TVSquad

Hey TV executives, it's me your good pal Jay Black. Maybe you remember me from my one man "Bring Back ALF" letter-writing campaign? If not, that's okay. I'm just happy that we're talking like this and not through Yvonne Strahovski's lawyers like last time.

As you can probably tell, I spend a lot of time thinking about you guys and your tough job of coming up with so many creative shows. I don't envy your having to sort through pile after pile of successful European reality shows trying to find one uncomplicated enough for American audiences. I don't know how you do it!

I'll be honest with you, I'm worried about the future of your industry. I know you're worried too. You think that if you don't act fast to counter all those people pirating your content that you'll wind up like your good buddies over in the music industry. I don't want that to happen to you, so that's why I'm writing this letter: TV, you can save yourself if you don't fight piracy, but rather embrace it.

Let's get this out of the way. Arrrrrrrrrrrgh. That will be the pirate-speak portion of the post. I will now proceed without the use of the words scurvy, booty or matey. I will also refrain from shivering anyone's timbers. Mark Burnett, however, is just getting started.

Since the pirate trend refuses to die, CBS and Survivor creator Burnett are whipping up a pirate-themed reality show for summer 2007.

What is known thus far is that the adventure-reality show will take place both on land and at sea. Standard issue competitions and elimination ceremonies will take place.

Silly me. Instead of watching Johnny Depp channel Keith Richards play 'Captain Jack Sparrow' in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I watched celebrities make terrible jokes and thank people I've never heard of. I forgot that, in rumored retaliation for not nominating Lost or Desperate Housewives for Emmys, ABC aired that pirate movie. The good one.

It appears I'm not the only one who forgot about the Pirates. Last night's Emmy telecast averaged 16.1 million viewers, a 14% slip from last year, but still the highest-rated program on television at that time. Pirates averaged about 10 million viewers.

In case you're one of the few Americans who didn't see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest last weekend, you can always wait until 2008 to see it for free. That's when USA Network has the rights to air it on television. The network also has the first cable rights to the far superior first movie, Curse of the Black Pearl, which airs tonight.

I saw Pirates last weekend and it was so long and boring that I can't even imagine watching the damn thing with commercial breaks. By the way, you should check out Ask a Ninja's review of the movie on YouTube. Hilarious and dead-on.

But try telling that to CNBC. The other day, while giving a report on the weekend box office, anchor Joe Kernan said that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest beat the previous record set by Aquaman, which had beaten a previous record held by Spiderman.

Um, does anyone at CNBC know that this Aquaman movie is a fake movie from Entourage? As Jossip says, Kernan was only reading a teleprompter, but the person who wrote the copy should have known (and where exactly did they get this "info" that Pirates had beaten Aquaman?) Video after the jump.

Update: Keith Olbermann talked about this just now on Countdown, and played the whole clip. Seems that Kernan actually did talk about Entourage just before this and made a joke. So the web has been corrected. Thanks to everyone in the comments who pointed this out too.

I've got an odd confession to make -- I'm a former Parrothead. Yes, I used to dig Buffett music too much, go to his concerts wearing stupid shit on my head and usually had a blender of something cold and boozy in my hand. But what I dug most about the whole scene was the notion of the ocean, the life of pirates of past, and of vast wooden ships skipping the Caribbean islands, all with nary a care in the world. So, when I got my hands on an early copy of History Channel's True Caribbean Pirates, I almost felt like a Parrothead again. Almost.