A Slight Delay

Somehow I get the feeling that as a kid, Andrew Zimmern never snuck anything off his plate to the dog. The sometime restauranteur, radio personality, television host and prolific blogger, it seems, will eat anything that crosses his plate.

But that isn’t what makes “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern” (on the Travel Channel; check your listings) must-see viewing. Some of us can’t stomach even the thought of head cheese (oh, the stories I could tell…), or eating rodents, regardless of how they’re prepared, so you’ve got to give props to a guy that can walk into a restaurant that specializes in dishes consisting of various animal penises and sample half the menu without batting an eyelash. (more…)

The promotions make it sound so enticing: motion pictures and events on demand, high picture quality, a variety of channels, and service that rivals cable. Then there’s the tagline: “Friends don’t let friends subscribe to cable.” Let’s just say that after having their service for nearly a year now, I know why so few of my friends and family have DirecTV. The channel selection’s not what it’s cracked up to be, picture quality is merely passable, and the service… well, I’ll let one story stand in for the several I could tell about the nail-biting experience that is DirecTV.
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And you thought the commercialization of the holidays was bad. Now we have more commercials for Mucinex… you know, the company with the Archie Bunker-esque glob of talking phlegm. We’ve also had talking stains (courtesy of Tide) and anthropomorphic toe cheese (thanks to the folks at Lamisil). What’s next? Overall-clad hernias? Hemorrhoids that sound like Dick Cheney? Enough already.

Citing low ratings–again–CBS is pulling the plug on its apocalypse opera, “Jericho.” This is, of course, the second time the network is cancelling the ratings-challenged show; the last time, CBS was beseiged by fans sending in thousands of pounds of peanuts. There’s no word yet whether those same fans are now back to hoarding Planters.

The first season of Jericho looked promising, building on the premise of a middle-American town coping with the aftermath of a limited nuclear war. But the series’ first-season flaws were only magnified in the second season; we’ve seen Jericho–the show and the town–devolve from a plot and character driven ensemble show, to soap opera, to B-movie-grade action. By now, it seems as though the writers can’t decide whether to emulate “The Day After,” “The X-Files,” “Days of Our Lives,” or some awkward combination of the three.

The show hasn’t been helped by its time slot, the writers’ strike, a truncated seven-episode season, or the fact the second season picked up after such a long layoff. If another network picks up the show, which is always possible, there’s much work to be done if “Jericho” is to live up to the promise it showed early on.

Slight shakeup over at MSNBC. Tucker Carlson’s eponymous show in the 6 PM slot is out, replaced by David Gregory’s Race For the White House. What difference will this have? Well, for one thing, Tucker packs up his bow tie and continues with the network as a correspondent-at-large. For another, David Gregory could now plausibly lay claim to the title of “Hardest-Working Man in News.” In addition to covering the White House for NBC, he’s anchoring the aforementioned show, and still making regular appearances on NBC’s Nightly News.

So, for practical purposes, what does it mean for the lineup from night to night? On one level, it does mean that the cable net is more tightly intertwined with its broadcast parent. This is especially clear on the nights of primaries and caucuses, when the likes of Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, and Gregory share airtime with the usual suspects. On another level, it replaces Carlson’s feisty conservative bent with Gregory’s more centrist presentation, drawing on the same cast of characters that tend to appear on the other programs: Air America’s Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson (associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post), NBC Political Director Chuck Todd, ex-Congressman/current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and Carlson. (more…)