Did you survive last night's avalanche of season premieres? Any favorites from last night? Speaking of something that might or might not have been in your program, the FCC is weighing tougher disclosure on product placement within television programs. Right now the only disclosure of product placement occurs in tiny type during the closing credits of a program even though most folks with a brain will realize that when you see entire episodes of a......

In the mind of the TV Junkie, last night's Emmy Awards were a vindication of the cutting edge programming happening on cable, both premium and basic. With the exception of reality programming and vague miniseries that nobody has heard of, the big networks came up mostly empty other than NBC's fantastic "30 Rock". Yes, Jeremy Piven (left), won an Emmy, but it was largely undeserved as there were better performances on other shows, and the......

This weekend it's all about the Emmies. Being the elitist anti-populists, we are hoping that critical faves win out over the dreck. For drama, it would be nice if Emmies went to "Mad Men", "Damages", "Breaking Bad" and "The Wire". For comedy, some of the following should be winning winged statues: "Flight of the Conchords", "The Office", "Weeds", "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia", and "30 Rock". This is the TV Junkie (weekend) plan: (Tonight) Bill......

The Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) will finally offer video clips! The Amazon-owned site will be providing legally licensed clips from the likes of Sony, CBS, etc. It's about time. TechCruch gives the low-down. Tonight on TV: goodbye big brother, hello big losers, hello House, and hello porn on "The Shield". 8:00pm The Biggest Loser NBC - Season Premiere 8:00pm Lincoln Heights ABC Family - Season Premiere 8:00pm Wipeout ABC - Season Finale 8:00pm House......

Recession? What recession? NBC reportedly has almost sold out of ad spots for the 2009 Super Bowl and are selling the spots at prices at least 11% higher than last year. This weekend it's all about Barack Obama appearing on Saturday Night Live with Michael Phelps hosting the season premiere, then Sunday with "True Blood" (which is excellent!!), and another great episode of "Men Men". Tonight 8:00pm The 2008 Alma Awards ABC - Eva Longoria......

After the last couple weeks we could use some reefer madness. It's on tonight on IFC at 9:45pm. In somewhat related news, since the early days of his show was for stoned undergrads, David Letterman told Rolling Stone in their most recent issue, that he will be replaced by "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart and that this has "already been taken care of". Is that really true or is he just riffing on something Craig......

Les Moonves says that Katie Couric is not going anywhere. He intends to keep her in the anchor chair despite the Nielsen ratings and any other calls of common sense because he "is proud of her." Lots of premieres tonight but the show to watch is Letterman who will have Barack Obama as a guest. 9:00pm Til Death FOX - Season Premiere 9:00pm Project Runway Bravo - The designers team up to create a garment......

To kick off the second season of ABC's TV show "Pushing Daisies" the TV network's Mobile Pie Hole truck is down at Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade today handing out small apple, cherry and peach pies til 3pm. Not familiar with the Emmy-nominated dramedy show about a pie maker who has the ability to resurrect the dead? Footage of it will be playing on plasma TV screens during the giveaway. Yum!......

NBC networks will have ad placement from Google the Wall Street Journal reports. The deal will start on an experimental basis and will probably focus on local markets. The same online interface that gives Google AdWords advertisers to local print and radio media will now accommodate TV advertising. There's been a lot of resistance to allowing this access to Google so other networks will be watching this closely. The fear is that the auction system......

Evanglelical totem, Sarah Palin, drew over 37 million viewers on Wednesday night, according to a report in the New York Times. This number is just shy of Obama’s record-setting 38.4 million viewers from last week's acceptance speech, dwarfed Joseph Biden's 13 million, and probably eclipsed John S. McCain's as well. Superstar or freakshow? This weekend HBO takes back Sunday nights with "True Blood" and "Entourage" - "Mad Men" we will always love ye. Tonight 8:00pm......

NY Times, the paper of record, says that Tivo has struck a deal with DirecTV so that subscribers will be able to record programs in HD on a new recorder made by Tivo. Other than the coolness factor, what should be noted is that Tivo will now be the recorder of choice for DirectTV, Comcast, and Cox - and people were saying Tivo was gonna disappear. TV tonight has more of McSame and the "Gong......

It's a good week so far for basic cable programming. "Mad Men" was great, as was last night's season premiere of "The Shield", and tonight we have the series premiere of "Sons of Anarchy" on FX. Somehow the show is becoming a darling of the critics (not this one, because, hint hint, FX hasn't sent me any previews). What we _do_ know about is the "Cocaine Diaries" on BBC America at 9:00pm - a really......

The hugely overhyped premiere of "90210" happens tonight - when NPR covers it, you know that the saturation level has been reached. Let's not forget our conflicted cops in "The Shield" are back - supposedly Vic goes after Shane from the get-go tonight. 8:00pm 90210 The CW - Series re-Premiere. 9:00pm Wanna Bet? ABC - Season Finale. 9:00pm Making the Band MTV - So this is what Diddy is bitching about having to fly to......

It's Labor Day weekend and while the US Open Tennis Tournament starts tomorrow, we can't provide any other reasons to turn the TV on that day. Tonight, however, brings the return of Bill Maher to HBO, Sunday brings us "Mad Men" and Bill Burr's excellent special on Comedy Central, and Monday brings the premiere of Steven Bochco's "Raising the Bar" on TNT. Tonight 8:00pm The Grizzly Man Diaries Animal Planet - Series Premiere. 9:00pm Discovery......

You just can't keep an undead cable network down: TechCrunch has reported that The WB has been resurrected as TheWB.com, which launched today. The site will act as a source for all the TV shows that originated on The WB and has a number of interesting features. While one might argue with TechCrunch's assertion that TheWB.com is now a competitor to Hulu.com, they really do have a pretty awesome search engine that will hunt down......

It was great to get some late night TV back yesterday, one wonders when the networks will run out of Olympians to showcase - Conan was particularly biting regarding the parade of Olympians and the relative importance they are playing on TV as of late. Tonight marks the debut of another show on BBC America, "Gavin & Stacey". It's a realistic comedy from the BBC but it's no "East Enders". The show starts out a......

What will get us out of our perchlorate-laced Olympics hangover? I don't think the season opener of "Deal or No Deal" is going to do it. NBC is getting some criticism for how poorly it monetized nbcolympics.com - essentially making only $0.004 per page served (of at least 1.2 billion pages), raking in a pissant $5.75 million, a tiny portion of the $1 billion it made from its Olympics rights. Obviously the web content was......

This weekend concludes NBC's broadcast of the XXIX Summer Olympics which has had some very enjoyable moments, not necessarily enjoyable because of NBC, but it's not like we had a lot of choice. Who knows what moments we missed in the countless events that were not broadcast, who knows what sports would have piqued the interest of Americans, if only they had exposure to them. In feedback to previous posts about the Olympics, commenters have......

Get ready for a crapload of Bogusky ads for Microsoft featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Microsoft is spending about $300 million on the campaign, dwarfing Apple's Mac Guy / PC Guy ad spend. Seinfeld is a fantastic stand-up man and comedic actor (despite the godawful "B-Movie") but something about his attitude and lifestyle tell us that he's motivated more by the $10 million he's getting than by the much disparaged Vista operating system. 8:00pm......

NPR's Monday Morning Edition broadcast had quite a profile on Bonnie Hammer, head of the USA network. Listen to it and it'll become pretty obvious how they come up with such predictable milquetoast programming - that's the secret to their success, American's just eat that crap up. Sick of the Olympics yet or just the parts that NBC limits you to watching? Evidently for most Americans, not yet: 83% of US households have watched......

Pretty much an Olympics-only night tonight which looks like it will be focused on gymnastics (_still_) and now track. Left is a pic from the cycling men's sprint event which was very exciting but of course you won't be seeing any of it on NBC's prime time coverage. There's a chance to revisit a couple great shows from Sunday night: Comedy Central's Roast of Bob Saget was very good - the combination of some great......

Today is the premiere date of NBC Universal Digital Studio's first original online series "Gemini Division," starring Rosario Dawson and Justin Hartley. The show debuts on NBC.com, SCIFI.com, GeminiDivision.com and several mobile, gaming and VOD platforms. So here we have a network jumping into the online drama fray - remember when LAist profiled "Quarterlife" and interviewed show creator Marshall Herskovitz last Fall? It's true that "Quarterlife" has no Rosario Dawson but perhaps the lower cost......

OK, just a couple more days to go of overexposure to Michael Phelps. Yes, he's amazing but do we need profiles of him every single night? Interesting how these profiles gloss over his 2004 DUI conviction. We know what he eats, we know how his dog snores, but we don't hear about his DUI, or his broken wrist, and other setbacks he's had over the last few years - facts which only make his story......

Dear NBC, please remove Mary Carillo from all Olympics broadcasts. She towers over the terrified and cowering Chinese locals and her speech impediment caused by her oversized caps a la Matt Dillon in "There's Something About Mary" (or something??!!) is almost as incredibly annoying as the vacuous fluff pieces they have her doing - really, did we need to meet the tallest man in China who could have been her love interest or the overlong......

NBC's primetime Olympic broadcast isn't as horrible as we thought it would be but it still suffers from the reasons we went over in last week's post. The live broadcasts have been good - thanks NBC for that and for some of the streaming online content. There's definitely TV worth watching in there, just not enough of it despite the hype. For those seeking something other than rehashed Olympic moments, you are somewhat SOL when......

So there's this thing called the Olympics on TV and it's as if TCM, HBO, and Showtime aren't even attempting to compete by showing some decent movies. If you're not into sports it seems as if no other network is stepping in to make an offer for your time, it's kind of pathetic. If you are into the Olympics and you stayed up to all hours last night, you got to watch the amazing Jason......

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you should know that the Olympics start this weekend. Tonight the enormous super-choreographed extravaganza known as the Opening Ceremonies will take hours of your life away from you. Over the next couple weeks, TV Junkie will show what's on Prime Time as well as any events that should be highlighted depending upon how the games go. Tonight 8:00pm The Olympic Summer Games NBC -......

A couple months ago when "Wipeout" and "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" were first broadcast, TV Junkie readers voted "Wipeout" the keeper and it looks like ABC is of a like mind according to TV Week. Next year, get ready for another season of people humiliating themselves for a mere $50,000 in prize money. 8:00pm Last Comic Standing NBC - Last season's winner, Jon Reep, performs Gilbert Gottfried, Penn and Teller, and Joel McHale......

According to The Hollywood Reporter, ABC is going to be releasing some pilots very soon, well not too soon as I don't imagine that they will attempt to compete with the Olympics and NBC. The only things that jumped out at me was the name of Portia de Rossi who will be in another sitcom, an untitled Victor Fresco ("My Name Is Earl", "Andy Richter", etc.) project, as well as a "large-cast Shakespearean drama" titled......

Networked DVRs? Yesterday a US Circuit Court made a decision in Cablevision's favor that would allow them to store programming on a networked DVR thus allowing customers who do not have DVRs in their houses, to access the programming at their convenience through their existing set top boxes. Does this mean that advertisers will get short shrift with more people being able to FFWD through commercials? They will probably just get tapped again to pay......