News, and “news,” from CBS’s day at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles:
* Did you know that Les Moonves, president of CBS Corporation, is married to CBS personality Julie Chen? And did you know that, just coincidentally, Julie Chen happens to be the most talented person at the entire CBS network, and possibly in all of TV, and probably the world? It’s true! That is the reason that CBS had little choice but to hire Chen to host Big Brother in addition to The Early Show. Because she’s Julie Chen! She’s available, you snap her up! It’s a no-brainer! And it’s the entirely coincidental reason she’s now going to be hosting—along with Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne and sundry others—a third show for CBS, the daytime women-talking roundtable The Talk, which is totally not a copy of The View, so shut up, because you are jealous.
* The producers of How I Met Your Mother explain last season’s bold creative gambit of turning the show into a boring, broad sitcom, and say the upcoming season 6 will bring major changes for each character rather than hitting the reset button each episode. Also, the first episode will bring a major development that, they say, will put the “Who’s the Mother?” gimmick to bed. (I’m guessing it turns out that everyone’s actually dead.)
* CBS programming chief Nina Tassler vowed that the network will totally gay it up next season in response to having been given a failing grade by advocacy group GLAAD for its representation of gay characters.
* William Shatner discussed $#*! My Dad Says, and graciously granted Twitter eight bonus characters.
* Chuck Lorre assured the assembled journalists that Mike and Molly is not just one long fat joke. It’s one long fat story.
* And the producers of Hawaii Five-0 ask the philosophical question: when is a remake not a remake? When it has the same title, theme song, setting, subject matter and characters, and the makers want to call it a “reboot” instead.