Sometimes we sit around complaining about the fact that there just isn’t anything good on television. Why don’t you take a moment to think about all the great stuff that WAS on television and is now available on DVD? Head to Amazon.com, my thumb-cricking friend and buy yourself the series pack of News Radio or The Golden Girls or even better Designing Women - a show which reminded us that women can work together without killing each other. (throwing in a gay man always helps).

Dixie Carter passed away today at the age of 70 years old from Uterine Cancer.

Dixie Carter - you’re a sassy broad, and dam you’ve got class. You taught me to always love your siblings, put losers in their place with a few carefully heated words, kick undeserving men off your porch and always, always, always be there for you friends. 

Check out her best moments at this great blog - http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/04/11/dixie-carter-ripdesigning-women/

This article by Mark Walsh from Online Media Daily poses that very question. Analyst Laura Martin, who works for Soleil Securities, estimates that Hulu will cost TV networks $920 in advertising dollars.

The continued success of Hulu and others will increasingly tempt people to give up their $100 cable subscriptions and just go with what’s online. The funny thing about it, is that Hulu is owned by NBC Universal - a network which had to scrap all of its network 10pm programming for the Jay Leno show because of declining ratings.

I haven’t had cable for almost 7 years - which is incredibly funny considering that I’ve WORKED in cable for the past 7 years at Lifetime and Oxygen Media. I even have a hard time watching regular television because I will not watch a 1 hour television program that is 17 minutes of commercials (YES, 17 minutes at the very LEAST). An online program has maybe 4 commercials in it - 1 at the top and bottom, and maybe 1 if you have to refresh the screen. So yes, I missed SUnday’s VMA’s and I had to hear all the gossip from people at work.

When you pay a $100 cable bill - that money is divided between the provider (Time Warner or Cablevision i.e.) and each cable network. For instance, ESPN gets $2 a month, Lifetime -  maybe $1.00, Golf Channel - maybe .40 cents. No way I’m paying for cable channels that I have no interest in watching. I’d rather pay for the channels that I will watch.  Since the cable networks won’t allow for a scenario like that, I’d rather just watch the programming I want to watch online or even at the gym.

I’m about to catch Beyonce teaching Kanye West a lesson in respect by going online to MTV or Youtube and watching her speech at Sunday’s VMA’s. Kanye - please, stop drinking Henessey in public. Your little 10 year-old self would not be happy if someone had done that to New Edition 20 years ago.  [Read more →]

It’s been almost a week since SciFi became SyFy and the world hasn’t ended. Legions of SciFi fans with access to light sabers, nunchucks, swords and pet dragons have not risen up to destroy the network.

Instead, they chose to mock the network (not an illegal action). There were a whole bunch of logo mock-ups made (my favorite was Imagine Grammar) but now I can’t find them!

Apparently they chose the new logo because not only was it phonetically the same, but more importantly it could extend the brand, its something the channel could own (rumor is the word SciFi is a genre and therefore cannot be owned by anyone)

And it turns out - syfy is a slang term for syphilis. Somewhere out there, an ex-marketing person is laughing.

The Good News about this? Networks have the freedom to alienate their audience and change their names, because they think changing their name doesn’t matter so much. Which may actually be true since their ratings were not down last week.

My garbage disposal just started gurgling, unprovoked. I’m scared.

So this past Wednesday I had just finishing up Lost and started watching the series Finale of Life on Mars. It was a good show, very interesting concept, but it never caught on, anyway I digress. In the Finale who do I see but Dean Winters playing the father of the protagonist. Most of you may not know him by name, but if you’ve watched TV in the past 5-8 years you’ve seen him.

Sex in the city fans know him as Carrie’s F*** Buddy who wasn’t really date material.

Law and Order SVU fans will remember him from the first season.

And probably most of you know him as Liz’s beeper selling boyfriend from 30 Rock.

I knew him from the show Oz, he played Ryan O’Reily, a character that always had a plan and played everyone against each other. Notably his brother also costarred as his brother on the show, you know him as the “how do you like Them Apples” guy from Good Will Hunting.

Anyway after seeing him on Wednesday I realized he’s got a connection to so many televisions shows with cameos and such that He’s easily television’s newest Kevin Bacon. I’m sure I can connect any television actor in 5 degrees or so. He’s even been on 2 different Law and Orders as 2 different characters not to mention a reoccurring role on Rescue Me as Dennis Leary’s brother.

So I submit a challenge to you readers name a television actor/tress (of the last 10 years) in the comments and I will try and connect him in 5 degrees or less.

GO…

“Inside the Mind of Tommy Westphall or “St Elsewhere’s Law and Order In Plain Sight of Homicide: Life On The Streets”

Law and Order has been on the air for 18 years, can you believe that? It’s grown to 3 shows and is becoming an ever expanding universe. One where good looking detectives and hard boiled DAs fight for justice in NYC. There has been plenty of character crossover in that time. They share characters Coroners, Cops, Lawyers, Psychiatrists and so on.

Recently I caught an episode of Law and Order: CI and in the episode there was a cameo by Mary McCormick of In Plain Sight on it playing her character from that show (which I’ve never seen but am told its not bad) I like to think now that the Law and Order universe has just expanded a little and now includes the characters of this show.

But there’s more Richard Belzer who plays “Detective Munch” was originally from Homicide Life on the Streets and came to New York to work the Special Victims Unit after that show was canceled. There were actaully a couple of crossover episodes as well before the cancellation.

Now Homicide was created by Tom Fontana who also created the 1980’s Hospital Drama St Elsewhere. In one episode of Homicide Alfre Woodard guest stared as Dr. Roxanne Turner her character on St Elsewhere. The interesting thing about that is that in the end of St. Elsewhere was it was reveled that everything was all in the imagination of a Autistic boy named Tommy. So that means that this boy Tommy who is likely 30 something at this point if not older has been creating years of your favorite television in his head.

Its sounds a little perverse but I actually like to picture Tom Fontana and Dick Wolf going to this poor kid every year with a box of chocolates and some baseball cards trying to get more and more ideas for new shows. Like he’s some sort of golden calf for television.

I’m not the creator of this theory or anything I remember hearing about this years ago with that first Alfre Woodard cameo, its an actual theory out there in the ether that has existed for years, I was just reminded of this with this most recent crossover bringing yet another character into this universe.

When I went to look up Tommy’s name I found some more info on this stuff if you want to see….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_WestphallThe_Tommy_Westphall_Universe_Hypothesis

and

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html