Hot Off The Press! The Latest Television News and Info [Text View] - Page 26

fredfa

11-03-05, 02:36 PM

Nielsen Ratings:
NBC's latest woe: Flight of the affluent
ABC now reaches more high-income viewers

By Kevin Downey MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 3, 2005

One might think NBC couldn’t sink any lower from its onetime dominance in the ratings and ad revenue.

It can and has. Nielsen data for the new broadcast season reveal the network is now suffering its biggest and potentially most devastating humiliation.

NBC is losing hold of the affluent viewers that advertisers most prize.

Through the first six weeks of the new season, ABC has surpassed NBC in reaching adults 25-54 in homes with household incomes of $100,000 or more. And it has matched NBC in the percentage of its audience that falls into this group. That is according to an analysis of Nielsen Media Research data released this week by Magna Global.

NBC had been the dominant network in reaching affluent viewers for decades, which was a key reason it was the most lucrative network for most of the past 20 years.

“Everything else being equal, a network is generally able to charge more if a show has an upscale audience,” notes Steve Sternberg, executive vice president and director of audience analysis at Magna.

“A show like NBC’s ‘The Office’ was likely renewed despite low ratings because it is one of the most upscale shows on television, and last season it was the most upscale.”

Sternberg focused on affluent adults aged 25-54 in his analysis even though the major networks primarily concentrate on reaching adults 18-49. The reason, he explains, is that the younger part of the 18-49 demographic consists largely of people living with parents, meaning their income doesn’t accurately reflect their value to advertisers.

NBC’s slip in affluent viewers will only worsen its revenue picture. The network was down $900 million in advertising revenue on a year-to-year basis in this past summer’s upfront ad selling season, slipping behind CBS and ABC for the first time in two decades.

NBC, obviously anxious to preserve its affluence quotient, has kept not just "The Office" on its schedule. It has continued to stand behind and promote “The Apprentice,” which remains on Thursdays despite severe ratings erosion.

Credit the show's well-to-do audience. While it ranks No. 12 with a 7.4 rating in the affluent demographic, one out of five people watching the reality show is an adult 25-54 with a household income of $100,000 or more. Affluent viewers are twice as likely to watch “The Apprentice” as other programs.

“E.R.” and “Will & Grace,” two other NBC Thursday series with sinking ratings, also rank among the 10 shows with the highest concentration of affluent viewers, as does the new hit sitcom “My Name is Earl.”

What changed this year is that ABC shows that didn’t exist two years ago now also pop up among the top 10, and above NBC's.

ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” is the highest-rated show in the upscale demographic, and it ranks No. 2 in the percentage of affluent viewers watching the program. “Lost” is No. 2 and No. 7, respectively, on the two measures, while “Grey’s Anatomy” ranks No. 3 in affluence ratings and No. 4 in the concentration of upscale viewers.

“[This is] significant because NBC was always far and away the most upscale network,” says Sternberg.

A few programs on other networks also score well with affluent viewers. Based on the percentage of viewers in this demographic, the WB’s “Gilmore Girls” ranks No. 10, CBS reality show “Amazing Race” is No. 17 and Fox’s “House” is No. 21.

NBC’s slippage in the upscale audience comes on top of other troubles.

The network, which last season ranked No. 4 in the 18-49 demographic for the first time ever, is tied with Fox for third place so far this season. Its 3.3 rating is down 13 percent from the same time last year. ABC ranks No. 1 with a 4.1 and CBS is No. 2 with a 4 rating.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1065.asp

fredfa

11-03-05, 05:58 PM

Wednesday’s network prime-time ratings are now (finally) at the top of RATINGS NEWS the second post in this thread.

fredfa

11-03-05, 06:59 PM

CBS Budgets More Time to Practice

By Ben Grossman Broadcasting & Cable

CBS has given a full-season order to Monday night freshman comedy Out of Practice.

The sitcom, which features an ensemble cast including Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler, has averaged nearly 12 million viewers overall and is trending up in the adult 18-49 demo Mondays at 9:30 p.m. out of Two and a Half Men.

The show has helped CBS hold down the fort on Monday nights post-Raymond, as fellow freshman Monday comedy How I Met Your Mother was previously given a full-season commitment. Four of the six new CBS shows have now been picked up for the season, including dramas Ghost Whisperer and Criminal Minds.

fredfa

11-03-05, 07:44 PM

You read it here first

As reported here a couple of days ago, CBS announced today it is acquiring the CSTV network for $325 million.

fredfa

11-03-05, 10:04 PM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
“Category 7”: A perfect storm of cheesiness
* (out of four)

By Robert Bianco USA TODAY

It's a really ill wind that blows no good twice.

Succumbing once again to its new-blown addiction to sci-fi schlock, CBS is remarketing last season's Category 6: Day of Destruction through a virtually indistinguishable category upgrade: Category 7: The End of the World. Watch, and Category 8: The Universe Implodes will be here by May.

Granted, the days of Roots, Holocaust and Lonesome Dove are far behind us. Still, even with network movie expectations at an all-time low, you might expect more from November's only broadcast miniseries than an overblown repeat. We've seen enough bad weather and bad movies to last a lifetime; why anyone would want to see the two combine again is beyond me.

The Category 7 tape provided for preview did not include all the finished effects, so it's possible the destruction of the Arc de Triomphe and Mount Rushmore will look more realistic on air. (Perhaps they'll even explain what it is about a marble arch that would cause it to explode.) But no amount of computer generation can help a hodgepodge script or a cast evenly apportionable between embarrassed and embarrassing.

7 picks up right where 6 left off, with the raging weather systems that destroyed Las Vegas and Chicago heading east. "If those two storms hit over D.C., and D.C'.s thermal column intersects with the mesosphere, we're not talking Category 6. This is going to be" — wait for it — "a Category 7!"

Lest you think storms are all that's brewing, 7 makes way for any number of time-filling crises. These include murder, kidnapping, adultery, poisonous frogs, government skullduggery, and two misguided evangelists played by James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz, the only cast members to keep their heads above 7's fetid waters.

Standing in harm's way is the new director of FEMA, played by Gina Gershon — an odd casting choice, but then FEMA seems to attract odd casting choices. She keeps demanding "ironclad proof" that the super-storm is approaching and not just "mumbo-jumbo data charts," which makes you wonder just what kind of proof she thinks she'll get about a weather front that doesn't involve data or charts. It's a storm, honey, not a crime scene.

There are treats for fans of disaster camp, provided by the on-the-run romance between Randy Quaid's tornado chaser and Shannen Doherty's scientist/bartender. But mostly 7 is just another movie in which nature stands in moral judgment, killing the evil and sparing the innocent — or at least the innocent who have names.

Unlike 6, however, 7 does make one thing clear in the end. The cause of all this bad weather is you, you energy hog, driving your car, heating your house, running your TV to watch movies like Category 7.

At least one of those problems is pretty easily fixed.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2005-11-03-category-7_x.htm

fredfa

11-03-05, 10:15 PM

Programming notes: Catch “Threshold” online

(medialifemagazine.com---)CBS is trying to recruit “Threshold” viewers online.

Yesterday CBS.com made the Sept. 23 episode of its new Friday night drama available for free download, and it will do the same for the next two episodes. “Threshold” airs Fridays at 9 p.m. and has averaged a 2.2 rating among viewers 18-49 so far this season.

Meanwhile, Fox has ordered three more episodes of “Killer Instinct,” “Threshold’s” timeslot competition, which has averaged a 1.6 among 18-49s this season. It’s doing better among men 18-34, winning its timeslot last week.

In cable programming, Comedy Central has ordered an entire season of “The Colbert Report,” extending its run from eight to 42 weeks. Launched on Oct. 17, the show has averaged 1.2 million viewers, keeping 86 percent of its “Daily Show” lead-in audience.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/cat_index_31.asp

fredfa

11-03-05, 10:28 PM

By John Consoli and Anthony Crupi MediaWeek.com November 03, 2005

CBS has signed an agreement to acquire CSTV: College Sports Television Networks for $325 million, with the transaction likely to close in early January 2006, following the split of Viacom into two entities. At that time, the transaction will be in CBS Corporation Class B non-voting common stock.

CSTV will continue to be operated by its founder and CEO Brian Bedol, who will report to Leslie Moonves, chairman of CBS and co-president and co-COO of Viacom.

Included in the acquisition is the digital cable network which features 30 men's and women's college sports events, with 15 million subscribers; online properties consisting of a network of more than 250 official college athletic Web sites, each maintained and managed for its institution by CSTV; a CSTV.com Web site; and Regional College Sports Networks which will be launched in 2006, featuring sporting events from the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA.

Bedol has been down this road before, developing Classic Sports Network in 1995, then selling it to ESPN two years later for $200 million. Classic Sports was then rebranded into ESPN Classic.

CSTV and CBS already have a business relationship, as CSTV has secured streaming media deals with CBS Sportsline.com and has negotiated the rights to produce an NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament highights package that was carried by Viacom's Spike TV.

"As the founder of the Classic Sports Network and other ventures, Brian has proven himself to be a truly creative business manager with a track record of getting things done," Moonves said. "I am particularly pleased that he and his partner, Chris Bevilaqua come along with this deal. They will be a valuable addition to the CBS team."

Bedol said CSTV was built to offer college sports enthusiasts access to content beyond that airing on the major networks.

"Through this transaction, we will now have the ability to help those consumers transition from the mass media of CBS Sports to the personalized media of the Web, and many points in between."

Moonves said with this acquisition, CBS will have a larger sports Web audience than any other online medium--with 19 million unique users.

"In bringing our operations under one roof, our presence in the college sports community grows even stronger, and the programming possibilities on national cable, regional sports networks, and the Internet are very exciting indeed," Moonves added.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001433557

keenan

11-03-05, 10:30 PM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
“Category 7”: A perfect storm of cheesiness
* (out of four)

I've never really paid attention to the ratings for these Sunday movies. Do they actually even come close to paying for themselves?

fredfa

11-03-05, 10:57 PM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
On a 'Break' and feeling all alone

By Ellen Gray Philadelphia Daily News

THAT SCREAMING you may have heard earlier this week was me reacting to a USA Today report that Fox was putting "Prison Break" on hiatus until May after Nov. 28 because with "24" and "American Idol" coming back in January, there just wasn't enough room on Fox's schedule and, besides, the network would rather have it around next summer.

I don't know if I can wait that long.

Especially when Fox next week is bringing back Pamela Anderson's "Stacked," which, you know, I haven't been missing even a little bit.

They tell me "That '70s Show" is back, too, but without Ashton or Topher. I'm not sure, but I think it may now be set in a Wisconsin retirement community and involve actual 70-year-olds.

Yes, I'm cranky. I like my "Prison Break," and I've already lived through a baseball-induced drought, mildly worried that the execution date for Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) might arrive before the World Series ended, or worse, that his brother Michael (Wentworth Miller) might escape to another network altogether.

I've been crankier than usual about Fox, anyway, since I started watching "Pasadena" on SoapNet (7 and 10 p.m. Saturdays). The stylish, 13-episode soap starring Dana Delany, which Fox pulled from the air after four airings, and, despite many promises, never brought back, is a weekly reminder of how impatience with a serialized show can leave hooked viewers hanging.

But unlike "Pasadena," which averaged a disappointing 4 million viewers in the fall of 2001, "Prison Break's" more than 9.3 million viewers, many of them advertiser-targeted 18- to 49-year-olds, make it a success story.

Which is why no one at Fox is talking about sending it away forever.

The extended hiatus "is just one of the scenarios that is being thrown about," a Fox spokeswoman said yesterday, noting that 13 episodes will have aired by Nov. 28 and that production continues on the next nine.

Here's hoping this time we won't have to wait four years to see them.

'Chris' in black and white

It's obvious by now that not "Everybody Hates Chris" (8 tonight, Channel 57), but given that we're talking about one of the season's best new shows, it's also puzzling that more people aren't showing up to love it.

Yes, it's on UPN - a network many viewers still can't find with their remotes - and it's on 8 p.m. Thursdays, a tough time period.

But while 7.8 million viewers managed to find "Chris" for its Sept. 22 debut, by last week, only 5.38 million were watching.

More than half of those viewers - 2.9 million - were African-American, according to Nielsen Media Research, whose weekly ratings reports on viewing in black households shows the Chris Rock-narrated comedy attracting more of those viewers than any other show on television last week.

What's up with everyone else?

Chris Rock's as big a crossover star as we have these days, and "Everybody Hates Chris," which plays in many ways like "The Wonder Years" - if, OK, "The Wonder Years" had been set in Bedford-Stuyvesant - is exactly the kind of family comedy that a lot of people, black and white, tell me they miss.

So why are so many of them still watching NBC's "Joey"?

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television/13067833.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

RussTC3

11-03-05, 11:23 PM

I'll definitely be missing Prison Break, but sometimes things like this happen. Maybe I should pick up the 24 DVD's (I've only seen about 3/4th of the 1st season, love it) so I can watch that show during Prison Break's hiatus.

As far as Stacked goes, I'm not sure what the reaction to the show is in these parts, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by it. It's pretty funny.

I've also been enjoying Everybody Hates Chris (It's better than Joey, which has gotten weaker in it's second season). It's ratings don't surprise me cause the show is on UPN. Very simple reasoning. :) Besides, UPN has thrown a lot of money at it and everyone seems pretty commited to it. I'm sure we'll at least get another season.

Thanks for the extra syndication ratings, fredfa.

fredfa

11-03-05, 11:27 PM

NFL HD November 13th

The CBS and Fox HD NFL schedules for Sunday, November 13th have been added at the top of the first post in this thread.

PJO1966

11-03-05, 11:27 PM

It seems that people just aren't interested in watching quality comedy. Both Arrested Development & Everybody Hates Chris should both be doing better in the ratings.

fredfa

11-03-05, 11:30 PM

Personally I agree on one of those two. :)
But obviously what is quality to some of us isn't to others.

RussTC3

11-03-05, 11:32 PM

It seems that people just aren't interested in watching quality comedy. Both Arrested Development & Everybody Hates Chris should both be doing better in the ratings.
It's REALLY a shame, IMO, that Arrested Development isn't doing better. EHC has the UPN excuse to fall back on, so it's future seems to be in good enough shape. FOX, surprisingly, has really done all it can to help out AD's ratings.

I'll never understand why so few people watch it. Quite simply, it's brilliant.

I wonder if the advertising they do: "If you don't watch this show, the best show EVER, you're an idiot". It's obviously not that dramatic, but maybe it turns people off?

keenan

11-04-05, 02:24 AM

From The Philadelphia Inquirer (www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/13066089.htm)

TV sweeps may be swept by technology

Posted on Thu, Nov. 03, 2005

By Beth Gillin
Inquirer Staff Writer

It's November, and we're all doomed. In other words, it's time for the fall sweeps, when TV networks, and local stations, try to fatten their ratings by luring viewers with a buffet of stunts, such as Category 7: The End of the World, a special-effects-loaded tale of planetary havoc in two parts starting Sunday on CBS.

The networks call this "event programming," and there will be plenty of it between today and Nov. 30, when Nielsen Media Research, the ratings company, "sweeps" most of the country. As it does four times a year, the company helps local stations set ad rates by collecting viewers' paper diaries that yield detailed information about who's watching what.

Technology is expected to eventually kill off sweeps - including those "special investigations" viewers have come to expect quarterly on the late local news - thanks to the introduction of electronic Local People Meters in various markets. But even though Philadelphia got the meters in June, don't expect to be free of those newscast exposes.

While network sweeps stunts continue, their influence will continue to spill over into local news shows, where grainy video of sexual activity in public restrooms and investigations of exploding cell phones have become standards, along with reporters in hospital gowns getting medical tests. However, few journalists are likely to go as far as Cleveland anchor Sharon Reed, who once worked for WCAU (Channel 10). She got naked for a first-person report last November on a nude group-photo installation.

Here, there's still an "all-hands-on-deck" policy during sweeps, said Jennifer E. Best, public-affairs director at WTXF (Channel 29), echoing representatives of other local stations. In other words, the talent isn't allowed to take vacations.

In the long run, the meters will do away with quarterly gimmickry. Because they measure viewing habits continuously and transmit voluminous data electronically every night, the meters will make sweeps obsolete.

In the short run, local stations in cities with meters are grappling with how to do news now.

"The networks will still program their heavy-hitter shows in the traditional sweeps periods, since the [meters] are only in a few markets," Best said.

To capture the eyeballs of audiences who tune in to "event programming," she said, The 10 O'Clock News will focus on consumer and investigative stories during sweeps - and will promote those stories during commercial breaks.

That said, the introduction of the meters here has brought some changes at WTXF, Best acknowledged. There is now a budget to finance and promote "special stories" throughout the year, and the Fox Undercover investigative unit has beefed up its personnel.

The meters "are so new to local markets that a lot of people are still trying to figure them out," said Kerry Kielar, director of communications for Nielsen.

The devices themselves aren't new; Nielsen has used them for years to measure national viewing trends. What's new is their local application.

Until recently, Nielsen relied on the 100,000 paper diaries distributed nationally during sweeps periods to find out what audiences in individual markets preferred.

The company started rolling out the meters in 2002 in Boston. They are now in seven locations, including Philadelphia, which got the first of its 850 meters this summer. The other markets are Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington. Next year, Detroit and Dallas-Fort Worth are scheduled to get meters, followed in 2007 by Atlanta.

That will take care of the top-10 TV markets. But out in the vast heartland, Nielsen still measures audiences the old-fashioned way, passing out paper diaries in November, February, May and July to selected viewers and asking them to faithfully record what they watch.

So long as a large swath of the TV audience is measured that way, networks will likely remain wedded to the idea of scheduling their showiest stuff during sweeps.

The rollout of the meters has not been glitch-free. Critics have questioned the accuracy of the devices, saying they undercount minority viewers.

In February 2004, Nielsen had a dress rehearsal in New York, distributing meters to some participants, diaries to others. In side-by-side comparisons, metered viewership declined 27 percent to 62 percent for UPN shows with black casts, including Girlfriends, Eve, Half & Half, and The Parkers. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns the Fox TV network and numerous local stations, including the UPN affiliate in New York, protested that the meter results were flawed.

Nielsen countered that audiences for Alias and The Practice, popular with white viewers, also fell during the test run, and said its experience in Boston showed that those discrepancies even out over time. But the company agreed to further refine its measuring techniques - Nielsen already oversamples certain groups and pays them more to participate to compensate for what it says is minority resistance to surveys.

Nielsen postponed the full New York launch until June 2004, while a coalition called Don't Count Us Out, supported by minority members of Congress and partly financed by News Corp., called for hearings.

That fight lost a lot of steam when cable's Black Entertainment Network and the Rev. Jesse Jackson endorsed the meters, after a side-by-side comparison of New York viewers in March 2004 showed BET's over-18 daytime viewership was up 180 percent.

In July, Sen. Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) introduced the FAIR Ratings Act (standing for Fairness, Accuracy, Inclusivity and Responsiveness). It got a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that month.

Burns' bill would require Nielsen to have all new measuring devices certified by the Media Ratings Council Inc., a consortium of broadcasters, cable operators, advertisers and others. The bill's opponents, including Nielsen, say that would stifle the development of new technologies.

The bill has not gone anywhere. Burns "would prefer to see the matter taken care of within the industry," his aide Jennifer O'Shea said last week, "and if he doesn't see results in the near future, he will continue working on legislation."

While acknowledging that the meters aren't perfect, Nielsen says they are more accurate than a coffee-stained paper diary in which a viewer has recorded what he remembers watching, or even what he thinks he should have watched instead of what he actually saw.

The meters have their drawbacks - a viewer must push a button on a remote at regular intervals. But that's easier than remembering to write everything down in the diary.

Viewer data in a click

Here's how Nielsen's Local People Meters work:

A group of families of diverse configurations and racial and ethnic makeups is chosen in each market. Extensive demographic information is obtained from each family member in the sample. Meters are installed on top of every TV set in the household, and each member is assigned a number.

Say viewer number 3, a male of 15, watches Monday Night Football on ABC. He switches on the living-room TV and clicks the number 3 on his remote, turning a light from red to green. His father, viewer 1, age 50, joins his son and repeats the process, while his mother, viewer 2, opts for NBC's Medium in the kitchen, and his sister, viewer 4, is glued to a Discovery special in her room.

At the end of the night, all the data are sent electronically to Nielsen, where they are analyzed and distributed quickly to clients, including networks, local stations and advertisers.

- Beth Gillin

keenan

11-04-05, 02:33 AM

From The Mercury News (www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/television/13062043.htm)

Several new shows are good, but there's no breakout hit
Posted on Thu, Nov. 03, 2005

By Charlie McCollum
Mercury News

Two months into the television networks' new seasons, there's one obvious point to be made: This autumn isn't fall 2004.

By this time last year, it was clear that ABC's ``Desperate Housewives'' and ``Lost'' were true pop-culture phenomena. Not only were a lot of people watching the two new series, but they were also talking about them over coffee, at the office and online. Can you believe what Bree said about Rex last night? What was the deal with the polar bear on a tropical island?

This season, there's not a single new show that has achieved that kind of traction. (NBC's ``My Name Is Earl'' probably comes the closest.)

That's led to the impression that this fall has been something of a bust for broadcast TV. The reality check is that series such as ``Housewives'' and ``Lost'' don't come along that often and rarely in a pair on the same network. Before the ABC shows, the last to grab that kind of attention -- and hold onto it -- was ``American Idol,'' which debuted four seasons ago.

If you judge the first two months of this season by more normal seasons and not by last fall, things actually look pretty good -- particularly when you factor in the impact of some sophomore shows that are just getting better.

Let's start with the fact that the carnage among newcomers hasn't been that bad. Four shows have been axed: NBC's ``Inconceivable,'' Fox's ``Head Cases,'' UPN's ``Sex, Love & Secrets'' and the WB's ``Just Legal.'' Only the latter was a series that deserved a little more time, although it's doubtful the legal comedy-drama ever would have clicked on the WB.

There is a batch of high-profile freshman shows that have been disappointments: artistically, in the ratings or both. NBC has been hit particularly hard by the relative failures of the Martha Stewart version of ``The Apprentice,'' ``E-Ring'' and ``Three Wishes,'' although Amy Grant's addictive reality weeper might still prosper. Also on the list: ABC's ``Night Stalker,'' CBS's ``Close to Home'' (another unexpected loser), Fox's ``Kitchen Confidential'' and the WB's ``Related.''

On the flip side, though, there are a number of new series that fall into the B- to B+ range for quality and have either already grabbed a decent audience or still have that potential if given some more time.

That list starts with ``Earl'' and Fox's ``Prison Break,'' the season's best new shows. But it also includes ABC's ``Commander in Chief'' (although the writing needs work) and ``Invasion,'' CBS's ``Criminal Minds,'' ``How I Met Your Mother'' and ``Threshold,'' ``Bones'' on Fox, ``Everybody Hates Chris'' on UPN and the WB's ``Supernatural.''

Of course, there are also a few new shows whose ratings success ranges from unexpected to inexplicable. The OK-but-not-great ``Ghost Whisperer'' has caught on for CBS on Fridays. Fox's dreadful ``War at Home'' is pulling an audience on Sundays. And how do you explain the full-season pickup for NBC's ``Surface,'' except that the baby creature Nimrod is cute and star Lake Bell, playing a scientist, looks good in a wet T-shirt and a bikini?

The other driving force this television season? An unexpected surge in viewer interest and creativity from three sophomore dramas.

The group is topped by ``Lost,'' which is now a top five hit and has become even more compelling in its storytelling. Rarely has a show come back in its second season and trumped what was an Emmy-winning first year, but the complex series about a group of plane wreck survivors on a mysterious island has pulled off the feat.

While they're not on a level with ``Lost,'' both Fox's ``House'' and ABC's ``Grey's Anatomy'' have also hit big this fall. Separated from ``American Idol,'' the former has proven it can generate an audience on its own and has established an engaging rhythm to its drama. And ``Anatomy,'' the sexy hospital show that aired just a handful of episodes last spring, has evolved into one of TV's most entertaining hours and a top 10 hit.

Now if the TV audience could just discover the fourth sophomore show having a great year -- UPN's sadly neglected ``Veronica Mars'' -- we'd really have something going this season.

BEST NEW SHOWS

``My Name Is Earl'' (NBC)

``Prison Break'' (Fox)

``Everybody Hates Chris'' (UPN)

``Invasion'' (ABC)

``Threshold'' (CBS)

MOST WATCHED NEW SHOWS

``Commander in Chief'' (ABC): 16.4 million.

``My Name Is Earl'' (NBC): 12.9 million

``Invasion'' (ABC): 12.5 million

``Criminal Minds'' (CBS): 12.2 million

``Out of Practice'' (CBS): 12.1 million

Nielsen Media Research, average audience through Oct. 21

RATING THE MAJOR NETWORKS

ABC

The good On a roll with last year's hits staying strong or even improving in the ratings. New shows such as ``Commander In Chief'' and ``Invasion'' are doing well. ``Boston Legal'' is giving the network a presence at 10 p.m. Tuesday. And it has the Super Bowl this season, which will boost ratings.

The bad Comedies are still hit-and-miss, ``According to Jim'' is floundering and the ``Alias''-``Night Stalker'' combo on Thursdays hasn't worked.

Rating B+

CBS

The good Getting good viewership for ``Ghost Whisperer,'' has a surprise hit in ``Criminal Minds'' even though it's up against ``Lost,'' and ``How I Met Your Mother'' is showing strength. ``Threshold'' hasn't found a big audience but it still has potential. And it already has a big lead in total viewers.

The bad ``Close to Home'' is dying and the awful ``Out of Practice'' hasn't clicked behind ``Two And A Half Men.'' Has to be a little concerned about overall drop in viewership, particularly for ``CSI: N.Y.'' and ``CSI: Miami.''

Rating B

Fox

The good ``Prison Break'' and ``Bones'' got off to decent starts before being preempted by baseball. ``House'' is now a certified hit. Sunday night comedy lineup is drawing droves of young male viewers. And it's got a couple of series called ``American Idol'' and ``24'' coming out of the bullpen.

The bad Weak World Series ratings, weak Friday lineup and a real turkey in ``Head Cases.''

Rating C+

NBC

The good ``My Name Is Earl'' and . . . did I mention ``My Name Is Earl''?

The bad Just about everything else. The network's schedule is a train wreck going into mid-season.

Rating D-

fredfa

11-04-05, 06:09 AM

Ratings Gratification Is Delayed

By Jacques Steinberg The New York Times (Bill Carter contributed reporting for this article.) November 4, 2005

Television executives never like to wait to find out how a program performed in the Nielsen ratings.

Part of it is ego, but there are also business reasons for the urgency: the networks like to tell advertisers that their money was well spent, and those same results can be critical for the shows themselves.

So when the overnight ratings for Tuesday's prime-time network shows did not arrive from Nielsen Media Research as scheduled on Wednesday, network executives wanted to know why. With the networks especially competitive on Tuesdays - and even more so with the return of the drama "House" on Fox - some reacted as the Yankees would if they had to sit tight to find out the results of a long-since-concluded game against the Red Sox.

"In an industry that is accustomed to a daily diet of ratings, it becomes a little traumatic for everyone when you don't get them on time," said David Poltrack, executive vice president of research for CBS.

The problem, said Matt Tatham, a Nielsen spokesman, was a software glitch that interrupted the gathering of audience data in more than a dozen markets, mostly in the East.

But Mr. Poltrack said the problem - which apparently occurred when new software was installed - should have been anticipated by Nielsen, which effectively has a monopoly on the measurement of television audiences. "The long-term question for Nielsen to answer is: Where is the redundancy?" Mr. Poltrack said. "To operate on a real-time basis, doesn't a system have to have a backup redundancy built in?"

Jack Loftus, senior vice president of communications for Nielsen, said the system had indeed had a backup: although Nielsen had difficulty collecting the data initially, the information remained stored on the so-called people meters that register viewer habits on a national basis.

By yesterday afternoon, Mr. Tatham said, the problem had been mostly corrected, and national results from Tuesday had been released. (The national results, at least for Tuesday night: "My Name Is Earl" on NBC and "House" did well.)

The timing of the computer problem was especially inopportune because tonight marks the beginning of the so-called November sweeps, one of several periods when the networks' performance will be measured for the purpose of setting advertising rates.

Mr. Tatham said, "We don't expect the situation to duplicate itself."

fredfa

11-04-05, 06:12 AM

DirecTV, Comcast Disappoint Investors

By Sallie Hofmeister Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 4, 2005

The slugfest over customers taking place between the nation's cable and satellite TV providers was clear Thursday when each industry leader disappointed Wall Street.

El Segundo-based DirecTV Group Inc. swung to a third-quarter profit of $95 million, adding 1 million subscribers. But the satellite company's stock declined because of a record customer turnover rate and the high cost of keeping subscribers from switching to competitors.

At the same time, Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. lost 46,000 basic cable customers, its third straight quarter of losses. Analysts attributed these defections to Comcast's delay in entering the digital phone business, which other cable providers consider a magic bullet to keep customers from jumping to satellite.

"Comcast was late to the party, and it's costing them," said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

Comcast's performance was particularly distressing to Wall Street after two big rivals of the nation's largest cable operator posted better results.

Time Warner Inc. and Cablevision Systems Corp. both added subscribers in the third quarter by bundling their cable television service with an inexpensive digital phone offering. The phone sales helped lift the two companies' revenues at a faster pace than Comcast grew.

At Comcast, revenue increased 9.4% in the third quarter to $5.6 billion, while net income was nearly flat at $222 million, or 10 cents a share, up from $220 million, or 10 cents, a year earlier. That failed to meet the consensus profit estimate of 14 cents a share among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Comcast shares fell $1.44, or 5%, to $27.36. Some investors also were frustrated that Comcast was investing heavily instead of showing bigger profit. Comcast said it would increase capital spending to $3.5 billion this year, up from a previous forecast of $3.2 billion to $3.3 billion, to meet demand for services such as digital recorders.

"The market obviously sees forms of competition in the future," Brian L. Roberts, Comcast's chairman and chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts Thursday when asked about his stock's lackluster performance this year.

Many analysts favor Comcast over DirecTV because of its long-term prospects. The satellite company, which is owned by News Corp., has provided customers with a premium television-viewing experience.

But satellite technology is unable to deliver two-way services such as Internet broadband and telephone, putting it at a disadvantage to cable providers as well as to telephone carriers that are entering the TV business.

To fill its broadband void, DirecTV probably will have to pay handsomely because the needed spectrum for such services is scarce, analysts said.

DirecTV's third-quarter net income was 7 cents a share, contrasted with a loss of 73 cents a share a year earlier, when the company recorded a $900-million charge for a shuttered broadband project. The results were above analyst profit expectations of 5 cents a share, according to Thomson.

Quarterly results included a $14-million charge from Hurricane Katrina losses. Revenue grew 13%, to $3.23 billion.

DirecTV's average monthly churn — the rate of customer turnover — jumped to a record 1.89%, up from 1.82% a year earlier, as the company cut off nonpaying customers who signed up when it loosened credit standards last year to drive subscriber growth. The company said it had tightened its credit policy.

As a result, DirecTV added 263,000 net new subscribers, compared with 456,000 in the year-earlier quarter.

fredfa

11-04-05, 06:15 AM

The TV Column
ABC Catches Up With NBC Among Watchers With Wallets

By Lisa de Moraes The Washington Post Friday, November 4, 2005; C07

If you are between the ages of 25 and 54 and recently dropped $1,400 for an Hermes crocodile-and-calfskin leash-and-collar set for little Fluffy, you need to read the following important information carefully:

NBC is no longer the broadcast network for affluent viewers. It is now safe to acknowledge publicly that you watch ABC.

Through the first six weeks of the new television season, ABC has caught up to NBC in terms of audience skewed toward 25-to-54-year-olds in homes with incomes of $100,000 or more, according to Nielsen stats as crunched by media buyer Magna Global, an agency that makes ad-buying decisions for sponsor clients.

Having a lock on the upscale audience has been important to NBC. When NBC could no longer boast that it was the country's most watched network, when it could no longer even brag that it was the country's most watched network among young viewers, it could still crow when it pitched to advertisers and the press that it was the network of choice among wealthier viewers.

And all things being equal, advertisers will pay more to reach people who have a lot of money than they will to reach the same number of people who do not.

Which helps explain why, for instance, NBC renewed the barely watched "The Office" for a second season in May, and why the network put two simultaneous editions of "The Apprentice" on its fall schedule.

"The Apprentice" has the highest proportion so far this season of 25-to-54-year-olds in households with an annual income of $100,000, according to Magna Global's stats. Yes, it's clocking about 6 million fewer viewers than the first round of "The Apprentice" last season, but the crowd that's left is well off financially.

"The Office," meanwhile, averaged a measly 5.4 million viewers last season, which put it toward the bottom of the heap when it came to overall audience size. (This season it's doing slightly better, with an average haul of 8 million.) But it's a Top 5 show this season among those 25-to-54-year-olds with $100K on them.

CBS's "CSI," which is the most watched show in the country, averaging nearly 28 million viewers, has more rich 25-to-54-year-olds watching, but they're less concentrated. Think of "The Office" audience as the membership of your country club -- not many of them, but what there is is rich.

"Desperate Housewives," on the other hand, has the overall tonnage of "CSI" -- it's the second most watched show this season, with an average of about 24 million viewers -- and also skews high among affluent 25-to-54-year-olds. It's okay to tell members of that country club you love "Desperate Housewives." Ditto "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost" -- those three sophomore shows have catapulted ABC into the Firmament of Rich People Viewing.

According to the Magna Global stats, "The Apprentice" indexes at 205 among 25-to-54-year-olds with household income of $100,000. A show that skews at 100 has an audience concentration of such people that reflects their numbers in the general population. "The Apprentice's" 205 means that its audience is about twice as thick with rich 25-to-54-year-olds. Sweet.

(Oh, and the guy who did this report for Magna Global said in an interview recently that he used 25-to-54-year-olds for this study, instead of the Holy Grail -- 18-to-49-year-olds -- in order to weed out all those 18-to-24s whose household income is $100,000 only because they're living at home off of Mummy and Dad.)

NBC notes that its prime-time programming skews more upscale this season than last. Which is to say that while NBC has fumbled about 5 percent of the audience it had at the same time last year, it is losing audience quickest among people with less money; richer folk continue to hang around.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302398_pf.html

HDTVChallenged

11-04-05, 11:16 AM

It seems that people just aren't interested in watching quality comedy. Both Arrested Development & Everybody Hates Chris should both be doing better in the ratings.

I've tried .... really, really tried watching AD, several times .... but for some reason it just doesn't "grab" me. I don't know why. Everyone keeps telling me that I should fall in love with it, but it just doesn't fit. Sorry ...

Then again ... maybe I'm still too upset over the "Wonderfalls" debacle ;)

Marcus Carr

11-04-05, 12:10 PM

I've tried .... really, really tried watching AD, several times .... but for some reason it just doesn't "grab" me. I don't know why. Everyone keeps telling me that I should fall in love with it, but it just doesn't fit. Sorry ...

Then again ... maybe I'm still too upset over the "Wonderfalls" debacle ;)

I respect the show, but it just doesn't make me laugh much. I think it will always have a loyal, but small audience. If the DVDs continue to sell so well it will probably stay on for a while.

scantor

11-04-05, 12:27 PM

I've tried .... really, really tried watching AD, several times .... but for some reason it just doesn't "grab" me. I don't know why. Everyone keeps telling me that I should fall in love with it, but it just doesn't fit. Sorry

By this point, the show is virtually impossible to appreciate unless you've watched it for a while. So far this year, some of the episodes have been very good, but full of a lot of long running jokes and character humor that wouldn't be at all funny if you just dropped in and tried the show.

This isn't *bad* per se, but it's a problem if the show still wants to find an audience.

So don't feel bad, but if you haven't ever seen the early shows, I suggest renting or borrowing the DVD and trying to watch it from the beginning, and then see if you like it any better. I only say that because if you did find that you liked it, you'd have a great couple seasons of very funny writing to watch.

fredfa

11-04-05, 12:28 PM

Thursdays prime-time ratings – and Media Week Analyst Marc Berman’s opinions of what they mean -- have been posted at the top of Ratings News the second post in this thread.

fredfa

11-04-05, 12:41 PM

TV Ratings
Party crasher:”Reunion” return tanks
Fox drama sinks to a season-low 1.7 in 18-49s

By Diego Vasquez MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 4, 2005

It looked as though Fox had found the perfect Thursday night companion to “The O.C.” when “Reunion” premiered to good ratings in September. It turns out, maybe it hasn’t.

In its first episode since Sept. 29, “Reunion” earned just a 1.7 Nielsen overnight rating among viewers 18-49 last night, down 43 percent from the 3.0 it earned for its series premiere Sept. 8.

The show also lost 43 percent of the 18-49 lead-in audience provided by “The O.C.” last night. Among 18-34s, “Related” lost 37 percent of “The O.C.’s” 3.8 rating, averaging a 2.4.

Part of the problem was surely the long layoff. The show hadn’t aired in more than a month, giving way to Fox’s postseason baseball coverage, and the network seemingly pushed the returns of other shows like “Bones,” “House,” and “That ‘70s Show” more than “Reunion” during the playoffs.

Also, the show airs in one of the wickedest timeslots on broadcast, head-to-head with CBS’s “CSI” and NBC’s “The Apprentice,” on the first night of November sweeps, no less. It also was hurt last night by ABC’s airing of the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean,” which did much better in younger demos in the timeslot than usual occupant “Night Stalker” has this season.

“Reunion’s” 18-49 overnight rating has fallen each episode, from a 3.0, to a 2.5, down to a 2.3, then to last night’s 1.7.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1119.asp

fredfa

11-04-05, 12:54 PM

PLEASE NOTE: There are some (what I consider to be) minor plot developments listed in the following article. If you don’t want to know about any potential cast or story notes for November, please skip the article!!!!

Be very afraid: Disaster rules November sweeps

By Amy Amatangelo Boston Herald Friday, November 4, 2005

This month, you’re not safe in front of your TV.

November sweeps, the all-important period for setting advertising rates for the commercial networks running through Nov. 30, brings death, destruction and shocking plot twists. (That’s right, consider yourself warned, there are spoilers ahead.)

NBC has the remake of “The Poseidon Adventure” starring Steve Guttenberg, Peter Weller and Alex Kingston on Nov. 20. This time, passengers on a cruise ship try to survive a terrorist attack. Not to be outdone, CBS’ two-part “Category 7: The End of the World,” about a deadly storm, begins Sunday at 9 PM ET/PT (CBS) and concludes Nov. 13 (see accompanying review).

That movie was completed before real-life deadly storms devastated the country. But “Law & Order: SVU” weaves the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina into its Nov. 29 episode. Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Chris Meloni) pursue a child molester who kidnapped three sisters orphaned by the destructive hurricane.

Many characters won’t survive the month as death comes to “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Las Vegas.” Odds makers expect Boone’s sister, Shannon (Maggie Grace), to meet her maker in Wednesday’s episode of the ABC hit. But not, of course, before she gets up close and personal with Sayid (Naveen Andrews). We’ll also find out who is the murder victim at the center of Fox’s “Reunion” (Thursday), and Hannah (Sarah Drew) will learn that her father passed away on WB’s “Everwood” (Thursday).

Before your favorite series settle in for the long winter’s nap of December reruns, expect some bombshells. The most boring season of “The Amazing Race” wraps up Nov. 29, and CBS promises a surprise ending. HBO’s “Rome” completes its first season Nov. 20.

The girls learn something unexpected about their father (guest star Barry Bostwick) in a very special episode of “What I Like About You” (tonight at 8 on The WB). Michael (Jason Bateman) learns a secret about his girlfriend, Rita (guest star Charlize Theron), on Fox’s “Arrested Development” (Nov. 14). The oh-so-creepy George (Roger Bart) stalks Bree (Marcia Cross) on “Desperate Housewives.” A new, important person will come into Luke’s life on WB’s “Gilmore Girls.” Some of the mysterious questions posed in the pilot (such as what’s up with Mariel?) will be answered on ABC’s “Invasion.” And the brothers will return to their childhood home where their mother died on WB’s “Supernatural” (Nov. 15).

“Prison Break” already has proven itself a show willing to kill anyone at any time, and now the gang will make a break for it in what Fox is calling the “fall season finale” on Nov. 28. And here’s the scariest part - it’s rumored the show won’t return until May.

They’re baaaack. Ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands return throughout the month. Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) and Christopher (David Sutcliffe) both show up unexpectedly in Stars Hollow on WB’s “Gilmore Girls” (Tuesday and Nov. 22). Grace (Debra Messing) is stuck on a plane with ex-husband Leo (Harry Connick Jr.) on “Will & Grace” (Thursday). And Dr. Gallant (Sharif Atkins) visits Neela (Parminder Nagra) on “ER” (Nov. 17), while Sam’s husband (Dean Cain) causes trouble on “Las Vegas” (Nov. 28).

But it’s not all doom and demolition this month. Nadia (Mia Maestro) wakes up from her coma on “Alias” (Nov. 17). Boone (Ian Somerhalder) and Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) pop up on “Lost” (Wednesday). Fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” will be thrilled when Alyson Hannigan reprises her role of Trina Echolls on “Veronica Mars” (Nov. 30) and faces off against Charisma Carpenter’s Kendall Casablancas. John Stamos is a paramedic who hits on Neela on “ER” (beginning Nov. 17). Camryn Manheim is a matchmaker on “How I Met Your Mother” (Monday), and Rick Fox romances Holly Robinson Peete for three episodes of UPN’s “Love, Inc.”

In Hollywood, it always pays to have connections, and many stars invited their real-life pals to stop by their series. Michael Vartan, the dear and maybe-not-actually-departed Vaughn on “Alias,” stops by buddy Bradley Cooper’s “Kitchen Confidential” on Nov. 14. Elizabeth Berkley is infected with the alien virus on her friend Carla Gugino’s “Threshold” (Nov. 11). And we don’t understand it either, but Bruce Willis guest stars with Ashton Kutcher on “That ’70s Show” on Nov. 16. (Seriously, who can explain La-La Land?)

The entertainment industry never met an awards show it didn’t like. “American Music Awards” are on WCVB (NBC) on Nov. 22. “The 39th Annual Country Music Association Awards” air on WBZ (CBS) on Nov. 15. Apparently no one is concerned about a country/hip-hop crossover since the “VIBE Awards” air on WSBK (UPN) on the same night.

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNews/view.bg?articleid=110214&format=text

CPanther95

11-04-05, 01:01 PM

Reunion is one example. That is a slowly unfolding series that better not allow viewers to find another show to watch for a week or two - or they may find many who don't feel compelled to return.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Reunion was gonna be in trouble :rolleyes:

When is FOX gonna dump baseball (at least in primetime)?

fredfa

11-04-05, 01:07 PM

Changes in Cable TV Rules?
Exclusive franchises may face FCC scrutiny, new competitor

Bloomberg News Published in the Chicago TribuneNovember 4, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators took a step toward opening cable television markets to new competitors such as SBC Communications Inc. and other phone companies.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission Thursday voted unanimously to invite comment from telephone and cable companies, consumers and others on whether it should try to pry open the markets controlled by local governments.

Congress in 1992 encouraged localities to permit more competition, with little effect. Cable operators including Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Inc. have exclusive franchises in 97 percent of markets overseen by 30,000 city, town and county governments, the FCC said in February.

"We seek to ensure that local authorities are not thwarting competition by unreasonably refusing to award additional competitive franchises," said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican.

The FCC's so-called Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Thursday was the first step in a process that could lead to a new federal rule in a few years

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/chi-0511040229nov04,1,3878073.story?coll=chi-ent_tv-hed

dturturro

11-04-05, 02:21 PM

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Reunion was gonna be in trouble :rolleyes:

When is FOX gonna dump baseball (at least in primetime)?

Hmm... a show going head to head with the number 1 show on TV is ratings challenged? Who'd a thunk it?!

Maybe they'll show some guts and give it the post AI spot.

CPanther95

11-04-05, 02:25 PM

It did just fine before the baseball break.

fredfa

11-04-05, 03:40 PM

Yes, but you have to remember it was up against repeats for the most part. The other networks didn't start their new programming until late September.

The baseball playoffs give Fox a great chance to introduce young males to their shows, and with a somewhat more male-oriented lineup than other networks, if Fox can put together some watchable shows, it should help.

fredfa

11-04-05, 03:47 PM

The “West Wing”: Vote Vinick? Or Santos?

By Scott D. Pierce Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News

The West Wing has always sort of been wish-fulfillment politics — America and its leaders as the best and the brightest.

And Sunday's "live" debate (8 PM ET/PT, NBC) between candidates Sen. Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) promises to be no exception.

"The show, as a whole, has always tried to say, "What do we wish our politics was?' " executive producer John Wells said during a conference call with TV critics, along with Alda and Smits. "And so the whole idea was to try to do a debate in which there's actually a debate. We will try and set up a world in which the candidates can have a real exchange, in the hopes that maybe a few people watch it and say, 'Gee, I wonder why we don't get that in our real presidential campaigns?' "

"What John really wants to do is try to give the audience what a real debate should be," Smits said.

In last week's episode, Vinick and Smits agreed to that genuine debate — just the two of them taking questions and exchanging ideas. The episode will actually air live twice — once for the Eastern and Central time zones and once for the Pacific. (Here in Mountain Time, we'll get a one-hour delay on the first of those.)

Other shows have done live episodes whose format didn't make much sense — why do a live episode of "ER" or "Will & Grace"? But, as Smits said, "It just seemed like such a natural fit to do this live."

"It may not be that there's as much an artistic advantage as there is a promotional advantage," Alda said. "I think for us — for Jimmy and I going head-to-head — there's something that can catch fire when two actors are connecting. And this, I hope, will give us a chance to connect so that that fire does happen. Then it won't just be fun for us, it'll be fun to watch."

Both greeted news of the live episode with excitement — although Alda perhaps with a bit more than Smits.

"I loved the idea," Alda said. "I started out as an improviser in the theater. . . . I always used to love it if I'd be out on stage in a Broadway play and somebody would forget to make an entrance and I'd have to make stuff up. I was always disappointed when they got back onstage."

"Of course, when you tell actors with theater backgrounds that we're doing a live show, it's, like, total elation. There's joy," Smits said. "The air started coming out of the bubble for me because of the improvisatory nature of what can happen."

The show will be, to some extent, improvised. "We'll definitely be rehearsing a script, but at the same time we're giving the actors substantial briefing materials so they can actually be familiar with the issues," Wells said.

"It sounds like you're saying it will be less scripted than an actual debate," Alda added.

Which is "the whole reason we decided we wanted to do this," Wells said. "I think even to call our current presidential debates 'debates' is stretching the term. They are so pre-negotiated. . . . It's an entertainment show, so I don't want to start to sound too pretentious about it, but it's a very conscious effort on our part to appeal to what should be the better nature of our political lives."

Which is something both Alda and Smits sound passionate about.

"I hope we arrive at something that's not a version of business as usual, in terms of debates, but something more stimulating," Alda said. "Something that says — 'It would be fun if a debate could be like this, where there's a real exchange of ideas.' "

"Hopefully, with this, maybe we'll give a little lesson or two to the way the next one should be — the next real one," Smits said.

"Yeah," Alda interjected. "With real actors."

http://www.desnews.com/dn/print/1,1442,635158412,00.html

tall1

11-04-05, 03:51 PM

As far as Stacked goes, I'm not sure what the reaction to the show is in these parts, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by it. It's pretty funny. fredfa.I am looking forward to Stacked because it IS funny. It seems it is very popular to fire salvos at this show, like the critic did above. If you haven't seen the guy who plays Pam Anderson's ex-boyfriend Eddie Banks you are missing out on enjoying one of the funniest characters on TV. It was a really bad idea naming the show Stacked and stigmatizing it out of the chute. I had to beg my wife to watch it because she thought it was exploitive (which it is) but dang funny. She loves it. I can't believe my wife looks as foward to watching a Pam Anderson show as much as me (for different reasons of course).

fredfa

11-04-05, 03:55 PM

The “West Wing”: “Before the show, we’ll throw up!”
By Adam Buckman The New York Post

Forrest Sawyer has done plenty of live TV before, but nothing quite like this.

"We'll be rehearsing right up until Sunday. And before the show, we'll gather together and throw up!" Sawyer said yesterday on the phone from California, admitting to being nervous about playing the role of moderator in this Sunday's prime-time face-off between presidential candidates Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits) on "The West Wing" on NBC.

The scripted debate, written by executive producer Lawrence O'Donnell, will be performed twice - once for the East Coast at 8 p.m. and again three hours later for the West. It will contain only two commercial breaks for American Express, the show's sole sponsor.

"[The producers] really mean for it to be the kind of debate that I think we all wish we could get, which is one that is not focus-grouped to death," said Sawyer, who has worked in the news divisions of CBS, ABC and NBC. "[The candidates] are actually talking to people about the things that they believe about the issues that matter."

In the interest of secrecy, Sawyer would reveal just one of the issues to be debated by the two candidates.

"They get into energy a lot, which is a big deal," Sawyer disclosed.

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/pfriendly_new.php

CPanther95

11-04-05, 03:57 PM

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:04 PM

8 TV shows to watch to fill out your weekend

Sid Smith and Maureen Ryan Chicago Tribune November 4, 2005

"Law & Order: Criminal Intent," 7 PM ET/PT Sunday, NBC: It's great to see Chris Noth back on TV, and back in the fold of "Law & Order"; after all, he and the old-school "Law & Order" crew helped spawn the TV-procedural crime wave we're still experiencing. This season, Noth is alternating with Vincent D'Onofrio as "Criminal Intent's" lead each week; on Sunday, Noth's and D'Onofrio's characters, detectives Mike Logan and Robert Goren, pair up for an engrossing two-hour outing, in which an Iowa teen on a school field trip to New York City goes missing. When a prominent judge's son is implicated in not just her disappearance but other crimes as well, the pressure on the detectives gets really intense. Colm Meaney does a terrific turn as the arrogant judge, and the case allows the "Law & Order" franchise to take a look at why and how missing white women seem to end up getting more attention from the media than missing women of other ethnicities. "Do not confuse my desperation with gratitude," the mother of a missing African-American girl fumes at a cable news personality (obviously modeled on CNN's Nancy Grace) who's finally decided to cover the case of the non-white girl -- once her death is linked to that of the white teen from Iowa.

Not only is the story meaty and provocative, it's a pleasure to see the easy chemistry of Noth and Annabella Sciorra, who plays Logan's partner, Detective Carolyn Barek. Noth's world-weary visage and Sciorra's urban edge give their pairing the upper hand in the "Criminal Intent" realm, though, truth be told, D'Onofrio's odd timing and hulking presence have their appeal, once you get used to them. "I'm an acquired taste," Goren admits to his partner (Kathryn Erbe). But it's one that goes down well in this company.

"Family Guy," 9 PM ET/PT Sunday, Fox: Gird yourself for "Family Guy's" most rebellious outing yet. Sick of the FCC interfering with his favorite TV shows, Peter Griffin starts his own television network, PTV, which does everything it can to flout government censors, who eventually show up at the Griffin home to restore order. Expect lots of envelope-pushing jokes about flatulence, the government, body parts, Osama Bin Laden and sex, and, not surprisingly, there's a musical number savaging "the fellows at the freakin' FCC."

"The West Wing," 8 PM ET/PT Sunday, NBC: Following on the heels of similar experiments on "ER" and "Will & Grace," this episode features a live telecast of a scripted debate between Democrat Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). Both characters are running for president on the series this season. To bolster the verisimilitude, real-life MSNBC newsman Forrest Sawyer will moderate. High oratory is likely, but it remains to be seen if there will be any of those legendary debate gaffes, a la Al Gore's supercilious sighs.

"George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing," 10 PM ET/PT Saturday, HBO: The venerable comic and iconoclast returns for his 13th special, an HBO record. This 75-minute session is a live one from New York's Beacon Theater, touching on such Carlinesque topics as weird American phrases and the possibilities for a cable channel devoted to suicide.

"Category 7: The End of the World," Part 1, 9 PM ET/PT Sunday, CBS: Fans of this telefilm's predecessor, wherein Chicago was assaulted by hurricane force winds, will probably enjoy this upped ante of a sequel, though it once again mixes spectacular effects with childish human melodrama. Everybody, from FEMA head Gina Gershon (slightly miscast) to demagogic televangelists James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz, comes off as a caricature, and the disaster scenario suggests that, when the entire world is endangered, only a handful of fringe scientists are able to deal with the crisis. There's also something a bit tasteless about disaster fluff at a time of so many genuine weather tragedies. Still, for those who liked the original, this time the casualties include the Pyramids and the giant sculptural head of George Washington, which comes tumbling down from Mt. Rushmore. Randy Quaid, as a cowboy tornado chaser, is one of the few joys of this made-for-TV movie, which concludes a week later Nov. 13. Tom Skerritt, Shannen Doherty and Robert Wagner are also in the cast.

"The Crusades: Crescent & the Cross," Part 1, 9 PM ET/PT Sunday, The History Channel: A documentary on the series of wars that most of us have heard about but are vague on the details. This medieval clash between Christians and Muslims has contemporary echoes, of course, and this version, which concludes Monday, offers one of this cable channel's typically accessible, if sometimes rudimentary, narratives, replete with colorful, occasionally hokey dramatizations. Both viewpoints, Christian and Muslim, are represented in the quoted historical accounts (Archbishop William of Tyre and Arab chronicler Ibn Al-Athir, for instance) and in the interviews of modern scholars.

"South of Nowhere," 8:30 PM ET/PT Friday, The N: Stephen from "Laguna Beach" -- watch your back. There's a new dreamy hunk on TV, Aiden Dennison (Matthew Cohen), one of the high schoolers on The N's fine new dramatic series, which follows the fortunes of a family that moves from Ohio to Los Angeles. Dennison's the star player at the L.A. high school attended by the three Carlin siblings; 17-year-old Glen Carlin thinks he can outplay the star point guard, Dennison, and makes waves by trying to do so. Despite having a queen-bee, cheerleader girlfriend, Dennison soon has his eye on Spencer Carlin, who's confused but intrigued by her new surroundings and her dramatic new friend, rich girl Ashley. The lack of either cutesyness or condescension shown by this program is promising; the fact that it doesn't shy away from issues of religion, sexuality and race -- the third Carlin sibling is a studious, adopted 17-year-old African-American young man -- is also commendable. This is a teen show that bears watching -- and not just by teens.

"Wanted: Ted or Alive," 8 PM ET/PT Saturday, OLN: We knew it would come to this: Ted Nugent has a reality show. The Nuge, an avid hunter, outdoorsman and, intriguingly, environmental advocate, takes five city slickers into the Michigan woods to see if they can master various outdoor challenges and survive what the wild has to offer. Though the show is more or less a deep-woods variation on "Survivor" (with fewer contestants), its non-flashy, low-rent feel is actually kind of appealing, and it has some unexpected moments, including rocker Nugent rhapsodizing about the benefits of biodiversity and contestants wrestling with the idea of killing their own meals. This is most certainly not a show for vegetarians (or for kids -- the Nuge's language can be pretty salty).

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/chi-0511040006nov04,1,732338.story?coll=chi-ent_tv-hed

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:15 PM

THE 2005-2006 TV SEASON
More TV dramas revolve around married female characters

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor

This season, women rule TV dramas.

Following last year's success of "Desperate Housewives," that development should come as no surprise; TV executives always are eager to emulate recent success.

Although women have had prominent roles in TV since at least the 1960s, this year there is a tangible difference: married women in the driver's seat.

Mary Tyler Moore, a successful single, headlined a self-titled sitcom in the 1970s. Dana Scully, another successful single, was Fox Mulder's equal in every sense on "The X-Files," a 1990s drama.

But the new trend elevates wives and relegates husbands to playing second fiddle, particularly in prime-time dramas:

* On NBC's "Medium," Patricia Arquette plays the title role and gets the majority of screen time.

* The disparity is more pronounced on CBS' imitator, "Ghost Whisperer," where Jennifer Love Hewitt's psychic is front and center while her paramedic husband (David Conrad) appears less frequently to offer comfort and support.

* On CBS' "Close to Home," Indianapolis prosecutor Annabeth Chase (Jennifer Finnigan) is the focus, while her husband is seen only in rare scenes.

* On ABC's "Commander in Chief," where first gentleman Rod (Kyle Secor) wins more screen time than most of these other "plus one" guys, he still plays a clear second to his wife, President Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis).

The reasons for the shift are myriad: They're economic and demographic, they're out of narrative necessity, and they're a result of the maturing of a medium that mirrors changes in society.

Viewers have seen married women in leading roles in the past, especially on sitcoms ("Maude" in the 1970s), but there are fewer examples in prime-time dramas. It has happened from time to time (e.g. Mary Beth Lacey on "Cagney & Lacey" in the 1980s), but usually the female leads in TV dramas are single, as on "Ally McBeal," "Judging Amy" and "Gilmore Girls."

In her upcoming book "Redesigning Women: Television After the Network Era" (University of Illinois Press, April 2006), Amanda Lotz, a communication studies assistant professor at the University of Michigan, charts the rise of female-centered dramas from 1945 to the present in nine-year increments.

Seven series fitting that description were made between 1975 and 1984, and more than double that number from the mid-1980s to the mid-'90s.

The floodgates burst open from 1995 to 2004, when more than 35 female-centered dramas were produced. Even then, many of those series starred young single women ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Felicity," "Dark Angel" and more) and aired on smaller networks or niche cable outlets. In time, TV shows with female leads migrated to the larger networks, particularly after NBC's success with "Providence" in 1999.

"In the realm of television history, it is still pretty new," Lotz said. "We didn't really [regularly] have women as leads of successful dramas until the mid- to late '90s. ... The fact that they were single women is significant as part of the complicated history of feminism and how we understand it in popular culture.

"Wrongly, it was assumed that women had to be single to be progressive female characters. ... It took the success of a number of single female characters in these types of shows before taking the next step of female characters who are also in committed and equal relationships."

John Gray, executive producer of "Ghost Whisperer," acknowledged the roles of men and women in TV dramas are changing.

"We've reversed what we saw for so many years where women were just the grace notes," Gray said.

Garth Ancier, chairman of the WB, said television reflects American cultural shifts.

"You're in a workforce where almost half the workers are women," he said.

The WB's new drama "Related" focuses on four adult sisters; only one of them is married, and her husband is a supporting character. "The majority of women in this country are breadwinners for their families, so you're just reflecting society," Ancier said.

Just as society has evolved, so have television's depictions of it.

And so we get the supportive husband who understands his wife's busy work schedule ("Close to Home") or her supernatural abilities ("Medium," "Ghost Whisperer") as she balances family and career responsibilities.

Married women in leading roles also mirror the life changes for the targeted 18-to-49 female audience, said Sharon Ross, an assistant professor in the TV department at Columbia College in Chicago.

"What happens next for all the women who grew up with shows about single women? The logical trajectory is that those women get married and have kids, and you can't keep feeding them what you've been giving them," Ross said, pointing out that even at the end of its run, the women of "Sex and the City" (more of a drama than a comedy by its conclusion) had all paired off.

The role of women behind the scenes in Hollywood may also be a factor, acknowledged Laverne McKinnon, senior vice president of drama development at CBS.

"CBS is a great example of it with ['CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' executive producer] Carol Mendelsohn, ['CSI: Miami' executive producer] Ann Donahue and ['Cold Case' creator] Meredith Stiehm all being female show runners," McKinnon said. "It's reflective of people's experiences and speaks to us as studio and network executives, as more and more women have risen to positions of leadership in the entertainment industry and other industries."

Viewers should bear in mind that this women-in-the-spotlight, men-in-the-wings dynamic is happening on only a few programs. With all the different demographic niches targeted by assorted broadcast and cable networks, the trend will undoubtedly continue but is unlikely to overtake prime time.

"I don't think it's the end of feminism and the beginning of female domination, but it's sort of a natural diversification in these characters," Lotz said. "And I'd still point to the entire FX lineup and many other locations where we have male characters with equivalently dominant screen time."

http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNjcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cW VlRUV5eTY4MDY3NDYmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:18 PM

Does baseball attract young male viewers?

Nowhere near as many as the NFL or the NBA, of course, but far more than any other programming readily available. And it does get many people (particularly upscale viewers) who rarely or never would watch a Fox program, to tune in -- and presumably see the constant promos.
'
It also attracts older viewers. And with the demo 24-54 increasingly being used by Madison Avenue, that can help too.

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:29 PM

“Good Morning Amercia” anniversary review

In my mind, yesterday's GMA 30th anniversary may well have been a key moment for HD.
The explanation (almost gushing) about the wonders of HD -- "even to those of you who don't have it yet" -- were constant and right on target, especially for the vast majority of folks who really haven't been paying attention.

If you are interested in Phillip Swann’s thoughtful take on the “Good Morning America” transition to HD (and can stand his almost constant, banal (and obviously in my mind) offensive remarks about older TV personalities like David Hartman and Joan Lunden (though he does give Diane Sawyer a pass) -- it is here:

http://www.tvpredictions.com/gmahdtv110305.htm

I think some of his thoughts about the future of HD are right on and very forward-looking. I find his predictions generally are far more prescient than many (if not most) on these forums like to give him credit for.

His views about anyone old enough to have gray hair or a wrinkle are, by contrast, Neanderthal.

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:32 PM

Not as Much to “Like”

Fox has cut its order for its veteran comedy “What I Like About You” from 22 to 18 episodes. If you haven’t kept count, that means there will be 86 shows by season’s end. That is marginally enough for syndication.

(Like network TV ratings, syndication requirements seem to have decreased recently. Back in the day, 100 episodes was considered a bare minimum for syndication ruches.)

dturturro

11-04-05, 04:33 PM

Nowhere near as many as the NFL or the NBA, of course, but far more than any other programming readily available. And it does get many people (particularly upscale viewers) who rarely or never would watch a Fox program, to tune in -- and presumably see the constant promos.
'
It also attracts older viewers. And with the demo 24-54 increasingly being used by Madison Avenue, that can help too.

How about a real Thursday night 9PM showdown: AI vs. CSI?

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:36 PM

Fox has done some weird scheduling moves over the years, and some version of that is being considered (perhaps a results show or some other spinoff).

Personally I think it would be crazy, but I've been wrong almost as many times as Fox (or even NBC) programmers in the past.

fredfa

11-04-05, 04:55 PM

Fulfilling another reader request. Again I will post these ratings on an occasional basis:

The Top 25 Cable Networks
Total Day Ratings, Week Ending Oct. 30th

Rank Network Avg. Households (in thousands)
1 Nicklelodeon 1,583
2 Nick at Nite * 1,242
3 The Cartoon Network 941
4 TNT 926
5 Lifetime 925
6 USA 907
7 ADSM * 874
8 ESPN 816
9 Fox News Channel 804
10 WTBS 768
11 American Movie Classics 613
12 TV Land 537
13 Cable News Network 531
14 MTV 521
15 A & E 500
16 The Hallmark Channel 499
17 The History Channel 495
18 HGTV 489
19 ABC Family 485
20 Spike 483
21 Sci-Fi 471
22 FX 461
23The Food Channel 445
24 The Discovery Channel 419
25 Comedy Central 402

(* Network broadcasts less than 51% of minutes in a 24-hour day.)
Source: medialifemagazine.com/Turner Entertainment Research based on data from Nielsen Media Research.

fredfa

11-04-05, 05:08 PM

More Cable Numbers. This time, prime-time only.

The Top 25 Cable Networks
Prime Time Ratings, Week Ending Oct. 30th

Rank Network Avg. Households (in thousands)
1 ESPN 2,176
2 USA 2,050
3 Lifetime 1,886
4 TNT 1,475
5 Nick at Nite 1,421
6 WTBS 1,377
7 Fox News Channel 1,344
8 The Cartoon Network 1,318
9 American Movie Classics 1,012
10 Spike TV 933
11 MTV 900
12 Sci-Fi 848
13 A & E 836
14 The History Channel 829
15 HGTV 829
16 TV Land 787
17 ABC Family 785
18 FX 757
19 Cable News Network 739
20 Comedy Cenbtral729
21 The Hallmark Channel 708
22 The Discovery Channel 681
23 ESPN2 657
24 Court TV 655
25 The Food Channel 625

Source: medialifemagazine.com/Turner Entertainment Research based on data from Nielsen Media Research.

fredfa

11-04-05, 05:18 PM

“Geraldo” Strip Declines in First Week

By Christopher Lisotta TVWeek.com November 4, 2005

Twentieth Television's limited rollout of its debuting first-run syndicated news strip "Geraldo at Large" declined from its first day on the air to its fourth, but was even with the October average of Twentieth's canceled newsmagazine "A Current Affair."

"Geraldo" scored a 2.1 household rating and 4 share for its primary runs in 32 metered markets last Thursday, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was down 19 percent from last Monday's 2.6 rating and 5 share.

For last Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, "Geraldo" averaged a 2.3 rating and 5 share, which was down 30 percent from its average lead-in of 3.3/6, and down 8 percent from the November 2004 time period average of 2.5/5. Tuesday's metered market numbers were not available as of the end of last week due to a Nielsen technical glitch.

"Geraldo," which is airing mostly on Fox owned-and-operated stations in prime access, early fringe and late fringe time periods, was even with the October 2005 average of "Affair," which garnered a 2.3/5. Compared with "Affair's" debut week in March, however, "Geraldo" was down 30 percent (3.3/6 versus 2.3/5).

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=8862

fredfa

11-04-05, 05:27 PM

TNT's NBA Opener Up 12%

By John Consoli MediaWeek.com

TNT's opening night 2005-06 NBA season doubleheader on Nov. 1 averaged a 1.2 U.S. household rating (1.6 cable rating), up 12 percent over last season's opening night rating.

The opening game, Denver Nuggets vs. San Antonio Spurs, averaged 1.55 million households vs. 1.22 million for last season's opening game. The second game featured the Dallas Mavericks vs. the Phoenix Suns.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/cabletv/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001434025

keenan

11-04-05, 05:32 PM

Nowhere near as many as the NFL or the NBA, of course, but far more than any other programming readily available. And it does get many people (particularly upscale viewers) who rarely or never would watch a Fox program, to tune in -- and presumably see the constant promos.
'
It also attracts older viewers. And with the demo 24-54 increasingly being used by Madison Avenue, that can help too.
I'll bet the NBA attracts a fair amount of young females(teens to early 20's). I have 2 nieces(18-19) that watch all the time and although they are more interested in the players than the game itself, they are watching it.

keenan

11-04-05, 05:37 PM

The “West Wing”: “Before the show, we’ll throw up!”
By Adam Buckman The New York Post

The scripted debate, written by executive producer Lawrence O'Donnell, will be performed twice - once for the East Coast at 8 p.m. and again three hours later for the West. It will contain only two commercial breaks for American Express, the show's sole sponsor.

They're actually going to do 2 separate debates? Interesting, I would have thought they would just re-broadcast the east coast one later for the west coast. Is that a first for primetime TV? It would be interesting to see both of them.

fredfa

11-04-05, 05:41 PM

keenan

11-04-05, 05:47 PM

8 TV shows to watch to fill out your weekend

"Wanted: Ted or Alive," 8 PM ET/PT Saturday, OLN: We knew it would come to this: Ted Nugent has a reality show. The Nuge, an avid hunter, outdoorsman and, intriguingly, environmental advocate, takes five city slickers into the Michigan woods to see if they can master various outdoor challenges and survive what the wild has to offer. Though the show is more or less a deep-woods variation on "Survivor" (with fewer contestants), its non-flashy, low-rent feel is actually kind of appealing, and it has some unexpected moments, including rocker Nugent rhapsodizing about the benefits of biodiversity and contestants wrestling with the idea of killing their own meals. This is most certainly not a show for vegetarians (or for kids -- the Nuge's language can be pretty salty).

I saw this guy live at the Fillmore in SF a couple of months back(friend had free tix, personally, Nugent is not my cup of tea) and even at his age he is still as crazy as ever. And "salty" doesn't even begin to describe his language!! This might be worth a viewing, now all I need to do is find what channel OLN is on, never watched it before. :D

fredfa

11-04-05, 05:51 PM

ESPN2 HD College Football

Reportedly ESPN2 is still deciding whether to broadcast the North Carolina State at Boston College or Maryland at North Carolina next Saturday, Nov. 12th, at 7 PM ET. In either event, obviously, it will be an ACC matchup.

CPanther95

11-04-05, 06:13 PM

They're actually going to do 2 separate debates? Interesting, I would have thought they would just re-broadcast the east coast one later for the west coast. Is that a first for primetime TV? It would be interesting to see both of them.

I think the Live episode of ER was also filmed twice for the two coasts.

keenan

11-04-05, 06:24 PM

I think the Live episode of ER was also filmed twice for the two coasts.
That would seem to be even more difficult than 2 guys standing at podiums. Wild..

keenan

11-04-05, 06:28 PM

I agree. It will be fun to compare the two -- to see which "candidate" learns from his first-debate mistakes!

It is rare (I can't think of it being done since the dawn of the videotape era) and I don't know why they are doing it that way (aside from the press relations angle).

The Mountain and Pacific time zone account for just about 23% of the nation's TV homes.

So why bother?
Yes, it seems as if the Mountain and Pacific zones will get the better end of the deal. Although, the second one may be even more hard-scripted-like after the first acting as a rehearsal.

fredfa

11-04-05, 07:21 PM

I think the Live episode of ER was also filmed twice for the two coasts.

I keep promising myself that some day I will actually watch a complete episode of ER :)

Perhaps I'll just buy the complete XX-season DVD collection and sequester myself on a desert island for a month or so.

Or perhaps not!

Bogney Baux

11-04-05, 07:21 PM

Not as Much to “Like”

Fox has cut its order for its veteran comedy “What I Like About You” from 22 to 18 episodes. Isn't this show on the WB Network?

fredfa

11-04-05, 07:30 PM

“Lost” vs. “Criminal Minds”

Did ABC executives overestimate the strength of “Lost”?

We should know more next week., As for last night however, Variety’s Rick Kissell writes that

“CBS may have another hot crime drama on its hands in rookie "Criminal Minds," which surged to its best Wednesday numbers of the season opposite a repeat "Lost."

It's hard to get a real read on the show's performance Wednesday as it was the timeslot's only firstrun scripted program on the six broadcast nets, but "Criminal Minds" dominated the 9 o'clock hour with a 4.9 rating/12 share in adults 18-49 and 16.3 million viewers overall, according to preliminary nationals from Nielsen.

The 18-49 number marks a 36% gain over the show's previous Wednesday average, delivering the best regular-slot score in the hour for CBS since an episode of "60 Minutes II" in February 2003…”

As many network executives (and even more former execs) have learned, you never want to allow the competition to gain a ratings toehold for any reason.

It is a little reminiscent of when CBS slotted “Without A Trace” against the then invincible “ER”. It took time, and it took perseverance by CBS executives, but slowly “Trace” cut into “ER’s” lead. Now it regularly tramples the former (and long-time) time-slot king.

This “Lost”-“Criminal Minds” battle will be very interesting to watch in the coming weeks.

fredfa

11-04-05, 08:08 PM

Forecast calls for an apocalypse

By Mark McGuire Albany Times Union staff writer November 4, 2005

We're all going to die. Again.

It's a shame we always have to go down so cheesily.

The latest celluloid apocalypse is "Category 7: The End of the World" (9 PM ET/PT Sunday and Nov. 13, CBS). Picking up the day after last year's miniseries "Category 6: Day of Destruction," Version 7.0 is four hours of special effects, polemics on global warming (fast becoming a weather-disaster-movie staple), annoying personal side stories (we have to care about the characters, you know), and some of the most gawdawful dialogue you'll find anywhere (e.g. "Unless we find out what's causing it, the entire planet could be doomed sooner than we think").

But, hey, stuff and people get blown up -- and away. So it's all good.

No, really: This miniseries is beyond bad. Meaning it will probably be a sweeps-month hit.

Filming began in July, before Hurricane Katrina hit. In this alternate universe, the head of FEMA is no Mike Brown schlub. Not only is the director smart and competent, but hot -- Gina Gershon hot.

"In case you haven't noticed," she says to her son as part of an annoying side story, "the sky is falling."

In last season's ratings monster "Day of Destruction," Las Vegas, St. Louis and Chicago were wiped out. (CBS probably wishes it had started lower in order to stretch out the franchise, maybe with something like "Category 2: Loose Shingles.") Returning players include Randy Quaid, hamming it up as storm-chaser Tornado Tommy, and a sleepwalking Tom Skerritt as Col. Mike Davis.

Kenneth Welsh appears as an administration official playing politics by downplaying predictions of cataclysmic storms. In the 2004 disaster feature film "The Day After Tomorrow," Welsh -- a ringer for noted global-warming agnostic Dick Cheney -- played Vice President Becker, who played politics by trying to downplay predictions of cataclysmic storms.

Needless to say, Welsh's character gets Dorothy'ed by a tornado.

Films depicting urban chaos and mass destruction have long served as de facto political statements, from "Godzilla" (nuclear war) to "The Warriors" (societal breakdown). Environmental disaster stories are currently all the rage. Global warming is the most popular manifestation of evil in Hollywood today.

James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz play televangelists Donny and Penny Hall. Penny Hall hypes the End Times angle, while Donny is a true believer who doesn't harbor Apocalyptic visions.

Guess who gets zapped by a lightning bolt? Oh, like you didn't see that coming -- and you haven't even seen the film.

So it's goodbye to Paris, Egypt, Buffalo (not Buffalo!), Miami, Havana, New York City and Washington. The Eiffel Tower, the pyramids and the White House get whacked. Shannen Doherty, as Quaid's partner in storm-chasing, almost gets decapitated by the disembodied torch of the Statue of Liberty. The bad news: It misses.

We'll be here all week -- enjoy the veal, and tornadoes, hurricanes, and tsunamis!

Speaking of scary

"The Simpsons" begins its season with -- get this -- the 16th installment of "Treehouse of Horror," the series' annual belated Halloween special (8 PM ET/PT, Sunday, Fox).

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=416069

fredfa

11-04-05, 08:15 PM

For ‘West Wing’ fans, Santos is their man
Smits' Democratic ‘candidate’ favored over Alda's Vinick in Zogby poll
By Denise Hazlick MSNBC.com

Rep. Matthew Santos (D-Texas) should be the next President of the United States, according to the latest Zogby International poll.

Say what? Representative who?

If you are a regular watcher of NBC's “The West Wing,” you know that Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) is the Democratic candidate running against Republican Senator Arnold Vinick of California (Alan Alda) for the fictional presidency. The two “candidates” will engage in a live debate Sunday night at 8 PM ET/PY (NBC also will broadcast a live West Coast version of the debate).

(MSNBC is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC.)

In advance of Sunday's debate, Zogby International, the national polling company, conducted a pre-debate poll. The poll, which surveyed 4,492 viewers, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, asked questions ranging from specifics about the show and outgoing President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) to the respondents’ beliefs about liberal bias in the media and on TV.

“Presidential races, fact or fiction, captivate millions of Americans. This one, though fictional, is the story of two ideal-type candidates, representing two distinct world views and parties, and two compelling personas. I wouldn’t miss this one for the world,” said Zogby CEO and founder John Zogby.

According the poll, most “West Wing” watchers favor Rep. Santos' world view. If the “election” were held today, 59 percent of respondents said they would vote for the Democrat, and 72 percent believe Santos will win the election on the show. Thirty-two percent of viewers believe Santos' election will make for better ratings and 27 percent believe the political biases of the writers will affect the outcome.

In terms of overall impression, Alda's Vinick received a highly favorable rating from 18.9 percent of respondents and is viewed as somewhat favorable with 55.6 percent of fans. Meanwhile, 42 percent of fans rated Santos as highly favorable and almost 46 percent said he was somewhat favorable.

Slightly more than 66 percent of respondents believe Santos would be more likely to pull over and help them if they were stranded on the side of the road (only 10 percent though Vinick would) and 52 percent would like to have dinner with the Texas Democrat (35 percent would prefer the California Republican).

Santos and Vinick are campaigning to replace Bartlet, the two-term Democratic president played by Sheen. Though Bartlet has faced numerous troubles during his administration, he is well-liked by viewers, earning a stratospheric 75 percent job approval rating in the poll.

Zogby also asked respondents about politics in general, and specifically whether or not they believe the media and Hollywood has a liberal bias.

When asked if they thought the storylines on “The West Wing” were purely entertainment or relate to the political agenda of the producers, almost 58 percent thought the show's creators were trying to promote their own political beliefs, while 28 percent thought it was just entertainment. However, 57 percent don't believe the storylines on the show have influenced real politics in America. Forty-one percent say they prefer watching the real political process to the fictitious one on the show.

Close to 77 percent believe a liberal political bias is reflected on the show, and 51 percent think the national media leans toward the left in its coverage.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9912744/

fredfa

11-04-05, 08:19 PM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
‘West Wing’ hopes live debate will boost ratings
But is enticing gimmick too little, too late?

By Stuart Levine, a senior editor at Daily Variety in Los Angeles and an MSNBC contributor

(posted on msnbc.com)

These aren’t heady days for the president.

His administration is a mess with scandals aplenty. A major security leak has emerged from a high-ranking official at the White House, and with an upcoming election that could easily shift the political power structure in Washington, he’s doing his best to appease his own party while trying to stand firm on choices made from his gut, not based on popular opinion.

Oh, you’re talking about the Bushes? That’s old news. It’s President Bartlet whose legacy hangs in the balance.

And it’s not just how Bartlet will be remembered by fans of “The West Wing,” the whole series — in what might be its final season — is getting a thorough inspection.

With ratings sinking faster than W’s poll numbers, NBC’s “West Wing” will be pulling out the big guns Nov. 6 in nothing less than a fight for its own survival. The show is staging a political debate, broadcast live, between Democratic nominee Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Republican candidate Arnold Vinick. It’s an enticing gimmick but seemingly too little, too late.

Alda as Nixon, Smits as JFK?

In our televised age of style and not so much substance, this showdown has all the makings of another Nixon-Kennedy rout. For 18-34 demos with no sense of history, in 1960, the two candidates for the nation’s top job participated in the first presidential TV debate.

Those who heard the exchange on radio believed Nixon — who was vice-president and had far more political experience — was the clear winner. But while he might’ve had a grasp on foreign affairs, Nixon was clueless about the importance of image. Standing at the podium with a 5 o’clock shadow and sweating profusely, he went directly in the tank.

The reason this is relevant in Sunday’s tussle is that Smits is boyish, good-looking and a natural charmer. Alda is a bit haggard-looking, creasing around the face, and has all the sex appeal of Kansas Senator Sam Brownback.

It’s not the first live broadcast in recent times, and — with ratings in jeopardy — certainly won’t be the last. Actually, NBC did this just a few weeks ago in the season opener of “Will & Grace,” another series teetering on extinction.

And while more viewers will most likely tune in than on a typical Sunday night, it won’t be enough to derail the runaway ABC locomotive. “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” the 8 p.m. foe of "The West Wing," is too feel-good for regular “EM” watchers to miss. People, it seems, need a good cry before heading back to work Monday morning.

The only non-“Wing” watchers who might check out this episode are the same who watch NASCAR for the possibilities of a crash. Maybe someone will flub a line? Miss a cue? Fat chance. Smits and Alda are pros, too polished for a major miscue.

It’s actually quite sad that “Wing” has to succumb to this kind of cheap stunt. The show won the Emmy for best drama four times in a row. We’re not talking “Cop Rock” or “Manimal” here.

The first few years of “Wing” were brilliant — even on its off days, it was still head and shoulders better than most everything else. It was an HBO-type show not on HBO.

Aaron Sorkin wasn’t above a few soap opera storylines — Rob Lowe’s affair with a D.C. hooker in the first few episodes, Bartlet's daughter’s kidnapping — but the camaraderie between Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff and Brad Whitford was Sorkin at his best, writing that was Mamet-like; better suited for Broadway than TV.

Of course, producing that high level of quality takes time — too much time, it turned out — and, eventually, the wear and tear of personally scripting 22 episodes a year exhausted Sorkin, put him behind deadline and costing producer Warner Bros. a ton of money. Sorkin parted ways with the show and the next chapter of “Wing” was born.

Executive producer John Wells took the reins, and a few scenes after the transition must’ve made hardcore “Wing” fans cringe. The show, it seemed, was seemingly slipping away into mediocrity. If you look closely, during one particular moment when Josh is shoving his closed fist at the Capitol and exclaiming, “You want a piece of me?” you can actually see the shark jumping over the Rotunda.

But, to his credit, Wells bounced back last season. The focus was smartly placed on the political primaries and some of the magic of those early years returned.

Smits a favorite to win?

Which brings us back to the upcoming debate and who should be the next leader of the free world.

Logic says Smits will win, as he’s certainly the bigger star these days, and would certainly draw younger, and advertiser-friendly, demos.

That being said, Wells would be both courageous and smart to put Alda in the Oval, thereby giving the series a right-wing bent it's never had before.

One benefit would be taking all the leading characters out of their element and giving them a fresh spin — maybe positioning them in the private sector. C.J., who for so many years had to spin stories as press secretary, could return as a reporter on the White House beat. Josh runs for and wins a congressional seat, where the machinations of Capitol Hill would be new terrain for dissection and discussion. Charlie could clerk for a Supreme Court justice (though that seems like a fascinating thesis for an entirely different show).

NBC’s decision to move “West Wing” from Wednesday to Sunday has proved disastrous. If it stays in its current Sunday slot, it’s a goner. A move back to Wednesday is a distinct possibility, even though that may not make a difference either.

Whether "West Wing" says goodbye in May, or miraculously reappears in September is yet to be determined, but viewers of smart and sophisticated television will always have a place in their heart for the Bartlet administration. There’s no debating that.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9880091/

keenan

11-04-05, 08:20 PM

I keep promising myself that some day I will actually watch a complete episode of ER :)

Perhaps I'll just buy the complete XX-season DVD collection and sequester myself on a desert island for a month or so.

Or perhaps not!
It's personal choice of course, but I have watched ER since the beginning and will watch until the very end. The Ray Liotta ep last season rates as one of the best hrs of TV I've ever seen.

Besides, I've had a crush on Maura Tierney since the first time I've seen her. :D

fredfa

11-04-05, 08:34 PM

THE 2005-2006 TV SEASON
Ask Matt

(from the Ask (TV Critic) Matt (Roush) column at TVGuide.com

Question: Is this a joke? I just read in TVGuide.com's Entertainment News column that after its "fall finale," Prison Break will not be coming back until May! I seriously hope that Preston Beckman, the guy who said this, is fired because this is seriously one of the worst programming moves in a long time.

I thoroughly enjoy Prison Break every week right now, but honestly, I am going to be really into 24 and The Shield (I can't wait for it to come back!) and I probably won't care much for Prison Break by the time it returns. According to those guys at Fox, there will be nine episodes left, so that means it will run into July unless they do some two-hour episodes. And honestly, do you really think you're going to remember what happened in November by May? I know that I probably won't, since I will be all into 24 and The Shield. Prison Break will definitely be taking a backseat in May. What a bad idea! Also, what is this news about American Idol possibly going to Thursdays now? Don't we already have enough to watch on Thursdays? And when would they air the results show? Definitely not on a Friday, I hope! — Alex

Matt Roush: Take a breath, there's an upside to all of this — although it's a fact that nearly all of the mail I got on this topic (and there was plenty) was negative. First off, I'm told that it's not yet a done deal for Prison Break to be on break until May, at least not yet, though it is an option. And even if that does turn out to be the case, I like to look at this as yet another example of the networks borrowing from the cable playbook in how to schedule a series — in this scenario, with a split season. The Nov. 28 "fall finale" of Prison Break promises to be a doozy of a cliff-hanger, as the team finally begins the escape on Lincoln's execution day. I have a feeling that we'll all remember what's going on whenever the show returns, and we'll be happy to welcome it back at any time.

But after a month off for December, when the TV audience tends to drift away for year-end holiday distractions, Fox will roar back in January with a new season of 24, and when that finishes its run, Prison Break would presumably return to give us the back half of its first season. I'm betting that once 24 is over, appetites will be whetted for more slam-bang action, and they'll greet the return of Prison Break with ratings at least on par with what they are now. (It's unclear to me just when in May Prison Break would make its return under this plan, but it would certainly continue to run into the summer, when competition will be minimal.)

I happen to like the idea of a shared time period, and, selfishly, I'm at peace with the concept of letting Prison Break rest for a while. In the winter the idea of fitting yet one more can't-miss hour of serialized action into my schedule is beyond daunting. There is the issue of momentum, of course, and it is a calculated risk for the show to be off the air for nearly six months.

But I truly doubt this would harm it that much. (24 did just fine last season after sitting out half the year.) Skepticism, however, is rampant, like this fretful query from Aisha: "Fox will only get an angry audience tired of every attempt they have made in the past to cancel a show (without really canceling it, like Tru Calling). I am sorry, but this move tells me that Fox doesn't realize what a great show Prison Break is. Matt, what do you think — does this mean that we shouldn't get used to Prison Break after this season?"

Apples and oranges. Fox never truly believed in Tru Calling, and if Fox felt the same way about Prison Break, which it most certainly does not, the network would probably be planning to air new episodes on Thursday or Friday, or Wednesday opposite Lost. There really isn't a time period for the show that wouldn't endanger something else on the network or put Prison Break at a serious disadvantage. Letting the show bookend the season makes sense to me and would give me something to look forward to as the regular season winds down. I'm not sure where the show is headed in a second season, but I'm positive we'll get a chance to find out.

Finally, a clarification on the American Idol front. Nothing is set yet, but if the show does move to Thursday, it would most likely be the results show, not the competition night. All of these mid-season maneuvers are sketchy right now.

Question: I recently read in TVGuide.com's "Entertainment News" that NBC had trimmed its 13-episode order of The Book of Daniel to seven. I have been eagerly awaiting this new Susanna Thompson series and was not pleased to hear this latest development. Do you know if NBC plans to air this series at all? I thought once one of their new shows bit the dust this fall that BOD would take its place, since NBC had seemed to be so high on the show. What's your take on this? Do you think BOD will ever see the light of day, or will it be like Susanna's last venture (Still Life), which Fox filmed and never bothered to air? — Beverly

Matt Roush: To be honest, I think NBC is scared of this show. Not so much entertainment president Kevin Reilly, who came to NBC from FX, because The Book of Daniel is a show that reflects that sensibility: risk taking, exciting, controversial, original, extremely well acted and written. But his bosses, I'm sure, are worried about the show's commercial potential, in part because it isn't the latest version of Law & Order and instead is a show that's difficult to pigeonhole. (A funky family comedy-drama anchored by a likable but troubled minister, played by Aidan Quinn, who pops pain pills in between conversations with a laid-back Jesus. Not exactly 7th Heaven) I first worried when NBC didn't announce the show for its backup lineup during up-fronts last May. Not a great show of faith.

And yet I wasn't that worried when Daniel wasn't put into play after the quick demise of Inconceivable. The Friday time period would have been equally fatal to Daniel. I can almost believe the corporate logic that because of a glut of mid-season product, and because the show may not premiere until after the February Olympics (with all of the heavy promotion that entails), a full order of 13 episodes wasn't required. Again, not a great show of faith, and a creative setback for a show expecting to tell its story over a longer arc.

But I do think NBC will eventually air Daniel — it's a much more viable project than Still Life ever was — and I hope the network gives it a halfway decent time slot (hard to find on NBC) or at least the sort of advance buildup that will allow the media to debate and appreciate the show in the hopes that the public might get a chance to sample it.

Question: I haven't seen any questions to you about Rome, and I don't see much chatter about it on the TV Guide website. I know it's on opposite the mighty Desperate Housewives, but in my opinion, it is one of the best shows on TV these days. It is certainly better than the creatively uneven and highly overrated Housewives.

Although most people know the rough outline of Caesar, Brutus, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, it has been fascinating to see their lives play out with the rich production values of this series (except for the nonexistent combat scenes). I think Rome ably continues HBO's rich Sunday-night drama history, and I would rank it only slightly behind Deadwood and well ahead of the awful Carnivale and Six Feet Under. What do you think? — Sarah

Matt Roush: Thanks for asking. Week by week, Rome has become more gloriously addictive, as the historical intrigues and betrayals come into sharper focus along with the reversals of fortune involving the two fictional soldiers at the core of the story — how great is Ray Stevenson as Pullo!

I still think HBO shows like Rome would benefit by airing in more of a miniseries format; this show is at its best if you watch a handful of episodes in a row to savor the narrative sweep (minus, as Sarah noted, the battle scenes, which pretty much vanished after the opener). It will look brilliant on DVD.

I have seen the rest of the first season — the finale airs Nov. 20 — and you're in for a real treat. A gladiator encounter in the next-to-last episode made my jaw drop. Rome isn't perfect, but it's one of HBO's top-caliber shows, right up there with Deadwood, if a notch below The Sopranos and The Wire at their best.

Question: Loved, loved, loved the Oct. 30 episode of Grey's Anatomy, especially the elevator scene with Bailey and McDreamy. After watching, it made me think about one of the things ER, one of my old favorites, is doing wrong these days.

Both shows are focusing on their group of young doctors, but while I care about the doctors on Grey's Anatomy, I don't give a &#@% about the doctors on ER anymore. They haven't given us a chance to get to know the ER docs, even with all the screen time they get. We see the young docs on ER moan and groan about their work and each other, but nothing much else in the motivations and emotions department. Whereas on Grey's, they allow the characters to show some real emotions.

One of the ways ER could help viewers become more emotionally invested in the new characters is to show them making connections with some of the old favorites — oops, there aren't any old favorites at County General anymore, are there? — Suzanne

Matt Roush: Last week's episode of Grey's inspired me to file a dispatch laying out all the reasons I have come to love the show, especially this season. It lends itself to inevitable, and possibly even unfair, comparisons to ER, but every time I struggle to stay engaged in episodes of ER this season, I have to agree with Suzanne — it's all on the characters' shoulders.

The Grey's ensemble is fresh and fun to know and to care about. The ER gang pales by comparison, and for me, the last straw was when the incompetent and obnoxious Morris (Scott Grimes) was elevated to the regular cast and put in charge as chief resident or whatever. That's unforgivably unpleasant, reason enough not to return each week.

Question: I just heard that a new episode of Grey's Anatomy will be screened after the Super Bowl next year on ABC. You know, I've always wondered why the networks choose to place one of their most established hits in this coveted time slot, since it almost always only gives the show a minor bump that doesn't really sustain itself long enough to affect the season average by much.

I don't think Alias, The Simpsons and Survivor: All-Stars (past occupants of this slot) really saw such exposure translate into higher ratings. Plus the fact that Grey's Anatomy is really an established hit, given how it managed to grow its numbers from its Desperate Housewives rerun lead-in this week.

Earlier this season the series premiere of Criminal Minds successfully launched behind CSI, and look how it's doing now (admirably, against Lost). Since most established shows already have their own followings, why not save the post-Super Bowl slot to launch one of ABC's mid-season shows instead? I'm especially looking forward to J.J. Abrams' What About Brian? , but I fear it just wouldn't find a good place in this crowded schedule to build an audience.

I'm also looking forward to CBS' The Unit. Any chance CBS might preempt, say, Cold Case or Without a Trace during the rerun-heavy months of March and April in order to let this show find an audience behind a show with a good lead-in? — Ed

Matt Roush: The track record of launching new shows in the post-Super Bowl slot isn't so hot, so it makes perfect sense to me to use this platform to christen an emerging hit and reinforce Grey's Anatomy's status as the watercooler show of the moment. Better this than Desperate Housewives, for sure, given the football demos. (Although the Super Bowl is mass-market programming, to say the least.) By the end of the Super Bowl, the regular viewer has been tuned in for so long that the idea of launching a softer show like What About Brian? could do more harm than good. However, endless promotions for shows like Brian during the Super Bowl could possibly pay off.

Grey's ought to play just fine in what is more or less its regular time period (unless ABC lets the postgame show run long, as unforgivably happened the night Alias got the nod). As for The Unit: Haven't a clue what CBS will do with it. Haven't seen it, so don't know what it would be compatible with. But I'd be shocked if CBS rests an already potent hit like Trace or Cold Case to make room for it. (Of all the CBS procedurals that could be bumped, I'm thinking CSI: NY is the most likely, with Close to Home the other logical choice, except it would be pitting two Shawn Ryan shows against each other if Unit faced The Shield.)

Question: You're the man to ask: What do you think of Nightline going from a one-topic format to a three-topic format, and of the three new hosts — Martin Bashir, Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran — and their previous work? Personally, I'd keep the one-topic format and Moran as sole host, and just send McFadden and Bashir home. Your thoughts? — Mohammed

Matt Roush: Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind, but I can't afford to do that. There's no question Ted Koppel's departure leaves a gaping chasm in the landscape of TV news in general and Nightline in particular. The new version sounds a bit busy to me, but perhaps as it evolves, Terry Moran will become more of a central anchor figure.

Who can say?

I'm not averse to the three-topic format, depending on the news day. I'm betting when a story like Katrina or a Supreme Court appointment comes along, it'll stick to a single-topic focus. (That said, many's the night I would tune in to Nightline for the opening news report but bail before the newsmaker interview, not because I don't admire Koppel's skills as an interviewer but because I felt I'd seen enough without watching talking heads equivocate.)

Question: I'm surprised at the lack of critical acclaim for Over There. I think it's a raw, honest and brutal look at Iraq, with a surprisingly apolitical approach. It's well acted and directed, but you never hear anyone talk about it. Is the show done? — David

Matt Roush:Over There got plenty of critical support, including from this corner, and for the most part lived up to the praise throughout its run. The lack of watercooler or Internet buzz may have something to do with the fact that many people simply felt disinclined to watch a show that was this grim and uncomfortably topical.

Because the show took a more humanistic than political stand on the current war, those on the extremes of either side no doubt were unhappy with some aspects of it as well. Over There was a laudable and risky venture, and while it was confirmed earlier this week that it will not be renewed, FX deserves kudos for having made the effort.

Question: I'm so glad to hear that Stargate SG-1 has been renewed for its 10th season. Can you confirm the rumor that Claudia Black will be back as a regular or the rumor that Amanda Tapping will be splitting her time between Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis? — Elizabeth

Matt Roush: Sorry, can't confirm these rumors. Last I heard, negotiations for both Stargate series were still going on. Keep checking our "Entertainment News" column for updates. (I will speculate, though, that the odds are excellent you'll be seeing more of Claudia Black's Vala on Stargate.)

Question: In regard to Monday's question about killing off characters, I wanted to add my two cents. I think there was one instance when spoilers actually helped a show's suspense rather than hurt it, and it had nothing to do with the death itself.

Last season on Lost, the creators made no secret of the fact that somebody wasn't going to make it. And while Boone's death was shocking only because it wasn't really all that shocking, there was a moment many episodes before that tore me up. When Jack and Kate found Charlie hanged by Ethan, I couldn't breathe until he did. And I don't think that would have happened (to as great a degree, anyway) had I not been advised by the creators that a major character was going to die. Instead of thinking, "not Charlie," I would have been thinking, "they aren't really going to kill him." I really thought Charlie was dead, and I have the spoilers to thank. That being said, I'm less enthused about the upcoming death on Lost. Letting us know it's coming is one thing, but telling us exactly which episode... eh. They'll really have to pull a rabbit out of their hats to make that move pay off. — Phil R.

Matt Roush: I wish I were more in the dark as well. But that's the media culture we're living in (and, for some of us, operating in) these days. And I agree about the impact of Charlie's hanging. I truly feared they'd actually gone for it and taken away such an instantly beloved character that quickly. I was happy to have been wrong.

Question: Do the networks not understand that people can only watch one show (maybe two with TiVo) at a time? Why do they insist on filling up Thursday? We've already got Alias, The O.C. and Smallville at 8 pm/ET. And now they are thinking of moving My Name Is Earl and Scrubs there? Maybe this is why NBC is having problems getting viewers. — Dan

Matt Roush: As we've often explained, the reason everyone is piling on Thursdays is because of the high viewership levels and the premium ad dollars available that night. The move has been surprisingly successful for Smallville, but not so much for the others (especially Alias).

But if NBC moves Earl and Scrubs to Thursday, I'm betting at least one, if not (hopefully) both, will air in the 9 pm/ET hour, if NBC has the guts to relocate The Apprentice elsewhere and try to reestablish a full two-hour comedy lineup. It's going to be an uphill climb against the CBS juggernauts that night, given how far NBC has fallen, but I'm all for NBC going back to what once worked for them on this critical night. Comedy counterprogramming still seems the smartest way to go.

http://tvguide.com/tv/roush/askmatt/

fredfa

11-04-05, 11:40 PM

Refusing to Coast on 7 Infamous Words

By Jacques Steinberg The New York Times November 4, 2005

DAYTON, Ohio, Oct. 28 - Ruth Richardson and Reuben Briggs were seated near each other at a theater here, but other than a shared admiration for the evening's featured performer - George Carlin - they did not appear to have much else in common.

Mrs. Richardson is a retired nursery school teacher who, at 89, requires a cane with a four-pronged base. She has followed Mr. Carlin's career since "the very beginning," she said, staying up late to watch his clean-cut, stand-up appearances on the "Tonight" show in the 1960's and remaining loyal as he grew his hair and let loose with a bit he called "Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV."

"It doesn't offend me when I hear George do it," Mrs. Richardson said from her seat at the Schuster Performing Arts Center. "I don't use all these words myself. But I understand them."

Nearby, among pockets of young men with baseball caps turned backward, was Mr. Briggs, a graphic designer who, at 25, is young enough to be the grandson of Mr. Carlin, an improbable 68.

Mr. Briggs said that he had been turned on to Mr. Carlin only recently, by friends who had CD versions of some of the comedian's old albums, and that he had found himself nodding in agreement during Mr. Carlin's recent appearance on Bill Maher's talk show on HBO.

"He said he was upset with the way the government was running right now," Mr. Briggs said. "He's not like your grandpa-type at all. He can still relate."

Mr. Carlin had traveled to Dayton as a tuneup for an HBO special - his 13th - which will be broadcast live on Saturday from the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Titled "Life Is Worth Losing," it will be Mr. Carlin's first concert on the cable channel in nearly four years, and his first since he entered a rehabilitation center last December for a 30-day stay intended, he said, to address his addictions to Vicodin and red wine.

Mr. Carlin nearly sold out the 2,300-seat theater here, and it was hard to imagine another comedian who could draw an audience from so many generations or one who has been as successful for as long - at least without the benefit of a long-running prime-time television series or a movie career as a leading man.

A Grammy Award winner for iconic comedy albums like "FM & AM" and "Class Clown" (both 1972), he has, in recent years, become a best-selling author of books that expand on his comedy routines, including "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?," published by Hyperion last year.

Meanwhile, his "seven words" routine - which is more than three decades old and lives on in his DVD compilations - seems no less relevant now, as Howard Stern flees an aggressive Federal Communications Commission for satellite radio. In 1973, a New York radio station, WBAI, was threatened by the F.C.C. with the loss of its license for playing a 12-minute snippet of the profanity-laced bit, a case that was argued before the Supreme Court and cemented the decency standard that ultimately ensnared Mr. Stern.

"You can't really find somebody that has been so prolific, so 'on the scene,' so popular and cutting-edge as Carlin," said the comedian Richard Lewis, who has known Mr. Carlin since the early 1970's. "He is the Rolling Stones of stand-up."

"There are a lot of comics working 40 years who might have added 10 jokes to their act over that time," he said. "Carlin treats every HBO special like a gallery opening."

Mr. Carlin's new 75-minute HBO show is an extended meditation on the three aspects of life that have preoccupied him for nearly a half-century: the little experiences we all seem to share, the words we use and our penchant for doing one another (and the world around us) harm.

In that last regard, he is, on camera as well as off, the bystander who is usually rooting for the 10-car pileup, at least partly because it's good for business.

"This place is eating itself alive," he said in an interview a few days before the Dayton show. "I like applying the entropic principle from science to this country, this civilization. I think it is slowly disintegrating."

"For me, it isn't the fact of the disintegration so much as the act of it, watching it, seeing it," he added. "It is a freak show. And in this country you get a front-row seat. And some of us have notebooks."

However familiar the themes of his new show may be, the actual material is somehow fresh, as he tries to give people license to laugh about matters that few other performers would dare broach. These include the beheadings in Iraq, natural disasters (he does not mention Hurricane Katrina but doesn't have to), genocide, human sacrifice ("I miss that," he said from the stage), suicide, autoerotic asphyxiation and necrophilia.

"You know the best thing about necrophilia?" he said onstage here. "You don't have to bring flowers."

After a pause, he added: "Usually they're already there."

Mr. Carlin's close-cropped beard and hair (worn just long enough in the back to curl upward) may be white, but he still prowls the stage with the urgency of someone seeking his big break. His shoulders slightly hunched, he has a voice as smooth as a D.J.'s (he once worked at stations in Boston and Fort Worth) and a patter that is often as syncopated as a beat poet's.

The opening monologue in his current show is a three-minute tour de force titled "The Modern Man," adapted from his latest book, that melds his ear for idiom with his bewilderment at the pace of modern life. He laments:

I take a short position on the long bond.
My revenue stream has its own cash flow.
I read junk mail.
I eat junk food.
I buy junk bonds.
I watch trash sports.
I'm gender-specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant.
I like rough sex.
I like tough love.

After pausing to make a reference to an expletive he uses in e-mail messages, he concludes: "The software in my hard drive is hard-core, no soft porn."

[The show is rigorous. At a performance in Canton, Ohio, on Wednesday, Mr. Carlin left the stage halfway through and did not return, saying his voice felt weak. Speaking by phone on Thursday, he said he had no doubt he would be fine by Saturday.]

Offstage, the hazel-eyed Mr. Carlin, who says he is 5 foot 10 (he appears shorter) and weighs 150 pounds (probably right), has a gentle, subdued bearing.

He was raised in Morningside Heights by a single mother, and dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. He traces his struggles with alcohol to his teenage years and had a well-chronicled cocaine problem in his 30's.

Though he was able to taper his cocaine use on his own, he said, he continued to abuse alcohol - as much as a bottle of red wine in a day, as recently as last year - and also became addicted to Vicodin. That habit began, he said, when he sneaked some pills from a prescription given to his wife, Brenda, for fibromyalgia. After a 36-year marriage, she died of liver cancer in 1997.

Compared with other addicts, Mr. Carlin said, his Vicodin habit - four pills a day - was "almost embarrassing." Even his companion of recent years, Sally Wade, a writer, had little idea that he had a problem, he said.

"No legal troubles, no car wrecks," he said.

And yet in the summer of 2004, he concluded, "This is only going to get worse."

Mr. Carlin is well known among fellow comics for his adherence to precision and routine. In preparation for each of his HBO shows, which began in 1977, he gives about 150 performances over two years, all serving to help him refine the material for his televised appearance.

He approached his decision to go into drug treatment with similar rigor. Looking at his calendar for the second half of 2004, booked solid with concert dates, he said, he realized "Christmas and New Year's, the month beginning there, was the only open period I had." And so he waited.

Afterward, he took off the rest of January and February, and has been back on the road pretty much ever since.

"There is no urge, no feeling, no pull or anything," he said of his sobriety.

Though his current material seems current, Mr. Carlin notes that his stand-up has never had a ripped-from-the-front-pages quality, making him more like a columnist than a daily beat writer.

In his daily life, he said, he doesn't follow current events closely, though he is obviously well read and says that one of the cable news channels is often on in the background in his homes, one in Las Vegas and the other in Los Angeles.

Asked if he felt any kinship with Mr. Stern, who has a Carlinesque knack for exploring taboo subjects, Mr. Carlin said the only connection was that "we both wound up in trouble with the F.C.C."

"I like Howard," he said. "I like his mind. I like his spirit. I am not a big fan of the stuff he does. He knows that. I think he picks on underdogs."

Mr. Carlin said he was an admirer of Jon Stewart, another performer who casts a wry eye on American life and who interviewed him onstage for one of his HBO specials. But he said he deliberately did not watch "The Daily Show."

"I don't like watching people who are essentially doing the same thing I do," he said. "I don't like the possibility that I'm going to pick up an idea and forget that it's not mine."

Instead, to relax he will typically tune in to a prime-time crime show like "Law & Order" or "CSI" because "they are very precisely done," he said.

In Dayton, Mr. Carlin did a small bit that imagines the detectives on those shows speaking wildly vulgar dialogue.

The routine got a big laugh, one of many that night. But some of his observations were greeted with silence, and not everyone had a good time.

After the Dayton show, Mary Baker, who had accompanied her friend Mrs. Richardson and had never before seen Mr. Carlin, pronounced herself offended by much of his act, not least his coarse language.

"I don't get cable," Mrs. Baker, 84, said. "I won't see him. Lucky me!"

Asked if she was similarly put off, Mrs. Richardson, who is five years her friend's senior, said with a smile that she was not.

And yet, she conceded, "I couldn't hear it all that well."

"George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing" is on HBO tomorrow at 10 PM (live), ET and (tape-delayed) Pacific time; 9 PM Central time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/arts/television/04carl.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

11-04-05, 11:45 PM

CBS seeks higher profile in college sports
Just what we need: More Regional Sports Networks!
By Larry Stewart Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 4, 2005

CBS, which has the NCAA basketball tournament but falls far behind ABC and ESPN when it comes to college football, took a step Thursday toward having a more prominent role in college sports.

CBS announced that it had acquired CSTV for $325 million, which gives the network all kinds of sports properties.

But is any of it worth network coverage?

CSTV, which has 15 million subscribers, offers only minor sports from most college conferences. It does own the rights to all Conference USA sports, including football, and will own the rights to all Mountain West Conference sports beginning next fall. But that doesn't necessarily mean football games involving schools from those conferences will be appearing on CBS Sports.

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said, "Anything we do will have to make sense and have an appeal for a national audience."

CBS plans to use Mountain West and Conference USA sports to help launch regional college sports networks in those areas. The deal also includes more than 250 official college websites operated by CSTV.

"The programming possibilities on national cable, regional sports networks and the Internet are very exciting indeed," CBS Chairman Les Moonves said.

Brian Bedol, who founded CSTV in 2003, will continue to operate the network and report to Moonves.

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-spw-tvcol4nov04,0,3004289,print.story?coll=cl-tvent

Marcus Carr

11-05-05, 05:24 AM

Discoveries America Video Series Reaches Milestone
Posted on Wednesday, November 02 @ 11:25:00 CST by xtv

Bennett-Watt HD Productions' 4 year HD Television series project - 1000 field cassettes and growing. Production milestones illustrate how much goes into creating a major documentary video series.

Issaquah, WA, USA, November 2, 2005 (XTVWorld.Com) -- Producers Jim and Kelly Watt of Bennett-Watt HD Productions, Issaquah, WA are now in the third year of continuous on-location production for their ambitious High Definition (HD) documentary series “Discoveries…America”. The milestones, numbers, and organizational demands tell a story of dealing with the challenges of location video production.

“Discoveries…America” is a cultural and travel documentary series about people, history and regions unique to each state in the USA. The Watts are traveling throughout the backroads of the USA for four and one half years to film the entire series. This is the first complete state-by-state documentary series on America in over 25 years. These 60-minute programs are broadcast nationally in High Definition (HD) and are also available on DVD.

Episode number 37, filmed throughout Vermont, was recently completed. At this point in the series, the Watts have shot more than 530 hours of footage on 1,060 Fuji 30-minute HD cassettes. Subjects have ranged from hot air ballooning in New Mexico, crabbing in Maryland and barn painting in Ohio to historical sites in Virginia, old time mountain music in Tennessee, Longhorn cattle ranching in Texas and museum tours in Washington DC.

To reach the multitude of locations in each state, they have driven over 95,000 miles towing a 34-foot 5th wheel trailer with a ¾ ton crew cab Chevy diesel pickup. In fuel alone, they have consumed over 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel (approximately $23,000 worth).

Shooting “Discoveries…America” requires about 11 months on the road each year. The Watts usually spend 14-17 days filming each state. At the end of each production, they screen, log and write the show, then ship it back to their editor, Sterling Noren, to edit the on-line version. At the same time that the Watts are writing and organizing the state just finished, they’re setting up locations in the next state.

With new shows released each month for broadcast and DVD distribution, communications from producers in the field to office staff is vital. Filming in extreme geographic locations creates a constant set of obstacles for communications as well as equipment. These demands have required some creative solutions. The Watts have set up an arsenal of leading edge technology to keep the information flow open. A Datastorm satellite internet dish on their trailer is one link with the internet. Treo and pda cell phones on two different services, provides another vital communication link both for voice and internet. Even with this technology in hand, sometimes depending on location, none of the systems work. On those days, communications between the Watts and their office is basically out of reach.

The Watts have also added computers plus a full online HD edit system to their 5th wheel trailer for rough editing as well as handling a multitude of administrative tasks. They are able to write script, log scenes, rough edit each show, create graphics for print and website, pursue contacts for interviews and locations, order stock, arrange for equipment or vehicle repairs, and run their company - all on the go. These are activities that, less than ten years ago, would have been impossible for a producer to accomplish while on location.

As milestones and accomplishments keep adding up on “Discoveries…America”, the Watts continue to hone their skills in High Definition production and utilize technology to keep all aspects of this project going smoothly. These skills gained during the past 5 years of filming and producing High Definition television programs (with over 60 hrs of finished HD programming released to date) as well as from over 40 years producing, directing and shooting news and documentaries for all three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), as well as PBS, HDNET, ESPN and INHD.

Production of the “Discoveries…America” series continues through 2007 and will ultimately include fifty-one 60-minute shows. The programs are filmed in Widescreen Digital High Definition (HD) video and are broadcast nationally on Comcast Cable’s High Definition (HD) channel INHD2 (for broadcast dates and times go to www.INHD.com). Each program is also available on DVD.

http://press.xtvworld.com/article7438.html

fredfa

11-05-05, 10:55 AM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
'Category 7': Sadly, IQs were the first casualties
GRADE: D+

By David Kronke Los Angeles Daily News Saturday, November 5, 2005

In "Category 7: The End of the World," a minor character warns, "The entire planet could be doomed sooner than you think." It's that "sooner than you think" that catches one's attention, suggesting we're all sitting around marking days off our calendar until utter oblivion.

And, honestly, if the characterizations and plot mechanics of "Category 7" are the best network TV can do for a November-sweeps stunt, then maybe the end of the world isn't such a cause for alarm. This idiotic miniseries, debuting Sunday night at 9 PM ET/PT on CBS and concluding Nov. 13, boasts tons of special effects, which clearly were of more concern to the production's brain trust (using that term advisedly) than anything else surrounding the spectacle.

It picks up where the previous "Category 6: Day of Destruction" left off, with much of the West and Midwest in shambles and storms growing in intensity throughout the rest of the world. Paris is the next to fall -- we know it's Paris because mimes and the Eiffel Tower are involved. Mount Rushmore, Egyptian pyramids and the White House -- whose officials blithely dismiss widespread panic -- shouldn't make any long-term plans to host tourists, either.

"Category 7" manages to find someone even less qualified to run FEMA than Michael Brown: Former evil "Showgirls" star Gina Gershon. As the tempests mount, she goes the crony route and taps old pal Ross Duffy (Cameron Caddo) to investigate what's causing all the mayhem. Even with the sky literally falling, the media is more interested in whatever past romantic entanglements the two may have shared.

Randy Quaid reprises his role from "Category 6" as yahoo storm-chaser Tommy Tornado, who incautiously removes the halo from his fragile skull and spine to team up here with Faith Clavell (Shannen Doherty -- clearly, no expense was spared in assembling an all-star cast), a former researcher reduced to pouring shots in a "Coyote Ugly"-style bar.

Just in case global storming isn't enough to maintain an audience's interest, screenwriters Christian Ford and Roger Soffer for good measure throw in televangelists (James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz) eager to profit off a flock fretting the Apocalypse is imminent. Kurtz's character casually queries, "Did you hear about Egypt?" when the pyramids collapse. (Given the news media these days, there's every chance that might slip past us.)

And, in what may be social commentary on how tone-deaf Washington and Hollywood are, the film manages to place its main characters at a posh gala while destruction ravages the planet. Said party is besieged by a plague of poisonous frogs, so maybe that's OK.

All this cataclysm is attributed to global warming and a U.S. government keen on hushing up information on environmental hazards, a gambit that failed to make "The Day After Tomorrow" a whit more credible. What's next? Only one thing: "Category 10: Chimps Typing Screenplays."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=t&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/247168_category05q.html

fredfa

11-05-05, 03:50 PM

Friday’s network prime-time ratings are now at the top of RATINGS NEWS (the second post in this thread).

fredfa

11-05-05, 05:15 PM

Woodrow

11-05-05, 05:32 PM

It was nice to see accurate plasma info in there.

Thanks for the post, Fredfa.

fredfa

11-05-05, 06:01 PM

It was kind of refreshing, wasn't it, Woodrow? :)

(I am going to have to trade my DLPs in for plasmas [or LCD screens] sometime -- but I would love to get a look at SED first.)

fredfa

11-05-05, 06:11 PM

Wandering through cyberspace, I found a comprehensive, concise and easy to understand explanation of the Nielsen ratings system.
If you have been afraid to ask how the Nielsens work, (or considered it too complicated) there is a detailed explanation of Nielsen ratings here:

http://www.nowsell.com/marketing-guide/nielsen-ratings.html

For good or bad, the Nielsens basically determine what will see on TV, so it is a good thing to know how they work.

keenan

11-05-05, 07:19 PM

PC World has an interesting article on "10 HDTV Myths" in its December issue. It is geared to those about to make the plunge, but has some very good material.

If you are interested, I have posted it here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=599932
Not bad, there's a bit of mis-information in there but overall it's a good starting point for someone brand new to HDTV.

fredfa

11-05-05, 07:23 PM

I just found this TV critic, and have checked some of his back articles. I think you’ll enjoy his work. (This is from his blog.) I don't agree with him all the time, but think his take on the "new" TV Guide is right on target.

TV Guide Needs More Spoiler Alerts

By Kevin Thompson Palm Beach Post

I've been a TV Guide subscriber for, like, forever. I mean long before I started covering television for a living.

As all TV Guide readers know, the mag has recently undergone an extreme makeover. Bigger book! More juicy gossip! More stories! Better listings! So far, I hate it. Well, not all of it. I still enjoy "Cheers & Jeers." I like the expanded feature section and just love the recapping your favorite shows part. That really comes in handy when you miss an episode. What I don't like is how the editors at TV Guide appear hellbent on giving away every key plot twist or cast addition without alerting readers with a heads-up spoiler alert. That's just downright wrong and insensitive.

When I got my Nov. 7-13 issue in the mail, for instance, I immediately learned that creepy-looking George is gonna propose to Bree on Desperate Housewives. I wasn't even looking for that bit of info. The page one headline screamed all National Inquirer-like "George Proposes to Bree!" There was no way I could miss it. I also found out -- oh, please stop reading if you don't want to know what's going down on the Nov. 15 episode of Commander in Chief -- it'll be revealed that a male character is HIV positive on ABC's hit White House drama.

Look, I'm an old-school TV watcher. I don't like to know what's gonna happen on a show three weeks before I watch it. I'm almost afraid to pick up my TV Guide now. I might read that 24's Jack Bauer is gonna die in a hail of bullets in episode 22. You know the new and so-called improved TV Guide would be more than happy to spill the beans.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/tv/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/thompson/

keenan

11-05-05, 07:23 PM

Wandering through cyberspace, I found a comprehensive, concise and easy to understand explanation of the Nielsen ratings system.

In our local Yahoo HDTV forum a member posted that Nielsen had actually started to track DTV viewing although the numbers were rolled into the overall rating for a particular show, they were not broken out in the results. In fact I think he said it was started this Nov. I hadn't heard anything about that so I was wondering.

keenan

11-05-05, 07:29 PM

I just found this TV critic, and have checked some of his back articles. I think you’ll enjoy his work. (This is from his blog.) I don't agree with him all the time, but think his take on the "new" TV Guide is right on target.

TV Guide Needs More Spoiler Alerts

This new TV Guide is garbage IMO, it's no different than all the other celebrity rags out there now. I agree with his remarks about the spoiler thing, I picked up a copy the other day as Grey's Anatomy was the cover story and ended up reading things I really didn't want to know.

With today's electronic PGs there really is little use for this periodical anymore so I imagine that's why they went with full size and celebrity content style to compete in that market.

fredfa

11-05-05, 07:34 PM

In our local Yahoo HDTV forum a member posted that Nielsen had actually started to track DTV viewing although the numbers were rolled into the overall rating for a particular show, they were not broken out in the results. In fact I think he said it was started this Nov. I hadn't heard anything about that so I was wondering.

I have heard the same thing, Jim, although I can't remember the source.

And for a while now, (over a year, I believe) Nielsen has been getting complete abd i instantaneous -- including HD -- results from more than 20,000 TiVo boxes. I don't know the percentage of them that are HD TiVos, but I believe the total numbers iwell into the thousands.

So while folks continue to say there are no HD ratings, the networks and advertisers actually have some very good guidelines about what HD content moves the ratings needle.

keenan

11-05-05, 07:41 PM

It's definitely a step in the right direction. I mean, heck, it's almost 2006.

fredfa

11-05-05, 07:41 PM

No, Dear

CBS has reportedly not picked up the final nine episodes of the veteran comedy series “Yes, Dear” for this season.

Brain Ford Sullivan at futoncritic.com reports that sources close to the show told him of the development. Most had thought “Yes, Dear” had gotten a full 22-episode order this season, but apparently not. The network does have two episodes left from this year, so it will have 15 altogether for this season, the program’s sixth.

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/newswire.cgi?id=7027

keenan

11-05-05, 07:52 PM

A reminder to those who have HDNet Movies, Bullitt in HD premiers at 5PM Pacific.

fredfa

11-05-05, 08:40 PM

WORKING IN TELEVISION
Story editor and medical consultant on Fox's medical series "House."

Script doctor takes up residence
By Susan King Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 6, 2005

David Foster:

Consultants on call: "There are three of us. I work with the writers and help them formulate the medical stories. The writers … work very hard, and they do a lot of great research, but a lot of times — because the medical thinking is sort of a world unto itself — they come and say, 'If someone came in with these symptoms, what might you as a doctor be thinking of?' Or the reverse of that, 'Let's say I would like Cameron [Jennifer Morrison] and Foreman [Omar Epps] to disagree over the treatment of a patient. What types of things might set sort of a rubric?'

"I do go on set, but there is an on-set [doctor] who does the on-set technical advising; I help the cast and the crew understand the medical story and more importantly how the medical story brings the characters into conflict with each other.

"All of our actors are very concerned that they look and sound like medical professionals, and I help them get that look and feel right and help them understand sort of what is behind what they are saying — and help them with the pronunciation of the technical words."

Ripped from the journals: "I am on the writing staff, so I write scripts during the year myself, and also I bring things in to the writers — new technologies, interesting new procedures, diseases that are popping up. There are all sorts of things post-Katrina, so these are the kinds of things that I might bring to the writers' attention to see if it fits in with something they are thinking of.

"I wrote 1 1/2 scripts last year and have written one this year and am starting on my second. What I bring to the staff that is unique is my medical background."

The feedback loop: "I hear from doctors with a range of opinions. I hear from some that 'I work with this disease, and I think it would be a great show for "House" to do.' I hear from some, in fact some of my very good friends, that say actually 'House' is rejuvenating for them because many people got into medicine because they wanted to really get in and solve people's problems. And what 'House' does is that he really gets in and focuses on one case, really gets involved in that case. A lot of doctors feel themselves pulled a hundred different ways by administrative problems. They don't feel like they can get involved with one patient like Dr. House does, so it helps them rekindle why they went into medicine to begin with."

Physician as storyteller: "I got into medicine because I liked telling stories. And I like listening to patients telling their stories. One of the great benefits of being a physician is to sit and listen to people talk about their lives and interact with them over very meaningful substance. I was an internist, and I practiced in Boston for six years doing inner-city medicine working with HIV, hepatitis C and particularly addictions."

Going Hollywood: "For the past seven or eight years, I have been going back and forth from Los Angeles and Boston doing some work with television. Television found me because of my best friend from medical school, Neal Baer, who is the executive producer for 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' now.

"He started working on 'ER' while we were medical students. He was a writer in L.A. before medical school and left that to become a doctor.

"The first show I had a consulting credit on was a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie called 'Only Love,' and I've done a number of things since then, including 'Gideon's Crossing.'

"I did quite a bit of work on 'Law & Order: SVU' with Neal, and then, thankfully, [executive producers] David Shore and Katie Jacobs and Paul Attanasio gave me the opportunity to be a writer full time on "House." I was hired as a consultant with a guarantee of a freelance script. I took the leap of faith that it would work out and moved from Boston to L.A. So far so good, although one never knows."

Hanging up the stethoscope: "I miss my patients, and I do miss practicing medicine.

"I love writing and being on the show, but that's not to say that practicing medicine didn't have its joys. The fortunate thing about writing on this show is that we have the opportunity to comment on and influence the public opinion about health issues through the story lines that we tell on the show. So I am still involved in the medical world."

Age: 40 Resides: Manhattan Beach

Union or guild: Writers Guild of America

Salary: "I am doing better now [than when I was a doctor]. I don't have extravagant needs. I chose to work with poor people in my medical world — I didn't choose a high-money field."

Yes, there's a doctor in the house: "We had a piece of equipment tipped over on one of the extras and fortunately it wasn't serious, but it was one of those things where I come running to offer what help I can. I don't have a medical bag, but the beauty of shooting on a medical set is that everything is right there."

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-ca-working6nov06,0,810587,print.story?coll=cl-tvent

fredfa

11-05-05, 10:17 PM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
'Category 7': The Film Before the Storm
Sunday at 9 PM ET/PT on CBS

By Neil Genzlinger The New York Times November 6, 2005

The Eiffel Tower and Mount Rushmore are both obliterated before the first commercial break of "Category 7: The End of the World," a two-part killer-storm drama that begins tonight on CBS, but they are not so much victims of the weather as they are victims of the ladies of Wisteria Lane.

"We do start off with a bang," admitted Robert M. Sertner, one of the film's executive producers. "You know what I blame that on? 'Desperate Housewives.'"

The mini-series, showing in two-hour blocks tonight and next Sunday, goes head to head with ABC's popular nighttime soap opera. Mr. Sertner said he purposely defied disaster-film conventions by having major destruction (and major special effects) right off the bat because he wanted to catch those viewers who sit with the remote control in hand, ready to switch channels at the first hint of boredom.

"You just can't stop, or you lose them," Mr. Sertner said.

In fact, the calamity doesn't stop - the series certainly lives up to its subtitle, as city after city is destroyed by ultrapowerful storms (a consequence, it turns out, of global warming). And if the special effects don't keep viewers tuned in, perhaps the eerie echoes of real life will. The series begins with Gina Gershon abruptly taking over the ineffective Federal Emergency Management Agency, though it was written long before the New Orleans debacle that cost Michael Brown his real FEMA job. And the story is bound to remind viewers of the pileup of natural disasters that has dominated the headlines recently. "It's as if we all had crystal balls on our desks," Mr. Sertner said.

The series was being filmed in Winnipeg even while Hurricane Katrina was developing. At one point it depicts a hurricane hitting Florida, and Ms. Gershon particularly remembers a fortuitous last-minute change in her dialogue for the scene. "There was a line that was cut out - I said, 'Can you imagine what this would do to New Orleans?'" she recalled. "The next day, New Orleans happened."

Ms. Gershon said she was a bit worried that the film was accidentally so topical that it would seem as if it were exploiting the real-life suffering. Mr. Sertner, though, said he thought any such complaint would be headed off by the sheer outlandishness of the tale. The storms are deliberately over the top and so are some of the characters, like Tornado Tommy, a wild-eyed storm-chaser played by Randy Quaid.

"It's not 'Katrina: The Movie,'" Mr. Sertner said. "It's a roller coaster ride that's intended as entertainment." The audience, he said, is smart enough to know the difference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/arts/television/tv-storm.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

11-05-05, 11:37 PM

It is a shame Broadcasting & Cable uses "Yes, Dear" to make some of its points -- since the show reportedly has been shut down by CBS.
Nonetheless, the story is very instructive about those shows we rarely pay any attention to -- but people just keep watching, year after year after year.

The Quiet Network Ratings Warriors
What makes a Stealth Show?
Flying under the pop-culture radar, these programs help keep their networks aloft

By Jim Benson and Ben Grossman -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/7/2005

During the TV advertising upfronts last spring, CBS held a press briefing early one morning at its Black Rock headquarters in New York. During Leslie Moonves’ remarks, an apparently caffeine-deprived TV critic heard the network chief mention the comedy Yes, Dear. Suddenly roused, the critic piped up: Why had it taken so long for CBS to cancel the show?

Awkward silence. Moonves had just announced that the 20th Century Fox Television show was being renewed for 22 episodes beginning this fall. (Note: That order has apparently now been cut back to just 13 episodes.)

Fast-forward to the Nov. 7 issue of The New Yorker. Nancy Franklin, reviewing My Name Is Earl and Everybody Hates Chris, takes a passing swipe at Yes, Dear, calling it “an unpleasant traditional sitcom that has somehow chugged along for five years.”

Not to worry. Just a couple of typical days at the coal mine for Yes, Dear, a member of the club that no one wants to join but that networks would fight to the death to defend. They are the stealth shows of TV: the sitcoms, dramas, clip shows and unscripted fare that might raise nary a blip on the media’s pop-culture-cool-detecting radar but would cause heart attacks in network accounting departments if they met the fate that many critics wish on some of them.

Delivering A Consistent Audience

Stealth shows are shunned by Emmy voters, dismissed by critics (though some shows, especially dramas, are much better received than others) and ignored by assignment editors. But they deliver a consistent audience, longevity and the promise of a lucrative backend—which can do wonders to help cushion the embarrassment they might cause a network promoting itself as the home of quality programming.

In other words, stealth shows like Yes, Dear—and ABC’s America’s Funniest Home Videos, NBC’s Crossing Jordan and a host of others—somehow chug along for years because networks dearly need them.

Not that the network executives show them much love. With promotional budgets especially tight these days and increasingly devoted to a handful of new shows that networks consider their best bets to succeed, the producers of stealth shows are feeling more neglected than ever. Some of the frustrated producers, weary of hoping for promotion that never comes, are devising ways to court viewers on their own. Network executives plead their case by saying that, unlike established series with a solid following, new and second-season shows require the lion’s share of promotion in order to generate the sort of buzz and viewership that ensures their survival.

“They Should Pull Their Head Out And Look Around”

Networks “are wrong-headed in the theory that you only promote the new stuff,” says Lance Heflin, executive producer of Fox’s America’s Most Wanted. “You see Prison Break or House 20 times in a baseball game. You see them to such an extent that, by the time the game is over, I feel like I already watched an entire episode of House. The show is great, but c’mon. I don’t know who the genius is that figured that out, but they should pull their head out and look around. There is room for a lot more promotion of other shows.”

A Fox spokesperson, in response, calls AMW a valuable asset that “has an incredibly loyal audience that has followed it for 19 seasons and knows exactly where and when to find it on the Fox schedule.” Presumably, they also know where to find Cops, also on Fox Saturday night and another stealthy success.

Of course, neither tireless network promotion nor adoring media coverage necessarily translates into success. Fox has plunged lots of capital into Arrested Development over the past two years, and the show luxuriates in rave reviews and admiring media coverage—a recent Lexis-Nexis search for the past 60 days indicates that articles mentioning Arrested Development occurred eight times more often than those referring to Yes, Dear. Yet Arrested Development, on Monday nights, is on Nielsen life-support, while Yes, Dear is pleasing CBS on Wednesdays, building on its Still Standing lead-in by 13% in adults 18-49 and posting a 24% bump up in ratings over the show it replaced, the now-cancelled midweek edition of 60 Minutes.

Despite those healthy signs, Yes, Dear is not a ratings blockbuster and, consequently, did not excite buyers when it went into the syndication market last year. 20th Century had to settle for an all-barter deal in broadcast syndication and getting $75,000 per episode from the TBS cable channel (which famously paid $1 million per episode of Seinfeld). Still, Yes, Dear is in syndication, and it makes a profit. A pleasant development for an “unpleasant” comedy.

“In television, almost all the media and audience attention goes to the top 10 shows or to the programs that get great reviews from critics,” says Mitch Metcalf, executive VP, program planning and scheduling, NBC Entertainment. “Lost in the shuffle are the yeoman-like performers that form the backbone of any network schedule.”

Craig Erwich, executive VP of programming for Fox, says his workhorse shows succeed because “they challenge themselves to improve every year and are constantly striving for innovation.”

Programming executives B&C spoke with offer varying definitions of these backbone programs, but they cite many of the same shows in that category:

• Fox’s Saturday-night cash cows and reality pioneers America’s Most Wanted (premiered in 1988) and Cops (1989), which have remained relatively stable in adults 18-49 over the past five years, despite facing their usual early-season declines against sports on other networks. In a similar vein: ABC’s versatile clip show America’s Funniest Home Videos (1990).

• The more recent reality show Fear Factor (2001); NBC’s gross-out hour is returning at 8 p.m. ET Tuesdays next month with a revamped format after ratings erosion last season in its once-powerful 8 p.m. Monday slot.

• UPN’s Friday Night Smackdown (1999), which has drastically improved the night for UPN this season with young wrestling fans after performing relatively steadily for years on competitive Thursday nights

• Comedies such as Fox’s animated King of the Hill (1996) on Sunday nights and UPN’s 9 p.m. ET Monday entry Girlfriends (2000)

• Crime dramas: CBS’ procedural Cold Case (2003) and NBC’s forensic investigative series Crossing Jordan (2001), both facing the thankless task of airing during ABC’s Sunday-night juggernaut (as does The WB’s bewitching Charmed, which has been on the air since 1998). Another stealthily successful crime drama: NBC’s Las Vegas (2003), posting solid numbers (averaging a 4.6 rating/11 share in adults 18-49 this season, an uptick from last year) on Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET.

Kelly Kahl, CBS/UPN executive VP, scheduling and program planning, says that Cold Case “never has a bad week,” pointing to its 3.7 average this season in adults 18-49—a three-year high for the show, despite consistent delays from football doubleheaders. And yet the show has not engendered much media interest, Kahl says, probably because the bounty of procedural dramas on CBS means that the shows “tend to get lumped together by the press.”

Even without the buzz, Madison Avenue has warmed to Cold Case. According to industry estimates, a 30-second spot on Cold Case costs north of $130,000, which is about 10% higher than a spot on the competing, higher-profile West Wing on NBC. A sure sign of Cold Case’s strength, despite the buzz deficit: TNT paid $1.4 million per episode to start syndicating it this season (not long ago, A&E paid a little over $1 million per episode for CSI: Miami).

Kahl calls UPN’s Girlfriends “year-in, year-out, the Rodney Dangerfield” of sitcoms. Respectable female demos at 9 on tough Monday nights and an 18% year-to-year climb from 1.7 to 2.0 in adults 18-34 during the first five weeks of this season help make Girlfriends, according to Kahl, “one of the few UPN success stories”—but not a story you’re necessarily likely to encounter in the press.

The WB Entertainment President David Janollari singles out Charmed as his network’s “workhorse.” The show with the loyal fan base has “set ratings records in every one of the three time periods it’s been in during its long, successful run,” he says. Somehow, the show survived its 1999 appearance in Newsweek, which posted the worst-possible night of programming in an article called “So Much Bad TV, So Little Time.” The show must have a charmed existence: Half a dozen years later, it’s still on the air, although this fall it has suffered a ratings drop of 18% in adults 18-34.

Faced with media indifference and what they perceive as networks taking them for granted, producers of stealth shows are more inclined than ever to air their grievances.

Gary Scott Thompson, executive producer of NBC’s 9 p.m. Monday under-the-radar series Las Vegas, has been alarmed by the network’s huge marketing effort behind launching new shows, such as My Name Is Earl.

“You are trying to program an entire network—and not just a half-hour a week,” Thompson says. “Shoving everything into Earl is not going to save your network.” In fairness, it should be noted that networks today are just copying the tactic of ABC last year, when the network indeed reversed its fortunes with its Hail Mary promotional bet on Desperate Housewives and Lost.

And the lopsided deployment might have unintended side effects, Thompson says. “It absolutely hurts us in the after-market. But it also hurt what we could have done this past season with Raymond [Las Vegas’ former time- slot competition] going off the air. We could have really re-launched the thing.”

Thompson says he is baffled because he is not the only one losing potential income on the show.

“This is an NBC Studios show. They own the thing,” he says. “Every showrunner bitches” about network neglect, he says, “but you would think, given that they do own this, they would want to be behind it.” (NBC did not return calls for comment.)

At America’s Most Wanted, Heflin and his staff resolved to drum up attention for the show on their own.

“A guy who used to be a warden at Folsom Prison once showed me the tools the prisoners had made on their own,” Heflin says. “He said the more we take away from these guys, the more creative they become. We always thought that was the Fox attitude toward us when it comes to promotion.”

One of Heflin’s tactics: using the show’s Web site to get the show noticed. Taking over the site about a year ago, Heflin and his team have invested in it, featuring letters and stories that did not make it on-air. Web traffic in that time has grown from 2 million hits a month to 20 million. “Hopefully, they will spread the word and become our marketers and bring more viewers to the show,” he says.

Emerging content-delivery technologies such as DVD, wireless and, eventually, video-on-demand could also be used to grow AMW, Heflin says. “People may not want to watch a whole program, but people may be interested in a specific investigation. We could provide a smaller amount of information streamed through handheld. That could be big for us.”

AFV Closes In On 360 Episodes

America’s Funniest Home Videos is a classic case of TV stealthiness. The show was an enormous hit when it premiered 15 years ago with what was considered, at the time, the innovative premise of having viewers send in their video of everyday comic moments in their lives. That might seem antiquated now, but the formula created by executive producer Vin Di Bona still works.

AFV is up 21% this season versus a year ago in adults 18-49 (from a 2.4 to a 2.9 rating), despite having been largely ignored for years by the press and the network’s promotion engine. But ABC certainly recognizes the property’s importance: It leads off the network’s valuable Sunday nights. A 30-second spot on AFV fetches a modest $86,302, but that’s still 34% more than the cost of a spot on the competition at NBC’s Dateline.

The 8 p.m. ET Sunday hit Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has garnered higher ratings when it has aired in the AFV slot, but ABC Entertainment Executive VP Jeff Bader, who heads scheduling and strategy, couldn’t be happier with AFV’s performance.

Since its inception, the show has aired as both a regular series and specials ranging from 30 minutes to two hours, and it hasaired in 10-20 different time periods (accounts vary) on five different nights of the week. Bader points out that, at the end of this season, ABC will have aired more than 360 episodes of AFV—supplanting The Lawrence Welk Show as ABC’s most prolific series.

Debuting the same night as The Simpsons in January 1990—back when there were only 3½ broadcast networks and cable wasn’t much of a factor—AFV finished its first season averaging a 21.1 household rating.

Says Bader, “Take that, American Idol.”

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6281534.html?display=Feature&referral=SUPP

fredfa

11-06-05, 12:51 AM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Live “West Wing” battles deathly ill ratings

By Rick Kushman Sacramento Bee TV Columnist

It's complicated, a little sad and not unexpected that the live debate Sunday night on "The West Wing" is the biggest episode of the season for a drama that has regained some chops.

"The West Wing" (at 8 PM ET/PT on Channel NBC) is just one high-profile "special television event," as the networks love to say, on Sunday night. There's also, for instance, the premiere of "The Boondocks" (at 11 PM ET/PT on the Cartoon Network), a new series that's both relentlessly inappropriate and piercingly funny.

Other, uh, events Sunday include a two-hour, combo-pack episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (at 9 PM ET/PTon NBC) featuring all four detectives; ABC's two-hour episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" (at 7 PM ET/PT on ABC) featuring a Fairfield house; Fox's 16th "The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horrors" (at 8 PM ET/PT); and, pathetically, CBS' "Category 7: The End of the World" (at 9 PM ET/PT), a weak, but nonetheless tasteless, hurricane movie.

We'll get to a couple of those.

First, "The West Wing." It has been pretty good this season. At times exceptional: high-minded, engaging and eloquent. It's also, sadly, shriveling on the vine. Its ratings are down almost 30 percent this season to about 8.1 million viewers, and it's barely a Top-50 show.

That's the complicated part. The reasons involve the shift from Wednesday to Sunday night, a sudden plunge in quality two seasons back that drove off fans, and the subject: politics.

"The West Wing," in its first four seasons under creator Aaron Sorkin, had an idolized, romantic approach. It was, as Sorkin called it, a Western where the heroes always rose to the fight.

It was also some wish fulfillment, or at least a step up, for viewers from both political wings, a Bill Clinton-like administration without the sex scandal. With a George W. Bush presidency, that formula changed for both sides.

But, worse, when Sorkin left, it lost the gloss he gave the show. In Season 5, it lost the beautiful fiction that people on all sides were in public service to actually serve the public, and the equally quixotic notion that people in a workplace can respect and listen to each other. Instead, we got a typical TV drama with all the usual manufactured conflicts.

This season, the show's seventh, that has changed again. Presidential candidates Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) brought back some of that romance. The writing has been crisp, the acting has been powerful, and the portrayal of politics has been, at times, dead on.

And that is our current problem. Most of us hate the politics part of American government, particularly the campaigns. We hate the ads, the positioning, the elusiveness and, frankly, the lying. Watching even an idealized version of it often leaves you with a stomachache.

Still, these two candidates, Vinick and Santos, would do America proud for their ethics and desire to make the campaigns about something, if they were, you know, real.

Which brings us to Sunday night. NBC and the producers are pulling the stunt of airing the debate live - acted out once for the East Coast and once for the Western time zone.

They brought in NBC's Forrest Sawyer for the feel of reality and to throw in a little cross-promotion, there will be limited commercial interruptions, and they've even allowed for ad-libbing, in case Alda or Smits sees the need. (For the record, Smits, star and glamour hunk that he is, admits he's pretty shy speaking in public and isn't likely to stray too far off script.)

Executive producer John Wells told reporters in a conference call he hopes all of that will make the episode refreshing and more satisfying than the usual political debates. Truthfully, that won't be hard. But of all the episodes that should not be done live, it would be a debate.

What we want is eloquence. We want articulate, well-reasoned, in-depth thought. This hour should be an exercise in great writing. Then give the words to these two pros, and give them the production values to bring them to life.

But television, like politics, is first about numbers. And right now, just like candidates Vinick and Santos, "The West Wing" needs to see some good returns to stay in business. And, just as in politics, "West Wing" producers will do almost anything to get attention.

The guess here is that it will still be a pretty good hour. And that the ratings will still be only so-so, but I'd like to be wrong about that.

* * * * * * * *

The best place to start with the new Cartoon Network show "The Boondocks" is to say it airs in the "Adult Swim" block at 11 p.m. Sunday. That's 11 p.m.

Next is this. The show is very smart, very funny and very offensive, if that sort of thing bothers you. This is the animated translation of Aaron McGruder's comic strip, and it makes the leap with all its wit and all its edges intact.

The cable show actually sharpens McGruder's angry iconoclasm, as it takes shots at white people, black people, rich people, gangsta rappers, white wannabe gangsta rappers, men, women and cheese. And that's just in the first two episodes. Yeah, cheese. You have to see it.

"Boondocks" is the story of Huey Freeman, a 10-year-old leftist revolutionary, and his brother, Riley, an 8-year-old devotee to gangsta-rap culture. (They're both voiced by Regina King.) Their grandfather (John Witherspoon) has moved them from the inner city to a white, middle-class suburb where the boys are not happy and they give him, and everyone, large shares of grief.

The tone, at times, is even stronger than in the comic strip. These characters casually fire off the N-word. In a session with TV critics this summer, McGruder said, basically, get over it.

"I just think we all have to realize that sometimes we use bad language," he said. "And the N-word is used so commonly, not only by me but by a lot of people I know, it would feel fake to write around it."

There is also a point Sunday, when the boys attend a garden party at a mansion that looks like Versailles, and Huey tries to lecture the adults about Jesus, Ronald Reagan and 9/11. It should be heresy. The rich folk see performance art, so removed are they from Huey's ideas or his life. Their reaction is to applaud.

When McGruder met with critics, he said all he's doing with the series is trying to entertain.

"I don't pretend like I'm leading the revolution," he said. "It's a show."

Maybe. You have to wonder if McGruder isn't taking a shot at some of "The Boondocks' " fans. As we laugh and applaud, we don't entirely get McGruder's ideas or his life, and so we see the show as just performance art, too.

* * * * * * * *

Finally, a word on what is decidedly not art, "Category 7: The End of the World." Sure, the plot is ridiculous. Of course, the tricked-out effects are still lame. Yes, it's impossible to believe almost all of it, starting with the competent FEMA director.

But it sure is nice to see such a public spirit from CBS. Knowing the country is storm-weary and battered from the thousands of lost homes and lives, knowing it may be years before untold numbers of families can go home, CBS is giving America a miniseries about a hurricane. Way to go.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/columns/kushman/v-print/story/13807336p-14648512c.html

fredfa

11-06-05, 01:11 AM

As the NBA season is getting under way, you would think perhaps Mark Cuban wouldn’t have time to keep his blog up to date.
Wrong.
He believes the entire network TV game could be about to change. (Not that it matters, but I have noted here consistently that I too think a major shift in network TV is coming -- and probably a lot faster than network executives could ever imagine.)
At any rate, here are Mark’s provocative (and, as always, thought-provoking) comments from a few days ago:

The Mark Cuban blog
How Bob Iger Saved Network TV

(from blogmaverick.com)
On the ITunes Store, you can buy the latest episode to Lost and some other shows the day after they air on Network TV. in this case ABC, for $1.99. Sounds simple and reasonable. Not anything earth shattering right ?

Content has been available for download for years and years. That content could be played on any number of devices, from computers to DVD players to PDAs. Being able to playback a video from the new Video Ipod just like you can play a song from a current IPod, certainly is not a technical marvel.

It is a business marvel. Bob Iger has gone contrary to what every current and previous TV network head has and would have done had Bob not turned the industry on its head with his announcement with Apple yesterday. Bob Iger has saved Network TV.

How ?

By completely changing the economic model.

When a show is produced for primetime network TV, its traditionally sold to a network at a given license fee. More often than not, particularly for non reality shows, that license fee is less than what it costs to produce the show.

The hope by the production company is that if they can produce good ratings for the network, not only can they increase the license fee after the first deal ends, but they can also sell the episodes in the future as part of a syndication deal and maybe even make some money back with DVD sales.

So for instance, shows like Law and Order, CSI, and all their different versions can fetch more than 1mm dollars per episode. Most other shows fall in mid six figure price ranges and can go as low as 50k to 75k for hit reality shows like Survivor. The reality shows go for far less because everyone knows the winner already.

But what if CBS sold Survivor episodes the day after it aired like ABC is with Lost ? What if they sold them not just on ITunes Store, but through CinemaNow, MovieLink, Netflix, Walmart Online, wherever.

Think some people would buy them to keep up with the action ? Possibly to sample the show ? Think they might sell more than 75k downloads at $1.99 each ?

Could this move have created a new market that could be comparable in size for some shows and more money for others than the current syndication market ?

ABSOLUTELY. No question about it.

This is far far better than syndication because it can apply to all shows. For a bunch of reasons, most shows do not make it into syndication. Those that dont, typically just sit on the shelf collecting dust. Most dont get DVD releases. They just rot.

And this is far easier and safer than releasing a DVD. No extras. No inventory. No shipping. No Returns. No shelfspace issues. You ship a file to Apple and boom, the sales begin. Whats more, Apple was incredibly smart to set the price tag at $1.99. That means few if any movies. Just TV and video. You have all the shelf space to yourself for at least a little while. And if the demand appears, you know which titles to invest in for a DVD release

Even the worst primetime television shows have on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox get millions of viewers. If the network can convert a couple percentage points of viewers into downloaders, it can turn into decent money. 2 bucks a pop. 50k downloads per eps. Thats more money than a hit reality show like Survivor earns in syndication.

And for some shows, the conversion rate could be much, much higher. A show like Lost could have hundreds of thousands of downloads per episode. Thats real money.

Which leads to how Bob Iger saved network television.

The entire TV industry is scared shitless about how advertising will evolve. Will the 30 second commercial survive ? Will PVRs eliminate commercial watching in a material percentage of homes ? What impact will HDTV have on TV viewing and advertising (besides the obvious rush to HDNet & HDNet Movies:) ? The answers to these questions are pivotal to the programming side of the equation because without enough advertising revenue for the networks, how are they going to pay for programming ?

Bob Iger has enabled a new revenue stream which if it grows, could definitely be the revenue stream that saves primetime network TV.

Its not inconceivable that just as DVDs have surpassed box office in revenues and the theatrical release has become a commercial for the DVD sale, the network TV broadcast could become the commercial for the download sale. I dont see download sales surpassing advertising revenue, but I do see it as likely that the download sales could more than compensate for any advertising market weakness brought on by ratings erosion and / or changes in how ads are delivered on TV. I also think it wont be long before we see an ad or two in front of the show that will further increase revenue.

How big a revenue stream could the two combined be ? Big enough to matter.

But wait, there’s more…

Its possible that the ABC offering NightStalker , which because it hasnt had stellar ratings, with 7mm viewers in its premiere could be the most important pay per download in internet history !. Why ?

What if NightStalker turns out to be a hugely popular download ? Would ABC keep it on the air for that reason ? What if the show is cancelled ? Will ABC sell any unaired episodes ? And how many downloads will be sold of those ? If the show is cancelled, are enough downloads being sold so that when combined with a license fee from a cable network, the show could live on ?

Since ABC will be able to see the sell through numbers on a daily basis, will that impact programming decisions ?

Of course Nightstalker will be replaced each season as the most important download in internet history by other shows as the market grows and data exists to better understand just what impact the downloads are having on network economics.

All of this isnt going to happen overnight.

Distribution must expand beyond Apple, and it will. It will be interesting to see how fast MicroSoft, Yahoo, Google, Sony (If sony had an ITunes and an ABC deal for the PSP..wow !), AOL and even retailers like Walmart Online and Best Buy respond. Which they will. They arent going to let Apple run away with this market like they did music. Im not saying they can stop them, but I think they learned a lot from what Apple has done with the Ipod. The competition in turn, should help the economics for the networks.

And this isnt about watching video on VideoIpod screens. Its about downloading video to ITunes software and its competitors, and all the places it does and will reside. All will be playback devices.I expect that either a 2nd tier of pricing will come along from Apple for full screen quality that is designed to play on a TV rather than an IPod or half screen on a Laptop or PC, as competitors compete by enabling higher quality and full screen playback. All of which will further expand the market.

The future of network television got immediately brighter yesterday. All because Bob Iger had the brilliance to say yes to giving consumers his content , where , how and when they want to consume it.

Just one suggestion Bob. How about letting us show digitally Lost in theaters ? Its a great show. How cool would it be to see it on a big screen in a theater ? Just show it in one 300 seat theater. Not enough to impact ratings, but enough to give hard core fans a unique experience that bonds them further to the show.

Im happy to offer Landmark Theaters as a place to test it out :)

http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000617063228/

foxeng

11-06-05, 09:21 AM

fredfa

11-06-05, 11:38 AM

Saturday’s network prime-time ratings are now at the top of RATINGS NEWS (the second post in this thread).

fredfa

11-06-05, 11:48 AM

THE NOVEMBER SWEEPS
How about a disaster to take your mind off disasters?

By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post TV Critic

In these anxious times, when terrorists, pandemics, hurricanes, earthquakes and local TV news teases made us hold our collective breath, the broadcast networks know how to help us cope.

Disaster movies. Splashy, big-budget, November sweeps disaster movies are calculated to match our mood. A traumatized nation flocks to these overcooked parades of B-listers, apparently finding comfort in fictional emergencies.

File under "It could be worse."

Last year viewers embraced the tacky CBS miniseries "Category 6: Day of Destruction." That ratings success inspired CBS to revisit our nervousness with the even more clichéd "Category 7: The End of the World." The sequel will air over two Sundays, beginning tonight and concluding Nov. 13, (9-1 PM ET/PT. on CBS both nights).

The apocalyptic title doesn't leave much wiggle room for next year's "Category 8: You Really Had Us Going" or the following November's "Category 9: Seriously, Folks, Kiss It Goodbye." But "7" should draw a crowd.

The alternately laughable and tedious disaster - and here we're referring to the script - includes superficial shout-outs to FEMA, terrorism, the oil industry and even the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Echoes of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina footage trigger memories and adrenaline, a cheap manipulation.

As a firefighter cradles a small child in the midst of destruction, and as bystanders run in panic, we cringe. The empathy we almost want to extend to the victims turns to disgust as we realize the context in which these pictures are used. Is it possible we'll be less likely to register honest emotion in front of non-fiction TV in the future as a result?

Ludicrously cardboard characters do nothing to enliven the story. Gina Gershon is cast as the new head of FEMA, frantically driving around Washington in the midst of the crisis. Tom Skerritt plays an ace super-pilot; Robert Wagner is barely present in his role as a congressman. Randy Quaid (reprising the buffoonish role of Tommy Tornado, back from near-death in "Category 6") and Shannen Doherty (as a sexy scientist), share an implausible romantic subplot.

Only Swoosie Kurtz and James Brolin excel as an evangelical Christian couple who use the public's fears to further their fundraising. At least they're having fun.

Havoc reigns, starting with the nutty opening scene at the Eiffel Tower. As Paris is decimated by high winds, a mime is tossed about, clearly a cue to those on the lookout for camp humor. (Shots all around every time the French mime tumbles!) Too bad the tone isn't ironic throughout.

As a computer-generated Mount Rushmore crumbles and folks begin to wonder whether the unusual weather is "a sign from God," the American press corps is depicted as a flock of Chicken Littles. Wouldn't you know it - the press can't catch a break even when the sky really is falling.

Incidental jabs at bureaucrats, vague pro-environmental messages and a subplot involving masked gunmen feel random.

If this were a routine on Comedy Central it would make more sense. As two superstorms are about to converge over Washington, D.C., apparently there's something wrong in the mesosphere. If Jon Stewart were on the job, he'd jump on the mesosphere reference to retitle the miniseries "Mess o' Fear."

Nobody ever went broke scaring the bejeebers out of the audience, particularly during November. The vicarious near-death experience, the virtual rush, is irresistible to a large number of Nielsen households.

Sharing the fear-mongering subtext, on Nov. 20 NBC offers "The Poseidon Adventure," reimagining the luxury ocean liner beset not by a tsunami, as in the 1972 original, but by terrorists with bombs. (This TV version beats the big-screen Warner Bros. summer film to the remake.)

The S.S. Poseidon special effects on NBC aren't nearly as cheesy as the "Category 7" visuals on CBS.

Just when the crack security team has completed a thorough inspection of the ship, giving it clearance to sail, a suspicious group of waiters manages to load a bunch of aluminum kegs onboard, specially fitted with infrared signals. How safe do you feel now, Mr. and Mrs. America?

This three-hour "Poseidon" struggles to stay afloat, laboring without Shelley Winters, and with too much reliance on one Homeland Security agent (Adam Baldwin, taking the Ernest Borgnine role as detective Mike Rogo). The passengers similarly struggle to escape the capsized ship, (a Bible-clutching Rutger Hauer stands in for Gene Hackman as the Reverend), but the terrorist cell in the kitchen gives it a contemporary spin.

Mercifully, NBC bumped its four-hour earthquake sequel, "10.5: Apocalypse," out of the November sweeps, choosing to hold that special-effects laden, End Times-predicting miniseries until next year.

Assuming the world as we know it still exists, disaster movies aren't going away.

http://www.denverpost.com/ostrow

fredfa

11-06-05, 12:06 PM

THE NOVEMBER SWEEPS
Television: WINGING IT

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News

At the end of Sunday's "The West Wing,'' presidential candidates Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), the Democrat, and Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), the Republican, bumped into each other just before New York's annual Al Smith political dinner.

Frustrated by their campaigns' inability to set a date for a debate -- and by the start of negative campaigning from both sides -- Santos challenges Vinick to ``a real debate on the issues, just you and me.''

``How's Sunday night?'' Vinick replies.

That kind of handshake agreement between presidential candidates could happen only in the parallel universe that is ``The West Wing.'' But this coming Sunday night (8 PM ET/PT, NBC), Santos and Vinick will indeed meet live (there will be versions for both the East and West Coasts) in debate -- at least partly unscripted and with a real TV newsman (ex-ABC anchor Forrest Sawyer) as moderator. The episode will air in two 25-minute blocks, with a short commercial break in between.

The debate episode comes at a critical time for the Emmy-winning ``West Wing,'' now in its seventh season. While the series has been enjoying a creative renaissance with the fierce, cleverly drawn presidential campaign between Vinick and Santos -- and such topical story lines as the recent one about leaks inside the White House -- it is staggering in the Nielsen ratings since a September move to Sunday nights.

Faced with intense competition in its new time period, the show has seen its audience drop from 11 million viewers to fewer than 8 million. The show is taking enough of a beating that after Sunday's episode, NBC will take it off the schedule for the rest of November sweeps.

At the same time, it has been eclipsed in the public mind by ``Commander in Chief,'' ABC's new and less sophisticated Oval Office drama that has become a top 10 hit despite implausible plot lines and broadly drawn moments that are laughably unrealistic.

While NBC and the producers hope the live episode will give the show's ratings a badly needed jolt, executive producer John Wells says the debate is just another example of ``The West Wing'' trying ``to say what we wish our politics were.''

Wells contends that ``to even call our current presidential debates `debates' is stretching the term,'' since all the elements -- questions, format -- are ``so pre-negotiated'' that they take the life out of the head-to-head meetings.

Wells suggests that presidential debates have evolved since the first televised one, between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in 1960, into a platform for the candidates ``not to engage each other, but to give another version of their stump speech.''

The results are debates with so little substance that ``you're just looking for that one moment when somebody makes a slip. You're looking for things that are so minor that it's like reading tea leaves,'' Alda says.

``The whole idea about doing'' the episode, Alda says, ``was to try to do a debate in which the characters actually debated. We will try to set up a world in which the candidates can have a real exchange. And maybe some people will wonder why we can't have that all the time.

``It's a very conscious effort on our part to appeal to what should be our better nature.''

This isn't the first time ``The West Wing'' has built an episode around a presidential debate. In its fourth season, there was one between President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and challenger Robert Ritchie (James Brolin).

But that episode dealt mostly with the behind-the-scenes machinations surrounding the debate. Sunday's episode will be devoted exclusively to the exchange of ideas. And while there is a script -- written by longtime ``West Wing'' writer Lawrence O'Donnell, a former political consultant -- Alda and Smits will be asked to improvise at least some of their comments.

Alda suggests that the episode may be ``less scripted than a regular debate.'' And Smits, who admits he's ``sweating'' about the live performance, says, ``We're just going to try to go out with a little bit of a net and riff a little bit.''

Both actors are products of the theater, and both have done more than their share of public speaking on behalf of causes they believe in, so improvisation is hardly new to either man. And it sounds as if they're taking their preparations seriously, even if the outcome is preordained by O'Donnell's script.

``Of course I want to win the debate. Some part of me does, anyway,'' Alda says. ``But you do have to go along with what the story is. If the story doesn't actually have Richard III winning the battle, no matter how much he wants to win, he doesn't win.

``But you still have to want it. Even in my imagination, I would love to rule the world.''

Which makes the actor sounds a bit like Vinick, who after agreeing to the campaign last week, told Santos with a wry smile: ``Hell of a way to end your campaign.''

Replied Santos: ``Oh, I'm just getting started.''

As the Bartlet administration staffers have often said: ``Game on!''

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/television/13089691.htm

fredfa

11-06-05, 12:37 PM

Weekly Update
BCS Rankings/HD Appearances

Only three top-10 BCS teams have made into the ranks of Top-11 HD appearances thus far this season. (All BCS Ratings will be adjusted as they are announced.)

The fans in Texas continue to be the biggest losers: #2 Texas and #15 Texas Tech have yet to appear in HD this season. (All statistics include games scheduled to be broadcast in HD this coming weekend, ending Saturday, Nov. 12. BCS rankings below the Top 25 are courtesy of Jerry Palm and college bcs.com.)
Six HD Appearances
11 Georgia
14 Notre Dame
16 Florida
33 Tennessee
Five HD Appearances
8 LSU
Four HD Appearances
3 Virginia Tech
4 Alabama
9 Florida St
20 Auburn
Three HD Appearances
12 Wisconsin
34 South Carolina
Two HD Appearances
6 Miami-Florida
7 Penn State
10 Ohio State
17 West Virginia
19 Boston College
21 Michigan
27 Louisville
28 Georgia Tech
29 Northwestern
35 Rutgers
41 Colorado State
One HD Appearance
1 US C
5 UCLA
18 TCU
24 Fresno St
30 UTEP
31 Michigan St
32 Boise St
36 Arizona St
37 Virginia
38 Iowa
39 Stanford
40 Iowa State
No HD Appearances
2 Texas 0
13 Oregon 0
15 Texas Tech 0
22 Colorado 0
23 California 0
25 Oklahoma 0
26 Minnesota 0

fredfa

11-06-05, 01:06 PM

Critic's Corner: Monday Night
“Las Vegas” Goes Through A Time Tunnel to 1962;
Martin Sheen Hits Road

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic November 7, 2005

During sweeps week, if you can't get a guest star to pop in or combine the cast of someone else's show or kill somebody off, there are still some options to make an episode stand out.

"Las Vegas" (NBC, 9 PM ET/PT), a show that never took itself too seriously, simply transports everybody back to the city's 1960s heyday for a week. Sinatra is headlining the showroom, Chubby Checker is in the lounge, and everybody's wearing skinny ties and retro fashion.

James Caan's character translates well: His impersonation of a Robert De Niro casino owner that seemed out of place in 2005 is perfectly suited for 1962.

When he knocks off a restaurant manager who gets under his skin, we see how far network TV has come, with its heroes murdering anti-heroes.

Not every character adjusts well to the time change. James Lesure's Mike Cannon is the victim of racism only once; nobody bats an eye when he becomes head of security in an era when Strip hotels were only two years removed from excluding black guests. Vanessa Marcil's Sam is still a working girl, but of a different stripe: a straight-up prostitute, stripping down as if this were some late-night HBO drama rather than an NBC show at 9 PM ET/PT

A better, time-honored sweeps stunt comes in "Two and a Half Men" (CBS, 9 PM ET/PT) with the inevitable appearance of Charlie Sheen's father, Martin Sheen. Now that "The West Wing" is about to change administrations, the man who played President Bartlet has time on his hands. That obviously was the case with first lady Stockard Channing, mired in her own bad post-"Wing" sitcom, "Out of Practice" (CBS, 9:30 PM ET/PT).

Sheen appears not as Charlie's dad, though, but as father of the loopy, lovesick Rose (Melanie Lynskey), displaying many of the same idiosyncrasies.

Neither of the sweeps tricks can mask how substandard both of these shows are, however.

Channel Surfing for Monday night:

"Arrested Development" (Fox, 8 PM ET/PT) wakes up fully rested from a monthlong absence with an hourlong episode. ... An Rhode Island mom goes to Virginia on "Wife Swap" (ABC, 8 PM ET/PT).

New England plays host to Indianapolis on Monday Night Football (ABC, 9 PM ET/PT). ... "Interesting Times: Xiao's Long March" (Sundance, 9 PM ET/PT) follows one of the 1.5 million volunteers in China's People's Liberation Army. ... "CSI: Miami" (CBS, 10 PM ET/PT) begins a crossover episode that concludes Wednesday on "CSI: NY."

http://www.ctnow.com/tv/hce-tveye1107_.artnov07,0,3972291.column?coll=hce-utility-tv

Tabasco

11-06-05, 01:30 PM

fredfa, thanks again for this thread. If I hadn't been a daily reader, I wouldn't have know about the History Channel's Crusades show or AD hour long episode on Monday. I also appreciate your rundown of BCS teams in HD. Your list helps illustrate how badly ABC is failing those of us who are fans of HDTV and a Big 12 or PAC 10 team.

fredfa

11-06-05, 01:55 PM

Thanks Tabasco!

(But also thank Ken H, David Bott and Alan Gouger who have always allowed me a lot of latitude -- like not not just talking about HD programming. CPanther95 and DrDon have also been really supportive.
I know we all love HD but there are some other programs [including news and public affairs] to be aware of, too. And they have allowed me, in an HDTV Programming Forum, the luxury and freedom to concentrate on HD, but talk abou all TV.)

On your football point, aside from ABC, we Big XII or Pac-10 fans have to constantly deal with the hideous PQ of FSN!

fredfa

11-06-05, 02:13 PM

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
'The End'? I wish

By Scott D. Pierce Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News

OK, I admit it. I was wrong a year ago when I thought that CBS couldn't possibly make a TV movie worse than "Category 6: Day of Destruction."

"Category 7: The End of the World" (Sunday and next Sunday, 9-11 PM ET/PT CBS) is much worse.

This two-part TV movie features the destruction of Paris and Mount Rushmore and Washington D.C., along with a trailer park — I am not making this up. But the real disaster is the script. It's so utterly ludicrous, it's downright insulting to anyone who wastes four hours watching the world end.

That's four hours of your life you'll never get back.

I could go on an on about how utterly terrible the plot is, but I'd fill up this entire edition of the paper. Let's just say that in the midst of storms that threaten to destroy the planet, a televangelist and his wife scream and die, kids are kidnapped, evil politicians cover things up, sickeningly sweet love stories play out and poisonous frogs invade a banquet.

I am not making this up.

It's not that "Category 7" isn't at all scary. Gina Gershon as the head of FEMA? Yikes. Randy Quaid and Shannen Doherty as a couple? Double yikes.

Sometimes dopey movies are fun to watch just so you can laugh at them. But this is just too stupid. Frankly, it's a huge insult to the intelligence of TV viewers. So if it garners big ratings, what does that say about American viewers?

Given that CBS has essentially remade "Category 6" as "Category 7," let me repeat the advice I gave you before the former aired — if you want to see Paris or Washington or a trailer park get hit by a huge disaster, tape "Category 7: The End of the World" and fast forward through everything but the special-effects sequences. You'll save a whole lot of time and miss a whole lot of nothing.

IT'S TREEHOUSE OF HORRORS time on "The Simpsons" (Sunday, 8 PM ET/PT Fox), and this one may be the weirdest yet.

The most clever part of the episode is the opening, as aliens Kang and Kodos deal with "the most boring game in the universe" — baseball — which once again this year delayed what should be the Halloween episode until November.

Then we're on to a story about a robot son for the the Simpsons, Mr. Burns playing "The Most Dangerous Game" by hunting Homer and other humans and a witch who turns the residents of Springfield into whatever Halloween costume they were wearing.

It's occasionally clever, but the 16th edition of "Horrors" isn't near the top rung on the "Treehouse" ladder.

http://www.desnews.com/dn/print/1,1442,635158708,00.html

fredfa

11-06-05, 02:21 PM

(I promise: I am doing my best to find even one critic who doesn’t hate tonight’s CBS movie.
This is one that would appear to be even beyond the old joke that "it is so bad that it is good".
Sadly, this made-for-TV movie seems to be so bad that it is truly horrendous.
With “Desperate Housewives”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, a two-hour “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, new episodes of “Family Guy” and “American Dad” and the Eagles-Resdkins all available tonight in HD, personally I can’t see wasting precious time or DVR space on this CBS disaster of a movie. But as always, YMMV.)

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Killer-storm sequel brings ill winds blowing on CBS

By Stephen Kiehl Baltimore Sun Reporter November 6, 2005

After a hurricane season that left in its wake a flooded New Orleans, the loss of more than 1,000 lives and damages so catastrophic they are still being calculated, CBS thought we might want a little more.

Starting tonight, the network is offering a two-part mini-series called Category 7: The End of the World, in which a monster storm boasting winds of 400 mph threatens to wipe out Washington after already shearing George Washington's face off Mount Rushmore and ripping the torch from Lady Liberty's steely grip.

What were they thinking?

At best, the movie comes off as exploiting this year's record hurricane season for commercial gain. At worst, it can be seen as callous and insensitive to those who lost everything in the storms and are still living in tents and trailers.

CBS executives note the movie is a sequel to last year's Category 6: Day of Destruction and was in production well before the recent devastating hurricanes. Executives said the network considered postponing the movie but decided that viewers would understand that it's fiction.

"This is a sequel. Viewers know what to expect when they see this film," said Chris Ender, senior vice president of communications for CBS. "They know it's an over-the-top presentation of an adventure film, and because of the over-the-top nature we don't think anybody will draw any parallels to any of the recent tragedies."

Over-the-top is right. Category 7 opens with laughable scenes of destruction brought on by monster storms: The Eiffel Tower is bent in half, the Arc de Triomphe is broken into bits, and the Great Pyramids of Egypt are wiped away. (After standing for 5,000 years, the pyramids apparently were no match for the power of a CBS mini-series.)

One of these storms, after hitting Chicago, Buffalo and New York, has made a sharp right turn and is headed to Washington. Meanwhile, Hurricane Eduardo is churning up the Atlantic from Florida, also headed for Washington.

The plucky FEMA director (Gina Gershon) must save the day with the help of her ex-boyfriend/mad scientist (Cameron Daddo), who is prone to pronouncements such as, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to nail this sucker to our trophy wall!"

So soon after images of flooded streets and flattened homes filled our TV screens, Category 7 offers scenes of water rushing through the streets of New York, of buildings being torn apart by high winds, of downed trees and power lines.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, it was a Category 4 storm with winds of 140 mph. Hurricane Wilma last month was a Category 4 storm when it hit Mexico and Category 3 when it reached Florida. (Both were Category 5's, with 175 mph winds, when over open water.)

Uh-huh.

The details are not quite right, but the movie's message about global warming is based in truth, according to climate experts. Warmer ocean temperatures inject more energy into storms, so it's expected hurricanes will continue to intensify.

"If you had told me five years ago that we would have three Category 5 hurricanes in the same eight-week period, I would have said, 'What are you doing, writing a mini-series for CBS?' " said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program. "The reality is that hurricanes are likely to get more severe, though not more frequent, because of global warming."

CBS said that last week's audience report - which lists critical and laudatory e-mails and phone calls - included only one complaint about Category 7. The network is confident most viewers won't take it the wrong way.

"It wasn't scheduled to take advantage of what happened," Ender said. "That's something we would never do. Viewers understand what this movie is all about, and it's certainly not about capitalizing on a real-life tragedy."

Even if CBS' motives are pure, there's no excuse for making a movie this bad. The characters are cardboard cutouts: the discredited scientist who seeks redemption, the jealous wife, the journeyman storm tracker, the money-grubbing televangelist. They say things like, "If this hits D.C., we're gonna need to find a new capital!"

It takes the crack scientists hours to figure out what must be obvious to any viewer still awake halfway through this - to cool down the city, shut off the power.

Meanwhile, Randy Quaid, playing a fearless storm chaser, goes from lying in a full-body cast in a Chicago hospital to running from a tornado at full gallop a few days later. Huh? Oh, and there are also some kidnappings and a poison frog attack thrown in for good measure.

Maybe those Katrina victims still living in tents and trailers - the ones without TV sets - have one good thing going for them: They won't have to watch this.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-ae.eye06nov06,1,3810668,print.story?coll=bal-artslife-tv

fredfa

11-06-05, 02:46 PM

TV Review
Tonight, Smits and Alda will 'Wing' it

By Virginia Rohan Bergen Record Staff Writer Sunday, November 6, 2005

Here's what Jimmy Smits, Alan Alda and John Wells hope tonight's live presidential debate on "The West Wing" will be: exciting, insightful, sincere, uncanned, edgy, unpredictable - in short, everything that today's real televised election rituals are not.

"Even to call our current presidential debates debates is stretching the term," said executive producer Wells. "They are so pre-negotiated - the questions, the language [in which they'll be asked], the way in which people answer, the lack of spontaneity - that I think in many ways [we've created] a world for our real presidential debates now where the candidates have an opportunity to not engage each other, but to give versions of their stump speech on a number of subjects, which they're fairly certain they're going to get."

Alda chimed in. "You're just looking for that one moment when somebody says, 'You're no John Kennedy.' ... You're looking for things that are so minor, it's like reading tea leaves, instead of what the word 'debate' used to mean."

By contrast, Smits said, "What we're going to try to do with the debate, besides the boiler plate messages, is to try to get an insight into these characters, into the men themselves."

On a recent afternoon, several weeks before the live episode, Wells and his two candidates held a spirited telephone press conference to discuss tonight's partly improvised face-off, which will be moderated by NBC newsman Forrest Sawyer. With limited commercial interruptions from a single sponsor (American Express), there will actually be two live versions - one for the East Coast and a second for the West.

"I think our preparation is going to be strong enough that the shows will be substantially the same," Alda guessed.

His Republican Sen. Arnold Vinick and opponent, Democratic Rep. Matt Santos, played by Smits, are, by "very conscious effort," both centrists who refuse to appeal only to a certain base, Wells said.

"The West Wing" has often presented a wishful view of how our political system could be. And while the live debate clearly calls attention to the Emmy-winning but struggling drama - which has been getting clobbered by CBS' "Cold Case" since NBC moved it to Sunday nights this fall - Wells said his primary goal was to remind viewers that America had a long and great tradition of true political debates.

"We will try to set up a world in which they have a real exchange, in the hope a few people watching will say, 'Gee, I wonder why we don't get that in our real presidential candidates?'Ÿ" Wells said, alluding to, but declining to elaborate about, a device that will facilitate this exchange.

While many details were still being worked out at the time of the call, Wells said the actors will "have a general sense of where we're going" and will have discussed the topics, which are sure to include education, which Santos has made a big issue in his campaign, and smaller government, which Vinick believes is a solution to many of America's problems. "West Wing" has been soliciting questions from viewers (who posted them at nbc.com).

"We'll be definitely rehearsing a script, but at the same time, we're giving the actors substantial briefing materials so they can actually be familiar with the issues," Wells said.

"We're just going to go out there with a little bit of a net and riff a little bit, too," Smits said.

Both actors have theater backgrounds and said they looked forward to working live, but Alda was far more excited than his co-star about the prospect of ad-libbing.

"I started out as an improviser in the theater," Alda said. "And I always used to love it if I'd be out on stage in a Broadway play and somebody would forget to make an entrance and I'd have to make stuff up. I'd always be disappointed when they finally got back on stage."

But Smits was apprehensive about the live episode's "improvisatory" elements.

"Jimmy is not a good talker," Smits said, breaking into the third person. "[Alda] just forces me to prepare doubly hard." Santos, he added, is "much more verbal than Jimmy is, than Jimmy can ever be."

Wells had to leave the call early, and when Smits and Alda were asked if they knew when the long-awaited "West Wing" election would take place, they said no.

At one point, there was talk of having it follow a real election cycle, which would have placed the election right about now, during November sweeps, they said.

"We're all talking about television. Maybe if they were not going to do it in the November sweeps, they'll do it in the February sweeps," Alda quipped.

As for whether this debate will affect the election's outcome, Smits ventured that it would "play heavy into it." The stakes are high for the actors as well as the characters they portray.

Issues and insights aside, in politics, image does count, as Richard Nixon discovered way back in 1960. What cosmetic pitfalls do the "West Wing" candidates want to avoid tonight?

"I'm just going to try not to smirk, because I know that gets people in trouble," Smits said, chuckling.

"I don't know what I'm going to do about not pointing," Alda said. "You're not supposed to point, and that's my favorite gesture."

He jokingly added, "I think one of the most interesting moments in a recent presidential debate was the rectangular wrinkle in President Bush's jacket. And if I can, I'm going to get that wrinkle."

http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNjcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cW VlRUV5eTY4MDgwOTImeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3

fredfa

11-06-05, 02:58 PM

Critic’s Notebook
The black South Park?
'The Boondocks,' Aaron McGruder's hot-button comic strip, becomes a TV show Sunday night

By Kevin Thomspon Palm Beach Post Television Writer Sunday, November 06, 2005

Aaron McGruder calls himself the angriest black man in America.

The controversial cartoonist, a black nationalist in the body of a nerdy high schooler, has no problem telling you what's on his mind. And what's usually on McGruder's mind are such hot-button topics as race, politics, the media and dubious white people — not necessarily in that order.

The 31-year-old McGruder is creator of The Boondocks, a popular comic strip that has outraged countless readers, big-name celebrities and influential politicians with its scathing observations on race relations, class and pop culture. And now it has a chance to outrage more people, as it becomes an animated series Sunday night (11 p.m.) as part of The Cartoon Network's late-night block of mature cartoons known as "Adult Swim."

"The Cartoon Network is the ideal place for this," says McGruder of the 15-episode series. "They get it, and they appreciate everything I'm trying to do here."

For years, McGruder's no-holds-barred strip, syndicated in over 300 newspapers, has unmercifully skewered everyone from President George Bush to rap mogul Diddy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It's been called a cross between Peanuts and the Nation of Islam.

The strip — and the show — follows the adventures of two African-American brothers: big-Afroed Huey Freeman, a 10-year-old militant named after famed Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton, and corn-rowed Riley, an 8-year-old gangsta rapper wannabe. Their crabby but caring grandfather (voiced by veteran funnyman John Witherspoon) has moved them from Chicago's south side to a pristine white suburb where they're both miserable and let everyone know it.

Trash-talking animated kids in the suburbs? Yes, The Cartoon Network has high hopes that The Boondocks will become its potty-mouthed South Park.

Reportedly, the network is paying Sony Pictures Television a $400,000 license fee per episode. And it has shelled out millions of dollars on high-profile billboards in key markets like New York and Los Angeles, making The Boondocks The Cartoon Network's most expensive show ever.

"It's our first grown-up show," says Mike Lazzo, the network's senior vice president of programming and production. "We've done quirky shows for about five years now. Now we actually have a big-budget half-hour."

But are television audiences ready for a black-themed cartoon that pulls no political punches, uses the N-word liberally, has black kids aiming toy sniper guns at unsuspecting white neighbors and turns a very alive, post-9/11 Martin Luther King Jr. into a hated terrorist sympathizer?

In the first few seconds of tonight's opener in which "Granddad" frets that his rambunctious grandchildren will embarrass him in front of their new neighbors, Huey dreams he's speaking to a bunch of white guests at a fancy, schmancy garden party where he candidly blurts, "Jesus was black. Ronald Reagan is the devil and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time and good night."

The conservative white people in the audience applaud as if Huey has just finished a gut-busting stand-up routine.

Meanwhile, the second episode is about the grandfather falling for a gold-digging prostitute, which leads to a discussion by Huey and Riley about whether all women are "ho's."

”My own worst critic”

McGruder, whom USA Today once called the nation's "most dangerous black man," admits the show will have its share of detractors, just like the comic strip. In 2003, The Washington Post pulled The Boondocks strip for a week when McGruder said that then-National Security Advisor Rice wouldn't have championed the war in Iraq if she had a man.

McGruder says he doesn't worry about his critics.

"I try to insulate myself," says McGruder. "You go into this knowing that some people are not going to like what you do and you can't let it interrupt the creative process. I'm my own worst critic. I don't think there's much that people can throw at me that I haven't already kicked my own self in the a— for."

Besides, he says too many black people worry about what other groups think of them.

"There's a fear among black people about how those outside of us judge us," McGruder says. "That fear can be a somewhat paralyzing thing. If you are equal and you truly believe that you're equal, then you don't have to worry about what other people might think and you'll speak your mind freely."

McGruder says his goal for the show is simple.

"You have to first hope that (the audience) laughs," he says. "That's the toughest job. If you've done that, at least you've survived to do it another day."

As for using the N-word so much — the term is heard more than 20 times in tonight's episode — McGruder doesn't understand all the fuss.

"It doesn't seem to be a topic that ever goes away, so I guess it's still a touchy subject," he says. "(But The Boondocks) ain't The (N-Word) Show. We do say a few other things, too. I just wanted to have the freedom to write the way I wanted to write and for the characters to be able to talk the way people actually talk. I think it makes the show sincere."

Unlike the groundbreaking strip, the TV series won't be as topical. The show's 15 episodes took 18 months to complete. But McGruder insists that the lengthy production time won't make The Boondocks less edgy or cutting-edge. Everyone remains a potential target.

"The show can have the same political punch without being right up to the minute on the news," he says. "I think the show will challenge people and I think the show will make people think about things in a very different way."

Like Huey and Riley (both voiced by actress Regina King), McGruder was born on the South Side of Chicago. When he was 6, his parents — dad is a communications specialist, mom is a homemaker — moved to the middle-class, predominantly white suburb of Columbia, Md.

At an early age, McGruder became keenly aware of the complexity of American race relations. He attended a majority white Jesuit school he says both repressed and liberated him. If it weren't for the restrictions the school imposed, McGruder says, he wouldn't have begun expressing his creativity to deal with the oppression.

When he switched to an all-black high school, McGruder became a big fan of rap music, listening to such progressive groups as Public Enemy and X-Clan.

After graduating from high school, McGruder pursued a degree in African-American studies with a concentration in social and cultural analysis at the University of Maryland. It was there The Boondocks was born.

Syndication, six figures, awards

The strip made its debut on a Web site in 1996 to glowing reviews. It later appeared in The Diamondback. But the strip didn't last long. McGruder took his creation to The Source, a hip-hop magazine. Legal and contractual disagreements made that partnership just as short.

McGruder's strip didn't gain nationwide recognition until 1997 when he had a chance meeting at a National Association of Black Journalists convention with a woman who worked for Universal Press. The company was looking to attract a young readership and immediately offered McGruder a syndication offer.

The Boondocks began appearing in about 160 papers in December 1998. That number swelled to 195 two months later.

McGruder's life was about to change. Six-figure contracts. Book deals. TV appearances. Prestigious awards.

And just what made him think he could succeed in a business with a ridiculously high failure rate?

"I was too ignorant at the time," says McGruder, who grew up reading Doonesbury and Bloom County. "I just didn't want to have a job that I hated. I was interested in politics. I was interested in writing. I was interested in hip-hop. I was trying to be a comic book illustrator . . . and it all came together in college. I don't know exactly what made me think it would work. If I had read up on comics and the difficulties of getting syndicated, I probably never would have tried. It's one of the few instances where being ignorant on your career page may have paid off a little bit."

But controversy would follow McGruder, named one of People's "25 Most Intriguing People" in 1999, like a long shadow. After the terrorist attacks, editorial cartoonists, left-wing political pundits and late-night comics refused to take jabs at the president or the administration.

Not McGruder.

Funny and inappropriate show

Huey railed against President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and overzealous patriotic Americans. In one strip, Huey calls the FBI and asks if he can give the names of Americans who financed terrorists. When the agent says yes, Huey gives him Ronald Reagan's name.

The strip didn't go over well and a handful of newspapers removed it — just for a short time, however.

Basing a TV series on the strip has been kicking around in McGruder's head for about six years. He produced a six-minute presentation for Fox, but the network insisted on making too many changes.

"Fox wanted a sitcom," McGruder says stiffly.

It doesn't matter, though, because he says the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim is the better fit.

"We were given all the leeway we needed to say what we wanted to say," McGruder says.

Despite his militant views, McGruder swears the revolution won't be televised on The Boondocks.

"It's a show," he says. "A really funny and inappropriate show."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/tv/content/entertainment/arts_entertainment/epaper/2005/11/06/a1j_featv_BOONDOCKS_1106.html

fredfa

11-06-05, 03:08 PM

ESPN2 HD Chooses

The network decided Sunday to show North Carolina State at Boston College Saturday night at 7:15 PM ET. (The other possibility would have been Maryland at North Carolina.)

The complete HD Football Schedule for the next two weeks, college and pro, is at the top of the very first post in this thread.

fredfa

11-06-05, 03:33 PM

TV Clutter

If you think there is less and less programming on TV these days, you are right.
According to Nielsen, the average hour-long program contains 15 minutes and 48 seconds of commercials and promos.

That is up from 124:39 in 2001, and up an astonishing amount from the “just” 9:53 of 1996.

Reviewing Commercial/promo clutter: (per hour)
1996 9:53
2001 14:49
2005 15:43

Isn’t it amazing that the networks can raise commercial rates by close to 10% a year for almost a decade, see clutter rise by 64% and still complain they can’t make enough of a profit?

Perhaps they should try to find some new answers.

Speaking personally, when I see a cluster of four promos and half a dozen commercials, I tend not to remember any of them at all.

keenan

11-06-05, 04:16 PM

TV Clutter

Isn’t it amazing that the networks can raise commercial rates by close to 10% a year for almost a decade, see clutter rise by 64% and still complain they can’t make enough of a profit?

Perhaps they should try to find some new answers.

See post about Mark Cuban above. :D

I don't watch anything live anymore except sports. I'll start a normal night of viewing at 8:45 and by 11:00 I'm caught up to real-time. Works great. 45 mins is a lot of extra time to do other things.

fredfa

11-06-05, 07:41 PM

Its time again for my periodic reminder of something I think you will really find interesting:
Check It Out!
If you haven’t yet heard AVS Radio, which offers two new shows a week, what are you waiting for?
It is produced by The HTGuys for AVS Forum and offers news, interviews, and HT topics that are sure to make you a weekly listener.
Here is all the info you need:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/announcement.php?f=34&announcementid=81
Happy Listening!

fredfa

11-06-05, 07:48 PM

See post about Mark Cuban above. :D

I don't watch anything live anymore except sports. I'll start a normal night of viewing at 8:45 and by 11:00 I'm caught up to real-time. Works great. 45 mins is a lot of extra time to do other things.

I agree entirely.

They have just pushed the limits way too far. Eight-ten minutes an hours are acceptable, but 15:43 (which despite the Nielsen imprimatur seems low, since most producers say they now do 40-41 minute programs) is far too much.

It is relatively easy to see four network programs in less than three hours, and that is a blessing.

So now I am like you, and always speed through commercials and promos, so they never get a chance to attract me to either their products or their programs. Like you, I just don't want to spend the time.

fredfa

11-06-05, 10:27 PM

UPN likes “Love”

In somewhat of a surprise, UPN has given the green light for “Love, Inc.” to finish the season.

The shows ratings have not been great and have seemed to be trending downward:

Week One: 87th place, 4.61 million viewers
Week Three: 92nd, 3.92
Week Six: 107th, 3.08

fredfa

11-06-05, 11:55 PM

Critic’s Notebook
''West Wing'' Live

By Rich Heldenfels Akron Beacon Journal

I don't know if tonight's ''West Wing'' is meant to demonstrate the failure of politics, or just the failure of a television drama. Either way, it was disappointing.

I did get a rush of excitement just before it began, thinking this could be exciting TV. But it started so awkwardly, with a contrived throwing-out of debate rules which regular viewers should have presumed was part of the Vinick-Santos handshake in last week's episode. (If they spent the necessary time to hammer out those complicated rules, there wouldn't have been any time left for debate prep.) For a moment there, I thought I would rather vote for Ellen DeGeneres.

And not long into the debate itself, I was hoping someone at FactCheck.org has enough of a sense of humor to issue a factual analysis of these fictional candidates' policy stands. Because as they wallowed in talk about CAFTA, it felt like one of something left over from an Al Gore position paper -- the sort of talk where you spent so much time proving you were the smarter guy, that you also came off as the most boring (or annoying guy).

Of course, that's where I thought the show was saying that politicians just can't help themselves, that they can be just as unenlightening in a no-holds-barred situation as they are in the formally structured ''debates'' that real-life politicians negotiate.

The complexities of the two candidates all but disappeared, with Vinick in particular reduced to Republican talking points when along the episodic trail he had seemed much more complicated. (The debate left Alan Alda sounding a lot like the presidential contender played by James Brolin earlier in the ''West Wing's'' run.) And I felt the same frustration I have felt at real debates when it seems that the guys aren't getting to the important stuff -- that a big issue like the economy isn't really being addressed (I guess things are better in Westwingworld), and that some things have just been dropped. A week ago, both sides were on a collision course over abortion and attack ads; what happened to that topic?

There was also the frustration with the moderator, real-life newsman Forrest Sawyer, who seemed to let these guys off the hook -- as real-life debate moderators have sometimes done. I would have cheered if only he had listened to Santos's bullet-regulating proposal and said, ''Gee, it sounds as if you're making policy based on a Chris Rock monologue.''

But I ended up feeling that this show was ''The West Wing's'' failure, not politics. Let politics take the rap for its own failings. Here we had a show that was once famous for taking big, complicated issues and turning them into human drama; in its big, November-sweeps dramatic gesture, it threw out humanity in favor of big, complicated noise.

Moreover, because it was live, it reminded us that in some ways politicians are better actors than people who get paid to act without holding elective office. No two presidential contenders, face to face on live TV, would hesitate and stumble as often as these guys did. Top pols are trained almost from birth that you always charge ahead. We see that all the time in the chatter on cable news; forget what point is being made, forget the challenge from the interviewer (if said challenge does occur), just keep charging. When I watched ''West Wing,'' I didn't see much of that kind of charge, and so wasn't very charged up.

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

11-07-05, 12:04 AM

This week’s Football in HD

This week there are nine college games in HD, and 11 NFL games in HD.

Of the college games, one involves two top-10 (#7 LSU at #3 Alabama) BCS teams; one features #11 Notre Dame, and another has #9 vs. #20. Also scheduled: #13 on the road as is #18.

In the NFL, however, there is just one game out of ten featuring two teams with winning records. Parity can have its downside.

The full HD football schedule is listed in the very first post of this thread.

fredfa

11-07-05, 10:45 AM

Live "West Wing" debate: The viewers won

By Ellen Gray Philadelphia Daily News

It says a lot about how much show business we already have in presidential politics that last night's live "debate" on NBC's "The West Wing" looked as much like the real thing as it did.

I'm not talking about moderator Forrest Sawyer - who used to work for ABC News and MSNBC - or even the misleading NBC News logo in the bottom right of the screen, which pretty much obliterated whatever's left of the line between news and entertainment at that network.

I'm talking about the "candidates" themselves, actors Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits, who, after weeks of preparation that must in some ways have resembled the work actual candidates do before debates, managed to go out there and, well, wing it.

Last month, "West Wing" executive producer John Wells had been telling reporters, "I hope we arrive at something that's not a version of business as usual."

Turns out that's harder than anyone could have imagined.

Sure, they threw out the time limits, but with Sawyer still asking the questions, and first Alda - who plays Republican candidate Arnold Vinick - and then Smits - who portrays Vinick's Democratic opponent, Matt Santos - both grabbing hand-held microphones and doing the now-popular Oprah walk toward the audience, all we really needed was an actor-turned-Republican-politician to say, "There you go again."

Which, come to think of it, Alda did at one point.

Alda, for those of you still used to thinking of the former "Hawkeye" Pierce as some pointy-headed liberal, has been doing a pretty convincing job playing a moderate Republican to less-than-packed houses on Sunday nights this fall, but this being "The West Wing," he's seemed at times like a Republican only a Democrat could love.

Last night, freed of some of the restraints of the show's writing staff, he showed Arnie Vinick's true colors - and did it so convincingly that even the real party's right wing might sit up and take notice.

Before anyone comes calling, though - I believe they call this acting.

Alda, who describes himself as an "independent," admits to a competitive streak, telling reporters, "It's hard to play any character and not want that character to get what he wants. I wanted to destroy Howard Hughes when I was in 'The Aviator.' "

Alda didn't destroy Smits - who introduced the live event's only real moments of spontaneity by occasionally stumbling over a word or two - but he did appear to out-talk him, something Smits (as Santos) had worried about at the beginning, when Vinick interrupted his own opening statement to suggest that they throw out the agreed-upon rules.

From that moment on, it was a fantasy evening for those who miss the wonky old "West Wing" of the Aaron Sorkin era, as Vinick and Santos served up serious facts about everything from Medicare (which according to Santos, is the most efficiently run health-care system in the country) to African economies (which Vinick argued were crippled by high taxes imposed as a direct result of our own country's supposed generosity).

I could have used one of those post-debate "truth squads" from time to time, but assuming the actors and the writers did their homework better than some of our real-life candidates have, there was much to be learned.

Too bad the real politicians spend even more time learning how to walk and talk like actors than these actors did learning their lessons.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television/13101672.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

fredfa

11-07-05, 10:57 AM

The new TV season
“Over There” a victim of current events

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News

(All time Pacific)

``Over There,'' the FX drama about the war in Iraq, has ended its tour of duty.

The cancellation was hardly unexpected but still is rather sad. The series, which focused on a company of soldiers on the front lines, may have had some detail issues, but it was riveting, often moving and intelligently made television. Its fans were devoted (there's already been a flood of e-mails bemoaning its end). There just weren't enough of us to keep it on the air.

If the message traffic I've gotten on ``Over There'' is any indication, there's nothing political about the low viewership. The series artfully avoided the red state/blue state trap, choosing to detail the lives of men and women in the military without polemic.

What hurt the show was something I feared from the beginning: People were unwilling to watch a drama about a war they were seeing in real time every night on the evening news. Many of the e-mails I got started with some variation of ``I really like the show, but it's just too hard to watch . . .''

As a result, the audience for ``Over There'' -- which started out at 4 million -- dropped under 1.5 million by what turned out to be its finale. That left FX with no choice but to pull the plug.

Networks and cable channels rarely issue press releases announcing cancellations, but FX did a refreshingly honest one for ``Over There,'' with president John Landgraf saying the decision was based solely on the ratings, ``rather than its quality or entertainment value.

``While we are passionately committed to fostering great television, we are an advertiser-supported network, and the size of our audience is vital to our bottom line.''

• A second departure this week that wasn't totally unexpected: Aaron Brown's exit from CNN and the end of his ``Newsnight'' show. It's been clear for some time that erudite Brown was not a favorite of CNN boss Jonathan Klein, while Anderson Cooper -- who now gets the 7 p.m. (PST) slot for his ``Anderson Cooper 360'' news show -- was Klein's pick to be the face of CNN.

The bottom line, though, is that Brown never clicked with viewers, the main reason he regularly got his clock cleaned by Greta Van Susteren's ``On the Record'' on Fox News. He is a smart guy, but he often came off as smug. When Darrell Hammond sent up Brown on a recent ``Saturday Night Live,'' his best line was ``I'm Aaron Brown and -- how can I put this? -- I am better than you.''

Just for the record, the new CNN weekday ``prime time'' (late afternoons on the West Coast) schedule -- which kicks in today -- has Lou Dobbs at 3 p.m., Wolf Blitzer's ``Situation Room'' at 4, ``Now'' with Paula Zahn at 5, ``Larry King Live'' at 6 and Cooper's show at 7 p.m. Somehow, I don't think the folks at Fox News are overly concerned by this new challenge.

• Another exit looming on the horizon: Fox's ``Prison Break'' (9 tonight, Fox). Say what? Isn't ``Prison Break'' a hit? Yes, but here's the story: The Nov. 28 episode of the compelling drama will be its ``fall finale.'' And it's a bit unclear when Fox will air the final nine episodes of the series' first season, although it may be in May, which would be one really long hiatus.

The problem for Fox is that, come January, ``24'' returns on Monday nights and ``House'' moves over to Mondays from its current Tuesday slot. And there is no other logical place to put ``Prison Break'' on the network's schedule.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/television/13102341.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

fredfa

11-07-05, 11:09 AM

Some Rupert Murdoch Comments

In a lengthy Wall Street Journal article overt the weekend, Rupert Murdoch had some interesting things to say regarding issues we often discuss….

“…Mr. Murdoch keeps a close eye on the techie subculture, though he professes not to be a gadget freak. He'll labor over a PC when necessary, and uses a mobile phone, but he "can't handle those damn palm things." He adds: "It doesn't matter that I'm not a technologist. I can hire them. What I've gotta know is what can it do for me, what can it do for the public, what it can do in the way of delivering content."

He appears unfazed by the steady dismantling of large network broadcast audiences by proliferating cable channels and the Internet. "There's no loyalty to channels. That went with the remote control," he says, but "a good show -- a truly popular television show -- will still get huge advertising. Special events like the World Series, or a show like 'American Idol,' will occasionally get very high advertising revenues." Not even the proliferation of digital video recording, making it easy for viewers to skip ads, seems to have him particularly worried: "The people who have it tend to be watching five more hours of TV a week. They're playing the shows they missed. I don't think it affects sports broadcasting. I doubt it will affect news broadcasting much."

In buying DirecTV two years ago, Mr. Murdoch enlarged his already big bet on satellite television. But while the technology is great at sending oodles of high-definition TV channels, its weak point is a lack of interactivity for video-on-demand and broadband Internet. Mr. Murdoch himself expects that when consumers get their hands on new HD home video cameras, they'll be clamoring for two-way bandwidth -- meaning he's got a strategic nut to crack. "Here [in the U.S.], we don't know. We may be forming a company with partners to build something out here that would give you broadband," he says….”

fredfa

11-07-05, 11:19 AM

Sundays prime-time ratings – and Media Week Analyst Marc Berman’s opinions of what they mean -- have been posted at the top of Ratings News the second post in this thread.

fredfa

11-07-05, 11:58 AM

Martha Stewart Live

NBC will end the run of “Apprentice: Martha Stewart” with a two-hour live finale Dec. 21. The program will begin at 8 PM ET/PT.

George Thompson

11-07-05, 12:44 PM

NBC UNIVERSAL AND DIRECTV ANNOUNCE FIRST EVER ON DEMAND DEAL FOR PRIMETIME NETWORK PROGRAMMING

Top NBC Universal Content On Demand for $0.99

Englewood Cliffs, NJ and El Segundo, CA - November 7, 2005 - NBC Universal (NBCU) and DIRECTV, Inc., today announced a first of its kind agreement that will give consumers access to the top programs of NBC and its cable entertainment networks, USA, SCI FI and Bravo, within hours after they air, commercial free, for just 99 cents. The programs will be available on demand through the new DIRECTV Plus interactive DVR.

This multi-year agreement will give the primetime on demand rights to NBC Universal TV programs, such as "Law & Order: SVU," "Law & Order: CI," "The Office," "Monk," "Surface" and "Battlestar Galactica." The programs will be available until the following week's episode airs. NBC Universal's movies and TV events will also be available through DIRECTV Plus, and on pay-per-view (PPV).

"The way people are consuming content is changing," said David Zaslav, President, NBC Universal Cable. "Through this agreement with DIRECTV, consumers will be able to watch top NBC content on demand for just $0.99, when they want, without commercials. It's a huge sea change. This deal is the first of its kind and we value DIRECTV's partnership in rolling it out."

"We are thrilled to be able to make some of the best and most watched programs in all of television, both network and cable, even more readily available to viewers," said Jeff Zucker, President, NBC Universal Television Group. "We are extremely aware that viewers can't always watch these programs when they're originally scheduled, and this will give them far more control over when they're able to see these shows."

"DIRECTV and NBC are the first to offer viewers primetime programming on demand, and this agreement furthers DIRECTV's position as a technology and programming leader supporting our commitment to deliver the best television experience available anywhere," said Chase Carey, president and CEO, DIRECTV, Inc. "DVRs have fundamentally changed the way people watch television, giving viewers greater choice, control and convenience. We will take the DVR experience to new levels by offering the widest array of network primetime programming available on demand."

The DIRECTV Plus DVR will be available at retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City this month. DIRECTV Plus will be the most advanced DVR available with features such as 100 hours of recording capacity, interactive functionality, one-touch recording and Viewmarks, which enable viewers to mark favorite places in recorded programs and jump directly to them.

The NBC TV programs that are available are some of the highest rated shows on television. "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" opened its seventh season on NBC with its highest season-premiere numbers ever. This season, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" is building on its "West Wing" lead-in by 52 percent in adults 18-49. "Surface" is averaging a 3.9 rating, 9 share in adults 18-49 and 8.0 million viewers this season to keep it a solid #2 in 18-49 in the competitive Monday 8-9 p.m. ET hour. "Battlestar Galactica" leads SCI FI Channel's high-powered Friday lineup, which consistently wins the night among all cable networks when the SCI FI schedule is in first-run. "Monk" was cable's #1 Friday series last summer and its July 8 season premiere was the #2 basic-cable original-series telecast of the entire third quarter. In its second season, "The Office" continues to deliver some of the most upscale audiences for any comedy on network television.

About NBC Universal
NBC Universal is one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80%-owned by General Electric, with 20% controlled by Vivendi Universal.

About DIRECTV, Inc.
DIRECTV, Inc. is the nation's leading digital multichannel television service with more than 15 million customers. DIRECTV and the Cyclone Design logo are registered trademarks of DIRECTV, Inc. DIRECTV (NYSE: DTV) is a world-leading provider of digital multichannel television entertainment services. DIRECTV is approximately 34 percent owned by News Corporation.

Contacts:
Alyssa Donelan
NBC Universal Cable
(201) 735-3568

Bob Marsocci
DIRECTV, Inc.
(310) 726-4656

fredfa

11-07-05, 12:59 PM

The affiliates may not be at all happy with this -- but I believe it will be possible to downlaod almost any content you want from any network or studio within the next couple of years.

HDTVChallenged

11-07-05, 01:15 PM

The affiliates may not be at all happy with this -- but I believe it will be possible to downlaod almost any content you want from any network or studio within the next couple of years.

Well ... I have a feeling that very little of this content will be in HD. Thus, it would be of little interest to me.

Has anyone actually filled up a 1000 (or 10000) song iPod at $1.00 a pop? :D

keenan

11-07-05, 01:26 PM

The affiliates may not be at all happy with this -- but I believe it will be possible to downlaod almost any content you want from any network or studio within the next couple of years.
Yup, this sort of non-broadcast, non-commercial, content delivery system is becoming a reality much faster than I would have thought. I didn't see HD mentioned, but I would easily pay $.99 to view Battlestar Galactica in HD without commercials. Even in an age of DVRs, the ability to pay for non-commercial versions of certain shows is definitely attractive.

keenan

11-07-05, 01:33 PM

Well ... I have a feeling that very little of this content will be in HD. Thus, it would be of little interest to me.

If it's not in HD, I wouldn't be interested in it either. But since these shows are shot for HD anyway I think they would be missing a golden opportunity to move HD into the realm of premium content, something that I think is going to happen eventually anyway in some form or the other.

This type of delivery can go even further as Mark Cuban talked about in an earlier post here. Imagine seeing the latest movie releases at home, in HD. I would pay maybe $4-6 for that in a minute.

fredfa

11-07-05, 01:51 PM

They will be in HD pretty soon. When the demand is there, it will be taken care of.

fredfa

11-07-05, 02:03 PM

(From Marc Berman’s Monday, November 7, 2005 “Mr. Television” column at Mediaweek.com )
Desperate Situation

By Marc Berman

The ratings for ABC's Desperate Housewives—24.4 million viewers with a first-place 11.9 rating/24 share season-to-date among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen Media Research—lead you to believe the show will be flourishing for years. But life at Wisteria Lane has taken a premature turn for the worse. And viewers will only tune in for so long hoping to recapture the early magic, which has all but evaporated in year two.

Unlike Knots Landing, a show with similar appeal that each year managed to find a season-long plot to incorporate all the core characters (and did so quite effectively for 13 of its 14 seasons), the biggest problem with Desperate Housewives is the lack of continuity. It has failed to come up with an ongoing story line that would set the stage for year two, with the four female leads scattered in their own, often monotonous worlds.

Only Marcia Cross as icy widower Bree Van de Kamp has connected this season, and that is because of guest star Shirley Knight as her calculating mother-in-law. If I were Cross (who was robbed in September) and Knight, I would get my Emmy acceptance speeches ready (for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy).

Surprisingly, none of the core female characters have had much airtime together, including the trademark card game that anchored the show each week in season one. Even when these women were knee-deep in their own troubles, there was a connection between the four. This season, they barely seem to know each other, and the secondary male characters have morphed into nothing more than pathetic caricatures. By unnecessarily killing off Rex (Stephen Culp), Bree's kinky hubby, the writers also cut off the most complex relationship on the series.

This season, workingwoman Lynette (Emmy winner Felicity Huffman) is busy trying to outsmart her nasty boss (the abysmal Joely Fisher). Selfish and pregnant Gabrielle (the overexposed Eva Longoria) is busy starting ludicrous prison riots. The writers don't seem to know what to do with ditzy Susan (Teri Hatcher) in her on-again/off-again relationship with wooden James Denton as Mike Delfino. And sassy sexpot Nicollette Sheridan, who rejuvenated Knots Landing in seasons eight and beyond, is grossly underused as Edie.

Instead of focusing on the characters we have come to know and love, the addition of Alfre Woodard as the mysterious Betty Applewhite, her son Matthew (who should be bait for promiscuous Gabrielle) and the disturbed man they have locked in their basement only adds to the separation. What do we need them for? Their presence only takes away from valuable airtime.

While it's not unusual to see an established show lose its way, or add new faces, the fall from grace and overpopulation on Wisteria Lane in season two is way too soon. When Knots Landing "jumped the shark," it did so in season 13, after 303 episodes (and it was Sheridan who spoke to series creator Michael Filerman about her concerns). Desperate Housewives has jumped, and it's only a mere 20-something episodes into the series.

So, what does Desperate Housewives need to do to get back on track?

First, go back to the well and find a new mystery for the women to solve. Start up the poker game again. Send Lynette to the unemployment line so she will be home dealing with those rambunctious kids. Send Lynette's boring househusband Tom back to work. Have Rex haunt Bree in her dreams. And bring Susan and Mike officially together. Since the one thing the women were good at doing was helping each other, how about some support for Gabrielle, who needs to deal with her pregnancy already? Better yet, how about killing off Carlos, framing Gabrielle and setting up an ongoing plot to unravel who is trying to hurt Gaby.

Is it John, her jilted lover? John's gay roommate, who Carlos once beat up? Mama Solis, her supposedly dead mother-in-law? The spoiled little brat across the street? Foxy Edie? That kook Betty Applewhite is hiding in the basement? Betty Applewhite?

If series creator Marc Cherry would take off the tap shoes (yes, he's a great dancer) and pick up the pen, maybe the show we once all loved won't seem so desperate in season two. If I can come up with an ongoing story line, so can Housewives' overrated writers. If they need some help, call Knots Landing creator Michael Filerman. Based on his background, he'll get the job done.

jim tressler

11-07-05, 02:05 PM

heck.. you can do that now... how do you think I caught up with my new favorite show prision break last week :)

The affiliates may not be at all happy with this -- but I believe it will be possible to downlaod almost any content you want from any network or studio within the next couple of years.

fredfa

11-07-05, 02:07 PM

You DL'd it in HD, Jim?

jim tressler

11-07-05, 02:12 PM

they are dvix (mpeg4) versions from an ota hd source... looks decent on a 51" crt rptv - not quite dvd quality, but close - using ffdshow makes it dvd quality - file sizes are about 350mb per hour .. recently I found hr versions that are are around 700mb for 1 hour - they are dvd quality without using ffdshow. - of course this is my opinion, so everyones mileage will vary :)

fredfa

11-07-05, 02:20 PM

Grokster to shut down

This is way, way off topic, but could be of interest to some of you.

The Associated Press is now reporting that it has learned that “Grokster Ltd., a leading developer of Internet file-sharing software popular for stealing songs and movies online, agreed Monday to shut down operations to settle a landmark piracy case filed by Hollywood and the music industry.”

According to the AP, “The surprise settlement permanently bans Grokster from participating directly or indirectly in the theft of copyrighted files and requires the company to stop giving away its software, according to people familiar with the agreement. They spoke on condition of anonymity because settlement details were to be disclosed to a federal judge later in the day in Los Angeles.”

fredfa

11-07-05, 02:26 PM

How "Lost" reinvented television

By Joanna Weiss The Boston Globe November 6, 2005

Around the time he glimpsed the shark with the tattoo, a rabid "Lost" fan named Elan Lee knew there was something different going on: This was a TV show that liked its audience.

Really liked its audience -- enough to reward it with treats that only devoted viewers would catch. The shark, which appeared in the season's second episode, had a logo on its fin that showed up elsewhere in the show, a possibly significant clue in the "Lost" mythology. It was the sort of thing you'd only see if you froze the frame and watched very, very closely. If you were looking for just this sort of trick. And if you had a community of fellow viewers doing the same thing.

To a sizable portion of its audience, ABC's Emmy-winning drama -- the tale of a group of plane-crash survivors, stranded on a strange desert island -- has become a different way of experiencing TV. To its most devoted followers, "Lost" -- which returns from a two-week break Wednesday -- is part metaphysics seminar, part jigsaw puzzle, part scavenger hunt. It's a collaborative experience, a game to be played and shared. And an acknowledgment that, even on network TV, the audience can have power, too.

"It's really interesting to see how the show and the writers are trying to put in a bunch of extra little goodies for only them," Lee says. "They feel like the more they poke at this bizarre thing, the more it pokes back."

Lee should know; most of the time, these days, he's poking from the other side.

As director and lead designer at 42 Entertainment, a marketing company based in Emeryville, Calif., Lee is a pioneer of the "alternate reality game," or ARG, and it's the medium that "Lost" most closely resembles.

The ARG is a fast-evolving form of storytelling with millions of devotees. The principals at 42 Entertainment devised what many consider to be the first full-fledged ARG in 2001, when they worked at Microsoft. Steven Spielberg had come to the company -- which had bought the video-game rights for his upcoming film "AI" -- with a request for an unconventional marketing campaign.

Lee and his co-workers devised an Internet-based game. They never mentioned the film itself, but they created a story, loosely connected to the world of the film, and left it for the audience to uncover. The programmers spent six months constructing a narrative, breaking it into a million fragments and hiding it on nearly 1,000 Web pages laced with clues, along with certain spots in the physical world.

Solving the puzzle -- which came to be known, in-house, as "The Beast" -- called for knowledge in areas diverse and arcane. It required collaboration, a network of shared ideas and expertise, the sort of collective entity The Beast's designers called the "hive mind."

And the hive mind was smart. The mystery was supposed to unfold over nine months, but "the audience had completely stripped it bare in three days," Stewart says.

That's an axiom of the ARG, which "Lost" producers seem to have taken to heart: The audience is wise and must be followed. It might not know the ending, but it still can drive the story.

"We have time and time again found audiences really latching onto a character or latching onto a particular theme in a narrative that we were going to downplay," Lee says. "And all of a sudden we let that become the focus of the second or third act of our story."

This is an intense form of participation, to be sure. But Stewart and Lee imagine it could be the future of entertainment. And, in the context of a show like "Lost," it could be the future of TV, says MIT media studies professor Henry Jenkins, author of the forthcoming book "Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Intersect."

With "Lost," "I think the cult audience is the leading edge," Jenkins says. "It's experiencing a new kind of power and a new kind of knowledge that's only possible when you combine the Internet with television."

The "Lost"-ARG analogy isn't perfect, of course. As Jenkins points out, The Beast and its successors are self-conscious games, devised with a clear expectation of what the audience would do. In the case of "Lost," he says, the viewers started the process. "This is something that audiences are demanding, not something that is thrust upon them," Jenkins says.

"Lost" creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof started by plotting a "mythological roadmap" that answered the show's central questions, says Carlton Cuse, the show's co-executive producer. But he says the producers conceived the show as a character drama.

But as it became clear that the mythology had sparked fan obsession, Cuse says, the show began to adapt. Producers weren't sure, for instance, how viewers would react to the six possibly magical numbers that have showed up on a lottery ticket, in a transmitted radio message, and on the door to a buried hatch. But when the idea created a fervor "we spent more time on that aspect of the mythology," Cuse says.

This second season, loyal viewers say, they've noticed more deliberate nods to the audience base, acknowledgment that many are watching with DVR remotes at the ready, prepared to rewind, freeze-frame and slo-mo to home in on possible clues. The rewards for such intensity include the tattooed shark -- which required a certain level of collaboration to spread through the fan base.

The writers have also been more overt about dropping hints -- or red herrings -- in the public arena. A few weeks ago, in a newspaper report, a "Lost" writer hinted that viewers should check an upcoming episode for a reference to the 1940s British novel "The Third Policeman." (Its main character is dead but doesn't know it.) Paperback sales of the book quickly spiked. But in the episode in question, the book was little more than a passing flash. And Cuse won't say what that means.

The book "was carefully chosen as a way to suggest a possible theory about what was going on on the island," he says. "Does it mean that was real, or does it mean that we were just teasing the audience and being sort of self-referential?"

"You have to watch because you're enjoying the journey, not because you are waiting for the endgame," Cuse says.

http://www.statesman.com/life/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/life_entertainment_34c686702355f1e00053.html

keenan

11-07-05, 02:34 PM

Grokster to shut down

Nice juxtaposition from the previous post. :D :D

fredfa

11-07-05, 02:37 PM

Hi-Definitely a Sharper “GMA”

By Michele Greppi TVWeek.com November 7, 2005

Ever since she watched the eye-popping, crystal-clear opening shots of New York's Times Square as "Good Morning America" opened the hi-def era for network news with last Thursday's broadcast, all The Insider wants for Christmas is her HDTV.

The view from the couch in "GMA's" green room, where a standard TV hung from one wall and a flat-screen HDTV hung from another, can be summed up in three words: Fab. U. Lous.

Or as co-anchor Charlie Gibson put it: "The 'America' in 'Good Morning America' is going to look so much better."

Everything popped, from the Chyrons (which sported a thin blue top edge on the familiar combo of "GMA" orange and yellow strips) to the wildly tie-dyed T-shirts the ABC morning show handed out to members of the crowd that gathered outside the 6-year-old studio for a street concert by Carlos Santana; from the crisp Manhattan skyline shots to the extended "GMA" family's assorted skin tones (now air-brushed instead of pancaked).

"This is for light-skinned black weathermen [only]," Tony Perkins joked as WABC-TV anchor Bill Ritter popped into the middle of a segment with Mr. Perkins' predecessor, Spencer Christian.

The decision to change formats was made four months ago. ABC's special projects VP Roger Goodman worked with California architect-designer Steve Bass to give the studio a new look that plays with variations on the "GMA" family of colors-ambers and sands and oranges and reds-with texture and depth everywhere.

It took less than a week to install, test out and touch up the upstairs set that was unveiled Thursday. (While the "GMA" control room was being upgraded, the show's executive producer Ben Sherwood called the shots from a truck.)

Hours after the maiden HD broadcast, Mr. Goodman said, work began on the conversion of the street-level studio area at the ABC Times Square Studios, which will look more like a home recreation room than the subway station it originally was modeled after. That area is likely to be unveiled on-air by Tuesday.

Mr. Goodman pronounced himself "very, very happy" after Thursday's show.

Because the rectangular HD image is horizontal, like letterbox format or a theater screen, the camera captures more expanse. That means crew members on the floor have to be farther away to ensure they are not accidentally in the picture. Mr. Goodman was particularly tickled to see that a shot of one of the couch areas, which he expected to accommodate only four people, in fact easily framed six adults (and one child each on two of the laps).

Mr. Goodman also ordered up a larger version of "GMA's" familiar weathered-wood American flag.

As cake was cut and champagne was poured after the show Thursday, "GMA" executive producer Ben Sherwood said, "Everybody's going to follow us."

http://www.tvweek.com/article.cms?articleId=28960

fredfa

11-07-05, 02:56 PM

Now it is Comcast and CBS

Earlier today it was DirecTV and NBC detailing their VOD plans, and now CBS and Comcast have announced that “CSI”, “The Amazing Race”, “Survivor” and “NCIS” will be available on demand on Comcast systems.

The VOD effort begins in January in the CBS O&O markets. Some of the shows maybe be available in HD.

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:39 PM

“West Wing”: What a debate should be

By Ken Parish Perkins Fort Worth Star-Telegram TV Critic

Even in the purest of forms, live episodes of television series are nothing more than shrewdly conceived gimmicks. What's the lure, really, besides the voyeuristic sensation of a chance to see a tumble off a high wire?

Shows inserting live episodes often fall into one of two categories: the successful series flaunting its superiority or the drowning series in need of a life preserver.

The West Wing, once the former and now the latter, was on display last night, and except for the look of the series -- a bland video feel instead of the more classy film style -- there wasn't much to distinguish this episode from any other. Co-creator and executive producer John Wells, who pulled off a live episode with his ER cast a few seasons back after the constant urging of star George Clooney, needed no such nagging this time. He thought that a live debate between the two presidential hopefuls, Democrat Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), was the perfect way to tiptoe around the embarrassing truth that this once-proud political drama is hurting for viewers.

American Express underwrote the episode, preventing the chance of inappropriate commercials destroying the more serious vibe (although making Ellen DeGeneres a commercial-break spokeswoman was odd and a little annoying). The sponsorship also enabled Wells to go forth in something close to real time.

Written by Lawrence O'Donnell and directed by Alex Graves, the entire episode showed Santos and Vinick debating at the podium but not as we normally watch real candidates in real debates. This is, after all, television. Seconds into the first question by NBC newsman Forrest Sawyer (his fine performance gave fuel to my long-held belief that there's no line separating TV newspeople and actors), Vinick shrugged and called for a real debate without the rules that turn candidates into stiff poles and boring television.

The West Wing couldn't have staged a debate in which each candidate had three minutes for speechifying and two for rebuttal, or whatever the rules are. That sort of thing sends viewers in search of life on cable.

Instead, Santos and Vinick gave us a schoolyard fight, complete with name-calling ("You're a liar," Santos yelled at Vinick), anger and a fiery debate over the meaning of the word liberal. It was the sort of thing we would never get to see in a real debate.

"Republicans have tried to turn 'liberal' into a bad word," Santos said. "Well, liberals ended slavery in this country."

Vinick: "A Republican president ended slavery."

Santos: "Yes, a liberal Republican, Senator. What happened to them?"

The West Wing pulled off what it does so well: present a highly idealized view of the workings of government and have viewers say that, while it may not be realistic, it certainly feels real and right, and if this isn't what a debate is like, it's what it should be like.

When Vinick complained of the debate rules, "What can you say in 30 seconds?" it's exactly what we say every campaign season.

At one point Santos left the podium, was handed a microphone and talked to the audience from the stage, tackling gun control, health care and his chance of becoming the first Latino president. When Vinick followed, Sawyer asked, "You gentlemen aren't going to go out in the audience, are you?"

The West Wing might be taking its last breath, even while it's having its most vibrant season creatively. But even if this campaign strategy doesn't lure viewers back into the tent, we'll at least know that Wells and company sent us on quite a ride for its swan song.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/entertainment/television/13102928.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:43 PM

“West Wing” rivals come off badly

'THE WEST WING: THE DEBATE' / Zero stars
By Doug Elfman Chicago Sun-Times Television Critic November 7, 2005

Sunday night's live episode of "The West Wing" stunk so bad, the stench may have polluted everything it touched, including my ability to write about it. It was P.U. stinky, like a baby's diaper or a dog's breath.

It wasn't even an episode as much as it was an "event"; that's the word NBC employed in commercials. The show's two candidates for president, Sen. Arnold Vinick (R-Alan Alda) and Rep. Matt Santos (D-Jimmy Smits) debated live for an hour, answering questions from an actual newsie, Forrest Sawyer.

Making matters worse, the NBC News logo was pasted on the bottom of the TV screen, a slip of NBC's separation of fact and fantasy. Then again, before the show, NBC News aired a laughable undercover-camera investigation on "Dateline" about how people can buy more than two beers at sporting events. So I'm not sure the logo debacle is worse.

Sunday's event may have seemed like a good idea to someone at the network, because NBC moved "The West Wing" to Sundays this season and lost confused viewers. Unfortunately, "The Debate" was an artistic shot to both feet of a fairly intriguing **1/2 season.

The actors looked like anything but well-rehearsed candidates. They moved awkwardly. They stumbled over dialogue. Camera operators were seen walking around. And a camera view from behind the studio audience made it look as though this were a set and not a town hall.

Even the strongest thing about "The West Wing" normally -- its fanciful version of politics -- seemed unbelievable. This season, Alda has done a great job of selling a fairy tale, that his Republican Vinick is an abortion-rights supporter who privately refers to anti-abortion-rights forces as "religious nuts" that want to "enact their version of Leviticus into law."

But in this debate, the issue wasn't even raised. Say what?

There was one good speech liberals everywhere have been waiting decades for a real presidential candidate to make. After Vinick sneered about liberals, Santos responded that liberals ended segregation, won for women and African-Americans the right to vote, created Social Security, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act and the Clean Water Act.

"What did conservatives do? They opposed every single one of those things," Santos said.

Conservatives complain "The West Wing" is liberal, yet Alda and the script writers have turned Vinick into a mostly sensible, likable and presidential wannabe. But on Sunday, Vinick seemed like a crotchety Bob Dole, high on several pots of coffee and frothing to drill for oil in Alaska: "I'm sure it's a beautiful place. ... Clap if you've been to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Uh, it's called a refuge because it's reserved for non-people.

And Santos came across like Bill Clinton on two pots of coffee, openly eager to raise some taxes.

Before this episode, both men seemed to be viable candidates in a fictional world. On Friday, a real Zogby poll showed "West Wing" viewers were inclined to vote for Santos over Vinick, 59 percent to 29 percent.

Now, though, it's easier to imagine swing viewers voting for someone not on the "West Wing" ticket: the woman president played by Geena Davis on ABC's new "Commander in Chief."

http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi?getReferrer=http://www.suntimes.com/output/elfman/cst-ftr-elf07.html

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:46 PM

“West Wing” debate lively in second half

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday, November 07, 2005

Live TV episodes have become more about creating a promotional, hype-filled opportunity to shine a light on a series than any particular grasp for new artistic heights. They're sometimes less contrived than others -- a live TV crew in the "ER"! -- other times not ("Will & Grace" was live for no discernible reason in September).

But the concept around the live episode of NBC's "The West Wing" last night made sense: If ever there was to be a live episode, a presidential debate at least lends itself to the format.

Nevertheless, much of last night's hour did feel like an eat-your-vegetables episode of "The West Wing." If you're a policy wonk, a political obsessive, the hour was a feast. But to those who tune in for the mix of political idealism and character drama, it began as a lopsided let down: Lots of boring back-and-forth, not much revealed about the characters.

The debate between fictional presidential candidates -- Republican Sen. Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Democratic Rep. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) -- was full of big ideas, as Vinick convinced the moderator (real-life newsman Forrest Sawyer as himself) and Santos to forsake the agreed-upon debate rules for something more open and revealing.

Written by Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. and directed by Alex Graves, executive producers of the series, the script had Santos and Vinick arguing over how to deal with illegal immigration, tax cuts, ways to improve education, the same issues that we hear about every four years. Every now and then, perhaps in an attempt to draw back viewers who got bored and started reading a magazine, a bit of drama was added (a heckler here, the audience booing there).

But it wasn't until the second half of the hour that the debate got interesting and the two candidates posed what were, if not new arguments, certainly not mainstream political talking points.

Vinick suggested no one but the rich visit the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, making it an OK place to drill for oil; he also offered a thought-provoking argument that high-cost prescription drugs are still less expensive than the surgery that used to be required to treat ailments that drugs can now cure.

Santos defended the term "liberal," reminding Vinick it was a liberal Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who is credited with ending slavery, and he wondered what happened to the Republican Party that it no longer will entertain the idea of liberal Republicans.

"When you try to hurl that label at my feet as if it's something to run away from, I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor," Santos said.

In those moments, the live "West Wing" was electric, but it took a while to get there.

As to the live element, it didn't really add much. The episode could have been stronger, better produced and with a less dull first half, if it had been filmed in advance as usual. The hour was scripted, so it's not like the actors were really debating. They had been prepped on their positions in addition to the script, but even the possibly spontaneous moments might not have been. (Did Alda really forget to shake Smits' hand at the outset or was it scripted that he forgot?)

Another thing the episode did was confuse its fictional "West Wing" universe with the real world. Using the NBC News "Live" logo in the lower left corner of the screen was certainly questionable. (Does the network really want to use its news division's icon in the service of realism on a TV drama?) But more baffling was the decision to allow real-world references into the fictional universe of "The West Wing," which, aside from the critically-panned post-9/11 episode, has always taken pains to be a little bit removed from the America of former President Bill Clinton and President George H.W. Bush. But there were references to real-world politics, including the high price of gas and the Republican governor of Illinois' suspension of executions of criminals, which made the debate more about the real issues that divide America than about the characters in the show.

As a stickler for continuity, I'd rather see the series deal with issues that face the real world in a way that didn't step outside the textured world "The West Wing" has built since its inception.

I'm not sure I have a strong sense of which fictional candidate won this debate. Underdog Santos probably did better than viewers expected, but I've always been partial to Vinick, simply because for dramatic purposes installing a moderate Republican president offers more new story possibilities for the show going forward. But demographically, NBC will want Santos to win because Smits is considerably younger than Alda. Either way, it probably won't matter. Given the show's disappointing Sunday night ratings, chances are it won't return after this season.

So I guess the real winner was television and, by extension, viewers. Real-life issues were brought to a prime-time national audience by two smart characters that were more familiar with these issues than some real-life candidates appear to be. And they explored these issues in greater depth and with intelligent arguments on both sides, so different from what Americans saw in the last real-life presidential election debates. Once again, "The West Wing" proved itself to be an idealized political fantasy land.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05311/601952.stm

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:49 PM

A Debatable Ploy by NBC

Live 'West Wing' Earns No Points for Substance

By Tom Shales Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 7, 2005; C01

A moderately bewildering exercise in exceptional acting and lily-livered irrelevancy, last night's special episode of the NBC drama series "The West Wing" was designed to inject some much-needed zip into what has become a stubbornly buzzless old warhorse. The experiment was a failure, yet not a complete waste of time.

Televised "live," except for some prefatory filmed scenes, "The Debate" pitted Jimmy Smits as Rep. Matt Santos (D-Tex.) against Alan Alda as Sen. Arnold Vinick (R-Calif.) in an imitation of what Dan Rather always insisted on calling "joint appearances" by presidential candidates. They weren't really debates, Rather contended, and shouldn't be called that.

This issue was faced squarely almost as soon as the show began, with Vinick suggesting to his opponent that they "junk the rules" -- which inhibit spontaneity and meaningful exchanges -- and forget all those two-minute limits for this and three-minute limits for that. Santos agreed, saying, "Let's have a real debate."

Thus "West Wing's" faux debate, it could be argued, was more "real" in some ways than the real debates have been.

Unfortunately the show's writers then proceeded to squander the novelty of their attention-getting gimmick by avoiding almost any semblance of controversy, ending up with an hour that lent itself to catnaps. Instead of having the candidates argue about actual and urgent issues of the moment -- terrorism, the Patriot Act, politicization of the Supreme Court nominating process and, of course, the faltering war in Iraq -- Vinick and Santos chatted about generic generalities.

They discussed tax cuts for the rich, public vs. private education, health care, global warming, gun control, job training -- say, when is this election supposedly taking place? 1994? 1984? 1974? At times the participants strayed from the safe and sane and into the arguably cuckoo, as when Vinick tried to make some point about the tax rates in Africa and later, addressing the hired studio audience, directed them to "clap if you've been to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

When his health plan was criticized by Santos, Vinick said, as no candidate in his right mind would ever say, "To tell you the truth, I'm not crazy about my health care plan, either."

There were no big bombshell moments of unexpected melodrama except for a brief disruption from a disgruntled crank in the crowd. He was hurriedly hustled out. Santos made reference to such relatively hot-button topics as corporate chicanery, but there was no follow-up either by the candidates or from Forrest Sawyer, the real-life journalist who capably played moderator. When the candidates called for hand microphones so they could be freed from their lecterns, Sawyer asked them, "Gentlemen, you're not going out into the audience, are you?" That at least was funny.

The "West Wing" debate was hardly the first experiment in what might be called trompe l'oeil television. It's a trick derived from the infamous and glorious Orson Welles radio prank, "The War of the Worlds," wherein large portions of the public mistook a drama for a newscast because the drama was written in newscast style. Hundreds of people in New Jersey and elsewhere ran from their homes with, Welles later recalled, "towels over their heads," because they thought his fake report about Martians landing on Earth was the real thing.

In March of 1983, Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who would later create the series "thirtysomething," invoked the legend of Welles and his broadcast when they produced "Special Bulletin," which looked like an actual breaking-news report on an incident of nuclear terrorism and blackmail in Charleston, S.C. While there were no reports of people running from their homes under cover of towel, journalism professors and media moralists furrowed their brows and worried loudly about the propriety of fooling the public.

One big difference between that telecast and last night's artificial debate: In 1983 the NBC News division stayed as far away as possible from "Special Bulletin" and got network censors to issue an order requiring frequent on-screen disclaimers that told viewers they were watching a drama, not a news program.

Throughout the "debate," however, the logo of NBC News sat prominently superimposed in the lower right hand corner of the screen. This is a small sign of how standards at the news division have deteriorated over the years, and an indication that maintaining the line between news and entertainment is no longer much of a priority -- at NBC or, for that matter, at CBS or ABC.

And the all-news cable networks have hardly raised standards, either. "The Debate" was not a comment on broadcast news, however, or the media in general, or really on anything. It was raised to the level of event not by its style or content but by Alda and Smits's outstanding, hyper-telegenic performances. Alda has become especially impressive in what might indelicately be called his old age, and Smits offered a strikingly earnest, youthful contrast. The men had to stay in character and be TV debaters at the same time.

That effort, at least, could be labeled Mission Accomplished. But the other key components of "The Debate" were Mission Kerfloogled. What sounded bold and gripping in NBC promos proved limp and wimpy on the air -- shilly-shallying in a namby-pamby way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/06/AR2005110601426_pf.html

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:51 PM

Nice juxtaposition from the previous post. :D :D

I thought I would leave that unspoken!

(But I should have known I wouldn't get away with it.)

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:56 PM

Comcast, CBS Hook Up in VOD Pact

By Matt Stump MultiChannel News

Hours after NBC announced a primetime-programming-download deal with DirecTV Inc., Comcast Corp. announced that it will offer four CBS shows -- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, Survivor and The Amazing Race -- on VOD for 99 cents per episode within hours after the programs air.

This marks the first time Comcast has budged on the issue of charging subscribers for basic or primetime TV programming on its video-on-demand platform.

The CBS programs will premiere in January on the network’s owned-and-operated television stations. After ordering, consumers will have 24 hours in which to watch the programs. Comcast also said certain systems may make CSI and NCIS available in HD for customers with HD-enabled Comcast digital-cable set-top boxes.

Prior to the March debut of new episodes of Survivor and The Amazing Race, viewers will be able to order the fall-2005 episodes of those programs.

“Video-on-demand has fundamentally changed the way people watch TV, and now, for the first time, the most popular primetime CBS programming will be available to our customers,” Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said in a prepared statement.

“This is an incredibly exciting evolution for CBS and network television,” CBS chairman and Viacom Inc. co-chief operating officer Leslie Moonves added. “Video-on-demand is the next frontier for our industry, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Comcast in taking this giant, positive leap forward. We’re offering hit programming that is extremely well-suited for this new medium.”

fredfa

11-07-05, 03:59 PM

A question:

Am I just hopelessly tech-deficient?

I know that all kinds of media executives (especially at Comcast) get weak at the knees when they think about VOD, but I wonder why anyone would pay to watch a TV show he or she easily could have recorded via DVR for free?

fredfa

11-07-05, 04:09 PM

NBC orders a full-season pickup for “The Office”

(NBC Press Release)

BURBANK, Calif. -- November 7, 2005 -- NBC has given "The Office" (Tuesdays, 9:30-10 p.m. ET) -- the critically acclaimed comedy starring Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin") -- a new lease for a full-season order of episodes for 2005-06, it was announced today by Kevin Reilly, President, NBC Entertainment.

"We're thrilled to extend such a viewer and critical favorite as 'The Office,' which is a breath of creative fresh air," said Reilly. "We think the combination of 'Earl' and 'The Office' on Tuesday nights is one of the funniest hours in network television each week. It's immensely gratifying to see our faith in the show validated as viewers start to gravitate towards its quirky characters and offbeat humor."

"We used to be a cult hit," said executive producer Greg Daniels, "and now we're becoming an actual cult. Here's some literature we'd like you to read."

"The Office" is averaging a 3.9 rating and a 9 share among adults 18-49 with 8.0 million viewers overall this season, and is leading its time period among adults 18-34. The acclaimed comedy's adult 18-49 audience includes the second-highest concentration of households with incomes of $100,000 and more for any comedy on network television behind only "Will & Grace."

In the last two weeks, "The Office" has also delivered its two highest retentions yet of its adult 18-49 lead-in from "My Name Is Earl," a 73 percent retention on October 18 and a 71 percent retention on November 1. "The Office" is up significantly from its averages for last season, including a 56 percent increase over its 2.5 average rating in 18-49 for 2004-05.

Adam Tyner

11-07-05, 04:36 PM

I know that all kinds of media executives (especially at Comcast) get weak at the knees when they think about VOD, but I wonder why anyone would pay to watch a TV show he or she easily could have recorded via DVR for free?I didn't think about watching Entourage until a co-worker of mine said how much he liked it. The season was half over by that point, but thanks to VOD, I was able to catch up with everything from the second season along with a good bit of the first. I didn't DVR the show at first because it never occurred to me that Entourage might be any good, but I kept up with it from that point on. Probably wouldn't have bothered if not for VOD.

For people who have DVRs where space is at a premium (the Moxi DVRs, for instance), VOD is also attractive. Some people have two-tuner DVRs and are already recording two shows at a particular time -- VOD would let them watch a third or, as time goes on, maybe even a fifth or sixth. You also have a lot of people who have digital STBs but no DVR that would benefit.

...although admittedly those advantages would carry quite a bit more weight if you didn't have to pay a buck a pop. If the quality's decent, though, it's like having a DVD set without having to drive to a store or wait months for a box set to be duplicated, packaged, and distributed, and the price is competitive in that sense. I don't think I'd ever use a premium service like this on a regular basis, but it'd be nice if I were out of town and could get an HD version of a show I can only get OTA like Lost or Arrested Development...or a show I can't get in HD at all, like Veronica Mars. I wouldn't pay a dollar for a noisy, compressed SD show, though.

fredfa

11-07-05, 04:39 PM

I guess that makes more sense to me, Adam -- especially if the downloads come without commercials.

David_Levin

11-07-05, 04:57 PM

Desperate Situation
Yea, I've almost had it. It's like they've got a completely new set of writes who never saw the show during season 1.
Did anyone NOT expect Lynette's tag to pop out during the meeting? Hasn't this been done about 1000 times?
I'll give it another week or 2, but my finger is hovering over the "thumbs down" button.

dturturro

11-07-05, 05:15 PM

I thought last night's episode was pretty good. It had some of the darker material I started watching the show for.

fredfa

11-07-05, 05:48 PM

I am reading more details on the VOD deals announced today.

As I understand those details, the Comcast-CBS agreement calls for the shows to have commercials included, although they apparently may be skipped by fast forwarding.

The NBC-DirecTV deal calls for commercial-free programs.

HDTVChallenged

11-07-05, 07:02 PM

This type of delivery can go even further as Mark Cuban talked about in an earlier post here. Imagine seeing the latest movie releases at home, in HD. I would pay maybe $4-6 for that in a minute.

Well if somebody could figure out how to do a "pure" ala carte VOD service with out forcing me to buy the "minimum required" $40/month service level for the "privilege," I'd jump. :) Until then, I think a basic DVR service is far more cost effective ... MMV of course.

fredfa

11-07-05, 08:23 PM

Bad HD News from MLB

HDNet’s Mark Cuban won’t be buying the Pittsburgh Pirates

Could you imagine how fast the HD explosion would take over in Major League Baseball is Mark Cuban owned a team?

There was talk late this season that he had an interest in buying the Pirates, but, sadly, it appafren tly is not going to happen.

Here is how the Associatd Press is reporting the news:

“Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is interested in buying his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates, but the ownership told him the team isn't for sale despite its ongoing streak of 13 consecutive losing seasons.

In an e-mail response to The Associated Press, Cuban said Monday he looked into buying the team recently, but "they told me they have no interest in selling."

Cuban's interest in the team he grew up rooting for is well known, but this is the first time he has acknowledged wanting to buy the Pirates. Previously, he said he would look into acquiring a stake only if the Pirates were put up for sale or if acquiring a lesser share of the team would help keep it in Pittsburgh.

"The Pirates are not for sale," club vice president Patty Paytas said, responding to Cuban's comment...."

fredfa

11-07-05, 09:30 PM

DVR Data Becomes Hot Issue

By Steve McClellan, Adweek November 07, 2005

The move by Nielsen Media Research later this year to incorporate playback viewing from digital video recorders into its daily ratings reports has sparked an industry debate over how advertising time should be bought and sold in the future.

The broadcast and cable networks have been pushing Nielsen (which is owned by Mediaweek parent VNU) to revise the ratings system to include tracking viewers watching prerecorded shows, so that they can charge advertisers for the larger audience—or try to, anyway. Not surprisingly, advertisers aren’t as interested in having the DVR viewing reported because of the high percentage of viewers that research shows skip through the ads.

Magna Global has brought the issue to the forefront. Company chairman and CEO Bill Cella declared that Magna will not use the revised system for negotiating deals for the 2006 upfront market. Cella said the agency will stick with the numbers that have been available all along—so-called “live” viewing. “That’s our policy,” said Cella. “And now is the time to let people know that because everybody starts to get ready for the upfront in January,” even though the market itself doesn’t usually break until late May or June.

Mediaedge:cia also plans to use live-only data for now. Lyle Schwartz, director of research and marketplace analysis, said that would only change if Nielsen starts issuing ratings that measure the level of commercial skipping, which is not expected in the near term.

Several other top-10 media agencies are mulling how to use the new data in negotiations. “We have not made a final decision,” said Harry Keeshan, executive vp, national broadcast at PHD. “We’re looking very closely at it.”

Other shops also want to analyze the new Nielsen data, which will start being issued Dec. 26, before making a definite decision.

“We’re still trying to get more information from Nielsen about how they will tabulate the data,” said Jason Maltby, co-president, national broadcast at MindShare. “I think people are waiting to see what some of that data looks like before making a determination.”
OMD is currently conducting a study of DVR usage with TiVo and cable operators, including Comcast, to gain a better understanding of how the devices affect viewing. Those insights will help the agency determine not just which set of data might be used in negotiations but might also help reshape messaging for DVR homes, said Joe Uva, CEO, OMD Worldwide. “There may not be one answer for everything,” he said.

Other shops say live-only viewing data will be used for negotiating most—but not all—of their buys. “There may be a few clients where we would consider same-day,” said Jon Mandel, MediaCom chairman. But most clients, he said, create specific ads to target live viewing that occurs at different times of the day. “So for a food client, it’s ‘When do you want to advertise—before they eat or after they eat?’ It’s a creative issue, not a media issue.”

But the networks remain convinced there is value to audiences who “TiVo” their shows. “The notion that anything that is seen off the disk takes advertising effectiveness to zero is completely incorrect and ignores what we’ve come to learn about how people view programs,” said Alan Wurtzel, NBC president of research and media development. “There’s a lot more to learn before we take final positions.”

Tim Brooks, executive vp, research, Lifetime Television, says newer research shows most viewers want DVRs “to reorganize when they watch TV. Skipping is a secondary part of it, and some spots stop people in their tracks.” He also said that some recorded viewing is delayed by as little as five minutes and that to dismiss such viewing as valueless “doesn’t make much sense.”

DVR penetration is still low; current estimates vary between 7 percent to 13 percent of households, according to researchers. Magna estimates that 8 million homes (between 8 percent and 9 percent of U.S. households) have DVRs now. But Cella said that could grow to between 30 percent and 40 percent in five years, making the debate on how the data are used to buy ads all the more critical.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/media_agencies/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001434666

fredfa

11-08-05, 12:16 AM

Time for “Gilmore Girls” to end their feud

By Rick Kushman Sacramento Bee TV Columnist

Consider this a plea to "Gilmore Girls" creator and producer Amy Sherman-Palladino, who, I say in all honesty, is funny, talented, gracious, and, I hope, an objective listener when it come to well-intentioned advice.

Anyone who reads this column much knows I'm a crazy fan for "Gilmore Girls" (Tuesday at 8 PM ET/PT, The WB). Smart show. Well-imagined. Bright writing. Kinetic pace. Engaging characters. Big heart. Been pushing that gem for years.

So. Dear Ms. Sherman-Palladino: Enough already. End the feud, or whatever it is. It doesn't fit anymore and it sure isn't fun to watch. Lorelai and Rory would have talked by now. They'd be back together mocking the world. It's what makes them Lorelai and Rory, and from a more practical standpoint, it's what makes the show work.

OK, we get what happened. Most of it. Rory (Alexis Bledel) decided she needed a break from college - a not unreasonable move, but more on that in a bit. Her mom, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), went all Emily on her, which was exactly the point.

Lorelai, in her love for her daughter, acted like her own mom, Emily (Kelly Bishop). Lorelai is human and, of course, a product of her family. It was a nice twist. Showed how maybe Emily wasn't completely horrible in wanting to control Lorelai, and Lorelai hadn't completely escaped the Gilmore family conditioning.

As for Rory, she has always been the "good kid": kind, oriented to the future, unrebellious to her mom. A dream kid, really. Also, there's not a lot of teenager in that description. So, of course, at some point adolescence was going to strike. Nature makes kids feud with parents so they'll leave the nest (and, by the way, that explains the angry chirping you hear in trees just before the young birds fly off).

So Rory and Lorelai were due for a falling out. A big fight. A little fuming. A couple of weeks of pouting and not returning calls.

But here are the two mistakes. No, that's harsh. The two inconsistencies that have me screaming at the TV.

One: Rory has rocked as a young journalist. Every shred of evidence she has seen about her work says she'll be great. (Whether journalism is a productive career choice is a separate discussion, though I will say there's far more money in writing for TV, not that I'm bitter.) And she's done that work in the face of challenges from people who said she didn't have what it takes.

So she is a. tough enough and b. smart enough to figure out that the man who is the c. father of her d. jerk boyfriend might be playing her, and even if he wasn't, she wouldn't just quit journalism.

But the writers needed a reason for Rory to leave school; so fine, she was driven from journalism, lucky girl.

Here's the second, uh, inconsistency. Lorelai and Rory would have made up by now. They have both wanted to, and with them, that would be enough. Rory made sure Lorelai knew she was wanted at Rory's 21st birthday party. They would have swallowed their pride long ago and ended up cracking ironic.

And during the party, there was a point Lorelai saw how out-of-touch her parents, Rory's grandparents, were, and that they couldn't see the person Rory had become. Then Lorelai runs into Rory. There is no way, no force on the planet that would have stopped Lorelai from telling her daughter something like, "You're a great kid" or "I'm proud of you."

Anyway, my good and gracious friend Amy - may I call you Amy? - I'm sure you've thought this through. I understand you know how to construct a dramatic arc. For all I know, they're gonna make up Tuesday night while old jerk boyfriend Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) meets new jerk boyfriend Logan (Matt Czuchry) in a sweeps stunt.

I'm just saying it's gone on too long. Every week makes us lose a little faith and inch toward a show like, maybe, Fox's "Bones," which, you probably know, is pretty clever. Please make the world right while there's still time.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/columns/kushman/story/13826789p-14667532c.html

fredfa

11-08-05, 01:34 AM

The TV Column
Vinick Sways Voters, er, Viewers on 'West Wing'

Surprise, NBC! Alda Skews Younger Than Smits

By Lisa de Moraes The Washington Post Tuesday, November 8, 2005; C01

After watching the live debate between Jimmy Smits's Rep. Matt Santos (D-Tex.) and Alan Alda's Sen. Arnold Vinick (R-Calif.) on "The West Wing," young viewers have changed their minds about the two faux candidates and want Alda in the White House.

Viewers 65 and older, however, came out strong for Santos, according to a survey by pollster Zogby International conducted right after Sunday's broadcast on NBC.

Yes, Jimmy Smits now skews older than Alan Alda.

For a network that chases young viewers exclusively but has seen its median age spring forward by nearly three years in one season -- from 46.4 to 49.2 years -- this ought to stop the suits in their tracks. Particularly since the network made it fairly clear it intend to put Smits in the Oval Office (his face, but not Alda's, is featured in the group mug shot on the home page of NBC's "West Wing" Web site, for instance.)

Despite a boatload of pre-broadcast hype, the debate episode did little to move the ratings needle -- the show averaged about 9.6 million viewers in the 8 p.m. hour, according to stats. That's its biggest audience this season -- which isn't saying much, since it's averaging only 8.2 million viewers. And the broadcast still finished third in its time period, pounded by ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" (18 million viewers) and CBS's "Cold Case" (16 million). More important to NBC's sales department, "West Wing" finished a distant fourth in its time period among 18-to-49-year-olds, which the network says is the only age bracket it sells to advertisers.

But those numbers aren't half so interesting as the ones spit out by pollster Zogby yesterday, showing how much ground Smits's Santos lost to Alda's Vinick in the debate, despite obvious efforts to make Santos look heroic.

Before the episode, viewers between 18 and 29 preferred Santos over Vinick, 54 percent to 37 percent. But after the debate, in which veteran Alda gutted pretty-boy Smits without him even knowing it, Vinick now leads among viewers under age 30, 56 percent to 42 percent.

(Among viewers 65 and older -- or, as TV execs like to call them, the Irrelevantest Generation -- Santos has a lead of 68 percent to 27 percent.)

Also switching camps were men, whom the networks have a harder time attracting than women and therefore chase harder. (The TV industry is a lot like dating: If you hang around a lot, the suits ignore you; play hard to get, they chase you with a passion.)

Among men, Vinick now leads with 55 percent to Santos's 39 percent.

Women were the only ones who did not change their minds after watching Alda fillet his opponent. Before the debate, women came out very strong for ever-so-handsome Smits/Santos; post-debate, they were just as pro-Santos, 68 percent to 23 percent. Really, why did they give women the vote?

Let's review, shall we?

"West Wing" producers and NBC look for a way to create "West Wing" event programming during the November sweeps to help goose ratings on the show, which has struggled mightily since being shipped to Sunday. How about a live debate? Great idea, they say, though Smits hasn't done much live performing and doesn't do well with improv, as he himself noted during a pre-debate phone news conference. How hard can it be, execs ask? Sure, it's live, but it'll be scripted and we'll give Smits lots of heroic lines such as: "What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party? I'll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. . . . So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'liberal,' as if it's something dirty, something to be ashamed of, something to run away from, it won't work, senator, because I will pick it up, and I will wear that label as a badge of honor."

Debate: Alda debones Smits.

Morning after: Numbers not so great and young viewers now strong for Alda to get presidential role next season. Great sweeps stunt turns into NBC headache.

Zogby rep Fritz Wenzel told The TV Column yesterday that the poll results show Smits "is a better scripted actor" and that Alda's Vinick "has a relatability" that Santos lacks.

Vinick "did much better than Santos" in the debate, Wenzel said, but even he was surprised that "there was so much movement in the numbers" in Vinick's favor.

"The other example we've had of an actor in the White House was right along the same lines as Vinick last night. Ronald Reagan was called the Great Communicator for a good reason. He was able to relate to people and not so much issue-to-issue but person-to-person."

* * * * * * * *

TV years later, Connie Chung and Maury Povich have brought back from the dead their plans to do a show together.

This time for MSNBC, Saturday mornings, for 30 minutes. Starting Jan. 7.

MSNBC officially announced yesterday that the as-yet-unnamed Chung-Povich show will touch on "everything from politics to pop culture," "cut through the spin and get to the truth," "explore all sides of a story as only two people who have been married for 20 years can do" and "leave no cliche unused."

Okay, I made up that last one.

Chung and Povich tried before to launch a half-hour news and information series in 1996 with the then-new and ever-so-hot DreamWorks SKG, whose partners included the too-hip-to-live Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Steven Spielberg. It was announced with great fanfare, but the syndicated show died before it was born, the victim of widespread lack of interest.

Nearly a decade later, according to a source with knowledge of the situation who did not want his name used because he has bills to pay and needs to keep his job in order to accomplish that, Povich's reps brought up the Chung-Povich idea earlier this year when negotiating his new contract to continue his syndicated show for NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution. Povich's show is ranked fourth among talk shows, behind "Oprah," "Dr. Phil" and "Live With Regis and Kelly."

MSNBC President Rick Kaplan, who can sometimes be quite sane, yesterday told the New York Times that Povich and Chung are the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn of TV.

For those not old enough to have met Hepburn or Tracy, she is the chick played by Cate Blanchett in the Martin Scorsese flick "The Aviator" who was the mistress of Leonardo DiCaprio and an actress born with a silver spoon in her mouth; Tracy was the guy Blanchett left DiCaprio for not long before DiCaprio started locking himself naked in his projection room and saving his urine in bottles. On-screen, Hepburn and Tracy defined witty, urbane, pretty and enormously talented; off-screen they were an item for a gazillion years, though Tracy was married to someone else.

In yesterday's news release, Povich and Chung did their best Tracy & Hepburn:

Povich: "It has taken me the last two decades to establish myself nationally as 'Maury Povich.' Something tells me I'm about to become 'Mr. Chung' once again."

Chung: "Maury's been on my case to get out of the house and get back to work, but I didn't want to until he came up with this idea. The question is not whether the program will last. . . . The question is 'Can our marriage survive?!' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/07/AR2005110701712_pf.html

fredfa

11-08-05, 01:45 AM

Koppel's final “Nightline” - a Tuesday with Morrie

By Gail Shister Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist

The mystery surrounding Ted Koppel's Nightline finale is finally over.

Forget the usual cast of presidents, senators and ambassadors. After 25 years and more than 6,000 ABC broadcasts, Koppel's Nov. 22 swan song will feature - drum roll, please - the late Morrie Schwartz.

Schwartz, a Brandeis University professor in the final stages of Lou Gehrig's disease, was profiled on Nightline three times: March 17, May 26 and Oct. 13, 1995. (He died Nov. 4 of that year at the age of 78.)

Koppel's moving interviews inspired Mitch Albom to look up his former teacher. That resulted in the 1997 best-seller, Tuesdays With Morrie. The book spawned a TV movie, with Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria, in '99, and a new Broadway play, starring Harold Gould. Albom cowrote both.

Koppel and Schwartz "had three memorable conversations together about dying," Koppel, 65, recalls. "Of all the subjects in the world we all have in common, one is being born, and the other is dying.

"Morrie did it in a particularly graceful way. His story has clearly stuck with a lot of people."

Put Koppel near the top of the list.

His deep, philosophical talks with Schwartz "stayed with me in a way that very few other interviews have... . He was a tiny little man. As a dying man, he became a giant."

Koppel and the professor "had a great chemistry," says Nightline producer Tom Bettag, who came up with the idea for the final show. "That's what makes those things go. These two guys connected."

Despite Schwartz's imminent demise, Koppel says that the professor "was able to give comfort to a lot of people who saw him, heard him, and, through Mitch, have read about him."

Tapes and DVDs of the Koppel-Schwartz interviews are among the most-requested in Nightline's 25-year history, says a rep for the show. (They go for $29.95 a pop on abcnewsstore.com.)

Koppel says he may do a broadcast from New Orleans as his "last big show," on Nov. 18, four days before his last hurrah.

Koppel's Nov. 22 curtain-closer will include highlights from the '95 trio of Schwartz broadcasts. Also, he will share remembrances of the professor with Albom, whose day job is sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press.

Ever the sentimentalist, Koppel plans no fancy flourishes at the conclusion of the 30-minute segment.

"I'll say goodbye for about a minute," he says.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television/13100136.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:20 AM

The 2005-2006 TV Season
Ask Matt

(from the Ask (TV Critic) Matt (Roush) column at TVGuide.com

Question:After watching this past week's episode of My Name Is Earl, I realize how surprisingly good Jaime Pressly is in her role as Earl's ex-wife. A little over the top, but it fits in well with this quirky show. So much so that I think she should get an Emmy nomination come next year. What do you think the chances are of that, along with Jason Lee (who is always pretty solid) and Ethan Suplee (who plays the dim-witted heart-of-gold brother so subtly)? — Garrett
Matt Roush: : Far be it from me to trust Emmy voters to be that much on the ball, but all three of these actors more than deserve to fill a few of those slots left open by the departure of Everybody Loves Raymond. Jason Lee is probably a slam dunk, but it can get trickier in the supporting categories.

Still, Jaime Pressly is sensational. In my initial review, I championed her "fearlessly vulgar" take on the venal Joy, and she's only getting better. I was able to screen next week's (Nov. 15) episode, entitled "Ruined Joy's Wedding," and it's probably her best yet — she even gets to reveal a little humanity beneath the crass surface. Pressly epitomizes the show's ability to reinforce white-trash stereotypes while injecting so much good humor in the portrayal that it's nearly impossible to take offense.

Question: Hey, Matt, love the column. I just watched the Oct. 26 episode of Veronica Mars and was absolutely blown away. This was, in my opinion, the best episode of the season so far (in what has been an absolutely excellent second year). I loved the scene between Wallace and Veronica in which Wallace accused her of operating as if it's all about Veronica and everyone else just lives in her world. To me, that scene is what separates a show such as VM from the rest: well-written, well-acted and based on history.
Every fan of the show realized how one-sided Veronica and Wallace's relationship was, but to see it play out on-screen was sheer brilliance. Also, I admit I was nervous about the new Jackie character, but I love how she was the catalyst in this great episode. I think she is a formidable match for Veronica in the future. Her "just pick one" line was just classic. What do you think of Jackie? And do you think that Kristen Bell is one of the best (if not the best) actress on television? Her range of emotions and her portrayal of a conflicted Veronica are can't-miss acting to me. — Sheldon
Matt Roush: I'm secretly (OK, not so secretly) hoping that the Golden Globes will discover Kristen Bell the way they did Keri Russell in the early days of Felicity — the type of performance that gets overlooked by the "major" awards groups because they're playing such young characters, but characters with unusual depth and wit. She's great, this episode was (as is usually the case) outstanding, and the conflicts among all the characters, including Jackie, truly hit home, primarily because they revealed Veronica to be so much less than perfect. Like you, I was a bit put off at first by Jackie as a prototypical spoiled rich girl, but watching her with Wallace is great fun, especially as it gets under Veronica's skin so easily. What a terrific show.

Question: From what I'm reading, Smallville is doing much better on Thursdays this year. I also have heard that the producers planned a five-year run, but I don't see why they'd quit when it's doing so well. Is this true? To me, this is by far the most interesting season, with Lex becoming totally evil, Chloe knowing the secret, Lionel normal or not (who knows?), Lana and Clark finally together, Tom Wopat coming to the show, and the totally cool new ways they show his powers (like jumping onto the missile). — Scott
Matt Roush: OK, I've really got to get back into this program again. Most of last season it got away from me because of the Lost competition (I still haven't caught up, but it's a priority), and I expected it to fade further this year when put up against all of those more heavily hyped Thursday alternatives. But that didn't happen.
Instead, the move gave the show a new lease on life, and my in-house source at the magazine tells me it looks very good for a sixth year (maybe even a seventh; who knows?). One of these days, when I get caught up, I'll file either a review in the magazine or at least a dispatch online. The show has proved again that it's worthy of attention.

Question:Any scoop on the upcoming season of The Shield? Anything on how much impact Forest Whitaker will have on it? Also, how great is it that it will be 21 episodes? That's almost like a whole other season of 24, unless they do what USA does with Monk. Will this season be split up or will it run for 21 straight weeks? — Alex
Matt Roush: The Shield will almost certainly split this next (possibly its last) extended season into two parts. Nothing's set yet, beyond the fact that the season will premiere in January. As for the buzz, those who've seen early rushes say Forest Whitaker is terrific as the new Internal Affairs snoop, as he sets about taking down Vic and the Strike Team. (Of course, I wouldn't expect to hear anything negative from the buzzmeisters at FX, but they were certainly right about Anthony Anderson last season.) Can't wait.

Question: It seems like 24 has broken new ground in television dramas with regard to pacing, as it was really the first of the current era of outstanding shows to take a long time to unfold (though, admittedly, none of the others take a whole season to tell the story of a single day). Lost is, of course, the best example of this, with the season covering mere weeks in the lives of the characters, and NBC has picked up a pilot for a show that draws out a kidnapping and investigation over an entire season.
So my question is this: Do you think a show like Murder One was just on before its time? This, too, was an exceptional character drama that took its time unraveling the story, but since it was on at the height of the MTV-I-want-it-now era, I think it just didn't stand a chance. What do you think? — Hilary

Matt Roush: : I've addressed Murder One before but not quite in this context, which is a good one, especially with so many intricately serialized dramas and thrillers on the air these days. (I would include Invasion in this subcategory, given that only a short period of time will be covered this season in the wake of the hurricane, and it's a fact that its methodically creeping pace isn't to all tastes.)
It's entirely possible that Murder One would be more successful today, especially since ABC has become the new House of Successful Hit Dramas. But it's also possible that a season-long legal mystery, even with all the twists and turns of that brilliant first season, wouldn't have the same juice as a slam-bang cliff-hanger-heavy action thriller like 24 or an exotic adventure like Lost. It would still be a risk. (For anyone who missed it, the first season of Murder One is on DVD. The second, and lesser, season comes out on DVD later this month.)

Question: Since the heyday of Friends, Seinfeld, Will & Grace, Frasier (or even going back further to The Cosby Show, Mad About You, Cheers and many others), the sitcom format has become nearly obsolete and the networks have clearly reached a point of desperation. In the last few years, only The Simpsons, Scrubs, Arrested Development and Family Guy have succeeded in making people laugh while watching network TV.
HBO has a distinct advantage due to its lack of censorship. This year, however, the networks seem to be improving with the additions of Kitchen Confidential and the close-to-being-very-funny How I Met Your Mother. Once Mother finds its true voice (Ted and Robin are simply not funny) and NBC brings Scrubs back from its inexplicable hiatus, we might finally be able to enjoy a few amusing comedies.
Notwithstanding the dissertation above, my question is about Freddie. In my not-so-humble opinion, Freddie Prinze Jr. is not funny. His family on the show is not funny. The concept of the show is not funny. However, Brian Austin Green is hysterical. And I know that my feelings are shared by many others (or at least the other 12 people who watch this show). Is it possible that the producers will either give David Silver (played by B.A.G.) his own spin-off or would they simply alter the show's concept to eliminate the deadweight, including its titular character? — Casey
Matt Roush: After all those classic titles, you ask about Freddie? Seriously, though, if you've seen the ABC promos, you get the sense that the network agrees with you. Freddie and B.A.G. are clearly the selling points here. And while I agree with you about the mediocrity of the show in general and of its main star (however likable) in particular, I doubt we'll be seeing a spin-off anytime soon. The show is doing just well enough — in that ABC-comedy way of coasting along with little buzz or purpose — to be renewed. But I'll be surprised if the show doesn't evolve into even more of a buddy comedy than it already is. The family angle (with the possible exception of the subtitled granny) is beyond tired.

Question: Have you watched Saturday Night Live at all this season? I am a fan of the show and usually TiVo it. While it does have a few bright spots (Tina and Amy's Weekend Update to name one), I would say that this season hasn't really been cutting it. Any thoughts? — Dave

Matt Roush: : I'm finding myself less enchanted these days even by the Weekend Update segments. Good to have Tina back, but there's a smugness to their delivery that can drive me berserk. This year I've settled back into the pattern that I adopted many seasons ago of half-watching the show for the first half-hour, muting the annoying musical guest (depending on the act) and tuning out after Weekend Update.
I usually record the rest of the show to watch later, but then decide I've got better things to do and erase it. The sketches are almost always too painful to endure, and if there have been great new characters and recurring bits introduced lately, I haven't heard about it. And yet, most weekends I still find myself feeling hopeful and tuning in. Kinda like Charlie Brown and the football. Like him, I end up flat on my back, but usually I'm asleep. (The one standout to me lately: Will Forte's Bush, which he perfected during last year's debate parodies.)

Question: What is the function of the November sweeps nowadays? With 24/7 entertainment coverage, hundreds of cable channels and the concept of a TV "season" rapidly changing, what can the sweeps add? We still hear about the sweeps being used to set advertising rates. Surely the advertisers aren't stupid enough to spend billions of dollars on advertising with rates based upon a four-week period that looks nothing like the rest of the year. The economic model that the "sweeps" concept is based on hasn't held for at least the last 10 years; why do they still persist on acting like it does?
For a typical series (22 episodes), four new episodes are held out for the November Sweeps, four for February and generally two or three for May. That leaves 11 new episodes to be spread out over five or six months for the rest of the "season." No wonder people are deserting the networks for something fresh on cable. Am I missing something here? — Rick C.
Matt Roush: No, you've pretty well summed up the situation. There is no real justification behind the sweeps model except that network TV is still forced to operate in partnership with a national chain of affiliate stations, and they're the ones who (from what I can tell) rely on the sweeps numbers. For the networks, it's just a bragging-rights contest for whichever network is on a roll that month. As you noted, it's such an artificial construct, and when NBC wins next February because of its reliance on the Winter Olympics, that means nothing in the big picture when the network is tanking during the rest of the season. Everyone I know wishes the sweeps would go away, but we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

Question: I've checked out all the spooky-ooky shows this season ((Surface, Supernatural, Invasion, Night Stalker, Ghost Whisperer and Threshold) and all of them have been beaten hands down by a little six-episode British series I just happened across on Showtime called Strange. It was the only one that I could not watch at night alone! Have you caught this show? It had a great ongoing story arc that hasn't been resolved in the six episodes that I saw, as well as very surprising stand-alone stories within each episode. Please tell me that there is more Strange to come! — Terry E.
Matt Roush: It doesn't surprise me that the British do this sort of thing better than anyone, but this series was news to me, so thanks! I searched the listings and discovered the episodes are being played now exclusively on the Showtime multiplex channel Showtime Beyond. You got my attention, so I've set my DVR and one of these days I hope to find time to watch it. I love this sort of thing. As for future episodes, I checked out a BBC website and saw an episode guide covering only one season's worth of episodes. If there turns out to be more, I'll report on it.

Question: Alright, Matt, I'm a big fan of serialized dramas like 24, Lost and Alias. But the problem I have is that if I miss an episode, like I did with the Alias season finale last May, I had to wait until Oct. 25 to catch a rerun in syndication. They sometimes show Lost on Saturdays, which is fine, but the same cannot be said for 24. They almost never rerun it during the duration of the season. Now, I'm no Les Moonves, but how about re-airing these shows during the night (12-5 am) so people who missed a show can set their TiVos to record them? Ratings shouldn't be a factor because it's so late, and it could help people catch up with their favorite shows. What's wrong with this idea? — Eugene G.

Matt Roush: In theory, it's a great idea. But as discussed earlier in the sweeps question, networks have to work with their affiliates, who aren't crazy about giving viewers a second window to view these shows: whether in late night, on a cable partner or, most recently, in ABC's scheme to make new episodes available for downloading a day after they first air. There is clearly a cultural shift taking form as networks and their studio partners find new methods for distributing this sort of product. But affiliates are still quite fond of the idea of trying to get you to watch a show on their channel as it airs. Years from now, and even now in today's age of TiVo/DVRs, this might seem an awfully quaint concept, as we just dial up any episode we want on demand (which we can do on cable; that's how I watch most of HBO's series these days). But the reason most network shows only air once a week during their regular first-run cycle is because that's how the business still operates.

http://tvguide.com/tv/roush/askmatt/

jim tressler

11-08-05, 08:39 AM

lol... never said I used any of the common p2p apps or even the gnutella network.. you must know how to hide your tracks within reason these days :)

Here's another question.. I guess this is more theory than anything.. but by me downloading prison break I got hooked.. so because the episodes were available for download they now have another viewer - one they wouldnt have had otherwise.

how's that for a juxtaposition :)

jim

I thought I would leave that unspoken!

(But I should have known I wouldn't get away with it.)

Andrew_J_M

11-08-05, 09:00 AM

The TV Column
Vinick Sways Voters, er, Viewers on 'West Wing'

Surprise, NBC! Alda Skews Younger Than Smits

(Among viewers 65 and older -- or, as TV execs like to call them, the Irrelevantest Generation -- Santos has a lead of 68 percent to 27 percent.)

I think that is an insulting way of saying that viewers 65 and older are least likely to be influenced by marketing hype or political bs.

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:48 AM

Jim, to be fair, the Grokster posting was made simply because the news was reported at that time.
The placement was coincidental. :)

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:48 AM

I am a day late posrting this one, but better late, etc.....

The 2005-2006 TV Season
CNN scoffs at history as Cooper takes anchor post

By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle

Jonathan Klein, president of CNN and the architect for the ouster of Aaron Brown and the ascension of Anderson Cooper, graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a degree in history.

Uh-oh.

Maybe the philosophy of George Santayana -- "Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" -- never made it into class, even in its misquoted form: "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

Same idea, really, minus the grace of the original. But all of this points, as it often does in TV, to one inescapable name:

Ashleigh Banfield.

Or, for those of you with longer memories: Arthur Kent.

In his zeal to make Anderson Cooper the poster boy of cable news -- apparently at all costs and with nary a concern about overexposure -- Klein is taking a gamble that history is likely to reveal as a miscalculation. One man -- even one as talented and likable as Cooper -- does not turn around a news network.

Though Klein has a newsman's bio, with a long and varied stint at CBS, he seems most intent on seizing on the palpable but unweathered hype surrounding Cooper, and that has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with being a suit.

Cooper was just another reporter with a show until Hurricane Katrina brought out a kind of emotionalism in his reporting that had been foreign to objective news coverage -- for a reason.

There's no crying in journalism.

Though others did, in fact, cry, and others were angry at the unacceptably slow response by FEMA and the White House, Cooper was on a mission there. Or at least he stood out among the many other missionaries. It happens all the time. Someone stands out. Sometimes he ends up being Dan Rather. Sometimes he ends up labeled "Scud Stud."

There is always a hook. A pair of glasses, maybe. A khaki jacket. But Cooper seemingly has it all: pedigree, looks, hipness, modernity.

Others have had it all too -- except longevity.

Cooper's tears were real and his pain at the plight of those ruined by Katrina was palpable. He hit a nerve -- at the time. He was anointed in the press. But natural disasters come and go, and nobody can sustain that kind of reportorial demeanor in the long term -- nor would people want to watch it. Already Cooper seems perhaps too ready for his moment and too ever-present around tragedy. Got hurricane? Got Cooper?

Back in the safe confines of the studio, he has some less honed and more annoying tendencies -- self-aggrandizement, a willingness to play someone's version of a tech-savvy anchor -- that a good news executive might manage a little more closely. But Klein appears to be smitten with Cooper and his buzz-worthiness, even telling the New York Times that "clearly, America is embracing Anderson Cooper" and noting that he's being satirized on "Saturday Night Live," as if that were a good thing.

A reminder: Ashleigh Banfield.

Banfield got a ton of ink. She got buzz. She got satirized. Then she got lost.

That's not to say Cooper is in the same league of fleeting media celebrity. MSNBC has always been desperate for real talent and seriously blind to it when it comes to women (hello, Rita Cosby).

Cooper, more talented in many ways, is likely to have a longer, more fruitful career. But that career has yet to suffer the inevitable media backlash that comes with insta-fame (beyond his Vanderbilt background) and the bank-on-it boredom viewers develop with anchors-as-stars. Cooper may be hot now, but unless he morphs into Jon Stewart, there are only so many book deals and promotions that can keep him afloat and in the zeitgeist long term.

Klein's rejiggering of CNN's schedule is a real mystery. It seems predicated on a relatively slight uptick in viewers that has yet to be sustained, some positive press for Cooper that has also yet to be sustained and a meritless belief in Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room," a show that desperately wants to be ground zero for breaking news but often seems like pointless plate spinning or unsophisticated sausage making.

"The Situation Room" is an all-heat, no-light management concoction that Klein seems inordinately fond of. Perhaps this is linked to his founding the FeedRoom, a broadband video company that fed 1 million video clips a day to clients, according to CNN.

"FeedRoom." "Situation Room." One was prepackaged news. The other shows you how news gets packaged. The trouble comes out the other end: It's superficial and boring. And yet Klein believes people want it twice a night, three hours total. Which raises the question: Has he watched it?

Cooper should be smart enough to know that Klein -- who just ran a respected newsman off the network with a decided lack of dignity -- is desperate for solutions. Klein appears to be not so much grooming talent as exploiting it. The battle for dominance in the 24-hour news business is a ratings horse race, and Klein put Brown out to pasture and then slapped a saddle on Cooper.

These moves seem tethered less to a leader's vision than to some water cooler assumption that Cooper is the next big thing. If Klein thinks "America is embracing Cooper," then what is America doing to Fox News' Shepherd Smith, who drubs Cooper in the ratings? Bear-hugging the breath out of him?

This is one of the forgotten elements of the Cooper-CNN hype machine. Fox News is handing CNN its head virtually every night. Klein was brought on board after a long, laughable line of CNN management successions -- each new person failing more spectacularly than the last -- to stop this drubbing. He hasn't. So maybe that's the history Klein is focusing on -- the failure of his predecessors. To avoid their fate, he's building CNN around Cooper and hoping viewers will come.

With a nod back to Santayana, and a belief that Cooper may someday validate Klein's enormous burden of faith in him, here's a thought: "There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far."

So good luck to you, Anderson Cooper. Keep history on your mind, but two words off your lips:

Ashleigh Banfield.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/07/DDGDCFJC701.DTL&type=printable

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:50 AM

The 2005-2006 TV Season
There's still potential in a boring season

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic Tuesday, November 8, 2005

I experienced an epiphany about the current television season during an episode of The WB's "Supernatural." Didn't have anything to do with what was happening onscreen, though. Instead, I was asking my husband why we keep coming back to it every week. It has no choreographed waltzes of violence, a pittance of clever dialogue and a few too many otherworldly problems solved with buckshot, rock salt and Zippos.

Didn't take him long to come up with an answer: "It's 'Simon & Simon' ... with butt rock! And shotguns! And demons!" he replied enthusiastically.

Following a pause, he added, "And when you think about it, all great TV descends from 'Simon & Simon.' " Then he launched into a lengthy explanation of his theory. Did it make sense? No. And yet I listened.

That's when it hit me: This season of network television is boring. Not terrible, BO-RING. There's a difference. Terrible television has nothing redeeming about it, and forces us to take up odd projects, like curling or crocheting trousers. Whereas boring television is just decent enough to keep you hanging on in the hopes that this will finally be the week that a show finds its way.

If you’re listening intently to your spouse’s Looney Tunes speech while such a show is on, and the air is not hazy with smoke or the strains of Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” that’s a sure sign your favorite TV series is boring. Sorry.

Now, I don't mean to specifically rag on "Supernatural." The Winchester Brothers will be a hit as long as Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki remain hot. Nor am I saying that network television has failed us this season. Viewers have a wider range of perfectly OK programming selections scattered across the schedule than they did last year.

But it's kibble. Pellets from a Skinner box. Your favorite series may fill you up, but they're not as fulfilling as they once were.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. I've been hearing other viewers, self-described television junkies, talk about how noncommittal this season has made them. Their TiVo backlogs are not due to a lack of time, but a lack of caring. And when you ask most of them why they like a show, it's because the star is hot/sexy/ smokin'/bangin'/McDreamy or whatever. Outside of, well, "Lost," there's a dire lack of substance, be it in the form of story line depth or character development.

Thus, as November sweep begins -- the period used to set local ad rates actually started last Thursday -- it's either all about that ABC hit, or "Grey's Anatomy," Fox's "House" and maybe NBC's "Medium," a few blasé stunts and a whole lot of middling.

Shows at the top of the ratings chart aren't exempt from the malaise either. "Desperate Housewives" is experiencing a legendary sophomore slump, although it's still top rated. Even "Commander in Chief" fans admit the backstabbing of the week schlock is starting to bore.

Still, that's a better vote than "The West Wing," which couldn't even lose its limp by going live. "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," dull. "Alias," "The Amazing Race," "Survivor," yawn, yawn and yawn. "Prison Break" is halfway decent, if you only count Wentworth Miller's brooding glares and the random violence. (And the other hot prisoners.) The conspiracy outside the correctional facility ... zzzzz. Granted, the husband could easily make a "Simon & Simon" connection here.

Is there hope? People, we're headed into the season of hope. Bearing that in mind, what follows is at least one item on each network that you can look forward to during sweeps.

Starting with the obvious, on ABC the two survivor groups merge and someone's going to bite it on tomorrow's "Lost" [/COLOR][/FONT] (9 PM ET/PT ABC). Things look worst for Sawyer; then again, this series is never obvious, and Josh Holloway happens to be a reliable bedtime visual aid for women around the world. Getting rid of him, or any other guy for that matter, wouldn't be wise.

NBC's "My Name Is Earl" brings in Beau Bridges as Earl's daddy Nov. 22 (9 PM ET/PT NBC), a day after the network resorts to the 3-D gimmick for a "Medium" episode.

On CBS, which is riding sweeps on the musty winds of "Category 7: The End of the World" and with "CSI" crossovers, a two-part "CSI" starts at 9 p.m. this Thursday and concludes next week. Of greater impact is the time period swapping between two suffering series. Tuesday's "Close to Home" airs Fridays at 9 on Nov. 11 and 18, while Friday's "Threshold" shifts to Tuesdays at 10 on Nov. 22 and 29.

"House" remains Fox's main man until "24" and that singing competition return to the air in January. Even so, there's still question as to what will happen after "Prison Break's" fall finale at 9 p.m. Nov. 28, when they might break out. Or not. The initial plan was to take it off the schedule until May because there wasn't any room for it. Then fans had a virtual riot, and Fox decided to rethink that strategy and consider moving "Bones" from its January timeslot instead. Meanwhile, back in the Who Cares? Department, the three people still watching "Reunion" will discover which friend is the murder victim Thursday at 9.

Oddly enough, The WB has the least amount of truly boring shows this season. "Everwood" has rarely been better, although its 9 p.m. Thursday timeslot is a bit murderous. Thursday at 8, we'll find out how silver kryptonite affects Clark on "Smallville," which may be less serious than the effects of a visit from Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) may have on Logan and Rory's relationship on "Gilmore Girls," tonight at 8.

Finally, UPN. The big news may be this week's "Top Model" infestation across the network, but what's really worth noting is Joss Whedon's cameo tomorrow night at 9 on "Veronica Mars".

So just stay awake a little while longer. Television should be getting interesting any ... day ... now.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=b&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/247415_tv08.html

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:59 AM

Not everyone is like us – and always wants the latest, greatest and most:

The Digital Revolution
Cable's final frontier: People who want less

By David Lieberman USA TODAY

NEW YORK — One of the toughest challenges media executives face is deciding how to deal with people such as Kelly Cunningham.

The 30-year-old single mom, a sales manager at a portable fan company in Chicago, is content to watch just a few television channels, mostly local stations and cable news, on her 27-inch analog TV.

She's so satisfied with her budget cable service, at about $20 per month, that she was the lone "no" vote when her condominium recently took DirecTV's offer of 155 channels for $45 a month per home — if it served the entire building.

Neighbors "thought I was from outer space, or living in the Dark Ages," says Cunningham. "But I don't need 10 versions of HBO and eight of Home Shopping Network."

What's wrong with that? Television companies face a bleak future if they can't persuade millions of customers to buy more or better programming, gear and services. Cable and satellite providers already serve 82% of all homes, and that's not expected to grow much in the foreseeable future.

While cable operators and others have made progress with extra-fee services, including digital cable and high-speed Internet, most of the buyers have been "early adopters" with the appetite and means to pay for the latest and greatest.

Now comes the hard part: to persuade people such as Cunningham, who find what they have good enough, to buy more. That may vex even the savviest marketer.

"Companies are pushing bigger packages, promoting digital, and not offering what consumers want most: fewer channels at a lower price," says Consumers Union's Gene Kimmelman.

To get an idea of the challenge companies face, consider this:

• Cable operators are going all out to sell extra-fee digital TV service, although only 3% of people who don't get it say they're "considering" buying it, according to a Horowitz Associates survey.

• Satellite's in a similar situation. Subscriber-acquisition costs already are up at DirecTV and EchoStar, and Horowitz finds that just 4% of non-subscribers are considering signing up for satellite.

"It's a case of 55 channels and nothing's on," says Stewart Wolpin of Points North Group, market analysts and consultants. More precisely, there's a lot on — the typical viewer receives 93 channels — but people spend 10 or more minutes a week on only 15 of them, Nielsen Media Research reports.

• The great mass of consumers aren't voting with their pocketbooks for more programming. Although premium channels such as HBO, Showtime and Starz/Encore have been around for decades, only about 42 million homes, or 36% of the country, get at least one, reports Kagan Media Research.

Betting on less for less

Figures like these have emboldened executives at a new company, U.S. Digital Television, to bet they can make a tidy profit by charging consumers less for a slimmed-down basket of programming.

The company will lease digital broadcast capacity from local TV stations and offer 30 channels — including local stations, ESPN, Fox News and The Disney Channel — over the air for about $20 a month.

"There are millions of homes that believe cable offers more than they want to watch, and they're looking for a low-cost alternative," says CEO Steve Lindsley. "This is a value proposition."

USDTV plans to announce before the holidays the cities where it will launch commercially. It got a $25.8 million investment in September from station groups including Fox, Hearst-Argyle and McGraw-Hill and has been testing in Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Las Vegas.

The big players remain convinced, however, that eventually most people will pay more to get more. The cable industry spent $100 billion on upgrades in the past decade to offer services such as digital TV and high-speed Internet. Programmers seeking new revenue — including Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and Viacom — are beginning to funnel concerts, sports, news, kids' programming and even some traditional movies and TV shows to the Internet.

Those efforts will be for naught, however, unless most of the 67% of all homes now Internet-free or dependent upon slower dial-up connections pay to upgrade to high-speed, video-capable broadband.

Digital cable boom stalled

Digital cable got off to a strong start in the late 1990s: More than 40% of the industry's 63 million subscribers now pay an extra $12 or so a month for the service, which offers dozens of additional channels, an interactive on-screen program guide and video on demand.

But the boom is over. The penetration rate among subscribers will rise to only 47% by 2010, Morgan Stanley predicts.

"The natural level for digital has been achieved," says Leichtman Research Group President Bruce Leichtman. "Now they're pushing out the envelope."

The companies are pushing hard just to stay even: About 4% of digital cable customers drop the service each month, sometimes because they move but often because they don't see the value, says Kagan Research Senior Analyst Ian Olgeirson. By contrast, basic cable has a 2% monthly "churn" rate.

"I can't imagine that many operators expected their (digital) churn rates to remain this high," he says.

Still, operators are determined to forge ahead. The sooner they get digital decoders into people's homes, the sooner they can go all-digital and get rid of their analog transmissions. That would enable them to offer even more services; at least six digital channels fit into the bandwidth needed for one analog channel.

Bandwidth may be in even shorter supply after local TV stations go all digital. Cable operators have said they will offer analog and digital versions of those stations for five years after the federally mandated transition, which may come as early as the end of next year.

If they didn't, then 78% of the 172 million TV sets in subscriber homes — ones that are "cable-ready" analog sets or that are connected to analog cable decoders — wouldn't be able to receive programming from ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and other broadcasters, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Operators also see digital cable as a moneymaker. Consumers who pay the additional monthly subscription fee also are presented with opportunities to make impulse decisions to pay extra for VOD programming and games. And operators want to sell targeted ads: They can transmit different messages to different homes that have the digital decoders.

Sweetening the deal

Some companies have tried to snag fans of networks such as Sci-Fi and The Golf Channel by moving the channels from the basic package to the digital cable tier.

But now the emphasis is on sweetening their deals. Comcast, the largest operator, is bulking up on free programming for digital customers. In October it added 250 movies to the package, for a total of 800 at any time.

Time Warner, the No. 2 operator, expects to coax about two-thirds of its non-digital customers to sign up by folding digital cable into a package of services including phone and high-speed Internet.

"The remaining one-third tend to be the demographically older group, and they don't always have the most favorable impression of cable," says Chief Marketing Officer Sam Howe. "We have time to work with them, and many of them will move on."

Both cable giants also are experimenting with lower digital prices. Comcast is rolling out a digital service called "enhanced basic" that costs about $5 a month but offers fewer programming options than the standard digital package.

And Time Warner is testing a $5 digital offering in Akron, Ohio.

"This is not something we'd do everywhere," Howe says. "But it's an example of what we could do" in markets where consumers are feeling pinched.

Satellite pitches new gear

Unlike broadcast and cable, DirecTV and EchoStar's Dish Network already transmit digital signals to their customers.

Yet they also face cajoling subscribers into paying for big changes.

The problem: "They don't have the capacity to offer local station HDTV broadcasts with their current satellite fleet," says Sanford C. Bernstein's Craig Moffett.

Both plan to resolve that with technologies that enable them to bounce more HDTV signals off their satellites and, in some cases, use different satellites than the ones that handle current broadcasts.

The upshot is that many customers who want to watch local HDTV will need to get new receivers and dishes.

This winter EchoStar's Dish Network plans to offer its new receiver for local and new national HD channels. Pricing and other details will be announced later.

DirecTV already is selling in Detroit the new receivers and dishes consumers need for local HDTV. Beginning Nov. 25 it will offer the equipment in 11 other cities.

The receiver and dish cost about $200, but DirecTV is offering a 100% rebate once people activate programming on the new gear.

These are risky strategies: People often start comparison shopping when they have to make a new purchase. And people who want HDTV now tend to be big spenders.

So while all satellite subscribers eventually will have to get new equipment, "It will be gradual," says Satellite Business News Editor and Publisher Bob Scherman. "The real threat to all these companies is, you don't want to create an MCI, a Sprint or an AT&T where customers bounce around all the time."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2005-11-07-cable-wanting-less_x.htm

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:04 AM

Maybe HD Delivery Isn’t So Important….
Hockey resurges, against all the odds

Game attendance is up, and so are TV ratings

By Toni Fitzgerald MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 8, 2005

Following a lockout, it can take forever to woo back fans. It took four years and the shattering of baseball's most hallowed record to bring fans back after the 1994 strike. NBA viewership still hasn’t recovered from the 1998-’99 strike.

But hockey, of all sports, is turning out to be a very different story. Against almost all expectations, its fans are returning at a healthy pace, if not in droves.

They are doing so, moreover, after perhaps the most disastrous labor breakdown in pro sports history, the first in which an entire season was lost.

Attendance was up 6 percent through the first two weeks of the season, and the league set an attendance record in October with an average 16,820 per game. Ratings on cable are up or performing above expected levels.

Post-strike, many predicted that hockey would return with a thud. Opinion polls throughout the strike suggested that the public was not that eager for the sport’s return, and both the owners and players came out of the dispute looking shabby.

Why the surprising resurgence?

Credit the good manners the league learned watching the NBA and MLB bungle their returns. In a sign of arrogance, or what was seen as arrogance, the two leagues attempted to come back from their strikes without properly apologizing to their fans.

They also failed to address long-simmering problems that led to those strikes.

The NHL did quite the opposite, first off apologizing to the fans for missing a season.

Second, the NHL implemented some real changes, several of which promised to lead to higher scoring, to the end of making the game more exicting. That's happened. Scoring has risen nearly a third versus the 2003-’04 season, to 6.4 goals per game.

Third, the league did a very good job of publicizing its return.

Those moves have resulted in lots of tangible success, even beyond the increase in attendance. Hockey, which six months ago seemed in danger of slipping from cable’s radar, is off to a strong start.

Nine games on OLN, its new carrier, have averaged 194,000 total viewers and a 0.1 household rating. Though that’s below the average for the 2003-’04 season on ESPN and ESPN2, those networks are available in more than 20 million more homes than OLN, which is available in 64 million homes.

But that’s still nearly double OLN’s timeslot average last year, and four of the games, featuring more popular NHL teams, did equal ESPN2’s most recent season average.

What’s more, hockey’s doing especially well in Canada, where its core audience resides, and on FSN regional channels.

Last month’s season openers for five teams, including the Chicago Blackhawks, Phoenix Coyotes and Pittsburgh Penguins, more than doubled their 2003-’04 season debut numbers. Minnesota Wild viewership is up 150 percent season-to-date on FSN North.

And to the North, the CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada” has increased more than 60 percent over the 2003-’04 season. Rogers Sportsnet set a regular-season record last month with 791,000 viewers for the Boston-Toronto game, its best NHL telecast ever.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1190.asp

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:15 AM

The 1006-07 TV Season.
“Survivor” Renewed
CBS has ordered two more seasons of its hit reality series “Survivor”. The pickup will carery the network through spring of 2007.

The current series, (which will end Dec.11), is the 11th , and like all its predecessors, ranks in the top 10 in viewers, as well as the adults 18-49 and 25-54 demos.

There has been no official word on whether Jeff Probst will return as host for the two new “Survivors”. He has said on several occasions he might want to do other things with his life.

The show debuted in 200, and CBS has taken to using two versions a year, one running from September-December, the other beginning in the February sweep and ending in the May sweep.

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:22 AM

Mondays prime-time ratings (with interesting numbers for "Monday Night Football", "Prison Break" and "Arrested Development")– and Media Week Analyst Marc Berman’s analysis of what the numbers mean -- have been posted at the top of Ratings News the second post in this thread.

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:32 AM

C A U T I O N: (Very Slight) Spoilers Ahead!
'House' call: The doc's parents drop by
Revealing moments for TV's most ornery MD

By Diego Vasquez MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 8, 2005

Every time Dr. Gregory House sneers at a patient or issues one of his searing put-downs, viewers wonder how exactly this man developed primetime’s most admired prickly personality.

Finally, tonight at 9 PM ET/PT, we’ll get a few answers when House’s parents drop by for a visit on Fox.

House of course does everything he can to get out of meeting mom and dad for dinner, but eventually John (R. Lee Ermey) and Blythe (Diane Baker) catch up with their son. At the same time, House treats a patient with daddy issues of his own, a recent college graduate who keels over at a party. The kid hasn’t been completely honest with his father about where he went on spring break, and that information could be the key to saving his life.

“House” performs one of TV’s more delicate balancing acts by showing hints of its characters’ backgrounds but rarely giving away too much. The show’s primary focus is always on the medical emergency of the moment, and insights about the characters are sandwiched around these crises.

It’s almost impossible then to imagine what mysteries House’s parents will solve. Were they overbearing, hypercritical or absentee? Perhaps they doted on the young House and he’s a jerk because of it. More than likely, Mr. and Mrs. House’s appearance will only lead to more questions.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1172.asp

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:52 AM

Programming notes:
More “Related and “Twins”

Melanie Griffith’s stint on TV just got a little longer. The WB has ordered five more episodes of her new Friday night comedy “Twins,” bringing the total to 18, and also picked up six more episodes of “Related,” for a total of 19.

The WB must be confident that the shows’ new timeslots can help the network build momentum--“Related” now airs on Mondays at 9 p.m. after “7th Heaven” after starting out on Wednesdays, and “Twins” now follows “Reba” on Fridays at 9:30, an hour later than its original start time. Neither show has performed well among the WB’s target 12-34 demo.

The network’s ratings among viewers 18-34 are down versus last year on every night of the week except Thursday, where “Smallville” has powered a year-to-year boost.

In other programming news, two of Mark Burnett’s shows have finale dates: CBS’s “Survivor: Guatemala” will end its season on Dec. 11 at 8 p.m., followed by a live reunion show at 10 p.m., and NBC’s “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart” will finish up on Dec. 21 with a live two-hour finale.

And A&E has ordered an eight-episode season of “Outback House,” an Australian reality show where volunteers manage sheep and live in 19th century conditions. No launch date has been set.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/cat_index_31.asp

fredfa

11-08-05, 12:20 PM

NCTC Takes OLN To Court For Breach of Contract
By Anthony Crupi MediaWeek.com November 08, 2005

The National Cable Television Cooperative has filed a complaint in federal court against OLN for what the NCTC alleges is a breach of contract.

In a filing Tuesday with the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, the cable cooperative said it would seek damages, declaratory judgment and injunctive relief in a reaction to what it characterizes as “OLN’s effort to add new terms to its long term programming contract with NCTC.”

NCTC interim president and CEO Tom Gleason charged that OLN “has unilaterally imposed new contract terms in connection with its carriage of NHL games and we maintain they do not have the right to do so.”

OLN’s carriage agreements with NCTC members states that each operator must make the network available to at least 40 percent of its subscriber base in order to be granted access to all of its programming. The NCTC filing also calls into question alleged rate hikes on OLN’s part.

“OLN’s imposition of penetration requirements and OLN’s asserted right to impose surcharges is completely at odds with the certainty our members have bargained for and the members’ ability to serve their customers’ best interests,”Gleason said.

While the dispute seems to echo a previous OLN scrap with Cablevision––which has since been resolved–and an ongoing tussle with EchoStar's DISH Network having to do with OLN’s National Hockey League coverage, OLN said that its NHL games have not been blacked out in NCTC systems.

OLN declined to comment on NCTC's complaint.

NCTC represents more than 1,100 independent cable operators and 14 million subscribers nationwide.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001435690

Xesdeeni

11-08-05, 12:47 PM

Digital cable got off to a strong start in the late 1990s
...
But the boom is over. The penetration rate among subscribers will rise to only 47% by 2010, Morgan Stanley predicts.
...
The companies are pushing hard just to stay even: About 4% of digital cable customers drop the service each month, sometimes because they move but often because they don't see the value, says Kagan Research Senior Analyst Ian Olgeirson. By contrast, basic cable has a 2% monthly "churn" rate.
...
"I can't imagine that many operators expected their (digital) churn rates to remain this high," he says.
...
Operators also see digital cable as a moneymaker. Consumers who pay the additional monthly subscription fee also are presented with opportunities to make impulse decisions to pay extra for VOD programming and games. And operators want to sell targeted ads: They can transmit different messages to different homes that have the digital decoders.
...
Some companies have tried to snag fans of networks such as Sci-Fi and The Golf Channel by moving the channels from the basic package to the digital cable tier.It's amazing how clueless cable companies are.

First, they raised rates on analog cable customers to pay for the digital cable infrastructure.

Then, they charge extra for digital service.

Here's a quarter...buy a clue!

They are just plain greedy!

You want more digital subscribers? It's simple. Make it the same price as analog. And then they can do all the fancy stuff they want with digital: VOD, more tiers, etc. But until they show a belief in the long term financial benefits outweigh the immediate need for profit, the buying public isn't going to be persuaded.

In 1984, Sony came out with the first portable CD player. Until then CD players were upwards of $1000. This one was $200. In the technology of the day, they were losing money. But they believed in the CD technology (and the royalties they would get from every CD sold), so they took a front end loss to stir up interest. And it worked. I bought one, when there was no way I would have come close before. Sony convinced me that they had faith in the format by putting their money on the line, and I bought into it...literally.

Cable companies can't see past the end of their noses. Initially, they can increase their programming offerings by maximizing their bandwidth if they can eliminate analog. Once everyone is digital, there are tons of ways to offer more services and milk more $$$ from subscribers. But as they've found, customers are not interested in continuing to subsidize the increased profits. And they just can't face the fact that they can't milk out a profit from the transition itself.

Here's another quarter...buy some vision.

Xesdeeni

fredfa

11-08-05, 01:08 PM

Good post, xesdeeni.

I think DirecTV should do the same: get rid of the HD tier and make it possible for everyone to get HD. Make all the STBs HD capable, and watch the added renvue flow in.

keenan

11-08-05, 01:22 PM

Yes, great post indeed.

BTW, that Nov 25 date is the first I've seen a date mentioned for equipment rollout for DirecTV HD-LiL, although the equipment has been available already in much of the country.

RE: Comast and the NCTC, hilarious, if Comcast continues to do such things they will never lose the "big bad bully" label that they must seem to like based on their actions. If the suit is truthful I hope Comcast has to back down and they can suffer with their less than 200,000 viewers for OLN.

fredfa

11-08-05, 01:26 PM

CBS swept all demographics in last week's just-released Nielsen ratings, and now leads for the season in total viewers, adults 25-54 and has tied ABC in adults 18-49.

Last week’s network prime-time ratings are now at the top of RATINGS NEWS the second post in this thread.

The program ratings will be posted later today.

fredfa

11-08-05, 01:31 PM

Colts-Patriots score a big TD for ABC
“MNF” averages a season-best 8.0 in 18-49s

By Diego Vasquez MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 8, 2005

Quarterback Peyton Manning finally got a win in New England last night, leading ABC’s “Monday Night Football” to its best outing of the season.

Manning’s Indianapolis Colts beat the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in Foxboro, boosting ABC’s “MNF” to a season-best 13.1 overnight household rating and 19.9 million viewers from 9-11 p.m. Fast nationals measure only timeslot data and not actual program data, so final ratings will likely change. Also, the game went until past midnight.

ABC averaged an 8.0 among 18-49s from 9-11 p.m., up 33 percent versus a 6.0 last week. Making that more impressive is the fact that the game was up against tough November sweeps competition, while “MNF” mainly faced reruns last week.

The game also took a bite out of the competing networks’ ratings. NBC’s 9 p.m. “Las Vegas” slipped 13 percent and 10 p.m.’s “Medium” was off 7 percent versus their last original outings. Fox’s “Prison Break” fell 12 percent versus last week.

A “CSI: Miami” crossover with “CSI: NY,” which should have given the show a boost, averaged a 6.3 overnight rating among 18-49s last night, down from a 6.5 for the show’s last original episode.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1199.asp

fredfa

11-08-05, 01:56 PM

Having a hard time without your weekly "American Idol" fix? Well, here's your
“American Idol” update
Simon Says: I’ve Found The Next “Idol”

By Don Kaplan The New York Post

November 8, 2005 -- SIMON Cowell says it'll be raw talent, and perhaps a bit of Irish luck, that propels the next winner of "American Idol."

"The only person I can genuinely remember from the auditions that I've done for this season is an Irish girl that we saw in Las Vegas who now lives in America," Cowell told The Post yesterday.

"I think she sang a Chaka Khan song and afterwards I said, 'I think we may have found someone as good as [first season winner-turned-superstar] Kelly Clarkson.' "

Cowell said he forgot the contestant's name.

Other strong contenders include a group of 16- and 17-year-old girls from around the U.S., he said. "I think probably the girls are going to be much stronger than the guys this year," Cowell said.

Last season, without saying her name, Cowell correctly predicted that Oklahoma cutie Carrie Underwood would win "Idol."

"I'm telling you that there is a blond girl who can really sing. I saw her when we cut it down from 200 to 40," he told "Extra" last January.

Meanwhile, Cowell swears that in all his time on "Idol," he never heard one whiff of backstage gossip that his colleague, embattled former pop-star Paula Abdul, was having a sexual relationship with one-time finalist Corey Clark.

Clark made the accusation last year in an edition of ABC News' "Primetime." Abdul was later cleared by Fox, which conducted its own internal investigation.

Cowell says that when he was watching the "Primetime" episode, it reminded him of the mockumentary "Best in Show."

"It was rather like that movie which is a parody of a real-life event," Cowell said. "When he [Clark] started singing that song about 'I Miss You Paula' — which is on his ghastly new album — I realized that it was all just a waste of time.

"I would swear on the Bible," says Cowell. "I've never, ever, ever seen Paula acting close with a contestant in all the time I've been on the show."

Cowell is promoting his new "Idol"-style show for ABC, called "American Inventor." On the new series, which Cowell produces but does not appear in, wannabe Thomas Edisons duke it out to create the next big gizmo.

The winner gets the invention put into mass production and offered for sale at a major chain retailer in around 3,500 stores.

"It is another American dream-type of show," says Cowell. "The goal is to find someone who is perhaps down-on-their-luck, who may have poured all their money into one idea and on a show like this you never know what's going to happen.

"As a viewer, you're able to understand the process, you're able to say, 'that is a fantastic idea,' or 'that's the worst idea I've ever heard of in my life.' "

So far, about 5,000 people have applied to appear on the show, which begins filming in February.

Potential contestants can apply for on americaninventor.tv.

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/56994.htm

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:02 PM

VOOM Gets Classic Monster Pics
MultiChannel News is reporting that the VOOm HD service has “acquired 44 classic and contemporary horror titles from Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution, including the original 1933 King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young.”

According to the report, VOOM says “all of the films have been digitally restored, and they will air uncut, uninterrupted and in HD. Many of them will air in HD for the first time.

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:08 PM

EchoStar Sub Growth Fattens Q3 Profit
By Jay Sherman TVWeek.com

EchoStar Communications reported Tuesday that its third-quarter profit more than doubled, as subscriber growth swelled during the period.

The company reported net income of $209 million, compared with $102 million in the year-ago period. Revenue jumped 14 percent to $2.1 billion.

The improvements came as EchoStar reported that it added 255,000 new subscribers in the quarter, raising its total sub count to just over 11.7 million.

Separately, EchoStar said Tuesday that the Federal Communications Commission approved the company's $200 million purchase of a satellite and associated satellite operations from Cablevision Systems. EchoStar now expects to close the deal by year-end.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=8877

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:18 PM

More on the NBC & CBS VOD Deals

In a lengthy analysis, today’s Wall Street Journal looks at the deals announced yesterday by both NBC and CBS to make some of their hit programs available for VOD delivery.

The NBC shows will be available to DirecTV subscribers, and the CBS deal was with Comcast.

The WSJ notes that: “…the announcements come only weeks after Walt Disney Co.'s ABC struck a similar deal with Apple Computer Inc., under which episodes of shows including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" can be viewed on an Apple video iPod for $1.99 an episode.

Together, the deals mark a profound change of heart for the broadcast television industry, which from its earliest days has built its schedule around the evening hours known as prime time. Executives have long resisted efforts by cable operators to offer so-called on-demand viewing of popular TV shows, worrying that it could cannibalize their existing businesses by eroding their ability to sell advertising for programs and reap lucrative profit by selling reruns.

But technology is forcing their hand. The Internet has encouraged widespread piracy of media content. Traditional prime-time viewing, in which viewers schedule their evening hours around showcase programs, is under siege from technologies like digital-video recorders, or DVRs, which allow users to save shows and watch them at their convenience -- and without commercials.

Thus, for TV executives the latest agreements are less about making money than they are about trying to maintain some control over their content, by offering people the chance to watch shows through an unconventional route. They hope that this will eventually lead to a substantial new revenue stream. Hollywood has gotten a clear view of the challenges in the rapidly shifting landscape by watching the music industry grapple with Internet piracy…

The NBC programs will be downloaded to subscribers' recorders overnight and be available in the morning after the show aired. "Once the West Coast airing of 'Law and Order' is completed, then we have the right following that to download to the DirecTV Plus box," Mr. Fawcett said.

NBC Universal said it is working to make other shows that it broadcasts but doesn't own available on demand. Among them is its new hit comedy, "My Name is Earl," which is owned by News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox. Bob Wright, CEO of NBC Universal, said the company also is "very close" to working out a deal with Apple to provide shows on its new video iPod.”

If you have access to the Wall Street Journal online, the complete article is here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113140185186190419.html?mod=COMPANY

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:29 PM

Yet Another Award Presentation!
Top TV-DVDs Get Awards

Last night in Marina del Rey CA, Home Media Retailing announced the top vote getters in 15 categories of the magazine's second annual TV DVD Awards, which this year drew more than 100,000 separate votes.

Paramount Home Entertainment swept five of the 15 categories, while 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment trotted home with four awards.

The winners:

Best 2000s Series: "24 - Season 3" (20th Century Fox)

Best 1990s Series: "The Simpsons - The Complete Sixth Season" (20th Century Fox)

Best 1980s Series: "The Best of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" (BCI Eclipse)

Best 1970s Series: "The Mary Tyler Moore Show - The Complete Second Season" (20th Century Fox)

Best 1960s Series: "Star Trek - The Original Series: The Complete Second Season" (Paramount)

Best 1950s Series: "I Love Lucy - The Complete Fifth Season" (Paramount)

Best Animated Series: "Looney Tunes Golden Collection - Volume 2" (Warner)

Best Children's Series: "The Muppet Show - Season 1" (Buena Vista)

Best Reality Series: "Survivor: All-Stars - The Complete Season" (Paramount)

Best Variety Series: "Chappelle's Show - Season 2: Uncensored" (Paramount)

Best One-Season Wonder: "Wonderfalls - The Complete Viewer Collection" (20th Century Fox)

Best Miniseries/Made-for-TV Movie: "Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars" (Lions Gate)

Best British TV Series: "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes DVD Collection" (MPI)

Best TV Documentary: "Broadway: The American Musical" (PBS/Paramount)

Best Bonus Materials: "Seinfeld - Volume 1" (Sony)

A panel of top DVD critics and journalists nominated three titles in each category from among more than 150 studio submissions of titles released between Sept. 1, 2004, and Aug. 31, 2005.

The awards were a part of Home Media Retailing's TV DVD 3 conference, a two-day business-to-business conference featuring top studio executives, public relations practitioners, stars of the small screen and members of the media. The event was co-sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter and DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.

http://channels.netscape.com/news/story.jsp?id=2005110806344710216177&dt=20051108063400&w=BW&coview=

dturturro

11-08-05, 02:38 PM

I think that is an insulting way of saying that viewers 65 and older are least likely to be influenced by marketing hype or political bs.

I can't speak for the poster, but I think it's pretty clear that advertisers are mainly interesred in the 18-49 category. I've even seen posts about 12-34 and up to 56. I can't ever recall seeing info on 65 plus. It may not be right, but it is reality.

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:41 PM

Critic’s Notebook
Appreciating 'House'

By Doug Elfman Chicago Sun-Times Television Critic November 8, 2005

Last week, Greg House explained to a fellow doctor why he doesn't care if thousands of Africans die of TB. Africans just aren't his people.

"There's an evolutionary imperative why we give a crap about our family and friends" but no one else, he reasoned. "If we loved all people indiscriminately, we couldn't function."

That's a succinct explanation of lousy human instincts. But House (Hugh Laurie) has incredible instincts as a physician, and that's what counts in "House" (9 PM ET/PT, Fox). He's great at playing detective to treat patients suffering from sneaky infections and diseases.

In other words, just because he has a superiority complex doesn't mean he's not superior.

Since its debut last year, "House" has become more than a cultish hit for Fox. Creator David Shore won a writing Emmy, and Laurie earned an acting award from the Television Critics Association. The appeal of the show is the witty but unsympathetic dialogue Shore and other writers insert into Laurie's affected snarl.

Like the medical conditions House addresses, the show has grown on me. The first time I watched it, it seemed to be a sort of whodunit, no different in pacing and inquisitiveness from "Matlock." But with each subsequent viewing, I've wanted more. That's a sign of a good mystery; like "Law & Order," it hooks me with long-term characters and short-term puzzles.

It might be a reflection of how the juiciest characters are often villains and victims. House is both. The reason he pops pain pills and walks with a cane is because of complications of an infarction of the thigh muscle. Therefore, he's miserable and takes it out on others.

Another cause for his sharp gloom is unveiled in tonight's episode, when his parents show up for the first time. He hates the parent who criticizes him with, "You know what your problem is?" Fans of "House" ought to be able to figure out which parent this is, based on House's macho dismissiveness.

Tonight's short-term thriller is typically unsolvable by a viewer. A Princeton-graduating wrestler, who has rolled on Ecstasy and who drinks at a college party, gets assigned to House's care after he experiences random shocks in his spinal column. But if you think you can figure out the ending, you're not a doctor. You're a psychic. Will it be a tumor? Multiple sclerosis? A genetic inheritance? An STD? Something else?

Fortunately, as usual, there is but a small amount of mind-numbing dialogue to digest such as: "Type-two neurofibromatosis could cause the shock. ... Get a DNA analysis of the long arm of chromosome 22." Graciously, the bulk of the script focuses on House's wisecrack-a-minute and interactions with nicer, slightly less brilliant doctors on staff.

Nothing tonight is quite as funny as last week's quip when House thought about his bad odds at ever earning a Nobel Prize in medicine: "Nobel invented dynamite. I won't accept his blood money."

Though, as always, the camera takes a glance or two into Laurie's occupied stare, a brief moment when he's all out of one-liners, left frozen with the hopeless realization that life is an unavoidable drain, enlivened only by skill and snide remarks. He forges on, because he can, because he's burdened with inquisitiveness and because sustaining life, as crappy as it can be, is an evolutionary imperative.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/elfman/cst-ftr-elf08.html

fredfa

11-08-05, 02:50 PM

(Almost all of these items have been posted earlier in more lengthy versions, but if you missed one or several, here they are in a condensed version.)
Programming notes:
“Lost”, Howard Stern and More
By Matt Webb Mitovich TVGuide.com

BIG LOST NEWS, BROTHER: Throughout November sweeps, ABC will offer weekly Lost podcasts featuring cast members — Josh Holloway and Daniel Dae Kim can be heard on the first one — and executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse teasing episodes and answering fan questions. The first podcast is available today at ABC.com; starting Nov. 15, the files can also be downloaded for free at Apple's iTunes store. Does the hatch's craptastic PC even have DSL? Sayid had better start hammering together some coconut shells and get to work on that.

STERN GETS A SPANKING: Shock jock Howard Stern was hit with a one-day suspension by Infinity Broadcasting — hence today's repeat — allegedly for pimping his employer-to-be, Sirius Satellite Radio, a bit (OK, a lot) more than usual on Monday's broadcast. Stern is expected back on air on Wednesday. In the meantime, can someone help me out with a new term for the overused "shock jock"? "D-mented-J"? "Naughtycaster"? Don't all speak up at once now.

CBS, NBC CHANGE THE TV BIZ: Two announcements made on Monday promise to further alter the way people watch television, if not change the medium's business model altogether. CBS has inked a deal to make four of its top shows — CSI, Survivor, NCIS and The Amazing Race — available for viewing on Comcast's on-demand video service, for a price of $0.99 per episode. Similarly, NBC Universal has teamed with DirecTV to make many of its programs available after their original broadcast via a new interactive digital-video recorder. But will any of this stop my VCR from flashing "12:00"?

MORE AND MORE SURVIVOR: CBS has ordered not one but two additional seasons of Survivor, to air during the 2006-2007 TV season. No destination locales were announced, but as the series continues, it looks as if some remote sections of New Jersey may need to start being considered.

ABC SWEEPS SUNDAY RATINGS: On the first Sunday of this November sweeps period, The West Wing's live debate netted the NBC drama its highest ratings of the season. Still, no channel could compete with ABC, which steamrolled its rivals with the triple threat of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (with 18.4 million viewers), Desperate Housewives (which had 24.4 mil wondering when, if ever, Gabrielle is going to start showing) and Grey's Anatomy (19 mil).

WB BOOSTS NEWBIES: WB has upped the episode orders for the freshmen series Related and Twins to 19 and 18, respectively, using the mathematical formula of "one episode for each 100 viewers."

MARRIEDS MAKE NEWS: The real-life husband-and-wife team of Maury Povich and Connie Chung are teaming up on screen for an MSNBC weekend news show from the cocreator of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. The program, as yet untitled, is described as "a look at the week's headlines, from politics to pop culture," supplemented by the occasional diatribe about Maury's leaving the toothpaste cap off.

STEWART SEND-OFF SCHEDULED: NBC will air the two-hour finale of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, in which someone will be awarded a job with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, on Dec. 21 — or as Peacock Network execs like to call the date, "not a moment too soon."

INSIDE SCOOP: The 12th season of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, premiering this winter, will profile the likes of Al Pacino, The Producers' Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, Dave Chappelle, Queen Latifah and Barbara Walters (whom I just loved in Terms of Endearment, didn't you?).

http://tvguide.com/news/entertainment/

fredfa

11-08-05, 03:16 PM

This story is very interesting, particularly in light of the fact that with "Nightline" show moving to New York, ABC just fired three long-time Washington DC stage managers -- one of them literally days away from a 25th anniversay with the company. And that anniversary would have meant a far more lucrative pension.

Why Did CBS News President Last so Long?
Happy Birthday To Me: Wayward Heyward Cashes Out at CBS

It is a question I have wondered about for months. But now radarmagazine.com has what it says is the answer:

“When beleagured CBS News president Andrew Heyward finally resigned last Friday, many wondered what had taken him so long. Ever since 60 Minutes’ botched 2004 story on Bush’s National Guard service resulted in the purge of star producer Mary Mapes and three other staffers last year, Heyward’s endangered status at CBS had been painfully apparent to network insiders. (CBS kingpin Les Moonves made little effort to conceal his disdain, complaining to the New York Times about Heyward’s failure to “lead a revolution” in the perenially trailing news division.) But in the end, sources say, it wasn’t pride or professionalism that kept the embattled exec hanging on at Black Rock. It was the lucrative pension that kicked in on October 29, his 55th birthday.

The milestone, which we hear made him eligible for a stipend hefty enough to keep him smiling the rest of his days, was no secret to the journalists at the heart of the Memogate scandal. “Heyward will not last a day past his 55th birthday,” Dan Rather told a friend not long after the network launched a probe into the sourcing of the (ultimately retracted) exposé…”

For more:
http://www.radarmagazine.com/fresh-intelligence/2005/11/08/index.php#report_004044

George Thompson

11-08-05, 03:21 PM

I for one refuse to pay anything additional to Cablevision. If I could drop them, I would.

Cablevision nears 2004 loss
By THE JOURNAL NEWS
FROM STAFF REPORTS

Cablevision Systems Corp., the Bethpage-based cable, phone and Internet giant, lost $62.88 million, or 22 cents a share, during the third quarter, nearing its loss of $63.17 million from the third quarter of 2004, the company announced.

Revenues increased from $1.12 billion to $1.24 billion, as the company added 308,000 new video, high-speed Internet and phone customers during the quarter that ended Sept. 30. The company said it has added 1.3 million customers the last year.

fredfa

11-08-05, 03:25 PM

So it is gaining new customers like crazy, but now that it has jettisoned the VOOM satellite service and its hundreds of million dollars in losses, how is Cablevision still losing money?

fredfa

11-08-05, 03:29 PM

More on VOOM’s Monster Film purchase….
Voom Net Buys 44 Horror Films

By Anthony Crupi MediaWeek.com NOVEMBER 08, 2005 -

Monsters HD has acquired 44 horror movies from the Warner Bros. vaults, a buy that includes the 1933 version of King Kong and other giant ape-related fare like the original Mighty Joe Young.

The network, one of 10 high-definition channels available through VOOM HD Networks, inked a multi-year licensing deal with Warner’s domestic cable distribution arm, bolstering its already expansive horror library.

Also included in the mix of classic and contemporary films are Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser franchise and Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist.

The deal comes as Universal Studios prepares to release Peter Jackson’s epic King Kong remake in theaters. A digitally restored HD print of the original King Kong will run without commercial interruption on Monsters HD before the end of the year.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/cabletv/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001435767

fredfa

11-08-05, 03:44 PM

“Desperate” Ratings Slide

ABC’s hit Sunday night show “Desperate Housewives” has been taking some critical hits this year as being much less compelling than in its premiere season.

The critics, it seems, aren’t the only ones who have noticed: the viewers seem to be slowly reaching the same conclusion.

Each original episode has lost viewers from the previous week, and as of Sunday “DH” is down 5.27 million viewers from its season premiere. That is an alarming drop of about 19 per cent – even as more people are watching television than in September.

This past Sunday, “Housewives” managed to lose over two million viewers from its previous original episode two weeks earlier.

Here are this year’s viewer levels (in millions of viewers)

Week One
28.36
Week Two
27.11 (1.25 million viewers lost)
Week Three
26.06 (1.05 million viewers lost)
Week Four
25.78 (280,000 viewers lost)
Week Five
25.22 (560,000 viewers lost)
Week Six (Repeat)
14.09
Week Seven
23.09 (2.13 million viewers lost)

keenan

11-08-05, 03:46 PM

So it is gaining new customers like crazy, but now that it has jettisoned the VOOM satellite service and its hundreds of million dollars in losses, how is Cablevision still losing money?
Isn't Cablevision the company that came up with the triple-play offering, a whole bunch of stuff for a "cheap" price? I recall articles where it was said that it's a great idea for increasing sub counts but not economically feasible long term. Maybe that is beginning to show itself in their bottom line.

fredfa

11-08-05, 04:06 PM

Last week’s complete program-by-program prime-time ratings have been added to the top of RATINGS NEWS (the second post in this thread).

fredfa

11-08-05, 04:10 PM

“Anatomy” of A Hit

While the ratings for “Desperate Housewives” slide steadily (see post #6478 above) the numbers for Grey’s Anatomy have held steady.

So “Grey’s” is actually holding far more of its “DH” lead-in than it did at the start of the season..

Here are this year’s viewer levels (in millions of viewers)

Week One
18.98
Week Two
17.57
Week Three
18.12
Week Four
18.28
Week Five
18.00
Week Six
16.67 (followed a “DH” repeat)
Week Seven
18.13

fredfa

11-08-05, 04:27 PM

“Thanks, Aaron”

During Monday's 360, Anderson Cooper paid tribute to NewsNight with Aaron Brown.

He said the program would have been four years old this weekend. "That's a toddler in human years, but in cable years, four is ancient. Things change and people move on. Aaron is moving on," Cooper explained gently.

"When I first got here, NewsNight and Aaron made a home for me," Cooper said. He started filling in for Aaron in the summer of 2002. "Frankly, I wasn't doing so hot at CNN and NewsNight was the only show that would have me," he said.

At the end of the package, Cooper concluded: "Aaron Brown is not only a terrific anchor and reporter, he has also been remarkably generous to me and to all those he worked with, generous with his time, his attention, and his knowledge. We shall miss him and all the people here who worked with him will miss him, as well. Thanks, Aaron."

http://mediabistro.com/tvnewser/

As for the ratings for the initial Cooper program, Matt Drudge at drudgereport.com reports that a disappointing 631,000 watched. Cooper lost 42% of the lead-in from “Larry King Live” and was off 10% from what Copper and Aaron Brown averaged in October.

fredfa

11-08-05, 06:23 PM

Good Morning America: NBC’s New Promotional Tool?
By Ben Grossman BCbeat.com

A Good Morning America segment reminded me to turn on the Today show Monday and I can’t help wondering if I wasn’t the only one. Like many Americans on a Monday morning, when I flipped on my TV it was still on ABC from the night before (although Desperate Housewives is slipping a bit, isn’t it?).

As I watched GMA, a promo came on for an upcoming segment entitled "Who In The World Is Mike Barz," where he goes around America all week to report on unusual jobs. As I snickered at the apparent shot at NBC’s “Where in the World is Matt Lauer” series, it actually reminded me that the NBC sweeps series was taking place this week, and I flipped over to NBC to check it out where Matt was off to (Easter Island on Monday...pretty cool).

And with NBC I stayed for a bit, which wonderfully gifted me the opportunity to see Katie try not to get too flustered when the guy who got his arse super-glued to the toilet at a Home Depot made a chauvinistic comment. Classic stuff.

Bottom line -- if the title of the GMA series was supposed to rip off or have a go at Today, it backfired in my case and actually reminded/prodded me to flip to NBC...and I'm guessing I'm not alone.

http://www.bcbeat.com/

DoubleDAZ

11-08-05, 06:29 PM

Personal opinion says that both cable and sat are in trouble with the current pricing models. DirecTV subscriber acquisition/retention costs are sky high and going higher and cable is, well, cable. I'm not sure of the answer because revenues increase but still profits dip. Networks, like OLN, raise prices and demand specific tier locations, yet we seem to agree that the cableco is still the bad guy. If all networks did what OLN is alledgely doing and what ESPN tried to do a year or so ago, just where would we be?

While I too abhor the high cost of cable and, even more so, the salaries of cable execs, I'm not sure where some of you think the money comes from to upgrade the infrastructure to offer digital and other services while also adding content (that nobody seems to want?). IMHO cable and sat are like pyramid schemes where they continually need to replenish the bottom tier or the whole thing comes tumbling down while at the same time bowing to pressure to pay increasing costs for content and not raise rates. Every time a new channel, especially HD, appears on the radar, everyone asks when it will be added to the cable/sat lineup. Also, every time a new box is developed, again, everybody asks when they will be able to get it, all while complaining about the cost of services. Well, none of this happens without some effect on the bottom line and costs.

While I can understand the animosity toward Cablevision and others, especially when it comes to customer service, I'm not sure how we can complain about prices when the losses from quarter to quarter are staggerring. It's easy to watch companies like USDTV offer a limited selection of channels at low cost, but just how many of us would be satisfied with that selection and no HD?

It's also easy to suggest cableco's do the same or similar things, but I believe many channels are paid based on the overall subscriber numbers and how many of those channels, including some that you and I may actually want to watch, would be willing to (or even able to) offer themselves on an ala carte basis and then be paid based on actual subscriber basis?

After all, what we're really talking about is changing the pricing model to something more ala carte and, while I don't necessarily disagree, I'm simply don't think it's as easy to do this kind of stuff, at least not in the US, as some folks think it is. I've looked over the ala carte pricing on Rogers Cable in Canada and I just don't see any savings or added control over selection for me. Sure, if you are prudent, you will probably save some money, but I don't think folks who would opt for just a few channels would significantly affect the bottomline anyway, but it would all come down to specific pricing and carriage contracts in order to find out. I don't really care because I justify my costs by comparing to the cost fo renting a DVD. If I watch just one show on a given channel, I believe I offset the cost of that channel by not needing to rent a DVD.

In the case of OLN though (and I admit I'm not up to speed on it), how many other channels will make similar demands if OLN wins? Every channel wants to be on the lowest tier to be available (and paid based on) the most viewers. But, it sounds to me like they've added content (hockey) to their lineup and now want to impose new contract terms because some cableco's are moving or have moved them to a different tier with fewer subscribers, something OLN didn't foresee when they negotiated the current conracts. Here on Cox-Phoenix, OLN was moved to the sports tier before the latest Armstrong tour. While I enjoyed watching last year's tour, I didn't want to pay the extra $5/mo this year, so I went without. I could have subscribed just for the month I suppose, but that's not really in the spirit of things. :)

Along that same line, I think ESPN should be in the sports tier too so that I don't have to pay for it if I don't watch it. Unfortunately, I don't think the OLN move had anything to do with where it may belong as much as it had to do with getting diehards to pay the added $5/mo, in other words, the bottomline and that's really all this is about on both sides of the argument. :)

dturturro

11-08-05, 06:38 PM

The answer: COLLUSION. It didn't work for Baseball, but if the big satellite/cable owners can keep their mouths shut...

DoubleDAZ

11-08-05, 07:46 PM

The answer: COLLUSION. It didn't work for Baseball, but if the big satellite/cable owners can keep their mouths shut...
I'm sorry, but if you're responding to my diatribe, I don't follow. Can you expound on this a little more?

I generally side with the cableco's because they provide a service I'm willing to pay for, not that I wouldn't appreciate a lower bill. They pay the going rate for content and hardware, then sell it to us. Satco's do the same, but it's my opinion that cable was expanding before sat came along. Sat saw an oppoutunity and took it, which is just fine. That may have had an impact on even more channels joining the mix and keeping prices down, but it all started with cable, for better or worse. I've also regularly compared prices for my total communication services and I'm still cheaper with cable.

I've often said that even with cable, sat, and phone companies all competing, there is still little competition. Like gas for your car, prices are really pretty much the same. Sure, sometimes they offer you cut-throat deals to hook you, but that's really all it is. I believe prices are set at whatever the market will bear and they have little relation actual costs. They all use creative accounting, just like Hollywood, to hide their profits and almost always show a loss or just enough profit to keep shareholders relatively happy. If all that adds up to collusion, then I certainly agree with you.

fredfa

11-08-05, 08:25 PM

ESPN has selected which college football games it will broadcast in HD on Saturday, Nov. 19th (although not which of the two networks the night games will be on).

The listings are in the first post of this thread -- Upcoming HD Football.

FYI: Fox has not yet announced its HD NFL games for Nov. 20th.

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:11 PM

Caught in the orbit of 'Mars

King of cult TV Joss Whedon's love of "Veronica Mars"
culminated in his cameo appearance Wednesday night

By Maria Elena Fernandez Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 9, 2005

It started innocently enough: Joss Whedon had just watched what he calls "a Veronica Marsathon" and he couldn't help himself as he sent his love for UPN's "Veronica Mars" out in cyberspace via his website, www.whedonesque.com.

"I can no longer restrain myself. Best. Show. Ever," posted Whedon, known in the TV universe as the king of cult for creating one-of-a-kind shows — "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel" and even the canceled "Firefly," which led to the feature film "Serenity." "Seriously, I've never gotten more wrapped up in a show I wasn't making, and maybe even more than those," he wrote. "Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion, I mean BIG, and charismatic actors and I was just DYING from the mystery and the relationships and PAIN, this show knows from pain and no, I don't care, laugh all you want, I had to share this. These guys know what they're doing on a level that intimidates me. It's the Harry Potter of shows. There. I said it."

Whedon figured he was cyber-chatting with his readers and fans. All he wanted was to encourage them to sample "Veronica Mars," the drama starring mega-talent Kristen Bell that is hailed by critics as the cult successor to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Now in its second season, the show has given UPN a much-needed boost in prestige, despite its modest ratings; fans of the show, like Whedon, were instrumental in keeping "Veronica" on the air.

The mystery-drama about a teen sleuth who was dealt a series of tough blows (her alcoholic mother abandoned her, she was date-raped, her best friend was killed) and overcomes them, in part, by helping her private investigator father, was doing better this season, but could clearly use a ratings stunt. So, this being Hollywood, it wasn't long before Whedon got an offer from creator Rob Thomas and executive producer Joel Silver to make his TV debut in an episode of the show.

"It wasn't like I made a formal announcement. I was just too damn excited and I wanted to share it," explained Whedon who appears in tonight's 9 o'clock episode. "I have a better understanding of what 'Buffy' fans went through from watching 'Veronica Mars.' I want to talk to other people who have seen it."

In the episode, Whedon guest stars as Car Rental Guy. He has an amusing scene with Veronica, who is trying to figure out who deliberately crashed a school bus with the intentions of killing her. Viewers this year are seeing a slightly more mature and more emotionally open Veronica, who has given her heart to her boyfriend, come to terms with her relationship with her mother and has an after-school job at a coffee shop.

Other shows have been compared with his beloved "Buffy," but Whedon says this is the first time it has made him proud "as opposed to irate."

" 'Veronica Mars' combines all the genres," he explained. "She's not just mystery-solving gal; she's dealing with the mysteries of the human condition. So it takes what it has, a catchy idea about an empowered and cool outcast girl in high school, and then it digs well below.... The mix of humor and pain and romance is exactly what we tried to do on 'Buffy.' But these guys actually work out complex plots in terms of mysteries, and that takes a knowledge of structure that I cannot claim. So in that way, I'd say it's actually got something 'Buffy' didn't have."

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" premiered in 1997 and was on the air for seven years, first on the WB and then on UPN, where it moved for its last two seasons when UPN offered to pay roughly $22 million more than the WB to get the show. When Whedon posted his comments, Thomas said, "it made my week."

"The toughest people to flatter are the people working in your same milieu," Thomas said. "If five years from now someone else had the new 'Veronica Mars,' my reaction would not be to say, 'You're right, it's great.' The human reaction is to say, 'Wait a minute, that's a pale facsimile of what we were doing.' So I think he's a very classy guy and very cool for him to say it."

This season, UPN President Dawn Ostroff moved "Veronica Mars" to Wednesday nights so that it could benefit from its hit lead-in, "America's Next Top Model." Despite averaging just 2.5 million viewers, Ostroff was persuaded to keep the show because the audience had grown as the first season drew to a close and fans campaigned on websites for the show. The support of critics and the media, Ostroff said, also played an important role in her decision.

"There's a certain quality that you strive for when you develop shows in TV," Ostroff said. "It's very hard to find a show that feels unique ... and when that show comes along, you really have to nurture it, protect it, and you need to do everything you can to support it in the right way."

But just as Thomas was getting ready to celebrate his "flattering" time slot, ABC announced it was moving "Lost" from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., pitting the teen detective against the blockbuster adventure series. Even so, "Veronica Mars" is up 28% from last year among women ages 18 to 34 and up 18% in total viewers. The show's last original episode, which aired on Oct. 26, scored the series' largest audience, 3.6 million — but as Thomas is quick to point out, "That night 'Lost' was a repeat."

"I wish we could just air on weeks when 'Lost' was doing repeats," he said. "I'm not just trying to do a show that's just for the 'Veronica Mars' cult. I want more people watching it. But honestly, I would he very happy with 'Buffy' numbers. 'Buffy' numbers would keep it on the air and would be populist enough for me."

That makes sense coming from a former high school teacher and author of teen novels who wrote for "Dawson's Creek," was an executive producer on "Cupid" and "spent the last few years wishing I was [Whedon] in the sense that I wanted the cool hip teen show that everyone is talking about on the air." "Buffy" averaged 4.2 million viewers the two years it was on UPN.

"We're both sort of writing in the 'Heathers' school of stylized teen dialogue, pretty quippy and bantery," Thomas said. "We both imposed metaphors on a high school setting. He did high school as a horror show, and we're doing high school as a noir piece. In our own ways, we re-imagined high school to fit a distinct style of storytelling."

The 25-year-old Bell credits Thomas with capturing "the narrative of an 18-year-old girl perfectly, which is also the freakiest thing about the show. They're real problems. It's utterly relatable. And Joss is such an intelligent guy and he gets the show completely and he was just very funny. It was so cool to have him on set because we're hopefully following in his footsteps, and he really knows how to write for cult fans."

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-mars9nov09,0,1164557,print.story?coll=cl-tv-top-right

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:22 PM

A 'Lost' Ship With Leaks
'
By Kate Aurthur The New York Times November 9, 2005

At the conclusion of the Oct. 19 episode of "Lost," a sonorous male voice narrated a preview of the next original installment of the popular ABC series. "Every season, there's one episode people will be talking about all year long," he intoned. "This is it." Over spliced images of various cast members in peril - Sawyer collapsed, Shannon screamed, Ana-Lucia pointed a gun - the narrator made a promise. "Three weeks from tonight, one of these survivors will be lost. Forever."

Here we are three weeks later - and indeed, someone is going to die on tonight's "Lost." That the ABC promotions department alerted viewers to that plot twist last month was meant to create excitement for the episode, which is the first "Lost" during the November ratings sweeps period. But among a certain segment of frenzied fans, the information was not new at all. From its debut, in September 2004, "Lost" has inspired a devoted base of followers who pore over every episode searching for answers to the show's many mysteries.

Gossip about television flows freely on the Internet. Advance information about plot developments - referred to as "spoilers" - is regularly slipped to reporters, to writers for entertainment Web sites like Ain't It Cool News and onto message boards. These leaks are a constant source of anguish to the creators of shows like "Lost," who, naturally, don't want the surprises they've planned to be ruined.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, two executive producers of "Lost," said they have no idea how the purveyors of spoilers get information about their series. They have put in place a numerical coding system to keep track of scripts, but it doesn't seem to fix the problem. At the end of last season, when the writers were determined to keep a kidnapping in the finale a secret, they were driven to extremes. Internally, the scene was referred to only by a prosaic nickname: "the bagel." And only the actors in that particular scene received script pages.

It worked. "We were really surprised, but really pleased, that that did not get spoiled," Mr. Cuse said.

Casting changes, on the other hand, might be impossible to hide. Last April, a rumor began circulating that a major character would be leaving the show this fall. As months passed, more information leaked out onto message boards and fan sites devoted to "Lost" - the character's sex, how he or she might die - all accompanied by the wild conjecture inherent in online chatter. It was like a giant game of Clue as viewers put together bits of information gathered from different sources - some more reliable than others. Finally, Ain't It Cool News, a site largely devoted to spoilers, posted the name of the doomed character. (This article will not reveal that name, nor will it spoil any of the plot's particulars.)

Will the character commit suicide or be murdered? Will he or she be eaten by the monster? Succumb to the disease that felled the previous inhabitants of the island? Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse wouldn't comment on any speculation, but in an interview last week, they conceded that the bell would definitely toll for someone tonight.

"Damon and I came up with the idea that this character would die last spring," Mr. Cuse said. That meant renegotiating - shortening - the actor's contract. "There were a number of people involved, including that actor's representatives and other agents within that agency," Mr. Cuse said with a sigh. "That's where it gets really porous."

Mr. Lindelof said: "Things started getting leaked that that actor was getting cast in movies. Which you can't blame them for - you can't say, 'You're going to leave "Lost" in Episode 7, and we don't want you to work for the rest of the year.' "

It was whispers about the actor's negotiations that tipped off Kristin Veitch, who delivers television scoops on E! and is also a columnist on the cable channel's Web site. If this rumor were a virus, Ms. Veitch would be its Patient Zero: on April 18, she broke the news of the Season 2 death. "Keeping a secret in this town on a show like that is next to impossible," Ms. Veitch said recently on the telephone from Los Angeles.

With months to milk this plot development, she has doled out minute hints along the way. In June, she leaked the character's sex; she also has written opaquely about how the person will die. "I never spill the whole enchilada," Ms. Veitch said. "It's this weird balancing act."

Michael Ausiello, a columnist for TVGuide.com, credited Ms. Veitch with breaking this story. He then learned the details himself, and has since trafficked in the deathwatch in his "Ask Ausiello" chats. Mr. Ausiello called his method of revealing information "a game for the readers," and has answered point-blank questions about who will not be dying on tonight's episode.

"There's a competition among us writers over who's going to get it out there first," he said. "But you always want there to be someone who takes it too far, because then they are the one who gets in trouble."

In this case, it was Ms. Veitch who tipped the scales. Something she wrote in one of her weekly chats led a number of her readers to guess not only who died, but how. She pulled her comments down as quickly as she could. "It was like, 'Retreat, retreat, retreat! I totally went too far,' " Ms. Veitch said.

Before it disappeared, Mr. Lindelof learned of this misstep. "Kristin had that on her site for all of 10 minutes, and as soon as I heard about it, I was like, 'Please don't do this,' " he said. "There are a million ways to die on the island. You're depriving the audience of the one thing remaining."

Although she has sources who funnel her secret information about his show, Mr. Lindelof and Ms. Veitch are friendly, and talk regularly. She said it's a mutually beneficial relationship. "The 'Lost' people - and this is not indicative of other producers on other shows - totally get it," Ms. Veitch said. "I think they're aware that people who do what I do are invaluable to shows like 'Lost.' We're getting people to think about the show even when it's not on the air."

Mr. Lindelof said he appreciated that Ms. Veitch is a fan of the show and, as opposed to many producers, will work with her - up to a point. "I don't leak her anything, and I don't know the source of her leaks," Mr. Lindelof said. "If I want her to take down something that I think is going to harm the show, I'll give her a piece of information that is less harmful. It's just like the White House in that sense."

Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse are more afraid of Ain't It Cool News and, specifically, Hercules, the anonymous writer-spoiler for the Web site, who published the dead character's name (albeit behind many warnings, and in invisible text the reader had to highlight in order to see). Mr. Cuse said, "Somehow people like Hercules have access, and we don't know how to shut that access down."

In an e-mail interview - the only kind he will allow - Hercules wrote that he learned who died "from a proven source, then another, then a third." He referred to Mr. Lindelof as "a good friend and a big talent," and wrote, "I sense he wasn't exactly shocked we got hold of the news."

With this particular kind of news, the fact that "Lost" is filmed in Hawaii is another hindrance. "When an actor is spotted in L.A. from 'Lost,' it already raises red flags," Mr. Ausiello said. "The paparazzi are everywhere."

That bodes ill for keeping future deaths a secret. "Lost," with its large cast and ominous premise, will continue to eliminate characters as the series progresses. Mr. Cuse said, "We do feel like to make the life-and-death stakes on the show really play, we do need to kill characters periodically."

And the hard-core fans can be a bloodthirsty lot. Mr. Lindelof said, "Already on the boards now that it's out there that we're killing a character, they want to know: who's next?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/arts/television/09lost.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

11-08-05, 10:28 PM

PBS comedy specials a hoot
'
By Dusty Saunders (Denver) Rocky Mountain News November 8, 2005

Before Steve Martin there was Sid Caesar.

And Milton Berle, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Burns and Allen.

Martin is the epitome of modern comedy, his talent honed mostly in sophisticated film performances.

The others, veterans of vaudeville and radio, pioneered comedy on television.

Public television on Wednesday night provides a comic history lesson, airing a pair of unrelated, back-to- back specials that provide contrast between the sketch-oriented satire of Caesar, and the low-key eclectic style of Martin.

First up is Pioneers of Prime Time, which examines the early careers of the noted comedians (most of them dead) through a series of what producers call never-before-seen interviews, given, in many cases, shortly before their deaths.

While the production of Pioneers is frustratingly disorganized at times, the hour does provide fascinating peeks into early television, radio, and vaudeville through film and kinescope.

Highlights:

• Berle and Hope in drag shopping at a supermarket as part of a TV special.

• Berle clowning with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on Berle's Texaco Star Theater (1950).

• Skelton, who regularly displayed a risqué streak, wisecracking while rubbing suntan lotion on a model's back.

• Benny aping a chimp. Or is it vice versa?

• The incomparable Caesar, working with Carl Reiner, Howard Morris and Imogene Coca in a couple of their historic Your Show of Shows skits.

No doubt about it - Your Show of Shows remains the jewel in the pioneer crown.

For four NBC seasons beginning in 1950 Your Show of Shows was one of the most ambitious undertakings on television, offering 90 minutes of live original comedy every week.

And no understatement to note the series featured the most talented stable of comedy writers ever assembled for a TV series: Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart. (A collection of Your Show of Shows is available on DVD).

In addition to the clips, the hour is peppered with commentary from many stars.

"When we started in television, there was nothing to copy," Caesar recalls. "There was nothing on TV - unless you counted bowling and wrestling."

Skelton, displaying his famous giggle, recalls his first sessions with network executives: "I know as much about TV as any of you guys do. We've all been in it for 20 minutes."

The late Steve Allen talks about how most of these stars made the transition from vaudeville to radio. "Young people today have no idea how prestigious and glamorous radio was in the '30s," Allen recalls.

Physical performers like Skelton found a way to entertain on radio.

And then Skelton, et al. went back to vaudeville routines during the early days of television.

Following Pioneers is The Kennedy Center Presents the 2005 Mark Twain Prize, which honors Martin for his body of work.

Dave Barry, Larry David, Tom Hanks, Eric Idle, Diane Keaton, Randy Newman and Martin Short are among those paying tribute during a 90-minute production.

In addition to the accolades, the production features comic performances from this all-star cast.

The live on tape show is, as NBC once proclaimed, "in living color." In Pioneers, Caesar's comedic work is shown in grainy, black-and-white kinescope (film of a live performance made on a television monitor).

The two programs have a common denominator: Sid Caesar and Steve Martin always make me laugh.

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/spotlight_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23962_4219963,00.html

dturturro

11-08-05, 10:40 PM

I'm sorry, but if you're responding to my diatribe, I don't follow. Can you expound on this a little more?

The service providers have to stop giving in to higher per sub rates. Nobody can stand up to Viacom, Universal, Fox or Disney because they can't afford to lose the entire slate of channels from that company? Remember E*'s recent battle with Viacom? But if they all agreed to not pay over X amount they'd be able to get the programming costs under control.

Of course there's still a ton of other costs to take care of but one step at a time.

GeorgeLV

11-08-05, 10:54 PM

The service providers have to stop giving in to higher per sub rates. Nobody can stand up to Viacom, Universal, Fox or Disney because they can't afford to lose the entire slate of channels from that company? Remember E*'s recent battle with Viacom? But if they all agreed to not pay over X amount they'd be able to get the programming costs under control.

Of course there's still a ton of other costs to take care of but one step at a time.

In America that's known as an illegal cartel. Companies can't get together to set prices.

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:00 PM

“Desperate Housewives” Actor Fired

(People Magazine)
New Desperate Housewives actor Page Kennedy was fired from the hit ABC show on Tuesday, a series spokeswoman says.

Kennedy, 28, was let go Friday after a "thorough investigation by the studio," publicist Janet Daily tells the Associated Press. She did not say what the investigation was about. However, the alleged misconduct didn't involve another cast member, a source close to the production tells the AP.

Kennedy, who joined Desperate Housewives this season, played Caleb, a character being held in the basement of Wisteria Lane newcomer Betty Applewhite, played by Alfre Woodard. Kennedy's character has only been seen briefly – most memorably when he tried to escape his dreary confinement.

The role is being recast, Daily says. Kennedy's final appearance on the show is Sunday.

The Detroit native made his film debut as a bad guy in 2003's S.W.A.T. He appears in the upcoming movie In the Mix, scheduled to open Nov. 23.

In October he told PEOPLE he was unsure of his character's future on the show: "I don't know what I'm doing in the next episode, much less at the end off the season," he said. "Hey, if I’m out of work next season, hopefully a lot of people saw me so I can move on."

http://people.aol.com/people/articles/0,19736,1127492,00.html

fredfa

11-08-05, 11:04 PM

Season To Date Ratings
Prime-Time Ratings Through November 6th

Here are the ratings for the Top 20 national prime-time network shows for the first seven weeks of the 2005-2006 TV season as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish. Nielsen estimates there are 277.93 million potential viewers in the U.S. ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions. (The entire list of 136 programs is in the Ratings section, the second post in this thread.)

Show / Network / Viewers (in Millions)
1 CSI 27.94
2 DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES 24.36
3 WITHOUT A TRACE 20.80
4 LOST 18.47
5 GREY'S ANATOMY 17.96
6 CSI: MIAMI 17.84
7 SURVIVOR: GUATEMALA 17.64
8 NCIS 16.86
9 COMMANDER IN CHIEF 16.01
10 EXTREME MAKEOVER:HOME EDITION 15.68
11 NFL MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL 15.19
12 COLD CASE 15.01
13 LAW AND ORDER:SVU 14.88
14 TWO AND A HALF MEN 14.86
15 CSI: NY 14.68
16 60 MINUTES 14.09
17 E.R. 13.55
18 CRIMINAL MINDS 13.02
19 MY NAME IS EARL 12.81
20 LAS VEGAS 12.63

DoubleDAZ

11-08-05, 11:28 PM

Ok, I get your meaning now, thanks. And, I agree with you, but it will take a lot to make that happen and, as GeorgeLV said, it may even be illegal.

I note that Cox was able to stand up to ESPN after some of the other cableco's unofficially joined them, but I'm not really sure that what we ended up with was any better. They are still on the basic tier and everyone pays, not just those that want the channel, and they still account for way too much of the content costs. I must say that I believe some of the current rate structure has perhaps led to better programming, particularly on channels like FX, SciFi, and TNT, so all has not been lost.

From what little I see about the OLN thing, it seems like they may be trying to change gears in the middle of the road because some content has become more popular than expected. These are the kinds of things that normally happen when negotiating new contracts. Unfortunately, during lean years, some channels make longer term committments than they should and then want to force an early renegotiation. Based only on that assumption my hope is that OLN loses. If those turn out not to be the facts, then I certainly could be persuaded to change my opinion.

Similar things are/were happening with Sinclair, etc., trying now to get paid in cash for local content. Personally, I'm not totally opposed to that, but then I shouldn't be subjected to increasing levels of commercials and decreasing levels of actual content. I think it borders on the criminal that some cableco's are not yet able to carry local HD content in some markets.

Of course, a lot of this will probably become moot once analogs are gone and a lot of these current struggles are simply a by-product of the in-between status the digital transition has put us in. Then too, I think a lot is posturing as the digital transition gets closer to completion and pressure for ala carte pricing, etc., from John McCain and others.

RussTC3

11-09-05, 01:33 AM

Good to see that Grey's Anatomy is doing so well. It's just so much better than DH, even though some of the things that are going on are a little annoying, but I think it'll all work out.

About DH now. What's going on? Somethings missing from the show, it's just not as good as the first season. And was I the only one to go "wtf" at the ending scene for the past episode?

Kinda weird, but I guess it was Susan being Desperate so maybe it was the point. I just didn't like the way it all played out.

fredfa

11-09-05, 02:05 AM

I agree Russ. I don't know what it is -- but last year's overriding mystery (Who killed Mary Alice?) was a nice bond for the women. This year there is no real connection and it seems to be four different stories.
It just doesn't seem to work as well. For me, at least.

fredfa

11-09-05, 02:40 AM

Fans of HBO's series will have to wait

By Gary Levin USA TODAY

Don't bother setting your TiVo. For the first time in six years, HBO will go months without new episodes of an original prime-time series.

Instead, it has opted to air repeats of The Sopranos and Deadwood from December to March, ahead of both shows' new seasons.

The rationale: scheduling considerations. HBO had slotted Big Love - a new comedic drama that stars Bill Paxton as a polygamist with three wives — in January, but it reversed course and probably will hold back that series until summer.

Program planning chief David Baldwin says the difficulty of promoting a new show during the holidays and the desire to relaunch The Sopranos in March after a 21-month hiatus, forced the issue.

"January and February every year is problematic," he says. "With only eight or nine weeks to play with, it's kind of tough to put a full season of anything in there and not disrupt the rest of the schedule. March to May is really the sweet spot of HBO's programming year," as series and movies vie for Emmy nominations before the late-May eligibility cutoff.

But winter poses other problems. The Winter Olympics, Oscars, Golden Globes and Grammys will crowd Sunday nights in those two months, making it even tougher to find viewers on Sunday nights. ABC has boosted broadcasters' once-moribund Sundays with Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, which have drained attention and viewers from HBO.

And the pay network has fewer top shows to spread around. The Sopranos enters its final season, and Sex and the City ended its run nearly two years ago.

"It just shows you've got to search for hit originals, and they just haven't been able to find another one," says Kagan Research analyst Deana Myers.

Though "financially they're doing fine," selling DVDs and maintaining a base of 28 million subscribers, "they're hurt by the broadcast networks finding hits," Myers says. "The business is cyclical, and right now (viewers) aren't talking about HBO."

Without a hit like The Sopranos, which is set to return March 12, HBO's ratings have fallen 25% this year, averaging 852,000 viewers in prime time.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, ending its fifth season next month, is in a lull. Historical saga Rome , a critical hit, averages about 2.5 million viewers for its Sunday premieres, a fraction of The Sopranos' 10-million-plus audience. And British comedy Extras ended its six-week run Sunday with 432,000 viewers.

The tentative lineup

Current:
Rome (ends Nov. 20)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (ends Dec. 4)

December
The Sopranos (Season 5 repeats)
Deadwood (Season 2 repeats)

March
The Sopranos (Season 6; tentatively March 12)
Deadwood (Season 3)

June
Entourage (Season 3)
Lucky Louis (new comedy from comic Louis C.K.)
Big Love (polygamy drama)

September
The Wire (Season 4)
January 2007
The Sopranos (Season 6, Part 2)

Later
Rome (Season 2)

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-11-08-hbo_x.htm

fredfa

11-09-05, 02:54 AM

OBITUARY
Sheree North, 72; Kramer’s Mom, Lou Grant’s flame
Stand-In for Marilyn Monroe Forged a Lengthy Acting Career

By Myrna Oliver Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Sheree North, the platinum blond bombshell of 1950s musical motion pictures remembered by younger audiences for her continuing television roles as Lou Grant's sultry girlfriend on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Kramer's mother Babs on "Seinfeld," has died. She was 72.

North, who had been in good health, died unexpectedly Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications following surgery, said her daughter, Dawn Bessire of Santa Monica.

Groomed as a studio glamour girl who could substitute for the more famous but often unreliable Marilyn Monroe, North was later interviewed or cast in documentaries and shows about Monroe. Among them were the 1980 television movie "Marilyn: The Untold Story," in which she played Monroe's mother; and the documentaries "Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend" in 1987 and "Intimate Portrait: Marilyn Monroe" in 1996.

Hollywood insiders originally whispered that 20th Century Fox hired North only as a threat to the troublesome Monroe — whom she did replace in the 1955 "How to Be Very, Very Popular," in which she outdanced and outshone the leggy Betty Grable. North not only shared Monroe's blond coiffure but almost exactly matched her height and measurements.

Unlike other studio-styled blonds such as Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren, North tried to change her bombshell image, allowing herself to age gracefully, work without makeup and segue into older character parts. She worked steadily, enjoying a half-century career on stage, television and in film. But she never quite shook the initial image as a beauty, which she blamed on studio-generated press coverage in the 1950s.

"Even today," she told The Times in 1983, lamenting that she had been rejected for several dramatic roles because of her looks, "there's still the same reaction when producers hear my name. They remember me as the blond who was to have taken over from Marilyn Monroe."

Born Dawn Bethel in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 1933, North danced as a youngster with USO shows during World War II.

"I started dancing about the time I started to walk," she told The Times in 1953. She said she later sanded floors and parked cars to pay for ballet lessons.

Abandoning thoughts of becoming a ballerina, she opted for paying jobs in local nightclubs and the chorus line at the Greek Theatre.

She made her film debut in the 1951 "Excuse My Dust" starring Red Skelton. But despite her first few films, she became so discouraged about launching a show business career that she considered going to secretarial school.

North had to cross the country for her breakout role — a wild dance number in the Broadway musical "Hazel Flagg" she was given after an agent saw her dancing in a Santa Monica nightclub. The debut on the Great White Way earned her a Theatre World award and a chance to repeat her self-styled jitterbug in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis musical comedy film version of the stage show, retitled "Living It Up," in 1954.

When she appeared on the initial episode of "The Bing Crosby Show" on television that same year, former Times television critic Walter Ames noted: "One of the surprises of the show was Sheree North, the shapely dancer. No one had given me an inkling that she could deliver comedy lines as well as she did, but she more than held her own with Bing and Jack Benny. Sheree came pretty close to walking off with the show."

After that, her film credits quickly rose to leading lady status, as in the 1956 musical film "The Best Things in Life Are Free" opposite Gordon MacRae and Dan Dailey.

North appeared on stage in such popular musicals as "Can-Can," "Irma La Douce" and "Bye Bye Birdie," and in such plays as "Private Lives," "The Madwoman of Chaillot" and "6 Rms Riv Vue." She also directed and produced several shows in small theaters, and in 2000 portrayed the Southern belle Amanda in a production of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" at the Laguna Playhouse.

Her film career also endured for several decades, including such films as "The Outfit" with Robert Duvall in 1973, "The Shootist" starring John Wayne in 1976 and the 1991 thriller "Defenseless" with Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard.

But the actress probably gained her widest recognition on television, beginning with early 1950s variety shows including Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town." She went on to guest roles in such top series as "The Virginian," "The Big Valley," "The Fugitive," "Cannon," "McMillan and Wife," "Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law," "Kojak," "Hawaii Five-O," "Barnaby Jones," "Fantasy Island," "The Golden Girls" and "Murder, She Wrote." She earned Emmy nominations for appearances on "Marcus Welby, M.D." and "Archie Bunker's Place."

North had a key role in the 1979 miniseries "Women in White" and played the uptight boss Edie McKendrick on Danny Thomas' 1980-81 father-daughter sitcom "I'm a Big Girl Now."

In 1974, North became a part of television history on the 100th episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," when Ed Asner's character Lou Grant fell for her as Charlene Maguire, a saloon singer with a past. She inspired the crusty newsman Grant to start wearing mauve turtlenecks and zip around the office like, as one colleague said, "a 200-pound bumblebee."

"I can recall no more flawless work of television comedy than this 100th episode," commented former Times television columnist Cecil Smith. "It couldn't happen to a better actress. Sheree North is a superb performer and she gives Charlene the kind of acerbic sophisticated wit the series has not had since the abdication of Rhoda [Valerie Harper] to her own show."

North is survived by her husband, Phillip Norman of Pacific Palisades; two daughters from previous marriages, Dawn Bessire and Erica Torrablas; a stepdaughter, Jessica Youd, of Los Angeles, and Youd's three sons, and a grandchild. No public service is planned.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-north7nov07,0,6432117,print.story?coll=la-home-obituaries

keenan

11-09-05, 03:13 AM

Good info about HBO, been wondering about that. After Nov 20 I can cancel the subscription until Mar-06.

fredfa

11-09-05, 03:27 AM

"Curb" sure has gone into the dumper this season.

keenan

11-09-05, 03:35 AM

I haven't even been watching, maybe I'll catch it next summer, maybe.. :D

fredfa

11-09-05, 09:57 AM

The TV Column
The Week’s Winners and Losers
CBS Rolls Into Sweeps, but Latin Grammys Steal the Show

By Lisa de Moraes The Washington PostWednesday, November 9, 2005; C07

CBS's winning streak continues as the November ratings derby kicks in. It is the first network to win the first seven weeks of a TV season since the late '80s. But last week's really big news? Latin Grammys thrive in the trophy show's first post-CBS broadcast.

Here's a look at the week's top and bottom:

WINNERS

Latin Grammys . Off CBS and on Univision, the sixth annual Latin Grammy Awards erupted, attracting an average audience of more than 5 million viewers -- nearly 2 million better than last year's CBS telecast. In fact, Thursday's show outperformed all but the first Latin Grammys' broadcast on CBS (which snagged 7.5 million viewers). Univision tied Fox and beat UPN and WB for the night.

"Category 7," ironically, didn't pack as much punch as "Category 6" (14.3 million viewers compared with 19.3 million). But it did come in about 5 million better than CBS is averaging with the Sunday movie this season, and it's a rare sequel that does as well as the original. Best of all, "C7" took a noticeable chunk of the "Desperate Housewives" audience, which hit a season low of fewer than 24 million.

"Boondocks." Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block notes that "Boondocks" is its best series launch ever among the 18-to-34-year-olds it targets. That said, the new animated series based on the comic strip attracted an average audience of 2.3 million viewers and the network's prior four-week average in that Sunday 11 p.m. slot with "Family Guy" reruns was 2.8 million. Problem with a Winners/Losers column is that there's no On the Fence category.

LOSERS

Anderson Cooper. Cooper took over "NewsNight's" 10-to-midnight slot this past Monday after CNN showed "NewsNight" anchor Aaron Brown the door. Cooper clocked 631,000 viewers. In October, Brown (with his replacement "co-anchoring") logged 665,000 viewers. Now let's look at the same night one year ago: CNN averaged virtually the same audience -- 632,000 viewers -- only with Brown's show running one hour at 10 and a Lou Dobbs rerun at 11. Breaking them out, Brown averaged 781,000 viewers that night, the Dobbs rerun 482,000. For the sake of perfect clarity, this past Monday, the first hour of Cooper's show averaged 758,000 viewers, the second hour 503,000 viewers. Welcome to prime time, Cooper.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110801829_pf.html

Xesdeeni

11-09-05, 09:59 AM

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:10 AM

The reality is, reality TV sells big

By Ellen Gray Philadelphia Daily News

In the latest answer to those who continue to ask plaintively, "When will 'reality' television die?" CBS yesterday announced that it's ordered the 13th and 14th editions of "Survivor" for next season.

As of last spring, its fifth season, the franchise had become only the sixth show in history to rank in the Top 10 in every season it's been broadcast. And it's extending the streak, with its current edition, "Survivor: Guatemala," ranked seventh among total viewers.

And it's not just "Survivor": ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" ranks 10th. NBC's "The Apprentice" may be playing itself out - please - but despite some complaints about the travel cutbacks in the family edition, CBS' "The Amazing Race" is still holding its own in a tough time slot.

And does anyone really think that Fox's "American Idol" won't come back strong in January?

I think it's time some people stopped whining about this.

Because the truth is that the growth of "reality" TV, particularly the serialized competitions like "Survivor" and "American Idol," has been better for television than most actors and producers want to admit.

Not only has it killed off a lot of weak sitcoms - remember when nearly every new one seemed to be about six young "Friends" wannabes hanging out together? - but it's helped increase viewers' appetites for continuing storylines featuring compelling characters.

It was only a few years ago that the drama business seemed totally committed to the self-contained model espoused by "Law & Order" honcho Dick Wolf, who developed a show so formulaic that it was originally intended to be syndicated in half-hour segments, with one episode covering a crime investigation and the second the trial.

Even in its hourlong version - the form in which it was ultimately sold and now airs pretty much around-the-clock - "Law & Order" is a show that doesn't expect its fans to keep track of much more than that episode's details.

A casual viewer might wonder why the prosecutors and police detectives come and go, but not knowing the characters' sketchy histories won't hurt anyone's enjoyment.

It's short-attention-span TV.

"Survivor," on the other hand, expects you not only to be able to tell its contestants apart but to follow their insane machinations, whether it's analyzing why Richard Hatch did what he did in his final immunity challenge in the first-season finale or how Tina Wesson manipulated Colby Donaldson in "The Australian Outback."

That said, not all attention spans are created equal.

It's been so long since the last original episode of ABC's "Lost" that I can barely remember who's on the island, much less work up much interest in who might not be there anymore after tonight's episode.

Could "Lost" be short for "Lost Track of the Plot During Reruns"?

I know, some of you have put this period to good use: replaying old episodes, freeze-framing and blowing up corners of the screen to reveal clues, exploring the new Web sites that seem to pop up daily for this show.

You're the people who'll be most excited by ABC's latest venture: a weekly "Lost" podcast, debuting today on ABC.com. Starting next Tuesday, you'll also be able to download it from iTunes.

Go ahead, go crazy.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television//13118844.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Marcus Carr

11-09-05, 10:15 AM

Comcast Sees Growth in VOD & Premium Services, Tops 8 Million Broadband Users

Citing strong consumer demand for new digital features including Comcast ON DEMAND, HDTV programming and digital video recorders (DVRs), Comcast Cable reported revenue of $5.3 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2005, representing a 9.8% increase from the third quarter of 2004. Video revenue increased $184 million or 5.7% to $3.4 billion in the third quarter of 2005, driven by higher monthly revenue per basic subscriber and a 12.4% increase in the number of digital customers. Comcast Cable added 307,000 new digital customers in the third quarter of 2005 and with more than 9.4 million subscribers, digital cable penetration reached 44.1% of basic subscribers. Basic subscribers are essentially unchanged at 21.4 million, a modest decline of 0.4% from one year ago.

VOD and HDTV: Pay-per- view revenues increased 7.9% from the same period last year driven by movie and event purchases through the Comcast ON DEMAND service. During the third quarter, Comcast Cable deployed 326,000 advanced set-top boxes with DVR and/or HDTV programming capability, ending the quarter with a total of 2.3 million advanced set-top boxes in service. At September 30, 2005, 21.8% of digital customers have one or more advanced set-top boxes.

Broadband:: Comcast High-Speed Internet service revenues increased 26.1% to $1.0 billion in the third quarter of 2005, reflecting a 24.2% increase in subscribers and strong average revenue per subscriber. Comcast Cable ended the third quarter of 2005 with more than 8.1 million high-speed Internet subscribers, adding 437,000 subscribers during the quarter and resulting in a penetration rate of 19.9% of available homes. Average monthly revenue per high-speed Internet subscriber in the third quarter of 2005 of $42.88 was in line with a year ago.

Telephony: Comcast Cable added 46,000 Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) customers, reflecting the rollout of CDV in new markets including Washington, D.C., Seattle, Baltimore and Denver. As expected, CDV customer additions were offset by a decline in the number of Comcast's circuit-switched telephone customers as Comcast transitions to marketing Comcast Digital Voice. As a result, Comcast Cable reported 12,000 net new phone customers in the third quarter of 2005. Cable phone revenue remained relatively unchanged from the third quarter of the prior year at $171 million.

Advertising: Advertising revenue for the third quarter of 2005 increased 4.5% to $333 million, reflecting growth of 2.9% in local advertising and growth of 11.8% in regional/national advertising.

Cable CAPEX: Cable capital expenditures increased 3.2% to $899 million compared to the $871 million in the third quarter of 2004 reflecting increased purchases of digital set-top boxes to meet strong demand for digital services and higher costs associated with readiness and deployment of CDV.

Including its content and other divisions, Comcast reported consolidated revenues of $5.6 billion, a 9.4% increase from the $5.1 billion reported in the same period of 2004. Consolidated Operating Cash Flow increased to $2.1 billion or 12.9%, in the third quarter of 2005, from the $1.9 billion reported in the same prior year period. Operating income increased to $883 million in the third quarter of 2005 compared to operating income of $686 million in the third quarter of 2004.

Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast, commented: "Last month, we delivered our 1 billionth ON DEMAND program this year. Comcast High-Speed Internet exceeded $1 billion in revenue this quarter and at 20% penetration, we believe this business has significant growth potential. Comcast Digital Voice service is now available to 12 million households in 21 markets. The rollout of this new service is just getting started, and we expect Comcast Digital Voice to be another meaningful driver of growth for years to come."
http//www.comcast.com

http://www.convergedigest.com/Mergers/financialarticle.asp?ID=16487

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:15 AM

Clowning glory: Salutes to those wild-and-crazy comics
PBS mixes legends and laughs in 2 shows; NBC recalls 'SNL' in the '80s

By Hal Boedeker Orlando Sentinel Television Critic November 9, 2005

The giants of television comedy, from Lucille Ball to Jerry Seinfeld, have enriched the culture and supplied hours of merriment. Celebrating that tradition either can lift the spirit or deepen the despair that few performers uphold that high standard today. Tonight, PBS offers two specials, celebrating Milton Berle and Steve Martin, that will leave you feeling a little sad and exhilarated.

”Pioneers of Primetime”, (tonight, PBS, time varies), starts as an inventory of pivotal performers, such as Berle, Red Skelton and Sid Caesar. Unexpectedly, this program morphs into a vaudeville history.

Oh, what a clunky show. It crams in references to giants Ball, Jackie Gleason and Jack Benny while accommodating gifted performers (Donald O'Connor, Rose Marie, Buddy Ebsen) who don't fit the pioneer label.

Pioneers of Primetime seems to have been assembled from whatever footage was available, and few clips reflect these pathfinders' brilliance. One exception is a delirious skit with Berle and Bob Hope in drag. Otherwise, rarely has such a terrific topic been so thoroughly mangled.

Disappointment gives way to delight with “The 2005 Mark Twain Prize”, (tonight, PBS, time varies). This year's deserving recipient is wild-and-crazy guy Martin, who was feted Oct. 23 at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Martin receives a suitably off-the-wall salute in speech, song and vintage clips. In one stellar bit from The Tonight Show, Martin plays the Great Flydini, a magician who reaches into his pants to pull out eggs, a ringing phone, a bouquet and an opera-singing puppet.

Host Johnny Carson's enjoyment reflects the audience's pleasure. Long after today's political jokes are forgotten, this physical comedy will generate guffaws.

This two-hour special acknowledges Martin's wide-ranging work as actor, comedian, writer, banjo player and Saturday Night Live host. Viewers weary of award shows can rest easy: The Twain telecast is more like a spectacular variety show than a windy night of self-congratulation. You can't be too pompous about a man known for wearing an arrow through his head.

The most touching tribute comes from Diane Keaton, who delivers a heartfelt rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight." Looking surprisingly glamorous, she evokes the joy of Annie Hall.

The good-natured insults fly freely, with the choice jabs coming from Martin Short and Larry David. "I think if Mark Twain met you, he would cherish your company because you're no threat," Short says.

Curb Your Enthusiasm star David launches into a hilarious -- and totally fictitious -- anecdote about Martin's cruelty toward a homeless man and a three-legged cat. "I could destroy this night in two seconds," David brags.

He doesn't. But a routine uniting Paul Simon, Mike Nichols and Eric Idle falls flat. Queen Latifah takes an unnecessarily coarse route by saluting Martin's sexual prowess. Other segments are basically plugs for Martin's Shopgirl and an upcoming remake of The Pink Panther.

Lily Tomlin introduces Martin's finest film performance in All of Me and compares the Twain prize to a beauty contest. "May this title bring you a lucrative modeling contract," Tomlin tells Martin.

The evening's funniest clips, however, come from television. There's an uproarious sketch of Martin and David Letterman sharing a gay vacation. In one of the best-remembered segments from Saturday Night Live, Martin and Gilda Radner waltz around the studio to "Dancing in the Dark."

Saturday Night Live receives a talky retrospective in an NBC special on Sunday that chronicles that late-night institution in the 1980s. Everyone has to talk to make up for the erratic comedy. How bad was it? Host Madonna opened a season by describing the previous one as "a horrible dream."

The best clips belong to Billy Crystal, who joins in the reminiscing, and Eddie Murphy, who doesn't. Conan O'Brien says he learned everything as a writer on the show. Julia Louis-Dreyfus hit it off with an unhappy writer, the aforementioned Larry David, who would later co-create Seinfeld.

This Saturday Night Live special is nowhere near as entertaining as a February look at the show in the 1970s. The new special has to cover more ground, and Saturday Night Live was far funnier a decade earlier. The reverence is ill-timed as well because the show is off to a weak start this year.

In the PBS salute to him, Martin accepts his prize by saying comedy has treated him well. "I hope that humor in America sustains in all its forms, from the bawdy irreverence of iconoclasts and satirists to family fare that teaches us about ourselves in a lighthearted and tender way," he says.

Television rarely delivers on that hope these days, but Martin and his friends do.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv/orl-tvcomedy05nov09,0,1784930,print.story?coll=orl-caltvtop

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:18 AM

Returning Show
"Stacked" is the sound of one body part clapping

By Kay McFadden Seattle Times TV Critic

TV shows that can be listened to without watching make a virtue of sloth. They let us squeeze entertainment and efficiency into our busy day.

TV shows that can be watched without listening provide fewer benefits. I've yet to give full visual attention to the screen while successfully faking interest in a real conversation.

But if any series can boldly assert that it doesn't need sound, it's "Stacked," which returns at 8:30 this evening on Fox. In fact, it's far more bearable without.

I know, because I experimentally hit "mute" halfway through tonight's premiere and for next week's entire episode, which pairs star Pamela Anderson with special guest Jenny McCarthy.

Anderson's role in "Stacked," where she plays a ditzy bookstore clerk, is a microcosm of her career. She floats in a voluptuous bubble, not so much interacting with others as projecting straight into our living rooms. Her appeal is mass; she can make a Pucci dress look like a Target knockoff with one forward dip.

Though only 38, Anderson long ago traversed the show-biz territory labeled "sex bomb" and "sex joke." Last year, a Canadian economic magazine named her Most Powerful Canadian in Hollywood.

She's earned it with an incredible work ethic. From early days as Labatt's "Blue Zone" girl to roles in "Home Improvement" and "Baywatch" to the indie hit "V.I.P.," Anderson's become a guarantee of tune-in the way that Roseanne has become a goad to flee.

That doesn't make us forget "Stacked" is otherwise useless. Tonight's show has a vocabulary of about 50 words and is plot-free, which doesn't help verbally driven cast members Christopher Lloyd, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Brian Scolaro and Elon Gold.

But perhaps they don't care. "Stacked" debuted last spring as a mid-season replacement following "That '70s Show." It immediately was a hit among adults 18 to 49.

And with Anderson on the screen, you're hard-pressed to notice anything else. When Lloyd or Winokur speaks, it's like the parental wa-wah on "Peanuts" TV specials. When Anderson and McCarthy simultaneously mock and fulfill fantasy by playing patty-cake with each other's anatomy, words lose all meaning.

See for yourself by watching "Stacked" minus the noise. Other TV stars may have to do; Pamela Anderson only has to be.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002612102&zsection_id=2002119662&slug=kay09&date=20051109

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:25 AM

CNN’s Future
Deck Chairs Sliding On The “Titanic”?

By Dusty Saunders Rocky Mountain News TV Critic November 9, 2005

All the news about TV news that's fit to print:

Are we witnessing the nurturing of a future TV news star?

Or is CNN simply re-arranging the deck chairs on a listing ship?

The dumping of Aaron Brown as the weeknight anchor on NewsNight in favor of Anderson Cooper, while predictable, remains the talk of electronic media world.

If you're a CNN news junkie you're certainly aware that Cooper, 38, who gained print and electronic headlines for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina (much of it personalized), has replaced Brown, 56, in the 8-10 p.m. spot.

Brown? He's looking for work.

The change also means that the 5 p.m. news hour, Anderson Cooper 360, has been taken over by Wolf Blitzer, who seemingly is on CNN 2 4/7.

Does Blitzer have a cot and coffeemaker in the Atlanta studio?

In making the announcement, CNN President Jonathan Klein lavished praise on Cooper as if he's a combination of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.

"Clearly, America is embracing Anderson Cooper," Klein said.

Embracing?

Actually, Klein will settle for steady viewing as CNN attempts to cut into Fox News Channel's enormous prime time audience ratings lead.

Brown, somewhat of an acquired taste, came across as a low-voltage newsman-anchor whose laconic style certainly is not compatible with the go-get-'em, upbeat tempo so popular today in TV newsrooms.

Cooper, an Energizer bunny type of anchor and reporter, faces the challenge of drawing viewers away from Fox's Greta Van Susteren (a CNN alum) and the repeat of Bill O'Reilly's hour.

Cooper last month began teaming with Brown on a two-hour version of NewsNight, concentrating on hurricane coverage.

With Anderson aboard, audience ratings on NewsNight often jumped 40 percent during some broadcasts.

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/spotlight_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23962_4222677,00.html

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:36 AM

Is there something in Denver’s water making TV critics write about Anderson Cooper?
CNN’s Future
Is 2 hours of Cooper too much?

By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post TV Critic

Anderson Cooper has many fine attributes. The gravitas associated with news anchoring is not among them.

CNN's rising star exudes empathy in the right times and places. Nobody put his stamp on Hurricane Katrina coverage as personally as Cooper (except maybe Geraldo Rivera on Fox News. But that's another story).

Cooper has an engaging presence on camera, appealing to the younger demographic. He's approachable and has fun with offbeat stories.

Frankly, his promotion by CNN to figurehead of the network's primetime programming may turn out be too much of a good thing. And I'm a Cooper fan.

The "anti-anchor," who gained prominence for his ability to express emotion and challenge bureaucrats and elected officials onscreen, who is known for his hip, relaxed attitude and overall coolness, has been elevated to serious anchor duty by CNN in one of the more graceless corporate announcements in memory.

Aaron Brown was sacked by the company without even being mentioned by name in the announcement.

It was a nasty heave-ho in a business of nasty heave-hos. Frankly, I feel sorry for Brown. And I'm not a Brown fan.

Brown's casual, muttering style was annoying on many occasions. He seemed to pile on the personal parenthetical remarks in inverse proportion to the importance of the news story. The more serious the news, the more conversational Brown got until it seemed he was playing to the gang down at the pub. Then, when he wanted to display his smarts, Brown paused, sucking in air through clenched teeth, letting us know he was mulling the finer points.

CNN president Jon Klein hasn't been shy about praising Cooper as the flavor of the month. Klein previously hailed the Cooper-Brown styles as the "fire and ice" of the cable news network. He suggested the emotional Cooper and the cerebral Brown were both important. Increasingly, however, Klein has let interviewers know he thought Cooper was a breakout star, a hot personality whose sizzle the network could not ignore. That "Saturday Night Live" singled out Cooper for parodies reportedly helped convince the CNN executives that he was a pop-culture icon in the making.

Cooper gained prominence during the Katrina story when he nailed Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., on the air, four days after the storm.

He cut off her breezy compliments about the fine job the Federal Emergency Management Agency

was doing in New Orleans, saying, "Excuse me, senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. When they hear politicians thanking one another, it just kind of cuts them the wrong way right now because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. Do you get the anger that is out here?"

Bold TV, yes. But was it the birth of a lasting anchorman?

"Anderson Cooper 360" will occupy the 8-10 p.m. slot that Brown's chummy "NewsNight" held for the past four years. According to Variety, "Over the past few weeks, Klein and Brown have discussed various other roles at the net, but those talks ended at an impasse."

Brown and Cooper both worked at ABC News before moving to cable. Brown was a TV anchor in Seattle for years before becoming anchor of "ABC World News Tonight Saturday" and reporting for other ABC news programs. Cooper joined ABC from Channel One News in New York. but he's best remembered as the host of the 2001 ABC reality series "The Mole."

When he took on that role, some of us thought he had dashed any hopes of being taken seriously as a newsman. Silly us. The anchor of the future is the reality host of the recent past.

As the networks grope to redesign their newscasts for younger audiences following the Brokaw-Rather-Jennings era, the first marquee name is Anderson Cooper's.

http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=3186259

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:39 AM

A 'Countdown' to big change in network news

By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday, November 9, 2005

As with most events related to television, the future is already past. The Next Big Thing is invariably something done years ago. A buzz-heavy arrival deemed "fresh" and "innovative" turns out to be old and stolen. It's all a matter of when and how and where you view it.

And so it is that the future of broadcast network news has been hiding out, as it were, for two and half years on -- of all places -- cable. If you want to know what the face of the future looks like -- at least the successful version, not some warmed over Bob Schieffer action or a trio of Triple A prospects on "Nightline," then look no further than this man: Keith Olbermann.

Yes, that Keith Olbermann. The same man who, along with partner Dan Patrick, set a standard for anchoring a sports show on ESPN that has never -- try as ESPN does in ever-more transparently hokey ways -- been equaled. The same guy who worked for NBC and CNN and then, in various capacities, MSNBC, furiously trying in each place to unleash his personality and allow it to be accepted and appreciated.

His results have varied.

The thing with Olbermann is that he has always been a bit of a misunderstood visionary on television. Part journalist, part comic, equal parts dry, silly, skeptical and angry, there has been no traditional role for him and thus he has either been an outcast or a noble failure or a square talent in a business full of round openings. Until, that is, he started "Countdown" on MSNBC in April 2003.

"Countdown" (at 8 PM ET and 12 Midnight ET) -- as you math whizzes may have guessed by that 2003 number, is not new. Olbermann himself is not new. He and his show have been written about. He is a known commodity. He is a reliable -- what's the word here? -- news product. Savvy (and cynical?) viewers have long had "Countdown" on their TiVo, or added his blog -- bloggermann.com -- to their list of favorite Internet destinations. Those who have settled on Olbermann not just as an option but as the only option know that while MSNBC is often the news channel of least critical ink (CNN and Fox are forever on the minds of media writers and, let's face it, MSNBC has been its own Blunderdome for years now), a certain debt of gratitude is owed the channel not only because it gave Olbermann and his quirky talents a chance, but because it stuck with him.

Part Jon Stewart (the funny), Dennis Miller (the erudite and biting sub-references), H.L. Mencken (the skewering of power and stupidity in equal doses) as well as crusading journalist, Olbermann is clearly the future.

Not of cable, of course. Of broadcast network news. His show is what a modern newscast will look like to the masses. They just don't know it yet. And maybe networks won't realize this in time to adequately use him.

But here's the deal: The network news is dead. It's been a dinosaur for longer than anyone of any honesty can remember. It's a miracle that for a business driven by fear -- and all of television is fear-based -- nobody has been quite desperate or adventurous enough to effect real change in TV news for some time.

Ted Turner took CNN and virtually invented cable news. Roger Ailes had the vision to fuse the country's political divide with its growing distrust of journalism to create Fox News. Since then? Nothing. Unless you count -- and you should -- how Stewart took a moribund comedy show and turned it into a cultural truncheon with "The Daily Show."

And now, with the iconic anchors of ABC (Peter Jennings), NBC (Tom Brokaw) and CBS (Dan Rather) either dead, retired or deposed, people are looking for the future.

People like Les Moonves, chairman of CBS.

Moonves -- no stranger to radical notions (getting people to watch CBS programming) and statements (blowing up the "Evening News" and finding a fresh way to read the news, perhaps while stripping) -- is looking for a revolution. His actions may not be as daring as his verbal gymnastics. But he's right in saying that the old way -- the Way of Cronkite, the way it's always been -- won't work anymore.

The why of that is simple. Most people who watch the news are older. Most people seeking alternative outlets via the Internet for their news are younger. There is a group in the middle straddling both sides, let's say those 30 to 50, just as a measuring stick and argument -- so save the letters. As the paradigm shifts and redefines itself as it most surely will in the coming years, all those groups are up for grabs. Though media writers may harp on 24-hour cable channels -- particularly in times of crisis, like Katrina, or in times of overkill, like the Natalee Hollaway story -- tens of millions more people watch the nightly network news than cable news.

He -- or she -- who finds a way to make network news both younger and more modern, less the Your Father's Oldsmobile that it is now and more a kind of iPod Journalism, will have found the market leader, the money maker. But no one, not Moonves or anyone else in power, is likely to be bold enough to hire a game changer.

Why? Because it would mean changing the way we look at journalism at the network level and all that encompasses -- from old-school principles to the dangerous flux of a publicly traded media conglomerate's bottom line. The network news of the future will be -- count on it -- a lot like Olbermann's "Countdown."

That is to say politically slanted, even though nobody, not even Olbermann or Fox News, will admit to a slant despite evidence that is more tangible than fatuous slogans or winking. Come on -- Olbermann leans left, Fox News leans right. You don't need Stewart to snark that out for you. Currently there's more wiggle (waggle?) room in the cable universe of "news" than there is at the network level, where everyone sincerely preaches at the altar of objectivity. In the future: less lying to the audience, more promoting said "bias" as something to be proud of. Look to British newspapers for guidance on that.

What's needed in the sacrosanct, pre-primetime news arena is a whole lot more hipness and innovation and clanging brass in the midsection. You want a younger audience for network news? Drop the idea that it's gospel. Give everyone a wink and a tweak and a pinch. Take the best of Stewart, the best of Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour," add some celebrity news and some bizarre news and feel free not only to raise an eyebrow or smirk, but to outright scoff.

Oh, and by the way, Olbermann has been doing that on "Countdown" for two and a half years. Nobody knows how to make a tonal shift quite like Olbermann. One moment he's dissecting the Scooter Libby leak story with multiple sources and the next he's playing "Oddball," a quick departure from the serious to the silly. He's updating the Iraq situation or dissecting some unflattering poll numbers on President Bush, then naming that night's "Worst Person in the World" or peeking into the "Countdown" hall of fame for examples of what rapper Chuck D once called "the dumbassification of America."

In-depth seriousness. Random stupidity. The five top stories of the day (and change) as Olbermann sees them, with his uniquely split personality. Beautiful in its modernity and its entertainment and news value.

In short: 2025, a news odyssey.

Why couldn't Moonves and CBS (or NBC or ABC for that matter) just hire Al Franken or Bill O'Reilly if they wanted to really put on a different kind of newscast? Well, contractual obligations and good taste and baggage aside, neither man has the chops for both journalism and hilarity. The mix is absolutely essential. Information and humor, seriousness and snarkiness. Through a lens Stewartly, if you will. And no, even Stewart himself doesn't have the real-news end of it for the job.

It's a hard-to-find mix these days, but just you wait. The future is coming to a broadcast network newscast near you -- where it's been hiding on MSNBC in the form of Keith Olbermann for years now, under the guise of a show called "Countdown."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/09/DDGPVFKGI01.DTL&type=printable

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:46 AM

A Look Back at “Saturday Night Live”

(The TV blog of Rich Heldenfels Akron Beacon Journal)

The other day I took a look at a new ''Saturday Night Live'' special about the show during the 1980s. It airs on NBC on Sunday night. The documentary is of particular importance right now because ''SNL'' has been so bad this season; the show reminds us that ''SNL'' has been bad before, and found its way back to quality. The 1980-81 season, which followed the departure of the acclaimed original cast, was famously horrible, but the documentary argues that it was not alone in that respect. When producer Lorne Michaels returned to the series after a five-year absence, he almost ended up presiding over its demise -- only to rebound a year later.

I wonder, though, how many shows are capable of such reinvention -- of recasting and retooling to such an incredible degree and yet still thrive. ''Law & Order'' has gone through a lot of recasting, but in its case that involves fitting new pegs into old holes, since the formula is fundamentally the same year in and year out. You could argue that ''SNL'' has the same basic formula, too, but both the writers and performers can make huge changes in the framework. A ''Weekend Update'' with Tina Fey is not the same as one with Chevy Chase, or Dennis Miller.

Still, in arguing that there is life after legend, the ''SNL'' special strikes an optimistic note. And who couldn't use a little optimism these days?

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:53 AM

Yukking it up on PBS with Steve Martin

Honoring the comedian with the Twain Prize

By Diego Vasquez MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 9, 2005

Mark Twain once said, “Comedy keeps the heart sweet.” If that’s the case, Steve Martin’s heart must be sweet as a lollipop. For more than 30 years he’s been tossing zingers.

The comedian almost never plays the suave, confident Adonis, usually the hapless soul who's excited just to be listed in the phone book, as in “The Jerk,” or the uptight, insecure “Father of the Bride” not ready to let his daughter go. No matter what the role, Martin always brings a literary bent to his characters.

That would have made Twain, the great American humorist, proud. Tonight at 9 PM ET/PT (but check local listings) Martin is honored on PBS’s “The Kennedy Center Presents: The 2005 Mark Twain Prize celebrating Steve Martin,” which was taped Oct. 23.

Expect a lively evening of one-liners. When Martin learned he had won the prize, he quipped: “I think Mark Twain is a great guy, and I can’t wait to meet him.”

Over the years Martin has addressed everything from politics to relationships to the abstract. A few of his best lines:

“I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was ... an arctic wilderness.”

“There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.”

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Tonight’s special doubles as a promotional tool for Martin, whose new movie, “Shopgirl,” is based on his novel of the same name.

On hand to honor Martin will be Dave Barry, Claire Danes, Larry David, Tom Hanks, Eric Idle, Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Randy Newman, Martin Short and Paul Simon.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1200.asp

fredfa

11-09-05, 10:56 AM

The November Sweeps
It's ABC leading in sweeps by a wink

Ahead of No. 2 CBS by 0.2 rating point

By Abigail Azote MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 9, 2005

Five days into the November sweeps, ABC has taken the early lead among adults 18-49. It’s two-tenths of a point ahead of CBS and is the only network showing year-to-year gains.
Best of all for ABC, several of its biggest sweeps stunts, such as the rumored death on “Lost” and the “American Music Awards,” have yet to air, while CBS has already shown one of its biggies, Sunday night’s miniseries “Category 7.” At this point, ABC looks in good shape to win its first November sweeps since 1999.

Through Monday night, ABC was averaging a 4.6 sweeps rating, up 15 percent from the comparable period last year. CBS was second with a 4.4, down 4 percent from last year; NBC was third with a 3.1, down 24 percent; and Fox was fourth with a 2.7, down 7 percent. The WB and UPN were tied for last place with a 1.4, both flat from a year ago.

Credit “Monday Night Football,” Sunday’s strong lineup, and one shrewd scheduling move for ABC’s early lead.

The network kicked off the sweeps period with the broadcast premiere of “Pirates of the Caribbean” last Thursday at 8 p.m., pre-empting ABC’s usual schedule.

The movie delivered a 2.9 18-49 rating for ABC, up 53 percent from the same night last year. By comparison, usual timeslot occupants “Alias” and “Night Stalker” average just a 2.3 and a 2.1, respectively.

Meanwhile, ABC’s Sunday lineup is up 22 percent compared with last year, much thanks to “Grey’s Anatomy,” which didn’t premiere until last spring and is holding much more of lead-in "Desperate Housewives'" audience than former timeslot occupant "Boston Legal."

Finally, Monday night’s Colts versus Patriots gave ABC a huge boost. It delivered a season-best 8.8 rating, nearly 30 percent above “MNF’s” season average.

All of which does not bode well for No. 2 CBS. ABC still has one of its strongest nights, Wednesday, to come this week, while CBS’s two best nights, Thursday and Monday, are already done.

CBS's was not helped by its disaster miniseries sequel “Category 7,” part one of which premiered Sunday night against “Housewives” to average a 4.9 18-49 rating. That’s down 22 percent from last season’s “Category 6,” which averaged a 6.3 rating.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1202.asp

fredfa

11-09-05, 11:05 AM

Weekly Ratings Notes
Criminal intentions
By Gary Levin USA TODAY

• Crime pays. CBS' Criminal Minds hit a series high Wednesday (16.2 million viewers) in its regular time slot and nearly doubled the audience for a Lost repeat (8.3 million) that aired against it. NCIS (18.1 million) notched a series high for the fourth time in five weeks.
• Less commanding. Commander in Chief averaged a series-low 14.6 million viewers Tuesday. Though it won the 9 p.m. ET/PT time slot and remains the season's top new series, Commander finished fourth among young-adult viewers. Rounding out the freshman top five: Criminal Minds, My Name is Earl, Ghost Whisperer and Invasion.
• Fox is back. Series that were benched for baseball in October returned last week and didn't suffer for their absence. House (13.4 million), Bones (8 million) and The O.C. (6.6 million) matched or topped their pre-baseball averages. The eighth-season premiere of That '70s Show (7.9 million) improved on its 2004 average and won its time slot among young adults. And the season opener of Trading Spouses (8.9 million) logged its best numbers since August 2004. But Reunion hit a series-low 3.6 million.
• No disaster. Part 1 of Category 7: End of the World, with 14.3 million viewers Sunday, marked CBS' biggest movie audience since the opener of its precursor, Category 6: Day of Destruction, last November, though it trailed it by 5 million viewers.
• Movie magic. HBO's Meet the Fockers averaged 4 million viewers Saturday, this year's biggest movie premiere on the pay network. ABC, hapless on Thursdays this season, had its best showing yet with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (8.4 million).
• Muy bueno. The Latin Grammy Awards, which moved to Spanish-language Univision this year, averaged 5.1 million viewers Sunday, its best numbers in five years, and was up from last year's 3.3 million on CBS.
• Huey scores. The opener of The Boondocks, adapted from Aaron McGruder's comic strip, marked the biggest premiere yet for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, averaging 2.3 million viewers — nearly a third of whom were kids and teens.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-11-08-nielsen-analysis_x.htm

fredfa

11-09-05, 11:30 AM

Top cable shows
Week Ending Nov. 6th

Rank - Show – Net - Viewers in millions
1. NFL Sunday Night Football: Eagles at Redskins ESPN 11.2
2. NFL Prime Time ESPN 5.1
3. WWE Raw (10 p.m.) USA 4.3
4. Meet the Fockers HBO 4.0
5. WWE Raw (9 p.m.) USA 3.8
6. Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Wed. 9 p.m.) USA 3.4
7. Nip/Tuck FX 3.3
7. Zoey 101 Nick 3.3
7. Law & Order: SVU (Fri. 9 p.m.) USA 3.3
10. Law & Order (Mon. 9 p.m.) TNT 3.2
10. 25 Strong BET 3.2
10. Sponge Bob Nick 3.2
10. Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Thur. 8 p.m.) USA 3.2
14. Unfabulous Nick 3.1
14. The O'Reilly Factor (Tues. 8 p.m.) Fox News 3.1
14. The O'Reilly Factor (Wed. 8 p.m.) Fox News 3.1
14. Laguna Beach MTV 3.1

USA Today/Nielsen Media Research

fredfa

11-09-05, 11:39 AM

(From Marc Berman’s Wednesday, November 9, 2005 Programming Insider column at Mediaweek.com )
NEW SERIES RESULTS

(in order of viewership)
Repeat telecasts of ABC’s Invasion, CBS’ How I Met Your Mother and Out of Practice, and the WB’s Supernatural were excluded. ABC’s Night Stalker, NBC’s Surface and Fox’s Kitchen Confidential were all preempted this week.

Commander in Chief (ABC, Tues. 9 p.m.)
Viewers: 14.64 million (#14)
A18-49: 4.0/ 9 (#27)
Although the audience skew might be older, this is still another bona fide hit for ABC.

Ghost Whisperer (CBS, Fri. 8 p.m.)
Viewers: 12.78 million (#21)
A18-49: 3.6/12 (#34t)
A series-high performance for the surprise hit is all the more reason to believe we’ll see Jennifer Love Hewitt and her deceased friends in 2006-07…and beyond. With all this interest in the after-life, how about bringing the sorely missed John Edward to primetime?

E-Ring (NBC, Wed. 8 p.m.)
Viewers: 9.82 million (#30)
A18-49: 2.5/ 7 (#57t)
Similar to former fading occupant The West Wing.

Close To Home (CBS, Tues. 10 p.m.)
Viewers: 9.52 million (#33)
A18-49: 2.9/ 8 (#47t)
Flipping time periods with Threshold in November may not be so temporary if the results are positive.

Prison Break (Fox, Mon. 9 p.m.)
Viewers: 9.01 million (#36)
A18-49: 4.2/10 (#22t)
Rock-solid now, but will Prison Break hold up outside of the confined walls in May? Stay tuned.

Three Wishes (NBC, Fri. 8 p.m.)
Viewers: 8.13 million (#46)
A18-49: 2.3/ 7 (#66t)
Six additional episodes have been ordered.

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart (NBC, Wed. 9 p.m.)
Viewers: 6.96 million (#67t)
A18-49: 2.8/ 7 (#49t)
Could be better/could be worse.

Freddie (ABC, Wed. 8:30 p.m.)
Viewers: 6.96 million (#67t)
A18-49: 2.8/ 7 (#49t)
Series-low performance.

Hot Properties (ABC, Fri. 9:30 p.m.)
Viewers: 5.84 million (#78)
A18-49: 2.2/ 7 (#71t)
Not so hot.

Everybody Hates Chris (UPN, Thurs. 8 p.m.)
Viewers: 5.24 million (#83)
A18-49: 1.9/ 5 (80t)
Losing steam.

Killer Instinct (Fox, Fri. 9 p.m.)
Viewers: 4.48 million (#88)
A18-49: 1.6/ 5 (#88t)
Continued growth out of lead-in Malcolm in the Middle (950,000 viewers this week) is worth positively noting.

Reunion (Fox, Thurs. 9 p.m.)
Viewers: 3.57 million (#95)
A18-49: 1.6/ 4 (#88t)
Series-low performance following a four-week preemption for baseball.

Love, Inc. (UPN, Thurs. 8:30 p.m.)
Viewers: 2.98 million (#99)
A18-49: 1.2/ 3 (#102t)
Series-low performance (out of a series-low Everybody Hates Chris).

Twins (WB, Fri. 9:30 p.m.):
Viewers: 2.87 million (#103)
A18-49: 1.2/ 3 (#102t)
With lead-in Reba (Viewers: #93, 3.65 million; A18-49: #93t, 1.2/ 3) fading, Twins has certainly not benefited.

Related (WB, Mon. 9 p.m.)
Viewers: 2.54 million (#105)
A18-49: 1.2/ 3 (#102t)
Patience will have to be in the card for the female-oriented Related to succeed.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/newsletters/proginsider/index.jsp

fredfa

11-09-05, 11:47 AM

This story will be getting a lot of attention:

Number of Sexual Scenes on TV Nearly Double Since 1998
Rate of “Safer Sex” Messages, Up From ’98, Has Now Leveled Off
Despite Overall Increase in Sexual Content, Scenes with Sexual Intercourse are Down Slightly in Recent Years

Press Release from The Kaiser Foundation)

Washington, D.C. – The number of sexual scenes on television has nearly doubled since 1998, according to Sex on TV 4, a biennial study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And while the inclusion of references to “safer sex” issues – such as waiting to have sex, using protection, or possible consequences of unprotected sex – has also increased since 1998, that rate has leveled off in recent years. The study examined a representative sample of more than 1,000 hours of programming including all genres other than daily newscasts, sports events, and children’s shows. All sexual content was measured, including talk about sex and sexual behavior.

The study found that 70% of all shows include some sexual content, and that these shows average 5.0 sexual scenes per hour, compared to 56% and 3.2 scenes per hour respectively in 1998, and 64% and 4.4 scenes per hour in 2002. These increases combined represent nearly twice as many scenes of sexual content on TV since 1998 (going from 1,930 to 3,780 scenes in the program sample totaling a 96% increase between 1998 and 2005). But despite these overall increases in sexual content, the number of shows in which sexual intercourse is either depicted or strongly implied is down slightly in recent years (7% in 1998, 14% in 2002, and 11% in 2005).

Among shows with any sexual content, 14% include at least one scene with a reference to sexual risks or responsibilities – up from 9% in 1998, but approximately the same rate as in 2002 (15%). In shows with intercourse-related content, more than one in four (27%) includes a reference to sexual risks or responsibilities. This is nearly double the rate found in 1998 (14%), but approximately the same as in 2002 (26%).

“Given how high the stakes are, the messages TV sends teens about sex are important,” said Vicky Rideout, a Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President who oversaw the study. “Television has the power to bring issues of sexual risk and responsibility to life in a way that no sex ed class or public health brochure really can.”

Sex on TV 4 was released today at a forum that included opening remarks by Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman, a keynote speech by Senator Barack Obama, and a roundtable discussion featuring Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy; Fox Television Networks President and CEO Tony Vinciquerra; Law & Order: SVU Executive Producer Neal Baer; behavioral scientist and RAND Corporation Researcher, Rebecca Collins; and National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Executive Director Sarah Brown. A webcast of the event will be available after 5 p.m. ET today at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/kff/09nov05 .

“The increase in the number of TV shows with sexual content, combined with the increase in sexual scenes per show has led to a dramatic overall increase in sexual content on TV since 1998,” said Dale Kunkel, lead researcher on the study and University of Arizona professor. “During the same period, the percentage of these shows that include “safer sex” messages has also increased significantly, but has leveled off in recent years.”

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia110905nr.cfm

fredfa

11-09-05, 11:52 AM

Election night fizzle for “Commander”
ABC's presidential drama dips to lowest rating

By Diego Vasquez MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Nov 9, 2005

On election night, TV viewers were not nearly as interested in fake politics.

ABC’s presidential drama “Commander-in-Chief” averaged a series-low 3.7 overnight rating among viewers 18-49 last night.

That’s down 16 percent versus the 4.4 overnight rating the show had averaged through the first six episodes.

The problem seems to be the return of Fox’s “House” after a baseball furlough during which the ABC show blossomed. With “House” now back, viewers who had been watching other things in the 9 p.m. timeslot are migrating back to Fox.

“House” averaged a 5.3 overnight rating among 18-49s last night in the 9 p.m. timeslot head-to-head with “Commander.” “Commander’s” three lowest-rated episodes of the season came while airing against original episodes of “House.”

“Commander” earned a 4.3 overnight rating for its premiere episode on Sept. 27, the same night Fox aired its last original “House” before giving way to baseball playoffs and a surge for “Commander.”

“House” returned to the schedule last week and “Commander” delivered a 3.9 overnight rating among 18-49s, its previous season low before last night’s 3.7.

Of course it's also possible that after watching endless local election coverage, viewers just weren't in the mood for political entertainment.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_1226.asp

fredfa

11-09-05, 12:04 PM

Death gives life to series
Who's next to kick the bucket?

By Marisa Guthrie New York Daily News Staff Writer

The Grim Reaper has yet to take a break from dispatching television characters to the great beyond. And lately, the TV gods seem to have him on speed dial.

For instance, tonight, the island-set drama "Lost" will lose another castaway, according to the ominous and endless promos running on ABC.

"What sets 'Lost' apart," said executive producer Carlton Cuse, "is we do have real life-and-death stakes. The environment on the show is a dangerous one. And we want to make the audience believe that those life-and-death stakes are real."

Ian Somerhalder, sacrificed during last year's finale, certainly knows the stakes are no joke. So does "Alias'" Michael Vartan, whose honeymoon with bride Sydney was cut mercilessly short in the season opener.

Killing off a major character has been a TV staple as far back as 1959 when Lt. Dan Muldoon (John McIntire) died a fiery death when his squad car careened with an oil tanker during the first season of "The Naked City."

Since then, fans have suffered through Col. Henry Blake's helicopter crash into the side of a mountain on "M*A*S*H"; Edith Bunker dying in her sleep on "All in the Family," and Det. Bobby Simone flat-lining in a hospital bed on "NYPD Blue."

The difference, though, is "M*A*S*H's" McLean Stevenson, "All in the Family's" Jean Stapleton and "NYPD Blue's" Jimmy Smits wanted to say their good-byes to their character.

Now, however, the motives behind on-screen deaths are creative and practical as series producers are ever more beholden to ratings.

On "Desperate Housewives," Steven Culp's Rex Van De Camp, who had a heart condition and a deadly onion allergy, cheated death early in the first season, only to bite the dust later on.

"Except for maybe one, all of the men on that show know the clock is ticking," said Culp. "And as we got toward the end of the season, I knew [creator] Marc Cherry's dad had died of heart disease. I had done enough episodes to know that we were all expendable and in the service of the story someone would die."

As executive producer of "ER," "Third Watch" and "The West Wing," John Wells has presided over the deaths of many characters. Like Cherry, he has found inspiration in real life. In "ER's" 12 seasons, the staff has experienced their share of misfortune.

"It's remarkable how many deaths we've seen," said Wells. "Friends get sick, they die in car accidents. A friend of mine's mother was actually murdered a few years ago."

There is no denying the shock value of carnage. But trauma can backfire if too jarring.

"People are so involved in the lives of the characters," said Wells, "that if you do it in a way that doesn't feel like it's real to the rhythms of life, the audience doesn't like you anymore and they go away."

For the actor dealt the death card, art can imitate the relentlessness of work. Somerhalder's exit on "Lost" gave some cast members the jitters.

"It's difficult," conceded Damon Lindelof, who created "Lost" with JJ Abrams. "They've uprooted their entire lives to move to Hawaii [where the show is shot]. We want to be very mindful of them."

But leaving a hit series at the right time in a memorable fashion can have its benefits.

"With any great show, the audience will ultimately turn on you," said Joe Pantoliano, who played Ralph Cifaretto during the 2001-02 season of "The Sopranos."

"They stuck my head in a bowling bag and I won an Emmy for it," said Pantoliano.

"It took me all of an afternoon to realize, 'Hey, this is great,'" said Culp, who is shooting a movie in Toronto with Todd Holland ("The Larry Sanders Show").

"I got all the benefits of working on a hit series," he said, "and now I'm free again."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ent_radio/story/363689p-309733c.html

fredfa

11-09-05, 12:57 PM

Who Will Replace Peter Jennings?
Not what Peter would have done

By Verne Gay Newsday TV Columnist November 10, 2005

Not long after Peter Jennings' death in August, someone at "World News Tonight" had the idea of printing up wristbands that read "What Would Peter Do?" As in: What would Peter do if he were still alive and confronting all the perils and predicaments that a major TV news broadcast owned by Disney must face each day?

Launch a thoughtful and chilling anti-smoking series on "World News Tonight" ?

Done.

Make sure the show got out front on breaking news stories like Hurricane Katrina?

Done.

Most especially, continue to make certain "World News Tonight" remained a vital, intelligent and competitive broadcast? Done, done and done.

But what would Peter do about his own successor? Jennings would choke on the word "retirement," but he probably would offer just one name - Charlie - signifying a friend and trusted colleague for the better part of an entire career.

So maybe this is just one more little reason it's been so hard for ABC to officially declare that Charles Gibson - a beloved figure at the network's news division and senior statesman after Ted Koppel's imminent departure - will not be the next anchor of "World News Tonight."

The future anchors will be Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas. While cautioning that nothing's official yet, knowledgeable observers suggest that it's all over except for the wording of the press release. Vargas will become the first female anchor of a weeknight newscast since Connie Chung was paired with Dan Rather at CBS from 1993 to 1995.

For viewers, the choice of these two over Gibson should hardly represent a Hobbesian one. They're demonstrably excellent, and potentially even lend ABC an edge over NBC's "Nightly News," which has one man, Brian Williams, at its helm. And while Woodruff is no household name, he's a superb newsman with all the seasoning of a veteran reporter; household recognition will come in due course. Viewers should expect pretty much what they've already seen, with Woodruff occasionally on the road, alternating with Vargas in New York, and vice versa.

Both are far from unknown and have been subbing on "World News Tonight" since early spring. Vargas, a "20/20" co-anchor since 2004, spent a chunk of the past decade at NBC, where she reported for "Dateline." After joining ABC, she briefly became a front-runner to be co-host on "Good Morning America." But viewers didn't embrace her cool demeanor, which has actually become an asset at "World News Tonight," where "warmth" has never been (nor should it be) at the top of any job application.

Woodruff - officially "World News Tonight's" Saturday anchor - is a former lawyer who was teaching in Beijing when he hooked up with CBS News as a translator in 1989. Not long after, he went to ABC and his overseas reporting after 9/11 helped the network win DuPont and George Foster Peabody awards.

So why the interminable foot-dragging? First, allow us to restate the obvious. Casting a nightly network news broadcast (and "casting" is the right word for the process) is one of the most perilous acts in all television - even more so in this instance because ABC must replace one of the great newsmen in TV history. (He or she who deliberates will ultimately be rewarded - Williams' succession at "Nightly News" took years to craft).

Meanwhile the liability of a Gibson move from "Good Morning America" to "World News Tonight" has already been widely reported. Move Charles, and ABC risks losing "GMA's" tightening ratings race with "Today." Apparently taking his career counsel from Samuel Beckett, Gibson has built a nearly perfect, airtight box in the morning, but forgotten entirely to add an exit ramp. With less than two years left on his contract, he likely will oversee major breaking news stories (as also reported). But this could be called "buying time" until Woodruff and Vargas are ready.

Of course, there's the curious Diane Sawyer factor behind all of this, too. The trade publication Broadcasting & Cable recently reported that she was interested in the "World News Tonight" job. That was promptly and vigorously denied - which, naturally, means it is probably true. Why Sawyer's sudden desire for a job she's never wanted? (And isn't there some sort of statute of limitations which says that after the 50th interview with Eva Longoria, a morning host should be considered ineligible for "World News Tonight?" Just asking ...)

Here's some idle speculation: That by alerting ABC president David Westin of her interest, Sawyer effectively barred the door for Gibson. Consider that if Gibson were to go, she could take a hike, too, and would probably want to. Without Gibson next to her each morning, Sawyer's "Today" chase is officially kaput along with her near-obsessive desire to topple Katie Couric. Sawyer, in other words, needs Gibson more than he needs her.

But file all of this under "More Information Than You Need or Care to Know." Here's the bottom line: Age. If immediate history is any guide, anchor tenures are measured in increments of 20 years or so. Gibson will be 82 in 2025. By the unforgiving calculus of modern American culture, 62 is old, but by the brutal calculus of TV culture, 62 is pre-Cambrian. The eventual ascendance of Vargas, 42, and Woodruff, 43, is just one more sober reminder of that.

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-ettel4504523nov10,0,6988494,print.column?coll=ny-entertainment-columnists

fredfa

11-09-05, 01:44 PM

Real-life “Housewives” intrigue: Caleb is fired

MediaLifeMagazine.com---Actor Page Kennedy has gone from playing the bad guy to being the bad guy. Kennedy, who plays fugitive from justice Caleb on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” has been kicked off the show for what ABC termed improper conduct. His final appearance will be Sunday night.

It's unclear what the improper conduct was, as ABC has not commented, but several reports say it involved a "Housewives" crew member. Caleb is a newcomer to Wisteria Lane, a mysterious man locked up in the basement of Betty Applewhite (Alfre Woodard). The writers implied that Caleb was involved in the murder of a young girl, and he may be Applewhite’s son or hubby.

The 28-year-old Kennedy had previously appeared in an episode of “Six Feet Under” and the film “S.W.A.T.” Variety reports Nashawn Kearse will assume the Caleb role. Calls to ABC this morning were not immediately returned.

http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/cat_index_31.asp

dturturro

11-09-05, 03:28 PM

In America that's known as an illegal cartel. Companies can't get together to set prices.

It's only illegal if you get caught. :rolleyes:

fredfa

11-09-05, 03:56 PM

I told you we'd be hearing more about the Kaiser Family Foundation study. It seems to me it will be hard for opponents to claim Sen. OBama is a right-wing extremist.

Sen. Obama Warns TV to Clean Up or Congress Will Act

By Doug Halonen TVWeek.com November 9, 2005

If the industry doesn't take significant steps to make it easier for parents to control what their children view on television, Congress will step in and legislate. That was a warning shot fired by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in a speech Wednesday in Washington.

"The amount of questionable content spilling across our screens is growing by the year," Sen. Obama said at a press conference to release a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that says the number of sex scenes on TV has been increasing dramatically over the past several years.

"Once again, we find ourselves asking those in charge to serve the needs of a nation that has a higher calling than simply peddling indecency and materialism for profit," the senator said.

The study, which examined a representative example of broadcast and cable TV network shows, said that 70 percent of programs included some sexual content this year (with an average of five sex scenes per hour), while only 56 percent did so in 1998 (with 3.2 sex scenes per hour on average). Among shows that contained sexual content, the study said, 14 percent included a reference to sexual risks or responsibilities this year, up from 9 percent in 1998.

But Sen. Obama said he was particularly concerned about the impact television is having on the ability of parents to instill positive values in their children. "Raising your children this way has become exceedingly difficult in a mass media culture that saturates our airwaves with a steady stream of sex, violence and materialism," he said.

Sen. Obama also said he is concerned about the message that television and other media are delivering to children. "It's a concern that mass media is contributing to an overall coarsening of our culture," Sen. Obama said. "That with all the time our children are spending in front of the television, with all the choices they have to see whatever they want whenever they want, the content of their viewing is not enriching their minds but numbing them; not broadening intellectual curiosity or appreciation for the arts, but trivializing the important and desensitizing us to the tragic."

The study's release comes in the wake of an announcement that the Senate Commerce Committee is planning a major public forum on decency Nov. 29, with representatives of the broadcasting and cable TV industry expected to attend.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=8885

fredfa

11-09-05, 04:09 PM

Lauren Holly and "NCIS”

CBS announced Wednesday that actress Lauren Holly will become a regular cast member of its hit Tuesday night drama “NCIS”.

Holly was originally to only have a short stint as Mark Harmon’s boss and former wife.

Marcus Carr

11-09-05, 04:39 PM

Sen. Obama also said he is concerned about the message that television and other media are delivering to children. "It's a concern that mass media is contributing to an overall coarsening of our culture," Sen. Obama said. "That with all the time our children are spending in front of the television, with all the choices they have to see whatever they want whenever they want, the content of their viewing is not enriching their minds but numbing them; not broadening intellectual curiosity or appreciation for the arts, but trivializing the important and desensitizing us to the tragic."

And of course he has proof of all this?

fredfa

11-09-05, 05:04 PM

Frankly, Marcus, I found other parts of his speech to raise more troubling questions. But the particular part you highlighted seems fairly self-evident, based on literally dozens of well-researched surveys conducted over the past several decades.

Of course television isn't the only offender (and to be fair, Obama often used the term "mass media") but it certainly doesn't have totally clean hands, at least IMO.

The Kaiser Family Foundation is generally well regarded by those on both the left and right politically, and the Senator was one of a nukber of speakers today at a conference where the Foundation's latest sex on TV survey was released.

As I noted above, more details are available here:
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia110905nr.cfm

In any event the topic of how TV effects young people will be discussed more and more on Capitol Hill, and will be the underlying impetus for efforts to force cable and satellite operators to offer a la carte programming choices.

dturturro

11-09-05, 05:16 PM

With the V-chip, satellite/cable STBs and the onset of digital OTA broadcasting there are plenty of options for parents to be able to restrict their children's TV activities. But that is up to the parents, not congress.

fredfa

11-09-05, 05:22 PM

I agree to a point (and certainly when it comes to cable/satellite).

But OTA is the public (our) airwaves, and as such the public's representatives, it seems to me, have a right to demand certain standards be met.

But frankly, what I believe personally has little bearing on what gets included in this thread. I posted the story on Sen. Obama's comments because until now, few liberals had openly been critical of the content on television. And far fewer, to my recollection, had ever mentioned federal legislation as a possible cure.

Until now those kinds of remarks have generally (although not always) come from the conservative side of the Congress.

And with Senate hearings set to start later this month, it seemed to me to make sense to at least give readers here a hint of what might be coming.

fredfa

11-09-05, 05:32 PM

Here are more details on that upcoming Senate hearing:

Senators Plan Public TV Indecency Forum

By Todd Shields MediaWeek.com Nov. 9, 2005 -

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is planning what it calls a public forum on televised indecency on Nov. 29, but has not announced plans for a formal hearing or vote on legislation.

The committee plans to invite broadcasters, cable executives, activists and others to the forum, a committee aide said. The aide portrayed the forum, announced late Tuesday, as an attempt to build consensus so legislation could move forward at a date to be determined.

The House early this year passed legislation to increase fines for broadcast indecency. Its bill did not affect cable, which is not regulated for indecent content. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is considering how he can include cable in whatever indecency measure emerges from the Commerce Committee that he chairs.

Also Wednesday, a Washington think tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, said changes in record-keeping are partly responsible for increases in indecency complaints registered by federal authorities.

The Federal Communications Commission in recent years decided to count each example of a mass email campaign as a separate complaint, and to count as a separate complaint each time any office within the agency received the same complaint.

“The vast majority of complaints are duplicate emails that are generated against a relative handful of programs,” the Progress and Freedom Foundation said.

Its finding emerged as the Kaiser Family Foundation released a study showing the number of sexual scenes on TV has nearly doubled since 1998.

The study defined sexual content to include talk about or depictions of sexual behavior ranging from kissing to intercouse; it counted only scenes that emphasized such activity.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001477092

dturturro

11-09-05, 05:43 PM

fredfa

11-09-05, 05:53 PM

Could be, but he did win his seat by a 70%-27% margin back in 2004. :)

fredfa

11-09-05, 06:19 PM

Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients
(Source: The White House)

President George W. Bush today announced the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation's highest civil award. Established by Executive Order 11085 in 1963, the Medal may be awarded by the President "to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." President Bush will honor these recipients at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, November 9, 2005.

Among the winners were:

Carol Burnett is one of America's most accomplished comediennes and actresses. She debuted on Broadway in 1959 and starred for more than a decade on The Carol Burnett Show. Ms. Burnett won a special place in the hearts of people across America through her combination of creativity, humor, and compassion.

Andy Griffith is an American icon of the stage, cinema, and television. He first achieved national acclaim in the 1950s for his stand-up comedy routines, and he went on to star in television shows such as The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock, as well as numerous Broadway productions and films.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/print/20051103-5.html

fredfa

11-09-05, 06:49 PM

More “Sponge Bob”

One of Cable TV’s most popular shows will be extended for 20 more episodes.

Nickelodeon says its order will give it a total of 100 episodes of “SpongeBoib SquarePants”.

Aside from NFL football, the program is often the most highly watched on cable.

In addition, the Associated Press reports that sales of “SpongeBob” merchandise has totaled more than $4 billion since the show premiered five years ago.

humdinger70

11-09-05, 06:50 PM

Death gives life to series
Who's next to kick the bucket?

By Marisa Guthrie New York Daily News Staff Writer

[snipped]

Since then, fans have suffered through Col. Henry Blake's helicopter crash into the side of a mountain on "M*A*S*H"; Edith Bunker dying in her sleep on "All in the Family," and Det. Bobby Simone flat-lining in a hospital bed on "NYPD Blue."

Sorry, but I need to correct this...

Henry Blake did not die in a helicopter crash into the side of a mountain. Henry died when the plane carrying him on his homeward bound journey was shot down over the Sea of Japan.

It was one of the more poignant scenes in M*A*S*H's history.

fredfa

11-09-05, 06:58 PM

You are correct, humdinger70 -- Ms. Guthrie should have done her homework a little more thoroughly.

(And of course, it was one of the most poignant scenes in the career of MacLean Stevenson's agent, too.)

fredfa

11-09-05, 07:03 PM

It is getting close to show time for those of you in the east and midwest, and I would hate to have you miss....

Critic’s Notebook
In season two, 'Stacked' ogles openly

By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff | November 9, 2005

There's never any question what ''Stacked" is really about. And we're not talking books, or a deck of cards, or the odds against winning a bet.

This Fox sitcom is a bright prime-time tribute to Pamela Anderson's bosom, plain and simple. It's the same bosom we've seen on countless glossy magazine covers and in one grainy sex tape costarring Tommy Lee, and it's the same bosom that has provided Howard Stern with hours of verbal adoration. ''Stacked," which returns for its second season tonight (8:30 PM ET/PT on Fox), is so openly monomaniacal about its star's mammaries, it's fairly awesome.

Next week, for example, Anderson and guest Jenny McCarthy spend a few long minutes tactilely assessing each other's breasts. There's nothing covert about the intention of the scene, as the blond bombshells stand center stage, titillatingly grabbing at each other with open admiration. It's a bold silicone-on-silicone extravaganza, with no pretenses to look like anything else.

When ''Stacked" premiered late last season, it was a slapdash affair. The script was a chaotic series of unrelated clunkers, and for a few weeks, it had the distinction of being the worst sitcom on TV. Of course, it went on to become a small hit for Fox, and it returns tonight as one of the network's ratings hopefuls since ''Arrested Development" and ''Kitchen Confidential" have failed to catch on. It has been given a little more direction and clarity of vision (directly onto Anderson's upper torso), although it's still fully awful.

OK, there is a putative plot. Anderson's Skyler is a recovering bimbo who works among the intellectuals of Stacked Books. She's trying to change from party girl into a woman of substance, but her three co-workers, including the two brothers who own the store, persist in viewing her as vacuous. They see her as a sex object, especially Stuart (Brian Scolaro), who is so smitten with her he continually makes a fool of himself.

After one embarrassing moment with Skyler, he says, ''How am I going to look her in the eye?" ''Shouldn't be a problem," brother Gavin (Elon Gold) snaps back. ''It's not where you usually look."

The oddest thing about ''Stacked" is Anderson herself, who doesn't quite know how to play comedy. When she delivers her punch lines, she accompanies them with nonsensical facial and body tics as if to signal that they're funny. While history has given us dumb blondes who seem a beat behind everyone, Anderson appears to be in a bit of a hurry, as if she isn't sure how to appear natural at the snappy sitcom pace. Watch her try to ''accidentally" fumble her blueberry muffin tonight; it doesn't even qualify as amateurish. But then her acting skills are beside the point on ''Stacked," where it's either the jiggle factor or bust.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2005/11/09/in_season_two_stacked_ogles_openly?mode=PF

fredfa

11-09-05, 07:08 PM

Critic’s Notebook
”CSI: NY” lightens up, crosses over and hits stride

By Gail Pennington St. Louis Post-Dispatch Television Critic Wednesday, Nov. 09 2005

In a now-famous Hollywood story, Anthony Zuiker was running the tram at the
Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas when he pitched a TV series to producer Jerry
Bruckheimer. Zuiker's idea: Delve into the workings of the Vegas crime lab in
glorious, gory detail.

That was 1999. Six years later, Zuiker, 37, is the toast of TV land and CBS
boss Les Moonves' favorite person. "CSI," the show he dreamed up between tram
rides, is the No. 1 series in television, averaging more than 27 million
viewers a week. "CSI: Miami," the 2002 spin-off, ranks No. 5 for the season to
date with an audience of 18.5 million.

The dark cloud on this pretty (if bloody) picture has been "CSI: NY," the third
entry in the franchise, which struggled last year in its freshman season. The
newcomer's failure was relative; despite coming in 21st in the Nielsens,
beating veteran "Law & Order" at 10 PM ET/PT Wednesdays, "NY" didn't perform up to
expectations for a member of the "CSI" family, and nobody - least of all
Zuiker, who had opted to run the show himself - was entirely pleased with its
direction creatively.

Luckily, it didn't take a forensic detective to figure out what went wrong.

"CSI: NY" was too dark - not just in tone (Zuiker has called it dour) but in
look, the result of an overzealous attempt to set the new show apart visually
from the original (lit by Vegas neon) and the "Miami" edition (shot in dazzling
Florida sunshine).

And speaking of dark, the characters, led by Gary Sinise's Detective Mac
Taylor, were glum and humorless. Stories focused too much on their brooding
backstories and not enough on the trademark "CSI" crime-solving.

With support from Bruckheimer and CBS, and advice from partners Carol Mendelson
(show runner on "CSI") and Ann Donahue (her counterpart on "Miami"), Zuiker
began tweaking "NY" in midseason last year.

By July, CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler was boasting of the
"continuing evolution" of the show, including more humor, topical storytelling
and brighter lighting. Sinise's team, previously confined in a gloomy
underground morgue, even got new, high-rise offices in midtown Manhattan.

The changes seem to have paid off. Recently, "CSI: NY" cracked the Nielsen Top
10, coming in 10th with viewers 18-49 and giving Zuiker three of the 10
highest-rated shows on television with the audience most valued by advertisers.

This week, "CSI: NY" gets its reward, a high-profile crossover episode that
began Monday with the New York investigators visiting "CSI: Miami" and
concludes tonight with David Caruso's Lt. Horatio Caine and his "Miami" team in
Manhattan.

Zuiker calls the two-hour episode, a month in the making, "virtually a movie,"
with plenty of action - "very gory and bloody and exciting." The body count,
even by "CSI" standards, is high, "six in Miami and seven in New York," by
Zuiker's gleeful accounting.

A similar crossover might have helped "NY" during its struggles last season,
but that wasn't the point, Zuiker said last week in a conference call with TV
writers. Instead, he wanted to wait until the show was healthy before offering
the crossover as a treat for fans - and as bait for "Miami" viewers to entice
them to "come visit us on Wednesday."

Donahue says the massive logistics of the crossover were worth it. Luckily,
both "Miami" and "NY" actually shoot in California, in Manhattan Beach and the
San Fernando Valley, respectively. "So it's not as if we had to get Miami to
New York," Donahue points out.

Still, with cast members taping regular installments of their respective series
at the same time, writers had to figure out legitimate reasons for the stars to
be absent from story lines. Sinise and Caruso were kept particularly busy,
shooting as many as three episodes at once - and right in the middle of it all,
Caruso became a new father. "He never missed a beat," Zuiker says.

A reward for viewers of both shows will be seeing Caruso and Sinise together.
"They're amazing," Donahue says. "They look as if they've been a team for five
years."

Looking back, the "Miami" spin-off went so smoothly that it made expanding the
franchise seem effortless, Donahue recalls. "We just ran with it."

But Zuiker says he learned from the "NY" experience that "just because it has
the 'CSI' brand in the title doesn't mean people will watch. You really have to
earn an audience base."

Then he returns to the subject of the crossover, his current pride and joy. Of
tonight's installment, he promises, "There's lots of blood, lots of screams,
you may not sleep that night," adding, "Hope you enjoy it."

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/columnists.nsf/gailpennington/story/93B697D66C13440E862570B000373DD0?OpenDocument