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August 2009 Archives
REALITY CHECK: Bye-bye, 'Big Brother'
August 31, 2009 2:08 PM
Could it be that the lowest of the low has actually hit rock bottom?
Britain's hit Big Brother "reality" franchise is being dropped by Channel 4 next year after a 10-year run. It's part of a "creative overhaul" described in this Financial Times article as C4's decision to focus "more on its public-service broadcasting responsibilities." Channel 4's own announcement cited its "public remit to champion new forms of creativity."
Which apparently don't involve locking strangers in a house under constant camera surveillance and waiting for the bad behavior to begin.
How will Britain survive without all the backstabbing betrayals, violent brawling, racist bullying, personal spitting, sex-for-cameras and other obnoxious activity devised to turn oneself into a reality show "celebrity"?
Oh, wait. Britain won't go without. Some other channel will doubtless pick up the Big Brother franchise and let the humiliations start anew. But at least a "prestige" broadcaster like Channel 4 has said enough is enough when it comes to "unscripted" seaminess. Could a U.S. broadcast network be far behind?
Probably. (Not.)
FLICK PICKS: The musical mind behind that 'Psycho' shriek
August 30, 2009 6:34 PM
Bernard Herrmann is the man to thank for those Psycho shower scene strings. And the spooky rumble under Citizen Kane. For Taxi Driver's moody Manhattan vibe. And Vertigo's dizzy delirium.
Now Herrmann gets a suitable salute, every September Tuesday on Turner Classic Movies, with 23 of the films his robust music made better.
Did you know that Herrmann (1911-1975) -- who cut his sonic teeth at CBS Radio alongside Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre (yes, he did War of the Worlds) -- also scored Ray Harryhausen stop-motion fantasies like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad? For that matter, Herrmann even cut a fine score for a '70s drive-in fave TCM sadly isn't showing, the underrated Larry Cohen shocker It's Alive! (Another fave that fails to make TCM's lineup: The Day the Earth Stood Still, with Herrmann's eerie Theramin electronics.)
TCM will move chronologically through Herrmann's career of 40 years, starting this week with four '40s scores -- his "Concerto Macabre" for the film noir Hangover Square (Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET), his Oscar-winning work on The Devil and Daniel Webster (9:30 p.m. ET), his first film Citizen Kane (11:30 p.m. ET), and Welles' follow-up The Magnificent Ambersons (1:45 a.m. ET, all on TCM).
Next week's Herrmann lineup turns to such '50s films as Five Fingers (Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. ET), before the following two weeks spotlight Herrmann's work with Alfred Hitchcock, including Vertigo (late Sept. 15 at 12:15 a.m. ET) and Psycho (Sept. 22 at 10:30 p.m. ET, all on TCM). Wrapping things up are Herrmann's final two films, both touted as TCM premieres: Brian DePalma's Obsession and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (late Sept. 29 at midnight and 2 a.m. ET, running wee-hours thanks to adult content TCM admirably declines to remove).
TCM's full Herrmann lineup can be found here. There's much more online about Herrmann here and here.
TV ON DVD: 'thirtysomething' finally arrives
August 26, 2009 7:42 PM
Bet you thought it would never happen: That oh-so-'80s fave thirtysomething finally hits DVD this week.
And it turns out to be oh-so-21st-century, too.
"It's about the problem of trying to be a good man or woman in an impossible world," says series writer Richard Kramer, in one of the six-disc set's many illuminating extras. (Thanks, Shout Factory!) "There's nothing about being a yuppie in that," Kramer says. "That, I think, applies to everybody."
"It's about trying to become grownups," says actress Patricia Wettig (who played Nancy), in the same DVD featurette that assesses the show's cultural impact. "How do you begin to have one of those real lives?"
That wasn't something TV dealt with in the '80s, despite the arrival of smart adult dramas like St. Elsewhere, The Paper Chase and China Beach. Those shows were built around outward concerns -- medicine, law school, the Vietnam War. But thirtysomething was all about introspection -- young urban professionals, dissecting their lives-in-progress, aspiring to "have it all," yet stumbling through this unfamiliar game called adulthood. Which turned out to be played mostly through such everyday concerns as babies crying in restaurants, friends resenting your new parental obsession, bosses asking you to betray your ideals in pursuit of profit -- all those demands suddenly being juggled by pressured souls who'd so recently been blithe spirits.
"Hill Street Blues had incorporated the personal into the procedural," says Timothy Busfield, cast member (Elliot) turned director-producer (Ed, Without a Trace), in a recent phone interview about the DVD release for my Sunday feature in Newsday about the show's profound (and continuing) influence on TV. "But we were just personal," Busfield says. "To be able to say, 'Here's how I'm sort of evaluating my life' -- the ability to connect with the audience, and sort of wink, and say, 'Hey, check it out, guys. Here's where we're blunderous, here's where we need to evolve.' To have that opportunity in television, which was primarily reserved for independent features, was at that time so rare."
This was auteur TV. In a separate phone interview, series creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick stressed that they weren't alone in trying to subvert that wall separating writers and viewers by making it clear we were all muddling through together. "There was Glenn Gordon Caron with Moonlighting," says Zwick. "And John Sacret Young with China Beach," adds Herskovitz. (Another show too long MIA on DVD.)
"But you have to understand how clueless we were," says Zwick. "We weren't veterans of television," says Herskovitz. "We were just applying what we'd learned in our own lives."
On Shout's DVD set, the duo -- still working together making films like Blood Diamond -- revisit those stumbling-into-greatness days while trading memories in an editing bay. Both 35 at the time, they considered themselves movie makers, and wrote a TV pilot only under studio duress. "What could we do that we would like, if we had to do it, but would be certain to fail?" remembers Herskovitz. "The baby boomer generation is not represented on television. Why don't we write about the people we know?"
Says Zwick, "It was about looking close to home, and inside."
When thirtysomething premiered in 1987, TV's highest-rated drama was Murder, She Wrote. Even Dallas was still going strong. L.A. Law had become a feisty adult favorite, but its smirking quirks could hardly be called earnest or intimate.
Which, of course, thirtysomething's pilot was (perhaps to excess). ABC's young programming executives were so moved, they bought the series. Zwick and Herskovitz were doing something radical, and though they had no illusions it would succeed in the ratings, at least it would make them happy. "We were so idealistic," Herskovitz muses on the DVD. "We couldn't abide the idea that this thing would be compromised. We were willing to walk away rather than make it bad."
They hired writers who felt the same -- Richard Kramer, who'd go on to such smart shows as Tales of the City and Nothing Sacred. And Paul Haggis, whose TV gems Due South and EZ Streets led to the movies, an Oscar nomination for Million Dollar Baby, and a best picture win for Crash. Winnie Holzman would later create My So-Called Life for producers Zwick and Herskovitz.
"We had this idea of what we called the dialectic," Herskovitz remembers on the DVD. That meant exploring their generation's "ambivalence, that things exist in opposition to each other. You want to be free, but you also want money." "You want to be single," says Zwick, "and you want to be in a relationship." "You want to please your client," says Herskovitz, "and you want to feel that you have integrity . . . Many of them were true meditations upon a theme."
Meditations? Yes, network TV would actually take the time to stop and think -- thirtysomething indulged a measured, heartfelt humanity that even the best shows today lack the breathing room to convey.
"I think in network television, that period of time stands alone," says Peter Horton, another actor (Gary) turned director-producer (The Philanthropist), in another recent phone interview. "There's been a real retreat from that kind of creative exploration and creative freedom. Sadly, network television has really ebbed away from that. They're going for much more dazzle and flash, trying to stand out in a crowded marketplace."
That's why thirtysomething hasn't hit DVD until now. It "hadn't been a priority" for release at owning studio MGM, Herskovitz says by phone. "The studios have bigger to fish to fry," explains Garson Foos of Shout Factory, the pop culture distributor that steps up when large studios focus instead on recent productions more likely to sell big.
Shout's loving releases have ranged from such recent faves as Freaks and Geeks and The Middleman all the way back to '60 single-camera sitcom pioneer Room 222, original nighttime soap Peyton Place, and Groucho Marx' You Bet Your Life -- all lavished with bonus archive footage, new interviews and more. "They really take it seriously," Zwick says.
For thirtysomething, new video masters were struck to make the episodes look fresh, and Shout jumped through hoops to secure rights to the show's pioneering use of pop songs. Music rights are often the hold-up for vintage favorites stuck in the vault. "Because we're putting so much TV-on-DVD out that has music rights issues," Foos says by phone, "we're able to negotiate at least a little more favorable deals. Because we come from the music business [he and brother Richard Foos were behind Rhino], we have great relationships with the labels and publishers."
The industry knows Shout brings the love, too. "When we feel like the show is really something that was important culturally," Foos says, they go to town. The thirtysomething box boasts specially produced retrospectives, interviews with all the cast and key crew, a variety of episode commentaries, and an insightful 40-page book about the show's impact as "an influential, very groundbreaking show. It's such good writing and storytelling and character development. I think those issues are the kinds of issues that people are grappling with always. It wasn't unique to that period of time."
Except to those who watched at the time, emotionally immersed, as if seeing their own lives laid bare on screen. The actors, too, connected, not only to their characters but to the broader horizons being explored. Busfield and Horton weren't the only ones who'd move behind the camera (while also continuing to act occasionally). So did Ken Olin, now a producer-director on Brothers and Sisters, which costars his real-life wife Wettig. Ditto Melanie Mayron, recently directing In Treatment, and Polly Draper, who created her sons' Nickelodeon series The Naked Brothers Band. All got their feet wet doing episodes of thirtysomething. Horton says, "We called it Ed's samurai school of directing."
So the show touched their hearts as profoundly as it did viewers. "It's been a pebble in our shoes all these years," Horton muses by phone. "Here we have this show that we so fully participated in and so adore, and we're living in a world of DVDs and shows living on at your command -- and it's every other show but ours. It was in obscurity on a shelf somewhere, and that was such a source of irritation and frustration. But I think with the idea that it's finally coming out, that's us finally getting to scratch that itch."
Us, too.
[For more on thirtysomething's wide-ranging influence on TV over the past two decades, read my Sunday feature for Newsday here. You can buy the first-season DVD at a sizable discount from Amazon here.]
IN MEMORIAM: Ted Kennedy coverage
August 26, 2009 1:27 PM
Sen. Edward Kennedy's funeral ceremonies will be carried live on cable's C-SPAN this weekend, starting with Friday night's "Celebration of Life Memorial Service" 7-9 p.m. ET from Massachusetts' JFK presidential library.
Saturday's C-SPAN coverage includes the Boston funeral mass 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET and the Arlington National Cemetery burial service at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Other news outlets are likely to carry coverage as well. But C-SPAN is, of course, commercial-free, and generally pundit-free, too.
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TV is jumping into action to assess the life and legacy of Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died late Tuesday from brain cancer.
Ted Kennedy -- The Last Brother airs tonight (Wednesday) at 8 ET from CBS News, anchored by Katie Couric and promising "exclusive footage culled from CBS News' vast archives." News coverage and video previews here.
Remembering Ted Kennedy airs tonight (Wednesday) at 10 ET from ABC News, anchored by Charles Gibson from Hyannis Port, Mass., and Diane Sawyer in New York. Stories and video here.
The Kennedys family portrait from American Experience gets an encore Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings). Or watch the 1992 documentary online here.
Cable is making quick schedule moves, too. Among the late additions:
Teddy: In His Own Words (Wednesday 7-9 p.m. ET, CNN) repeats HBO's July documentary.
The Kennedy Brothers: A Hardball Documentary (Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET, MSNBC) previews a day earlier than its scheduled premiere Thursday at 7 p.m. ET. Also airing: Headliners and Legends: Ted Kennedy (Wednesday at 11 p.m. ET, MSNBC).
Biography Remembers: Ted Kennedy (Thursday at 9 p.m. ET, BIO) is preceded at 8 ET by an hour on JFK. The Ted Kennedy hour repeats on BIO Saturday at noon ET.
WEIRD & WILD: Quentin Tarantino on Weather Channel
August 22, 2009 4:50 PM
Who needs Good Morning America and The Tonight Show? Celebs can always hype their stuff on The Weather Channel.
Seriously.
You can start your week watching Quentin Tarantino guesting on Wake Up With Al (Monday at 6 a.m. ET, Weather), the new early morning news/business/showbiz/chat/andohyeahweather-fest. (It's repeated at 10 a.m. ET so west coast viewers don't miss the thrills.)
The day after Tarantino talks up his new movie Inglorious Basterds, host Al Roker welcomes former Notre Dame football coach and current broadcaster Lou Holtz. He'll likely promote his college football analyst gig on ESPN, and maybe even defend his prediction that Notre Dame could go undefeated this season.
Which is loony.
(And I say this as a Notre Dame fan raised in South Bend and once employed at WNDU, then the university-owned NBC affiliate where the school's coaches taped their weekly programs.)
Who'll guest next? It's probably too much to hope for Brett Favre. But maybe he's a weather geek!
FLICK PICKS: Movie legend, she wrote
August 20, 2009 8:16 PM
If you only know Angela Lansbury for TV's Murder, She Wrote, you don't know Angela. Not only was she a '60s Broadway musical star in Mame (and a '70s revelation baking those man-made meat pies in Sweeney Todd), but decades before that, Lansbury had launched her career in her teens as a busy Hollywood studio contract player.
Which Turner Classic Movies smartly reminds us Sunday, when its Summer Under the Stars month spotlights the versatile actress behind Jessica Fletcher.
TCM's 12 Lansbury big-screen titles span through four decades, from her 1944 debut in MGM's suspense classic Gaslight (Sunday at 8 p.m. ET; photo at right) to her 1978 turn in the Hercule Poirot mystery Death on the Nile (Sunday at 11:30 p.m. ET, both on TCM). There's even a retrospective chat about her entire career with channel host Robert Osborne in a 2006 edition of Private Screenings (Sunday at 3:15 p.m. ET, TCM).
Viewers unfamiliar with Lansbury's film work should be most knocked out by The Manchurian Candidate (Sunday at 1 p.m. ET, TCM), director John Frankenheimer's dark 1962 Cold War thriller of a brainwashed ex-GI turned assassination machine, with evil aid from his politically exploitive mama. Not only is Lansbury chilling in the dearly demented role [photo at top], but she's persuasive playing actor Laurence Harvey's mother despite being just 3 years older. (She earned an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award.) Throw in perhaps Frank Sinatra's best performance as a nightmare-plagued investigating officer from the soldier's platoon, and you've got a must-see classic -- and a controversy, with the film largely unseen for a quarter-century following President Kennedy's 1963 assassination.
But Lansbury was always versatile. She was solid in musicals (with Judy Garland in 1946's The Harvey Girls, Sunday at 6 a.m. ET; photo at left). And in westerns (with Randolph Scott in 1955's A Lawless Street, Sunday at 9:30 a.m. ET). In Disney fantasy/adventures (1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Sunday at 6 p.m. ET). In literary adaptations (1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sunday night at 2 a.m. ET). And other genres.
Now 83, Lansbury has remained active this decade, doing animation voice work, Law & Order guest shots, TV movies like The Blackwater Lightship, the Broadway play Deuce [2007 photo at right], and even -- coming full circle -- theatrical films like Emma Thompson's Nanny McPhee.
Lansbury also received 1997's Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, joining the ranks of legends like Sidney Poitier, Clint Eastwood, Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn. Watch TCM this Sunday and see why.
WATCH THIS: Leno is funny! Really!
August 18, 2009 4:18 PM
Could the old Jay be coming back? The Jay Leno who was such a sharp and loose dude while subbing for Johnny Carson, before he officially took over The Tonight Show and turned into such a safe-playing schmo?
There's intriguing evidence to the affirmative in a wild Leno location sketch NBC is using to promote Jay's new fall 10 p.m. weeknight hour -- a mockumentary with Jay driving one of his antique cars, hitting something bloody, shoving a cop into his trunk, and otherwise getting down and dirty. I haven't even chuckled at Leno in forever (maybe 1992), yet laughed out loud at this wicked viral-style promo being shown in movie theaters:
Leno actually used to have a dangerous edge, and a killer wit, back when he wasn't into public humiliation ("Jay-walking") and cue-card reading (the rest of the show). His nimble pre-Tonight standup always took the high road, directing barbs up at the powerful rather than down at common folk, and his late-night interviewing back then was relaxed, reactive and irreverent yet inclusive. When the sainted Carson was actually seeming stagnant behind the desk, reflecting a dated '50s booze-and-broads attitude, Leno bantered on contemporary terms with women, blacks and rebel celebs, rarely sucking-up and typically eliciting something fresh and real.
Fresh? Real? When's the last time almost anybody said that about Jay Leno? But his new mock-viral promo has that early-Jay sense of energy and honesty, even though it's nakedly concocted.
Could the Jay of 20 years ago, the guy who arguably merited his Tonight Show elevation, be making a comeback? I'm too cynical to get my hopes up much. Sure was fun, though, seeing The Good Jay make this reappearance.
(Thanks to Jamie Hibberd's fine TV blog The Live Feed for giving us the heads-up.)
FALL PREVIEW: New 'Dancing' cast
August 17, 2009 1:48 PM
So, whom from this list do we want to see least? Kelly Osbourne? Ashley Hamilton? Tom DeLay? Michael Irvin?
Which assumes, of course, that you know who all these people are.
(MTV reality kid, George Hamilton son, ex-Republican congressional whip/lobbyist pal, ex-Dallas Cowboy/crime suspect/broadcaster.)
They're four of the strangest celebs on the next cycle of ABC's ballroom competition Dancing With the Stars, set to start Sept. 21. Of course, this is a series that always delivers something surprising. Who knew Lil' Kim, the ex-con rapper, would be such an elegant dancer in last spring's edition? Did we really think beat-up aw-shucks bull rider Ty Murray could improve his ballroom dancing skills from zero to, uh, 60 per cent?
One thing we know for sure: Tom Bergeron is the reality-competition genre's wittiest host, always fun to watch reacting to live-broadcast achievements and disasters (remember his poise when Marie Osmond went down) -- not to mention quick to quip every time judge Bruno Tonioli shrieks another ultra-fab metaphor.
The new cast of 16 DWTS twinkle-toes announced Monday on Good Morning America also includes singers, snowboarders, models and martial artists.
Here's the full list:
AARON CARTER -- Singer/songwriter, actor and younger brother of Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter.
NATALIE COUGHLIN -- Olympic swimming gold medalist of 2008 and 2004 Games.
MARK DACASCOS -- Host of Food Network's Iron Chef America, actor, trained martial artist.
TOM DELAY [photo] -- Former House Majority Leader known for aggressive party discipline, earning him the nickname The Hammer.
MACY GRAY -- Singer/actress whose debut album On How Life Is and single I Try both went to No. 1.
ASHLEY HAMILTON -- Son of former DWTS contestant George Hamilton, appearing in film, comedy and television (Sunset Beach).
MELISSA JOAN HART -- Star of TV's Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, now mother of two toddler sons.
KATHY IRELAND -- Supermodel and fashion guru.
MICHAEL IRVIN -- Former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver, radio-TV sportscaster, host of Spike reality show 4th and Long.
JOANNA KRUPA -- Polish-born model/actress and PETA spokesperson.
CHUCK LIDDELL [right] -- Ultimate Fighting Championship icon.
DEBI MAZAR -- Goodfellas actress, now in HBO's Entourage.
MYA -- Grammy-winning singer, seen in the film Chicago.
KELLY OSBOURNE -- Ozzy Osbourne's daughter, known for TV celebreality groundbreaker The Osbournes and ABC drama Life As We Know It.
DONNY OSMOND [photo at top] -- Lead singer of The Osmonds, duet partner of ex-DWTS contestant Marie Osmond, actor, now performing in Las Vegas.
LOUIE VITO -- Professional snowboarder favored to make the 2010 Olympic team.
DVD ALERT: 'On the Road With Charles Kuralt'
August 14, 2009 8:11 PM
Sunday Morning fans will appreciate this DVD announcement: On the Road With Charles Kuralt comes out Oct. 27 from our friends at Acorn Media (responsible for British drama sets like Poirot and Life on Mars, plus other releases like Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything).
Kuralt started doing ordinary-life vignettes in 1967 for CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite about toothpick artists, covered bridges and other generally heartwarming subjects across America. Then he launched CBS' equally laid-back Sunday Morning broadcast, back in 1979, setting a reassuring tone and wonder-filled tenor still upheld by current host Charles Osgood. Kuralt retired from Sunday Morning in 1994 and passed away in 1997.
The DVD set includes three discs with 18 episode compilations of Kuralt's memorably personal reports. Read more about it here. Also check out the Remembering Charles Kuralt web site.
SUMMER SLUDGE: The true cost of network cost-cutting
August 13, 2009 12:34 PM
There's an interesting story about the broadcast networks' disastrous ratings for summer originals in Jamie Hibberd's smart Hollywood Reporter blog The Live Feed.
Hibberd quotes a network exec bemoaning the "costs" of this year's little-watched originals, meaning the money paid to produce even stop-gap reality shows. But it strikes me that the real "cost" to which the networks should be paying attention is the psychological one they've inflicted on themselves by giving every indication to viewers that their driving concern is money, not quality, and not even entertainment value.
Look, nobody expects the networks to present the likes of Mad Men three times a night or even three times a week. Even AMC, despite all the buzz, isn't getting that big an audience for such high-minded fare. But that show is unique, and it delivers something bigger than ratings to the channel that presents it. Mad Men is an impressive exhibit of its own voice and its own style, as are most of cable's big-ticket items. You can feel the buoyancy oozing out of even something as inconsequential as USA's Burn Notice. That spy romp makes no pretense to being Emmy bait, but it's delivered with flair, confidence and an obvious eagerness to satisfy the viewer. It feels like a show made to please us, not some budgetary cost center.
In contrast, nearly everything on the broadcast networks this summer feels cynically calculated somehow. Like, here's our seeeerious drama (The Philanthropist, pictured above). Here's our "quirky" procedural (The Listener). Here's our celebrity wallow (I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here). Here's our ordinary-folks competition (There Goes the Neighborhood). Here's our cheesy exercise in public humiliation (Wipeout). Here's our international coproduction "epic" that's meant to look fancy but actually reflects accounting advantages (Merlin).
Whereas something like Mad Men fairly screams to get out of its writer's psyche. And something like Burn Notice just wants to strut what juicy fun TV can be. There's a level of audience understanding and especially showmanship there -- or in True Blood or Rescue Me or Leverage or Nurse Jackie or even Army Wives -- that the networks no longer seem very interested in.
That's the "cost" of cost-cutting being such a primary concern. You gotta give a little to get a little, and the networks are now in the take-it-back business of shrinking both expenditures and expectations. It's as if entertaining us is not worth the money and effort. And viewers can feel that, even if it's only subliminally. Cable channels are giving us their all, while the networks are giving us the shaft.
Used to be, critics would praise a strong effort on cable by saying, wow, The Sopranos feels as big as a network show! Now, we see something like House on a network and think, man, that's as interesting as a cable show.
This is what the broadcast networks' cost-cutting has cost them -- that sense of specialness, creativity, connection with the audience. It's always been true, but it's transparently clear now, that network viewers are merely a marketing target and shows are just the stuff to fill time between commercials. The first half of the term "show business" today feels like an afterthought for the networks, which have been overtaken by the kind of middle-management risk aversion that's helped kill American innovation in so many industries.
Cable is just as commercially driven, of course, even on channels like HBO that don't carry ads but still must please subscribers. It's just that cable has been No. 2 to the long-dominant networks, so they've had to try harder, and it shows. Even their promos feel fresher. They've thrown themselves into customer service, at the same time the networks have learned to lean on bean-counting.
The saving grace in this equation historically has been that when a specific network's ratings fell truly precipitously, they'd be forced to throw caution to the winds and gamble big to get back into the game. That meant trying things as crazy as, gasp, adult drama, like Hill Street Blues or NYPD Blue. Or smarter sitcoms, like The Cosby Show or Everybody Loves Raymond. Or the wildly fresh satiric animation of The Simpsons. Even the cinematic style of CSI or 24, the non-linear storytelling of Lost, the unscripted "reality" of a Survivor or American Idol.
None of these shows were me-too efforts to ape previous hits. They were hail-Mary passes that proved to be game-changers, raising ratings for the presenting network and upping the ante for the medium in general.
That's what all the broadcast networks need to throw these days, and what they're so reluctant to uncork. They think there's too much to lose. But of course they're losing it anyway, thanks to me-too duplication and butt-covering trepidation. I'd like to think this sorry summer of '09 might be the turning point, the low ebb that shows the networks how desperately they need to focus as much on viewer entertainment as bottom-line accounting.
But the quote in Hibberd's piece tells me they still don't have a clue what the true cost of cost-conscious decisions can be.
TV WORTH BUYING: Classic series stamps
August 11, 2009 8:33 AM
Lassie will be happy to mail your letter. So will The Lone Ranger. Even Ralph Kramden.
TV icons from 20 classic series get a U.S. Postal Service salute Tuesday, when a commemorative sheet of 44-cent stamps called Early TV Memories becomes available at post offices and online.
Here's the full list of 1950s series that'll get your mail moving:
The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
The Dinah Shore Show
Dragnet
The Ed Sullivan Show
The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show
Hopalong Cassidy
The Honeymooners
Howdy Doody
I Love Lucy
Kukla, Fran and Ollie
Lassie
The Lone Ranger
Perry Mason
The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt. Bilko)
The Red Skelton Show
Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle)
The Tonight Show (Steve Allen)
The Twilight Zone
You Bet Your Life (Groucho Marx)
What, no Mister Peepers?
WEIRD & WILD: Killer weather!
August 10, 2009 1:23 PM
Because there's just not enough scary disaster on TV (unless you count pretty much every episode of Maury), cable is following up Discovery Channel's just-concluded Shark Week with The Weather Channel's current Hurricane Week: Extreme Impact.
Even Brian Williams shows up, now that Weather is part of the NBC corporate family (alongside other formerly independent channels like Oxygen). In His Own Words: Brian Williams on Hurricane Katrina (Monday at 8:30 p.m. ET, repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, Weather) spotlights the NBC anchor's personal on-site coverage of 2005's devastation, as Williams looks back on the epic experience.
Also in the eye of things: five new editions of Storm Stories, including Monday's "Ivan Dome Home" (Monday at 8 p.m. ET) and Tuesday's "Wilma in Cancun" (Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET) and "Mitch in Honduras" (Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET, all on Weather). Not to mention Weather Channel's current-season hurricane coverage on-air and online.
Weather's Hurricane Week continues through Aug. 15.
DVD ALERT: 'Ally McBeal' update
August 10, 2009 12:55 PM
We reported last month that both Ally McBeal and It's Garry Shandling's Show were finally coming to DVD in complete series sets. We had an Oct. 20 release date for Shandling then, and now Ally has a firm street date, too -- Oct. 6.
While Shandling comes from the retro-heads at Shout Factory, Ally arrives from Fox Home Entertainment at a $130 Amazon price point for its 5 seasons totaling 112 episodes.
The full-series Ally box will pack in 32 discs featuring the original music -- often an expensive sticking point or controversial change for TV on DVD. And that's crucial, since songs were a key element of the Boston-lawyer-girl saga featuring on-screen punctuation from club balladeer Vonda Shepard.
Ally also offers tons of extras -- a retrospective featurette with cast/creator, behind-the-scenes TV specials, soundtrack CD, and even a crossover episode with another David E. Kelley series, The Practice ("Axe Murderer").
Fox will also release a 6-disc Season 1 set of Ally McBeal that same date, for just $26 from Amazon.
Shout's package for It's Garry Shandling's Show includes 62 episodes on 16 discs, plus featurettes, outtakes, commentaries and more, for Amazon's $120 pricetag.
GOOD SPORTS: Tiant's emotional return to Cuba
August 10, 2009 10:17 AM
This almost makes up for all the hyperventilating ESP-heads screaming at each other to beat the clock . . .
ESPN presents a moving documentary portrait of pitcher Luis Tiant's return to his native Cuba after 46 years in exile, The Lost Son of Havana (Monday at 10 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN Deportes). The legendary Red Sox hurler left for America's big leagues in 1961 -- his father had earlier played in the Negro Leagues -- and couldn't secure permission to return until 2007.
It sounds obvious that today's Cuba is not at all the land Tiant left back in the Kennedy era, but the film's emotional impact is nonetheless profound. Tiant makes bittersweet personal discoveries that speak for thousands of souls and families torn apart by five decades of political barriers forcing tough choices. (Watch a preview here.)
HBO keeps its eyes on the games people play, too, with a continuing slate of sports programming leaning more toward brains than brawn. Hardknocks: Training Camp With the Cincinnati Bengals (Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET, HBO) returns this week for another season of instant behind-the-scenes documentary of the NFL preseason.
Also continuing is HBO's monthly sports magazine series Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel (Tuesday, Aug. 18 at 10 p.m. ET, HBO), this time reporting on the Florida boating disaster that killed two NFLers in February, as well as the comeback of Little League in L.A.'s inner city. The August edition also updates Frank Deford's heartwarming tale of a special ed student who worked his way up from high school basketball go-fer to full-fledged player hitting a storybook three-pointer.
And if you haven't seen HBO's fascinating documentary portrait of Ted Williams -- the Red Sox hall-of-famer, .400 hitter, inscrutable personality and cryogenic poster child -- try to catch this week's repeat of Ted Williams (Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. ET, HBO2; also available via HBO On Demand through Aug. 23).
