BC Beat
Edited by Joel Topcik, with John Eggerton and Paige Albiniak -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/24/2008 8:00:00 PM
FCC's Adelstein Will Join Dems in Denver
If FCC watchers were to vote on which of the five commissioners they consider “Most Likely to Attend a Nominating Convention,” it's a good bet the answer would be Democrat Jonathan Adelstein.
Sure enough, at presstime Adelstein was the only commissioner planning to join his fellow party members in rallying around their chosen candidate.
Adelstein, an Obama supporter who attended a fundraiser for the presumptive Democratic nominee a few weeks back, is planning to be at the Democratic confab in Denver this week. An aide says he'll pay his own way. He's also slated to speak on media issues at a symposium sponsored by Common Cause Colorado.
Asked if fellow Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps would accompany Adelstein, an aide to Copps answered “Nope,” without elaboration.
On the other side of the aisle, Deborah Taylor Tate was on the fence: Her assistant said last week that her schedule was tight and her plans still undetermined.
Republican Robert McDowell is not planning to attend, said a staffer.
Which leaves Chairman Kevin Martin, whose spokesfolk didn't know at presstime if he would join the elephant stampede to next month's GOP convention in St. Paul.
Valerie's Big Comeback
It looks like three jobs at a time for Valerie Bertinelli.
The former teen star of late-'70s sitcom One Day at a Time is enjoying a busy second act after appearing earlier this year on The Oprah Winfrey Show, shedding 40 pounds and publishing a tell-all book about her past drug-use and failed marriage to guitar hero Eddie Van Halen.
Last week came the news that Bertinelli, 48, will return to the sitcom world with a pilot for TBS, in which she'll play a working single mom.
Meanwhile, her daytime talk show with CBS Television Distribution remains in development, sources close to the project confirm, and she'll continue as a spokesperson for weight-loss program Jenny Craig.
The question on everyone's mind: When can we expect a similar comeback for One Day's leering fix-it man, Schneider?
Blood-Stained Wretches
In these doggiest of late-summer dog days, when it seems everyone but you is on vacation, you may find yourself feeling on edge—maybe even psychotic. That's why we here at B&C decided to test our mental fitness with “Dexter's Psycho Therapy” at www.dextertherapy.com.
Designed to measure your affinity with the serial-killer hero of Showtime's Dexter (as well as promote the Aug. 19 Season 2 DVD release), the test rates your “killer instinct” based on responses to a series of blood-red ink blots.
And I'm happy to report that of the 14 staffers who took the test, only our unassuming art director, Forest Evashevski, scored 100%! The rest of us are harboring evil thoughts well below the 50% latency threshold.
Some of the diagnoses were uncannily on target. Reporter Alex Weprin, apparently, is “the kind of person who is calm most of the time, but if someone spills your drink you can get nasty. Very nasty.” (How true!) Contributing editor Rob Edelstein, who scored a disconcerting 0%, was deemed “completely normal. Almost too normal. What are you hiding, you psycho?” (Good question!)
More revealing were the responses to the ink blots, particularly No. 4 (see image). “A Pokemon character flattened by a steamroller,” said our fanciful D.C. bureau chief, John Eggerton. Others said “the mask of death” (beleaguered copy chief Jay Blickstein), “a teddy bear's skull” (so Glen Dickson!) and “Owen Wilson” (the unstable editor of this column).
B&C editor Ben Grossman, who scored a suspicious 34%, saw a Gremlin (“as in the movie, not the car”). “I don't know what that means,” said Grossman, “except that I'm a tool.”
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