On the 'CSI' Scene Without Petersen, Where Some People Need to Get a Clue

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif., Jan. 12

TV critics were taken to the set of "CSI" to see what a Q&A session would look like without William Petersen and to enjoy photo ops in the "CSI" morgue, which you'd think newspaper journalists would want to stay far away from, for obvious reasons.

Cast and exec-producers really ratcheted up the treacle, offering anecdotes about how "Billy was really definitive about how he wanted to leave the show," as if he were dead or something, and how Petersen was with the show nearly a decade and how awkward the last day was because they all had wanted to "have a moment with him alone to unzip" themselves and tell him how they felt, but he's not that kind of guy. And how they had tears in their eyes on the final day of shooting his final episode -- except, of course, that Petersen's going to return to the show from time to time "in an organic way," says executive producer Carol Mendelsohn, though not this season.

It didn't seem to play as weepy as the "CSI" people had hoped but, of course, they were talking to journalists who'd seen many of their own colleagues -- some of whom they'd worked with far longer than this group had worked with Petersen -- being shown the door at their places of employment, and those departing journalists weren't riding off in the sunset to work in theater while hanging on to a piece of the financial action because they're still going to be a producer, like Petersen. And, isn't the first rule of the entertainment industry to know your audience?

There were the usual number of embarrassing questions: "Might we see your lovely wife at some point" on the show? one critic asked Laurence Fishburne, the new male lead on the grisly procedural crime drama that is America's favorite scripted series.

And Fishburne inevitably got asked the question as to whether his being cast in the show might open the door to other African Americans being allowed to lead prime-time series. Fishburne "Hmmmmm-ed" dramatically, then answered that he hadn't stopped to think about it until a reporter asked him that a while ago and that he'd asked CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who responded, "Dennis Haysbert," who, of course, is the star of CBS's "The Unit." Which, of course, is hooey because that's not the most-watched show in the country -- "CSI" is.

Finally, Fishburne got around to an answer: "The good news is that I was asked to join this company because of my intelligence and my gifts as an actor and for that I'm extremely grateful. The fact I happen to be a man of color, I like to think of as a bonus. In much the same way I think of the man who will become our president in a week's time."

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NBC's broadcast of the three-hour Hollywood kegger otherwise known as the Golden Globe Awards jumped to an encouraging 14.6 million viewers Sunday. Glass-half-empty types noted that it was the show's second-smallest audience since 1995. But they should see the numbers it was doing before 1995, when it aired on cable. Even "Lipstick Jungle" is doing a bigger number than that!

Given that the awards ceremony had been off the air two years -- an eternity in TV time -- thanks to last year's writers' strike, and that the productions chalking up the wins included flicks "Slumdog Millionaire," "The Reader" and "Revolutionary Road" (who?) and the TV shows "John Adams" and "30 Rock" (a.k.a. the best sitcom no one's watching), it's really something of a miracle the show clocked nearly 15 million viewers.

But all those Gloomy Guses will insist on noting the 2007 Globescast snared 20 million viewers, and as recently as five years ago, the Globes show was rivaling the Academy Awards, with audience levels approaching 27 million viewers. From which we learn that the TV business has changed a lot in five years -- duh.

Oh, and this year's Golden Globes ceremony aired opposite the much ballyhooed return of "24," which had also been off the air since 2007 -- thank you, Hollywood writers.

Jack Bauer returned to get the country out of its latest pickle, and nearly 13 million tuned in. First, the good news: That's higher than the ratings Fox snared earlier this season with its lame-ish November sweeps "24" TV movie, "Redemption." But it's 20 percent fewer viewers than watched the previous season debut, way back in January '07. In fact, it was "24's" least-watched season opener since October 2003 -- back before Fox figured out it should debut in January and run straight through without rerun. That opener logged 11.6 million viewers.

Last year's Lamest Ever Golden Globes News Conference, in which infotainers from celebrity suck-up shows read the names of winners, averaged 6 million viewers -- which we're guessing is roughly the number of people in the country who count with their toes.