Our man in Hollywood

If you're a faithful TV Barn reader and are looking for a break from the T-and-V this weekend, may I make a movie suggestion: "Wordplay," the documentary about competitive crossword solving that opens in wider release this week in better cities across the country.

Even if you're not a faithful TV Barn reader, I'm still recommending that you go see "Wordplay."

As is typical of the genre, the film follows around several contestants, including one seen here in the theatrical trailer and known as "The Maestro." He is Jon Delfin, who has won more American Crossword Puzzle Tournaments than any other person: seven over three decades.

He is also an accomplished musical director and arranger. And I have been privileged to have him serve as the editor of the most complete daily television column (I wrote, modestly) to be found anywhere: TV Barn's TV Picks, which are conjured up by Tom Heald in South Dakota, then emailed to Jon at his apartment in New York City, where they are streamlined and then posted on the Web and an email list (that you can join).

With the passing of Knight Ridder Digital, our paper is taking full control of KansasCity.com, and as part of that, I am adding TV Barn's TV Picks back to the home page of TV Barn ... where, frankly, it belonged all along. Welcome back, Jon and Tom.

Speaking of TV and crosswords, "Jeopardy!" runnerup Ken Jennings is making "Wordplay" a weekend pick as well. As do Ebert, Butler and the Baltimore reviewer who had the common decency to mention Jon.

TV Barn's TV Picks for Friday, June 30, 2006

NINE OH TWO ONE OH?
"Numb3rs" hunky nebbish David Krumholtz can list an early role on which series on his résumé?

E) "Dweebs"
I) "Gimme a Break"
G) "Here's Boomer"
H) "thirtysomething"
T) "21 Jump Street"

Is it Lauren's year?

This may finally be the year that the WB's "Gilmore Girls" breaks through with an Emmy nomiation, according to Tom O'Neil, who lives the trophy life on his Gold Derby website.

As you may know, the nomination process for Emmys was changed this year to allow more peer review. An interim step was added that will whittle a finalists' list of 10-15 per category down to the requisite five. And according to a rumor sheet posted by O'Neil, Lauren Graham of "Gilmore" as well as Kirsten Bell of UPN's "Veronica Mars" are on the finalists' list. Won't know if they make the top five till next Thursday.

The Emmys are early this year -- August 27, so NBC won't have to pre-empt "Sunday Night Football."

Non-shockers

• TNT renewed "The Closer." Next season, 15 episodes.
• Kathy Najimy's family is smarter than Brande Roderick's family. The two sides squared off to determine the winner of CBS's kicky "Gameshow Marathon," with the Najimy clan taking the Ricki Lake-hosted "Family Feud." No word if it's coming back next summer. Hope so -- I'd like to see them go deeper in the Goodson-Todman vault. "Tattletales," anyone?
• Barbara Walters's last measure of dignity evaporated this week when she was caught lying ... and had the temerity to chew Star Jones out for not lying as well.

A fitting end to a bad idea

By a 20-to-2 vote (ouch), a Senate committee rejected a proposal by John McCain to impose a la carte pricing on the cable industry.

Which means C-SPAN won't be put on an ice floe and your cable bill won't be reduced 10 percent while your cable lineup is reduced 40 percent.

"People who are retirees … don't want to spend $3 for ESPN every month," griped McCain. No, and I don't want to spend 50 cents a month for Discovery Times, a channel Discovery right now currently gives away. But that's what it's gonna cost under the new plan. At least.

Sen. Ted Stevens ominously predicted that he would be back.  Oops, sorry -- Sen. Ted Stevens ominously predicted that a la carte legislation would be back.  But why should it ever come back?  The government has a hard enough time regulating the things it's already implemented, like closed captioning.  And the need for a la carte will soon be obviated by video-on-demand. I wouldn't be surprised if entire major cable networks were delivered by VOD in the near future. Voluntarily.

Then there were three. And if they could be trees...

I'm a day behind in my Lisa D reading, and needless to say, I have not been watching "The View" this week:

After the Star Flameout, the Negatives Are Rising.

Sounds like I did not miss much ... or at least, not much that could not be more entertainingly recapped by my favorite catty columnist.

Our foreign desk

Scotsman.com - Men in British TV ads are all 'castrated dweebs'.

I have no idea what any of these adverts (as they say) look like. But the article is entertaining enough.

Here's an idea

It's not just Spike TV -- all the MTV Networks are beefing up their iTunes content.

Link: Infinite Loop: MTV feels stronger urge for iTMS.

Which means Logo could make that news story about "Welcome to the Neighborhood" available to more than you folks lucky enough to read TV Barn.

Tucker Carlson is the new Dan Abrams

Changes announced at MSNBC today. Good news for Rita Cosby and one-hour longform. Bad news for Tucker.

An ignominious anniversary

If you don't have the Logo network, here's a segment you've got to see.

One year ago today, ABC preemptively cancelled a summer reality series entitled, "Welcome to the Neighborhood," in which an eclectic mix of families competed for a house on a cul-de-sac in a conservative part of Austin, Texas. You remember it because I wrote about it. Though there was a Korean family, a black family and other diverse families competing for the house, the spotlight cast on the Wrights, a gay couple with an adopted child.

We'll let the "Advocate Newsmagazine," as seen on Logo, take it from there.

"Broken Trail" and broken records

It's official: AMC is back. Part one of its "Broken Trail" aired on the final night of Nielsen's 2nd quarter and pulled the highest number, by far, of any cable show. Just under 10 million viewers watched the Western with Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church.  In fact, it was the No. 6 show on all of television last week, and would've ranked even higher had it been carried on a broadcast network (since, according to Nielsen, there are 110 million TV homes and AMC is in only 86 million of them).

Cable's top 10 also included TNT's "The Closer," the NBA playoffs and the "Kids Choice 06 Awards" alongside the usual suspects (WWE, NASCAR, SpongeBob).

Dept. of delayed reactions

Only now is word filtering down to the Parents Television Council that a scene from last week's "Rescue Me" might have been, well, skanky.

Yet more evidence that the PTC doesn't watch the shows it wants off the air.

A Schwab ad, mostly

I'm a little behind the times, movie-wise, so it wasn't until this weekend that I saw the movie trailer for the upcoming Hollywood blockbuster "A Scanner Darkly."

And became the umpteenth person to notice that the animation company responsible for turning that movie from a live-action film into a quasi-cartoon first sold Charles Schwab on the concept. Sort of like priming the pump ... and getting paid for it. Already there are remixes.

Mayhem on your iPod

The grisly two-hour pilot of "Blade: The Series" is available for free at iTunes. It's a promo to kick off the launch of Spike TV on the download service.

Making a big fat deal of a kiss

Someone claims to have incontrovertible evidence of Rush Limbaugh having a thing with Mary Lynn Rajskub of "24."

Actually, all the Rush-man was doing was moderating a panel on the show and the Hollywood fight against terror at the Heritage Foundation.

By the way, this is exactly why that last-gasp-at-a-comeback episode of "Commander in Chief" fell flat; the idea that one still photograph would be monolithically interpreted by the press corps and pajamas media is absurd.

Joining the XFL in the Vince McMahon Hall of Shame...

"I have now watched three weeks of ECW on SciFi, and I have come to the conclusion that the new ECW is just not good television," writes a contributor to  Pro Wrestling Insider Xtra. What's interesting about this commentator is he considers the measure of "good television" the old Extreme Championship Wrestling, which in my book was pretty unwatchable, too. Though the article is rife with insider wrestling-talk, it's worth skimming just to find his hilariously terse dismissal of NBC's attempt to lend "a SciFi twist" to choreographed wrestling.

Somebody's making up for you

Estimates that 30 billion viewers will tune into the World Cup seem not to have fazed scientists who have thusfar counted only about six billion souls on Earth.  Clearly, though, at five matches viewed for every man, woman and child on the planet, there are countries that are overcompensating for those of you reading this. Not to mention all those English children addicted to "Postman Pat."

How "Nobody's Watching" got on YouTube

So, was the unauthorized posting of "Nobody's Watching," one of the better failed pilots I've ever seen, to YouTube a couple weeks ago just a clever PR stunt designed to get the show another pitch meeting?

I asked "Nobody's Watching" co-creators Neal Goldman and Garrett Donovan that question. Here's what they said (mp3).

ReplayTV reboots

Remember ReplayTV? I do. My very first DVR was a ReplayTV. I used it during my quarantine. Funny thing - there I was with all the time in the world. Appointment TV? Ha! That was every show on the air. What other appointments did I have to keep? And yet ... as soon as I got the thing, I started time shifting shows. ReplayTV made it so easy.

But TiVo had the marketing dollars, the cool factor and the hype, and ReplayTV went away. Now it's back ... and it's on your PC.

Star v. Rosie: I'd watch that

Barbara Walters told the New York Times that Star Jones had to be sent off "The View" because, in her words, the network "had done a great deal of research, and her negatives were rising."

That comment made Reese Schonfeld laugh. "Barbara Walters was let go by NBC because like Star, her negatives overwhelmed her positives," writes Schonfeld, the guy who made CNN matter back in the day, before it didn't matter. He also says what a lot of us have been thinking the last couple of days: "Who wouldn’t have tuned in if  Star and Rosie had battled it out everyday?"

Link: Reese's blog.