Want an Explanation for Surprise Dancing with the Stars Ejection? Look at the Judges

I couldn't stop laughing.

Watching the judges from Dancing With the Stars take umbrage at last night's result -- how dare America reject Cheetah Girl Sabrina Bryan! -- was better comedy than half the sitcoms on ABC's schedule.

Head Judge Len Goodman was in particular form: "This takes the biscuit...this girl should be in the finals!" he bellowed when it was obvious that Bryan or soap actor Cameron Mathison were on the chopping block. "They are absolutely fantastic dancers." Judge Bruno Tonioli looked as if his head was ready to explode, intoning over and over "Ees madness! Ees madness!"

Which was funny, because less than an hour before, Goodman was shown criticizing Bryan's foxtrot during Monday's show, saying, "For me, it was all too hard. It was too aggressive...It was too powerful." And the show's narration noted "the former front-runner faltered" in part because her hectic, c-level celebrity schedule made rehearsing difficult. While I haven't been watching the show much, this seemed a consistent theme; Bryan comes out with youthful vigor and Disney Channel-bred dancing chops, and Goodman slaps her down like a crotchety uncle.

On Tuesday, even Goodman seemed surprised that America finally listened to him.

Until now, Dancing has garnered attention mostly for its non-dancing drama: Marie Osmond's bizarre fainting spell; judge Carrie Ann Inaba reportedly flipping off one professional dancer after he gave her a rule book describing how to judge a lift; Jane Seymour, widely considered the worst dancer Monday and a strong candidate for ejection, skipping last night's show due to "suspected food poisoning."

But now we're getting to brass tacks. The comic relief contestants are gone -- buh-bye Wayne Newton and Mark Cuban -- and, except for Seymour and Osmond, we're down to the celebs who can actually cut a rug. I may actually start watching this show, now that there's actual dancing going on.

Still, if Goodman wants to know why a good dancer got bumped Tuesday, he should look in the mirror. And the remaining dancers should take note: a lackluster performance -- particularly if you're not an actual celebrity -- can get you a ticket to Ejectionville, no matter how well you did in previous weeks.   

Grading the Graders: Network TV Diversity Report Cards Get a Failing Grade From Me

Regular readers of this space know I care quite a lot about diversity issues on network TV. And that's why I always cringe whenever the Multiethnic Media Coalition presents it's annual diversity report card for the networks, which they released yesterday.

Vague and influenced by whatever successful shows are on the dial at the time, the report card offers grades on diversity in acting, writing directing and other categories. What it doesn't do, is tell you very many specific figures, though every network but Fox provides detailed information on diversity figures for their analysis. So there's no way to know what amount of roles for Latino actors led the National Latino Media Council to give ABC an A grade this year (though Emmy wins for the Latino-led series Ugly Betty, at left, probably helped).

This is the central gripe network types have always had about this exercise, which includes advocacy groups for Hispanics, Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans (advocacy groups for black people left the coalition long ago). It's tough to take a letter grade to heart, if you don't know specifically what earned it.

Each ethnic group releases its own report card and they're all accessible through the NHMC's Web site here. The analysis by the Asian American Justice Center offers the most detail, noting that only 29 Asian Americans were cast in regular prime time series roles this year (unfortunately, they don't say how many roles there are in total this season, so it's hard to gauge how this number of roles stacks up against the proportion of Asian Americans in the population -- a common goal).

Critics have also noted the report card doesn't deal with cable TV, which likely offers more diversity in programming. 

Overall, the Hispanic group gives the networks As and Bs, while the Asian American group gives the networks Cs and C+s, which is probably an accurate reflection of how well the networks have featured each group in their operations. But there are other institutions which have done a better job of analyzing these numbers, including the kids advocacy group Children Now and the Screen Actors Guild; neither group has done a recent diversity analysis, however.

Privately, network executives are quite cynical about this effort, which they see as unfair and arbitrary. My own suspicion is that, even though we're seeing a bit more diversity onscreen than in years past, more of these roles are focused on best friend and supporting parts. I would know for sure if the coalition posted it's raw data on the Web site for the public to sort through.

That's why I'm giving the Network TV Diversity Report Card a D grade -- for good intentions implemented not so well. Hope that doesn't sound too vague.

Lauren Hutton and Nip/Tuck: A Tampa Girl Made Good Plots Her Next Comeback

Even through the phone lines from her office in New York City, it's obvious. Lauren Hutton is a real broad -- in the finest sense of the word.

At age 63, she's got the ease and fearless eccentricity of many celebrities in later life. With little left to prove, few asses to kiss and less desire than ever to conform to anything, Hutton is ready to dish about life and showbiz, wrapping her smoky, lived-in voice around cheeky nostalgia and bitter curse words with equal enthusiasm. Check out the best quotes in my Floridian profile of the Tampa-raised star here.

She's once again filling a fine part, as insider Hollywood publicist Fiona McNeil on FX's buzzed-about plastic surgery series Nip/Tuck (how cool is that they're using a muscular cover of Wicked Game as their unofficial theme?). And she is frank about how, even when trying botox made one of her eyebrows stick up, "like the Wicked Witch of the West" she almost enjoyed it.

"I’ll tell you something, it felt great. I felt like I was in a tranquilizer – except for when I looked in the mirror. The rest of the time, you’re completely tranquil. Which made me realize how much of the synapses of our brain are trained in some way to work with the muscles of our face and emotions. If you can’t frown at all -- which is what happens when you get Botox,nothing moves -– you just float around all day. I miss that feeling, and I can still remember that.”

On her early days as a model in NYC: "We had jobs by the hour – you could make $60 or $70 an hour. A hardworking model, she’d have six jobs a day; you’d have a half hour to get between jobs, you’d be running up down and up downtown in the back of taxis. I used to really study people. Once in a while, I’d see an expression I didn’t know. And this was while I was trying to train my face to do anything the big girls do – to make any expression the big models could make. In New York, on every corner, there’s some drama happening. If I saw an expression where I didn’t know what that meant – I can remember trying to put my facial muscles in that expression, and I’d feel the emotion that the person had. It was amazing.”

On why she doesn't model much anymore: "I don’t care how many promises I got from the photographer, the president of the company, or even my own agents that they wouldn’t retouch me or would barely retouch me, I’d look at a picture of myself and look like a plastic doll. I’d look like one of those blow up dolls that truck drivers use. And it was scary and infuriating, because I knew I was passing the crap along to women."

On how she feels about most publicists (except her own): " I think most of them are monsters, really....Maybe it's that their job a lot of times is about hyping and they don’t get the time to believe in their clients. They start to disbelieve anything.”

Get a glimpse of Hutton's grandeur in this promo clip, where they've watered down the language (Guess which line was substituted for this one: "I feel like I'm trying to sell semen in a whorehouse!" Gotta love the wilds of cable TV after 10 p.m.)

Tampa Area Cable Access Takes a Pugnacious Message to the Airwaves

The first commercial begins with shots of despots Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, warning of the dangers from government leaders totally controlling public media. By the spot's end, the picture has resolved into photos of four Hillsborough County commissioners, drawing an uncomfortable and serious comparison.

Never let it be said that Tampa's cable access producers don't know how to make a point.

Weeks after filing a lawsuit against the county for voting to end the community's side of cable access while maintaining the government's end, Speak Up Tampa Bay has unleashed a series of commercials to raise money for their legal fund. The first and most striking ad, which I described up top, is viewable here.

Another, slightly less in-your-face ad can be seen here, showing cable access programs cut off without warning. The third, and funniest spot, features a longtime access host literally getting the rug -- and the background and the mics -- pulled out from under her.

All the ads make the same basic point: That County officials' decision to drop cable access programs created by the pulbic, diverting all the money collected for the program to shows touting the government and elected officials, is Unconstitutional.

It's hard to know whether this action has any chance of success. And Speak Up's very success in getting its commercials seen on YouTube -- along with efforts by other producers to keep their shows alive online -- may turn out to be the most persuasive argument against their thesis.

Check out the commercials yourself below. And speak up here -- is this much ado about nothing, or an important First Amendment issue?

 

It's Official Because CNN Says It Is: All Major GOP Candidates Onboard for YouTube Debate

We had the story Saturday, but CNN just issued a press release confirming that all the major GOP candidates will show up for this newfangled debate organized with the video file sharing Web site you Tube on Nov. 28 in St. Petersburg.

Pundits still seem to be divided over whether this is a new way of querying Presidential candidates or yet another gimmicky grab at attention during an election year. I think it's a bit of both, which makes it irresistible for those of us who are political and media junkies.

The St. Petersburg Times has already begun collecting questions from folks for possible airing during the show; we had cameras at the Festival of Reading Saturday, and there's more opportunities:

Thursday:6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., YMCA, 3200 First Ave. S, St. Petersburg

Nov. 7: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., University of Tampa, student commons

Nov. 17 and 24: 3 to 5 p.m., Times booth at BayWalk

Or, if you want to film and submit a question yourself, go to www.youtube.com/debates for instructions.

Here's the release:

All Major Republican Candidates Confirmed for First-Ever CNN/YouTube/Republican Party of Florida Debate

CNN, YouTube and the Republican Party of Florida today announced that the eight major Republican candidates running for president – Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Sen. John McCain, Rep. Ron Paul, Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Tom Tancredo and Sen. Fred Thompson – will participate in their first-of-its-kind Republican primary debate scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 28, at the Mahaffey Theatre in St. Petersburg, Fla. CNN’s Anderson Cooper will moderate this program designed to allow voters, no matter where they live, ask questions of the candidates for this country’s highest office.

CNN also announced that the ground-breaking program will broadcast live from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. (ET) on CNN, CNN International, CNN en Español, CNN Airport Network and CNN Radio and stream live on CNN.com, ensuring that people around the country and the world can watch these candidates’ answers to lively and thoughtful questions coming exclusively from their fellow citizens via video.

Like the Democratic CNN/YouTube/South Carolina Democratic Party debate, this innovative, live forum will feature video questions submitted to YouTube that will be broadcast and answered by the candidates on CNN.  Over 2,225 questions have been submitted thus far; online users are able to submit their video queries through Sunday, Nov. 25 at www.youtube.com/debates or www.rpof.org or www.cnn.com/youtubedebates. 

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.

YouTube is the world’s largest online video community allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube is based in San Bruno, Calif., and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.

The New Digital Media Reality: More Outlets with Less Actual Reporting

I'm just the kind of media geek who would eat up Howard Kurtz's new book, Reality Show, a blow-by-blow account of how the old school network TV anchors Brokaw, Jennings and Rather were suddenly and unexpectedly gone -- replaced in a frenzy of activity which saw one anchor blown up in Iraq, another disgraced by a runaway story and a third die of lung cancer.

But all of that behind-the-scenes dirt pales compared to one of Kurtz's most interesting discoveries: How much network newscasts crib from big newspapers such as the New York Times and Wall Street journal without admitting it.

An interesting section of the book involved Kurtz focusing on March 2006 and documenting nearly a dozen instances in which reports featured on the network newscasts followed stories on the same subject printed in a major national newspaper.

That's nothing new; TV outlets have been cribbing from newspapers for decades. But as newspapers shrink their reporting staffs and digital media outlets blossom, we are left with a peculiar circumstance -- a growing media structure increasingly built on a shrinking amount of original reporting.

I tried to explore this idea a bit in a Perspective column Sunday. The good news is that newspapers such as the New York Times, USA today and Washington Post become even more indispensable as sources for much of the original reporting on Iraq, unrest in Myanmar and tensions in Turkey. But fewer perspectives in reporting means less chance to avoid groupthink -- it was, after all, the Washington Bureau for Knight Ridder Newspapers which offered reporting challenging the assumptions in the run up to war in Iraq. 

Still, with more of us depending on fewer reporters to deliver facts for our media platforms, there's a serious reckoning coming. "The dirty secret of the information revolution is that much of it is about repackaging other people's stories," said Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "We probably have more reporters crowded around smaller subjects. Which means MSNBC and CNBC and Fox News may all have someone at the White House, but who's covering the Department of Agriculture?"

Why Did Tim Russert Give Two Journalists a Pass on Ethical Improprieties?

Russert-hating is almost an Olympic sport with some journalists, so I'm sometimes reluctant to join in the chorus of those who criticize the Meet the Press host for his chummy, insiderish excesses.

But then I watched Sunday's show, which began awfully enough with an extended interview featuring Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd -- a guy so far behind, even Russert cited a poll showing he had zero response among voters, justifying his status as a running joke on the Daily Show.

Then talk turned to the new book by Thomas DeFrank, Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Daily News, called Write It When I'm Gone. First, New York Times columnist William Safire admitted that he sent a memo to Richard Nixon in the early days of Watergate, not long after he had started work at the newspaper, telling the embattled president how he could survive the scandal.

Next, DeFrank admitted passing up the biggest scoop of his reporting life -- that Gerald Ford admitted to him he thought Nixon was finished as president one year before he resigned -- for fear of derailing his career. Ford had blurted it out while discussing his reaction to a Safire column, and then pressured DeFrank into agreeing to only write it after the president was dead.

Later in the interview, DeFrank also admitted Ford told him that he hated Ronald Reagan -- thought he was remarkably ignorant of details of major issues, but a great salesman -- despite many public speeches in which the former president said the exact opposite.

Did Russert even mildly challenge these guys on why they let these politicians lie about such stuff when  their job was to pierce those lies?  Did he ask Safire why he felt it was ethical to write columns for the nation's newspaper of record while advising the president on how to handle an emerging scandal? Did he note that the Watergate scandal might not have lasted so long if the world knew even the vice president had given up on Nixon?

Of course not. Indeed, it fell to Safire (pictured, at right) to note his discomfort with journalists only agreeing to publish the truth about a politician's statements after they're dead. As he quite rightly noted, that doesn't produce a whole lot of accountability when they're alive.

Viewers of Sunday's Meet the Press got a bitter taste of how politics and journalism worked 30 years ago, served up by a joking Russert -- too busy buttering up his guests to challenge their actions. Those who think today's White House Press Corps are lapdogs to powerful politicians need only hear stories like these to realize that was a tradition which started an awfully long time ago. 

Deggans Takes Brand Building Lessons from New York Times

I was struck earlier in the week by this story on how the New York Times is building its brand identity by promoting its staff -- particularly the young lions.

In a way, it's a self-serving discovery, I know. Because I've often wished the St. Petersburg Times would do a little more to promote those of us who serve as the face of the newspaper in its pages and in the community.

Come to Saturday's Times Festival of Reading at about noon on Saturday, in the Poynter Institute, and you'll see me introduce Dexter author (and Cape Coral resident) Jeff Lindsay, who I spent an enjoyable afternoon with a few weeks ago before I wrote about him.

But I've always thought we could do more: feature writer Lane DeGregory has written stories complex as any novella; music critic Sean Daly is the most energetic speaker on pop culture I've ever seen; Tom French won a Pulitzer for a series which read like a page-turning novel.

I don't even know if these guys want to speak. But as newspapers struggle to build bonds with readers, it seems that putting writers in closer touch with our readers only makes sense.

Our metro columnists Ernest Hooper, Sue Carlton and Howard Troxler will speak tomorrow at the same session. Still, in the years when I have spoken at the festival, it was such a pleasure to spend time with people who read the newspaper closely, I've always been surprised we don't utilize the platform and others like it a little more often.

Deggans Builds His Own Brands on WEDU

Check me out tonight on Rob Lorei's show for WEDU-Ch. 16, Florida This Week. I believe we'll be talking about the Florida Legislature and taxes, the recent GOP debate in Orlando and Mel Martinez stepping down as chair of the Republican National Committee.    

Anatomy of a Failure: Why NBC's Bionic Woman Is Na-Na-Not Working

As one of the most-anticipated new shows of the season, NBC's Bionic Woman remake has become a symbol of the oddest TV season in recent memory. Never have so many mediocre shows crowded TV screens for so long, testing viewers' patience with a steady stream of substandard material.

Since its debut, according to Nielsen ratings figures corralled on TVByTheNumbers.com, Bionic Woman has lost 5-million viewers, plunging from a high of 13-million viewers at its debut to 8.3-million last week. Watching this show's slow disintegration -- like any good sci fi fanboy, I have been TiVo-ing every episode in a vain hope things would get better -- is like seeing a fish thrash out its last moments on a muddy beach. It's also a bitter parable for what ails most new TV shows this season -- even series such as ABC's Pushing Daisies, recently picked up for a full season.

Here's what I think ails NBC's marquee show:

It's the writing, stupid -- Producers have had a hard time balancing all the different story elements they put in play from the very first episode. There's Jaime's rivalry/sisterhood with the first bionic woman, played by Battlestar Galactica alum Katee Sackhoff; Jaime's friction with the super-secret organization which bankrolled her upgrades; implications that her romance with the doctor who built her bionics was calculated from the start; Jaime's conflict with her high school-age sister, who she cares for; Jaime's struggle to figure out how her new abilities work; and the menace posed by the father of the doctor who built Jaime, who seems to be a calculating bad guy trying to sell bionics to the highest bidder.

Stir in weekly adventures which may or many not have anything to do with any of these core plotlines, and you have way too many storylines bouncing around which can't possibly be serviced by a coherent script. Which explains why so few episodes are coherent, making viewers feel abandoned.

Gloomy visuals do not equal realism -- The Battlestar Galactica reboot which Bionic Woman David Eick helped lead works because producers have created a gritty world filled with ambiguity, brutality, pain and near-insurmountable obstacles -- which always make heroism and triumph stand out even more. But Bionic Woman doesn't reflect that same merciless realism -- how can a woman who is supposed to be taking care of a high schooler vanish for days with no real explanation, for example? Instead, the series counts on moody visuals and hip-looking actors to convey an new attitude. But there's no there, there. It's like The Matrix with cheesier fight scenes.

Too many powerful actors underused -- Producers haven't yet figured out how to juggle all the great acting talent they have shoehorned into the show, from Sackhoff and Crossing Jordan alum Miguel Ferrer to Third Watch's Molly Price, Thief's Will Yun Lee and, of course, fallen Grey's Anatomy star  Isaiah Washington. Washington, in particular, seems forced into the episodes, brought to the project in a casting coup from new NBC entertainment head Ben Silverman. But making a character which was supposed to be a minor note into a major theme has taken its toll, pushing Price's character in particular into the background.

Too much nonsense onscreen -- Cute as it was to see the British actress playing Sommers revert to her original accent for this week's episode, where BW was pretending to be an exchange student from Oxford, how does the character come up with a letter-perfect British accent when needed? And why doesn't anyone else on the show question it? Every episode is filled with these niggling questions: Why exactly does Jaime Sommers feel compelled to make nice with the first bionic woman, which killed her boyfriend? Why exactly is she working for a super secret company which may was observing her for years before the car accident which required her bionics? Each query is a tiny nibble from the show's believability, which makes watching episodes almost painful.

It's not the actors, stupid -- Much as some fans are trying to blame Brit import Michelle Ryan for the show's problems, that's a bum rap. She's a game actress, vaulting into indulgent fight scenes and non-sensical dialogue with equal gusto. But producers have failed her, like a pit crew which doesn't put a race car's tires on tight enough. Ryan is stuck in special effects scenes where she is clearly flailing at the end of a wire or working through clumsy fight choreography. In a post-Matrix, post-X-men world, lame-o special effects only adds to the feeling of watching a clunker hit the skids before viewers' eyes. 

   

Air America Pokes its Nose in the Tampa Radio Market

Looks like Clearwater radio station WTAN-1340 AM -- once renowned as the Tampa Bay area's last home for disgraced radio host Don Imus -- will soon feature two talk shows from the liberal oriented radio network Air America.

On Monday, WTAN debuted a three-hour show by Tampa native Lionel (a.k.a. Michael William LeBron) airing from 9 p.m. to midnight, and is negotiating to bring an hourlong show by Air America's big name Randi Rhodes to their afternoon schedule at 3 p.m. beginning in November.

It's a big move for WTAN, which makes much of its money selling airtime to independent producers who assemble their own shows and sell their own advertising. It's also important for Air America, which announced deals with 10 other small radio stations around the country, fighting off continued rumors of its imminent demise by allowing stations to pick up select shows -- a practice the network resisted when it debuted in March 2004.

David Bernstein, Air America's vice president of programming, also dropped another admission: the liberal-oriented network is moving away from extreme liberalism.

"I do think the liberal programming that has occurred here has been far too extremist," said Bernstein, who came to Air America from commercial radio. "It's not our job to get a Democrat elected to Congress. We need to be funny, we need to be enjoyable, and I don't think that existed at this company three years ago."

That's quite a change from the network's debut, when former Saturday Night Live castmember Al Franken kicked off the network promising to oppose "the radical right wing of the Republican Party." Over the years, the network has seen major programming, executive and ownership changes amid constant rumors that it might go out-of-business. Franken has since left the network, along with former TV talk show host Jerry Springer and comic Marc Maron.

And even though some progressives might accuse the network of taking a Hillary Clinton-like moderate approach to talk radio, WTAN co-owner David Wagenvoord said Lionel and Rhodes will still offer an alternative from most AM talk stations in the Tampa Bay area, which feature hardcore conservatives such as Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh.

"I think a lot of people have moved away from that (conservative) outlook," said Wagenvoord, who also said he'd take back Imus " in a second" if he returns to radio. "I like to be the guy in the middle who listens to everyone. And I think there's room now (in local radio) for both sides."