February 2009 Archives

We'll end this blog as we began it - with the first entry, from two and a half years ago.

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Welcome, good people of Television. The Council of Network Executives and I have labored mightily to ensure that Television is a place where entire families that have been strategically relocated outside of the FX and HBO Districts can thrive and enjoy life - we're still working on making life palatable for those dwelling in the neighborhoods dominated by QVC, Spike TV and Lifetime - and that our community truly will be a place where your fantasies can become real life.

First, a few housekeeping notes:

* Once again, I must implore reality-show producers in the Southern Quadrant to limit their attacks on more northern Regions of Good Taste on a Need-to-Bomb basis. Talks are ongoing with the insurgent creators of "Flavor of Love," "My Super Sweet 16" and "Date My Mom" to cease their audiences' metaphorical beheadings, and we're making quite a bit of headway, so to speak. So other reality-program producers need not escalate the hostilities toward their viewers with ever-more-visceral assaults on genteel sensibilities.

Also, I beseech those in that area to give a wide berth to the loyal patriots in Kevlar-enhanced Hazmat suits cleaning up the spillage from "My Fair Brady: We're Getting Married!"

Remember, Television is home to all of us, and our goal is a serene, relatively incident-free environment that we would all be proud not to denounce as our own.

* There will be a Zoning Commission meeting Tuesday to discuss whether The CW's Sunday-night comedies - "Everybody Hates Chris," "All of Us," "Girlfriends" and "The Game" - might be allowed to exist peaceably at other points on the schedule.

* Will whoever is planting the effigies of Jeff Zucker's head on a pike in public spaces please remove them. Again, I remind you, Television is a land of happiness, enforced or otherwise, and such forms of protest are at odds with our Doctrines of Infinite Q Scores and Failing Upwards.

* Also, we implore those who are leaking to YouTube.com the results of our Test Laboratories' failed Petri dishes - known to some as "pilots rejected by the networks" - to please cease immediately. Television is a land of Compulsory Harmony, and the dissemination of such confidential governmental documents may lead the citizenry to question not only our motives but our sanity.

OK, these notes aside, we have some new business to attend to. As you know, the Council of Network Executives and I are pleased to announce the commencement of a new television season that we are confident will be the most successful ever or, at least, not result in the embarrassments of seasons past. Fox, being Fox (desultory chuckle), will commence the season on Monday, with the season-two premiere of "Prison Break" and the debut of "Vanished."

There is a great deal of hope amongst all involved this year, particularly in the area of gentrifying the Eastside Comedy Ghettos.

Our Ministry of Aesthetics will be issuing Analytical Reports of each broadcast networks' prospectus in the coming days, and we invite you to inspect our thoughtful inquiry as to how Fox has improved upon its already celebrated schedule when it appears on this blog on Monday. Subsequent White Papers analyzing each network's impending fortunes will be issued at appropriate times as the new season continues to roll out.

Moreover, we are fast approaching the Emmy Awards, many of our citizens' favorite time of the year, except for those at the newly rechristened CW and, apparently, some disgruntled fringe elements at ABC, who have opted to air "Pirates of the Caribbean" opposite our bread-and-circuses ceremony. (Remember, if viewers can't enjoy yet another spurious awards show, the terrorists win.) Our upcoming discussions of the controversial nominating process within this forum threatens to be nominally insightful and to contain an almost certain amount of vague interest. So keep your eyes on this forum: We of Television haven't made this a Constitutional Requirement - yet - but it's always nice for a constituency to have a healthy interest in what little we Leaders want you to know about the democratic process.

Finally, would those posting signs proclaiming, "Recall the Mayor" please desist. You knew coming in that Television has never been a Meritocracy: It's a Stalinist Democracy. And so it shall ever be.

All Hail Television!

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Look out for mayoroftelevision.com soonish.

Variety offers an all-purpose Oscar-acceptance speech, as written by "Rescue Me" co-creator and star Denis Leary. Here's a taste:

"I just wanna say that -- acting is -- so ... awesome. It's just such an incredibly - awesome - thing - to do! It touches people and it makes people - change - and grow and cry and laugh and -- feel ... stuff! And stuff is so -- important. And - it ... encompasses. Us. All of us. And I love acting because now I will be able to do the kind of work I've always dreamed of doing which will reach and touch and help people and -- make them smell better. Cause when I get a new perfume contract - a really really classy one that smells really really good but different too! And I wanna help people with their hair and do one of those beautiful slow motion hair commercials that look so luscious and I wanna help George Clooney with the Darfur stuff and the anti-paparazzi thing but -- and, um -- last but in absolutely no way least -- to my partner, to my costar in life and love -- who will probably leave me for The Next Big Thing in about eighteen months after I've squandered whatever tiny bit of sparkle and power I may appear to have at this very moment by doing six overblown gimungous box-office bombs that leave three studios and eight agents left for dead in my wake, but tonight my sweet -- I love you."

Conan O'Brien is approaching his impending new gig as "Tonight Show" host - as well as bumping "Host, 'Late Night with Conan O'Brien'" down a notch on his resume - with a combination of awe and dread. His run at 12:35 a.m. ends tomorrow with his 2,725th episode.

"I'll probably cry like a baby on Friday night," he tells the New York Times. Aw, c'mon, Conan - at least cry like a man.

The story recounts the rigmarole that went into NBC prematurely bouncing Jay Leno from the 11:35 p.m. timeslot and the last-second negotiations that'll put Jay in primetime, stripped across NBC's weeknight schedule at 10 p.m., which has been explicated at length here and elsewhere. It also points out that O'Brien's ratings have slipped of late - he's even started losing the hour to CBS's Craig Ferguson on a semi-regular basis.

"I feel a little sorry for Conan," one longtime late-night executive tells the Times in reference to Jay still preceding him on the schedule. "I think he's getting sandbagged."

But Conan insists he's OK with it: "Of all the alternatives in the universe, this one honestly does work best for me," he says. "I didn't want to suddenly be perceived as this person who forced someone into a bad position. I wouldn't be comfortable in that role." Or, no doubt, the role of personal ratings punching bag for Leno should he have turned up at the same time on another network.

What remains to be seen is how much Conan will alter or water down his act when he's on an hour earlier. The weirder stuff will no doubt get jettisoned - say farewell to the Masturbating Bear - but then, David Letterman polished his act a bit when he moved to CBS but remained enough of the weird old Dave that audiences continued to embrace him.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon - best known for laughing at his own jokes on "Saturday Night Live" (at least someone did) - takes over in the "Late Night" anchor's chair on March 2, and he's curiously chosen a couple of notoriously prickly interview subjects as the guests of his inaugural show: Robert De Niro and Van Morrison (way to chase that youth demographic, Jimmy!).

To be fair, De Niro's gotten a little better at the whole sitting-for-an-interview thing, but then, he's had 30 years to adjust to it. I remember sitting through a press conference with him for a movie - he couldn't bring himself to talk with journalists on a more personal level at the time - and it was excruciating; not a single full sentence emanated from his mouth. A few years later, I sat down with him for a one-on-one interview, and I actually managed to get some usable quotes, but it was still a pretty awkward experience. Morrison, on the other hand, will just perform a song or two and doubtless forego the small talk, which is best for all involved.

Plus, a fun new fact about NBC's ongoing cheapskate ways: The network won't pay music royalties, which means Fallon's house band the Roots will have to cook up a wealth of their own riffs and musical tags with which to accompany guest entrances and lead-ins out of commercials. As opposed to, say, when Paul Shaffer plays a pop chestnut that also serves as an inside joke about whatever guest is sauntering toward Dave's guest chair.

"We have to write 200 new songs, which will probably last about a year," ?uestlove tells Rolling Stone. "We've written about 55 so far." Well, quit gabbing about it and go back into your little den and get to work!

A recent poll found that fewer young adults think of TVs or cable or satellite hook-ups as "necessities," though they do think of their cell phones and high-speed Internet access in that way.

Which sets the old-school old-guard into paroxysms of panic, leading them to making observations and asking questions like:

"As many already know or will soon find out, youth is fleeting. Which leads to the question: Are young adults different just because they are young and, if so, will they set aside childish things as they get older? For example, if a young adult has relied solely on mobile wireless, will she want a landline phone when she's 30? If someone has grown accustomed to the selectivity of online video, will he pay for a package of 500 basic and premium TV channels when he gets older, especially if online TV can by then be streamed conveniently to big screen TVs?"

(The evils of technology.)

The answer to these questions seems to be "No." Those anarchists. On the other hand, did we continue to buy fedoras like our dads or frilly aprons like our moms?

Anyway, this poll sees big, brutish changes in the future, changes which I anticipate the status quo will be loathe to follow, since it means they won't be able to make so much money then.

PaleyFest, the latest and most chipper-sounding name for the annual series sponsored by the Paley Center (formerly the Museum of TV and Radio) honoring worthy-ish TV shows, runs April 10-23 at the Cinerama Dome at the ArcLight Cinema on Sunset, followed by a concluding program at the museum's Beverly Hills location on the 24th.

There are no retrospectives of classic shows this time around, just a bunch of current programs - except for the ones that have already been cancelled, or won't likely be around come the fall. There's even an evening centered around a one-off Internet sensation.

Here's the drill: For each event, they show an episode or two of the series being honored, then the cast and creators come out and take some questions from a moderator (some of the moderators are pretty decent; others are so bad you wonder how they got the gig) and then finally questions from You, The People. The questions from You, The People tend to go like this: "Hi, I just really love your show and I wanted to say 'Hi.'" Which isn't a question.

Herewith, the schedule (all programs begin at 7 p.m. unless otherwise specified):

Friday, April 10: "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." FX's sitcom starring Danny DeVito, Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and Kaitlin Olson as a hive of conniving weasels can be pretty hilarious, and they're all funny extemporaneously, as well. I'd consider going to this one.

Saturday, April 11: "90210." This sure had a buzz about it when The CW announced it last May. That buzz built and built and built - and then it premiered. Still, I'm sure someone likes it.

Monday, April 13: "True Blood." People tend to love or hate Alan Ball's HBO vampire gothic drama. I think Anna Paquin's a little miscast, but then, the Hollywood Foreign Press gave her a Golden Globe. Those in attendance won't be of the hate-it variety, though.

Tuesday, April 14: "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog." This amusing oddity from geek god Joss Whedon stars Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring supervillain in love and his plot to thwart the heroic Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and was a hit online. Harris isn't yet scheduled to appear, but I can't imagine having a discussion of the project without him.

Wednesday, April 15: "Dollhouse." Whedon returns with his latest effort, which we've picked on enough here, so we'll just say it's a cult show starring Eliza Dushku.

Thursday, April 16: "The Big Bang Theory." Nerds are becoming a theme this week: This sitcom, which has seen a spike in its ratings in recent weeks, stars Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons as geniuses at everything, it seems, except getting the girl (Kaley Cuoko).

Friday, April 17: "The Mentalist." The only new big hit of the season stars Simon Baker as a former fake psychic who now works for the California Bureau of Investigation, where he pesters Robin Tunney. But Baker can pick up on your body language, so he'll probably know what question you're going to ask before you ask it (mainly because it'll probably be, "Hi, I really love your show and just wanted to say 'Hi'").

Saturday, April 18: "Desperate Housewives." They've done this show before - all I can remember of the previous session was that moderator Carrie Fisher talked about herself quite a bit. So maybe this time they'll talk about the show and defend that jumping-five-years-into-the-future thing.

Sunday, April 19 at 1 p.m.: "Pushing Daisies'" unaired episodes. For you absolute die-hards out there, series creator Bryan Fuller will introduce the episodes of his too-eccentric-for-broadcast-TV pastiche that were produced but never aired on ABC.

Monday, April 20: "Battlestar Galactica"/"Caprica." The soon-to-depart sci-fi cult classic and the soon-to-debut impending sci-fi cult classic are squashed together in one big night of fan ecstasy.

Tuesday, April 21: "The Hills." MTV's reality program focusing on professionally loathsome twentysomethings boasts a lot of fans who watch it only out of a sense of Schadenfreude, so it might be interesting to watch the give-and-take here. On the other hand, attending means that you would actually have to be in the presence of people who like the show unironically, and that's just a fate to grim to consider.

Wednesday, April 22: "Big Love." Bring all your wives to the panel discussion of HBO's polygamy series.

Thursday, April 23: "Fringe." The jury's still out on whether J.J. Abrams' latest convoluted thriller has what it takes to go the distance or is simply an interesting, well-intentioned shrug. Perhaps the cast will be able to make a convincing case one way or the other.

Friday, April 24 at 6 p.m.: "Swingtown." CBS's quixotic summer series about '70s swingers may not have made the splash the network hoped for, but at least it merited one of these PaleyFest events, even if it will take place in the more intimate environs of the Paley Center rather than the sprawling Cinerama Dome. They haven't scrounged up any actors yet, just the show's creators.

Tickets go on sale for Paley Center members Thursday, Feb. 26 and for the rest of the planet Sunday, March 1. They've really jacked up the prices - tickets are $50/$35 for members, $60/$45 for the rest of us plebes (except the "Pushing Daisies" screening, which is $12 for members, $15 for everyone else) - and will be available at TicketWeb.com or at (866) 468-3399.

Hmm, this is a tough one: Blogger Paul Shepard of Black Spin decries TV Land's censoring episodes of the '70s sitcom "Sanford and Son" by badly dubbing in some other less incendiary word whenever Fred (the late Redd Foxx) uses what we'll euphemistically describe here as "Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Epithet (and that's saying something)," otherwise known as "The N-Word."

("Nooo! They're censoring me, Elizabeth! I'm comin' to join you!")

"Hearing the n-word doesn't cause black people to turn into a pile of dust," Shepard writes. "Yes, I admit it is still a word that can start a fight if uttered by the wrong person in the wrong tone of voice. But that's not what we were talking about in the 'Sanford and Son' episodes. There, it's part of an extremely funny joke."

Being fairly virulently anti-censorship, I have to agree: To deny our cultural past is to wish to remain in ignorance. It's useful to understand the way we used to behave and think, and censoring anything invariably gives that message more power than it might otherwise have. Plus, it's kind of fascinating to think that this sort of thing flew in the '70s but we're squeamish about it today, even though there are far fewer things we find objectionable these days.

On the other hand: It's TV Land, which caters to a family audience expecting genteel entertainments. Non-black kids watching the show and not understanding the context and historic underpinnings of the show may not get the joke and unwittingly subject themselves to a righteous beat-down on the school playground the day after seeing an episode. This wouldn't be the same issue were "Sanford and Son" airing on, say, TV One.

Is a compromise possible: Alter the wording when kids might be watching, but don't censor it late at night? Or feature a disclaimer before every episode in which Fred uncorks an N-bomb:

"The following program comes from an era in which the sociocultural climate was far different from our own. Therefore, it contains language and situations that defined that time but may not have aged well for contemporary audiences. We present this program not just as entertainment, but as an historical document that mirrors its day and is not intended to reflect current mores and attitudes. Enjoy - or don't, it's up to you, you delicate little fragile flowers who can't process a word that in the end is just a word."

("Nooo! I just heard the 'n-word!' I'm comin' to join you, Elizabeth!")

Of course, if they do that, everyone will have changed the channel before they finish the disclaimer.

What do you think? Should Fred be allowed to amuse/offend at will, or is TV Land right in protecting the more innocent members of its audience?

Apparently, someone begrudges Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and the flight crew of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 the kudos for their heroism that they've picked up throughout their media tour, because I received this, via one of those exhaustively forwarded Emails with the subject header "TOO TRUE:"

Apparently, Sully could've just thrown his hands in the air and declined to attempt any seat-of-the-pants tactical maneuvers and all would've been well. What I never get is some inspirational mass Emailing like this whenever a deity has a case of the butterfingers trying to catch a doomed airliner.

SpongeBob SquarePants is celebrating his 10th birthday; hooray and all that. But Nickelodeon is commemorating the sea sponge's decade of daffiness, naturally, by pushing a huge glut of toys out onto the market, where they'll sit on store shelves because no one has any money anymore.

And a couple of their new offerings sound downright naughty. For example:

SpongeBob ShakyPants! "SpongeBob can sense how you move him, and he laughs so hard that you can feel the funny - even his eyes go all wild! Slow down, so SpongeBob can catch his breath..."

Barbie® Loves SpongeBob "Barbie® doll shows she's a big fan of the sea-dwelling sponge ..."

Actually, it looks like this:

But couldn't they have called it "Barbie® Really Just Adores SpongeBob" or "Barbie's® A Big Fan Of SpongeBob" and spared me that gruesome image of anatomically-impossible-airhead-on- Amphimedon-queenslandica action now burned into my retinas?

The director of a Buffalo TV station was arrested for beheading his estranged wife (yes, that's illegal in Buffalo) when her decapitated body was found at the station. Grim irony department: The man founded the station after Sept. 11 in an effort to counteract negative attitudes toward Muslims, yet the murder has been described as a possible "honor killing," "a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men."

Like the rest of us, former MTV icon and current disgraced punchline Michael Jackson is feeling the pinch of the current crummy economy. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn't have to get taken by taking his stuff to Amoeba Records - he can put the stuff on auction, which he will, in April, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. What's he putting up for grabs? Let's take a look - start saving your pennies:

Amusingly self-aggrandizing portrait: expected take, $4-$6K

Electric Golf Cart with his image on the hood - expected take, $6-$8K

Robotic MJ head - expected take, $2-$3K

Painting ludicrously comparing MJ to other icons - expected take, $1-$2K

Here's how far Michael's fortunes have stumbled - his detritus is expected to garner a lot less than the recent "Battlestar Galactica" auction. Because Cylons, after all, just wanted to conquer Earth; they had no (alleged) prurient aspirations for the planet's young boys.

When Fox announced it had signed a deal with Joss Whedon to do a show called "Dollhouse" with Eliza Dushku, everyone was very excited. When Fox announced it was going to air the show on Fridays, everyone quickly became a whole lot less excited and we wondered if this was just going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for failure.

("I'm sure there's a viewer around here somewhere...")

Turns out, yep: "Dollhouse" was seen by a mere 4.7 million viewers, though it did squeak past its competition in the Viewers Aged 18-49 Demographic. This being a Friday, most of the show's target audience was out, probably seeing the "Friday the 13th" movie. This is a show that'll probably get TiVo'd and watched online a lot, so its overall viewership won't seem that awful, but geez - it was the second-lowest premiere for a scripted show this season, behind "Crusoe," another show that foundered on Friday nights before washing ashore dead on Saturdays. ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," which premiered about a year ago to nearly 13 million fans, debuted in its Friday timeslot preceding "Dollhouse" to a woeful 3.7 million viewers. Both of these shows are far too pricey to produce to draw these piddling numbers.)

Only CBS is having any success on Fridays, with shows aimed at older viewers who have lost the will to socialize. It'll be interesting to see if the other networks even bother to schedule original scripted shows on Friday next season, because if it wasn't obvious before that Friday is the new Saturday as far as the broadcast networks are concerned, "Dollhouse's" weak bow makes it gospel forevermore.

And Joss might want to rethink the whole working-with-Fox thing in the future.

I had a dream early this morning in which there was a parade featuring a lot of big if dinosaur-ish figures in journalism - Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Dan Rather, whoever's the editor of the Chicago Tribune, etc. And they were all on different - well, "floats" is the wrong word, because they weren't decorated or anything. Let's just say they were flatbeds. And as each flatbed puttered down the parade route, each journalist wasn't waving to the crowds (and, oddly, there was a big crowd) but, rather, sitting at a folding table rolling pennies.

I don't even think that's a metaphor anymore.

I confess to enjoying TNT's "Leverage" even though its storylines strain the reasonable reaches of credibility - but, more often than not, they never make me roll my eyes and think I'm being played for a chump, merely that the show's trying to be whimsically and entertainingly convoluted and sometimes crashes through that window we know as "common sense." And apparently, enough other people are finding it fun enough, as well, as TNT has picked it up for a second season, which makes the cliffhanger for next week's season finale a whole lot less so. (Belated not-so-spoiler alert.)

So: This week and next, in a two-part season finale, Nate's (Timothy Hutton) team decides to go up against Ian Blackpoole (Kevin Tighe), the insurance dirtbag who dragged his feet on allowing coverage on the procedures that might've saved Nate's son, who died before the show began but kicked it into motion and taught Nate his epicurean appreciation of the finer boozes.

Nate's colleagues form something approaching an intervention, except they're not after him to give up booze - they want him to f@&k over Blackpoole, but good. "You don't need rehab," Sophie (Gina Bellman) tells Nate. "You need revenge," Elliot (Christian Kane) adds. Which should serve as justification for alcoholics everywhere for years on end - just mercilessly torture the person you think caused you to start drinking!

Anyway, insurance dirtbag Ian Blackpoole is a big-time art collector (how better to demonize the wealthy at this point?), and Tuesday's episode opens with Nate, drunk, falling out of a cab, stumbling up to a charity function and pulling a gun on his nemesis.

"Are you here to kill me, Nate?" Ian asks.

"Not tonight," Nate slurs.

"Well, in that case, come in," Ian responds amiably. "There's shrimp."

But of course something else is afoot, and of course even greater obstacles will prevent the Leverage team from their goal, not the least of which is the fact that Nate's ex Maggie (Kari Matchett) is playing for Ian's team and may scotch their intricate plot (she doesn't know about Ian's role in her son's death because Nate kept that information from her, it's soon explained).

Stealing the diminutive artwork, one of two Davids Michelangelo crafted before chiseling out his masterpiece, is child's play (thanks to Parker (Beth Riesgraf)),

but Ian has a team in place that's every bit as thorough and unforgiving as Nate's, if not moreso. And, it's tipped, one of Nate's team may have given Sterling (Mark A. Sheppard), Ian's scoundrel-in-waiting and Nate's season-long nemesis, an in to outing the plot.

Next week opens with Leverage's staff in flux and in flight to avoid Sterling's sinister do-gooderism (he plans on selling off Nate's band of scam artists to the countries where they're on Most-Wanted lists), but, well, they just can't help themselves, and they're sneaking into Ian's latest art exhibit. Nate - who's such a tease! - brashly informs Ian and Sterling he's going to rob them. Good - or, at least, the good that's better than the perceived-good bad - prevails; surprise, surprise.

For me, the show's saving grace has always been its sense of wit, that it can deftly backtrack from a lachrymose scene to an agreeably glib one. But next week's episode manages to cut from a histrionic, overplayed flashback to a nominally touching scene. (Fun Fact: When Nate worked for the Evil Insurance Company, he slicked his hair back with lots of Brylcreem or some such to approximate the style favored by evil corporate pr!cks in entertainments committed to film; now, he just doesn't wash it often enough, which manages to be a better look for him).

At any rate, the fact that we know that the show will be returning for a second season makes its first-season finale all the more satisfying, if less suspenseful.

- "Leverage:" 10 p.m. Tuesdays, TNT.

Michael Hirschorn has an interesting piece that may serve as a eulogy for TV As We Know It at TheAtlantic.com, entitled, appropriately enough, "The Future is Cheese."

Hirschorn links two events - NBC announcing Jay Leno's move to primetime and "Heroes" creator Tim Kring lamenting that only "saps and dipsh!ts" watch his show Mondays at 9 on an NBC affiliate - to underscore the dire straits the broadcast networks find themselves in.

Kring isn't entirely wrong, Hirschorn says - it's much more satisfying to watch multiple episodes of a highly serialized show back-to-back than to visit it once a week cluttered with commercials, so such a show's very ambition and the fact that it's so costly to make turns it into an albatross for the broadcast networks, who can cut costs massively by stripping Leno across its weeknight schedule.

He continues:

"(T)he problem is what I'd call cultural attention-deficit disorder, which afflicts the consumer bombarded with choices: more TV networks ... more video games, more Web sites, and more ways to consume shows than ever before (VOD, DVD, PPV, etc., etc.). ... Amid the chaos, it's difficult for a media consumer to care enough about any one thing to stick with it--and for a network trying to build allegiance to a brand, convincing anyone that what you're showing matters becomes almost impossible."

And concludes that in the era of niche programming, the quality shows will continue to migrate to cable, where they're content with smaller audiences, while the networks will continue to trot out flotsam like "Superstars of Dance."

What's fascinating is not just that it's true, but that the guy writing this - and kinda sorta passing judgment on bad TV - was named "Mr. Bad Taste" by the New York Observer back when he was running VH1 and junking it up with stuff like "Flavor of Love." In the piece, Hirschorn calls a book by John Seabrook, called "Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture" a major influence on his life and says, "I haven't resolved that conflict -- if I'd like to be a populist or highbrow."

So TV's troubled future is a win-win for him, if for nobody else.

On Sunday's episode of "Flight of the Conchords," Jemaine (Jemaine Clement) wakes from an evening of drunken revelry to discover he has - gasp! - slept with an Australian woman. Which is anathema, of course, for New Zealanders, kind of like a New Yorker palling around with someone from Jersey, someone from Bel Air venturing into the Valley or anyone hanging out with a Kentuckian.

He calls Bret (Bret McKenzie) in a panic: "I went home with a woman. I think she might be Australian."

"You've got to get out of there," Bret, understanding his alarm, quickly advises.

From there, lots of Aussie jokes: "What did she sound like?" Jemaine's asked; he responds, "Like an evil version of our accent."

The woman in question boasts, "You couldn't get more Australian than me. My great-great grandpa was a rapist, and they shipped him out to Australia, where he met my great grandma, who was a prostitute. I say, 'met,' but he raped her."

But, hey, she's not bad-looking, so Jemaine weighs his shame against the notion of a too-rare booty call. He dabbles with a song: "Do Australians Feel Love?"

"Flight of the Conchords" has tried to up its production values this season while maintaining the show's low-rent deadpan sensibility, and so far, they've managed to balance the two pretty well. The music videos are more elaborate this year (in one on Sunday, Jemaine is haunted by the girlfriends of his past, which includes one with some suspicious facial hair), and the guest stars are name comics - Jim Gaffigan last week, Kristin Wiig next week.

But the show continues to revel hilariously in the Kiwi talent for officious inefficiency. Bret receives a handful of biscuits from New Zealand, while Jemaine doesn't because he didn't fill out the form properly.

- "Flight of the Conchords:" 10 p.m. Sunday, HBO.

On Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons," Bart's make-work chalkboard assignment is to repeatedly scrawl: "HDTV is worth every cent." And so begins the first episode of "The Simpsons" produced in high-definition, a truly historic occasion, for one can just imagine seeing something like this in high-def:

And a not-bad episode, either, another variation on "It's a Wonderful Life" in which Homer discovers what his life might have been like had he been elected class president in high school, an era described as "a simpler time when the only thing we worried about was total nuclear annihilation."

Could Homer's life have been better? Could he have scored better than Marge? Could he have avoided having Bart as progeny? Homer answers that middle one, telling Marge, "I'd still be married to you, but you'd be hotter."

High-def seems to make Homer a little more philosophical: "If losers like me know one thing it's that, deep down, winners like him are miserable," he says at one point, and also: "I want him to know that if your life doesn't turn out the way you want, there's someone else you can blame."

- "The Simpsons:" 8 p.m. Sunday, Fox (Channel 11 in L.A.).

Here's all you need to know about all those crappy reality dating shows in three minutes, augmented beautifully by a Bible lesson, as well:

I'd like for the marketing department for the film "Confessions of a Shopaholic" - which, given the current economic crisis, may be the most poorly timed movie in the history of poorly timed movies (just beating out "Citizen Kane," which was released just as audiences were exhausted with hyper-literate and brilliantly photographed thinly disguised parodies of bloviated media magnates) - to explain, exactly, what they were thinking with their campaign for the film. (Actually, I pretty much know what they were going for; I'd just like them to admit it.)

First: Isla Fisher's facial expression. Fisher was absolutely hilarious in "Wedding Crashers," until the filmmakers decided they didn't need her to be so anymore, but it's hard to figure out what she's trying to convey here, if in fact she's trying to convey anything chaste.

Her expression seems to read, "OMG! I've just purchased a load of overpriced, superficial consumer goods that I can't possibly afford! How did that happen? LOL!"

However, there's a load (pardon the expression) of individuals who aren't violently misogynistic, as well as a wealth of literature that explores the subtext of attractive women with blank expressions and mouths wide open that divines prurient intent. And Fisher's relationship with Sacha Baron Cohen (best known on these shores as "Borat," whose semi-exposed male member was comically extenuated by wishful-thinking censorship in his brilliant and wildly popular 2006 film), only suggest to those viewing this poster: You do the math.

Everyone who doesn't have a date this Valentine's Day can wallow in their misery - or, perhaps, feel a sense of relief that they're being spared the misery that comes with relationships - with comedian Christopher Titus's Comedy Central special, "Love is Evol."

Titus has always been a dark comic - his Fox sitcom got laughs from the most twisted family dynamics imaginable - but with this special, he's smarting from a recent divorce and doesn't care who knows it.

"If you have never contemplated suicide, then you have never been in love," he says at the outset. "And if you've never contemplated murder, then you've never been divorced."

One wonders what Titus's ex will make of this performance, but given that she must've known the guy pretty well, she probably saw this coming. Titus, at various points, refers to treacherous women as "life-sucking vampires," "soul-sucking humps," "life-force-@ss-killing nozzles," and so on.

"Tonight's show will either fix your relationship or destroy it, and either way, you're welcome," he tells the couples in his audience.

After railing against the pain that the end of a relationship inevitably brings, and sharing demented stories about his parents' twisted relationship, Titus abruptly shifts gears and starts talking about his new and improved relationship. Everyone will be able to relate to his material about heartbreak; the "I'm-dating-a-super-hot-model" stuff, probably not so much.

- "Christopher Titus: Love is Evol," 10 p.m. Saturday, Comedy Central.

Pink slips are flying everywhere, even on hit (and not so hit) shows on ABC. Whether they're stars who complain their way out of their contracts or people who have proven to be too much of a headache or distraction on the set or a long-running show whose time has simply come, ABC is feverishly culling the herd, sending a sharp, pointed message to the rest of the performers in its stable of programming: Behave.

Katherine Heigl ("Grey's Anatomy")

T.R. Knight ("Grey's Anatomy")

Nicollette Sheridan ("Desperate Housewives")

Balthazar Getty ("Brothers & Sisters")

The cast of "Scrubs" ("Scrubs")

You will be missed. Except for those of you who won't.

David Letterman greeted the garrulous Joaquin Phoenix last night, who probably made people even less inclined to see his new film than they were already. Letterman ended their - well, "chat" certainly isn't the right word - with the perfect rejoinder: "Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight."

Next week's episode of "Lost" hinges entirely on the deep symbolism behind this image:

Then again, I found this online, so it's probably going to figure into the episode, as well:

It turns out that Stephen Colbert likes Glenn Beck almost as much as Your Mayor, and last night he went to extravagant means to demonstrate just what he thought of Mr. Beck. How extreme? Watch and learn.

On a related note, you know what's fun? Singing the word "colonoscopy" to the tune of Philip Glass's hit love theme from the film "Koyaanisqatsi."

Well, I think it's fun.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann used to joke about Bill O'Reilly thinking that Fox News had its own police department. Now, NBC News is acting like it thinks it's INTERPOL.

NBC News is working on a series in which they hunt down war criminals and play "gotcha" like they did on "To Catch a Predator." (Suggested Titles: "The Biggest War Criminal," "Who Wants to Be a War Criminal," "Howie Do It" - oh, sorry, that last one's taken.)

The network teamed up with a Rwandan prosecutor to track down Leopold Munyakazi, who's accused of participating in the Rwandan massacres. Except that he wasn't hiding, exactly, he was a visiting professor at a college in Maryland (his course "Genocide 101" was a dead giveaway). They filmed interviews with the college president, Sanford Ungar, and its director of communications, the adorably named Kate Pipkin.

"I think they wanted it to be an ambush, to be frank," Pipkin told the New York Times.

"If the prosecutor has evidence or has concerns he wants to present, why is he doing it in the company of NBC News?" Ungar wondered, saying the incident smacked of a stunt pulled by NBC. "I don't think (the Rwandan prosecutor) sat in Kigali and said, 'Hmm, what would be the best way for me to achieve justice? I think I'll call NBC and ask them.'"

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement: "A program of this kind could negatively impact law enforcement's ability to investigate and bring cases against the perpetrators of these horrible crimes."

The accused claims he's being persecuted because he has disagreements with Rwanda's political leaders.

So: Nice going, NBC News.

And no, they're not after Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Aaron Bruns, a producer at the Fox News Channel, has been arrested for having child pornography on the computer on which he no doubt also crafts his love letters to Mitch McConnell. The affidavit obtained by SmokingGun.com goes into explicit and horrific detail of just what sort of thing got this guy revved up. He was also arrested for child pornography while in college, but Fox News didn't start doing background checks until 2003, the year after he was hired. Feel free to make your own Bill O'Reilly/Andrea Mackris/falafel joke.

(Bruns, performing a ditty from the R. Kelly songbook.)

Fun fact: Bruns was named one of mediabistro.com's "Hottest Media Types."

It constantly amazes me how "Dancing with the Stars" actually manages to lure celebrities who most of us have actually heard of. Sure, it's a hit show, but it's not without its downside - immense humiliation being the foremost - and, after all, it's still a reality show, which remains the last refuge of the scoundrel.

(Tasteful!)

And yet, ABC's done it again: Most of its new roster, which you'll get to see come March 9, had respectable careers before they became resigned to playing reality-TV hacks. So let's handicap the field, shall we?

First to get booted off: Steve-O - because most dance steps don't involve getting a concrete block slammed on your skull (his usual "Jackass" shtick) - or Steve Wozniak, which if you ever saw a photo of the guy you've felt sorry for him, even though he's a billionaire genius. He dated Kathy Griffin for publicity, for chrissakes. I doubt he has my moves, and I have a herniated disk.

(Steve-O demonstrates his one true talent.)

Obvious filler: Ty Murray - bouncing around on bulls with their b@lls in a tight sling doesn't exactly qualify as "dancing" (for extraneous drama's sake, his wife, earnest singer/songwriter Jewel, is also on the roster). And Nancy O'Dell, "Access Hollywood" co-anchor: Gushing about the latest crap that's oozing down Hollywood's pipeline doesn't make you a "star," let alone a dancer.

Ringers: Belinda Carlisle - the former Go-Go achieved success in the first place because she had some sexy moves.

(Let's just hope she doesn't have to drag that big old bag around with her.)

Same with Lil' Kim, whose prison time may have taught her some even more valuable moves.

Don't count out: Lawrence Taylor, because football players tend to do well on "DWTS," if only because they don't have to worry about breaking a tibula or getting a concussion.

(LT is more palatable as a Fathead.)

Happy just to be here: Gilles Marini, who cagily parlayed a role in the "Sex and the City" movie into a reality-TV spot; Shawn Johnson, who can finally get that Olympic gold medal to translate into some serious cash; and Chuck Wicks, a country singer/songwriter whose ABC bio actually included a link to his MySpace page so that people could figure out who he is.

Just plain sad: David Alan Grier, a funny-enough comic actor who should be able to be spending the time he's expending here on something that's actually entertaining; Jewel, whose debut album went quendipular-occipidal-platinum before she utterly disappeared from the charts; and Denise Richards, a one-time film star whose appearance here actually doesn't represent her career nadir - that would be her abysmal E! reality series, "It's Complicated."

(Well, that qualifies as a dance move, doesn't it?)

Bottom line: LT vs. Lil' Kim in the finals.

The most-watched program last night wasn't "Two and a Half Men" or "CSI: Miami" - it was Barack Obama's first primetime press conference, which was seen by 37.19 million people on the four major networks, handily beating The CW's "Gossip Girl" by 35.52 million viewers. 9.75 million watched it on NBC, which is significantly more than the network usually gets when "Chuck" occupies the timeslot. (Ben Silverman is trying to sign Obama to do a press conference every week.)

Add those who were watching on the cable news channels, and the number sails over the 40-million mark, which is better even than an episode of "American Idol."

Obama got some good reviews: E! called it "a bravura performance," while "Access Hollywood" raved, "Obama proved adept at making even macroeconomics seem fun and exciting!" Fox News, on the other hand, groused, "He used too many words. Had Bush still been President, the whole thing would've lasted 10 minutes, tops."

The guy who asked Obama about Alex Rodriguez apparently thought Bush was still President, and offered up a question he figured he'd be able to answer.

If self-help is so effective at what it's supposed to do, then why is there so much evidence that Americans, and the society they inhabit, are so screwed up?

That's the principle question from Steve Salerno's book "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless." He writes that self-help gurus "refuse to be held accountable even when they harm the very individual consumers whom they lure in with grand promises of transformation, happiness, and success. Invariably, in fact, they project the blame back on the individual. ... If (their program) doesn't transform your life, it's not because the program is ineffective. It's because you're unworthy."

I've spoken to enough book publicists to understand that self-help authors are among the most psychotic and needy people on the planet. And there's plenty of literature suggesting that the self-help industry helps only those who write the books, including Salerno's book, which takes Tony Robbins to task.

So, what has NBC, in its infinite wisdom and its far-more-limited concern for its viewers, chosen to do?

It's developing a reality show based on Tony Robbins' precepts.

Given:

1) Friday nights have become a wasteland in terms of TV viewership.

2) Particularly for Fox...

3) ... who killed off Joss Whedon's ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") last TV series, "Firefly," by scheduling it on Friday nights, then unceremoniously canceling it.

What to make of:

1) The fact that Fox has scheduled Whedon's new show, "Dollhouse," on Friday nights, where it will lead out of the surprisingly low-rated "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles?"

2) Particularly given that Fox had really trumpeted this show last May at its upfronts, announcing that it would air on Mondays with limited commercial interruption?

"Dollhouse" stars Eliza Dushku, who has roughly as many facial expressions as she does voluptuous mammary glands, as Echo, who works for your prototypical sinister corporation that trucks in human tabula rasas for well-heeled clients - they wetwire her brain into thinking she's whatever the client wants, whether it's what "The Andy Griffith Show" called a "fun-time girl" or an art thief or just a really bangin' martial-arts expert who can save the world. Her bosses are evil-ish, or at least that's what we can presume (shows with this convoluted a mythology are notoriously tricky), and for some reason, her brain wipes haven't been particularly meticulous, so that she still holds some vestiges of memory of who she once was, or something.

(She's so malleable!)

Anyway, as Denise Richards (who would make a pretty decent Dollhouse apartchik herself) might put it, it's complicated. But perhaps not as complicated as the corporate mindthink that conspired to take a show that once had a lot of buzz surrounding it and plop it in a Friday-night death zone where it's more or less destined to underachieve.

Asked about this at last month's TV Press Tour, Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly dissembled thusly:

"Joss does a certain kind of show. I think he's right in the zone again on that. It's a kind of show that we know has a core passionate audience. You hope for upside. There could be upside. In some of the other scheduling scenarios, we think there was going to be enormous pressure on it. We didn't want to go through that thing where we had to play it, you know, either put pressure on Joss or worse, yank it from the schedule. ... We're going to let the show play out for 13 episodes and hopefully catch on."

Which doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement. Whedon himself admitted - with, no doubt, no small amount of understatement - that his initial reaction to the scheduling was "mixed:"

"I'd had a bad experience once on a Friday. You might have heard about it. But at the same time, I knew that was just sort of an instinctive reaction to something that had happened before. The fact of the matter is, I felt also a sense of relief. ... Friday, you know, when we talked about it, the guys made it very clear that this was a different agenda. They weren't looking to stick us on a Friday, not promote us, and then expect us to be a huge hit instantly. It's about rolling out the 13
episodes and letting people come to the show and kind of grow with it. And that takes a lot of the pressure off of us. And ultimately, I feel much more comfortable there than I did on Mondays."

Translation: At least all the episodes will air, as opposed to the show getting cancelled after four episodes.

So will this show fly on critical acclaim? Here's The Washington Post's TV columnist, Lisa de Moraes, in an online chat:

"It is the most craptastic thing I have seen in years and years - and years. Eliza Dushku is the most insanely bad actress ever, though I do have to give her props for killer hair and gorgeous bod. She plays a chick who has her memory wiped out every 'mission' and a new personality implanted in her every week to help her accomplish her 'mission' - she's in the employ of a sort of 'Mission Impossible' mercenary fighter kinda Big Brother-ish firm. So in the first episode I saw, the braintrust in charge of coming up with her perfect personality each week decides it's really really important, so that she can do her next kick-ass job - that she be asthmatic, among other things. Genius! So, naturally, when she's chasing some bad guy, she has an asthma attack. Really, I can't make this stuff up."

(Here's the main reason to watch "Dollhouse" - and this shot doesn't even appear on the show. So maybe you're just better off reading this blog.)

Here's the more-measured, more old-school-critic-y Brian Lowry in Variety:

"Trying to explain the first hour required a bit of cribbing off Fox's website ... Dushku first appears in a micromini dress, showcasing her most formidable assets. This triggers an obvious thought: If you had the equivalent of a human blow-up doll resembling Dushku, one suspects her assignments would primarily be more of the indoor variety than action-adventure. ... Attempting to unravel this convoluted package suggests that by the time 'Dollhouse' finds itself, there won't be anybody but hard-core Whedon worshippers left to play with."

What we have learned from this: A more entertaining series could be divined from critics contrasting Dushku's physical attributes with her acting skills.

- "Dollhouse:" 9 p.m. Friday, Fox (Channel 11 in L.A.).

Tonight, on "Leverage:"

Parker's (Beth Riesgraf) called for jury duty under the guise of the fake identity Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge, which is actually a better name for his character than Alec Hardison) has created for her, which makes him impressed with his own computer-hacking skills. Her colleagues/fellow con men think it'd be a good idea for her to go, as it might help her with her people skills.

The case involves something horrible that some New-Agey guru/businessman (Brent Spiner with no yellow makeup) has done, involving some b.s. vitamin supplement of the sort you'd see advertised on late-night TV and nowhere else, and Parker thinks the Leverage folks should investigate. And, in fact, there is something shady going on and the Leverage folks do get involved.

Lauren Holly plays some high-powered something-or-other with a vested interest in the trial who tries to manipulate the jury, but Nathan (Timothy Hutton) is on the case, and there's some business involving chess pieces which is a bit too spot-on a metaphor for the proceedings, but what're you going to do?

So Parker is told to try to make friends with her fellow jurors, and, if you know anything about this show, you know that's the one thing that she's absolutely awful at. Still, after some halting, horribly botched attempts, she manages to resemble something vaguely human in the eyes of her fellow jurors.

But Lauren Holly isn't done trying to manipulate the case, which results, for some reason, in Aldis Hodge - sorry, Alec Hardison - becoming the attorney for the plaintiffs despite having no legal background and no embarrassing family members starring in a reality show along the lines of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" whatsoever.

Basically, it's "The Runaway Jury" only without Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman chewing up the scenery and with jokes. Despite the earnestness at its core, "Leverage's" do-gooder concerns are utterly leavened by its casual wit.

- "Leverage:" 10 tonight, TNT.

Eric McCormack, Tom Cavanagh, Monica Potter, Griffin Dunne, Sarah Clarke, Mike Damus and Geoffrey Arend - the cast of "Trust Me," the show about advertising that's not "Mad Men" - will participate in an online chat with fans of the show (if you're not a fan of the show and want to join in, I'm sure they'll let you, too) tonight at 8 PCT at TNT.com. You'll just have to trust that it's really them offering replies to your questions and not TNT publicists pretending to be them.

The bad news is that those participating in the chat on the East Coast will have already seen tonight's episode and may inadvertently provide spoilers for those on the West Coast. Or, if you're sleepy and can't stay up to watch the episode, maybe that's good news.

OK, so the Christian Bale flame-out is played out. Here are a few iterations you may or may not have seen, but are worth a second (or third) look:

"30 Rock's:"

"The Colbert Report's" (with Steve Martin):

The Bale vs. Bill O'Reilly mash-up:

We'll end the week with some last words from John Updike, a famous writer-guy who died late last month, saddening the New Yorker crowd. (Well, and a lot of other folks, too, as he seems to have been a decent fellow who worked hard at his craft right up to the end.)

In April, a last book will be released, "Endpoint and Other Poems." This, courtesy the publisher, is one of them:

"Requiem"

For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

Kind of a downer to end the week on, I suppose. Well, how about this Updike anecdote of sorts from Richard Jenkins, nominated for an Oscar for "The Visitor," who early in his film career worked on the film adaptation of Updike's "Witches of Eastwick:"

"I kept expecting to see him at the craft services table, maybe eating a donut," Jenkins told me, laughing at his naïveté. "But of course he never came to the set."

Oh, my. That's kind of anti-climactic and an equally unsatisfying note to close the week on, isn't it? Oh well then, enjoy this, in which Updike wrote under the nom de plume of William Lee:

TNT's "The Closer" will introduce on its next episode a character who will serve as the Moriarty to Brenda Johnson's (Kyra Sedgwick) Sherlock Holmes, a scuzzy lawyer who turns out to be extravagantly scuzzy indeed.

It all begins when a pretty woman is murdered (they're always pretty women - here's a social experiment for all you homicidal maniacs out there: Will the police not work as hard to solve the case if the victim is a homely woman?). (Just to rub it in, she's killed on her birthday, to boot.)

The responding cops don't exactly do stellar work, but they do manage to run a suspected but exonerated sex offender up a tree. The bad guy is one of those sniveling, whiny type bad guys you just sort of want to smack around in order to give him something to really snivel about, but his attorney is the previously mentioned scuzball, played by Bill Burke.

Burke's none too subtle - you peg this guy for a bad egg from the first frame of his appearance - but he fairly revels in his sociopathy, offering up luxuriant, high-minded justifications for defending lowlifes. "It gives purpose to my life," he says, soaringly and queasily.

There's a twist that's either really brilliant or utter nonsense - if there exists a legal loophole that allows for the sort of travesty of justice, you'd think someone would close it and quick. (Honestly, could this really happen? Someone with the show - we want answers, dammit!) And Brenda and the Gang seem to give up awfully easily on this one.

But it sets up future clashes between Brenda and the Attorney from Hell that should be fairly satisfying.

Now for the small-world portion of the story: TNT was established by Ted Turner. Ted Turner recently wrote a book, "Call Me Ted" (OK, Ted), which was co-written by - you guessed it, Bill Burke. (Sample sentences: "After our children grew older, Janie and I weren't on the same wavelength when it came to thinking about the big picture and as I became more involved in working on global issues, we had less in common. ... Divorce is always difficult but in this case the settlement negotiations were fair and went smoothly." Heartwrenching stuff.)

Mere coincidence? You be the judge.

- "The Closer:" 9 p.m. Monday, TNT.

Stars! They're just like us! In that, as ew.com is reporting, some of them may not be getting raises and may even be getting laid off this year.

CBS Paramount is asking the stars of some of the dramas it produces to forego pay hikes this year in an effort to keep production costs down, tossing in the dire threat that if they don't agree, sundry co-workers could lose their jobs and they don't want that happening.

(To ride out the recession, "CSI: Miami" star David Caruso is cutting back on his sunglasses budget.)

"I think they're desperate," said a producer who apparently can't even afford a name because none was given in the story. "Prime-time viewership is way down, and the advertising base is being devastated by the recession."

Actually, at CBS, viewership is actually up a smidgen, making it the only network to enjoy a ratings uptick in years.

But, given that stars make tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars per episode, here's guessing that they'll be able to weather this storm.

This is no way to start your workday: An Email in my in-box with the subject header screaming:

WORLD'S HEAVIEST MAN GETS MARRIED ON TLC

Like they're proud of it or something.

It's about some guy who weighed 1,200 pounds but slimmed down to a svelte 800 pounds to please his ladylove. And they include photos, too, including:

(Sorry for that. But now you know what they're doing to me. I'm just now recovering from this, but I still may never eat again.)

So this is on Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. Also on at that time is a "Nature" episode on PBS, "Why We Love Cats and Dogs."

(Hope this makes up for the last photo.)

Let's see - an hour about an obese guy vs. an hour of cute animals, obese guy vs. cute animals...

Decisions, decisions.

Congress has finally agreed to push the deadline for retooling TVs to receive digital rather than analogue signals to June 12. Initially, the day that your parents or grandparents would call you up and complain that something was wrong with their TV was supposed to occur Feb. 17.

It's helpful no doubt for the estimated 6.5 million people who haven't yet installed the digital-conversion gizmo to their TVs, and at that point, those $40 rebate coupons might be back in play (they were discontinued in early January, when the administration issuing them ran, like the rest of us, out of money; they tried to slip more coupons into Washington's Big Stimulus Package).

But it's also a headache for local stations deep into the the process of converting their signals from analogue to digital. PBS said running both analogue and digital signals for four months could cost its stations about $22 million.

All this because the government decided to scale back on TV's portion of the spectrum so they could sell more of it to cell-phone companies and say that it was going to homeland security, or something like that. So Aunt Harriet won't be able to watch her stories so your nephew can text his friends while ignoring everyone else at the dinner table. Seems like a fair trade-off, don't you think?

We all know times are tough, so why not seriously scrimp on your loved one this Valentine's Day? Instead of flowers and dinner, just give him/her one of these free "30 Rock" E-Card Valentines. Because nothing says "love" like award-winning comedy junkmail cluttering up one's inbox.

Last night, I sat through a very earnest and well-intentioned and vaguely uninteresting production that'll soon be showing up on your TeeVee screens (if you can guess what it was based on this description and mention it in the comments section of this blog, I'll probably send you some crappy promotional stuff!). And I thought: This is all well and (nominally) good, but Hollywood executives kind of have a poor opinion of people if they think people can be inspired through insipidness.

And then, I read that they're actually going to make a movie based upon the board game Candy Land. And everything else that I thought was casually cynical about the entertainment industry is suddenly called into question.

Honestly, what good can come of this? Answer: None. No good can come of this. Avoid the rush: Be appalled now.

(And if you can summon the appropriate words to express outrage that money is being poured into this sort of junk in the comments section below, I'll definitely send you some silly TV promotional stuff.)

The following image may unlock all the keys to the mysteries on the next episode of "Lost," so it's best for you to do due diligence in the meantime so if this proves to be true; you'll be way ahead of the curve:

Abilify© may be the first mood-enhancing drug whose commercials spend more time on the disclaimer listing the sundry - and extraordinarily worrisome - potential side effects than on actually trying to sell you the product. (I've seen the commercial a lot on news channels lately, which should tell you something.) The commercial goes something like this:

"Depressed? Take Abilify©.

"Abilify© could increase risk of suicide in children, adolescents, and young adults with Major Depressive Disorder. It can also cause neuroleptic malignant syndrome, Tardive Dyskinesia, hyperglycemia and Diabetes Mellitus, Orthostatic Hypotension, esophageal dysmotility, seizures and/or convulsions, the potential for Cognitive and Motor Impairment, and suicide. It can also cause akathisia, extrapyramidal disorder, dizziness somnolence and tremor, fatigue, nausea, blurred vision, salivary hypersecretion and complete organ failure, sometimes but not always resulting in death.

"Consult your doctor if symptoms persist. Do not take Abilify© if you want to live past age 35 or have ever had the sniffles or a bruise or a skin abrasion.

"Abilify©. Because it's slightly better than being depressed."

The Onion News Network can be relied upon to take on the stories that the mainstream media are afraid to touch. Here's a powerful exploration on why reality TV just might be bad for a certain segment of society. Warning: A few pretty naughty words get sprinkled into the discussion.

In The Know: Are Reality Shows Setting Unrealistic Standards For Skanks?

And as a bonus, this one manages to be deadpan, silly and appalling all at the same time:

Astronauts Suffer Agonizing, High-Pitched Death After Helium Leak

"Researchers at the NYU Stern School of Business found viewers say they preferred to avoid advertisements, yet rated their overall experience of watching a TV show higher when commercials were included." The explanation is fairly mind-bending, so I won't go into it. Commenters responded to the story linked above with a resounding, "Bullsh!t!"

Thoughts?

("Surviving Suburbia" can only be seen on a television console like this. And, you'll need to get the digital conversion box.)

Once upon a time, The CW, a scrappy, essentially non-existent television network, decided that programming its primetime schedule was a bit of a hassle. "Why bother?" wondered the well-heeled executives at The CW. "It's not like anyone will bother to watch the shows, anyway."

That's what's known as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So The CW turned its Sunday-night programming bloc over to a consortium known as Generic Media, or thereabouts, and that company proved good to its word, slapping together and churning out some tepid, eminently forgettable shows that, indeed, no one watched and that The CW cancelled within a few weeks, which is saying something, because The CW rarely cancels anything; they just let their shows sputter along, alone and unwatched and unloved, until the series order plays out and the showrunners themselves plead for the sweet release that death brings.

Ah, but here's the plot twist - The CW cancelled Generic Media's Sunday programming so quickly that one of the shows scheduled to appear in that bloc, a sitcom generically entitled "Surviving Suburbia," never even managed to get on the air. So you know it had to have been good. America was spared having to be exposed to this abomination.

But wait! "Surviving Suburbia" just happened to star Bob Saget, who is actually very funny (see "The Aristocrats" if you don't believe it) when he's not actually on TV, and the ABC Television Network has a "relationship" with Mr. Saget, and the ABC Television Network was hurting for programming because of the writers strike.

(Mr. Saget in happier, more-innocent-headshot days.)

So the ABC Television Network, demonstrating a sense of responsibility akin to that of Homer Simpson's work at Springfield's nuclear power plant, picked up the 13 episodes of "Surviving Suburbia" and will foist them upon an unsuspecting America come April.

Here are actual words from ABC's press release:

* "Cookie cutter"

* "Steve maintains a rather cynical point of view on family, friends, neighbors, society ... as he tries to survive suburban life."

* "Why do kids' classroom projects inevitably become the parents' responsibility?"

(The subtle message Mr. Saget is attempting to impart to America with "Surviving Suburbia.")

In short: A show not good enough for The CW is coming to ABC.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Another amusing anecdote about idiocy in action.

In case there's anyone out there who still takes Rod Blagojevich seriously, he thoughtfully will make that no longer an option when he appears tonight on "Late Show with David Letterman." If ever there's a guy who could use an evisceration, cranky-Dave-style, it's Blago.

(Dave used to make fun of his own hair. Now it's Rodney's turn.)

- "Late Show with David Letterman:" 11:35 tonight, CBS (Channel 2 in L.A.).

Given the number of promos NBC ran for its new-ish Monday lineup of "Chuck," "Heroes" and "Medium," they could've just run installments of one of the episodes and people would've then seen practically the whole thing.

("So the ratings were weak! You can't pin this all on me!")

That's what they would've done had they wanted people to actually see the shows, because viewers didn't exactly tune in in droves Monday night despite all the hype. What's probably most worrisome for NBC is that almost as many people watched "Chuck's" 3D episode - did the 3D work for you? It didn't, much, for me - as watched "Heroes," the network's one-time juggernaut, and practically no one has been watching "Chuck," which actually had tougher competition, given that "House" had nearly 15 million viewers opposite it, while "24" scraped a chunk over 11 million opposite "Heroes" ("Heroes" beat it in that 18-49 demographic TV people yap so much about, however; both had their hats handed to them by "Two and a Half Men" and "The Bachelor"). (What we learned last night on "24:" Terrorists can be distracted by offers of lasagna.)

"Medium" fared the best, but just nominally - all shows had about 8.5 million viewers, with so-so numbers in the 18-49 demographic.

(Rarely has one character slept so much through her own show.)

Oh, and I mentioned this in my review, but someone should really slap together a montage of Patricia Arquette's character Allison waking up with a start from one of her countless nightmares. I did a cursory search on YouTube and was shocked that no one has done this yet. If anyone finds (or makes) one, I'll post it here.

Meanwhile, since "90210" is getting hammered by "American Idol," The CW has opted to rescue it from such ignominy by putting "Reaper" in the 8 p.m. Tuesday timeslot beginning March 3. Why The CW likes "90210" better than "Reaper" is beyond the purview of sentient beings.

(Simon Cowell prepares to send "Reaper" to its maker once and for all.)

And here we were, sweating it out that terrorists really could take over America's infrastructure by kidnapping one expert and stealing a box the size of a car-trunk-installed CD player, which is the nightmare scenario posited by this season's storyline on "24." Dr. Stephen Flynn, former security advisor to the Clinton Administration, wants us to know that that isn't necessarily true. To wit:

"On 24: Major elements of the national infrastructure are controlled by centralized software systems that are vulnerable to hackers."

"In reality: There is a glimmer of truth here. Says Flynn: 'It's true that the infrastructure systems we take for granted are increasingly managed as cyber networks. That is a built-in vulnerability if somebody can get access to one of them.' But, he adds, the extent to which these systems are centrally controlled is vastly overplayed on the show. The real system is a patchwork of local networks. 'I mean, the DHS has had a hell of a time just inventorying what it has.'"

Flynn goes on in this vein for a while, that the computerized infrastructure is too decentralized for terrorists to access it with a gadget that small (if they landed something bigger than a breadbox, maybe, then we'd need to worry), and then considers the mass-hysteria card:

"On 24: The American population is generally clueless about the threats that play out among them, but the risk of mass hysteria is so grave that the government can't say anything about what's going on."

"In reality: Well, this pretty much reflects the message sent sent to Americans by the Bush administration, according to Flynn. 'They embraced this whole "24"-style story line, in which the American people are helpless against the threats. The mentality is, they just need to pray that people as nimble and capable as Jack Bauer are around to keep them safe.' This is a security threat in its own right, in Flynn's opinion. He makes the case that an informed and engaged citizenry is one of the best homeland security measures available. 'You've got to give people something to do,' he suggests."

Amen to that, given how many people are losing their jobs these days. No, a bigger threat these days are simple snowstorms that can shut down vast swatches of the nation's power grid for days, even weeks, at a time. Let's get Jack Bauer on that, shall we?

- "24:" 9 tonight, Fox (Channel 11 in L.A.).

Now that "House" has reached its 100th episode - it airs tonight - its writing staff has gotten around to wondering, just what is important in life? (Aside from reaching that elusive 100th episode, which ensures a series a long, lucrative life in syndication.)

("We lost the patient, doctor. Perhaps you should've been wearing scrubs and rubber gloves for this procedure.")

Our patient of the week is a former renowned cancer researcher, who collapses during a cooking class. She explains she abandoned her practice when she was on the operating table and realized, well, see the headline above.

"Can't you buy an overpriced German sports car and have an affair?" Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) asks.

"My sports car is doing what I want when I want," she explains.

Which gets House (Hugh Laurie and his team) to discuss and debate happiness. Is it a fulfilling job? Personal freedom? Being in love? Tweaking crystal meth like a caged rat with a pellet-dispensing button? Someone asks House if he's happy; he replies, "Does it show?"

The requisite complications ensue when the patient is discovered to have scratched right through the skull, revealing brain matter. That's even possible? Not with my fingernails. Soon, she's bleeding out her eyes and nose.

("You know, I don't think we're ever going to cure a patient as long as we keep posing for these publicity stills.")

Again, the patient's woes are set aside for stretches of narrative time to focus on the travails of the main characters. House and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) are in a little p!ssing match - she's bitter that he's insisted on her working, so that she can't spend time with her adoptive baby. (Years from now, she'll thank him for keeping her from her petulant teen.)

She contrives to shut down the elevators when he arrives at the hospital, forcing House to limp up the stairs. "Why do you think the elevators are out to get me?" he asks her. "You've officially dragged me down to your level," she tells him. Well played, House!

Meanwhile, the relationship between Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) and Foreman (Omar Epps) is exacerbated by her experiencing complications from the clinical trial he placed her in in an effort to save her life, which kind of takes the air out of booty calls.

It's kind of touching that "House" finally got around to wondering what makes its characters happy, though the rest of us at this point would answer that question with a simple, "Not being a hobo - yet."

- "House:" 8 tonight, Fox (Channel 11 in L.A.).

TAMPA (Staff and wire services) - NBC play-by-play man Al Michaels and color analyst John Madden embarked upon a unique experiment and decided to see if any viewers at Super Bowl parties across the country were actually paying attention to what they were saying during the clash between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals during Super Bowl XLIII. Apparently, few were, because NBC Sports reported no complaints about their coverage of the game, which NBC reported - accurately, it turns out - that Pittsburgh won, 27-23.

Michaels referred to Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner as Troy Aikman throughout the second quarter, Joe Montana in the third and Bart Starr in the fourth, an apparent reference to the veteran athlete's advanced age. Madden, while diagramming a play on his telestrator early in the second half, poured gasoline on his gadget and set it on fire, resulting in a splash of onscreen color. "Boom!" Madden expostulated. "Did I just blow your mind?"

Sideline reporter Alex Flanagan offered a long-winded but entirely fictitious anecdote on Steelers coach Mike Tomlin's inspiring childhood battles with leukemia, polio, eczema and restless-leg syndrome. And during post-game analysis, commentator Cris Collinsworth continued the dissembling, speculating that the Steelers won because, as he put it, "The players were sneaking jackhammers onto the field and drilling Cardinals players when the refs weren't watching. This represents an incredible black eye for the NFL, and Commissioner Roger Goodell had better announce an investigation first thing Monday Morning. That, or he should just bounce Arizona out of the league for not putting up enough of a fight."

"Let's face it - everyone is watching the game from a party or at a bar, and they're talking and cheering and carrying on, so we're essentially irrelevant to the proceedings," Michaels said in an interview prior to the game. "What we say or do really doesn't matter, as long as people have ready access to the visuals and copious amounts of beer."

One fan reported hearing the miscues. "I actually did hear Al Michaels call out 'Fumble!' instead of 'Touchdown!' on the Steelers' second score, and then, Madden called James Harrison's 100-yard return of an interception for a touchdown at the end of the first half as 'Not that big a deal,'" said Otto Ausflucht, 38, of Winslow, Oklahoma. Ausflucht attributed his ability to discern the mistakes due to the fact that, as he put it, "I have no friends and watched the game alone and my neighbor's party wasn't all that loud, so I could hear parts of the game."

Even half-time performer Bruce Springsteen got in on the act, performing his classic-rock anthem "Born to Run" with all-new lyrics celebrating a life of unblinking obeisance to social mores and a spiritually crippling life of cubicle dwelling.