A quote from David Chase:

"Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.'

Who said it was your character?"

The new season premieres Sunday, March 12 at 9pm.

The Last Aria of Tony Soprano

I always liked this one.

Lisa: Can't you see the difference between earning something honestly and getting it by fraud?

Bart: Hmm, I suppose, maybe, if, uh ... no. No, sorry, I thought I had it there for a second.

Brought to you this week by the Enron trial.

Sorry, I thought I had it there for a second.

The schedule speaks for itself. Tune in tomorrow.

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist
Explores the Hidden Side of Everything"
Co-authors STEVEN LEVITT & STEPHEN DUBNER

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Historian & Author

Freakonomics and Fukuyama to appear on Charlie Rose

It's more fun with your friends.

A new season of "Entourage" begins this Sunday at 9pm. Watch the trailer here.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that

"Entourage" roars back with some of the best writing anywhere and a cast that picks up exactly where it left off last season -- inexplicably hitting all the right notes, perfecting nuance and sharpening the comedic edges as if they'd been doing this for years instead of eight measly episodes."

"Entourage" could very well be HBO's next breakout show. Rarely has a city, its denizens and the entertainment community that fuels and populates it been dissected so precisely.

HBO: Entourage

Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.

HBO presents the fifth and final season of the award-winning hit series Six Feet Under - now premiering every Monday night starting in June.

That's Monday, June 6, at 9pm. Watch the season 5 trailer here.

Moving the show to Monday nights could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, but I think it's likely just an effort to give the hopeful successor to "Sex & The City" more room to grow its audience. At this point, one would not expect continued top billing for SFU to boost its audience, but fans should willingly follow it to Monday without much of a drop-off.

HBO: Six Feet Under

Advertising insiders theorize that most companies will soon target multiple, smaller pools of consumers. The key will be finding audiences that are interested in the product to begin with. Fulfilling this vision will require significant changes in the ad industry.

New Ways to Drive Home the Message

There's nothing like a little mathematical rigor to dispel the myth of drama in reality TV.

We hate to admit two things: first, that we watch Fox TV's American Idol and second, that the contest is not as close as it appears.

While it may be the case that American's are truly divided on such issues (red and blue, and all of that), we suspect that it is the "idle" voting system that is accounting for the tightness of the contest, not a closely divided American public.

In the 2003 vote, around 240 million calls were made to the phone lines, but only 24 million calls got through. Thus, only one in ten calls did not get a busy signal.

Suppose that, indeed, one contestant has far more fans than the other, and as soon as voting begins both groups start to call. To keep things simple, let's assume fans keep dialing if they get a busy signal. If the phone system is not fast enough, then we might find ourselves in a situation where the voting closes, yet there are still fans on both sides trying to dial. While, of course, there are a lot more fans of the more popular contestant that are left dialing at the end, the vote totals are due to the callers who got through. Since the phone lines accept calls at roughly the same rate, the vote totals for the two contestants will be much closer than the actual fan base would indicate.

American Idle?

I think it's because making something good is so hard. Most books, movies, plays, albums, product design and restaurants are awful. You just see more bad TV because the medium makes it so easy to browse.

They Liked the Naked Middle-Aged Man

Music Choice executives said they were optimistic, largely because the advent of digital video recorders and services like TiVo had spurred many advertisers to re-examine their usual methods.

On-Demand Channels: A Niche Frontier

"Everybody Hates Chris," a sitcom to appear on UPN, is based on the Brooklyn childhood of the comedian Chris Rock, who will narrate each episode.

Oh, boy! I hope it's like "Everybody Loves Raymond!"

"An off-the-charts hit, the best comedy of the season, hands down, no contest, the show to watch," raved Shari Ann Brill.

It is, it is like Raymond! Yay!

Of the 31 new series scheduled to appear in the coming season on the 6 networks, more than a dozen can be categorized as inspired by, or, more cynically, derived from, current hits.

I just thought this quote was amusing:

"CBS has a significant dependence on crime now."

On Fall TV, the Networks Are Planning Something Borrowed