The hope that Fox's portion of the TV press tour would include a major announcement regarding who will fill the empty chairs on American Idol's judging panel was dashed, quickly and completely, when the network's top programming executives met with media types here in Hollywood on Monday morning.

"The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty right now is that no one who wasn't on the show last year has signed a deal yet, on either side of the camera, to join American Idol next year," said Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Rice. "There has been tremendous speculation ... (and) much of the information that has been written has been accurate, and some of the information that has been written is wildly inaccurate.

"I'm not going to get into confirming or denying which ones they are."

And with that, pretty much any discussion or line of questioning focused on Idol's future was shut down. Rice declined to comment of reports that Kara DioGuardi is also leaving the show -- on the heels of Simon Cowell's exit at the end of last season and Ellen DeGeneres's announcement last week that she won't return for a second season -- and would not discuss Randy Jackson's status or recent suggestions that producer Nigel Lythgoe might be rejoining the show.

The surprise-hit Fox series Glee was the big winner Saturday night at the annual Television Critics Association Awards, taking home three trophies -- outstanding new program, program of the year, and an additional honour for series star Jane Lynch for individual achievement in comedy.

The ceremony, held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, featured an opening-act comedy contribution by Parenthood co-star Dax Shepherd, and included the presentation of awards in 11 categories.

Rookie shows fared particularly well -- in addition to Glee's triple grab of TCA Awards, CBS's The Good Wife received the award for individual achievement in drama (series star Julianna Margulies) and ABC's new comedy hit Modern Family won the prize for outstanding achievement in comedy.

Two series tied for outstanding achievement in drama -- ABC's Lost and the made-for-cable (AMC) hit Breaking Bad.

Peacock: not quite proud yet, but feeling slightly better about itself....Catching up on things after a jam-packed day of NBC interviews and preview screenings, followed by another celeb-filled network party atop yet another nearby parking garage....

NBC's top execs met the press on Friday, and expressed careful optimism about the direction the network is headed in after the disaster that was last year -- fueled mostly by the decision to move Jay Leno into a 9 p.m. weeknight slot and, of course, the public-relations implosion that followed when affiliates forced the cancellation of that show and the network decided to take The Tonight Show away from Conan O'Brien and give it back to Jay.

"We're trying to rebuild," said NBC Universal Television president Jeff Gaspin, "and we recognize some of the mistakes we've made over the past several years. We put a lot more money into development this year (and) we picked up quite a few series. We're taking more shots, certainly. We feel very good about the progress we've made during the past year."

Gaspin admitted that some of NBC's strategy -- cutting hours of prime-time scripted programming for budgetary reasons at a time when the network should have been giving viewers more, not less -- probably wasn't the right way to go.

If it's July, then this must be Hollywood; if it's Hollywood, then I must be smack-dab in the middle of the summer version of the U.S. networks' semi-annual press tour, which brings together TV critics and media-minded journalists from around North America to preview and discuss the upcoming television season.

The press tour is a two-week-long whirlwind of tube-obsessed activities that range from closed-circuit screenings of new-show pilots (so critics can spend at least part of the day doing what they do best, which is lying in bed in their jammies watching TV), press-conference interviews with actors, producers and writers of new and returning prime-time series, and evening events that follow a variety themes and locales but basically boil down to TV-industry folks and media types eating, drinking and chatting in close confines.

In the first few days of this edition of the tour, we've dropped in on the Hollywood-studio sets of Desperate Housewives, Parenthood and the new NBC drama Undercovers, spent a couple of days interviewing the stars and producers of new shows on the CBS and CW networks, mingled with the greater mass of stars from shows on those networks at an outdoor party atop an abandoned parking garage across the street from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and now spent the first half of this day dealing with NBC's new roster of shows.

That's a lot of mull over, but when it comes to the TV press tour, there's always something else that grabs the assembled critical mass's attention..... and this time, several days before Fox is scheduled to make its presentation, it's American Idol.

Saturday was all about the spinning of yarns -- some funny, some serious, and some a little bit of both while also waxing nostalgic about a departed friend.

My chuckle-seeking tour of the 2010 fest continued with the Storytellers session at the GST (I was forced, by other commitments, to miss Saturday's edition of The Debaters), a new entry in the fest sked that arrived with great promise and drew a beyond-capacity crowd to the Village venue.

The event, focused on "outsiders and iconoclasts," turned out to be more literary than laugh-packed, but that seemed to be perfectly OK with a very appreciative crowd.

Host Bll Richardson shared some warm memories of his Winnipeg upbringing, and then comedian/author Barry Kennedy -- also a local product -- read a very funny tale about trying to sneak into Blue Bombers home games back in the wild-and-innocent '60s. Journo/columnist Tabatha Southey shared some quirky tales about forbidden reading material, unintentional culling of the pigeon population and shopping for properly fitted unmentionables; then Michael Muhammad Knight read an oddly poignant passage about exploring a mosque while under the influence of mind-altering substances.

The "where to go?" aspect of Friday's fest-bound wandering got the simplest of "where to stay?" answers when I observed that the best strategy for seeing acts I'd not yet seen at this year's fest was staying put at the Playhouse for back-to-back galas. Which made the evening very -- almost lazily -- easy. Which is nice. So I had that goin' for me.

Given the state of reno-project chaos back at the homestead, the first Friday gala -- Open House -- did carry some added personal appeal.

Clearly, this repair-related fascination wasn't universally shared, as Pantages Playhouse auditorium was at best half filled when the show began. Host Tim Nutt forged on regardless, delivering a strong home-and-neighbours-focused set; the less-than-crackling atmosphere in the room forced him to work extra hard to get the decidedly reserved crowd warmed up for the feature acts.

Scott Faulconbridge was agitatedly energetic as he discussed home, kids ("I have a beautiful five-year-old boy at home. He's full of life; he's full of energy. I say that because he's for sale. If you act now, I'll throw in the grandparents."), and furniture and home-reno stores ("IKEA is proof that humanity is stupid; they have a successful business model, which is, 'You buy it, YOU build it.'"); L.A. resident Tammy Pescatelli kept things rolling with some funny stuff about marriage and motherhood and a cool observation about being bumped from the cast of Dancing With the Stars' second season after the producers opted for Sir Paul's ex, Heather Mills, instead ("You don't know a bad day at work until you've been replaced on a dancing show by a one-legged woman.").

It goes without saying that classrooms and gyms are two places folks don't need all that much of a reason to skip out on. And apparently, some related principle was at play Thursday night when it came to the book-learnin'-themed Edumacation Show gala and the iron-pumping late-night effort, Underbelly Diaries Redux: Aaron Berg's One-Man Show. Attendance at each was, well, spotty.

Which is too bad, because the gala was a pretty solid effort, and Berg's theatrical tour of the bodybuilding world's darkest corners was an unexpected revelation.

As gala themes go, The Edumacation Show was pretty safe and well-trod territory, but host Gerry Dee -- once a teacher himself, now one of the country's most in-demand comics -- did a better-than-B-plus job of opening the show with momentum and maintaining a satisfying pace between acts. His contribution reinforces the wisdom of fest organizers' decision to favour experienced comics over gimmicky guest hosts at this year's event.

Veteran performer and continuing-to-toil substitute teacher Steve Brinder gets a passing grade for his perspective on the toughest classes (kindergarten) and schools (anything ending in "Tech") to teach, and festival first-timer Karen O'Keefe was funny in comparing her tall-kid academic adventures to the travails of Archie Comics' oddball Big Ethel.

Wednesday evening; McPhillips Street Station -- the night/show when the Comedy Fest usually gets off to its meandering opening-night start; this year, the whole goofy deal had already been in motion for 24 hours and was operating at full speed by the time host Trevor Boris takes the stage.

The casino showroom -- which, in its more fiscally productive hours houses bingo games rather than wisecrack artists -- remains a brutal venue for comedy; the sightlines are OK, but the acoustics, thanks to a heavy back-wall curtain that separates the auditorium from the clanging/beeping/buzzing VLT lounge outside, are terrible. The muffled sound of bank balances being not-so-joyfully wagered away intrudes constantly into the show, but the ineffective cloth divider still manages to seize and smother much of the laughter that, in other rooms, would echo and roll and reverberate and eventually begin to build upon itself. But the govt. gaming guys are a major fest sponsor, so it remains a make-the-best-of-it proposition.

And to that end, fest organizers definitely assembled the most aggressive and impactful opening-night lineup to date, beginning with Boris, still basking in the afterglow of his not-quite-a-DVD-launch homecoming show on Tuesday, and continuing with a roster of comics that easy doubled the depth of any previous fest-kickoff shows. Boris began by tentatively testing the casino crowd's inclinations -- yes, there were actually people in the room who were there for the bingo and just waiting for all the joke-spinning to cease -- and then forged headlong through a brief set that gauged the first-nighters' openness to chatter about all things gay-tastic. The crowd laughed along, at times a bit reservedly, as Boris talked about dating much-younger men ("I'm not a cougar; I'm gay -- I'm a fag-uar") and growing up homo in Selkirk ("The Pride parade consisted of me opening the garage door, yelling "Happy Pride Day!", and then slamming it shut. ... And then people would chase me around for a bit").

Cartoonist-turned-comedian Greg Morton, who'll appear Friday night with local sketch troupe Hot Thespian Action and take part in Saturday's late-night Obsessions Show gala, did a very funny superhero-themed set that opened with the suit-jacket-parting revelation of a pair of red underpants worn outside his trousers -- a reference to the sartorial habits of more-than-human crimefighters ("They wear their little pants outside their big pants. I think that's why superheros wear masks").

I guess it's kind of fitting that this year's edition of the CBC Winnipeg Comedy Fest jumped the gun on its usual Wednesday-night opening by, well, jumping the gun.

Tuesday's special-event/pre-opening-opening show was touted (true Freudian-slip story: as I tapped out this part on the keyboard, I accidentally typed "outed" instead of "touted") as the Trevor Boris Homecoming Show and DVD Release Party; as it turns out, it was a fitting and funny homecoming show but not in any way a DVD-release event, as the disc set in question has had its release delayed three weeks (til April 27) because its label, Warner Music, had to do some last-minute scurrying to finalize rights clearances for a musical track in one of the short-film extras in the set.

Now, "musical track" is a bit of a stretch, since the sequence in question features Selkirk-born funnyboy Boris in his Toronto apartment, dancing around in his underwear while belting out a few lines from a Black Eyed Peas number -- not really enough to make a musical impression, unless you're a record-label lawyer who's trying to protect his bosses from getting their arses sued off for copyright infringement.

So, three weeks' delay. Boris's giggling assessment: "Totally worth it!"

Is the world safe from the evils of Dr. Horrible, or do we still have tuneful reasons to fear his return?

The answer to the question -- which has been the subject of debate and anticipation among fans of the online-but-still-sort-of-TV musical-comedy sensation Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog -- seems to be yes.

But not soon.

Neil Patrick Harris, who starred in the Joss-Whedon-produced web series that was probably the best thing that came out of the Hollywood writers' strike, was asked this week if he and the Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse creator will reconnect to do another Dr. Horrible run (earlier reports have said Whedon is interested, particularly now that Dollhouse has ended its prime-time run).

The official network-organized portion of the semi-annual TV press tour is done -- the stars, producers and execs got themselves out of Pasadena just in time for dense clouds and days upon days of predicted rain to settle in here in no-longer-sunny L.A.

But there's one more bit of business for the TV critics who's decided to stick around until the very, very, very end of the winter tour -- a day of shuttling along the sure-to-be-treacherous freeways en route to visits to the sets of several prime-time shows.

The travel will be slow, no doubt brought to a sloshing halt occasionally by freeway wrecks caused by Angelinos' inability to remember what wet-road driving is like (think of first-snowfall chaos in Winnipeg, but with more Beemers and Porsches involved in the carnage), but if all goes well, it'll be worth the travel.

Among the stops are the set of:

The stars of the science/nature/reality/lifestyle-TV universe were out in full force the other night here in Pasadena, at an elaborate outdoor party celebrating Discovery Communications' (which includes Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Planet Green and others) 25th anniversary.

The talent roster for the event, which was held inside and outside of a huge white tent erected on the back lawn of the Langham Pasadena Hotel, included Paul Teutul Sr. and son Mikey from American Chopper, Stacy London and Clinton Kelly from What Not To Wear, Mythbusters underlings Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci, Storm Chasers Reed Timmer and Sean Casey, LA Ink's Kat von D, Little People Big World parents Matt and Amy Roloff, as well as Bill Nye the Science Guy, ocean explorer Philippe Cousteau and eco-celeb Ed Begley Jr.

Barbecue chef Myron Mixon of the smokin' new TLC series BBQ Pitmasters had his mobile smokehouse unit parked out back and was serving up some very impressive down-home ribs, brisket, pulled pork and chicken to an enthusiastic crowd.

At the front entrance to the part, a small zoo-like enclosure allowed guests to get up close and personal with a baby giraffe named Stanley.

On the first day of the cable networks' portion of the semi-annual TV press tour, here's one duo that added nothing to my day:

Conan and Jay.

Despite the fact the Hollywood rumour mills were abuzz all Thursday afternoon with reports that NBC's late-night muck-up was finally being resolved -- with Jay Leno being handed The Tonight Show's 10:35 p.m. timeslot after the Winter Olympics end, and Conan O'Brien being handed a big cheque and shown the door -- their now-oh-so-tired antics just felt like more of the same.

On the other hand, HBO's late-afternoon cluster of new-show-related interview panels produced three pairings that were waaaaaaay more than worth waiting for: