TV Jots

The bad news just keeps on coming for fans of Fox’s rookie crime drama Standoff. The FBI negotiator series, which was yanked from the air back in mid-December, was supposedly set to return Friday, April 6. Now comes word that instead, House repeats will air during the series’ previously announced Friday-night, 8pm time slot, knocking the show off the schedule again until June this summer (*wink* *wink*).

Looks like The Trump told a big fat fib on national TV during last Sunday night’s installment of his boring reality show The Apprentice. What said he? Only that he has “the number one show on television,” when The Apprentice actually peaked—and I use that term very, very loosely—at #46 last week. If only somebody’s nose would grow longer in equivalence to each passing lie.

Although Steve Irwin, also know as the Crocodile Hunter to fans, passed away last September, his eight-year-old daughter Bindi’s new Discovery Kids Channel wildlife show, Bindi: The Jungle Girl, will feature footage of him when it debuts in June. Now that’s what I call creepy, but maybe it’s just me.

The United Kingdom has this really cool cop/sci-fi TV show called Life on Mars. Apparently, an actor in the show, one Philip Glenister, thinks none too well of the British television industry, going so far as to call it “screwed up” and run by “a lot of fools.” He expresses particular wrath for most soap operas. And here some of us were thinking those assessments were only true in the States. Where have ya been, Phil? Join the party.

American Idol freaks, some of your dreams are about to come true. Fox announced today that its extending three results shows to one hour in length, namely those on April 11, April 18, and May 2. Thank goodness I’m not wild about Idol. Isn’t a half-hour too long to begin with?

In yet more Idol news, the singing series is saving more than just Sanjaya Malakar each week. ‘Til Death, the freshman married-people sitcom starring Everybody Loves Raymond alum Brad Garrett and Season-2 Desperate Housewives bit player Joely Fisher, is getting a much-needed ratings boost from the pseudo “talent” show. As a result, guess what might return in the fall after all.

Leave it up to The Onion to launch a 24-hour online network of fake news. Sounds almost identical to what the 24-hour televised doom-mongers serve up right now, but at least it should prove funnier. Welcome aboard!

Among the first recipients of the YouTube Video Awards are some videos called Ask a Ninja and some people who call themselves OK Go. I’ve never heard of either one, but I’m sure YouTube’s marketing miracle workers will do their best to brainwash us all that the winners are, like, really relevant, dudes.

The United Kingdom obviously needs more hip-hop because fans thereof and therein are royally pissed that Snoop Dogg‘s been banned from their fair kingdom (or rather denied a visa, which is effectively the same thing), directly leading to the cancellation of his and P. Diddy’s proposed tour. Woof!

Some people think that MTV’s Punk’d is punking around following the recent announcement that the forthcoming eighth season will be the prankster series’ last. My only questions are (1) who still watches the show after all this time, and (2) what celebrities are dumb enough to still get fooled by Ashton Kutcher and his assorted mirth makers?

The X-Files photo courtesy of Fox