That’s essentially the question posed by The New York Times’ TV Decoder blog, in pointing out that ABC’s new reality series, Wipeout, just became the highest-rated new show of the summer.

The premise of the show, according to the blog, is that families compete for cash and prizes by making their way through a mud-filled obstacle course.

There are those who genuinely think such programs mean society’s destruction who blame the media for that. “If they’d stop showing such awful programs,” these people might say, “things would be a lot better.”

“What things?” I ask.

Will the absence of reality shows make people turn off the television and actually have a conversation with each other? Will their sudden disappearance make folks read a book instead?

Or will they just pick up the remote and find something else?

Wipeout doesn’t sound like the kind of show I’d be remotely interested in. Neither does that CBS show Swingtown that the family groups are having such a hissy-fit about. And the funny thing is, when either of those two shows are on — I couldn’t venture a guess what either show’s regular time slot is — I manage to find something else to watch, anyway.

It’s as simple as picking up that little remote control that’s sitting right there next to you. You know, that little thing you grab every time a commercial break comes on. If you don’t like what’s on, that same little remote works while the show itself is on, too. It doesn’t deactivate itself after the commercial break ends.

Give it a shot.

Just heard on Today: Katie Couric is returning to the Today show tomorrow, according to Matt Lauer. She’s coming back, apparently, for a single appearance and to make a “major announcement.”

Is she announcing that she’s giving up the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News? Probably not. It seems like CBS wouldn’t allow her to go announce such a thing on her former show at NBC.

Meredith Viera even joked, upon hearing the news, “Permanently?” Viera, of course, replaced Couric on Today when Couric left for CBS.

Is it some cheap marketing ploy designed to make people just curious enough to watch? Yep.

I’m curious enough, and I’m sure I’ll be disappointed by whatever the “major announcement” turns out to be.

UPDATE:  I found out what the “major announcement” is, and wouldn’t have spoiled the details until I realized that all of the networks were doing a fine job of spoiling it on their own.  And it’s not just Katie Couric appearing on Today.  NBC’s Brian Williams is going to appear on ABC’s Good Morning America.  And ABC’s Charlie Gibson is headed to CBS’s The Early Show.  In fact, all three anchors are appearing together on all three morning shows.

The reason?  To announce a new initiative to fight cancer.  More here.

See?  Not knowing was a lot more exciting.

Rosie O’Donnell won’t be returning to The View following an on-air skirmish between the former comedienne and colleague Elizabeth Hasselbeck, it was announced on Friday.

O’Donnell was riding out the last few weeks of her contract with ABC and was planning to leave at the end of the season. What set her off — this time around — was that Hasselbeck apparently didn’t rush to Rosie’s defense when conservative pundits accused Rosie of calling American troops “terrorists.”

To review, here is a sample of the exchange between the two on the show from May 16th:

Rosie: Six-hundred fifty-five thousand Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?Elizabeth: Who are the terrorists?

Rosie: Six-hundred fifty-five thousand Iraqis. … I’m saying that if you were in Iraq and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?

Though her question was rhetorical, there is no doubt in my mind that Rosie is making the implication that our soldiers are the terrorists in this situation. You may agree with her; it doesn’t really matter to me whether you do or not. But I don’t see how anyone can hear (or read) that exchange and doubt that Rosie was making that suggestion, whether she meant to or not.

Last Wednesday, the two had a well-publicized blow-up on the air, when Rosie called Elizabeth “cowardly” for not stepping up to defend her. Elizabeth fired back:

“You know what’s cowardly? Asking a rhetorical question that you never answer yourself. That’s cowardly.”

And I would have to agree. There’s nothing wrong with speaking your mind; there’s a lot wrong with leaving so much room to interpretation, then claiming offense when someone else doesn’t rush in and explain your words for you. If we’re to believe that Rosie is so tough, so eager to “put it out there” and so thick-skinned, we should have a great deal of trouble believing that Rosie seriously thinks she needs anyone to defend what she has to say.

This is the problem I see with talking about the war: it has everything to do with snarky personal attacks and very little to do with the facts. (Are we to believe that even Rosie thinks that American troops killed each one of those 655,000? Are we really to believe that Rosie has somehow discounted the deadly results amassed by Iraqis who are bombing and murdering their own citizens?)

It is this kind of foolishness that has kept us in Iraq so long. It is this kind of attack-style argument that not only doesn’t help real discussion, understanding and solution occur, but also only encourages both sides to stubbornly dig their heels even deeper into the soil of whichever side of the spectrum they’re standing on.

You don’t solve conflicts or ease tensions that way.

If I were to use Rosie’s reasoning, I guess I’d be calling the extremists on either side, those who seem to delight in attacking for the sake of attacking, terrorists as well. I bet she’d have a problem with that.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering about the timeslot, it should come as no surprise to my regular readers that while the while the women of The View are trading their barbs, I’m watching The Price is Right, which I find infinitely more entertaining and equally effective in bringing the troops home.

All this week, TV Squad is doing posts about the network upfronts, and I’m chiming in with my own take on each network’s plans for the 2007-08 season.

This time, it’s ABC’s turn. (The full upfronts report is here at TVSquad.)

There were not a lot of surprises to be found on the “Alphabet Network’s” schedule: those shows that have gotten lots of buzz for the past couple of seasons, like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal, and Grey’s Anatomy, are returning. I don’t know of anyone who expected otherwise.

What should have been a big surprise, that ABC — or any network, for that matter — would actually try to build a show around the cavemen characters who appear in the Geico insurance commercials, was reported months ago. If you’re annoyed with that advertising campaign, you might be happy to know that Geico plans to temporarily pull their commercials featuring the characters so that the show itself can be promoted. This means, of course, that you’ll still have to endure the commercials…but only on a single network.

I was mildly surprised to see that George Lopez was cancelled, but based on his public bashing of the network, I don’t think I was anywhere nearly as surprised as he was.

The new show I am most likely to try, out of curiosity, is Women’s Murder Club, to see what the do with the ensemble from six James Patterson novels. I will not be surprised at all when I discover that the novels are better than the television show.

Your turn: review their season plans and tell me what looks good and what looks bad to you.

The first consumer VCR was developed way back in 1964, but they weren’t commonly available until the mid to late 1970s. So it’s safe to say that no one who was filming a television show in the 1950s would have counted on the fact that one day, people sitting in their living room would be able to pause the show and take a closer look at shots that only lasted a couple of seconds.

That, at least, is evident from an episode of Leave It to Beaver that is believed to have been filmed some time around 1958. Nearly 50 years later, over at Shorpy, someone took the time to actually transcribe a letter written to the Beeve’s father by the principal and shown in a quick shot during a scene between father and son.

Among the rambling paragraphs is this:

“This paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with anything. It is here merely to fill up space. Still, it is words, rather than repeated letters, since the latter might not give the proper appearance, namely, that of an actual note.”

The letter writer does apparently remember, in time for the final sentence, that the piece of paper he was creating as a prop no one would ever really read was supposed to be written by a principal to a parent, so this line wraps up the gibberish:

“I hope you can find a suitable explanation for Theodore’s unusual conduct.”

No wonder Beaver showed signs of unusual conduct: what kind of an example is the principal?

I have to admit that I would never have taken the time to try to read the note. I guess that’s one of the main reasons that I never got into Lost: I don’t have time to keep pausing every scene to study every tiny little element.

These days, television shows have to be a lot more careful about such details because they know that there are sharp-eyed viewers waiting to call them out on their “blunders.” Years ago, a television station I worked for at the time sent me along with a crew as field producer to CBS Television City in Hollywood. At one point, I walked through one of the studios in which The Young and the Restless is taped and I found myself in the office of Victor Newman, one of the primary characters on the show.

I admit it: I did sit at his desk. I also glanced at the manilla folder on top of the desk that had a full color “Newman Enterprises” logo. I even picked up one of the pens on his desk and noted the “V.N.” engraved on it. No camera would pick that up, but there it was!

The next time I watch TV Land, I might have to reach for the pause button and see what’s hidden right in plain sight.

I work in the media. This may make my opinions about how the media does things suspect for you; if it does, that, frankly, is your problem. I can only assure you that I make every attempt to be fair, and I think my record has been pretty clear in the past.

I do not automatically side against people who criticize the media. I think that is an important fact that is worth mentioning before I get into the point of this post. There are some very valid criticisms out there. However, we live in a society that seems to enjoy making vicious attacks an art form, and I think we tend to overdo criticism more out of sport than reason.

When you have an “easy target,” like religious leaders, politicians, or the media, it’s all the more easy, when you feel the power one feels when he preaches to the proverbial choir, to go a bit too far.

Case in point: Rosie O’Donnell’s tirade on The View in which she blasted NBC News for airing photos and video clips of Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter in the Virginia Tech massacre. She had a lot to say about their decision to run the footage. In the clip I saw, she neglected to mention, quite conveniently, that her network, ABC, was running the same footage. One might wonder why she felt only NBC was at fault.

And here in Charleston, the local newspaper, The Post and Courier, pulled a similar stunt on one of its blogs, Good Morning Lowcountry:

“And what is with the networks parading parents who have just lost a child in front of the lens to answer questions like how do you feel? and when did you learn the worst? and what was your daughter like? and what will you do now? Have the TV folks no shame? It goes beyond unseemly, tacky and classless and into the realm of invasion of privacy and voyeurism at its worst — intrusion on the private feelings of people forced into the spotlight by the worst thing that has ever happened to them.”

There has always been a healthy rivalry between newspapers and television stations. They often act as though they are bitter enemies, fierce competitors, when quite often, people who want news are customers of both.

But this comment was ridiculous. For one thing, the writer seems to forget that there were plenty of print reporters standing side by side with the television reporters. Also, many of the television correspondents provided information that would later end up in wire stories that, in turn, ended up in newspapers across the country.

In Tuesday’s Post and Courier, editors apparently had no problem at all running a series of quotations of students who were witnesses to the actual shooting rampage, under the headline, “Students recall day of terror.” The newspaper attributed the quotes as having come from “wire reports.” I guess they’re fine with that because that means it wasn’t their reporter on the scene asking the victims “how they felt” and what they saw as the events unfolded. But they sure didn’t mind capturing the drama and running it in their paper. Apparently, it doesn’t go “beyond tacky” if they just print excerpts of interviews that they think should never have been conducted, anyway.

Even more damaging to their argument about the distastefulness of the television coverage is that when you go to the paper’s site and visit one of the many stories devoted to the tragedy, you will find links to AP Video stories…television reports shot by some of the very crews they were so quick to attack for “intruding” on the Virginia Tech campus. On their website.

I wonder if they’re really fooling anyone in their desire to preach to a media-hating choir. I’d like to think the public would recognize those arguments for what they were.

It began as just another humorous way to advertise the Government Employees Insurance Company, which you know as Geico. The idea even spawned a parody website for people who loved the commercials and wanted to get a peek at their hip apartment. Now those Cavemen who resent the company’s slogan, “So easy a caveman can do it,” may wind up the stars of their own sitcom!

I can only wish that I were making this up!

Virtually everyone by now is reporting that ABC is considering a new sitcom that would center on (but not around, for you grammar police out there) three cavemen who face the (dreaded) “trials and tribulations” of living in the modern world. More specifically, as some sources describe the project being produced by Touchstone Television:

“[The project] features the cavemen as they struggle with prejudice on a daily basis as they strive to live the lives of normal thirty-somethings in 2007 Atlanta.“

(If I were a caveman, Atlanta would be the first place I’d want to go.)

It wouldn’t be the first time that a popular commercial character wound up with his own sitcom. Remember Baby Bob? I wish I could forget.

Variety reports that the project is being developed by Joe Lawson, the same ad man who created the ads for Geico in the first place.

I think the funniest thing that could happen to this sitcom — if it ever makes its way to television — is to have a company like Allstate buy up all of the commercials that run during the program! But my mind is just devious like that….

TVSquad asks, “Is it time for Dick Clark to hang up the microphone?”

Some people say that it is, because his slurred speech caused by a stroke he suffered three years ago makes him too depressing to watch. I suppose I can appreciate that point of view. His condition today, though seemingly improved from his condition last year, is still a far cry from the ever-youthful “America’s teenager” we remember.

Then again, the man is 76. Sooner or later, the “teenager” nickname had to wear off.

Personally, I hope he stays with the show as long as he feels he is able. I think he’s an inspiration to people who have suffered strokes or other neurological damage, and who might otherwise feel that life is hopeless or that they no longer have the capability to do whatever they want to do in their lives. If Dick Clark can come back from a stroke to host a national celebration on network television, there’s probably not nearly as much as one would think that falls into the “impossible” column.

Granted, I’m a little more melancholy by nature than the average person. So unlike all of those revellers who want to get blitzed out of their mind to the point that they’ll never even remember what they were doing at midnight, I like to think I’m a little more grounded.

To me, seeing Clark and the progress he has made since the stroke, is a reminder to me that we never know how long we’ll have. No matter how successful, how rich, how admired, or how loved, we’re nothing more than mortals. As the late John Connelly, former Governor of Texas, said, “You never know how long you have.”

Maybe such a reminder might inspire people to live a little better over the next twelve months. Maybe it will inspire them to take an extra moment every now and then to spend with their loved ones.

There are probably fewer more important messages to ponder as the clock strikes midnight.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of Luke and Laura’s marriage on the ABC soap General Hospital, Entertainment Weekly has put up a list of televisions greatest “watercooler moments,” those events that inspired talk around the watercooler after the programs aired.

There are some obvious moments that do appear on the list, like the birth of Little Ricky on I Love Lucy or the solution to the mystery of who shot J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Then there are some moments that I’d call “questionable” at best: Felicity’s title character cutting her hair on October 3, 1999 and Dennis Franz baring his butt on NYPD Blue on this date in 1994 are among them.

They didn’t seem to include season finales in the list, and as pointed out over at TVSquad, it’s possible that they deliberately excluded finales because they’re supposed to produce watercooler moments, but I agree with a poster there that M*A*S*H’s finale was one that we talked about for a good while after it happened.

But I should think that television’s biggest watercooler moment began 43 years ago today, when television news came into its own to announce the assassination of John Kennedy, and reached its ultimate peak two days later when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death live on camera.

Do you have any “watercooler moments” that should be on the list?

On a recent blogjog, someone offered a recent CNN story as one example of proof that television is dying: a survey shows that today’s teens mostly are unable to name the “big four” TV networks. Only about 20% of kids 16-18 can correctly identify ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

This isn’t a death knell for TV by any means. Most kids of that age have grown up with cable television, so they’ve never had to live life with only four channels. Cable television came to my hometown in the late 1970s. When I first got cable, TBS was still known as WTCG in Atlanta. HBO was more commonly referred to as Home Box Office and wasn’t a 24-hour network: those who tuned in prior to 5:30 or 6:00pm or so would get a screen asking that you come back later when the movies started.

The poll also claimed that 85% of teens of that age choose to spend their free time online, while only 69% would rather lounge in front of the television. This isn’t that surprising a figure when you consider the fact that the poll was conducted by Bolt Media, which operates Bolt.com, a teen-targeted website with the lofty goal of becoming the #1 teen brand in America: they want teens to choose the web over television.

I have no doubt that if they’d asked teens to name four TV networks, the teens would have had no trouble doing so. They might have come up with names like Spike, USA, G4 or MTV, but I doubt that those kids would have had any trouble demonstrating that they do, in fact, watch TV regularly, even while they’re surfing the web. It’s obvious from the numbers, since you can’t have a poll add up to 154%, that there are plenty of teens doing both at the same time.

I haven’t been a teenager for a long time, but I rarely go online without the TV on, at least in the background.

These eulogies for television seem to grow in popularity despite shows like American Idol, in which more people voted for their favorite contestant than voted in the last presidential election, a fact touted by the show’s toothy host, Ryan Seacrest. I don’t understand the wild popularity of such shows, but at the same time, I can’t watch shows like this attract this many viewers and then be so confident in predicting that TV is dead.

A more realistic view of television’s future is that the internet will not only keep TV alive, but revolutionize the way it entertains you. In the old days, TV was a “push-push” business: the networks ran what they wanted to run, and viewers either watched or they didn’t. There were no other alternatives. The future will see TV networks delivering more and more of their content online and via “on demand”-type setups, with the viewers deciding when they want to see a show.

Could you have named the “Big Four?” It doesn’t matter, really. Today’s TV is about a lot more choices than that. Tomorrow’s will give you even more. Would you want anything less?

Last week, the seemingly-impossible happened: the CBS Evening News moved up to second place, surpassing ABC World News Tonight in the ratings race.

This week, ABC announced a plan it should have announced five months ago: Charlie Gibson will leave Good Morning America to anchor ‘WNT’ beginning next week. Gibson will replace Elizabeth Vargas, who goes on maternity leave at the advice of her doctor, and who will not be returning to the anchor chair when she comes back to work. Instead, she’ll return to 20/20.

There was little mention of Bob Woodruff, Vargas’s former co-anchor, who was seriously injured in Iraq when a roadside bomb went off while he was preparing to do a standup for one of his reports. There has been some speculation that his injuries were so severe that he may never be able to resume his duties, but no one’s coming right out to say that just yet.

So in September, when Katie Couric starts anchoring over at CBS, we’ll have the big three anchors in place. Last month, the “Patrick’s Place Poll” asked you to rank who you’d prefer to watch, but I gave you several options for ABC, including Vargas and “mystery guess,” Vargas alone, and Gibson alone. Oddly enough, Vargas with the rotating fill-in anchor scored the highest for ABC.

So does Gibson’s reassignment make anyone more likely to watch ABC?

The last poll asked which cancelled show from this season you’d miss most last season. NBC’s American Dreams topped the list with 22% of the votes. CBS’s family show, Joan of Arcadia was a close second with 17%, and a three-way tie had ABC’s My Wife and Kids, and CBS’s 60 Minutes II and Judging Amy each taking 13% of the votes in third place.

ABC’s 8 Simple Rules and NBC’s Third Watch both received 9% of the votes, and Fox’s Quintuplets received just 4%.

ABC’s Extreme Makeover, Fox’s Life on a Stick and NBC’s Law & Order: Trial By Jury did not receive any votes.

The new poll is about the Michael Jackson verdict: Were you surprised? Cast your vote in the sidebar.

Last Veterans Day, sixty-six ABC affiliates across the country refused to air Saving Private Ryan over fears that they would be vulnerable to severe fines from the FCC because of the movie’s profanity and violent images. (ABC was contractually obligated to air the movie in its entirety without any editing.)

At the time, a watchdog group called the Parents Television Council, which reportedly has been behind as much as 99% of the complaints about indecency received by the FCC, gave its approval of the movie’s airing, profanity, violence and all.

But just because the PTC decided not to complain (assuming they didn’t change their mind), that didn’t stop others from doing so. And now the FCC, which has found itself buried in such complaints since it began revamping indecency guidelines (and attracting the attention of every overly-sensitive prude that is willing to come out of the woodwork long enough to whine about sitting through some terrible program rather than simply changing the channel), has had its say:

An item in The Hollywood Reporter (no direct link available; registration required) quoted FCC sources who said that the commission is preparing to deny those complaints. That has to make ABC and the affiliates that actually aired the movie breathe a sigh of relief.

But while the Parents Television Council was ignoring ‘Ryan,’ they were keeping themselves occupied, gluing themselves to televisions to watch programs they feel no one should watch because their subject matter is so offensive. (Ironic, isn’t it?)

Also recently acted upon by the FCC is a stack of thirty-six PTC complaints about episodes of television programs that have aired between October 29, 2001 and February 11, 2004. Episodes of Dawson’s Creek, NYPD Blue, and Boston Public were criticized by the group for their use of a pejorative word that could be interpreted as a synonym for “jerk.” The four letter word in question is also the first name of our current Vice President. Episodes of Will & Grace, Friends, and Scrubs were among several other series targeted for discussing sexual matters.

The Washington Times (no direct link available) reported Monday that the FCC is also dismissing those complaints, after concluding that “in context, none of the segments were patently offensive under contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, and thus not indecent.” The commission also found that the material was “not profane, in context,” according to a statement issued from the agency.

This is more good news for broadcasters in that they won’t face fines for the programs in question. But it’s bad news, too, because it further confuses the issue of what is and isn’t offensive.

Lawmakers are again ready to discuss the possibility of raising fines for broadcasters and performers, according to both sources. (Washington Times link is here.) The latest proposal would not only increase the maximum fine for a broadcast licensee from the current $27,500 to $500,000, but would also increase the maximum fines for individual performers from the current $11,000 to $500,000. It would also repeal a portion of the current law that allows the FCC to issue a warning on the first violation. Seems a little unfair to me, especially when there is still no clear-cut guidelines about what will or won’t incur such a high fine.

As always, it comes down to an issue of what is offensive to you. There are plenty of shows on television that I think cross the line at some point. Shows that deal with topics I don’t want to see depicted are shows I don’t watch. What a concept!

There are lots of channels out there, and some of them actually have decent programming that hardly ever offends anyone. But you’ll notice that PBS is never at the top of the Nielsen ratings. I wonder why.

A news story caught my eye yesterday. Producer Steven Bochco is against a proposal to cut a 15-second sex scene from an episode of NYPD Blue to create a “clean version” of the show to air in other time zones.

The show will air in the Eastern and Pacific time zones with the scene intact. The concern lies in the Central and Mountain time zones, where everything airs one hour earlier. According to the Associated Press, Bochco calls this a “hysterical knee-jerk response” to Janet Jackson’s breast-bearing wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl.

A similar argument arose last week on NBC’s ER, when producers didn’t want to cut a scene that showed an elderly patients bare breasts while she was being treated in the emergency room. ER got around the problem not by cutting the scene as expected, but instead by simply blurring that portion of the image.

I’ve worked in television for a good while now. And I’m a decent fiction writer as well. So perhaps it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to suggest that if the 15-second scene in question isn’t appropriate to air at 9pm, it’s probably at least bordering on not being appropriate at 10pm, either. Our kids don’t go to bed exactly at 9pm like they did on Leave it to Beaver these days. And anyone who has screened the show that can honestly believe that the scene can be cut without destroying the story has probably stumbled upon another important point: the sex scene isn’t really necessary.

There are plenty of ways to convey a sexual encounter without nudity or simulating the act itself. If the scene is being defended this vigorously by the producer, my guess, never having seen the show, is that it’s supposed to be intentionally provacative.

That’s not good television…that’s just shock value.