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'American Idol's' Song and Dance

Same time, same channel:
Same time, same channel: "American Idol" judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell. (By Kevin Winter -- Getty Images)
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Thursday is a big advertising night on television and a special favorite of movie studios because that's the night a lot of viewers make their weekend plans.

Fox suits, who had pulled the media's strings on this one like they've seldom been played before, got a real kick out of yesterday's big "reveal," which started with this headline:

The Guessing Is Over as 'American Idol' Returns Tuesday and Wednesday on Fox

"With all of the speculation and rumor, it's great to finally announce the premiere of the second half of our season," Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguori crowed in the announcement.

"It takes discipline to hold back '24' and 'American Idol' [for a January debut] but doing so allows us to strengthen our schedule across the week and to give our viewers nonstop excitement from January through May," he added.

With the announcement that "Idol" would not -- repeat, not -- move to Thursday, NBC is now free to maybe move "My Name Is Earl" to that night. And how about moving out that loser "Joey," which last week got stomped by Charlie Brown? Just a suggestion.

* * *

The PBS show that contributed so much to Ken Tomlinson's exit from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is moving to Fox News Channel.

Yes, "Journal Editorial Report" -- your tax dollars at work to the tune of $4 million in CPB money for startup costs, pilot program and 35 first-season episodes -- is now going to work to make money for News Corp.

Those figures, by the way, are from the internal investigation conducted by CPB Inspector General Kenneth Konz, results of which were made public last month.

The Wall Street Journal told PBS last month that it would not do a third season of the show with the programming service and, soon thereafter, said in an editorial that the show had been "blackballed by some of the largest PBS stations."

"The last time we checked, PBS stations in eight of the top 30 TV markets don't run the show at all and another four do so in the dead zone of the post-midnight morning," the Journal said in its editorial.


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