Warner Brothers' synergy going too far?

I happened to be home tonight, so I checked out Roswell, the new X-Files-meets-Dawson's-Creek offering on the WB network. While it's nothing new for WB shows that are heavily in the teenage demographic to cross-promote WB musical artists, this episode had three albums mentioned before the closing credits. They're also running Warner/Reprise artist Filter's "Take a Picture" over ads for Dawson's Creek. Repeat after me: Media consolidation is BAD.

Hopefully, this sort of blatant corporate interest won't pollute Reverb, the live music showcase on Time-Warner owned HBO. This week was much happier than the Kid Rock and Hole shows of the past couple of weeks, with this one featuring selections from one of the few shows Beck put on to support his Mutations record, along with Sebadoh and a single track from Robyn Hitchcock.

We're also two episodes into both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sportsnight, with both shows stumbling a little bit before finding their footing. Buffy is perhaps overdoing the big changes involved in going to college, and the show is still only hinting at whatever the main story arc will be for the season. Sportsnight is getting bogged down with the relationship between Dana and Casey, as each of the two first episodes would have been fine without that additional plot element. And they have set down what at least one of the story arcs will be this season, with a ballbuster of a ratings consultant being brought it to "help" the show. This introduced enough conflict to warrant scenes from next week's show, which is the first time I remember this ever happening.

Finally, both Snoops and the Law & Order spinoff will most likely never grace my TV again. I caught an episode of Angel and liked it, but it's up against Sportsnight, so forget it. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do when they have a 2-hour Buffy/Angel crossover next week.