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[dad1153]

Originally Posted by Daryl L

I learned a long time ago to never ever take any critics opinion of a tv show or movie. Atleast 50% I don't agree with them. Heck, 50% I don't agree with non-critics either.

But my experience is that when critics are divided (and even though most reviews of "Dirt" have been negative there have been a few from the likes of Kronke and Garvin that loved it) it's when its most fun to watch a show and make up your mind. I've seen movies/TV shows that got great reviews that have sucked hard (Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula movie being the perfect example) and shows/movies that got panned that I liked (the Fox sitcom Flying Blind with Tea Leoni) with everything in-between. And Ian Harts' paparazzi reporter sounds like the kind of supporting character that steals the show (like Masi Oka's Hiro in Heroes). Those quirky secondary characters are always fun to watch provided star/producer Cox doesn't feel Ian's taking the spotlight away from her and reduces the character's visibility. Ahh, producer's prerogative!

[Daryl L]

Originally Posted by dad1153

But my experience is that when critics are divided (and even though most reviews of "Dirt" have been negative there have been a few from the likes of Kronke and Garvin that loved it) it's when its most fun to watch a show and make up your mind. I've seen movies/TV shows that got great reviews that have sucked hard (Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula movie being the perfect example) and shows/movies that got panned that I liked (the Fox sitcom Flying Blind with Tea Leoni) with everything in-between. And Ian Harts' paparazzi reporter sounds like the kind of supporting character that steals the show (like Masi Oka's Hiro in Heroes). Those quirky secondary characters are always fun to watch provided star/producer Cox doesn't feel Ian's taking the spotlight away from her and reduces the character's visibility. Ahh, producer's prerogative!

Actually I wrote that sentence wrong. I said:

Atleast 50% I don't agree with them. Heck, 50% I don't agree with non-critics either.

I ment to say:

Atleast 50% of the time I don't agree with them. Heck, 50% of the time I don't agree with non-critics either.

Kinda changes my intended comment. Sorry about the confusion. Anyway I'll give "Dirt" a try for atleast 3 to 4 episodes then decide.

[keenan]

Originally Posted by fredfa

I'll be a lot more likely to watch FX when it starts broadcasting in HD.

That's how I feel about Dirt, if it was in HD I might give it a look-see, but since it's not, forget it, 3 shows a year from FX in SD is enough for me. In fact, if FX doesn't go HD soon I'll probably just Netflix the DVD sets when they come out, waaaay better PQ and 16x9 to boot.

[fredfa]

Opinion
A La Carte
Sports Tears
By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld at multichannel.com Tuesday, January 2, 2007

=If there was ever an argument to be made for a la carte pricing, it’s sports programming that makes it.

Specifically, the NFL Network.

It’s not taking the ball and going home to headquarters quietly in the night. You can be sure Steve Bornstein and compadres will be back before next football season trying to jawbone Time Warner, Cablevision and any other resistant cable operators into taking its full lineup of programming at 70 cents a month -- or more -- even if it only includes eight live games, all year.

If you’re looking at this fee from the standpoint of an average cable subscriber, here’s what the bill starts to look like now and in the near future.

ESPN, $3 a month. ESPN spinoff channels, 35 cents a month. Regional sports network (a la YES Network), $2 a month. NFL Network, 70 cents a month. In the near future, the MLB Network, $1 a month. Regional college network, 50 cents a month. Grand total: $7.55.

All other basic programming networks: Roughly the same total.

Which means it’s clearly time to turn basic cable back into a really basic tier of 70 or 75 channels of news, weather, entertainment and local channels. No sports channels. At all.

Let each sports channel charge whatever they want to charge for their live and recorded events. Let them try to be HBO, if they want. No hidden charges. No hiding their higher ticket prices. Put them out in the open.

Of course, this would take a lot of willpower to enforce on the part of cable operators. Once they buckle on ESPN and include it again on the basic tier, it’s hard to keep the door barred on other sports networks.

But the operator likely would win the popularity contest. Making every sports network an a la carte choice or bundling them all into a separate sports-only tier, as has seemed logical for a good while, would let operators be heroes, dollar-wise, with the customer.

Pricing on basic tiers could be rolled back, as much as by half. True basic for $15 or $20 a month, not $40.

No one ever said live sports was an inalienable right of the TV viewer.

And, similarly, no one ever said sports programmers ever had inalienable access to the TV viewer.

Time for cable operators to make a bottom line stand. And not keep hiding the increasingly high cost of buying tickets to sports events in the cost of basic subscription television.

Sure, some fans will cry rivers of tears for having to pay "extra" for sports. But the costs of capitalistic sports are readily available at open-air stadia: $100 seats, $7 drafts, $10 parking.

Time to start making prices just as explicit for seats at home.

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/182...400006140.html

[dad1153]

The Business of TV
Time Warner, Fox News Ink Carriage Deal
By Jon Lafayette, TV Week - January 2, 2007

News Corp. and Time Warner Cable have completed a long-term deal under which the cable operator will carry the long-planned Fox News business channel when it launches.

The long-term deal gives Time Warner Cable retransmission consent to carry all of the Fox-owned TV stations in Time Warner markets and extends its carriage agreement for Fox News Channel, a Time Warner Cable spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

Time Warner Cable has also agreed to roll out the Fox Reality Channel.

"It's a big deal with a major content provider," the Time Warner Cable spokesman said.

Time Warner Cable is the second-largest cable operator, with 23 million subscribers. The deal would put News Corp. close to the 30-million-subscriber level it has said it would need in order to launch the channel.

The channel would operate under Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, with Neil Cavuto, managing editor of business news, and former CNBC reporter Alexis Glick in charge of day-to-day operations.

Terms of the overall business deal were not disclosed, but Fox News has been receiving an average of about 70 cents per subscriber per month in recent deals. While not the $1 per sub News Corp. execs had been seeking, it is a substantial increase from its previous rate of about 25 cents per sub.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11290

[dad1153]

TV Review
Of ABC's new comedies, 'Knights' is the only likely to prosper
By Melanie McFarland, Seattle Post-Intelligencer - January 3, 2007

"The Knights of Prosperity," 9 on Wednesdays, KOMO/4

"In Case of Emergency," 9:30 on Wednesdays, KOMO/4

Almost every network's TV party hits a slump in January. The players people really want to get down with have stepped out to take a break, and everyone else is looking mighty bedraggled.

Premiering "The Knights of Prosperity" at this point, then, must be ABC's idea of stepping in fashionably late and hoping the crowd will notice its arrival. It's highly unlikely that'll happen. The network's freshman shindig cruised into its diminishing returns portion when "Day Break" flopped onto the schedule in November. "Help Me Help You" and the outright dumb "Big Day" didn't make many viewers excited about its new sitcoms.

Anyway, the scheduling powers at ABC rarely are attuned to the subtle art of managing a good time, and "Knights," a tale about below-average Joes quixotically scheming to get rich by robbing a rock star, stands as proof of that.

This is a series born with a buzz by virtue of its original name, "Let's Rob Mick Jagger." Then ABC thought better of such an inspired title, which rarely is a good thing, and nixed it.

As a small consolation, the Rolling Stones frontman's name remains attached in an executive producer credit (along with David Letterman), and he makes a very funny cameo in tonight's half hour.

Nevertheless, calling a show "The Knights of Prosperity" is easy to ignore. You can almost hear the argument that an underdog series about underdog criminals deserves a mutt of a name -- the spit shine on the whole joke, perhaps -- but, really. People who don't find it confusing will likely sail right on by in any case.

Those deigning to give it a shot will be treated to the kind of single-camera comedy that improves in its second outing -- yep, that old qualification -- but one that still leaves you with the feeling that it'll be gone before it really hits its momentum.

"Knights" is imbued with bona fide sweetness behind the slapstick foolishness spurrish it along. There's a thorny side to its shtick as well; beneath the offbeat humor that occasionally ducks into the locker room, this light comedy nods at the growing chasm between the hyper-rich and the working poor.

One can't quite call its execution subversive, but the plot's engine sure is. Crew leader Eugene Gurkin (Donal Logue), a graveyard shift janitor, comes up with the world's dumbest heist only when he has no other options to fund his dream of opening a bar.

Sitting in his grimy studio apartment, he sees an entertainment special on Jagger's Central Park West luxury pad, scenes from which become a running gag during the first half hour. Jagger has a houseboy who draws him yogurt baths while Gurkin has a Loni Anderson poster taped to the bottom of his wall bed.

So Gurkin and a few of his dead-end pals -- fellow toilet cleaner Francis "Squatch" Squacieri (Lenny Venito); cab driver Gourishankar "Gary" Subramaniam (the side-splitting Maz Jobrani), who was a top lawyer in India; security guard Rockefeller Butts (Kevin Michael Richardson); and voluptuous waitress Esperanza Villalobos (Sofia Vergara) -- decide robbing Jagger is the key to achieving their dreams. They hire a college student, Louis Plunk (Josh Grisetti) as an unpaid intern; they squat and plot in a Jewish party supply warehouse; they make up gaudy orange T-shirts announcing their name. And as one would expect from a criminal crew whose strongman has a soft spot for cookies, they are as inept as three-legged dogs in a greyhound race.

Creators Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman employ the same charm here that won people over in their NBC series "Ed," once again leaning heavily on its characters' humility and fuzziness. A sweaty desperation may be driving Gurkin and his crew, but each mook contains an innocence that's hard to reject.

"Knights" is without question the funniest comedy ABC has on its roster. But look at the network's other options, and you'll understand that's not what you'd call a hard-won honor. Indeed, "Knights" is not in absolute top form out of the gate, and small portions of the pilot were unnecessarily tinkered between last summer's version and the one you'll see tonight.

Either is more successful than ABC's new 9:30 option "In Case of Emergency," the feckless wingman accompanying "Knights" to this soiree.

Viewers probably will recognize "Emergency's" stars (David Arquette, Jonathan Silverman, Greg Germann, Lori Loughlin, Kelly Hu) more easily than the cast of "Knights." Good thing, too, because those names are all this barren 30 minutes has going for it.

Even more familiar is a premise it has in common with CBS's Monday night "The Class," another show about fledgling adults who realize their lives didn't turn out they way they'd envisioned it when they were in school, boo-hoo-hoo. Silverman's character Harry, for example, thought he'd be a great writer. Instead, recently divorced and writing cute slogans for greeting cards, he goes to a "massage" parlor only to discover the class valedictorian (Hu) is handing out happy endings to pay her rent.

Germann's Sherman is a failed diet guru, and Arquette's Jason botched a suicide attempt. Each realizes he or she doesn't have someone to call in a pinch like, say, when one finds himself the hospital or another is arrested.

"The Class," not a terrific sitcom by any stretch of the imagination, trades in this quarterlife crisis nonsense each week far better than "Emergency" does. That show's delivery isn't as hyper or forced as "Emergency" is, and it coaxes out a few chuckles here and there, whereas "Emergency" can't dredge up even a gasp in two episodes.

The quality of its punch lines, or utter lack of them, won't matter in the long run. "American Idol's" arrival in a couple of weeks means both of these comedies are going to be impaled.

"Knights" can easily be moved to a friendlier timeslot if this one doesn't work. Based on the what the first two episodes had to offer, it deserves a chance to circulate a little.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/298122_tv03.html

[dad1153]

The Business of TV
Turner: No Progress on Court-Dish
By Linda Moss, Multichannel News - January 2, 2007

Officials at Turner Broadcasting System said Tuesday that they haven’t talked with EchoStar Communications’ Dish Network about Court TV since New Year’s Eve, and they don’t expect the justice network to be reinstated to the direct-broadcast satellite service anytime soon.

“The truth is, we are not currently negotiating,” Turner president of domestic distribution Andy Heller said. “We haven’t had a conversation since 9 o’clock New Year’s Eve … The network is off and, at the moment, absent some change in somebody’s position, it’s going to stay off, I think, for a while.”

Court TV came off Dish’s America’s Top 60 tier at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1, when the programmer’s carriage deal with the satellite service expired. It was replaced by The Biography Channel.

That drop sliced roughly 11 million subscribers from Court TV’s distribution, which most recently had stood at 87.7 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

A year ago, Dish was engaged in a nasty public dispute with another programmer, Lifetime Television. Dish pulled Lifetime and its sister services off its lineup for roughly one month.

This year’s Court TV dispute centers on Dish’s desire to move the network from its most widely distributed tier, America’s Top 60, to America’s Top 120, which reaches about 3 million fewer homes, with a penetration of only about 8 million.

“They proposed that [Court TV] move and they get to write their own rate card after they moved it, which wasn’t exactly consistent with our hopes and dreams,” Heller said.

Heller claimed that he offered Dish an extension to continue carrying Court TV on America’s Top 60 for the current license fee.

“We offered them an extension with no change whatsoever, just maintain the status quo,” he added. “This is the first time someone said, ‘No, I don’t want an extension’ … I’ve been doing this a long time, but this is the first time this has ever happened. Never, all of these networks that we have, I’ve never been in a situation where a network went dark.”

In its press release, Dish said Turner “refused to offer an extension in the company’s Top 120 package for continued negotiations.”

Turner wasn’t in favor of Court TV, a top-20-rated network, being moved to America’s Top 120, with its lesser penetration, Heller said.

“That having been said, we’re not going to say, ‘No, you can’t do it, but if you do it, we’re going to lose 3 million customers that currently have access to the product,’” he added. “That hurts our ad-sales business. And so we have a tiered rate card for that, and they didn’t want to pay it.”

Dish claimed that the license fee Turner was seeking if Court TV was moved to America’s Top 120 would amount to a 70% increase in rates.

“Unfortunately, Turner Networks refused to deliver a reasonable offer for carriage in America’s Top 120 package that fairly reflected Court TV’s overall ratings performance and value,” EchoStar spokesman Kathie Gonzalez said.

Heller conceded that the license fee for Court TV to be carried on America’s Top 120, versus America’s Top 60, “was much more expensive.” But he wouldn’t say how much more.

In the Dish press release, senior vice president of programming Eric Sahl said, “We are working hard to negotiate a fair contract with Turner Networks and Court TV … It is not fair to ask our customers to pay a DBS premium for a channel owned by the second-largest cable operator, Time Warner.”

Court TV became wholly owned by Turner in May, putting its carriage negotiations in Heller’s hands.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/...=Breaking+News

[dad1153]

TV Notebook
New Year's Irresolution
James Poniewozik's Time "Tuned In" Blog - January 2, 2007

Oh, did I mention I was going on vacation? I could have sworn I had put up a post mentioning that I was going to be gone last week. Apologies to everyone who counted on Tuned In as a refuge from your alcohol-fueled, resentment-filled, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf family holiday get-togethers.

Today Tuned In returns to its regular (but frustrating) schedule of irregular (but still frustrating!) commentary. It's New Year's resolution time, and in the spirit of the holiday, here are a few of my faults as a critic and blogger that I'd like to rectify in the coming year yet almost certainly won't.

Above all, I'd like to make an effort to watch more TV like an ordinary person. Like a lot of critics, I tend to be pretty prime-time-focused: there's a lot to keep on top of, and my daytime is filled with writing for the print magazine, catching up on TiVoed shows, and filling this blog with content for you insatiable ingrates. As a result, I miss a lot of daytime TV, which is probably inexcusable. I'll try to remedy that, so if any Time editors happen to notice Passions on my TV as they walk by my office, trust me, I'm working.

Likewise, because I use TiVo to keep my media diet manageably bite-sized, I don't see nearly as many commercials as the average viewer. Considering that commercials are the genre of programming that makes most of the rest of TV possible, they're arguably more influential than the shows they appear in. I'll try to work more coverage of them in here as well.

More bad daytime TV and more commercials: lofty goals, I know, but someone has to strive for them.

http://time.blogs.com/tuned_in/

[fredfa]

Cable TV Notebook
News Corp., Time Warner Sign Carriage Deal for Business Channel
Gives Fox Business News Access to 23 Million Homes
By Claire Atkinson Advertising Age January 02, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- News Corp. executives spent New Year's weekend concluding a carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable for its long-awaited Fox Business News channel. Time Warner Cable serves 23 million homes and has been long sought after by News Corp. as a cable partner for the launch. With this deal in hand, many expect News Corp. can now move forward with the channel after years of delays.

Time Warner Cable and Fox News distribution executives had been hashing out terms in advance of the holiday week. A senior executive inside Time Warner confirmed that the cable system had finally given the Fox News' business sibling the distribution it needs. Terms were not disclosed.

Major cable players

Time Warner Cable is one of two major cable players in the New York market, which is considered critical for News Corp. to secure before launching its business-news channel. The deal will give the channel access to the crucial Wall Street audience and to the Madison Avenue-based advertising community.

Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman-CEO, has said he would not launch the business service -- the idea for which was first raised in 2004 -- until he had enough distribution partners lined up.

In November, Comcast said it would distribute the business service to its 12 million subscribers should the channel go ahead. Speaking in December at the UBS media conference, News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said the company was still working on the channel and would commit to a launch once it had sufficient carriage deals in place. The company has said around 30 million homes would suffice.

Launch date

While a date for the launch still hasn't been revealed, News Corp. Chairman-CEO Rupert Murdoch has said the business channel will launch in 2007.

It is still unclear, however, whether Cablevision, which also has a sizable chunk of New York-based customers, has made an agreement to carry the service. DirecTV -- in which News Corp. owned a significant stake until its sale last month to Liberty Media -- is likely to give the service satellite liftoff but has said nothing on the matter. DirecTV, which is present in 15 million homes, did not respond to a request for comment.

A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. Fox News Channel's managing editor of business news, Neil Cavuto, is expected to be a major part of the new service. News Corp. hired Alexis Glick away from CNBC in September as Mr. Cavuto's second in command.

At the end of 2004, Time Warner closed its own financial news service, CNNfn, leaving the TV business news field to NBC Universal's CNBC and Bloomberg. That's the same year Mr. Murdoch first started touting the idea for the business news service.

Changing environment

The environment has changed considerably since then. Broadband video has taken off as a distribution method, and CNBC has had time to return to its original business-news mantra after a brief foray into prime-time entertainment. CNBC is distributed to 90 million homes and in December revamped its own website to offer video from around its international bureaus. The channel also launched new shows such as "Fast Money," which features a roundtable of investment professionals debating features such as the trade of the day. In some ways, such shows ape Fox News in their fast-paced discussions and analysis of news stories.

Annual advertising revenue at CNBC is estimated at $300 million. Time Warner has also boosted its financial presence online, plugging its Fortune magazine staff to its CNN Money offering. Major online giants such as Google and Yahoo are also looking to own the daytime business viewer with their own stock market information.

The move could be a way for Fox News sales to reach out to fresh advertisers. After the company's 10-year ascent to lead the cable news ratings, Fox News may have already soaked up all double-digit spending increases it can muster.

Gaining traction

Business news has gained traction within News Corp. just in the past month. On Dec. 4, Fox News launched an online-programming partnership with Yahoo Finance that rolls video branded "Fox Business Now." The segments air weekdays and comprise two-minute market reports.

Yahoo helps promote the service, and Fox News has given it on-air support. The segment currently online is "Terror Free Investing," hosted by Stuart Varney, dated Dec. 28.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article....icle_id=114045

[dad1153]

The Business of TV
Time Warner Cuts Broad News Corp. Deal
By Mike Reynolds, Multichannel News - January 2, 2007

The renewal of Fox News Channel and the “placeholder” provision for its proposed business channel with Time Warner Cable are components of a larger deal the cable operator has struck with News Corp.

According to a Time Warner executive familiar with the deal, the broad-reaching contract, which was finalized on Dec. 28, also encompasses retransmission-consent carriage for Fox’s owned and operated stations through 2009, renewals for Fox News Channel and Speed Channel, plus the addition of Fox Reality Channel to its channel lineup and a commitment to the business channel that Fox News has been contemplating launching.

Another executive with knowledge of the deal placed the monthly per subscriber fee for the proposed business channel in the 10 to 15 cents range.

A Fox News Channel spokesman confirmed the extension agreement for the news service and the placeholder pact for the business channel, but declined to comment on any financial terms. Officials at Time Warner Cable and News Corp. officials declined comment.

Of the 35 stations in 26 markets comprising the Fox Television Station group, a number transmit in such Time Warner Cable-served DMAs as New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Austin, Texas, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Kansas City and Greensboro, N.C.

The Time Warner executive familiar with the pact said that Fox’s O&Os had been out of contract with the cable operator since Dec. 1, 2004. The stations had remained on the air in the interim via month-to-month renewals under terms of the old contract, said sources with knowledge of the O&Os.

The far-reaching pact also covers a contract renewal for Speed, which counts nearly 70 million subscribers nationwide, as well as the launch of Fox Reality in roughly half of Time Warner Cable’s footprint. The Time Warner launch, coupled with a pact with Comcast Corp., will push Fox Reality’s sub count into the 35 million-home range.

As for Fox News Channel, Time Warner Cable, whose original 10-year contract with the cable news leader was set to expire in fall 2007, has reached a multiyear contract extension covering some 13 million subscribers.

An executive familiar with the negotiations said the terms are similar to the ones that Fox News reached with Cablevision Systems Corp. last fall in that there is an escalating license fee structure. The agreement with Time Warner, this executive said, tops out in 80-cent range in the latter years of the pact. The Fox News’s deals with CVS and Time Warner Cable average around 75 cents per subscriber per month over the life of the contracts.

Fox News also inked renewal contracts with DirecTV and the National Cable Television Cooperative last year.

The Time Warner Cable/News contract also pertains to the proposed business channel Fox News has been eyeing. The executive familiar with the deal said the cable operator would pay a monthly per subscriber license fee in the 10 to 15 range, should the service get off the ground.

Time Warner Cable’s large subscriber base, particularly its strong presence in Manhattan, home to this nation’s financial district, is viewed as critical for News Corp. to give the official go-ahead. Officials at the media giant have indicated that a business channel, which go after the same lucrative advertising base that is now the province of CNBC, would need some 30 million homes before it would debut.

Fox News already has a commitment from DirecTV and a placeholder pact with Comcast Corp. for the business channel.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/...=Breaking+News

[dad1153]

TV Review
Courteney Cox washes out in 'Dirt' on FX
By Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle - January 2, 2007

Dirt: Drama. 10 p.m. Tuesdays on FX

There are a number of problems with the new FX series "Dirt," starring Courteney Cox in her first post-"Friends" television show, but one of the biggest is Cox herself. No doubt she wanted to reinvent herself with a more rough-edged dramatic role, and there's no place better outside of HBO to do just that than FX.
But in one of the few instances where FX doesn't go far enough (not an argument you'll often hear about the channel that airs "The Shield," "Rescue Me," "Nip/Tuck" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"), "Dirt" seems artificial as it tackles Hollywood and tabloid gossip peddling.

After three episodes of earnestly wishing that "Dirt" was as good as its promos, we admit that the whole series just misses its mark -- despite that mark being one of the fattest, ripest targets imaginable. Given a chance to skewer the shallow, self-absorbed world of celebrity and, in the same instant, the morality-challenged scandal-rag industry, you'd expect the biggest challenge for the "Dirt" writers would be whittling down the numerous, whopping, juice-dripping story lines at hand.

And yet, "Dirt" never seems to get anywhere close to something that resembles Hollywood, and Cox -- who was perhaps the most underappreciated character on "Friends," where her self- deprecating humor honed her winning personality -- never seems believable as Lucy Spiller, a ruthless nutcracker of an editor whose sole passion in life is to reveal the drug addictions, marital infidelity and bloating butts of the very famous. Since Cox and husband David Arquette are executive producers on "Dirt," this is not a problem that is going to be corrected soon enough to make "Dirt" the sharp-edged series many hoped it would be. (The series was created by playwright and filmmaker Matthew Carnahan.)

That's not to say Cox isn't up for a provocative makeover of her light-comedy persona. While the pilot has pretty much every actor partaking in "Nip/Tuck"-style sex scenes, Cox's Spiller character takes her boy-toy one-night stand and pushes him down under the sheets (and later calls on him to repeat the task). But mostly she's reduced to her vibrator -- she's too busy for sex and love anyway, and as "Dirt" tries unconvincingly to show us, Spiller gets her only true orgasms by revealing celebrity sins. ("Dirt" still goes out of its way to show Cox masturbating, which may boost ratings and sex up Cox's reputation but is oddly off-putting.)

"Dirt" tries to make Cox seem like the most feared woman in Hollywood -- she runs two magazines, Drrt and Now, a quasi-journalism empire -- but viewers are likely to spend any time invested here wondering why Monica from "Friends" is trying to play tough (and why her masturbating is so unsexy). This is the biggest obstacle -- but not the only obstacle -- to the success and believability of the series. Something is amiss here. Monica/Cox could not possibly be mean and, no offense intended to Cox, but she's not the type of woman that men tend to imagine in the masturbation arena (their own or hers -- Jennifer Aniston perhaps, but not Cox, who seems more like your giggly and sweet best female friend).

Beyond the limitations of Cox as a sensationalistic, power-toppling viper, there's the artificiality of Hollywood in "Dirt." We're shown Holt McLaren (Josh Stewart), who made a really great movie long ago but since has fallen onto the B-list with a string of duds. His girlfriend is Julia Mallory (Laura Allen), an A-lister with a film career and a hit TV show. When McLaren hears that Julia's friend and fellow hot actress Kira Klay (Shannyn Sossamon) is pregnant, he trades the secret to Drrt in exchange for favorable coverage that makes him look as if he's in demand.

Not exactly original, but "Dirt" runs with it -- and mostly gets away with it in the pilot because of a quirky character who ends up being the show's only redeeming quality, the "functioning schizophrenic" paparazzo Don Konkey (Ian Hart), who persuades McLaren to rat out Kira Klay.

(And yes, if you're wondering, "Dirt" does have the dumbest character names in recent memory, a small but vital reminder that it is trying way too hard.)

Hart imbues Konkey with multilayered charm. He's clearly struggling with demons, mentally. He's off his meds a lot and has visions. But he's also phenomenally good at what he does. When Spiller needs him to get the impossible shot, he does (sometimes at great, ill-advised personal peril). In the midst of a seedy profession, Konkey has a dose of humanity. He's a hermit who loves his cat. And he feels genuine sadness about invading the privacy of those he photographs. In the pilot, Hart's bent Konkey character is the standout performer.

Unfortunately, by the third episode, his allure is waning, his shtick heavy with we-get-it-already predictability. Meanwhile, with Cox unable to convince anyone that she's a bloodsucker, and Stewart and Allen unable to make the audience care about (or believe in) their celebrity, "Dirt" finds itself with no core.

If "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" has a hard time selling the importance of making a TV show (with likable characters, no less), imagine the burden of "Dirt," where devious tabloid writers and editors scheme to embarrass vain, drug-addicted actors you've never heard of before.

A wealth of supporting roles in this series are either confusing or superfluous, with gay themes tossed in as supposedly shocking tidbits (two former stars of prime-time network soaps aimed at teens get same-sex lip-locks). And then there's former NBA star Rick Fox playing an NBA star, Prince Tyreese, who is portrayed in the media as the ultimate family man but ends up doing what a lot of professional athletes do -- screw around. Only this time Drrt captures Tyreese with a stripper who, in one of those "Nip/Tuck" moments, bounces around with him in a hot tub and then straps on a little something and has a backcourt violation that will no doubt have content referees blowing their whistles like mad.

Now, how is all of this muck not going far enough? Well, for starters, Cox isn't evil enough. Her magazines are not mean enough (though in the third episode, a hospital room cover photo manages to capture the repulsive nature of feeding off celebrity misery), and, ultimately, the series only scrapes the surface of the symbiotic relationship between celebrities and the magazines that fuel their fame. Instead of a deeper examination of the cult of personality, or entertainment as fantasy fulfillment in the hollow lives of the masses -- or even how actors, writers and directors are used and abused to fuel the Hollywood dream machine -- what "Dirt" mostly delivers is salacious visuals and no real story.

Which is very Hollywood, of course, but ultimately not very interesting as a TV series.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...L&type=tvradio

[dad1153]

TV Notebook
Critic's TV picks for Wednesday: 'The Knights of Prosperity'
By Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch - January 3, 2007

• Tops of the night:'The Knights of Prosperity' 8 p.m. on ABC (Channel 30) - All Eugene Gurkin (Donal Logue) wants is to open his own bar. But after years of working as a janitor, his savings (total: $89) won't make that dream come true. Then he happens to catch a "lifestyles of the famous" documentary on Mick Jagger and his ridiculously lavish home, and a new dream is born. Gathering a gang of have-nots, Eugene proposes: "Let's rob Mick Jagger."

That, in fact, was the original title of this new sitcom from Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman, creators of "Ed." Then it became "Let's Rob ...," making room for victims post-Jagger. Finally, somebody decided on "The Knights of Prosperity," the name Eugene chooses for his band of misfit robbers.

The struggle with the title symbolizes the show's problems in deciding what kind of sitcom it is. Like "Ed," it's part broad comedy and part poignant character study, with plenty of dry, tongue-in-cheek irony a la David Letterman, an executive producer along with Jagger. His cameo in the pilot is hilarious. For good measure, there's even a caper: the robbery itself.

The time may be right for this sort of hybrid, with "My Name Is Earl" already a hit on NBC. "Knights" is different and entertaining; unfortunately, it's a terrible fit with "According to Jim," which precedes it. And beginning in two weeks, it will face "American Idol."

• Also new tonight: 'In Case of Emergency' 8:30 p.m. on ABC (Channel 30) - So often, promos for a new series give away all the good jokes. "Emergency" has the opposite problem: Its promos are so loud and slapstick, they make this dumb show look dumber than it is.

The plot has three friends, 20 years past high school, serving as a support system for one another. Harry (Jonathan Silverman), who wanted to be a writer, works for a greeting-card company and is a divorced dad. Sherman (Greg Germann) is a diet guru with food issues. Jason (David Arquette) is about to be indicted.

If "Emergency" didn't feel the need to force-feed us pratfalls, gunfire and repeated assaults with a bedpan, it might be just another mediocre comedy. Instead, it's just painful.

• Season premiére: 'Beauty and the Geek' 7-9 p.m. on the CW (Channel 11) - The third season of Ashton Kutcher's charming "social experiment" introduces eight new beauties ("gorgeous but academically impaired women") and their corresponding geeks ("brilliant but socially challenged men"). The drill is the same: The men and women are paired up, each learning from the other until the two who have learned the most take home a $250,000 prize.

• Season premiére: 'According to Jim' 7 and 7:30 p.m. on ABC (Channel 30) - The sixth season begins with back-to-back episodes. First up: Jim (Jim Belushi) teaches Kyle (Conner Rayburn) to defend himself.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ent...B?OpenDocument

[Davinleeds]

Ford and Indiana. Did I miss it?

[dad1153]

Are you talking about Indy 4? That's a yet-to-be-made movie, this is the AVS Forum thread were we talk TV, HDTV and the business of TV. Welcome to the board BTW!

[dad1153]

TV Review
Dirt - FX
By Garth Johnston, Broadcasting & Cable - January 2, 2007

As much as it tries Dirt, FX’s newest hour long drama does not have that Sweet Smell of Success.

Yet.

The show, which premieres on January 2, stars former-"Friend” Courtney Cox as a celebrity-tabloid editrix combination of Bonnie Fuller and Gail Weathers, Cox’s alter ego in the Scream trilogy.

Like other FX dramas, especially Nip/Tuck, Dirt tries desperately to be “dark” and “edgy.” To wit: Lucy Spiller (Cox) runs two nasty tabloid magazines that never print lies but aren’t above setting up stars with prostitutes to get the money shot.

Initially the series attempts to follow two magazines (ala American Media's empire), but to make things simpler for viewers, in the third episode the two magazines, ‘Drrt’ and ‘Now,’ are merged into ‘Dirt Now’.

Spiller's best friend from college Don Konkey (Ian Hart) is a “functional schizophrenic” who happens to also be an ace paparazzo who talks to his dead cat. Spiller and Konkey interact with a full range of Hollywood stereotypes from closeted action stars to murdering rap producers to sports legends with penchants for anal action. One such cliché is Holt McLaren (Josh Stewart), a young actor whose star is on the wane. In exchange for favorable clips, McLaren lets slip to Spiller that a popular young catholic actress (Shannyn Sossamon) is pregnant out of wedlock. When Spiller runs the news on the cover of her magazine the young actress ODs and dies. But she doesn’t leave town, instead her pregnant ghost proceeds to move in with Konkey. Rumor has it in a later episode she gives birth to kittens. Seriously.

In press materials Matthew Carnahan, the show’s creator who produces with Cox and her husband David Arquette, has described initially wanting to write a show about a schizophrenic and being persuaded to refocus his efforts on the tabloids. That Dirt’s creator wasn’t initially hooked on the concept is apparent and the final product suffers for it. Of the three episodes available for review, the one episode not directed by Carnahan was noticeably more vital.

Dirt does have a lot going for it, however. With Nip/Tuck, The Shield and Rescue Me FX has a proven track record of incubating and nurturing unconventional guilty pleasures, and if the progression of quality in the first three episodes is any indication, a little practice could go a long way for this show. While Hart’s Konkey the Paparazzo is often a bit much, Cox seems to relish playing mean and a few of the side characters are particularly inspired - specifically noteworthy is Canadian actress Carly Pope scene-stealing as a lesbian drug dealer to the stars.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/1640000164.html

[fredfa]

dad -- daveinleeds is a long-time (and fairly prolific) poster here.

I am sure he was welcomed quite a while ago.

[URFloorMatt]

Originally Posted by dad1153

The Business of TV
Turner: No Progress on Court-Dish
By Linda Moss, Multichannel News - January 2, 2007

...Heller claimed that he offered Dish an extension to continue carrying Court TV on America’s Top 60 for the current license fee.

“We offered them an extension with no change whatsoever, just maintain the status quo,” he added. “This is the first time someone said, ‘No, I don’t want an extension’ … I’ve been doing this a long time, but this is the first time this has ever happened. Never, all of these networks that we have, I’ve never been in a situation where a network went dark.”

In its press release, Dish said Turner “refused to offer an extension in the company’s Top 120 package for continued negotiations.”

Turner wasn’t in favor of Court TV, a top-20-rated network, being moved to America’s Top 120, with its lesser penetration, Heller said.

“That having been said, we’re not going to say, ‘No, you can’t do it, but if you do it, we’re going to lose 3 million customers that currently have access to the product,’” he added. “That hurts our ad-sales business. And so we have a tiered rate card for that, and they didn’t want to pay it.”

I'm sorry, but is Court TV really in a position to play hardball? I can't possibly imagine that there are regular diehard viewers for this network, but maybe I'm underestimating the O.J. Trial crowd.

Court TV might have its viewers, but I'd wager that they aren't half as dedicated to watching Court TV on any given night as I'd imagine that Lifetime viewers tend to be. For me at least, it's one of those channels that I only happen upon when there's nothing else on. It's nothing close to appointment television and it's certainly a channel that I wouldn't even know was missing were it to disappear.

On an unrelated note, Fred, my FiOS install was finally finished today, and while we had to tackle a few problems along the way, we got everything worked out and it is much, much better than my previous Adelphia service in almost every way. I'm just disappointed I waited two months to get hooked up. The picture quality is better (but maybe only marginally so) for HD, the SD analog/digital channels are vastly improved, Internet video downloads are noticeably faster, the onscreen guides and STB remotes are vastly superior to my previous service, and the channel selection, both SD and HD, is also superior. Great stuff all around.

[fredfa]

That sounds great Matt -- a happy New Year to you, obviously!

Is there a good HD DVR?

[fredfa]

TV Sports
The Fiesta Bowl: And Now, a Few More Words
By Richard Sandomir The New York Times January 3, 2007

This is the first college football postseason I can recall without Keith Jackson, whose voice defined bowl games. Although Jackson was frustrated with his performance in his finale, last year’s Rose Bowl, his presence was welcome. His retirement coincided with the conclusion of ABC’s era of dominance over televising the Bowl Championship Series.

ABC still has the Rose, but Fox has the Fiesta, Orange, Sugar and the new national championship game, to be played Monday between Ohio State and Florida in Glendale, Ariz. Bowl games played in the Cactus State are invariably more meaningful than what is perpetrated in the name of the National Football League, and played in the same stadium, by the Cardinals.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Fox began its reign Monday night with Boise State’s wild, 43-42 overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

For the Fiesta — and the national championship — Fox assembled an announcing team of Thom Brennaman, better known for calling Fox baseball; Barry Alvarez, the former Wisconsin coach and still its athletic director; and Charles Davis, who is on loan from TBS’s college football crew.

My interest was mostly in Brennaman. He has called N.F.L. games for Fox, on and off, since 1994, giving him far more experience than Bryant Gumbel had before he mis-stepped into the NFL Network booth.

Brennaman has never been my favorite baseball announcer, but recently I speculated that his big voice might be better suited for college football, with its rah-rah atmosphere, and need to speak over a loud stadium roar.

It turns out that he was pretty good Monday night. He was restrained for much of the game, modulating his voice in a way that will serve him well when he returns to calling baseball for Fox and for the Cincinnati Reds. He grasps the mechanics of the job and the rhythms of the broadcast. He quickly identified players and whether they held onto a pass or not. He knows to say a runner heading downfield is “inside the 30,” not crossing it.

• • • • • • • • • • •

On many of the night’s big plays, he used his profundo voice to convey excitement, not to puncture viewers’ ear drums. On Allen Patrick’s second quarter 30-yard run for Oklahoma, Brennaman said: “Give to Patrick. He’s inside the sideline, back to the inside, all the way to the 22.” On a dropped pass by Boise State’s Nick Harris, he said: “Oh, goodness, Nick Harris, an eye on the end zone, but apparently not an eye on the ball.”

But he could lose a little control. On Drisan James’s 32-yard touchdown reception from Jared Zabransky, which extended the Broncos’ lead to 20-10 over the Sooners, Brennaman topped his call with a resounding, “HOLY MACKEREL!” As the coda to a score, it was too retro and too loud. In the third, he channeled Dick Enberg with an “Oh my,” without a video footnote.

Late in the fourth, after Marcus Walker’s interception for a touchdown put Oklahoma ahead, 34-28, Davis said, “It may seem trite, but for Oklahoma, it’s ‘Been there, done that.’ ” Advice: if you must utter a banality that need not be said, don’t compound it by introducing it as trite.

Avoiding clichés at crucial moments (unless you invented them) can only improve Brennaman’s play-by-play. He needs to eliminate platitudes about how Boise State “can run with the big dogs.” In a worse case of overused truisms from the kennel, he said, “It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog,” on Boise State’s hook-and-lateral play that wound up sending the game into overtime.

Brennaman could also try to use his favorite end-of-touchdown topper — “Can you believe it?” or “Can you believe that?” — only once, instead of twice.

How much, after all, can you ask an audience to believe?

Alvarez and Davis showed promise, meshing well with Brennaman after a few rehearsals in Madison, Wis., and calling one N.F.L. game as a team. They didn’t goof around like Brennaman’s recently fired baseball partner, Steve Lyons.

But Alvarez’s official connection to a major Big Ten program is troubling. His ties to the Badgers make him contemporary, but why should the issue of his objectivity, especially with Big 10 rival Ohio State in the national championship game, linger in anyone’s mind? What if he upsets Buckeyes Coach Jim Tressel with remarks that would sound like standard criticism from any other analyst, but biased from a former star Big Ten coach?

After Boise State pulled to within one point in the overtime, Davis quickly said the Broncos would go for the win on a 2-point conversion, which they did, deploying the Statue of Liberty play: Zabransky faked a screen pass and hid the ball adroitly with his left hand before handing it off to Ian Johnson. The replays showed Zabransky’s legerdemain, and Alvarez said that Oklahoma could only defend what it had seen in game film.

The game did not produce spectacular viewership — an average of 13.7 million people watched — but the 8.5 rating at the end, at 12:51 a.m. Eastern, exceeded the 8.3 for the entire broadcast. The 2005 Fiesta Bowl, with Utah as the featured midmajor team, playing Pitt, attracted 12.2 million viewers. Last year’s Ohio State-Notre Dame Fiesta Bowl generated 20.6 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/sp...gewanted=print

[URFloorMatt]

Originally Posted by fredfa

That sounds great Matt -- a happy New Year to you, obviously!

Is there a good HD DVR?

Happy New Year to you as well.

I don't have one unfortunately. I plan to upgrade to the Multiroom DVR eventually, but it's like $20 a month. Because FiOS only has local channels over analog, I had to invest in the max of seven STBs. The main problem is I have two HD boxes, one for each HDTV, so basically I'd have to invest in two DVRs, and then we're talking like $30 on top of my bill.

For now, I'm trying to see what I can do with my Media Center PC.

[fredfa]

Critic’s Notebook
Hey! Never Underestimate the Average Joe
By Virginia Heffernan The New York Times January 3, 2007

“The King of Queens,” the longest-running live-action comedy currently on television, is the opposite of an acquired taste. Like pizza or the Doors, the show just hits the spot — the simple, happy sitcom spot.

But you can train yourself to disdain “The King of Queens.” Determined viewers have had nearly nine seasons, and a campaign of rerun-saturation so thorough that you might begin to suspect a state sponsor, to muster complaints. They have come up with two. Unable to say it’s not funny, detractors say “The King of Queens” is unconvincing. Slim, go-getter secretaries like Carrie (Leah Remini) don’t marry lugs who drive trucks like Doug (Kevin James), do they? Others don’t buy Jerry Stiller as Carrie’s dad. He’s always George’s dad of “Seinfeld” to them.

Inside, though, that first conviction doesn’t go away. “The King of Queens,” which ends this season, now that Mr. James is turning to other pursuits, is funny. It’s brisk, perceptive and unpretentious. It works. See for yourself tonight on CBS.

In the late 1990s, when writers were taking stock of the would-be new economy, they decided that the back-end of retail — the part that involved getting merchandise to consumers — was not obsolete. Whether or not people shopped on the Internet, they still needed a way to get their goods. Warehouses and roads, stockers and drivers.

Thus, in 1998, while Fox and NBC were peddling “Getting Personal” and “Conrad Bloom,” comedies about front-end figures like art directors and admen, CBS banked on a fat deliveryman. The overgroomed swingers foundered, but “The King of Queens” persisted. Its hero, Doug Heffernan (not a relative), worked for a U.P.S.-like company that hasn’t gone under.

When that new economy became kind of upsetting, then, and we didn’t want to think about it for a while, it was nice that the old economy, with its outer boroughs and its cardboard boxes, could still make us laugh.

“The King of Queens” may no longer exemplify a cultural trend. But people watch it. According to CBS, 8.7 million viewers tune in each week. After tonight’s episode, the series goes on hiatus until April 9; it’s expected to do as well or better for its seven valedictory episodes.

Just as “The Pilgrim’s Progress” begins when the everyman comes upon a book, “The King of Queens” begins when Doug comes across a television set. That anachronism, a pre-digital, 70-inch technology coffin, is intended for enshrinement in Doug’s basement in the series’s pilot episode. He hopes it will attract his slobby friends to the rec room for sports viewing and dissipation. But Arthur Spooner (Mr. Stiller), Doug’s father-in-law, shows up to wreck the plan when his house burns down.

Doug adapts, but Arthur’s arrival is this comedy’s original sin. Anyone who suggests that it’s Carrie who gets the raw deal in the marriage is not thinking straight. As far as I’m concerned, the spouse who brings a parent into the marital home puts everything in hock to the other spouse, and must spend a lifetime paying for it.

“The King of Queens” and I are in agreement, and the moral imbalance of the show — Carrie’s presumption in allowing Arthur to stay — compromises her hard-won authority. Yeah, she’s trim, organized and snippy, with the makeup, the Manhattan job and the shopaholism, but she’s also the one in the couple who can’t really grow up because she lives with her dad. She’s irritated with Doug because she feels obliged to him for accommodating her regression, and the series has found humor in this conflict at every turn.

On a recent episode, Carrie tries to pass off a frosted sofa cushion as a homemade cake. Not being able to contribute baked goods for a church auction — and be “wife-ish,” in Doug’s nice neologism — seems at first trivial. But Ms. Remini manages to keep Carrie stubbornly blind to her incompetence until that incompetence becomes the dark night of her female soul; then she must fake it. Any woman who can’t bake will recognize this harrowing arc.

On another Carrie-centric episode, she cheats at board games. The Heffernans and their friends decide to have a game night; Carrie wins, and relishes her victory, by subtly cheating. But then she’s caught. The everyday foul play is not played as madcap or off-kilter, as it might have been on “Seinfeld.” Instead, it comes across as it might if anyone were caught cheating at board games, i.e., utterly humiliating.

Doug and Carrie are childless (“You’re pregnant?” “No.” “Thank God!” was dialogue on the pilot), and much speculation about whether they’ll have kids has attended this final season. The question may be moot, since the series has always been about the competition between the spouses to grow up. Like many couples who met and married young, Doug and Carrie are learning responsibility and even refinement together, but they also have each other’s number — and any overreaching by one is met with a swift retribution by the other.

Which is not to say that they don’t, eventually, move on in the world — socially, psychologically, culturally — but the progress is slow, and it works by feints and dodges in the marriage.

This checkers match to maturity keeps jokes on tap, and it’s a reminder of why comedies set among average Joes, who detect a wider range of mockable pretensions, are more durable than “hip” comedies, which can really never be hip enough. Also, the imperative to stasis — not to budge from the couch, the family, the buddies, the neighborhood — is just funny, and clearly of a piece with the ambition-free practice of television-watching.

Mr. James, a onetime football player from Mineola, N.Y., with a rosy complexion and a reassuring frat-guy voice, is the making of this show. A bravura standup, he writes and acts with easy athleticism. Conspicuously, he lacks the darkness of his friend and occasional collaborator Ray Romano.

The dirty secret of his Doug character is that he loves life. The brilliantly senile Arthur, along with Doug’s lechy, creepy friend Spence (the pro stand-up Patton Oswalt), present a fair challenge to his frankness and naïveté.

But the greatest challenge to Doug’s modus vivendi comes from Carrie, and the result is the series’s elegant equilibrium. Exuberant, open-book, gluttonous Doug is married to a woman of cosmetics, schemes and guile. His inertia, it turns out, is their shared honesty; but her guile is their ambition, and it’s what allows them to keep moving. It’s a lovely dynamic. It could almost last forever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/ar...gewanted=print

[fredfa]

TV Sports
Bidding war rages for NFL vet Barber
Retiring running back in talks with three nets
By Michael Learmonth Variety.com January 3, 2007

Retiring NFL starTiki Barber is set to sign a broadcasting deal said to be worth more than $3 million a year over four years.

But the question remains: With which network?

Barber, 31, has been the target of a multinetwork bidding war ever since he announced he would retire from professional football to begin a broadcasting career at the end of this season.

The Giants running back has been in talks with three nets with both football and significant news assets: ABC/ESPN, NBC and Fox.

A report in the New York Post said Barber had agreed to a deal with ABC/ESPN that includes football commentary as well as work on ABC News' "Good Morning America" and "20/20."

But business manager Mark Lepselter denied the report and said talks with all three networks are still alive.

"The report in the New York Post was an erroneous report," Lepselter said. "We have certainly had detailed conversations with Disney as we have had with NBC and Fox as well. Nothing has been finalized. No networks have been informed of anything."

An ABC News spokesman declined to comment.

That another sports figure is heading to the broadcast booth would be unremarkable except that Barber wants to do general news, not just sports.

Also landmark will be the size of the deal. If signed, pact would exceed the value of the last two years of Barber's contract with the New York Giants, which is worth $8.3 million.

Barber had planned to make a decision on his future this week, but Lepselter said he's delaying that until the end of the Giants' playoff run.

The Giants made the playoffs in large part due to Barber, who rushed for 234 yards against the Redskins on Saturday, a team record. His performance silenced those who criticized Barber for talking about his post-football career while the Giants' season was still alive.

The ability to do news will be the most important part of the deal for Barber, but to pay the freight for his salary, networks will look to spread the hit over a number of shows in both news and sports.

Barber is a regular Tuesday substitute on Fox News Channel morning show "Fox & Friends," using his day off from football to gain experience on the set.

http://www.variety.com/index.asp?lay...&categoryid=14

[fredfa]

Note:

The TV pilot pickup season is upon us, and over the next few months we will be inundated with stories of this and that project being "picked up" by one network or another.

As a matter of policy here, such news isn't reported unless there is some overriding reason: a major star is committed, for example.

The fact is that many of these series never see the network schedule board. I post more than enough stories here, and those are -- until a series gets a schedule slot -- just too far away from reality.

In the case of cable networks and non-HD shows, I prefer an even stricter standard. Barring some major item of general news interest in such a pickup, let's keep the thread free of such minutiae.

Thanks.

[VisionOn]

Originally Posted by fredfa

I'll be a lot more likely to watch FX when it starts broadcasting in HD.

If I waited to watch most of the programs on TV in HD, most of them would be canceled by the time TWC actually acquired them! I'm just glad FX broadcast in 16:9 even if the quality is poor.

[dad1153]

Originally Posted by fredfa

The TV pilot pickup season is upon us, and over the next few months we will be inundated with stories of this and that project being "picked up" by one network or another. As a matter of policy here, such news isn't reported unless there is some overriding reason: a major star is committed, for example.

Would the news I posted earlier about the creator of Gilmore Girls (Susan Palladino) getting her sitcom pilot greenlighted qualify? 'GG' generates a lot of buzz and the creator's departure was (a) huge news that (b) explains the show's current (and widely perceived) decline in quality. What about the casting of Nathan Fillon (of Firefly and Serenity) on Fox's mid-season action series Drive? I posted that as well.

[dad1153]

TV Review
'Emergency,' exit at once
By Verne Gay, Newsday - January 3, 2007

Before deciding to devote a little quality downtime to ABC's "In Case of Emergency," consider the premise: Who do you call in case of an emergency? For some, the answer's easy; for others, not so easy. This show is about the others: The lost, the lonesome, the emotionally unattached (and unattachable).

Sounds like a riot, does it not?

It does not, and it is not. "Emergency" is sodden, forbidding, a waste of 22 good minutes - ABC's as well as yours, should you fail to pay heed to this fair warning. "Emergency" is what TV comedy should not be doing, namely turning the rank and immature travails of four late-30-something adults into a soupy mess that's borrowed from every sitcom from here to "George Lopez."

What's especially mystifying about "Emergency" is the on-screen and off-screen pedigree. The series show-runner, Howard J. Morris, is an experienced writer with a dozen credits, from "Home Improvement" to "According to Jim," while the cast has some bona fide TV stars: Jonathan Silverman, David Arquette, Kelly Hu and Greg Germann.

Harry Kennison (Silverman) is a struggling writer who always wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut Jr., but instead now creates cute little lines for greeting cards; for kicks, one night he heads over to the local "massage" parlor where he recognizes the masseuse, Kelly Lee (Hu). Twenty years earlier, both went to the same high school, where she was class valedictorian. Meanwhile, Kennison's buddies are having a bad night. Overwhelmed by financial and emotional setbacks, Jason Ventress (Arquette) decides to kill himself but shoots his foot instead and ends up at the hospital, just as other friend and diet guru Sherman Yablonsky (Germann) has a meltdown and hijacks a doughnut truck. Emergency calls are sent out to Kennison, and - cue to the credits - all four are now living in Kennison's house with his young son, Dylan. (Think "Three and a Half Men and One Sexy Woman.")

Watching all this, you may find yourself wishing for "Emergency" to succeed, if only because there are some talented people here. But don't wish too hard. "In Case of Emergency" is dead on arrival.

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment...sion-headlines

[dad1153]

TV Review
Painful Mick is their gall Stone
By Verne Gay, Newsday - January 3, 2007

Some ideas seem like great TV ideas until you actually see them on TV, which then prompts this instant and visceral gut reaction: What was I thinking or (more to the point) what were they? Maybe here's what ABC was thinking about the idea two talented ex-writers from "Late Show With David Letterman" floated last year: Let's con Mick Jagger into doing a cameo for a new series that we'll call "Let's Rob Mick Jagger," and then maybe a prestigious national newspaper with the words New York in its name will run a front page story about how we're re-inventing the comedy genre with a bold and innovative new concept.

Bingo! The plan worked flawlessly. Until now.

Since renamed "The Knights of Prosperity" - with Donal Logue as a hard-luck janitor with a plan to turn his life and anemic bank account around - this is a sweet, gentle, good-natured trifle that is (nonetheless) surprisingly airless and only rarely funny, if that. Pretty much the only thing ABC has succeeded in reinventing is Mick Jagger and - under the circumstances - that's nothing to brag about. With a total of about 25 seconds of screen time over the first two episodes, Jagger is atrocious: a painful-to-watch wraith of a superstar with a couple of bad lines and some bits meant to pass for physical comedy.

What was he thinking?

Jagger's appearances are embedded in some show-within-show sequences from E! News, which pose as satirical little swipes at those awful celebrity home segments that (in fact) have polluted E! for years. He swishes gamely through the scenes, and if we didn't know better - after witnessing four Technicolor decades in public view, we do know better - you'd think Jagger was supposed to be gay here. In his sparse scenes, he boots a soccer ball into the face of an Asian houseboy and brags about a swimming pool for his dogs. He's flamboyant and silly, like Richard Simmons playing Mick Jagger.

Why, Mick, why! Don't worry. We still love you. We always will. What we didn't need is this misguided career asterisk.

"Knights" comes from Jon Beckerman and Rob Burnett, former "Late Show" writers (Burnett is still top boss there after Letterman, who also gets billing as executive producer), but someone neglected to tell them that the heist genre on TV has pretty much cratered. For whatever reason, TV viewers have zero tolerance for the heist, so "Knights" tries to get around this by fusing farce to the concept.

Just think of the possibilities: What ridiculous contortions will the gang that can't rob straight tie themselves into week after week? To a point, the contortions are amusing enough, made nearly buoyant by the eccentric little touches that Burnett/Beckerman specialize in. The problem is, this farce isn't nearly farcical enough.

Logue's Eugene Gurkin is a hard-luck janitor with a big dream, to open a bar in Queens, but he's broke. One day, he witnesses a fellow janitor succumb while cleaning a urinal and then, he's ready to finally ready to try something dramatic. That's when he sees Jagger on TV. Gene gets together a crew, each member equally delusional, with soft hearts and softer heads.

They include Gourishankar Gary Subramaniam - "just Gary" - who's played by Iranian-born veteran actor Maz Jobrani with a Tony Shalhoub-like zing. As a New York City cab driver, Gary's effectively a running Letterman gag - the cabbie with broken English and a broken odometer. Francis "Squatch" Squacieri (Lenny Venito) likes to toss the occasional ethnic insult at Gary, while Rockefeller (Kevin Michael Richardson - Captain Gantu in "Lilo & Stitch" and a million other voices in movies and on TV shows) is the muscle. They're joined later by Esperanza Villalobos (Sofía Vergara), the saucy spitfire with sex appeal, and Louis Plunk (TV newcomer Josh Grisetti), the nebbishy grad from SUNY New Paltz with no sex appeal whatsoever.

Yup, they're all cliches and meant to be, while their harebrained schemes to roll Jagger - by making copies of his key, or getting the keypad code to his security lock - seem doomed from the start.

Sadly, a once good idea from a pair of quality writers appears doomed instead.

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment...sion-headlines

[dad1153]

TV Review
ABC heist sitcom's stealing the show
By David Bianculli, New York Daily News - January 3, 2007

"The Knights of Prosperity" - Tonight at 9 on ABC
Rating - Three Stars (Out of Four)

When ABC announced its 2006 fall schedule, one sitcom, starring Donal Logue as a night janitor who recruits a bunch of blue-collar misfits for a crime of opportunity, boasted the best title of the year: "Let's Rob Mick Jagger."

But that was last year, and that sitcom never showed up. Instead, it's now ABC's first new series of 2007. It arrives with what, 362 days from now, may well be the worst title of the year: "The Knights of Prosperity."

Yet this show, by any other name, still smells as sweet - and will make you laugh as hard. Its time slot and midseason status may make it harder to succeed, but creatively, "The Knights of Prosperity" has delivered this season where so many new shows have failed: It introduces a serialized story line with characters and a plot that are different and likable enough to warrant a return visit.

Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman, co-creators of "Ed," team again for a laugh-track-less comedy, and "Knights" (tonight at 9) has everything you'd want from a new sitcom.

It has a hilarious extended cameo by Jagger himself, poking fun at his image by taking viewers on an "MTV Cribs"-type tour of what is supposed to be his Central Park West apartment. Twenty-year janitor Eugene Gurkin (Logue), desperate to change his life after a colleague drops dead on the job cleaning a toilet, sees Jagger on TV and convinces himself that robbing Jagger of just enough to finance a dream of a neighborhood bar would be tantamount to a victimless crime.

To pull off the job, he assembles a crew of blue-collar folks with modest dreams of their own, and enough larceny in their souls to team up as the Knights of Prosperity.

"They even made up T-shirts," says the theme song, and thank the TV gods there's at least one new show with an actual theme song (music by Paul Shaffer, yet, with clever lyrics by Burnett and Beckerman).

Eugene's quintet of fledgling criminal assistants includes two riotous scene-stealers: Kevin Michael Richardson as deep-voiced, big-bodied Rockefeller Butts, a warehouse security guard, and Sofia Vergara as gorgeous, cocky Esperanza Villalobos, a waitress. The other players, all scoring with funny lines and scenes, are Larry Venito as "Squatch" Squacieri, another janitor; Maz Jobrani as "Gary" Subramaniam, a cab driver, and Josh Grisetti as Louis Plunk, a communications student at college who signs on initially thinking it's an internship on a movie shoot.

The pilot is delightful, and a subsequent episode sent for review, with Reiko Aylesworth making a potent TV return after her character died on "24" last season, proves the show could have legs - and not just hers and Vergara's. But starting next week, "Knights" goes up against "American Idol" - and that's a bigger crime than anything this gang is attempting.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...p-408431c.html

[dad1153]

TV Review
Just in the 'Mick' of Time
'Knights' Gets Laughs
By Linda Stasi, New York Post - January 3, 2007

"The Knights of Prosperity" - Tonight at 9 on ABC
Rating - Three Stars (Out of Four)

CAUTION: This review was written by a person in the final stages of shock.

Why am I in this precarious medical state? Because TV made me laugh, that's why.

Yes, in a year when the funniest thing on TV was watching Katie Couric delivering the news in "when librarians go bad" outfits, I'm thrilled to report that an actual sitcom, "Knights of Prosperity" had me laughing out loud.

And this from a mid-season replacement that was shoved off the fall lineup.

"Knights" is about a toilet-scrubbing night janitor from Queens named Eugene Gurkin, (Donal Logue) who can't take being a poor schmo anymore and decides to get a crew together to rob Mick Jagger's apartment.

This happens after two events push him over the edge of the bowl.

First, Gurkin, depressed, asks his colleague-in-toilets for some words of wisdom and the guy snarls: "Wisdom? Who do you think I am - Morgan Freeman? I been drunk since the bicentennial." He then promptly drops dead.

Gurkin then goes home to his miserable apartment, and watches the fabulous Mick Jagger showing off his equally fabulous crib on E! News.

Pushed to the limit, Gurkin tries to enlist all of his loser friends in his criminal enterprise - and there hasn't been a ragtag bag of losers this bad since "Animal House."

Only three others want in: Gorishanker (Maz Jobrani), a-much married Indian cabby; Squatch, (Lenny Venito), another janitor; and Rockefeller Butts, (Kevin Michael Richardson), a fatty night watchman at a Jewish goods warehouse.

While every single actor is perfect and perfectly funny in his role, every time Richardson opens his mouth, I nearly spit my Weight Watchers fat-free snack food all over my desk. The guy is brilliant.

Into the crew also comes Louis (Josh Grisetti), a loser of a communications major who is "hired" by the cabby as the crew's intern, and Esperanza, (Sofia Vergara), a gorgeous waitress who Gurkin wants to nail. (Good luck pal!)

Every week (and hopefully ABC will let this show get its legs) the crew overcomes a hurdle or four to get to their goal of robbing Mick.

There's a joke in the first episode about Gurkin naming the crew "The Knights of Prosperity," which is an inside poke because the show was originally called "Let's Rob . . . Mick Jagger" but was changed for legal reasons. Personally I like the fact that the crew wears T-shirts emblazoned with their new name which is strictly for their illegal reasons.

Be sure to also catch the equally hilarious "Knights of Prosperity" music video on "You Tube" with Richardson singing the horrible and hilarious theme song.

A crew of losers out to rob Mick Jagger? I'm in.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01032007...inda_stasi.htm

[dad1153]

TV Review
The 'Geek' still inherit the mirth
By David Bianculli, New York Daily News - January 3, 2007

"Beaty and the Geek" - Tonight at 8 on The CW
Rating - Three Stars (Out of Four)

The third-season premiere of "Beauty and the Geek," a former WB staple resurfacing tonight at 8 on the CW network, arrives with the same old tricks, tone and formula - but that's not a complaint.

When something's this not broke, there's no need to fix it.

With new contestants but a familiar approach, "Beauty and the Geek" is the team-sport equivalent of "American Idol." There's a lot less talent involved, and an exponentially smaller audience, but in both cases, the formula is as comfortable as it is pleasing.

In "Idol," the mega-success that starts next week on Fox, you know you'll get, in the opening auditions, a mix of impressively good and horrendously bad, and that the editing and photography will milk and stretch the drama every step of the way, playing up any and all clashes of personalities or hints of romance.

So, too, in "Beauty and the Geek," which Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg brought to TV years ago as a fully formed high-concept competition show. A bevy of young beauties who are stronger on social skills than academic achievements are paired into two-person teams with high-achieving academic nerds who are the exact opposite.

The girls arrive in cars, the cameras homing in on their high heels. The guys arrive on scooters - and one guy is even named Scooter. The chasm between these two groups, a Grand Canyon of social differences, is as wide as it is humorous. It'd be mean-spirited if "Beauty" didn't take care to be an equal-opportunity offender, making sure the beauties and geeks display weaknesses and strengths.

One woman, asked to describe her best feature, replies, "Pouting." And she offers a display, with her lower lip thrust out long enough for a bird to perch on it, just in case we didn't take her seriously. Which, from that moment on, we don't.

And when one of the guys wants to impress the girls, what does he reel out? His very loud, astoundingly annoying impression of ... a high-speed blender.

"It's as if they're Romulans and I'm the Federation," says one baffled "Star Trek" enthusiast, setting the stage for the fun, humiliations and lessons to come.

What's nice, though, is that the teaming of these pairs - eight young women, eight young men - tests them in ways that enhance, as well as challenge, their self-esteem. "Beauty and the Geek," in the end, is warmer than most reality competition shows. It's also effortlessly watchable, with more laughs than many of this year's sitcoms.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...p-408429c.html