The Discovery Channel will devote an entire week to Alaska-themed programming beginning April 12, promising to "transport viewers to one of the most unforgiving environments on the planet." In fact, this might be the most time any network has spent in Alaska since Fox News' Greta Van Susteren temporarily movedin with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her family. (That's an exaggeration, if only a slight one.)

Discovery's "Alaska Week" will feature special episodes of the ongoing series "Dirty Jobs" and "Mythbusters" set in Alaska, along with the hit crab-catching show "Deadliest Catch." Other offerings will include "Arctic Roughnecks," "Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment," "Alaska: Most Extreme," "Untamed Alaska," and my personal favorite, "Bear Attack!," about a series of maulings (OK, three) that took place near Anchorage over a six-week period. (Free tip: There are crossover possibilities with "The Office" on this one.)

Given the continued speculation surrounding Palin's political future, Discovery is perhaps missing an opportunity. Palin still enthralls a portion of the conservative base, which can't understand why the rest of the nation thinks she's a dunderhead and assumes they're suffering from some "hot for teacher" fixation. Actually, I think Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis nailed it on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" when he said nominating Palin in 2012 would be "political suicide" on the GOP's part, which I guess makes me a God-hating tool of the liberal establishment.

Still, the governor certainly has enough of a base to produce hit TV shows by cable rating standards. So I propose -- free of charge -- the following ideas for programs that other networks could offer as part of their own "Alaska Week" editions:
-- "Media Attack!" (Fox News) -- A sobering look at how a politician who can't think of a newspaper that she reads, can't name any reform efforts with which her famously reform-minded running mate was associated and who seems so woefully over her head even many prominent conservatives say she isn't ready to be president is, somehow, strictly a victim of the media. Sean Hannity hosts.

-- "Hot Northern Nights" (MTV) -- A look at teenage sex in a state where all that snow on the outside heats things up on the inside. Of course, the kind of things you can catch in this context can be pretty deadly, too. Kim Kardashian hosts.

-- "Fabulously Dirty Jobs" (Bravo) -- Reality series focusingon the McCain PR team assigned to clean up the messes surrounding Palin during the 2008 campaign, whichprompted them to open a combination PR firm/hair salon/matchmaking/second-hand clothing service. Heidi Klum hosts.

-- "Russia: The Most Dangerous Neighbor" (History) -- What's itlike for Alaska residents to live in constant fear of a Russian invasion that would turn America's largest state into a socialist, Vodka-swilling stronghold? Includes CGI reenactments of what the U.S. will look like under Russian control. Glenn Beck hosts.

-- "Mother Bears" (Animal Planet) -- Reality series about the similarities between human and bear mothers' behavior in Alaska. Joan Lunden hosts.

-- "Deer in the Headlights" (MSNBC) -- A retrospective of Palin's campaign interviews, complete with wacky sound effects. Rachel Maddow hosts.

-- "Todd and Sarah Plus Five" (TLC) -- A reality show about juggling political life with a family of five kids, especially when they get old enough to begin having kids of their own. Dr. Phil McGraw hosts.

-- "Polar President" (Chiller) -- The title is self-explanatory, but it's hard to think of another one -- even the bear-mauling thing -- that would be nearly as scary. Jamie Lee Curtis hosts.

If you'd like more examples, I'll try to find some and I'll bring 'em to ya.

Although I wasn't able to attend and participate, I wanted to throw out a plug for an upcoming event at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, "From Test Patterns to Pixels: Envisioning the Future of Television." The day-long April 8 seminar will explore the work of producer and network executive Fred Silverman, which will include a look at Silverman's programming history and an interview with him conducted by "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft. (Both Silverman and Kroft are Syracuse grads, class of '58 and '67, respectively.)

I've always enjoyed and valued Silverman's input and observations about the state of the TV business, and he continues to analyze the primetime landscape as if he were still in charge of shuffling the programming squares at CBS, ABC and NBC, all of which he headed for a time during his storied career.

That said, the timing didn't work out for me to make a pilgrimage to Syracuse, and having been there a few years back (to attend the NCAA basketball tournament, if you must know), well, it just wasn't on top of my list of vacation destinations. Moreover, I'd feel like a bit of a hypocrite given that the retrospective will be hosted by Robert Thompson, the ubiquitous founding director of Syracuse's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, who is quoted so frequently in media circles about such a staggering array of topics that I have joked about him turning up at local Wal-Mart openings if there's an outside chance a camera crew might be there.

At any rate, those wanting more information about the event should visit silverman.syr.edu, which will offer journalists a chance to contribute questions that will be posed at the seminar or at the least answered online.

Oh, and if anybody is going to be honored at the University of Hawaii in the near future, for that kind of boondoggle, hey, I'm there!

The NCAA Final Four will be played on April 4, with the title game two days later. So after two weeks of enjoyable basketball and ear-straining bluster, here are five final thoughts on the event so far:

-- Producers love to find feel-good stories around the tournament, but this year, they should probably keep the focus strictly on basketball. For starters, the games are being played in Detroit, where any allusions to Motown or the auto industry will only depress people and bring to mind the hideous economy. Connecticut, meanwhile, enters the weekend under a cloud because of alleged recruiting violations -- a reminder that college sports are a big business that occasionally leads to bending of the mostly preposterous rules designed to protect its "amateur" image.

-- Attention, sportswriters: The Final Four will consist of two No. 1 seeds (Connecticut, North Carolina) playing against a No. 2 and No. 3 (Michigan St. and Villanova, respectively). All four are solid basketball programs that have won championships before. And guess what? The tournament has been just fine without more of the Cinderella stories that you keep whining about. CBS could certainly hope for a little better geographic diversity, but in terms of marquee matchups, the network should be smiling.

-- It's always a relief when color guy Bill Raftery (he of the exclamation "With the kiss!") has called his last game of the season. Dick Vitale has made a fine living hyperventilating and coining nonsensical phrases; the pretenders/imitators like Raftery -- who also feel compelled to create their own languages, sort of like that character in "Nell" -- have grown pretty tiresome.

-- Play-by-play man Jim Nantz sounds like he's having a religious experience (or an orgasmic one) during those promos for CBS' Masters Coverage. "The celebration at 18. Where dreams ... come true," he oozed in one. Dude, it's friggin' golf, for crissakes.

-- "60 Minutes" always looks a little bit silly when it tries to be a good network team player by offering a sports-themed piece to tie in with CBS sports coverage -- in the case of Sunday's episode, Steve Kroft's profile of LeBron James. Kroft did elicit a few interesting tidbits about James having surrounded himself business-wise with childhood friends, but for the most part the Cleveland Cavaliers star didn't have much to say, and Kroft couldn't think of much to ask him.

Plus a free, completely gratuitous bonus sports-related observation:

-- It's interesting that there would be so much hand-wringing over whether Notre Dame should have invited President Obama to speak at its commencement ceremonies, inasmuch as Notre Dame gets invited every year somewhere where it doesn't truly belong. It's called a "bowl game."

Although I recognize that newspapers are desperate to generate reaction these days, you have to wonder about the Los Angeles Times op-ed editors who opted not to challenge the bone-headed assertions in Andrew Klavan's latest demonstration that he is not particularly bright -- an op-ed piece titled "Take the Limbaugh Challenge," which concludes that nobody who criticizes Rush Limbaugh actually listens to him.

Klavan, just to refresh your memory, is the same guy who wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed, "What Bush and Batman Have in Common," which concluded that the popularity of "The Dark Knight" was in fact an endorsement of the Bush administration's handling of the war against terrorism, calling the movie "a paean of praise" to the former Commander in Chief. It made you wonder if he actually sat all the way through it, but let's not get sidetracked in past stupidity.

Klavan starts out with a howler -- namely, that you couldn't possibly read the LA Times unless you were a bleeding-heart liberal from the get-go. He then proceeds to "the certainty" that if you disagree with the syndicated radio host, "You've never listened to Rush Limbaugh."

For the record, I listen to Limbaugh quite a lot, and I recognize that he can be entertaining and that some of his more outlandish statements are obviously exaggerated for effect. Nevertheless, even moderates can find plenty in Limbaugh's overheated, alarmist rhetoric that's offensive, which is precisely why Democrats are doing everything they can to make him the voice of the Republican Party. It's also why Limbaugh has become so indispensable to his core audience, since he can be more impolitic in demonizing liberals than most politicians dare to be.

Like other conservative talking heads, Limbaugh also has a vested interest in discrediting competing sources of information, which is a powerful marketing tool. In essence, personalities like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck bond themselves to their audience with a pitch that you can't trust newspapers and the major networks, which is perhaps why Klavan makes the assumption that only a liberal could possibly endure reading the Times. I wonder how he feels about Democrats reading the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal or watching Fox News.

Klavan claims he listens to Limbaugh all the time and has "never heard the man utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word." This only proves what I already suspected -- namely, that Klavan is either conveniently or situationally deaf, or as the Batman piece already suggested, doesn't have much operating between his ears.

As one of the non-bold-face names at Warner Bros.' classy farewell party for "ER" on Saturday night (and for a more detailed list of the who's who that attended, see Cynthia Littleton's recap on her blog), I couldn't help but think that the affair marked more than just a goodbye to a program, but an era.

NBC will replace "ER" starting April 9 with "Southland," a new series from "ER" producer John Wells created by Ann Biderman. A full review will come later, but it's an extremely promising cop drama set in Los Angeles -- one that arrives already living on borrowed time in terms of its timeslot, given NBC's commitment to strip Jay Leno at 10 p.m. in the fall.

Granted, there's not much of a distinction anymore content-wise between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. dramas, but NBC's financially-driven decision to carve back primetime will decrease the amount of network real estate for dramatic fare.

The irony is that "ER" itself was birthed when NBC was in the dumps and people were speculating that the network might have to make some kind of big structural shift. Instead, NBC -- then under Warren Littlefield, who was at Saturday's event, and Don Ohlmeyer -- used the final episode of "L.A. Law" to air an extended promotional spot touting its new medical drama, which premiered in the fall of 1994 and, along with "Friends," set the stages for what would become a pretty remarkable turnaround.

Fifteen years later, it's hard to see how NBC can pull off another Lazarus-like resurrection. Indeed, after the tepid debut for the new drama "Kings," there's reason to be concerned as to whether the network has the critical mass anymore to adequately launch a new hour -- and the Leno move makes the prospects of a dramatic breakthrough that much less likely.

That's the real consequence of giving Leno five hours in primetime. Sure, stripping an inexpensive talk program mitigates the cost of failure, but that also blunts NBC's opportunities for success. It's a way of saying that as long as we can make some money on Leno, we're willing to throw in the towel on introducing the kind of game-changing hit -- always a long shot, but at least a possibility -- that "ER" became. In a way, then, the diminished status of dramas becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

During the speeches at Saturday's event, NBC Entertainment Co-Chairman Ben Silverman introduced Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer as "my future boss," a harmless quip about the rumors that seem to crop up every few years about Warner Bros. being in the market to acquire NBC Universal. Still, Warner Bros. has a very different attitude about rolling the dice by investing in dramatic programming than NBC, which increasingly prefers to focus on its cable assets and pretend as if the flagship network is something of an afterthought.

For his part, Meyer said of "ER" that there is "no show in the history of the studio that has made us so proud for so long." He left out "made us so rich," but this is a studio boss, after all, so that was clearly implied.

Other dramas -- including "Southland" -- will make the studio proud again. But the days of a new dramatic hit being instrumental in helping get NBC off life support -- as "ER" once did -- appear to be a thing of the past.

Although I didn't care for the new sitcom "In the Motherhood" (and most critics, other than Tom Shales, seemed to share that opinion), I apparently missed a sin that prompted one reader to label the show "vile." Here is the angry letter that he sent to ABC and was kind enough to copy to Variety:

"I am outraged at ABC for the comments made on 'In the Motherhood.'

I was watching this vile show with my young son this evening when out of the blue it is announced that Santa is a made up character and parents are lying to their children about Santa being real.

The look on my son‘s face was one of shock & disappointment. I was outraged that this could happen. Outraged more that a network would allow this shameful act to take place at 8pm when families are gathered together watching TV in primetime. There was no innuendo or pretense here, just straight out that parents are lying to their kids and Santa is made-up.

How utterly cruel, senseless & disrespectful to every child and parent watching this awful show. You can be assured that ABC will never cross my screen again.

I am so upset considering what damage this has caused to the fantasies of young imaginations across the country, not to mention my own household.

Shame on you."

Several reactions come to mind, but for some reason I can't get past this one: Why on earth was anybody watching "In the Motherhood" with his or her child? And do families really still gather together to watch TV at 8 p.m.? I thought the kids pretty much were in one room watching Nickelodeon or playing video games most of the time, while they're parents watched something else in the other.

As if to underscore this point, here's a ratings tidbit that ought to make the outraged parent sleep a little easier: According to Nielsen data, 99.3% of U.S. children age 2-11 mercifully missed "In the Motherhood," with young kids accounting for less than 5% of the program's 6.7 million viewers.

There is, however, an interesting underlying issue here: My guess is network programmers have become so accustomed to expecting that kids have abandoned them that virtually nobody even raised the question of whether dissing the existence of Santa Claus was potentially problematic in a show that wound up being scheduled at 8 o'clock.

That said, with apologies to the outraged parent, I have to give ABC a pass on this one. Nothing in "Motherhood" was particularly believable, so it would seem easy enough to tell the kid, "It was just a stupid TV show, honey. Ignore it." Besides, most parents recognized that the best thing for their kids would be to watch something else -- like "American Idol," which teaches them that hard work is for saps and their real ambition should be to find a way to get on a reality show.

So "vile?" Hardly. Trust me, I watch TV a lot, I know "vile" when I see it.

Oh, and for the record, I'd keep junior away from those "Peanuts" specials. At least one of them strongly implies that there's no Great Pumpkin.

The ratings gains by Fox News Channel and MSNBC -- coupled with the declines during the first quarter for CNN -- could lead to various conclusions. The most obvious one is that with a new Democratic administration and an extremely polarized cable news audience, viewers are gravitating toward their ideological comfort zones. So conservatives are taking solace in the "Obama is a socialist" rantings of Fox's Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, while liberals cozy up to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. CNN -- trying to stay down the middle -- thus becomes the odd network out.

There is certainly some underlying truth to this, but I wouldn't overlook CNN's own missteps in contributing to its ratings woes. (To be fair, the year-to-year comparisons are skewed by election coverage in first-quarter '08, but there's no denying that CNN's competitive standing has slipped.)

Most of the thoughts that instantly come to mind regarding CNN in the last year are all of the sniggering variety, many having to do with the gratuitous use of technological toys that did more to obscure than illuminate its coverage. From holograms on election night to fever bars crawling across the screen during debates to the "Word Cloud" plucking terms out of President Obama's speech to the aerial (or was that satellite?) shot of the inauguration, the network forever seems to be planting a big "kick me" target on its back, making life too easy for the writers on "The Daily Show." As one critic put it, the latest stunt, "word cloud," looked like "Your brain on CNN." I was thinking more "Schoolhouse Rock."

The shame of it is that CNN should be -- needs to be -- better. With Fox veering harder right and MSNBC finally gaining traction as a progressive counterweight, there's a genuine need for serious reporting -- beyond the confines of "Frontline" and PBS -- that goes beyond just people in a studio spraying out their opinions. CNN could distinguish itself as the news counterpoint to the talkradio that its competitors are becoming, and it only has to attract a few million viewers hungry for that to become a rousing success. But first, it has to get smarter -- and stop futilely hoping that gizmos are going to be its salvation.

Instead, we get Wolf Blitzer and John King explaining the joys of "word cloud." "Some may find it cool, some may find it confusing," King began, leaving out the obvious -- namely, "And some may find it completely ridiculous."

For his part, Anderson Cooper fidgeted uncomfortably, as if he's somehow above all the nonsense. Sorry, A.C., but from my 360-degree view, the whole network is up to its ankles in it, and it's time to start shoveling.

Forgive this bit of indulgence in a pet peeve (though this is a blog, after all), but I receive a ridiculous number of email pitches lately that begin with personalized messages -- from people who I don't know.

"Hey, B.," one began.

"Hey Brian, How's it going?" said another.

This is a relatively recent trend, presumably designed to lure journalists into entertaining a pitch before they realize it. I'm waiting for one that starts out, "Hey, how's the family? We should really get together for dinner soon. You haven't called in awhile. Anyway, I was wondering if you'd be interested in talking to one of the executives at Gurgle-tech about the latest gizmo that's going to revolutionize TV...."

So hey, flacks, here's a friendly suggestion from your old pal: If you don't know me, don't pretend like you do. This may come as a surprise, but I gave up on imaginary friends several years ago, and acting like we're bosom buddies when we're not doesn't do anything except make it that much more likely that I will hit "delete" before bothering to read your email.

Anyway, thanks for listening. And be sure to give my best to, you know, whoever.

Favorite ratings press release of the week, regarding the CW series "Reaper":

"REAPER Delivers Double-Digit Gains Week-to-Week

            The CW’s sophomore series REAPER hit season highs last night among adults 18-34 (1.0/3), women 18-34 (1.0/3), adults 18-49 (1.0/3) and total viewers (2.) against the Presidential press conference on the other four networks, according to preliminary live plus same day Nielsen ratings for Tuesday, March 24, 2009. 

"REAPER built by double-digit increases versus last week in all key categories, including adults 18-34 (+11%), women 18-34 (+43%), adults 18-49 (11%) and viewers (2.7 million)."

Now, if the CW can just get President Obama to schedule a press conference that preempts all the other broadcast networks every Tuesday, the show might be able to escape the fatal touch of YOU KNOW WHO.

Actually, though, Obama's plans to do more primetime press conferences could be a modest bit of good news for CW, in the same way Fox always tried to capitalize on such news-oriented preemptions in its infancy. After all, the "Top Model" audience isn't exactly a primary target for news coverage -- unless, I suppose, the story explores how long a person can survive on radishes and diet soda.

According to Nielsen, by the way, the press conference totaled just over 40 million viewers on 11 networks. And that actually turned out to be a pretty good lead-in for "NCIS" (with an audience of 17.8 million), "Dancing With the Stars" (16.1 million) and "The Biggest Loser" (9.8 million), though many people might have accidentally turned to the latter assuming that they would find information about CNBC's Jim Cramer or their 401(k)s.

Sports writers occasionally become so enamored with "the story" that they miss the event they're covering, and I think the New York Times' Pete Thamel fell victim to that myopia in his analysis piece on the NCAA basketball tournament.

In a nutshell, Thamel lamented the lack of upsets in the first two rounds and the fact that the 12 top seeds had made it into the Sweet Sixteen, without a Davidson or Valparaiso "for the news media to storm to capture the spirit of a memorable run."

Well, damn those favorites for crushing the hopes and dreams of the news media.

Upsets are swell, but I think Thamel is sitting so close that he missed the whole point of the tournament. The seeding process, after all, is specifically designed to favor the higher seeds -- to have them knock off lesser opponents in the early rounds so the games get progressively more competitive and theoretically better played as the teams advance. For the North Dakota States of the world, the opportunity is just being invited to the dance, not necessarily going home with the glass slipper. Besides, what's the point of doing well during the regular season if it doesn't improve your chances in the playoffs -- the same reason pro teams play for home-court (or field) advantage and (in the NFL's case) opening-round byes.

As a basketball fan, I want to see Duke vs. Villanova and eventually Pittsburgh vs. Connecticut, and not just because I have that in my office pool. It's because they'll be more fun to watch, even if I don't have a dog (mine, UCLA, went home early) in the fight.

If CBS ends up with marquee matchups in the Final Four, in other words, that only means the tournament selection committee did its job. And if sports writers feel let down about not having a heartwarming story to tell, well boo hoo, dude -- skip the hoops and try watching "Oprah."

Update: Chris Dufresne, who along with Mark Heisler remains the only Los Angeles Times sports columnist that I can tolerate, offers his own column largely making the same points as Thamel. Mostly, Dufresne sounds upset that he only ran 9-7 on his tournament pool scorecard in the second round, meaning he outsmarted himself by trying to pick a bunch of upsets that didn't pan out. Anyway, not a bad read, if a wrong-headed one.

Oh, and one final note on conspiracy theories: If you're CBS, the concern is less about the marquee value of the schools than the population centers in which they play. And whatever gripes one can level at the tournament selection committee, let me reiterate that the basketball system -- where a champion is settled on the court in a sudden-elimination format -- is so vastly superior to the politics that surround the Bowl Championship Series, or just about anything else, that I have a hard time buying criticism of it simply because Cleveland St. didn't make it out of its bracket.

National Public Radio's David Folkenflik is a little late to the party in noticing the surge in Fox News Channel's ratings during President Barack Obama's young presidency. Yet one wonders if News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch isn't becoming a prisoner, in some respects, of Fox News' success.

Always a pragmatist, Murdoch has plenty of business to transact that could involve the new administration, and according to biographer Michael Wolff has seen his own notoriously conservative political views soften somewhat. Yet Murdoch's conservative assets have grown more strident than ever, from Glenn Beck's tearful rants to the New York Post cartoon flap, over which Murdoch himself ultimately apologized.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has done a bang-up job in capitalizing on conservative/GOP resentment toward the Democrats' electoral victories, but it's hard to argue that FNC has veered harder right in the process -- not only adding Beck, but allowing Sean Hannity to go solo since Alan Colmes stopped lending his tiny voice to that program. And even Bill O'Reilly has pretty much dispensed with the pretense of fairness and balance, as Monday night's show demonstrated, in which the host asked if Obama is "over his head," then discussed the question with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and two right-leaning pundits who mostly just agreed with him.

(O'Reilly, by the way, continues to experience Captain Queeg-like moments on air, the latest involving an ambush interview with a blogger that dared to criticize him. Couching the story as one of "good & evil," he ended up bringing the whole thing around to attacking NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker -- clearly as a means of lashing out at MSNBC for employing Keith Olbermann. I don't have the time or patience to recount the entire dust-up, but see this Huffington Post link for the video and back story.)

Ailes is enjoying such success at Fox News that it's unlikely Murdoch will rock the boat, especially with so much else going on at the studio as No. 2 Peter Chernin steps aside.  Put simply, Murdoch has a lot on his plate, so FNC can run on auto-pilot for awhile. The really interesting part, though, will be seeing how and whether Murdoch can seek to gingerly distance himself from FNC when the need arises to try cozying up to Obama. If Murdoch can master that two-step, he'll qualify as not just a man amongst moguls but the Lord of the Dance.

The Parents Television Council newsletter is always good for a few laughs, but I'd hate to think that anybody takes it too seriously, especially with a blaring headline like, "Why PTC's Work Matters: Violence on TV = Violence in Society."

The front page opens with a tragic story about a four-year-old boy being killed by automatic weapons fire, just to soften readers up for the inevitable fund-raising pitch. Then PTC -- pardon the expression -- moves in for the kill: "Scientific research and common sense suggest one very big and very obvious reason why our society today is so violent: Because our entertainment promotes it."

Of course, there are a few convenient omissions in the PTC's argument, beginning with the fact that the organization's most frequent preoccupation appears to be sex and language, not violence. Moreover, the group's right-leaning allies are among the first to object to any restrictions on guns or firearms, leading to the old bit of hypocrisy that goes, "Guns don't kill people; TV kills people."

What really troubles me, though, is the persistent effort to equate social science with chemical and biological sciences, acting as if there's a proven, direct causation between media violence and societal violence. Even studies that suggest a correlation in this area can't experiment in the real world or control for all the variables that might explain why crime goes up or down, why one kid kills and another doesn't, why I could watch more violent crap growing up than anybody without becoming a psychopath. And as someone who has read plenty of research on the topic, I feel confident saying that any respectable social scientist who isn't currently lobbying for grant money would acknowledge as much, provided that you were willing to endure speaking to a social scientist.

"The Debate is Over: TV Violence Harms Children!" the PTC nevertheless proclaims, insisting, "Case closed! American families are at risk from television programming that falls outside of our society's agreed-upon standards."

Frankly, I'm not sure our society's standards are any more agreed upon than the case is closed, but when it comes to the anti-smut-violence debate, the PTC is a bit like John Belushi's character in "Animal House." Once they're on a roll, there's really no point in quibbling about the details.

President Obama is planning more primetime news conferences. It's a very good idea as a political strategy, and perhaps explains why his opponents and media critics are having fits when it comes to the new president.

Over the last few days, Obama has appeared on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and been interviewed by Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes." In stark contrast to his predecessor, he betrays an ease and command of the facts in these settings that's perhaps befitting of not only a natural politician but a president weaned in the television age, one who can segue from detailed policy discussion to adorable anecdotes about his young daughters flying aboard Air Force One or playing on their "Rolls-Royce of swing sets."

Obama's style is a big reason why the most outlandish charges leveled against him are only registering with his most vociferous critics, who are finding a loyal audience of like-minded viewers and readers buying into the "He's a socialist!" because, well, they can't understand why everyone else can't see it, too. The more heated and strident these criticisms become, though, the more those offering them are likely to be marginalized in the eyes of public's vast majority, to whom Obama looks like a genial if extraordinarily bright guy.

The latest head-scratching criticism directed Obama's way is that he relies too much on a TelePrompTer, a charge that's particularly amusing coming from certain TV and radio hosts who would be lost without a script/prompter/talking points in front of them. The assumption seems to be that he's cheating, somehow, by sounding so polished and articulate. Yet after President Bush -- who even supporters generally acknowledged wasn't exactly a great speaker -- such denunciations have the feel of splitting hairs. People want their president to sound smarter than they do, and I suspect most don't mind if cue cards are involved to help them get there.

There's plenty of room to disagree with Obama on policy matters, and critics on both the left and the right are second-guessing his response to the financial crisis. Political foes should remember, however, that the public's exposure to their political leaders (and indeed, celebrities of almost any stripe) occurs through the medium of television. As he has demonstrated over the last few days, Obama is gangbusters in this vehicle -- funny, resolved, tough when he has to be. Based on that TV presence, those who want to be taken seriously beyond the fringes of the tin-foil-hat crowd should choose their lines of attack accordingly.

Although I confess to not paying regular attention to the daily ins and outs of "Dr. Phil," the show's PR offensive appears to indicate that it's doing more dumpster-diving in the tabloids lately than I can ever remember. After expressing remorse over that Britney Spears flap of a while back, the program has recently indulged in the unsavory courting of (and multiple episodes featuring) the so-called "Octo-mom," Nadya Suleman. Now, it's piggybacking on the Chris Brown-Rihanna story in its pitch for an episode about domestic violence, issuing "10 Warning Signs That You Might Be in an Abusive Relationship."

Things are tough all over, but if this is the direction in which the program is heading, why not rename it "Dr. TMZ?" Others have already noted the show's drift (see this recent Forbes.com piece), but there's an aura of desperation in it that seems particularly unsavory given the plain-spoken niche the host has occupied.

That said, I realize there are people who might need semi-professional help to extricate themselves from watching the show. So here are five warning signs that you might be in an abusive relationship with "Dr. Phil" (the series, not the guy):
-- You keep watching even when you know it's really, really bad for you.

-- You are thinking about having a litter of children -- or trying to balloon your weight up to 500 pounds -- just so you can meet him.

-- You begin speaking with a Southern drawl and saying things like "That dog won't hunt," even though you are not from Texas.

-- You find yourself emotionally paralyzed and uncertain how to behave in your personal relationships without first tuning in to receive Dr. Phil's advice, even though he says pretty much the same thing every day.

-- Your mood abruptly changes when you realize the show is in reruns.

Should these conditions persist, try turning off the TV. Or go back to watching just "Oprah."

Lacking a budget, my "prize" for the Jim Cramer-Martha Stewart caption contest was to allow a reader to determine and contribute part of an upcoming post. Scott Killinger, an aspiring writer in Brentwood, was the winner (see related post), and he opted to devote his space to the second-year AMC series "Breaking Bad."

Scott writes as follows:

"Since the final episode of 'The Sopranos' aired in June of 2007 there has been a gaping void in my life. Over the course of eight years David Chase and company took me on an epic emotional journey that made me both laugh uncomfortably and hysterically, cower in fear and jump for joy all in an episode’s time. This Sunday night ritual was capped off by what I consider the true test whether a drama is worth planning my life around -- constantly rewinding and re-watching the cryptic previews for next week’s episode. If you are partaking in this futile act then you know you have hooked into something special.  (Side note:  if you have a Time Warner DVR and are using one of their remotes then you REALLY understand the pain and frustration this causes, but still we try).  For the past two Sunday nights I have found myself doing just this.

"There have been many suitors who have attempted to restore Sunday night as event television in my life. Along the way I’ve kissed many frogs like 'John from Cincinnati' and had my heart broken in 'Rome,' but at last the void has been filled by none other than a meth-making, terminally ill, high school science teacher. 'Breaking Bad,' you have finally restored meaning to my Sunday nights. I could list countless reasons why you’re so great, how you’re an allegory for capitalism going off the rails or the layered, ultra-nuanced performance by an actor who I best knew as Jerry Seinfeld’s dentist (sorry 'Malcolm,' even a bit part on 'Seinfeld' trumps being a regular on your show).  But the main reason you have stolen my heart is simply because you are truly compelling and original television. The only missing element is an east coast feed so I don’t have to wait until 10 p.m. for our weekly meeting."

Thank you, Scott. Personally, I'm not sure that I'm prepared to elevate "Breaking Bad" to quite that level yet (and it sounds like I enjoyed "Rome" far more than he did), but I have found the AMC show equally addictive -- a series that, like it's main character, appears to be hurtling out of control, which when it's done right is pretty thrilling to watch. Plus I'm absorbing all kinds of useful information about how to cook drugs, and as a journalist, having a fallback career sounds like an increasingly good idea. Having already seen this weekend's episode, I can assure you that it doesn't disappoint.

Oh, and one anecdote about the show's star, Bryan Cranston: Years ago I went to an open house in my neighborhood and noticed that there were several pictures of him on the walls. Being the intuitive reporter that I am, I immediately assumed that the home was occupied by a big Bryan Cranston fan -- until I got into the bedroom, saw a bunch of family photos, and realized it was actually his house.

Moral of the story: If you are on a hit Fox comedy that's fortunate enough to go into syndication, you will be moving out of my neighborhood.

Anyway, when we were actually introduced awhile later at I think a charity event, the exchange went like this:

Cranston: Nice to meet you.

Lowry: I've been inside your house.

This explains why I do better work when I stay away from people.

News item: NBC has tapped "To Catch a Predator" correspondent Chris Hansen to get to the bottom of the financial crisis.

So beware: If you show up to talk someone into a subprime loan -- or try to have sex with their under-age daughter -- Hansen is on the case.

Actually, there's a lot of good, simple information in the two-part "Dateline" report that airs March 22 and continues on the March 27 edition of the NBC very-seldom-news magazine. Hansen does a reasonably solid job of putting a human face on debt problems, particularly when he and his producers delve into the credit-card burdens bearing down on ordinary folks during the second hour.

The problem is that Hansen's old tricks persist, and he almost can't help himself from grandstanding and turning the "bad guys" in the piece into weird, creepy predators, in much the same way he exploited the pathetic losers that NBC helped lure to the "Predator" stings.

So in the first hour, Hansen drives to former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo's gated community -- and includes the footage for no particular reason, since he's turned away at the gate. And he spends a lot of time pressing people -- including consumers -- regarding who they think deserves blame for the financial crisis, including themselves.

The piece de resistance, though, is hidden-camera footage of collection-agency employees in the second hour, as they stand around drinking beer and talking about their questionable tactics. And sure enough, there's a "Predator"-like sequence, as Hansen and camera crew tail the proprietor of a Buffalo debt-collection agency, confronting the employees until they repeatedly slam doors in his face. It all makes for great, conflict-laden video, but it's big, dumb journalism.

Then again, Hansen's world has to be boiled down into heroes and villains, into black and white without shades of gray. So he winds up obscuring the underlying point of his reporting by overreaching for the big "Gotcha!" moment -- a trend that's become increasingly common in local news, which does precious little real reporting, but every sweeps month takes advantage of lipstick-camera technology to try doing splashy exposes on shady local auto mechanics, retailers, whatever.

NBC is belatedly coming around to the financial meltdown, especially in light of CNBC's contribution by serving as a Wall Street cheerleader -- not that you'd know it from NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker's indignation about such suggestions or Jim Cramer's latest defensive appearance on the "Today" show. Belatedly finding his voice, Cramer said it was "a naive and misleading thing to attack the media" for its role as Jon Stewart had on "The Daily Show," where he reduced the "Mad Money" host to quivering mush.

As for Hansen, his act ultimately remains the same. It's only the perps -- and who they're out to screw -- that has changed.

Here are the Los Angeles Press Club nominees for "CRITIC, TELEVISION," in its second annual National Entertainment Journalism Awards, with comment:

* Shawn Edwards and Russ Simmons, Fox4 News, Kansas City

Rightfully notorious as a "quote whore," Edwards earned the following compilation from Variety editor Tim Gray in his 2007 wrap-up of embarrassing quote ads:

"No Reservations" -- "The most delightful movie of the year!" (July 22)

"Resident Evil: Extinction" -- "The most exciting movie of the year!" (Sept. 28)

"Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" -- "The most magical movie of the year!" (Nov. 11)

"I Am Legend" -- "The best movie of the year!" (Dec. 15)

* Nancy Jay, AAFES-EXTV

I'm not sure what any of those letters mean.

* Manny the Movie Guy, KMIR6/NBC

This might sound like nitpicking, but shouldn't you have to provide a real last name to be nominated for a journalism award?

* Sandie Newton. CBS11/TXA21, Texas

Never heard of her.

* George Pennacchio, KABC-TV

Him I have heard of, but A) he's not a critic and doesn't do reviews, and B) gushes so much over celebrities that there's a constant fear he's going to spontaneously combust on them.

The same five folks, by the way, account for six of the eight nominees in the television "FEATURES" and "NEWS STORY" categories, which suggests either a dearth of submissions or that the ballots were tabulated in Florida and Ohio.

The press club's March 26 event will honor Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern, who is certainly more than deserving of the accolades (and already owns a Pulitzer Prize). Still, with newspapers and broadcasters ailing financially, maybe it's time to spare journos from hitting up their bosses (or worse, digging into their own pockets) for the submission fees on these manufactured prize hunts -- or at least declare a moratorium.

In fact, I think that's "the best idea of the year!" (March 18)

Quote of the day: NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, speaking at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit, explaining the changes at NBC in the context of moving Jay Leno into the 10 p.m. hour: "Sometimes, you see the world more clearly when you're flat on your back."

Actually, when you're flat on your back, what you usually see is just blue sky, which is clearly what's in Zucker's line of view in putting that kind of positive spin on the move. Although I suspect Leno will do OK, the decision to strip him in primetime will undoubtedly further weaken NBC vis-a-vis its competitors and, more significantly, leaves the network with no fall-back position in failure. If Leno inexplicably tanks, in other words, how do you fill a gaping five-hour hole? What's next, Dr. Phil?

Then again, Zucker's tenure since moving to NBC Entertainment and then up the corporate ladder has been characterized by short-term thinking -- the kind of we'll-fix-it-on-the-fly approach he used in his successful stint running the "Today" show. The problem is that network TV, anyway, requires a better grasp of longterm planning than that, which partially explains why NBC's primetime lineup does indeed find itself flat on its back, despite the news division's continued strength.

Then again, Zucker stressed in his comments, as he has before, that NBC Universal is mostly a cable company now, and turned part of his attention to defending CNBC's Jim Cramer from Jon Stewart's dissection of the business-news channel on "The Daily Show."

Zucker said Stewart had been "incredibly unfair" by focusing on Cramer's bad stock calls, which completely misses the point of what Stewart and his crack research staff exposed -- not just a few "bad calls," but a general tone of blustery worship toward Wall Street that prompted even conservative columnist George Will to wryly muse, "Don't take financial advice from people who are shouting."

To be fair, NBC has enjoyed considerable success in cable, but after the last few weeks -- including the public-relations demolition of CNBC, MSNBC's conspicuous silence on the matter, the risible name change of Sci Fi Channel to Syfy, and NBC's disappointing (if predictable) ratings for the dramatic gamble "Kings" -- the company certainly hasn't had much to shout about. Unless, perhaps, you're seeing the world through Zucker-vision.

One of the strange aspects of growing up in Los Angeles is that you cross paths with people who wind up in the movie industry. In my case, that included going to school for a brief time with both "General Hospital" star Genie Francis and "Race to Witch Mountain's" Ike Eisenmann.

Being a snotty kid even then, I never saw "Witch Mountain," having little appetite for the live-action Disney fare. But I remember it was a big deal for most of our peers. Anyway, the Los Angeles Times ran a feature the other day about Eisenmann and  his 1975 co-star Kim Richards, which brought a flood of memories back about the weirdness of being 12 years old and realizing that we had a sort-of celebrity in our midst. (Frankly, I paid more attention -- albeit from a respectful distance -- to Francis, junior high school hormones being what they are. Unfortunately, this pattern would be reenacted with other girls, famous or otherwise, until roughly my sophomore year of college.)

The Times story didn't mention Eisenmann's longstanding Southern California connection/roots, but it did contain one oddity that I at first attributed to another screw-up slipping by the paper's decimated copy desk: Eisenmann, who moved to Florida, has changed his name to Iake Eissinmann. Given the paper's recent glut of typos, it probably would have been a good idea to include that explanation on the front page, instead of waiting until the jump.

Eissinmann wasn't asked about his motivation for the spelling change, but I assume it was to avoid being harassed as an adult by Google-ing fans. This has given me an idea, inasmuch as 20 years worth of bylines has allowed former high-school classmates and what-not to easily track me down, even when I didn't want them to. So when I finally hang up my critic spurs and want to be avoid being bothered by outraged readers, I just might change my name to Briain Lowereye, which sounds a bit like something out of "The Lord of the Rings."

Or Luke Skywalker. I'm still working out the details.

Basic cable networks keep doing really weird things in their efforts to run away from confining brands, from TLC no longer meaning "The Learning Channel" to AMC dumping "American Movie Classics" to the Biography Channel shortening that to "Bio." But now comes one of the dumbest yet: Sci Fi Channel renaming itself ... Syfy.

Executives note that the name will still sound like Sci Fi, but "the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider and more diverse range of imagination-based entertainment including fantasy, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure, as well as science fiction. It also positions the brand for future growth by creating an ownable trademark that can travel easily with consumers across new media and non-linear digital platforms, new international channels and extend into new business ventures."

If that's your explanation for changing the channel's name to something that on paper resembles either a disease or the pharmaceutical product that treats it ("Be sure and check with your doctor before taking Syfy"), good luck with that.

And here Sci Fi (sorry, Syfy) has to go and do something like this just when I was getting ready to applaud the build-up to the two-hour "Battlestar Galactica" finale, mostly because it's pretty clear that fans of "BSG" will get absolutely nothing accomplished this week, surfing the web for spoilers while waiting to find out how the series concludes.

By the way, my guess is A) the whole thing's a dream in the mind of an autistic child; B) Galactica actually crashed on a deserted island, where it's now hurtling through time; or C) the Cylons finally morph into GE refrigerators, in a climax that brings NBC product-placement and corporate synergy together in one big all-time low.

Either way, if your urges to watch Syfy remain naggingly persistent after "Galactica" wraps up, consult your physician. And be cautious how much Syfy you consume if you are already on medication for high blood pressure or have never had an actual real-life girlfriend and have begun to truly believe that you might have a shot with Kara Thrace or Sharon Valeri.

NBC Universal is doubtless hoping Jon Stewart's takedown of CNBC quickly fades into the ether, but the company's collective response -- or lack thereof -- to Jim Cramer's dismal "The Daily Show" appearance risked turning a small fire into a raging one.

After building up Cramer with appearances on "Today" and MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in advance of his date with Stewart, there was virtually no follow-up on NBC-owned outlets in the wake of the interview. Indeed, the website mediabistro.com/tvnewser reported that MSNBC producers had been instructed not to feature the segment on their programs, which elicited -- as my colleague Dan Frankel wrote -- a not particularly resounding denial, since minimal coverage on Rachel Maddow's show doesn't fully deflect the charges of a blackout -- especially beyond its two primetime programs.

Granted, this wasn't a huge "hold the presses" story. Still, given the amount of attention it generated elsewhere and the kind of lightweight pop-culture material that MSNBC normally pounces on, bypassing it at best smells fishy, and at worst feeds the sense that some kind of orchestrated corporate ass-covering was involved.

For its part, CNBC issued a statement expressing how the network is "proud" of its journalism. It's hard to believe that anyone there is equally proud of its PR efforts, where someone should have either dissuaded Cramer from doing the "Daily Show" guest shot or, barring that, prepped him better for the buzzsaw he cheerfully walked into, offering only "I'll try harder" as a feeble defense.

Frankly, it's not surprising that Cramer wanted to do it, and I think Dennis Miller nailed the reason in a guest shot on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday. "Cramer hates the idea that someone as quintessentially cool as Jon Stewart thinks he's a putz," Miller said. Bingo -- but that doesn't mean that somebody at CNBC shouldn't have saved him from himself.

Ultimately, the way it was handled in the incident's aftermath risked tarring not just CNBC but MSNBC and NBC News as collateral damage -- not a bad night's work for Stewart, a figure Cramer had blithely dismissed as "a comedian" before his drubbing. Already, a fixcnbc.comsite has launched, urging the channel to serve the public instead of its narrow focus on blather aimed at day traders. Hell, even columnist George Will piled on, quipping on ABC's "This Week" that among the rules one should follow -- beyond not playing poker with a guy named "Slim" -- is "Don't take financial advice from people who are shouting." (The funniest comment, by the way, came from Tucker Carlson on CNN, who labeled Stewart a "partisan hack." Clearly, Carlson is still smarting from the tongue-lashing "The Daily Show" host administered back in his "Crossfire" days.)

Finally, see my earlier post -- "Jim Cramer-Martha Stewart Caption Contest!" -- to see who won.

The latest management shakeup at News Corp. (detailed by my colleagues Michael Schneider and Tatiana Siegel) has resulted in another slightly unorthodox executive reshuffling from Rupert Murdoch, placing Fox Searchlight's Peter Rice in charge of the Fox network as chairman of Fox Entertainment.

This got me to thinking about the last 20 years at what was once called the Fox Broadcasting Co., which has a history of reaching beyond the roster of TV industry usual suspects in choosing presidents and chairman. Please forgive me if I miss anybody, but my list of the last two decades goes as follows -- and given that my first stint at Variety began in '87, it's also like watching my professional life flash before my eyes.

That might have been the most foolish appearance by someone whose name sounded like "Cramer" since "Seinfeld" went off the air.

Jon Stewart grilled CNBC's Jim Cramer for all but five minutes of his show on Thursday night, while the "Mad Money" host feebly kept promising to do better. He should have stayed home.

In the process, Stewart again displayed journalistic instincts that put many conventional TV news organizations -- including CNBC -- to shame. The key exchange, in fact, hinged on Stewart explaining to Cramer what journalists do after Cramer threw up his hands at the idea that CNBC might have misled viewers because CEOs had lied to him.

"I'm under the assumption you don't just take their word at face value," Stewart said, hitting at his central point: That CNBC is so enamored with, and has been so deeply in bed with, the financial heavyweights that their breathless coverage was "disingenuous at best and criminal at worst."

A penitent-sounding Cramer meekly protested that he's simply doing "an entertainment show about business," but there's the rub: Either it's entertainment -- and therefore not to be taken seriously by those seeking genuine financial advice -- or it's a show about business, in which case CNBC's willingness to lap up whatever Wall Street figures said amounted to letting them get away with financial murder. "They burned the f--kin' house down with our money," Stewart said. In that context, Cramer's ranting and wacky sound effects look considerably less amusing -- less a sideshow than an abdication of responsibility.

CNBC has a small audience, but it's nevertheless an extremely valuable franchise for NBC Universal that has been damaged in the public consciousness over the last week. That concern perhaps explains why Cramer has made a veritable tour of NBC assets -- the "Today" show, "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, Martha Stewart's NBC-distributed syndicated program -- to defend himself, albeit not particularly well. If the PR conclusion was that sitting in dark room hiding wasn't an option, that certainly would have been preferable for Cramer and CNBC to what transpired Thursday.

How this will play out is yet to be determined, but my gut says the whole "feud" will likely fade away fairly soon. Nevertheless, given the pain the economy continues to inflict on the public, "The Daily Show" has delivered a reminder of the need for independent-minded journalism -- and in the process rendered CNBC a laughingstock to many casual viewers that might not have afforded the channel much thought previously.

Meanwhile, the old adage that "There's no such thing as bad publicity" appears not to be operable here -- at least not yet, anyway. Based on Nielsen data, ratings for Cramer's program and CNBC have actually dropped marginally since Stewart delivered his first rant -- a little surprising, given that one might have expected all those web links to prompt some tune-in out of curiosity. Then again, the channel's audience is relatively puny  -- averaging 0.3% of U.S. households.

CNBC is still standing, but the foundation looks shakier than before this whole brouhaha began. And Cramer and the rest of his colleagues have been publicly schooled on what a truly tough interview looks like.

Let's stipulate that cable news chews through a huge number of guests on a daily basis. Even so, Fox News Channel and the bookers of Sean Hannity's program really aren't trying hard enough if the best conservative actor they can find is former "Saturday Night Live" member Victoria Jackson.

Jackson appeared on "Hannity" earlier this week (Crooks and Liars has the video), and wherever one falls on the ideological spectrum, it was flat-out embarrassing. Jackson brandished a bible, ranted about Barack Obama being a Communist and suggested that Hannity or Rush Limbaugh should run for president.

Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of enlisting actors -- whatever their political views -- as guests in such venues, mostly because it's such a transparent ploy to try broadening the cable-news audience. Besides, Bill Maher has that "Odd dinner party chat" niche scoped out on HBO.

Assuming you're determined to do so, though, there are helpful guides to conservative/pro-GOP performers out there despite the entertainment industry's liberal bent (Newsmax.com has even published a list, labeling them "Hollywood Heroes"), and some aren't still dining out on credits like "Larry the Cable Guy's Star-Studded Christmas Extravaganza" and an "SNL" stint that ended in 1992. Either that, or the recession has really hit in an unexpected way and we're finally running out of famous people.

While I recognize the value in a little comic relief now and then, Hannity isn't doing Jackson -- or for that matter his own cause -- a service by acting like she belongs in their arsenal of advocates. Then again, even Hannity appeared slightly shellshocked as Jackson prattled on for several uncomfortable minutes. "I'm speechless," Fox News contributor Bob Beckel said after some give-and-take with her.

He shouldn't have been the only one.

CNBC's Jim Cramer keeps misrepresenting what "The Daily Show" has done in deconstructing bad calls/stock cheerleading by the business-news channel, but he got some advice about his upcoming appearance with Jon Stewart on the latest episode of Martha Stewart's syndicated show. Cramer's "woe is me" act wasn't particularly convincing, and I think he's been badly advised if he thinks appearing with Stewart is a good idea -- not because Stewart's going to "skewer" him, but because it will further betray just how clueless Crameris about A) why CNBC's history in touting the market is relevant and B) why it's utter nonsense for the host of a nationally televised show to act like he's being unfairly picked on when his shtick draws such scrutiny.

Anyway, feel free to insert your own caption. Here's mine: "See, and if you swing the roller just right, you can knock off a parolee ankle bracelet with a single blow."

Update: I neglected to mention a prize. Being the cheap bastard that I am, the winner gets to pick the topic for an upcoming post -- within reason, obviously -- on any TV show or related topic of their choosing. And they can contribute the first two paragraphs. I know, it sucks, but swag intake has been slow lately. I'll pick a winner on Monday.

Final Update: OK, we have a winner, and thanks to all the submissions. (Seriously, there's some talent -- or at least under-employed comedy writers -- out there.)

After much deliberation, the "prize" goes to "Scott" and "Once we're done with my viewer's portfolios we'll move on to yours Martha." That seemed to best sum up what the whole mess was all about.

Runners-up: "Put all of your money in Circuit City! Now!" by E.L.M. and "Enough with the pie, lets move on to puppies and baby seals" by Chris. (That last one made me laugh the hardest, but it just wasn't on point.)

For the last week, thanks to one of those free-trial periods, I've been receiving 30 pay movie channels. And the really remarkable part is how often I've surfed through them without finding anything that I had even the most remote interest in watching.

Thus far, pay TV appears to have weathered the recession, perhaps in part because people are staying home more and thus hanging onto their entertainment options. Yet even with all those channels available -- and strictly from a movie standpoint, I'd expand this to include Turner Classic Movies, AMC and other basic channels that air movies regularly with commercial interruptions, like FX and TNT -- it's odd how much dreck there is out there.

TCM, in fact, has become a kind of default channel for me, the place I go most frequently between bouts of watching new-program DVDs to breathe in a few minutes of an old classic. The other night I found myself watching about half of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," for example. There are also recent movies that are easily consumed (or re-consumed) in 10-minute bits, so when HBO was running "300," say, I probably watched it two or three more times, albeit in non-linear increments. (Occasionally I'd flip to HBO and land smack dab in the middle of the same section of the movie I had just watched, a phenomenon that Variety editor Tim Gray once rather brilliantly referred to as "deja view.")

Obviously, this is extremely subjective, but beyond the fact that I already see a lot of movies, this strikes me as an indictment on the general quality of movie-making today and the way movie channels use library crap to augment the mediocre new titles in their scheduling rotations. At any rate, I'd be curious to hear others' thoughts and experiences in this regard -- and whether anybody is rethinking or cutting back on the elective portions of their cable bill due to the recession.

Nikki Finke and I don't agree on much, except perhaps that it's OK to use a wildly out-of-date photo of yourself. But as fate would have it, we simultaneously weighed in today on the question of whether the movie "Watchmen" is too faithful to the graphic novel.

Not surprisingly, Finke essentially concluded on her blog that Warner Bros. officials were a bunch of douchebags for allowing director Zack Snyder to make a movie that adhered so closely to the original. My point was that if you were going to gamble on "Watchmen" at all, then fidelity to the source was pretty much the only way to go -- and I'm not sure that "opening it up" would have significantly improved the film's box-office prospects.

Indeed, for some of my friends who know absolutely nothing about the comics, the movie simply wasn't on their radar, period, so it's not like the running time or Dr. Manhattan's blue penis kept them away. Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, meanwhile, articulated what I'd call the anti-Nike verdict -- as in "Just Don't Do It" -- in his review, saying "the core of what made 'Watchmen' 'Watchmen' ... is by its nature next to impossible to re-create on screen, even with a 2-hour and 41-minute running time."

Anyway, I digress. In writing my column, which talked about not just "Watchmen" but the creative license taken with the upcoming PBS miniseries based on Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit," space considerations forced me to excise an example regarding how fans crave fidelity in such adaptations, so I figured I'd share it here.

The gist of it was that when PBS' "Masterpiece" aired its Jane Austen tribute awhile back, I joked in one of my reviews that having the movie adaptations available to watch would represent a boon to "slacker students everywhere."

This rather innocuous aside prompted a polite rebuke from a past president of the Jane Austen Society of North America, who suggested that watching the impeccably crafted made-for-TV versions of Austen's works "will give [students] only an inkling of what the novels are like," adding that the filmmakers "took considerable liberties with each of the novels, especially with 'Mansfield Park.'" Reading the books, she concluded, will provide students "far richer ... intellectual and psychological experiences" than viewing the movies.

"Thank you for the message," I responded, "and honestly, who would have guessed that a past president of the Jane Austen Society would have an underdeveloped sense of humor?"

I know, it's juvenile, but these days journalists have to take their laughs when and where they can find them.

1) After listening to the contestants on Tuesday night, shouldn't they add a 14th number for a "none of the above" category, even at the risk of connecting to another phone-sex line?

2) Paula Abdul has officially begun creeping me out, so much so that watching the show has become uncomfortable. I've been at parties before when I was talking to someone who acted like that, and the fascination with how they're holding themselves together begins to mesh uncomfortably with the sense that they might fall into you, throw a drink at you, or throw up on your shoes. Abdul's on-air demeanor has gotten so weird that even my buddy who got fixed up with her on a blind date in high school has finally stopped talking about it.

3) Fortunately, we have other people here that watch "American Idol" with religious fervor. I just can't bring myself to do that. Thanks to TiVo, however -- zapping through all the human-interest fluff, Ryan Seacrest's non-interviews and the commercials -- I actually finished a two-hour episode in about 50 minutes. Then I watched "The Daily Show" to cleanse my palate and reactivate my brain.

4) Favorite moment: When Simon Cowell turned to Gordon Ramsay in the audience, and he didn't have a microphone, so his lips just moved without any sound. That's actually the first time I've ever found the "Hell's Kitchen" chef tolerable. And at least his hair looked way better than his mentor, Marco Pierre White, from NBC's "The Chopping Block."

5) Cowell had a fabulous burst of honesty when he blurted out that "American Idol" isn't about art. Bingo.

6) Now that it's been pretty well established that becoming the official chronicler of "American Idol" is not going to stop the bleeding at -- much less save -- the sadly beleaguered Los Angeles Times, is there any chance that the paper might reduce its coverage of all things "Idol" back to merely a ridiculous amount, instead of a breathless, pandering, embarrassingly ridiculous amount?

At a certain point, isn't NBC News complicit in peddling the defensive BS that's coming from its business-news channel, CNBC?

On Tuesday, Jim Cramer and Erin Burnett appeared on the "Today" show, where Cramer feebly responded to the question of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart's" searing criticism of CNBC by allowing, "Anytime you recommend a stock and it goes down you've made a mistake." Considering that Cramer's show had been one prolonged orgasm about the merits of the market before its collapse, that would seem to be enough "mistakes" to disqualify him from the advice circuit -- or at least put him in the equivalent of TV's penalty box. It's also utterly ridiculous for Cramer and CNBC's Rick Santelli to paint themselves as victims ("little guys," as Cramer put it) when they enjoy a nationally televised forum. If you can't stand the heat, stay off the trading floor.

Still, Burnett also stepped forward on Cramer's behalf, saying, "Jim has to go out every day and make these calls." Really? Whatever happened to that old adage, "If you don't have anything intelligent to say, don't say anything at all" -- or maybe I'm screwing that up, because that's certainly not the maxim in cable news.

Indeed, what's really on display here is a more fundamental question: When our so-called "experts" reveal themselves to be every bit as clueless as laymen, then why should we give any credence to their advice/analysis/pontification? The problem is that between NBC and MSNBC and CNBC -- with all that time to fill, requiring all those talking heads -- that's a point that NBC can't possibly make.
(See related post.)

Update:MSNBC's Joe Scarborough also hosted Cramer this morning, and -- apropos of what I wrote above -- seemed intent on bucking up his fellow GE employee. The "Morning Joe" host also criticized "The Daily Show" for mocking those "in the arena" while suggesting that Stewart had turned his fire toward the media because he was a fan of the Obama administration.

As Jason Linkins writes on the Huffington Post, with that comment Scarborough merely exhibits his ignorance about the nature of "The Daily Show's" satire. Indeed, Linkins recommends "that Scarborough develop an understanding of what The Daily Show is. First and foremost, the show is a critique of the media. It is not 'fake news.' It is not 'funny riffs on the headlines,' a la 'Weekend Update.' It is a lampoon of media excess. As any veteran watcher can tell you, it has ALWAYS 'attacking people like [Cramer].' George W. Bush was just value-added content."

Bingo. Stewart's most valuable contribution hasn't been to politics, but in providing a near-real-time review of the media on television, which even in an exaggerated form is extremely rare. Pundits can't hold forth quite so freely if they're going to be held accountable for their commentary. Small wonder that Scarborough -- whose daily discourse has expanded from TV to radio -- would resent the idea of being subjected to such scrutiny.

  Once in awhile a picture and a press release simply defies your ability to come up with anything clever (or more horrifying) to say about it. Consider this one of those times. Notice, though, how Dr. Phil managed to milk two episodes out of this circus act, and that the ubiquitous Gloria Allred found a way to attach herself to the story:

(Los Angeles, CA, March 9, 2009)- Dr. Phil McGraw announced today in a special taping of DR. PHIL that Nadya Suleman, the mother of octuplets born in January in Southern California, has come to an agreement with Angels in Waiting to care for her 14 children.  The arrangements have been finalized in the last week, at the urging of Dr. Phil, so that Ms. Suleman could provide the best possible care-giving solution in advance of the octuplets being released from the hospital.

Details of the agreement will be revealed in today’s taping of DR. PHIL, to be broadcast in two parts on March 10^th and March 11^th. (Please check your local listings.)

According to Linda Conforti West, CEO and founder of Angels in Waiting, the agency initially will be providing around-the-clock services of skilled neonatal intensive care nurses who specialize in premature infant developmental care. Psychological and physical early therapies to help enhance all of the children’s growth and well-being will also be provided.  All Angels in Waiting services will commence as soon as the octuplets are released from the hospital and will be reevaluated every 6 months.

“From the beginning, my interest in this story has been guided by my concern for these children,” said Dr. Phil. “Nadya realized that she had to make every effort to care for the octuplets as well as the 6 children at home in a way that proved that she understood the enormity and complexity of the task ahead.  The plan in place, which could not have happened without attorney Gloria Allred and Angels in Waiting, affords all of the Suleman children a chance to grow and thrive. The childcare will be completely transparent, so that Kaiser Permanente and Child Protective Services will see that Nadya is seriously committed to her family.”

Attorney Gloria Allred, who originally brought Angels in Waiting to Ms. Suleman's attention, added:  “I am delighted that Nadya understood that the offer from Angels in Waiting was made in the best interest of the children, and I am equally delighted that we could find a way to provide help and support so that she could remain in her own neighborhood. Now that Ms. Suleman has found a suitable new home, Angels in Waiting has also agreed to help Nadya prepare the house properly to meet the children’s needs.”

Those in charge of CNBC, as well as signature talent like Jim Cramer, appear to remain utterly clueless about the damage that Jon Stewart inflicted on the network in one bold stroke on "The Daily Show." (For a helpful compilation of Stewart's eight-minute segment and some of the CNBC and Fox News howlers that preceded it, see this handy link from Esquire.)

What Stewart accomplished, with the help of his research staff, was such a damning blow to CNBC's credibility because it exposed an obvious fact the channel would surely like to overlook -- namely, If you didn't know what the hell you were talking about then, why on Earth should anybody believe you now? And while nobody expects TV pundits to be 100 percent accurate, when they go that howlingly wrong, it's time to retreat to that old strategy of having a monkey throw darts to make stock picks.

Credibility is a fragile commodity, and for all its bluster, CNBC's is in tatters.

Stewart's piece, in fact, was only half of a one-two punch that Comedy Central landed on CNBC. The other came from Stephen Colbert, who featured CNBC's mad prophet Cramer as a guest, letting him hold forth about the market while Colbert ran pictures of puppies and kittens behind him. Cramer tried to play along with the joke, but as the audience roared, it only made him look like more of a buffoon. And when the CNBC host talks now about "wealth destruction," well, could anything have contributed more to destroying somebody's current wealth than heeding Cramer's advice back when he was yelling "buy, buy, buy" with the Dow at 13,000?

CNBC officials still haven't adequately addressed their role in all this, including today's New York Times piece, which was puffy -- failing to include any reaction from the network to "The Daily Show" broadside, even a no comment -- but nevertheless illuminating. CNBC President Mark Hoffman blandly told the Times that this is "a unique time for the organization," and so far, the network seems content to continue covering the financial crisis as if they were ESPN and this was their Super Bowl. The main problem with that strategy is that when football analysts get their predictions wrong, there's only one big loser.

Update: Stewart bitch-slapped CNBC again on Monday, running a pretty devastating assortment of clips that undermined Cramer's whining claims that he hadn't been a cheerleader for Bear Stearns before the company collapsed. Here's the video (also, see related post on Cramer's "Today" show appearance):

Yes, I know, everyone who reads TV criticism thinks this occasionally. Still -- and chalk this up perhaps to Daylight Savings Time -- her latest piece for the New York Times' Week in Review section, "The Vanishing Sidekick," made me wonder if one glass of red wine Saturday had somehow left me with Sunday-morning hallucinations.

In discussing Jimmy Fallon's decision to do without a sidekick and Conan O'Brien's announcement that he would bring back Andy Richter, Stanley's theorizing loosely connected Ed McMahon, Cardinal Richelieu, Tonto, the sitcom character Rhoda, Batman and Robin, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, and Chester from "Gunsmoke." Then she placed part of the blame for the disappearance of sidekicks on Dick Cheney, which is where outfits like the Times get slapped around for veering out of their lanes to exhibit liberal bias.

Stanley's tongue was obviously pressed in her cheek for much of the piece, but even so, there were some casual asides that bring to mind the periodic charge that the New York Times' primary TV critic can be sloppy -- like saying that Jon Stewart shuns sidekicks, when he features multiple "correspondents" on his Comedy Central show, many of whom have gone on to bigger and better things.

And there, actually, is the central point behind her premise, which Stanley for the most part missed: Latenight hosts have mostly gone without sidekicks since Johnny Carson because few of them have been secure enough to risk sharing the spotlight with someone else. It's also why they forgo guest hosts. Carson knew the job was his. Everyone that has followed him has acted like they're just renting the chair, no matter how successful they are. On that score, at least, give someone like Keith Olbermann credit, inasmuch as he championed Rachel Maddow as a fill-in host and then pushed for her to get her own program. (For more on Maddow, see my Variety colleague Ted Johnson's profile.)

Dick Cheney did a lot of questionable stuff, but I'd cut him some slack on the fact that after the bruising succession battle for Carson's crown, Letterman, Leno and most other comics have spent their careers looking over their shoulders.

IFC has a new series coming up called "Modern Toss," which is a collection of blink-and-you'll-miss-them gags, created by Mick Bunnage and Jon Link, done using both animation and live action (and in some cases blending the two).

Like a lot of what's in latenight these days (the series will air at 11 p.m. starting March 17), it's virtually impossible to review. Some of the bits are kind of funny, most of them aren't, and the prevailing attitude seems to be that if you don't like one of them, another will be along directly. Current TV, meanwhile, has its own Flash-animated sketch show, "SuperNews," premiering later the same week, on March 20.

"Modern Toss" -- a British import -- and much of what's on Current reflects the YouTube-ization of television, along with Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" lineup, the VH1-Jack Black experiment "Acceptable TV" (which featured user-generated content), and assorted entries on Comedy Central. Under this philosophy, the goal is to serve up inexpensive material in bite-sized bursts, for an audience with a gnat-sized attention span.

That isn't to say that there's no place for sketch comedy, but reducing your programming to what approximates a series of rapid-fire sight gags -- thanks to the fact that Flash animation is so relatively cheap that a chimp could do it -- sounds more like throwing in the towel than being genuinely inventive.

If TV comedy wants to hang on to its audience, the longterm challenge remains to develop half-hours (or even hours) that will hold viewers for their duration. Creating shows consisting of 40-second gags will surely provide fodder for web tie-ins but ultimately seems to exacerbate the problem more than solve it, since such content is just as easily consumed between tasks at work, leaving the producers still struggling to make a dime off it.

"Modern Toss" refers to itself as "a state of excellence in a world gone tits up," which is delightfully British, but not entirely accurate. Actually, I'd call it another dollop of generally uninspired silliness, in a comedy world where silliness is always welcome but which is still desperately in need of more genuine inspiration.

Rorschach's Journal: This will be last entry on first week of "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon." Bottom line: Show evolving, but not improving.

Monologue on Thursday down to three minutes. Jokes big, broad, too Leno-like. Interviews still weak -- "conversational" doesn't have to be same as "incomprehensible." Hrrm.

Recurring bit with electing "president of the audience" had potential, goes nowhere. Donald Trump interview painful. Tennis star Serena Williams brightens up show. Plays beer pong with Fallon. Good idea. But writing remains disappointing overall.

Fallon must be given time. People still sampling the show. Fans defending him -- weak-minded, undemanding fools. Kids these days. Different sensibilities.

Will try watching later, give host chance to settle in. But longterm outlook not good. Hurry up, Conan. World will miss you these next few months.

Meanwhile, latenight TV viewing has made critic cranky. Life not always easy being a "watch man," as in man who watches stuff. Ha ha. Funny joke. Also amused by reading "Watchmen" reviews. Reaction all over the place. "Too faithful" main criticism, probably true, but given unwieldy nature of source material seemed like best strategy.

But that's for another day. Must rest now, 10-hour PBS adaptation of "Little Dorrit" to watch. From Fallon to Dickens. Hrrm.

Attention, Joss Whedon-ites. Determined to give the show a second chance, I watched the upcoming fourth episode of "Dollhouse," which Fox sent out in advance. I was momentarily confused, however, when the DVD began with several minutes of silent footage, either by accident or for "B-roll" purposes. Anyway, Eliza Dushku jumped in the pool and swam a lap, took a shower and got out wrapped in a towel, all while sporting a vacant stare. The full episode then followed, complete with dialog and sound.

I actually liked the first part better.

OK, that's kind of mean. But I can't escape the feeling that this entire series is structurally flawed. And while I admire Dushku's willingness to flaunt her assets in playing Echo, the show's mentally manipulated heroine, it's hard to remember a scripted project -- short perhaps of "Barb Wire" -- that more persistently objectified its female protagonist, who played a half-dressed dancer in episode three and first appears as a stripper in the fourth hour. (Frankly, I was tempted to work the word "naked" into this post in a lame effort to increase traffic, but that would be a naked ploy, and therefore wrong and create pictures in my head that are very, very dirty.)

The ratings for "Dollhouse" are somewhat difficult to analyze, especially given that "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is providing such an anemic lead-in. Both shows are clearly being recorded and played back (apparently, some sci-fi geeks actually do have better things to do than stay home on Friday nights watching this and "Battlestar Galactica" -- not that there's anything wrong with that), but even accounting for that boost the overall numbers remain pretty low.

Whedon fans have preached patience, but if "Dollhouse" doesn't survive chalk this up as another bit of collateral damage from the writers strike -- a show greenlit based on its beguiling elements but that looks to have been shoved into production lacking a well-defined blueprint. It's a reminder that giving talent the latitude they seek occasionally means allowing them to leave you sitting there with a rather Echo-like vacant-looking stare.

Silly item of the day, regarding this upcoming Writers Guild Foundation event:

LOST - INSIDE THE WRITERS ROOM WITH THE WRITING STAFF OF LOST
Thursday, March 26 - 7:30-9:30 pm
***AT THE WRITERS GUILD THEATER - 135 S. Doheny Dr., 90211
***PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE
Free parking & light reception included.

What's that, you say? The venue is changing? Hell, the whole island is moving! And how can we really trust what time this is? I mean, 7:30 p.m., sure, but in what year exactly? And if I go, is there a chance I'll see a blinding light, begin bleeding from the nose and run into myself as a child? And what can we infer about these "135" and "90211" numerical sequences?

Joking aside, the series delivered another mind-blowing episode on Wednesday, and not entirely in a good way. "Lost" has tackled the time-travel conundrum with more intellectual rigor than most programs would dare attempt, but this season has nevertheless become so coiled in the "When are we?" question that you can either give up asking and succumb to it entirely or start wondering if "Lie to Me" is improving. Perhaps the only benefit in this is that the narrative has raised so many new questions that I've forgotten what some of the old ones were. (For another interesting take on this, see USA Today critic Robert Bianco's thoughtful analysis recently on the strong creative years registered by both "Lost" and "24.")

At any rate, I suspect this writers forum will be well attended, entertaining, and completely devoid of substantive answers. Sort of like a political news conference.

Jimmy Fallon joked about sweating profusely during his opening-night interview with Robert De Niro, but damned if he didn't look nervous and sweaty again in his second outing as host of "Late Night."

Foremost, Fallon seems extremely uncomfortable behind the desk. His interview with Tina Fey was less    an interview than like watching two high school buddies reminisce. I'm sure the stories were great, but as we weren't a part of them, they really don't mean much to the viewing audience. Moreover, why have Fey stick around for the entire show if she's going to sit there like a lox, instead of bringing her into the conversation? At this point, Fallon needs all the help he can get.

Fallon's monologue was a brisk four minutes and, again, mostly fell flat -- including a misguided joke about the U.S.' plans to withdraw from Iraq. Certain topics require a bit more finesse, but so far the writing is blunt and obvious.

Expect viewers to continue sampling the show for awhile (the premiere ratings were strong, not surprisingly, on Monday night), but if Fallon doesn't start to settle in relatively soon, I suspect the folks at NBC will begin doing some sweating of their own.

Rahm Emanuel -- President Obama's chief of staff, and the Emanuel brother with the really cool if relatively low-paying job -- exhibited himself to be a master PR tactician this week, given the fallout from his remarks about radio personality Rush Limbaugh.

Interviewed on "Face the Nation," Emanuel characterized Limbaugh as "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party,"adding in regard to Limbaugh's criticism of the new president: "He has been up front about what he views and hasn't stepped back from that, which is he hopes for failure. He said it and I compliment him for his honesty. But that's their philosophy that is enunciated by Rush Limbaugh and I think that's the wrong philosophy for America."

Emanuel thus shrewdly set up an internal conflict in the Republican Party, given that the only constituency Limbaugh has to answer to is his vast radio audience, which loves it when he does impolitic things like refer to the White House press corps as "butt boys" and feminists as "feminazis." Such colorful commentary led new GOP chairman Michael Steele to refer to Limbaugh (accurately) as an "entertainer," while going further to label some of his remarks "ugly" and "incendiary." Steele later apologized, but not before cable news had a field day with what amounted to this intramural skirmish.

For Limbaugh, of course, this is all good news, and he sounded not-so-secretly delighted at being the center of attention on such a vast stage during his radio show Tuesday. Lacking other identifiable big-name Republicans to lampoon, David Letterman called Limbaugh a "bonehead" on Monday night, while Jimmy Fallon joked that Limbaugh wanted his new show to fail, too. (It's still early for Fallon, but in terms of the premiere, he got his wish on that one.)

Limbaugh is undoubtedly the loudest conservative voice out there right now, and Sean Hannity probably ranks second. But Limbaugh is an entertainer, which is liberating for him but also perilous for politicians drawn into his orbit. They're concerned about broadening their base; Limbaugh -- sitting on a $400 million syndication deal -- need only satisfy his existing one.

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the intellectual tool shed, but after defending Limbaugh he did acknowledge the strategic savvy behind zeroing in on the radio titan in his latest Los Angeles Times column, noting, "Limbaugh and other right-wing talkers are popular with a third of the country. Fairly or not, they turn off moderates and self-described independents."

Bottom line: If Endeavor's Ari Emanuel had just played other talent agencies as deftly as his brother manipulated the Republicans, CAA, WMA and UTA would all be having a really bad week.

If you ever want to see a stark example of the older-demo disconnect, look no further than Sunday night's ratings and the performance of the CBS movie "Jesse Stone: Thin Ice," starring Tom Selleck.

In overall audience, the fifth "Stone" movie trounced the competition, averaging 15.1 million viewers based on Nielsen fast nationals. Yet the vast majority of that consisted of adults who think of Selleck as "that nice young man who used to star in 'Magnum P.I.,'" given that the show ran a distant fourth among adults age 18-49 in it first hour, with less than 20% of its audience coming from that demographic. (By way of comparison, the two-hour premiere of "Celebrity Apprentice" on NBC averaged 8.8 million viewers but nearly doubled "Stone's" demo rating during the second hour.)

By contrast, the Selleck vehicle pulled in a whopping 14.3 rating among adults 55 and older, who accounted for the vast majority of its audience. If you need evidence that there's an older crowd out there with an appetite for a certain kind of programming that's generally under-served by networks chasing younger viewers, it would be hard to find a more stark example of that.

By the way, those who did miss "Celebrity Apprentice" (and I'll say "SPOILER ALERT" here, not that I really believe anyone cares) missed a truly pathetic appearance by comic Andrew Dice Clay, even by the standards of the celeb-reality genre. At every turn, Clay felt the need to keep reminding people that he used to sell out concert arenas, perhaps painfully aware that his career has sunk to the point where pleading with Donald Trump for mercy seemed like a reasonable option.

Clay got booted at the end of the show, and unfortunately for NBC, probably took any reason to continue watching "Celebrity Apprentice" along with him.To borrow from Clay's old nursery rhymes in his stand-up days, "Hickory dickory dock, I'd sell you if you were a stock." Oh!