Celebrity Chatters

ABC, NBC, and CBS all have coverage of the 2008 Republican Convention. Check your local listings for specific times.

• Fox has the season premiere of Prison Break
• NBC is new with Deal or No Deal, America’s Toughest Jobs, and Dateline
• CBS has repeats of The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and CSI: Miami
• ABC is new with High School Musical: Get in the Picture and has a repeat of Samantha Who?
• The CW is new with the season premieres of Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill
• MTV is new with The Hills and Exiled
• VH1 has I Want to Work for Diddy, New York Goes to Hollywood, and Luke’s Parental Advisory
• TLC is new with Jon & Kate Plus 8
• TNT is new with the The Closer and has the series premiere of Raising the Bar
• Bravo is new with Date My Ex: Jo & Slade
• ABC Family is new with The Middleman
• Comedy Central has repeats of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report
• Showtime is new with Weeds
• Late-night highlights include Jack Black, Caroline Gurtz, and Conor Oberst on on a repeat of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC, and Steve Carell, Alyson Hannigan, and Duffy on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on NBC

Hey, wasn’t I just talking about songs with lyrics I don’t understand? My lovely friend Bella sent this adorable French electropop artist my way and implored me to check her out. And holy wow, I can’t stop listening (or looking, for that matter!). Her name is Yelle and she’s becoming a pretty big deal in France already. I’m not sure she has any cross-over plans in the near future, but I’m going to help her start her US takeover campaign right now by posting a video for her song “Ce Jeu.”

She is apparently quite witty with her words, so if any of your high school or college French comes back as you’re listening and you want to translate, please do so in the comments! As for me, this is one time when I can just smile and enjoy this tune’s infectiousness. To check out the video,

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I’ve already given you some of my highlights from the week, but today, I wanted to check in with some of the web’s best TV bloggers to see what they were buzzing about. To see what was making headlines this week, just

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The New York Times recently ran a story comparing the portrayals of teenage life in Gossip Girl, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and the British show Skins. As I read through the reporter’s description of each show, I wondered which teens, if any, see themselves represented in these three seriously different shows. Though they’re fun to watch, none of these three shows quite captures my own teen years.

For example, the Times describes Secret Life as “steeped in moralizing” (my teen years weren’t as pious), Gossip Girl as a place “where jetting to Aspen from Teterboro” is normal (yeah, not my experience either), and Skins as “nihilistic in its mood” (my hormones were raging, but I wouldn’t say I was a nihilist).

So what teen drama did come closest to my own youth? Strange to admit it, but Saved by the Bell comes pretty close (sometimes I related to Jessie Spano. There, I said it. Except during this scene). Or maybe My So-Called Life (because of this scene, I did my fair share of bed dancing) — but even that still isn’t quite right. What about you? What teen show — past or present — best sums up your own teenage years?

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• Fox has repeats of The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad
• NBC has National Treasure
• CBS is new with Big Brother 10 and has repeats of Cold Case and CSI: NY
• ABC has repeats of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Desperate Housewives
• The CW has repeats of Everybody Hates Chris, Aliens in America, The Game, and Girlfriends
• AMC is new with Mad Men
• Lifetime has repeats of Army Wives
• MTV has a repeat of The Hills
• VH1 has I Love Money
• HBO has a repeat of Generation Kill

Admittedly, I was thrilled to read Entertainment Weekly’s dishy interview with Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth about their reunion on the set of the new 90210. It’s a great flashback to the love triangles and backbiting of the earlier series, and it helps explain why the two of them have decided to reunite on the new show.

But it also got me thinking again: Is it a bad thing that when 90210 lands on the cover of EW, it’s because of its old cast members and not its new ones? I actually asked executive producer Gabe Sachs about that back at TCA, and he said they’d take publicity any way they could get it, even if it came in the form of buzz about the old cast. That will work for a while, I’m sure — but can it turn the series into a hit?

What do you think? If you’re planning to watch 90210, are you watching for the new folks or for the vintage flashbacks?

Source and courtesy of The CW

(Kevin Nealon (left), Scott Hamilton and Eric Idle)
    On Sunday, 150 friends surprised Olympic gold medalist, Scott Hamilton with a huge 50th birthday bash!

    Some of the A-list guests included singer Brad Paisley, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, fellow figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, NHL’s Bret Hedican, Canadian William Shatner, retired NHL hockey player Adam Deadmarsh, […]

• Oh, Obama. Barack Obama set a new ratings record for presidential nomination acceptance speeches on Thursday, when his speech from Denver was seen by at least 38 million viewers. For some context, that makes it a bigger TV event than the Olympics opening ceremonies were — but it still couldn’t beat some of last year’s NFL football playoff games.
• Speaking Greek. Greek set a ratings record with its season premiere on Tuesday. Its 1.6 million viewers were the ABC Family show’s biggest audience ever.
• A little less talent. NBC’s America’s Got Talent is still one of the biggest shows of the Summer, but it hit a low mark when it returned from an Olympics hiatus on Tuesday. Its 11 million viewers tied the season low for the show.
• Tough win for tough jobs. NBC’s America’s Toughest Jobs was the network’s first new series to premiere after heavy Olympics promotion, and it scored a narrow victory in its time slot on Monday with 7.3 million viewers.

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