVee, so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Your call as to whether that’s a good thing.
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Finally, The New York Times tries to divine some meaning, some bigger picture, some essence of the Zeitgeist out of George W. Bush’s appearance on “Deal or No Deal” last night, and fails. But it was a fool’s errand to begin with – no one could find meaning in Bush or “Deal or No Deal.” Let’s just say America has become its own self-parody and be done with it.
The people putting together “Ugly Betty: The Book” had a problem: They hit upon the fairly inspired idea of presenting it as an issue of Mode magazine, but that made it a trade paperback and would shave $5-$10 off its cover price.
Enter the trusty cardboard slipcase and all was right with the world.
“Ugly Betty: The Book” (Hyperion, $25) is for undying, undiscerning fans. It offers a lavish number of photos of the stars and has interviews with all the principals, but not really probing interviews, just generic “How-I-got-the-job” interviews – it’s an EPK* in handy book form.
There are some witty snippets from scripts strewn throughout, but it would’ve been nice had they offered even more. There are a few amusing beauty tips from the show’s characters’ perspectives.
But – and this seems a major oversight – the book, for all its color and flash, doesn’t fully exploit the show’s distinctive and hilarious production design. Outside a couple of shots of Wilhelmina’s office and some props, there’s nothing celebrating Mode’s splendidly outré office design. There’re precious few shots from the show’s silly fashion shoots, as well.
Instead – and this is where I got insulted – there’s about 20 pages of product placement, labeling the Dolce & Gabbana and Yves Saint Laurent dresses and the Prada and Jimmy Choo shoes worn by the characters. Had the book been online, you no doubt could’ve clicked through to purchase all this stuff. Yes, they made it look like a magazine, but they priced it like a hardcover. They shouldn’t’ve taken up so much space with advertising.
To paraphrase a line from the show: “Ugly Betty: The Book” is superficial, but at least it knows it’s superficial.”
* EPK: Electronic Press Kit, in which talent are interviewed by publicists, who lob them softballs.
As “Heroes” disappeared quickly after the writers strike began and will remain off the air until next fall, it would seem an odd time to release a soundtrack album for the show; nonetheless, that’s what NBC has done.
Soundtracks, of course, are A) souvenirs for ardent fans of the movie of TV series in question; B) good compilations of well-selected music capable of luring casual fans; or C) Both of the above. (Well, there’s D) pointless, too, but we’re trying to be charitable here.) “Heroes” falls into the C) category, with a smart if not terribly surprising selection of evergreen and currently cool artists.
Death Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket, Panic at the Disco, the New Pornographers and Imogen Heap are among those in the latter group; some of their contributions are new tracks (and a couple of those sound like maybe they’re stuff that may not have made the cut on their actual albums). Those in the former category include Bob Dylan, Wilco, Iggy Pop, David Bowie (inevitably, “Heroes”) and the Jesus & Mary Chain (contributing their first new song in a decade, “All Things Must Pass” – not the George Harrison number).
Fans of the show will also be jazzed by some of Tim Sales’ comic-book illustrations from the series, and portraits of the musicians in a style aping Sales’ work.
Today, soundtracks can sort of serve as the gateway drug for longtime music fans conditioned to buying albums, easing them into the notion of shuffling tunes on iPods rather than listening to recordings straight through. The “Heroes” soundtrack is a decent iPod shuffle; unfortunately for it, with “Heroes” on a prolonged hiatus, there’s no immediate impetus for picking it up, unless you’re a really rabid fan in need of a fix.
Chinese-Americans must have a lot of free time on their hands: A few thousand protested at CNN headquarters in Atlanta and Los Angeles, cranky over remarks made by “The Situation Room’s” wryly irascible bomb thrower Jack Cafferty about the Chinese government.
Except that when Cafferty said, “I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years,” he didn’t specify that it was the government he was talking about. Except that if you look at the context of what he said, it’s pretty apparent that’s who he was talking about, not the entire population of China.
One of the protestors had last taken to the streets in 1989 – in Tiananmen Square. In other words, he last stood up to the very goons and thugs Cafferty was grousing about. So it goes.
Hopefully, Cafferty will ride this one out. CNN needs him to keep blustery old Wolf Blitzer on his toes. And it’s emblematic of our world’s current sitcom-family dysfunction that even the Olympics – that venerable celebration of global brotherhood – is inspiring so much enmity and protest.
True story: President George W. Bush will appear on tonight’s episode of “Deal or No Deal.”
Not-quite-as-true-story: He will thank host Howie Mandel for his service to our country. He will then select Briefcase #17 and, with Laura screaming at him to make a deal, refuse to make a deal. He goes home with $50.
Two “Law & Order” series hit milestones this week: “Special Victims Unit” commemorates its 200th episode with Robin Williams as guest creep, while the original series bids adieu to Jesse L. Martin’s Detective Ed Green after nine seasons with an exit far more respectful than it gave its first departee, George Dzunda, where series creator Dick Wolf reportedly requested the fattest body double available to serve as his character's sorry corpse.
“SVU’s” episode offers a fairly inspired mash-up of the 2004 strip-search hoax in a Kentucky McDonald’s, the random New York troupe Improv Everywhere’s prank in which participants became human freeze-frames in Grand Central Station and Professor Stanley Milgrom’s disturbing experiments in torture and mind-control. Williams stars as Merit Rook, who is accused of leading a fast-food manager to sexually abuse an employee but exonerated in his trial because, you know, he’s really good at mind-control. He becomes a folk hero for his railing against conformity.
It might seem a little ironic for the most successful franchise in TV history to decry conformity – then again, since it’s the bad guy who’s doing it, maybe not. Still, the premise is presented in a most intriguing fashion: One rally finds the leader shouting, “We refuse to conform!” and the assembled masses replying, “Yeah!”
It reminded me of the scene in “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” in which Brian told the worshippers he had reluctantly lured, “You’ve got to think for yourselves,” and they naturally responded, “Tell us more!”
So, an interesting episode, except that anyone could’ve played Williams’ role (except near the end, where he overacts a storm; until that point, he’s basically channeling his character in “One Hour Photo” here) and there’s a lot of “just trust us” narrative: Some pretty damning evidence seems to be overlooked at Rook’s trial, and detectives Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Benson (Mariska Hargitay) just sort of seem to give up too easily at the end.
Many, many recent episodes of “Law & Order” have seemed to give up too easily in recent years, cribbing shamelessly from those torn-from-the-headline narratives and twisting them in tortured ways. But the writers really stepped up to give Martin – and his character – a decent Viking funeral.
Opening: Dead guy found, ho-hum. But: He had a gambling problem and a witness fingers a perp that causes Green to React Significantly. Soon: Perp is dead, and Green killed him. What now?
The episode also introduces Anthony Anderson, who will replace Martin (in case there was any question as to Fox’s “K-Ville’s” fate, here’s your answer); he plays Detective Bernard, an internal affairs detective gunning for Green who, this episode’s narrative hints, does sloppy work. Which could make for a pretty interesting dynamic as the show goes forth.
It’s up to Detective Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) to save – or utterly botch – the investigation.
Freed from the constraints of having to reconfigure a news story that briefly entered the public’s consciousness, then make it just different enough to avoid a lawsuit or two, this episode of “Law & Order” offers more intrigue than camp, and allows Martin to exit on something resembling a grace note. But “L&O” hasn’t replaced both its leads in the same season before: Will Sisto and Anderson be able to convince viewers they’re still watching the same show they’ve dutifully tuned into for nearly two decades? Especially when Robin Williams has told them the night before that they need to rebel against the status quo?
- “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:” 10 p.m. Tuesday, NBC (Channel 4).
- “Law & Order:” 10 p.m. Wednesday, NBC (Channel 4).
Read as much of this New York Times report about the Bush Administration’s manipulation of TV coverage of the war with Iraq as you can stomach – and boyoboy, is it long, and almost oppressively detailed with stories about juicing the results with people who had conflicts of interests or kept up the fictions because they were well paid by the networks or were just dumb or mean – and never bother me, nor anyone else, with nonsense about how this administration ever gave a sh!t about anyone in this country who didn’t run a company populated with mercenaries.
Just a taste:
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Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof. ‘We don’t have any hard evidence,’ ” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves saying, ‘What are we doing?’ ” … . Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.”
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What should be more shocking, but, actually, isn’t, is how little vetting the cable news networks did while trying to discover its “sources’” ties to anything that might compromise their opinions about the war. But then, these people will still allow Ann Coulter on the air, so clearly, they’ve never been serious about actually providing context to anything.
The chief lesson of the Bush Administration, it seems, is: Just never allow them to get you to testify under oath, and you’ll keep your job forever.
John Oliver, the vaguely hapless British scamp who serves as a genially inept correspondent on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," has a bit of a mean streak. Who knew?
Anyone who watches his Comedy Central special, "Terrifying Times," will figure this out this Sunday. While Oliver's work on "The Daily Show" is generally fairly benign, his standup show has some serious teeth.
Here are just a few of his sharp lines that draw blood:
(On the new American imperialism) "America has received so much criticism for its foreign policy when the only mistake you've made is you're doing what you're doing now in the era of 24-hour-cable-news. We didn't do that. ... I am glad that the massacre in Amritsar, India was only captured in watercolor." (He displays the painting.)
"I think, deep down, this planet yearns for the days of the British Empire once again - they yearn once more to be treated that badly, that politely."
(Championing the notion that textbooks discussing evolution should have a sticker stamped on them, declaring that evolution is just one theory, should be taken even further) "Slap a sticker on the Bible: 'Of course, this could all be bu!!sh!t.'"
(On the Oreo Pizza, which since its obscene media launch has seemed to have mercifully disappeared) "That is the biggest imaginable f@%&-you you could ever issue to terrorists. ... (It tells them,) 'There is nothing you can do to us that we are not already doing to ourselves.'"
"You could grab any Fox (News) journalist square by the shoulders, shake them backwards and forwards, scream into their face, 'Be worse at your job,' and they'd be entitled to say to you, 'How?'"
- "John Oliver: Terrifying Times:" 10 p.m. Sunday, Comedy Central.
Maybe people care vaguely about politics after all: An impressive 10.7 million watched last night’s 735th Presidential candidate debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on ABC, the most of any debate this campaign season, and most didn’t even switch over when the “American Idol” results show came on. The debate kicked “Big Bother’s” – er, “Brother’s” – hindquarters, but that’s no doubt because the squabbling during the debate was at least comprehensible.
On the other hand, ABC’s “Men in Trees” tanked afterwards, again. If your frothy romantic comedy can’t engage as many people as a political policy discussion, don’t expect a third season.
Except, of course, policy didn’t seem to be much of a concern for Charlie Gibson and former Clinton advisor George Stephanopolous. Pretty much everybody, and I do mean everybody, not to mention everybody’s parochial uncle and snarky aunt, found the debate a pile of offal, as ABC News took up Fox News’ proud mantle last night, turning the debate into all Reverend Wright/Tuzla/“bitter” all the time, with just a soupcon of Iraq and the economy and other actual issues.
Clearly, Obama can try to issue as many reasoned, nuanced observations as he pleases but the media will just trample over them and insist on more red meat – probably he should just get back to chanting “Yes We Can,” because that’s all the pundits seem to be able to understand.
The New York Times’ David Brooks liked it, though, declaring, “The journalist's job is to make politicians uncomfortable.” Unless, of course, the politician is a conservative.
(Any guesses as to how long it’ll take for this to post? In the past few days, our blog server has adapted cutting-edge print-journalism technology: Write something, and it might appear 12 hours later.)
Former Tennessee Senator (and, likely, former doctor) Bill Frist recently took a look at this blog’s server and declared, “There just seems to be insufficient information to conclude that this blog server is in a persistent vegetative state. It certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.”
Which means you’ll never read this. But anyway.
Great news for President Bush: In a poll conducted by George Mason University’s National News Network, two historians declared his presidency a success.
On the other hand, 107 deemed it a failure. Chin up, pal: Can’t please anyone everyone. And cheer up: A whopping 39% said Bush wasn’t the Worst President Ever. Which really means that that James Buchanan is a total screw-up, since he couldn’t even hold on to that title.
One of the President’s champions wrote: “No individual president can compare to the second Bush.”
Oh, but then he added: “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”
On the plus side, he really helped “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” to rock.
Hey, it was this or writing about CBS’s summer reality series, and those are really depressing.
(Let’s try this again. I tried to post this, repeatedly, beginning four hours ago with no success. If it doesn’t work this time I will personally enter the Internets and tear this blog to shreds.)
TV news anchors are just like baseball players – you can trade them to opposing teams. Who knew?
Or at least that’s the impression left by this New York Daily News story quoting an unnamed network source that solves CBS’s Katie Couric woes by sending her to CNN in exchange for Anderson Cooper.
The scenario has Couric hip-checking Larry King, and at his age, that’s gotta be dangerous. CNN officials insist Larry’s going nowhere – in a good way, that is.
And the New York Times suggests that even with out the Couric quandary, CBS is in a world of hurt: It was the hardest hit by the writers strike (except for The CW, and The CW doesn’t count anymore), earnings are down (its healthiest division is currently its billboards, which tells you something), its stock price has plunged nearly $10 in the past year and COO Les Moonves is raiding the pantry, taking home $36.8 million in 2007.
And what is Moonves doing to earn those big bucks? Passing the buck: He’s insisting he bears no responsibility for the travails of “The CBS Evening News.” His full argument, as presented in the Times: “I really don’t.”
You convinced me, Les.
Hey, guess who's fighting in Iraq? Elmo's dad, that's who!
A while back, the Children's Television Workshop made a cheerful video entitled "When Parents Are Deployed," hosted by Cuba Gooding, Jr. (who really seems way too happy in that photograph, for two reasons: he's explaining to kids why their parents won't be around, and he's an Oscar winner reduced to doing underwear commercials). In it, Elmo's hillbilly dad explains why Elmo won't see him for a while and when he does, he won't recognize him because he'll be a husk of his former self. You need Windows Media or something to watch it, but I imagine it goes something like this:
Elmo's Dad: Son, I have some news. I'm shipping off to fight in Iraq.
Elmo: But why, Dad? Hasn't the military already accomplished its stated goal - to depose Saddam Hussein? And there're no weapons of mass destruction for them to secure!
Elmo's Dad (chuckling sadly): Son, you're naïve in the ways of the world. I can't quite explain to you the nuanced vicissitudes of why I'm needed in Iraq, since President Bush has hardly articulated them himself. But rest assured, I must go. I'll see you in 15 months - if they don't stop-loss me, that is.
Elmo: I'll miss you, Dad. But look on the bright side: If your Humvee trips an IED, you don't have any lower body to lose.
A friend of mine appeared on the "Today" a number of years ago, where he witnessed one of Katie Couric's infamous-inside-the-industry tantrums. He looked around, and noticed that the expressions on the faces of crew members was not of the "Oh, sh!t, we screwed up" variety, but more like a blasé "Here we go again."
A female comic who witnessed a similar side of Couric joked that during her "Today" tenure, if a woman wanted to hack Katie off, all she need do was wear nicer shoes.
Today, the nicer shoes can be found at "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" and "ABC World News with Charles Gibson:" As we noted yesterday, the low ratings for "The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" has her considering leaving well before her contract expires in 2011.
Did we say "well before?" Her departure may well be imminent, according to the New York Times, which reports that yesterday's Wall Street Journal story on her impending departure may have accelerated the process. Noting that Couric met with CBS brass to discuss her future at the network, Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg write:
"[R]umors from CBS News and reported in the news media may have, inadvertently or not, done what the meeting failed to do: ensured Ms. Couric's early departure.
"Though some people close to Ms. Couric, as well as some professional associates, said Thursday they believed that it was now likely she would not remain as anchor through the election, and might even leave in the next few weeks, that point was adamantly denied by the senior executives closest to the decision.
"'Katie is absolutely going to continue as anchor until the [2009 Presidential] inauguration and very possibly beyond that,'" one said."
Very possibly? That doesn't seem to be a big vote of confidence. The Times continues:
"[E]ven the hint that Ms. Couric might depart was hardly a development that CBS News needs. ...
"Some of Ms. Couric's friends have described her as miserable, while others say she has adopted a stoic reaction to what has happened. ...
"'She's fine,' an associate said. 'She's annoyed at all the stories being leaked about her. But she's not angry. You could say she's in a good position now. She's got zero to lose.'"
That's not particularly suggestive of a long-term tenure for Couric, either.
Here's how bad it is: The Washington Post has already moved past her, focusing on who will occupy the anchor's chair next. Among those said to be in the running are Harry Smith, one of the co-anchors of CBS's "The Early Show," and CNN's Anderson Cooper, while in an online chat, Post TV Columnist Lisa de Moreas championed David Caruso (whipping his "CSI: Miami" sunglasses on and off during every story) and Christopher Walken, both brilliant suggestions. Let's hope Les Moonves is paying attention.
A moment’s silence, please, for “Secret Talents of the Stars,” which CBS cancelled after a mere episode, which drew an ostentatiously awful 4.6 million viewers.
OK, that’s enough. No need going overboard.
Well, that didn't take long.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric will take her handful of viewers and go home, perhaps as soon as next January, after the Presidential inauguration. She's currently signed with the network through June 2011, at $15 million per year.
But whatever CBS COO Les Moonves expected of Couric when he almost ran over her with his money truck has decidedly not occurred: Her ratings are worse than her predecessor's Bob Schieffer's, worse even than the guy who left the network ignominiously, Dan Rather. Couric manages about 5.9 million viewers a night, as opposed to NBC's 8.3 million and ABC's 8 million. That's what you'd call a distant third place.
And giving Couric all that cash when it could've gone to serious newsgathering has seriously hamstrung CBS News - last week, it laid off a slew of local reporters at affiliates owned and operated by the network; this week, it was reported that the news division might outsource some of its duties to CNN.
One possible scenario in the WSJ's chalk talk has Couric going to CNN herself, where she'd take over for The Cryptkeeper Little League aficionado Larry King, whose contract expires next year even if he doesn't. This, of course, doesn't really solve anything: One of the things that has been underscored during Couric's tenure at CBS is her uneven interviewing skills - too cozy with Condoleezza Rice, too snippy with John and Elizabeth Edwards.
And, CBS would have to renew an anchor search having not much bothered to strengthen its farm system. And again with the CNN - one guy initially named as a possible anchor, John Roberts, bolted to CNN when it became apparent CBS wasn't interested in grooming him for the gig. And you'd think that Moonves might've learned his lesson re: shelling out cash for pricey outsiders.
All grim stuff, indeed. So we'll cede final word to the happy-face statements blandly issued by CBS News - "We are very proud of the 'CBS Evening News'" - and Couric herself - "I am working hard and having fun."
Nope, not the Daily News – the Cypress Bay High School Circuit, the subject of yet another MTV reality show, “The Paper.”
I was editor of my high-school paper (and yearbook), and I can safely report that if MTV’s cameras had followed our staff around, it would’ve caused a universe-destroying rift in the time-space continuum, as MTV didn’t exist at the time. I can also report that if they had done so anyway, they wouldn’t’ve been able to cobble together enough interesting footage to put together a single episode of the show, let alone an entire season.
We didn’t break into spontaneous dance in our classroom. We didn’t make out, either, or sweep the female staffers up in our arms for publicity photos. We didn’t have singalongs. We didn’t yell and scream at one another. No one was reduced to tears over anything involving the paper (or anything else, as far as I can recall). We didn’t trash cars with sledgehammers. There wasn’t any great drama behind the selection of the editor – the faculty advisor picked someone, and that was that.
Basically, people did their work – typed up their stories, laid out the pages, cropped photos, proofread copy – or, they didn’t, because some people took courses working on the paper because even if you didn’t do a thing, you’d still get a B. And with an exception or two, we were all just kind of average-looking.
So clearly, the high-school-newspaper racket has gotten a lot sexier. Or, more likely, the reality-TV genre has inspired a generation to always be “on,” to respond like a drama queen to every potential problem, to be loud and colorful because that’s how you get cameras to remain trained upon you. But in the future, how will people know how to behave when a camera isn’t pointing at them?
- “The Paper:” 10:30 p.m. Monday, MTV.
The New York Times’ Mark Leibovich uncorks one of the great all-time hit pieces in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (already available online via this link). His target: MSNBC’s blustery Chris Matthews, who was all too willing to play along, serving as the prey in the journalism equivalent of “The Most Dangerous Game.”
Here’s guessing that when Matthews finishes reading it, he won’t respond with his trademark “Ha!”
The first sentence reads, “Whenever Chris Matthews says something he likes, which happens a lot, he repeats it often and at volumes suggesting a speaker who feels insufficiently listened to at times,” so you know no good can come of this as far as Matthews is concerned. But this will prove to be one of Leibovich’s kinder observations about Matthews, who comes across as vain yet incredibly insecure, which makes sense given his on-air behavior.
Matthews is a taste I’ve never managed to acquire, and Leibovich’s piece explains precisely why that is. He revisits Matthews’ exquisitely creepy interview with CNBC’s Erin Burnett as well as his humiliating appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” in which Stewart labeled his latest book “a self-hurt book” and “a recipe for sadness.” Matthews hints to Leibovich that he thinks MSNBC may balk at resigning him when his contract expires next year; this profile gives the network all the ammunition it needs to dump the guy.
It opens with a fairly excruciating anecdote set in a bar after Matthews has done post-debate analysis of one of the 200 or so Presidential candidate debates of the past year. Matthews gets cozy with actress Kerry Washington, whom his producer has invited to appear on “Hardball:”
*
“I know why he wants you on,” Matthews said to Washington. ... At which point Matthews did something he rarely does. He paused. He seemed actually to be considering what he was about to say. He might even have been editing himself, which is anything but a natural act for him. He was grimacing. I imagined a little superego hamster racing against a speeding treadmill inside Matthews’s skull, until the superego hamster was overrun and the pause ended.
“He wants you on because you’re beautiful,” Matthews said. “And because you’re black.” He handed Washington a business card and told her to call anytime “if you ever want to hang out with Chris Matthews.”
Then, a young Irish-looking woman walked up shyly and asked if he was “Mr. Matthews.” “Ah, an Irish girl has come to my aid,” Matthews said, placing his hand gently on the woman’s shoulder. She was in law school and said her name was Margaret Sweeney. “I went out with a Sweeney once, a nurse,” Matthews said, taking her hand. …
At one point, Matthews suddenly became hypnotized by a TV over the bar set to a rebroadcast of “Hardball.” “Hey, there I am — it’s me,” he said, staring at himself on the screen.
*
In case that’s not bad enough, here are a few more choice lines from the profile:
* “His soothing-like-a-blender voice feels unnervingly constant …”
* “[Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Keith Olbermann] appeal to the eye-rolling tendencies of a cooler, highly educated urban cohort of the electorate that mostly dismisses an exuberant political animal like Matthews as annoyingly antiquated, like the ranting uncle at the Thanksgiving table whom the kids have learned to tune out.”
* … “[T]hree network officials asked me why I was writing about Matthews and not Olbermann.”
* “‘Did you see me on the ‘Today’ show?’ Matthews asked when I called him one afternoon in early March. ‘I quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think I’m the only guy around who quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald on the ‘Today’ show.’”
* “A number of people I spoke with at NBC said that [NBC’s Tim] Russert can be disdainful of Matthews, whose act he often sees as clownish.”
* “Sometimes during commercial breaks, Matthews will boast to Olbermann of having restrained himself during the prior segment. ‘And I reward him with a grape,’ Olbermann says.”
* “Bill Kovach, the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, anointed Matthews as part of a ‘new class of chatterers who emerged in [The Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky] scandal . . . a group of loosely credentialed, self-interested performers whose primary job is remaining on TV.’”
* “If Matthews has an overriding professional insecurity, it is being confined to the pigeonhole of cable blowhard. The insecurity is well founded, since this is how many people view him.”
* “It can be amusing if slightly painful to watch Matthews’s facial expressions and body language on the set of “Hardball” when others are talking; he will, at times, bounce in his seat like a Ritalin-deprived second-grader who is dying to give an answer but has been admonished too many times for interrupting.”
* “As I began researching this article, Jeremy Gaines, an MSNBC spokesman, gave me the names of about a dozen people that Matthews recommended I speak to, all famous — everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Marvin Hamlisch. But gatekeepers for more than one of these people expressed confusion as to why Matthews would refer me to them. ‘Please keep us out of this,’ pleaded a spokesperson for one prominent politician whom Matthews had recommended via Gaines.”
Ha!
Now that Charlton Heston is dead, those damn dirty apes at Turner Classic Movies think it’d be a great time to show a bunch of movies that he appeared in, so that’s what they’ll be doing on Friday, because people like to commemorate celebrity deaths by discovering their work in a sort of posthumous fashion.
The bad news is that outside of “Ben Hur,” TCM isn’t showing his most celebrated stuff. The good news is, they’re not showing “Bowling for Columbine,” either.
Here’s the schedule. All times are West Coast, so adjust accordingly. And never forget: Soylent Green is people.
11:30 a.m. “Private Screenings: Charlton Heston”
12:30 p.m. “The Buccaneer” (1958) – co-starring Yul Brynner and Claire Bloom.
2:30 p.m. “The Hawaiians” (1970) – co-starring Geraldine Chaplin and John Philip Law.
5 p.m. “Private Screenings: Charlton Heston”
6 p.m. “Ben-Hur” (1959) – co-starring Jack Hawkins and Stephen Boyd.
10 p.m. “Khartoum” (1966) – co-starring Lawrence Olivier and Richard Johnson.
12:30 a.m. “Major Dundee” (1965) – co-starring Richard Harris, Jim Hutton and James Coburn.
That’s an insightful line from next week’s episode of “30 Rock,” which is actually a little funnier than Thursday’s episode, which signals the show’s return from the writers strike. Which is a little surprising, because this week’s episode introduces us to Jack’s (Alec Baldwin) most genius brainstorm yet, the reality hit “MILF Island.”
Those jokes should write themselves, and the show-within-a-show’s funny enough, though it’s clear “30 Rock’s” writers have no idea how “MILF Island” might actually work. (On the other hand, as Fox reality guru Mike Darnell would tell you, with that concept, who cares?) Although we do know thatt when a MILF is kicked off the island, the catchphrase is, “We no longer want to hit that.”
But the episode’s subplots kind of fall flat – Liz (Tina Fey) is charged with figuring out who insulted Jack in a gossip column; Pete (Scott Adsit) gets his arm caught in a vending machine. There is a great line that comes virtually out of nowhere: When Liz stares daggers at Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer), he says, “You eyes look like my uncle’s after he drinks from the air conditioner.” A couple of lines like that a week from “30 Rock,” and I’m a happy man.
Next week’s episode operates on all cylinders. Liz’s obnoxious ex, the Beeper King (Dean Winters), becomes a hero after rescuing someone in a subway and is cast to guest-host “TGS,” much against Liz’s wishes – at least initially. Jack, unable to locate a suitable celebrity Republican, recruits Tracy (Tracy Morgan); together, they concoct a brilliant campaign spot to help John McCain. And, in a hilarious spoof of a lachrymose episode of last year’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” Tim Conway plays a Golden-Age-of-Television personality wandering the halls of NBC, sharing with Kenneth some nostalgic anecdotes (ah, the “sandwich girls”) that Kenneth finds increasingly appalling.
“30 Rock” has plenty of laughs; what it lacks are viewers. Look, it’s won a Peabody and an Emmy and even a couple of those goofy-looking Actor Awards. What the hell more do you want?
- “30 Rock:” 8:30 p.m. Thursday, NBC Channel 4.
Tom Shales hated Kathy Lee on “Today” even more than I did.
*
Bubble shows: ABC’s “Boston Legal,” “Eli Stone” and “Women’s Murder Club;” CBS’s “Moonlight,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” “Rules of Engagement,” “Shark” and “The Unit;” Fox’s “Back to You” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles;” and The CW’s “Reaper.” Time to ramp up those “save our show” campaigns.
*
Fox had a reality show titled “When Women Rule the World,” then apparently decided that prospect was too terrifying for viewers. How bad does a reality show have to be to not get on Fox?
*
There’s a new ABC pilot, “Castle,” about a horror novelist who consults with the NYPD. Make it about a horror novelist who consults with a broadcast network and you actually have some believability.
*
Jeff Zucker to actors: Oh, sweet Jesus, pleasepleaseplease don’t strike.
*
Jeff Zucker’s also miffed that Lifetime swiped “Project Runway” away from him, and so, some attorneys will get even richer. At least he didn’t sue to keep “Scrubs.”
*
The New York Times says CBS News is essentially throwing in the towel and outsourcing its newsgathering to CNN; but Variety says “not so fast.” Which probably just means that CBS didn’t like the way it looked in the Times story.
*
I’m betting that pregnant guy did it just to get a book deal.
*
*
Jack McBrayer is Kenneth the Page: “To hear Brett Ratner say, ‘O.K., now walk more slowly with the unicorn’; ‘O.K., Mariah, spank Jack more,’ ” he said. “What is happening to my life?”
I will be unable to blog for much of the rest of the day. You see, I was asked to watch Kathie Lee Gifford’s inaugural turn on the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” show – a program that routinely makes fluff look hard-hitting by comparison – and will need to spend the next several hours hooked up to an insulin drip.
Co-host Hoda Kotb, in welcoming Gifford to the show, presented her with a gift basket that included a bottle of tequila and a flask. All well and good, but the people who really needed such relief were those who watched this thing.
The resulting story will turn up online shortly, I’m told.
For all that slick surface demeanor and glad-handing prowess, NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman has the soul of a poet.
Herewith, the powerful protest verse from Silverman, as delivered at Wednesday's press conference announcing NBC's 2008-09 schedule:
*
Fight the Power
We all deal with
a cacophony
of bad news
We want to give
an opportunity
to our audience
to have some fun
and enjoy their lives
watching our TV
programs
*
A World Without Laughter
I've watched
the other comedies
on the other networks
and
I've never laughed
*
End the Madness
If I had
one
more
person
sitting next to me
on a plane
and tell me
Friday Night Lights
was their favorite show
I
was going
to lose my mind
*
A Prison in My Own Mind
We all go home
at the end
of the day
with an ankle bracelet
For me, it's a Blackberry.
*
Untitled: The Office Spinoff
We will not go forward
and
put it on the air
if it's not absolutely
what we want
it to be
and only
if it doesn't
damage the mothership.
*
Ode to "Chuck"
Zach Levy
is a guy
Who is totally
accessible
to any generation
A ton
of young people
are tuning
into that show
Zach does crazy
stupid stuff
That resonates a with a young audience
*
Surrealism in the 21st Century
What's wrong
with the car
Saving the day
And the good
guys winning?
… and Barack Obama’s nowhere in sight.
(New series indicated with an *; new timeslots with a ^)
Thursday
Fall 2008
8-8:30 p.m. “My Name Is Earl”
8:30-9 p.m. “30 Rock”
9-9:30 p.m. “The Office”
9:30-10 p.m. “The Office”/“SNL Thursday Night Live” *
10-11 p.m. “ER”
The “SNL” things will run in October before the Presidential election, because NBC got all excited about that Entertainment Weekly story that called “SNL” the most politically influential, agenda-pushing media entity on the whole planet or some such. So I saw Tina Fey’s little bit on Hillary that was kind of funny and then watched an episode and – guess what? – it’s still the same old unwatchable stew it has generally been for about two decades now. But, you know, still not a bad idea, because I imagine they can tweak at least one amusing idea out of 21 minutes of airtime.
A lot of people, I realize, didn’t like the hourlong “Office” episodes, but they mainly just seemed to me to be two episodes shown back to back with the vaguest of narrative threads connecting them. Barring any strikes or other natural disasters, “The Office” will produce 28 episodes next season, not to mention …
Winter 2009
8-8:30 p.m. “My Name Is Earl”
8:30-9 p.m. “30 Rock”
9-9:30 p.m. “The Office”
9:30-10 p.m. “The Office” spinoff (currently untitled)
10-11 p.m. “ER”/“The Celebrity Apprentice”
As we noted yesterday, precious little is known about this “Office” spinoff, probably because they’ve just recently started thinking about putting it together. NBC promises to scrap the whole thing if it doesn’t work or hurts the original show too much. (It’s scheduled to premiere after the Super Bowl.)
The show has already kind of used the most likely scenario that would spawn a spinoff – layoffs and a restructuring of the company (good for keeping Jim and Pam separated for a season) – well, we’ll see. A Variety poll suggests that of a handful of cast members, people want to see Dwight spun off in his own show, but then who would Jim have to perform his practical jokes on?
“Office” fans are notoriously picky – they were ready to hate the show outright for blaspheming against Ricky Gervais’s original – until it turned out to be really good. But its viewers have a pretty good nose for sniffing out bullsh!t, so no doubt executive producer Greg Daniels will be experiencing night sweats for the next few months.
And, as we’ve noted in the post below, might do well to have an “Earl”/“Kath & Kim”/“Office”/“30 Rock” Thursday-night lineup.
Summer 2009
8-8:30 p.m. “The Office” (repeats)
8:30-9 p.m. “Office” spinoff (repeats)
9-10 p.m. “Last Comic Standing”
10-11 p.m. “The Listener” *
“The Listener” is a Canadian co-production that could be titled “If Matt Parkman Were the Only Hero.” It’s about a paramedic named Toby who can read minds and, as only NBC can put it, “balances high-stakes drama with irreverent humor and sends Toby on an intellectual and emotional adventure.”
Friday
Fall 2008
8-9 p.m. “Crusoe” *
9-10 p.m. “Deal or No Deal” ^
10-11 p.m. “Life” ^
Winter 2009
8-9 p.m. “Deal or No Deal” ^
9-10 p.m. “Friday Night Lights”
10-11 p.m. “Life”
Summer 2009
8-9 p.m. “Chopping Block” *
9-11 p.m. “Dateline NBC” ^
Here’s where NBC got really creative in terms of programming on a budget. Given that ratings on Fridays have been awfully anemic in recent years, the networks seem to be drifting closer to the same “Test Pattern Theatre” they throw up on Saturdays, so NBC’s efforts here deserve some sort of applause, even if you have a life and spend Fridays out with friends and/or loved ones.
“Crusoe,” an updating of that book by Willem Dafoe or someone, is a British co-production. “Friday Night Lights,” perennially low-rated but boasting one of those avid fan bases, will be a co-production with DirecTV, who will actually air it first, in the fall. “Chopping Block” is a reality competition in which contestants vie to see who can get away with the most grisly axe murders pretty much like “Hell’s Kitchen.” OK – so NBC’s not so creative on that one.
NBC bills “Crusoe” as “equal parts ‘MacGyver,’ ‘Castaway’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’” but apparently no parts of the Daniel Defoe – that’s the guy! – book.
Saturdays will, as we’ve noted, just be the usual assortment of repeats.
Next: Insightful analysis of what this all means (if we can think of any)
Don’t miss an all-new “My Name is Earl,” tonight on NBC!
Hey, look, NBC – I can write promotional copy! Does that pay well? You got any openings?
Otherwise, I’m just going to have to keep analyzing your whopping big new schedule, picking at it like a scab, and no one wants that…
(New shows are labeled with an *; timeslot changes with a ^.)
Tuesday
Fall 2008
8-9:30 p.m. “The Biggest Loser: Families”
9:30-10 p.m. “Kath & Kim” *
10-11 p.m. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
Winter 2009
8-9:30 p.m. “The Biggest Loser: Couples”
9:30-10 p.m. “Kath & Kim” *
10-11 p.m. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
“Kath & Kim” is a remake of a hit Australian sitcom about a wackily boorish, dysfunctional mother-daughter duo. Molly Shannon will play the mother; Selma Blair the daughter (fun fact: Shannon is about eight years older than Blair). It’ll be tricky to adjust this tonally for American audiences – the Aussie version was loud and almost abrasively over-the-top – and it seems an odd fit with the purportedly inspirational “Biggest Loser.”
Here’s guessing at some point they’ll try it out on Thursdays after “My Name Is Earl” (where it kind of seems a natural) and maybe move “30 Rock” to after “The Office” (which is where it sort of belongs) and expand “Loser” to two hours, which is what it has been this season.
Summer 2009
8-9 p.m. “Most Outrageous Moments” ^
9-10 p.m. “America's Got Talent”
10-11 p.m. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (repeats)
Summer timeslot placeholders. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Wednesday
Fall 2008
8-9 p.m. “Knight Rider” *
9-10 p.m. “Deal or No Deal” ^
10-11 p.m. “Lipstick Jungle” ^
The biggest surprise on NBC’s schedule was brining back the low-rated (and not-very-good) “Lipstick Jungle.” In a press conference yesterday, NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman justified the decision by calling it both an “upscale” show and one that does particularly well in the demographic of women aged 18-34. That seems kind of contradictory – I don’t imagine that women aged 18-34 really have a whole lot of discretionary income to spend (unless, of course, they’re starring in “Lipstick Jungle”) – but that’s a tough demographic for a broadcast network to reach, and maybe it’ll do better on a schedule not hampered by a writers strike.
As for “Knight Rider,” well, you know the drill – talking car (or, as NBC puts it, “absolutely the coolest car ever created”) and, in this post-“Transformers” era, capable of changing into other stuff. The TV movie did well, even though NBC didn’t send out advance screeners (and the few reviews it did get were pretty withering). But one thing NBC is all about as it presses forward is arranging advertiser-friendly deals, and this has one built right in with the Ford Mustang folks.
Winter 2009
8-9 p.m. “Knight Rider” *
9-10 p.m. “Deal or No Deal”
10-11 p.m. “Law & Order”
“L&O” creator Dick Wolf is hellbent to have his show break the record for longest-running drama in American TV history, and it got a second wind (or was a third or fourth?) this past season thanks to being the rare show in original episodes during the writers strike. Even if he has to bankroll the episodes himself and pay NBC to air them (which he could easily afford to do), he will break that record (beating “Gunsmoke,” by the way). It’s impressive that any show could’ve lasted as long as it has in today’s climate. “Gunsmoke” had it easy, competing only against two other networks.
Summer 2009
8-9 p.m. “Shark Taggers” *
9-10 p.m. “America's Got Talent" (results show)
10-11 p.m. “Law & Order” (repeats)
Thom Beers (“Deadliest Catch,” etc.) kinda cribs from himself again with this reality series that “follows daring marine biologists as they track down the ocean's top predators and hand-tag them with cutting-edge satellite transmitters or investigate bull sharks' sudden attacks on surfers.” Someone’s gonna lose a hand…
Next: Thursday and Friday
Yesterday, NBC announced its 2008-09 schedule, nearly six weeks ahead of the traditional mid-May events that usher out the old season (instead of an “upfront,” as these things are usually called, NBC called theirs an “infront,” because they’re way in front of everybody else – get it?).
So here’s the schedules for Sunday and Monday. We’ll do the rest of the week over the course of the day (except for Saturday, which’ll just be repeats and “Datelines”). We won’t be breaking any land-speed records on this because my real job beckons.
(New shows are labeled with an *; timeslot changes with a ^.)
Sunday
Fall 2008
7- 8:20 p.m. “Football Night in America”
8:20-11 p.m. “Sunday Night Football”
Winter 2009
7-8 p.m. Specials/“Dateline NBC”
8-9 p.m. Specials/“Merlin” *
9-10 p.m. Specials/“Medium” ^
10-11 p.m. Specials/“Kings” *
Summer 2009
7-8 p.m. “Dateline NBC”
8-9 p.m. “Monk”
9-10 p.m. “Nashville Star”
10-11 p.m. “Kings” * repeats
On “Merlin:” An updated, action-adventure version of the story of Camelot, set in King Arthur’s (Bradley James) and the magician Merlin’s (Colin Morgan) days of impetuous youth. NBC hopefully suggests, “The innovative, action-packed drama has cross-generational appeal and paints a picture of Merlin and Arthur's early life that audiences have never witnessed before.” It’s a British co-production and, as such, will have a limited run of 13 episodes.
On “Kings:” Some sort of mash-up of the David-vs.-Goliath story and, say, “Gladiator.” Here, David (Christopher Egan) is a soldier in another king’s (“Deadwood’s” Ian McShane, minus all those “motherf@%&ers” and “c@%&s@%&ers”) army. David quickly proves his worth and is therefore subject to temptations and political backbiting. NBC declares this “the ultimate story of David vs. Goliath, and there's no telling who will win.” Well, if it’s remotely faithful to the source material, yes – yes, there is telling who will win. “I Am Legend” director Francis Lawrence will direct the pilot. It will be introduced as a TV movie in the fall, with sponsorship from an insurance company that feels its tagline endorsing “responsibility” is a nice fit with the show’s themes.
“Monk” is the USA Network hit, of course, and “Nashville Star” is a USA reality competition, a country “American Idol.”
As for those specials: NBC has two miniseries in the works, a rarity for the broadcast networks these days, who’ve essentially gone out of the one-shot movie business. One is “The Last Templar,” starring Mira Sorvino in what sort of sounds like a four-hour “National Treasure” retread that begins with “four horsemen dressed as 12th century knights storm the gala opening of an exhibition of Vatican treasures and steal an arcane medieval decoder.”
The other is “XIII,” a conspiracy thriller starring Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorff that begins when “the first female U.S. President is shot dead by a sniper during her Veteran's Day speech.” (Must … not … read … too … much … into … this …) It then becomes something of a “Bourne Identity” retread, as a man is discovered three months later with no memory of his identity and only a tattoo – yes, the “XIII” of the title – and Bourne-like abilities to snap necks and the like to distinguish him.
Monday
Fall 2008
8-9 p.m. “Chuck”
9-10 p.m. “Heroes”
10-11 p.m. “My Own Worst Enemy” *
NBC is again attempting what it tried this past season, molding Mondays as an action-, slightly paranormally-themed evening, only the network’s feel-good mission statement means no programs like this year’s glum “Journeyman.”
“My Own Worst Enemy” is billed as a kind of “Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde”-style story, starring Christian Slater as a middle-class Everyguy who has a secret life as a spy. NBC insists the show “explores the duality of a man who is literally pitted against himself. And it raises the question: Who can you trust when you can't trust yourself?” If you can’t trust yourself, why would you believe you could trust anyone?
Winter 2009
8- 9 p.m. “Chuck”
9-10 p.m. “Heroes”
10-11 p.m. “The Philanthropist” *
From Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson (“Homicide: Life on the Street”) comes “The Philanthropist,” about a “vigilante philanthropist” and “renegade billionaire:” “Instead of spending $25,000 a plate at a fundraiser, he's dodging bullets in third-world countries to hand-deliver vaccine.”
Summer 2009
8-9 p.m. “American Gladiators”
9-10 p.m. “America’s Toughest Jobs” *
10-11 p.m. “Dateline NBC” ^
Even though it looked like NBC was going to go stark raving reality all over its schedule, it actually showed restraint, waiting until summer to deliver a reality onslaught – it even kept “American Gladiators” off its schedule during the regular season.
“America’s Toughest Jobs” takes the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” and transforms it into a reality competition from creator Thom Beers (“Deadliest Catch,” “Ice Road Truckers”). And yes, some of the challenges will involve fishing under extremely difficult circumstances and driving on icy roads.
Next: Tuesday and Wednesday
Networks traditionally throw stuff up against a wall to see if anything will stick. NBC’s Ben Silverman is going that strategy one better – he’s taking a wall and throwing it up against a bigger wall.
NBC announced a wildly ambitious slate of programs that it will be rolling out in the next 18 months, a mélange of returning shows, new scripted shows, reality placeholders and series co-produced with foreign partners. They’ve sent out about 10 very wordy press releases and conducted a phone press conference with network Entertainment co-chairman Silverman in the past 90 minutes or so, so it’s going to take a little while to process the whole shebang, particularly since Silverman says NBC is producing twice as much original programming in a season than it a decade back, but here are some highlights:
* An “Office” spinoff is set to debut after the Super Bowl (and following a new episode of “The Office”). Details are sketchy – it doesn’t sound like they and “Office” executive producer Greg Daniels have yet figured which characters will wind up where, which will be exceedingly tricky, given that you don’t want to destroy the chemistry of the original, yet would seem to need some main characters to keep the spinoff from seeming like just a watered-down version of the original.
Still, Silverman insists, “We will not go forward and put it on the air if it’s not absolutely what we want it to be and ifi it does damage to the mothership.”
* “The Office” will again return in the fall with hourlong episodes; in October, it will be followed at 9:30 p.m. on Thursdays with political sketches from the “SNL” brain trust in anticipation of the November Presidential election. “Scrubs” is gone – from NBC, at least.
* “Friday Night Lights” is returning – it’ll first be seen on DirecTV’s Channel 101 in the fall, and then on NBC beginning in February. Silverman declared, “If I had one more person sitting next to me on a plane and tell me it was their favorite show I was going to lose my mind.” He doesn’t think DirecTV’s airing episodes first will much impact it on NBC, as DirecTV subscribers constitute only 10-15% of the network’s audience.
* “ER’s” returning for a 15th and final season – 19 episodes, no repeats, gone in February.
* As previously announced, “Chuck” (8 p.m. Monday) and “Life (10 p.m. Friday) are returning. Somewhat surprisingly, the low-rated “Lipstick Jungle” is, too, Wednesdays at 10 p.m. (“Law & Order” returns again at midseason.)
* Don’t expect many dark shows. Acknowledging the “cacophony of bad news,” Silverman talked up the idea of audiences needing to “have some fun and enjoy their lives watching our shows.”
* NBC has divvied up each evening thusly: 8 p.m., family fare; 9 p.m., “franchises;” 10 p.m., more adult fare.
* New shows debuting in the fall:
“My Own Worst Enemy,” starring Christian Slater as a guy who leads dual lives – as a button-down business shlub and as a master spy. (Monday, 10 p.m., after “Heroes”)
“Knight Rider,” the remake. “What’s wrong with the car saving the day and the good guys winning?” Silverman asks. (Wednesday, 8 p.m.)
“Crusoe,” an update of the Daniel Defoe novel. (Friday, 8 p.m.)
“Kath & Kim,” American version of a popular Australian sitcom about a randy mom (Molly Shannon) who allows her self-absorbed daughter (Selma Blair) to move back in with her following her divorce. (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m., following "The Biggest Loser")
More shows roll out in the winter and summer, but we’ll get to them and more – including a night-by-night rundown and analysis – later. (Ooh! A blog cliffhanger!)
After plowing through incisive reports on this page regarding "Farmer Wants a Wife," ABC's summer reality sludge, "Prison Break's" latest shark jump and Paris Hilton on "My Name is Earl," you might get the impression that this blog is obsessed with the rancid debris Television leaves alongside the road in his carefree travels.
To disabuse you of this notion, we're going to do an entire entry dedicated to Television Excellence. Today, the Peabody Awards - an award that by law must be described as "prestigious" - were announced, and we're presenting the entire list, as noted in the first line of the press release below:
COMPLETE LIST OF 2007 PEABODY AWARD WINNERS
See? Anyway, here are the winners, with comments from the Peabody folks on some of them, comments from me on some of them and no comments whatsoever on others.
"30 Rock" Peabody says: "Tina Fey's creation is not only a great workplace comedy in the tradition of 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' complete with fresh, indelible secondary characters, but also a sly, gleeful satire of corporate media, especially the network that airs it."
What Peabody means: So watch it, already.
"Mad Men" Peabody says: "The way they were on Madison Avenue, in the Manhattan towers and the bedroom communities of New York, circa 1960, is recalled in rich detail and a haze of cigarette smoke in this exemplary period dramatic series."
Wow. Someone got fancy there with all that writing and words. But if they hadn't honored this show, this blog would have been very, very disappointed.
"The Colbert Report" Peabody says: "Let none dare call it 'truthiness.' Colbert, in his weeknight Comedy Central parody of all that is bombastic and self-serving in cable-news bloviasion, has come into his own as one of electronic media's sharpest satirists."
They're just now noticing this?
"Dexter" Peabody says: "With a premise that questions our fondness for avenging heroes - a serial killer who channels his dark urges into police forensics and the killing of other psychopaths - this Showtime series is a masterful psychological thriller and a complex and ambiguous meditation on morality."
I'll be this one is giving our friends at the Parents Television Council fits. I thought the second season was better than the first, which is saying something, and wonder how they'll be able to top themselves.
"Planet Earth" Peabody says: "Awesome, spectacular, humbling, exhilarating - pick your effusive adjective - the 11-part [Discovery] series documented the natural wonders of our world, some familiar, others never before seen, in stunning high-definition clarity."
No question, but National Geographic's "Galapagos" boasted cinematography that was just as breathtaking, but apparently got lost in the shuffle.
"Project Runway" Peabody says: "A series that redeems the reality-contest genre, this face-off competition among upstart fashion designers demands, displays and ultimately rewards creativity that can't be bluffed."
I know people who hate reality TV who like this show. I might, too, if I cared about the fashion world.
"Bob Woodruff Reporting: Wounds of War - The Long Road Home of Our Nation's Veterans" Peabody says: "Severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, Woodruff made wounded veterans and their struggle with recovery and red tape his special focus and served them well with his sensitive, dogged reporting."
This documentary would've been good even if it hadn't had the additional resonance of Woodruff's own injury propelling it.
"Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" Peabody says: "The centerpiece of this thoughtful, topical edition of 'NOVA' was the recreation, verbatim, of key testimony and argument from a six-week trial in Pennsylvania that served as a crash course in modern evolutionary theory, the evidence for evolution and the nature of science."
Boy, I got crap from the mouth-breathers out there who don't believe in evolution when I reviewed this. Guys, take up your grievances with the esteemed Peabody council.
"Taxi to the Dark Side" Peabody says: "The brutal death of an Afghani cab driver while in U.S. military custody gave director Alex Gibney the central thread of his searing exploration of detainee interrogation techniques and who, ultimately, bears responsibility."
When is winning a Peabody anti-climactic? When you've already won an Oscar, as this documentary has.
"NATURE: Silence of the Bees" Peabody says: "The first in-depth investigation of an alarming, world-wide die-off of honeybees, this documentary underscored the critical role of these pollinators to our food supply and surveyed the forensics that have yet to solve the mystery."
"FRONTLINE: Cheney's Law" Peabody says: "In a strongly researched and reported hour that sometimes played like a political thriller, 'FRONTLINE' traced the Bush Administration's expansion of Presidential wartime powers to a determined, secretive campaign by the Vice President, that stretches back three decades."
"CNN Presents: God's Warriors" Peabody says: "In six hours over three nights, CNN explored how rising fundamentalist disenchantment with the modern, secular world has affected Judaism, Islam and Christianity in sometimes similar but also different ways."
The rest of the winners, after the jump:
A recent (or future, who can keep track?) episode of Comedy Central’s “Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil” pitted twin sinister juggernauts Dick Cheney and Paris Hilton against one another.
As awful as Cheney may be (you know, the whole unnecessary wars and shredding-the-Constitution thing), at least he’s had the good sense to commit his treachery in secrecy. Hilton, on the other hand has publicly, ubiquitously slathered her lascivious, lice-encrusted cynicism over every molecule of modern society, leaving each of us tainted with the mean stink of hunger for celebrity gossip.
No, the genuine competition should have been between two shameless self-promoters, two who, by coincidence, both appear in gratuitous cameos in Thursday night’s hourlong post-writers’-strike return of “My Name Is Earl:” Hilton and NBC COO Jeff Zucker.
Zucker, of course, is the guy who led the parade in NBC’s valiantly inept trek from first to fourth place in TV ratings, yet maintained that he was a TV visionary and brags copiously about his lack of accomplishment before audiences larger than he merits. He appears in tonight’s episode at the very beginning, playing himself, a craven TV executive who will only be happy when all of Television is a lobotomized and product-placement-strewn wasteland of reality TV and wan punchlines.
Hilton appears in the latter half hour, again, portraying herself, a celebration of all that is brutishly brainless and awful and undeserving in this world.
“Earl” has never been particularly keen on plotlines that aren’t cartoonish, but, well, Thursday’s installment makes an episode of “South Park” look like “The Usual Suspects.” Earl (Jason Lee) is in a coma, thanks to Alyssa Milano’s poor driving skills. As Earl’s inept pals go about their inept motions to try to resuscitate him, Earl, in his sorry state, imagines himself in a sitcom world. Which means: The writers created an environment in which they could willfully create sitcom-style jokes that are intentionally not funny, with (to their minds, at least) impunity and, due to their very lack of wit, are supposed to be clever in some perverse post-modern fashion.
That’s where Paris comes in: She’s part of Earl’s dreamscape (or is it, nightmare-scape?), where all she’s asked to do is deliver, after every witless gag, her own Terry Schiavo-esque catch-phrase utterance, “That’s hott.” She does this three or four times, with a complete and utter lack of conviction, and for her troubles no doubt earns a larger paycheck than you or I will see anytime soon.
(Oh, and the rest of the show’s not very funny, either. Individual lines are clever, but given the stupidly capricious context in which they’re presented – amid inept and corrupt cops and paramedics, inept and corrupt faith healers, they kind of flounder.)
So, again, we return to the original “Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil” conundrum with which we began: Who is more evil, Zucker or Hilton?
Well, Zucker destroyed a once-proud broadcast network. But there are other sources for television excellence out there, so in the broader scheme of things, Zucker has only polluted a small portion of the broadcast spectrum. Hilton, on the other hand, has insinuated her offal everywhere, making it difficult for even the most discerning of viewer to avoid her. So again, much as she vanquished Dick Cheney, she here would appear to beat out Zucker.
Except that Zucker, in his role as NBC uberlord, decreed it acceptable that Paris further her despicable dominance in celebrating celebrity mediocrity on his airwaves, so …
Man, this is a tough one.
- “My Name Is Earl:” 8 p.m. Thursday, NBC Channel 4.
There are entertainment cross-overs that you completely expect: Batman and Superman, or Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, or “CSI” and “CSI: Miami.”
Then there are those you wouldn’t expect: “Gilligan’s Island” and the Harlem Globetrotters, or Christopher Walken and Fat Boy Slim, or Chris Matthews and Ellen DeGeneres.
And then there’s Laurie Anderson and Andy Kaufman, another unlikely yet true story for April Fools Day. Wikipedia even suggests that they dated; I didn’t want to get into that, but in a phone conversation today, Anderson did speak of Kaufman fondly.
“I met him when he was doing his bongo thing,” Anderson recalled. “I went up after the show and said, ‘I love what you’re doing.’ I became a plant in his audience; it was really great fun.”
Anderson was actually around when Kaufman was into his bit involving wrassling ladies. “It was hard – he would really fight,” she remembered.
“We did that, and we would go to Coney Island and we’d do things like the ‘Test Your Strength’ stuff on the boardwalk,” she continued. “He’d make fun of the people doing it for a while and then I’d cry out, ‘Andy, please win me a bear!’ So he’d be ridiculing all the people doing it and then his turn comes and he hits the hammer on the platform and it reads, ‘Try Again, Weakling!’ And then he’d get angry and demand, ‘I want to see the manager!’ He was chaos-creating. It was completely entrancing to see how to break taboos in an interesting way.”
Another thing they have in common (sort of): R.E.M. wrote a song about Kaufman called “Man in the Moon;” Anderson was Artist-in-Residence at NASA in 2002.
The CW, in a bold attempt to make you think they still exist, will present yet another new reality show, "Farmer Wants a Wife," later this month. Think of it as "Hillbilly Bachelor" and you're close enough. (Remember: On this April Fools Day, we're not making anything up; it just feels like it.)
Ah, but the catch - there's always a catch - is that the farmer must pick the woman who'll slop the hogs and feed the chickens and grease the willy from a bunch of high-class big-city fancy-ladies who'll have to pretend to be excited by tractor pulls and squeezed teats (on cows, that is).
So, just a few things that caught my eye in the contestant bios:
Christa apparently believes the way to a simple farmer's heart is by accentuating one's alcoholism: "There are a million and one places to go in New York. Every corner you turn, there is a bar and I want to see them all! I've done a pretty good job accomplishing that."
Josie, a "Playboy cybergirl and aspiring actress," explains her strategy to win over our plainspoken guy who's happiest when he's on a tractor: List among your interests "traveling to exotic islands" and insist he get a little gumption: "One thing I hate are men who wake up and say 'I don't know where my career is going.'"
Kanisha has a good chance, since she seems to like losers: "I love going to a Los Angeles Clippers game. I'm a big fan." (Full disclosure: My grandfather was a farmer, so naturally I don't think of farmers as losers; I was the loser when he had me working the fields at age 8 for a quarter a day (where was Cesar Chavez then, huh?). Also, I have purchased Clippers tickets myself, but not this season.)
Krista's not even trying: She lists among her interests "snuggling with my skunk." Whether it's a real skunk or drugs, Krista may offer the rustic, somnolent charms of a sleepy rural community, but hardly in any way they'd prefer.
Of course, Krista might have a modicum of personality. Contrast her with Ashley, who at age 27 has amassed exactly one interest: "shoe shopping."
Nonetheless, ladies, and gentlemen, our winner: Brooke, who says, "I try to put God first in everything I do because I know I wouldn't be where I am today without my faith. I love my country boys, because no one looks better in a camo hat driving a big truck."
To commemorate April Fools Day, we’re going to present stories that sound like they should end with a cry of “April Fools!” but instead are absolutely true. That sounds like just about every other day on this blog, you grumble, but hey – on other days, I actually do make stuff up. Just play along.
First: Ray Romano will produce and star in a drama for TNT, and not just any drama, but one a TNT spokesman calls “a very special project for TNT.”
It’s called “Men of a Certain Age.” It’s about middle-aged guys dealing with middle-aged problems and “the unique bonds of male friendship.” Ray plays a neurotic divorced father (I always knew Deborah would leave him). His pals also would not fall under the rubric of “winner.”
Romano provided the requisite quote including a bit of a joke and the standard boilerplate press-release-ese: “(Series co-creator) Mike (Royce) and I have always had success writing what we know. What we know now is that we’re middle aged, neurotic and fat. We’re excited to be working with Michael Wright and TNT, who have been incredibly enthusiastic and supportive.”
TNT has also greenlit a show that can only be described as a “Mad Men” rip-off, “Truth in Advertising,” starring Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”) and Tom Cavanagh (“Ed”). They play two pals only one is promoted and one is not and that’s going to be a little tricky for them to get along after that.
But, hey. TNT is really ramping up its production; they currently have 20 shows in development. At this rate, it’ll have more decent scripted dramas than NBC by 2010, if not 2009.
About this blog
David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place.
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