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Sundance shorts stream on Yahoo for online Audience Award voting

Starting today, the short films premiering at Sundance are viewable at sundance.yahoo.com via Yahoo, a sponsor of the festival. Through Jan. 27, Web users can watch the films and vote on them for the Yahoo! Audience Award. The winning filmmaker will be announced  Jan. 28 and will receive $5,000.

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

The Daily Bruin :: Television shows important to college students

My dad has mentioned time and again the portable television he brought with him to college. He and a friend would convene each week to watch “Saturday Night Live” and huddle around the ten-inch black and white screen.

via www.dailybruin.com

TiVo® App for Android Phones: It’s here! « TiVo Blog

The much anticipated TiVo App for Android Phones is officially here! Now you can search, browse, explore and share comments about your favorite TV show or movie without interrupting what you’re already watching on your TiVo® DVR. If that’s not enough you’ll also be able to schedule your programs on the go and have the ability to use your phone as a remote. The TiVo App for Android Phones is now available.

via blog.tivo.com

The secrets behind J.J. Abrams' top-secret show... - Toronto.com

via www.toronto.com

PBS Shifts Tactics to Reach Wider Audience - NYTimes.com

The goal is to attract new viewers to PBS and make audiences think of public television more like the top-tier programming of HBO, Showtime and other channels they are willing to pay for. “Think of PBS and the local stations as premium television on the honors system,” said John Wilson, senior vice president and chief television programming executive at PBS.

via www.nytimes.com

Conan's O'Brien's $40 Million Muzzle - BusinessWeek

Posted by: Patricia O'Connell on January 19

It looks like Conan O’Brien isn’t getting a golden parachute, but a golden muzzle. Is it worth it? The (for now) Tonight Show host has gotten a lot of mileage—and improved ratings—out of poking fun at NBC, et al, over the mess about moving the show’s time slot.

And I admit watching Conan skewer his employers and colleague/competitor Jay Leno has been part of the great fun in watching Conan of late. But what will happen when he can’t do that anymore?

via www.businessweek.com

It's been a fun ride.. but, I suspect it's time to move on for Late Night Fun & Games.. We should see Conan on another venue or network before long, and the "old guard" resumes "The Tonight Show" .. such is show business and "it's just business" ...

Blockbuster and TiVo Join To Deliver Digital Movies - NYTimes.com

Blockbuster and TiVo Join To Deliver Digital Movies - NYTimes.com.

Blockbuster and TiVo Join to Deliver Digital Movies
By BRAD STONE, Published: March 25, 2009

With its lingering debt problems resolved for now, Blockbuster is pinning some of its hopes on a digital future.

The struggling video rental chain will announce a partnership with TiVo on Wednesday to deliver Blockbuster’s digital movie library over the Internet directly to the televisions of people with TiVo digital video recorders.

As with similar deals TiVo has struck to make digital video services from Amazon and Netflix accessible from its set-top boxes, no money will change hands between the companies. But Blockbuster also said it would sell TiVos at many of its 4,000 stores in the United States, taking a typical retailer’s cut of sales. The two companies plan a joint marketing campaign to promote the new service, which will start in the second half of the year.

I have TiVo Series 2 dual, and will try this out when available; so far, I've used it for Amazon's movies and free content, but not Netflix.

The Prisoner - Patrick McGoohan - Very Short List

The Prisoner - Patrick McGoohan - Very Short List.

JANUARY 19, 2009
A cult classic comes in from the cold

Bored by his role in Britain’s popular Danger Man series (Secret Agent in the USA), Patrick McGoohan — who died last week at 80 — created The Prisoner. This surreal, subversively comedic example of the paranoid style aired in America in the summer of ’68, and it fit the cultural moment to a T. Now you can watch all 17 episodes again, online, in high-quality streams presented by AMC.

Watch The Prisoner at AMC’s Web site.. a remake is coming soon...

The TV Watch - ‘CSI’ Farewell - Leave Us the Maggots - NYTimes.com

The TV Watch - ‘CSI’ Farewell - Leave Us the Maggots - NYTimes.com.

The TV Watch
Goodbye, Grissom, Leave Us a Maggot
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY, Published: January 14, 2009

Men are such babies.

The tender farewell to Gil Grissom (William L. Petersen) as he retires from the Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigation unit was stretched over two episodes and ends Thursday night on CBS in a tableau of bitten lower lips and suppressed tears.

It’s not just Grissom’s colleagues who are feeling bereft. “CSI” has fiercely loyal male fans, and many of them are misting up over their own lost youth and eight years devoted to watching Grissom examine maggots, blood spray patterns and decayed flesh. Grissom has found a successor, Dr. Raymond Langston (Laurence Fishburne), a pathologist and college professor who seems to share Grissom’s slavish work ethic and kindly reticence.

But Langston is not his only successor. Simon Baker, who plays Patrick Jane on “The Mentalist,” the new CBS hit, is a greater threat to the Grissom legacy. More than any other show, “The Mentalist” signals that intuition is the big new thing, while forensic science and nerdy, obsessive lab workers are old hat.

Grissom, the lead investigator on the show, makes a forlorn plea for his life’s work in his last episode. “People lie,” Grissom tells Langston. “The only thing we can count on is the evidence.”
...

Multimedia
Preview: 'CSI'

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Prisoner star McGoohan dies at 80

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Prisoner star McGoohan dies at 80.

Prisoner star McGoohan dies at 80
Page last updated at 19:11 GMT, Wednesday, 14 January 2009

[image caption] Patrick McGoohan - Rex Features McGoohan wrote and starred in The Prisoner from 1967

Emmy-winning actor Patrick McGoohan, best known for starring in cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner, has died at the age of 80.

He died in Los Angeles after a short illness, his film producer son-in-law Cleve Landsberg told Associated Press.

McGoohan played the character Six in the surreal 1960s show, filmed in the north Wales village of Portmeirion.

He won two Emmy awards for his work on TV detective series Columbo, playing different characters. The first came for an episode of the series in 1974, with another 16 years later.
...
See also his obituary.

Tops In 2008: Top TV Programs, Single Telecasts | Nielsen Wire

Tops In 2008: Top TV Programs, Single Telecasts | Nielsen Wire.

Tops In 2008: Top TV Programs, Single Telecasts
December 12th, 2008 Posted in Consumer, Media And Entertainment, Nielsen News, Online And Mobile

Nielsen has issued a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008, covering everything from the top TV programs to the most popular consumer packaged goods.

FOX’s “American Idol” was the top TV program of 2008, according to Nielsen. Tuesday night broadcasts of “American Idol,” through December 7, drew 15.5% of U.S. TV households, on average, while Wednesday night “American Idol” broadcasts drew an average of 15.3% of all TV households.

Viewers with DVR access gave NBC’s “Heroes” the biggest bump any primetime program received in 2008. The average TV audience for “Heroes” increased by 35% when timeshifted viewing within seven days of a program’s original air date was factored into Nielsen’s ratings. FOX’s “Fringe” and ABC’s “Lost” also drew large audience boosts — +26% and +25%, respectively — from DVR viewers. The 2008 Superbowl, which drew 43.1% of all U.S. TV households, was the most popular single telecast of 2008.

As we've noted before, "Lost" benefits from my TiVo and saving to watch at timeshifted time, and repeated viewings...

The Mercury Theatre on the Air: The War of the Worlds

The Mercury Theatre on the Air: The War of the Worlds.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air: The War of the Worlds

The finest radio drama of the 1930’s was The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman. In its brief run, it featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. The show is famous for its notorious War of the Worlds broadcast, but the other shows in the series are relatively unknown. This site has many of the surviving shows, and will eventually have all of them.

• The War of the Worlds  (October 30, 1938)
  Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
  
  

Check out this article about the Mercury Theatre production of "The War of the Worlds" as covered in the recent issue of The Scout Report. Happy Halloween!

`Mad Men' makes a splash bigger than its ratings : North County Times - Californian

`Mad Men' makes a splash bigger than its ratings : North County Times - Californian.

`Mad Men' makes a splash bigger than its ratings
By LYNN ELBER | Thursday, October 23, 2008 8:45 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES - "Mad Men" draws a slice of viewers as slender as Don Draper's 1960s neckties, yet the TV drama unquestionably is all the rage.

There was a "Mad Men"-themed category last week on "Jeopardy!" along with an online game. A "Mad Men" homage is tucked like a fancy chocolate treat into the Nov. 2 Halloween episode of "The Simpsons."

Fashion designer Michael Kors cited "Mad Men" as an inspiration. The show's beautifully retro-styled stars are on magazine covers. A "Mad Men" DVD was spotted at the elbow of Barack Obama aboard his campaign plane.

Shatner's Denny Crane TV's best fiction

Shatner's Denny Crane TV's best fiction.

Shatner's Denny Crane TV's best fiction
Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun, Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008

In television, as in life, the memorable characters stay with us forever, their delightful idiosyncrasies ingrained in the part of our brain that stores the quirky stuff.

The truly great characters of the small screen, for instance, include ribald Karen Walker of Will & Grace, neurotic George Costanza on Seinfeld, brazen Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous, and the frenetic Dust Bunnies that live under The Big Comfy Couch.

But there is one character that stands above the rest, by far the best work of fiction created by a scriptwriter since television became a universal North American household appliance in the 1950s and forever changed the cultural landscape.

That would be Denny Crane, the skirt-chasing, politically incorrect, stogie-puffing tough but tender lawyer on Boston Legal.

It's Friday last, early in the afternoon, and William Shatner has just left the Los Angeles set of Boston Legal and is heading home, chatting on his Bluetooth headset as he navigates through traffic.

Love the show, grown to love Shatner as never before.. I want to be him at my own 77, laugh.. I treasure "Boston Legal," and as the last season unfolds on my TiVo, I'll be there.. just finished a book I'd meant to read for a long time, "Star Trek Memories," by Shatner.. I'll have to grab his new autobiography...

George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com.

George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71
    By MEL WATKINS, Published: June 24, 2008

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

The cause of death was heart failure. Mr. Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, went into the hospital on Sunday afternoon after complaining of heart trouble. The comedian had worked last weekend at The Orleans in Las Vegas.

A sad loss for us, a great comedic mind, that would not be quiet, or gentle, or tame.. he was an original, like Hope or Benny or Miller, and he will be missed...