As for the room inside the Statue of Liberty, it’s going to serve as a portal of sorts for VIPs to cross to and fro. This bridge will remain secret from the general public.

Here’s the newest list of channel additions, effective April 19th, 2011:

642 Style HD
643 E HD
644 Travel Channel HD
652 Fuse HD (Digital View Plus)
653 VH1 HD
654 MTV HD
655 CMT HD
656 BET HD
690 Disney XD HD
691 Nickelodeon HD

The channels without the (Digital View Plus) designation are all standard, expanded basic channels. The Digital View Plus is a separate package which costs $10 or so more each month.

Their Switched Digital Video upgrade appears to be a success, but I have noticed “network” problems on the tuning adapter during primetime while trying to access a few of the channels. I hope Charter is able to work those problems out of the system.

Don’t be surprised if more HD channels are added within the next 30 days. I suspect Charter has more in the pipeline. The only major news station missing at the moment is CNN HD and I’m surprised by that omission.

The bulk of the second half of the season premiere had Jamie trying to work with an independent fast food restaurant owner, Dino Perris or Patra’s Burgers. Oliver wanted to replace some of the unhealthy burgers and other food items with healthier alternatives. Problems arose immediately when they began talking about pricing and ingredients.

It came as no surprise to me when Oliver revealed the black angus beef in his burgers was considerably more expensive than the beef Dino was using. When asking a customer which one he would choose, he liked the black angus burger, but the price was a huge problem for him. It’s hard to justify nearly $5 for a burger for most people.

When it came time for remaking the milk shake, Oliver completely changed what most people think of as a milkshake by dumping the ice cream and using yogurt. The significantly healthier alternative probably tasted great, but Dino Perris had a problem with the name. He felt you couldn’t call it a shake since the ice cream was gone and replaced by yogurt. To him, it was now a smoothie.

To me, I laughed at it all because I felt Jamie Oliver’s approach was all wrong. If he’s so convinced of his ideas, Oliver shouldn’t try to get an already-successful business to change its menu. Instead, Oliver should open his own restaurant using his own financial resources.

I just don’t see Oliver staking his reputation on a restaurant because most big-time chefs opt for the expensive, high-class restaurants, never a fast food joint.

However, I think that’s the only way Oliver’s going to get his point across. Put everything on the line and open his own place. I believe it could work. I know I’ve seen other fast food restaurants be successful. I just wonder if Oliver feels the only way to start a “revolution” is to change an existing restaurant.

Again, it’s not the right approach. You influence a revolution by showing your idea is a good one. And in the restaurant business, a good idea is validated by how well your restaurant is. If Dino Perris sees Oliver start his own place and has a successful go at it, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him make a few changes to his menu, thus changing the culture, menu item by menu item.

For the restaurateur in last night’s season premiere, it’s hard to justify the changes Oliver is trying to propose. Oliver’s essentially trying to remake the burger joint’s menu and that’s a very risky thing to do. As the gentleman said, this was his only source of income so if things go awry, he and his family are in serious trouble financially.

While I feel Jamie Oliver’s revolution attempt is obnoxious and ridiculous at times, I approve of what he’s trying to achieve. I applaud the attempt to get excess sugar out of flavored milk and to help change the eating habits of Americans.

Discovery elected to go with a two-hour season premiere airing and I was psyched for it – I won’t lie. As things got going, I liked where the new season was going. It’s going to take some time getting used to the new crews and the new captain aboard the Cornelia Marie, but as the progressed beyond sixty minutes, the show started to drag a bit. The pacing was slower than normal after an intense, heroic at-sea rescue by the Coast Guard.

Going forward, I pose the following suggestion for Discovery: go 90 minutes with a huge sponsorship deal. This is something I see NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams do a couple times a year. The normal 30 minute broadcast sees close to 25 minutes of actual news instead of the boatload of pharmaceutical advertisements. A few ads from a single, major company and there are ‘limited’ commercial interruptions and we get more content, and less advertising.

Deadliest Catch’s biggest sponsor over the past few years has been Coors. The producers should strike an NBC Nightly News-esque deal with Coors for next season so the premiere can be a 90-minute limited-interruption episode. Anytime NBC does this sort of thing, it gets press not only for the news broadcast, but for the advertiser as well.

For Coors [or other potential advertiser] and Discovery Channel, this is a win-win situation. In the end, we, the consumer also win because we get nearly the same amount of content in 90 minutes as there would be in 120 minutes and get to see it with only a handful of commercials.

I didn’t watch more than a few minutes of the first three days of the event. I caught some of the highlights on ESPN, but that was pretty much it. As I saw the leaderboard tighten up for the fourth day, I decided to plop down in front of my Plasma screen and check out CBS’ coverage of the event.

As far as golf goes, the fourth round of Masters play was about as exciting as it gets. Not only did we see Tiger Woods make a terrific comeback to tie for the lead for a spell, but we also saw a large number of people tied for either the lead or for second. I was on the edge of my seat when there were six or seven people tied at 10 under and Adam Scott was beginning to pull away with some excellent birdies in his back nine. Charl Schwartzel, however, came on strong and managed to edge out Adam Scott for the win.

Golfer Rory McIlroy

The fourth day of the Masters managed to be both thrilling for the reasons stated above and disheartening when Rory McIlroy’s game fell apart. The leader heading into the fourth day, McIlroy crumbled under the pressure and his psyche was never able to recover. The 21-year-old McIlroy began Sunday’s final round with a 4-stroke lead. By the end he shot an 8-over-par 80 to free-fall to a tie for 15th and a full 10 strokes behind eventual winner Charl Scwhartzel. He went from phenom to failure in a single, agonizing afternoon.

I felt terrible for Rory. His youth brought immediate comparison to Tiger Woods, who was also 21 when he won his first Masters tournament. Let’s hope Rory takes some time off and recoups. He has a lot of great golf years ahead of him.

This Thursday, we saw nothing new in the “This Game Respects Big Moves”. Ometepe and Zapatera may not be part of Murlonio, but the division is obvious. It was even discussed briefly at tribal council.

To make things interesting last night, Matt was brought back from Redemption Island and thrust right back into the game. Since Matt has been away from the tribe for so long, he’s not really even part of his tribe anymore. As soon as be was brought back into the fold, the opposing tribe tried to convince him to join their group since it was his own tribe that voted him out the first time.

“Boston” Rob Mariano on Survivor: Redemption Island

Mike’s attempt to win Matt over was a good try, but he was clearly conflicted on where his allegiances lie. When Matt finally made up his mind, he told Boston Rob all about the plan and I too was dumbfounded by it all. Like Rob, I couldn’t believe he’s opened his mouth again about this stuff and spilled everything, even throwing Andrea’s name into the mess as considering gunning for Rob. I’m sure Matt is a nice person outside of the game, but he’s just terrible at Survivor’s social game.

I have admittedly disliked Boston Rob for years… right from the start. However after watching him play this year, you have to respect his game. It’s pretty smart. He’s got the numbers. He’s so confident that he’s throwing away idol clues and making up Spanish names. Yeah, I may not know Spanish, but even I knew that tribe name was bogus. It’s not the first time someone’s offered up a fake word for a tribe name.

If I were Rob, I’d be concerned about Grant at some point. As the preview for next week’s episode alluded to, Grant could eventually grow a brain and realize he doesn’t have to play second fiddle to Rob. It’s strange to me how Ometepe treats Rob as some sort of Survivor god. Philip is certainly annoying as hell, but I understand where he’s coming from when he bitches about the way things are around camp.

As for Matt, either he keeps up his winning ways on Redemption Island or goes home. I don’t see him putting together another string of wins to stay. Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way and injuries can pop up. That cut on his foot could get infected and he may have to bow out of the game. I hope it doesn’t come to that and he can keep his spirits up. It’s going to be a difficult thing to do after he was voted out by his own people twice.

Bryan Cranston as Walt White on Breaking Bad

My local Charter branch added a bunch of new HD channels after upgrading the network to Switched-Digital-Video (SDV), which will help in the bandwidth department. As for which HD channels Charter added, here’s the list:

• AMC HD
• CNBC HD
• Fox News HD
• FX HD
• Hallmark Channel HD
• Lifetime Movie Network HD
• MSNBC HD
• Oxygen HD
• Spike TV HD

It’s not a huge list, but it’s a nice start. I already had a decent lineup to start. It’s nice to finally get some of the news channels, but I was surprised to see CNN not make the cut. Of the channels making the cut, I’m most excited about AMC because of the movies and the original TV shows they’re producing now.

Every couple of years Discovery’s Shark Week has a bit of an off-year in terms of the quality of the lineup. This was certainly true of this past Shark Week which was pretty light on substance. It was almost entirely re-enactment type of docu-reality type stuff, nothing particularly educational or even gripping for that matter.

For National Geographic Channel, the big advantage to Expedition Week over Discovery’s Shark Week is the range of programming. Not confined to the subject of sharks, Nat Geo’s programming director can put together a schedule on almost any subject. I thoroughly enjoyed the Expedition Week of 2010 and 2011’s is shaping up nicely, kicking off last night, Sunday April 3rd.

Here’s a rundown of the National Geographic specials scheduled for Expedition Week:

April 03, 2011 (Sunday) – 9pm EST – Eating with Cannibals
April 03, 2011 (Sunday) – 10pm EST – Finding Jack the Ripper
April 04, 2011 (Monday) – 9pm EST – Hunt for the Abominable Snowman
April 04, 2011 (Monday) – 10pm EST – Last Stand of the Templars
April 05, 2011 (Tuesday) – 9pm EST – Gladiators Back from the Dead
April 05, 2011 (Tuesday) – 10pm EST – Egypt’s Lost Rival
April 06, 2011 (Wednesday) – 9pm EST – Return of the Ghost Ship
April 06, 2011 (Wednesday) – 10pm EST – Ben Franklin’s Pirate Fleet
April 07, 2011 (Thursday) – 9pm EST – Into Iceland’s Volcano
April 07, 2011 (Thursday) – 10pm EST – Man vs. Volcano
April 08, 2011 (Friday) – 9pm EST – Lost Land of the Tiger
April 08, 2011 (Friday) – 10pm EST – Tiger Man of Africa: The Mating Game
April 09, 2011 (Saturday) – 9pm EST – Death of a Sea Monster

Each special is also scheduled to be repeated numerous times so if you do miss the original airing, there are plenty of opportunities to catch it later in the week.

For Good Eats to be relegated to an 11:30pm EST timeslot, it left me with one conclusion: they’re trying to kill it. Plain as day. Watching Alton Brown has been a real treat over the years. I just can’t imagine many people being willing to stay up that late to watch Good Eats. It’s the same time as the late-night shows (Leno, Letterman, etc) – that’s too late for a primetime show.

Looking at Monday night’s schedule, you’ll find Unwrapped; Kid in a Candy Store; Diners, Drive-ins, and Drives; Meat and Potatoes; The Best Thing I Ever Ate; and Ice Brigade as all premiering before Good Eats. Not only are half of those episodes repeats, but shows are frankly not particularly original.

Food Network owes Good Eats a great deal of credit for its success in my view. It’s one of the only shows left on the network that actually feels original and not a clone of a million other cooking shows. Regardless of the timeslot, I’ll be Tivoing the episodes until Food Network eventually cancels the show.

I’ve been a relatively loyal viewer for all these years, even through the truly awful seasons. I’ve missed an episode here and there, but I’d estimate I’ve seen approximately 98% of the shows and that’s a lot of Survivor.

Now in its 22nd season, Survivor is bringing back two familiar faces, “Boston” Rob Mariano and Russell Hantz. Both are amazing competitors, each with their own strategies. And neither of them have won the whole show.

The return of these two competitors is a bit of a mixed bag for viewers. Some love them, some hate them. I’ve heard a lot of regular Survivor fans who claimed they wouldn’t watch the season if they returned to the show once again. If the ratings are any indication, it seems they followed through on their promise to skip the season. The ratings were pretty bad, but CBS made the mistake of putting the show up against Fox’s popular American Idol.

The few million viewers that did watch Survivor: Redemption Island saw what would easily be the best premiere in Survivor history. In fact, some claim last night’s episode alone made up for last year’s suckfest of a season. I would have to agree.

Phillip Sheppard

The addition of the Redemption Island twist is nice and all, but I’ve got my doubts as to whether or not it’s going to have the game-changing aspect Mark Burnett and company are hoping it will.

The season’s premiere got off to a slow start as the two new tribes got to know one another. Alliances began to form. Competitors sized one another up. And then alliances broke down.

It didn’t take long for Phillip Sheppard to destroy his alliance in such a way that it’s got fans buzzing. I couldn’t believe how quickly he dissolved his alliance with Francesca and Kristina at their Tribal Council. After telling everyone about the plan to vote out Boston Rob, Phillip then alerted everyone to Kristina’s hidden immunity idol.

Holy hell, Batman!

The immunity idol revelation was huge. I was hoping he wouldn’t reveal it because I liked Kristina’s courage to target Rob, but entrusting Phillip was a huge mistake. Throughout the entire episode, Phillip seemed a little off to me.

I don’t even know if he really was in the FBI. His official CBS.com profile has a question mark after his occupation. Apparently they aren’t even sure about this guy.

The thing that is so amazing about Phillip is he’s not aware of how others perceive him. His lack of self-awareness is downright frightening! I can’t imagine him EVER being a federal agent for any length of time.

Kristina’s determination to get Boston Rob out early was bold and I love that about a person, but she was too aggressive. It’s been a mistake of a lot of Survivor competitors. Ease into it. Eventually, Rob’s alliance will break down as they get wary of him. Kristina’s going to be headed to Redemption Island pretty soon. She may or may not be safe for another week with that hidden immunity idol.

If she has any chance of staying in the game, she needs to create a division in Rob’s harem… I mean alliance. Seriously, what’s up with Rob being surrounded by half a college sorority?!

I highly recommend tuning in for more of this season. Whatever else is on during this timeslot isn’t worth watching. The drama in last night’s premiere has reinvigorated my interest in Survivor. Hopefully it did the same for you.