variety

Yesterday, Variety reported that several writers from the Young and the Restless had crossed the WGA picket line in order to keep their jobs. After the article ran, a spokesperson for the WGA-East condemned those planning to cross the picket line and warned them that they'd "never be full members of the Writers Guild again."

However, the Variety article isn't true, according to a memo sent out late Tuesday from the WGA-West and the Y&R writing staff. The Y&R statement reads: "We were incensed to read the incorrect information printed in Variety that several writers on our show sought financial core status...Our entire writing staff of 18 is united and we fully support our union."

Jimmy Kimmel has taken his Matt Damon joke to the next level, by actually placing a full-page advertisement in Variety congratulating Damon on his star on Hollywood Boulevard. Kimmel has an on-going joke on his show where he pretends that he ran out of time and had to bump Matt Damon from the schedule-- he frequently apologizes to Damon at the end of his show. Damon even played along when he appeared on Kimmel last year, pretending to be annoyed at always getting bumped.

The ad says: "Congratulations on the star and sorry we ran out of time. We'll try to squeeze you in soon." And, at the bottom, it says, "This ad cost me $8,512". That's an expensive joke. Do you think he can write it off as a business expense?

What a difference 24 hours make. Yesterday, it looked like fans of Jericho might have been successful in their campaign to resurrect the canceled show. Today, it looks like they really are successful. Both Variety and the LA Times are reporting that CBS is in hurried negotiations with producers, writers and actors to resuscitate the show for an eight episode run, to return mid-season.

"The idea would not be to bring it back for eight and out, but to bring it back for eight with the hope that it would keep going," executive producer Carol Barbee told the LA Times. Barbee also said that when the fans initially responded to the cancellation, CBS suggested a two-hour movie to wrap up the series. But Barbee said 'no', because that wouldn't do justice to the series.

Barbee also makes an excellent point about the way networks are going to have to start looking at ratings. She says, they're going to need to consider online fan communities and online viewings and, "I think they have to understand that the Nielsens are not telling the story anymore." The networks need to find the coveted 18-49 demographic by going online. I thought they had figured that out by putting so many shows online, but apparently CBS wasn't taking that online community seriously.

**UPDATE: CBS officially announces Jericho is back... for seven episodes. The full letter is in comments (Thanks, Mark!)

If only this were true. Seems like the crew behind HBO's Entourage had some extra dough laying around because they took out a fake Emmy consideration ad for Drama's role in Five Towns in today's issue of Variety. Hilarious, huh? Well it gets even better. Johnny Chase himself wrote a short letter to the readers of Variety, discussing how stressful the Emmy season can be for a veteran actor such as himself. It's definitely worth reading if only for his vivid imagination as well as his plan to bang the "hot presenter" after smelling her perfume. Johnny Drama at his finest! He is like a punch in the gut!

[via Defamer]

Fans of the NBC soap Passions who felt sad and neglected when the network announced that the show was ending after eight years take note: the show is going to live on!

The show is going to return this fall in a new home: DirecTV. NBC and the satellite system are about to finalize a deal that will keep the quirky soap opera (which includes, I believe, a character who is a witch, and used to have a character that was a doll brought to life) on the air for four days a week. They'll have to cut the budget, too, but at least the show will live on in some form.

This is the another move in DirecTV's plan to increase the amount of original programming they have.

It looks like the Emmy Awards are turning into the SATs.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has made several changes to the way Emmy nominations are chosen. For one, series and acting category nominations will be chosen by a mix of a regular vote and voting by a blue-ribbon panel of voters. Second, there's a new "Ellen Burystyn" rule. An actor can only be nominated if he or she was in at least 5% of an episode (Burstyn won a Supporting award last time, even though she was only on screen for 14 seconds). Third, public performances on TV will no longer compete in the music/variety category. They're adding a new special category where more than one performance could win an award.

Oh, and there's one more change: actors and producers will have to submit an essay of 250 words or less as to what their character/show is about and why they think they should be nominated. This wiill come in handy when Jim Belushi has to explain the complexity of his According To Jim character.

Did you see the Heroes spoof on YouTube? It's called Zeroes, and it features a familiar voice talking about regular people with "Pointless Abilities". For example, one guy can ripple his stomach and a girl can put her entire fist in her mouth. You get the idea. It's worth a chuckle or two.

It turns out, the 2-minute spoof was an NBC creation. Marketing guru Vince Manze admitted to Variety that he created the spoof without any fanfare or even a tease to the real series, just as an experiment. He didn't even tell Heroes creator Tim Kring about it. The video short got more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. Minze seems to be one of the few marketing guys who "get it". He knows that people aren't going to YouTube to watch advertisements or promos (unless they're exceptionally creative).

How do you guys feel about this? The network is getting buzz for its show by spoofing it. Is it sneaky or is it creative marketing?

Zeroes is after the jump:

The career trajectories of the former Kids in the Hall have been fascinating to behold. Dave Foley went from a starring turn in News Radio to a funny, but strange co-hosting gig on Celebrity Poker Showdown. Mark McKinney appeared briefly on SNL and now sits around the writer's room of Studio 60 hoping Aaron Sorkin will throw him a bone and actually let him write something. Kevin McDonald turns up in bit parts everywhere and keeps a steady gig as the voice of Lilo and Stitch's alien life form Pleakley. Scott Thompson visits Conan every once in awhile, but my favorite Bruce McCulloch's post-Kids appearances have been few and far between. McCulloch served a brief stint as a SNL writer and wrote and directed the forgettable film Dog Park.

Oh, I was afraid of this, and CNN made it official today: Rick Sanchez is going to replace Carol Lin as the weekend night anchor.

Rick "I Never Met a Tragic Situation I Didn't Want To Exploit" Sanchez has been showing up more and more on the network, as either a fill-in host or as a correspondent. He's the one who went out in the snow to try to "recreate" what happened to James Kim and his family. He's also the guy who got himself shot with a police taser gun, to the delight of people who don't like him (and fans of wacky videos in general). Not a big fan of his voice either. Grates on me like Rita Cosby's does.

Lin is leaving CNN after many years there, and she's having an interesting back and forth e-mail battle with Variety reporters over at TV Newser.

I think this internet thing might just be catching on... It seems that self proclaimed asshole, Tucker Max, has managed to turn his website into a television show. But this isn't just some video podcast, or YouTube experiment. It's the real deal. Variety is reporting that the team of Gavin Palone and Jamie Tarses will executive produce the show for Comedy Central. The two also work together producing TBS' new show My Boys. It's good, you should take a look.

Tucker's site has gained a rather large following, getting something between 1 and 1.5 million unique visitors a month. Along with a blog and a message board, the big attraction is the stories of his boozing and womanizing. They have already led to the book "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell." Max will also write the pilot script. The show is said to be about him and his friends as they transition into adulthood.

I'll be interested to see what comes of this. Some of the stories Tucker has written are very funny, so there is something to build from. Being on Comedy Central will get them a bit of leeway with content, but I think this one would have been better served with the even more lax restrictions at Showtime or HBO.

Now that Comedy Central has pulled all its Daily Show and Colbert Report clips from YouTube, they've been quietly popping up over at iFilm. For some reason, there has been no publicity on the part of the network or the website. iFilm is owned by Viacom, which also owns Comedy Central. So, you see how that works.

The clips that are appearing on iFilm are primarily from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They're uploaded in about three-minute segments, but there are numerous segments so practically the entire show is on iFilm. And the good news is that they appear the morning after a new episode of either show airs. Other Viacom clips include sketches from Chappelle's Show, Reno 911!, The Real World, and Wonder Showzen. There are also clips from The State, as well as other MTV and LOGO programming.

Looks like the days of VHS are officially over.

Today, Variety reported the death of the once-dominant videotape format by way of a funny obituary. According to the article, downloads, high-def availability, TiVo and DVDs finally killed off the format. Very few stores will have pre-recorded VHS tapes on their shelves this holiday season, save for a few Barney tapes at Toys 'R' Us.

You could probably still find bricks of blanks over at your local Wal-Mart, but I'm sure even those are going to be harder to find after a while. It's never been the best format for recording TV; Beta had better quality back in the day, and the tapes themselves never really stood up well to repeated re-recordings. But, like Windows, the superior product doesn't always win the hearts and minds of the public. If you don't already have a DVR or aren't using BitTorrent or iTunes to get your video, now might be a good time to enter the 21st century (I'm reminding myself more than anything here...).

[via Pop Candy]

Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick, along with writer John McNamara and director Jonathan Mostow, are bringing a new sci-fi thriller to Fox.

Entitled Them, the project is based on Michael Oeming and Daniel Berman's graphic novel Six. Taking a page from Battlestar's metaphorical take on the war in Iraq, Them will be working the sleeper cell angle. The premise of the show involves extraterrestrial terrorists who take on the shape of humans. Their mission is compromised when they begin to acquire human emotions, which act like a drug on them. Eick reported to Variety, "Them is about the war on terror, writ large."

In addition to Them and his continued work with Battlestar, Eick is working on The Bionic Woman for NBC.

So excited for Them. Not so excited for The Bionic Woman.

In the least surprising TV news of the week, ABC Family has canceled the summer-launched family drama Three Moons Over Milford. The premiere episode only got 1.6 million viewers, and didn't really improve after that.

While I'm linking to Variety, does anyone else every get annoyed when you read something in the mag? They have all these short declarations instead of complete sentences. For example, instead of saying "The cable network confirmed Thursday..." they take out the "the" and just start with "Cable network confirmed Thursday..." Gah.

(Oh, in case you're wondering, this doesn't count in our contest, because it premiered during the summer.)

There is speculation that ABC, bowing to protests by former President Clinton and other Democratic supporters, may pull the movie The Path to 9/11, which is set to air this weekend.

Variety writer William Triplett reports that, while ABC publicly stands by the movie and is saying small last-minute edits are being made to the entire program, insiders are saying that they might pull the entire thing. This is the same the "path of least resistance" tactic that CBS used when they pulled their miniseries The Reagans when Republican groups protested the movie unfairly portrayed Ronal Reagan's presidency.

Seems like a rash move by ABC, considering it's a two-night affair. There are people -- including 9/11 Commission co-chair Tom Kean -- who have seen the movie and said it's accurate and both sides get slammed equally. So maybe everyone should just calm down and watch it to this point. At least Scholastic has pulled its participation in the program. The educational aspect was the scariest part of this whole mess.