Knight Rider, the baby of NBC programming co-chair Ben "Mr. Invincible" Silverman and weekly ode to Ford Motor, will halt production early, with the season wrapping at Episode 17 instead of the full 22, which NBC only weeks ago ordered up. Expect Episode 17, then, to not only be the season's last, but the series' last. [THR]
With this depressing economic climate, do you even want to start thinking about the dismal ratings of next year's Golden Globes and Academy Awards? Sure you do! Especially since the first winners have already been named, from The National Board of Review, which usually keeps their awards pretty class.
So who are the winners that might portend the future nominees for next season's glitz and gala? Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle walked away with Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Male Breakout Performance. And maybe it's the dark cynic in me, but with all the shit going on in Mumbai right now, where the movie takes place, probably won't hurt the film's chances when the real awards come a'calling.
See the rest of the winners, after the jump.
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Arianna was on The Daily Show last night shilling her her employees' book The Huffington Post's Complete Guide to Blogging. Two fun facts we learn during this interview:
• It took fifty Huffpost editors to write this book (Jesus how many editors are there? I guess you can hire a lot when the job compensation is zip)
• 50 thousand blogs are started every day.
Coincidence? Doubtful. Also: This means there are 1 thousand people starting a blog every day for every non-paid Huffington Post editor position. Makes you wish you went and got that degree at McDonald's Burger Academy instead of dropping $40,000 for that New Media major, huh?
(Left: Sarah Palin on August 31st, Right: Palin on December 1st)
We've all been there: you drank a little too much at the Republican Convention, passed out during the election, and now have to go allllll the way back to Alaska wearing the same clothes you've been wearing for the last four months. No big deal, right? Except that Palin's wardrobe cost $150,000 of GOP money, and was supposed to go to charity after the campaign. And um, she's still wearing it?
As Huffington Post points out, Palin was first seen in the jacket two days after being announced on the McCain ticket. So it's plausible the beige nightmare is from her own wardrobe. But equally possible it's not. Anyone I.D. where the outfit is from? To her credit, if you can recognize it as a Barneys item, chances are the Alaskan governor didn't shoot it down from an airplane and skin it herself.
How sucky is this? Nearly four years after getting fired from 60 Minutes II over the CBS Dan Rather scandal, producer Josh Howard just happened to be one of the producers canned on today's CNBC's firing rampage. Especially since Howard built up the documentary department over at the business station from scratch, and, Rather/Memogate incident aside, seemed like he had a pragmatic head on his shoulders. Oh well, at least he'll be in good company, with every other out of work media person right now.
With all the terrible things going on right now (Viacom cuts! Bombings in Mumbai! Madonna's Louis Vuitton ad!) we need a breathe of fresh air around here. So how apropo that good news comes by way of a classic remake of a film that's all about union workers, the dangers of consumerism, and aliens? Yes! They Live is getting remade!
The original film, part sci-fi thriller and part social satire, told the story of a down-on-his-luck construction worker (Roddy Piper) who discovers glasses that let him see aliens walking among us and controlling humanity. The man races against the clock to find a way to stop them.
The movie is known for a fight scene that lasts 5 1/2 minutes and for the line, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass … and I'm all out of bubblegum."
Even though the film has no writer yet, but Carpenter will executive produce so how bad can it be? Below, the best clip ever from the film.
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There is some intense live-blogging action going on now that the Big Three automakers are back in Washington asking for a bailout for a second time, only this time they apparently have a "plan" to help out the American people…and are asking for $13 billion dollars more than they originally thought.
Because: why should Citigroup get $306 billion for their banks, and Freddie and Fannie get their bad loans taken care of by Uncle Sam, but Chrysler, Ford, and Chevrolet have to beg for a measly $25 bill? No fair, you guys!
Meanwhile Viacom is letting go 850 positions including old-timey MTV News anchor John Norris, NBC is cutting 1,3500, and AT&T is hitting staffers hard today with 12,000 new members of the unemployed ranks. So sure, let banking chairman Chris Dodd and Sen. Sherrod Brown debate the diner merits of what kind of transportation would have been appropriate for the auto execs to come in the first time as to not appear to lavish. We'll wait.
Sean Avery attempted to apologize for his now infamous "sloppy seconds" comment about his teammate and ex-girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert, but he might as well have been speaking in another language, because it's not going to do any good. Hey Avery! You're off the team:
With ratings so low it regularly "scratches" on Nielsen's ratings, it's curious that CNBC had to find another reason to put Donny Deutsch's 4-year-old The Big Idea on hiatus. Big Idea was just shelved because brass thinks a program about success just doesn't gel with today's economic climate, according to TVNewser, and not because nobody is watching — and certainly not because NBC is laying off 3 percent (500 jobs) of its work force in an effort to cut more costs.
Yes, Deutsch, the advertising exec-cum-television personality who also writes the Gotham column "Deutsch Mark," will lose his show because unlike his "a sleek, chalk-striped, navy Ralph Lauren suit and Gucci loafers," the show just doesn't match well with the current recession. And yet somehow CNBC will allow Jim Cramer's Mad Money, about picking stocks in a market even Cramer doesn't think you should invest in, to continue. CONTINUED »
All those rumors circulating about Chris Matthews running for Pennsylvania senate? Well they might be true. Or they might not be, so nothing new on that front. However, Chris has apparently been shopping around for a house in PA, and has been asking advisers whether he should step down from his Hardball post before his contract expires in June.
Then again, all this "speculation" from "operatives" within the Democratic party might just be leaked by Matthews' own team, hoping MSNBC will fight for him to stay and give him a better re-up contract, which he's in the middle of this week. If Chris is trying to use his departure as leverage, he might as well change his name to Plaxico Burress, because he's shooting himself in the foot. CONTINUED »
Ooh, the mole at NBC who leaked the probably-true rumor about David Gregory taking over Meet the Press? None other than our ginger-hair MSNBC choice pick:
The infamous in-house squabbling over Tim Russert's replacement "is at a new peak" said one tipster, with some NBC suits and talent sore over the network's widely reported choice of Gregory - who had yet to be confirmed as of last night. An other source said the brass blame MSNBC host Chuck Todd for tipping off media blogs on Gregory's new gig - for which Todd was a top contender - and ruining the announcement that was planned to be made this Sunday by interim "Meet the Press" host Tom Brokaw. [P6]
Whoa! That's heavy stuff, Page Six. Only one problem: It can be hard to believe anything the Post writes about NBC. CONTINUED »
You needn't look far to see this website has zero respect for the methodology of Nielsen, the audience measurement giant whose television ratings decide where billions of advertising dollars get spent. Employing household panels who volunteer to have their viewing habits tracked (in exchange for a small fee), Nielsen relies on Americans to report back to the company what they watched; Nielsen then expands that sample data to tell media buying agencies and network executives how many people across America tuned in to their show. Nielsen's entire measurement panel includes just 14,000 households; in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau clocked 105,480,101 households in America. That means Nielsen uses just 0.0132 percent of the population to determine this nation's viewing habits.
The whole thing is flawed.
Young people, especially college students, go under-counted. Same for minorities. Entire urban markets may be represented by a frighteningly small number of homes. And the whole phenomenon of recording TV and watching it later? Nielsen has a frail and inadequate solution for measuring DVR viewership.
And yet, Nielsen represents its data as accurate, continues peddling it to anyone who will listen (read: everyone), and thus has more power than even the TV studios in deciding which shows get canceled because they don't pull in enough viewers. You can imagine Brooke Shields' frustration with this whole charade.
And now, finally, a television network with the balls to say something about Nielsen's crapshoot analysis is … saying something. CONTINUED »
What is a multi-millionaire Grammy winning artist and respected celebrity to do? Barbra Streisand is supposed to attend the Kennedy Center Awards Ceremony that will honor Yentl along with celebrities Morgan Freeman, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, but the DC event comes with a catch: she will have to meet and play nice with the prez. And no one (celebrity-wise) hates the Bush klan more than Babs, except for maybe bloated advocate Tim Robbins Michael Moore.
Remember, this is the same big-nosed vocalist who frequently stopped during her "comeback" tour to bash George W. via sketch comedy(?). Whatever.
Kennedy Center is already planning the damage control, saying, "Typically, the honorees go to the White House and see the president, and that's something that's been happening for years regardless of personal politics. It's all pretty standard."
Yep, pretty standard stuff. Just make sure to frisk our lady of the People to make sure she's not packing heat. Don't worry Babs, one more month and he's out of there! Just grit your teeth and bear it.
Anna Wintour, a little late on the boat down river Denial in her claims that she's not leaving Vogue or getting replaced by her french counterpart Carine Roitfeld, in a Devil Wears Prada reenactment.
"I have no plans to leave American Vogue now or in the foreseeable future," said Vogue editor Anna Wintour as she was walking out of the Plaza this morning.
Well, at least the lady doth not protest too much? When Wintour was asked this question last month, she just told the reporter to go away…fueling even more rumors that she was facing an imminent replacement.
So what would it take for Anna to split from her editrix posish?
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Sean Penn with Gus Van Sant at the 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards on Tuesday night
QUEERTY REPORTS — "A new step" in gay cinema is how director Gus Van Sant described his Harvey Milk biopic last night at a Q&A following a screening at the the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Queerty attended, if only to see if Van Sant was as charmingly handsome as he seemed in his Entourage cameo. (Answer: He most certainly is.) Fielding a handful of questions after Milk's credits rolled, Van Sant was lauded by the audience. A 25-year-old blonde New York transplant, who says he is still harassed daily, even in New York, and saw new hope in the film, gave the director a tearful "thank you." An executive from the Hetrick-Martin Institute, home to New York's gay-friendly Harvey Milk High School, attended with some of his students, and commended Van Sant for perfectly capturing Milk's "legacy." And of course, somebody asked the director how he felt the film could have impacted Proposition 8, if only it came out before the election. And that's where he surprised us:
Whoops, you thought the MTV layoffs were going to be bad? Suckers: MTV's parent company Viacom just released an internal memo saying that 850 people, or 7% of their global force, is going to find themselves redundant in the "company-wide restructuring plan." That's one percent more, and 200 extra employees axed, than Time Inc.! Who said this recession couldn't get any worse?
Unfortunately, that doesn't just affect MTV, but all of those little stations like VH1, Comedy Central, Spike TV, and Nickelodeon. Just when we were starting to believe that comedy was going to survive an Obama administration.
Jason Binn, the boyish schmoozer behind Niche Media's well-known Gotham and Hamptons magazines, suffered one of his first losses this week: Atlanta Peach is shutting down, reports Folio. Technically, the Georgia luxe magazine was started in 2006 not by Binn but by Jerry Powers, Binn's Ocean Drive Media partner, who together with Binn forged a deal in fall 2007 with Greenspun Media Group, which also backs a few Las Vegas casinos, to become one giant publisher of glossy pages for the rich. But with the closing of Atlanta Peach, it's a sign things are absolutely not well in the world of luxury; when Marc Jacobs totes are reduced to $629 from $1,250, you know things are bad. And while Binn isn't commenting for the record, others are happy to speculate the fuzzy Peach won't be the last title in his stable to fold. Binn's most recent acquisition (Philadelphia Style) and his most recent self-launch (Chicago's Michigan Avenue) are both fingered by a competitor as the next to be "re-structured."
The New York Times is obsessed with The Big Lebowski, and by extension the annual Big Lebowski Festival last month in New York City. Well, it makes sense. Like the Times currently, The Big Lebowski was not well received by critics, ran into financial trouble, and suffered from writing that was almost too clever. You could see how the Times can especially relate, at least in its writers' mind, to that last part.
But as the Dudeman cometh, the high-brow Times needs to find some reason to write about an event where the point is to dress as slovenly as possible and embrace bowling. Hence, an entire article on White Russians, their creation, and how much the original Dude for whom the part was written loves to drink them.
The White Russian is not for the faint of stomach. “The cream is going to build up,” said Ted Haigh, the author of “Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails.” “If you’re drinking these all night, the sugar will build, too, and you’ll have a hell of a hangover.”
Blurgh. The article is filled with tons of these amazing gems. Let us show you some of them, after the jump.
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Miles O'Brien is finally being forced out of CNN, though you'd be forgiven for not realizing Mr. O'Brien still works at the network.
Of late, the 16-year CNN veteran has been toiling away at the network's science, space, environment and technology unit in Atlanta — and it's shutting down, reports TVNewser. That leaves O'Brien and his six-producer team out of jobs. Of course, this isn't the first time CNN president Jon Klein tried to remove O'Brien. He was co-anchoring American Morning up until April 2007, with Soledad O'Brien (no relation), before they both got the boot and were replaced by John Roberts and Kiran Chetry, who remain at Morning.
The move fit very well with Klein's policy of whittling down camera time for anyone in the 40-plus demographic; plus, Chetry likes short skirts, and Klein had a plan for those gams a la Katie Couric. (Funny, because in replacing Soledad, Chetry was replacing a former Weekend Today anchor, where showing leg was all but required.)
And it was all Klein's way of saying "We can't cancel your contract, but really man, get lost." Meanwhile, The Lady O'Brien (Soledad) still has a gig at the network, though lately she's been cornered into hosting race-related specials. Tick tock? [Photo via]
Would you believe that Grand Theft Auto IV could turn kids gay?
As you may have heard, the world of video games is filled with all sorts of deviants — killer alien zombies, cake-eating psychotic artificial intelligences, Bella Goth — but for The Timothy Plan, a self-described "Christian conservative" financial planner that "conducts proprietary research on publically traded companies based on their moral integrity", the biggest threat on your X-Box is, dun dun duhhhh– the homosexuals.
Editorial Director
