As we reported in August, the District is moving closer to ending Comcast's virtual monopoly over cable television service in the city. Today the D.C. Office of Cable Television announced that a franchise agreement negotiated with Verizon for its fiber-optic service has been submitted to the D.C. Council for review. Don't go running to Comcast and telling them where they can shove their notoriously bad service, though. According to the press release, if the D.C.......

The next season of Top Chef, filmed this time in New York, is set to premiere on November 12, and this time we'll have a hometown girl to cheer for. Carla Hall is chef-owner of Alchemy Caterers, and got her schooling at Bethesda's L'Academie de Cuisine. Her bio states that her food is at the "heart and soul of the South and the refinement of her classic French training." Let's hope that she fares better......

Isis King, the local transgender woman who sought to be America's Next Top Model, this week became the fifth contestant of 14 to be eliminated from the television competition this season. The Advocate reports that host Tyra Banks and the show's judges "decided King had to go after too many uninspiring photo shoots and catwalk sessions. King's last photo shoot required her to wear a bikini, which clearly made her uncomfortable." Equality Maryland, the state's......

A reader sent us these two photos the other day, taken at 14th and Columbia Road NW late Saturday night. A pair of police officers appear to have been watching Family Guy via Hulu.com on the squad car's computer. They had paused the video to enter a nearby store when the photo was taken. Now hopefully these officers were on a break or off-duty. And we guess it's good they weren't watching World's Wildest Police......

Last spring the Washington Capitals made headlines as they pulled off an 11-2 run to make the playoffs, and Alex Ovechkin broke the all time record for goals by a left wing and earned himself his first Hart Trophy and Lester B. Pearson Award as the league's most valuable player. Just to show that these headlines were not lost on the local broadcasting community, Washington Business Journal reports today that the Caps have now scored......

Former Miss D.C. Kate Michael writes on her blog, K Street Kate, that she was told by soon-to-be reality TV star Katherine Kennedy ("herself!") that filming started yesterday on Blonde Charity Mafia. The show, as you'll recall, is styled after The Hills and follows the lives of young, blonde Washington socialites. It will eventually air on the Lifetime network, following Project Runway.......

On the heels of the announcement that Lifetime picked up the Late Night Shots-inspired reality show that's been in development since early this year, we now have the title. According to the Post's Lisa de Moraes, they're going to call it Blonde Charity Mafia. That's the nickname three of the show's main characters have given themselves, due to their reputation for throwing elaborate parties that raise money for charitable causes. So what do you think......

It's all speculation and rumors at this point, but this is one potential reality TV show we're happy to hype. Mr. Irrelevant caught Wizard's star and highly trained professional blogger Gilbert Arenas calling in to 106.7 WJFK’s Big O and Dukes show, where at some point, he mentioned that he's been approached to do a reality show. Agent Zero is famous for not partying out on the town, preferring to stay home and play video......

The Examiner went with a story this morning about how the FCC is worried that too many people in the D.C. metro area still haven't heard about the digital TV converter box program. Seems a little tough to swallow at first, considering the sheer amount of promotion it has already received compared to virtually any other government program. But the FCC is especially concerned about seniors, people with disabilities, minorities, the very poor and non-English......

No, you're not having a waking nightmare. It's really happening. So says Patrick Gavin and Jeff Dufour in their Yeas and Nays column in the Examiner. We can now exclusively confirm that Lifetime has picked up the show and filming begins in September. The half-hour show is slated to air in November and has scored a crucial timeslot: Immediately following Lifetime's popular reality show, "Project Runway" (which will switch from Bravo to the Lifetime network......

The Travel Channel's Samantha Brown recently filmed an episode of her show, Passport to Great Weekends, here in D.C., and it premieres tonight at 10 p.m. You can check out the list of places she visited while in town, which, we suppose, is about as good as we could hope for from a half-hour travel show. Busboys & Poets, Ben's Chili Bowl, Union Station, Perry's, Etete, Jack's Boathouse, Hudson and Eastern Market all made the......

OK, OK. You all keep sending in "tips" about the YouTube trailer Wonkette put up yesterday that seems like there could maybe be a scripted TV show in the works called DC Prep. You know, a fake documentary-style type thing where the main characters are all naughty, hot, and the children of powerful Washington politicos. Except that we can virtually guarantee this show is not real. It's a fine enough trailer put together by......

Anthony Bourdain and José Andrés after a visit to the Penn Quarter farmers market OK, he may not be Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but I'd bet $5 on Anthony Bourdain in a bare-knuckle boxing match. So, if you see him around town this weekend, filming segments for his Travel Channel show, No Reservations, best not tick him off. We spotted Bourdain yesterday afternoon at the weekly Penn Quarter FRESHFARM market, accompanied by new......

The longrunning science fiction television phenomenon The X-Files will reappear after a six-year hiatus in a second film to be released in theaters next week. But the show that brought to life Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and added "The Truth Is out There" and "I Want to Believe" to pop lexicon is also finally showing its age. This morning X-Files director/writer/producer Chris Carter was at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History to......

As commenter RJ noted on our earlier post about the Washingtonienne television show, it appears that the reality show we've been ... anticipating? for months now is getting realer and realer all the time. The Examiner's Yeas & Nays column announced earlier today that a cast has been set for the so-called 'The Hills of D.C.' The stars are "local socialites/hotties/20-somethings Katherine Kennedy, Krista Johnson and Sophie Pyle. Johnson’s younger sister, Alexa Johnson, may also......

You know, I canceled my HBO subscription when The Wire ended, and even though I was briefly regretting that decision when I started reading about Alan Ball's new vampire show, today's news makes me feel sure I did the right thing. Via Gawker, Variety is reporting that some four years after the Jessica Cutler/Washingtonienne Capitol Hill sex blog scandal first broke, the pay cable network is going ahead with a pilot for a TV series......

I'm not one to watch reality shows (or their talent search related ilk), but I wish I had a heads-up on this one. During last night's broadcast of America's Got Talent on NBC, the D.C. Cowboys, a gay country-western dance troupe, proved they have what it takes to entertain the masses... or at least to move on to next round. Check out their audition performance above, set to Big & Rich's 2004 single "Save......

Slowly, but surely, Chef José Andrés can now knock-off another television network from his list to appear on; this time Bravo. D.C.'s beloved Andrés will guest judge on tonight's episode of Top Chef, which will feature the fan-favorite "Restaurant Wars" contest, pitting two teams against each other in designing and operating a mini-restaurant. No stranger to conceptualizing, designing and running a plethora of restaurants, Andrés is a befitting choice for judging this season's Restaurant Wars.......

Still of José Andrés and crew at minibar courtesy WETA Local "celebrity" chef groupies and aspiring foodies itching for a glimpse inside their favorite D.C. restaurants' kitchens can get an hour’s worth of behind-the-scenes restaurant dirt (in the figurative, NOT the literal sense) tonight as WETA premieres the latest installment of its local D.C. documentary-style series: The WETA Guide to Fine Dining. The guides, which are produced four times a year, cull together some......

Former Mayor and current Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry apparently called up The O'Reilly Factor and asked to be a guest on the conservative talk show last night, and we've posted the video above. Barry wanted to talk a bit about Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal, but don't get too excited -- the back and forth between Barry and host Bill O'Reilly is actually for the most part rather......

Here we go again: The Real World may finally (or dreadfully) be coming to Washington. We know, we know. Rumors circulated three-and-a-half years ago that MTV was scoping out property in Adams Morgan. We warned you then it probably wouldn't happen, it didn't, and the bars of Adams Morgan were better for it. But Bunim-Murray Productions, which currently produces The Real World for MTV, is reportedly looking for activists and politically minded people to cast......

The Washington City Paper's Angela Valdez provides a two-pronged update today to the monstrosity that could be the Late Night Shots reality TV show we told you about earlier this month. In a piece over at Campus Progress, she interviews Havva Eisenbaum, the producer of the pilot, who says that they've already had "nibbles of interest from networks" who might end up picking it up once the pilot is completed. Considering how many reality TV......

James Jay Lee, the man better known only as "Lee", the organizer of a lengthy protest against The Discovery Channel, has been arrested by Montgomery County police. Lee appears to have spent thousands of dollars in advertising his protest plans in publications such as the Express and hiring homeless people to beef up his presence in front of the cable network's Silver Spring headquarters. WJLA reported that Lee was arrested yesterday on charges of littering......

Attention DCist readers with reality TV show aspirations: FOX's So You Think You Can Dance is coming to the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE on Thursday. From 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. tomorrow, dancers ages 18 to 30 have the chance to see if they have what it takes to be applauded or booed on national TV. Be prepared to wait in line, because producers expect anywhere from 300-1200 dancers (callbacks are......

Late Night Shots, the invite-only, Georgetown social scene site first made famous by why.i.hate.dc, Wonkette and later by an investigative report by the Washington City Paper, has apparently piqued the interest of reality television producers looking to do a show similar to The Hills based on the web site. The image above is currently showing up as a splash page when you log in to Late Night Shots, which takes you to this page......

Sometime last week a friend of DCist sent in this rather hilarious web site promoting what appears to be a one-man crusade and protest against the Silver Spring, Md.-based Discovery Channel. As you can see, the singularly named "Lee," with his faux-tough mug shot and all-caps, is dishing out a little of the old insane rambling on the cable network to promote his "Save the Planet Protest Against the Discovery Channel," which the web site......

FRIDAY: >> The 18th Street Lounge's regular Wednesday night reggae stars SEE-I are at the Rock and Roll Hotel to celebrate the holidays with some friends who are sure to get you dancing too -- DJ Mat the Alien and remix artists Fort Knox Five. Tickets for the Happy FKX-XMas are $10. >> Rufus Wainwright begins a two-night stint at the 9:30 Club tonight with his sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche. Tickets are still available for......

There's always something special about last shows. Whether the final episode of a beloved television series, or the farewell tour of a band, or even just the closing show of a tour, the artists involved always seem to throw a little something extra into the mix. So what does that mean for someone like Ted Leo, who closed out his tour Saturday night at the 9:30 Club, for whom giving roughly 210% at any......

Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping are of the opinion that the masses have an opiate other than religion. And if it's the merchandise that keeps us in line, then there is no time of year when we binge on our fix of choice like the holiday season. Bank accounts and credit card statements across the nation can do the testifying for us on this point. And so it is at the most......

For dance lovers looking to get into the holiday spirit, The Nutcracker is a must at this time of year. Thankfully, the Washington D.C. area has numerous performances of the beloved ballet from which to choose. While there’s over a dozen performances ranging in size from huge ballet troupes to small dance studios, here's a few that stand out among the rest. American Ballet Theater: Few companies can compete with the size and talents of......