Katie at KT has the scoop...

Is it just me, or were the Daily Show and the Colbert Report better without writers? A couple of shows I've seen with the writers back seemed stiff and uninspired, and some of the jokes were just stupid. Same thing with Bill Maher (actually, he hasn't been very good with or without writers lately). Maybe they need to rethink this whole comedy by committee thing?

I just saw that CNN.com now has a little box at the top of their articles called STORY HIGHLIGHTS.

It's kind of like a five sentence summary of the main points. Apparently CNN.com feels people might not want to have to (yawn) read the whole article or maybe can't read or think well enough to get the drift of the material on their own?

Just another way to dumb down the news. Some people probably think they actually understand the content without reading the whole article that way. Yeah, like understanding Shakespeare from reading Cliff Notes.

It's really revolting.

This explains why.

I wanted to like Studio 60, and a couple of episodes I saw were pretty good. But lately I've been wondering why it is again that I'm supposed to care about these characters?

Friday Night Lights, on the other hand, is great TV. It's just like American Dreams, except it's present day instead of the sixties, small-town Texas instead of Philadelphia, and centers around football instead of American Bandstand. (But it's not really about football, and don't let the cheesy website fool you.) The writing, characters, and acting are all top-notch.

If you haven't seen it, check it out if you're interested in that sort of thing. It's on NBC Wednesdays, at 8PM. (At least for now. They keep moving it around.)

County Commission's actions certainly will get some TV attention this weekend.

DTV tonight will be a live show. I will be hosting as usual. The program is from 9:30 to 10:30 pm. Sharon Cawood is confirmed as a guest; others are possible. Call-in questions welcome, 215-2288.

WBIR's Inside Tennessee (the station's website indicates it airs at 9:30 a.m. Sunday with likely replays on the Ten News 2 channel). It taped Thursday night. First segment: Commissioners Greg Lambert and R. Larry Smith and former commissioner John Greiss. Second segment: Randy Tyree and Me, as you might expect I blast the process followed by the commission. Third Segment: Sharon Cawood, Sherry Witt.

WATE's Tennessee This Week. The station website indicates Noon airing, and streaming video likely earlier on the station website. Guests include: Commissioners R. Larry Smith and Greg Lambert, as well as Amy Broyles.

--Mark Harmon

We decided to update our home entertainment system for the first time in a while. I can highly recommend Sony LCD HDTVs. We also switched from DirecTV to Charter Cable to get local HD broadcast channels. Being sick in bed for a few days last week, I had plenty of opportunity to check it out. This week we're also setting up a networked digital media receiver and ripping our CD collection.

Full (long) review of everything after the jump...

I don't pay much attention to TV schedules and such and so I just noticed on http://atrios.blogspot.com/ that among the scheduled guests on CBS' Face The Nation today was Senator-elect Borg Corker. I was just wondering if anyone from the reality based community caught the show and had an assessment of how embarassed we need to be?

CAFKIA

Katie Allison Granju has been nominated for an Emmy for her work at WBIR on this series.

Go by and congratulate her. She certainly is deserving of this success.

Lou Dobbs has just finished an interview with Bill Moyers on CNN.  PBS is airing a Moyers on America segment titled Capitol Crimes Wednesday evening at 9:00.  The interview suggests it will be worth watching.

HBO will run a documentary at 9:00 PM next Monday (Sept 18) about Barry Goldwater featuring his granddaughter, C. C.  I caught an ad last night about the film with a statement from Walter Chronkite saying that Goldwater would be appalled by people accusing him of becoming more liberal in his old age.

I remember him saying that he hadn't changed a bit in later life; the Republican party had just swung so far to the right that they made him look like a liberal.

There's controversy over ABC's miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," which starts tonight. Bill Clinton and his former staff members in particular are angry about some of the scenes. From the best accounts, they should be.

Other than the terrorists behind the attack, no American president is to blame for 9/11. One can fairly criticize Clinton in general for not taking fundamentalist Islamic terrorism seriously. That same general level of blame can also be directed at Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Sr. All of them glossed over terrorist problems, failed to take reprisals, and cut and ran following attacks. The sum effect of all of those decisions of all of those presidents led the 9/11 terrorists to believe that a massive attack on American soil would lead to a massive withdrawl of American influence around the globe.

The real issue in "Path to 9/11" is that based on accounts of people who have seen the movie, ABC has created fictional events using historical characters. I understand that dialog has to be re-created for historical dramas. I can even understand creating composite characters to make the story simpler to tell (while cringing at the potential for abuse). What ABC has apparently done is to have specific historical characters taking specific actions and making specific decisions that aren't true to history. That's unfair to those individuals and to anyone trying to understand 9/11.

One of the people whose opinion I'm relying on is John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist for the NY Post and National Review. He's seen the original, unedited movie and while he has no love lost for the Clintons and their staff, he found parts of the movie blatantly inaccurate.

Katie Couric is quoted in USATODAY, "We heard from many people the news is just too depressing," Couric says of the feedback so far. "Obviously, we can't sugar-coat what's going on, but there are cases where we can be more solution-oriented."

Is that what the evening news needs? Does this country, or any country for that matter, need talking heads on television providing "solutions"? Isn't what is really needed is for television news anchors and newspaper reporters to just report the news?

When the line between news and commentary becomes impossible to define then what can be believed?

Edward R. Murrow said, "Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions. We cannot make good news out of bad practice."

Just report the news Ms. Couric. Good night, and good luck.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/02/25/knotts.obit.ap/index.html

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company," has died. He was 81.

Very sad. Not much else to say other than I really enjoyed both Barney Fife and Mr. Furley.

With Winter Olympics and Law and Order pretty much dominating the airwaves at the moment, I was thinking about what makes good TV. In no particular order, here are what I think are some of the greatest TV shows of all time:

• Seinfeld
• Andy of Mayberry
• The Twilight Zone
• Ed Sullivan
• The Sopranos
• Our Gang
• The Dick Van Dyke Show
• All in the Family
• West Wing
• American Dreams

Yeah, M*A*S*H should probably be on the list, but I think it was a little overrated. As for the greatest, it would be a tossup between the first two for me. Looking at the list, the things most seem to have in common are great writing, great characters, and a message that entertains while communicating values. What do you think are the greatest TV shows of all time?

P.S. I forgot Bonanza. It should be on the list, too.

P.P.S. And of course, The Beverly Hillbillies