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From the home page
Roshanak Taghavi | The Christian Science Monitor
California's Iranian-American community is getting its very own reality TV show – exposing millions of viewers to the culture, trials, and antics of six Iranian-American men and women who either immigrated to the United States with their families after Iran's 1979 revolution, or were born and raised in America.
At a time when reports on Iran and things Iranian focus primarily on the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear program, the prospects for war, and sanctions, much of the Iranian American community is asking whether “Shahs of Sunset,” which debuts Sunday night on Bravo, could help improve American perceptions of Iranian culture.
Some, though, are also asking whether the show trades in one stereotype for another, and whether it presents a face of the community that Iranian-Americans want to show. ...
More at The Christian Science Monitor
Channels of diversity
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Anthonia Akitunde | The Root
Clocking in with nearly 213 hours per month, African Americans watch more television than any other ethnicity, according to a Nielsen study. That's twice as many hours as Asians and 57 more hours than whites. Yet you wouldn't know it from a casual flip through your local and cable channels. Despite some high-profile wins -- professor-turned-talking head-turned-MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, for example -- cable television is still largely white, with the exception of niche channels BET, Centric and TV One.
That stands to change in the next few years. Comcast recently announced plans to launch 10 new channels over the course of eight years, eight of which will be evenly split between and independently owned and operated by African Americans and Hispanics. Two of those channels -- and the men behind them -- have already been named: Magic Johnson's faith- and family-based Aspire and Sean "Diddy" Combs' Revolt, which is being billed as an MTV alternative.
With these new channels set to enter the marketplace, one has to wonder: How will it affect the representation of black people on television? ...
Read more at The Root
China turns off the TV
From the home page
BBC News
Satellite broadcasters in China have cut entertainment TV by two-thirds following a government campaign, state news agency Xinhua has reported.
An order by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to curb ''excessive entertainment'' came into effect on 1 January.
The number of entertainment shows aired during prime time each week has dropped to 38 from 126, said the watchdog.
The news came as the president warned of the influence of Western culture.
In the piece published in a Communist Party magazine, President Hu Jintao also urged efforts to boost the country's own soft power, said Xinhua. ...
Read more at BBC News
And still Sharpton rises
From the home page
Michael E. Ross | The Root
Back in August, as the Rev. Al Sharpton began his hosting duties on MSNBC's PoliticsNation, the first gig there for an African American who wasn’t a journalist, a reader at The Huffington Post asked what many in the media (and elsewhere) probably asked themselves: “What is the over-under on this guy's hosting job lasting a full month?”
Four months later — and six months after he began his association with MSNBC, as a substitute host for progressive firebrand Ed Schultz — Sharpton remains at the helm of his own regular program, and has come into his own as part of the rotating face of the "Lean Forward” network.
With a forthright style cultivated in the pulpit and on the street, Sharpton has done one of the main things that modern television demands: carved out a telegenic personality, established a singular identity not to be confused with anyone else.
The fact that Sharpton, head of the activist National Action Network, is no shrinking violet but a full-throated progressive with passionate views on a range of topics related to social justice illustrates the evolving tango of journalism and opinion in 21st century media. Much to their dismay, old-guard mainstream journalists face a paradigm shift of which Sharpton’s rise is but a leading indicator: the fact of minority voices finally starting to achieve critical mass in the American commentariat. ...
Read the rest at The Root
Late night with … the candidates
From the home page
Scott Collins | Los Angeles Times
Mitt Romney has yet to appear on the Sunday morning political talk shows of three major broadcast networks this fall, but the GOP presidential candidate front-runner has twice found time this year for David Letterman's late-night show, including a turn earlier this week in which he ribbed rival Newt Gingrich in a Top 10 list.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also ran to Letterman's CBS show to poke fun at his famous memory lapse, but has declined invitations to hash out policy questions on the network's "Face the Nation." Perry also joked around on NBC's "Tonight Show" but has been MIA on that network's "Meet the Press."
Just four years ago, trips to the Sunday talk shows were all but mandatory for presidential candidates. Every major primary candidate endured that gantlet during fall 2007 ...
But in an ever fragmenting television universe, the Sunday morning talk shows are witnessing their central role in the election process fade as candidates gravitate toward lighter programs where the hosts are more welcoming, the audiences younger and the questions usually softer. ...
Read more at the Los Angeles Times
Cairo: Egypt’s Daily Show
From the home page
Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Amro Hassan | Los Angeles Times
CAIRO — Bassem Youssef is barefoot, pacing around the dining room of his apartment in the tony Maadi neighborhood where he has assembled a crack team of twentysomething bloggers and activists. They are hunched over their laptops in Conan O'Brien and "Family Guy" T-shirts, plotting Egypt's comedy revolution.
To Youssef, 37, the actual revolution was hilarious.
CAIRO — Bassem Youssef is barefoot, pacing around the dining room of his apartment in the tony Maadi neighborhood where he has assembled a crack team of twentysomething bloggers and activists. They are hunched over their laptops in Conan O'Brien and "Family Guy" T-shirts, plotting Egypt's comedy revolution.
To Youssef, 37, the actual revolution was hilarious.
Much of the January uprising that unseated Egypt's longtime president was fueled by online media: social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, but also clips posted on YouTube — images of Tahrir Square, of protesters and security forces and former President Hosni Mubarak addressing the nation on state television.
He used the clips to create a mock Arabic newscast posted on YouTube, an homage to Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." It turned Bassem into an Internet sensation with more than 4 million uploads on YouTube and 88,000 likes on Facebook fans, many of whom greet him on the street by name. ...
Read more at the Los Angeles Times
All tomorrow’s parties
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Michael E. Ross | Culcha
It’s being called the Wedding of the Century; never mind, apparently, what the next 89 years of this century might bring. The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton has already obsessed the world’s media. On Friday when all’s said and done, more than 1 billion people around the world will have watched the proceedings from Westminster Abbey.
We wish them all well, but the fact is, in a world that’s increasingly on edge about everything, from wars to the hazards of a global economy gone wrong, a marriage between two people — even two fantastically privileged people — may be just the reliable, comfortably predictable exercise in ceremony we need right about now.
Royal watchers have sliced and diced the differences between this Wedding of the Century and the last one, back in the last century, when Prince Charles married Diana Spencer in July 1981.
Of all the distinctions between then and now, they’ve overlooked the fact that Friday’s splashy nuptials will be the first such event in the age of the Internet. The global village that attended the earlier event will numerically pale in significance compared to the audience that’s coming tomorrow. ...
Read more at Short Sharp Shock.
The new TV
From the home page
Michael E. Ross | Culcha
It’s been happening in fits and starts, with events from Oprah’s new cable channel to Keith Olbermann’s big move, from Katie Couric’s all-but-certain departure from the CBS News anchor chair to rumored changes at the “Today” show, to the coming launch of a new black-oriented broadcast network.
A shift is underway in the American television landscape; the legacy brands of the medium are being challenged by defections in their own ranks, experienced and well-capitalized newcomers, a fickle and restless viewing public, and (as much as anything else) their own resistance to change in an era that demands it.
This change, of course, didn’t happen overnight. The increasingly stratified cable TV universe — did you see the special last night on the Concrete Formsetters Channel? — has been evolving for years. And it may not be a tectonic shift; the shakeout that’s been going on could just be manifestations of media-star midlife crisis.
We’ve seen some of this coming for a while now. Social media and YouTube traffic have exploded, as everyday people explored their options as communicators. thanks to YouTube, Flip cameras and high-def technology, the little people could play on the same turf as the major players.
But the rapid succession of these TV transitions in waiting points to a willingness of name-brand professionals in the medium to break out of the boxes that have shaped their public identity. In a new year, obeying their restlessness and the American siren song of self-reinvention, they may be about to make television relevant again.
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Consider: After 25 years, Oprah Winfrey is ending her highly-rated, lucrative daytime talk show on May 25, not long after the Jan. 1 launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network on cable, striking out on her OWN after years in syndication as a fixture of daytime television. The early ratings numbers weren’t promising — they plummeted less than two weeks after the launch, prompting an early retooling of its schedule — but Winfrey is in it for the long haul. As a joint venture between Winfrey and Discovery Communications, the OWN venture can take the time to build an audience, and do it under a proven television commodity.
After being fired from MSNBC, Olbermann joined forces with Current TV, a fledgling cable venture in need of viewers and a public face (besides that of Current co-founder Al Gore). Olbermann, once the host of MSNBC’s influential “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” program, is preparing for the debut of his widely-anticipated prime-time show on Current, in the May-June time range.
Chafing for years at her anchor post at the “CBS Evening News,” and imprisoned by the half-hour format of the program, Couric is reportedly set to exit from the anchor’s desk, possibly to move to a syndicated talk show sometime in 2012. And talk’s been furiously swirling that Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer, longtime fixtures at NBC’s “Today” show, may be eyeing the exits as their contracts near an end — Lauer’s in December 2012, Vieira’s this September.
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For Oprah, Couric, Olbermann and the others, it’s all about the challenge of doing something new (at a different time of the day) and ensuring their prominence in the national conversation. For the owners and founders of Bounce TV, it’s about ensuring a place in that conversation.
Bounce, the brainchild of former UN ambassador Andrew Young and others, is set to launch in the fall as the first black-oriented broadcast television network. Bounce would join BET and TV One as a player in the black mediasphere, but there the comparisons end.
With multiyear licensing deals for hundreds of top-shelf films from NBCUniversal and Sony, and an array of special programs being planned, Bounce’s broadcast business model is poised to exploit a market of hundreds of thousands of black and minority U.S. households that don’t get cable, millions of consumers on a budget.
In the current economy, and amid a relative shortage of black-focused entertainment outlets in the mainstream media, that’s likely to endear itself to a broad swath of middle-class consumers who’ll come to Bounce for what they can’t find anywhere else.
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The change is taking shape around a culture that’s less inclined to pledging allegiance to the signature brand names of television; a culture that’s presented with more TV choices, available on a multitude of platforms; a culture that’s less enamored of the anointed of television’s legacy alphabet, and the yesterday that alphabet symbolizes.
Even now, the decision about Couric’s successor at CBS is being made with all the gravity of a council of state. What’s evident in the names of the probables (and certainly the eventual choice) is the power of network ritual, a concession to the past-is-prologue institutional lethargy, the hidebound traditions that probably contributed to Couric’s decision to leave in the first place.
A few seasons back, the FX network announced a slate of new shows yoked to a new FX programming philosophy. The tagline: “There is no box.” As television expands its audience and its possibilities; as the democratization of the media picks up speed, what’s emerging now is the leading edge of an entrepreneurism that television hasn’t seen since the rise of cable, powered by proven talents in the medium, insiders as impatient as the viewers they hope to attract.
Katie unbars the door
From the home page
David Bauder, The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at "CBS Evening News" less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast.
A network executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Couric has not officially announced her plans, reported the move to The Associated Press on Sunday night. ...
Couric's move from NBC's "Today" show was big news in 2006, and she began in the anchor chair with a flourish that September. She tried to incorporate her strengths as an interviewer into a standard evening news format and millions of people who normally didn't watch the news at night checked it out. But they drifted away and the evening newscast reverted to a more traditional broadcast. ...
Read more by David Bauder at The Huffington Post
Katie and CBS: A clash of cultures
From the home page
Michael E. Ross, Culcha
What began at CBS News in September 2006 with relentless effervescence and high hopes is in the last turn of a sour, regretful five-spiral crash. With Katie Couric’s pending exit from her role as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News — the only woman to helm a broadcast network news program — the Tiffany Network will have lost another network star because of a combination of factors, only some of which were under her control.
There was a clash of cultures between Couric’s effervescent personality and CBS News’ classic buttoned-down style; between the world of feature news that was her pre-CBS hallmark and the red-meat story selection that’s characterized CBS News for decades.
Other problems — the fallout from Rathergate and a game of musical news anchors — were what she inherited. Still other issues stemmed from Couric’s own personality; friction with producers and staff members, and her own thin skin regarding criticism of her program by outsiders were entirely her doing.
The end result? Call it a “bad fit”: a journalist who thrives on contact with luminaries and the public trapped in the gilded cage of the anchor desk most of the time; a journalist who once pledged to change the template of broadcast network news, imprisoned by the template, and its institutions.
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Couric came to CBS after the Dan Rather debacle had finally been resolved, and after a succession of temp anchors had no doubt frustrated viewers trying to determine who was minding the door. Many of those viewers, no doubt, drifted away during Rathergate; they never got attached to the gruff, curmudgeonly Bob Schieffer, who subbed in the big chair for months.
Couric got a short-term bump in the ratings after her September 2006 debut as the new CBS News anchor, but a few months later most of those viewers had taken up with Brian Williams at NBC News.
Nielsen Media Research reported that, for the week of Dec. 4, 2006, NBC’s evening news broadcast had 9.1 million viewers. ABC’s newscast pulled down 9 million viewers, and the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” got 7.5 million viewers. A perception was being established, one that found CBS firmly in command of third place, about where it’s been ever since.
Some of Couric’s early story choices raised eyebrows. She led the Dec. 13, 2006 broadcast, for example, with a story on holiday shopping — timely and topical except that other newscasts led with the potential bombshell of the mystery illness of South Dakota Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, an illness whose worst-case presentation could have altered the leadership of the U.S. Senate, and the pending shift of the balance of power to the Democrats.
By July 2007, after some Couric ideas on story choice and presentation didn’t pan out, the CBS Evening News was retooled under veteran producer Rick Kaplan, late of CNN and MSNBC.
Couric reportedly chafed at Kaplan’s input, but by then the damage was done, anyway. You could see it in the network promos that year: Couric at her desk, head down like a cubicle drone, her blank expression hinting at a hunt for the exits.
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Couric wasn’t exactly diplomatic herself. She was quoted in a James Wolcott column in Vanity Fair, saying "[w]e kind of ignore people who are observing everything we do and praising, criticizing or analyzing it." That regal dismissal surfaced about the same time that Radar Online circulated excerpts of a somewhat fractious interview Couric had with Tom Junod of Esquire magazine.
“You guys even take a shot at me,” she said. “You have something in the November issue, something about how since I’ve become an anchor, you don’t know me anymore. You don’t know me anymore? Bite me.”
It got uglier still. According to a Couric interview in the July 9, 2007 issue of New York magazine, Couric reportedly slapped a CBS News editor repeatedly in a tense newsroom confrontation, according to a source quoted in the New York article. Couric became angry over the word "sputum" into a story about tuberculosis. “I sort of slapped him around," Couric admitted to the magazine. "I got mad at him and said, 'You can't do this to me. You have to tell me when you're going to use a word like that.' I was aggravated, there's no question about that."
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By then, there was no question that something was wrong. Her sniping at Esquire revealed more than a mean streak; it suggested that, whatever Couric knows about the nature of television, she doesn’t understand broadcast network news, or its declining primacy in the viewing habits of a fickle American public. And she clearly didn’t grasp the depth of the self-identity of CBS News as an Institution — one that, despite the inroads of technology and pop culture, is still redolent of the more earnest traditions of Cronkite, Reasoner, Sevareid and Murrow.
Her interview with New York was eerily prophetic. "People are very unforgiving and very resistant to change," Couric told New York. "The biggest mistake we made is we tried new things."
"If it turns out it wasn't a perfect fit (at the evening news), then, you know, I'll do something else that's really exciting and fulfilling for me," she said in the interview, the chronicle of a changing of the guard foretold.
Fox retools for Hispanic market
From the home page
Stuart Elliott, The New York Times
Just as Bob Dylan wrote that you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, you don’t need a census taker to know how quickly advertisers, marketers and media companies are responding to the results of the 2010 census.
The census data, now being released, show continued robust growth in the population of Hispanic Americans. So it is not surprising that the News Corporation is seeking to expand its presence in media aimed at Spanish-speaking consumers. ...
Read more in The New York Times
Losing Charlie Sheen
From the home page
Michael E. Ross, Culcha
The manic self-empowerment industry that is Charlie Sheen has for the last three weeks or so been alternately delighting and stupefying the media and the wider world. Sheen, he of Adonis DNA and tiger blood, has just announced a monthlong standup tour expected to earn him $7 million; he’s regaled us with tales of goddesses, warlocks and trolls (oh my); railed against his former employer, the producers of his hit show Two and a Half Men; done numerous interviews to explain and defend his increasingly bizarre behavior; launched a Twitter page; sued Warner Bros. and CBS for $100 million; had his home searched by the police for weapons, and launched a cooking show on Funny or Die.
That would be a hell of a year for most of us. Charlie Sheen has lately gone into some unhinged overachiever mode, redirecting the energy that would have gone into production of Two and a Half Men into any number of projects. Someone asked him if he’d try to trademark the word “winning.”
“Duh,” Sheen said, offering a response that he’s all but trademarked already.
But while Charlie Sheen is winning in the narrow, PR-driven context of grabbing and holding the public attention span, he’s losing in another. All the borderline-and-beyond nut-job behavior, all the Noriega-style machete waving is taking us, the public, further and further away from what endeared him to us in the first place.
It’s not so much about the attitude, it’s about the acting. And besides his performances in public, there’s been more acting out than acting from Charlie Sheen, and that ultimately works to his disadvantage.
Hollywood values and honors spectacle; Hollywood wouldn’t be Hollywood without it. But the city of the industry of fantasy also values the work ethic.
When Charlie Sheen idled the production crew of his hit show, it didn’t just take him out of circulation. Even though the producers of Two and a Half Men graciously kept the show’s staff on salary during the current flap over Sheen’s behavior, that’s not a situation that goes on indefinitely.
If the show is effectively terminated because either Sheen won’t get his act together or the network gets tired of waiting for that to happen, Sheen will be out of a job, as well as the staff members, from writers to lighting crew, from makeup artists to set decorators that work on the show — or who did before it was canceled.
For these people — the ones who work in the boiler room of the starmaker machinery — Sheen’s antics aren’t funny, or they sure as hell won’t be for long. They can’t afford to be. Sheen’s actions could cost them a paycheck; for these working stiffs, the star’s behavior likely means the difference in paying a mortgage, a car note, a grocery bill, a daughter’s piano lessons … or not paying them.
And the historical record works against Charlie. For all Charlie’s protestations of unfairness, he’s no stranger to bad behavior. The domestic assault incidents, the threats, jail time in Aspen … all of that indicates a pattern and practice of going off the rails. Whether he likes it or not, big production companies (and the networks they’re accountable to) and networks (and the stockholders and advertisers they’re accountable to) don’t look favorably on their stars’ dalliances with hookers. They tend to frown on a drunken, one-man renovation of a room at the Plaza Hotel.
The fact that Sheen is willing to let all these matters go by the boards in the name of pursuing his own sense of personal freedom is hardly a sound strategy for winning friends and influencing people. The people who matter. The ones in the industry.
But as much as anything, Charlie Sheen’s behavior these last weeks is showing us the most grievously wounded person in all of this is Charlie Sheen.
With every new pronouncement from Generalissimo Charlie, we’re taken further and further away from his acting skills, from the actor that made Two and a Half Men such a runaway success, and the actor of years before that.
An actor’s most formidable weapon is the ability to suspend our disbelief. To watch visual entertainment, on the small screen or the big one, is to enter into a contract of willful disregard of your own reality. Our best actors, the ones we revere, are the ones who manage the difficult perceptual navigation past our conscious minds into the subconscious. When we see these actors at work, we’re not seeing the actors, we’re seeing the lives they portray, body & soul. Our reality takes a back seat (if only until the commercial break or the end credits).
Watching Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men for so long now, we’ve always known, top of mind, that we were watching Charlie Sheen play himself, and to great financial success.
That’s great as far as it goes. But outside that narrow comedic venue (which may or may not be history), who’ll go to a Charlie Sheen movie from now on, to watch him play any character you can imagine, and not think automatically they’re watching no one else but Charlie Sheen?
There’s no suspension of disbelief when the actor’s drama, his outward foibles so forcefully project themselves into our minds, when the actor’s inner demons outstrip those of the character he portrays. We can’t willfully disregard our reality watching him. We don’t know where the real Charlie Sheen begins or ends anymore. There’s no distinction between roles anymore. When everything is acting, nothing is acting.
Charlie Sheen revels in his role as pop culture’s reigning loose cannon, lightning rod and poster boy for bad behavior, but there’s more than one way to be winning and losing. More than anything else, Charlie is losing ground, losing traction out of a whirlpool of various abuses aided and abetted by the narcotic of more money than most of us can imagine, and all that it can obtain. There’s a sad sense of someone auguring in, of a high-flyer in the process, like so many others, of making a five-spiral crash.
The last such precipitous decline I can recall, the one with the same relentless trajectory, was back in 1994, in the months and weeks before Kurt Cobain checked himself out.
But here’s hoping Sheen gets past that point of no return by getting around it, going back seven years earlier, to 1987. That’s when he played rogue trader Bud Fox in Wall Street. That’s the film where, in one scene, Fox, awash in the pleasures of vast riches and carnal satisfactions, stands on the balcony early one morning and asks himself “Who am I?”
Here’s hoping Charlie Adonis asks himself that question, before it’s too late.
Mexico: Video game under fire
From the home page
Associated Press, via Houston Chronicle
A shoot-em-up video game set in the border town of Ciudad Juarez has angered local officials who are busy fighting all-too-real violence.
Chihuahua state legislators said Sunday they have asked federal authorities to ban "Call of Juarez: The Cartel," which is based on drug cartel shootouts in Ciudad Juarez.
About 6,000 people died in drug-related violence in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 and 2010, making the city, located across from El Paso, Texas, one of the deadliest in the world. ...
Read more at the Houston Chronicle
Olbermann’s Current relationship
From the home page
Jack Mirkinson, The Huffington Post
Keith Olbermann announced on Tuesday that he will host a one-hour, nightly primetime show on Current TV starting in late spring. He will also become the "chief news officer" for Current. Olbermann had been without a television home since he abruptly left MSNBC, where he had hosted "Countdown" for eight years, in January.
For Olbermann, his move to Current gives him a chance to wield large influence over a a relatively tiny network. Current averages about 23,000 viewers in primetime every night--a far cry from the million or so viewers who watched "Countdown."
Read more at The Huffington Post
All in for Lights Out
From the home page
The FX Network has been one of cable’s more productive petri dishes for series television. With a history of producing addictive fare like Rescue Me, Sons of Anarchy, Justified and Terriers, FX shows a reflecting eagerness to take dramatic risks (much like its counterpart AMC, whose Breaking Bad and Mad Men similarly kick ass). FX is back in the ring with Lights Out, a stylistically gritty, emotionally charitable modern-day study of one man’s crack-up and his battle back to redemption (and a better bank account).
Holt McCallany shines as Patrick Leary, a former heavyweight champion grappling with his inner demons, juggling a family, a mansion months late in mortgage payments, and a gnawing sense of his own mortality as he struggles to keep his life together. Stacy Keach is perfectly cast as Leary’s world-weary father; Catherine McCormack (Braveheart) is spot-on as Leary’s wife, a woman dutifully lashed to the mast of her husband’s career, but unwilling to watch him die in the ring. McCallany (late of CSI: Miami) brings a fighter’s raw physicality to his role.
Part Rocky Balboa, part Tony Soprano, Patrick Leary is an everyman for 2011: cold-cocked by the recession, awakened to the evanescence of dreams, fighting hard to hold on to what he’s got. Creator Justin Zackham (screenwriter of The Bucket List) invests his characters with passion; the dialogue crackles with life and mood; the show gains from smart production values reflecting life in the New York/New Jersey axis. If the premiere episode is any indication of what’s coming, Lights Out is already a contender. The regular season starts Tuesday at 10.
MICHAEL E. ROSS
Lights Out on FX
Cutting the cable, taking down the dish
From the home page
Tom Evslin, Fractals of Change
People are dropping their pay TV subscriptions. According to an article in The New York Times, cable, satellite and telecommunications subscriptions for entertainment during the third quarter of 2010 declined by 119,000; it was the second consecutive quarterly decline. Although the economic situation indubitably has something to do with the decline, the third quarter of 2009 – when times were even worse – saw a gain of 346,000 subscribers.
Ian Olgeirson, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan, is quoted in the NYTimes story as saying that it is "becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss the impact of over-the-top substitution on video subscriber performance." In other words, people are increasingly obtaining their entertainment a la carte over their Internet connections. ...
This a la carte trend is an enormous threat to the profits of big cable companies whose profits depend on the huge margins they can get by buying content from studios at a low price based on tremendous volume and then selling us bundles of channels - only a few of which we really want. These profits have also shielded the big cablecos from effective competition; small cable operators, telcos, and ISPs don't have the buying power to get the content at a price which allows any profit on resale, even with bundling. ...
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Why do we need channels at all? It's individual shows or series or sports teams that we watch. And why do we need a network operator – whether an ISP or a cableco – to resell content which can be sold directly to us by its owners or through aggregators like Hulu or Netflix? Certainly we need high quality access networks ... But, IMHO, we won't buy the content from the operator of the physical network. ...
This final disaggregation of content from access probably won't happen through regulation; it'll happen because of the self-interest of content owners and advertisers. People ARE cutting the cable and taking down the dish. ...
Read the full analysis at Fractals of Change
Conan back in late-night's swim
From the home page
Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times
Conan O'Brien's contractually mandated wandering in the wilderness that is Everything That Is Not Television came to an end Monday night with the premiere of his new TBS late-night show, "Conan." Technically, it came to an end the previous week with a three-minute walk-on to new late-night neighbor George Lopez's "Lopez Tonight," which "Conan" has bumped to midnight; a sexy mock-sexy promo involving a garden hose; and an impressive American Express commercial in which O'Brien travels to India to buy, weave and dye the silk for the curtain for his new show. But those were just appetizers: This remains, for the indefinite moment, the story of a talk-show host and his still unpredictable future.
Read more at The Los Angeles Times
The age of the Everygeek
From the home page
Virginia Postrel, The Wall Street Journal
Sheldon Cooper is an elitist.
Ever since he was 4 years old, his mother has been warning him to stop telling people that he's smarter than they are. But he just can't help himself. Asked by a friend to "make yourself scarce," he replies, "I am a theoretical physicist with two doctorates and an I.Q. that can't be accurately measured by normal tests. How much scarcer could I be?" And he says it in a condescending tone.
So why is he so popular?
American culture is experiencing one of those periodic waves of anti-elitism that have roiled and defined the country ever since Andrew Jackson's day. Intellectuals, symbol manipulators, universities and people who think they're so damned smart are out. Regular folks are in.
Yet The Big Bang Theory, the CBS sitcom featuring Sheldon and his three almost-as-elite geeky friends, is among the most popular shows on TV. …
Read the rest at The Wall Street Journal
Emmys: Newcomers, old familiars
From the home page
Susan King, Rene Lynch and Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times
There was a lot of new comedy but not much new drama at the 62nd annual prime-time Emmy Awards on Sunday night.
"Modern Family," the ABC comedy series about a disarmingly dysfunctional family, won the top comedy series honor as well as writing and supporting actor awards. Fox's cult phenomenon "Glee" — nominated for 19 Emmys — took home two trophies: Jane Lynch for supporting actress in a comedy and series creator Ryan Murphy for comedy direction. The combination of "Modern Family" and "Glee" ended the dominance in the comedy category by " 30 Rock," NBC's critically acclaimed but low-rated spoof of the television business.
On the drama side, the telecast looked like a rerun of the last two years. AMC's " Mad Men," a dark period drama set in the 1960s on Madison Avenue, won its third consecutive Emmy for drama series, while Bryan Cranston, star of AMC's " Breaking Bad," won his third lead acting Emmy for his portrayal of Walter White, a science teacher-turned- crystal meth cook.
While this was supposed to be the year that broadcast television made a dent on cable's dominance of the Emmy Awards, overall cable took home 17 statues while the broadcasters walked away with nine. HBO, as usual, dominated the movies and mini-series category thanks to "Temple Grandin," "You Don't Know Jack" and "The Pacific."
Read more in the Los Angeles Times
Mitch Miller: He got America singing
From the home page
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Mitch Miller, record producer, talent scout, conductor, effervescent host of “Sing Along With Mitch” and leader of the band when the band was the American people, died on Saturday at the age of 99. For the millions of Americans who watched his prime-time NBC program “Sing Along With Mitch,” Miller’s singular way of celebrating musical Americana — radio on the TV — was a participatory anodyne event, a refreshing counter to the velocity of the times, and the last hurrah of the endearingly quaint before (and during) the onslaught of rock and roll.
For four years consistently (from 1961-1964) and later in specials (intermittently until 1966), Miller and the “Gang” performed a national community sing on national television, the Gang singing songs from the 1920s, 30’s and 40s, and singing them unabashedly, led by Miller, who conducted the group with a rather mechanical brio.
And we were invited to, well, sing along with Mitch. Miller called on viewers to get involved. “Open the window and let the neighbors hear you, loud and clear!,” Miller shouts between numbers. “That Old Gang of Mine,” “Mary Lou.” “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” All done with a brazenly retrograde gusto and fire that laughed in the face of the British Invasion that was either just around the corner or already here.
Miller was no fan of rock n’ roll, maligning it early and often (this despite his role in discovering new talent as a top A&R man at Columbia Records). In the 1950's, Miller called rock "musical baby food" and passed on signing Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley to the Columbia label. He stuck by his guns for years, bringing something original to prime-time television when broadcast TV (less reflexive, less advertiser risk-averse than today) was as much a laboratory as anything else.
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Now, it’s tempting to look at Miller’s bold stroke in an isolated context, like an amusement, a museum piece we can’t relate to. But maybe we can. Commenting Monday on Miller’s influence, Alienhuman (on YouTube) observed: “Ever notice that half the radio stations today play "oldies" or 'classic rock"? This was the 'oldies' music of the 1960s and it got on TV every week, not just the radio.”
For five years once a week, Mitch Miller invited America to crowd into the musical wayback machine, to take a sentimental journey to that proverbial yesteryear, before the cold war and several hot summers shoved such journeys to the back of the national mind. Before we knew everything, or thought we did. It really was a simpler, quieter time. And we haven’t been the same since.
MICHAEL E. ROSS
Lives during wartime
From the home page
Two of television’s most honored not-so-guilty pleasures are back for your viewing pleasure. With their two views of domestic American combat — one happily entrenched in the sleek boardrooms of New York City in the 1960’s, the other a portrait of grim and gritty urban life closer to the present day — cable TV renews its embrace of stories well told and characters we actually give a damn about.
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“Mad Men,” the Matthew Weiner series on the lives, loves and intrigues of Madison Avenue ad executives in the Kennedy era, starts its fourth season on Sunday night, on AMC at 10/9 central. The Emmy- and Golden Globe winning series picks up after Don Draper (the surface-smooth but privately tormented ad man played by Jon Hamm) takes the lead in forming a new ad agency with various associates from the Sterling Cooper agency. Draper’s bid for a new professional beginning dovetails with the unraveling of his marriage with children to Betty Draper (January Jones), as well as the unraveling of the cover stories of his past.
Over the past three seasons, the tension between the cool, calm, collected Draper at work and the shadows of his private life has made “Mad Men” a must-watch for millions. We’ll see how season four, which starts around Thanksgiving 1964, examines the lives in this huge ensemble production.
It’ll be curious, too, to see how “Mad Men” navigates the wider real world of its era. The series resumes during one of the more turbulent periods of American life, with the Vietnam War and its social turmoil yet to come. We can only speculate on how the rise of music-powered pop culture will impact the show’s scripts (by late 1964, the Beatles will have landed, with more British invaders on the way). And for all the dramatic power of the vast cast, there’s no escaping its racial composition: 100 percent white. How will “Mad Men” make the pivot to exploring the dominant domestic experience of the ‘60’s — the civil rights movement?
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No such challenge exists for “The Wire,” the highly-acclaimed HBO cable series (2002-2008) resurrected (in high-definition) on July 18, on Channel 101, the proprietary feature channel owned by DirecTV. Created by David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, the series is set in modern-day Baltimore, and derives its power from a relentless attention to story and character, and a huge multiethnic cast of character actors and relative unknowns.
One of the things that’s made “The Wire” such a success (some critics have hailed it as the greatest television series ever made) is its focus on various aspects of a modern city’s social and poilitical infrastructure. In each of its five seasons, the show explored elements of Baltimore life, from the labyrinthine intricacies of city government to the codes of those in the street drug trade, from the particulars of life in the police department to the reflexes and biases of the media.
The show’s 60 episodes are being presented from the beginning, something that gives viewers unfamiliar with the “Wire” story the opportunity to catch the train of the series’ storyline as it leaves the station. It’s a ride you shouldn’t miss.
MICHAEL E. ROSS
‘Survivor,’ Sarah Palin edition
From the home page
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From Scott Collins, Los Angeles Times:
“Heartland values are indeed what TLC pushes, carving out a profitable niche in a reality TV marketplace otherwise filled with sex-drenched youth soaps (MTV's "Jersey Shore") or aspirational voyeurism (HGTV's entire programming block). And now the network is making maybe its strongest play yet for the non-elite, middle-class audience, with a new show starring the queen of Red State America, Sarah Palin.
“The combative former Alaska governor is teaming with reality super-producer Mark Burnett to start production next month on a one-hour, eight-episode series in which Palin ‘will show, first-hand, what it means to be Alaskan,’ according to an internal summary developed by the channel's ad department. ‘Each one-hour episode will feature taking on a different job, a new adventure.’
“Whether the show will connect with its target audience is anyone's guess; Palin is already a contributor and show host for Fox News, another network self-consciously aimed at non-elites. But it's the strongest proof yet that TLC, a unit of Discovery Communications, which also operates Discovery, Animal Planet and other networks, is determined to become the antidote to Bravo, a rival cable network that has perfected the fine art of chasing upscale viewers with wry, trendy, often-sensational fare. …”
Read more at the Los Angeles Times
‘Big Brother’ bows out
From the home page
“A New Age monk, a former soldier who lost both legs in a bomb blast and a girl who believes that she was an elf in a former life are three of the 14 housemates in the final series of Big Brother. …
“Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, has promised to make the final series the most spectacular, with the final two weeks featuring the most famous faces from previous series to determine the ‘ultimate champion’ of the show. Although it will leave our screens in the short term, many believe that Big Brother will return. Phil Edgar-Jones, who oversees production of the show, said that there were talks to run the programme as an online-only venture, charging viewers to watch on the internet.”
More in The London Times
Gary Coleman
From the home page
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Packed inside Gary Coleman's 4-foot-8-inch frame was the spark of an actor who would become a national phenomenon, a television star who turned "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" into a cultural catch phrase.
In the 1970s, Coleman was on top of the world as a highly paid child actor on a hit TV sitcom.
But people who worked with him near the end of his life say the star of "Diff'rent Strokes" turned into a "tortured soul" who was desperately trying to escape the fame that had made him a household name.
"The job that gave him everything also took it all away," said Ron Carlson, who directed Coleman in his last project, the movie "Midgets vs. Mascots," which was released on video last February.
Coleman, 42, died Friday at Provo's Utah Valley Regional Medical Center after suffering a brain hemorrhage during a fall at his Santaquin home earlier this week.
"I just hope the guy can find some peace," said Dave Hunter, a Utah County movie producer who worked with Coleman on 2005's "Church Ball." "He was just not at peace with himself. He felt that people were always trying to take advantage of him."
More in the Salt Lake Tribune
It’s a rite of summer: The TV networks gather for the ritual dog & pony show in which they announce their top prospects for the upcoming fall season. It’s always a crapshoot, and anyone’s guess as to which ones stand and which will fall. What’s with “The Cape,” NBC’s new mystery action drama? How will Matthew Perry fare as “Mr. Sunshine”? And do we really need another take on “La Femme Nikita” (this one from, heaven help us, The CW)? Bob Sassone of AOL’s TV Squad looks at some of the more intriguing prospects (see the behind the scenes video on CBS’s resurrection of “Hawaii Five-O”).
6 years getting (and
not getting) ‘Lost’
Offering fan comparisons of the best episode in the life of the series (was it "Dave" or "Walkabout"?), and theories about the plot twists and existential curlicues that made the series as bewildering as bewitching, the writers at PopMatters offer a farewell package to “Lost,” vanishing from the ABC lineup after six years.
More at PopMatters
Spike Lee digs for family roots
On a recent journey to his native Georgia, Spike Lee makes a wrenching personal discovery: the African American filmmaker’s third great-grandfather helped manufacture pistols for Confederate soldiers. NBC’s new reality-based program “Who Do You Think You Are?” puts celebrities in touch with their ancestries — often with surprisingly emotional results. (Fridays)
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MICHAEL E. ROSS
Lights Out on FX
Cutting the cable, taking down the dish
From the home page
Tom Evslin, Fractals of Change
People are dropping their pay TV subscriptions. According to an article in The New York Times, cable, satellite and telecommunications subscriptions for entertainment during the third quarter of 2010 declined by 119,000; it was the second consecutive quarterly decline. Although the economic situation indubitably has something to do with the decline, the third quarter of 2009 – when times were even worse – saw a gain of 346,000 subscribers.
Ian Olgeirson, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan, is quoted in the NYTimes story as saying that it is "becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss the impact of over-the-top substitution on video subscriber performance." In other words, people are increasingly obtaining their entertainment a la carte over their Internet connections. ...
This a la carte trend is an enormous threat to the profits of big cable companies whose profits depend on the huge margins they can get by buying content from studios at a low price based on tremendous volume and then selling us bundles of channels - only a few of which we really want. These profits have also shielded the big cablecos from effective competition; small cable operators, telcos, and ISPs don't have the buying power to get the content at a price which allows any profit on resale, even with bundling. ...
◊ ◊ ◊
Why do we need channels at all? It's individual shows or series or sports teams that we watch. And why do we need a network operator – whether an ISP or a cableco – to resell content which can be sold directly to us by its owners or through aggregators like Hulu or Netflix? Certainly we need high quality access networks ... But, IMHO, we won't buy the content from the operator of the physical network. ...
This final disaggregation of content from access probably won't happen through regulation; it'll happen because of the self-interest of content owners and advertisers. People ARE cutting the cable and taking down the dish. ...
Read the full analysis at Fractals of Change
Conan back in late-night's swim
From the home page
Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times
Conan O'Brien's contractually mandated wandering in the wilderness that is Everything That Is Not Television came to an end Monday night with the premiere of his new TBS late-night show, "Conan." Technically, it came to an end the previous week with a three-minute walk-on to new late-night neighbor George Lopez's "Lopez Tonight," which "Conan" has bumped to midnight; a sexy mock-sexy promo involving a garden hose; and an impressive American Express commercial in which O'Brien travels to India to buy, weave and dye the silk for the curtain for his new show. But those were just appetizers: This remains, for the indefinite moment, the story of a talk-show host and his still unpredictable future.
Read more at The Los Angeles Times
From the home page
Virginia Postrel, The Wall Street Journal
Sheldon Cooper is an elitist.
Ever since he was 4 years old, his mother has been warning him to stop telling people that he's smarter than they are. But he just can't help himself. Asked by a friend to "make yourself scarce," he replies, "I am a theoretical physicist with two doctorates and an I.Q. that can't be accurately measured by normal tests. How much scarcer could I be?" And he says it in a condescending tone.
So why is he so popular?
American culture is experiencing one of those periodic waves of anti-elitism that have roiled and defined the country ever since Andrew Jackson's day. Intellectuals, symbol manipulators, universities and people who think they're so damned smart are out. Regular folks are in.
Yet The Big Bang Theory, the CBS sitcom featuring Sheldon and his three almost-as-elite geeky friends, is among the most popular shows on TV. … Except that the geeks on The Big Bang Theory aren't business whizzes or even programmers. They're three physicists and an engineer who designs toilets for the international space station. None of them is going to get rich. These guys aren't heroes. They're a new kind of Everyman—representatives of a culture in which nobody's normal.
Read the rest at The Wall Street Journal
Emmys: Newcomers, old familiars
From the home page
Susan King, Rene Lynch and Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times
There was a lot of new comedy but not much new drama at the 62nd annual prime-time Emmy Awards on Sunday night.
"Modern Family," the ABC comedy series about a disarmingly dysfunctional family, won the top comedy series honor as well as writing and supporting actor awards. Fox's cult phenomenon "Glee" — nominated for 19 Emmys — took home two trophies: Jane Lynch for supporting actress in a comedy and series creator Ryan Murphy for comedy direction. The combination of "Modern Family" and "Glee" ended the dominance in the comedy category by " 30 Rock," NBC's critically acclaimed but low-rated spoof of the television business.
On the drama side, the telecast looked like a rerun of the last two years. AMC's " Mad Men," a dark period drama set in the 1960s on Madison Avenue, won its third consecutive Emmy for drama series, while Bryan Cranston, star of AMC's " Breaking Bad," won his third lead acting Emmy for his portrayal of Walter White, a science teacher-turned- crystal meth cook.
While this was supposed to be the year that broadcast television made a dent on cable's dominance of the Emmy Awards, overall cable took home 17 statues while the broadcasters walked away with nine. HBO, as usual, dominated the movies and mini-series category thanks to "Temple Grandin," "You Don't Know Jack" and "The Pacific."
Read more in the Los Angeles Times
Mitch Miller: He got America singing
From the home page
.jpg)
For four years consistently (from 1961-1964) and later in specials (intermittently until 1966), Miller and the “Gang” performed a national community sing on national television, the Gang singing songs from the 1920s, 30’s and 40s, and singing them unabashedly, led by Miller, who conducted the group with a rather mechanical brio.
And we were invited to, well, sing along with Mitch. Miller called on viewers to get involved. “Open the window and let the neighbors hear you, loud and clear!,” Miller shouts between numbers. “That Old Gang of Mine,” “Mary Lou.” “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” All done with a brazenly retrograde gusto and fire that laughed in the face of the British Invasion that was either just around the corner or already here.
Miller was no fan of rock n’ roll, maligning it early and often (this despite his role in discovering new talent as a top A&R man at Columbia Records). In the 1950's, Miller called rock "musical baby food" and passed on signing Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley to the Columbia label. He stuck by his guns for years, bringing something original to prime-time television when broadcast TV (less reflexive, less advertiser risk-averse than today) was as much a laboratory as anything else.
.jpg)
For five years once a week, Mitch Miller invited America to crowd into the musical wayback machine, to take a sentimental journey to that proverbial yesteryear, before the cold war and several hot summers shoved such journeys to the back of the national mind. Before we knew everything, or thought we did. It really was a simpler, quieter time. And we haven’t been the same since.
MICHAEL E. ROSS
Lives during wartime
From the home page
Two of television’s most honored not-so-guilty pleasures are back for your viewing pleasure. With their two views of domestic American combat — one happily entrenched in the sleek boardrooms of New York City in the 1960’s, the other a portrait of grim and gritty urban life closer to the present day — cable TV renews its embrace of stories well told and characters we actually give a damn about.
.jpg)
Over the past three seasons, the tension between the cool, calm, collected Draper at work and the shadows of his private life has made “Mad Men” a must-watch for millions. We’ll see how season four, which starts around Thanksgiving 1964, examines the lives in this huge ensemble production.
It’ll be curious, too, to see how “Mad Men” navigates the wider real world of its era. The series resumes during one of the more turbulent periods of American life, with the Vietnam War and its social turmoil yet to come. We can only speculate on how the rise of music-powered pop culture will impact the show’s scripts (by late 1964, the Beatles will have landed, with more British invaders on the way). And for all the dramatic power of the vast cast, there’s no escaping its racial composition: 100 percent white. How will “Mad Men” make the pivot to exploring the dominant domestic experience of the ‘60’s — the civil rights movement?
.jpg)
One of the things that’s made “The Wire” such a success (some critics have hailed it as the greatest television series ever made) is its focus on various aspects of a modern city’s social and poilitical infrastructure. In each of its five seasons, the show explored elements of Baltimore life, from the labyrinthine intricacies of city government to the codes of those in the street drug trade, from the particulars of life in the police department to the reflexes and biases of the media.
The show’s 60 episodes are being presented from the beginning, something that gives viewers unfamiliar with the “Wire” story the opportunity to catch the train of the series’ storyline as it leaves the station. It’s a ride you shouldn’t miss.
MICHAEL E. ROSS
‘Survivor,’ Sarah Palin edition
From the home page
.jpg)
“Heartland values are indeed what TLC pushes, carving out a profitable niche in a reality TV marketplace otherwise filled with sex-drenched youth soaps (MTV's "Jersey Shore") or aspirational voyeurism (HGTV's entire programming block). And now the network is making maybe its strongest play yet for the non-elite, middle-class audience, with a new show starring the queen of Red State America, Sarah Palin.
“The combative former Alaska governor is teaming with reality super-producer Mark Burnett to start production next month on a one-hour, eight-episode series in which Palin ‘will show, first-hand, what it means to be Alaskan,’ according to an internal summary developed by the channel's ad department. ‘Each one-hour episode will feature taking on a different job, a new adventure.’
“Whether the show will connect with its target audience is anyone's guess; Palin is already a contributor and show host for Fox News, another network self-consciously aimed at non-elites. But it's the strongest proof yet that TLC, a unit of Discovery Communications, which also operates Discovery, Animal Planet and other networks, is determined to become the antidote to Bravo, a rival cable network that has perfected the fine art of chasing upscale viewers with wry, trendy, often-sensational fare. …”
Read more at the Los Angeles Times
‘Big Brother’ bows out
From the home page
“A New Age monk, a former soldier who lost both legs in a bomb blast and a girl who believes that she was an elf in a former life are three of the 14 housemates in the final series of Big Brother. …
“Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, has promised to make the final series the most spectacular, with the final two weeks featuring the most famous faces from previous series to determine the ‘ultimate champion’ of the show. Although it will leave our screens in the short term, many believe that Big Brother will return. Phil Edgar-Jones, who oversees production of the show, said that there were talks to run the programme as an online-only venture, charging viewers to watch on the internet.”
More in The London Times
Gary Coleman
From the home page
.jpg)
Packed inside Gary Coleman's 4-foot-8-inch frame was the spark of an actor who would become a national phenomenon, a television star who turned "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" into a cultural catch phrase.In the 1970s, Coleman was on top of the world as a highly paid child actor on a hit TV sitcom.
But people who worked with him near the end of his life say the star of "Diff'rent Strokes" turned into a "tortured soul" who was desperately trying to escape the fame that had made him a household name.
"The job that gave him everything also took it all away," said Ron Carlson, who directed Coleman in his last project, the movie "Midgets vs. Mascots," which was released on video last February.
Coleman, 42, died Friday at Provo's Utah Valley Regional Medical Center after suffering a brain hemorrhage during a fall at his Santaquin home earlier this week.
"I just hope the guy can find some peace," said Dave Hunter, a Utah County movie producer who worked with Coleman on 2005's "Church Ball." "He was just not at peace with himself. He felt that people were always trying to take advantage of him."
More in the Salt Lake Tribune
Upfronts Week: Winners and others
From the home pageIt’s a rite of summer: The TV networks gather for the ritual dog & pony show in which they announce their top prospects for the upcoming fall season. It’s always a crapshoot, and anyone’s guess as to which ones stand and which will fall. What’s with “The Cape,” NBC’s new mystery action drama? How will Matthew Perry fare as “Mr. Sunshine”? And do we really need another take on “La Femme Nikita” (this one from, heaven help us, The CW)? Bob Sassone of AOL’s TV Squad looks at some of the more intriguing prospects (see the behind the scenes video on CBS’s resurrection of “Hawaii Five-O”).
6 years getting (and
not getting) ‘Lost’
Offering fan comparisons of the best episode in the life of the series (was it "Dave" or "Walkabout"?), and theories about the plot twists and existential curlicues that made the series as bewildering as bewitching, the writers at PopMatters offer a farewell package to “Lost,” vanishing from the ABC lineup after six years.
More at PopMatters
Spike Lee digs for family roots
On a recent journey to his native Georgia, Spike Lee makes a wrenching personal discovery: the African American filmmaker’s third great-grandfather helped manufacture pistols for Confederate soldiers. NBC’s new reality-based program “Who Do You Think You Are?” puts celebrities in touch with their ancestries — often with surprisingly emotional results. (Fridays)
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