Cbs @ MindSay

Ah, CBS has finally decided to do something notable after years of woeful inadequacy.  While ABC was torn between porn shows and the Disneyfied yuppie crowd and NBC decided to take the low road on everything from truthful news to partisan hit pieces, CBS just sort of folded into the backdrop under its own failures and disrepute.

Well, it seems that CBS wants its old seat at the table back again, and, indeed, this explosive video may be their ticket back.  If so, good on them.  It's about time someone called a Clinton on a lie in primetime.  I'll confess my shock that one of the alphabet soup crowd had it in them, but maybe there's some hope for American media after all.

Hillary will probably have trouble adjusting to this new development.  Since 1992, the Clintons have had a free pass on most of the major networks for their manufactured facade.  With CBS breaking ranks, the lies of the Clinton "legacy" may be over.  If nothing else comes out of this primary, I'll be forever grateful to Hillary's hubris for giving America the chance to finally realize how much "rainbows and candy canes" BS we've come to believe about the Clintons.  Then, maybe, we can begin to dismantle the Bush/Clinton dynasty's damage to the nation.

These next 14 days or so will be when most of the TV networks will be airing their season finales. And as has been the trend, there's been very little worth watching.  At least from my point of view.  So here's six ideas I have that could help the networks dig them out of their holes.  Which, of course, they won't do.

1. Lose the extended hiatus for serialized shows.  I know that these are the big budget shows, and that it takes longer to finish an episode of Lost or Heroes than it does to do an episode of My Name is Earl or Deal or No Deal.  But the big break is what's killing these shows.  No one cared when Lost came back.  Heroes lost a ton of viewers over their break.  Jericho got canceled cause the break killed it.  A two to three month break on these shows kills interest.  People invest themselves into these stories, and when the stories go away replaced with <insert talent show here>, it's hard to maintain that level if excitement.  Either lose the breaks, or make em shorter.
2. Homogeny drives viewers away.  There's a large LACK of variety on network TV.  Game shows, reality TV, sitcoms, and crime dramas rule the airwaves.  On pretty much every network.  And when you've got 3 spin-offs of CSI, 5 spin-offs of Law & Order, 4 talent shows, 3 big money game shows, and countless cookie-cutter sitcoms on EVERY network, they all look alike.  People are going to Netflix or the cable networks because that's the only place you can find something slightly different, even if it is just reruns of Star Trek or I Love Lucy.  Heroes was a breath of fresh air, and Family Guy capitalizes on all the edgy potential that The Simpsons had their first 3 seasons.  Other than that it all looks the same.  If it's all the same, I've seen it before, and don't need to see it again.
3. Too many commercials.  Everyone complains about this, but it's not getting through to the networks.  I know they make their money by selling commercial time, but that's also time that we have to sit and watch a commercial for Flonase for the 8th time today.  And no, smaller commercial breaks more often isn't the answer either.  This is the one part where product placement is a good thing.  Or product sponsorship, like when Lucky Strike would sponsor an episode of the Honeymooners.  One big long commercial at the beginning, another at the end, and less inbetween.  Use that model on a good show and my ass will stay on the couch.
4. Talent means more than loyalty.  This is aimed squarely at Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, and a few other shows that have been on the air for ages.  They're staples of the network, I understand that.  But just because they WERE good doesn't mean that they still ARE good.  I stopped watching full episodes of SNL after Chris Farley died.  And I stopped watching it altogether after Will Farrel left.  It's just not funny.  I can't tell you the last time I watched a new Simpsons episode.  The shows still have good premises and promises.  But the staff is complacent.  Fire the writers, and for gods sake get Lorne Michaels away from SNL.  That man thought Rob Schneider was hilarious at the same time that he made Chris Rock entirely unfunny.
5. Bring back special episodes and events.  I'm not talking about an episode of Law & Order that mirrors whatever celebrity in legal jeopardy has the headlines this week.  Every episode of The Office it seems has been advertised as "very special", without actually BEING special.  I think it may beat the "very special" record held by Blossom next season.  TV movies and mini-series were watchable because they were either a train wreck (the legion of Amy Fischer tv movies), or were something that we would otherwise never see out of Hollywood (the several Dune miniseries on Sci-Fi).  But they were something that was truely different in the TV schedule, at least for a week or two.
6. Stop trying to compete with HBO and Showtime.  You just can't.  The rules aren't the same.  The Black Donnellys are going to feel muted, restrained, and outright censored compared to The Sopranos.  Reruns of Sex and the City without the sex neuters the show.  And Dennis Franz's bare ass on NYPD Blue doesn't make you edgy.  They're playing rugby with one decade of experience.  You're playing football with half a century of experience.  Don't pretend you're playing rugby when you know how to put on an amazing game of your own.
   

Maybe there’s hope for us after all.

 

From today’s CNN website:

 

“Maybe they're outside in the garden. They could be playing softball. Or perhaps they're just plain bored.

In TV's worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show.”           

 

To read the article in its entirety:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/09/tv.missingviewers.ap/index.html         

 

Don Imus' racist remarks got him fired by CBS on Thursday, the finale to a stunning fall for one of the nation's most prominent broadcasters.

Imus was initially suspended for two weeks after he called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" on the air last week. But outrage kept growing and advertisers kept bolting from his CBS radio show and its MSNBC simulcast, which was canceled Wednesday.

I don't know how I feel about this.  Imus' comments were definitely out of line, and I do think he should've received a lengthy suspension (longer than 2 weeks) but we do have the freedom of speech in this country.  I don't know if people should be fired for something that they say, but there should definitely be consequences.

Patrick Warburton is a talented man. You may not know his face but anyone who's anyone about cartoons should recognize his voice in Family Guy and the Venture Brothers, but he hasn't had enough television time. His life as a live actor can be best described by his role in Men in Black 2 (dear Lord).

Luckily that's going to change. Monday nights are now home to a new sitcom starring none other than the heavenly-voiced Patty. It's called Rules of Engagement and Patrick plays a married man who's friends with a single man and one who's engaged. Although the premise is a but washed-out and overplayed in Hollywood, there's some fresh material here that should keep you entertained, and if that's not enough then Patrick's presence is most definitely a redeeming factor.

Unfortunately he's accompanied in his role by David Spade whose acting is so terrible he made Chris Farley commit suicide. Other than those two is a guy whose name doesn't matter because he sucks, but the stage name is "Jeff" and if he wasn't engaged I'd bet money on him being a homosexual. Let's just hope that future episodes will continue to please and feature more of my friend here, whose tears have been known to heal sick children.
Too bad he's never cried.