Jonathan Storm: 'Man v. Food' visits Philly

Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm is reporting this week from the television critics' press tour in Pasadena, Calif. These items originally appeared in his blog, "Eye of the Storm," at

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Adam Richman, of the Travel Channel's Man v. Food, lands in Philadelphia in a September episode to do his usual three-spot. The segment includes stops at a cheesesteak place (stay tuned), the Reading Terminal Market ("It might be one of the greatest places in the world"), and Franklin Fountain, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor at 116 Market St. that is very serious about the "old-fashioned" part, making phosphates, ice cream sodas and such to historical specifications.

"They even get some of their recipes from the Library of Congress," says Richman. The program is scheduled for Sept. 23 at 10 p.m.

Richman gives the cheesesteak love neither to Pat's nor Geno's nor Jim's, but to Tony Luke's. "Tony Luke and Tony Luke Jr. are icons, and we are happy to be the first entity to showcase something wonderful," he said during the TV critics' press tour in Pasadena.

Man v. Food is hardly the first entity to notice Tony Luke's steaks, but we're not going to make a fuss.

And Richman doesn't want to make a fuss, either. "I'm never going to comment on who's got the best cheesesteak," he says. "These places are all beloved by their fans, and it's not up to me to tell anybody they're wrong."

Besides visiting three homegrown establishments in each episode, Richman also takes on a "challenge" - eating too much stuff, eating stuff that's too spicy. In Philadelphia it was "a giant, delicious cheesesteak," says Richman, spreading his arms wide like a bragging fisherman. Wid onions. American cheese, not Whiz.

Let the naysaying begin.

Lightning rod Lou Dobbs. "We're the only news network based on reporting," CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein said, almost as an aside, as his network was winding up a session at the TV critics' press tour featuring heavy hitters Christiane Amanpour, John King, and Soledad O'Brien.

But then there's Lou Dobbs, who continues to follow the non-controversy perpetuated by a handful of knuckleheads about whether President Obama was actually born in the United States.

Fact check: He was.

"Mr. Dobbs is trying to get ratings, trying to be provocative, just using this to stir the pot and get viewers," none other than Bill O'Reilly said Monday night on his show, where Southern Poverty Law Center president Richard Cohen called on CNN to take off the air the man O'Reilly characterized as a "bloviator."

Such irony.

"Lou wants it both ways," Cohen said. "He wants to pretend he's a newscaster."

CNN apparently wants it both ways, too. Klein pooh-poohed the idea that Dobbs should be censured, stressing that on CNN, Dobbs himself acknowledges the birth issue is moot, even as he interviews people who keep questioning, including WPHT talk-show host Dom Giordano.

On his radio show, Dobbs goes a little further, stirring the pot to get attention.

"His radio show is separate from what's on our air," said Klein, who said suggestions that he clamp down on Dobbs were misguided and would hinder the vibrancy of CNN. "On CNN, the birth-certificate issue is a dead issue."

But I'll bet Dobbs keeps stirring it anyway. Ratings, and all that.

Great new site for TV heads. Here's some news from the press tour so new it won't happen for more than a month.

It's the Archive of American Television, located online at emmytvlegends.org. This is a very cool Web site, sponsored by the people who bring you the Emmys, which are frequently misguided. But this site isn't. Beaucoup interviews with TV legends, from both in front of and behind the cameras: Mary Tyler Moore, Steven Bochco, Rita Moreno, Uncle Walter Cronkite, Michael J. Fox, and on and on and on, even Robert Adler, the guy who invented the remote control. (He's not too happy with the modern versions: "Too many buttons.")

You can go there now and click through to lots of half-hour interviews on YouTube. The originals are two to seven hours (the longest from Dan Rather). Starting Sept. 1, if the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences meets its deadline, the interviews will be cataloged into bite-sized pieces by subject matter, so you can go directly to Phylicia Rashad remembering her meeting with Nelson Mandela, who thanked her for The Cosby Show. "I watched it with my guard," Mandela said, referring to his long incarceration under apartheid on South Africa's Robben Island. "And it softened him."

Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm reports from the Television Critics' Press Tour this week. Read his dispatches in the newspaper and on his blog at www.philly.com/philly/

blogs/storm.

On Thursdays, he and Daily News critic Ellen Gray host an online chat.

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