Results tagged “usa”

Tonight at 10:00pm USA will be premiering their new dramedy "White Collar". At the premiere event this morning at Rockefeller Center in NYC, the TV Junkie had a chance to talk to stars Tiffani Thiessen, Matthew Bomer, and Tim DeKay. The series pairs master "white collar" criminal Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and hardened FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) on capers where they need to track down various corporate criminals...

Weekend Edition The prediction that TV was fading into the fog of yesteryear as a medium seems to not be true (for the moment). Overall viewership of TV is up by 4% and the departure of the coveted 18-49 demographic seems to have been arrested. The Hollywood Reporter offers a breakdown, network by network.

The U.S. Men's National Team took a big step towards booking a ticket to next year's World Cup in South Africa after a tough win over Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain. The soca warriors took the game to the Yanks for long stretches during the first half last night as the Yanks looked disorganized and struggled to generate any offense.

First half goals by Clint Dempsey and Jozy Altidore help the U.S. National Team get a victory last night over La Selecta from El Salvador. The Yanks fell behind at the 32nd minute when Jonathan Bornstein failed to clear a ball cleanly and instead sent it into the box. El Salvador gained possession in the U.S. penalty box and was able to capitalize on a header by Christian Castillo. The goal came after a mixed first 30 minutes of play that saw the U.S. threaten on a few occasions through Charlie Davies and Landon Donovan.

Philadelphia 76ers defeat LA Lakers 94-93. With a foul to give the Lakers let Andre Iguodala get off a three pointer at the end of the game to burn them. Mind you this is after Kobe drained a jumper for the lead with six seconds left. The Lakers had led by as many as 14 points early in the fourth quarter but let it slip away with very sloppy play. After their last game Phil Jackson commented on the Laker's lack of a killer instinct. If this game wasn't evidence of that...As Stu Lantz said at the end of the FSWest broadcast there was a lot of green in the building. What the hell is wrong with you Lakers fans? How the hell do you think it's remotely appropriate to wear green in the Staples Center? Dumbasses.

If you thought that the local news was boring claptrap that only idiots watch, then you are outside of the ever-increasing popularity of the local newscast - Nielsen is reporting a 20% year-over-year increase in viewership. For TV, a fractional percentage change is big news but 20% is incredible.

We have a host of finales tonight but the ones to keep an eye on are Timothy Hutton's "Leverage" (10pm on TNT, pictured right) and John Lehr's "10 Items or Less" (11pm on USA). Of local note, KNBC will be doing a special at 9pm on their historical 60 years of broadcasting in Los Angeles. KNBC helped define the medium of television and is due many accolades for it's services to the community over these 6 decades.

Tonight marks the last broadcast of Conan O'Brien on "Late Night..." and what a ride it's been. From being a virtual unknown in front of the camera, O'Brien is now a staple of late night television. O'Brien's resurrection of NBC's "Late Night" after the departure of David Letterman to CBS was not easy and the first few years were very tenuous ones for the wild haired funnyman. With support from Lorne Michaels, O'Brien was given enough time to build an audience, something almost unheard of these days.

Controversial contestant Joanna Pacitti has finally been pulled from "American Idol" after it was revealed that she had friendships with multiple executives with "Idol" co-producer 19 Entertainment. For fans of the show who couldn't believe that she had made the cut after performing poorly and fumbling lyrics to several songs during the Hollywood rounds of auditions, it will be assumed that she had moved ahead due to these personal relationships and not merit.

So "American Idol" fans, round three of the Hollywood auditions start tonight - we haven't seen a lot of chatter about this season here at LAist and wondered what your thoughts were. Has the show jumped the shark yet? Because if you're not into the show we'd just as soon not list it here. Your comment is your vote.

Did any of you watch the Grammys? Did you enjoy it? OK, so you might actually like pop music but tell us what you specifically like about it. To us, the performances seem somewhat off and the staging heavy-handed. There was a 17% increase in viewership of the Grammys this year over last year with most folks watching during the 8:30-9:30pm hour.

A lot of our sport fan/fiend friends are convinced that this Sunday's Super Bowl event will be a boring blow out - "the Cardinals will win how?" is oft heard. But for a lot of media dorks, ourselves included, the Super Bowl is all about the ads. We already know that GoDaddy and PETA have had their ads denied (as must have been planned for). Adweek's Barbara Lippert analyzes past Super Bowl commercial foibles as well as a list of all expected advertisers for XLIII. On Saturday, CBS also takes a trip down memory lane with a program on the "best" commercials of years past.

Chivas USA's standout midfielder, Sacha Kljestan, led the U.S. National Team to a 3 - 2 victory against Sweden in a friendly played on Saturday night at the Home Depot Center. Kljestan scored all three goals for the Americans, the first of which came on a scorcher of a free kick from about 30 yards out. The U.S. provided the vast majority of the offense in the first half and took a 2 - 0 lead into the locker room. Play evened out in the second half, but the Swedes were unable to overcome their early deficit. Next up for the U.S. is their first match of the final round of qualifying for World Cup 2010 versus Mexico on February 11th in Columbus, Ohio.

For those of you that watched the 2-hour premiere of "Lost" last night, are you enjoying that old familiar feeling of not knowing what the hell is going on?

A lot of programs return to or make their premiere on premium cable this Sunday including: "Big Love", "The L Word", "The United States of Tara", and "Secret Diary of a Call Girl". What we most eagerly anticipate is the season premiere of "Flight of the Conchords". The pair of musicians and their hapless manager, all hailing from New Zealand, might not have made a second season due to low viewership but their cult like following gave us one more. So enjoy every episode like a smooth New Zealand Merlot, savor it, because this might be their last run, on HBO at least.

2008 was a year where TV saw viewership decline for at least the 8th straight year. We saw even more film stars make their way to basic cable (USA, TNT, TBS, FX, etc.) to star in their own series and we saw the big three networks make even more forays into the realm of cheap reality TV at the expense of scripted programs.

Recession? What recession? NBC reportedly has almost sold out of ad spots for the 2009 Super Bowl and are selling the spots at prices at least 11% higher than last year.

With so much going on in the world of sports right now with the Olympics, baseball, USC injuries and all, here's a list of things to keep an eye on.

This weekend presents a dilemma. The big deal this weekend is the season premiere of "Mad Men" on Sunday at 10:00pm but this puts it in conflict with HBO's excellent "Generation Kill" which runs until 10:30pm but it repeats again at Midnight so that's probably the way out of this mess.

The Screen Actors Guild has officially rejected the June 30th offer from the studios. Cited among the reasons for the rejection was the fact that the major studios and networks have invested large amounts of money and/or have inked deals to distribute their content online or via video-on-demand but the contract offered actors does not account for this increased distribution. Considering that the contract would be for four years, to be locked out of that revenue was considered unreasonable.

Those in-the-know were entertained by Freddy Adu's blazing first steps, a pair of goals for both Clint Dempsey and Brian Ching, and Barbados' bumbling defense. The fans might have felt sorry for the goalkeeper, but he does live on a tropical island and leads the life of a professional athlete. Boo hoo.

In contrast to the wildly cute meerkates to the right (yes, they're back), some seriously big numbers have been issued by the prestigious Milken Institute has put out an impressive study of the impact of the writer's strike. In summary:

Tainted sprouts might be on the shelves of your local grocery store. Although not considered a mealtime staple by many, a nice handful of sprouts can liven up a sandwich or a salad--that is unless they give you salmonella.

OK so the Oscars are this weekend. Even though the writers' strike is over, the prediction is that this will be a ho-hum (excuse me?) Oscars. First of all, the majority of the films presented for consideration are real downers, secondly, because of the strike, many potential presenters thought that the awards ceremony would be canceled or drastically cut back so they made other plans and are now not available to present at the show. I'm sure they will have enough presenters but perhaps there won't be as many "mega-stars", thus leaving room for more indie-types.

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OK so the Oscars a week from Sunday are what we're building up to but as an enthusiastic follower of Dexter on Showtime, I'm intrigued to see how it will translate to its network debut on CBS at 10:00pm this Sunday. At first I was concerned that the end result would be a heavily edited, several minutes shorter, vapid and empty shell of its former glory. Not so according to my Showtime contact. Evidently when they were shooting Dexter, for scenes that were gory, had nudity, or strong language, they shot alternate footage meant for broadcast TV. On Sunday we'll see if the result is a dumbed down and boring version of our favorite serial killer.

There's a good chance that the WGA strike will end tomorrow. What implications does this have for the rest of the year? Will we really not see any effects on TV until the late fall sometime, or will we get some reason to turn the TV on over the summer?

A Metro bus collided with two cars this afternoon, injuring twelve. "Four patients transported to area hospitals with minor injuries, eight were treated and released at the scene," Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman d'Lisa Davies said in a text alert.

The Los Angeles Fire Department is reporting a "water main rupture with pavement damage" on West Cahuenga Blvd. in the community of Cahuenga Pass. The street is passable, however, traffic is expected to be rerouted once the Department of Water & Power arrives on scene. For now, though, the DWP is stuck in traffic, so that won't happen right away. There will likely be delays this afternoon going over the pass in either direction, prepare your patience or thank the gods you took the Red Line subway to work today.