TVSquad

Leave it to the Sundance Channel to broadcast a reality television program that may actually benefit world society. The show is called On The Road In America and is about four Arabs in their 20's on a road trip across America, seeing different aspects of American culture.

It looks like there has been yet another step in the independent movie industry going corporate as Cablevision has purchased the Sundance Channel. The sale set Cablevision back about $500 million and the channel is expected to join Cablevision's Rainbow Media programming along with IFC, AMC and WE tv.

What's happening on other blogs via the interweb.

• So how did Jesse L. Martin leave Law and Order the other night?
• I reviewed the Stingray DVD recently, and Jaime Weinman has some interesting facts about the show.
• Former NBC reporter Arthur Kent is suing Universal Pictures and the makers of Charlie Wilson's War.
• Cablevision might be buying The Sundance Channel.
• PBS' Jim Lehrer is recovering from heart surgery.
• Gary Coleman is going to appear on another daytime court show, this time with his wife.
• What were the best seasons of ER?

Virgin America, the newest start-up airline in these United States, has inked a deal with Sundance Channel to create a customer in-flight channel for it's passengers.

The new channel, Sundance Channel for Virgin America (catchy, ain't it?) will feature a collection of the cable network's feature films and documentaries as well as original programming such as Iconoclasts and Kath and Kim. In addition, Sunny Virgin (which I think is a much better name for the in-flight network) will air original episodes of the new documentary series Nimrod Nation three weeks before they air on the cable network. Nation, which will focus on the town of Watersmeet, Michigan and their obsession with their high school basketball team (the Nimrods) will air on the in-flight channel on November 1st, while it will air on the Sundance Channel on November 26th.

So I was poking around the ol' iTunes yesterday, and what do you know, they had just added shows from the Sundance Channel.

"Hey, ma!" I yelled, "we done got ourselves some Sundance programming on the iTunes!"

"Yee ha!" she screamed, tossing off her bonnet and almost knocking over her butter churner. As soon as Bessie Ellie Mary Ellen May gets back from the Maple Syrup and Baptism Festival we'll download ourselves some episodes!"

"If only pa were alive to see this," I sighed. "Why did he have to taunt that rabid goat with a stick?"

At any rate, you can now find a few Sundance shows on iTunes. The shows are all of the "reality" variety, including documentaries The Hill and One Punk Under God, and investigations into real-life dramas such as The Staircase and The First Amendment Project.