TVSquad

One of the greatest -- and most resilient -- characters in the history of Saturday Night Live is making a comeback. Or maybe he's just taking a paycheck. Mr. Bill is the star of a new MasterCard debit card "Priceless" commercial. He's going to depict how even someone like Mr. Bill is tough enough to survive the rough financial times in which we live, just by using his MasterCard debit card.

The new 30-second commercials will begin airing on June 9, showing Mr. Bill as a typical guy heading in to work at the office. Naturally, along the commute, he stops for coffee and Mr. Hand scolds him accidentally. At the gym, he's catapulted off the treadmill. Later, an briefcase opens and launches him out the window. Naturally, through it all, Mr. Bill endures. Being made of clay has its pluses.

The buttoned down mind of Bob Newhart is coming back to TV. In August, Hallmark Channel will present Newhart in Herb's Murders, a two-hour original TV movie. And that's not all. Hallmark, which yesterday announced Jane Seymour in a detective movie called Dear Prudence, has other old TV favorites slated for original telefilms.

There's former 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins will star in The Ride of Her Life; Jacqueline Bisset has a holiday pic in the works called Thanksgiving Reunion, which will air in November; and Pam Grier, Florence Henderson (The Brady Bunch) and Donna Mills (Knots Landings) will headline Ladies of the House, about three women from the same church who team up on a home renovation project.

TV Land, the network that caters to the baby boomers and everyone else who likes a dose of nostalgia in their TV viewing, is making some big changes. They're rebranding their network from being a retro TV destination to being a network that has a whole lot more. And apparently that strategy involves reality shows.

The channel has picked up reruns of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They'll start airing on August 7, and its regular slot will be Tuesdays at 11pm.

I'm baffled by this. Why destroy the network theme that has made you as successful as you are? Or do they consider Extreme Makeover a "future classic?" How many times can you watch the rerun of a home makeover show? And at 11pm??

It's great that they're also going to start running some original programming, but airing reality reruns is lame at best.

Now here's an interesting idea: a line of food based on a TV show.

They're called Mayberry's Finest, and they are a line of "southern comfort food" based on the type of stuff The Andy Griffith Show's Aunt Bee used to cook for Andy and Opie (and anyone who was sick in town, like Clara): beef stew, mustard greens, and mixes for buttermilk biscuits and lemon icebox muffins. They're being launched at the Food Marketing Institute's convention in Chicago. Each package will be based on a character from the show and will include snippets of show scripts and episode info.

This could start a trend. How about a line of food based on Gilligan's Island (canned pineapple, coconut cream pie) or Survivor (bugs)?

Barney Fife, Herman Munster, James T. Kirk...and President Bill Clinton?

Yup, the former President is going to be the keynote speaker at TV Land's March 23 event to announce their lineup and programming future. It's the ultimate Baby Boomer talking about the ultimate Baby Boomer network. To quote TV Land spokesman Paul Ward, about the speech: "You better believe it's going to be about the economic and cultural and social influence of Baby Boomers (I don't know why I keep capitalizing "Baby Boomers" but it just looks right).

The event is being held to announce new shows that TV Land is going to air this year. It will be held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

[via TV Tattle]

Here's a question for the Baby Boomers who are reading this: do you consider yourself tech savvy? If so, you're the demographic CNN is hoping to reach by creating a new microsite for the "Life After Work" segment from Paula Zahn Now. The segment focuses on different lifestyles of retired Baby Boomers, and the new site will include such things as clips from the television segment, a place for user-generated content, photos, and interactive tools.

The new site, according to MediaWeek, is part of CNN's ongoing strategy of creating multiplatform content. This seems like an obvious move when going after a younger crowd, but you don't see the same attempts made at attracting Baby Boomers. It would be nice if CNN could set a precedent and other content providers followed their example.

[via Lost Remote]

According to the AP, a study commissioned by rerun-centric network TV Land found that Baby Boomers -- still the largest segment of the population -- are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the youth-oriented programs on TV these days.

The study found that 37 percent of boomers are unhappy with what's on TV, and 80 percent of all people over 40 say that they have trouble finding shows that they can find relatable to their own lives.

Mulder is returning to television for a pair of shows in development with Showtime.

The first project, an untitled drama about a novelist with a kid, a drug problem and sex addiction, has not been officially picked up as a series. Duchovny will, however, be starring in and executive producing the pilot for the network. The second series, a comedy entitled Yoga Man, will be written by Duchovny and Bart Freundlich. Yoga Man is being described as Shampoo, but in a yoga studio.

Newsweek's November 13th issue features a story on what television taught baby boomers. Apparently, it first taught them how to buy a Davy Crockett cap and shotgun. Then, however, things got more complicated. All in the Family. M*A*S*H. Good Times. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Roots. "What boomers ultimately took from early TV was a collective sense of irony." The article isn't entirely convincing in this argument, but it does level a pointed criticism about television today.

Modern TV, according to Newsweek, has lost its edge. "The most popular shows are still crime procedurals (CSI) or soaps (Grey's Anatomy) - slick and sexy, but not about much. The reality shows American Idol and Dancing with the Stars are so retro, they're practically The Lawrence Welk Show. When The Unit or 24 does dare to focus on something like the war on terror, their take is uncritically gung-ho - no network today would risk satire on the level of M*A*S*H."