The verdict on Paula

Fox admits, in effect, that a judge on "American Idol" excessively fraternized with a contestant, but that's okay because she stopped short of fornication (My Way News). Which is not exactly vindication for Ms. Abdul. In fact, had Corey Clark gone much further in the "Idol" competition, the penalty would almost certainly have been greater for the show's sexy den mother.

No good deed ...

TV station managers have been passing around this story. It's about an FCC fine that was handed down to two Florida stations for failing to put crawls on the screen that repeated the information given out over the air by a news anchor during the stations' coverage of Hurricane Charley last year.

Link: The News-Press: Local & State - TV stations fined, failed to inform hearing-impaired.

A lot of people in the business are incensed that the feds went after WBBH-TV and WZVN-TV. They aired more than a week of nonstop hurricane coverage at great expense to the bottom line, which now takes an additional hit because, on three occasions during that eight-day span, "useful" advisories that were given orally did not have a visual presentation as well. "Talk about Monday morning quarterbacking by Washington bureaucrats," grumbled the Television Business Report.

Initially I was sympathetic to the stations. Then I wondered. The fine is $24,000 per station. How much promotional value did that hurricane represent?  At least $24,000? Several times that amount? Or how about we just say, "Priceless," since putting a dollar amount on deadly weather conditions is, you know, crass.

If there's one area in which a no-tolerance policy is at least defensible, it would be making sure everyone in a community receives the same emergency information. Sure seems a better use of bureaucratic time than sniffing around for "indecency."

Ellen again

She should host the Emmys every year, but she's definitely hosting them this year. "You know me, any excuse to put on a dress," DeGeneres said through a joke writer.

Steal this post!

My copy of the Family Guy direct-to-DVD film, "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story," arrived today, encased in plastic and abject corporate paranoia.

This cover letter (click to enlarge) set the tone, advising me to "Please take care of your DVD screener," which did not mean wiping the shiny side in a straight line as opposed to a circle, but rather meant that if someone at Fox should find this disc ("individually watermarked"!) in someone else's hands, I would risk severe career damage, or at least "the loss of your screener privileges."

The disc was also plastered with warnings, and then when I popped it in I got a lovely PSA:

YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR (...see kid eyeing parked car)
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A HANDBAG
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A TELEVISION (...shadowy figures heisting TV from apartment)
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A DVD
DOWNLOADING PIRATED FILMS IS STEALING
STEALING IS AGAINST THE LAW

Okay, okay. We get it. (But just in case we didn't, a "Property of Fox" message flashed on screen after the credits. You can't see it when fast-forwarding, only at normal speed. That's a new one on me.)

The question is, does this stuff do any good and -- more to the point -- are Fox's corporate lawyers correct in their assumption that (a) screeners like me are responsible for piracy and (b) that piracy is doing irreparable harm to the home video business and (c) that the entertainment industry's enforcement tactics are no more onerous than they were in the Betamax days?

I still think the most effective anti-piracy device is putting out product that doesn't suck and, by the way, is packaged thoughtfully for the collector. I think even Seth MacFarlane, the creator of "Family Guy," who stands to profit directly from the sales of this DVD, knows that. The opening scene of the Stewie movie takes place at the red-carpet premiere of ... the Stewie movie. Or as the local TV reporter on the scene puts it:

Tonight the stars are out for a special sneak preview of a straight-to-DVD feature that will soon be in the 3.99 bin at your local car wash.

Yup.

Update: A reader writes, "Just thought you'd like to know, I got my illegally downloaded copy about 3 weeks ago...from the amount of seeders on the web site, looks like anyone who really wants it can get it."

Showtime's latest "B.S."

Plus, a Kevin Smith sighting. Remember, if you've got a RealCities ID, you don't have to register again.

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | ‘Barbershop’ has a new bunch of cutups.

But don't call it Season 7

Phil Rosenthal's analysis of HBO's announcement that "Sopranos" creator David Chase has agreed to extend the show's sixth and final season by eight episodes -- which won't air until 2007 -- is worth reading right to the payoff line at the end.

Link: Chicago Tribune | `Sopranos' reheating HBO water-cooler talk.

Don't look back, they may be gaining

In honor of Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, the Negro Leagues baseball great who died this week at the age of 103, some pictures of Kansas City Monarchs:

(Taken August 3, 2005, in the Barnhart garden.)

Somewhere around here I have pre-digital-camera pictures of the elaborate gravesite of Double Duty's former teammate and business partner, Satchel Paige, which includes his rules for life (like "Don't look back...") etched onto two huge marble stones. I hope someone builds a similar tribute to this great American.

On a related note, Star columnist Joe Posnanski says it's time to put Buck O'Neil in the Hall of Fame.

I think we've turned a corner...

I'm happy to report that "Over There," the almost-no-holds-barred war drama, is finding its audience. Last week, viewership dropped by 37 percent from week one. Of course, week one was promoted more heavily than the actual war. Anyway, FX publicity now reports that

Episode three of Over There delivered a 2.21  HH rating, a +6% improvement over week two. This translated  to 1,916,000  households and 2,507,000 viewers.  Of those (1,424,000) were adults 18-49.  Over There is now averaging a 2.51 HH rating, 2,179,000 HHs and 3,040,000 viewers  --  of which (1,782,000) are adults 18-49. Over There ranked #1 in cable among Men 18-49 and Men 25-54 on Wednesday. Audience composition for last night's episode was 67% male / 33% female .

I'd love to know what reservists who have served their tour of duty in Iraq think of the show.

Finally! Dave in high def

I had this scoop last night, but got all sleepy plotting my brilliant future on TV Barn. Sure enough, by the time I thought of posting it today, B&C already had the news.

When Letterman starts his 13th season on CBS August 29, it will be in beautiful 1080i HDTV. "Letterman's 13th season on the network": now there's a phrase that was never uttered over at NBC.

Link: Letterman Goes HD Aug. 29 | BCBeat.

About the new site

Welcome to the new and — I think you'll soon agree — improved TV Barn.

It was at least four years ago, maybe five, that Dinn Mann and I first had discussions about bringing my Web site in-house and making it part of KansasCity.com. Dinn soon left for MLB.com, but over the years the conversation continued with various editors, both at the Kansas City Star and Knight Ridder Digital.

Even back then I wanted to move TV Barn to KansasCity.com. No one ever said "no" to the idea; it just took a while to make a reality. Today I'm excited to turn a new page in my career as an online journalist.

You may be asking, "Aaron. Don't you mind giving up the editorial independence you had with TV Barn?"  Sorry, but I've never seen it that way. I gave up my editorial independence on January 2, 1997, when I joined the staff of the Kansas City Star. No, the reason I set up TV Barn is that my readers on the Internet were having trouble finding my stories on the old kcstar.com. Also, I wanted to close down my email newsletter devoted to late-night television, so the timing was perfect.

It started out as a blog (before there were blogs), then mutated into other forms. While I've always taken a lot of pride in TV Barn, I have never been entirely satisfied with it, as you might have guessed from the many redesigns. Lately, I've been worried that TV Barn looks too much like the zillions of other TV reference pages and blogs out there (and indeed, readership for the site appears to have plateaued, according to usage stats).

I felt the only way to move forward with TV Barn was to go back to blogging -- but this time, a blog that was fully integrated with my newspaper work. That merger of electronic and print journalism is, of course, exactly what many media forecasters say must happen if newspapers are to remain relevant in the 21st century.

Thanks to my editor-in-chief Mark Zieman, I now have a license to blog at work. I believe you'll see new energy going into TV Barn as I expand my beat into areas that are well suited to online journalism. Watch what happens, and let me know what you think.

***

Let's go over some of the changes you'll see at the new TV Barn.

Comments

You can comment on any post made to the new TV Barn. Comment mode is moderated, which means you won't see your comment until I've approved it. So be civil. However, registering is optional, meaning you are free to post anonymously.  (You can even send me an anonymous news tip without using email: just post a comment and type "NOT FOR PUBLICATION" somewhere in your message.)

Ticker

The blog will incorporate Ticker, though all items will be written by me. Just like in the old days.

I've thanked Mark Jeffries, Paul Murray, Steve Rhodes, and my anonymous contributors to the Ticker privately, and I'd like to tip my hat to them publicly as well. They spent hundreds of hours posting links to my site, and I know many of you appreciated having them. However, I felt Ticker was achieving diminishing returns as more and more TV-related news feeds were sprouting up on the Net. So the news items you see here will almost certainly have comment or instant analysis accompanying them. Hence the name I've given to the category tag: News and Comment.

I know some of you visit TV Barn frequently to look at the Ticker. I think the new TV Barn will keep you coming back just as often.

Article links

All links to articles I write for the Kansas City Star will go to KansasCity.com. Which means you will have to be registered to read my articles. That's the big tradeoff, I suppose, though it has never seemed like much of a tradeoff to me. Especially since registering at one RealCities site (whether kansascity.com or ohio.com or miami.com or philly.com, etc.) will create an account honored at all the rest of them. Try doing that with Advance newspaper web sites.

TV Barn's TV Picks

The Remote Patrol list will continue under Tom Heald's and Jon Delfin's direction, but will no longer include capsules of mine. Jon and Tom have toiled for years to make these capsules both distinctive and comprehensive, and I hope you'll continue to read them. I'll keep a link to them on the home page. (Also, if you use the tvbarn.com/remote link, that's down temporarily.)

tvbarn2

There is a static link to the tvbarn2 discussion list, but I've discontinued the blogroll of latest topics. You can, however, subscribe to it yourself from the tvbarn2 Google Groups Feeds page.

Trackbacks

These have been around half a decade and I still really don't know how they work. But I see them on people's blogs and I figured, now's the time to start adding them to mine. So, those of you who can, trackback away!

Spotlight posts

You'll notice there's a new blogroll. It will trap articles that I've tagged with a "Spotlight" tag because they have some lasting value after they've rolled off the main blog area. Mom's obituary comes to mind, as does the upcoming Fall season package.

Categories and calendar

These are self-explanatory additions. You've seen 'em on a million blogs, you'll see 'em here.

***

That's it for now. I'll be hard at work building the site over the coming weeks, so check back often. (Francis will be hard at work watching me.)

-- Aaron