News Bullets

• The Associated Press's F.N. D'Alessio has written an article about the success that actors from Chicago-based theaters have had in TV crime shows, including William Petersen (Gil Grissom), Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor), and Dennis Franz (from NYPD Blue).

• The Akron Beacon Journal notes that, bizarrely enough, Kim Delaney is noticed for her short-lived CSI: Miami role as Megan Donner on the back of the new 'Tour of Duty' Second-Season DVD set, instead of her much more successful role in NYPD Blue.

• The CSI: Miami computer game is still not making any fans: IGN PC's Steve Polak awarded it only a 6 out of 10 rating:

  CSI Miami will no doubt please fans of the series, but the truth is that it is the third outing for the same basic game design which first debuted in the original CSI game. It's a little tired. Added to this issue is the fact that CSI Miami is perhaps the least engaging of the CSI franchise. The other series have the advantage of a more interesting cast and more inventive writing and the writers don't rely on the swamp and alligators every second show! Indeed, perpetuating this cliché beautifully, the first murder in CSI Miami features this very situation - sheesh!

  If you'd like to read the full review, please follow this link. Should you not mind the abundance of alligators, the actual game can be ordered here.

• With Christmas on her mind, Boston Herald TV critic Sarah Rodman wrote 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, or a Visit from St. Nielsen.. Here's the part CSI fans will like best:

  With a little old show called CSI in the mix,
  CBS proved cloning can be a programming fix.
  More rapid than eagles these offshoots came
  Gaining success by adding new cities to the name.

  Read on here.

• CSI is also featured in the Christmas rhyme of the Star-Telegram.

• Zap2It's TV Gal recently showcased the "Best of Everything" in 2004. CSI made the list twice: firstly with Aisha Tyler (Mia Dickerson), who won the title of Most Versatile Actress, secondly with David Caruso (Horatio Caine), winning the Best Overacting award, and finally with Sara and Grissom from the original CSI, who won in the Best Requited but Never Acted Upon Love category.

• Barbara Kerr, assistant director at the Medford Public Library, argues against the oft-heard opinion that television "rots your brain." Kerr claims that while many people indeed just watch TV "and let that be their only experience of it, there are just as many people who watch something and use that experience as a springboard to reading and further research." One of the examples Kerr provides in her article is that of shows such as CSI and Law and Order, which have sparked a great interest in books on forensics.

• On the other hand, Australian publication The Age argues that it's not so much the intricate forensic investigations that draw (male) viewers to crime shows, but rather the Babe Factor. They've provided a top-10 of the "most-watchable crime-busting women from the past year," but we think their methodology is inherently flawed - how else to explain Emily Procter (Calleigh Duquesne) coming in last?

• While IGN didn't go wild over the Miami PC game, Gamespot's Alex Navarro seemed to downright hate the Xbox re-release of the original two CSI games. "The cold, hard fact remains that neither of the games featured on this disc were really very good in their original form on the PC, so the fact that you're effectively buying a cheap, semibroken port of two games that weren't especially appealing from the get-go simply doesn't fly," wrote Navarro in his review, before awarding the game a 4.8/10 rating. We almost don't dare mention that the game is available from Amazon.

• GrissomSaraRomance.com has a video clip of William Petersen (Gil Grissom) accepting the TV Guide Favorite Drama Performer award from his colleague Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle). Thanks go out to Elyse's for this!

• In USA Today's midterm score card of all the six major networks, CBS received only a passing C grade:

  In September, this grade would have been a solid "B." But the network's fall average was depressed by the cancellation of its best new show, Clubhouse, and the creative mistakes of CSI: NY - a lifeless series in which the characters are so dull and ill-defined, you can barely tell the cops from the corpses. Luckily, CBS has so many solid hits, it can survive some freshman flops. But it still may want to take a second look at some of its development strategies. You copy CSI too many times, you risk wearing out the original.

  The big winner in the full article was ABC, which got an A, while NBC was last with an F.

• The Holland Sentinel has a section on West Michigan-based companies that have been successful in getting their products featured on television, such as Herman Miller Inc., a furniture manufacturer in Zeeland, Michigan, whose products appeared in CSI: New York. "One of the things that we've realized is that we have to make good relationships with set designers, because if we're open to their requests and we're responsive, they'll be calling us back when they move along to the next TV or movie set," said a spokesperson for the company in the article.

• In Philadelphia, lawyers have found that juries increasingly expect the most advanced forensic technology available to be used while tryinig a case, and that they want the cases to be over as quickly as possible. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, they call this the "CSI effect."

• Tivo users are not CSI watchers: the New York Times' Kate Arthur has discovered that while four CSI episodes appear on Nielsen's list of the most popular TV shows of the year, CSI is completely absent from the list of most-TiVo-ed TV shows. Instead, users of the timeshifting device preferred Friends, The Apprentice and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé.

• Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor) was featured in the December 16 edition of People Magazine, according to Elyse. Sinise said that his children have gotten more interested in science as a result of his appearing on CSI: New York - apparently, Sinise's 14-year old son McCanna is "fascinated with all that stuff. I hope it helps him in school," said Sinise.

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