TVSquad

"This is the first script I've read that made me excited to come back to TV," said the actor about his latest project. The actor is Wilmer Valderrama; the project is a Fox comedy pilot called The Emancipation of Ernesto.

Wilmer, who is best-known from his eight seasons on That '70s Show -- a supporting player on the Fox mainstay -- will be front and center on this new one-hour, single camera comedy. He's Ernesto, and Ernesto is a quirky character.

The show is citing two 1979 films -- for starters -- as reminiscent of The Emancipation of Ernesto: Steve Martin's The Jerk, as well as Chauncey Gardiner, the Peter Seller's character in Being There. Why? Well, it's the Ernesto character.

No, it's not the start of a dumb joke. I'm sincerely asking you good folks at TVS the question, because it seems like the answer would be the same since Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb: about half a second.

Somehow, NBC executives think it takes a lot longer than that: an hour, to be exact. That's how long tonight's special, Christmas in Rockefeller Center, will last. The 74th Rock Center tree-lighting ceremony, hosted by Ann Curry and Al Roker, will be padded with performances Christina Aguilera, Taylor Hicks, Enya, John Legend, Sarah McLachlan, and others. If you live in the New York area, you'll actually get two hours to bask in the tree's darkness; WNBC will begin airing their special at 7, and the rest of the country will join them at 8. And you thought New Yorkers moved faster than the rest of the country.

Anyway, all the performances lead up to the climactic last thirty seconds of the show, when [SPOILER ALERT!] the tree will be lit. Not sure what they're going to do with the last twenty-nine-and-a-half seconds, but I'm sure they'll think of something.

Yes!

Whoa. I'm getting ahead of myself here. And, really, I was asking your opinion.

After visiting with CBS viewers in different cities, anchor Katie Couric says viewers are hungry for more, in-depth news and information. The big three networks all have 30-minute newscasts and, unfortunately, an hour-long newscast is unlikely because that extra half-hour of network space makes some decent cash with syndicated programming. You have to go to cable news or public television to get that.

Although, cable television is evidence that an hour-long newscast doesn't necessarily mean you'll get any in-depth news and information. Thirty minutes is such a short amount of time for so much news that it's super dumbed down and, in many cases, stories are generalized in order to get everything in.