"As your world changes, stay with Fox." Right: as your world turns into some scene out of Se7en or Saw with a bunch of quick edits and scary, pounding techno music, remember just who warned you that the country was going to literal hell.
Because it was Fox News.
If you've missed our coverage of Lil Bill O'Reilly doing his shtick, please go back and check out the sketches from the beginning. This kid really nails it, either because saying "shut up!" comes oh so easily to children, or being constipated and in desperate need of a nap does.
So who is the young actor stepping into the role of television's most angry old guy?
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Despite Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia being canceled (much to editor David's chagrin), there is at least one shred of evidence that there is a a benevolent TV god.
Fox just put the nix on Mad TV, a show that's inexplicably been on the air since 1995, and yet has never in it's entire history made anyone laugh. How did it take executives this long to realize the show is the worst?
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Fox picked up J.J. Abram's X-Files Fringe series for a second season, which is great news for all those stay-at-home infectious disease scientists out there. Also pleased: Joshua Jackson's agent.
Ugh, every time somebody reports on the fallacies of medical dramas, it serves as a reminder that there are actually people out there who use Gregory House in lieu of health insurance. That man is addicted to Vicodin, why are you listening to him?! If your actual doctor acted like a huge jerk and kept on popping pills during your diagnosing session, you would ask for a second opinion, not trust his insane (but usually correct!) judgment to cut open your skull to cure your headaches.
Whatever, at least there is some semblance of logic there: With the rise of Dr. Oz and daytime shows with Daily Living segments, it's easy to confuse pop health with real medical advice. Fair enough. But now we actually need to be told that J.J Abram's X-Files rip-off Fringe isn't scientifically accurate?
"And the award for first cancellation of the new fall season goes to…Fox's Do Not Disturb! Sources confirm to me exclusively that the critically savaged sitcom, starring a slumming Jerry O'Connell and Niecy Nash, has been axed after three low-rated episodes." [EW]
It's something out of Grimm's fairytale: The fox and the peacock team up to steal the mouse's gift of laughter. At least that's the idea that seems to be propelling crafty old King Murdoch in his green-lighting of the tentatively titled dramedy, Georgia and the Seven Associates. At the show's helm are producers Chris Brancato and Bert Salke, whose previous work includes NBC's The Office, and who say they got the idea after looking out from their offices overlooking the Disney.
As NBC cuts down dramatically on their comedy fare for the upcoming season, Fox is jumping at the bit to fill up their prime time schedule with Jeff Foxworthy cartoons and Georgia, which is billing itself as "The Devil Wears Prada meets Taxi set in Los Angeles' legal circles."
Could go either way in the ratings (will it be the station's next Alli McBeal orArrested Development?) but it's nice to see that even when they're idea-poaching, Fox still sees some business in being funny.
Life with Louie. Bobby's World. Camp Candy. The Gary Coleman Show. If there is anything the 80s-90s era of cartoons taught us, it's that the trajectory from comedian to animation to game show host/ironic cultural causality is never a pleasant one.
Jeff Foxworthy is trying to beat the system; he's already hosted Fox's game show Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader before signing on for his own animated star vehicle, which will also premiere on Rupert's channel.
But as loathe as you may be to admit that Jeff Foxworthy's brand of redneck comedy is amusing to anyone, this is actually a clever move on both Jeff and Fox's parts: CONTINUED »
Before becoming television's most lovable Vicodin addict, Hugh Laurie spent a good twenty years on British airwaves with BFF Stephen Fry on A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Blackadder, and Jeeves and Wooster. He's also a concert pianist and is really good at Sudoku. Laurie basically is Gregory House, but nicer, and British. And not a doctor.
It's good news then, that Laurie will soon be rewarded for his diligence and good work with a pay bump from Universal Studios that will leave the 49-year old one of the best paid actors on television. Laurie is expected to rake in $400,000 zone per episode, which is still $100k less than his doppleganger Jack Bauer's alter-ego Keifer makes at also-on-Fox 24. Still, $9 million a season is nothing to sneeze at; if every episode of House has 45 minutes of actual programming, Laurie will earn a cool $8,888 a minute just to keep that wonderful American accent going.
He's still nowhere near Friends-level of payment, but hey, not everyone can be a David Schwimmer.
Every fanboy got his panties in a bunch when a trailer for The Watchmen, Alan Moore's 1985 graphic novel about masked vigilantes, previewed before The Dark Knight several weeks ago. Watchmen holds a special place for most comic book lovers; it was one of the first comics, along with Maus, to earn the title of graphic novel (though it was released in sections) due to its meta-commentary on the traditional world of superheroes and crime fighters. Watchmen deals with some pretty dark and complex subject matter, and when details were leaked about the cast of heroes (young and hip, as opposed to the comic where they were older and washed up), and the director (Zack Snyder, who adapted Frank Miller's 300, to mixed reviews), there was some rumblings of trouble in geek and non-geek communities alike. Despite a giant marketing tie-in at this year's Comic-Con, Watchmen seemed doomed to have the impossibly high expectations of a super-hero action piece that also says something, resting on its shoulder. That is, if it even gets released now.
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Well, it's been a good ride. After months and months of being bombarded with reasons to feel embarrassed for Sherri Shepherd, Today and Good Morning America concert performances, and an endless loop of Anderson Cooper, TV video clipping service RedLasso says it's shutting down. It just might have something to do with the little lawsuit that NBC and Fox just filed against it for copyright infringement. So there will be more more daily embed links to the most recent stink filling up our airwaves … unless you're a paying customer: business clients will still get their clips. (Doesn't that put RedLasso at more risk of claims that it's profiting from others copyrighted works?) And all the videos that have been posted thus far? They should soon be made unavailable. Which might come as a surprise to those working at RedLasso, who, not four hours ago, wanted to let us know about Feist performing on GMA. CONTINUED »
Following up May's cease and desist letter, NBC Universal, Fox News, and the Fox Television Stations today will jointly file suit against Redlasso, the defiant clipping service all of them refuse to credit with making tons of their programming more popular than they ever could. (NB: CBS, originally involved in the case, doesn't seem to be attached to the lawsuit.) [NYO]
Former New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, who once auctioned himself off on a date with two other men, announced his retirement earlier this month. Now, he's headed to out to pasture where many high-profile ex-athletes end up: television sports. He's signed with Fox to be an analyst on Fox NFL Sunday, where he'll be paid to take the shit-talking out of the locker room and into the living room.
Last month, the big broadcast networks NBC, CBS, and Fox filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against RedLasso, the video clipping service used by many blogs to post footage of Dancing With the Stars contestants falling down and Fox News anchors displaying their whiteness. While RedLasso argued they wanted to work with television content producers to create a good-for-everyone revenue-sharing model, the networks took a different approach: stop stealing our content and building your business on it.
Funny, then, that the same companies responsible for trying to kill RedLasso are using the very service on their own websites.
Sadly, it appears those interning at 20th Century Fox have not learned the lesson of Chrissy Torres, the University of Southern California student who thought airing her complaints about her gig – like her boss giving her a "Meryl-Streep-in-Devil-Wears-Prada long list of things to do one day, 3 hours before I had to leave" – would be a good idea.
Some of her fellow interns aren't so pleased with her actions. Which is why they're doing some blogging of their own … aimed at Torres. CONTINUED »
… and she's Chrissy Torres, who's likely out of an internship, like, right this second. Not only did she give away the damning details about her identity while blogging about her internship, she also listed the fact that she was interning at Fox and contributing to CollegeOTR.com, where the blog was published, on her Facebook profile. Idiot.
Bad news, kiddos: The USC student who was said to be interning at FNC is actually just interning at one of the bajillion divisions of Fox (okay, it's 20th Century Fox in LA). Not that writing about her experience there is any less stupid.
By slashing the number of commercials for two new dramas, Fringe (fall premiere) and The Dollhouse (January premiere), Fox has been able to command 35-40 percent premiums for regular 30-second commercial spots.
It's all part of the network's Remote Free TV initiative, which hopes that by eliminating the amount of total commercial time, viewers will become more engaged in the programming and, thus, less likely to skip through the ads. (Gimmicks like this one have helped Fox sell out 70 percent of its upfront primetime commercial spots, and they could finish sales by the end of the week.) [MW]
Advertisers like it because it eliminates commercial clutter, where so many ads are squeezed into a single block of programming that marketing messages can be easily lost amidst the inundation.
Viewers like it because it means they'll have to hit the fast-forward button less often.
Fox insists it didn't intentionally run American Idol a smidge long to cut off Ryan Seacrest revealing the winner's name to DVR viewers. "The winner, by 12 million votes, of ‘American Idol’ 2008 is David —," was how things might've appeared on your end after sitting through what was essentially a two-hour ad for The Love Guru. [NYT]
RedLasso, the sometimes buggy but generally reliable embeddable video service, was handed a copyright infringement lawsuit this week by the major TV networks, who want it shut down for distributing their content.
With a huge 24 million unique visitors a month, it's clear RedLasso serves a purpose. But so did Napster, and one industry in particular wasn't pleased with its reach.
So what's RedLasso to do? The company still hasn't responded formally to the lawsuit, but they have said one thing: We've got the blogs on our side! CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
