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I've long been a fan of the old "Siskel & Ebert" movie review shows that I recall watching as far back as the late 70's. Back then it was the only way to get reviews of that nature. However, as the years have gone by, there's been a lot of politics, and changing of technical shows. Not to mention the death of Gene Siskel, and the departure of Roger Ebert too due to severe health problems.

I looked up the show's lineage, and have pieced together bits of it. The title graphics were nicked from Wikipedia, no way could I come up with those on my own. :)

SNEAK PREVIEWS

Originally known as "Opening Soon.. ..at a Theatre Near You" (1975-1977), this original incarnation was produced locally (truly, it was local only) in Chicago. It was a monthly movie review show with Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert. After a couple of successful years in local programming, it was decided to take the show national. So, in 1977, it underwent something which is a recurring theme over the entire legacy of the show, a formal name change. The "Opening Soon" name was dropped, and it was renamed to "Sneak Previews". It was first distributed through PBS in 1977, and ran for five years with Siskel & Ebert at the helm of the show.

They left in 1982 over what appears to be contract disputes (I have no memory of this, I was 17 at the time). The show continued on for quite awhile after Siskel & Ebert left. The final episode aired in 1996, 14 years later. Siskel & Ebert left the show in 1982. The show continued on with other hosts (Jeffrey Lyons, Neal Gabler, & Michael Medved) from that point. Gabler lasted from 1982-1985, being replaced by Medved, who ran through till the end. Jeffrey Lyons was the longest tenured person on the show, lasting 14 years.

I sort of remember this tenure. I was more interested at this point in Siskel & Ebert, so I followed them to the new show, and sort of not watched the other guys who were with the old show. I remember Medved fairly well, the other guys not so much - so I did watch it, but really, I was more interested in Siskel & Ebert.

AT THE MOVIES WITH SISKEL & EBERT

Siskel & Ebert founded this show after departing from the original incarnation. Technically (and legally) this was a separate show. The original was produced by WTTW in Chicago, and this show was produced by Tribune Entertainment, again out of Chicago.

While I don't have any specific recollections about Show 2 over Show 1, I do have a vague recollection of thinking around that time that "Hey, this is really Sneak Previews, just called something else because some people got pissy over money", so I was more intersted in this for the nebulous concept of "this is the same spiritual show, even if legally it is not". Anyway, this show carried on until 1986, when again apparently Siskel & Ebert left over contractual reasons.

And again, it carried on without them, only not nearly as successfully as Sneak Previews. This version of the show only lasted four more years (until 1990), with hosts Rex Reed, Bill Harris, and later on, Dixie Whatley. What's amusing about that is that both Harris & Whatley also had tenures on Entertainment Tonight, and from what I recall, the show under their direction was less about movie reviews in the way Siskel & Ebert had done it, but more of a general entertainment thing, still with a lean towards movies.

SISKEL & EBERT AT THE MOVIES

This gets somewhat confusing. Technically this show is still going (until Aug 2010 when it goes off the air), but it started in 1986 with Siskel & Ebert. The original title of the show bears this, going under the name "Siskel & Ebert and the Movies" from 1986 through 1999. The last episode with the two of them together was Jan 23, 1999. So it ran quite a long time with Siskel & Ebert as hosts. That is the bulk of the time. However, in 1999 it starts getting confusing.

SISKEL & EBERT AT THE MOVIES

Gene Siskel announced in February of 1999 that he was taking some time off to deal with a brain tumor, and less than three weeks later, he died of that. There was the tribue to Siskel by Ebert immediately after that, and then Siskel's chair was filled with a series of co-hosts.

ROGER EBERT AND THE MOVIES

Ebert kept going with guest hosts - some were serious attempts at getting a new host (AO Scott, Michael Phillips), some were not (Harry Knowles, Martin Scorsese). The original title was kept until Sep 4, 1999, when it was renamed to "Roger Ebert and the Movies".

EBERT & ROEPER AT THE MOVIES

The guest host thing continued until Ebert picked Richard Roeper as the permanent replacement for Gene Siskel, and the show was renamed again on Sep 10, 2000 to "Ebert & Roeper At the Movies". I grew to really like Richard Roeper, some did not. Here's what I have to say about that... With Gene Siskel gone, that is NOT coming back, so you have to move on. Roger Ebert was still there, and this was still the same program, so you have to accept change. You have to accept SOMEONE. Granted, Richard did a better job than just "being someone", I'm speaking to those who say he will never be Gene Siskel. No he won't. But that's not the point. Ebert & Roeper were NOT going to be Siskel & Ebert. What made that show great from 1975 through 1999 died with Gene Siskel. Given that, I was really behind the selection of Richard Roeper. As you watched the guest stars, you got the feeling more and more they were leaning towards either Richard Roeper or AO Scott, guys who were guesting way more than anyone else at that point.

EBERT & ROEPER

The title was yet changed again in the name of length to "Ebert & Roeper" in September of 2001. The show stabilized under this format and lasted for about five years this way.

This went on until 2006, when Roger Ebert had his thyroid problems, and was knocked off air for those reasons. The 2006-2007 season was completed with guest hosts for Roger.

AT THE MOVIES WITH EBERT & ROEPER

For the return of the 2007-2008 season, the show's formal name was changed again to "At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper". On April 13, 2008 Michael Phillips was named the permanent on air replacement for Roger Ebert, although the name remained "ATM with Ebert & Roeper".

It was short lived, though as Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert said on July 21, 2008 that they would both be leaving the show over contractual and format reasons. Roger Ebert took the "Thumbs Up" with him, as it was a copyright owned by Siskel's widow and Roger themselves, that did not lie with the producers of the show. It probably had something to do with the fact that the thumbs up/down had disappeared from the show some time before they formally checked out. That's probably part of what contributed to the "artistic direction" remarks we saw around the separation.

Although, in researching this article I ran across an article where Richard Roeper clearly calls out Ben Lyons as being "stupid" and being the reason he left the show. Wow.

And so it ends..

AT THE MOVIES (goes into the toilet)

On July 22nd, 2008 it was announced that the new hosts would be Ben Lyons & Ben Mankiewicz. This was widely disparaged by long time fans of the show (some going so far as to create a Stop Ben Lyons website), and it proved to be true, as their incarnation of the show was generally regarded as completely awful. The show's format was changed, expanded, and bore little in common with the Siskel & Ebert lineage it held (legally). Mankiewicz wasn't all that bad, really. However, Ben Lyons was SO awful, it just drug the whole thing down. Had Mankiewicz been paired with someone else, he might still be there.

One interesting note - Ben Lyons was the son of Jeffrey Lyons, who was one of the replacements for the original Siskel & Ebert show Sneak Previews. That doesn't justify anything, Ben Lyons was still damn awful, despite that quirk to the show's past.

I actually had recorded the final Two Bens episode the same weekend the new hosts came on (see next bit). The final Two Bens episode had gotten better then the absolute crap it was when they started, it had elevated itself to "pretty bad" from the spot it was in earlier in the season.

AT THE MOVIES (gets some cred back)

The two Bens experiment was fortunately realized as bad by the producers, and on Aug 5, 2009 it was announced that the two Bens would not be returning for the 2009/2010 season, which started on Sep 5, 2009. They were replaced by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Both were guest hosts for Roger Ebert during his health problem period; Phillips being named the brief permanent replacement for Ebert in 2008. Much was made in the press for the change in hosts about going back to "serious reviews", and "serious writers". If that was the case, then why did they just not bring back Richard Roeper with Phillips, and restore it to the way it was before the Two Bens came onboard? Probably too many bridges burnt there. Anyway, Scott/Phillips are a welcome return to form, will definitely be watchable. Some of the post Ebert changes remain, but it's mostly back to the way it was (if not with the same hosts).

As I write this, the first two episodes have aired with Scott/Phillips. It's definitely good again. Given they legally can't use thumbs up/down, the "See it, Skip it, Rent it" sort of works. I've seen some backlash against that, but I find my wife and I saying a lot that we will wait for a DVD release to watch a movie, won't spend the boatload it now costs to see a movie in the theatres. They have kept the "chair" motif from the two Bens era of the show, the old movie theatre / balcony idea is gone. Shame, as I always felt that added to the aura of the show. Below is a promo video for AO Scott & Michael Phillips, which is worth checking out. Also there's this video, which is Scott & Phillips talking about movies from their past.

Another thing I found out in researching this article is that the official site for the "At the Movies" show has a huge archive of video reviews of movies they've reviewed over the years. I'm unclear if it's every single movie they've reviewed, but wow. That's a massive past video archive, and it's a blast to run through and look at movies I liked in the past to see what they said. It's also a good tool to find out how different the various eras of the show were. Check out the review of Dragnet from 1987 with Siskel & Ebert, Batman Begins in 2005 with Ebert & Roeper, Casino Royale in 2006 with Roeper & AO Scott, Ratatouille in 2007 with Roeper & Katherine Tulich, Indy IV in 2008 with Roeper & Phillips, Twilight in 2008 with the two Bens, and finally Scott & Phillips' entire show from the weekend before I wrote this story (The Informant, The Other Man, September Issue, Whiteout).

So the original show started by Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert in 1986 is still going now under the name "At the Movies" with rather respectable hosts going forward. This bodes well for the (legal) legacy of the program. However...

AT THE MOVIES (gets canceled)

I wrote this article back in September, and at that time, the new incarnation of the old show had just started with Phillips & Scott. I watched several, the quality was quite good. While it wasn't Siskel & Ebert, it was the legal show they started, and I felt good about the future with these guys.

So it came as quite a shock on the morning of Mar 25, 2010 when I learned that this will be the final season for "At the Movies". It started many a year ago, and the article i read today said that this season (the 24th year) will be the last. That's pretty sad, and a lot is being written today about how much the legacy was good, and it was. I've had a season pass for the show on my TiVo for a few years now. Going back into the old show, through the two Bens (although I almost never watched it), and this now final season. The reasons given for the show being canceled are probably valid, as they're business reasons. Not the hosts, and not the idea. There's virtually no syndicated shows like this left that aren't infomercials. That's part of the problem, I think. Here in Dallas, the show is on at like 1AM on Monday morning (Sun night), and leads off a block of overnight infomercials. The show was never treated well (and this was even before the two Bens year) in syndication. If it was on at a "real" time, I bet you the show would still be around.

My brother and I used to watch it back in the 70's, so it's pretty sad that it's finally finishing. I'll definitely miss the show, but as one of the articles I read today said.. At least having AO Scott & Michael Phillips there at the end means the show can die with some dignity. Had it been the two Bens at the end, it would have a different feel.

The show ends in August, I wonder if they could get Roger Ebert there on the last episode to make an appearance. I think that would be a great touch, and a nice bookend for the show he started ages ago with Gene Siskel.

I'll update this again probably when the show finally does go off the air.

TRYING TO GET OFF THE GROUND AGAIN

The time after Ebert & Roeper walked away from the show was spent with a few attempts to get the "old show" off the ground again. Here's what I know about those, which I label "Show 4" (I wrote this section in the fall of 2009, so some of the text could be a little off when it talks about Show 4 still happening)...

EBERT & ROEPER PRESENT "TALKING MOVIES", NO WAIT.. "TWO THUMBS UP".. NO WAIT...

It was stated at the same time when Ebert & Roeper left At the Movies that they would have some new show. That announcement was made on July 21, 2008. They said something like it would be announced "soon", and would restore the legacy of the original Siskel & Ebert show:

TALKING MOVIES

Right when Roeper & Ebert departed, I set up a Google News Alert for "Richard Roeper". I wanted to be told when their new show was talked about. Nothing happened with it after that. It was a dark time, as the old show was only on with the two Bens. Then on June 12, 2009, my alert sent me the following text:

The Thumbs will be returning to television in a new program named Talking Movies, with Richard Roeper, Michael Phillips and Christy Lemire. ...

The alert stopped there, as they don't email you the whole thing, just the first line or so. So I clicked on over immediately and found the link was a 404 Not Found. It had been taken away. What I suspect happened was someone was prepping an article about that, and it got published to the RSS feed, and then deleted before anyone (well, almost anyone saw it). This happens to me a lot when you use RSS feeds as your primary source of access to websites. Anyway, the link was gone, and I could not find anything online about this story other than this link, so I wasn't sure what happened here, exactly. Whatever this "Talking Movies" was, it never got off the ground. I don't know Christy Lemire, but Richard Roeper & Michael Phillips were the hosts who held the spiritual line of sucession going back to the Sneak Previews days of the 70's, so it felt right to have them together. Both were hand picked replacements for Siskel & Ebert (by Ebert themselves), so I'll buy them as the carriers of the flame.

EBERT & ROEPER PRESENT "TWO THUMBS UP"

But again, nothing happened. It just sat there. On September 7th, 2009 I had discovered that Roger Ebert & Richard Roeper had been working on a website project called "Two Thumbs Up". It had the URL of http://www.twothumbsup.tv. It appeared from what I could tell to be an internet based version of the old TV show. However..

When I saw it in Sep of 2009, it was stale, and had been abandoned more or less, there was nothing current when I saw it. I don't know when it went online, either. This snuck out there with little fanfare, or I would have heard about it, since I was looking for info on them. Either I totally botched it, or this really was a small time thing. Either way, not much appeared to be going on with it, although Christy Lemire's name was still attached to it.

On the day I wrote this section of the article (Sep 15, 2009), I went to grab a screen capture of the site for use here, and discovered it had gone. I have no idea what happened now. If you go there, you get a "Forbidden" error, which generally tells me one of two things. Either the site's server has a serious configuration error preventing you from seeing anything, or someone just nuked the entire content off the server, and there's nothing for it to show. Either way, whatever this experiment was, it appears to be gone.

The trademark is still in use, though. If you look at Roger Ebert's current reviews, they're called "Two Thumbs Up® reviews". So it's still out there. But how it will manifest itself on TV?

What's going on, guys? What happened to the "coming soon" (In the summer of 2008) show that was going to restore the legacy of Siskel & Ebert? Some of us are still waiting, and as you can see by this article are still paying attention. While the old show is in capable hands with Scott & Phillips, I want the Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert show to return. It was said that it would be Richard Roeper & Michael Phillips with Christy Lemire on screen. Well, Phillips has another gig now, so he's out. No matter who is picked as the other host, what the heck is going on with THAT?

UPDATE NOVEMBER 29 2009: ROEPER GOES IT ALONE

It appears that the attempt at Show #4 has failed, and will not be happening. The why of that I'll get into in a minute, but we do have some solid new stuff.

First off, on Nov 24th, I found an article saying that Richard Roeper was going to be getting back to the movie review thing. He isn't on a new show (like we expected), but he's going to be doing movie reviews from his website, and via some unspecified "deal" with the Starz cable network. The reviews will appear weekly on his website, they will then be on Starz. I wonder if they'll be sandwiched in between movies akin to what is shown by Leonard Maltin on DirecTV. Anyway, it appears from what I read that he'll be doing this by himself. While I'm eager to hear what he has to say again, part of what made him work I think was being with someone else. We'll have to see how they go. Here's a quote from Richard about the "new venture"...

"I'm so excited about this new project," Roeper said Monday. "As much as I loved doing 'Ebert & Roeper,' this will have much more of an unfiltered, uncut, viral feel. As someone at Starz put it, they wanted 'Roeper uncut.' If a film is a piece of shit, I'll say it's a piece of shit. I love the idea of seeing the movie and turning around immediately and telling you what I think about it in a conversational manner. In some cases I'll be recording reviews right there on the street as I'm exiting the theater or the screening room."

There was a minor stink about it the next day from Roger Ebert thinking that Roeper thought he was censored on Ebert & Roeper, and I could see that, but Richard came out with a retraction saying that was not the case. Still, it made for an interesting bit of back and forth for a day there around Thanksgiving. :) One final amusing thing, Richard's website says "Richard Roeper & the Movies" - nice throwback name. Richard had an intro video initially posted on his website (but was later removed - I don't know why). It parodies the recent movie, Paranormal Activities. It's here:

So Richard will be doing movie reviews. That likely brings an end to the hope that the old phoenix will rise from the ashes, as he's now gone off on his own without Roger Ebert. Or does it? Ebert can never be on TV again (not regularly anyway), so he'll need a "friend" to be on camera, which I assumed would be Roeper. However, in Roeper's article he does leave the door open a bit for a return to syndication, which I'd realy like to see. Hopefully it's with Roger Ebert and the thumbs. That needs to come back.

Which brings us to the other part of the update. Roger Ebert finally spoke out about all of this stuff, the old show, Richard Roeper, the two Bens, etc.. There was a really great journal update by him here detailing a ton of stuff. If you've read this far, you need to read that article too. Roger goes into issues of his own health, what happened behind the scenes after his boot off the air from thyroid cancer, and talks about other names (Philips, Scott, others) that could have been permanent replacements (some of that is covered above).

But the sad part is how Roger talks about the end of his incarnation of the show - the point where the "producers" decided on destroying the old classic balcony stage instead of donating it to something like the Smithsonian. I didn't realize that kind of stuff happened.

But the final nail was when the studio hired AO Scott and brought back Michael Phillips to host the show, Phillips went to Roger Ebert's house personally to tell him. I thought that was classy. Apparently Roger offered to the producers the legal return of the thumbs and his own endorsement of the show (which would have brought a nice closure to all this), but he was rebuffed, saying "the show has moved on". That's sad. That's really sad.

Roger also goes into far more detail on "Show 4" (my term, not his) than I knew of. The reason THAT didn't happen is due to the economy according to Roger. But he says the show can probably still happen, and from what Roger said, it seems to be more than a "glimmer", but not exactly a raging inferno waiting to break out either. But I remain hopeful that the original show's lineage (if not the legal version of it) will rise from the ashes.

Whatever Roger Ebert ends up doing, whether it be with Christy Lemire or Richard Roeper, or someone else, I think there's enough room for their show, and Roger's old show still going on with Scott & Phillips. I'd watch both for sure.

IT'S 2010: NOW WHAT?

Well, it's now late March 2010 as I write this, and it was just announced that the old Siskel & Ebert show (now manned by Scott & Philips and called "At the Movies") will be gone come August. Is that truly the end? Apparently not.

First off, before I get into that, I wanted to mention the appearance by Roger Ebert on the Oprah Winfrey show. I am most definitely NOT a fan of Oprah Winfrey, but I brought myself to watch the show (or at least this part of it) that Roger Ebert was on. To my knowledge, it was the first appearance by him on TV since he was knocked off the air at his old show with Richard Roeper. I had seen pictures of him since, and was aware of his condition. But seeing him can be hard if you're not used to that kind of thing. I was glad I tuned in, as his story is seriously cool that he's been able to fight past all that's happened to him, is cancer free, and all that. The bit where his voice was recreated by a company using tons of his old commentary DVD's and whatnot was really quite awesome. This appearance was like a big step back for me, as he got to announce his own Oscar picks in his own voice for the first time in ages. The Oprah Winfrey website has videos of all this stuff online (for now, anyway). I suggest you go check them out here.

I mention all that, because I think it ties in somewhat to something he announced today that the old show he was talking about awhile ago is still going to be happening. I found that as quite a surprise.

THE TRUE "SHOW 4" - ROGER EBERT PRESENTS 'AT THE MOVIES'

Today (Mar 25, 2010) Roger Ebert had another blog post (man, this guy can write well), this time about the cancellation of "At the Movies". He talks about the past with Siskel again, why the show was gone, it's (as usual) a fantastic read. But for someone like me, the real gold here was the announcement that he is still going to be doing a new show.

Roger talks about how he didn't think it would work if they were just doing the same show as it always was. Which is kind of why I think the old show finally was canceled. It effectively was the same show from all those years ago, just a different tone and flavor, but the format was the same. Roger's new show according to him will cover "New Media: Television, net streaming, cell phone apps, Facebook, Twitter, iPad, the whole enchilada.". That's good to see. I think if Roger just brought back the old format with new hosts, then it probably too would fail.

I also liked this text which Roger wrote.. ""At the Movies" was one of the last survivors of half-hour syndication. It didn't fail so much as have its format shot out from beneath it." He even goes on to mention everyone who has hosted the show (which is Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Richard Roeper, Michael Phillips, AO Scott, Ben Mankowicz, & Ben Lyons).

The show will be produced by him and his wife. He wants to make appearances, and says his computer voice can be used to keep him "on" the show, even if he can't physically appear. He mentions they know who they'll cast as face talent (Christy Lemire perhaps? Her name has been attached to his for awhile now). He's not giving details, but this is the most forward I've seen Roger Ebert be with a replacement show since he left the air.

So something is coming. I hope it's soon, and I hope it's got a balcony again! :)

IN CLOSING

So there we are. A twisted history of the Siskel & Ebert movie review show. Many names, many incarnations, I believe I've covered it all. Roger, I know you're online, and do the blog thing, so if you see this, I wanted to say thank you. Have had fun all these years watching, and Richard? I thank you for sitting in the seat all those years for Gene. I even liked the Scott & Philips team, even if they were a bit too much like each other and there was no Siskel & Ebert arguments. At least they weren't "dumb", there was a level of intelligence to them which I enjoyed seeing.

I'll leave you with some amusing videos I saw on Youtube of various funny bits from episodes over the years. These show that Richard Roeper & Roger Ebert could still complain at each other like Siskel & Ebert did, they weren't the bland pair that I've read about over the years. Enjoy.

God bless Gene Siskel.

This was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. MacGruber is a recent vintage SNL recurring bit, and for some reason I laughed really hard at this (especially the third one). My wife witnessed it, and it's really short, dumb, and it always blows up at the end. For some reason, I really enjoy the MacGruber bits. :)

There's more of them available here.

First off, I hope it goes over in February, and not June. Folks have been saying it's coming for years, the February date has been known for quite a long time now. What are you waiting for, people? If you didn't notice by now, go dark. Meh.

Anyway, the question I have is this. In all the talk we see about the big digital switchover, the talk is that the air wave space that is currently allocated for over the air analog television signals is going to be reassigned for other use. What is going to happen at some point down the road if I plug in rabbit ears to one of my old television sets without a digital converter box? Will my TV set pick up whatever is using that old spectrum space?

I'm sure if it's data, it'll be encrypted, but what if it's used for voice or something? Will my old TV set become the new police scanner radio of the next decade? :)

Anyone who knows me knows I've been a big fan of major league baseball for ages. So it was with great joy that I got ready for January 1st, 2009. That was launch day for the MLB Network, a new 24 hour baseball channel. So I was rather excited to see that launch. Especially given one of the lead guys is Victor Rojas, who left my Texas Rangers broadcast booth to take a job there.

Some (important) background

A little background info first. A couple of months ago I bought a nice 46 inch HDTV. Not necessarily in anticipation of this channel, but this was going to be a benefit. This TV has a TiVoHD hooked up to it - this is a CableCARD device, so the cable goes from the TiVo just to the TV, there's no "cable box" as such. My bedroom has an older SDTV, and a Series 2 TiVo. This TiVo uses a Motorola Cable box provided to me from Time Warner in addition to the TiVo device.

January 1st Rolls Around

So January 1st rolls around, and I find out I have some big tech problems getting the channel (which persist to today). I found I could not tune to the channel. This is Channel 198 here in Dallas. On a TiVo box, you can tune to a channel two ways. Either through the guide, or "manually". On the TiVoHD/HDTV one, if I try tuning to 198 through the guide, it's impossible, as Channel 198 is not listed as a channel that exists. If I try tuning to Channel 198 manually from LiveTV, the screen is still black, and I get one of two error messages saying something like "Channel not Available, CableCARD device may be needed, please contact your cable company". I've been reading online about the problem since, and some information I found on the bizofbaseball website says this:

Reports have also filtered into the Business of Sports Network that some using TiVo players with cable cards are unable to access the channels listed. In the cases reported, subscribers had premium packages. Others, however, have reported that the systems are working properly. MLB Network is looking into the issue at this time. A technical issue has been reported in the past with premium channels and TiVos with cable cards, most notably those looking to watch NHL's Center Ice.

Great. Sigh. So on January 2nd, I went through all the options I know of on my local TiVo unit to reset the channel lineups. No luck. Any TiVo has a screen in the setup options that lists every single channel known to the TiVo service that is on your specified cable provider. In theory, it should match the list of channels available from Time Warner Cable. Guess what? Channel 198 isn't there. There's a 197, and then it goes to 200. Sometimes when a channel is new, TiVo won't have guide information available for said channel, but it will be on the list of available channels as "To be announced". 198 isn't like that - it isn't even a selectable channel, which is why I get a blank. As far as my TiVoHD is concerned, Time Warner Cable doesn't have this channel at all.

The Real Hell - Calling Customer Service

So I pick up the phone and called TiVo Customer service. Got a nice CS rep on the other end, which as good, since we were on the phone for about an hour. She had me walk through some options I didn't know about, she looked up things on her end, but the end result of that hour on the phone with TiVo was that "This is a Time Warner problem". The CS rep told me that TiVo has filed an official problem report with Time Warner over this specific issue I raised. So as far as TiVo was concerned, this wasn't their problem, and lodged a complaint with TWC over it. They told me it can take up to a week for TWC to deal with their lodged complaint, which would be January 9th (this coming Friday). Those who know me know patience is not one of my strong points, so I couldn't just "sit" and wait that long.

So I fumed for a bit, and contacted TWC's online support later in the evening (via their online live chat). I basically talked to the customer support rep. I knew this would be bad, since TWC is not known for their good customer service, and my problem is definitely not your garden variety "can be fixed by a customer service script problem". I was right. The CS rep I spoke with issed a box reset from her end, and it didn't make a difference, I still could not access 198 on my TiVoHD. After talking with her some more, she kept wanting to send out a tech to "fix" my CableCARD issue. I asked her what the point in that was because TWC doesn't officially support TiVo. She said they didn't, and after my rather useless CableCARD installer originally, I said "I do not want a tech to come out at this time", since I couldn't see what they'd do - except make things worse. So Time Warner's response was that it was a TiVo problem.

Great. They both blame each other. That doesn't help me. My TiVoHD/HDTV setup is stuck, I can't get the channel at all.

My Bedroom TV

Now all that above is about my primary TV, the one I want to watch this on. What's interesting about this whole situation is that my bedroom TV CAN get the channel. Further reading on the bizofbaseball site says that there are plenty of providers around the country who have MLBN on incorrect "tiers" or programming packages. My first thought was perhaps my account was not setup right to get the channel. So I check my bedroom TV. Guess what? I can get it. If I bypass the TiVo here and directly change the channel on the cable box, I can get 198 - MLB Network is there. So I know it's not my account not having access, it's some tech problem with my living room TV/TiVo. The bedroom TiVo does have 198 listed in the list of available channels, so I am able to set up recordings on my Bedroom TiVo.

TiVo & Tribune Media

I cannot do it "properly", though since the TiVo service does not know about Channel 198 on Time Warner Cable in Garland, TX for my zip code. Zap2it is run by Tribune Media - the backend company that provides the guide information that TiVos use in their service. So I went through zap2it's feedback mechanism, and told them "Hey, 198 is missing, where's the lineup"? I sent the same kind of request to TiVo as well. What I was hoping for is for TiVo's service to recognize 198 in my Garland, TX zipcode. My thinking was that if it showed up as a channel in the TiVo service, it might kickstart my TiVo into thinking the channel is there, and allow me to select it. However, as of January 5th, the channel is not there on either of my TiVo units. Likewise it is not on the guide info at tivo.com nor at zap2it.com. So TiVo (the service) doesn't "know" about the channel, despite the TiVo CS rep's statement that they did.

Summing up - what to do now?

So that brings me to now. It would appear that the statement over on bizofbaseball about TiVo/CableCARD devices and these kinds of channels is true. While my TiVo service doesn't know about the channel, I was able to tune to it via the Motorola cable box in my bedroom, so it is not an issue with my level of account access. I spent some time talking in a thread on dslreports.com about this issue, and others have confirmed that it is available in my area, it's something local with me. I hate those kinds of problems, since it's harder to get a CS rep that cares enough to learn your problem and really deal with it - most CS people just want to "script" you off the phone.

One curious thing, though. If you look at the listing of channels for TWC in Garland, TX, Channel 198 shows up as uncategorized. I wonder if perhaps the channel is mis-categorised at TWC's end, and if so could be contributing to my inability to see the channel on the TiVoHD device.

I'm at a loss. I'd be far more mad if I couldn't get it in the bedroom. Since I can get it there, I am manually recording things in there, and then transferring them to the TiVoHD and watching them out in the living room. It's certainly not optimal, since the programs have things like "Ch 198 - 6PM" as program names, but at least I can see the channel.

The final little turn of the knife in all this is that Time Warner is not even OFFERING the HD feed for MLB Network. According to MLBN, any carrier that carries MLB has the option to offer the HD version of MLBN - but TWC in the Dallas area is not even making it an option. That's lovely.

UPDATE FRI JAN 9: When I came home from work, my wife said that at some time in the middle of the afternoon, MLB 198 came on the TiVoHD unit. In addition, Channel 96 came back on, too. Whatever was going on at the headend appears to have been fixed. So, w00t! Whether it was my multiple calls to TiVo, or my complaint to TWC, I have no idea, because it just "came on", no tech ever visited my house (fortunately).

Now if TiVo would get some guide info in there...

UPDATE THU JAN 15: There's finally guide information in here now about the channel, so all is well. I'm just annoyed it took so long to get it all working. Not annoyed enough to get truly angry about it, after all it is just a TV channel.

With the new series of Doctor Who starting in less than two weeks now, I thought I'd revive a post I made on another forum about ages of the actors. Was talking to a friend of mine who asked me how old David Tennant was (he'll be 37 on April 18th), and it reminded me of this. I did some research as to how old all the lead actors were when they started in their role on the show, and did some comparisons.

Mostly useless information, I admit, but I tend to do things like this. Especially about Doctor Who. This post only for the hardcore nutters. :)

Here's the ages they were when their respective times in the show started. I am not breaking it down to days. That's just too stupid. I'm also not counting Colin Baker's appearance as Cmdr Maxil or Lalla Ward as Princess Astra, those are different characters. The companions are listed by which Doctor they started with, not ended with.

Doctors:
William Hartnell: 55 years, 10 months
Patrick Troughton: 46 years, 7 months
Jon Pertwee: 50 years, 5 months
Tom Baker: 40 years, 5 months
Peter Davison: 29 years, 11 months
Colin Baker: 40 years, 10 months
Sylvester McCoy: 44 years, 1 month
Paul McGann: 36 years, 7 months
Christopher Eccelston: 41 years, 1 month
David Tennant: 34 years, 2 months

Companions:

Doctor #1:
Carole Anne Ford (Susan): 23 years, 5 months
William Russell (Ian): 39 years, 1 month
Jacqueline Hill (Barbara): 33 years, 11 months, died Feb 18, 1993
Maureen O'Brien (Vicki): 22 years, 5 months
Peter Purves (Steven): 26 years, 4 months
Adrienne Hill (Katarina): Unknown birthdate, died Oct 6, 1997
Jean Marsh (Sara): 31 years, 1 month
Jackie Lane (Dodo): 18 years, 8 months
Michael Craze (Ben): 23 years, 5 months, died Dec 8, 1998
Anneke Wills (Polly): 24 years, 4 months

Doctor #2:
Frazier Hines (Jamey): 23 years, 3 months
Deborah Watling (Victoria): 19 years, 5 months
Wendy Padbury (Zoe): 20 years, 4 months

Doctor #3:
Caroline John (Liz): Unknown birthdate
Katy Manning (Jo): 21 years, 3 months
Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah): 24 years, 10 months

Doctor #4:
Ian Marter (Harry): 30 years, 2 months, died Oct 28, 1986
Louise Jameson (Leela): 25 years, 9 months
Mary Tamm (Romana I): 28 years, 5 months
Lalla Ward (Romana II): 28 years, 3 months
Matthew Waterhouse (Adric): 18 years, 11 months
Sarah Sutton (Nyssa): 19 years, 11 months
Janet Fielding (Teegan): 24 years, ?? months

Doctor #5:
Mark Strickson (Turlough): 22 years, ?? months
Nicola Bryant (Peri): 21 years, 4 months

Doctor #6:
Bonnie Langford (Mel): 22 years, 4 months

Doctor #7:
Sophie Aldred (Ace): 25 years, 3 months

Doctor #8:
Daphne Ashbrook (Grace): 33 years, 4 months
Yee Jee Tso (Chang Lee): 21 years, 2 months

Doctor #9:
Billie Piper (Rose): 22 years, 6 months
Bruno Langley (Adam): 22 years, 1 month
John Barrowman (Jack): 38 years, 2 months

Doctor #10:
Noel Clark (Mickey): 30 years, 5 months
Freema Agyeman (Martha): 28 years, ?? months
Catherine Tate (Donna): 38 years, 2 months

Others:

John Leeson (K9): 34 years, 7 months
David Brierly (K9): 43 years, ? months
Gerald Flood (Kamelion): 55 years, 11 months

Notes:

1) I counted Mickey with Doctor #10, as he wasn't a "traveling companion" until that point. It's the same reason I haven't counted characters like Jackie Tyler, or the Brigadier, as they weren't traveling companions, just support characters. It's a fine line I know. I also realize I condtradict that by the use of Grace & Change Lee from the 1996 movie, but if you didn't count them, Doc 8 would have NO companions, and that's not right, either.

2) Some of the companions have ?? as months, as their birth month was not given, just a year, and a couple have totally unknown birthdates. I listed 'em anyway, but with as much info as I could get.

3) I debated what to do about using "Others" are they were merely voiceovers, and weren't on screen. But I put the info in there for the heck of it. The actor who voiced Kamelion would be the oldest "companion", but since these characters were robots, I'm not sure if that should count.

Oldest/Youngest:

The youngest overall companion was Jackie Lane, Doctor #1's Dodo Chaplet at 18 years 8 months. The second youngest, and youngest male companion was Matthew Waterhouse; Adric. He was 18 years, 11 months. The oldest was William Russell, one of the original companions (Ian) at 39 years 1 month.

Older than the Doctor:

1) There's only one companion (discounting Kamelion) who was older than their Doctor at the time of their taking the role. That was Catherine Tate. She was 38 years 2 months old when she appeared in "Doomsday", and David Tennant was 35 years, 3 months at the time of "Doomsday"'s airing.

2) John Barrowman was 38 years 2 months when he first appeared in the Doctor 9 story "The Empty Child". At that point he was younger than Christopher Eccelston. However, when he reappeared in Utopia with David Tennant's Doctor, that changed. At the time of the airing of Utopia, Barrowman was 40 years, 3 months. Tennant was at that time 36 years, 2 months.

I'm such a dork.

The official launch of the new season of Doctor Who in the UK has been formally announced as April 5th. I've known about that for a couple of weeks now due to a source I'd rather not name, but it's nice to see it pubicly out there now.

UPDATE: The official Series 4 trailer has been released in high quality by the BBC, on their official Youtube Channel.

The BBC are calling this "Series 4", but that's the fourth series of the revived Doctor Who. Since the history of the modern show includes the old show, I believe it shouldn't be "Series 4", but "Series 30".

You have now concluded reading this blog entry by Mr. Pedantic.

The new season of Battlestar Galactica starts on April 4th. The entire cast showed up on the David Letterman show last night and delivered the Top 10 list. Was quite funny.

This is an interesting post. As a sci-fi fan, I'm excited about it, but I'm more excited about my daughter reading. So here goes an odd one.

As I posted about back in May of 2006, Samantha seems to have inherited the sci-fi gene from Daddy. Now we don't actually show her full episodes of things, as most of it is too advanced for her, but she has seen a few minutes here and there. Enough that she can recognize "The Doctor" when I pause the TiVo and ask. David Tennant is "her Doctor", a term Dr Who fans will recognize. Anyway, as per the old blog entry, Samantha has always danced to the title sequence of (modern) Doctor Who. If I put it on, she gets all excited, and starts dancing around the floor. She seems to love it. I had it on tonight, and she started dancing around, only this time she shouted "DOCTOR WHO! IT'S DOCTOR WHO MOMMY!", which got both of us laughing. So she danced around a few more times, only in the middle of the title sequence, she said "Tardis!". For those who don't know, the Tardis is the blue box that is the Doctor's ship. Samantha recognized it, and pointed it out to us.

So we repeated the theme song a few times, and then stopped it on the logo in the titles, which I'm showing here.

She's 2 years 5 months, so we've been working on letters, alphabet, and rudimentary reading. She pretty much knows every letter of the alphabet, although she doesn't get it right 100% of the time yet. So when I paused it on the logo, I asked her "What are those letters?". She walked up to the TV, and read them in order.. D-O-C-T-O-R-W-H-O. That part was cool enough, but I took a step and asked "What does that spell?" I think we had to repeat the question a second time like "What do those letters say?", She said "Doctor Who!", which was a really cool moment. Lynn and I both laughed. Now, you could make the point that we were talking about Doctor Who anyway, and she just remembered it, but it seemed like she was reading it, which was cool to me on two levels - one as a parent, and two as a Doctor Who fan. So we repeated it again, and once she realized we were all happy, she got all excited about it, and started saying "Doctor Who!" several more times. BTW, she can also recognize a Dalek on screen too.

A little setup for the second part of this. I work for a game company, and as such, it allows me to continue to act like a kid myself into my 40's. I have quite a few toys on my desk at work, including a decent collection of Doctor Who toys. This past Friday I got two more things in, one was a fairly large (about a foot tall) replica of the Tardis. It's the current "hot toy" in Doctor Who fandom (it's really a Flight Control Tardis for any Who fans reading this). I had brought it home to show Lynn, and brought home a couple of the relevant figures to stand with it. When Lynn called the stuff "Daddy's toys", Samantha immediately wanted to play with them, saying things like "Daddy share his toys with Samantha!". I was a little leery of that, as I had visions of the Tardis exploded on our living room floor. I stuck the Tardis and the figures in our entertainment center for the weekend, and Samantha would point at them saying "Those are Daddy's toys!". Well, after the stuff I described above with the reading of the Doctor Who logo, I decided to let her hold the Tardis for a bit. I grabbed the camera (mostly because a friend Jake would love seeing the pics), so I snapped a few of her with the Tardis toy. It was quite cute actually, as the prop looks even larger with a two year old holding it. So after she held that for a bit (and figured out how to open the doors on her own), I took it back and let her play with the action figures a bit. When she was sitting there, I decided to push my luck and grab some of the Doctor Who DVD's off the shelf from previous Doctors and ask her who they were. She recognized David Tennant easily enough on TV, but the concept of other guys being "The Doctor" probably is foreign to her. I picked up a DVD from the original Doctor from 1963, an older fellow named William Hartnell. Asked her who that was, and she said "The Doctor". Showed her one from the sixth actor in the role during the 80's, Colin Baker. She also said he was "The Doctor". I just smirked at that, and decided it was time to end the Doctor WHo stuff, as she needed to get ready for bed.

While this is mostly a Doctor Who-centric post, I do have to admit to thinking it was very cool that my two year old daughter was able to read "Doctor Who" off the television. But the inner geek in me was loving the fact that my daughter also exclaimed "I love Doctor Who!" tonight.

Somewhere I see Jake & Lina smiling over reading this, too. :)

The season finale of the current series of Doctor Who just aired in England over the weekend. I rather liked it, but then again I'm a Who nut, and will like most anything they do. :)

Anyway, the finale did seem to borrow a lot of "elements" from other things that have already happened. In reading the forums over at the Outpost Gallifrey website this weekend, I saw this thread where someone had posted the plot of the finale by using screen grabs from other movies and TV and similar stuff. I can not take credit for this, the idea was not mine, but I thought it was darned funny. I did add on to the original, though. The last picture and the fourth in my sequence were not in the original.

If you have NOT seen the finale of the current series (the third of the revival, the 29th overall) then do not look at the extended version of this message.

This will probably amuse the guy who made the image, and perhaps one other person in the world, but I don't care. It made me laugh. If you don't get it, don't worry about it. :)

This is some research I did on the 10 actors who have played The Doctor on the TV show "Doctor Who" in regards to 'length of service'. I needed a place to put this, so my blog is it.

Note: Since David Tennant is the current doctor, these stats cover the 2007 series that is scheduled to air between March and June this summer.

Doctor	Stories	Episodes	Seasons
William Hartnell	29	134	3 full, plus two stories
Patrick Troughton	21	119	2 stories short of 3 full
Jon Pertwee	24	128	5 full
Tom Baker	41	172	7 full
Peter Davison	20	69	1 story short of 3 full
Colin Baker	11	31	2 full, plus one story
Sylvester McCoy	12	42	3 full
Paul McGann	1	1	Just the 96 TV Movie
Christopher Eccleston	10	13	1 full
David Tennant	24	30	2 full so far, plus addtl

I was then asked if I would do the same information for the companions, so I whipped up the following chart. The companions are a trickier lot, several exceptions had to be made due to the oddities of cameos, story issues, etc. Here's some notes on my companions chart.

• This does not take into effect situations during the first two doctor's runs where actors were away on vacation, and the character did not appear on screen. If the story happened during their "run", then I counted it. Having the actors away on vacation was fairly common during the first six years of the series, as they made on average between 44-46 episodes a year then.
• I'm not counting 1993's Dimensions in Time, as it's canonicity is in doubt.
• I am not counting the UNIT folks as companions. I've seen some lists of companions list them as such, but UNIT characters while important to Doctor #3's run, were never formally listed as show companions.
• I am not counting the official repeat of Evil of the Daleks inside the show's own storyline.
• I am counting the Five Doctors as one episode, as that is how it was originally made, despite being broadcast mostly since in four 25 minute parts. Also, I do not count Romana II's appearance in the Five Doctors as a story, as it was recycled Shada material, and I already counted that appearance in her episode count as Shada. Likewise I am counting cameos in this story as an appearance.
• I am counting 1986's Trial of a Time Lord as 4 stories, not one, as they were made in four production blocks and then sequenced together into "one story". Officially it's classified as one 14 part story, but that's a production thing, almost everyone else classifies it as four stories (4-4-4-2)
• For 25 of the 26 years of the classic series, episodes were 25 minutes in length. During the 1985 (22nd overall) plus the 2005 series onwards, episodes are 45 minutes in length. I have not compensated for that in the episode count, although it made me think about doing a third column, "adjusted episodes", or "screen time", but that might be too complicated.
• K9 was also left out of several stories during his run due to technical problems with the actual K9 machine. I feel it would be too much work to go back and look at the plots of all the stories he appeared in to figure out which ones he was not included in, so if it happened during K9's original companion run, I counted it. I also did not make a distiction between the four different K9 models that have appeared in the series.
• I did not count K9 & Company, as that was officially a spinoff.
• While Shada was not formally transmitted, bits of it were made, and as such I counted it.
• I am not counting "A Fix with Sontarans", as that is officially an episode of another series ("Jim'll Fix it").
• Resurrection of the Daleks was made as a four episode story, and then edited into two longer episodes due to the Olympics at the time. I am counting it as four episodes.
• Paul McGann's lone story was one 90 minute movie, so I'm counting it as one episode.
• The Children in Need mini episode inbetween Series 27 & 28 I counted as an episode.
• Three episodes in the series run had no companions at all, and as such were not counted: Mission to the Unknown (1966), The Deadly Assassain (1976), & Attack of the Graske (2006)

Companion	Stories	Episodes	Years	Notes
Susan Foreman	11	52	1963-1964, 1983	Doctor's Granddaughter. Stayed on Future Earth to be married. Appeared in The Five Doctors
Barbara Wright	16	77	1963-1965	Returned to Earth with Ian
Ian Chesterton	16	77	1963-1965	Returned to Earth with Barbara
Vickie	9	37	1965	Stayed in Troy in the past to be married
Steven Taylor	10	50	1965-1966	Became Leader of the Tribes
Katarina	2	8	1965	Died
Sara Kingdom	1	9	1965	Died
Dodo Chaplet	6	19	1966	Returned to Earth, left halfway through final story
Ben Jackson	9	40	1966-1967	Returned to Earth with Polly, overlapped Doctors 1 & 2
Polly Wright	9	40	1966-1967	Returned to Earth with Ben, overlapped Doctors 1 & 2
Jamie McCrimmon	23	117	1966-1969, 1983, 1985	Forced back to Earth by Time Lords.  Cameo in Five Doctors, returned for The Two Doctors with Doctor six.
Victoria Waterfield	7	41	1967-1969	Stayed on Earth with the Harrises.
Zoe Herriot	9	51	1968-1969, 1983	Forced back to Earth by Time Lords. Cameo in Five Doctors.
Liz Shaw	5	26	1970, 1983	Reason for departure never stated, cameo in The Five Doctors
Jo Grant	15	77	1971-1973	Stayed in England to be married
Sarah Jane Smith	20	80	1973-1976, 1983, 2006	Dropped off on Earth when the Doctor could not take her to Gallifrey.  Overlapped Doctors 3 & 4.  Was in Five Doctors and School Reunion.
Harry Sullivan	9	34	1974-1975	Decided to stay on Earth with UNIT when an adventure took the crew there.
Leela	9	40	1977-1978	Stayed on Gallifrey to be married
K9	24	96	1977-1981, 1983, 2006	Stayed with Romana II in E-Space.  Cameo in Five Doctors; appeared in School Reunion.
Romana I	6	26	1978-1979	Regenerated into Romana II
Romana II	11	46	1979-1981	Stayed in E-Space with K9
Adric	12	46	1980-1982	Died, overlapped Doctors 4 & 5.
Nyssa	13	50	1981-1983	Stayed on Space Colony to heal lepers, overlapped Doctors 4 & 5.
Tegan Jovanka	19	67	1981-1984	Stayed on Earth after "having enough" following a Dalek story, overlapped Doctors 4 & 5.
Kamelion	2	6	1983, 1984	Killed by the Doctor after requesting he do so
Vislor Turlough	9	33	1983-1984	Returned to home planet after being exonerated of past crimes.
Perpugilliam Brown	11	33	1984-1986	Left the Doctor to be married to King Yrcanos; was initially thought to have been killed by said King.  Overlapped Doctors 5 & 6.
Melanie Bush	6	20	1986-1987	Left to travel with Glitz.  Overlapped Doctors 6 & 7.
Ace	9	31	1987-1989	Reason for departure never stated, was incumbent companion when classic series ended.
Dr. Grace Holloway	1	1	1996	Decided not to travel with the Doctor
Chang Lee	1	1	1996	Decided not to travel with the Doctor
Rose Tyler	22	28	2005-2006	Trapped in alternate dimension, unable to return
Donna Noble	1	1	2006	Decided not to travel with the Doctor
Martha Jones	10	13	2007-	Incumbent companion

Doc 1: 10 companions (3 male, 7 female)
Doc 2: 5 companions (2 male, 3 female)
Doc 3: 3 companions (all female)
Doc 4: 8 companions (2 male, 5 female, 1 robot)
Doc 5: 6 companions (2 male, 4 female, 1 robot)
Doc 6: 2 companions (both female)
Doc 7: 2 companions (both female)
Doc 8: 2 companions (1 male, 1 female)
Doc 9: 1 companion (female)
Doc 10: 2 companions (both female)

The overlapping companions were counted more than once, so this won't match up exactly with the number of companions listed above. I'm still torn on what to do with the 2005/2006 extra characters like Mickey, Jackie, Capt Jack, etc... For now I'm not listing them, since most places do not refer to 'em as companions, but I've included ones from the past with more spurious connections. Arrgh!

The popularity of YouTube has given rise to collections like this. This video is taken from an article called "The 50 Greatest TV Commercials of the 80's". Given the 80's happened when I was 15-25, I remember just about all of this stuff. A huge trip down memory lane for someone who grew up in that decade. :)

I wonder if I could still order Freedom Rock - the ordering info is at the end of the commercial.

There's actually a Part 2 to this - "50 More Commercials from the 80's. This stuff is like gold, but the funniest thing is probably the Jerry Springer for Governor commercial that's in Part 1. :)

As the season has just started, I wanted to bump this back up the top again. Also, if you are a Google Spreadsheets user, and wish to view that version, you can do so here. Google just implemented a feature where I can allow anyone to view it now, you don't need a specific invite like before. The regular downloadable version is still available, it's in the main story below.

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Since I live in Dallas, and have the hell of living in Cowboy land, one majorly huge lifeline for me is the NFL Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV. It allows me to watch pretty much whatever game I want, so I get to see all the Eagles games (I'm from Philly), and Steeler games (wife's from Pittsburgh) without having to sit through the agony of all the Dallas Cowboy games every week.

Anyway, for the last several seasons (06 is my fifth doing this I believe), I've put together a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet containing the entire NFL Season Schedule for all the NFL Sunday Ticket channels. You can download it, print it, and have the entire schedule on one page. This originally started out as a project for some people on the TiVo community forums, but I've moved to my own blog as my primary distribution point. Still, I wanted to say hi to the folks over there. :)

The first year I did this I did just the NFLST games. But since then I include everything else. Which in 2006 is a lot more confusing. I also have the ESPN MNF games, the Sunday night NBC games, various Thurdsay NFL Network games, and the other oddities like Thanksgiving day, things like that. They're all here. Here's a few notes about the spreadsheet and the NFL schedule this season:

• For the last two years, DirecTV did not publish the HD schedule until generally the week of, so that makes it impossible to schedule. If DirecTV ever would publish their full season HD schedule ahead of time, I'd add that, but it's been this way for the last couple of seasons. If it changes for 2006, I'll update, but I'm not holding my breath.
• Monday Night Football moved from ABC to ESPN this season.
• The Sunday night games that were on ESPN now have moved to NBC. ABC is out, they have no games at all now.
• Weeks 10-15 & 17 are now part of the new "Flex Scheduling". Being tired of getting stuck with dud games on TV at the end of the season, the NFL now has a rather large number of games listed as early games these weeks. The NFL will move one game from the schedule to the Sunday night slot no closer than 12 days from gameday. Lots of details on the new flex scheduling are available on the NFL.com website here. I suggest reading it.
• I've been doing this spreadsheet for about 5 seasons now, and the more stuff they add like flex scheduling, Thursday games, etc, the more cluttered my spreadsheet goes. If it gets worse next season, I may have to revisit how I lay this out.
• Last year someone had a great idea - to color code the boxes for an individual team's games with their team colors. I think it's a great idea, but that's 32 extra spreadsheets for me to do. Great idea, but I don't have the time to make that many spreadsheets. :)
• I also have this available as a spreadsheet in Google Spreadsheets. If you would like to have access to my online version, send me an email to joe@siegler.net with your Google account name, and I'll get you hooked up. Google Spreadsheets doesn't have a "let everyone see" option, otherwise THAT would be my primary distribution method. Scratch that. They do now. You can reach it online here.

If you use this, send me an email and let me know. I don't want anything, I just like to know that people actually use the thing. Feel free to pass this to whomever you want, just please don't change the credits; distribute it as I sent it. That's all I ask.

Thank you, and enjoy!

A couple of updates since I originally posted this:

• Update Jul 25: Week 3 had an incorrect opponent for the Rams. It said Panters, should ahve been Cardinals. Fixed. Thanks BrianT.
• Update Jul 31: Two NYJ/NYG mixups. Week 7's MNF game and Week 11's Ch 714 game. Thanks to gruxx.
• Update Sep 4: Another NYJ/NYG mixup. Week 11's MNF football game. Fixed. Thanks to Kevin in FL.
• Update Sep 4 #2: I finally found the time to go through the spreadsheet and remove all the hyperlinks in the games. For example, DAL@PHI was being translated into an email link. These are all gone now.

If you find any errors, please let me know.

A few days back I reported (not really reported, just posted other's news) on an update to the original Star Trek's special effects. Since then, several things have been posted which are updates to the original story. Here's a summary of some further developments:

• Aint It Cool News has a short video comparing the old version vs the new HD version.
• Second Article from startrek.com - Includes a Q&A with the people doing the work, including some specifics as to ships, and scenes.

My personal preference would be for these episodes to be in 90 minute time slots with MORE commercials so we could get the ful 51 minute episode, but they're being shoehorned into 60 minute slots, which means about 8-9 minutes per episode is being excised. Not thrilled with that, but at least we'll get to see 'em.

Also, it's mostly going to be on SD channels, as apparently, most channels that show HD material can handle live HD, but not recorded HD (something about capacity of stations). This is replacing Star Trek Enterprise in syndication, as ENT is going to HDNet and Sci-Fi this fall. So if your TV station has been showing Enterprise reruns, you'll get the new Star Trek. In the Dallas area here, it has shown up on my TiVo, so I've already gotten a season pass for it.

Here's a couple of significantly larger versions of the new CGI NCC-1701 ship:

Finally, there's this story from the DVD site The Digital Bits on all of this:

Well... we've got some more information for you today on CBS/Paramount's effort to upgrade Star Trek: The Original Series in high-definition with new digital effects. This comes from a phone Q&A session with producers John Nogawski, Dave Rossi, and Michael Okuda, held earlier this morning: