Right Said Sexy

Right Said Fred. There's a name I haven't heard in a while.

Fifteen years ago "I'm Too Sexy" was #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 for three weeks straight. It's just one of those songs that always got stuck in my head. Never liked it, but it was always there.

Since it was such a pop cultural phenomenon, I just assumed that TV writers would relish the opportunity to make fun of it. Boy, was I wrong. These are the only ep titles I found that paid homage to this single:

• He's Too Sexy for His Fat (''Family Guy,'' 6/27/2000)
  
• I'm Too Sexy for My Brother (''The Wayans Brothers,'' 1/25/1995)
  
• I'm Too Sexy for My Butt (''Super Duper Sumos,'' 10/13/2002)
  
• I'm Too Sexy for This Shot (''The Jamie Foxx Show,'' 5/3/1998)

Common Threads #11

What do these shows have in common?

• "Party of Five"
  
• "The O.C."
  
• "Numb3rs"
  
• "Shark Week" on Discovery
  

(+/-)answer

All four featured Caltech masquerading as another college on TV.

• Stanford on "Party of Five"
  
• UC-Berkeley on "The O.C."
  
• CalSci on "Numb3rs"
  
• Shark University on "Shark Week" commercials

You'd be surprised how often you run into a film crew or a Star Wagon when you walk through Caltech these days. "Close to Home" filmed all over campus last week.

Monthly Airings Update

Earlier today I added 554 records to the Schedule Finder for the most recent four weeks.

The big news with the update? "Law & Order: SVU" overtook "Touched by an Angel" to claim the 10th spot on the list of Total Tube Time for dramas. "L&O: SVU" has aired 3.84 billion household-hours so far. (You can find Total Tube Time in the near-right sidebar.)

Enjoy!

Beware of Geeks Sharing Media Gifts

Studios want to dictate when, where and how their content is distributed — all in the name of direct revenue. But this strategy flies in the face of the media-sharing reality. It's never been easier to record and share video, and it will only get easier as more people participate.

If you're Sony, what do you do?

Why Sony? It controls media as well as many consumer products for recording and playing media. That makes them unique amongst the large studios.

I can imagine Sony acting like Big Brother at some point. Every media image will have a unique serial number secretly embedded. That serial number might be some combination of TV show, telecom, set-top box, TV set, DVR, DVD recorder, CPU, IP address, logins/passwords, and date. The theory is simple. With all of that data, it should be easy to identify the person who originally recorded and uploaded any video that violates copyright law. And just as easy to locate those who aided distribution by sharing.

In theory.

But, like with all things in life, people will find a way. Some tech-savvy people will quickly find ways to counterfeit these serial numbers, causing a dead-end investigation. Or, worse, causing the studios to prosecute the wrong person.

As the studios try to maintain control over all aspects distribution, I'm sure we'll see an interesting discussion of privacy rights. I wonder how the FCC feels about the subject?

Let's Make Love

A new dating game from Universal!?!

About a week ago Universal TV Distribution Holdings LLC filed documents with the USPTO to protect the phrase, Let's Make Love, for 'entertainment services in the nature of an on-going television game show related to dating.' You can't get much more specific than that, huh?

But I am a little confused. I wonder if this is Universal's second dating show or if Universal is renaming "Create-a-Date"?

Way back on September 13, 2006 Universal TV Distribution Holdings LLC protected the phrase, Create-a-Date. Just last week, "Create-a-Date" was being filmed at the Rose Bowl.

No matter what Uni is doing, it should entertain the thought of using Ken Levine on its show.

Clubadelic

Looking for new shows on Cartoon Network? No, not those. I told you about "Santologia" five months ago. And I mentioned "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack" over a year ago. Though I did miss a few.

I'm talking about shows that might not premiere until late 2007 or early 2008. First in line? "Clubadelic." The Cartoon Network & Turner Broadcasting filed docs with the USPTO on February 12, 2007 to protect the phrase for an animated series. Just three days prior, TBS registered the domain, clubadelic.com. Nothing at that site yet.

I have no other info about the show, and TBS did not respond to my request for more information.

From Here to Modernity

Since the Oscars are Sunday, I thought I'd put a movie spin on this week's fun with TV ep titles.

If you watch "ER" tomorrow, you'll watch the From Here to Paternity episode. An obvious homage to From Here to Eternity, which won the Oscar for Best Picture and is #52 on AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time.

Paternity is a pretty common word substitution for eternity, and many other shows honored the flick with the same ep title, From Here to Paternity:

• ''Aaagh! It's the Mr. Hell Show'' (11/18/2001)
  
• ''Dream On'' (3/9/1994)
  
• ''L.A. Law'' (3/26/1992)
  
• ''Last of the Summer Wine''
  
• ''Savannah'' (3/24/1996)

And if you're not going to use paternity, there's another obvious choice for a replacement word. Maternity. These series used From Here to Maternity ep names to honor this film:

• ''Agony'' (1/18/1981)
  
• ''The Governor and J.J.'' (12/30/1970)
  
• ''Chicago Hope'' (4/14/1999)
  
• ''The Love Boat'' (1/17/1981)
  
• ''Melrose Place'' (3/17/1997)
  
• ''What's Happening!!'' (3/31/1977)

Still not satisfied? Here's a list of more ways that TV ep titles reference FH2E:

• From Baltimore to Eternity (''Movin' On,'' 9/16/1975)
  
• From Beer to Eternity (''Cheers,'' 11/28/1985)
  
• From Fear to Eternity (''Charmed,'' 2/10/1999)
  
• From Hair to Eternity (''Head of the Class,'' 2/7/1990 & 2/14/1990)
  
• From Hare to Eternity (''NYPD Blue,'' 12/14/1993)
  
• From Here to Eternity (''Linc's,'' 7/25/1999)
  
• From Here to Infinity (''Terrahawks'')
  
• From Here to Machinery (''TaleSpin,'' 9/10/1990)
  
• From Here to the Pharmacy (''The Golden Girls,'' 12/7/1991)
  
• From Queer to Eternity (''Will & Grace,'' 5/10/2005)
  
• From Where to Eternity (''The Sopranos,'' 3/12/2000)

gr8est tv airlines

Once the darling of the airline industry, Jet Blue recently encountered its first pocket of turbulence. Blue will recover just fine.

But it makes me wonder whether Oceanic Airlines will recover? It lost a plane. It lost people. I wonder what other ticketed passengers thought about the whole thing? Is Oceanic Airlines still flying?

And then I started to wonder about other fake airlines on TV. Here's a short list of TV's greatest fake airlines:

• Air Cathay on "Terry & the Pirates" (1953, Syn)
  
• Lato Airlines on "The Islanders" (1960, ABC)
  
• Oceanic Airlines on "Lost" (2004, ABC)
  
• Regency Airlines on "The Crew" (1995, Fox)
  
• Sandpiper Air on "Wings" (1990, NBC)
  
• Slick Air on "Fly By Night" (1991, CBS)
  
• Spencer Aviation on "Spencer's Pilots" (1976, CBS)
  
• Sunwest Airlines on "Flying High" (1978, CBS)

Time Is of the eCensors

It should be no surprise that major studios are spending so much cash to protect intellectual property. They spend big bucks to develop and produce a show; so why shouldn't they control distribution to get a reasonable ROI.

Movie studios led the anti-piracy movement for video, but now TV studios really feel they need it. That's why Viacom pulled their vids from YouTube. That's why some video sharing sites, like GUBA, have implemented software to automatically detect copyrighted video while other sites are catching up.

But that's not what this post is about. With all of this effort developing software to automatically detect items listed in a database, I'm surprised that the PTC or FCC hasn't funded a group to develop a software package that automatically censors shows that you watch based on items you select from a database. Not based on the show's distribution — website, TV station, etc — but solely based on audio and image analysis.

Maybe this software is the compromise we're all looking for. Some of us like to push the bounds of vulgarity and obscenity on broadcast television, while others want to protect everybody from the smallest impropriety. Just make the software a standard feature on all TVs or set-top boxes and set the defaults so that most things will be censored. If you want to see more, you have to change some settings.

Of course the software won't really solve the problem, but I'm still surprised advocacy groups aren't funding its development. (Maybe they are and I just haven't read about it yet. I would think that some of the more advanced anti-porn software could be ported for use on TV.) I imagine a group of people will work solely to find ways around the software to get some obscene language or indecent image past the autodetector.

And the cat-and-mouse game would continue as always.

Address the Mess

Comedy Central's own home makeover parody?

Last week Comedy Partners (Viacom and Hearty Ha! Ha!) protected the phrase, Address the Mess. I have no other info. No websites. No responses for my RFIs.

TV That's Plugged In

Wow. That's the new slogan for G4?

On February 7, 2007 G4 filed documents to protect the phrase, TV That's Plugged In. I have no other details since I received no reply from G4 for my request for additional information.

I guess it's better than We Get Guys.

If It's On, We're On It

Kind of a lame tagline for TV Guide. Or one of its shows.

TV Guide Magazine Group, Inc. filed documents with the USPTO on February 7, 2007 to protect the phrase, If It's On, We're On It.

Ep Vid Finder Update, For Real

You should really check out the most recent update of the trivialTV Ep Vid Finder.

I added more than 5500 links. The trivialTV database now contains 26,544 links to 16,576 eps for 949 series. It'll hit 1000 series in the very near future.

I updated links to the following video delivery services:

• AOL
  
• CinemaNow
  
• The CW
  
• Fox/MySpace
  
• GUBA
  
• in2tv
  
• iTunes
  
• Movielink
  
• OutZone
  
• peer impact
  
• tbs.com
  
• Unbox
  
• Vongo
  
• Wal-Mart

I'll update the other 14 services soon.

Check out yesterday's post for the list of new series and seasons in this latest update.

Enjoy!

trivialTV Ep Vid Finder Update

You may have wondered what happened the last two days. Why no posts?

Well, it's been a while since I've updated the trivialTV Ep Vid Finder. About eight weeks. I'm still entering some data and doing some testing, but I will release the update tomorrow. I thought I'd take the opportunity to let you know about the new series and/or seasons you'll see:

• "Across America" (CinemaNow)
  
• "The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon" (Vongo)
  
• "The Agency" (VH1; iTunes)
  
• "All About the Andersons" (WB; in2tv)
  
• "All of Us" season 4 (CW; iTunes, Unbox)
  
• "America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions" (NFL Net; iTunes)
  
• "Arrested Development" season 1 (Fox; Unbox)
  
• "Bam's Unholy Union" (MTV; iTunes, Unbox)
  
• "Bat Masterson" (NBC; Vongo)
  
• "Beach Patrol: San Diego" (CourtTV; iTunes)
  
• "Big Valley" (ABC; Vongo)
  
• "Bunny Short" (Vongo)
  
• "Camp Reality" (Fox Reality; Unbox, iTunes)
  
• "Century of Warfare" (CinemaNow)
  
• "The Chelsea Handler Show" (E!; Unbox)
  
• "The Chicas Project" (iTunes)
  
• "CHiPs" (NBC; in2tv)
  
• "The Class" (CBS; Wal-Mart)
  
• "Cimarron Strip" (CBS; Vongo)
  
• "Cisco and Ripple" (Vongo)
  
• "The Contract" (Vongo)
  
• "COPS" season 19 (Fox; iTunes, Unbox, AOL)
  
• "Cory in the House" (Disney; iTunes)
  
• "Danny Phantom" season 2 (Nick; iTunes)
  
• "Day In Day Out" (mun2; iTunes)
  
• "Desert Punk" (iTunes)
  
• "Design Star" (HGTV; Unbox)
  
• "Destination Wild" season 1 (Fox Sports; iTunes, Unbox)
  
• "The Devil's Music" (Vongo)
  
• "The Directors" (Encore; Vongo)
  
• "Dirt" (FX; iTunes, Unbox)
  
• "Dogfights" (History; AOL)
  
• "The Dresden Files" (SciFi; iTunes)
  
• "The Dukes of Hazzard" season 2 (CBS; iTunes)
  
• "Edgemont" (Vongo)
  
• "ER" seasons 3 & 4 (NBC; Unbox, Movielink)
  
• "The First Amendment Stand Up" (Vongo)
  
• "First Comes Love" (Logo; iTunes)
  
• "Foo" (Vongo)
  
• "Friday Night Lights" (NBC; iTunes)
  
• "Gamer.TV" (Starz Edge; Vongo)
  
• "Gay, Straight or Taken?" (Lifetime; iTunes)
  
• "The Gene Autry Show" (CBS; Vongo)
  
• "Get Out" (HDNet; CinemaNow)
  
• "The Green Hornet" (ABC; Vongo)
  
• "Hill Street Blues" season 3 (NBC; Unbox, AOL)
  
• "I Love New York" (VH1; iTunes)
  
• "Johnny and the Sprites" (Disney; iTunes)
  
• "Just Jordan" (Nick; iTunes)
  
• "Kung Faux" (Vongo)
  
• "Is It Real?" (Nat Geo; iTunes)
  
• "Lost in Space" season 3 (CBS; iTunes, Unbox, AOL)
  
• "Mama's Family" (NBC/Syn; in2tv)
  
• "My Favorite Martian" (CBS; in2tv)
  
• "The Naked Brothers Band" (Nick; iTunes)
  
• "The Naked Trucker & T-Bones Show" (Comedy Central; iTunes)
  
• "One Tree Hill" (CW; Unbox)
  
• "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" (CBS; iTunes)
  
• "Percy the Park Keeper" (Vongo)
  
• "Pit Pony" (Vongo)
  
• "Pocket the Difference" (Fine Living; Unbox)
  
• "Pookie Poo" (Vongo)
  
• "The Pretender" (NBC; Unbox, AOL, CinemaNow)
  
• "Prey" (ABC; in2tv)
  
• "Pros vs. Joes" (Spike; iTunes)
  
• "Re: Evolution of Sports" (Showtime; iTunes)
  
• "Ready As He Grows" (DIY; Unbox)
  
• "The Rifleman" (ABC; Vongo)
  
• "Rob & Amber: Against the Odds" (Fox Reality; iTunes, Unbox, CinemaNow)
  
• "Rockin' America" (Vongo)
  
• "St. Elsewhere" (NBC; Unbox, AOL, CinemaNow)
  
• "Samurai 7" (iTunes)
  
• "The Sarah Silverman Program" (Comedy Central; iTunes)
  
• "Shooting Sizemore" (VH1; iTunes)
  
• "SilverHawks" (in2tv)
  
• "Speed Grapher" (iTunes)
  
• "Starveillance" (E!; iTunes)
  
• "Starz the Hollywood Reporter" (Starz; Vongo)
  
• "The Stones" (CBS; in2tv)
  
• "Superman: The Animated Series" (WB; in2tv)
  
• "Surreal Life: Fame Games" (VH1; iTunes)
  
• "ThunderCats" (Syn; in2tv)
  
• "Time Tunnel" (ABC; Unbox, AOL, CinemaNow)
  
• "Today Show" (NBC; iTunes)
  
• "Top Cat" (ABC; in2tv)
  
• "Top Design" (Bravo; iTunes)
  
• "Twins" (WB; in2tv)
  
• "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (ABC; Unbox, AOL)
  
• "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home" (Syn; in2tv)
  
• "Wanda at Large" (Fox; in2tv)
  
• "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?" (style; iTunes)
  
• "Wild World of Spike" (Spike; iTunes)
  
• "The Wind in the Willows" (Vongo)
  
• "The Willows in Winter" (Vongo)
  
• "Wonder Woman" season 1 (ABC; iTunes)

Fresh Squeezed

You don't like your entertainment news old and stale, do you? You'd much rather have it "Fresh Squeezed." Right?

At least that's what NBC-Universal thinks.

NBC-Universal registered the domain, freshsqueezed.tv, about a month ago (8 January 2007). Kind of an odd name. For now the site's just parked. I couldn't find any shows in development that would have that name. Not even as an alternate title. So I didn't think much of it.

Until today.

Early this morning the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) published NBC-Universal's filing for "Fresh Squeezed." And, for once, a company was very specific in its filing. "Fresh Squeezed" will be a 'one-hour daily news and entertainment program.'

Never would've guessed that we needed another "E! News Daily" or "Access Hollywood" or "Daily Buzz" or "Inside Edition" or "The Insider" or "Extra" or ... Well, you get the idea.

Now that "Passions" has been canceled, I wonder if "Fresh Squeezed" will take its afternoon timeslot.
Update (11 Feb 2007, 11:42AM PST): See comments for additional ideas of how "Fresh Squeezed" might be used.
Update (7 Mar 2007, 11:56PM PST): From the comments: See a picture of the hosts on the set.

DVR InstaMeme

TiVo has its Trick Play option, which lets you rewind and pause live TV. I wonder how fast TiVo can measure "trick played" content? For the Super Bowl, TiVo released data about commercials the following morning.

Wouldn't it be great if TiVo acquired and used Trick Play data more quickly?

Think about this concept. You were watching "Heroes" last Monday and a little icon popped up in the lower left corner of your screen at the end of the show. That icon let you know that a bunch of people hit rewind sometime in the last ten minutes. You selected the option to view the clip and you saw the limo's license plate. Even better, the video paused to give you a nice clear look of the plate number.

At least that's the first implementation. You get an easy way to watch what others wanted to re-watch, and you get to watch it the way they re-watched it (on average). Pauses and all. Nearly in real-time. No more waiting to read blogs. No more waiting for somebody to upload a vid clip on YouTube.

Now you can start thinking about extensions to the concept.

I chose the "Heroes" example because many people didn't immediately get the "Star Trek" homage, but they did get the reference after hearing "Star Trek". Wouldn't it be great if TiVo also let its users text message a small caption and then did natural language processing to automatically determine the best caption? This way every viewer could've read the significance of the clip. (Plus TiVo can use the number of text messages as a way to measure the significance of the Trick Play. Many times I hit rewind, but I didn't see anything new or significant. TiVo only wants to present meaningful, Trick-Play clips.)

If this idea has any legs, I reckon that TV shows will be distributed with built-in InstaMemes. Writers often add "did you see that?" moments for shows like "Heroes" and "Lost." Why not give the writers a chance to write captions for their own easter eggs and provide a way to for them to communicate with viewers?

TiVo will like the idea because it can really advertise the personalized aspect of the feature. Each time you view an InstaMeme, you'll have the option to press Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. Your rating gets stored in a database along with all the viewers who originated (or text-messaged) the InstaMeme. Now TiVo can use these scores to determine whether or not you're likely to enjoy watching the next InstaMeme before offering you the option.

Divorce House

That title has Fox Reality written all over it. Doesn't it?

Just think about the possibilites. Make it like The War of the Roses. But make it more than one couple — maybe something like six couples who really don't like each other and are quite vindictive. Then add a touch of "Paradise Hotel" or "Forever Eden" — let different people hook-up every show. Then add a smidge of "Temptation Island — tape some of the interludes and show the future exes. Sounds like the perfect Fox show — all four shows are either 20th Century Fox properties or aired on Fox.

That's probably not what "Divorce House" will be like.

So what can I tell you about "DH"? Not much.

I found a trademark application for "Divorce House" that was filed on 31 January 2007 for "Cable television programming; Entertainment in the nature of on-going television programs in the field of entertainment and reality shows."

The website for "Divorce House", divorcehouse.tv, was created on 23 January 2007, but all registration info was kept private. Plus the website is just parked right now.

I could not find contact information for the persons who filed the trademark application, which meant my usual RFI wasn't ignored since I couldn't even request further information.

Let's Get Ready to Bundle

I'll bet you can already hear the commercial in your head. I know I can. I don't know if it's going to be for at&t, Charter, Time-Warner or some other company. But you know it has to happen.

I just wish I was creative enough to come up with that tagline.

Instead, I found that the Buffer Partnership (Michael Buffer & Bruce Buffer) filed docs with the USPTO on 1 February 2007 to protect the phrase, Let's Get Ready to Bundle. For what goods and services, you ask? Well, pretty much everything. Here's the list from that filing:

Advertising and promoting the goods, products and services of others, including but not limited to theatrical films, television (basic, cable and satellite), radio, other media and media systems, global computer network programs, software, sporting events, athletic teams and other consumer goods and services.

Apocalypse Nowledge Is Power

Are you going to watch Apocalypse, Push (''Medium,'' 2/7/2007 @ 10PM, NBC) tonight? If you do, you can see the return of Ranger Push.

Of course the ep title is a shout-out to the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, which simply has a ton of pop cultural references. I thought I'd add to that list. Here are all the TV ep titles I could find that pay homage to this flick:

• Adoptcalypse Now (''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends,'' 10/15/2004)
  
• Ape-pocalypse Now! (''Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys,'' 6/14/1997)
  
• Apocalypse - What, Now? (''The Real Ghostbusters,'' 11/18/1987)
  
• Apocalypse Cow (''Going to California,'' 9/6/2001)
  
• Apocalypse Maybe (''Team Knight Rider,'' 5/4/1998)
  
• Apocalypse Nash (''Nash Bridges,'' 10/23/1998)
  
• Apocalypse Not (''Duckman,'' 2/24/1996)
  
• Apocalypse Not (''Charmed,'' 5/11/2000)
  
• Apocalypse Now (''The Watcher,'' 6/27/1995)
  
• Apocalypse, Push (''Medium,'' 2/7/2007)
  
• Apocalypse Skeeter (''Cousin Skeeter,'' 12/1/1998)
  
• Apocalypse Soon (''Big Wolf on Campus,'' 4/15/2000)
  
• Apocalypse, Nowish (''Angel,'' 11/17/2002)
  
• Apokolips…Now! (''Superman: The Animated Series,'' 2/7/1998)
  
• Taco Lips Now (''Son of the Beach,'' 9/17/2002)

A Nude Beginning Makes a Nude Ending

I know it's odd, but every Super Bowl I think of nudity. Thanks, janet. And now we have the Chevy commercial to thank too.

In honor of that weird thought, here's a list of TV series with the word naked in the title. All for you.

• ''Naked'' (1995, Aus)
  
• ''The Naked Archaeologist'' (2005)
  
• ''The Naked Brothers Band'' (2007, Nick)
  
• ''Naked Café'' (1994, VH1)
  
• ''Naked Cannes''( 2005)
  
• ''Naked Celebrity'' (2004, five - UK)
  
• ''The Naked Chef'' (1999)
  
• ''Naked City'' (1958, ABC)
  
• ''Naked City'' (1993)
  
• ''Naked City'' (2003, UK)
  
• ''Naked Elvis''( 1999, Ch4 - UK)
  
• ''Naked Happy Girls'' (2007, Playboy)
  
• ''Naked Island'' (1965, UK)
  
• ''Naked Josh'' (2004)
  
• ''The Naked Lady'' (1959, BBC1)
  
• ''The Naked Mind'' (1974)
  
• ''Naked Nashville'' (1998)
  
• ''Naked New York with Bob Berkowitz'' (2002)
  
• ''Naked News'' (1995)
  
• ''Naked News'' (2000)
  
• ''The Naked Pilgrim: The Road to Santiago'' (2003, UK)
  
• ''Naked Planet'' (1999)
  
• ''Naked Science'' (2004, Nat Geo)
  
• ''Naked Sport'' (, UK)
  
• ''The Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show'' (2007, Comedy Central)
  
• ''The Naked Truth'' (1995, ABC)
  
• ''Naked Truth'' (2001)
  
• ''The Naked Vicar Show''(1977)
  
• ''Naked Video''(1986, BBC2)
  
• ''Nicholas Craig, the Naked Actor''(1990)
  
• ''Playboy's Really Naked Truth''(1995)

I probably missed a few. If you know of any others, please leave a comment.

Like Compressing Apples and Oranges

You're so accustomed to talking about HDTV, but did you stop to think about some of the early work? Here's a snippet from Ron Wolf's article (29 Dec 1982; The Miami Herald):

Broadcasting and cable executives are suddenly talking about another gadget that is likely to have a profound effect on the business: a device that is able to "squeeze" two television signals into one channel.

General Electric unveiled these electronic components last month that are part of a "bandwidth compression system"--meaning they will double the channel capacity of a cable system.

GE accomplishes this technical feat by electronically dissassembling the 525 lines that make up a television picture. Every other line is eliminated and replaced by a corresponding portion of a second picture. The resulting composite is then transmitted as a single TV signal.

After the signal is received in the home, the two images are electronically separated.

Jack My School

About a year ago, Ryan Seacrest Productions (RSP) signed a deal with E!, and as part of that deal, RSP would develop new shows.

Well, it looks like the first show is on its way. "Jack My School."

Last week RSP filed docs with the US Patent & Trademark Office to protect the phrase, "Jack My School," for 'entertainment services, namely an ongoing television series.' It's the first trademark for RSP since its E! deal.

I e-mailed Mr. Seacrest to request additional information about the new show, but I received no reply. That's OK. I guess he must be too busy hosting "AI," "E! News," "America's Top 40" and KIIS-FM's morning show.

I have no other info about the show, but it doesn't mean I can't speculate.

I wonder if it will be a documentary like "High School Stories: Scandals, Pranks and Controversies"? A straight story of how a group of students can take over a school.

Or maybe something like "Extreme Makeover: High School Edition"? That show might work, especially if it focuses on areas still recovering from Katrina.

Or could Mr. Seacrest call in some favors from the music biz and create a series based on an episode from MTV's "Jammed"? Something like the ep when No Doubt surprised Carlsbad High School (near San Diego, CA) with a concert. (Part 1, Part 2)

Now that's how you jack a school.

There Is No Box

FX Networks filed docs to protect this phrase last week. I e-mailed FX to request additional information, but I received no reply.

I don't think that's the name of the untitled legal thriller with Ted Danson and Glenn Close. Just doesn't seem to fit.

It's next new series, "The Riches," is already set to preem on March 12. "Dirt" is already airing. I doubt either of those shows will have a name change.

My best guess? There Is No Box will be the new slogan for FX.

Just take a look at the other original series that aired over the last two years on FX.

• "Nip/Tuck"
• "The Shield"
• "Rescue Me"
• "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
• "30 Days"
• "Black.White."
• "Starved"
• "Thief"
• "Over There"
• "NASCAR Drivers: 360"

I would have a hard time putting all those series in the same box. And I think shows like "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me" demonstrate that FX likes to think outside the box for storylines.

FX: There Is No Box.

Cul-de-Sac

Remember "Made in the USA" (2005, USA) and "Super Agent" (2006, Spike)? You probably don't know the connection, but Realand Productions brought both of those reality shows to the small screen.

What else does Realand have in the pipeline? It will film "Cul-de-Sac" in Pasadena next Wednesday on 6 Feb 2007. What street? Well, one with a cul-de-sac, of course. Realand plans to use the whole street too. Not just a house. That's what's so odd about the permit.

I've found nothing else about this show nor Realand Productions. I couldn't even find good contact info to make an RFI. Different exec producers for each show, including its 2005 special on USA, "The Good Life of Golf Superstars." A trail of PO Boxes. Limited data on the California biz website for LLCs.

I've got nothing, but I thought I'd mention the show just in case you wanted to check out the film shoot next week.