Category Archives: Cable
Weekly TV Update: June 11
Each week we bring you stories from around the Internet that you might have missed.
J.R. Ewing and family returns to television this Wednesday at 9 pm on TNT.
ABC Family’s Bunheads debuts tonight. This drama that centers around ballet dancers comes from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherma-Paladino.
Cinema Blend’s Kelly West has a treat for Suits fans. She has posted photos from her behind-the-scenes tour.
CBS asks a court to block the premiere of ABC’s The Glass House, which is a Big Brother-esque reality show. The ABC show has somewhere between 15-30 former Big Brother staffers, some who had access that show’s “bible”.
In its quest to remain relevant, Ion Television announces five new original Christmas movies for December.
Push Girls Needs to Be Pushed Off Television
Even before I started watching the Sundance Channel’s Push Girls, I knew I was going to be very critical of it. I was right. I didn’t expect it to be anything I could consider “good television”. There were parts of it that I found profoundly irritating and even offensive. The reality series, revolving around four women who use wheelchairs, opened with two episodes on Monday night. The entire goal of the show seems to be to inspire a viewer to believe that they can achieve anything in life regardless of obstacles. It is a very repetitive and uninteresting message. The message starts to sound sickening when you realize that none of the women have lives that are particularly impressive.
The tagline for the series is “If you can’t stand up, stand out.” This annoying because it tries too hard to be cute. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it was accurate for any of these women. It seems not to be. They just don’t seem that special. While their situations certainly took perseverance to overcome, it seemed that Tiphany, Angela, Mia and Auti were simply women who left me wondering why they got a show.
Weekly TV Update: June 4
Each week we bring you stories from around the Internet that you might have missed.
Rolling Stone has a recap of Sunday’s episode of Mad Men.
Are you a fan of Game of Thrones? The Los Angeles Times has you covered in the recap department.
E! has a list of crazy moments that happened at the MTV Movie Awards yesterday.
Richard Dawson, the original host of Family Feud, died on Saturday.
The voice of Gumby also died last week.
Weekly TV Update: May 28
Each week we bring you stories from around the Internet that you might have missed.
Don’t know what TV shows to look forward to? Here is a list of upcoming shows.
Robin Thicke apparently thinks he’s not famous enough to win ABC’s Duets. Then again, he is competing against Kelly Clarkson and John Legend.
History has a new miniseries about the Hatfields and the McCoys. It will star Kevin Costner.
Mediaite’s Sarah Devlin has an article about Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner’s Woman Problem.
Will the musical Rags be riches for Nickelodeon? The New York Daily News reviews the latest Nickelodeon Original Movie.
The Forgettable Season of Food Network Star
The Next Food Network Star is one of those shows that I watch because I think it’s going to get better, but it never does. It’s hard to believe that Food Network Star made its debut in 2005 with Marc Summers as host. The show hasn’t had a true host for about 5 season. Instead, the judges take turns announcing rules, so that the show does not completely lose its way. Each year Food Network Star continues without a host, I wish Marc Summers was back to keep track of things and help viewers keep track of the contestants.
Spoiler Alert
The contestants for season 8 of Food Network Star.
Logopalooza: TV Land Edition
On May 9, TV Land debuted a new logo for the first time since the networks launch 16 years ago. While TV Land has made minor tweaks to its logo in the past, the latest change is major and marks a new direction for the network.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, TV Land’s president Larry W. Jones says, “The logo feels more modern, but it’s not a complete abandonment of what our heritage is. ”
The Hollywood Reporter also reports that TV Land’s demographic has changed. TV Land’s target audience is 40-somethings, who used to be members of the baby-boomer demographic. Now that the baby boomers have aged, people in there 40s are members of Generation X, who TV Land believes want to see “the kind of multi-camera sitcoms on which they were raised on,” so the logo change is meant to show the change in the network. Jones says, “This was opportunity to signal to the new 40-somethings that is the new TV Land.”
Reviewing TBS’s Men at Work
TBS is one of my favorite channels, but it’s one of the last places I would think of to have a quality first-run show. I’ll watch endless reruns of Friends or Seinfeld, but that’s what TBS is best at: reruns. Though, when I saw so many ads for Men at Work during multiple two hour marathons of Friends, I wanted to give it a chance. I have been a fan of Breckin Meyer ever since I saw him star in Rat Race in 2001, so I was curious about how well he would do as a showrunner. I’ve also been a fan of Danny Masterson for a while. I knew this new role wouldn’t be as enjoyable as when he was Hyde in That 70s Show, but I still wanted him to succeed.
The style of the show wasn’t going to suit me, since I have an aversion to multi-camera shows with a laugh track. While there are a few notable exceptions, the overwhelmingly deliberate delivery of punchline and prompting for the viewer to laugh turns me off. Also, the camera set up seems to compromise individual character focus. The premise of this show was respectable, but not very unique. Four men living, working and dating in New York. The series opened with two episodes on Thursday night, and while I chuckled a few times during both of them, I wasn’t impressed.
Nickelodeon Brings Figure It Out Back
Nickelodeon’s Figure It Out has been brought back into production, much to the excitement and dismay of 90s kids everywhere. New episodes will start airing next month with current Nick stars, such as Victoria Justice, Big Time Rush, and Jeanette McCurdy.
Here is the promo for the new version:
For those unfamiliar with the show, it’s What’s My Line? meets Nickelodeon. Celebrities, mostly from Nickelodeons shows, guess the unique talents of the kid contestants. The panelists have to ask the contestant yes or no questions hoping that they get a little closer to the hidden talent. In every round the panelists are given clues to help them. The longer it takes panelists to “Figure it Out”, the more prizes the kid wins. If the panelists never guess the kid’s talent, the kid wins the grand prize.
While the show may not be remembered as well as other Nick game shows such as Double Dare or Legends of the Hidden Temple. Figure It Out is very much a Nickelodeon show with a large fan base.
The new version of the show looks promising; despite the absence of original host Summer Sanders. Hopefully, there will be a shout out to the original Figure It Out. It is unlikely to happen, but fans of the 1997 version will keep their fingers crossed for an appearance from Kenan Thompson or Amanda Bynes.
Enjoy your walk down memory lane 90s kids!
Logopalooza: Lifetime Edition
On May 2, Lifetime introduced a new yin yang logo with the tagline “Your life. Your time.”
In a press release, Lifetime’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Time Nolan said, “Great experiences build successful brands. Expanding on Lifetime’s 28 year legacy, our vision balances the equity the network built while breathing new life into the viewers’ experience. This new logo marks the next step with a distinctive new look and attitude. Embracing everything we love about life, Lifetime strives to be as brash as it is honest and always entertaining.”
While I applaud Lifetime for taking more steps away from its former image as the channel with movies about battered women, my initial reaction to the logo was that it would not seem out of place on a feminine hygiene product and seemed borderline ridiculous. The pink yin yang would fit perfectly on a package of Poise, which was probably not what the Lifetime executives intentions. As I thought more about the logo, I realized that Lifetime was probably going for the balance between work and having a family, the yin and yang in a woman’s life. The problem is that a network logo should not require someone to analyze and get existential.
I prefer the old logo because it did not have an unnecessary symbol and got straight to the point in feminine script. You knew you were watching Lifetime. There was no glancing at a irrelevant symbol before you read the print underneath it. The channel name was the logo.
My dislike of the new logo definitely has a lot to do with the fact that it is new. Since 1995, Lifetime’s logo has deviated little until the most recent change, so I grew up with one variation of the above logo or another gracing the lower right-hand corner of my television screen. Maybe the pink yin yang will become Lifetime’s thing, an iconic logo for an iconic network. The yin yang may end up like the NBC peacock, forever associated with a network despite having nothing to do with the content of what the network airs.
What to know what more of Lifetime’s former logos look like? Business Insider takes a trip down memory lane with this slideshow.
Wait! What's A Dial? 