Results tagged “lost”

                                          

It's that time of year again, when many LA residents (along with others from around the world) make the trek to Comic-Con in San Diego. Given that 125,000 people are attending the convention this year, navigating the Comic-Con exhibit hall is an event in itself. And although the main costume spectacle will take place during Saturday night's masquerade, today's crop didn't disappoint!

For people who like real news other than the BBC should know that there are huge changes happening over at PBS with regards to "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer". Starting in September, the show will change its name to "PBS NewsHour" and along with an online correspondent, will have two anchors move from a single-anchor format to one with two anchors.

The CW announced Monday night that they would be giving back control of Sunday programming to their affiliate stations. It's been over a year and a half since The CW launched a new program for Sunday nights, "Life Is Wild", which was very short-lived. It appears that the network can't fund a couple hours of competitive TV on Sundays and that the affiliates can make more money hawking reruns of long-dead series rather than original programming from The CW.

Keith Olbermann wants to take up Sean Hannity on an offer to undergo waterboarding - Obermann is offering $1000 for every second Hannity undergoes the procedure. It's time to man up Sean.

The TV Junkie Plan: "Better Off Ted", "Lost" (maybe), "MythBusters" (if not "Lost"), "South Park", "Reno 911!", Letterman, Fallon.

The TV Junkie Plan: "Better Off Ted", "Lost", "South Park", "Reno 911!", Leno, Fallon

In case you didn't hear about it yet, but internist Dr. Kutner on FOX's "House" committed suicide in Monday's episode. This was hastily written into the script as the real-life Kal Penn is leaving acting for a while to go work for the Obama administration in the Office of Public Liaison. This also means no more Harold & Kumar movies for a while, so we're all sacrificing here - but seriously, congrats Kal and godspeed.

Tonight's season finale of "Damages" promises to be a nail-biter - we know where we'll be at 10pm. As it approaches, we wonder how there could possibly a third season after this, but that's the result of great writing. Unfortunately it's conflicting with the season premiere of "Reno 911!" but we take solace in the fact that it airs again later, because we're cheap that way.

Late night news: TBS is building a late night show around comedian/actor George Lopez (whom we have loved as Mayor Hernandez on "Reno 911"). The hour-long show will air at 11pm, Monday through Fridays but we're not so sure that it's a good move to go head to head with local news. We'll see what happens when the show launches. TBS has dabbled in late night comedy, with the Frank Caliendo vehicle, "Frank TV", which has not been renewed, and the admirable "10 Items or Less", headed by John Lehr, which is up for renewal now.

Ad spending in the US dropped by 2.6% in 2008, with only cable increasing ad revenue for the year. TV and cable still retained a leadership position as the preferred media, taking more than 60% of all ad dollars.

Critics are being rather forgiving of Jimmy Fallon's (only slightly shaky IMHO) "Late Night" debut: they brought out DeNiro who is always a tough interview and Fallon kind of made it work, and Timberlake kind of saved the first show - not sure why they had Van Morrison on, are they trying to reclaim the age 55-and-up demographic?

It looks like Andy Richter will be returning to the side of Conan O'Brien when he fires up his version of "The Tonight Show" starting on June 1st. Richter will be the announcer for the show and will appear in comedy sketches but it's not clear if he will be a fixture on the guest couch a la Ed McMahon. Now that the Academy Awards are over with and Conan has shut down production, late night TV is a wasteland this week other than Jimmy Kimmel.

Even though the majority of eyes are focused on Sunday's Oscars, this Saturday, the Writers Guild of America will be doling out their awards and a sampling of scuttlebutt with regards to TV leaders include "Mad Men", "30 Rock", "The Office", "The Wire", and "True Blood".

Last week we went to a sneak preview of Demetri Martin's new show on Comedy Central, "Important Things With Demetri Martin", which premiere's tonight at 10:30pm. The show has been in the works since last Spring so we are happy to see it make it on air.

Truth is stranger than fiction - or life imitates fiction? Something like that: Anna Torv and Mark Valley, the stars of FOX's "Fringe", have married in real life. Fringe also did pretty good in yesterday's Nielsen numbers, with a 10+% increase in viewership over last week, but that increase is getting attributed to the popularity of its lead in, "American Idol".

Sir Paul McCartney will pay a visit to Comedy Central's "The Colber(t) Repor(t)" tonight - we're wondering if Colber(t) will succeed in performing a song with yet another famous musician. [Also Colber(t)-related is his latest "remix challenge", so all you audio-tweakers should check out the details here.]

Yesterday's inauguration of President Barack Obama spiked traffic for all the venues that attempted to carry streaming video and audio of the proceedings. The NY Times has more details in this report which was made further enjoyable because they quote an analyst named "Woodcock".

The TV Junkie says "welcome back" to you all, to a new year and a new "Winter Season" of TV. Premieres we are looking forward to this month are "Nip/Tuck" (FX 1/6), "Damages" (FX 1/7), "24" (Fox 1/11), "Battlestar Galactica" (SciFi 1/16), "Big Love" (HBO 1/18), and "Lost" (ABC 1/21).

  

That was fast. I guess this proves that billboards and a massive, massive, massive amount of flyers put around the neighborhood can get your dog back. For background on Hedkayce (that's the dog's name), check out yesterday's story.

The big story of the night is the season finale of "Lost". The problem for "Lost"-haters, and they do exist, is that there are very few other options this evening. Programming on ABC is dominated by 3 hours of "Lost" and the other majors are throwing just program repeats or reality contests at it.

We've got (at least) 6 season finales tonight. Speaking of finales of sorts, CNET was bought by CBS for $1.8 billion. In a day where the old school dinosaurs have been shedding their digital assets, it's pretty remarkable that CNET's management pulled off a sale, especially for that amount, for a property that has regressed to not much more than a newsfeed, and product review site. Also, if you remember, CNET actually had original TV programming with "CNET Central" and "The Web" on the Sci Fi Channel and the USA Network. Unfortunately, CNET also gave us "The New Edge" with Ryan Seacrest as host in one of his first ever TV gigs, and for that they should never be forgiven.

Bye-bye Robert Redford - Sundance Channel is being bought by Cablevision. Why "bye-bye"? Because even though Redford will remain "involved", he will not have an ownership stake and without ownership Redford will essentially be a figurehead.

Yesterday, two men visiting Los Angeles took a hike in Griffith Park and before they knew it, it was dark. Probably not a place for night hiking if don't know your way around, especially with the constant tease of being within sight of the city lights below, but many cliff jumps away.

Are you a "Lost" fan (like me)? Did you love tonight's episode? Are you wondering what's going to happen next week?! Evidently you/we are losers according to our friends at Comedy Central. No worries, I can laugh at myself and this current obsession.

The New York Times says that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Screen Actors Guild will not be reaching an agreement anytime soon. In less than 60 days the SAG contract is up and all motion picture and TV production will stop on a dime with the exception of game shows, reality TV, and the news. I might actually get outside this summer!

$10,000 reward and four lifetime passes to whoever returns a giant pig.

"Lost" is back! Thursday night is truly the best night on TV, hands down.

It's Thursday, is there an option to watching Lost? Especially since it's going on a bit of a hiatus? So this week we find out more about Michael who has returned to the island, or at least to a boat near the island.

A new development, according to the Wall Street Journal, in the land of Big (advertising) Brother is that Nielsen is teaming up with Charter Communications to get set top box data from 320,000 set top boxes in what city?? Los Angeles! Now while no advertiser would make ad placement decisions based exclusively on the somewhat limited data that would come from set top boxes but this infusion of a large pool of subjects is a needed supplement to what many thought was becoming a limited offering from Nielsen. The question now is, how representative are the viewing habits of Los Angeles compared to the nation?