Press Tour July 08

By Anne Louise Bannon

YourFamilyViewer.com

Yep.  I did it last night.  I danced with Dereck Hough and Alec Mazo.  For real.  Mazo said I got the cha-cha (I think he was being nice) and Hough twirled me.  Both are just amazingly gorgeous in person.

Too bad I’m still peeved with the network, ABC.  They won’t let me on their MediaNet publicity site because I’m a blog.  Never mind that I’ve been a TV critic for over 10 years now and a member of the Television Critics Association for almost that long.  Worse yet, VP of Communications Hope Hartman told me that they’re trying to save money by not sending out DVD screeners.  Instead, if I want to review ABC shows, I have to download them through MediaNet.  So figure there may not be a lot of reviews of ABC shows on this site.

The thing that really annoys me is that the other site I write for, CommonSenseMedia.org, is not allowed on MediaNet, either.  So I asked about it on their behalf, and found out that CSM is being blown off as just another blog site.  Which if you’ve ever been to it, you know what a great resource it is for parents, and it is not a blog.

The sad thing is that this will ultimately hurt ABC more than me or CSM, for that matter.  With more and more news media moving onto the Internet, and more and more newspapers and magazines going under or feeling the pinch, there are going to be fewer and fewer outlets where ABC can publicize their offerings.  I also got the sense that this is really beginning to annoy their publicists.  ABC may be pretty big - they are owned by the Walt Disney Company, after all.  But nobody is that big and bloggers will ultimately have more and more of an effect on what people choose to see as bloggers become more and more part of the established media.

So much for my pique.  CBS is up tomorrow.  See you then.

By Anne Louise Bannon

YourFamilyViewer.com

I know.  I know.  I skipped a day.  But yesterday was one of those short days - we were shipped off to a little studio in downtown Los Angeles for a tour of the Mad Men set.  That’s the AMC show set in an advertising firm in the early 1960s.  Great antiques.  Lots of ashtrays - hard to believe how attitudes toward smoking have changed in just 40 years.

Monday night, however, at the Fox Stars party, I got a chance to chat briefly with Simpsons creator Matt Groening.  I remember 20 years ago, when the show debuted, all the flak The Simpsons caught because the family was so dysfunctional, not to mention Bart’s joy in underachieving.  Then 10 years later, I had an editor point out that the Simpson family was also one of the very few families on TV that was intact.

So I asked Groening about that and he was very gracious.  As soon as I get the interview transcribed - it’s not a very long one, but it’s a little hard to do here - I will post it.  But the upshot is that the Simpsons were a traditional nuclear family because he came from one.

By the way, with the Simpsons being so big, my ex-husband came up with a great way to help my daughter work on her addition.  Bart Simpson was on a bus and they added up the people getting on and off and Her Ladyship had to keep track of how many people were on the bus with Bart.  Now, there’s a way to use a TV show to stimulate imagination.

ABC is up today and tomorrow and ’til then….

By Anne Louise Bannon

YourFamilyViewer.com

Today’s presenter is Fox.  Not much new here.  Fringe, the latest from J.J. Abrams and friends, looks to be plenty violent.  Do Not Disturb, Fox’s new (you should pardon the expression) comedy doesn’t look any better on the family-safe front.

Oh, and former Bush Administration official Karl Rove was here with Fox News.  I, personally, have no problem with Fox News’ conservative bent.  I don’t agree with them, but I think they have an important voice.  But Rove was downright uncivil and there is no excuse for that. ‘Nuff said.

Yesterday’s PBS sessions were wonderful, as always.  I know I cover a lot of their programming and I know it is not easy to get your kids, especially the older ones, to watch it.  But at least it’s there.  Give it a shot.  The upcoming Nature episode on the American Eagle will be well worth it.

And there’s Sid, the Science Kid, the upcoming show for pre-schoolers.  Okay, we’re still dealing with some gender stereotypes - why can’t Sid be a girl?  But there are some science kid girls, including Gabrielle, who loves bugs.  The big thing to do will be to turn the tube off at the end of the episode and try some of the activities you see.  Ask your kids what they think will happen.  Why is what they do different from what they saw?  Who knows you might get a little scientist out of it.  And we need kids (girls, especially) interested in science.

Finally, something to start thinking about, Digital TV comes in on February 17, 2009.  I’m guessing that if you’ve got Internet, you’ve probably also have some pay TV service or other (or have a TV that can receive a digital signal) and you won’t notice too much difference, except for your picture going letterbox.  But you may have an elderly relative who gets only broadcast TV.  It’s not that big a deal, but folks with broadcast only TVs will need a converter box.  And if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at info@yourfamilyviewer.com

Until tomorrow.