Short Takes Part 1 – June 10, 2007

I decided that I wanted to split my usual Short Takes post in two this week because there's a lot of news out there and I wanted to devote a significant amount of time to the decision of the Second Circuit Court with reference to "inadvertent use" of obscenities, and related issues, including my weekly puncturing of the PTC. That's for tomorrow though. Today my focus is on entertainment...not that puncturing the bloviating of the PTC isn't entertaining, at least for me.

Nuts!: Apparently the campaign to resurrect Jericho by sending nuts to CBS has worked. I say apparently for a reason that will become clear shortly. CBS has announced that they will order seven episodes of the series as a mid-season replacement, with the option to order more episodes if ratings warrant. The show, which deals with one small town in Kansas in the wake of an act of atomic terrorism which destroyed many of the big cities and much of the national infrastructure, had been a ratings hit until an extended hiatus – during which it was replaced for a time with the celebrity reality show Armed And Famous – killed the show's momentum and lost most of the audience. The show limped towards its finish even as the story-telling became increasingly dramatic. The Nuts! campaign in fact grew out one of the last lines uttered in the last episode. When the Mayor of New Bern demanded the surrender of Jericho, Jake Green gave the same response as General McAuliffe gave to the German commander who demanded the surrender of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge – Nuts! (Actually there's some controversy on this. The story goes that when McAuliffe was told of the surrender demand he said "Ah nuts" and his aide, Lt. Colonel Kinnard suggested this as the official reply to the surrender demand. McAuliffe later stated that his first reaction to the demand was the saltier "Shit!")

In response to the cancellation, fans of Jericho organised in support of their show. They wanted to act in a more demonstrative way than a letter writing campaign, an e-mail blitz or on-line petitions. They settled on using response to New Bern; the not only inundated CBS with letters and emails but they sent nuts. In bulk. As in just over 40,000 pounds of nuts. For those of you whose knowledge of weights and measures is a trifle impaired, that's just over 20 tons of nuts. The nuts, mostly sent through a company called Nuts Online, inundated the CBS offices while Les Moonves announced that he was screening Jericho in his emails. Finally – and appropriately enough on June 6, the anniversary of D-Day – CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler announced that the show would be back: "CBS has ordered seven episodes of "Jericho" for mid-season next year. In success, there is the potential for more." Tassler did make clear in her announcement that the audience had to grow beyond the core element of devoted fans that had been sending the nuts. Tassler indicated that CBS would be doing their part to help: "At this time, I cannot tell you the specific date or time period that "Jericho" will return to our schedule. However, in the interim, we are working on several initiatives to help introduce the show to new audiences. This includes re-broadcasting "Jericho" on CBS this summer, streaming episodes and clips from these episodes across the CBS Audience Network (online), releasing the first season DVD on September 25 and continuing the story of Jericho in the digital world until the new episodes return." She finished her statement by saying, "P.S. Please stop sending us nuts :-)"

While the Nuts! campaign undoubtedly had a huge influence on CBS decision making, it may not have been the only one. According to the Toronto Star and some other sources, there is some suggestion that the show's revival might be tied to some less than enthusiastic affiliate responses to some of the shows that CBS has announced for the coming season, in particular the controversial Swingtown which doesn't appear to be going down too well with the network's "middle American" affiliates, as well as the reality series Kid Nation which will be occupying the Wednesday time slot that Jericho held this past season.

One beneficiary of the Nuts! campaign is charity. Nuts Unlimited donated 10₵ from
every pound of peanuts to reconstruction efforts for the town of Greensburg Kansas where an EF5 tornado destroyed 95% of the town. CBS will be donating the nuts they received to various charities, including one that sends care packages to servicemen overseas.

Bars!: Buoyed by the success of the Nuts! campaign, ardent supporters of Veronica Mars are launching their own campaign to save their show. In association with Amazon.com's Indian Food Store fans can send Mars Bars (the good British kind) to the CW network president Dawn Ostroff. There's even a website promoting the effort (of course). The problem with Veronica Mars (and no offense is meant by this to the many Veronica Mars fans) is that while Jericho was in its first season and had a significant fan base before CBS screwed it up with the long hiatus – and indeed even after the hiatus the audience of 7 million households increased by 13% when PVR recordings viewed within seven days of the original broadcast were factored in – Veronica Mars has had a full three seasons and the audience hasn't grown. Even when you consider that it spent two years on UPN before that network joined with the WB, that's not a good sign.

Washington decision making: The producers of Grey's Anatomy have made a decision about two cast members whose contracts were up in the air while a third has seen her bargaining position improve considerably because of her movie success. And they're all interrelated. Katherine Heigl, who was one of the most vocal cast members in calling for Isaiah Washington to be terminated from the show after the remarks he made about Heigl's friend and cast mate T.R. Knight's sexuality doesn't have a new contract yet, but the success of her movie Knocked Up (second behind Pirates of The Caribbean: At World's End in it's opening week and averaging $3,000 more per theatre than the Pirate film) has certainly had an impact on her ability to make demands. As for Knight, not only was his contract renewed but his salary increased to $125,000 per episode and a percentage of any profits the show makes, putting him on a par with other stars of the series including Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, and Patrick Dempsey.

This leaves Isaiah Washington. His contract has not been renewed and he's mad about it. In fact he channelled Howard Beale and told EOnline "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." The source of Washington's anger is his feeling that he had done what was asked of him following the incident in which Washington used an offensive term for a homosexual directed at T.R. Knight at the Golden Globe Awards, as a denial that he'd used the term about Knight in a previous on set dispute with Patrick Dempsey. Off hand it seems sort of like using the N-word when denying that you had previously used the N-word. No matter, according to TV Guide Washington is now considering a law suit against the producers. According to his spokesperson Howard Bragman, Washington did everything that the producers told him he had to do if he wanted to return – and indeed did a PSA which the producers didn't originally ask for – and feels betrayed that his contract has not been renewed. The fact is of course that if Washington was at the end of the contract period the producers have every right to drop him from the cast without explanation.

I love Paris!: The one in France. Or the one in Ontario. Maybe the one in Texas. But not the one in jail in Los Angeles. Mainly because she's overexposed in the media with the whole situation surrounding her current incarceration...release...reincarceration being only the latest. But complicate in the whole "Paris Industry" is the news media. I expect heavy coverage of Paris Hilton from the so-called entertainment news shows (starting with Entertainment Tonight and its even more loathsome Canadian counterpart ET Canada) but you also have The cable networks offering wall to wall coverage and only grudgingly giving in to cover (as briefly as possible) things like the retirement of Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And even the NBC Nightly News, which didn't cover the original story on Thursday, did make it the second story on their Friday newscast. And even though they veiled it in the cover of a story about "the appearance of the LA legal system in turmoil" they are still covering Paris Hilton. And I guess so am I.

Of course NBC does have a point in this. In fact it was raised earlier by Geraldo Rivera (hack spit) albeit in a typically crude way: "This fight between the judge and the sheriff is a fight over whose johnson is longer. It's so pathetic." I'm curious about a lot of things in this case, like whether it is common for a judge to require the sheriff's deputies to pick up an "ordinary person" for a hearing of this sort (apparently not that common – supposedly it is usually handled through a conference call), or whether it is common for an "ordinary" person to be jailed for even as short a time as 23 days for breaching probation in a case like this given jail overcrowding – and again I've heard reports that the more common punishment is the ankle bracelet. In other words is Paris Hilton being made an example of because she's a celebrity (for whatever reason). If that's the issue then make that your story, otherwise you are doing nothing more than reporting spectacle rather than news, and there's too much real news – like the case of Stepha Henry that is more deserving of your, and our time.

Whither CITY-TV: And now onto a sexier story – media consolidation. In Canada this time. In a move that is virtually unheard of, the CRTC has at least partially rejected a merger proposal from one of the big Canadian networks. Late last year CTVglobemedia which owns the CTV network purchased the CHUM group of TV and radio stations and cable channels. CHUM's assets include 21 specialty cable channels, 34 radio stations, six broadcast stations branded as "A Channel" and five branded as CITY-TV. The original plan was to sell the A Channel stations – most of which are in smaller communities in Ontario – to Rogers Communications, which has interests in cable, telephones and broadcasting. Meanwhile CTV would continue to operate the five CITY-TV stations – in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver – as a separate network. CRTC regulators stated that CTVglobemedia's acquisition of the CITY-TV stations would contravene ownership regulations by giving CTVglobemedia ownership of two stations in each of the cities despite the intention to operate as two networks.

This leaves CTVglobemedia, which owns 20 TV stations, 17 cable channels (in whole or in part) and the Globe and Mail newspaper with the problem of selling the CITY assets rather than the A Channel stations (or possibly as well as though that doesn't seem likely). Among expected suitors for the CITY-TV stations is Rogers, which owns 51 radio stations, four multi-cultural or "spiritually themed" TV stations, eight cable channels (in whole or in part), Canada's largest wireless communications network as well as it's largest cable TV provider, more than 70 magazines and the Toronto Blue Jays. Another possible owner is Quebecor, which owns 19 newspapers, seven TV stations (all but one in Quebec), nine cable channels in whole or in part, and the largest cable provider in the province of Quebec. The other major private broadcaster in Canada, Canwest Global owns 13 major newspapers, 10 Global TV stations, five channels branded as CH channels including stations in the Hamilton-Toronto market and the Victoria-Vancouver market where Canwest owns Global stations (which CTVglobemedia used as justification for the CITY-TV acquisition), and eight cable channels (in whole or in partnership with others). Such is the state of media consolidation in Canada.

A Vaguely Disappointing Talent

There was something vaguely off about the season debut of America's Got Talent on Tuesday night, but I'm at a loss to explain why I feel that way. Maybe it was a combination of things, but put them all together and the result was not as much fun as the debut of the show's first season.

Now don't get me wrong the show was still quite enjoyable but it didn't sparkle the way that it did in the first season. Then, I was a jaded viewer fully expecting another dull American Idol clone courtesy of Simon Cowell, with the complete formula – a snarky Brit, a ditzy judge, and an industry pro, auditions in which you truly awful performers to ridicule as well as ones with ability – in which the big difference was that the ditz was David Hasselhoff and the host wasn't a Ryan Seacrest clone but Regis Philbin. I was expecting to hate it but somewhere in the first episode that I saw (I missed the LA auditions because I basically wasn't interested), and I don't honestly know if it was the guy who balanced a motorcycle on his face, the "Snow White stripper" (Michelle L'amour) that the PTC loathed, or Leonid The Magnificent in his wings, but they had me hooked.

There were some important cast changes between the first and second season. Brandy – the industry pro in my view, famous for giving all three "X"es to Michelle L'amour and having to fight Hasselhoff and Morgan to do it – withdrew as a judge largely due to her legal problems related to the charge of involuntary vehicular manslaughter (and the $50 million wrongful death suit filed against her). She has been replaced with Sharon Osbourne who really is an industry pro. I can't imagine her fighting to "X" a "Snow White stripper; on the other hand I can't imagine Hasselhoff and Morgan giving her as much trouble as they did Brandy if she did want to do it. The other big replacement was that Regis left the show and was replaced by Jerry Springer. Springer is clearly continuing the effort to rehabilitate his image that began with Dancing With The Stars. The problem is that Jerry doesn't have the sort of frenetic energy that Regis brings to just about anything. Everything seems to be ratcheted down just a bit.

I didn't feel the same way on Tuesday night. Last year I wrote "There were great acts, awful acts, and then there are the truly bizarre." This year, with the first auditions taking place in Dallas, there didn't seem to be as much of the "totally bizarre" as there was last year. Oh there were some odd acts but there also seemed to be an emphasis on the bad acts. One of the worst was an overweight Elvis impersonator (who looked fatter than "fat" Elvis) who was simultaneously "X"ed before he even opened his mouth to introduce himself. Even Piers Morgan (the snarky British judge) realised that this was unfair so they took back their "X"es and let him sing...two words. There were a host of bad Bianca Ryan imitators (she won the first season of America's Got Talent) including one who was shown and was singing the same song that Bianca sang "I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" (which was also sung by former American Idol contestant and Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls). This kid was no Bianca. Another kid thought he was a ventriloquist. Piers asked him if he practiced a lot. The kid said he really didn't need to – he was so wrong.

There was controversy when another act came out. She was a nine year-old doing what was described as a "full cheerleading routine", and to be honest she and/or it weren't that good. More to the point we kept getting shots of Jerry and the girl's mom and by her head movements the woman was going through the entire routine with her daughter. Piers was harsh in his critique and openly suggested that she was only there because her mother was a stage mother. Meanwhile Sharon was steaming. Then Jerry brought the mother out and Piers started cross-examining her. At which point Sharon got up from the judges table, said she'd had enough and walked back to her dressing room vowing that she was quitting. You could tell she was serious too, because she pulled off her artificial eyelashes as she was walking. Piers walked almost immediately thereafter, either because he thought they were taking a break or to apologize to Sharon or what. Meanwhile the kid, her mother, and Jerry were left staring at Hasselhoff, who was probably wishing he had a bottle of booze and a cheeseburger right at that moment. Eventually Piers apologized to Sharon and the two of them were informed that the kid (and her mother and Jerry) were still on stage. They came back and Piers apologized but they all told her no.

There were a few bizarre acts. There was an aerialist who used long fabric sheets rather than ropes. He was actually quite good no matter what the judges felt. There was also acts like a guy who works in four large tubes put together like a four legged spider whose act involved extending and retracting various tubes. The judges liked it but basically thought it was an act for kids. Then there was the guy who sounded a lot like Barry White. Sang like him too when he did "Don't You Wish Your Boyfriend Was Hot Like Me?" Unfortunately he opted to do it topless except for a collar tie and hat and believe me when I say that this is one time when I wish the FCC had rules on exposing male nipples. And speaking of male nipples some mention has to be made of the two brothers who flexed their pecs to "Duelling Banjos" – some, but not much.

There were more than a few good acts. There was a singer named Fallon who accompanied herself on the guitar. Her guitar playing wasn't great but her voice more than made up for it. There were three girls reminiscent of The Supremes, and Jabberwockee, a group of break dancers who performed wearing expressionless white face masks. The Duttons, a multi-generational family group from Branson Missouri started with six adults and suddenly ballooned when half a dozen kids came out. Piers gave them an "X" because of the kids – his feeling was that despite playing instruments the kids added nothing to the act. I'm inclined to agree; several of the kids seemed only to be going through the motions of playing their instruments.

For a long time I was divided on what my favourite acts were. Fallon was on the list, but so was a young woman ventriloquist who, with her two puppets, sang "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (and believe it or not Word did not mark that as spelled wrong!). Piers thought it was an act for kids but this young woman was dead on in how she sang the parts in terms of getting the voices right and the rotation. An act that I loved and felt sorry for was Mr. Bill, a Las Vegas school bus driver with an amazing tenor or baritone voice. He sang "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound Of Music and almost from the beginning the crowd was booing him for reasons passing all of my understanding. Piers hit his "X" but then, Mr. Bill amazed him by stepping up the quality of his performance. The booing grew less intense and some people actually started cheering in response to the boos. After Mr. Bill finished his performance, Piers apologized for hitting his button so soon. None of the judges voted for him to continue though, and I'm convinced that Mr. Bill was betrayed by his material. If he had sung an operatic aria, for example "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot, I'm convinced that people would have taken notice of him.

The final act of the night became my favourite and may be enough to convince me that this show is still almost as good as it was last year. He was Andrew Beal aka Mr. Big "Who's the Guy" Beal. Coming out he looked like a nerdy guy with a sax, and people were giving an "oh good grief" look. But then he started to play and to dance around, combining hip-hop popping moves with incredible sax playing which completely won the audience and the judges over. It was an amazing performance and has to be seen as one of the frontrunners when the series shifts to the semi-final rounds in Las Vegas.

Even though I thought, based on the first episode, that America's Got Talent had slipped a bit I still consider it to be a terrific show in the great tradition of Vaudeville and Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour. And it's not just an American phenomenon any more. According to Wikipedia – and the show's own introductory sequence – there are versions of the show in at least nine different countries including Australia, Britain, and Greece. This is yet another show, like Dancing With The Stars, that a Canadian television could do very well with if they were willing to spend the money to license the concept and run with it. CTV has done phenomenally well with Canadian Idol but as yet no one take a chance with these other shows.

Finally, here's a YouTube clip of Andrew Beal.

Short Takes – June 4, 2007

I ate salmon last night. I should never eat salmon, but it was something new and I knew my mother wanted to try it so.... At least this time I didn't vomit. I came close, but the fish stayed where I put it.

The Big Donor Show: It's several days after the fact and I still don't know how I feel about this one although I edge slightly towards agreeing with the network. As I'm sure you know, the Dutch network BNN put on a reality show – produced by Endemol, the same company that created Big Brother just about everywhere (but not in Canada for some reason; we have to be content with watching Americans) and has spread like a giant fungus all over the world – about a woman dying of a brain tumour who was going to choose one of three patients to donate her kidney to (apparently she had only one). The potential recipients had a one in three chance of getting the organ but that was far higher than their odds on a waiting list (in the Netherlands or probably anywhere else in the world). Inevitably the notion of the show brought condemnation from just about everyone you could think of, from Pope Benedict on down. There were calls in the Dutch Parliament for the Health and Media ministers to prevent the show from airing. Of course as we all know by now, the show turned out to be a hoax – or rather the central premise did. The terminally ill woman turned out to be a perfectly healthy actress and the three patients, while really ill, were in on the stunt. After revealing the hoax, Endemol Director Paul Römer stated "Let there be no misunderstanding, I would never make a program such as 'The Big Donor Show' for real. I do understand the massive outrage very well. But I also hope for people to understand why we did this. It was necessary to get the shortage of donors back on the political agenda. I call up everybody to get very angry about that, and to fill in a donor form." The Dutch Minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk called the show "a fantastic idea, and a great stunt" although Christian Democrat MP Joop Atsma, who led calls for the show to be banned, claimed that he didn't feel it had contributed towards solving the problem. The proof, one way or another, may be in the figures – two days after the show aired the Dutch national news program NOS News reported that over 50,000 organ donor forms had been requested.

BNN was an appropriate venue for this stunt. The network is aimed at a youth demographic; the sort of people who tend not to fill out donor cards because they think they're going to live forever and also the type of people who tend to get into car and motorcycle accidents. The network is also known for shocking content, some of which can't be named or described in a family blog, and for medical shows like It Could Have Been You and Over My Corpse in which youth with handicaps are consulted and tell about their lives. The biggest reason that the network was an appropriate venue for the show is found in the network's name. The initials BNN originally stood for Brutaal News Network (Flagrant News Network in English), but when network founder Bart De Graaf died in 2002 it was rebranded as Bart's Neverending Network. De Graaf had been in a serious car accident as a child which resulted in severe renal failure which also led to a growth disorder that made him look like a 12 year-old boy. A popular presenter on the Dutch network Veronica (an outgrowth of the famous pirate radio station) de Graaf underwent a kidney transplant in 1997, the same year he founded BNN. His body rejected the kidney in 1999 and he died in 2002 at age 35. Laurens Drillich, current chairman of BNN, said of The Big Donor Show, "We very much agree that it's bad taste but we also believe that reality is even worse taste. I mean, it's going very, very bad with organ donorship in the Netherlands. We as a broadcaster, BNN, had someone who started our TV station who needed kidneys and was on a waiting list and died eventually at the age of 35. That happened five years ago and in the last five years the situation has only gotten worse in the Netherlands." I'm not entirely convinced that The Big Donor Show was a good idea but it is often the case that people need something shocking to get them to do things that they really should do anyway – look at how blood donation went up immediately after the World Trade Center attacks but only 5% or Americans donate blood. If The Big Donor Show got people to sign organ donor forms and they and their families live up to the promises that those forms make, maybe it made a difference. I hope so.

Doctor Who won't end after four season: The British tabloid The Sun – a paper that no self respecting parakeet would even relieve itself on – reported a few days ago that Doctor Who would be axed in 2008 because producer Russell T. Davies wanted to move on to new projects and "He and senior staff have hatched a plot to hand in a group resignation in summer 2008." Davies claimed that the heavy workload, "nine months of 16-hour days every year" was taking its toll and he wanted to move on to new projects. This was followed almost immediately by an accurate news story from the Guardian newspaper (registration needed) stating that while Davies might go, the show wouldn't: "there isn't any way it would be axed even if he left. He loves the show and he does feel that maybe it would benefit from some new blood." (I can just picture the editors at The Grauniad drooling in anticipation of making The Sun look like a bunch of total prats.) Not only don't I think that Russell T. Davies is not indispensible as producer of Doctor Who, it is my opinion that it's about time for him to go even if he doesn't want to. In its original incarnation Doctor Who had a turnover of producers about every three or four years until the arrival of John Nathan Turner. Turner served as producer for nine years – three times longer than average – and oversaw the decline and cancellation of the series. It's my opinion that a show like Doctor Who needs a continual regeneration of ideas which basically can only come through periodic turnover of writing and production staff. That's what Turner forgot and what the BBC will hopefully remember.

Battlestar Galactica on the other hand will: On the other hand producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick have confirmed rumours that Battlestar Galactica will end after the fourth season. The rumours first surfaced at the 2007 Saturn Awards when both Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackoff told an interviewer that the fourth Season would be the show's last. At the time Moore denied the report but confirmed it on June 1. In an interview about the discrepancy between his two statements he said that "the decision to end after season four needed to be a collective one, which would be why there was some disconnect with prior reports." The plan had always been that there would be a beginning middle and end to the series and they both feel that they will have told the tale they want to tell by the finish of the fourth season. As much as I love the revival of Battlestar Galactica – and I love it a lot – I find this sort of finite storytelling to be one of those ideas that should be adopted a lot more on television. It was key to one of my favourite series – Babylon 5, although that series sort of went off the rails when the decision was made to wrap up both the Shadow War and Earth Alliance Civil War storylines in the fourth season because it appeared that the show wouldn't be around for a fifth season...and then it was. As long as producers are able to get a reasonable guarantee that they will have the time they need to tell their story having a plan is a good thing, but how many TV executives – particularly in broadcast TV – are willing to make that sort of guarantee? The answer is "damned few", right Kidnapped and Vanished fans.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: The PTC's criticism of a lot of shows stems from a fallacy and nowhere is that clearer than in the organization's hysterical condemnation of the season finale of NCIS for "grotesque violence." The first line of the second paragraph of their diatribe states "On the 5/22/07 episode of NCIS that aired during the so-called "family hour" of 8 p.m. ET/PT". Indeed the phrase "Family Hour" "is used in the subtitle for the article: "Horrific Drug Scene Aired During 8pm 'Family Hour' and Without Appropriate Content Ratings". Well here's a news flash for the PTC – you're thirty years out of date. The "Family Hour" (or to be totally accurate the "Family Viewing Hour") was a restriction imposed upon the television networks by the FCC starting with the 1975 television season. It was struck down by US Circuit Court Judge Warren Ferguson in 1976. Ferguson found that the FCC, having lobbied the networks to implement the scheme rather than holding public hearings on the matter had overstepped its bounds and that as a result "the Family Viewing Hour had no binding merit."

Ah, but what of their criticism of NCIS? What is the "grotesque violence?" Well it was directed against a corpse. In the episode, Tony DiNozzo and his girlfriend Dr. Jeanne Benoit are held hostage by a drug dealer who wants the balloons of heroin that are in the digestive tract of his dead drug mule. As the PTC describes it, "The scene shows the dead smuggler having his midsection sliced open and his blood-soaked organs pulled out of his body. The man's digestive tract is sliced open and heroin powder spills over his bloodied torso. When a fight ensues, one character stabs the drug dealer with a scalpel and another character shoots the drug dealer. Then the junkie-sister is seen burying her face in her brother's bloody entrails as she snorts the heroin off his dead body." Needless to say the PTC is outraged: "This episode was rated TV-14, with no content descriptors. Based on the graphic violence, the "V" descriptor should have been used, and due to the foul language, the "L" descriptor should have been employed as well." But they go on: "This episode, this scene, is one of the most grotesquely violent programs we have ever seen on primetime broadcast television. At a time when the nation holds a heightened sensitivity to the volume and degree of violence on television, CBS seems intent on baiting the Congress to act on the recent recommendations of the FCC and expand indecency standards to include graphic violence when children are in the viewing audience. And not only did CBS choose to air this episode during the 8 p.m. 'family hour' when they knew millions of children and families were in the viewing audience, but they ignored the industry's own 'solution' of attaching a proper content rating." And they call on their members to inundate advertisers and CBS affiliates with letters: "If the sponsors knew about the content of this episode, they must be called to account; and if they did not know about the content, then they should demand – and receive – a complete refund from CBS. Furthermore, we are calling on the viewing public to communicate with their local CBS affiliate to ask how their actions serve the public interest, as required by each affiliate's broadcast license. It is outrageous that CBS – which uses the public airwaves for free – would have the nerve to air something so graphically perverse and violent when they know millions of children and families comprise the viewing audience."

This whole thing, particularly the PTC's continual diatribe on "correct" applications of descriptors raises a lot of questions. Easily the biggest of these is who, at the networks, applies the descriptors and what are their guidelines. Obviously the PTC would like a central body – presumably with similar views to their own – to impose the descriptors on the networks. However even a central body to provide ratings and descriptors for TV shows would be rife with problems. The documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated deals with the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board and found among other things that films with homosexual themes were treated far more harshly than films with heterosexual themes, that "the board's raters receive no training and are deliberately chosen because of their lack of expertise in media literacy or child development," and that many ratings board members either have no children at all or none under the age of 18. The question of who decides on the ratings for shows and the descriptors attached to them is, I think, a legitimate one.

On the other hand I personally find the scene that the PTC is most infuriated by to be less than what they claim it to be. The demand for the language descriptor is absurd – the language in this episode is no worse than on any number of other episodes of the series or other shows on at the same time. People have quite frankly seen worse violence to living people than what happened to the drug dealer in this episode (he's stabbed with a scalpel and DiNozzo shoots at him but doesn't hit him). So the PTC's "grotesque violence" is all happening to the corpse of the dead "mule" and to be quite honest we've seen more graphic depictions than that in autopsy scenes on CSI, and Crossing Jordan; even a few episodes of Quincy were reasonably graphic back in the day. No I think what really set the PTC off on their crusade – this "crime" against families was deemed worthy of a press release and call to action of its own and isn't designated as the PTC's "worst of the week" – it the moment when the "mule's" junky whore sister snorts the drugs from off his remains. Yes the scene is shocking and more than a little disgusting but it is in character for the person performing the act, a heroin addict desperate for a drug fix.

But what would the PTC replace shows like NCIS with if they had their way? Well we can get a sense of the sort of pap that they would replace most shows if not all with by looking at their Best of the Week shows. The most recent of these is ABC's National Bingo Night. This is a show that many people have found to be so dismal as to be unwatchable and reviewers were even more shocked by. To the PTC it was great because "This provides a great opportunity for friends and family alike to enjoy a family activity together." This follows a trend in that the PTC wants more game shows and "gentle" reality shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The last scripted series to be labelled as the PTC's Best of the Week was Everybody Hates Chris on March 2. I've only been able to find one other scripted show that they liked – a CBS Hallmark TV movie called Valley Of The Light – although the Council's archives appear only go back to the beginning of February 2007. Meanwhile many series from the five broadcast networks have been named as Worst of the Week and virtually every show on TV has been given a "Red Light" rating in the organization's Family Guide to Primetime TV, and I don't anticipate any change in the coming 2007-08 season. These people don't want good television or television that challenges the viewer; under the guise of "protecting the children" they want television that doesn't offend anyone that will be watchable by the lowest common denominator – the person who is most easily offended. The rest of us suffer from their insistence on not being offended. The public, based on Nielsen ratings, wants shows like CSI and Grey's Anatomy (the two top scripted shows on the list) – both of which the PTC has condemned for violence and sex (not to mention language) – while the PTC wants the networks to serve up pablum like National Bingo Night. And it insults us all, including Canadians because so much of what we see is the product of the American broadcast networks.

Yo Ho Yo Ho A Pirate’s Life For Me

After watching the debut episode of Pirate Master I feel an Arrr coming on.

ARRRR!

Pirate Master is Mark Burnett's latest reality show modelled after another reality show. This time the model is Survivor and unlike much of Burnett's other imitation on this season, On The Lot, this one is actually sort of good. Admittedly the show is an effort to tie into this Disney movie franchise Pirates of the Mediterranean or whatever it's called, but the fact remains, this wasn't at all bad, just good, satisfying mindless entertainment that even my mother (who loathes Survivor except for the reunion show) likes.

This show had me from the opening, where a longboat rows silently up through the fog to a tall ship and the occupants board her. There are sixteen of them and these scurvy scallywags are the typical reality show mix; eight men and eight women from various occupations and backgrounds. On boarding the ship they are introduced to the show's host and their guide to events Australian actor Cameron Daddo, who some of you might remember from the Melrose Place spin-off Models Inc. not to mention guest appearances on a number of other shows in the US. Daddo's first task for them is to have them man a pair of lines to heave up a mysterious item from the sea. When they bring it aboard they discover the fabled Chest of Zanzibar. The Chest, the "legend" says, contains clues to the treasure of Captain Henry Steel and his pirate crew. Steel had split his booty amongst himself and the members of his crew and sealed maps to the treasure in the chest. Each compartment of the chest contains two maps for that particular treasure.

Come the dawn – after the contestants have spent at least part of the night getting to know each other and "something" in pewter mugs (with real pirates it would undoubtedly be Jamaican rum but with these guys who knows) the search begins in earnest. First of course they have to sail the ship – a rather nice three masted barque – to the Caribbean island of Dominica. They actually have to sail the ship themselves – there's no evidence of a professional crew aboard – which means that at least some people have to go aloft and man the lines to unfurl the sails, a prospect that more than a few of their colleagues find too daring – some say crazy – for them to do. And there was one case of sea sickness from a woman named Joy (receptionist) much to the scorn of some of her crewmates, notably John (scientist by day, Chippendale Dancer by night). This lack of sympathy for anyone else would, as we`d soon see, be a recurrent theme for John.

Arriving at the correct location off the coast of Dominica, the mouth of the Indian River – which leads to the inevitable question of who was steering the ship given that none of them knew where they were going let alone how to actually steer a course or navigate – Dado emerges again to open the first compartment of the chest. The compartment contains two maps and two compasses. He then gets each pirate to select a musket ball which is painted either red or black. The two new teams have to navigate up the Indian River, find the correct branch (marked by a skull with a cutlass through it) then go across country to find three buried keys. The keys unlock a skeleton`s cage to find the map that will lead them to the actual treasure. They have to continue down the river to a sabotage point where one team can slow down another – in this case by putting a net across the river – while they go on to the final location of the treasure, suspended between two crocodile heads. Of the two crews the Black Crew generally excelled. For one thing they remembered that their longboat had a rudder. I'm serious about that by the way; the Red Crew paddled off trying to steer by varying the rate at which they paddled on each side. And yet the Black Crew never had a convincing lead thanks in part to their lack of real leadership. At one point one of the crew got stuck in a mud bog and lost his shoe. He spent a lot of time trying to extricate the shoe from the mud while his crewmates were shouting at him to just leave it as opposed to maybe helping him get it. Then after he got out of the mud they had trouble with the keys to the cage until John managed to work it. And when they finally reached the place where the treasure was they went off searching on their own for the crocodile head until Joe Don (Forest Service firefighter from Fairbanks Alaska) got them organized to search more methodically. But it was John who used his "knowledge of crocodiles and the trees they live under" to actually locate the treasure just as the Red Crew arrived at the final location.

Once the two crews returned to the ship the chest was opened. Inside was $40,000 in gold coins. The members of the Black Crew were told by Daddo to select one of their number as Captain. The unanimously picked Joe Don – well almost unanimously. John, who had been asserting in confessionals and even members of his crew that he had been the only person doing anything during the quest for the first treasure wanted to be Captain and even when the tide was obviously against them refused to vote with the "sheep". Then came the surprise – Captain Joe Don would receive half of the booty just because he was the Captain. He was then told to select two officers – he picked Ben (musician) and Cheryl (deputy district attorney). They split half of the remaining booty - $5,000 each. The five remaining crew members split the remaining coins ($2,000 each) amid considerable resentment that Joe Don, Ben and Cheryl didn't share and share alike. The crews were then disbanded.

There were a couple of other perks for the captain and officers. They got to live in the luxurious Captain's Cabin, although with varying degrees of luxury. The Captain had a large bed for himself, the officers' two bunks in the bulkhead but at that they were in more luxurious quarters than the crew who were in a common room in bunk beds. The other thing was the ability to choose who would go to "Pirates Court," the show's elimination process. The Captain sends summons to the court to the crew but three of the summonses are marked with the "Black Spot" marking them to be cut adrift. Joe Don picks John, Louie (Fishing Dock operator, who vaguely looks like Rupert Bonham from Survivor: Pearl Island) for speaking out against the Captain, and Joy for no reason except that she wouldn't be likely to get any votes. The voting process gave each crew member (not the officers or the people served with the "Black Spot") four cards, three with the names of the marked crew members and one with the word "Mutiny." If the crew voted for "Mutiny" it would be Joe Don cast adrift. John then showed piratical conniving by stealing the two compasses that the crew had received during the hunt for the first treasure and demanding that the crew voted for "Mutiny" because he'd done all the work during the challenge not the Captain, and how are you supposed to find the rest of the treasure if you ain't got a compass, arrrr?! He actually challenged Joe Don on this but the Captain (who served two years in the real US Navy in search and rescue said that it's easy to navigate without a compass by reading the natural signs – the sun, the stars and the moon. For his arrogance, attempt to make himself the indispensible man, and trying to foment a mutiny while being even less well liked than the Captain, John was cast adrift.

Pirate Master is an interesting amalgam. It has the challenge aspect of Survivor mixed with elements of Big Brother in the form of the Captain's Quarters (HOH room) and the "Black Spot" (house keys). And there's a certain historical accuracy to it, although it isn't carried too far. The "Black Spot" is well known – check out Treasure Island for example – but so is the distribution of the booty and not just amongst pirates. In Nelson's period and before when a warship was captured and taken into a British port the Admiralty would pay out "prize money" to the ship that captured the prize. There would be a payment to the Admiral commanding the squadron that the ship belonged to (one eighth) but the bulk of the prize money was split between the Captain and crew with a quarter going to the Captain, an eighth to the officers, and a quarter divided amongst the crew. Obviously pirates didn't have the overhead (admirals) or some of the other recipients of splits, but the fact remains that most of the booty went to the captain and officers even amongst pirates. Two areas where they don't seem to be going for accuracy are in punishments and accommodations. There wouldn't have been bunks for the crew in a real pirate ship – they'd be slinging hammocks in their mess room (in the British tradition the mess room is where crew spent all their off-duty hours including the time when they were asleep – hammocks were the beds for ordinary seamen in the Royal Canadian Navy until a few years after World War II) or more likely over the ship's guns, but of course this barque carries no guns. And don't even mention the food – biscuits with weevils, and salt beef or pork, supplemented with lemon juice (for Royal Navy crews) or sauerkraut (for German ships) to combat scurvy, though neither was common with pirate crews. As for punishment, even in the Royal Navy in Nelson's time stealing from members of your own crew as John did when he took the two compasses, would have been a death penalty offense but not before the Captain ordered that the cat (of nine tails) be let out of the bag and the thief be given ten or twenty lashes across his back. And for this offense in particular the crew would not only expect this but demand it. Pirates were even harsher as were some of the earlier punishments (my all time favourite was a punishment from the English navy in the 16^th century which involved tying the transgressor to the bowsprit of the ship with a can – a small cask – of beer, some ship's biscuits, and a knife; he'd die either of starvation, dehydration, stabbing himself, or drowning after he cut the ropes holding him to the ship). Simply put there is no way that John would have been allowed to leave the ship – dead or alive – with the two compasses.

As you can tell I have a lot of interest in ships and sailors of this period (I did a couple of senior level papers in history on the topic when I was in University). The show is a bit of a hoot and I don't get the idea expressed by some viewers in the comments section of the Entertainment Weekly recap piece that the show seemed scripted at times. While not on the level of Survivor or The Amazing Race, and it doesn't have the immediate quality of a Big Brother season – where the eliminations at least are done live and real life events can occasionally intrude into the show's internal reality (the biggest example of which was 9/11 tragedy which directly affected one of the participants who lost a relative in the World Trade Center) – this is a fun summer reality show. True there's nothing original here, but I really wonder how original you can get with a reality competition show (at least tastefully – I'm not talking about something like the Dutch show that's giving away a dying woman's kidney for transplant into one of three contestants. Pirate Master isn't particularly deep; it's summer fluff that you can watch either to decry how bad it is or just to enjoy. And really, what more do you want in a summer show than that.

Arrrr!

Tony Winner and Emmy Nominee Charles Nelson Reilly – 1931-2007

Charles Nelson Reilly used to say that "When I die, it's going to read, 'Game Show Fixture Passes Away'. Nothing about the theater, or Tony Awards, or Emmys. But it doesn't bother me." Well he's not getting that from me. Charles Nelson Reilly was nominated for three Emmy Awards: for Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role as Claymore Gregg in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1970); for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series as Jose Chung in the episode "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" from Millenium, and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series as Mister Hathaway in the "Drugco" episode of The Drew Carey Show. He won a Tony Award for Best Featured Performer in a Musical for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying for the role of Bud Frump (1962), and was nominated for Best Featured Performer in a Musical in 1964 for Hello Dolly as Cornelius Hackl, and as Best Director of a Play for the 1997 revival of The Gin Game. He was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his autobiographical one man show Save It For The Stage: The Life of Reilly (2002). He appeared in six Broadway shows and directed or staged five others. And yeah, he was also a fixture on the game show Match Game, which was hosted by his long time friend Gene Rayburn who Reilly had been an understudy for in the original Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie, and was a frequent guest on Hollywood Squares.

Charles Nelson Reilly was born on January 13, 1931 in The Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Haven Connecticut. In 1944 he survived the Ringling Brothers Circus Tent fire which killed 168 people. Reportedly Reilly would never sit in the audience of any performance after that. Reilly's first television appearances were in two episodes of Car 54 Where Are You?, a series which shot in New York. He did a number of guest appearances in TV shows after that before landing the role of Claymore Gregg in the TV version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. That was the role that I first saw him in, playing the great nephew of the Captain Daniel Gregg (Edward Mulhare). Claymore – an eternal disappointment to his ancestor – is the scheming, but terrified of his ghostly uncle, owner of Gull Cottage. He was a delight to watch in the show's too short two season run.

After The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Reilly stayed in California and was a frequent guest star on network series as well as appearing frequently on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on which he made 95 appearances on the show. He played the evil magician Horatio J. Hoodoo on the short lived Sid and Marty Krofft series Lidville (another Krofft series that was never seen in my part of Canada). It was also during this period that he reunited with his friend Gene Rayburn to do the revival of Match Game where he frequently feuded with another series regular, Brett Somers. Also during this time Reilly developed a longstanding friendship with Burt Reynolds. Reilly frequently served an instructor and director at the dinner theatre that Reynolds owned in his hometown of Jupiter Florida. Reilly made a number of appearances with Reynolds in movies and TV shows and directed several episodes of Reynolds's series Evening Shade.

Reilly had some regrets about his work in game shows telling The Advocate in 2001 "You can't do anything else once you do game shows. You have no career." This was probably true; certainly most of his work on Broadway after Match Game was as a director. Still, one of his most memorable TV roles came long after his main period of fame on Match Game. He played writer Jose Chung twice – once in the X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," and again in the Millenium episode "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" a not so subtle tweaking of Scientology. Watching Reilly playing Jose Chung made me re-evaluate him as an actor. In both appearances Chung was significantly less flamboyant than his persona on Match Game or even as Claymore Gregg on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Charles Nelson Reilly didn't officially reveal his homosexuality until his one man show Save It For The Stage although it was hardly a secret. He told Entertainment Tonight in 2002 that "he felt no need to come out of the closet and that he never purposefully hid his homosexuality from anyone." Certainly his comedic persona in Match Game and probably as far back as Claymore Gregg in The Ghost and Mrs Muir was that of a rather flamboyant or even camp gay man, and his sexuality may have hurt his TV career as much as his game show appearances during the 1970s. According to Reilly a network executive once told him "they don't let queers on television."

In recent years Charles Nelson Reilly had focussed on his one man show. According to his partner Patrick Hughes (who he met while appearing on the game show Battlestars in the early 1980s Reilly had been ill for more than a year before succumbing to pneumonia on May 25^th. And yeah, he was right – virtually every newspaper obituary referred to him as "game show fixture Charles Nelson Reilly."

Here is the trailer for the film version of Reilly's one man show which is called The Life of Reilly and was released onto the festival circuit in 2006.

Breaking News – Kevin Reilly Leaving NBC

Variety reports that NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly (on the right in this photo with NBC-Universal CEO Jeff Zucker) will be leaving his post with an official announcement expected no later than Tuesday. The decision to fire Reilly was apparently made on Friday but the parties had to negotiate a settlement of Reilly's contract which was renewed in March of this year. Reilly's replacement is expected to be producer Ben Silverman, although he is not expected to hold the same title as Reilly had and may in fact be partnered Marc Graboff who is expected to run the business side of Reilly's job. According to Variety Silverman, who created The Office and The Biggest Loser for NBC as well as Ugly Betty for ABC "is expected to take on a role giving him oversight of the bigger picture at the network. He'll also play a key role in attracting talent to the network." The status of NBC development chief Katherine Pope, who was generally considered to be Reilly's eventual successor, is also unclear. Variety suggests that "there's a very real chance she could end up leaving NBC U, people with knowledge of the matter said."

Apparently the situation at NBC came to a head when Reilly learned that Graboff – who is Vice President in charge of NBC's West Coast operations and above Reilly in the network hierarchy – and NBC-Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker were interviewing candidates for a job that according to two people interviewed by the LA Times "would usurp much of Reilly's authority." This was followed last Friday by an anonymous e-mail sent to Reilly stating that Silverman would be replacing Reilly. According to the Times this led Reilly to ask NBC to release him from his contract, and Zucker was willing to do so regardless of the costs which are likely to be considerable.

Kevin Reilly was initially in the Programming & Development department at NBC between 1988 and 1994 where he helped shepherd projects like ER and Homicide: Life On The Streets onto the line-up. He left the network to serve as president of the Brillstein-Grey production company which developed shows including The Sopranos, Just Shoot Me NewsRadio and The Steve Harvey Show during his tenure. He left there to become president of the FX cable station where he was responsible for the development of such scripted productions as The Shield and Nip Tuck. He returned to NBC in 2003 as president of primetime development until Zucker ascended to his current position in December 2005.

His time as head of NBC's Entertainment Division was marked by the embarrassing situation surrounding the 2006-07 upfronts, when NBC announced its line-up only to totally reorganise the schedule less than a week later after ABC announced its line-up. That line-up was an embarrassment for Reilly with high profile ratings failures including Kidnapped and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. Reilly is credited with supporting and nurturing a number of shows including My Name Is Earl and The Office, and in the 2006-07 season had a singular bright spot with Heroes. His support of quality programming led to a full season renewal for Studio 60, and second season renewals for Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock even though neither series posted stellar ratings. The 2007-08 schedule seems to also at least attempt to live up to Reilly's philosophy (borrowed from Grant Tinker) of making quality the first priority with ratings success following naturally.

Reilly's departure from NBC – with Pope presumably soon to follow given her feelings about Zucker and the NBC old boys (reported by Deadline Hollywood Daily) – is yet another example of Jeff Zucker's habit of succeeding by failing. After all it wasn't Reilly who kept Matt Leblanc's sitcom (feel free to insert an 'H' if you want) Joey on the air for two season or some of the other moves that Zucker made in his process of failing up the corporate ladder. I'm not saying that Kevin Reilly was a great President of the Entertainment Division – the reshuffling of the 2006-07 season and the subsequent debacle would seem to disprove that – but I do think that he deserved better than the "behind his back" machinations that led to his resignation, particularly as leadership at the network seemed happy enough with him not quite three months ago to give him a multi-year contract extension.

Film Making Idol

I'm not exactly sure what FOX is trying to do with On The Lot. The show debuted on Tuesday with an hour long episode that brought together the fifty film makers from around the world and saw that number culled down to thirty-six. Then we were told that the next episode would be seen on Thursday night after So You Think You Can Dance. I was expecting an hour and instead what we got was a rather oddly timed 35 minutes, which is why I held off from reviewing the first episode (that and the Dancing With The Stars finale). All of which leaves me with the impression that having given the project the green light – probably because the name Spielberg was attached to it – they are possibly embarrassed by the final result or just don't know how to handle it. Or maybe it's a combination of the two.

The concept behind On The Lot is intriguing. Take short films submitted by aspiring film makers from around the world and bringing the fifty best to Hollywood for the opportunity to win a development deal at Dreamworks. The fifty who make it to Hollywood are then winnowed down to eighteen through an intense selection process that puts them in a pressure cooker – three challenges in three days with little or no time for minor details like sleep. Then the eighteen would do one film a week to be judged at least in part by the show's viewers. Judging the filmmakers – at least in the beginning – would be actor/director/producer and TV legend Gary Marshall, director Brett Ratner, director Jon Avnet, and Carrie Fisher (who everyone refers to a "Princess Leia" ignoring the fact that today she is primarily a novelist and screenwriter, as well as a highly regarded script doctor rather than an actress).

The first thing the aspiring filmmakers had to do – after being brought off the regular route of the Universal Studio Tour by our friend Tony Figueroa (he was the tour guide on the Tram; he had two lines and maybe fifteen seconds of screen time and if you blinked or tuned in late you missed him) – was to develop a pitch for a film based on one of five one sentence loglines. The contestants had to take the logline they had randomly received and develop a concept for a movie and then pitch the concept to the judges, and they had to do it all in a period of twelve hours. The loglines were pretty out there, including "a slacker applies to the CIA as a joke and is accepted," and "a mouse is abducted as a lab rat by a pharmaceutical company and has to plan his escape." If you're like me you tried to play along at home – I came up with a couple of ideas for one of the other loglines – but the real task was the pitch which had to sell the judges on the story telling abilities of the movie makers. It's not as easy as it sounds – one man not only couldn't tell his story in an interesting way, he could barely speak at all. And that was part of the problem with this portion of the episode – we saw far too much of people whose pitches stank to high heaven and not nearly enough of people who were able to get their ideas across effectively. Fourteen people were sent home after this stage.

Immediately after the selection process was completed the contestants were given a new assignment – break into teams of three and make a two minute movie based on the logline "Out of time." They had two actors, three locations and 24 hours to complete the assignment in. That meant of course that there were twelve teams but the show only followed two of them, one with three guys and one with two women and one man. They were obviously teams that were having trouble working together. The team with three guys had two control freaks who clearly couldn't work together and were constantly contradicting each other on just about any issue possible. Meanwhile on the team with two women and one man, both women had attended film school while the man was almost proud of the fact that he hadn't. Unfortunately he seemed indecisive when it came to using his actors and when he was serving as director of photography for a scene directed by one of his team mates there were a number of technical errors – like a mike boom getting into the shot that the other two people on his team said he ignored. The shorts were edited on laptops (Macs?), probably using a program like Final Cut, and then presented to the judges. One of the films shown, the production of which had barely been seen during the entire 35 minute episode, was a special effects masterpiece that one high praise from the judges. But that short, and the films from the two bickering teams were the only ones that we saw on the show (the rest can be viewed on the show's website). In the end the control freak from the team with three guys and the woman whose scene was shot by the man who had never attended film school from the team with two women and one man were sent home, along with ten others for reasons that we really don't know. Then the next challenge – to shoot a one page scene with a professional crew and actors – was presented to the remaining twenty-four contestants.

The premise sounds intriguing. Unfortunately the execution was scarcely original. Really, it came off like the audition process for American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, or the various other shows – running or cancelled – which have adopted a similar format. The tasks may have changed but the underlying principals remain the same. And I think that if you were doing a show called So You Think You Can Act that might work. The problem here – one of many – is that we don't know why Spielberg and Mark Burnett (the other Executive Producer), and whoever actually sifted through the videos selected these particular people from the ten thousand or so who submitted films to the show. Obviously they all exhibited some talent in their initial submissions, including the guy who was barely able to speak during his pitch, but unless you were motivated to check out the show's website you never saw more than a couple of seconds of a couple of the audition films and are rarely able to associate people with their short films. This business of judging, and not knowing the criteria, carries on into the initial tasks that the contestants are given. Having brought the film makers to Hollywood, and given them their tasks, the show's producers – probably Mark Burnett – focussed on specific individuals and usually if they focussed on you it was either because you weren't going to be around long for some spectacular miscue or because you were part of a dysfunctional team. Maybe this could have been made right – particularly in the two minute short test – if the show had run in a two hour time slot rather than in the fragmented manner that it was shown. Part of the result was that we never got a consistent feel for the criteria that the judges were using in their evaluations. And given that more than half of the people who started in the competition were eliminated in those two episodes, it would have been nice to know what the judges were looking for and even nicer to get at least an inkling of why they were let go. Maybe this will change when (or, based on the show's ratings in its first two episodes, if) the show gets to the point where it's dealing with the "final twelve" rather than the unwieldy initial fifty. At the very least we'll be able to get to know the individuals and their work. As well it will put more emphasis on one aspect of the format that I really like: the "live" aspect of the show – necessary for the fan voting aspect that I'm not entirely happy with – puts the film-makers under the sort of deadline pressure that film makers who have to meet a release date have to deal with.

As I have mentioned several times in this review, I think the idea behind On The Lot is an intriguing one but that the execution has been thoroughly botched. There's plenty of blame to go around. Burnett blew it by focussing a big part of his first episodes on the elimination process. While they didn't necessarily have to go right to the final twelve competitors, I think he could have done so relatively easily simply by saying "From the thousands of entries submitted from around the world, we brought the directors of what we judged to be the fifty best films to Hollywood where we further reduced the field down to the twelve finalists." That would have immediately given us a group of people that we could get to know and might have allowed us to see the short films that they made that got them into the competition. As it stands the final twelve contestants might come down to a group of people who have barely had any screen time yet – in 95 minutes of the show – while the producers have focussed on people who they already know are going to be eliminated. I think that Burnett can also be blamed for the very format that he's chosen for this show, the American Idol format complete with audience voting each week. This show might have been ideal for a format that Burnett himself pioneered – an Apprentice style show although with all three of the show's three judges making the decisions and explaining their reasons for those decisions (something Trump rarely if ever really did). In this format Carrie Fisher (who I like as a judge) would be more of a spokesperson for the group than a final arbiter. The final decision – between the top two films could be left to a viewer vote, the audience being the ultimate critic. Fox also isn't without blame in this mess. They were the ones who gave this show the green light but more importantly they were the ones who decided to "help" the show by putting an hour of it on after the final performance show of American Idol and then shoehorn a further 35 minutes in behind the debut of So You Think You Can Dance. The net result of this hasn't been a boost to the show's ratings but the distinct feeling that they were dealing with a show they wanted to get rid of. As for Spielberg, well I guess you could blame him for putting his imprimatur on this mess by including his name on the list of executive producers, because as far as I can tell that's about all the contact he's had with it.

On the whole I judge On The Lot to be a failure. It had potential but failed dismally to live up to it.

Okay Kids, It’s Over

I found this Blondie cartoon a few weeks ago and I've been saving it. Alexander and Cookie are obviously reacting to their parents cutting a rug in the same way that kids react when they discover Mom and Dad necking and realize that they are still probably still having sex. Of course in the case of Blondie and Dagwood, the strip was created back when the Foxtrot was the latest dance and the Tango had been popular since Valentino did it in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse a few years before.

Fear not Cookie and Alexander, your parents will now stop behaving in this disgustingly unparental manner – the latest season of Dancing With The Stars has ended with the triumph of Apolo Anton Ohno and his professional partner Julianne Hough over Joey Fatone & Kym Johnson, and Laila Ali & Maksim Chmerkovskiy – announced at the end of a two hour finale that followed and hour long wind-up of The Bachelor.

So did the right people win? Not according to my mother! She was cheering for Laila Ali throughout the whole competition but then again she liked Billy Ray Cyrus (not as a dancer mind you but as a personality – I thought that Heather Mills and even John Ratzenberger were better than him). I liked Laila too but there were a couple of moments when the wheel came completely off. Number one was a couple of weeks ago when her dad was in the audience of the live show. Laila's strength was always a sort of sexy elegance epitomized by her performance in the Latin dances, but Muhammed Ali didn't like to see his daughter doing those sexy moves, so her performance was far more demure than in other weeks and the judges called her on it. The other time was when it counted, on semi-final Monday. Her freestyle performance totally lacked the elegance that the judges wanted to see from her and again they called her on it.

Both Joey and Apolo had stumbles in their semi-final performances, both during their "Judges Choice" dances. The choreography on both dances veered radically from the stylistic norms of the dance that the people were told to do. Their marks were reduced significantly. They made up for it on the Freestyle performances though. Apolo & Julianne put together a hip hop number that fitted their youth and which earned 10s from all three judges. Then if anything Joey & Kym out performed them with a dance that started with Joey leaping off the stage over Kym's head and landing on the stage and culminated with a sequence of lifts and spins that had judge Len Goodman saying that it was a shame that they could only give out 10s. It was showy and entertaining which was Joey's greatest strength.

The two hour finale on Tuesday night was more than a little anticlimactic when it came to judging. Each team was allowed to repeat one dance they had done from the previous episodes. Julianne & Apolo opted to perform their Pasa Doble a second time. It was one of two dances that the team had received a perfect score of 30 on – the other was a Samba in week 5 – and Apolo felt that it was his best dance. He earned a 30 on it the second time as well. On the other hand Joey & Kim decided to do the Tango they had done in the first week to the music from Star Wars. The movie is a favourite of Joey's and it was a dance they had done early in the season when he was unused to dancing. They earned a perfect 30 this time around with the biggest improvements being to his posture. Laila & Maks did a Mambo they had originally done in the second week of competition and they too earned a perfect score of 30. In other words the positions set on the first night hadn't changed in the second. The judges' votes, when combined with the votes of the viewers at home, which were cast after seeing only two of the dances, placed Laila Ali in third spot with Joey finishing in second

The two hour finale could have easily have been packaged as a 90 minute show without losing much of significance. There was a review of the history of the American Dancing With The Stars which acknowledged – albeit briefly – the show's origins as the British series Strictly Come Dancing but which implied that the series' international expansion was based almost entirely on the success of the American show when this was at the very least suspect if not mostly false. Previous results shows this season had been notable for the presence of several major musical acts and guest dancers. The series finale had the dancers eliminated in previous episodes doing samples of their dances, and given the length of time some of them had been off the show doing them even worse than they had when they were practicing every week. In short, even though there was considerable excitement as a result of the final results viewed objectively, the finale dragged more than a little. But of course in terms of ratings, that's isn't going to matter: the two episodes of the Dancing With The Stars finale are going to draw huge ratings, probably at least as good if not better than the ratings for the finale of Lost although probably not quite as good as the ratings for the finale of American Idol. It is ABC's big ratings winner of the year.

All of which leads to a final question from me. Dancing With The Stars appears in 32 different countries in addition to Britain (where it originated) and the United States. Greece, Lebanon, Thailand, Brazil, and Hong Kong are reported to be getting ready to do their own shows. One of the 32 countries is not Canada (or at least not English Canada – there's a show in Quebec called Le Match des etoiles which is similar to Dancing With The Stars in a number of ways but not a copy) and I guess my question is why CTV, which has adopted the Pop Idol/American Idol model with Canadian Idol – and done so quite successfully in terms of ratings and discovering talent – has not come up with a Canadian version of Dancing With The Stars? The show gives the network huge ratings (although apparently not huge enough for them to broadcast the finale live or in prime time – it aired here on Wednesday morning between 10 a.m. and Noon) and in the past we've seen Canadian specials for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Deal Or No Deal (on Global) so why not Dancing With The Stars – Canada?

Be Sure To Watch

On The Lot on FOX tonight.

Not because it looks like an interesting variation of the American Idol concept, with aspiring film makers being judged by a group of industry people (Carrie Fisher, Bruce Ratner, Gary Marshall, Jon Avnet) with the prize of a million dollar development deal with Dreamworks. Not because it has Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg as executive producers. And not because it's one of those rare occasions when non-Americans are able to appear on an American reality show (although of the 50 semi-finalists only 2 currently reside outside the USA – one of them is one of the three Canadians).

No the real reason to watch On The Lot is this guy:

That's Tony Figueroa, the guy who has the first blog with Child Of Television as a name (I swear I thought I was being original when I came up with the title of this blog). Not only is Tony far better looking than I by a long margin, he's also married to a far lovelier lady than I could hope to aspire to. And now he gets to work for Steven Spielberg! (My biggest industry contact is a VP at Pixar that I went to high school with and haven't seen in thirty years.) He plays "The Tour Guide" and while I don't know how extensive his part in this series is, I know he'll be great. Anyway...

Best of luck Tony!

Short Takes – May 20, 2007

I skipped this last week mostly because the network upfronts were coming up and a lot of the previous week's news was "leaks" about shows that were going to be cancelled or renewed. And in fact virtually all of the news last week was about shows that were renewed or cancelled. If nothing else it should make for a short post – maybe.

George Lopez cancelled: And boy is he pissed. Once he learned that George Lopez was cancelled he made a statement implying racism in the decision process. Most media outlets printed Lopez's rant in a censored form. It's presented here as he said it:

I get kicked out for a fucking caveman and shows that I out-performed because I'm not owned by ABC? So a fucking Chicano can't be on TV but a fucking caveman can? And a Chicano with an audience already? You know when you get in this that shows do not last forever, but this was an important show and to go unceremoniously like this hurts. One hundred seventy people lost their jobs. TV just became really, really white again.

I'd be angry if my show had been cancelled for Cavemen too, because quite frankly the show looks like crap. On the other hand Lopez is overlooking a lot of things in his rant. George Lopez (the show) has had the second longest run of any series featuring a Hispanic-American lead – number one was I Love Lucy. While the show had an audience, it's also true that the show's ratings have declined over the past season. For the week of April 23-29, two new episodes of George Lopez finished behind shows like Crossing Jordan, Close to Home, Jericho, Real Wedding Crashers, Raines, and Identity, all of which were cancelled. The only ABC series that performed worse (in a new episode, not a repeat) and was renewed was Notes From the Underbelly (though it did out performing some NBC shows that were retained including Scrubs and 30 Rock). This was not just a one-time event either. The fact is that other networks cancelled shows that were performing better on a regular basis than episodes of George Lopez. The show wasn't performing as well as it had in the past. And then you can add in the fact that the show is produced by Warner Brothers rather than ABC or its corporate parent Disney which means that increased costs for the network could not be offset by later revenues from syndication and suddenly the reasons for the cancellation of George Lopez becomes clear – declining audience combined with increased costs. Dare I mention that the TV business is a business not a charity, and George Lopez saying that his show is "an important show" does not necessarily make it so. To imply that race had anything to do with the ending of the show is absurd – it would have been renewed for sure if it had performed better in the ratings.

Don't mess with the NFL: Picked up this little note from the Toronto Star's TV website. ABC was supposedly doing a pilot for an American version of the BBC series Footballers Wives to be called (in a fit of imaginative thinking) Football Wives. It wasn't picked up and according to the Star (which some of you may know was supposedly the real model for the Metropolis Daily Planet) the reason was that the NFL objected to the subject matter of the show. For those of you who don't know Footballer's Wives had storylines that included infidelity, drunk driving, drug use, attempted murder of a team owner, more than one other murder, rapes, and lesbianism. Needless to say the NFL doesn't like this sort of storyline (maybe they touch too close to home given the sort of things that some NFL players have been involved with over the past few years). And of course ABC is owned by Disney which also owns 80% of ESPN which broadcasts Monday Night Football. Presumably this means that if you're ABC (and just about any of the other broadcast networks including The CW, half of which is owned by CBS) you don't want to antagonise the NFL.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: With upfronts come more call on the part of the PTC to advertisers to use the assistance provided by the PTC in making good advertising decisions; to "consider how the programming you support with your ad dollars will affect children – even if children are not part of your target demographic." I'm going to include some excerpts from PTC President Tim Winter's Open Letter to Advertisers here. The whole thing can be found by clicking the link.

"Advertising dollars make possible wholesome, uplifting programs, but they also make possible programs that pollute young minds and encourage children to engage in dangerous and risky behavior." And later in the letter: "Unfortunately, our research has also shown that the broadcast networks do not rate their own programs accurately because they are financially motivated not to do so. The networks then push the sole responsibility onto parents to monitor what they're (sic) children are watching. But the sole responsibility cannot rest on parents. When you as a sponsor commit your company's advertising dollars to a broadcast program, you automatically commit to sponsoring the program's content, for better or worse. You are thereby committed to helping to keep the public airwaves safe for our children." The letter ends with the following statement: "Millions of families will be watching to see what values you support. The innocence of our children rests with you."

Now you'll excuse me for a moment but I am amazed by one statement in this: "the sole responsibility [for monitoring what their children are watching] cannot rest on parents." These are social conservatives – the sort of people who scream bloody murder at even the vaguest suggestion that any sort of sex education – except for abstinence until marriage of course – be taught in the schools not just to their kids but to any child. According to them sex education is the responsibility of the parents alone. And yet the responsibility for monitoring what children watch on TV "cannot rest on parents," and advertisers must assume some of it – with the guidance of the Parents Television Council of course? Surely parents know their children and their relative maturity better than any organization, because they know their children as individuals rather than as a collective faceless mass.

As I said, I missed last week because of upfronts which means that I didn't get to tell you about the PTC's attack on Ugly Betty as worst show of the week for "intensely suggestive dialogue and sexual themes" and lacking "descriptors to warn viewers of the smarmy content to be found on the program." I won't go into details except to remind readers that Ugly Betty was one of the shows whose development was supported by the Script Development Fund of the Family Friendly Programming Forum of the Association of National Advertisers, a group that puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to supporting family friendly shows, something that the PTC and groups like it have never done.

This time around the worst show of the week is the April 29 episode of American Dad. This time around they really seem to be embracing not just a social conservative agenda but a downright moralistic religious one in their reasoning. In the opening paragraph they state "Anyone who values the sanctity of marriage, and the act of sexual intercourse as the most intimate and significant act possible between two individuals, would be truly repulsed by this story. The episode conveyed the message that sex without love and commitment is harmless, and quickly earned our pick for Worst of the Week." They then summarize the plot which focuses on the character Francine's revelation to her husband of her pre-marital sexual experiences (she has a rosebush in her "sex garden" for every man she's been with) which appals her husband Stan as does her stance that "sex without love is just a physical action with no emotional consequences." To prove it, she urges Stan to have sex with another woman and even gives him a divorce to make him feel good about it. The PTC finds the show's conclusion unacceptable even though it disproves Francine's point: "The program's unconvincing conclusion attempts to show Francine's error but fails miserably. The clear not-so-comical message communicated in the episode is that the sex before marriage is meaningless and carries no emotional or physical consequences." The evaluation of the episode ends up stating, "the viewer gets a glimpse into the 'creative' minds of indifferent and disturbed individuals who are under the delusion that such a storyline constitutes 'satire.' It is honestly quite frightening and unfortunate that Fox employs writers who can with a clear conscience conceive of producing content so destructive to children and teens."

The Fall Season Day By Day

The upcoming TV season looks like it's going to be an interesting match-up between the networks. The 2006-07 season had a lot of interesting shows – in fact may have had more quality that we see most years – but it was also a season when viewers of broadcast TV rejected the new and TV executives were quick – maybe too quick – pull shows out of their line-up. It was the year that rejected the serial as executives found themselves in vicious circle of self-fulfilling prophecy: people were holding off on watching recorded episodes of new shows out of fear that they'd be cancelled and networks were cancelling those shows because people weren't watching (because they were afraid they'd get into a show only to have it cancelled). Even reality shows like The Apprentice took a hit, leading a Canadian TV critic to suggest that the days of the reality completion show are over.

And what of this season? It looks like network executives are finally wising up over things like serials, and hiatuses which kill the momentum of series. CBS is putting on some very "un-CBS" shows and pushing the envelope a bit. NBC is going the soft "sci-fi" route with three of their four dramas. The CW is returning to its roots with a serious youth movement on its schedule. ABC is continuing with its "relationship drama" shows that proved fairly successful last season while having lots and lots of material in reserve. And FOX? Well FOX is giving us a schedule of two halves, thanks in no small part to Baseball and Football.

Let's take a look at the schedule day-by-day (New shows capitalized).

Sunday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
7:00-7:30	America`s Funniest Home Videos	60 Minutes	The OT (NFL Post-Game)	Football Night in America	CW NOW
7:30-8:00	America`s Funniest Home Videos	60 Minutes	The OT (NFL Post-Game)	Sunday Night Football	ONLINE NATION
8:00-8:30	Extreme Makeover: Home Edition	VIVA LAUGHLIN	The Simpsons	Sunday Night Football	LIFE IS WILD
8:30-9:00	Extreme Makeover: Home Edition	VIVA LAUGHLIN	King Of The Hill	Sunday Night Football	LIFE IS WILD
9:00-9:30	Desperate Housewives	Cold Case	Family Guy	Sunday Night Football	America's Next Top Model (encore)
9:30-10:00	Desperate Housewives	Cold Case	American Dad	Sunday Night Football	America's Next Top Model (encore)
10:00-11:00	Brothers & Sisters	Shark		Sunday Night Football

CBS is showing their colours when it comes to different sorts of shows with Viva Laughlin, the musical drama based on the BBC series Blackpool (incidentally, Tim Gueguen wondered about Hugh Jackman appearing on TV – slumming as Tim put it; his participation isn't surprising given the fact that he's one of the Executive Producers of this show). I'm not sure how the series will do against the triple threat of heart-warming reality, dysfunctional animated people and football. CBS doesn't have preview reel of this so it's going to be a bit of a surprise. As for the CW, setting aside CW Now and Online Nation for the moment, Life Is Wild (which is shot in South Africa) looks like it is definitely going to be the 7^th Heaven and Everwood sort of family drama that the network likes and will undoubtedly be a favourite of groups like the PTC (not that it's necessarily a bad thing that they like a show). I think it could be a real hit – at least by the standards of The CW.

Monday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Dancing With The Stars	How I Met Your Mother	Prison Break	Deal Or No Deal	Everybody Hates Chris
8:30-9:00	Dancing With The Stars	THE BIG BANG THEORY	Prison Break	Deal Or No Deal	ALIENS IN AMERICA
9:00-9:30	Dancing With The Stars	Two and a Half Men	K-VILLE	Heroes	Girlfriends
9:30-10:00	SAM I AM	Rules Of Engagement	K-VILLE	Heroes	The Game
10:00-11:00	The Bachelor	CSI Miami		JOURNEYMAN

Three new comedies on the night and amazingly the most interesting of them may be on The CW. Aliens in America looks far interesting than either the Stacked retread The Big Bang Theory or ABC's Sam I Am. That show sort of sticks out between Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor. I can't really come up with much enthusiasm for NBC's Journeyman but it should finish second in its time slot. The new drama K-Ville may be the night's rookie success if FOX gives it more than a couple of episodes to show its stuff. NBC is taking an interesting approach to the "hiatus problem" by effectively extending Heroes to 30 weeks with the Heroes: Origins mini-series that focuses on characters not in the main continuity. Are people going to stay tuned to episodes that don't feature characters they know?

Tuesday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	CAVEMEN	NCIS	NEW AMSTERDAM	Biggest Loser	Beauty & The Geek
8:30-9:00	CARPOOLERS	NCIS	NEW AMSTERDAM	Biggest Loser	Beauty & The Geek
9:00-10:00	Dancing With The Stars	The Unit	House	CHUCK	REAPER
10:00-11:00	Boston Legal	CANE		Law & Order: SVU

Last year ABC threw a number of comedies at viewers and the viewers threw them right back. Their two comedies on Tuesday are effectively "male-bonding" shows with Carpoolers looking less dreadful than Cavemen – but not by much. FOX's New Amsterdam looks vaguely intriguing, but knowing FOX executives, I have the feeling that it's going to be a show that if you blink you'll miss it. I have the same sort of feeling about Chuck – the idea is interesting (and I've always liked Adam Baldwin) but I can't see it thriving against House, the Dancing With The Stars recap show or even The Unit. Expect a fast exit. On the other hand Cane may finally solve the problem CBS has had with the third hour of Tuesday nights since they ended Judging Amy in 2005. In the two years since they've tried six different series (Close to Home, Threshold, Love Monkey, The Amazing Race, Smith and 3 Lbs.) in that time slot and inevitably ended up airing repeats of their procedurals. Cane is a revival of an old format but it just might work.

Wednesday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	PUSHING DAISIES	KID NATION	BACK TO YOU	Deal Or No Deal	America's Next Top Model
8:30-9:00	PUSHING DAISIES	KID NATION	`Til Death	Deal Or No Deal	America's Next Top Model
9:00-10:00	PRIVATE PRACTICE	Criminal Minds	Bones	BIONIC WOMAN	GOSSIP GIRL
10:00-11:00	DIRTY SEXY MONEY	CSI New York		LIFE

On general principle I hope that Kid Nation dies a swift and well deserved death and not just because CBS cancelled Jericho after mishandling that series' hiatus (repeat after me – extended hiatus bad). The preview reel seen look horrible and pretentious. In a way that I can't explain it reminds me of that horrible "boot camp" series that ABC had a couple of summers ago. I'm really hoping for good things from the two NBC series – the revival of The Bionic Woman and Life which look like the best new shows the network has this year. ABC is taking a big chance by making Wednesday a night of all new shows. They don't give us much to judge by with their clip for Pushing Daisies, but it's in a fairly weak time slot, before CBS, NBC and FOX deploy their heavy hitters so I don't know what to expect as far as ratings. You could call Private Practice a semi-known quality since we've seen the pilot (badly) integrated into an episode of Grey's Anatomy. On the one hand it's going up against two established shows but on the other hand it is different enough from the other shows that it could find an audience. The same rationale applies to Dirty Sexy Money – different enough from the shows around it to be able to find an audience. I just don't know how well the audience for Private Practice will transition into Dirty Sexy Money.
The CW's Gossip Girl could also find a niche. It's a throwback to the sort of teen angst series that The WB was famous for.

Thursday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Ugly Betty	Survivor	Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader	My Name Is Earl	Smallville
8:30-9:00	Ugly Betty	Survivor	Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader	The Office	Smallville
9:00-9:30	Grey`s Anatomy	CSI	KITCHEN NIGHTMARES	30 Rock	Supernatural
9:30-10:00	Grey`s Anatomy	CSI	KITCHEN NIGHTMARES	Scrubs	Supernatural
10:00-11:00	BIG SHOTS	Without a Trace		ER

Thursday is the arguably the most competitive night on TV, but it's also the most stable night; there are only two new shows in the line-up. If we're going to be brutally honest Kitchen Nightmares is just a placeholder until after the baseball playoffs end. The only other change is the return of Without a Trace on CBS in an effort to drive a stake through the heart of ER. Meanwhile with Big Shots ABC is continuing its recent trend of "relationship dramadies" – typified by shows like Men In Trees, October Road, Brothers and Sisters and coming later in the 2007-08 season Cashmere Mafia. The show has a good male cast but the clip on the ABC website doesn't tell us much about the show except for a telling last line: "Men. We're the new women!"

Friday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-9:00	Men In Trees	Ghost Whisperer	THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN BAND	1 vs. 100/THE SINGING BEE	WWE Smackdown
9:00-10:00	WOMENS MURDER CLUB	MOONLIGHT	NASHVILLE	Las Vegas	WWE Smackdown
10:00-11:00	20/20	Numb3rs		Friday Night Lights

CBS continues its new trend of doing shows that aren't what we've come to expect from CBS with Moonlight. The story of a vampire detective might have a relatively smooth transition from Ghost Whisperer but is it a good fit for Numb3rs? I have the same feeling about how well Women's Murder Club coming out of Men In Trees. Women's Murder Club may or may not work as a series – the one clip ABC has given us frankly looks a bit lacklustre – but it doesn't seem like a show that will build well off of Men in Trees.
NBC is taking a big risk by moving Friday Night Lights to Friday Night. It is one of the best shows on TV but it doesn't do much good if it can't find an audience. Is the audience younger people – Friday is "date night" for a lot of them – or people who are interested in high school football – who will be at high school football games at least until the end of November. As for FOX, they seem to be hoping they'll hit pay dirt a second time with the American Idol format with their news Search For The Next Great American Band. As for Nashville, the premise might have been good for a drama series but unfortunately this isn't a drama series. I think it will get beaten by the dramas on the Big Three networks and maybe even by The CW's perennial Wrestling show.