TVSquad

I was going to make some sort of "dough" and "doh!" here, but I'm sure that will already happen elsewhere.

The owner of a candy store in Aviles, Spain found a Euro with the face of Simpsons star (star? character?) Homer Simpson on it. The coin usually has King Juan Carlos on it. The other side of the coin wasn't touched, and no other coins have shown up with the likeness of Homer, or any other TV character, for that matter.

Which got me thinking: putting TV and movie characters on coins is a great idea. The U.S. is so obsessed with pop culture, what better way to show that then to put celebrities and characters on our money? I can imagine Montgomery Burns on the $100 bill.

Say it ain't so, Ho. Homey, that's is. According to Variety, even though Fox has given The Simpsons a renewal for season number 20, the voice talent that make the show have not been re-signed. Julie Kavner, Dan Castellaneta, Hank Azaria, Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright and Harry Shearer -- the actors who are as integral to the success of The Simpsons as the writers and animators -- are looking for a new deal. The group make approximately $360,000 per episode. They want a raise to $500,000 per. While that sounds like a lot of money -- and it is! -- when you consider how much Fox and company are making off The Simpsons franchise, like the new ride at Universal Orlando, the talent have every right to expect their piece of the pie.

My father is a former economics major who spent 30 years as a mortgage banker before starting his own company (which does economical things so complex that to my simple mind, they might as well be magical). One of the things that constantly irks him is the loaded language that the nightly news uses to describe our economic situation: words like "crisis," "downturn," and, worst of all "recession."

Now, anybody who has spent more than forty seconds online in the last six months can see that we are, more than likely, in the middle of a recession brought on by a downturn in the real estate market because of the current credit crisis. That said, I'd like to ask the question: would we be better off if TV simply lied to us about all of these things?

The Fox Business Channel, which launches on October 15th, is trying to overthrow CNBC as the go-to network for news on money, business, and stocks. It's also going to be HOT.

Take a look at the female members of their on air anchor team. The women in the pic to the right are (clockwise from the top left) Alexis Glick, Jenna Lee, Dagen McDowell, and Rebecca Gomez. I'm getting a Charlie's Angel's vibe from this. "I took them away from all that. And now they work for me...my name is Rupert."

I love thumbs as much as the next guy. They allow me to grab things, I can use them for sucking in place of my pacifier and, most importantly, they allow me to pass pure, unadulterated judgment on everything from my mom's home-cooked meals (thumbs up) to my new neighbor Steve (sorry Stevie).

However, with the news that film critic Roger Ebert plans on withholding his famous thumb movie rating scale, I have grown tired of the thumb. I really wouldn't mind if you just lop it off (his, not mine).

Isn't there a rule where you can't say something about yourself or it automatically makes it untrue? Like if you call yourself "hip" or "cool" then that means you're not hip or cool?

I thought of that when I read this piece (scroll down) about CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Several years ago people gave her the nickname "Money Honey" because she talked about finance on the network and...well, look at her. It was revealed that Bartiromo herself had trademarked the "Money Honey" phrase last year, and now Hamptons mag tells us why. She's starting her own show titled Money Honey.

How is she going to be able to say "Hello and welcome to Money Honey" with a straight face? Will she wear bikinis and evening gowns for various stock segments? Will there be Money Honey Dancers to entertain viewers?

[via TV Newser]

I know that the most devastating news that came out of the recent network upfronts was that NBC didn't announce when or if The Apprentice was coming back. I think I actually saw people crying and screaming on the street that day, shaking their fists to the heavens. But then NBC said it wasn't canceled, they just hadn't decided what to do yet. And then Donald Trump "quit" before they could "fire" him.

But wait! Trump told Larry King the other night that NBC wants to do another season of the show and he wants to do it too. He also criticized the network, saying they ruined the show by putting it all over the schedule (yeah, OK). So I guess they'll be another season.

GSN has bought the rights to the (very) short-lived ABC game show Show Me The Money, hosted by William Shatner. That's a total of seven episodes, including two that never aired.

Wow, what a get! Seven episodes of a lame TV show that lasted for five episodes. Did GSN get some sort of great deal on this? Are they that hard up for shows? It will run Tuesday night, but maybe it should be a daily show, so they can go through the entire run of the show is a week. Maybe they'll have a week long marathon and show the same seven episodes over and over and over again.

A network buys a short-lived game show but no one is currently running Kate and Allie or The Odd Couple, both of which lasted years. Crazy.

Starting today and running throughout the week, CNBC will be looking at how Star Wars has changed the way movies are made and financed (it is a business channel after all). This is all in celebration of the movie's 30th anniversary. Reports will also be shown on the CNBC Web site.

I'll admit that I'm a huge Star Wars nerd, but even I think this is a bit too much. I'll sit down for any special that delves into the making of the trilogy, the technology behind it, the mythology, and all of that cool stuff, but I couldn't care less about box office, financing and merchandising. That's obviously part of the whole package when talking about a huge blockbuster like Star Wars, but none of that stuff mattered to me when I first saw the movie all those years ago. The truth is, even if Star Wars wound up just being some cult movie that only a few people saw, it would still be one of my favorite movies of all time.

I have to ask, is anyone interested in an examination of the financial side of the Star Wars phenomenon? Please comment, I'd love to hear your views on this, too.

Fewer viewers are tuning in to watch reruns of prime time shows, partly because of new technologies like personal video recorders and television networks placing full episodes online. A few years ago, a repeat broadcast of a prime time drama could draw about 80% of the audience as a new episode. Today, it brings in just about 60% of the audience.

Picture This Television, the production team behind Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List and Celebrity Poker Showdown is creating a new game show for Bravo called Paycheck. The game show pits seven contestants against one another to try and figure out how much money they each make. The players must guess with the aid of questions, clues, and just plain, well, guessing. The person who guesses the correct salaries of all the players wins $25,000.

The whole "try to guess something about someone" idea sounds awfully close to Identity, and that game show isn't exactly the most compelling one on TV right now. Still, Celebrity Poker Showdown isn't a bad show, so maybe the folks behind this one have a way to make it more exciting than it sounds. Bravo has placed an order for the game show pilot.

It's that time of the year. People are being cast in pilots left and right and some interesting stuff has been announced. At ABC, Christopher Titus (Titus) has landed one of the lead roles in an untitled project from Warner Bros. The show focuses on CEOs and also stars Dylan McDermott (The Practice) and Michael Vartan (Alias). McDermott and Vartan as CEOs is an easy sell. But Christopher Titus, Senior VP Harvard graduate? That's different, and something I look forward to checking out.

Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix) is set to star in ABC's Suspect. The show is a procedural that will solve crimes by tracking suspects through a lineup. She's joined by Eric Palladino (ER) and Kathleen Munroe (Beautiful People). The ABC track record for procedurals is less than impressive, but the addition of Guy Ritchie (Snatch) as director is intriguing enough to give this one a look.

SpongeBob SquarePants is hugely popular in the United States with little children and immature adults like myself, but nobody thought he would make much of a splash in Japan.

It turns out those people were wrong, because SpongeBob is watched by 1.9 million households every day in Japan, which is even more impressive when you take into consideration that the series is only shown occasionally on network TV and that many households don't have cable or satellite, where SpongeBob SquarePants is shown on a more regular basis.

Also, it's not little kids who love SpongeBob the most, it's young women. This wasn't an accident, though: SpongeBob was introduced to Japan as a trendy, hip, underground kinda thing, something to be found on clothes and handbags and spread around by word of mouth. Apparently, it's been working.

[via The Beat]

It's odd. You ask a person a question enough times, you sometimes end up hearing a range of answers that makes things even more muddled in your mind than if you never asked the question at all.

And I know it's been two days since NBC day at the Television Critics Association press tour, but what Zach Braff said at the Scrubs session is still making me scratch my head. He told the gathered lunch crowd that "Scrubs could go on without me," and that he'd love to keep working on the show if possible. He even joked with creator Bill Lawrence, who said that if he left and there was a season seven, he'd force Zach to come back and explain why he left. "I'd come back for one episode to die," said Braff.

Hm... the day before, when I visited the set for a video feature we're putting together, he gave a more affirmative answer. Granted, he never said the words, "Yes, I'm coming back," but he did tell me that he was recharged by doing this season, including the musical, and would love to come back if the opportunity presented itself. So what changed between Tuesday and Wednesday for him to say the show could go on without him?

Have you ever hated a TV show so much you said you wouldn't watch it even if someone paid you? Well, that's what Cartoon Network is doing. Okay, they're not really doing that, but they are giving away five hundred dollars each to two hundred kids who call a toll-free number during a repeat of Re-Animated, Cartoon Network's first original movie. The movie follows the adventures of a young boy who has his brain replaced with a famous animator and begins to see cartoon characters in real life. It garnered record ratings when it debuted Paul Reubens, Ellen Greene, Tom Kenny and Brian Posehn provide the voices of the characters.

You have to be under eighteen years of age to qualify for the cash giveaway. I plan to cheat this by calling and speaking in a high pitched voice. In order to be authentic, I've asked a small child to punch me in the groin right before I call. I promised him I would split the money with him if I win, though I'm actually just going to abandon him and move to a different city. It won't be my proudest moment, but we must do what we can to survive.

The repeat airs January 12 at 7pm.