Results tagged “letterman”

October is Monty Python month over at IFC, check out these items on their schedule: Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's cut): New Six-Part IFC original docu-series on Python legacy airs October 18-23 @ 9:00pm. We've watched this and it is excellent and should not be missed by anyone who remotely considers themselves to be a Python fan. We will be at the US premiere of the documentary next week and will ask you for your questions for the Monty Python posse.

OK, so the Letterman stuff happened like a million years ago last week but get ready for a fresh round of jokes this week as Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson finally have their chance to rise and take the bait. Will Ferguson actually take some potshots at his boss?

Weekend Edition The TV world (and other worlds) is abuzz with David Letterman's statement yesterday regarding his sexual relations with female employees and an associated extortion attempt. Whether or not Letterman engaged in these activities after marrying his longtime girlfriend in March, It makes us wonder what kind of release one has to sign if becoming an employee in the entertainment industry these days.

We'll tell you who's back on TV tonight: Madonna on Letterman. Yeah, there's other stuff happening on late night TV but nothing will hold a candle to the anticipation of more antics between Madonna and Letterman.

Featured Series Premieres for Tonight: Modern Family (9pm on ABC): Of all the shows premiering tonight, this one seems to have legs. Yes, comedy kingpin Ed O'Neil provides an experienced cornerstone for the series but we're happy to see Julie Bowen, whom we know from "Weeds" and "Lost", given a venue we think she deserves. The promos are hilarious and the folks whom we know received screeners say the show can back them up.

Even though we've already had a couple dozen season premieres over the last two weeks, traditionally the "Fall season" doesn't begin until the week after the Emmys making tonight the launch pad for at least nine shows. --- "Heroes" fans, former or otherwise, are you looking forward to tonight's premiere? Anyone out there with a Sprint contract to look at the "exclusive" content? Enlighten us. --- Last night's Emmys had the highest viewership in three years but still lost out to football.

Speaking of death: Today news producer Don Hewitt died. Hewitt was the creator of CBS' "60 Minutes", a program that changed the way news was reported and set the high bar for all other news programs to follow. Perhaps only PBS' "Frontline" has come close to the standard. And hey, it's still a popular show getting the 2nd most viewership this week. For more on Hewitt, check out a series of interviews with him on the Archive of American Television's YouTube channel. RIP Don.

Finally Shark Week is back on Discovery - and it's about time because other than Shark Week and IFC's "Bollywood Hero" (on Thursday), this is one dead week of TV. --- This week the TCA gave it's annual "Program of the Year" award to "Battlestar Galactica", with HBO scoring more awards than any other network. [Hey TCA, ain't it about time you offered LAist membership? We write more about TV than a lot of your members do.]

The Emmys were announced this morning, and you can check out the complete list here. "30 Rock" came away with a record-breaking 22 nominations and "Mad Men" garnered the most nominations for a drama, with 16. Despite the Academy tinkering with the process, all the actor nominees are virtually the same as last year other than Jeremy Piven (finally) not making the list. Creative Arts Emmys will be presented on September 12th while the big primetime show will be on September 20th.

Check out "The Daily Show" tonight as we have a USC professor as a guest, and check out Letterman who has a very strong lineup.

Over 31 million American households watched the Michael Jackson memorial. "Households" is the operative word as that is what Nielsen measures, TVs in the home, not office or bars/restaurants/etc. That's a huge number since other major events like Princess Diana's funeral (33 million viewers), President Reagan's funeral (35 million viewers), and President Obama's inauguration (38 million viewers) occurred when people were more likely to be at home.

Tour de France coverage: In offline discussions with readers and friends, the subject of Versus' TdF coverage has come up repeatedly with some people enjoying and appreciating the evening edition with others appreciating the classic live commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin. The prevailing opinion is, however, that Versus throws too many gimmicks at the evening edition - tone it down boys, and stick to the cyclists on the road.

CBS is counter-attacking NBC with "Project L.E.N.O.", an acronym that stands for Late Prime Enhanced News Opportunity, an aggressive multi-tiered local campaign to pump up their 10pm programming.

We have some great science fiction hitting us this weekend: tonight features "Virtuality" on FOX (by the creators of "Battlestar Galactica"), and tomorrow we have a new "Doctor Who" at 9pm on BBC America - Cybermen in Victorian England!!

As we said a couple weeks ago, we went to France for a couple weeks where we didn't watch much French TV because, well, there really wasn't anything worth watching other than the French Open and Manchester United vs. Barcelona. Now our uneducated opinion has supporting proof: in 2008 only 13 of the top 100 scripted TV shows in France were actually French. American-produced TV programs took the biggest slice at 57. Who says we don't export anything?

Shows get their renewals due to their populaity right? Now there's a new tool for measuring the "online engagement" of TV viewers called the TV Fandex. The first week of Fandex measurement has shown that HBO's "True Blood" has the highest level of online engagement of any TV program, go figure. If the series stays as good as last night's episode, "True Blood" will rank very high for the rest of its season.

Hardcore classic film geeks (ourselves included) now have a place to go as Turner Classic Movies aka TCM has launched a fan site that includes social networking doo-dads, video clips, and rare photos. --- Fans of "The Shield" will be eagerly anticipating the next effort from series creator Shawn Ryan, an hour-long comedic private investigator series called "Terriers" co-penned by "Ocean's Eleven" writer Ted Griffin. The pilot has been green-lighted/lit? by FX but no word on air date.

The TV Junkie is still on vacation but we've put together highlights of the week. The TV Junkie will be back next Monday. The big story this week is Conan O'Brien taking over "The Tonight Show" with a new set and hopefully a new take on the show as Jay Leno's tenure, while stable, seemed a little dated by the time he signed off last week.

We also can't believe that on June 24th MTV's "Real World" will return for it's 22nd season. Has anything remarkable happened in the last 17 seasons? Oh wait, this season is essentially an episode for Cancun.

Upfront Day News: This week is when the networks roll out the programs they are planning to release for the Fall - or, at least, its the programs they "say" they are going to roll out for the Fall. They might announce these programs but it doesn't mean they will be given budgets to adequately promote them; it doesn't mean that some of these programs aren't "filler" to be shifted around the schedule before they are ultimately canceled; it doesn't mean that some of these programs aren't feints to throw the other networks off.

NBC has announced that the first guests on "The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien" will be Will Ferrell and Pearl Jam. | We were pleased that AMC's "Breaking Bad" won at Monday's Peabody Awards ceremony but we weren't happy to read that "Saturday Night Live"'s Lorne Michaels is considering a "MacGruber" movie. "MacGruber" is funny for the 20 second segments it has on "SNL" but it doesn't have legs beyond that.

Tonight is the two-hour season finale of "24" (haters can move on please). We're already looking forward to season 7 which will supposedly occur in New York City and will be the "most realistic" season yet. How is that even [snark] possible? We admit we have shamelessly been wasting a ton of hours on the "24 - Special Ops" iPhone game. A recent high point for us was the chance to see a Janeane Garofalo performance where she read some of her "Janis Gold vs. Chloe O'Brien" dialogue.

Programming Notes for the Weekend: Saturday marks the return of "Primeval" on BBC America (@9:00pm). The well-produced science fiction series has been a major hit in the UK and today it's been reported that Warner Brothers will be taking the series to the big screen.

One of the things we really liked about "Fringe" was the fact that the commercials were limited - a segment would end with an announcement of "Fringe will be back in 60 seconds" and sure enough, the show would be back on, we even timed it. FOX did this by charging advertisers more for each break and then limiting the breaks. The experiment is over and "Fringe" will now be as riddled with commercials as any other show.

For people who like real news other than the BBC should know that there are huge changes happening over at PBS with regards to "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer". Starting in September, the show will change its name to "PBS NewsHour" and along with an online correspondent, will have two anchors move from a single-anchor format to one with two anchors.

This trend of creating multi-hour season finales of TV reality shows has got to stop. Among other finales, Sunday's 3 hour finale of "Celebrity Apprentice" was unnecessarily drawn out with tons of footage that should have been cut, resulting in subjecting the audience to almost 1/2 hour of additional commercials. Tonight's 3 hour finale of "The Biggest Loser" promises more of the same.

New Web Series: Fans of stand-up comedy will enjoy "ROFL" which starts today and will be updated weekly with hand-picked tidbits of comedy from around the country. The show gets posted to Revision3 internet TV.

The CW announced Monday night that they would be giving back control of Sunday programming to their affiliate stations. It's been over a year and a half since The CW launched a new program for Sunday nights, "Life Is Wild", which was very short-lived. It appears that the network can't fund a couple hours of competitive TV on Sundays and that the affiliates can make more money hawking reruns of long-dead series rather than original programming from The CW.

Today we sadly note the passing of the always hilarious Dom DeLuise, who died at age 75 in Santa Monica last night. DeLuise was primarily known for his roles in movies like the Cannonball Run franchise with Burt Reynolds, as well as several of Mel Brooks' fillms, particularly Blazing Saddles and History of the World Part I. DeLuise actually got his start in TV on staples like "The Munsters"

Unless you are a Chicago Bulls or Boston Celtics fan (yeah!) this weekend's TV was kind of boring other than Sunday's "Breaking Bad" on AMC, which was excellent as usual. We wonder why the premiere of season 2 of "Ashes to Ashes" was pulled off of BBC America - it was a highlight for Saturday and pretty much the only alternative to basketball.