Rosie O'Donnell's "Rosie Live" is ... well, not among the living. What the star herself didn't do to kill it off, the network on Thursday mercifully finished.
The Rosie comeback to end all Rosie comebacks scored a fat 5 million viewers and was immediately kicked off the NBC schedule.
"Bad jokes, over-the-hill performers, a few impressive dance/acrobatic/singing acts and too much Rosie. Really, it made us remember what a stellar job Carol Burnett did all those years–and how easy she made it look."
On Thanksgiving Day, the fine TV critic of the Baltimore Sun, David Zurawik, and I quarreled politely over whether MSNBC was adequately covering the Mumbai terror situation on Wednesday.
Well, that was before a violent attack turned into a three-day ordeal. Unfortunately, by the time the killing in Mumbai was over, one network had decided to save some money and send everybody home for the Thanksgiving weekend, and I was feeling like an idiot for defending MSNBC. Take a look:
Reader Tom Grelinger writes: "To be perfectly honest, CBS stinks when it came to parade coverage. Yes, both channels went for almost an hour before viewers saw anything from the parade, but CBS's coverage wasn't even in HD (or else KCTV-5 didn't give me the HD feed), and there were things missed that were available on NBC's coverage."
So far as I can tell, CBS insists on calling its "Early Show" extension a "Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" instead because people actually want to watch the Macy's parade. (Harry Smith isn't even hosting; those chores were handed off to Maggie Rodriguez and Dave Price.) Maybe they should've called it the "Clay Aiken Thanksgiving Day Parade Drive-By" instead.
My newspaper has been without an editorial cartoonist since the last round of layoffs, but there's no shortage of other people's cartoons we can put in the places where Lee Judge's work used to go. The problem -- besides the fact that none of these cartoons has a local angle to it, which is a real loss considering Mayor McCheese is running our city right now -- is that most editorial cartoons these days are unexceptional, stultifyingly obvious and so ideological as to be cartoonish in their outlook toward the world. Now, you'd think that not such a bad thing -- isn't the point to be cartoonish? -- but the very best cartoonists avoid this trap. The best cartoonists all know how to throw a wicked curveball.
... that "Slumdog Millionaire" looks like a hell of a movie. My friend Ric urged me to see it, if for no other reason than to see how they do "Millionaire" over there (for one thing, it's more like "Who Wants to Win 250 Million Rupees?").
By the way, how stupid does that YouTube clip look? it's all because YouTube went to letterbox format but forgot to adjust the embedded clips properly -- and it can't be fixed by hand (I tried).
Sure enough, as I suggested a couple of weeks ago, it appears MSNBC and its number one talent, Keith Olbermann, have decided he has a woman problem. Appearing on "The View" was just the start -- this week, he made a triple-chocolate pumpkin pie with Martha Stewart. Next week, I understand Carson Kressley is going to show him just how beautiful he looks in the buff!
Tellingly, KO has used segments of "Countdown" to play back highlights of both appearances, and while KO contributes the requisite amount of eye-rolling at what a dork he is on these programs, even this gesture serves to underscore the larger point: KO is strong enough to be a man even on a show that's made for a woman.
There's a new edition of the one-hour-or-so mix of music and chat from yours truly. This week features Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune, Liz Phair, Walt Bodine, Merle Haggard and Chip Franklin -- not all of whom are singing, thank the Lord.
Check it out in the sidebar. Look for "TV Barn Radio" in red letters. This is a free service of 8tracks, the coolest site I've used for audio to date.
Here's an interesting reaction to a discussion Chip and I had on the radio the other day:
"I heard your podcast with Chip Franklin where you were talking about football broadcasting without announcers. You suggested that it would be interesting. Well, it happened in Canada in 2005. The CBC was going through a strike, but the bosses wanted to carry on with Canadian Football League broadcasts. Management manned the cameras, etc. but there was no commentary, just the natural crowd noise and the field announcer.
On Thanksgiving Day, the cable sports channel will be repeating all day long the two latest productions from its hard-working, award-winning documentary team: "CityBall" chronicles a year in the life of student athletes inside the embattled Kansas City School District, who manage to have fun playing their games despite low turnout and lousy budgets -- and proving that even in the roughest neighborhoods, after-school sports help kids stay in school and off of drugs. It will be repeating all day along with "Border War," which explores the only athletic rivalry to emerge from an actual historical conflict, and how the echoes of the Civil War are heard over the playing field even today.
Hey, remember HBO? All those terrific shows that you couldn't wait to come back from their artificially long 15-month (times $12 a month) hiatuses?
Well, they're back, in special DVD collections, just in time for the holidays. Most of them will run you at least as much money as Walmart plans to charge for a Blu-ray high definition DVD player starting Black Friday ($129).
Good news -- we fixed the RSS feed. Everyone's readers should be updating again. Thank you for your patience. I'm not even sure what I did wrong but I just went through, feed by feed, till I had everything lined up consistently.
Just so you know, the main TV Barn feed is a combo deal from now on: You'll get my big stories and my Ticker stories. The big Ticker spew is no more; instead I suggest if you want breaking news on TV you subscribe to this feed.
In related news, the stylesheet got a tweak and Internet Explorer 6 users should see the web pages on TV Barn formatted the same way as everyone else.
Two pods were posted this morning -- they're in the sidebar, but I can't decide whether they're prominent enough -- also, if your sidebar is looking a little wrecked (hint: you may be using Internet Explorer), sorry about that -- but here are links to them:
And then I have two more radio dates tomorrow. First I make my monthly visit to Walt Bodine, and then I stick around for a little longer to talk about the KMBC situation on "Up to Date." Both can be heard live at KCUR.org, where they've just posted an interview with my boss about all the layoffs here. (UPDATE: The producer for "Up to Date" claims never to have booked me, so I guess I dreamed that phone conversation I thought we had last week.--AB)
Of course, you're encouraged to subscribe painlessly to all my podcasts. Also, I roll all my podcasts every week into a musical concoction called TV Barn Radio. It's also in the sidebar. Go see for yourself.
Well, you hate to see this, because it's so rare that a television program originates from a local TV station that does not have the following:
Two pretty anchors
telling you "we have breaking news!"
usually involving stuff they heard on the scanner
and weather every six minutes.
"38 Sports Spot" had none of those -- right down to its down-to-earth, buzz-cut-sporting anchor, Jack Harry. And yet, it lasted five years, an eternity in local TV, as the nation's only prime-time broadcast television sports show.
The FX network did something nice for TV critics the other week: It put the much-anticipated finale of "The Shield" -- the whole episode -- on its password-protected press web site to give reviewers like me a chance to see it and talk it up to our readers.
The understanding would be that we would keep the ending a secret. Who knows, maybe they wanted the whole website business kept a secret, and now they're going to send someone to torture me (and by "torture" I mean "force me to watch this season's episodes of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'").
1. FCC appeals to Supreme Court. Thirty years after the George Carlin-Pacifica Radio case, the Supremes have a chance to reverse their horrible mistake: letting a government agency decide what's decent to listen to.
While writing my annual holiday DVD roundup, I noticed that the same "Yearbook Edition" DVD of "Freaks & Geeks" that came out a few years ago is out again -- at a nice hefty $130 price. This reviewer takes it apart pretty well and advises picking up a used copy of the complete series instead.
Just a minute of your time and you'll learn why TVB is the one media site you'll want to bookmark. Watch the video.
What's working for me this week
Waiting for NBC to be sold. Preferably to someone who knows how to run a network.
The audacity to remake. Over three nights beginning Sunday, AMC is airing a new take on the 1960s boggler “The Prisoner,” a task not for timid cable channels. See my review in Sunday's A&E.
"Andy Barker, P.I." on DVD. With the release earlier this year of “Andy Richter Controls the Universe,” our collection of the funniest sitcoms nobody watched is now complete.
... AND WHAT'S NOT
Writing ill of the dead. Richard Schickel gratuitously roasted the new Robert Altman biography (author Mitchell Zuckoff is at the Plaza Branch on Monday), calling the director an angry, drug-addled auteur of "historical curiosities."
Rupert Murdoch's war on fair use. The Fox chieftain doesn't believe anyone should be allowed to quote or mashup his content without paying for it. Sadly for him, recent court rulings have all gone the opposite direction.
Waiting nine months for "Mad Men" season four to start.
Rosie O'Donnell's "Rosie Live" is ... well, not among the living. What the star herself didn't do to kill it off, the network on Thursday mercifully finished.
Sure enough, as 
Well, you hate to see this, because it's so rare that a television program originates from a local TV station that does not have the following:
The FX network did something nice for TV critics the other week: It put the much-anticipated finale of "The Shield" -- the whole episode -- on its password-protected press web site to give reviewers like me a chance to see it and talk it up to our readers.
While writing my annual holiday DVD roundup, I noticed that the same "Yearbook Edition" DVD of "Freaks & Geeks" that came out a few years ago is out again -- at a nice hefty $130 price. 
