Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2824

Nielsen Overnights (18-49)
‘American Idol’ Posts Lowest-Rated In-Season Premiere, Down 19% From Last Year
By Nellie Andreeva, Deadline.com - Jan. 17, 2013

The complete revamp of the judging panel with Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban could not stop the ratings decline for Fox’s American Idol. The series’ 12th season last night opened with a 6.0 rating among adults 18-49, down 19% from the 11th Season premiere last January, and 17.8 million total viewers, down also 19%. It was Idol‘s lowest-rated in-season premiere. Still, the singing competition’s debut ranks as one of the highest-rated entertainment telecasts this season and No.1 among fellow unscripted series. The two-hour opener gave Fox the highest-rated night with entertainment programming of any network so far this season and outrated the ABC, CBS and NBC combined by 11%.

Idol has been on a downswing ever since the meteoric highs of Season 6, which opened with 15.8 18-49 rating and 37.4 million viewers. The only time the show was able to stem the ratings erosion since then was with the first big judging panel makeover in 2010 when the Season 10 premiere with new judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler posted a 11.8 in 18-49, up a smidgen from Season 9′s 11.7.

Elsewhere, ABC somewhat puzzling scheduled its big Pritchett baby episode of Modern Family, in which Gloria gives birth, against the Idol season debut. The hit comedy (4.8/11), which had been building towards the birth since last season’s finale, was down 9% from last week. The entire ABC comedy block was pushed down by Idol. The Middle (2.3/7) was down 4% from last week, Neighbors (1.9/5) down 10%, and Suburgatory (2.4/6) down 8%. But at 10 PM, Nashville (2.2/6) perked up, up 5% for its best 18-49 rating since the series premiere.

On CBS, following an NCIS repeat (1.1/3), Criminal Minds (2.8/7) was down 10% from its last original five weeks ago but posted its largest audience of the season (12.5 million). Not facing Idol, CSI (2.3/6) was up 5% from five weeks ago and edged Nashville for the No.1 spot at 10 PM. The CW’s lineup also returned after a long winter break. Arrow held steady in total viewers (3.1 million) and was up a tenth in A18-49 (1.1/3) from its last fresh episode in mid-December. Supernatural also was on par in total viewers (2.1 million) and in A18-49 (0.9/2) and up slightly in 18-34 (0.9/3). NBC stayed out of contention with repeats.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/01/ratings-rat-race-american-idol-posts-lowest-rated-in-season-premiere-down-19-from-last-year/

TV Notes
Steven Bochco 'Killing'-style drama pilot ordered at TNT
By James Hibberd, EW.com's 'Inside TV' Blog - Jan. 16, 2013

Crime drama pioneer Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues) is edging closer to getting a new police procedural on the air.

Bochco’s Murder in the First has just received a pilot order from TNT. Set in San Francisco, the murder mystery shares something in common with AMC’s The Killing — following season-long cases rather than a crime-of-the-week format.

If greenlit to series, the first season will follow two seemingly unrelated high profile murder cases. The story will begin with the crimes, then take us through the police investigation, arrest and trial . Characters include two SFPD homicide inspectors, a Silicon Valley wunderkind who is a celebrated CEO of a cutting-edge tech firm and a prime suspect, a defense attorney and prosecutors. As the series unfolds, the investigations and prosecutions will “provide viewers with a window into the soul of modern justice in an increasingly complex world.”

Bochco is teaming with writer Eric Lodal (Lawless) on the show. And for those wondering: No, the show is not related to the 1995 Kevin Bacon movie with the same title.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/01/16/steven-bochco-murder-in-the-first/

Top 10 things out of the Manti Teo story:

#10 Mantis girlfriend was the Mayan calendar’s Playmate of the Year
#9 Brent Musberger hasn't seen Teo's girlfriend either, but he is assured, real or fake, that she is smokin'

#8 Karl Rove is reporting that Mants girlfriend still might be real
#7 Now I know why Manti always bit on the play action fake

#6 On the bright side his relationship was probably better than any Taylor Swift has had.
#5 He just moved way up the NY Jets draft board

#4 Manti will meet even faker girls once he’s an NFL millionaire
you know about that right Paul ?

#3 AJ McCarron’s girlfriend will be featured in an SI Swimsuit issue. Manti s girlfriend will be featured on Myth Busters
#2 These Teo jokes are all very funny but let's all try and remember that a person who never existed is dead

& the #1 thing out of the Manti Teo story....
When does Manti get his sit down with Oprah ??

^^

I've seen a few good jokes/memes already... funny stuff. I'm still confused on what really happened.. but I don't care. All I know and care about is that he looked like a bum against BAMA.

Whats up with CBS being all repeats?

I watched both of these, even if Roswell got a bit soapy at times.

I actually have the DVD set of Nowhere Man.

Back when UPN was still in few markets full time, they would often syndicate their shows to other local stations. The station I worked at back then picked up Nowhere Man and (later) Voyager. We aired them each week at 5PM during their runs, right after the weekday strip of Star Trek: TNG.

Why not?

Their shows seem to rate just as well in repeats as some other network's do in first run.

I'm starting to think CBS could just show someone reading the phone book and still come in no worse than 2nd in total viewers...

This may be a reposting as I do not read HOTP that often.

Fox Doubling Down on FX in Bet on Cable Nets
By Jon Lafayette -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/16/2013 5:21:22 PM

Fox Networks is planning to split its successful FX channel into two networks as part of a larger effort to enlarge its cable footprint.

A new network, tentatively called FXX, would target younger viewers -- millennials -- with a skew towards comedy, according to media executives who have been briefed on the plans.

The network would program some of the original comedy series that now appear on FX, such as The League and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It would also be stocked with appropriate theatrical movies from a stockpile FX has been building in deals with nearly all of the major studios over the past few years.

The plans call for a launch in September with about 75 million subscribers. Many of those subscribers would come from the Fox Soccer channel, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

After the split, FX would continue to air the edgy dramas such as Sons of Anarchy and Justified that attract young adults and baby boomers. FX Networks, headed by John Landgraf, will also continue to produce the movie channel FXM.

A Fox spokesman declined to comment on details, saying only that the company is always examining its programming options.

By giving the entertainment networks different focuses, they might avoid cannibalizing each other's viewership and competing for programming. Splitting a network portfolio along drama/comedy lines has long been done by Turner Broadcasting, with TNT, which features drama, and its "very funny" TBS. AMC Networks is following a similar strategy by having IFC focus on quirky comedies while its develops dramas for Sundance Channel.

Cable has been a major profit driver for News Corp., which is in the process of dividing itself into two public companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch. One company, the new News Corp., will mainly own the company's publishing assets. The other, Fox Group, would be in the TV and movie business, headed by Chase Carey, a big believer in the power of both cable and sports.

Fox is also in the process of creating a national sports cable network that would compete with ESPN, which commands high ratings and higher subscriber fees thanks to its licenses to carry professional football, baseball and basketball, as well as college football.

The network, expected to be called Fox Sports 1, will be built on what is now the racing driven channel Speed. There is also talk that the company's Fuel channel, now gaining muscle from its UFC programming, could become Fox Sports 2.

Of course, all of the changes are subject to agreements with distributors, which can opt to drop channels if the deviate from the way they are defined in their carriage agreements.

Executives from cable distributors such as Time Warner Cable and Dish Network have talked about dropping channels rather than adding them as the cost of programming rises. That could make achieving carriage more difficult for new networks or mean that less lucrative deals are coming down the pike.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/491385-Fox_Doubling_Down_on_FX_in_Bet_on_Cable_Nets.php

________
Imagine if providers do not carry the HD versions of both of those channels

Edit: Similar to what dad posting yesterday.
'News Corp. may convert Fox Soccer into entertainment network'
http://www.avsforum.com/t/838060/hot-off-the-press-the-latest-tv-news-and-information/84660#post_22835734
Edited by Young C - 1/17/13 at 11:03am

Repeats next week too cause theyre saving for february sweeps which starts in 2 weeks.

To be fair, there would have to be a couple of modifications. The guy reading the phone book would have to be a serial killer and the cops would first have to eliminate a red-herring phone book, then they'd catch him after he made the fatal error of mispronouncing a name.

Not to meantion, the sections that include "Smith" and "Jones" would incorporate a music montage to speed things up...probably to the tune of "Who Are You?..."

It used to be different. There was a time where TV Shows ran virtually non-stop from September to May. The only breaks were for "Special Programming" (Usually done during the Sweeps or the Holidays) or if there was a Major News event or a Presidential Address and/or News Conference. Now you get First-Runs at the beginning of the season, and during the November, February and May "Sweeps". All other times it's either reruns or replacements.

I kind of like the break-up. It allows me to catch other shows when my "must haves" aren't on and discover new ones.

I imagine the distribution of telephone books won't last too much longer.

Then, CBS can run a nostalgia/reality series where someone is seen reading from ye olde phone book.

The seasons were more than 22 shows. Most seasons in the 60's and 70's were 32 to 36 shows. It was easy to run non stop to May then.

On our book theyve stopped doing the white residential pages so now its only the yellow business pages numbers & of course half the book is in spanish.

Give your campaign a rest.. You must not have noticed most of us are not giving up access to cable. And access to cable news, so we don't become the "low information" voters.

if you had cable AND a DVR then you wouldn't have this problem

Nah, I like my method better!

Business Notes
Ex-Discovery Exec Peter Liguori Named New Tribune CEO
By Tim Molloy, TheWrap.com - Jan. 17, 2013

Former Fox and Discovery executive Peter Liguori has been named the new CEO of Tribune Company.

In its first board of directors meeting since emerging from a bankruptcy, Tribune Co. also named investor Bruce Karsh as its chairman. The new Tribune board includes Ross Levinsohn, the former interim CEO of Yahoo who this week was named CEO of Prometheus, the parent company of the Hollywood Reporter.

Eddy Hartenstein, who had served as CEO of Tribune for the last 18 months, will stay with the company as publisher/CEO of the Los Angeles Times Media Group. He will remain on the company's board and serve as a special adviser to Ligouri.

Liguori's appointment had been long expected. Reuters reported in September that he was being eyed as the company's new CEO.

Liguori gave interviews to the two largest Tribune papers, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. In his Times interview, he was asked if the papers could be sold.

"There are people interested in the newspapers," he said. "It is my fiduciary responsibility to hear them out and see if in fact their interest is real and their commitment is concomitant with the value of these newspapers. But that runs parallel to my working with you guys on running the business on a day-to-day basis to maximize the value."

Liguori became an operating executive at Carlyle, a private equity firm, in July. At the company, he provided guidance to the telecommunications and media team. He was also up for the post of entertainment and digital media president at Microsoft. That job went in September to former CBS executive Nancy Tellem.

Liguori was previously chief operating officer of Discovery Communications, serving as the cable network’s No. 2 executive from 2009 to the end of 2011. He served as interim CEO of OWN beginning in May 2011, after the the dismissal Christina Norman.

Within two months, Oprah Winfrey named herself CEO of OWN. In November, Liguori said he was leaving Discovery, and the company said no replacement would be named.

Prior to joining Discovery, he spent 13 years with Fox Entertainment, serving as president and then chairman of Entertainment for Fox Broadcasting Company from 2005 to 2009.

He was previously president and CEO of News Corp.'s FX Networks.

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/ex-discovery-exec-peter-liguori-named-new-tribune-ceo-73551

TV Notes
Armstrong: ‘I doped. I was a bully.’
By Media Life Magazine Staff - Jan. 17, 2013

The substance of what Lance Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey on an Oprah Winfrey Network special tonight was already known — he doped.

It was the details that people tuned in to find out, and while Armstrong didn’t fully deliver, he did admit to an awful lot.

During a special that streamed live on Oprah.com, Armstrong and Winfrey’s conversation began with the former cyclist answering a string of yes or no questions from Winfrey, conducting her highest-profile interview for her fledgling network, OWN, whose ratings struggles have been well documented.

Armstrong admitted to taking EPO, testosterone and blood doping. He admitted to bullying people to keep quiet about it.

He said several times he did not want to name names or accuse other riders, but he made it clear that, in his view, the rampant doping culture would have made it impossible to win without doping.

Armstrong admitted that many of the people he sued who accused him of doping were correct, though he chose not to comment on whether he confessed to doping to a doctor during his cancer treatment, as the wife of one of his former teammates had alleged.

On Twitter Armstrong inspired half a dozen trending topics during the interview, which many tweeted about under the hashtag “doprah.”

Winfrey, who presumably won the interview because of her sympathetic nature, was lauded for doing a good job asking questions, though some social media commenters and TV critics noted that her follow-up questions could have been more forceful.

Before the airing of the interview, which continues with part two Friday night at 9 p.m., OWN said that it had received “premium” pricing on ads during the show.

But viewers on Oprah.com noted that no ads where shown on their broadcast. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter said that was because the network did not have time to insert them before the broadcast.

The interview is expected to shatter OWN’s former record of 3.5 million total viewers for an interview with the late Whitney Houston’s family that aired last year.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/armstrong-i-doped-i-was-a-bully/

Business Notes
TWC: Netflix Is Withholding Content to Gain 'Unprecedented' Access to ISPs
Operator Says It Is in Discussions on Connecting Into Netflix's Private CDN
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - Jan. 16, 2013

Time Warner Cable said it is currently in discussions with Netflix on terms for connecting into the video streamer’s private content delivery network, but the MSO charged Netflix with unfairly holding back content in trying to get preferential treatment from Internet service providers.

Last week, Cablevision Systems announced a deal to participate in Netflix’s Open Connect private CDN. Under the agreement, Cablevision customers who are Netflix subscribers will have access to select “Super HD” and 3D content. Netflix saves money on third-party CDN transit fees by co-locating caching servers that store copies of the most-frequently accessed content at ISPs' data centers.

But Time Warner Cable complained that Netflix was improperly tying access to the enhanced video content to the CDN initiative.

“While they call it ‘Open Connect,’ Netflix is actually closing off access to some of its content while seeking unprecedented preferential treatment from ISPs,” Time Warner Cable said in a statement to Multichannel News. “We believe it is wrong for Netflix to withhold any content formats from our subscribers and the subscribers of many other ISPs. Time Warner Cable’s network is more than capable of delivering this content to Netflix subscribers today.”

Asked for a response, a Netflix spokesman said, "Open Connect provides Netflix data at no cost to the location the ISP desires and doesn't seek preferential treatment. We hope Time Warner [Cable] will join the many major ISPs around the world who are participating in Open Connect to reduce costs, minimize congestion and improve data delivery to enhance the consumer experience."

Netflix’s relationship with ISPs has been contentious at times. Executives at the company, whose streaming video accounts for as much as 33% of peak downstream bandwidth consumption by one estimate, have argued to policymakers that ISP bandwidth caps and usage-based pricing practices are anticompetitive and will inhibit Internet video consumption.

In addition to Cablevision, other ISPs participating in the Netflix Open Connect CDN include Google Fiber, Clearwire. Virgin Media, British Telecom, Telmex and Telus.

In a statement last week, Cablevision president and CEO James Dolan said the Open Connect CDN will deliver “a higher-quality Netflix viewing experience for Optimum customers than Verizon or AT&T can provide, including access to new Netflix Super HD and 3D TV shows and movies.”

Terms of the agreement between Cablevision and Netflix were not disclosed. According to Netflix, Internet service providers can participate in Open Connect at no cost.

Netflix’s Super HD format provides better picture quality than is available via “full HD” 1080p format, according to the company. Super HD titles, which require a minimum 5 Megabit per second connection, initially will be available on Sony's PlayStation3, Nintendo Wii U, Windows 8, Roku, Apple TVs with 1080p, and select smart TVs and Blu-Ray players. In addition, in the U.S., Netflix is also offering a small number of titles streaming in 3D through Open Connect partners.

Netflix provides more info on Open Connect at https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect.

http://www.multichannel.com/cable-operators/twc-netflix-withholding-content-gain-unprecedented-access-isps/141261

TV Notes
Heather Locklear Joins TNT's 'Franklin & Bash'
By Philiana Ng, The Hollywood Reporter's 'Live Feed' Blog - Jan. 17, 2013

Franklin & Bash has landed a new series regular.

Heather Locklear has joined the TNT legal drama for the upcoming third season, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

She will play Rachel King, as EW first reported, who is described as a "stunning trial lawyer with stiletto heels and clothes tailored within an inch of their life." She will be a new partner at the law firm that Jared Franklin (Breckin Meyer) and Peter Bash (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) work at.

Locklear, who starred on the 1990s primetime soap Melrose Place as well as The CW update, recently has appeared on TV Land's Betty White comedy Hot in Cleveland. She also starred in the short-lived LAX and for several seasons on Spin City.

Franklin & Bash, which said goodbye to series regular Garcelle Beauvais, returns this summer.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/heather-locklear-joins-franklin-bash-413523

TV/Business Notes
Syndicators Boast About Shorter Commercial Breaks
Higher recall and engagement in 60-second pods
By Jon Lafayette, Broadcasting & Cable - Jan. 16, 2013

With NATPE around the corner and the upfront market down the road, the Syndicated Network Television Association has new numbers to bolster its pitch that its short commercial breaks make it a good buy for advertisers.

According to the SNTA's annual member survey, breaks in syndicated shows average just two minutes and 27 seconds in length, making them 30% shorter than commercial pods on the broadcast and cable networks during primetime.

The SNTA adds that the exclusively national pod in syndicated shows average 1:31 in length and that in 16 syndicated shows, 60 pods are available.

The shorter pods lead to higher effectiveness. According to the SNTA, advertising in pods containing between one and three commercials have unaided recall that's 57% above the average for all commercials. By contrast, spots in pods with 10 or more commercials have recall that's 21% below average.

SNTA says the 60-second pods score 21% higher than average in ad engagement, 31% higher in add attention, 61% higher in ad likeability and 250% higher in unaided recall.

Shorter pods all mean that commercials in syndicated shows have a better chance of airing in the coveted first position in a break -- the A position -- and of airing in the first minute of that break, when ratings are highest.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/491377-Syndicators_Boast_About_Shorter_Commercial_Breaks.php

Critic's Notes
Bianculli's Best Bets
By David Bianculli, TVWorthWatching.com - Jan. 18, 2013

MOYERS & COMPANY
Public Television, Check local listings
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate will either reform the filibuster rules, or keep them as they are for another two years – which is why, this weekend, Bill Moyers is speaking with Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America, and a man campaigning, through the Democracy Initiative, for filibuster reform. Moyers & Company airs from Friday to Sunday on local public TV stations; to find it in your local area, click the BillMoyers.com website.

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
IFC, 7:45 p.m. ET
One of my favorite “spider-web movies”: This 2000 Coen Brothers film always gives me new things to notice, and laugh about, and treasure. Sometimes I’ll pay particular attention to the music, or the story as it parallels The Odyssey, or the wild images. And sometimes I’ll just hone in on a performance. This time, I think I’ll simply delight in the core trio of chain-gang goofballs, played so cartoonishly, and so brilliantly, by George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson.

LAUREL AND HARDY MARATHON
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
It’s a prime-time Laurel and Hardy marathon tonight on TCM, and in this batch of film shorts, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy can be heard as well as seen. The action starts with 1931’s Chickens Come Home, and is followed by several other films from the same period.

FRINGE
Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
SERIES FINALE: Maybe, when tonight’s two-hour finale is over, everything in the Fringe universe – sorry, the Fringe universes – will make perfect sense. Maybe not. But it’s been quite an amazing trip. And my guess is that before it’s all over, at least one of the characters who died this season will be resurrected in an altered, happier-ending timeline. If not in this TV universe, then somewhere.

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: Bill Maher has been missed during his hiatus, with so much going on in the headlines and politically, but tonight he returns – and is scheduled to chat with such guests as former Sen. Bob Kerrey and former SCTV and Saturday Night Live repertory player Martin Short.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/

Technology/Critic's Notes
The Problem with Your [Cable] TV
By David Kender, TelevisionInfo.com

Is there a problem with your TV, specifically the cable TV experience? The de facto response from certain segments of the population is a resounding “yes.” A more tech-literate audience has been eagerly craving something better ever since Apple began the rumor-manufacturing of the Apple Television, a product whose mythic fervor is perhaps matched only by a cold fusion generator or a perpetual motion machine.

Dig deeper, however, and even casual TV viewers will admit to the shortcomings of cable. Does your grandmother have legitimate gripes about pricing structure, or why she has to subscribe to three ESPN channels in order to get Turner Classic Movies? Can she even find her way through the labyrinthine menus or 40-button remote control? Mine can’t either.

Okay, so the cable TV experience is terrible. Why? Foremost, perhaps, is that the cable companies have no incentive to innovate. That great driver of technology – competition – is largely absent. Cable providers tend to have monopolies in most of their markets. If one company undertakes the expensive, laborious task of laying hundreds of miles of optic cable, a second company is then less apt to repeat this process in the same territory; greener pastures are simply more appealing than territorial price wars.

With no competition, all the development that would typically go into luring customers is forgotten. As a result, you have these ugly, sluggish menus and arcane remote controls from the underfunded, under-performing R&D labs at Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox. Even if these companies wanted to go toe-to-toe on user experience with Apple or Google or even Netflix, they likely don’t have the core competencies to do so.

Thinking outside the (cable) box

None of this is to say that cable companies aren’t under assault from some type of competition. Netflix reports about 30 million subscribers. Apple, Amazon on Demand, Hulu, and a host of others are building up their arsenals of movies and TV shows. Their strategy is simple: anything you want, any time you want, on any device you want, with flexible payment systems based on your appetite. And guess what? Americans tend to have a pretty big appetite for entertainment.

The field is filled with hardware, software, and service solutions all vying to get around your cable box and put something you like on your TV screen. This was incredibly apparent at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, where the TV manufacturers are battling it out for the smartest “smart” TV. From what we saw on the show floor, Samsung appears to have the lead with an interface that aggregates all content sources (Netflix and other streaming sources plus your cable box content) and displays them in a single interface, rather than having to open each application one at a time. Want to watch Iron Man? It will tell you every service you can stream it from at that moment, as well as telling you that it’s on the FX channel right now for free. If it works, that would be a huge coup for Samsung, though we’re suspending judgement until we can try it out in the real world.

An insurmountable challenge?

Competition such as we saw at CES, where the “best” TV is the one with the best looking design, the slickest interface, and the largest number of content partnerships, stresses the real hunger for a better TV viewing experience. So why isn’t it here yet?

There are a couple very good reasons, and they’re both hard truths to get around. First, while you hate the cable company, in most markets they own all the pipes going into your home, and they’re not very likely to just lower the drawbridge to let the invading hordes into the castle. They have every reason to throttle your speed, jack up your rates, or simply refuse to play ball with the competition. The Net Neutrality Bill is one thing, but you can count on the cable companies to put up a long and dirty fight.

The second, equally troubling issue is the networks. As Gizmodo points out, all the would-be players that have tried to create an a la carte TV system have been stymied by intractable networks who realize that they make more money in the current system. It may have been a while since you looked at the “About Us” page on NBC, SyFy, or USA, but they all belong to Comcast, along with several other channels. TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network… they’re owned by Time Warner. The very same companies that own your cable and internet pipes. Do you really think they’re in a hurry to create a la carte TV?

It’s also a fact that the cable companies have some reasonable defense of their product. They do offer content on demand, and a fair bit of it. Yes, the variety is not great and the interface is downright caveman compared to dedicated streaming services, but there it is. Maybe you should make peace with your cable box, because you’re probably going to be roommates for a while yet.

http://www.televisioninfo.com/Features/The-Problem-with-Your-TV.htm?utm_source=usat&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=collab
Edited by dad1153 - 1/17/13 at 10:09pm

TV Review
'Enlightened': A Brilliant, Must-See Return For The HBO Gem
By Maureen Ryan, HuffingtonPost.com - Jan. 17, 2013

"Now only hope hurts." - Tyler, "Enlightened"

The rebirth of "Enlightenment" (Sundays at 9:30 p.m. EST on HBO) is quietly stupendous.

The show's must-see second season is one of the best stories I've experienced in a long time (HBO sent all eight Season 2 episodes for review). And -- appropriately for a show about a woman who wants to live a more vivid and connected life -- it is an experience.

"Enlightened" is a show that trusts itself to make small gestures and spend time on quiet observation, and it ultimately succeeds at one of the hardest but most important things any story should do: It brings you inside in the emotional state of the people at the heart of the tale. With its spare visual style and its meditative aesthetic, "Enlightened" evokes a feeling of not-quite-resigned aspiration, a lyrical, guarded sense of possibility. The show is suffused with the sense that what you want is just out of reach and that the dream could be yours if you just wanted it a little more intensely.

"Enlightened" is a work of precision craftsmanship that recalls two very different cable classics: It has the large-heartedness and aching love for the misbegotten that you find in David Milch's "Deadwood," and it has the mastery of tone, theme and visual style that typifies the best seasons of "Breaking Bad." It uses a rational, honest yet warmly compassionate eye to examine profound questions: When does it makes sense to give up on big dreams and be thankful for the narrow slice of existence that life has allotted you?

Is it hubris to want more, or human nature?

This season, "Enlightened" wraps that question in a taut story about corporate malfeasance, and the sense of forward momentum is a welcome change from the show's meandering first season. But the well-calibrated plot doesn't upset the show's beautiful, delicate balance between resignation and hope; each episode unfolds like an evocative short story destined to linger in your mind for days.

It takes a great deal of restraint to evoke such bittersweet feelings so consistently, especially when you consider that the show's lead character takes up a lot of space. But Amy Jellicoe (who's played by co-creator Laura Dern) is probably the reason the show is generally minimalist in its approach; for other aspects of "Enlightenment" to compete with her unruly nature would be a mistake. In a delicious irony, the show uses nuance to reveal -- and almost revel in -- her lack of subtlety.

We all know someone like Amy. She's the person who will get up in your face at a social event even if you're not well acquainted. She ignores or downgrades the rules of polite behavior because she burns with a single-minded intensity that often blinds her to how she's coming across. She doesn't ask you to follow her on Twitter, she demands it.

Yet she's not all bombast, and this season in particular, Dern brings a yearning, self-doubting quality to her that is transfixing. Ultimately, you see why various people can't quite evict Amy from their lives: She allows them to see something more than the bland, mundane world around them, and she assumes they are braver and better than they are. She questions why the world is the way it is, and believes she can change it, and yet she wonders, as the people around her do, if she truly wants to do good or if she just be validated as a good person.

The characters on "Enlightened" -- Amy, her friend Tyler (played by co-creator Mike White, who wrote and directed most episodes), their boss Dougie (Timm Sharp) and her ex Levi (Luke Wilson) -- just want to be noticed, they just want to matter to someone. Don't we all?

Storywise, the second season of the show is a big improvement on the first, in part because Amy's obsessions are wedded to that well-paced plot about corporate malfeasance. The contemplative tone remains, but there's less talk of New Age concepts and more unsparing demonstrations of what happens when idealistic theories and principles meet the messy realities of human behavior.

That's also the source of much of the show's dry comedy; Dougie in particular evolves into a douche that you can't help but love. Well, not "love," but the more you get to know this bombastic cubicle overlord, the more likely you are to forgive him for his particularly unfortunate haircut. Dermot Mulroney is also extremely good as a reporter Amy comes across; Mulroney gets the character's mix of battered idealism and self-aggrandizing ambition exactly right.

Voiceovers are crutches on a lot of other shows, but here, they're not used as exposition dumps, and I began to look forward to these spare monologues, because they're so often poetic and moving. That's not to say that "Enlightened" is a gauzy trip to the land of woo-woo self-absorption -- Amy is self-absorbed, of course, but she's also willing to risk everything in the way that holy fools have from the beginning of time. This show is so gentle because it's ultimately about exposing raw pain.

In any case, the show isn't about just her and the flaws that keep tripping her up. The third episode of the season focuses on Levi's trip to rehab; it's is an astonishingly perceptive short film about the pleasures and despair that fuel addiction, and it contains some of the best work Wilson has ever done. Becoming more enlightened usually involves facing a lot of internal and external ugliness, and the show doesn't judge people for running from that, and that's what I love about it -- "Enlightened" has such compassion for its characters, even as it tenderly exposes the least likable and weakest parts of them.

The fifth episode focuses on Tyler's existence, which consists of a featureless apartment in the Valley with cheap furniture and blank walls. The show never pulled any of the usual TV moves to make me like Tyler; it just observed his beige existence and allowed me to see hope flicker in his eyes as Amy drew him further into her schemes. He knows that Amy is probably going to end up in a great deal of trouble, but he can't resist the unpredictable possibilities that she brings to his life. Something -- even something dangerous -- is better than nothing. Unless you're left with nothing, which is a real possibility for all these people.

Tyler's grey sadness is safe, as is Levi's belligerent dissatisfaction and the dignified resignation of Amy's mom (Diane Ladd). Amy doesn't want a safe life, however, and that makes her both obnoxious and admirable. The miracle of "Enlightened" is that by the end of the season, I saw how inseparable these qualities are: "Wanting more" is almost never a pure expression of altruism -- it's a form of imposing one's will on the universe. Wanting to change anything at all is bound to piss someone off.

"Enlightened" made me afraid for Amy, because life's jackals always sniff out people like her -- the ones who are willing to throw away what little they have in pursuit of some cockeyed idea. Amy's dreams are dangerous, but to her, not dreaming at all is worse. "Enlightened's" brilliant second season, which is a controlled, perceptive exploration of the importance of passion and rule-breaking, explores that conundrum with an exceptional amount of discipline, humor, sensitivity and intelligence.

May it experience many more reincarnations.

In this week's Talking TV with Ryan and Ryan podcast, Ryan McGee and I discuss "Enlightened" and the FX comedies "Legit" and "Archer," which arrive Thursday. Other recent podcasts focus on "Arrow," "1600 Penn" and "Banshee." The podcasts are available here, below and on iTunes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/enlightened-review_b_2491809.html?utm_hp_ref=maureen-ryan

TV Review
‘Ripper Street’: a gripping Victorian crime drama
By Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe - Jan. 17, 2013

What we need is another crime drama.

Yes, kidding. Our TV schedules are lousy with cops out to catch murderers while trying to protect their souls from numbing out. We’ve got travelogue crime dramas (“Hawaii Five-0”), romantic crime dramas (“Bones”), gangster crime dramas (“Vegas”), family crime dramas (“Blue Bloods”), fiber crime dramas (the “CSI” shows), and charming crime dramas (“The Mentalist”), also known as charmas. “Castle” is also a charma. We’ve got Sherlock Holmes (“Elementary”), and on Monday, we’ll have a serial killer obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe (Kevin Bacon’s “The Following”). We clearly have all the blood-spattered, DNA-stained, fingerprint-strewn bases covered.

Or not. BBC America’s new crime series, “Ripper Street,” which premieres on Saturday night at 9, is a pleasant surprise. Well, not exactly pleasant; it’s about the awful murders in the East End of London in 1889, not long after Jack the Ripper’s siege. It’s as dark and violent as you can get on TV without being on pay cable. But the series is gripping, nicely styled, and smartly written, with a solid leading performance by Matthew Macfadyen as Inspector Edmund Reid, the head of H Division. Set in the dirty, seedy, and anarchic streets of Victorian England, it’s distinctive and unlike most of what’s out there already.

It’s important to know that, despite the title, “Ripper Street” isn’t yet another look at Jack the Ripper so much as it’s about the shadow of Jack the Ripper, and the hysteria that lingered in the killer’s aftermath. It’s about the cultishness that surrounds famous murderers — the series begins amid a Jack the Ripper tour — and how that can plague working detectives. Reid is a pragmatic guy, and when a prostitute is found murdered on the street in the premiere, he refuses to assume that Jack the Ripper has struck again. But the public and the media are convinced it was the Ripper; they want it to be the Ripper; and they bring a lot of pressure down on him to say it was the Ripper. But he doesn’t want to “miss the truth of it,” he says angrily.

The evidence leads Reid and his two right-hand men, Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) and the American Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), into a very sordid world involving pornography of the worst kind. And Reid is all about evidence. He is burnt out from having failed to catch Jack the Ripper, and he is turning his passions to the growing art of forensics and technological advancements. He lives on the cusp of a new era of police investigation, and he knows it. Jackson — who likes to visit the local brothel — was an army surgeon, and Reid relies on him to perform autopsies that will provide important factual information. Drake is Reid’s muscle, a guy who knows how to use his fists. The three of them banter as they solve, but with none of the cuteness of their American counterparts.

Reid has a seriously burned shoulder, and a mystery connected to it in his past that will surely unfold across the season. He is in a fraught marriage whose origins will also emerge. Macfadyen projects a strong moral presence, but he also adds layers of flawed humanness on top of it. The actor, who starred in “Pride & Prejudice” in 2005 and “Little Dorrit” in 2008, tempers his righteousness with doubt and a pleasingly sad-sack expression. I am genuinely curious about Reid’s back story.

I have to admit that I’m slightly wary of recommending “Ripper Street,” because I got burned by a similar BBC America series not long ago. The network brought us “Copper,” which started off with some promise but quickly deteriorated into amateur hour. But I feel more confident about this BBC production, which is, as they say, bloody good.

RIPPER STREET
Network: BBC America
Show Date: Saturday night
Show Time: 9-10

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/2013/01/17/ripper-street-victorian-crime-drama/l0a0brrMdzuOFJdomiQo3L/story.html

Perfect! Another network that can't fill enough time with decent content, so let's split it in two and make it worse. I think this is more about what to do with FSC than any need to make FX 'better'.

On a similar note, I'm sad that they're going to be repurposing Speed into a general purpose Fox sports channel later this year. They already have tons of regional channels but I guess they think they need to compete with CBS, NBC, and ABC which all have their own national channels now. Speed was a great channel for any motorsports fan even if it did favor NASCAR more than the other series.
Edited by slowbiscuit - 1/18/13 at 4:55am