If you had the chance to take home thousands of dollars and all you had to do was inflict teeth wrenching pain on a fellow human being, would you do it?

In France, a documentary posing as a fake TV game show posed just that question and the results may surprise you. They won't if you're a cynical bastard with no hope for humanity.

The concept for the experiment is based in part from the work of Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist who sought to understand the psychological actions of the Third Reich and the Nazi regime and how authority influenced their actions.



[via Neatorama]

Would America be ready for an African-American president, which is now a 50-50 proposition with Senator Barack Obama the presumptive Democratic candidate, if actor Dennis Haysbert hadn't done it first on 24?

A lot of people have wondered if Haysbert's brave, commanding President David Palmer influenced the way people are thinking about Obama. Dennis Haysbert has now weighed in, and he believes that his role on 24 made a difference.

"My portrayal of David Palmer may have helped open the eyes of the American people," he told the AP.

"I mean the American people across the board - from the poorest to the richest, every color and creed, every religious base - to prove the possibility there could be an African-American president, a female president, any type of president that puts the people first," he goes on to say.

TidalTV is a web-based video service. But it doesn't look anything like YouTube, Joost, or even Hulu. If anything, it looks like the service you get from your cable or satellite provider.

The TidalTV display is laid out like an electronic program guide with a video window in the corner. You can click on the video to bring up a full screen version. Or you can click on the program guide to flip channels. There's also an on-demand section if you don't want to watch the scheduled programming stream.

I bet you won't guess this.

In a year that saw news about everyone from Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan to Don Imus and Paris Hilton controlling the airwaves, newspaper editors and broadcast producers have chosen someone quite different for their annual "Celebrity of the Year" award (and it's a TV celebrity). The Pensacola News calls this person "a force of nature." This person beat out J.K. Rowling, Kanye West, and Kenny Chesney.

Read on for the answer...

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today on TV Squad Daily:

• Darnit. The AP's ban on publishing Paris Hilton news didn't last long.
  
• John Ratzenberger (best known as "Cliff" from Cheers) will replace Vincent Pastore on Dancing with the Stars.
  
• American Idol's new source of revenue is selling Happy Meals, ice cream, candy bars and potato chips to kids.
  

The video's embedded below, or you can download the file directly (Quick time required). You can also subscribe to this podcast via our feed.

America - always threatened by the black man's sexuality. The debate hasn't gone there yet, but just you wait. An AP story was released yesterday that strings together multiple reports of viewers who were shocked, shocked to see Prince's "demonic guitar phallus," as it was described by Stephen Colbert, projected in shadow against a large sheet of fabric during the Super Bowl halftime show.

These same viewers also giggle at the word "dooty," think a man using a microphone resembles an act of fellatio and that, from the air, Dolphin Stadium looks like a vagina. Folks, you can't rock out without your cock out so get over it already. You're just lucky this was Prince circa 2007 and not Prince circa 1984 when the guitar he took on tour would ejaculate water at the climax of "Let's Go Crazy." He kept his ass covered. What more do you want?

The Associated Press is protesting a ban put in place by FOX that would keep photographers from snapping pictures at the Television Critics Association press tour. The network wants the AP to use photos that FOX hands out, rather than have actual photgraphers come in and take the pictures themselves. The AP says it will not assign any journalists to the event at all unless FOX allows their photographers into the event. David Ake, deputy director of photography for the AP, says, "The problem for the AP is that, just as we wouldn't let Fox write our stories, we can't have them shooting our pictures." This seems to me like a pretty clear cut example of a violation of journalistic rights. What do the rest of you think?