Marring an otherwise good article on Letterman

The New Yorker has an otherwise good blog post on David Letterman, but this mistake shows that the person who wrote the article obviously hasn't watched The Late Show with David Letterman in a while, let alone watch it on a regular basis:

But from the beginning things were a little off. Letterman made a show of running across the back of the stage before walking out to greet the audience, and then he went off to the side to talk to someone for a second or two. It’s hard to say what that was all about—nerves, blowing off steam, a pretend escape from the theatre?

The Late Show does this gag every day.

It takes 2,200 words to say that Jay Leno is an unfunny hack

Vanity Fair, trying to make sense of why Jay Leno is so popular, spends 2,200 words writing about the phenomenon when it could be said better in three words:

Lowest common denominator.

Does anyone out there think that Two and a Half Men is the funniest comedy on TV? Hell no, but it gets high ratings. Because it's familiar and unsurprising -- you always have a pretty good sense what is coming next.

Compare it to The Office or 30 Rock, and it's downright boring.

Jay Leno is the Two and a Half Men of late night TV.

Oh and this part is just 100 percent, completely wrong:

Although Leno is called a conformist and a hack and a survivor and all that kind of thing, he certainly positions himself against his network bosses more aggressively than the more rebellious-seeming Letterman or Stewart. Even with his face plastered on every billboard and bus stop in America over the past few months, he has, in press interviews, taken shots at NBC, questioning the network's wisdom for having unceremoniously nudged him, the No. 1 late-night performer, off the Tonight Show stage. Not exactly playing the good soldier, Leno has also said, with a laugh, concerning Conan's less-than-stellar ratings, “Not my problem.”

Yeah, because David Letterman and Jon Stewart never take shots at CBS or Comedy Central.

Get over yourself, Vanity Fair writer.

Nate Silver on Fox's morning show

Nate Silver, of fivethirtyeight.com fame, went on Fox News' morning show, and he had an... interesting experience discussing Barack Obama's falling poll numbers.

He concluded his post, "I've never met people more terrified of what might happen if they actually tried to engage in a rational discussion."

AdAge looks into the future of ESPN -- including holograms

A pretty cool look into what we can expect from the sports media behemoth in the near future from Ad Age. And that includes holograms:

New hologram technology coming to ESPN in the spring, based on Electronic Arts' "Virtual Playbook," will enable anchors to be digitally inserted into shots from remote locations. The idea thrilled Chris Berman and Bob Ley, the two anchors with the longest tenure at the company.

"This is just an example of the cutting-edge technology that will save us so much money on airfare for the World Cup," said Mr. Ley, referencing ESPN's forthcoming coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which will be broadcast from South Africa. Mr. Ley first appeared via green screen from a separate conference room down the hall, only to appear seamlessly on the screen seated between Mr. Berman and Chuck Pagano, ESPN's exec VP-technology.

Mr. Ley looked remarkably more realistic than Will.i.am did during his appearance on CNN last fall, which was precisely the goal. "We looked at that and we said, 'How can we do it better?'" Mr. Pagano said. "How can we extend our internal studio to the outside world?" Although the convenience seems inherent, you can expect many jokes like the one Mr. Berman made in response to Mr. Ley: "You look like Kazoo on 'The Flintstones,' sitting on my shoulder."

The whole piece is interesting, so go take a look.

TV reporter files report -- via iPhone

Here in Albuquerque, KOB-TV reporter Jeremy Jojola (or @jeremyjojola on Twitter), did something pretty cool -- he filed his report via the iPhone.

Check it out:



I'm not an iPhone user and I still find this pretty cool.

G.E., News Corp muzzle Olbermann and O'Reilly

So says the New York Times at least.

For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.

It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to bring it to an end.

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Weird.

Craig Ferguson's tribute to Apollo 11

A promo for tonight's Craig Ferguson shows Ferguson saying that his show is closer to PeeWee's Playhouse than a late night TV show. I'm not sure what Ferguson's show is close to -- especially the first half -- but it is undeniably funny. And he proved it again with this musical segment from last night.

Ignore the Paris Hilton thing, but this is great.

Dead Like Me on Hulu!

I hadn't noticed this before, but the complete series (so far) of Dead Like Me is now on Hulu. I never watched the show when it was on Showtime (we had HBO so we could watch The Wire instead of Showtime) but started watching the show's reruns on SciFi and HD Net.

But if you haven't seen this show, then you need to -- now.

The show follows around George Lass, a dead woman. She died and became a grim reaper. It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea -- watch the first couple of episodes and you'll be hooked.

Here's the pilot:

Scrubs coming back, but it will look very different

While Sacred Heart will still be a part of Scrubs, the emphasis will shift away from the hospital that has served as the main backdrop for the sitcom for the past eight years.

The comedy will shift to a medical school setting, though familiar faces will still be around.

From Entertainment Weekly:

Scrubs boss Bill Lawrence said his cancellation-defying comedy would undergo an extreme makeover in its ninth season, and, man, he wasn't kidding. When the show returns next winter, the action will shift from the hospital to the classroom and make med-school professors of John C. McGinley's Dr. Cox and Donald Faison's Turk.

"It'll be a lot like Paper Chase as a comedy," Lawrence tells me. "It's going to be a different show. It'll still be life-and-death stakes, but if the show is just Scrubs again in the hospital with a different person's voiceover, it would be a disaster and people would be mad."

Zach Braff is leaving the show and Neil Flynn (aka the janitor) won't be around as he is costarring in his own sitcom. Sarah Chalke also will not be on the show.

Maybe they should move Royal Pains to NBC

I'm not sure how good Royal Pains is. The first two episodes were entertaining, and it seems to be a good match with their other Thursday night hit, Burn Notice.

So NBC should sit up and take notice, because it is beating their network TV show in the same slot. And the parent company of NBC also owns the USA Network.

From Broadcasting & Cable:

Royal Pains drew 2.35 million viewers 18-49 Thursday, up 2% from last week, and 2.6 million P25-54, up 3%. The episode drew 5.6 million total viewers, on par with last week’s premiere.

USA also continues to dominate its broadcast sibling NBC in that timeslot. At 10 p.m. NBC aired a new episode of its drama The Listener. The Listener drew just a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demo, and only 4.38 million viewers (according to Nielsen Fast Nationals).

USA Network is a juggernaut. Between their original programming (Psych might be the best comedy on TV, and Monk is pretty damned good too) and wrestling (WWE still gets super high ratings), no network comes close to the numbers that USA gets.

Colbert reminds us the troops are still in Iraq

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Comedy Central star gave up a thick head of hair, and shelved his beloved blow-dryer. America won't soon forget the shtick -- Colbert forcibly shorn by the big, bald-headed general on "order" of the commander in chief, who beamed in via satellite TV to Camp Victory in Baghdad.

That scored lots of laughs and something more. It helped sidestep the presumptive war fatigue of the audience back home so Colbert could drive home a few more salient points: This war is not over. These soldiers are not home. Some of the rules (particularly the one prohibiting open homosexuals from serving their country) don't make sense. It won't be over any time soon.

Futurama is coming back!

The animated TV show Futurama which was canceled by Fox years ago (stop me if you've heard this one before...) is coming back, the Los Angeles Times reports.
For my money, Futurama is a better show than Matt Groening's more famous creation, The Simpsons. But I'm just happy it's coming back for 26 episodes -- and hopefully much, much more.

Comedy Central has struck a deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television to air 26 new episodes of "Futurama," the animated comedy from "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening that was canceled by the Fox network in 2003 after a four-season run.

It will be back in mid-2010, so in about a year.

Oh, and it might not be on Comedy Central:

Comedy Central may not be the only home for the second life of "Futurama." Twentieth's deal with the cable network gives it the rights to sell the newly produced episodes to a broadcast network as well -- given the series' history and the networks' corporate ties to the studio, Fox would be the most likely candidate.

The entertainment industry is so weird.

Penn Jillette juggling broken bottles

There is something strangely disconcerting about this video of magician Penn Jillette juggling broken glass bottles (hat tip to @brianarn for the link).

I'm not sure what it is about the video that creeps me out... maybe it's the a minute and three seconds of total silence. Maybe it's seeing Jillette's mouth moving in super slow motion, obviously saying something. Maybe it's just Jillette.

But, yeah, the video creeps me out.

Oh, and before the video, I saw a commercial featuring Bear Grylls, the star of Man vs. Wild. I always refer to Grylls as the fake survival expert since he's faked numerous scenes. I prefer Les Stroud of Survivorman.

No, Susan Boyle didn't win

No, Susan Boyle didn't win.

And no, I don't care, internet.

Sarah Palin to be on Colbert

Via her Twitter account:

Getting ready to tape shout-out for our awesome US troops serving overseas! Will be on ‘Colbert Report’ next month, broadcast from Iraq…

Colbert vs. Palin on his turf?

Not fair.

The HDNet vs Time Warner fight

High definition cable TV network HDNet is going to be dropped from Time Warner Cable by the end of the month if a deal isn't worked out. Is this like the recently resolved high-profile fight between the NFL Network and Comcast, where the cable company argues that the cable network wants too much money?

Nope.

From the OC Register:

Time Warner confirmed two weeks ago that it is parting ways with the Dallas-based high-definition TV network because the two failed “to reach terms.” Time Warner wouldn’t elaborate on the loss of the channels, which were part of the $5/month “HD Tier.” In their place, Time Warner added the Smithsonian HD Channel and Crime & Investigation HD.

But according to HDNet owner Mark Cuban (yes, he’s also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks), the deal wasn’t about the usual increase in carriage fees, which is the money companies pay per subscriber to offer a network’s TV channels. (Remember the whole Viacom fiasco when Viacom’s fee increase nearly resulted in the loss of Jon Stewart, Sponge Bob and MTV?)

“No, the exact opposite. We cut the fees considerably,” said Cuban, via e-mail.
Interestingly, Cuban says he was trying to get HDNet to become part of Time Warner’s digital basic cable package so that all customers could access the channel. HDNet Movies would remain on the special HD tier. The new deal would be “considerably less than what they were paying to have both on the (HD) tier,” he said.

In other words, Cuban and HDNet wanted to be available to a larger audience than just those who were willing to pay an extra $60 a year to get HD channels. In order to do so, Cuban says they "cut the fees considerably."

And yet Time Warner is all set to cut loose HDNet and HDNet Movies and replace them with the Smithsonian Channel HD and MavTV in most areas.

One day, all channels will be broadcast in high definition. That's just the way TV technology and the TV industry is going. In a few years, people will look back at this battle and wonder what the hell Time Warner was thinking.

NBA TV ratings are at record highs

With Kobe Bryant in the Western Conference Finals and Lebron James in the Eastern Conference Finals, the NBA is doing better than ever when it comes to TV ratings.

From Multichannel News:

After ESPN set a record for most-viewed NBA playoff game in cable history Monday night, TNT donned the crowd Tuesday with its coverage of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. TNT's telecast of the Orlando Magic's 116-114 overtime win over Cleveland averaged nearly 10.1 million watchers on May 26. That toppled the 9.88 million ESPN drew the night before for the fourth game of the Western Conference finals when the Denver Nuggets evened the series at two games apiece.

Slam Online notes that the game between the Los Angeles Lakers Denver Nuggets game on Monday "annihilat[ed] ABC’s The Bachelorette and NBC’s Dateline."

Which is made all the more impressive by the fact that the game was on ESPN -- basic cable, not network TV.

And the next night's game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic had even higher ratings, becoming "the most-watched show on cable this year!"

The ratings for last night's Lakers victory over the Nuggets (on ESPN) will be available later today.

Update 4:07

Something else that I thought about: my dad, who has had just about no interest in the NBA since Jordan retired if not before, wanted to see a Lakers/Nuggets game so bad the other day that he resorted to listening to the ESPN radio version of it on his cell phone.

Despite the horrible officiating, it appears that the NBA is as strong as ever, even among casual fans.

TV show remakes?

Bill Simmons at ESPN.com has an interesting idea -- remaking TV shows. Not remaking them as movies as was done with poor results with Get Smart and less-poor results with Mission Impossible, but actually making a new TV series.

His friend and fellow ESPN worker Kevin Wildes actually came up with the idea on Monday's edition of Simmons' podcast, The BS Report (mp3).

And the first idea up? Cheers: Chicago.

Before you cry "blasphemy!" think about it -- it if was a good enough idea and a good enough show, why couldn't they do a remake of it? Wildes and Simmons make the point that we have no problem envisioning an old TV show becoming a movie (Charlie's Angels, Miami Vice, etc. etc.) or of taking a show popular in England and importing it over here (done well with The Office and not so much with Coupling) -- so why not redo a classic TV show as a new TV show?

It's at least worth a listen.

And if you're into the whole Twitter thing, you can follow Simmons (caution: Basketball heavy) at @sportsguy33 and Wildes is at @kevinwildes.

Young women love American Idol

I know, I know, it's not exactly breaking news... but according to a poll by the Pew Research Center, the demographic that follows American Idol most closely are young women -- that is women from the age 18-30.

The poll shows that 26 percent of women in this age group follow American Idol "Very" or "Fairly" closely. Me, I didn't know who Adam Lambert was until I was pointed to this video of the Idol runner up massacring "Ring of Fire," the Johnny Cash classic.

The numbers are slowly dropping across the board, a trend that I wholeheartedly support. In fact, I would hope that the numbers accelerate, but that is just me.

Meanwhile, men 18-30 (which is my age group) aren't that enamored with American Idol. Just 13 percent of men in the youngest age group follow American Idol "Very" or "Fairly" closely.

If you take away the number of men who are forced by their girlfriends or wives to watch the show, I would be the number would rapidly approach five percent.

Oh, an 71 percent of people say that they have followed the karaoke competition "Not at all closely."