Jay Leno's farewell to "The Tonight Show" was, appropriately, a mostly unsentimental affair -- inasmuch as Leno isn't really going anywhere.

Sure, there was extended applause when he came out Friday, loud whoops from the audience, a rather stilted tribute to the staff, and a formal baton pass to Conan O'Brien. "Please give Conan as much support as you've given me through the years," Leno said over the cheers.

But who's kidding whom? The truth is, if Leno had truly been concerned about supporting Conan, he would have ridden into the sunset and gone on to do something else other than host a five-day-a-week comedy show. He certainly wouldn't have left the world speculating for months about whether he was going to continue doing a latenight show -- in direct competition with O'Brien and NBC -- for ABC or Fox.

No, the real story is that NBC -- desperate not to lose O'Brien -- elbowed Leno to step aside before he was ready in 2004, hoping he would be ready by 2009. He wasn't, leaving NBC desperate not to lose Leno. And here we are.

Meanwhile, O'Brien has always lauded Leno for his graciousness -- as he did again during Friday's guest appearance -- but has never really hidden the fact that in terms of comedic sensibilities, Letterman was a huge, formative influence on him and is much more his cup of tea.

Not surprisingly, Leno joked about NBC during an otherwise pretty much run-of-the-mill monologue, except for a bizarre interlude titled "White Trash Theater." Let's hope that bit (which looked like video plucked off YouTube) doesn't resurface on "The Jay Leno Show" in the fall.

During the opening, Leno said he was taking a post-"Tonight" break by going to "a secluded spot where nobody can find me" -- namely, NBC's primetime lineup. Funny stuff, but maybe a little too close to the truth.

All told, the highlight was a taped package of the "Jaywalking" segment -- one of "Tonight's" most consistent gags under Leno, and usually superior to his overly programmed studio interviews. Even more than Conan's ability to adapt to 11:30 (he can, whether the audience turns out or not), Leno's willingness to revise his program into being a general comedy show -- instead of a transplanted-to-primetime version of "Tonight" -- remains the real question that bears watching.

Leno has always spoken of the job as franchise maintenance -- essentially keeping Johnny Carson's chair warm -- and he referenced that in his sign-off. "The Tonight Show" was No. 1 when he took over, he noted -- albeit without real competition -- and is still on top, 17 years later, as he makes the hand-off to O'Brien.

Ultimately, that commercial triumph over a more critically admired competitor is Leno's legacy. He was the likable guy that more Americans chose. For a fellow that's spent his tenure poking fun at politicians, perhaps that democratic victory isn't such a bad legacy at that.

He threw the competition because he didn't want to have to pose for this picture, taken of Kris Allen (he's the one on the left) at the new "American Idol Experience" at Walt Disney World in Orlando:

Sample captions:

"Haha! AT&T rigged the voting ... and now you're going to Disney World!"

or

"Whew. For a second I thought you were the one who's supposedly coming out in Rolling Stone."

If you've got a better one, send it in.

The focus on NBC over the next few weeks will be centered on latenight, with Jay Leno's baton pass to Conan O'Brien at the helm of "The Tonight Show."

Yet with that shift, it's easy to overlook the network's status in primetime and how its performance in those hours is interconnected with what transpires in latenight.

On Leno's final show tonight (May 29), for example, the primetime lineup is an hour of "Howie Do It" followed by a "Dateline NBC" about what has seemingly become the favorite topic for newsmags -- namely, whether some guy killed his wife.

Next week, the big tease to O'Brien is a two-hour revival of the former ABC show "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!," followed by "Medium," a series that jumps to CBS in the fall.

Unless NBC can prevail upon President Obama to become a permanent "Tonight Show" co-host, it's difficult to overcome those kind of primetime lead-ins to late local news. Moreover, with Leno moving to 10 p.m. in the fall, the fate of O'Brien and his predecessor remain inexorably linked, making Leno's departure less the end of a chapter (even one 17 years in the making) than simply the turning of a page.

Finally, there's the David Letterman portion of the equation. Losing to Leno has always irked Letterman, and with the host having little left to prove in his career, it's pretty clear he'd like nothing better than going out on top. With O'Brien expected to possess less widespread appeal than Leno and CBS seemingly destined to trounce NBC at 10 p.m., he has a golden opportunity to make that happen come September.

Latenight has always been a marathon, as opposed to a sprint. So while it'll be interesting to see how O'Brien does getting out of the starting blocks -- when his numbers will be fueled by curiosity -- we won't really know what to expect from the latenight race until all the pieces are in place later this year.

That won't stop us media folk from pouncing on it, of course. But to quote Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, drawing any grand conclusions before "The Jay Leno Show" arrives will be for you to poop on.

Republicans and "American Idol" viewers apparently have a lot in common. If they lose an election, they immediately insist that the results must have been influenced by massive voter fraud.

OK, I admit, that's unfair to "American Idol." But you wouldn't know it from the faux controversy being ginned up regarding Kris Allen's "victory" over Adam Lambert.

Inasmuch as "Idol" has never adhered to the "one man, one vote" ideal, I have a hard time taking questions about voting improprieties seriously. And of course, Fox cultivates doubt about the "fairness" of the process by treating its system as if it were the College of Cardinals. (The New York Times, by the way, has been responsible for igniting this latest mini-fracas with the headline "AT&T May Have Swayed 'Idol' Results," proving yet again that whether or not the mainstream media is biased, it certainly has too much time on its hands.)

Although I understand that people become invested in who wins, the truth is once "Idol" reaches the last couple of contestants, everyone has a pretty good shot at a singing career that they wouldn't have otherwise enjoyed. And isn't that ultimately what the whole exercise is about? (See Chris Daughtry, Clay Aiken, etc.)

So I'm shedding just as many tears for Lambert as I am for John McCain and all those GOP crybabies who are still boo-hooing over a few doltish members of community group ACORN trying to register Mickey Mouse, as if that accounted for losing by 7 million votes.

Get over it, gang. Your guy didn't win. And hey, look at the bright side: With both "Idol" and the midterm elections, we get to do it all again next year!

No one will admit it, of course, but the NBA and ABC are really, really hating the Orlando Magic right now.

Any hopes that the league and network have for a high-rated NBA Finals rest largely on a Lakers-Cleveland/Kobe Bryant-LeBron James showdown. Can you imagine the sound of air whishing out of the ball if the faceoff ends up being between Orlando -- which has taken a 3-1 lead over Cleveland in their series -- and Denver, which is currently tied 2-2 with the Lakers?

Granted, the best cure for ratings, even with a non-marquee matchup, is a close, seven-game series. And this year's playoffs have been inordinately entertaining (see the earlier Boston-Chicago series), which has boosted tune-in for ESPN and TNT.

Still, it's pretty obvious that the NBA has been salivating for LeBron-Kobe, along with all those sponsors pushing the two all-stars. If Orlando (a humid hell-hole in June, by the way) spoils those plans, then the home of Disney World will absolutely not be the happiest place on earth for ABC.

New York Times columnist David Carr was too polite, apparently, to formally slap someone working for his own paper, but his latest column not-so-subtly debunked Times contributor Dave Itzkoff's take on Jimmy Kimmel's performance at ABC's May 19 upfront presentation.

As I stated in an earlier post, Itzkoff seemed inordinately shocked that Kimmel could keep his job after ridiculing ABC's failure rate with new series during a brief standup turn at the event. Of course, the latenight host reserved his most pointed gags for NBC, saying the network was destroying itself by moving Jay Leno to primetime, but never mind.

Like me, Carr has been to the rodeo a few times before, so he pointed out that "some reports" about Kimmel were wrong -- without indicating that said reports were disseminated under the aegis of his own paper.

"Contrary to some reports, he killed," Carr wrote of Kimmel. "The room, stuffed to the gills with people who have been force-fed upfront claptrap for years, shook up and down with convulsive laughter. In years past, networks have been subjected to friendly fire from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Drew Carey and Conan O’Brien as a knowing nod to all the hyperbole, so everyone there was in on the joke."

Not a big deal, really, except A) I think the Times probably should have spelled out the fact that Carr was presumably taking exception to the paper's own coverage; and B) this is another small sign of what can happen when reporters are assigned to a beat who lack perspective or history. Suddenly, Kimmel's barbs at ABC are a story because the familiar blather associated with the upfronts is all minty fresh to them.

So kudos to Carr for setting the record straight. Sort of.

David Gerber spent time as a POW during World War II, but the veteran producer and executive is revisiting a different war over the Memorial Day weekend.

Gerber approached Turner Classic Movies some time ago with the idea for a WWI marathon this Memorial Day, helping program a night of movies that includes the Gary Cooper classic "Sergeant York," "Dawn Patrol" with Errol Flynn, "The Fighting 69th" starring James Cagney, "The Big Parade," and director John Ford's "The Lost Patrol."(TCM is airing a number of World War II films over the weekend as well, including one of my personal favorites, "The Bridge on the River Kwai," and "They Were Expendable.")

A long-time history buff (his credits include the miniseries "George Washington"), Gerber produced the 2001 World War I movie "The Lost Battalion" for A&E and, more recently, the Emmy-nominated Sept. 11 pic "Flight 93" for the same network.

TCM's World War I block will be co-hosted Eli Paul of the National World War I Museum.

The Los Angeles Times has a fun story today about two real-estate agents suing "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" for using names that sound suspiciously like theirs (or so the couple alleges) in an episode depicting those characters as "dirty-dealing, S&M-loving real-estate agents."

Lawsuits always make these things sound unusual, but the truth is writers do this all the time. Watch enough television and if you know the players, you'll hear plenty of references (some tongue in cheek, some genuinely hostile) to names that sound a lot like former bosses, high school classmates, ex-girlfriends and such.

Personally, my name has surfaced as a murder victim in scripts for the pilot of ABC's since-defunct "The Women's Murder Club" and in the episode of "Entourage" where the Johnny Drama character waltzes into the Variety office to tell the TV critic to go screw himself. In each instance, the name was changed before air, in the first case because they were afraid that it wouldn't clear legal. As for the latter, "Entourage" producer Doug Ellin told me he went with "Paul Schneider" because that's a friend of his and the name was going to be repeated over and over again. (Actually, I thought it might be the bastard child of myself and Variety TV reporter Michael Schneider, but no such luck.)

Producers can be sneaky about these things. As I recall, Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Flint's name turned up as a mere placard (as in "Judge Joe Flint") on "Law & Order." Former NBC exec Perry Simon was a corpse covered with maggots (his name, not him) on "The X-Files." And so on.

So since I have this semi-public forum, I would like to offer all writers dispensation to use my name however they see fit within their programs. After all, I kill your series and movies on a regular basis. If you want to engage in a slightly juvenile act of revenge by returning the favor fictionally, I have no problem with that. In fact, it seems only fair.

Besides, I have a feeling the fictional versions of me would have far more exciting lives than the real one does.

Let's face it, young girls love them vampires, and CW couldn't resist boarding that bandwagon with "The Vampire Diaries." TV is thus one of those rare fields where the phrase "We suck more" might actually be considered an asset.

Yet while CW President Dawn Ostroff certainly made good on her pledge that the fledgling network would exhibit "consistent quality and tone" across its five-night schedule, watching the presentation it felt more like numbing sameness -- as if all those new and returning dramas bled into each other, becoming "The Beautiful Vampire Place Girl Diaries."

In addition to dumping Sunday nights, CW has also expunged comedy from its lineup, betting the farm on youth-oriented dramas where everyone is beautiful and chubby gals with glasses need not apply. Fortunately, most of the media buyers at the L.A. closed-circuit screening look like they'd fit right in. (Don't fight over me, ladies. I'm married.)

As for originality, CW certainly qualifies -- if by "original" you mean slavishly replicating Fox circa 1993, with the tandem of "90210" and a sleazy-slick revival of "Melrose Place" destined to hold down Tuesday nights. Alas, when "Gossip Girl" star Ed Westwick (as his character Chuck Bass) joked that with the CW shows "most of it works just as well with the sound off," he might have struck a little too close to the truth for comfort.

Working too hard at being hip and techno-friendly, the presentation also foolishly burdened Ostroff with a touch-screen approach that forced her to keep slashing at air with her right hand. Instead of fulfilling the weblet's new slogan "TV to Talk About," this gradually became "TV to Giggle At" in the L.A. venue, offering a distraction from the underlying message.

So while cohesion might ultimately work for CW -- especially with the channel offering more scripted dramas than NBC in the fall -- in this concentrated setting the image of a network adhering too single-mindedly to its "brand" prevailed.

Overall grade: C+

Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass who wins the latest cycle of "American Idol." But I am wincing at the prospect of the new volley of "culture war" arguments that the outcome is sure to unleash.

The faceoff between Adam Lambert and Kris Allen will inevitably yield the red state-blue state/"will America vote for a [in this case (presumably) gay guy]?" debate that circled the 2008 presidential election, thanks in part to Lambert's theatrical style and photos of him that surfaced on the Internet. Headlines like "Could Adam Lambert Be First Gay American Idol? have already conflated a Fox reality karaoke competition into a social referendum to rival Barack Obama becoming the first African-American president.

Pundits and print outlets desperate to latch onto the coattails of the show's success will spend untold hours seeking to parse the larger significance of the voting results. For awhile, anyway, any talk about the franchise cooling or its ratings decline this season will be lost amid the "What does this all mean?" blather.

The whole ritual is as predictable as it is pointless, but hey, anything that can connect TV's most-watched program to politics is a big win for cable news and consumer newspapers, who would like very much to ignore the fact that their average viewer/reader is more likely to be retired than fall within the coveted adults 18-49 demographic. Think I'm kidding? Let's not forget, the median age of Fox News Channel viewers is 65, and CNN and MSNBC's profiles are only slightly younger.

"The future's all yours," Simon Cowell told both contestants on Wednesday.

The present, unfortunately, is all ours. Please wake me when it's over.

Read even slightly between the lines, and there was nothing at all subtle about CBS' upfront presentation on Wednesday. Sure, the network touted its growth and (sometimes awkwardly) trotted out its stars, but the main point was this: NBC's bailing out of the game as a major player with the Jay Leno move; give us their money.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves set the tone, saying the real problem wasn't with the network model but "not being able to find any hit shows for years" -- a big F-U to NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker if there ever was one. Sales chief JoAnn Ross followed by belittling NBC's comments about "managing for profit margins" instead of ratings. "Not keeping score might work in T-ball," she said, but not the big leagues.

Finally, CBS Entertainment Prez Nina Tassler called the NBC shift at 10 p.m. "a sea-change," and the Eye network has responded by making an aggressive push to dominate that hour on TV's biggest night, moving first-year hit "The Mentalist" to Thursdays coming out of "CSI." Even with "CSI" looking considerably weaker this season, that should create a formidable tandem.

In another smart strategic move, CBS will relocate "The Big Bang Theory" to follow "Two and a Half Men" on Monday nights, which should fortify the network's comedy block and allow "BBT" -- coming off a stellar sophomore year -- to grow further, bolstering "CSI: Miami" as well as planning for the day when "Men" has hummed its last chorus.

For all that, CBS' lineup remained conservative, including a few moves that take compatibility to almost comic extremes. "NCIS" leading into spinoff "NCIS: Los Angeles?" "The Ghost Whisperer" leading into the NBC transplant "Medium," for a psychic overdose on Fridays? It might work, but it still fosters the impression that the older CBS audience is simply falling asleep in front of the TV.

Oh, and with apologies to LL Cool J, asking a guy to get up and rap in front of an audience of uptight media buyers in suits -- urging them to stand up and wave their hands in the air -- is never, ever a good idea.

In terms of the new shows, CBS has also stayed close to home, but with purpose. Julianna Margulies plays a lawyer (as she did in Fox's "Canterbury's Law") but should be more at home in "The Good Wife," and the hospital drama "Three Rivers" seems more conventionally "ER"-ish than most of the other medical franchises being introduced to vie for that title. Also, the reality show "Undercover Boss" seems especially well-timed and appears to have breakout potential.

All told, a pretty savvy lineup with a lot of meat-and-potatoes type programming, if nothing at first glance that warrants rushing out to buy a back-up TiVo. Moonves opened by joking about the fact that CBS wasn't sexy, but that for him, winning is enough.

Of course, if that were completely true, the presentation would have skipped the rap number.

Overall grade, subject to revision: B

Much as I hate to completely agree with Deadlinehollywooddaily's Nikki Finke, she's absolutely right about Dave Itzkoff's New York Times piece, which sounded utterly shocked by the "withering, blistering monologue" that Jimmy Kimmel delivered at ABC's upfront presentation on Tuesday.

Itzkoff must be a complete neophyte to upfront blather, since comics have been getting up and poking fun at their own networks for years at these events. And while Kimmel joked about ABC's shows, I'd contend (as I did in an earlier post) that Kimmel's most pointed barb was aimed at NBC, who the latenight host accused of destroying its own network by virtue of its determination to prevent Jay Leno from leaping over to ABC.

Funny and very smart stuff, perfectly suited to an insider-savvy audience. As for Itzkoff pondering whether Kimmel is lucky to have a job, my guess is that he not only has one but will be doing it a half-hour earlier sooner or later, if ABC pulls the trigger on moving him to go directly opposite Conan O'Brien.

This is, in other words, a completely bogus non-story, receiving attention only because people like to assume that the New York Times knows what it's talking about. In this case, the paper didn't.

Let's hope they're doing a better job on how they cover Washington.

Doing little to polish a reputation and image that has taken a public-relations drubbing this year, CNBC's documentary "The Oprah Effect" plays like an infomercial for the marketing power of Oprah Winfrey, only conspicuously without the participation of the daytime diva herself.

The result is an hour produced by Bill Kurtis distinguished by its stunning ability to state the obvious -- namely, that getting mentioned on Winfrey's program helps move products -- without any serious insight into why that's the case, other than that Oprah is a trusted brand. Well, duh.

The special includes tips on how to get on Winfrey's show (good luck with that) and success stories of those who have been featured. As for any of the darker aspects of "The Oprah Effect" -- say, whether people spend money they don't have on the host's "favorite things," or the vague cult-like qualities of Oprah worship -- that will clearly have to wait for another hour.

Similarly, there's zero mention of how Winfrey's support apparatus and vetting process has experienced several much-publicized glitches in recent years, such as touting James Frey's fabricated memoir or Herman Rosenblat's bogus story about meeting his future wife at a Nazi concentration camp. Even ABC News was inspired to ask "Is Oprah's Golden Touch Tarnished?" last December after the latest discredited yarn that was stamped with the Oprah seal of approval.

Not that you'd know about any of this from watching this cheerleading documentary, or learn about Winfrey's occasional passion for potentially dubious products, persons and self-help regimens, from psychics to the Acai Berry diet.

Hosted by CNBC's Carl Quintanilla, the special premieres May 28. But for all it's worth, anybody truly interested in gaining a better grasp of "The Oprah Effect" would be better off simply taping "Oprah" and time-shifting it into primetime.

Using its upfront presentation to maximum advantage, ABC showcased one of the best comedy pilots to come down the pike in a long time with "Modern Family," shrewdly airing the program in its entirety.

Yielding several laugh-out-loud moments, that half-hour helped dispel some of the skepticism surrounding the Alphabet network's decision to schedule five new programs -- four sitcoms and the hourlong "Witches of Eastwick" adaptation "Eastwick" -- on Wednesdays during the fall, which at first blush sounds like a prescription for disaster.

Still, after a weak development crop this spring, ABC appears to have some of the goods to rebound in the coming season, and ABC Entertainment Prez Stephen McPherson rolled the dice not just with "Modern Family" -- a Christopher Lloyd-Steven Levitan comedy that features a top-notch cast, among them Ed O'Neill -- but also by screening the entire first act of the sci-fi hour "Flash Forward." The latter features a strong narrative hook, though as always with these things, it's difficult to tell at this stage whether it's the next "Lost" or just another "Daybreak."

McPherson promised to continue "taking the chances that we need to take," and the lineup appears to accomplish that -- getting away from some of the sameness that has plagued ABC's recent development. The mix includes a CBS-style procedural from Jerry Bruckheimer ("The Forgotten"); a midseason reboot of the 1980s sci-fi series "V" that looks primed (a la "Battlestar Galactica") to tap into present-day paranoia; and the mystery "Happy Town," which in its promo actually referenced "Twin Peaks."

As for more of the same, there's the youthful legal drama "The Deep End," which at first glance looked a bit too much like "Grey's Attorneys."

But hey, you can't have everything, as latenight host Jimmy Kimmel reminded the audience during an extremely clever stand-up set. "Everything you're gonna hear this week is bullshit," Kimmel began, joking about ABC's past failures before skewering NBC -- which decided, he said, "We will not allow Jay Leno to go to ABC, even if we have to destroy our own network to keep him." Sure, it's a joke, but buried wiithin that punchline is a pretty devastating assessment of how the Leno move could play out in a worst-case scenario. (McPherson also couldn't resist a swipe at NBC counterpart Ben Silverman's earlier statement about "managing for margins.")

The final garnish to ABC's presentation featured clever promos that mixed and matched characters from established ABC series -- putting "Lost's" Matthew Fox, say, with "Desperate Housewives'" Teri Hatcher. The spots fostered a sense of cohesion across the network's primetime roster, making some of what has been a negative attribute feel -- for a moment, anyway -- like an asset.

ABC still faces some tough sledding after a rough 2008-09 campaign, and it renewed a few new programs that haven't done much as yet to justify that vote of confidence. Still, if the network can get just a couple of these latest seedlings to take root -- which after Tuesday's preview sounds less far-fetched than it might have before -- that Wednesday gamble could pay off, which would be a major coup.

Overall grade, subject to revision: A-

Upfront presentations have to be graded on a curve, so I begin my annual scorecard with relatively passable marks for Fox -- which, with NBC doing its "in-front" shtick, essentially opened the broadcast festivities on Monday.

There wasn't much of a wow factor in either Fox's presentation or the programs displayed, based (an inexact science at best) on the brief new-series previews that the network showed. Indeed, if there's any headline out of Fox it's that the network has largely stood pat, trotting out relatively few new programs, despite Fox Entertainment Prez Kevin Reilly's pledge that Fox wouldn't use its frontrunning status thanks to "American Idol" to hide behind its big lead.

In terms of upcoming programs, Fox got the most mileage out of its musical "Glee," including a rousing live number to showcase the series. The new sitcom "Brothers" and animated spinoff "The Cleveland Show" each generated a few laughs, which is a few more than the preview of "Sons of Tucson" could muster.

On the drama front, Fox clearly wants to leverage "Idol" again, as it did this year to establish two mediocre dramas, "Fringe" and "Lie to Me." Notably, both of those new one-hour entries will arrive at midseason to cash in on "Idol's" benevolent lead-ins and promotional base.

Alas, "Past Life" looks like another "The X-Files Lite" entry, though God knows Fox has gotten enough mileage out of that formula. The potential breakthrough in the bunch would appear to be "Human Target," which stars Mark Valley as a bodyguard for hire. If the show can maintain the snazzy look and tone of the presentation, the series might fill a breezy action niche that's been long dormant.

As for the presentation itself, which I watched at a closed-circuit feed in L.A. where the sound was slightly off, there wasn't much sizzle. Fox seemed to miss an opportunity in failing to bring out Wanda Sykes -- the host of a new weekly latenight program premiering in November -- to provide some stand-up fresh off her newsmaking turn at the White House correspondents dinner. The opening was also flat, with too much "network TV is still king" cheerleading from Fox sales chief Jon Nesvig and newly arrived Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice.

For his part, Nesvig couldn't even utter the word "recession," referring only to looking forward to teaming with advertisers as we approach "the coming recovery." I get that the glass is always half full at these things, but geez.

Rice did make one interesting point by citing how the "Idol" audience is equivalent to the entire boxoffice haul for "Iron Man" if you charged $10 for each of those viewers -- an observation I've frequently used in the past to demonstrate TV's reach. But I have a suspicion most of those watching were thinking, "So what?" It's an interesting cultural touchstone but in this context doesn't have much to do with negotiating ad buys.

So all told, a couple of promising-looking shows, a few more that didn't look quite so promising, and a relatively short (about 75 minutes, by my count) presentation, for a lineup that appears to be saying to the rest of the TV world, "We're ahead, and we've got the ball. If you want it, you're going to have to take it away from us, because we're not taking any risks." Not the worst strategy in this environment, but nothing to knock me off the uncomfortable wooden chairs that they put out for us in L.A.

Overall grade, subject to revision: C+ 

Spent a few days in the wilderness (actually, Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks in Utah) before the upfront mayhem officially began, which explains why I haven't posted anything in awhile. But even a fleeting respite from this blog yielded a few media and TV-related thoughts:

-- There's really nothing quite like being in a place where you get absolutely no cell/Blackberry reception for a couple of days. At first it was irritating and unnerving, then invigorating and relaxing. Right up until I got within eyesight of Vegas and all those messages started to suddenly pile upon each other.

-- Driving through Utah, it occurred to me that most of my current conceptions of the state are shaped by the HBO series "Big Love."

-- Although I didn't purchase anything (honest), the hotel viewing menu contained a feature that reminds us how much media consumption has changed. The pay offerings included "Just-Missed TV," which would have allowed me to buy key episodes that I had missed (including last week's two-hour "Lost" finale) and watch them at my convenience for a mere $4.99.

After some thought, I decided to wait and watch "Lost" when I got home, but it's just another variation on a spate of second-chance viewing options that are exacting a toll on network schedules. Why watch it live when you can tape it, or order it the next day? And in the gee-whiz technology dept., we actually found ourselves watching YouTube clips on an iPhone during the drive back. Amazing the things you take for granted these days.

-- Finally, yep, the hotel offered on-demand porn, even in redder-than-red state Utah. For some reason, I thought it would be nothing but reruns of "The 700 Club" and "The Osmonds."

I know, I really need to get out more.

"Storymakers," the sporadic AMC specials on the movie business, premieres its second installment this Friday (May 15), with Tom Cruise, Judd Apatow, and Cameron Diaz (along with her "My Sister's Keeper" director Nick Cassavetes) as guests.

The show is hosted by Variety editorial director Peter Bart along with producer Peter Guber, so for obvious conflict reasons I'll skip a review. What does emerge, though, is an interesting and unusually illuminating look at Cruise, who in this unguarded and leisurely setting (relative to most conventional hit-the-mark, tell-pre-screened-anecdote TV interviews, anyway) reveals a thoughtful side about his business.

Admittedly, most interviewers can't casually reference a dinner that he shared with Cruise at his house, as Guber does. But given the drubbing that Cruise's image has taken over the years (see that infamous couch-hopping "Oprah" appearance and his testy exchange with Matt Lauer on the "Today" show), this conversational format suits him much better than the lion's share of his carefully orchestrated media exposures.

In short, he comes across as a different guy when the discussion is confined to the process of making movies as opposed to, say, allowing him to hold forth regarding mental-health treatment or his personal life. It's a reminder that actors initially become famous for their work and subsequently become infamous for everything but, once that fame opens the door to picking apart the rest of their lives.

As for Apatow, the director discusses, among other things, the duration of the frontal-male-nudity scene in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and how the number of people who walked out of advance screenings dropped as he gradually reduced the time that actor Jason Segel was shown naked. However ego-deflating this might be for Segel, the moral of the story per Apatow is, "There is a certain amount of penis that America can handle in 2009."

Now there's a sentence you probably won't hear on "Entertainment Tonight." Although come to think of it, "ET's" very existence helps prove its veracity.

More than 1,200 people had the odd experience of watching TV as a shared communal event on Monday, as Fox screened the two-part season finale of "24" at the Wadsworth Theater to what could only be described as a wildly appreciative audience.

It was clearly a sign of studio support for the show, which has rebounded creatively this year. That's no small accomplishment, since the series followed up its Emmy-winning season with what most agree (including yours truly) was a subpar Day Six, then saw its latest flight delayed by the writers strike.

To my mind, the key to the current season has been its villain-by-committee approach. As opposed to trying to sustain a single thread, as in the past, the show has essentially mined a threat for an extended arc, then handed off to a new bad guy that helps carry the story line for the next batch of episodes. The fact that those heavies have been cast with top-notch actors like Jon Voight and Will Patton certainly doesn't hurt, though in terms of inheriting a mess, the roller-coaster format has given the show's fictional president (played by Cherry Jones) a series of headaches that makes Barack Obama's situation look like a relative picnic.

As I stated in moderating the event, "24" also remains a political Rorschach test, seized upon by forces on both the left and right who are eager to frame real-life issues in pop-culture terms. More than anything, the "Does America support torture because it watches Jack Bauer?" nonsense is representative of how the cable networks covet casual news viewers and try to cloak their coverage in anything that they think will help lure them in.

Yet despite the current torture headlines, series co-creator Joel Surnow's outspoken conservatism and former Vice President Dick Cheney's unintended promotional tour for the program, "24" is at its core a thriller. As exec producer Howard Gordon stated, people have been watching James Bond for more than 40 years, with the spy having by now outlived the Cold War that birthed him by a couple of decades.

A small cloud hovers over "24" because of the latest off-screen fracas involving star Kiefer Sutherland, but the show is currently scheduled to begin production on its next season in a few weeks and be back on its traditional January-through-May schedule for 2010.

Perhaps by then, God willing, Cheney will be out of the news.

All that pageant footage and those not-quite-topless photos were simply too much for the cable news networks to resist: Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN all went live with coverage of megalomaniac Donald Trump ruling on whether Miss California, Carrie Prejean, could retain her Miss USA Runner-Up title.

Of course, all this was manna from heaven for Trump, organizer of the pageant, who at least wasn't being asked about "The Celebrity Apprentice's" mediocre ratings or the real-estate holdings bearing his name that are going south in Mexico. (The Los Angeles Times recently detailed the problems surrounding the Trump-branded Baja project.) 

Oh, and speaking of the Times, let the record show that its awards blogger, Tom O'Neil, was among the media hordes who actually appeared to lend his "expert" opinion to the conversation. And the award for media whoring goes to....

Seriously, Tom, I know everyone wants to be on TV, but when the call is from MSNBC and the topic is as inane as this, maybe it's time to just say "No."

Because Trump was late (keep 'em waiting, Donald!), the spectacle was magnified by having the networks cut back and forth between more serious news -- a soldier murdering several others in Iraq, the budget debate, the release of a jailed journalist in Iran -- to kill time until Trump made his appearance. Notably, while CNN cut away a few minutes before the press conference ended, Fox and MSNBC stayed until the bitter end, proving there is something the two can agree on.

"They were fine," Trump said of the controversial (not really) modeling pictures of Prejean that surfaced, which Fox and MSNBC helpfully posted next to her while she spoke.

"I would like to thank Mr. Trump for believing in me," Prejean said, amid the sort of blinding flash of cameras that would have sent King Kong into a blind rage.

"Most importantly, I would like to thank God," Prejean said, proceeding to talk about her grandfather fighting in World War II to safeguard her freedoms -- no, seriously, she really did -- as she fought back tears.

"Think about how much better our society would be if we could just agree to disagree," Prejean said as she closed her prepared remarks. Wow, out of the mouths of babes. Meanwhile, she will be awarded for her principled stand with an appearance on Fox's "Hannity."

Asked why the controversy had blown up, Trump awkwardly nailed the answer by saying it was all because Prejean is so beautiful. "That's the way the press works," he said, cracking a mischievous smile before adding, "You should be ashamed of yourselves."

"Can I vomit right now?" MSNBC correspondent David Shuster said immediately afterward. That's a rhetorical question, right?

Somehow, I have a pretty good feeling that I just watched the lead segment on the May 12 edition of "The Daily Show."

Let's give credit where it's due: The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences still has a big headache awaiting it when organizers try to pare down the number of awards presented live during the annual Primetime Emmy Awards telecast. But the group did make a smart move in splitting the awards for writing and directing in variety, music or comedy programs into two categories: series and specials.

The most recent Emmys underscore the problem. The variety directing category pitted the 80th annual Academy Awards against series such as "Saturday Night Live," "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." It is, at best, an apples and oranges comparison.

Of course, the last thing the TV academy needs is more awards, as anyone who has spent a week sitting through 50-some-odd categories at the Creative Arts ceremony can testify. Still, the reasonably artful solution will be for the categories to rotate back and forth between the main Primetime Awards and the Creative Arts showcase. Notably, that might be the best alternative available assuming the board proceeds with its voted-on plan to whittle a half-dozen or so awards out of the principal show to provide the producers more flexibility, and it's telling that writers and directors were willing to grant a use-of-clips fee waiver in exchange for a compromise that was to their liking.

Here's the announcement:

In a move to expand its recognition of two key peer groups, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has established separate series and specials categories for both the Outstanding Directing and Writing Emmys® for a Variety, Music or Comedy (VMC) Program. Television Academy Chairman-CEO John Shaffner made the announcement today.

“The Television Academy’s Board of Governors, writers and directors peer groups have long wanted to see separate competitions for the VMC series and specials,” Shaffner said.  “Now, writers and directors working on both VMC series and specials will take part in competitions that recognize the creative challenges posed by each format, as well as the talent required and accomplishments possible in both the series and specials categories.”

Starting with the year’s Primetime Emmy Awards, the presentation of awards for directors and writers of VMC series will rotate annually with those for VMC specials between the Creative Arts Emmy Awards and the Primetime Emmy telecast.  Those VMC Writing and Directing Awards presented at the Creative Arts show will be acknowledged on the Primetime telecast.

This year, the Creative Arts Awards are scheduled Saturday, Sept. 12, and will air on E! Entertainment Television on Sept. 19; the Primetime Emmy Awards will be televised Sunday, Sept. 20 on CBS.

“We are grateful to both the Directors Guild of America and Writers Guild of America East and West for working with us on this change and graciously granting a modification to our current clip fee waiver that accommodates this rotation,” said Shaffner.

Wow. I get that op-ed writers and hoary old newspapers like to make themselves more relevant by tying into pop culture, but the New York Times' Week in Review section features not one, not two, but three separate pieces today drawing cosmic significance from the new "Star Trek" movie.

Maureen Dowd's attempt to link President Obama to Mister Spock was at least entertaining, though I'd put her on columnist probation just for sneaking in the term "Rahmulen" (get it? As in Emanuel).

The other salvos came from Columbia professor David Hajdu, who weighed in on "Trek" history; and Dave Itzkoff, a regular contributor to Arts & Leisure, whose own piece sought to tie cultural trends today to those that existed when the original series launched in the 1960s.

All that was missing was a couple of paragraphs in Frank Rich's column somehow blaming George W. Bush for torturing the fan base and killing off the TV franchise with that imprudent excursion into "Enterprise." (Notably, both Rich and Dowd explored the difficult economic climate facing journalism, which is certainly on most print wretches' minds right now.)

Newspapers are obviously grasping to widen their appeal, but piggybacking on summer movies doesn't sound like a sustainable longterm strategy.

In the meantime, brace yourselves for next week's Week in Review section, which will focus on what "Angels & Demons" tells us about U.S. attitudes toward religion and whether we can truly achieve salvation through watching "Terminator" movies.

Ted Koppel will weigh in on May 11 on the U.S. use of torture in a segment on "BBC World News America." Meanwhile, Dan Rather could be seen last week good-naturedly joining in a "The Daily Show" spoof regarding the ridiculous amount of time that the cable news networks devoted to President Obama ordering a hamburger.

It's a rather odd time to be one of broadcast journalism's lions in winter.

Koppel -- for my money, the foremost TV journalist of his generation -- is still doing serious work, first at Discovery Channel and now for the BBC, albeit on a much smaller stage. Meanwhile, "Nightline" plods on, delivering respectable ratings but also regularly filling out its half-hour with heavy doses of lifestyle and pop-culture trivia (Paula Abdul!) as well as lighter "signs of the times" to pay the bills.

Rather has plied his trade for Mark Cuban's HDNet in relative obscurity, staying in the spotlight mostly when there's some new flurry of activity regarding his lawsuit against his former employer, CBS News. In terms of the old gang Tom Brokaw stands out, enjoying emeritus status at NBC News while having the latitude to write books and produce documentaries for cable.

Given all that's going on in the world, it's something of a shame to see TV's old guard of journalistic royalty not being pressed into service, but it's not like "Dateline" or "20/20" have much of an appetite for anything much beyond "Why do men cheat?" stories or true crime. That leaves "60 Minutes" as an increasingly lonely island of sobriety in the commercial broadcast space.

It also leaves Koppel tackling one of the day's biggest stories on a relatively small channel, and Rather cracking wise -- under a fake '70s Afro -- about fish tacos.

Courage, Dan. Courage.

The Senate held a "The Future of Journalism" hearing this week, and I finally caught up with the testimony of David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter who parlayed that experience into "Homicide" and "The Wire," then recently followed it up by producing the splendid HBO Iraq miniseries "Generation Kill."

For the complete document, here's a link, by way of Jim Romenesko's Poynter site. But the key passages include Simon's observation that because newspapers can't monetize the Internet sites that are aggregating their content, "the parasite is killing the host;" and that the industry's demise began out of greed and mismanagement "long before the threat of new technology was ever sensed."

Simon left the Sun in the mid-1990s, right when I was starting at another Tribune newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. And with the benefit of hindsight, I think he's right about almost everything -- including the pervasive effects of a "prize culture" that he documented in the final season of "The Wire," where editors push Pulitzer-bait projects at the expense of the nuts-and-bolts reporting that actually serves their local community.

As for greed, Tribune got into the layoffs-in-pursuit-of-bigger-margins business long before the Internet began leeching away profits. Indeed, I was hired there to fill a vacancy left after job cuts and a hiring freeze imposed about a year before I started in '96.

Simon closed his testimony by outlining several proposals to help "save" newspapers, which mostly boil down to providing antitrust protection that would allow them to collude on a system to charge for online content; and facilitating the shift to non-profit status. Both sound like reasonable ideas to me, though I confess to some skepticism about either gaining much traction. For starters, too many on the right are delighting in the financial woes assailing what they deride as the "mainstream media" (see Jeff Jacoby's Boston Globe column on the misguided gloating) to let such measures to move forward without turning it into a political circus.

Meanwhile, Simon is moving ahead with his next HBO series, "Treme," about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Based on his Senate testimony, it's an appropriate choice, because the guy knows a thing or two about how to clean up a complete mess.

Nielsen's Monday ratings finally came out after a protracted delay, which perhaps explains why I looked them over a little more closely than usual. And what stood out was the pronounced if seldom-mentioned older skew of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

One would think the considerable overlap between the adults 18-49 and 25-54 age brackets would be enough to keep the swings between those groups within a relatively modest range. But the disparity in viewing habits separating the poles of those segments -- 18-24 and 50-54 -- is enough to produce extremely wide deviations.

This is true practically across the board, with every series that aired on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox on Monday posting markedly higher numbers among 25-54 than 18-49. The only exceptions to buck that trend were the CW's "Gossip Girl"-"One Tree Hill" block.

Yet the jump on "Dancing" -- from a 4.8 rating among adults 18-49 to a 6.2 in 25-54, or nearly 30% -- was the night's most noteworthy. By way of comparison, the latest "American Idol's" 25-54 rating was a more modest 21% bump over 18-49 (10.1 to 8.3), while "The Biggest Loser" exhibited a mere 11% improvement, suggesting that the preoccupation with fat knows no boundaries.

Then again, the majority of "Dancing's" 20.3 million viewers actually fall within the 50-plus category, which would be no big deal if older eyeballs weren't still treated like pariahs on Madison Ave., despite the occasional lip-service that's paid to the notion of showing a little more respect toward those eligible for AARP membership.

So what does the 18-24 vs. 50-54 schism prove? Only that Steely Dan got it right with that old song, "Hey Nineteen": No, we really can't "Dance" together.

Fox News Channel didn't endorse Barack Obama, and one suspects few of its primetime hosts would publicly admit how happy they are to have him in office. Nevertheless, his administration is working out very, very well for the right-leaning cable network.

From News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch's comments regarding today's quarterly earnings:

"Our Cable Network Programming segment showed remarkable growth, led by the Fox News Channel, which nearly doubled its operating income over the year-ago quarter. ... The Fox News Channel (FNC) almost doubled its operating income versus the third quarter a year ago, primarily from increased affiliate revenues on higher rates. In the quarter ended March 31, 2009, FNC primetime ratings were up 23% compared with the same period a year ago."

The practical implications of this -- amid an otherwise tough quarter for the media conglomerate, in keeping with the deflated results put up by its peers -- are that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes and his posse should continue full steam ahead in delivering voice-of-the-opposition attacks on the Obama administration. Murdoch might have personally softened his political views (or so Michael Wolff says in his biography of the mogul), but he's nothing if not a pragmatist, and feeding red meat (and of course Tea bags) to the disenfranchised right has been very good for business.

So remember, the next time you see someone on Fox complain about the president being a socialist/Marxist/fascist/foreign-born/closet-radical/terrorist sympathizer, strictly from the standpoint of good old-fashioned capitalism, they wouldn't have it any other way.

Proving that the TV business ain't what it used to be, the CW will give up programming Sunday nights, as my colleague Cynthia Littleton reported.

Hey, we get it, CW has its hands full just dealing with Monday through Friday. In essence, NBC's move to strip Jay Leno weeknights represents its own version of a give-back, accepting lower ratings in exchange for the certainty of not losing piles of money on failed dramas.

What got my attention, though, was the following comment from Acme Television President Doug Gealy, who seemed to think that program suppliers would be beating a path to CW stations' door to fill the gap that the network is leaving.

"Syndicators are going to be lining up to fill those time periods," he said.

We all saw how well "those time periods" worked out for Media Rights Capital, to which CW briefly brokered its Sunday lineup. Moreover, the cornerstone of CW's affiliates roster remains Tribune, which still owes millions to the studios thanks to its bankruptcy-protection filing.

As a result, the only way programming for those time periods will work is by airing shows that are either produced on the cheap or which approach the U.S. as a secondary market, originated in Canada or Europe. Either way, one suspects it won't be the kind of fare that will inspire TiVo devices all over America to be pressed into service to save them for posterity.

So go ahead, syndicators, start lining up, and try to be orderly about it. There's no reason to look like you're in a hurry to lose money.

The Washington Post's ombudsman has tackled an issue that I've often considered -- namely, whether it's possible for a TV critic to weigh in on a politician's TV persona and performance without spilling over into political commentary.

Ombudsman Andrew Alexander writes that the Post received plenty of angry email about a Tom Shales piece in which he praised Obama's smoothness at a primetime press conference. After quoting some of the reaction, Alexander interviewed Shales, who told him, "I never talk about policies. I talk about how [Obama] comes across on TV. I like him based on what I see on television."

I agree with Shales -- both in his assessment that Obama is a masterful performer by TV standards, and that it's possible to analyze television dexterity without considering specific policy merits. A pre-2008 John McCain, who famously referred to the media as his "base," won reporters (and critics) over more with his style, accessibility and "The Daily Show" appearances than his policies. Even Ronald Reagan's critics grudgingly admit (or most of them do) that he spun a great yarn. By contrast, one needn't be a wild-eyed liberal to have serious doubts about Sarah Palin's readiness for national office based on how ill-informed she appeared in a number of campaign interviews.

That said, it's virtually impossible in today's shrill, overheated environment to register even the most innocuous opinion about a prominent politician without appearing to take sides. Any praise or criticism thrown Obama's way will invariably trigger knee-jerk responses from the customary knee-jerkers on both political poles. Still, conservatives tend to be far more vehement about this, inasmuch as they're always seeking evidence to buttress their self-serving claims that the "mainstream media" has it out for them.

Nothing will mollify such voices short of an admission of bias and being "in the tank" for Obama. That said, the impulse to "review" a presidential news conference is sort of asking for trouble -- often motivated by the desire of feature-section editors to demonstrate that they can play in the same sandbox as the big boys on the national desk.

Ultimately, I'd say if you want to cover politics from every angle -- including the significant question of how imagery plays through the media's filter -- then be prepared to take a few hits. If your analysis is honest, only the wing nuts and true believers will be truly bent out of shape by it, and frankly, most of them are pissed off before they read word one.

The Jonas brothers' new sitcom premiered on the Disney Channel Saturday, providing another intriguing reminder that there's riches in niches -- in this case, girls age 9 to 14.

Disney noted that the show delivered 1.6 million viewers in that age group, known as "tweens," and a respectable 4 million overall. (By the way, any adults watching the program without a child present should be immediately placed on a watch list.)

The more interesting statistic, though, is that 75% of those tweens were girls, meaning they outnumbered boys three to one. The percentage was exactly the same among the younger demographic breakdown of kids age 6-11.

So while Cartoon Network has made solid in-roads with boys thanks to "Star Wars: Clone Wars," and other competitors -- including off-shoot channels like Nickelodeon's Nicktoons and Disney XD -- join an increasingly crowded scrum for boys, girls remain an extremely lucrative niche, especially if their "Jonas" viewing yields the expected appetite for Jonas brothers music and merchandise.

What's perhaps most interesting is that these various kid-oriented cable networks are going after each other in take-no-prisoners fashion, recognizing that they're pursuing a finite children's market that the major networks have essentially abdicated to them.

Tweens, in fact, represent just how heated the battle has become, inasmuch as it's a relatively new demographic segment, minted by Disney to differentiate itself from younger-skewing rivals. Once you start splitting up the pie among preschoolers (age 2-5) and kids (either 2-11 or 6-11) and tweens (9-14), the spinning is enough to make your head spin.

Cutting through that haze, it seems fair to say that the Jonas trio has gotten off to a reasonably promising start in their ongoing quest to sing for their supper -- and in the process to separate your female children from their allowances.

The flood of "President Obama's first 100 days" coverage in cable news saw many of the channels, especially CNN, obsessing over assigning letter grades to the new administration. After absorbing 14 weeks (and change) of cable's reporting and ranting on the new Obama White House, I decided to assign some value-added grades of my own.

How are the cable channels doing? Not well -- though I have an image in my mind of Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes' eyes lighting up in the run-up to the Tea Party protests the same way that Faye Dunaway's did in "Network." Like Howard Beale (who was quoted often during those events), a ranting correspondent (in this case, CNBC's Rick Santelli) rallied his constituency to give voice to their anger. The next step was obvious: How do we cash in? Or, as Dunaway's character put it in "Network," "I want angry shows."

Broken down, here are not-even-mid-term grades on how the cable nets' are performing (alphabetically by network), with helpful mnemonic acronyms to go with each basic letter grade:

CNN: D, as in D.W.E.E.B. (Dumb, With Egregiously Enervating Bluster). The more I watch them, the more I'm convinced CNN's problems are largely of its own making. There is an opportunity for the network between the polarized space on Fox News and MSNBC. But CNN is so relentlessly disappointing -- so thoroughly preoccupied with meaningless toys, like having viewers go online to assign their own statistically insignificant letter grades to the president -- that it's difficult to take refuge there.

Every day, CNN seems to provide "The Daily Show" fresh fodder that renders the network ripe for ridicule. Until the network curbs those excesses, it's going to continue alienating natural allies in the media sphere that would otherwise like to embrace the notion of a down-the-middle news channel.

Fox News: C, as in C.A.R.P. (Crazily Angry, Righteously Purposeful). Unlike CNN, Fox knows exactly what it's about, and what its goals are. With the Republican Party in disarray, Fox's high-profile talent (along with Rush Limbaugh) has become the voice of the opposition. Indeed, more than ever Fox functions like a TV version of talkradio, a medium that relies on keeping a small, like-minded audience listening (or here, watching) longer to pump up its average rating.

The only problem now is that as FNC's hosts become increasingly successful, they become harder to rein in and keep from spilling into a level of vitriol that will embarrass parent company News Corp. -- unleashing a Don Imus moment, such as the one that recently got Boston radio personality Jay Severin suspended. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck work best as voices for angry conservatives, but not when they cross the line into wing-nut territory. Similarly, Bill O'Reilly's obsession with "smear merchants" that dare criticize him -- devoting parts of his show to paranoid-sounding personal grievances -- continues teetering on the verge of a meltdown, not exactly the kind of precarious perch a network would covet for its top-rated host.

MSNBC: B-, as in B.O.O.R. (Bright, Only Overly Rude). The addition of radio personality Ed Schultz -- another progressive -- has added volume but not intelligence to the channel's lineup. As a consequence, MSNBC's positive profile still hinges almost entirely on Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, both smart when discussing policy matters with regular talking-head contributors like law professor Jonathan Turley, but prone to bouts of unrestrained snarkiness when going after the political opposition. (Alec Baldwin registered much the same point on Huffington Post, though the "Fight! Fight!" response to a liberal actor chiding liberal hosts prompted him to clarify those remarks.)

It's worth noting, too, that the lion's share of MSNBC's daytime anchors are consistently groan-inducing and bring to mind the over-hyped banality of most local broadcast news. That makes the primetime beachhead the channel has established a lonely island amid a sea of typical news blather and distasteful true-crime documentaries.

Count veteran TV movie producer Michael Jaffe among the skeptics as to whether California's recently adopted tax-credit program -- designed to help thwart runaway production -- is going to yield any appreciable benefits.

Jaffe, a partner in Jaffe-Braunstein Films, recently wrote the following letter to the Santa Barbara News Press. (Click here for an earlier column of mine detailing some of the tax-incentive provisions, which commit up to $500 million to support local production over the next five years.)

Jaffe's take is that the program is too little, too late, and won't be enough to attract independent producers, thus becoming a corporate give-back to the major studios. He might well be right, but given the pleas from local below-the-line workers and supporting actors for something to keep production at home, it's difficult for me to damn the if nothing else well-intentioned effort before giving it a chance. As even Jaffe concedes, "only time will tell."

Anyway, here's his position:

I have produced over 120 movies for television and started service companies that produced another 30-40 in Canada. I am one of the first to "runaway" from Hollywood. The AP article about California Tax Incentives for film production is misleading.

First, it fails to mention that numerous other states (Michigan, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, and Iowa, just to name a few) have incentives that are markedly larger than California’s. No contest there.

Secondly, it fails to mention that the innate cost of doing business in the United States for lower cost productions where every dollar counts is simply much greater than in Canada. A recent example from my own professional life. We budgeted a film in Michigan. $4.7 mil.  Michigan’s tax incentive was a bout $1.5 million. Net to our company, $3.2 mil. Cost of the same film in Canada? 2.7 mil., without taking advantage of another $400k in tax incentives in Canada! Bottom line: Same film costs $900k. less in Canada than in the United States!

Thirdly, given number two above, how would California ever compete? It is more innately expensive than anywhere except New York and it gives smaller tax breaks.

So, if the stated goal of the California incentives is to create jobs in California then it is hopelessly behind a giant 8 ball. Thus the question is: who will get these incentives? And the only producers left to apply for them are people who already shoot here anyway – largely the major studios. The Film Commission says they have placed controls in the system to prevent this, but only time will tell. If there are no legitimate applicants for the credit, what will they do with the 100’s of millions of dollars the legislature has allocated? At this point anyway, one thing I doubt they will do is create any NEW jobs.