If you’re planning on staying home tonight (and have DIRECTV), one of the very best ways to kick off your weekend is available via the satellite cabler’s Audience Network channel 239. At 10 p.m. PT, the live concert series Guitar Center Sessions returns.

Unusually, this weekend’s episode featuring The Smashing Pumpkins and next Friday’s performance by Frank Turner were taped at SXSW in Austin. But after that, all the way through to the program’s 50th episode on July 26 featuring Dhani Harrison’s THENEWNO2, it’s back to the chain’s flagship location in Hollywood:

“Today, more than ever before, any artist, established or up and coming, is working within a new convoluted paradigm full of challenges,” says show host and backstage interviewer Nic Harcourt via recent press release. “The new episodes of Guitar Center Sessions feature a truly diverse group of artists, all sharing the ups and downs of their careers in the interviews and delivering blistering performances on stage.”

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Seth MacFarlane, Trey Parker and Matt Stone can all claim a legacy piece of Mike Tyson Mysteries, a new weekly quarter-hour show green lit for Adult Swim. The show will mix in live-action footage of Tyson with a cartoon sidekick that owes a lot to Stewie Griffin and Cartman.

Per a report by TheWrap TV editor Tim Molloy:

Armed with a magical tattoo on his face and a trusty associate by his side — a talking pigeon — if you have a problem that needs solving, Iron Mike is in your corner. The series incorporates live-action appearances featuring Mighty Mike himself, and the gloves come off as the former heavyweight champ and his fowl-mouthed partner gear up for weekly adventures as they put unsolved mysteries.

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Tomorrow night at 5 p.m., the stars of FOX 11 news will not be Jeff Michael, Laura Diaz, sports anchor Liz Habib and meteorologist Pablo Pereira. Rather, for that hour, the group will be temporarily overshadowed by the on-air prowess of Jeff Hall and Grant Van Zevern.

After months of anticipation and various on-air teases, LA’s FOX affiliate is finally debuting its redesigned news set, created by the leading firm Jeff Hall Design Inc. The primary designer was Hall together with associate designer van Zevern.

The good folks at FOX have kindly provided FishbowlLA with some exclusive preview shots. Take a look – mighty spiffy, don’t you think?

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And FishbowlLA thanks Tesh for opting to make his new project something other than a voyeuristic reality TV show about his day-to-day life with Connie Sellecca.

Tesh, who has found great success on radio and the Web with INTELLIGENCE for your life, is now finally expanding the brand to television this June. His advice on topics such as health, wellness, personal finance and relationships will be available in snippets as part of a half-hour syndicated offering of the same name. From today’s announcement:

“The greatest differentiating factor in this program is our local strategy,” says Tesh. “It’s designed for local viewers and advertisers and for the national brands that are interested in a locally-strategic advertising approach.”

“I spent 25 years in the local news world and am naturally very familiar with the needs of the local advertiser,” he adds. “We are implementing the rich content approach we’ve been using for the last 10 years on our radio program, to not only create useful ‘life coaching’ pieces for the viewer, but to also create unique, embedded-content pieces in which our advertisers can reside. This is a show that protects our local and national advertisers from the ‘DVR dilemma.’”

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Here’s a fun challenge for DVR manufacturers. How can a future machine be set to truncate a program that “is about 73% really good and the rest… in the crapper”?

That assessment comes from the person at the center of the May 20 episode of PBS’ American Masters – Mel Brooks. And when you consider the Woody Allen-worthy jazz soundtrack coursing through the promo below, it may also be time for The Woodman to cast Brooks in a movie. Before it’s too late, for either or both of of these Your Show of Shows alums.

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There’s a special advance screening tonight of All The President’s Men Revisited at Washington D.C.’s Newseum, co-presented by the White House Correspondents’ Association. To be followed Sunday night at 9 p.m. by the feature documentary’s Discovery channel debut.

FishbowlLA’s favorite portion of this fascinating, highly recommended retelling of the intertwined stories of the real and Hollywood versions of Woodward & Bernstein comes around the half-hour mark. That’s when Redford himself notes the irony of the media’s efforts to expose the identity of Deep Throat leading, belatedly, to a street in the Bay Area called Redford Place.

Rachel Maddow shares some great comments in the Deep Throat segment, alongside Redford, Woodward, Bernstein, Jon Stewart and Tom Brokaw. Bernstein has the funniest line, noting that the only reason the secret of the Hal Holbrook-portrayed source’s identity lasted so long is because neither he or Woodward told their ex-wives. From there, the documentary moves to Marc Felt‘s daughter Joan, who recalls what it was like for her dad’s courageous “follow the money” efforts to finally be confirmed.

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Right off the THR print magazine Q&A bat, VICE founder Shane Smith and his main backer Tom Freston spin a very enviable privately owned narrative. Smith tells senior writer Eriq Gardner that the multi-media guerilla operation currently has 1,250 full-time employees/4,000 contributors in 34 different countries, while Freston boasts that VICE is already on an audience-engagement par with MTV, SNL and Rolling Stone magazine.

We’re not sure about that last part, but there’s no denying that with VICE’s HBO documentary series debuting tonight at 11 p.m. and featuring a first episode that was cleverly shared earlier this week on YouTube, VICE’s bodacious brand will only be further enhanced. It can also be argued that nothing recently compares to the free-publicity juggernaut VICE triggered by taking Dennis Rodman and three Harlem Globetrotters to North Korea.

In a separate Web-only Q&A with Erin Carlson, Smith clarifies that VICE did not smuggle the basketball players into the DPRK and says the ensuing media circus was actually cause for great concern:

We were really worried… Rodman was only there for two days and we were there for 10 days and our team was on the ground shooting. And we know how crazy the North Koreans are and how easily they’ll sort of put someone away so we were very nervous.

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After watching Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston do his thing on location in New Mexico for the upcoming final season of the AMC program, in the bitter January cold, visiting LA reporter Ruben Nepales sat down with the actor in a nearby hotel suite. What followed was a most unusual line of questioning:

I told Bryan what his co-star Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) told me earlier. “No one knows this,” Aaron said, relaxing with a drink after a day’s shoot, “but Bryan never wears pants in close-up shots. He is very proud of what is happening down there and he thinks it is intimidating for all of us, in a loving way. From the belly down, he has nothing on.”

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This weekend’s big sports story will be The Masters and whether Tiger Woods can add a 15th major to his redemptive, winner’s circle march.

Over on DirectTV channels 201 through 207, viewers can watch every conceivable part of the Augusta action. And Sunday night at midnight, SoCal golf fans looking for post-tournament coverage and more can tune in to the debut of Going Roggin on NBC4 Southern California. From today’s announcement:

The 30-minute show will feature various segments including “Freducation,” “Local Legend,” “Viewer Comments” and “Fredtime Story.” In the “Freducation” segment, Fred Roggin gives a commentary on the week’s top stories and welcomes guests to debate and provide opinions. The segment also includes What The Fred?!, a look at some of the most unusual stories and videos from around the world of sports.

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Glad we’re not alone. Looking over the teaser announcement for Wednesday night’s debut of Connected With… Kobe Bryant on Time Warner Cable SportsNet, we were immediately struck by the following excerpt:

On retiring: “I could play another five years. That’s not to say I will.”

Say what!? Veteran Laker watchers have all bandied about the time frame of two to three years. This latest reminder of Bryant’s super-human physical specimen qualities, from the specimen himself, is new and as also noted at Lakers Nation by Daniel Buerge, jaw-dropping. Maybe this is Bryant’s way of letting interested Chinese parties know that he will be ready and able to suit up over there around the fall of 2015.

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