Recently in Television Category

CBS really needs to learn what every other broadcast network has learned:

• Live sporting events always run long
• The programming which follows live sporting events should be "flexible" in its timing... give that time to the affiliates for their local news, for example.
• If you're not going to make it flexible timing, then you certainly don't do your season premiere episodes soon enough after the overrun slot that you can't have stolen back the time from the commercial sponsors

As we sat down to watch our TiVo'ed copy of this season's premiere of Amazing Race, we realized that the first thirty minutes of the time slot was us watching some crappy 60 Minutes episode we didn't give a wet slap about. We were still in the 9pm-10pm time-slot when we noticed this, and nothing else had started recording, so we were able to quickly tell the TiVo to grab "whatever is on CBS from 9-10", and it grabbed everything starting at the beginning of the 30-minute live-window, from 9:07-9:37pm, but seriously, if we had decided to watch it like the next day, I'd have been pissed. (Heck, we already were a bit pissed, we missed seven minutes of footage of them traipsing about Ireland, and we'd been sort of curious to see if they went anywhere we did).

What adds insult to injury is that if CBS had "Clue One", they'd butcher their live 60 Minutes airing... it's fucking 60 Minutes... it's a whole series of 15-minute news pieces. Here's an idea, if the fucking NFL broadcast is running 30 minutes over -- chop two pieces out of the 60 Minutes episode and air them NEXT week. I mean seriously, we're not talking Quantum Mechanics here. You've got a program that you can slice up into manageable time-slices. Tell the on-air talent for the football broadcast "Get us to the nearest quarter hour", and then show however many segments from 60 Minutes are appropriate. If you insist that "60 Minutes" live up to its name, don't air it right after a live sporting event that you know will always run late!!!

Seriously, if I can sort this out, and I'm not in television professionally, you'd think that people who get paid to do it for a living would catch a ride on the Clue Bus.

There was much talk and buzz on the 'Net over the last week over NBC's Brian Williams' planned appearance last night as the host of Saturday Night Live. Would he be funny enough to carry it off, etc., etc.?

It's often been observed that the more sketches the SNL writers put you in, the funnier they think you are. It came as a bit of a shock to find Williams in nearly every sketch of the evening. And better, some of the ones he wasn't in were probably less about "how do we make that funny" but more of "that's too low-hanging of a fruit, we can't do that".... For example, there was no appearance by Williams on the Weekend Update sketch. It's simply too obvious, I know I was waiting for it, and I think D was as well. But it never came.

But throughout the evening, Williams' sense of comedy shone through. It's easy to see that, as was hyped, he's been a fan of the show for 30 years. I don't have trouble believing that's a factual statement and not invented by some PR/Marketing lackey in the middle-floors of 30 Rock.

I hope he gets opportunities to come out of his bubble more. He's got a lot of talents that are simply wasted on staid, boring, reading of the news.

Here's Derek's tips of the day, if you're going to pimp yourself out as a non-union writer right before the WGA strike:

• Learn the difference between "your" and "you're". For example: Your knowledge of the English language sucks moose-balls. You're gonna be lucky if you can get hired at Arby's if that is your idea of selling yourself.
• You've just made the WGA's point for them, in their claims that Hollywood "needs" professional Union writers, because all others are incompetent. You made it so well in fact, that I actually wonder if they shouldlhire you specifically to write ad copy for "scab writer looking for work". It's especially sad that you've made their point for them because it is so patently not-true. I know this as a fact.
• If you're trying to "get noticed" in Hollywood, I suspect that there are very few Hollywood executives saying "Hmmmm, let me troll Craiglist looking for anonymous unknown people I can hand off story ideas for ER to." Are they trolling "casual encounters"? Maybe. But they're not looking for talent there.
• On the off-chance that you do get a job... good luck keeping it. Eventually, the WGA folks will come back, and not only will you not be employed any more, but you'll have caught enough attention as a scab writer that they'll blackball you for future work. You need to be a teensy bit more subtle and under the radar than that my man. The WGA knows people like you exist, but really can't be bothered to chase after you unless you do something to draw attention to yourself like, say, post a really poorly written ad on Craigslist that gets mentioned on a bunch of blogs....

We now return you to the last of your scripted programming....

What Bill Said. x2

D and I have the Time-Warner provided Scientific Atlanta 8000HD hi-def DVR cable box. When we first got it, it was the only way to get HD cable DVR service. Our existing TiVo couldn't do hi-def, was single tuner, etc. The only HD TiVos that were out there were for satellite or for over-the-air, neither of which was useful to us.

We toyed with getting a new Series3 TiVo a couple times in the last few weeks. We both missed the TiVo interface -- its ease of use, the way it always "just worked" for us.... But it always came down to "Is now the right time to do this? The Time-Warner box is doing the job, even if we don't like it all that much," especially with a list price of $800 for the box.

Two years, and two cable-boxes later, it had started to act... quirky. Just the other day it mysteriously deleted some programming way before it was necessary to do so. But still we persevered. Maybe there was some bizarre "pre-delete" logic happening. After all, it had about six hours of hi-def programming scheduled for the following evening as it would be recording a whole bunch of finales.

Fast forward a little bit to this evening.... The unit has a whopping total of three hours of low-def programming stored on it, set to "do not delete". It had another two hours of today's programming (D has a daily recording of Dr. Phil and Oprah), neither of which had been watched yet. It has held a lot more on it. Tons.

It had two simple tasks:

1. Record American Idol Finale.
2. Record Lost Finale.

As we were watching Idol (on delay), around 9:06 I decided to sanity-check the "currently recording" list... and found it NOT recording Lost. Worse, when I quickly bailed out of the "watching the recorded A.I.", and jumped to ABC-HD live, no matter how much I told it to record it, and it said "OK", it failed to do so. It continued to show "Lost 9:00-11:00" in the "Scheduled Recordings" column, but completely failed to act on it. Also, the Oprah and Dr. Phil episodes were gone, deleted as thought it needed room for them, but that couldn't possibly have been the case.

I told D I was going to watch Lost in HD, Live, while Idol recorded, since it was recording Idol. Five minutes into this, though, I realized I would never hear the end of it if we watched Lost live, and she lost her Idol finale because of the flaky box. So I retired to the office to watch Lost live (giving D updates every commercial... again Lost is more "my" show than hers, but she has a passing interest in it). D is now out in the living room watching Idol on delay. We keep each other updated on "what's going on". It's pathetic and annoying but the only option this piece of junk has left us with.

And so I decided there and then that -- when we get back from the honeymoon -- that piece of shit is heading out the door and TiVo is getting some cash from us. It's just that simple.

You put a lot of trust in a DVR. You trust that you can leave it to record your shows and they'll be there when you get home. The Time-Warner box betrayed that trust at the worst possible time, and signed its own death warrant in the process.

What the hell did those Chinese bastards do to Jack Muthafuckin Bauer, eh? He breaks down crying cuz he had to shoot somebody? Christ, wasn't it just last season that he executed a fellow CTU employee just to have a chance at getting some information, and now he gets all skinned-knee girly-crying because he had to shoot Curtis in the shoulder?

I thought Jack was back, better than ever, last night, when he went all The Lost Boys on that guy, ripping his carotid artery out with his bare teeth, but now he's gone completely 180º in reverse, pansy-style.

Also, seriously, a note for future government officials - Jack Bauer is never fucking wrong. Any time you find yourself wanting to second-guess him, could you please just remember that he's saved the world more times than you've had sex, and quite probably he's saved your life, personally, at least once. And every time a government official has ever doubted him, it's always made the government look incompetent. SO, if you find yourself doubting him, just remember that the last fifty or so government officials to doubt him looked like retards later.

D and I were joking that "every time Jack crawls out of whatever hole he's been in, the world goes to hell," and that if I were President, there'd be an executive order that "If Jack Bauer turns up on the radar, today is an excellent day to test whether the NAOC is really fully functional, and to get me there toot-sweet.

All that said, though, it looks like it's gonna be a really exciting "day".

Last night, almost certainly crushed in the ratings by the Survivor three-hour finale, West Wing took its final bow from the television screen.

Nobody, I think, will sit around and say that it is likely that any president would face all the troubles that Jed Bartlet went through (an assassination attempt reminiscent of Reagan's, a Vice President who resigns in shame, a kidnapping of his daughter that causes him to invoke the 25th Amendment and put the Speaker of the House from the other side of the aisle in charge for a few days, and his former chief of staff becoming a winning VP candidate who dies in the middle of election day).

Yes, there were unbelievabilities about it, but that is television drama. What was more important about West Wing was that it showed that -- by and large -- even crazy situations like that, the government has processes to work through damned near everything. Last night's finale was a classic example of that, showing something that is fairly rare still in our global society: the ritualized and orderly transition of power from one elected official to another.

I was a little disappointed that we didn't actually get to see Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), or Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfeld), especially since Toby's now a free man, pardoned by Bartlet in the final minutes of power.

Peter David said it best when he said: If the first rule of show biz is "Always leave them wanting more," then West Wing succeeded beyond all imagining. Despite D's complete lack of enthusiasm for the show, I always wanted to tune in every week to see what was going to happen. It was one of a handful of shows I almost always insisted on watching live, not on DVR, because I simply couldn't wait, and would suffer through having to watch commercials if I had to in order to avoid that waiting.

Bartlet was always the kind of President I wanted. This is not -- at all -- to say that I agreed with him on all of his policies during his television tenure, but you at least realized that he felt like he was doing the right thing. By and large, his actions were rarely controlled by an opinion poll, or by how public opinion would change afterwards. They even hammered that point home for those who couldn't figure it out, having him spend a good six months being that typical politician, and the White House became a political mess. Only when they got back to the guiding principle of "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet", did governance return to its normal path.

West Wing left itself completely open-ended for its finale. If it wanted to, it could come back for a Season Eight, and have a good dozen storylines to pick up and run with. It's disappointing to me as a viewer to know that we'll never see what happens there, except insofar as we can infer them from "future shots" shown occasionally during the series, but it's also realistic, because life doesn't just tie up neatly at the end of one President's term.

It looks like Sorkin has a new show starting next fall, with some of the same actors (Bradley Whitford) as well as actors who had great runs of their own, but wanted desperately to join the West Wing cast (Matthew Perry). With any luck, it'll get another long run, and not get double-tapped the way Sports Night was....

OK, I'll admit it. I'm addicted to Sons & Daughters on ABC. It's partly improv dialog, but it's definitely some of the funniest stuff on television.

Definitely worth checking it out.

Holy frackin' crap!

I've gushed before about how good this show is. Last night's season finale turned the entire series on its ear, and left us with a completely changed world. The interesting part is that, even though the story is completely torqued, it all "works".

And, of course, leaves me waiting breathlessly for next season to start.

OK, with a proper amount of time given for the John Spencer news to kick in, now it's time to speculate a little on "where West Wing will go" since Leo McGarry was pretty central to current plotlines.

There's a couple different "general" directions it can go, depending on how things were already being written...

• If Vinnick was going to be the Presidential winner.

  If Vinnick was always going to be the Presidential winner, then the impact on the show is really minimal, aside from tying up any loose ends in Leo's storylines (which, right now, there don't appear to be any, but I can't speak for episodes in the can already). If Vinnick wins, there's no need for a recurring "used to be chief-of-staff, used to be VP candidate" character, and McGarry goes gentle into that good night.

  Also, potentially, a Vinnick win ends the series entirely, wrapping up neatly a "democrat's term in office".
  

• If Santos was going to win...

  Well, if Santos was going to win, there's a lot of problems... first of which is how do you write out Leo, and do you do it before or after the election? Probably the way which makes the most sense, given both the character's history (he had a heart attack in the show several years ago) and as a tip of the hat to the real life actor, is to have Leo suffer a fatal heart attack.

  Now the interesting part of this is what do you do after that? Who do you fill the VP role with? You need a Democrat who can be taken seriously in the context of the show. Sure, you could fill it with "random actor" who goes off into recurring-character mode (just as Tim Matheson and Gary Cole did), or you can do something interesting... something that will breathe new life and interest into the show. What character can you put into the VP slot who is both credible as well as potentially show-worthy?

  Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe's character). He's got the political clout, especially after he gave it a good showing in the California 47th. The current presidential team -- headed by Josh and Donna -- certainly trust him and would be willing to extol his merits to Santos. It could be both a believable move, as well as the fact that Rob Lowe returning would give a ratings boost to a show that's slipped a little this season in the ratings, if the contractual issues could all be quickly and sensibly resolved.

  But, assume for the moment that they don't... Bob Russell wouldn't necessarily make a bad VP candidate again, so long as he's willing to continue to play second-fiddle, and Gary Cole is almost always great television as well.

  Crazy idea mentioned by someone else (not by me) : Vinnick as VP. Would never happen, though.
  

I'll admit it, I've been watching Rock Star:INXS. It's like "American Idol For Grown-Ups", for those who haven't been watching it, where the winner gets to be the new frontman (or woman) for INXS as they replace their dead lead singer.

Each week, on the elimination night, they have someone who is picked to perform an encore of the previous night's performance, and then they later isolate the "bottom three vote-getters". Normally the encore is picked by INXS, and the bottom-three is based on phone-in votes, etc. This week, both were determined by "the masses".

Paradoxically, the guy who got the encore this week (e.g., the majority of the people out there said "his performance was the best and we want to hear it again") was also a member of the bottom three vote getters (e.g., "These are the three people who we think had the worst performances.")

That makes no sense whatsoever. Seriously. That's a brain-dead system.

Admittedly, the "masses" actually get no say in who leaves the show. (INXS decides from among the bottom three who they want to send home, so if they like someone, no matter how much the world hates them, they don't go home). But still,.... for the person to get voted as both "the best performance" and "one of the worst performances" simply makes no sense.

Does anyone know if anyone other than Empty-V is showing Live 8 in the states? I mean, seriously, this is a long-ass concert stretching across like twelve time zones, and the Empty-V is only scheduled for an eight hour block of coverage. Doesn't exactly come across as a ringing endorsement that one would get to see the whole thing. I'm not even sure you could get the highlights into only eight hours.

And, of course, MTV doesn't have a hi-def version, so while the rest of the world gets basically "the whole show, in all its hi-def glory", us Merkins will be subjected to eight hours of MTV Tripe in low-def suckage.

Sigh.

American Idol: Seriously, how the hell did Carrie win? Actually, I know the answer. The answer is that through the prior three seasons of completely ignoring anyone with a rock influence, there's not really anyone who likes rock and roll who watches the show (and thus, a large market segment, disillusioned by the show's "Diva-friendly" previous seasons, was not around to vote). I soothe over my festering rage on this topic by knowing that Bo will still end up with some sort of recording contract, even if it isn't the one that comes with the American Idol Personal Jet.

Lost: WTF? They call that a finale? Other than the fact that "the Others" did come for "the boy" (just not the boy that any of us was expecting the entire season, given how they pretty much came right out and said earlier in the episode it was going to be the newborn), what the hell did we learn? OK, so Rousseau is not crazy (or at least, she is crazy, but she wasn't wrong about the Others coming), and the hatch leads to a broken ladder down into the heart of the island. Significance of the numbers? Nope, still a mystery. Who these "others" are? Nope, still a mystery (other than the fact that they appear to be human and drive a 10' fishing trawler when they want to kidnap folks).

And seriously, am I the only one who thought "Jeez, Locke, you got some dynamite in your pouch, why don't you blow up the security system when it comes for you, so we can see what it looks like?"

Speaking of which, the security system sounded really mechanical last night, the sound effects taken directly from the pull-up chain from a roller-coaster. Quite a difference from what we think we saw in the pilot.

Overall, an extremely disappointing evening of television for me. :-(

Last night marked the end of an era, with the series finale of NYPD Blue, after twelve seasons (making it one of the longest running TV Dramas ever). I liked that it went out not with some climactic episode about retirement (or death) but that it was another "run-of-the-mill" story about crime in the 15th Precinct, just that there's this new guy running the squad now.

It's clear that ABC wants "Blind Justice" to be the successor, putting another "cop drama" in the time-slot, but personally I think that's dumb. First, it looks stupid, but secondly, any crime drama put in the same time slot is going to be compared -- poorly -- to NYPD Blue, and suffer because of it. Even a great drama will have growing pains its first season, so putting something like that "right in the shoes of something great" just isn't a sound strategy.

But I digress... Blue's first season was as shaky as any other show, although not because of the quality of writing, but because of the controversy. It was unclear if ABC was going to stand behind their gritty, mostly-true-to-reality look at police life. Luckily for all of us, they did.

Now I have to find something else to watch on Tuesday nights, which is pretty tough, because it's been a bastion of uselessness the last few seasons....

Reading Brian's story about how I pointed him at the BitTorrents of the upcoming Battlestar Galactica series (which is airing first on SkyONE in the UK because of the way the joint-production contract was written) made me realize that I hadn't yet posted anything myself about this great series.

I'll admit it. I went into the mini-series, which aired on Sci-Fi about six or eight months ago now I guess, with extreme trepidation. Boomer a girl? Starbuck a chick?! Seriously, what was Ron Moore thinking, that blasphemer.

The mini-series convinced me, though, that while it wasn't "my Battlestar," it was definitely something workable, and something worthy of the name. Further, it was a storyline that I wanted to hear more about.

I've watched through episode 1x08 so far (1x01 hasn't even aired in the U.S. yet, and won't til the middle of next month) and I have to say that I love where the storyline is going. It's part classic BSG, part Space: Above and Beyond, and part freakin' X-Files, with the levels of mystery and machinations that are going on in the background.

But the beauty is that it all works. Even Richard Hatch, who was a proponent of his own self-funded BSG revival project, and was an outspoken critic of Ron Moore's "plan", came onboard to do a "recurring cameo" role in the new series (although it hasn't actually recurred yet).

If you are BT savvy, I highly recommend grabbing these now and catching up. If not, definitely, definitely start watching in January when SciFi airs them. Apparently, the reaction in the U.K. has been so good that NBC is actually going to air the mini-series on their normal NBC feed some time in January before SciFi airs 1x01, so US viewers will finally get to see it in Hi-Def.

I say again: Watch this show!

I tend to watch TV series on DVD, or on TiVo. One way or the other, I make the shows fit within my schedule, not the other way around (although there's one or two notable exceptions, shows I subconsciously insist on watching live).

I never got into Farscape, because I hated starting in the middle of the show, and because the Farscape box sets cost just way too much ($100+ per season, due mostly to their completely crappy DVD layout, requiring 10-12 discs per season), to buy just on the speculation that I might end up enjoying the show.

But, I recently decided to get back on the Netflix wagon, so as to keep my DVD late-charges in check, and thought "well, grabbing the first couple DVDs from Farscape would be a good test as to whether I like it or not".

My first 5 DVDs, containing 10 total episodes, showed up on Friday. Between yesterday and today, I burned through all ten episodes, and am eagerly awaiting more. It's clear that the first season "builds up slowly" in terms of writing and such, but many first seasons of shows are like that. (And come on, let's face it, if someone can get through the first season of Babylon 5, they can get through the first season of anything)

I've got all the first four seasons now queued up in Netflix, and am hoping to somehow manage to figure out how to get through them all in time for the mid-October premiere of Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars, which is a mini-series to resolve unanswered questions, etc. Obviously, these are questions I don't even have yet, but I will. :-)

Somehow I don't think I'll make it, though, and I suspect that said mini-series will be sitting on my TiVo, tying up space until I finish watching the DVDs. That's just my prediction.

I was pleasantly surprised today to find that today's Yankee game wasn't on YES, but was on FOX. While I hate listening to Tim McCarver call games with a passion, FOX broadcasts its games in Hi-Def, which would be sweet.

So it was with a heavy sigh that I noticed that channel 705, Hi-Def FOX, was black. Thinking it was a blackout, I turned to channel 5, Lo-Def FOX, to check. But Lo-Def was spiffy. All my HD channels are working fine except FOX.

I spoke to Time-Warner, who went through re-booting my box, etc., and now insist it must be my cable box. My bets are still on "problem at the head-end and the FOX-HD feed is lost", but she didn't even feel like checking into that was worth doing.

Oh, to live in a house where I can have a satellite dish and get some decent customer service...

I'm surprised this guy has survived long enough to be the "elite" of the CTU. Seriously.

Early in the episode, it's him, Tony, and Saunders' daughter (she who shall be known as "The Most Important College Chick Whose Retention Is Required To Save Ten Million People") ... Tony goes to a pay phone to wait for Saunders' call. Daughter starts making comments like "you're using me as bait!?" and such. Jack confirms that she's the bait. Then goes off to hang out with Tony saying "wait here".

Um, no fucking way pal. If she's so goddamned important, she doesn't leave your sight, at all, period, end of statement.

Then, later, Jack takes Saunders down, he's laying in the bottom of one of the L.A. spillways. Jack calls in, says "Saunders is in custody," and then, while Saunders sits there uncuffed and unsearched, he turns his fucking back on the suspect!!!! That's a pretty good way to get a bullet in the back of the head, you moron. I'm not in law enforcement, and even I know that. Jeez.

Seriously. Someone needs to get 24 a new "expert", because this guy would never have survived to reach the point he's at in his career if he was as inept as he is portrayed...

I'm watching Survivor: All-Stars and it's final Tribal Council... The Jury's overwhelming theme is "how can you separate 'the game' from 'the friendships involved'"

The theory being that, by and large, a lot of the people voted out were friends of Rob's who he backstabbed, etc., etc., in order to survive. Which, of course, begs the question: Can you, or even should you, separate the two in a competition like this?

The answer is a resounding yes. You have to separate the two. In baseball, A-Rod and Jeter were friends from way back. Does that mean they should have cut each other breaks when A-Rod was playing against the Yankees, back in the day? Hell no.

But you can say that baseball doesn't involve lying, deception, etc., and that's true. Maybe my years of playing Diplomacy have conditioned me to be able to differentiate between "the backstabbing that is part of the game" from "backstabbing in real life", and the ability to realize that they're radically different creatures. If you're playing Diplomacy against me, and you stab me in the back, that's part of the game, I'll congratulate you for an excellent deception. I'm looking to backstab you the same way and it's similar to a game of chicken, which one of us believed the usefulness of the other had come to pass first.

In that vein, I can't really fault Rob. If people who are playing a game where the central theme is "backstabbing people to get ahead", you need to have a thick skin and accept that you're going to get knifed in the back. You have to accept that you also need to be willing to use the dagger on occasion, yourself. If you can't, then you've got no place in that game.

With the rash of people jumping on the Airline bandwagon, raving about the show which showcases Southwest Airlines employees around the country, I thought I should offer up the following tidbit of information.

The Discovery Wings channel has been showing reruns of the BBC Show Airport .

Airport, instead of concentrating on a single airline, tends to follow the staff of the airport itself (in this case, London Heathrow), with occasional dalliances with a particular airline's staff (for instance, in an episode I watched this morning on TiVo, they followed around an El Al agent as he helped out an underage passenger).

It's clear that Airline is a carbon copy of Airport, converted for American audiences... the pacing of the show is the same, the standard segues are all the same (although instead of "Meanwhile, at Chicago's Midway...", it's usually "Meanwhile, over in Terminal 2...")

But if you like Airline, you should check out Airport as well.

I've been playing catch-up all week on TiVo stuff. This afternoon, I had the Sunday and Tuesday episodes of "24" queued up for background while working.

The end of Sunday's episode, with Chapelle taking a bullet (literally) for the team, sent chills down my spine. Also the silent clock (instead of the normal beeping one) made it all the more ... creepy.

However, Chapelle's face was remarkably "intact" for someone who got a 10mm plugged to the back of their head. "Face? What face?!" would have been far more accurate than "fake blood drizzled over his head" that we got. I'm not implying they should have shown that, but avoiding showing the face entirely would have been better.

I've decided what my disaster-response will be, though, when I become President. If you attack us with a biological agent, we will intentionally infect agents of the government and send them all over the freaking place. The response protocol to a biological agent, right now, is basically "shut everything down, prevent travel, stop the spread of the virus at all costs."

That's completely the wrong way to go about it. A foreign national, who knows the infection is unlikely to spread to their country, can attack with impunity.

The strategy needs to be "If you infect us, your friends, your neighbors, everyone you hold dear is going to be infected as well, we'll spread the disease everywhere that humans can reach. You may be able to protect your closest friends and family, but bear in mind that when it's all over, it's going to be just the dozen or so of you left on the planet, reigning supreme over a corpse of a planet."

It's the biological-agent version of Mutually Assured Destruction. Say what you want about the insanity of M.A.D. -- and you can say plenty -- it worked. It kept two countries who hated each others' guts from eliminating each other. If a religious radical from some third world country knows "if you infect us, that same infection is guaranteed to come right back at you, harder than ever," it's much more likely to dissuade them from doing it.

Via Fark...

I have wanted, for years the ability to pick and choose my channels. I don't need the full-on Digital Cable 200 channels of complete shite. There's probably ten channels total I would want:

• CBS
• NBC
• ABC
• Fox
• WB
• YES
• HBO
• Sci-Fi Channel
• BBC America
• TBS
• Bravo
• History Channel
• Travel Channel
• ESPN
• A&E

Okay so it totalled 15 Channels, maybe a little more if you make me pay twice for the HD versions of those channels

And you know what? If push came to shove I'd probably double-tap a couple of those channels as well, if the pricing for them was out of the realm of normalcy.

The good news is that McCain has announced that he intends to attach an amendment some time this year to force cable companies to do a la carte pricing for cable channels. The cable companies are complaining saying basically the "high ratings" channels, like USA and such, subsidize the "low-ratings" channels like BET and Telemundo.

Ya know what? If they can't support themselves, that's their own look-out, they're catering to too narrow an audience. If there's no market for a channel for "the home shopping channel for gay black rural america", then don't try to make me pay for it so those twelve people who want it can have it.

Thank you, Mr. McCain.

If you want to debut a new television series, it's important to actually get people watching it. After all, people watching it equals ad revenue, and that's what pays the bills in TV Land.

Unless you're CBS. Then, you'll consistently schedule your spiffy new series "Century City" to follow sporting events. So far, I've recorded:

• A full episode
• An hour of basketball
• 30 minutes of Price is Right, followed by 30 minutes of a 60 minute episode (the Price Is Right episode was pushed back by, you guessed it, basketball)

Now, seriously... do you want me to watch this new show you're plugging all over the place? If so, you damn well ought to schedule it in such a way that, oh, I dunno, I can actually watch it when you say I can.

There's almost certainly a team of Media Buffoons sitting around a board table somewhere in Studio City saying, "Why the heck isn't this Century City thing making us money?! For as much as we spent, blah blah blah..."

Morons.

That's the current ad campaign for BBC, with Americans sitting around claiming to be "BBC Americans".

As I sat watching Dead Ringers (American Site), I realized I fell into that category.

Three-quarters of this show is parodies of British politics and celebrities, people the average American doesn't even know exist. And I "get it". I think there may be about one or two spots every hour that I don't get at first run through.

BBCA is tied with CBS in my household for the title of "Channel with the most TiVo Season Passes", and that's only because I added CBS' upcoming "Century City" just so I could see what it was like.

When I get a house, and DirecTV, I would pay pretty good money for the ability to get "real" BBC stations in the US, and not just the "what we think the Merkins will stomach" version. It's too bad they don't offer that. :-(

I was watching the ad for Pizza Hut's "Four For All" Pizza, the one with the muppets. I notice something odd.

One of the four pizzas is hawaiian style... ham and pineapple.

I hope that's not the part Miss Piggy ordered.

24 Spoilers.... West Coast Folks Beware

I know I've touched on this before but it really hit home for me this weekend.

I spent the past few days watching Season One and Season Two of Dawson's Creek. I'd always written it off when I saw commercials for it... after all, it was on the WB for god's sake. But then I got trapped in a hotel during a firestorm and found that the show wasn't all that bad.

One thing I've found odd, though... nearly every movie aimed at teenagers or young adults has -- as its protagonist(s) -- a collection of people who could easily appear in the center of a Gap ad.

Even twenty years ago, a show that was supposed to be about the school geeks starred the extremely hot Sarah Jessica Parker.

John Hughes was pretty good about it, but even his "social outcasts" were terminally cute, like say Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink.

I know why it happens... the beautiful people make eye candy on TV. But the reality is that they're not all that populous. By and large, the average teenager sits somewhere in the middle.... not terribly popular, but not a social outcast either. They're not the superhottie, but they're not terminally disgusting either.

Why is it, then, that television and movies don't aim more for that demographic? It would seem, to my limited understanding, that you could get better ratings with actors and actresses of merely average looks, playing characters of merely average popularity, because those are the characters that the target audience can identify more with. Sure, some of it is the escapist, living-vicariously-through-the-characters'-eyes type of appeal, but there has to also be some attraction to characters to which the audience can truly relate.

Maybe it's just me. Other than Office Space, I've had literally dozens of shows that I liked, but none that I related to.