Greetings from the Home Planet

My home entertainment center is wide screen, high-def, and the best 3-D on the market -- and running on one hundred percent biofuel, this baby is fully carbon neutral...


Yep, still on hiatus while enjoying the backwoods splendor of the Home Planet, where I do not trouble myself with thoughts of Hollywood, much less try to write about it. Once again I leave the heavy lifting to others -- in this case (and if I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here, so be it) the inimitable Tim Goodman, who in Friday's column explains the whole messy business of the network "upfronts," and how cable continues to force change on the television landscape. It's called "There's a Chaotic New World Order in TV Land," and you can read it here.

Like all Tim's work, it's good stuff: smart, pithy, and dead on target. I'm not exactly thrilled with his analysis or conclusions, since -- as I've pointed out repeatedly in this space -- the rise of cable at the expense of the broadcast networks is very bad news for those of us who toil in the trenches of television, but Goodman writes for the viewers, not for the workbots on the factory floor. With prose as sharp and entertaining as his, I almost don't mind reading the grim news.

Rome may be burning, but that doesn't mean I can't warm my hands -- or feet -- by the fire...