Q: Who thinks up the shows on TLC? Most of them should not even be on the air. “Toddlers & Tiaras” is just a way that the parents exploit those little girls. And now there’s “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” What a shame that people even watch shows like this! Look what happened to “Jon & Kate Plus 8” — it was a train wreck waiting to happen, and it did!
A: Most of these sorts of shows are either the idea of a network executive or, more likely, a production company pitched the show to a network executive.
In the case of “Honey Boo Boo,” it’s a spinoff of “Toddlers & Tiaras,” where Alana (aka Honey Boo Boo) and her mother, June, first appeared.
Q: I keep hoping to hear that some other network has picked up Fox’s “The Finder,” which I had come to enjoy hugely. Its parrot-head laid-back setting, the three or four main characters and “gypsy” backstory, the genuinely engaging puzzles around which each episode was built — it seems unbelievable that it should have been canceled in the first place, but then I have learned to live with the bitter realization that if I like a show and think it intelligent, it is almost certainly doomed.
Have you heard any encouraging news on this front? The similarly themed “Perception” just made me want to weep for what was lost.
A: Sorry, but “The Finder” is done and won’t be back on any network. But its star, Geoff Stults, just signed on to appear in the new fall Fox sitcom “Ben & Kate”
Q: Where was “Covert Affairs,” set in Cuba, filmed? I am assuming that we cannot film in Cuba.
A: Production on “Covert Affairs” is based primarily in Toronto, but the show does travel for some episodes. This one was filmed in the Dominican Republic, which stood in for Cuba. Other shooting locations this season include Barcelona, Paris, Puerto Rico, Morocco and Budapest.
Q: I’ve become a big fan of “Good Afternoon America.” Do you think ABC would ever consider adding it permanently to the afternoon lineup?
A: I sure hope not if it means “General Hospital” would be canceled and there’d be renewed gnashing of teeth from fans of the “stories.”
When it debuted, “Good Afternoon America” improved on the ratings of canceled daytime talk show “The Revolution.” But in the weeks that followed, its ratings began to fall to below the ratings that canceled soap “One Life to Live” used to achieve.
Of course, “GAA” is a lot cheaper to produce than a soap, and ABC has not been shy about suggesting the series could live on, but at this point that won’t happen unless either Katie Couric’s new talk show or another ABC daytime program bites the dust.
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