Next week, Leon Wieseltier reads Rolling Stones lyrics aloud

The New Republic's Lee Siegel goes all crotchety on Jon Stewart on its Web site today. Siegel thinks Stewart is prostituting himself to the young and sacrificing his magical "wit"  for "pandering puerility" and "gross-out expedience." He's become the "Howdy-Doody Orwell," writes Siegel, and criticizes him for using the word "dude" on "The Daily Show." Siegel exhorts him, to "use the show to trot out your native wit and win for yourself a mature audience that will give you a meaningful career that will last decades, and not just until the news cycle spins beyond your reach."

Yep, he said "wit." Twice. Dude, that's so Steverino. And not early, hip Steverino either.

It's Hers-Been week on ABC

"Alias" returns the day after "Commander in Chief" returns, not long after Salman Rushdie's wife appears in a dreadful "Ten Commandments" remake. And it's all yours on A-B-C.    

See you at the Grill, Ted

Link: Paul Harris Online: Aaron Barnhart, TV Barn Radio.

Yesterday on my KMOX show, Aaron Barnhart and I talked about the late Don Knotts' classic Barney Fife character, who I contend was the greatest TV Barney, ever.

We also discussed Ted Turner leaving Time-Warner's board of directors, the return of "The Apprentice" and "Deal or No Deal" on NBC tonight, and the ninth season of "The Amazing Race," which debuts Tuesday night on CBS.

(here's a link to the Ted story)

Where's Goodman?

Listen to Andrea Hsu's report on NPR and the "secret identity" of the king of this year's Mardi Gras will be pretty obvious:

Link: Morning Edition

Dennis Weaver, RIP

Of the three former TV leads who passed away in the last 72 hours, only Dennis Weaver was still working in television:

All of us at ABC Family are saddened to learn of the death of Dennis Weaver.   It was an honor to have him star in our original drama "Wildfire" and his performance never ceased to dazzle us.  He was an American legend not only for his contribution to the acting community but for his extensive and inspirational environmental work.  Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Dennis' family.

Weaver, as fans of "Wildfire" know, disappeared from the cast between seasons one or two. My guess is his illness was revealed during shooting of season two as this pickup press release assumes he'll be part of the cast.

The only thing I'm sicker of than the Olympics

So on my arrival back into town from the long weekend, I get this:

My name is Nick Bromberg, and I am a journalism student at MU. I am writing a story for class about the Olympic ratings and was wondering if I could ask you a couple of things.

• Have the Olympics lost their relevance? Or with the arrival of the glut of information on the internet, are people less interested to tune in when they know the results?
• Does NBC need to do things differently in order to increase the ratings? Perhaps live coverage on a cable network of the important events, and then a replay on the network at night?
• Do you foresee giant ratings for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, which will be mostly live? Or are the Turin games a sign of things to come?

To which I replied:

Hi Nick.  I think ratings stories about the coverage of the Olympics have soared in "relevance" -- and god only knows why.  NBC is a fourth-rated network and if it weren't for Turin they wouldn't be winning ANY time periods EVER.

The need to comment on the Winter Games has been the driver behind some remarkably insipid commentary, even from unlikely quarters. Everybody is cooking up cockamamie theories for why the Olympics ratings were so "low."  Meanwhile, my newspaper, and every newspaper I saw during the past two weeks, invariably featured Olympics coverage on the covers.  It was all anyone on ESPN could talk about -- and half those guys hate the Winter Games.  Seems the Olympics are relevant to a lot of folk.

Ironically, it's the expansion of media that has fueled the talk of the Olympics being irrelevant -- because all these gasbags with talk shows and blogs need something to talk about, and this is the topic du jour. Never mind that's it's b.s.  NBC spent probably $5 million an hour for its primetime coverage and improved its ratings in nearly every time period, where it would've been spending $2-$3 million an hour anyway. Plus it generated a blizzard of off-network revenue that will allow it to make almost as much money off the Olympics as it does "The Tonight Show."  Any network would take that.

Hy and Jean: A recipe for disaster

"Mrs. Harris," a trippy new HBO film airing at 8 p.m. ET Saturday, bills itself as a "darkly comic tale" that revisits the 1980 killing of Herman Tarnower, the renowned diet doctor, at the hands of his lover Jean Harris. Tarnower's death caused an immediate sensation at the time, driving his Scarsdale Diet book back to No. 1 on the best-seller lists.

Meanwhile, Harris, a 50-something headmistress at a Virginia girls' school, was portrayed in the press as a wronged woman, whose beloved "Hy" had abandoned her for younger blood.

Indeed, "Mrs. Harris" at first seems like it's going to be a movie about the perils of crossing Jean Harris. The opening credits are a montage of old black-and-white movies featuring jilted lovers pumping bullets into the cads who dun them wrong.

But as we soon learn, there's more to this film than that. "Mrs. Harris," which stars Annette Bening as Jean and Ben Kingsley as Hy, offers a fascinating psychological autopsy of two articulate and intelligent people who, as Bening puts it, "only argued about the use of the subjunctive," yet wound up destroying each other.

TV Barn radio

This afternoon on my KMOX show, Aaron Barnhart talked about the battle between NBC's Olympics coverage and the "American Idol" juggernaut. Aaron also explained what happened to "Commander In Chief," what's coming up on the Monty Python specials that start tonight on PBS, NBC using iTunes to promote its new Dick Wolf series "Conviction," and what News Corporation has planned for those soon-to-be-former UPN affiliates.

More like 'My Patchwork TV'

Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a network out of my hat!

Link: News Corporation.

I fully expect to turn on my TV a year from now and see Joe Millionaire starring in a telenovela.

They're finally over the XFL

NBC's Saturday ratings have sunk to cable levels, so how surprising is it that Vince McMahon is bringing "Saturday Night Main Event" back to the network?

Designed for television

When Jay McCarroll, a slovenly, chain-smoking, 29-year-old fashion designer, won Bravo’s reality series “Project Runway” last year,  it was as stunning to him as it was unlikely to those watching.

For impressing a panel of judges that included designer Michael Kors and Elle fashion director Nina Garcia, McCarroll had his winning designs featured in Elle. Heidi Klum, “Project Runway’s” ubermodel host, ordered a dress from him. And he was able to summon the nerve to move to New York and start his own clothing line.

“Project Jay,” an entertaining one-hour special airing at 11 ET Wednesday on Bravo, documents these first few months after McCarroll’s triumph on TV. It’s part of an effort by Bravo to further extend the second season of “Project Runway,” its hottest show. (A “reunion” special, which sounds like a clip show in disguise, precedes it at 10 p.m. “Runway” returns next week for a two-part finale.)

A dog-eat-dog hell

I heard from the owner of a large dog kennel near here who saw my review of "Dealing Dogs," the horrific HBO documentary airing tonight. I've posted a longer version of the review on the jump, for reasons you'll understand in a moment.

Your headline is a misnomer. Puppy Mill does not apply to Baird. He was our competitor for many years. The USDA has enough rules on the books to put anybody out of business. The problem is lack of enforcement and, they will tell you, lack of personnel. Research facilities feel they are protected if the seller has a license.

Marjorie Brink

Gumbel iced

Well, Bryant Gumbel, here's the difference between the Olympics and the Republican National Convention: At the Olympics, the black guy finishes first.

Gumbel's grumbling about the Winter Games have been swishing around the Internet for the past couple of weeks. Bill Maher, on his HBO "Real Time" Friday night, noted how odd it was for avid golfer Gumbel, "of all people," to be making such comments. Somebody else pointed out that the Summer Games, which feature Africans as well as African-Americans, have a lot of events that the ancient Greeks didn't partake of, either (nor did they play them indoors).

But the latest twist came when a Chicago athlete named Shani Davis won the 1000-meter speed skate this weekend at Turin. Davis, the first African-American to win gold at a Winter Olympics, had been criticized as "selfish" for his decision to skip the U.S. pursuit, a team skating event that's never been held at the Olympics before. Never mind that 1980 Olympic multimedalist Eric Heiden, at the end of a long, equivocating column with a misleading headline, ultimately backed Davis's decision to go for the gold in the 1000m:

Link: NBCOlympics.com - Speed Skating - Heiden: Davis could have raced.

My favorite line from Gumbel's rant was this: "Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won." So what does that make the NFL and NBA, where everyone stands around waiting for the referees to finish watching the instant replay of a game-changing play to decide who won?

You just don't ...

Dear Mr. Barnhart:

I read with great interest your article on UPN's Half and Half.  While I can respect your opinion that Half and Half is a "forgettable show," I would ask forgettable to whom?   Half and Half is ranked as one of the top ten shows watched by African-Americans.  Since you state that the message is to reach its intended audience (single, African-American females), are you qualified to determined that it has?  Your treatment of the episode of "Girlfriends," is crass and condescending.  Perhaps the reason why the AIDS episode airs so frequently on BET is that it connects to that particular audience. The viewer you mentioned on Jumptheshark.com actually is the one who doesn't get it.  What the show conveyed is that you can be "young, cosmopolitan, urban, educated," and have a hysteria regarding AIDS.  This premise sounds plausible, particularly in light of best selling books marketed to black women on how to detect "down-low" black men and the high incidence of AIDS in black women.   

Mr. Barnhart, you do a great job at what you do, however, there are some areas that maybe you should just admit that you frankly do not understand because of the cultural divide.  Thank you. 

Dwyane Smith

(My response on the down low.)

Oh, Martha!

It's the book-cover sendup of the month. I smell Emmy! Or ziti, or something.

Safe doesn't win Super Bowls...

....but safe wins the battle of the Super Bowl ads:

Link: Bud/ Bud Light Scores Big During “Ad Bowl” 2006.

Note that edgy promotions from Emerald Nuts and Hummer hurt their respective companies, while Fedex's inane caveman parody (the Geico one was much better! was so!) and those formulaic Bud ads were big hits with viewers. In the non-news of the day, women disapproved of the GoDaddy.com ads.

Cable indecency wars: Book III

In today's edition, the Parents Television Council responds. Plus: Why not everyone on the religious right is happy with the PTC's Cable Choice campaign.

You might want to print this one out.

Not available in Finland (yet)

The N, the nighttime network for teens, premieres the second season (six new additional episodes) of the animated comedy series, O’Grady on Friday, March 3, from 9:00 – 9:30 p.m. (ET.)  The premiere episode features special guests Conan O’Brien as Chip, the oldest lifeguard in O’Grady who pines for the attention of Wendy, the less than perfect and sometimes flighty concession stand girl played by Amy Poehler. I have attached a great animation shot of both Conan and Amy for your consideration.

Right over here, Mr. Russert

Here's an interesting back-and-forth exchange between Tim Russert's producer and the watchdog group Media Matters for America (headed by rightie-turned-leftie David Brock) called, "If It's Sunday It Must Be Conservative." She takes issue with the report's conclusion that you're much more likely to see pro-Bush people on "Meet the Press" than other points of view. MMA responds with more charts and graphs.

Torino so far: Less fluff, more stuff

Color me converted. After Friday's gaudy opening to the Winter Olympics, I really wasn't expecting much of NBC's Torino coverage. But I've been pleasantly surprised.

Here's the first draft of my review, appearing in Wednesday's paper:

For America’s best known Winter Olympic athletes, the highlight of these 2006 Games thusfar has probably been Friday night’s opening ceremonies. On that night, figure skater Michelle Kwan was still one of the 211 members of Team USA, albeit the one that NBC’s cameras seemed most in love with as she paraded around (stadium) with her red-and-white-clad teammates.

By Sunday, she had left Italy behind, and two of her most heavily marketed colleagues were also licking their wounds: skier Bode Miller, who finished a disappointing fifth in the men’s downhill, and short-track skater Apolo Anton Ohno, who didn’t even qualify for the final race in the men’s 1500 meter event. But as viewers discovered, not only does Team USA have a deep bench, so does Team USA’s broadcaster. For the first time, NBC has committed to airing events from all 15 winter disciplines, and thanks to some inspired announcing choices, it is putting some pep into these no-name Games.