Secrets of the City

Blah Blah Blah-ler blogger christina offers a comprehensive list of her weekly TV-watching habits. Not only does she watch TV every day but Sunday (even on date night!); she TiVos additional shows for future viewing. The woman gets excited about her shows; she claims at least three of them are her favorite.

How much TV are we really watching? What are we watching? Should we be concerned? Entertainment or brain rot?

[Note: christina brings up a good point about Mad Men, too. How do we feel about Don Draper's infidelities? Is it wrong to like them, even want them? How can this be good?]

TwinCities.com just published a story about an online protest for “a story that was never going to be on television.”

An NBC affiliate in Duluth aired promotional ads over the weekend for an exclusive interview with Donald Blom, the man convicted of kidnapping and murdering a young Moose Lake woman 10 years ago.

In the ad, audio of Blom professing his innocence accompanied an image of the victim, Katie Poirier.

The ad, aired several times on KBJR-TV, touched a nerve with viewers, and one of them even started a page on the social networking site Facebook to boycott the segment.

It turns out the whole thing was just one big misunderstanding (or one employee’s unethical behavior), but the report points out two items worthy of note (and a bit of irony): 1. The station (much like other news entities) is still trying to adapt to a new age of viewer interaction. 2. TwinCities.com reporter John Brewer can be reached at 651-228-2093.

No?

From the event on Facebook: “…[Totally Scrabble Tuesday] host Hamil Griffin-Cassidy vowed that if he won ten games in a row, the show would get cancelled.” Hamil has won nine in a row and tonight likely will be the last game after a five year run. 11 PM tonight on MTN 17 or online.

Andrew Zimmern reports that Man v. Food will be filming here February 5-8. Zimmern only reports a rumor of Jucy Lucys, but what food-related challenges do you think he’ll be taking on?

The New York Times looks back at Minnesota’s contribution to the world of smart-asses making fun of a movie as they watch it: It was more than two decades ago that Mr. Hodgson walked away from a thriving stand-up comedy career, retreating to Minnesota to build sculptures of robots. There Mr. Hodgson, now 48, discovered that his eccentric hobby of building automatons, and especially his aptitude for finding the flaws in mass media, could be combined into something greater.

Jesse Ventura will be working on a new conspiracy-theory series & Ventura will travel the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory’s validity.

“Ventura will hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces,” truTV said in a statement.

Via Jossip.

We’re just going to pretend Angus MacGyver actually was Minnesotan, because Richard Dean Anderson is, and he had a big hand in defining the character (also, according to Wikipedia, MacGyver was “raised in Mission City, Minnesota”). And so we give you the canonical List of problems solved by MacGyver.

Mnspeak’s very own mad man Max Sparber has submitted a clip of himself doing a monologue from Mad Men to the AMC “You Could Be on Mad Men” contest. Should Max’s fascinating nigh-Machiavellian take on ad exec Don Draper’s definition of advertising prove to be the most popular clip, Max stands to demonstrate that all is still good and just in the world by representing Minneapolis in an upcoming episode of the TV show.

Crime TV aficionados take heed, the latest season of City Confidential has an episode centered on the 1991 murder of a Russian immigrant and stock broker. Narrated by Keith David, the opening sequence naturally focuses on “Minnesota Nice” and the weather. Since I’m a relatively recent transplant, does anyone else remember this story?

io9 has a clip from the Adam Sandler-produced, Nick Swardson-starred Gay Robot pilot, and the news that that a new pilot has been completed for Comedy Central.