TVSquad

NBC just sent me a series of photos showing the interviews that will be conducted during the network's "A Woman's Nation" series. As part of the series, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC personalities will interview each other about "the state of women in American life," as the accompanying press release has stated.

In most of the pics, the pairs -- Andrea Mitchell/Rachel Maddow, Kathie Lee Gifford/Jenna Bush Hager, Mika Brzezinski/Hoda Kotb, Natalie Morales/Suze Orman -- sit on the comfy chairs, legs crossed. As you can see from the pic above, Ann Curry, who's paired up with Meredith Vieira, wants to be different: shoes off, feet tucked under her rear end. She's really into this conversation, know what I mean? She's listening. She's comfortable.

It's so Ann Curry, isn't it?

This week on The View, the ladies were talking about how to avoid getting the swine flu. The discussion began with ways to handle (or not handle, as the case may be) guests, to reduce the amount of germs passed from one human to another. Or something.

Anyway, during the course of the bit, Joy offered several options, including the elbow-bump, the knuckle-bump, and -- getting progressively worse -- the hand-shake, the body hug, an air kiss, and then a full-out kiss on the mouth. She proceeds to demonstrate this on Whoopi Goldberg.

My question is this: Why do the ladies of The View always end up kissing each other on the mouth? Ok, "always" is a pretty strong word, but there was the Meredith Vieira / Barbara Walters smooch, and I'm sure others in between that one and this one between Joy and Whoopi.

(S04E10) "We've saved the best for last." - Nick about this being the last audition episode

The last America's Got Talent audition episode not only featured loads of good performances -- sadly, most shown in a quick montage -- but also an interview with Britain's Got Talent's Susan Boyle. The "Susan Boyle - Daring to Dream" interview with Meredith Vieira depicted well Susan's path to fame and her life struggles, but I would have preferred to have seen Boyle perform live on the show during one of the performance episodes in August. Then the contestants could have interacted with someone who went very far in the competition and be inspired by her story, as well as show that everyday people who truly have talent can become stars.

Before we get to my two cents about tonight's performances, I wanted to point out that contestant Shaunie, who performed a unique singing number in last night's episode, dropped by the comments section in my review of Audition show 9 to share the link to his YouTube channel so you can watch more of his talent.

If you tuned in to Today this morning expecting to see Matt Lauer, you were disappointed. But Matt wasn't off on another world wind tour of Asia or South America or the Baja Peninsula.

No, the intrepid NBC host had a serious bike accident which sent him flying over the handlebars. According to co-host Meredith Vieira, Matt was biking at his Long Island home over the weekend when he had a run-in with a deer!

Seeing Brian Williams sitting next to Matt Lauer on Today was a bit disconcerting, wasn't it? I knew NBC was having some budget problems, but I didn't realize how thin of a bench they actually had. Williams subbed in for Meredith Vieira, but only stayed on the show for an hour, as I'd imagine he'd rather spend the 8:00 hour putting together tonight's Nightly News lineup than talk about ten ways to keep your car running or what Drew Peterson ate for breakfast.

Anyway, Williams was at times a bit too stuffy for the morning gig, but his famous sense of humor showed through a number of times, including the clips after the jump. The first one is a clip reel of some strangely homoerotic interplay between Williams and Lauer, which Al Roker called "a Whitman's Sampler of man candy." The second one is of Lauer, Williams, and Natalie Morales making their Oscar picks.

Something about Today's Ann Curry has always struck me as odd. Don't get me wrong; she seems like a nice woman and a hell of a journalist. But something about the way she answers questions, how she gets chummy and touchy-feely with people she's just met, and how she always chooses to go on needlessly life-threatening assignments makes me think that she's not quite all there.

Her November climb up Mount Kilimanjaro furthered this notion. Yes, it was nice to see how the glaciers on the African mountain were affected by climate change, but couldn't we have seen it using an airplane and a high-powered spy camera? Did Ann and her crew really need to climb the toughest route up the mountain during the most treacherous time of the year to get the story?

Well, it was absolutely necessary, as she tells TV Week in an entertainingly wacky interview about the assignment.

Anyone who's read TV Squad for any period of time knows that we have a bunch of game show fans here. OK, maybe it's just me and Bob. But we've been watching game shows for years and know what works and what doesn't. A challenging premise that allows the viewer to play along? That works. Picking numbered cases at random? That doesn't (at least not after the first five episodes, anyway).

So, when I heard about the changes that were coming to the syndicated Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, I wanted to reserve judgment until I saw them. Now that Meredith Vieira's smiling face has graced my TV for the seventh season opener, I can say that I like most of the changes ... except for one. The new graphics and music are fine, the new lifelines make more sense (more on those in a second). But now there's a clock.

Yeah, you heard me; the show that once let contestants take as much time as they wanted to answer very tough questions now adds the pressure of a time limit. And that's not a good thing.

If you watched the network morning shows this morning, you've seen the shocking sight of the Big Three evening news anchors -- Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and Charlie Gibson -- appearing on each show ... together! Gasp! How can that happen? Don't the networks have contract clauses and armies of lawyers to prevent these things from happening?

Well, I guess the lawyers tend to stay home when a good cause is involved. The anchors went on the news shows this morning to announce a cross-network telethon called Stand Up for Cancer Stand Up To Cancer, which will air on NBC, CBS, and ABC on September 5. The one-hour show will have musical performances and testimonials from all three anchors about the need for furthering cancer research (remember Couric's husband and sister both died from various forms of the disease). Money raised by the telethon will go to a number of organizations and research groups.

Mark your calendars kids, or not, Meredith Vieira is heading back to The View, for one day anyway, on October 8th. She'll be there to promote her Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game show and a DVD game that is coming out based on the show. I always seem to forget that she even does that because, man, I just don't get the attraction to Millionaire. It's just so dang slow. How that show made it while Beat The Geeks disappeared just boggles me.

Anyway, I suspect it will be all warm and fuzzy with a lot of palms getting sore as the whole group pats each other on the back for all the wonderfulness they are all putting out in the world, or something like that. An entirely different vibe than what we would get if this headline was Rosie returning to the view. Or even Star Jones, for that matter.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, "If you sit by an inkwell, you'll get dirty." It certainly seems that even if you are slightly involved with the juggernaut that is Idol, you will achieve great fame overnight.

Ashley is the latest person to receive this kind of peripheral American Idol fame. The last person I can think of that enjoyed a similar amount of success is William Hung.

Yesterday, little Ashley made her national pop culture icon debut on The Today Show with Meredith Vieira and elaborates why being such a "Fanjaya" brings her to tears.

The best part of the interview is when Meredith attributes Sanjaya's survival on the show to her devotion to the contestant. The girl turns out to be way smarter than her deluded mother, and says she doesn't think so but is instantly refuted by her Mom.

I smell a stage mom. Sheesh. Get your own passion for your own Idol.

I like Meredith Vieira. I really, really do. I've heaped praise upon her in this space in the past, and I'm sure that I'm going to heap more praise on her in the future. But she completely dropped the ball on the Today show this morning when she interviewed the three climbers that were rescued from Mt. Hood a couple of days ago. She asked them a lot of questions about how they survived, and how their dog Velvet helped them stay warm. But she didn't ask the one question I'm sure every non-hiker in the country was curious about:

What the hell were they doing up there on the mountain to begin with?

"Dance Dance Resolution": Man. All that talk about disappointing Davey Crockett really broke my heart. And all that talk about Wicked made my inner theatre geek laugh... and my inner normal civilian cry a little bit for the state of our Congress. Did a cell phone really go off at the end of that guy's speech? If so... Wow.

Or maybe America isn't asking why. If the ratings are there, then they must be watching. But I have to wonder: what the hell do these people do that they are watching so many hours of The Today Show in the morning? I mean, I work from home and write about TV, and even I can't imagine having any interest in it. Though I guess I'm not the demographic they're shooting for.

But it's probably coming in 2007. Matt and Meredith won't host it though, and neither would Al or Ann. It would probably go to Access Hollywood's Billy Bush and maybe a co-anchor.

If they actually do a fourth hour of the show, I really hope they have more celebrity interviews! And cooking demonstations! And maybe makeup tips and fashion segments!

Meredith Vieira has been on the Today show for almost three months now. And, I don't know what you folks think, but to me it looks like the show has barely skipped a beat. We all knew that Vieira was a pro with an easygoing, self-effacing manner and a good ability to deal with hard news as well as soft subjects. But it seems like, since she replaced Katie Couric, the show has been clicking along without much disruption.

Jim Bell, the show's executive producer, feels the same way, as he told David Bauder of the AP. "It's been too smooth. It's been too good. As great a story as it has been for us, it's just been seamless and that may be why it hasn't drawn as much attention."

Interesting piece over at Seed magazine. A Boston University researcher decided to try out for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and used his training in learning, memory, and decision-making to win $500,000.

Ogi Ogas describes his thought process for each question he got, and how he got the answer that he chose for each question. How he would use bits and pieces of knowledge and what he knew was right about an answer to put together the pieces that would give him the final answer, like a memory detective. There's also a bit of intuition involved, as with the question of the first produce that Sears sold in its catalog. Ogas had no idea what the answer was, but for some reason, immediately, "watches" came into his mind. Was it some sort of information that he had read quickly once and had been stored in his memory bank? I wonder if intuition isn't pure intuition at all, but a decision we come to from what we've learned in the past and stored. I'm not sure if this explains why I can't remember to pay certain bills every single month but I remember the Bionic Woman's telephone number (555-2368), but it's fascinating.

Of course, if various aspects of memory and learning are the keys to winning Millionaire, I guess luck and a lack of greed is the secret to winning Deal Or No Deal.