PBS is bringing back the Electric Company, although updating it for today.

Scrubs, which is an uber favourite television show of mine, will be saying goodbye to NBC and moving to ABC for 18 more episodes next season. I am so happy that Scrubs lives on.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will be appearing on The Colbert Report this Thursday night. Should be fun, and hopefully funny.

Have you ever contemplated what the rationale for broadcasting blackouts during sports and other events? I recently did when I was blacked out from seeing a Canucks game. The answer is not so fascinating.

Apple, you know those ipod folks, has become the lead sponsor of American Idol. The implications of this venture include:

- “Idol” downloads will now only be available on Apple’s iTunes store
- iTunes will sponsor online streaming of performances on the American Idol website
- Apple brands will also be integrated into the show — just wait for the judges to be seen using iPhones.

Additional information can be found via this Variety article.

According to this article on Page Six, Jefferey Tambor was on XM Radio and let it be known that the Arrested Development movie just might actually be coming.

via Pop Candy

Roger Catlin, by way of the Hartford Courant by way of the LA Times, writes that with the series end of The King of Queens, the traditional network sitcom is coming to an end.

The end of “The King of Queens” is another step toward the end of another kind of network comedy — those that are simply presented in a studio before a live audience, where the resulting laughs (sometimes enhanced after the fact) are as much a part of the show as the multiple-camera setup, shooting the action as if it were a play.

Nowadays, comedies are much more sophisticated, without laugh tracks and shot like a movie or drama series. They’re called single-camera comedies, though they certainly involve more than that.

The studio style of sitcoms continues most often on kids’ channels, where the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon churn out inoffensive and cheap comedies that attune young people to the rhythms of studio-audience laughter.

But an attempt to update the form to accommodate adult humor was a huge flop on HBO with “Lucky Louie.”

via artsjournal

Need to know when the season (or possibly series) finale of your favourite show will hit the airwaves? Check out this handy guide.

via Pop Candy

Remember the high school sitcom Head of the Class that was on ABC back in the 80’s? You know that show about a bunch of kids in a gifted class in a New York high school. Well from this clip you’ll get to see the intro and Brad Pitt in a bit role for just an episode. He has come a long, long way.

David Chase, producer and creator of The Sopranos, gets the Q&A treatment in the April issue of Vanity Fair. This is a must read for any fan of the Sopranos. Here is an excerpt:

How involved are you in the editing of the shows?
I do all the editing. I sit over the editor’s shoulder. I hardly ever even show [my cut to] my colleagues. The truth is, what you really want is for people to say, “It’s perfect! My God—don’t change a thing!” (Laughs.) And when they say anything other than that, you tend to say, “Well, they didn’t get it.” We take a long time to do postproduction. We change the stories, and we take scenes that were meant to have one purpose, and re-purpose them to do other things. Or change the whole order of the way the story’s told. Often, because it’s somewhat of a serial story, we’ll realize—like, say, in Episode 8—”You know what? We really should have introduced this guy earlier on.” Or introduced this idea earlier on—so it doesn’t come out of the blue. So we’ll go back and do some retrofitting of information, or character, or some story points.

You’re famous for not tying up loose ends.
I think, probably, that’s because that’s not what the story was about. It’s not important. It seems to be part of life, too, that things recede into the background or whatever. Something that was so important to you Thursday—all of a sudden, you’re caught up in something else and it’s not important Friday.

Here is a great deleted scene from the “Conflict Resolution” episode from season 2 of The Office. Don’t remember the episode? It was the one where Michael assumed (read took over) the conflict resolution duties from HR and he - of course - makes things much worse.

Fred Willard, who played for laughs in Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, amongst other films, is going to be a regular star on Fox’s future sitcom Action News, which also stars Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton. Fred will be the sports reporter on this comedy about a former anchor team who reunite on the anchor desk of a local news broadcast.

via TV Squad

Hey Simpsons fans, check out this quirky article, by Erica Klarreich, on the use of mathematics in the show.

The Simpsons writers often play on mathematical cultural stereotypes, extracting humor by exaggerating both the mathematical illiteracy of the U.S. public and the nerdiness and self-aggrandizement of the mathematically gifted. In a characteristic exchange, in the third-dimension episode, mad scientist Professor Frink tries to explain to Police Chief Wiggum the nature of the three-dimensional space through which Homer Simpson is wandering.

What I find rather odd is that the site, Science News Online, displayed an ad for season 2 of The Hills when I read the article. I did not think that vain pseudo-reality TV on MTV and science mixed. Little did I know. Little did I know.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s national public broadcaster has a new sitcom that will be joining the airwaves on January 9, 2007. The new show is called ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie. The title is a play on the classic Michael Landon show Little House on the Prairie.

The show is about a Muslim family who moves to rural Saskatchewan, which is stereotyped as an agriculture province.

Little Mosque On The Prairie is an unabashedly comedic look at a small Muslim community interacting with the denizens of a little prairie town. The sitcom reveals that although different, we are all surprisingly similar when it comes to family, love, the generation gaps and our attempts to balance our secular and religious lives while trying to understand those of others in the community.

Starring Zaib Shaikh as Amaar, a young big-city lawyer who finds his true calling as an Imam and moves west to become the spiritual leader of the small Muslim community. Carlo Rota is Yasir, a contractor married to Sarah (Sheila McCarthy), a Muslim convert. Sitara Hewitt is Rayyan, their smart, outspoken devout daughter. Manoj Sood ss Baber the former Imam who harbours as many fears about western society as they do about his; Arlene Duncan is Fatima, who runs a diner; Derek McGrath is Reverend Magee; Debra McGrath as Mayor Popowicz; and Neil Crone as the inciting host of a local radio program.

Visit the show’s official site here or see its press kit.

The show is already picking up some international coverage from the New York Times,  Agence France Presse and NPR are just three of many examples.

See another teaser clip here.

You have watched the ‘Cosby Show‘ when you were a kid. Well, remember that episode featuring Stevie Wonder? What stands out the most for me from that episode was Theo saying “jammin’ on the one!” Stevie had the Huxtables in his studio and made a recording using some dialogue and sounds made by the family. When it was Theo’s turn, he asked him to rap something or say what he would say at a party. Theo’s answer was “jammin’ on the one”. Here is that scene:

The Guardian is reporting that Israeli satelitte TV provider YES has dropped BBC World from its line-up in favour of al-Jazeera’s English station. This could be speculation, but perhaps the switch is because al-Jazeera’s English station provides more favourable coverage about Israel that the BBC does. Of note here is that this is the first dropping of BBC World as a result of the newly developed al-Jazeera English.

(C) GQ

GQ has this spread about B.J. Novack, Rainn Wilson and John Krasinski, who play Ryan, Dwight and Jim respectively on NBC’s version of The Office.

Rainn Wilson | Dwight Schrute
Relevant work experience: Former ad-agency receptionist; played a creepy mortician on Six Feet Under.

How he gets inside Dwight’s head: “I draw from a rich tapestry of nerddom. I spent a lot of hours playing Dungeons & Dragons. Nobody needs to tell me about being a dork; it’s in my blood. But the thing I love about Dwight is that he’s kind of an ass-kicking, blue-collar, heavy-metal nerd. He would have beaten himself up in high school.”

Jump here for details on the other two.

Anthony Letizia over at PopMatters, writes a rather lengthy (well longer than you would expect) pontification of the cultural significance of the Sarah Michelle Gellar lead Buffy The Vampire Slayer tv show. More specifically he examines the popularity of the show’s musical episode.

In late 2003, for instance, Channel Four in England offered the opportunity to vote for the “100 Greatest Musicals” via their website.  While the Rocky Horror Show finished number seven on that list, the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn’t far behind, coming in at number thirteen.

…

The Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts, seems to have held the first Sing-A-Long on October 22, 2004.  The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, followed two months later, and then Vancouver added its name to this list in 2005.  In a two-week span this past September, New York City and Pittsburgh also joined the fray. Because these Buffy Sing-A-Longs are fan-driven, without any formal “standard” structure, each location is free to tailor the event to suit its city and space.  The Alamo in Austin, which has held seven sing-a-longs so far, screens a “warm-up” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer beforehand.  New York City had a Buffy-oke contest and offered fans the opportunity to act out scenes from the series, while Pittsburgh had a trivia contest showdown between two lucky fans of the show.

I never watched the show, but the article is quite interesting.

It is now official, NBC has ordered a full season’s worth of episodes of the Lorne Michaels produced and Tina Fey starring show 30 Rock. This makes me happy for I have been enjoying 30 Rock and would like to see some more. Sure, this is not a show that is as good as say Andy Richter Controls the Universe, which only lasted 10 episodes. But, it is funny and could have something going for it.

At first I wasn’t going to consider watching it, but then I had some freetime on my hands and gave the first couple of episodes a try and I was pleasantly surprised. The writing is smart and even a bit zany. Furthermore, the characters, while not entirely original, have enough concept around them that some fun can be had with them. Haven’t watched 30 Rock? Give it a try, it is a Marty recommends.

via TVSquad

TVSquad writes that SNL is thinking of putting its Friday night rehersals for broadcast on the web. Could be interesting.