Posted Mar 27th 2009 7:02PM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: Sports, Lost, Video, Celebrities, Reality-Free
If you're a sports fan, then you definitely have heard Al Trautwig's distinctive voice. Whether he's anchoring tennis coverage during the US Open or hosting the pregame show for the Knicks on MSG, it really doesn't matter what the guy is talking about - you can't help but pay attention to him. I'm a diehard Celtics fan, absolutely despise the Knicks, and still tune in for Trautwig's Knicks pre-game show. The guy is good.
For people that aren't huge sports fans, you'll probably remember Trautwig for his coverage during this past summer's Olympics. NBC used him for tons of stuff, including all of Michael Phelps' swimming events their gymnastics coverage.
Anyway, when he isn't calling a game, Al Trautwig is a huge Lost junkie. Apparently someone at MSG Network caught on and now you can see all of Al's theories in a weekly video podcast.
Continue reading Al Trautwig knows more about Lost than you do - VIDEOS
Posted Mar 6th 2009 11:03AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Sports, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
If you've been waiting, hoping and praying for the next big ESPN movie blockbuster, then you have my deepest sympathies.
The network's film studio will produce two more made-for-TV movies about, let me guess, some sports hero's rise, fall, then rise again, then fall, then triumphant rise to redemption and glory in the annals of sports history.
The network plans to produce a film about Jim Jones Jr. and his rise to redemption through basketball, and a fallen firefighter who finds redemption by coaching a high school basketball team to a state title. It's bound to be redemptabulous!
Continue reading ESPN gets the greenlight to make more crappy sports movies
Posted Feb 27th 2009 2:03PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, OpEd, Celebrities, Reality-Free
I think I saw the perfect commercial today. I mean it. It was quite simply the perfect marriage of product, production, message and entertainment. It was better than anything I saw during the Oscars or the Super Bowl, and that's saying something. So, have I whetted your appetite?
The commercial was for Nike and it celebrated Tiger Woods return to active competition (he's been off for over a year rehabbing from knee surgery, in case you're not a casual golf/sports fan).
Continue reading Tiger and the perfect commercial - VIDEO
Posted Feb 20th 2009 4:28PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Sports, Industry, Cable/Satellite, Reality-Free
Warning: this post about the FBI's investigation into the Super Bowl porn snafu uses the word "probe" several times. Viewer discretion is advised.
Comcast's probe into the Super Bowl porno snafu has officially become an FBI probe.
A Fox affiliate in Tucson reported that the cable provider has asked the FBI to conduct their own probe into the 30 seconds of pornography that aired during Super Bowl XLIII.
Special Agent Manuel Johnson of the Phoenix FBI field office would only confirm for TV Squad that the probe is still ongoing.
Continue reading FBI joins Comcast's Super Bowl porn probe
Posted Feb 19th 2009 7:08PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Sports
First of all, you should all be ashamed of yourself for thinking that title means anything but
basketballer.
Former NBA player Duane Causwell and producer Mark Skeete are looking for
America's Top Baller. That's the (hopefully tentative) name of a new reality show that's in the works. A bunch of guys will compete to see who is the best amateur basketball player in the country. The winner gets a bunch of money, a sports agent, and their own sneaker. Of course, winning this show doesn't guarantee an NBA career, but I would imagine that if you win this show you're probably pretty talented when it comes to basketball so you'll at least get a tryout with some teams.
We have to come up with a better title though. How about
Dribble! or
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Basketball Player? Or maybe
Don't Forget The Lycra Shorts! I think
The People's Court would be a good title, but that's already taken.
[via
TV Tattle]
Posted Feb 3rd 2009 7:33PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, Celebrities, Reality-Free
As anyone who follows sports on TV knows, Bob Costas is a baseball guy. He loves, loves, loves the National Pastime. Therefore, since NBC has not had major league baseball for years, it's been rough on Bob. He's managed to keep his love for the game alive with books and speeches and as part of his work for HBO. Well, now he's going to be doing a lot more baseball.
Bob Costas is upping his commitment to the MLB Network, and leaving HBO. When the new baseball channel launched on January 1, 2009, included in the charter line up
All Time Games, the rebroadcasting of vintage baseball games with Costas as the host.
Continue reading Costas drops HBO for more MLB Network
Posted Feb 3rd 2009 12:45PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, Cable/Satellite, Reality-Free
So you've probably heard about the
30 seconds of porn (video is
unbelievably NSFW. You will be fired and embarrassed if you watch this video. Please don't show to your parents, kids, or clergy. Warning! Graphic!) that many Tucson residents saw during the Super Bowl. And if you lived in the area and actually saw it, you might be getting some money from Comcast.
The cable company has
decided to pay ten dollars to each person who was "affected" by the showing of porn during the game. I have no idea how you're supposed to prove you saw it or even what "affected" means. Annoyed? Ticked off? Embarrassed for your family? Aroused? Did it make you want to strangle a puppy?
Comcast, the nudity you showed on Super Bowl Sunday made me rethink my career path. I want my ten dollars!Comcast is still investigating what exactly happened, but they're pretty sure it was done by someone on purpose. Only people who didn't watch the game in HD actually saw it, which is a great ad for HDTV. Not sure if the spokesperson for the company helps by using the words "aggressively pursue" and "come to a resolution" in the statement.
Posted Feb 2nd 2009 2:10AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, OpEd, Video, Commercials, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
(Editor's Note: In anticipation of editing the Best/Worst Super Bowl ads, I paid close attention to the ads while I was watching and decided that some could go either way. Sure enough, Rich and Bob picked a couple of the same ads - Cash4Gold and CareerBuilder. Check out Rich's Best Super Bowl ads, and tell us which category you think the ads fall into ... Jane Boursaw)There weren't any
Super Bowl ads that made me want to kick in my television set this year, but I think that says more about the dullness of the ads rather than any brilliance. There weren't many memorable ads. I asked a friend of mine about the ads, and she said, "I think there was a cute one, I don't remember what it was."
Below are the five ads I chose as the worst of the night (not including the movie ads - those are in a different category and shouldn't be counted when you're judging the commercials). They range from confusing to lame to downright sad.
Continue reading The Super Bowl Commercials: The Worst - VIDEOS
Posted Feb 1st 2009 9:55AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Sports, Cancellations, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
God has offered us another conflicting sign that depending on who you ask, he either loves and respects us or is punishing us for doing something really, really bad. Check which chromosome they are carrying before you ask.
Lingerie Bowl VI, that pay-per-view hotbed of halftime entertainment for lonely fantasy football players with too much time and money on their hands,
lost their first venue in Florida awhile back. Then, the doomed franchise rose from the ashes like a mighty phoenix when the league's owners found a new venue at
a nudist colony in Tampa.
But just as that majestic phoenix spread its flaming wings and took to the skies once again, someone blasted it with a fire extinguisher. The game has been canceled for the second straight year because of
a dispute with their new venue. Continue reading Lingerie Bowl canceled, then renewed, then canceled again
Posted Jan 30th 2009 5:21PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, Commercials, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
NBC is airing the
Super Bowl this year. Sunday's all-day telecast (several hours of pre-game and probably another four or so for the game itself) will feature a wide variety of guests. Which of these guests are not going to be seen during the broadcast?
Keith Olbermann
Sarah Palin
Tina Fey
Top Chef's Tom Colicchio
Matt Lauer
Al Roker
Bruce Springsteen
Bob Costas
Jay Leno
Conan O'Brien
Continue reading Everyone in the world will be on NBC this Super Bowl Sunday
Posted Jan 22nd 2009 5:03PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Sports, Industry, Commercials, Web, Super Bowl, Reality-Free
Two things about Darren Rovell's CNBC.com story about the famous
Apple Macintosh Super Bowl ad shocked me:
- That it aired for the first and only time (at least as an ad, not a cultural icon) 25 years ago today, during the broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII (when the Los Angeles Raiders crushed the Washington Redskins, for you sports fans); and
- That the Super Bowl was once played as early as January 22.
The NFL season has slowly gotten longer and longer, hasn't it? Anyway, Rovell has an interesting interview with Mike Murray, Apple's marketing manager for the then-brand-new Mac. The best thing to come out of the interview was the fact that Apple's board of directors
hated the completed ad, which was inspired by George Orwell's novel
1984, and never wanted it to air. But they couldn't sell back their 60-second spot and had nothing else to put there.
So, basically, a lack of productivity on the part of Apple's marketing department allowed us to see what became the most famous Super Bowl ad ever. You can see the ad after the jump.
Continue reading Someone fetch me my cane: Apple's "1984" ad is 25 years old today - VIDEO
Posted Jan 19th 2009 10:02AM by Richard Keller
Filed under: Sports, News, OpEd, Reality-Free
Now, before you raise your pitchforks in a move to skewer me as a "liberal journalist," I just want to clarify what this item will be about. This is not an article about the job President Bush has done over the last eight years. You all have your differing opinions (which should be vented on politically-based sites) about how good or bad he did when it comes to policy. What I am going to talk about here is more of an image issue than a job performance one. We good? Good!
I'm going to ask a simple question: Was George W. Bush a good television President? Let's face it, the way that any famous person, whether they be Hollywood star or politician, is prepped for the TV cameras can make or break that person. Take the example of the Kennedy-Nixon televised debate in 1960. While many people have said that Nixon 'won' the debate on his statements, they also say that the way he looked in front of the cameras made voters uneasy about him and, eventually, cost him the election.
Continue reading Was President Bush a good television President? -- VIDEO
Posted Jan 18th 2009 11:06AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Sports, Cancellations, Reality-Free
If part of your Super Bowl plans consisted of watching the Lingerie Bowl on pay-per-view at halftime, then first of all find a girlfriend immediately and secondly, think again.
The St. Petersburg Times reports that the owners of the four-years-young full contact football floozy-off lost their playing field in the zero hour.
This, of course, is a double whammy for the Lingerie Bowl organizers who had to
cancel last year's game and hoped to make their big comeback with Super Bowl XLIII. They've also got less than three weeks to find a new venue, or the tears of hundreds of thousands of very, very, very lonely men will evaporate into sorrow vapor, form into a sadness cloud and create a tribulation hurricane the likes of which we have never seen.
Continue reading The Lingerie Bowl is without clothes, dignity and a venue
Posted Jan 16th 2009 2:02PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Sports, Late Night, Reality-Free
All you insomniacs, speed freaks and nightwatchmen (some of you might be all three) might have noticed David Letterman's picking on Mike Singletary. Given Letterman's latest ratings, that's probably not many of you.
Every week, Letterman has interrupted his show to conduct a live via satellite interview with San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Singletary about last Sunday's game. A Singletary impersonator appears in a split screen shot in full 49ers regalia and answers questions with the fluidity and grace of Ralphie May in ice skates.
How did this slice of sports satire get started, and how long will it stick around?
Continue reading Why is Letterman always picking on Singletary?
Posted Jan 7th 2009 8:02PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Sports, Commercials, Chuck, Reality-Free
We told you last month about
NBC's plan to plug their shows during the Super Bowl game on February 1. Now it turns out that they're also going to show some stuff in 3-D.
Two commercials during the game will be
broadcast in 3-D: one is for the new animated movie
Monsters vs. Aliens, and the other is another ad for Sobe that features wacky lizards dancing (because
last year's ad was so great?). If, however, you're not a fan of commercials but are a fan of wearing red and blue eyewear, you're in luck: the episode of
Chuck that airs the night after the game will also be shown in 3-D. You can get the glasses (thanks to Intel) in Sobe displays in supermarkets and other stores.
3-D movies and shows are always disappointing. For every effect that makes you smile, there are 27 that are just really lame. Besides, I think
Heroes might be more fun in 3-D. I think it lends itself to 3-D more than a show like
Chuck does. We'll probably have these silly scenes of Chuck throwing a cell phone towards the camera or someone suddenly using a javelin.
[via
AdFreak]
« Previous Page | Next Page »
TV Squad Ten: Top Ten ESPN shows from worst to first
Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
Have any questions for Vik Sahay of Chuck? Ask them here!
