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Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information

10M views 101K replies 753 participants last post by  DrDon 
#1 ·
Note: Original "Hot Off The Press" thread: August 27, 2004 - April 23, 2007. (25,503 posts, 2,231,621 page views)
What's Available in "Hot Off The Press"

For the latest news, commentary and discussion,
please go to the last page of the thread.

Each day's prime-time network program listings
(along with late night and cable highlights) are listed by
dad1153 generally between midnight and 8 a.m. ET each day.

Post #3 - Useful Information
 
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#14,901 ·
Nielsen Notes
Thursday's Final Overnight Nielsen Ratings

(Original Episodes Only)

(Posted by Travis Yanan in Marc Berman's Programming Insider blog)

Code:
Code:
[B]Show                 HH Rtg/Share  A18-49  Viewers     A18-34[/B]
   
  LOST                      8.1/13  5.8/15  13,757,000
  ELI STONE (10:02pm)        4.8/8   2.6/7   7,462,000
   
  SURVIVOR: MICRONESIA      7.5/12  4.6/13  13,178,000
   
  DEAL OR NO DEAL           7.6/13  3.4/10  12,184,000
  CELEBRITY APPRENTICE      5.9/10  3.7/10   9,111,000
  LIPSTICK JUNGLE (10:01pm)  4.2/7   2.5/7   6,004,000
   
  39TH NAACP IMAGE AWARDS    2.6/4   1.4/4   3,847,000
   
  SMALLVILLE                 2.4/4   1.5/4   3,673,000   1.6/5
  SUPERNATURAL               1.8/3   1.2/3   2,969,000   1.3/4
   
  MAKE ME A SUPERMODEL       0.7/1   0.5/1     968,000
Source: Nielsen Media Research data

http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/t...5301#136105301
 
#14,902 ·
Television


TNT reporter Craig Sager, left, picks a shirt and tie to go with a sport jacket he'll wear to the NBA All-Star game Sunday. Hank Taghi helps out.

JOHNNY HANSON: CHRONICLE



TELEVISION
Suited for the occasion

When it comes to fashion, sports reporter Craig Sager is in a league of his own


By DAVID BARRON

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Feb. 15, 2008, 1:40AM


Rockets center Yao Ming, like most NBA players, is familiar with Turner Sports reporter Craig Sager's sense of fashion, which is, in a word, eclectic, and his pace of acquisition, which is, in a word, constant.


At any given time, Sager's 30-foot by 10-foot walk-in closet in his suburban Atlanta home contains a rotating cast of 100 suits, 100 sports jackets and perhaps 200 ties — so many choices that his wife, Stacy, has to make do with closet space in their children's bedrooms.


And so Yao should have realized the potential for the unexpected when he suggested to Sager, after an interview in Yao's hometown of Shanghai several years ago, that they go clothes shopping.


"Ninety percent of silk comes from China," Sager said. "So we go to a suit shop with all this raw silk. But it's boring — all blacks and grays."


In another part of the store, however, several brightly colored bolts caught Sager's eye.


"What's that?" he asked.


Yao stared at him.


"That's the women's section," he said. "Those are for dresses."


"Well, that's what I like," Sager replied. "Let's go over there."


And so they did, which is how Sager acquired a raspberry-colored Chinese silk sports jacket that now resides in his closet, awaiting its next appearance from courtside at an NBA game on an HDTV screen near you.


"You know that look Yao has in the commercials, like he's saying, 'What's with this guy?' " Sager said. "That's the look he gave me."


The raspberry coat isn't the only item in Sager's closet with a Houston connection. Houston, in fact, looms large in Sager's sartorial legend.


At least four times a year, Sager flies to town to visit brothers Hank and Ali Taghi, whose family owns the A. Taghi men's clothing store in the Galleria area. Sager shops at practically every stop on the road, but the Taghis are his go-to guys for special occasions like the playoffs and the NBA All-Star Game.


It was Hank Taghi, in fact, who sold Sager perhaps the most famous suit in NBA television history — a silver and black reflective silk Armani number so riveting that Turner Sports officials made Sager change it during All-Star Saturday in 2001 in Washington, D.C.


"It cost, maybe, $5,000," Sager said. "It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And they only let me wear it for a couple of hours."


The suit, which now hangs in a place of honor at an Atlanta sports bar, inspired the deathless quote from Charles Barkley that summarizes the more extreme reactions to Sager's fashion sense.


"I don't have anything against black people, white people or any kind of people," Barkley said. "But when you start letting pimps interview people, that's where I draw the line."


Barkley was joking — sort of. Fortunately, Sager enjoys the jibes from such noted fashion critics as Shaquille O'Neal, who said Sager's outfits are "horri-awful — horrible and awful combined;" TNT analyst and former Rockets player Kenny Smith, who describes Sager as "the Liberace of the NBA;" and fellow ex-Rocket and current ESPN analyst Jon Barry, who, informed that Sager shops in Houston for clothes, said, "That's interesting. I thought he made them himself."


Such comments, however, send Hank Taghi, whose current and former client list includes Hakeem Olajuwon, Barkley, Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and others, scurrying to his customer's defense.


"Craig likes fun, colorful things," Taghi said. "He wears them well. Some people can't wear strong colors. They can't handle things that stand out. But some carry it very well. You have to have a strong personality to carry it off."


With the 2008 All-Star Game events taking place this weekend in New Orleans, Sager began preparing several months ago for his weekend ensembles. When he came to Houston last week to work a Rockets game on TNT, his first stop was at A. Taghi to pick up his All-Star coat — a navy blue crushed-velvet number with cream piping assembled for the Houston store by a London tailor.


"It's my Ringo Starr look," Sager said, referring to the fashion style preferred by the former Beatles drummer in the band's late 1960s incarnation.


More specifically, it's probably what Ringo Starr would wear if Ringo owned a New Orleans riverboat.


With the velvet jacket, Sager will wear off-white pants, a white shirt with medium blue stripes and a tie that matches navy blue pleats with royal blue fabric studded with about a half-carat of diamonds.


Tonight's ensemble will feature a peach, pink and teal jacket, light teal shirt and pants and a brown-and-light-blue polka-dot tie.


In two weeks, he'll be back to pick up a carnation-colored linen sports jacket and a few more items to take him through the regular season. And he'll probably return in April or May to stock up before the playoffs.


"I can't wear the same thing in the playoffs. Barkley would kill me," he said. "We have to come up with something new. The players elevate their game. I have to elevate mine. I don't want to wear something that I wore in November in Cleveland to a playoff game in Houston."


Sager, who set his fashion style by wearing Nehru jackets to high school in the 1960s, receives a clothing allowance from Turner, but it's not enough, he said, to make it through one trip to A. Taghi's. He doesn't know how much he spends on clothes annually, adding, "I should be on a budget. But I'm not."


Sager clearly enjoys the attention and the occasional ridicule that his style inspires among players but said, "I don't dress for TV. I dress for me.


"My first job in TV, I showed up wearing a blue and yellow seersucker suit. The director said, 'Ooh, that's not good for TV,' but I wore it anyway. You've got to have fun with it."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/tv/5543366.html
 
#14,904 ·
Business
Wal-Mart picks Blu-ray over HD DVD in format battle


Associated Press

Feb. 15, 2008, 3:01PM


Wal-Mart Stores has picked Blu-ray over HD DVD in the market battle for the format of high-definition video.


The nation's largest retailer said today it has decided to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware in its 4,000 U.S. stores and no longer carry rival HD DVD offerings.

. . .


For the complete Associated Press story at the Houston Chronicle web site, click on the following link:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...z/5545589.html
 
#14,906 ·
Critic’s Notes
Instead of Men Behaving Badly,

By Marianne Paskowski in her Television Week blog, February 15, 2009


Remember, you read it here first: I think it’s a goner. By now you know that “24” will not be returning with a new season this year, hobbled, its creators say, by the three-month writers’ strike, which has ended with most writers back at work.


Even though Fox already has eight episodes in the can, it says it cannot, given the time constraints, produce the season’s remaining 16 episodes in such a short period of time.


On top of that, we’ve learned that Joel Surnow, one of the series’ creators and executive producers, is leaving to pursue other interests. I’m sorry, but something stinks here.


I still have the DVDs from last season, sealed and unwatched. I heard last season was a bust, with a lot of viewers turned off by plot twists involving Bauer’s brother and father. If they were turned off then, I surely doubt they’ll wait until January for Bauer and his cronies to return to TV.


It was a nice run, but it’s curtains for “24.”

http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/marianne-paskowski/
 
#14,907 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by RussB /forum/post/13123756


Business
Wal-Mart picks Blu-ray over HD DVD in format battle


Associated Press

Feb. 15, 2008, 3:01PM


Wal-Mart Stores has picked Blu-ray over HD DVD in the market battle for the format of high-definition video.


The nation's largest retailer said today it has decided to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware in its 4,000 U.S. stores and no longer carry rival HD DVD offerings.

. . .


For the complete Associated Press story at the Houston Chronicle web site, click on the following link:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...z/5545589.html

wow. just wow. A dual format player was on my toy wish list for this year.

That is beginning to look increasingly unnecessary.
 
#14,908 ·
As I recall, Wal-Mart sells about a third of all DVDs in the country. So ditching HD DVD would be a catastrophic loss.


And didn't it also sell Toshiba HD DVD players for $99 during Christmas season? Ouch for the people who bought them.


But I shared their pain: I still have my laserdisc player in a closet somewhere.
 
#14,909 ·
TV Notes
Misleading Headline of the week:
'Lost' ratings weakest of season

By Paul J. Gough, The Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 15, 2008


NEW YORK -- ABC narrowly won Thursday night's primetime in the adults 18-49 demographic, although "Lost" turned in its weakest performance so far this season and "Eli Stone" continued to fall.


CBS, on the other hand, won the night in viewership and was only three-tenths of a rating point behind ABC, even though it only had one original program, "Survivor: Micronesia."….

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...1e42680d350860


Excuse me, but wasn’t last night the second “Lost” showing of the year?
 
#14,910 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by fredfa /forum/post/13124374


...And didn't it also sell Toshiba HD DVD players for $99 during Christmas season? Ouch for the people who bought them.

They probably would’ve had them all returned but it looks like they made the announcement with plenty of breathing room .
 
#14,911 ·
Critic’s Notes
Strike unleashed Internet ire
Mob mentality rules on talkbacks, boards

By Brian Lowry, Variety, Feb. 15, 2008


Squabbling over Internet revenues was at the heart of the writers strike, but it was squabbling on the Internet that contributed to the vitriolic tone and rhetoric flung about during the dispute that will leave a bitter aftertaste.


Although hardly Hollywood's first strike, this has been the first conducted in the Facebook/Gen-Web era, underscoring the sometimes ugly, insular and semi-delusional worlds the Net can perpetuate -- a seldom-discussed drawback amid its blessed convenience and abundant economic potential. In that respect, the Internet's supporting role in the strike is another reminder of the way the Web has inadvertently helped pollute society, coarsening the level of discourse and incubating online communities prone to wildly lash out at enemies real and imagined.


Cultural critic Lee Siegel advanced this point in his book "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob," maintaining that the Web represents "the first social environment to serve the needs of the isolated, elevated, asocial individual."


The book met with some derision, in part because Siegel overreaches on certain fronts. Yet the criticism, which the New York Observer underscored by misleadingly headlining its review "How the Web turned you into a schmuck," downplays a more salient point -- namely, how the Web allows small groups of schmucks to delude themselves into thinking they have plenty of company.


Such criticism hardly represents a Luddite plea to retreat back to the days when we spoke breathlessly about the "information superhighway," even if that were possible. It is, rather, a wakeup call regarding a reality demonstrated throughout the strike -- that new media, like scientific or medical breakthroughs, has crept into our lives without much thought regarding its unintended costs. Nor is it mere elitism to observe that the Net's egalitarian ideals have also yielded some negative consequences.


Take gray old newspapers that once had to partially guess at what caught readers' eyes, but are now preoccupied with tallying online hits. Because fluff and gossip thrive in that space, this works against serious reporting and heightens pressure to behave like Britney-obsessed schoolgirls or newsstand-driven tabloids. When an employee dared ask about news standards at Tribune's newspapers, new owner Sam Zell glibly dismissed such concerns as "journalistic arrogance."


After a brief experiment with being LinkedIn to colleagues and acquaintances, I found the process to be a time-wasting annoyance with no discernible benefits. Yet social-networking adults continue to emulate teenagers, which seems a dubious goal at best.


PBS' "Frontline" recently explored the wired-world's impact on teens in "Growing Up Online," a sobering documentary that found the most egregious online behavior stems from teens assailing peers, transitioning cruel schoolyard taunts into an uncharted new dimension. A few such instances of "cyberbullying" have led to suicides.


The MySpace revolution has also exacerbated the unnerving erosion in conceptions of privacy. Teens and young adults are especially susceptible to such excess, but no one is immune. How often do you see someone saunter into Starbucks blathering away on the cell phone in lurid detail, never engaging the person behind the counter -- a form of rudeness emblematic of the media-encased bubbles in which many unwittingly reside.


For some, the Web fosters an unrealistic sense of how widely held their views are. As an example, a woman indignantly responded to a recent review I wrote by emailing that "the purpose of your job ... is to relate to viewers like me, the general public. Get to know what we tend to like."


Most revealing is her presumption (increasingly common in such correspondence) that she is the general public -- harboring nary a clue that there are now thousands of "publics," each possessing their own specific menu of preferences.


Many striking screenwriters have acknowledged that their recent sacrifices probably won't be offset by short-term gains, saying they endured the financial pain on behalf of future generations.


For their sake I hope that's true, and that the moonbats frequenting chat rooms can return to being schmucks minus the "too much time on their hands" excuse. Still, if those shrill voices or the kids tormenting peers online are even marginally representative of what we can expect from Net-immersed generation for which they've fought, if I were a screenwriter, I'd want that hard-earned cash from the studios right now.



http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117981032.html
 
#14,912 ·
#14,913 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by fredfa /forum/post/13124399


Excuse me, but wasn't last night the second Lost showing of the year?

No, it was the third.
 
#14,914 ·
Ah, so I missed one.


But weakest ratings of the season? That sure sounds misleading -- or just lazy writing -- to me.


I guess we'll just have to wait until James Hibberd starts at THR to straighten them out.
 
#14,915 ·
TV Notes
TLC Learns The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom
Discovery Networks-Owned Cable Channel Adds Reality Show to Lineup

By Alex Weprin, Broadcasting & Cable, 2/15/2008

TLC picked up The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom, a one-hour reality show that takes ordinary stay-at-home mothers and shows them what their lives could have been like had they pursued their careers instead of taking care of the family.


Moms who have always wanted to be chefs, police officers, fashion designers and others will be able to pursue those goals for one week. At the end of the week, the mom can either choose to live the dual life of raising a family and having a career or go back to being a stay-at-home parent.


"Almost every woman experiences the pull between becoming a full-time mom or juggling both family and work. This show will give us the chance to learn what sacrifices and rewards there are in making this challenging and unique decision," TLC senior vice president of programming Brant Pinvidic said in a statement. "Each episode ends up being a remarkable voyage as we see them accomplish goals they never thought possible and then make the decision about which path they should pursue."


Soccer Mom will debut on TLC and TLC HD March 3 at 10 p.m., joining the network’s Monday-night programming lineup, which already includes Little People, Big World and Jon & Kate Plus 8.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/ind...leID=CA6532928
 
#14,916 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by fredfa /forum/post/13124374


As I recall, Wal-Mart sells about a third of all DVDs in the country. So ditching HD DVD would be a catastrophic loss.

I suspect Wal-Mart sells a lot less than 1/3 of either HD DVD or Blu-Ray discs in the USA. Its selection of both formats has been very small at the stores in my area. I did buy the Planet Earth box set and the five Harry Potter movies on HD DVD from them.

Quote:
And didn't it also sell Toshiba HD DVD players for $99 during Christmas season?

Only for a few days around the end of October / beginning of November, which is when I bought my HD DVD player (from Best Buy, which had a similar deal at the same time).
 
#14,917 ·
Digital TV shift affects minorities most


By JOHN DUNBAR Associated Press Writer

Article Launched: 02/14/2008 09:27:39 PM PST


WASHINGTON—Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to be left without television service following the nationwide transition to digital broadcasting next year, according to a new survey.


Beginning in February 2009, full-power broadcast stations will transmit digital-only signals, meaning people who get their television programming over an antenna and do not have a digital set won't get a picture without a special converter box.

. . .


For the complete Associated Press story at the San Jose Mercury web site (also published in the Houston Chronicle), click on the following link:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_8266421
 
#14,918 ·
It's all getting blurry for the HD DVD format

Wal-Mart's vote for Blu-ray likely to end the war


By MATT RICHTEL and ERIC TAUB

New York Times

Feb. 15, 2008, 10:19PM


SAN FRANCISCO — HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.


There are no funeral plans, but retailers and industry analysts are already writing the obituary for HD DVD.


The announcement by Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailer of DVDs, that it would stop selling the discs and machines in June when supplies are depleted comes after decisions this week by Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer, to promote Blu-ray as its preferred format and Netflix, the DVD-rental service, to stock only Blu-ray movies, phasing out HD DVD by the end of this year.


Last year, Target, one of the top sellers of electronics, discontinued selling HD DVD players in its stores but continued to sell them online.


"The fat lady has sung," said Rob Enderle, a tech analyst in Silicon Valley. "Wal-Mart is the biggest player in the DVD market. If it says HD DVD is done, you can take that as a fact."


Toshiba executives did not return calls asking for comment. Analysts do not expect the company to take the product off the market but the format war is over. Toshiba had been fighting for more than two years to establish the dominance of the format it developed over Blu-ray, developed by Sony.


The combined weight of the decisions this week, but particularly the heft of Wal-Mart, signals the end of a format war that has confounded and frustrated consumers and that had grown increasingly costly for the consumer electronics industry — from hardware makers and studios to retailers.


Andy Parsons, a spokesman for the Blu-ray Disc Association, an industry trade group, said retailers and movie studios had incentives to resolve the issue quickly because it was costly for them to devote shelf space and technology to two formats. Besides, he noted, many consumers have sat on the sidelines and not purchased either version because they did not want to invest in a technology that could become obsolete.


Thus far, consumers have purchased about 1 million Blu-ray players, though there are another 3 million in the market that are integrated into the PlayStation 3 consoles of Sony, said Richard Doherty, research director of Envisioneering, a tech assessment firm. About 1 million HD DVD players were sold.


Evenly matched by Blu-ray through 2007, HD DVD experienced a marked reversal in fortune in early January when Warner Brothers studio, a unit of Time Warner, announced it would manufacture and distribute movies only in Blu-ray. Warner's decision gave the Blu-ray coalition around 75 percent of the high-definition content from the major movie and TV studios. The coalition includes Sharp, Panasonic and Philips as well as Walt Disney and 20th Century Fox studios.


Universal, Paramount and the DreamWorks Animation studios still back HD DVD; none of those studios responded to requests for comment Friday.


"It's pretty clear that retailers consumers trust the most have concluded that the format war is all but over," Parsons said.


Because movie and entertainment technology has become integrated into a range of consumer electronics, the high-definition movie format war has created unusually wide-ranging alliances. The battle included, for example, video game companies; Microsoft has backed the HD DVD standard and sold a compatible player to accompany its Xbox 360 game console.


Sony has pushed vigorously for the Blu-ray standard, not just because it is a patent holder of the technology, but also because it has integrated the standard into PlayStation 3. Sony has argued that consumers will gravitate to the PlayStation 3 because of the high-definition movie player.


Any celebration over the victory may be tempered by concerns that the DVD, of any format, may be doomed by electronic delivery of movies over the Internet. The longer HD DVD battled Blu-ray, the more the consumer market has had an opportunity to gravitate to downloading movies. Such a move, coupled with the growth of technology that makes such downloading easier and cheaper, has threatened to cut the long-term sales of physical movies in the DVD format.


Doherty, like Parsons, argued that digital downloads are not yet affecting the DVD market and that they would not do so for some time. They said that movie downloads continue to face a host of challenges, chief among them that many consumers have insufficient bandwidth to download movies or move them from device to device on a wireless home network. Enderle, however, argued that bandwidth is improving and that major telecommunications carriers, which are pushing to increase speeds, would like to be able to make their pipes the delivery mechanism for high-definition movies. Wal-Mart, Warner Brothers, Best Buy and all the others lining up behind Blu-ray realized they had to kill HD DVD — and fast, he said.


"The later it gets, the much worse it gets," he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...z/5546612.html
 
#14,919 ·
Toshiba to exit HD DVD, end format war-NHK


Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:50am EST


TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp is planning to stop production of equipment compatible with the HD DVD format for high-definition video, allowing the competing Blu-Ray camp a free run, public broadcaster NHK reported on Saturday.


Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to exit the business, Japan's NHK said on its website.


No one at Toshiba could be reached for comment.


The format war between the Toshiba-backed HD DVD and Sony Corp's Blu-Ray, often compared to the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, has slowed the development of what is expected to be a multibillion dollar high-definition DVD industry.


Toshiba was dealt a blow on Friday when Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it would abandon the HD DVD format, becoming the latest in a series of top retailers and movie studios to rally behind Blu-ray technology for high definition DVDs.


Toshiba plans to continue selling HD DVD equipment at stores for the time being but will not put resources into developing new devices, NHK said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...27196120080216
 
#14,920 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by RussB /forum/post/13126554


WASHINGTONHispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to be left without television service following the nationwide transition to digital broadcasting next year, according to a new survey.

And I am twice as likely to buy a Chevy over a Pontiac. And that means what?


I cringe every time one of these reporters write about the transition. They always have alarming phrases like that which mean absolutely nothing and then as one reads further, it becomes clear they have no idea what they are writing about.


We don't really know if ANY Hispanics will be left out.We don't if any Black's, or White's or Asian's will be left out. We don't know, period. WILL some be left out? Absolutely and there is no guarantee it will be Hispanic. What we do know is it will cut across all races, but it is assumed that Whites will be effected less because they have the means and money to avoid it. I am here to tell you that is no guarantee. It is human nature to ignore what is not immediately in front of your face, no matter what race you are. That is a proven. But these hacks do not say that.


I think everything that can be done is being done and we have only just started. The awareness of the situation has taken a huge leap forward. I hear from people all the time asking questions. The word is getting out but using vague emflamatory statements do not help, I tell you from first hand experience and I hear from all peoples, White, Black, Hispanic, you name it, I have heard from them in the past few months. That is why I have a hard time believing some of this stuff.


Someone reads stuff like that and people panic and then call the stations all in a tizzy and most find out since they have a MSO this whole thing is a non-event for them. The ones who do need it, usually already have some idea what is coming and want to know where to get the STBs or coupons. The sky isn't falling Chicken Little, sorry.


Way of the world.
 
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