Flashpoint

The complete list of winners at the inaugural awards

Riding on his TV success, Hugh Dillon digs up his old music demons with a solo album

A lack of reality kills them in the ratings

Via TV, Eh?, a German publication recently had an interview with Enrico Colantoni to promote Flashpoint‘s German TV premiere. He also says he hasn’t heard anything about the long-rumoured, ever-elusive possibility of a Veronica Mars movie.

Via Diane,  CBS has rendered inoperative some of my jokes about how American shows can’t compete with Canadian shows in the marketplace. Or at least they’re inoperative until 2010.

CBS’s fall schedule has been announced; aside from the network picking up Medium after NBC dropped it (it should be an excellent fit on CBS, which produces it) and the unfortunate decision to move The Big Bang Theory to 9:30 — from a ratings perspective, it may be sound; it’s unfortunate for those of us who liked having the convenient TBBT/HIMYM hour — the big news is that Flashpoint has been renewed. It won’t be on the fall schedule, since Medium and Ghost Whisperer will be paired for what I’m hoping they’ll call “Psychic Pfridays,” but it will be returning as a mid-season replacement in 2010. CBS makes this announcement after canceling other procedurals on its schedule, like Shawn Ryan’s The Unit. Clearly this is proof that American shows cannot compete in the free market.

So I think I speak for all of us when I say that Flashpoint‘s good Thursday ratings on CBS are a major foreign-policy triumph for the entire nation.

Well, Flashpoint is doing pretty well down there, isn’t it? Or at least, it has a chance. CBS is moving it from Friday to Thursday — a promotion if there ever was one — and Advertising Age, which after all speaks to the people who actually run television, recently pegged this show as one for advertising folk to keep an eye on:

In the money: NRDC Equity Partners, owner of the upscale American Lord & Taylor department store chain, finally achieved its goal of buying HBC. As a consumer I’m thrilled (in a guilty kind of way), mainly at the prospect of seeing my dowdy local Bay store get a facelift and start offering clothing brands I want to buy. I even like their pick for CEO. Today it was announced that Jeffrey Sherman, former president and COO of the Polo Retail Group, is the Bay’s new top gun. With experience overseeing the Polo stores internationally and looking after Club Monaco for a while, he might be able to inject the Bay with a little style.