Media Scribbler

In the past few weeks, “Saturday Night Live” has managed to squeeze every political parody that would’ve seemed very improbable just a couple of months ago. After all, who would’ve predicted in early July (outside Sen. John McCain’s campaign, at least) that a Tina Fey look-alike would randomly become a Vice-Presidential candidate?
But on a show where politicians making fun of themselves have become much-valued guest stars (remember Al Gore’s would’ve been Oval Office speech where he basically ruminated on what might have happened if he’d won the 2000 election?) Sen. McCain got an early start. He and Tina Fey (playing …read more

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One of the best uses of modern statistics and polling has done is in bringing things out of test screenings and focus groups to let them know women hate one character or think another is too stereotypical, et. al.
But by the power of the Internet (and a great little webcasting platform called Seesmic) a producer of the show “Heroes” to find out one thing — how many people watch his show on the Web through Hulu or P2P shares, downloaded them from iTunes or simply TiVo it. He also wants to know what you like about that method you like.
Where …read more

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For everyone who thinks that Whitney Port is the only remaining sane person on “The Hills”, MTV has posted a sneak peek of her spinoff show “The City”, which is set in New York City.

For everyone who has never read the dearly departed Socialite Rank blog, the “Olivia” shown in the clip is controversial socialite Olivia Palmero, who is apparently going to figure large as Whitney starts her new job at Diane von Fustenberg. The snarking is already going full-steam, with fellow celeb-socialite Samantha Ronson dubbing Palmero “a new Heidi [Montag] on the rise.”
Beyond that, it looks like Whitney is …read more

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NBC: Crusoe — This show is NBC’s big gamble that the same people who watch “The Tudors” and “Robin Hood” (or even on a more basic level in “Pirates of the Caribbean”) will stay home on a Friday night to watch a swashbuckling explorer who battles pirates in this premiere ep. If you need to find a reason to watch it, here’s a clip (US only, sorry) of “Lord of the Rings” hottie Sean Bean from the premiere ep as Robinson Crusoe’s father. More clips available here.

CBS:  The Ghost Whisperer — After being introduced to online gaming, Melinda finds a …read more

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There have been several shows that have ended up revamping their shows between the pilot and the premiere this year. Three of them — “My Own Worst Enemy”, “Kath & Kim” and “Life On Mars” — will be debuting within the next week.
The promotional campaigns for each show are different, and probably highlight some of the major changes that the shows have undergone and how much their networks are still banking on them. This goes especially for the first two shows.
Other than a bunch of promos during the Olympics (which weren’t even for the show we’ll see, since they were …read more

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Even thought “Heroes” may not have burned up the airwaves Monday with record ratings, NBC execs can rest assured that their show is being watched. Kinda.
TorrentFreak says that Mininova, which is possibly the biggest P2P tracker in the world, got 10 million downloads in a single day. The increase is presumed to be mostly because of “Heroes”. Other BitTorrent trackers reported similar jumps for Monday.
Stats from TorrentFreak say that, across all BitTorrent sites, the two episodes from “Heroes’” season opening were downloaded well over a million times each.
The folks at NBC and Hulu really shouldn’t be too upset, because 92 percent of …read more

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- If you’re sick of “90210″ hype, then I’ve got some really bad news for you — the CW has picked it up for a full-season run. The show, which was originally ordered for 13 episodes, has managed to keep up its ratings enough for the CW to make the leap of faith. Another good sign is the addition of writer-producer Rebecca Kirschner, who worked on “Gilmore Girls” and  “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
- Fox has ordered 13 episodes of Imagine/20th Century Fox TV’s “Lie To Me”, which is slated to star Tim Roth as a human lie detector who can …read more

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Comics Continuum has a preview of the upcoming season of “Heroes” on their site. The show definitely will make the “Heroes” fandom be ready to get the show on the road on Sept. 22, if they weren’t already beyond the waiting point after a writer’s strike-shortened season.
One observation from a non-Heroes-watching observer who is a huge fan of “Doctor Who” — when you think about it, this show is closer to that classic British sci-fi show than anything on American TV at the moment. There are other sci-fi shows with aliens and space travel, but there aren’t many with so …read more

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It’s hard to described how good the BBC sitcom/geekfest “Spaced” is without sounding like a promotional package. That’s why, on BBC Video’s new complete series U.S. DVD release of the show, the writing staff let some bigger names make their jobs easier on the back of the package. They just let some of the commentators do the gushing.
“‘Spaced’ is so damned good I’m seriously honored to be quoted 0n the DVD cover,” said Matt Stone, who is a little bit busy with his own comedy franchise for even the PR soundbite, much less doing commentary on both discs of eps.
“I …read more

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David Hoselton, Producer & Writer for House (recently promoted from co-producer), appeared at the Banff World Television Festival in Alberta last week to give a speech about the "art of story editing" for the show: from concept to execution, and all the changes along the way.
image: ianivarieanna
David Hoselton gave a play-by-play look at the production of episode 3.18, "Airborne", in which House and Cuddy find themselves on a plane from Singapore amidst a possible epidemic. Throughout the discussion, David tells us many interesting things about working for House, such as the three doctors kept on retainer for the series. …read more

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