A True-Life TV Love Story: How a Stroke Stopped Old Video Viewing Habits In Their Tracks

July 21, 2011 10:15 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

You won't find note of this in a any medical journal, but an after-effect of stroke is an unreasonable addiction to... Emeril Lagasse. Though not a neurologist, I conclude this from experience -- and, it has to be noted up front, with the bemused approval of my spouse.

A quick background. Linda, whom I met in 1964 and married in 1967, experienced a major brain aneurysm in 1999 --12 years ago this week. Experts told us immediately she probably would die. They don't know this remarkable woman. When she didn't fulfill their initial prediction, they pronounced with certainty that her life had virtually ended. She would be in a hospital bed and a wheelchair and be dependent for the rest of her life. Wrong again, doc.

So many wasted predictions about a person who is stronger and more determined than anyone I've ever known. I didn't need the experts' opinions about these not-to-happen calamities.

I just wish I would have been warned about how her television tastes would change...

Oh, how they changed -- in a way that could have derailed a person who has been a student of television longer than I've known Linda. Another important note, though: It's been a happy, but wholly unpredictable, adjustment. As Linda has continually progressed from a huge setback, I have had to readjust my horizontal and vertical holds, so to speak, when it comes to video.

This surely was the last adjustment I expected after finally bringing Linda home, seven weeks after the event. The first clues came when we turned on the set one morning and the channel we had last watched was showing a Three Stooges short.

Larry, Curly and Moe had carried record amounts of opprobrium in Linda's life previously; she would look at me questioningly (perhaps weighing the chances of an annulment) when I laughed at their routines, and if our son was discovered watching them, the power of absolute parental censorship was invoked. But that morning, as Moe hit Curly's head with a hammer and stuck his fingers in Larry's eyes, Linda laughed.

Clue No. 2 came during a Seinfeld scene in which Kramer burst into Jerry's apartment, his hair smoking. Another big laugh. I was not prepared for this.

Linda's sense of humor always had been lively, but was more refined than mine. A James Brooks or Nora Ephron movie was more to her taste than, say, Dumb and Dumber. Taxi and M*A*S*H worked for her; Green Acres didn't. She did the Sunday Times crossword with a ballpoint; Mad definitely was not her magazine.

Amazed as I was by the change, I thought it could be nice to have a partner who suddenly enjoyed the "nuances" of slapstick. I didn't yet know how massive the change had been, though.

I got an idea when she started to develop an Emeril addiction. The Food Network had been added to our cable lineup during Linda's hospitalization. She loved cooking, was great at it and could spend a long time reading monthly copies of Gourmet and Bon Appetit. She's not a snob by any means, but Lagasse's shtick, I'm guessing, would have ranked him, in the old days, alongside Curly and Moe.

Reruns of Emeril Live finally left the air a few weeks ago. Because I have a rule that the person who can't get up independently and leave the room chooses what show to watch, Emeril has been on a lot in our home over the last decade. If David Bianculli hadn't invited me in 2009 to revisit television writing, I'm not sure what I might have done to find alternative recreation. Since caregiving keeps one close to home, I'm guessing he didn't save me from a life of crime.

Every brain event leaves different results. Linda's aren't heartbreaking or massive. But they still strike me as odd in the person I met 47 years ago.

Her love of Live with Regis and Kelly is every bit as powerful as it is for Mr. Lagasse. Anything Ellen Degeneres does is great with Linda. I bet she has watched more Paula Deen and Giada De Laurentis episodes than their closest relatives have. And the biggest thing I ever have learned from the former "Learning Channel," TLC, is that the wife of mine who hated shopping (but still looked fabulous every day when she went to work) can watch What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress for more hours in a week than she spent over her entire life, collectively, in department stores.

Conversely, this woman, who sat engrossed as we watched heavy drama in the old days, has a hard time with it now. So while the other writers on this site regularly praise shows about zombies and meth dealers, I recuse myself from those deliberations, citing insufficient exposure to the product.

Good points to note: Linda enjoys as much as I do screening the programs I write about. And her feedback often helps me in forming an opinion.

But the best thing about this (and you're allowed to dismiss this as too Lifetime Movie-like for a serious website like this one) is I don't regret forfeiting heavy dramas that cause viewers to lose sleep (as a reader commented to David recently about Breaking Bad). And I have built up a snake-venom immunity to Ellen, Kelly, and Emeril, so no harm is done there.

The most important person ever in my life didn't check out, as predicted, 12 years ago. And she didn't remain where a calamitous health event dropped her. So if listening to Emeril yell endless "Bams," or watching Regis complain about his gripe du jour, or watching Ellen dance as badly as I do -- if that's the trade I made to have selfishly kept Linda these past dozen years -- that's OK with me.

Just so she never develops a taste for Minute to Win It.

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Is There a Lifeboat Drill in PBS's Near Future?

July 14, 2011 11:45 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It hasn't been a year to brag about for the Public Broadcasting Service. Four television stations so far this year have dropped their PBS memberships, three at the start of this month...

(Prefatory note: I had hoped this would be a news story about what looks a little like the start of a meltdown, with comments and perspective from the epicenter agency, PBS. But after weeks of requesting an interview on the subject, and no luck, I must ask readers to form opinions without comments from the key player.)

All four of the stations that have bolted of late have claimed high membership costs as the reason for leaving.

KCET, Los Angeles, started the year by dropping out.

On July 1, WMFE in Orlando, WDSC in Daytona Beach and WIPR in Puerto Rico jumped the ship.

KCET reportedly is filling its schedule with shows it produces and non-commercial programming picked up from non-PBS suppliers.

The Puerto Rico station, according to news reports, has been producing a lot of its own programming and will do even more now.

The lame-duck Orlando station sold its TV-broadcast rights to a religious broadcaster, and hoped to pass off the controls on July 1, but has been filling its air with everything but home movies while waiting for the Federal Communications Commission give final approval to the sale.

A partnership of the stations at nearby University of Central Florida and Brevard Community College -- put together in just weeks after WMFE's surprise announcement -- has managed to keep PBS programs on the air in Central Florida.

But it's the Daytona Beach station's strategy that really should worry PBS most.

It is part of a regional college, Daytona State College, trying to cope with the economy. Rather than sell, close or join forces with the Orlando and Brevard stations, it now only uses programs from other suppliers at a much smaller cost.

The decision cut somewhere between $185,000 and $200,00 from the school's costs, outgoing General Manager Bruce Dunn said Wednesday -- a savings that was nullified when Florida's governor made a sizable cut in state funding to the state's public radio and television stations.

WDSC's programs now come from American Public Television, Executive Program Services, National Educational Telecommunications Association and others, which collectively supply an abundance of public-television programing at a much smaller cost than PBS.

Some of the shows are as established and as well-known as anything PBS offers -- including cooking shows from Lidia Bastianich and Cooks Ilustrated's Christopher Kimball, travel shows hosted by Rick Steves (right) and Rudy Maxa, other long-running series and one-time specials that appeal to public TV's selective audiences. All are noncommercial and many are extraordinary independent productions.

Dunn, who was the WDSC general manager for six years, said the surprise nature of WMFE's announcement to sell left his school with little time to help devise a rescue. The Orlando-area market's three public stations previously had worked under a sort of gentlemen's agreement to complement each other, rather than compete for supporters, he said.

WMFE's decision to not clue in the others, he said, left "Daytona State College (where) it just wasn't in the picture to spend more money. Quite frankly, when that happened, it became a domino effect."

Reduced funding for public broadcasting, combined with the threats of conservative lawmakers to cut even more, has the potential to make such polite agreements more difficult to maintain. Dunn said there are 17 similar "overlap" communities in the country that could experience the same sort of financial crisis.

It would have been helpful to know what PBS is doing to keep and support its member stations, in light of the four recent defections. Especially threatening to PBS, it would seem, would be for more stations to stay alive by dropping PBS membership, but keeping access to a wealth of public-TV programming, as WDSC did -- at an appreciably smaller cost.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which disburses the money Congress votes to fund a portion of the cost of public radio and television, is said to be working to keep stability in the public television universe by encouraging partnerships such as the one that emerged in the Orlando area. Several requests for information about this from CPB had not been answered, however, by the time this story was written.

Perhaps, someday, Frontline or PBS Newshour will do a story on this threat to the best television America offers.

If it does, the opening question could be: How many stations will be left to carry the report?

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Won't Someone Please Enact a Lemmings Law?

July 6, 2011 12:00 PM

[Did PBS's An American Family, in one generation, and CBS's Survivor, in another, lead us all, like lemmings, over a cliff from which there is no return? TVWW contributor Tom Brinkmoeller asks the question -- and connects the dots... -- DB]

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Several thoughts on being the first lemming into the abyss:

PBS retrieves, in a shorter form, a 1973 sensation of sorts July 7 (8 p.m. ET, check local listings) when it condenses into two hours the original 12-hour An American Family. This series opened a door that seemingly can't be shut again, by putting cameras inside the lives of a California family for seven months and disclosing lots of things no one really wanted to know. It seemed.

Pat and Bill Loud and their five children -- the hosting family -- were at neither the Ozzie and Harriet nor the Ralph and Alice Kramden ends of the television-family spectrum at the time. Tame and boring by today's "watch us brawl" reality programs, the Louds were the first family to invite television viewers not just to peek in their windows, but to pull up a porch chair and watch just about anything going on inside. To a generation brought up on a "what will the neighbors think" mentality, An American Family was a giant push of the envelope.

One of the few similarities that can be seen in this program and the housewives, hoarders, confronters and many other "welcome to my dysfunctional life" series that exist today is the complaint of those filmed that edits made situations appear negatively different than they really were.

Watch it as a history lesson, or as an early textbook on the malfunctioning American family. But this kind of sociological video voyeurism has morphed into so many more ghastly shapes and sizes in the four decades since it appeared, don't expect anything shocking. For those whose pulses are quickened by the seemingly borderless ranges of today's reality shows, a pot of strong coffee and a No-Doz or two is recommended.

* * *

One more What TV Hath Wrought reflection about a lemming-like event:

Eleven years ago, when Survivor premiered on CBS, I feel safe in saying I wasn't the only one watching who expected to see a competition played out in a civilized way, moderated by rules -- somewhat the same way organized sports competitions are presented.

But conniving, alliances, deceit and in-your-face hostility took over quickly in the run for the prize money. Forget rules, sportsmanship and civility. This program quickly became the reflection of the work world many of us turned to television to escape from.

The underhanded, unprincipled, cannibalistic practices that for many years characterized a going-to-work experience had now invaded our homes. And the worst part of this was: it was accepted. Incivility was the tool, the series told us, for getting what you had to have.

That the first winner in this battle of the boors, Richard Hatch, took the winning money and ended up in prison because of tax-evasion issues even more mirrored the business life many of us found foul and "Enron-ish."

Endless imitators have followed Survivor off this precipice since -- to the point that watching people abandon personal principles in the chase for cash is now a TV staple hardly anyone challenges.

So the Louds opened the door to today's acceptance of acting out in public and a shallow, silly series about tribal councils and unholy alliances placed a seal of approval at winning at any cost.

See any parallels to what these lemmings did and how life is lived today -- inside and outside the TV set?

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First-Rate PBS Mysteries, Sans Poirot and Marple

June 19, 2011 5:38 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

History Detectives starts its ninth PBS season this week (Tuesday 8 p.m. ET; check local listings), and that's notable for several reasons.

The series has longevity, something the television business displays little of anymore. It has lasted because its premise -- discovering whether privately owned items have a historical significance -- is one-of-a-kind, and is produced in a way that genuinely holds a viewer's interest. And it's an enduring PBS program concept that hasn't yet been copied and diminished by a cable network.

A fan already? Tune in knowing that the new season is as fascinating as the ones that preceded it.

Haven't watched yet? If your primetime viewing preferences are probing, you'll probably like this one. The components are pretty constant: Someone contacts the show asking for help in learning the legitimacy of an object thought to have had historical significance.

In this week's show, the objects include engine parts that may have come from a Japanese plane that crashed on a small island the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing; metal shavings that could be from a cannon that fired the first shot of the U.S. Civil War [photo at right]; and a saddle that might have been owned by a stunt man who was given an Oscar for the safety reforms he brought to the movie business. All are in private hands, and each query is supported by a scant written and/or oral history.

What one has to understand going into this series is that each segment's contents, like any story, could be summarized and revealed by adding just a few more words to the synopses above, giving away the endings. As with any good detective story, the fun is in the discovery, and History Detectives makes tracing the facts a lot of fun.

A ton of groundwork is done by what has to be a topnotch research staff before any film is shot. There are five well-credentialed hosts, two from the auction-appraisal business and three from different U.S. universities. The hosts go on the road to interview the experts and visit places that the researchers have uncovered as important to the story, eventually reporting the findings to the person who owns the object in question.

The twist here on the detective-story genre is that the weekly denouement has nothing to do with scripted arrests or convictions. It's much more interesting and usually a bit more suspenseful and unpredictable than TV's cop shows. Going along for this ride, viewers get to watch the pieces come together and pick up some interesting facts along the way. Watching this Tuesday's stories, one learns about events that brought Americans into two different wars and also about a film-industry trailblazer whose workplace-safety reforms predated the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by decades.

Another twist: Unlike scripted detective series, History Detectives can't always tie up all the facts at story's end. Just like it is in real life, definitive answers often are just too elusive.

The second episode of the season (June 28) has equally fascinating topics: U.S. propaganda tactics during World War II; Americans who enlisted in the 1930s Spanish Civil War to fight against Francisco Franco; and one of the first women to be hired by Louis Comfort Tiffany to design stained glass windows.

These are well-spent hours -- with one caution. Watching History Detectives can be addictive. But when one checks out its Tuesday competition on commercial networks, the show seems like a wonder drug.

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Best Seat's in Your House for Carnegie Hall 120th Anniversary Concert

May 30, 2011 10:58 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Had you been in New York on May 5, had an interest in seeing a top-tier symphonic performance, and had an extra $50-$180 to spend, you might have been seated on one of five levels inside Carnegie Hall to watch and hear fabulous music.

Those stars weren't in alignment for most of us. But PBS' Great Performances was there for the celebration of Carnegie Hall's 120th anniversary, featuring A-list talent. And now we have what might be better seats than any offered at the box office.

Carnegie Hall 120th Anniversary Concert (Tuesday 8-9:30 p.m. ET in many markets; check local listings) does perfectly what television does better than any other medium: Get people wonderfully close to the performing arts. The New York Philharmonic, conducted by Alan Gilbert, returned to its pre-Lincoln Center home for the event. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Emmanuel Ax were the featured instrumentalists. Audra McDonald was the vocal soloist.

And though home speakers may not match the hall's famous acoustics, our perspective is superb. Attendees mostly saw Gilbert's back. We see his expressions and delight as he conducts the evening's music. We see close-ups of all of the principals' faces, reflecting emotions that define their performances.

We see the glances between Shaham and Ma as they artfully synchronize their shared parts of Beethoven's Triple Concerto in C major. We see the concentration on Ax's face that sometimes seems a soundless vocalizing of the notes he's playing. We're treated to close shots of their hands as the three practice their arts at master levels. (More than one shot includes what appears to be the fascinating concentration of one of the orchestra's cellists as she watches Ma at work.)

And as many who have attended a Broadway musical can tell you, being close enough to the stage to watch a a singer's face can add a valuable layer to the experience. McDonald's facial expressions may not have been that clear to many in the house that night. We get to see every nuance she adds to her performance of several Duke Ellington pieces.

Then there are the music-coordinated shots of orchestra members that a ticket-holder couldn't see, even if that person were allowed to roam the stage through the performance. Hearing a wind, string or percussion highlight is one thing. Seeing it happen makes for magical viewing.

Even better, we can watch it all without wearing a tux or fighting for a post-performance cab.

Such access isn't easily accomplished. Executive producer David Horn, who has been associated with Great Performances for 31 years, explains how a largely unseen small army put together these 90 minutes. Because he sometimes also directs the programs (this one was directed by Brian Large), he understands the entire process of planning and execution.

This time, he says, a renovation of Carnegie Hall had not been completed, and workarounds had to be devised for some of the construction-blocked usual ways of doing a telecast. Stage, lighting and audio technicians from the hall were involved in planning along with their counterparts from the TV production group. With 11 cameras in the hall, each operator knew well in advance what each shot for that camera would be throughout the entire night.

The musical scores provide the basis from which the evening's script is developed. "The television director comes up with an interpretation," Horn says, and shots are planned from that reading. "In your mind's eye, as you're directing, you're building an image." Full-crew run-throughs, including one done during the event's dress rehearsal, help all involved perfect the seamless look evident in this Carnegie concert.

Though the aired program usually runs just as it was scripted -- making it virtually live -- each camera feeds a video recorder, Horn says. Those backup shots make it possible to edit the final product. This turned out to be a valuable resource several years ago, when the control-room switcher used to choose camera shots broke down for a very long 15 minutes. The director was able to insert the missed shots into the final edit from the bank of single-camera tapes running at the time.

But because the feeling of a live performance is extremely important, relying on backups is only a last-ditch safety net. "The show we do that night, we want to do it as if it were going out live," Horn says.

Any person who finds such programs as exciting as I found this one might feel a need to edit that sentence slightly: This historic Carnegie Hall 120th Anniversary Concert should feel less like a "going out live" delivery and more like actually being there -- in a seat better than any sold that night.

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Should TV Viewing Come with a Money-Back Guarantee?

May 27, 2011 4:45 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

When the cost of a tank of gas now is nearly the same as a newspaper reporter's weekly pay in the mid-'70s, and the cost of a week's worth of groceries for two exceeds a mortgage payment during the same era, it's easy, in a long recession, to be wistful over what once was.

Much of what television currently doles out, for me, eliicits the same reaction as filling up my gas tank: I can't help but remember when you watched TV and usually got your money's worth. The Great Recession has crashed into what already was once appraised as a wasteland, and short-sale programming is endemic.

I began forming this opinion when unscripted programming began appearing on the air. It's cheaper to produce, I read at the time, and for this reason networks especially loved it. But the extent to which hard times have affected prime times has more than doubled in size since then, making watching television. for me, the most unrewarding it ever has been, in more than six decades of doing so.

The economic calamity of what is being done to PBS -- the harshest example of what the recession is doing to television -- is emanating from outside its walls. But here are a few of the viewer assaults that are happening inside commercial television, in the name of economy -- and are being accepted without question or objection by many viewers.

-- Rerun nights. Broadcast networks, like the thrifty homemakers of the '50s, serve up leftovers one night a week, on the weekend. (Miss NBC's Law & Order: Los Angeles, seen above, on Monday? Get another chance to see the same episode, in the same week, on Saturday.)

This isn't being done as a convenience to viewers who might have missed an original showing -- not in an era of DVRs and website downloads. It's just a "shut up and eat leftovers" attitude on the part of TV executives.

-- Lack of patience: Network programmers seem to have been born with hair-trigger instincts. It always has been a frustration when a good program hasn't been given time to grow. But 2011's programming crop seems to drink from the same well as the Wall Street traders who send the major indicators on senseless ups and downs for the shakiest of reasons.

If a series doesn't instantaneously ignite all kinds of fireworks, it's dumped, derided and forgotten. Fox's Lone Star drama, for example, was cancelled last fall after just two episodes.

(It's not too surprising that the same networks that devised the knee-jerk elimination process that drives the many network singing, dancing, cooking and weight-loss competition shows would treat their own programs in the same way.)

Network television has slipped quite a bit, but cable has free-fallen from where it was not that long ago. Read Eric Gould's recent story about National Geographic's cable-television branch, in his latest TVWW Cold Light Reader column HERE and you will see noble lineage, in a recession, means little.

-- More examples of crumbling foundations: Travel Channel, which began as a video version of a well-made travel magazine, has been reduced to mostly and repeatedly showing the same, and often lame, series week after week. Some haven't had a new episode in years, but still secure abundant schedule space.

-- HD Theater began as a showplace for what technology can add to make television worth watching, but now has cars, and little but cars, on its show lineup. Food Network puts a large buffet table of low-cost competition shows on a schedule that once taught viewers that food was more than a prop in a contest.

-- Elsewhere on cable, there are bizarre shows that cost little to produce and attract small fly-like swarms of viewers: People who track ghosts. Dogs that eat strange objects. A man who will eat anything. A man who eats absurdly large amounts of anything. People who never throw anything away, and live amid mountains of junk. People who tell the camera the most gory of details of grisly events they somehow survived.

Whether the examples listed above are necessary reactions to tight times or they're rationalizations designed to pay less and pocket more, their effects on viewers who refuse to settle range from disillusioning to maddening.

Do you have some additional examples, from your own viewing, of the cheapening of television in a recession? Exercise your critic muscles, share those examples with us, and add to the list...

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Dick Cavett, Take 2: Souvenirs from an Interesting Interview

May 16, 2011 4:00 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

I interviewed Dick Cavett last month to write a story for TV WORTH WATCHING. You may have read it. You might have liked it. At any event, in our conversation, Cavett provided many wonderful quotes that didn't fit the topic at hand, but were too good to ignore or bury. So here they are...

On the ubiquitousness of the word "awesome" in contemporary language: "However did the young Keats say 'awesome'?"

Cavett worked for one-time Tonight show host Jack Paar. They stayed in contact for years as friends. On the almost-hypnotic effect watching Paar had on some people: "They didn't want to look away for fear of missing a nervous breakdown."

On Groucho Marx's occasional delayed reactions: "It was interesting to see how he would be impressed after he realized what he'd just said."

On not remembering which of President Franklin Roosevelt's four sons was a guest on the program: "They all were so densely obtuse."

When singer Trini Lopez had told him on the air he was high on life -- then asked Cavett if the sentiment sounded too strange, Cavett answered, "It did, Trini."

Two guests he wishes he had been able to book: Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.

"I blew a wonderful opportunity with Sinatra. We were at the same party with him at Bennett Cerf's. I had to leave early. I didn't try hard enough."

Some time later Cavett called a New Jersey phone number someone had given him that was supposed to be Sinatra's. He said a rough-sounding character answered the phone, and when Cavett told him why he was calling, the guy (Cavett assumes Jersey accent) says, "Frank ain't interested in doing things like that." The phone call ended, and Cavett never had another opportunity to talk to Sinatra again.

On doing his New York Times Opinionator blog, now in its fourth year: "After I'd written the fourth one, I thought I had run out of subjects for life."

A favorite comment left by a blog reader: After Cavett wrote a story about Piers Morgan, a comment he remembers, and chuckles in sharing, "Die, Die, Dick Cavett and your terrible toupee."

On my doubling the time I promised I would spend interviewing him: "Is my half hour up yet?"

Cavett's Opinionator blog for The New York Times can be read HERE.

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ABC's 'Better with You': Too Good to Lose, Not Too Late to Save

May 11, 2011 7:15 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

STORY UPDATE, MAY 14: SAD NEWS: According to one of Tom's sources, ABC has cancelled Better with You. Read on for the full story... -- DB

STORY UPDATE, MAY 12, EVENING: Nielsen ratings for the May 11 Better with You showed another healthy jump in viewers: 11 percent over the previous week in total viewers and 25 percent in the much-coveted viewers aged 18-49. The series retained 82 percent of the audience of The Middle, the show that preceded it. That time period, 8:30-9 p.m., puts it against the second half of Fox's American Idol and CBS's Survivor. Better with You kept 91 percent of viewers aged 18-49 from its lead-in and 94 percent of the viewers aged 18-34 who watched The Middle, meaning most defections were among older viewers.

It was the series' best ratings showing since early February. -- TB

--

ABC will announce its 2011-12 prime-time schedule next week, but producers are expected to learn the fates of current shows before the weekend.

In 2007 I was just a viewer-bystander as a wonderful TV series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, disappeared way before it deserved to. I was really bothered by the way NBC abused it, meddled with it and then abandoned it. But individual viewers don't count a lot with networks and my irritation meant nothing.

It was the first time since I stopped writing about television in the '80s that I wished I were doing it again. Critics don't mean much to networks either, but they do have a louder voice. I told myself if something like that ever happened again, I sure hoped I had that louder voice again.

Well, another above-average series looks like it soon may encounter the same callous dismissal, and -- son of a gun -- this time I have access to TV WORTH WATCHING's megaphone...

ABC soon could pull the plug on the most clever comedy to hit television in five years.

Better with You, which premiered last September, is an exceptionally well-written, excellently cast comedy. It does these two rare-for-network-TV things atop a concept that's as fresh and as polished as the standout series that inspired me to name my TVWW outparcel "Raised on MTM." From my seasoned perspective, it's in the same class as series like Cheers and Taxi and Newhart.

It's too good to lose. And, perhaps, not too late to save it.

I'm not just urging ABC to keep the series. I am telling you that this TV series is worth watching, and if you haven't done so yet, please catch the season finale tonight (Wednesday) at 8:30 ET.

If you don't know the story, here's the premise: Two sisters and their partners interact with the sisters' parents. They all live in New York. The parents (played by Kurt Fuller and Debra Jo Rupp) are retired, married for more than 30 years and like to think they control the reins of the stagecoach that is their daughters and their spousal-like partners.

Older daughter Maddie (Jennifer Finnegan) is a lawyer who has lived for nine years with boyfriend Ben (Josh Cooke), who manages a New York hotel. They see no reason to marry. Younger daughter Mia (Joanna Garcia) runs a high-tech business and is living with Casey (Jake Lacy), the father of their soon-to-be-born child. They plan to marry before the child is born.

[They'd better hurry. Tonight's season finale takes place in a hospital maternity ward.]

One other note: Casey, the father-to-be, is the only one who doesn't possess the Manhattan-style sophistication of the other five. Think Woody on Cheers, or George on Newhart, and you can see similar comic construction. The magic settles on the series with the writing.

If my brief description of the premise made you think straw, see how the chemistry of cast and production spins it to gold. Watch this clip from the pilot as not only an introduction to the characters, but also as an example of the richness of writing that artfully and entertainingly introduces six new characters in record time. (Click HERE.)

I have watched every episode this first season and have been happy that I did. I have recommended the series to others who have thanked me for doing so. The reason it is in trouble is not its own fault: It runs against American Idol and Survivor . Its task is like trying to pitch to a Yankees team that included Ruth and Gehrig.

An often-invoked network principle is in situations like this is "Nobody can beat those suckers, but some innocent blood must be shed to show how serious we are about losing."

Still, the statistics aren't as lopsided as they might be. And if the savvy strategists in ABC's command center outnumber those demanding sacrifice, we still may get a second season of Better with You. Here's what they should be looking at: Hour-long 8 p.m. shows build viewership levels in the second half hour.

Yet Better with You holds on to more than 80% of the viewers who watched The Middle, the program that precedes it on ABC. Better with You is averaging 6.6 million total viewers this year -- which is a bunch, when stacked against its reality-show Goliath competitors. (It also beats NBC's offerings, but with that anemic network, it's similar to winning by forfeit because the other team didn't show up.)

Another factor working for it is that Nielsen ratings now include people who watched the show up to seven days after its air date as a DVR recording. Its 6.6 million total viewers jumps 7.4 percent, to 7.2 million, in this measurement. And in the top target demographic, viewers aged 18-49, the viewership increases by 9 percent. Unlike five years ago, when it couldn't save Studio 60, DVR technology now can save a series.

Added momentum may have developed last Wednesday alone, when the show's total-viewer ratings increased by 17 percent over the previous week, and its 18-49 viewers jumped by 7 percent.

The networks are formulating their fall schedules now, but sources say the final lineups haven't been locked in yet. Another bump up in ratings Wednesday night might make the necessary difference.

But think of watching not as a favor to the cast, or the producers, or to me. Chances are good you're going to like what you see -- and you'll be doing YOURSELF a favor.

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'Nature' Trilogy Goes Where Bear Claws Aren't Just Bakery Goods

May 6, 2011 5:45 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

The PBS series Nature has presented some memorable wildlife programming over the nearly three decades it has been on the air. Over the next three Sundays, Nature will memorably return a term to the wild, when it reminds viewers that mama grizzlies don't care about tea, can't see Russia and can be pretty darn accommodating to outsiders.

Bears of the Last Frontier (8 p.m. ET Sunday, May 8, 15 and 22 -- check local listings) is a video record of more than a year of following grizzlies, black bears and polar bears through many parts of Alaska with a couple of cameras, a whole lot of expertise and even more chutzpah. It's a mostly fascinating, sometimes scary, always interesting look at America's most undeveloped and wildlife-rich state.

Bear expert Chris Morgan is host. He and producer-writer-videographer Joe Pontecorvo started an adventure that took them across the state, south-to-north, in the spring of 2009 when a sea plane took them to a part of the Alaska Peninsula that's heavily populated by grizzly bears -- and left them there.

Bears normally are solitary, Pontecorvo said in a recent phone interview, but the high number of them in this area has turned them into more social animals. They tolerate each other more than bears usually do, and they also mostly tolerated being watched, followed and filmed.

The story here, as in later segments as they move through the state, shows bears to be intelligent, resourceful, powerful and potentially intimidating by nature. It also shows that mother bears, whether polar, black or grizzly, are devoted to and protective of their cubs, while being surprisingly habituated to two-legged intruders. The three-part series will satisfy anyone who is fascinated by the behavior of predator animals in the wild, but has neither the resources nor the courage to get this close in fulfilling that fascination.

Encounters this close with these powerful creatures always carry a large share of risk. That's demonstrated during the first hour, when the filmmakers' vantage point for watching grizzlies hunting salmon turns from relatively safe to dangerous as a large bear charges toward them. Nothing disastrous happens, but Morgan, who has studied bears in many habitats for half his life, and Pontecorvo, whose wildlife credits have put him close to many dangerous animals, don't hide their extreme relief when the danger has passed.

Subsequent stops on the state-long trip take them to the large city of Anchorage, where black bears and moose wander populated neighborhoods that used to be their wilderness. Black bears, though the smallest of the trio of bears shown in the series, still can be dangerous. And the human efforts to keep them under control and away from pets and small children and other easily harmed targets demonstrate how lower-48 obstacles like commutes, shopping malls and client meetings are so lamely tame in comparison.

They next visit Denali National Park, where the grizzlies are as solitary and elusive as their Peninsula relatives are social and plentiful. A single bear can cover an area the size of Yellowstone National Park, Pontecorvo said. It's the second of three types of grizzlies seen in the series, and shows how one breed of bear can change and adapt in radically different ways, depending on the setting.

The third hour begins in polar bear territory, and it's here, said Pontecorvo, that he had his biggest scare. Polar bears prey on other large animals, he explained, and their need for quiet stalking and a coat that blends them into the surroundings makes them extra dangerous. He was filming polar bears that were feeding on a whale carcass when it was pointed out one of the bears had circled behind him, putting him in potential danger. He immediately headed toward the safety of the truck they were using.

"Open the door," he said.

"Just a minute," came the reply from inside.

"I don't have a minute," was his reasoned but firm response.

His wife, Nimmida, got the message and opened the door. Yes, wife. They had gotten married, he said, shortly before the Alaska trip began, and she came along as a second videographer and sound tech. She did so willingly and happily, ruling out any motive for her "Just a minute" being retaliatory for such an unusual honeymoon.

The final stop is in the Brooks Range, where still another grizzly subset is encountered. A mother and three cubs are filmed as she teaches them how to catch salmon. They may be the first humans these bears ever have encountered, and the well-grown cubs are curious about their visitors. Morgan literally talks the cub into not coming any farther -- eliminating a situation that might have made the mother react in a politically incorrect manner.

More than 500 hours of video were shot and post production took more than six months. He said there was plenty of good material to have added a fourth hour. He also explained how they used solar chargers to keep their cameras powered and how there was enough sunlight to avoid the dilemma of drained batteries when miles away from a conventional power source.

Protection largely was pepper spray and flares, though there were times when the participants carried shotguns. The shotguns weren't an option when on national parkland, Pontecorvo said, because federal policy bans them. When possible, a metal electrified wire surrounded the tents.

The mix of a year of bears, the famous Alaskan mosquitos and enough cold weather for an ordinary person's lifetime hasn't changed his mind about the great payback for this adventure, or other similarly tough ones he has experienced. He looks forward, he said, to each assignment, no matter the terrain or the critter being followed.

"The more perilous the situation, the better the shot," Pontecorvo explained.

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Shades of Black Examined in PBS Series about Slavery's Effects in Latin America

April 25, 2011 2:49 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

I grew up in a segregated community in a segregated America. Like many others, I learned during the late 1950s and into the '60s how wrong this was, and have tried since then to make amends for my ignorance. But as proven by PBS's current nonfiction series about slavery and its impact on Latin America, I remain more ignorant than I imagined...

I suspect I'm not atypical in thinking America stood shamefully alone in the world for its awful and divisive history of slavery and race relations, and that the slow resolution of race problems in the U.S. does at least something to remedy the wrongs that were done.

My limited knowledge of the history of slavery was revealed as I watched Black in Latin America on PBS. Of the more than 11 million people from Africa who were stolen from their land and families and made slaves during the Middle Passage, 450,000 ended up in the U.S. A huge majority ended up as slaves in Latin American countries, and this four-part series goes inside six of those countries to look at how the lives of slaves and their descendants differed in many ways from how slavery and its abolition played out in America.

The series, televised Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET (check local listings), began last week with an examination of the surprising differences of how slavery has affected the residents of Hispaniola. In short, the Dominican Republic then and now, envisions itself as a country of Spanish history and culture.

Haiti, which is separated from its neighbor by a river, has a history and current culture built on its African heritage. Despite a common African past, the different mindsets have produced two very dissimilar citizens and governments.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the show's host, co-executive producer and writer, presents clear, illuminating and extremely interesting profiles of each of the countries (others are Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Peru). Each has a different, complex history, which Gates explains through interviews with residents, observations of cultural events, and visits to places in each country.

(The Internet helps in correcting somewhat the tardiness of this review. The entire first episode can be watched HERE. The subsequent three episodes will be shown April 25, May 3 and May 10 -- all at 8 p.m. ET, but check local listings -- and also will be available on the same PBS video portal following the broadcast.)

The documentary's subject is not an easy one to explain, especially when the material will be previously unknown to many who watch. The clear and organized script tackles and minimizes that potential obstacle. If this and previous PBS productions of which Gates, right, has been part are examples of his teaching methods, it is easy to imagine his Harvard courses filling quickly. Excellent videography that has been expertly edited complement the script's attention-holding clarity.

The second installment, about Cuba (seen at top above), also may surprise most Americans. In the many decades since the revolution, the country has been pretty much a mystery. Its history and workings in regard to the nearly 800,000 Africans brought there as slaves and their descendants is even more the mystery. Early in his rule, Fidel Castro said discrimination in Cuba no longer existed. The program examines that claim and discovers its faults. The segments about Brazil, Mexico and Peru are equally illuminating.

By the time the series ends, we learn that the shame of slavery isn't confined to just our country and its aftermath has been markedly different in six of the Latin American countries that participated in its exploitation.

In a Gates interview that's available on the Web HERE he also notes a common trait:

"Each country except for Haiti went through a period of whitening, when they wanted to obliterate or bury or blend in their black roots. Each then had a period when they celebrated their cultural heritage, but as part of a multi-cultural mix, and in that multi-cultural mix, somehow the blackness got diluted, blended.

"So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' -- really brown, a beautiful brown blend.

"And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest-skinned with the most African features. In other words, the poverty in each of these countries has been socially constructed as black. The upper class in Brazil is virtually all white, a tiny group of black people in the upper-middle class. And that's true in Peru, that's true in the Dominican Republic.

"Haiti's obviously an exception, because it's a country of mulatto and black people, but there's been a long tension between mulatto and black people in Haiti. So even Haiti has its racial problems."

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On Local TV Weathercasts, Beware the Mighty Doppler -- And Dangerous Purple Round Things!

April 16, 2011 7:30 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Forget the invention of the printing press, the telephone or even the electric light. This world was nothing until the invention of doppler weather radar. In fact, it's a wonder this world still spins, and wasn't ripped to cosmic shreds before doppler arrived and saved us from complete devastation...

So it indeed is appropriate that whenever they can, television meteorologists commandeer their station's airwaves and endlessly show their reverence to this most wonderful ever of humankind saviors, The Mighty Doppler.

For more than 25 years, I have lived in Florida, where weather has replaced pastor Benny Hinn as television's saver of souls -- not to mention pets, wildlife, roofs, windows and, most important, ratings. Since 2004's hurricane season, TV has developed common law that proclaims lightning is license to worry, wind is reason to worry more, and the combination of the two is reason to just bend over and kiss your ass goodbye -- "unless you watch us."

Let a line of storms develop, and whatever was scheduled for the next day or so disappears from the screen so teams of men with rolled-up sleeves and loosened ties (and women wearing whatever might be the female equivalent of "this is serious" attire) play with their computers more than they did when, as younger children, they owned an Atari and a Frogger cartridge.

They show us the storm line from every angle, they show us the height of the storm, they play doctor, and look for dangerous purple round things hidden inside the radar that might make things even worse (gasp!). They also put so many trackers on the storm, their efforts surely rival the surveillance provided by drones flying over Afghanistan.

It's usually a litany of redundancies after what little news there was to report lies mostly motionless, doing nothing to qualify it as new news. It's also a game of chicken, as stations honor their pledge of allegiance to never be the first to resume regularly scheduled programming.

As long as there is one tree that might not remain upright, as long as dime-sized hail may inflate to quarter or half-dollar, as long as the wind speed exceeds that of a fully loaded bus moving up a 30-degree incline, there will be coverage.

In the city in which I grew up and lived until the mid-'80s, you knew some bad weather might develop if the old Cold War air-raid sirens were sounded. People then went to their basements, turned on the radio and left the safety of the basement only for bathroom breaks, drinks of water, snacks, to answer the phone, get the paper, or retrieve the trash cans that were blowing down the street. It's amazing we're still alive. But it's grand that we are, so we can witness the wonders of doppler at the drop of a hat (full of water).

I have been assured that this form of television ecstasy connected to radar screens happens all over the country. Tornadoes, snow storms, blizzards and other bad weather things, it seems, can't be fully dreaded unless there is much anticipation before their possible arrival.

That doesn't stop me from soliciting stories from you readers about the odd weather practices you have observed at your stations. (Our editor, David Bianculli, has vented on this website about the recent advent of "thundersnow." How are your local stations upping the weather-drama ante?)

Meanwhile, two former television news directors, both of whom teach ways to make broadcast journalism better, offer some professional and experienced perspective.

The technology exists, works and is important to viewers -- a fact reflected in how the number of viewers alway rises impressively when bad weather threatens, said Jill Geisler, now a faculty member at The Poynter Institute (journalism's equivalent of the FBI's Academy at Quantico or theology's seminary at the Vatican), and Scott Libin, who taught at Poynter for seven years before starting his own news consulting and instruction business.

People now know to turn to television in possible emergency situations for reliable information, and the weather department that does that job best contributes to a halo effect that raises the whole station, Geisler said. No money is made when weather coverage preempts all commercials. The halo effect can help make up for those losses in ordinary times, they said, by attracting more viewers. Higher ratings can translate to higher ad rates. And if stations were indeed as falsely alarmist as I have painted above, the public would see through the ploy, Geisler said.

What she said is a newsroom mantra of "First on, last off" is "always something of a dilemma" that can produce misjudgments.

"I wouldn't challenge that," Libin said when presented with the term "weather ecstasy."

A reason for that, he said, is that "most meteorologists see themselves primarily as scientists. At one time in relatively recent television history, radar was basic and black-and-white, the weatherman also was a staff announcer, and show-business clowning was written into his act. The leap from clown to scientist often skipped over a stop for learning about journalism, he said. "They want to give you every piece of information they see as relevant."

Excesses aside, how should any responsible station stop and start coverage with a developing story? "You can't say, 'That's all we know. We'll be back in 20 minutes.' New people are tuning in all the time."

One way to minimize weather overkill, Geisler said, would be to pool weather coverage the same way stations in some markets now pool helicopter coverage of a breaking story. But once the sizable expenditures were made in radar equipment and weather coverage became a bragging element, the chance of that happening has decreased mightily.

What options are there for viewers who brand this kind of weather coverage as excessive, silly, alarmist or exploitive -- or all of the above? Short of going on an exclusive bland video diet of Lifetime or TLC, the best solution is to just wait until this whole weather ecstasy thing blows over -- just like more than 90 percent of the storms the phenomenon celebrates seem to. And realize there are varying amounts of public serviceand personal revenue built into the picture.

But for now, unless you're "hunkering down" before an imminent storm, or on your way out to buy milk and bread before the snow arrives, please share some of your weather insights with the rest of us.

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Talking with Dick Cavett: Remembering When TV Talk Shows Weren't Informercials

April 7, 2011 4:30 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

During a phone interview with Dick Cavett, when he mentions being at the home of Groucho Marx and one of the other dinner guests was Carly Simon, name-dropping just isn't suspected. On his television shows, and off the air too, he has talked with some of the more interesting people in the world...

And because Cavett is as gifted and natural a storyteller as he is an interviewer, fabled people easily turn into elements that illustrate his answers.

Before he began hosting his own show in the '60s, Cavett worked on Jack Paar's and Johnny Carson's versions of the Tonight show. He watched, he learned and he met the personalities who were guests on those shows.

It was a logical progression when Cavett was given a show in which he asked the questions. He listened to the answers. His shows were funny, smart and engaging. Many of the people who appeared there felt relaxed and opened up to provide memorable interviews.

After a show, a guest often would ask, "How did you get me to talk about that?" Cavett says, adding they often followed the question with, "I felt so comfortable."

Shout Factory has released four collections of Cavett shows that prove the above statement much better than any writer can. (You can buy one or all by clicking HERE.)

Example: Katharine Hepburn, who rarely appeared on talk shows, just came into the studio to get a feel for Cavett's style after a friend recommended she do the show.

Cavett won her over almost effortlessly, it seems. With cameras recording as she rearranged some furniture and talked about ground rules, the visit turned into an entire program. She enjoyed it so much, she stayed on to tape a second.

Not all of his memorable shows were with movie stars. Writers Janet Flanner, Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer appeared on one that's a legend in itself. Vidal and Mailer were feuding at the time. Mailer, Cavett says, apparently came to the program after filling up at a bar. While Vidal and Mailer threw some full-force verbal punches at each other, Flanner added some jabs of her own; the audience took sides, and a frustrated Cavett answered a belligerent Mailer question about an alleged question sheet with, "Why don't you fold (the sheet) five ways and put it where the moon don't shine?"

The Hepburn show is part of the DVD release. The "moon don't shine" program is not, though Cavett hopes it will be available some day.

In his latest book, Talk Show, Cavett calls the latter "without doubt the damnedest show I ever did."

The book is a collection of the blogs he writes several times a month for The New York Times -- nearly flawless storytelling that often touches on the people who were his television guests.

(You can order the book HERE, and read Cavett's blogs HERE.)

Not all the writings are television-born. Others recall growing up in Nebraska, being the rare Nebraskan at the Yale of the 1950s, and "confrontations, pointed commentary and off-screen secrets" (the remainder of the book's full title).

They are recountings that might never grow past boring, were one of us telling them about our lives -- even if we had led a life even half as interesting as his. So much of the magic lies in the telling.

Which is a logical lead-in to a return to the Groucho Marx story.

Cavett was telling how Marx often boasted that, unlike his randy film persona, he was almost Victorian in his attitudes in private life -- "and then 10 minutes later tell a hilariously filthy joke."

The clock inside Marx must have been ringing loudly, demanding an unusually off-color remark -- which he addressed at Ms. Simon. Cavett waded into Groucho's stream of thought and diverted it back to a better course. Simon told Cavett later that she fell in love with him for defusing the situation: "I felt my throat tighten and I couldn't speak," she said, when Groucho's words hit her.

"The sad part," Cavett says, "is that neither of us can remember what I said."

What part of sitting at dinner with Groucho and being told by Carly Simon she loved you wouldn't any person almost kill to have lived? But could any of us have told it in the simple and delightful way Cavett did during the interview?

He said he was surprised to recently read in a magazine story that his show's ratings were higher than the current Tonight show's. That's not the only way what he did tops many current talk shows. A lot of today's guests are on studio-bankrolled promotion tours for a movie, album or show -- the consistently worst being recently rejected reality show contestants. They move from one program to another, telling the same stories, showing the same clips and exiting as soon as the publicity seeds have been sown.

Cavett's guests showed up to talk, not to shill. They often would sit and talk with him for an entire show. It's the difference between being an interested guest and being a shill. Viewers felt they were part of an engaging conversation, not the equivalent of an Amway recruitment meeting. The audience was given credit for being smart enough to understand. Condescension wasn't judged to be an essential ingredient.

Even though what he did should be a model of what talk today could be, Cavett declines a request to rate today's shows or list the ones he watches. Except for the rare Norman Mailer rebuttal, a respectful decorum marked and still marks much of the way Cavett works. It's classy, it's fun to watch and before the style becomes extinct, one can hope that the endlessly cyclical nature of television swings back in that direction again.

Until that happens, watch the DVDs and read the book and the blog. Knowing what you're missing might be the start of a groundswell that makes the pendulum move more quickly.

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Under Siege in Congress, Public Broadcasting Has Boardroom Support

March 11, 2011 1:01 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

In an era when government funding for public radio and television seems to be under new attack, the importance of program underwriters has risen sharply. And despite economics and politics, some big companies have continued their support.

Businesses steer funds from their marketing budgets to public media programs as a selling tool, an image-enhancer and/or a sign of support. Though there appears to be no public ranking of these companies, names like Canon, Liberty Mutual and ExxonMobil are among those often connected with continuing support of non-commercial shows.

And then there's Subaru. The carmaker is a sponsor of public TV's Antiques Roadshow, Globe Trekker, Growing a Greener World, Sara's Weeknight Meals and Pedal America, and public radio's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, World Cafe, Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me and Fresh Air. Previously, it was an underwriter of the public TV series Garden Smart.

"Our company has been a big fan of PBS and NPR for a long time," said Alan Bethke, Subaru's director of marketing and communications. "Despite the recession, we've maintained that."

He would not share how much Subaru spends for underwriting or what percentage of the marketing budget it commands. But Bethke links the expenditures to three years of sales gains and a 50% increase in Subaru market share over that period.

The programs his company underwrites, Bethke said, give it the chance to connect more closely with consumers whose buying and lifestyle preferences align with Subaru's marketing message. Lifestyle profiles of a program's fans -- its psychographics -- determine whether his company will spend money to reach them. The producers of public shows collect that data and use it to cement underwriting acquisition.

In addition to exposure in messages at the start and end of a program, these companies often see other benefits. Underwriters can receive exposure on a program's website, and they can be included in events linked to the program, said Suzanne Zellner, vice president of corporate sponsorship at WGBH/Boston. "Multi-platform packages" such as this can be ingredients more effective than those offered by commercial broadcasters, she said.

"[Underwriters] see a tremendous value from aligning their brands and reaching the kind of audience" that meets their target market, Zellner said.

Subaru, for example, staffs a display that features vintage and current models of its cars at each hall in which WGBH's Antiques Roadshow appears each year [photo above]. It also receives tickets to the events, which it can give to customers, as well as the opportunity for ticketholders to meet the program's appraisers, Subaru's Bethke said.

WNET/New York, like WGBH, plays a large role in public TV program production. In the current recession, corporate funding accounts for 10 percent of WNET's budget, said Kerry Kruckle-Gibbs, vice president of development [photo at right]. She said that in an improving economy a goal of between 15 and 20 percent is realistic. She sees the donation by James and Merryl Tisch of $15 million for the station's new Lincoln Center studios as a signal that other donors are moving toward more support. As-yet unannounced underwriting deals are being worked out with some first-time public broadcasting underwriters, she added.

Factors that retain underwriters and attract new ones, said Harvey Seslowsky, the station's executive director of local and national advertising and sponsorships, include an uncluttered on-air environment, polling that consistently shows PBS as the most credible network, and the chance to connect with "unique programming that, quite frankly, nobody else wants to do."

Subaru's Bethke said public broadcasting gives his company a valuable chance to match programming to current and potential customers' "passion points" -- whether it's an interest in world travel, concern about the environment, a fascination with history, making healthy meals, personal fitness, or news and current events.

"Our [Subaru] owners are naturally curious about things," he said. "We've been able to connect with them on like-minded subjects. Historically, Subaru has been a niche marketer, and these shows have given us the chance to find people who were predisposed to Subaru and speak to them directly."

(Disclosure: As TVWW readers know, David Bianculli is a contributor to and guest host of NPR's Fresh Air. This story was conceived without the writer's knowledge of the Subaru connection to that show, but was based on the frequent presence of the carmaker on public TV. Bianculli did not know I was working on this story, nor did he know of the Subaru interview. The writer does not know the kind of car his editor owns -- but remembers a fear-inducing journey across the freeways of Los Angeles in which the editor, as driver of a rental, reignited the writer's love for walking.)

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'Thousands of Choices' And Not One to be Found

March 6, 2011 3:45 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

[In which, after a senate bill is introduced justifying the end of government funding for public broadcasting because there are "thousands of choices" for educational offerings otherwise available, our intrepid correspondent asks for a representative list... - DB]

On March 4, two Republican U.S. senators introduced legislation that isn't that unique in the Washington, D.C., that exists today. Their bill would end all government funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the same idea that has longer roots in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The rationale put forward by Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Sen Tom Coburn (Okla.) should sail through conservative quarters with a collective nod. But it deserves some exposure among people who appreciate high-quality television, and who aren't afraid to question or challenge flawed arguments.

This is from the news release offered by Sen. DeMint's office:

"Our nation is on the edge of bankruptcy and Congress must make some tough choices to rein in spending, but ending taxpayer subsidies of public broadcasting should be an easy decision," said Sen. DeMint. "Americans struggling to make ends meet shouldn't be forced to fund public broadcasting when there are already thousands of choices for educational and entertainment programming on the television, radio and web."

Setting aside that the public money given to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting helps to partly fund only public radio and television, and Web offerings hold little relevance in this argument, one would have to stretch awfully far to find the "thousands of choices" now existing on commercial radio and television stations.

The "thousands" number is linked to "educational and entertainment programming." Commercial radio and television are entertainment. Finding more than a few programs they offer that could be labeled "educational" is difficult.

I found it impossible. So I called Wesley Denton, a press aide to Sen. DeMint, to ask for help. Had the senator told him some of those programs referred to in the press release?

"I'm sure you can think of many examples of the kinds of shows you're asking about," Denton said.

No, that's why I'm calling, was my response. Please help me.

"You're not aware of these programs?"

He said equivalents of Sesame Street and Curious George abound on commercial television. I must know what they are.

No, I replied. Could he please give an example?

"That's a silly question that answers itself," he said, and the conversation soon ended.

If those hunting the heads of public broadcasters want to build momentum, they'd better do so with real facts, not baseless ones they don't even try to explain or defend when asked about them.

There is a long history of empty statements emanating from the U.S. Capitol. But ones that attempt to link South Park to Sesame Street, or Cake Boss to America's Test Kitchen, deserve some sort of award in the category.

As it is, some of them are trying to gut the soul of America with a coal shovel. Not only is the process unnecessary -- it's clumsy, dirty and patently stupid.

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PBS 'Troubadours' Is a Scenic Tour Through a Magical Musical Era

March 1, 2011 6:30 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Troubadours: Carole King/James Taylor and the Rise of the Singer-Songwriter , the newest American Masters masterwork, premieres Wednesday on PBS (8 p.m. ET -- check local listings). Consuming its contents, for many fans of that music, will be as revelatory as they are enjoyable...

Imagine a neighborhood in which many of the residents were the creators and performers of some of the most memorable music of a generation. Or Elton John, an unknown singer-pianist in 1970, playing to an almost-empty club.

Try to hear in your mind James Taylor's Carolina in My Mind backed by a big orchestral sound. Or the Shirelles' version of Will You Love Me Tomorrow having the same effect as when its writer, Carole King, later made it a classic on her Tapestry album.

The neighborhood is L.A.'s Laurel Canyon, and residents at one time included King, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Glenn Frey and other significant artists of the late '60s and early '70s.

And Sir Elton, making his first American performing appearance in 1970, played to a mostly empty house at the kingmaker club of the time, Doug Weston's Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard.

James Taylor's initial solo album was recorded by Apple Records when the Beatles were still very involved in its operation. That version of Carolina has the kind of orchestral sound reminiscent of A Day in the Life.

And when Carole King made her Troubadour debut, it took a bomb threat and evacuation of the building to help her overcome her nervousness.

These are just some of the fascinating contents neatly packed inside this new, surprisingly informative American Masters documentary.

A lot of us showed up for that remarkable time in American music, the so-called troubadour era, but took few notes. There were a lot of '40s- and '50s-born who greedily adopted almost everything performed by Carole King and James Taylor but, it can be argued, didn't know at the time they composed the songs they performed. These ever-aging boomers loved the singer-songwriter music without defining it as a "breather" era in popular music, post-Beatles, and that its growth was as geographic as it was societal.

Director Morgan Neville's American Masters special, about that pivotal time, details and explains what happened, and how it happened, within a beautifully researched and constructed 90-minute package -- one it would be nearly impossible for anyone who lived through that time to dislike.

Neville has put together what he calls a scrapbook of an era, one that roughly began about the time the Beatles and Stones retreated and ebbed when a radically different late-'70s disco era elevated dance steps to a plane far above the music that accompanied them.

King and Taylor first played together at the Troubadour in 1970. In a recent phone interview with me for TV WORTH WATCHING, Neville told how the two artists arranged to have their 2007 reunion concert at Troubadour recorded on video, but weren't certain what they wanted to do with the footage afterward. Neville had worked with King before, when he shot a documentary about the New York-based writers of '50s and '60s pop music, a group that included the 18-year-old King and her creative partner and then-husband, Gerry Goffin. He approached King-Taylor in late 2009 with the idea of documenting the era by telling the story of them and their contemporaries.

"We'd like to help and cooperate," Neville said they told him. "You figure out what it is."

They were on their 2010 reunion tour and helped as much as possible. He took just a bit more than a year to put it together.

The result is a collection of contemporary interviews and performances intermixed with amazing archival footage: King as little girl, practicing at the piano; film from her wedding celebration; of her and Goffin working together on a song, and of the young family of three in their West Orange, N.J., home.

There is footage of Taylor performing Fire and Rain at the July 1969 Newport Folk Festival (below). Of a very young Joni Mitchell in one of her first concerts. And more. How did he find all of that fascinating footage?

"We did an intensive archive search," Neville explained. "We hit usual suspects and then we kept digging. The artists also gave us some nuggets, others we found from former club employees. A few clips, like James at Newport playing Fire and Rain, were revelatory. James had just written the song and it was the first time he'd ever played anything larger than a club. You can see an artist at the moment he's finding his voice. It's discoveries like that that you live for as a documentarian."

Neville's love and understanding of the music, more than anything else, makes the idea work so well. The artful mixing of the new material with the old, in telling the story, results in a fast-moving program that will leave many viewers wishing for more.

Neville said he had enough good material to produce a longer version -- in fact, the version shown at the recent Sundance Film Festival was 10 minutes longer. He fell in love with material he had to take out for time, and said it was like "killing your babies." But it played to capacity audiences at each of its Sundance screenings, he said, "and with time, and when you see it with an audience, you get over it."

This probably is the best 90 minutes of television available all month. Savor it.

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Trump Card Turns to Joker if Used Too Often

February 23, 2011 4:08 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

When a good pitcher relies too often on his best pitch and telegraphs its delivery, that fast ball, curve or slider loses much of its effectiveness. The same loss can happen on TV comedies when the people in power -- writers, producers, network executives -- play too often to a popular character's quirkiness.

Consider the cases of Alex P. Keaton and Jack Donaghy.

Alex was, of course, the Family Ties character played to Emmy-winning level by Michael J. Fox, while Jack has been an Emmy-winning role on 30 Rock for Alec Baldwin.

These two exceptional actors share other distinctions. From 1982 to 1989, Fox's character won deserved attention as the ultraconservative son of two once-hippie parents. His idol worship of Nixon, Agnew, Reagan and Bush and his fierce devotion to capitalism became primary ingredients of the series. Since 2006, Baldwin has been playing a later-issue version of the same red-state, blue-chip male.

And both, it can be argued, have had those roles painted into corners by over-reliance on caricature.

Family Ties took on some really serious subjects over its seven seasons, handling them with class. Now that the series is running again on the Hub channel's prime-time schedule (Monday-Thursday at 10 and 10:30 p.m. ET), re-watching more than two decades later proves its quality level endures. And the flaws seem just as bad. Whether audiences demanded stories be punctuated by broad strokes of Alex's conservatism, or whether that was a perception of the show's makers, those lines pop up regularly to seem as out-of-place as a saxophone solo in a Mozart concerto.

Similar things happen on 30 Rock. Clever and creative dialogue, delivered by any number of characters, will be building the story in a fun way until the script gives Donaghy a pin-striped line from the right that trips up the tempo. It happens often enough to make one think the writers rely on the same old shortcut again rather than keep trying for a truly fresh alternative.

Whether it's Keaton in the '80s or Donaghy next Thursday, there seems an implied obligation to toss in the character's cliches so viewers don't feel cheated. In reality, leaning on those crutches is a cheat in itself. Actors generally like to expand their characters, and people who love good television love when that happens. Even though characters like Klinger on M*A*S*H, Cliff on Cheers and Phoebe of Friends were created as easy-laugh gimmicks, each developed other sides that delivered nice payoffs.

Left unchecked, television grows cliches like weeds -- even on classy lawns like 30 Rock and Family Ties.

Now you take a turn: Let's hear which series you think let themselves and you down by playing too much to a single breakout character's quirks.

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Top 10 People Who, Like Lindsay Lohan, Won't Be Reading a List on CBS 'Late Show'

February 16, 2011 4:42 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

The CBS eye got a little egg on it Wednesday when the network and David Letterman learned they apparently had been misled by someone who said actress Lindsay Lohan would appear on the Thursday, Feb 17 The Late Show with David Letterman to read the Top Ten list. (Later reports identified the third-party negotiator as Lohan's father, with the offer denied once her handlers learned of it.)

Here's the correction from Letterman's production company... and our own list of other people who ALSO won't be appearing on The Late Show...

"Lindsay Lohan will not be delivering a Top Ten list on Thursday's LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN, as had been previously announced. We made a mistake. Someone purporting to be a friend of Lindsay's reached out to the show yesterday, allegedly on her behalf, and booked her to appear. Clearly, this person was not authorized to make commitments on her behalf. We wish Lindsay well, and look forward to having her on the show in the future."

In the style of Letterman, we offer the following --

Ten Other People Who Mistakenly Were Assumed Booked On 'The Late Show'

10. Osama bin Laden -- His handlers called, but thought they'd reached "The Goat Show."

9. Moses -- Has contractual obligation to do only one Top 10 per eternity.

8. Miley Cyrus -- It's a solidarity thing among acting-up young women.

7. David Bianculli -- Thought they were offering Top Tenure.

6. The Situation -- The problem here: the higher math.

5. No Number Five -- Writer who talked to "someone purporting to be a friend of Lindsay's" on time out.

4. Dick Van Patten -- Said Eight is Enough.

3. Franz Liszt -- Like Moses, shuns other lists.

2. Tea Party -- Too busy trying to dismantle PBS. CBS, your turn will come.

1. Lindsay Lohan -- "Did I already turn them down? I forget."

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PBS's 'Need to Know' Focuses on Need to Teach -- Differently

February 11, 2011 11:15 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

A chemistry course that puts an equal emphasis on proper uses of commas and periods as on the periodic chart is part of a program that has helped lift graduation rates much higher at a Massachusetts high school. And at an Illinois high school, starting students' days with physical education has raised their heart rates and, as a result, their grades in the six years since the program was started.

This week's Need to Know (8:30 p.m. ET Friday, Feb. 11, on PBS -- check local listings) includes these stories in a single-subject program that looks at examples of education innovations devised and activated by the actual faculty members who were frustrated by the walls they kept hitting in trying to effectively teach their students...

It's a fascinating hour. At Brockton High School, south of Boston, uniform testing results showed 75 percent of its 1998 students weren't going to graduate because of low math and/or English skills. A core group of teachers decided to make changes by integrating reading and writing skills into every course taught there. Some faculty members protested (including a book-burning) and some left. Others were reluctant; a science teacher, now fully behind the idea (shown at top above) initially thought it was useless meddling.

But the scores improved, and one of the early instigators for change now is the principal there, where success continues and has been recognized as a model for other schools to follow.

The academic results, in many cases, were just as low at a suburban Chicago high school six years ago. A man who taught physical education at the school, Naperville Central High, championed an idea that links higher academic performance to physical activity before problem classes. Here too, the grades of participating students showed marked improvements.

In a third segment, at a Maryland college, students taking science classes have been moved out of that age-old venue of tedium and confusion, the giant lecture hall, to small groups in which they investigate and solve problems together. As a result, the number of students dropping out of science-related majors has decreased there.

In an interview this week, Shelley Lewis, the news series' executive producer, said the decision to look for such "change agents from within" grew from a story they did late last year about results of worldwide testing that showed American schools doing worse than many in other countries.

An interview with a Finnish educator pointed out approaches in his country not being taken in U.S. schools. Though the story was relatively short, Lewis said, the full interview ran on the Need to Know website, "and we were deluged" with responses from people interested in this "hot-button issue."

Over several months, staff members found these and other stories that demonstrated educators' ingenuity in solving their school's problems. The decision was made to follow the stories with a panel discussion with educators as the hour's fourth segment.

Panelists include Susan Szachowicz, the Brockton principal; Zakiyah Ansari, a parent leader with New York's Coalition for Educational Justice; and Dr. Pedro Noguera, an author and professor of education at New York University.

"It was great to see (the panelists') level of excitement" at what the show's stories reported, Lewis said. Need to Know has been structured since its start as a program that exists complementarily on the air and online, she said, adding, "The stories, we hope, will spur lots of teachers to come to our website and share with us their reactions and stories of what they've done."

Future programs will feature other stories that were discovered in producing this one. Lewis, whose 20-year news career includes posts with ABC, NBC and CNN, will look for further story ideas in the feedback.

This week's show is another example of how Need to Know is working hard and effectively to fill the footprints left by Bill Moyers, whose long-time news series it replaced. And addressing another replacement issue, Lewis clarified a recent New York Times story that reported that Need to Know was in danger of cancellation because it hadn't yet been renewed.

A point the story didn't include, Lewis said, was "that we didn't expect to know by now" whether a renewal would happen. Long-term story planning, she said, continues.

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A Return to Those Not-So-Thrilling Days of Yesteryear? Or, WHOSE 'Old House'?

February 9, 2011 5:16 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

The founder and editor of this site, under a different context, recently told me I write about old people a lot.

I stipulate that fact, with no reservations.

So it should not surprise him, or anyone else who has read my earlier interpretations of TV's Dead Sea Scrolls, when I start here by reflecting on the long-ago days when sponsors controlled what television viewers saw -- and didn't see...

Sponsors owned the shows in the early days. And if that sponsor was a cigarette maker who wanted the show's characters to light up during the show -- or if the sponsor was an automaker who dictated the type of car the lead character drove -- that's what happened. "Gladly," without question.

Sponsors had, in most cases, total creative control. The sponsor's enforcer, so to speak, could walk onto the set, or into the writers' room, and rip the life out of a script the way a ravenous polar bear tears into an unlucky seal. Resulting, in some cases, in similar messes -- which may explain the relative rarity of truly classic series.

Then came the reformation, and networks started tending the crops that grew on their acreage. Sponsors bought time on the shows; they no longer owned them. This change has been heralded many times as a point at which creativity took a giant leap out of commercial bondage.

But when a depressed economy stretches too long, it can play havoc with ideals.

David Bianculli recently wrote about blatant product placement in commercial-network series, and surprisingly few readers posted responses saying a Subway here and a Ford Focus there shifted their viewing composure from equilibrium to agitation. So I honestly expect a much smaller blip on the seismograph over the fact that commercialism may be snaking into public television, too.

(Collective gasp . . . or not.)

As Rod Serling (another antiquity reference) used to say: Submitted, for your consideration...

On Feb. 1 the Time Inc. magazine This Old House posted a story on its website called "15 Secrets No Real Estate Broker Will Tell You." Not every one of those secrets made real estate brokers appear to be on the way to canonization.

I would quote some here, but I can't, since the article was removed later that day. And that's the odd part. Just why did it disappear?

Time Inc. owns the magazine, and the series of the same name that runs on PBS stations across the country. Most of the programs that public-TV stations run are underwritten, not owned, by commercial entities; often, they are produced under the aegis of individual public-TV stations.

The hybrid This Old House program is owned by the for-profit Time Inc. but still underwritten by separate for-profit corporations: Home Depot; GMC; Lumber Liquidators; Stanley; State Farm Insurance; and the National Association of Realtors.

Was the story removed from the website because it bothered that last-named underwriter? Stephanie Singer, speaking for the Realtors group, said it wasn't offensive, it was a four-month-old story that no doubt had been reposted by mistake, and that probably was the reason it went away.

But Karen Greco, speaking for Time Inc., said the disappearance happened because the story was "inadvertently put up prematurely" as a mistake. The story, she said, "is probably slated for later this year." Singer, Greco said, probably mistook it for one called "Brokers Tell All" that was published in January 2009 -- a bit longer than the four months Ms. Singer recollected. (In a subsequent conversation, Ms. Singer said the story she remembered wasn't written for the This Old House magazine.) A call to the magazine's editorial offices for a clarification was not returned.

Of the people who were able to be reached for this story, no one seemed upset by events that could be interpreted as a close brush with PBS funding standards and practices, which state: "To allow program judgments to be controlled by program funders would be to breach the public's trust. Therefore, PBS will not accept a program if the program funder has asserted, or has the right to assert, editorial control over a program." (For a list of the guidelines, click HERE.)

Does all of this -- whatever it might mean -- cast ugly shadows on television's best home-improvement series? No way. The five principals of the series appear to be sticking to the original mandates that make it standout television -- as does the series itself.

What I worry about is this:

If a sponsor can establish a beachhead on a rock like This Old House, what kind of resistance can be put up by a public-TV series that is still trying to establish roots?

With Tea Party disdain for most things cultural a fashionable wave, private funding is more important than ever. A new and worthwhile public-TV series in search of production assistance night be forced to either give in to the bankrollers or relish the integrity of cancellation.

Out of work, a show's producer and staff might have to sell their homes to survive. If so, maybe the magazine, by that time, will have published "15 Secrets No Real Estate Broker Will Tell You."

Could be a big help. Tax deductible?

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Hard to Put a Dollar Value on 'Roadshow' Appraiser Experience

January 30, 2011 7:00 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

After 15 years of traveling the country, paying all of his own expenses and looking at countless wannabe valuables for 12 hours or longer at a time, it's easy to think the routine of an Antiques Roadshow appraiser might get older than even the best of the items he looks at.

That would be an inaccurate appraisal, one realizes, after talking with Baltimore antiques expert and dealer J. Michael Flanigan, who has done nearly every Roadshow event since the PBS series started taping in 1996. Flanigan is one of about 150 professionals who make up the program's pool of appraisers -- about half of whom are asked to each event.

[The latest edition of Antiques Roadshow is televised Monday, Jan. 31, at 8 p.m. ET. Check local listings.]

In a recent telephone conversation, Flanigan gave a number of good reasons why he has remained a furniture and folk-arts appraiser on the series since its inception, and hasn't missed a city stop on the annual tour of show tapings since 2001. Near the top of his list was the fun of making his mother so happy. He had written a book and assembled some impressive shows before television, but none of these things matched her reaction to her son's presence on this popular new show.

"I do it because of the look on my mother's face," Flanigan said. "The minute Roadshow started, people started calling my mother. If I had written her a check for a million dollars, she wouldn't have smiled as much."

Beyond that personal motivation, there are a number of solid professional reasons on Flanigan's list. An important one is meeting the people who bring their items in for an expert opinion. Appraisers have "an abundant respect for the guests" and their hopes of finding a treasure. There are few who get the hoped-for payoff. Flanigan said probably only 75 out of every 10,000 to 15,000 objects the appraisers see turn out out have unusual value.

"It's like panning for gold," he said. "It's just so rare. It's as tough as nails."

Even though "90 percent of them couldn't dine out that night" on what their objects are worth, the contacts between the experts and the visitors stays positive and friendly because of the respect with which guests are treated.

He also values the sharing of information among the show's many experts.

"One of the great things that makes Roadshow work," he said, "is that you have the wonderful ability to tap into all these great resources. Another reason why I keep doing the show is that I learn much more every season that I give out.

"It's a chance to do what you love to do and it's a chance to do it on a bigger stage."

He is happy that the closeness of the group and the genuine interest of the appraisers hasn't changed from the very humble start (200 people showed up at the inaugural 1996 event in Concord, Mass.,) to the point where an estimated 10,000 people showed up when Roadshow did its Los Angeles event two years later.

Another benefit, Flanigan said, started when the producers added the city of the appraiser to the superimposed name ID shown during each appraisal. To learn that an antiques authority is doing business near a viewer's home prompts customer contacts.

He also mentions that, by doing the show, he has traveled to parts of the country he might not have had reason to visit. A colleague once mentioned he was going to skip an upcoming city "because it was in the middle of nowhere." Flanigan thought otherwise. He looked at a map and planned what he described as genuinely unforgettable side trips to great scenic landmarks within driving distance of that city.

His participation in the series started as gamble. He received what he called "pretty close to a form letter" asking him if he wanted to be part of this show-in-planning. He didn't know how the producers got his name, and they weren't offering a deal he couldn't refuse. He paraphrased the letter from memory:

"Please travel around the country with us at your own expense for this untested program for which you may or may not appear on the air."

He followed the instincts that have led him to uncover many other treasures in his business life, and accepted the invitation. It's a choice he has never regretted.

"As long as they keep asking me back," he said, "I'll keep doing the show."

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Looking Back on 'Doogie Howser' With Series Creator Steven Bochco

January 21, 2011 7:30 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Decades before Neil Patrick Harris was Barney Stinson, the prodigal, he played Doogie Howser, the prodigy.

Since late last year, lucky viewers have been learning that -- hot as How I Met Your Mother may be -- Harris shined even more brightly in his first series, the 22-year-old Doogie Howser, M.D. (shown, in sequential order, weeknights at 9:30 on The Hub cable network). The entertaining and thoughtful writing, bullseye casting and enlightened production of this four-season comedy about a boy-genius physician give it a singular spot on the list of extraordinary TV.

Had there been a fifth season, fans of the show would have gotten to see Howser's genius follow another path -- but more about that in a moment.

The series is part of a Hub prime-time lineup that also includes Family Ties and The Wonder Years. It's a trio that, in the mind of many fans of high-quality television, constitutes Must-See-Again TV.

(If you're not in one of the 61 million U.S. homes said to have access to The Hub, and you remember those series as gems, apologies that they're in a virtual vault. All of Doogie, most of Ties and only a few episodes of Wonder are available on video, and episodes of all three can be found on the Web -- the former source being expensive, and the latter inconsistent with, and second-notch to, the way television works best.

(If you're too young to recognize those titles, run them through your search engine; if you truly are interested in TV that's worth watching, you'll love what you find.)

Watching Doogie almost two decades after it disappeared from prime time has been even more fun and rewarding than expected. Steven Bochco created and carried it through four brilliant seasons after his first big TV creations, Hill Street Blues and LA Law, had won plenty of fans, ratings races and awards during their NBC runs. It was his second half-hour comedy after those dramatic hits, but the first he really ran (he created and consulted and wrote for Hooperman, his first comedy, a John Ritter-starring series that also shined).

Each Doggie Howser episode is as crisp as it was when first aired: the kind of perfect blend between smiles and serious that used to be so hard to find on a TV show -- and it's even rarer now. The stories are amusing, believable and touching. Each half hour's resolution is as new and effective as it was when ABC served it fresh.

Each ends with Doogie at his computer, writing a personal-journal entry on his home computer. (Its MS-DOS platform and the bulkiness of the occasional cell phone are the only items so far discovered that date the stories.) Each journal entry, only a couple of lines long, sums up what he's just experienced and delivers a touching insight into the character.

Two lists can be found on the Web of these closing lines., which you can read by clicking HERE and HERE.

Wonderful as it is that two industrious people compiled them, these closing journal entries are best enjoyed in context, after watching the show that led up to that part of the script.

For example, these words at the end of a Thanksgiving episode -- an episode showing serious friction between Doogie's maternal grandfather and father -- aren't nearly as nice to read on their own as they are to experience at the believable denouement of a several-layer, artfully written story:

Thanksgiving. Had turkey and pumpkin pie. Grandpa ate crow. Dad sampled the fruits of victory. Vinnie tasted sweet satisfaction. I hope the leftovers last all year.

The computer-screen reflections were a show trademark that viewers at the time seemed to keep with them and talk about later. It was easy to think then, and similarly so now, that it had to be just as difficult to get those few parting sentences right as it was to put together the rest of the script.

More than just an insight into the Howser character, those lines also were an insight into Steven Bochco. In a phone interview from his California office this week, Bochco told how he claimed those few sentences for himself: "I, generally speaking, always wrote those 'computer lines'."

Not only was he wrapping up each week's package just perfectly with that ending -- in showcasing the young man's writing, he also was developing a story line that never had a chance to unfold.

"I had an idea how I wanted to end the series, but ABC canceled us before I could do it in the fifth season," Bochco said. "(Doogie) would have left medicine and become a writer... if we had been able to grow the series organically through a fifth season."

Doogie probably would have gone on to write fiction, Bochco said. He said he hadn't shared those details with the rest of the company. So the idea of seeing Doogie spending more time with words than medicine is one that might come as a surprise even to people once connected to the series.

Bochco still thinks well of Doogie Howser M.D., which ran on ABC from 1989-93, but hasn't watched any of the episodes, ever.

"I always loved that show and always thought it was an underrated show," Bochco said, explaining that many judged it by his earlier series and these people "always looked at it as below the standards" he had set in the earlier shows. But it isn't such criticism that has kept him from watching his work once it has been delivered.

"I'm not tempted to watch anything I've done again," he said of all his work. He explained that by the time an episode is completed, "you're sick of it," and watching would force him to spend too much time thinking "how you would make it differently."

It's a safe bet a lot of other people, who don't have the same deep investment as Bochco has in the series are pretty sure they can't watch too much of this very special series and wouldn't change anything about it.

[Doogie Howser, M.D. is televised weeknights at 9:30 ET on HUB. A complete series collection on DVD, and individual season collections, can be purchased by clicking HERE.]

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What TV Shows on DVD Would You Most Like to Give, Or Get, for the Holidays -- But Can't?

December 4, 2010 9:50 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Were there a logical answer to the following, finding lasting world peace wouldn't be far behind:

Why are there three seasons of Keeping up with the Kardashians available for sale on DVD, but none for Brooklyn Bridge, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, The Wonder Years and Ed -- and only partial video releases of Newhart, St. Elsewhere and The Paper Chase?

Now is the season of, among other things, give and get. Great news for people who want to drink endlessly from the well of Kardashian wisdom. The tidings are of comfort and joy for Jersey Shore fans, too. Also, supporting the idea that there just may be too much of a good thing, every episode of Cheers, a great series that plays endlessly in syndication, also is available on DVD.

Others of us abide, it seems, in the house of Bob Cratchit. There are many people who would love to be able to give and get some of those impossible-to-buy classic TV series.

In September, when the subject here was the unavailability of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, a number of people left comments that they would happily buy videos of the series. A few months earlier, the TVWW question was why Brooklyn Bridge was still locked and lost in a CBS vault. To date, more than 60 people have left comments telling how their frustration at not being able to add this wonderful series to their home library is only surpassed by their great memories of watching it during its network run.

(Both remain mysteriously out of sight. Regular checks with an outlet that might be interested in bringing Molly Dodd to the home market have not uncovered anything new. And periodic calls and e-mails to the CBS executive who is said to control the fate of Brooklyn Bridge never are acknowledged.)

The people who control the fates of these series seem to live behind high and soundproof walls. No tactic seems to have moved them to releasing the series, even though most of the people who created and produced the shows would love to see their work available again.

Most of the series in question have Amazon slots that allow potential customers to sign up for notification if and when a release happens. But Amazon repeatedly has refused to share how many names are on those lists, citing a company privacy policy. (Anyone else see an irony here? Amazon, until very recently, was the host server for Wikileaks...)

Anyway, we welcome your comments -- and hereby overtly solicit them -- about which TV series, telemovies or specials you would most like to give, or get, were they available on DVD. Of all the great TV out there, what are we missing?

More to the point, what are YOU missing?

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Latest CBS Overhaul Suggests Morning TV Is Not for Sisyphuses

November 30, 2010 11:30 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Successive American presidents in the '60s and '70s ordered all-out bombings in Vietnam as an arguably oxymoronic weapon of peace. Peace, of course, lost.

In a smaller scale of carpet bombing, CBS News presidents, stretching back to the '60s, have ordered repeated obliterations of the network's morning-news troops. The latest happened Tuesday, when the shards of the network news operation that Edward Murrow helped build dumped Agent Orange all over The Early Show set and did away with anchors Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez and weather reporter Dave Price.

This is, it seems, the seventh time since 1999 that a previous magic-personnel formula has been redrawn with new on-air faces that are sure to work -- finally.

Presidents tend to say odd things at times like these. CBS News President Sean McManus is quoted in the Associated Press story as saying, "We just felt the timing was right to start planning for the future."

That's uber-odd. Is he saying the decades of changes in the CBS morning-news formula were unplanned? Or has he consulted with Marty McFly and Doc Brown and plans to unwind history, Back to the Future style? I am suspect of news produced by someone who gets away with such statements.

(Should you have a thirst for more details on CBS' Morning, Bloody Morning campaign, look up this Wikipedia posting on The Early Show -- even if you allow liberally for wiki-sloppy facts, it's not a story to be telling young children.)

There was a time when the changing of the principals of a theoretically important news program caused a lot of comment and speculation and several well-placed essays of outrage. There was a time when television news was taken more seriously, when the quality of the product often outweighed the revenue it produced.

Fred W. Friendly, who worked alongside Murrow in the early years of CBS News, took over the presidency of the news operation in the early '60s, not long after Murrow was pushed out. Friendly fought sizable battles with CBS' profit-oriented executives over the wall that should exist between news and entertainment. When the entertainment cadre prevailed in early 1966 and Friendly wasn't permitted to broadcast an important Congressional hearing on the Vietnam War, and an I Love Lucy rerun was shown instead, it was the last straw and Friendly resigned. Outrage followed.

Outrage isn't fashionable any longer, especially when it comes to The Early Show. The changes happen with some regularity, as they did Tuesday, and hardly anyone notices. The ratings remain in last place as CBS devises another way to beat Today at its own game. Which is outrageous for a couple of reasons. The first is that Today isn't worth imitating any more. Jeff Zucker, soon to exit the top post at NBC Universal following the sale to Comcast, ruined Today when he took over the show in the early '90s and turned it into a bottomless entertainment hole into which countless empty features have been thrown over the years. Zucker's bent for malicious destruction of property subsequently was rewarded with higher and higher positions of NBC power in which he ruined even larger pieces of television.

Today is broken. That it has imitators who also long for similar mechanical problems is inscrutable.

Rather than try to compete in the morning olympics of mediocrity, CBS has its own model for excellence up and running successfully since 1979: Sunday Morning. This 90-minute program is appointment television for the millions who value it. It's thoughtful without being arrogant. It's timely, but still makes time for in-depth feature pieces. It contains tons of top-notch journalism, some of it very serious and some a whole lot of fun. It's a gem that thrives on its excellence.

Someone at CBS realized this shortly after Sunday Morning debuted, and for a while weekday versions took over the morning-news spot on the network. Then a higher-ranking someone at CBS started counting beans, was unhappy with the tally and pulled the plug. And for three decades, while hopelessly chasing its NBC competition, all the subsequent experiments have yielded no higher bean counts.

Year after year CBS could be called the Sisyphus Network for its fruitless attempts to reach the top of the morning ratings, only to have the boulder it's pushing roll to the bottom and have to begin its impossible quest again. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone there who remembers when CBS was known as the Tiffany Network would decide to chase class again and give viewers the choice of singularity again in the morning?

Wish I felt it was worth a bet.

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The Ghost In These Machines Is Digital

October 28, 2010 7:10 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It's pretty safe to assume that wherever a voter in the upcoming election falls on the Red-to-Blue political spectrum, that person may be a little wary of the efficacy of America's voting system. The images of the chaos of the hanging chads in 2000 has imbedded a memory bug that may last for generations.

A story on Friday's Need to Know on PBS (8:30 ET, check local listings) might give that suspicion bug additional shelf life...

Ballot Boxing is a segment by correspondent Rick Karr that shows that some of the $3 billion dollars of federal money that was supposed to correct voting problems created new ones. Congress voted the money in the Help America Vote Act and President Bush signed the bill in 2002. A decade after the disputed Florida election that went all the way to the Supreme Court, Karr has discovered that about 50 million people can vote Tuesday only on high-tech machines that, in theory, were purchased to solve those problems -- but, in fact, are rather easily hacked in a way that can illegally steer election results in ways that defy detection.

Karr interviews Princeton University computer scientists who demonstrate how relatively easy it is to capture and change voting machine results with just just a minimum of computer skills. A substitute chip or a card can be placed in a voting machine that has no paper record, a program on that device can alter data to a desired result, and the crime can't be traced.

Machines vulnerable to this kind of manipulation are the only way citizens of six states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana) can vote with this year, Karr said. His report shows two obstacles to correcting the problem: In almost all cases, there is no money to repair or replace the machines; and election officials who "staked their reputations" on the quality of the voting machines in question aren't anxious to admit a mistake.

Because this kind of voting fraud is so difficult to trace, it's unknown, he said, whether it has been used before.

"But there are some people who suspect it has been done," Karr said.

States that adopted lower-tech voting reforms, ones in which a much clearer paper trail is left, aren't similarly vulnerable to electronic fraud, he said; about 100 million voters have access to this new "gold standard" for voting, he reports.

Karr began following this story in 2002 and has kept up with its developments. He said this year's election, a decade after the one that caused so many reforms, was a good time to update the story for the public. Companies that make voting machines and state officials who oversee voting weren't very cooperative, Karr said. The easier side of the story was getting to the academics who demonstrate the flaws in the voting machines.

"They do not have any dog in this fight," he said. "They just hate poorly designed computer hardware."

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Try It, You'll Like It: Commercials Definitely Worth Watching

October 22, 2010 1:03 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

If more television commercials had been made by the people profiled on Tuesday's Independent Lens, there would have been no need to invent the mute button. Art & Copy premieres Tuesday, Oct. 26 on PBS (10 p.m. ET, but check local listings), and it offers a satisfying look at what could be called advertising's hall-of-famers -- the people who create commercials we don't want to ignore.

They include Lee Clow, who made the aired-just-once "1984" Super Bowl commercial introducing the Apple Macintosh; George Lois, whose credits include the "I want my MTV" campaign and the series of ads that introduced designer Tommy Hilfiger; and Mary Wells, whose "I Love New York" and Braniff airlines campaigns broke all kinds of major ground for her clients.

Add interesting interviews with the people who devised "Where's the Beef?" "Got Milk?" and "Just Do It," and the result is an enjoyable and fast-moving 90 minutes. That's not easy to do when the subject is commercials, considered by many the toxic mold that grows on commercial television.

Director Doug Pray, who started work on Art & Copy in 2005, makes it happen. He met the subjects in their offices and, for a few, in their homes, spending enough time with each to get clear pictures of the seldom-examined small world of advertising genius. They explain why and how they developed memorable advertising and why it always wasn't easy. The commercials in question get air time, too.

Now, a disclaimer: After I left newspapers, I worked in public relations at a number of small advertising agencies. In my collective years in these settings, I never witnessed genius. I was more like a spectator at a road race, bracing for loud and disastrous crashes as self-absorbed creative types ran head-on into imagination-deprived, tightfisted clients.

So you're going to have to trust that the advertising icons in Art & Copy appear to exhibit genius. I have no experience base by which to measure them. But I do kindly remember, after many years, each of the commercials included in this program. I doubt many of us will feel the same way in three or four decades about Progressive Insurance or Sargento Cheese ads.

Think of it this way: If you could have listened to Thomas Edison, Claude Monet or Igor Stravinsky explain the things he did, would you have passed up the chance? Same criterion applies to watching Art & Copy.

Or, as Ms. Wells' agency put it in the '70s: Try it, you'll like it.

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June Cleaver the Enemy of Women's Rights? Wrong!

October 16, 2010 9:50 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It's neither cool nor civilized to criticize someone who has recently died, and that's not the purpose of this effort. But the death Saturday of Barbara Billingsley, at age 94, brought to mind all the criticism and parody the moms of the Golden Age of Television attracted as the world slowly enlightened to the role of women as people versus patterns. And thinking that her death might resurrect some of that criticism, it's a good time to go on record with a hearty Balderdash to counter those thoughts.

It's old news that Ms. Billingsley's June Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, as well as Harriet Nelson's Ozzie and Harriet TV role and Jane Wyatt's Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best, were among actresses who took plenty of shots for playing roles that implied a standard for wives and mothers that could exist only in a script. I feel bad for women who tried to hit that standard, and for husbands and children who suspected they'd mistakenly gotten on the wrong bus.

But the truth is, I never saw any evidence of the Perfect Mom Complex in real life. I grew up with these shows as regulars in our home. My mother, like the mothers of all my friends, never seemed a bit rattled, and surely not intimidated, by June Cleaver and company.

No moms wore pearls or always had fresh-baked cookies for me and my friends. (We would have been embarrassed by the former and we totally would have exploited the latter.) They didn't seem ashamed to wash the kitchen floor, give themselves a home permanent or ask the family to try the new casserole recipe that didn't turn out perfectly -- all situations rarely dramatized on Golden Age sitcoms. Trauma, in our neighborhood, was a sidewalk that didn't get shoveled quickly enough after a snowfall, or garbage cans that remained at the curb too long after pickup.

I never saw any of the dads in our neighborhood hang out in the house wearing a tie and a sport coat. And though there was nothing wrong with smoking then, I never saw a dad walk around with a lighted pipe in his mouth. There might have been a couple of David Nelsons or Wally Cleavers in our neighborhood, but those of us who weren't as shallow as Eddie Haskell kind of wished we could be.

All of us -- moms, dads, boys and girls -- knew the Nelsons and the Cleavers and the Andersons were no more real than Blondie, Dagwood or Snoopy. We watched and liked these series (until Rick Nelson ended up taking over the last segment of that sitcom with record-promoting performances) the same way we now read magazines in waiting rooms -- it was an amusing way to pass the time. We didn't take them very seriously, just as we didn't expect Michael Anthony to deliver us a tax-free million-dollar check from John Beresford Tipton (Google it, youngsters).

Just as, today, we don't think our next home purchase will land us in the middle of some Desperate Housewives.

My mother, my sister and my wife never said bad things about June Cleaver et. al. They never lamented how their lives were irrevocably changed for the worse by TV mothers who never had to unclog a toilet or scrape an eighth of an inch of burned surface off the cake that stayed in the oven too long.

Maybe it was because we all started our lives before the phenomenon of television brought fictional domestic situations into the home. But it probably didn't inflict the alleged damage because I believe our brains are deep-wired to reject the outrageous -- outside of politics, that is.

Barbara Billingsley's character is a memorable one for a lot of good reasons. Decades from now, will someone be able to say that about the mother in Raising Hope? Doubt it.

Thanks, Mrs. Cleaver.

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As PBS Pledge Model Falters, What's Next? A "Re-Imagining"...

October 15, 2010 7:25 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

PBS's lead affiliate station in Los Angeles, KCET, is dropping its network membership because of the amount of dues it was being asked to pay. Several public TV stations have decided to furlough employees to prop up weak budgets. One public-TV station in Texas and another in Michigan, each formerly owned by educational institutions, have been jettisoned, reportedly for reasons that include money. For public television near the end of 2010, that's only the top of the problems list...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is encouraging underfunded stations in neighboring markets to merge as a way to stay alive. A study done recently for CPB reports non-governmental financial support for public television fell by $262 million over recent years, a number estimated to almost double by 2013. PBS wants to begin raising money on the Internet, but some turf-sensitive affiliate stations are fighting the idea, arguing the money they traditionally raise locally will be siphoned away to Washington.

The diagnosis for PBS?

"It's on the critical list, but it will recover," said Steve Behrens, editor of Current, a national newspaper that covers public radio and television. "But will it ever be the same?"

No, it won't, and that isn't all bad, said PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger in a phone interview this week with TV WORTH WATCHING.

She acknowledged the economic issues while pointing out that her network has built new ways to deliver content to its fans, attract new audiences, raise funds and cut costs without necessarily cutting quality.

The PBS Web presence has grown significantly, she pointed out, through its own site and by delivery of programs over third-party sites such as YouTube and Hulu, and apps for smart phones and devices like the iPad.

She mentioned, as other signs of vitality, the network's increased amounts of children's programming, and the use of the Internet as "an incubator" in which new programs can be tested and grown before they join the broadcast schedule.

Kerger also envisions many more sharing partnerships among nonprofit stations, similar to those going on now between public radio and TV news operations, as a way of keeping standards high while spending less.

"I think the story for public broadcasting is one of that, despite that we're working through some hard times, we've been able to break through a good bit," she said.

"I just have this sense that we're sort of re-imagining the medium as we're living it right now."

While it reinvents its methods, PBS still has more than a few fires to fight. The defection of KCET, currently, is the largest blaze, with several analysts wondering if the move will permanently hurt PBS in the nation's second-largest television market and whether the move will motivate other cash-strapped stations to walk away, too.

Kerger said PBS hopes to replace the station's impact by utilizing the three other public TV stations in the Los Angeles area. She wouldn't say whether the replacements now reach as many homes as KCET, but it's her goal to make sure "to get PBS programming to the entire market" by the end of this year.

The furloughing of employees at public stations is a sign of the current economic picture, but she said public stations are faring better than and not doing as many short-term layoffs as many other nonprofits, such as museums. For two years, it has been a major goal of PBS to help stations in jeopardy, many of which have had their state support reduced or eliminated by state governments.

Current's Behrens said some of the ideas being offered by PBS CPB worry local-station administrators and boards of directors. He said they fear mergers would take away local autonomy and identity, and central fundraising would divert their money to a central treasury.

"In general, they're suspicious of Washington."

"What (CPB is) trying to encourage is, where it makes sense, there would be collaboration," Kerger said. By combining some business functions, she said, stations could reduce "back office" expenses "so that more resources may be put on the air." The Internet fundraising she sees being done by PBS would complement what is done locally. Many Web users end up on the PBS site without connecting to the site of the local station. She wants to make sure that visitors to the national site have a way to donate, with the raised money going to the visitor's local station.

She said testing of the central-giving concept would be done soon and the results would be presented to local managers later this year, along with the rationale for merging stations, in hopes of calming their worries and gaining their support.

Though Kerger said "I'm not sure I fully agree with" the study that showed huge reductions in the amount of private money that will be given to public television, "I think it is clear we have to think very carefully about how we bring new funding into public broadcasting."

Corporate support of established PBS series has increased 10 percent this fiscal year over the previous one, she said, and many foundations continue to give support to specific types of programs. Still, individual support remains essential to the future of public broadcasting. In addition to traditional programming, Kerger believes that new ways of reaching the public will maintain public support:

"We have to find new ways to connect with the people who are using our services. That's how we're going to turn this around. There is opportunity, but there is not one silver bullet."

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Singing Off the Same Page: 'Great American Songbook' Website

October 12, 2010 11:15 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Last week in this space, Ed Bark convinced me and a lot of others, I hope, to watch Michael Feinstein's Great American Songbook, a first-rate, three-part PBS series which premieres its second segment Oct. 13 at 8 p.m. ET (check local listings). Feinstein has been collecting, preserving and archiving 20th century American popular music for almost 50 years (he started when he was five), and the series shows how the singer-musician spends almost all of his free time making sure a wealth of material that documents this subject will be available forever...

What he has collected is beyond impressive: video, audio, visuals, printed materials and more that almost surely would have been lost forever, had Feinstein's collecting not been so intensely inclusive. (In the first episode, he stands near a California interstate highway and tells how MGM got rid of countless historically important materials when the highway was being built so those materials could be used as fill for the roadbed. His demeanor makes it clear that if he could, he would tear up the highway to get those materials back.)

Starting early next year, much of the material Feinstein has collected will be displayed in a 6,000-square-foot museum housed in a public building near Indianapolis. More accessible and nearly as complete is the website that has been created to give anyone access to the remarkable collection. The website Michael Feinstein's American Songbook, available HERE, will display many of these materials for anyone with Internet access to enjoy. For fans of the PBS series, the site has the same effect as an encore.

"We didn't want to make the shows like a freshman survey course," said Amber Edwards, who produced and directed the television series and is a producer of the website. "We wanted (the site) to provide a place for people to explore a little more."

From late 2008, when the series production began, the site was part of the plan, she said. In part, it provides "a wonderful repository" for relevant pieces that couldn't fit into three hours of television. But there is much more than surplus footage, and so much of the content is one-of-a-kind. None of the video clips, recordings or images is "commercially available. . . you can't buy these on iTunes. If we were playing a lot of music you could buy, it would have brought up a lot of copyright issues," she said.

Instead, there are examples of otherwise-lost materials. She mentioned a recording of Moon River sung by its composer, Johnny Mercer, accompanied by Henry Mancini, who wrote the music, as one of the treasures Feinstein has discovered and posted on the Web (found HERE on this page. The recording was part of Mancini's personal property, Edwards explained, and Mrs. Mancini allowed Feinstein to make a copy.

At its launch, Edwards said, there were 2,000 pages of information on the site, and the number will grow. The growth will continue even more impressively if, as Edwards hopes, the series returns next season for more installments. She said she couldn't reveal details, but "we are very hopeful we will be back next season with more episodes."

To that end, she told how a crew accompanied Feinstein this month as he made more acquisitions from a man who collects 78 rpm records. They have put together "a list of a dozen thematic ideas," she said, and are ready to keep shooting and adding more to both the series and the website.

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'30 Rock' Roasts TV Chef

September 29, 2010 4:51 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It was easy to wonder whether something of a gastronomic nor'easter was brewing last week in the exclusive East Hampton community in which Ina Garten lives, after 30 Rock trained its parody rifle on The Barefoot Contessa herself and her husband, Jeffrey, a Yale professor who spends most of the week at the school.

In the NBC comedy's season premiere, Tina Fey's Liz Lemon and guest star Matt Damon, playing an airline pilot named Carol, picked up their strange relationship about where last season ended: wandering cluelessly among several equally amusing subplots. When Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy character called her on the undefined nature of the Liz-Carol situation, Liz defended their "separate but intersecting lifestyles" by saying, "I'm like that woman on the Food Network whose husband only comes home on the weekends, and she spends the rest of her time eating and drinking with her gay friends."

Ina Garten may not appear to be a person who would laugh at comedy built around her quirks. She worked as a White House policy adviser in the '70s, moved to Long Island after buying a specialty food store in the Hamptons, and can sound genuinely condescending when pronouncing the right and wrong ways to cook as she hosts The Barefoot Contessa. She hangs out on that show with neighboring Hamptonians whose wardrobes probably are worth more than most viewers' homes. Listening to her dictate the use of only the best ingredients when making her recipes (or why make them at all?), one is reminded of the retail axiom: If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.

The magic spell the Gartens cast on Liz and Carol is revealed in a subsequent 30 Rock scene in which Carol cries heavily while watching Jeffrey because "I'm not as strong as that guy." It's pretty funny.

But any prospective storm over the parody never blew up, and sunshine prevailed. Though no one at NBC would respond to questions about the episode, a Food Network representative said, "We were thrilled by it." It was not a sneak attack, the rep said: "We provided them the footage that was used. It was sanctioned by us."

Though no one at the network knew what would be said ("We weren't approving dialogue"), the script appeared to be very tasty. She said that, as far as she knew, no one had heard anything -- favorable or not -- from Ms. Garten.

Messages I left for Garten finally resulted in an email from publicist Amelia Durand: "Ina loved the episode and thought it was wonderful. She and Jeffrey love Tina!"

On this Thursday's 30 Rock, there's even more about relationships -- Tracy gets deeply involved with his wife's childbirth.

Sounds like it might be TLC's turn in the comic crosshairs.

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Holy Smoke and Mirrors

September 28, 2010 12:05 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

I can't figure this one out. A recent CBS news release announced the network was planning to broadcast a weekend daytime religious program called Faith in Action: Young People Making a Difference. (New York's WCBS/2 airs it this Saturday at 1 p.m. ET. Check local listings in other areas.)

I didn't know such things still were being made. I remembered there used to be a lot of Sunday morning religious programs. Lamp Unto My Feet (1948-79) and Look Up and Live (1954-79) presented faith-based drama, music and readings on CBS weekly for decades. NBC did a couple I vaguely remember: Frontiers of Faith (1951-70) and The Eternal Light (1952-1989; that's Gene Wilder in the episode photo at right). But as a boomer child back then, my priority was cartoon viewing.

I thought all of the network-level religious shows went away when the Federal Communications Commission deemphasized its requirement that stations document a set percentage of their programming "in the public interest, convenience and necessity." That was the start of the broadcasters' "who cares if it isn't required?" era. Shows of that ilk went off the air, I had assumed, about the same time Red Skelton, Garry Moore and the Cartwrights of Bonanza made their exits.

So I called CBS to ask more about this upcoming anachronism, Faith in Action: Young People Making a Difference. I learned it is one of four multifaith religious programs CBS presents each year. I was given contact information for the man who produces these shows, but he turned down my interview request. A request to speak with the person who oversees this effort also was turned down.

Then I started checking at the station level. I learned that many CBS affiliates don't carry the programs because CBS won't let any advertising be sold within them.

"It's no secret that last year was a terrible one for TV ad revenue," said an executive at a CBS affiliate, who asked not to be named. "We need to carry shows that we can sell."

So here's what we have: A network still produces a brand of public-service programming that seemingly feel into extinction decades ago. Many of the stations that have agreed to carry the abominable S#*! My Dad Says won't carry that public-service programming because it doesn't make money. CBS won't talk about why it continues to produce this throwback to a simpler era that explores the place of faith in society today.

Are network officials ashamed? Or does anyone in power there even know the shows exist?

Perhaps with help from outside, this little mystery can be solved. If any of you readers know what's up with CBS in this matter, share a comment.

Until someone with info comes forward, the mystery of why CBS keeps its still-lighted lamp under a basket remains unsolved.

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'Galloping Gourmet,' Redirected, Handles Life with Care

September 22, 2010 12:50 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Pace, as in the miles-per-hour context, always seems to have had a large role in the life of Graham Kerr. When he was in his 30s, in the late 1960s, he won over a very large number of viewers and pretty much invented a TV cooking form when he was known as The Galloping Gourmet and hosted a daily syndicated show of the same name.

The pace then could be described as frantic -- as one can witness by watching the daily replays of the 1969-71 series on cable's Cooking Channel.

Kerr would burst onto the set, running among and greeting members of the always-packed studio audience. A full wine glass in his hand, he would run onto the set, jump one or two dining room chairs and finally settle onto a bar stool where he'd sip his drink, sometimes puff a cigarette and set up the day's cooking with a monologue that was packed with energy and crowned with a punch line.

It was a fitting introduction for the turbocharged cooking segment, a delightful, taste-at-all-costs, adventure that captivated his fans and galvanized opposition from proponents of healthy eating. A group that promoted heart health called him "dangerous," and a weight-loss group singled him out as one year's largest impediment to fitness.

Contacted recently at his rural north-of-Seattle, Wash., home, Kerr talked about the top-speed environment: the company would produce two or three shows a day, 195 shows a year, a total of 455 by the time the show's run ended. It all was done from a TV studio in Ottawa, Canada. Every show was as entertaining as it was enjoyable. It remains one of the fastest 30 minutes on television because Kerr, his wife and producer, Treena, and a crew that obviously was enjoying itself and its new-found multi-continental attention worked so hard to make it look like nothing but fun.

Enjoy it, he did: "Each show had approximately 19-1/2 hours of my life poured into it. . . By the time you get to (the show itself), you either enjoy the end of the process or you're a fool," Kerr said.

Thanks to a weekday-afternoon Galloping Gourmet dose on Cooking Channel, old fans are reconnecting with Kerr while others undoubtedly are discovering this program as a matinee must-see.

Just don't count Graham Kerr among the show's viewers.

It isn't simply because this man who has logged more than 1,800 television appearances doesn't own a television set. It isn't directly connected to the fact that he has only seen three episodes of The Galloping Gourmet in his life -- he explained that at the time Treena didn't want him analyzing, and maybe jeopardizing, the way the program came together.

It's because now, at 76, Graham Kerr's life is just as intense as it was in those Nixon-era days. It just has been speeding in an entirely different direction for four decades.

The Kerrs' life has changed from five-star gourmet elegance to a simplicity that leaves no room for the former. The transformation unfolded in a particularly dramatic way.

In 1971 the Kerrs were victims of a serious auto accident -- so serious, it ended production of The Galloping Gourmet. After they recovered, they began a round-the-world sailing trip. It was in Antibes, in the south of France, on May 18, 1971 (Treena's 37th birthday), where everything changed. To celebrate the day, they went ashore and enjoyed a French feast, "a magnificent meal," he recalled. "It was the last magnificent meal I ever had."

They returned to their boat as a large storm was developing, and "it wasn't very long before we were all very sick." The following morning, stunned by the results of their excess, the young couple radically changed pace and started speeding in a new direction. For the remainder of their trip, they made meals that were fresh from the land or the sea. It was a radical move from the TV cooking style that regularly subjugated health concerns to butter- and fat-infused tastiness.

"When I came ashore," he said, "all I could think of was telling people about it."

The conversion to "eating as fresh as you can" took hold and has been central to the Kerrs' lives since. Today, they still are moving at a pretty swift pace to reach a lot of people with their message. At their WEBSITE, they fully explain their Double Benefit approach to living. In short, this is a philosophy to benefit personally by eating better while helping others by donating some of the resources that are saved in that process.

Their efforts are three-pronged. Growing at the Speed of Life is a book that explains their mission in detail and offers plenty of solution ideas, including advice for personal planting and harvesting of fruits and vegetables and many recipes for making the harvest varied and palatable. It's nearing completion and will be their 26th book. They also have turned their yard into a substantial garden, doing much of the work themselves. Their strong video orientation made it natural for them to document this process. They shot many hours, are editing it now for use on their website and hope to have it completed and on-line by Feb. 1, 2011.

They additionally plan to transform the website to an interactive one where people interested in better lifestyles can share information, as neighbors would.

"My enthusiasm for what I do now is exactly the same as it was (during the run of the TV show)," he said. "I lived that life and suffered the consequences of it. I'm just trying to make people understand that we must find a better way to live our lives.

He doesn't think this new effort ever will surpass the popularity of the polar-opposite television series, nor is that a goal.

"I cannot compete with myself. I'm just trying to make people understand that we must find a better way to live our lives," he said -- then added a thought the original incarnation of the Galloping Gourmet probably wouldn't have understood: "As a society, we've gone too far and gotten ahead of ourselves. We just have to slow down a bit."

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Classic "Molly Dodd" Series Remains Locked Up, Awaiting 'Bail'

September 3, 2010 6:40 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Rare snippets of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, like the opening sequence above, can be seen on YouTube -- but for those who would love to see that classic TV sitcom again in its entirety, I have some not-so-good news...

Any of you who fondly remember The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd already know what a great TV series we're discussing here. But for those TVWW fans who may be too young to remember a series that premiered 23 years ago, please read the following:

Do a Web search for The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and you get more than 80,000 returns. Do the same search for this brilliant late-'80s half-hour series, and add the name "Bianculli," and you get nearly 70 returns.

Click on this TV WORTH WATCHING internal link, to the MORGUE collection of some of Bianculli's favorite newspaper columns, and you'll see another reason why I won't have any trouble getting this story posted here. The guy who drew many of you to this site loves this series, uses it in his Rowan University TV History and Appreciation courses, and called it "too good for me to leave out" when he wrote his Dictionary of Teleliteracy.

And, should you still not be convinced I'm writing about one of the best comedies ever to appear on television, go to the website of Richard Lawson, who played one of the series' key characters, Det. Nathaniel Hawthorne (seen here, at left, with series star Blair Brown and fellow supporting actor David Strathairn).

Watch three classic clips from the show with Lawson and Brown, who played the title character. Please, take a taste of this really smart, way-ahead-of-its-time TV classic, by visiting Lawson's site HERE. It's SO good.

And now the bad news. This series has the slimmest of chances of ever appearing in home-video form. More than 60 episodes of brilliant writing, acting, storytelling, directing -- it seems they are lost forever. Last seen in 1991, when it ended a run on Lifetime (the network that rescued it from originating network NBC's blatant neglect), it's locked in a Burbank vault (at least figuratively), and there's no early release or parole on the horizon.

"We still own the series, but we currently have no plans to release at this time," was the response from the Warner Bros. executive who last took the series' pulse.

Though she gave no reason, it seems music, and the rights to reuse it, is the huge boulder in the road to a DVD set we can't buy. When the series was in production, rights for music use weren't secured for future home-use release. Molly Dodd is one of many, many TV series that were produced without the foresight to predict where technology would take entertainment options over a pretty spectacular quarter-century of invention and adaptation.

"Who would have thought back then that we'd be able to watch TV on a hand-held phone?" asks Shane Miller, an executive with EMG, a company that works to clear copyright use in situations such as this.

"It's gibberish to me, the reasons for all of this," says Jay Tarses, the executive producer, creator and creative powerhouse behind Molly Dodd. "It's all very, very labyrinthian."

Tarses would love to see the series reappear for its fans, but he's seen this same thing happen before. Buffalo Bill, starring Dabney Coleman as an abrasive TV personality, was another of Tarses' ahead-of-its time, boldly artistic series. In order to release the series on DVD, Tarses says, they had to eliminate some songs entirely. And though Warner Bros. owns the rights to The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and could make a DVD release happen, Tarses isn't optimistic.

"Warner Bros. told us they deficit-financed the series and, according to them, they never made the money back," he says.

About two years ago, producer Kenneth Kaufman, with the blessing of Tarses, tried to make a DVD deal similar to the ones he'd made for Alf and Buffalo Bill. Kaufman said he got approval from Warner Bros. to try to make a deal with another company, but no one was interested in buying in.

Three factors stood in the way, he said. Sales of DVDs have decreased to the point they often lose money. The music-rights and conversion costs are substantial. Finally, collectors "want new content on the DVDs they buy," and producing this kind of supplemental material also is costly.

"As hard as I tried, I wasn't able to do any deals," Kaufman says.

Tarses, Kaufman and the show's many fans are frustrated by all these obstacles, just as art lovers would be if museums had to lock up and keep from public sight their best paintings. Add to that list of frustrated enthusiasts the actress who played Molly Dodd, and who now is a supporting player on Fox's Fringe.

"Molly Dodd should absolutely be released on DVD," Blair Brown told me when contacted for this story, "if for nothing than to give Jay Tarses the credit he deserves for creating a quality show with wonderful characters that was so ahead of its time, possibly even now.

The series, she went on, "was before (CBS's) Murphy Brown and (Fox's) Ally McBeal, and Molly was this character who was just a person. She had no plot for her life, she just lived. She hit her stumbling blocks, like illegitimate pregnancy, and dealt with it.

"Other people often get credit for these forward-thinking ideas, so it should be remembered that it all goes back to Jay Tarses.

"Plus, in revisiting the series, viewers would get to see a young David Strathairn, Lewis Black, Nathan Lane, John Benjamin Hickey, John Glover, Victor Garber, etc., and that's always fun." [Strathairn just won an Emmy, his first, for his supporting performance as an inspirational teacher in HBO's Temple Grandin.]

One possibility rescue scenario remains. Shout! Factory is a company that has packaged videos of many other singularly good, cult TV series. In theory, it could do for The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd what it previously did for such "lost" series as NBC's Freaks and Geeks. Company officials said they have a policy of not discussing possible acquisitions, and, as a result, won't talk about any property they don't own.

Yet if there is a white knight that will save Molly Dodd, history points to Shout! Factory as a leading candidate. The cost for any DVD set would be higher than normal because of music-clearance costs. Would you be willing to pay a little more than the average DVD boxed-set price to finally be able to see this wonderful series again? Let us know.

Very visible fan support can work wonders.

Ask Betty White...

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PBS Presents a Prime-Time Musical Competition, Sans Simon Cowell

August 31, 2010 11:00 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Anomaly alert:

Wednesday night at 9:30 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), a network will broadcast a competition during which no devious alliances were formed, no overstuffed mogul fired anyone and -- though music is center-spotlight -- there was no connection whatesover to Simon Cowell. No weigh-ins; no texting of votes; no mile-high performance pastries.

Instead, gimmick-free and purely entertaining television.

A Surprise in Texas is an engaging and very watchable documentary about last year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The event is held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas, and attracts the best young classical pianists in the world for three weeks of one of the most prestigious modern music competitions.

Twenty-nine men and women started the competition. Each performed a solo, and from that 12 semi-finalists were chosen. Each of the 12 then performed with a string quartet, as well as another solo. Six finalists then were selected to perform with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. From those, the three medalists were chosen. Even though the winners were chosen more than a year ago and the names of those who won are public (all the details are on the Cliburn website,) part of the drama for many viewers will be in watching how the performers fare.

Some of the artists are lightly profiled, and each is a unique and interesting personality, which helps engage viewers more deeply in the drama. Performance footage of these amazingly talented young artists will make the 90-minute program a treat for anyone who loves to experience extraordinary musical talent.

More than 70 performances were recorded over the three weeks, each shot with six cameras. In addition, the program includes rehearsal, backstage and non-performance footage that better reveals the personalities of the performers.

It's amazing such a easy-to-enjoy program resulted from all of that activity. So many people involved in so many different activities could have turned the program into a muddy mess. Maybe it's because this was the fourth time Peter Rosen has executive produced the program that the result is clear and confusion-free. It's said that marathon runners find the races subsequent to their first easier, only because they know what to expect.

Rosen and his company spent six weeks in Fort Worth last year. He personally worked as many as 22 hours a day, and the crew was just as focused. (In addition to putting together material for this program, they were responsible for a worldwide live-stream Webcast of the entire competition.) They returned to New York with more than 300 hours of footage. He and two other editors each took a third of the events and effectively distilled those 300 hours into 90 minutes of cohesive, entertaining and one-of-a-kind television worth watching.

If you know people who are convinced television has locked out culture, let them know about this program. It will change their minds.

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"Hot in Cleveland" Is First Stop on Tour of TV Land's New Neighborhood

August 25, 2010 8:00 AM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Anyone else see the growing irony in this? TV Land is a cable network that replays series that once were huge hits on the broadcast networks -- when those networks knew how to regularly schedule the kinds of shows people just never skipped.

Look at the TV Land schedule and you'll see series like M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Cosby Show and Roseanne. People rearranged their lives to watch series like these. It's a schedule full of hit sitcoms produced for the TV generation -- once a must-have demographic group that eventually aged too much for the broadcasters to care much about.

OK. That has been the strategy since the cable network signed on in the '90s. But since the June premiere of Hot in Cleveland, TV Land has escalated the contest several notches. It has started producing the kinds of series the Old Giants once liked. TV Land plays them to any and all disenchanted "elders" who can't find quite the same satisfaction in what's run today on the networks that used to chase after them.

The broadcast networks want viewers in their mid-20s, explained TV Land President Larry W. Jones in a recent interview. "We're trying to attract a demographic in their 40s."

Jones said the good ratings for Everybody Loves Raymond after it started running on his network more than a year ago made him think very seriously about producing TV Land's own crop of scripted comedy series that would "tap into a whole world of lifestyle subject matter."

"We put out the word that we're open for business," he said, and his team started meeting with producers. One meeting was with the people behind Hot in Cleveland -- though that show wasn't first on their pitch list. Jones said the producers first talked about a few reality shows before they told him about a comedy featuring four "women of a certain age" who decide to replace their vapid Los Angeles lives for the more the palatable lifestyle in Cleveland.

Jones sensed a good idea, he said, and ordered a pilot script. When casting started, the decision was made to go with actresses who have a strong record: Betty White (Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls); Wendie Malick (Just Shoot Me); Jane Leeves (Frasier), and Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time).

Cleveland is the kind of series TV Land's research showed disenchanted over-thirties were searching for, Jones said: the multi-camera, live-audience, sharply written program reminiscent of network-level fare before the weight-losers, singers, dancers and sword-swallowers grabbed the spotlight.

"We're not afraid of traditional," he said.

And many fans of "traditional" seem to like what they have seen. TV Land said 4.4 million people watched the first-season finale last week. After that finale aired, The Nielsen Company estimated the average first-season viewership for Hot in Cleveland as 3.1 million viewers, including 1.4 million adults age 25-54.

And Mediaweek recently reported: "Ignited by Hot in Cleveland, TVLand.com rose to a record 923,000 unique visitors for the month of June 2010 -- up 62 percent from the comparable year-ago month."

Not really surprising, then, that after just a few episodes into its 10-show commitment, Hot in Cleveland was renewed for a 20-episode second season. When it returns, it will be joined by another newly produced traditional sitcom when it returns.

Retired at 35 stars George Segal as the father of a 35-year-old who gives up a pressured New York City life to move to his parents' Florida retirement home. The search for a third series is active, Jones said. Now that the word is out, even more producers are contacting TV Land with offerings. Out of "a large number of scripts," two shows will be turned into pilots and plans are to have the one that wins that race on the air by June 2011.

No, it's not a revolution, this TV Land trend. But when other cable networks, in a desperate search for identity, are sinking into deeper sludge -- guy who eats too much (Man V. Food), the guy who eats the wrong stuff (Bizarre Foods) and dubious dog gastronomy (My Dog Ate What?) -- it's encouraging to know that somebody interprets the word "taste" the way it SHOULD be defined.

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NBC Overturns Laws of Reality in Upcoming "Outlaw" Legal Drama

August 22, 2010 6:21 PM

By Tom Brinkmoeller

If you were watching a TV drama about baseball where the batter got a single and ran to third base -- not to first -- and the story made that seem normal, would you wonder if the show's producers knew very much about the sport?

Or if you were watching a how-to program and the host secured a home's structural lumber with duct tape, would you think of that host as an expert?

Hope not.

So don't look for too many factual insights into the country's top court when Outlaw premieres this fall on NBC...

In the series, which premieres Friday, Sept. 24 at 10 p.m. ET, Jimmy Smits plays Cyrus Garza, a U.S. Supreme Court justice -- for about five minutes -- in this under-researched, error-heavy hour-long drama. This is not Bob Woodward's deeply researched and reported look inside the country's top court for The Brethren. This is one sloppy mistake after another, presented in the belief viewers will take as accurate anything the networks feed them.

In its initial minutes on the air, Justice Garza is escorted from a casino for counting cards (and no one in the crowded room apparently has recognized his as one of the nine faces in the court's often-used formal photo). Cut to him leaving the Supreme Court Building by the front door and walking down the front steps, unnoticed and unprotected, to get into a senator's car that is waiting for him. The senator, unhappy because the justice has strayed from the conservative ways that got him confirmed, tells him he will be impeached unless he steers to the right again. The grounds for blackmail: The justice's six-figure gambling debts will be made public, and he'll be dead in the water.

Cut to the courtroom, where all nine justices are seated because of a four-four tie on a request to delay a death sentence. Smits' Garza breaks the tie in favor of the prisoner. The senator leaves the room in anger, so he misses it when the justice announces he's resigning from the court. He wants to change the system, he explains.

Cut to the former justice offered a job with a power law firm. His first case is defending the prisoner whose execution he voted to delay. The viewer is now asked to get on board with the idea that the poor will be made better at the expense of the rich.

Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights had a better grasp on reality.

"Under no circumstances would the Smits character be allowed to accept a case on which he had ruled as a judge," said Stephen Gillers, a faculty member at the New York University School of Law and an expert on legal ethics. "However, if all parties to the proceeding agreed to let him do so, in writing, he could. The chances of getting consent from both sides are quite low."

That opinion is shared even more strongly by Steven Lubet, also an legal-ethics authority and a faculty member of the Northwestern University School of Law:

"The former justice could not take the case. Under Rule 1.12 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (some version of which has been adopted in virtually every state), a former judge may not 'represent anyone in connection with a matter in which [he] participated personally and substantially as a judge.' Casting a deciding vote would be personal and substantial, therefore the former justice could not take the case in private practice."

Lubet thinks a blackmail threat from a senator to a justice "would never happen. Senators have often threatened to impeach justices... But not face-to-face in order to influence future judicial rulings. Senators do, of course, talk with judges from time to time, but not coercively."

The show offers "no more insight into the Supreme Court than Perry Mason did into the trial system," said LeRoy Pernell, dean of Florida A&M University's College of Law. "It's fantasy. It's not based on reality."

Real life also suffers in the portrayal of the motives the justice cites for stepping down, Dean Pernell added: "What better place to change the system than the Supreme Court?"

Those are some of the major flubs that are made early on in the first episode. Smaller ones accumulate as the hour continues, but most of them are the same courtroom-theatric dramatic license TV has used for decades. It's unlikely the series' dramatic hook -- from Supreme Court to Superman -- will disappear in subsequent stories, so there's no telling in which ways reality will be distorted. Why would NBC present a drama such as this as an accurate reflection of American law?

An NBC spokesperson relayed a statement that showed no worry over the factual errors: "While we work closely with legal consultants, as with most television programs, our writers use dramatic license to enhance the viewing experience. This is clearly not a documentary, but a fictional work, and we're confident that viewers recognize this."

The response didn't surprise one TV observer, who explained that facts are no more than clay lumps that get molded into TV-convenient forms when money is at stake.

"Clearly, in this case, they don't give a ----," explained one award-winning writer-director-producer, who has been associated with major television series for decades, who declined to speak for attribution."You're forgetting this is just a dopey television show, where everyone disregards reality for entertainment."

Disregarding is what discriminating viewers, most likely, will do when this series shows up. Its weak concept is trumped only by its utter ignorance of the subject.

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Crossing That "Brooklyn Bridge" When We Come To It

August 12, 2010 4:30 PM

[Bianculli here: Back in May, contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller posted a column that may well have generated more comments than any single TV WORTH WATCHING post. It was about the oft-delayed DVD release of Gary David Goldberg's classic Brooklyn Bridge comedy series -- and with this report, Brinkmoeller updates the story...]

Picture of 'Brooklyn Bridge' DVD Release
Still Shrouded by Fog

By Tom Brinkmoeller

A little more than two months ago, I wrote about the DVD release of a former series -- rather, a strangely constricted DVD release of a former series. Brooklyn Bridge is that series, and the story detailed the obstacles standing between series creator Gary David Goldberg and CBS, which owns the video rights. Since then, I've tried to keep in touch with both sides in this impasse, in the hopes of reporting a resolution.

The bad news: The ball seems to remain in CBS's court, and if anything has transpired, they are keeping it very quiet. The not-as-bad news: I will stay on this mysterious story and will report any changes as soon as they happen.

Before you check out the link to the story and the 50 comments it has received since it was published, consider this query, one that I learned of very recently:

"Here we are, sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, searching the web, and wondering why we cannot find DVDs of the Brooklyn Bridge! Although the series ended years ago, we have never lost our love for the series. As you can guess, Mom and Dad grew up in Brooklyn; we moved to Long Island when I was five.

"So. What are the chances that we will be able to purchase the series on DVD? Dad Is 90 and Mom, 85. Time is of the essence!"

With all the unfunny material that passes as good sitcom on TV, where, oh where, is the Brooklyn Bridge?"

Many of the comments readers have posted to the original story reflect the same frustration quotient, though not as poignantly. The writer quickly responded to a request from me to reprint her comments:

"Of course, you may certainly use my email and name in any follow-up story. If the neighborhoods in Brooklyn were anything, they were personal; so, why shouldn't an article about Brooklyn Bridge be so, as well? Having said that: personally, my favorite episode was the one in which the Jewish and Irish Catholic families are getting ready to meet each at some agreed-upon restaurant while West Side Story's 'Rumble' plays. It was clever and poignant on every level: comically, musically, dramatically and educationally... in a 'woid,' great TV. -- Sincerely, Carolyne Lundberg"

Should you care to read the original story again and/or read dozens of passionate reader posts (50 at the time of this posting), click HERE.

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The new Cooking Channel is Half-Baked

August 3, 2010 9:16 AM

[Bianculli here: The former Fine Living Network has downsized with the times, and now presents itself as The Cooking Channel. Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller has seen the new incarnation, and posed questions to network representatives, and still finds both the channel's programming, and the slogan, somewhat lacking...]

'Staying Hungry' Isn't Difficult When
There's Not Much Substance on the Menu

By Tom Brinkmoeller

If someone regularly told you to "Stay Hungry!," would you wonder about the sentiment's meaning? Would you doubt the meaning if the wish were to "Stay Unemployed!" or "Stay Destitute!"?

Nonetheless, "Stay Hungry" is the signature line of a new cable network called Cooking Channel. The context of the "hungry," it's safe to guess, is meant to encourage continued curiosity about cooking.

Like the legendary Chevy Nova Latin America ads that lured hardly any Spanish-speaking buyers because "nova" translated as "it doesn't go" and the KFC "finger-lickin' good" ads that translated in Chinese to "eat your fingers off," "stay hungry" appears to have been given little forethought.

(Just to keep you globally positioned, this little-known new entry recently replaced the equally obscure Fine Living Network. Both are Scripps Networks creations, the latter given life during the once-booming economy. Fine Living's motto, during the boom days, could have been "Keep Spending," and it's appropriate that a network that celebrated dot-com wealth has been replaced by one that seems to be saying "Buy groceries or pay the mortgage: Stay Hungry or Stay Homeless. Take your pick.")

Cooking Channel is worth watching -- at times. Its standout programs also happen to be graying with age, having premiered many years ago. A Julia Child public-TV series from the 1960s and early '70s, The French Chef, is the oldest, and could have been the best thing on the network. It's classic Child live-to-tape cooking, mistakes and all. It's also cooking techniques and preparations that still are being passed off as new and groundbreaking by some TV chefs. And it's lovingly unpretentious.

Many of the episodes presented so far, unfortunately, have been edited with the finesse of a sloppy butcher. Chunks of programs have been sacrificed for added commercial time, and the breaks for those commercials often show up at totally inappropriate times.

Graham Kerr's 1969-71 Galloping Gourmet series, a very popular show at the time, also can be seen each weekday afternoon. It's just as much fun to watch as it was when it was first-run. Kerr works in front of and to an audience (think Emeril Live), is a talented chef, and is just as talented as a clever entertainer. He worked without a script, often misplaced his notes, and keeps audiences laughing with inventive ad-lib humor. Because this series was produced for use on commercial stations, the edits aren't as deep or misplaced.

Other Cooking Channel gems are reappearances of series that ran years ago on the Scripps Networks' Food Network, such as Molto Mario, Melting Pot, Food 911 and Tyler's Ultimate. These series featured established and credentialed chefs, and the last two were examples of when Food Network once put its hosts on the road to bring viewers closer to food stories.

Food Network's early days were marked by marquee-level chef-hosts, and programs that had very visible travel budgets (Ming Tsai, Mario Batali, Tyler Florence, Gordon Elliott and others traveled to spots all over the globe). A request to find out how many former Food Network series may show up in the future on Cooking Channel went unanswered. Like waiting for a bus in a blizzard, a fan of these old shows just has to stand in the cold and see if anything ever shows up, it seems. Or give up and go someplace better.

Other programs aren't new -- just new to the U.S. Nothing to date stands out as inventive. Promos for several of these shows share a common trait: hosts who juggle, and one juggler who is touted as having many tattoos. Perhaps tattoos are the cosmetic equivalent of grill marks: brandings that don't add to or take away from a food's quality level. What juggling translates to in culinary skills is an equally vague concept.

A question about how much of the current schedule is original also went unanswered. As for the new network's "Stay Hungry" slogan, and its possible misinterpretation, that question was sidestepped: " 'Stay Hungry' is the rallying cry for the passionate food lovers that seek more instruction, the exploration into topics not yet explored at this level and more culinary talent."

Announced new series are: Emeril's Fresh Food Fast; Cook Like an Iron Chef with Michael Symon; Spice Goddess with Bal Arneson; Brunch @ Bobby's with Bobby Flay, and A Week in a Day with Rachael Ray.

Maybe this new programming eventually will help Cooking Channel develop a singular personality. But for now, it's a network made up of parts borrowed from all kinds of sources. Some are attractive, some are slightly worn pieces that didn't have much luster to begin with, and the rest just seem to be taking up space.

It's not much of a buffet. Hence, perhaps, the true origin of "stay hungry."

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GUEST BLOG #106: Tom Brinkmoeller Salutes the Long, Impressive Lineage of PBS's "American Masters"

July 20, 2010 3:12 PM

[Bianculli here: Wednesday night at 9 ET, most PBS stations are presenting the latest American Masters documentary, a profile of veteran country artist Merle Haggard. He's survived for decades despite the fickle currents of pop culture -- but so has American Masters itself. Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller tracked down the show's persistent and perceptive executive producer, Susan Lacy, to learn how...]

"American Masters" Wrote, and Owns, the Book on Video Biography

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Since she came up with the idea of creating a video compendium of American culture 26 years ago, Susan Lacy has lived to make that dream fly. It's one that almost was grounded early.

In 1984, when she presented to PBS her idea for what would become American Masters, the decision-makers weren't ready to open either the network's wallet, or its doors to prime time, for her. There was no American model for what she was proposing, Lacy explained in a recent interview.

She wanted to start building a library of complete and compelling histories of creative giants that would be available for a long time after those giants were gone. Nothing close to her idea had ever been shown on PBS. She was competing for schedule space with such already-established hits as Nova, Masterpiece Theatre and Great Performances, as well some then-popular series like Newton's Apple and Matinee at the Bijou. Winning over enough supporters wasn't a quick process.

"I refused to believe it wasn't going to happen," Lacy, the series' executive producer, said.

Determination made this gem of an idea a reality. Merle Haggard: Learning to Live with Myself (July 21 at 9 ET on PBS; check local listings) marks the midpoint of American Masters' 24th season. Like the more than 160 profiles that preceded it, the hour presents a story of unique creativity, and one doesn't have to be deeply involved in the showcased field (in this case, country music) to get wrapped up in the story it tells. Whether Haggard is a known or an unknown in your mind, odds are favorable you'll know, and care, a lot more by the end of the program.

(If your local station isn't showing the Haggard program, PBS is making it available, temporarily, after the national broadcast. So beginning Wednesday, you can watch it on the American Masters website by clicking HERE.)

This kind of commitment is what distinguishes American Masters from A&E's Biography, Food Network's Chefography and most other similar bio-history projects. A number of factors make it singular.

Lacy's original vision, perfectly targeted, hasn't changed. The subjects always have been ones that have made a lasting difference in the cultural picture, versus people who burn brightly for a short time. Spots aren't auctioned as part of a marketing effort to push a movie opening, book release, concert tour or any other commercial event. And, most important, Lacy has held tightly to the belief that high-quality works only can be produced when the producers have full editorial control.

Without that control, a project won't be made, she said. And some stories she really wants to do have been held up for this reason. Lacy won't list them, because she says she remains "eternally optimistic" that the control eventually may be given -- as it was by Bob Dylan, whose 2005 American Masters profile, No Direction Home, won Peabody, Emmy and Grammy awards.

(A list, albeit an incomplete one, of the series' many profiles is posted on PBS' website, and can be found HERE.)

The schedule for the remainder of the current season is tantalizing: musician Israel "Cachao" Lopez (September); filmmaker Elia Kazan (October); Beatle John Lennon (November) and pianist Glenn Gould (December).

American Masters' silver-anniversary season isn't finalized yet, but Lacy said it will include actor Jeff Bridges and the Bridges family legacy; a profile of the "troubadour singer-songwriters of the 1960s and '70s," such as Carole King and James Taylor; naturalist John Muir; choreographer Bill T. Jones; and producer-director-impresario Joseph Papp.

Earlier this year, when Lacy accepted a CINE Lifetime Achievement Award, she told the audience that in the early days she just hoped the series might build enough support to win a second season on the air. "Who ever thought we'd become an institution?"

Her dream, now 25 years old, still isn't complete. Lacy said she always has envisioned the library of American Masters programs as an accessible record of American culture. In the hands of academics, she said, it could be turned into an extraordinary course in this country's cultural history.

That dream is an expensive one, and as a result less than 20 episodes can be purchased at present. Costs to purchase the rights to content of all of those programs is enormous, and in-perpetuity rights are even more expensive, she said.

Finding the funding to just keep the production going always has been a large task, Lacy said. Raising money to buy the rights was mostly too daunting to tackle. Somewhere, she believes, the funding finally will develop to make it possible to open the fabulous American Masters vault and give more people a look at the exceptional treasures inside.

Meanwhile, watch, and appreciate them, as they're televised.

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GUEST BLOG #99: Tom Brinkmoeller on the Berlin Wall -- Well, Not Literally

June 28, 2010 8:08 AM

[Bianculli here: PBS presents a new documentary on the Berlin Wall tonight, and contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller gives us an advance look at the literally two-sided political story...]

PBS Special Expertly Rebuilds History of Berlin Wall

By Tom Brinkmoeller

When the Berlin Wall went up, almost overnight, in 1961, I was in high school, and more tuned in to trying to pass the next chemistry exam than to world events. I could be excused for not paying the closest attention.

But when it started to fall, in November 1989, I was an adult, something of a news junkie and one who enthusiastically hoped detente might finally be making the world a peaceful place. I thought I knew a lot about that stage of history. I might even have been a little smug in my knowledge about what was happening in Germany, the country from which my grandparents emigrated.

That "I know it all" attitude stayed intact and inactive until I watched The Wall -- A World Divided, a PBS special premiering tonight (Monday at 10 ET; check local listings). Like a 50-year flashback to the day of my chemistry test, I quickly realized how little I really knew.

This hour-long documentary is the best history of that 28-year span of Soviet-Western high-stakes poker I've ever seen. History wonks may disagree, but I've never been one who finds joy in digging through mountains of minutiae to find a gem of a fact. Nicely, producer-director-writer Eric Stange has done that for us.

His hard work and excellent reporting shows throughout. Inside an hour, he effectively and thoroughly sets the stage for the crisis, walks viewers through an interesting and fact-filled chronicle of the wall's 28-year existence, and covers the events that led to its dismantling.

But even more interesting than the facts is that Stange includes recent interviews with many of the people who were pushing the power buttons at the time: Mikhail Gorbachev, under whose leadership of the Soviet bloc the dismantling took place; former President George H.W. Bush, vice president to President Ronald Reagan when Reagan made his memorable "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech (and President when the "tearing down" finally happened); Bush Secretary of State James A. Baker and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft; Helmut Kohl, chancellor or West Germany at the time the wall fell; and others who lived as ordinary lives as possible in that divided country.

Their comments on the history that was happening around them give more insight than I have seen before. Gorbachev, for example, says he "was not at all impressed" with Reagan's taunt, noting that Reagan had been an actor long before he was a statesman. Bush, who was the first American leader to meet Gorbachev (at the funeral of Gorbachev predecessor Konstantin Chernenko) told Reagan the new General Secretary was "very different."

Bush also tells why there was a restrained, almost silent, response from his administration as the long division between the two Germanys was ending -- a diplomatic balancing act that confused some observers at the time but which Bush (and his then Soviet Affairs Advisor, Condoleezza Rice) convincingly explain more than 20 years later.

And this is the first time I learned that Tom Brokaw unwittingly sped up history. At a Nov. 9, 1989, press conference, an East German official read a prepared statement detailing the easing of travel restrictions between the two German states. A reporter asked when the changes would take effect, and the unprepared official mistakenly answered, "Immediately."

Within hours, thousands of people were making preparations to move from the east to West Berlin and Brokaw was on the air, showing the crowds that had shown up at a crossing point. It became a world event, and the East German guards, being watched by millions on television and having no instructions on what to do, let them pass. The memorable images of Germans from both sides gathering all along the wall and celebrating the end soon followed.

Stange also includes footage of an October 1989 protest by more than 70,000 people in Leipzig, East Germany -- surreptitiously taken from a church steeple, because the East German secret police had banned any video coverage. With the Chinese crush of the protests in Tiananmen Square only months old, troops could have intervened and the events could have been just as bloody. The footage shows armed troops nearby, but they weren't mobilized and the anti-government movement picked up more momentum.

I doubt I'll be the only one who watches this program who doesn't say, at least once, "I didn't know that."

The Wall -- A World Divided isn't term-paper tedious or talking-head boring. It's an excellent hour that engagingly explains one of the seminal events in modern world history. A bit of diplomatic advice: Give the commercial networks' all-the-same programming the night off and treat yourself to some one-of-a-kind programming.

Consider it, if you like, your own little protest.

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GUEST BLOG #95: Tom Brinkmoeller Thinks "Old Christine" Deserved More Respect

June 2, 2010 9:46 PM

[Bianculli here: First CBS denied The New Adventures of Old Christine a spot on its upcoming fall schedule, then yanked it Wednesday night for a special-night rerun of How I Met Your Mother. Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller thinks Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and her very funny sitcom (that's my verdict, too), got a raw deal...]

'Christine': New, Refreshing Series; Same Old Network Story

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Lost, 24 and Law and Order have checked out of prime time for good, and I feel no differently. Their departures got lots of attention, but not from me. When I pledge allegiance to a series, it's usually a long-term commitment based on a wonderfully mixed chemistry of acting, writing, casting and production.

Series that are packed with vague clues and nuances -- ones that only mandatory weekly attendance guarantees the chance of understanding -- require more effort than almost any television deserves. Same can be said for series that dilute themselves into translucence by endlessly spinning off clones.

On the other hand, I'm really bothered that CBS (stands for "Couldn't Be Stupider"?) has turned off the power to The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series' concept couldn't have been fresher: Relationships linking former wife, former husband, current wife (all delightfully unbalanced characters), brother (who at times appeared almost normal, compared to the others), and first wife's best friend/business parter/spouse of immigration contrivance.

Name another series, ever, that can claim such a mix. Go ahead and name one, CBS, who got rid of this delightful half hour on its 2010-11 fall schedule to make room for The Defenders, Hawaii Five-0, Tom Selleck and William Shatner. (What? No Andy Griffith or Petticoat Junction resurrections?)

Christine, it must be noted, pulled off that concept with some of the most inventive humor to land in modern-day prime time. Which forces the question: Why ditch this show and leave Rules of Engagement, a show built from surplus-store wares, on the air?

Some will say Christine, which starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is just another victim of "the Seinfeld curse." That's a term, I'm betting, that was dreamed up by programmers who would love to pin responsibility for the failures of series starring Seinfeld alumni on a mythical curse instead owning up to their own poor skills at knowing what makes good television.

Jason Alexander and Michael Richards were fortunate to be chosen as Seinfeld co-stars. Their luck ran out when they tried to pick series in which they would star.

(And do we blame this same "Seinfeld curse" for its namesake's odd decision to get involved with The Marriage Ref, an indistinguishable oddity that's the artistic equivalent of the "puffy shirt"?)

The Old/New Christine casting was faultless: Clark Gregg as Richard, daffy, clue-impaired and uber-horny spouse of both the new and old Christines; Hamish Linklater as Matthew, old Christine's brother and a man who swam near the drain of craziness so often, he sometimes got suctioned into it; Wanda Sykes, a fabulously funny actress who played her Barb character as the reality counterpoint to the cyclone of wackiness that enveloped the others in the stories.

Finally, there was Louis-Dreyfus as Old Christine. That a really talented comedian would take on Old Christine, a character with no redeeming social values, and craft her craziness into the axis on which this superior series spun is proof of her special talent. Except for the character of Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, it's hard to think of such an out-of-balance character carrying a successful TV comedy so well.

What's worse is that this is the second time a network has messed up a very good Louis-Dreyfus series. When Watching Ellie started running on NBC in 2002, it was delightfully different to the point that it reinvented the sitcom field: Each episode was shown as a real-time 22-minute package. (Think of it as 24 with real laughs and without the rat's nest of plot lines.) Then NBC started messing, and Watching Ellie's network run turned into a hobbled, painful crawl. Killing inventiveness is a sport in which networks excel.

She isn't the only victim of dunderheaded network decisions. Heroes, one of TV's hottest series a few seasons ago, was messed with by NBC until fans could no longer follow the path and just gave up. Just one example. Any fan of television that is worth watching almost surely has a personal list of favorites that were meddled to death.

Such harassment would be illegal in the real world. But when television labels creatures like Survivor and Biggest Loser as "reality shows," we more fully understand that the people who run things there have a very odd concept of what's real.

Snit nearly completed. I just want to add: Thank you, creators and cast of The New Adventures of Old Christine, for all the entertainment and the many laughs. It's just a lousy shame the gatekeepers of prime-time television have much more power than they have imagination.

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GUEST BLOG #94: Tom Brinkmoeller on the Tradition of Holiday TV Concerts

May 29, 2010 8:57 AM

[Bianculli here: Instead of taking the annual PBS summer holiday concerts for granted, contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller goes to the source to ferret out all sorts of facts, figures and back-stage anecdotes -- just in time for Memorial Day...]

Thirty Years In, Annual PBS Holiday-Concert Broadcasts Stay Fresh and Viewer-Friendly

By Tom Brinkmoeller

There are several reasons why PBS' broadcasts of the annual Memorial Day and July 4th concerts from the lawn of the U.S. Capitol are so popular. They're traditions: The first July 4th telecast was in 1981 and the first Memorial Day concert was broadcast nine years later.

They mark summer holidays in an American-made manner: A concert, touching memorials, patriotic speeches, spectacle and fireworks. And each year it is a first-class, 90-minute production.

And, of course, they're noncommercial -- always kind of odd when a touching moment on commercial TV segues into a Pepto Bismol or a Viagra commercial.

But the fact that they're live telecasts has to be one of the big draws for many. They happen outside, no matter what the weather. Hundreds of thousands of people gather to watch. The orchestra and the guest stars perform without the safety net recording and editing usually provides. People aren't watching for mistakes. The excitement is watching as something happens. It's similar to watching an artist put paint on canvas. Live broadcasts are rare events anymore, and when they're done well, it shows natural is even more attractive than the polish applied in an editing bay.

Executive Producer Jerry Colbert was 37 when he came up with the idea for the original broadcast, and 30 years later he's still happily at it. He recently shared some facts and stories about the two concerts, which are scheduled as follows:

National Memorial Day Concert (May 30, 8-9:30 p.m. ET, rebroadcast immediately following; check local listings).

A Capitol Fourth: America's Independence Day Celebration (July 4, 8-9:30 p.m. ET, rebroadcast immediately following; check local listings).

FIRST, SOME NUMBERS

About 500 people work on the shows. It takes 54 trucks to deliver all the needed materials to the Capitol's West Lawn twice each summer. There are 18 cameras used for the July 4th telecast and 10 for Memorial Day. Each requires more than 200 microphones. The two programs are PBS' highest rated performance shows. More than 100,000 people show up to watch the dress rehearsals. Between 300,000 and 400,000 people attend the actual live broadcasts. Colbert and company deal with 22 different agencies each year to get clearances and coordinate permissions for the concerts.

"Every (agency) has their own cultures," Colbert said. "and in the cultures, they have their own rules. That's a lot of different groups to bring together."

His son, Michael, who is executive vice president of Colbert's Capital Concerts, takes primary responsibility for dealing successfully with all these agencies.

EQUIPMENT HISTORY

Colbert said the truck used as control room for the first concert reminded him of a bookmobile. The control console was temperamental: The person who delivered it had to pound on it three times with the palm of his hand before it finally turned on. But he assured Colbert that once it was on, it wouldn't unexpectedly turn off.

Colbert called the first tent, under which hosts, performers and orchestra performed, "the bikini," because it was so small. So small, he said, that a rain during one early concert was so intrusive that 36 of the 40 violinists walked off the stage -- while "the conductor pleaded with them to stay." The tent was revised five times, he said, before one was made that keeps everyone dry in a storm.

There was no teleprompter for the first broadcast. Host E.G. Marshall had a clipboard of notes, which he'd review and commit to memory immediately before he went on camera again.

PREPARATION

Planning starts in September. Colbert travels to Los Angeles for the first of several meetings with directors and other key technical people who have years of experience in producing live television. These key people regularly are called on for awards shows like the Tonys, Country Music Association, People's Choice, Golden Globes and Emmys.

Walter C. Miller, who used to direct the holiday telecasts, now actively produces each show from a key vantage point on the stage. His son, Paul Miller (whose credits include Saturday Night Live, In Living Color and the Tony Awards), took over the director's chair in 1993.

The closer the performance date, the more intense the activity: mid-week meetings; a rehearsal at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; the previously mentioned dress rehearsal before a huge audience; and countless revisions, rewrites and polishes along the way.

PEOPLE

Most of the talent, Colbert said, are truly into the spirit of the events, and the concessions they take in fees helps to keep the costs down. But artists' temperaments aren't always in-check. Like the pop group that showed up for the rehearsal, saw the size of the audience and demanded double the pay. They claimed they were doing two shows. That same group had a member who decided he'd rather play golf than rehearse. He tried to convince Colbert that a member of the group's entourage knew all his musical parts and could fill in nicely.

When Little Richard performed, "he wouldn't tell us what (songs he was going to do)," Colbert said. "He told us, 'I just got to get the feel.'"

And in a very early performance, guest artist Pearl Bailey and National Symphony Orchestra Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich were already legends in their own musical circles, but neither knew a thing about the other, Colbert said, leading to some awkward moments. He remembers the look on Rostropovich's face when Bailey ad-libbed at the end of a number, "Play it again, Maestro."

WARM FEELING

Twice, Colbert said, members of Congress who were in the Memorial Day audience introduced veterans' funding legislation after seeing show segments, one on homeless veterans and another on vets' traumatic brain injuries.

Once the final concert is over, Colbert retreats to a home on Cape Cod, where he reads as many as 500 letters from viewers who wrote to share stories of their family's military experiences and other personal notes sent in appreciation.

"It just makes you feel good," he said.

Labor Day marks the end of summer and of Colbert's down time. That's when he leaves the Cape and travels to Los Angeles to start the process over again.

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GUEST BLOG #93: Psst! Wanna Buy "Brooklyn Bridge"? Sorry, Tom Brinkmoeller Reports, It's Not That Easy...

May 26, 2010 3:00 PM

[Bianculli here: I'm so proud of our TV WORTH WATCHING contributors. Earlier this week, Diane Holloway posted a very comprehensive and helpful initial rundown of the proposed new fall shows, which you can read as a guest entry on Diane Werts' blog by clicking HERE. And today, Tom Brinkmoeller, through a lot of dogged reporting, has news for anyone eagerly awaiting the DVD release of Gary David Goldberg's superb Brooklyn Bridge CBS series. Alas, the news isn't necessarily good...]

Troubled Waters Threaten Fate of "Brooklyn Bridge"

By Tom Brinkmoeller

When I was growing up, cool people I tried to hang around with sometimes would tell me, "And if you believe that, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you." The bridge they referred to was in Brooklyn, and the context was that anyone who would buy into the preposterous statement just spoken was dumb enough to think he could buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

Today, a slight twist on that take on gullibility: Twenty years ago, a wonderfully singular television producer named Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties, Spin City, Lou Grant and more) created a series called Brooklyn Bridge.

Based on his growing-up years in that borough in the late '40s and early '50s, it was a beautifully written, acted and produced story of a three-generation Jewish family's simple and credible life together. Marion Ross, previously the white-bread Mrs. Cunningham on ABC's Happy Days, starred, and demonstrated her impressive comic range, as the Jewish family matriarch, grandmother Sophie Berger.

Brooklyn Bridge premiered on CBS in late 1991, and its last episode was shown in late 1993. The series won awards, great reviews and the hearts of many viewers.

And then it disappeared from view, though not from mind. Many people remember it as superior and standout television and would like to have the chance to see it again. And therein lies the big problem:

Goldberg, who doesn't own the series, can't sell Brooklyn Bridge, but wants it shared with its fans. In an interview last week, he told how, on his book tour for his 2008 autobiographical Sit, Ubu, Sit, "The first or second question I'd always get is 'When is Brooklyn Bridge coming out (on DVD)?' " His Web site, garydavidgoldberg.com, has fielded many requests for the same information, according to his office. Amazon has a sign-up option for being notified when the series DVDs go on sale.

CBS Home Entertainment owns the rights to Brooklyn Bridge. The question seems to be when, or if, it will start selling it. That company says it may release the series. Goldberg, who started work with CBS Home Entertainment almost a year ago to make that happen, recently abandoned any hope of that happening and accuses CBS of misleading him and the people who want the series in their homes again.

What started off as a harmonious concerted effort last August, according to him, has turned into a hot war. Goldberg accuses CBS of "misleading me for months." A CBS Home Entertainment executive calls what's going on "dirty pool" and "very bizarre."

A series of e-mails between the two sides, made available by Goldberg, details the meltdown.

In August 2009, Goldberg is told the series will be released in March 2010.

By October, a CBS lawyer's e-mails show her getting legal clearances for parts of the series that included clips of baseball games and TV series of that era.

November e-mails between the lawyer and Goldberg seem to indicate progress on legal clearances, and she refers him to CBS Home Entertainment Executive Vice President Ken Ross as the person who will work with him on releasing and marketing the DVDs. The two men make contact and set up a Nov. 18 meeting at Ross' New York City office. The day after the meeting, Goldberg e-mails the CBS lawyer to tell her it went well, that he was told the DVDs would be released in May, and to thank her for her help. She answers, "That's great news."

In early December, Ross makes arrangements to send a DVD of some Brooklyn Bridge promos to Goldberg's home. In January, Goldberg e-mails Ross and asks, "Anything I need to know or be worried about?" Ross replies: "Only thing for you to worry about is how the Knicks could lose at home to Dallas by 50 points. . . We're back on the Brooklyn Bridge track. Will know something soon."

In April, Goldberg again e-mails Ross: "As May is approaching, any decision on the Brooklyn Bridge DVD release?" Ross answers that "yes we're going to move forward," that he met with an Amazon representative about selling the DVDs through that on-line outlet and he will send an agreement to Goldberg the following week.

Goldberg said he was never sent the promised agreement, and on April 23 forwarded an e-mail to Ross from a Brooklyn Bridge fan who asked if the promised May DVD release was still happening. Goldberg added this note to the forwarded question: "Hi Ken, Been getting a lot of emails like the one below. Can't say I don't share the concern. Thanks, Gary." Goldberg said he never received an answer.

He wrote Ross again on May 10, that "here we are in mid-May without even the slightest word from you." He described the entire process as "the most annoying frustrating and baffling interaction I've ever had" and ended by saying, "I give up." Ross answered that "I have never been more hurt." And Goldberg, in a final e-mail, told Ross, "You've been misleading me for months. I don't know why."

Goldberg says he has no understanding of what happened. He doesn't think it was a money issue, since he said he promised to put up $100,00 of his own money to defray costs, waive any royalties to which he might be entitled, and pay for a public tour he'd make to promote the DVD release.

Ross, reached by phone last week, described what's happening as "dirty pool" and "bizarre," and suggested the sharing of correspondence by Goldberg was "not only unethical but illegal" before refusing to say for the record if the series would be released and what, if anything, has caused its delay. Later last week, a spokesperson for CBS Home Entertainment issued "the only comment we have" on the subject:

"We have never announced a release date for a Brooklyn Bridge DVD. As we do with every title in our library, we have been investigating the feasibility of releasing Brooklyn Bridge on DVD. This process is ongoing and we hope to be able to bring this beloved show to fans in the future."

To which Goldberg responded: "I was told on two separate occasions that there was a release date set for the Brooklyn Bridge DVD. First date I was given was mid-March. That was then pushed back to mid-May. I asked if I should post that on my web-site and was told I should. (The CBS spokesperson) continues down the path of misrepresenting CBS' intentions and misleading fans of the show into believing that Brooklyn Bridge might someday be released on DVD by CBS. I don't think anyone concerned, and certainly not me, believes a single word of what she's saying."

Until all of this is resolved, and right now it sounds as though that's not possible, a bright spot in TV history will stay locked in a vault.

Final question: If Brooklyn Bridge IS released on DVD, will you buy it? Add a comment and let us know.

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GUEST BLOG #92: Tom Brinkmoeller Says Watching "American Experience" Is Anything But Depression

May 21, 2010 4:16 PM

[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller looks at the next two American Experience presentations on PBS, and finds their Depression-era topics clearly pertinent to today...]

Two 'American Experience' Hours Show That 'Past as Prologue' Applies in Many a Tempest

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Looking for some perspective in a time when oil is spilling, out of control, into the Gulf of Mexico? When the stock market inexplicably dropped nearly a thousand points in an hour? When the Euro's distress is infecting the world's already-ailing economy? When Arizona ignited a divided America with an immigration law that seems to hinge on profiling?

If so, a couple of PBS American Experience reruns over the next two weeks do a good job of holding history up to the present and removing thoughts that what's happening now is a singular experience. The series reprises two episodes that document aspects of the Great Depression, and in watching one or both, a viewer probably will conclude that the country has recovered from much worse conditions -- though not without a lot of hard work and heartaches.

Riding the Rails (May 24, 9-10 p.m. ET, PBS -- check local listings) is a fascinating history of the estimated 4 million people who left or were forced from their homes between 1929 and 1941. They lived on the roads and rails, either by hitchhiking or by hopping freight trains, searching for a solution to the historic hard times of the Depression.

Civilian Conservation Corps (May 31, 9-10 p.m. ET, PBS -- check local listings) outlines the effects of a controversial and revolutionary program President Franklin Roosevelt initiated just months after he first took office in 1933.

Riding the Rails was produced in 1997, in a relatively calm and prosperous pre-9/11 era when financial backing was more easily found, and shows more polish and does a better job of uniting visuals to the story it tells.

The Civilian Conservation Corps hour first aired late last year on PBS and reflects the more restricted financial milieu in which it was born. Even so, they build on each other and watching both won't be duplicative nor disappointing,

The story of the first of the two is told by people who, as young men and women, took off to look for a way out of problems that only people who lived through the Great Depression can fully understand.

It was a time when there wasn't a national awareness of what was happening, and word of mouth and rumor often were the only influencers available when choosing a course. So many of these hoboes, as they were called, headed to California, often based on false rumors.

At one point, police were stationed at the border, and any hobo attempting to get in was escorted back to the Arizona line and told to stay out. A Texas town was so wary of the need to care for sick and indigent migrants that the town police drove them several miles beyond the city limits and left them alongside the road and the surrounding desert.

Many went to New York, following rumors, hoping to find a job on a ship. There were no jobs, and the city overflowed with even more people who tried to live on the street and survive. Others, charting a course many migrant workers still follow, became "fruit tramps," hoping to find jobs during seasonal harvests.

One of the veterans of the hobo life, interviewed for the show, remembers thinking, "Why does it have to be this way when the goddamn guys on Wall Street all have a million dollars?" He said that in the late '90s, and it's a question asked often during the current recession -- most recently and repeatedly following the Goldman Sachs controversy.

The hour ends with the 1933 creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the relief it finally offered so many hopelessly poor and desperate people.

The Civilian Conservation Corps hour the following week excellently fleshes out that closing point. Soil conservation and environmentalism were virtual unknowns in the early part of the 20th century. It was the time of the dust bowl. The hour opens with a man remembering how he looked up to the sky above his North Carolina home to "watch Kansas blow by."

Four years after the crash of the stock market, official unemployment for the U.S. was 25 percent, though the uncounted unemployed probably pushed that number much higher, the program notes. The newly elected President Roosevelt aimed for work versus relief as a solution. Despite the strong opposition of business, labor unions and citizens who feared creeping socialism, the president had the program up and running in three months.

Three months.

Men enlisted, and were sent to camps that eventually were in every state. They earned a dollar a day (the cause of the unions' concerns), and a requirement was they send $25 of their monthly $30 paycheck back home.

The CCCers reclaimed and replanted lands that had been ravished by poor agricultural practices and out-of-control lumbering. They planted 2.3 billion trees, blazed trails that hikers still use today, and helped build hundreds of state parks. People who did the work tell how hard it was, but how good it was to have food, clothing, a place to sleep and money to send home.

They also talk about the discrimination against African-American and Mexican-American members of the corps, both from within and from the communities located near the CCC camps. But in a time when discrimination largely was unchallenged in America, facing poverty and beating it erased many prejudices. They came to the camps from all parts of the country. Some were educated, some couldn't read or write. Some never had known wealth, while others had lost it.

"The only thing they had in common was that they were poor and in need of a job," a man interviewed for the show points out. Men undoubtedly returned from an enlistment in the CCC with viewpoints that were altered from the way they entered.

The start of World War II in December 1941 led to the end of the CCC. It was disbanded by July 1942. The lack of a standing army of sufficient size made it impractical to continue. Instead, many of they men who had gained experience in the paramilitary surroundings of the Civilian Conservation Corps made the transition to military life easily and quickly, giving the country already-seasoned personnel when the buildup otherwise might have been slowed and less efficient.

It's not consoling to watch the overwhelming problems those who proceeded us had to deal with. What's encouraging is how these members of the Greatest Generation beat those problems.

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GUEST BLOG #87: New York, New York, It's a Wonderful Town... And You Can Explore It on WNET's Web Series

April 21, 2010 6:52 AM

[Bianculli here: One of contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller's specialties is finding intriguing TV in out-of-the-way places. This time he's found some worthwhile stuff in a place so far out of the way, it's not even ON television... but emanates from public TV anyway...]

Explore New York... Without Leaving Home

By Tom Brinkmoeller

For anyone whose interest in New York City's people and places goes beyond what's encountered on a on a Gray Line Tour, a couple of made-for-Web series produced by the city's WNET public-TV station are worth checking out.

New York on the Clock, a web series you can find HERE is a series of short (about five minutes) profiles of people who have interesting, but low-profile, jobs in the city.

The City Concealed, which you can find HERE, discovers and shares New York places that aren't well-known. Episodes of both can be viewed on the station's Web site, YouTube or iTunes. New Yorker or not, there's a lot to be learned and enjoyed in almost every one. Several new segments are posted each month.

The New York on the Clock profiles include a surprisingly young tugboat captain; the operator of Coney Island's Cyclone coaster; a woman who travels to the depths of the city's buildings to read electric meters; and a mohel (the medically and religiously trained person who performs Jewish circumcisions). Each offers a chance to learn a little more about people whose jobs are outside the usual employment borders -- and which take on a unique personality when done in that city.

The City Concealed goes to places many people wouldn't know about, and/or have easy access to. These include the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which has an under-utilized and diverse industrial-park role following its passage from a huge ship-building site; a tour of Green-Wood Cemetery; the grand United Palace Theater (shown here), once a movie palace now functioning as a church; and a Staten Island beach on which a man builds rock sculptures (seen at top). A trip up Newtown Creek and a history of the 1880s African American community of Weeksville takes viewers to places they might not otherwise be able to find.

TV programming made for sole viewing on the Internet isn't new. But when pieces appear with this much polish -- ones that draw from such a fertile field -- it's worth noting. It's also something of a curiosity when the program source is a public-TV station.

The station does them, explained it director of on-line marketing, Debbie Adler, to "extend the brand of Thirteen... The station feels they are an investment in connecting us to our community."

Costs and funding, always a sensitive subject with public stations, were subjects she declined to discuss.

The station's commitment to each program is strong and continuing, said Dan Greenberg, executive producer of both series. Finding people to profile is easy among a population pool that includes, he said, "the most beloved and the most hated people in the country. They're comical and smart at the same time."

The only obstacles to finding places to explore among the many boroughs are getting permission to enter, and entering only places that don't present a danger.

"Sometimes we can't always get there," Greenberg said. And sometimes, he added, it's too dangerous to want to.

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GUEST BLOG #83: Tom Brinkmoeller Checks In On Fred Rogers' 21st Century Legacy

March 23, 2010 10:06 AM

[Bianculli here: Last year, I attended a conference at St. Vincent College's Fred Rogers Center, and reported on it for TV WORTH WATCHING, where plans were made to carry on the vision and children's TV commitment of Fred Rogers. Yesterday, when worthy recipients were given scholarships to pursue their modern visions of children's entertainment and education, I was at Rowan University teaching -- but contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller pursued the results on his own, and has this encouraging news flash...]

TV Academy Picks Three People to Help Carry Mr. Rogers' Legacy into Future

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Smoking once was socially acceptable, red meat once was the staff of life and children's television once was Moe hitting Curly's head with a hammer.

The whole universe soon may be smoke-free. A rare steak may be the only pre-existing condition not covered by the new healthcare legislation. But South Park still claims kids as part of its core audience.

Some things get fixed more quickly than others.

So how about some good news about children's programming? A just-concluded two-day gathering in Pittsburgh, the Fred Forward Conference, awarded a trio of Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarships to people whose goal it is to continue to advance the kind of high-quality programming pioneered by the scholarships' namesake, TV's Mr. Rogers.

From nearly 100 applicants, three post-grad students were chosen to receive an impressive $10,000 prize and an even more valuable mentoring assist from within a network of non-commercial and commercial children's programmers. This is the sixth year The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, in conjunction with Ernst & Young, has selected people judged to be the best architects of what good things children will be watching in the future on television, and in other media.

Last night, the more than 150 conference attendees watched as Christina Zagarino, a master's student at Tufts University, won for a plan to produce short programs that point children away from obesity and toward physical activities. The second winner was Rachel Schechter, part of a Tufts doctoral program, won for a proposal to study the links between use of media and learning in young people. And Xavier Raphael Vanegas, who is working toward a master's degree in film production at the University of Southern California, won for a proposed animated television program, Fink Forest Friends (shown here).

Beyond the money, there is the pledge of professional help the winners walked away with. Scholarship winners are paired with someone already established in children's programming to help advance their winning projects, as well as their careers.

"It is priceless," said Terri L. Clark, executive director of the Television Academy Foundation, because it gives the winners the kind of expert help and professional contacts that can make a difference between ideas that get made and those that don't. Each of the winners, she said, will be interviewed by Academy members so that the best professional match can be made. As with previous scholarship winners, the mentor's experience and insights will help the winner perfect the proposal.

Clark said the annual research scholarship is as important as the two production prizes because it helps industry members make their programs better: "If we're able to help advance research into current and future TV programming . . . that's something that's immeasurable."

The Academy made Rogers a member of its Hall of Fame before his 2003 death. It was following an Academy memorial program for Rogers, she said, that members asked themselves, "How can we keep his legacy moving forward?" The scholarship program, with initial and continued support from Rogers' wife, Joanne, grew from that. Its goal, simply put, Clark said, is a continuation "of what Fred did."

Mrs. Rogers was one of the presenters at Monday's ceremony.

The Web site for the scholarships can be found HERE.

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GUEST BLOG #82: Tom Brinkmoeller Considers the Endangered Pioneers of "How-To" TV

March 17, 2010 8:21 AM

[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller follows a lot of public TV and informational cable TV shows. And when some of them began disappearing from his television set, he decided to keep following them, and find out where they went and why...]

Recession Puts TV Innovators on Endangered-Species List

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It's safe to guess that public-TV icon and master carpenter Norm Abram and producing legend Steven Bochco seldom, if ever, have crossed paths. Just as it's a pretty sure bet that TV master chef Sara Moulton and TV legend Sid Caesar never talked television. Still, these four equally share the title of TV innovator.

Bochco set all-new criteria for prime-time drama when he co-created Hill Street Blues in the early '80s; Caesar starred in, and was the driving force behind, groundbreaking live television shows in the 1950s.

Abram was part of a small team that gave birth to and grew how-to television on a national scale when This Old House debuted -- two years before Hill Street. For 21 seasons, starting in 1989, Abram further built his reputation as the standard by which all TV home-improvement shows should be measured as host of The New Yankee Workshop. A couple of cable networks overflow with shows that trace their heritage to these two long-running Abram shows.

Moulton's groundbreaking was done at a kitchen counter. Caesar's many once-a-week programs were masterpieces of timing, planning and improvisation -- all done without the safety net of videotape. For six years, Moulton hosted the hour-long Cooking Live series on the Food Network five nights a week -- and the word "live" means just that: with sharp knives, live flames and real-time call-in questions from viewers.

For a while she did two live shows a night. As ER and The West Wing proved when those series went live in prime time, a live show done well is excitingly creative. When Cooking Live ended in 2002, there were more than 1,200 of them in Food Network's library. It's a record that probably never will be duplicated.

Despite their accomplishments, the visibility of these two innovators has decreased. Abram recently said he regained about 150 days a year when New Yankee Workshop stopped production and he turned his TV efforts only to This Old House. Moulton, who has a unique ability to make cooking watchable, understandable and easy, currently hasn't a show in production. Her two cookbooks, plus a third that will be published in April, are the current ways to connect with this extraordinary teacher.

It wasn't Moulton's idea to end Cooking Live, she said in a recent interview. Innovation lost its cachet at the Food Network years ago. The network that once hosted noted contemporary chefs sharing their expertise has moved far from that Julia Child end of the spectrum to shows that feature home cooks, nearly ubiquitous competition programs and, as Moulton pointed out, an abundance of female cleavage.

"The target audience," she said, "appears to have shifted to 15-to-35-year-old males."

As the focus changed, chefs such as Mario Batali, Ming Tsai, Emeril Lagasse and Gale Gand disappeared from the network. Moulton didn't leave immediately. She moved to a half-hour taped program, Sara's Secrets. The series was in production for about three years and Food Network used reruns for another two years.

After leaving the network in 2005, she hosted Sara's Weeknight Meals on public television. Though production ended on that series, she hopes it may restart as the economy improves and underwriters for public-TV shows reappear. That same weak economy contributed to the folding of Gourmet magazine last year. Moulton was executive chef of the publication, and as it sunk it also pulled under a pending syndicated series, Ask Gourmet with Sara Moulton.

Even though it was a lot of hard work, Cooking Live remains a personal favorite with Moulton:

"It was the perfect show. I would love to do it again."

There's a small chance the company that owns the Food Network might make that happen. Scripps Networks plans to launch the Cooking Channel later this year. When asked if a live cooking show might make the new network's schedule, a Scripps representative said, "That's certainly something that's in the (potential) mix."

Abram is hoping for The New Yankee Workshop to return to the air in a different way. When he and producer Russell Morash began the series in 1988, they guessed there were enough woodworking projects to take it "through four years, and that would pretty much do it," Abram said. Instead, it stayed on the PBS schedule for 21 years, with the last two seasons highlighting repackaged early episodes.

"We pretty much accomplished what we set out to do. And I wanted some more free time," he explained.

Abram and Morash believe the early episodes are just as good as when they were new, but the financial support for the repackaged shows evaporated, and this is the first year in 22 that hasn't seen a new Yankee season. For now, an early episode is posted each week on the show's Web site, which you can find HERE. And if the Web traffic is strong enough, underwriting may reappear for the series, he said.

Abram's work, like Moulton's, focuses on high quality and accessibility versus flash and the half-hour fix. It's one type of programming that makes TV worth watching. A better economy may keep that standard from being forgotten.

--

TV Worth Watching contributor Tom Brinkmoeller, who is neither a chef nor a carpenter, tries to improve his meager skills by watching real artists at work.

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GUEST BLOG #80: Tom Brinkmoeller On Tom Brokaw's CNBC "Boomer$"

March 4, 2010 7:54 AM

[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller not only watched an early cut of tonight's CNBC special by Tom Brokaw, but spoke to its executive producer. His report follows. But first: a personal, unrelated preface: Tonight at 7 ET, the Marlton, NJ Barnes & Noble, my neighborhood bookstore, is hosting a presentation/reading/signing where I'll show rare Smothers Brothers clips and, for one of the last times, push my book. If you're in the area -- Route 70E in Cherry Hill, just west of Route 73 -- please pop in. And now, to Tom's column about Tom...]

Brokaw Special Chronicles the Fizzle of Baby Booming

By Tom Brinkmoeller

With at least a couple of weeks of winter left and a ruthless jet stream that doesn't seem to want to back down, a lot of Americans must be thinking they're seen more snow than ever. But those blizzards may seem mild compared to an avalanche right around the corner: The first of the generation born between 1946 and 1964 turns 65 in January. Around 78 million baby boomers later, the last will retire.

That scary statistic, around for more than 40 years, has taken on a darker hue since the start of the recession. A feared, but expected, stress on the country's economic health has been trumped by unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, spent savings and the recession's many other unwanted side effects. As a result, those people who once hoped for a better version of the golden age experienced by their parents happily now would settle for a chrome-plated later life.

In the '90s, Tom Brokaw spotlighted the greatest generation and more than justified that designation in his books and television specials. In 2008, in his book Boom!, he took a long look at how the greatests' children put their stamp on the 1960s. Tonight at 9 ET, he anchors a two-hour CNBC news special that takes a long, close look at what's coming for many of those who outspent their earnings and will outlive their savings. It's entitled Tom Brokaw Reports: Boomer$, and what it talks about is much more substantial than what the hokey use of the dollar sign in the title would suggest.

Just don't look for the answer to a problem that has years yet to unfold and don't expect to end the two-hour investment of your time with a feel-good glow. Unlike the hours of junk-food programming featured on its higher profile NBC cousin, this program isn't under a mandate to deliver empty calories. That undoubtedly is a reason the special isn't being shown on the big network -- where two straight hours probably hasn't been devoted to reporting since the end of the O.J. Simpson trial.

It's a small, not-very-seaworthy ship boomers find themselves in. Those who want to know a little bit more about sea conditions and where the life jackets are will find spending two hours in front of the set an educating experience. (CNBC will rebroadcast the program March 6 at 7 p.m., March 7 at 9 p.m. and March 8 at 8 p.m. -- all times ET.)

The luxury of more time helps to better lay out the issues and add depth through interviews with a wide range of relatively unknown to famous boomers. Former President Bill Clinton and actor Tom Hanks represent the latter group. Among the lesser-known but just as interesting are a Marine who was one of the last Americans to leave Saigon during the Vietnam War and who, at age 57, remains involved as a reserve officer; war protester David Harris, who went to jail over his beliefs, and the parents of Denise McNair, who was 11 in 1963 when she and three other children were killed in a KKK-engineered bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church.

The program's senior executive producer, Mitch Weitzner, explained the cross-section of interviewees: "We were very careful to not paint (the generation) with too broad a brush. . . That they were all made from the same mold."

The program's predominant theme is uncertainty. There's the man who lost his six-figure job in 2008 and has only been able to get three interviews since. A cross-section group of University of Michigan 1973 graduates who talk with Brokaw about how their lives have changed from charmed to jinxed in the decades since graduation. There is a look at how debt, especially debt that arose from buying homes three times larger than the ones they grew up in, has played a significant part in revising the retirement rainbow.

"Never assume things will be better tomorrow than they are today," is a sentiment expressed by one participant. And when it's projected that as more baby boomers morph to geezer status, a third of all the money spent on goods and services will be on health care, that statement seems more like a warning than a regret.

When an interviewee asked Brokaw how he would characterize boomers, he answered "Unrealized."

The program ends with a hint of promise, or realization. Many boomers first made a big noise in the '60s, when their idealism clashed with established ways and ended up challenging and helping improve civil rights, equal rights and global politics. After two hours of chronicling the shift from "social activism to chronic consumerism," interviews show age and economics are shifting some boomers to reorder their priorities and put more value on families and relationships again. Just like their parents' generation did.

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Tom Brinkmoeller, who was born just months before the start of the boom, will happily realize a goal characteristic of the times in a few weeks, when he turns 65 and finally can afford health insurance again -- more exciting, in perspective, than when he got a driver's license at 16.--

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GUEST BLOG #74: Tom Brinkmoeller Wonders If "30 Rock" Is An Endangered Species on NBC

February 4, 2010 8:19 AM

[Bianculli here: Tonight at 9:30 p.m. ET, NBC presents a fresh episode of 30 Rock -- a delightful episode guest starring the equally delightful Jan Hooks. One week from tonight, NBC presents the final installment of the prime-time Jay Leno Show. Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller connects the dots, and suggests that as Leno leaves for later pastures, 30 Rock should watch its back...]

Thrill of the Chase? Not When It's Chevy

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Is Tina Fey the next to go?

Like Conan, she and her 30 Rock are Lorne Michaels proteges. That seems about as healthy, in today's NBC environment, as a three-pack-a-day habit.

But there's more reason to worry she'll be canned. Hers is the only intentionally funny series left on NBC. The same NBC that for many decades gave shelter and encouragement to classic comedy series.

(It's also the same network that grew wonderful drama series, from St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues to The West Wing and ER. But since it has so badly botched Friday Night Lights, Heroes and Southland, and just abandoned high-end series like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, drama is deader than comedy there, and talking about its health is just moot.)

Community and Parks and Recreation are uselessly void of humor, and The Office ran out of gas a season or two ago.

ABC, which once produced as many laughs as a clown car full of Republican senators, now kicks butt with the season's best new comedies. CBS promotes and protects its reliably funny carryover comedies. But NBC only produces laughs when David Letterman talks about it in his monologue.

Which brings us back to Tina Fey and 30 Rock. Now that it's been shown, courtesy of Jay Leno, that a never-that-funny old guy can engineer a coup and retake the once-glorious nighttime palace, what's to keep the same from happening in prime time?

The threat, of course, is Chevy Chase, the gooey prototype for the later Leno model of the much ado about nothing product NBC now produces.

Chase, too, is out of place in prime time. He, too, once was anointed by NBC's executive wing of 30-watt bulbs as a cornerstone of its late night. Except for falling down a lot and coining the phrase "and you're not" (and I always was glad to hear that), he has no trophies to show for more than three decades in entertainment.

Chase, no doubt, has watched and drooled as Leno unseated O'Brien. And his attack, perhaps, is imminent. With Dick Wolf's many Law and Order offspring as his model, Chase just may use his leverage at NBC to spread even more Communities around the network.

After all, if a town has a fire engine and its own garbage trucks, it probably also is big enough to support a community college. Community: Altoona. Community: Toledo. Community: Cherry Hill. They all could be coming soon to TV listings near you.

And they'd be every bit as wonderful as the rest of the slop NBC now nurtures. And just think what they would do to improve unemployment prospects for third-tier actors.

And what about Tina Fey and 30 Rock? They'd not only be occupying a space which Community: Biloxi could use -- they'd be a too-painful reminder of the high quality NBC has flushed away. And who wants people remembering originality when the generic brand is so much cheaper?

Say goodbye to Liz and Jack and Tracy and the rest. The only long-term hope they have at NBC is to gain a whole lot of weight and try out for The Biggest Loser -- which, of course, is us.

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Disclaimer: Tom Brinkmoeller holds no financial interest in NBC-Universal (he's done some dumb things in his life, but nothing that stupid), and he has no interests in nor prejudices against this country's many fine community colleges. Nor does he find them inherently funny.

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GUEST BLOG #73: Tom Brinkmoeller on the New Installment of PBS's "Frontline"

February 1, 2010 8:42 AM

[Bianculli here: Tuesday's edition of the PBS series Frontline looks at the impact of the Internet and digital media. Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller looks at it, too -- by not only previewing the program, but interviewing its producer...]

The Digital Revolution:
Good for Home Cooking, Bad for 'Moby-Dick'

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Some images from Tuesday's Frontline (9 p.m. ET, PBS; check local listings), called Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, that probably will stick in the minds of many who watch it:

Young South Korean teens who hang out for hours, sometimes days, at the country's computer parlors to play virtual-reality games -- and the camps that have developed in that country to detox those young people from game addiction;

Under-draft-age kids spending lots of time and not a penny at the Army's $13 million, 12,000-square foot Army Experience Center recruitment facility in Philadelphia, where simulation lets them play in fantasy war conditions in which they can kill aplenty with no risk of getting hurt;

The truly eerie sight of a largely vacant IBM park of office buildings in Westchester, N.Y., where technology, not the economy, has emptied the offices -- so many employees telecommute that one has to wonder how much all of this unused real estate is pulling down IBM's ledger.

The Frontline program is almost overloaded with information about what the massive changes in technology over the last decade or so have done to the "natives" who were born into it and the "immigrants" who have to stretch farthest to adapt. Experts speak about, and examples point to, the good and the bad effects of this digital nation.

Two schools, one in the Bronx and one in New Jersey, have bought into the revolution and administrators are more than enthusiastic about the wonderful results. MIT students, who are nonstop-wired to handhelds and laptops, talk about the ease with which they multitask during almost every minute of their non-sleeping lives.

Equally comfortable with the changes is an Army officer connected with the Philadelphia endeavor who explains, "Here in the Army Experience Center . . . video games are never going to replicate the real thing. But it is a sampling experience to pique your interest and maybe. . . encourage you to go learn more, just as Apple is trying to do" (in its retail stores).

From the other side, a researcher's tests reveal the way multitasking slows the brain and the UCLA author of a "Brain on Google" study uses the word "addiction" to describe the conditions. An English professor tells how it's now not possible to assign a book that's longer than 200 pages and another academic says those who proudly claim citizenship in this new digital nation "have done themselves a disservice by drinking the Kool-Aid."

Is what's happening good or bad?

Viewers looking for a verdict won't find one. Rachel Dretzin, who produced this as well as a 2008 Frontline look into tech effects, Growing Up Online, said she gauges the success of her efforts by their ability to cause people "to turn off the television set and argue about it for an hour. I want them to talk about it.

"It's neither a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down," she said. "It's way too complex to come to a conclusion like that."

By generating conversation, she said, people can better examine the issue to uncover the good and scary parts of what has and is happening in the digital world growing around us: to point out "what it is that's important, that we don't want to lose."

She said the digital shift "is as big as literacy," and it's the responsibility of "the last generation who remember a non-digital world . . .to tell (those who follow) what they may not know."

But it may be difficult to function as a herald of a cultural heritage, Dretzin points out, when the the would-be messengers "are wrestling with and dealing with (these changes)" at the same time. Anyone familiar with the carefully stodgy image IBM built for itself during the 20th century can only wonder what kind of shifts people who worked under that former paradigm must have had to make.

The program also shows Air Force personnel who, stationed at a Nevada base, pilot drone aircraft over targets thousands of miles away. Drone-mounted cameras relay images of people and objects to screens, and when the images are targets, the pilots fire on and destroy them. When their shifts end, these same pilots drive home to have dinner with their families.

The program also offers a fun example of a "native" helping an "immigrant" find her way through the Digital Nation. Bayla "Bubbe" Sher, 83, worked for a bank until she was 73. Today, thanks to the savvy and collaboration of her grandson, she hosts a popular Jewish cooking show on the Web, Feed Me Bubbe, from her home kitchen. Watch it by clicking HERE.

The grandson, Avrom Honig, talked proudly of his grandmother's adaption to change: "The Internet, really, I have to say, it added years to Bubbe's life."

But even in a digital revolution, an old weapon can pack considerable punch.

"They grew up with it." said Sher. "To them it's like second nature. And it's easier for my grandchildren to go into e-mail -- I get angry at them sometimes, I say I'd like to hear your voice! I know you e-mail, and they sit down and type you out a little e-mail, and it's wonderful. But call me on the telephone."

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Tom Brinkmoeller notes that the aphorism "The more things change, the more they stay the same" was written in the middle of the 19th century, making it even older than CompuServe.

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GUEST BLOG #71: Tom Brinkmoeller On HIS Buried TV Treasures

January 18, 2010 10:44 AM

[Bianculli here: First, Diane Werts' FOR BETTER OR WERTS blog today covers a gaggle of new, and good, DVD releases. Also, one of our TV WORTH WATCHING contributors, Diane Holloway, just listed some of the shows on TV that made her happy. Now it's another contributor's turn -- and Tom Brinkmoeller intentionally surfs the fringes of the air waves...]

Forget the Whiskers on Kittens:
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Some baseball players earn a roster spot by mastering a specialty (a pinch-hitter, a closer, a base-runner), while most earn their pay by trying to do everything well. On the TVWW team, I have made it my specialty to discover really good, off-the-beaten-track shows that tend to get lost in the wake of an industry fixated on weight-losers, amateur singers and I-think-I-can dancers.

This role became more clear to me when the cable company recently switched out our DVR and I had to reprogram the series I don't want to miss. For every 30 Rock or Big Bang Theory, there are, on our list, multiple little series many haven't heard of. Most air on public-television stations. And all are fantastic, in my opinion.

What follows, in capsule form. is a list of these series and a description of what they do so well. (Some may be out of production, but still are being played all over the country. Few of them, it's safe to say, are available in all markets. The "check local listings" proviso applies, as always.) Click on the titles for more info.

MUSIC/ART

From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall -- A TV spinoff of the popular NPR series, the program brings young musicians to New York to perform before a live audience. The talent scale each week transcends impressive and is an antidote to the prevalent obsession for pop stardom. Host/concert pianist Christopher O'Riley makes sure the series and its participants don't take it all too seriously: no judges; no texted votes; no ultimate winner. Just a celebration of serious talent grown to greatness through a lot of hard work.

Design Squad -- A second series that celebrates talented youth whose intelligence and resourcefulness are more important than their ability to sing. Each week two teams of teens are challenged to design and deliver, in two days, a product requested by an outside company or party. They first have to agree on a design, then build it and test it before the run-off competition in which the client picks the winner. Anyone who admires seeing really smart people take on real-world challenges and solve them in innovative ways will find his series as fascinating and upbeat as it is entertaining.

Classical Destinations -- A BBC-produced series that explores classical-musical masters and the cities and countries they lived in and that affected their works. Whether it's Austria and Mozart, Norway and Grieg or any other of the great composers, this half-hour, beautifully shot series is a combination travelogue and music history that makes it extra-enjoyable to learn a bit more about music that lasts. Simon Callow hosts (see photo at top).

Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis -- This is one of the series that no longer is in production, but episodes still are running and age only makes them better. Lewis hosts the series, which features two or three guest jazz musicians each episode. The talk is intelligent and entertaining, and a featured part of each show is a performance by each guest, and usually a combined performance to end the half-hour. What a great opportunity to learn about jazz from its top players.

Landscapes through Time with David Dunlop -- Dunlop, who calls himself a landscape painter, is a talented artist who knows a lot about art history as well as the scientific reasons for what makes good art work. In each half-hour program, Dunlop travels to a locations where a great artist worked and explains the artist's work as he paints an interpretation of a scene the artist once painted. A totally unique concept that's carried off especially well.

FOOD

Mexico One Plate at a Time -- Chicago chef and restaurant owner Rick Bayless isn't just one of the country's most recognized experts on Mexican cooking -- he's an unassuming and fun-to-watch cooking expert whose ego is the total opposite of the current batch of celebrity TV chefs. That, in itself, makes the show wonderful. The fact that his approachable recipes are backed up by trips to food sources in Mexico makes it all the better.

Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie -- Gourmet, the magazine of this show's title, soon will disappear and with it, almost surely, this beautifully photographed and produced series that traveled all over the world to look at food at many angles, from production to the kitchen. But reruns are just as wonderful and relevant as when they were first-run, and video podcasts make the series even more accessible.

Food Trip with Todd English -- Boston-based restaurant owner and chef English doesn't have the comfort level with being on television that many chefs have, but his trips to all parts of the world to look at cuisines and how he can adapt what he learns to his restaurants still is multiple-times better than nearly anything that shows up on the Food Network.

Lidia's Italy -- Lidia Bastianich is cut from the Julia Child stock of chefs: She knows what she's talking about (her chef, restaurant-owner and cookbook-author credentials are impressive) and she cares more about the food than the building of her stardom. Besides, she's an Italian grandmother, which, according to popular culinary legend, is the height of authority when it comes to cooking Italian.

TRAVEL

Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge -- Wolfe, a well-known and respected still photographer of nature and wildlife, goes to places pretty far off the tourist track in each episode to record the scenery and animals in these far-way places. He's accompanied by a video crew, and Wolfe's photos are integrated into the usually stunning moving record of the trip. Anyone interested in photography will find Wolfe's explanations of his shots and how and why he composes them are the equivalent of a free expert seminar.

Fantastic Festivals of the World -- This series of hour-long programs that wonderfully showcases folk festivals from around the globe was shot for Discovery HD Theater when it was spending money on other programming than testosterone-oriented car shows. It's often buried on the cable channel's schedule, and probably will disappear for good in the near future. Catch it while you can. Its quality level is just as high as its definition level.

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Tom Brinkmoeller has labeled himself "The Brink of Obscurity" because of his penchant for searching out and sharing the flecks of programming gold usually buried deeply under the TV industry's huge mounds of dross.

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GUEST BLOG #68: Tom Brinkmoeller Samples Two Very Different TV Cooking Shows: Pot Roast vs. Truffles

December 19, 2009 8:24 AM

[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller's specialty is finding, enjoying, and finding out more about shows on the fringes, especially on public television. In his latest column, he presents two more, both of which sound delicious...]

City- and Country-Mouse Food Shows Light Up
Public-TV Schedules from Different Perspectives

By Tom Brinkmoeller

They're extremely dissimilar, these two worth-watching public-television food programs: America's Test Kitchen, soon to begin its 10th season, rarely leaves the kitchen and its staff works long hours to discover the best recipes, ingredients and kitchen ware and share the findings. Meanwhile, the brand-new Gourmet's Adventures with Ruth takes viewers to cooking schools around the world and, like its sister series Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, is as much about people and destinations as it is about the growing and preparation of food.

The first embodies the New England practicality of its founder and host, the always-bow-tied, Yankee-skeptical Christopher Kimball. The other is so New York, with its jet-to destinations and lineup of celebrities who happily accompanied host Ruth Reichl on these trips.

One show is pot roast and pie -- albeit the best; the other, truffles and Courvoisier.

Program personalities aside, the two do share some interesting similarities. The largest may be that each sprang from the ashes of a dead magazine. Kimball started Cook's magazine in 1980 as an advertising-supported publication. In a very competitive niche market, it survived until 1989. Four years later, Kimball went rogue -- in the minds of those who think print exists for advertising's sake -- by starting Cook's Illustrated, an ad-less magazine that could put its readers first by reporting its research about products and wares without risking a revenue backlash. Six year's later, following the same public-first philosophy, America's Test Kitchen was begun.

Gourmet magazine, after more than 50 years of publishing, recently was put to sleep by its owner, Conde Nast Publications (part of the Newhouse family of ink-and-paper businesses -- once an owner of Cook's magazine before it could no longer stand the heat and got out of that kitchen). Reichl was Gourmet's editor-in-chief until its disappearance, and the deal made for this new series stayed on track, even after the news that the magazine had been canned.

"It's a bigger brand than just a magazine," Executive Producer Laurie Donnelly said, explaining the Conde Nast people wanted the Gourmet name to remain on the series.

The other big similarity is how each program makes food and cooking approachable. Though celebrities like Lorraine Bracco, Diane Weist and Tom Skerritt share the screen with Reichl over the initial season's 10 episodes, the attitude is down-to-earth and viewer-friendly. Each episode is as informative as it is fun and easy-to-watch. Reichl's food credentials are huge, and she wanted the series to reflect the same style and standards people loved in the magazine she led.

Perhaps no cooking show is better at explaining both the science and art of good food than America's Test Kitchen. Before a recipe gets on the air, many variations are tested repeatedly until the best one is found. That's more easily done than it would be for most cooking shows, because the impressive kitchens and full-time staff seen on television are the same ones that support the magazine year-round.

And the television show has the same editorial purity as its parent magazine. Like all public-television series, it accepts no advertising. But Kimball keeps the wall between content and marketing high by making sure the program's underwriters' products would never have an opportunity to show up on the air, says Jack Bishop, the magazine's editorial director and the man on the series who takes Kimball through the weekly blind product taste tests.

Cook's Illustrated showed editorial independence could pay off. Bishop said after only publishing two issues its subscriber list was larger than Cook's, its predecessor. America's Test Kitchen averaged a hefty 1.71 million viewers per show in 2009 -- up from 1.59 the year before, according to show publicity.

The Reichl series, though currently on the air in some cities, has yet to arrive in others. Look for it where you live. With the kind of viewer support it deserves, it also one day could celebrate 10 years on the air.

[For more information, visit the America's Test Kitchen website HERE, and the Gourmet's Adventures with Ruth website HERE.]

--

Tom Brinkmoeller, who once wrote for one of the many branches of the Newhouse conglomerate, wonders if General Motors will follow the Conde Nast example and lend the names "Oldsmobile," "Pontiac," "Saturn," "Saab" and/or "Hummer" to a TV series.

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GUEST BLOG #65: Tom Brinkmoeller Embraces the "Healing" Power of TV

November 24, 2009 10:09 AM

[Bianculli here: Pledge periods for PBS stations are notorious for bait-and-switch tactics, but sometimes some very valuable fish can be found among the bait. Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller writes about one such public TV special, but using much better metaphors...]

'Science of Healing' Extraordinary --
But How Many Will Get to See It?

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It happens to public-TV viewers several times a year: They go to the television listings hoping to find a gem and, instead, hear a loud ripping sound as the local PBS outlet splits its personality and loads its schedule with stunts. The goal always is the same: raise some money to stay on the air. The goal-reaching tactic is one of the most uncharacteristically gauche things these otherwise-rational affiliates do.

This is when feel-good and make-money lecturers take over the stage from actors, not-so-great performances by pop singers preempt masterpieces, and the antiques aren't on the road but on the couch as they and Lawrence Welk attempt to re-create the '50s.

It's also when the letters PBS morph into "Pledge Bait-and-Switch." Viewers attracted enough to these atypical programs to call in a pledge have to be disappointed and disillusioned when Wayne, Suze, Lawrence and company exit and the good stuff returns. They probably rejoin Dancing with the Stars or Glenn Beck, several dollars poorer but, if lucky, with a new coffee mug into which they can cry.

All of which makes it even more ironic when a program created for use during pledge time is as good as the regular PBS programming, but has to compete with the stunt shows to get on the air. That program is The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg. The M.D. of the title, shown above, currently is chief of the Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior section at the National Institute of Mental Health. She's an authoritative researcher and an author. Being pledge time, one might expect such a program to be filled with a lot of podium time, bromide-spouting and large-chart displays.

None of that.

Matt Cohen, an executive producer of the program, calls it "a very low budget show that doesn't look like it. Every dollar is on the screen."

The hour-long show opens in Greece, where Dr. Sternberg, a rheumatologist, accidentally discovered that venues, food and other sense stimuli, when positive, can reduce stress and assist the brain in alleviating physical problems -- in her case, arthritis. In the confines of a single program, Dr. Sternberg explains and demonstrates that theory by visiting researchers who show the healing power of the brain when lower stress levels prevail.

"Each sense can trigger memories that trigger emotional responses that can help you heal -- or not, depending on whether they are positive (reduce stress response) or negative (increase stress response)," she explained.

It's a scientifically sound, fast-moving, easily understood program with the kind of high production values that put it on an equal plane with PBS' excellent science-based series.

The big question is how many people will even get an opportunity to watch this program. Matt Cohen and his brother Renard, whose Resolution Pictures produced it, originally pitched the knowledge contained in Dr. Sternberg's research to PBS as a 13-episode series. Not enough money for a series, they were told, and were introduced to another group of funders, the people who finance pledge programming. A yes from them, plus a timely invitation to a Greece-Crete press junket, made production possible.

And now that it is complete, The Science of Healing goes onto a large menu of shows from which PBS member stations can choose to fill their schedules during pledge time. It stays there for three years, during which it can become a "Waldo" hidden among all kinds of varied offerings. Getting local programmers to watch, and then use, the show is an even bigger challenge than producing a high-quality, genuinely useful, easily understood science special.

Crucial fund-raising, it seems, happens during pledge drives, and some stations aren't about to try out a new idea at harvest time. The tendency is to "stick with tried-and-true," Matt Cohen said.

Getting their show on the schedules of larger-market stations is a solution, Renard Cohen said: "Smaller stations want to see how well it does in a major market."

Every pledge-show producer wants time on a big-city station. As a result, a lot of selling goes on: to get on the key stations' schedules and at a time when people watch. The more money raised, the more smoothly the success will spread to other cities. Another oddity of this whole journey is there isn't a process in place to track which stations use a pledge program. If the Cohens want those stats, they have to hire someone to scan countless schedules -- probably the same person they hope to hire to lobby for their show with local programmers.

The hedge mazes of European castles are more easily navigated. But the payoff could be the series that originally was envisioned during the first trip to the PBS well.

"The bigger numbers we can show to a potential underwriter for a series, the better our chances," said Renard Cohen.

Dr. Sternberg sums up what new things such a series would do:

"In many senses we wanted to create a new genre of health and science television that does not elevate science above the masses and focus on disease, but that focuses on health and welcomes viewers into our world of science, and also includes the back-drop of history, archeology, travel and culture."

STATIONS RECENTLY SIGNED TO BROADCAST The Science of Healing INCLUDE:
(All times local)

Nov. 26:
WGBH 2, WGBH HD, Boston MA, 1 a.m.

Nov. 28:
WETA Washington DC, 6 a.m. (repeats Nov. 29, 12:30 p.m.)
Arizona Public Media, 8 a.m.
New Hampshire Public Television, 11 a.m.
KRMA Denver, CO, 11:30 a.m. (repeats Nov. 29, 3:30 a.m.; Dec. 7, 11 p.m.)
WMPT Annapolis MD, 12:30 p.m. (repeats Dec. 11, 10:30 p.m.)
WMPTV Milwaukee, WI, 12:30 p.m. (repeats Dec. 11, 10:30 p.m.)

Nov. 29:
Western Reserve PBS, OH, 4 p.m.
Maryland Public Television, 1:30 a.m.

Dec. 5:
HD 2, Idaho Public Television, 3:30 p.m.
Dec. 6:
KUED Salt Lake City, UT, 4:30 p.m.

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Tom Brinkmoeller, who has been a caregiver for more than a decade, was curious to see if this show matched the claims contained in its PBS news release. The above enthusiasm reflects the fact that the claims are valid and have added a bright new perspective to a sometimes-challenging commitment.

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GUEST BLOG #61: Tom Brinkmoeller Cooks Up a Tasty TV and Podcast Recommendation

November 5, 2009 12:41 PM

[Bianculli here: Last year, I interviewed cooking author and columnist Mark Bittman for Fresh Air, in an interview you can hear HERE. Today, contributing TV WORTHWATCHING writer Tom Brinkmoeller revisits him. I asked about steaks; Tom asks about podcasts and television. Showoff...]

Minimalist Mark Bittman Maximizes Bite-Sized Video Podcasts

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Foodies know Mark Bittman through his New York Times columns and his popular cooking books.

TV viewers who have an interest in food may know Bittman as Mario Batali's reluctantly comic sidekick on the recent public TV series about food in Spain (Spain...On the Road Again). Or they might have seen him in a guest cooking spot on Today.

In the former, he appeared to acquiesce to Batali's claim to the majority of the spotlight. On Today, as it is with any chef who appears on that show's cooking segments, there's the problem of fitting an interesting segment into an unreasonably short space, while contending with one or more of the program's hosts.

But Bittman finally gets the stage to himself, and proves himself an interesting cook and an entertaining host, on his New York Times-produced The Minimalist video podcasts. (They're also available on iTunes).

In less than five minutes -- usually solo on a kitchen set, but sometimes with a guest chef -- Bittman puts together dishes that not only look good, but also are uncomplicated enough to be re-created by the mere mortals watching him.

And it's all fun to watch. He takes neither cooking nor himself too seriously. Clear, succinct and interesting: The simplicity of the formula and its successful execution makes one wonder how much time is simply wasted on some half-hour food shows.

With 150 Minimalist episodes completed and the ease with which each show flows, you might think this is an idea Bittman developed and is happy to see succeed. No to the first; yes to the second. It was an idea that started with the boss. He reacted as many writers do when an editor attempts to oversteer the vehicle.

"The Times wanted me to do it," he said during a phone interview. "I did it kicking and screaming -- though now I like it. Now I think it's great."

He shoots 13 episodes every quarter, over "six or seven days." He said it's easier to do a complete package with the podcasts, because they're produced and edited. The Today appearances are three-to-five-minute live segments he called "a scramble... but I've gotten better at it."

The Spain series, in which he, Batali and actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Claudia Bassols road-tripped to food venues across the country in a pair of luxury cars, ran during the past year on public-TV stations. Bittman participated in the planning for the 13-part series with Charles Pinsky, its director and executive producer, and said he "had fun doing it." Pinsky is thinking of doing a similar series in another part of the world, said Bittman -- who isn't revealing where that might be, or the identities of the celebrity travelers.

With so many video podcasts, Today appearances and the Spain series on his resume, it seemed Bittman might have a few recommendations of food shows he thinks are worth watching. But that would be wrong:

"I don't watch a lot of food television," he said. "I don't, for the most part, find it that interesting. It's mostly junk."

And that's all he had to say on that subject. Podcasts, stints on morning news shows and sharing an audio track with the outspoken Mario Batali probably engenders brevity.

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Tom Brinkmoeller, who struggles with the cooking of almost anything, understandably admires the author of How to Cook Everything (Bittman), a book that sold so well he wrote a completely revised 10th anniversary version.

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GUEST BLOG #59: Tom Brinkmoeller Leads Us On a "Nature" Walk

October 23, 2009 6:38 PM

[Bianculli here: This weekend, contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller tracks down the executive producer of the long-running PBS series Nature, to explain the birds and the bees. Or, at least, the bees and the stallions...]

Run Like a Stallion, Sting Like a Bee --
As Presented on Public TV

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Nature starts a new season on PBS this Sunday (8 p.m. ET; check local listings) with the third segment in the fascinating story of Rocky Mountain wild horses, "Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions." Naturalist-photographer Ginger Katherns has followed Cloud, a wild stallion, from its birth to its role as a powerful leader among this rare group of untamed horses.

Katherns' instincts in documenting, from the beginning, the life of what would become an extraordinary animal have resulted in a beautifully shot nature trilogy that lets viewers see places and witness events few people experience.

Otherwise-difficult access to places and events pretty accurately summarizes the role Nature has played since it started its run on public television in 1982. Natural-history programming was a virtually empty category in U.S. television at the time, said Nature Executive Producer Fred Kaufman in a recent interview.

He has been with the series since the start, and has led the effort since 1991. The BBC successfully had been producing high-quality natural-history shows for some time, and the new PBS series imported the British network's shows in its early days.

"There really wasn't a market in the U.S. for that type of show at the time," he said. "As a result, we paid sort of a wholesale price" to the BBC producers.

It wasn't too long before original Nature programs were being produced. The transition has been very successful. To date, the series has won 10 Emmys, three Peabody Awards, and received the Sierra Club's first-ever award to a television show. At 28 seasons, it's a successful long-distance runner, and its long-time hold on the 8 p.m. Sunday spot underlines its popularity. It remains a staple in many homes for intelligent, accessible family programming.

A key to its continued success is its ability to expand the original concept and adapt to changes in viewer sophistication and advances in technology.

"For the first 10 years, you would have been hard-pressed to find a person in any (Nature) scene," Kaufman said. Also, he added, all early shows also were exclusively shot on film. But the people who produce the footage now help tell important parts of the stories, and the transition to videotape -- and then to high definition -- were changes that made the series even better.

In 2007, a Nature episode, "Silence of the Bees," used a special camera that allows a dramatic slow-motion effect and the same endoscopic video technology used by surgeons to go inside bee colonies. The technology helped to better explain the phenomenon that has been devastating the world's bee population.

It also won the series a Peabody Award for the episode.

Kaufman's confidence in the production's singular excellence sank dramatically the night it aired, and winning awards was far from his thoughts. An hour before "Silence of the Bees" premiered, the hit CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired an in-depth story on the same topic.

"My jaw dropped," he said when he saw the piece. "They did a great job."

He worried the Nature special would suffer from overexposure. That was not the case. Kaufman said a Peabody judge explained Nature was given the prize because it not only explained the issue as well as 60 Minutes, but also "because of the way we filmed the bees... that bumped it up a bit."

Kaufman oversees the production of 13 new episodes each year. In deciding which shows get produced, they follow a simple directive: "What haven't we done that we can do that the audience will enjoy?" Some ideas come from inside, while others are generated by a network of researchers and nature videographers that has grown over the years. A stretch of 18 months to three years can occur between the approval of an idea and its completion, he said.

This season's shows will take close looks at the first days of life for all kinds of animals ("Born Wild: The First Days of Life," Nov. 1); the efforts of some South African snake handlers to improve the image of s dangerous snake ("Black Mamba," Nov. 8), and the first year in the life of a female humpback whale ("Fellowship of the Whales," Nov. 15).

New episodes in early 2010 will focus on wolverines, the giant pythons that live in the Everglades, and confrontations between Yellowstone's bears and wolves.

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Tom Brinkmoeller did some research and discovered a few PBS series have been on longer than Nature: Washington Week ('67); Sesame Street ('69); Masterpiece Theatre ('71); Great Performances ('72); Austin City Limits and Nova (both '74); Newshour ('75) -- all TV Worth Watching.

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GUEST BLOG #57: Tom Brinkmoeller on TV's coolest road trip

October 15, 2009 7:25 AM

[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller delights in unearthing TV treasures from the remote spectrum of broadcast TV. This time he's outdone himself, and champions a show I've never even HEARD of, much less seen...]

On the road again for revelations

By Tom Brinkmoeller

In 1967, Charles Kuralt invented a television genre when he began documenting simple and interesting parts of America and its people with his series of "On the Road" reports for CBS News.

In 1995, soon after Kuralt ended those reports, three guys from a Kansas public television station accidentally picked up the thread. And they've been having nothing but fun with it ever since.

Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations is a half-hour series that finds outsider art in all corners of the country, has fun making the discovery, and tries to include the creators of that art. It's a road trip with a trio of the coolest tour guides ever on public TV -- a kind of a Monty Python meets Rick Steves mix that tells you a lot about what you're seeing and makes you laugh at the same time.

It's one of those small, obscure public television series that's a delight to discover, so if you see it on the schedule where you live, don't pass it up. Where Kuralt's reports reflected the decorum of CBS in its "Tiffany network" era, the guys behind Roadside -- producers Mike Murphy and Randy Mason, with videographer Don Mayberger [left to right in photo at top] -- look at their subjects with a decidedly Midwestern point of view. Kuralt's detached smile has been replaced with more than a few hearty laughs and endless bad puns. Most of the charm is in the presentation.

The Rare Visions trio is, in fact, a quartet. The "world's largest ball of videotape" -- 70-pounds-plus -- has had its own seat in their van on every road trip since the series began. It's their own version of outsider art.

Mason said by phone from Kansas City's KCPT that the series is "about people creating stuff they want to. Some of it's art, and some is not. They're just making it because it's something they can do and share. We never make fun of an artist." (A New Orleans artist named Big Al made this piece of folk art.)

That's the approach that made Georgia resident Gary Arnold a fan. "(They) feature people that are marginalized and categorized by society as 'different,' or 'eccentric,' or just plain crazy," said Arnold, who often enthuses about the show online. "(The show) doesn't present these marvelous individuals to their viewers as freaks in a freak show, to be mocked and jeered at, but as visionaries to be celebrated."

RVRR starts its 13th season early next year, but it began simply as a rebuttal to what was perceived by Kansas residents as an insult to their state. A New York Times story had named Kansas the worst tourism state, and KCPT programming executives Mason and Murphy decided to hit state roads with videographer Mayberger to prove the mighty Times wrong. They spent five days on their project, turned it into an hour-long special, and were surprised when its showing resulted in a large viewer response. "We had thought it was going to be a one-show thing," Mason said.

That reaction convinced the station's management to expand the idea. In early 1996, the three rented a van and shot enough non-Kansas footage for six more shows. "The smart money would have said that's it," Murphy said.

But the show's popularity has resulted in 72 more episodes, shot in all but two of the 48 contiguous states. (Connecticut and Delaware haven't yet made the cut. They found this gas station in Decatur, Texas.) They limit their road time to two weeks each year -- "The joy we have in traveling with each other by the end of those two weeks becomes somewhat diminished," Murphy said -- then return to Kansas, where each episode takes about three weeks to edit.

An early fan wrote a four-page letter of praise and included two checks -- one to the station and a larger one to the RVRR team to make their road life a bit nicer. They estimate they have driven nearly 70,000 miles in the rented van that's a step or two down from the motor home Kuralt used as home base. Motels and meals aren't fancy.

But "I look forward to it every year," Murphy said. "How could you not be happy seeing America like this? It is this very visceral thing. You get up every morning, start driving and eventually you see something really cool."

That enjoyment is contagious.

[Check your local public TV station's web site for air times. In New York, WLIW/21 runs Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations Friday nights at 11:30 p.m., while in Philadelphia, WHYY's Y ARTS digital subchannel runs it Thursday at 4 p.m., Saturday at 10 a.m. and Sunday at 10:30 a.m.]

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Tom Brinkmoeller travels vicariously through good TV travel shows. He thinks there ought to be a medal for people who drive 70,000 miles so non-travelers can see strange things and meet amazing artists.

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GUEST BLOG #53: Tom Brinkmoeller Takes A Critical Look... At Critics

September 23, 2009 10:04 AM

[Bianculli here: Once again, I'd like to encourage you to click on the Fall TV Preview banner above the Best Bets and check out TV WORTH WATCHING's constantly updated analysis of the new fall shows. And today, keep reading to check out contributing columnist Tom Brinkmoeller's advice about taking advice, at least from critics...]

TV Star Ratings and Critical Raves: Don't Necessarily Believe Everything You Read

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Along with the ads for Christmas layaway and robocalls from political wannabes, another sign of early fall has hit the atmosphere: reviews of the new TV shows.

Like computer-model hurricane predictions, these reviews serve the valuable purpose of telling readers when to run for cover. But just like the weather reporter who howls frantic warnings when anything monumental ever will hit land, some reviewers aren't to be taken seriously.

A few points to consider as we're immersed in the new fall TV premiere week:

1) Beware of the bite. When you see a review quote in an ad for a TV show, squint hard and look for the attribution. If the quote is from someone or some source you've never heard of, your faith in this new show should be guarded. If you can search the Web and find the source, see if it has any credibility.

If it's nothing but a site that spits out bite-sized quotes in the hopes they will be appropriated by an ad-writing flack, the site has all the credibility of a litter box. This reviewer has more enthusiasm than the show's executive producer. Ignore the hype. Far as I'm concerned, this rule applies to anything good said in a review of Hank or Brothers.

2) Too many stars is a sign of turbulence in the cosmos. Film reviewers who reward stars do so for a completed package. TV reviewers who award stars are doing so for a work-in-progress. On a five-star scale, no series ever has been born with all five. Five stars, if they are indeed a reflection of near-perfection, is something into which a TV series grows.

No matter how much one loves the current state -- or the memory of -- a series, a viewing of the pilot and the first season will show how much that series has grown. If a good series doesn't grow, it's like an artificial bouquet. It doesn't age, it just gathers dust.

3) Adopt a critic. You're here, probably, because of Bianculli. Doesn't mean he's the final word in quality judgment, but he's near the top in your (and my) mind. You've tested his reviews against your tastes and found a good match. (If anything I've written has resonated well in your taste area, you'll seriously consider my endorsement of The Good Wife and The Middle.)

Use the same criterion with others who review television. If your tastes match, give that critic your equivalent of five stars. If you never agree with a critic, that's valuable, too. Anything that gets positive comments from that person is almost automatically to be ignored. If that reviewer dislikes something, it may have some great redeeming values. (Avoid The Good Wife and The Middle if my writing causes you to shut down your computer.)

4) Believe in television's love of the mundane: If you like something new on TV and most critics hate it, know the show has a great chance of surviving. Conversely, if you hate something new and the best critics like it, know it is airing on borrowed time and almost surely will disappear very soon.

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Tom Brinkmoeller is ever mindful of the fact that "critic" and "cynic" can share more than similar-sounding syllables, if one is not very careful.

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GUEST BLOG #52: Tom Brinkmoeller On a New Way to Appreciate Old TV

September 17, 2009 10:37 AM

[Bianculli here: With the new fall TV season about to arrive, contributing columnist Tom Brinkmoeller checks out the revamp of a website devoted to old TV, and the preservation of its oral history. Warning: The site, like the columnist, may prove addictive...]

Repackaged Website Provides User-Friendly Access to Priceless Interviews

By Tom Brinkmoeller

A premise of which I'm so sure, I'm smug about it:

If you're a regular visitor to this site, your interest in television stretches way past buying vowels or Atlanta housewives. If that's correct, and you love and are fascinated by good television, go to this site soon: emmytvlegends.org

Been there before? You'll be pleased with the improvement. New to you? If you're a fan of TV WORTH WATCHING, you'll think you've discovered a new mother lode.

More than a decade ago, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation started recording interviews with most of the people who have contributed to television's history. To date, more than 600 interviews have been completed.Not the talk-show-interview type, which can last about five minutes, including the obligatory clip for the product being promoted. No, there are interviews of depth and interest, with intelligent questions prompting interesting answers.

In essence, you're part of a wonderful chat. Not since Dick Cavett's show ended has this kind of interviewing been seen so easily.

In 2005, the interviews started showing up on the Web. But finding what you were looking for was clumsy, and interest in tapping into this collection easily could be deflated. The just-launched, redesigned site lets visitors search by people, shows, professions and topics. The former labyrinth has been dismantled. Ease of use clearly is the successful main motivator of the redesign.

Go to the site and click on Interviews in the menu bar, and then on People in the sub-menu, to get an idea of the diverse collection of people, from in front of and behind the camera, who have shared their time and wonderfully explored reflections and opinions.

Some of the interviews have yet to be added to the site, and their names don't link to the interviews. But a spokesman for the Foundation, asked about this, says, "They're working to get everything uploaded as quickly as possible." And though there is no time line, completing the site is an obvious high priority.

Sid Caesar to Milton Berle. Grant Tinker to Ted Turner. Leonard Nimoy to Mary Tyler Moore. And many more, enough to tailor-fit any taste. And those whose interviews offer a longtime insight into their extraordinary lives, lives which have, sadly, recently come to an end: Walter Cronkite, Don Hewitt, Larry Gelbart, Tim Russert and others.

The interviews have been around for a while, but this repackaging is so, so much more than regifting. Visit, explore, and enjoy.

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Tom Brinkmoeller wishes the content of commercial television were as imaginative as the Web site that gives such great insights into its history.

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GUEST BLOG #46: Tracking "History Detectives" and Digging "Time Team America" with Tom Brinkmoeller

August 31, 2009 10:35 AM

[Bianculli here: Finding quality TV shows can be tough enough. Showing your support for them, even when they're on public television, can be even trickier, as contributing critic Tom Brinkmoeller reports today, using two current series to make his point...]

Two Exceptional PBS Series in Search of Viewer Momentum

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Trail-blazing in Oregon isn't limited to the NBA. Two of public television's more innovative and consistently entertaining series, History Detectives and Time Team America, are products of OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting). Each is built on an inventively new concept -- a rare event in America's follow-the-leader television business. In every episode of each series, producers manage to creatively and intelligently tell stories that entertain and educate. The two series are gems that are, as they say, well worth watching.

High quality aside, the life expectancy for each is a less-than-grand. This column is a shameless attempt to generate some of the enthusiasm that gave Friday Night Lights and Jericho leverage against cancellation. More on the jeopardy thing shortly. First, a brief sales pitch.

History Detectives, which presents a new episode tonight and its season finale next week (10 ET on PBS; check local listings), investigates, in several fascinating individual stories weekly, what, if any, historical significance can be tied to three or four objects that have been submitted to the show.

A piece of cloth may have been part of a World War II effort to use floating balloons to bomb America's western states. A piece of crumpled metal may have been part of Amelia Earhart's plane, and another may have been part of the Hindenburg. A machine may have been a Thomas Edison invention designed to communicate with the dead, but neither it nor he is talking.

They're just a few of the examples of stories that made it to the air from what executive producer David Davis says are about 5,000 viewer submissions each season. Once an idea comes in, it is scrutinized. If it's "a good story to tell," says Davis, and if the show's impressive group of researchers believe the history can be traced, an object is a bit closer to getting on the show.

The digging that has to happen next determines the segment's outcome. Contrary to the impression the series sometimes gives, a judgment is made on the object's history before any shooting begins. The segments compress the research, and one of the show's principals physically, and geographically, retraces the steps the researchers uncovered.

Davis semi-seriously describes the program as "Antiques Roadshow meets CSI." Up to 10 weeks can be spent putting together each segment, and the respect for detail shows up brightly. Aggressive fact-finding melds with good storytelling, and the results don't disappoint.

Time Team America, which recently wrapped its first season of five episodes, also does digging, this time literally. Each week its team of archeologists, each with a different speciality and all possessing a wealth of experience, visits a US dig and lends three days of collective expertise and a wealth of technological tools, to the team already working there.

Once again, professional production skills merge with science to produce a package that entertains, teaches and, endearingly, shows that people with impressive graduate degrees can love their work enough to dig and sift through tons of dirt, and deal with false leads, scorching sun, dig-filling rains, insects, snakes and other elements that don't plague university lecturers.

One last element of the pitch: If you haven't seen one or both but want to sample these series, full episodes can be watched at video.pbs.org, which you can reach by linking HERE.

Now the jeopardy part: The seventh season of History Detectives ends next week. It is the second most popular PBS summer series (after Antiques Roadshow), with a 1.5 rating (35 percent higher than the average PBS prime-time rating). Time Team America's first season is complete, and its .8 rating isn't bad for a freshman PBS summer series.

Especially in a recession, excellence doesn't necessarily pay the bills. Neither show, despite concentrated and prolonged efforts by OPB, has any underwriters. PBS has made up for what institutional and corporate contributors, to date, haven't done. It has fully funded History Detectives, and OPB recently learned that funding is promised for seasons eight and nine, even if no underwriting is found. A decision hasn't yet been made on Time Team America, which PBS funded this year.

Recent news of cutbacks due to revenue shortfalls (e.g., your clunker was worth $4500 last week; this week it's just a worthless heap again) demonstrates the fickleness of well-made promises. OPB would, no doubt, feel a lot better if funding were backed up by a contract. So would the shows' fans.

What can series supporters do?

Those involved in marketing who see the value of reaching a deliciously high-end audience at a great cost-per-thousand can stake out a prime image-making spot by putting some marketing money where it makes undeniable sense. If you're not in this unique position, and you think the series deserve more time: watch, to keep the ratings up; write/e-mail OPB and PBS to tell of your dedication to the shows; and, should you decide to make a donation to a PBS station, tell them in your letter or phone call you're giving them money to help your favorite shows stay on the air.

(Once, you could support those series by just calling in your pledge while they were on the air. That's not as easy, since Wayne Dyer, Suze Orman and other shills take over the air during pledge drives on almost all public stations.)

As long as The Biggest Loser, The Bachelor and Big Brother can tramp through prime time without a care in the world, we viewers can get a bit more aggressive about programs that are worth caring about.

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Tom Brinkmoeller insists he's not a big PBS fan just because it spares him encounters with car-insurance commercials and programs featuring Ryan Seacrest. Honest!

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GUEST BLOG #45: Just When Tom Brinkmoeller Thought He Was Out, We Pulled Him Back In...

August 27, 2009 9:35 AM

[Bianculli here: We here at TV WORTH WATCHING are gearing up for the fall TV season, and wrestling with a site relaunch that may or may not be done in time. Meanwhile, asked to start perusing the new fall fare in advance, one of our contributing critics had an identity-crisis epiphany...]

Going Back Into Combat After a 24-Year Absence

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Though it's an event that lost its drum-roll status a long time ago, a new television season is about to happen. The gates will open, the stuff will spill out and fans of worthwhile programs will look for guidance in what among the new is worth watching, and what should be avoided. Again this year, TV WORTH WATCHING will offer its insights on the subject through the eyes of its contributors.

Be warned: This contributor will go about this in a different, decidedly unprofessional way.

You are viewers, very discriminating viewers. Read the comments to TVWW's blogs, and that is immensely clear.

The writers of the blogs you read, and sometimes comment upon, are long-time, very credentialed critics.

I am more you than I am us.

Even though that statement sounds like it was stolen from a Lewis Carroll story, it means the other people who write here have been critiquing television, pretty much non-stop, for decades. I, on the other hand, stopped being paid to be a critic decades ago. Even when I was being paid, my talents were loaded on the reporting side of broadcasting, rather than on the side that awards stars for excellence.

I advised readers to think of me as a consumer reporter who told them what business decisions drove the people who were selling them programming. Networks, I said, bundle viewers for advertisers. They usually care little about the quality of what's being shown; they care much more about how it will act as a snare to trap viewers. The more they catch, the more money they make.

In the time that has passed since I was last paid to criticize, I became more like you. I am a viewer who is very selective about what television merits the investment of my time. For the best advice, I followed the wisdom of Bianculli at the newspaper and then on this site, just as you are -- until I got my Schraft's moment and he, with whom I collaborated on several stories in the '80s, offered an invitation to write again.

But that did not make me a critic the likes of my teammates. I long ago lost the feeling of obligation to watch an entire program before making up my Viewer Mind. That "civilian" philosophy told me a program had a limited chance to catch my attention and imagination. If this didn't happen within 10 minutes of a 30-minute show, I would stop watching.

Hour-long dramas had an even harder time of it. Not only did they have to give me a reason to watch beyond 20 minutes, but they had to give me a reason to return for weekly doses. And that's the tougher criterion. Historically, high-quality TV dramas are born on life support, and networks appear way too anxious to pull the plug.

I have been burned, as a TV consumer, too often by this. Comedies make your mind relax; if they go away, it's a shame, but you learn to chill another way. But good dramas make you subscribe. You buy into the acting, writing -- the whole package. It's a commitment.

Then some marketing-research apprentice at the networks decides to put it on hiatus. Or switch its schedule spot. Or kick the good product in the ass with gimmicks until it loses all the charm it had and, instead, takes on the appearance of something only Aaron Spelling could have loved.

Now, as a columnist for TV WORTH WATCHING, I'm a hybrid. I will not subject myself to a full hour if there is so much slop up front that a full 60 minutes could be harmful to my health. In such cases (and there are some deadly examples on the new schedule), I'll just recuse myself from the deliberations and let Bianculli and the others review -- they have, over time, built up an immunity to TV's toxins. I'll weigh in on a show only when I've watched the whole thing.

And I have seen most of the new shows, in total. The ones I like may or may not maintain that level of excellence, and among the many losers, a metamorphosis into high quality could happen, but I don't bet on it. But please count on the fact that whatever I DO offer an opinion on will be judged fairly, with my Viewer Mind completely disengaged.

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Tom Brinkmoeller doesn't miss critic-type encounters with network types. Quoting Lewis Carroll (for real): "'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice.'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'" Tom thinks the view from a La-Z-Boy is more relaxed, and probably more sane.

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GUEST BLOG #42: Tom Brinkmoeller Laments the Later Resumes of All-Star TV Casts

August 17, 2009 9:00 AM

[Bianculli here: The best TV comedy and drama series benefit from synergy, when their casts feature actors who are strong individually and superb collectively. Contributing critic Tom Brinkmoeller wonders why some of those actors never get lightning to strike twice...]

Will the M*A*S*H Syndrome Claim More Victims This Fall?

By Tom Brinkmoeller

I have always thought of the problem as the M*A*S*H Syndrome: The collection of some of the best imaginable characters in one program, and the in-effect disappearance of the actors who played them once the series ends. Loretta Swit, Jamie Farr, Gary Burghoff, William Christopher and others, to varying degrees, ended up leaving our lives when they left their M*A*S*H characters.

No good character exists without good writing. Just as true, the best writing is flat and useless in the hands of a bad actor. I’'e always regretted these fine M*A*S*H actors never got teamed up with the high-talent behind-the-camera part of that mix again.

A new season looms in which a number of actors who won fans and awards in previously successful series (Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton and Courteney Cox are some of the more stellar members of this pack) are going to try for it again. Not all good actors get this opportunity to shine anew. It made me think of characters viewers loved, who were brought to life by good actors, who we rarely got to see again, once the series they populated went away.

This has happened to the stars of other mega-hit series: The Cosby Show's special cast members didn't break out again; the six Friends stars may be set for life financially, but they're pretty much out of the lives of the people who helped them grow (Ms. Cox's new Cougar Town looks like a short-termer); all but one of Seinfeld's principals also are affluently out of sight.

The tally sheets for Cheers and spinoff Frasier are mixed (Grammer's new Hank shows up lame at the starting gate). While a few actors have built off their hit series, others whose characters were key parts of the magic (George Wendt, John Ratzenberger, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin) didn't fare as well.

Sad that no one created similar chemistry after those series folded.

But really good actors who helped create memorable characters, only to evaporate, existed in lesser-rated series, too.

Ellen DeGeneres' mid-'90s sitcom owes a lot of its magic to supporting cast David Anthony Higgins (Joe), Joely Fisher (Paige) and Clea Lewis (Audrey).

Joe Regalbuto (Frank) and Charles Kimbrough (Jim Dial) were key players in the Murphy Brown success.

Same can be said for Night Court's Richard Moll (Bull), Charles Robinson (Mac) and Marsha Warfield (Roz).

Go back farther and you can ask why Julia Duffy, who added an essential layer of wonderful goofiness to Newhart as Stephanie, never got the same comedy spotlight. Why didn't someone cast Bill Daily in a role as fun as his Howard Borden character in the earlier Bob Newhart Show?

Obscurity isn't always involuntary (a recent What Not to Wear revealed that Blossom star Mayim Bialik left show business to earn her Ph.D). Nor is it permanent. Jon Cryer, who was funny but overlooked in '89's The Famous Teddy Z, was "rediscovered" and now is an integral part of Two and a Half Men's success as Alan.

Also, David McCallum, who all but disappeared after creating the too-cool Illya Kuryakin character in The Man from UNCLE, is equally cool, though an older cool, in NCIS's medical examiner, Ducky. But they escaped the M*A*S*H Syndrome. And I wonder how many other actors would be doing good, high-profile work again, if they'd been given a spot in a high-quality production.

Any interest in adding to this list of unforgettable actors who, despite making TV watching worthwhile, fell off TV's schedule? Name a favorite -- or more.

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Tom Brinkmoeller always thought super-cool newspaper editors like Lou Grant's Art Donovan existed only in dreams. That had to be the serious career impediment, he thinks, for Jack Bannon, the actor who played him.

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GUEST BLOG #40: Tom Brinkmoeller on "Julie & Julia" -- and the Real Julia Child

August 7, 2009 7:10 AM

[Bianculli here: Contributing TV critic Tom Brinkmoeller is a long-time Julia Child fan, so he approached the new Julie & Julia movie with a grain of salt (and pepper). Turns out he enjoyed it a lot -- but savors the real Julia Child, and her TV legacy, even more...]

Julia Child: In New Movie and on TV, A Lot More than Just "Save the Liver!"

By Tom Brinkmoeller

It's about an hour into the film Julie & Julia that Dan Aykroyd's 1978 Saturday Night Live parody of Julia Child shows up.

It's a famous skit, in which Aykroyd's over-the-top caricature of the chef on her original TV show accidentally cuts herself, and tries to carry on as she bleeds uncontrollably. Though not doing much to advance the story line, the piece is valuable because it shows how awful a movie this might have been in the hands of someone who sees Julia Child only as a caricature. (Watch it HERE.)

Thank you, Nora Ephron, for writing and directing a film that treats Child as a real person. And thank you, Meryl Streep, for showing Child's humanity in playing this icon whom I, like the film's other title character, consider a hero.

In 2002, 29-year-old Julie Powell decided to make, in a year's time, every recipe in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking book and blog about the experience -- an experience that led to a popular book and to this movie. Simultaneously, it tells the story of how a woman in 1949 Paris transformed from the under-challenged wife of an American diplomat into America's first celebrity chef.

I'm not a film critic, and critiquing this enjoyable movie might be more suited to a site called MOVIES WORTH WATCHING. But everything Child ever did for television solidly belongs here. And I think it's fair to guess that many people who stop here to read about high-quality television will see the new film. Go knowing you'll be more entertained than disappointed.

But, if you're as much of a Julia junkie as am I, be ready, also, to feel a little cheated that the Julia Child whose four later cooking series still are regularly shown on many public stations doesn't show up in this film.

You will see the problems she and her collaborators had in getting the first book published. And you'll see Streep doing versions of the original PBS black-and-white series, The French Chef (the show Aykroyd parodied). It's that period of Child's life that is relevant to this film.

Too bad there's a bit of the Aykroyd in Streep's re-created French Chef clips. Before writing this, I scanned episodes of The French Chef three-DVD set (which I previously have watched in full) just to check my memory. Child is like no other television personality who preceded her, but her enthusiasm for cooking does not reach the quirky level the film portrays.

And for those whose knowledge of Child is minimal, there's no hint of how the host of that original series grew into a seminal model for future cooks and chefs.

She was the original celebrity chef. But she didn't open restaurants or endorse cookware to play on her name, and she rarely lectured her viewers, showing off her superior knowledge, the way many of today's TV cooking stars love to do.

Watch the series on which she cooked and baked with A-list chefs, and you'll see her advance the knowledge of her viewers by asking questions to which she undoubtedly already knew the answers. The chefs would skip over an important point, and she would unselfishly put the viewer at the head of the line again, by making sure the visiting expert would explain the use of an ingredient, technique or piece of equipment. Viewer first, while never calling the chef to task.

In these series, though she had a level of fame some of her guests must really have envied, her role was sidekick. She rarely took the spotlight off the visitor to her kitchen, happily making her guest the star. And in one series, she moved the spotlight from the kitchen in her Cambridge, Mass., home and into the kitchen of whatever chef was guest that week. She did intros and wrap-ups to the episode, but the attention almost totally was on the guest.

Only when she shared her kitchen for a series with her good friend Jacques Pepin did a Julia Child program turn into a team effort. They were funny together, and they didn't always agree. Child, for instance, insisted on white pepper over black, apparently for cosmetic reasons, while Pepin favored the taste of black pepper over the other's aesthetic merits.

The pepper rivalry showed up more than once, and the inside joke seasoned the shows without ever crossing over into nonsensical. Always, viewers who wanted to watch artists at work weren't disappointed.

The main reason for mentioning this side of Julia Child is to mitigate a hint the movie makes that the famous chef didn't think much of Julie Powell's endeavor. In the film, After a New York Times story takes the young cook's exposure to a much higher level, Powell gets a call from a reporter who says he thinks Child doesn't approve.

Child, by this time, had sold her Cambridge home and moved to California and a small Santa Barbara apartment. The reporter from the local paper relates to Powell, in a phone call, what he interprets from a call he made to Child, asking for a reaction.

After a moment or two of Julie's angst over the possible rejection by her hero, the movie moves on. Child died in 2004, and she and Powell never did meet or talk. But those who don't know much about Child might take away from the movie that the star of The French Chef was jealous, heartless, senile or just mean.

Wolfgang Puck, whose series was running on The Food Network at the time, devoted an entire episode to cooking with Child in her new, small kitchen. Puck's series now runs on Fine Living Network, and though the Puck-Child episode is not, at the moment, scheduled for a timely repeat (talk about a missed bet), if you ever see it on the schedule, watch. It's the Wolfgang Puck episode called "Wolfgang & Julia: In the Kitchen."

What you'll see is an aging Julia Child -- working in a kitchen that's incredibly small -- as gracious, smart and wonderful as ever.

Julia Child mean? As likely as Julia Child driving up to a Burger King and ordering a Whopper.

----------

Tom Brinkmoeller, who does what some might call cooking daily, loves to watch people who actually know what they're doing in the kitchen. And nobody, in his opinion, makes the watching more enjoyable than Ms. Child.

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GUEST BLOG #31: Tom Brinkmoeller on 'Sunday Morning' delights

July 9, 2009 2:00 AM

[Bianculli here: One of the best things about TV WORTH WATCHING, if I do say so myself (and I do), is that its writers are encouraged to follow their passions. Today, contributing columnist Tom Brinkmoeller's passion takes him to an old TV friend: a show that's been around since the Carter administration, but remains one of broadcast TV's most watchable, least hyper nonfiction newsmagazines...

'Sunday Morning' Stays at Top Form by Staying the Same

By Tom Brinkmoeller

A little more than 30 years ago, as it was getting ready to debut CBS' Sunday Morning, the network mailed out a promotional piece that was perceived as a challenge by many who received it. It was a drawing of a newspaper floating out of a TV screen.

"CBS News Sunday Morning," read the copy. "The Sunday Paper that Comes in a Tube!"

Sent to newspapers across the country, it seemed like a red cape waved in front of people so bullish at the time on print news. I know that because the people at my paper, who patiently smiled at the CBS claim, assigned me the story of finding the reactions of other news folk.

"Like other TV news programs, they'll be hard-pressed to deal effectively with other than visual news," said a news executive at one paper.

"I'm glad that TV's adding to its news coverage," said the managing editor of another paper. "God knows they need it. But I feel they could run news all day and still not equal the kind of content we offer."

"The beautiful thing about a Sunday newspaper," said another of these unfazed editors, "is that you can pick it up and read it any time during the week . . . That's something they can't easily do with a newscast."

Since that day in 1979, time-shifting of programming through home VCRs and DVRs has arrived, and it, like the Internet, has scrambled the news assessments of three decades ago. Newspapers are curled into a corner, as afraid and bewildered as the bully who's met his match. Latest figures from the group that audits newspaper circulation numbers show subscribers for Sunday papers dropped 4.8 percent between October 2008 and March 2009. Arrogance is a tricky thing.

Meanwhile, Sunday Morning is having its "best season in several years" -- so says the program's executive producer for the last 10 years, Rand Morrison. "We have 5 million loyal . . . viewers each week," in what Nielsen reports are 3.7 million homes.

But it's more than changes in the media landscape that have made Sunday Morning so successful for so long. A look at the many failed newsmagazine attempts from NBC over that span, as well as the sorry state of the surviving Dateline, proves network presence doesn't translate to lifetime respectability.

CBS' Sunday Morning started as a class act and has only improved since. Robert (Shad) Northshield, a creator of the show and its first executive producer, said back then that CBS had dedicated "a real commitment" and a "relatively high budget" to Sunday Morning. Morrison says the network's support hasn't changed and the trendiness that marks other news shows hasn't been forced on his.

"We're very lucky to have enlightened bosses who understand that, for our audience, this works. I have never had a conversation with a boss to start or stop a story."

No one has pushed to have studio windows looking out on the street. There are no live performances by pop groups. No cooking or decorating demonstrations. Host Charles Osgood doesn't ask his viewers to guess where in the world he's traveled to this week. (Morrison says, "We've been really fortunate to have had two anchors throughout the show's history, Charles Osgood and before him Charles Kuralt, who our viewers have considered to be smart and loved broadcasters.")

Instead, viewers get to see deep, truly interesting interviews with people who don't have a movie, album or book to peddle. Recent stories about Sheryl Crow, Dennis Hopper, Norman Lear, Lynda Carter, Lionel Richie and Marianne Faithfull are the kinds you don't see on Today, Good Morning America or the other regular stops on the hype circuit.

Features one recent week included two other examples of what Morrison says are stories "that take [viewers] someplace they never thought they'd be going" -- a 2-year-old pool-playing phenomenon known as New York Shorts (watch it here), and the love-to-hate process behind buying a parrot and then finding out they're more work than buyers ever imagined. The program's consistently strong reporting, producing and editing guarantee the most engrossing 90 minutes of news produced anywhere.

Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent on PBS' equally respected NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, mirrors the respect Sunday Morning carries among fellow professionals:

"They found a formula that defines who they are and what they offer uniquely, and they've stuck with it. Despite dramatic changes in the news media, and pressures to try something different and 'hip,' they haven't changed their mission or their approach in any fundamental way in all the years they've been on the air. Viewers know what they're getting when they turn to CBS' Sunday Morning -- in-depth looks at some of the most interesting and under-reported stories of the day. Plus, they've kept a crew of terrifically talented correspondents and producers, who deliver week in and week out."

Hear much praise like that for newspapers lately?

[In most markets, Sunday Morning airs at 9 a.m. ET, but check your local listings.]

----------

Tom Brinkmoeller, who may
have smirked with the best
of them back when CBS'
Sunday Morning premiered,
has only rarely missed a
Sunday broadcast for years.

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GUEST BLOG #28: Tom Brinkmoeller pokes 'Jon & Kate' in the eye

June 26, 2009 6:00 AM

Bianculli here: Celebrity culture has never been more obvious or inescapable than right now, as TV covers -- blankets, smothers -- the death of Michael Jackson, with Farrah Fawcett's death in second place, Ed McMahon's death a distant third, the unfaithful South Carolina governor a rapidly sidelined fourth, and the poor protesters in Iran wiped off the attention grid almost entirely. So what does the celebrity of Jon and Kate have to do with all this? According to contributing columnist Tom Brinkmoeller, a lot...

'Jon & Kate' Just Ate America's Lunch

By Tom Brinkmoeller

How many times did Moe tell his Three Stooges partner Curly to pick two fingers, and then poked him in the eyes with the fingers he picked? How many times did Moe tell the bald Stooge to hit his hand, and then swing his arm in an arc to land his fist on Curly's head?

If you think the Stooges are history, think again. Television's play-callers are pulling the old Moe trick on us more often and more brazenly lately than its namesake ever did. They think of us as a collection of Curlys. And lots of us have offered our eyes as willing targets.

The largest offender, to date: TLC, for the way it has suckered so many into the spider web called Jon & Kate Plus 8. Maybe you remember how Moe would clamp a huge pliers on Curly
s nose and pull him around? See any similarity in the way TLC has been yanking us around?

With an amount of manufactured excitement its Learning Channel predecessor would have considered offensive, the unabashed new TLC used a giant stick to stir up the waters as it led up to Monday's D-I-V-O-R-C-E episode. Fresh photos of the telegenic parents with eight children got published. Unattributed rumors got printed. Clips showed up on the star-sycophant programs. Emeril Lagasse and the American Chopper comedy trio made guest appearances.

People who once sold pet rocks and mood rings must be the VPs of hype at TLC. They said, "Pick two!" and the viewing Curlys let themselves get poked in the eye.

Following Monday's melodramatic conclusion -- as the public response morphed into "How could anyone victimize those sweet children?" -- there's a lot of handwringing going on in some of the same fields where the first seeds of hype started growing a few weeks ago. Why isn't someone wringing TLC's neck, instead, for selling more sideshow tickets than Barnum ever dreamed of peddling?

More evidence of stink: The night after the momentous episode aired, it aired again. And now, as the series is on a so-called hiatus, the TLC schedule is amply populated with maudlin promos inviting viewers to revisit the better days, as the network works to make sure the upcoming reruns pull better ratings than the originals. Parent-company Discovery's e-mail list sent out an offer Wednesday right: Buy the Season 1 DVD of Jon & Kate and get the second season free!

This really awful series (is there ever a time when one or more of the children, or Jon, for that matter, isn't crying?) is not the first to play the manipulation game. Bachelors and bachelorettes, celebrity apprentices -- and of course those celebrities who should be left in the jungle -- do it, too. But these vapid competition shows don't make children into accomplices. So in the current tally, Jon & Kate is the worst.

Does the manipulation have to rise to the Bernie Madoff level before someone finally shuts it down? This isn't a regulatory thing, like banning cigarette commercials was. Nor is it like TV's 1950s quiz-show scandals, where government officials jumped in and created an entirely different mess.

This is one for the public to change simply by waking up and realizing they're being used shamelessly. We can reverse things, and not just by tuning out of these sickly shows (though low ratings hit networks in the most sensitive body parts). When large numbers tune out and sound off by calling this the scam trend it is, the garden slugs who come up with these shows will slink out of town before they're ridden out on a rail.

Curly, take the pliers out of that numbskull's hands and let him know you're the one holding the blunt object now. Don't be afraid to use it.

---------

Tom Brinkmoeller -- who wouldn't
be surprised if Kate and Jon were
Joan Rivers and Geraldo Rivera in
disguise -- remembers when the most
brazen thing on television was a
deodorant ad that showed an armpit.

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GUEST BLOG #26: Tom Brinkmoeller has music on the brain

June 23, 2009 9:55 AM

Bianculli here: I'm still working under manic deadlines for another week or so (don't ask), so contributing columnist Tom Brinkmoeller bails me out by reviewing a new PBS music and science special, Wednesday's The Music Instinct: Science and Song. It answers lots of your musical questions -- not necessarily "Who put the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?," but plenty of others. Here's Tom's review...

PBS Special Explores Brain-Music Harmony

By Tom Brinkmoeller

You may want to try the following elimination rounds in deciding whether to invest two hours in the new PBS special The Music Instinct: Science and Song (Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET -- check local listings).

Are you fascinated by how the human brain works and its potential as science discovers more of its secrets?

Does it catch your interest that music may have preceded speech in early humans?

Does evidence of a complex relationship between the brain and music make you hungry to learn more?

Are you curious to find out about people like:
* Accomplished percussionist Evelyn Glennie [above], deaf since birth, who performs by "hearing" the vibrations of the instruments she plays?
* An accomplished surgeon who, after being struck by lightning, decided to study music and developed an impressive ability to compose and perform?
* Stroke survivors who regain some speech by using the singing portion of their brain to form words?
* Or Parkinson's disease patients who learn to coordinate their movements better with the help of rhythmic assists?

Still here? Then know that if you opt in to The Music Instinct, you won't be gently fed. It's a thoroughly researched, intriguingly produced program that at times dispenses its facts at a supercharged pace. But maybe it's appropriate that a program taking on the intricacies of the brain expects its viewers to have well-tuned brains, as well.

The subject matter actually seems pretty comprehensible -- reminiscent of that philosophy course you never could afford to sleep through.

You'll learn that fetuses begin to hear between 17 and 19 weeks, that music is audible to and affects them, and that humans are born with what the producers call "a music module." In people who learn to play an instrument when they're young, that module pays off with improved long- and short-term memory through life.

Blind musicians commandeer the part of the brain usually used for sight and transform its forces into musical ability. And there appears to be universality in music effects, even among cultures unknown to each other. People living in a remote part of Cameroon, who never have heard Western music, respond to emotional parts of a piece of music much the same way as people who are familiar with it.

Musicians Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR, at right) and Bobby McFerrin lend the program interesting insights in demonstrating brain-music links.

It's only when the neuroscientists take the spotlight that those of us who swim in shallow water, so to speak, start to look for a lifeguard. I hope I'm in the minority, but these super-cerebral elements seemed to add at least 15 unneeded minutes to the program. Even so, it's a two-hour investment with a good payoff.

Dr. Jamshed Bharucha -- a cognitive neuroscientist, musician, and the provost and senior vice president of Tufts University -- offers some important takeaways for the non-neuroscientists among us. Though many musicians say it's a "heart" function, the brain has a major role in the perception and appreciation of music, and music plays a key role in the development of the brain: "The brain changes as you learn, and it can change in any point in your life through exposure to music."

And then there's the evolution of music into speech: "Music derives from a very primordial form of communication . . . that today's languages have drawn upon."

Considering what the other networks are offering tonight (America's Got Talent, I Survived a Japanese Game Show, So You Think You Can Dance and a Criminal Minds repeat), The Music Instinct: Science and Song may be the only offering guaranteed to make your brain hurt in a good way.

---------

As a child, Tom Brinkmoeller was
successfully urged by his piano
teacher to take up sports instead --
and yet he remembers that incident.

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GUEST BLOG #24: Tom Brinkmoeller reveals 'Antiques Roadshow' secrets

June 17, 2009 6:10 AM

Bianculli here: TV critics are like treasure hunters, sifting through mounds of worthless junk in search of the occasional sparkling treasure. No wonder contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller finds lots to like about the long-running PBS series Antiques Roadshow...

Waiting in Roadshow Line Sometimes Pays Off

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Maybe the most impressive fact about Antiques Roadshow isn't that it still finds amazing treasures after 13 seasons, or that it has been the highest-rated PBS weekly series since its second season on the air, regularly attracting 10 million viewers.

It just may be that, having set up in more than 90 halls over that time, and having done thousands of appraisals during each stop, not once has an appraiser broken an object, the producers report. Not one piece of glass that got slippery while being held more than an hour in the nervous hands of its hopeful owner. Not one brittle piece of antique paper kept in the family for hundreds of years. Not a fragile carving that's older than this country.

It's truly an unbroken record.

Rarely, viewers will hear something break off-camera, said Marsha Bemko, executive producer of the series since Season 5. But that's been at the hands of the owners, she said, and never anything valuable.

Bemko knows a lot more than that about Antiques Roadshow -- so much, in fact, that she has turned her knowledge into a 256-page book, Antiques Roadshow Behind the Scenes, to be published in November. Bemko happily shares some of her fun facts from the road: The most six-figure appraisals were in Palm Springs, Calif., followed by Baltimore. People used to camp out during the first four seasons of the show, hoping to get in ("We had people sleeping out overnight," Bemko said). In 2000, the WGBH production staff started handing out appointment times, with 3,200 tickets available for each city. The most ticket requests were for the Raleigh, N.C., show (34,000); the easiest ticket was in Phoenix (20,000).

Shows are shot on Saturdays, when the doors open at 8 a.m, and it's at least 11 or 12 hours before the sets are struck and the hall is empty again. Most of the Roadshow crew of about 45 people arrive in the host city on Thursday and return home Sunday. While there, they're joined by 15 local crew members and 110 volunteers (each of whom receives lunch, a T-shirt and an appraisal in appreciation).

The appraisers always pay their own expenses, and out of a pool of 150 appraisers, 75 attend each show. Most arrive the day before, but some come in early to socialize with each other. Antiques Roadshow has helped tear down a wall: Employees of Sotheby's and Christie's had historically avoided each other. "We've changed that, they tell us," Bemko said. "We've become something like a summer camp for grownups."

People bring their would-be valuables for three reasons, she said -- to learn about the object; hoping to hear it's valuable (usually, it's not); and/or to be on television. When an appraiser sees something that seems worth an on-air appearance, Bemko or another producer is called in to make a ruling. The guest is never told if the object is valuable or not. Each appraisal takes at least 10 minutes to shoot.

Over the course of a day, 55 formal appraisals will be shot; 30 more will be shorter versions done at the appraisal table. Of those, up to 60 will show up in the three shows made from each Roadshow visit. In all cases, the show's producers refrain from revealing the owner's last name (though guests sometimes do so themselves).

"Most of our guests do not sell their objects. We ask them to let us know if they do anything. In most cases, it's not about the money," Bemko said of people who bring in family heirlooms. The sale ratio is a bit higher if the appraised object has been found at a yard sale or trash bin.

There was also a spinoff show, Antiques Roadshow FYI, which followed the stories of appraised items later sold. (It lasted just one year because underwriting couldn't be found.) Expanded information about some of the objects is available on the Roadshow web site.

---------

For a number of years, Tom Brinkmoeller was paid to watch and write about television. That seemingly ideal situation can't match his current one: watching only what he enjoys -- especially in the lesser-hyped areas of television, where he finds some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.

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GUEST BLOG #21: Tom Brinkmoeller falls hard for Apple TV

June 3, 2009 5:42 AM

Bianculli here: Guest contributor Tom Brinkmoeller proudly considers himself and his values old-fashioned, but today he takes on something decidedly NEW-fashioned: an Apple TV. Read on, to get to the core of his analysis...

Apple TV Puts Some Programming Power in Viewers' Hands

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Consider the following a short burst of enthusiastic applause for a piece of TV-related equipment I ignored for almost three years.

Apple introduced Apple TV in September 2006. At the time, I tried to learn more about it and what it did by searching the Apple website and trade stories. I saw no connection between it and my life, and really didn't think about it again. Now I'm an enthusiastic turnaround on Apple TV, a piece of hardware barely pushed by the Apple marketing muscle that has made Macs, iPods and iPhones as well-known as Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson.

Discovery by accident doesn't make the discovery any less satisfying.

Almost a decade before the recession economy put the squeeze on outside-the-home entertainment choices, health circumstances had already made home-based entertainment crucial in our household. Since we're boomers, television has been our default for most of our lives. Cable offers hundreds of channels. But when the number of weekly hours spent watching television approaches the pounds shed on The Biggest Loser, you discover how empty and rerun-ridden those cable channels can be.

Faced with that entertainment vacuum, we were driven to fill it. Netflix and Blockbuster DVDs deliver mostly movies, tie you into a plan and make you responsible for returning their DVDs -- a bit too much effort for the limited television payoff. These companies also offer to sell you hardware to stream a small portion of their offerings directly to your TV. More money, less product -- similar to what today's newspapers keep doing.

So more than two years after deciding Apple TV was irrelevant to my life, I looked at it again. This small box lets the owner download a ton of movies (rent or buy) from the iTunes Store. Also makes it possible to download and play TV shows, audio and video podcasts, music, photos, personal video and YouTube on a home TV.

There aren't many requirements: an enhanced- or high-definition widescreen set with one of several ways to connect Apple's box to the set; broadband internet connection; a router to wirelessly stream from that connection to the box; an iTunes account. You can download onto your computer (Mac or PC) or directly to your Apple TV box. The only hard wiring is between the box and the TV. The setup is as easily instinctive as any other Apple product, and it takes little time to go from unpacking the box to watching a new kind of television.

The viewing choices seem to outnumber those of the competition, the quality of the picture is high (and often high-def), the initial cost is competitive ($229 for 40GB and $329 for 160GB storage), and there's no plan to sign up for, no DVDs to receive and return.

If Apple TV has flaws, we haven't found them in the month since we bought one. We love the free video podcasts. We can watch full-length movie trailers before making a buy. And our iTunes music library sounds better than ever when played through a decent sound system.

I don't know why Apple TV hasn't done more of a marketing push on this product. I think it's the next best thing to happen to the medium since high definition. And I want to thank Netflix and Blockbuster for helping me rediscover it.

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I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." Despite my boomer status, I refuse to be intimidated by technology innovations that make the watching choices better.

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GUEST BLOG #19: Tom Brinkmoeller Ends TVWW Contest, Takes a Powder

May 26, 2009 6:00 AM

Bianculli here: Memorial Day weekend is over, and so is Tom Brinkmoeller's TV WORTH WATCHING contest. He'll take over from here, to explain and award the winner...

The Envelope, Please

By Tom Brinkmoeller

"They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder."

That's how Cary Elwes' Westley, in The Princess Bride, explained how he outwitted Wallace Shawn's Vizzini in the showdown over the poisoned cup.

Perhaps the same thing applies to many TVWW viewers, who have endured enough TV that is not worth watching that the bad stuff no longer affects them. That could explain why the entries for last week's grouse-along about television irritants numbered many less than those in the month's earlier Star Trek box-office poll.

But that doesn't mean there was nothing of merit entered. Eileen's complaint about how the Viva Viagra commercial must haunt the ghost of Elvis probably would have won in a much larger field.

And Chris Collins, another entrant, complained about hollow news anchors -- and, in a later e-mail, told how he wrote a song called "Katie Couric Used to be a Journalist" to try to persuade his mother away from watching Today. Had he only shared the lyrics, it would have been a photo finish.

Congratulations, Eileen. And unless it's a trade secret, would one of you non-contestants please reveal to me how you built up that wondrous immunity.

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I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." My almost-a-geezer status gives me more time than ever to watch the lesser-hyped areas of television, where I often find some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.

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GUEST BLOG #18: Tom Brinkmoeller Launches a TV WORTH WATCHING Contest Of His Own

May 22, 2009 7:20 AM

Bianculli here: Contributing writer Tom Brinkmoeller does two things in his latest column. One, he starts out by referring to my Extras, the in-jokes I collect that are hidden in TV shows -- which I mention only because, next week, I'm devoting a column to my favorite Extra in years (one which, so far, seems to have gone unnoticed).

Two, Tom asks for reader feedback by bribing you with the lure of a gift. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is it's a much better bribe than when I do it. How dare he offer up an out-of-print Beatles book, and act like it's no big deal? And all under the guise of presenting and gathering TV gripes.

But go ahead, read ahead, and play along. If I complain, it'll just sound like... sour gripes.

Second (In As Many Weeks) TV WORTH WATCHING Invitational

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Many years ago, I learned many of the people who savor the Bianculli approach to television are active participants in what they read. David is a collector of what he calls "Extras" -- inside references hidden within a television show. (The final count is still out on whether he likes Extras more than he likes puns.)

And for years, his readers have happily collected and reported the obvious and the obscure Extras to him -- e.g., when Neil Patrick Harris' Barney character in How I Met Your Mother complained in a recent episode about the poor quality of today's child actors. (Old Doog yearns new slicks.) The Extras continue, by the way, on this very website, and you can find them by clicking HERE.

The continued reader loyalty showed up mightily last week when the owner of this space invited readers to guess the weekend take for Star Trek. Forty-one responses later, those of us who enjoy reading what all of you write had a better analysis of the film's chances than we would have, had we mainlined the Hollywood Reporter into our veins.

Riding that wave of involvement, and acknowledging that so much of TV WORTH WATCHING celebrates what's good about television, I'm inviting all of you to a grouse-along. TV, like a cheap wool suit, can irritate you with every move. Creative complaining about the irritant factor can be a powerful salve. You have shown yourselves to be a very thoughtful, very creative group. So how about putting on your Andy Rooney hats and scratching the medium back? I offer some examples:

If Geico really does offer the lowest car insurance price, how much lower would that cost be if the company didn't spend so much on commercial time?

Why would anyone want to watch another TV series that features an obnoxious cook? On-air promos for TLC's Cake Boss has the starring chef telling staff the orders come from God's lips to his ears. Another shows him pouring a large amount of flour from the top of a building onto an employee. Does a 40-watt IQ and high propensity to abuse your employees equal a killer TV formula? Makes you wonder if offers of a series haven't gone out to Osama bin Laden.

A yogurt brand brags about its "bifidus regularis" ingredient. Do you also think you first saw that phrase when it was supered onto the screen of a Road Runner cartoon as the scientific name for a coyote?

Why do advertisers think an English accent will make American television watchers all the more eager to buy an overpriced broom or a device that scrapes dead skin off of feet? If it works, does this explain the Simon Cowell phenomenon?

Has anyone else sworn never to buy an Oreo Minicakester because of the way women are portrayed as mindless, screaming sweets predators in the product's commercials?

Does Billy Mays scream all his conversations? If so, do you think his kids let him wish them goodnight? Is the most-mellow-voiced Empire Today announcer still working his way out a '60s lid of unbelievable grass? (Don't buy the hemp carpeting, just in case.)

Now it's your turn. Last time, Bianculli offered a prize to the person who came closest to the box-office take. I have a prize to offer, too: A review copy of the 1984 (paperback) The Long and Winding Road--A History of the Beatles on Record (it still has the publisher's press release tucked inside). A semi-worthless prize, to be sure, but I said goodbye to all my shlock from the networks about three moves ago.

Like the examples, keep your offerings as concise as possible. Judging will be totally subjective, and by me, and extra points may be awarded for creative incorporation of puns into the grouse. Or may not.

And one last thought: Since so many weight-loss commercials superimpose the disclaimer "Results not typical" over a tiny part of the screen, does your mind do evil things to you when you imagine what "typical" is?

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I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." My almost-a-geezer status gives me more time than ever to watch the lesser-hyped areas of television, where I often find some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.

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GUEST BLOG #15: Tom Brinkmoeller On A First-Class TV Travel Series

May 5, 2009 7:21 PM

Bianculli here: Today's guest column, the latest from Tom Brinkmoeller, finds its inspiration from a travel series -- one that inspired Tom to interview the producer about why public television's Rick Steves' Europe seemed so different from most other TV travel shows.

Read on to travel to Tom's full column...

Ultimate Journeymen Make Up 'Team Steves'

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Disclaimer: Even though this is the second time I recently have used this space to praise public television, you will not be hit up for a pledge or made to endure a showing of a Wayne Dyer or Suze Orman special. It is not my intention to put your wallet, your patience or your intelligence in jeopardy. -- T.B.

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Travel shows, or "travelogues," as they used to call them in Jimmy Durante's day, are just about as old as photography itself. Whether professionally produced or a friend's home movies, people love to show off pictures of where they've been. The challenge to giving this work-horse genre some pedigree is to make the viewing as compelling as the photographer's perceived experience.

Nobody does this better than public television's Rick Steves, whose series have made world travel unintimidating and inviting, educational and entertaining -- and a bit addictive to wannabe travelers. As a viewer, one can guess at the reasons Rick Steves' Europe, which is seen in 95 percent of US markets, ranks so high in a relatively crowded category. For more accuracy, it's nice to be able to ask an insider.

Producer Simon Griffith has been in on the making of more than 80 episodes over 10 seasons with Steves, and his insight takes away the guesswork. The guesses were pretty accurate: Each half hour is the result of extensive preparation, a well-crafted script, high production values, teamwork among talented people and more hard work than any project connected with the word "vacation" ought to contain.

All that, and an ethics policy that doesn't make the kind of "pay for play" deals that help many travel programs reduce costs by trading exposure in the programs for accommodations, travel, meals and favors. After a decade of filming, the team behind this series continues to avoid production shortcuts and formulas. Each episode connects and flows in a way most viewers feel they have a close-to-being-there impression of the destination visited.

Griffith shared the details of how they reach these goals. Each episode takes six "usually really long" days of morning-into-the-night shooting, says Griffith, part of the trio that puts the shows together. (He's the man with the beard often seen sharing a restaurant table with Steves; videographer Karel Bauer, who shoots those meal scenes, sits down at the third place setting, no doubt to cold food, once the scene is finished.)

Twice a year, the team makes a three-week production trip. These trips wear out even the show's host, whom Griffith calls "a genuine Viking" because of Steves' nonstop work ethic. One almost can get empathy fatigue hearing about the double-time marches Steves' small production crew makes during its European trips. Every day starts with an early working breakfast, in which the three review the script for the day and plan the next 12 or so hours of shots.

"We make sure we don't just shoot the nouns," Griffith says, which would result in "a video slide show" that emphasized little more than pointing a camera at each location. Steves' script is supplemented during a "meeting of the minds" that adds interlocking sequences of visuals giving the production a rich and polished look unique to travel shows.

This, by nature, eats up a lot of videotape -- "about 12 40-minute tapes per show," Griffith says. "We certainly have to do things again and again" until all the required elements fall into place.
"Occasionally, we'll have to do 20 to 25 takes before we get what we want," he says. "We can easily take 15 or 20 minutes to shoot a 20-second transition scene."

This can get tricky if the scene to be reshot is one in which Steves speaks to the camera as he drives. To make sure they get the proper lighting and background, the crew repeatedly will travel the same stretch of the road, "sometimes for a half hour or more," until the scene is perfect. Griffith says other drivers on that road don't always share the crew's enthusiasm for perfection.

Sometimes, when shooting in a very controlled venue, such as the Louvre or Prado museums, they are given limited access outside of the museum's normal hours. To add to the feel of what it is like during a normal visit, the crew will recruit guides, security guards and cleaners from their normal duties to stand in as tourists.

When daylight ends, often scenes will be shot of restaurant experiences, performances or downtown areas that better illustrate the script. Then, finally, the shooting ends.

While Griffith and Bauer often take that as a chance to unwind over a leisurely meal or drink in a relaxed cafe, Steves will go back to his room to work on his blog, communicate with his office, plan his weekly radio show or fine tune the next day's script.

Steves' attitude about serving the people who turn to him for travel advice is characterized by a sentence in his recent blog entry: "You can read a book without flying to Rome. A walking tour (which costs triple the price of that book) should connect you vividly to the place."

"Rick is one of the hardest working persons I've ever met," says Griffith.

Once they have returned home, three to four weeks are spent editing editing each episode into finished form. That's 30 weeks of work to produce each six-episode season. (Think NBC spends five to six weeks on each episode of Howie Do It?)

Steves' enthusiasm for perfection seems to pay off. His Edmonds, WA, company, Europe through the Back Door, includes a full-service travel company, tour-book and video sales, Steves' weekly radio show, a very popular travel blog, as well as the TV series. If his blog reader reactions and the questions from radio callers are a barometer, Steves' enthusiasm for travel has to be contagious, and is reflected in sales figures.

But even if one may never be able to take actual vacations in Europe, each half hour's work by these perfectionist journeymen has to be the next-best thing. To find where and when Rick Steves' Europe is broadcast in your area, click HERE.

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I, like Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardner character in the film Being There, unapologetically "like to watch." My almost-a-geezer status gives me more time than ever to watch the lesser-hyped areas of television, where I often find some wonderful gems. Sharing those finds is even more fun than watching.

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GUEST BLOG #12: Tom Brinkmoeller Loves Public TV's No-EVOO Diet

April 29, 2009 8:37 AM

Bianculli here: Tom Brinkmoeller, for his latest column, reverted to his old print reporter instincts, and conducted interviews as well as delivered his own opinion. The topic: TV's food shows. And while I'll agree to disagree with him about Gordon Ramsay, whose shows I find immensely entertaining, he's really onto something about the respective informative values of certain shows.

Here's Tom's full report...

Without Public Television, We All Would Be Drowning in EVOO

By Tom Brinkmoeller

If you understand the difference between a really good museum and a circus, you no doubt can see the huge differences between the prototype cooking, how-to and travel series on public television and the badly executed rip-offs that populate cable's Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel and their lesser sycophant cable brethren.

One is art. The other is clowns and animals.

Some comparisons: Watch any Julia Child or Jacques Pepin series, or America's Test Kitchen, or Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, or almost any other public broadcasting cooking show (the wonderful reality is there are so many), and you actually learn how to cook. You're entertained, but it's secondary to making the half-hour a worthwhile investment. It's intelligent, clearly presented and non-gimmicky. There's an art involved, and you get to watch.

Then watch any Food Network show hosted by Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, Sandra Lee or even Ina Garten or Giada De Laurentiis and if you're interested in learning to cook, you have to question your investment. Learning too often gets put far behind meaningless story lines, empty glitz, cross-promotion and product placement.

Could it be that these shows get sprayed with PAM before airing, so nothing too important sticks to them? At least they are better than the truly awful food-competition shows, which would seem to attract people who like to watch crying contestants get voted off the set and those viewers who will sit through a thoroughly boring hour to see if a cake falls over or apart before it's judged.

A few more comparisons -- in case you're not yet convinced -- before a little analysis. Compare public TV's Rick Steves, Globe Trekker or Rudy Maxa shows with those hosted by:

-- Samantha Brown (a decent travel journalist trapped inside a network that appears to have minimal ethics when it comes to a business buying its way onto the show).

-- Anthony Bourdain (perhaps the angriest man on television after Regis Philbin, but decidedly less professional or entertaining).

-- Andrew Zimmern (a man who has gotten himself airtime simply by showing he'll eat any insect or innard -- a quality my wife's childhood dog had, but it didn't win him a series).

Finally, see if you can discover the quality thread of This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop in commercial knockoffs Carter Can or Design on a Dime. Are the production standards similar in The Victory Garden and Desperate Landscapes?

Of course, there is no comparison. PBS invented and has perfected TV Worth Watching in these categories. Over the years, cable has largely acted as an anti-alchemist, repeatedly turning gold into lead. Most unjust is that these high-quality originals have to work like crazy for underwriting. Meanwhile, the propensity to do anything to attract higher advertising rates helps the commercial bandits pay bills and makes people like EVOO peddler Rachael Ray wealthy. (The words "extra virgin olive oil" may be too hard for her to say.)

How does this sit with the inventors of these genres? Russell Morash produced every Julia Child series from her television start in the early '60s, and invented This Old House, Ask This Old House, The New Yankee Workshop and The Victory Garden. He cut back his busy schedule in 2004, handing over control of all but The New Yankee Workshop. Separation hasn't lessened his interest, though. Standards for shows that have taken his concepts commercial, he says, have dropped "beyond zero."

On his PBS shows, hosts also have been collaborators, shaping the programming and raising quality levels. Morash says Norm Abram and French Chef Julia Child have shared the quality of thoroughly knowing the subject before the shooting starts -- a quality not deemed necessaryhosts are chosen for looks and how they will on the commercial networks. Too often, Morash says, appeal to a demographic target, and program concepts are born in marketers' minds.

"Julia did not have all the chromium, but she could cook the hell out of a show," he says. "She had another disarming characteristic. She was very smart, well-schooled. She knew what she was talking about, and she kept that up her entire life.

"Norm is the same way. He reads about and understands the entire technique before he does something he's never done before."

These qualities don't show themselves on the copies of the originals. Be it a how-to fix program that skips over the details of a project to fit it into a half-hour package or a cooking show that's more drama than substance, a program is built to fit a concept.

Morash says he recently watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen in which star Gordon Ramsay's main purpose seemed to be "to insult and abuse these youngsters." Morash's wife, Marian, watched with him. She was the cooking expert on The Victory Garden and also worked for many years in the kitchen of an East Coast five-star seafood restaurant. More than their astonishment at the chef's theatrical demeanor ("beyond abusive"), they couldn't believe Ramsay would charge the contestants with creating a signature dish in 45 minutes. Morash's wife pointed out that many truly talented chefs consider it an achievement if they can create a true "signature dish" over a 45-year career.

The commercial networks' appetite for the wrapping paper over the content is nothing new. Morash accompanied Ms. Child many years ago to a cooking appearance on Good Morning America. Seventy-seven seconds into the segment, a network executive in the control room turned to Morash and said, "This is really boring!"

Though they've seen their masterpieces counterfeited into the equivalent of velvet paintings for sale on a roadside lot, the good guys haven't given up on their dream of producing TV Worth Watching. Laurie Donnelly has been working in public television for 34 years and, as the WGBH executive producer of lifestyle programming, oversees the programs Morash created, as well as Simply Ming and Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie. She says these types of programs will continue to thrive as long they're "presented in a way that's not intimidating and not condescending" by "experts who have a passion for what they do."

Finding underwriters, she says, "is always a challenge." But experience has shown her that there's always "the right fit" for programming that makes high quality and accessibility the most important ingredients.

Just imagine how far television would sink without those kinds of principles.

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Tom writes: For a number of years, Tom Brinkmoeller was paid to watch and write about television. That seemingly ideal situation can't match his current one -- watching only what he enjoys, not being held hostage by a paycheck, and not having to steer a TV story through editors who think watching television impairs the brain as well as social status.

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GUEST BLOG #9: Tom Brinkmoeller pits Hawkeye vs. Hannah

April 20, 2009 5:22 AM

Bianculli here: This is going to be fun. Two of the new contributors to TV WORTH WATCHING are taking opposite sides of a very touchy issue. Namely: Is referring to "vintage" references when writing about pop culture putting things in context, or alienating younger readers being targeted by mass media as necessary for survival?

Today, Tom Brinkmoeller. Tomorrow, in the opposite corner, P.J. Bednarski. And boy, are all of us interested in what YOU have to say on this topic. Read on, and return tomorrow, and weigh in yourself...

It's 2009. Do YOU know who Eddie Haskell is?

By Tom Brinkmoeller

--OK, PJ. My gauntlet is old and unattractive, but I throw it down with as much gusto as my arthritis allows.--

As a Boomer, I know what it's like to have lots of attention pointed at my crowd. While it lasted, it was an intriguing time. Now it's a new season, our leaves fell from the holy tree of demographic influence a while ago, and another set of leaves is eating up the attention.

That's the way it always happens, it's natural, and what follows isn't the ranting of a jilted Geezer Boomer. The relative obscurity is pleasant.

What bothers me is that, in hoping to win the love of the current techo-generation, the country's mega-marketers have decided the "leaves" of previous generations are carcinogenic, at best, and must be destroyed, or at least ignored. They fear that references to anything that predates American Idol or is older than Hannah Montana will offend and confuse the precious target audience and result in an economic catastrophe. What's past, no matter how brilliant or enriching, is no longer prologue. It's a prime target of the delete key.

Television leads the large group of the fearful. The Techno-gens have their own brand of ambition, so contest series -- survivors, racers, bachelors, overeaters, dancers, singers, models, designers and plenty of other lemmings -- just about own prime time because the Technos identify with beating out the rest of the bunch and owning the spotlight.

I wrote a few weeks ago about a current series, Scrubs, and referenced a couple of classic TV shows in the process. A worry was passed on to me that most Technos weren't alive in 1983, when M*A*S*H ended, and that reference probably lost them.

Editor & Publisher, a trade publication that follows newspapers (think of the people who tracked the passenger pigeon into extinction), recently posted a story headlined "Journos Are Alienating Readers With 'Retro' References." The author cited stories he's sure lost many readers because they made references to Leave It to Beaver characters, The An