Those of us who travel the cable circuit get asked this question all the time by non-travelers: Was it a good show?

A fair question. And at least it show the questioner actually listened when you mentioned you’re attending The Independent Show, this week in Orlando. The problem is that the questioner usually expects a succinct response. It’s not easy.

First, you have to explain to your friendly inquisitor that in many ways this show is as far from NCTA’s The Cable Show as you can get. To start, it’s a fraction of the size. How much smaller? Despite this summer’s record numbers, attendees actually sat down for a group lunch each day. This year they heard a pair of excellent entertainers to boot, a self-described extraordinist (don’t ask) and a comedian who specializes in performing for businesses. (A question: When was the last time you had time for lunch at NCTA’s show, much less one that didn’t involve a pitch?)

And the exhibitor booths? Well, that’s a misnomer here. They aren’t booths, but nicely decorated tables. Still, there was a palpable excitement on the floor, something you don’t see at all cable trade events.

Of course we must mention that the show’s held on the Disney World property. Maybe that’s why it feels more like a very large wedding than a business function. The place is loaded with spouses and kids. But that’s by design. As NCTC chief Jeff Abbas said Tues night, the support of members’ family is one of the reasons people like The Indie Show.

As a result the hall chatter’s not always as businesslike as at The Cable Show, although nobody minded. The main buzz this morning wasn’t DirecTV boasting of 150 HD channels. It’s why last night’s party wasn’t held at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, as planned (weather considerations were the cause). In this atmosphere it’s as important that Discovery sponsored today’s kid’s trip to SeaWorld as it is that the panel on cable and residential home security was nixed.

When people here talk about mergers they’re likely referring to romances between kids who’ve attended this get-together with their parents for several summers, not DirecTV and Dish.

To gauge the importance of The Independent Show’s social aspects, we’ve heard that people who lost their jobs in cable through layoffs were almost as upset about their employment situation as they were about having to tell their families they’d no longer be attending The Independent Show. Honest.

But it’s not enough to summarize this show by saying the most important talent on the busy show floor today was Elmo, who held court at Comcast Entertainment’s booth. Far from it.

The show was extremely well organized and featured some excellent sessions, most were well attended. While NCTA tends to populate its general session panels with big names who have oversight of huge companies, the Indie show features tracks with hands-on people who tend to provide a wealth of details.

One of the best panels came late Tuesday, when a representative of the broadcasters, David Donovan, made it abundantly clear that there’s more to the digital transition than informing subscribers. For operators this thing is as technologically complex as it was for Indie Show attendees to find their rooms in the labyrinthine halls of the Disney Yacht Club hotel.

Donovan’s message was that operators must meet with local broadcasters about broadcasters’ construction plans and other technical issues related to the digital transition—and fast. While contact and coordination on the transition between associations like ACA, NCTC, NCTA and NAB have been “good,” that’s not been so “at the local level,” Donovan said.

It was not a partisan message. Indeed, prior to Donovan’s briefing, ACA chief Matt Polka summed up his group’s exhortation to members this way: “Don’t wait—contact your local broadcasters now.”

Donovan’s short, but densely technical, presentation reinforced that message. It contained myriad issues that must be addressed by operators in concert with broadcasters, mostly concerning equipment that cable operators might need to purchase to receive signals from broadcasters. He also noted that on several questions there’s no uniformity among broadcasters. In other words, cable ops should contact each local broadcaster in their footprint and not make assumptions.

Without those conversations broadcasters and small and mid-size cable operators might spend their money needlessly. Even Mickey Mouse would lose his smile over that.

Nothing succeeds in television like success.

Carson Kressley, host of Lifetime’s hit How to Look Good Naked, seems set to premiere a style-related talk show on the network in January. In developing Naked, Kressley told Lifetime that he wanted to do a talk show at some point in his career.

“We’re in the very early stages,” Kressley said at TCA, but he seemed to have quite a few details.

It’ll be 30 minutes long and run during the day on Lifetime. Kressley said his style-related show would fit with Project Runway, which is coming to the network. We will do a show on Fashion Week in Paris, but do it from Paris, Kentucky, Carson said. Celebs will visit the show, but we’ll also go to Vegas to visit celebrities who are performing there, he said.

Kressley was impressive in his TCA appearance, displaying the kind of qualities that just might make him a successful talk show host. At TCA he mixed offbeat humor with his spiritual cheerleader side. A pair of women who had appeared on Naked and felt they were transformed by the experience sang Kressley’s praises. One of the women, Kelly Park, said Cressley changed her life because he “told me how beautiful I was…you opened up my eyes to what I was not seeing…I was finally free of all the things that trapped me.” Park revealed that she hadn’t been sexual with her husband for 6 years when she appeared on the show. “I’m having sex all the time now,” she said.

Another bit of Lifetime news, Army Wives has re-enlisted. The hit series will be back for a 3rd season next year, the network said.

Revelation of the Day: Mark-Paul Gosselaar, whose next attempt to make people forget him as  Zach on Saved by the Bell is called Raising the Bar (TNT, Sept 1), told TCA critics today that he had to regularly dye his hair blonde to play Zach. He also wore clothes as Zach that weren’t his, they were costumes. Imagine.  “That wasn’t Mark-Paul in school, I was  playing a character,” he said. But my mother, she told me…

Next Revelation (or a sign that the Apocalypse is upon us): Fox Reality Channel President David Lyle says 32 reality shows will be introduced on broadcast television this year. There will be 140 introduced on cable.

Unimportant But Nice Revelation: Ewan McGregor, here to pitch Long Way Down, where he and a mate take their bikes from Scotland to Namibia (Fox Reality Channel, 9pm, Aug 2), has to be one of the most articulate actors around. The “bloke on a bike” spoke about everything from being anonymous in Africa to the good Samaritans who transport AIDS HIV anti-viral medicines to patients in Africa, where transportation is sometimes a luxury. (Part of McGregor’s reason for the trip was to publicize Africa’s plight and the need for westerners to support charities.) There’s no way to know if Long Way Down will find an audience on FRC, but it sounds like McGregor had quite a journey.

Poor CNN. It and its Turner brethren have absorbed some brutal beatings over the years at TCA.
Still, like the veteran fighter it is, CNN and Turner come back for more punishment.

Would this year be different? It seemed so in the early rounds.

CNN got out of the box fast at TCA this morning, trumpeting “the best political team on television” its coverage of the primaries, the crowded set, the liberation from the anchor desk, the technology, CNN’s number one ranked online site (ie, the usual line CNN spouts when it  wants to avoid talking about ratings not during the primaries). The TV critics, eyes blurred from a week of TCA panels, were lapping it up without so much as a semi-tough question.

John King, Gloria Borger, Suzanne Malveaux and Wolf Blitzer (via satellite in Washington, hurting from a pulled tendon suffered on his treadmill) were talking up the conventions and how “dramatic” they would probably be. When will Bill Clinton speak? (a yawn from the critics) Who will introduce Hillary when she speaks? Will it be Chelsea or Bill? (another sound that resembled a yawn) Will the VP candidates be introduced before the conventions or at them? (stifled grunt) How will the Republicans say good-bye to Dick Cheney? (incredibly disinterested snort).

Finally, a TCA critic questioned the emphasis on drama at the conventions that the CNN talent were pushing. Shouldn’t you folks be discussing analysis of what’s said at the conventions? A word or two about how what is said at the conventions will make a bit of difference to those trapped by a slumping economy? The mortgage mess? The war in Iraq?

A good counter punch from the CNN talent. All chimed in that the questioner was absolutely correct and that both drama and substance could, should and would be part of CNN’s coverage. Potential crisis avoided. And, despite being in Hollywood, the word drama never was uttered again during this panel.

Then a clever but fair question got the room’s temperature up. “There’s a question from the best TV critic in Philadelphia,” said a TCA scribe, which resulted in knowing laughter from the rest of the critics, roused from their  morning haze. The questioner, of course, was referring to the above referenced tag line “the best political team on television.”

Give the injured Wolf credit. He jumped in fast to avoid another Star Jones debacle (Anyone remember the mess caused by Star when she refused to answer TCA critics’ questions about her dramatic weight loss?). “I  wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it,” Blitzer retorted, proving that he can play in pain. He dug in deeper, noting it’s really a team, on camera and off. “We have wizards back there [off camera] who are analyzing what’s going on…I happen to believe we are” [the best political team on television.]

Bully, Wolf. Good that you jumped in, but you should’ve left that one for your boss, CNN/US President Jon Klein, to handle that silliness. Coincidentally(?) it fell to Klein to cut off the debate, time was up. “We’re glad you’ve noticed” the tagline was all he could manage before calling the session to an end. But with all those bloggers in the room, was it really over?

Perhaps it’s the tighter economic times. Programmers can’t afford to just throw money at TCA room drops and think they’ve done their job. A costly, huge basket of goodies just isn’t in the budget at the moment.

Still the fight for eyeballs continues, and critics play a vital part in cultivating buzz (or so programmers think), thus the room drops continue. Interestingly the sluggish economy seems to have resulted in programmers being more thoughtful than usual with their spending for room tchotchkeys. Below is a quick look at what was left behind.

Highlights:

* It was AMC’s week, no doubt, with Mad Men’s huge splash. AMC left nothing to chance, stuffing critics’ hotel rooms with the season 1 DVD, a CD with music from the show and a Do Not Disturb sign. The best items were the smallest—a note on the stationery of the series’ fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper, inviting critics to a set visit (we assume the visit isn’t fictional also), and a water pen, which when turned over shows the black-and-white figure from the show’s opening sequence descending into the abyss. Brilliant.

* Planet Green instantly became critics’ eco friend with a gift bag made of 80% post consumer waste. The bag’s insides were local, green and low cal. Did you see that cotton candy that contained not a gram of fat or a single artificial color or flavor? Better than that, it tasted great. How about that organic chocolate, the organic olives or the fish oil pills?

 Well Done:

* Loved Nat Geo’s simple but effective room drop. For its Expedition Week it left a compass attached to a portable water bottle. For World’s Toughest Fixes critics received the fix-it book When Duct Tape Just Isn’t Enough. As we said, simple but effective.

Well, OK:

History (formerly The History Channel) isn’t ready to re-write tchotchkey history. To tout its session featuring Sandhogs (Sept premiere) and Einstein (Q4) it left critics the only logical gift it could come up with—a selection of chocolates in an edible basket. “Einstein, after a long day of bombarding atoms loved to relax with a good piece of chocolate; this everyone knows,” a History official insisted. “And didn’t you notice the pecan sandies included with the chocolates? They were a nod to the Sandhogs,” the official continued. Perhaps. Still,  a very tasty but disappointingly routine gift.

A better idea would have been an Einstein action doll. How about a book about Einstein or a small chemistry set? Or even products from Baby Einstein (remember, critics are genetically cheap, they could have re-gifted those goodies and, hey, the holidays are right around the corner). What about a small sand sculpture, obviously in the form of a hog? Like Einstein’s universe, the possibilities seem endless.

Tomorrow: On-site swaggery and the cleverness of encasing flashdrives.

 

 

 

 

 

They really couldn’t have plotted it better.

Network execs are always hoping their series finds an audience. The new entry on A&E, The Cleaner (July 15, 10pm), seems to already have a built-in audience. Co-creator and showrunner Jonathan Prince says it was not a coincidence that he pitched The Cleaner to A&E, home of hit original reality series Intervention. “A&E was the only place I pitched this to,” Prince says in an interview at TCA.

The Cleaner, based on the life of co-exec prod Warren Boyd, is about a crew of former addicts led by William Banks (Benjamin Bratt) that rescues people from their addictions and delivers them to a safe house and eventually to rehab. Later in the season it is revealed that Banks has a hand in a rehab facility.

On top of his stressful occupation, Banks also must balance his chaotic home life as a husband and father of two teens. His marriage is rocky, he sleeps on the couch, and rescuing addicts can’t be done on a schedule, which means he often is unable to fulfill obligations to his kids and wife. On the other hand, when he’s with his family his job sometimes calls. (To illustrate how busy Boyd is, Prince notes that during his pitch to A&E, Boyd was at the pitch table juggling 3 Blackberries. He was exchanging messages with addicts or their families that he was trying to help, Prince says. The reality of the situation didn’t hurt the pitch, Prince believes.)

But Prince’s logic was not simply that a series about addiction and rehab would fit on the network home of Intervention. The series fits into A&E’s sweet spot in several other ways too. “Look,” he says, “beside Intervention, A&E has The Sopranos, which is the greatest TV drama, but it’s partly about a dysfunctional family with a strong male character.” The Cleaner also has a strong male character and much of the show revolves Banks’ family and his crew, his professional family. Prince also points to other A&E series with strong male leads, like Dog The Bounty Hunter. “Look, I’ve been canceled before,” Prince says. “I’ve had the right show at the wrong network. So I was careful this time.”

But The Cleaner, A&E’s first original scripted series in six years, is not a dramatized version of Intervention, co-creator and exec prod Robert Munic insists. And A&E SVP Tana Nugent Jamieson says, “We won’t have Intervention leading in to The Closer.” Still, Munic believes “I think people who are interested in Intervention will want to see The Closer.” I think he’ll be proven right. From there the series itself must be good enough to make viewers stick. Judging from the pilot, it just might be.

It seems music channel fuse changes course as often as the Sun rises.

This time out the channel is hell bent on original programming, announcing Tuesday at TCA a lineup of documentaries, reality series and what a network official describes as a variation on ESPN’s excellent verbal ping-pong session “Pardon the Interruption,” except fuse’s version will feature debate about music not sports. Yet, fuse officials at TCA emphasized the network’s still about the music. If the network’s party for critics was an indication, yes, fuse knows from music.

You never know what prompts a TCA critic to write about a network. Sometimes it’s plain, old relationship building—the network gets scribbles when a critic feels good about something associated with a programmer. If so, fuse will get plenty of ink based on critics’ reaction to a performance Tuesday night by singer Natasha Bedingfield , seen above, at left, with fuse pr hand Amy Lynn, and below during the performance. The striking blonde Brit performed for just 40 minutes for an intimate but thoroughly delighted group of about 50 TCA hacks. It was a masterful mix of the right performer working with appropriate forces in the correct setting.

Bedingfield said she was singing “scaled-down versions” of her songs, but there was nothing small about her vocal styling or the quality of the ensemble of acoustic guitar, keyboard and two back-up singers. The group, modest in size only, demonstrated conclusively that excellent music can be made with minimal input from the local power company. Working without a drummer, Bedingfield and company swung hard when necessary, plunging deep into soul numbers, but never getting too loud. Showing a versatility that’s uncommon in pop music, Bedingfield also crooned, but always with the hint of a hard edge, on ballads.

This soft-hard mix was present throughout Bedingfield’s set. Her short set alternated between sunny and darker numbers. Her short denim skirt reeked of rock band grunge, but her shapely legs and taut midriff were bare, exposing angelic skin sans visible tattoos. Her between-songs patter had a similar dichotomy, mixing literacy with sharp bite. Noting that a song she was about to sing was inspired by the book “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus,” she said, “I hated that book, which says that men and women think differently…I hated it because it gave men the excuse to act like assholes.” The audience roared at that one, and throughout the performance.

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, the old commercial for margarine said. Well, Discovery Networks has gone in the other direction, doing something nice for its dear, old mother.

Last Wednesday evening at 6 ET, it began carrying Planet Green, the eco-friendly entertainment channel.

Thing is, Mother Nature rained on Planet Green’s elaborate parade. The channel was to be inaugurated, appropriately, in Washington, D.C., at the new Nationals Park, before a baseball game between the hometown Nats and the St Louis Cardinals. The innovative partnership between Discovery and the Nationals included, among other things, green hats all around and a pitch for Planet Green in the form of Discovery chief David Zaslav throwing the opening pitch that night.

But Mother Nature intervened, sending a tornado to D.C. whose tail eventually washed out the game. But it wasn’t easy—nothing with Mother Nature ever is.

For those who arrived at the Park before 6 pm to watch the birth of Planet Green on the Nationals’ 4500-square-foot HD scoreboard, the night began well. The D.C. area had just been pelted by a brief but violent storm that knocked out power for nearly 500,000 people. Yet the field looked to be in good shape and the Sun was shining. Some 30 minutes before the game, though, a light rain began. The rain continued sporadically for another four hours, and somewhere around 10 p.m. the game was called.

With the Cardinals making just one migration to the D.C. area this season, Major League Baseball was loath to postpone the game, and so the players, and most of the fans and Discovery’s 600 or so guests waited inside the stadium’s gut. Those lucky enough to be schmoozing with Zaslav, his good-looking family and Planet Green talent Emeril Lagasse inside Discovery’s suite at the Park fared much better. Open bars dispensed liquid refreshment, complementing pub grub and green M&Ms (what, no green beer?).

While they didn’t see a game, the early arrivals caught the opening moments of Planet Green, playing on the scoreboard for about 5 minutes. Those inside the suite had to decide: Do you watch the final countdown from Discovery Home to Planet Green outside on the scoreboard or on the many HD screens tuned to the channel in the suite? With a glass of champagne in my hand, I straddled the line, literally. I stood at a suite door that opened out to the field. I took turns looking in at a TV and outside at the huge scoreboard where Maria Menounos was hosting Hollywood Green, a series bursting with movie-star types espousing green lifestyles. Menounos looked fine on both screens.

Right after that, Zaslav proposed a toast to Planet Green and the work of its staff, which managed to get the channel up in roughly 9 months. The best part, Zaslav joked, is that last week “I got to hang out with [Planet Green talent] Tommy Lee and Ludachris, which makes me seem a lot cooler than I am.”

Yes, you get a second chance to anoint a channel. Tonight many of the Discovery faithful will be at the ball park again, the beer will be flowing and again Zaslav is scheduled to hurl the first pitch. Predictions for the evening’s weather? Hot and humid, with temperatures expected to be about 95 degrees. Combined with a humid air mass, the heat index value could reach 105 degrees, The Weather Channel’s weather.com says. At least the Nationals are cold, having lost 7 of their last 8 games.

No, I’m not referring to HBO’s clever film about the 2000 presidential election, which premiered Sunday, just one day before its exec producer Sydney Pollack passed away at 73.

I’m speaking of NCTA’s Battle of the Bands last week at The Cable Show in New Orleans. This was a first-class execution of a terrific idea by NCTA’s Mark Bell and Barbara York. Instead of paying for entertainment during the closing-night party, NCTA donated the money to worthy charities in New Orleans. In turn the entertainment was provided gratis by ten bands composed of cable industry personnel (and what seemed to be more than a few semi-pro ringers).

[Full Disclosure: Yours truly was a member of one of the bands, so some of this post’s sour grapes can be attributed to my paucity of musical talent.]

As anyone who attended the event knows–and there must have been several thousand, the buzz for this night was terrific–the best band won. Cox’s entry, Xpanded Bandwidth, had the most talent, energy, the best stage presence and the biggest sound vocally and instrumentally.

But where was Full Mesh from Juniper Networks in the final vote count? This small band had a huge vocal sound, thanks to its terrific singer, Robb Foster. And its dueling guitars, Richard Russman and Eamon Loftus, were musical and entertaining. That this band didn’t place, based on the judging of three professionals and voting from the audience, was a major disappointment. Yes, it was a numbers game in that 50% of each band’s score was derived from audience voting on mobile phones. That explains why for MSO bands from Cox and Charter it was their battle to lose.

Still how could the cable crowd ignore Time Warner Cable’s More Cowbell , fronted by the alluring Julie Simon (aka Carly’s niece)? Sure, Simon’s choreography was histrionic and detracted from her overall performance, but her powerful vocals and musicianship were undeniable, as was her interpretation of soul classics.

I’ll admit it was hard to ignore the thrill of hearing billionaire/Charter owner Paul Allen do his thing with a band of Jerry Garcia look-alikes. He proved to be more than a wealthy man dabbling in music. Allen’s a legit guitarist, no doubt. Still, it seemed inappropriate that at least one of the judges appeared to know Allen personally, and even asked his band to perform an encore, a privilege afford to no other group.

If this post seems like a rant, I apologize. It’s a quibble. The night was so successful that NCTA might have to stage a battle every year, and designate an appropriate charity. On the other hand, it could just continue to give the night’s proceeds to New Orleans. By the looks of things outside the French Quarter, the need will exist for years.

It’s nearly the 11th hour for those attending The Cable Show in New Orleans. If you’re like me, things are just shy of ridiculously crazy.

Still, this particular Cable Show is different than in past years. More than 400 cable folk will be adding to their personal craziness by doing arriving even earlier than usual. They’ll be remembering others and volunteering this weekend to help rebuild New Orleans. Some will do in a fun way. We love the idea that Univision will donate $100 for each invited guest who attends its comedy night at House of Blues on Monday. How can we get invited to that?

But cable’s good doing has already begun. Just this morning C-SPAN delivered 1300 non-fiction books to the New Orleans Public Library on behalf of C-SPAN2, BookTV and the cable industry. [See NCTA VP Mark Bell on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal commenting on cable’s activities.]

As CableFAX Daily noted today, more volunteers are needed. Should you be in the volunteering mood, we have a few ideas that are just a bit off the main road, but are important nonetheless.

If you’ll be in town Saturday, around lunchtime, join The Sportsman Channel as its crew of volunteers cooks venison, donated by area hunters, to feed the homeless at Ozanam Inn, 843 Camp Street.

One of our favorite people, Sportsman’s affiliate relations director Mick Mantie, a chef in another life, is threatening to take 60 pounds of venison and create venison chili. That alone should be worth the price of admission. Contact Kim Hawkins for more information at: khawkins@thesportsmanchannel.com or www.thecableshow.com

And once the Cable Show starts and you feel the convention walls moving in on you (C’mon, admit it, you duck away every year for at least an hour or so, right?) why not step away and help Cable Positive by volunteering on Sunday. Cable Positive will be painting, cooking, gardening and cleaning at Project Lazarus, a venerable home for those with AIDS, and Kent House, which was battered by Katrina. Not handy? Not a problem. Cable Positive needs volunteers who can help by talking to AIDS patients. [UPDATE: It’s a pleasure to report that since this blog was posted Cable Positive has filled all its Sunday volunteer slots. As noted below, volunteers are needed Saturday.]

Cable Positive has a shuttle bus service that will take you to the volunteer site from the Convention Center, outside Hall D (the bus leaves in 2-hour intervals and has a Cable Positive sign on it). Hands (and hearts) are needed Saturday, 9-5pm. Please contact Jennifer Medina, Director of Programs at Cable Positive, at 212.459.1504, or jennifer@cablepositive.org for more information. [To read more about Cable Positive’s activities in New Orleans, including its auction of 35 pieces from Josh Sapan’s collection, click here.]

After a few years trade shows begin to blend together. For those who volunteer this year, the memories likely will be distinct.