TVSquad

As a fan of music from the 80's and the early 90's, I didn't believe it at first when one of my friends told me that Michael Jackson died. Since TVs were rare where I was at the time, my first instinct was to check CNN.com. As soon as I got confirmation, I found a TV and was glued to one of the news-only channels to get all the latest updates on the death of one of my music idols.

TV coverage of Michael Jackson's death was worldwide and every source of media. The news of his death, the coroner's investigation, the rumors that his death may have been faked (see the video after the jump), the news of where he would be buried, the details of the various tributes, as well as coverage of the special funeral ceremony, etc., made Michael Jackson's death one of the 2009 events that got the most air time around the world. Even as huge an MJ fan I am -- I do have about 30 of his hits on my MP3 -- I can admit that this event got too much air time.

Sometimes when I'm watching USA Network, I'm as tickled with the promotions for the shows as I am the shows themselves. That's saying a lot, because as a rule, networks are not very clever about commercials hawking their shows. However, USA is the exception to the rule. Just yesterday, Kona wrote about the Psych promo that took a shot at The Mentalist -- completely justified, too -- and here's another that caught my eye. It's a tribute to Monk.

This is the last season for Monk, so USA gathered some of the stars -- in character -- from its other programs to give a little tribute to Adrian Monk. What a stroke of genius!

I don't know how true this axiom is, since I just made it up out of thin air. But it seems to me that, in the world of reality TV, you can edit a nice person to look like a jerk, but it's much tougher to edit a jerk into looking like a nice person. It's just harder to fake being a good person than it is to fake being a jerk. And what I learned by the entire season of Pitchmen, including last night's tribute episode, was that Billy Mays was a good guy.

Sure, he had an ego. Sure, there are probably production staffs out there who think the guy was a jerk because he was having a bad day when he worked with them. But, the entire season of Pitchmen showed that Mays was a fun-loving guy that seemed to be a dedicated family man; he also seemed to be truly committed to helping people realize their dreams through their inventions. Considering how many different people teared up during the tribute episode last night, I could tell the guy was loved and admired.

You knew that Conan O'Brien would pay tribute to Ed McMahon (who died yesterday), the only question was how. Last night Conan showed clips of some great Tonight Show moments with Ed and Johnny (though not enough in my opinion), and he also showed a great clip of Ed and Andy Richter playing quarters on Late Night.

The fifth annual VH1 Hip-Hop Honors will be taped on October 2nd at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. The show will premiere on VH1 the following Tuesday, October 7th. The honorees and performers will be named later this summer. Last year's celebration paid tribute to A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop Dogg, WHODINI, Missy Elliott, the film Wild Style and Teddy Riley and Andre Harrell for New Jack Swing with appearances by Mos Def, LL Cool J, Salt-N-Pepa, Ne-Yo, Ciara, Eve, Chris Rock, Busta Rhymes and others.

Of the show, Tom Calderone, Executive Vice President and General Manager for VH1, says, "Our VH1 Hip Hop Honors has grown into one of the most anticipated events in the hip hop community, drawing legends from back-in-the-day to the hottest stars of the genre today."

But before the network fetes the innovators of hip-hop, VH1 will tape the 3rd annual Rock Honors on July 12th at the UCLA campus. This year the network is paying tribute to The Who. Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, and The Flaming Lips will perform.

Recently, I wrote about why I respect, admire, and -- yes -- love Turner Classic Movies. Well, today they've done something else to reinforce my feelings. On June 2, TCM will air a salute to director Sydney Pollack, showing four of his films. The Oscar-winning director, who was also an actor and producer, passed away on Monday following a short bout with cancer. It was only a few months ago that the word spread in Hollywood that he was seriously ill. Film critic Joseph Morgenstern wrote a salute to him on February 2 in the Wall Street Journal, honoring the man before his death.

Sadly, the cancer that fell Sydney Pollack was one that didn't respond to treatment.

On Monday, TCM will show Sydney Pollack's directorial debut in features, 1965's The Slender Thread starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In the same year, he won an Emmy for directing The Game, part of the Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater anthology series. On TV, he'd also done Ben Casey and The Fugitive episodes, learning his craft.

Or is that "Star Wars Robot Chicken?"

Well, whatever, the main site for the upcoming Robot Chicken tribute to all things Star Wars has been updated with a bunch of kick ass new production stills (including images from the upcoming special as well as older images from past Robot Chicken parodies), a brand new trailer, and a hilarious therapist session featuring the man himself, George Lucas. He even talks about that dreaded Star Wars Holiday Special. Talk about opening up old wounds.

CBS is not only broadcasting a send-off to game show legend Bob Barker, they're asking fans to upload their own tributes to the soon-to-be-former Price is Right host.

That's why, in honor of his well-known pleas to help control the pet population, I'll be uploading footage of myself castrating a dachshund.

Anyway, on May 16 at 8:00 p.m., folks can tune in to a special nighttime showing of The Price is Right in which the winner will walk away with one million dollars. The following night, May 17, fans can catch the hour-long retrospective Bob Barker: A Celebration of 50 Years on Television. Some user-submitted videos will be featured during the special, and others will air during the final week of Bob's stint as host of the long-running program (no date has been given yet for Barker's departure).

According to TV writer Mark Evanier, Calvert DeForest, who played Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's NBC show, passed away on Thursday from a pneumonia-related heart attack. He was 85.

Everyone remembers DeForest as Melman; he was the little old man with the big glasses and putty-like face who would show up and inevitably bungle whatever lines he was given to read, often saying them very loudly in the process. He was a signature on the NBC show, and Dave continued to use him when the show moved to CBS (under Calvert's real name, due to intellectual property issues with NBC), but less frequently; DeForest's last appearance was in 2003.

Evanier got the information from an "authority" on the Letterman newsgroup, who also mentioned that the Late Show was set to air a tribute to DeForest last night, but delayed it when Letterman went home sick. Since there won't be a new taping until next week, the tribute will have to wait. I'm sure it'll be both poignant and funny at the same time.

[thanks to Elf for the tip.]

When The Kennedy Center Honors airs on Monday night, we won't be seeing Jessica Simpson's flubbed tribute to Dolly Parton. In fact, we won't be seeing Simpson at all. Despite running through Dolly's "9 to 5" a second time at the taping, Simpson asked that her performance be pulled from the televised version of the show entirely. Why? Because Simpson's a perfectionist, damn it - a regular Maria Callas.

According to Simpson's spokesperson, the young singer and reality show punchline "idolizes Dolly" and "wasn't happy with her performance" so she nixed it. Thanks to the internet, however, you can see snippets of Simpson's performance online. Just think - before the days of YouTube, you couldn't see the lackluster production numbers that got trimmed from bloated tribute shows. Now, you can. Thanks, technology!

It looks like the guys at Giant magazine's web site are at it again, trolling YouTube for videos that you may not have thought of. This time, they've dug up ten intros to Hanna-Barbera shows, in tribute to Joe Barbera, who passed away a couple of days ago. Among the selections are the wonderfully un-PC intro to Hong Kong Phooey (I guess it was OK for Scatman Crothers to sing "ching chong" back in the seventies... Rosie O'Donnell was born in the wrong time, I guess), and intros to The Herculoids, the "so hip it's square" Flinstones Comedy Hour from '72 ("We'll have a groovy time!"), The Jetsons, and one of H-B's Scooby-Doo clones from the mid-'70s, Speed Buggy. There's also an intro from the live-action show Korg: 70,000 B.C.

Speaking of Scooby, the intro they post is from a late-'70s revival of the show, which included the then-new character of Scooby-Dum. But they kind of miss the boat on this one; that's maybe the third-best intro, behind the originial Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and my personal favorite, the oh-so-cheesy Scooby-Doo Movies from 1972. Remember the episodes with the Harlem Globetrotters, Sandy Duncan, Batman and Robin, and Tim Conway? That was from this series. In order to refresh your memory, I've embedded the intro to that after the jump.

Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel are planning on simultaneously airing a two-hour tribute to Steve Irwin on Sunday, January 21. The first hour-and-a-half will be the world premiere of Irwin's final documentary, called Ocean's Deadliest. This is the special that he was filming with adventurer Philippe Cousteau when Irwin was struck in the heart by a stingray barb and died. Thankfully, the video of his death will not air. Instead, the special is about Irwin and Cousteau's expedition to find the deadliest sea creature off the Australian coast. Ocean's Deadliest will take them on different adventures that include wrangling a giant crocodile, watching great white sharks feast, and capturing deadly sea snakes. Cousteau narrates. As with all of Irwin's work, the documentary is meant to raise awareness about the roles of these dangerous creatures in our ecosystem.

The last half-hour of the special will be a tribute to Steve Irwin's life and legacy, featuring interviews with his wife and daughter, and others who knew him. It will also include some of his most exhilirating moments on film and some never-before-seen footage.

The tribute to Steve Irwin airs January 21 at 8 pm on both Animal Planet and Discovery.

(S01E17) The final episode of The Prisoner is arguably the most controversial and confusing finale to a television series ever filmed. If you've been watching the episodes over time and think you're going to get some sort of resolution with this final portion of the story, think again. I've viewed this series a number of times over the years and, frankly, I still don't totally get what Fall Out was all about.