TVSquad

The Disney Channel has ordered six additional episodes for the third season of their ridiculously successful series Hannah Montana. The series stars teen icon Miley Cyrus in an effort to maximize her exposure before she is sacrificed for the harvest.

This brings the number of total episodes of the season to 30. When does any show get thirty episodes per season? The number I've always understood to be the maximum is 24 (and that's only for a series that is actually called 24). My guess is they're trying to wring as much they can from Miley before she goes to her inevitable solo career. Perhaps Disney should just create a new character for the franchise: Miley Mouse.

As a side note, Disney has also ordered more episodes of The Suite Life on Deck, a series I've never heard of but I'm sure parents of very young children will be sick of before too long.

We have a TV Royalty category here at TV Squad, and if there's anyone who worked in television and deserved the honor it's Bill Melendez.

Melendez was an animator for Walt Disney Studios in the 1930 and 40s, working on such classic movies as Fantasia and Pinocchio and Mickey Mouse shorts, then went on to make tons of movies, cartoons and commercials (he worked on many Bugs Bunny shorts and other famous cartoons) for well-known companies such as United Productions of America (where he was an animator on Gerald McBoing McBoing) and Playhouse Pictures. He then met Charles Schulz in 1959 and went on to animate (and often direct and produce) most of the Peanuts TV specials, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and many, many others. Many people don't know this but he was also the voice of both Snoopy and Woodstock (they didn't talk, of course, but he did all of the howls and other noises). He worked on TV versions of Cathy and Garfield too.

Industry staple magazine TV Guide will be co-opted by the Walt Disney-owned ABC network for its August 25th issue. The issue will have 21 ad pages, all of which will be promoting ABC. It will also contain a DVD with a sneak-peak at ABC's fall shows.

To me, this willingness of TV Guide to prostitute itself out for an issue is an example of how print media is in decline and how desperate TV Guide must be for advertising dollars. On the other hand, TV Guide is released with such frequency that people will likely forget such an advertisement onslaught by a single network by the following week. If CBS wanted to do the exact same thing the following week, I doubt TV Guide would say "no."

If you're an ABC fan, this issue could become something of a collectible. If you're not, then it'll probably just be annoying. With the existence of the Internet, does anybody even subscribe to TV Guide anymore?

The buzz about ABC's Oscar broadcast is starting in earnest, and yesterday it was announced that Kristin Chenoweth, the adorable Olive Snook on Pushing Daisies, has been tapped to sing one of the Academy Award nominated songs, "That's How You Know" from the film Enchanted, according to the Baltimore Sun. Kristin will be joined by Marlon Saunders, who played the Central Park Calypso singer in the movie. By the by, Enchanted's star, Amy Adams, will also be singing on the show. She's doing, "Happy Working Song," another nominated song from the Disney hit. FYI, that's the sing-along tune she did in the film with cockroaches, rats and other happy vermin. You can just imagine Walt Disney spinning in his grave, can't you?

Eli Stone, the new ABC legal drama, is already in trouble. This is interesting news since the first show hasn't even premiered yet. The trouble is stemming from the American Academy of Pediatrics, who want the first episode of the series canceled because it feeds into the myth that vaccines can cause autism.

In the series premiere, which airs after Lost this Thursday, lawyer-turned-reluctant-prophet Eli Stone argues in court that a flu vaccine made a child autistic. Dr. Renee R. Jenkins, president of the AAP, said that both ABC and its parent company, Walt Disney, are being irresponsible by airing the show because it will be perpetuating the vaccine=autism belief. Dr. Jenkins added that the network would share in the responsibility for the suffering and deaths if parents who watched the program chose to deny their children immunizations. Dr. Jenkins also mentioned that many viewers trust the health information presented on fictional television shows.

So I was watching an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show this weekend. What does this have to do with Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Firefly mastermind Joss Whedon? Read on.

The episode I was watching was "Scratch My Car and Die," the one where Rob buys a new sports car and Laura accidentally scratches it while shopping. Watching the credits (I often watch the credits to see who was in an episode and then I run to the comptuer to check the IMdB to see what else they've done, if they're still alive, etc) I noticed that it was written by someone named John Whedon. Now, Whedon isn't the most common name, and he did work in television, so I checked and...yup, it's Joss Whedon's grandfather! He wrote another episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show and also wrote episodes of Leave It To Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Wonderful World of Disney, and several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show (though it's hard to figure out how many exactly with the IMdB's odd credits system).

Whedon died in 1991.

Awhile back, cartoon historian Jerry Beck mentioned the upcoming book Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman. Beck was able to get his hand on an advanced copy, not a small feat considering the book isn't even available in the United States yet (keep an eye on the Indiana University Press site, though).

As some of you know, I loves me some classic animation, but I've always been more of a fan of Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera than Walt Disney. Nevertheless, I don't think one can ignore that Disney helped open a lot of doors for other animators and studios, many of which went on to carve out their own niche far removed from the Disney aesthetic.

The book covers every "Silly Symphony" created by the studio in great detail, or so says Beck, who, unlike me, has actually seen the book. I've always enjoyed Beck's writing, not to mention his audio commentaries on the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" DVDs, so when he says this book is a "must have" for animation fans, I take him at his word.

And speaking of "Silly Symphonies," I've placed one of my favorites, "The Skeleton Dance" after the jump. Enjoy.

Robert Smigel says that he meant nothing nasty by lampooning Disney and the Disney Vault on last week's Saturday Night Live. (YouTube has it, for now.)

"I didn't really look at it as mean-spirited...I know that some of these things that I talk about in that cartoon aren't true. I don't really know that anything in there is true."

And why the dig at Mickey Mouse?

"I never found Mickey Mouse funny...I have to admit that."

I can't wait for The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse, on NBC, April 29, at 11:30.

[via TV Tattle]

It was announced today that the former chief of Walt Disney Co., Michael Eisner, is to have his own CNBC talk show. Aptly called Conversations with Michael Eisner, the show will feature interviews with "business, entertainment or political leaders, with a focus on creativity and innovation". CNBC president Mark Hoffman approached Eisner about having his own show after he saw Eisner fill in for Charlie Rose on PBS in October. Hm. I guess he did a pretty good job... I'm not quite sure how he'll do as a talk show host because I've never seen him on TV except during The Wonderful World of Disney and during various news reports. Did anyone see his fill-in spot for Charlie Rose?

I nominate Mickey Mouse for the first interview candidate. Let's start things out nice and awkward.