TVSquad

One of the things that never gets old about the press tour is that at any moment, you could be in the middle of a blow-your-mind, surreal pop culture moment. That's exactly what happened to me yesterday evening, as the PBS sessions were wrapping up.

Patti Smith had the last session, to promote her biographical movie on POV called Patti Smith: Dream of Life. It was fascinating, as she was pretty open with the reporters about why she let filmmaker Steven Sebring into her life for eleven years, what she likes to watch on YouTube (Maria Callas for one) and all sorts of fun stuff. But I had to leave to interview another legend, Norman Lear, who was there with producer Mark Johnson to promote the documentary Playing For Change: Peace Through Music.

When we were done with the interview, Lear, Johnson, the publicists and I were about to walk our separate ways when we heard music coming from the ballroom. When we open it, we see Patti Smith playing her guitar for the critics, in the middle of her second song. So imagine me and Norman Lear, standing there, listening to Patti Smith.

Maybe the strike's not all bad. That's what some studio executives are saying in this Variety article. The winter TCA Tour has been canceled already and upfronts are now in jeopardy. And just as it took the lead in pulling out of the TCA, NBC has already said they will forgo the multimillion dollar extravaganza the upfronts had turned into.

But from the network's point of view these are good things, as they'd been wanting to cut some of these expenses for years. What does that mean? The TCA Tours may be done for good, ditto the upfront "events." And that may just be the start of changes in the television landscape we've come to know and love.

We knew that Dan Rather was still going to be kicking around, didn't we? The old coot's just too feisty to go away retire; even after quietly leaving CBS after 44 years of service (the last 2 of which were, shall we say, a bit contentious), he'll still be on our TV screens, or at least a small fraction of them.

Just as the rumors predicted, Rather signed with Mark Cuban's HDNet to do a weekly newsprogram called Dan Rather Reports. He'll also be appearing as a guest panelist on Chris Matthews' syndicated show and will be talking to Larry King about his new venture tonight. And I'm sure he'll be giving plenty of "exclusive" interviews to the critics gathered at this week's Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, as he has arrived there yesterday to promote his new venture with Cuban. Now that he's unfettered by his relationship with CBS, I'm curious to hear what spills out of Dan's mouth about his exit. This might get interesting.