Category: TCA Press Tour (Page 39 of 56)

Despite the best intentions of my mother, I have never claimed to be a real history buff. Nonetheless, I always try to keep an open mind on the matter, particularly when it’s something produced by The History Channel. (Did you catch their program which focused on the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth? It was fantastic.) But have you noticed how they’re starting to put on shows where the content is only tangentially historical at best? I like “Ice Road Truckers” as much as the next guy, but it’s a reeeeeeeal stretch to suggest that it really fits snugly within the network’s format. I’m glad, therefore, that it isn’t too hard to accept the inclusion of “Sandhogs” into the line-up, since its origins stretch all the way back to the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

David McKillop, head of programming for The History Channel, set the stage for those in attendance…like, say, myself…who weren’t familiar with the Sandhogs and their long legacy.

“They were the guys that went down under the East River and dug in the currents and the sand to create the foundations that actually support the Brookly Bridge today,” explained McKillop. “Sandhogs are urban miners, construction workers, who generation after generation have literally dug at great personal risk to build and maintain one of the greatest cities in the world. The work is extremely hazardous. Sandhogs toil underneath the streets today, as they did more than 150 years ago. They built the two tunnels that provide water to New York City that were completed in late last century. They built every single subway, traffic tunnel, sewage line, and steam pipe. They’re digging the tunnel that’s going to link the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station, and they’re digging New York’s third water tunnel, which when completed will be the largest public works ever undertaken in U.S. history…and it’s all because of these guys. They’re a special breed, a special society, the identity and the subterranean culture they inhabit is a bond that is truly shared as a brotherhood, and few people know they even exist until now.”

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When a brand name has been around for 110 years, you sometimes tend to take it for granted, and I must admit with great embarrassment that I’m prone to do that with National Geographic. As a result, I’m always glad to get a kick in the ass from one of their screener DVDs, so I can remember all over again how awesome a lot of the programming on the National Geographic Channel is.

When you think about it, it’s almost a little depressing that a name as recognizable as that of National Geographic doesn’t have the same kind of foothold on cable as, say, the Discovery Channel. Fortunately, Russell Howard, the Senior VP of Communications for the network, has every intention of changing that. He wouldn’t actually go so far as to utter the name of the competition, but when someone else asked if NG’s new “Expedition Week” was their attempt to create their own version of Discovery’s always-anticipated “Shark Week,” Howard replies, “We hope ‘Expedition Week’ will be…a long-running, successful series week like theirs, of course. We’ve been doing this for 120 years, and so it’s time that we emphasized it.”

What is “Expedition Week”? Well, we might as well let Mr. Howard talk it up himself:

“We’ll take you to the moon for never-before-seen images and deep into the Amazon jungle to find lost cities. We explore the mysteries of the Great Pyramid and uncover one of the greatest architectural monuments of the ancient world. We’ll see George Washington’s childhood home. It’s going to be an incredible week, and many of these are ongoing expeditions right now. ”

Fortunately, some of the network’s resident explorers were in a position to come in from the field and sit in on a panel, including Dr. Bob Brier, a mummy expert and renowned Egyptologist who’s participating in a show called “Unlocking the Great Pyramid,” Charles Dean Beeker, who’s heading up the team that has just discovered what they believe to be the shipwreck of Captain Kidd’s Quedagh Merchant ship off the coast of the Dominican Republic, and Kelly Hearn, who’s documenting a the recent discover of a heretofore-lost city deep in the jungles of the Amazon.

Oh, right, and Buzz Aldrin was there, too.

Okay, I’m totally failing at playing it cool about Col. Aldrin being in the house. Second man on the moon…? C’mon, that’s awesome! As soon as the panel concluded, I was in the lobby and shaking that guy’s hand. I don’t know if my daughter will ever be as impressed as I was, but it would be nice to think that, someday, she’ll be at least vaguely bemused by the knowledge that her dad met the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 11. (Probably won’t happen, though.)

The footage from the moon that’s going to be shown during “Expedition Week” will be the first footage from the moon since our astronauts walked on its surface back in the day. (I was thisclose to writing “many moons ago,” so please applaud my restraint, if you would.) Someone noticed Col. Aldrin staring quite intently at the screen during that portion of the pre-panel footage and asked if he was looking for his footprints. “Well, I was born in 1930, and my eyes aren’t quite that good,” he said, with a laugh. “But the film is just really fantastic in its high definition. And, yeah, I did look for Tranquility Base, but it’s 60, 65 miles away, and my eyes still aren’t quite that good. But I could see the smoothness, and I could see why NASA picked that as our landing site.”

I’m not looking to give the shaft to Col. Aldrin’s fellow panelists, all of whom were very interesting, but I’m gonna share the story with you that impressed me the most, I’ve gotta go with the one he told when the question was thrown out to the entire panel about the most exhilarating discovery of their careers.

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TV Land just hasn’t held the same appeal for me since it started moving away from the time-tested “classic television” format in favor of premiering new reality series like “High School Reunion” and “She’s Got The Look.” I mean, what, like there aren’t enough reality series out there…? They can’t maintain the familiar brand name so that the network remains the equivalent of comfort food on your cable dial, where you can always go to find a classic TV series, no matter what the time of day…?

Apparently not, because in addition to greenlighting second seasons for both of the aforementioned shows, now the network is trotting out “Family Foreman,” a new reality series which follows the bustling home life of sports legend, business entrepreneur, and multi-grillionnaire George Foreman.

Now, clearly, I’m not looking to bust George Foreman’s balls…and not because he could far more easily bust my balls, but just because he’s such a nice guy. (That, and my wife and I use one of his grills on a regular basis.) As such, I figure the least I can do is set the stage a little bit for you, in case you might be interested in checking out the series. So, in no particular order, here are the top 5 things that Foreman said during his panel that’ll make you go, “Gosh, he really is a nice guy, isn’t he?”

5. “It’s so important now, for me especially, to show family and reality because I go around the country, and there are a lot of fathers jumping ship these days. And they feel like, ‘Well, I lost a job. I better get out of here or something.’ So I constantly kind of impose on them that, ‘Hey, a family consists of mom, dad, children,’ blah, blah, blah, and knows their neighbors and the whole deal.”
4. “For over 31 years now, I’ve been a preacher, a minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s what I really do. I moonlight as a grill salesman to feed all these kids, but in reality, that’s what I do: (I’m) a preacher. As your kids grow older, you’ve got to make sure they know, ‘Look, I’m a preacher. You are not.’ So I spell it out in the show that my faith is my faith. Whatever faith they have, I don’t know yet. But they’re having fun with their lives. Let them find it as they grow.”
3. On why he named all his kids George: “When you’ve been hit on the head by Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Evander Holyfield, and Muhammad Ali, how many names do you expect me to know, or come up with? It would be confusing if they weren’t all George!”
2. “I just want to have fun. The best thing in the world is to wake up in the morning with a feeling like, ‘We’re going to have some fun! And you’re going to meet a lot of people!’ And that’s what the show is all about. You can’t predict the future, but you can have fun anticipating some fun.”
1. On why he agreed to do a reality show: “My life has been an open book, and sometimes guys are peeping over the windows and peeping over the gates taking pictures of me, anyway. I just said, ‘Come on in.’ That’s all.”

Dammit, he’s just about got me wanting to watch the show now.