TVSquad

As we do every year, we here at TV Squad are reminiscing on the top TV news stories of the year. What has 2008 brought us? Well, while we were all complaining about the lack of quality shows that debuted this season, we may have missed the second-year shows going right down the crapper.

Let's start over at ABC. Three very promising shows premiered last season -- Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, and Pushing Daisies -- to praise from the critics and buzz from the viewers. Dirty Sexy Money, with the cast that could be someone's fantasy cast, started off strong. There was a mystery, unique and complex characters, and some integrity. With the writer's strike went the integrity and the ratings, and recently, we got the news that no more episodes of Dirty Sexy Money would be ordered.

I recall a time when Ron Howard was diligently trying to distance himself from the two television icons that made him famous: Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham (from The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days, respectively). Now, thanks to Funny Or Die and in an effort to get his candidate of choice (Barack Obama, if you didn't know) elected, he is prepared to step back into those two roles. And to do so, he takes Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler with him.

I didn't really grow up with Andy Griffith, but it was quite the nostalgia trip to see Ron Howard and Henry Winkler as Richie and the Fonz again. Winkler seemed to just slip back into the character despite all the years.

There is definitely a generational gap with this presidential election, with the elderly favoring McCain and the youth favoring Obama. I'm generalizing of course, but it certainly seems like the campaign advertising is geared that way. One piece of evidence is two cast members of Gossip Girl appearing in an anti-McCain ad.

Granted, since the elderly isn't exactly the target demographic of Gossip Girl, I doubt anyone's grandma is going to stop voting for McCain because Blake Lively asked her to. I doubt said grandma even knows who Blake Lively is. At least the ad acknowledges that most of the demographic for the show aren't old enough to vote and therefore have to convince their parents. When have parents ever listened to their children with regards to their voting preferences?

The campaign is kind of reminiscent of Sarah Silverman's "Great Schlep" Obama ad. That one garnered a response by comedian Jackie Mason. I wonder if this advertisement will get a similar response. If so, will the response be done by the cast of Matlock?

I'm going to share my Emmy thoughts, but there's so much to digest, I figured I'd space it out a bit. If you missed the announcement, check out Bob's live blog.

First thought: Why do I feel like I did when the Daytime Emmy nominations were announced? Oh yeah, because all these nominations are predictable! Where's the surprises, where's the nominations from out of left field? These nominations lack the element of shock, at least to me. Here's my thoughts, plus I dug through the whole list and found some other interesting items...

I don't know about you, but I stopped really caring about the Summer Olympics when the Dream Team fell apart. It is long, often boring and flooded with too much commentary. SHUT UP! I just want to watch the athletes do their thing!

Well it turns out I must be the only one complaining, because NBC plans on covering 3,600 hours of Summer Games across multiple networks. That is literally 150 days of continuous coverage. Five months of non-stop Olympic action. Almost half a freakin' year of Olympics? That may be a bit too much.

Is a series-ending black-out even more vibrantly black in high-definition? Well, subscribers of HBO and Cinemax will find out next year when the entire multiplex of pay-cable channels goes hi-def.

According to Bill Nelson, chairman and CEO of the networks, the conversion to HD for all 26 HBO and Cinemax channels will begin later this year and be completed by the 2nd quarter of 2008.

As we all know, the Stephen King / Peter Straub novel The Talisman is being made into a six-part miniseries for TNT for the 2008 season.

Now TNT has told advertisers that the Stephen Spielberg-produced miniseries could also become a regular series in 2009.

The original novel, the first collaboration between King and Straub, focused on a young boy named Jack Sawyer who flips back and forth between two worlds: our world and a mystical but malevolent world known as the Territories as he attempts to secure the titular talisman that may save his dying mother. A sequel, Black House, followed many years later. Both stories also tie into King's larger Dark Tower series, which may also be developed for television.

John Kerry made an important announcement about his decision to not run in 2008... Well, actually, it wasn't a real announcement, it was just Kerry completing his concession speech.

Wolf Blitzer interviewed Vice President Cheney... Of course, Blitzer wanted answers and Cheney wanted to avoid giving answers, especially when it came to his pregnant daughter, Mary, who is in a gay relationship. I don't think Jon even needs to do Cheney jokes anymore... All he needs to do is show a clip and then quack for, like, five minutes.

With the aid of Roget's monosaurus (ha!), Bush has prepared yet another stirring State of the Union! That montage of the president's past addresses was amazing. And by "amazing", I mean "kind of depressing".

Senior Political Analyst Jason Jones talked about what Bush meant about the average American's sacrifice: peace of mind. When that robot unexpectedly turned around and started talking, I was surprised that Jones didn't know what to do. The Daily Show should hold improv workshopping for all of their correspondents, heh.

Rumor has it that The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is in talks with the Washington Post to provide online content for the Post's 2008 election coverage. Neither Comedy Central nor the WashingtonPost.com's editor would confirm the story. As Daily Show followers may remember, Indecision 2004 was released as a DVD and garnered the show's writers and correspondents tremendous critical acclaim. Stewart's deal with the Post would have him providing written, not video, content to the site. It would be a huge coup for the paper and would make it much more difficult for Stewart to maintain his apolitical, "I'm an entertainer; I don't influence the news" claim.

Page Six in the New York Post is reporting that Diane Sawyer will take over for Charlie Gibson as anchor of ABC's World News after the 2008 presidential election, at least according to industry insiders. Gibson took the job in June knowing that he'd step down after that election, but his replacement wasn't named. The choice of Sawyer is curious, since she's only about two-and-a-half years younger than Gibson (but looks a whole heck of a lot better). You'd think ABC would go younger with the next anchor.

Anyway, the article goes on to speculate what Sawyer will do in the meantime. One theory is that she'll take over hosting duties for Nightline, with Kate Snow, Daryn Kagan, or Campbell Brown taking over for her on Good Morning America. But, remember the source, folks: Page Six's batting average on things like this is around utility-infielder level, so take this whole thing with a lump of salt.

[via Mediabistro]

NBC Universal announced yesterday that it's begun to sell reruns of the USA Network show Monk to stations in top markets, with episodes to begin running in the fall of 2008. According to this press release, the network has sold the rights to weekend reruns to markets in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Of course, the NYC and LA markets are both NBC-owned stations, but still...

Anyway, the reruns are intended to be shown on the weekend, which has been the model lately for one-hour shows in syndication (for instance, WABC in New York shows ER reruns on Saturdays at 12:30 AM... at least, that's the way it was the last I checked). I can envision Monk being on at like noon, though, as a nice transition between the kids' programming and golf. I'd definitely watch it as I tried to rub the Friday night out of my eyes.

[via The Futon Critic]

We've reported on every single little rumor that's come out about Futurama's return. We've asked Billy West, who couldn't tell us anything definitive one way or the other. But -- finally! -- we have some confirmation that Futurama is indeed coming back.

And we can thank Craig Ferguson for it.

When Katey Sagal visited The Late Late Show the other day, she told Craig that the show is coming back to Comedy Central in 2008 for at least 13 episodes (I was watching that appearance, too. Must have slept through that part). Don Kaplan of the New York Post confirmed this; his sources told him that all the primary voice actors signed new deals this week. Also according to the article, FOX may have the option to air the new episodes, but probably won't. The new episodes will also come out on DVD after they air.

I just have one reaction: Huzzah!

[thanks to Alex of BuzzerBlog for the tip.]

(UPDATE: John DiMaggio (Bender) confrims the story even more below. And yes, it's really him.)

Jon Stewart attempted to summarize Bush's speech, despite taping The Daily Show a few hours before the speech even aired. Bush has decided to tap Mexicans' phones. Donning his ever-accurate Bush impression, Jon said, "Jose hasn't been using his phone... I think he might have made the move North."

Back in June of 2005 Bob Sassone reported that a Star Wars TV Series was in the works. The details are now a little more clearer. As of this writing producer Richard McCallum is reporting that 100 hour-long episodes of the show will be ready for broadcast beginning in 2008. As mentioned previously the story will take place in a 20-year span between movie chapter 3 (Revenge of the Sith) and chapter 4 (A New Hope). However, not much more is known about the series, other than it will utilize the special effects that were prevalent in the last three Star Wars movies. There is no news at this time as to what outlet in America will be broadcasting these shows (although, I wouldn't be surprised if Sci-Fi Channel picked it up).

We all need to pray that the acting will be less stilted and that it will have move of the atmosphere of the first three movies. Most importantly, we need to pray extra hard that Jar Jar Binks is not in any one of the 100 episodes!