Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel courtesy The CW
Two years after signing off the airwaves, the WB is returning with new programming — as well as some of its most memorable series — but not on TV. According to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, the Warner Bros. Television Group is reviving the network as a website, where viewers will be able to watch free streaming episodes of Gilmore Girls, What I Like About You and Everwood, as well as all other WB-produced shows. (The site's "working title," wb.com, currently jumps to a general Warner Bros. Studios roundup of movies, TV, DVDs, etc.)The WB, which merged with UPN in 2006 to become the bastion of twentysomething programming that is the CW, aired a string of fan-favorite shows in its 10-year existence, including Dawson's Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. It's not clear yet whether non-Warner Bros. shows will be available on the site, but new Web-minisodes are reportedly in the works, with series aimed at the WB's core audience.Warner Bros. hasn't confirmed the ...
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Dinosaurs DVD courtesy Michael Jacobs Productions
Whoops! I was buried in other work yesterday and I forgot to do my weekly "Pick of the Week," so I apologize to anyone who came here looking for the story yesterday.May 1 has a number of decent releases, but no single "Wow, this is going to be the #1 set" release, which makes my job a bit harder to do. I looked at the sets that people on TVShowsonDVD.com want, and there were two that stood out: the second season of Beverly Hills, 90210, and the third and fourth seasons of Dinosaurs. I'm going to go with Dinosaurs for next week; the set contains seven unaired episodes (out of the 36 in the set), a behind-the-scenes featurette, commentary tracks, a music video and more. Sounds like a winner to me. While 90210 will be a decent set, it'll also contain a lot of music substitutions.Warner Bros. is also releasing the first season of What I Like About You, though it'll have a different theme song on the DVD set (check out the previous blog entry regarding theme songs); Fox has the second se...
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It's almost a given that a show with tons of music will have at least one song replaced when it comes out on DVD, but what if that one song is the theme for the show? The earliest theme-song replacements occurred on Dawson's Creek and Married... with Children, the former using the international theme, and the latter using a sound-alike song, but the replacements didn't stop there. Since then we've heard new theme songs for Life Goes On, the international theme for Las Vegas, a butchered theme for Baywatch, George Lopez uttering some words instead of "Low Rider" and the season 3 theme being used on season 2 of Happy Days. Why is this happening?Most songs are licensed on a per-play basis, so the theme song costs are multiplied by the number of episodes in the season. A $20,000 song quickly becomes $440,000 for the season, and the studios are telling us that the recording companies hold this songs hostage, knowing that it's the most important song to license. Sony delayed the third sea...
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Amanda Bynes bends her gender in She's the Man.
In the new comedy She's the Man (in theaters now), Amanda Bynes plays Viola, a soccer star forced to get her kicks by masquerading as her twin brother, Sebastian. Along the way, of course, all manner of hunky guys and ironically attracted girls find themselves mesmerized by this gal in disguise. Was Bynes able to pull it off? Should Felicity Huffman be looking over her shoulder? And more to the point, is the perky What I Like About You star ready to kick some Natalie Portman butt this weekend? Here's what Bynes shared with TVGuide.com in a fun one-on-one.
TVGuide.com: Seeing She's the Man almost — and my AP English teacher will be happy to hear this — made me want to actually read Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, on which it is loosely based. Or at least revisit the CliffsNotes
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Kevin James, The King of Queens
This week the networks began meeting with ad-agency execs to talk about what's in development for the 2006-07 season. That means it's time for producers of current shows with less-than-robust ratings to start worrying about getting picked up for next season. Here's what industry insiders are telling the Biz.
ABC: The network's comedies are having a tough year in the ratings, but you can't cancel all of them. Rodney, Hope & Faith, Crumbs and Less than Perfect aren't likely to make the cut. According to Jim, George Lopez and Freddie have a chance of returning. Since ABC has two more hours to program in the fall now that football has moved to NBC, shows that would otherwise be doomed have a chance. We're talking Invasion and Commander in Chief. Their survival depends on the strength of the network's new-program development.
CBS: Another season of The King of Queens depends on whether the n
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Bold and the Beautiful star Antonio Sabato Jr. (Dante) will soon figure into a paternity plot.... As previously reported, Friday, Feb. 10 is the final airdate for both Brad Maule (Dr. Tony Jones, General Hospital) and Justin Hartley (Fox, Passions).... Linda Dano alert! The soap vet guest-stars on WB's What I Like About You on Feb. 17.... Days of our Lives hustler Brody Hutzler (Patrick) plays Vanessa Marcil's sexy masseur in the March 10 episode of NBC's Las Vegas.... Beth Maitland (Traci Abbott) comes back to The Young and the Restless on March 1. Traci will be in Genoa City to support her troubled papa, John, and share
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Linda Dano alert! The soap vet guest-stars on WB's What I Like About You on Feb. 17. She'll play Dan Cortese's mother, which also makes her Jennie Garth's new monster-in-law. "On Desperate Housewives, I play a mother [who] is thrilled that her son even likes women. On this [show], I play a mother who would prefer that her son's new wife would disappear," Dano cracks. "For me, this experience was even richer because Dan also directed the episode."
FYI, Dano will pinch-hit for
Lisa Rinna from Feb. 13 to Feb. 15 on SoapNet's
Soap Talk, which uses guest cohosts when Rinna's busy hoofing on
Dancing with the Stars.
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Dancing with the Stars
Tom Bergeron was faster than the quickstep with his off-the-cuff humor tonight — calling the rowdy audience soccer fans, warning the judges not to tell Drew Lachey he wasn't "in sync," suggesting that Master P start a line of dancing shoes. I was also tickled by the way George Hamilton was orchestrating all these little soap-operatic scenes for the moments just before the commercial. I'm glad some people are taking the competitive edge off things.
Lisa and Louis: I always thought of the rhumba as Baby and Johnny's dance from Dirty Dancing. Even without the lift, this was much dirtier. But what, dear god, is up with choosing that
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Dancing with the Stars
Tom Bergeron was faster than the quickstep with his off-the-cuff humor tonight — calling the rowdy audience soccer fans, warning the judges not to tell Drew Lachey he wasn't "in sync," suggesting that Master P start a line of dancing shoes. I was also tickled by the way George Hamilton was orchestrating all these little soap-operatic scenes for the moments just before the commercial. I'm glad some people are taking the competitive edge off things.
Lisa and Louis: I always thought of the rhumba as Baby and Johnny's dance from Dirty Dancing. Even without the lift, this was much dirtier. But what, dear god, is up with choosing that
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The O.C. "Donna Martin graduates! Donna Martin graduates!" That was one of my all-time favorite Beverly Hills, 90210 moments. It was camp at its finest. And just as Tori Spelling gets her own VH1 show, the notorious B.A.G. costars on Freddie, Jason Priestley goes all Love Monkey on us, Luke Perry receives a Windfall and Jennie Garth stars in What I Like About You, it's only right that The O.C. pays homage to an awesomely classic moment in teen TV.
OK, the Harbor High student body didn't actually come together to chant "Free Marissa," but T-shirts and signs were made up. Taylor defied her mean mama and got more than 300 students to sign a petition to reinstate the once-troubled girl. So why did Mari
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