Steven Jens and I are having a bit of a discussion about the latest developments on House, M.D. at his place; there’s also an interesting post on the show up at Blogcritics.org.

Jerry Palm has some thoughts on next year’s move of Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN; I do think the “stars come to play on Monday night” hype has gotten downright tiresome, but if history’s any guide ESPN won’t exactly be toning it down…

Steven Taylor links an E! Online piece that says Tom Snyder is battling lymphocytic leukemia. While I don’t remember ever seeing Tomorrow (although my mother was something of a fan, so it’s possible I did see it back in that gray zone before my memory starts), I remember his show on CNBC and the post-Dave Late Late Show fondly; here’s hoping Tom pulls through.

While not entirely fair, I have to admit Jacqueline’s title for this post about the Battlestar Galactica miniseries gave me a good chuckle.

Plus, I want to find this gym where I can watch my own DVDs while I’m on the treadmill…

I saw the first episode of Invasion Iowa last night and found it pretty entertaining. The person who came up with the idea of Shatner hauling around his Emmy with him was a genius, and “Tiny” dancing around in his nude Speedo was pretty funny too. We’ll see how they push it a bit further over the next few days as the other characters get fleshed out.

Greg of Begging to Differ says House is his new favorite TV show. While it’s not my absolute favorite show at the moment (I probably would rank Galactica a small notch higher), it’s truly compelling TV—and that’s spoken by someone who has never cared for either medical dramas or CSI-type shows.

I’m glad to see I’m not the only college professor who is sick and tired of TIAA-CREF’s current advertising campaign. In particular, I’m not entirely convinced that one prof lecturing to a room of 200-plus bored undergraduates (the centerpiece of one of these ads) is “serving the greater good,” or even the individual good of anyone involved in the process. Plus, given most college faculty’s antipathy-to-outright-hostility toward Division I athletics, one suspects TIAA-CREF’s members might question the organization’s expenditure to help pay CBS’s bills for airing the tourney.

Prof. Karlson’s point about the “greater good” being served by such things as comparative advantage and a market-based economy, in addition to doctors and college professors, is also well taken.

In terms of the tournament itself, color me deeply pleased that two of America’s most overrated basketball programs, Syracuse and Kansas, both got spanked by rank outsiders today.

Truly bizarre:

A painter working at David Letterman’s Montana ranch was charged Thursday with plotting to kidnap the talk-show host’s toddler son and nanny and hold them for $5 million ransom.

Kelly A. Frank, 43, was being held on a felony charge of solicitation, among others.

Montana Department of Corrections spokeswoman Sally Hilander said the plot was uncovered when someone Frank had approached about the plan informed local police.

They’re throwing the book at this guy:

In addition to the solicitation charge, Frank also is charged with felony theft for allegedly overcharging Letterman for painting, and a misdemeanor charge of obstruction for lying to an investigator who first contacted him about the alleged plot. [emphasis mine]

Mind you, this isn’t the first time nutjobs have gone after Dave:

For years, Letterman was targeted by a stalker who called herself “Mrs. David Letterman” and broke into his Connecticut house at least seven times.

Margaret Ray eventually pleaded guilty to breaking and entering. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she served 10 months in prison and 14 months in a mental institution. In 1998, she committed suicide at age 46 by kneeling in front of a train.

As Steven Taylor says, this is insane.

Tonight’s episode of Battlestar Galactica is the thoroughly awesome “Hand of God,” which is probably the best single episode of the first season (“Kobol’s Last Gleaming,” the season-ending two-parter, is equally as good, but spread out over two episodes). And don’t miss the podcast commentary by Ron Moore while you’re at it. (þ: UBSGB).

Also tonight: Stargate SG-1’s “Threads,” a 90-minute episode which promises to wrap up quite a few plotlines in time for the season finale.

Jeff Harrell is proposing a T-shirt design to help you join the new McCarthyism.

Incidentally, I initially considered this week’s episode (“Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down”) the weakest outing of the first season, but on second viewing it’s grown on me a bit. And those of you who just tune in to sci-fi shows for cool explosions won’t want to miss next week’s episode, “Hand of God,” also featuring the coolest bit of misdirection I’ve seen in a long time.

Another thing: don’t miss the Unofficial Battlestar Galactica Blog.

Starting in July we’re gonna get 20 more episodes of Battlestar Galactica according to Sci-Fi Wire. While the renewal was already public knowledge, the announcement that we’re getting 20 shows (up from 13 this season) with all of the main cast members returning (which, in some circles, might count as a spoiler) is the real news. (þ: David Janes)

This is my entry in today’s OTB Traffic Jam.

I saw this a while ago, but after last night’s episode of NUMB3ERS I think Jeff Goldstein has nailed it as always:

Hoping to overcome what has quickly become a hackneyed premise, FBI agent Don Epps (Rob Morrow) eschews a dangerously abductive statistics-based theory offered him by his brooding mathematician brother, Charlie (David Krumholz), and instead tries doing his own fucking crime solving for a change—relying on nothing more than the vast resources available to him as a federal law enforcement official. (Co-stars Peter MacNichol, Judd Hirsch, and Sabrina Lloyd)

I have to say it’s not that bad a show, and the female FBI agent is “easy on the eyes” as they say, but the opening credits manage to somehow be both idiotic and patronizing. If I hear Krumholz’s character say “numbers are everywhere” one more time, I get this odd feeling that I’m going to bash my TV to pieces with a golf club, at least once I run out to the nearest sporting goods store and buy one.

David Janes observes in response to Ron Moore’s latest posting to his Battlestar Galactica blog:

No wonder I think this show is so good. The writer’s a fracken Libertarian.

Indeed. But it’s spelled “frakkin’.” Moore is also in quite a celebratory mood over news of the renewal, as one might expect, and gives some good answers to questions on such things as the rank structure, evolution, and what we can expect to see in Season 2 (although not really in a spoilery way).

Sheila O’Malley has word that one of my favorite shows when I was a kid is coming to DVD. That, the A-Team, and CHiPs had me in kid heaven.

Yes, I was a dork.

Woot! (þ: Slashdot)

Dan Drezner has the scoop on the hubaloo surrounding GoDaddy.com’s Super Bowl ad, which featured a pneumatic model in a tight top testifying before a bogus government committee. I thought it was a pretty funny ad and a spot-on parody of self-important lawmakers—which, no doubt, will be a major reason why you’ll hear whining from the usual suspects on Capitol Hill about the ad.

The rest of the ads were pretty so-so (though I liked the skydiving ad and the FedEx-Kinko’s ad with Burt Reynolds), I could take or leave Paul McCartney, and the game was entertaining but sloppy. Now the long off-season begins, just in time for me to start pretending to enjoy televised college basketball.

Former Star Trek producer Ron Moore has posted his thoughts on where Trek goes next in the post-Enterprise era to his SciFi.com blog.

Following up from yesterday, Steven Taylor links an E! Online piece on the demise of Star Trek: Enterprise.

The writing on the wall was there for some time, but now it’s official; Star Trek: Enterprise will come to an end after four seasons on UPN. Although I have to say that (at least creatively) Enterprise was on the rebound, hopefully this will give the powers that be behind Trek a few years to sit down and rethink their approach to telling stories; maybe they’ll even learn something from Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, which is getting significantly better ratings in a less desirable timeslot and with a big chunk of the potential audience having already seen the episodes that have already aired in Britain. (þ: OTB)

I don’t have a lot to say about Johnny Carson’s passing Sunday at the age of 79—I was never a huge fan of his, always preferring David Letterman—but an interesting footnote of his life (that I only discovered a few days ago) was that he came to Millsaps College for part of his naval officer’s training in 1943. Small world and all that.

I just started watching a few new shows:

• Veronica Mars (TiVo), a surprisingly good (and humorous) mystery show on UPN, starring terminally cute actress Kristen Bell as Veronica, popular chick turned outsider after the mysterious death of her best friend (and her sheriff dad’s perceived bungling of the investigation).
• House, M.D. (TiVo), a medical drama on Fox starring Hugh Laurie as a thoroughly sociopathic doctor whose team tries to figure out what’s ailing patients at his hospital. Recommended to me by my mother, of all people.
• Battlestar Galactica (TiVo), the Sci-Fi channel’s (amazingly good) reconceptualization of the often-cheesy 1970s sci-fi series as a dark, gritty space-based drama. I’ve raved about it here and elsewhere already.

So record one, or record ‘em all.

ESPN.com reports that the head football coaches of the Southeastern Conference are “very enthusiastic” about the prospect of adopting an instant replay system for football games, beginning next season. As having replay will require television cameras at every game, the decision—if approved by athletic directors at their meeting at March—may also have the side-effect of increasing the amount of SEC football on television, just as ESPN finds itself launching a new 24-hour college sports network with plenty of airtime to fill.

Steven Taylor links to news that TiVo has announced plans for an integrated high-definition digital cable tuner/DVR using the newish CableCard standard, to reach consumers sometime in 2006. I’d say I want it, but first I’d need that HDTV I’ve been lusting for.

Jane Galt is amazed to discover Britain’s television police, responsible for ensuring the BBC gets its £121 a year from TV-watching Britons—even if they never watch the BBC. From the article:

The fee is very much a part of British life. It is a criminal offense for anyone with a television set not to pay it, whether they watch the BBC or not. Fee-evasion cases make up 12 percent of the caseload in magistrates’ courts. Although most evaders are fined, 20 people were imprisoned for nonpayment last year.

The BBC took in £3.9 billion ($7.5 billion) from the fee in 1993, but 5.7 percent of television owners still failed to pay. TV Licensing regularly carries out campaigns to warn them about the consequences of inaction that say, for instance, “Get one or get done” – “getting done” being slang for getting caught.

Enforcement officers visit homes and businesses about three million times a year. They have a variety of weapons at hand, including a law that requires retailers to notify the government whenever someone buys a television; a database with TV-owning information about 28 million Britons; and specially equipped vans and hand-held devices that can detect unlawful television-watching.

The predecessor of the TV licence, the radio licence, went away in 1971. For more details, visit the TV Licensing website, where you can learn about the TV licence in 12 different languages.

An interesting development in college football today as Fox Sports has won the bidding for the next BCS contract for 2007–10, including three of the four “plus one” title games. ABC retains its contract through 2014 for the Rose Bowl games, including the national title game in 2010 (to be played in Pasadena).

Is this a sign that Fox is planning to get serious about college football more generally? To date, Fox’s involvement in the sport has been limited to a schedule of second-tier Big XII and Pac-10 matchups on its cable outlets (along with some Division I-AA matchups) and broadcast rights to the Cotton Bowl. It’s likely that at least one major conference, like the Pac-10, would be interested in a national Saturday afternoon slot to compete with the SEC-CBS contract—thus avoiding the limited 3:30 coverage associated with ABC’s programming. Plus, Fox would be hard-pressed to come up with an exclusive announce team that works four days a year, suggesting that regular season college football on Fox is coming sooner rather than later.