The Triumphant Return of TV Press Tour

Winter TV Press tour begins today, at least nominally: It's a relatively mercifully short (11 days) affair, but then, it's pretty light on exciting stuff.

For example, sessions will concern reality shows that suggest that reality producers at this point pretty much choose their subjects by making a dart board with every profession listed on it and then tossing a dart; where it lands is their new show (or random verbs and nouns and throwing two darts). We'll be subjected to programming about drag queen competitions, a "Survivor: Alaska" show without hokey competitions, the wives of NASCAR drivers, jockeys, a search for nice beaches, a daredevil, yet more weight loss guru stuff and the detainees at Guantanamo Bay (oh, wait, that's a straightforward documentary).

(Actually, that'd be a reality show I might watch - just imagine the bitchy backbiting between the inmates the producers would conjure up and the competitions they could have to see who gets to avoid getting waterboarded.)

I digress.

Here's a factoid that underscores the dispiriting nature of this Press Tour and the industry in general at this point: According to the schedule at this point, NBC is keeping its co-chairmen, Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, away from journalists, instead offering up an executive session with Primetime Entertainment president Angela Bromstad and reality guru Paul Telegdy.

The CW goes NBC one better - it's sitting this press tour out. Perhaps they have the right idea.

We're starting with the tony stuff, PBS and Ian McKellen discussing "King Lear," which played to sold-out houses in Los Angeles, leading him to marvel, "Even in L.A., people want to go to the theater, and even in L.A., people want to go to serious theater."

But then, it's not all high-minded: Discussing the nude scene in Lear, McKellen confessed, "Every night, when I took my clothes off, you know what I did? I held my stomach in - pathetic! He's an old man - he should just let it hang out, but I couldn't."