Yes, Oprah's leaving daytime syndication. But don't worry, she'll be back.

You won't find this on my résumé, but 12 years ago, I worked for three long months at King World, home of Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and The Oprah Winfrey Show (among others). I won't bore you with the details (it was not fun), but I do recall sitting in a meeting where a bevy of overpaid execs were ecstatic that Oprah was not stepping down from her top-rated podium. "Whew! No need to worry about our stock options now," laughed the head of the division. "We got her for two more years."
  Now, after talking about leaving her top-rated syndicated talk show for the past 12 years, she will finally do so in 2011. Personally, all I can say is, good riddance. Don't get me wrong, I recognize Oprah's impact. Everything she touches turns to gold. But I am just plain sick and tired of hearing about her departure. Aren't you? And I know damn well—as you should, too—that she is not "retiring." There is no way that the egomaniac of the century is walking away from her daily exposure. She feeds from this. She lives by this. And she is not walking away. It ain't gonna happen. My guess is Oprah will plop herself smack in the middle of OWN, the cable network she's creating in conjunction with Discovery Communications. And that, no doubt, will give the cable net a shot in the ratings arm. But what Oprah apparently does not know is that the cable platform is not daytime syndication, and there is no reason to believe she will attract an audience of the same magnitude. It's much easier to tune into Oprah on channel 7 in your local market from force of habit than find her on one of the higher channels. Looking into my crystal ball, I can already see the headlines in 2012 or 2013 about Oprah's amazing return to daytime syndication, once she realizes her impact has diminished on cable. Just wait. You'll see.
  As I always have said, there is only one Oprah. You can't duplicate her. And chances are Sony Pictures Television's Dr. Oz, who owes his success to Oprah, will inherit a large percentage of the Oprah time periods. But September 2011 is almost two years away. And for 20 long months, all we will be hearing about is Oprah departure. Personally, I can't stand it. Can you?

—Posted by Marc Berman

Do magazine awards still matter?

Given everything that magazine editors have to worry about these days, from staunching newsstand losses to launching brand extensions to helping hawk ads, how much do awards still matter? That was Glamour editor Cindi Leive's first question to a panel of editors Wednesday at an American Society of Magazine Editors luncheon on winning National Magazine Awards. When expense budgets are tight, perhaps awards matter less. Submissions for the past year's so-called Ellies were off 13 percent. In such an environment, "I do think [awards] give you a partial, limited immunity for a while," quipped John Rasmus, editor of National Geographic Adventure, whose award-winning magazine recently cut its frequency from 10 to eight times a year. Panelists also mulled judges' perceived bias in favor of big, well-financed titles and against women's magazines. Peggy Northrop, global editor of Reader's Digest, wondered why female judges are "especially critical" of women's titles, while admitting she used to take them less seriously herself. This year, with ASME's introduction of several new digital awards categories, women's magazines could level the playing field. That is, if they can scrape together the submission fees.

—Posted by Lucia Moses

Edward's always been a sucker for Volvo

What drives beautiful, brooding vampire Edward Cullen? His eternal love for high schooler Bella Swan, of course. Oh, and his Volvo XC60. There may be some head-scratching over the promotional tie-in and sweepstakes between New Moon, the Twilight sequel opening Thursday night, and the European automaker. But one need look no further than the source material—the best-selling novels by Stephenie Meyer—to find that Volvo is one of the few brands mentioned by name in the books. Meyer, probably not wanting to date the material, steered so far away from brand shilling that Bella digs into vamp lore using "her favorite search engine," works at a mom-and-pop sporting goods store and favors grungy jeans and flannels over designer duds. In other words, no one would confuse the Twilight series with Cover Girl-sponsored Cathy's Book. Across more than 2,400 pages, there are fleeting mentions of brands like McDonald's and Monster Garage, but it's clear from the first book that Edward loves his Volvo. Vampire go fast! (And he buys Bella an Audi sports car to replace her beater truck, which frustrated him because it topped out at 50 mph.) Meyer, a confessed car nut, indulged that one passion—and obviously an obsession for human/undead romance—in the quadrilogy. New Moon, not incidentally, is tracking to be the top-grossing movie this weekend. Fandango reports that it's racked up the most advance ticket sales of any flick in the online service's history (that includes The Dark Knight and Star Wars: Episode III), and MovieTickets.com says it's outselling Twilight by four-to-one. Twihards, on your mark!

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

TV shows called 'Hank' never do very well

Don't you think the networks would know by now that programs called Hank work no better in 2009 than they did in 1966? ABC is now as Hank-less as NBC was 43 years ago. The first version ran at least one full season. As a former CEO, Kelsey Grammer's Hank character was familiar enough. (Did someone say Hank Greenberg?) Less familiar is the '60s Hank, an oddball college student who attended class in disguises. (Late actor Dick Kallman portrayed him.) Perhaps the world was different then. Or perhaps NBC has compensated with Community, another show about college students. That sitcom now runs in the same slot as their original Hank.

—Posted by Jim English

Tired of hearing the word 'douche' on TV? It appears you are not alone on that.

Television is pretty douche-y these days. In fact, one character has called another character a "douche" no fewer than 76 times on prime-time network series this year, with shows like NBC's Community, ABC's Grey's Anatomy, CBS's The New Adventures of Old Christine and the CW's Vampire Diaries all featuring the insult in recent weeks. I learned this tally from The New York Times, which commissioned the right-wing Parents Television Council to do a douche count. That number is way up from just a few years ago, when only six characters got busted for being douchebags. (By the way, I think I'm more offended by the PTC getting hired to search TV for "naughty" colloquialisms than by the misuse of a word for the sake of comedy. Sorry, Massengill). The story further reveals that the tube has a whole passel of "bitches" (triple the number of a decade ago) and a heaping helping of "jackasses" (mentioned in 34 family-hour shows). And a lot of things just "suck." That word's come up 232 times this season in series that air between 8 and 9 p.m. But back to douche, a pejorative term that's apparently so titillating to the Grey Lady that it spawned an entire coarsening-of-our-televised-world story, only about a dozen years late. And they totally forgot to mention Jon Gosselin. What a bunch of asshats.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Miracle Whip's marketing team is not as massively dope as we had hoped

If you watched last night's Colbert Report, like I did, you were probably expecting some hard-core Miracle Whip attitude. But the self-described "bold marketing team at Miracle Whip" seemed to choose the less-is-more Miracle Whip attitude. Using the same spot three times over was apparently their interpretation of "airspace dominance." Oh, but wait. There was a lackluster and unfunny change of voiceover copy addressing the beef they have with Stephen Colbert. After the show, my boyfriend turned to me and said that if we had Miracle Whip in the refrigerator, he would have thrown it out. I said we don't use language like that in this house. Personal reactions aside, the most dominant and memorable moment? Stephen Colbert shaving Woody Harrelson's head while singing a duet of the National Anthem. That was the true definition of bold.

—Posted by Cindee Weiss

Mayonnaise lover Stephen Colbert will be swimming in Miracle Whip very soon

Click the ad to enlarge. When a sandwich spread (ewww) announces that it's mad as hell and it's not going to take it anymore, you know the Earth has spun off its axis. This past summer, Miracle Whip decided it was no longer going to be the stepchild of the condiment world. So, in a new ad campaign by mcgarrybowen, the Whip attempted to prove its hipness and coolness and anti-mayo-ness by showing hip, cool, anti-mayo people eating a lot of sandwiches and laughing. A lot of people, including Stephen Colbert, felt differently. Colbert went so far as to defend mayonnaise on his show. Now comes the really fun part. Today, Miracle Whip has gone and declared war on Stephen Colbert. The brand has apparently bought every ad slot on The Colbert Report this evening, and placed the ad shown here in newspapers warning Colbert that his commercial breaks will be filled with "mayonay-sayers" who will be "in your face and massively dope." I'm intrigued and scared by this. Intrigued by the prospect of how Colbert will top his previous parody, and scared that after that much of a Whippin, I may never eat a sandwich again.

—Posted by Cindee Weiss

Eight more long days until James Franco begins his run on 'General Hospital'

There are a couple of reasons why Nov. 20 is marked on my calendar. First, it's Absurdity Day. Which segues nicely into the second reason: James Franco stars on General Hospital! Actually, as a long-lapsed viewer, I can't wait for the two-month story arc that will bring Franco to the small-screen melodrama and weave him into an organized-crime thread on the show. Judging from the promo clip below, released this week by ABC, he plays an artist, he's mysterious, he's adorable (as usual), and he's embroiled in some murder plot. Sweet! The Spider-Man, Pineapple Express and Milk co-star reportedly approached the team at GH because he wanted the challenge of cramming a couple of film scripts' worth of work into a few days of shooting, as is required for daytime TV. (Don't even think about using that TelePrompTer.) He got what he came for, he recently told New York magazine. And his TV work isn't finished yet. He has a guest-starring role coming up in 30 Rock. It's a good time to be a Francofan.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

'Gossip Girl' threesome doesn't amount to much, but the ratings soar anyway

Lots of people are talking about Gossip Girl today because a mousey character started to roar. Go Eric! Wait, there was a threesome? Judging from the blogs and message boards today, the much-hyped three-way sexcapade didn't impress fans nearly as much as the blackmailing, backstabbing and scheming of good-boy-gone-deliciously-bad Eric van der Woodsen. As for that sexual tripling—among Dan, his movie-star girlfriend Olivia and his long-suffering BFF Vanessa—is drawing comparisons to spin-the-bottle in the heat department. In other words, it was awfully PG. The run-up included tequila shots and a list of "15 things you must do before graduating college in New York," but viewers saw only a fairly chaste glimpse of the actual deed. I doubt I'm alone when I say I'm looking forward to the fallout and the flashbacks. The CW soap saw a 20 percent ratings bump over the previous week, with 2.3 million viewers tuning in. That number's likely to rise substantially when time-shifted viewing is counted. So, the network has a solid start to the November sweeps, and the Parents Television Council now has the back half of the season to go nuts about.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

John Lithgow is back in black in 'Dexter'

Even though I just got done giving Dexter's webisodes a tongue lashing, I'm still head-over-heels for the Showtime program. It's my new Lost. I can't get enough of it. Sure, there are speed bumps here and there (bad acting, some terrible subplots), but it engages me every time I watch it. Goosebumps abound! And the writing can't be beat. Season four is no exception, with the entrance of seasoned actor John Lithgow, guest starring as the Trinity Killer, a psychopathic serial killer who murders in threes. I must say, it's great to see Lithgow playing the bad guy again (even though we have to endure his 60-plus-year-old bare bottom in the first episode). He was everybody's least favorite dad in Footloose, the demented psychiatrist in Raising Cain, and a mountain climber's worst nightmare in Cliffhanger. Now, he's a twisted murderer—possibly the best bad guy role of his career. I predict an Emmy nod for this role at some point.

—Posted by Will Levith