Big Brother 12’s lack of drama will be delayed for many people across the country, while others will see the show on a different channel. While people in bulky costumes slamming into each other and competing as if winning actually matters might typically be confused with the reality competition, I can assure you it’s something different, even with all the ass-slapping.
That’s because of final pre-season NFL football games tonight, which reality blurred TSG and football consultant Victor helped me decipher. Apparently the college kids who play the football games will also be doing something tonight, but that will not interfere with Julie Chen’s work.
Thankfully, a kind person identified only as Kelvin has created a Google map that aggregates information from local CBS affiliates and indicates exactly where it is being preempted and when the show will ultimately be broadcast in that area:
The next season of Top Chef may be a full all-star season, as contestants from the previous seven seasons are currently filming in New York City. They include Spike Mendelsohn, Marcel Vigneron, Richard Blais, Fabio Viviani, Carla Hall, Angelo Sosa, Tiffany Derry, Michael Isabella, Dale Talde, Tiffani Faison, and Stephen Asprinio.
Could this just be another all-star special like the show did at the start of season three? Eater NY was told that “this is a full season and not a one-off special” after earlier reporting on “unsubstantiated rumors” that “they’ve been shooting for the past week or two, [which] would make for a very long episode.”
A separate Eater NY report said that “Marea was closed for lunch last Tuesday to film and its definitely an All-Star reunion. not sure if they’re filming an entire season, but they 100% shot an episode here last week with no new cast — just the previous chefs.” That tipster also told Eater that “Padma is so inept at hosting that she wears an earpiece and the crew is there telling her exactly what to say through it. would explain her weird pauses and lack of seemingly any brains.”
Big Brother’s singing clam and sock puppets made to look like the houseguests should have one giant mouth hug to viewers. Instead, they came off as a barely reconfigured challenge from last season and a bit that lasted only a few minutes and was almost ignored by some of the houseguests, like Enzo, whose puppet moved its mouth once for every three or four sentences he spoke.
There were good moments here: I laughed out loud at Enzo’s sock puppet getting its mouth blurred when Enzo swore, and there was a lot of drama for a few seconds when nominees Enzo and Ragan were the last two standing in the veto competition, one of this season’s few moments of intensity in a competition. (Britney even broke the fourth wall and told the producers, “If you guys don’t slow motion what happened, I’m not talking to you any more.”) And I have no doubt that Otev the Broadway Clam singing “I was high on my luck” was about right, if only for the first three words.
But here’s what really stood out during the episode: Hayden was convinced voting out Britney would be “a power move.” Britney talking final-two strategy with Lane led him to tell her to go to sleep. Ragan’s loss in the veto competition caused him to throw a temper-tantrum, cry, and pout. Then we got five minutes of Britney cleaning out the fridge by throwing away what looked like perfectly fine food.
Yes, once again, no one wants to play the damn game.
When Ragan lost, he started pouting immediately (Hayden narrated that “Ragan hurls his CD and both the clam and Enzo take it right in the face,” and the CD bouncing off the clam and hitting Enzo in the head was amusing, especially since it was unintentional), and then crying. He said that he had an “overwhelming sense of heartbreak” because he had “given my all to this game.” That wasn’t much then, was it? And, why give up? How about channeling that frustration into something like, say, game play?!
Ultimately, Enzo’s veto win meant that Lane had to nominate someone new, and he went with Hayden, the perceived safer choice. Ragan promised us that he would “find ways to exploit” rifts in the guys’ alliance, but I’m not so sure I believe that. And even if it is true, we’ll see it during five minutes at the start of tonight’s episode, before we’re treated to 10 minutes of an interview with the guy Ragan gets coffee from every morning. Six episodes to go.
A man who’d previous protested Discovery’s programming held three people hostage at Discovery Communications’ headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., was shot to death by police this afternoon. The hostages were safe but an explosive device on the gunman discharged when he was shot.
James Jay Lee entered the building, which houses the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, and the other Discovery networks, at about 1 p.m. armed with explosives and a gun. After almost four hours, Montgomery County police Chief Thomas Manger told NBC News that police “believed the hostages were in danger” and “had been talking to him for several hours and he had a wide range of emotions. He pulled his weapon and we came in.”
Earlier, Lee posted a rambling manifesto entitled “My Demands” (if the site isn’t working, try Google’s cache) that was titled, “The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY.” Its first demand was that “The Discovery Channel and it’s [sic] affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s ‘My Ishmael’ pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.” It includes a combination of reasonable and batshit crazy sentences, such as “Saving the environment and the remaning [sic] species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.”
He was arrested a year and a half ago after protesting at Discovery for six days after throwing cash into the air, according to NBC News. Early TV news reports suggested he might have been upset about Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, but there’s no mention of the show in the manifesto.
The Amazing Race 17 11-team, highly telegenic cast has been announced, including the previously revealedbeauty queens, although CBS only identifies one of three beauty queens by her pageant experience.
The network notes that the new teams include “Home Shopping hosts, newly dating couples, an Internet entertainer, Ivy League a cappella singers and a birth mother/daughter Team who were recently reunited after the mother gave her newborn daughter up for adoption over 20 years ago.”
Here’s a video introduction to the teams, which makes it look like a pretty good cast overall:
Big Brother ratings are up 6 percent from last summer and the show is regularly getting its highest demo ratings in years, which is evidence that there’s nothing else on TV—or that people like us are sticking around because we are desperately hoping something interesting will happen to validate all of the time we’ve wasted since early July.
But the increase in viewers has validated the producers’ decisions, particularly in regard to casting, which is what they attribute this season’s success to. Executive producer Allison Grodner told the AP, “You can have a rootable villain or a fun villain. You don’t want to necessarily have someone who is completely hateable.”
The AP adds that “[p]roducers last year learned the importance of casting characters that people enjoy following each week, Grodner said. She believes that’s been a big reason for its success at a point most shows are running out of steam.”
Of course, anyone who is watching this season knows that this cast is horrifically boring, especially compared to last season’s cast. What this sounds like is that the producers tried to cast a bunch of Jeff and Jordans (hence the inexplicable pimping of Rachel and Brendon’s absurd relationship) rather than a diverse cast, and I don’t entirely mean in terms of ethnicity, although that this cast is both pasty white and fundamentally similar to one another hasn’t helped anything.
Deadliest Catch executive producer Thom Beers has never been shy about the nonfiction and reality TV Emmy categories, which last year he told me were “ridiculous,” and he’s echoed that this year.
“To be honest, I was totally crushed” that Deadliest Catchlost to Ken Burns’ documentary about national parks, he told Fancast. “Once again, I lost to a PBS series! I don’t know what the hell my show is even doing in a category that basically every year is a PBS category. [The academy doesn’t] recognize [‘Deadliest Catch’] as a documentary but they put it in that category. To lose to Ken Burns’ ‘Parks’ was an abomination. That was the most boring show Ken Burns ever made and when I think that my show should lose to the most boring, the dullest show Ken Burns has ever made, it’s an abomination.”
Beers told the site that there’s an obvious solution: “How easy is this! Docudramas — [they’re on] every network, [they’re] the staple of the world now. I’m not saying they’re the greatest thing in the world, but look, Cops is a docudrama, Intervention — the high-brow stuff — but Jersey Shore, Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, Pawn Stars — look at the shows that are in the top 20 in television right now. They’re docudramas and nobody’s touching that category. And to put something like Deadliest Catch in with Parks, a [six-part, 12-hour] limited series, and against Monty Python? What, are you kidding me? They don’t have anything in common.”
After a challenge from CBS, the Survivorcast contract, which includes the show’s rule book, are back online on reality blurred.
In late July, almost eight weeks after I first published my analysis of an annotated version of the contract cast members sign, a CBS lawyer in New York sent a DMCA takedown notice to Scribd, the document hosting service I used to present the files in an easy-to-use reader that was embedded in my stories. CBS’ letter claimed that “[s]uch copying and use of this material constitutes clear infringement of the Rights Owner’s copyrights under the Copyright Act, including the DMCA, and its counterpart laws around the world.”
“If your hosting service or other online service provider receives a DMCA takedown notice regarding your content, it ordinarily will respond by removing the complained-of material, and it will do this automatically without making any judgment about whether your content actually is infringing. However, the DMCA notice-and-takedown procedures provide you with protection from a wrongful claim of copyright infringement. The DMCA requires your service provider to notify you promptly when it removes any of your content because of a takedown notice, and you have the right to submit a counter-notice asking that the material be put back up. […] If you are not prepared to stand up for your use of the copyright owner’s work in a lawsuit, you should think twice about firing back a counter-notice. That said, copyright owners sometimes send bogus takedown notices that have no basis in law or fact, which are meant solely to intimidate the target. A prompt counter-notice can make these empty threats go away for good.”
Chilling Effects notes that if someone sends a counter notice “claiming that the material does not infringe copyrights, the service provider must then promptly notify the claiming party of the individual’s objection. [512(g)(2)] If the copyright owner does not bring a lawsuit in district court within 14 days, the service provider is then required to restore the material to its location on its network. [512(g)(2)(C)]” (Because of the way this works, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that “the DMCA has become a serious threat that jeopardizes fair use, impedes competition and innovation, chills free expression and scientific research, and interferes with computer intrusion laws.”)
Two weeks ago, I sent a counter-notification, modifying Scribd’s template and writing in part that “I believe the claims of copyright infringement are inaccurate and should be rejected because: My use of the material is legally protected because it falls within the ‘fair use’ provision of the copyright regulations, as defined in 17 USC 107. My use was for criticism, comment, and news reporting about the documents as part of my work as a journalist and television critic, and the annotated documents were embedded as part of these two stories that reported on, criticized, and explained the contents of the documents.” (Copyright law allows for fair use, which includes “for purposes such as criticism, comment, [and] news reporting.”)
As explained above, that essentially gave CBS 14 days to sue me. While I believe in standing up for things you believe in, that was, as you can imagine, kind of scary. I’m just a journalist and critic with a laptop, TV, and a cat.
Tonight, two weeks later, a representative of Scribd wrote to me to say that “CBS has not responded to multiple requests for follow-up on your counter-notifications,” and the the documents “have been restored.” (Scribd, by the way, has been great throughout the process.)
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
share this
recently on Twitter
![Survivor [TV Soundtrack]](/realitytv/images/az_survivor_soundtrack.png)
![The Mole [TV Soundtrack]](/realitytv/images/az_mole_soundtrack.png)
