Results tagged “spiketv”

A look at some of this week's noteworthy television: Spike TV's Video Game Awards 2007 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Spike TV) It is the fifth annual outing for this awards show for video games. Live From Lincoln Center: Red Hot Holiday Stomp (Monday, 8:00 p.m., WNET 13) Jazz at Lincoln Center is highlighted with this special hosted by Glenn Close. There will be a program of holiday music and jazz, plus it also features the broadcast...

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

NY Magazine gets city coroner Jonathan Hayes to write about the latest CSI spinoff, CSI: NY, set in our great city. Now, Gothamist is predisposed to the reigning cop-and-lawyer show in town, Law & Order, especially since it actually shoots its episodes in NY, but we won't mind seeing CSI:NY in reruns or on Spike TV at some point. Gothamist did like Hayes's insights about being a coroner:

There’s a forensic saying that “there is only one honest witness to every murder”—the victim. And we talk about the Five Questions: Who are you? How did you die? When did you die? Where did you die? Who killed you? But we don’t ask those questions out loud. Watching Khandi Alexander [of CSI Miami] caress and murmur to the bodies creeped me out, both for its bedroom-level sensuality and its tacit New Ageism. Aesthetic issues aside, that sort of sentimentality is just not an option if you’re going to stay sane doing this work.

CSI creator and producer Anthony Zuiker tells Hayes that "[The New York series] will be more desaturated, colder in winter, oppressive, muscular. Less gloss, less glamour," and from the commercials, the photography does have that slick Bruckheimer touch.

In the many concepts that Spike TV is trying to introduce, in order to shore up their audience, Gothamist would definitely take a cotton to the proposed reality show hosted by Al Sharpton, "I Hate My Job." While the actual details of the show are okay ("eight men — including a pre-school teacher, a manure shoveler for a compost company, a lawyer and a handyman — will get a helping hand from Sharpton and the chance to become a club promoter, male model, comedian and a hockey coach, respectively"), the prospect of Al Sharpton browbeating you into trying your best and succeeding is pretty intoxicating to us. Imagine it: Meetings in the Harlem beauty parlor as Al gets his hair set, or one of your tasks is driving Al to the scene of some urban, most likely racial, controversy. Calling himself the working man's Donald Trump, Sharpton says, "Most people end up going through life doing things [for a living] that they really don't want to do. Ultimately, people ought to try to pursue who they want to be rather than just be whatever will pay the bills, and that's the theme of the show." Sigh, Gothamist knew there was a reason you seemed the smartest Democratic candidate in all the debates.

As we suspected, Spike Lee and Viacom have settled the "Who does the name Spike belong to" issue. Viacom can rebrand TNN "Spike TV," Spike Lee gets some cash money.

Okay, but never has Spike Lee been just Spike in recent memory. While Gothamist does agree that having your name associated with Stripperella, Pamela Anderson's animated show for Spike TV, might be a little disconcerting, it's still a leap that people would think Spike TV is associated with Mr. Lee. We actually thought Spike TV was a new all-volleyball, all-the-time channel.

Celebrity hubris or legitimate complaint? Formerly rabblerousing director Spike Lee has sued Viacom Inc. over TNN renaming itself to "Spike TV." Newsday reports that "Lee asked for an injunction against Viacom's use of the name Spike for TNN."