The rumors have been flying for more than a year now, but Fox News is saying it's now official: Jimmy Fallon will replace Conan O'Brien when O'Brien takes over the Tonight Show next year.

Nothing about this can possibly be good.

4/24/2008 3:48:24 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Ellee spread the word over on Slop earlier (complete with a fantastically crafted illustration - Ellee, you are a Photoshop genius), but Pat Lyons*, over at the NYT's Lede blog, considers a entirely different aspect to the story:

"The father of the child is variously reported to be 18 or 19 years of age, and she is 16. We don’t know exactly where they were 12 weeks ago, and frankly don’t want to — but prosecutors might. In Louisiana, where they both live, the age of consent is 17, and what obviously must have gone on between them might qualify as criminal carnal knowledge of a juvenile in that state — either a felony or misdemeanor, depending on just how old he is.

In California, where she stays while the show is being shot, the age of consent is 18, and the relevant charge would be unlawful sexual intercourse, a misdemeanor."

Yikes. We know who we would not like to be right now.

Read Lyons's full blog entry here.

*Apologies to Pat for originally/incorrectly identifying the author of the post as Mike Nizza!

12/19/2007 7:50:33 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  

So, Sox fans, looking forward to those late-night appearances this Friday from David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez who'll be doing Conan and Leno, respectively?

Uh, well, there might be a problem with that - the Writers Guild currently doesn't have a contract with their studio bosses, which might cause them to strike as early as Friday. If that's the case, late night comedies and talk shows would likely shut down immediately.

"Boom -- our show just shuts down," said "SNL" vet Amy Poehler. "It's just done. There is no backlog of scripts."

Also in jeopardy: the new season of Lost. Things could get so bad that ABC would have to revive Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Seriously.

11/1/2007 9:06:58 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Normally, this would be Miliard's domain, but we have a quick baseball note to pass along: the ALCS matchup between the Red Sox and the Indians will be on Fox, and not, mercifully, on TBS. Which does, sadly, mean a steady diet of those paragons of idiocy and self-righteous indignation, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, but it also means no more ads for Frank Caliendo's TV show, Frank TV, which aired at least twice a commercial break during the TBS broadcasts. And not a moment too soon.

The guy does impressions. Some of them are accurate. Great. We get it. And we know TBS doesn't have a lot to promote. But just last night, we saw his face more times than we saw Eric Wedge, Derek Jeter, Bobby Abreu, Joe Torre, Travis Hafner, Grady Sizemore, Paul Byrd, Chien-Ming Wang, Rafael Perez, Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Joe Borowski combined. We don't even think Fox promoted Skin this aggressively in 2003. And here's the kicker: nothing in any of those promos even came close to resembling something that was remotely chuckle-worthy. Also, is it just us, or is it not completely played out in 2007 to be doing imitations of Al Pacino's Devil's Advocate/Scent of a Woman characters and Robert DeNiro's Goodfellas/Analyze This characters? Does Caliendo do Christopher Walken and William Shatner, too? Because that sounds like it'd be fresh and edgy and unique! Watch it, sports fans!

We'd like to believe the guy is funnier than what we saw. But we did some research and saw that his previous credits essentially consist of MadTV, Mind of Mencia, and the Fox NFL Pre-Game Show, where what passes for biting wit is a crack about Jimmy Johnson's hair or Terry Bradshaw's chrome dome. And so we feel comfortable saying this: what we saw in the ads is probably as good as it gets. Just don't tell that to Peter King.

Although, maybe it does get worse: Joe Buck is developing a late-night comedy show.

10/9/2007 4:19:49 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [1] |