The FCC is frequently guilty of blindly adhering to the interests of entertainment conglomerates, having permitted a level of media consolidation which has been devastating to the television industry as a whole.

Yet whenever they strong arm major media companies, it’s for all the wrong reasons. This prudish $1.4 million penalty against ABC for a shot of a nudity on a 2003 episode of “NYPD Blue” is unreasonable and silly.

As Harry Potter fans know, during a game of Quidditch the player known as the Seeker desperately tries to capture a small flying ball called the Golden Snitch. When the Seeker succeeds, he scores a whopping 150 points for his team and the game ends.

Meanwhile, there’s all this other frenetic and suspiciously pointless Quidditch-related activity going on. Aside from the Seekers, each team has six others players (dubbed Chasers, Beaters and a Keeper) who fight over an entirely different ball (the Quaffle) and try to get that ball through small hoops at ends of the field.

If they succeed, they score a mere 10 points and the game continues.

Author J.K. Rowling established these wildly unpractical rules for her alleged team sport in her first Potter book and she likely has no regrets. Since the Seeker has the awesome power to (A) end the game and (B) effectively score 15 goals at once, Rowling’s narrative would have to bend over backwards to allow any character to ever take center stage during a Quidditch match except the Seeker – which, naturally, is the position played by her story’s protagonist Harry Potter.

Kiefer Sutherland was released from a Glendale jail today after serving 48 days for a DUI. All the stories declare the actor was a “model prisoner.”

Did he keep his cell extra tidy?

Volunteer to organize books in the library?

Share his portion of tater tots with fellow inmates?

Barely make a sound when he was probed for contraband?

Please.

Sutherland is a wealthy actor from a respected Hollywood family who spent less than two months in suburban jail.

How tough was it, really, to follow the rules?

This isn’t a “24” fight scene battling five actors playing terrorists in a warehouse that took three days to choreograph.

It’s sitting quietly in a cell.

He can do that.

As a bonus, he also did some laundry.

You know those scenes in apocalyptic disaster movies that show people reduced to fighting over dirty water or a bare-bones shelter or scraps of food to survive?

That’s what it’s like watching the broadcast networks struggling to program their airwaves during the writers strike.

Now NBC and ABC have stepped into the Thunderdome to fight over celebrity circus reality shows.

David Milch is reportedly working on a new series pilot for HBO entitled “Last of the Ninth”. The series takes place in New York City in 1972 and according to milch follows “a young detective returned from Vietnam in a department fiscally crippled, under attack by revolutionaries, and which has been brought by allegations of systemic corruption into public disrepute”.

The series was co-written by former NYPD detective Bill Clark, who won an emmys for his work with Milch on NYPD Blue.

“American Idol” is back.

Its ratings are like Jack Nicholson slapping Faye Dunaway in “Chinatown.” The ratings are huge! The ratings are disappointing! The ratings are huge AND disappointing!

They are bigger, bigger than anything else this season. Bigger by a mile. So tall you can’t see the top.

Yet they are also down. Tuesday night’s premiere down 13%. Wednesday’s second episode down 19%. Lowest premiere numbers in four years.

Whatever does this mean?

“Idol” is getting old. Reality shows are like dog years. Seven seasons is old for a reality show.

Fox is defensive about this. Its the fading quarterback who’s still on top, but his bum knee is catching up with him and he no longer gets carded at the bar and he rather just sit around and grill a steak than play in the game against Denver on Saturday. He’s denying he’s losing his touch, convinced he’ll play forever.

His fall may take a long time. Got many more seasons left in him. But fans know he’s past his prime and the standings prove it.

Fox’s glorified karaoke show returns tonight with producers promising fewer annoying mentors and more annoying contestants.

Once again, “Idol” is expected to decimate all competition. But by how much? Reality shows tend to have a ratings pattern that goes – in professional network executive lingo-speak — up, up, up and then down, down, down.

“Idol” went up, up, up and then last year went down for the first time. So will this year the decline continue?

It doesn’t even come close to mattering.

Some ratings softening for “Idol” is like Bill Gates getting a parking ticket. “Idol” has enough ratings to spare, enough to throw a party for its friends and to pass out Nielsen points in a big bowl on the coffee table.

Joel Hogsdon and the original MST3K cast return in Cinematic Titanic!

From their website:

Cinematic Titanic is a feature length movie riffing show and is an artist owned and operated venture created by Joel Hodgson, the creator of the Peabody award-winning Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Cinematic Titanic features the original cast and writers of MST3K, which is Hodgson (Joel Robinson), Trace Beaulieu (Crow), and J. Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo). Filling out the ensemble is Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) and Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank). Cinematic Titanic’s focus is to riff on the movies we love, which are ‘the unfathomable’, ‘the horribly great’, and the just plain ‘cheesy’ movies from the past.

This is not to be consfused with Mike Nelson’s RiffTrax, because no one actually liked Mike, and no one cares what he is doing.

NBC tapped professional in-house suck ups Nancy O’Dell and Billy “yes we’re related and equally smug and shallow in our chosen professions” Bush to host the aborted, downsized, writers struck Golden Globes.

So, I finally got around to watching the premiere of Cashmere Mafia last night, and it was… um, enlightening. Here are some of the things that I learned.

1. In New York, everyone is incredibly attractive.

2. Skinny women are bitchy, and I blame it on the fact that they haven’t eaten since Junior High.

3. Tom Everett Scott is the Tom Skerritt of our generation.

4. High powered professional women divide their time evenly between home, luncheons, and martini bars… they never actually make it into the office.

5. I don’t own enough “Evening Attire”.

6. Every woman alive has an insatiable sex drive, and by insatiable, I mean at inappropriate times and in inappropriate places.

7. Lucy Liu has no soul, and her eyes can eat asteroids.

8. Sometimes people are born with BlackBerry’s where their hands should be, and it makes me very sad.

9. A lisp is the must-have accessory of the season.

10. I hate Cashmere Mafia