TV: The Best of the Bad and the Best of the Best

(The cast of "Parenthood" -- photo courtesy of Imagine/NBC-Universal)

When it comes to television – my taste are somewhat weird – which you’ll soon find out when I reveal some of my likes and dislikes. Although I don’t fit the channel’s demographic – which is basically female – I will admit to watching and enjoying the Lifetime cable channel (and it’s sister channel – the Lifetime Movie Network). The clue to watching either of these channels’ original programming is to never place high expectations on quality. The writing is going to be weak and the acting is sometimes just a hair above that of a community theater group – but occasionally Lifetime will really surprise you. On one hand – you have the funny and charming series “Drop Dead Diva” about a beautiful model who dies and comes back to life in a big girl’s body and then you have “Army Wives” – which is one of Lifetime’s most successful original series and one of my favorite all-time bad TV shows.

One of the first things that you notice about “Army Wives” is how damn cheesy the production values are on the show. I have seen better set design for a junior high school play than I have on this prime-time cable drama. The “Army Wives” sets look like they were hammered together with drywall and filmed in filmed in Sgt. Bilko’s auto garage. I mean, you would be hard press to distinguish a difference in the look of what’s suppose to be a hospital room to what is suppose to be an office of one of the Army officers on this show – this show is never going to win any awards for set design – but that’s part of what makes this show good bad TV.

Then we have the actors who must put some kind of life into the lamest script writing in television today. Kim Delaney (who some might remember from “NYPD Blue”) is suppose to be the heart of the show – but it’s hard to get past her lips. It looks like Delaney got a one of those lip jobs from some Hollywood nip/tuck doctor after her NYPD Blue run and it definitely doesn’t look natural. Then we have Brian McNamara, who plays Delaney’s husband in “Army Wives”, and he tries to over compensate the lousy scripts with acting so phony and over the top that you have to laugh…because you can’t take him serious.

“Army Wives” is so bad…it’s actually fun to watch and that’s why that I’m looking forward to the premiere of Season four on 10 pm, Sunday, April 11^th on Lifetime. (Be sure to check your local listings for cable channel.)

NBC has surprised me. The network that gave us Jay Leno in prime-time, only to replace him on one of those nights with “The Marriage Ref”, has given us a show that I think might be the best television show of 2010 – “Parenthood”.

“Parenthood” is based on a 1989 movie that Ron Howard produced and directed and it’s the second time that this movie has been made into a television series. (The first attempt at turning “Parenthood” into a TV series was in 1990 with Ed Begley Jr in the lead role, but it didn’t click with the viewing public and was cancelled after twelve episodes were aired).

“Parenthood” is about the Braverman family and all the things make a family a family. You’ve got the daughter and her two kids who has to move back in with Mom and Dad after her marriage and life goes south. Then you have the one son with the perfect family – that is until their youngest son is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Then you have the other daughter – who’s a successful lawyer, but still can’t quite get the “career and marriage thing together” and then there’s the youngest Braverman son who’s single and lives on a houseboat and just recently found out that he has a son from a previous relationship. You have enough story lines in this show if you just stuck with the Braverman children – but were soon going to find out that Mom and Dad has a few secrets about their marriage that they’re holding back from their children. Got you interested yet?

I’ll admit right off that I have never been a big Ron Howard fan. I know that he’s a talented director and everyone loves Ron Howard, but his movies have never been my cup of tea, but I have to give the man credit for his persistence in breathing life in this new version of “Parenthood” and trust me – it hasn’t been easy.

“Parenthood” was originally scheduled to premiere on NBC’s 2009 fall schedule – but one of the original cast members -- Maura Tierney (“E.R.”) – was diagnosed with breast cancer, so NBC rescheduled the show to begin as a mid-season replacement. Tierney announced that she would be leaving the show to allow for the scheduling of medical treatment and her part was later recast with Lauren Graham (“Gilmore Girls”) – who’s one the show’s shining stars (and it’s incredible how much her fictional daughter actually looks just like her in this show).

When it comes to good TV – you can’t get any better than “Parenthood” (Tuesday nights at 10pm on NBC).

Bad TV/Good TV …it’s all TV….Turn out the lights and enjoy it. Until we meet again – keep the grin above your chin and the TV remote nearby.

Fox Broadcasting vs Time Warner Cable: It's All About Money (ours)

There’s a battle going on as I write this entry to this blog between Fox broadcasting and Time-Warner cable. This battle really doesn’t affect me as a DirecTV subscriber and it probably doesn’t affect many of the people who are reading this – but eventually it will – and within the next couple of years.

The battle that’s going on all boils down to money and the money that these two media giants are fighting over will eventually come from you and me – the people who rely on cable companies for our television programming. What is happening in this battle is pretty simple – Fox broadcasting wants cable operators (such as Time-Warner) to pay them for the programming they get when they broadcast a Fox broadcasting owned and operated station (which the cable company is pretty much forced into carrying on their system due to FCC must-carry rules). Here’s the big rub in the battle that’s going on -- Fox Broadcasting is asking the cable companies to pay them around a dollar per subscriber – which is more than the amount of money that cable systems have to pay each month for such cable channels as USA, TNT, TBS, Lifetime, CNN, Fox News, etc.

What’s going to happen in this little battle between these two media giants is simple – they’ll reach an agreement and Fox is going to get their financial coffers filled with a nice sum of change by the cable-satellite companies. The people who own ABC, CBS, the CW, Univision, and NBC are going to see all the money that Fox is reaping from this agreement and they’re going to go to the cable-satellite companies and ask for their piece of the pie. The cable-satellite companies will pay, but they still want to make the big bucks – so – they’ll hike up the rates that they charge us for the programming we receive – and that’s where this whole deal sucks.

Many of our favorite cable channels are owned by the big networks:

NBC owns the Weather Channel, USA Network, Bravo, MSNBC, SciFi, Oxygen

CBS owns: MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TVLand, and BET

ABC owns: ABC Family, Disney Channel, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network, ABC Soap Net and ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic

Fox owns: Fox News, Fox Business, FX, Fox Reality, Fox Movie Channel, Fox Sports Channels around the country and they have an interest in other cable channels such as The Big 10 Network and National Geographic.

ABC and NBC jointly own A&E (and if I’m not mistaken – the Biography Channel)

Looking at all of these cable channels – these four companies alone get a good hunk of money from each and every one of us each month and now they want their broadcast signals to get paid the same at their cable counterparts. Well, it’s time that we said, ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!’

It is a fact that of all of the monthly programming fees that cable and satellite companies pay – ESPN leads the pack in what they charge per subscriber. ESPN will justify their huge fees by saying that the major league sports packages that they carry cost a lot of money and somebody has to pay for it…so because ESPN is a basic cable channel (and they make sure they’re a basic cable channel) everyone who subscribes to basic cable pays for ESPN whether they watch it or not. It doesn’t sound fair to me -- but who are we – we’re just the consumer, right?

It wasn’t that long ago that a typical cable bill was somewhere around forty dollars a month and that amount included a pay cable channel such as HBO or Showtime. America’s cable-satellite companies knew that forty dollars a month was a breaking point for the customers and they did their best to stay as close to forty dollars as possible…but not anymore. I can’t tell you what the average cable rate is these days – but I know that each month I’m paying nearly seventy-three dollars – and most of the time all that I get are half-hour infomercials airing on one of the basic channels that I’m supposedly paying big bucks to be entertained by and then there are the round the clock shopping channels. It’s like the Bruce Springsteen song – “fifty-seven channels and nothing on.”

But, let me get back to this battle between Fox and Time-Warner cable and address the both of them. To Fox – if you want to get paid the same as your cable counterparts – allow the cable companies to 1) insert their own commercials in your over-the-air programming like they do on the basic cable channels that they pay for (and you own) that might prevent the cable-satellite program provider from hiking their rates , and 2) allow cable and satellite companies the right to sell your programming ala carte to their customers I can understand that everyone wants to make a buck – but why should I have to pay for something I never watch and could care less about. Hey, I don’t mind paying for your Fox broadcast signal – but why should I have to pay for Fox News when I don’t watch it? It makes sense to me, but I’m sure that Fox doesn’t see it that way.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Look for your monthly cable and/satellite bill to go up because Fox wants to charge you for NFL football, NASCAR, House and American Idol whether you watch them or not. And the bad thing is – it’s only going to get worse. Looking to be entertained? Buy a book – it’s a lot cheaper.