Blink

Networks used to view January as a time to regroup and relaunch, setting aside the failures of the fall. Now the new year is all about one thing: Avoiding getting crushed by the return of Fox’s “American Idol.” “We anxiously await its arrival,” NBC scheduling chief Mitch Metcalf joked last week.

Having long ago given up trying to beat the singing show tsunami, programmers these days aim merely for survival—usually via counterprogramming. NBC, repeating a strategy that worked OK last year, plans to enlist “The Biggest Loser” to fight the Tuesday edition of “Idol.” The network currently is set to sacrifice struggling drama “Knight Rider” against “Idol’s” Wednesday results show, perhaps hoping that young men will find a talking car preferable to Paula Abdul’s histrionics. ABC hasn’t yet said what it plans to air against the 8 p.m. Tuesday “Idol,” though there’s been industry speculation that the network might schedule the new male-skewing reality show “Border Security” in the slot. Wednesdays at 8 remain a mystery for ABC now that “Pushing Daisies” is set to go away. Don’t be surprised if “Lost” repeats end up in the slot for at least a few weeks. As for CBS, it traditionally has been hurt the least by Hurricane “Idol,” thanks to its schedule of older-skewing crime dramas. The network is sticking with red-hot “NCIS” on Tuesdays, and odds are comedies will remain at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. The network that fears “Idol” most? The CW, which goes after the young females who make up the core of the “Idol” audience. Executives at The CW will be praying that new Tuesday success “90210” can hold up against Fox’s reality monster.

—Josef Adalian

There will be a bit more pride than usual involved on Dec. 6 when the YES Network televises the Gridiron Classic pitting the champs of the Northeast Conference, the University of Albany (N.Y.), against Pioneer Football League winner Jacksonville University. Albany vs. Jacksonville, you say? The network is carrying the game because VP of Operations Ed Delaney’s son plays for Albany. Eddie Delaney was born without a left hand, but played lacrosse and football in high school. He walked on at Albany, became starting defensive end and was named conference player of the week for a game in October. “Ed’s an incredibly proud papa, as you can imagine,” said network spokesman Eric Handler.

—Jon lafayette

CBS Television Distribution’s recent promotion for the syndicated weekend run of “CSI: NY” in New York involved a roving mock crime scene that was staged in various parts of the city over two weekends in November. Passersby, who were offered promotional keychain lights, also could pose for photos in the scene that later were displayed online at csinyweekends.com.

—Tom Gilbert

One result of the stock-market meltdown has been to value big, profitable television companies at absurdly low levels. Blink isn’t given to unkind comparisons, but can’t help but make some observations. Take CBS Corp., which had a market capitalization of $4.02 billion on Nov. 25. That either makes NBC Universal’s purchase of the Weather Channel for $3.5 billion look like the world’s worst bargain, or it implies that stock brokers don’t care about CBS’ killer ratings in prime time of late. And who would have guessed that little CNET, the tech-savvy Web site that sold to CBS for $1.8 billion, would carry a price tag that exceeds the market’s valuation of good old TV and newspaper owner Gannett Co., whose market cap dipped to $1.7 billion last week? It all leaves us wondering where the bottom may be, and whether that bar around the corner is open for lunch.

—Greg Baumann

Any lunch or dinner conversation last week with television industry insiders probably included some well-grounded kvetching about the declining value of stock-based compensation. Stock price declines among media companies have sucked the air out of many a retirement plan lately, beating even the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a race to the basement. Because misery loves company (and because the list might provide a much-appreciated dose of schadenfreude for some), Blink offers a table of media-company percentage stock declines, year-to-date through Nov. 25.

—Greg Baumann

TNT’s latest “We Know Drama” series, “Leverage,” revolves around a group of high-tech crooks who steal from wealthy criminals and corrupt businessmen.

See, the heroes in this show are morally gray because they steal from bad guys. But the bad guys totally deserve it!

In addition to star Timothy Hutton, the show features a slew of TV faces familiar to the Daily Blink: Christian Kane (“Angel”), Gina Bellman (the British “Coupling”), Aldis Hodge (“Friday Night Lights”) and Mark Sheppard (every show ever, seriously).

Check out some scenes from the show, which premieres Dec. 7, behind the cut.

It worked for “Grey’s Anatomy” with Snow Patrol and the Fray, so now ABC is giving “Lost” the music video treatment.

In a nearly 3-minute Fray music video aired last night during “Grey’s Anatomy,” fans got a sneak peek at the fifth season of “Lost.” Most of the featured “Lost” footage is old, but there are some scenes from the upcoming season, including ones of Sawyer and Juliet holding hands while running, Desmond and Penny in bed and an Easter egg for Ajira Airways.

Oh yes, and Sawyer has lost his shirt again.

Check out the full music video behind the cut.

Back in 1998, ABC aired “Cupid,” a romantic drama about a psychologist charged with helping a man who believes he’s Cupid sent down to unite 100 couples before he’s allowed back to Mount Olympus.

ABC canceled the Rob Thomas-created show after one season. Starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall, “Cupid” was one of many shows for which Ms. Marshall earned the online nickname “Showkiller.”

But the network is giving Mr. Thomas another chance to inject some romance into prime time with an update of “Cupid.” Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulson take over the lead roles this time, and the setting moves from Chicago to dating mecca Los Angeles.

With so few romance shows on TV that don’t involve pubic hair—thanks for that, “The Ex List”*—and scalpels, and TV’s most non-touching romance, “Pushing Daisies,” possibly on its way out, the Daily Blink welcomes “Cupid” into the 21st century with a teaser trailer behind the cut.

*Rob Thomas has brought on board his “Veronica Mars” executive producer Diane Ruggiero, who quit her duties as “Ex List’s” showrunner before the show premiered. Hopefully, she didn’t bring the pubic hair jokes with her.

The truth is at least as strange as fiction.

Political pranksters Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin, hot off the blogospheric ascension and equally fast outing of their creation Martin Eisenstadt, are hoping to use their newfound fame to get their TV pilot off the ground.

Before the fictional Mr. Eisenstadt took credit for leaking Sarah Palin’s confusion about Africa to the world, the filmmakers had been shopping a pilot based on the pundit character. Mr. Mirvish said the single-camera comedy, called “The Pundit,” would be “about this sort of Frasier Crane-meets-Stephen Colbert type character” and the people who work with him at his think tank.

However, in pitch meetings before Eisenstadt’s exposure, Mr. Mirvish said, they were told, “The appetite for political satire on television is very limited.” There’s Jon Stewart and Mr. Colbert, and that’s about it.

But “Saturday Night Live’s” record ratings thanks to its political satire gives Mr. Mirvish hope. After all, he and Mr. Gorlin can take a little of the credit for that lift. The rumor that Barack Obama would appear on the NBC show on the Saturday before the election, according to Mr. Mirvish, originated on EisenstadtGroup.com, the faux pundit’s blog. It was picked up by numerous mainstream media outlets and was credited for boosting tune-in for the episode, which in fact boasted guest star John McCain.

Where does satire end and reality begin? Don’t ask Martin Eisenstadt!

—Lisa D. Horowitz

Like the South from which he hails, Ted Turner will never forget, but at least he’s being a gentleman about it. It’s no secret that Mr. Turner has no love for onetime Time Warner Chairman-CEO Gerald Levin. It was Mr. Levin who engineered TW’s financially disastrous 2000 merger with AOL and—using Mr. Turner’s term—“fired” him as vice chairman of the newly combined company even though he had his hopes pinned on running TBS, CNN and the other TW-owned networks he founded. And while he indeed takes Mr. Levin to task in his new autobiography, “Call Me Ted,” Mr. Turner generously gives equal time to the erstwhile media executive, who retired from TW in 2002 and all but vanished from the business. In one of a series of colleague-penned “Ted Stories” sprinkled throughout the book, Mr. Levin—who tactfully broaches “the force” of Mr. Turner’s personality (he was once known as “The Mouth of the South”) and characterizes him as a “fiery entrepreneur”—says that since Mr. Turner was not interested in “building a bigger company with more Internet activity,” the plan was for him to become “a cheerleader and inspirer” who “would not have to worry about the day-to-day.” Blink thinks if not exactly a firing, that would definitely qualify as a kick upstairs. Although Mr. Turner later details Mr. Levin’s rather ignominious departure from TW, he stops short of rubbing his face in the company’s failures. “We had made a fundamentally bad move by merging with AOL and I didn’t know how to turn the ship around any more than anybody else did,” he writes. n

—Tom Gilbert

Without a job for the first time in 36 years, Oxygen founder Geraldine Laybourne has traveled to Bhutan, India, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and the Amazon this year, leaving her only 45 days in New York. That means she’s had little time to watch the channel she sold to NBC Universal a year ago for $925 million. But what she has seen, she likes. “I am thrilled that NBCU has done exactly what they said they would do … promote Oxygen,” she said in an e-mail. “Most of the shows are the same shows that we put on the air and I’m told that the ratings have seen dramatic improvement. I love the tagline, Live Out Loud, which is perfect.”

—Jon Lafayette

On Wednesday, NBC Universal announced that “Lipstick Jungle” was one of three NBC programs that had committed to going “green.” Within the next news cycle, it was learned that “Jungle” was going bye-bye before completing its sophomore season. “You can’t go more carbon-neutral than going out of production,” said more than one industry wag. That wasn’t the only unfortunate timing. Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford this week announced on the fourth hour of “Today,” which they co-host, that they would be taping an appearance as themselves for “Lipstick” later that day. This morning they told “Today” viewers that their appearance is scheduled for Dec. 26, which is slated to be the series' final episode.

—Michele Greppi

Rosie O’Donnell is offering an early peek at her upcoming NBC variety hour—and making some jokes about her public persona in the process.

On a video posted Thursday on her Rosie.com Web site, Ms. O’Donnell appears in costume as Officer Lockstock, a character from the Broadway musical “Urinetown.” A young actress playing Little Sally (another character from the show) peppers her with questions.

“Will Rosie tell off a famous billionaire?” Little Sally asks.

“Oh, Little Sally, he’s not a billionaire,” Ms. O’Donnell replies, in character.

“Will she yell at a skinny little Republican?” asks Little Sally.

“No, she did that for almost a year,” responds Ms. O’Donnell.

The quips are references, of course, to Ms. O’Donnell’s run-ins with Donald Trump and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Ms. O’Donnell began rehearsals for her NBC special this week. The show, dubbed “Rosie Live,” airs Wednesday, Nov. 26, at 8 p.m.

NBC today announced that Kathy Griffin and Jane Krakowski will be guest starring on the show, along with the previously revealed musicals guests Ne-Yo and Alanis Morissette.

—Josef Adalian

Earlier this year Patrick Swayze revealed he was battling pancreatic cancer. The news brought into question his role on A&E’s series “The Beast.” After he starred in the pilot, the network was glad to keep Mr. Swayze on board for production on the series, which began this past summer in Chicago. Below is a teaser clip for the cable network’s upcoming drama due in January.

The Parents Television Council released its list of the 20 most popular prime-time broadcast TV shows watched by children ages 2-17, according to Nielsen Media Research data.

The programs are ranked from best to worst “based on foul language, sexual content and violence, along with the overall themes of each program,” using a traffic-light ratings system.

The green-light category, which is populated by reality and game shows such as “Deal or No Deal” and “Don’t Forget the Lyrics,” may be most suitable for children, but it’s hardly quality programming, if you ask the Daily Blink.

Here’s the complete list of green-light shows. We’ll give the PTC its top show, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” because it’s the only thing on TV that makes the Daily Blink tear up.

1. “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”
2. “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”
3. “Don’t Forget the Lyrics”
4. “Deal or No Deal”
5. “NBC Sunday Night Football”
6. “American Idol”

Readers, prepare to step on the gas, because the following yellow-light shows are “questionably suitable.”