See I told You: Rosie Is Toast

I warned you months ago that Rosie O'Donnell's new talk show was a bust.
The new show went through various format changes, one sign it might be headed to a quick demise.
And it didn't help that the show was running on Oprah's new network OWN. I can't find many people who admit to ever watching OWN even when Oprah is on.
Why Rosie ever left her morning talk show syndicated by Warners beats me.
She had phenomenal ratings, big guests like Tom Cruise and huge ratings.
but she did leave and then came that controversial stint on The View where she sometimes bucked the authority of its octogenarian host Barbara Walters.
And nobody talks back to Barbara and survives sitting next to her.
Rosie went from that show amid a blaze of publicity--didn't Barbara once refer to Rosie as "my problem child"?
Well, Rosie added sparks to that show rarely evident on The View these days.
With her stint for Oprah (another powerful woman who must be obeyed) Rosie started off saying she wouldn't be doing a celebrity thing where stars come on to promote various products.
And she didn't. Trouble was she couldn't find a suitable format replacement.
Some of the shows I found interesting --like a two parter over a breakfast table as she traded anecdotes with fellow stand up queen Kathy Griffin.
Another big night was a one-on-one with struggling comedienne Brett Butler who answered every question by turning to the audience and talking quickly.
The last figures I saw had Rosie averaging 190,000 viewers. For the entire U.S.A. Which is catastrophic even for a struggling new cable weblet.
Of course Oprah immediately texted: "I thank Rosie for joining me on this journey." Which is so Oprahesque. What journey?
Heck, it was a talk show that flopped.
Actually I felt the show was slowly getting better. The silly game show part was dropped. The audience was pared down to 70 hearty souls for a more intimate look. And also it was cheaper to produce.
Rosie says she's going back to her New York roots but what can she do next? She's tough talking, very smart --is there no platform for her on TV?
Perhaps as late night's first female standup comedy host? Or as Barbara Walter's ultimate replacement on The View --but that might happen years from now.

The Age Of Anxiety Looks At Our Pill Popping Culture

I grew less anxious when I discovered Ric Esther Bienstock is the producer of the challenging new documentary The Age Of Anxiety. It's on CBC-TV's Doc Zone Thursday night at 9.
The Emmy Award winner has this knack of taking a difficult and diffuse topic like today's anxiety related culture and making us understand some of the key debating points.
And being able to accomplish all this in something like 45 minutes.
She's taken a topic all of us are wondering about as we go about our business: whether we have become a nation of pill poppers and if indeed we need all that medication in the first place.
I'd suggest a rash of celebrity deaths due to prescribed medications has a lot of people on edge. Bienstock choses her subjects wisely: a concerned New York city mom stressed out by living and working in the capital of high anxiety, a female college student stressed out as exams loom on the horizon, a guy at a computer who wonders if any other past society ever experienced such high levels of stress.
And Bienstock has gone out and garnered a rafter of leading experts. But her editing skills are so smooth we forget for awhile that what we're watching is the inevitable parade of talking heads.
One indicator such a film is timely comes with the announcement that in 2013 a new edition of Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM) is coming out a full year behind schedule. What will it list as disorders? Apathy syndrome? Parental alienation? Internal addiction?
At one New York party Bienstock captures a group of chic and trendy couples all completely familiar with the language of psychological distress and eager to discover which disorders they may possess.
And Bienstock also goes after the smooth and sophisticated campaigns by PR firms designed to entice susceptible TV audiences into thinking that they need the next wonder drug. How Plaxil was marejeted is an astonishing case study of producing a market for something new.
The experts summoned forth include Patricia Pearson whose book A Brief History Of Anxiety was the jumping off point for the film, University of Toronto medical historian Edward Shorter, renowned David Kupfer, chair of the DSM task force, Harvard University's Arthur Kleinman, Daniel Carlat who wrote Unhinged and Allen Frances who chaired the last DSM task force.
And Bienstock manages to get a lot of information out of them without seeming to over load viewers with too much fancy details, an admirable feat in itself.
Scott Harper wrote and directed it for Associated Producers and the way it is made ensures a wide audience outside of Canadian TV.
THE AGE OF ANXIETY PREMIERES ON CBC-TV ON THURSD. MARCH 15 AT 9 P,M. WITH A SECOND SHOWING ON CBC NEWS NET FRID. MARCH 16 AT 10 P.M.

My Extreme Animal Phobia Scares Me

My Extreme Animal Phobia premiered on U.S. TV back in October.
It's a six-part hour long series that every week takes patients on a week long journey into confronting their innermost fears. about animals they've encountered.
On the first hour four people are profiled.
There's Tom, 40, who has been terrified of rodents every since he was a young boy.
He's so paranoid he has his young kids open the garbage can before he tosses out the garbage --who knows there might be a rat lurking just under the lid.
Then there's pert and sassy Jackie who is deathly frightened of dogs, any dog. She won't even visit her best friend's house because dogs also live there.
Cameron, 21, desperately wants to move to New York city but there's a problem --the mere sight of a pigeon causes him to scatter.
And then there's 60-years-young ()()()( who has this phobia about snakes. She won't take her shoes off out of doors and dreams about snakes slithering up and out of the faucet when she's taking a bath.
They all need help or rather tough love. And they get it in abrasive doses from Dr. Robin Zasio who explains that these phobias result from chemical imbalances in the brain. There's no way getting around these fears except by directly confronting them.
For Tom it involves tossing a bucket of dead rodents into the animal cages at the zoo.
For Jackie it's getting closer and closer to man's best friend.
To Cameron it involves putting his hand in a cage and petting a pigeon.
For Ramona, 61, it involves going back to her room and finding it filled with stuffed snakes and not getting freaked out.
Usually I'm no big fan of Realty TV which I firmly believe is mostly made up.
But these four people are not acting for the cameras, I believe. To the contrary they all want to get up and run for hell.
What keeps them on camera is Dr. Zasio's insistence they stick it out or they'll never be free of their phobias. And they've lived with this problem for ever so long.
Cameron must venture inside a pigeon feeding pavillion where thousands of birds live and he must fill the troughs with food and water as they fly all about him.
And he finds the birds are basically harmless and only interested in getting their next meal.
Ramona must sit in her bath tub and allow Dr. Zasio to bring in a 10-foot yellow python and hold on to it while the good doctor exits.
And she finds the snake harmless and probably just as scared as she is.
Jackie learns to hold dogs on leashes in the park and not be frightened.
And Tom is confronted by the reality of 50 mice and rats let loose in his room --all of which he must pick up and place in cages.
There are lessons to be learned here for all of us. But I'm not sure who I was rooting for sometimes --the terrified humans or the beleagured animals.
When last glimpsed Cameron is sitting with his parents in a park in New York city feeding --you guessed it pigeons.
And please alert me if slippery, furry spiders are ever showcased. I'm so afraid of them you see.
MY EXTREME ANIMAL PHOBIA PREMIERES ON ANIMAL PLANET ON THURSD. MARCH 15 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Missing: TV's Best Midseason Replacement Series

Wow --it really was a whole back when I was on the set of the ABC series Sisters and watched newcomer Ashley Judd do a scene. Like 1991 I'm figuring.
Now Judd is slated to make her TV series comeback in Missing an action-jammed effort that plays like a snappy sequel to Lost.
Only this time Jack Bauer is played by Judd's tenacious character Becca Winstone.
And she's kicking some serious butt.
If one believes the ABC press package Judd does all her own stunts which includes a lot of running up and down the cobbled streets of Rome, getting tossed, thrown and stabbed at by various revolutionaries and reacting in kind by stomping, tossing and cracking as many bones as she can find.
In the first episode I counted five or six possible cliffhangers and I'd like to warn ABC to treat their star with a little more compassion or she'll be in traction for many months to come.
In short she is a Jack Bauer for our times.
In the first episode we watch as a slightly fraught Becca waves good bye to her only son who is off to Italy to study. But she seems more upsety than the ordinary mother would be. Is she hiding something?
That's because Becca is no ordinary housewife.
She's a former ace CIA agent who has deep connections with this organization all around the world. And when she doesn't get the information needed she jets over to take care of the deteriorating situation herself.
Most U.S. series are shot on back lots either in the U.S. or Canada.
Missing goes on actual locations --mostly European --every week meaning the costs are sky high but the authenticity is in every shot.
As Becca investigates she finds her son's rooms, his half eaten breakfast and begins the first of her "Perils of Pauline" escapes from a hired assassin.
By the way the first cliff hanger that ends the first episode is a basut. And I can't possibly reveal it here.
Written by Gregory Porier, directed by Steve Shill, the hour whistles by. A lot of information is given out that may be useful later on: turns out both Becca and her dead husband (Sean Bean) were CIA types --but is thehusband really dead? Or will Bean keep appearing only in flashbacks?
Cliff Curtis as CIA head of European operations is right properly skeptical that Becca has been a stay-at-home home for the past decade --after all she's been training to be in peak physical shape. But for what?
To get Judd on board ABC agreed to shoot only 10 episodes the first season and no more than 13 if a second season is ordered. Each hour will be set in a different European city as more aspects of Becca's life are revealed.
But once she finds her son will the series be over? How long can she go on searching without TV viewers losing interest?
But ABC bought the series based on the first script and without the usual pilot.
Subsequenr hours have to include more "down" time. Wartching the first made me feel exhausted.
We'll have to see how the next few episodes unfold before knowing of the series' fate. And top production values of the first hour will be difficult to replicate every week.
MISSING PREMIERES ON CTV AND ABC THURSD. MARCH 15 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

Terra Nova And TV Extiction

Almost all the hugely hyped new TV series of the season are getting mowed down one by one.
The latest to get bumped off is Fox TV's Terra Nova.
Ratings were unspectacular and the huge costs of the show forced Fox to cancel after just one disappointing half season.
This was the show where the dinosaurs were the best actors while the humans were just cliched types.
Good for the actual studio 20th Century Fox in saying the series will be shopped to other networks.
It's too expensive for cable networks but what about a possible pay TV window?
To be truthful the show was a muddled mess from the beginning opening strongly and then wasting all its dramatic points. It fared much the same as The River. Too much dough was spent on the look of the show and not enough on getting viable scripts.
The two-hour finale tried to reverse all of that and was the only satisfying chapter and based on that Fox had to ponder whether the show was worth saving or not.
Fox has just cancelled its Monday night series of eight great years House. And another Monday night show Alcatraz which started off so strongly has been dripping away in the ratings ever since.
I'm among those viewers who think Terra Nova could have been saved early on. It was too clearly aimed at younger kids with nothing much offered to the all important tween and teen markets.
The plot inconsistencies certainly disturbed the nerd niche market --they never got attached to this one as they should have. It has also been said there was little to get really frightened about.
Characterization was certainly poor --this family was a cardboard creation.
And, yes, it's strange but some buffs thought the effects cheezy.
I interviewed star Jason O'Mara when he was starring in another series that never made it (InJustice). Why wasn't he better promoted and should not his character have been front and center throughout?
Anyway Terra Nova is now history.
And look for pink slips to soon be delivered to the likes of Pan Am with veteran shows Cougar Town, Parenthood and even Fringe facing the ratings hammer.

Giving Operation Unplugged A Chance

There was another new series debuting the same night as the Canadian reality series Operation Unplugged.
So I watched it and didn't give OU a chance.
Call it my natural antipathy to Reality TV. But that's not the way at all to cover the TV beat however crowded the schedule becomes.
Oh, I started hearing about it from readers of this column and friends.
So I finally relented and watched the DVD preview and I'm liking what I saw.
I like this one because it's so relentlessly Canadian. The eight participants are all Canadian and so are the venues.
And we get to learn life lessons about what it means to be a Canadian.
What's there not to dislike about this one I ask you.
Th host is understated adventurer Alan Bishop and his tests for the eight will take us through some of the magnificent national parks of Canada.
The collection of contestants also has a strangely humorous aspect as many are modern techology fanatics who worry what their lives will be like without constant tweeting and texting.
They form a nicely ecclectic mixture of personality types: balded Kammer Kinnarath, 27, who calls himself a gadget dude. Described as "wedded to the web" is Jillian Storey, 20.
Scott Simons, 19, is a compulsive gamer while Alana Obey , 30, is a text fanatic but also dead scare of the water.
Vanessa Pampalon, 21, is a social network diva and Daniel Paluzzi, 21, is a smartphone slave.
Catherine Lebel, 26, is described as lost in cyber space while the oldest Chris Miekle, 42, is described as a digitally distracted dad.
The premiere found the gang at Nova Scotia's overpoweringly beautiful Kejimkujik National Park and a journey back into time to the early 1800s when British soldiers from the Citadel in Halifax would sojourn here to hunt and fish.
Two such tourists are provided and the eight must treat them as any gentlemen of the period would be treated --by building tents, paddling the canoes around for transportation, even making them teas and dinners the tourists would demand --and all without any modern accoutrements.
Watching them try to build a tent from scratch or saw a log is fun of a special kind. But it also reminds us what kind of wilderness once completely dominated the Canadian landscape.
On this week's episode on Tuesday March 6 they venture into Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park in Quebec for a series of water based adventures.
Next week they're in Bruce Peninsula National Park and on March 20 are in Saskatchewan's Motherwell Homestead National Historic Site.
I happily admot I was wrong prejudging this one and I promise to watch every week from now on.
And you should do the same.
OPERATION UNPLUGGED RUNS ON T+E (TRAVEL + ESCAPE) ON TUESDAYS AT 9.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Should Smash Be Re-Titled Crash?

Four weeks ago NBC plopped two new series onto its schedule.
Smash got wildly enthusiastic reviews while The Voice was less well received.
And now?
Smash is crashing wile The Voice is up almost 50 per cent in ratings and is now in a a tie with American Idol as most watched musical series of the week.
How could this happen?
I previewed Smash and thought it highly original and well acted although I wondered how it might fare in the great American heartland where few people have had the opportunity to pay $100 a ticket to watch a Broadway musical. Also, my spies in L.A. told me a whole hunk of the total budget was spent getting the pilot just right meaning subsequent episodes would not be produced to such a high quality.
And that's exactly what happened.
When I watched last week's episode with guest star Nick Jonas I couldn't believe how predictable and ordinary the show had quickly become.
Every soap opera cliche was unveiled, there was no dramatic momentum, it was a real chore having to watch for the entire hour.
Last week the cheerfully unpretentious The Voice garnered 14.9 viewers for NBC while Smash crashed to a new low of just 6.6 million.
When I talked to an old friend in Buffalo she said it was a case of NBC not knowing its audience.
NBC made the same mistake this fall in presenting a new version of the British TV hit Prime Suspect only to see it spectacularly flame out in the ratings.
A friend at CBS told me there's a reason his network sticks with tried and true procedurals which in some cases having been running for a decade or more.
It's this truism: it's getting harder and harder to mount a new series because viewers simply do not have the time they once did to sample the new wares and stick with a series until it finds its bearings.
We live in a TV universe of 100 competing channels. And there are other ways to watch TV shows these days from Netflix to YouTube to Rogers On Demand. So TV ratings are stalled if not actually falling for conventional networks and will continue to do so.
Two seasons back NBC cancelled all its 10 p.m. dramas to make way for the new Jay Leno show --a programming disaster it has yet to surmount.
That means all its 10 p.m. dramas are necessarily new and enticing viewers back is going to be a long haul.
NBC's new fare this season included The Playboy Club (already cancelled) and The Firm which has been a ratings bust from the beginning.
NBC has a new programming czar in Bob Greenblatt who has been realistic about the network's short term failures.
If he wants a role model he should look to CBS which remains solidly number one in the ratings based on unexceptional procedurals which do not ask to much of the audience and delivery dependable thrills week after week.
Maybe Smash was too good for network TV, maybe it would have fared better on cable --except that the weekly budge was too high for Showtime or HBO.
NBC has said the show will probably be renewed for a second season but moved to another night. There simply isn't anything in development quite ready to replace it.