My list of summer TV's worst shows . . . so far

A couple of weeks back, I filled The Feed with a list of the shows I most liked this summer. Now it’s time for the other shoe to land.

For every ambitious drama like Nurse Jackie or True Blood, there’s a boorish I Survived a Japanese Game show lurking around the corner. And heartwarming as some of the performers’ stories are on America’s Got Talent, most of the bunch are musty enough that I’ve considered adding a question mark to the end of the show’s title.

In that spirit of crabby grousing that the sweltering heat of late July can produce, here’s my list of stinkers for the summer – titled, you’d be well-advised to avoid by any means necessary.

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, 12:35 p.m. weeknights, WFLA-Ch. 8: The rush from his triumphant debut has faded, and a few months into his job as NBC’s New Conan, it’s obvious former Saturday Night Live star Fallon is floundering like a 16-year-old driving his dad’s Maserati. Mentor Lorne Michaels has built an amazing vehicle for his young talent – complete with the second-best band in late-night, The Roots – but Fallon can’t do much with it besides make funny faces and look adorable.

I’m  a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here, aired in June on WFLA: Unfolding like a bizarre ripoff/blend of Celebrity Apprentice and Survivor, this show mostly had the distinction of publicizing reality TV brats Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt so much, you actually felt sorry for Sanjaya Malakar and the governor’s wife whose husband got caught trying to sell Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.

 Big Brother 11, airing at 8 p.m. Sundays and Thursdays, 9 p.m. Tuesdays on WTSP-Ch. 10: In case there was a viewer left who missed the sophomoric stuff that went down when a dozen vapid reality TV wanna-bes got stuck in a makeshift house over three months, this year producers made it official by separating contestants into the kind of cliques you remember from high school. The problem: This makes the show unwatchable for everyone except that small percentage who still fondly remember high school.

Wipeout, airing at 8 p.m. Wednesdays on WFTS-Ch. 28: Watching over-excited, under-coordinated knuckleheads doink their heads of the show’s outlandish obstacle courses feels entertaining the first dozen times you watch. But every telecast feels like it saps your brain power a little more, until you’re babbling at the screen like somebody stuck in the audience of that Schwarzenegger film, The Running Man.

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Two more longtime area journalists lose jobs at WFTS-Ch. 28 and Creative Loafing

Posting will be light the rest of this week -- I'm taking the family to Disney World for my daughter's 5th birthday.

But I couldn't hit the road before noting the departure of two more longtime journalists, both seemingly victims of long tenures and presumably substantial salaries in a deteriorating media environment.

St. Pete Times sports media expert Tom Jones reported yesterday that Al Keck, top sports guy at ABC Action News and at CBS affiliate WTSP-Ch. 10 before that, would not have his contract renewed. The news seems another blow to the rapidly deteriorating state of local TV sports, where WFLA-Ch.8 has seen its regular on-air staff clipped from three anchors to one and WTSP's top sports anchor quit with no new job arranged.

Keck, who left WTSP in 2001 when his contract wasn't renewed, went to ABC Action News that same year.

On the same day, news surfaced that Eric Snider, longtime editor and music writer at Creative Loafing's Tampa newspaper, had been laid off. Snider, who was once music critic at the St. Petersburg Times, was always a fun companion for me at area concerts when I came to the Times in 1995 as its music critic.

He's a raconteur with a sharp writing talent and a good ear for great music; the conversation got so good at shows, I had to be careful about missing too much of the actual concert.

In a blog post announcing the move, Loafing's Tampa editor David Warner expressed his regret over Snider's layoff while maintaining confidence in the newspaper's future and confirming the already slim staff lost four people this year. A judge has set an Aug. 25 date for auction of the in-bankruptcy newspaper chain, following negotiations where its biggest creditor wrote down a $31 million debt to $12 million.

Current publisher Ben Eason is expected to lead one group seeking control of the company, while the biggest creditor, Atalaya Capital Management, will likely be the other. Atalaya has already made a "stalking horse" offer of $2 million.

One hopes the staff won't be cut too much more by then.

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Discovery Channel catches up to executive producer, says Pitchmen will present a second season after death of star Billy Mays

(UPDATE: After I posted this item on the certainty of producers' Anthony Sullivan and Thom Beers that Pitchmen would continue after the unexpected death of Billy Mays, Discovery Channel -- which had originally declined to comment on my item -- issued a press release admitting a second season was going to happen.

The channel is also repeating its hourlong tribute to Mays on July 24; it originally aired July 9. The channel's release says Sullivan, Beers and Discovery Channel are developing the next season with Mays' son Billy Mays III.)

To clear his head after the death of his friend and partner, legendary pitchman Billy Mays, infomercial producer/talent Anthony Sullivan decided to hike a distant mountain in Colorado, far away from their Tampa homebase.

But when a group of girls stopped to pet his dog, Sullivan soon found out he hadn’t traveled far enough to outdistance fans of the Discovery Channel show he starred in with Mays.

Which helps explain why Sullivan and executive producer Thom Beers say they are going to try reinventing the show for another season after Mays’ death — if they can work out a new format that honors their departed co-star’s memory.

“Everyone has said to me ‘Are you going to find a new Billy Mays?’ and that’s not possible,” said Sullivan, noting only his 20-something son, Billy Mays III, might come close. “We have to reinvent the show, but I really want to be careful. I just want to make sure we do what Billy would want — I think he’d roll over in his grave if we just stopped it.”

Executive producer Beers, whose credits include the Discovery hit Deadliest Catch, was more definitive, saying “I know (Pitchmen) will continue on. Absolutely, without a doubt.”

Mays, 50, was found dead in his Tampa home the morning of  June 28; the Hillsborough County medical examiner said preliminary autopsy results indicate he may have died of heart disease. Sullivan and Mays had already filmed the 12-episode first season of Pitchmen, which concluded July 1. Discovey aired a special tribute episode July 9.

Beers suggested the show could continue because so much drama came from the stories of inventors pitching their products to Sullivan and Mays, who would decide which deserved a showcase in a major direct-marketing campaign. But fans may wonder if the chemistry between Mays and Sullivan, who sparred with each other playfully like an old married couple, might be difficult to replace.

“(Mays) was thrilled with his ability to help all these people reach their dreams,” Beers said. “Why would we give that up?”

And though Sullivan had some ideas for revamping the show, he wants to make sure Mays’ wife, Deborah, and son are on board, as well.

“The main thing, is we want to be sensitive to his fans and his family,” Sullivan said. “And we’ve gotten an overwhelming amount of mail saying ‘You’ve got to carry the torch.’ Turns out, hit shows aren’t that easy to come by . . . and I get the feeling how we do it will be part of the appeal of season two.”

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As SpongeBob turns 10, voiceman Tom Kenny explains why leading a hit show can be like surviving a terminal disease

Speaking over the phone, Tom Kenny sounds lot more like an overworked middle-aged dad than the hyperkinetic voice behind one of TV's biggest cartoon hits ever, Nickelodeon's Spongebob SquarePants -- now marking its 10th anniversary on air.

 But Kenny -- who also voices the controversial Skids robot in the Transformers movie sequel and a talking toy chain saw under development by Fisher Price -- is always a can of Red Bull and an enthusiastic request away from sliding into the relentlessly upbeat undersea sponge at the center of nickelodeon's gargantuan hit SpongeBob SquarePants, even as he compares starring in a hit TV show to surviving a terminal disease.

“Spongebob has hung on for so long it’s almost like you beat this terminal disease – marketplace malaise," he says, laughing." And every day’s a bonus round.”

Beating the odds, SpongeBob has racked up $2-billion in annual merchandising sales and a regular berth among the most-watched cable shows each week without compromising its eccentric, creative vision.
Nickelodeon  celebrates with 50 hours of programming this  weekend, including 11 new episodes, celebrities’ favorite moments and a documentary Square Roots, airing at 9 p.m. Tuesday on VH1.

Before the madness starts, I spent 90 minutes dissecting SpongeBob SquarePants with the guy -- outside of creator Stephen Hillenburg -- who knows him best:

Can you believe the show has been on for 10 years?

“It’s not like I would have been disappointed that it went away after three or four years – that’s usually the lifespan in the marketplace. You do 52 episodes, which gives them enough to rerun it forever. I always loved the character and loved the show right from the very beginning. I really liked him and his world and the supporting cast of characters – even when they were just drawings on a piece of paper. It’s been nice to watch it flourish. It’s been an interesting sociological experiment.”

What have you learned from the show's success?

“You can’t try to sit down with test tubes and beakers and try to create a gigantically worldwide popular show. You never know what’s going to resonate. SpongeBob was created in a resolutely unscientific way – without regard to demographics of flow charts or marketshare. It was an artistic, funny guy with an interest in oceanography and comedy, trying to make a funny seven-minute short. It’s inspiring for younger people and kids out there – be passionate about what you’re passionate about, because you never know about how it call can come together to enrich your life.

I love the way the show recalls earlier landmark cartoons like Ren and Stimpy.

"When Ren and Stimpy came along, all the funny cartoons that were on were old. Looney Tunes is funny, but it’s old, Bullwinkle is funny, but its old,. And then you turns on new cartoons and its Care Bears and stuff. Ren and Stimpy made it okay to be funny again. It was an animators show...(it) had the fingerprints of its creator all over it. It was funny like those old cartoons, and it was new. It really intensified my desire to work in animation.

You once said you get paid for doing stuff that used to get you kicked out of class.

“It’s that weird job that as fun as you think it would be when you were a kid. When you grow up, you might realize that actually being a fireman or being an astronaut is nothing like the reality of it. But I can't think of anything I’d rather do. I don’t need to date any more, I’ve find my soulmate. I'm able to make a living doing what I always want to do – being creative and funny and artistic. For me, as a voice over person it’s like being a session musician. Today I’m playing on a soul record, yesterday, I played on a country record – you’ve got to make your instrument play the right stuff for that gig. You’re just always out there trying to keep all the plates spinning as much as you can.”

Gay activist group plans protest Wednesday against WFLA-Ch. 8 at its front door

More than two weeks have passed since WFLA-Ch. 8 aired as paid programing a controversial documentary titled Speechless: Silencing the Christians, which maintains that a "radical homosexual agenda" has led to unfairly persecuting religious people who find homosexuality morally wrong.

But the statewide gay rights advocacy group Equality Florida isn't willing to let the matter slide. The group has announced a press conference and demonstration at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, in front of WFLA's headquarters at 202 S. Parker St. in Tampa.

Equality Florida spokeswoman Nadine Smith said the group was disappointed that WFLA and executives at the TV station's owner Media General have not apologized for airing the documentary or offered free airtime for a presentation which might offer an opposing view.

Smith said their protest coincides with a local visit by Media General president and CEO Marshall Morton; online materials circulated by the group claim that more than 1,800 people have contacted the station to protest the show's airing in the first place.

The controversy is similar to criticism the St. Petersburg Times faced when it included copies of the controversial documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West with editions of its newspaper.

Though supporters said the film focused on the excesses of extremists, other Muslim advocacy groups said the documentary was an attempt to turn Americans against all Muslims, distributed to newspapers across the country in swing states during an important election year.

Equality Florida has organized around outrage over the documentary, holding a statewide online town hall last week and asking members for $25 donations to help fight future airings of the program. A Facebook page advocating boycott of WFLA has drawn about 500 members.

Turns out, broadcast of the documentary may have helped organize gay people in Florida more than ever -- a rather ironic result.

Check out a sample of the documentary below:

  

Producers for Jerry Seinfeld's Marriage Ref come to the Tampa Bay area this weekend

If you haven't already tried out for Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or Biggest Loser or America's Next Top Model or American Idol -- all top reality TV shows who have auditioned folks in or near the Tampa Bay area in recent weeks -- then you've got one more shot at unscripted television glory.

Producers for Jerry Seinfeld's new show The Marriage Ref are expected to fly into the Tampa Bay area this weekend, scheduling interviews with couples who have a longstanding disagreement over something ("no problem is too small," the casting notice insists).

Instead of arranging a cattle call audition somewhere public, however, the producers are asking prospective couples to call their hotline at 1-877-304-4040 or email marriagerefcasting@shedmediaus.com to schedule an interview this weekend. Seinfeld is the creator and executive producer; in other words, he isn't going to be there.

The Marriage Ref is a show dreamed up by Seinfeld which allows celebrities, comics and sports stars to act as referees for typical and not-so-typical marital spats.

So imagine turning to Chris Rock for advice on how to keep your wife from complaining about your boys nights out, or asking Kathy Griffin for tips on how to spice up your love life (maybe you want to ask Pamela Anderson, instead)

If you do call and get an audition, feel free to post here on how it went.

This may be some couple's last chance to earn the kind of fame which has made household names of Jon and Kate Gosselin -- though that may not be the best motivation.

Tampa Bay Idol winner and runner-up move up

Samantha Leigh's shot at American Idol fame came down to about 15 seconds; the amount of time she got to blast through Aretha Franklin's Rock Steady during her audition today before American Idol producers in Orlando.

Leigh was the singer I helped choose for a special audition slot handed out through WTVT-Ch. 13's Tampa Bay Idol contest, working with four other judges to sort through 80 applicants and watching 10 finalists sing at a Brandon mall.

Turns out, she and second-place finisher Brad Iturriaga did well, moving to the next stage in Idol's audition process.

Leigh's win guaranteed an audition before the show's producers ahead of the 10,000 people who crowded around Amway Arena today, joining about 50 people who had won similar contests around the region or done well at Disney World's Idol Experience.

 According to Leigh, singers were split into groups and asked to sing when pointed at, standing before four casting producers. Generally, singers got through about 15 seconds of a tune before they were stopped -- nothing like the longer auditions with feedback they show during the Idol broadcasts.

(Here's Leigh with WTVT's Charley Belcher, me, WFLZ's Meredith and singer Belinda Womack last week in Brandon.)

"They tell you ahead of time not to introduce yourself, not to ask for feedback, they just point to you and you sing," said Leigh, 22, who works as a hairstylist and performs at Busch Gardens  in Tampa. "It was crazy, nerve-racking . . . almost surreal."

Leigh and Iturriaga will perform for the show's executive producers later this month -- Fox doesn't publicize those auditions the way they hype the big stadium cattle calls -- and won't face on-camera judges such as Simon Cowell, if they're lucky, until next month.

Leigh didn't even get to meet Idol host Ryan Seacrest, who was there to film some of the opening sequences for the audition shows. "I did get to stand 20 feet away from him," she said, laughing. "Maybe I'll meet him next time."

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Oprah re-airs episode based on St. Pete Times' Pulitzer-winning report, The Girl in the Window, today

Talk queen Oprah Winfrey is re-airing her episode based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning St. Petersburg Times series The Girl in the Window today.

You can see the episode locally at 4 p.m. on NBC affiliate WFLA-Ch. 8. see the Times array of reports by clicking here.

The episode was actually filmed last year, featuring Times reporter Lane DeGregory, who authored an in-depth look at a 6-year-old named Danielle found living in squalor in plant city, unable to talk, wearing dirty diapers and living in a cockroach-infested home. See Winfrey's online material by clicking here.

Winfrey's cameras visited the Plant City home in which Danielle was found in 2005 with the officer who discovered her, describing how animal feces lined the walls, how her mattress was moldy and falling apart, and the child herself was covered in insect bites, fleas and mites, wearing only a soiled diaper.

Footage from Tampa Bay area cable newschannel Bay News 9's 2008 interview with Danielle's biological mother, Michelle Crockett, was shown during the episode, with Crockett's face blurred out. Winfrey never mentioned Crockett by name, quizzing DeGregory on the mother's mental state; DeGregory appeared from the Times newsroom via the video conferencing service Skype.

"She seemed very much in denial," DeGregory said of Crockett. "She felt very much like a victim . . . Her only regret was moving (to Florida)." Winfrey noted that the show attempted to get a statement from Crockett through her attorney, who did not return their calls.

Times photographer Melissa Lyttle's intimate, revealing photographs were added to footage gathered by Winfrey's producers and other sources to show Danielle's integration into her adoptive family, including parents Diane and Bernie Lierow.

Clips of Danielle spending time with the Lierows revealed what Danielle looks like during frequent fits and while she was learning new ways to eat, walk and use the bathroom. The Lierows appeared in Winfrey's studio for the story, but Danielle remained off camera in the show's "green room" for guests, seen there only in a brief video clip of the host meeting with the family backstage.

Is there a difference between the stereotypes in Bruno and Transformers 2?

It's easy to look like a poor sport when you're talking about negative stereotypes in film and TV.

The latest flap along those lines involve two of summer's most anticipated movies: Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno and the whiz-band action film Transformers 2.

Some critics have already taken aim at Bruno, denouncing Cohen's in-your-face mockumentary centered on a cartoonishly effeminate and hyper-sexual fashionista as a gay minstrel show.

Writing in Salon, David Rakoff provides a typically caustic review, calling the Bruno character "an open hydrant of empty, venal ignorance" and denouncing the film as "bad for gays" over its too-broad attempts to provoke homophobic reactions from unsuspecting people.

Other critics have lodged similar complaints against Transformers 2, noting that two new robot characters, Skids and Mudflap, talk in a patios normally associated with young black people and are mostly ineffective, foul-mouthed characters used almost entirely for comedic effect.

Director Michael Bay shrugged off the criticism, saying ""We're just putting more personality in. I don't know if it's stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it."

Which raises an interesting question: When is such stuff considered stereotypical?

When Tracy Morgan voices a jive-talking hamster in the new animated movie G-force, is that a stereotype, or Morgan just doing what he does? Does that verdict change when you watch the commercials, where his character struts in front of the camera like he's doing a modern-day pimp walk?

 I'll be discussing these ideas at about 9:30 a.m. this morning, appearing on National Public Radio's Tell Me More. My verdict, as someone who has seen Transformers but not Bruno: It seems tough to lay the stereotype label on Bruno, which is specifically crafted to pile on all those gay stereotypes in one character to satirize how we all react to them.

That's a lot different than creating two stereotypical fictional characters -- like Star Wars' Jar-Jar Binks -- purely for comic relief in a movie focused on a totally different subject.

In this game, I think, you get points for intent. Tune in at 9:30 and see if anybody else agrees with me.

As Discovery Channel airs tribute to pitchman Billy Mays tonight, his family OKs continued airing of his commercials

As I originally reported last week, the family of legendary pitchman Billy Mays has given their permission for marketers to continue airing commercials featuring the popular infomercial/spot selling king, who died suddenly in his Tampa home on June 28.

Mays' family issued a statement Wednesday announcing the decision, reached after a conference call held last week with more than a dozen marketers who had built advertising campaigns around Mays. Though Mays' son, Billy Mays III, has made reference to a foundation to be established in his father's name, the Wednesday statement makes no reference to it.

Roger Pliakas, a California attorney representing Mays' family, said in the statement, "Out of respect for Billy's family, most commercials were temporarily pulled off the air as his loss was mourned.  While the mourning and healing process will continue for the family, they have graciously given permission for all the people, inventors, companies and corporations to continue using his likeness on television and packaging pursuant to and honoring all existing agreements that he had in place.  The family hopes this will be done respectfully and at an appropriate time because they strongly believe this is what Billy would have wanted."

The company behind the Mighty Putty and Mighty Mendit products announced Wednesday they will air the last long-form infomercial Mays recorded before his death, a pitch for the Mighty Tape adhesive strips that featured the salesman repairing a leaky air line while scuba diving -- in his trademark blue shirt and khaki pants. 

 "It is important to understand that Billy believed in every product he sold, and he loved nothing more than bringing helpful products to people at a great savings," said his wife Deborah, in the statement.  "He always enjoyed meeting his loyal fans and taking time to really talk to everyday people."

Discovery Channel will air an hourlong tribute to Mays at 9 tonight called Pitchman: A Tribute to Billy Mays, featuring interviews with family members, his co-workers in the infomercial industry and his co-star on the series Pitchmen, Anthony Sullivan. A spokeswoman for the channel said Discovery had not made any decision on the future of Pitchmen, which aired the last episode of its first season July 1.

Pallbearers copied Mays look for his July 3 funeral, carrying the pitchman's coffin clad in his trademark blue shirt and khaki pants.

Discovery has also created a space on YouTube where fans can upload video tributes to Mays. Click here to travel to the site. Look below to see some of the videos already uploaded there.