Let's just put this out on the table: CBS is an old-school station. While other networks experiment with dramedies, single-camera mockumentaries, and investing as much in their digital entertainment and online "extras" as they do in their programming, CBS still banks on laugh track heavy traditional comedies like Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang. CBS is still riding off that Survivor wave they caught 8 years ago. CBS is your mom's favorite station, and yet Two and a Half Men is still the ratings champ. Go figure.
Case in point: While ad sales are down on networks now that DVRs allow people to fast-forward through commercials, stations become increasingly desperate to do in-show product placement, give more ad time to the buyers online, and come up with new marketing techniques to trick viewers into thinking they aren't watching a commercial. While CBS? Is going to give you interstitial cooking shows during commercial breaks.
It's so Dinner and a Movie circa 1998:
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Against rational thought, NBC has picked up Knight Rider for a full season, its struggling new series that's yet to find an audience (just 6.9m viewers), or a favorable critic. This has more to do with co-chair Ben Silverman — who brought the remake to NBC — trying to save his reputation than giving audiences what they want. But when would the network reverse course and try that?
Cecily von Ziegesar, the scribe of the Gossip Girl book series, looks like Laura Dern on crack in that photo. Just sayin'. But at least the lady knows her subjects: Ziegesar (mouthful) grew up in that snooty New York private school lifestyle that she puts her characters in.
How relieved were the show's creators then, to find out that Cecily not only liked the CW series based on her books, but was a 'faithful watcher' of the program as well, and had only one character complaint (and no, it isn't that Nate Archibald and Chuck Bass never acted that gay in the books):
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"Peter Chernin, president and COO of News Corp. said today that labor talks with the Screen Actors Guild are going 'horribly' and that if SAG called for a strike the results would be "devastating to the creative community."
Mr. Chernin's remarks may carry more weight than most as it was he, along with Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger, who are credited as being the two major forces on the studio side that helped hammer out an agreement with the Writers Guild after the WGA struck for 14 weeks starting at the end of last year."
-TV Week
Comedy Central's first attempt at black (as in African American) comedy following Dave Chappelle's untimely 2006 departure, Chocolate News, premieres tomorrow night. In the same vein as prime time heavyweights The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Chocolate News will attempt to mock news of the day with a wry, liberal bent. From what I've seen, it's not going to work.
Upon exclusively viewing the CW's Stylista — a reality show featuring 11 contestants competing for The Greatest Prize Ever (and a job at Elle magazine) — we discovered the premise is quite obviously based on The Devil Wears Prada: Incompetent people who have no business being involved in the fashion industry? Check. Frightening dictator (fashion news director Anne Slowey)? Check. Inane tasks that have seemingly nothing to do with fashion? Check. The difference: We wanted Anne Hathaway to succeed in the movie; in the reality TV version, we kind of hope everyone fails miserably.
Does it strike anyone else as a bit odd that the most spirited political discussion these days is coming for those five overly percolated women on The View? Sure, Bab's show has always been fun to watch, in that "what would Sex and the City be like if they were all old and didn't like each other and not everyone was white" sort of way, but never before this election show actually contained something resembling a serious political discourse that is being as closely monitered in the papes and blogs as, oh say, an Olbermann/Matthews feud.
We're on Day Three of resident Republican and stereotypical blond Elizabeth Hasselbeck's futile promotion of John McCain and the Republican party. Once again, the usually ditzy Sherri Shepherd is on the attack, playing off yesterday's feud, and now she has Joy to back her up again, and threatening to flash everybody.
This is a Joy Behar nation folks, we just live in it:
Sherri Shepherd, bless her heart, reared her slightly empty head today on The View to stand up to resident crazy Elisabeth Hasselbeck. The ladies' Friday show was pretaped, so today they threw in extra chirping about Thursday night's debate. Can you guess who Elisabeth thought did the best job? She tried to convince the other women, which is when Sherri "I haven't thought about whether the earth is flat or round" Shepherd got riled up and spewed some semi-coherent thoughts for the first time in her life. We never thought we'd say this, but: Good for you, Sherri!
Hey look, a reason to go out and buy a television and then turn it on this weekend: Wu-Tang doc you guys!
Gerald K. Barclay's documentary "Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan" will premiere Nov. 13 on BET, five days before its release on DVD. The film chronicles the pioneering hip-hop group's rise from Staten Island through interviews and a wealth of rare footage.
The trailer can be found here, but real gangsters don't use YouTube. Real gangsters buy the DVD.
In an interview for Radar's October/November issue (not online yet), Ana Marie Cox asked the Arizona senator about his pop culture preferences. McCain listed Dexter, Lost, Seinfeld and The Wire as his favorite shows, and also called Showtime's nudity-filled series The Tudors "one of the best shows I've watched recently."
But then McCain noted that he often settles for reading scripts instead of watching the actual program "because obviously with my schedule and such, I don't get a chance to watch them on a regular basis."
What a neophyte. Has the man never heard of Hulu? The only reason McCain would ever read the scripts for The Wire or Seinfeld would be so he can enjoy the dialogue without having to hear the Jews or blacks actually speak.
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.
Here's something new: A clip of Sarah Palin looking like an uninformed twit as she is asked fairly basic questions about politics. This scenario was brought up Tuesday, when we said Sarah couldn't name any Supreme Court cases, but the video shows she just can't name any with which she disagrees. Minor difference, but you know she couldn't even name a single one if she tried. Hell, she couldn't even name a newspaper when asked.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I watch The View morning after morning in hopes of witnessing something amazing. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the moron who gives Republicans everywhere a bad name, had a minor meltdown during the show's first segment today. She was so beyond help that not even Barbara Walters came to her rescue. The topic, of course, was the idiocy of Sarah Palin, which turned into another session of Elisabeth spouting off nonsensical remarks to defend her beloved McCain/Palin ticket. After Barbara correctly likened Palin's preparation for the debate to a high school student cramming for an exam, Elisabeth became extremely angry, which is when this happened (inciting a round of boos from the audience):
Can you believe we actually suffered through Paris Hilton's My New BFF last night? And — even crazier than that — we didn't feel the urge to stab ourselves in the eyes? We realized that once you sit through A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, you can sit through anything.
Anyway, the contestant who makes this show bearable is Onch, a jewelry designer from Hacienda Heights, Calif. Onch's favorite color is rainbow (seriously) and prefers the term "pomp" over "fabulous." Also? Onch is a male.
For all five of our readers who follow Gossip Girl, Details magazine shot a beautiful cover of the show's leading men, along with an in-depth interview with each. To make a long story short: Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford totally love each other in a not-gay-bromance kind of way (maybe), Penn Badgley is kind of an ass and thinks he's better than you, and all the boys love Christian Bale. We knew we loved these guys for a reason.
The two police officers involved in the death of mentally unstable Brooklyn man Inman Morales have been stripped of their field duties following an investigation into the incident. Neither Officer Nicholas Marchesona, who Tasered the unarmed Morales off a 10-foot high ledge, causing him to fall to his death, or Lieutenant Michael Piggot, who ordered Morales Tasered, were fired.
After the jump, Piggot and Morales' slap on the wrist in the style of a 1950's sitcom, where it belongs.
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"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]
Why buy the cow when its way of life is so reliant upon you that it can't leave, despite the fact that you rob it blind? That's apparently the abusive husband-like thinking of the city of Los Angeles, which continues to watch shows formerly filmed in its borders – Ugly Betty, In Treatment – head east after failing to offer film and television productions tax breaks comparable to those of New York City.
LA has always sucked, but it's going to suck even more if visitors driving around and looking at it can't every 20 minutes go, "Hey, that's that building from that one movie." According to the numbers, that's happening quite frequently these days. The mayor's office estimates that in just five months since the city of New York enacted their massive tax breaks, city-based shoots have contributed $505 million more in spending than they did during the same time last year.
And New York's not the only city wising up to how profitable playing nice with the movie stars is:
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Our own Mollygood editor Whitney Little reports on last night's premiere of Dancing With the Stars and the crazy antics of Young Frankenstein's Cloris Leachman:
"Who knew the 82-year-old would inject some life into this drag of a program?"
Oprah protege and always-wearing-scrubs medical professional Dr. Oz has always been well, everywhere. Mehmet Oz is a regular on the morning shows, Esquire, the Discovery Channel, and even popping up on The Colbert Report. And then, of course, there is Oprah. Now, thanks to the giftbag hoarding TV queen's Harpo Productions, Dr. Oz will be a daytime staple: Sony has sold the show Dr. Oz in 14 markets, or 40 percent of the country, with more on the way, for next fall's debut.
In fact, this is Oprah's second foray into medical TV; she's also spun off The Doctors from Dr. Phil, where Dr. Phil's son Jay — a regular Dr. Phil guest — will exec producer the daytime medical talker, with real operations performed on set! In between coffee chats!
Surely this must be a sign of … something? CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
