TVSquad

Richard Keller
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Movie actors are a unique bunch of characters in Hollywood. Adept at script memorization, method acting, and being snobby little princesses (the males included), they are somewhat limited in their performance venues. They can switch pretty easily and thrive in theater productions because most of them began their acting lives on the stage in front of adoring audiences. Decades ago they could also do radio pretty easily; most likely because they could read right from the script and no one listening would know any different.

Television? Well, that's a whole different loaf a bread! For some reason, big-named movie stars with their Oscars and Golden Globes just tank when they decide to jump to the small screen. Their failures could be due to the show they've decided to star in, who they play on the show, or the fact that they are catering to a different audience than film-goers. Whatever the reason, some of Hollywood's most famous film stars had some famously big television flops. Here are but a few of them to digest.

At the midpoint of the 1970s the Saturday morning schedule was remarkably different from what it was a mere five years before. Instead of featuring animated rock n' roll bands, animated mystery-solving teenagers and animated versions of Jerry Lewis, the 1975-76 schedule was filled with live-action series. Lots of live-action series.

In fact, about half of the new series to premiere this year were live action shows. Add those to existing series making return appearances and half of the 1975 Saturday morning schedule featured live actors and actresses. It would be a trend that would continue until the end of the decade and would give animated fare a run for their money.

Here's why: it now languishes on my DVR for days afterward. When it aired on Wednesday nights I would either watch it live or immediately after I put the kids to bed. It was appointment television for both my wife and me; something that we could get together for after a day of work and children and basic mayhem.

Now that FOX switched the show to Thursdays it doesn't have the same importance as it once did. Instead it gets superseded by the other "Must See" shows of the evening. Because there's so much to see that night the DVR gets loaded up with those shows as well, pushing Bones lower in the queue. Then Friday comes around and we watch the other shows, plus that night's entries. With Saturday and Sunday being so busy with life in general I don't get enough time to clear out the DVR queue. By the time the next new episode of Bones airs my wife and I haven't even watched the previous week's episode.

Television as an industry is in need of a major overhaul. It's old, dusty, soiling itself, and not keeping up with the technology that changes from day to day. If it were an old, sick animal, or Larry King, it would probably be put to sleep. Alas, so many of us rely on the old biddy that it would be hard for us to say good-bye.

Luckily, I am a resourceful, intelligent and, dare I say it, gorgeous human being who has some ideas in mind to freshen up the television landscape. Yes, it may mean sacrifice from some of us (mainly network executives) and we may lose something in the process. But, in the end, the industry that we love to quietly despise while watching Cheaters will thrive once again.

You may not have realized it after coming off of your President's Day Booze and Beef BBQ, but February 17th was the voluntary day for television stations to turn off those piddly analog signals and crank up their digital ones. Other than one guy shooting his television over the conversion, the switchover of about a quarter of the 1800 television stations in the U.S. went off fairly smoothly. Course, this was just the dress rehearsal. The real performance will be on June 12th, which has become the new 'no change' cut over date.

Being a proud citizen of the United States, I thought I'd take your pulse once again and find out if any stations in your viewing area cut over on Tuesday. If they did, and you were one of those remaining folks without a cable hookup, did you encounter any problems with your new digital converter box? Also, just out of curiosity, was there one major market station that remained in analog mode while the others jumped into the digital pool?

Come on, Americans! Let your voice ring out on this matter.

I have to get something off my chest, and I'm not talking about my man boobs. It has to do with Will Ferrell. See, I like Will as an actor. He had some fine roles on Saturday Night Live and has proven himself a qualified movie actor. Some of his roles have even revolved around television show remakes. Unfortunately, those remakes tend to, um, not make fans of the original shows very happy.

As we all know, and are probably tired of hearing because it makes us so damned depressed, the recession is hitting everyone hard. Businesses are closing left and right, people are losing their jobs, and unemployment rates are hitting levels not seen since the days of leg warmers, headbands and tainted Tylenol. It's bad enough that even if people still have a job, their employers are taking extensive belt tightening measures to make sure they are prepared for the worst.

One of the things being eliminated from families' budgets during this belt tightening is their cable or satellite hookup. With costs that can total over $100 a month, families are just not ready to dump that kind of cash on something they feel doesn't have any value. That doesn't mean they are going without television (especially after the DTV switchover) and turning to a simpler life of canning vegetables, making quilts, and attending square dances. Rather, they are switching off their hi-def flat screens, turning on their computer flat screens, and getting their TV fix over the Internet.

The networks are cold, heartless bastards.They want us to watch their shows in order to grab ratings and ad revenue; yet, they mess around with their schedules so much that it's frustrating. Eventually, it gets hard for us not to pick up the damn television and throw it out the window. Well, more like get a few people to pick it up and throw it out of the front door. Come on, those flat screens are heavy!

(NOTE: The following post talks about my favorite commercials of this past Super Bowl. There are absolutely no spoilers in this post. That is, unless you didn't watch the Super Bowl, recorded it for future viewing, and have decided to ignore every single other media outlet, as well as friends and family so no one tells you who won. If that's the case, don't blame us for your extremely poor time management skills.)

Well, it's all over except for the pack-up, the clean-up and the over-analyzing of the analyzing of the game that was actually played in Tampa. Super Bowl XLIII is now in the history books and so are its commercials. This year featured some returning companies, some new ones, plenty of NBC promos, and a koala puppet being punched in the face. In other words, a bit of everything. Out of all of them, here are some of my favorites.

(NOTE 2: The embedded videos come courtesy of Hulu. If you cannot view these videos I have linked the commercial titles to another site that you should be able to view.)

The 1980s was the beginning of the end for Filmation Studios ... sort of. For, while their Saturday morning fortunes began to fade and eventually disappear, their successes turned to the burgeoning syndication market. It was there, starting in the early 1980s, that the studio introduced us to a sword-wielding warrior who became an animated legend.

Unfortunately, the studio's success in syndication would be a small, but powerful, blip for the two-decade old company. By the end of the 1980s the studio would fade into memory as the company was broken up and its talent moved onto bigger and better things.