American Idol on iTunes

The biggest American reality show on TV has finally joined the iTunes platform. Fox Broadcasting, Fox Interactive Media and FremantleMedia signed an exclusive deal with Apple to bring American Idol audio and video performances to iTunes as single song-sized snippets available the day after they premiere on air.

Audio performances of the top 24 contenders run 99¢ per song, and videos of the top 12 finalists performances will be priced $1.99/each from March 11.

Apple will also become one of the show's premiere sponsors and maintain a branded presence on AmericanIdol.com, where some free streaming performances can be seen.

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MSNBC's Super Tuesday Hype Inferno

This past Tuesday was "Super Tuesday" in the United States. Both the Republican and Democratic political parties held primary elections in 22 states to help decide which candidate would represent their parties in the upcoming November U.S. Presidential election.

On Tuesday's episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jon jokingly wondered "What's bigger than Super Tuesday?" These are what the American cable news networks came up with and Jon Stewart's reactions.

1. Chris Matthews: "Super Duper Tuesday"
   Jon Stewart: "That's kind of retarded... infantile."
   
   
2. CNN: "Super Fat Tuesday"
   Jon Stewart: "Well that's certainly.... dope."
   
   
3. Fox News: "Tsunami Tuesday"
   Jon Stewart: "Yes I believe the plethora of state primaries is reminiscent of the sudden and horrific deaths of a quarter million people living on the Indian Ocean."
   
   
4. MSNBC: "Monster Super Tuesday"
   Jon Stewart: [Jon needs a fire extinguisher to hold off MSNBC's hype inferno. Just watch the clip. It's great.]
   

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Dateline To Catch A Predator - Taser Accident

Call me crazy, but when a group of Police officers approach me holding guns and start yelling "Get down on the ground," I'm gonna listen. This guy... not so much.

Watch this clip first from the popular American TV series "Dateline: To Catch A Predator" (dateline.msnbc.com), then read my explanation. I've analyzed this YouTube clip frame by frame and watched it like 50 times. I think I've got it all figured out.

If the embedded video below doesn't load, you can watch the clip here.

The perp unknowingly shows up at a "Dateline: To Catch A Predator" sting house looking for a sexual encounter with an underage teen he met in a chat room. After Chris Hansen pops out and basically tells him that he's on national TV, the guy tries to put on his shoes and walk out the front door to freedom. But the cops are outside.

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Ann Curry Visits the Antarctic Ecozone

Antarctica is a huge desert. Even though it’s one of the coldest and windiest places on earth (average temp is -56º F), it has little or no precipitation, which classifies it as a desert. However there’s hidden plant and animal life that draws the attention of thousands of scientists every year, and interestingly enough, NBC’s "Today Show."

The "Today Show" sent Ann Curry to Antarctica this week for a segment called The Ends of the Earth set to air on Nov. 5th and 6th. While there, Ann is going to explore Antarctica’s ecosystem from McMurdo Station, and discuss the continent’s melting ice and many life forms.

While it might seem like Antarctica is covered with a bunch of igloos, McMurdo Station is actually an efficient little town. It’s situated on volcanic rock along the frozen sound where it was constructed in the 1950's by the U.S. Navy, and it's grown consistently ever since. Next week Ann is giving a personal tour of McMurdo which should give some great first-hand insite to what it’s really like there.

Once at McMurdo, you can hang with 1000+ scientists and attempt some eco sight seeing. You have to look hard though because Antarctica doesn’t have extensive vegetation or animals since the combination of freezing temperatures and little sunlight prevents extensive growth.

But thankfully Antarctica’s marine animals are pretty large and easier to see. They include penguins, blue whales, orcas and fur seals, and are all carefully guarded under the Antarctic Treaty. Ann Curry’s plans do include a date with some penguins, but also a trip to the South Pole, a flight over an active volcano, and who knows.

You can track Ann Curry's progress online here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/21487444

Brrrr voyage Ann!

[Sources: CaptClicker.com & Wikipedia]

Locked Door Derails NBC Studio Tour on Live TV

NBC News anchor Brian Williams tried to give a tour of his new TV studio live on the air but oops.... the studio DOOR WAS LOCKED!!!

I wonder how many people got fired for that? You can see the clip here on YouTube.com.

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iPod Nano Commercial with "1234" Song

If you were watching any of the American football games this past Sunday, then you probably saw the new 3rd generation iPod Nano commercial. The ad features the upbeat and catchy song "1234" by Canadian singer/songwriter Leslie Feist.

Here are the lyrics to "1234" used in the iPod Nano ad:

One Two Three Four
Tell me that you love me more
Sleepless long nights
That is what my youth was for

Old teenage hopes are alive at your door
Left you with nothing but they want some more

Oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, You know who you are

You can watch Feist's full video for "1234" here [link] on YouTube or check out her new album "The Reminder" on iTunes. The commercial is no doubt doing wonders for Leslie Feist's name recognition. Everyone is talking about it online (like me).

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Tearful Britney Fan Is a YouTube Hit

A tearful Britney Spears fan named Chris Crocker posted a passionate video called Leave Britney Alone! on YouTube after the pop star's disastrous MTV Awards performance. Crocker's video has become an instant YouTube hit and has gotten about 4 million views.

In it, Crocker defends Britney's widely-criticized performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, in which the troubled pop star appeared out of time and out of shape while miming the words to her new song "Gimme More." It reminded me of Ashlee Simpson's SNL un-synced disaster.

Crocker berates the media for their treatment of Britney since the awards show and says fans should be thankful she decided to perform. Here's a transcript of his rant:

"How f**king dare anyone out there make fun of Britney after all she's been through. She went through a divorce, she had two kids ... and now she's going through a custody battle. All you people care about is readers and making money off of her.

She's a human. She hasn't performed on stage in years. Her song is called Gimme More for a reason - because all you people want is more, more, more, more, more ... leave her alone. You're lucky she even performed for you bastards. Leave Britney alone ... please."

Crocker, who has posted other YouTube videos about Britney Spears, said on the Howard Stern radio show yesterday that he was "not acting" and was "really crying."

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Internet Video Contest Gives American Idol Hopeful an Edge

Can an Asian-American ever hold the American Idol title? Paul Ethan Hahn says a resounding "yes" and Internet video might be his Ace in the Hole.

Paul grew up in Murray Hill, New Jersey and has always been a big country fan. He also loves the hit FOX-TV program American Idol. And if Paul has his way, he’ll be the first Asian country singer on American Idol.

"I wanna make Paula Abdul cry and show that jerk off Simon how to sing. I want to be the next American Idol!" Paul quips.

This week, Paul Hahn entered an online FOX 29 Philly Idol contest and hopes that a hi-tech edge will help him bypass the massive lines outside the first round of judges.

FOX 29 posted an open American Idol audition on their website. The winner gets to perform live on Fox's morning show, Good Day Philadelphia, and gets to bypass the first round of judges at the open American Idol Philadelphia auditions later this month. To enter, all you had to do was upload a video of you singing.



Paul recorded his American Idol demo using his Apple MacBook Pro laptop, with a built in iSight camera, and the video editing program iMovie.

"It was so easy," says Paul. "I just opened iMovie, recorded about a minute sample of my singing, burned a DVD and threw it into the mail. The whole process only took about 10 minutes."

Since Idol's first season, we've seen Kelly Clarkson belt out high notes, a plethora of Sanjaya hairstyles, and even a contestant who went on to win an Oscar. But we haven’t seen any serious Asian-American contestants get a real shot at the Idol crown (sorry but William Hung doesn't count).

Will Paul's dream of telling off Simon and getting to sing a country song on American Idol come true? Can Internet video voting give this American Idol hopeful a back door to stardom? That's in the hands of you, the voters.

You can watch and vote for all the top 10 Philadelphia contestants, including Paul Hahn, on FOX 29’s web site: http://media.myfoxphilly.com/idol/idolvote.html. The top 5 get to perform live on FOX 29's morning show Good Day Philadelphia and the winner gets to bypass the massive lines at the Philadelphia open auditions for season 7.


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MSNBC Reporter Kills Paris Hilton Story - Becomes Internet Sensation

A lighter and paper shredder helped make Mika Brzezinski the "symbol of television journalism's guilt trip" about Paris Hilton. Brzezinski used both to destroy a script calling for her to read about Hilton's release from jail on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program recently. Part serious, part an act, it has become an Internet sensation. More than 2 million people have watched a clip of the incident on YouTube, around 10 times the number who watched it live on TV. Apparently, she's not the only one sick of the socialite.

"Among journalists it touched a nerve because I think we're tired of pretending this is important," she said. "We also know that, deep down inside, our viewers know that we don't believe this is news. They can't. They can't think we're that dumb."

Brzezinski, who left CBS News last year, has been working as a news- reader and on-air foil for Joe Scarborough on the show MSNBC is trying out to replace Don Imus in the morning.

Hours after Hilton's June 26 catwalk to freedom, Joe Scarborough (widget) and Brzezinski discussed one of the day's other big stories at their show's opening: influential Republican Sen. Richard Lugar's declaration that President Bush's Iraq strategy wasn't working.

It was then Brzezinski's turn to sum up the day's news. She looked down at her script and Hilton was the top story. She froze.

"I could not get through the first three words without crumbling," she said. "My skin was crawling. This was our lead? On a day like this? To me, it was just the ultimate Paris Hilton out-of-control moment. We've gone too far and we've got to stop. That was all real. There was nothing planned about that, and I believe we got a little snappy."

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Criss Angel Escapes from Cement Box

If you walked through Times Square this past Tuesday, then you probably noticed American magician Criss Angel suspended in midair. Angel was enclosed for 24 hours in a clear box that was encased in cement as fans and reporters watched. The box was then hoisted 40 feet above the ground in a parking lot just off Times Square.

Hundreds gathered to watch his escape, and a big screen showed Angel inside the box, kicking at the walls and dejectedly holding his head in his hands. When a countdown clock hit zero, the box was sent plunging to the ground.

As organizers called for paramedics and fans went quiet, Angel appeared atop the screen's nearby scaffolding, waving to the crowd and with his hand across his heart.

While much of the crowd cheered, several people were heard asking: "Was he actually in the box?"

"Well, I was in it when I fell -- that's the truth," Angel told Reuters, adding that people should be asking how he got from the fallen box to the scaffolding.

The stunt was meant to draw attention to the third season of his show "Mindfreak," which started airing on A&E this week. Angel said the first episode would reveal how he escaped.

[Source: Hollywood Reporter]

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Age of Love - Details Announced

American broadcast network, NBC, has removed the shroud of secrecy around their new controversial reality dating series called Age of Love.

The series centers on Melbourne tennis champion Mark Philippoussis (age 31) as he's wooed by a group of 13 special ladies. What Philippoussis doesn't know is that these women range in age from 21 to 48. Will he go for one of the younger gals (Kittens), or will he become smitten by someone more mature (Cougars)?

Age of Love's "Kittens" will feature six young, enthusiastic women in their 20's who could probably better keep-up with Philippoussis' fast-paced lifestyle, while the "Cougars" will consist of seven women in their 40's who are more sophisticated and thus probably better equipped to deal with his fame as a tennis pro.

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Similar to the manner in which the "geek versus hunks" twists on NBC's Average Joe reality dating shows played out, Philippoussis will initially be introduced to his older "Cougars" suitors. Later, he will learn that the younger "Kittens" -- who will also initially be unaware of the "Cougars" and vice versa -- will also be attempting to vie for his affection.

Once the "Cougars" meet the "Kittens," the claws come out and all the bachelorettes will try to win him over. From there, the field of suitors will be narrowed until Philippoussis picks his final bachelorette.

I guess "Age of Love" just sounds better than "Primetime Catfight," though I would argue the latter is a more fitting title.

Age of Love premieres on Monday, June 18 at 10PM ET. You can see a preview clip of Age of Love on Vmix.com or get more info about the show at nbc.com.

[Via TV Squad]


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Psychedelic News Promo

Between the psychedelic animation, goofy photo-flipbook effect, saccharine-sweet music, and the all-around goofy news team, this local news promo is everything the movie "Anchorman" should have been.

I guess in the 1970s, even the local news teams were on drugs.

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Bionic Woman Preview

After months of hype, we finally get to see Michelle Ryan in NBC's new remake of the Bionic Woman. In this clip from Vmix.com, we get to see Jamie Sommers (Michelle Ryan) find out she has bionic parts and freak out. Those are some sexy bionic toes by the way.

It's tough to tell from just a few scenes, but Bionic Woman looks like it’s going to be a fun show. With the success of sci-fi shows like Heroes and Lost, Bionic Woman might just be the next big hit. Plus David Eick from Battlestar Galactica is the Executive Producer. Here's another clip of Eick talking about the strong women characters in his shows.

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Dwight Schrute Bucks

Did you watch the 2007 season finale of The Office (US)? Want to print out your own Schrute Bucks?! A $1,000 Schrute Bucks will you get an extra 5 minutes for lunch. I wonder how many Schrute Bucks it takes to get the Dwight bobblehead from nbcstore.com?

The Schrute Buck gfx was made by Digg.com user dawgma.

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Bionic Woman Pulls Double Duty

There was a bit of a surprise when Katee Sackhoff told reporters that her time on the new NBC series "Bionic Woman" went from "one episode" to "recurring." But all of that can be explained in one simple sentence: Sackhoff simply wowed network executives.

"She absolutely steals the screen in 'Bionic,'" Angela Bromstad, president of NBC Universal Television Studio, told TV Week's James Hibberd.

Some of the clips featuring Sackhoff, best known to genre fans as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace in SciFi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica," have been released to the Web by NBC Universal as a way to promote the series, which will make its debut this fall. In it, Sackhoff plays the original bionic woman who gets in a rooftop bionic battle with Jamie Sommers, played by series tar Michelle Ryan.



Sackhoff's character originally was slated to be offed in the pilot, but executives liked her so much that she is now going to be pulling double duty between both shows which are filmed in Vancouver and produced by NBCU.

Sackhoff apparently isn't the only BSG alum to be making the show either... two more actors familiar to "Battlestar" fans who have some type of role in the pilot.

The Bionic Woman airs Wednesdays this fall at 9/8c on NBC. See NBC.com's Bionic Woman web page for more info.

[Via syfyportal.com]

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Office Season Finale

This coming this Thursday (tonight) is the season finale of the American version of The Office. Here's a teaser trailer and 10 things we learned from last week's episode of The Office.

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10. Buffoons (like Andy and Dwight) do not need to wear sumo suits to appear more buffoonish. In fact, the hilariousness of the sumo suit is inversely proportional to how funny the character is in his regular officewear. However …

9. The fact that a sumo suit enables Andy to float away on the ebbing tides of Lake Scranton is completely fascinating. How does physics explain this?

8. Michael notes that Lake Scranton is America’s eighth largest indigenous body of water. Ignoring the fact that this is patently false, we’d like to believe he was creating a metaphor for America’s unsustainable reliance on reservoirs and the corresponding danger to the ecosystem. Or a metaphor for being an idiot.

7. Contrary to Michael’s assumptions about Oscar’s beachwear, it’s actually gayer to wear designer jeans to the beach than a Speedo or leather pants.

6. If one employee at Dunder Mifflin could actually win Survivor, it’s Creed. Did you see the two-second shot of him toeing out into the lake and catching a fish with his bare hands? Jeff Probst would be proud. Poor fish. Who knows where those hands have been?

5. Jim is not as good of a boyfriend as we thought. What kind of guy tries to distract his girlfriend while she’s lobbying for a promotion? Then again, why is Karen competing for the same job as her boyfriend? Did we miss something?

4. Pam thinks that she has the most boring job at Dunder Mifflin. We'd give that honor to Stanley … if we knew what Stanley did.

3. No matter what anyone says, we still like Karen better than Pam. Karen goes out and gets what she wants (Jim, a better job, a fake tan). Pam has to walk through a field of burning coals to work up enough outrage to confess her feelings for Jim, and even then, she stops short of saying what she's really feeling (burning flesh).

2. If you’re going to walk across a field of burning coals, go fast, and remember “The mind has to wrap around the foot.”

1. Not even The Office's writers are immune to jerking us around during May Sweeps. They hadn’t gone near the Pam-Jim-Karen love triangle for weeks when suddenly, Pam dropped her bombshell (if you can call wanting to be “best friends” with Jim a bombshell). This is all leading up to next week’s season finale, when Michael, Jim, and inexplicably, Karen, head off to New York to compete for the same job. We’ll give two-to-one odds Karen gets the gig, thus putting an end to the ménage tension and taking a little piece of our heart with it.

[Via nymag.com]

The season finale of The Office airs on NBC at a special time 8/7c. Don't forget to double check your TiVos and DVRs.

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How NOT to Ship a HDTV

The person who packed up and shipped this TV must have been a professional... idiot. They might as well have shipped this HDTV using bowling balls or, I dunno, hammers as padding.

For future reference, here's a photo tutorial on how NOT to ship a Plasma or LCD HDTV.

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Earl is Baby Cooking Crazy

In the May 10th season finale of American sitcom My Name is Earl, Joy's future lays in the hands of deaf lawyer as her trial finally arrives. It's "baby cooking crazy"!

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Top 5 TV Shows that Should be Canceled

Here is MSNBC.com's list of the top 5 American TV shows that should be canceled. I have a feeling that a lot of people aren't going to agree with the top three.

Let the fireworks begin...

Disagree? Want to talk about it? You're not alone. Head over to the MSNBC.com Message Boards and join in the discussion.

"The Simpson's stopped being funny years ago." ~ Ghazi

"Lost needs to start getting down to business. It's losing it's appeal. Start answering questions outright already and get to the damn point." ~ primehifi

You can see the MSNBC.com list here: Top 5 TV Shows that Should be Canceled

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