Results tagged “g4”

Chris Hardwick is a nerd. He humbly embraces this now, and he’s happier for it. The trick was to align his career with his passions -- even if they’re frowned upon by jocks. The comic/writer/TV personality has a deep affection for science, technology, and his love affair with “Dungeons and Dragons” is in its third decade. While Hardwick isn’t the type of nerd whose busted eyeglasses are fastened with Scotch tape, when meeting with LAist he sported mismatched shoes -- one sneaker, and a blue soft cast.

Nielsen says that President Obama's latest press conference slipped in the ratings and that the CW series, "Reaper", gained (the implication is that Obama is suffering from overexposure). I'm not sure how many teens would be that in economics, much less everyday Americans. I guess former President Bush avoided these kind of comparisons by not doing press conferences and by spending more time on vacation than any other president.

We're highlighting the DVD release of G4's animated series, "Code Monkeys", because Season One features the actual Steve Wozniak as the owner of GameAvision, the hilariously dysfunctional video game developer that is the focus of the show. Wozniak will also be featured in this season's "Dancing with the Stars", which starts tonight at 8pm on ABC - yes, the Woz will be donning dancing shoes to shake his booty and has been practicing diligently for months [vote for Woz tonight!!].

It looks like Andy Richter will be returning to the side of Conan O'Brien when he fires up his version of "The Tonight Show" starting on June 1st. Richter will be the announcer for the show and will appear in comedy sketches but it's not clear if he will be a fixture on the guest couch a la Ed McMahon. Now that the Academy Awards are over with and Conan has shut down production, late night TV is a wasteland this week other than Jimmy Kimmel.

Even though the majority of eyes are focused on Sunday's Oscars, this Saturday, the Writers Guild of America will be doling out their awards and a sampling of scuttlebutt with regards to TV leaders include "Mad Men", "30 Rock", "The Office", "The Wire", and "True Blood".

When dudes are together doing what dudes do (playing poker, watching a bloody UFC fight, drafting fantasy baseball teams) the words "girlfriend" or "wife" are bound to come out of someone's mouth once or twice. But rarely will you hear a guy utter the sentence, "This would be more fun if my girlfriend were here." That's just how it is; for many guys cigars, bloody knuckles and discussions of Russell Martin's OBP are just more enjoyable when their significant other isn't around.

Last week we went to a sneak preview of Demetri Martin's new show on Comedy Central, "Important Things With Demetri Martin", which premiere's tonight at 10:30pm. The show has been in the works since last Spring so we are happy to see it make it on air.

Truth is stranger than fiction - or life imitates fiction? Something like that: Anna Torv and Mark Valley, the stars of FOX's "Fringe", have married in real life. Fringe also did pretty good in yesterday's Nielsen numbers, with a 10+% increase in viewership over last week, but that increase is getting attributed to the popularity of its lead in, "American Idol".

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

Yesterday's inauguration of President Barack Obama spiked traffic for all the venues that attempted to carry streaming video and audio of the proceedings. The NY Times has more details in this report which was made further enjoyable because they quote an analyst named "Woodcock".

                                   

Joanna Angel, nominated for 14 AVN Adult Movie Awards, including Jenna Jameson Crossover Star of the Year, blogged (NSFW) about her experience:

                                   

As mentioned previously, AVN's annual Adult Entertainment Expo and Adult Movie Awards took place earlier this month in Las Vegas, with the convention running for four days at the Sands Expo and Convention Center and the awards show taking place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Fans of "Beverly Hills, 90210", and we mean the real original fans, might be elated to know that, yes, Tori Spelling will be joining the cast of the new "90210" sometime around the 19th episode this season so I guess you had better start watching now so that you know what the heck is going on when she makes her debut.

CBS head honcho, Les Moonves, says that the network TV model of programming and advertising "ain't broke" despite reports to the contrary as well as the evidence of the past decade. Moonves was confident in the easy bet that "CSI: Miami" will beat Jay Leno's new 10pm show on Monday night, he didn't offer much additional perspective on the 3 1/2 hours of nightly talk shows that NBC is planning in 2009.

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

G4's "Attack of the Show" crew is broadcasting live from Comic Con for the next couple days (see the listings below).

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

Looks like big media service companies aren't immune to the temptation of outsourcing their workforce - the most recent case is the media metrics leader, Nielsen Co. After taking millions of dollars in tax breaks for promising jobs at a Florida data center, Nielsen has outsourced the positions to an Indian-based offshore provider - makes one respect the numbers Nielsen spews out even less.

Season four of "the #1 ad-supported cable series of all time", aka TNT's "The Closer" returns to TV tonight. I've always had a problem with this series, whether it was the annoying music, Kyra Sedgwick's overpainted lips and weird accent, or the fact that her character, LAPD Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, has somehow attained the status of Deputy Police Chief despite being "hopeless at LAPD politics". Still, the series is well-funded, looks decent and the supporting cast is capable. The series is interesting on a basic level by having Sedgwick's Johnson in the very human, read "quirky", female lead in a cast that is almost 100% men - she does seem very isolated and you do pull for her. Unfortunately the season premiere has two laughable caricatures: a super-hipster "Times" reporter and a "crazy" psychopath arsonist who has jokes worthy of the original "Batman" TV series; hopefully the tone of the season won't be established by this first episode.

So the producers called SAG's bluff and told them to go do their strike vote - not much new to report on there.

- Unless you've got some specific sports events you want to watch this weekend, things are pretty slow on the tube - you'd better hope your Netflix came in.

How dope was it that Jack was listening to the Pixies on the "Lost" season finale last night?

100 Hamburgers! from Invisible Engine on Vimeo.

Idol-heads and Runway-heads have a lot to celebrate tonight and I'll be damned, look at how busy the schedule is in the 10:00-11:00pm time frame. Since I don't think any of the options are fantastic is it better to have a little or a lot of mediocrity to choose from?

Am in a post-Super Bowl stupor. The commercials were so-so, I wasn't unduly impressed, and the halftime show was terrible, they practically had to frickin' wheel Tom Petty and his aging cronies out there. Going for it on 4th and 13?? That made me almost as sick as the above clip.

A couple things on tonight but Saturday's a wasteland, go play in the sand or snow. Sunday is finale-city, check it out below. Have a great weekend.

Read our exclusive LAist interview with G4TV's Olivia Munn to find out how she feels about playing Gay Chicken with Kevin Pereira, living in Los Angeles, and making out with her spray-tan lady

Introducing the TV Junkie Black List: While waiting for Spoon to go on the Tonight Show last night I had to endure Leno and guest Denis Leary talking about how they'd like to get cyclists off the roads and how they enjoy honking at them, etc. Both of these a-holes know* what went down recently in Beverly Hills as reported by LAist and the last thing LA needs is more SUV drivers feeling justified in...

There's only one network that would dare give you the raspberry: and that's G4TV, who will be premiering episodes of an animated "Spaceballs" this fall - you know, that Star Wars Mel Brooks parody you watched about seventy-six times in the 80's? Variety says: Encompassing a one-hour pilot and 13 half-hour episodes, project represents the first scripted series greenlit by the new TV division at MGM, led by Jim Packer, president of the worldwide...

If only all casting calls could be like this. Ninja Warrior (a/k/a Sasuke, airs weeknights at 6:00pm and 10:30pm on G4) is offering one lucky badass a trip to Japan and the right to attempt the show's daunting obstacle course. With all the wanna-be talent in this town -- I'm looking at you, reality TV "stars" and celebutants-- it's nice to see that somebody still values real skillz. According to the show's PR people, those...