Entries Tagged 'Bravo' ↓

Welcome to the seventh layer of Hell, otherwise known as Reality TV. Larry King is hosting the 24-hour news desk in this dark corner of the universe, so let’s get right to the headlines…

• Project Runway is moving from Bravo to Lifetime for Seasons 5-10. Does anyone really care? Apparently NBC Universal’s accountants do, as they’re suing producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein for violating “right of first refusal.” (Yawn)
• Fox unveiled its summer schedule, heavy with reality programming. So You Think You Can Dance?, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, The Moment of Truth, Hell’s Kitchen, Don’t Forget the Lyrics, and When Women Ruled the World… oops, scratch that. This Lord of the Flies scenario series where women lord over men on a remote island has been indefinitely shelved. Apparently it’s not real enough.
• Thought the WGA strike was over? Guess again. The Writers’ Guild is filing suit against reality TV producers for more than $500,000 for unpaid overtime and violation of guild working conditions.
• WE TV is going America’s Most Wanted by marshaling the American viewing public in tracking down missing persons via their new series The Locator. The show is fronted by celebrity tracker Troy Dunn (aka Troy the Locator) as he attempts to help viewers track down loved ones… or objects of lust and vengeance.
• Oh yeah… The breasted one, Pamela Anderson, is getting her own reality series on E!. The challenge will see how many drunken relationships and short-lived weddings the former Baywatch babe can get herself into and out of in 26 minutes each week.

Until next time, stay beautiful America… and get off that couch to take a walk once in a while.

Here at TV Verdict, we like television. We also like being snarky about television. So it is with mixed emotion that we stumbled (a few days late admittedly) onto the news about Television Without Pity and the status of its founding fathers.

For those not in the know, the sassy seminal recap website was purchased outright by Bravo last year, which immediately alarmed the hell out of its fan base. Reassuring its loyal constituents that nothing would change, things of course rapidly changed, with the site immediately branching out into recapping shows nobody cared about. Plus, they stopped making those awesome shirts. A few days ago, exactly a year after the sell to Bravo, it was announced that all three founding members of the site would be leaving for good at the completion of their contract.

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NBC’s big foray into internet imports imploded Thursday when they pulled the plug on Quarterlife. Fans shouldn’t start crying in their Starbucks just yet, as the network is putting the show out to pasture on Bravo. Unfortunately, the WGA strike hasn’t tempered these knee-jerk programming decisions. Lucky us.

My wife alerted me to the fact that Season Four of Bravo’s Top Chef is debuting March 12th. I report this news with dubious reluctance, as I generally abhor reality television. That being said, as these things are counted, Top Chef is tolerable. I tolerate it in the sense that I do not want to take a flaming axe to my television set when I watch it, which is more than I can say about nearly every other reality show (with the grudging exception of The Amazing Race, which is pretty cool.)

The new season, set in Chicago pits 16 aspiring chefs against each other in a whirlwind competition of cook-offs, challenges and conflict, with the winning chef receiving a fat $100,000 in seed money to open their own restaurant, a full feature in Food & Wine magazine, a showcase at the Annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, a gourmet dream vacation in the French Alps and (of course) will earn the title of “Top Chef,” which has no inherent dollar value. Rats. As entertaining television goes, you can do a lot worse, especially if you dig food-related television. The awesome cooking usually glosses over the annoying bits of edited reality-style drama. But sadly, no televised knife fights in the kitchen as of yet… fingers crossed for Season Four!

On a lighter note, I strongly suspect that Bravo has a secret clause somewhere that insists at least one contestant per season has a faux-hawk/mohawk hair-do. They probably have quotas to meet.