Top Chef Junior Tops Bravo’s Menu
Top Chef is reducing its serving size. And server size.
Bravo is catering its latest reality-competition series for the pint-size set, announcing plans to develop Top Chef Junior.
The network has ordered eight episodes for the spinoff of its haute cuisine hit, which will pit teens ages 13-16 against one another in a series of cooking competitions until one earns the title of junior Top Chef.
While there’s no word yet on when the production will get cooking, the original Top Chef wraps up its fourth season tonight.
I don’t know why people aren’t watching The Mole
It’s only the first episode, but people seem to be avoiding ABC’s new edition of The Mole like it was on The CW or something.
The first episode of the show this past Monday at 10pm got a 1.9 rating in the important 18 to 49 demographic. It came in third place in the time slot and lost a lot of the lead-in from The Bachelorette.
I don’t understand why viewers don’t make this one of the top reality shows on television. I mean, if you love reality television, why don’t you watch this show? Is it the time slot? Is it the fact that you have to figure things out on the show yourself? I think this is actually one of the most interesting parts of the show, that it’s actually a reality show that you can actually play along with. You don’t get that with The Bachelorette or Survivor. It’s actually a reality show mixed with a mystery/spy series. It’s a TV mystery series, where viewers have to guess who the bad guy is, mixed with a reality competition series. And it has great music and great Amazing Race-like stunts and worldwide locales and is immensely entertaining. Why aren’t more people, especially people who watch reality shows, watching The Mole?
Are You Young and Female? The CW’d Like to Talk
At 36, Jennie Garth must have gotten onto the CW on a special waiver.
The network today unveiled a new fall schedule that, from the Garth-graced 90210 redo (new cast shot above) to a Project Runway-aspiring new reality show, focuses almost exclusively on wooing women no older than 34.
As previously announced, the male-oriented Smackdown goes. The male-fronted Smallville and Supernatural stay, presumably getting by on their good looks.
Also coming back: Watercooler shows Gossip Girl and America's Next Top Model; barely rated shows Everybody Hates Chris and The Game; and the once-endangered One Tree Hill.
Reaper won a reprieve, and a sophomore season, as a midseason replacement. Aliens in America wasn't so lucky; the comedy didn't win anything but a cancellation.
Of the three new fall shows announced, one was hardly new to anyone paying attention.
90210, the update of Beverly Hills 90210, has been buzzed about for weeks. Even Garth's hireshe'll play her old, sorry, former 90210 self, Kelly Taylor, on a "guest star" basiswas leaked. As previously noted, the new show will focus on a pair of siblings à la Brandon and Brenda Walsh, who enter West Beverly High as the new kids on the expensive block.
90210 will be paired on Tuesdays with the CW's other new scripted show, Surviving the Filthy Rich, about a young woman (natch) who trades in a career in journalism to become a tutor to a pair of rich kidssorry, rich girls.
Stylista, the third new show, could fuel a rivalry with the Lifetime-bound Project Runway.
The CW reality series, from Tyra Banks and the creators of, yes, Project Runway, is set at Runway judge Nina Garcia's old, sorry, former magazine, Elle, and features 11 Lauren Conrad-types competing for a job at the publication. The show's early winner is Banks, who earlier today saw ABC pick up her and Ashton Kutcher's untitled reality competition series as a midseason replacement.
The fall schedule is the CW's third. The network has yet to put together a season as "big" as either of its ancestors, the WB and UPN. After scrapping Saturdays, the CW plans to downscale even further, turning Sundays over to an independent studio that'll produce four as-yet unspecified series for the night.
So far this season, the CW is averaging 2.6 million total viewers, including the pesky old and occasionally male kind.
Here's a night-by-night look at the network's 2008-09 fall lineup:
Monday: Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill
Tuesday: 90210, Surviving the Filthy Rich
Wednesday: America's Next Top Model, Stylista
Thursday: Smallville, Supernatural
Friday: Everybody Hates Chris, The Game, America's Next Top Model (reruns)
Miley Still Working for the Mouse
Miley Cyrus is ready for another, more age-appropriate close-up.
Just a few days after her Vanity Fair photo flap exploded to epic proportionsand a few days after rumors swirled that Disney would be keeping a closer watch over the Mouse House moneymakerthe tween queen is getting ready to return to the spotlight, prepping to make her first postscandal public appearance at a concert this weekend.
E! News has confirmed that the 15-year-old, who has been working in Nashville this week on her upcoming Hannah Montana movie, will go forward as planned with a special concert set to take place at (where else?) the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando on Saturday.
Cyrus was definitely not in a chatty mood when she was corned by a camera crew in a Target parking lot.
Asked how she was holding up, Cyrus simply said, "Good, thank you."
When the questions turned to her Annie Leibovitz snaps, however, Cyrus issued a "no comment."
Meanwhile, though the concert is getting filmed this weekend, the singing spot won't be televised until this summer, when it will air as part of the cable network's Disney Channel Games, a competition series which, in addition to Cyrus, will feature appearances from fellow homegrown network talent the Jonas Brothers, the Cheetah Girls' Sabrina Bryan, Adrienne Bailon and Kiely Williams and Dylan and Cole Sprouse.
As far as Cyrus' participation continuing as scheduled, Disney spokeswoman Brenda Kelly Grant told News that "nothing has changed on our production."
The weekend concert will also help to ease Cyrus back into a bigger spotlight, which she will no doubt feel when she returns to an even bigger stage May 10, when she is scheduled to perform at KIIS-FM's annual Wango Tango concert in Orange County.
Reporting by Whitney English