Super Bowl XLIV mashes M*A*S*H finale, says CBS
02/08/10 02:40 PM
By ED BARK
Sunday's New Orleans Saints' win over the Indianapolis Colts at Super Bowl XLIV is being crowned as the most-watched program in TV history by CBS.
Averaging 106.5 million viewers in the preliminary national Nielsens, the game edges CBS' Feb. 28, 1983 telecast of the M*A*S*H finale, which had 106 million viewers.
The Super Bowl's final national number could go up -- or down. But it went up substantially last year, from 95.4 million to 98.7 million in the final Nielsen compilation. That was termed an "unusual and unexpected adjustment" by NBC, which carried the game.
There are many more potential viewers now than in 1983, when M*A*S*H set its record. But there also are many more networks vying for viewer attention. Super Bowl audiences continue to climb steadily, with new records being set by each of the last three telecasts. The Saints-Colts game is the first to top the 100 million mark.
"With all the memorable story lines going into Super Bowl XLIV combined with the awesome power of the NFL, we are thrilled with this rating," CBS News and Sports president Sean McManus said in a statement.
CBS also is bragging about the audience for Super Bowl XLIV's followup act, the new reality series Undercover Boss. It drew 38.6 million viewers, the third largest ever for a post-Super Bowl attraction.
The record-setter is still a 1996 extended episode of Friends, which had 52.9 million viewers on NBC. In second place is the premiere of CBS' second edition of Survivor (45.4 million viewers after the 2001 Super Bowl).
CBS says that the first episode of Undercover Boss is the most-watched series premiere in any time slot since ABC launched the variety series Dolly (starring Dolly Parton) on Sept. 27, 1987. It had 39.5 million viewers.
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NFL Full Contact rings false on truTV
02/08/10 01:38 PM
Premiering: Monday, Feb. 8th at 9 p.m. (central) on truTV
Starring: A collection of behind-the-scenes guys
Produced by: Steve Sabol
By ED BARK
The NFL's ratings were up across-the-board on all of its client networks this past season. Little truTV, which can't afford the rights to any games, hopes to mop up with its six-part NFL Full Contact.
Premiering Monday, the series promises "unprecedented, exclusive access to what really goes on behind the scenes of professional football."
But an up-close look at last September's NFL Kickoff game -- and a preceding concert -- quickly proves to be a lot of ado about next to nothing. That is unless you're thrilled by stuff like veteran NFL photographer Bob Angelo eating his pre-game meal before taking the field for the Tennessee Titans-Pittsburgh Steelers faceoff.
Played in the Steel City, the game was preceded by an outdoor concert featuring Tim McGraw and The Black-Eyed Peas.
"It's a dream come true if you're a football fan. But it's a nightmare if you're throwing the party," a narrator contends before bossy guys like event producer Dan Parise start pissing, moaning and creating mountains out of ant hills.
Early in the inaugural one-hour episode, the reliably overwrought Parise spots an apparent McGraw impersonator and acts as though Osama Bin Laden has infiltrated the ad hoc "Pen" where a big throng of commoners will congregate to whoop and holler at the events onstage.
"Get his ass over here right now," Parise barks. Wow, what drama.
An eight-year-old child later is reported missing, prompting security head Sean Oates to spring into action. The kid is quickly found. Earlier, a "suspicious package" of course turns out to be nothing of concern. And so on. You can cut the tension with a plastic butter knife, even though the drum-beating theme music bridging commercial breaks implies that Armageddon is just around the corner.
Next Monday's second episode will feature the first regular season game at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. In a preview of coming attractions, we hear the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders being told, "Final fluff and puff."
Full Contact, judging from the opening episode, is puff for the NFL and fluff when it comes to what publicity materials tout as "the unpredictable challenges and conflicts that ensue in the high-stakes atmosphere that extends from the sidelines to the television truck to the locker room to the halftime show."
Yeah, right.
GRADE: C-minus
Come together: Letterman and Leno play act with Oprah as buffer
02/08/10 09:36 AM
By ED BARK
The surprise spot of Super Bowl XLIV came at the 9:34 mark of the second quarter, when Indiana native David Letterman in a Colts jersey whined, "This is the worst Super bowl party ever."
"Now, Dave, be nice," Oprah Winfrey admonished him before the camera moved to their surprise guest -- Jay Leno.
"Oh, he's just sayin' that because I'm here," Leno groused before Letterman mocked his words with a high-pitched Leno impression.
Winfrey sighed and put her hands up. End of genius spot, a sequel to a 2007 Super Bowl commercial in which Winfrey wore a Chicago Bears jersey while they pretended to be lovers. The two earlier had settled their differences after Letterman pointedly baited her to appear on his show.
Letterman likewise has been ridiculing Leno and defending Conan O'Brien during NBC's late night train wreck. Leno eventually fired back with a memorably blunt joke on how to get Letterman to ignore you. In short, "Marry him."
Winfrey took Leno's side -- at least in the NBC mess -- during a recent full-program interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show. So this was a perfect way for her to play referee, with Letterman and Leno at least appearing in close proximity to one another for the first time in more than a decade.
CBS says the 15-second spot, a promo for Letterman's show, was taped last week at Letterman's home base, The Ed Sullivan Theater. It will air only once, the network said.
Leno is scheduled to resume his competition with Letterman on March 1st, when NBC re-gifts him with The Tonight Show. Here's the spot:
Jobs well done: CBS' post-Super Bowl Undercover Boss pays as it goes
02/05/10 01:39 PM
Premiering: After Super Bowl XLIV, Sunday, Feb. 7th on CBS
Starring: Various undercover bosses and members of their workforce
Created and produced by: Stephen Lambert
By ED BARK
See a chief operating officer get his hands dirty in a new reality series that doesn't feel dirty to the touch.
Still, you might feel a bit manipulated. But maybe edified, too. And you definitely can't say the latter about MTV's knuckle-dragging, fist-in-the-face Jersey Shore and star player Nicole "Snooki" Pilozzi.
CBS' Undercover Boss, which follows Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV, has found a dream executive for its premiere hour. He's Larry O'Donnell, positioned as the all-caring COO of Houston-based Waste Management, Inc.
Billed as "America's largest trash company," it has 45,000 employees, 20 million customers and an ample number of nasty jobs. O'Donnell tries his hand at five of them Sunday night -- and meets five wondrous workers in the process. It spurs him to make some changes in the corporate culture while also rewarding those who have made even Port-o-Let cleaning seem like a life's calling.
O'Donnell infiltrates his own company by posing as Randy Lawrence, whose adventures as an entry level worker are being recorded by a camera crew as grist for a possible reality series. Or so everyone's told.
Before he heads out into the field, viewers briefly meet O'Donnell's family. He's married with two children, one of them a daughter whose brain was seriously damaged during a medical procedure gone awry. This provides the star of this hour with some built-in empathy before he tries to master the art of picking recyclable cardboard off a fast-moving conveyor belt while being encouraged by a dedicated employee named Sandy.
During a daily half-hour lunch break -- after O'Donnell has fouled up some of the equipment -- he witnesses Sandy suddenly hurrying off to punch her time card. The clandestine boss learns that employees are docked two minutes of pay for every minute they're tardy. It seems inhumane to him. And besides that, "My back is hurting like you wouldn't believe," O'Donnell tells the camera before retiring early in his room at a cheap motel.
Undercover Boss succeeds in its depictions of both the sometimes hapless O'Donnell and the altogether genuine-seeming workers he encounters.
Walter, who tries to school him in the art of picking up hillside trash, has been on kidney dialysis for the past 20 years. Yet he perseveres.
Jaclyn is a cancer survivor who does multiple administrative jobs while striving to hold on to her family's home, which lately is up for sale. She even invites O'Donnell home for dinner, and he's touched by what he sees.
Buoyant Fred is a maestro at cleaning portable toilets. O'Donnell meets him at a Houston carnival, where he says, "I call it the battlefield of poop." And if you get some of it on you, "you're wounded but you keep going."
Finally, Janice has a sprawling trash collection route of a "little over 300" houses. To save time, she pees in a can. But she also makes time for some of her customers. O'Donnell gets choked up when a mentally handicapped woman reads Janice a thank you note.
It gets to you in ways that most reality series don't, can't or won't even try. In the end, the five employees are summoned to O'Donnell's corporate offices to find out who he really is. And to hear that he'll also be making their work lives better.
It might have helped -- from an overall believability standpoint -- if O'Donnell had encountered at least one heavy-duty malcontent. Instead, the first hour only singles out the fleetingly seen time card cop, who's told to be more lenient.
Undercover Boss will settle into its regular 8 p.m. (central) Sunday slot on Valentine's night, when Hooters goes under the microscope. That's a little easier sale than a waste management company. But the show's inaugural post-Super Bowl edition almost assuredly makes a better first impression. In continued tough economic times, its salt-of-the-earth supporting players are relatable and worth rooting for. And the bossman seems all right, too.
GRADE: B
Danes in full bloom as autistic heroine of HBO's Temple Grandin
02/04/10 04:32 PM
By ED BARK
This is such a good film. And Claire Danes is simply great in it.
That's the condensed review of HBO's Temple Grandin (Saturday, Feb. 6th, 7 p.m. central), which on paper has a less than scintillating premise.
The name in the title is a real-life autistic woman whose singular achievements in animal husbandry have made it easier for cattle to proceed to their eventual slaughter. Her clarion call: "Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be. We owe them some respect."
Danes, still best known for her starring role in ABC's one-season wonder, My So-Called Life, has a transformative role in Temple Grandin. Her hair short and curled and her speech slightly impaired, she not so much plays but inhabits her character. An Emmy nomination is a certainty, and it's hard to imagine anyone else measuring up. Few TV performances in recent memory have risen to this level.
The film begins in 1966, with Temple spending the summer at her Aunt Ann's (Catherine O'Hara) cattle ranch in Arizona before being asked to make an abrupt transition to Franklin Pierce College out East.
Temple's mother, Eustacia (Julia Ormond), has doted on her daughter since spurning a doctor's recommendation that she be institutionalized as a mute four-year-old diagnosed as an "infantile schizophrenic." College and further socialization for Temple are musts in Eustacia's view. But Temple prefers the company of animals, whose moods and routines she comes to understand.
While on the ranch, she builds a calming "squeeze machine" modeled after a close-quartered cattle restraint. It substitutes for the human hugs that Temple can't tolerate. The invention and its inventor become inseparable, but not without a fight for the right to keep it in her dorm room.
The movie also flashes back to Temple's high school years at a New Hampshire boarding school, where she's befriended and encouraged by a science teacher named Dr. Carlock (David Strathairn). He realizes that Temple thinks in pictures with a mind that retains visual records of everything she's encountered.
"Trust me, we know how different she is," Carlock tells Eustacia.
"Different, but not less," she responds.
Temple Grandin is touching without ever being cloying. Its plucky heroine loves both The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the challenge of envisioning master plans for the humane treatment of cattle.
Her principal battles are with taunting students, automatic sliding doors and a brusque, condescending cattle boss named Don Michaels (Richard Dillard). Initially bemused, he refuses to approve her proposed master's thesis on mooing as an indicator of cattle behavior.
As noted, none of this seems like the stuff of riveting drama. It is, though. Still only 30, Danes shows she's now ready and able to take command of any acting challenge put in her path.
"I'm Temple Grandin," she proclaims at film's end.
That she is.
GRADE: A
Jones 'n' Joplin -- still smokin' after all these years
02/04/10 09:59 AM
All music awards shows on are big on mix 'n' match duets these days.
Sunday's Grammy Awards opened with Lady Gaga and Elton John together for the first time. Much less effective was the later off-key pairing of Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks.
For a truly blazin' hot twofer, though, return with us to 1969's This Is Tom Jones, during which the swivel-hipped underwear-catcher smoked TV screens with a wailing Janis Joplin. Their performance of "Raise Your Hand" remains a wonder to behold -- and that includes the unbridled joyous dancing and a full-blown horn section. You won't be able to sit on your hands. That's for sure. Here we go.
Ed Bark
Lost returns with double shots of intrigue (note: don't read if you still plan to see it)
02/03/10 07:50 AM
By ED BARK
Aha, so Lost intends to have it both ways.
Tuesday's two-hour Season 6 premiere of ABC's ever-confounding conundrum conjured up a pair of each principal character from the show's maiden Sept. 22, 2004 voyage on Oceanic 815. Whether that turns out to be a complete flight of fancy will be determined over the next four months.
Viewers were left last season with a flash of white and the apparent detonation of a bomb aimed at preempting the crash of Oceanic 815 and therefore wiping out everyone's five-season tour on the mysterious island that bedeviled them. Did it work? Yes and no.
In a dual device that few fans could have envisioned, Dr. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox); apprehended fugitive Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly); con man James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway); paralyzed John Locke (Terry O'Quinn); former torturer Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews); lottery winner Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and husband/wife Jin and Sun Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim) were all back aboard their Oceanic 815 flight from Sydney to L.A.
Drug-addicted former rock star Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan) also could be seen, although federal marshals soon had other plans for him.
But as the plot twisted, all of them -- except Charlie -- also were back on the island, circa 2007. Kate initially was high up in a tree and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), who wasn't a passenger on Oceanic 815, remained buried beneath the rubble of the bomb detonation site.
Both Mitchell and Monaghan were seen only briefly -- but memorably. They're otherwise occupied on the respective ABC series FlashForward and V, whose March returns were promoted during commercial breaks. Speaking of interruptions, there were an awful lot of 'em. But in the end, actual program content probably got more time than the products that paid for it.
Judging from the first two hours, Lost intends to split its time between the island and the aftermath of Oceanic 815's landing in L.A. Kate already has made more serious trouble for herself after escaping her federal escort at LAX. And Jack, who discovered a mysterious cut on his neck in the plane's restroom, has no idea what happened to his father's presumably on-board coffin.
Then there's Locke, who on Tuesday night emerged as someone else entirely in addition to being the all-powerful "Smoke Monster."
"I'm sorry you had to see me like that," he told a cowed Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), who's been reduced to his intimidated gofer while fake Locke has emerged as the island's brusque, sometimes brutal overlord.
The rest of the island's denizens eventually found themselves at The Temple, where a gutshot, nearly dead Sayid supposedly could be healed. Two new characters, a no-nonsense Asian leader and his interpreter (John Hawkes from Deadwood), emerged to make things even more miserable for Jack and crew. But Sayid predictably returned from the dead after being forcefully held beneath the Temple's healing waters. It took quite a while, though, with Tuesday night's doubleheader ending with the lifeless Sayid jolting awake and then wondering what had happened.
The trick now is to somehow merge the Oceanic 815 principals with their island counterparts. That presumably has to happen at some point during Lost's climactic back-and-forth trips through the Looking Glass.
Meanwhile, fake Locke has an entirely different motivation than murdered Locke, whose body still lays sprawled from its coffin on island beachfront property.
"I want the one thing that John Locke didn't," he told Ben. "I want to go home."
Good luck with that.
***Amid the glut of Lost commercial breaks were several for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison, who's been slipping in the polls. All were replays of Nolan Ryan's countrified endorsement of the sitting U.S. senator, who's still throwing a good deal of money into her race against incumbent Rick Perry. The guv didn't bother advertising during Lost. Perhaps he didn't like the title, which for now certainly fits Hutchison.
Will Lost find a way? The climactic Season 6 is ready for takeoff
02/01/10 02:26 PM
By ED BARK
The Lost bandwagon has lost much of its load over the years. Year by year, former fans of ABC's magical mystery tour have dropped out rather than re-puzzle their way through.
Even co-executive producer Damon Lindelof admits that Lost has "jumped the shark" numerous times during the twisted, knotted course of its first five seasons. You can read all about this in an extended piece I wrote for locatetv.com after the show's maestros and stars met with TV critics for the last time during January's midseason TV "press tour" in Pasadena.
Those of us who have stayed the course are -- of course -- eagerly anticipating Tuesday night's launch of Lost's sixth and final season. A two-hour episode (8 p.m. central) will be preceded by a one-hour refresher course that might make things a little easier to comprehend.
However it all ends, Lost is fated to be debated for decades to come on the web, at fan conventions or wherever else inquiring minds gather to dissect its innards. Co-executive producers Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have vowed to answer a lot of questions, leave a little mystery and stay away from an abrupt Sopranos-like blackout that left many viewers initially wondering whether the trouble was with their sets.
It's also more or less guaranteed that the entire Lost adventure won't be a wildly careening dream or the product of a very vivid imagination.
I'm in until the end, and happily so. Whatever its faults, Lost is a singular achievement in the broadcast TV realm, with ABC commendably along for the ride. We're unlikely to see the likes of Lost again. Many are OK with that. But for those with continuing long-term investments, Tuesday night marks the start of the last Lost payout.
Below are two appetizers -- a condensed Season 5 "Starter Kit" and a one-minute Season 6 preview that for the first time includes a smattering of upcoming footage.
Better late than never? Conan's last week a ratings triumph (plus, the Grammys get the words out)
02/01/10 12:08 AM
By ED BARK
Conan O'Brien bled ratings gold for NBC during his final week as host of the network's Tonight Show.
Lobbing grenades at his employer before making nice in the end, O'Brien averaged 5.3 million viewers for the week of Jan. 18-22, lagging behind only his debut week (June 1-5) haul of 6.1 million viewers.
The Jan. 22nd finale marked O'Brien's personal best, with 10.3 million viewers taking the plunge. His previous single show record was 9.2 million viewers for the June 1st launch of the now defunct Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.
CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, which had been thumping Tonight in the total viewer Nielsens, came up well short of O'Brien in their final head-to-head week of original shows. Letterman averaged 3.9 million viewers.
O'Brien also smacked Letterman among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, drawing 3.1 million for the week compared to Letterman's 1.2 million.
For their entire run against each other, Letterman had averaged 4.2 million total viewers a week, with ABC's Nightline second (3.9 million) and O'Brien far back with 2.8 million viewers. Among 18-to-49-year-olds, O'Brien managed to beat both Letterman and Nightline by just one-tenth of a rating point.
Jay Leno, who had dominated Letterman in both ratings measurements, gets a do-over on March 1st when he returns as Tonight host after a disastrous run in prime-time that will end on the Feb. 11th eve of the Winter Olympics.
***Sunday night's three-and-a-half-hour Grammy Awards on CBS again made Taylor Swift a big winner with the climactic Album of the Year trophy.
It might be best remembered, though, for the heavily censored preceding performance by rappers Drake, Lil Wayne and Eminem. Introduced by a highly enthusiastic Quentin Tarantino, they were silenced a total of 12 times, often for several long seconds at a time.
That has to be some kind of broadcast TV record, even though the semi-frenzied live audience at the Staples Center got the full monty. Viewers at home might have wondered, though, why CBS and Grammy organizers couldn't get their shit together -- so to speak -- on how to handle both the lyrics and the performers. Here's the heavily expurgated CBS version transmitted to the country at large: