TVSquad

The marketing for this show has been relentless, and that's an understatement. It's easier to shake the SARS virus in a back alley chicken hut in downtown Hong Kong than it is to shake an ad for The Cougar.

One of my personal rules (number one is "thou who smelt it, dealt it") is the harder the advertising, the worse a show is bound to be. TV Land hasn't just aired a commercial for The Cougar every five seconds in between their few remaining watchable shows. They air it on other networks. They plaster ads all over the Internet. If the economy dips any lower, they'll probably start tattooing ads to people's foreheads.

In an odd bit of network news, The CW nixed a lesbian kiss planned between Veronica Mars guest-star Patty Hearst and actress Keri Pratt. Hearst, playing a trustee to the fictional Hearst College on Tuesday night's Mars episode, didn't get to lock lips with her lady love due to an intervention on the part of the suits. Reporting to the New York Daily News, Hearst said, "I meet Keri and I'm like, 'Hello.' We didn't know until we were on the set we couldn't actually kiss. We were all set for that."

This is just weird. Didn't The CW get the memo that lesbians kissing in primetime are hot? It's gay men kissing that are supposed to get the patriarchy all nervous. I guess when they figured out that it was the 52 year-old, Symbionese Liberation Army kidnap victim Hearst getting down Sappho-style and not uber-hot Kristin Bell they freaked. It just doesn't have the same sweeps promo potential as "Veronica macks on Mac."

Maybe all that blogging is starting to tire Meredith Vieira out. The New York Daily News is reporting that the syndicated version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire will be using celebrity hosts to fill in for Vieira, who is pulling double duty with Millionaire and the Today show. "They're just filling in for a couple of days," a show spokeswoman tells reporter Richard Huff.

When the spokeswoman says "a few days," she means a few days of production; because up to five episodes can be taped a day, that means the guest hosts might host in one-week blocks. No real word on who the celebrities are or when their episodes will air. Judging by Vieira's taping schedule, in which the entire season will be completed by December, those weeks could air anywhere.

Think Regis might show up? I wouldn't mind seeing him in his old chair for a week.

The Bravo reality show Tabloid Wars hasn't been doing too stellar in the Mondays at 9pm time slot, so the network is moving the show to 7pm for the final few episodes.

I haven't seen one minute of this show, which is surprising to me, since if there's one reality show I thought I'd be interested in would be one that centered around news or journalism. But I think the overdose of reality shows we experience in general might make viewers not want to watch even the shows they might really like.

This guy, however, live blogs the episodes.