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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
November 28, 2007
By Alex Weprin
[Last Call for Carson Daly] Oooh Carson Daly, remember when you were on MTV? And everyone thought you were smug, and not a very good host? And then you went to NBC at 1:35 a.m., and no one watched you except drunk college kids who remember you from TRL when there were in high school? Well, you stepped in it this time buddy. Daly, yes, Carson Daly, will be the first late night host to return to work this week. Daly is not a member of the WGA, and according to him he did it for his non-writing staff, who were going to be laid off at the end of the week if the show did not go back on air.
What really might get Daly in trouble is this plea for jokes from friends and family. Daly is setting it up as a joke in itself, but some writers might see it as scab work even though apparently no money is getting exchanged.
[FCC Tuesday Night Smackdown] Members of the FCC scuttled Chairman Kevin Martin’s plan to expand regulation over cable Tuesday evening. At issue was the data Martin used to determine that cable was subject to the 70/70 rule, which potentially could have given the FCC the ability to regulate it. The data was from Warren Communications, which the other FCC commissioners thought was incorrect. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein told the AP: “Our job of ascertaining the facts is made more difficult because the draft cherry picked the only data that justified the outcome apparently desired while suppressing other data.”
[This is Like Getting an Inside Look at Skull and Bones!] CNN has given the St. Petersburg Times one heck of a scoop. The Times sat in as CNN selected the questions for the upcoming CNN/YouTube debate. There has been some criticism of the debate, because even though the questions are submitted by viewers, ultimately CNN chooses them, and presumably they could choose questions that would already fit any preconceived frames.
At any rate, here is the “money” quote that will probably get a lot of people (especially Democrats) up in arms: “Gotcha questions were eliminated. So were most that seemed like they came from Democrats or went on for too long.”
It is a fascinating look at the question selection process, and clearly there is a lot more thought being put into the questions than that one quote would have you believe. That probably won’t stop anyone from taking it out of context.
[Has Nightline Forgotten Iraq?] Eric Boehlert has written an opinion piece that has been making its way around the web at Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group. The piece criticizes ABC’s Nightline, which he says was at the forefront of covering the Iraq war, but since anchor Ted Koppel left, has been more focused on soft issues like Perez Hilton, Barbie, and my personal favorite: “frenemies.”
Says Boehlert: “Nightline's new, post-Koppel format allows it to address far more topics on a weekly basis. Meaning, the program usually reports on 10-15 topics each week. Yet even with those additional opportunities the program is reporting far less about Iraq than when Nightline addressed just one topic each night when Koppel was the host.”
[The NFL Gets Sacked] The NFL is feuding with many of the big cable providers. The NFL wants them to carry the NFL Network, and they want it on basic cable. Most of the cable companies are only willing to include it as part of a sports tier or digital cable package. The NFL is not happy about this. This week, things are getting sticky for the league. The league decided that they would broadcast this week’s Packers vs. Cowboys game on NFL Network. As a result, many fans in Wisconsin and Texas outside of the team’s home cities won’t be getting the game, and they are not pleased. Fans are placing the blame squarely on the NFL’s shoulders.
[Simon Cowell: Taking Over the World] American Idol judge and America’s Got Talent executive producer Simon Cowell plans to launch a worldwide talent contest dubbed, yes, The World’s Got Talent. The show will feature Piers Morgan, who judges both the American and British version’s of the show, as well as Cowell, who judges in the UK version. So far the only confirmed contestant is Paul Potts, the opera singing phone salesman who won Britain’ Got Talent earlier this year.
Posted by BC Crawler on November 28, 2007 | Comments (1)
