By Stacey Harrison

© Scripps Networks

Having covered HGTV for the past couple of years, I’ve seen more than a few shows pitched as something completely different for the network. While sometimes you can chalk that up to clever marketing, it happens to be oh-so true in the case of The Antonio Treatment. For instance, how many design shows can boast life-size pink rhinos coming out of walls and boxing with a former Saved by the Bell heartthrob?

Design Star Season 4 winner Antonio Ballatore brings his rock’n'roll background heavily into play as he revamps dumpy spaces with his signature edgy style. Along with his crew of longtime friends, and his ever-present bulldog Chewie, Ballatore sets out to make radical designs custom-suited to his clients. Among his tasks this season are a renovating a non-profit music studio for young people, creating an art studio for a deaf cartoonist, a punk rock family looking to incorporate antique furniture into their home, and giving Mario Lopez a swanky new workout gym. It all gets started when The Antonio Treatment premieres with two episodes at 10pm ET Sunday on HGTV.

Ballatore took some time to answer some questions about getting the show off the ground, and the backlash to his unconventional approach.

Did you know right after you won Design Star what your show would be, or was there a lot of planning that had to be done?

Antonio Ballatore: I think we had a basic plan to begin with, and once we started, we really got into more of my life and what I was doing and captured a lot of that also. It’s definitely evolved since then. A lot of what goes on, it’s a lot of my friends, a lot of things that are in my life, a lot of artist friends I bring in as guest artists. I could have a guest artist come in every week. A lot of that developed as it went. [Read more →]

Categories: Lifestyle, Reality TV by sharrison76
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Tags: Antonio Ballatore, Chewie, Design Star, HGTV, Mario Lopez, Stacey Harrison, The Antonio Treatment

By Stacey Harrison

If NBC has a hit on its hands with Parenthood, it’ll certainly have earned it.

The network first attempted to adapt Ron Howard’s 1989 dramedy as a half-hour show back in 1990 — a straight-up adaptation with Ed Begley Jr. in the Steve Martin role. It lasted one season and is memorable now mainly as an early screen credit for Leonardo DiCaprio and David Arquette. Twenty years later, the concept was revived with a new set of characters and situations to explore. Howard was back as executive producer, and the all-star cast included Peter Krause, Craig T. Nelson, Monica Potter, Bonnie Bedelia, Erika Christensen, Dax Shepard, and in a critical role as troubled sister and single mom Sarah, Maura Tierney. The pilot had been completed and sent out to critics for the show’s premiere last fall. Before that could happen, though, Tierney announced that she had to leave the show to fight her newly diagnosed breast cancer. That left the production having to recast the role and shoot a new pilot.

Enter Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), who joined the cast and has sought to make the role her own, having to answer just as many questions about Tierney as anything else. That should all be over tonight after the pilot premieres. The many plights of the Braverman clan — the pilot alone covers overbearing sports fathers, adult children moving back home, teen rebellion, work/life balance, an autistic child and unexpected paternity — provide plenty of drama that could make it NBC’s first step toward making amends for The Jay Leno Show.

I spoke with Krause and Christensen at a recent press tour to get their thoughts on their characters and why they connected to them. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama by sharrison76
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Tags: Asperger's Syndrome, Bonnie Bedelia, Craig T. Nelson, Dax Shepard, Erika Christensen, Jason Katims, Lauren Graham, Mae Whitman, Max Burkholder, Monica Potter, NBC, Parenthood, Peter Krause, Ron Howard, Stacey Harrison

Courtesy TV Land

New York, NY, Feb. 25, 2010 — TV Land announced today that it has picked up the popular reality series How’d You Get So Rich? starring the notoriously uncensored Joan Rivers for a second season, premiering on Wednesday, May 5, at 10 p.m. ET/PT. How’d You Get So Rich?, a TV Land PRIME original series, returns this spring and will once again take viewers on a journey to meet mega-rich millionaires who worked hard and struck gold. As she tours the most lavish and extravagant homes, she introduces viewers to folks who made a lot of money in out of the ordinary, fascinating ways and asks all the questions no one else would — in the way only Joan can. How’d You Get So Rich? is a six-episode series from Mark Burnett Productions and Zoo Productions, Inc.  Mark Burnett, Barry Poznick and John Stevens serve as executive producers.

“It’s so exciting for us to work with our friend, the incomparable Joan Rivers and bring ‘How’d You Get So Rich?’ back to TV Land,” states Larry W. Jones, president, TV Land. “Viewers were very inspired last season by the stories of these millionaires who went from rags to riches - some of whom were mowing lawns and are now collecting Bentleys! It is truly the American Dream, proving anyone can do it, and there is no one other than Joan who can do a better job of finding out how in the world these people got that rich!”

“I’m thrilled to be back on How’d You Get So Rich?, states Joan Rivers. “It’s so much better than hosting How’d You Get So Poor?…and when I say ‘Rich,’ I mean RICH. People that Oprah will borrow money from. People that will use Dr. Ruth as a paperweight and people that when their computer breaks Bill Gates comes by to fix it.”

Among the fascinating stories featured in the first season of How’d You Get So Rich? was Joan’s visit to the home of the inventor of the BillyBob Teeth — who grew up dirt poor and now owns the largest house in Illinois, a trip to the Versace mansion now owned by a telecommunications tycoon who once went door to door selling cordless phones and a visit to the 11,000 square foot Tampa Bay home owned by the father of the infomercial who made “Ginsu” a household name.

See our chat with Rivers from just before the first season premiered here.

Categories: Reality TV, TV News & Program Updates by sharrison76
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Tags: How'd You Get So Rich?, Joan Rivers, Mark Burnett, Stacey Harrison, TV Land, TV Land Prime

Credit: FX

LOS ANGELES, February 22, 2010 —  FX has given the go ahead for a second season of its critically acclaimed animated series Archer, announced Nick Grad, executive vice president of original programming, FX Networks.  The network increased the episode order to 13 for season two, which is scheduled to debut in 2011.

Archer (TV-MA) has three new episodes slated for air this season. Through seven episodes the series is averaging 1.2 million total viewers, 853,000 adults 18-49 and 573,000 adults 18-34. This Thursday, Feb. 25, FX will air the “Four-Play Marathon,” four episodes of Archer from 10-midnight. Archer will return with new episodes on Thursday, March 4, at 10pm and the season-one finale airs on March 18.

“Executive producers Adam Reed and Matt Thompson are delivering a hilarious series and it truly earned a second season,” Grad said. “H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Jessica Walter, Chris Parnell and Judy Greer comprise one of the best voice casts of any animated series on TV. We’re very happy with the audience response and critical acclaim for Archer and are excited to move forward with it.”

Archer was created by Adam Reed and Floyd County Productions and is executive produced by Reed and Matthew Thompson. The show is produced by FX Productions. FX ordered 10 episodes for its first season.

“We are incredibly excited about the opportunity to make a second season of Archer,” said Reed, “and grateful that FX has enough faith in the show to allow it to build an audience.  Excelsior!”

Categories: Animation, Comedy by sharrison76
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Tags: Adam Reed, Aisha Tyler, Archer, Chris Parnell, FX, H. Jon Benjamin, Jessica Walter, Stacey Harrison

Los Angeles, Calif. — To help promote the release of its newest original drama series Justified, FX has launched the interactive online game Justified Pursuit: The Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes, giving players the chance to win cash prizes and clothing from Stetson. Justified premieres on FX Tuesday, March 16, at 10pm E/P.

At www.Justifiedthepursuit.com, players will sign up as “deputies” in Harlan County, Ky., and collect clues to track a fugitive.  The game leads participants through 16 sightings in the pursuit of fictional bank robber, Jarrett Lee Cook. On the way, they will learn key elements about the series and unlock hidden content from the show. Each player will be assigned a virtual deputy desk and tracking map to follow the sightings. The final clue will be revealed in the series premiere on March 16.

Participants will receive an entry into the sweepstakes for every sighting they enter. Four winners will be selected:  1 Grand Prize winner will receive a $5,000 reward and a $500 wardrobe from Stetson that will include a hat, pair of boots, jeans, and a shirt.  Three first prize winners will receive $1,000 as well as the $500 Stetson wardrobe.

In Justified, Timothy Olyphant stars as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens,  a true-blue hero born and reared in the hill country of eastern Kentucky, who left at age 19 to become a U.S. Marshal.  Now, years later, after shooting a gun thug in Miami hotel and thereby incurring the wrath of his Marshals Service superiors, Raylan has been sent in punishment (and by fate?) to the one place to which he vowed he would never return — Kentucky. But, being back in Kentucky, Raylan will also have to confront a past crowded with enough skeletons to choke a graveyard.

Check back here in the coming days for our interview with best-selling novelist Elmore Leonard, who created the character of Raylan Givens in his books Pronto and Riding the Rap.

Categories: Drama by sharrison76
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Tags: Elmore Leonard, FX, Justified, Justified Pursuit: The Scavenger Hunt, Raylan Givens, Stacey Harrison, Stetson, sweepstakes, Timothy Olyphant

Photo: Dan Littlejohn/CBS ©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc.

By Stacey Harrison

Last night’s post-Super Bowl airing of Undercover Boss pulled in over 38 million viewers, the best for that time slot since 2001.

Incidentally (or not) it was another reality offering — the premiere of the second season of Survivor — that was the last to pull in those kinds of ratings. But instead of cutthroat gamesmanship, Undercover Boss offered an uplifting vision of nameless, faceless corporate bigwigs finally developing empathy for their underlings. Waste Management President and COO Larry O’Donnell posed as a regular employee in his own company, going from task to task, in order to see how the policies he had a part in creating were handled in practice.

O’Donnell seems a genuine guy, far from the fat cat stereotype associated with high-level corporate execs, and has a compelling personal story involving a special-needs daughter that make him an easily empathetic figure. But even he was shocked by the difference between his insulated view of how the company functioned compared with what he saw in the field — including female route drivers not being provided a place to use the restroom while striving to make company-mandated goals; employees being threatened with their pay being docked for clocking in late after lunch; and deep personnel cuts leading to overworked, underpaid employees. It all led to one contrite executive how sought to make things right by episode’s end.

So beyond being thrilled about getting a better understanding of his company, and the stratospheric-level of publicity generated by the show, what did O’Donnell think of the show? I caught up with him at the annual press tour in Pasadena recently, and while he said the experience was overwhelmingly positive, reality TV is never all that it seems.

Did the show accurately portray your experience?

Larry O’Donnell: “There were certainly a couple of things — the whole thing on the time clock really bothered me. [Read more →]

Categories: Reality TV by sharrison76
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Tags: CBS, Larry O'Donnell, Stacey Harrison, Super Bowl XLIV, Undercover Boss, Waste Management

Burbank, CA (Jan. 12, 2010) — ABC Family’s two upcoming original movies will have spring premiere dates. The Cutting Edge: Fire & Ice, starring Francia Raisa (”The Secret Life of the American Teenager”) and Brendan Fehr, will premiere on Sunday, March 14 (8:00-10:00PM ET/PT). Business of Falling in Love, starring Hilary Duff, with Matt Dallas, Michael McMillan and Chris Carmack, will premiere on Sunday, April 18 (8:00-10:00PM ET/PT).

In The Cutting Edge: Fire & Ice, Francia Raisa reprises her role as Alexandra “Alex” Delgado in film franchise, whose figure skating career came to an abrupt halt after her partner (on and off the ice) became injured. As their love affair cooled, a heart-broken Alex stopped competing and turned to teaching. Enter James Van Behr (Fehr), the smoldering bad boy of speed skating, who has had fiery Alex in his sights as a skating partner ever since he was banned from speed skating. There aren’t many girls who say no to James — Alex may well be the first. However, James pushes her buttons, challenging her like no one else - and her fighting spirit returns. She agrees to be his partner and they begin a grueling practice regimen fueled (and occasionally derailed) by their own tempestuous relationship which heats up as they get closer to competition. But will their passion destroy Alex’s chance to bring home the gold again?

The Cutting Edge: Fire & Ice marks the fourth installment of the successful franchise produced by MGM Television. The movie is directed by Stephen Herek and is written by Holly Brix. It is executive-produced by the MGM team of Craig Roessler, Sara Berrisford and Hudson Hickman. [Read more →]

Categories: Movies, TV News & Program Updates by sharrison76
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Tags: ABC Family, Brendan Fehr, Business of Falling in Love, Cutting Edge: Fire and Ice, Francia Raisa, Gil Junger, Hilary Duff, Michael Horowitz, Stacey Harrison, Stephen Herek, TCA

Burbank, CA (Jan. 12, 2010) — ABC Family’s original comedy series 10 Things I Hate About You will return with ten all-new half-hour episodes beginning Monday, March 29 (8:00PM-8:30PM ET/PT). The critically acclaimed series, recently named by New York Times as one of the “Top 10 Television Shows of 2009,” bowed this summer as the network’s highest rated comedy in its history. The series is executive-produced by Carter Covington and Robin Schiff, and stars Larry Miller, Lindsey Shaw, Meaghan Martin, Ethan Peck, Nicholas Braun and Dana Davis.

The half-hour series centers on the Stratford sisters, Kat (Shaw) and Bianca (Martin), as they both approach high school with very contradictory goals. Kat is a strong-willed, in-your-face feminist who is looking to save the world and get out of high school as fast as she can. Bianca is a social butterfly whose only concern is that she be popular, at any cost. As they both attend Padua High, the girls try to find what they want while navigating the popular crowd, boys and their over-protective Dad (Miller).

Categories: Comedy, TV News & Program Updates by sharrison76
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Tags: ABC Family, Dana Davis, Ethan Peck, Larry Miller, Lindsey Shaw, Meaghan Martin, Nicholas Braun, Stacey Harrison, TCA

Burbank, Calif. (Jan. 12, 2010) — ABC Family’s two hit original scripted series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Make It or Break It, have each been picked up for a new season, it was announced today by Paul Lee, president, ABC Family. Set to return this summer, The Secret Life of the American Teenager has been renewed for a 3rd season and Make It or Break It for its 2nd season.

“We’re thrilled to announce both The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Make It or Break It will be coming back this summer for new seasons,” said Lee. “Both returned last week to record numbers — our Millennial audience is just so passionate about these shows and has responded to both of these dramas in such a big way.”

The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which focuses on the relationships between families and friends and how they deal with issues including teen pregnancy and motherhood, currently airs on the network on Monday nights (8:00-9:00PM ET/PT). The series stars Shailene Woodley, Molly Ringwald, Mark Derwin, India Eisley, Ken Baumann, Daren Kagasoff, Francia Raisa, Megan Park and Greg Finley. It is created and executive-produced by Brenda Hampton. [Read more →]

Categories: Drama, TV News & Program Updates by sharrison76
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Tags: ABC Family, Ayla Kell, Brenda Hampton, Candace Cameron Bure, Cassie Scerbo, Chelsea Hobbs, Daren Kagasoff, Francia Raisa, Greg Finley, India Eisley, Josie Loren, Ken Baumann, Make It or Break It, Mark Derwin, Megan Park, Molly Ringwald, Peri Gilpin, Shailene Woodley, Stacey Harrison, Susan Ward, TCA, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Zachary Burr Abel

Jamie Oliver is here to start a revolution.  The impassioned chef, TV personality and best-selling author is determined to take on the high statistics of obesity, heart disease and diabetes in this country, where our nation’s children are the first generation not expected to live as long as their parents.  Oliver is inviting viewers to take a stand and change the way America eats, in our home kitchens, schools and workplaces, with the thought-provoking new series, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, debuting Friday, March 26, (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. The series is produced by Ryan Seacrest Productions and Fresh One Productions.

In the series, Oliver heads to Huntington, WVa. — which has been called the unhealthiest city in America — to start his new cooking initiative. He hopes to help get Huntington off that list and start a chain reaction of positive change across the country. Oliver says, “The time is right for people to rediscover the sense of pride, satisfaction and fun you can get from cooking for the people you love. There’s an incredible community in Huntington, and I want this experience to be a celebration of what we can achieve when people come together. I want to prove that turning around the epidemic of obesity and bad health doesn’t have to be boring or dull in the slightest. Wonderful stories will unfold in Huntington, and hopefully this will inspire the rest of the States.”

Needled by local naysayers, challenged by ingrained unhealthy habits and government bureaucracy, and welcomed by some of the most surprising youngsters, families and local leaders, Oliver shows how, in just a few short months, he tried to transform Huntington as a template for the entire country. The stakes — simply the health of our country’s citizens and the legacy for its children. [Read more →]

Categories: Reality TV by sharrison76
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Tags: ABC, Craig Armstrong, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Huntington, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, Ryan Seacrest, Stacey Harrison, TCA, The Naked Chef, West Virginia