Poor David Archuleta - so many 'tweener sitcoms, and only one of him to go around.

Last October, the Utah-raised "American Idol" also-ran made his acting debut on Nickelodeon's "iCarly," playing Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" - no, really, playing a singing-competition contestant named David Archuleta. (What range!)

This Sunday, the 800-pound gorilla of sitcoms for the under-12 demographic, the Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana," snags Archuleta for a guest appearance. According to CinemaBlend, Archuleta (playing himself) offers Hannah (Miley Cyrus) a chance to record a duet - but it's on the same night as the prom, and Miley has promised to go out with her school's resident dork. (Oh, what will she do?)

Sunday's episode is timed, reports HollyScoop, with the debut, Saturday night on Radio Disney stations, of the new single "I Wanna Know You," a duet between Archuleta and Miley Cyrus.

Here's a preview of the song, and the episode:

Labels: David Archuleta, television

The things Sean Hannity will do for charity.

Two years ago, the conservative yakker came to Salt Lake City to debate Mayor Rocky Anderson about the Bush administration's record on the Iraq war - and Hannity said he wanted the box-office proceeds to go to charity.

This week, on his Fox News show "Hannity" (minus the "& Colmes"), Hannity was buttonholed by guest Charles Grodin about the ethics and effectiveness of torture. Here's the transcript:

GRODIN: You're for torture.

HANNITY: I am for enhanced interrogation. I don't believe waterboarding is torture.

GRODIN: You don't believe it's torture. Have you ever been waterboarded?

HANNITY: No, but Ollie North has, and I've talked to him about it.

GRODIN: Would you consent to be waterboarded so we can get the truth out of you? We can waterboard you?

HANNITY: Sure.

GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?

HANNITY: I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families.

No word yet on whether Hannity is following through on his boast to Grodin.

But over at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann upped the ante - offering $1,000 to charity for every second Hannity endures a session of waterboarding. "A thousand dollars a second, Sean, because this is no game. This is serious stuff," Olbermann said on his show "Countdown" Thursday night. "Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. Oh, and I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life, when you admit the horrible truth - waterboarding, the symbol of the last administration, is torture."

Not everyone on the progressive side of the argument enjoyed Olbermann's little challenge. Jonathan Leigh Solomon, writing on The Huffington Post, argued that Olbermann and his guest pundit, Lawrence O'Donnell, were trivializing the torture debate - something they accuse Hannity of doing - "by riffing on wrongheaded semi-comedic premises they thought of in the green room." Wendy Davis, on her blog for Talking Points Memo, said Olbermann should "stop playing cutesy with Fox News pundits; you degrade yourself, as well as the issue."

If you want to take the torture debate seriously, Rocky Anderson - who's now running the group High Road for Human Rights - has something for you to do: Sign a petition to protest the idea that those who engaged in and approved torture should get immunity from prosecution.

Or maybe Hannity could come back to Utah and debate Rocky a second time - though maybe that's a torture he doesn't want to suffer again.

Labels: Rocky Anderson, Sean Hannity, television

Today's the deadline for Americans to get their federal and state tax returns mailed in - which usually is accompanied by the tradition of TV news reporters standing outside a mailbox to capture the oh-so-telegenic sight of a line of cars.

This year, though, we have something else to celebrate - thanks to the AstroTurf (that's fake grassroots) movement, mounted by right-wing lobbying groups and Fox News Channel, to launch "Tax Day Tea Parties" across the country.

As the Tribune's Cathy McKitrick reported today, several such events are scheduled in Utah - the biggest being one at noon at the Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake City, where Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, and U.S. Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz will suck up to, er, rally the eager (and, one hopes, waterproof) crowd.

What are the "tea party" enthusiasts - or "teabaggers," as they have unfortunately dubbed themselves - protesting? Are they protesting the Obama administration, which is planning to cut taxes for most Americans? Are they protesting government bailouts, most of which were started under the Bush administration? Are they protesting because they can't come up with anything better? Are they protesting because Fox News told them to?

The nature of the protest, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said Tuesday night, is "amorphous," but "the adoption of their teabag as their symbol - now that is plain as a one-two punch to the face." (Seriously, as any lesbian received as much enjoyment from "teabagging" as Maddow has this last week?)

Here's the web site listing Utah events, and here's a response from the Utah Democrats.

Labels: Jason Chaffetz, Mark Shurtleff, politics, Rob Bishop, television

More on the "things are tough all over" front:

The Progress & Freedom Foundation, a conservative DC-based "market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy," has canceled plans to hold its 15th annual Aspen Summit this August at the Sundance resort in Utah's Provo Canyon.

PFF President Ken Ferree issued a statement that reads, in part:

"In light of the current economic environment, we do not think it prudent to spend our supporters' money, or ask others to spend scarce dollars, on a lavish conference at a remote facility."

Those supporters include most of the big corporate players in the telecommunications, media and computer industries. According to the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch, their big issue is deregulation of the media.

Labels: internet, Sundance, television

Fans of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" got a quick - and hilariously exaggerated - lesson in Mormon history on Tuesday night.

Introducing the 55th installment of his 434-part series "Better Know a District" (in which Colbert attempts to interview every every member of Congress), Colbert launched into the history of New York's 25th District with this fun fact:

"The district contains the town of Palmyra, where in 1827, Joseph Smith discovered the source for The Book of Mormon, the Golden Plates. The Golden Plates also won him a free tour of Jesus' chocolate factory."

Here's the video:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a District - New York's 25th - Dan Maffei
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Colbert fans may recall that Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz appeared in the "Better Know a District" segment in January - where Colbert bested the former BYU placekicker in a leg-wrestling bout.

Labels: Jason Chaffetz, LDS, politics, television

A handful of Utah "American Idol" viewers may have been surprised Tuesday night when Fox 13's 9 p.m. newscast popped up 35 minutes early.

Without explanation, a crawl across the top of the screen informed KSTU's viewers that the show scheduled to follow "American Idol" - the debut of the variety program "Osbournes Reloaded," which Ryan Seacrest dutifully teased - would be shown instead at 12:05 a.m.

"Osbournes Unloaded" - which stars rocker Ozzy Osbourne, manager/wife Sharon Osbourne and talent-free kids Jack and Kelly - had already offended the folks at WPGX, the Fox affiliate in Panama City, Fla. That station pulled the Osbournes' completely, replacing it with an episode of "The Simpsons."

(According to Broadcasting & Cable, an industry trade publication, 16 Fox stations didn't air the show - while another 10, like KSTU, pushed the show to a later time slot.)

Insomniacs who stayed up past midnight to watch "Osbournes Reloaded" got to see a celebrity train-wreck of lowbrow pranks - blindfolding a lothario and having him kiss an old lady, having Kelly work a fast-food drive-through window and shout obscenities at the customers, or confronting a reluctant boyfriend with his long-suffering girlfriend in a wedding dress - and bleeped-out profanity. It may not have been the worst use of videotape ever, but it's in the Top 5. (Don't believe me? Tom Shales of The Washington Post called it "must-flee TV," while Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly opined that "the stink of this show will last a long time.")

Awful as it was, the offensiveness level of "Osbournes Reloaded" wasn't out of line for the network that gives us "Family Guy" every Sunday. But as a follow-up to "American Idol" - whose multi-generational audience includes teens, tweens and their grandparents - the Osbournes' profane hijinks were woefully out of place.

Labels: American Idol, television

Attention, mainstream media (and, yes, I'm calling out myself here, too): A lot of younger Americans are tuning you out in favor of - gasp! - comedians.

A national phone survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 30 percent of Americans age 18-29 and 32 percent of Americans age 30-39 believe satirical news programs - like "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" or "The Colbert Report" - are replacing traditional news outlets.

The survey found 42 percent of the thirty-somethings and 35 percent of the 18-29 group disagreed with that opinion.

True, "The Daily Show" and Colbert's program are intelligent and funny takes on the news - and, more importantly, takes on the people who bring us the news. And it's true that those shows sometimes make news, like when Stewart smacked down CNBC's Jim Cramer over that network's sucking-up-to-CEOs coverage before the financial bubble burst.

But what people conveniently forget is that shows like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" - like most of the bloggers and other aggregators of information that dominate the Internet - all rely on the "mainstream media" for their source material.

Without the shoe-leather reporting that appears in newspapers and TV newscasts every day, the satirists would have nothing to satirize and the bloggers wouldn't be able to link to anything.

The worry in journalism - and you see it now with the online-only seattlepi.com - is that the online packaging of news is more important than the generation of the information that's being packaged.

Labels: journalism, television

HBO's polygamists-are-people-too drama "Big Love" is going into a Mormon temple on Sunday - and the real-life Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't like it one bit.

An LDS Church statement issued Monday reads in part: "Now comes another series, 'Big Love,' and despite earlier assurances from HBO, it once again blurs the distinctions between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the show's fictional non-Mormon characters and their practices. Such things say much more about the insensitivities of writers, producers and TV executives than they say about Latter-day Saints."

The episode shows an LDS endowment ceremony, which is performed in the temple and witnessed only by church members with a temple recommend and in good standing - which would not, presumably, include the polygamist family that is at the series' center.

"We go into the endowment room and the celestial room, and we present what happens in those ceremonies," series co-creator Mark V. Olsen said in an interview with TV Guide. "That's never been shown on television before."

E-mails are circulating among Mormon groups, urging the faithful to cancel their HBO subscriptions and their AOL service in protest. (Why AOL? It, like HBO, is owned by TimeWarner.)

In any event, Olsen and HBO could be gracious and cut a check to the LDS Church - for giving the show all this free publicity.

Labels: Big Love, LDS, television

I'm back on the culture prowl, after two-plus weeks' vacation (gotta thank George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for arranging that extra day off). In that time, I missed the following:

• News that all of Utah's TV stations wouldn't be switching to digital TV today.
• Two Utahns - Megan Corkery of Sandy and Taylor Vaifanua of Hurricane - making the round of 36 on "American Idol."
• A bad stretch for the Osmond clan: Young David (son of Alan) missing the cut in the Hollywood round of "American Idol," while his famous uncle Donny was not among those picked for "Dancing With the Stars" - despite hinting loudly that he would be.
• Utah's own singing heartthrob David Archuleta making his acting debut on Nickelodeon's tweener sitcom "iCarly" - portraying, in a stretch worthy of Olivier, a singer (named David Archuleta) competing on a TV talent show.
• Heber resident Tyson Apostol competing on the new season of "Survivor."
• Huka Bar waitress Kelsey Lee still hanging tough with the other skanks on "Rock of Love Bus."
• The Beehive State's newest congressman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Publicity Stunt) having his daily routine videotaped for a CNN series, "Freshman Year." (Chaffetz has charmed D.C. media - an easily charmed bunch, apparently - by sleeping on a cot in his office. This is in marked contrast to his predecessor, Chris Cannon, who during the Clinton impeachment sacked out on a cot in the Fox News Channel's green room.)

I did have my own bit of celebrity spotting last week. My wife and I had a pre-Valentine's lunch at a downtown SLC sushi restaurant, and sitting at the next table was actor Frankie Muniz ("Malcolm in the Middle") and a good-sized entourage.

Even on vacation, I can't get away from this stuff.

Labels: American Idol, David Archuleta, Jason Chaffetz, Kelsey Lee, Osmond, Survivor, television

On Tuesday night, Utah's newest congressman, Jason Chaffetz, appeared on "The Colbert Report," saying hello to Stephen Colbert's gun and getting embarrassed in a leg-wrestling match.

On Wednesday, Chaffetz was interviewed by Kerri Kronk and Kirk Yuhnke on Fox13's "Good Day Utah," where the congressman demanded a rematch.

Guess what, Congressman? It's on like Donkey Kong.

Colbert accepted the rematch challenge - and threw down a further challenge to the Fox13 crew:

Labels: Jason Chaffetz, television

Here's an alert for my fellow post-boomers: "The Electric Company" is back!

Sesame Workshop is revamping the early '70s children's educational show, which boasted a cast that included Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno and a then-unknown Morgan Freeman and a funky theme song ("We're gonna turn it on/we're gonna bring you the power") - all aimed at teaching basic reading to kids who have outgrown "Sesame Street" -

Here's a clip from the new rendition:



The new version of "The Electric Company" debuts Monday, Jan. 19, with four back-to-back episodes. (The two-hour block starts at 3:30 Mountain time on Salt Lake City's KUED, Ch. 7.)

Labels: television

Utah's newest congressman endured one of Washington's oddest hazing rituals: Surviving seven minutes with Stephen Colbert on "The Colbert Report."

Among the funnier questions playing on Utah stereotypes ("Tell me about your black person - is he nice?" or "What percentage of your district is made up of Osmonds?"), Colbert landed a satirical jab at Chaffetz' draconian stance on illegal immigration ("When did rounding up people you don't like in your country and putting them in camps get a bad name?" Colbert asked).

Chaffetz kept his smile pasted on through most of Colbert's frivolity, though he got a little nervous when Colbert showed off his snub-nosed pistol, which he called "Sweetness."

To cap it off, Chaffetz challenged Colbert to a leg-wrestling match, which Colbert won. Either the freshman congressman threw the match, or it's been a long time since the ex-BYU placekicker hit the weight room.

Here's the excerpt from Tuesday night's show:

Labels: Jason Chaffetz, television

Big news for Utah filmmaker (and, until two weeks ago, Salt Lake Tribune arts writer) Julie Checkoway: Her documentary "Waiting for Hockney" - about Baltimore graphic artist Billy Pappas (at right), trying to get validation for his painstaking portrait of Marilyn Monroe - is debuting on British TV tonight.

The movie airs at 10 p.m. London time on More4. The Times of London gave the movie a nice little write-up here.

Labels: television

Thursday night's episode of "The Office," titled "Moroccan Christmas," took a strange turn when Meredith (Kate Flannery) got drunk at the Dunder Mifflin Christmas party - and Michael (Steve Carell) decided to turn it into an intervention:

MICHAEL (reading off a list): Meredith, have you ever used alcohol to alter your mood or deliberately change your state of mind?

MEREDITH: Sure.

MICHAEL: Do you sometimes have a drink to celebrate a special occasion or mark a holiday?

MEREDITH: Obviously.

MICHAEL: Have you ever, under the influence of alcohol, questioned the teachings of the Mormon Church?

OSCAR: Where did you get this?

MICHAEL: I got it on a web site. That's not important.

It starts at the 8:45 mark. Enjoy!

Labels: alcohol, LDS, television