NBC’s The Voice returns for its second season after the Super Bowl this Sunday, and the big test for the show is whether it can sustain both the interest that sweet timeslot will provide and overcome the general fatigue from music talent competitions that both X Factor and American Idol have contributed to by, well, sucking.
American Idol continues to lose viewers, dropping significantly compared to both last year and last week on Wednesday night, and on Thursday, now consistently losing to The Big Bang Theory, with more total viewers and more viewers 18 to 49.
It will be interesting to see if The Voice will do further damage to American Idol, or if the reverse will be true, especially with all the promotion it will get Sunday. The competition is intense, which explains why, on Ellen DeGeneres’ show today, Adam Levine responded to Randy Jackson’s insecurity-laced comments by saying “shame on Randy.”
On Sunday, join me for live thoughts on both The Voice and, before that, Super Bowl commentary, which should be particularly great because I know nothing about football, probably because when I played I was always in the outfield. All of this will happen on the Twitter, of course. Follow me!
Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney yesterday, a brave, unexpected choice, considering how Romney just easily won Florida. The endorsement has already inspired an ad comparing Trump and Romney’s firings. Upon his endorsement, Trump said that people love to follow him, including viewers of The Apprentice, but in fact, the opposite is true.
“I bring a lot of people with me. If you look at my Twitter, if you look at my anything, if you look at my ratings, period, we bring a lot of people, not because people like me, but they are with what I’m saying,” Trump said while endorsing Romeny in Las Vegas, according to the Los Angeles Times.
This is classic Trump. He’s so full of himself that he mistakes our attention for endorsement, even though facts say otherwise. A January Washington Post-Pew poll found that 8 percent of people are more likely to vote for someone Trump endorses, while 26 percent “said that a Trump endorsement would actually make them less likely to vote for his choice,” according to the Washington Post. Republican strategist and George W. Bush and John McCain adviser Mark McKinnon told the paper, “He brings zero votes, zero credibility and zero impact — [Trump] actually has a negative impact. At a time when Romney needs legitimacy, the head clown steps in and welcomes him to the circus.”
As I’ve said before, Donald Trump’s delusion is one of the best parts of The Celebrity Apprentice; what makes him insufferable in real life makes exceptional television, although it’s too bad his real life bullshit causes some people to skip a pretty outstanding TV show.
Bravo has renewed Top Chef for a 10th season, despite the pretty disappointing season that’s currently airing. The 10th season is currently casting and will tape in May for broadcast later this year. In quasi-related food reality TV news, Fox’s Gordon Ramsay vehicle Kitchen Nightmares has been renewed for a fifth season.
As to Bravo’s show, it’s hard to believe that just a year ago one of its best seasons ever, Top Chef All-Stars, was airing, only to be followed by a dumbed-down Top Chef Masters, absurdly formulaic Top Chef Just Desserts, and a pretty weak Top Chef Texas that did manage to air one of the show’s best episodes ever.
In The Daily Beast yesterday, Jace Lacob detailed why the show “has never felt quite so irrelevant and predictable”, and points out that they’re rarely allowed to just cook.
That’s exactly it, and what made the Charlize Theron episode so awesome: each chef was able to create a one dish by themselves. That’s it. No phony team drama, no making 600 portions for 500 guests while standing in a swimming pool in 110-degree heat. Just showcasting their skills as a chef under intense pressure. Imagine that!
I think a lot of network executives and reality show producers are under the impression that a show must continue to top itself and get ever-crazier to keep viewers’ attention. Things do need to change, but good casting can solve most of that, and incremental changes to the formula can keep things fresh, as Survivor has proven, even with its occasional missteps. Stick to what you do best and viewers will show up and stick around.
Emily Maynard says she’s frightened of what will happen when she films The Bachelorette, and also feels like a hypocrite for saying she’d never do it, but she’s also convinced the format can work, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Emily told People, “It really hasn’t hit me, what I’ve signed on to do. I’m scared to death.” I presume she means signing on to a show where the producers are understandably more concerned with making entertaining television than with finding her a partner for life, and thus is worried about how they’ll fuck with her through the casting and/or set-up moments.
Meanwhile, Emily says that when she said she didn’t intend to be the next Bachelorette, “I genuinely meant that. I feel like the biggest hypocrite because I said that and now I’m doing it.” But she also said, “I know it can work. I fell in love the first time and no, we didn’t end up getting married, but in the end just falling in love, for me, is a success.”
Emily also said her daughter is “not going to be involved in a lot of filming and certainly not meeting the guys.” So at least her daughter will be spared whatever the producers could come up with for her.
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A Jersey Shore spin-off starring Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and Jenni “JWoww” Farley is supposed to start filming this month, but Hoboken, New Jersey, has denied 495 Productions a filming permit, protecting the rest of the country by at least delaying their return to the attention of cameras.
City of Hoboken’s film commission denied the permit Monday, calling the production “an attractive nuisance” and noting that a “proposed 24-hour filming permit would violate” a rule against “filming after 11:00pm in a residential area.” It also says that filming people whose whereabouts would be known by fans would be “making crowd and traffic control impossible” and affect residents, “unnecessarily degrading their quality of life.” The Jersey Journal published the letter from the film commission.
Might the show try to film there anyway? A letter from mayor Dawn Zimmer [PDF] says the city was “extremely surprised to learn … that 495 Productions filmed in public areas without a required film permit in one location,” and citing the community’s past “significant corruption,” says that “there will be zero tolererance for this kind of approach.” It adds, “Any attempts to film in a manner that is not permitted without a permit will be dealt with immediately and aggressively by the city of Hoboken.”
One of the Fear Factor contestants who drank donkey semen and urine during a stunt says she has been threatened by NBC for talking about it. The network pulled the episode Monday and has not yet rescheduled it.
Twins Brynne and Claire Odioso talked about drinking the semen on Tampa Bay’s Cowhead Show, revealing that one drank semen while the other drank urine. Claire called the taste of semen “so bitter” with a “hint of hay,” and said it was “way thicker” than human semen.
Claire describes it as “the hardest 15 minutes of my life.” She said that “if you vomited, you’d have to start over,” so she “vomited it my glass and just drank that.” Claire adds, “everyone was throwing up” and “the cameramen were vomiting.” (Listen to the full interview.)
Claire “got a threatening call this AM, after execs saw a video of her talking about the stunt posted on” TMZ, the site reports, saying that she was prevented from “appearing on TMZ Live today, and further told her if she dared to say another word about animal spunk, they would enforce the confidentiality agreement and sic their lawyers on her.”
That there’s a confidentiality agreement isn’t a surprise, and on the radio show, the host mentions the “pretty strict rules” and says “let’s speak in hypotheticals so you don’t get in trouble.” Brynne says they can discuss things because pictures of the episode were posted, but they discuss all three stunts, which implies that made it to the end, although when confronted with that, says, “we’re not allowed to say.”
But really, who cares if they talk about it now? This is probably just a network being controlling and people exercising their tiny bit of power to make themselves feel better about their powerlessness, but it could also imply that NBC does intend to air the episode, and thus doesn’t want the results spoiled.
Fired The Real Housewives of New York City cast member Jill Zarin has responded to a gossip report that she was asked to return to the show. She confirms that she was asked to cameo, but says she’s too busy with other projects, such as her appearance on Iron Chef America’s top-five moments countdown.
Radar reported that “axed cast member Jill Zarin received a call from a show insider recently asking her if she would consider returning to the show,” but “that came just a little too late, [because] the New York socialite and businesswoman has found a new TV gig on a cooking show.”
That’s a pretty transparent report, considering how it describes Jill and frames the whole thing, so it’s not a surprise that Jill confirmed that it’s true, saying “it was more than one person” who invited her back, though it’s not clear if that refers to cast members or producers. However, she says it would have just been a cameo, and, most interestingly, calls out Radar for reusing an old interview and presenting old information as if it was new: “most of the questions I answered a long time ago from and [sic] older interview.”
The writing is sometimes challenging to read but is also amusing, such as the fact that she gets the name of the network wrong (“COOK channel”). But at least she wrote it herself, unlike so many reality stars who write things for web sites.
Discovery’s game show Cash Cab, which takes place in an actual cab and is hosted by the cab’s driver and comedian Ben Bailey, is now in syndication, airing five nights a week (check your local listings).
To mark that occasion, the show has offered three lucky reality blurred readers prizes: a $50 Visa cash card and the Cash Cab board game to the winner, and, for two runners-up, the board game alone.
To enter, you need a U.S. mailing address, and you must do two things:
- Comment below. That’s your entry, and you can do this once per day until Monday.
- E.mail me your contact information: your name and mailing address. If you do not send me an e.mail message with this information, your comment entries will be invalidated, because I need this if you win to pass along to show’s representatives, who will send your prize. I won’t use that information for anything else.
You can enter once a day—again, by commenting—until Monday at noon ET, for a maximum of six entries. I’ll randomly select one winner and two runners-up at that time. No purchase is necessary, et cetera, blah blah blah.
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