Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2536

I'll be watching it. The Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl are the only two football games left before the 7 month drought of no football sets in. I need to put off my withdrawal symptoms as long as possible.

You need to look into the Channelmaster 7400 dual tuner HD DVR that works with OTA with no monthly charge. We have been using the DTV Pal DVR with an indoor antenna for three years with no monthly fees. OTA HD is the best source of HD available.

Pretty good stuff here. I'll try to pick up on some of it when I get back in country.

You can always switch over to the NBA to fill in the gap. Lots of intresting stuff there. Ie, some polls are showing the Clippers to be a better team than the Lakers this year. I myself don't believe it but there you have it.

You've got to be kidding, the NBA? I wouldn't watch those overpaid jokers if there were no other sports on, period.

Obituary
Prolific TV director John Rich, 69, dies
By Southwest Riverside News Service Staff - Jan. 29, 2012

John Rich, a legendary television director in the estimation of the president of the Directors Guild of America, died today at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.

Rich had directed episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, All In The Family, The Brady Bunch, and Gilligan's Island, among other legendary TV shows of the 1960s and '70s. Along with Henry Winkler, he produced MacGyver.

The DGA had made Rich an Honorary Life Member. The guild announced today that he died at his home of heart failure after a brief illness.

No one who ever sat in a meeting with John will ever forget his stories about the early days of the guild or his lovably salty sense of humor, DGA president Taylor Hackford said in a statement today.

Hackford recalled that a forerunner of the directors guild was just being organized by movie industry luminaries like Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock and others when Rich this brash, young television wunderkind griped that no TV directors were included. The very next day, John got a call that they had appointed him, Hackford said, as an alternate member of the board.

After becoming a member of the movie-oriented Screen Directors Guild in 1953, Rich was instrumental in its merger with the Radio and Television Directors Guild into the DGA in 1960, and served more than 50 years on the DGA board. After his retirement, he served as chairman of the Directors Guild Foundation.

But Rich made a bigger mark on the industry through his work on the sets. He helped set up the now-legendary live TV broadcast at the dedication of Disneyland in 1955, which put the ABC television network on the air.

He directed some of the Mister Ed and Gilligan's Island shows in the dawn of television, and moved on to three-camera film and then helped pioneer live audience TV sitcom work.

He won an Emmy for The Dick Van Dyke Show, and won two Emmys, two DGA awards and two Golden Globes for All In The Family. He was busy in the '70s on the Norman Lear shows Maude and The Jeffersons, as well as Good Times and The Brady Bunch. Later he worked on Where's Raymond?

His movie credits include a pair of Elvis Presley vehicles, Easy Come, Easy Go and Roustabout.

The DGA bestowed its highest honors to Rich, including the Robert B. Aldrich Award in 1993 for his extraordinary service to the guild and its membership, and a 2003 Honorary Life Member Award.

The guild said Rich was survived by his wife, Patricia Dodds Rich, children Catherine Rich, Anthony Rich and Robert Rich, and step-children Megan Lewis, Kimberly Beres, and Dana Benton, and eight grandchildren.

No plans for services have been announced.

http://www.swrnn.com/2012/01/29/prol...-rich-69-dies/

SATURDAY's fast affiliate overnight prime-time ratings -and what they mean- have been posted on Analyst Marc Berman's Media INsight's Blog.

Q&A
The Sunday Conversation: Bradley Whitford
By Irene Lacher, Los Angeles Times - Jan. 29, 2012

Bradley Whitford, 52, has shuttled among theater, film and television since his Emmy-winning run on "The West Wing" ended in 2006. He plays one of three men arguing about an abstract painting in the Pasadena Playhouse's revival of "Art," opening Sunday, and stars in the horror film "The Cabin in the Woods," opening in April.

Is this your first appearance onstage at your hometown theater? How did this come about?
David Lee, a wonderful director, and Sheldon Epps, who runs the theater, asked if I was interested in doing this particular role in this particular play. And I am a big fan of [playwright Yasmina Reza's] writing. Thank God, I have dim memories [of it], so I'm not chained into doing a crappy Alan Alda imitation of the production in New York, which I saw I think about 10 years ago or so. But I loved the play.

Part of what I responded to is I share my character's outrage about a lot of contemporary art. It seems like an originality contest, and surely novelty seems like a pretty shallow aesthetic, and then it gets monetized in the art world as this exclusive club where some people know what it's about and some people don't and very rich people collect it....

"Art" is also a play about friendship between men. And Reza told Houston's Alley Theatre that she thinks that "often men have no real friends … they have colleagues, contacts, but not friends…." Do you think that's true?
I would disagree with that. I have friends. These guys are certainly friends. The piece of art creates a fantastic discussion, but one of the things dramatically you have to figure out is how could a conversation like this explode these friendships? And it's interesting because we all know there are certain situations where we should not talk about politics, because with politics, like art, any discussion is not simply an intellectual exercise but it's a reflection of your values, and it goes down deep, and if you really disagree about them, it can explode.

Film.com called "The Cabin in the Woods" one of the 12 most anticipated films of 2012. I know co-writer Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" creator) gets people's attention, but why do you think it's getting so much buzz?
I think because it's a very original smart take on a very popular genre, and Joss just has a wild kind of wind-tossed imagination. And there's Drew Goddard, who [co-wrote and] directed it, and it's a bunch of really good actors, which is fun. I got to work with Richard Jenkins, which made me happy.

When you work in Hollywood, do you see a prominent difference in the work of people who do theater and Hollywood as opposed to people who are just Hollywood?
I think with certain kinds of material it's just a huge advantage. I myself cannot imagine what it would be like to be an actor who hadn't done theater simply because when you're an actor you're a pawn in storytelling, and if you're onstage you're telling a story over and over, you're telling the entire story eight times a week. If you're in a movie or TV show, you're telling it once out of sequence in snippets. You just get to act more [in theater]. I think it's the reason we had such a great group in "The West Wing." The reason was they were all theater actors.

What has life been like post-"West Wing"? Did your success help your career or did more people than you would care for continue to think of you as your character, Josh Lyman?
You're going to get typecast as whatever you do, but to be typecast as that guy who was complicated, passionate, funny, that's fine. But yeah, people think you're going to be a smart guy in a suit. But my God, what a wonderful experience. The only problem with it is it does spoil you; honestly, not to be pretentious but the creative experience, that kind of writing and those kinds of actors and directors and that arena, for God's sake. What do you do after that? A show about a canning factory?

Horror is such a well-explored genre. What did Joss do that was original?
I don't want to give it away. I have to find some way to keep my kids from seeing it.

How old are they now?
Not old enough. 13, 12 and 9.

Well, good luck with that. Because it's bloody?
Yeah. It's many things, but it is a horror movie. I'm actually very personally conservative about what my kids are exposed to, and I've raised them like any parent where you're fighting the inevitable premature loss of their innocence because of a lot of crap that gets made.

It is, by the way, upsetting to me that we live in a culture where the definition of obscenity is the act of procreation.

You haven't seen some of your own movies and TV episodes. Why is that?
It just makes me uncomfortable. I really do not like to watch. It's probably vanity. It's disappointment, and I see through it, and I'm just not a fan. At least 60% of "The West Wings" I never saw. I knew how they ended.

You once said you thought actors were alcoholics waiting to happen. What did you mean by that?
What I meant by that was it's a very tiny percentage of humanity that would entertain the notion of making a spectacle out of themselves, whether on television or even more excruciatingly live onstage. And that indicates to me an incredibly assertive part of that person. The problem is you take these people with this incredibly rare assertive impulse and put them in a business that renders them totally passive. Usually you have to wait for somebody to write the play or to direct the play; you have to get chosen for the play; you have to see if the play does well. There's no resolution to that kind of assertiveness that is the crux of what I think makes a lot of actors very good and the passivity that the business imposes on you.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,3751773.story

TV Reviews
At the Races, In the Money
By Nancy DeWolf Smith, Wall Street Journal

Apart from the beautiful horses, racing can be an ugly business, and because of the beautiful horses no sport is more heartbreaking. So be warned: HBO's addictive new drama, set at and around the Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles, is designed to pull you into this tortured world and hold you there until you see the light. It's hard to look away.

The cast is large and the show drops us into the stream of each character's life without much explanation. Go with the flow until it begins to make sense. It will.

One main story revolves around "Ace" Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), a crime boss just out of prison; his chauffeur of many talents, Gus Demitriou (Dennis Farina); and the Irish-bred horse Ace has stabled at the track with trainer Turo Escalante (John Ortiz).

Ace is bent on revenge against former associates, and his plan includes an investment in the track. The rest is left murky, however, so that when Ace hires the young financial whiz Nathan Israel (Patrick J. Adams), we cannot anticipate the young man's real purpose in the story. Ditto the shy woman (Joan Allen) looking to start a center where prison inmates help rehabilitate sick or injured horses. Is that all she is?

The other central character in "Luck" is trainer-owner and breeder Walter Smith (Nick Nolte), who has poured all his hope and plenty of fear into a big, fast colt who is linked to Smith's clouded past. This is a great role for Mr. Nolte, who gets to put a different spin on a character he portrayed in the movie "Affliction" and show us a battered man whose soul and capacity for love, or at least kindness, are still intact.

But the glory of "Luck" is that almost everyone in it has dramatic appeal. Usually, this is because we can see into their hearts. Take the novice jockey Leon. Played by Tom Payne, he's a gentle innocent whose happiness only requires the opportunity to ride. Yet nature has given him a body that is bigger than it should be. The agony of his weight-loss running sessions in the California sun is so pitiable that it plays like tragedy.

On the upside is cheerful Rosie (Kerry Condon), an Irish workout rider who has a magical rapport with horses but is still struggling to get mounts as a race jockey. Her grace even in disappointment is more touching because her competition for a coveted job is Ronnie (real star jockey Gary Stevens), an alcoholic and drug-snorting former champ now trying to make a comeback.

Racing is still a man's world, and track veterinarian Jo (Jill Hennessy) must be strong to stay honest in a business where a lot of people will do anything for an edge. Her job also means delivering bad news, a constant reality in thoroughbred racing, about a horse's health. Jo is so tough, in fact, that when she does cry, we can hardly watch. And then there is jockeys-agent Joey, played to perfection by Richard Kind as a Pagliacci whose depression makes him seem pathetic but also sinister.

One of the series' most remarkable achievements comes with the four characters who function as racing's typical degenerate gamblers. Four men who live for the track, for the bet, and without hope of escape from the degrading boom and mostly bust nature of their addiction. At first, they appear in broad outline: the bitter and mean wheelchair-bound Marcus; the excitable and slow-witted Renzo; the ambitious and frustrated Lonnie; and the formerly handsome Jerry (Jason Gedrick), a masterful handicapper whose gambling addiction is terrible to behold.

As "Luck" progresses, however, this bedraggled gang, almost Shakespearean in its dramatic form and function, reveals a key to the entire series. The revelation begins when the men, watching a race, see an unfamiliar horse gallop to the finish with the strides and speed of a true champion. Such an animal is the miracle, the holy grail of the sport. All at once, the hard-core gamblers smile, their ravaged faces transformed by the joy of the moment. Watching a thing of beauty, able to appreciate its majesty, they themselves look beautiful.

There are many more moments of humanity discovered or restored in "Luck." The most bizarre incident involves a suicide attempt gone wrong that rekindles a lust for life in a person who barely seemed worth saving. In another instance, a man compelled to commit murder signals regret with a redemptive flicker of his eyes.

There is much in this series that is gorgeous, like the sight of steam rising from a horse's back while it is being soaped and washed after an early morning workout. There is a lot that is not pretty. After one scene of stunning violence, the possibility of more can't be forgotten.

Strong writing and acting ensure that we soon become so sensitive to the characters that we feel for them the way they feel for their horses. This is a predictably searing experience in a venue like racing, where big dreams must usually be followed by crushing disappointment. When Nick Nolte's character is watching his beloved colt run, Mr. Nolte's body rises and sinks with the rhythm of its hoofbeats, and we are moved by the sight but filled with worry.

Yet most everybody keeps going. They rise every morning and, as one gamblers says, "step up to the plate" in the hope that one day will be better than the last. That is what "Luck" is really about. When all is said and done, the series is an invitation to play the game of life.

'LUCK'
Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO

* * * *

Take five perky and pink-clad sorority sisters from America (think "Legally Blonde"). Send them to England to recruit members of the first-ever sorority in the U.K. from among the denizens of a grimy industrial city and.... "Sorority Girls" is what reality television was made for. The setting helped guarantee a number of applicants with inelegant accents, heavy makeup and hard-drinking habits. Leeds is a site of the proverbial 19th-century dark, satanic mills of "Chariots of Fire" fame.

As rush interviews begin, the Americans can barely conceal their horror, for instance when a prospective new member of Sigma Gamma turns out to be a human pin cushion, with piercings on one hip, two nipples and various other parts. But they give other applicants high marks for trying: "Normally I'm not a fan of someone's bra showing," one American sister says. "But hers was cute and it did match her shirt."

'SORORITY GIRLS'
Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on TLC

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...estyleArtEnt_6

Methinks you have the wrong heading on this piece, at least I hope so!

HitFix.com's Alan Sepinwall Interviews "Chuck" Co-Creator Chris Fedak about Friday's Series Finale (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEE FRIDAY's FINAL TWO EPISODES)

Yikes! You're right, Whitford is alive and kicking. I'm the dead AVS poster walking for goof-ups like that... sorry!

I agree, just sayin'.

You missed my point. It was not about being able to find an OTA DVR, but integrating OTA channels with a cable DVR so that cable wouldn't need to carry or pay for locals. I should be allowed to subscribe to cable without paying for locals I could get for free with an antenna. It's the technology that forces me to pay for locals because they don't provide an integrated solution. I DON'T subscribe to cable/sat to get LOCAL channels. I subscribe to get CABLE channels, their IPG and their DVR. I pay cable to integrate the locals, but I'd subscribe to cable/sat even if they didn't provide locals and even if it meant I'd need 2 DVRs. IMHO, locals are simply blowing smoke when they say THEY add value to cable/sat. It's completely the other way around for me. Cable/sat add value to the locals.

If I were to go OTA-only, I'd certainly consider the 7400, though I think there are cheaper alternatives. However, as long as I need to pay cable for their channels, I might as well use their equipment or one designed for their system.

You can do that with satellite or with a Tivo with cable.

Fine in theory and great for those of us who are "AVS savvy." Joe Sixpack isn't messing with an antenna. The millions of apartment dwellers and probably most of the TV consuming public neither have the wherewithal nor the desire to fool with antennas. While you and I are perfectly comfortable slinging aluminum onto the roof or attic (and for some, me included, it's a sport), JSP gets annoyed with having to move rabbit ears around just to pick up the different OTA channels. And he/she really gets annoyed when people moving around the house and using appliances interferes with reception. Add to that storms, airplanes, power lines and anything else that can interfere with an OTA signal and you quickly discover why reliable ghost*-and-interference-free reception of local channels is a primary reason people turn to cable or satellite. America WANTS a plug-and-play solution to their television needs. OTA isn't it for them. For us, yeah. We get it and we don't see why they don't. But they don't. Millions can't. You'll never convince the multitudes that they need to go back to the days of tinfoil on rabbit ears.. which for many, is the only way they can get OTA. And for some apartment-dwellers, sticking something gangly on top of their pristine 60-inch flat screen just ain't happening. Oh, you want apartment landlords to install sophisticated antenna distribution systems? Good luck with that.

*Ghost = multipath.

No, I can't, I'm still paying for locals if I subscribe to cable or sat. I want the option to subscribe to cable or sat without the locals, but with an antenna port and ATSC tuners on their DVRs. That's the way I try to look at things now. I'm not paying for the locals, I'm paying cable to integrate them with their DVR. However, it galls me that the locals extort and get my money for "free" TV. And no amount of rationalization is going to change my mind.

In fact, I will celebrate the day local stations no longer exist and all I get is the primetime programming from ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC. I care nothing about any other OTA network or time period. I'd be perfectly happy if those 4 networks were cablenets and all I had to subscribe to was cable or sat. And, yes, I also understand that my cost might still be the same or maybe even more, but that money would not be lining the pockets of the Sinclair's or Belo's of the world, especially since they charge more now and deliver much less than they used to just a few years ago when I still watched them for news, etc.

I'm not talking about J6P, I'm talking about ME.

However, let's say you're right (and I agree you are), I'm still not getting anything from the locals. I'm paying CABLE to integrate the locals. The locals don't add value, they simply exist, with or without cable/sat. If cable/sat didn't exist, I'd still be getting the locals without paying extra. Cable isn't reselling me the locals, they are selling me the integration and that's what I'm willing to pay for. And cable/sat actually brings more viewers to the table than the locals can deliver on their own, another reason the locals shouldn't be making me pay. They base their ad rates on viewership and then penalize me for adding to those viewership numbers.

Look, I understand the economics and I don't really mind paying. However, I object to the BS they sling saying that they add value. Be honest and simply admit it is another revenue stream we are ill-equiped to fight.

His last sentence, "OTA HD is the best HD available", isn't necessarily true, either.

The dtv transition was a godsend for the NW North Dakota DMA. With NTSC, NBC's surround was screwed up because they had an ancient auto stereo synthesizer, which , if a mono signal was sensed, it created stereo. This may have been fine back in the '84Miami Vice 2 channel days, but if you were at home listening to pro logic, as soon as the synth circuit kicked in, you were treated to dialog in all 5 channels.

Then there was the ABC affiliate, video signal had poor color, and video levels peaked at about 70ire on the waveform. At least now with ATSC, we pretty much get the same feed.

No, we don't.

This was true in the early days of DTV, when most stations lacked the equipment to muck with their network's digital feed, but today picture and sound quality can vary quite a bit from one affiliate to another.

In my area, for instance, the audio frequency response is noticeably wider on Baltimore CBS and NBC and Washington FOX programming than it is on the same programming on Washington CBS and NBC and Baltimore FOX. Pictures are generally sharper on Baltimore ABC and FOX than on Washington ABC and FOX and Baltimore CBS has far less macroblocking and other motion artifacts than Washington CBS.

And then there's the Washington PBS affiliate, WETA. They downconvert the PBS feed from 1080i to 720p so they can squeeze in THREE additional subchannels. Before they started downconverting, the HD would macroblock if a talking head's eyes blinked. Now the HD picture is not only very soft but the color purity is atrocious compared with the 1080i picture on Maryland Public Television.

If degradation like this isn't happening in your area - which you cannot really know without two or more affiliates to compare - count your blessings.

Oh, and p.s. don't blame your local affiliate for that. In the last years before the analog shutdown, the ABC SD feed had atrocious color quality, on every affiliate I ever looked at, whether OTA, cable, or satellite. The difference in color quality between a Canadian SD broadcast of Lost and the ABC SD broadcast was like night and day.

Windows 7 Media Center + ATSC Tuner + CableCARD tuners can do this just fine.


I'm an apartment dweller and I pick up channels 50 miles away just by pointing an antenna at the ceiling.

TV Notes
SAG Awards TV: The Equivalent Of A Rerun
By Nellie Andreeva, Deadline.com Team - Jan. 29, 2012

In the TV series categories, SAG members largely stuck to their choices from last year, repeating 5 of the 6 series winners from 2011. Alec Baldwin and Betty White appear primed to “own” the lead comedy actor and actress titles for as long as they’re on TV, which, given the fact that Baldwin is signed for another season of 30 Rock and that White shows no signs of slowing down at 90, could be awhile. Baldwin extended his record to 6 consecutive wins, one for every season of 30 Rock to date. White is also at a perfect batting average, scoring 2 consecutive trophies for 2 years on Hot In Cleveland. In total, this is White’s third consecutive SAG Award as she made the unusual transition from a lifetime achievement award in 2010 to regular SAG trophies in 2011 and 2012. Baldwin and White’s enormous popularity among fellow actors means that ABC’s Modern Family, which repeated as best comedy series ensemble, is yet to nab an individual acting prize for its cast.

Also frozen in time were the best drama series ensemble and the best actor in a drama series categories, which went to last year’s winners, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and its star Steve Buscemi. The only “new blood” in the series categories was in the drama actress category won by veteran actress Jessica Lange for FX’s American Horror Story, in what surprisingly was her first SAG trophy.

There was a mild surprise in the actor in a TV movie/mini-series category won by Paul Giamatti for Too Big To Fail. This is the first ever win for the HBO movie, which competed at the Emmys and the Golden Globes. But then, Giamatti is one of those actor’s actor who is well respected by his peers, this is his fourth consecutive SAG Award. No surprises on the distaff side won by Emmy and Golden Globe winner Kate Winslet for HBO’s Mildred Pierce.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/sag-...nt-of-a-rerun/

* * * *

TV Notes
SAG Awards TV Winners List: ‘Boardwalk Empire’, ‘Modern Family’, Steve Buscemi, Jessica Lange
By the Deadline.com Team - Jan. 29, 2012

Primetime Television

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
PAUL GIAMATTI / Ben Bernanke – TOO BIG TO FAIL (HBO)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
KATE WINSLET / Mildred Pierce – MILDRED PIERCE (HBO)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
STEVE BUSCEMI / Enoch “Nucky” Thompson – BOARDWALK EMPIRE (HBO)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
JESSICA LANGE / Constance – AMERICAN HORROR STORY (FX)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
ALEC BALDWIN / Jack Donaghy – 30 ROCK (NBC)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
BETTY WHITE / Elka Ostrovsky – HOT IN CLEVELAND (TV Land)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
BOARDWALK EMPIRE (HBO)
STEVE BUSCEMI / Enoch “Nucky” Thompson
DOMINIC CHIANESE / Leander Cephas Whitlock
ROBERT CLOHESSY / Ward Boss Jim Neary
DABNEY COLEMAN / Commodore Louis Kaestner
CHARLIE COX / Owen Sleater
JOSIE & LUCY GALLINA / Emily Schroeder
STEPHEN GRAHAM / Al Capone
JACK HUSTON / Richard Harrow
ANTHONY LACIURA / Eddie Kessler
HEATHER LIND / Katy
KELLY MACDONALD / Margaret Schroeder
RORY & DECLAN McTIGUE / Teddy Schroeder
GRETCHEN MOL / Gillian Darmody
BRADY & CONNOR NOON/ Tommy Darmody
KEVIN O’ROURKE / Mayor Edward Bader
ALEKSA PALLADINO / Angela Darmody
JACQUELINE PENNEWILL / Lilian
VINCENT PIAZZA / Lucky Luciano
MICHAEL PITT / Jimmy Darmody
MICHAEL SHANNON / Agent Nelson Van Alden
PAUL SPARKS / Mickey Doyle
MICHAEL STUHLBARG / Arnold Rothstein
PETER VAN WAGNER / Isaac “Icky” Ginsburg
SHEA WHIGHAM / Sheriff Elias Thompson
MICHAEL KENNETH WILLIAMS / Chalky White
ANATOL YUSEF / Meyer Lansky

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
MODERN FAMILY (ABC)
AUBREY ANDERSON-EMMONS / Lily
JULIE BOWEN / Claire
TY BURRELL / Phil
JESSE TYLER FERGUSON / Mitchell
NOLAN GOULD / Luke
SARAH HYLAND / Haley
ED O’NEILL / Jay
RICO RODRIGUEZ / Manny
ERIC STONESTREET / Cameron
SOFIA VERGARA / Gloria
ARIEL WINTER / Alex

Lifetime Achievement Award
MARY TYLER MOORE

SAG Honors For Stunt Ensembles

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series
GAME OF THRONES (HBO)

http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/sag-...opher-plummer/

I wouldn't watch the NBA even if they were playing in my back yard.

You are upset at the wrong channels. You should be upset at ESPN for charging $4.69 for their channel. They are the reason pay TV bills are so hi. And reality show channels, shopping channels, and religious channels are the ones lowering the quailty of the service that you are paying for. The big 4 networks are the most viewed networks and people like me want to have access to them without having to pay a high price for all the crap I just mentioned.

I get MeTV for free OTA and they beat then heck out of any classic TV channel on cable or sat.

TV Notes
Monday’s Highlights “Gossip Girl” on KTLA
By Los Angeles Times' 'Show Tracker' Blog - Jan. 29, 2011

[ALL TIMES LISTED ARE PACIFIC TIME]

"GOSSIP GIRL" celebrates its 100th episode with the at 8 p.m. on KTLA.

SERIES

106 & Park: The hip-hop countdown show devotes a special episode to the challenges of teen parenting (6 p.m. BET).

Heat Seekers: This new episode explores the spicier side of San Diego’s food scene (8 p.m. Food).

The Mortified Sessions: “Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston and “Community’s” Danny Pudi share their torturous tales in this new episode (8 p.m. Sundance).

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: The women reunite to reminisce in Part One of a two-part special (9 p.m. Bravo).

RuPaul’s Drag Race: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, is a special guest judge on the talent competition’s horror-themed season premiere (9 p.m. Logo).

Cake Boss: Next Great Baker: The winner is revealed as the culinary competition ends its latest season with an expanded episode (9 p.m. TLC).

Bizarre Foods America: New Orleans is the latest destination for host Andrew Zimmern (9 p.m. Travel).

SPECIALS

2012 Screen Actor’s Guild Fashion Wrap: This new special dishes on who wore what, and how, at last night’s big awards ceremony (8 p.m. TV Guide), and “Fashion Police: 2012 SAG Awards” does likewise (10 p.m. E!).

Inside the NSA: America’s Cyber Secrets: This new documentary special examines the ordinarily hush-hush work of the National Security Agency (9 p.m. National Geographic).

MOVIES

Inglourious Basterds: Brad Pitt leads a squad behind enemy lines during WWII in director Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 action tale (8 p.m. TMC).

Black Swan: Oscar winner Natalie Portman is all tutus and tiaras in director Darren Aronofsky’s dark 2010 dance-themed melodrama (10 p.m. HBO).

SPORTS

Basketball: The Clippers welcome the Oklahoma City Thunder (7:30 p.m. FS Prime).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...l-on-ktla.html

TV Notes
With Homeland,' Showtime Makes Gains on HBO
By Bill Carter, The New York Times - Jan. 30, 2012

Showtime has long been second to HBO among premium cable channels, but on the strength of its critically acclaimed drama Homeland, it has seized a coveted title from its larger rival: the channel with the most discussed, praised and award-festooned cable show of the year.

At the Golden Globes, Homeland won the best drama award, helping Showtime match HBO in the number of awards won (three) and setting up what could become a more competitive battle between the rivals. As Showtime edges closer to its competitor's subscriber numbers, though, HBO is ready to counter with a host of prominent projects over the next six months.

Awards mean a lot to pay-cable channels. They are particularly important because you are trying to create a sense of value that's worth subscribing to on a monthly basis, said David Nevins, Showtime's president for entertainment. He added, That best-series win is a breakthrough moment that says cutting-edge stuff is being done here.

Offering compelling series is the main way premium channels keep the subscriber cash flowing. We don't think it's an accident that five years ago we were at 13 million subs, and now we're pushing 22 million, Mr. Nevins said.

Showtime has improved its subscriber base to 21.3 million from 13.8 million in 2005, according to the media analysis firm SNL Kagan. Over the same period, HBO has held relatively steady at 28 million to 29 million.

The leveling off of HBO's growth, its executives conceded, can be traced in part to a fallow period in its series development about four years ago, when its entertainment management was going through an upheaval as Chris Albrecht was replaced by Michael Lombardo, the president for programming at HBO, and Richard Plepler, the co-president of HBO.

We had precious little in the coffers, Mr. Plepler said.

Mr. Lombardo added, We were getting a little spooked by our own success. Sopranos' and Sex and the City' were so big, what happened was an inertia to try new things.

HBO famously passed on Mad Men which has collected a trove of awards for AMC and it took time and a full-court press, as Mr. Plepler put it, to bring the biggest names in Hollywood back to HBO.

But HBO never lost the advantages it has always enjoyed, money and brand identity. And those factors have long drawn many stars to HBO.

The talent agency WME represents big series at both pay-cable networks, including Homeland at Showtime and Boardwalk Empire at HBO. Ari Emanuel, the head of the agency, said Showtime was surely becoming more relevant.

Homeland' has helped them, he said. But he added, What we know is there are two iconic brands in cable: ESPN and HBO.

One reason, he said, is that HBO has huge advantages in areas like financial resources, technological innovation and brand recognition. While Leslie Moonves, the president and chief executive of Showtime's parent, CBS, is an executive you never bet against, Mr. Emanuel said, Les doesn't have the economic firepower of HBO.

In recent years, HBO has earned about a quarter of the total annual profits for its parent, Time Warner, generating slightly more than $1 billion annually. Showtime is growing, but remains considerably behind. A Morgan Stanley report on CBS estimated that the cable channel would earn $692 million in 2011.

The channels earn significant revenue from subscriber fees: usually about $16 a month for each subscriber. HBO also owns virtually all of its programming while Showtime owns about 50 percent. (Homeland is owned by the Fox studio.) That means HBO makes more in ancillary sales to international outlets, for example. And HBO has been ahead in distribution expansion, most recently with the mobile app GO, now available to more than five million users.

Audience totals still tip heavily toward HBO. Mr. Lombardo said three series Boardwalk Empire, with 8.4 million; True Blood, with 12.6 million; and Game of Thrones, with 9.3 million were attracting more viewers than any show, save for one, in the network's history. Its biggest all-time hit remains The Sopranos.

By comparison, Showtime's most popular series, Dexter, reached 5.5 million viewers in its latest run. Homeland drew an average of 4.4 million. Still, Showtime is demonstrating consistent growth, with its new series House of Lies up 13 percent from the initial numbers for Homeland, and the second-year drama Shameless up 61 percent over its first season.

Mr. Plepler of HBO said, It's not a zero-sum game. A lot of good work is being done. He mentioned several shows on other networks. Our job is to play our game, and if we do that we're going to have more than our fair share of quality and more than our fair share of brand recognition.

HBO is positioning itself to meet the challenge from Showtime and other cable rivals like AMC and FX with a coming roster of programming that includes the most prominent group of shows HBO has ever assembled in one year.

We have never had as many new shows premiering as we will have in 2012, Mr. Lombardo said.

The lineup starts on Jan. 29 with the drama Luck, a racetrack series created by David Milch (Deadwood) and directed by Michael Mann (The Insider), which stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. Following that is a searingly broad comedy, Life's Too Short, from Ricky Gervais, on Feb. 19.

In March, the movie Game Change, about the nomination of Sarah Palin to be vice president, will most likely stir controversy thanks largely to Julianne Moore's starring portrayal.

In April, Game of Thrones, which has emerged as one of the network's hottest properties, returns, along with two new comedies, Girls, from the young filmmaker Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture), and Veep, which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the first woman to be vice president. And in June, HBO will add Newsroom, the latest television creation of Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) about the cable news world, starring Jeff Daniels.

That doesn't count the lineup of movies and special projects on HBO's runway, which includes a host of big names like Michael Douglas (as Liberace) and Matt Damon (as his lover); Clive Owen (as Ernest Hemingway) and Nicole Kidman (as his lover, Martha Gellhorn); Al Pacino (as Phil Spector) and Helen Mirren (as his lawyer); and Ewan McGregor (in an adaptation of The Corrections).

Showtime has some big projects of its own, including a drama called Ray Donovan with Liev Schreiber, and a series based on the lives of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the sex researchers.

Mr. Nevins stressed that both networks were well positioned to cash in on the renewed attention.

We're extremely profitable, he said, though he declined to cite any figures. HBO is extremely profitable. They continue to roll along but it's much more of a game than it used to be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/bu...nes&emc=tha210

I've said all that before, a number of times, and there was no need to repeat it.