Welcome to CraveOnline's Idiot Box Updates, where we run down all the latest TV news and separate the facts from the rumors and nonsense on and about the small screen.
Here's a list of the top 20 prime-time shows by viewership numbers, compiled by Nielsen Media Research for March 30-April 5:
1. "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 24.41 million viewers.
2. "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 24.34 million viewers.
3. "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 20.48 million viewers.
4. "NCIS," CBS, 17.23 million viewers.
5. "The Mentalist," CBS, 16.96 million viewers.
6. "ER," NBC, 16.38 million viewers.
7. Academy of Country Music Awards, CBS, 14.78 million viewers.
8. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 14.63 million viewers.
9. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 14.56 million viewers.
10. CBS NCAA Basketball Semifinal: Villanova vs. North Carolina, CBS, 14.45 million viewers.
11. "Dancing With the Stars Results," ABC, 13.51 million viewers.
12. "CSI: Miami," CBS, 13.46 million viewers.
13. CBS NCAA Basketball Between Games Show, CBS, 12.95 million viewers.
14. "Without a Trace," CBS, 12.53 million viewers.
15. "House," Fox, 12.51 million viewers.
16. "60 Minutes," CBS, 12.27 million viewers.
17. "Survivor: Tocantins," CBS, 11.27 million viewers.
18. "24," Fox, 11.26 million viewers.
19. "Rules of Engagement," CBS, 11.02 million viewers.
20. "ER Retrospective," NBC, 10.63 million viewers.
It's a beautiful day in TV land! HBO has brought dreams to life by renewing the raunchy, comedy series "Eastbound & Down" for a second season.
The series stars Danny McBride as Kenny Powers, who becomes a substitute teacher in his North Carolina hometown after his righteous-bastard attitude and ever-slowing fastball knock him out of Major League Baseball. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay were executive producers of the six-episode run, and fans of the show will recognize Will as the scary/creepy car salesman from the second episode. Ratings for the show grew as the series went on, finishing with 950,000 viewers tuning in for the season finale.
HBO says production on new episodes will begin later this year. The new episodes will debut in 2010! Whoo!
(It should be noted that I took great pains not to drop F-bombs all over this little item. Kenny Powers just has that effect.)
If you watch "Fringe," you're likely aware that there's something more to the show than the X-Files-meets-CSI element. The show is full of Easter Eggs--little goodies hidden within the show--and one of the more perplexing gems has apparently been solved. When Fox's sci-fi drama heads to commercial break, a spooky blue symbol - which includes an apple, a waft of smoke and a human hand- sits on screen for a few seconds. We've know that they're supposed to mean something, but what? Turns out we may have been looking too hard.
Tech Web site Ars Technica editor Julian Sanchez discovered that each symbol corresponds to a single letter of the alphabet--like a Sunday newspaper cryptogram. When the symbols shown during each episode are put together, they spell out a word that corresponds to the episode's theme. Some examples include the words "Rogue," "Taken," and "Olivia."
But, given that breaking the code was fairly simple, Sanchez thinks there may be even more to the puzzle.
In more "Fringe" news, Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has learned exclusively that Abrams is close to bringing on Leonard Nimoy to play the pivotal role of William Bell on the show.
Although Nimoy has yet to sign on the dotted line, a Fringe insider says "everyone's optimistic" that the 78-year-old Trek icon will be the one to play Walter Bishop's former lab partner-turned-millionaire founder of Massive Dynamics.
The character is slated to debut in next month's season finale and then return in the fall for an extended arc.
Check out more info here: http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/04/exclusive-fring.html.
NBC has renewed "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" for another season, says EW.com, and an official announcement may come as soon as early next week. However, one thing not set in stone are the contracts of the show's two leads, Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay.
While it isn't likely that the two star will be dropped, it isn't out of the realm of possibility. Both actors were reportedly quoted as having questionable returns to the show last season, with Meloni getting bogged down by negotiations, and Hargitay looking for more family time.
Personally, I think the world could do with one or two less "Law & Order" shows. Throw in a "CSI" or two while you're at it.
Frog-throated windbag Joan Rivers, the 75-year-old comedian, will be given the torch treatment July 26 in Los Angeles by the American cable network Comedy Central.
The roast will air on the Viacom Inc.-owned network on Aug. 9. Rivers will make for great roasting material, being that she has never been shy about her plastic surgeries, she's old as dirt and self-deprecating as all hell. But Rivers has made herself the butt of her humor perhaps more than anything else. On Wednesday, she joked that the last time she was roasted was for a "two-for-one special: Joan of Arc and me."
We saw this one coming: The new unscripted show "Someone's Gotta Go" will invade businesses, giving employees the power to fire each other. Yeah, sounds like a lot of assault charges waiting to happen. Leave it to Fox to prey on America's worst fear.
The show features real businesses looking to downsize, turning the experience into a cubicle-set Survivor.
Employees will have access to the company's internal information- including everyone's salaries -and will vote on who they think should be fired. Everything will be overseen by an employment consultant, who will also host the series.
"It's Survivor meets The Office," Fox's Mike Darnell told Variety. "When someone is arbitrarily let go the first reaction usually is 'How come that person was fired when another idiot is still here?' This finally gives employees a chance to make that decision instead of a boss."
This shit makes me sick. With unemployment reaching near-all-time highs, making light of the worst day of someone's life isn't exactly in good taste, even for Fox. Don't watch it, please.
NBC hospital drama "ER" ended its 15-year run last Thursday by drawing 16.4 million viewers for its final episode, the highest viewership for a drama finale since 1996, the network said on Friday.
The two-hour show on Thursday night brought back "ER" alumni Noah Wyle and Eriq La Salle, as the staff at County General Hospital in Chicago treated a dying woman in labor, an AIDS patient and a comatose teenager with alcohol poisoning. The last scene showed emergency room staff wheeling in burn victims from a plant explosion as Chicago's famous elevated train passed overhead, giving audiences the sense that while a TV show may end, life goes on.
The 16.4 million figure was the highest for a U.S. drama finale since the CBS show "Murder, She Wrote" in 1996, which drew 16.5 million viewers, NBC said.
Sci Fi, soon to be SyFy, is producing two four-hour movie events "Riverworld" and "The Phantom", both of which may lead to a new series - and both of which star some welcome familiar faces.
Tahmoh Penikett of "Battlestar Galactica" and currently on FOX's "Dollhouse," will play the lead in "Riverworld" opposite "Smallville" supergirl Laura Vandervoort, while "Desperate Housewives" actor Ryan Carnes will play the titular lead in "The Phantom."
"Riverworld," based on the novel series by SF author Philip Jose Farmer, centers on the greater part of humanity that lived on Earth suddenly finding themselves resurrected on a terraformed planet known as Riverworld. Among these people are war correspondent Matt Ellman (Penikett) and his fiancee (Vandervoort), both of whom had been killed and now find themselves alive and kicking.
"Riverworld" and "Phantom" have already begun production and are set to air in 2010. A third RHI project, "Alice," is also planned.
The way-overhyped "Kings" has been struck from its Sunday night spot after a dismal ratings drive. It'll now air on the TV week's Death Row - Saturdays. The big-budget, big-concept, big-ratings-disappointment Kings looks to be near the end of its reign.
Sunday's episode notched a 1.1 rating/3 share among 18-49-year-old adults and only averaged 3.6 million viewers. That's not good for a show rumored to have a $10 million pilot.
In its place, NBC will extend the news show "Dateline" to two hours. "Kings" will replace an hour that is largely considered the worst primetime hour - it's the time that NBC usually airs reruns.
Those loyal to Kings might say the show was marketed incorrectly or not enough. What do you think went wrong?
"Stargate Universe" (SGU), with Robert Carlyle, Lou Diamond Phillips and more, is headed to screens soon! "Stargate Universe" is a spinoff of the Stargate franchise and it follows a group of explorers forced onto the Destiny, a ship built by the Ancients. The only catch: The ship can’t return to Earth.
A new trailer debuted during the airing of "Stargate Continuum" last Saturday night. They’ve titled the trailer “Philosophical.” did you watch it? What did you think?
The post office is giving Simpsons fans the chance to vote on five new stamps honoring the nation's funniest dysfunctional family. The Simpson stamps will be issued May 7, portraying Homer, his wife, Marge, their son Bart, daughter Lisa and baby Maggie.The 44-cent stamps will go on display at 8 a.m. Thursday at http://www.usps.com/simpsons and votes can be cast at that site until May 14.
The price of a first-class stamp goes up 2-cents to 44 cents in May.
Are you ready for some hot "Parks & Recreation" action tonight?! The new Amy Poehler series debuts tonight after "The Office," and this fan couldn't be more excited.
From the Hollywood Reporter: It's unfair to compare "Parks and Recreation" to "The Office" just because they share writers and producers. "Office" didn't invent the mockumentary any more than its British predecessor did. "Parks" is a genuinely funny and engaging comedy that bears stylistic similarities to "Office" but has a heart and mind all its own.
Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), deputy director of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Ind., is the kind of naive, blindly cheerful central character who is reminiscent of Steve Carell's Michael Scott. But the key difference is that Michael's idiocy is egocentric, while Leslie's lack of self-awareness and her zealousness to please ultimately are designed to benefit those around her. In the words of Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), she's "kinda doofy, but sweet."
The series revolves around Leslie and her fellow low-level government employees, including Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider) and her boss, Ron (Nick Offerman). Leslie is endearingly optimistic about her ability to effect change in the community, so when Ann appears at a meeting to complain about a giant undeveloped pit next to her apartment that has become a safety hazard, Leslie takes it upon herself to try to reclaim the land and get a park built on the lot.
As far as structured plot goes, that's about it, but that thread is more than enough to connect a series of often hilarious moments in which Poehler and the talented cast riff on their natural chemistry. Ansari plays the same cocky and somewhat lazy schemer he's come to perfect on everything from "Scrubs" to features like "Observe and Report," but he's great at it. It's also nice to see Schneider, so wonderful in dramatic work, fit snugly within a comedic ensemble. Offerman scores breakout moments as a conservative official who wants to dismantle and privatize his department and who looks to Bobby Knight for leadership tips.
But it's Poehler who owns the show, and she proves instantly that she's got the comic intelligence to carry a series like this one, which draws its energy from character interactions rather than broad punch lines. She's awkward but not alienating, and she's eager without being repelling. Most of all, there's a genuine heart to her that gives the comedy a balance and lets it be mocking without resorting to cruelty. It's funny, smart and fast.
