While attention has focused on Conan O'Brien's possible move from NBC to Fox, there's growing talk of a reverse of that move.
This scenario has Jack Bauer and the "24" crew packing up and leaving Fox for a new home at NBC.
Although nothing has been announced, Fox is said to be ready to pull the plug on the action show after the end of this eighth season. Ratings are eroding a bit and the show isn't as profitable as it once once.
Michael Ausiello of EW.com broke the news that 20th Century Fox, which produces the show, has approached NBC about picking it up if Fox axes it.
But another EW.com blog, Hollywood Insider, says that all signs are pointing to a series finale for the TV show.
And the planned big-screen version of "24" most likely couldn't happen until the TV series ends.
Despite the talk, it seems unlikely that NBC will invest in the aging show with declining numbers. That last network to do that was ABC, which picked up "Scrubs," after NBC canceled it in 2008 after seven seasons.
The medical sitcom just finished up its second ABC season on Wednesday night.
The odds are that there won't be a third ABC season of "Scrubs," which was revamped this year, with the departure of a number of regulars, including Zach Braff, who appeared in the first few episodes this year. Ratings weren't stellar during much of its NBC run, and they've been declining.
On TV: Check out this week's TV version of my column on Time Warner's Wisconsin on Demand Channel 411, featuring former Channel 4 traffic maven Lisa Manna. We handicap the remaining 11 "American Idol" finalists in this episode.
- Thursday's passing of Fess Parker, who portrayed both Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett, led me to dust off this 2006 interview I did with the big man.
- Variety is blogging that it's between A&E and Discovery as the TV home of Sarah Palin's Alaska "reality" show. The broadcast networks weren't interested in the program produced by "Survivor" creator Mark Burnett.
- The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd blogs that Paula Abdul and ABC couldn't come to terms for her to join a remake of "Star Search."
- It's now official, Christiane Amanpour is leaving CNN to join ABC this summer as host of "This Week." There's no word on whether the show will be refocused on Amanpour's specialty of international news.
- Wednesday's Fox News Channel interview with the president averaged 3 million viewers for Bret Baier's "Special Report" in the 5 p.m. hour, according to Nielsen Media Research numbers.
"Futurama" is really coming back: One more sign of the unlikely return of Matt Groening's canceled "Futurama" is this promo for the show. New episodes are due to start airing on Comedy Central in June:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
