Hot Off The Press! The Latest Television News and Info

[dad1153]

For PC owners this might not seem like that big a deal, but for those of us that are into videogames this is huge!

Technology
Xbox 360 Celebrates Anniversary with TV Shows
Multichannel News November 22, 2006

On the one-year anniversary of its launch, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 began delivering TV shows and movies Wednesday via its Xbox Live Marketplace service.

Microsoft said Xbox Live Marketplace is now providing gamers with hundreds of full-length TV shows for download to own and movies for download to rent from CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Turner Broadcasting System, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

Among series that will be available via Xbox Live Marketplace: Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show, Drawn Together and South Park; MTV’s Pimp My Ride and Punk’d; Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and SpongeBob SquarePants; Nicktoons’ Skyland and Invader Zim; Turner’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Frisky Dingo, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Sealab 2021 and The Venture Bros.; VH1’s Breaking Bonaduce and Hogan Knows Best; CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, NCIS and Star Trek; ABC’s The Nine; NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; and The CW’s Veronica Mars.

As far as movies, the service will offer Paramount Pictures’ Chinatown, Star Trek VII: Generations, Patriot Games, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Sum of All Fears, The Untouchables and When We Were Soliders; and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s Perfect Storm, Poseidon, The Shining, Three Kings and V for Vendetta.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6394375.html?display=Breaking+News

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In Memoriam
Altman learned his craft on early TV
By Mike McDaniel Houston Chronicle November 21, 2006

Known primarily for his work in films, Robert Altman learned and shaped his craft by early television standards: fast and cheap. In that way, he was not unlike many filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood.

He directed episodes of such well-known favorites as Bonanza, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maverick, Peter Gunn, The Millionaire, Combat and Route 66. He also worked on such lesser-known shows as The Roaring 20s, Sugarfoot and Whirlybirds.

Altman's rise in film went off-course in 1981. After a seven-year drought, he revived his career by returning to television, directing Tanner '88, an HBO series that followed a presidential candidate on the campaign trail. It was a renowned bit of television, shot documentary-style, blurring the line between fact and fiction as it worked in cameos of real-life politicians.

Altman revisited politics and television in 2004 with Tanner and Tanner, which found him working with a new screenwriter, Doonesbury author Garry Trudeau. The Sundance Channel project reunited Tanner '88 stars Michael Murphy and Cynthia Nixon, but it didn't seem to have as much to say as the HBO original.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/tv/4352609.html

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If you've been following the AVS thread about the mini-disastrous NFL Network debut game on Thanksgiving (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=755905) then the last two paragraphs in this article will give you something to think about.

The Business of TV
Blame It on Bornstein
From Steve Donohue Multichannel News' 'Voices' Column Nov. 22, 2006

If there’s one person responsible for pro football migrating from free TV to pay TV in the past 20 years, it’s former ESPN chairman and current NFL Network president Steve Bornstein.

If you’re one of the few consumers without a subscription cable or satellite package these days, Bornstein’s the guy to blame for missing those new Monday Night Football games on ESPN. Ditto if you’re a Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications or Cablevision Systems subscriber on Thanksgiving, when NFL Network will carry its first live NFL game -- your cable systems haven’t agreed to distribute the network.

But if you’re a pay TV provider, Bornstein is the guy to thank for putting ESPN on the map, which, in turn, helped drive the cable and satellite universe to more than 90 million subscribers.

Bornstein helped make ESPN the most profitable cable network when he first scored NFL games for the all-sports channel in 1987. ESPN only carried the first half of the NFL’s regular season during its first NFL contract, but 10 years later, it outbid TNT to acquire the full-season cable rights package -- a deal that eventually drove ESPN’s monthly license fees to more than $2 per subscriber.

Cable operators often rail on ESPN for its annual rate hikes, but at the same time, affiliates consistently cite the network as the most valuable in terms of attracting new customers and driving local ad sales.

“I think football on cable television has been a boon to the values and asset creations of cable MSOs, as well as ESPN,” Bornstein said Tuesday.

Bornstein’s biggest challenge these days is convincing Charter, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and other holdouts to carry NFL Network. As a casual sports fan, I can understand the argument from some operators: If not all subscribers are football fans, why should they all be forced to pay for the network?

But then if you look at football’s performance on cable this year -- ESPN continues to set new ratings marks with Monday Night Football, pulling a 12.8 rating and 16 million viewers for the Oct. 23 New York Giants-Dallas Cowbows game, the best performance in history for a cable program -- you can see Bornstein’s argument that NFL Network should be considered a mainstream channel.

“We’re not talking about a niche network here. We’re talking about the most popular content on television,” Bornstein said. Ratings are up this year for all NFL rights holders, despite the growth of new cable networks and digital-video recorders.

But there’s no chance of NFL Network posting big numbers for its Denver Broncos-Kansas City Chiefs debut game Thanksgiving night. After all, only about 40 million cable and satellite subscribers will be able to watch the game, compared with the 92 million that receive ESPN today.

But if Bornstein gets his way, viewers who realize Thursday night that they can’t catch the third game on Thanksgiving will pressure their local operators to carry NFL Network. And before you know it, NFL Network will double its distribution by next season.

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1790000179/post/150005615.html

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The New Season
NBC hopes history repeats with Identity
Zap2it.com November 22, 2006

NBC got an early Christmas present last year when Deal or No Deal became an instant success in mid-December. The network is hoping history will repeat itself this year.

On Dec. 18, NBC will unveil a new game show called Identity, in which players can win cash based on how well they're able to read people. Like the launch of Deal or No Deal, the new show will run for five consecutive nights at 7 p.m. Identity will be hosted by Penn Jillette.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/tv/4354704.html

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The Business of TV
Phone vs. Cable: Turf Wars Escalate
By Ken Belson & Vikas Bajaj The New York Times November 24, 2006

PHOENIX — Bees swarmed around Dennis Pappas as he pried open the door to a telephone equipment box belonging to Qwest Communications at an apartment building here recently. Inside, the insects had built a small but seemingly busy hive.

The bees called the box home because workers from Cox Communications, a local cable provider, did not properly plug a hole in it when they switched customers in the building over to Cox’s phone service, said Mr. Pappas, a public policy chief at Qwest, the local phone company. As a result, Qwest had to bring in a contractor to undertake the risky task of removing the hive.

It may sound like a small thing, but Qwest says the infested box is just one of many pieces of equipment that Cox has damaged or misused. It says Cox has left wires exposed and improperly grounded cables, hazards that could disrupt phone service or hurt customers and workers. Qwest even argues that the damage is part of a plan to make it harder to sign up customers it lost to Cox.

Technicians who came to Qwest from Cox said “that their instructions were to make it as tough for Qwest to win back the customer as possible,” Mr. Pappas said.

Cox says Qwest is exaggerating the scope of the damage, and it says there are many explanations for the problems — including improper maintenance by Qwest’s own workers. Cox also insists it fixes any damage brought to its attention.

There has been an outbreak of this kind of finger-pointing across the country lately, a product of the increasingly bitter turf war between phone and cable companies. After decades of relative peace and separation, friction is growing as cable providers sell more phone lines and phone companies get into the video business.

For the most part, the sparring has been limited to advertising campaigns and promotional offers. But here in Phoenix, where Cox has stolen nearly a third of the residential phone business from Qwest, the rancor has escalated. In January, Qwest filed complaints with state regulators over the equipment problems, leading to a protracted legal standoff and public backbiting.

Given the disputes over who did what, and the lack of any central records, it is hard to say how much these incidents are actually hurting the cable and phone industries, or their customers. But complaints by the companies are clearly on the rise.

AT&T has fought with Cox in Oklahoma and Time Warner Cable in Texas. In Maryland, Verizon has accused Comcast of shoddy work and vice versa. BellSouth says problems have cropped up with Cox in Louisiana. Cable companies have as many complaints about the Bells.

In some cases, cable and phone companies accuse one another of ripping out equipment. In others, wires were reportedly left exposed and ungrounded.

Elsewhere, Verizon asserts that dozens of times this year, Comcast and other cable providers ran their wires down phone company pipes instead of installing separate conduits. Verizon said that in one case it sent a letter to Comcast asking that the practice be stopped, but that the paperwork and repairs that followed not only cost hundreds of dollars, but delayed installations for its customers.

“As we enter a more competitive world with them, we see these occur more often,” said Chris Creager, who oversees Verizon’s phone network in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. “It’s kind of the Wild West some days.”

A Comcast spokeswoman, Beth Bacha, said that inadvertently using another company’s conduits was “a fairly common and easy-to-correct, non-customer-impacting mistake,” and that Comcast had immediately addressed Verizon’s complaints. She added that Verizon had made thousands of cuts in Comcast’s cables, generating $1.4 million in damages.

In Phoenix, one of the country’s fastest-growing and most hotly contested markets, Cox says the accusations by Qwest are evidence of Qwest’s desperation. It says Qwest is so worried about the loss of tens of thousands of customers that it is throwing up legal smokescreens and ignoring that Cox has corrected problems brought to its attention.

“Clearly, we’ve been in business and been successful; we’ve won our J. D. Power awards,” said Douglas Garrett, Cox’s vice president for regulatory issues. J. D. Power, which measures customer satisfaction, ranked Cox as the best phone company in the northeast, southwest and west this year. It has nearly 950,000 cable customers in Arizona.

“The way we win customers is to provide good service.” Mr. Garrett said. “You can’t win customers by damaging competitors’ equipment.”

Cox also argues that some of the damage Qwest says is caused by its workers is often indistinguishable from the harm caused to equipment by vandals, bad weather and regular wear and tear.

Not to be outdone, Cox has built up its own collection of photos of equipment that it says Qwest damaged or misused. The problems include 39 instances of Qwest installers tapping into the plastic conduit through which Cox threads its cable wires. The practice appears to be a way for Qwest to avoid the time and cost of installing its own conduit, said Mark A. DiNunzio, a director of regulatory affairs for Cox in Phoenix.

“But we don’t run to the Arizona Corporation Commission when we discover it,” he said, referring to the state’s utility regulator. “We try to resolve it on a business-to-business basis.”

Qwest acknowledges that some of its contractors have improperly used Cox conduits and says it has corrected those transgressions. But Qwest officials say the problem is far smaller than the damage it says Cox is responsible for.

These kinds of spats are hardly new. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, upstart phone companies like Covad accused the Bells of blocking access to their switching stations, making it harder for rivals to sign up new customers. Decades earlier, phone and even telegraph companies butted heads over access to equipment and customers.

“This is an age-old problem,” said Richard Nespola, chief executive of the Management Network Group, a telecommunications consultant. “As long as people share facilities, the finger pointing will continue. It’s a competitive business and everyone accuses everyone.”

While workers certainly make mistakes, these are often isolated issues, and damage is rarely the result of malice, Mr. Nespola said. For most companies, equipment damage and misplaced wiring are often unavoidable in a market where rivals either share equipment or keep it side-by-side, he said. This is particularly true in apartment complexes and office towers that have hundreds if not thousands of phone lines.

What is different now is that the contest is a two-way slugfest between powerful and sophisticated companies with deep pockets and a lot more to lose. The start-ups that were born in the wake of regulatory changes have largely faded as a threat, particularly in the last year, as Bell companies bought their two biggest rivals, AT&T and MCI.

Now, the Bells’ chief competitors are Time Warner Cable, Comcast and other cable providers that have the technology, armies of installers and marketing budgets to lure away video and phone customers. By the end of the year, for instance, cable operators will have nearly nine million phone subscribers, up about 58 percent from 2005, said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein.

Internet phone start-ups including Vonage and SunRocket have several million more customers, many of whom came from Verizon, AT&T and other Bell companies.

The Bell companies assert that their complaints are not just sour grapes. Instead, they are an effort to cut down on costly repairs and interruptions in customer service. In a filing with Arizona regulators in January, Qwest said that since 2004 its technicians had been dispatched more than 7,900 times to fix equipment damaged by Cox, repairs that cost nearly half a million dollars.

“Even though they’ve admitted to what they are doing, getting them to stop it and certify it has not been easy,” said R. Steven Davis, Qwest’s deputy general counsel. “When a company turns a blind eye to activity that is wrong, it becomes intentional.”

Qwest is also taking its case to the news media. Mr. Pappas spent two hours last month driving around Phoenix to show a reporter the damage to Qwest’s property. The telephone boxes he visited had a few exposed wires, small unsealed holes and what Mr. Pappas said was improper grounding of Cox electrical wires to Qwest equipment.

In many other cases, the companies resolve their differences on an ad hoc basis before they blow up into legal fights. In San Antonio, for instance, AT&T says it found instances where Time Warner Cable installers cut phone company wires when trying to install their own voice service.

AT&T technicians must repair the equipment, which costs about $200 a job, according to Randy Tomlin, senior vice president of network operations planning at AT&T.

“You’d have to have service in that house for multiple years to recover that money,” Mr. Tomlin said, adding that similar problems had cropped up in California, Illinois and Wisconsin. Though reports of damage are infrequent, “as competition continues, the opportunities for this to occur increase,” he said.

A spokesman for Time Warner Cable, Mark Harrad, confirmed that there had been problems with cut wires in San Antonio, but he said they had been fixed. He added that at times, AT&T had damaged its equipment when installing its new U-Verse television service.

In Phoenix, Qwest and Cox are now arguing in front of regulators about how to determine the scope of the reported damage and how to repair it. If an independent audit is performed, it could take about a year to complete, after which regulators would have to decide whether there was any wrongdoing and set any compensation.

In the meantime, Cox and Qwest continue to battle for each other’s customers in more conventional ways.

Cox is offering customers in Phoenix a discounted package of digital cable, phone and high-speed Internet service for $99.95 a month, while Qwest is selling a comparable package, with the help of DirecTV, for about $92.97 a month. Which package consumers choose will likely have little to do with the companies’ disputes in the field.

“If this is not competition, then I don’t know what it is,” said Scott Simanson, vice president and general manager for Qwest’s operation in Arizona.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/business/24damage.html?ref=business

[dad1153]

Confirmed it on my DVR... Saturday night is the Match Game marathon.

The other show is Sunday at 8e/5p

The "other show" ('Behind the Blank: The Match Game Story') airs twice this Sunday on GSN: 8PM and 11PM ET and PT.

BTW, at 3:30AM Sunday night/Monday morning GSN will air one of the few surviving B&W episodes from the original 60's 'Match Game' (the one with the whistling 'Safari' music composed by Henry Mancini). Set your VCR/DVR's! :)

[123HDTV]

Done! Thanks for the tip!

[dad1153]

Two-for-the-price-of-one posting time!

Critic's Notebook
Listen for the Music, Look for the Muscles
By Ginia Bellafante The New York Times November 24, 2006

Will Madonna ever get old? She may acquire more gravitas, continue to mature emotionally and find greater meaning in her work with kabbalah, but will she ever come to look arthritic, puffy, menopausal? This increasingly seems doubtful. Madonna no longer reinvents, she maintains.

It is the sheer spectacularity of her physical form, the near menacing force of it, and largely that alone, that sustains your attention in “Madonna: The Confessions Tour, Live From London,” the two-hour film of a concert she gave at the Wembley Arena in London this past summer, which was broadcast on NBC Wednesday night and will be shown on Bravo next week.

With each tour Madonna has embarked on in recent years, her deltoids appear to have grown more regally expansive, robust and winglike. Toward the end of the Wembley show, part of a worldwide tour pegged to her album “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” Madonna sings one of the hits from it, “Hung Up,” a song about a woman who migrates between boredom and agony as she waits for a man to call. But who could this man possibly be? Unless Madonna is expecting a call from Wladimir Klitschko about meeting him in the ring, the sight of her singing a song like this, in a leotard no less, leaves you feeling as you might if you were forced to watch Ethel Merman trying to impersonate Chet Baker.

The show pays tribute to Madonna’s current and former selves and does so with dizzying jump cuts and all the spectacle — the acrobatics, playground sets, endless costume changes — that have become the hallmark of her concerts.

Today, Madonna, who is 48, is a concerned citizen of the world. She has made African AIDS orphans one of her causes and wants to adopt a child from Malawi, causing some controversy. At one point in the concert, she sings “Live to Tell” against the backdrop of images of children in Africa and a speeding tally of the number who have been left parentless. But here again, her perfect musculature produces a kind of dissonance. Madonna doesn’t have an altruist’s body, she has a denier’s. What you’re tallying in your head when you watch her dance with the strength and agility of a 19-year-old are the number of hours she spends each day practicing Ashtanga yoga, running hills and bench-pressing the weight of a Regency table. You are tallying all the calories that Madonna is not eating.

In addition to keeping up her legendary physical regimen, Madonna now also rides horses on her country estate in England. Some critics have seen this as another aspect of her Anglophilic pretensions, but what is really surprising is that it took her so long to cotton to a sport so steeped in the dynamic of submission and control. Madonna the equestrian seems the most inevitable Madonna of all. Perhaps realizing that on some level, she opened her Wembley show looking as if she were about to ride in a reimagining of Ascot. She danced around, directing men on all fours before she rode an apparatus meant to look like an electric horse.

Madonna travels backward in the show to the beginning of her career, the time before she was encumbered with the need to do good. The documentary “I’m Going to Tell You a Secret,” which follows her on her 2004 world tour, reveals a Madonna who wants to learn all the time, who hugs her assistant and dancers, who wishes she’d been nicer to people when she was young. Perhaps she knows that many in her audience miss the Madonna of so many Madonnas ago, the one who refused refinement and probably thought Oxford was just an insurance company.

“The Confessions Tour” gets deeper and deeper into her early disco years as it progresses, with Madonna getting in and out of a “Saturday Night Fever” tuxedo and Jane Fonda-esque aerobics gear before it’s all over, as if to tell us that sometimes, yes, she misses herself too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/arts/television/24mado.html?ref=television
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Critic's Notebook
A Girl, a War and a Bunch of Gentle Lessons
By Anita Gates The New York Times November 24, 2006

“Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front” is to sincere as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is to camp. So it’s both odd and satisfying, while watching this sweet holiday television movie (Sunday night on the Disney Channel), to come upon a “Mommie Dearest” moment.

When little Molly McIntire (Maya Ritter) refuses to eat the turnips served at dinner, the neighbor looking after her and her siblings orders her to sit at the table until she has cleaned her plate. “Which means I’ll be here until I die,” Molly announces woefully.

But unlike Christina Crawford, Molly has a mother (played by Molly Ringwald) who is willing to compromise. When Mom comes home from her job at the airplane factory, she warms up the turnips, mixing in a little butter and sugar (to heck with the rations!), and Molly happily finishes her meal.

It is wartime — 1944 to be exact — and Molly is learning about sacrifice, hardship, doing her part and the preciousness of family. As she does, viewers may be concerned about manipulation on more than one front.

First there’s Molly’s provenance. She is one of the dolls-with-historically-significant-back-stories that make up the lucrative American Girl empire. (The Fifth Avenue store has its own restaurant and its own on-site theater production, as well as floors of dolls, doll clothing, doll books and other accessories.) Clearly, at least one of the reasons the movie exists is to sell merchandise.

Then there’s the war. Granted, this is World War II, the one that even protesters in the Vietnam era could see as “the good war,” totally justified and noble. But it may seem to some viewers that Molly’s lessons in the necessity of the ultimate sacrifice are meant to persuade young viewers to see the current war in Iraq as equally noble.

Parents can talk to their children about that issue and then safely allow them to enjoy “Molly” for what it mostly is, a heartwarming, dreamlike vision of American small-town life six decades ago, with universal lessons around every corner.

In addition to loving her parents and tolerating her brother and sister, Molly has a rich life. She and her best friends go to the movies and learn about the world from the newsreels (in which young Princess Elizabeth of Britain makes a reassuring speech to children around the globe). They idolize a pretty young teacher, Miss Campbell (Sarah Manninen), and fantasize about her romance with and coming marriage to a handsome young soldier.

Molly desperately wants to win the lead in the big tap-dancing finale of the school’s Christmas show. She acknowledges that she isn’t a very good dancer but is willing to do whatever it takes to become one.

“I’ll practice day and night,” she announces, although she hates to practice. Her father (David Aaron Baker) supports her completely. “Once my girl makes up her mind, there’s no stopping her,” he tells her with an approving smile.

Molly’s trials include dealing with a wartime shortage of ice cream, saying a tearful goodbye to her father as he leaves for Britain, watching her mother take a job (horrors!) and, most intrusive of all, being forced to share her bedroom with a total stranger.

That stranger is Emily Bennett (Tory Green), a young refugee from London who modestly talks about living in a manor house and having the royal family to tea. (“It was only once.”) Not surprisingly, Molly’s resentment of Emily diminishes, and they become friends, even before Emily apologetically reveals her terrible secret.

“Molly: An American Girl” is poignant but carefully avoids difficult choices and long-term disappointment. A spelling bee that pits two major characters against each other is interrupted and declared a tie. Telegrams from the War Department arrive regularly, but really bad things happen only to minor characters. Hard work and sacrifice always pay off in victory. (Molly isn’t that great a tap dancer, but what are the odds of her winning the starring role in the show?) That, come to think of it, may be the most subversive message of all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/arts/television/24moll.html?ref=television

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International TV
Italian court rules Berlusconi will stand trial
By Eric J. Layman The Hollywood Reporter November 24, 2006

ROME -- An Italian court ruled late Wednesday that controversial media kingpin and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will stand trial for corruption as planned, sparking a flurry of speculation in the Italian media about how the case might play out.

The case started Tuesday but was halted as Berlusconi's lawyers filed a motion to have judge Edoardo D'Avossa removed from the case on the grounds that he has presided over three previous trials related to Berlusconi's Mediaset network and that the judge could not be objective about the latest case.

The decision about whether or not to allow D'Avossa to continue was expected Monday, and the quicker-than-expected result was interpreted by the Italian media as meaning the courts were eager to pursue Berlusconi, who has been dogged by legal problems for years but never convicted.

Italian newspapers carried the story on their front pages Thursday, with the left wing daily L'Unita declaring, "This time it's real." Other newspapers ran similar stories, making reference to Berlusconi often escaping convictions in the past due to legal maneuverings that often delayed a verdict until the statute of limitations expired.

That is unlikely now. The case could restart as soon as Monday.

The trial is to look into charges that Berlusconi used the sale of two offshore television stations to illegally avoid paying millions in taxes and then paid witnesses to cover his tracks.

Berlusconi has denied any wrongdoing in the case, saying that the charges against him were politically motivated moves from Italian Premier Romano Prodi, Berlusconi's chief political rival. Prodi has declined to comment on the case in recent weeks.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iced79d02214d1926b31707ab4312b4d4

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TV Sports
Ailing Chiefs owner enjoys holiday win
By Doug Tucker Associated Press November 23, 2006

KANSAS CITY, Mo. ---- Lamar Hunt lobbied the NFL for 37 years to put a Thanksgiving game in Kansas City, but he had to listen to his Chiefs beat Denver on Thursday night over the phone in his hospital bed.

"Lamar, I hope you're feeling better," an emotional Trent Green said moments after the Chiefs wrapped up a 19-10 victory in a key AFC West showdown.

"This win," the Chiefs' quarterback added, "is for you."

The 74-year-old Hunt, who has missed only a handful of games since founding the franchise, was admitted to a Dallas-area hospital on Wednesday, bitterly disappointed he would not see Kansas City's inaugurating the NFL's new Thanksgiving tripleheader.

"He's doing much better," said his son, Clark Hunt, the chairman of the Chiefs. "He had a lung issue and needed to go to the hospital and let them take a look at it."

Having the Chiefs dedicate the game to him was certain to be a great tonic, the younger Hunt said.

"This game has been important to him really going back to the AFL days. He's worked since the merger to try to get the game back here."

Like most NFL fans, Hunt was unable to view the game. His hospital is not hooked into the NFL Network, which broadcast the game to about 40 million of the country's 111 million television homes. So his daughter held the phone near her television while he listened on the other end.

"He told me to call him at halftime," Chiefs president Carl Peterson said. "He said, 'I'm hearing it good, I'm hearing it good.' I told him, 'Well, we're doing good.' This night is his night as far as I'm concerned."

NFL rushing leader Larry Johnson gouged Denver's fifth-ranked run defense for 157 yards and Lawrence Tynes kicked four field goals for the Chiefs (7-4), who charged into a second-place tie with the Broncos (7-4) in the AFC West. The Broncos, tied for first only four days earlier, fell further behind the Chargers (8-2).

Johnson, raising his league-leading rushing total to 1,202 yards, consistently burned the Broncos with 8- and 10-yard gains, using his usual assortment of power moves and start-and-stop elusiveness. The Broncos came in giving up a shade better than 90 yards per game on the ground.

"I felt real good," Johnson said. "Overall, it's just your energy. You know that the whole nation is going to be watching you. It's the only game at night and it feels like a Monday night football game."

Johnson scored the Chiefs' only touchdown on a 1-yard vault late in the second quarter following a crucial mistake by the Broncos' Ebenezer Ekuban, who was called for roughing the passer on a failed third-and-4 play from the 9.

"There were a lot of crucial situations when we didn't step up and make the plays when we should," Denver cornerback Champ Bailey said. "One thing we've got to realize is we've got a lot of football left to play."

Tynes hit from 24, 34, 29 and 21 yards for the Chiefs, who have put themselves in a strong playoff position by shaking off a host of injuries and winning five of their last six.

Making the night even more festive was an in-house standing-room-only crowd of 80,866, the largest since 1972, the year the Chiefs opened the facility that many call the loudest outdoor stadium in the league.

"Our fans were awesome," Chiefs defensive end Jared Allen said. "We took energy from them all night."

The Broncos did not even snap the ball in Kansas City territory until after Jake Plummer hit Javon Walker with a 21-yard pass to the 47-yard line with 1:30 left in the half. Nine plays later, Jason Elam kicked a 31-yard field goal that made it 10-3 at halftime.

Plummer dropped to 0-6 in six starts in Kansas City and had his second pass intercepted when tight end Stephen Alexander tipped the ball into the hands of cornerback Ty Law, leading to KC's first field goal. He was 25-for-39 for 216 yards and no doubt speculation will pick up steam over whether rookie Jay Cutler is about to be promoted.

"We'll see what happens there," said safety John Lynch, a Torrey Pines High alumnus. "That is the other side of the ball. We've got to look at our side."

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/11/24/sports/professional/19_26_9911_23_06.txt

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The New Season
Big Day
Bottom Line: Something bold, something new, something funny through and through
By Barry Garron The Hollywood Reporter November 27, 2006

9-9:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 28 - ABC

It's finally the big day for "Big Day." Originally scheduled to premiere with the bulk of the fall series, "Big Day" was delayed by the growing buzz surrounding "Ugly Betty." Responding to the good word-of-mouth, ABC switched "Betty" to Thursdays and bumped "Big Day" from the schedule, making it wait for another day.

"Big Day," a single-camera comedy about the hornet's nest of activity surrounding a large, formal wedding, is like "24" in that it parses the day into a season's worth of episodes. Unlike "24," though, you really don't need to know much about the previous episodes to enjoy the one you're watching.

And enjoy it you will. Husband-and-wife team Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa pack the half-hour with oddball characters, zany circumstances and loads of physical comedy, but it's all grounded in enough reality to be utterly believable and irrepressibly funny.

Marla Sokoloff stars as the bride, the sweet but anxious Alice. Josh Cooke plays Danny, the laid-back, childlike groom, who works year-round as a camp counselor. Steve, the disapproving dad, a well-heeled doctor, is played by Kurt Fuller. Wendie Malick plays Jane, his obsessive wife. Rounding out the cast are Skobo (Stephen Rannazzisi), Danny's best friend from camp; Becca (Miriam Shor), Alice's sister and maid of honor, and Lorna (Stephanie Weir), the put-upon wedding planner.

Unlike the accident-prone wedding day it depicts, "Big Day" has all of the various elements in place. The casting was superb and the script from Goldsmith and Yuspa is tight and smart. Even the less obvious parts, such as David Schwartz's festive music and scene segues that zoom for room to room, all contribute to the lively mood and the comic madness of each episode.

In the premiere, Alice's dad suggests that Danny needs to grow up more before he's ready to marry. Father might know best but no one is ready to listen. Alice and her mother have a last-minute fight over salad selection and the best man is busy being a jerk to the maid of honor, with whom he spent the previous night.

If "Big Day" wins ABC support (and, with "What About Brian" still on the schedule, how hard could that be?), Goldsmith and Yuspa said they would build new seasons around other big events, such as the birth of a child or a family cruise. These days, with funny and inventive sitcoms as scarce as $2-a-gallon gas, "Big Day" looks like a welcome addition to the TV landscape.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/television/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=8442

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TV Notebook
Spader finds small screen a 'Legal' fix
By Erin Carlson Associated Press November 23, 2006

James Spader never really imagined he'd wind up with a steady gig on television. He'd always been in movies. In fact, he didn't even watch much of it. But he was willing to try it.

"I mean, I've never been much of a planner in terms of my business," Spader said. "I'm not very good at that, and I have not given tremendous thought to what to look for and what I would want to do, toward building a career.

"I wasn't particularly curious about it, and I really had no idea about what that would be like. ... I guess that's part of the reason why I did it, because I was so ignorant, you know? And ignorance really is bliss."

Spader plays the twisted yet goodhearted defense attorney Alan Shore on ABC's "Boston Legal," a David E. Kelley creation. Alan inhabits a world of weird and wacky Kelley characters, most notably the hilariously unhinged Denny Crane (William Shatner), senior partner of Crane, Poole & Schmidt.

Kelley introduced Alan in the final season of his legal drama "The Practice," which ended in 2004. That same year, Spader reprised the Emmy-winning character and got his own hit show, "Boston Legal," starring with such small-screen veterans as Shatner and Candice Bergen, who signed on last year.

"I realized how much I liked it and how sort of addictive it is," said Spader, who describes himself as "obsessive compulsive." "I have a very addictive personality, you know, so I've become rather intoxicated by it ... So I really look forward to getting the next script. I mean, I really look forward to that. That's something I think I would miss if I wasn't doing the show."

He would probably miss Shatner, too. The two have become pals - "odd sort of friends," said Spader, comparing their relationship to the male-bonding between conservative Denny and the more liberal Alan.

"Bill and I probably share more of the same views about certain issues than Denny and Alan do, but we are ... in many ways, opposing in personality," he said.

While Shatner has his side projects (host of the new ABC game show "Show Me the Money," among them), Spader prefers to concentrate on "Boston Legal" and is even staving off his movie career to do so.

If a script were good, would he look at it?

"I'm so busy on the show," he said. "I don't think I have time - I don't have time to pursue a movie career right now. I have time if something were to come along, and it were very minimal in terms of time and it were to just land on my lap and I were to quickly read it and then were able to quickly act it, then I could do something in film."

His extracurricular activities, he said, include "eating or sleeping or record-shopping or goofing around" with his teenage sons, Sebastian and Elijah, from his first marriage. He has a girlfriend and a dog.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ent_radio/story/473886p-398668c.html

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Technology/Business
U.S. grants exemptions to copyright rules
Associated Press November 23, 2006

Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced yesterday by the U.S. Copyright Office.

Other copyright exemptions the agency approved will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use software to read copy-protected electronic books.

The changes were among six exemptions approved by James H. Billington, the head of the Library Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office.

"I am very encouraged by the fact that the Copyright Office is willing to recognize exemptions for archivists, cell phone recyclers and computer security experts," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Frankly, I'm surprised and pleased they were granted."

But von Lohmann said he was disappointed that the Copyright Office rejected a number of other exemptions that could have benefited consumers, including one that would have let owners of DVDs legally copy movies for use on Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod and other portable players. The new rules will take effect Monday and will expire in three years.

In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to the underlying programs.

Providers of prepaid phone services have been trying to stop entrepreneurs from buying subsidized handsets to resell at a profit. But even customers of regular plans generally can't bring their phones to another carrier, even after their contracts expire.

Billington noted that at least one company has filed lawsuits claiming that breaking the software locks violates copyright law, which makes it illegal for people to circumvent copy-protection technologies without an exemption from the Copyright Office.

Billington said the locks appeared in place not to protect the developer of the cell phone software but for third-party interests.

Officials with the industry group CTIA-The Wireless Association did not return phone calls for comment yesterday.

The exemption granted to film professors authorizes the breaking of the CSS copy-protection technology found in most DVDs. Programs to do that circulate widely on the Internet, though until now it has been illegal to use or distribute them.

The professors said they need the ability to create compilations of DVD snippets to teach their classes - for example, taking portions of old and new cartoons to study how animation has evolved. Such compilations are generally permitted under "fair use" provisions of copyright law, but breaking the locks to make the compilations has been illegal.

Hollywood studios have argued that educators could turn to videotapes and other versions without the copy protections. But the professors argued that DVDs are of higher quality and may preserve the original colors or dimensions that videotapes lack.

"The record did not reveal any alternative means to meet the pedagogical needs of the professors," Billington wrote.

The Copyright Office also authorized the breaking of locks on electronic books so that blind people can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

It also granted two exemptions dealing with computer obsolescence. For computer software and video games that require machines no longer available, copy-protection controls may be circumvented for archival purposes. Locks on computer programs also may be broken if they require dongles - small computer attachments - that are damaged and can't be replaced.

The final exemption lets researchers test CD copy-protection technologies for security flaws or vulnerabilities. Researchers had noted Sony BMG Music Entertainment's use of copy-protection systems that installed themselves on personal computers to limit copying.

In doing so, critics say, Sony BMG exposed the computers to hacking, and the company has acknowledged problems with one of the technologies used on some 5.7 million CDs.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.copyright23nov23,0,6825101.story?coll=bal-business-headlines

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TV Notebook
L&Onely Girl
Abducted Web Mystery Gal
By Michael Starr The New York Post November 24, 2006

'Law & Order" has built a franchise on its "ripped from the headlines" approach.

But this Tuesday's episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" goes one step further in its depiction of a cyber-kidnapping (believed to be a TV first).

"This is 'pre-ripping' from the headlines," says "CI" executive producer/head writer Warren Leight.

The episode, entitled "Weeping Willow," stars Michelle Trachtenberg ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") as "Willow," a popular online video blogger whose violent kidnapping is streamed in real time on the Internet.

She and her boyfriend are held hostage by two hooded assailants demanding ransom in the form of downloads from "Willow" fans (at $1.99 a pop).

It's up to "CI" detectives Logan (Chris Noth) and Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson) to figure out if the kidnapping is real - or an elaborate online hoax.

"Forget about 15 minutes of fame - there are hundreds of people who get their 15 inches of bandwidth, people making names for themselves on Youtube and others," Leight says, alluding to post-it-yourself video sites.

(The video site used in "Weeping Willow" is called "YouLenz.")

"This blogging phenomenon has created a certain kind of 'cyberfame,' people who don't have to do anything more than put themselves on the Web and catch a cyberwave," Leight says.

"We now have a spate of very strange celebrities."

Leight says the twentysomething "Willow" is modeled after "lonelygirl15," a video blogger who became an online sensation earlier this year on Youtube.com.

"Lonelygirl," ostensibly a 15-year-old girl, was later exposed as a fictitious character played by an actress and created by two filmmakers.

"At this moment in time, people will do anything to be famous, and this is about the nature of fame at the moment," Leight says of the episode.

"It's fun to play with the detectives' expectations.

"Their biggest frustration is trying to understand what's real and what isn't," Leight says. "Does this woman, Willow, really exist, and has something happened to her?

"Is she playing a character and a game that's gotten out of hand? And how do you locate someone in cyberspace?"

Wheeler, Logan's younger partner, immediately suspects a hoax - while Logan isn't so sure, especially when real blood is found at the crime scene.

"When we were preparing the episode, I talked to several DAs and asked them what the charge would be [for cyber-kidnapping]," Leight says. "They told me that this is a real problem, that there's a lag between what's on the books now and what's happening out there.

"They said that we're starting to see this type of stuff, and they have no idea on how to [legally] handle it."

The episode, which also features cameos from actor Wallace Shawn and CNN's Larry King, airs Tuesday (9 p.m./Ch. 4).

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11242006/tv/lonely_girl_tv_michael_starr.htm

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Critic's Notebook
Music's the grace note of U2 gab
BONO AND THE EDGE: OFF THE RECORD. Friday, 11 p.m., HBO
By David Hinckley The New York Daily News November 24, 2006

THREE STARS (OUT OF FOUR):

At this point, getting U2's Bono to talk - about anything - is no harder than getting a dog to wag its tail at a fistful of fresh bones.

But he seems to keep finding new audiences, or at least old ones that don't mind hearing a few greatest hits.

People who have followed U2 over the years won't hear radically new material when Bono and U2 guitarist The Edge sit down for this hour-long "Off the Record" session with interviewer Dave Stewart.

Neither will they be bored.

When The Edge talks about playing guitar on mathematical principles, that's turf he's covered before. And yes, the predictable sound- wave patterns of feedback may be a discussion in which the average music fan has only passing interest.

But he gets away with it because U2 some time ago transcended "average" in the rock world and therefore has so much recognizable music as reference points. Familiar songs and a large, devoted core of listeners win them considerable latitude in an interview like this.

On the other hand, they're smart enough to realize they should focus on matters to which the listener relates.

Stewart holds up a Patti Smith album, for instance, and Bono immediately says she is the reason he bares his soul in his lyrics.

Edge, real name David Evans, talks about how Bryan Ferry's experimentation gave U2 the kind of creative inspiration that the Beatles or the Who gave to an earlier generation of rockers.

Edge also notes, not for the first time, how U2 came out of the punk movement, where the lasting mantra was simplicity.

Of less interest, perhaps, are passages where Bono goes political. While there are no speeches here on Third World debt, he does declare that at one time he may have been naive about the oppression of communism.

That sort of rumination doubtless reflects Bono's absorption of lessons and thoughts from the non-rock 'n' roll people with whom he has hung out. Since he shows no signs of shedding that part of his life, most fans have either embraced or tolerated it.

For purposes of this program, though, the more interesting Bono remains the one who recounts - again, not for the first time - that U2's first gig as a band was surprisingly good, "and the next 25 were awful."

That's interesting because out of it, somehow, these two guys plus Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. formed a remarkably solid band that has produced years of solid music.

Hearing The Edge talk about how Clayton's bass is in some ways a lead instrument in U2 while his own guitar often falls back into the rhythm section with Mullen, is the reason to tune in to this good-natured hour of patter.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ent_radio/story/474150p-398851c.html

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TV Notebook
Shop at home, couched in comfort
L.A. Daily News Staff and Wire Services November 23, 2006

Those who lack the fortitude to hit the stores today on Black Friday can do a little preview shopping from the couch instead, courtesy of HGTV. At 8 p.m. today, "Gift Show 2006" has all sorts of unusual present ideas, while the "Toy Fair 2006" special at 9 p.m. is all about the latest for children from more than 1,500 companies. Big kids may want to stay up late for the 11 p.m. holiday-themed "I Want That! Tech Toys," from earmuff headphones to a universal remote with a relatively foolproof downloadable set-up. Remember: Batteries not included.

LUCKY `BREAK': "Prison Break" has its fall season finale Monday. And Fox has announced that it's bringing the show back on Jan. 22, when the second-year series returns with an hour-long clip show recapping the events of the first 13 episodes.

The winter's first new episode of "Prison Break" will show the following Monday and the rest of the season will run without repeats through to the finale.

"Prison Break" will return to its standard 8 p.m. time period the week after the two-night, four-hour sixth-season premiere of the network's Emmy-winning "24."

GAY RADAR: Lifetime is taking Fox show "Playing It Straight" one step further with "Gay, Straight or Taken?" which is scheduled to premiere on the cable network Jan. 8.

As you might expect, each episode will follow a woman on a series of dates with three different guys - one gay, one in a relationship, and one single and heterosexual. She'll try to figure out which guy is which, then pick one for herself.

If she chooses the straight guy, she and the guy win "an exotic trip for two." If not, the man she picks gets to take his significant other on the vacation.

The premiere features a 27-year-old Realtor, choosing among Chris, a personal trainer; Luciano, a bartender; and Mike, a club promoter.

MATCH GAME: On Dec. 18, NBC will unveil a new game show called "Identity," in which players can win cash based on how well they're able to read people. Like the launch of "Deal or No Deal," the new show will run for five consecutive nights at 8 p.m.

Host Penn Jillette will introduce players to 12 people and give them a list of 12 pieces of identifying information. The players then have to match each trait - which could range from profession to shoe size, NBC says - to the person they think has that trait. Getting all 12 matches right brings a prize of half a million dollars.

'TREE,' `VERONICA': The "One Tree Hill" gang will continue to sleep with inappropriate people, and "Veronica Mars" will have more time to close in on the campus rapist now that The CW has ordered additional episodes of the two dramas.

The new network ordered eight more episodes of "Hill," while "Veronica" got seven more, making a total of 21 and 20 episodes, respectively, report trade sources. Each show was picked up for 13 episodes this past spring.

In its third season, "Veronica" has increased its viewership by 7 percent among adults 18-34 and 5 percent among women 18-34 compared to last year when it was on UPN. It's averaged a 1.6 rating/4 share among the 18-34 demo and a 2.2/6 among women 18-34. This year, "Veronica" followed "Gilmore Girls" and also marks the titular protagonist's (Kristen Bell) first year of college.

"One Tree Hill" is currently in its fourth season and also has increased from its WB run last year, with a 5 percent increase among adults 18-34 and 4 percent among women 18-34. It has averaged a 2.0/5 among adults and a 2.8/7 among adult women, retaining a large percentage of its lead-in, "America's Next Top Model."

http://www.dailynews.com/tv/ci_4711106

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TV Notebook
Santa's TV bag is stuffed with seasonal treats
By Cindy Clark USA Today November 23, 2006

The season is festooned with TV programming of all sorts, from classic films to new specials to helpful how-tos. USA TODAY assembles a sampler of the holiday's many offerings:

•Decorating Cents: Home for the Holidays, Sunday, 9 p.m. ET/PT, HGTV: Designing a holiday for deserving families: the Hunts, who'll see husband and father Tim off to duty in Afghanistan, and the Schnacky family, dealing with medical treatments for son Tyler.

•A Charlie Brown Christmas, Tuesday, 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC: Charlie struggles to direct his school's annual Christmas pageant in the digitally remastered special.

•Christmas at Rockefeller Center, Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET/PT, NBC: Today's Al Roker and Ann Curry host the annual lighting of the Christmas tree. With Christina Aguilera, Sting, Bette Midler and Sarah McLachlan.

•The Polar Express, Dec. 1, 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC: Based on the classic story of a skeptical boy on a Christmas Eve journey via train to the North Pole.

•The Christmas Card, Dec. 2, 9 p.m., Hallmark: A soldier in Afghanistan falls in love with a woman he does not know who sends him a holiday greeting.

•Holiday Open House, Dec. 3, 7 p.m. ET/PT, DIY: Creative and original ideas to decorate the house.

•Holiday Windows 2006, Dec. 3, 9 p.m. ET/PT, HGTV: Legendary department-store window displays, including Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Barneys.

•Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, Dec. 5, 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC: Fred Astaire narrates the 1970 tale of a young Kris Kringle who must overcome the evil ruler Burgermeister, who has banned toys from the land.

•White House Christmas 2006, Dec. 6, 8 p.m. ET/PT, HGTV: A look inside the White House preparations.

•Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Dec. 8, 8 p.m. ET/PT, CBS: Digitally remastered version of the classic Christmas special of "the most famous reindeer of all."

•Frosty the Snowman, Dec. 8, 9 p.m. ET/PT, CBS: Classic musical special narrated by Jimmy Durante. Followed at 9:30 by Frosty Returns.

•Nigella Bites: Christmas Holiday, Dec. 9, 9 p.m. ET/PT, Food: "Domestic Goddess" Nigella Lawson gives tips on festive treats for Christmas to New Year's.

•Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Dec. 9, 9 p.m. ET/PT, ABC: Jim Carrey stars as the Grinch in the 2000 film based on the classic book.

•Santa Baby, Dec. 10, 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC Family: Santa's estranged daughter, a business executive, returns to the North Pole to help after Santa falls ill.

•The Year Without a Santa Claus, Dec. 11, 9 p.m. ET/PT, NBC: Santa (John Goodman) has decided to take the year off.

•Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Dec. 12, 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC: The 1966 animated holiday story celebrates its 40th anniversary.

•Christmas With the Dickinsons, Dec. 13, 10 p.m. ET/PT, Oxygen: Model-turned-mogul Janice Dickinson's take on The Twelve Days of Christmas.

•Christmas in Washington, Dec. 13, 10 p.m. ET/PT, TNT: Dr. Phil and Robin McGraw host Taylor Hicks, Il Divo, Gretchen Wilson, Chris Brown and Bianca Ryan in a D.C. benefit.

•Christmas Do-Over, Dec. 16, 8 p.m. ET/PT, ABC Family: A man gets the chance to do things differently after he is forced to relive a terrible Christmas.

•It's a Wonderful Life, Dec. 16, 8 p.m. ET/PT, NBC: Frank Capra's 1946 classic is also described for the visually impaired by former president George Bush.

•National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Dec. 17, 8 p.m. ET/PT, TBS: Chevy Chase stars as the patriarch of the Griswolds as they try to make the best of a disastrous holiday.

•A Perfect Day, Dec. 18, 8 p.m. ET/PT, TNT: Rob Lowe plays a first-time author who hits it big with a best seller but loses sight of what's truly important.

•A Christmas Carol, Dec. 20, 8 p.m. ET/PT, TNT: Patrick Stewart stars in TNT's adaptation of Charles Dickens' perennial tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and his visitation by the ghosts of Christmas.

•A Christmas Story marathon, Dec. 24, 8 p.m. ET/PT, TBS: 24 hours of the nostalgic comedy based on the stories of Jean Shepherd, who narrates. Ralphie wants a BB gun; mom worries he'll shoot his eye out.

•A Very Married Christmas, Dec. 24, 9 p.m. ET/PT, CBS: A man's orderly life begins to fall apart when he learns shortly before Christmas that his wife is having an affair and wants a divorce.

•Yule Log, Dec. 25, 7 a.m. ET/PT, INHD: Perfect for your new high-definition TV, this image of a crackling fire burns for 24 hours.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-11-23-holiday-TV-guide_x.htm

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TV Q&A
TV Q&A with Rob Owen
By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's TV Critic Nov. 24, 2006

Question: Just my final comment on "Studio 60." I tried through two more episodes to like this show. I fell asleep both times. I miss "West Wing," and this show ain't no "West Wing," but somehow NBC renews it for next year? -- Rob, Sarver

Rob Owen: NBC has not renewed "Studio 60" for 2007-2008. The network has only ordered the balance of episodes on the 2006-2007 season, extending its run into 2007. Unless ratings perk up when it moves to a new time slot (not yet announced), I don't expect it will live to see a second season.

Question: "Brothers and Sisters" is fast becoming one of my favorites -- tape-worthy, as Elaine in "Seinfeld" would say. I enjoy all of the characters, and the latest episode was hilarious, I thought. Sally Field does a bang-up job of holding the whole thing together. Now for the question: As the Dearly Departed Dad ("Dexter" influence here) toppled into the pool I thought I heard him say, "Saul, what have you done?" Which leads me to believe that Saul and not Dad was the culprit. Did you hear this, too, or are my ears joining the rest of me in going south? -- Betty, Cranberry

Rob Owen: I did not, but I checked with the show's ABC publicist to be sure, since she has a copy of the script. "William Walker did not say this in the pool," she reports. "Sarah [played by Rachel Griffiths] said, 'What have you done?' when she was able to tap into her father's accounts."

Question: I've looked all over online, and I can't find the soundtrack music to "Heroes." I'm specifically looking for the music in Sanskrit. Can you tell me what this music is and how to find it? -- Justin, Squirrel Hill

Rob Owen: The music isn't currently available on NBC.com. A soundtrack is under discussion, but the network has nothing to announce on that yet. The show's credits say the music is by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, "with the voice of Shenkar." I tried to find information online about a single-named recording artist named Shenkar but had no luck.

Question: I was watching a recent episode of "House" and saw Pruitt Taylor Vince as a 600-pound man. Was that a fat suit he had on? He looked so realistic. I remember him from "Murder One." Also, is there any chance that the late great "Nothing Sacred" will be released on DVD? -- David, Johnstown

Rob Owen: The actor, who is a large guy without any special effects, did have prosthetics on in the "House" episode. Nothing listed for "Nothing Sacred" at www.tvshowsondvd.com, so that means no plans for a release yet.

Question: What happened to the good old-fashioned family half-hour sitcoms? Shows like "The Cosby Show," "Full House," "Home Improvement," "Family Ties," "The Wonder Years," etc. The stuff on TV now is horrible. I'm not into the one-hour drama shows at all. I like comedies -- you know, the ones that make you laugh with your family. It's all going away, sadly enough. I try to find the reruns of all of these classic shows on other channels because the "reality" stuff on TV is getting old. Bring back the fun! -- Nick, Homer City

Rob Owen: What happened is that time marches on. Right now TV is in a cycle where family sitcoms are not in fashion. Maybe they'll come back, maybe not. That said, "Everybody Hates Chris" (8 p.m. Monday, The CW) keeps the family sitcom alive and kicking.

Question: I know you mentioned in your column that Richard Karn was being replaced on "Family Feud" by John O'Hurley, but I'm curious as to why. I loved Richard as host. I loved his laid-back style and his off-the-cuff remarks. I've tried the new host, and I hate the show. He tries so hard to be funny, and he's not! I get so tired of him making the same goofy face when the buzzer is sounded in the final round! Did Richard leave by his own choice? What's he doing now? Any chance of bringing him back? -- Dorothy, Donora

Rob Owen: It's interesting how personally some viewers take it when changes are made to their favorite programs. The reality is, these are business decisions that have nothing to do with viewers' feelings. The only goal is to generate higher ratings and, in that, make more money. For that reason, when a distributor changes the host of a syndicated game show, they don't usually give their reasons for making the change. That said, reading between the lines of an April story in Variety about the host change, it appears they brought in O'Hurley, best known for playing J. Peterman on "Seinfeld," to try to boost the ratings of "Feud."

Question: This being sweeps month: How do they gather the ratings data in this day and age? They don't still use those viewer "Diaries" I remember from years ago, do they? With technology today (i.e., TiVo, etc.), is it taken into account that viewers tape shows while watching something else? -- Brad, Palm Springs, Calif.

Rob Owen: There has always been a place in the Nielsen diaries to record programs you tape, and now Nielsen is also getting into measuring programs timed-delayed on a DVR or TiVo. Diaries are still used on a local level during sweeps, but in Pittsburgh, meters give stations a report on how many people are watching their programs 365 days a year. The diaries add in demographic information. At some point in the future, Pittsburgh will get meters that measure demos, too.

Question: Is Kristine Sorensen of KDKA pregnant? -- Elaine, Mt. Lebanon

Rob Owen: Good eye, Elaine (I never notice these things). According to KDKA-TV news director John Verrilli, Sorensen is pregnant with her second child. She's due March 31st.

Question: Do you know if any local stations are planning to switch to HD for local news? -- Anthony, Brookline

Rob Owen: That seems like a simple question, but none of the news directors in town wanted to answer it directly. WPXI's Corrie Harding said the date to switch to HD in local news "is a bit of a moving target" with no concrete time table set. WTAE's Bob Longo called the answer to your question "information of a competitive nature, and we're not willing to divulge our plans." KDKA news director John Verrilli did not respond to your question.

Question: Would you please explain to me why it is I am liable to find the Steelers playing almost anywhere but the Cartoon Network? They're sometimes on Channel 2, Channel 4, Channel 11, and, like this coming Sunday, Channel 53. -- Russ, McCandless

Rob Owen: It's not really all that mysterious: CBS and Fox have rights to the NFL Sunday afternoon games (that covers Channels 2 and 53) and NBC has the rights to Sunday night NFL games (Channel 11). Until this fall, ABC aired "Monday Night Football," which has since shifted to ESPN, but Channel 4 can still get local rights to that broadcast, just as they did when ESPN carried Sunday night games. Of course, you never know what the future holds. Given how the Steelers have performed this season, the team might be more suited for a slot on Cartoon Network.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06328/740241-238.stm

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(International) TV Notebook
Numbers don’t lie — CBC barely alive in the ratings department
By Bill Brioux Toronto Sun November 24, 2006

Despite all the carping, criticism and finger-pointing, CBC brass keeps saying its shows are doing just fine, thanks.

Well then, let’s look at the most recent national numbers:

October 1970 (Thursday, Nov. 16): 56,000 viewers.

Rumours (Monday of this week): 94,000.

The Hour (Monday of this week): 82,000.

Intelligence (Tuesday of this week): 247,000.

Dragon’s Den finale (Wednesday of this week): 381,000.

See, still horribly low.

That hasn’t stopped the Corpse from ordering a second edition of its entrepreneurial reality show Dragon’s Den based on a series high of 547,000 viewers three weeks ago. That’s when they called it “CBC’s fastest-growing series.”

There was no release a week later when it was CBC’s fastest-falling series.

HEROES SOARS:

How do those ratings compare to shows on other networks, you ask? Here’s why Intelligence gets stomped on Tuesdays. Global owns the night, with House drawing 2.3 million viewers this past Tuesday. That Rumour wipeout on Mondays? Hey, you take on Global’s Prison Break (1.7 million) and Canada’s top rookie series, Heroes (1.5 million).

HEROES’ NEW HIRO:

George Takei, Star Trek’s Capt. Sulu, will play Hiro Nakamura’s father on Heroes. Look for him to beam aboard in January.

GUIDE, TV (Canadian):

Passed away in its sleep this week at 53. Leaves about a dozen subscribers; back in January 1977, when this U.S. publication became Canadian owned, the circulation stood at 1,046,579 — by far the biggest-selling weekly in Canada.

At its peak, the U.S. TV Guide was the biggest-selling magazine in the world, racking up weekly sales close to 25 million copies. Founder Walter Annenberg sold TV Guide to O.J.-yanker Rupert Murdoch in 1988 for more than $3 billion.

I worked there for about a dozen years in the ’80s and ’90s. I still remember getting quick callbacks from people such as Tom Selleck, Michael J. Fox and Stephen Bochco. That little red logo had clout.

What happened? As TV exploded, TV Guide shrank. Even the once mighty U.S. edition has been hammered down to 3 million copies a week.

Anyone who has struggled through its sorry listings lately could see it coming. Faced with covering 500 channels in four time zones and dozens of cable and satellite services, the listings — always TV Guide’s bread and butter — just couldn’t keep up, Heck, the way networks are yanking and re-scheduling shows these days, even on-screen listings are often inaccurate.

So like antennas, test patterns and the CBC, TV Guide is a thing of the past. Hold onto those classic copies, they’re only going to go up on eBay.

SLAMMER TIME:

Already bugged that Prison Break is taking a break after Monday’s fall finale? Good news: The Fox/Global drama is returning earlier than first reported (or even than it did last season, when it returned in March). Fox is bringing Wentworth Miller and the gang back Jan. 29 (a recap episode airs Jan. 22). New episodes will run through April.

MORE WEB WINDOWS:

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and cancelled CBS drama Smith are joining The O.C. as the first U.S. dramas available on CTV’s broadband website. You can find The O.C. and Studio 60 episodes now at CTV.ca (click on the Broadband Network). Those four “lost” Smith episodes should show up there soon. Canadians are “geo-blocked” from accessing most U.S. network websites for broadband streaming.

MORE MARS:

Veronica Mars, one of those cool little dramas you’re probably missing (it airs Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. on SUN TV), has been given a full season renewal at originating U.S. network The CW. The fledgling U.S. broadcaster has also ordered a full season of One Tree Hill.

30 ROCK ON:

Good news for Tina Fey — NBC has ordered three more 30 Rock scripts. Still, they haven’t given the green light to produce any episodes past the original 13-episode order. It’s almost as if they’ve seen the series. Last week’s super-sized episode drew only 5.2 million viewers.

CITY GOES ELECTRIC:

Remember Electric Circus? The retro dance show returns for a special one time only holiday edition, airing Dec. 30 at 9 p.m. on MuchMusic. If you’re 18-26 and wanna make the scene, glitter up and get your booty down to the CHUM/City building at 299 Queen St. West tomorrow between 1 and 4 p.m. for an open audition for dancers. Check out casting@muchmusic.com for more information.

http://torontosun.com/Entertainment/Columnists/Brioux_Bill/2006/11/24/2474069.html

[dad1153]

Fans of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip should read this story about what Jamie Tarses (the ABC programming chief that inspired the Jordan McDeere character in Aaron Sorkin's latest) is up to since her departure from ABC a few years back. We've also included early reviews of the project Tarses is working on with Betty Thomas (mentioned in the Times article below) and its companion sitcom on TBS in this same posting. Also click above and on the previous pages (#609 & 610) for a slew of articles added in the past 24 or so hours.

Who loves you baby? :)

TV Notebook
Back in the game
Former ABC exec Jamie Tarses tests the waters again with "My Boys."
By Lynn Smith The Los Angeles Times November 24, 2006

Jamie Tarses and Betsy Thomas, uncharacteristically made up for a photographer and relieved that the session had finished, sat in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel and philosophized about a topic they know well: television comedy.

"Everybody begins at that point of 'I want to do something that is of very good quality, I want people to enjoy it, learn from it, be inspired from it,' " said Tarses, the former head of ABC Entertainment, in a rare interview. A show like "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," featuring a character partly based on Tarses herself, demonstrates how it's not always possible to take the high road due to commercial demands, she said. "But always aspiring to do that is certainly admirable and what everyone would like to be able to do every day of their lives."

It's been especially tough for sitcoms lately, but the two women had reason to celebrate. "My Boys," a show written by Thomas four years ago and co-executive produced by Tarses, will launch Tuesday on TBS. Along with "Ten Items or Less," the show represents the cable network's first venture into original programming planned to complement its syndicated comedy block — "Sex and the City," "Friends," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Seinfeld."

Tarses and Thomas have known each other since the days when networks still loved sitcoms and women executives and comedy writers were rare in Hollywood. Eight years ago, Thomas sold her first pilot script, a comedy based on her own life in Hollywood ("Then Came You") to ABC.

Then, after Tarses resigned under difficult circumstances from her high-profile job, the two often met informally to talk over Thomas' latest projects. One, also loosely based on Thomas' own experiences, followed a young female sportswriter and her weekly poker games with her male friends. ABC and NBC passed but Tarses liked it and remembered it.

Last November, just after she signed on as a partner with Pariah Productions, Tarses asked Thomas what had happened to that script. When she heard it was collecting dust, Tarses knew it would be perfect for TBS.

Michael Wright, senior vice president of original programming for TBS and sister network TNT, said "My Boys" was just what the channel had been seeking: a romantic "buddy" comedy, with a smart, contemporary tone that avoided silliness or sentimentality. The lead character of P.J., a sweet tomboy on a steep learning curve about life, love and occasionally career, was perfect. "She's very attractive, the girl that guys want to go out with and women want to hang out with," he said.

He said P.J. (played by Jordana Spiro) is a well-written version of Thomas herself. "The characters are all plucked from her world," Wright said. "She's writing from what she knows."

Thomas agreed that she tends to write about women like herself — "not particularly girly, not particularly [aggressive], just professional, sensitive, intelligent women who can both drink a guy under the table, and yet are sensitive and vulnerable and a little crazy."

In the '90s, Tarses made news as the first female entertainment chief at any of the big three networks. She became the entertainment president at ABC after a successful run at NBC as a development executive, during which she was responsible for "Friends." Since leaving ABC, Tarses has shied away from the press.

Though many women now populate writing rooms and executive suites in Hollywood, it wasn't the case when Tarses and Thomas first met. "Now the composition of those rooms has changed dramatically," Tarses said, ticking off women-led comedy staffs at CBS and ABC.

As a consultant on "Studio 60," Tarses helps shape the character of Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet), the president of the fictional National Broadcasting System who oversees a troubled comedy show and is the only female executive in sight. The show is accurate in the limited view it describes, she said.

In a production studio, she said, "certain areas going to be mainly men and only one woman. You also haven't seen her other staff. In terms of who she's working with, only her dynamic with two men, they're accurate with that. I don't think you've been exposed to enough of the world in which she's working to know if they're getting it right or not."

Thomas said she always had fun in the male-dominated writing rooms. "The truth is, [the culture of the writing rooms] has less to do with gender and more to do with the pace and the stress and the frenetic nature of television production. Fourteen-hour days. Working crazy hours. You're under a lot of stress. You have to toughen up. You have to develop a thick skin or a great sense of humor. You've got to let a lot run off your back.

"There's a lot of rejection in this business. You have to get used to that. Just like in sports."

"My Boys" is replete with baseball metaphors, delivered through P.J.'s voice-over narration, and Thomas says she has plenty more where they came from. In Hollywood, she said, "there are people who are respectful of others in general. And know how to play rough without getting someone hurt. There are people who don't know how to roughhouse whether they're a comedy writer or stockbroker.

"I've been really lucky. I've always been treated with complete respect."

One reason Thomas wrote "My Boys" four years ago, she said, is that she could not identify with women on television, portrayed mostly through gender stereotypes.

"We have a lot of female friends who work in the biz one way or another," Thomas said of herself and Tarses. "We talk about work and politics, things that are typical male. We go to dinner, and we can talk about work and then shift right over to earring talk just like that," she snapped her fingers.

"There are TV shows where women do nothing but talk about sex and shoes," Thomas said. She quickly added that "Sex and the City" is a terrific show "and they're on TBS, so we love them."

The premise of "My Boys," the weekly poker game, is a seven-year tradition in Thomas' home, which she shares with her husband, actor-writer Adrian Wenner. One of the regulars is actor Michael Bunin ("Scrubs") who was cast in "My Boys" as Kenny, a sports memorabilia store owner also coping with dating dilemmas.

Tarses has joined the group a few times. She lives a few miles away in the Hollywood Hills with musician Paddy Aubrey and their 14-month-old child, Wyatt.

Though both are beyond their 20s now, the women said they don't write or produce for a target audience.

"You write what you know," Tarses said. "If they want it, they feel it will appeal to the target audience," which at TBS is the usual 18-to-49 demographic.

TBS shaped "My Boys" by insisting on a single-camera format without a live audience, which Wright said allowed more focus on the characters and their relationships. He also said he relied on the women's extensive experience in television comedy.

Tarses said television comedy is in a "transitional phase," noting that lately the breakout shows have been dramas.

She and Thomas partly blamed the press for a "backlash" against comedy. "They've been reviewing the form more than the content," Tarses said. "The multi-camera comedies that have come on in the last couple of years have perhaps been unfairly evaluated based on the fact that they are of a certain form."

"The word 'sitcom' has become a dirty word," Thomas said. "It's even to the point where somebody says about 'My Boys,' 'So this is a sitcom,' I bristle. But then I think, well actually, technically it is."

Undoubtedly, the popularity of reality shows and mockumentaries has also contributed to the dearth of traditional comedies.

"There is an adrenaline rush people get from watching reality television because it's really happening and people are made to look uncomfortable and you want to see conflict," Tarses said. "That's what in a lot of reality shows drives them and brings people back to watch more."

What's more, she said, "there's a correlation to reality television in this evolution with the idea that anybody can be on television."

Thomas called the situation "depressing. You used to win money on game shows by answering trivia questions. Now you point to a suitcase. You used to have to guess whether this window cleaner is more or less than $1.59, and show some amount of knowledge."

Still, Tarses said, they are both "genuine fans of the medium. TiVo has ruined my life basically. But I love television, I really do, and there's some great stuff on television." Some promising midseason comedies she said she's looking forward to include ABC's "Knights of Prosperity" and "In Case of Emergency."

"When will the next big hit be a comedy?" Tarses asked. "That hasn't been true in a long time. Will it ever be true again? That's what people are trying to figure out."

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-myboys24nov24,0,7662783.story?coll=cl-tv-features
____________________________________________________________ _____
Critic's Notebook
My Boys
Bottom Line: A baseball-themed sitcom with only limited punch
By Barry Garron The Hollywood Reporter November 27, 2006

10:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 28 - TBS

TBS steps up to the plate with a sitcom about a young, perky baseball writer who covers the Chicago Cubs for the Sun-Times and her pals, mostly guys who also cover sports. Let's call it a base hit, or maybe it can be stretched to a double, but it's definitely not going out of the park.

I'll drop the baseball metaphors here. Mostly, I wanted to demonstrate how they can be used, with little effort, to describe just about anything in life, which is just what creator-writer Betsy Thomas does. Voice-overs at the beginning and end of each episode are brimming with baseball comparisons, even though the stories don't have much to do with sports or journalism except in the most general way.

Mostly, this is a vehicle for up-and-comer Jordana Spiro, who stars as P.J., arguably the youngest and most attractive writer to cover the major leagues for a major newspaper. No matter. If it's realistic sportswriter stuff you're looking for, dial over to ESPN.

TBS wanted a companion to "Sex and the City," which has been running on Tuesday nights. While "My Boys" also consists mainly of discussions about relationships and dates, it more closely resembles "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on FX. Both have ensembles dominated by dating-challenged guys who spend a lot of their time at the favorite watering hole while they joke about one another.

Thomas earns high marks for coming up with appealing characters who are as comfortable as old cardigans. Her dialogue is full of breezy, witty patter, and the time flies. Helming the first couple of episodes is veteran sitcom director Barnet Kellman, who knows how to get the most out of every line. What is missing, at least in the five episodes sent for review, are stories with surprise twists, unexpected endings or eventful occurrences. Additionally, there are no big jokes here, nothing that sticks with you after final credits roll.

P.J.'s gang consists of fellow scribes Kenny (Michael Bunin), who can't get beyond coffee with a prospective date, and Mike (Jamie Kaler), the commitment-phobic ladies' man. There also is Brendan (Reid Scott), P.J.'s best friend from college, who is stuck in an on-again, off-again relationship, and Andy (Jim Gaffigan), P.J.'s henpecked older brother.

P.J. has a girlfriend, too. Kellee Stewart plays Stephanie, her friend from journalism school who is always ready with tips on how to use feminine wiles, a sort of female equivalent of wingman Barney on "How I Met Your Mother." In the opener, P.J. meets Bobby (Kyle Howard), her counterpart on the Chicago Tribune, a fairly normal guy who will supply the love interest, at least for the time being.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/television/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=8443
____________________________________________________________ _____
Critic's Notebook
10 Items or Less
Bottom Line: Grocery store humor that should have you laughing in the aisles
By Barry Garron The Hollywood Reporter November 27, 2006

11-11:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 27 - TBS

Maybe TBS has the right idea. Maybe the best place for improv comedy -- even when it's well done like it is in "10 Items or Less" -- is late at night when viewers are more open to shows that deviate from the setup-joke-setup-joke rhythm of traditional sitcoms.

Not that improv comedy can't succeed in primetime. It's just going to take a while. It took viewers a year or so to get in sync with the "The Office" which, while scripted, has a unique comic pace, modeled after a documentary. Viewer preferences and habits change slowly and late-night can be a good incubator for the offbeat. Baby steps.

Consider "10 Items" part of the process. Exec producers and writers Robert Hickey, Nancy Hower and John Lehr prepare detailed outlines for each episode, which the cast (except for Lehr, who also stars in the show) never sees. Instead, the actors are given situations and told to wing it, over and over, doing enough takes to knit together a good show.
In "10 Items," ne'er-do-well Leslie Pool (Lehr) has returned to Ohio and the family grocery store, Greens & Grains, which he inherited when his much-admired father died. Employees at the struggling independent store are produce boss Yolanda (Roberta Valderrama), butcher Todd (Chris Payne Gilbert), stock boy Carl (Robert Clendenin), customer service rep Ingrid (Kirsten Gronfield), bagger Buck (Greg Davis Jr.) and cashier Richard (Christopher Liam Moore). Jennifer Elise Cox, a regular on Lifetime's improv comedy, "Lovespring International," plays Amy, the manager of the large grocery store across the street whose corporate bosses want to turn Greens & Grains into a parking lot.

The premiere mainly introduces the characters and the premise. Lehr gets most of the face time, establishing his character as more clueless but also more sensitive than "The Office" boss Michael Scott. At the same time, Valderrama quickly creates an appealingly complex character with attitude. You'll have to wait until the second episode, in which Leslie turns a stain on the wall into a religious attraction, to get a good feel for the other cast members, but it's worth the wait.

There are no deep belly laughs here but you can count on a steady stream of chuckles, more from the characters than the situations. The series is filmed in a real grocery store with real customers, though they don't contribute much to the humor in the first couple of outings.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/television/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=8445

[fredfa]

Thurday’s updated fast national over night prime-time ratings have been posted just under the HD Football listings near the top of Ratings News the first post in this thread.

[dad1153]

Wow, a new 'Ugly Betty' came in third behind 'Survivor' and the first hour of a horrible, horrible 'Deal Or No Deal' two-hour special (zero tension since all the contestants eliminated the big money early and were playing for chump change). Can 'Betty' be on its way to becoming the next 'Commander In Chief'? At the very least the media's pronouncement that 'Ugly Betty' and 'Heroes' are the only breakout hits of the season should be modified. While 'Heroes'' ratings continue to hold steady or rise 'Betty's' lose viewers with every new episode (though not as badly as 'Commander in Chief').

[fredfa]

The "Ugly Betty" numbers were surely down. But so was everything else.

Heavily promoted "Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI" (with Roger Daltrey) were also far off their season averages.

Nonetheless, I agree with Marc Berman that "UB" is facing a major problem: the story line just becomes less than compelling. (How long can she face down all those adversaries week after week?)

[fredfa]

TV Notebook
Filling in the once-bawdy blank
“Match Game” players recall its mix of urbanity and naughtiness — and the lunchtime vodka
By Richard Rushfield Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 25, 2006

Decades before "The Osbournes" gave the American public a peek into the family life of a rock legend, before "Chaotic" detailed pop princess Britney Spears' unraveling, before "Being Bobby Brown" captured celebrity dysfunction in its fullest flower, one little daytime quiz show brought the unguarded moments of television's biggest stars into American homes every afternoon. And it captured the lifestyle of swinging 1970s California more vividly than any Joan Didion novel or Robert Altman film.

After a brief stint in a staid, buttoned-up, black-and-white incarnation in the '60s, "Match Game" relaunched in 1973 and immediately became the grooviest celeb hangout on the airwaves. Ostensibly a straightforward word game, the format served as a sometimes thin-seeming excuse for the era's TV icons to joke around in a split-level celebrity panel led by definitional 1970s "personalities" Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers and Richard Dawson.

The rules were simple. Host Gene Rayburn read a phrase in which one word was left out and read as a "blank." (For instance: "The bank guard said to Bertha the stripper, 'Lady, I don't care how valuable you think they are. You can't keep your 'blanks' in our safety deposit vault.' "). Contestants then guessed what word should fill in the blank followed by the rotating panel of six celebrities. For each celebrity whose answer they "matched," the contestant received a point.

Minutes into the show, however, the rules were often thrown out the window as the party commenced on a glittering, shag-carpeted set that seemed the embodiment of the era's foppish excess — like a Las Vegas showroom, a suburban conversation pit and the hospitality lounge of a Concorde jet had been melded together.

Twenty-four years after its cancellation in 1982, "Match Game" continues to inspire a cult following, with a host of tribute sites on the Internet and an enduring following on the Game Show Network, which runs episodes daily, and Sunday will air "The Real Match Game Story: Behind the Blank," an hourlong special on the show's history. According to Rich Cronin, GSN's president and chief executive, " 'Match Game' debuted on GSN when the network launched in 1994 and has consistently been one of our top-rated classics."

"God it was fun," gushed regular Marcia Wallace on Wednesday. "We knew at the time that it was a great gig."

Brought together for a two-hour lunch conversation at Santa Monica's Casa del Mar hotel, Wallace's and fellow regular Jimmie Walker's affection for the show brimmed over.

"It was a show of euphemisms and it was wildly hilarious," remembered Wallace, who these days is heard as the voice of Bart's teacher on "The Simpsons" and has just written her memoir, "Don't Look Back, We're Not Going That Way."

The show's comedy flourished with the thrill of first acknowledgment of forbidden fruit but retained an air of refinement and innocence that TV would quickly lose once the floodgates to the bacchanal were hurled open. "Naughty is not in now," Walker reflected, adding that nowadays the innuendo goes further.

Life on the "Match Game" set, Wallace and Walker report, was indeed borderline out of control. Wallace recalled meeting regular Somers her first day on the show. "Brett said, 'Oh, hello darling, you must forgive me, I'm not myself. I just separated from my husband,' and I said, 'I wouldn't notice. I just got out of the loony bin.' From then on we were best friends."

On-air, the show managed to capture, in the most static of TV formats, the feeling of a loose and friendly, very grown-up cocktail party, complete with drinks and cigarettes. Five shows would be filmed in one day and, Walker said, "After the second show we went to lunch, and there was this big flask and there would be people who would imbibe."

"It was a vodka group," concurred Wallace, who said few were actually drunk, merely loosened up. It is noted in GSN's documentary that when watching a week's worth of shows, the episodes filmed later in the day have a decidedly more buoyant tone.

The pair also credit much of the game's success to host Rayburn, notable for his Cheshire cat grin, three-piece suits with a pocket square, conspicuous flirtations with the panelist in the "dumb blond seat" and his legendary 12-inch wand microphone.

"Gene was our handler," Walker said. "He knew the personalities on the show and he put you in a position where you would have a chance to do whatever you wanted to do. He would never leave you hanging."

But what truly gave the show its tone of mischievous adult wit was its reliance on a class of celebrity that is all but extinct today: "the TV personality," as personified by two of the permanent panelists around whose chemistry the show revolved: Somers and Nelson Reilly (neither of whom was available for lunch). Somers, the show's den mother in huge tinted glasses and with a perpetual cigarette in hand, kept the set alive with a constant flow of chatter. "I don't think Brett ever stopped talking," said Walker. "I loved her stories about the stuff she did in theater. She was the best."

Nelson Reilly, reclining in Foster Grant glasses, pipe in mouth, brightly colored scarf around his neck, supplied the show's driest but most outrageous wit.

To viewers, it might have seemed like the most fun place for grown-ups to be on Earth. And perhaps it was.

"What we had," remembered Walker, "was a chemistry where nobody felt beyond anything. What we thought was, this was fun! And you're with friends! And you're rooting for everybody!"

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-match25nov25,0,6209728,print.story?coll=cl-tvent

[dad1153]

Thanks for the 'Match Game' article Fred, although that picture of Wallace and Walker on the L.A. Times website gave me the creeps. Time's not been kind to these folks. :eek:

A reminder that, after the 'Match Game' special airs on GSN in primetime this Sunday, a rare airing of one of the few surviving B&W kinescopes of the original 60's 'Match Game' will also air on GSN at 3:30AM ET/PT (Sunday night/Monday morning). Set your VCR's... or TiVO's... or DVR's... whatever! :rolleyes:

[cocoon]

Does anyone have ratings for the last 2 episodes of Nip/Tuck? For me it went somewhere bizarre with jumping X many years in the future I just lost total interest in that episode and deleted it. I hope it was just one episode and I will pretend it never happened just like season 2 of desperate housewives.

Also is there a thread for Nip/Tuck because I couldn't find it I know its not this area because its not HD obviously.

[Inundated]

A reminder that, after the 'Match Game' special airs on GSN in primetime this Sunday, a rare airing of one of the few surviving B&W kinescopes of the original 60's 'Match Game' will also air on GSN at 3:30AM ET/PT (Sunday night/Monday morning). Set your VCR's... or TiVO's... or DVR's... whatever! :rolleyes:

I'm regularly TiVoing the regular 70's run of the show, if only to catch three appearances by a friend on "MG '78".

Unfortunately, at the rate they're going, I'll be 78 years old before GSN airs her shows.

:D

[dad1153]

TV Notebook
Real game begins on 'Survivor'
Associated Press November 24, 2006

NEW YORK - Now the chess game begins.

The exquisitely organized competition that has made "Survivor" so popular is starting to kick in with the number of players dropping, and it forced writer Jonathan into an agonizing decision on Thursday's episode.

The former Aitu and Raro tribes merged into a single tribe with nine members called Aitutong. At the merge, there were five Raro members still in the game, and four from Aitu, and each tribe's members have been fiercely loyal to one another.

Raro member Jonathan, who has switched loyalties more than once, was the key in deciding which former tribe would dominate the next few weeks, with the numbers to pick off the others.

Aitu members were courting him to knock off a Raro member. Since Jonathan had pulled a mutiny and left Aitu for Raro a few weeks ago, he figured he was in a lose-lose situation. No matter which way he went, pretty much everyone else in the game would figure he had betrayed them.

Jonathan was already starting to get annoyed with some lazy Raro members who wouldn't do chores while he was out fishing.

"I'm not going to lose because you kids can't get out of bed," he said in an aside.

The choices were between Raro's Nate and Aitu's Yul. Nate was considered untrustworthy. Yul was a target because other players considered the management consultant too smart.

"You don't want that clock tickin' there, homey," Nate said of his rival.

Yul, however, had a hidden immunity idol that he could use to save himself after a vote. It made the tribal council — tied 4-4 between Nate and Yul before the final vote was revealed — moot. However, that last vote would tell everyone where Jonathan's loyalty was.

He chose to get rid of Nate.

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/tv/articles/1124survivorgame-CR.html

[dad1153]

TV Sports
Digesting some leftover tidbits on Theoharis, ABC, Musburger
Ray Frager's Baltimore Sun 'Medium Well' Column Nov. 24, 2006

Yesterday, you carved up your turkey. Today, it's a sliced-up column.

• Amber Theoharis will be leaving Channel 45 at the end of the year. Theoharis, who joined WBFF in September 2004 as No. 2 sports anchor/reporter behind Bruce Cunningham, doesn't have a new full-time gig lined up yet, she said.

She has appeared on CBS Radio's stations here, which include all-sports WJFK (1300 AM), and has been hosting a couple of shows on Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. Perhaps she could surface in a bigger role with MASN, which will be adding baseball programming for its Orioles and Washington Nationals coverage next year.

Theoharis said WBFF asked her to continue -- "I love Fox. I love the people there," she said -- but she wanted "to explore other options." Theoharis, a native Marylander, didn't rule out the possibility of going to another market.

• Man, those players in Saturday's Michigan-Ohio State game were fast. Several times, they would run off screen before ABC's cameras could catch them.

• Speaking of that game, it might be anathema to say anything nice about Brent Musburger, but few play-by-play men would bring strong -- and spot-on -- commentary as he did when Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr was protesting a Michigan touchdown called back on replay.

"What Lloyd should do is forget the controversy and call the play," Musburger said. "He's wasting time."

• On the other hand, Musburger offered this at the end of a terrific game: "Only in America, only today, until the stars align again." Which means what, exactly?

• Good move by CBS to protect the Indianapolis Colts-Dallas Cowboys from being moved to NBC Sunday. It drew a 14.7 national rating, the highest of the season. The game got a 17.6 in Baltimore.

• Speaking of ratings, Baltimore has a way to go to match the television devotion of the Steelers fans in Pittsburgh. On Sunday, the Steelers-Cleveland Browns game rated a 43.7 in Pittsburgh, compared with the Ravens-Atlanta Falcons' 25.6 in Baltimore. Even more impressive, the Steelers had a 73 share, meaning that nearly three-quarters of the TVs in use at the time were tuned to the football game. The Ravens had a 49 share here. (Yes, the Steelers were on the road, while the Ravens were home, meaning none of the fans at M&T Bank Stadium could be counted as TV viewers.)

• Is it the absence of Jillian Barberie? CBS' NFL Today has out-rated Fox NFL Sunday three times this season. Going into 2006, CBS' pre-game show had beaten Fox once since 1998.

• Flexible scheduling can only go so far. When NBC picked the Colts-Philadelphia Eagles game for Sunday night, the network pictured a Peyton Manning-Donovan McNabb matchup. But McNabb suffered a knee injury last weekend, so it's Manning vs. Jeff Garcia. Not exactly ratings gold.

• Phil Mushnick of the New York Post on the way "perspective" is an ephemeral part of football telecasts: "Every time a player gets laid out, motionless, we're told in voices suddenly switched to 'funeral home' that 'this puts everything into perspective.' Oh, and it does. For about two, three plays. By halftime, ESPN's back with its 'He Got Jacked Up!' segment."

• Maybe no one takes seriously anything Michael Irvin says. Or maybe hardly anyone listens to Dan Patrick's ESPN Radio show. In any case, this story has gotten little mention outside of a brief newspaper item and a few Web sites.

On Monday, while discussing Dallas quarterback Tony Romo's athleticism, Irvin, who is black, offered the explanation that Romo, who is white, might have had some African-American ancestry.

According to ProFoot- ballTalk.com, here is some of what Irvin said, though he was laughing through it: "He doesn't look like he's that type of an athlete. But he is. He is, man. I don't know ... some brother down in that line somewhere ... if great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandma pulled one of them studs up out of the barn [and said], 'Come on in here for a second.'"

Michael Irvin, heir to Jimmy the Greek.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-sp.frager24nov24,0,768310.column?coll=bal-artslife-tv

[dad1153]

TV Notebook
WGN fills up on Canadian 'Corner Gas'
By Etan Vlessin The Hollywood Reporter November 25, 2006

TORONTO -- Canadian broadcaster CTV Inc. on Friday cracked the U.S. market by selling "Corner Gas," Canada's top homegrown sitcom, to Superstation WGN.

The two-year deal, brokered by Arthur Hasson's Multi-Platform Distribution Company, will see Tribune Broadcasting's Superstation WGN air four seasons of "Corner Gas," totalling 88 episodes, to around 70 million homes via cable or satellite beginning in 2007.

"This sitcom is very well written and the ensemble cast is very funny," Bill Shaw vp and president of Superstation WGN, said in a statement, adding "Corner Gas" would fit well with his channel's other program offerings.

The deal marks a coup for CTV, which fully financed the first two seasons of the ensemble comedy set in the fictional prairie town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, with no government subsidies. CTV then bank-rolled the third and fourth seasons of "Corner Gas" with The Comedy Network.

Terms of the deal with Superstation WGN were not disclosed, but CTV will split the proceeds of the U.S. distribution deal with the series' producers, Prairie Pants Productions.

"Corner Gas" is also available in 26 international markets, including Australia, Finland, Morocco and throughout the Middle East, as part of deals brokered on behalf of CTV by UK-based Minotaur International Ltd.

"Corner Gas" has consistently been the top-rated comedy on Canadian TV, beating out American competition and pulling in an average of around 1.5 million viewers weekly.

The series was created by Canadian comic Brent Butt, David Storey and Virginia Thompson. The ensemble cast includes Butt, veteran Canadian actors Eric Peterson Janet Wright, Cavan Cunningham, Gabrielle Miller and Fred Ewanuick.

Canadian-originated dramas have long aired in the U.S. market on cable channels. But homegrown sitcoms breaking through south of the border has been a rarity, despite the prominence of Canadian stand-up and sketch comedy talent working in New York City and Los Angeles.

"Trailer Park Boys," a comedy about low life in a Halifax trailer park, earlier became a cult classic on BBC America after bowing on Showcase in Canada.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3ic91452dc0e71f744f41c008c009ffccc

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TV Notebook
'Rock' and a soft place
On '30 Rock,' macho Alec Baldwin is solid as an overbearing network exec. Now he's ready to show his gentler side
By Matea Gold The Los Angeles Times November 26, 2006

These days, if a part calls for someone to play brazen, caustic or swaggering -- in short, a real man's man -- one actor seems to have a lock on the role.

At least that's how it appears from Alec Baldwin's near-ubiquitous presence lately portraying men like Jack Donaghy, the bombastic and preening network executive on the NBC sitcom "30 Rock." Baldwin calls them "man of authority" characters, "something you need to do sort of unflinchingly," he said during a lunch break on the show's set in Long Island City, as he wolfed down a plate of rice and sauteed tofu.

Suddenly, he let out a delighted yelp. "30 Rock" creator Tina Fey had stopped in the lunchroom with her 13-month-old daughter, Alice, in tow. Baldwin leaped out of his chair, gushing over the child and her colorful outfit. (It was Halloween, and Alice was decked out as a peacock, the NBC mascot.)

"How are you?" Baldwin cooed, his gravelly voice an octave higher than usual. "I love your costume! Do you like your costume? Do you?"

This is Alec Baldwin, tough guy? "He's more like a small-town theater professor in real life than a dirty cop," Fey, who plays the frazzled head writer of the show's fictional late-night comedy sketch program, said later. "He is this very literate guy who loves the arts and goes to plays and opera and stuff. He's cultured."

Lout and clear

After a stint as a leading man in the 1990s, Baldwin has most recently re-emerged as a character actor who imbues the most hard-edged, loutish parts with subtlety and humor. His ability to avoid caricature while playing the likes of casino boss Shelly Kaplow in 2003's "The Cooler," a role for which he garnered an Oscar nomination, has made him more in demand than ever.

"Some people don't want to step up and fill that void," he said, explaining why these types of characters often come his way. "The role demands a certain amount of clarity, a certain amount of forcefulness, a certain amount of authority that other people can't do, quite frankly. And many of them who can do it, don't want to do it. And so people have asked me."

He's currently on screen as a macho, profane police official in Martin Scorsese's film "The Departed" and a remote, alcoholic father in "Running With Scissors." Up next month: Robert De Niro's "The Good Shepherd," featuring Baldwin as a CIA operative.

Lately, however, the 48-year-old actor has been itching to try his hand at a new kind of character.

"In truth, I'd rather do 'Little House on the Prairie' and play Michael Landon's role," he said without a trace of facetiousness. "I want to do something sweet." That doesn't mean he's looking to play Charles Ingalls, necessarily, but "something that stays with people."

"I want to play what I haven't played," he added, his clear, blue eyes fixed intently on his interviewer. "One thing about my career, I've done everything: TV, movies, theater. I really feel like I've done it all on one level. You become very conscious of being duplicative."

That's why Baldwin had some apprehension about signing on to "30 Rock," his first gig as a television series regular since playing Joshua Rush on "Knots Landing" in the mid-1980s.

"That is the great concern about doing a television series, that you get trapped into playing the same thing 22 episodes times however many years the thing winds up going," he said. "You can fall into these patterns where it's all pretty treadmill, you know?"

But Baldwin, who is unsparing in his criticism of the film industry ("We are now in the fully realized age of the no-risk movie"), was willing to take a gamble on a series, in part because television's more consistent schedule would allow him fly to Los Angeles every other weekend to visit his 11-year-old daughter. (He shares custody with ex-wife Kim Basinger.)

Fey actually had Baldwin in mind when she wrote the Donaghy character for "30 Rock," a show loosely based on her experiences as a head writer for "Saturday Night Live," but didn't think she had a shot at casting him.

"At the time, I was trying to think of the most masculine actor," said Fey, who had worked with Baldwin on the late-night program during his regular hosting gigs. "He's extremely manly. I thought I would use him as a writing template. I never thought we would actually get him."

Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment, said that "everybody in town was chasing Alec Baldwin. I think he was probably sent every script in town."

"It's been a blessing"

In fact, Baldwin was developing his own program for FX about a "Bill Clinton-like" mayor of New York when Lorne Michaels, executive producer of "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock," approached him about the Donaghy part.

Michaels' involvement in the show, coupled with Fey's writing, persuaded Baldwin to take a chance on it.

"It's been a blessing," the actor said. "It's a nice job, and I work with funny people."

On "30 Rock," Baldwin brought with him some definitive ideas of how to flesh out Jack Donaghy. "I didn't want them to make the character the negative value in the piece, a la Ted Baxter, the guy that's the least self-aware person in the room," he said. "I