Hands offa my remote

By a majority that would make the president of Bulgaria break out in a huge smile, 501 voters polled by the group TV Watch said they would like to make up their own minds what to watch on TV, thanks much.

The poll, summarized on the jump, makes clear that FCC chairman Kevin Martin is toadying up to a very small base of powerful interests with his indecency crusade. Someone needs to show this guy TV Watch's findings ... and then step on his glasses.

Incident at Independence

The talk of the local journalism community this week has been a clash between our city's most aggressive news team -- that of Meredith-owned CBS affiliate KCTV-5 -- and the police of Independence, Mo., Harry Truman's hometown, late last Friday night.

Link: Kansas City Star | 03/31/2006 | TV inquiry leads to a run-in with police.

The facts, as we know them, are that a representative from a group known as the Police Complaint Center, which investigates allegations of abuse by law enforcement, walked into police HQ there and demanded a form to file a complaint against a police officer. Now, if you read the Police Complaint Center's Web site, it becomes pretty clear that if you are Officer Friendly and one of these people walks through your door, the thing you are supposed to do is: Immediately hand the person a complaint form. Let them fill it out. And then get the complaint into the system.

All due respect, Judge, you're wrong

So have you been following the dust-up between Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia -- who improbably rates his second TV Barn mention in as many days -- and the Boston Herald?

Link: BostonHerald.com - Local / Regional News: Photographer: Herald got it right.

Apparently he really did flip off a member of the media. At least that's the conclusion of a Boston University journalism professor .... and the guy who plays Vito on "The Sopranos."

No wonder Scalia runs from cameras.

I need the make-work

We're launching an "Idol" blog at KansasCity.com.  AND IT STARTS .... NOW:

Link: KansasCity.com - American Idol - Season Five.

Why another "Idol" blog?  Because we can, and because TV Barn attracts a reader somewhere between the annoying "Idol"-trasher and the insufferable "Idol" maniac. And because we can.

So go over there and post a comment.  Do it for me.

Also, if there are good RSS feeds I should add to the existing feeds I'm aggregating over there, please post them below.

Must ... see ... Conan ...

If the above sentence describes you, then here's how to score two tickets to the May shows Conan O'Brien is taping at the Chicago Theatre:

Link: Chicago Tribune | The Watcher.

For those of you without a Tribune password and too lazy to use bugmenot, basically you go to the NBC website and root around.

Cameras in the courts - finally

You know what was the weirdest thing about that story about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia expressing his views on state-sanctioned torture? He did it on camera -- and didn't demand that the shooter turn off the camera and destroy the video.

Scalia is a notorious avoider of the lens, which has always suggested to me that he is all too aware of his predecessor, Louis Brandeis's, observation that sunshine is indeed the best disinfectant.

However, because Scalia was in Switzerland, perhaps he felt the video wouldn't make it back here to the States.  What's scarier: his defense of letting the wardens run amok at Guantanamo, or the possibility that he still doesn't know what the Internet is?

Anyway, by sheer coincidence the Senate Judiciary Committee has just moved a bill that could put an end to Scalia's evasions once and for all.

Godzilla on my TV

I recently hooted my way through a book, Godzilla on My Mind, written by a Japanese-Texan professor at the University of Kansas named Bill Tsutsui.  Written from multiple perspectives -- part memoir of a Godzilla-loving boy, part critical analysis of the entire "Godzilla" movie ouevre, part cultural analysis of why this monster endures in the public imagination -- the book is neither stodgy nor simplistic. I came away knowing more about the big guy in the rubber suit than I ever thought I would care to know.

To celebrate the continued popularity of Godzilla, and of Tsutsui's award-winning book, Washburn University in Topeka is sponsoring a Godzilla Film Festival. And lucky TV watchers in the viewing range of Topeka's public TV station, KTWU, can have a filmfest of their own this Saturday night, when KTWU's movie man, Keith Van Sickle, and Tsutsui present "Godzilla v. Megalon" and "Monster Zero." I've posted the colorful promo poster on the jump.

"Commander" in Hell

ABC is returning "Commander in Chief" to the schedule five days sooner than the previously announced April 18 date. So the good news is that the second turnover in showrunners this season did not doom the show after all.

The bad news? Five days earlier is Thursday night ... where Geena Davis is expected to hold her own against "Without a Trace" and "ER."  Right. And Rumsfeld's gonna turn this war around, just you watch.

"Idol" cheerleader re-signs

Sad to say, the headline doesn't say what you think it might. Paula Abdul isn't going anywhere.

Al Jazeera under fire

Christopher Hitchens writes in an apparently offline column for Vanity Fair (April 2006) that

on April 16, 2004, President George Bush proposed bombing the Al Jazeera network headquarters, in Qatar, and was talked out of it only by Tony Blair.

The gist of the Hitchens column is that, while awaiting his American citizenship, he has decided to throw himself into civil-liberties disputes that could get him in deep doo-doo both in his native country and his adopted country. The British matter concerns the leaking of the above fact, recorded in a top-secret document, for which the Blair government is prosecuting the alleged leaker and leakee.

Regarding Bush's bizarre plan, Hitchens writes: "I've tried to imagine the possible effect of that in the Arab world ... Let's just say that it would have put a large and smoldering hole in Karen Hughes's 'Make Nice' diplomacy. It would furthermore have raised the suspicion that the American bombing of Al Jazeera's Baghdad office in 2003, which killed a reporter, had not been a regrettable accident."

I still do not understand the hot-potato status of Al Jazeera in a country with the free-est and fairest media liberties in the world. Hopefully someday we can look back at the President's idea and laugh -- and not a rueful laugh, either.

Buchwald and Bikel tonight

Two must-see shows on PBS in one night ... who'dathunkit?

First, Art Buchwald, whose hospice room has turned (in the Washington Post's phrase) into the "hottest salon" right now, talks to the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

And then on "Frontline," another remarkable program from Ofra Bikel. Many people, though not "Law & Order" producer Dick Wolf, know Bikel's award-winning documentaries about those unjustly accused of crimes. So tonight's program is a definite change-of-pace: Bikel hanging out with soon-to-be Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and his wife, Aliza, who -- along with all their children and in-laws -- oppose most of Olmert's policies, and say so without restraint, yet whose affection for him -- and he for them -- seems unaffected.

Saying 'pimp' on C-SPAN

Actually, you can say anything you want on C-SPAN ... no bleeping is allowed!

But Mark Cuban was just having fun talking about how he rose from middle-class upbringing in Pittsburgh to making a billion and sitting on TV's leading edge.

Excerpts from the interview on the jump, including his early encounter with a young PC builder named Michael Dell. You can also read his smackdown of today's supposed Internet "innovations" like streaming NCAA tournament games. "There was a big deal about CBS streaming all the games online for free for the first time.  Well ... it wasn’t really the first time, because we had done it 10 years earlier."

Hearst-Argyle ups ante

The owner of Kansas City's ABC affiliate and soon to own its CW affiliate ... as well as two dozen other stations nationwide ... is going to do 10 minutes a day minimum of political news, or double its 2004 commitment.  The challenge, of course, will be making it not boring.

Monday Night Football - where modesty and taste are no object

Link: MNF on ESPN Launches With Double-Header - Broadcasting & Cable.

And am I the only one who has noticed that ESPN is making a national holiday out of the premiere of TV's premier football telecast ... on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?

Do you really want to be chest-thumping all day long, calling attention to yourself, on what will surely be a national day of mourning?

Buck Owens, RIP

The death this weekend of Buck Owens was one I took special note of.  I've been listening to him a lot lately.  I hadn't thought about Owens for years, until I saw "Capturing the Friedmans" a second time. The first time was at Sundance, and I hadn't a clue who the Friedmans were, let alone why they needed to be captured. Only on repeat viewing did I realize how richly appropriate was the choice of Owens's "Act Naturally" in the opening credits.

Also, I loved how it sounded.  That was the classic "Bakersfield sound," a raw, forward-moving yet emotionally sophisticated approach to songwriting. Working out of that California town he adopted as his own -- he died there shortly after one of his twice-weekly performances -- Owens perfected the Bakersfield sound in the 1960s with such hits as "Think of Me," "Tiger By the Tail" and "Together Again." And of course, the "Streets of Bakersfield."

Our newspaper, and probably yours too, though, reduced his career to just one credit: BUCK OWENS, STAR OF 'HEE HAW,' DIES.  I'm sorry, but even though I spent countless hours watching that show as a kid, and even though I am supposed to have an occupational preference for the TV business over the music industry, I think that's a travesty. Television made Buck Owens rich and it certainly added to his fame. But the music made this man, and that's how I'll remember him.

Update: That's how the Post's Richard Harrington remembers him, too.

ABC FAQs

For those of you still wondering about "Alias" and "Commander in Chief," the latest schedules from our ABC affiliate confirms they are returning the week of April 17.

Damn.

I should've figured "In Justice's" goose was cooked. But this news confirms it.

America is still waiting the blockbuster TV show about exonerating the not guilty. Or should I just as well wait for a show about all the jet airplanes that land safely every day?

A timely piece...

... if, that is, you only watch reruns.  It occurred to me on Tuesday morning that Shawn Ryan had bumped into me at the CBS party and told me, "You need to do a story about David." I had written about every other "Shield" actor and writer with a Kansas City connection -- Jay Karnes, Liz Craft, Sarah Fain -- but had overlooked David Rees Snell. Hey, I'm only one man!

Better late than never. Here's a profile from today, without any details to spoil your Friday night "Shield" rerun fun:

Link: Kansas City Star | 03/24/2006 | ‘Shield’ lets Kansan learn to love L.A..

"60" online: It's about time

Finally someone at CBS has gotten the bright idea of pairing "60 Minutes" content with a high-volume Internet news site.

You know, maybe the reason younger viewers aren't watching the news is because it's not anywhere on their radar. Yahoo! is on their radar.

"The Shield" - NOW what?

Well, that was a messy ending to season 5.0 of "The Shield."  In just three weeks, they'll start taping the next 10 episodes -- "season 5.5," as insiders are calling it -- which will air later this year or maybe 2007. And then who knows what.

The outcome of "The Shield" may be turning on another program that aired last night. "The Unit," from "Shield" creator Shawn Ryan plus David Mamet, scored what CBS is promoting as a significant share of its previous week's rating (85%), given the fact that last week's had a "NCIS" first-run lead-in and this was a rerun.

If "The Unit" keeps putting up decent numbers, the temptation would be strong for Ryan to make these next 10 episodes of "The Shield" the last. He intimated as much in an interview last week on public radio.