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TV Review
“Friday Night Lights”
(DirecTV 101, Wed. Oct. 28, 9 p.m.)
By Stuart Levine, Variety

With the Dillon High School graduates now entering the real world, a new group of student-athletes have arrived in this football crazy Texas town. Like a team with an influx of freshmen, the fourth season of "Friday Night Lights" arrives at a transitional juncture. Series, returning on satcaster DirecTV but relegated to summer 2010 duty on NBC, finished last year with what could easily have been a series-ending storyline and now faces the additional challenge of maintaining a high level of quality despite showrunner Jason Katims splitting exec producer duties between this and the Peacock's "Parenthood."

Since the pilot, Katims has been the creative force of "FNL," and first episode signals he still has lots of original storylines to be mined. Most notable is the change of scenery for Coach Eric Taylor (the always stellar Kyle Chandler), who, despite winning a state title, has been forced out of his old job and reassigned to take over as coach of dilapidated rival East Dillon.

Many of his players -- a majority are minorities, with the school in a depressed part of town that has far fewer acoutrements than Dillon High -- are unwilling to put in the effort needed to become a well-rounded team, and Taylor is clearly starting from scratch.

Just how much Katims and his writers will include former Panthers quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) and running back Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) on upcoming episodes remains to be seen. Both are still meandering in Dillon post-graduation -- Riggins discovers he and higher education aren't a good fit -- and having Saracen deliver pizzas after turning down a college scholarship is almost too sad to ponder.

Storylines on those two feel a bit played out, while new characters are intriguing and help the show remain vibrant. Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan) is one step away from being locked up in juvenile detention before Coach Taylor gives him an opportunity to get off the streets and reinvent himself on the field.

Show's minscule budget has turned into one of its greatest assets, using real-life Austin locales and citizens to bring an authenticity that only adds to the drama.

One doesn't have to be a soothsayer to figure out the season is heading toward a showdown between Dillon and East Dillon. Yet, what has made "FNL" so riveting over its run is that while the town is football obsessed, nothing that happens between the goalposts is as compelling as the journey before the lights go on.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117...goryid=32&cs=1

There are many, many reasons. Here are a few off the top of my head

★For one, cable nets need a far smaller number of viewers to be able to claim a success.

★For another, they can more easily target a demographic group. OTA networks are "broadcasters" and historically have needed to reach a wide range of viewers.

★Union rules also allow cable productions to be made for less money.

★Traditional networks are judged against each other: there are only five (counting the CW but NOT counting Univision) so even amateur ratings mavens can easily ave an opinion. But with cable networks, there are dozens, each trying for a slightly different slice of the pie, so such comparisons are not as easily made.

(From Marc Berman’s October 27, 2009, Programming Insider newsletter and blog at Mediaweek.com)
http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/t.../630102152/p/3
Monday’s Nielsen Broadcast Finals
(posted by Travis Yanan)

Dancing with the Stars (122 minutes) ABC
- 17.380 million viewers
- 11.3/17 HH
- 3.6/9 A18-49

CSI: Miami (R) CBS
- 11.524 million viewers
- 7.6/13 HH
- 3.1/8 A18-49

Two and a Half Men (R) CBS
- 11.411 million viewers
- 7.1/11 HH
- 3.5/8 A18-49

The Big Bang Theory (R) CBS
- 10.855 million viewers
- 6.6/10 HH
- 3.8/9 A18-49

Castle (58 minutes, 95% coverage vs ABC usual 97%) ABC
- 9.987 million viewers
- 6.8/11 HH
- 2.5/7 A18-49


How I Met Your Mother (R) CBS
- 6.941 million viewers
- 4.4/7 HH
- 2.6/7 A18-49

Lie To Me Fox
- 6.328 million viewers
- 3.8/6 HH
- 2.4/6 A18-49

Accidentally on Purpose (R) CBS
- 5.890 million viewers
- 3.8/6 HH
- 2.1/5 A18-49

So You Think You Can Dance Fox
- 5.848 million viewers
- 3.6/5 HH
- 2.6/4 A18-49
- 2.8/8 A18-34
- 3.6/10 W18-34

Trauma (61 minutes) NBC
- 5.775 million viewers
- 3.7/6 HH
- 1.9/4 A18-49

Heroes NBC
- 5.724 million viewers
- 3.6/5 HH
- 2.5/7 A18-49

The Jay Leno Show (59 minutes) NBC
- 4.699 million viewers
- 3.2/5 HH
- 1.3/4 A18-49

One Tree Hill CW
- 2.669 million viewers
- 1.7/3 HH
- 1.3/3 A18-49
- 1.7/5 A18-34
- 2.6/7 W18-34

Gossip Girl CW
- 2.307 million viewers
- 1.5/2 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.8/5 A18-34
- 2.9/7 W18-34

http://travisyanan.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/travisyanan

Note: Previous overnight ratings are available at Marc Berman’s Programmers Insider blog:

http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/t...51/m/460103871

While I understand your sentiment, I must say that I watched the DVD when it was released a few months ago. I had seen the series on DirecTV.

I didn't notice anything missing (although I know there were some edits for NBC/DVD), But from purely a viewer's perspective -- and from one who really enjoys the show -- I didn't feel cheated in the slightest by the DVD.

But clearly YMMV.

Business Notes
A Big Deal, but Not a Good One
Commentary by David Carr, The New York Times

Content never became king — search did — but the notion continues to lure otherwise careful companies to the deal altar with its abundant charms.

Sometime in the near future, Comcast, the largest cable system operator in the country, is likely to buy a majority stake from General Electric in NBC Universal, a huge enterprise with content assets in broadcast, cable and film and on the Web.

It’s just like the good old days, when media titans strode the earth in search of the grail of synergy, a magical elixir that emerged from vertically integrating seemingly disparate enterprises.

In this case, Comcast — a company with around 24 million customers in 39 states that make up 95 percent of its revenue — wants to diversify when cable systems are under a variety of threats.

Nothing like a little deal flow to get the blood pumping. Peter Chernin, former head of the News Corporation, has been brought in as an adviser by Comcast, and the possibility of a change in ownership has ginned up all manner of speculation about the fate of Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC. Even Rupert Murdoch has made noises about kicking the tires on the prize, which adds spice. And just in case people aren’t feeling the nostalgia, the conglomerate Vivendi, a battered expression of a bygone era when synergy was not an epitaph, is in the mix as a 20 percent owner of NBC Universal.

We haven’t seen anything quite like it since the merger of Time Warner and AOL. And that turned out well, right?

Jeffrey Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner and a major competitor to both Comcast and NBC Universal, has seen this movie before and is glad his company is not the star this time. Ever since he took over the company, he’s been busy trying to undo the merger, spinning off the cable division of the company and planning to do the same with AOL.

“Somebody has finally noticed that these things don’t work out so well,” Mr. Bewkes said at a media conference this month, according to Peter Kafka, of the blog Media Memo at AllThingsD. “We love to see our competitors taking risks.”

The deal Mr. Bewkes seems to wish on his competitors would go something like this: Comcast would make an offer of about $27 billion, creating a new separate enterprise that takes on $9 billion in debt while Comcast would contribute its cable channels, including E Entertainment, the Style Network and the Golf Channel, along with other channels and its local sports networks worth about $6 billion. Comcast would give, by some estimates, $6 billion to Vivendi for its 20 percent share of NBC Universal, and then own 51 percent of the enterprise and use cash flow to gradually buy out G.E.

The deal is not without business logic, if you stay away from the S word. It’s not a bad time to be buying NBC Universal, which is struggling with big assets like the peacock network (primetime Leno, anyone?) and Universal Studios (remember “Land of the Lost”? Me neither). But the company’s cable channels — CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, SyFy and USA — are profitable jewels.

And at a time when video on demand is taking off, the enterprise would have lots of audience and plenty of studio product to show, especially as we move to a world where movies are released simultaneously on all manner of platforms. And let’s not forget that the deal comes with a 30 percent stake in Hulu, the online video service, which may not be profitable but could be if it makes the leap to a pay service, which appears likely.

And it’s not as though being a stand-alone cable system were a walk in the park these days. They face all kinds of threats. But cable has been a surprisingly stable business while the rest of the media lurches from hit to flop and back again.

Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, has never made a secret of his desire to diversify the company and with it, his family’s assets. Unfortunately for Mr. Roberts, his shareholders have the ability to diversify on their own and they’d like the company to stick to its core knitting.

According to a report on the potential ramifications of the deal from Bernstein Research, investors have not forgotten Mr. Roberts’s last content crush. “Comcast has spent five years in the penalty box after attempting to buy Disney in 2004,” the report said, mentioning that the company’s stock had underperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index in the last five years by 31 percent.

The report was called “Comcast: Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory?” and lowered the stock’s target price to $18, from $21. Beyond the economics of the transaction, which are very much in flux, the report predicts a rough road toward regulatory approval: “cable-bashing in an election year is a no-lose bipartisan proposition.”

“Media moguls see it almost as a birthright to buy and sell assets, but most of it clearly has not worked out,” said one of the report’s authors, Craig Moffett. “The value of the deal is the conceptual value of vertical integration, and most of it is against the law as a regulatory matter.”

He said that by attracting government scrutiny to the tie-up, Comcast could end up encountering some unintended consequences. He invokes the AOL Time Warner deal, in which the newly formed enterprise had to sacrifice its proprietary messenger service — an asset that would have been golden in the development of AOL — and open it up to other users.

“Where would that company be today if they had not given up AIM?” he said. “At the time, they didn’t even fight that hard because they wanted to get the deal done so much.”

Other stop signs are visible as well, maybe not big enough to halt media companies in full mating frolic, but worth thinking about. Investors have already expressed skepticism, and marginal improvements in earnings will not bring them around. If the price is cheap, investors are free to go ahead and buy shares on their own. And whether he likes it or not, Mr. Roberts is sending some pretty strong signals about his lack of faith in the company’s core business.

“Right now, they are in the most structurally advantaged businesses there is in media,” said Mr. Moffett. “People can talk all they want about content being king, but distribution has historically been a much better business because of the huge barriers to entry.”

Speaking of which, if Comcast is so hellbent on going shopping, there is a company out there that has been orphaned by the conglomerate that owned it. Its stock has not only outperformed Comcast, but also significantly outperformed the market, and it could generate billions in, yes, synergies on the cost side: Time Warner Cable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/bu...ref=television

TV Notes
NBC books 3 more weeks of 'Trauma'
By James Hibberd in his The Hollywood Reporter LiveFeed blog, October 27, 2009

And if NBC comes out and sees its ratings shadow growing longer, it means three more weeks of "Trauma"...

After last night's ratings gain, NBC has officially booked the Monday night medical drama to continue airing for the next three weeks. The network's listings update is typically routine, but in this case sources say it took on some added importance. The relatively pricey drama has been under-performing on Monday nights and speculation was rising that the show might get axed (with "Chuck" fans holding their prayer beads for just such an event). The network renewed new shows "Mercy" and "Community" last week, but not "Trauma."

Then last night's episode climbed 6% to a 1.9. Not much, but you don't want to take a show off the air that's going in that direction -- thus, a stay of execution. The decision on "Trauma" might down to the wire.

(A follower on Twitter just dubbed the show "'Final Destination' + 'Grey's Anatomy' = FUN" which is a rather awesome description).

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/10/nbc-b...eeks.html#more

DVD Review
'On the Road With Charles Kuralt: Set 1'
The CBS reporter's instincts for finding uniqueness in the commonplace made his journeys into America's heartland must-see viewing for two decades.
By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times television critic, October 27, 2009

Back in the 20th century, a CBS TV reporter named Charles Kuralt set off in an RV with no particular place to go to see what was happening there. "On the Road With Charles Kuralt" was the name for the short pieces he filed, which ran in several venues over the years, beginning in 1967 with "The Evening News With Walter Cronkite" and ending a couple of decades later as part of "CBS Sunday Morning," which Kuralt himself hosted for 15 years. A three-DVD set collecting some of Kuralt's televised anthologies of favorite pieces is being released today by Acorn Media, with "Set One" attached to the title. More would only be a good thing, and not too much of one.

From "Huckleberry Finn" to "The Wizard of Oz" to Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" and Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider," stories about going from here to there and having adventures along the way are a cornerstone of our national mythology. If the hippie bikers of "Easy Rider," which hit the screen two years after Kuralt hit the highway, "went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere," Kuralt sees it everywhere he looks. And because he is only interested in what makes a person, place or thing interesting or valuable, there are no politics in his pieces, other than the extremely local politics of doing well by one's kith and kin and talents. You would not know that when many of these stories were filmed there was a war on, or that half the country feared the other half, and vice versa.

Although there was a kind of exclusivity in his inclusiveness -- he was looking for untold stories off the beaten track -- the range of subjects that Kuralt embraces is wide. We meet poor people, working people and a refreshing amount of old people; the carver of carousel horses, the champion shoe-seller, makers of bricks and boats and ginger ale. It is the world of the family farm, the corner cafe where (after the first 100 cups of coffee, and some time on a waiting list) you get your own cubbyholed mug, with your name painted on.

Television is full of things that are sort of like Kuralt's pieces, but they almost always lack his intelligence, curiosity and point of view. And while his downshifting from hard news to "soft," from breaking stories to stories that stretch out over a lifetime, might seem a (self-directed) demotion, the whole point of "On the Road" is that "the news" -- the stuff of tomorrow's history books -- is just a hiccup in the greater, more particular, more abiding history of the People.

Although Kuralt is a presence in his work, he stands out of the way. ("We" is the pronoun he uses, or "you," but rarely "I"). Still, it's his narration that gives it context and meaning, conveyed with a poetic (but never poetical) economy. Of a Fred's Lounge in Mamou, La., where at 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning the party is in full swing, he says memorably, "Fred's Lounge has the smell of beer and joy. It's the place you didn't think existed anymore, the place your mama told you to stay away from when you were a kid, and you grew up, and didn't, and were never sorry."

And so "On the Road" is endlessly watchable, not as history but as some timeless expression of ongoing life. One hopes they are still out there, these people -- or people like them, since many, including Kuralt, who died in 1997, must be long gone. Indeed, the world he reported on was endangered even then -- that was partly the reason for the visit -- and has become no less so as the country grows more conglomerated, super-highwayed and franchised.

But Fred's Lounge remains open for business in Mamou, still smelling, I would imagine, of beer and joy.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,2426170.story

Many of you, (and most assuredly Juan Pablo Montoya) have never heard of Charles Kuralt. Or his name rings just a very faint bell.

You only need to know that he was perhaps the most superb story teller in TV news history. His On The Road pieces won an Emmy and Two Peabody Awards.

Even if you have never heard his name, run, don't walk, to buy or rent this DVD set.

(Thanks to EJ for tipping me off to this fun read….)
Technology Notes
I Come to Bury CRT, and to Praise It
By Michael J. Nelson, hometheatermag.com, October, 2009

In the classic 1957 film Old Yeller, a young man faces a terrible choice when his beloved and faithful dog tangles with a rabid wolf and contracts hydrophobia. Of course, you know how it ends: with a bullet to the head and lots of tears. (Yes, I know, “Where’s the spoiler alert, man?!” You’ve had 52 years to watch it. I refuse to enable your procrastination.) Tragically, I’m smack dab in the middle of my own Old Yeller moment. A recent move gave my wife the perfect cover to do something she has long wanted: order the death of my beloved and faithful 55-inch CRT rear-projection TV. At my work, I have access to the latest LCDs, plasmas, and LED sets, yet at the end of the day, it’s the CRT that sits curled up at my feet and keeps me company.

That’s about as far as I can carry the dog analogy, because my CRT is, well, alarmingly huge. It weighs 215 pounds, and if it was empty, it could comfortably house a family of four. Sure, the kids would have to share a room, maybe the one next to the tennis court. Its frame is made of chipboard wrapped in unattractive vinyl, and it’s surprisingly fragile. It’s also difficult to move, even on its casters, and when you lift it, it proves very unwieldy and is prone to tipping. If I had to amend my Old Yeller analogy, I guess I’d say I’ve been forced to take the life of my beloved, elderly silverback gorilla, the one with dementia, a skin disease, and rage issues. For reasons known only to her, my wife doesn’t share my affection for my rage-filled diseased gorilla and refuses its admittance into our new home.

But really, my loss is symbolic of a larger one: The venerable cathode-ray-tube television technology served faithfully and with distinction for more than 70 years. Yet when it died sometime in the last couple of years, not only did the nation not offer its gratitude, most people responded with a hearty, “Eat it, CRT! Enjoy hell!” Well, I believe it deserves a proper eulogy.

Depending on who you ask, you’ll get one of three answers to the question, “Who invented television?” Some will credit the Russian immigrant Vladimir Zworykin, while others will say it was Philo T. Farnsworth (easily the most awesomely named engineer since Thomas Crapper). Others will simply point at something behind you and run rather than have to address the controversy. But no one disputes that the scanning electron beam, essential to the process, came in a flash of inspiration when Farnsworth was out plowing rows in a field. (Nothing came of his other, lesser flashes of inspiration, once while mucking out the hog stalls, and again, right after being kicked in the side by a mule.) Farnsworth gamely battled it out with Zworykin and RCA in the patent courts, but in the end he was a beaten man, bitter and given to drink (although in fairness, that could have been entirely due to his having seen his invention used to transmit an especially bad episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis).

Television had been broadcasting for many years prior, but it wasn’t until 1947 that regularly scheduled broadcasts began with a show called Puppet Playhouse. Later renamed The Howdy Doody Show, its title character’s grim, befreckled death mask would go on to scare the living hell out of American children for 13 years. The innovation of color came about shortly after that, and because the powers in charge had data showing that not every child in America was terrified at every waking and sleeping moment of every day, they debuted their new technology with a larger number of even more terrifying puppets via Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

Already long in the tooth in the 1970s, CRT saw a bumper crop of entertainment inventions spring up around it, e.g., the video game console, the VCR (and VHS rewinder!), the home video camera, cable TV, and the DVR. Yet it resolutely refused to change or adapt in any way, much like Bartleby, the Scrivener, and Larry King. Even DVD, which is arguably the most successful software format of all time, owes its success to Old Man CRT.

This brings me to my beloved old beast. Why, given its many, countless, manifold, and sometimes dangerous shortcomings, will I be sad to see it go? Because through much coaxing, massaging, cleaning, and manipulating, I got a terrific picture out of it—better than many TVs out there now. Sure, there was a fair amount of maintenance involved. I regularly contorted my ungainly body to clean the mirror, which, because of the static involved, was invariably coated with a thick lacquer of dust. I spent many painful hours on my knees staring at crosshatch patterns. And then there’s the nerve-wracking process of swabbing the delicate plastic lenses—so delicate, I’m told, that a single overzealous swipe of your cloth would mean ruin, shame, bankruptcy, and quite possibly prison.

In a fit of A/V nerdiness not seen since junior high school, I cracked into my CRT’s secret locked menus (secret, that is, if you don’t happen to have access to the Internet or know anyone who does). With the aid of a photographic gray card and a 6500K flashlight, I painstakingly tweaked its gray scale. With the same super-secret service menu, I adjusted its gamma and overscan settings. (Yeah, I know, my wife is a lucky woman.)

But that’s over now. I will either give it away or junk it and get a sexy, slim plasma TV that requires minimal tweaking and almost no maintenance. But I will always think back on my beloved gorilla of a CRT and all the hours I put in and think, “See you in hell, you worthless beast.”

http://hometheatermag.com/curtain-ca..._to_praise_it/

Cable Nielsen Notes
'Dexter' Slays Ratings Record
Oct. 25 episode most-watched in series history
By Alex Weprin -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/27/2009

The October 25 episode of Dexter was the most-watched episode in its four seasons, Showtime says. The episode drew just over 2 million viewers during its 9 p.m. premiere and 11 p.m. replay. That is the first time any Showtime show has topped 2 million viewers in a single night.

Likewise, season three of Californication is also delivering its best numbers ever, averaging 776,000 viewers during its 10 p.m. premiere slot, up 60% from season two.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/art...ngs_Record.php

(From Marc Berman’s October 27, 2009, Programming Insider newsletter and blog at Mediaweek.com)
http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums?a=t...2152#358102152
Monday’s Nielsen Cable Finals
(posted by Travis Yanan)

Monday Night Football (8:30pm, 199 minutes)
- 12.766 million viewers
- 8.1/13 HH
- 5.2/14 A18-49

WWE Raw (10pm, 70 minutes)
- 5.752 million viewers
- 3.3/6 HH
- 2.1/6 A18-49

WWE Raw (9pm)
- 5.417 million viewers
- 3.1/5 HH
- 2.0/5 A18-49

(Jon &?) Kate Plus 8
- 3.026 million viewers
- 2.0/3 HH
- 1.4/3 A18-49

Real Chance of Love 2 (90 minutes)
- 2.503 million viewers
- 1.7/3 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49

Cake Boss (10pm)
- 2.302 million viewers
- 1.5/2 HH
- 1.0/3 A18-49

Cake Boss (10:30pm)
- 2.279 million viewers
- 1.5/3 HH
- 1.0/3 A18-49

Little People, Big World (8:30pm)
- 1.976 million viewers
- 1.3/2 HH
- 0.8/2 A18-49

Little People, Big World (8pm)
- 1.667 million viewers
- 1.1/2 HH
- 0.7/2 A18-49

No Excuses with Master P
- 1.448 million viewers
- 0.9/2 HH
- 0.8/2 A18-49

Greek
- 0.773 million viewers
- 0.5/1 HH
- 0.4/1 A18-49

Lincoln Heights
- 0.763 million viewers
- 0.5/1 HH
- 0.2/1 A18-49

http://twitter.com/travisyanan

http://travisyanan.blogspot.com/

Note: Previous overnight ratings are available at Marc Berman’s Programmers Insider blog:

http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/t...51/m/460103871

TV Notes
TNT nearing deal for 'Southland,'
(But don't pop the champagne just yet)
By Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times staff writer, in the “The Company Town” blog, October 27, 2009

In Hollywood's worst-kept secret, Warner Bros. and TNT are putting the finishing touches on a deal to bring the dark cop drama "Southland" to the cable channel.

But whether this means "Southland," which NBC abruptly canceled earlier this month, is getting a new life or a temporary stay of execution won't be known until next year.

Under the terms being negotiated, TNT will buy the seven episodes that ran last spring as well as the six new episodes that Warner Bros. and John Wells Productions made for NBC. The show is not going back into production because TNT will decide whether to order additional episodes of "Southland" after it sees how the drama performs. The show isn't expected to make its cable debut until after the new year, and the new episodes might not run until late February or early March.

The deal comes a few weeks after NBC pulled the plug on "Southland," a decision that surprised Warner Bros. and John Wells. Last season, NBC ran the show in a 10 p.m. time slot, but this season it was moving the drama about Los Angeles beat cops to a 9 p.m. home because Jay Leno now occupies all of the network's 10 p.m. time slots.

Although NBC expressed support of the cop drama last spring, the tone of the show apparently got a little too grim for the network. But because the time slot change meant "Southland" would air at 8 p.m. in much of the country, NBC wanted to cut back on some of the violence and language. There was resistance from the Wells camp, however, and NBC ultimately decided to drop the show and replace it with "Dateline," which is much cheaper to produce. There has been speculation that cost was also a factor in NBC's decision to cancel "Southland" -- the network had to pay about $1.5 million in license fees per episode, people close to the program said.

Because Wells is one of Warner Bros. biggest producers and is responsible for "ER," which made boatloads of money for the studio, there was a real push to find a new home for "Southland."

TNT will likely schedule "Southland" at 10 p.m. We'll see how it does against Leno.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ente...pagne-yet.html

Critic’s Notes
Airwaves that echo with fright all month long?
The horror! The horror!
By Tom Shales, Washington Post TV Critic, in his “Shales on TV” column, Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Traditionally there are 12 days of Christmas, and eight days of Hanukkah. Why, then, would we possibly need "31 Days of Halloween," which is this month's slogan and gimmick on cable's Syfy (formerly Sci Fi) channel? Many, if not most, other cable networks -- and broadcast networks, too -- will take ample or excessive notice of Halloween, principally by showing films and TV shows filled with ghastly, gory imagery and blood-gushing violence.

Q&A, Transcript: Shales on TV live: Too much Halloween programming on Syfy

Don't worry; what follows won't be a lament for the good old days of atmospheric horror classics or the moodily suggestive dark dreams of cinematic artistes. It's actually the cheap, cheesy horror movies that tend to be the most fun anyway -- although today, with technically sophisticated special effects within reach of even the most minimalist filmmakers, cheesiness is relatively hard to find. Syfy's weekly made-for-TV monster pictures are sometimes hilarious steps in that direction.

My complaint about TV's saturation programming for Halloween is neither the barrel-bottom quality of the films nor their thundering banality. It's the truly wretched excess of the horror programming that is discouraging -- frightening for the wrong reasons, and giving occult, satanic and paranormal subjects worrisomely excessive expanses of airtime.

At Syfy, Tuesday's bill of fare includes the greatest low-budget horror film of all, George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," but also such dubious delights as "Shave and a Headcut" and "Taxi Cab Carnage" (both are episodes of the "repackaged" cable series "Scare Tactics," incompetently hosted by Tracy Morgan) as well as the films "Joyride 2: Dead Ahead," "The Deaths of Ian Stone" and "House of the Dead 2." And so on and so on and blah blah blah.

Syfy, which NBC Universal owns, airs PG-13- and R-rated movies that have mostly been trimmed back to eliminate some of the violence, almost all of the sex and many a four-letter word. But even films that air during daylight hours, when children have easy access to the channel, can include explicit gore, the likes of which wouldn't have been shown even on late-night TV 10 or 20 years ago. Heads are lopped off, gruesome wounds inflicted, bodies splayed and splattered, and those inescapable "forces of evil" often depicted as victorious. Ever since Richard Donner's gigantic hit, "The Omen," in 1976 (stupidly remade in 2006), it's been fashionable for horror movies to have cynical, unhappy endings in which "bad guys" win and good ones are defeated.

Children now grow into adolescence with relatively little reassurance from pop culture that good eventually will triumph over evil, that bad people (or the monsters who represent them) don't win. The long-obligatory last scene or denouement in which all's been put right with the universe, or some little town, and the hero and heroine walk bravely into the sunset is no longer even vaguely obligatory. Now the cookie crumbles into the hot ash of hell; everybody's doomed and hope is kaput.

It has been established that large amounts of televised violence desensitize viewers, especially younger ones, to real violence, be it physical, verbal, political or whatever. Thus, kids today get not only a surplus of violence but also a steady, dour diet of pessimism and cynicism. Does this reflect the lowered expectations of post-Watergate generations or does it help breed it? Such chicken-and-egg questions may never be answered unequivocally, but how healthful can it be to expose young people to hours and hours of mayhem and horror in which dismembering and beheading may provoke laughter rather than revulsion?

Many artful, fascinating and challenging horror and sci-fi films have been made, of course. Even some of the teens-in-peril films of recent times can have redeeming virtues. "The Ruins," now making the rounds of pay-cable stations, is a sickeningly gory but ecologically resonant film about young adults trapped in a Central American country and menaced by vicious vines (okay, it sounds funny) that, perhaps in a spirit of ecological revenge, want to devour them, first by insinuating themselves into the humans' veins and arteries.

“The Mist," from a story by Stephen King, traps a cross section of humanity in a supermarket after a mysterious thick fog has settled over their town. From within the mist are dispatched truly horrible frights -- giant tentacles that rip off flesh with a single slap, enormous insects that splat against the supermarket's large windows and try to get inside, and a collection of animated spiders that rank among the scariest bugs in screen history. But in an actual attempt at social commentary, the mist also provokes monsters from within the stranded villagers, including a deranged fanatic who persuades some of her subjects to demand human sacrifice.

"Cloverfield," the 2008 horror film that took many knocks for its jumpy and bumpy hand-held camerawork, is more watchable on television than it was in theaters, and its primal scenario about a monster who for absolutely no explicable reason sets about destroying New York from the tip of Manhattan on up, is thrillingly brilliant. It translates old-fashioned horror into something that is much more intimate and somehow hideously plausible.

Even the best horror films can obviously be inappropriate for children, and at any hour on subscription channels like Cinemax, a horror film may be unreeling that would give a child nightmares of unwieldy intensity and realism. Hollywood will keep cranking out horror films for the target teenage audience that flocks to them on date nights, and for a very receptive global market. But everything ends up on television eventually, and there are so many of these films in the vast cinematic library now that they've become more than just bothersome.

The truly scary part is what they might do to the malleable mind of a sensitive child, and whether desensitization is becoming not just a worry but a genuine public health problem.

Maybe next year, Halloween could be shriveled back to just two or three or four nights -- 31 is a nice number of ice-cream flavors but an absurdly excessive amount of dreadful ordeals.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...27.html?sub=AR

Will NBC?

There might be a tad more reason to expand the Christmas celebration.

On a cynical, business level you are probably, and sadly, right.

That was not the point Shales was making, however.

A month of hard core violence and mayhem may well get viewers. What it does to those viewers is something we won't know for a while.

Television Review
'Friday Night Lights' tackles Season 4 changes,
And scores
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

As every high school football coach knows, it's tough to replace great talent.

That goes double for Coach Eric Taylor, who lost not only his best players but also his team, having been maneuvered out of Dillon High and exiled to hard-luck East Dillon.

But it's also the task faced by TV's best slice-of-life drama, Friday Night Lights, a still-remarkable series that has prolonged if not quite improved its life by innovative cost-sharing and cost-cutting.

The sharing part is why this former NBC series will once again premiere on DirecTV, with NBC repeating the run sometime next year. As for the cuts, you won't notice them in terms of production values, because the show's shot-on-location, bare-bones, handheld look has always been integral to its reality-driven storytelling style.

But you will notice them in a cast that, while still centered on the excellent and Emmy-undervalued Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, has gone through considerable changes in the supporting roles.

Though Zack Gilford (who plays Matt Saracen), Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins), Aimee Teegarden (Julie Taylor) and Jesse Plemons (Landry Clarke) remain, Adrianne Palicki's Tyra, Gaius Charles' Smash, Minka Kelly's Lyla and Scott Porter's Jason are either gone for good or reduced to guest status. In their places are some new East Dillon students (including actors Michael Jordan and Jurnee Smollett) who may someday pop, but don't tonight.

To be fair, while cash may be the main precipitating factor behind the shifts, it's not the only one. The change also reflects the show's desire, forced though it may be, to follow life's normal progression. Kids grow up, graduate and leave town. And that switch has been hastened by the plot upheaval that finds Eric trying to revive the football program at a new, dirt-poor, competing high school.

Even so, to think you can shrink and cut the cast without consequence is not just foolish, it's insulting. It's an insult to the writers, because it implies a character introduced in one hour can be as rich and real as one they've spent three years developing. And it's an insult to the actors because it implies their contributions were valueless.

Yet much that was great remains in the cast members who carry over, and in the show's desire to detail the struggles of everyday life in small-town America. Is Lights the show it was when it began? No. But it's still better than most anything else on the TV field.

Any coach would count that as a win.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/televis...t-lights_N.htm

I think NBC will give it every possible chance.