Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2836

TV Notes
Watch a Three-Minute Preview of Futurama’s Seventh Season
By Jesse David Fox, Vulture.com (New York Magazine) - Feb. 5, 2013

EXCLUSIVE: Last week, we reported back to you from the "Futurama Live" show at San Francisco Sketchfest and told you about a three-minute highlight reel that offered a thorough and exciting preview of the show's upcoming seventh season (its second on Comedy Central).

Well, you can now see that reel, and it has everything a Futurama fan would want and a bit more. The whole cast is back doing silly space things: Fry, Leela, the Professor, Bender, Zoidberg, a second Zoidberg (?), and even a sighting of Fry's beloved dog.

The show is set to return sometime this summer — until then, we can only imagine why Fry has rainbow teeth. (Is it the future's version of nail art?)

[CLICK LINK BELOW TO SEE PREVIEW]

http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/watch-a-preview-of-futuramas-seventh-season.html

Critic's Notes
Tinkering smooths out first-season bumps for 'Smash'
By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Feb. 3, 2013

NBC's "Smash" began with promise a year ago and then sputtered through a season full of creative missteps. Inconsistent characterizations and repetitive plots damaged the show. New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum popularized the term "hate watching" with her second-look review of "Smash" midway through its first season. ("Hate watch" means to keep following a show a viewer has decided is worthy only of disdain.)

"Smash" (9 p.m. Tuesday, WPXI) was an ambitious series that failed as often as it succeeded, but I never hate-watched it (I save that for "Dance Moms").

Even at its worst, I stuck with "Smash" and cheered it on, especially when the writers finally tired of the Ivy (Carnegie Mellon University grad Megan Hilty) vs. Karen (Katharine McPhee) rivalry -- long after viewers got bored with it -- and flipped the script by giving them a common enemy in Rebecca St. Clair (Uma Thurman).

Even then "Smash" had its forehead-smacking moments, including Ivy's apparent overdose in the season finale, any scenes involving Ellis (Jaime Cepero) or Julia (Debra Messing) and her ill-conceived, "that-will-end-well" affair with leading man Michael Swift (Will Chase).

There were enough missteps to worry NBC, which led network executives to bring in a new head writer, replacing series creator Theresa Rebeck with Joshua Saffran ("Gossip Girl").

Judging by three episodes sent for review, these course corrections work. Admittedly, it's a long way until the end of the second season, and "Smash" could develop a whole new set of problems, but at least some of last year's errant plotting is under control.

This season the focus expands. While production of the Marilyn Monroe musical "Bombshell" is still a part of "Smash," it's just one aspect of the series, which introduces new characters and bounces around plots involving several Broadway shows.

Karen befriends Broadway star Veronica Moore (Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"), who may star in a revival of "The Wiz" directed by Derek (Jack Davenport). Karen also discovers Brooklyn strivers Jimmy (Jeremy Jordan) and Kyle (Ross native Andy Mientus), who pen their own "Rent"-like musical called "Hit List." Deeper into the new season Sean Hayes, guest starring as the star of a musical, "Liasons," clashes with Ivy.

By distributing the show's focus, but keeping it tethered to the world of Broadway, "Smash" may be able to avoid last season's tendency of plots repeating themselves (Ivy's on top! Karen's on top! Ivy's on top again!). It also roots the stories in the Broadway theater scene rather than spinning off into the home lives of characters disconnected from work. The theater world has plenty of drama to mine without jumping to irrelevant, standard soap plots.

At a press conference last month, "Smash" producers were loath to offer specifics about what they disliked about the first season, but they did acknowledge reading criticism, something that becomes a plot point for Julia in an early episode of the second season.

"I would say that our instinct about the show followed a lot of the things that people were saying about the show," said executive producer Craig Zadan. "When we felt that certain things were going off kilter in season one, we would read about them in either the press or on blogs or tweets, and it reinforced the feeling we had and the things that we would log away and say, if we are lucky enough to get the chance to come back for season two, boy, wouldn't it be great to fix those things."

Producers suggest the new season has more music, though I'm not sure I agree. But it does feature more music styles, thanks to the introduction of numbers from "Hit List." Some of the music seems younger and poppier, but traditional Broadway showtunes remain, too. Dream sequences continue, although nothing as extravagant as last season's polarizing Bollywood number (for the record, I liked it).

In a follow-up interview at an NBC party, Mr. Saffran offered an example of a specific change he made for the second season.

"As a viewer, I was maybe feeling like I wanted to focus more on the [Broadway] show they were creating," he said. "While I enjoyed the personal stories, my goal this year was to make sure they always impacted the work. While we don't always stay in a rehearsal room -- we go home with people -- what they're dealing with at home impacts the work, which is the same for all of us with jobs. Our home life has to bleed in."

Perhaps "Smash" can live up to its title after all.

'SMASH'
When: 9 p.m. Tuesday, NBC.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/tv-radio/tuned-in-tinkering-smooths-out-first-season-bumps-for-smash-673221/

TV Review
‘Strip the City,’ super smart documentary
Science Channel series is an engaging tour of the guts of cities
By Tom Conroy, Media Life Magazine - Feb. 4, 2013

Those of us who watch too much TV — and that’s most Americans — sometimes need a palate cleanser after a steady diet of overblown dramas, smarmy comedies and cacophonous reality shows. The perfect choice at those times is a nice light, dry documentary.

Unfortunately, under the influence of reality TV, documentaries are increasingly overblown, smarmy and cacophonous. That’s why an old-school one is so refreshing.

The Science Channel’s new series “Strip the City” features some pretty cool computer graphics, but it’s basically a traditional documentary. Examining the infrastructure of major cities around the world, it keeps the fun facts coming and the pictures changing. It’s a pleasant way to download some information without either overtaxing our mental hard drives or worrying about viruses.

The premiere episode, airing this Tuesday at 9 p.m., explores the bridges, tunnels, water pipes and building foundations of San Francisco, a city that, the narrator says, is “under constant attack — from the earth.” For more than 100 years, the city has sought ways to build defenses against the area’s frequent earthquakes.

The show’s gimmick is that it uses realistic computer-generated animation to strip away layers of buildings, infrastructure or terrain. The windows of the city’s tallest building, the 850-foot-high Transamerica Pyramid, fly away like leaves, followed by the concrete-and-crushed-quartz walls.

Thus we can see the various trusses and concrete blocks that hold the building together. Although it shook and swayed for a full minute during the 1989 earthquake, it suffered no structural damage.

Other graphics show the differences in the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, explaining while the former survived the ’89 quake unscathed while the latter, which is newer, had to be closed for a month afterward.

The show explains the mechanics of the San Andreas Fault clearly. A geologist visits a spot along the fault that has a “creep meter,” an underground wire that measures how quickly the tectonic plates are passing each other. Since the plates are passing at a slower rate at that particular point, pressure is building up there.

That sort of evidence is why various experts say that San Francisco is due for an earthquake that will be bigger than either the 1989 or 1906 ones. But the same experts say that the right construction methods could make “the big one” less costly and deadly.

We see how tunnels for subways and cars are now being built to bend rather than break in an earthquake. One expert says that tunnels are actually the safest place to be. A man working on the new Bay Bridge says that he hopes he and his family will be on it when the next quake hits.

The technology that makes the city’s cable cars work is less impressive but still interesting.

Of course, we could always get some stimulating information by picking up a book or a newspaper. But as long as the TV remote is closer to the couch, shows like “Strip the City” will do fine.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/strip-the-city-super-smart-documentary/

TV Review
Men Who Took Silicon to Silicon Valley
By Mike Hale, The New York Times - Feb. 5, 2013

“Silicon Valley” is a deceptively grand title for the new “American Experience” documentary Tuesday night on PBS. “Fairchild Semiconductor” would be more accurate. It could even be called “Robert Noyce” or, with a musical score and some dance numbers, “Noyce!”

But the film’s modest goals work in its favor. “Silicon Valley” takes one piece of the sprawling story of the electronics industry in Northern California and tells it with admirable clarity and detail. Stopping well short of the valley’s modern era — the action ends in the early 1970s, with the invention of the microprocessor — it’s rewarding as both history and nostalgia.

The documentary actually touches on several cycles of wistfulness. Nostalgia for the preindustrial Santa Clara Valley of orchards and farm stands, which has been heavy for more than three decades now, is indulged with grainy shots of apricots being picked and young men in letter sweaters and khaki pants walking past the History Corner of the Stanford quad. (Like many films about Silicon Valley, this one also cheats by including San Francisco vistas and cable cars.)

After that stage setting, the film gets to its central story: how in 1957 eight young men, led by a visionary physicist and engineer, Mr. Noyce, took the revolutionary step of leaving their company to form a start-up called Fairchild Semiconductor and in the process created Silicon Valley. Interviews with an array of industry veterans, including two of the three surviving defectors, outline how Fairchild and the companies it spawned both developed the technologies and established the business and financial cultures that would eventually produce behemoths like Apple and Google.

This is dramatic social and scientific history, revealing, among other things, how the semiconductor industry grew to serve the military and the space program long before the rise of the personal computer. But, again, the film’s visceral appeal has much to do with period detail: neatly groomed engineers wearing suits and ties, even on the production floor or at the bar of Walker’s Wagon Wheel in Mountain View; rows of women in smocks and hairnets assembling transistors. (The gender lines are inviolate in these early-’60s photos, and the men are almost invariably white.)

One startling image shows a handwritten list of the many corporations that declined to bankroll the eight pioneers before Fairchild Camera and Instrument said yes. If any of them had possessed more foresight, the silicon chip might have belonged to National Cash Register, Motorola, Philco, BorgWarner, Chrysler, General Mills or United Shoe.

Even with its relatively narrow focus, “Silicon Valley” is highly compressed, and people familiar with the industry may have complaints: that the infighting that made Fairchild Semiconductor’s reign short-lived isn’t fully explored, or that Intel, the chip giant later founded by Mr. Noyce and Gordon Moore, should receive more attention.

Any quibbling aside, though, the film is a captivating look at recent history that already feels ancient, when high technology involved inventing and building things rather than writing code and selling clicks.

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: SILICON VALLEY
On PBS stations on Tuesday night (check local listings).

http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/arts/television/silicon-valley-on-american-experience-on-pbs.html?ref=television&_r=0

Nielsen Overnights (Cable)
David E. Kelley’s ‘Monday Mornings’ Debuts Weak; ‘Dallas’ Hits New Series Low
By Dominic Patten, Deadline.com - Feb. 5, 2013

TNT’s Monday Mornings had a sickly debut last night. The 10 PM premiere of the new medical drama pulled in just 1.34 million viewers in Live + Same Day. That’s a harsh drop from the 2.232 million Monday Mornings’ 9 PM lead-in Dallas got Monday with the second show of its second season. Monday Mornings averaged 386,000 among Adults 18-49 and 472,000 among the 25-54 demo. Dallas got 773,000 among the 18-49 and 917,000 among the 25-54. Last night was also a series low for Dallas.

Monday Mornings is the debut of executive producer David E. Kelley on cable. The show is based on a book by CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, who also serves as co-executive producer. Gupta’s upcoming Monday Mornings novel is set at Chelsea General and follows the lives of five surgeons as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/tv-ratings-monday-mornings-debut-david-e-kelley-dallas-series-low/

TV Notes
'Game of Thrones' Writer George R.R. Martin Lands Overall Deal With HBO
By Tim Kenneally, TheWrap.com - Feb. 5, 2013

There just might be a lot more dragons and swords in HBO's future.

George R.R. Martin, whose "A Song of Fire and Ice" fantasy novel series served as the basis for HBO's hit drama "Game of Thrones," has entered an overall deal with the network.

The two-year agreement will retain Martin as a co-executive producer of the series, which begins its third season March 31, but will also have him developing and producing series for the network.

In addition to "Game of Thrones" -- which he's written a few episodes for -- Martin served as a producer and writer on the 1980s series "Beauty and the Beast," and penned a handful of episodes for the 1980s revival of "The Twilight Zone."

News of Martin's overall deal with HBO was first reported by Deadline.

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/game-thrones-writer-george-rr-martin-lands-overall-deal-hbo-76416

TV Sports
Dick Vitale, finally, to call NCAA Final Four action
By Michael Hiestand, USA Today - Feb. 5, 2013

ESPN's Dick Vitale is a rarity: Despite being arguably the best-known broadcaster in men's college basketball, he has never worked NCAA tournament championship action.

But during the upcoming March Madness, Vitale will do just that as an ESPN game analyst during the NCAA Final Four — for its international TV feed.

"In the history of ESPN, he's one of our most-important personalities," ESPN executive vice president John Wildhack said of Vitale. "This is a reward and a thank you."

That overseas TV coverage, going to 156 countries, will include Vitale working with play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler on one semifinal game and the NCAA championship game. Jay Bilas, with Nessler, will be the game analyst on the other semifinal.

"I'm on cloud nine," Vitale told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday. "It's the last chapter of my life, or my career. They just called me today (about the assignment) and it blew me away."

Vitale says NCAA tournament coverage, through various studio shows, kept him going on TV. When ESPN began doing peripheral coverage of the tournament in 1983 -- as the NCAA controlled the game announcing -- Vitale says being involved was a life-changer.

"I was thinking of going back to coaching college -- I really wanted to go back," Vitale says.

But when he says ESPN executives told him "you hit a nerve" with viewers, Vitale figured he would stay with this TV gig for the long run.

"I'd love to be smooth like (ESPN anchor) Bob Ley, but that's not me," Vitale says.

Gooaaallll!!!! Gus Johnson, the Fox announcer famous for flamboyant game calls on basketball and football, will try something new next Wednesday -- calling world-class soccer on a Manchester United-Real Madrid game.

Johnson, in the first assignment for the Fox Soccer channel that will include various European championships, doesn't pretend to be a soccer expert. He has prepped with radio calls of the MLS San Jose Earthquakes.

But he says when Fox Sports co-president Eric Shanks first approached him about calling soccer, "I thought, 'What is this guy going to get me into?' That was my reaction."

Says Shanks: "With Gus, this wasn't a grand plan from the beginning and it was kind of off-the-cuff. It's a tough assignment, but he pours himself in his work. It took a while and took some coercing. But he's a unique sports voice and there's a first time for everything."

Fox begins covering soccer's World Cup starting with the women's tournament in 2015. So while Johnson told USA TODAY Sports he wants to "tap into the passion of the world's game and understand why it's almost more than a religious experience for some of these fans," he's also realistic about whether he'll call those Cup games.

"I might hit Lotto and not have to work again," Johnson says.

Whul show: Actor Robert Wuhl on Wednesday debuts a weekly Off the Wuhl fantasy baseball sports radio show on Sirius XM Radio (9 p.m. ET). Wuhl, who has been playing fantasy sports since 1988, told USA TODAY Sports, "I understand the passion and pragmatism and killer instinct" of fantasy leagues -- "and how it gives fans a better appreciation of baseball and a skewed appreciation of baseball." And now, he says, "Everybody thinks they can be a general manager." Well, maybe they could.

Spice rack: In the second year of live-streaming Super Bowl TV coverage, the Baltimore Ravens' victory vs. the San Francisco 49ers attracted 3 million unique users -- up 43% from last year's New York Giants' victory vs. the New England Patriots. And the digital coverage, available on cbssports.com and nfl.com, generated nearly 10 million live video streams -- up 100% from last year. To keep things in perspective, CBS' coverage of Super Bowl XLVII attracted 108.4 million viewers. ... NBC will begin coverage for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics a day earlier than the traditional start date. Rather than going prime time next Feb. 6 with the Game's opening ceremonies, NBC will start with events underway the previous day, such as women's freestyle moguls and women's slopestyle moguls. NBC, which Wednesday begins running on-air promotions for the Games, will live-stream all events, as it did at the 2012 London Olympics.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2013/02/05/ncaa-basketball-dick-vitale-final-four-ncaa-basketball/1893125/

Nielsen Notes (Cable)
Puppy Bowl biggest ever: Ratings rise during blackout
By James Hibberd, EW.com's 'Inside TV' Blog - Feb. 5, 2013

The Super Bowl’s epic power loss was Animal Planet’s gain.

The cable network’s cuteness-counter-programming special Puppy Bowl IX scored record viewership this year. A total of 2.6 million viewers tuned in for the show’s annual two-hour premiere, up 64 percent from last year. (Also, a total of 12.4 million sampled the telecast — watching 6 minutes or more — across all its repeats, which is also a record).

During the New Orleans’ Superdome’s 34-minute blackout on Sunday, viewership of a Puppy Bowl repeat climbed to 1.1 million viewers — a 54 percent increase compared to the prior segment. So the Super Bowl may have fallen short of breaking its viewership record, but the Animal Planet managed to lap up a few extra viewers.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/02/05/puppy-bowl-ratings/

Critic's Notes
TV's Newest Trend: 'Hate Watching'
By Tim Goodman, The Hollywood Report's 'Bastard Machine' Blog - Feb. 5, 2013

If you're a fan of television and use social media at all -- or troll for recaps and the comments they elicit -- then you know all about "hate watching."

And on Tuesday night, the scripted drama that's probably the poster child for hate watching, Smash, returns for its second season. Already people are hating on it. Or hoping it's not "fixed" so they can still hate watch it without being let down by, say, an improvement in quality or the shoring up of some characters.

I'm not a hate watcher. As a professional television critic, I already watch plenty of shows I hate. Because I have to review them. And then I have to check back to see if they stayed awful or, unicorn time, got better. Once a clear assessment of a show can be made, I snap off the rearview mirror and go forward.

The essential issue here is time. We're living in a TV world of unprecedented options. There are a staggering number of shows on television to choose from, and if you focus, like I do, almost exclusively on scripted series, there's still an unholy, time-sucking amount out there to follow. The blessing (curse?) here is that so much of those choices are good. Many of them great.

We are in that era where the drama renaissance shows no signs of faltering. And hell, comedies are better than they have been in years, though most of them are low-rated and fall prey to the numbers game. For some viewers, the choices are confounding, and they seek a kind of freedom from choice. They want their friendly favorite television critic to cut through the clutter and tell them what to watch. Unfortunately for them, even doing that leaves a breathtaking number of options.

If 75 percent of television is crap and 25 percent is great, these days that 25 percent includes more shows than ever before.

I've even told people who are way behind on such seminal and/or influential series as The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, etc. to drop cable entirely and just rent or stream the shows. There's been so much amazing television in the past decade that, like readers trying to pore over the classics they never got to, the existing inventory is so immense that everything current can wait. That certainly rules out wasting time on series that get canceled after you've invested time in them, plus you don't get a situation like The Killing. And it allows debates, like the one involving whether Homeland frittered away its greatness in season two, to play out definitively while you're busy watching Breaking Bad.

For those of us who are essentially all caught up and current in television, we don't have that luxury. Instead, we have the burden of time, of selective elimination. For example, how do you keep up with -- a random and conservative number -- 15 very strong television shows (including some nightly examples like The Daily Show, etc., plus David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel), go to work, maybe take care of family or kids or go to college and pay bills, get your car fixed, clean the house, find time to work out, see big-screen movies and then have enough time left over to hate watch a show that mostly annoys you?

I do not get that. At all.

Maybe because I go out of my way to avoid shows I hate. Or maybe because I find an overwhelming multitude of other things to hate or at least be annoyed with in this world, subjecting myself to Smash lacks a certain appeal. I don't know. Way back I coined a term -- TiNo -- to describe all the stuff I recorded but hadn't watched and maybe wouldn't ever watch on my TiVo. This remains an issue today, part of it for professional reasons, obviously. But when I look at my DVR, all I see are stacks of shows I'm desperately trying to keep up with. I'm not going to add Here Come Honey Boo Boo or Two and a Half Men just so I can hate watch them and vent on Twitter.

Even on my so-called "guilty pleasure" shows, I keep a fairly tight leash. I watched Revenge until I couldn't take it anymore. I gave up SportsCenter on ESPN a long time ago (and in the process managed to increase my screen time spent since I now regularly visit or record shows on the NFL Network, MLB Network, Fox Soccer, etc.).

I do, however, at least partially understand the appeal of rubber-necking something that goes off the rails, provided you believe there's some likelihood of a creative turnaround. Much of Downton Abbey's season two was like that for me -- and the burn-victim cousin (or not) was nearly the opt-out moment. The very last episode provided redemption, at least.

But Smash is not in the same league as Downton Abbey. It seems to be a series that's grabbing more attention than it's ultimately worth for merely falling short of unrealistic expectations in the first place. Behind-the-scenes wrangling happens on a lot of shows, and that turmoil often turns up in the quality of the onscreen content. But to hate-watch Smash just to bitch about its shortcomings while periodically clapping out loud about certain scenes just seems like a time-management mistake to me.

Yes, I know, it's your life (if you're a Smash hate-watcher), and you can do whatever you want with it. You can watch a bunch of trashy reality shows -- the true staples of hate-watching because there are so many more offerings, from The Bachelor to The Real Housewives collective to Survivor.

But count me out. Because I can hear that clock ticking. I can see that list of things I didn't get to cross off. I know there's pleasure or soul-satisfaction to be found doing something else.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bastard-machine/hate-watching-smash-is-latest-418392

TV Notes
Release of 13 Episodes Redefines Spoiler Alert
By Brian Stelter, The New York Times - Feb. 5, 2013

This article about “House of Cards” contains no spoilers.

That notice seems necessary, since Netflix’s all-at-once release of the Kevin Spacey political thriller series last Friday has raised a thicket of questions. Chief among them: how can viewers who binged on all 13 episodes in one sitting talk about the show without ruining the season for others who might wait weeks or months to watch it?

Netflix’s release strategy went against the grain of “social TV,” the catchall term for viewers who virtually watch TV together by chatting along in real time on Twitter, Facebook and other Web sites. Jenni Konner, one of the showrunners for HBO’s “Girls,” made the point this way on Twitter on Sunday night: “I don’t know how to talk to people who aren’t at least halfway through ‘House of Cards.’ ” On Tuesday she still had one episode left.

Dave Winer, the Internet pioneer who helped give birth to blogging in the late 1990s, restarted his Netflix subscription so he could watch the series, and immediately noticed the drawback to the all-at-once approach.

“I don’t want spoilers, and I don’t want to be a spoiler,” he wrote in a blog post on Sunday. “We need to invent new communication systems, where only people who have made it through Episode X can discuss with others who have made it exactly that far.”

These are the conundrums that accompany the decades-long shift from “appointment viewing” to the on-demand kind — and they’re heightened by Netflix, which is plowing new ground by trying to make network-quality programming exclusively for the Web.

Netflix says it won’t release any data about how many of its 27 million streaming subscribers in this country watch “House of Cards,” much to the exasperation of broadcast and cable television executives, who suspect that the show would be relatively low-rated if Nielsen were actually tracking it. But Nielsen is not, partly because Netflix has no advertising. The industry will know if the show is a success only if Netflix orders more episodes.

For now, Netflix is committed to 26 episodes; filming will begin on the second half in the spring. The company declined interview requests about the response to “House of Cards” this week, but a spokesman said in a statement, “We’re happy with the great reception the show has had in the media, social media and the reviews on Netflix.com.”

The commotion about online release strategies (and spoiler avoidance) isn’t going away. Netflix has more original shows in production — a new season of “Arrested Development” is due in May, for example — and competitors like Hulu do too. Amazon is financing half a dozen comedy pilots with actors like Jeffrey Tambor and John Goodman. A production company called Prospect Park is bringing back the soap operas “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” online, to be shown on Hulu and elsewhere.

While appointment viewing still accounts for a vast majority of Americans’ TV time, these shows will exist as a lab experiment of sorts, allowing companies to try — and to study — new viewing behaviors. “Over the next several years, speculation will give way to data,” the “House of Cards” showrunner, Beau Willimon, wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Willimon was active on Twitter all weekend, answering questions and asking binge viewers to prove that they were watching. To one viewer who lost sleep watching all the episodes in a row, he wrote, “Anyone who gets fired for missing work due to ‘House of Cards’... I will personally pay for their Netflix subscription.”

His involvement might be one way to create “social TV” chatter. Networks like HBO and ABC say online conversations about once-a-week shows can double as free marketing, sometimes bolstering ratings. But Netflix has other ways to market, like its home page, which can be a huge billboard for shows.

“The huge benefit is that we don’t have to advertise ‘8 p.m. on a Thursday night, tune in,’ ” Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, told investors last week. “We get to let people know about the show, and they can watch it any time, at their leisure.”

The investors didn’t ask Mr. Hastings about the social conundrum the show’s release created. On Friday “House of Cards” would have ranked No. 6 on the daily chart of most-talked-about TV shows assembled by Trendrr, a company that specializes in such data. By Sunday, though, Trendrr said, it would have fallen out of the Top 10. (The show didn’t appear on the charts because Trendrr tracks only broadcast and cable telecasts.)

By Monday, reviews — largely positive — of the entire first season were trickling in. Some writers said they loved the season but hated the glut. “Art, after all, is meant to be contemplated; junk food is meant to be consumed quickly, without thought or sentiment,”wrote Jace Lacob in The Daily Beast. “Is ‘House of Cards’ doing itself a disservice by urging viewers to watch so quickly? Should we be approaching television as one would a bag of potato chips? Is there something to be said for waiting patiently until the next meal?”

There is, but Netflix is arguing that viewers should have the option to watch as they wish, one at a time or all at once. Over the weekend some “House of Cards” viewers started their Twitter and Facebook posts with the episode number, as in, “I’m on No. 5.” Some said they would watch two or three each weekend until the season finale, and avoid spoilers in the meantime.

By Tuesday, the Internet was lighting up with “safe spaces” for faster viewers to converse about all 13 episodes. “If You’ve Seen All of House of Cards, Let’s Discuss,” read a blog post on New York magazine’s entertainment site Vulture.

That’s a long way from Mr. Winer’s proposal for a new communication system, but it’s a start.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/arts/television/netflixs-house-of-cards-redefines-the-spoiler-alert.html?ref=television

TV Sports/Nielsen Notes
Super Bowl: What Happened To San Francisco (The TV Market, Not The 49ers)?
By Patrick Hipes, Deadline.com - Feb. 5, 2013

As media outlets race to determine who was at fault for the half-hour power outage during Super Bowl XXLVII — does it really matter now if it the power company or the Superdome is to blame? — here’s a more intriguing story. How is it that the San Francisco TV market, which includes Oakland and San Jose and is the sixth-biggest in the U.S., finishes 28th in the overnight ratings among Nielsen’s 56 local metered markets?

Oakland fans can be partially excused as the home of the rival Raiders, but still, it’s an NFL city. In the final totals, SF drew a 46.5 local rating, a Ray Guy punt away from Baltimore’s leading 59.6 — the latter number means 3 of every 5 TVs were tuned to the game, a record for the city according to the Baltimore Sun. So is it that the Niners fans were turned off by (and therefore they turned off) the team’s shaky start? Their team was down 28-6 before the lights went out. If so, it’s too bad they didn’t stick around for a great ending that most Super Bowls rarely have — the Ravens’ goal-line stand prevented the biggest comeback win in Super Bowl history. It all runs contrary to our very unscientific poll showing that the city was awash in red and gold for two weeks leading up to the game, with buzz levels high. So this is really a head-scratcher.

For the rest of the country, Sunday’s Ravens-49ers game garnered the highest overnight rating in Super Bowl history, a 48.1, though it was only the third-most-watched game with 108.4 million viewers.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/tv-ratings-monday-mornings-debut-david-e-kelley-dallas-series-low/

Business Notes
Disney Earnings Beat; 'Star Wars' Spinoffs Planned
By CNBC.com - Feb. 5, 2013

Disney posted quarterly earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street's expectations on Tuesday amid strong revenue growth in its media networks business and its theme parks. But earnings slipped from a year ago, given higher programming costs at ESPN.

And, big news "Star Wars" fans: Disney, which announced it would buy Lucasfilm last year, plans to make spinoff movies based on characters in addition to the three sequels it had previously announced, CEO Bob Iger told CNBC in an interview after the earnings report.

After the announcement, the company's shares rose in extended-hours trading.

Disney reported fiscal first-quarter earnings excluding items of 79 per share, down from 80 cents a share in the year-earlier period.

Operating income at ESPN declined given higher programming and production costs which were partially offset by higher affiliate revenue.

"In ESPN's case, we had the largest program cost increase for the year in the quarter that we just announced," Iger said. "We have new distribution deals coming online, but the revenue from those deals won't hit until the second quarter."

Iger expects ESPN will deliver solid high-single digit growth for the year.

Iger also said that ABC and ESPN were affected by softer ratings in the fiscal first quarter, but said both have bounced back. "ESPN is running in the quarter around 7 percent above where they were last year and we feel much better about the advertising market now than we did during the quarter that was just announced," the Disney CEO said.

And in a sign consumers may be feeling better about the economy, Disney said that higher operating income at its domestic parks was driven by increased guest spending during the quarter.

While there was some softness in the international parks business in the fiscal first quarter, Iger told CNBC the trends for the domestic parks business for the year are quite good, noting strong bookings and pricing.

For the first quarter, net income fell 6 percent to $1.38 billion from $1.46 billion a year ago.

Revenue rose 5 percent to $ 11.34 billion from $10.78 billion.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of 76 cents a share on $11.21 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100434935

Technology Notes
Microsoft Surface Pro packs a punch
By Edward Baig, USA Today - Feb. 6, 2013

It was hardly flawless, but I found much to admire in the Surface RT tablet computer that Microsoft started selling in October. The very first personal computer that Microsoft produced itself, it was light, sturdy and, as I wrote at the time, an impressive piece of engineering. It was Microsoft's premier showpiece for its radical new tile-based touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system, a machine that could possibly bridge the narrowing divide between tablet computers and traditional laptops.

Except that wasn't entirely the case. Surface RT actually runs a Windows 8 variant known as Windows RT, which means it was incompatible with all of the Windows PC software that came before it. Sure, Surface RT was preloaded with complete versions of Microsoft Office programs Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint (but not Outlook). And other apps were available through an online Windows Store.

But for the many people (including me) who might consider Surface as a Windows notebook substitute, the inability to run old programs was for RT a probable deal-breaker. It meant waiting instead for the Surface Pro tablet that goes on sale Saturday, which does make nice with older software.

The time is near. I've been testing Surface Pro and like it very much, though it, too, is by no means perfect. On the, um, surface, Surface Pro and Surface RT are not identical twins, though you can't help but notice the strong family resemblance. Both have (not overly loud) stereo speakers and front and rear high-definition (720p) video cameras. Both are solidly built tablets encased in a magnesium alloy, with convenient kickstands that enable you to prop them on a desk. Alas, the lack of a hinge attached to the Surface display means you cannot adjust the angle of the screen when it is propped up.

Surface Pro and RT can accommodate clever Microsoft-branded keyboard/cover accessories that add versatility if you want to go into work mode. There's something reassuring about the clicking sound — and which Microsoft highlights in TV spots — when you snap on these keyboards. They come in different colors and there are two main versions: a thin Touch Cover ($119.99) that lets you touch-type passably but without any give on the keys and a somewhat thicker (but still pretty thin) Type Cover ($129.99) that I used to write this column in Word. You'll find the Type Cover experience reasonably close — if not quite as good — as typing on a decent regular laptop keyboard. And you will have difficulty typing with it on your lap.

Of course, Windows 8 lets you summon an onscreen touch keyboard. And the touch environment is what makes the new operating system, and Surface itself, feel fresh and modern. But the very schizophrenic nature of Windows 8 means you're likely to spend a fair amount of time going back and forth between handling the screen with your fingers and reverting to the more traditional mouse/trackpad and keyboard worlds in which you've comfortably lived for years. I adapted quickly but expect it will drive some of people crazy. (I tried Microsoft's optional pocket-size $69.95 Wedge Touch Mouse Surface Edition during my review.)

Surface Pro, unlike RT, also comes with a pen that you can use to draw or write, such as when jotting things down in OneNote. You can magnetically adhere the pen to the tablet by connecting it to the same port where you connect the power charger. I figure it's only a matter of time before the pen goes AWOL. Surface is smart enough to pick up whatever you're writing with the pen while ignoring the movements of your finger that may be simultaneously touching the screen.

The tablet is just over a half-inch thick, compared with a little over one-third of an inch on RT. And at 2 pounds, Pro is heavier than its 1.5-pound sibling but not to the point where it bothered me. Where you do feel the extra weight is in your wallet. Pro versions start at $899, compared with a $499 starting price for Surface RT.

The entry-level Pro unit comes with a mere 64 gigabytes of storage, a sum that is far stingier after you factor in the operating system and other built-in software. Microsoft says tests on final production units show about 30 GB of storage are left for installing your own software and files. (Published reports said the available storage was even lower, but Microsoft claims that was for pre-production models.) The push nowadays may be toward cloud storage — in this case through Microsoft's SkyDrive — but I still like having a decent amount of on-board storage. For $999, you can buy Surface Pro with 128 GB, though, again, the available storage — roughly 90 GB — is considerably less. You can bolster storage through a microSD expansion.

Surface Pro also comes up short on battery life. In my harsh test with the brightness cranked to the max and a movie streaming over Wi-Fi, I got just 3½ hours of juice. That's extremely skimpy for a tablet and not great for a laptop either. In a similar test, Surface RT got six hours. (Neither comes close to the battery life on an iPad.) Expect somewhat better battery performance under less-trying conditions.

So why then do I like Surface Pro so much? For starters, this machine packs a punch. It's got an Intel Core i5 processor inside, compared with an Nvidia Tegra 3 in RT, and it smokes. You appreciate the difference in speed when you run the same apps side by side.

The 10.6-inch full-high-definition display (resolution 1920x1080 pixels) is terrific, with wide viewing angles. I didn't mind the same-size but otherwise lower-resolution display on Surface RT, but it doesn't hold a candle to Surface Pro.

Surface doesn't have a built-in DVD/CD drive, so to install older software that resided on disks, I had to borrow such a drive from a friend. I connected it to Surface via the tablet's lone built-in USB port; a second USB port is on the power connector, letting you, say, charge a cellphone while you're plugged in working. Incidentally, Surface Pro uses a faster version of USB than Surface RT.

I successfully loaded older versions of Family Tree Maker software, Adobe Premiere Elements and Quicken, some dating back to the Windows XP era. Of course, I imagine most folks will load more of the recent stuff they may have on a Windows 7 PC. I downloaded Firefox, iTunes and Office, and they worked fine, though depending on the software, you may not be able to exploit the machine's full touch capabilities. In iTunes, for example, I could tap the screen to make things happen but couldn't always flick to scroll.

Microsoft won't say exactly how many apps are available in the Windows Store. On Surface Pro, Microsoft includes its own apps for Internet Explorer, Bing, Xbox Music and more. It does say that the number has quadrupled since the grand opening back on Oct. 26 and that there have been 100 million app downloads overall. Suffice to say the thousands that are available are a small fraction compared with the tablet apps available for the iPad, still the envy of the tablet universe.

Pardon the pun, though, but Surface vs. the iPad doesn't exactly represent an apples-to-apples comparison. Especially if you factor in the accessory touch cover keyboards, Surface has as much in common with regular laptops as it does with tablets. The ability to run Office alone suggests it is very likely to show up in the workplace.

At the time of my review of Surface RT I indicated that I'd consider it more of a hotshot if it could run older Windows software. Well, Surface Pro obviously can do that, so I'll stick to my word and call it a hotshot. It's blistering fast. The screen is beautiful. It's a solid hybrid between tablet and laptop. But you still have to take to the radically different Windows 8 operating system. And I wish it were cheaper, had more available apps and storage and longer battery life.

The bottom line:

SURFACE PRO

$899 on up; www.microsoft.com/Surface
Pro: Fast. Light and handsome. Compatible with older Windows software. Beautiful touch-friendly screen. Clever keyboard cover accessories.
Con: Mediocre battery life and limited storage. Screen can't be propped at different angles. Limited number of new apps. Pricey.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-review/1891757/#

$899 for a tablet in this Apple-dominated market? Seriously, Microsoft? Why don't you just shoot it in the head while you're at it?

This is simple. Bay Area fans were gathered in houses and bars watching the game on single TVs. Many, many eyes all glued to that single service. They don't count the eyes, just the TV set to CBS on that given Sunday....

If Baltimore fans weren't gathered in houses and bars, where were they watching?

Critic's Notes
Bianculli's Best Bets
By David Bianculli, TVWorthWatching.com - Feb. 6, 2013

NATURE: "ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES"
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
Part 3 of 3. This hour concludes Sir David Attenborough's three-part career overview, and is even more impressive and emotion-stirring than the others. It's called Our Fragile Planet, and Attenborough takes the time - the entire hour - to reflect on the changes he's witnessed in the natural world, and in his own way of covering and relating to it, in the past 60-plus years as TV's finest nature host. The good news: Even with species going extinct and the polar ice melting, Attenborough finds cause to be hopeful. How inspiring. Truly. Check local listings.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
TCM, 8:00 p.m.
This early sound film, one of the boldest anti-war movies ever made, is a milestone movie – and not just because its director is Lewis Milestone. Released in 1930, this version of Erich Maria Remarque’s gripping novel about life (and death) in the German trenches painted a portrait of WWI that came before, but didn’t prevent the German enthusiasm for, what became known as WWII. Lew Ayres stars.

MODERN FAMILY
ABC, 9:00 p.m. ET
One of the subplots in tonight’s show has Manny (Rico Rodriguez) trying out – very, very aggressively – to replace the star of his school’s upcoming production of Phantom of the Opera. Expect some backstage intrigue, worthy of matching whatever’s being enacted in front of the footlights.

NOVA: "BUILDING PHARAOH'S CHARIOT"
PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET
After last year’s Building Pharaoh’s Ship, this science series returns to the well with another hour devoted to examining, and reverse engineering, one of the impressive artifacts of the early Egyptian era. It’s an intriguing idea, but what’s next? Nature devoting an hour to Clutching Cleopatra’s Asp? Check local listings.

THE AMERICANS
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
Episode two of this new FX series gets to move forward, after establishing the characters, conflicts and premise in last week’s outing. Tonight, Soviet sleeper agents Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings (Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys) embark on a dangerous mission to bug the office of a top U.S. official – while, at home, Phillip has an unexpectedly “neighborly” encounter with FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), who has moved in across the street – and who, this week, is the most intriguing aspect of this series that’s all about intrigue.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/

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

Nielsen Overnights (18-49)
NBC’s ‘Smash’ returns to a series low
Second-season debut averages a 1.1 in 18-49s
By Toni Fitzgerald, Media Life Magazine - Feb. 6, 2013

NBC’s “Smash” crashed in its second-season debut.

Last night’s premiere fell to a series low and was down 39 percent from last May’s first-season finale.

“Smash” averaged a 1.1 adults 18-49 rating from 9 to 11 p.m. last night, according to Nielsen overnights, off from a 1.8 for its most recent episode last spring.

The musical drama was expected to draw lower ratings than it put up during its first season, when it aired behind the hit show “The Voice.” Last February it posted the season’s second-best debut for a new drama, drawing a 3.8 in its 10 p.m. Monday slot.

This year it has moved to Tuesday, where it has little lead-in support. NBC’s “Betty White’s Second Annual 90th Birthday Special” drew only a 1.5 at 8 p.m.

“Smash” started with a 1.3 at 9 p.m. but had dropped to a 1.0 by 10:30 p.m.

The show’s ratings may see a DVR bounce, as it gained an average of 47 percent when seven-day playback was added last season. This time its initial numbers are so low that may not help its chances of survival.

Elsewhere last night, ABC’s “The Taste” rebounded in its third episode, growing 13 percent from last week to a 1.8 at 8 p.m., second in the timeslot behind CBS’s “NCIS,” dominant as usual with a 3.7.

A special 9 p.m. episode of “The Bachelor” drew a 2.6, growing 8 percent from the previous night’s episode.

Fox’s 9:30 p.m. comedy “The Mindy Project” may have benefited from the absence of usual timeslot foe “The New Normal” on NBC. The show grew to its best rating in four months, a 1.9, up 12 percent from last week.

CBS finished first for the night among 18-49s with a 2.8 average overnight rating and a 7 share. ABC was second at 2.3/6, Fox third at 1.9/5, Univision fourth at 1.7/5, NBC fifth at 1.2/3, and CW and Telemundo tied for sixth at 0.5/1.

As a reminder, all ratings are based on live-plus-same-day DVR playback, which includes shows replayed before 3 a.m. the night before. Seven-day DVR data won’t be available for several weeks. Forty-seven percent of Nielsen households have DVRs.

At 8 p.m. CBS led with a 3.7 for “NCIS,” with ABC and Univision tied for second at 1.8, ABC for “Taste” and Univision for “Por Ella Soy Eva.” Fox was fourth with a 1.6 for “Raising Hope,” NBC fifth with a 1.5 for “Birthday,” CW sixth with a 0.6 for “Hart of Dixie” and Telemundo seventh with a 0.5 for “Pasion Prohibida.”

CBS was first again at 9 p.m. with a 3.1 for “NCIS: Los Angeles,” followed by ABC with a 2.6 for “Bachelor.” Fox was third with a 2.2 for “New Girl” (2.5, even to last week) and “Mindy” (1.9), Univision fourth with a 1.9 for “Amores Verdadores,” NBC fifth with a 1.2 for “Smash,” Telemundo sixth with a 0.6 for “La Patrona” and CW seventh with a 0.4 for the series finale of “Emily Owens, M.D.”

ABC took the lead at 10 p.m. with a 2.7 for more “Bachelor,” while CBS slipped to second with a 1.6 for “Vegas.” Univision was third with a 1.3 for “Amor Bravio,” NBC fourth with a 1.0 for more “Smash” and Telemundo fifth with a 0.4 for “El Rostro de la Venganza.”

Among households, CBS led the night with a 9.9. average overnight rating and a 16 share. ABC was second at a 4.6/7, NBC third at 3.3/5, Fox fourth at 2.4/4 and CW fifth at 0.9/1. Note: Household primetime averages for the Spanish-language networks weren’t available at press time.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/nbcs-smash-returns-to-a-series-low/

* * * *

TV Notes
A crossover for ‘CSI,’ perhaps its last
'CSI: NY' is in danger of being canceled with low ratings
By Louisa Ada Seltzer, Media Life Magazine - Feb. 6, 2013

The investigators of “CSI” and “CSI: NY” collaborate on a case tonight at 10 p.m. that could mark the very last crossover in the franchise’s history.

That’s because “CSI: NY” is in danger of going off the air just like “CSI: Miami,” which was canceled last May.

The spinoff has been drawing low ratings in its Friday timeslot for years, averaging a series-low 1.4 adults 18-49 Nielsen rating this season.

Because it’s an older show, now in its ninth season, “CSI: NY” also has high production costs for its cast and crew. And that may prompt CBS to replace the drama with an unproven but cheaper program next year.

The network seems to be leaning that way.

“CSI: NY” will air its season finale this month, and while an early end to the season isn’t always an indication that a show will be canceled, it’s rarely a good sign.

This could then be the last time that two “CSI” shows cross over.

By contrast, the original “CSI” seems to be on track to return for its 14th season next fall. Ted Danson is now in his second season on the show, and it has consistently won the 10 p.m. Wednesday timeslot this season despite competition from ABC’s much-buzzed-about new show “Nashville” and NBC’s improving “Chicago Fire.”

The original “CSI” is averaging a 2.4 this year, off 11 percent from a 2.7 last season.

On tonight’s episode, “CSI: NY’s” Mac (Gary Sinise) comes to Las Vegas to surprise his girlfriend, only to discover she’s missing. Mac enlists his old pal D.B. Russell (“CSI’s” Danson) to help him find her.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/a-crossover-for-csi-perhaps-its-last/

TV Notes
MTV Renews 'Buckwild'
By Philiana Ng, The Hollywood Report's 'Live Feed' Blog - Feb. 6, 2013

MTV has renewed Buckwild for a second season, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

Thus far this season, the half-hour reality series that follows nine raucous twentysomethings in West Virginia, has hovered around the 3 million viewers mark in the old Thursday time slot occupied by Jersey Shore.

Buckwild is currently the top-rated original cable show on its respective night in MTV's 12-34 target demographic.

The series closes out its 12-episode first season with the final two episodes beginning at 10 p.m. A Buckwild Unseen Moments special will air at 11 p.m.

Buckwild is executive produced by John Stevens and Barry Poznick from Zoo Productions, with J.P. Williams from Parallel Entertainment. Adam Paul is also an EP, with MTV's Lauren Dolgen and Colin Nash.

EW first reported the news.

Michael O'Connell contributed to this report.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/mtv-renews-buckwild-418757

* * * *

TV Notes
'Top Chef' Renewed for Season 11
By Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Report's 'Live Feed' Blog - Feb. 6, 2013

Top Chef fans, feast your eyes on this: The Emmy-winning Bravo cooking competition has been renewed for season 11.

There's no word yet, however, on what city will host the competition, or whether the show's power-trio of hosts/judges -- Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi and Gail Simmons -- are confirmed to return, a Bravo spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter.

To find its next cast of culinary hopefuls, the network has announced a series of nationwide casting calls. Auditions kick of in Austin on Feb. 11, then move on to Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Chicago, Miami, and wrap up in Los Angeles on March 1.

Top Chef, while no longer a ratings juggernaut for Bravo, remains a steady performer for the network. Its current Seattle-set season reached highs in early December, pulling 1.4 million viewers -- 805,000 of them in the network's targeted adults 18-49 demographic. Online spinoff Last Chance Kitchen has also seen growth, up triple digits from its experimental debut in the eleventh season.

Magical Elves will return to produce, with Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz again serving as executive producers.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/top-chef-renewed-season-11-418760

Business Notes
Fortifying the Empire ‘South Park’ Built
By David Carr, The New York Times' 'Media Equation' Blog

When it comes to success stories in the entertainment world, it doesn’t get much better than the one about a pair of regular guys from Colorado, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who took cutout paper dolls, animated them and triumphed on cable television, on the Web, at the multiplex and on Broadway.

Last week, Mr. Stone arrived at a coffee shop in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York so bundled up that he resembled Kenny, who always shows up on “South Park” encased in a big orange parka. He was leaving the next day for London, where the fourth production of “The Book of Mormon” will soon begin a run.

Over the course of 16 seasons and 237 episodes, “South Park,” an assault on good taste built on the misadventures of four crudely animated and crudely spoken boys, has entered every pore of the culture. In the meantime, the two creators have helped put Comedy Central on the map, made four feature films, produced a sitcom and landed a Broadway hit with “Book of Mormon,” produced by Scott Rudin and Anne Garefino and created along with Robert Lopez.

Now Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker are about to finish a video game version of “South Park,” and they recently announced that they were forming a production company called Important Studios, valued at $300 million.

The success of “South Park” is a stark lesson in the fundamentals of entertainment: if you tell stories that people want to hear, the audience will find you.

This is true no matter how fundamentally the paradigms shift, or how many platforms evolve.

“We’ve been doing it long enough to figure out that content will ride on top of whatever wave comes along,” Mr. Stone said.

You might think that after all they’ve accomplished, they would be ready to step back a bit, and this is essentially true. Don’t worry, they aren’t going to actually kill Kenny, who for years was done away with in every episode. But “South Park,” which generally has been produced in two batches of seven episodes for a total of 14 every year, will be cut back to a single run of 10 episodes, beginning on Sept. 25.

“Why did we do seven and seven to begin with?” Mr. Stone said. “We just sort of made that up. And we are switching to 10 for the same reason. It just sounded like a good number, and we won’t break up the year so we can more easily do other stuff.”

The change sounds casually tossed off, but there is nothing unformed about the thinking that drives their choices.

“There is no appointment viewing anymore,” Mr. Stone said.

“In our first season, you had to show up on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. on the comedy channel to catch the show. Now, I don’t even know where or how people watch our show. We sort of don’t really care about ratings. It’s more important to come up with work that will add to the library in a way that we’re proud of and will make people want to catch the show wherever they want to.”

That could happen on Netflix, on iTunes, on an ad-supported streaming format on Hulu, or hosted by the servers in the Los Angeles offices of Mr. Stone’s and Mr. Parker’s company.

The two men had the prescience to negotiate a 50-50 split on all digital revenue with Comedy Central, and part of the reason they remain so engaged is that they have real participation in the “South Park” enterprise.

“We have always owned our stuff or acted like we do,” Mr. Stone said as he worked his way through a late lunch. He pointed to Louis C. K., the comedian who took his last comedy special directly to fans on the Web, as an example of an artist moving to the sweet spot of the business that she or he creates.

“Owning your own stuff means that you control not only the content, but the life you are living while you are producing it,” he said.

“And then, if things go well, you can be part of the upside.”

Mr. Stone thinks it’s silly for creators to rely only on outside financing. Why drop years of sweat equity into creating something but not invest any cold hard cash?

“It took us four years to work out ‘Book of Mormon,’ and when you think of the opportunity cost of that — other projects that we walked by — it would be sort of silly not to put money in,” he said.

As a result, they have a big stake in “The Book of Mormon,” which is about to clone its fourth version in London — following New York, Chicago and a touring production — and has combined gross income approaching $5 million a week. That’s part of the reason that they were able to create a studio.

“Disruption is overrated,” he said. “If you tell good stories, the platforms are sort of beside the point. We made the most analog thing you can think of, a play at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, and it worked out as well as anything we have ever done.”

He went on to suggest that each time new a distribution avenue opens, it has become a window of opportunity for their content.

In a week when Netflix broke through to report a profit and Apple seemed to bump up against the upper limits of the hardware that delivers entertainment, the “South Park” guys are proving anew that content will maintain value.

“Nobody even cared about DVD rights when we got started,” Mr. Stone said. “There was nothing there. But we started with shows on half-inch tape and people bought them, and then it was DVDs, and then the Web, now iPads and Netflix. Each time, it worked out.”

Doug Herzog, president of the Viacom Entertainment Group, which owns Comedy Central, echoed that sentiment. “ ‘South Park’ has yet to meet a platform it hasn’t been able to conquer,” Mr. Herzog said. “We’re happy to take as many or as few as they can produce. Frankly, I’m surprised it took them this long to get to a schedule like this.”

Reached by phone, Mr. Parker, a musician as well, said “South Park” ran like a rock band. “Now instead of putting out two albums a year, we are only going to do one, which is more manageable and ensures that it will be something we are proud of.”

Given the loyal and frantic fan base for “South Park,” the creators’ decision to cut back on the number of annual episodes would seem risky, except they have been right about a lot of things and have the artistic and financial independence to show for it.

“We want to keep ‘South Park’ going for a long time to come, and given what is going on in television, I don’t think it matters as much how many episodes you have,” Mr. Stone said.

And just in case I didn’t grasp the level of devotion that Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone inspire, a young man suddenly stepped up to our table with his shirt off. He began speaking rapidly about the impact of “South Park” on his life. He explained that he took off his shirt so we would not forget him, but later Mr. Stone could not remember his name.

“He will forever be ‘shirtless dude’ to me,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/business/media/south-park-creators-fortify-their-content-empire.html?ref=media&_r=0

TV Notes
E! Announces new Docuseries with The Wanted
By Marc Berman, TVMediaInsights.com - Feb. 6, 2013

E!, which seems to give a docuseries to just about anyone these days, has announced an upcoming new non-scripted series from Ryan Seacrest Productions focused on UK pop band The Wanted. The five band members – aka the “Bad Boys of Pop” (Max George, Siva Kaneswaran, Jay McGuinness, Tom Parker and Nathan Sykes) – will live together in the Hollywood Hills and take on all Los Angeles has to offer.

“America has a long history of falling for British bad boy musicians, so it’s no surprise that The Wanted are already beloved by legions of fans far and wide,” said Ryan Seacrest, Executive Producer. “This talented and outspoken English-Irish band are setting their own course to fame and this journey is the foundation of the series. It’s a road that’s bound to include irresistible pop tracks along with plenty of humor, antics and drama behind-the-scenes, which I believe will further ignite fascination and even obsession with these guys.”

Produced by Ryan Seacrest Productions, SB Productions and Global TV UK, the new half-hour series will premiere on E! this June.

http://www.tvmediainsights.com/2013/02/e-announces-new-docuseries-with-the-wanted/

Found this tidbit about an upcomming Summer Series on CBS ... :

UNDER THE DOME (CBS) -
Aisha Hinds ("Detroit 1-8-7") is the latest to board the ever-expanding cast of the upcoming drama Under The Dome, CBS’ 13-episode summer series from Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, about a small town that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome.
She'll play Carolyn Hill, "a take-no-prisoners Los Angeles entertainment attorney who is trapped in Chester's Mill while driving through town with her partner, and their daughter, on their way to deliver their teenaged daughter to a camp for troubled youth." Alex Koch, Britt Robertson, Colin Ford, Jolene Purdy, Natalie Martinez and Nicholas Strong also star in the project, which is based on Stephen King's best-selling novel of the same name. (Deadline.com)
Read more at http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2013/02/05/development-update-tuesday-february-5-106503/10192/#tBM32trrdRjxfC3J.99

Well, already making changes. In the book, Carolyn is a grad student there with her much-older professor/lover and they sort of adopt two kids whose parents got trapped on the other [out]side of the dome. She's very much a minor character in the story; guess they're beefing up her role.

Apples and oranges, you are comparing two totally different types of devices. The Surface Pro is a notebook computer with a detachable keyboard, a full fledged PC that can run any software that runs on a PC. The iPad will only run iOS apps, and will not run any software that runs on a Mac.

If you want to compare an iPad to a Surface, you have to compare it to the Surface RT which starts at $499, the same price as an iPad.

This man has to be stopped.

Critic's Notes
Bianculli's Best Bets
By David Bianculli, TVWorthWatching.com - Feb. 7, 2013

COMMUNITY
NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: After a long wait on the bench, Community finally trots out on the field to begin Season 4 on NBC. Its opening parody, by now, may seem a little dated, but that’s the network’s fault for sitting on these episodes so long. It’s a twist on The Hunger Games – here called “The Hunger Deans,” a physical competition in which the usual gang has to compete with others for seats in an accidentally overbooked class.

THE BIG BANG THEORY
CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s new episode is titled “The Spoiler Alert Segmentation” – so I’m not about to offer anything that would qualify as deserving a Spoiler Alert. I will, say, however, that Sheldon and Leonard have a bigger fight than usual, and it’s one that may have an impact upon their formerly iron-clad cohabitation agreement.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11
Flix, 8:00 p.m. ET
Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary on the presidency of George W. Bush, up to that point, is repeated tonight – and though it’s now more historical than timely, that doesn’t make it any less effective as a work of nonfiction.

ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Long before Showtime presented The Tudors – in fact, way back in 1969 – Richard Burton starred as King Henry VIII in this film version of the Maxwell Anderson play. Genevieve Bujold co-stars in the title role, as Anne Boleyn. Spoiler Alert: Anne’s Days, as the title infers, are indeed numbered.

ARCHER
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s episode title is “Midnight Ron,” a particularly appropriate play on words. In structure, it’s a parody of Midnight Run, the 1988 film comedy in which Robert de Niro and Charles Grodin played a mismatched pair – one a cop, the other a bail-jumping accountant – trying to elude a bunch of bad guys. Only in this animated version, it’s Archer the secret agent who’s paired with a mismatched companion while on the run from gangsters – and the companion, in this case, is his new stepfather, Ron. Hence the title. And as punny titles go, that one's a bullseye -- which brings us back, full circle, to Archer.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/

Obituary
'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Actor Robin Sachs Dead at 61
By Greg Gilman, TheWrap.com - Feb. 6, 2013

Robin Sachs, the British actor who portrayed the evil Ethan Raynes in Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series, has died in Los Angeles. He was 61.

Details surrounding his sudden passing are scarce, his representative told TheWrap on Wednesday that Sachs was in good health and that no cause of death has been identified.

His official website first reported the news on Tuesday.

"It is with great sadness that we have to announce the sudden and unexpected passing of Robin Sachs," the message reads. "Please join us in raising a glass to Robin -- goodbye, dear friend. Thank you for all the laughter and the cookies. We will miss you so very much."

Sachs was born in London, England on February 5, 1951 and went on to act in a number of television, movie and video game titles over the course of his 40-year career.

Although he only appeared in four episodes of "Vampire Slayer," his character was memorable for fans, as he was Rupert Giles' (Anthony Stewart Head) friend-turned-foe.

Sachs' other roles include General Roth'h'ar Sarris, the big green villain in 1999's "Galaxy Quest," along with several on the "Babylon 5" television series. He also voiced Zaeed Massani in video games "Mass Effect 2" and "Mass Effect 3."

Most recently, he voiced a Russian character in the CG-animated video game adaptation, "Resident Evil: Damnation."

A memorial service in Los Angeles is being planned.

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/buffy-vampire-slayer-actor-robin-sachs-dead-61-76576