May 9, 2008 1:43

Corporate Press Release Theater: Bravo Goes Green

Remember Tuned In's lengthy whine the other day about massively packaged TV-network mailings? We get results!

BRAVO IS COMPLETELY GREEN WITH EMMY®

Network Offers On-Air And Online Screenings That Include Friday Viewing Marathons And Downloads On BravoTV.com/Emmy

NEW YORK – May 8, 2008 – Bravo is completely Green with Emmy – as the network announced today that its upcoming Emmy® "For Your Consideration" campaign is going green. Replacing the non-eco friendly award mailers, the network will make their series and specials solely available for download online at www.BravoTV.com/Emmy and will offer screenings on-air – including 214 programming hours on-air across all day parts, where voting members will have the opportunity to view Emmy entries throughout the day beginning May 7 until the Emmy nominees are announced in July. The announcement was made by Frances Berwick, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Bravo Media.

"During Emmy season, every network comes up with new and innovative ways to reach NATAS' voting membership through their mailers, but after award season, this impressive packaging ends up in landfills across the country," said Berwick. "We hope the Academy's members will support Bravo this year as we minimize our carbon footprint by delivering our screenings online and on-air."

So what do you say, Emmy voters? Are you going to give Top Chef a statuette this year? Or do you hate Mother Earth?

May 9, 2008 12:48

Fox Newser Discloses Self Out of Job

When Time's not breaking news, we're making news! After last night's big Time 100 bash in Manhattan—which neither I nor fellow Timeblogger Lisa Cullen attended—a Fox News production assistant got her walking papers for telling Sen. John McCain she voted for him in the primary, reports TV Newser. (Link via Romenesko.) "I voted for you in the primary," she reportedly told the Senator, "you're going to win." The remark was caught on videotape; Fox reportedly took action promptly.

Mmmmmyeah. Because that incident just totally changed my perception of Fox News.

Seriously, this just goes to show one thing I've been saying about the journalistic fetish for keeping our voting preferences secret: it's about protecting the news organization, not serving the reader/audience. This was an embarrassment, and Fox punished the embarrasser; but does anyone out there think of Fox differently because of it?

(By the way, for those of you who have not yet read my broken-record disclosures, I wrote a column this year arguing that journalists should be allowed to disclose their votes, in which I noted that I voted for Barack Obama. Also, in 2000, I voted for McCain in the Republican primary in New York. At least I'm pretty sure I did, if he was still in the race at that point. I registered Republican that year specifically to vote for him in New York's closed primary.)

May 9, 2008 11:59

Dept. of Does Not Exactly Surprise Me

ABC News reports that college students get high and watch Yo Gabba Gabba!, the most awesome kids' show on TV. (Via TV Tattle.)

Makes sense to me—I get high by watching Yo Gabba Gabba!, but same difference. It only takes a few minutes watching the show's surreal images, wacky monsters and talking food to draw a connection to it and certain enhanced states: last summer, I wrote, "You, grown-up you, need to watch Yo Gabba Gabba!, debuting on Nick Jr. and Noggin on Monday. At least once. Possibly even while sober."

The funniest thing about the ABC News piece is the perfectly straight voice in which it reports its Onion-like finding, followed by the comments in which readers note that, um, adults have been getting high and watching kids' shows since practically the dawn of television. I am certainly not the first to draw attention to the affinity between stoners and SpongeBob, for instance. I would not be surprised to find if, in smoke-filled living rooms in the Village, there were Beats toking up to Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

Not that I endorse any of it, of course. Kids, stay in school! The rest of you, take a hit of this.

May 9, 2008 10:27

Dead Tree Alert: Florida Forever

In the paper version of Time magazine this week, my column looks at the upcoming HBO movie Recount, and how the 2000 electoral circus in Florida still looms over the psychology of politics—especially in a certain party that has a lot of members cheesed off about enfranchisement and Florida:

After George W. Bush won Florida in 2000--O.K., I apologize to my Democrat readers for legitimizing Bush by using the word won. Also, I apologize to the Republicans for delegitimizing Bush by apologizing to the Democrats ...

This is what Florida has done to us. Nearly eight years after Bush--um, "became President"? Can we agree on that?--the Florida recount still grips our politics, down to its semantics. To choose a verb is to take sides. Florida is not just a state but a state of mind: the widely held attitude that the game is rigged (by the courts, the media, the voting machines ...) and that any close election is suspect. Florida looms over politics like the Alamo, the Maine and the grassy knoll all rolled into one.

The potential for half the Democratic Party to feel like it's been re-Florida'ed is there, I point out, no matter which way the superdelegates go. Since Tuned In is not known for its political prognostications, I didn't really feel like declaring a winner in the primary. The cover of Time, you'll note, is not so shy.

May 9, 2008 9:40

The Morning After: The Taste of Solitude

NBC Photo: Nicole Rivelli

The secret to most good 30 Rock episodes is that they strike the right balance between character comedy and farce. That balance generally is: one, maybe two characters get to be real people, while the rest are free to be cartoons. (I love cartoons, by the way, so I mean that as a compliment—in the good, Simpsons/Futurama kind of way.) Every once in a while, for instance, Pete is going to be a middle-aged sad sack trying to work out his marriage, and other times, he gets to be a deranged, frustrated Olympic archer firing arrows at pages in the studio.

May 9, 2008 7:16

Lostwatch: Will the Real John Locke Please Stand Up

Mario Perez / ABC

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, take your remote control, a compass, a knife—no, not the knife!—and watch last night's Lost.

May 8, 2008 2:36

Coming Attraction: Swingtown

"Swing" don't mean dancing! / Cliff Lipson/CBS

Yesterday I posted about having finally gotten a screener of CBS's summer drama Swingtown, which I'd been anticipating since CBS screened a trailer a year ago at upfronts. I've watched it, and I have to report that I'm disappointed.

Disappointed because it's good. Very good. Which means that I have to prepare to be depressed that CBS apparently lost confidence in the show almost as soon as it signed it up (like Viva Laughlin, except that show deserved the no-confidence vote) and consigned it to the traditional kill-off space of the summer schedule. (One hopeful factor: the paucity of new shows after the writers' strike means it's possible that a scripted summer show should actually get renewed. Just possible.)

I'll give the show more of a review-review when it comes out, but here are a few impressions:

May 8, 2008 12:16

John McCain, Maoist

Daily Show regular John McCain returned to TDS last night, this time as presumptive Republican nominee, and cited the inspirational words of Chairman Mao:

I somehow get the feeling that people would be making a bigger deal of it had Barack Obama dipped into the little red book. In the second half of the interview, Stewart "enters the octagon" with McCain and asks him about his association with a certain leading American religious figure:

All in all, not as contentious as some recent McCain sit-downs in which Stewart pressed him hard on the issue of Iraq. I can let that pass, though. I'm more surprised that Stewart did not ask the obvious follow-up on McCain's vice-presidential joke: Sir, have you ever actually watched The Office? Give me two names of members of the Dunder-Mifflin Scranton branch accounting department! And if I may follow-up: Team Pam or Team Karen, and why? No waffling!

May 8, 2008 11:23

TV Poll: What's Your TV Guide?

In the New York Times, the new editors of TV Guide—which looks like it will be up for sale again already—explain why they believe the magazine still matters. It may, but the magazine itself recognized some time ago that if TV Guide matters, it's not as a guide to TV, as least not as far as the listings are concerned. Probably smartly, the magazine has been de-emphasizing its TV listings for some time, more recently adopting a bigger magazine format and a greater emphasis on features. (The brand has also diversified with, among other things, a TV channel, a nod to the alternative technologies that are supplanting the mag's original function.)

All well and good. But people do still need to find out what's on TV. Anecdotally, I know that TV listings have been cut back in local newspapers, but what with the number of channels and the scheduling shell games, listings are theoretically more useful than ever. To me, TV Guide Channel or similar scrolling cable-listings channels are useless—I don't want to sit around and feel myself grow old waiting for channel 145 to roll around again. I haven't looked at a print listing in ages, but then I have TiVo, and also, I'm kinda paid to follow TV for a living.

What about you Tuned Inlanders? Do any of you still use an old fashioned print guide? Is your cable box's listings interface good enough? Do you have a favorite online source? Or do you just go wherever the remote takes you?

May 8, 2008 10:45

Coming Soon in the 2008-09 TV Season: The 2007-08 TV Season

USA Today runs a walkup to next week's broadcast network upfront, where the big trend in new TV will be: less new TV. The upfronts are usually an intense preview of the coming fall season, with the networks screening trailers of pilots that they mail out to advertisers and critics soon afterward. This year, there'll be fewer clips, because fewer pilots have been shot. The bad news: though I'll still be going to most of the upfronts next week, I may have bupkes to report to you. The good news: the sessions will be much shorter than usual.

Among the handful of new shows that are expected or are already announced, USAT spots one trend: "Dramas that blend weekly procedural cases with expansive character development." Intrepid readers may recognize that as the big TV trend of last fall (Life, Journeyman, Pushing Daisies, Moonlight...), one that didn't pan out so well ratings-wise for the nets even before the strike.

But given the hurry-up mode TV development is in, the networks are lucky to have any new stuff on the air come fall. Isn't originality too much to expect on top of that? It usually is.