Everyone, even the judges, seems a bit blow away by the results of the show last night - lets recap…

First, the non-elimination stuff. The Top 20 did the group song thing - and it was in no way memorable. Seacrest announced that on March 11th the contestants would be singing songs from The Beatles song book. I don’t know how I feel about that (big Beatles fan here) - but I’ll watch.

Idol Gives Back is also returning in April.

The four singers that were eliminated are:

Jason Yeager

Alexandrea Lushington

Alaina Whitaker

Robbie Carrico

I can’t say I was terribly surprised to see any of them go, although they might not have been my first choices.

What did you think?

TVsquad reports that Scrubs may be making a move to ABC for its final season. NBC has been reluctant to renew the show for the fall so that its last season can be finished, and ABC studios has finally had enough of the show’s constant mistreatment by the network. So, now, the two networks are in negotiations to see who will end up with Scrubs.

I love Scrubs. Some people complain about the J.D./Elliot storyline, and the “unevenness” of the show - but I find it consistently funny, and I’d like to see it go on for another 5 years. While I doubt that will happen, you never know.

If Scrubs does make the move to ABC it won’t be the first time that a show has jumped networks towards the end of its run. Family Matters, Different Strokes, and Buffy (to name a few) all made network switches towards the end of their runs…and none of them saw ratings boots for it…so I doubt Scrubs will suddenly score through the roof, but I do hope the show gets a decent end.

ABC has renewed 5 of its reality shows - none of which should really be a surprise. The shows renewed include, Dancing with the Stars, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Supernanny, Wife Swap and America’s Funniest Home Videos.

America’s Funniest Home Videos will be entering its 18th season which makes it the longest running primetime show on the network. In this YouTube day and age its no surprise to me to see the show still going strong after all these years - I mean, really, Funniest Home Videos and Funniest People were YouTube before there even was a YouTube.

Host Tom Bergeron will return.

The New York Times has an article that verifies something that has been rumor and speculation for a few months now - everybody that can want Jay Leno in 2010 - wants Jay Leno in 2010.

ABC, FOX, and Sony Pictures Entertainment all want Jay Leno to host a late night talk show for them when he is forced out of “The Tonight Show” to be replaced by “Conan O’Brien” in 2009. Jay’s contract extends through 2009, but in 2010 he is a free man.

Fox would like to have some kind of late night presence. ABC would, reportedly, be willing to cancel Nightline to put him in the spot, and Sony Pictures literally wants to build him a yellow brick road to his studio, that will be the center piece of their lot. They are also, reportedly, offering ownership of his show, and the show that would follow him - a deal very similar to the one that David Letterman has with CBS.

So what will happen? Nothing until 2009. Until then it is illegal for Jay to talk to anyone about anything, but it looks like we could have another Late Night Wars when this is all said and done…and that would be very interesting indeed.

‘According to Jim’ is not a great sitcom. I think everyone involved with it knows that. It isn’t a classic, and it won’t be a show that is remembered fondly like ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ or ‘I Love Lucy’. Amazingly, however, it has had a seven year run of mediocrity.

Even more amazing - ABC is in talks to bring it back for an 8th season. Last year the show didn’t get picked up initially, but was given an 18 episode order for mid-season…and it looks like ABC may do it again this year.

Why?

Well, even though the show isn’t a mega-ratings winner, it serves as a bit of a cash cow for the network in syndication…so who knows if it will EVER end.

Even though there has been a big stink about how this year’s Oscars was the worst rated in history, apparently that’s not necessarily a reflection on the quality of the product as much as it is a reflection on people just flat out not watching television. Why? Because it was the highest rated show of the week, beating out ratings juggernaut ‘American Idol’.

So what does that tell us? Did people find other stuff to do during the writer’s strike? Will they be coming back to television, or did the strike have more of an affect on the future of television than we thought?

1. The Oscars (ABC)
2. American Idol - Tues (FOX)
3. American Idol - Weds (FOX)
4. American Idol - Thurs (FOX)
5. Oscars Red Carpet (ABC)
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll admit, I’ve never been a huge comic book nut, but the forthcoming Iron Man flick has me really pumped. With Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role and with Jon Favreau in the directors chair, it’s got the makeup of something great. Plus, the previews have been incredibly awesome.

The newest trailer will be shown during this week’s Lost, a Desmond-centric episode entitled The Contrast. So there’s one commercial break that you won’t have to fast-forward through.

Lost is on Thursday night at 9/8c. Iron Man premieres May 2.

The CW may have decided to shed the “Smackdown” from their line-up, but MyNetworkTV was only too happy to pick it up. WWE’s second tier brand, “Smackdown” will begin airing on the network this fall, after its contract with The CW has concluded.

The move will put the show back on several local stations that it lost after the merger of the The WB and UPN a few years ago. You’ll need to check the availability of MyNetworkTV in your local area, and keep in mind that the network also appears on several local Fox networks after their initial block of programming runs.

WWE Chairman Vince McMahon stated, “We are excited to add MyNetworkTV and its television affiliates to our family of global network partners. We have an unmatched record of delivering ratings success to each and every network partner we’ve worked with in our long and storied history. We fully intend to bring that same level of success to MyNetworkTV.”

CAN WE PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SAVE SHOWS BY SENDING CRAP INTO THE STUDIOS?!??!?!

In yet another futile attempt to save a struggling show, fans of “Friday Night Lights” have decided to attempt to save the show by sending in lightbulbs to NBC executive Ben Silverman.

For some reason, ever since “Jericho” was “saved” this is what everyone things they should do if their favorite show is cancelled. Well, I got some bad news for you guys - “Friday Night Lights” isn’t getting saved by this - in fact, no show is ever going to be saved by sending junk into the execs at any network.

I mean seriously, chances are they don’t even see this stuff - and if they do, they’re so convinced that the Nielsen ratings are fool-proof and that their corporate way of doing things in television is fool proof that they’re not going to allow this kind of thing to “save” anything.

Let’s face it - the “nuts” campaign didn’t even save Jericho. It simply gave the show a temporary stay of execution. CBS has been determined NOT to promote this show - even seemingly ignoring it when during the Writer’s Strike when it was one of the only scripted shows even on the network with new episodes.

How can anyone explain or justify that? The answer seems clear - CBS doesn’t want the show saved. If they did, they’d promote it, they’d do recap episodes, they’d do SOMETHING to remind people that its coming on - but they haven’t done that.

So please, I’m begging you, stop sending stuff to executives to save television shows. Take those few dollars and donate them to a charity - if we all spent as much time trying to save other people as we do trying to save tv shows we’d be a lot better off.

NBC continues to refuse trying out new ideas, and instead develops old properties into new shows - this time its not something from the NBC vault, though, it’s the public domain literary classic ‘Robinson Crusoe”. This is hardly the first version of this story on film, or even as a tv series, but this one has a “twist” (isn’t that delightful) - this time there is an african slave woman!

Yeah! I’m sure that’s going to make a GREAT show!

Robinson Crusoe and a slave woman he names “Friday” will be stranded on an island together, for 13 episodes, which are getting a massive $35 million dollar budget.

Even though this series is keeping the 1650 time frame of the original work, there is very little of the rest of this show that will resemble the book, based on the description by Ben Silverman. “”It’s part MacGyver, part contemporary morality tale about race and personal discovery, part comedy and part Castaway meets Survivor.”

I’m sure its all of those things, and I’m sure it will be great.

ugh.