On The First Day Of Christmas...

On the first day of Christmas my true love – television – gave to me... One Epic Fail.

And surprisingly it wasn't my total failure to write anything for the past how many months?! It was close but... well actually no, it wasn't. Because the epic fail I refer to in this article was the attempt to move Jay Leno into a five night a week prime time series. Whatever they were smoking at NBC when they came up with that one was not just illegal but dangerous to the health. The problem was that it was dangerous to the health of one of the four major television networks, and if you look back to the days of radio, the company that spawned the idea of bringing a string of stations together and forming a more powerful union called a network.

I'm not saying that the prime time Jay Leno show is a failure compared to the hype surrounding the show. It would in fact be difficult for what Leno is doing to live up to the hype. The hype was over the top. If you remember when the show was announced, well before the upfronts, the brain trust at NBC – which at the time was Jeffrey Zucker and Ben Silverman if I'm not mistaken – was saying that this one show with this great host would change the face of television. Other networks would waste their time and considerable amounts of money producing dramatic series while NBC would prosper with equal or slightly lower rating because Leno's show wouldn't be that expensive to do... and this is even factoring in the amount of money they would be paying to keep Leno and his cars in the style to which they have become accustomed. And when you consider that the media en masse bought into the NBC hype – to the point where there were articles in big media (and we're talking Time Magazine here) were pubishing articles about how Leno moving to prime time would change the face of television – it would be nearly impossible to live up to the hype. And it didn't.

The problem with the Leno show is that it hasn't even lived up to NBC's normal standards. Fact one: the show routinely finishes third in its time slot in the ratings each and every week night. Fact two: the show routinely finishes third in the 18-49 year-old demographic each and every night of the week, including on Wednesday night when ABC had been airing the now cancelled Eastwick and Tuesdays when ABC airs the "hanging on by the skin of Jerry Bruckheimer's teeth" The Forgotten. Fact three: the show is not providing as good a lead-in to the local newscasts on NBC's affiliates as just about everyone had hoped. And since the late local news is a profit center for the affiliates they are not happy, to the point where there have been preliminary rumblings that they'll stop carrying the show which in turn will affect audience and advertising revenues for NBC. Fact four: increasingly the quality of guests that Leno is able to attract seems to be in decline. It's not a radical decline but it does seem to be trending down. Fact five: Leno's ratings have not improved when the show was up against reruns. This is a big one; it was always stated by NBC in their packages about Leno that while his show might not win the time slot against new dramatic shows it would perform better against reruns because 46 out of 52 weeks would be new shows. If that's not happening, and it certainly looks as though Leno is only improving slightly against reruns and CBS reruns are winning every night Leno's new shows. We know that hasn't happened when the CBS shows were running up against NBC dramas like the Law & Order franchise and ER. Which brings us to...Fact Six: Running Leno in the third hour of primetime has forced NBC to run their more adult programming – such as the Law & Order series – in the second hour at a time when either the content has to be dialled down or it is totally unsuitable. Or, in the case of the extremely gritty police series Southland they were forced to scrap the series entirely. Southland, which has fortunately found a home on TNT, was deemed to be too extreme for the Friday second hour time slot that it was originally slated to appear in and was cancelled by NBC.

Look, I can see the machinations that were going on at NBC with the whole Leno-Conan O'Brien thing. In simple terms the network had two cakes and wasn't willing to set down either one to safely deliver one of them. When they announced Jar's retirement from the Tonight Show in 2004, the network was undoubtedly worried that they couldn't keep the popular O'Brien in the second late night slot indefinitely and if they didn't move him to the Tonight Show they'd lose him to ABC. And Jay's statement at the time, "You can do these things until they carry you out on a stretcher, or you can get out when you're still doing good," seems to indicate that he may have thought the time had come to go. If that was the case, then the transition would have been smooth, but for many people – even those who thought that if Leno wasn't, "still doing good" – thought that the workaholic Leno would come to regret deciding to step down. And of course he did, which left NBC on the horns of a dilemma. Should they break their promise to O'Brien and keep Leno on the Tonight Show for as long as he wanted to stay, in which case Conan would be out the door and over at ABC or FOX. Or should they hold Leno to his agreement, in which case Jay would have been on ABC or FOX or even the Tribune stations and presumably demolishing Conan O'Brien. So they gave Jay Leno his prime time show and hyped it to make it appear as if it were the second coming of television...which it wasn't. The net result has been bad for Jay Leno – his show is not a good fit for primetime – bad for Conan O'Brien – there's the constant feeling that he's still under Jay's shadow – and good for one man, David Letterman. Since Conan has taken over the Tonight Show ratings for Letterman's Late Show have surpassed the Tonight Show not just overall but in the major 18-49 and 18-35 demographics. And not even the revelation that Dave had, before his marriage, slept with female members of his staff had an effect on that.

I can't fault Jay Leno for the Jay Leno show as much as I probably should. The decision to put the show on the air was after all NBC's. The network was the organization that wanted to keep Jay around at any cost and given Jeff Zucker's frequent musings on abandoning the third hour of primetime putting Leno on there must has seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, if there was anyone left at NBC who had an institutional memory that extended beyond Knight Rider and Bionic Woman they might have hearkened back to the first two hosts of the Tonight Show and what they did after leaving the late night grind. Both Steve Allen and Jack Paar had primetime series on NBC after they completed their runs on the Tonight Show, although Allen's series, which was on opposite The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights, started while he was doing the late night Tonight Show. Allen's NBC primetime show ran for four years from 1956-1960 while Paar's show ran from 1963-1965 (Paar pulled the plug on the show himself). The thing about these shows is that they were both hour long shows, one night a week. While it is entirely possible that the modern television industry would not accept a live hour-long talk and comedy series one night a week they way they did – at least for a while – in the 1950s and '60s, but it would have presented an opportunity for NBC to keep Leno and give Jay a real opportunity to do superior. Just about anyone who has seen even a few minutes of Jay's current primetime show will tell you that what he's delivering isn't the quality of comedy that he's capable of.

Christmas Cancelled!

Well the eighth through twelfth days of it anyway. I'm still not feeling up to my best or even an average level thanks in no small part to decongestants, antihitemines and other cold and flu stuff, and while I just might be capable of banging out a piece tonight on the latest bit of reality TV crap from Ashton Kutcher (prejudged only slightly) I wasn't capable of much of anything the past few days except perhaps sleeping. And let's face it, the moment has kind of past for what I was trying to do.

On The Seventh Day Of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love – Television – gave to me...seven year end lists (or at least year end lists from seven favourites of mine).

This was the supposed to be the one that got me caught up; an easy one, because all I'd be doing is inserting links. Yeah, right. Schedule still way out of whack thanks to shovelling snow and feeding little brother, not to mention watching the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. I'll share a secret – the Rose Parade was more exciting than the football game.

But let's get started with this. These are end of the year lists put out by various people, most of whom I have a certain amount of respect for, although there are some that are included for reasons like the fact that they're Canadians.

• Alex Strachan, who writes for the Canwest newspapers has his "Naughty and Nice" list – five things he considered Naughty, and five that he considered nice. #1 on the Naughty list Farmer Takes A Wife: "This pig-in-a-poke, roll-in-the-mud dragged reality TV to a new low, and that's saying a lot. Is this really our reality?" #1 on the nice side was Canadian comedian and social and political satirist Rick Mercer: "Rick Mercer had himself a merry old year. An unnecessary fall election, and the nonsense that followed it, gave him a lifetime's worth of material to run with. And run with it he did."
  
• Long time friend of the blog Jaime Weinman, in his Macleans Magazine blog has his Best on TV list. He has five categories including "Best non-romantic relationship," "Best appearance by a ghost," "Best use of a TV show for political purposes," Best speech," and "Best-looking Canadian on TV." In the latter category he writes, "This is almost as difficult as choosing the most depressing news story of 2008; there are so many beautiful Canadians on television that many U.S. message-board posters have become convinced that Canadians are all beautiful. Which we are." Setting that obvious truth aside he's really talking about Colbie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother, and while I have other choices I can't entirely disagree.
  
• Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger has two lists here. One looks back at the best shows of 2008, while the other looks forward to the best episodes of 2008. His Best Series list is the traditional 10 best series of the year – although naturally there are eleven entries in his top ten list. Naturally most of his shows were on cable. #1 was of course The Shield: "It's been two months since I first saw the cop drama's final two episodes, and I still shiver at the memory of how uncompromising, how disturbing, how powerful and how devastating they were -- the best finale I've ever seen for an American TV drama. Unlike "The Sopranos" -- the show to which it was so often compared -- "The Shield" seemed determined to provide as much closure as possible, and yet there's a delicious ambiguity to the final fate of Vic Mackey (the brilliant Michael Chiklis) and what it means." In his Best Episodes list has fifteen entries with no apparent order. I particularly like his assessment of the CSI episode "19 Down": "The first half of William Petersen's farewell offered up Bill Irwin as a disturbing new villain, Laurence Fishburne as an intriguing new hero, and a reminder of just how much more potent the original "CSI" is than its various spin-offs and imitators."
  
• Aaron Barnhart at TVBarn.com and the Kansas City Star focussed his attention on what he called at one point, "TV's most thrilling reality show," the 2008 presidential election. In one concession to looking at entertainment he talks about the late night shows and in particular Tina Fey's version of Sarah Palin: "Her close encounter with Palin on one "SNL" episode was much commented-upon, but it was the QVC sketch -- with the fey-Sarah hawking "Palin in 2012" T-shirts while Real McCain, standing just off-camera, asked, "What are you doing over there?" -- that historians 100 years from now will write dissertations about."
  
• Ed Bark in his Blog also made a point of discussing the election, with four or five of his ten entries focussing on either politics or TV as a venue for politics, making reference to the death of Tim Russert, and MSNBC embracing its status as a left-wing response to Fox News. For him Obama was the TV story of the year: "From the hard-fought, ice-encrusted primaries of January to December's still operative after-glow, Obama is by far the year's biggest TV story. Making history helps, too. And in the end, yes he did."
  
• Tim Goodman of SFGate.com came up with a list of the twenty-five best shows of the year, although his number one was Mad Men: "This is a series that is brain candy as well as eye candy. Visually stunning and smartly nuanced, the full Don Draper character study is a thing of beauty. But this season, "Mad Men" fleshed out the surrounding characters as well (particularly Don's wife, Betty) while simultaneously ramping up the duality of Don, nailing cultural change and alluding to the onrush of chaos."
  
• Maureen Ryan has a list of the Top Shows on TV in 2008 that is chock full of stuff besides her Ton Ten list (with twelve entries) that reminds me why she's one of my favourite professional critics. I really like her assessment of the second season of Mad Men: "Even when it confounded me, this rich, complicated drama about yearning, unpredictable men and women left me hungry for more. This year, the "Mad" men frequently yielded center stage to the show's frustrated, fascinating women, who turned in stunning performances, and to supporting characters such as the lovable but heartbreaking Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray)." And her writing on The Shield – "Few shows in the history of television have worked as hard to keep their fans' attention; only high-quality Swiss timepieces are more beautifully complex." – ain't bad either.

On The Sixth Day Of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me – six male characters I enjoy.

I did this last year and it seemed to work out pretty well. In fact I think it worked out better than I expected it would considering that it was a last minute addition to the list. What I'm talking about is characters rather than actors. True, there are cases where it is the actor who really makes the character, where no one could ever imagine someone other than who was chosen playing the role. Then there are characters who may not be "actor-proof" but into whom an actor grows. After a while you may come to think that no one else could do the role but that's because you identify the character with the actor and vice-versa. Think of this sort of role as being an off the rack suit rather than one that is made to measure. And so with that as a preface here's my list:

• Charlie Crews (Life): One of the holdovers from last year and for good reason – I want people to watch this show! The reason I want people to watch this show is the performance of the two leads, Damien Lewis and Sarah Shahi, who is going to be on the list of female characters in a couple of days. Crews is a perfect example of an "off the rack" role. While I won't say that any actor could play the part, it's also not a part that could only be filled by Damien Lewis. In fact because Lewis is British, it's probably a role that he is less suited for than many actors. And yet Damien Lewis has made Crews his own. While Charlie's quirks and what might be called "personality tics" are largely the product of the writers, it is Lewis who takes those qualities and with his mode of speaking and his body language turns them into a believable character.
  
• Jack Donaghy (30 Rock): I can't remember the last time I actually watched an episode of 30 Rock (the first time I saw it I was very turned off by the character of Tracy Morgan) but I know and appreciate just how good this show is. A large part of it is due to the ensemble cast but the standouts are Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin. I don't know that Donaghy is the role that Baldwin was born to play but I do think that there is no one else who could play Donaghy.
  
• Patrick Jane (The Mentalist): I've recently been somewhat dismissive of The Mentalist because the series seems to be a "safe" approach for CBS. Still Simon Baker invests Patrick Jane with a number of qualities that make him stand out. I recently read an interview in which Baker stated that in his interpretation Jane is "full of self-loathing and incredibly self-deprecating." In his view, the death of Jane's wife and daughter shaped the character by taking away just about everything in his life. It's shown in his clothes which are worn and his shoes which are worn out. It indicates that since the death of his wife and daughter, "he gave up on his physical appearance." As Baker puts it, "Jane really has nothing left to live for, except for a form of revenge and justice, and his own take on what justice is." While The Mentalist may be a safe show for CBS, following a format that is episodic and therefore eminently repeatable, the way that his personality is presented makes Patrick Jane one of the more complicated characters around.
  
• Walter Bishop (Fringe): Walter Bishop stands out in a different way from Patrick Jane. While the fact that Jane has largely given up on living except for his determination to avenge his family, Walter Bishop is a mass to personality quirks that are blatantly obvious to the viewer. It's largely due to his insanity of course; Walter is quite literally a mad scientist. Although the role of Walter Bishop is one that abounds with opportunities to chew the scenery, John Noble invests him with a considerable amount of humanity. In a very real way Walter is almost a child, alternately naive and knowing, callous and caring. A very enjoyable portrayal.
  
• Dave Williams (Desperate Housewives): Villains are often the juiciest roles for an actor and in Dave Williams, Neal McDonough has found good one. On the surface Dave seems like a personable fellow out to make friends and help people. It's all part of a massive plot of course. While retaining his "nice guy" exterior, Dave has run Mrs. McCluskey out of her home, killed his former psychiatrist, started a fire in a night club to cover the murder that killed six or seven people, and framed Porter Scavo for the murder. The reasons for his actions have slowly been revealed. Initially it came out that he was seeking revenge against one of the husbands of Wisteria Lane. Narrowing it down slightly it was mentioned that the person he was after had killed someone in prison. Most recently it was revealed that – like Patrick Jane – Dave is seeking to avenge the death of his wife and daughter. In this case the vengeance will not simply be the death of the person (and I'm not going to mention who if only to avoid the wrath of the spoiler haters) he holds responsible for the death of his family but rather to inflict suffering on this man of the likes that he himself suffered.
  
• Gil Grissom (CSI): I've always liked William Petersen's performance as Grissom but with the announcement that Petersen would be leaving the series in the middle of this season, the producers seem to have made a very deliberate effort to focus storylines on Grissom. He's been made to appear increasingly melancholy and the producers have delved into his relationships with both the people he works with and people outside of his life who are important to him like Sara and Lady Heather. There's a telling moment at the beginning of the season when Grissom asks the psychologist played by Alex Kingston whether dogs can adopt the emotions of their owners that really lets us know that for whatever reason – most likely that Sara has left – Grissom is increasingly dissatisfied by where he is. It is perhaps fitting that it is his closest confidant, Catherine Willows, with whom he first confides his intention to leave. It is also fitting that she knows him so well that she can say that she knew he was going even before he did. In spite of the fact that they have never been physically intimate their connection is on a very intimate level. The past half season or so of the series has provided viewers with some of the most revealing glimpses of Grissom ever in the show.
  

On The Fifth Day Of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas (which has already passed) my true love – Television – gave to me ... five Emmy hosts.

What were they thinking?

I mean seriously: What were they THINKING?!

I'm getting this out late because I spent a cold and not overly clement Tuesday with my little nephew, which really meant watching cartoons on Teletoon here in Canada. This would normally spark a rant on the quality of the modern TV cartoon as compared with the stuff that I used to watch as a kid. The stuff I used to watch was better, and if he can say the same thing when he gets to be my age then the art form will be in seriously deep doo-doo. However I had already planned to talk about the Emmys and the decision to use the five reality show hosts nominees as hosts for the Emmys which in its own way shows that something is in seriously deep doo-doo.

I'm not entirely sure what the rationale was for choosing to spotlight the five nominees for "Outstanding Host for a Reality Show or Reality Competition" as hosts for Emmys. That the category was new is scarcely reason enough to make the choice. Of the five reality show hosts – Howie Mandel, Jeff Probst, Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, and Ryan Seacrest – only Howie Mandel is really used to working in comedy and before a live audience. Thanks to his work in game shows over the years Bergeron is probably almost as polished as Mandel. For the rest, their skills vary from marginal – Seacrest hosted the Emmys in 2007 and failed miserably – to non-existent in the case of Heidi Klum. Even so the experiment might have worked, or at least functioned adequately, if they hadn't insisted on having more than one of the hosts working at any one time. But – at least during the times when you actually saw the hosts which was increasingly rare as the show continued – the producers insisted on having two or more of the hosts working at a time.

Of course the business with the hosts was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to problems with the Emmy Awards. A certain amount of the problem might have been beyond the control of the producers. A significant number of the nominated shows, performers, writers and directors came from cable series and networks shows that quite frankly were artistic and critical successes but not necessarily seen by a large number of people even in the current climate of reduced audiences. The result would seem to be a reduced number of viewers turning in from the beginning.

Still there were a great many things that the producers of the show did have control over. While the TV networks insist that the Emmys be broadcast live rather than taped and edited, they also insist that the show run to time. The producers know this – or rather should know this since they've been doing the show for years – but still insist on writing stand-alone comedy material like the initial presentation of the hosts or the "tribute" to Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. In Fact the Laugh-In tribute may very well have been the worst thing of the night artistically – the jokes were bad, the performers who showed up weren't as sharp as they were thirty years ago (Alan Sues in particular seemed sadly like he was either drunk for real or suffering quite ill) and the whole seemed to have absolutely no purpose. The producers also put jokes in the category introductions for the presenters, most of which actually work better than the stand-alone material. The problem is that as the show rolls on, material increasingly gets cut for time. And it's usually not the stand-alone stuff but the presenter material. By the end of this year's Emmys the hosts were never seen (as hosts that is, but I'll get into that in a moment) and the presenters barely had time to be announced, emerge and read the names. No jokes, in fact no preface at all to what they were about to do. I'm not even sure if they showed clips of the nominated shows.

Which brings us to one of the worst excesses of the 2008 Emmys, the presentation of the award for Outstanding Host for a Reality Show or Reality Competition. While the presenters for the Outstanding Drama category were reduced to walking to the nearest microphone, swiftly reading out the names of the nominees and getting out of the way of the thundering herd from Mad Men it took about ten minutes and a commercial break for them to present Jeff Probst with his Emmy in a sort of mock tribal council or some other reality elimination format. Beyond the fact that it was boring as hell and badly presented the worst part of it was the waste of time that could have been used for better material, not to mention for a better category. Even the Outstanding Reality Competition category, which by virtually any measurable standard is the more important category, got short shrift as a result. And for the life of me I don't know why they focused on this particular category.

So what does the Television Academy have to do to make the 2009 Emmys if not more successful at least more palatable? Well, first of all, cut the number of hosts down to one or at most two. Whoever does host the show should be big – Craig Ferguson, or maybe Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer. Second, cut the extraneous stuff to a minimum – the obituary reel, a tribute to some notable show or person and do that with clips – but beyond that just focus on presenting the awards. And when you're doing it, keep the jokes to a minimum, particularly in the "lesser" categories. Those are the ones where the presenter should come out and just announce the names of the nominees. And for heaven's sake, when you time the rehearsals remember that sometimes winners talk longer than the amount of time you allot for them, and that people actually laugh at jokes – even the one's your writers come up with. Take the jokes out in rehearsal so you don't have to cut more and more as the show goes on and the important categories come up. Just my opinion of course, but that might make the whole show a bit more watchable.

On The Fourth Day Of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me... four shows from last season that I wish were still on this season.

Okay, first of all this isn't the "fourth day of Christmas" post that I had originally planned. What I did have planned was a series of gripes about Canadian TV and the difficulties that being a Canadian imposed on people who love TV – like the fact that the best premium cable, and some basic cable, shows don't show up on basic cable here for months or years after they air in the United States. I could have reviewed Deadwood and Rome, but what would be the point; they had already been cancelled. And please don't ask me to subscribe to the premium channels to see these shows unless you are willing to provide me with a guaranteed $28 each and every month to pay for them. And don't even get me started on people who embed HULU clips on their websites that I can't see because I'm not an American. At least HULU tells me up front. Some other sources make me watch a commercial first and then tell me.

I know, this all sounds a bit self-centered. More to the point writing it was increasingly difficult for me, so I dropped it, but what to replace it with. I very nearly wrote "On the fourth day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me... nothing at all." I think I could have spun that into a piece about the industry but it kind of loses the numerical flavour. But then I thought of a great old standby, the "wrongly" cancelled show. Networks have all kinds of reasons for cancelling shows of course but in the light of what we got from them instead, maybe they shouldn't have been so hasty with what they did dump.

Moonlight – CBS: CBS cancelled a show that usually finished first in its timeslot and replaced it with The Ex-List. More to the point they cancelled a show about a vampire in love with a human (and vice versa) six months before ($150 million gross in four weeks), and less than four months before HBO put True Blood on the air. Yeah I know there were fan protests, and I know that after what happened with Jericho (which the network totally mishandled, but that's beside the point) CBS might be just a little wary of on a show that might be described as a "cult favourite," but come on, can anyone really say that the show wouldn't have performed better than The Ex-List? No, I didn't think so.

Women's Murder Club – ABC: This was the show that was usually on opposite Moonlight an alternated winning the time slot with it. The show, about four women involved in the criminal justice system – a cop, a coroner, an assistant district attorney, and a reporter – did reasonably well in the ratings and was one of the few new ABC shows to come back after the Writers Strike, and did so with little apparent erosion in the ratings. The show was not the unanimous critical success that Pushing Daisies or to a lesser extent Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone were, but in terms of audience numbers it was close to the latter two series. The time slot might have hurt it; Grey's Anatomy on Thursday night might have been a better fit for the show than 20/20 or the weak and often moved Men In Trees. Certainly Women's Murder Club would have done better coming out of Grey's Anatomy than Big Shots did last season or Life On Mars did this season.

Las Vegas – NBC: Yeah, I know it was expensive, and yeah I know that it was coming to the end of its string but it was one of the great "guilty pleasures" and it deserved to be treated better than NBC treated it in what turned out to be the final not quite a season. Particularly when you remember that this season NBC had Crusoe, My Own Worst Enemy and Knight Rider, none of which can be classified as "great guilty pleasures."

1 vs. 100 – NBC: This one was really hard to decide on. There are a lot of people who would have said Journeyman but it wasn't a show that I saw much of, and I could make arguments for FOX's New Amsterdam (because I liked the concept; it reminded me a bit of Highlander) or Shark (because it's fun to watch James Woods chew scenery), the CW's Aliens In America (which I never saw, but had good ratings – well good by CW standards – until it came back from the strike and let's face it the CW needs all the help they can get). In theory at least I could even make a case for the CW's Life Is Wild on the grounds that it was closer to family fare than most of what is on any network and even at its worst in terms of ratings it did way better than all of the MRC shows that the CW put on combined. But no, I went with a game show, 1 vs. 100 and I did it because as game shows go it was more knowledge based than something like Deal Or No Deal and despite all of the tinkering that NBC did with the scoring system (instead of money levels for each question where you got that amount for each mob member eliminated they changed it to ten levels were you had to eliminate ten mob members to collect that amount of money) and the composition of "the Mob" (putting permanent mob members in, some of whom wouldn't have survived the old system – I'm looking at you Dahm Triplets and you Oscar the Grouch) it was always an enjoyable show to watch.

On The Third Day Of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me... three Reality TV Show stars.

Now contrary to what my friend Toby contends, I don't watch all that much reality TV. I watch what I call "The Big Three" from CBS – Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race and sample a few others in the summer. I really don't consider Dancing With The Stars to be a reality show, and I don't watch the Project Runway class of look-alike shows – Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, Top Chef, and the one about hairstylists. Mostly those shows aren't available to me. I've never watched the "dating" shows like The Bachelor, and most of the talent shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance leave me totally out of it. That goes for their Canadian versions as well, although I feel a considerable irritation over the fact that CTV has pulled Canadian Idol from their 2009 line-up and blame the economic environment. It's one of the network's highest rated show and either they think that they've found all of the singing talent in Canada after three seasons or that it costs too much to rent the venues. (Maybe if they didn't spend $3 million on the rights to the old Hockey Night In Canada theme. No hockey games to go with it, just the theme music.) I even became disenchanted with the only "talent" type show that I watched – NBC's America's Got Talent – as a result of the bloated audition phase and the atrophied performance phase.

What all of that was about was to explain why my list of Reality TV Show Stars is restricted to just three. I mean it could have been four if I'd decided to include Gene Simmons from Celebrity Apprentice but let's face it, Gene Simmons is Gene Simmons; larger than life and maybe even (in his way) larger than Trump. What I'm interested in in this post is the non-celebrities who have, through the medium of the Reality TV Shows that I watch have inserted themselves into my memory for a little while. I have to say that the number who actually did that was severely restricted. While Jerry and to a lesser extent Renny on the summer Big Brother created an impression but in the case of Jerry it was an increasingly negative one and in the case of Renny it often focused on that voice. There were good people in Amazing Race 13 but none who stood out in the way that Kynt & Vyxsin did in the twelfth edition of The Race. So here's what I've got, two players from the most recently completed cycle of Survivor and one from an otherwise unremarkable show called Greatest American Dog. These are presented in alphabetical order if for no other reason than it removes any taint of favouritism from the mix.

Bill McFarlin & Star – Greatest American Dog: I'm a dog guy – have been since the cat I thought was mine ran away when I was four. Watching Greatest American Dog generally reaffirmed for me the claim by the late Barbara Woodhouse that there were no bad dogs just bad owners. The people on the show all loved their dogs, but some were incredibly – even stupidly – indulgent of them. Some couldn't control their dogs while others were over-controlling to the point where their dogs were becoming stressed and the owners didn't even know it. And then there were the egos – mostly the owners – that got in the way. Bill, from Flint Texas, seemed to have a special bond with his Brittany Spaniel Star. Unlike some of the contestants he didn't anthropomorphise the dog, and unlike others he wasn't overly controlling. Star was smart and responsive, while Bill was genuinely concerned with the dog's welfare. At one point Star was injured – apparently by a feral cat – and Bill was heartbroken over the possible injury to his dog, not about possibly leaving the contest. This was in contrast with some other contestants. The other thing about Bill is that he was very friendly and willing to help other contestants on the show in working with their dogs if they wanted the help. Again this was in stark contrast with some of the contestants. One in particular – a professional trainer – tended to be condescending to the other owners. It is something of a testament to Bill and Star that when they were eliminated from the show, I eliminated the show from my weekly viewing.

Bob Crowley – Survivor: Gabon: One of those cases where the "good guy" and someone who actually deserves it wins a reality-competition show. Bob Crowley, a high school physics teacher, from Maine wasn't the most likely person to win the show. In fact he was arguably the most unlikely. He was the oldest man on the show and in a very real way one of the least effective in the physical challenges. But as he said at one point (it was inserted into promos for the show featuring him) he was "wicked smaht." His initial contributions to the tribes that he was on were in terms of woodcraft and outdoorsmanship. His teams had plenty of food cooked well (he improvised a griddle by splitting open and flattening a large tin can) and comforts (at one point he apparently built a bench at one of the camps). This led at least one of his competition to dismiss him as "not really playing the game." It was a severe underestimation. Even as his alliance was falling apart he was laying the groundwork towards forging new temporary relationships. And he was not above being devious. Not once but twice he created fake immunity idols of such good quality that they were able to persuade others of their legitimacy. But perhaps his greatest triumph in the game was an unprecedented string of personal challenge victories – both immunity and reward – with which he was able to retain his position in the game even as he was becoming the obvious threat to beat. In the end he was able to persuade the jury members that he, unlike second place finisher Susie (a woman who made flying under the radar a new art form), had lived up to the show's motto "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast." (One interesting sidelight about Bob: one of his students, Julie Berry, was a competitor on Survivor: Vanuatu - she finished fifth.)

Jessica "Sugar" Kiper – Survivor: Gabon: If ever proof were needed that reality shows have writers – at least to pick out and develop the storylines from the footage shot on location – it is Sugar. To viewers Sugar was the second most likable member of the cast (behind Bob) as shown by the fan poll at the end of the series. And yet she was the only one of the final three not to get a vote for the jury. Susie, who was probably the least visible of the cast members who made it to the merge – at least in terms of screen-time – received only one less vote than Bob. Clearly – and it was stated during the reunion show – there were things about Sugar and her behaviour that irritated people. I suppose that 39 days of Sugar is different than fifteen edited hours of her. What is abundantly clear is that however much she may have irritated them, Sugar also allowed herself to be underestimated by the other competitors (with the possible exception of Bob – I think he saw right through her). They seem to have based their impression of her on the body, the voice and the hair and ignored the fact that she had a brain. It was absolutely clear when we saw Corinne and Randy talking about Bob almost certainly finding the Hidden Immunity Idol at Exile Island despite the fact that Sugar had been there five times while Bob had only been there twice. Clearly Sugar was too stupid to find the Idol (she found it the first time she went). Setting that aside, Sugar was either responsible for or at the very least involved with some of the biggest moves in the game including the elimination of Ace – supposedly the "brain" behind Sugar – and the final elimination of Kenny by giving her Immunity Idol to Matty. In fact it was Sugar who gave Bob the million dollar win by voting for her long-time ally Matty ensuring the tie, and telling Bob of her intentions beforehand which allowed him to practice his fire making skills. Sugar's greatest enemy in the game was Corinne, and I suspect it may have been her statements at the jury session that influenced the portrayal of Sugar. First Corinne said that Sugar would have her vote if only she would agree to use the money to have her vocal cords severed. It went downhill from there. In a speech later in her questioning of the surviving players, Corinne showed off what I can only call her "Anne Coulter" side: "You are an unemployed, uneducated leech on society. And the only thing I would vote to give you is a handful of anti-depressants so that no one else has to be subjected to your constant crying anymore. And maybe if you get some, then it would seem a little more sincere when you are crying about your dead father." And there you have summed up the "heroine/villainess" (because Randy and later Kenny had admirably placed themselves as the male villain of the piece in counter point to Bob's hero) dynamic that the people who put the hours of tape for this season together in a viewable package used to shape our perceptions of this season.

On The Second Day Of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas my true love – television – gave to me....two cancelled shows.

This piece isn't going to be as long as I had planned on it being. Word ate the original posting. I know I had saved it – in fact there's a nice file titled On The Second Day Of Christmas
2008 on my list of recently worked on Word files. Too bad it links to a blank page. (Almost as bad as the fact that I'm a day of Christmas behind – I didn't count Christmas Day itself as a day of Christmas and even if I did I was nowhere where I could post so...) So basically what I'm going to do is give you the Readers Digest condensed version of the part of the post that I had actually finished when this poxy program lost what I had written.

While there have been a number of series cancelled in the 2008-09 season so far, only The Ex-List from CBS and Do Not Disturb from FOX were actually cancelled and pulled immediately from the line-up. Other cancelled shows, notably My Own Worst Enemy, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, and Dirty Sexy Money were allowed to air most or all of the episodes that had been produced at the time that the cancellation order was given (apparently there are three episodes each of Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money that will air in the Summer 2009). The cancellation of Do Not Disturb and The Ex-List are not surprising. The "humour" in the FOX comedy had all the subtlety of being bludgeoned with a sledge hammer, while The Ex-List hinged on people buying into a premise that I can't see as being anything but absurd (a woman believes a "psychic" who tells her that if she doesn't find her "soul mate" – a man that she had previously been involved with – within a year she will never find happiness) even though many professional critics were enamoured with the show.

No, the interesting part of this season's round of cancellations is that aside from these two the series weren't immediately pulled from the line-up. Even the series that Media Rights Capital did for The CW were allowed to continue their runs after being cancelled (by MRC) until the network ended their deal with the content provider. This is in vivid contrast to previous seasons. The strike affected season of 2007-08 aside, the recent trend has been to pull shows from the line-up quickly. In the last pre-strike season, 2006-07, the five networks cancelled six scripted shows that had aired five episodes or less. And who could forget shows like Emily's Reasons Why Not (1 episode), Just Legal (3 episodes, with five more burned off in the summer), Love Monkey (3 episodes on CBS with the remaining five airing on VH1), Head Cases (2 episodes), Heist (5 episodes), Inconceivable (2 episodes), or Book of Daniel (3 episodes). These shows were all from the 2005-06 season.

The reason for the stark contrast between this season and previous seasons is not entirely clear. One explanation might be the as yet unrealised threat of a Screen Actors Guild strike (the likelihood of which seems increasingly low), or it could be one of the effects of the current economic situation – networks can't afford financially to effectively throw away the money they invested in a show by not airing all of the episodes they've paid for without a damned good reason. In the case of The Ex-List it is probably the realization that they would have better ratings (and consequently be able to charge better advertising rates) with reruns of their stand-alone procedurals.

One effect of this reluctance to immediately pull shows from the line-up has been that viewers have been given more of a chance to view shows. Many viewers – or at the ones who comment on various blogs and message boards – claim that they want new shows to "get a fair chance." Some even go so far as to state that they won't watch new shows when they air because of the fear of quick cancellation (an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy if I ever heard one; if people don't watch new shows out of fear that they might be cancelled then the ratings will be low and those shows will be cancelled). The downside of the networks not pulling shows immediately is that it seems to disprove the theory that a show will gain audience if given time to "mature." Instead viewership for most shows seems to decline or at least stabilise at a lower level when the shows "mature." Leaving aside the argument that the ratings system is "broken" (usually made without any suggestions on how to fix the system), the cancellation of low rated shows is a constant reminder that broadcasting is first and foremost a business.

On The First Day Of Christmas

On the First Day Of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me.... a Nostradamus wannabe.

I'm talking about Jeff Zucker and by extension his little minion Ben Silverman. The truth is though that most of these pronouncements, whether they come out of the mouths of Zucker or Silverman (and often, before Silverman, Kevin Reilly) are Zucker's. And Zucker has a tendency to make predictions about things that are going to happen. Often – well sometimes anyway – these are predictions of gloom and doom. In my book this makes him a Nostradamus wannabe. The only thing is that Nostradamus couched his predictions in quatrains that are so vague and subject to interpretation that you really only knew he was "right" once things had happened. Who really thought that "Hister" equalled Hitler until after World War II? Zucker, bravely, does not couch his predictions in vague, if cryptic, generalities; he just comes out and makes statements. And his predictions tend inevitably to be wrong. This makes his most recent musings about the future of TV, and the more importantly the action that he took after making them, particularly bothersome.

But let's go back in history first to one of the first Zucker predictions that I took note of in this blog. Back in October 2006, when NBC was going through a batch of cost cutting that required the firing of 700 employees to make a saving of $750 million, Zucker announced that the network would no longer air scripted TV series in the first hour of primetime. According to the TV Squad article at the time Zucker stated that "advertisers just won't pay enough money during the 8 pm time slot to cover the costs of comedies and dramas." Instead the network would program game shows and reality series during that hour, largely I think because NBC was basking in the initial glow of Deal Or No Deal. While it was never stated – the article doesn't cite a source for the statement unfortunately – Zucker presumably expected all of his competitors to follow the NBC lead. At the time I stated that the truth was that advertisers weren't willing to pay enough for the NBC shows that were airing in the first hour of primetime. In the event NBC did try the "non-scripted only" strategy in the middle of the 2006-07 season. The only night on which they aired scripted programming in the first hour was the Thursday night comedy block. On other nights they were airing two episodes of Dateline NBC (then in the heat of it's To Catch A Predator popularity) plus one on Saturday; Deal Or No Deal; Thank God You're Here (the show where actors did "improv" to various pre-scripted situations); and 1 vs. 100 (which was replaced by a twelve episode run of Identity. But in the 2007-08 season the network added the scripted show Chuck (until the beginning of the strike) on Monday night, while airing two episodes of Deal Or No Deal and Biggest Loser (and the Football pregame on Sunday night). Dateline NBC only reappeared on Sundays after the end of the Football season. And this season? NBC is airing scripted series three nights of the week with the Football pregame, Deal Or No Deal (down to one episode a week now) and Biggest Loser. As for the rest, CBS has scripted shows on four of the six nights (the exceptions being 60 Minutes on Sunday and Survivor on Thursday); ABC has scripted series on two of six nights (Lost on Wednesday and Ugly Betty on Thursday); FOX does three (currently – this will change a bit when American Idol begins and changes a bit more when the new Friday night line-up debuts) nights of scripted shows; The CW does four nights of scripted shows (five if you count the Jericho reruns on Sunday night); and MYNetwork TV (which I mention because Zucker's most recent pronouncement apparently counts them as a competitor) does one (three if you count their two nights of movies) but doesn't have anything on Sunday nights. Score one Zucker prediction down the tubes.

Next up we had Jeff Zucker talking pilots and the traditional upfront presentations. This really started in January of 2008 when Zucker told the NAPTE (National Association of Television Program Executives) convention in Las Vegas that NBC would only be ordering five pilots a year instead of the more usual twenty. According to Zucker, "People want to ridicule the idea of making fewer pilots. It's usually those who have a vested interest in perpetuating the inefficiencies of the system. As I have said, this is not about making less programs. It's about making less waste." Supposedly – as was stated in a follow-up statement by then Universal Media Studios president Katherine Pope – was a script for the first episode so they could see what the show would be about. This also rationale also had a lot to do with NBC's decision not to hold a traditional upfront presentation at Radio City. At the same meeting Zucker stated that, "We believe the big show is a vestige of the last decade. What matters is the new schedule and the rationale behind it." And he added "We probably will be on our own in doing this at the start. Like everything else, if it's successful, others will follow." In other words everyone was going to do it but NBC was going to be innovative. There were mixed reviews from the decision not to do upfronts. According to a TV Week article from around the time of Zucker's NATPE speech, while some advertising executives felt that individual meetings with agencies were more important than "the big 'Here are the stars and the shrimp and the fun'" others felt that there were considerable advantages to the upfront system. John Miles of MediaCom stated that the advantage of the upfronts was that "You connect with the community at large, which includes clients. It can create some positive momentum. Does it have to be $20 shrimp? I'm sure it doesn't. But you know want? It's a people business. It's a social business, it's a relationship business, and part of relationship-building happens at those parties." And John Swift of PHD U.S. stated that there were advantages for both sides in the traditional upfront process, including – for the agencies – price advantages, the ability to secure spots when you need them and ratings guarantees.

As for the decision not to produce many pilots, John Miles stated that "We understand the economics, we understand the reality, but we are buying shows for audience delivery and environmental capability, and in order to make some of those decisions, you've got to see the program. The bait-and-switch is that we know that what we see is not necessarily what is going to end up on the schedule, but I think it gives us a flavor of the sort of direction that the network is heading in. And so I think pilots give you some good information about a network's sensibility." And Shari Anne Brill, VP of programming at Carat stated, "I don't know what any of these guys have in development and I like going to those meetings so I have an idea of what's new and coming out. They're going to have to have something to show us or describe because we have to do our [audience] estimates. What do I estimate on? I need to see some form of an attempt at a schedule." (Emphasis mine.) In other words the decision not to do pilots deprived the advertising executives of the ability to make decisions on what programs they should buy time on. Most of all though, based on the performance of the schedule that NBC put in place its "limited pilot" strategy seems to have been an abject failure. Of the new shows that NBC introduced in September, My Own Worst Enemy ended after nine episodes – all that were completed at the time it was cancelled; the Knight Rider remake was initially given a full season order of 22 episodes and then had that order reduced by five episodes and had the storyline "reformatted" to make it more like the original series; Crusoe was moved from Friday to Saturday night for the remainder of its thirteen episode run. The only "success" has been the American version of the Australian sitcom Kath & Kim which has done poorly in both total viewers and ratings in the demographic. From this standpoint the whole business of not actually seeing what you're going to put on your network seems to be an abject failure. While there may still be sufficient questions about the necessity for the upfronts to leave that prediction unresolved, it seems clear that the idea of fewer pilots is another Zucker prediction that's a flop.

Which brings us to the latest pronouncements from Nostra-Zucker-us, and the events that followed them. Speaking before the annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on December 8^th, Zucker stated that the model for broadcast networks has to change: "Can we continue to broadcast 22 hours in prime time? Three of our competitors don't. Can we continue to broadcast seven days a week? One of our competitors doesn't." In the first part he is referring to FOX, The CW and My Network TV, while in the latter case he is talking about The CW (which doesn't program shows on Saturday) although he might well be speaking of My Network TV which doesn't program Sunday nights. The fact that three networks don't program the third hour of prime time each night is at least partially an accident of history. When FOX was established it could only program two hours a night if the company wanted to produce its own scripted programs; by programming only two hours it was not considered a network under FCC regulations. Networks at the time weren't allowed to produce shows and a major part of the FOX programming strategy required shows to be produced by 20^th Century Fox. By the time the FCC regulations were changed the Fox affiliates had cut out a lucrative niche by presenting the news an hour before their "network" competitors. Something similar occurred with The CW and My Network TV – their affiliates had already established their late night news programming at the beginning of the third hour of prime time and they were unwilling to surrender the time. Using these networks – particularly the extremely low rated CW and My Network TV – as a model for the future is at best a questionable bit of logic.

Zucker's UBS announcement was followed the next day by the blockbuster announcement that some people thought the original statement was set up to lead into: NBC signed Jay Leno to do a talk show in the third hour of primetime five nights a week. This means of course that NBC has removed itself from original scripted programming in the third hour of primetime every night except Sunday, and then only after Sunday Night Football ends. And the truth is that no matter what NBC is paying Leno for that hour a week it is probably less than what a scripted series would cost. There are other implications however. Because in much of the country (though not all as the Parents Television Council never ceases to remind broadcasters thanks to their demands for FCC fines) the third hour of primetime fall beyond the so-called "watershed" when more adult programming can be legally presented, NBC's abandonment of scripted programming in that hour means that the network won't be able to do shows that "push the envelope" (although again – because of the PTC and their FCC complaints – the degree to which any of the networks has been willing to do that is questionable). Of course in real terms for NBC the loss is really minimal. With ER ending its run in March 2009, the only NBC show that has been established as a long-term resident of the third hour are Law & Order and Law & Order Special Victims Unit. The most recent attempts (as in this season) by the network to program the third hour have included shows like My Own Worst Enemy and Lipstick Jungle, both of which were cancelled by the network.

Zucker' assertion that maybe the networks should give up the third hour of primetime was hardly received with universal acceptance. Les Moonves of CBS told the UBS conference that, "I'm here to tell you the model ain't broken. You can still make a lot of money in network television. We like 10 o'clock shows." Other reaction to Zucker's statement has been mixed. An article in the Denver Post stated that, "At the very least, NBC is signaling its emphasis on cost-cutting rather than a pursuit of proud entertainment. The days of great NBC dramas like Hill Street Blues, Homicide: Life on the Street are long gone. With Leno as a lead-in, NBC affiliates won't get any ratings help for their late news." The article also stated that "NBC pulled off a clever move in the short term, keeping Leno in the family along with O'Brien. In one stroke, it filled a weeknight hour of prime time with Leno's solid brand, prevented ABC from hiring the comedian, and responded to the changing nature of television with a different economic model. The network saves $13 million a week by abandoning scripted dramas in the last hour of prime time. Smart business idea; lackluster entertainment concept. Shareholders are bound to be more pleased than viewers, who are right to expect more. Hailed as bold and radical, it's really a very safe move, aimed at cutting costs." And that's what it really seems to be about for Zucker and NBC – how the shareholders regard the bottom line. In a chart shown at GE's investor presentation on December 16^th, the profits from NBC's broadcast business fell from $1.4 billion in 2005 to an estimated $400 million in 2008. At the same time profits for the company's cable arm went up by nearly $800 million. The Wall Street Journal article that this tidbit came from stated that "You can blame some of that loss on the fact that NBC has tumbled in the ratings and has never replaced the hits it had in the days of Seinfeld, and later, Friends. But hits are cyclical: Wait around long enough, and you end up airing something that works. If NBC thought that hits would be enough to claw back some of that billion, CEO Jeff Zucker wouldn't be conceding five valuable hours to Jay Leno, who costs less to air than the shows he's replacing, but has less upside potential. Instead, Zucker seems to be saying that broadcast TV is a big but shrinking business, and that he's not going to fight that trend." It is of course worth noting that the programming decisions that failed to replace hits like Seinfeld and Friends but instead kept those shows on the air by throwing money at their stars (and then after even that stopped working, giving us crap like Joey and the American version of Coupling) were made by one Jeffrey Zucker. As the Denver Post article points out, "Audiences deserve an array of smart scripted comedies and dramas beyond the lowbrow, vanilla humor that has come with NBC efforts like Celebrity Apprentice or The Biggest Loser. The broadcast networks are increasingly abandoning challenging drama to cable. Knight Rider is NBC's answer to Damages, Mad Men, The Shield, Weeds and The Tudors.... While spreading Leno across primetime makes fiscal sense, it sounds about as exciting as the virtual fireplace or yule log video loop so popular at this time of year. It's a game changer, all right. For many viewers, there are compelling dramas and comedies waiting on the DVR. Plan to catch five minutes of monologue, then switch to a meaty cable drama." Or maybe something on CBS or ABC. But that doesn't matter to Jeffrey Zucker. His motto seems to be "short term gain and long term pain" though he doesn't say the latter part out loud.

Concern for the bottom line is important but in both this move and his previous utterances and actions Zucker has proven that the bottom line is his primary concern. But surely success on the bottom line has a lot to do with the quality of the shows you put before the public. Because in truth the public aren't true customers for network television, it is the advertisers. The public – the TV viewers – are the real commodity that the networks are selling, not the shows. Advertisers are buying eyeballs in front of the set because those eyeballs might actually watch the commercials that the advertisers are producing. The financial straits that NBC as a network finds itself probably has very little to do with the existing network broadcasting model. It is in part a product of the economic downturn but also in part a product of NBC simply not putting on shows that the public wants to see.

Oh yeah, and CBS? The network that doesn't believe that the broadcasting model is broken? Well their audience figures are up over last year. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Through Dec. 21, CBS has averaged 12 million viewers, up 1% from last year. NBC, ABC and Fox are each down 9%." And that's mostly with scripted programming including the third hour of primetime.

On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....twelve Fearful Forecasts.

Normally I would say twelve fearless forecasts. I learned long ago that the trick with predicting the future is to be as vague as possible in making your predictions so that after the fact you can form the prediction to fit the facts. Either you do that or to come up with something so blatantly obvious that no one could possibly miss getting it right. Take this one for example, from last year: "I predict that the biggest housecleaning at the Upfronts in May will occur at The CW, with new series being created to try to create an identity of its own for the network rather than that of the two parent webs as well as build ratings. It will succeed in the first, not so much in the second." I pretty much nailed that one but it was patently obvious that The CW was going to have to cancel many of the series that they put on the air last season. It was equally obvious that those changes would give the network an identity that was more its own than it had in the first year. And in all honesty there was little or no chance that the network would make significant gains in the ratings. I had a pretty good record last year following those simple rules.

Ah but this year – this year you have the thrice damned Writers Strike, and while I support the writers 110%, it makes it hard to predict the future. I mean take a prediction about the Oscars. I can make a prediction that they'll be boring and generate complaints that they go on too long – that's a perennial one that you can make every year and I usually do – but how do you make that sort of prediction when you don't know whether the Academy Awards will be given on the scheduled date, if the Writers will still be on strike, if they'll grant a special waiver for the broadcast if they do go on the scheduled date and they are still on strike, and if anyone except the six Moguls and the Below the Line workers represented by IATSE will actually show up if they do and they are. I mean you can see the problems for wannabe Carnacs. Still, I've got my crystal ball out of hock and am sitting yogi like before it and with a growing sense of trepidation I look deep, deep into its depths to predict....THE FUTURE!

1. I predict that the Super Bowl will run far outside of the time slot that FOX will allocate for it, to the point where most of the episode of whatever show the network is planning to run following the game will run outside of prime time in most of the United States. Despite this only half the people in the United States will complain about the game being too long and they weren't watching it anyway. (This is one of the "perennials" I mentioned earlier. In fact I just cut and pasted it from last year's list.
   
2. I predict that the first quarter profits for the five networks will go down slightly despite the fact that they don't have to pay for those nasty old writers and for actors and such. The advertisers will start demanding give backs as ratings decline, but at the moment the networks have enough scripted product available in the form of shows that they held back as mid-season replacements that it won't be huge. But what happens when that material is gone and the nets have to rely on reality series, game shows and news department shows?
   
3. Outside of the established reality programs such as The Amazing Race, American Idol, Big Brother, Hell's Kitchen The Apprentice, and Survivor new reality series brought out by the networks will be abject failures in terms of ratings. Despite this, the networks will run them to the bitter end rather than go back to the negotiating table with the Writers Guild.
   
4. The networks will have greater success with repurposing shows from their various cable networks. There are people who don't watch the USA cable network let alone Showtime.
   
5. The Writers Strike of 2007-08 will last longer than the Writers Strike of 1988. Neither side will be entirely happy with the result but one side will be far happier than the other when it is eventually settled.
   
6. The Parents Television Council will continue to whine, bitch, moan, complain about language, violence, sexual content, and the "fact" that cable subscribers are forced to "subsidize" content that no one wants (despite strong ratings). They will continue to make protests at stockholders meetings imploring companies to not advertise on bad shows and work with the PTC to choose where to spend their advertising dollars. They will continue to insist that the ratings system is a failure and there needs to be an outside board to "correctly" rate shows presumably with considerable input from the PTC. They will continue to crow whenever they agree with an FCC ruling, and insist that the word of the FCC is unappealable when the evil networks take those decisions to court, but will insist that the FCC reverse its position immediately when the PTC doesn't agree with one of their positions. They will continue to send in obscenity complaints to the FCC for material that most sensible people would never regard as filth. The FCC, mindful of being overturned by the Second Circuit Court on the "fleeting obscenities" case will ignore all but the most blatant and obvious transgressions. Which will be nonexistent because networks are, on the whole, too afraid of the FCC's ability to levy fines of $325,000 per station. (This by the way is another one of those "perennials.")
   
7. The 2008 Olympics will be the biggest thing on NBC all year, despite the fact that nothing will be shown live (because the damned foreigners didn't put the Games in the United States where they belong perpetually), the Opening Ceremonies will be totally messed up by Brian Williams and Bob Costas, there will be far too many "up close and personal" pieces profiling (American) athletes. Naturally the only ceremonies that are show will be ones where the USA wins, and the only time some events will be seen is when an American is competing. Meanwhile CBC (and it's various partners) will do a much better job of covering the Olympics by showing events when they happen, regardless of the nationality of the competitors. And they'll do the whole thing – from buying the rights to paying staff, renting locations and housing staff – for a fraction of the total what NBC spent to get the rights. Olympics junkies will flock to border areas where they can see the Canadian coverage and there will be a bump in the purchase of "gray market" Canadian satellite dishes to American households and sports bars. (This is a "biennial" – it is accurate every even numbered year.)
   
8. Despite being named by everybody and their cousin as the best new series of the year, Mad Men will receive no Emmy nominations when the Emmys eventually occur. Also overlooked will be anything on The CW and every show on most basic cable networks regardless of quality.
   
9. Despite the ample opportunity presented by the Writers Strike, Canadian private TV networks will continue to miss the opportunity to expose their product to their domestic audience continuing to adhere to the mantra that Canadians won't watch Canadian shows so why bother.
   
10. Bill O'Reilly will continue to be Keith Olberman's favourite target for calendar 2008, primarily because O'Reilly continues to be such an easy target and he gets so upset when Olberman calls him on something. Why just this weekend Bill O (as Keith O continuously calls O'Reilly) shoved Obama campaign staffer Marvin Nicholson for standing in his way, had the Secret Service intervene, and lied on air about what happened. Olberman probably can't wait to get on the air Monday night. (For the record, I don't see FOX News – it's available but the cable company requires viewers to buy a specific package to get it and I can't be bothered with Bloomberg TV. For some reason that I don't entirely understand – well really I don't understand it at all – I do see MSNBC, and am rapidly becoming an Olberman fan.)
    
11. Despite the concerted (I nearly – and foolishly – said "best") efforts of the US Federal Government and the Television industry, the conversion from analog to digital television in the United States will be screwed up so that there will be a small but vocal number of people whose TV stop receiving signals when the switch-off occurs in February 2009. I mention this now because publicity about the switch-off has already started, and the coupons to buy the converter boxes needed for analogue TVs to receive digital signals are already available.
    
12. Katie Couric will be hosting the CBS Evening News at the end of 2008. I confess that she's gotten better at the job and watch her more often than either Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson. Her ratings will improve although by the end of the year they still won't take the CBS News out of third place, or even close to second place.
    

Bonus Prediction: Election night will be very interesting. (And yeah, for me that's another perennial, no matter what election we're talking about. There's something amazing about watching the votes come in and the results being decided.)

On The Eleventh Day Of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas (plus a few hours), my true love (Television) gave to me....eleven Odds and Ends.

This is basically stuff that doesn't fit into any other category. Well there are a couple that could have been stuffed into lists that I did before but hey, this is my blog and I'll put stuff where I want them so there!

1. Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant: Okay, she's 16 and her mom thinks it's okay if she's living with a 19 year-old guy, and America's national shrink, Dr. Phil thinks that Lynn Spears – who is not only the mother of Jamie-Lynn but also of celebrity train-wreck Britney Spears – is "a great and dedicated mother," who has "her feet squarely and solidly on the ground." But that's not the amazing part of the reaction to Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. The moralists immediately declared her to be an unfit role model for teenage girls and demanding (as these groups do) that her TV show, Zoey 101 be removed from the air. Of course they don't know – or more likely don't care – that the planned final season of the show had already been shot before Spears got pregnant. So there'll be no scenes of a pregnant Zoey (or whatever the character's name is) to corrupt the minds of teenage girls in the USA. For that they'll have to go to school and see the girls in their classes who got pregnant, probably because they haven't had any sex education at school or at home.
   
2. Reality-competition show contestant deaths: Two of them. Rachel Brown, who was a contestant on the second season of Hell's Kitchen was found dead in her home in May 2007, killed by a gunshot wound. The circumstances were under investigation at the time, but as far as I can tell there's been no further determination. She left behind a girlfriend and two cats. Second, Cheryl Kosewicz, the fourth person voted off in the truly awful Pirate Master died on July 27, 2007 – a few days after the show had been cancelled by CBS with the remaining episodes being streamed on the networks InnerTube online service – an apparent suicide. Kosewicz, a 35 year old deputy District Attorney from Sparks, Nevada killed herself two months after her 26 year-old boyfriend. According a post that Kosewicz made on fellow contestant Nessa memir's MySpace webpage about a month before her death, "Truthfully, I've lost the strong Cheryl and I'm just floating around lost. And this frik'n show doesn't help because it was such a contention between Ryan and I and plus its not getting good reviews."
   
3. Sanjaya and Terry Fator: You couldn't get two more different performers. People were stunned and amazed at Sanjaya Malakar's continued presence on American Idol which became a fandom phenomenon for no apparent reason other than he was so bad (I can't comment – I have better things to do than watch American Idol – like just about anything). Or maybe it was the hair. It certainly wasn't any ability as a singer. Meanwhile ventriloquist Terry Fator stunned audiences and the judges on America's Got Talent with his performances which were an amazing mix of ventriloquism, vocal impressions, and actual vocal chops as a singer. In fact about the only person who didn't seem to get the fact that Terry Fator is an amazing performer is comedian Bill Maher who stated in the New Rules segment of his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher on August 24^th, "New Rule: If your winner is a ventriloquist, then "America Hasn't Got Talent." Besides, if there's one thing Americans have had enough of, it's the guy who puts words in the dummy's mouth. [photo of Bush and Rove shown] Oh, we kid President Bush. It's all with love." After watching his diatribe on medicine on David Letterman's show the other night, I'm beginning to wonder if Maher (who I liked on his show Politically Incorrect) may be proof that "America Hasn't Got Talent." Or maybe it's just the hair (which has looked like it had enough product to start its own beauty salon).
   
4. Don't Hassle the Hoff: Unless of course you're his daughter. A highly controversial video emerged in May showing Hasselhoff in a drunken stupor trying to eat a hamburger. It was shot by his eldestdaughter in an effort to get him to stop drinking by showing him how he looked when he drank. At the time, Hasselhoff was involved in a custody battle for his two teenage daughters. His visitation rights were suspended. However, some six weeks after the video appeared on YouTube, Hasselhoff won "primary physical custody and full legal custody" of his daughters.
   
5. Hugh Laurie didn't host the Emmy's: Ryan Seacrest, who is about the least important person on American Idol was the host of the 2007 Emmys and he performed just about as well as he does on American Idol. The more interesting thing is that Hugh Laurie, the star of the Fox series House was seriously considered for the hosting job by FOX (which broadcast the Emmys in 2007). Laurie is a multi-talented performer who is not only a dramatic actor but also a comedian and an extremely talented musician. Reportedly FOX executives eventually chose Seacrest because they "felt Seacrest would draw a larger TV audience and because viewers might be confused seeing Laurie in an unfamiliar role." Or even his (real) British accent. And knowing the sort of people that FOX executives believe their audience to be – given some of the shows they put on and many of the shows they take off almost as soon as they debut – they might have been right. But the rest of us lost something special.
   
6. Musical Executives: Kevin Reilly was manoeuvred out his job as President of Network Entertainment at NBC (or as it's known by people outside of NBC, "dying for Jeff Zucker's sins") a few weeks after the 2007 Upfronts. It was also about three months after he signed a new three year contract with NBC. His sin was apparently releasing what some described as a "lacklustre" list of new series for the 2007-08 season. Part of the reason for that may have been the fact that he "could do only half the number of pilots of the other Big Four broadcast networks for the 2007-08 season." Reilly, who had been a champion for such series as Friday Night Lights, Heroes, The Office, My Name Is Earl, and 30 Rock, was replaced by former agent and independent producer Ben Silverman whose shows include Ugly Betty, The Office, and such reality shows as Biggest Loser, Nashville Star, Parental Control, Date My Mom, Blow Out, 30 Days and House of Boateng. About a month after being effectively fired at NBC, Kevin Reilly was named President of Network Entertainment at FOX.
   
7. Most overexposed celebrity: Britney Spears of course. She exposed her scalp, she exposed her hoo-ha, and although this happened just a few days ago (in 2008), she exposed her weak grasp on sanity (or something) when she was involved in a confrontation with police that led to her being taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in hysterics. It's a sad situation when Kevin Federline is considered a more suitable parent to have custody of a one and a two year-old. Other candidates included Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith's corpse, and O.J. Simpson. And whose fault is this really? Not the celebrities really but the fans who want to know every detail of their lives and the news editors who pander to those fans.
   
8. Dumb network practice: Well one of many anyway – the mid-season hiatus. The practice of shooting only 22 episodes of most series, combined with the probably excessive emphasis on the three major sweeps periods in November, February and May, and the observation on the part of networks that some shows "don't repeat well" has led in recent years to the practice of taking shows off the air for extended periods of time rather than show them in repeats. The theory is that rather than letting the ratings drop (and possibly not recover) for an extended period of time the show would be taken off the air and something else would run its time slot. I think it can safely be called a disaster. It nearly killed Lost which aired a mere six episodes before the series went on an extended planned hiatus – the six episodes were in theory meant to stand alone – while ABC aired 13 episodes of Day Break starring Taye Diggs, which was meant to run until March 2, 2007. There was a minor problem in that ratings for the show tanked and it was pulled in mid December 2006. However Lost still didn't return immediately, it was kept off the air untilthe beginning of February. The practice did kill Jericho (but see the next item) which was replaced by CBS with the first eleven episodes being shown before the end of November and the final eleven starting in mid-February. In the meantime viewers were supposed to watch a reality show called Armed And Famous about a group of "celebrities" who trained as cops. Meanwhile NBC's game show Deal Or No Deal was running new episodes while FOX was rerunning episodes of Bones. People didn't watch Armed And Famous, and when Jericho returned, people didn't watch it. The audience for Jericho dropped by 25% between the first and second half seasons. Obviously the mid-season hiatus won't be a problem in 2008 – the strike has meant that most shows have run all the episodes they have while others will start in the new year and run their complete run uninterrupted, but the question for a lot of people is whether the networks have learned anything from the experience. I doubt it.
   
9. Nuts to you CBS: That was the response of Jericho fans to the announcement that the series would only run one season. They sent over twenty tons of nuts to CBS as well as flooding the network with letters and emails. The nuts were a reference to the last line in the final episode in which Jake Greene, leading the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Jericho, Kansas against the forces of a larger town responded to a demand to surrender with General McAuliffe's response to the German demand to surrender Bastogne: "Nuts." Commenting on the situation, CBS president Les Moonves said, "You have to tip your hat to their ability to get attention and make some noise." The campaign had a positive result. CBS first announced that they would "provide closure" for fans (something they wouldn't do for most cancelled series) and later announced an eight episode "mini" season to air as a mid-season replacement with the possibility for more episodes if ratings justified it. The campaign also spawned imitators. Fans of Veronica Mars were encouraged to send Mars Bars and/or marshmallows to The CW before June 15, 2007 to get the network to bring the series back as a mid-season replacement. It didn't work despite the fact that 1400 pounds of Mars Bars (which have been discontinued in the US), Almond Snickers Bars, and Marshmallows were sent to the network. United Hollywood is encouraging fans to send pencils to the six major Hollywood moguls – Les Moonves (CBS), Jeffrey Immelt (NBC/Universal), Rupert Murdoch (FOX), Jeffrey L Bewkes (Time-Warner), Robert Iger (Disney), Sumner Redstone (Viacom) – to pressure them to settle the Writers Strike. At present just over 650,000 pencils have been sent to "The Moguls" and just look at the effect it's had.
   
10. Dumb decision department: Okay I'm reaching for content here (it's late and I'm a day behind), but I think that CBS should get some sort of award for dumb decisions related to the way they handled the hour after 60 Minutes and The Amazing Race. Now I'm biased because I am a huge
    Amazing Race fan who only regrets being a Canadian when I see that the show is looking for new contestants. The show has won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality Competition Series since the category was created, and it finally seemed to find a stable time slot last year in the hour following 60 Minutes. So what happens to the show in the 2007-08 season? Why CBS not only replaced the show with Viva Laughlin but also announced that only one series of The Amazing Race would be run this year and that would have fewer episodes than previous seasons. Karma – being a bitch – rewarded CBS with the cancellation of Viva Laughlin after two episodes (only one of them in the time slot), the Writers Strike, and the show has finished in the Nielsen top ten in two of the past four weeks (and one of those weeks the show wasn't on the air because of the Survivor finale). Another season has officially been ordered though there is no indication of when it will air.
    
11. Blog comment that angered me most: Now I really am reaching, but this comment still gets me angry. It's also Amazing Race related. In response to the article I posted on the Racers in the current season of The Amazing Race which featured Kate and Pat, a lesbian couple who are also members of the Episcopal clergy, I got this "lovely" comment from "John 3:16: "Homosexuals posing as and claiming to be God's people?!... Leave it to the pawns at CBS to promote a lifestyle that is offensive and straight from the gates of hell." Except from obvious commercial spam I don't censor comments but I was sure tempted to that time.
    

On The Tenth Day Of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love (Television) gave to me...ten dead people.

Yeah, it's that time in the awards show....sorry....the list of lists that my 12 Days Of Christmas posts really are, to do the obituary montage. Now obviously there were a lot more than ten prominent TV people who left us in calendar 2007, and if you want a far more complete list that I am going to provide, check out TV Squad and my good friend "Tele-Toby's" great blog Inner Toob.

So what am I doing with this list? Basically I have picked out ten people who, for one reason or another, have either had great significance for me in my life as a TV viewer or for one reason or another were (in my oh so humble opinion) towering figures in the history of the medium. I'll try to give some explanation but I will tell you right now, inclusion on this list is extremely arbitrary and is in no particular order.

Charles Lane (January 26, 1905-July 9, 2007): One of the great grouchy old men, whether it was in Frank Capra's movies, working with his good friend Lucille Ball on a number of her films and TV shows, or as the prototypical flint-hearted businessman, Homer Bedloe on the TV series Petticoat Junction, Charles Lane was one of the great character actors. Primarily known on TV for his comedy work he was equally comfortable in dramatic parts, particularly later in life. He was a founding member of both the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Honoured at the TVLand Awards on his 100^th birthday, he stated "In case anyone's interested, I'm still available!" Apparently someone called because his last IMDB credit is as the narrator in a 2006 animated short, The Night Before Christmas.

Tom Snyder (May 12, 1936-July 29, 2007): One of my favourite talk show hosts, in part because he was an involving (and involved) conversationalist. You usually got the sense that he was at least interested in his guest and unlike Larry King (who Snyder apparently had some animosity towards) you knew that Tom actually read the books. He could bear right in on a guest when necessary or at other times just let them talk. You could tell when Tom really liked a guest. One of the best things that David Letterman did when he came to CBS from NBC was to put Snyder (who had been replaced by Dave at NBC in 1981) on after him. It was joy to just listen to him talk to people but in the opinion of CBS at least the time for his type of talk show had passed and I at least think that television is the worse for it.

Verity Lambert (November 27, 1935-November 22, 2007): The first woman to become a producer at the BBC, and later headed her own production company, Cinema Verity, she will forever be linked with the first series that she ever produced at the BBC – Doctor Who. In fact she passed away one day before the forty-fourth anniversary of the debut of the series.

Merv Griffin (July 6, 1925-August 12, 2007): Merv Griffin was one of the titanic figures of the Television industry. The former big band singer would have been numbered among the most memorable figures in the history of the medium just for his landmark talk show, which ran mostly in the afternoons, except for an unhappy three year period when his show ran on CBS in the late night time slot opposite Johnny Carson. It was after the CBS debacle that he took his show to syndication with Metromedia where it ran until 1984. For most of this time Merv's own production company was creating game shows, of which the two most famous are Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Griffin sold his production company to Columbia Pictures Television in 1984 for $250 million, although he continued to dabble in Television, most recently creating the syndicated game show Merv Griffin's Crosswords, which debuted after his death.

William Hutt (May 2, 1920-June 27, 2007): Though probably best (or only) known to American readers for his performance as Charles Kingman in the third season of the series Slings And Arrows, a generation of Canadians were riveted by his performance as Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, in the 1974 adaptation of Pierre Berton's National Dream. He actually did relatively little film or TV work, but was a fixture at Ontario's Stratford Shakespeare Festival from its beginning in 1953 until 2005. He was recognised as one of Canada's greatest actors of the last half of the 20^th Century.

Charles Nelson Reilly (January 13, 1931-May 27, 2007): Best known on television as one of the regular panellists on Match Game where he regularly crossed wits with Brett Somers (who also passed away in 2007), he was in fact a talented actor, stage director and raconteur. The first time I remember seeing Charles Nelson Reilly on TV was in the TV version of The Ghost And Mrs. Muir as Claymore Gregg, one of three roles for which he was nominated for an Emmy, which preceded his time on Match Game. He developed a close friendship with Burt Reynolds and was a frequent guest director at the actor's dinner theatre in Jupiter, Florida. Reilly showed his dramatic abilities playing Jose Chung in an episode of the X-Files and on its sister show Millenium. Although he was long a gay icon on TV he didn't actually reveal his sexual orientation until his one man stage show Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly in the 1990s.

Tom Poston (October 17, 1921-April 30, 2007): A fixture, along with Louis Nye and Don Knotts on the old Steve Allen Show Tom Poston was a serious dramatic actor (he played opposite Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac he would come into his own as a comedic actor on television and the movies. He was a regular on a number of game shows of the 1960s including What's My Line. In 1975 he appeared on his friend Bob Newhart's series The Bob Newhart Show along with Suzanne Pleshette, who he would eventually marry in 2001. Later he would be a regular on Newhart as the easily befuddled George Utley. He was in high demand as a supporting actor in both comedic and dramatic roles until shortly before his death.

Bob Carroll Jr. (August 12, 1918-January 27, 2007): Writer and sometimes producer, he forged a professional relationship with Madelyn Pugh that lasted for 50 years. The pair's relationship with Lucille Ball was shorter lived only because Lucy died on them. Along with Jess Oppenheimer they created Ball's 1948 radio series My Favourite Husband, and followed her to TV to write most of the episodes of I Love Lucy. Later they would write for The Desi-Lucy Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Ball's last series Life With Lucy (an unfortunate project for all involved). They also wrote the story for the Lucille Ball-Henry Fonda movie Yours, Mine and Ours, which was remade in 2006.

Yvonne DeCarlo
(September 1, 1922-January 8, 2007): Although she is best known today for playing Lilly Munster on The Munsters, the actual amount of television work that she did was quite limited. She had been very popular in films playing sexy exotic roles in 'B' movies (like Princess Scheherezade in The Desert Hawk) under contract at Universal. The Munsters was her only series though she did a number of guest appearances including the first episode of Bonanza. She took the role of Lilly Munster to pay the medical expenses of her then husband, Bob Morgan, a stuntman who had been severely injured during the making of the movie How The West Was Won (that was also the reason why John Wayne hired her for another of her better known roles these days, Mrs. Warren in the comedy western McLintock. Not bad for a little girl from Vancover B.C.

Tammy Faye Messner (March 7, 1942-July 20, 2007): No one personified the excesses of the Evangelical Christian movement of the 1980s more than Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and in the case of Tammy Faye there was never anyone involved in that situation who was more of an innocent victim. Unlike her husband Jim Bakker she was never tried or even charged of involvement in the financial improprieties that brought down the PTL Club, the organization that they headed. She had always had a far more tolerant attitude towards homosexuals than most evangelical religious figures, and she revealed a sense of humour over her own excesses – mainly makeup and her propensity to weep at the least excuse. She appeared on Larry King Live a number of times during her final illness, the last time the day before she died.