TVSquad

Here are the weekly TV ratings, by number of viewers.

What, no America's Got Talent in the top spot or Wipeout in the #2 spot this week? Nope, thanks to FOX's All-Star Game. Wipeout fell all the way to #7, beaten by repeats of Criminal Minds and CSI.

CBS' Flashpoint came in at #18, which explains why they moved Swingtown to Fridays at 10 and put Flashpoint on Thursdays at 10.

1. MLB All-Star Game (FOX)
2. America's Got Talent (NBC)
3. MLB All-Star Pre-Game Show (FOX)

The Teen Choice Awards will feature a dance battle between two of the toughest, roughest, street-est (not a word, I know) dance crews around. No, Lil C and his crew won't be there crumping. Miley Cyrus and Mandy Jiroux's M&M Cru will battle ACDC, the dance crew featuring Jon M. Chu and Adam Sevani of Step Up 2: The Streets. The two crews are BFFs and they challenged each other back in April. A more heated rivalry has not been seen since TuPac and Biggie. Yeah! Totally street. "Street" is even in the name of the movie.

The Teen Choice Awards have some other performers and appearances lined up too. But they're not "street" so who cares? Shia LaBeouf, David Archuleta, James Marsden, Sophia Bush, Josh Holloway, Scarlett Johansson, Zac Efron, Pink, JoJo, Kristen Bell, and Hayden Panettiere are some of the other names previously announced. Mariah Carey is slated to perform her new single, "I'll Be Lovin' You Long Time."

The Teen Choice Awards will air on August 4th at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.

If you're one of those Whedon fans that gets a throbbing vein in your noggin when the subject of Firefly, Fox, and the original pilot come up, you might want to have a seat before you continue. It seems that the newest member of the Whedonverse, Dollhouse, is getting a new pilot.

As Whedon explains in a post over at whedonesque.com, the original episode "...didn't bring the visceral pop the network had expected from the script. The network was cool about it, but not sure how to come out of the gate with the ep." If you read that and immediately think of the network wanting a different opening for Firefly, I can't blame you, but it doesn't seem as bad as all that this time.

(S04E17) Well, we've certainly moved on to the next part of the competition. America decides. And we don't have to listen to cranky Nigel or that lunatic Mary anymore. Lil C, however, I will listen to. I thought he was a great judge last night. And his comments tonight were good, too. Speaking of Wednesday night, the big announcement was that Comfort would be replacing Jessica (who has a couple broken ribs).

But we got another big announcement last night -- So You Think You Can Dance received four Emmy nominations. The make-up team was nominated as well as three choreographers. Wade Robson's Hummingbird & Flower piece got a nod as did Mandy Moore's Table routine (the one to "Sweet Dreams") and Shane Sparks' Transformers number to "Fuego." Mia Michaels is crying in corner somewhere. You'll get 'em next year Mia.

Here are the weekly TV ratings, by number of viewers.

Doing the ratings during the summer is rather boring. America's Got Talent and Wipeout are on top again, and the rest of it is the usual mix of other reality shows and game shows and the CBS lineup of crime crime crime, which even gets big ratings when they're repeated, for some reason. Even the newest crime drama Flashpoint grabbed the #15 slot with its premiere, and it's on Friday nights.

1. America's Got Talent (NBC)
2. Wipeout (ABC)

As usual, FOX leaves the best press conference (at least as far as I was concerned) for last. I sat through Karl Rove and Chris Wallace getting contentious with the critics near the end of the FOX News panel (more on that later), Jerry O'Connell and the cast of Do Not Disturb strain to answer questions about a show whose clip reel wasn't all that funny, and the millionaires from Secret Millionaire talk about being poor for a week. All of it was made worth it (and, really, seeing Rove start to get annoyed near the end was fun to watch) so we could see the final panel: all the producers of all FOX's Sunday animated shows.

The first person who spoke up, not surprisingly, was Seth MacFarlane. "Is this where Karl Rove sat? Because I don't want to get AIDS." Wow. Unfortunately, no line that was said after that was as shocking or funny. But it was all still pretty good.

Including gay characters on your TV show is good, unless it's two lesbians who fall in love with a straight man, as they do in a storyline on New Amsterdam. FOX learned that the hard way when they received a failing grade from GLAAD (The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) on their second annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index. The index measures the "quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television."

Even though GLAAD gave FOX a failing grade, the network's cable counterpart, FX, received top honors for cable channels. The advocacy group praised them for including the most original programming that featured members LGBT community. Special notice was given to Nip/Tuck, which had a gay, lesbian, or bisexual character in every episode. Rescue Me's commitment ceremony storyline was also viewed favorably by the group.

Between the sessions for So You Think You Can Dance and Fringe, FOX Entertainment president Kevin Reilly happily took answers from the gathered critics. Perhaps the most interesting piece of news he unleashed on us was that the network is officially going to have two development seasons: the traditional one that ends in May with the upfronts, and a new one that ends in December, which will position the network to air pilots in the January/February time frame, a time Reilly called the network's "high season." (Which it is, of course, given the presence of the BCS and American Idol).

In fact, Reilly has eight pilots currently in development for consideration in December, far more than he had for this past May, due to the writers' strike and other reasons. Other interesting bits after the jump.

A few years ago I introduced on this blog the concept of Fanesia (sorry for the weird formatting on that page, not sure what happened), where a fan chooses to get amnesia over a plot point that happened on a TV show. Examples I used before include The Lone Gunmen dying on The X-Files, Toby being the leak on The West Wing, the entire last episode of Seinfeld, and Mark Greene dying on ER. Nope, in my mind, those things never happened.

Here are five more Fanesia moments, involving such shows as Will & Grace, Guiding Light, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But does he swear? If he doesn't, then a big component of the TV show is lost, wouldn't you say?

Yesterday marked the release of Ubisoft's Hell's Kitchen: The Video Game (the FOX show has been advertising the game for the past several weeks). Chef Ramsay does the voice for his character, and the game actually sounds rather cool, if it works the way it's described. Players go through three rounds of cooking (preparing the food, cooking it, and then the service), and Ramsay judges you. He can shut down the kitchen if you're not doing well, and you even get an "Advanced" mode where the customers become jerks and send the food back. Go through certain levels and you get access to special Gordon Ramsay recipes.

Hole in the Wall, this summer's latest Japanese game show ripoff, has announced its hosts. Actress Brooke Burns and L.A. weather anchor Mark Thompson will be presiding over Fox's version of human Tetris. Both have game show experience, with Burns having served as the host of Dog Eat Dog and Thompson providing the voiceover for Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Hole is being brought to America by American Idol producers FremantleMedia North America and came to be after clips of the Japanese version became hugely popular on YouTube. Ellen DeGeneres also got a kick out of the Japanese competition, not only featuring several clips on her talk show, but even going so far as having audience members participate in her own version.

(S04E14) Tonight's "jidges" included the return to the panel of Mia Michaels. In a reversal of Kristin's thinking last week, I'm actually disappointed to see Michaels joining Nigel and Mary on the dais this week for two reasons. First, I think she does some amazingly bizarre things with the dancers and I find myself always incredibly curious and mesmerized by her choreography, even if there are those times where I don't get it. But even more importantly, I hate hate HATE her as a judge. She's completely subjective and criticizes the most nonsensical things.

And then tonight she completely surprised me by being generally pretty solid before derailing again to the point I wanted to throttle. But still she can't help but get all ethereal and bizarre leaving confusion in their wake. How do you learn and grow from a comment like "I wanted more movement"? And how do you respond to what was said to Will (which I'll get to later)? Overall, the night wasn't as strong as prior episodes, but there were still some gems among all that rough.

Along with running three shows on Fox (Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show), Seth McFarlane is also getting into online content development. Even worse, he's doing it for a Fox competitor.

McFarlane will be developing fifty two-minute animated vignettes for Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy which will be distributed via Google's AdSense network (a competitor for Fox's Myspace).

The article goes into the corporate issues behind this strange move and asks a few good questions: why didn't Fox get a first-look offer at this idea? If they did, why did they pass on it? It seems inexpensive enough to produce and given the popularity of the creator, it seems a no-brainer.

Now that the Democratic party has decided to present the final night of their convention from Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium in Denver before as many as 80,000 enthusiastic voters -- a venue that will underscore Senator Barack Obama's skill as a speaker -- the networks are deciding how they want to cover the event. Will the big three give the Democrats the entire night? One hour, two hours?

Will ABC and CBS be compelled to cover the night, when NBC and Fox have the option of using their cable outlets and keep entertainment on the broadcast side?

Here are the weekly TV ratings, by number of viewers.

NBC must be really happy that it's summer. With their reality shows and reality competitions, it's the only way they can get the top spot in the ratings. ABC's Wipeout continues to be strong, though I Survived A Japanese Game Show must be losing a lot of viewers. I'm really surprised that repeats of shows like Criminal Minds, 60 Minutes, and all of the CSIs continue to do so well in the summer.

1. America's Got Talent (NBC)
2. Wipeout (ABC)