TVSquad

It's been a tumultuous six weeks for Eric Braeden and The Young and the Restless. For a while, it looked like he was on his way out of the soap when contract talks broke down between the star and Sony. Then there was a story in the trades about other actors being contacted to possibly replace him, including William Devane, Paul Michael Glaser and Peter Strauss. Before you could say Jabot Cosmetics, Bob posted the news that Eric and Sony had reached an agreement and Victor Newman would continue to be played by Eric Braeden. Crisis averted.

Well, while he was still in exit mode, the show wrote Victor out. In the storyline, Victor is recovering from a heart transplant and has decided to go to a clinic in Belgium to rehabilitate. This week he's been tying up loose ends before leaving.

You never know when the most innocuous-sounding panel is going to bring out the A-listers here at the TCAs. But when a big name is behind a project and he or she is passionate about it, that person will brave the room of critics to promote it.

To say Matt Damon is "dedicated" to the new History documentary The People Speak would be an understatement. The family of the Oscar winner lived next door to Professor Howard Zinn, on whose book, A People's History of the United States, is based. He and his Project Greenlight partner Chris Moore have been trying to bring the book to TV for a decade. "I have one of first copies (of Zinn's book) in hardback. It had a huge impact on my life so that's why I stayed with it. The moment we had iany influecne in this town we tried to get thids project off the ground."

Adults are always urging kids to "stay in school," but they don't usually say which school. What if there was a university dedicated to all things Lost?

ABC has launched a web site for Lost University, an online school that starts on September 22. There are two semesters (or one final season), and courses include "Introductory Physics of Time Travel," "I'm Lost, Therefore I Am," and "I'm Right, You're Wrong: The Us vs. Them Mentality." There's also a Smokey Patrol, a campus security service run by students, and a Drive Shaft cover band contest.

The university will be at Comic-Con this weekend too, dropping clues about what all this means.

[via PopWatch]

It's doubtful the tough guys (and gal) driving north to Alaska on the current season of Ice Road Truckers are big video game players. They're too busy staying alive while driving tons of cargo over roads would keep sane people home from school.

But, that's not stopping The (former) History Channel from launching its first paid iPhone and iPod Touch game with an application that allows users to command 18-wheelers across Arctic roads.

Fans of the show -- and of snowy truck driving in general -- can download a free, "lite" test version of the game now through Apple iTunes.

Now that the second season of Breaking Bad is in the books, it's time to evaluate high school science teacher Walter White's performance. He's been giving out the grades to students for years, but who's been monitoring this high school teacher?

It's time for this Breaking Bad character to be graded. Here's a report card for Mr. White, and whether he's using the name Heisenberg or White, we're turning the tables on "teach" and giving him some grades across the board.

At the beginning of the year the beautiful and sexy Jay Black presented a wonderful dissertation on the state of channel drift in cable television that discussed many of the reasons for this phenomenon. Being someone who likes to jump on an idea and trample it to death, I decided to expand on Jay's initial premise and provide some specific examples of cable networks that have drifted one way or another. Yet, being someone who likes to add something to an existing idea before the trampling begins, I decided a twist was in order.

Since a drift can range from 'small, but noticeable' to 'am I on the right channel?' a ratings system needed to be designed to determine how far a channel has gotten away from its origins. So, in the fifteen examples I list after the jump, you will see one of four categories...Minor Shift, Moderate Shift, Major Shift and Mother of All Channel Shifts. It is these four categories that you can use to agree or disagree with my findings once they are presented. So, without a continuing narration, here are the cable networks that have encountered some sort of channel drift.

The History Channel is going away. The network's name will now simply be History. This move is being done to promote their attempts to move into other forms of media.

The network was once dubbed "The Hitler Channel" by some critics due to its overabundance of World War II documentaries. History is apparently following the model of other channels and loosen the central theme of the network.

I'm a sucker for cartoons of the 40s and 50s, whether it's Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, or those two squirrels that just wanted to have a nice life where everyone left them alone (their names escape me at the moment). I also like the great pseudo-documentary cartoons that you often saw, like the one after the jump.

It's Television From Tomorrow from MGM and Tex Avery. It shows what the typical household is going to look like in the future (the future meaning now - this was released in 1953). Specifically, it shows what the television of the future was going to look like. It's not serious, of course, but it's very clever and really fun. I like the big guns that pop out of the top of the television, and I think that complicated knob on the front of that one TV accurately predicts the complicated remote controls we have today. Oh, and the 4 out of 5 people who own TV sets? That could have been drawn today.

Can you guess who the narrator is?

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

As the race between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barak Obama heats up for the Democratic party presidential candidacy, here comes news that should throw the spotlight onto Hillary...if she's savvy enough to say yes. During a recent visit to The Tyra Banks Show, Hillary revealed that "if (paired) with one of those really good partners" she would someday like to compete on Dancing with the Stars. When the powers that be at Dancing heard that, they wasted no time in sending the former first lady a formal invitation. While they acknowledge that the show is not currently in production, dancers from the show are performing around the country in Dancing with the Stars - The Tour. They invited Hillary to choose any one of the dancers and take a try at a cha cha, pasa doble or tango. Or, if she prefer, she could always call on hubby Bill for a pas de deux.

Hey gang, here's a few shows I plan on checking out this summer. Some are old, some are new.

Creature Comforts [Mondays at 8:00 p.m. on CBS]: What can I say that I haven't said already? It's a charming little animated show that pipes the everyday conversation of normal human beings through animated animals. It's such a simple idea, but at the same time it demonstrates how we probably have more in common with one another than we realize.

Ice Road Truckers [begins June 17 at 10:00 p.m. on the History Channel]: This new series focuses on truck drivers who risk injury and death while driving their big rigs across frozen lakes. It's one of the world's most dangerous occupations, and one I wasn't even aware existed until hearing about this new series a few months ago.

Big thanks to my pal Wild Bill for smacking me upside the ol' noggin' about this documentary.

Star Wars was the first movie I remember seeing in the theater, even though I was only seven months old when it was released (I saw it in 1980 when it was re-released to coincide with the release of The Empire Strikes Back).

I'm sure Star Wars fans have know about the History Channel's upcoming Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed for some time now, but if not, here's your heads up: the special airs May 28 at 9:00 p.m., then repeats at one in the morning.

What the hell does Star Wars have to do with history. you ask? Well, that's what this documentary is all about. It will delve into some of the subtle and not-so-subtle mythological and historical parallels that run throughout the original trilogy, including Napoleon, Hitler, King Arthur and Greek legends.

Starting in 1913 and ending in 1967, Time Inc provided a series of newsreels to theaters called "The March of Time." The series chronicled significant world events using photos, filmed elements and dramatic reenactments. When theaters stopped showing newsreels in the early fifties, Time Inc continued to make new documentaries and news stories for television. In the end, "The March of Time" covered more than 70 million feet of film.

Thought Equity Motion and the HBO Archival Collection recently teamed up to make all of the footage from "The March of Time" series available online. Unfortunately, it's only available to media professionals, but you can see a "trailer" of sorts here. It's nice to see this footage maintained, rather than simply fading away in a vault somewhere, plus it's a reminder of a time not terribly long ago when going to the movies or watching TV was more of an event than it is today.

In all of human history, no object is as revered as the mighty can: holder of both liquid and solids, aluminum liner of truck floors in most Southern states, and able to double as a phone or a bong whenever the situation calls for it. Where would we be without the can? I'll tell you where: at the store trying to mop loose soup into our grocery bags with a sponge, crying out to whomever will listen: "why isn't there some kind of receptacle that will hold this soup?"

On March 8 at 10:00 p.m., Man-Made: The Can premieres on the National Geographic Channel. The episode promises to delve into the history and making of the cylindrical items, and also promises not to be boring, even though it's a show about how cans are made. In all of recorded history, the phrase "hey, wanna know all there is to know about cans?" has never been met with an affirmative response. At least not that I know of.

This Tuesday, February 6 at 10 p.m., HBO will air a documentary that attempts to chronicle the history of gangs and gang violence in Los Angeles. Bastards of the Party, directed by former gang member Cle "Bone" Sloan, pinpoints the origin of gang formations as far back as the 1940s, when blacks began moving from the south into mostly white areas of Los Angeles, a fact unknown to many who assumed it was the turbulent '60s and '70s that gave rise to the gang culture. Of course, that era will also be chronicled in the documentary, along with the escalation in violence that continued throughout the '80s and '90s.

Sloan, who now works in the film business, became a member of the Bloods at the age of 12 and learned about the history of the gangs from older gang members, and also read about that history while in jail. This isn't the first documentary to cover this subject, and it certainly won't be the last, but what will make it worth checking out is seeing it through the eyes of someone who actually lived it.

Tom Cavanagh, known for his goofy-but-sweet roles in Ed, Love Monkey and Scrubs, is going all nerdy on us! He's going to host six episodes of a backstage pass-type show for the Smithsonian Institution.

Last year, the Smithsonian announced it is creating a television channel with Showtime that will launch in April. There are at least 60 programs planned, with a few already in the works. One of those few is Cavanagh's Stories from the Vaults. The premise of the 30-minute series is that Cavanagh gets to take viewers behind-the-scenes to check out some of the Smithsonian Institution's coolest and oddest artifacts.

The Smithsonian programming is being offered to cable and satellite profiders as an on-demand channel. Many of the other programs will focus on Smithsonian research, which is not as well-known as its artifacts. So far, no television providers have picked it up.