Gail: Hi, everybody. Hot outside (OK, it's July in St. Louis), but I got the AC back in my car, which is very good news. Also, the laptop is out of the hospital after having a transplant of its "O" key, which mysteriously stopped working yesterday. Plus, there's day baseball, so I'm three for three and all ready to chat.

Janice: Gail, I had to ditch my little old 4" TV that sat on my kitchen counter. I watched the local morning news to see what's what. Has there been a down-turn in viewing because of the switch? When you see the CBS people in LA tell them canceling "Without a Trace" and "The Unit" was a stinky thing to do. Be polite, of course.

Gail: I had to throw away a little, pink battery-operated TV, too. I only used it in power outages, but it was nice to have. As of late last month, Nielsen reported that more than 2 million homes hadn't made the digital switch. But I'm gussing most of those weren't Nielsen homes in the first place, so there absence won't matter in the ratings. And little TVs like yours wouldn't have been hooked up to a Nielsen People Meter anyway, so their viewership wasn't being measured. The arrival of People Meters in St. Louis last spring already skewed the ratings so much, it's hard to make valid comparisons anyway.
CBS knew viewers would be mad about those cancellations. Ratings for "The Unit" were low, and the audience skewed older. (Ooh: bad.) "Without a Trace" completely had to do with coming to a time when license fees would go up, thus it would cost a lot more for the network. "Trace" was one of my favorite shows, and I'll miss it, although I'm glad they broke Sam and Jack up at the end -- I loved them as a couple, and now I don't have to wonder what would have become of them.

kymba_o: Please! Tell what you know about "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Hope you are saying it is returning soon!

Gail: As far as I know, HBO hasn't made this official. But when I got the schedule for cable's portion of the TCA press tour, which I'll be attending next month in Los Angeles, I noticed that HBO has a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" session with Larry David -- and the schedule said "Curb" returns ... are you ready? ... Sept. 20!

Mary Anne Wilson: Hi Gail,

Last week, last answer regarding sets you will visit, you mention NCIS: LA.
Maybe it was mentioned before and I skipped over the LA part but is this a spin off of NCIS?

Gail: Yes: "NCIS: LA" is a spin-off of "NCIS." It stars LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell, and Rocky Carroll will cross over between both shows.

Steve M.: I noticed that Fox-2 news had some pretty dramatic video of a police chase that lead to a fatal "accident".Do you know if that video was actually film by a Fox-2 news crew,or did they used video from a free lance video photoghapher like some of the TV stations in Los Angeles and other cities use?

Gail: I don't know, but I do know Channel 2 still flies its helicopter, in contrast to other stations who have dropped their helicopters for cost saving.