TVSquad

I'm not sure how hip Old Spice is these days. Is it something the twentysomething crowd uses or is it simply for older guys like me?

This new commercial shows that regardless of your age or what you like to do, Old Spice is for a man. I like this ad, especially the surprise appearance of the nose.

[via Adfreak]

According to a new study (PDF link), women are more likely to stream TV shows from network web sites than men, and they're more likely to time-shift their TV viewing with a personal video recorder. While both of these activities may seem like the geeky domain of guys with thick glasses, there's a pretty simple explanation. Men are more likely to watch sports, which is far more time sensitive than most other programs. If you took any group of folks and divided them up into heavy sports viewers and people who watch, well, pretty much anything else, you'd probably find that group B spends more time with the PVR too.

The study from Solutions Research Group found that 15% of women watched a streaming network TV program last month, while just 11% of men did. And women time-shift about 56% of their television viewing, compared to 42% for men.

The study also looks at other digital lifestyle activities like video game usage, online shopping, and downloading movies from the internet.

[via CNet]

The three guys who are my picks for the hottest guys on television today. It was not easy to pick only three amongst all the eye candy offered by TV series today; I could have included men like Josh Holloway, Milo Ventimiglia, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Eric Dane, Josh Duhamel, Michael Rosenbaum, and Michael Vartan, just to name a few. I eventually narrowed my list to three leading men. Two are in their forties and on ABC's payroll, while the other is in his late 30s and on FOX.

Look, we all want old men to have sex, no one's arguing that point, but couldn't Viagra use a different approach with its commercials?

There's one airing right now that shows an older gentleman (not ancient, but probably in his 60s) washing his car. His wife sashays past him, gives him the "I want sex now" look over her shoulder, and steps into the house.

(S02E15)

Orel: Gee, Doughy, your parents really do love you after all. They give you money and they don't ever want anything in return, not even you.

This episode was written by former Mr. Show writer/performer Scott Aukerman, along with Neil Campbell and Paul Rust. It wasn't until about one third through the episode I realized this was the first episode that wasn't tethered to some kind of religious ideal. The only "religious" aspect occurred when Orel decided he had to ask his mother if it was morally acceptable for a woman to accept gifts from a man if she doesn't actually like him.

When I first heard about the Pillow Fight League, a team of women in very little clothing who engage in pillow fights, I immediately thought of that line from The Simpsons when the family is at an auto race and the announcer says, "And now, something for the guys!" to which Homer replies, "Finally!"

So, if you're like Homer and think there just aren't enough chances to see scantily-clad women on television, start praying to the God of TV Lust that the Pillow Fight League makes it to television.

MANswers, a new game show for Spike centering on the kind of questions men want to ask but don't find "socially acceptable" will be given a nine-episode run and will debut sometime this fall. The show will pit contestants against one another and include re-enactments and interviews with experts.

Variety reports that some of these so-called "socially unacceptable" questions include "how long can a man survive on just beer?" and "what's the best organ to eat if you're a cannibal?"

HGTV has put out a call for men who have a special place in their home designed just for them. You know, that section of the house with a pool table, dart board, beer steins and several stuffed animal carcasses on the wall? These men and their men spaces will be featured on a new series called Man Land that apparently aims to celebrate stereotypical manliness. Other men like myself whose "man space" consist of nothing more than a Debbie Gibson album and a small tin of ginger snaps have been woefully overlooked. If I hadn't just come back from a manicure and didn't want to ruin the finish on my nails I'd be dialing up HGTV right now to complain.

We'll have to wait and see if this new series has anything worthwhile to offer. At the very least, it could be a nice change of pace from Queer Eye by actually celebrating the conditions these men choose as opposed to trying to change it.

Chuck Lorre, the creator of Two and a Half Men, has sold a pilot to CBS called The Big Bang Theory. The show will center on two theoretical physicists and a woman who proves to them they don't know everything.

I don't think it's bad to create a show where the woman is the "smart one," but it is a cliche. The rule most sitcoms adhere to is that the woman must always be grounded and intelligent while the man is pretty much a bumbling moron. When sitcoms first started to do this, it was a righteous response to the shoddy roles women had previously been given in television. Now, however, I think it's time to take the next step, to not try and make each character a representative of an entire gender and instead treat each character as an individual. Arrested Development springs to mind as one show that I think did this fairly well. Characters were driven by their own selfish desires and everyone, male and female, had plenty of shortcomings. When you try to force an absolute onto a character, it stifles that character's ability to come across as real.

Men are becoming the minority in newsrooms across the country. According to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, 42% of anchors are men. That's down from 46% in 1996. One of the reasons? The ultimate goal for many male journalism students is in sports. But, sports is a dying genre at local news stations across the country. Another reason, stated in an article in the Boston Globe, is that anchoring isn't really as manly as it used to be back in the days of Walter Kronkite and Edward R. Murrow. They were a breed of anchor who came across as tough on government corruption, whereas anchors these days are pretty boys who are more even-tempered and less aggressive. News readers, really.

While it's nice to see that women are kickin' butt in television, it's also a sad commentary on the role of the anchorman in our society and in news in general. These days the anchors are hired as personalities, not news gatherers.