Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2812

TV Notes
Meet the Press’ exclusive: Barack Obama is the guest
By Hal Boedeker, Orlando Sentinel's 'TV Guy' Blog - Dec. 29, 2012

David Gregory of NBC’s “Meet the Press” made the biggest headlines last weekend by interviewing Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association. (There was also the matter of Gregory displaying a gun magazine.) It’s a good bet that Gregory will make the biggest headlines this weekend: President Barack Obama is an exclusive guest on “Meet the Press.”

The fiscal cliff will be the main topic. “We’ll hear directly from the president about where things stand and whether a compromise is possible,” the show’s website says. “Plus, David will talk with him about other key issues facing the country as he prepares to begin his second term in office.”

The program airs at 9 a.m. Sunday on WESH-Channel 2. A panel on the fiscal cliff and the Obama interview features NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd, historians Jon Meacham and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and David Brooks of The New York Times.

There will be a lot more about the fiscal cliff on other Sunday morning programs:

CNN’s “State of the Union” talks to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack about guns in rural America and possible price increases on dairy products. The program starts at 9 a.m. and noon. A panel on the fiscal cliff features Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md.; and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. A reporters’ roundtable on the fiscal cliff brings together Jessica Yellin of CNN, Matt Bai of The New York Times, Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post and Jerry Seib of The Wall Street Journal.

“Fox News Sunday” interviews Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., about the fiscal cliff, gun control and Benghazi. The program starts at 10 a.m. on WOFL-Channel 35. The panel will be Bill Kristol, former Sen. Evan Bayh, Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard and Kirsten Powers of The Daily Beast.

CBS’ “Face the Nation” welcomes Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. The program starts at 10:30 a.m. on WKMG-Channel 6. A politics panel brings together Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal, Dee Dee Myers of Vanity Fair and Joe Klein and Michael Duffy, both of Time magazine. There will be reporting by Major Garrett and Nancy Cordes of CBS.

ABC’s “This Week” interviews Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. The program starts at 11 a.m. on WFTV-Channel 9. Other guests are Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho. ABC’s Jonathan Karl will lead a roundtable featuring former Gov. Howard Dean, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Maggie Haberman of Politico and Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair. ABC’ Bianna Golodryga and Leigh Gallagher of Fortune assess the fallout from the fiscal cliff.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2012/12/meet-the-press-exclusive-barack-obama-is-the-guest.html

Critic's Notes
Unwrap these resolutions for 2013
By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Dec. 30, 2012

As 2012 ebbs away and 2013 looms large, it's time to consider the state of prime time and needed fixes to favorite shows.

But it's not just the networks and their series that need to make New Year's resolutions: Viewers also need to reconsider spending some time with the best shows they're not watching.

Resolutions for networks

Fox's "Glee" (9 p.m. Thursday, WPGH) needs to cut its original cast members loose.

Much as they've proved enjoyable over the years, the show's efforts to keep them around smack of illogical desperation.

Does anyone really buy Finn (Cory Montieth) as a temporary glee club sponsor? Or that so many characters who graduated in May would come home from college to participate in high school productions?

An occasional return -- like for the episode set over Thanksgiving -- is fine but beyond that, "Glee" needs to move on. The new characters are sufficient replacements and when the show stays focused on the kids in high school, it's fine -- not great (the show's best episodes are in its past) but certainly watchable.

Now that ABC's "Revenge" (9 p.m. Sunday, WTAE) has gone the way of "Alias" with a plot involving a conspiracy-minded organization ("the Initiative"), it's become convoluted and a lot less fun. The show still has its moments but has lost touch with its "Count of Monte Cristo" inspiration and spun off into cuckoo soap territory. It needs to return to its roots.

New episodes of "Revenge" resume Jan. 6 but then it will be a choice between it and "Downton Abbey," a far superior soap in every way.

As much as I loved "Homeland" (returning next fall on Showtime) in its first season, it rocketed off the rails in season two with too many unbelievable plot twists that brought to mind "24." Not that there's anything wrong with "24" but in its first year "Homeland" was more grounded, less pulpy. That's no longer true.

Then there's FX, home to two of the most sadistic shows on TV, "Sons of Anarchy" and "American Horror Story" ("Sons" returns next fall; "AHS" finishes its second season with four episodes beginning this week at 10 p.m. Wednesday).

"Sons," in particular, is a smart, well-written drama but it is so, so brutal. This season one character ended up with a face full of nails and another saw his daughter set afire and killed in front of him. Edgy is fine but the cruelty got to me.

Same for "American Horror Story," which turned me off with its murderous Santa (Ian McShane, "Deadwood") in what passed for a Christmas episode. Sure, it's a horror show set in an asylum, but those scenes of premeditated mayhem outside Briarcliff Manor were the most upsetting thing I watched this season.

Resolutions for viewers

Any episode now, ABC's "The Neighbors" (8:30 p.m. Wednesday, WTAE) may implode but until it does, it's a TV comedy worth defending. Yes, many critics hated it but the vitriol was wholly undeserved.

The show is wacky in its premise -- human family moves in next door to extraterrestrial neighbors -- but it's perfect for parent-child co-viewing with enough layers to entertain everyone.

Fans of soaps -- I'm looking at you, disappointed "Revenge" viewers -- should give ABC's "Nashville" (10 p.m. Wednesday, WTAE) a shot. And, no, you don't have to be a fan of country music to enjoy the "All About Eve"-style plots revolving around up-and-coming singer Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere, "Heroes") and veteran Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton, "Friday Night Lights"). It's not ground-breaking but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Similarly, ABC Family's "Bunheads" (9 p.m. Mondays beginning Jan. 7) is an enjoyably witty, soapy show from the writer of "Gilmore Girls." It's yet to reach the creative heights of "Gilmore" but this story of a dance teacher (Kelly Bishop from "Gilmore Girls") and her daughter-in-law (Sutton Foster) running a dance studio in a small town is a delight for fans of gentler, serialized storytelling.

"AHS" executive producer Ryan Murphy has the same credit on NBC's "The New Normal" (9:30 p.m. Tuesday, WPXI), a wildly uneven comedy. The story of a gay couple and the woman surrogate carrying their child is occasionally strident in the defense of gay rights. And conservative characters either sound hilariously mad or like liberals trying to write conservatively.

But the lead characters are often entertaining as is the surrogate's bespectacled daughter in this sitcom that mixes outrageous humor with heart.

Fans of cop shows who haven't watched TNT's "Southland" (10 p.m. Wednesdays beginning Feb. 13) are missing out on the best police show on TV. A gritty, character-based drama, "Southland" last season offered a strong dramatic platform for Lucy Liu, who's now starring on "Elementary."

But it's the show's regulars -- Ben McKenzie, Michael Cudlitz, Shawn Hatosy, Regina King -- and sharp writing that make trips to L.A.'s seamy, underbelly worthwhile.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/tv-radio/tuned-in-unwrap-these-resolutions-for-2013-668326/

Can someone please explain why NFL is N.F.L. and NBC is not N.B.C.? Seriously, NYT, what kind of 'style' is that? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

*crickets*

So what do you want, pregnant teens or ghost hunters? If it bothers you there are a few more channels to watch....

The same thing could be said about Fox News using the name "Usama" when everyone else was using the name "Osama" to describe bin Laden. Plus, there were five million ways the late former dictator of Libya's name was spelled.

Just ignore the little periods and move on as if they were never there.

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

Critic's Notes
Small Wonders
Comedy, off the radar.
By Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker

In 1950, when “Your Show of Shows” débuted, it quickly became NBC’s hippest series, a set of dervish-quick skits and parodies, performed live every Saturday night. Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, the lead actors, became stars. New Yorkers gathered at bars to watch together. Yet the show was never a huge hit, like Milton Berle’s variety show or “I Love Lucy,” and even those series were on TV, after all, an untested medium, with low stakes and lower expectations. On such a wall, you could toss any spaghetti you liked.

As televisions got cheaper, audiences grew and admen became powerful, and networks stopped taking risks. Over the decades, comedy remained a release valve for radical sensibilities, but its conventions congealed: there’s a formula to “Saturday Night Live,” and network talk shows are even more aggressively conventional. Whenever Letterman hints that he’ll retire, I roll my eyes. They’ll just pick another white guy. Perhaps it’ll be a Conan-like ironist, or someone boyish, like Jimmy Fallon, but it will be a distinction without a difference. Luckily, it’s become easier each year to escape that world, by fleeing to a constellation of smaller channels and to the Internet, where idiosyncrasy reigns. In Vanity Fair’s recent comedy issue, Chris Rock waxed nostalgic for the era when a successful comic had to make everyone laugh: to “work any crowd,” from the “Tonight Show” to the Apollo, which may be a lost skill. But odd humor, strange humor, the type that not everyone gets, has always been around, and it, too, has its value. Often, it grows best in narrow spaces.

W. Kamau Bell isn’t doing anything structurally fresh on his new talk show, “Totally Biased,” which airs on the cable network FX. Yet the show feels faintly revolutionary, just because the man is black—ridiculous but true, given the whiteness of late-night TV. A handsome, affable fellow, with a deep chuckle and a shaggy ’fro, Bell came up in the San Francisco alternative-comedy scene. He has no desk, but he does a monologue (which, like many late-night monologues, is hit or miss), and a likably spontaneous man-on-the-street segment. In one episode, after Hurricane Sandy, he visits a gas-station line, where a driver tells Bell that the police are helping to move his car. “When a black man gets pushed by the cops, that’s a good day,” Bell says. “Yeah, well, it depends on how you being pushed,” the man replies.

Bell isn’t the first black male comedy host: Arsenio Hall had his own show, too, beginning in 1989. But, while Hall’s show was a phenomenon, it had a manic, anxious sizzle, partly because he strained to reach the largest possible audience. (Later, as ratings sank, Hall threw caution to the wind and interviewed Louis Farrakhan for an hour.) Bell’s show works because, in the hip precincts of FX, he can simply take black culture as the show’s default, the way network shows presume white culture. “There are actually more black ‘Seinfeld’ fans than there are black Kwanzaa fans,” Bell argued, in one bit. “I only know like a handful of people who do it, and two of them are white lesbians with black kids.” To use a gag-worthy phrase, Bell’s gimmick is intersectional progressivism: he treats racial, gay, and women’s issues as inseparable. That may not sound hilarious, but when it works it grants him new routes into old topics. In one guest bit, he and the black lesbian comic Wanda Sykes bonded over having white wives. Like Fallon, Bell has a nice-guy vibe, which lends his show the air of a laid-back, welcoming party: when he mistook a sexually ambiguous Comic-Con attendee for a woman, the label “Replay of Shame” appeared over a slo-mo clip—but, refreshingly, the joke was on him, not on the interviewee.

Bell was in good form throughout the election, and, after Obama won, the show turned relaxed and triumphant. The black comic Hannibal Buress did a routine in which he put up a series of post-election tweets on the screen. The final one read, “What’s faster than a n***** that just stole a TV? Obama with the United States of America.” Buress gazed wearily out at the audience, then paused. “Sometimes, if it’s a racist joke, I get it,” he said. “But that one, I’m just like . . . yo, that was weird. Just a weird joke. And it’s bad—bad structure, and I don’t get it.” Then some advice: “Shouldn’t have tweeted that. Should have put that in the drafts, man. Step up your racist tweet game. We’re watching you.”

On other cable networks, particularly IFC, Comedy Central, and the Cartoon Network, a wild array of comedy series are taking similar advantage of their niche status. On the Cartoon Network, there’s the stoner-ready late-night lineup Adult Swim, which includes smart animated series like “The Venture Bros.,” as well as “Childrens Hospital,” an anarchic live ensemble series that parodies “Grey’s Anatomy”-style medical dramas. There’s also “The Eric Andre Show,” which is, like “Totally Biased,” a talk show with a black nerd host (his co-host is Buress), but with a rawer, more aggressive vibe—Andre’s version of the man-on-the-street segment involved him touching the hands of strangers, then murmuring, “It’s touch-a-stranger’s-hand day.”

In fact, when you turn from network to cable, TV overflows with black male comedy, much of it slyly political: there’s also Adult Swim’s animated version of the black-power comic strip “The Boondocks” and Comedy Central’s skit show “Key & Peele,” which had a bit about a self-aware bully that is one of the best things I’ve seen all year. IFC has “Comedy Bang! Bang!” and the ultra-white “Portlandia,” whose aperture is so narrow that its audience consists of people who laugh at jokes about Evites and feminist-bookstore owners (guilty!). Such shows, at their worst, can turn twee or solipsistic, but a smaller audience means more tolerance for risk, not to mention the chance for a strange thing to stay alive. Contrast FX’s cheaply made sitcom “Louie” with NBC’s brilliant “Community,” which crumpled under the pressure to speak to everyone.

You have to head online to find the true Wild West, where pioneers have cobbled together quasi-organized Deadwood-like comedy encampments, shooting off viral videos like pistols, and scratching together a subsistence economy using Kickstarter and PayPal. The best sketches from “Portlandia” and “Key & Peele” are passed virally, friend to friend; Web sites like Funny or Die and College Humor operate as loosely run studios, producing material that viewers vote up and down. Standups saturate Twitter, devising new comedy forms within a hundred and forty characters.

Amid such chaos, the Onion is a grizzled old prospector, having staked its virtual territory back in 1996. A fake media empire, the Onion specializes in deadpan satires like “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex”; occasionally, these articles become accidental hoaxes, accepted by news sources as the real thing.

In 2007, the organization launched a video offshoot, the Onion News Network, which now appears on IFC as well as online, applying the same satirical tools to cable news but rendering them, amazingly, even more nihilistic. While other comics do fake news (Stephen Colbert is the form’s undisputed champion), the Onion’s gift is never to break character or seek applause. In one segment, a reporter seduces the wife of a missing soldier, even as he conducts interviews with her and her children. “Emma is entering adolescence at a time when having a father figure can be crucial,” the voice-over intones, as the reporter brushes the girl’s hair. The video ends with an eerie shot through the depressed woman’s window, as she succumbs to his embrace. On a TV skit show, that premise would get defanged with some goofy twist, but there’s a cruel control to ONN, whose theme seems to be that the objective reporting voice is itself fundamentally insane; not for nothing is its slogan “News Without Mercy.” “Once again, I close this video with nary a quiver of fear in my voice about the uncertainty of the human condition,” one broadcast concludes. “That’s professionalism.”

Of course, to produce cult humor you have to get someone to pay for it—ideally, your cult. Last year, when Louis C.K. put his stage show online, he charged five dollars a download, and ended up grossing more than $1.1 million. A few weeks ago, Maria Bamford, another alternative comedian, took a similar plunge, but, unlike Louis, who fills stadiums, Bamford is a comic’s comic, with a stylized, experimental act that lingers in the mind, full of riffs on her struggles with anxiety and depression. In 2007, Bamford produced a Web series called “The Maria Bamford Show”; its premise was that she had moved home to Minnesota after a nervous breakdown, and that the show was being filmed in her family’s living room. (In the past few years, Bamford has been hospitalized for mental illness.) It was a cold blast of brilliance, capturing in miniature the existential loneliness of someone who feared she’d never be able to live in the world of “normal” people, and filled with half-affectionate, half-disparaging imitations of her family and friends.

Bamford’s newest show, “The Special Special Special!,” which is available for download on Chill.com, is a more polished product, but equally radical—as unsettling as anything Andy Kaufman ever did. As Bamford performs at a mike in the living room, the camera keeps cutting to the supportive laughter of the only people who are in the audience: her parents, seated on the couch (the ultimate in narrowcasting). Bamford is tiny and blond, and speaks in a voice that is squeaky and hyper-feminine, but then she’ll suddenly shriek a word, or drop into the low tones of a stoner guy, or stretch her mouth into a grotesque, rubbery gape. In one extended riff, she performs a series of damning imitations, based on what would happen if people treated physical illness as dismissively as they do mental disorders. “You’d think you’d be able to stop vomiting for me and the kids,” she says weepily. In a bland female voice, she whispers, “Apparently. Steve. Has cancer.” Then a pause, her chin drops, and she glares with furious incredulity. “It’s like, f*** off! We all have cancer. Right?” Her parents laugh in appreciation, but it’s a routine that is unlikely to win every viewer over. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/12/24/121224crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all

The Usama thing was a reaction to all the people that were saying Obama when they meant to say Osama and vice versa. Forcing everyone to use Usama helped reduce the number of errors.

Actually Fox was using the Usama spelling long before Barack became involved in national politics. Fox took their cues from the Bush Pentagon, which also adopted that spelling.

TV Notes
It's the first 'Rockin' Eve' with just Ryan Seacrest
By Bill Keveney, USA Today

The huge New Year's Eve crowd in Times Square always lifts Ryan Seacrest's spirits.

"In a world that has so much chaos and conflict, there's a moment when you look around and you feel as if we're all in it together," he says.

The feeling will be a little more complicated this year. Seacrest will host ABC's Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve (Monday at 10, live ET/tape delay PT) from New York's Times Square for the first time without Clark, who died in April. The younger host began working on the show in 2005, when Clark returned to the special after having a stroke the previous year.

"It's definitely a mixed emotion. As a kid, I knew New Year's Eve by watching Dick Clark. As an adult, I know New Year's Eve recently by working with Dick Clark. I've never done the ABC show without him," he says."It's emotional, it's reflective, and, at the same time, it's celebratory, because he was such a leader and pioneer and mentor. It will be unique in so many ways, and frankly, I don't know what to expect in that first second when I sign on."

Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, says Seacrest is the perfect choice to carry on Clark's four-decade tradition.

"He's injected our New Year's Eve special with incredible energy and talent, but one of the important things to remember about Ryan and New Year's Eve is how he worked with Dick Clark when Dick came back for the first time after his stroke. I think that was a view of Ryan that just endeared him to everyone," she says. "His respect for Dick, the grace and dignity he showed him during the broadcast — I still tear up when I think about it."

The evening kicks off at 8 ET/PT with a two-hour tribute to Clark hosted by Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas and Jenny McCarthy, featuring an appearance by Seacrest.

At 10, Seacrest takes over hosting duties, overseeing a musical lineup that includes Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, Neon Trees and Psy in New York. A West Coast party will feature Justin Bieber, Jason Aldean, Pitbull, Karmin, Greyson Chance, Ellie Goulding, The Wanted, Brandy, Flo Rida and OneRepublic. McCarthy will interview those gathered in Times Square, and Fergie will host the Los Angeles festivities.

Swift, who performed on an earlier New Year's Eve show hosted by Clark and Seacrest, is a fitting headliner, Seacrest says. "When we were thinking about this year, we were looking for who was having a bright, bright year and somebody who had been part of the show before," he says. "She was the first choice and a perfect pick."

Swift returns the sentiment regarding Seacrest, the longtime American Idol host and a successful television producer.

"Ryan has become a leader in every business arena he immerses himself in, and someone only gets where he is by approaching every new project with passion and hard work," she says via e-mail. "I'm so excited to be a part of this New Year's Rockin' Eve because I know Ryan throws himself into every part of the creative process to make sure the show is the best it can be."

Seacrest, 38, says he's not certain what he will say on-air regarding Clark, but it will come from the heart and likely not be scripted. He will remember his first year working with the entertainment legend.

"I was so nervous, not necessarily because it was a live telecast, but more because I wanted his approval. ... He'd also had his stroke, so I wanted to make sure I was there for him in every way," he says. "And at the end of it, (you) cross your fingers and hope he pats you on the back and says, 'Not bad, kid. You can do this again next year.' And he did, and that was one of the greatest moments of my life."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2012/12/27/ryan-seacrest-hosts-new-years-eve/1790641/

Critic's Notes
2012 Departs With Some Indelible TV Moments
By Eric Gould, TVWorthWatching.com - Dec. 29, 2012

With forgettable television proliferating like rabbits (think Here Comes Honey Boo Boo or Killer Karaoke), there's an avalanche of TV content out there. We took out the shovel, went through the pile, and dug up a few of the moments we wanted to remember.

Spoiler alert: we discuss a few plot threads from Mad Men and Homeland, oh, and Breaking Bad, so if you're not up to speed on those shows, skip the fifth and sixth paragraphs. Oh, and if you have some favorite TV moments we haven't mentioned here, feel free to add them to the comments section below...

2012 was an election year, so, naturally, politics was front and center. Ironically, one of the best-known political clips to emerge during the most expensive election in history wasn't a splashy, professionally produced piece — it was a surreptitiously snatched moment secretly captured on a smart phone during a Romney fundraiser in Florida. In it, the Republican candidate dismissed 47 percent of the electorate as entitled government dependents who, he said, would never vote for him. The "gotcha" video undercut the Romney campaign so badly, some believe it may have been the deciding moment in the election.

But maybe the most memorable political scene came out of the summer Republican National Convention, when Clint Eastwood spoke just before Romney on the final night of the convention. The iconic actor/director did a squirmy, sometimes funny mock interview with an invisible President Obama, directing his words to an empty chair. The chair went on to immediate national fame.

In drama, the Mad Men season finale left us with the unforgettable image of Don Draper (Jon Hamm, left) walking away from young wife Megan. She had finally arrived on the set at her dream job as an actress, dressed up as a princess for a commercial. While Don marched away, expressionless, Megan shrank in view, and was left in her make-believe world. We have to believe that was the closing chapter in that marriage.

We also got, to some surprise, the seemingly hasty unmasking of Brody on Homeland. And we saw Walt and Skyler in front of their mountain of ill-gotten cash in the mid-season finale of Breaking Bad.

AMC's The Killing wrapped up the Rosie Larson murder mystery after two years and 26 episodes, and was cancelled a few weeks later. The cancellation proved (shocker) that a two-year murder mystery with umpteen red herrings is frustrating and infuriating for shrinking audiences. And speaking of cancellations, there were the disappointing dismissals of NBC's Awake and HBO's Luck — which wasn't so lucky after all.

Oh, and let's not forget the surprise charm of the PBS/BBC series, Call The Midwife.

In comedy, there were the double-shot departure of Saturday Night Live heavyweights Kristin Wiig and Andy Samberg. Liz Lemon showed up for her wedding on 30 Rock decked out as Princess Leia from Star Wars. Louis C.K. brought director David Lynch in for creepy cameo appearances on Louie. And Lena Dunham showed that a young writer/director/actor could carry the weight of her own HBO series, Girls. (And, I mean, she showed everything.)

In sports, there was the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, with Michael Phelps returning in swimming events to get the all-time record for gold medals. The Olympics opening ceremonies were broadcast worldwide, with an ambitious and perhaps top-heavy program including, of all things, a re-enactment of the Industrial Revolution and an army of Mary Poppins lofting down from the sky under their umbrellas.

The NFL bounty scandal and the suicide of linebacker Junior Seau did not have the effect on the game (and profits) that some writers thought it would. But the league instituted new penalties for 2012 that curbed merciless concussion-causing hits to protect players.

And in music, there was Adele's live, riveting Grammy performance last February of "Rolling in the Deep." It was a captivating moment when she seemed to have the entire Grammy audience in the palm of her hand.

But that performance, as good as it was, paled in comparison to a video that had monumentally more traction. Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" video made history this year by crossing the billion-hit mark this month on YouTube.

That's billion, with a capital B.

The internet video demonstrated, perhaps better than no other example (along with faster and larger download capabilities for TV and film), that broadcast, cable and internet will eventually morph into one interconnected world-wide media.

It also showed that a chubby guy in a tux doing a horsey-dance can become an international sensation. Apparently, new media can launch virtually anything.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/BlogPostDetails.aspx?postId=3967

TV Review
‘Double Divas,’ beware, implants
This new Lifetime reality series has two naturals as its stars
By Tom Conroy, Media Life Magazine

By now, reality-TV viewers know that much of the action in so-called unscripted shows has been planned and plotted in advance. They appreciate it when the fakery is at least kept to a minimum.

Lifetime’s new series “Double Divas,” set in an Atlanta lingerie shop that specializes in bras for hard-to-fit sizes, features two women with telegenic jobs and personalities that would seem to render unnecessary the false setups that are endemic in workplace reality shows. But the producers evidently couldn’t resist sweetening the mix. Since those elements are relatively unobtrusive in this show, however, viewers can squint and enjoy it.

Previewing on Tuesday, Jan. 1, at 10:30 p.m., before going to its regular time slot on Thursday, Jan. 10, at 10, “Double Divas” features Molly Hopkins and Cynthia Richards, the co-owners of a shop called LiviRae Lingerie. Molly, a busty brunette, is in charge of sizing customers. “I honestly believe that I’ve seen more boobs than Hugh Hefner,” she says.

Cynthia, whom Molly calls the “mad inventor,” is in charge of creating new designs for special customers. Some of these make money, Molly says, but most don’t.

In the episode provided for review, Cynthia tells Molly that she saw a woman on TV who supposedly has the largest natural breasts in the world. Cynthia contacts the woman, who goes by the punning pseudonym Norma Stitz, offering to help her out. Norma travels all the way from Virginia to get fitted.

One doesn’t have to be a cynic to assume that the producers not only set the meeting up but are paying for it. Still, Norma is a sight to behold. She keeps a full-size handbag in her cleavage.

Cynthia and Molly seem sincere in their desire to give her a comfortable means of support. Cynthia pulls an all-nighter putting together something that looks like two small parachutes sewed together.

The episode’s other story line rings false throughout. The women have a sales associate named Loren, a striking young blonde who says she’s a singer in an all-girl group called the Coeds. Molly says a lingerie shop needs a sexy salesgirl, but most viewers will suspect that Loren was hired a day before the series began filming.

Loren takes a call from a socialite named Tiffany and tells the partners that Tiffany wants to have a lingerie bachelorette party. Molly and Cynthia arrive up at Tiffany’s house with naughty panties and whips, only to find a group of sedate women being served tea and sandwiches.

Molly and Crystal do their best to loosen up the “snooty hooties,” but they chastise Loren the next day. Ashamed, Loren hides her face in one of Norma’s bra cups.

Just to keep us interested, the show is interspersed with shots of normal-sized women trying on tiny garments.

None of this would work if Molly and Crystal’s shtick weren’t so unforced. Molly says something outrageous — at a restaurant, she asks if the cute waiter is listed with the specials — and Crystal looks unamused and gets back to her point. The show’s best moments are when they’re just chatting.

One would think that, given their business, Molly and Crystal know that natural is best. It would have been nice to see “Double Divas” without all the padding and implants.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/double-divas-beware-implants/

Critic's Notes
Bianculli's Best Bets
By David Bianculli, TVWorthWatching.com - Dec. 31, 2012

'THE WALKING DEAD' MARATHON
AMC, 9:00 a.m.
For years, I’ve called the week between Christmas and New Year’s a “dead week” for television – but I didn’t expect AMC to take the concept so literally. Beginning at 9 a.m. ET today and occupying all of New Year’s Day as well, the network repeats, in order, the first three seasons of The Walking Dead in their entirety. Expect a lot of death, and I’m not just talking about the zombie “walkers” – but expect a lot of acting and writing brilliance, as well.

NEW YEAR'S ROCKIN' EVE CELEBRATES DICK CLARK
ABC, 8:00 p.m.
Last year, ABC prefaced its New Year’s Eve show with a prime-time special devoted to 40 years of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Dick Clark, the host from the start, was around to enjoy that – but since Clark died in 2012, ABC is prefacing this year’s countdown to the new year with a two-hour prime-time celebration of Clark himself.

LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER: “ONE SINGULAR SENSATION: CELEBRATING MARVIN HAMLISCH”
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
Dick Clark isn’t the only celebrity who died in 2012 who is getting a prime-time salute on the last day of the year. Also being honored, in a new Live from Lincoln Center concert tribute, is composer Marvin Hamlisch, who, among other impressive artistic achievements, wrote the music for Broadway’s A Chorus Line, cinema’s The Way We Were, and rekindled Scott Joplin’s legacy by using his ragtime music to score The Sting. And check out the lineup of performers gathering to honor him and sing his music tonight, all under the baton of Paul Gemignani: Audra McDonald (who also hosts, and is pictured here), Michael Feinstein, Kelli O’Hara, Megan Hilty from Smash, Joshua Bell, Raul Esparza and others. Check local listings.

DICK CLARK’S PRIMETIME NEW YEAR’S ROCKIN’ EVE WITH RYAN SEACREST 2013
ABC, 10:00 p.m. ET
After a two-hour salute to the late Dick Clark, ABC turns over prime-time hosting duties entirely to Ryan Seacrest. Scheduled to perform are Taylor Swift, Flo Rida and, just in case you needed to hear “Call Me Maybe” one more time in 2012, Carly Rae Jepsen. At 11:30 p.m. ET, after a break for local news, Seacrest returns to count down, for the first time, to the New Year – and the dropping of a ball that, for the first time, will have Dick Clark’s name engraved on it.

NEW YEAR'S EVE WITH CARSON DALY
NBC, 10:00/11:30 p.m. ET
Arguably, Carson Daly’s star has risen significantly since the late-late-late-night star has hopped aboard the Voice train. So it’s significant, if otherwise coincidental, that Daly’s NBC New Year’s Eve party – which, like Ryan Seacrest’s, broadcast live from Times Square – includes performances by the group Train, and by the most recent winner of The Voice, Cassadee Pope.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/

Watch Episode II. Natalie Portman is smoking hot in that one.

That 4.5% rate hike is only the beginning.

Critic's/Business Notes
Engineering a Reversal of Fortune in 2013
By David Carr, The New York Times' 'Media Equation' Blog - Dec. 31, 2012

In business, all years are critical — make a big mistake and you won’t have the chance to make another one. But in the media, wave after wave of transformation mean the coming year is particularly important.

Insurgents are racing over the hills; margins, along with the advertising sales that drove them, are tumbling; and people consume media content at a time, place and, often, at a cost of their choosing. Forget New Year’s resolutions. We’re talking imperatives, a to-do list that requires eating your Wheaties and then some. So on the last day of 2012, it’s worth looking at a group of leaders who confront very steep hills to climb in the year that ends in lucky 13.

LAURA LANG, C.E.O. OF TIME INC.

Hired a year ago from a digital advertising firm to head Time Inc., Time Warner’s magazine behemoth, Ms. Lang was optimistically viewed as an out-of-the-box answer to the knotty problem of making a print company dance in a digital era.

Twelve months later, the honeymoon, if there ever was one, is over. Advertising has quickly gone backward at the publisher, and the nascent efforts in mobile and video Ms. Lang has championed will not fill the crater anytime soon.

Time Inc., an industry leader in print subscriptions, has yet to find a way to wring money from consumers on the Web. Ms. Lang has been slow in articulating a business strategy and building a team to execute it, and at some point, the people who hired her will start checking their watches.

JEFFREY ZUCKER, PRESIDENT OF CNN WORLDWIDE

Of all the people on this list, Mr. Zucker, whose appointment was announced in November, probably has the best chance of showing progress. After all, he will take over a business that makes $600 million, all while doing not much of anything right.

Fixing any one of CNN’s manifest problems — mornings that are not competitive, evening ratings that are deeply embarrassing and a late-night transplant in Piers Morgan who is being rejected by the viewing public — will make him look like a genius.

Most important, to me at least, is that CNN master the Big Story. The network, often useful on breaking international news, has fumbled on signature domestic events including the Newtown school shooting. Call me old-fashioned, but fewer breathless, informationless stand-ups from reporters and more actual reporting may be a good place to start.

MARTHA STEWART, FOUNDER, MARTHA STEWART LIVING OMNIMEDIA

A nice little franchise that overshot after going public, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia resembles a troubled aircraft that is madly switching pilots while chunks of the plane are flying off.

Big write-downs caused third-quarter losses to exceed total revenue; after all of five months, the chief executive said she would step down; and the company just cut two of its magazines, Whole Living and Everyday Food, as stand-alone products.

Add in the fact that the Hallmark Channel declined to renew the daily “Martha Stewart Show,” and you have a lot less media coming out of a company named Omnimedia. Most of the profits now come from merchandising, but even those are imperiled.

The company signed a deal with J. C. Penney to sell branded Martha Stewart products last year, which was a coup, except that Macy’s accused the company of already selling it those rights and promptly sued. The stock fell to $2.50 a share from over $4.50 at the start of the year. Clearly, it’s going to take more than a few well-placed floral arrangements to make this company look pretty again.

ROBERT THOMSON, C.E.O. OF NEWS CORPORATION

A trusted Rupert Murdoch lieutenant who took over as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in 2008, Mr. Thomson overcame the skepticism of the staff with an acute eye for news. The result was a more general interest newspaper that was a hit with readers. And now that News Corporation has been split into two divisions, publishing and entertainment, Mr. Thomson will make the leap to the business side and become the chief executive of the publishing unit.

Running those assets without the support of Fox News and “Avatar” will be a challenge, which became clear this month when the company said in a filing that its publishing businesses lost $2.1 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30. Those losses came largely from $2.8 billion in charges mostly related to closing News of the World in Britain in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

The remaining print assets — including newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and The Times of London, and HarperCollins, a book publisher — will be folded in with a number of fast-growing Australian pay-television assets, which should give the newly formed division some financial cushion.

Still, it’s a complicated job in a troubled industry, and his portfolio could grow even bigger should rumors about Mr. Murdoch’s interest in buying The Los Angeles Times turn out to be true.

MARK THOMPSON, C.E.O. OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

The board of the Times Company crossed platforms and an ocean to recruit a new chief executive: Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, where he was known for rigorously managing costs while expanding the digital reach of the publicly financed broadcaster.

That credential lost some luster after it was learned that a BBC investigative report about the suspected sexual improprieties of Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC host, was canceled while Mr. Thompson ran the organization. An investigation seemed to suggest that he was not involved in the decision, but his lack of awareness was less a vindication than a signal that the BBC was an enterprise at war with itself and its mission.

His expertise in digital realms seems like a good fit at The Times, which has unrealized ambitions in online video. But he may be preoccupied by more prosaic matters, including the 85 percent drop in net income the company suffered in the third quarter, compared with the same period a year ago. Mr. Thompson has never been much involved in sales, a skill he will have to acquire or hire if the company is to stem the slide in advertising and build on the success of its digital subscription model.

JEFFREY ROBINOV, PRESIDENT OF WARNER BROTHERS PICTURES GROUP

Mr. Robinov is in a bake-off for the job of chief executive of Warner Brothers Entertainment, now held by Barry Meyer, and he has significant claim on the position, but timing is everything and current trends are not great.

Trying to fill in the giant gap left by the end of the Harry Potter franchise, Mr. Robinov bet on movies like “Dark Shadows” and “Cloud Atlas,” which went nowhere. Much of the excitement and profits are coming out of the company’s New Line Cinema unit, which had a large bump from the start-up of the Hobbit movies.

Mr. Robinov has some big movies in play for 2013 — another hangover from the “Hangover” franchise, a new take on Superman called “Man of Steel”and “Pacific Rim,”a movie powered by robots — and those movies need to click in a town where hits fade fast and misses haunt.

It’s quite a list. Makes my resolution to type faster, more often and on time seem quite doable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/business/media/in-2013-engineering-a-reversal-of-fortune-for-media-leaders.html?ref=media&_r=0

Critic's Notes
Is TV the new rock?
Television has been many things through the years, but rarely has it been cool. Until now. Big names want to work there, and programs are varied and exciting.
By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times - Dec. 30, 2012

Television has been a lot of things in its 60-some-year life, but one thing it was not, until this century, with certain rule-proving exceptions, was cool. It was the home of "Father Knows Best" and "The Andy Williams Show," "Dynasty" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" — something for the whole family to enjoy, when three broadcast networks ruled the nation and competed for viewers of all ages.

But to be seriously into "Breaking Bad" or "Pretty Little Liars," "Doctor Who" or "Fringe," "Bob's Burgers" or "Adventure Time," Rachel Maddow or Jimmy Fallon, "The Voice" or the "Real Housewives" of here and there, now confers status — and the basis for an identity — in the same way that liking the Velvet Underground, Skrillex or the Alabama Shakes might.

Once a fairly monolithic medium, in its subdivided formats and niche-directed multiplicity, it caters now to myriad smaller but often more intensely dedicated audiences, inspiring a sense of ownership and of community reminiscent of the way pop music works. So I ask: Has television, so long considered the lowest medium — the boob tube, the idiot box, the old vast wasteland, corporate and irrelevant — finally become hip? Is it the new rock?

As always with coolness, it is partly a matter of perception — first it wasn't cool to like Neil Diamond, and now it is — and TV was always better than its reputation. But it is also that TV actually has gotten cooler.

It's been a commonplace for a while now that television has gotten to be, at its best, as good as or better than film. Movies still seem the dominant medium, because they cost more to make and show in theaters, but many actors and directors — including Dustin Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny, Nicole Kidman, Claire Danes, Kevin Costner, Gary Sinise, Martin Scorsese, Gus Van Sant, Michael Mann — who might once have considered TV a comedown (or an unfortunate return to the place they started) now embrace it without shame or desperation as an opportunity for creative work and personal expression. Many more, and more all the time, will take that as given.

Before "Louie," Louis C.K. made a few short independent art films and other projects you have to work to find; on his FX series, he makes art 12 weeks a year, and it is widely seen and celebrated. The independent films Lena Dunham made are what got her the chance to create HBO's "Girls," but TV, which has imported her sensibility unscathed, is what made her a star.

TV has grown wilder on the one hand and deeper on the other. Its audience divides and unites itself by interest, by age, by cultural or countercultural self-identification. Like pop music, television today is multifarious and factional, and with the expansion of cable and cable's leap into original production, it has acquired something like an "indie" or alt-TV component to complement its still substantial mainstream.

You see it in the weirder reaches of Comedy Central and IFC — whose "Portlandia" is not just metaphorically "rock" but made by rock musicians — and in the animations of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim and Nickelodeon, where whole new realities are drawn from the ground up and individual visions, and visuals, are the name of the game. And for that matter, on HBO and Fox and even NBC, whose "30 Rock" has broken as many rules as any show ever aired and where young heroes of comedy Aubrey Plaza and Aziz Ansari appear weekly on "Parks and Recreation."

But the way we consume television is part of it as well. Watching any particular show no longer necessarily happens in real time, or at home, or with the family, as was often the case in a world of less choice and fewer screens — for better (more choice) or worse (less social cohesion, end of the universally shared television event).). TV can happen anywhere, and it can happen over and over again; it has, like music in the succeeding ages of the transistor radio, Walkman and iPod, become portable and personal.

By stream or on DVD, Blu-ray and whatever format comes along to replace them, on wall- or pocket-sized screens, the life of any television series — or the hooky television moment, for that matter, in this age of viral replication — may be extended indefinitely. This is similar to, but fundamentally different from the traditional syndicated rerun model, which caters to mass tastes and depends on them.

And in the cloud-based, Wi-Fi-ed, file-sharing, content-rental economy, the past is eternally present: "Freaks and Geeks," streaming since September on Netflix, your time is now.

Social media, being the demonstrative organs they are, amplify the effect. There is increasingly a word-of-mouth or word-of-text aspect to the way content makes its way through the world. Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook exist to let you share taste, to array the things you love like posters on a dorm room wall for potentially all the Web to see: The YouTube link, the screen capture or animated GIF can slice a TV show into mountable, shareable "objects." Kids make mottoes from dialogue the way another generation looked for the meaning of life in the words of Bob Dylan. You Are What You Post.

What's true of the amateur watcher is true of the professional as well: To be a critic of TV in 2012 is something different from when I first wrote about it, back in the 20th century, before the cultural penetration of "The Sopranos" signaled the beginning of the end of the hegemony of old-school network television. (A game that new broadcast networks Fox, the WB and UPN had already begun to change from within, as it were.)

Just as a school of rock criticism emerged in the late 1960s to reflect, reflect upon, contextualize and celebrate pop's growing ambitions, dignifying music that had once been regarded as junk — while still embracing the parts of it that were — critical writing about television, once largely skeptical and superior or blandly industrial, has grown increasingly enthusiastic and engaged. (Like Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker and GQ's Tom Carson, surely among others, I am a rock critic turned TV critic.) I don't want to say the job is sexy, exactly, but it has definitely become more attractive — taken off its glasses and shaken loose its hair — especially since the Internet let a thousand critics bloom.

The subject is addressed in voices intellectual, passionate, academic, giddy, provocative, belligerent, comical, concerned, feminist, post-feminist and every other flavor imaginable. And just as there are "critics' bands," more written about than listened to, there are critics' shows, discussed out of proportion with their actual viewership. Sometimes it takes a while for the world to catch up with us.

Anyway, it doesn't make you a nerd to love TV anymore, ardently and without irony. But even if it did, being a nerd is cool now too. So you are all right either way.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-tv-as-rock-20121230,0,4266721.story

Last nite SNF cowboys @ redskins game 18.3 -- highest NBC primetime regular season game ever.

Toasted previous record of 17.2 set last year.

How bout them cowboys !!!
Edited by dcowboy7 - 12/31/12 at 8:51am

Yeah great job Romo, once again you're a bust when it counts. Jones needs to make some hard decisions about whether to trade him out (I hear Tebow will be available.. ). Couldn't happen to a better team though, sorry dcowboy7. Much more fun to see RG3 against Wilson in the first round, ratings will be HUGE.

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

Critic's Notes
On Louie, ‘New Year’s Eve,’ and Respecting the Mystery
By Matt Zoller Seitz , Vulture.com (New York Magazine) - Dec. 31, 2012

I briefly wrote about “New Year’s Eve,” the third season finale of Louie, in my list of 2012’s best comedy episodes. I’m writing about it again here because I’ve thought about it every day since I first watched it back in September; because today is New Year’s Eve (a hook), and because it’s the most audacious installment of a TV show since the final episode of The Sopranos. Those two episodes have little in common on a plot-and-character level. I mention them in tandem because they embrace ambiguity and deny viewers the footholds that series TV usually provides.

As I wrote in an August column about how the show makes stand-up techniques cinematic:

Season three started out with a series of personal, professional, and even sexual humiliations for Louie — some hugely exaggerated, even ridiculous, such as the bit where Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) they were the sorts of absurd caricatures who would appear in a stand-up routine by a comic who had just been through a rotten experience and needed to vent. Yet this story — as well as ‘Dad,’ which climaxed with Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) — all existed within the same fictional framework, one in which anything is possible.

No episode of Louie exemplifies the “anything is possible” aesthetic better than “New Year’s Eve.” It feels loose and spontaneous, but it’s dense and vivid as a dream, packed with signs and symbols and narrative feints and images you can’t be entirely sure how to take.

It begins with Louie Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) But this is the first episode that seems wholly dedicated to rendering the dream/reality distinction useless. It insists that we experience every moment in terms of emotional logic and metaphor, as we might one of our own dreams.

“New Year’s Eve” retroactively makes David Lynch’s appearance in the Letterman arc feel like more than a fan’s tribute. C.K. seems to have as deep an affinity for Lynch’s work as he does for Woody Allen’s, and his creative development on FX seems to be following Lynch’s arc. Since Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lynch moved further away from commercial filmmaking clichés, releasing a series of features (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire) that followed dream logic, or anti-logic, from start to finish, as if to attack the foundations of narrative itself. Louie is built around the thoughts and feelings of its hero, a storyteller who has confidence in his imagination but zero confidence in his life, yet must live in both worlds at once. He is always asleep and awake, always feeling and thinking, always dreaming and being. The show’s form has evolved to reflect this, becoming more daring and alienating. “New Year’s Eve” is to Louis C.K. as Inland Empire is to Lynch. It hurls narrative conventions out the nearest window like Louie did his Christmas tree. This is truly audacious. No commercial TV storyteller has been so insistent that we respect the mystery of what he’s doing, and be okay with the fact that he won’t hold our hand as we follow his journey. Even at their most surreally playful, David Chase and Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective) delineated reality from dreams. They didn’t just leave us unmoored, uncertain what to trust, or how to see. At no point in “New Year’s Eve” does the filmmaker reassure us that something “really” happened or was “just a dream,” much less tell us which bits of the episode, if any, refer to previous events in the hero’s life. The episode is as mournfully opaque as Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, a film in which nothing was real and everything mattered.

Did Louie really Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) I don’t know the answer to any of those questions. Neither do you, and neither, I’d wager, does the filmmaker-star, an artist with a direct line to his unconscious. Louie reminds me of a line from Donald Antrim’s introduction to Donald Barthleme’s 1975 postmodern novel The Dead Father: "One has the sense that its author enjoys an almost complete artistic freedom … a permission to reshape, misrepresent, or even ignore the world as we find it … Laughing along with its author, we escape anxiety and feel alive."

http://www.vulture.com/2012/12/seitz-revisits-louies-new-years-eve-episode.html

Nielsen Overnights
Sunday Night Football Sets Primetime Ratings Record for NBC
By Michael O'Connell, The Hollywood Reporter's 'Live Feed' Blog - Dec. 31, 2012

Sunday Night Football went out on an especially high note for NBC, with the match-up between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins earning football's biggest ratings for a primetime regular season game in 15 years.

The game averaged 26.67 million viewers and a 18.3 overnight rating among households. The last game to pull in higher numbers was ABC's 1997 showdown between the Broncos and the 49-ers.

In the demo, early returns give the game a whopping 9.0 rating among adults 18-49. With a 90-minute Football Night in America (4.2 adults rating), NBC averaged a 7.3 rating in the key demo and 21.4 million viewers for the entire night.

Football overrun and animation encores gave Fox a distant second place finish for the night. The network averaged a 3.7 rating with adults 18-49 and 10.3 million viewers.

CBS, which also started the night with football overrun, had a new episode of 60 Minutes (1.5 adults) followed by encores. The network averaged a 1.1 with adults 18-49 and 7.5 million viewers.

Airing an America's Funniest Home Videos repeat and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, ABC netted a 0.9 adults rating and 3.5 million viewers.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-sunday-night-football-407307
Edited by dad1153 - 12/31/12 at 3:08pm

Nielsen Overnights
AMC Networks, Time Warner Cable Agree to Temporary Extension for IFC, WE tv
By Tim Kenneally, TheWrap.com - Dec. 31, 2012

Could the cheer and goodwill of the holiday season be bringing a cease-fire in the cable carriage wars?

At least for the time being, it seems so.

AMC Networks and Time Warner Cable have agreed to a temporary extension for TWC to carry AMC's WE tv and IFC, a Time Warner spokeswoman told TheWrap on Monday.

The extension, which comes ahead of a midnight deadline, will give the two companies more time to hammer out a longer-term deal, and prevents IFC and WE tv from going dark for TWC customers early next year.

It is not known how long the extension lasts for, or how close the two sides are to reaching a more lasting pact.

Meanwhile, as TWC customers await word on how long they'll be able to keep watching such IFC and WE tv fare as "Portlandia" (pictured) and "Bridezillas," TWC said Monday that it has come to a more permanent agreement with Crown Media Family Networks to carry Hallmark-related programming.

Like the TWC/AMC stopgap measure, details on the Hallmark agreement were scant.

"Time Warner Cable and Crown Media Family Networks have reached a mutually beneficial long-term agreement for carriage of Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel," TWC and Crown said in a joint statement. "Additional terms of the agreement were not disclosed."

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/amc-networks-time-warner-cable-agree-temporary-extension-ifc-we-tv-71001

Critic's Notes
Best television series of 2012: ‘Homeland,’ ‘Downton Abbey’
By Hal Boedker, Orlando Sentinel's 'TV Guy' Blog - Dec. 31, 2012

The best television series of 2012 owe a debt to the past. They have taken the miniseries storytelling so popular decades ago and made it work for today’s audiences.

Viewers who fondly remember “Shogun,” “Brideshead Revisited,” “Lonesome Dove” and other great minis can see that serialized style carried forward with flair by “Homeland,” “Downton Abbey” and “Breaking Bad.” These novels of the airwaves are generally more rewarding than the best movies.

The more traditional, episodic TV storytelling continues to flourish on CBS in “The Good Wife,” “Person of Interest” and “Elementary,” the best new fall series of 2012. But those series, too, have incorporated the miniseries style with compelling results. “The Good Wife” may not get the raves of cable dramas, but it’s stirringly acted and well produced. And “The Good Wife” makes nearly twice as many episodes as the much-admired cable dramas.

The best of 2012, and note that many of my favorites air on Sundays:

1. “Homeland,” Showtime: If you haven’t been watching this espionage thriller from the “24″ producers, the first season is out there waiting for you. The second season was just as compelling, thanks largely to the Emmy-winning performances of Claire Danes and Damian Lewis. In season two, he was phenomenal as the conflicted Brody. The standouts in the fine supporting cast include Mandy Patinkin, Morena Baccarin and Rupert Friend.

2. “Downton Abbey,” PBS: Love triumphed in the second season of this sweeping British drama. The good news: The third season, starting Jan. 6 on “Masterpiece,” is even better. Maggie Smith heads the remarkable cast. A 2013 prediction: Look for Smith to collect a third Emmy for her work as the dowager countess.

3. “The Walking Dead,” AMC: The best of the AMC dramas, although it’s unlikely to get Emmy love. Still, this violent drama about a zombie apocalypse consistently surprised and wowed viewers. It was never dull.

4. “The Good Wife,” CBS: The legal drama continued to present first-rate cases in the courtroom. And the show continued to bring on guest stars of the highest caliber, notably Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, Maura Tierney, Brian Dennehy, Christina Ricci, Amanda Peet and Jane Alexander. The appearance of Kalinda’s husband may have been a misstep, yet the show seems to have put that one behind it. One revelation: Archie Panjabi remains fascinating as Kalinda under any circumstances.

5. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS: The most consistently entertaining sitcom these days. Jim Parsons gets the prizes, but the ensemble is wonderful.

6. “Mad Men,” AMC: The much-admired drama had its weakest season, but it’s still better than most dramas. The stories for Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Lane (Jared Harris) kept fans riveted. And Don’s new wife certainly brought a new dimension to the show.

7. “Modern Family,” ABC: The Emmy-winning sitcom continues to delight with its wonderfully daffy ensemble.

8. “The Middle,” ABC: A fine, thoughtful sitcom that celebrates family. Why won’t the TV industry celebrate it?

9. “Breaking Bad,” AMC: It was the standout series last year. The shortened season in 2012 wasn’t as dynamic, but the acting remained stellar. The end for Walt White comes in 2013.

10. “Person of Interest,” CBS: Proof that the crime procedural can be refreshed with imaginative storytelling and offbeat acting. Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson make a memorably strange team.

What were your favorites of 2012?

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2012/12/best-television-series-of-2012-homeland-downton-abbey.html

Technology Notes
Disruptions: The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes
By Nick Bilton, The New York Times' 'Bits' Blog - Dec. 30, 2012

Over the last year, flying with phones and other devices has become increasingly dangerous.

In September, a passenger was arrested in El Paso after refusing to turn off his cellphone as the plane was landing. In October, a man in Chicago was arrested because he used his iPad during takeoff. In November, half a dozen police cars raced across the tarmac at La Guardia Airport in New York, surrounding a plane as if there were a terrorist on board. They arrested a 30-year-old man who had also refused to turn off his phone while on the runway.

Who is to blame in these episodes? You can’t solely pin it on the passengers. Some of the responsibility falls on the Federal Aviation Administration, for continuing to uphold a rule that is based on the unproven idea that a phone or tablet can interfere with the operation of a plane.

These conflicts have been going on for several years. In 2010, a 68-year-old man punched a teenager because he didn’t turn off his phone. Lt. Kent Lipple of the Boise Police Department in Idaho, who arrested the puncher, said the man “felt he was protecting the entire plane and its occupants.” And let’s not forget Alec Baldwin, who was kicked off an American Airlines plane in 2011 for playing Words With Friends online while parked at the gate.

Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.

A year ago, when I first asked Les Dorr, a spokesman for the F.A.A., why the rule existed, he said the agency was being cautious because there was no proof that device use was completely safe. He also said it was because passengers needed to pay attention during takeoff.

When I asked why I can read a printed book but not a digital one, the agency changed its reasoning. I was told by another F.A.A. representative that it was because an iPad or Kindle could put out enough electromagnetic emissions to disrupt the flight. Yet a few weeks later, the F.A.A. proudly announced that pilots could now use iPads in the cockpit instead of paper flight manuals.

The F.A.A. then told me that “two iPads are very different than 200.” But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. “Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that,” said Kevin Bothmann, the EMT Labs testing manager.

It’s not a matter of a flying device hitting another passenger, either. Kindles weigh less than six ounces; Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs weighs 2.1 pounds in hardcover. I’d rather be hit in the head by an iPad Mini than a 650-page book.

In October, after months of pressure from the public and the news media, the F.A.A. finally said it would begin a review of its policies on electronic devices in all phases of flight, including takeoff and landing. But the agency does not have a set time frame for announcing its findings.

An F.A.A. spokeswoman told me last week that the agency was preparing to move to the next phase of its work in this area, and would appoint members to a rule-making committee that will begin meeting in January.

The F.A.A. should check out an annual report issued by NASA that compiles cases involving electronic devices on planes. None of those episodes have produced scientific evidence that a device can harm a plane’s operation. Reports of such interference have been purely speculation by pilots about the cause of a problem.

Other government agencies and elected officials are finally getting involved.

This December, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to the F.A.A. telling the agency that it had a responsibility to “enable greater use of tablets, e-readers and other portable devices” during flights, as they empower people and allow “both large and small businesses to be more productive and efficient, helping drive economic growth and boost U.S. competitiveness.”

A week later, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, also sent a letter to the F.A.A. noting that the public was “growing increasingly skeptical of prohibitions” on devices on airplanes. She warned that she was “prepared to pursue legislative solutions should progress be made too slowly.”

If progress is slow, there will eventually be an episode on a plane in which someone is seriously harmed as a result of a device being on during takeoff. But it won’t be because the device is interfering with the plane’s systems. Instead, it will be because one passenger harms another, believing they are protecting the plane from a Kindle, which produces fewer electromagnetic emissions than a calculator.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/f-a-a-rules-make-electronic-devices-on-planes-dangerous/?ref=technology

Q&A
Walton Goggins talks 'Django Unchained,' 'Justified'
The actor, returning as Boyd Crowder on 'Justified,' recently went from cowboy boots in 'Django Unchained' to high heels in a 'Sons of Anarchy' guest spot.
By Irene Lacher, Los Angeles Times - Dec. 30, 2012

Alabama-born Walton Goggins is best known for playing corrupt cop Shane Vendrell on "The Shield" and born-again ex-con Boyd Crowder on "Justified," which earned him an Emmy nomination; the crime drama returns for its fourth season Jan. 8. But Goggins also dispelled any preconceptions about his limits as an actor this year with divergent roles in the films "Django Unchained" and "Lincoln" as well as a recent guest spot on "Sons of Anarchy."

Did you get acting whiplash playing these wildly different roles, from crazed killer to transgender hooker?
I've been around for so long, and this opportunity came up and then this opportunity came up and then Venus came up. I feel like I'm in the place that I always wanted to be. I have ideas about the career that I would like to have, but when I say that, in some ways, I'm already having it.

Which is eclectic?
Yeah. Some of the people with careers that I would like to have are Sam Rockwell and Chris Cooper and Ed Harris and Tommy Lee [Jones] and Bob Duvall. You look at what these people have contributed to this art form, and they've done it in a way that's iconic.

In "Django Unchained" that torture scene with Jamie Foxx, where he's hanging upside down, looked tricky to film. Was it?
Emotionally it was very tricky to film, but just in the physical requirements, having to hang upside down for any period of time. And it's tough to photograph that. And [writer-director] Quentin [Tarantino] was our leader. Because he was so supportive and all the actors were so supportive of each other, it really allowed each of us to go way out on a limb and if it broke, know that one of the other people were going to catch us.

How long did it take to film that? How long can you hang upside down?
Not for very long. Not without a fair amount of Advil, or an Advil drip. It took us five days to do it.

So right after filming "Django," you went into your guest spot on "Sons of Anarchy" as the transgender Venus Van Dam?
Literally four days later. Two days later, flying back on a Wednesday, Friday was at the wig store, Saturday was getting a mani-pedi, Sunday shaved my whole body, Monday we did the test, and we shot on Tuesday. To trade cowboy boots for high heels was a different worldview, for sure.

What kind of response did you get?
People were shocked. We went to great lengths to keep it a secret. We took no credit and did no advertising. We really wanted people to do a double-take and not bring their experiences of me in other roles to it, but to say, "Oh, my God, wow, oh, my God!

Will Venus come back?
I don't think we've seen the last of Venus. I think you're going to see her again, and we're talking about it now, how that will go down.

You're known for playing characters who are fearless, like Boyd and Shane and even Venus, and in "Lincoln" you play a congressman who calls himself a coward. In a way, that's just as much of a departure from your earlier roles as Venus was.
I felt that way. I, Walton, am a pretty vulnerable person. I think I have both sides to me. At times in my life, I have been a coward and I have been afraid. "Coward" is such a negative word, and I think people are sometimes fearful and it takes an extraordinary amount of courage to overcome those things. For me, getting to play Clay [Hutchins in "Lincoln"] in that way, who in the face of having his life threatened makes the right decision is something I'm so proud of. It felt like the ultimate history class, yet I was in it.

What's coming up for Boyd on the new season of "Justified"?
A whole lot of love is coming this season and a fair amount of acrimony with Mr. Givens, with Raylan [the deputy U.S. marshal played by Timothy Olyphant]. We might have a split that we can't come back from.

What was your contribution to Boyd's evolution?
It's been a real collaboration from the very beginning. Now I feel a kind of ownership over him, because I have so much invested in him and it's not just a job for me. It really is like an extension of my creative self.

You helped him evolve from a white supremacist stereotype to something more layered.
In the beginning, I said, "I'm not going to play a racist," and it was just for the pilot. I don't think that's who this guy is, and I'm going to encourage us to take him in the direction of making him smart and well read, a man who's self-taught and a lover of words. He was a messenger without a message, and he just needed people to follow him.

So when crime writer Elmore Leonard, whose work inspired the show, said of your character, "There's never been a more poetic bad guy on television in the way he sees the world," he wasn't talking about his conception of Boyd, he was talking about yours and the producers'?
Can I get a T-shirt made with that? My face is as red as the bougainvillea growing on the fence. I look for how a character can evolve over time, where are they starting from, and Boyd starts from a real deep place of pain. He's a wounded guy, and he vacillates between extremes. And I think his journey will be one of equilibrium.

Was he inspired by anyone you actually knew growing up in the South?
He's an amalgamation of a lot of people I met in the South, yeah. And then probably some of my own insecurities. I'm a lover of words. I left college to move to Los Angeles when I was 19 years old, and I for the longest time regretted that decision. I regretted being a part of conversations where people were making references to literature that I hadn't had the luxury to read because I was hustling when I got here. And I longed for that sustained period of reflection and curious exploration that a young person can have during college.

So I set out to expose myself to as many things as I possibly could, from religion to authors to art to music. I wanted to participate in a real way and have a real opinion and know what people were talking about. And that's somebody I've always wanted to play. I wanted to play a guy who was able to articulate his self-taught experience, and I was given that opportunity with Boyd.

Now that you have a 2-year-old, is that going to clip your wings?
Oh, no. It's the wind beneath them. In maybe three years, hopefully, maybe [when he's] 6 or 7 — I'm not that educated on when you can begin scuba diving — he'll have his license and we'll be on the road as much as we possibly can for summer and winter. We'll just go wherever the journey takes us.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-walton-goggins-django-unchained-justified-conversation-20121230,0,6072659,full.story

Critic's Notes
Bianculli's Best Bets
By David Bianculli, TVWorthWatching.com - Jan. 1, 2013

THE PINK PANTHER
TCM, 8:00 a.m. ET
What a delightful film – and what a pleasant way to begin the New Year, by laughing out loud. This 1963 movie, in which Peter Sellers introduces the bumbling character of Inspector Clouseau, is a very, very funny film. David Niven, Robert Wagner and Capucine co-star, but this movie belongs completely to one actor. It’s a Sellers market.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
The Movie Channel, 8:00 p.m. ET
This 2011 movie focuses on the making of another movie – specifically, a week of filming during 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. The point of view here is from Olivier’s assistant, Colin Clark, who documents the stars’ flinty relationship, and his own “dream week” with the vulnerable, magnetic actress. Eddie Redmayne portrays Clark, Olivier is played by Kenneth Branagh, and Monroe is played by Michelle Williams.

GREAT PERFORMANCES: “BROADWAY MUSICALS: A JEWISH LEGACY”
PBS, 9:30 p.m. ET
Michael Kantor, who looked lovingly and intelligently at New York stage history in Broadway: The American Musical, returns with another smart, talent-filled treatise, this time focusing on Jewish performers, composers, book writers and influences on the Broadway musical. Joel Grey hosts, and the vintage performance clips you’ll see include Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, Nathan Lane in The Producers, Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, and, yes, David Hyde-Pierce in Spamalot, singing the pertinent lyrics, “To hit the top on Broadway and not lose… There simply must be, simply must be Jews.” Interview subjects include Stephen Sondheim, Mel Brooks, Stephen Schwartz, Arthur Laurents, Sheldon Harnick, John Kander and Harold Prince. Check local listings.

PARENTHOOD
NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET
Of all the series on my Top 10 TV Shows of 2012 list, this is the first to return in 2013 with a fresh episode. I’m still recovering from the Chistmas episode, so I hope this one takes it a little easier, emotionally. For that matter, I hope 2013 does, too. I’m just saying…

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE
TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET
This 1950 movie, directed by John Huston, is fun to watch because it's such a prototypical film noir, and because its plot - of a daring robbery and what happens afterward - has been borrowed by so many other subsequent films, including Reservoir Dogs. But watch, too, for the actress who stars, playing Doll Conovan, opposite Sterling Hayden. She's Jean Hagen, who's much more familiar from comedy roles - especially as Danny Thomas' wife in Make Room for Daddy, and as Lina Lamont, the silent movie star with the horrible singing voice, in Singin' in the Rain.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/

TV Review
Teenage ballerinas step into a new season on 'Bunheads' with Sutton Foster and Kelly Bishop
By David Hinckley, New York Daily News - Dec. 31, 2012

New episodes resume next Monday for ABC Family’s smart series “Bunheads,” after a marathon Tuesday of all its earlier episodes, and it’s worth the effort to figure out what this offbeat cast of characters is up to.

The show takes its name from its teenage ballerinas (bunheads), who attend a small-town California dance school run by the quirky Fanny (Kelly Bishop) with help from her even quirkier daughter-in-law Michelle (Sutton Foster).

Given ABC Family’s target audience, the show naturally explores the lives of the teens, good kids with a range of neuroses.

It also spends considerable time on the grownups, who of course were once teenage dancers themselves.

Fanny loves dance, and she wants to pass along that love to her pupils. Michelle also loves dance, but fears she’s aging out of her chance to reach the top levels.

If this sounds like a recipe for a sentimental soap, it’s not. Fanny and Michelle are wisecrackers who often speak and act before thinking, which complicates their lives and makes for delightful dialogue.

The kids, also smart, get more interesting as things roll along.

First-time viewers, it should be cautioned, may have to take some of that on faith. Monday’s return episode deals, nicely but quite deliberately, with the aftermath of the previous midseason finale, in which Michelle had walked out after a funny and terrible mistake.

The first-time viewers Family needs for the show to thrive may have to work to figure out what’s going on.

Happily, Family is rerunning the whole first half-season Tuesday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., followed by the movies “Dirty Dancing” and “Burlesque.”

“Bunheads” so far remains fresh and different.

BUNHEADS
Network / Air Date: Monday, Jan. 7., at 9 p.m., ABC Family
Rating: ★★★★ (out of five)

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/tv-review-bunheads-article-1.1229084

* * * *

TV Review
‘Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy’ shows how a culture and the theater world meshed beatifully, with works by Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim and more

The fact Jewish songwriters composed many of the great tunes of Broadway is about as startling as hearing that Disney studios did a lot of animation.

So this new PBS special, which tracks many of those great Jewish songwriters, from Irving Berlin up to Stephen Sondheim, doesn’t pretend to be a news flash.

It’s more like a refresher course, dutifully noting names, dates and résumés while featuring dozens of clips of the music itself.

What “A Jewish Legacy” does do is identify elements of traditional Jewish music, often the music of Eastern Europe, in songs the casual listener might have thought were just melodies of Broadway.

It’s certainly clear in listening to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” that he had been listening to the music of his ancestors. This special postulates, convincingly, that some of his show tunes reflected the same influences.

The show cracks a few jokes about how Cole Porter, one of the few non-Jewish writers of the ’30s, ever crashed the party. It good-naturedly suggests some of his music was honorary Jewish.

For all the minor chords, though, Jewish story themes were slow to enter the Broadway mainstream. “Fiddler on the Roof,” it’s suggested here, was the first full, whole and unapologetically Jewish story to score there — although writers like Oscar Hammerstein had addressed related topics such as prejudice for years.

So there’s some education to be had in this special, and that’s good. But mostly it’s just a pleasure to see some of the most memorable performances for some of Broadway’s most enduring tunes.

BROADWAY MUSICALS: A JEWISH LEGACY
Network / Air Date: Tuesday at 9:30 p.m., PBS
Rating: ★★★★ (out of five)

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/tv-review-broadway-musicals-jewish-legacy-article-1.1229100