TVSquad

He's an actor, a pin-up hunk, he's tried Dancing With the Stars, and now he'll see what it's like to be a Jim Lange or Wink Martindale. Cameron Mathison has been tapped to host TLC's new game show Your Place or Mine? Looking at those eyes, I'd let him redecorate my abode!

"I'm thrilled to be a part of TLC's first game show, and extremely excited about the fun concept," said Mathison. "I think both men and women, of all ages, are really going to enjoy the show because there's a little something in it for everyone." Yeah, TLC is pitching this as a family show. Hmm...we'll see. If it can capture the Trading Spaces vibe, they may be on the right track.

Startup ZeeVee announced its new set media streaming device, the ZvBox today. Unlik the Apple TV, Windows Media Extenders, or pretty much any other set top box designed to let you watch PC and internet content on your TV, the ZvBox works with your home's coaxial cable network. In other words, you plug the ZvBox into your PC so it can use your internet connection, and plug the other end into a spare cable jack. It will find a TV channel not currently used by your cable provider and allow create a new HD channel you to tune in to on any TV in the house to access the ZvBox service.

So what content can you access? Pretty much anything you can watch on your PC, including YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, BitTorrent, and Netflix content. If your PC has a DVD player, you can access that. If it has a TV tuner, you can use ZvBox to watch live TV.. on your TV. Or more to the point, you can set up a PVR in the bedroom and watch recorded shows on any TV in the house -- assuming you have cable in each room in the house. If you're in a bunny-ears only household, the ZvBox might not be the best solution.

The ZvBox (plus the ZvRemote control and Zview software -- they like the letter Z) will be available in June for $499.

The BBC iPlayer service lets UK residents catch any TV show they missed in the last seven days, provided they're willing to watch on a computer or other supported device. Earlier this month the BBC discussed plans to create an iPlayer channel for the Nintendo Wii that would let video game console owners use a Wii to watch TV shows on an actual TV. But now it looks like the BBC is expanding its support for devices and partnering with Virgin Media to give cable customers access to the same programming.

Virgin Media has 3.5 million customes, and while I don't happen to have the number of UK households with a Nintendo Wii handy, I think it's safe to say that more people are going to wind up with access to the iPlayer service through Virgin than Nintendo.

It's likely that the BBC is working on deals with other cable, satellite, mobile phone, and device companies as well.

As our own Jonathan Toomey has reported, Miley Cyrus, age 15, has signed a book deal with The Disney Book Group.

The book is said to be focused on Cyrus's relationship with her mother, and to emphasize how important Cyrus's family is to her. This is surely gripping material that can fill an entire book. Why, with the exception of some books by a little-known author named Laura Ingalls Wilder, I don't think we have any books about teenage girls and how important their families are to them.

Some have questioned what a 15-year-old girl could possibly fill a memoir with at such a tender age. Let's take a look at some possible book chapters:

Digeo may have killed its plans to release two set top boxes direct to consumers earlier this year, but that doesn't mean you won't find a new Digeo box running the company's Moxi software in your living room anytime soon. The company is still developing new boxes for cable television operator

Light Reading uncovered a few (very few) details about a new CableCard-enabled high definition personal video recorder from Digeo. CableLabs sent out a press release highlighting some of the technology that will be on display at next month's Cable Show, and one of the devices is the Moxi HD DVR 3012.

The set top box will use Digeo's Moxi software and will be able to record up to two programs at once. But that's about all we know about it at the moment.

[via Zatz Not Funny]

Remember how DISH Network quickly responded to the latest (and possibly final) twist in the TiVo v. Echostar patent dispute by saying that customers would not be affected since all DISH set top boxes had received software upgrades? Yeah, that wasn't entirely true.

Now DISH is letting us know that there are actually a few boxes that not received the upgrade treatment. The four boxes in question are all on the older side and odds are you weren't going to get one installed when you signed up for DISH service anyway. But the company is letting installers know that the VIP 721, 921, 942 and Homezone 1022 models are to be pretty much taken out of service. If you've already got one of these in your house and service has already been activated, it sounds like you shouldn't be affected.

[via Engadget and CNet]

Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM are launching a new premium cable channel next year that will likely strip Showtime of much of its theatrical movie content. Showtime was originally a sister company to Paramount until 2006 when Viacom president and CEO Les Moonves split the two companies into separate entities.

One of the reasons cited for this move was by the Showtime's vice president of corporate public relations Stu Zakim. He stated that the network no longer wanted to pay "outrageous license fees" for theatrical content.

This is actually a natural progression for the bigger name cable channels. As they develop more original content, they no longer need to rely on the movie studios to provide content for them. This is a far cry from the early days of cable television when HBO and Showtime were known as the channels from which you could watch R-rated movies in the comfort of your own home.

Uh oh. Remember that biker show that HBO is doing that was just cast with Donal Logue in the lead? Well, there seems to be a question about just who wrote the story and who deserves credit for the script. Sonny Barger filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that HBO has swiped the project -- 1% -- out from under him.

This is a guy you don't want to mess with, and yet, HBO has stepped into it with him. Sonny Barger is the founder of Hell's Angels. According to his complaint, the network, White Mountain Company and Michael Tolkin (The Rapture, The Player), the writer/producer of 1%, froze him out of the series. He is also ticked off that they've "violated many of his publicity rights when he demanded changes so as not to dilute his own brand." You could say they also violated him by using his name in the press release announcing the greenlight.

Everybody wants Donal Logue. Just one month after NBC added him to the cast of NBC's Life, as Charlie's new boss, now comes news that HBO has booked Donal Logue as a biker in 1%. The new pilot casts Donal as a character named Misfit, a Silicon Valley member who's sent to Carefree, Arizona, to get one of the toughest biker clubs in the west in line. Also joining Logue in the show are W. Earl Brown (Deadwood), Timm Sharp (Undeclared), Lucy Punch (hilarious in The Class as Holly Ellenbogen), Marisa Ryan (New York Undercover) and Sonny Barger. Barger is an actual biker and has been enlisted to no doubt add realism to the project.

There should be a moratorium on remakes. They rarely work, and in some cases, they are just ill-conceived from step one. That's how I feel about this news: they're remaking Ben-Hur as a television mini-series. I'm not saying this because actor Charlton Heston has just died and this was his movie and, therefore, it should be sacrosanct. No, not at all. If someone has the urge to remake almost any other Heston film -- Soylent Green, Diamond Head, The Pigeon That Took Rome -- go for it. But leave Ben-Hur alone. You'd think the disastrous remake of The Ten Commandments on ABC last year would have been a lesson. I guess not.

I'm not a regular Oprah watcher, but on Monday I happened to see actress Jamie Lee Curtis' appearance. I've been really curious about Jamie lately, especially since seeing her on those Activia yogurt commercials. Damn, she's just two years younger than I am and she looks great! What is in that yogurt anyway?

But Jamie Lee was on Oprah to vent. Turns out that the cover shot she did for AARP magazine, which the editors chose to proclaim as a nude shot, was a sham. The picture was not a naked photo shoot. She was wearing a strapless top and was photographed in a swimming pool. The illusion of nudity was created by the way they cropped the picture. Jamie Lee said she was shocked. She held up a copy of the magazine and said to Oprah and the world, "Isn't it fascinating that this constitutes being naked. What the f*ck are we talking about? In my world, this is called strapless. I didn't go around saying I was topless."

There's news about CBS's Mike Birbiglia's Secret Public Journal, and from the sounds of it, this may be a real sleeper -- that's if you believe in the quality of the casting. Joining Mike in the show are comic Bob Odenkirk, actress Rachel Blanchard and former deejay Phil Hendrie.

Mike Birbiglia's Secret Public Journal, based on his stand up comedy, includes Blanchard (7th Heaven) as his significant other, an aspiring doctor and the sensible one of the couple. Phil Hendrie, best known as a popular radio talker but was also on The Unit in a supporting role, has been cast as Mike's abrasive doctor. But perhaps the best news for this CBS project is adding Bob O to the company as Mike's big brother. In everything I've ever seen him do, Odenkirk is a riot. He's a two-time Emmy winner for his comedy writing.

Whenever I think of Robert Wuhl, I'm reminded of that scene in Bull Durham where he's playing a coach meeting on the mound with the pitcher and the catcher -- Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner -- and they're arguing about what's an appropriate wedding gift. It's an inane, silly, funny moment, topped by Wuhl's suggestion that candlesticks always make a nice gift.

It's also nice to report that Robert Wuhl has agreed to remain with HBO. It's been his comic home for 12 years, including Arli$$ which ran for season seasons and poked fun at the world of professional sports. The show wasn't a water-cooler comedy like Entourage or Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it was consistently funny and I enjoyed it.

The success of last summer's General Hospital: Night Shift was the harbinger of things to come. And now they have. SoapNet announced a new 10-episode drama series called MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives.

It makes sense that SoapNet would take another stab at creating its own dramas. Last year's Night Shift, the channel's first attempt at that kind of original programming, proved more popular than the reruns of daytime soaps it had been running at 11 o'clock at night. But the difference between this new offering -- about the ladies in the lives of professional hockey players...hockey and soap? -- is that Night Shift was based on General Hospital and used popular stars from the daytime show for the spin-off. If Steve Burton (Jason), Kimberly McCullough (Robin) and Jason Thompson (Patrick) were not in Nightshift, would SoapNet viewers have tuned in?

Welcome back, Raymond.

TNT has signed Ray Romano for a new one-hour comedy/drama pilot, Men of a Certain Age. After the success of Everybody Loves Raymond for CBS -- 1996 -2005 -- Ray Romano left television sounding very much like a guy who wasn't interested in another show. After all, he could have kept Everybody Loves Raymond going for years. It was an Emmy-award winning, Nielsen champ. The show is doing great in syndication.