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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking News – Kevin Reilly Leaving NBC

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

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

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

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

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

Film Making Idol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay Kids, It’s Over

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Sure To Watch

On The Lot on FOX tonight.

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

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

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

Best of luck Tony!

Short Takes – May 20, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fall Season Day By Day

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

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

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

Sunday

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

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

Monday

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

Wednesday

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

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

Thursday

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

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

Friday

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

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