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TV Review
'Longmire' is an unrushed law enforcement drama
Stars Robert Taylor as a Wyoming sheriff and Katee Sackhoff as his fresh-from-Philly-homicide deputy. Their chemistry is promising.
By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times - June 2, 2012

If the success of History's recent miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys" is any indication, it's still tough to beat a good tale from the frontier. Whether emanating from an iPhone or a 90-inch flat screen, there's something about hoofbeats stirring up mountainous mulch and men in big hats meting out justice that twangs the American heartstrings deep and true.

Though set in the modern west, A&E's new law enforcement drama "Longmire" (Sunday at 10 p.m.) hits many of the same notes. A place of flat plains edged with pine-crowded mountains, Absaroka County, Wyoming, still answers to its sheriff, one Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor). Where his forebears once spit tobacco, he picks up litter, but the watchful squint and laconic lyricism conspire to make him an American icon (never mind that Taylor is an Australian) and offer viewers a hero that should appeal equally to fans of Tom Selleck's Jesse Stone and Dennis Weaver's "McCloud."

It's a slow-moving show, to judge by the pilot; the camera, like the sheriff, takes pleasure in Big Sky country when it can and refuses to be rushed when surveying a crime scene or a witness. Fortunately, one of Longmire's deputies, Vic Moretti, is played to ponytailed perfection by Katee Sackhoff, which should bring the youngsters around for a look-see. We hear her before we see her, in a series of answering machine messages Longmire carries no cellphone as she tries to shake her boss out of bed and up the mountain where trouble is brewing among the sheep herds and hunters. Trouble that quickly becomes more serious than it first appears, involving a rogues gallery of local characters, including Longmire's best friend Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), the hatefully ambitious deputy Branch (Bailey Chase) and an ongoing turf war between Longmire and police officials of the local reservation.

The mystery in the pilot is mildly interesting but plot is clearly not the point here. Based on the novels by Craig Johnson and written by John Coveny, "Longmire" is an evocation of place and character, a reminder that not every crime is committed in a big city and not every police force is run by homicide detectives and/or special-interest consultants, be they novelists, psychics, forensic anthropologists or assorted geeks. Six months out of Philadelphia homicide Vic serves as the citified acolyte to Longmire's prairie prophet the sheriff's first clue when he turns over the victim's body is that it belongs to someone he does not know, a rare thing in Absaroka County.

Where Longmire strides, Vic bounces, and though Sackhoff doesn't have quite enough to do in the pilot, the chemistry between the two will no doubt be the river running through the show. While anything can happen over time in a TV series, their relationship appears remarkably, and mercifully, free of sexual or even romantic tension, despite their being the two best-looking people in the county and probably the state. (No offense meant, citizens of Wyoming.)

The reasons Vic has ditched Philly for the Old West are not given in the pilot, which is promising for future episodes, and though she complains about the sheep and the snow and Longmire not respecting her talent, she seems happy enough to do her job and keep a sympathetic eye on her boss.

For Longmire is nursing that deep essential sorrow we too often demand of our heroes. His wife died the year before, and despite the pleas of his grown daughter Cady (Cassidy Freeman), he is loath to let her go.

How, and if, a man can heal his own heart is the question "Longmire" sets out to answer with steady tread and shoulders squared. It's an old-fashioned sort of show, working unapologetically toward wisdom rather than cleverness, attempting to depict its setting as neither romantic nor dismal, the local color rising as much from silence as words. No one banters in "Longmire"; they speak.

And when that doesn't work, they shoot.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,4094393.story

TV Notes
No Retrial For Nicollette Sheridan Desperate Housewives' Case, Appeals Court Rules
By Dominic Patten, Deadline.com - Jun. 2, 2012

The pending retrial of Nicollette Sheridan's Desperate Housewives wrongful dismissal case has been put on ice by the California Court of Appeals. In a ruling issued Friday the court said, it is further ordered that the retrial currently set for September 10 is hereby stayed pending further order of the court. The appeals court ruling seems to agree with defendant Touchstone Television Productions and ABC Studios that it is not wrongful termination under state law when a contract renewal is not exercised. However, Sheridan's lawyer Mark Baute points out the court order notes the case can be examined under Occupational Safety and Health Administration's labor code violations. Baute also says the court wants the wrongful termination claim more fully laid out and he will be filing those briefs soon. The temporary stay is designed to clarify and resolve those issues before the September trial starts, says Baute. Adam Levin, ABC's main lawyer in the case, did not respond to a request for comment. A hearing is set for August 9 for trial Judge Elizabeth Allen White to make her case for a retrial.

Sheridan's first case against Touchstone, ABC Studios, ABC Entertainment and Desperate Housewives' Executive Producer Marc Cherry ended in a mistrial on March 19 when the jury was deadlocked. Cherry was dismissed as a defendant before the end of the first trial and would not have been a defendant in any retrial. Sheridan has contended that her character was suddenly killed off in early 2009 because of complaints she made over an alleged head-hitting incident on the Desperate Housewives set with executive producer and series creator Cherry on Sept. 24, 2008. The three weeks of the first trial saw a parade of former ABC executives, such as former ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson and former ABC Studios boss Mark Pedowitz, and both Sheridan and Cherry, among others, take the stand. Desperate Housewives aired its final episode on May 13, 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/ma...ref=television

that sounds about right - but I think they got slapped around pretty good [sued] during the Richard Jewell stuff and since have pulled all conjecture out of their reporting - at least that's how it seems to me. But I agree that it softens the blow of their message.

I seem to remember sitting in our family's livng room in the late 60's one Sunday night when this new program called 60 minutes came on for the first time. At least that's what I remember. Did I get it right?

Partially right. Sixty Minutes did indeed start in 1968, however it originally premiered on Tuesday evenings and at 10pm on alternating weeks. It wasn't for a few years till the mid 70s that 60 found it's Sunday evening post football home. And from there the ratings skyrocketed.

I was going to quote 1968 but was afraid the year would be wrong. Well at least I got some of it right. That's one of my bigger memories. How the years have flown by.

You are correct. They are, one way or another. It is HOW they deal with their human bias in their reporting that I care about.

Certainly at the national level, it has become fashionable to show your bias in either direction, I don't care what organization you work for. Ratings are based on that these days. I don't think that is right. Call me old fashion. Cronkite was as liberal as Olbermann, but you never got that from his reporting. That is why he is remembered as a great journalist. My personal favorite was another liberal named Edward R. Murrow. Again, when it came to straight reporting, he kept his opinions to himself, but on news magazine shows like "See it Now", the forerunner of "60 Minutes", he did allow his bias to show through on occasion. His expose on Sen Joseph McCarthy in 1954 was the first time a bias was shown, (and gave CBS Chairman Bill Paley heart palpitations for months after) but then even Murrow was careful in using McCarthy's own words to tell the story, but still be fair how it was presented. That is the element that is missing today, fair presentation.

Personally, as someone who gets a paycheck from the "Fourth Estate", I don't partially like it. As Joe Friday used to say, "Just the facts, ma'am" is all I want from my news, local or national. I would rather see the news segments stay straight news. The option segments, knock yourself out on bias. Newspapers have had that line in the sand for hundreds of years until the last 10 or so and it worked well. TV has gone from hardly any bias to that is just about all there is. There needs to be a balance. There isn't.

IMO, CNN has tried to play it too straight with very little opinion and during prime mostly entertainment news (King/Morgan)and straight politics, while MSNBC has gone total bias in all segments, and FNC has gone ultra bias during the opinion segments (Primetime) and does allow a little bias thrown in the regular reporting segments throughout the day (Shep's throwdown on the bridge during Katrina being one that constantly keeps coming back). It looks to me that CNN is going to have to put in some kind of opinion programming to counter MSNBC and FNC if they want to have better ratings than what they have.

At the local level, most stations really do not want bias in the reporting. It hurts the bottom line too much. I was in a meeting the other day where it was once again reiterated that we report news, we don't create it or slant it. It has all to do with creditability in the community. You lose cred and you lose money. It is that simple.

Just my point of view.

Foxeng,
What you are saying seems to be true IMHO. Most old guard broadcast news does indeed try to be unbiased. The key word being "try." But all these news organization are made of human beings who do have beliefs, whether they be liberal, conservative or some other flavor, and one can't help but realize that they sneak into the work product on occasion. Like you, while not responsible for content, just the technology to help create and move that content, I have witnessed many instances that prove that the actual content creators do strive for facts and fairness. I've also been there when they've failed miserably. Yes, I helped put the 60 MINUTES II Bush, Texas Air National Guard story on the air.

I can not on any regular basis watch FOX or MSNBC. FOX because I cringe when I hear the thoughts expressed, MSNBC simply because, while I agree with most of the views expressed, I don't want to be spoon-fed what is basically sugar for me, I want real facts that make me understand there are two sides to every story. CNN on the other hand, just seems to keep repeating the same stuff over and over again, so that too is rarely viewed by me.

What I personally appreciate about both The CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News, both of which I TiVo, is that they both provide a very good 22 minute package of the day's news along with some other information. There is little redundancy in either broadcast, and I know both are products that are thought out over the day, or days leading up (for the softer stories), and not just slapped together as the broadcasts are on the air. They're not perfect, but they are perhaps the most efficient usage of my TV news viewing time. And again, I have faith that there is a strong effort to be a "just the facts" presentation.

I hope that doesn't happen. CNN fills a need - they're at least trying to play it down the middle. There has to be someplace where you can go to "Joe Friday" it: just the facts, ma'am.

I think the public in general regards CNN in that way, whether one personally believes it or not. Their ratings surge during crises periods when people just want to find out what's going on. I must confess that's the only time I watch it.

But then during the in-between periods, people want a little more entertainment, a little more showtime as foxeng mentions. That's okay; I'd rather have them there when I need them than have to rely on a filtered message when the real news happens. Sources of credible information are essential to the health of a democracy, and in this new internet age where misinformation can spread like wildfire it's important to have somebody who's at least trying to tell it like it really is.

CNN is still on the TV's out in the public arena for the most part, so people are still aware of it and still absent mindedly watch the commercials while they're waiting on their plane or their lunch or something. So I would think there's enough value in the brand to keep them on the air and their operations sufficiently funded. As long as they don't lose money, maybe that's enough. Let the ratings chips fall where they will and soldier on.

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

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

Obituary
Richard Dawson, Host of 'Family Feud,' Dies at 79
By Jane Kellogg, The Hollywood Reporter - Jun. 3, 2012

TV staple Richard Dawson, the Emmy Award-winning original host of Family Feud, as well as Hogan's Heroes' Corporal Peter Newkirk, died Saturday. He was 79.

“It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my father passed away this evening from complications due to esophageal cancer," the legendary TV comedian's son Gary posted to Facebook early Sunday morning. "He was surrounded by his family. He was an amazing talent, a loving husband, a great dad, and a doting grandfather. He will be missed but always remembered…”

The British actor died from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan Memorial hospital, according to his son.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...bituary-332426

I'll counter your Wolf and Candy with Erin and Anderson. But I don't think that either Erin or AC are burning up the ratings charts. It just seems like CNN has been directionless in their programming for the last several years.

I would agree. FNC and MSNBC anchors seem to be more into their stories.

Commentary
Perspective: The tyranny of Puttnam's Law in American culture
Producer-turned-mogul David Puttnam's brief foray into upending the status quo shows that in Hollywood and elsewhere it doesn't pay to fail boldly, much to the detriment of the creative spirit.
By Neal Gabler, Los Angeles Times - June 3, 2012

When it comes to contemporary American culture, its slogan ought to be "same old same-old." Same old movies — one bombastic comic book adventure after another. Same old TV shows — one "Friends" clone after another, from "How I Met your Mother" to "Happy Endings" to "Whitney" to "Men at Work." Same old journalism. Same old politics. There are, of course, outliers and renegades, but there seem to be fewer of them nowadays, and they are just that: outliers. For all the obsession with the new and different, we seem to be living within déjÃ* vu.

If you are looking for an explanation for this cultural gravitational pull that drags everything to the predictable center, it may very well be what one might label "Puttnam's Law" after David Puttnam, the British film producer. Puttnam's Law should take its place alongside Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong), Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the time available to complete it) and the Peter Principle (a person rises to the level of his or her incompetence) as a basic tenet of modern life. Indeed, if you understand Puttnam's Law, you will understand a great deal about the cultural poverty that surrounds us.

Puttnam was regarded by many as the savior of the British film industry in the early 1980s — he won the best picture Oscar for "Chariots of Fire" — when Columbia Pictures, then under the ownership ofCoca Cola Co., decided to tap him as its head of production in 1986. It was a bold move. Puttnam was known for making small prestige pictures, Hollywood for making bloated commercial ones. And Puttnam not only embraced the difference; he touted it. No sooner had he taken office than he issued a manifesto in which he excoriated the "tyranny of the box office" and the "lowest common denominator of public taste" to which Hollywood had so often pitched its films. To say he was a maverick would have been an understatement.

And so Puttnam roared through Hollywood. In short order, he attacked the talent agents who at the time virtually ran the entertainment industry, dismissed one of Columbia's prime producers, Ray Stark, and reviled stars who, he lamented, made exorbitant salaries that he felt extorted the studios. He even disdained making "Ghostbusters II," a surefire hit, albeit one at a steep cost. Instead, he announced a slate of 22 films at an average budget of $11 million — the sorts of films on which he had made his reputation — on the theory that no single movie could bankrupt the studio and that a few hits could greatly enrich it.

So what happened? Puttnam so threatened the status quo that barely a year after taking the job and before a single film from his slate was even released, he was unceremoniously forced out of the studio, though he would claim to have left of his own volition. He had made a lot more enemies in Hollywood than friends, but even so there was an inordinate amount of schadenfreude at his demise. The consensus was that Puttnam was an arrogant fool. If he had only kept his mouth shut and made the typical big-budget movies, he probably could have remained at the studio even if his movies bombed — his successor, Victor Kaufman, had made those sorts of movies at Tri-Star and still got the promotion — because everybody in Hollywood made those movies. Puttnam's crime was not in failing — but in failing by doing something no one else in Hollywood would have done.

Thus Puttnam's Law: It is more acceptable to fail in conventional ways than in unconventional ways. And its corollary: The reward for succeeding in unconventional ways is less than the risk of failing in unconventional ways. In short, you can screw up with impunity so long as you screw up like everybody else.

This is not only the iron law of the entertainment industry. It is the iron law of life. No one wants to be caught out on a limb for fear of having it sawed off behind him. Or put another way, there is safety in numbers even if there isn't necessarily wisdom. When Matthew Weiner wrote his"Mad Men"pilot and then went around pitching it, he was told repeatedly that it was unsalable because it was set in period and because its protagonist was unhappy and flawed, which is to say, it was unsalable because it wasn't like anything else on television.

(Of course "Mad Men" eventually did get made and is still a hit. At least AMC had the fortitude to break from the herd.)

When NBC decided to replace Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show," despite his high ratings, withConan O'Brien because everyone in television hungered after a younger demographic, no heads rolled even as the ratings were crashing. It was the acceptable move. But when NBC, trying to pacify Leno, then put him in the 10 o'clock slot, that was a crime because no other network would have done such a thing.

When New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick opted to go for a first down deep in his own territory two seasons ago in a critical game against the Indianapolis Colts rather than punt, as just about every other coach would have done, he suffered endless ridicule.

There is a scene in Alexandra Pelosi's documentary aboutGeorge W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, "Journeys With George," in which a reporter rises from his desk at the end of the day in a press room filled with other reporters and asks, "What is our story today?" In other words: What are they all going to be writing? One might think that reporters might strive to look for the odd angle or the unreported element — to separate themselves from the pack. You'd be wrong. That's Puttnam's Law.

Thus, even when you are wrong, you have the defense of working within the consensus. When you are wrong outside the consensus, you have no defense. You are on your own. That's Puttnam's Law again.

Puttnam's Law is also readily applicable to politics and economics. Woe betide the politician who proposes something new and different, which is why Mitt Romney is still peddling tax cuts, even though they demonstrably failed in the Bush administration, and why President Obama followed a war plan in Afghanistan that was essentially forged by consensus and that changed only when the consensus changed. Puttnam's Law also helps explain why Wall Street geniuses who should have known better pursued high-risk strategies that brought on the Great Recession and continue to pursue them, as JP Morgan recently showed. Everybody did it. The prudent ones were the outliers, and where are they now?

To be fair, America has long been in the grip of Puttnam's Law. Conformity is comfort. Early in the 19th century Tocqueville remarked, "I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." But the law operates with greater force now because the culture has become so status- and success-conscious at its upper echelons that there is more at stake by risking independence, and because mass culture itself intensifies the fear of being different. For all our vaunted individualism, majority not only rules in America; it rules with an iron hand.

It is often said of Hollywood that it is like high school with money, meaning there is the same childish fixation on status. But when it comes to peer pressure as well, that joke is sadly accurate about nearly every sector of respectable adult life. Most people prefer self-protection to the risk of being ostracized. As a result, we increasingly live in retreat from anything that is daring, exciting or different because what would the other kids think if we didn't all do what they were doing? So there is a monotony in American mainstream culture, an overwhelming sense of groupthink, for which there is no punishment save the awful damage it wreaks on our national imagination and on our sense of creative adventure.

And that's Puttnam's Law.

Gabler, author of "An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood," "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" and other books, is a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at USC. He is writing a biography of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...0,672709.story

16 years to the day after Ray Combs committed suicide.

TV Notes
They’re Pretty, Normal and in Wheelchairs
By Megan Angelo, The New York Times - Jun. 3, 2012

The first few moments of the pitch tape that landed on the desk of the Sundance Channel’s general manager last fall verged on mundane, in terms of reality TV: four women seated at an outdoor brunch table, breezily gabbing.

“I thought, ‘All right, they’re beautiful, but how is this right for us?’ ” said the executive, Sarah Barnett. “Then the camera pulled back, and I saw they were all in wheelchairs.”

Maybe Ms. Barnett should have seen the twist coming: the pitch, for the series “Push Girls,” which begins Monday at 10 p.m., had come from Gay Rosenthal, the producer whose résumé includes “Little People, Big World,” the TLC series about little and average-sized members of an Oregon family, and “Ruby,” the Style network show that followed a formerly 500-pound Georgia woman.

Ms. Rosenthal’s programs have never had trouble attracting attention, some of it critical. Reviewing “Little People” for The New York Times, Virginia Heffernan wrote, “We get to stare at unusual bodies while pretending to do something good for us.”

It may be impossible to turn a lens on a group with defined physical differences without being called exploitative. In any case, Ms. Rosenthal is used to this and used to dismissing it. “A lot of people are cynical and just go to that place,” she said. “Fine. Say that. It’s not true. It could be, but we’re telling the story with respect.”

The “Push Girls” story began when Ms. Rosenthal met Angela Rockwood, a model and actress in Los Angeles, for lunch. A mutual friend had introduced them; Ms. Rosenthal was eager to profile Ms. Rockwood’s romantic relationship.

“I was married to sort of a celebrity at the time,” said Ms. Rockwood, who has been a quadriplegic since a 2001 car accident. She and that celebrity, the actor Dustin Nguyen (“21 Jump Street”), have since separated. “Gay really wanted to focus on our love story,” Ms. Rockwood said. “But I kept bringing up the girls.”

“The girls” are Ms. Rockwood’s circle of pretty, ambitious, wheelchair-using girlfriends. “They’re my world of how I deal with my paralysis,” Ms. Rockwood said in a telephone interview. She persuaded Ms. Rosenthal to meet them at her home. The producer planned on a quick drop-by. “Five hours later I was still there,” she said. “They’re amazing. I knew: This is the show.”

“Push Girls” focuses on Ms. Rockwood and three other women Ms. Rosenthal met that night: Auti Angel, Tiphany Adams and Mia Schaikewitz. Of the four, all but Ms. Schaikewitz, who suffered a spinal rupture, were paralyzed in car accidents. All live in the Los Angeles area and work in various fields (including graphic design and dance, as in dancing professionally in a wheelchair). And all spend far more time on camera reflecting on love, work and motherhood than they do discussing life with a wheelchair. (A telling moment from the show: Ms. Rockwood cold-calls modeling agencies while using her knuckles and mouth to work the phone.) Which brings us back to the brunch table and the element that Ms. Rosenthal said she hoped would keep viewers engaged.

“In the beginning, sure, there’s a gawk factor,” Ms. Rosenthal said, recalling the reception for “Little People, Big World” upon its debut in 2006. “People wanted to know, ‘How do they drive?’ Now, it’s just about a great mom and dad raising kids. With ‘Push Girls’ it’s four girlfriends juggling dating and babies and careers. Their lives are interesting, with a dramatic twist.”

That angle — young women just trying to figure it all out — was ultimately what sold Ms. Barnett. “I never thought, ‘Oh, we need to make a show about disability,’ ” she said. Rather: “There are so many shows in the scripted world about female friendship that I feel are finally accurate. But I didn’t see many in the unscripted space.”

It’s worth noting that unlike the tense casts of, say, Bravo’s “Real Housewives” series, the women on “Push Girls” are genuinely friends, not acquaintances hurriedly bundled together before shooting began. Ms. Rockwood met Ms. Angel at a rehab facility just days after Ms. Rockwood’s accident. Three years later she encountered Ms. Schaikewitz in an acting class. Ms. Rockwood has known Ms. Adams for four years; Ms. Rockwood invited her to go with the group to a concert shortly after Ms. Adams moved to the area. “She never thought she would have BFFs in wheelchairs,” Ms. Rockwood said.

But Ms. Adams clearly warmed to the idea: she and Ms. Rockwood are now roommates. Acceptance and adaptation are the real themes running beneath the show’s mimosa-and-gossip scenes. So the process doesn’t look too easy, Ms. Rosenthal has worked in a fifth character: Chelsie Hill, 20, whose paralyzing injury occurred more recently than that of the main characters. As Ms. Barnett said, “She doesn’t want to identify as someone who’s always going to be in a chair.”

That puts Ms. Hill, to some degree, in contrast with the other stars. In a later episode, Ms. Barnett said, “the question of ‘if you could walk again, would you?’ comes up, and the answer is not a resounding yes.” Ms. Rockwood in particular sees positive transformation in her paralysis. “Before my accident I wasn’t comfortable with my body,” she said. “I was a gym rat. Now I can’t hold in my little belly, and I have these noodle arms, but I feel sexy.”

Not that she’s interested in sugarcoating the full experience. Especially as she continues to pursue modeling gigs, Ms. Rockwood has become well-versed in how uncomfortable people can be interacting with a disabled person, and specifically how paralysis can devastate women. “It’s a huge thing for a woman to be able to walk and sashay,” she said. “You see that light dim.”

But she’s confident that, with the help of Ms. Rosenthal, “Push Girls” can restore some of that brightness. “I love Gay,” said Ms. Rockwood, who said she had no concerns about appearing in the series. “She already understands the formula of things people are not used to seeing.”

Ms. Rosenthal is more concerned with the people on the other end of that equation — her disabled stars and potential disabled viewers. “It’s so important to them, this message that we can live our lives to the fullest and have a positive outlook,” she said. “They’ve been waiting for this.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/ar...levision<br />

Wow!

Wow! That's fantastic! Congratulations to everyone who has ever posted here!

Professorial, grandfatherly Wolf scares people? I find that hard to believe. Candy - well, she's deeply cynical, intelligent, informative, and not the vaccuformed 'beauty' sort that TV seems to prefer. So, yes, I guess she could be scary to some.

Shep's always been a bit scary, but he has mellowed of late, actually expressing some opinions that Rupert probably doesn't like. But Megyn - she scares the p*ss out of me. Scary is her shtick. If I saw her on the street, I'd head the other way. If I saw her come into the building where I work, I'd call security, while watching her to see if she was packing a weapon. She is good looking, though.

That's very peculiar. An unfortunate coincidence.

Congratulations and thanks to you Fred, for the idea and all your effort in turning it into the mega-topic it's become.

RIP Richard Dawson. You will be missed.

Don't forget bgooch who really goes to town posting stuff about cable from time to time.

P.S.: Fred, when did you move to TX?

Good catch, I totally missed that.

TV Notes
Monday's Highlights: 'The Real Housewives of New York City' on Bravo
By Los Angeles Times' 'Show Tracker' Blog - Jun. 3, 2012

[ALL TIMES LISTED ARE PACIFIC TIME]

NEWCOMERS ARE WELCOMED on the season premiere of The Real Housewives of New York City at 9 p.m. on Bravo. Ramona Singer and Sonja Morgan.

SERIES

Money With Melissa Francis: The actress-turned-anchor premieres a new show (5 p.m. Fox Business Network).

GTTV Presents: E3 All Access Live: The Spike and Gametrailers crew highlight the video game industry's 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo show (7 p.m. Spike).

America's Got Talent: Auditions continue in Austin, Texas (8 p.m. NBC).

Hell's Kitchen: Chef Gordon Ramsay again puts aspiring restaurateurs through an intense culinary academy in a new season (8 p.m. Fox). Then Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot are back for a third season of MasterChef (9 p.m. Fox).

The Secret Life of the American Teenager: Anne shares news with her family in the season finale (8 p.m. ABC Family).

Wild Justice: This new episode chronicles Operation Fake Cop, a mission to track down a guy who's posing as a game warden (9 p.m. National Geographic).

Gene Simmons Family Jewels: Believing that Gene is having second thoughts about adoption, Shannon arranges for him to meet families with happy adoption stories in this new episode (9:30 p.m. A&E).

SPORTS

2012 French Open Tennis: Round of 16 (6 a.m. ESPN2).

Baseball: The Dodgers visit the Philadelphia Phillies (4 p.m. KCAL and ESPN); the Seattle Mariners visit the Angels (7 p.m. FSN).

College Softball: NCAA World Series Game 1 (5 p.m. ESPN2).

Hockey: 2012 Stanley Cup Final: The New Jersey Devils visit the Kings (5 p.m. NBCSP).

Basketball: NBA Playoffs: The Oklahoma City Thunder visit the San Antonio Spurs (If necessary). (6 p.m. TNT).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...on-bravo-.html

TV Sports
Tiger Woods' dramatic win gets ultra-hyped by CBS announcers
By Michael Hiestand, USA Today - Jun. 3, 2012

Golf broadcasters, before Sunday, seemed almost resigned recently: Even when Tiger Woods played well enough to show up on-air on Sundays, they'd seem kind of silly hyping him as if he were still a golfing god when he wasn't playing that well.

But Sunday, CBS genuflected when Woods made a 50-foot chip on the 16th hole at the Memorial that sent him to victory.

"That was incredible!" gasped reporter David Feherty. "Does that remind you of anyone?"

As Woods flashed the fist pump that used to define TV golf replays before it largely disappeared, analyst Nick Faldo noted: "We haven't seen that reaction for years."

Jack Nicklaus, dropping by the TV booth at a tournament he hosts, said: "That was one of the most incredible shots you'll ever see."

Tiger Is Back, suggested lead announcer Jim Nantz a minute later: "This is the one moment people have been waiting for for three years."

And it's not just that everybody was caught up in that moment. Woods' win had a lucky theatrical touch: Viewers saw him congratulated by Nicklaus for his 73rd win — tying Nicklaus' career total. Seemed almost scripted.

After time to cool off during a few commercials — including Woods in a TV commercial (for Nike) that represented another sort of Woods comeback — Faldo said Woods is "obviously now back on top of everything."

Nantz, after recalling Woods' pitch-in as "a shot absolutely beyond description" addressed the potential monumentalism: "Is Tiger back? He certainly looked like it big-time today."

Nobody could blame golf's TV outlets for writhing in ecstasy at the thought of resurrecting the 50%-plus ratings spikes that came when Woods bestrode the golf universe.

But, seriously, is that what we witnessed? "I think this is a turning point," Faldo said in a phone interview after the broadcast. Now, he says, Woods has "go-to" shots that he can count on when there's "a gun to you head" and one "you'd trust your life on. … He's tried some weird and wonderful moves in the past year that we've all cringed at. But this has been the best week Tiger has had in 2½ years."

And NBC's coverage of the upcoming U.S. Open got the best hype imaginable.

ESPN recruit: Once again, an NFL TV gig follows Dancing With the Stars success. ESPN, says spokesman Mike Soltys, will announce today that it's adding Jason Taylor as an NFL analyst. Taylor retired in December after 15 NFL seasons that included 139.5 sacks, six Pro Bowls— and a runner-up performance on ABC's Dancing in 2008 that included a spicy paso doble to the theme of Monday NightFootball.

Taylor will appear on various shows including NFL Live and Sunday and Monday pregame shows as he joins about 25 other former NFL players or coaches at ESPN.

Spice rack: Charissa Thompson today takes over for Michelle Beadle as a co-host on ESPN2's SportsNation (5 p.m. ET), a bouncy talk show Beadle leveraged into a move to NBC for sports and show biz shows.

A former sideline reporter, Thompson says "of course I joke with Beadle that there'll be bumper stickers, 'We hate you, We want Michelle back.' … But if I worried about what people thought of me, I might not still be in the business."…

TBS' MLB analyst DavidWells, noting players in "great physical shape" getting injured this season, said he played it safe when he pitched: "That's why I played big, you can't pull fat." …

The New Yorker magazine has long reprinted other publications' corrections — usually when mistakes were whoppers. But its June 4-11 edition corrects a whopper of its own: It reported that ESPN's Mel Kiper correctly predicted only 22% of the players picked in the first round of this year's NFL draft — Kiper picked 81%. If you've even heard of Kiper, you'd figure he'd predict more than 22% of the first-rounders.

TV school: The NFL, says spokesman Dan Masonson, will announce today a sort of grad school for its annual Broadcast Boot Camp. The seminar, meant to help current and former NFL players learn TV skills, will be hosted by CBS' James Brown from June 18 to 21 at NFL Films in Mount Laurel, N.J. But this year it will include three returnees — ex-NFL players Adam Archuleta, John Fina and Michael Young— who will participate in a new advanced program. They're likely to face grueling two-a-days during which they have to keep reading teleprompters no matter how much melting pancake makeup is dripping into their eyes. The NFL says that of the 105 boot campers since the seminars started in 2007, 44 went on to broadcasting jobs.

Running numbers: Even with small ratings, big markets don't always matter that much. NBC's coverage of the big-market Los Angeles-New Jersey NHL Stanley Cup Final Game 2 on Saturday drew a 2.2 overnight, which translates to 2.2% of households in the 56 urban markets measured for overnights. That's down 12% from Game 2 in last year's Boston-Vancouver Stanley Cup Final. This year's Game 1 was also down compared to last year's … TNT's small-market San Antonio-Oklahoma City NBA Western Conference Finals Game 4 Saturday drew a 4.1 overnight. That's down 33% from TNT's comparable coverage of a Chicago-Miami playoff game last year as TNT's Spurs-Thunder series overall trails Chicago-Miami last year by 33%. But TNT is still on track for its second-highest-rated NBA playoffs in 28 years, with this year's overall ratings trailing only last year's.

On tap: MLB Network's amateur draft coverage on Monday, starting at 6 p.m. ET, will include footage from 22 MLB team draft rooms. … Sirius XM Radio's Jim Duquette, a former New York Mets general manager, today will donate a kidney to his daughter Lindsey, 10. She has a rare kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGC).

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colum...ods/55367480/1

Critic's Notes
Our TV Overlords Command: Watch Our Commercials or Else!
By Art Brodsky, HuffingtonPost.com - Jun. 3, 2012

It's hard to believe these days, but there was once upon a time when TV executives didn't mind consumers taking control over TV sets. There were no lawsuits, like the ones recently filed by the TV networks against Dish for its new commercial-skipping DVR. (A court has ruled for Dish in a preliminary part of the case.)

This is what NBC said in its complaint against Dish in its May 24 lawsuit: "The U.S. broadcast networks cannot provide the news, sports and entertainment programming they have historically created and offered if the revenue-generating ads are systematically blotted out on an unauthorized basis by distributors like DISH." Keep those words in mind.

Once upon a time, there were no cases taken to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the right of consumers to record shows, as in the 1984 Betamax case. These days, of course, are different. Our TV overlords continually demand our strict attention at the same time as they sue innovative companies out of existence.

Yes, there was such an innocent, pristine time when TV execs would let things go. It was 1955, a day gone by when people actually had to get up from their chairs or couches, cross a room and turn a dial to change the channel on the TV or to adjust the sound. That was before the late Eugene J. Polley invented the Flash-Matic, a light-sensor remote control device that allowed people to do those activities.

The device from Zenith was a wonder. It was, the ad said, "A flash of magic light from across the room (no wires, no cords) turns set on, off or changes channel... and you remain in your easy chair."

Of course, that wasn't all the handy gadget did. As highlighted in the ad, in capital letters, "You can also shut off long, annoying commercials while picture remains on screen." Take a look at the ad.

Did the industry complain? No, of course not. Why not? Because that was a very different place and time. There were only three networks (a fourth, DuMont, was on its way out). There were only 432 TV stations in the entire country in mid-1955 -- fewer than the choices on any cable system today. Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, had four stations, New York City had six and Los Angeles had nine. Many smaller cities had only one or two. There was no cable, no Netflix, although for a time there was Phonevision. That was another Zenith innovation, one that allowed customers to dial-up (literally, through their phones) movies to be shown on their TVs in the first pay-per-view model that broadcasters thought might save it from declining ad revenues. The Interwebs at that point weren't even a gleam in an engineer's eye.

It was the golden age of the Outer Limits philosophy of TV: "Sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear." And it has lasted for quite a while, long past the shelf life of the TV show, right up through today. Technology has overtaken it, but the entertainment moguls don't know or don't care. They were in control then and want to be in control now. Let's look at just a partial record, up to the minute.

While there had always been animosity between established entertainment businesses and new models (musicians vs radio, movies vs. TV for example), consumers were largely left out of it until the whole Betamax kerfuffle. It was, of course, the move industry and not TV behind the attempt to outlaw the VCR, but the sentiment was the same -- TV viewers should do what they are told and be grateful. The court upheld Betamax in 1984 on a 5-4 vote but it hasn't been smooth sailing since then despite the ruling.

Ever since then, through lawsuits and legislation, the industry has tried, King Canute-like, to stem the tide of technology and keep their customers at bay by claiming that without our slavish attention to the adverts, we would lose commercial-supported TV -- sort of ignoring the obvious fact that however you look at it, just because commercials are broadcast doesn't mean they are watched. They can be skipped. Channels can be changed. Bathrooms may be visited. Snacks may be prepared. No matter. Lawsuits must be filed, innovation must be quashed and consumers must be threatened. It has ever been thus since the 1980s.

ReplayTV was one notable victim. Introduced in 1999, as a recorder without tape, it featured the ability to skip commercials. As SONICblue, the manufacturer pitched it: "Topping the charts of user-friendly features, Commercial Advance(R) lets you choose to skip commercial breaks all-together when you playback recorded shows. No fast forward, no remote control interaction at all. Just a split-second "blip" and you're right back into the action."

On Oct. 31, 2001, 28 companies including the TV networks, studios and cable companies, filed suit against SONICblue, charging that the new device allowed consumers to make "unauthorized digital copies" of programming "for the purpose of -- at the touch of a button -- viewing the programming with all commercial advertising automatically deleted." This commercial skipping deprived the companies of payment and "diminishes the value" of copyrighted works, according to the suit, piling on that skipping commercials "attacks the fundamental economic underpinnings of free television." On March 23, 2003, SONICblue filed for bankruptcy, and the ReplayTV model died.

Between the time that ReplayTV was sued and the time it died came the clearest expression from the entertainment moguls of what consumers had the right, and didn't have the right to do. It came from Jamie Kellner, then chairman of Turner Broadcasting System, now the head of a small station group. In an interview with Staci Kramer, Kellner described commercial skipping as "theft." He said: "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."

Kellner conceded to a "certain amount of tolerance" for someone to go to the restroom during a commercial, adding: "But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial."

Never ones to leave well enough alone, the entertainment industry went to Congress and persuaded its friendly legislators in 2004 to draft a bill that, among other things, outlawed skipping of commercials in TV shows. This was too much for some legislators, and it was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who held up the bill. In a floor statement on Oct. 11, 2004, McCain said: "Americans have been recording TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for more than 30 years. Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for behavior they've been engaged in for more than a quarter of a century?"

No, but if one buys the Romneyian equivalences, that corporations are people, then the answer is yes. The TV networks want to do the moral equivalent of throwing Dish in jail on the same trumped-up charges that were made against ReplayTV and on the same bases that Kellner outlined.

Look at the language of the recent suits filed in late May. We've seen what NBC said. Here's a selection from Fox: "By stealing Fox's programming to create a bootleg video on demand service for all network prime time programming, DISH is undermining legitimate consumer choice by undercutting authorized on-demand services and by offering a service that, if not enjoined, will ultimately destroy the advertising-supported ecosystem that provides consumers with the choice to enjoy free, over-the-air varied, high quality broadcast programming."

Does this sound familiar? Of course it does. It's the identical argument, even to the word, that the networks have been making for years. Watch what we want you to watch or we'll be destroyed. The networks are great at making threats. Viacom threatened in 2002 to withhold high-definition content without copy controls on broadcast signals. Never happened.

But who wants to take the chance that one day, disaster will strike. Perhaps the next generation of TVs will come equipped with motion and heat sensors to be activated during commercials. That way, our overlords will know who is supporting TV by sitting glued to their seats and who wants it destroyed by getting up or changing the channel.

If you think the media moguls should keep their hands off of your DVR, sign this letter.

Art Brodsky is the Communications Director of Public Knowledge.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-br...l?ref=tv&ir=TV

TV Notes
'Scream' TV Series in Development at MTV
By Lesley Goldberg, The Hollywood Reporter's 'Live Feed' Blog - Jun. 4, 2012

MTV is looking for a Sidney Prescott of its own.

The network is developing a TV series adaptation of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's horror franchise, sources confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

As first reported by TV Line, former MTV executives Tony DiSanto (The Hills, Teen Wolf, Teen Mom) and Liz Gateley (The Hard Times of RJ Berger) are on board to executive produce the project, with a search currently under way to find a writer to pen the project.

What role Scream director Craven and screenwriter Williamson would have with the project has yet to be determined.

Since debuting in 1996, the franchise -- which stars Neve Campbell as Sidney along with Courteney Cox as investigative reporter Gale Weathers and David Arquette as loyal lawman Dewey -- has spawned three sequels. The franchise has grossed more than $330 million worldwide.

Williamson, meanwhile, already has two series set for the 2012-13 television season: the CW's Vampire Diaries and Fox's Kevin Bacon serial killer drama The Following, which was picked up to series in May.

The project comes as the young-skewing network has found success on the scripted side with another feature film-to-series TV adaptation in Teen Wolf, which was based on the 1980s movies that originally starred Michael J. Fox. The werewolf drama returned for a second season Sunday night.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...ent-mtv-332538