TVSquad

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Eddy Arnold: The legendary country singer was best known for classic songs such as "Make The World Go Away." He also hosted his own TV show in the early 50s called The Eddy Arnold Show and guest starred on many shows, including The Milton Berle Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Tonight Show, and many others. His songs have been used on many TV shows and films, including How I Met Your Mother, Bad Santa, Nurse Betty, Private Parts, and Groundhog Day. He died in Nashville at age 89.

Anchorwoman, the upcoming comedy/reality series from FOX that takes place at an actual news station in Tyler, Texas, will debut on Wednesday, August 22 rather than August 21 (as previously reported). It will still air at 8:00 p.m., though, kicking off with a one-hour premiere before settling into its normal half hour on Wednesday nights.

I've never been a fan of Dateline's "To Catch A Predator." Despite helping to put sexual predators behind bars, the series is tainted by egregious spectacle, and recently resulted in the suicide of one man in Murphy, Texas. Consequently, the district attorney has refused to prosecute the other twenty-four men who were caught in the sting.

Readers can discuss in the comments the value of one man's life over that of anyone else's, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm saying is, despite selling the show as some kind of humanitarian crusade, reporter Chris Hansen and the producers behind "To Catch A Predator" both want and need that moment of public humiliation for the show to work and for people to watch. They're putting out a fire, yes, but they're doing it by throwing manure on it.

On August 21 at 8:00 p.m., FOX will debut Anchorwoman, a comedy/reality TV program focusing on a swimsuit model who moves to the quiet community of Tyler, Texas to try her hand at local news reporting.

As a twist, the series will take place in an actual newsroom, KYTX-TV, a CBS affiliate. Actual newspersons will appear on the program, which has many people in the community asking if this is such a good idea.

The first season of Friday Night Lights is over, and NBC has begun to rerun some (but not all) of the first season episodes. Fortunately, you can watch the entire first season over on NBC's site.

I've been catching up with the first season online, after having avoided it completely when it originally aired on television. You see, I don't like sports, and I especially didn't like high school sports. In fact, I pretty much hated every aspect of high school. You can imagine a show about high school football was going directly on my "Never Watch In A Million Years" list.

There's not too much information on it just yet, but FOX has ordered six episodes of Anchorwoman, a new comedy that will mix both reality and scripted elements as it focuses on a super model who returns to Texas to become a TV anchorwoman, because, who wants to listen to an ugly woman report the news? Not me. In fact, I was once almost killed in a tornado because I refused to listen to the average-looking news woman telling me to seek shelter. I now have half a dead chicken embedded in my skull, I can't do basic math, and sometimes triangles make me cry, but I think it was worth it.

Where was I? Oh yeah, not much information, but I like the idea of mixing two genres together. I'll save judgment until more information pops up about the series, but the basic premise alone has me intrigued.

I'd like to say I knew it all along, but I was initially duped by Pauly Shore's staged video that showed him getting punched by a heckler in Odessa, Texas. Shore now has a video on his MySpace page (via Best Week Ever) that shows him coaching the crowd and his fake attacker before his act, telling everyone to film it and then put it on the internet.

Shore later said he wanted the video to make fun of the whole "viral video" fad and to serve as a lesson to those who take things at face value. Most people still saw it as a cheap stunt on the part of someone who's been out of the spotlight for many years, but I still think Shore has a good point. Besides, it's not like he's the first one to do this.