May 2008 Archives

Let's just get this out of the way: Jemaine and Bret were brilliant. They were hilarious. I haven't seen such deadpan humor play so well in a venue this big since I saw Steven Wright more than 20 years ago. If you're rich enough to score tickets to Sunday's show at the Orpheum, you'll end up as happy as the scalper you bought them off of.

I don't want to dwell on their concert all that much, because if you know what I'm talking about, I don't have to explain it all over again, and if you don't, you've already tuned out. Explicating their banter can't possibly be as funny as hearing it live, so I'll sidestep that minefield but suffice it to say, it's self-deprecation elevated to an art form. And Jemaine had a nice screed aimed at douchebag audience members who were trying to download performances on their cell phones so they could post them on YouTube.

Random observation: The song they're most sick of performing seems to be "Bowie," based on how very truncated a version they hacked out Friday night.

Alas, they didn't do this song:

They did offer a few brand-new songs that should turn up in season two in 2009 - one, in which Jemaine did battle with a choir of ex-girlfriends, another celebrating their banal sexual "freakiness" and an uplifting spiritual number about "angels in the clouds" that should single-handedly deny them entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, at least that realm as defined by John Hagee.

So, anyway, here's what was annoying about Friday's show: Jesus Christ, people, can you quit already with shouting out the song requests? Have you ever been to a concert? Do you not realize that the band probably already pretty much knows what songs they're going to perform?

And particularly with a show like Flight of the Conchords, where all you're doing when screaming out is mucking up their comedic banter? Hey, guess what: It's not all about you. Even though you live in L.A. and are entitled beyond all rational thought.

Complaint No. 2 is aimed squarely at FotC's T-shirt designers, who were apparently tasked with creating the ugliest T-shirts on the planet. (And they had plenty of competition: For example, I've seen Neil Young live a whole scad of times in the past 25 years, and only seen maybe one or two T-Shirts that seemed remotely cool-looking enough to be worth buying.)

These aspiring poxes upon society succeeded: Most FotC T's looked like they were rejects from the '70s; they were all horrible, save for one. That one T, however, wasn't nearly attractive enough for anyone anywhere to think, "You know, that'll look good in my wardrobe."

A couple of particularly gruesome T-shirts referenced the song "Ladies of the World." Jemaine and Bret didn't even perform that song - it's like even they didn't want people to waste their money.

My favorite sentence of the day, just because it sort of seemed to come out of nowhere and also vaguely smacked of Too Much Information, comes from Roger Ebert:

"I went to AskJeeves.com and typed in 'How do female dogs masturbate?'"

It's funnier if you just let the thought linger, context-free, and just wonder what kind of weird sh!t Ebert is into these days. But, it's also funny when you know it's from Ebert's review of "Sex and the City."

It's less funny, but still kind of funny, if you read it in context.

Harvey Korman, one of the stars of "The Carol Burnett Show," died today at the age of 81, four months after suffering an aortic aneurysm. He worked a lot, from "Blazing Saddles" to voicing the Great Gazoo in "The Flintstones," but he was most celebrated for his unusual rapport with Tim Conway in particular on Burnett's show. (After their TV gigs became few and far between, they still toured together with a sketch-comedy act.)

Here's one of Korman and Conway's most famous bits. Korman is utterly incapable of keeping a straight face amidst Conway's slapstick; he positively melts in the face of such lunacy. It's always harder to stop laughing when you're not supposed to; Korman's fruitless efforts to keep it together is at least as funny as Conway's character's ineptitude.

As you've no doubt heard, Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an ad that imperils America because it features celebrity irritant Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that has petrified some wingnuts because they think it looks like something a terrorist would wear and that means Rachel Ray wants to kill America and will cajole her minions into joining forces with her to bring Western Civilization to rubble, or something like that. (Her presence in the pop-culture landscape does a good enough job of that, I'd think.)

So thanks to Michelle Malkin for her eternal vigilance. But I've done some investigating of my own, and have found more shocking evidence of the terrorists amongst us!

Laura Bush ...

Barack Obama ...

John McCain, preparing for his reign of terror as a Panamanian strongman ...

Howard Dean, head of the Democratic National Committee ...

President Bush, declaring himself dictator for life of Africa and the rest of the world ...

And then, doing what dictators for life always do to celebrate their ascension: Supping on the blood of innocent young life forms.

All Washington is atwitter over the fact that apparently, the word "atwitter" has reentered the vernacular. Well, that, and because of the highly unflattering portrait of the Bush Administration in former press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."

Among the charges that have gotten the pundits all in a lather in the past couple of days: The White House fired up a "political propaganda machine" to mislead Americans on the need for war with Iraq; Bush saying he didn't remember if he used cocaine; and Karl Rove and Scooter Libby misleading McClellan about their involvement in smearing former CIA agent Valerie Plame. McClellan was on the "Today" show this morning defending the book, and will discuss it again this evening on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

But read the book closer, and there are even more astonishing revelations:

* Bush got all excited the first time he was told it was time for his morning PDB, because he thought it meant peanut butter and jelly sandwich and not Presidential Daily Brief.

* Bush's first act as president was to have The Official Decider Dart Board© installed in the Oval Office at a cost of $39.95 to taxpayers.

* Bush had a pet monkey, Mr. Scruffles, whom he allowed to issue executive orders every Tuesday.

* Mr. Scruffles once dressed up in an Alberto Gonzales costume and fooled everyone in the West Wing.

* Bush once tried to improve himself by reading "Finnegan's Wake," which resulted in the verbal malapropisms that plague him to this day.

* Comparisons of Dick Cheney to Darth Vader are inaccurate. He's more like a cross between Dean Wormer in "Animal House" and Al Pacino's character in "The Devil's Advocate."

* McClellan was startled and a little scared when he visited the East Wing to consult with the President on a matter after hours, and was greeted by Laura in a zippered cherry-red leather mask.

* Karl Rove had a Blofeld action figure from the James Bond movie series on his desk.

* When feeling down, President Bush cheers himself up by treating himself to a Beer Smoothie.

* Ann Coulter taught Bush everything he knows.

As part of my research for today's story on Flight of the Conchords (with typos added for your inconvenience!), who will perform at L.A.'s Orpheum Theatre Friday and Sunday, I watched the entire first season of the New Zealand duo's HBO series in a marathon screening session with my pal Sheila (probably not her real name; I haven't checked), a friend without benefits with whom I have had a number of onesomes. Together, we divined a number of recurring themes and trends in the show that I feel forced, as it's my job and all, to share with you now.

First, here's a song from the band that they didn't manage to incorporate into their series:

Now, onto the recurring themes and trends not mentioned in that story linked above:

* Jemaine and Bret don't know how to dress to accommodate New York weather.

Early episodes of the show find characters with bright-pink noses, despite their wardrobe, indicating that they were performing scenes in freezing temperatures regardless of what the scene actually called for. And then, a mere episode or two later, you see them sweating their @sses off while trying to act all nonchalant.

* New Zealand kind of sucks.

Throughout the series, it's mistaken for Australia, which the characters Jemaine and Bret pretty much hate. Their manager Murray (Rhys Darby), who works for the New Zealand Consulate, has posters on his office walls that offer such wan selling points for the country as "Don't Expect Too Much - You'll Love It" and "It's Not Part of Australia;" when Jemaine is described by a cop as talking "like a robot," it's explained to her, "That's the New Zealand accent." All anyone they encounter knows about it is that "Lord of the Rings" was shot there.

But, as the guys will somewhat xenophobically remind you, Australia's much worse.

* These guys are more inept at women and relationships than, say, Bret Ratner.

Exhibit One:

Exhibit Two:

But the show was keen on striving for verisimilitude. When shooting the music video for "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)," the actress to whom Jemaine poured out his heart really was the most beautiful girl in the room. A production assistant who was a little prettier was sent for coffees while the sequence was blocked and shot.

* The show ran out of steam as its first season wore on.

The deadpan humor that fans loved was supplanted in later episodes by broad turns by supporting players that threatened to overwhelm Bret and Jemaine's subtle approach. Consider Will Forte's "actor" who agreed to play a record-company executive to bolster Murray's flagging spirits in episode 11, or Todd Berry and Demitri Martin as the novelty musicians in episode 12. Worse, they kind of ran out of songs to interpret into music videos as the show went along: In the last four episodes, only two songs (both in episode 10, which, just guessing, was shot earlier in the production cycle) turn up on the recent "Flight of the Conchords" CD. The last episode is relegated to not one but two lame "Flashdance" parodies. So perhaps it's a good thing that the second season has been pushed back to a 2009 premiere - they'll have more time, and stamina, to make all the episodes funny.

Ah, but that's a buzzkill note to end this entry on. So here're two versions of one of their most inspired parodies: "Bowie in Space," here performed years ago:

And here, on the show itself, when it was simply entitled "Bowie:"

Anyway, those Orpheum shows are long sold out, but eBay is thoughtfully offering you the chance to still score tickets (which originally cost $32 per) for, like, 10 times that amount or so.

And now, if you'll excuse me, business hours are over.

Hey, remember that war in Iraq? The one where we were gonna kick Saddam's @ss and be treated as liberators and score some cheap oil in the process?

Well, apparently, it's still going on.

Not that you can tell if you snap on the TV these days. Apparently, our liberal media just keeps on failing us when it comes to Iraq.

Former Bush White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in his upcoming book, "What Happened," "The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. In this case, the liberal media didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

And now, the liberal media has more or less forgotten to keep us up to date with what's going on over there in the desert:

"During the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of the newshole for network TV news. In 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent during that period. On cable networks it fell from 24 percent to 1 percent, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism."

As a result, by March 2008, a mere 28 percent of Americans knew that 4,000 military personnel had been killed in Iraq, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In another Pew poll last month, almost as many people thought the story of the Texas polygamist sect was as big as the Iraq war.

We've harped on this before, but maybe revisiting it now and again is OK when Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell calls it "the biggest political and moral issue of our time."

Of course, there are many reasons war coverage isn't what it used to be. War fatigue, for one - we're sick of the bad news. Americans can shirk from Colin Powell's "You break it, you bought it" doctrine and turn our attentions to celebrity baby bumps and David Cook's surprise "Idol" win before he skulks off into obscurity. Also, anyone left with a passing interest in the real world has turned attention to the election and Hillary Clinton's vow to keep campaigning until Barack Obama finally realizes that even though he's raised more money, draws bigger crowds and has more delegates, she's actually the better campaigner.

Plus, turns out that not only is throwing a war expensive - we're ponying up $5,000 a second to achieve a stalemate, by some estimates - but so is covering it. And given how on the ropes the media are these days, there are far fewer correspondents still based in Baghdad.

Besides, outside of a major loss of American lives, what's going on in Iraq is your everyday, garden-variety chaos, and therefore not of that much interest to most Americans, allowing them to tune out. Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner notes, "American deaths are pretty small, and the children of the political, business and chattering classes are not dying, and so the war no longer is on the radar screen most of the time. The bad economy has replaced it, and no one has yet succeeded in tying the trillion-dollar war to the decline in the economy." Which means maybe we'll pay attention again once we realize its devastating impact on our pocketbooks.

And, of course, there's the White House's hope that we will just forget the whole thing, by denying Americans the ability to see the war's toll.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank recently covered, or tried to cover, the funeral of a highly decorated solider at Arlington cemetery, where the press was kept far from the proceedings - even though the soldier's family wanted them to cover it:

"'There will be a yellow rope in the face of the next of kin,' protested one photographer with a large telephoto lens.

"'This is the best shot you're going to get,' a man from the cemetery replied.

"'We're not going to be able to hear a thing,' a reporter argued.

"'Mm-hmm,' an Arlington official answered."

We're not going to be able to hear a thing. And that's just how our government prefers it.

If you want to brand yourself as King of the Ubergeeks, all you need do is buy a full-size Cylon Centurion Robot from "Battlestar Galactica."

You can get one from either the dopey original series or the cool new one. These Cylons are seven feet tall, weight 300 pounds, have little LED lighting effects in their visors - and sell for a cool $7,900. (That's, like, $8,000 minus the $100 Hopeless-Nerd Rebate.)

(By the way, please note that Cylon Centurion Robots are famously designed to kill humans. The manufacturer disavows anything that might happen to humans you allow near your Cylon Centurion Robot.)

From the press release:

"The Cylon Centurion replicas were both molded and hand-sculpted to perfection in [Fred] Barton's Los Angeles studios using an original costume from the 1970s and a computer generated, automated foam-cut Cylon, which was scaled to the imposing height of seven feet. The body is made of 100% fiberglass. The classic Cylon Centurion boasts a 'reflective showroom finish,' while the Cylon from the current series bears a 'distressed multi-tone finish.' Both incorporate synchronized stereo sound and lighting effects, advanced electronics and red LED light effects."

I recognize that I cannot dissuade any true "Battlestar" fan from blowing their life savings on one of these steroidal toys. But just let me say this: Oh, pathetic geek who is considering buying a giant play-pretend robot, remember that pact you made with yourself to get laid some time before you died? $7,900 will go a long way to making that dream come true! And you don't have to squander your cash on one of those Eliot Spitzer three-diamond whores - you can just help yourself to a crack-addicted streetwalker and, for that money, get laid, like, a thousand times!

For a while, it seemed inconceivable that the actors would go on strike after seeing what a mess of things the writers strike made of everything. Then, everyone in town that you spoke to seemed resigned that the actors were hellbent on striking, and that the producers were too obstinate to prevent it or even care all that much.

So that big gust of wind today was a collective sigh now that AFTRA has tentatively agreed to a new contract with the producers. SAG, which fumbled its first round of negotiations and got the producers to walk out on them (which isn't hard - the producers would walk out of a screening of "Iron Man"), is now expected to follow suit. Your TV shows are safe for another three years.

Or maybe that big gust of wind today was just a big gust of wind. Weather here's been crazy of late.

On Monday, June 2, Turner Classic Movies will present four films by Sydney Pollack, the almost unfairly talented director/producer who died Monday and who later in his career turned in some nicely wicked little performances in other people's films (his presence doesn't rescue "Made of Honor," alas). The schedule (all times PCT):

5 p.m.: "The Slender Thread," Pollack's first film, starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.
7 p.m.: "Three Days of the Condor," the Oscar-nominated conspiracy thriller starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.
9 p.m.: "Tootsie," the beloved gender-bending comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange.
11 p.m.: "Jeremiah Johnson," starring Robert Redford as a mountain man who seeks revenge when he loses his family.

On July 7, TCM will introduce a new series, "Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence" (full disclosure: Elvis is a friend of mine); its first episode will feature one of the last interviews Pollack gave, followed by "Tootsie" and then "An American in Paris," a movie Pollack said was an influence on his own work. (The show's title must be a bit of a joke, as Elvis is a teetotaler.)

* UPDATE: Oxygen's jumping on the bandwagon: It'll present Pollack's "The Way We Were" Sunday at 1 p.m. (That one, I wouldn't personally watch so much.)

*

Speaking of farewells, the Washington Post's magazine columnist Peter Carlson offered this piquant insight in his farewell missive:

"In the last 12 years, there have been many changes in magazines, but some things never change. For instance, Cosmopolitan and Glamour keep running sex tips and discovering hitherto unknown sex acts pretty much every month. For all those years, I have assiduously studied approximately 2,638,419 sex advice articles, and I believe I can now boil down all their wisdom into two simple rules:

"1) Insert tab A into slot B.

"2) Season to taste."

* UPDATE: Their own press release was wrong. The job's on the show itself, not the Internet incarnation.

I know a lot of these open casting calls tend to be just publicity stunts and then they go and hire a known professional anyway, but KNBC is having an online contest for "1st Look Los Angeles," a - well, let them describe it:

"In entertaining, short video episodes, KNBC/LX.TV shows you the newest and most exclusive destinations in food, nightlife, art, shopping, fashion, wellness, weekend escapes and family living. Their very own expert hosts take you behind the scenes for first-look access to the cutting edge of luxury lifestyle and the people who define it."

Well, that's something I know absolutely nothing about, so I'm out. (What does "expert hosts" mean? What are they expert at? Hosting or being pampered?) Anyway:

"KNBC/LX.TV is looking for an enthusiastic and talented professional who wants to host KNBC/LX.TV '1st Look Los Angeles.' The perfect candidate should demonstrate the ability to enunciate, pace, vocalize, and emphasize points effectively. The one winner will become a host of the online show. - (lookit here, this was the sentence in the press release that was wrong)" (Click on the above link for more information on how to apply. Contest ends June 14.)

Some advice: Given the kind of show it is, just don't try to do anything substantive, be perky and superficial and edit the bejeepers out of your clip, and you'll do just fine. And don't use that Bill O'Reilly "Inside Edition" clip as your audition tape.

The CW, which turned its Sunday-night programming bloc to the generically named Media Rights Capital because, you know, going to the trouble of developing and producing shows is sooo unglamorous and boring and even, like, hard, announced what MRC has come up with on the fly.

And it's safe to say that they came up with the laziest-sounding batch of shows since CBS cooked up its reality programming to serve as stopgaps during the writers strike. Take a look:

"In Harm's Way:" "A reality show that looks at lives of people doing dangerous jobs." Aren't there, like, about 20 of these already on the air? (And NBC has yet another one or two come summer 2009.) The executive producer is Craig Piligian, who's simply cribbing from himself, as he already does Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs."

"Surviving Suburbia:" "Half-hour comedy about a family and their new neighbors." Yes, that's the title, and yes, that's the logline as provided by Mr. CW Publicity. Oh, I bet the fur is going to fly on this one. Some very lucky actor is going to get to deliver an Emmy-clip soliloquy about those damn kids with their skateboards in his driveway.

"Valentine, Inc.:" "One-hour drama/comedy about an agency that finds lost loves, true loves and mends broken hearts." Have you noticed there haven't been any descriptions of any of the characters on these shows? And that the descriptions of the shows themselves amount to not much more than "Things happen, and characters respond to them"?

"Easy Money:" "One-hour drama about a family that runs a high-interest loan business." ZZzzzzzz. Huh? Oh, sorry; dozed off there. Clever title, don't you think, and can't wait for the expository scenes explaining how they figure out math for the interest rates.

More from the press release: "Our approach ... is simple: when you put talented people like our artist partners and the advertising folks together in a room, they come up with smart and creative solutions to problems."

At least they admit that this lineup is a "problem."

MEDIA ALERT: TORI SPELLING SIGHTING

The New York Times offers one of those classic we're-saying-this-though-the-statistics-don't-really-bear-it-out-all-that-convincingly stories on the decline of Oprah Winfrey.

Viewership for her syndicated afternoon show is down 7% (the broadcast networks would kill for attrition that teeny in primetime), but on the other hand, she had huge ratings when she interviewed that pregnant guy and it's still the No. 1 talk show. Her magazine's circulation is down from 2004, though it had a bit of an uptick in the past year. Her most recent book-club selection sold faster than any other, but was criticized for its New-Agey b.s. Her primetime reality show "Oprah's Big Give" started strong but petered out (probably precisely because she wasn't on it much, though the Times doesn't explore that option). Her media empire is expanding, but "The Rachel Ray Teeth-Scraping-on-Concrete Hour," which she produces, is sliding in the ratings (wouldn't that be more on Rachel Ray than Oprah?). And so on.

The Times attributes this sort of blip in her popularity to a) her endorsement of Barack Obama for President, which upset all the middle-age white ladies who watch her show who apparently think one powerful black person in America is enough, and b) her sheer ubiquity (up next: Oprah's own cable network, OWN, which will truck in empowering programming (empowering for who?).

Yeah, well; we should all have Oprah's problems. In a media world that rabidly chases the hot new thing, she's been around, like, forever, and shows no signs of going anywhere anytime soon. Wonder what Oprah did to get on the writer's bad side. But I look forward to the Times' "Drinking Water: Is It Passé?" expose.

*

Media Bistro got all wound up when it was announced this morning that Katie Couric would be appearing on the "Today" show on Wednesday. Calm down, guys; it's not what you think (hope?). She'll be appearing with Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson to announce a joint network effort, "Stand Up to Cancer," that'll air Sept. 5 simultaneously on all three networks and feature singers and stars raising money for cancer research.

*

NBC's stated that its 2008-09 is written in pencil, and today, it got out a big pink eraser: Those "SNL" political specials set to run on Thursdays in October have gone the way of wit in general on "SNL." Instead, "Kath & Kim," the sitcom starring Molly Shannon and Selma Blair based on the Australian comedy, will take over, moving from its originally scheduled post-"Biggest Loser" timeslot.

Which makes sense, since "Biggest Loser" and "Kath & Kim" (whose characters are big losers of another sort) were hardly complementary shows - "Biggest Loser" is ostensibly uplifting, while "Kath & Kim" (the Australian version, at least) is acerbic and dysfunctional, which should make it compatible with its new lead-in, "The Office." But what will this do to that "Office" spin-off, which was already promised that timeslot? (On Tuesdays, "Biggest Loser" will simply loosen its belt and expand from 90 minutes to a flabbier two hours.)

*

Remember Weekly Reader? You know, that little newspaper you got in elementary school that reported on playground equipment shaped like whales and stuff? No? Well, let's try this tack: Remember elementary school?

Anyway, according to a press release issued today, Weekly Reader is a Franchise®, and a Franchise® looking to expand its empire, at that (look out, Oprah! You've got competition!).

And how do they plan to do that? By spreading out into TV and DVD productions, of course. Which wouldn't really seem to encourage reading all that much, but Weekly Watcher doesn't quite trip off the tongue so agreeably.

Oh, those funny, funny court jesters at Fox News Channel. Commenting yesterday on Hillary Clinton's statement Friday that she's staying in the race because you just never know what could happen in that crazy month of June - you know, the month that Bobby Kennedy got assassinated (nudge nudge, wink wink) - Fox's Liz Trotta not only pilloried Hillary for the out-of-line comment, but she also endorsed it:

"And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama. Um, uh, Obama. Well both, if we could." (Laughs)

Ho ho ho - good one, Liz. I bet you're an absolute scream at airport security checkpoints, laughing about all those comedy bombs in your luggage. But, you know, you kind of lose style points if you're going to ding Hillary for doing the same thing you just did.

Here's your first clue that Presidential campaigns are too long these days and have reached the breaking point: When a candidate who has slung enough mud to fill the Grand Canyon and insists she'll be alert enough to answer the phone at 3 a.m. raises the specter of assassination during a presidential race, either out of exhaustion or for reasons more cynical, and pundits joke about it.

In related news, Fox today announced that it was promoting Trotta to Executive Viceroy of its Ministry of Information. And Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh kicked themselves for not thinking up the line first.

Our good friends at LA.com are too busy enjoying the holiday, so the duty of posting these reviews falls to us:

"Recount:"

Some Democrats kvetched long and loudly about how Al Gore was cheated out of the 2000 Presidential election by malfeasance in Florida and the Supreme Court's hijacking of the public's will. Conservatives offered them this helpful bromide: Get over it, already.

Which seemed sensible, if slightly insensitive, advice. One wonders how many of those triumphal champions would repeat those words to those bitter losers today, with that winner's approval rating at an all-time low and 80 percent of Americans believing the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Still, I wasn't particularly looking forward to "Recount," HBO's docudrama about the 2000 Florida debacle, as I expected the whiff of sour grapes to emanate pungently from it. And I wasn't wrong, but despite its self-righteously indignant stance and the fact that anyone who might watch it already knows how things turn out, it's still eminently watchable.

Gore and George W. Bush are but peripheral players in this film, which is most concerned with the "street fight" their minions notoriously engaged in in Florida. Essentially, the film's conceit is that Gore had a legitimate beef, but his milquetoast consigliores weren't nearly as adept at knife-fights as Bush's cutthroat strategists, who understood what American politics were (ital) really (end ital) all about.

Kevin Spacey stars as Ron Klain, Gore's former chief of staff who was dismissed then brought back in at a late date to work on his campaign. He leads the charge when Florida's vote becomes hopelessly convoluted on Election Night (there is much archival footage of the news networks' fumbling coverage of that evening), particularly when the Democrats' go-to man, Warren Christopher (John Hurt), proves vexingly ineffectual.

There are no such worries on the Republicans' side: James Baker (Tom Wilkinson) is in his element when it comes to manipulating media coverage; he proceeds, hammer and tongs, to utterly discredit any argument, legal, moral or otherwise, that Gore might have.

Parts of "Recount," such as a lowly Gore operative's efforts to prevent him from delivering a concession speech on Election Night as results become murkier, play, as scripted by newcomer Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach (the "Austin Powers" and "Meet the Parents" movies), like a political thriller. Elsewhere, as the proceedings become mired in legal minutiae, the viewer is given far too long to remember that he or she already knows how this plays out and wonder why it merits a replay in 2008.

What enlivens "Recount" are supporting performances, such as Wilkinson's, Denis Leary's as a Democratic strategist and Laura Dern's as Katherine Harris, who was then Florida's Secretary of State, who essentially helped give the victory to Bush.

Dern's turn as Harris is hilarious, as she essays the self-deluded ditziness that eventually turned even staunch Republicans against her in the 2006 Congressional election.

Harris' ultimate fate is not mentioned in "Recount," however, nor is the ironic fact that a post-Inaugural count of the votes in Florida found that if all votes had been counted in the manner requested by Bush, Gore would have won, and if all votes had been counted in the way Gore requested, Bush would have won.

But then, once all those votes had been counted (and recounted, and then recounted again, at a cost of nearly $1 million), the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 had already occurred, and America needed a President to rally around more than the truth, and so those results were pretty much buried by the media. In that regard, "Recount" not only buries its lead; it strangles it offscreen.

- "Recount:" 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. Monday, 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. Thursday, 9:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. June 4, 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. June 8 and 4 p.m. June 14, HBO.

*

"Denise Richards: It's Complicated" and "Living Lohan"

Before becoming one of the four horsemen of the impending cultural apocalypse, E! used to be known - if it was known at all - as a channel that provided gushing, brown-nosing entertainment coverage with but one show, "Talk Soup" (now simply "The Soup"), that turned a cheekily askance eye at the entertainment-industrial complex.

Today, it's ground zero for some of the most lurid "reality" shows to pollute basic cable, such as "The Girls Next Door" (featuring Hugh Hefner), "Dr. 90210" (a plastic surgeon to the stars), "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" (starring the star of a notorious Internet sex tape) and "Snoop Dogg's Father Hood" (widely believed to be scripted due to its out-sized situations).

Tonight, it adds two more dubious contributions to Western Civilization: "Denise Richards: It's Complicated" and "Living Lohan," two more reality shows that exist only to exploit (and, largely, frustrate) America's insatiable craving for tabloid fodder, a hunger perhaps even more unhealthy than its hankering for Big Macs.

"It's Complicated" is the better of the two shows, if only because it's nominally more honest. Even though participants are interviewed against greenscreens that recreate a faux bucolic domestic existence, and the show wistfully notes that she currently lives in a small town - heck, her (ital) ranch (end ital) is the size of a small town).

Richards, today best known for her messy divorce from Charlie Sheen, makes no bones about being attracted to what her sister calls "self-absorbed Hollywood a--holes;" when told she needs to date "normal" guys, she replies, "To me, 'normal' is a famous person or a rock star."

Tonight's installment features not one but two scenes featuring pigs having sex, which seems a bit of a metaphor for her experiences in Hollywood. But at least the scenes aren't contrivances - she lives with 10 dogs, three cats and, by the end of tonight's episode, three pigs.

Still, one imagines there are more interesting things going on in Richards' life than seeking out a stud boar for her sow or sitting at the DMV awaiting word on whether she can change the name on her driver's license back from Sheen back to Richards. There is one sort of funny scene in which she goes on a blind date and the guy mentions her film "Wild Things" - which features a notorious scene between her and actress Neve Campbell - and all he wants to talk about is how good Matt Dillon was in the movie.

By contrast, "Living Lohan" is not only a fraud, but a tedious, self-aggrandizing fraud. It's about Lindsay Lohan's stage mom, Dina, who, having lost control over her older daughter (whose well-documented woes she essentially blames on "the idiot people ... trashing us"), has decided to turn her attentions to transforming her 14-year-old daughter, Ali, into a pop icon.

(Dina insists Lindsay will not appear on her show, so the editors opt for the next-best thing - the opening minutes of tonight's premiere focus on family snapshots of Lindsay around Dina's Long Island mansion and onscreen graphics insist to viewers that she's on the phone with her daughter, even if her voice is never heard.)

There's an attempt to milk drama from a producer working with Ali claiming to the tabloids to be dating Lindsay. In other words, he's using Dina's daughters to boost his career in the same way that she's using E! to boost Ali's. Dina thinks that makes him a real low-life barnacle.

With Dina Lohan's behavior widely reported, the fact that Dina also serves as an executive producer on the show results in what feels like an utter white-washing of whatever actually happened. We see Dina go out for a night on the town, but the events are cut short. Instead, the focus is on Ali's diligent quest to find the best material for an upcoming album.

Nonetheless, all the judicious editing in the world can't quite mask Dina's domineering and calculating nature. Had "Living Lohan's" producers been given free reign, the show might've been a steroidal exercise in Schadenfreude and an exquisite train wreck; as is, it's simply a train kind of vaguely bumping into another train and masking any residual damage, which simply isn't interesting to anyone.

Both shows feature similar lines: "There's nothing more important than family to me," Dina insists; Richards vows, "My life is all about family." Were that so, wouldn't they have devoted their energies to their kids away from the intrusive purviews of ogling cameras?

- "Denise Richards: It's Complicated:" 10 p.m. Mondays, E!
- "Living Lohan:" 10:30 p.m. Mondays, E!

*

"The Andromeda Strain"

It's a good time to remake "The Andromeda Strain," Michael Crichton's 1969 novel about a micro-organism from the cosmos that seemingly can't be killed but is awfully good at killing anything it touches. Paranoia over biological weapons, the SARS scare, a hypochondriac populace - just about everyone has a decent reason to fear for their health, if not their lives, these days.

Directed by Mikael Salomon (TNT's "The Company" and "The Grid") from a screenplay by Robert Schenkkan [cq] (the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "The Kentucky Cycle"), A&E's new four-hour miniseries hews closely enough to the source material, while adding more cutting-edge technobabble and incorporating the current geopolitical turmoil and environmental concerns into its melodrama.

Tonight's installment is burdened with all the narrative heavy lifting, so it provides a bit of a bumpy start. An orbiting satellite crashes into Piedmont, Utah, instantly killing everyone there but an infant and an old drunk. Wildfire, a team of medical specialists - Drs. Stone (Benjamin Bratt), Noyce (Miller), Tsi (Daniel Dae Kim), Barton (Viola Davis) and Keene (Ricky Schroder) - are summoned to assemble in a high-tech underground bunker and figure out how to resolve the situation, while the military, led by General Mancheck (Andre Braugher), tries to quarantine the area.

Trouble is, they can't figure out whether the alien organism found on the satellite is a virus, bacteria or some exotic life form, and it proves remarkably adept at adjusting to their assorted remedies, as well as finding faster, more efficient ways to kill. And the military must also contend with a brash (is there any other kind?) reporter (Eric McCormack) who stumbles upon the story.

Schenkkan's script briskly delivers the exposition, but offers some awfully bland dialogue and characterizations and rote friction between the doctors and the reporter and his boss. (Not to mention some trite plot detours - as dire as the situation is, a couple of doctors can still find time for a smooch or two.) Salomon's direction undercuts tonight's climax - a race-against-the-clock sequence is so languid that you just know something worse is just around the corner.

And a lot of the bit players who show up just long enough to succumb to the malady are a tad, shall we say, histrionic in delivering their death screeches. I played a sequence over the phone for a friend who called up and who couldn't stop laughing.

But Salomon ratchets up the suspense quite efficiently in the second episode, as everything goes to hell. (You could probably skip tonight and watch Tuesday without missing too much important.) There's only one big inadvertent laugh, a slo-mo close-up of a severed thumb spinning through the air; too bad it happens right at the climax.

"The Andromeda Strain" fits pretty snugly in the wheelhouse of TV spectacles with just enough intrigue and star power to keep you engaged but not quite enough cheese to send you lunging for your remote.

- "The Andromeda Strain:" 9 p.m. tonight and Tuesday, A&E.

Online polls are invariably worthless. So let's talk about one.

TV.com asked people which TV character they'd most like to see have their own series, and 8,000 people had enough free time on their hands to respond (after all, they were at TV.com).

They released their results, but didn't discuss their methodology. For example, were those who turned up on the forthcoming list offered by TV.com as examples? Was there even a list, or did they just let people name characters at random, and as late-coming voters turned up, too lazy to think through the hundreds of characters on TV, just look at those who had already received votes and picked one of those? Did they just pull these numbers out of their @ss?

So many questions, so few answers. Anyway, the results:

Barney, "How I Met Your Mother" (22%)
Sawyer, "Lost" (20%)
Lex Luthor, "Smallville" (19%)
Claire Bennet, "Heroes" (10%)
Elliot Reid, "Scrubs" (8%)
Chuck, "Gossip Girl" (8%)
Gabrielle Solis, "Desperate Housewives" (6%)
Joy Turner, "My Name is Earl" (5%)
George O'Malley, "Grey's Anatomy" (3%)

To which I can only respond: Are you people kidding me?

First off, several of these characters - Barney, Joy and Gabrielle - all adhere to the less-is-more edict for supporting players and ensemble cast members: They come in, they work their magic for a few scenes, and they shuffle off, leaving viewers sated. Any more of them and you'd actually kind of get sick of them. (30 solid minutes of Joy in particular would truly be nails on a chalkboard.) One spinoff show based on a peripheral character, "Frasier," worked because they tamped him down a smidge and surrounded him with characters even more neurotic than he (and, in the early seasons at least, had inspired writing).

As for Elliot, Chuck and George: People want spinoffs (or, in the case of George, more spinoffs) of "Scrubs," "Gossip Girl" and "Grey's Anatomy?"

Sawyer, Lex and Claire are vaguely more intriguing (though Lex'd never happen, since Michael Rosenbaum has finally bolted from the show so he can grow his hair out again). "Lex's Lair" might be a fun show, essaying the further development of a sociopath, but there was a show that tried this, "Profit" (starring, coincidentally, "Heroes"' Adrian Pasdar), and, good as it was, no one watched it. And what would Claire's spin-off show be? Claire breaks free of the worldwide conspiracy, locates a high school where she can be a cheerleader but never quite fits in, and still finds herself battling evil? Again, already been done: It was called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." And Sawyer's penchant for being a selfish Southern con man who dispenses annoying nicknames to everyone is President Bush's shtick.

Get ready, because I'm going to ask you to consider this same question, but I'm not only going to answer it, but present a pitch of each resulting spinoff show. And, after I land four or five development deals based upon my inspired ideas, will stand down as Mayor of Television and ascend to my celebrated new title, Lt. Governor of Television:

* Bunk of "The Wire;" "Bunk Beds... :" Tiring of the unwinnable war on drugs in Baltimore, former cop Bunk (Wendell Pierce) decides to traverse the country and find out how many fine ladies his smooth act as a hard-drinking, stogie-chomping charmer he can actually seduce in this reality series.

* Peggy of "Mad Men;" "California Dreamin':" In this hard-hitting drama set in 1967, up-and-coming ad executive Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), disgusted with being exploited by The Man (or Mad Men), heads to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, where she uses her Madison-Avenue-honed rhetorical skills to create such memorable anti-war slogans as "Hell no, we won't go, unless you ask nicely!", "You knocked my block off, LBJ!" "You sank my battleship, LBJ!" and "Make Love with Weasly Little Advertising Bastards, Not War with Weasly Little Advertising Bastards - Wait; Let Me Rethink That One."

* Mel of "Flight of the Conchords;" "Mel, Born Again:" Power-groupie Mel (Kristen Schaal), having underscored her resolve for personal glory in utterly emasculating her disgraced husband Doug, opts to prove once more that she gets whatever she wants by running for President of the United States, which she continues to pursue despite Barack Obama having instituted several restraining orders against her by the United States of America.

* Earl of "Saving Grace;" "Paradise Lost" AKA "Heaven Help Us" AKA "Earl Is My Name" AKA "It's a Miserable Life:" After God discovers how Earl (Leon Rippy) has been goofing around with Grace's spiritual life to no apparent result, He banishes him to his most difficult assignment - rehabilitating and bringing back into the fold such insufferably nutball preachers as Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee.

* That extra off to the left in that scene set at a crummy chain restaurant in "According to Jim;" "Spreading My Trimmed Wings:" Meg (Denise Thorne-Stoukas), an attractive if humble and roundly ignored young woman who believes better things await her if she accepts Tom Stoppard's philosophy that all dramatic characters are the stars of their own dramas, attempts to break out of her stereotype as a bit player eternally consigned to the sidelines of other, more charismatic characters' sagas. Her aspirations to relevance are routinely rebuffed as she attempts to essay the lives of an E.R. nurse, a Senator's assistant, a druglord's lover and an alpaca farmer in this wacky sitcom/powerful avant-garde drama.

* Dick Cheney of sundry Fox News interview shows, "All in the Military-Industrial Complex:" This cutting-edge, socially relevant sitcom features a Lion in Winter sitting in his favorite easy chair and dismissively insulting his wife, neighbors and anyone who questions his foreign policy as "dingbats;" routinely mocking his daughter's lover as "Tofu-head;" and launching pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Iran, North Korea and France.

OK, what are your thoughts? What supporting character would you like to see get his/her own series? Brilliant - well, at least coherent - responses of more than 7,105 words will be eligible for a brand new iPhone! Maybe.

You know it's a slow cycle in the entertainment world when the stars of E! reality shows are getting face time on "The View" and "Late Show with David Letterman." But then, these aren't exactly just any old lame reality shows; they both carry the fetid whiff of exploiting the exploitation of the tabloids - "Living Lohan" and "Denise Richards: It's Complicated," both of which premiere Monday.

Both shows feature similar lines: "There's nothing more important than family to me," Dina says. "My life is all about family," Denise says. And we all know the best way to demonstrate that is to trot one's kids out for public inspection on reality shows for an easy paycheck.

"Living Lohan" focuses on Dina Lohan, who demonstrates some of the mother-of-the-year qualities that has resulted in daughter Lindsay emerging as the paragon of virtue that she is today. Here, we see her working her magic on 14-year-old Ali, hellbent to transform her into a star, as well, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Lindsay has so tainted the brand that the only people who would be anxious to work with her are charlatans looking to make a quick buck off the name but incapable of providing quality material.

When a record producer working with Ali claims in the tabloids to be dating Lindsay - he's using Dina's daughters to boost his career in the same way that she's using E! to boost Ali's - Dina thinks that's beneath contempt. OK, Dina, you're halfway there; now, just connect the dots ...

As for Richards, her kids don't turn up much; it's more about how her life is a mess because she freely admits she's attracted to celebrity @ssholes. So it offers up high-powered sequences of her sitting around in the DMV and seeking out a boar stud for her sow. Monday's installment features not one but two scenes of pigs humping, which means someone at E! actually understands what a metaphor is.

A full review will come Monday in the Daily News. If that's not something to live for, I don't know what is.

Kudos to CBS, winners of this year's coveted prize for First Network to Release Its Fall-Season Pilots. "Project Gary," "Worst Week," "The Mentalist," "The Ex List" and trailers for "Eleventh Hour" and the midseason series "Harper's Island" arrived a week after the network unveiled them at the New York upfront. I'll start viewing them as soon as my shipment of Kaopectate arrives. (Oh, but I'm the kidder.)

By contrast, NBC announced its fall schedule a month ago, and still nothing. That's because NBC no longer believes in shooting pilots (although they did shoot a few), so they don't have anything to show critics yet.

*

Speaking of NBC, check out this Valentine to the network from the New York Times:

"'Shark,' a drama that CBS is canceling, was seen by more people last week than any other NBC show but '(Law & Order:) SVU.'

"The network's prime-time average of 5.5 million viewers last week, was just more than half of first-place CBS' average."

And things aren't looking up for the network, either: "American Gladiators," which did fine this past winter as stopgap programming during the writers strike, was seen by a mere 4 million viewers on Monday, as was a two-hour bloc of the ultimate in timeslot-filling/time-killing programming, "Most Outrageus Moments," last night. (This is still sweeps month, right? Has NBC just curled into the fetal position and decide to sit this one out?)

*

It may be the easiest job on the planet: Step into a studio and read a few lines every now and again for about 30 minutes to an hour. And, it pays well, too: About $360,000.00 per session. But those poor, beleaguered employees - Hollywood's migrant farm workers - believe they deserve $500,000 for that hour out of their life.

And so, production on "The Simpsons" has ground to a halt, until Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer work out a deal with Fox that pays them handsomely for their efforts. The show may lose two episodes from its run next season due to the walkout.

That's $3 million per episode, without even throwing in the writers, guest stars or any of the animation. Sunday's season finale was seen by six million viewers. So the vocal talent will be making about $1 for every 12 viewers the show has these days.

Of course, The "Simpsons" Six point out that given all the toys and DVDs and toys and T-shirts and toys and amusement-park rides and toys out there, the show can afford to pay them for their contributions that made Fox owner Rupert Murdoch even more obscenely wealthy than he was before. And they have a point. But if the Korean animation studio were to make the same point, Fox'd simply find another Korean animation studio to produce the show. And if the writers were to make that point, new writers would be brought in. (Heck, new writers are brought in all the time once every last drop of comedy is squeezed out of the old ones.) In 1998, when the vocal talent first went on strike, Fox considered auditioning "Simpsons" impersonators for the jobs.

But all is expected to be resolved, and peaceably, and maybe this week.

For National Geographic's upcoming documentary, "Stonehenge Decoded," they went to the eminent source for all things Stonehenge: Spinal Tap lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel. Unfortunately, his interview ended up on the cutting-room floor, but at least they posted the outtakes here.

*

An almost equally blithering interview (albeit unintentional in this case) with someone whose myopia knows no bounds can be found in ABC's profile of US Magazine's brain trust, in which a pretty blinkered notion of the importance of celebrity and how to best achieve it is laid out in hilariously chilling fashion. Some highlights:

Janice Min, editor: "Those other traditional avenues to determine your fame and popularity [she's referring to making music and starring in films and TV shows - you know, actually having some talent] don't have as much potency as [appearing on] the red carpet these days."

Peter Grossman, photo editor: "The word news means something different to us than other people." Clearly. But, he admits they have their standards: "Britney getting sushi is not a cover story." The idea that he even has to explain this speaks volumes.

Heidi Montag, star of "The Hills," the MTV reality show/paean to superficiality which owes almost all of its popularity to US's never-ending coverage: "I think reality shows are harder than being in a film sometimes."

*

Before they crown David Archuleta the new "American Idol" tonight, be aware that your relative lack of interest in this season isn't just some random phenomenon - someone did a whole study on this and scientifically discovered that almost no one cares.

A constituent of Your Mayor relayed this to me, expressing doubt in my ability to exist.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There's inspiration for all of us in that, despite being afflicted with the crippling setback of not actually existing, I still manage to update this blog on a consistent basis. So if I can do this, you can achieve your dreams, as well! Reach for the stars!

Disclaimer: Ability to reach for the stars not available in all individuals. Consult local regulations and restrictions.

No sooner do I post that last entry than an even stupider awards show pops up. "The Movie Preview Awards" celebrates film trailers, those time-killing coming-attractions you watch before the movie you paid to see. They're often better than the film itself, but that's no reason to dedicate two hours of primetime coverage to honoring them.

Categories include Trailer of the Year, Best Summer Blockbuster Trailer, Best Comedy Trailer, Best Action Trailer and the Golden Fleece Award, honoring the best trailer for a bad movie (should the winner be proud that they won?)

Anyway, they're handing these things out Monday at 8 p.m. on MyNetworkTV, the network so cheap they can't afford space bars on their computer keyboards.

Bravo, realizing that there are precious few awards shows out there for the general population to ignore, has seen fit to create yet another: "The A-List Awards," which will be presented June 12.

How misbegotten is this particular round of unwanted trophies? Consider: One category has Barack Obama competing against Britney Spears, Ryan Seacrest and Nicole Richie (what? Paris Hilton couldn't insinuate herself in there somewhere? After all, that category celebrates the most ubiquitous pop-culture presence, and Paris pretty much would seem to have that one nailed, unless Richie signed some sort of deal with Bravo agreeing to appear).

Given the name, you can probably guess that the awards celebrate vague celebrity over anyone who's genuinely deserving of attention. It's TV's ultimate version of the velvet rope at a club - some guy at the door decides if you merit attention, regardless of whether you have a PhD or just a really tight dress. They'd be more honest but probably less audience-on-target if they called them "The Superficiality Honorifics."

Categories include: Person whose celebrity was created wholly by the Internets (Perez Hilton and Obama Girl are among the nominees), hippest TV show ("Gossip Girl" is a nominee - boy, those New Yorkers really love their guilty pleasures), most assertively annoying reality show personalities (obviously, that's not how Bravo puts it, but that's how the nominees shake out - you know, if you're giving awards to reality show participants, how cool can you really be? (oh, right - Bravo airs tons of reality shows)), and hippest celebrity accessory (you wonder who'll accept this one, given that the nominees include "a baby" and "rehab stint").

So, yeah, they're jokey only not really, since they're also feting designers, chefs and restaurant owners (hmm - Bravo has reality shows featuring designers and chefs...).

The only category mysteriously missing is "The A-List Uselessly Self-Aggrandizing Awards Show," which Bravo could reward to itself, thereby allowing the ceremony to fold itself and disappear into a black hole of omphaloskepsis. One guesses this will draw the same sort of star power of this year's Golden Globe Awards or the year the AFI Awards tried to go national on CBS only to have no major winner attend.

Check back soon for an announcement for the prestigious Mayor of Television's Awards for Excellence in Stuff That's Sitting Around on My Desk! Nominees include "Bull Terrier Bobble-Head from Fox's Short-Lived Series 'Keen Eddie,'" "Masked Wrestling Action Figures in a Mexican-Wrestling Ring," "African Virtuoses: The Classic Guinean Guitar Group CD," "HP Photosmart C4280 All-In-One Printer-Scanner-Copier," "Return-Address Stickers from Sundry Organizations I've Donated Money To Who Desperately Want Me To Donate Even More," "Albert Einstein Action Figure," "Ironic Facsimile of a Communist-Chinese Government-Issued Ceramic Pencil Holder," "Photos of My Dog," "Cactus Planter from a Friend Who Knew I Wouldn't Be Able to Keep a Real Plant Alive" and "Pretzels."

The first time I saw Current TV's "InfoMania," it struck me as just a riff on E!'s "The Soup" aimed at more caffeinated, ADD'd viewers. Host Conor Knighton felt like just another variation of those casually amped-up hosts on any number of shows trying to be "hip" to "the kids." But I watched again, and it's now apparent that the reason Knighton speaks with such energy is because he has an awful lot of jokes to bulldoze his way through.

"InfoMania" is indeed a mash-up of "The Soup" and "The Daily Show," with its once-over of the week's events in politics, pop culture and weird corners of the Internets and how just idiotically the media (TV journalists, magazines) covered them. They rag pretty amusingly on everything from bizarre Craigslist ads to iTunes' Top 5 to Bill O'Reilly.

My favorite in this episode is Ben Hoffman, who presents a Tech Report on Amazon.com's new Kindle: "Finally, a reading device without all those messy wires," he marvels in a laconic deadpan while reading his teleprompter slightly clumsily and holding up a book with wires coming out of practically every page. Maybe I like Hoffman because he's the one guy on the show who doesn't talkrealfast.

There's also amusing looks at the glut of online contests for amateur filmmakers and the joys of nature footage - well, of animals tearing one another apart, at least - on YouTube. Anyway, watch this and you'll be able to bluff your way through almost any weekend party conversation.

- "InfoMania:" New episodes air Thursdays at 7 p.m. on Current TV, and then can be seen at current.com.

World Wrestling Entertainment has announced plans to launch a website aimed at kids, which will join a recent magazine aimed at 6-14-year-olds.

You mean WWE was originally targeted at adults?

Angelenos will have a special opportunity to botch the 2000 Presidential election their own selves on Tuesday, when a dozen authentic voting machines with flawed ballots from the state of Florida will be on display from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Grove.

Time machines that will make the vote count for something will not be on hand.

It's to promote HBO's upcoming movie "Recount," naturally. "Recount" stars Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Denis Leary, Tom Wilkinson and recalls the battle over the famously obfuscating Florida ballots and the infamously botched vote count. (Spoiler alert: Gore lost; Bush won; America paid but good for Florida's buffoonery.) For years, conservatives told those still hacked off about the 2000 election to get over it; apparently, HBO still can't.

Can you make sense of the butterfly ballot and avoid voting for Pat Buchanan? Can you punch the ballot card hard enough to avoid leaving a dangling chad? The suspense is overwhelming; I'm going to have to sit down now.

OK, so we've had some time to absorb upfront week (read that: We sat through upfront week, wrote about it as it occurred, then spent the weekend in brain-melting heat incapable of thinking about anything, and now we're making this up as we go), and herewith, our winners and losers re: the upcoming fall season.

Winner: Fox. The best schedule, the shows most likely to succeed and, with "Remote-free TV" (airing "Fringe" and "Dollhouse" with limited commercials throughout the entire season), a nice, outside-the-box idea that a) genuinely seems to respond to the challenges confronting broadcast networks, b) should translate into heightened viewership (provided the shows deliver the goods, since everyone's going to want to give them a lot of hype) and c) gets Fox enough publicity that should allay any financial hits, which one imagines will be pretty minor, since advertisers should pretty much be clamoring to get in these shows and be willing to pay handsome premiums.

Loser: ABC. They shouldn't even be allowed to call what they offered up their 2008-09 schedule. They should've called it their 2007.1 Vista "upgrade."

Winner: NBC. By at least appearing to be forward-thinking and trying to solve problems in new ways, Ben Silverman gets a pass for programming shows with tons of product placement, co-productions with foreign and domestic investors and concepts so depressingly derivative there's not much on that schedule any sentient being is highly anticipating (fortunately for him, I guess, is the fact that there are plenty of TV viewers who would never be mistaken for sentient beings).

Loser: NBC. By conceding that his 2008-09-and-beyond schedule is written "in pencil," Silverman's just admitting that most network executives are making it up as they go along (just one example: The USA Network's "Monk" is supposed to return to NBC in Summer 2009; it's already been yanked from NBC's spring 2008 schedule). That "Office" spin-off sounds so suspiciously written in pencil that it's hard to imagine it coming off without a severe drop-off in quality either in it or the original (remake).

Winner: TNT/TBS. The cable networks proved themselves more than willing to mix it up with the big boys in their first upfront with advertisers during the week generally reserved for the broadcast networks. Just a sampling of the behind-the-camera talent they trotted out in announcing shows they're developing: George Clooney, Steven Bochco, William H. Macy, Jamie Foxx, Ray Romano, Mark Burnett, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Dean Devlin, Donnie Wahlberg, Russell Simmons and director Jon Avnet. Some of the shows even sounded pretty promising.

Loser: CBS. Well, they have more cop/procedural shows for your edification.

Kinda sorta winner: Comedies. Though fewer new comedies will debut in the fall, more new sitcoms have been ordered overall for the entire season. Hope springs eternal for a genre perennially deemed moribund.

Kinda sorta loser: Reality programs. Far fewer new reality shows will debut this fall, but fear not: Once new shows start dropping one by one, what will be brought in to replace them?

Winner: Cult-TV geeks. Fox loves you guys and is willing to give you a second chance: They're airing shows from "Alias's" and Lost's" J.J. Abrams ("Fringe"), "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" and "Firefox's" Joss Whedon ("Dollhouse"), and two shows from "Arrested Development" writers, "Do Not Disturb" (a comedy set in a hotel) and "Sit Down, Shut Up," an animated show developed by "AD" creator Mitch Hurwitz based on an Australian sitcom about beleaguered teachers who, um, aren't exactly dedicated to their profession.

Loser: The Human Race. ABC renewed "According to Jim."

A while back, Adult Swim began to seem to lose its way. Cartoon Network's late-night bloc aimed at 14-year-old boys made its name on its inspired parody spin-offs of old Hanna-Barbera characters - "Space Ghost Coast to Coast," "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law," "Sealab 2021" and even "The Brak Show" offered nostalgia through a Dadaistic lens. Seeing old characters who were not terribly beloved but yet not thoroughly hated going behaving like petulant chumps and dithering morons was a blast of fresh air that had viewers helplessly laughing at the incongruity and inanity of it all. For some viewers, watching these shows was a sort of cathartic penance for numbly, uncritically watching the original junk shows back in the day.

Those shows didn't earn their creators much money, though, since the characters were still owned by Turner (who owned the Hanna-Barbera library), so people started knocking off shows so casually and so effortlessly (literally: No effort seemed to be involved whatsoever) that all that was left was the randomness of the plotting, the cranky attitude and the jaunty nihilism.

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" gets a pass because it approximated the other early shows by looking like they were constructed from clip art but featured decent characters and a smart absurdist bent; it looked like they were ripping off and mocking something, even if they weren't. "Boondocks," based on Aaron McGruder's much-missed comic strip, went in another direction - it had a distinct and ambitious if somewhat embittered sensibility, and then just tried to get jokes out of using the N-word a bunch. Shows that followed, like "Tom Goes to the Mayor" and "Robot Chicken" were/are funny but they achieved an endgame in the Dada department. The jokes were random, the characters, stupid; there was nowhere else to go.

Not that they didn't try. "Stroker and Hoop," "12 oz. Mouse," "Moral Orel," MinoriTeam" and "Squidbillies" were sloppy, lazy, one-note parodies that basically held their characters in contempt, if they bothered to think about them at all, and Dramamine was recommended to survive the randomly zigzagging plotlines. By this point, particularly with "12 oz. Mouse" and "Squidbillies," the cheesiness of the execution was pretty much the entire joke, if there was one to begin with.

Which brings us to "Metalocalypse," which returns Sunday at midnight. The show falls somewhere between the two extremes - sure, all the characters are stupid, but the show itself exudes some smarts; and yes, cynicism is the overriding mindset, but at least here it comes from somewhere where such wry despair has been hard-won.

The show is about Dethklok, a hardcore death-metal band that has become the most celebrated pop-culture entity on the planet, so much so that they've become a multinational conglomerate that doesn't really have to do much of anything and still their fans remain rabid. The military routinely holds briefings on their activities, seemingly out of concern for their well-being, though this could be clever subterfuge. Music video sequences feature much bloodletting and vomiting, but only, I'm sure, because it's organic to the plotline.

Like I said, everyone in the band is an idiot, identifiable mainly by their accents. Their names are, befitting a death-metal band, grotesqueries: Nathan Explosion, William Murderface, Skwisgaar Swigelf, Toki Wartooth (these last two are Scandinavians) and Pickles (who hails from Wisconsin).

Pickles has to do the heavy lifting in the season's first couple of episodes. In one, his useless scofflaw of a brother, Seth, invites the band to his impending nuptials; everyone sees this as Seth's attempts to leech big bucks off his brother, but the band all attends, anyway. (The Military Intelligence white paper on the Marriage-Industrial Complex is brutal stuff - not necessarily untrue, mind you, but brutal.)

Pickles wants out, but the other band members are drunk on Schadenfreude, enjoying his suffering too much to rescue him from his time with family. And the wedding can pretty much be summed up with this line: "I've never seen so much blood at a wedding - awesome."

In a future episode, Pickles hires Liz Bain (think Pat Kingsley; clearly, the show's writers were) as his personal publicist, and, despite public appearances that might be considered humiliating at best and appalling at worst, he becomes more popular than the rest of the band. Of course, Liz isn't really a publicist but the head of any number of cults; she's using Pickles to bring on Armageddon. She's only vaguely successful.

Vocal talent on this 15-minute cartoon includes Malcolm McDowell, Mark Hamill and Laraine Newman. Sir Richard Attenborough may have directed a couple of early episodes. So, yeah, it's a cult thing, but not just for people who can listen to death metal without their ears bleeding.

- "Metalocalypse:" midnight Sundays; Adult Swim.

Mediaweek's ratings guru Marc Berman has done some post-upfronts math and come up with some shocking statistics (OK, more like just kind of interesting statistics, but again, no one wants to cop to reading something that's just kind of interesting, so shocking it is):

Number of New Shows Overall:
16 (versus 29 in fall 2007)
Dramas: 10 (versus 16 in fall 2007)

Sitcoms: 4 (versus 6 in fall 2007)

Non-Scripted: 2 (versus 7 in fall 2007)

By Network:

ABC: 2
(as opposed to 8 last fall)
CBS: 5
(5 last fall, as well)
NBC: 4 (5 last fall)
Fox: 2
(5 last fall)
CW: 3 (6 last year, but then, they actually were programming Sundays back then)

A cursory look at these numbers and you might think the writers strike had a huge impact on the fall season, but the numbers are inflated a bit by the big drop in the number of new reality shows. (And the two new reality series that did get picked up come from the networks that took the laziest approaches to their fall schedules - ABC and The CW.) The networks constantly tout and embrace reality as inexpensive programming that's every bit as good as scripted material, but it looks as though when they look deep into their hearts, they really understand that, with rare exceptions, it's at best stopgap programming.

"Extra" -- Why Does Jennifer Love Hewitt Wear Makeup?

Well, actually, they were about what you'd expect, but that's not nearly as interesting a headline, is it?

* 31% said they watch none of the shows they TiVo. 35% said they only watch about 10% of the shows they TiVo.

60% said they watch their favorite shows live, but that number drops to 51% with TiVo users.

13% of TiVo users still watch shows on the day they aired, while 21% watch TiVo'd shows later on.

* 66% prefer product placement in programs over commercials interrupting the show, but 31% said product placement takes them out of the show. Only 3% said product placement makes them want to buy said product.

* Only 1% said they "most often" watch TV on their computer.

* Nearly 60% said they no longer anticipate the fall season as highly as they used to. And this poll was taken before this week's upfront presentations - just imagine how low that number would be now.

Opening: Stars of Fox shows stand onstage, waving cheerfully. Includes Sarah Wayne Callies, who got offed this season on "Prison Break" but will miraculously recover from her beheading, who waves less cheerfully. Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz of "Bones" exchange wan, not terribly funny banter of the sort that is usually a staple of upfront week but has gone sorely missed (or not) to this point this year.

Jon Nesvig, president, Fox Sales: Super Bowl blah blah blah NASCAR blah baseball blah blah. Here's something that's interesting - Nesvig considers baseball's All-Star game "the event of the summer," not the Olympics; the fact that the latter are on NBC may have something to do with that assessment. God, he has a droning voice; he sounds like he wants to kill himself and I'm not feeling so good, either. He maunders on: C3 blah blah enduring truths blah blah blah vital role in delivering purchase intent blah blah impactful advertising with immediacy blah hyper-targeting oh-sweet-God-take-me-now.

Peter Liguori, chairman, Fox Broadcasting: We service viewers first. (Should he be telling advertisers this?) Redefine viewing experience/remote-free TV/scary financial proposition blah and some more blah.

Kevin Reilly, president, Fox Entertainment: We're full-throttle in spring. Introduces new shows, including the two that'll feature limited commercial interruption throughout the season, J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" and Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse;" fanboys across the country are cleaning the spunk off their keyboards.

"Fringe:" Discussed in previous entry. Looks pretty good.

"Dollhouse:" Discussed in previous entry, too; too complicated to explain in a trailer, so it must be cool (and it looks it); fanboys are advised to keep spunk-cleaning wipes near their computers from now until both shows debut.

"Do Not Disturb:" Eh. Life among employees at a trendy New York hotel. Dumb, sexist boss doesn't care about the employees. Smart, sassy sub-boss cares for the employees. A stiletto-heel fetish and Molly Stanton seems funny as a stereotypically vain anorexic, but that's about it.

Next, two dramas that may or may not be on Fox at some point in the future: "Lie To Me" and "Courtroom K." Creators discuss them; not enough footage to assess one way or another.

"24:" Two-hour movie coming in November, then the season that was supposed to be this season, next season. Got that? Kiefer Sutherland seems like he really means it when he thanks advertisers for the "best seven years of my life." But then, he does have an Emmy, so he's obviously a good actor.

Next, two comedies that may or may not be on Fox at some point in the future: "Boldly Going Nowhere" (no footage but it's from an "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" creator, so that's promising) and "Outnumbered," typical typical typical dysfunctional-family sitcom.

"Secret Millionaire:" Reality show where rich guys go undercover in poor neighborhoods and find nice people to give money to. Reilly says, "It's so positive and uplifting, I had to check it came from Mike Darnell." (Darnell is Fox's reality-show evil genius who cooks up so many of the network's crassest programs.) Actually, I was thinking the same thing when Reilly said it. Was he reading my mind? Get out of my head, Kevin Reilly!

Two new cartoons that will be on Fox (not much footage from either, but given their lineages, expect good things): "The Cleveland Show" (spinoff of "Family Guy") and "Sit Down, Shut Up" (adapted from a live-action comedy from Australia about burned-out teachers by "Arrested Development's" Mitch Hurwitz, who avers that, as he was brought up in our own crumbling education system, "I didn't know what Australia was." More jokes like that and it'll do fine.

That's all they got, but Reilly wants people to hang around longer, so he brings out contestants from "So You Think You Can Dance." Sorry, people who think they can dance, I have traffic to beat, so I'm outta here.

Fox's fall schedule is here, so here's its (tentative) January schedule (you know the drill - * = new show; ** = new timeslot):

Monday
8 p.m. "Dollhouse"
9 p.m. "24"

Tuesday
8 p.m. "American Idol"
9 p.m. "Fringe" *

Wednesday
8 p.m. "House" **
9 p.m. "American Idol" **
9:30 p.m. Comedy to be named at a later date *

Thursday

8 p.m. "Hell's Kitchen" **
9 p.m. "Secret Millionaire" *

Friday
8 p.m. "Bones" **
9 p.m. "'Till Death" **
9:30 p.m. "Do Not Disturb" * and **

Saturday
8 p.m. "Cops"
9 p.m. "America's Most Wanted"

Sunday
7 p.m. Comedy repeats
8 p.m. "The Simpsons"
8:30 p.m. "King of the Hill"/"Sit Down, Shut Up" *
9 p.m. "Family Guy"
9:30 p.m. "American Dad"/"The Cleveland Show" *

In short: The No. 1 network looks to be in pretty-to-really-good shape. Just never let Jon Nesvig speak in public again.

So Fox's big news is that it will limit the amount of ad time next season in every episode of its two highly anticipated shows, which means that J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon will have extra time every hour to further confuse and obfuscate fans of their brand of spinning dense webs of mysery and mythology.

Of those two shows, J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" looked nominally cooler, because its conspiracy was easier to follow in its trailer: Hot Fed (Anna Torv) investigates icky mass death in an airliner which leads to bizarre conspiracy that perhaps only a crazy genius (John Noble) and his son (Joshua Jackson) can unlock, and Lance Reddick of "The Wire" (and "Lost") is in it.

Hard to say what's going on in "Dollhouse" based on the cut-down that was presented, so I'll leave it to Fox's crack publicity staff's press release:

"Joss Whedon, creator of groundbreaking cult favorites 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Firefly,' returns to television and reunites with fellow 'Buffy' alumna Eliza Dushku for a thrilling new drama, DOLLHOUSE. ECHO (Dushku) is an 'Active,' a member of a highly illegal and underground group who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. Confined to a secret facility known as the 'Dollhouse,' Echo and the other Actives including SIERRA (Dichen Lachman, 'Neighbors') and VICTOR (Enver Gjokaj, 'The Unit') carry out engagements assigned by ADELLE (Olivia Williams, 'X-Men: The Last Stand,' 'Rushmore'), one of the Dollhouse leaders. The engagements cater to the wealthy, powerful and connected, and require the Actives to immerse themselves in all manner of scenarios romantic, criminal, uplifting, dangerous, comical and the occasional 'pro bono' good deed. After each scenario, Echo, always under the watchful eye of her handler BOYD (Harry Lennix, 'Commander in Chief,' '24'), returns to the mysterious Dollhouse where her thoughts, feelings and experiences are erased by TOPHER (Fran Kranz, 'Welcome to the Captain'), the Dollhouse's genius programmer. Echo enters the next scenario with no memory of before. Or does she? As the series progresses, FBI Agent PAUL SMITH (Tahmoh Penikett, 'Battlestar Galactica') pieces together clues that lead him closer to the Dollhouse, while Echo stops forgetting, her memories begin to return and she slowly pieces together her mysterious past. DOLLHOUSE revolves around Echo's blossoming self-awareness and her desire to discover her true identity. But with each new engagement, comes a new memory and increased danger inside and outside the Dollhouse."

Got it?

Fox Chairman Peter Liguori, in trumpeting "Remote-free TV," said that in reducing the ad clutter, "Only Fox is putting the audience first." Well, for two shows, at least.

Coming soon: Breathless, action-packed play-by-play of Fox's upfront delivered of the sort you so enjoyed when it was done for ABC and CBS.

Here's the story on Fox's upfront that'll appear in the paper. More on the actual upfront (which would've been the shortest yet -- quite the turnaround for the network that puttered around for like three hours just a couple of years ago -- had they not trotted out "So You Think You Can Dance" contestants at the very end) in just a bit.

Fox announced on Thursday an innovative plan that actually harkens back to the earlier days of television: It will place fewer commercials in two dramas debuting during the 2008-09 season.

Called "Remote-free TV," the initiative was introduced in New York by Fox chairman Peter Liguori and the network's entertainment president, Kevin Reilly. It will be tested on "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams' new FBI conspiracy thriller "Fringe" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse," which stars Elisha Dushku as a member of a team of secret agents who are implanted with new personalities and abilities before each mission, after which their memories are erased.

Episodes of the dramas will contain half as much commercial time during each episode, or about five minutes of national advertising (in addition to commercials from local affiliates). The strategy is intended to prevent viewers from channel-surfing as much during commercial breaks, and the hope is that advertisers will pay a premium to spots run amid less clutter in two shows that already have generated a lot of advance buzz.

The network, which has long endured the challenge of launching new shows in the fall which invariably get interrupted by baseball playoffs and the World Series, will introduce but two new shows in September: "Fringe," which will air on Tuesdays after "House," and the comedy "Do Not Disturb," about the neurotic employees at a trendy Manhattan hotel. On Nov. 23, Fox will air a two-hour "24" movie that will retain the show's real-time conceit and will be shot in South Africa.

But for Fox, the season really begins in January, when "American Idol" and "24" - which didn't appear this season due to the writers strike - return. The network will also debut "Dollhouse," which will air on Mondays before "24."

Other midseason series include the animated comedies, "The Cleveland Show," which spins off a character from "Family Guy," and "Sit Down, Shut Up," a comedy about burned-out schoolteachers based on a live-action Australian comedy. It was developed for Fox by "Arrested Development" creator Mitch Hurwitz and will feature the voices of that show's alumni Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Henry Winkler.

Fox also introduced two dramas that are currently in development, with an eye toward turning one if not both into midseason replacement series: "Lie To Me," about behavioral experts recruited by law-enforcement officials to divine when suspects are lying in criminal investigations, and "Courtroom K," a legal drama from "House" executive producer Paul Attanasio.

The network additionally announced that next season, most "American Idol" results shows will be limited to 30 minutes. Reilly said that one of two comedies in development would likely follow: "Boldly Going Nowhere," from the creators of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," or the dysfunctional-family sitcom "Outnumbered."

Departing series include "Back to You," "New Amsterdam," "Canterbury's Law," "K-Ville," "The Return of Jezebel James," "Unhitched," "The Next Great American Band" and "Nashville."

... but there wasn't much to say. Fox will keep it simple this fall, adding but two new shows, before implementing more widespread changes come January. It's wimpy, like ABC's strategy, but really, as far as Fox is concerned the season doesn't really start until January because they're so busy contending with baseball in the fall.

Check back later, when I return from the upfront, for a full deconstruction; in the meantime, here's Fox's fall schedule * = new show; ** = new time slot):

Monday
8 p.m. "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"
9 p.m. "Prison Break"

Tuesday
8 p.m. "House"
9 p.m. "Fringe" *

Wednesday
8 p.m. "Bones" **
9 p.m. "'Til Death" **
9:30 p.m. "Do Not Disturb" * (formerly "The Inn")

Thursday

8 p.m. "The Moment of Truth" **
9 p.m. "Kitchen Nightmares" **

Friday
8 p.m. "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" **
9 p.m. "Don't Forget the Lyrics" **

Saturday
8 p.m. "Cops"
9 p.m. "America's Most Wanted"

Sunday
7 p.m. "The O.T." (football overrun)
8 p.m. "The Simpsons"
8:30 p.m. "King of the Hill"
9 p.m. "Family Guy"
9:30 p.m. "American Dad"

Say what you will about producer Jerry Bruckheimer - and movie critics tend to be far harsher on the guy than TV critics - but without him, CBS might well be The CW.

Come the fall, Bruckheimer will be responsible for at least seven hours of the network's schedule - the three "CSI's," "Without a Trace," "Cold Case," "The Amazing Race" and the new "Eleventh Hour" - and, when you consider that his shows will usually comprise CBS's "Crimetime" repeats on Saturday, that means he's providing nine of the network's 22 primetime hours. And none of them as bad as "National Treasure," "Bad Boys 2," "Pearl Harbor," "Coyote Ugly," "Con Air, "Armageddon" or "Kangaroo Jack."

TV GUIDE NETWORK CELEBRATES "IDOL" MANIA WITH AN ENTIRE WEEK OF PROGRAMMING DEDICATED TO AMERICA'S #1 SHOW AND MORE THAN 100 HOURS OF "IDOL" PROGRAMMING

Each Day of the Week will Feature an "Idol"-Themed Program Including "Close-Up: Randy Jackson," "Idol Tonight: Live at the Finale" and a Special Fashion Team Episode Featuring the Glitz and Glamour from this Season and the "Idol" Red Carpet

CBS this afternoon introduced four more new shows, offered endless celebrity jabbering about its sundry media platforms and in general offered more information and less gasbaggery than ABC managed yesterday - and came in a couple of minutes shorter than ABC's presentation, as well.

So, here's how it played out:

Les Moonves, CBS COO: They're in Carnegie Hall; hence, a lame, tortured metaphor about CBS's TV, online, radio and billboard empire being akin to an orchestra. Lame, tortured metaphors were a recurring theme today.

Craig Ferguson: Mock praise for the advertisers in attendance for their uncanny ability to sell the boobs who watch CBS worthless junk they don't need. Proves once again that droll, amiable self-deprecation gets you far, even if your material wouldn't otherwise.

Adam Carolla: Vaguely bitter tirade on his career trajectory disguised as some sort of enthusiastic touting of CBS radio stations.

Quincy Smith, President, CBS Interactive: Insists more people go to websites attached to CBS.com than any other websites in the world. Our content follows our audience rather than our audience following our content, or something like that that no doubt sounded good when some overpaid consultant thought it up. Now, it just sounds like CBS content is a stalker.

Anthony E. Zuiker, creator, "CSI" franchise: I love CBS! Give it up for CBS - c'mon, clap! Some sort of artificial enthusiasm-enhancers speaking? Possibly. Unveils sinister scheme, "CSI 24/7/365," to ensure that no matter where you go, you will be inundated with "CSI"-related content - seriously, Grissom's gonna be dialing you up on your cell phone with spam calls, if Zuiker gets his way.

Rachel Ray: Lame, tortured metaphor comparing CBS's syndicated programming to a BBQ chicken sandwich. A captive audience of thousands had to sit through this.

Nina Tassler, President, CBS Entertainment: Not too much blah blah blah rah rah CBS; straight into introducing the new shows.

"Worst Week:" I was finishing up Emailing myself some notes while some of the clip was playing (anything to prevent having Rachel Ray burned into my retinas, and anyway, seems like half those in attendance were playing on their cell phones during the presentation, as well). Based (like most new shows this season) on an overseas hit, a British comedy about a couple's disastrous wedding preparations. As previously mentioned, ABC did a show like this a couple of years back, "Big Day;" didn't do well. But this one's on after "Two and a Half Men," and Jesus, people even proved willing to watch "Rules of Engagement" after "Two and a Half Men," so maybe it has a chance. Seemed to go waver between amusingly escalating mayhem and soaring waaay over the top.

"Project Gary:" Good lord, another one of these: Divorced guy (Jay Mohr) deals with ex (show-killer Paula Marshall, "Cupid," "Snoops," "Cursed," "Hidden Hills," "Out of Practice," etc.) and kids and new dating world in a warm and fuzzy and fizzy fashion. Apparently it's a lame, tortured metaphor on the state of the sitcom. It'll be paired with "The New Adventures of Old Christine" on Wednesdays, offering viewers potent reminders (as if they needed any more) of just how miserable divorced life is.

"Eleventh Hour:" Yet more from the Jerry Bruckheimer TeeVee sweatshop hit factory, based on a British show that looks like it was based on "The X-Files." "Brilliant biophysicist" (are there any mediocre biophysicists?) Dr. Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) helps the government find solutions to scientific crises (must be science-fiction, as our current government doesn't believe in science). Seems perhaps a tad overwrought, but it's on after "CSI" and opposite NBC's flatlining "ER" and ABC's "Life on Mars" so it should do OK.

"The Mentalist:" "Psych," only not as funny - a guy (Simon Baker) who used to pretend to be a psychic but really just has keen perceptive abilities helps cops solve crimes and doesn't play by the rules! Some sort of love-hate sexual frisson with his boss (Robin Tunney), too. Sandwiched between "NCIS" and "Without a Trace" on Tuesdays, it likely won't crater. (Former timeslot occupant "The Unit" has been shipped to Sunday night, to the timeslot where "Shark" went to die.)

"The Ex List:" Based on an Israeli show about a woman (here played by Elizabeth Reaser) who really really really wants to get married, only a psychic tells her she's already met her soul mate and if she can't track him down in a year, then it's spinsterhood for her. Well. How seriously can you take her if she's taking her romance cues from a psychic? Didn't "The Mentalist" already show us that they're all fakes? And while Reaser has been strong in some guest appearances on sundry shows I've seen, here she seems a little too "Aren't I adorable?" for my tastes. No matter, this isn't aimed at me - it's targeted at those same women who couldn't get a date on Friday night who didn't watch NBC's "Miss Match" or ABC's "Men in Trees," either.

"Harper's Island:" Midseason series about a group of friends who gather for a wedding on the titular landmass and then a whole bunch of people start getting murdered. Apparently a self-contained, one-shot deal, unless they get cold feet and dial back on the body count so they'll have characters still around for a second season. Maybe they can do cross-over episodes with "Worst Week," also about a disastrous wedding.

After ABC's depressing upfront on Tuesday (Mediaweek dismissed it as "unusually passive"), CBS will attempt to perk things up when it presents its 2008 fall schedule today. Remember last year, when CBS went all avant-garde on us with half-baked musicals and child slave-labor entertainments? This year, not so much - they're back to meat-and-potatoes.

One last note on ABC's upfront: Jimmy Kimmel explained how networks create reality shows. He had a platform with three "Wheel of Fortune"-type wheels trotted out, each with an array of descriptors on them; he spun each one, and came up with "The Amazing Fattest Fifth Grader," which ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson immediately announced as a midseason replacement series. Fox later bought the gadget from Kimmell for $30 million.

Anyway, before I head over to see CBS's official announcement (more on this later), here's the story on the network's fall schedule (oh, along with a desultory mention of what The CW is thinking these days):

CBS proved considerably more aggressive in revamping its 2008 fall schedule than ABC, as on Wednesday it unveiled five new series compared to ABC's mere two.

The network picked up three dramas and two comedies, adding another comedy bloc on Wednesdays. It was the first time in years a network expanded its airtime devoted to comedy after years of the genre faltering in primetime.

New shows include:

* "Eleventh Hour," a Jerry Bruckheimer production based on a British drama about a government agent (Rufus Sewell) who investigates scientific anomalies.

* "The Mentalist," starring Simon Baker as a man with acute powers of perception and deduction who aids police in solving crimes, not unlike the USA Network's "Psyche."

* "The Ex-List," starring Elizabeth Reaser as a woman told by a tarot card reader that she has already met her soul mate, so she starts looking up all the men she has dated in the past. It's based on an Israeli series.

* "Worst Week," based on a British comedy about a young couple encountering disaster at every turn as they plan their wedding.

* "Project Gary," starring Jay Mohr as a recently divorced father re-entering the dating pool.

Departing shows include "Shark," "Moonlight," "Jericho," "Cane," "Kid Nation," "Viva Laughlin" and "Welcome to the Captain."

CBS's 2008 fall schedule (* denotes new show; ** denotes new timeslot):

Monday
8 p.m. "The Big Bang Theory"
8:30 p.m. "How I Met Your Mother"
9 p.m. "Two and a Half Men"
9:30 p.m. "Worst Week" *
10 p.m. "CSI: Miami"

Tuesday
8 p.m. "NCIS"
9 p.m. "The Mentalist" *
10 p.m. "Without a Trace" **

Wednesday
8 p.m. "The New Adventures of Old Christine" **
8:30 p.m. "Project Gary" *
9 p.m. Criminal Minds"
10 p.m. "CSI: New York"

Thursday
8 p.m. "Survivor"
9 p.m. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"
10 p.m. "Eleventh Hour" *

Friday
8 p.m. "Ghost Whisperer"
9 p.m. "The Ex-List" *
10 p.m. "Numb3rs"

Saturday
8-10 p.m. Repeats
10 p.m. "48 Hours Mystery"

Sunday
7 p.m. "60 Minutes"
8 p.m. "The Amazing Race"
9 p.m. Cold Case"
10 p.m. "The Unit" **

The CW announced its 2008 fall schedule late Monday. It has abdicated its Sunday viewing bloc, turning it over to Media Rights Capital, which is busily developing two comedies and two dramas for the three-hour time period.

The network also announced three new shows, including a remake of the campy soap "Beverly Hills, 90210." It added that it would bring back the action comedy "Reaper" at midseason.

The CW's 2008 fall schedule (* denotes new show; ** new timeslot):

Monday
8 p.m. "Gossip Girl"
9 p.m. One Tree Hill"

Tuesday
8 p.m. "Beverly Hills, 90210" *
9 p.m. "Surviving the Filthy Rich" *

Wednesday
8 p.m. "America's Next Top Model"
9 p.m. "Stylista" *

Thursday
8 p.m. "Smallville"
9 p.m. "Supernatural"

Friday
8 p.m. "Everybody Hates Chris" **
8:30 p.m. "The Game" **
9 p.m. "America's Next Top Model" repeat **

Anne Sweeney, President, Disney-ABC Television Group: Welcome, blah blah blah, ABC's better than ever and you can watch entire episodes of shows on your phone, blah blah.

Jimmy Kimmel: Sorry there's no party this year - we're focusing less on the after-party and more on developing shows that aren't "Cavemen." Sundry NBC-bashing. TVs are bigger, kids are fatter, gas has never been more expensive - if we can't get people to watch TV under those circumstances we should all be executed gangland-style. We're very excited about all both of our new shows.

Mike Shaw, President, ABC Sales and Marketing: Cliché, cliché, cliché, cliché, television is better than ever, C3, HUTs, more TV-sales jargon, we've created a formula involving actual numbers that shows that everyone on the planet watches ABC and no one watches anyone else and here are those numbers though we're keeping the formula strictly under wraps, just trust us and after all would a salesman lie? (He was like John Lahr's cable-TV executive in that DirecTV commercial - "I went to business school, where I read a book - about business school.")

Stephen McPherson, President, ABC Entertainment: We started out strong last fall. Too bad that whole writers strike thing utterly emasculated us. New shows? We don't need no stinking new shows! What? OK, here're two.

"Opportunity Knocks:" They build a set on a suburban street somewhere and have neighbors participate in some vaguely embarrassing competitions: (to a kid) "You have 45 seconds to trash your sister's room and find her diary." Ha! She doesn't even have a diary! This is the post-literate society, remember?

"Life on Mars:" Looks exactly like the British version, which as we've said was great, except the actress playing the ladycop doesn't have dark hair. Otherwise, like, even the same camera angles and color schemes. Colm Meaney and Lennie Clarke are in it. Except, as we've noted, it's going to be produced by the talent-deficit-disorder-suffering team that created "October Road," so prepare to have your heart broken.

Stephen McPherson: Well, that's it - what? We have some more time? Oh, well. Hmm. Well, here's a glimpse at some stuff we're developing that may or may not actually make it on TV.

"Four Play:" "Will & Grace" creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick busk for the cameras, explaining how their new comedy will be like nothing on TV. They're kind of kidding, but they also kind of want to believe it.

"The Goode Family:" Mike Judge explains his new cartoon show, which will be a midseason replacement, about a way too politically correct family. Could be funny; can't tell from the clip.

"In the Motherhood:" An online show starring Jenny McCarthy, Leah Rimini and Chelsea Handler (who looks a lot like Jenny McCarthy - do they accidentally do each other's lines on the set?) that has contests and people like you can write story ideas for the online show but they probably won't let you write for the real show because that's what professionals are for.

Stephen McPherson: Well, thanks for com--What? We still have more time? Jesus. Watch these clips from the summer reality shows we've slapped together.

Oh, hooray, "The Mole" and "The Bachelorette" are back! And they have something clunkily called "I Survived a Japanese Game Show," as well as something that looks precisely like a Japanese game show only it's called "Wipeout." It features people who look like they're bred at a special facility designed specifically to create lummoxes who'll be willing to appear on shows like this and make utter fools of themselves, doing belly-flops into mud-filled ponds. But it is kind of funny - for the duration of the clip, at least.

Stephen McPherson: Seriously, dude, we're completely tapped out. We'll play ourselves out (hey, Bill O'Reilly, remember that phrase?) with this unrevealing clip from an upcoming episode of "Lost." Thanks for coming. Give us money.

Man, there is no killing "According to Jim."

The show, which was cancelled then resurrected last year, only to air to abysmal ratings this winter and spring, will come back yet again as an ABC midseason replacement series.

But then, thanks to the writers strike, ABC didn't have a lot of stock on its shelves to tout when it makes its upfront presentation in about an hour. So "Jim" - which at this point will need a stake planted through its heart to keep from returning to terrify audiences anew - and poaching "Scrubs" from NBC was about as much as ABC could offer advertisers in terms of bells and whistles.

I'm off to watch the satellite feed of the upfront and will report back later today. In the meantime, here's the story for tomorrow's paper about ABC's fall 2008 schedule:

ABC kept its upfront presentation unveiling its fall 2008 schedule short and sweet on Tuesday, mainly because the network didn't have many new shows to introduce.

In introducing a schedule with so few changes, network entertainment president Stephen McPherson touted ABC's "incredibly stable schedule, a schedule that dominated in the fall. We were winning (in the ratings) until the strike."

Only two new shows will join the schedule come fall. "Life on Mars," an adaptation of the British series about a police detective who, after an automobile accident, finds himself back in the 1970s, where swaggering machismo is the order of the day in the police precincts, is the lone scripted addition. "Opportunity Knocks," a reality series created by Ashton Kutcher in which a game show is taken out into the streets for contestants in a neighborhood to play, was also added.

New midseason shows include "The Goode Family," an animated series from Mike Judge ("King of the Hill") about a stringently politically correct albeit inept family, and an untitled beauty-pageant reality series from Kutcher and Tyra Banks. ABC has also scheduled the medical comedy "Scrubs," which heretofore had aired on NBC, for midseason. "Lost," "The Bachelor," "According to Jim" and ABC News' "Primetime" will all also join the schedule at a later date.

McPherson stated that additionally, the network has 17 more pilots that are still in development, some of which will appear some time in 2009, but didn't elaborate on what they might be. "We don't feel comfortable picking stuff up until it's been fully developed," he said.

That "Boston Legal" and "Eli Stone" are returning was considered something of a surprise, since neither show was expected to return. "According to Jim" also returns despite anemic ratings - it was almost cancelled last year, as well. Their returns can be attributed to fallout from the writers strike, which prevented more new shows from being developed in a timely manner.

Departing series include "Big Shots," "Men in Trees," "Miss Guided," "Cashmere Mafia," "Carpoolers" and "Cavemen."

ABC's fall 2008 schedule (* indicates new show; ** indicates new timeslot):

Monday
8:00 p.m. "Dancing with the Stars"
9:30 p.m. "Samantha Who?"
10:00 p.m. "Boston Legal" **

Tuesday
8:00 p.m. "Opportunity Knocks" *
9:00 p.m. "Dancing with the Stars the Results Show"
10:00 p.m. "Eli Stone" **

Wednesday
8:00 p.m. "Pushing Daisies"
9:00 p.m. "Private Practice"
10:00 p.m. "Dirty Sexy Money"

Thursday
8:00 p.m. "Ugly Betty"
9:00 p.m. "Grey's Anatomy"
10:00 p.m. "Life on Mars" *

Friday
8:00 p.m. "Wife Swap" *
9:00 p.m. "Supernanny" *
10:00 p.m. "20/20"

Saturday
8:00 p.m. "Saturday Night College Football"

Sunday
7:00 p.m. "America's Funniest Home Videos"
8:00 p.m. "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"
9:00 p.m. "Desperate Housewives"
10:00 p.m. "Brothers & Sisters"

In the wake of our story yesterday on the critical situation facing the broadcast networks this upfront week come more stories on the miserable downturn in viewership for the broadcast networks and What It All Might Mean. But really, if I do say so myself, just read mine and save yourself some time.

So in the meantime, Variety indulges in its annual speculation and scooping as to what shows might be making it to the air come fall and what might not be returning ("Boston Legal" has apparently dodged a bullet, while the creators of Fox's "Back To You" will go back to the drawing board.) Given that the writers strike pretty much scrapped pilot season, drastically reducing the number of potential new shows, here's how bad things are for ABC: They haven't outright cancelled their low-rated new series "Miss Guided" and "Eli Stone."

So what may be turning up? A lot of shows based on shows from overseas.

* ABC's got "Life on Mars," based on a terrific British TV series about a police detective whose partner is kidnapped when he's hit by a car ... and wakes up in the macho '70s, where cop precincts were modeled after "Starsky & Hutch." It was developed for the network by David E. Kelley, but that's where the good news ends. The bad news is the original series only went 16 episodes, less than one season of American TV; to keep it afloat, they'll pretty much have to ignore all the stuff about his efforts to return to the present day and save his partner. Worse, ABC is said to be handing the show over to Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg - the guys behind the god-awful "October Road." So don't expect any character motivations to make an ounce of sense.

ABC has also ordered an animated series from Mike Judge ("King of the Hill," "Beavis & Butt-head"), "The Goode Family, and a reality show, "Opportunity Knocks," in which a game show comes to an unsuspecting contestant's home. ABC may be ramping up production quickly for midseason, so it can rid itself of the "Eli Stones" of its schedule in a timely fashion.

* CBS has reportedly ordered six new shows, including two new sitcoms for a second sitcom bloc on its schedule. Sitcoms include "Worst Week," based, again, on a very funny (but intentionally limited to 17 episodes) British series about a couple's disastrous wedding preparations (ABC's "Big Day" mined this territory a couple seasons back; it got cancelled), and "Project Gary," starring Jay Mohr as a divorced father re-entering the dating world.

CBS dramas may include "The Ex List," based on an Israeli TV show about a woman who's told by a psychic that she's already met Mr. Right (if she pays attention to tarot cards, she gets everything she deserves), and "Eleventh Hour," adapted from a British iteration of "The X-Files" and produced, inevitably, by Jerry Bruckheimer. Also possibly on tap: "The Mentalist," which isn't based on an overseas show but does sound suspiciously like an unfunny version of "Psych," and "Harper's Island," a murder-mystery-at-a-wedding drama that'll probably be too serialized to succeed.

* Fox, as we've previously noted, has Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" and J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" up for midseason. It'll add the comedies "The Inn," about a trendy Manhattan hotel from an "Arrested Development" writer (the pilot was directed by "AD's" Jason Bateman) and "Class Dismissed," an animated show based on a British show that was adapted by "AD's" Mitch Hurwitz (and features Bateman's vocal talents) but won't likely benefit from his input on a daily basis. Are you clear on all that "AD" cross-pollination?

* Oh, and The CW has some stuff going on, including that "Beverly Hills, 90210" rehash and a last-second reprieve for "Reaper," but you know, it's just hard to care.

But you know what? None of this matters, because ...

On top of all this, word comes that the networks have little faith in the palliative negotiating abilities of AMPTP's Nick Counter and are indeed bracing for an actors strike. In which case, scratch all this and get ready for the uproarious raucous reality show "Funny Dogs in Hats."

You will love this clip of Bill O'Reilly from much earlier in his career when he was on "Inside Edition" (hey, he looks nominally better without hair than he does with the hair in this clip!), in which he explodes into a Vesuvian rage due to a teleprompter glitch - or, maybe, his simply not understanding traditional TeeVee slang. (Warning: He says very dirty words very loudly.) Geez, talk about over-reacting.

This, I believe, is the demo reel that got him the gig at Fox News.

(Oh, and some of the comments below the clip are amusing, as well.)

So this is the first day of upfront week, but not a lot happened, since it's NBC's day and NBC announced its schedule from fall 2008 through summer 2009 last month (it's already tweaking things, but never mind about that).

So here's what NBC did do today:

* Announce, as expected, that Jimmy Fallon will replace Conan O'Brien on "Late Night" in 2009. Trumpeted the press release: "Jimmy is more than just a likeable guy and a great comedian, he is genuinely interested in what people have to say."

* Announce a new reality-competition-dating show from the criminally underworked Ryan Seacrest: "Momma's Boys," about "a group of mothers who must help choose the perfect bride for their complacent sons ... Conflict results when numerous mothers and their eligible bachelor sons are housed together with several 'brides-to-be.' As the tension mounts, viewers will watch the controlling mothers search for their son's perfect mate." Or won't watch, as the case may be. But more: "Some of the possible brides are 'nice girls' - while others might not be as appealing to the mothers. As expected, rivalries are formed, drama mounts and emotion builds as crucial choices must be made."

So - this is "The Bachelor," only the mother picks the woman for her "complacent" son? No "Bachelor" has ever tied the knot, but that track record will seem positively honorable compared to this show's.

Seacrest ponied up the requisite press-release quote: "I am a true Momma's Boy. She is the most important woman in my life [way to stoke those rumors, Ryan!] and she is never short of opinions. This series throws Mom right in the middle of all the drama. It's loud, it's wild and it's real." Yeah, "loud" and "wild" is the direction you want to go in when making one of the most important decisions in your life.

* Announce a product-placement partnership with an automaker for its upcoming show, "My Own Worst Enemy," about a guy with a double life as a staid business- and family man and a spy. The spy'll drive a cool car and the other guy will drive a boring minivan or something and every driving scene will end with the car's grill stopping right at the camera so you can see the automaker's logo. NBC has a similar deal with another automaker for "Knight Rider." NBC is also in talks with the producers of their upcoming shows about Robinson Crusoe and Merlin to see if they can't work cars into a deserted island and Arthurian England.

Meanwhile, NBC uberlord Jeff Zucker spoke to TV Week about the future of television, and apparently, schedules and ratings aren't important anymore:

Zucker: "And it's not about the scheduling. I think this is the point that some of our competitors have missed. It was more about the dialogue that we began with these advertisers and agencies. In this world where it's much more complicated than just buying a 30-second commercial, the conversation is so much more complicated. The extra time to have these conversations has proved to be invaluable."

More Zucker: "(W)e're not going to knee-jerk change schedules just because the ratings aren't what somebody else expected them to be. It's really not just about the ratings anymore. It doesn't mean the ratings aren't still important. ... (W)e're managing for margin, not for ratings. So it's the expense of our shows, the consistency of our shows being on the schedule. It's not determined by the size of the ratings, because the size of the ratings of a show we cannot afford is not going to do us any good anymore. This is not because we do not have the outsized hits that we once did. This is because we are in a different environment where the difference between the first (place) and fourth (place) or second and third is incredibly minimal."

So NBC is arguing that if a show is cheap enough to produce and doesn't lose them money, they'll tally it up as a success, particularly if they're cozy enough with advertisers to stick some product-placement in the mix. NBC was the network that in the early '90s announced that it would no longer worry about total viewers but only those in the target demographic, viewers aged 18-49. The rest of the industry went along with them. Now, NBC's trying to change the rules again, but they're not exactly in the same position of power to get the industry to follow along this time.

We'll look at other TV issues confronting this week's upfront later this afternoon. Unless, you know, I die. Which I don't foresee happening, but you never know.

By TV's obdurate rule of diminishing returns, "House" should, at this point, be a shell of its former self, particularly when you look at the self-inflicted damage other equally successful shows have suffered in the past couple of years. And it's had its share of potential jump-the-shark moments - Sela Ward's turn as his ex and David Morse's relentless cop story arc come to mind - but series creator David Shore and his writers have spun away before any irreparable damage was done to the series, and Hugh Laurie and his supporting cast are generally so spot-on you're willing to ride out the missteps in anticipation of the next great episode.

Which brings us to tonight's episode, "House's Head," mainstream TV's equivalent of an art-house movie. It opens with House getting a lapdance in a strip club but not sure why (well, if you have to ask, fella...). Turns out he has a pretty serious scalp wound, and just fragments of memory of seeing someone exhibiting symptoms of a serious malady - but who? And where? And when?

He exits the gentlemen's establishment - that's what they call them, right? even though a real gentleman wouldn't be caught dead in one? - and around the corner, there has been a grisly bus accident, one that House somehow simply strolled away from to go to the strip bar, which somehow was so insulated that no one within was aware of the conflagration not a hundred yards from its front door.

Oh, well; these things happen on TV shows. From there, however, tonight's installment of "House" becomes a medical mystery where no one without brain damage is sure that there's actually anything to solve. House is driven to a worrying extent to find the person he may or may not have seen and save them. "Why does this matter so much?" he's asked, to which he can only respond, "I don't know."

Throughout the episode, House noodles around inside his own psyche, remembering bits of minutiae that may or may not be important. Details are sketchy - he recalls visiting a bar, but the bottles there are generically labeled "LIQUOR" OR "BEER." The bus driver is initially considered to be the afflicted person House witnessed before the crash. Wilson's (Robert Sean Leonard) girlfriend (and House's former charge) Amber (Anne Dudek) pops up in his semi-hallucinations, leading Wilson to believe that House is sweet on her. One of the pre-commercial patient collapses is that of House himself. A cool beauty who wasn't actually on the bus appears and reappears in House's internal dramas. Artful lighting dances about House's face as he tries to make sense of all of this.

All this is prelude to next week's episode, the fourth-season finale. For a show that, if anything, may be more rigidly structured than even all those crime procedurals, "House's" writers do find inventive ways to break from the formula.

And for "House" fans who've always wanted to see Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) perform a pole dance, your episode has arrived.

- "House:" 9 tonight; Fox (Channel 11).

LA.com again saw fit not to run today's story looking at the broadcast networks' challenges as we enter upfront week. Of course, if you check out the site, they still have a review posted for a "Masterpiece" film that came and went three weeks ago. So there's that.

And here's the story:

Traditionally, the May upfronts, in which broadcast networks unveil their fall schedules to advertisers and media journalists in New York City, have been a weeklong party. The presentations offer spectacle, comedy, music (The Who once performed for CBS) and a cavalcade of stars from each networks' programs, followed by lavish parties with alcohol flowing copiously.

This year, as the networks reveal their fall schedules over the upcoming week, the mood won't exactly be funereal, but it'll be far less celebratory than in the past. Every network except, perhaps, Fox is expected to take hits in advertising revenue next season.

Only Fox and CBS will offer traditional upfronts, though CBS's may offer fewer bells and whistles than usual. NBC, whose executives decried the expense involved in mounting upfronts and have anyway already unveiled a tentative schedule spanning from fall 2008 through summer 2009, will instead focus on touting NBC Universal's cable and online offerings for advertisers.

ABC will reveal its 2008-09 plans in a short, frill-free presentation with no party. The CW, coming off a disastrous second season, will forego an upfront altogether, opting only for a cocktail reception during which it will sketch out its plans for next season. (For one thing, it has abandoned Sunday night, opting to rent its airtime to a media conglomerate that will create programming and sell advertising.)

Tally up another victim of the writers strike. After the loss of original scripted programming played havoc with the networks' winter schedules and resulted in widespread viewer attrition - which wasn't reversed once new episodes of series returned - the networks are looking to cut corners wherever they can.

Moreover, the strike cut into pilot season, during which new shows are developed, so the networks have significantly less with which to titillate advertisers than in the past.

So at a time when the networks need strong programming to lure back viewers who have strayed, they have precious little to whet their desire to return. Not to mention the possibility of an actors strike this summer, which no one in the TV industry wants to contemplate.

"The fact that we broke viewers of their viewing habits will, in all likelihood, carry over into next year," concedes Preston Beckman, Fox's executive vice president of strategic program planning and research. "But it's like the baseball strike - if we have a couple of compelling new hit scripted shows ... on the broadcast networks this season, it'll reenergize viewers to network TV."

He adds, "Given that we were all kind of behind the eight-ball this year, I don't know if you'll see new programming on in the fall, but by the end of the season, a couple of quality scripted series will remind people why they've always watched broadcast television."

It may not be quite that easy. Marc Berman, ratings analyst for Mediaweek magazine, declares, "There's no reason to think that people will rush back after being away for three months. You can't mess with an audience. And even before the strike, the networks were still down. There were no big new hit shows this past season, nothing worth noting. In fact, we haven't seen any really big hit shows since the 2004 season [when 'Lost,' 'Desperate Housewives,' 'House' and 'Grey's Anatomy' all debuted]. And a lot of the veteran shows are losing steam."

Indeed, TV's most popular scripted shows - "Desperate Housewives," "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Grey's Anatomy," "House," "Lost" and "Heroes" - all hemorrhaged millions of viewers this season. Each of the networks lost about 10 percent or more of their audience since last season in terms of overall viewers and target demographics, though Fox has fared the best (or, lost the least).

At the same time, cable channels like ABC Family, Bravo, Comedy Central, HGTV, Lifetime, Oxygen, Sci Fi Channel, TBS, TNT and USA have each enjoyed huge bumps in viewership in the first quarter of 2008. Many, in fact, enjoyed the most successful month in their histories in April.

Which means viewers aren't tuning out of TV in favor of the Internet, as conventional wisdom would have it. They're just migrating from the broadcast networks, which cost exponentially more to operate than their cable cousins, even though the difference in their respective ratings numbers are dwindling on an almost weekly basis.

"If ever in the history of the medium the broadcast networks needed a few good hits, this is the time," says Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. "But even if they find them, given the new economic models in the industry these days, how do they pay for them? Can you afford to do that anymore?"

Due to the writers strike, most networks won't have many new shows to unveil this week. They'll continue to develop programming through the summer. Fox, with two high-profile projects with celebrated showrunners - Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" and J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" - will fine-tune both with an eye toward debuting them in early 2009.

"We knew we didn't need a lot in the fourth quarter, so we didn't have to rush projects or make hasty decisions," says Beckman of Fox, which airs baseball's World Series but otherwise tends to get off to a slow start in the fall. "Our needs for fall are minimum. ... We can fail in the fourth quarter and have failure-proof shows in "(American) Idol" and "24" in January and beyond, which gets us back on track."

Other networks, however, have gotten skittish and rushed some new shows into production, ordering up drama presentations, which are usually about half the length of a regular pilot.

"Initially, they weren't going to do anything because nothing was ready, but in the course of three weeks this spring, there was this slate of stuff they wanted to produce," says a TV producer speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The list multiplied out of nowhere. Some didn't have completed scripts, but they wanted to shoot in three weeks. It was haphazard. One show that's on the air couldn't get its guest cast hired because everyone waiting to hear if they got pilots.

"What we'll end up producing are some half-baked shows that are not as well thought-out as they should be," the producer continues. "They're racing through production, but if you're on a deadline to make advertisers happy, are you going to make them happy with something half-baked? It's like doing your homework the night before the project is due. I haven't heard any kind of positive buzz on anything that's been in production. Usually you hear about one or two or three things that people are high on, but this year, I've heard nothing except what a mess everything has been to get to this finish line."

The producer insists, "In the wake of the writers strike, you need to spend more time getting it right. Otherwise, you'll lose more audience, and then, what the hell was the point of the strike? You're not making anything that'll make money because it won't be on the air long enough."

But Rob Roy Thomas, a writer/producer/director (Fox's "Free Ride," Bravo's "Significant Others"), isn't surprised by the confusion and mixed messages prefacing this week's upfront presentations.

"This is like a market crash and the markets are resetting themselves right now," he says. "Things are getting redefined and we're in middle of that process. When you're in a state of redefinition, there's nothing surprising about chaos. But we're always surprised by chaos."

Thomas believes the ad agencies will be sympathetic to the networks' paroxysms while undergoing change.

"After all that has happened, will the buyers expect anything else? They know what they're getting into," he says. "The networks are in transition and not sure which way they're going to go - they're used to constants and they're dealing now with variables. They're going to have to lump it and get through this metamorphosis. They'll lose some money along the way. Even though it's financially difficult and scary, it's never been more interesting."

And though some say network TV is a victim of burgeoning technologies, Thomas says that with time, it will survive thanks to the new technologies, as it learns just how to embrace the Internet.

"Right now, network TV is a patient," he says. "We just have to keep it alive and comfortable until the new technological kidney comes in."

There are a couple of ways a traditional reviewer could open a discussion of Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein's Saturday-night concert at L.A.'s Ahmanson Theatre benefiting CTG. You could count how many references there were to MacFarlane becoming Hollywood's new $100-million-man (answer: too many to keep count; at one point, Borstein told him, "It's your world; we're just breathing the air"). Or you could focus on how the two hijacked the concept of having people sign the show for deaf audience members, forcing them to perform sign-language's assignations for just about every dirty word and sexual position the human population has been able to discover to this point. (So it was educational - we learned how deaf people convey the concepts of @ssholes and cunnilingus to one another on this most edifying of evenings.)

Or, you could choose to meld these disparate approaches and marvel at how one of the richest men in the universe has become so by reveling in such crass, debasing, utterly politically incorrect and, yes, pretty much devastatingly hilarious gags.

For the uninitiated, MacFarlane created the cartoon show "Family Guy," a funny show that becomes exponentially funnier when you hear about religious groups' complaints about it, which Fox cancelled not once but twice before this past week shoveling a cool $100-mill into his lap to keep doing it (and developing other shows, besides, for the next four years). MacFarlane also provides the voice of the show's clueless protagonist, portly (to be kind) Peter Griffin, as well as a host of other characters; Borstein plays Peter's long-suffering-to-the-point-that-it-becomes-eternally-suffering wife, Lois.

So anyway. Saturday night's concert, MacFarlane and Borstein explained, was something you'd experience if you shuffled through "a retard's iPod." They also worked off a vague alphabetical conceit, as well, crooning tunes with titles from A to Z, though adherence to their concept with letters such as L, V and Z were pretty sketchy, at best.

One of the evening's recurring jokes was performing songs inappropriately, offering a Vegas hack's stylings to the theme to "Animal House" or Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." (MacFarlane did his best Dean Martin impersonation, sitting on a stool, smoking cigs and quaffing Jack Daniels, throughout the event.)

But then, pretty much everything was inappropriate, if you have any taste. It's hard to precisely finger the most tasteless moment, but it was probably one of these:

* Borstein protesting MacFarlane singing "Edelweiss," saying her family included Holocaust victims. MacFarlane replied, "I don't think this is a place to bring your Hebrew baggage."

* Borstein performing Diana Ross' "Upside Down" in Marlee Matlin's slurred speaking voice. MacFarlane then asked the sign interpreters how they conveyed said slurring in their signing.

* In a version of the mawkish Barbra Streisand/Neil Diamond ditty "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" rewritten for Peter and Lois, MacFarlane and Borstein lamented very specific sexual acts that the drifting couple no longer performed on one another.

MacFarlane also did "Rocket Man" as "Family Guy's" Stewie, channeling William Shatner. They performed Queen's theme song from the movie "Flash Gordon" only to point out how sh!tty it was - so bad that they got bored and wandered offstage, where Borstein purported serviced Seth with some oral sex. Britney Spears, Monty Python, the Bee Gees, Lindsay Lohan, "The Little Mermaid," Blondie, Tina Turner and the Muppets came victim to their show's assault. The number of obscure TV themes MacFarlane offered up called into question just how much of his youth was wasted on crap TV.

Oh, and Borstein revealed she was pregnant. It wasn't until after intermission that MacFarlane realized she wasn't just doing some sort of shtick.

I've heard the term "painfully funny," but I didn't really understand it until Saturday night - my herniated disk and sciatica had returned with a vengeance, so every time I laughed I suffered a sharp, shooting pain. But not laughing wasn't exactly an option.

Janeane Garofalo opened the evening. "I would rather take a salt bullet to the knee than see 'Made of Honor,'" she declared, not unreasonably. Noting that she had a role in "24" this season before the writers strike (it'll return next year), Garofalo probably gave up more information than the producers would have liked: She'll play an FBI agent who can out-hack the show's resident computer expert, Chloe. Oh, and "Jack's gone rogue," but then, Jack always goes rogue. She explained what little she could make of the show: "Jack Bauer's an important guy and he gives people his word a lot."

And something else that'll endear her to the producers: "I don't watch this sh!t." They had shot nine episodes before the strike; expect her character to die a horrible death by episode 11.

Coming Sunday: A look at upfront week, which starts Monday. What can the broadcast networks do to stanch the hemorrhaging viewership? Or, maybe more to the point, what will they do? Do we have any answers? I guess you'll have to find out Sunday.

HBO today released a list of upcoming projects (the bad news: no new "Flight of the Conchords" until 2009), but curiously enough, they neglected to include "Hung," about a guy with, um, a humongous phallus. (Go ahead, click on that link. It's not what you think. It may actually be worse, but at least it's SFW.)

Yes, seriously. April Fools was weeks ago. This is the first pickup at HBO since Sue Naegle replaced Carolyn Strauss as the head of programming.

"Hung," per Variety, "revolves around a well-endowed man who is plodding along in middle age as a struggling father and high school coach. The character was once a high school sports legend, and his luck returns when he figures out a way to use his best asset." At least it doesn't seem to have any psychiatrists.

This will come to us courtesy Colette Burson, who - again no joke - directed a film back in 2000 entitled "Coming Soon." According to Variety, it grossed all of $3,742.00. She also wrote an episode of "The Riches," and so her husband, "Riches" creator Dmitry Lipkin is also attached, as is director and Oscar-winning screenwriter Alexander Payne ("Sideways").

Lipkin called "Hung" "a comedy with a lot of heart." And a lot of something else, too, obviously.

I can't wait to see the reviews for this in family newspapers.

Feel free to direct all d!ck jokes to the comments section.

Hugh Hefner, having a senior moment and apparently not quite getting the point behind that Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair-Disney kerfuffle, told "Extra's" cameras that he wouldn't mind getting Hannah's Mountain-a's in the pages of Playboy.

"Sure, she'd be welcomed in the magazine. Very pretty lady," sez Hugh, with the attendant Rowwwrrrr going unspoken but understood. Hef, Hef - the problem wasn't that Miley had too much on in the photo. Hefner did allow that she'd have to be of legal age to appear in his glamorous smutrag - again, Hef, the whole problem was that she isn't of legal age. Pay attention.

Hef also declared, "I think to make such a big to-do over something as innocent as those photos, I think is a reflection on how schizophrenic America is about sexuality." Well, innocent, as opposed to the sort of photography he trucks in.

*

This intentionally vague Email arrived this afternoon:

"Please join us on Monday, May 12 at 12 p.m. ET for a special announcement regarding NBC's 'Late Night.'"

Alas, the location was 30 Rock in Manhattan, so I must send my regrets. But this likely means that Jimmy Fallon, who was "SNL's" smirky "Weekend Update" co-anchor who stood alone in laughing at his own material before Seth Meyers and has been long-rumored to be Conan O'Brien's replacement when Conan ascends to "The Tonight Show" next year, can put that abysmal movie career behind him and take a nightly ratings beatdown from Craig Ferguson.

*

Finally, I have no idea what this is about, but The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports that Congressional Republicans officially hate their mothers:

"On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, 'Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day,' when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"'Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote,' he announced.

"Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

"It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it."

Sheesh. Happy Mother's Day.

"Heroes" continues to strike while the iron is cold: They're unleashing a bunch of dolls action figures of the characters, starting next month, when cheerleader Claire, time-bending Hiro, moody Peter, ineffectual Mohinder and bad-guy Syler hit stores. The gyp, of course, comes when you melt down your Claire doll and discover that it doesn't have the same indestructible superpowers that she does. On the other hand, when you misplace your Hiro doll, that proves it has slipped through the time-space continuum. And be careful around that Sylar doll - he might slice open your skull and swipe your brain after absorbing your special ability to spend your workday playing spider solitaire.

But, good news! This announcement came with some of the most hyperbolic press-release gibberish we've seen in months:

Some guy from NBC: "We are certain that the loyal 'Heroes' fans will feel that these figures reflect the action and excitement of the series." Yeah, seven-inch-tall chunks of plastic really wind me up with their visceral recreations of spectacular sequences - oh, wait.

Some guy from the toy company stamping these things out: "NBC has a rich and proud history and Mezco is very excited to become a part of that tradition. Having our first series of seven inch 'Heroes' action figures on display at the storied '30 Rock' building in New York City is truly a dream come true for us and seeing the excitement of the 'Heroes' fans as they view the figures makes the dream all the more sweeter." Man, dreams really aren't what they used to be.

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MTV is proud of the fact that it's a nonstop playground of advertising, product placement and, in general, hawking crap rather than trying to entertain viewers:

"Dario Spina, who handles [integrated marketing] for MTV's entertainment channels like Comedy Central and Spike, said ... 'That's the idea here; we want to blur the lines between the commercial breaks and the entertainment content.'"

Call me antiquated and old-fashioned, but I prefer having the option to mute the TV when the commercials come on so I can watch little wacky online films featuring Hillary Clinton trying to operate a coffee machine or Maria Bamford being exquisitely neurotic or Tim Fite smashing flowerpots or Tom Waits being Tom Waits. I don't want to be told to buy something I don't need, unless it's sweet, sweet booze.

The only example of this sinister plot I've witnessed is Stephen Colbert hawking a snack chip he clearly holds in at least a little disdain on "The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central is part of the MTV networks). I doubt other shows manage their plugs with such curdled irony.

Does everything have to be commercialized? It sickens me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to snack on some delicious Trader Joe's© pinwheels - which will I have? BBQ Chicken Breast or Havana Style? I'll let you know later!

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Here's a shocker: Media outlets have been reticent to follow a New York Times report (which we previously mentioned) about how media outlets were played for dupes by "military analysts" who were actually shills for the Iraq war. Actually, they're just taking a page from the Bush Administration playbook - if you don't 'fess up to a mistake, then it never happened.

Jon Stewart has always insisted that "The Daily Show" is not a news program, but
a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, after following the show for all of 2007, has decided it's no more a news program than any other news program on the air. Which either means Stewart is wrong, or that Stewart is right and there're no news shows anywhere on TV.

I won't bore you with the details of the study, but the Project for Excellence in Journalism compared Stewart's show to the traditional news media's coverage of sundry issues, and found:

* "When Americans last year were asked to name the journalist they most admired, showing up at No. 4 on the list was a comedian. Jon Stewart, host of 'The Daily Show' on Comedy Central and former master of ceremonies at Academy Award shows, tied in the rankings with anchormen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and cable host Anderson Cooper."

* "In its use of news video, The Daily Show is often quite documentary, culling through archives to show official hypocrisy, abuse of language, and spin. ... In its choice of topics, its use of news footage to deconstruct the manipulations by public figures and its tendency toward pointed satire over playing just for laughs, The Daily Show performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature--getting people to think critically about the public square."

* "'The Daily Show' not only assumes, but even requires, previous and significant knowledge of the news on the part of viewers if they want to get the joke. ... The survey also suggests 'Daily Show' viewers are highly informed, an indication that 'The Daily Show' is not their lone source of news. Regular viewers of 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report' were most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs."

* "The presidential campaign and the policy debate about the war in Iraq, together added up to a quarter of the time spent on 'The Daily Show' (26%) for the year (2007, remember). This was significantly more than in the mainstream press, where the two stories commanded 18% in the same time period. ... Washington-related pieces, U.S. foreign affairs (especially the Bush Administration's Iraq war policy), and general politics accounted for 47% of the show's airtime in 2007. In that regard, by the numbers The Daily Show closely resembles in its topic agenda the news menu of many cable 'news' shows."

* "'The Daily Show' is clearly impacting American dialogue. ... Some of the show's sway as an information source could also come from language, and the sense that it is more candid, and thus somehow closer to one sense of accuracy than the more hidebound traditional media. 'My students tell me they read the news for facts, but they watch Jon Stewart for the truth,' Professor Steve Lacy of Michigan State University has observed."

Hence, PEJ's study concluded: "In its subject matter, 'The Daily Show' is indeed journalistic. Its topic agenda is highly focused on the public square, on issues of significance, particularly those focused around Washington. Its agenda is not dissimilar, indeed, from other cable talk shows. The language is even more blunt, and its point often more direct. 'The Daily Show' is no doubt entertainment, but it is entertainment, measurably, with a substantive point. It is, in its own way, another kind of No Spin Zone."

Bill O'Reilly, who dismisses "Daily Show" viewers as "pot-smokers," no doubt will love being compared to Stewart. He should be that talented.

Against my better judgment, I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly, the magazine famous for loving movies/TV shows/music based upon their hyper-charged marketing campaigns until, oh, six months or a year down the line, when they finally admit that, oh, yeah, they were cold lumps of merde in the first place and that any heat that steamed off of them was due in large part to the hyperbolic efforts of Entertainment Weekly itself.

So the most recent issue has been sitting around my place for nearly a week, and I've just now managed to coax myself into looking at it. And I looked at the cover, and that's about as far as I've been able to get. The headlines are idiotic.

For a "Grey's Anatomy" cover story, the headline reads: "Why is Ellen Pompeo smiling? Because her hit show is finally getting good again." Actually, it's because she's posing for a photo shoot, and smiling is generally what you do for one of those, and anyway, she doesn't look all that happy to begin with.

The other headlines: "Miley Cyrus: Get off her back!" (actually, people getting off on her back is what got her in trouble in the first place); "American Idol: Inside Their Fiercest Battle" (which no doubt explains why the show's ratings and buzz have slipped this season); and "Gossip Girl: Evil Has a New Name" (and EW actually likes "Gossip Girl;" this is only their fifth or sixth story on the show this season, which is really paying off, given that this week's episode was watched by a measly 2.1 million viewers - The CW's "Reaper" had nearly 2.5 million viewers last night, and without the benefit of a splashy new ad campaign).

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AMC today announced it's renewing "Breaking Bad" for a second season, after its truncated (by the writers strike) second season. "Breaking Bad" is that nasty little inspired drama/black comedy starring Bryan Cranston as a beleaguered chemist with cancer who decides to fortify his pathetic health-care plan by eliminating the health of patrons and competitors of his spanking-new crystal-meth business. So, with this and "Mad Men," AMC's officially on a roll. Thoughts, HBO?

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Miss those fun days of the writers strike? Fear not: Actors and producers are conspiring in their squabbling to plunge us back into those halcyon days of inactivity and gutting L.A.'s economy.

Per the AMPTP: "Negotiations were thrust into reverse by SAG's persistent refusal to acknowledge that the three deals already struck with the writers, directors and AFTRA reflect the economic realities faced by everyone in our industry, including actors."

Per SAG: "The AMPTP suspended negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild today over the objections of SAG's negotiating committee.The committee had urged that the AMPTP continue discussion and had offered to negotiate around the clock if necessary in order to secure an agreement."

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Fox's Monday-Tuesday schedule is a head-scratcher. They've kept "Hell's Kitchen" on Tuesdays after "American Idol," where it loses about half the audience. "House," meanwhile, is on Monday, where it's hardly struggling but is certainly not doing the business it has done on Tuesdays, where it'd reliably lure 18-23 million viewers after "American Idol." (Repeats of "House" have spent the season plugging any timeslot hole in Fox's schedule - do people realize these are new episodes and that it's been relocated?)

Perhaps it's a function of living in Southern California, but I have no need of or interest in the Weather Channel whatsoever. If I care about the temperature or the forecast, I'll simply click on my computer's dashboard icon and get it in five seconds, along with the date, the time, a calculator and an update on how much ink remains in my printer. Why would anyone need to flip through scores of cable stations to locate some happy shiny people who'll invariably be chattering away about the barometric pressure in Pittsburgh?

Here's why: Because while watching, you can imagine the lurid, Axe-Body-Gel-TV-Commercial levels of lustily frenzied sexual tension between the meteorologists.

The Smoking Gun has a piquant little yarn about a sexual harassment suit that the Weather Channel is trying to keep quiet (obviously, not too successfully). Bob Stokes, a 50-year-old former Weather Channel anchor, was canned after arbitration found that he asked a 38-year-old co-anchor, "Will you lick my swizzle stick?", "leered at her chest, and followed her into the women's dressing room. He also allegedly questioned her 'over and over again, non-stop' about her sex life, and once noted, 'It tortures me when you wear those heels and skirt.'"

This is inconveniently becoming public as the channel is up for sale. I say this makes it an irresistible new landscape of Caligulan debauchery for the guy behind the American Apparel ad campaigns.

Thursday's season finale of "30 Rock" finds Jack (Alec Baldwin) estranged from GE/NBC/Universal/Kmart and trying his hand at politics in the waning days of the Bush Administration - "It's time for my Freedom Search©," he tells Liz (Tina Fey) on his cell phone, as a security guy in the background snaps on a rubber glove.

As gung-ho as Jack may be, he has entered a land of abject malaise: The offices appear to have been looted; since there are no pens to be found, government employees are left to scratch memos on Post-It Notes with straight pins. Jack's boss (Matthew Broderick, who manages to make stultifying blandness fairly hilarious), Cooter Burger (a moniker bestowed upon him by the nicknamer-in-chief) an interim chief while the acting chief is on trial on sundry corruption charges, strives to maintain an upbeat demeanor - when Jack asks about a leak in the ceiling spilling copious amounts of water onto the desk below; Cooter insists there's no leak: "I'll show you the study," he offers.

Jack wants out, but as we all know, no one leaves the Bush Administration unless they really screw up. So Jack cooks up a monumentally inept plan.

There's some inspired comedy in "30 Rock's" depiction of a dissolute, desiccated and rudderless government run to ruin, populated by toadies given to kneejerk banalities. When Jack, trying to rally the troops, declares, "Rome wasn't built in a day," one gormless career hack replies, "Well, that's one theory."

Meanwhile, Liz fears she's pregnant and, in the requisite subplot that just doesn't work, Kenny the Page (Jack McBrayer) is in a monumental struggle to get his application to serve as a page at the Summer Olympics in Beijing in on time.

Here's hoping the keep Jack stranded in Washington a bit longer when the show returns next season, because they're tapping a rich comic vein there. And here's hoping Liz quickly forgets her vow at the end of the episode, because what she proposes is a reliably proven killer of quality TV.

- "30 Rock:" 9:30 p.m. Thursday, NBC Channel 4.

Cable network Bravo announced on Monday sinister plans to make it impossible for the ordinary American to go anywhere in public without being reminded of the reality show "Top Chef." Of course, Bravo wasn't so honest as to phrase it that way: They called their nefarious plot "major retail and merchandising partnerships created to extend the Bravo brand beyond the television screen and directly into the viewers' environment."

Some of the strategy isn't surprising or, even, offensive. "Top Chef: The Cookbook," which has been out for a month, fairly seems a no-brainer. "Top Chef: The 2009 Calendar," while nothing I'd want to see on my walls, is harmless enough, as is this fall's cross-promotion with a kitchen-housewares company that'll give you the book free if you spring for $400 in cookware (though, again, I intend to spend $400 in cookware over the entire span of my life).

"Top Chef's" 20-city nationwide tour, likewise, is not particularly odious - it will feature former contestants offering cooking demonstrations. The "Top Chef" culinary school, also featuring the TV contestants as instructors offering classes this summer in New York City, is pushing it, but has not yet utterly lapsed over into brazen bad taste.

But I start to draw the line with the "Top Chef" mobile game - what does your cell phone have to do with fine dining? And Bravo really plunges into the ninth ring of hell with its "Top Chef Crusining Experience," launching in a year, also featuring former "Top Chef" contestants giving even more cooking demonstrations that serve as the only respite from the mind-numbing tedium that can only come from being adrift at sea for weeks at a time.

Not that I have anything against cruises (see previous sentence), but it seems like Bravo's missing a good bet by not expanding the cruise theme to also incorporate some of its other reality programming and casting a wider net for potential customers. Since patrons will be eating nonstop, it would only be thoughtful for them to also offer a "Workout" seminar so that customers will still fit into their clothing at the end of the trip. And "Project Runway" demonstrations would teach cruisegoers, who will be financially depleted by journey's end, how to make their own clothing out of asparagus and tin foil. They could share some crack with the star of "Being Bobby Brown," dabble in whatever the hell "Hey Paula's" Paula Abdul is on and then lose some more cash in "Celebrity Poker Showdown" matches (hey, on TV the word "celebrity" has become so diluted that reality-show contestants qualify nowadays - just ask Kathy Griffin, star of "My Life on the D-List").

And, of course, they could throw in the "Real Housewives" of Orange County and New York and the cruise would be transformed into a floating key party. Naturally, they'd film everything and have yet another reality show.

C'mon, Bravo! If you're going to be cynical moneymakers, take it to its logical, Kurtzian conclusion!

Back during the writers strike, Fox was finishing up a few episodes of "Family Guy" without input from creator Seth MacFarlane, and MacFarlane decried the maneuver as "a colossal d!ck move." A couple of weeks ago, MacFarlane and some "Family Guy" writers sued Fox for breach of contract for unpaid work on the "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story" DVD.

Now, it's hugs and kisses all around. $100 million will do that for you.

That's how much TV Week says MacFarlane is getting for a four-year deal with Fox Television that will include his work on "Family Guy," "American Dad," an upcoming spinoff show featuring "FG's" Cleveland character, potential live-action comedies (MacFarlane executive-produced the short-lived sitcom "The Winner") and, if all goes according to plan, a "Family Guy" movie. Not bad for a show that got cancelled by the network - twice.

Let's go to Fox TV Chairman Dana Walden for the requisite press-release quote, which is gushier and less corporate-ese than usual: "Seth is an incredibly talented guy whose kindness and generosity are legendary in this business, and there's no one more deserving of the kind of success that he's had and will continue to have in the years to come. He's also about the most entertaining meeting you'll take as a creative executive, and everyone here lines up just to be in a room with him."

To celebrate, MacFarlane will allow you to be in a room with him: He and his "FG" co-star Alex Borstein will headline a live show, "Freakin' Sweet!", this Saturday evening at the Ahmanson Theatre, benefiting Center Theatre Group's New Play Production Program. After the show, MacFarlane will use his $100 million to buy all in attendance a steak and a highball. Well, maybe.

George Costanza's father's collection of TV Guides may be nearly complete: After last week's hatchet jobs on the magazine's editors, there's a sense the print edition is not long for this world. Macrovision bought Gemstar, TV Guide's owner, mainly for the technology that creates listings for the cable channel and online; the magazine itself was more or less thrown in as an afterthought, a white elephant that's hemorrhaging money.

This, after decades as the magazine with the highest subscription base in America. Today, of course, it's a shell of its former self, a People Magazine Lite cluttered with frivolous gossip and childlike cheerleading for just about every show and sorely lacking the one thing people for which used to subscribe to it - the listings, which people of a certain age will recall fondly, riffling through the black-and-white pages when the chubby little thing arrived in the mail and checking off the shows that sounded promising to them, making a mental note to try to catch them, but knowing that convenient reminder in digest form would be there on the living-room end table.

But as TV evolved, TV Guide devolved. Cable gave the magazine more to write about, but it also diffused the star power of its cover stories - there were no shows watched by 30 million people every week -which seriously injured newsstand sales. It got to the point where they were featuring cover stories that had nothing to do with TV - hawking the big movie opening that week or NASCAR or pop singers or something, anything that might catch the eye of those in a grocery-store checkout line, since fewer TV personalities had the ability to move large numbers of copies. And the glut of channels made printing listings a logistical and paper-wasting nightmare, and with them being available online and from your cable or satellite provider, and with the advent of telegrazing via channel surfing, listings became expendable. Which probably inspired more channel surfing.

Ah, well, 55 years is a good, long run. It will be survived by TV Guide Channel, an eternal if less slick version of "Entertainment Tonight," and its online presence, defined by giddy gossip and vague spoilers for shows' upcoming episodes.

(Full disclosure: I once toiled for a couple of years for the L.A. bureau of the Canadian edition of the magazine, which had separate owners and content. At the time, it, too, had the highest circulation of any magazine in Canada; today, it has been reduced to a mere online presence. It was one of the most exasperating professional experiences of my life, if in fact "professional" is the appropriate word to use to describe that publication.)

I suppose this was inevitable (which doesn't make it any less depressing): TV Land, of all people, is determined to diminish its brand, so they're doing a reality dating show in which a cougar has her pick from a bunch of younger guys.

It was announced today (wouldn't this be something you'd want to keep quiet?); it'll air in 2009. Here's the requisite press-release-ese:

"We are thrilled to unleash this wild project onto TV Land's schedule and join other successful and fun-filled shows like 'High School Reunion' from Mike Fleiss," stated Keith Cox, executive vice president, original programming and production. "The TV Land audience is looking for entertainment with interesting and compelling storylines -- something Fleiss has proven he can deliver to our audience."

OK, just what audience out there is not looking for "interesting and compelling storylines?" And didn't NBC do something along these lines only they had younger women in the mix, as well? And didn't that utterly tank?

No title yet, but why they just don't go with "Cougar on the Prowl" is beyond me. And why ape the tired old "Bachelor" format? Just follow some desperate ladies around as they hit bars (the cameras will likely help them score) and capture them in their natural habitat and it can be repurposed as "Wild Kingdom" episodes.

It boggles the mind: McDreamy could've been McCranky.

Patrick Dempsey auditioned to play another iconic TV doctor, "House."

"I was one of many people up for that," he told me in a recent interview. (And yeah, like Warren Zevon's werewolf of London, his hair is perfect.)

"It wouldn't have been the right role for me," he conceded. This is a much better fit.

"Otherwise, I would've gotten it, you know, if I was right for that. But I knew when they had me come back, I knew I wasn't going to get it."

Things seem to have worked out well for Dempsey anyway - and, of course, for Hugh Laurie, as well.

More on Dempsey in Sunday's paper or at LA.com, if those guys see fit to post it.

For the broadcast networks, the past TV season has been one that all involved would pretty much like to forget. But, outside of Fox, no one's looking ahead with much gleeful anticipation, either.

The writers strike has played havoc with the networks' ability to cobble together schedules for the 2008-09 season, with fewer pilots to choose from to fill more holes in the schedules.

The Hollywood Reporter notes, however, that Fox should be fully loaded: It has a "Family Guy" spinoff, "Cleveland," two dramas from cult-fave showrunners, J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" and Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" (starring Eliza Dushku), a Bernie Mac sitcom and two potential animated series based on live-action sitcoms - "Sit Down, Shut Up," developed by "Arrested Development's" Mitch Hurwitz and based on an Australian sitcom about dysfunctional high-school teachers, and, um, "The Pitts," based on a mercifully short-lived Fox sitcom a few seasons back. The idea being, I guess, that the latter will be more palatable if the characters really are cartoons instead of being broadly cartoonish.

At CBS, there's yet another Jerry Bruckheimer show, "Eleventh Hour," "Exit 19," starring Geena Davis as a single mom/police detective, "The Mentalist," which sounds a little like a serious version of "Psych" and starring Simon Baker and the comedies "Single White Millionaire" (starring Fred Savage) and "Worst Week."

ABC has been the busiest and most ambitious, developing 20 projects including the "Harry Potter"-inspired "Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas" and David E. Kelley's take on the British lost-in-time cop drama "Life on Mars."

The Beleaguered© CW has only three pilots in the works: a "Beverly Hills 90210" remake, a "Gossip Girl"-y "How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls" and medical drama "Austin Golden Hour." The CW just doesn't care.

(NBC has already announced its schedule for 2008 and beyond.)

In the past, upfronts were lavish affairs, with comedy bits, musical numbers and plenty of star power. No longer: Now that the networks are crying that they're just as poor as you and I, they're downgrading from a circus to an afternoon tea. Only Fox will present a traditionally blustery upfront and blow-out party (though it'd be nice if they could keep it from becoming the bloated leviathan of two years ago). ABC's presentation will last less than an hour; CBS's will include talking up its other media to advertisers; neither will have a post-upfront party. Meanwhile, The Beleaguered© CW will only have a party (to celebrate the simple fact that they're still on the air?), which they'll interrupt briefly to reveal what little they have to offer.