This was Saturday night at the House of Heldenfels: While my wife ironed, I worked on a newsletter for the arts-booster group at our son's high school. When the ironing was done, we worked together on the newsletter.

This was Sunday night: Having made 500 copies of the newsletter that afternoon, we folded them and stuffed them into envelopes. Next up is labeling, followed by getting them mailed.

In between, we saw our son perform twice in a show at his school. Students had to pick and perform show tunes, and he did a little comedic piece that showed him off well. Such moments bring out the proud papa in me — I can't deny I have a certain amount of bias in favor of my son, but I can also see how he has grown and improved at performing. Then there was the putting up of a new storm door on the front of the house.

It went well until it came time to put the handle on, when the limitations of my drill, and my limitations at drilling, became evident; we have someone coming to take care of the handle today. (Later Monday: It's fixed, just in time for the crummy weather heading our way.)

On the TV side, I caught a little bit of football and managed to catch up on some TV from the last couple of weeks: "My Name Is Earl" (still funny), "Everybody Hates Chris" (not as good as usual last week), "The Office" (liked the Friday/Saturday prank, thought the main plot dragged), "Gilmore Girls."

I wasn't entirely pleased to see the Lorelai/Rory reconciliation because it felt so abrupt; even if Rory had been worrying about her life for some weeks, the Jess-inspired epiphany seemed like a let's-get-this-done-during-sweeps story. (Similarly, the Luke-has-a-daughter plot looked like a clumsy way to keep the wedding stalled.) And trust me, if you tried to stake out the Beacon Journal's office to get a job, you would not find the success Rory had. So I'm hoping that there will still be issues between Rory and Lorelai, not a return to their old relationship as if nothing happened; at least we know that Emily is not done feeling hurt.

I hope to catch up on some other things, and to file a few more posts here before Thanksgiving. Definitely planning a few notes about tomorrow's "Nip/Tuck," where a former "American Dreams" star goes for a big makeover — and I don't mean the plastic surgery kind.

I recently put my 200th post on this blog. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. But I should have. If my blog was a TV show, 200 posts would be a TV event.

If I had paid proper attention to my blog, the 200th post would be a Very Special Beacon TV. I might have offered highlights of previous posts, and sit on my couch with the other members of the Beacon TV cast to talk about it. We would agree that we're like a family — "a dysfunctional family!" someone would quip — but that we really cherish working together, and  that we spend a lot of time hanging out off-blog. The network has always been very supportive, even in the tough times, we would say. The vision of the show is strong. We're doing our best work.

I could also have outtakes from the blog — basically some really bad ideas that I started and never finished. There could even be bloopers, most of which would involve my inept attempts at pasting in network press releases and linking to other sites. For instance, I wasted a bunch of time today because I kept clicking on an "envelope" logo — for e-mail — instead of a "chain link" logo — to link to another site.

Wouldn't that be a great moment for my special? Or I could save it for an extra on the "Beacon TV" DVD.

Some of the clips would have to go with my interview on my network's morning show. The two-hour primetime news-magazine tribute will wait until the night of my very last Beacon TV post, and I'm not ready to leave the network yet.

On the other hand, I might get some prime time on cable. James Lipton could have me on "Inside the Actors Studio." He would have done some amazing research about me. I would look impressed and a tad embarrassed, but would remember that he introduced me as "not merely someone whose place in the blogging pantheon has long been assured, but one who has turned the ether of the Internet in the ambrosia of literature."

Anyway, back on the morning show, the host would giggle at my every joke and urge people to check out my Very Special Beacon TV. Sort of like being on E! just after I won something. The host would sound very sincere, too, and no one would ever, ever think that it was all a big sham set up just because we were on the same network. News is news, right? The show would have me on because my 200th blog is a watershed event, not simply as marketing. Right?

But the buildup to the 200th episode would be worth it. I would have decided not to do the clip show (which will work much better as the hour-long special before my extended-edition Beacon TV finale, which I haven't announced yet). Instead, I would make the 200th post "a Beacon TV unlike any you have ever seen before."

– Someone would die unexpectedly (except to all the people who had found out and posted it on a message board).

–  Or I would announce that I was leaving Beacon TV to join the world tennis tour, only to be brought back at episode's end when I realized that Beacon TV was the best home I had ever had.

– Or another cast member would be desperately ill, and — in an Emmy-nominated moment — I would cry and pray for my co-star's recovery, and the audience would cheer when she came out of her coma.

– Or I'd just bare my soul, and my butt.

All this would be even better because I would have timed my 200th post for sweeps. Great promo opportunity. Not that I would do this just to bring more people to Beacon TV. I would be pushing the envelope, expanding my range, stretching my acting, proving my chops, taking a risk and pursuing my art. It's too bad I missed my chance.

Maybe for the 300th post…

You may have heard that Oprah Winfrey is crediting Roger Ebert with getting her into TV syndication — and therefore making Oprah the mighty presence that she is today. The always useful www.tvtattle.com  today has Ebert's description of that meeting, and some background about his acquaintance with Oprah, which you can find here.

You may be amused by Ebert's math. I thought he also gave a pretty apt description of what one could encounter on the talk-show circuit — and you can see how much he still misses old TV partner Gene Siskel.

Fans of old-time TV may recognize the title of this post, since it is also the title of Sid Caesar's 1982 autobiography. I thought of it tonight because of my absence from the blog, an absence I didn't particularly enjoy. I have fun with this thing.

But I spent the better part of today finishing another thing, one that has become a Thanksgiving tradition for the Beacon Journal: the annual listing of Christmas-season TV specials. Since it tries to be comprehensive, and since it is arranged chronologically (so any show that is repeated has to be listed for almost every repeat), it is rather long and time-consuming. But readers like it. Some even call in the weeks leading up to its publication (on Thanksgiving Day, when the paper is fat enough to accommodate this great print beast), to make sure they don't miss it — then clip it on their refrigerators as a reference.

Still, as I said, it takes time, and today and tonight were the times I had for it. Not all of that time, either. I went to the office early to write my DVD column for Friday's paper, and a feature about a TV-memorabilia museum in Akron. Then I had to attend a couple of meetings at work. And I had a video to watch, which had to be done at home because it kept freezing in the cantankerous player at the office. I also saw my family, at least for a little while.

But the specials list is now done. I have a couple of other projects that need completing early next week, but I feel some relief — and am looking forward to seeing the stuff backlogged in the DVR, and to talking about it here.

(I did manage to get to "Veronica Mars" on Wednesday, and am still pondering what was going on there — didn't it feel unfinished, almost as if it was the beginning of a two-parter? No, no, won't get started. It's late. Sleep well, all.)

Some technical difficulties this morning and a packed schedule have kept me from filing today. I hope to post sometime this evening.

Tonight was one of those times when I wished I had this whole season of "Lost" to watch at once, whether because I had stored up all the episodes, or had the DVD, or someone made the whole thing available at VOD. Then this would be another chapter in a skein that I could watch unravel instead of a semi-event — the return of a show after weeks of absence, the resumption of a narrative that had been interrupted, like a book you start on a trip, then leave on the plane and don't get around to resuming until much later.

If I could watch this as that single chapter, then I might feel less dissatisfaction. After all, the idea behind the episode — to show us the saga of "Lost" from the point of view of the other flight survivors — was an intriguing one. And in most respects it was superior to having the characters verbally recap their side of the adventure in the sort of clumsy expository speeches you find on lower-quality soap operas. ("Well, Jean, it's so good to see you again after so much has happened, what with Eric's amnesia and Vita's affair with the pool boy and the shooting that came about when Lyle found out about Vita, and decided to have an affair of his own …")

An interesting idea, yes, but not so interesting in execution. We were still spending just an hour trying to get to know new characters, when we had had an entire season to get to know the original ones. The resulting shorthand made a lot of the people seem, well, dull. I wondered if the makers of "Lost" had exhausted all their best ideas for survivors when they conceived the series, and some of these were rescued from the reject pile. And extending the episode with a final sequence that went over ground that had already been covered was less of a dramatic device than a way of dragging us along into the next hour.

But when I try to think of this as a single chapter, without the weight that a New Episode! must bear, it feels pretty good. Lots of information, lots of hints — the stuffed bear, another glimpse of the bunker, the insight into the real Others (smarter and more sophisticated than they at first seemed), mysteries surrounding characters — and some nice touches, like Mr. Eko's mourning period (or so I saw it) and its conclusion. So I wasn't disenchanted as much as impatient. I'm ready to turn the page, and "Lost" hasn't let me yet.

No longer appealing to the broadcast networks, the Miss America Pageant moved to cable — specifically CMT. You might have thought that meant the pageant would move to Nashville, in keeping with its heartland foundation. But no. It's going to Las Vegas for a telecast in January 2006.

All right, so Atlantic City didn't seem like the best location for a pageant now planned for January. Vegas will at least be warm. But it is also famous as A Hub for Underclad Women, and not merely underclad but spectacular-looking, clad or not.

It is no accident that the "Las Vegas" series has some very beautiful women as regulars. Otherwise, they would be diminished by the beauties serving as props in so many of the show's scenes.

In a Vegas context, even a Miss America contestant who is the best-looking woman ever to come out of Pocatello, Idaho, will be fourth runner-up to the girls lined up at the bar in any casino you can name. And since the Las Vegas of popular imagination is fundamentally about sin and skin (in either order you prefer), the fantasy women of Las Vegas hint at possibilities unimagined by most Miss America contenders (or at least unimagined whenever the judges are listening).

I know, "Miss America" is supposed to be about talent and scholarships and charming Middle America. But that's the thinking that cost it a broadcast TV contract. Now it needs to be about something more alluring, more dangerous. (Country music, nominally CMT's bread and butter, is also a home to leggy women, dark-eyed men, drinking to excess and other roads to perdition.)

Unfortunately, it is going to draw on a pool of competitors who have spent years honing their talents and freeze-drying their intellect to meet the image the pageant was long based on. They have also been groomed to a different, uh, visual standard. They did not need much to stand out in Atlantic City, famous as a waterside resort for families who couldn't afford a trip to a really good beach, and for the sort of seediness shown in the movie "Atlantic City." The casinos haven't done much to change that image, as far as I can tell. Do you imagine anyone saying with a straight face, "What happens in Atlantic City …" ?

Think of it this way. If a mid-level hooker in Las Vegas married a plumbing-supply mogul in New Jersey, dropped a couple of kids, divorced the mogul, married an auto-parts salesman with a drinking problem, had another kid, got divorced again, had trouble finding work, developed a drinking problem of her own and then — a dozen years after she left Vegas — wound up sober and working as a hostess in Atlantic City, then she would still be considered one of the better looking women in town. And that would even hold up during "Miss America."

So it's going to be tough for the new crowd of Miss America candidates in Las Vegas. I can imagine the directors of the TV production already scouting locations, trying to avoid shots with too much local pulchritude.

As I mentioned in a previous post, TV stars have had a tough time being declared People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive." So it is again, as the 2005 winner is Matthew McConaughey. You can read more about him here, including a profile that makes McConaughey sound very Playboy Playmate-like. An excerpt: "McConaughey is fluent in Spanish, cites the dictionary as his favorite book ('I love to look up words') and calls his mom, Kay, every Sunday." I didn't read far enough to see if it listed his turn-ons and turn-offs.

As for TV, the magazine does have a list — and photos — of 13 runners-up for SMA: Patrick Dempsey, Terrence Howard, Viggo Mortensen, Vince Vaughn, Nick Lachey, Heath Ledger, Daniel Dae Kim, Keith Urban, Ian McShane, Matt Damon, Denis Leary, Anderson Cooper and Clive Owen.

Fair number of TV folk there — Dempsey, Kim, Cooper, McShane (because of "Deadwood") and Leary (for "Rescue Me"). You could also make an argument for Lachey, thanks to "Newlyweds," and Howard, who besides making movies is a presence on TV ("Lackawanna Blues," "Their Eyes Were Watching God").

The following arrived in the e-mail today from the broadcast networks. I'll have a few comments after:

Contrary to earlier claims that Digital Video Recorders would have an adverse impact on ad-supported television, executives from major broadcast networks released today clear evidence showing that homes with DVRs watch significantly more television, and could increase the average primetime audience for a program by an average of 4 percent.

In a presentation to reporters earlier today, the networks highlighted multiple reports showing that DVR households watched 12 percent more television, and that they are exposed to a greater number of commercial impressions. The results of these studies, though early, confirm what the networks’ own proprietary studies have found all along: DVRs increase the viewing of television’s most popular programming, as well as commercials.

          Among the highlights presented today:

n When factoring in DVR usage, primetime programs increase their audience by an average of 4 percent. This figure is based on a study conducted by Nielsen that examined DVR usage in seven major markets, including Houston, Tampa, Denver, Orlando, Charlotte, Raleigh and Austin - regions with large enough samples to report DVR usage.

n Homes with DVRs averaged 5.7 hours of television viewing per day, compared to 5.1 from homes without DVRs. This represents a 12 percent increase in the amount of time spent watching TV.

                 Additionally, the networks’ own proprietary research found that DVR viewers do pay attention to commercials, and that they show high levels of awareness/ recall on commercials they have fast-forwarded. Among the findings:

            n 58 percent of DVR users pay attention to commercials even while fast forwarding

            n 53 percent of DVR users have gone back to watch commercials they mistakenly skipped.

What these numbers show is that when added together, the audience levels for live and played back television represent a net gain for viewers of commercials. …

n   In DVR households, the share of network television viewing was significantly greater than the average total viewing audience reported by Nielsen

n   DVR penetration in US households now stands at 8 percent, representing 11.4 million viewers. By 2010 that number is expected to grow to 39 percent (or 45.9 million viewers).

(end network announcement)

A few notes: Of course, a DVR makes me watch more network TV. The convenience of recording and the ease of playback (no messing with videotapes) are both factors. But I also end up recording more stuff than I manage to get to. And on many occasions, I am watching something I DVR'ed instead of other network programming, so they're gaining my attention in one place but losing it in another.

But when it comes to commercials, as much as possible they get fast-forwarded through. So unless the rapid stream of the image somehow delivers a subliminal message to my brain, the ads are not generally registering.

And no matter how happily the networks are trying to sound about this data, you're not going to see them go, "Oh, hey, we can just count on ads!" They're going to keep looking for other ways to make money — downloads, product placement, whatever it takes. 

Today's mail included the latest issue of Inside TV, the attempt by the company behind TV Guide to make a glossy, celeb-oriented magazine. The cover photos include Jennifer Aniston, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel of "Gilmore Girls" and Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie as part of a "Paris Vs Nicole" piece that dominates the cover.

But apparently people are getting their Paris/Nicole fix elsewhere (I'm especially fond of www.hollywoodrag.com ) because Inside TV is about done. Its owner has said it will shut down the magazine to focus on, well, other stuff. If you want details you can find them  in a release at www.gemstartvguide.com.

I think one of the biggest problems for Inside TV was the way that it seemed indistinguishable from many other magazines — including its revamped sister publication. In a Beacon Journal column in October, I said the new TV Guide "reminded me of Inside TV."

I could have gone on to point out nuanced differences, that Inside TV seemed to aim for a younger audience than TV Guide, that it was somewhat gushier about celebs, and that it took even less time to read. (What was that line in "The Big Chill," that each article had to be short enough to be read during a bathroom sit-down? Shows how things have changed in the 20-some years since the movie was made. Now you have celeb magazines that can be finished before you are.) But now there's no point. The magazine is going in less time than a flash-in-the-pan actor's career.

Also headed to the boneyard is "Night Stalker," ABC's attempt to modernize the old Darren McGavin franchise. I wasn't a fan of the show, and thought some of the plotting was painfully obvious. I wonder if it might have done better with another leading man, since Stuart Townsend was a big blank in the middle of the show. But the point's moot now.

Because it's Monday, and I am trying to avoid serious work as much as possible, I have been pondering People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" list, which is marking its 20th anniversary.

The latest winner of that title will be announced on Nov. 16. At www.people.com you can find the previous winners, who are, in chronological order: Mel Gibson, Mark Harmon, Harry Hamlin, John F. Kennedy Jr., Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Nick Nolte, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Brad Pitt (again), Pierce Brosnan, Ben Affleck, Johnny Depp and Jude Law. (There were a few years with no pick.)

So, how many of those are TV guys? Harmon, then starring on "St. Elsewhere," and Hamlin, then on "L.A. Law," qualify. So does Clooney, since he was still riding his "ER" success when picked. But not Brosnan, Washington and Depp, who had significant TV credits but were movie stars when named the sexiest men.

It's not as if viewers don't find some TV men sexy. A People online poll at this writing as Patrick Dempsey of "Grey's Anatomy" in second place (behind Matthew McConaughey) and "Lost's" Daniel Dae Kim in fifth (one percentage point ahead of the perennial Mr. Pitt).

And, in a companion online piece on "Fall TV's Sexiest Guys," the magazine cited James Denton, Bradley Cooper, Chad Michael Murray, Wentworth Miller, Mathew St. Patrick, Jared Padalecki, Matthew Fox, Stuart Townsend, Benjamin Bratt, Eddie Cibrian, Jason Lee, David Boreanaz and Josh Duhamel.

You may be wondering who some of them are. I'll get to that in a moment.

So with all those names in play, why aren't more pure TV stars named the SMA? I consulted some of the women in my office and a number of possibilities arose: that there's still a difference in the way we see movie stars and TV stars, for one, and that a TV actor who is genuinely sexy will quickly become a movie star. (Think of Brosnan, Depp, Washington and Clooney.)

But the best theory may be that TV is so huge and scattered, that even its sexiest actors may be known only to a small portion of the audience.

The pool of well-known movie actors is fairly small, and makes for endless repetitition on TV shows about Hollywood, in gossip columns and on magazine covers. Although a big TV hit is seen by far more people than see a big hit movie, the audience for a hit show is still a fraction of the total TV audience. So even if you're watching Dempsey make knees weak on "Grey's," millions of other people are occupied elsewhere (perhaps with the sexiest person in their real lives).

Indeed, Dempsey may have the best shot at the latest SMA title not only because he was a movie actor for awhile, but because his fan has spread beyond "Grey's." The guy has been on a lot of magazine covers, and people.com is using him as an example of an actor who has gotten sexier as he has aged.

Because of that, folks have heard of him in a way they haven't heard of some of the other actors on that Fall TV list. In fact, I asked several women to identify the names on that list — and most of the names got no glimmer at all. (Bratt, Fox and Dempsey were the best known, and all have had show-biz lives before their current shows.)

So here's each TV actor again, with current show attached: James Denton ("Desperate Housewives"), Bradley Cooper ("Kitchen Confidential"), Chad Michael Murray ("One Tree Hill"), Wentworth Miller ("Prison Break"), Mathew St. Patrick ("Reunion"), Jared Padalecki ("Supernatural"), Matthew Fox ("Lost"), Stuart Townsend ("Night Stalker"), Benjamin Bratt ("E-Ring"), Eddie Cibrian ("Invasion"), Jason Lee ("My Name Is Earl"), David Boreanaz ("Bones"), Josh Duhamel ("Las Vegas").

Ringing any bells? Maybe not. Maybe you're already scurrying to other Web addresses to find pictures of these actors. After all, "Kitchen Confidential" isn't even on at the moment. And you may better remember St. Patrick from "Six Feet Under," Padalecki from "Gilmore Girls," Bratt from "Law & Order," Cibrian on "Third Watch" or Boreanaz from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel."

In some ways, then, a sexy TV actor can be like a drunken one-night stand: You vaguely remember being attracted to him, but can't really remember his name…

I've been thinking lately about the joys of football without sound, and I'll get to that later in this post. But first, fun with schedules.

I only made it to halftime of the Steelers-Browns game last night, because I needed to sleep and the 10-point Steeler lead felt pretty solid (well, solid enough not to overcome my weariness). But about 1:30 a.m. I woke up, wasn't going back to sleep immediately and flipped on the TV to check the score.

Then was stunned.

Not because the Steelers had won, or because Batch had broken his hand, or anything game-related. Instead, I was shocked because that "Saturday Night Live" documentary was on Channel 3, which picked up the local broadcast rights to ESPN's telecast of Browns-Steelers.

I had gone to great lengths to warn people that Browns-Steelers was going to send NBC's prime-time schedule into the wee hours, and the lineup I had written about had Penn & Teller from 12:30 to 2:30 a.m., followed by the "SNL" special.

My onscreen cable guide had the order reversed. I agonized. I hate making mistakes. Obviously human, I make them. But readers expect everything they see in the paper to be correct — and when it comes to TV, they plan their viewing around the lineups we include — so I check and double-check program times to make sure they're right.

I got up, double-checked the paper to see what I had written, then went online looking for an explanation. The Channel 3 Web site had the shows listed in the order they were actually airing. Could I have messed up? Finally I found a copy of the Browns telecast announcement that Channel 3 sent out; it had things the way I had written them. The schedule had gone out almost two weeks ago (and, because of the deadline for our TV supplement, I had written about the show a week before the piece was published). And the Channel 3 announcement had a note that it had been updated on Thursday, just a few days before the game.

So when the station flipped the shows, it seemed to have done so very late in the process. (Update: Channel 3 now says that the decision to flip the programs was made about two weeks ago. The station also says the change was made at NBC's request, since the network apparently thought it would do better with "SNL" in the post-football slot. But the station did not do a very good job of getting word about the change out.)

Even though the error was the result of bad information, it took me about an hour to get back to sleep. As I said, I hate mistakes.

As for watching football in silence, with so many night games, I find myself watching the end of good games in bed with the sound off, so my wife can sleep. Although some of the excitement from a live football game stems from crowd noise and the sounds of the players, on TV I find it more intense to watch it without sound.

You don't miss much, since yardage, downs, penalties and other crucial data are explained in onscreen graphics. And anyone who has watched much football knows what the announcers will say in a given situation — or at least knows anything sensible the announcers will say. Then, if you take away the audio, you have to pay more attention to the image on the screen. That increased level of concentration adds to the excitement, I think. When you have the sound on, you're letting the TV do a lot of the work for you, so you don't have to pay as close attention — especially if you're watching with a bunch of friends eager to high-five every triumph. Without the sound, you have to be in the game every second.

While there was at least one experiment with commentary-free TV, I doubt we'll ever have soundless sports, unless we make it by ourselves. For one thing, it's an inconvenience for people who watch TV in groups. Or for people who, say, have to be in the kitchen while the TV is on — loud — in another room, so they can keep track of the action and rush back to watch a key replay. For another, if you don't have announcers, there's no one to do a lot of commercial business — promoting other shows on the network, or telling you who sponsored the trivia question.

Besides, it's hard to fall asleep in front of the set without the steady hum of announcing.

Last week I did a column about some of the changes in TV technology, including recent deals by CBS and NBC, which you can find here.

I worked hardest at making the changes understandable, to stay away from the sort of jargon gearheads love when talking among themselves. Still, it was not my favorite kind of story to write, since new tech is not my strong suit. I am most comfortable writing about what is on the screen, not what the screen is or the bells and whistles that bring the show to your eyes.

Oh, I like toys. I have an HD TV set, a relatively cheap one. I have an MP3 player, although it already feels out of date — it's almost as big as the palm of my hand! I covet satellite radio and love the Internet. (Yes, the Internet still counts as a toy to a lot of people, given the readers who contact me and don't have access — or computers, even.)

But I also identify with a old Bill Cosby routine about cars, where as much as he loved fancy ones, he admitted that his knowledge was so limited that all he could tell servicemen was: "It's broke. Fix it." That's me with just about any technology — it takes a lot of work to understand it well enough to hazard an explanation.

Yet tech stories are unavoidable, not only because so much is changing, but because what is happening offscreen affects the kinds of shows you see. (I've already talked elsewhere in this blog about what tiny-screen TV might do to the way shows are produced.) In fact, I've already gotten involved in another tech story for later this year. Even the early research feels like baby steps into a swamp. But I expect to slog on; I can't hope to explain something if I don't understand it first.

Saturday was put-some-things-in-order day. The patio furniture is now socked away in the shed for winter, and the snow blower is out of the shed and in the garage, handy for when the weather goes bad. So of course the day gave no hint of being almost mid-November, sunny and pleasant (and it's already 52 degrees on this Sunday morning). A lot of rubbish has been cleared out of the basement, a few leaves have been gathered up — and I even squeezed in a little television.

That is: A portion of the Ohio State-Northwestern game, at least until it was clear that Ohio State had it in hand. Watching reminded me how hard announcers try to sound knowledgeable, only to be tripped up by their showing off. One ABC announcer took pains to talk about a player's going to Buchtel High in Akron. He also mispronounced Buchtel. That's always a killer to local folks. Back when I lived in the Albany, N.Y., area, an anchorman who had arrived from out of town said he hurt himself with viewers early on by not knowing the correct pronunciation of Valatie. Gold stars if you do.

When the chores were done, I relaxed with the first hour of "The Virgin Queen," a BBC production premiering on "Masterpiece Theatre" tonight. It's about Queen Elizabeth I, and the first hour at least was pretty good. It was also a contrast to the packaging, which looked to be sexually provocative — showing Elizabeth bare down her back, with the slogan "She led by leading men on. …"  That's mildly surprising given how much PBS has backed away from suggestive content and strong language, supposedly out of fear of the FCC. Then again, I know of at least one BBC production that PBS pared down because of content concerns, so maybe there was a bit of that in "The Virgin Queen."

The cast includes Joanne Whalley and Tara Fitzgerald, both of whom have been screen sirens in the past, but are now playing older, sterner parts (and neither, by the way, is Elizabeth). It must be even rougher for actors as they age to not only see their current selves, but to know that they are competing with their younger images on VHS, DVD and movie channels.

In the evening, my wife and I did what millions of other folks were doing on Saturday night — watched a rented movie. We're Netflix people, with a queue of about 65 movies built up, and we don't get through them as quickly as we would like. But with a relatively laid-back evening, we watched Jet Li's "Unleashed." Good stuff. Actual plot, excellent fight sequences and decent acting; Li  managed to look as if he belonged in the scenes with Morgan Freeman. Of course, Freeman is a master of underplaying, and that may have helped Li — but the action star came off admirably in any case.

After the movie, the evening basically wound down. A little of this (Georgia-Auburn), a little of that (new "Leave It to Beaver" DVD). The football game was a thriller, the lead going back and forth, the whole thing settled in the final seconds. It also had poll/BCS implications, but I ended up watching more than I had anticipated just because it was a really good game. I'll watch just about anyone if the competition is intense and the game is close.

And now it's Sunday morning. Church soon, then some errands. Maybe some football this afternoon, although my big game for the day — Browns-Steelers — isn't until tonight. But the TV will most likely be on before then, since I have (as always) some video for work that needs attention. And you never know where a nugget for the blog may pop up.

An e-mail from a reader arrived this morning, asking what had happened to "Threshold" on Fridays. Since some of you may also be wondering, it's a CBS shuffle to try out both shows in different time slots. "Close to Home" switched to Fridays at 9 p.m. (the "Threshold" slot) last night and on Nov. 18. "Threshold" will be on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. (the "Close to Home" slot) on Nov. 22 and 29. (On this coming Tuesday, Nov. 15, CBS will have the CMA awards.