Sorry, but you're wrong about Conan

Scores of confident readers continue to predict gloom and doom for Conan O'Brien (shown here on the zipline) when he takes over Jay Leno's time period. I hear from them on the comments, I hear from them through email and I hear from them on the radio. Best I can tell, however, almost all the readers are reaching this unambiguous conclusion from polling data that they conducted on themselves.

And the more feedback I get, the more convinced I am that I'm right: Conan O'Brien will weather the transition to the "Tonight Show" just fine.

The John Edwards love-baby story: What took so long?

Who knew that the biggest story to break at the television critics' tour would happen while we were all in our rooms getting some shut-eye?

In the wee hours of Tuesday, July 22, John Edwards — the former senator from North Carolina, former presidential candidate and running mate in 2004 — was confronted by reporters for the National Enquirer at a men's room of the Beverly Hilton, the very hotel where TCA summer press tour had concluded a few hours earlier. They believed he was there to pay a visit to the child he had fathered out of wedlock and the baby's mother, an ex-campaign staffer named Rielle Hunter.

On Wednesday, the story finally started to trickle out into the mainstream, beginning with Wikipedia and followed today by a news story in our sister paper, the News & Observer. Given the Enquirer's stellar track record in reporting such things, why was the media so slow?

Only in summer: "Battleground Earth," "Dance Crew," "Gong Show"

First week of August means it's high tide for those TV shows that make summertime summertime. We're talking shows that are lighter than air and, in some cases, dumber than rocks. I've picked a handful I think you'll want to check out (like the odd Tommy Lee-Ludacris competition "Battleground Earth").

Talkin' TV: "Mad Men," "Saving Grace," "Burn Notice," Comic-Con and a glass-half-full fall season

I've got some nice podcasts lined up for your listening enjoyment. Of course, if you were subscribed to the TV Barn Podcasts feed, you'd already know that!

The day started out on KOGO 600 AM, the news-talk blowtorch serving San Diego, where LaDona Harvey was filling in for Chip Franklin and, through me, fulfilled her inner geek quizzing me about Comic-Con:

KOGO 7-28-2008 (MP3)

Next, I spent the 10 o'clock hour on WLS, the Big 89, in Chicago with Paul Harris, who was in the pre-Rush time slot filling in for Jerry Agar (yeah, that Jerry Agar).

"Saving Grace," "Mad Men" and other shows helping us through summer

That was the topic today when I hooked up with Bruce Elliott of WBAL Radio in Baltimore:

WBAL-7-28-2008 (MP3)

The best new fall shows; plus, "Dr. Horrible"

Those were just two of the topics Paul Harris and I chatted about today during my full hour on the Big 89, WLS in Chicago:

WLS 7-28-2008 (MP3)

It's official -- Al Franken's campaign for the U.S. Senate is no joke

Mrs. TV Barn is a native Minnesotan, and she has seen it all in Minnesota politics — Harold Stassen, Jesse Ventura, the bleeding-heart schoolteacher who won over a Republican district — but even she wasn't ready for this.

Al Franken is still running for the United States Senate. And between him and his opponent, incumbent Norm Coleman, you'll never guess who's become the serious one.

What's working for me....

1. "Star Wars: Clone Wars." This HD spinoff of the upcoming movie (Aug. 15) was previewed to raves from critics and Comic-Conners alike. Saturated in rich colors, loaded with action and storyline, it's the first must-see show of the fall.

2. "The Soup." Not since Greg Kinnear hosted "Talk Soup" 16 years ago have people talked so much about the E! channel's roundup of TV clips. Credit Joel McHale, whose improv comedy chops get a workout every week.

3. "Burn Notice." As if the show isn't en fuego enough, Michael will soon learn he's not the only ex-CIA operative lurking in Miami.

... AND WHAT'S NOT

1. "Heroes." NBC blew off the TV critics tour in L.A. and showed the 3rd-season opener to fanboys at Comic-Con instead. Because the last thing a fourth-place network needs is more viewers.

2. Fox Business Net. According to Nielsen, only 8,000 people nationwide are watching the new channel during trading hours. Fox 4's local noon news gets a bigger audience. No wonder CNBC fired Alexis Glick.

3. Switched digital video. Time Warner Cable just launched a raft of new HD channels. Too bad no one with a TiVo HD player can watch them: the channels are "switched" to a band that TiVos (and any other device that relies on CableCards) can't reach.

The incredible story behind "Generation Kill"

You see it on the screen, and it seems very realistic: A group of the U.S. military's elite fighting forces, the First Reconnaissance Battalion of Marines, operating behind enemy lines in the opening days of the Iraq War in HBO's gritty new drama miniseries, "Generation Kill."

What you probably don't know is how amazingly realistic it is — and what one journalist went through in order to write the story that the creators of "The Wire" would then convert into the television event of the summer.

"Burn Notice" and Comic-Con reviewed

LaDona Harvey of KOGO Radio in San Diego and I went over some of the shows that are getting us through this summer and we reviewed the just-concluded Comic-Con there.

KOGO 7-28-2008 (MP3)

Another way to honor Buck O'Neil -- spell his name right

The unveiling this afternoon of a new life-sized statue of John "Buck" O'Neil at the Baseball Hall of Fame is no small deal. Like many people, I was infuriated that a special committee to elect Negro Leagues greats to the Baseball Hall of Fame had passed over O'Neil, who was merely the greatest spokesman the Negro Leagues have ever had. To think that certain sportscasters are in the Hall and Buck isn't made me see red -- even though I know Buck would've wanted me to turn the other cheek and laugh it off gently. While not a perfect way to get Buck into the Hall, the fast-tracking of the bronze meant that a lot of people on high felt the travesty as deeply as I did. And that counts for something.

But did you know that the bronze at Cooperstown was actually the second monument erected to O'Neil's memory. This is the first. It went up a few weeks ago at Kansas City's Forest Hill Cemetery, not far from the burial site of Satchel Paige, which also sports an impressive monument to another ageless Negro Leaguer.

I've been meaning to say something about Buck's monument at Forest Hill since visiting it earlier this month. Maybe it's just the old-school journalist in me, but I am embarrassed that the lettering on the gravestone has at least two obvious and needless typographical errors on it. As you will see below, one of the typos is Buck O'Neil's own name.

Comic-Con topic: Why the heck do we need superheroes?

Chip Franklin, morning host on San Diego's news-talk powerhouse KOGO-AM, had me on his show this morning to talk about Comic-Con ... and very quickly steered me into a discussion of why we even need superheroes. I was flying by the seat of my pants on that one, but listen and I think you'll agree it was a very interesting side route we took:

Download KOGO-7-25-2008.mp3

Also on TV Barn: For TV critics, a Comic-Con dilemma

The Comic-Con dilemma

UPDATED: NBC "Kings" panel video is below.

Earlier today I chatted with Chip Franklin of San Diego's news-talk powerhouse, KOGO, about this year's Comic-Con. Which is kind of funny, because I'm in Kansas City. After a brief stopover in the Bay Area to see my sister and take in a Giants game, I've returned home to unpack two weeks' worth of clothes and notes from the TV critics' summer press tour.

Still, there is so much freakin' journalism coming out of Comic-Con compared to just two years ago — when I last went — that it's easy to keep up on at least the TV-related developments. Well, maybe not "developments" so much as appearances: panels for "Fringe" and "Dexter" and "True Blood" and "Kings" on Thursday — all of these shows also presented at TCA. Friday's TV highlights include a screening of the spectacular high-definition animated episode, "Star Wars: Clone Wars," by Cartoon Network. It was screened for TV critics two weeks ago.

But other panels, like one for the DVD release of Robert Smigel's "TV Funhouse," bypassed TCA completely. "Doctor Who" (see photo) has a large presence at Comic-Con, but not at critics' tour.

And that got me to wondering: At what point does TV critics' tour become unnecessary to the people promoting TV shows?

KY age discrimination suit goes national on Friday as John Stossel cries, "Give Me a Break!"

Remember the EEOC complaint filed by three former 99.7 KY disc jockeys earlier this year? A couple of months after that, ABC News flew two of them — Tanna Guthrie and legendary rock 'n' roll jock Max Floyd — to New York for a classic John Stossel grilling. I don't want to say that John Stossel is predictable, but Vegas suspended betting on how this segment would turn out 10 minutes before it was announced.

Remind me again why dumping "Nightline" for Leno is a good idea

UPDATED: "Nightline" also beat Letterman in the 18-49 demo. See below.

For the second week in a row, "ABC News Nightline" beat "Late Show with David Letterman" in total viewers, and the week of July 14, Letterman was airing five new shows. (For the week of July 7, "Nightline" beat a week of "Late Show" repeats.) It also beat Letterman among adults ages 25-54 and even ages 18-49.

As I'll explain below, comparing ABC's numbers to the other networks is a bit of an apples-oranges game. But it can no longer be denied that in viewers and 25-54, and some weeks 18-49, "Nightline" has made it a race for second place. What was considered a fluke just eight months ago is now a full-on trend.

It is now unequivocally clear that ABC's decision in 2005 to send Ted Koppel to pasture — in place of Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir, above — and to replace his single-topic format with something zippier, has delivered as promised. So the question for ABC's entertainment division is whether Jay Leno will also deliver as promised on what has been rumored to be a bank-busting talent deal to bring him over as host of a new late-night hour, replacing "Nightline," in 2010 after his NBC deal expires.

Al Jazeera English deemed not a threat to the security of Burlington, Vermont

You can count in a basket of falafels the number of cable operators in America that carry Al Jazeera English, the most excellent news and documentary service launched in 2006 by the Arabic al-Jazeera. (Here's my profile of AJE from 2007.) One of those hardy few systems to carry AJE is Burlington Telecom, the broadband service provided to the citizens of Vermont's largest city (pop. 39,000), by its municipal government.

Vermonters are, we are told, a proud and independent lot. Still, it seemed inevitable that someone there would challenge the decision to add AJE to the unlimited bandwidth of Burlington Telecom when it launched two years ago. What was not inevitable was what wound up happening: The city council, by a 7-0 vote (with three abstentions), urged BT to keep AJE on its system. Earlier this week, BT complied, signing a new carriage deal with AJE.

Below, I've reprinted the resolution, which should be read by every city council member in the country that has to sign off on a cable TV charter. It's time that we demand our local monopolies serve the interests of the public by providing global news and information like the kind found on AJE.

"Mad Men": It's brilliant by design

Last summer a lot of us who watch TV for a living went bonkers for a new series on AMC called "Mad Men." Set in New York in 1960, it followed the career and personal life of Don Draper, an advertising executive at the top of his game, an impeccably groomed Fifties man with a pretty wife named Betty, two loving children and inner demons that push up his blood pressure and drive him to drink.

Draper (played by Jon Hamm, right) works at a Madison Avenue agency with other walking heart attacks and goes home to the suburbs of Connecticut, where Betty and her fellow desperate housewives pass the time.

Two days before "Mad Men" was nominated for 16 Emmys, including best drama, the show's creator, a onetime sitcom writer named Matthew Weiner, gave TV critics a personal tour of Draper's home and office on a studio lot in downtown Los Angeles.

Whedon's "Dollhouse," or the education of Active Echo

Three dozen critics ended their summer press tour by taking a tour of the jaw-dropping set of Fox's midseason buzz machine, "Dollhouse," led by its creator Joss Whedon and fetching star Eliza Dushku, who changed outfits midway through (she was wearing a purple blouse in the first half).

Much of the instant oeuvre of "Dollhouse" journalism has focused on the fact that creator Joss Whedon is shooting a new pilot to replace the first pilot that wasn't expository enough. I posted a podcast where Whedon and I talked about this last week at the Fox party, and Hibberd and Sepinwall weighed in with greater depth and Whedonesque knowledge after yesterday's tour.

But you know, that's largely a procedural thing, swapping out episodes. I suppose you could argue that out-of-order episodes killed Whedon's "Firefly" ... well, maybe. (One could debate if "Firefly" ever really died: It had a nice run on DVD and in theaters, and that's a lot more than can be said of most cancelled series.)

Sitting on the 30-foot-high, 100-foot-wide circular set of the "Dollhouse" holding area — let's call it an expensive-looking spa with a skybox —  what was more interesting to me was what Whedon was trying to say with his complicated-yet-simple new fantasy.

"American Idol Truth Tour" and the reality behind reality TV

Many reality-show workers primarily perform editorial functions, like constructing plot outlines and editing words. The only difference between what they do and screenwriters is they use other people's words. Also, despite their obvious writerly function, these workers aren't classified as writers. Instead, they are called producers and thus not unionized. Some are treated shabbily, working 14-16 days for low pay and no health insurance.

The Writers Guild has been trying to call attention to their plight and to pressure the studios into letting them join the union. The guild supported three writing non-writers on "Top Model" a couple of years ago when they staged a walkout. Those people probably regretted ever doing such a thing when they were fired and the guild just kind of shrugged. But it was a start.

Now the guild is targeting one company, FremantleMedia, the producer of "American Idol," "America's Got Talent" and other shows. The "Idol Truth Tour" is visiting Phoenix on Friday. More info on the website.

"Hopkins": It bleeds ... and leads

On Thursday nights this summer, CBS has been airing "Swingtown" and NBC has been pushing a horror show called "Fear Itself." Both are scripted network dramas. Both have gotten a fair amount of ink.

And both shows are getting whupped in the ratings by a documentary series on ABC.

That show is "Hopkins" (10 p.m. ET), the second coming of a real-life medical drama filmed at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. The show last aired eight years ago on ABC, when it was titled "Hopkins 24/7."