The Z woman gets the NYT treatment

Lauren Zalaznick is one of my favoritest people in the whole business of television. We got to know each other when she was hired to shepherd a tiny little cable channel called Trio for the Universal Cable Group that was eventually sold to NBC. Kansas City was one of about a dozen cable systems in the country that got Trio, and I loved how she used attitude and a splash of color to make something out of nothing.

Montana for Obama? Yeah, so what?

The state of Montana you see in the photo illustration at left was formed by some 500 or so high school seniors attending 1982 Boys State. I'm in the top row, ninth from the right. Keep reading, because there's an even more amusing picture of me from the summer of '82 below.

I became nostalgic for my home state this week, while reading the news stories explaining that Montana had gotten competitive in the presidential race. This is being treated as a somewhat shocking development, since Montana went for Bush by 20 points in 2004 and generally supports the Republican candidate for president.

Actually, it's no big deal. I am surprised that a Montana gun manufacturer would fire its CEO (and the company's namesake) after he announced his support for Barack Obama. After all, the governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, is a gun-toting Democrat.

KC's Sharon Liese tops "Damages" and "The Closer" in CableFax Awards

Great news! "High School Confidential," the documentary series produced for WEtv, filmed in suburban Kansas City by a suburban Kansas City mom, Sharon Liese, and produced by Liese as her first-ever television project, beat out FX's "Damages" and TNT's "The Closer" for the Best Producer award at the first annual CableFAX Program Awards, handed out Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington.

A local television producer hasn't scored this kind of win since KCPT took home a national Emmy Award for best documentary in 2004 for the Tracy Tragos film "Be Good, Smile Pretty."

Previously on TV Barn, I wrote about "High School Confidential." I produced some videos connected to the story as well, and I notice they're now offline, so below, I've reposted them.

The Obama infomercial: A sterling example of how to sell a president

It isn't every day you can draw a comparison between Barack Obama and Richard Nixon, but here goes. Both men, faced with a key group of voters who stood between themselves and the presidency, used television in creative ways to try to win them over.

In 1968, the Nixon campaign produced 10 hourlong programs and paid to put them on TV stations. On Wednesday, the Obama campaign produced a half-hour program and paid to air it on three networks and select cable channels.

While Nixon's handlers had to work around the fact that their man was (to put it kindly) a stiff in front of the camera, not to mention a two-time loser with baggage, Obama found himself facing an opposite set of challenges, which he addressed directly and repeatedly in his infomercial.

Did you see Al Franken's wife's ad?

It's been running on Minnesota TV stations for about a month but, if a Minnesota TV station isn't on your cable grid, perhaps you haven't seen it: a remarkably candid and moving 60-second spot in which Franni Franken, the lovely and down-to-earth wife of U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken, tells the story of her alcoholism and of her husband's devotion to her while she was in recovery. We had some of Mrs. TVB's kinfolk in town overnight, and they mentioned how struck they were by the commercial. Here it is:

Rachel Maddow: Rhodes scholar. Activist. And now, Media Brand.

How long did it take Keith Olbermann before MSNBC gave him his own juiced-up web page? Four years? Today, the host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" was given a major upgrade to her online experience, complete with her own spiffy video jukebox (sponsored by Target) ... and it took her less than two months on the air to get one.

"The new site," reads the press release co-authored by NBC and Microsoft (the MS in MSNBC), "gives The Rachel Maddow Show's rapidly growing on-air audience an enhanced extension of the brand online."

I think it would be extremely odd to wake up one morning and discover that I was not just a commentator, a personality, somebody's loved one ... to hear someone saying you are a brand is one of those lifestyle adjustment moments you never quite see coming. After Sarah Palin, it is Maddow who has had the most meteoric rise of anyone connected with Campaign 2008. She may not be a household name yet, but she's something. A brand, then.

Sweeps! "Law & Order" and "24" return, guest stars galore, and stay tuned for news

Thursday begins the first serious TV ratings period of the year -- and that means lots of heavily-promoted stories on the local news about things you won't believe their reporters found going on in the area. (Not to get too Andy Rooney about this, but I always wonder why local newscasts tease an upcoming story by saying, "You won't believe what we found." Well, then, I guess I should stop watching because I was lured to your program on the obviously false pretense that I would be delivered credible facts.)

The fall season supposedly starts in September, but November sweeps is when the networks really get into gear with their best programming. That way, you'll tune in to your local affiliate and, hopefully, stay tuned afterward for the news.

Here are some prime-time picks from the next four weeks that you can believe in.

MoveOn's new customizable viral video, ready to send to your favorite slacker

Someone just sent me this video from MoveOn.org. It merges the personalized video Flash thingy that JibJab popularized with the edgy faux-news approach of Onion News Network ... and its sole intent is to jar apathetic slackers (like me?) into not just going to Obama rallies but actually voting for the dude. Naturally, the reader personalized this video with my name:

Time Warner: We gotcher tuning adapters right here. Do not panic.

UPDATE: You can order your Tuning Adapters at this link. (Not in the KC system? Try changing the URL in your browser, substituting your market for "kansascity".) Thanks to reader Craig Brown for that.

Whether to avoid any further FCC fines or simply out of the goodness of their hearts, Time Warner Cable is planning to make available, at no cost, devices that will help its customers who were left out in the cold by the Switched Digital Video mess.

Last week I blew a fuse after I tuned into channel 1497 on Time Warner Cable expecting to find ESPN HD and instead found ... 1497 had disappeared. I immediately assumed it had been moved off the regular HD grid and onto one fenced off, like so many other channels, from the poor saps (like me) who were using CableCARDs in a laughably futile attempt to stray from the Time Warner nest.

I wrote this, then someone at Time Warner talked me down. Turns out the high-def ESPNs weren't gone, and I could still watch them. But ... I still had something to cling to. At its new location, that channel was surrounded by HD channels I couldn't get because of my crippled CableCARD. And since at least one Time Warner CSR had told at least one TV Barn reader that Time Warner would never, ever support my CableCARD.... well, the lion roared again.

The "Meet the Press" moment that will make Letterman's show

If you watch "Late Show with David Letterman" most nights, you probably think you could write some of the material ... but actually, in the opening desk bits of the show, the material more or less writes itself. Letterman's writers, like their NYC colleagues over at Comedy Central, specialize in found humor from the wide world of videotape (or whatever it is these days).

But whereas their boss, in his salad days, always added his personal snarky commentary to whatever bits of epehemera his staff picked up from the small-town news and whatnot, today Letterman often gets his biggest laughs from the "no comment" videos, carefully edited to make the subject look as idiotic as possible.

As soon as I saw this segment from John McCain's interview with Tom Brokaw on "Meet the Press," I knew it would show up on Letterman's show. It is 5:24 p.m. ET as I write this, so the show has not begun taping yet. (Special guest, Bill O'Reilly!) So this really is a guess, but an educated one. Watch.

(or download it)

The perilous flight of Patti LaBelle's National Anthem remix

I was working the TiVo "jump back" button pretty hard during last night's performance of the National Anthem prior to Game 4 of the World Series on Fox.

That's because I kept hearing new lyrics to the American classic coming out of the mouth of soul legend Patti LaBelle, who was effectively doing an encore to her performance of the National Anthem at the U.S. tennis Open.

It's one thing to interpret the National Anthem by injecting new beats and notes -- it's a pregame tradition that has rewarded such superstars as Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and Whitney Houston with career highlights. But LaBelle took it to the next level with editorial enhancements to the words written by Francis Scott Key.

What's working ... October 27

1. "60 Minutes." Its excellent work explaining the credit crisis -- and the reckless collusion between Washington and Wall Street that made it possible -- has been must-viewing for millions. No wonder it's starting its 41st season with a return to Nielsen's Top 10.

2. "Mystery Science Theater 3000" on DVD. Out this week is the 20th anniversary box set of the show that made it cool to talk back to your TV set. It also influenced a generation of comedy writers and reality-TV shows; Martha Stewart claims her daughter's new series "Whatever, Martha!" was inspired by "MST3K."

3. "Life" support. NBC rescued the Damien Lewis cop show from Friday doom by moving it to Wednesdays as the lead-in to "Law & Order."

...AND WHAT'S NOT

1. Tom Brokaw. He promised to leave "Meet the Press" after Election Day, but the blowhard NBC anchor should have quit while he was ahead. Following his widely publicized Q-and-A with Colin Powell (who endorsed Barack Obama on the show), he ruined an interview last week with John McCain by asking weird, overstuffed questions and then interrupting the answers.

2. Kirk-Sulu feud. William Shatner's angry rant about not being invited to "Star Trek" alum George Takei's gay wedding was the hot item on YouTube. Shatner needs to take his foot out of his mouth and use it to kick down, Priceline-style, that wall he put up between himself and Takei. Perhaps he could pay for the lucky couple's honeymoon airfare.

3. Campaign withdrawal. I'm already dreading the end of my favorite TV soap opera of the fall season. And I'm sure the same goes double for Keith Olbermann.

-- A.B.

Everybody loves blogs! Even Phil Rosenthal

Great news this Monday morning -- one of my favorite journalists on any beat, Phil Rosenthal, finally has his own blog. So now he can fully cover the collapse of MSM instead of picking and choosing which items to cover for his must-read column in the Chicago Tribune.

A new look at the late-night ratings race

It's been years since people paid much attention to the ratings competition between Jay Leno, David Letterman and ABC's "Nightline" (above: co-anchors Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir). That's because there really hasn't been much competition for more than a decade. NBC has ruled the roost since 1995, when Leno reclaimed the No. 1 spot from his CBS rival.

But now, with big changes only a few months in the offing, those rivalries are taking on new importance. In May 2009 Leno will sign off as host of "The Tonight Show" and Conan O'Brien will take his place, and Jimmy Fallon will take O'Brien's place (though he will actually sign on a few weeks/months earlier at NBC.com). Leno may return eventually -- though as I reported this summer, it won't be for a while -- so for the rest of 2009 all eyes will be on the race between O'Brien and Letterman and "Nightline" 2.0, which has seen its audience get considerably younger since Ted Koppel's departure.

T. Boone Pickens on "60 Minutes" this weekend

Remember those golden days of broadcasting? Back when you could switch on the TV and see something other than wall-to-wall attack ads?

Boy, I can almost recall it like it was yesterday ... (scratching chin as harp music plays and we dissolve to...)

"We can make ourselves energy independent ... the single greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind ... join me at PickensPlan.com."

(harp music, dissolve back to)

Hey, wait! I'm not dreaming! T. Boone Pickens is back!

Time Warner KC shuffles HD channels for those of you who get them, present co. excluded

So as it turns out, ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD did not disappear from my cable system. They were two of several channels reassigned out of the 1400-range of channels down to the 1000-range of channels, as Time Warner Cable of Kansas City imposed a uniform numbering system to deal with its ever-expanding universe of HD offerings.

That's great news if you can get them. But as I documented yesterday, I cannot because I am one of about 1,200 households in Kansas City that was stupid enough to believe the line that you could substitute a CableCARD for a full-blown cable box, save some space on top of the TV and a few bucks a month in the bargain.

My favorite fall TV shows: What have they done for me lately?

One of the occupational traps a TV critic falls into is reviewing the latest -- even if it isn't the greatest. So for this week's column I returned to several of the shows I reviewed in my fall TV preview to find out how they were holding up. Below, I'll return to "Worst Week," "Privileged" and "Chuck" but first ...

Of all the programs I enjoyed the first time around, "Fringe" (8 p.m. CT Tuesday, Fox 4) was the one I had my fingers crossed for as I watched the next episode. The most ambitious fall show of the season, I knew it was taking a big chance trying to reinvent the "X-Files" intrigue-horror genre by adding CBS procedural elements to it. (Yes, I realize CBS has one of those shows as well, but "Eleventh Hour" isn't doing much for me so far.)

After watching three hours of "Fringe," I'm happy to report that it's doing just fine. It's predictably unpredictable, it's out there, it's got a great cast and most surprisingly, it's a hoot.

Trouble on TV

Today's theme is trouble. People in it. People trying to get out of it. Some of it's real, some of it emerged from a screenwriter's sick mind. Shows reviewed here include "Celebrity Rehab," "New Orleans High," "American Gangster" and a second look at "Sons of Anarchy."

Yeah, why DON'T we hear more about G. Gordon Liddy?

I remember hearing, during the height of the Don Imus blowup last year, that the I-man was going to appear on the Rev. Al Sharpton's syndicated radio show. My first reaction: "Al Sharpton has a radio show?"

So when I read this morning Steve Chapman's column in the Chicago Tribune about John McCain's chummy relationship with unrepentant Nixon fixer and convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy, including the tidbit that McCain had recently appeared on the G-man's radio show, my first reaction was, "Wait. G. Gordon Liddy still has a radio show?" And then: "Why aren't we talking about this?"

FCC fines Time Warner Cable for leaving CableCARD customers in the dark

Two related things happened on Monday. Time Warner Cable cut off moved both of my high-definition ESPN channels to a new HD tier -- a tier where many of the channels were off-limits to me because I had dared to exercise some consumer choice. And, I got a chance to look at that FCC ruling last week that slapped Time Warner with a $20,000 fine for doing to its customers in Hawaii what they've been doing to me.