Current TV Injures Shoulder Patting Itself on Back After Announcing Launch of Hip Music Content Video Blog

Current TV has been around for about 2 1/2 years struggling to be the hip center of the new media movement. Al Gore founded the network to give voice to the growing phenomenon of User Generated Content in early 2005.

A lot has happened in the realm of UGC in the past 30 months, however, and very little of it to do with Current TV. Now, I was one of the early fans of the network but the channel was borderline unwatchable. Not so much because of the content submitted by viewers, but by the offensively sterile personalities recruited by the network to represent hip, smart and engaged youth.

Can you imagine anything worse than getting hip and savvy news from this?

Gotham Chopra, contributor Current TV. Also, co-creator of K Lounge, the Kama Sutra themed bar in Manhattan that was kind of bumping that one time I went at like 5:30 on a Wednesday.

Or this?

Conor Knighton, Current TV Contributor

Or this?

Max and Jason, Contributors to Current TV. Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

The corn-ball personalities they chose as their faces and the minimal success of Current TV begs the question - is San Francisco too gay to be cool?

Apparently, yes:



But in case you're still on the fence, now's the time to find out. News came out today that Current TV is launching a Music-Video blog to air frequently on the network. The segment will apparently fill the void left by channels like MTV, VH1 and BET abandoning their ostensible objectives of music programming. By focusing on "up-and-coming" acts like Dizzy Rascal (who I'm pretty sure has been kind of huge both in the UK and the US for almost 5 years now), Current TV will ipso facto become the go-to destination for mainstream music news.

There's only one problem. The address for Current TV:

118 King Street
San Francisco, CA 94107p
(415) 995-8200
f (415) 995-8201

Yup, that's the Bay Area and nothing cool having to do with white people has come out of San Francisco since Judd scored Pam the Asian on the Real World.

Even worse, Current TV prides itself on its lame locale and unashamedly provides visitors to its site a link to a Google Map showing you from exactly where that stench of smug mediocrity you find in Trader Joes grocery stores and poetry slams originates.

Current TV can encourage you to FTP them cell phone videos of My Morning Jacket live at Lollapalooza until its XML is blue in the face. That won't change what has always been the case. San Francisco's just too lame to be cool.

Vh1: Friend, Foe, Frenemy?

I am firmly convinced that had I not had Vh1 freely fed into my apartment as an undergrad my G.P.A. would have been 0.6 points higher and I wouldn't currently be sitting in a windowless bedroom that smells like paint updating an internet TV blog for an audience of two (you know who you are, my sole RSS feeder). I had unfettered access, though, to that crack of cable, airing endless marathons of count down lists that legitimately had me wondering, "who DOES have the #4 hardest rock body?!" I would sit on that 9 foot couch, a Chipotle burrito sitting on my chest, and actively know what it was like to have television eat my brain.

Three years later Vh1 has taken its calculus of narcotizing crap and out of it actually spun a viable media platform: Celeb-reality. Shows like Flavor of Love, The Surreal Life, and I Love New York have given the network some of the highest ratings in the land of cable and, as Bill Carter in today's New York Times points out, pioneered the path for a bizarre new programming maxim:

Take a pop cultural idol from the past 20 years or so — idol being defined so broadly as to include almost anyone who ever struck the public consciousness even a glancing blow — and place him or her in some reality television context.

Carter's article raises the obvious criticisms levelled against shows like Flavor of Love, which opponents claim reify black stereotypes of minstrels and hoochies. Most interesting, however, is the paradoxical role Vh1 seeks to establish for itself as the gatekeepers of "Acceptable TV," an upcoming show starring Jack Black that "dovetails neatly with the general skepticism that VH1 executives have about the value of the Internet vs. traditional television."

Here we have Vh1, the network that brought us Mini-Me peeing on a Brady Brother, as the final arbiter of taste between what passes for measly user generated content and broadcast worthy entertainment. Maybe that passes for irony, but I'm not exactly sure of the term's definition. If only I'd spent more time in the library as an undergrad than on my couch inhaling burritos taking note of the top 40 most awesomely dirrrty songs of '04.

30 Rock: Writing Derrty

Yeah, I know 30 Rock was a rerun tonight, but the absence of anything new to write about has allowed me to rummage through the heaps of TV on the INTERNETS notes I have scrawled on the backs of "Business Reply Mail" cards that have fallen out of my sister's past issues of People and pick a bone that has for too long gone, you know, not picked. 30. Rock. Is. Stealing. Jokes.

Yup, I said it, and I'll step back, appreciate it and repeat it. 30 Rock is writing derrrty. Cheyeah.

Now I'm well aware that the standards of ethical argumentation normally require at least 3 supporting pieces of evidence for each supposition, but I only have two right now and hopefully a third will strike me by the end of this post.

First example of punch line plagiarism - tonight's repeated episode "Jack-Tor," in which, according to the info on my sister's DVR:

Liz integrates Jack into a sketch; Frank and Toofer trick Jenna into fearing for her job; Liz wonders if Tracy is faking illiteracy to skip rehearsals. Rated TV-24. Program Type: Series/Sitcom. Letterbox. Repeat.

I forget when exactly this episode aired, but it was relatively early in the season, as the show was first finding its legs, and served as one of the flash points that ignited attention for both Alec Baldwin and the show (as well as star and head-writer Tina Fey) as something more than just Suddenly Susan where the new Susan suddenly has bigger boobs and no Judd Nelson. In fact, it was a fellow TV blogger I believe, who raved about the episode's Snapple Placement scene during which the writing staff of the fictional Girlie Show criticize Alec Baldwin's character for encouraging product placement while they simultaneously throw in non-sequiturs praising Diet Snapple and its Plumagranite flavor. Yeah, we get it, it's WAY meta on like SO many levels except, wait a minute, Wayne's World did it like 15 years ago.



Second example - the episode which aired about two weeks ago that featured the debut of the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine. An obvious parody of the George Foreman Grill, the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine also mimicked the George Bluth Cornholer from Arrested Development in its dangerous shortcoming of scalding its users with burning grease.

The similarities between the shows don't stop there. Both 30 Rock and Arrested Development fall into the category of, dare I say it, post-post-modern sitcoms (in other words - sitcoms written after and with the full understanding of the paradigm shift created by '80s and '90s institutions The Simpsons and Seinfeld) that not only break the use of the 3 camera system but also find jokes in the deconstruction of language and TV-reality interplay.

For the humor found in deconstructing language one need only to look at any scene involving David Cross in Arrested Development (ex, Psychoanalyst + Therapist = Analrapist) or the Colbert Report's "The Word" segment. As for TV-reality interplay, both Arrested Development and 30 Rock rely heavily on recreating the humor of real life by inviting the audience into the world of the show's characters and making them privy to inside jokes. How many times did Arrested Development quickly toss out a self-referential joke like "hermano"? Even 30 Rock created an alternative world where jokes transcend punch lines and one liners (the kind of sitcom bricks that still form the foundation for more "traditional" fare such as Two and a Half Men or The New Adventures of Old Christine) and involve situations of shared experience like Jenna's "Rural Juror." Even Alec Baldwin's character in the episode cops to it when asked to play a GE exec in a sketch mocking GE execs:

Oh I get it. The whole self-referential thing. Letterman hates the suits. Stern yells at his boss. Nixon's sock-it-to-me on Laugh In. Yeah, hippy humor.

In my opinion, 30 Rock is still the best new sitcom of the 2006 - 2007 season and has proven for many critics that the sitcom is no longer a moribund genre. However, it's important to realize originality is still the basis of creativity and without it you're just writing derrrty.

I know that's not a third supporting piece of evidence for my original argument but that's all I have written on my "Business Reply Mail Notes" I've scrounged up off the floor among old Chipotle wrappers. Cheyeah.

Van Milder: The Edgeless Edge of Kal Penn

It's been a busy week for Kal Penn. When not losing life on 24 he was taking it on Tuesday's Law and Order: SVU. Playing the Indian kid with daddy issues, Penn successfully executed the difficult task of overacting understated. Still, for too few legitimate reasons, touted as a film star, Penn underwhelmed TWICE this week on network prime time, doing little to strengthen the occasionally whispered argument that Van Wilder II failed because of residual imperialist attitudes of the West and not because, you know, the incredulity of Kal Penn as a hetero player.

3 quick notes to the producers of Law and Order: SVU:

1) Change your name to Order: SVU. There's no law in your story lines. There's a sex crime, an unfortunate similarity between a victim and a real person, the chase of a wrong lead, the introduction of the actual culprit as a character peripherally related to the initial suspect, the scene where "remand" is denied and bail is set at $1 million, the capture of the reprobate who actually turned out to be a flight risk, the killer rapist's confession of the crime brought about by Freudian interrogation, and, finally, an uncomfortable ending during which Elliot, Mariska or Ice T realize justice served can never undo the scars of a crime already committed.

2) On a related note, Order: SVU, plot twists and guest stars don't really go hand in hand. If you paid for Kal Penn's SAG fee then he's probably going to be the killer.

3) Order: SVU, be more like this:

Golden Globes / Golden Showers

Most recently epitomized by The Aviator's victory for Best Picture however many years ago, the Golden Globes have repeatedly reinforced in the eyes of the critical populace its image as a booze-fueled hand-job for Hollywood that serves as the shaggy-haired roadie one has to get through to make it to the Academy Awards. The most valuable barometer to use to predict whom the Hollywood Foreign Press will choose as its winners is the institution's obsession with the "golden age of Hollywood." It's "Inside the Beltway" politics for the Holiday Hills resulting in a pretty alienating experience for the rest of us. Except when stars get drunk, jokes get crass and the pomp and circumstance of the Oscars is eschewed instead for an atmosphere reminiscent of a French Pot Luck - you can almost smell the smoke and feel the sticky heat of George Clooney's gin sweats through the television.

The HFPA's obsession with all things, well, Hollywood as well as the Golden Globes' role as a prelude to the Oscars, make the Hollywood Foreign Press' film picks inherently political and a little too up-it's-own-butt. It's TV picks, however, are usually more deserving than the Emmy's, caught up in its own degree of self-importance, and serve as the strongest statement of the year of what's been the best in TV Land in the past year (See Mary Louise Parker's win for Weeds in 2006 and her subsequent loss to a Seinfeld Curse Breaker at the Emmy's that same year).

So without further stream of consciousness verbosity, my Golden Globe TV picks for 2007.

Best Television Series - Drama

24 (FOX)
Real Time Productions/Imagine Television/Twentieth Century Fox Television; FOX

Big Love (HBO)
Anima Sola/Playtone Productions/HBO Entertainment; HBO

Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Heroes (NBC)
NBC Universal Television Studio/Tailwind Productions; NBC

Lost (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Pick: Grey's Anatomy
Why: Last year's winner, Lost, fell off in the middle of season 2 and has suffered serious momentum challenges by its extended hiatus schedule and fan reactions to too few sequential new episodes. Grey's Anatomy developed into a true blockbuster series during its second season with an enormous post-Super Bowl episode that literally exploded the show out of the shadow of its Desperate Housewives lead-in. Season 2 gave no less than 3 memorable episodes that delivered the suspense of mid-90's ER and the emotional drama of a great evening soap. It's irreverent attitude and impetuous sexiness forged a new voice in prime-time TV that resonated with an audience no show has found since HBO's Sex and the City. Big competition from FOX's 24, however, which beat out Grey's for the Best Drama Emmy in '06.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama

Patricia Arquette – Medium (NBC)

Edie Falco – The Sopranos (HBO)

Evangeline Lilly – Lost (ABC)

Ellen Pompeo – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)

Kyra Sedgwick – The Closer (TNT)

Pick: Kyra Sedgwick
Why: I've never seen The Closer but all those reviews make it sound like Kyra Sedgwick's southern accent makes Matthew Mcgonnagay sound like he's from Hoboken. Don't be surprised by a win for Edie Falco, though, for a Sopranos farewell, and there's always that whole HBO lobby...

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Patrick Dempsey – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)

Michael C. Hall – Dexter (SHOWTIME)

Hugh Laurie – House (FOX)

Bill Paxton – Big Love (HBO)

Kiefer Sutherland – 24 (FOX)

Pick: Michael C. Hall
Why: Laurie won last year. Kiefer won the Emmy. Dempsey's character doesn't demand enough range. Michael C. Hall's the shit. And kinda so is Showtime.

Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Entourage (HBO)
Leverage/Closest to the Hole/HBO Entertainment; HBO

The Office (NBC)
Deedle Dee Productions/Reveille/NBC Universal Television Studio; NBC

Ugly Betty (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Weeds (SHOWTIME)
Showtime/Lionsgate Television/Tilted Productions, Inc.; SHOWTIME

Pick: Weeds
Why: Not even nominated last year, The Office could follow up its '06 Emmy win with this year's Golden Globe. Midway through season 2, however, The (American) Office made it very clear that when not adapting story lines from the British original it mired itself in overwrought plot and excessive pop culture references so thin they date themselves during the time between production and broadcast (Lazy Scranton?). Last year's winner, Desperate Housewives, is a critical non-entity this year serving as the osteoperatic backbone for ABC's flaccid Sunday lineup. Showtime's Weeds, on the other hand, rose to a new level in its second season, sharpening its banter and executing a smart, well-developed story that was both hilarious and surprisingly touching. Oh, and did I mention Showtime's the shit?

Best Performance By an Actress in a Series - Musical or Comedy

Marcia Cross – Desperate Housewives (ABC)

America Ferrera – Ugly Betty (ABC)

Felicity Huffman – Desperate Housewives (ABC)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus – The New Adventures Of Old Christine (CBS)

Mary-Louise Parker – Weeds (SHOWTIME)

Pick: America Ferrera
Why: I can't watch the show but everyone seems to love American Ferrera, and I have to admit, it would feel kind of warm in the chest if a fat, little dark girl won an award. Also, MLP won last year yet JLD took home the Emmy. Why should the HFPA pick sides between the two when it can reward someone young and new and also say fuck you to two white chicks that, in the end, kinda look the same but aren't cumulatively hotter than Sigourney Weaver's Key Master in Ghostbusters 1?

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Alec Baldwin – 30 Rock (NBC)

Zach Braff – Scrubs (NBC)

Steve Carell – The Office (NBC)

Jason Lee – My Name Is Earl (NBC)

Tony Shalhoub – Monk (USA)

Pick: Alec Baldwin
Why: Duh. I mean Carell's acceptance speech was funny enough last year for NBC to use it as a promo for this year's airing, but Baldwin? C'mon. And Tony Shalhoub has been consistently condescending in his speeches toward those he's beaten like six times, so Baldwin? Duh.

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV

Bleak House (PBS)
Masterpiece Theatre/BBC/WGBH Boston/Deep Indigo; PBS

Broken Trail (AMC)
Butchers Run Films/Once Upon a Time Films/Sony Pictures Television; AMC

Elizabeth I (HBO)
Company Pictures/channel 4/HBO Films; HBO

Mrs. Harris (HBO)
Killer Films/Number 9 Films/John Wells Productions/HBO Films; HBO

Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PBS)
Masterpiece Theatre/Granada/WGBH Boston; PBS

Pick: Bleak House
Why: Yeah, I know it's risky to bet against anything backed by Killer Films, John Wells and HBO, but everyone's been sweating the PBS adaptation of Dickens without having sat through it so why can't I?

Best Performance By an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV

Gillian Anderson – Bleak House (PBS)

Annette Bening – Mrs. Harris (HBO)

Helen Mirren – Elizabeth I (HBO)

Helen Mirren – Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PBS)

Sophie Okonedo – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)

Pick: Gillian Anderson
Why: Let Helen Mirren win for The Queen. Annette's got her nom for Running With Scissors. And Gillian's just always been awesome from The X-Files to The House of Mirth to, apparently, PBS' Bleak House.

Best Performance By an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV

André Braugher – Thief (FX)

Robert Duvall – Broken Trail (AMC)

Michael Ealy – Sleeper Cell: American Terror (SHOWTIME)

Chiwetel Ejiofor – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)

Ben Kingsley – Mrs. Harris (HBO)

Bill Nighy – Gideon's Daughter (BBC)

Matthew Perry – The Ron Clark Story (TNT)

Pick: André Braugher
Why: It's been Bill Nighy's millennium, but he couldn't bring the Globe home last year for The Girl in the Cafe, which means a) he's out this year b) Ejiofor's out as well since HBO doesn't seem to be too favored and c) FX had the balls to re-brand a canceled show as a mini-series and that deserves the pilfering of some serious hardware.

Best Supporting Actress in ANYTHING on TV

Emily Blunt – Gideon's Daughter (BBC)

Toni Collette – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)

Katherine Heigl – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)

Sarah Paulson – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (NBC)

Elizabeth Perkins – Weeds (SHOWTIME)

Pick: Elizabeth Perkins
Why: Sandra Oh won it last year for Grey's, somewhat deservedly, but Heigl's emotional basket case, Izzie, was more difficult to watch than Isiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey on Oprah. Perkins' Celia Hodes character in Weeds, however, develops her own strong storyline in season 2 that Perkins plays with a wry disgust that somehow becomes fragile and endearing.

Best Supporting Actor

Thomas Haden Church – Broken Trail (AMC)

Jeremy Irons – Elizabeth I (HBO)

Justin Kirk – Weeds (SHOWTIME)

Masi Oka – Heroes (NBC)

Jeremy Piven – Entourage (HBO)

Pick: Justin Kirk
Why: Justin Kirk's character in Weeds is hilarious and is dating Kate Walsh. Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage is brilliant but he's fighting with John Cusack. Piven won the Emmy, but he also wore an ascot. Kirk is every much an "actor's actor" as piven but may, in real life, actually have a sense of humor, which Piven, obvious to anyone who saw his MTV sponsored trip to India, may actually lack.

AOTC: Rolling Stones Gather No Cred

Back in November I posted a meandering manifesto on why NBC's "Heroes" sucks. Three weeks later Lesley Savage wrote in the December 14th issue of Rolling Stone what could be considered an anachronistic rebuttal. You know, three weeks before she made her points I countered them on this blog thereby subverting some sort of logical temporal relationship between point/counter-point argumentation. For instance:

I said:

[Heroes] is written by Tim Kring, a gentleman (who knows, he might be an asshole) whose past television and writing credits offer nothing to intimate an organic familiarity with comic books or the aesthetic of comic lore.

Lesley said:

"...Heroes transcends sci-fi-loving nerds. 'We wanted to make sure that we weren't just a genre-based show,' says Kring, who never reads comic books.'" (my emphasis)

Translation = let's embrace Heroes as watered-down comic book fiction even though it performs the same function as a Jessica Simpson cover of a classic rock song - all tits, no authentic connection to the material.

I said:

It's just not geeky enough.

Lesley said:

"IT'S NOT TOO GEEKY" (her emphasis, not mine)

Translation = not geeky means not detailed and nuanced which means cheesy which means perfect for white chicks named Lesley.

I said:

It is a soap opera with lazy dramatic writing techniques to mask the holes in its supposed mystery.

Lesley said:

(quoting Kring) "We're just the opposite of most shows...It's not like a tank of gas that runs out. We generate more twists and turns the more we reveal...If you're positing that there are people all over the world with powers, it's an endless supply."

Translation = We make the show up as we go; there is no long term plot structure and we're going to keep stretching things out as long as the sponsors ask.

I said:

Third, and most importantly, where's the show's overarching metaphor? Heroes is nothing without its Christ figure. Nothing without its Holocaust themes. Nothing without the political subtext necessary to make a comic book the innocent representation of the ugly truths adults rationalize with the principles of capitalism, realism, safety and pragmatism.

Lesley said:

"While the show works as fantasy, it also reflects the world we live in...In times of war, superhero movies do well because we need a break from grim reality."

Translation = Hm, I have no capacity to critically interpret the events of history and therefore must rely on contrived analyses of current events to establish a metaphor for my show. Sorry, Kring and Savage, but that bullshit figurative speech could be said about anything from why people like Two and A Half Men (buddy comedies reinforce the importance of friendship in these trying times of alienation and anxiety) to 24 (contemporary Westerns allow viewers to sublimate their fears of Arabs in the gunslinger ethos of a man who's more Cowboy than our current jingoist President).

Sorry, Lesley. Consider yourself re-rebutted.

TVnasty

Since I got into the TV blogging business I've fielded many questions in cars, coffee shops and chat rooms about why anyone in their right mind would want to get into the sordid world of infrequently updated posts on reality TV and quirky cult wonders with sapphic subtexts. Truth is the world's not all that sordid - mostly just exasperating and overrun by loud chicks who spend commercial breaks bedazzling their mouse pads.

Take, for instance, Exhibit number A. The TVnista blog at TVguide.com. From what I gather from her posts, she's 25. How do I know this? Because her favorite show until this year was A Different World. Now, it's The Wire. Seriously. And what makes this Quarter-Lifer worth listening to when it comes to analysis and critique of mass media? Obviously her uncanny ability to feign total retardation as well as regurgitate shit she's read elsewhere to affect an aura of, "I know what the fuck I'm talking about."

TVnista on "The Best Returning Show of the Season: The Wire"

This gritty drama makes you flinch, but for good reasons, by turning a camera on the urban realities so many people live in quiet desperation. Often I have to pinch myself to remind myself that I’m not watching a documentary, but instead, a work of fiction.

Ah yes, what would a review of The Wire be without a totally unnecessary and unoriginal allusion to a classic piece of literature. Do me a favor and don't tell TVnista that The Wire actually developed out of the HBO miniseries "The Corner," a veritable documentary of what David Simon saw as a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

TVnista goes on to list her second favorite "Breakout Hit of the Season: Friday Night Lights." And here, friends, is why I got into the TV blogging bidness. Because comments like this:

Here’s another show, like The Wire, that can often feel like a documentary. It does have a film-like quality, but I could do without the shaky camera. It makes me a bit nauseous.

...by people like TVnista, in this age of YOU are the PERSON of the Year, may actually have some sort of affect on the shows normal people reasonably enjoy. New Media may be the future but it also threatens to dismantle the institutions we have, over the years, come to embrace as immutable. Yeah, I got into the TV Blog scene mostly to score a free Lost t-shirt, but what started as a campaign for J.J. Abrams e-bay fodder has become an (j)E-had for taking TV back from the TVnistas, starting in the nearest car, coffee shop and chat room I can find.

Heroes, Zeros and Weirdos

There have been many things I've been meaning to post about in the past month. How much NBC's "Heroes" blows (or does it?). How far NBC's "The Office" is slipping in quality and substance (told you so). How far above expectations NBC's "30 Rock" is consistently delivering (F the haters). And how far up its own butt NBC's "Studio 60" continues to crawl each week (BS site but whatever he agrees) .

With all that out in the open to be harped on again soon, I instead turn my attention to a larger question about the current state of Television as we wrap up the 1st quarter of the viewing season. Specifically the age old quandary of why bad shows out-perform good shows and why good shows have to get cancelled (See: Dateline to replace Friday Night Lights on Tuesday).

Let's start with this year's honoree as "The Best Show You're Not Watching," a dubious achievement formerly awarded to FOX's "Arrested Development." For 2006, it's NBC's "Friday Night Lights." One of the primary reasons I started these posts was to flex my Words Per Minute and defend shows like Friday Night Lights and "Kidnapped," which were clearly too good for network television to sustain. FNL's got its full season pick-up, however, and Kidnapped is wrapped for good after 13.

Another surprisingly solid show hitting its comedic stride during its second season is CBS's "How I Met Your Mother." Even after co-star and scene stealer NPH came out to People a few weeks ago, the show is still pulling in mediocre ratings (despite "Let's Go 2 the Mall" by Robin Sparkles somehow), which begs the question: how bad does a show have to be in order for it to be considered good?

The Office, Heroes, Criminal Minds, NCIS, Two and a Half Men, the list goes on and on of mediocre shows that find mass audiences through their watered down, accessible substance. Who's to blame? The networks for not sticking by fledgling franchises? The networks for not putting enough corporate muscle behind the commercial promotion of new, edgier shows? The public for not caring enough about television to waste time to wade through the bevy of new shows and gravitate toward the best and brightest? The writers and producers themselves who are too out of touch to be both relevant and engrossing?

Who knows. All I know is Seinfeld was successful and remains one of the greatest shows in the past 20 years. Who knows where it would stand in today's TV climate. Who knows how many times I'll say "who knows" in succession as a poor attempt at parallel structure? If it were to air today Seinfeld probably wouldn't receive the acclaim of "Worst Show For Some Reason You Are Watching." Nope. That shit would still go to Heroes.

Ummm, I think it's called nausea?

With Grey's Anatomy moved to Thursday nights and Desperate Housewives relying far too heavily on Eva Longoria's semi-clad tiny torso for ratings bumps, the only TV left to consume on Sundays is sports.

Sure, there's LPGA, MLS and NASCAR racing offered on networks major enough to only need a single digit but what Sundays in October really come down to are football and post-season MLB. The Sunday sports viewing sesh can be broken down into 3 segments: Morning, Afternoon and Night.


Morning's obviously noon pregame coverage for a 1:00 game. Afternoon's the second game of the afternoon at 4:00 EST. And Night is usually NBC's new Football Night In America and, for today, MLB on FOX's presentation of Game 2 of the World Series.

CBS and FOX have had standard Sunday football packages for the past several years. 2006, however, saw NBC break back into the football business by launching its own primetime Sunday football showdown to usurp the network share lost by Monday Night Football's move to ABC affiliate ESPN. NBC celebrated the launch of it's new sports show franchise with the lamest name it could possibly come up with: Sunday Night Football and its associated analysis program Football Night In America. Right when it seemed NBC couldn't get any whiter they spice up their promo video with a rap song lacking so much melanin that the unacknowledged perpetrator could only be MC Powder.

NBC's shortcomings as a sports network are only reinforced by a terrible presence in the field of digital media. Though its SNFONNBC website boasts pretty bad-ass graphics, it's really nothing more than a Flash window with sound effects ripped straight out of Tecmo Bowl. It's now week 6 of the NFL and NBC's football home page still hypes a Manning Bowl that took place two months ago.

MLB on FOX = Huge DB's on FOX

This weekend also saw the start of the World Series on FOX with Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, Ken Rosenthal and Chris Myers handling the live game coverage. A new addition to the pre and postgame coverage, however, is guest analyst Eric Byrnes, formerly of the Oakland A's, whom we have the pleasure of seeing every time the series returns to Detroit this year. If anyone saw the coverage they'll understand that the picture posted to the right does not nearly do justice to how big of a douche bag Byrnes actually is. Like, I don't know of any dictionaries that actually have pictures but, you know, if there happened to be one that existed and if it actually chose to water down its credentials as the only dictionary to have pictures by including definitions and illustrations for words like "douche bag" then I'm sure Eric Byrnes would be smugly staring back at us between entries for "doubtless" and "dough."

FNL, SNL, WTF?

Kyle Chandler stars in this Peter Berg television adaptation of the Peter Berg film adaptation of the Buzz Hissinger Book of the real-life-story "Friday Night Lights."

Let's try to clear things up. Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip airs on Monday nights and is about a sketch-comedy show that films on Friday Nights. Saturday Night Live IS a sketch comedy show that airs on Saturday nights, however, without its former head-writer, Tina Fey, whose new show mocks Saturday Night Live on a Wednesday Night, which is the day after Tuesday night when NBC has decided not to confuse anyone and slot Friday Night Lights. On a Tuesday. Night.

The Big 3 companies (not counting Mack Brown who throws his own weight behind the show's desperate plea for authenticity) behind this production are NBC Universal Television (obviously), Imagine Television and Film 44. Brian Grazer is the bigwig of Imagine Television and is responsible for a slew of critically and consumer acclaimed shows such as Arrested Development, Playmakers, Sports Nite and Felicity. Film 44 is Berg's new production company and has 4 projects slated to bow by 2007, FNL the first.

In addition to the pedigree of David Nevins and Brian Grazer, Friday Night Lights has the music of he who seems to be the de-facto NBC in-house composer as of late, W.G. Snuffy Walden who's work on NBC shows is prominent on three series this fall - Studio 60, Lights and Kidnapped. The real question is, though, why didn't Berg stick with the original team that scored his feature version of Hissinger's book? Music credits on the film go to Texas-based instrumental group Explosions in the Sky and Brian Reitzell and David Torn of Evolution Music Partners. Snuffy, however, takes what seems like the same signature sound of the motion picture and mimics the shit out of it. Why? Hopefully a myspace message to Texas Band can clear things up.

explosionsinthesky@yahoo.com wrote back:

they ended up using a couple of songs for the first
episode. they may follow up and use some in the next
as well. we got lucky to be a part of the movie and
now it looks to have spilled over to the t.v. show.
thanks for thinking of us and i hope you like the
program.

take care of yourself.
explosions in the sky

So looks like the makers of music young men want to clay-shoot to are still involved in the creative process of the series, and this blogger spun conspiracy from an end credit for no reason.

Maybe Peter Berg can clear it all up here.