Entertainment Only

I am ever so glad I don't watch America Idol.  I've seen a few minutes of it here and there when it ran long and interfered with Lie To Me or Fringe.  I saw Adam Lambert's rendition of the Tears For Fears/Gary Jules song Mad World and it brought out the goosebumps.  I also got to see his Robert Plant performance and being a Led Zeppelin fan I have to say I was impressed.  The other guy, not so much.  Every time I saw him he was either screeching or hit a flat note.  Last night's decision ensures that I will never watch the show because it isn't about talent and whether or not I would buy their music in the future, it's about the story.  Kris Allen can follow all the other winners into boring oblivion and Adam Lambert can front a rock band that I would be interested in listening to because his voice is great.  Hopefully Adam can use Jennifer Hudson as inspiration and Kris will follow the path of Clay Aiken and Taylor Hicks.  To nowhere.

Since I'm on the subject of entertainment how about those upfronts?  Network television is going to be so bad next year that they are going to be ripe to be replaced by TNT and USA.  The Closer, Leverage, In Plain Sight and Burn Notice could make a killing against the network offerings.

ABC couldn't do much damage to itself because there were very few shows that I watched after they canceled Life On Mars.  I like Castle (Nathan Fillion, yum) and they picked that up but they didn't renew The Unusuals, a very quirky show that I enjoyed very much.  I might watch Flash Forward and the reincarnation of V (Alan Tudyk, another yum) then ABC runs out of things to watch.

NBC is almost toast.  Jay Leno five nights a week at ten o'clock?  Not on my tv.  Heroes at 8 and Chuck isn't back until after the Winter Olympics which means late February or early March.  And they literally have nothing else to offer me since I don't watch sitcoms.  I might catch Law and Order on Friday night but it's at 8, how much fun can that be?

The CBS schedule also has major problems.  Other than 60 Minutes, The Mentalist, Numb3rs and the alphabet shows they also have nothing.  And seriously, how many procedurals can one watch?  Medium and Ghost Whisperer (aren't they the same show?) before Numb3rs, what were they thinking?

Fox held up the best but that isn't really saying much.  They canceled the Sarah Connor Chronicles (no more Summer Glau, you might think I was a Firefly fan or something) and replaced it with comedy before Dollhouse.  There's a match made in heaven.  Not.  Lie to Me (only 13 episodes so far) and Fringe (without Kirk Acevedo) will be back, no mention of 24 and then they run out of things I'm interested in.

Does anybody watch the CW?  Melrose Place?  I didn't watch the first version. Once they canceled Everwood and Veronica Mars the CW dropped off my radar.  Seriously, this is the weakest schedule I have ever seen.  Netflix is going to hate me next year, usually I only watch a couple of videos a month, next year looks like five or six per week.

Yup, it's looking pretty sad, no wonder they are bleeding viewers.  A few years ago there were conflicts almost every night of the week, this year I won't need a dual DVR unless TNT and USA schedule extra episodes to take advantage of the lack of competition.

BBB