By Scott Buckner
I’m adverse to mixing TV and politics (or politics and anything whatsoever), but from what I’ve seen on TV over the past 18 hours, I have little choice.
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I saw the sound bites of President Barack Obama pushing his health care plan on TV, where he reassured the American people: “Don’t be afraid.”
Look, I’m almost 50 years old, so if there’s anything I’ve learned about the federal government, it’s two things: 1) When the president tells you to not be afraid, be afraid. 2) If either house of Congress has anything to do with it, be incredibly afraid.
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This week, NBC’s main network affiliates have been airing the Wimbledon tennis championships – even though really, the Wimbledon championships are about as engaging as dominos or soccer. On the other hand, NBC’s Universal Sports channel has been airing the week-long World Beach Volleyball Championships from, I think, Stavenger, Norway.

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Posted on July 1, 2009

By Scott Buckner
Jesus H. Christ! First Michael Jackson croaks out of the blue, and now incredibly popular TV pitchman Billy Mays! Which rightly begs the question about whether having infomercial medical insurance is prudent, even if the federal government does happen to come up with its own plan, like, next week.
Either way, celebrity Armegeddon is certainly upon us. So even if you’re only remotely notable, I wouldn’t even bother getting out of bed for the next two weeks because the shit is really hitting the fan. This means you, Wilford Brimley.

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Posted on June 29, 2009

By Scott Buckner
At first, I thought NBC’s I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here was going to be the same sort of VH-1 resurrection of D-list celebrities shoved into in the same confined space long enough to kill each other for our amusement. Sure, I started out watching Celebrity to see how quickly Patti Blagojevich would end up as roadkill. For the first week or so, the campground kept reminding me that this is how Jonestown must have had started out, and like most everyone else, I pegged Patti to become dead meat within a week. But she wasn’t, so I kept watching.
I’m not entirely convinced she deserved the very special, five-minute (seemed way longer) retrospective of her time in the jungle after she got booted earlier this week, but I found myself surprised to discover that I really liked her. I’ll leave the media vultures to debate whether she deserves whatever chamber of horrors the U.S. Attorney’s Office might have in store for her and her husband, but I really liked her.

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Posted on June 26, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
Watching Patti Blagojevich try to eat a tarantula faster than Lou Diamond Phillips last night really made me question what I was doing with my life. A new low.

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Posted on June 2, 2009

By David Hall
I’m a weather geek. Often I’ll just put The Weather Channel on as my background, because I’m interested in weather anywhere. I know I’m not alone; Tom Skilling has his following, more and more time is devoted in news broadcasts everywhere to talk about what’s going on and, heck, they even have “The Weather Channel!”
So, with the advent of the tornado season, Mike Bettes of TWC is joining with a team of more than 100 scientists and crew with an “armada” of mobile radar trucks, etc., to track tornadoes throughout “Tornado Alley” a strip of states including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and parts of a couple of others.
TWC has been promoting the living crap out of this series, which basically is the 6-9 pm window that usually is manned by Bettes, a determined no-nonsense type with television good looks and Stephanie Abrams, who is both exceedingly knowledgeable and more bubbly than a bottle of San Pellegrino. She talks very fast and because she knows so much and has so much to say, she sometimes stumbles over her words. She can be both annoying and endearing at the same time. Her fatal flaw? The tendency, in just a couple of hours to ask multiple times, “What are you doing now?”

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Posted on May 14, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

Years ago, perhaps before reality shows even existed, Homer Simpson was accused of sexually harassing the babysitter after he couldn’t resist peeling the gummi Venus de Milo off her rear end. He went on the Rock Bottom show to explain, apologize and defend himself, doing a rather good job. But when the show aired, it was so heavily edited and cut, Homer looked like a guilty personification of evil. The clock on the wall in the background jumps to all different times to show how hacked the editing was. Funny. Or was it?
And so it is with Jockeys, the “reality” show that mercifully came to its season end last week. The show has jumped the shark like Willy the Whale over Navy Pier.

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Posted on March 20, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

It’s been said that all of television is a soap opera. You might even be able to say that for sitcoms, as in “What are our wacky friends up to now?”
Jockeys has gotten awfully sudsy. And your silks will stay Downy fresh as it’s been announced that the show has been renewed for a second season. This is good for racing with its potential to draw new fans to the game, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see what new angles they can come up with because I don’t see any. Does that mean reality (shows) escapes me?
This week’s two half-hour episodes went directly to “As the World Turns, Can It Get 10 Furlongs?” It’s the brink of a breakup as Hall of Famer Mike Smith and his girl Chantal Sutherland confront the many issues of their relationship.

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Posted on March 13, 2009

By Scott Buckner

For anyone either too poor or too Fuck-The-Man because there’s something fundamentally wrong with Comcast charging the gross domestic product of Peru for basic cable, an advantage to the analog TV conversion is the dozen or so additional digital channels you get absolutely free. This is a welcome development for anyone with a lot of useless UHF channels because you don’t speak Spanish or Korean.
Among the digital spawn is NBC’s Universal Sports on channel 5.3, which is pretty much the free-TV equivalent of ESPN2. This is fine by me, because ESPN’s mother channel doesn’t air neat stuff like World’s Strongest Man competitions from Iceland. This week, Universal Sports was busy covering a whole slew of World Cup events like bobsledding, luge, and skiing from Bulgaria and Slovenia. Defend Summer Olympic events like javelin throwing and pole vaulting all you want, but they don’t hold a candle to a ski jumper floating breathtakingly-perfect through the air only to land with the style and grace of someone getting pushed off the end of a pier during a Red Bull Flugtag.

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Posted on March 2, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

Editor’s Note: Thomas Chambers, our man on the rail, continues his review of the debut season of Jockeys. You can find his first two installments here and here (midway down).
In a workmanlike and informative week, the theme of Jockeys is “Competitive,” with a capital “C.” We also get a good look at the many chapeaus of Jimmy the Hat.
Chantal is back, and Ms. Sutherland establishes the idea that when out on the track, every rider, including her love Mike Smith, is just another jockey. They’re out there to win. To drive home the point, we see Mike and Chantal each arriving at the track, in an Escalade and a Corvette, respectively. “She’s so competitive, we don’t even ride in the same car anymore,” Smith says. Chantal replies with a roll of her eyes: “I know I make better coffee than him. But he folds laundry better than me.”

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Posted on February 25, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Once again I returned to Chicago Tonight to watch a panel discuss Roland Burris, and once again I was stunned by some of what I heard. What a bunch of tools we have in this town. The panelists: political consultant Delmarie Cobb, NPR reporter Cheryl Corley, and Laura Washington. Moderating: Eddie Arruza. This is a rough transcript edited for clarity. I was not on the panel, I was just commenting from Beachwood HQ.
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COBB: I spoke to [Burris] today . . . This whole amended affidavit was done for all the right reasons. The sad thing about it was that it wasn’t done within the context of a media strategy . . .
[Cobb then rues that the media “controlled the message” instead of Burris]
RHODES: In Russia, propaganda controls you.

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Posted on February 20, 2009