“It’s still a passive activity,” Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, told the New York Times.

Which means that people with DVRs still sit through commercials because they’re too lazy to use a remote.  With 1/3 of US households watching television through their DVR, when factored into ratings, many shows are increasing their viewership in the  range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent.  The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.

Shocking!  But there it is.  Only now have networks come to realize that just because people watch television shows on time delay or on the internet doesn’t mean that people aren’t watching shows.  Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, but I guess it does take a television executive about three years.

V has been the one show I was hoping would redeem this lackluster fall television season.  It is, afterall, based on a popular (cultish?) NBC science fiction show from the early 80s about lizard creations pretending to be humans with nefarious plans for our planet and population. 

It seems like an excellent premise to be reimagined with better effects and acting and more weighty themes to explore.  Why then, did I feel ho-hum about the show after last night’s premiere?

You can read plenty of recaps elsewhere, but suffice it to say there’s a lot going on.  The FX look up to snuff, the acting is all pretty darn good (how could it not be with Elizabeth Mitchell, Alan Tudyk, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Scott Wolff, and Monica Baccarin) for a network television show and the themes are not disimilar from the recent Battlestar Galactica remake (religion, terrorism, identity, etc.). 

There were huge problems with the pilot episodes’s story arc: 1) the humans just accept the aliens with open arms, 2) the exposition/backstory is clumsily handled, 3) two of the main characters easily figure out that the lizard aliens are up to no good, 4) it’s too clean and polished.

Still, none of those complaints are what I’m having difficulty wrapping my brain around this morning.  I’ve never watched a show so anti-progressive as I did the one last night. 

And I’m not alone.  Both Time’s excellent James Poniewozik and Chicago Tribune reviewer Glenn Garvin made note of this: a telegenic messiah from a foreign and alien place comes to the United States with the promise of hope and change offers our citizens science, technology and — gasp! – universal health care. 

Make no mistake, the Obama parallel/allegory here is downright unnerving.  It’s so blatent I really thought some combination of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were show runners. 

Chew on this basic plot:  charismatic, attractive newcomers win the adulation of America’s youth with the promise of hope & change; they manipulate the braindead media and promise universal healthcare, but a group of real Americans are saavy to their evil (fascist?) hidden identity/agenda and will work to prevent the destruction of humanity. 

It would have been refreshing, or still can be, if the lizard aliens turn out to be the saviors of the human race.  But alas, I don’t think that will be the case.  And yet, and yet, I’m still going to tune in because there’s enough decent story threads that the show has my interest.

Thanks internets! From last week’s “Top Chef” where Padma Lakshmi and guest judge Natalie Portman drop their fair share of fellatio double entendres in 40-seconds. [via]

Some enterprising It’s Always Sunny fan took every Charlie Kelly dance sequence from Seasons 1-5 and made this highly enjoyable supercut.

Charles Kuralt was one of the myriad reasons I began doing what I do.  So it’s nice to see that some of his greatest segments have been packaged together as a DVD collection.

Seth Stevensen pays the man tribute for Slate: “There is something distinctly pre-Internet about the folks who appear in Kuralt’s reports. They harbor no ambition to become famous. They’re odd people, doing oddly beautiful things, tucked away in odd corners of the country. Nowadays, many of them might publicize their doings on personal Web sites and YouTube channels or try to scheme their way onto a reality show. But back then, it was a pleasant, one-in-a-million surprise when Kuralt rolled into town and put them on TV. “They didn’t know there was anything special about themselves,” says Kuralt’s longtime cameraman, Isadore Bleckman, “until Charles held up a mirror to them.”

What amazes me is that with the technology improvements, no one has taken up Charles Kuralt’s mantle for one of the major news organizations.

Usually, I’m not too into the extra webisodes from The Office or any television show for that matter, but this one is pretty good.  Also, the new secretary Erin is beginning to grow on me, so it’s nice to see her get to stretch her comedic chops. 

Subtle Sexuality is a girl group made up of “the beautiful and mysterious” Kelly Kapoor and “the pretty” Erin Hannon, two employees of a certain paper company in Scranton, Penn.

Their first song/video is the Auto-Tune–heavy dance jam “Male Prima Donna,” featuring guest appearances by ‘Nard Dog and Mr. Understood. MORE »

In anticipation of ABC’s V remake, the SyFy Channel has decided to reair the original miniseries this weekend, which is helpful in determing whether or not the new show compares to the old show.  I was too young to catch the sci-fi miniseries when it first aired in 1983, and I haven’t bothered to add it to Netflix.

The marathon starts on Saturday Sunday at 12:30 p.m.

I jumped off the putrid 24 train after season 5, when it was quite evident the show was going to live out its days in an absurdly endless loop of Keifer Sutherland running around, doing stuff and preventing things from happening.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask to throw in a bathroom or food break just to mix things up. 

Anyways, I recognize that some people may still be into the show, so here’s a trailer for the new season.  Action moves to NYC, so that should be fun.

No worries.  Hulu isn’t going to start charging you.  They still might add premium content that does cost money, but they aren’t about to change their business model.  I wonder how much the uproar over the floated idea had anything to do with this announcement.

Not really much to go on here, but Elizabeth Mitchell was great on Lost. This premieres next Tuesday, so you won’t have to wait long to watch the entire episode.  To be honest, not much has grabbed me this television season, so I’m hoping V becomes that show.

It’s already been neutered, now that you can only watch five episodes of a show at a time, but now Hulu is basically putting their business in jeopardy by charging people to use the website.  There isn’t a timeline in place for when this will happen, but News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey hinted it would be sometime in 2010. 

Here’s the thing — Hulu’s  value is derived almost exclusively because it’s free.  The people that watch Hulu, could easily switch to Casttv.com for example, or just Bit Torrent.  It’s a risky gamble.

Sahar Sashar put together this short video with Jason Jones and Tim Greenberg of The Daily Show about their trip to Iran.  It’s no secret that Jason Jones is going to be the next big breakout star from Jon Stewart’s cabal.

I’m not sure if this news makes me want to stick with Fox’s Glee a bit longer, especially given how fantastically awesome the Buffy musical episode was (guilty, I own the soundtrack), but Joss Whedon will be directing an upcoming episode.  My interest in the show is starting to wane so this may be a convenient time to decide if it’s worth sticking around to watch.

He comments about the news on Whedonesque: “What can we expect from a ‘Joss Whedon’ epsiode of Glee? An episode of Glee. God willin’ and the crik don’t rise, a good one. A television director’s job is, on some level, to be anonymous; to find the most compelling way to present a story without calling attention to himself. I had a wonderful time doing just that on The Office, and hope to again. A guest director can bring a huge amount to the party (we’ve had CRAZY talent on Dollhouse), but the party isn’t his. I just want to work with good people on a show that I like enough to have watched every episode several times. (I lied: I HAVE watched the show. And seriously, when do the cops show up?).”