Video: Interview With "Bionic Woman" Star

One of the strongest debuts of the fall lineup is NBC's "Bionic Woman," a redux of the 1970s classic. Watch this WSJ interview with the star of the new series.

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ER Episode Impacts Viewers' Health Knowledge, Behavior

A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California suggests that some TV may be good for you.

Researchers found that a storyline on the primetime NBC network drama ER that dealt with teen obesity, hypertension and healthy eating habits had a positive impact on the attitudes and behaviors of viewers, particularly among men.

The study, published in the Sept. 14 Journal of Health Communication and now available online, offered researchers a rare opportunity to evaluate the impact of health messages in entertainment, says Thomas Valente, associate professor of preventive medicine and member of the Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Research (IPR) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“This study demonstrates the importance of interventions and programs targeted at a population level,” says Valente. “We have so many public heath issues to deal with, we can’t restrict ourselves to any one strategy. We have to do everything and anything we can to help people improve their health.”

The storyline depicted an African-American teen who is diagnosed with hypertension during a visit to the emergency room and is advised to eat more fruits and vegetables and to get more exercise. The story aired over three episodes from April 29 to May 13, 2004.

The impact of the episodes was evaluated using three separate datasets, one of which provided data on a sample of 807 primetime viewers before and after the episodes aired. An independent firm collected surveys from viewers, measuring whether their self-reported behavior and their nutrition attitudes, knowledge and practices were impacted by the storyline.

Results showed that ER viewers were 65 percent more likely to report a positive change in their behavior after watching the episodes. The results also suggested that the storyline had modest impacts on knowledge, attitudes and practices, Valente notes. Those who watched ER also had a five percent higher rate of knowledge about nutrition than those who did not. Researchers accounted for a number of factors, including age, sex, ethnicity, income and education.

Interestingly, the effects were stronger for men than they were for women. Researchers theorize this may be because men started with a lower baseline knowledge of the information shown in the episodes, Valente says.

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Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers: YouTube Should Become The Next Scifi Channel

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column above how much trouble it was to download episodes of the scifi TV series I had been missing. I predicted it would take at least a few years for the technology and business models to shake out so that viewing Internet video would be as easy as watching television.

That day is fast approaching.

The TV networks are falling all over themselves to push you to their websites to watch reruns of your favorite shows and broadband capabilities have expanded to make watching them more seamless.

I, myself, have more recently come into the Web video world myself as content manager of Energy Policy TV, a website that's sort of a CSPAN for energy and the environment. As both a consumer and distributor of Internet video I'm astounded on a daily basis on how this market is moving.

In the realm of science fiction, as with most scripted TV series, big studios still control the content. Episodes may now live on the Web, but if some Hollywood executive axes a series, that video will still certainly dry up and we fans are still on the outs.

The Internet offers a different approach, however. We've heard for years how scifi is mostly a "niche" audience. Fair enough -- the Internet is absolutely designed to serve such niches.

A couple of years at a scifi convention, author and one-time Star Trek writer David Gerrold was describing how the costs for professional-quality gear -- the cameras, CGI generators, etc. -- were coming down dramatically on the production side of the equation.

The rise of Internet video now puts the distribution side of the equation in more and more hands, as well.

Fans have already begun making use of this convergence, of course. Several groups have sprung up in recent years that produce fan-produced Star Trek episodes, with fans also playing the major characters.

These projects, however, are the video equivilent of fan fiction -- there is no profit motive in it.

But what if an entrepreneurial producer were to take this to the next step?

What if someone were to tap some forward-thinking investors to create a for-profit, original Internet scifi series?

The idea would be to avoid Hollywood altogether. Hollywood has no monopoly on talent -- either in front of, or behind, the camera. Hire a cast and crew -- not for blockbuster salaries, but enough to live on comfortably.

Create special effects are that aren't Lucasfilm-level, but are of good quality and are good enough. Then sell advertising around the whole thing to pay the bills.

Take the whole enterprise, so to speak, directly to the fans -- I think they would respond overwhelmingly.

This new Web series would find its fans, who would feel a direct connection and investment with this sort of production precisely because they are closer to it -- they will not be separated by huge corporate entertainment conglomerates.

And more good science fiction would find its way into the world.

Any takers?

A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance has been active with the USS Chesapeake Star Trek/scifi club for more than a decade.

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Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers: Series Finales That Aren't So Final These Days

By Scott Nance

What happened to the good ol' days when folks understood a TV finale was supposed to be, well, final?

The not-so-final finale reached a crescendo this summer -- most famously with the cable-outage-like ending of HBO's Sopranos crime drama.

That series ends with nothing more than a dark screen as crime boss Tony Soprano goes to munch an onion ring.

Then there was the finale after 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, titled, what else? "Unending." The episode, very much by design, feels much more like a season finale -- not the last episode of the entire series.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't eager to say "goodbye" to either series -- especially SG-1, which is one of my favorites of all time.

And although Sopranos creator David Chase seems to have precluded any future installments of that series, the same cannot be said of Stargate and its producers who very much want to keep that franchise alive.

But I say if a finale is going to be a finale, there has to be some finality to it. As "Unending" concludes with our heroes climbing the 'Gate ramp to embark on "just another mission to save the universe," it appears as if we'll see the SG-1 team again real soon.

Except we won't. Not for a good long while anyway.

Even Star Trek: The Next Generation went out with a proper finale. Sure, Capt. Picard and the rest would soon be back on the big screen, but Q finishing his "trial" of the human race gave the TNG finale the feeling of some kind of closure.

Make no mistake: "Unending" was a great episode. The fact that it was so well-done makes the agony even worse.

The fact that the finale was of such good quality and the series doesn't really say goodbye just proves that Stargate SG-1 had a lot of great stories left to tell. This was not a series on the downside creatively.

The Gate Room closed entirely and solely because of finances. While maybe in a business sense, that's a good reason to end a series, for us viewers it stinks. And it's worse that because the finale was "Unending," we can't really say goodbye.

All we're left with are fond memories and a Gate-shaped hole in our hearts.

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