TVSquad

If anyone in the press should ever ask you, "What were you doing when you heard the great Michael Jackson was dead?", be sure to answer with: "Reading one of your stories on what a lowlife you thought he was just prior to his death."

There are times when I'm ashamed to be a part of the media. The 48 hours after Michael Jackson's death was just such an epoch. I chose that last word carefully because the endless, maudlin, self-congratulatory coverage the major news networks wallowed in following Jackson's death was as long-winded as it was embarrassingly dramatic.

While that coverage is sure to continue throughout the memorial services, unavoidable custody and estate battles and forthcoming autopsy reports, none of that will compare in sickly sweet sensation to what CNN, Fox News and the others lowered themselves to just following the singer's death.

Here's a tip: if you're invited to be a guest on a talk show, it's probably not the best strategy to insult the host and say you're embarrassed to even be on the show. That's what happened to a guest on Nancy Grace's CNN Headline News show the other night. This guy has actually been a guest on her show before, but I'm assuming never again.

[via TV Newser]

It's amazing how many bad talk shows there are on the air. I'm not talking about The Late Show with David Letterman or Late Night with Conan O'Brien or Jimmy Kimmel Live. Those are good shows, and if you clicked on this list expecting to find any of them, you're going to be disappointed. The shows I picked are the talk shows that deal in exploitation, human degradation, and feature terrible, terrible people. In short, daytime talk shows!

Well, OK, I did include one late night talk show, but you'll have to click after the jump to see which one it is.

1. Maury (syndicated). Really, was there any question that this would be number one? It shouldn't even be called Maury anymore, they should just go ahead and call it Paternity Tests!, since that is what it's most known for. Doesn't Povich have enough money? Can't he do something else in his life besides this show? What does Connie think of this? Who knows, considering she co-hosted one of the worst shows from a few years ago. If aliens watch our TV broadcasts and happen upon this show every single morning, we're all doomed.

The "duh" in the title is because it has always seemed to me like CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck belonged on Fox News all along, because it seems to be more in line with his way of thinking and his viewpoints.

Beck has signed a deal with Fox News Channel to host a daily show at 5pm (and a weekend show in the future). The deal has been described as "multi-year" and "multimillion-dollar." There have been rumors that Beck was going to eventually move to the network ever since he was seen eating with FNC head Roger Ailes. No word yet on when Beck will leave Headline News.

This will give Keith Olbermann more fodder for his frequent rants against Beck. Sure, he could do them if Beck was still at CNN, but it's probably going to be more convenient to have all of his targets (Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity) all in one easy-to-find place.

Personally, I'd rather see Nancy Grace leave Headline News than Beck. She annoys the hell out of me for so many reasons.

Yes, that title is correct.

Not Just Another Cable News Show, a half hour comedy series that will focus on politics and pop culture, will debut on CNN Headline News on April 5. It's going to air at 7pm on both Saturday and Sunday nights, with repeats at 9pm and midnight. That seems like an awful lot of showings for one night, but I'm sure these cable execs know what they're doing.

Fox News tried something like this with their Half Hour News Hour, which was canceled a few months ago. But this Headline News show has some potential, because it has a great group of contributors, including Time / L.A. Times writer Joel Stein, The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar, Time.com's Ana Marie Cox, comedian Hugh Fink, and political strategist and commentator Amy Holmes.

I'm not sure how many people out there think that Nancy Grace is really a nice person away from her TV show, where she is usually sneering, snarling, and yelling at both defendants and victims, but the video after the jump should put to rest any of those thoughts. It's Grace's appearance on Celebrity Jeopardy, along with Regis Philbin and Queer Eye's Carson Kressley.

I don't think you have to have a degree in psychology to see what she's really like. When she says an answer wrong, she tries to tell Alex Trebek and the judges that she actually said the right answer. She also gives a rather inane answer to "Final Jeopardy" that I still can't figure out.

That's the claim she's making in a joke e-mail she sent to staffers at CNN Headline News. She's been so fed up with all of the people coming forward to claim they might be the father (the list so far includes Howard K. Stern, Larry Birkhead, Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, an ex who is in jail and J. Howard Marshall, the old guy she married years ago who might have frozen his sperm) so she finally declared that she was the father of the baby.

This would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that Grace has been covering the damn story from every single angle several times since Anna Nicole Smith died.

It's funny that she would say she's the father of the baby, since most people describe her as being a "mother."

[via TV Newser]

We told you earlier that Larry King is celebrating 50 years in broadcasting (there's even a DVD set coming of his best Larry King Live interviews), and now King has been interviewed in the Miami Herald about his years in the business. King (who's really name is Larry Zieger, something I didn't know) says he's not a big fan of people like Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly. On the former, he has this to say:

Oh, and so does John Grisham!

Interesting piece by the horror writer in this week's Entertainment Weekly (the one with Kate Winslet on the cover). King talks about the latest controversy involving the mentally unbalanced queen of exploitation legal journalist, and has a few choice observations for the woman he calls "Graceless and Tasteless:"

"And before you accuse me of writing about news in your favorite entertainment magazine, let me assure you Nancy Grace is entertainment...if, that is, you're the sort who watches NASCAR for the crashes and Survivor hoping no one will. In the increasingly weird world of infotainment, she is the belle of the Freakers Ball...[Grace] conveys by body language alone the idea that we're all guilty of something...and she knows it."

Bravo, Mr. King. He goes on to talk about the recent case involving the disappearance of Trenton Duckett. Grace had his mother on her show and pretty much hammered her about her whereabouts that day, and Duckett wouldn't say (as King points out, her lawyer told her not to, duh). And when Grace and CNN found out that she had killed herself earlier that day did they decide to not run it? Of course not, they ran it anyway.

(The article isn't online yet, but the issue is on newsstands now.)