Changing Channels

TV's top dog

Very appropriately for the end of a decade that went to the dogs a long time ago, the folks at AOL's PawNation.com polled readers to find out their favorite TV canine. The results:

Eddie (Frasier) -- 27 percent 

Brian Griffin (Family Guy) --  22 

Flash (Dukes of Hazard) -- 16 

Petie (Little Rascals) -- 13 

Comet (Full House) -- 5 

Huckleberry Hound -- 5 

Jack (Little House On The Prairie) 3 

Blue (Blues Clues) -- 5 

Tiger (The Brady Bunch) -- 1 

Reckless (The Waltons) -- 0.7

Some obvious omissions: Lassie and Rin Tin Tin were included in the movie category, and Snoopy in the comic-strip category. Also, it should be noted that my cat Panchito says this is the stupidest poll since the one that said Dewey would beat Truman.  

Bobby Rydell won't be there, or Fabian. But...

Hard to believe, but Dick Clark has been doing his Rockin' New Year's Eve show for longer than he hosted American Bandstand. Clark counted down the hits on Bandstand for 32 years, but Thursday will mark the 37th edition of Rockin' New Year's Eve on ABC. Clark will share his Times Square booth with Ryan Seacrest, while Fergie hosts the (pssst! pre-taped!) segments from Las Vegas. The live acts include Jennifer Lopez and Daughtry, while the Black Eyed Peas, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Keri Hilson, Colbie Caillat, Orianthi and Robin Thicke appear during the Las Vegas cut-ins.

Remember when everybody called Clark America's Oldest Teenager? Not so much anymore. He turned 80 earlier this month. I think we could go with America's Oldest Middle-Aged Guy, though. 

2009: That was the year that was

It's not exactly television, but..

Just when you're thinking it's the end of a rotten year at the end of a rotten decade, something happens to restore your faith. I'll admit it, I thought something a little sketchy was going on out there in Phoenix, for instance. Crazy Joe Arpaio, the local sheriff, was having his deputies pull over vehicles for having broken tail lights, then checking to see if the drivers were illegal immigrants. Maybe there was just a teensy bit of ethnic profiling involved?

But that wasn't it at all. Jerry Sheridan, Crazy Joe's director of custody -- I think in English, we call that ``jailer'' -- explained that ethnicity has nothing to dowith it. Their deputies are just hyperalert to the subtle nuances of international culture.

``I think you can tell people that are not from this country,'' Sheridan told a local TV station. ``And I'm not talking Hispanics. Maybe someone from France looks a little different than somebody from Europe.''

I'm relieved that despite my faithless cynicism, Crazy Joe has dauntlessly gone about his constitutional duty of getting those sinister French wetbacks (not to mention the thieving, promiscuous and plague-ridden Europeans) under control. I'm turning over a new leaf when the calendar changes pages later this week, and so should you. This New Year, we should all resolve to...Read my full op-ed column in Tuesday's Miami Herald.

A record year for Fox News

Hey, remember the funeral for Fox News around this time last year? With Barack Obama taking over the White House, it was curtains for Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace and Shep Smith and those guys. This was a new America. Chris Matthews even bragged that the crowd at Obama's inaugural was there almost as much to celebrate MSNBC as the new top dog in cable news. "This is the network of the 21st century, MSNBC," Matthews boasted. "I think we're open to it. And that's why this crowd knows us." Matthews was actually kind of a late arrival at the funeral; some talking heads, like Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, had already been predicting the demise of Fox News for a year: "When the GOP catches a cold, everybody at Fox News gets sick."

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. As the final days of 2009 dwindle away, the Nielsen numbers say Fox News had its best year ever, increasing both its viewing audience and its market share, while CNN and MSNBC both shrank:

** Fox News' average weekday audience jumped 15 percent to 1.33 million. CNN's dropped 14 percent to 636,000; MSNBC's 13 percent to 432,000. The trend was even more pronounced in the 25-to-54 age demographic that newscasters value -- the Fox News demo ratings were up 18 percent, while both CNN and MSNBC lost more than a quarter of their audience.

** The Fox News share of the viewing audience increased 6 percent; CNN's fell 3 percent, MSNBC's 2 percent.

** The top 10 cable news programs were all on Fox News.

With Fox News marking its eighth consecutive year as the most-watched news network, the ratings race has become so lopsided that it's not really a race at all. As the No. 4 network in all of cable, Fox News' real competitors are entertainment channels like USA and Nickelodeon -- not CNN and MSNBC, which don't even rank in the top 20.

Screen Gems: TV the week of December 27

Demons (10 p.m. Saturday, BBC America) -- A sort of British crossbreeding of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dracula, this new series stars Christian Cook (Doctor Who) as a teenage party boy disconcerted to learn he's the great-great grandson of crusty vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing -- and now he has inherited the family business. Which is even less appealing than it seems, because some of these vampires snack on cockroaches.

Witness: The Kidnapping of Patty Hearst (10 p.m. Sunday, MSNBC) -- A documentary recounting the tale of an abducted newspaper heiress whose metamorphosis into a terrorist bank robber provided American parents with a metaphor for everything they feared about the 1960s.

P.O.V.: Patti Smith: Dream of Life (9 p.m. Wednesday, WPBT-PBS 2) -- This PBS documentary series traces the career of the punk poet whose angry raves won her a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Let me program your TiVo! Just click on my best bets for the week at www.tivo.com/guruguide.

Special Bah, humbug! alert

Consider the possibility that there's something seriously wrong with you. I mean, really. It's Christmas Day and you're reading a TV blog on the computer instead of counting your loot or bonding with loved ones or smugly contemplating the superiority of your own religious beliefs. (They worship somebody who was born in a manger?) Stranger yet is that you'd think I'm here writing something on Christmas Day. Do you think I don't have a life?

At the very least, I figure you're pretty sick of the whole Christmas business. So, here's an alternative: Watch the world's most peculiar Christmas TV programming marathon. The TV Guide Network is screening the 1987 film Dirty Dancing for 12 straight hours starting at noon. I don't know why. The whole movie takes place in the summer, so there's not some misty Christmas ending to it. It's just Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey dancing to a pretty cool 1960s soundtrack (and no, it does not include Brenda Lee or Rocking Around The Christmas Tree). Oh, and bad-mouthing Ayn Rand novels. But as far as I know, she didn't write about Christmas. Though you gotta think she probably admired Santa for taking his workshop offshore, away from the prying eyes of OSHA and the NLRB. If those elves wanted to work for all the sugarplums they could eat instead of minimum wage, that was their business, right? I can see it now -- The Christmas Sweatshop, An Epic Novel of Capital Formation and Voluntary Association.

Anyway, we're getting off the subject here. Dirty Dancing. Noon. TV Guide Channel. I don't really have any other insights. I'm sorry you didn't get the stuff you wanted for Christmas. Ayn Rand would say it serves you right for lying around like a welfare-state slug expecting somebody to give you something instead of working for it. But I don't have time to talk about it. I've gotta go before the elves start snorting mistletoe again. Merry -- oh, forget it. Just turn on the TV, okay?

UPDATE: Okay, which one of you wise guys left the Heartless Libertarian t-shirt under my tree this morning?

Lighting a candle against the fog of Alzheimer's

It's hard to believe, but not everything is about television. Here's a story I wrote for the Miami Herald's Wishbook project, which tries to match donors to people who need help.

The night before Magdalena Bravo had brain surgery, she prayed long and hard -- not for success but, in case of failure, for death. ``Because,'' she says softly, ``I knew the girls could never take care of both of us.''

In the autumn of their lives, nature has dished out a cruel double whammy to Magdalena and her husband, Edgar. Their own brains have been turned against them. Hers was harboring a tumor that her doctors estimated, with grim good humor, as about the size of New Jersey.

And Edgar's is retreating into the fog of Alzheimer's disease, a harsh parody of human development in which every day he knows a little less than before. The English he spoke perfectly for 50 years has gone. So has the ability to shave, tie his shoes or bathe himself.

``It's like having a 7-year-old,'' Magdalena says. ``Except that he's 71, and he's my husband.'' Read the rest of the story in Thursday's Miami Herald.

New Year's resolution: Double your Rick Sanchez

Rick Sanchez, who's created some buzz with his CNN late-afternoon show that makes aggressive use of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking media, is getting a new program and an extra hour of airtime. Rick's List, which debuts Jan. 18, will run from 3 to 5 p.m. Instead of host, CNN is calling him "curator" of the show: He'll comb social media for what he considers the best reporting and commentary on the top news stories of the day, then feature them on the program. Sanchez will also present other lists -- biggest financial scandals, worst abuses of political power, worst jokes on Larry King and so forth. Now that I think about, nobody at CNN mentioned the Larry King thing. You're welcome.

Christmas classics that started out as flops

 

People didn't always love George Bailey or Ralphie.

Now if THIS doesn't get CNN ratings up...

Say what you will about CNN's ratings, the network isn't standing still. Newest innovation: gay porn correspondents. As first revealed by the authoritative Gay Porn Blog (be careful about clicking on that at work, by the way), this fellow delivering one of CNN's new "citizen journalism" iReports is noted gay porn star Collin O'Neal. You no doubt know him from his groundbreaking work on WorldOfMen.com.