To help make sense of the looming deadline for Congress to raise the national debt ceiling, Stephen Colbert invited 'Wall Street Journal' columnist Naftali Bendavid onto 'The Colbert Report' (Weeknights, 11:30PM ET on Comedy Central).

One of the big problems in getting this legislation passed, or getting anything productive done for the Republicans is what Bendavid called an inability to "control their own troops," citing all the Freshman Republican congressmen in particular.

"[Speaker John Boehner] described the other day getting this through the house is a Rubik's Cube," Bendavid said. "And to me that symbolized that he was having a great deal of trouble solving this thing and figuring out how to get it done."

When I first saw this I thought to myself, Jeff, a show like Seinfeld actually would survive if you stuck with it and didn't cancel it, just like NBC did back then. You don't have to cancel shows even today just because they don't get great ratings after two episodes.

This is a clip of NBC boss Jeff Zucker being interviewed at the All Things D conference. He talks about Hulu, iTunes, NBC's woes, and how the industry has changed over the years. (This is highlights from the interview - full report here.)

This is approximately the 57th "Katie Couric is doing badly in the ratings and will probably will fired or quit her job at CBS" story that has surfaced in the past year, but since it's The Wall Street Journal, perhaps he has a little more gravitas to it?

Possibly.

The newspaper is reporting that "CBS executives" and "people close to Couric" say that she will probably leave her job as anchor of The CBS Evening News well before her contract is up in 2011. She might even leave in early 2009, right after the current Presidential election is over.

In case you missed it, Jon made a very special appearance on The Colbert Report Tuesday night. The situation is already a bit confusing, and Jon's explanation of it didn't help much. Actually, don't even think about it too much. Just focus on the fact that Jon is a very tiny man. What he lacks in height, he makes up with well-played self-deprecation.

"Indecision 2008": Big news! John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani have both dropped from the race. Edwards fixed up his hair and delivered a speech to say good-bye and Giuliani, accompanied by his supporters and funny eyebrows, dropped out in Florida. He also got an earful from the media for putting all his eggs in the Florida basket, whatever that means.

I wasn't a Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood kid; I was a Sesame Street kid. I know that many kids watched both, but I never did. I probably saw every single episode of Sesame Street in the late '60s and early '70s, but I've only watched a handful of Mr. Rogers episodes over the years. And some of those I watched as an adult to see what I missed.

Still, I have to disagree a bit with this article at The Wall Street Journal Online. It pretty much says that Mr. Rogers is to blame for the attitudes that young adults have today and the entitlement they feel. The article uses examples from colleges (students asking for extra points and time for assignments) and from psychologists (kids shouldn't call adults by their first names).

Some of this advice is dead-on, but I think they're blaming the wrong people.

My, my, my... It looks as if ABC is thinking of spinning off Grey's Anatomy, and they're thinking of using my favorite actor on the show to star in it.

Word from The Wall Street Journal (via Reuters) is that the network is looking to create a Grey's spin-off for Kate Walsh and her character of Dr. Addison Montgomery. The plan is to make a two-hour pilot and air it in May. According to an ABC spokeswoman, Shonda Rhimes is working on the spin-off but doesn't yet have a title.

As an unabashed fan of Ms. Walsh (if you've read my Grey's reviews, you'll see how much I've been enjoying her performance this season), this comes as really welcome news. She has both the comedic and dramatic acting skills to pull off her own show, and it seems like there are a lot of potential to have Addison involved in lots of neonatal surgical cases as well as fun romances with the doctors at whatever hospital they send her to. And Grey's needs a bit of a castectomy, anyway; currently, the ensemble is in the double-digits and getting hard to keep track of, story-wise. What do you folks think of this development? Let me know in the comments.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article pondering the demise of The O.C. It lost 26% of its audience when season two started up. Then 15% more disappeared (myself included) for season three. And, now in season four, The O.C. lost a whopping 39% of its crucial, age 18-49 viewers from last season. It's in so much trouble that the network has even launched an online effort to save the show. (Or gauge viewer interest)

Why?

The article includes a very frank interview with The O.C. creator, Josh Schwartz, who admits some mistakes. He says, opening up the series during season two to include storylines for the parents was too much to juggle. When it started to get stale, he killed off Caleb Nichol. Smart move, he says. But, he wonders whether it was such a hot idea to kill off Marissa Cooper's character at the end of last season.

As a Verizon DSL customer, I've been eagerly anticipating to the arrival of their FiOS service to my neighborhood, mainly for the super-fast 15 Mbps download speed on their broadband serivce. But FiOS will also give customers the opportunity to get TV service, even though the jury's still out on whether it provides better value than the "evil" cable providers Verison is trying to defeat. But there's potential that the new service will bring something that neither cable nor satellite can provide: grainy videos of old commercials and teenagers getting hit in the groin.

Thaaat's right, folks: according to Reuters (via our blog cousins at Engadget), the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon and YouTube are discussing an agreement where the recently-Googlified video site will provide content to Verizon via both it's VCAST mobile phone video service and to TVs via FiOS. The videos would be available on the FiOS service on an on-demand basis and likely for only a limited time.

It turns out, coming back for an eleventh season isn't such a great thing for the cast and crew of 7th Heaven. According to this article (credited to a Wall Street Journal writer), The CW has the veteran show on a shoestring budget. When The CW brought it back from the dead last spring, CBS Paramount Television, the company that produces the show, cut salaries across the board for actors, producers and writers. CBS also ordered editing to be done in six days rather than seven and it cut all nighttime shoots, which can get expensive. Thanks to all the cost cutting, The CW pays between $1.4 and $1.8 million per episode, compared to the $3 million that WB paid to air each episode. That price is 70% below what most networks pay for an hour-long show.

When I received the preview screeners for the new fall pilots earlier this summer, I resisted every request from friends to lend them out, copy the discs, or upload the contents. My feeling, and the feeling amongst everyone here at TVS, is that the networks are doing us a favor by sending these; why betray their trust by creating a Torrent of a show and distributing it?

I guess not everyone feels the same way we do. The Wall Street Journal recounts how pirated videos for ten pilots -- including Jericho, The Nine, and Heroes -- are making their way around the Internet. This is putting the networks in an odd position; they like the advanced buzz that has developed amongst the public before the shows even air, but they're upset because their shows are being pirated. For instance, a CBS spokesperson told the WSJ that "[w]e're pleased that there's an early demand for our shows but the marketing benefits can't excuse what is illegal theft of our programming."

What the article explains to me is how all these TVS readers have been able to see the pilots, as we've seen in the comments for our network previews. Actually, I kind of knew that these pilots were available as Torrents, but I guess I was just in denial.

[via Mediabistro]

This is a first: according to this Wall Street Journal article, Warner Brothers will allow local stations that buy the syndicated reruns of Two and a Half Men to stream the reruns on their web site. The episodes that will be streamed are the ones that aired on the channel the previous week. This may start a trend, as syndicators may start offering episodes of other shows -- the article said "think Friends and Seinfeld" -- for streaming. You know, because those shows are so hard to find as it is.

[Thanks for the tip, Todd!]

Have you ever taken a long trip on an airplane and thought to yourself, "This is far too comfortable!" Well, you're in luck because Airbus is pitching the idea of creating some new standing seats (the pasenger would essentially be harnessed onto a padded board). If you've ever wanted to travel the world the same way as an airplane's tray tables or Hannibal Lecter, write to Airbus and let them know how you feel.

I suspected that Rupert Murdoch was bluffing when he said he didn't think there was a future for video on the internet. According to the Wall Street Journal, FOX just inked a six-year deal with its 187 affiliates to play reruns on the internet. The agreement allows FOX to make 60% of its schedule available online the morning after it airs.

It's not yet clear how FOX will distribute the online video or how much it will cost and it probably will cost something because the deal gives the affiliates a 12.5% cut of the profits.

I had no I idea that the Freakonomics guys had a blog, but apparently they do. Good thing I found it though, because it directed me to this interesting Wall Street Journal article about how economists, who study game shows to examine how people make risky financial decisions, absolutely love studying the show Deal or No Deal. Why? Because the decisions are pure risk/reward decisions, not influenced by game-playing skill or trivia knowledge like on shows such as Jeopardy! and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. They've not only studied the American version, but versions from around the world, as well. They'll get more of a chance to study without translation when Deal comes back after the Olympics.

[via Freakonomics.com]