Idiot Box

Throughout his NBA and business career, Magic Johnson has always aspired to achieve great things. So it’s only logical that he would choose to call his new TV channel Aspire.

Per an LA Times article this morning by Meg James and Greg Braxton, Johnson’s channel is the first of several planned by Comcast TV as part of the company’s recent agreement with the FCC and Department of Justice to diversify. Aspire will offer a 24-hour mix of inspirational, family-friendly movies, comedy, music and more. From the article:

“This is so exciting for me, I’m pinching myself,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “This is big for myself, for the African-American community and the African-American creative community. I wanted a vehicle to show positive images and to have stories written, produced and directed by African-Americans for our community. Aspire — that’s how I’ve been leading my life.”

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Create a clear, strategic approach to the way you use Facebook to market your business in our new Facebook Marketing Boot Camp. The online conference and workshop starts April 24. Learn more.

KTLA entertainment anchor Sam Rubin delivered a wonderful tw0-minute analysis of KFI’s suspension of Ken Chiampou and John Kobylt for their insensitive comments towards the late Whitney Houston.

This is where you could normally watch the video on this blog … but it appears KTLA.com isn’t big on that whole embed code concept.

Alas, head over to their website to view the video from Friday morning as Rubin tears KFI’s management and the conservative talk show duo a new one.

For years now, the most entertaining part of the Oscars has been Jimmy Kimmel‘s post-Academy Awards special.

The ABC late night talk show host landed some serious star power for his seventh special Thursday when the network announced Oprah Winfrey would join Kimmel on Feb. 26.

This should be a change of pace for Winfrey, who is normally doing the interviewing.

Kimmel is the right man behind the desk to make the former talk show giant squirm just a little bit while she promotes her new weekly series on OWN, Oprah’s Next Chapter.

Billy Crystal, Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Martin Scorsese will also join Kimmel and Coldplay will close out the show.

CNN has officially ended its 87-year relationship with Larry King.

No, we kid the King. He was with CNN for more than 25 years.

After ceding his daily talk show to Piers Morgan in 2011, King stayed on at the network to produce a series of special shows. But the network announced yesterday that it would no longer be airing those specials.

King’s last show–A Larry King Special: Dinner With the Kings–aired this past December.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t post last night’s Daily Show bit making fun of Time magazine’s ridiculous “pet friends” cover story. This would be about the 327th time in the past few years that Time‘s European, Asian and South Pacific readers get a story of global import on their cover while we Americans get the journalistic equivalent of a lobotomy.

Previously on FishbowlLA:
Time Magazine Wants Us to Viva La… Anxiety?

The Daily Caller‘s Tucker Carlson went on The O’Reilly Factor to talk about his latest “investigative” scoop. That would be his story on how various left-leaning columnists across America receive and report, without attribution, “propaganda” directly from the liberal media criticism site Media Matters. Among those with a propaganda inbox are LA Times media critic James Rainey and New York Times media writer Brian Stelter. Interestingly, Carlson’s story doesn’t cite a single example of either writer using Media Matters content. Instead, Carlson’s anonymous “insider” sources tell him they do.

Quite the scoop.

We reached out to Rainey to ask about his Media Matters-propaganda-using-ways, but haven’t heard back yet.

Welcome to the Guinness Book of World Records, Jeremiah Franco and Carin Shreve.

They set the Guinness World Record for longest continuous television viewing by watching 86 hours and 37 minutes of The Simpsons.

¡Ay, caramba!

Fox sponsored the contest in honor of the 500th episode of The Simpsons, which airs this Sunday.

Franco and Shreve walked away with $10,500 and likely a pair of gnarly bags under their eyes.

Cenk Uygur‘s online talk show The Young Turks is celebrating its 10th anniversary today. What began as Sirius Radio’s first talk show back in 2002 has transformed into a regular show on Current TV and an online network with more than 30 million viewers a month on YouTube.

Not bad.

Says Uygur: “Our ten year anniversary is a celebration of all of these people coming together to make an independent show happen. Together we’ve been fighting the power for the last ten years and the establishment better watch out, because we’re just getting started.”

Filmmaker Andrew Napier has also apparently been shooting behind-the-scenes at TYT for the past three years and released the trailed for his untitled documentary in honor of today’s anniversary. After the jump:

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The LA Times has a nice profile of BBC Worldwide Productions head Jane Tranter, who, three years ago, gave up a billion dollar programming budget in London to come to Los Angeles to adapt BBC shows to American audiences.

[T]ransporting a series is not easy. Humor, tone and relationships vary from culture to culture. Although some imports have been successful, including “Dancing With the Stars” and NBC‘s “The Office,” the TV scrap heap is littered with failed attempts.

Tranter tried to tally all of the British shows that had been developed for U.S. networks. “I stopped counting when I got to 85,” she said.

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On the heels of last week’s use of a pair of models to help with the weather forecast on Fox & Friends, KTLA Morning News producers upped the Sweeps ante today. In honor of Valentine’s Day, they paired weathermen Mark Kriski and Henry DiCarlo with a couple of lingerie-clad babes.

Actually, you have to hand it to KTLA for multi-tasking these women. The pair were on-set to model Frederick’s of Hollywood gear as part of this morning’s overall Valentine’s Day theme, and so it was just a hop, skip and a pump to get them in front of the green screen.

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