NBC? DEADLINE notes:
Entertainment content keeps ceding ground to sports on NBC‘s primetime schedule. Last fall marked the arrival of NBA basketball, which joined Sunday Night Football and college football. Next fall, the network is adding MLB baseball to the mix.
Yet, NBC is increasing the number of its primetime scripted series in 2026-27 as four new shows, dramas The Rockford Files and Line of Fire and comedies Sunset P.I. (single-cam) and Newlyweds (multi-cam), are joining the lineup with only two canceled, drama Brilliant Minds and comedy Stumble. (The Hunting Party remains in limbo.)
Two of the newcomers, Line of Fire and Newlyweds, are on the fall schedule, which also features a high profile unscripted addition, Peacock hit The Traitors‘ civilian edition.
Next up, a passing. Clyde Haberman (NEW YORK TIMES) reports on the passing of journalist Rex Reed:
Rex Reed, who across six decades reviewed films and wrote about movie stars in prose that was graceful and evocative but often also the literary equivalent of a poison-tipped dagger plunged between the shoulder blades, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.
A statement from the publicist Sean Katz said that a longtime friend, William Kapfer, confirmed the death, after a short illness.
Mr. Reed made no bones about his fascination with filmdom’s grandes dames of yesteryear — the Dietrichs, Bergmans, Lansburys and Mercouris — and he tended to write about them glowingly. “I am a fan of what was, not what is,” he said. Modern actresses barely raised his thick eyebrows. “The old broads are the ones who interest me the most,” he once told Newsweek. “Nothing bores me more than these miniskirted girls with nothing on their minds.”
Here he was on Bette Davis in 1968, when he was a regular contributor to The New York Times: “Froggy-eyed, lipstick-slashed or glowing like a Tiffany lamp, she is exciting enough, even when photographed through gauze, to make the latest youth idols about as interesting as a withered logarithm.”
Gwen Verdon was one of those performers, “rare as blue butterflies, who carry around their own lightning.” Dame Edith Evans had a “wonderful rococo voice that sounds like Mahler played on a dulcimer.” As for Myrna Loy, “she brings back the quiet aura of a time when kids fell in love to Dinah Shore records and nice women never took their aprons off until 5 p.m.”
But if Mr. Reed disliked someone or — worse — found the person merely uninteresting, it was wise to duck and cover.
His 1967 Times article on Michelangelo Antonioni — “If there is anything more excruciating than sitting through a Michelangelo Antonioni film, it’s sitting through a Michelangelo Antonioni interview” — led the Italian director to write a letter to the editor disputing Mr. Reed’s characterization of him. To Mr. Reed, Bette Midler was “a zaftig waif,” Peter Lawford a low-I.Q. “court jester” and Warren Beatty just plain insufferable.
[. . .]
An oft-quoted Reed takedown was his skewering of Barbra Streisand in 1966 after she kept him waiting longer than a David Lean epic. “Three-and-a-half hours late,” he wrote for The Times, “she plods into the room, falls into a chair with her legs spread out, tears open a basket of fruit, bites into a green banana and says to the reporters, ‘OK, you’ve got 20 minutes.’ ” What Ms. Streisand had to say about him later is best suited for impolite company.
[. . .]
Reviewing “Do You Sleep in the Nude?,” a collection of Mr. Reed’s writings and one of his eight books, Nora Ephron wrote in 1968 that it was impossible to read him “without wondering how on earth Reed gets his subjects to say the things they do.”
In a career spanning more than six decades, Reed became one of the most well-known voices in cultural criticism. He published eight books, acted in movies (playing himself in “Superman”), counted movie stars like Angela Lansbury as friends and often found himself in the spotlight for controversial comments. Most infamous among them was his assertion that Marlee Matlin’s Oscar win for “Children of a Lesser God” was a pity vote, and, decades later, comments about Melissa McCarthy’s weight and size in a review for “Identity Thief.” He also perpetuated a false conspiracy theory that Marisa Tomei’s 1992 Oscar win for “My Cousin Vinny” was fake.
Going out with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Amna Nawaz:
A nonprofit group trying to stop President Trump's reflecting pool renovation on the National Mall claims the project breaks federal law.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation filed a lawsuit today, saying the National Park Service violated an historic preservation act by repainting the pool -- quote -- "American flag blue." The complaint says the new color -- quote -- "will fundamentally alter the visual and experiential character of the pool."
The president announced the project last month and drove through the pool's construction site just last week. The New York Times is also reporting that its initial cost of less than $2 million has now ballooned to seven times that figure.
For more on the project, I'm joined now by one of the reporters covering that story. That's David Fahrenthold of The New York Times.
David, welcome back.
Let's begin with your reporting on this that shows that initial cost estimate from the president of $1.8 million now up to $13.1 million. What happened there?
David Fahrenthold, The New York Times:
Well, the -- President Trump has said multiple times that this project is only going to cost $1.8 million or less than $2 million. That's never been right.
From the beginning, the federal government had expected to pay $6.9 million for this contract. And then, on Friday, that cost jumped again by another 88 percent. So now we're talking about $13.1 million.
Amna Nawaz:
And the contractor for this project, your reporting also showed, had no previous federal contracts. How unusual is that for a renovation like this?
David Fahrenthold:
It's quite unusual for a renovation of this size and this sort of importance.
Remember, this is not a swimming pool. This is a pool that's about 2,000 feet long. It's been around since the 1920s. It has a lot of complicated problems that come from both its age and its size. And the contractor they chose to do it, not only is this their first federal contract, but it's not clear this is a swimming pool contractor at all.
Their Web site is more about lining pipes and culverts and fuel tanks. It's clear this is a very different project than the ones that they appear to be used to.
Amna Nawaz:
So folks will remember the images from last week that showed the president and his motorcade driving through that pool area. When we saw those, I know a lot of folks had the same question was, is that going to impact the pool in any way? What does your reporting show you on that?
David Fahrenthold:
Well, from folks we have talked to, it will not probably make the pool look any different in terms of reflectivity. If you're standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, you're standing at the World War II Monument on the other end, and you're looking across the pond at a low angle, it'll probably still be reflective.
The difference, though, may come when you see it from a higher angle, from an airplane or the top of the Washington Monument. This is a space that's meant to sort of be invisible. It's supposed to reflect back the gray stone and the trees all around it.
If what you see instead is kind of an artificial blue, like a -- the water hazard at a mini golf course, that could stand out in a very jarring way on the National Mall.
Amna Nawaz:
We know that the president has framed some of these renovations as part of a broader beautification effort ahead of those America 250 celebrations. What do we know about what that means about who's paying for much of this?
David Fahrenthold:
Well, in the cases -- in this case and in the case we wrote about recently about changes to the fountains around D.C., the government is paying for it.
It's not private donors. And the money they're using in this case is coming from people that go to national parks. If you go to a national park and pay an entrance fee, some of that money goes to the Park Service to pay for renovations. And that's the fund they're using here.
Amna Nawaz:
I know as we reported earlier that at least one nonprofit is trying to block this project. But this is one of several renovation projects that we know the Trump administration is looking to at least partially fund with taxpayer money.
We have seen the Kennedy Center renovation, the White House ballroom, and others. As you track this, as ethics watchdogs and other track this, what are some of the concerns that are coming up here?
David Fahrenthold:
One of the biggest concerns about this project and others around the area is that these are no-bid contracts. The government is supposed to let multiple vendors bid on jobs like this so the taxpayers get their best bang for the buck.
In this case, the Trump administration used sort of a special power to block out all competition and hand this job directly to a firm that President Trump says is close to him. He says, this is a company that worked on the swimming pools at his golf club in Northern Virginia.
And so what happens when you give a contract directly to somebody with no competition, you don't really know you're getting the best deal. You don't know that you're getting the best person for the job. And so it raises questions about why they're circumventing the normal contracting process and what we're losing in the process in terms of quality or maybe overpaying.
Kelly himself replied to Hegseth with the video below and wrote: “We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago and you said it would take ‘years’ to replenish some of these stockpiles. That's not classified, it's a quote from you. This war is coming at a serious cost and you and the president still haven't explained to the American people what the goal is.”
Washington Post military affairs correspondent Dan Lamothe also joined the discussion, writing: “Secretary Hegseth is again threatening Sen. Mark Kelly with legal action here. In this case, the comments from Kelly that Hegseth is claiming are an issue do not address specific munition numbers. That’s generally where classification comes into play. No sign of that here.”
Washington, D.C. – Today—as Trump proposes to slash domestic investments to help pay for a defense spending increase of roughly half a trillion dollars—U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, released the following statement after a new report found the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program saves participating Washington state families over $19,000 a year on child care.
“Trump is asking Congress to increase his war budget by $500 billion dollars and even said: ‘’We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care.’ Well, as a former preschool teacher and mom, I think that is just absurd,” said Senator Murray. “This is not a question of what’s possible—it’s a question of priorities. President Trump and congressional Republicans want to spend your taxpayer dollars on costly wars and golden ballrooms, and I’d like to help more families afford child care. Instead of dumping trillions of dollars into Trump’s reckless wars, we could be expanding crucial programs like CCDBG—we could be saving families thousands of dollars a year on child care. Half a trillion dollars would make high-quality child care affordable for every family that needs it, and it would mean employers wouldn’t have to worry about their employees missing work because they couldn’t find child care. The child care crisis is holding back families and holding back our economy. But putting the kind of money Trump is talking about for war into child care instead would make a world of change for all families.”
A new report has detailed how CCDBG subsidies help families in Washington state afford child care for kids under the age of five. The average cost of child care in Washington state is over $21,000 a year, or almost $1,800 per month. For families who qualify, CCDBG brings the cost of child care down to a maximum of $1,980 a year, or $165 per month for a family of three in Washington state. But, of the over 118,000 children who are eligible in Washington state to be served by CCDBG, only 15,435 kids are being served at the current funding levels—that means only 13% of kids who have families who are struggling to afford child care, are receiving support. Senator Murray has long pushed to change that and played a critical role in securing historic funding increases for the CCDBG program to help serve more families.
As Trump proposes spending $1.5 trillion on the defense budget—roughly half a trillion more than this year—raising costs on everyday essentials for working families, Senator Murray is leading Democrats in Congress to continue their push to help working people make ends meet—including by tackling the child care crisis. In the FY26 appropriations bills Senator Murray secured $8.8 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant program (CCDBG)—an $85 million or increase over fiscal year 2025—and $12.36 billion for Head Start, an $85 million increase over last year’s funding level. Sustained annual increases of federal investments in child care and Head Start are critical in tackling the child care crisis and helping to ensure more families can find and afford the quality, affordable child care and early childhood education options they need. Senator Murray also protected funding for Preschool Development Grants, which President Trump and House Republicans pushed to eliminate.
Senator Murray is Congress’ top advocate for child care, and her Child Care for Working Families Act would tackle the child care crisis head-on: ensuring families can afford the child care they need, expanding access to more high-quality options, stabilizing the child care sector, and helping ensure child care workers taking care of our nation’s kids are paid livable wages. The legislation will also dramatically expand access to pre-K, and support full-day, full-year Head Start programs and increased wages for Head Start workers. Under the legislation, which Senator Murray has introduced every Congress since 2017, the typical family in America will pay no more than $15 a day for child care—with many families paying nothing at all—and no eligible family will pay more than 7% of their income on child care.
###
-
-
-
-
-
Chump is a liar and a fool8 hours ago
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
No comments:
Post a Comment