Since today seems to be a day for writing about television, it seems appropriate that David Bauder, Television Writer for Associated Press, just released a story on the new Fox season. Given that Fox is associated almost entirely with their approach to news (which may or may not include The Simpsons, depending on your personal perspective), it is interesting to see the way they have decided to "mine" a story that is still newsworthy, even if it is now pretty much neglected by most of the media (including Fox news coverage):
The drama "K-Ville," set for Mondays, focuses on a cop angry that his partner deserted him after Hurricane Katrina and willing to bend rules to catch bad guys. His new partner is an Afghanistan war veteran and more of a stickler for rules.
It will be filmed on location in New Orleans, said Peter Liguori, Fox entertainment president.
"I think the city itself has many, many stories to tell," he said.
Yes, Peter, Spike Lee did not tell all the stories about New Orleans, particularly since those stories keep unfolding long after When the Levees Broke was ready for screening; so it will certainly be interesting to see what you feel are stories worth telling.
I have to wonder about the epithet embodied in the title of the new series, however. I assume the reference is to Katrina. Do folks in New Orleans actually use this epithet; or are they going to react to it the way we residents of San Francisco react when we hear "Frisco" (which I have always taken to be fried version of Fresno)? On a lark I decided to do a Google search on "K-Ville." I got "about 399,000" hits, the first of which was for the online community, Kawaii Ville. Second was a far more interesting Wikipedia entry:
Krzyzewskiville, or K-ville for short, is a singular phenomenon that occurs before major men's basketball games at Duke University. In simplest terms, it is the line for students (frequently referred to as Cameron Crazies) wishing to gain access to the designated tenting games. It is often mistakingly referred to as a ticket line. However, there are no student tickets; students are admitted from the line 1.5 hours before each game.
Krzyzewskiville is named for Mike Krzyzewski, often called "Coach K", the long serving and much loved coach who has helped make Duke's Basketball program one of the best in the nation. He has been known to buy pizza for the K-ville residents from time to time and has held open forum "team meetings" with the Cameron Crazies before games against arch-rival North Carolina.
The sounds more like the sort of subject matter for a Fox series, where it not for the fact that they have already been scooped by ESPN. The third entry is an ESPN report, based on the above entry, entitled "A day in the life of K-Ville!" This will probably tell you more about the K-ville ritual than you will ever want to know. As a matter of fact, among the top ten hits, four are about this particular K-ville!
The first association of K-Ville with New Orleans is a Web site for the Fox program, and it is sixth on the list. Two other entries also apply to the new show, one of which is for IMDB. So Duke outpaces Fox by a nose in this particular race; but, more to the point, none of the entries have anything to do with New Orleans independently of how Fox plans to treat it. Hasn't New Orleans suffered enough? Do they really now have to put up with a new name that they do not particularly want?
I have to keep reminding myself that it's only television. The show isn't even on the air yet. Is it really worth the fuss? When I start seeing K-Ville headlines in The Wall Street Journal that have nothing to do with the entertainment industry, then I can start worrying!
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