September 13

How do you pump up the viewership for a music award show on a network that used to be all about music but lately has been all about reality TV and nasty scandals? Well, apparently MTV has decided to go retro and keep it funny. To promote the upcoming 2009 Video Awards, MTV has created a West Side Story parody, not too different from the brilliant solo turn by Neil Patrick Harris at last June's Tony Awards.

The commercial is a mixed bag. Taylor Swift proves that she has the real goods as a singer, doing the toughest part of the "Tonight" quintet. Ne-Yo's dance turn is more of a salute to Michael Jackson than an homage to composers Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. And Katy Perry's rooftop bit reinforces the fact that she's funny and playful.

At the end of my conversation with Jimmy Kimmel, I fired off a question that's been bugging me since my first days at TV Squad: "Why did you start wearing a tie?"

Unfortunately, Jimmy had a meeting to attend, so all he could say before politely kicking me off the phone was "It's a long story." But it's understandable that he might not have time to go over his sartorial choices. His late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, has just been picked up for a fifth season, and his first prime-time special, Jimmy Kimmel Live's All-Star Salute to Jimmy Kimmel Live!, will air on ABC on September 13 at 10 PM. In addition, he has just been named host of a new ABC game show called Set for Life. Oh, and he's also planning his football-watching activities for this coming Sunday (as you'll see, it's quite involved).

I spoke to the 38-year-old host on Tuesday about his football parties, his flirtatious relationship with Ben Stein, and other topics, all of which you can find after the jump.

Our friends over at sister site DV Guru give a very technical report about the Today show's conversion to a High Definition broadcast, which will start when they move into their newly-renovated studio on Sept. 13 (which is also new anchor Meredith Vieira's first day). If you want all the details about what cameras they're going to use, what kind of HD it is, etc., you can go over to the DV Guru article. The important part for the casual viewer is that, like all of NBC's HD shows, it'll be shown in 16:9 format, meaning that viewers on standard TVs will see the show in a letterbox format. They'll handle standard-format feeds from affiliates by showing colored bars on either side of the 4:3 picture, which, combined with the news crawl on the bottom, should reduce the picture to the size of a postage stamp for those who have older TVs.

But the bottom line is: Ann Curry will still be insincere, Al Roker will still be a goofball, and Matt Lauer will still be bald. They'll all just look instantly older now.