· Today's most dispiriting strike-related lede: "With both sides back at the barricades, many believe the writers strike won't be resolved until March at the earliest." See you on the other side of Armageddon, Hollywood survivors! [Variety]
· Onetime UPN pilot Tanner Hall, is being reborn as an indie feature film, starring Tom Everett Scott, Amy Sedaris, and Chris Kattan. [THR]
· In a happy side effect of the strike (for actors and studios), projects canceled by the work stoppage have freed up some big-name talent to shoot films until the DGA and SAG contracts expire in June.[Variety]

· Judd Apatow officially joins pals Adam McKay and Will Ferrell as a partner at Funny Or Die, hoping that his bold idea to move the site into the porn space might help it finally generate some revenue. [Variety]
· USA promotes six-episode miniseries The Starter Wife to a full series, betting that its viewers' appetite for the lightly fictionalized tales of Gigi Levangie Grazer's time as a Hollywood war bride has not yet been sated. [THR]
· Breaking new ground in awards-season whoring, DreamWorks-Paramount is sending out screeners of Things We Lost in the Fire to Oscar voters on the same day it's released in theaters. [Variety]

The show explores the emotional and societal ramification of loved ones coming back from the dead. You know, like in "Pet Sematary." But by the end of the episode, the zombie thriller is crossed with a crime procedural. So, small town police detective Stevenson is given a murder to solve while zombies wander the streets. "ZSI."

Granted, the "Babylon" brand of zombies are not all moany-stumbly like in most films about the living dead. But they remain, quite clearly, deceased—autopsy scars, open wounds, bad skin, worms, etc. The zombies walk back to their former homes. They talk to their former loved ones. And have sex with them.

We recommend you watch the second clip at TV Week, in which two of Babylon's horny zombies discuss the unexpected priapic benefits of rigor mortis, a frank discussion of posthumous sexuality that rivals Tell Me You Love Me's most emotionally revealing moments. Maybe HBO will consider adding an undead character to that show's cast, as the story of a wife who suddenly finds herself pestered by her insatiable, unexpectedly exhumed husband would counterpoint nicely with the couple who have gone a year without achieving any kind of physical intimacy.

• 'Babylon Fields'—CBS's Buried Zombie Necrophilia Pilot Unearthed [TV Week]

Media executives have long discussed the potential of using physical reactions and brain scanning to track their messages, and advances in medical research in the past few years have made this more practical. NBC is working with Innerscope Research, a small company in Boston that uses wearable sensors to translate physical responses into what the company calls "emotional engagement."

Panelists wear black-netted vests with tubes running out of them. Sensors on fingers measure sweat or "skin conductance," as the researchers like to say. A monitor picks up on heartbeats, and an accelerometer tracks movement when panelists wiggle in their seats or chuckle. A respiratory band can tell if the abdomen and chest stop moving — noticing when someone holds their breath, for example, in a scene of suspense.

Innerscope has developed its own scale for engagement that combines the biometric factors that it tracks. On a scale of 1 to 100, a 50 is neutral, and above 60 is engaged. In Innerscope's test for NBC, viewers of the first 20 seconds of live advertisements clocked in with a 66 engagement score and those fast-forwarding scored 68.

"People don't turn off their emotional responses while they're fast-forwarding," said Carl Marci, the chief science officer of Innerscope. "People are obviously getting the information." [...]

Mr. Wurtzel of NBC acknowledged it was early in the research process. But over time he hopes to expand bio-testing of commercials to the facilities NBC has used to test potential television programs in front of an audience. General Electric, the parent of NBC, has worked on security technology that can track people's facial expressions and follow eye movements. He said he may also put that to use.

It's especially welcome news that this incredible technology might be applied to the maddeningly imprecise pilot-selection process; in this brave new world, networks like NBC can choose their Fall winners by measuring brain activity and galvanic skin response, abandoning outdated, but blindly trusted, methods like observing a test audience's reaction to, say, their new Bionic Woman series while their captive viewers are submerged in a tank of water or made to stand in bare feet upon a metal grate that intermittently delivers a painful electric shock. And once the network's competitors follow suit, we may never see another Cavemen greenlit again.

[Photo: NYT]

• Engaging at Any Speed? Commercials Put to Test [NY Times]

"I get kicked out for a...caveman and shows that I out-performed because I'm not owned by [ABC Television Studios]...So a...Chicano can't be on TV but a...caveman can?" Lopez said.

"And a Chicano with an audience already? You know when you get in this that shows do not last forever, but this was an important show and to go unceremoniously like this hurts. One hundred seventy people lost their jobs." [...]

"TV just became really, really white again," he said.

While Lopez's angry reaction to losing his job is understandable, his knee-jerk dismissal of Cavemen demonstrates that he's probably unaware of the series' noble mandate to deconstruct the absurdity of racial stereotyping through sophisticated allegory. Once he realizes that the hilarious Cro-Magnons aren't his enemy, he'll direct his anger in a more appropriate direction, such as the show about the carpool or the one where Christina Applegate tries to regain her identity after getting bonked on the head.

• TV just got a lot 'whiter,' says a canceled George Lopez [LAT Show Tracker]
• Previously: 'Cavemen' Gets A Pickup [Defamer]

UPDATE: Wait, ABC wants some funny too. Net is ordering "Sam I Am," "Carpoolers" and, of course, "Cavemen."

Also, another drama, the untitled Jon Feldman project about the "bedrooms and boardrooms of four dysfunctional CEOs."

Rejoice! That deep void on the TV landscape calling out for a sitcom about a smart aleck, fur-and-latex-covered protagonist who drops occasional nuggets of outsider wisdom on the human condition has finally been filled since Alf's tragically premature departure at the end of the 1980s. We can now look forward to having the one question that's been nagging us since first reading about the project answered: Can Geico advertise on a show based on their own commercial, and if so, can the commercials be written seamlessly into the plot, effectively turning the entire programming block into one uninterrupted Geico Cavemen Comedy Half-Hour?

• Pilot Pickups [blogs.tvweek.com]

"Cavemen" has a lot of people talking since it was first announced. People will continue to talk... about just how astoundingly awful it is.

"Cavemen" is literally a thirty second commercial expanded to twenty-two minutes. But... it's actually much worse than that. Just like their source material, the origin of these domesticated Cro-Magnons is never explained. I guess "Encino Man" is part of the prequel trilogy. We meet these humanoids already fully integrated into society and living in a mid-west apartment with a bunch of Ikea furniture. Think about it, a show based on a commercial is bound to have a lot of product placement.

Now comes the most mind numbing, stupendously stupid and astoundingly misguided part of this fiasco: The creators have tried to infuse social satire by making the show an allegory for prejudice. They draw astoundingly leaden parallels to every minority group in the world without a laugh in sight. It's jaw dropping horrendous and actually makes "American Dad's" lunkheaded topicality seem sophisticated. [...]

This video will get passed around like the infamous "Star Wars Christmas Special." It's nice to know that the spirit of Ed Wood lives on.

Ironically, amidst the mad rush of script ABC developed this season was one of the funniest half hours I ever read... and they didn't order THAT script in favor of this depth charge which could be the first pilot to actually hurt an auto insurance company.

No network's development process is free of hand-wringing over unordered pilots once the underwhelming results of the ones they actually greenlighted are viewed, but with the upfronts so close, there's no point in obsessing over what could have been; at this late stage, the best an exhausted programming president can do is put on his happiest face, thank his team for all of their hard work, and then hope the delicious ice cream he's flown in at great expense helps raise the spirits of a demoralized staff.

• Ugh!! Derek Flint Calls ABC's Geico CAVEMEN Pilot 'Astoundingly Awful'!! [AICN]
• Complete Cavemen Coverage [Defamer]

The ABC entertainment prexy played Good Humor man on Wednesday, pushing a cart of ice cream and walking from office to office, passing out scoops to network staffers.

Steve McPherson flew in 12 large tubs from Thomas Sweet, a Princeton, N.J., parlor famed for its homemade ice cream.

"They don't ship — so I had to bribe them," McPherson said. Included in the shipment: cookie dough, coffee, bittersweet and McPherson's favorite: cookies and cream.

ABC staffers "flipped out" at the sight of their network leader marching down the network halls, ice cream scooper in hand, McPherson said.

While the thoughtful gesture was appreciated, many couldn't help but feel vaguely disappointed in the display of gratitude as they consumed their chilly treats; after all, if Ted Harbert can transform his entire headquarters into a Mardi Gras-quality bacchanalia, couldn't McPherson at least roam the hallways offering his underlings some pulls from the tube of his beer-helmet, or set up a tequila body-shot station in a cubicle? No proud broadcast TV staff wants to see its leader outdone by a basic-cable show-off.

• ABC's McPherson scoops out love [Variety]

Of the 54 comedies in development, 16 are set in the workplace (à la "The Office" and "30 Rock"), and many are based on characters or ideas that seem fresh on the surface, at least, for the small screen.

Think "Cavemen" on ABC (yes, based on the popular Geico ads); "I'm With Stupid," about disabled people, on NBC; a heart-warming relationship between an American child and a Pakistani exchange student on "Aliens in America" on the CW; three siblings best described as "The Beverly Hillbillies" meets "The Swan" on "Stumps of Hollywood" on CBS; and Lee Majors playing himself in Fox's "Me & Lee?" the single-camera tale of Majors' obsession with bionics since "The Six Million Dollar Man" went off the air.

It seems as though desperate times call for overreaching measures. So if a Cro-Magnon race allegory doesn't scratch that "show me something I haven't seen"
itch, there's sure to be an equally outrageous option just a channel away—bold explorations into the comedic unknown such as the worlds of the disabled, Pakistani exchange students, drastically plastic-surgeried Miss Hathaway-types, and long-forgotten 1970s TV superheroes who aren't Lou Ferrigno.

[Photo: The Daily Ping]

• TV pilots play for laughs [LAT]

THR: The pilot "Cavemen" is based on the Geico commercials. Was there a conscious effort to find nontraditional voices?

McPherson: We tried to go some nontraditional ways, but some of the voices are not necessarily nontraditional voices, they just haven't had a chance to stretch their muscles a bit or been kept in a box. I can't say we went looking for "Cavemen." When they came in the door, they pitched and we were very skeptical at first. But when we heard it, we heard it was a sendup of race the way "3rd Rock From the Sun" is an analysis of human nature.

McPherson might be setting the bar a bit high in comparing the project to the socio-allegorical triumph that was 3rd Rock, but it's only because he's confident that the stunts he's planned for the upfronts next month, a "Superficially Evolved People Dance Like This, Cavemen Dance Like This" Party and a curbside demonstration in which some Cro Magnons demonstrate their inability to hail a cab, will instantly have prospective advertisers ready to buy into the show's winning combination of racially charged satire and broad humor.

• Pilots Package: dialogue with Stephen McPherson [THR]