Salon.com > cable

Charlie Sheen’s two-year plan

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:20:00 +0000

On Thursday night, the FX sitcom "Anger Management" returns for its second and, in a sense, final season: After an initial run of 10 episodes, the next 90 (yes, 90) will run more or less uninterrupted over the course of the next two years. (They'll likely take a week off for the start of the NCAA basketball tournament in March.)

The deal allows FX to purchase a relatively inexpensive property, guarantees production company Debmar-Mercury syndication dollars starting in 2014, and hands star Charlie Sheen some walking-around money. The mercurial actor has a reported approximate 40 percent stake in the show, including the syndication profits.

Chuck Saftler, executive vice-president of FX and the man responsible for greenlighting episodes 11 through 100, was aware that the program -- with its laugh track and three-camera setup — has little in common with the network's edgier fare, like the critically acclaimed "Louie" and "Justified." "Prior to 10 p.m.," said Saftler, "we have 'Two and a Half Men,' "How I Met Your Mother,' and the best movie portfolio on the air. When you look at how 'Anger Management' plays with 'Two and a Half Men,' or movies like 'Iron man' or 'Taken' or 'Avatar,' it’s a very traditional fit."

Amish are all the rage

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Reality TV, the territory of rich housewifes and famous-for-being-famous celebrities, has a new, unlikely star: the Amish. The intensely private, traditional Christian sect are turning some network heads after hit show "Breaking Amish," which follows five Amish young adults as they come-of-age in big, scary New York City, scored TLC its highest premiere ratings among women in over three years. And, despite the fact that the whole thing might have been fake, audiences want to see more good-kids-gone-sort-of-bad.

Bad science gets busted

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:57:00 +0000

As any P.R. hack worth his weight in press releases knows, the most persuasive content is that which doesn't look like propaganda at all.

If you want to influence a mass audience, for instance, you can try to do what the Pentagon does and subtly bake slanted information into entertainment products such as movies and television shows. If, on the other hand, you are looking to influence a slightly higher-brow audience, you can embed disinformation in newspapers' news and opinion pages. And if you are looking to brainwash politicians, think tanks, columnists and the rest of the political elite in order to rig an esoteric debate over public policy, you can attempt to shroud your agitprop in the veneer of science.

While these are all diabolically effective methods of manipulating political discourse, the latter, which involves corporate funding of academic research, is the most insidious of all. But the good news is that the last few weeks provided important reminders about the problem -- and why scrutiny of sources is so important.