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Finally back on the air, the show has no one to play the most popular politician in America.

So far, the only time SNL has featured Obama in a skit was a cameo performance by the man himself, just before the writers’ strike began. Now that the strike is settled, the show, three days from airing, finds itself with no clear candidate to play the Democratic front-runner. … Which is why Kenan Thompson, SNL’s only black cast member at the moment, was often mentioned as a possibility. But apparently producers have wisely decided that would be like asking William Hung to play Chiyo in Memoirs of a Geisha, and, yesterday, the Post announced that Lorne Michaels was holding auditions outside the cast for the role.

The Economist has an odd story about a conspicuously popular television documentary in Russia.

The film’s usage of modern words and imagery is so conspicuous that the moral cannot escape a Russian viewer. Instead of sticking to its traditions, Byzantium tried to reform and modernise, as the West demanded, and it paid the price. Worst of all, the West infiltrated Byzantium with harmful, individualistic ideas, which destroyed the core values of the empire—so the people lost faith in their rulers.

Still disappointed with whats on TV? In steps this excellent show about well, Mark living in Ikea. Mark Malkoff works on The Colbert Report, and also visited 171 Starbucks in 24 hours last summer.

(via TV Squad)

The Economist offers more depth to the strike resolution than anything else I’ve read (which I admit hasn’t been much) .

The devil, as usual, is in the detail. The residual payments for streaming start only after a 17-24 day window (which is when most people would want to catch up online with shows they missed on telly). The writers asked for a straightforward percentage of gross receipts, but settled for fixed dollar amounts, which limits their earnings compared with the studios. The writers made other concessions too: they for instance dropped their demand for a higher share of money from DVDs. They also gave up trying to get reality television and animation covered by union terms. That is important: being able to fill holes with reality shows protected the media companies financially during the strike. Some people point to the fact that the Directors Guild of America, whose contract was also up for renewal, managed to get a broadly similar deal from the media conglomerates without downing tools at all.

Vulture attempts to tell you when your favorite television shows will be back on the air. Right now they’ve got a large number of question mark, which is to be expected. It may be worth keeing an eye on the page if you can’t wait for a new episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

Vulture — more often interesting than trustworthy — makes the point that despite the breakthrough the writers’ strike’s still not guarunteed a speedy resolution:

According to Nikki Finke, WGA leaders are happy with the deal they worked out with studios on Friday, but the board can’t vote to authorize it until a resolution is set in writing — and any disagreement over language, tone, or overly aggressive punctuation could derail the whole thing.

Slate’s Troy Patterson has a “snarky” review of Hillary Clinton’s town hall meeting which she held on the Hallmark Channel last evening. I didn’t learn much from it, but I did enjoy reading it.

The event’s home base was a New York City studio decorated in two or three tints—muted blue, waiting-room blue, soporific blue—meant to set off the candidate’s insistent red jacket. With the exception of a video screen showing a map of the lower 48—the Super Tuesday states pulsed greenly, as if the sites of Ebola outbreaks—the set was as soothing as Ovaltine. The chaperone was Carole Simpson, late of ABC News, who adopted a Mr. Rogers tone as she introduced questions from live crowds gathered at rallies across the republic: “OK, are you ready to go to the Volunteer State?” “We’re going pretty far now! We’re going far away … to Boise, Idaho!” “Doncha just love hopscotching across America? Guess where we’re going next?!”

As today is probably the most important television day of the year in the United States, it’s worth considering the future of high definition media, about which The Economist’s Tech.view column has a number of interesting things to say. On of the most interesting to me:

The human eye can discern over 500 pixels per inch horizontally and vertically (say, 26,000 by 14,500 pixels on a 60-inch screen). To achieve true immersive reality—the “killer app” that consumer electronics makers see on the horizon—requires displays a dozen times sharper than today’s HDTV sets.

The Japanese have made a start. The Ultra-HDTV technology that NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting network, is currently investigating has 16 times more pixels (7,680 by 4,320) than an HDTV set. And that’s just the beginning. The betting is that both Blu-ray and HD DVD will go the way of the VHS tape, as ever sharper images begin to grab our attention.

I knew it would end this year, but I didn’t really expect it this soon.

Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood’s striking writers and production companies have eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, which could lead to a tentative agreement as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

TV Guide’s strike data’s been updated, and there seems to be little that’s any good left. It looks like the only scripted shows I watch that still have reserves are Scrubs and The New Adventure of Old Christine — which is coming back next Monday.

(via TV Squad)

Virginia Heffernan offers an interesting reason that Friday Night Lights — which is a critical darling — has failed to draw a large audience. I’m not sure she’s right, but the argument is interesting.

The fault of “Friday Night Lights” is extrinsic: the program has steadfastly refused to become a franchise. It is not and will never be “Heroes,” “Project Runway,” “The Hills” or Harry Potter. It generates no tabloid features, cartoons, trading cards, board games, action figures or vibrating brooms. There will be no “Friday Night Lights: Origins,” and no “FNL Touchdown” for PlayStation.

I’m not sure I like mentioning The A Daily Show twice in one day (here’s the first instance), but this is too good to pass up. Jonah Goldberg, who has a new book called Liberal Fascism, was on last night and unjustly or not looked like an utter fool.

Perhaps I’m the only one who had mistakenly believed that she already had one (Wikipedia gives no hint that she’s related to Oh!/Oxygen), but Discovery is giving her the dead-next-year Discovery Health channel, which will be redubbed the “Oprah Winfrey Network.”

Troy Patterson, Slate’s TV critic, has a fun little essay about the hypnotic power of C-SPAN’s unblinking campaign coverage:

That night in September found Romney working the town of Littleton, N.H., at a leisurely pace. There he was in a candy store. “This should be a red state, so I’m only going to get red candy,” he vowed, plastic bag in hand, scooping up Swedish fish. “You’ve got these lids on real tight. Is that to preserve freshness?” His total was $11.52, and when it came time to pay, he reached into the leave-a-penny-take-a-penny cup for the two cents. I wondered whether to read the gesture as a proud statement of fiscal prudence or an unwitting signal that he’s apt to support socialist schemes.

The Wire, much-loved by critics, much-ignored by the populous, is beginning it’s final season on HBO this Sunday. I’ve only recently found the show — a grim and unblinking look at Baltimore’s crime and law enforcement — and have been working through it on DVD. The Atlantic’s critique of both the show’s chief architect, David Simon, and his creation is fresh, interesting, and innovative. One of it’s many great lines:

The essential difference between writing nonfiction and writing fiction is that the artist owns his vision, while the journalist can never really claim one, or at least not a complete one—because the real world is infinitely complex and ever changing. Art frees you from the infuriating unfinishedness of the real world. For this reason, the very clarity of well-wrought fiction can sometimes make it feel more real than reality. As a film producer once told me, “It’s important not to let the facts get in the way of the truth.”

(via kottke.org)