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I expect to have a new post up later today and probably one tomorrow too before my second annual 12 Days Of Christmas posts (that I haven't actually started on yet - yipe!) but before that...

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Who Does The PTC Hate This Week?

I wasn't supposed to be writing this right now. I was going to be out at the casino Thursday afternoon, so I headed off to catch the shuttle bus. I got there in plenty of time...I thought. There were about 15 people standing about waiting for the bus when I got there but by the time the bus arrived that number had almost doubled, but I was there before them so I should be able to get on the bus. Nope. The driver (who had to pick up people at another stop) quite sensibly limited the number of people who could get on to something like 18 or 20 and somehow, but people who arrived after me were among the 20 and one or two who had come before me weren't on the bus. But the truly galling part for me was this one guy who arrived after me kept shouting "Get in line. Those people there aren't in line." Of course this was after he was safely ahead of me.

Naturally this put me in a perfect frame of mind to write about the Parents Television Council. So who do they hate this week?

First off we have an issue which I actually agree with the PTC on, media cross-ownership. The PTC is opposed to a recent FCC ruling which will allow newspaper companies to also own TV stations (and presumably vice versa) in the ten largest US markets (I would assume that there is some variance in the existing ruling that allow the Tribune Corporation to own WGN and the Chicago Tribune, WPIX and Newsday in New York, and KTLA and the Los Angeles Times in LA). Naturally the PTC and I don't agree on the reasoning behind our mutual dislike for this ruling. In its press release the PTC states, "Broadcasters are required to use the public airwaves to serve the public interest, and at the same time they are able to reap immense financial benefit. This creates an inherent potential for a conflict of interest, especially when billions of dollars are at stake. It is therefore incumbent upon other media outlets to provide a check and balance by reporting objectively about how the public airwaves are being exploited. Experience has shown us that newspapers do not take TV or radio stations to task when they are jointly owned by the same media conglomerate." My concern has little to do with that. It does have to do with creating an atmosphere in which the number of independent media voices in a city or country is reduced. I'm thinking in particular of the presentation of the news. As a Canadian I know of what I speak.

The battle of media consolidation has already been lost in Canada. Both of the two major, private, English language televisions networks are paired up with major newspapers. CTV is owned by CTVglobemedia which also owns the Globe & Mail newspaper, the more popular of Canada's two newspapers. Torstar, which owns the Toronto Star newspaper also owns a 20% share of CTVglobemedia. Quebecor Media owns newspapers in both English Canada and Quebec as well as the TVA television network in Quebec.Global TV is owned Canwest Global, which also owns the Southam chain of newspapers which includes newspapers in every major English Canadian city outside of Atlantic Canada except Toronto. It owns both newspapers in Vancouver, the single dailies in Victoria, Saskatoon and Regina, and the only English language newspaper in Montreal. They also own the National Post, Canada's second national newspaper. The effect, particularly in the case of Canwest Global has been caustic. As a rather silly example, you will not see a single ad for a show on either CBC or CTV in a Southam paper but you often see full page ads for the latest program that Global has bought. It is in news that things are really bad. Canwest Global uses the reporting staff of their newspapers to "supplement" the newsgathering efforts of their TV stations. That sounds benign but the net result is that the reporting in both the TV and newspaper side seem to parrot a similar line. In the recent provincial election in Saskatchewan for example, both the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the local Global TV station both exhibited a noticeable bias in the tone of their reporting towards the Saskatchewan Party and against the incumbent NDP government. To what degree that effected the election, which was won by the Saskatchewan Party is unclear but it undoubtedly had an influence. It's not a good road to travel, and one can only imagine the effects of such consolidation in the United States.

Of course the PTC can't stay mad at the FCC for long; who would their righteous, mass mailed form letter complaints about obscene content go to otherwise. This time around the PTC is claiming that the November 30^th episode of Las Vegas was obscene and they're using same tactic that they used when they attacked the "teen orgy scene" from Without A Trace. They are claiming that the content in the Las Vegas episode was obscene in the Central and Mountain time zones because in those regions shows that air in the third hour of prime time start at 9 p.m. and end at 10 p.m. Don't laugh, that old wheeze got CBS a $3.25 million fine for the Without A Trace episode, and the maximum fines have gone up by a factor of ten since then. What I do find alternately laughable and scary is what the PTC is calling obscene in the Las Vegas episode: "The Parents Television Council™ is calling on its members to file complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about an indecent episode of NBC's Las Vegas that aired on November 30 at 9:00 p.m. in the Central and Mountain Time zones and at 10:00p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time zones. The episode that was viewed by hundreds of thousands of children included a side camera shot of a stripper exposing her breasts. As if that were not offensive enough, the men watching her wagered money about the color of her nipples." That's it, that's what the PTC considers obscene: a shot from the side of a stripper exposing her breasts...in a strip club, and men wagering about whether the woman's nipples are pink or brown. Let's ignore the absurd notion that "hundreds of thousands of children" were watching Las Vegas, because it is an absurd assertion. What they fail to mention is the duration of the "exposure" in that side angle shot. It is less than five seconds. This isn't the "teen orgy scene" in Without A Trace, (which I personally still don't think qualifies as obscene) let alone the episodes of NYPD Blue where you saw extensive shots of strippers who looked like they were in a real strip club. And the only thing scarier than the image of some self appointed PTC censor hunched over his VCR remote advancing footage of the episode frame by frame to find the naughty bits is the idea that the FCC might actually rule that this absurd complaint constitutes real obscenity.

Sticking with that episode of Las Vegas for a bit, the PTC has also named it this week's Misrated show, and it's for pretty much the same reasons. The show was rated TV-14 LVD (Language, Violence, Dialog) and the PTC contends that the S descriptor should also be added. Here's the description of the scene that they provide: "Sam is trying to come to terms with her new situation when her friend Nick[?] from the Montecito comes to visit her one night. Sam is watching a terrible imitation of an '80s hair band perform a ballad called 'Stripper Girl': 'Your lips were red, your skin was pale…You were the one I wanted to nail…I asked you for a table dance, you came over, put your hand down my pants…' croons the singer as he pushes his hand down his own pants. Meanwhile, strippers dance in cages all over the club. Nick looks over at two men yelling "50 Gs on Pink!" "50 Gs on Brown!" Nick asks them what they are betting on. "Her nipples!" they answer gleefully. The stripper then whips off her top and provides America with a side view of her breasts as she continues to dance." Setting aside the fact that they got the name of the character from the Monetcito who visits Sam (it's Mike, played by James Lesure – I don't know who "Nick" is) I suppose one might think that maybe the lyrics to Stripper Girl is the reason for the PTC's demand for the S descriptor or the bet on the shade of the stripper's nipples. But wait, those would be covered under the D descriptor for "highly suggestive dialogue." So obviously it's the breasts, and in fact the PTC admits as much: "Las Vegas is by no means a family-friendly show -- though NBC apparently thinks it is appropriate for 14-year-olds. But refusing to use an S-descriptor in a program focusing on strippers and bare breasts demonstrates that the networks are either incompetent or willfully negligent when it comes to rating their own programs."

So let's get down to points. First, the focus of the episode was not on "strippers and bare breasts." In fact there were only three or four scenes of Sam in the strip club one of which didn't even show the strippers. None of those scenes ran for more than five minutes. The focus of the episode was a robbery at the casino and Danny's suspicion that his uncle may have been part of it. The storyline around Sam losing her job at the Montecito and trying to get it back was a secondary plot and hardly the main focus of the episode. Second, as I mentioned in critiquing the PTC's campaign to have the FCC declare the episode obscene, the actual amount of time in which the side view of the woman's breasts was seen can literally be counted on the fingers of both hands and I'm being conservative in this estimate. Moreover, the woman isn't seen in a close-up or clearly lit as other shows have done with similar material (like NYPD Blue did on numerous occasions). I scarcely think that any rational person would find that this met the standard of "moderate sexual situations" that is required to earn an S descriptor on a TV-14 show. Then again this is the PTC we're talking about.

Now, let's turn to the PTC's Broadcast Worst of the Week. And it's an old PTC "favourite" making a triumphant return to the top of this category, American Dad but to do so they have to resort to reviewing a rerun of an episode that ran during the second season of the show, "Lincoln Lover." According to the PTC the episode "included highly offensive comments about sexual orientation and perverse sexual innuendo which carried the show from joke after repulsive joke." And yes, that's exactly the way that sentence appears on the website. The episode starts with Stan talking about how it is "cool to alienate gays" and includes the line "gays are the new blacks." What some might see as a borderline clever play on the claim that some colour "...is the new black" the PTC adds, "as if to suggest that it was once "cool" to alienate African-Americans." Either the PTC doesn't get the reference – possible I suppose – or they feel the need to be outraged on behalf of Blacks and Gays (the organization has been accused of homophobia on more than one occasion). Subsequently Stan becomes involved with a group of "Log Cabin Republicans" (gay members of the Republican Party). According to the PTC interpretation of the episode, "When he realizes they are gay he not only changes his ideas about homosexuals, but now desires to be one. He tells his wife that he plans to have sex with a man to prove to his new friends that he is gay." Now there's quite a bit of detail and nuance that is missed in this description of the episode, which a look at the TV.com recap would show. But of course detail and nuance are hardly the PTC's stock in trade unless they "prove" the organization's point. They are far more concerned with the use of the term "power top" which they then need to explain to their readers ("which means he is willing to be the man with the role of penetrating the other") so that they'll know exactly why "This is not a term that children watching TV should be made privy to." The PTC's article ends by stating, "The needless sexual innuendo and offensive sexual scenarios make this show completely inappropriate for broadcast television and far more suited for extended cable." Now, I'm not a Family Guy or American Dad viewer (the PTC tends to lump the shows together in the same circle of Hell) for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with "needless sexual innuendo and offensive sexual scenarios." The PTC's review taken on its own would seem to support their position, the problem is that the PTC is engaged in that old pastime of essayists, picking and choosing the data they present so that it supports their cause, in this case to make the show seem far more outrageous and unfocussed than it was. A comparison of the TV.com recap with the PTC article would indicate that the show was far more than a collection of, "highly offensive comments about sexual orientation and perverse sexual innuendo." There was in fact a plot and a reason for the events described.

The Cable Worst of the Week is, yet again, Nip/Tuck. In the four weeks since I spun this recurring post off from my Short Takes posts, Nip/Tuck has been the Cable Worst of the Week twice (and I have a strong suspicion that they've changed the episode being described so it may in fact be the third time and I just missed reporting one). This certainly indicates an obsession with this particular show on the part of the PTC. Their outrage this time is with the sexual relationship between Eden and Sean. Eden is 18 and Sean is 42, something which the PTC makes a big deal about. I won't go into details, although the PTC does. I will simply refer you to the organization's final comment on the episode, which aired on December 11^th: "In an era when the sexual abuse of minors has become a major concern, and the entertainment industry increasingly portrays and urges women and even young girls to think of themselves as sex objects, it is outrageous that Nip/Tuck's creator Ryan Murphy shows such insensitivity to these issues, and that his program is lauded by critics as 'deep' and 'insightful.' No doubt potential pedophiles take comfort in seeing their depraved desires lauded by Murphy's warped drama." There is an obvious problem in this assessment – Eden isn't a minor. Every state in the United States considers an 18 year-old to be above the age of consent for sexual activity (in fact the age of consent in the majority of states is 16 – in South Carolina it is 14). An 18 year-old can drive, vote, buy cigarettes, and join the army without getting a letter of permission from a parent. Society considers an 18 year-old an adult except when it comes to drinking. Even the PTC considers an 18 year-old to be an adult. Or at least they do unless it suits them not to as it does in this case. In other words, the relationship depicted in the episode is hardly sexual abuse of a minor, particularly since it seems clear from previous episodes of this season that Eden is at least as much the aggressor in this relationship as Sean is, and indeed it has been made abundantly clear that not only is Eden not a virgin (even with hymen reconstruction performed by Sean) she has been quite aggressive sexually. Far from portraying the "sexual abuse of minors" and showing potential pedophiles "depraved desires lauded by Murphy's warped drama," the show is depicting a relationship which is, if a little strange and even creepy, entirely legal. Put it a different way, would the PTC be up in arms about this if Eden were described as 20 and Sean were 44? I doubt it.

The PTC's TV Trends column this week is titled Decent Sitcom Content: An Alien Concept? The article focuses on the CW comedy Aliens In America. Proving that the PTC is not unable recognise a paraphrased quote when it suits them (see the American Dad piece for an example of a time when it doesn't suit them) the first paragraph of the article is: "To paraphrase a famous Shakespearean quote, some shows are born filthy, and others have filthiness thrust upon them. While many primetime shows occupy the former category, the CW's Aliens in America typifies the latter. A series that could be focused on cultural understanding and the true meaning of friendship is undercut
by tawdry and crude sexual humor." And then they go on to "prove" it, the proof consisting of three examples of dialogue from the show and one scene description. Each is followed by a PTC approved interpretation of the scene. The PTC is clearly stating that the show is awash with raunchy dialogue and situations. They state: "It is easy to forget the more positive elements of Aliens in America when these pointless scenes are embedded into the story. Do the producers hope to appeal to audiences desiring edgy fare? Do they feel that needless filth is somehow going to salvage the series in the eyes of the viewing public? What makes this truly appalling is the fact that Aliens in America on the whole is not a trashy show. Outrageous sexual humor is injected into stories that otherwise have the potential to be positive. The theme of deep friendship is undercut by homosexual innuendo. An attractive girl's company cannot be enjoyed without sex as an ulterior motive. These instances, and more, are sadly commonplace on the new series." Ah, but that's not the worst of it. The writer of the piece uses ratings to "prove" that the general public doesn't want to watch this sort of "raunchy" programming, particularly in the mythical "Family Hour." As the writer puts it, "Perhaps audiences sense that the tone of Aliens in America just isn't right. Despite being one of the CW's most heavily-promoted series, it is also one of the network's lowest-rated. Notably, Aliens in America consistently loses viewers from its lead-in, Everybody Hates Chris. Is it a coincidence that a teen/family sitcom with clean content and positive themes enjoys a higher viewership than a teen/family sitcom that sabotages its positive themes with coarse humor?"

Okay, since the PTC has declared that ratings are the benchmark by which we are to measure the success or failure of a "clean show" versus a "raunchy show," let's look at some ratings numbers. These numbers are taken from Mark Berman's Programming Insider Forum page and there are a couple of nights when the numbers aren't in a form I can use. The numbers are total viewers only (in millions):

• October 1(the night Aliens In America debuted): Everybody Hates Chris – 2.58 million; Aliens In America – 2.33: -250,000
  
• October 8: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.63 million (up 50,000 over previous week); Aliens In America – 2.11 (down 220,000 from previous week): -530,000
  
• October 15: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.57 million (down 60,000 from previous week); Aliens In America – 2.23 (up 120,000 over previous week): -340,000
  
• October 22: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.53 million (down 40,000 from previous week); Aliens In America – 2.35: (up 120,000 over previous week): -180,000
  
• October 29: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.50 million (down 30,000 from previous week); Aliens In America – 2.11: (down 240,000 from previous week): -390,000
  
• November 12: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.72 million (up 220,000 from 2 weeks before); Aliens In America – 2.24: (up 130,000 over 2 weeks before): -480,000
  
• November 26: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.28 million (down 440,000 from 2 weeks before); Aliens In America – 1.89: (down 350,000 from 2 weeks before): -390,000
  
• December 3: Everybody Hates Chris – 1.89 million (down 390,000 from previous week); Aliens In America (repeat) – 1.59: (down 300,000 from previous week): -300,000
  
• December 10: Everybody Hates Chris – 2.09 million (up 200,000 over previous week); Aliens In America – 1.84: (up 250,000 over previous week): -250,000
  
• December 17: Everybody Hates Chris (repeat) – 1.87 million (down 220,000 from previous week); Aliens In America (repeat) – 1.42: (down 420,000 from previous week): -450,000
  

There is a lot that we can conclude from this. The first of course is that neither of these two shows is drawing an audience that would merit running this long on any network other than the CW. Secondly, while Aliens In America has never passed Everybody Hates Chris in total viewership it is worth noting that there were two weeks when Aliens increased its audience over previous weeks while Chris lost audience, and several weeks when either the increase in the Aliens audience over previous weeks was greater than the increase in the Chris audience or the decrease in the Aliens audience was less than the decrease in the Chris audience. Finally, it is worth noting that The CW has also aired an "encore" performance of Aliens In America on Sunday nights since October 28^th. In that time slot it pulls about 850,000 viewers. Are they people who watched the show on Monday and decided to see it again on Sunday or are they totally new viewers? Who knows? If even half of them are people who didn't see the show on Monday nights, then in most weeks more people watch Aliens In America than watch Everybody Hates Chris – raunchiness and all. What does it all mean? Well bearing in mind that the ratings for these shows are dwarfed by even the weakest shows on the four major networks, the answer is not much at all. The statistical difference is scarcely sufficient to "prove" the PTC's assertion that it's not coincidental that "teen/family sitcom with clean content and positive themes enjoys a higher viewership than a teen/family sitcom that sabotages its positive themes with coarse humor." As is frequently the case when the PTC tries to prove that people want clean programming their methodology is at best suspect and at worst as case of smoke and mirrors, heavy on the smoke.

Head To Head

The other new American show that debuted on Monday was ABC's game show Duel. Like the show, not crazy about the host. I'm not sure – for reasons that should become apparent – whether it will work as a weekly series, but I think it could have the potential to work during sweeps periods.

Duel isn't an ordinary game show. It has a tournament format and unlike a show such as Jeopardy or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? the tournament aspect is integral to how the series works. The mechanics of the game are layered on in such a way as to violate what I feel is the primary rule of game shows, adherence to the KISS Principle (Keep It Simple Stupid). At its heart the game is a multiple choice trivia quiz, with two contestants competing head to head with each other. The twist – or rather the first of several twists – is that you don't have to give just one answer. Each player is given ten chips, which resemble poker chips each chip represents $5,000. A screen made up of two LCD monitors is raised between the players; it not only serves as the place where they see the questions and the possible answers but it also keeps the players from seeing what the other person is answering. Answers are entered by placing chips on the letters for the various answers; A, B, C or D. A player can place chips on as many or as few answers as they wish. However each chip placed on an incorrect answer is taken away and the amount of money they represent is added to the prize pool for the finale of the tournament at the end of the week. So if a player with eight chips places chips on three answers, one of which is correct, he is left with six chips, and $10,000 is added to the prize pool. There is no time limit in terms of a player giving an answer unless his opponent "presses" him. Each player has two Presses which require the other player to answer within seven seconds. If one player doesn't have the right answer covered with a chip, the duel is over and that player but only those chips that covered incorrect answers are added to the prize pool. If both players fail to cover the correct answer, all of their chips are forfeited with the ones covering incorrect answers going to the pool. They then enter a shootout. They are both given four chips with no monetary value; the person to get the correct answer while using the fewest number of shootout chips wins the duel. Players who win their duel get to keep an amount of money equal to the number of chips they have remaining. They then go on to pick from one of three people randomly selected from the show's pool of 24 contestants. The top four contestants in terms of duels won and money earned have seats in the "Leaders Box." The four players in the Box at the start of the final show will play for the amount of money in the Prize Pool.

Sounds complicated right? Well, it's sort of like the difference between Poker and Tournament Poker. In a regular Poker game the focus is on the current hand. In Tournament Poker, the primary focus is on the hand but the player also has to be aware of how the tournament is structured, where they stand in terms of chip count in the tournament and at the table, when the value of the blinds go up and so on. It's another case of where detail is layered on but the primary focus for the player should always be on the hands they're playing. So it is with Duel. The primary focus of the player should be on keeping as many of his own chips as possible while trying to force the opponent to waste chips. (I don't know why I'm using the masculine pronoun here – in two nights of the show only two men have actually competed and only one has won a duel.) This is where the Press option comes in – it forces players who don't know the answer to use more chips. A player who is certain enough of the correct answer that they can play only one or two chips can gain a real advantage using the press against an opponent who is less clear of the correct answer; conversely a player who has no clue about the correct answer can either force an opponent to use the maximum number of chips or rush their thinking process so that they don't cover the right answer. This gives the show a valid strategic aspect to it that you don't see in most game shows. I'm sure experts in Game Theory could analyse correct choices to death, but for my part I'm just happy to see a game show where not only are players pitted against each other, but there is more to playing the game than simply answering a trivia question or picking numbered briefcases.

The tournament format is essential to Duel. The show builds towards the final contest between the four players in the Leaders Box for a guaranteed one million dollar prize (and possibly more depending on how many chips are collected during the week), and there is dramatic tension in having a contestant winning their duel in one episode and having to choose who they'll face... but holding the actual announcement over until the next episode. But the tournament aspect of the show would seem to argue against having it as a weekly series. The format of the current miniseries with six episodes in a week allows the show to have a fixed pool of twenty-four contestants who are there for every episode and allows the actual leaders to stay in the Leaders Box. Now, I realise that the series was probably shot in fewer than six days but there would undoubtedly be logistical problems in trying to have the show run for even thirteen weeks. Do you restrict the pool of challengers or do you bring a new group in every week? Do you bring back the people in the Leaders Box every week or just have them appear as names and pictures on a wall? How high do you allow the prize pool to build?

Duel is hosted by Mike Greenberg who is probably best known as the co-host of the Mike & Mike Show on ESPN. Well at least he's well known among people who watch ESPN in the mornings, or have access to ESPN Radio – obviously I'm in neither of these categories. There are some definite negatives about Greenberg's hosting style. For one thing he doesn't seem to have any gift for humorous banter of any sort. He seems to be totally serious all of the time and it's wearing on the audience. He also seems to have a couple of annoying quirks. Whenever a new duel is about to start, Greenberg seems compelled to restate the rules to the new contestant and the audience, or at least port of the rules (the part where he tells them the chips are worth $5,000 each). Another quirk seems to grow out of his experience on radio. From time to time he seems compelled to announce that "You are watching Duel on ABC." This sort of thing is pretty much necessary on radio where it's not always obvious what show you're listening to and what stations you're hearing; on TV it's redundant. Television has plenty of clues, including the "Bugs" at the bottom of the screen to tell you what network you're watching, and if you've stuck with a show for any length of time you know what the show is just by watching it come back from commercial. And boy do there seem to be a lot of commercials in Duel, all of them timed for moments of "high drama" like a crucial answer or the selection of the next opponent.

The pedigree of Duel is interesting. It originated in France from producers FrenchTV (although the series apparently isn't seen in France yet). It was brought to the United States by Gail Berman (former president of FOX's Entertainment) and Lloyd Braun (former president of ABC Entertainment) and sold to ABC. A British version of show will begin in January 2008 and the show has been optioned in a dozen other countries if the show proves popular in Britain and the United States.

As I've stated, I am enjoying Duel even though I have trouble with Greenburg as host. I like the strategic aspects of it particularly the ability to force an opponent to make less than optimal choices. This aspect makes the show more than just another trivia challenge. It is certainly preferable to shows like last season's stinker Show Me The Money (with William Shatner) or the popular Deal Or No Deal. The fact that Deal Or No Deal and even one of my favourites 1 vs. 100 are popular may be a bad sign for Duel in terms of gaining an American audience. Do Americans like complexity or strategy in their game shows? The fact that a show where the high point in strategy is deciding which briefcase to pick and whether or not to take an offer is one of the hottest shows on TV seems to indicate that they don't. And for all that I love shows like Jeopardy and 1 vs. 100, they are also very basic in terms of what a player has to think about – there isn't much for the player to do beyond getting the right answer to the question. The strategic aspect and the tournament format are what set Duel apart. I don't think you can scrap the tournament format of the show. Certainly you could have players face off against each other, with the current champion playing until they lose and then taking their money and leaving, but that would seem to make it just another trivia challenge. But in my opinion the tournament format would seem to make the show impossible to offer as a continuing series. On the other hand I could definitely see the show as something you could trot out during sweeps (a full week of shows or episodes presented two or three days a week for the full month) or even for a restricted period during the summer. A great deal will depend on ratings of course, and while the show did adequately during its debut (as did Clash Of The Choirs) it didn't set the world on fire, so ABC may not see fit to even try it again once the Writers Strike ends. In my book that would be unfortunate.

The Sound Of The Season

Both ABC and NBC debuted new shows on Monday night. Both will have a limited run this week, but while one has the potential to become a regular series, this time around I'm going to be reviewing the one that has the potential – if people are watching – to become a holiday standard. That show is Clash Of The Choirs on NBC.

For me, choral music has always been associated with Christmas and I'm willing to bet that most people in North America or Europe – regardless of religious faith – are the same way because this is the time of year when music performed by choirs comes close to being ubiquitous. I also know a little about choral competitions. As a student in public school in Saskatoon in the 1960s singing in the school choir or with your class was almost mandatory as was participation in the city-wide choir competition. It wasn't necessarily something I looked forward to – the adjudicators seemed to take great pleasure in pointing out the faults in the singing of seven, eight, nine and ten year old kids. They usually pointed out something which standing up there you knew you didn't do. Indeed the last time I participated in one of those competitions was in 1966. The next year my class opted out of the competition because the previous year's adjudicators claimed we had sung "deserted are our hollowed sheep" when collectively we knew we had sung the correct words, "deserted are our huddled sheep." The last time I sang in public as part of a choir was in 1968 at the Saskatoon Press Club (a long and boring story, but at the same time a treasured memory for me) and while these days I can barely carry a tune in a bucket let alone stay in key and on pitch, I still appreciate the hard work that goes into singing as part of a choir. That's part of why I was looking forward to Clash Of The Choirs.

While Clash Of The Choirs is produced by NBC and BBC Worldwide America, the actual concept for the show comes from Scandinavian production company Friday TV. There the show is called Singalong but while the details may differ, the premise is the same in both versions. A celebrity goes back to their hometown to put together a choir of twenty members which then goes through a training process. After the training, the choirs go head to head in a live competition (which explains why I don't have an image for this show) over a period of three nights, with the winner being announced on the fourth night. And while the Scandinavian version of the series rewards the winning choir with all expense paid trips, the American version is for charity. The winning choir will earn $250,000 for a local charity chosen by the celebrity choir director.

The celebrities selected by NBC ran a gamut of age, experience and musical styles, not to mention parts of the country. Nick Lachey, formerly of the "boy band" 98 Degrees, (not to mention being married to Jessica Simpson) formed a choir in Cincinatti. Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child represented Houston Texas, Michael Bolton picked his choir in New Haven Connecticut, country singer Blake Shelton selected in Oklahoma City, and Patti Labelle looked to find a choir in Philadelphia. In the show's first episode, which ran for two hours, we were "treated" to the audition process that each singer went through (and in some cases had to endure). Fortunately coverage of the audition process was kept relatively brief so that it was not entirely like American Idol auditions where we are inundated with footage of bad singers. Oh there were bad singers in the process, as well as people who thought that singing in a choir was optional and they could get by with dance moves. There were also people who insisted on songs that the celebrities had made famous, a process that didn't necessarily endear them to their prospective leaders – Patti Labelle very quickly came to hate bad renditions of Lady Marmalade even telling people who said they were going to sing it, "Please don't." There were human interest stories in each of the locations, whether it was a girl who gave Nick his first kiss in high school (and who incidentally has a tremendous voice), the two soldiers who auditioned for Blake in Oklahoma City (the both made it and sang in uniform on the show), or the 77 year-old lady who impressed Michael Bolton.

Once the behind the scenes footage was shown the choirs performed. In this first round most of the songs seemed to be pop songs of various types, although Patti Labelle's group did The Whole World In Your Hands. Nick Lachey's choir did Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten and performed it primarily as a choral number with limited use of soloists. Kelly Rowland's group from Houston sang George Michael's Freedom in a performance that was sharp even though I found some fault with the soloists. They brought it together at the end though. The third group to perform was Michael Bolton's and it didn't live up to my expectations either from Bolton or from choirs in general. The whole thing felt like a showcase for the single soloist with nineteen back-up singers. It was one of the two worst performances of the night. The other weak performance followed with the Oklahoma City Choir fronted by Blake Shelton. It should be noted that Shelton readily admitted that he knew absolutely nothing about choirs – he had never even been in one – and it showed though the audition process and the actual performance. They did my fellow Canadian Tom Cochrane's Life Is A Highway, and while it's a song that could probably work with a choir, I don't really think it did much for this particular group. The final performance was from Patti Labelle's group and it was an amazing experience. The choir came together beautifully, as a choir with the soloists feeding into the choir rather than being out front and expecting the choir to support them. It reminded me of some of the great gospel performances I've heard over the years.

The mechanical parts of the show on the other hand may need a bit of work. Hosted by Maria Menounos of the Today Show and Access Hollywood, the show decided not to go with a judges' panel of any sort. Instead the celebrities whose choirs weren't singing were asked to comment on the performances. Naturally there was absolutely no criticism, constructive or otherwise, about the performance just comments about how great the choirs were and how wonderful the celebrity leader had done. I'm not sure that this was particularly helpful. Certainly for the viewers, who vote after each night's performance on which choir was best, this mutual self-congratulation was less than helpful since it didn't give them much idea of what was right and what was wrong with the performances. And while there were a couple of standout performances (my personal favourites were the Cincinnati and Philadelphia choirs and my least favourite was Bolton's New Haven group) not having any real critiques may make the voting procedure less about the quality of the singing and more about the popularity of the celebrity leaders. Maybe I'm flashing back to those elementary school choir competitions, but I would have liked to have seen at least some critical comments made. You don't necessarily need Simon Cowell style snarky comments for this show, but I'm convinced you need someone who can point out strengths and weaknesses. I'm also not sure about Maria Menounos as host. I found her voice a bit irritating. I've seen some criticism of her attitude; there were times when she interrupted people or cut them off. I'm not going to criticise her on that for the simple reason that the show was live to air and she had to keep it with a strict two hour time limit.

In honesty, I don't believe that I can say that Clash Of The Choirs is a show that has ongoing series appeal like that other BBC Worldwide series Dancing With The Stars. I do feel however that it is a show that fits with this time of the year. While I'm not entirely convinced that American audiences will embrace the concept (I fear that the ratings will stink although under the circumstances NBC isn't going to dump it), it is a welcome respite from reruns of whatever NBC has to rerun (the cupboard seems pretty bare over there even without the strike making a mess of things), and decades old Christmas specials. And while I probably would have preferred to see the show wind up its run closer to Christmas Eve than it will, or add an extra choir to run for a full week (the final episode airs Thursday night) I don't think that's something that should stand in the show's way. The show isn't perfect, but for a one week event at a time of the year when choral music asserts itself in our consciousness I think it works. I just hope that NBC is wise enough to recognise that this probably won't work as a sweeps event. If they are, and if they keep it as a bit of a Christmas treat, they may just have something that will become a holiday tradition in a lot of houses.

Short Takes – December 16, 2007

Some interesting stuff came up this week, some strike related and some not so much. Okay most everything these days is strike related, but you know what I mean.

Oh, and by the way, this is for Phish, who made a comment on an earlier post. Before I reveal the comment let me just tell you that Phish is the guy I mentioned last week who commented in TVSquad that the best writers in Hollywood should just go back to work, and that unions in general were un-capitalistic and defied the concept of supply and demand. Not content to troll about the strike on a totally unrelated topic, he decided to pop up here to write the following: "Brent, you are a 2 bit writer and a failure. pls go get a real job and provide for your family for f***s sake! You're such a loser, i feel sorry for you!" (I edited his language). To which all I have to say is that he's about as wrong about this as he is about unions which in my view is pretty wrong. I am not a "2 bit writer"; no one will pay me that much. I have had a couple of articles on wargaming published – and paid for – many moons ago, and that's probably more than Phish can say. I also had my own zine, which had a small but dedicated following. More to the point I don't write as a job, never have. I write as a hobby – some people build model railroads, I write for relaxation. If a little money comes my way, well, I'm grateful but I hardly depend on it. Okay, enough of that.

Journeyman and Bionic Woman cancelled?: The networks haven't exactly been forthcoming with announcements about cancellations. A lot of the "news" that we get have actually been rumours reported by "our sources." Which is all well and good I suppose but it's not like someone from the network sending out a press release saying something like, "This show isn't working so we're kicking it to the curb." We're not getting that this year. For example here's what The Sun says about the cancellation of Bionic Woman (which starred former East Enders favourite Michelle Ryan and therefore of great interest to the Brits): "The ex-EastEnders star stunned Hollywood by landing the lead role in the much anticipated remake of 70s hit The Bionic Woman, but the show is reportedly about to be axed.... A final decision is expected to be announced in the coming weeks." The title of the article though is Bionic Woman Scrapped. And the same thing is true about Journeyman; E!'s Watch With Kristin has an article titled Exclusive: Journeyman's Journey Is Over but what she reports is basically rumour: "Sources tell me tonight that Journeyman has been closed down. No word yet on whether the series' final two episodes will air as scheduled next Monday and Wednesday on NBC, but we can all keep our fingers crossed."

Now I have no doubt that both of these shows are toast, and a big sign came when Chuck and Life got their "back nines" but Journeyman and Bionic Woman didn't. Neither show was getting spectacular ratings, with Bionic Woman debuting with 14 million viewers but after eight episodes dropping to 6 million. At least in the case of Journeyman – which draws about the same number of viewers or a few hundred thousand less – the blame can quite certainly be placed on CSI: Miami. There hasn't been a series yet that has been able to stand up to that juggernaut on either NBC or ABC.

I don't know about Journeyman, a show which seems to have developed the sort of fan base that sends nuts to TV executives – or in the case of Journeyman boxes of Rice-a-roni (the San Francisco treat – the show is set in San Francisco). It's on Monday night and I'm one of those people who tapes CSI: Miami on my bowling night. Bionic Woman, on the other hand is a case of expectations not being met. And while it's easy to blame the lead actress (Ryan normally speaks with a British accent and I've heard the rather absurd assertion that Ryan can't do an American accent and act at the same time), the problems with the show lie a lot deeper. Part of it is the writing but in my opinion at least the entire concept was wrong. Revived by David Eick who was one of the producers of Battlestar Galactica, like Galactica the original Bionic Woman was also a show created by Glenn Larson, so naturally but probably unrealistically viewers expected this revival to be as spectacular as the revival of Galactica. The problem is that I'm fairly convinced (and was convinced when the show debuted) that there wasn't as much you could do with the concept of Bionic Woman. What are you really able to do with a woman with replacement parts today that you couldn't do in the 1970s. I suppose you could make the character darker – I suspect that was the real attraction of Katie Sackoff's character Sara Corvus who was an almost immediate fan favourite – but how do you make a darker protagonist attractive to audiences from week to week. Instead Jamie Summers on the 2007 revival of Bionic Woman was essentially an innocent thrust into the world of spying for which she was truly unprepared, just as the original Jamie was. I think the public wanted something more.

Late shows going back soon?: This is another area where rumours abound, although there is one aspect that is out of the realm of rumours. I'll get into that one in the next item because it's an interesting one. The reports are that at least some of the major late night talk shows will be returning towards the beginning of January 2008. Variety is reporting that, "the betting in network circles is that several hosts will be back on the air by Jan. 7, if not sooner," possibly with Letterman, Leno, Ferguson and O'Brien coming back at the same time. It seems more likely however that Leno and O'Brien will be coming back for sure: "Latenight insiders, however, believe Leno and O'Brien are most likely to return in early January, no matter what Letterman decides. NBC has to be concerned about the plunging ratings for both shows, which in recent weeks have lost nearly half their audience." While Kilborn's show has been doing well with audiences, he is financially the least secure of the late night hosts, and according to Nikki Finke, the financial strain of paying at least some of the salaries for "below the line employees" of his show may have pushed him to the edge of bankruptcy so that if the others go back without writers, he may well be forced to as well.

Here's an interesting thought. While the networks may well feel that they're winning a victory over the WGA by forcing the late night talk shows back into production, this can be a double edged sword if Leno, O'Brien and Kimmel make sure that everyone knows that they're doing this under protest, that they need their writers, that the shows aren't going to be as funny without the writers, and particularly if the shows suck without the writers, this could help strengthen the support, or at least the understanding, of the writers' cause amongst the general public.

Letterman and Ferguson back with writers?: This item has a lot sounder basis in fact, and it may spell considerable trouble for the other talk shows. On Saturday the WGA announced that they would be open to offering "interim agreements" to independent producers and any of the media companies that sought to break ranks. Previously they had offered such agreements to the Kennedy Center Honours and to the Screen Actors Guild Awards. An interim agreement, as explained by Mark Evanier is when, "an independent producer says, in effect, "If you'll take me off the Strike List and let my writers return to work, I'll agree to your terms." There are variations on how these pacts are structured but in most cases, the Indie has a Favored Nations option. That is, he signs a new contract that the WGA draws up and then when we make our deal with the AMPTP — a deal which presumably will have more favorable terms for a Producer — the Indie can elect to switch to that. In any case, the principle is that they agree to sign with us, we go back to work at that studio and then, whenever the new contract is finalized, it displaces the interim agreement." The first producer to announce that he will be seeking an interim agreement is David Letterman's company Worldwide Pants, producer of The Late Show and The Late Late Show, and while there may be hitches it looks as though the WGA seems inclined to make the deal.

Why can Letterman make this deal and Leno and the others can't and, more to the point, why would the WGA be willing to accept Letterman's offer? The first point is fairly simple to answer; Letterman has followed Johnny Carson's practice and owns his show outright through his production company. CBS only serves as the show's distributor. According to the Tonight Show website Leno's production company Big Dog Productions does the show "in association with NBC Studios." Similarly Conan O'Brien produces Late Night with Conan O'Brien through his company Conaco with Broadway Video (Lorne Michaels's company), "in association with NBC Universal Television Studios" and Jimmy Kimmel Live is produced by Jackhole Productions (which Kimmel owns in partnership with Adam Carolla and producer Daniel Kellison) "in association with ABC Studios." This means that Letterman can make a deal for his show and Craig Ferguson's without the intervention from CBS. And as Mark Evanier points out Letterman is pretty much immune from the issues that AMPTP considers deal killers (the issues that they used as an excuse to pull out of the negotiations): "Letterman, of course, doesn't have to worry about some of the "deal killer" issues that are presently said to be an obstacle to a WGA/AMPTP settlement. He doesn't produce any "reality" shows. He doesn't produce any cartoons. Excerpts from his shows do stream on the Internet via the CBS site but that could be curtailed or kept within a window that the WGA would agree was promotional. There are, as yet, no DVDs of old episodes of Dave's show." As to why the Guild is willing to make a deal with Letterman, beyond the fact that it's a crack in the wall (albeit a tiny one) but Letterman – a veteran of the '88 strike who came back without writers when Carson did – has also been extremely loyal to his workers. As Rob Burnett, the producer of The Late Show with David Letterman describes it, "Worldwide Pants has always been a writer-friendly company. Dave has been a member of the WGA for more than 30 years, and I have been a member for more than 20." According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, not has Letterman been paying his non-writing staff (about $300,000) but he also pays the rent on the Ed Sullivan Theater and insurance costs of 200+ employees. According to a source, "triple that figure [the $300,000] and you'll be close to what he's been shelling out a week for six weeks. I'm tired of everyone being lumped together for taking roughly the same out-of-pocket hit. It's not close." If nothing else that builds up a huge amount of good will. For their part CBS seems a bit conflicted over this. In a press release, CBS stated, "We respect the intent of Worldwide Pants to serve the interests of its independent production company and its employees by seeking this interim agreement with the WGA. However, this development should not confuse the fact that CBS remains unified with the AMPTP, and committed to working with the member companies to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with the WGA that positions everyone in our industry for success in a rapidly changing marketplace." In other words, they're happy that Letterman wants to come back with writers (for reasons that will become clear) but want to cover their butts by making it clear that CBS isn't going to be standing in line to make their own interim agreement.

This is a big thing though – assuming of course that the interim agreement is granted – because it puts the late night shows that are going to be at a significant disadvantage when and if they come back without writers. It's not just the obvious either, the lack of monologues and the other services the writers provide for the shows. If you're an actor are you more likely to want to appear on Leno, passing through the WGA picket line and probably being called every name in the book, or would you be more likely to go on Letterman's show, which would not only be a pleasanter experience thanks to the lack of pickets. In fact it could almost be seen as a show of support for the writers to go on Letterman and refuse to be booked with Leno. It's almost a dead certainty that Letterman would be able to get any presidential candidate that he wanted from either party too. And if Leno's show (and Kimmel's, and O'Brien's) are really bad, the public is likely to turn to the shows that have writers, which would mean a significant boost to the ratings of the two Worldwide Pants series.

On animations writers:
Mark Evanier (again), has a nice piece on the reasons why many animation writers probably want to be in the Writers Guild rather than the Cartoonists Guild. The latter is actually Local 839 of IATSE, the one union which seems to be very conciliatory with AMPTP (which is another way of saying kissing their asses) and very opposed to the Writers Guild. The basic point is that Local 839 has rarely served the best interests of animation writers, who seem doomed to be part of the union because of the way that theatrical cartoons were made in the 1940s, without writers per se but with "story men" who developed gags but also worked as artists. For one thing, Local 839 seems far more aligned with people to punch a clock every day (like animators and assistant animators) than it is for writers who don't necessarly work "at the office." Mark points out a couple of horror stories – like a union business agent who responded to a request for assistance on some issues by saying "I'm too busy to bother with you overpaid whiners." In fact, as Mark points out they weren't overpaid, just paid more than the business rep thought they should be. In fact, thanks to Local 839's "bargaining" abilities the writers had a base pay level that even the cheapest companies in the business in the 1980s (starting with Hanna-Barbera) were ashamed to pay. Mark also offers some true horror stories about trying to move writers from the Cartoonist Guild to the Writers Guild, efforts which ultimately failed, but which saw the business rep spending more time chatting with the studio representatives than he did with the people he was supposed to be representing and was in danger of losing. And while the current business agent for Local 839 is far better than his predecessor, there is still a major fight to get animation writers into their "proper" union.

Videos on iTunes Canada: This isn't a strike story except it kind of is in a peripheral sort of way. Earlier this week the Canadian version of the iTunes Music Store began making TV shows available for purchase. It isn't a big selection right now. For one thing there are only thirteen series available at the moment. For another thing, of those, it seems that only about five are American and they aren't the major network series like Cane or Boston Legal. This has a lot to do with precisely which rights Canadian networks buy when they purchase an American series. Currently Canadians can watch the following (shows marked * are American series airing in Canada:

• From CBC: Dragons Den (a show about people trying to get money from entrepreneurs for their inventions/business ideas), Little Mosque On The Prairie, The Rick Mercer Report.
  
• From CTV: Corner Gas, Instant Star, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Robson Arms.
  
• From the Comedy Central (which is owned by CTV): The Sarah Silverman Program*, South Park*, Drawn Together*.
  
• From the NHL: Stanley Cup Classics, NHL Games of the Year.
  
• From MTV Canada (also owned by CTV): The Hills*.
  
• From YTV (or Nickelodeon): Avatar: The Last Air Bender*.
  

Here's where the peripheral aspect of the strike comes into play. For the most part the contract that the Writers Guild of Canada has managed to get with TV producers in Canada has been inferior even to the deal that WGA writers had before the current strike began. However, as Denis McGrath points out in a piece in his blog Dead Things On A Stick this is one area in which Canadian writers have it better. A statement from the WGC explains where the writers stand on revenues from iTunes: "The flow of revenue for use of these programs is governed by the terms of those licence agreements as well as the WGC collective agreement – the Writers IPA. In addition to other payments under the collective agreement, writers have a royalty formula calculated on Distributors' Gross Revenues when a conventional TV show is delivered over any platform, including online. Digital downloads may be included in an original licence between the independent producer who owns the program and the Canadian broadcaster, for which the broadcaster has paid a licence fee. This licence fee forms part of the writer's royalty formula.... In any case, the digital distribution of made for t.v. programs always results in revenue flowing into the writer's royalty formula." In other words the Canadian writers of the shows available on iTunes get a royalty payment (because they retain authorship) when their shows are downloaded. Also, though it doesn't seem to apply for iTunes yet, animation writers are covered under the WCG contract. This of course is one of the six points that AMPTP demanded that the WGA take off the table when they withdrew from negotiations. Another issue that APMTP was adamant about having removed from negotiations (claiming that it could end up with producers paying out more money than they made from online sales) was the question of using Distributors' Gross Revenues as a basis for payment for online distribution. As you can see, this is something else that the Canadian writers already had. In the terms of handling this area at least, the Canadian contract is ahead of what the union in the US currently has and well ahead of what the Studios and Networks seem willing at present to give them.

Who Does The PTC Hate This Week – December 12, 2007

I have to confess I am in something of a deep blue funk of late. I do know why. There's a touch of Christmas in the mix – I tend to get irritable around this time of the year, usually because I can't find what I want of don't know what other people want (where can I get Test Tube Aliens in Saskatoon?!) – but this year it's more. Television is letting me down. I want to write about TV shows; I want to tell you what I like and what I don't and why I like them and why I don't. The end of the WGA-AMPTP strike "negotiations" – in quotes because negotiations tend to feature two sides bargaining in something called good faith and one side, the one with far fewer than 12,000 members, wasn't behaving like they believe in good faith – left me thoroughly pissed off at AMPTP. And then when some neo-con posted a comment about the strike in a article at TVSquad that was totally unrelated to the strike I'm afraid I went and fed the troll.

(I don't want to rehash this because I doubt that the guy reads my harmless little writings, but he made a follow-up comment that really ticked me off all over again but this time I didn't reply. He wrote: "i understand your point of view, but it doesnt make economic sense. this is how the capitalist market works, if you dont like it, move to russia (on but wait, they are capitalist too now...) [new paragraph] its demand vs. supply, simple as that, and unions are as un-capitalistic as humanly possible..." He's wrong of course, or maybe he's right, but in that case then the big studios and networks should be disbanded and each individual producer should have to find venues for his movies and TV stations that are willing to air his programs. If the supply of labour doesn't have the right to collectively bargain with those who demand it, why should the people who supply movies and TV shows have the right to collectively bargain with the audiences and the advertisers who demand them. Why is one capitalistic and the other un-capitalistic?)

And then there's the PTC. Because I don't have TV shows to write about I feel like I am constantly writing about the PTC and I have to say I am coming to loathe writing about them. Again, it's a case having little else to write about. And talk about un-capitalistic, to say nothing about anti-democratic, the PTC is all over it. The PTC says that advertisers, regardless of whether the she show they are sponsoring is delivering an audience (and more specifically an audience that they want) should base their decisions about what shows they should buy advertising on not based on the number of people who watch it but on whether it is a "wholesome" show, with the standard of quality being declared by a small group of people – the PTC. As far as undemocratic, the PTC is telling that vast majority of Americans that they shouldn't be allowed to watch what they want but only what a tiny self-appointed minority – one million plus (as the PTC is never hesitant to remind us) out of a population of about 303 million – says is good for them. If they had real power they'd be dangerous. So, as much as I hate writing about them on a weekly basis, I'm writing about them on a weekly basis. This time, hopefully, I'll be able to keep my stuff mercifully short.

The PTC has two new press releases up on their website. One is a condemnation of a plan announced by CBS president Les Moonves to "repurpose" programs from their cable network Showtime to the main CBS network. I don't want to delve into the details of his one because it is also the subject of the TV Trends column this week with the overblown rhetoric that is so typical of that particular writer. Not that Tim Winter, the PTC's president is any slouch at overblown rhetoric of course. The press release contains gems like this: "CBS' plan is purely based on corporate greed, not what's good for families or in the public interest." Or this: "CBS has no qualms about putting shows that make heroes of serial killers and revel in sick, graphic violence or those that condone drug use and glorify drug dealers in front of millions of children and families on broadcast television." And of course this: "If CBS goes through with this plan, the PTC will certainly contact every sponsor of the programs. And if indecent content appears over the public airwaves anywhere in the country prior to 10pm, we will urge the public to let their voices be heard at the FCC."

The other press release is another congratulations to Senators Ted Stevens, Daniel Inouye and John D. Rockefeller (average age of the three: 79) for their support of the "Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act", which the PTC is urging the Senate to pass as fast as they possibly can. PTC Chairman Tim Winter stated, "Congress needs to reinstate the FCC's authority to uphold the decency law after the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that so-called 'fleeting' expletives were appropriate to air on the public airwaves. We urge the full Senate to pass this bill before Christmas to ensure that children are not bombarded by indecent material in the New Year." Because of course Chairman Winter seems to think that the 2^nd Circuit's ruling means that every TV show that will – eventually – be written will be filled with the vilest of language, forgetting perhaps – but more likely ignoring the fact – that the decision applies specifically to unplanned incidents in live broadcasts. Take for instance an incident a few years ago where a man presiding over a debate told one of the speakers to "go fuck yourself." The man presiding over the debate was Vice President Dick Cheney, and he was presiding over the Senate at the time. Or what about the time when George W. Bush was caught on an open microphone describing another international leader with a word that would be censored if it were on even a basic cable show. If this legislation was in place and that event had been broadcast live on network TV, the network would face a $320,000 fine for every station that broadcast a statement by the President of the United States, the same as it would for an athlete overheard saying "shit" by a sidelines microphone after a bad play. But what do I know; I live in a country where not only are fleeting expletives tolerated – if frequently apologized for – but scripted obscenities, and indeed both fleeting and planned nudity, are perfectly acceptable. Of course that description also covers most of the industrialized world.

Of course if the Senate were to pass this legislation, it is hardly bulletproof. As a commenter on the website WashingtonWatch.com put it, "The text of the bill, if it ever becomes law, would guarantee legal challenges, and given the U.S. Court of Appeals Ruling on the FCC's "fleeting expletive" standard, would most likely be held overbroad and unconstitutional. The text of the bill 'a single word may constitute indecent programming' lacks any kind of boundaries, as it simply piggybacks on the FCC's general regulatory powers. It also flies in the face of 30 years of judicial precedent, beginning with the Pacifica ruling. Since indecent speech has constitutional protection (unlike obscene speech), a court must be sensitive as to whether the limitation is broader than necessary. This bill does not do that."

Turning now to the Broadcast Worst of the Week which is The CW's series The Game. The PTC's review contains one of their most hilarious definitions of foul language. It seems that foul language is now no longer confined to former obscenities (like "hell," "damn," and "ass") which are now routinely used on TV without the Republic crumbling, or to words like "bitch," "slut," "skank," "hoochie," and "ho." No, we now have the addition of tone of voice as actionable in the PTC's little world. In between the warning about "hell," "damn," and "ass," and the bit where they go on about "bitch," "slut," "skank," "hoochie," and "ho" comes this little gem: "In one scene Derwin is called a 'negro' by an African-American female in an extremely degrading tone of voice." Yes, being called a "negro" is now "foul language" if it isn't said properly.

The plot itself comes in for attack of course. It concerns the male lead Derwin being encouraged to live the life of the single athlete by his teammates. This apparently involves having sex with a lot of different women but avoiding anything that even smacks of commitment: "They give him three rules to live by. First, they instruct him never to use girls' real names, but rather to give them nicknames like 'hottie, buckwild, or delicious.' Next, they say that he should never spend more than four hours with any one girl. Finally, they tell him never to have a sleep-over with a girl, but only to 'hit it and quit it.'" At the same time the women who engage in this behaviour aren't exactly shining examples of their gender either: "Women discuss their methods of becoming pregnant by professional football players, thus tying themselves to the men and their wealth. They talk about the method of having intercourse with the man, stealing his condom following ejaculation, and injecting the semen into themselves with a turkey baster. Derwin is shown having sex with a topless woman on the living room couch and catching her trying to steal his condom. Derwin is painted as a hero for standing up to the sperm thief."

The PTC's comments on this are indicative of their mindset: "This episode of The Game simply doesn't take life seriously. It irresponsibly throws around issues of sexual promiscuity, gender rights and roles, and race relations. The networks profit off of these very real issues while the young viewers suffer for making poor life decisions based on television's fantasy depictions." The PTC seems to think the attitudes in this episode are reprehensible and unreal (And I don't even want to know where they're coming from with that business about "race relations;" it seems to come out of nowhere). Now I don't know a lot about the life of single football players but I do know a little something (though not terribly much) about pro hockey players and the groupies or "Hockey Annies" who are a pretty constant presence at the games and in the beds of single players (and some married ones too), and some can indeed be this devious. If you are going to do a series, even a comedy series, about professional athletes and the women who share their lives this issue is going to come up. A drama can treat it seriously a comedy has the ability to get the same sort of message across by using humour. And as for the "young viewers" who "suffer for making poor life decisions based on television's fantasy depictions," I would frankly have my doubts about any teenager who made his decisions about sexual promiscuity, and gender rights and roles based on watching a TV show, or even a number of TV series.

Now we all know that the PTC hates Nip/Tuck, which again takes its place as the Cable Worst of the Week. What is a bit surprising is that they are angry at the creator of the series for taking on a subject that they themselves rail about, reality shows. But of course Nip/Tuck takes on the subject with a certain amount of wit that the PTC can't really comprehend let alone duplicate: "One can only marvel at the monumental extent of Ryan Murphy's gall. For the creator of Nip/Tuck to attack television for being shallow and sensationalistic is the very nadir of hypocrisy." In the December 4^th episode, "Desperate for fame and attention, plastic surgeon and sometime gigolo Christian agrees to allow a 'reality' show to be made about himself, his partner Sean, and their family and friends." Of course the resulting show is exploitive, looking at the various people in Christian's life and including scenes of him, "cupping the breasts of a succession of nude models, each of them begging to have their breasts enlarged." The PTC gets that this is supposed to be a moment satirizing the series Dr. 90210 but obviously hates that Murphy and Nip/Tuck are doing it: "No doubt Ryan Murphy would claim that the use of 'reality TV' themes in Nip/Tuck is actually some subtle satire, some deeply insightful meta-textual commentary on the state of American television, yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that Murphy is in fact exploiting those very same elements to raise the ratings of his 'critically acclaimed' and supposedly highbrow drama – even going so far as to have Tiffany 'New York' Pollard, from VH1's execrable "reality" series Flavor of Love and I Love New York, prominently featured as a guest-star. It is difficult to take any implied criticism of "reality TV" seriously when Nip/Tuck indulges in the very same elements with such obvious glee." And after the inevitable call for cable choice they add this evaluation of Ryan Murphy and his writing: "It is clear that with this episode, Ryan Murphy's writing has descended to the level of a low-grade hack. His original story ideas apparently exhausted, he has been reduced to relying on the very television techniques he claims to criticize. But Murphy and his fellow Nip/Tuck cohorts should beware of throwing stones at shabby television, ensconced as they are in a palatial house of glass."

Every so often I describe something the PTC says as being one of the most absurd things ever. In my book the PTC's Misrated section is filled with absurd assertions that show that the PTC usually just doesn't get it. This week the show is the November 27^th episode of Bones which carried a TV-14 DL rating. The PTC is outraged that it didn't carry a 'V' descriptor but for the life of me I can't figure out why. But let's start with a description of the episode or rather the plotline of the episode that has aroused the ire of the PTC. The decomposing murdered body of Santa Claus impersonator Kris Kringle (his real name as they soon discover) is found in a sewer. It isn't a pretty sight – his face has been gnawed by rats. The PTC says this is violence. Of course we don't see any rats anywhere near the body. Of course the PTC editorializes about this: "This sight – coming in the program's opening minutes, at the very beginning of the Family Hour – was certain to put any channel-flipping children who stumbled across it in a festive mood." Later, at their lab, the corpse is examined further: "On a table, the decaying Santa is laid out in his entire gory splendor. 'There is copious insect activity from the sewer!' exclaims a delighted Hodgins as he makes his way around the corpse with tweezer, looking for bugs that might help him figure out where Santa was killed." I suppose this is supposed to be violence in the universe that the PTC inhabits as well. In my world the 'V' descriptor isn't added to shows that show evidence of violent acts, it is used for shows that actually depict violent acts. In this episode of Bones there is only one event that would described as violent, when a group of store Santas at the employment agency where Kris Kringle worked out of attacked and subdued the man who killed him, another Santa who had been picking the pockets of people on the street. There is nothing on this episode (and this one I did watch) that in the least degree deserves a 'V' descriptor. The TV-14 rating should be enough to warn parents who know their kids that this episode and indeed this series might not be suitable for children.

The TV Trends section of the PTC website has a closer look at the organization's attitude towards Les Moonves's announcement that CBS was considering "repurposing" at least one show from their premium cable channel Showtime to the CBS broadcast network, a move which the PTC's press release described as being "purely based on corporate greed, not what's good for families or in the public interest." The TV Trends article, Repurposing: To Whose Purpose? starts with the Moonves announcement and carries on to slam all efforts to move cable shows to broadcast TV while also taking a swipe at professional TV critics along the way to a conclusion which I'm not entirely sure is complete.

The piece starts by declaring that, "The CBS broadcast network is justly infamous for its swath of gory crime dramas like C.S.I., C.S.I. New York, C.S.I. Miami and others. These shows are awash in blood and entrails, and are often charged with depraved sexual tensions as well. Rare is the episode of C.S.I. in which the murder under investigation does not involve or in some way touch upon rape, prostitution, child molestation, sadism or some other unsavory form of sex. However, production on these programs will soon come to a standstill, due to the ongoing TV writer's strike. One might think that, given that all his bloody crime dramas on CBS are going on hiatus, CBS President Les Moonves might consider some other kind of programming." Setting aside the almost puritanical attitudes this statement reveals, one is forced to wonder where Les Moonves is supposed to come up with this "other kind of programming" when new, scripted programming at least isn't going to be available. Set aside as well the fact that this "swath of gory crime dramas" are among the most popular shows on broadcast TV (the original CSI was the most popular show on network TV for the week ending December 9^th), because it is a statement that ignores the other elements on the CBS lineup.

The focus of the PTC is on "repurposing," the practice of taking shows from a broadcast channel and airing them on cable, or – as has been the case in the past and will become increasingly true during the strike – taking shows from a cable channel and airing them on broadcast. In a statement reported on the TVWeek website Moonves announced that the network was "prepared to mount a full schedule for midseason, partly by broadcasting some series from sister pay-cable operation Showtime," with the series Dexter likely to be the first to be added because "it would work well with the network's popular dark crime procedurals." This outraged the author of the PTC article: Among those programs will be Weeds, about a drug-dealing housewife, and Dexter, a show about a heroic serial killer. You read that right: on Showtime's Dexter, the hero of the program is a serial killer. The viewer is apparently supposed to cheer for Dexter, because he only kills murderers or other criminals such as pedophiles. On the program, Dexter's father – a police officer – teaches Dexter how to commit his murders: how to drain his victim's corpses of blood, how to dispose of bodies, and generally how to evade the law." Of course the PTC fails to acknowledge that the show is based on a series of three novels by Jeff Lindsay (pen-name of Jeffry P. Freundlich).

But then the PTC has a disgust for cable, which it typifies as "increasingly home to more graphically violent and sexually explicit original programming – programming often laden as well with truly astonishing amounts of profanity." And it is here where the PTC takes its shot at professional TV critics by saying that, "Naturally, television critics are hopelessly infatuated with these rancid shows, lauding their 'dark,' 'edgy,' and 'mature' themes (as though there is something 'mature' about subjects and language which delight adolescents)." But here the PTC makes an inexplicable statement: "In the incestuously insular world of television production, however, praise from 'the critics' is the ultimate compliment." So I suppose this makes shows like Dexter being on the air the fault of people like Maureen Ryan and Alan Sepinwall. I imagine they'd be surprised to know that they had such power. The PTC is wrong on this of course. I doubt that most of the TV networks are worried about what the Sepinwalls and Ryans of the world are saying except when it comes time to pull quotes for advertising; it is the number of viewers that counts even on premium cable channels (see the demise of such HBO series as Rome, Carnivale and John From Cincinatti which were loved by the critics but either weren't working financially or weren't drawing an audience).

They then reveal a woeful failure to understand aspects of television by saying, "... if a program, however tawdry to the vast majority of television viewers, attracts even a couple of hundred thousand viewers, it is considered an overwhelming success. In these circumstances, the corporate ownership looks for ways to turn small hits drawing tiny numbers on cable into bigger hits drawing millions of viewers on broadcast TV." But it isn't a "couple of hundred thousand" really, unless of course the definition of couple is extended far beyond the traditional. In the case of Dexter the first season of the series – on a premium cable channel – drew an average audience of two million viewers per episode. Just for the record that is twice as many people as the PTC claims as its membership. Which begs the question of which group is more representative of the "vast majority of television viewers?" But of course it isn't the matter of audiences that the PTC objects to when it comes to content, it's the sex and the violence and the language. The PTC "proves" the failure of efforts to make the shows more acceptable for basic cable and broadcast TV by stating that "In each case mentioned above, the networks involved promised – cross their hearts and hope to die! – that every episode would be carefully scrutinized and scrubbed clean of any violence, sex, language or dialogue which might even possibly contravene broadcast decency standards…with predictable results. In side-by-side comparisons of the cable originals with the broadcast reruns, the PTC found practically no difference in content." This is of course the sort of statement that the PTC is always making, but the question is really, what do they expect the broadcasters to do? The article cites The Sopranos, The Shield, Damages, and Sex And The City as examples of how the networks involved "failed" to clean up the shows. I don't know about Damages which aired in a modified version on the FOX controlled My Network TV, or The Shield which I've only seen in passing in its censored form. I have seen The Sopranos and Sex And The City in their original forms and briefly as changed for non-premium cable. There's no nudity, and the language has been brought to the standards of basic cable. While Samantha may still be a bed-hopping slut (which is why I love her), she is no longer a naked bed-hopping slut and her language would no longer make a sailor blush. Tony Soprano no longer admires the silicone enhanced ladies of the Bada-bing or uses most of the words that people find objectionable. I don't know what they want, but obviously the PTC expects Samantha to be portrayed in a more chaste manner and Tony not to be the brutal creature that is the entire reason why the show was successful.

The article "concludes" by listing the three "dangers" of repurposing. First: "it creates the possibility that any TV viewer anywhere – adult, teen or child – might be exposed to disturbing and explicit content. So long as Dexter, The Sopranos and other such programs remained confined to premium cable, this was not a concern; adults who enjoyed such programming could order it, while viewers who would find it disgusting or disturbing were not forced to pay for it, or ever see it." But of course, no one is forced to see these shows if they are on basic cable or network television either, unless of course the PTC believes the American to be sheep being force-fed by the networks. Choice and free-will exist. Second, repurposing "makes a joke of America's broadcast indecency laws. Broadcasters do not own the airwaves – the American people do. Broadcasters are granted licenses and allowed to use the airwaves, so long as they operate 'in the public interest,' as required by law. But in their arrogance, the multi-billionaire network owners pooh-pooh the law, claiming that if viewers are offended by the use to which the public property is being put, they should just 'change the channel.' By 'repurposing' programming which is created for premium cable -- programming which is intended to operate on a restricted-to-adults pay network, and which is deliberately written to incorporate ideas inappropriate for children and which many adult viewers would find unsavory or offensive – the broadcast network bosses are defiantly ignoring the laws which the majority of Americans find desirable." But is that statement entirely accurate (and I'm not just talking about the description of Showtime and HBO as "restricted-to-adults", a description that makes them sound like The Playboy Channel)? As noted, broadcasters that have repurposed premium cable series for broadcast and basic cable have made an effort to remove objectionable content in the form of nudity, obscene language and the most extreme violence. These are efforts to fit the content within the restrictions of the broadcast indecency laws, and based on the fact that I have yet to see any broadcast station fined for showing episodes of The Shield or Sex And The City, it is my assumption that this effort has been viewed as successful by everyone other than the PTC. Third (and the point which brings the article to a sudden halt, in my view at least): "by putting extreme and graphic drama on broadcast TV, programmers are deliberately 'raising the stakes.' One has only to look at the programming filling movie theaters and TV screens today to see that this 'upping the ante' is already happening. Allowing adult premium cable programs like Dexter to be "repurposed" onto broadcast TV will serve only the purposes of television's greedy and arrogant bosses…not those of the American people." While I do agree about the statement about TV's bosses being "greedy and arrogant," I must confess that I don't understand this point at all. What exactly does the PTC mean by "raising the stakes" or "upping the ante" and how is this "proven" by what is on the movie and TV screens? This is the least developed point of all – I've quoted almost the entirety of the third point (I dropped only the words "Thirdly, and perhaps most disturbingly" from the original text). Are they saying that by putting an episode of Dexter or Weeds on CBS the other networks would be "forced" to put on something more extreme, or that by airing those shows in bowdlerized versions people will expect "more of the same but even edgier?" What I do know is that the audience is not made up of sheep, and that no one is forced to watch any show. The opportunity to choose exists. People can change the channel or turn the TV off, and if a sufficient number do so, even in the year of the Strike shows will be cancelled. Why? Because in the end TV is a business, a business about delivering viewers to advertisers, and network bosses have to be greedy if only to satisfy shareholders whose principal concern is how much money the network makes. And if there's arrogance on the part of the "TV bosses" there is also incredible arrogance in an organization like the PTC which sets itself up not as an arbiter of good taste but as the definitive word on what constitutes objectionable material and what public should be allowed to watch.

Who Does The PTC Hate THIS Week? – December 6, 2007

'Tis the season to be jolly. That is unless of course you're our "friends" at the Parents Television Council in which case 'tis the season to be ticked off at the very existence of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on CBS. They have their annual demand that their loyal robots outraged members send complaints to the companies that advertised on "this televised peep-show." Thing is, the lengths that the PTC has to go to in order to find something to be outraged about is about as funny as anything that has ever come out of the PTC...and that's saying a great deal. They couldn't find some way to claim that the show was legitimizing sex with teenage girls by showing lingerie models in activities that are common to girls of that age group, which was what they did last year. And they couldn't complain that the show was on too early...or could they. Well apparently they decided that they could. The show aired in the third hour of primetime (10-11 p.m. EST and PST, 9-10 p.m. CST and MST) so the PTC decided to used the technique that allowed them to get the huge fine against the rerun of the "Teen Orgy" episode of Without A Trace. According to the PTC: "Although the special aired at 10:00 p.m. on the east and west coasts, families living in the central and mountain time zones had to scramble to find their remote to keep their children from accidentally stumbling across this televised peep-show during the 9:00 hour." But why? Was there nudity? Cussing? Implied sexuality? Suggested violence? No, according to the PTC, "the event featured profiles of the top models, musical performances, and a flesh parade featuring Victoria's Secret's latest buttock-and cleavage-baring ensembles." That's it, nothing else. All they have to object to are the "buttock-and cleavage-baring ensembles," being shown starting at 9 p.m. in the Central and Mountain Time zones. If that isn't the funniest thing the PTC has come out with in a while I don't know what is.

The PTC also has a hate on for the Burger King restaurant chain. They sent Miami Chapter Director Miryam Knigge to the annual shareholders' meeting. Now when the PTC dispatches one of its Chapter Directors to a shareholders' meeting it is usually to whine moan and complain about the company advertising on "bad" TV shows, and to be fair, Ms. Knigge did do some of that: "Your negative commercials supported such non-family friendly shows as Family Guy, C.S.I. Miami, Nip/Tuck, The Shield, The Sopranos, and South Park. In an episode of Dirt on the FX network sponsored by Burger King, the lead character takes out a vibrator from her drawer and activates it, then places it under the covers against her crotch, using it to masturbate. Is this responsible advertising Mr. Chairman?" But advertising on "bad" shows wasn't the primary function of the PTC's attack on Burger King, it was the company's ads. The PTC spokesperson claimed that three stuck out for her. In one, for the company's dollar menu features, "a father giving his young son what looks like a condom and instructing him to put it in his wallet because he will become very popular with the girls." According to the PTC this "is completely irresponsible in its overtly sexual message that involves children." A second ad "a ballerina reaching into the front pockets of a man from behind searching for money." I suppose they think she's "pleasuring him" with her hands in order to get the money; Miryam Knigge doesn't go into details on this one. Finally there's an evil spot "depicting mothers trying to kill your spokesperson." I guess that means the big fibreglass headed King character. And amazingly they're surprised that Burger King doesn't respond to their complaints: "We have reached out to you many times; we've called, e-mailed and written you. Our calls go unreturned; you shut out our e-mails and then you send us form letters written by your consumer relations department."

You have to admit that they seem to be pretty desperate if this is the best they can come up with to be outraged about. Even the supposed condom ad is hardly in the same league as Paris Hilton washing a Bentley in a bathing suit and enjoying a Carl's Jr. $6 Burger. I haven't seen the first two ads but I have seen one of the "mothers trying to kill your spokesperson" ads and I have to say it is one of the most innocuous bits of advertising that I've seen. Some people have too much time on their hands.

The Broadcast Worst of the Week is the November 20^th episode of Law & Order: SVU. According to the PTC it, "featured a horrific depiction of a murdered teenager and retraced the promiscuous behaviors that lead to her death. Rape, prostitution, nudity, and teen sex saturated the hour-long program." Of course, this being American Television in the era after Janet Jackson's nipple the "nudity" was primarily in the PTC's collective imagination rather than real but let's spends some time looking at the PTC's complaints. Here's their description of the first scenes of the episode in which the victim's body is found: "The show opens with two pre-teen Boy Scouts finding the body of a dead 17-year-old girl in the woods. Her body is beaten and disheveled, and her lips have been ripped off. When detectives investigate the scene they find a bloody bag with the girl's recovered lips." Okay, sounds pretty grizzly but remember, this is the PTC and what they describe is inevitably phrased in the most graphic and inflammatory manner possible. Like this scene, which I suppose is one of the instances of nudity: "As the investigation begins, the man whose semen was found is questioned and, wouldn't you know it, he just happens to have a sex tape of himself in bed with the victim. The man is shown getting out of bed clearly in the nude, with a towel barely covering his genitals." Well setting aside the fact that they aren't showing the act on screen, the allegation that the man in the part of the tape that is show has "a towel barely covering his genitals" contradicts the statement immediately preceding it, that "the man is shown getting out of bed clearly in the nude." (And of course how does the PTC know that the towel is "barely covering his genitals" – do they know something about the actor that we don't?) They also mention, "pictures of the victim in bed with one young man, and being beaten to death by another. The photo of the girl in bed is shot from behind and shows her straddling the boy, completely topless and engaged in intercourse." But of course her nudity is only implied since we see her from the back, and since it is a still photo the sex act is only implied rather than obvious. In a scene between the two mentioned – the clip that the PTC has put up as proof of how bad the episode is, "...a pimp answers the door and quotes prices based on race to sleep with a prostitute. Police push past the pimp and move to the back of the apartment where they hear orgasmic moaning. They enter the room to find a young man on top of the prostitute, thrusting his hips in a clear display of sexual intercourse. When the cops remove him from the woman he yells, "Hey, I ain't finished!" That bit is probably the most graphic depiction in the episode (which is of course why the PTC decided to feature it) but it's hardly as prolonged and obvious as the PTC's claim. But beyond that, this is a show airing in the third hour of primetime, with the proper ratings and descriptors. It is intended for an adult audience but of course the PTC continues to take the attitude that everyone – not just minors who the PTC nominally seek to protect – need "offensive material" such as this kept from them. But it is their conclusion that really grates on me. They state that, "the worst thing about this episode is that the honorable efforts of the show's protagonists to solve crimes and apprehend the guilty are completely overshadowed by unnecessary content which could only have been intended to disturb and titillate. From the young boys who witnessed the body to the topless teens in bed, the offensive content in this episode was not essential to telling a decent crime story." But for a show which is intended to depict the work of cops dealing with sexual crimes – which is what the Special Victims Unit specializes in – it is surely necessary to depict the circumstances surrounding those crimes. While the scenes may have been intended to disturb the audience, one could hardly feel titillated by the scene that the PTC had as a clip. And I would submit that, in a show with this subject, disturbing the audience is probably not a bad thing.

I think I'm going to pass on this week's Cable Worst of the Week, which is A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. I haven't seen it, have no desire to see it and and can't understand why anyone would. However, the clip that the PTC shows with such obvious disgust depicts the sort of contest that occurs on Survivor and other reality-competition shows all the time. In this case the contestants have to transfer chocolate sauce from a large wading pool to buckets set a distance away using only their bodies. The PTC writes "Indeed, repeated slow-motion close-ups show Amanda squeezing her breasts, causing chocolate to fountain out of her cleavage into her bucket. Not to be outdone, the male contestants appetizingly dump chocolate out of their rears and crotches." Which is just about what happens in other reality shows with this sort of contest. And of course the piece ends with the usual cry for Cable Choice: "because the entertainment industry refuses to allow Cable Choice – thereby forcing adults who wish to purchase the Disney channel for their children to also receive, and pay for, hypersexual programs like Tila Tequila's." Put another way though, twenty-somethings with no kids, and who like to watch MTV are forced to receive and pay for shows like Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel. As this Wikipedia article points out a la carte pricing, or cable choice, is prohibitively expensive for the cable companies and will remains so, "until digital cable television becomes popular" or all channels are scrambled and consumers are forced to use a set-top box to receive analog cable signals.

There is no Misrated this week – the PTC is apparently still hung up on American Dad and child molesters – so let us turn our attention to the TV Trends column. This week it seems to have a rather benevolent topic – Gift Ideas for TV Fans: Entertainment Choices During the Writers Strike – but let's face it, this is the PTC and they aren't going to let any opportunity pass to skewer and roast the television networks. And even before they present one gift suggestion they're up for taking a shot: "One of the entertainment industry's greatest fears is that viewers, already tired of the current wave of dark, graphic and explicit programming, and now confronted with the prospect of endless reruns of same, will turn for entertainment to some of the many alternatives which now exist to watching prime-time television." I suppose the assumption here is that fans won't watch the reruns because they don't like "dark, graphic and explicit" shows, which is of course incorrect. Those are the shows that are pulling in strong ratings, and indeed when shows like CSI, Bones, and House are rerun they continue to pull in strong ratings. It also assumes that the networks are going to be content to air reruns of shows during the strike period, something else that we know is not true – they are ready to release a number of previously shot dramas and comedies, and are going to start showing a variety of game and reality shows, either new concepts or (as seems to be more the case) renewals of existing shows. And while I agree with the PTC's claim that people will "turn for entertainment to some of the many alternatives which now exist to watching prime-time television," it is my expectation that a large percentage of that number (at least those who are able to) will opt for programming on cable and satellite channels, some of it more daring, darker, more graphic and more explicit – and because it is free from the restrictions that the FCC is able (and in some cases forced by organizations like the PTC) to impose on over the air broadcasters, probably more realistic in feel than many of the shows that are permitted on broadcast TV. If anything scares the broadcast networks it is that having been forced to try a different style of TV the great American public won't return to the restricted world of broadcast TV.

Of course the PTC doesn't share my opinion of the great American TV viewer: "While there are, inevitably, some viewers who crave novelty, or who revel in graphic violence, explicit sex, and endless foul language, many Americans are weary of such depressing fare. The writers strike offers TV viewers a unique opportunity to revisit – or to see for the first time – television programming from the days before constant swearing, sophomoric sex jokes and horrifically explicit and gory violence were considered a necessary part of every TV show." What they are suggesting as gifts for the TV viewer are DVDs of old series, shows that roughly fill the same niche that current shows do. Now before I give you the list of ten shows and categories that the PTC puts forward, I would like to explain that I have nothing against the shows they name as alternatives for current shows. In fact I'd like to own most of them myself (hint). But this is the PTC, and let's face it they have an agenda and this is the perfect forum to push it; a chance to "prove" that older shows are better than current "decadent" shows (it is worth noting that there isn't a series on the PTC's list produced later than 1983). They don't miss a chance to take shots at what's on TV today even as they praise to the heights the great old shows. This is a premise that I don't agree is valid. My feeling is that as great as older shows may have been the very best of current shows is at least their equal. I would take the gritty reality of an NYPD Blue over the supposed reality of the 1960s Dragnet any day of the week. With that in mind, let's take a look at the recommendations and the "shots" at the current shows.

1. Perry Mason for fans of Boston Legal: "Viewers drawn to compelling legal intricacy and courtroom drama have, in recent years, had to settle for the ridiculously unrealistic legal strategies, rampantly sex-crazed characters and anti-religious bigotry of David E. Kelley's Boston Legal....
   Raymond Burr's portrayal of Perry Mason still provides entertainment and courtroom intrigue, without the necessity of injecting smarmy sex references into every other line.
   
2. Mission Impossible for viewers of 24: "The plots on Mission: Impossible are every bit as tense and intricate as those on 24. Of course, on Mission: Impossible one does not have the opportunity of seeing Kiefer Sutherland repeatedly subjected to brutal torture; but if a viewer is willing to forego this pleasure, Mission: Impossible will fit the bill nicely."
   
3. Combat! for people who watch The Unit: "A product of its time, Combat does not feature the explicit violence or raw language of The Unit, but still conveys the tension and drama of war."
4. Quincy, M.E. for people who like shows like Bones, NCIS, CSI (and it's spin-offs): "The field of forensic crime investigation has become a fertile one for television, with such dramas as Bones, NCIS and the various CSI spin-offs, among others, all scrambling for a piece of the (increasingly bloody) pie. For another drama featuring a forensic investigator – albeit one with a more humorous twist – fans tired of decomposing corpses might welcome a visit from Quincy, M.E....
   While obviously less realistic than today's forensic dramas, Quincy is also far less graphic – and as a result features more sharply-drawn character interaction than many of today's shows. For viewers intrigued by murder mysteries and forensic science but tired of gore, Quincy is just what the doctor ordered."
   
5. The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Best of Boris & Natasha for fans of The Family Guy: "Seth MacFarlane's rancid cartoon Family Guy offers American TV viewers the opportunity to be "entertained" by such spectacles as a household of men and boys explicitly vomiting and passing gas; a father beating his own daughter with a baseball bat; and a baby discussing the ways he plans to torture and murder his own mother – and all this is, allegedly, "satire." For animated programming about "family guys," but without the bondage gear, flatulence and constant crude sex jokes, a viewer could turn to those mainstays and building blocks of prime-time animated comedy, The Flintstones and The Jetsons – both of which are every bit as intelligent as Family Guy, even if they lack its lascivious and grotesque elements. And for genuine satire, The Best of Boris and Natasha, collecting episodes from The Bullwinkle Show, features cunningly clever word-play and slyly subversive humor which doesn't need to make bathroom jokes to inspire laughter."
6. The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show for viewers of American Dad: "From the sweet humor and timeless moral lessons of The Andy Griffith Show, to the outrageously funny (yet somehow oddly realistic) situations of The Dick Van Dyke Show, there are many choices available to viewers who ache for laughter, yet are tired of being offered endless references to sex, genitalia and bodily functions posing as humor."
7. Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, Barney Miller, WKRP In Cincinatti for lovers of The Office: Shockingly the only negative the PTC has to offer about The Office is "it is regrettably off the air for the foreseeable future." On that at least we can agree.
8. Kolchak: The Night Stalker for fans of Supernatural: "Supernatural is about a pair of individuals investigating the occult, replete with graphic violence and bitter, unhappy characters. The program is often unrelentingly grim. For a different take on the same situation – one that used suggestion rather than open bloodshed to inspire spine-tingling suspense – fans of horror-themed shows could do worse than Kolchak: the Night Stalker.... Kolchak was a brilliant combination of humor, horror and hard-boiled newspaper drama."
9. Dark Shadows for viewers of Moonlight: "Since the overwhelming success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampires have become one of television's most frequently-featured protagonists. Most recently, the program Moonlight has returned to the bloody well, dipping into stories of an ageless vampire in love with a mortal woman.... A product of fast-paced production schedules and a tiny budget, Dark Shadows will require patience from a contemporary viewer accustomed to the latest in CGI; but the lack of focus on special effects at times actually enhances the haunting atmosphere and mood. Generations of fans have enjoyed Dark Shadows, and today's fans of supernatural shows just might find that they do, too."
   
10. Family Affair for the many viewers of Two And A Half Men: "Finally, in the realm of situation comedy, at least two popular shows have featured the story of a child living in the same house as his swinging bachelor uncle, who undertakes to teach the child about life. It is a measure of how far Hollywood's idea of "teaching children about life" has declined that today's iteration is the crassly crude and sexual Two and a Half Men. Those who are not enamored of seeing a twelve-year-old boy referring to group sex and condoms, or adults who talk constantly about sex and little else, might find a refreshing change (or an exercise in nostalgia) in Family Affair. One program features an impatient but loving uncle and three squeaky-clean children; the other, a drooling, sex-crazed uncle and a snide, abrasive child. If Family Affair is unrealistically sweet, Two and a Half Men is unrealistically sour and smarmy. Neither program represents a family truthfully; so why give automatic credence to the repellently raunchy recent show? Many may laugh at this comparison, for Family Affair has come to be seen as hopelessly saccharine and sappy, but it is worth pausing for a moment and considering: is Two and a Half Men really any more realistic – or any less stupid?"

And there you have the PTC's gift suggestions. I could go through this list ridiculing many of their comparisons (are people who watch American Dad really watching it for the same reasons people watched The Dick Van Dyke Show back in the 1960s?) but really the PTC's explanations of their reasons for suggesting these shows as "replacements" for existing shows pretty much do the job for me.