The Harvard-Radcliffe TV station has changed call letters from HRTV to HUTV and changed its tone from soap opera to silly. Besides abandoning their Seven-Sisters roots, the HUTV site also appears to have abandoned any attempt at serious television. But this video of Stephen Pinker--known on campus as "The Hair"--smashing a TV is aight.

The show line-up includes some standby favorites like On Harvard Time alongside less serious-sounding shorts by the Harvard Hooligan, but even the most informative HUTV News pretty much just covers students talking about Obama. It's a nice try, but we'd rather watch the Mather House video.

That said, one has to wonder why HUTV would invest their resources so heavily to make a website of B-grade viral videos. (Well, make that bacterial videos since nobody's really catching on.) Harvard has a recent history of really good comedy and a short history of bad jokes. But since a Brown alum basically owns TV news, you'd think HUTV at least try to report on some real current events to build a legacy. Those Harvard kids love legacy, after all.

So c'mon HUTV. Let's see some real balls-to-the-wall, unembedded reporting! In the meantime, just leave the real journalism to us.

When we last  wrote about intrepid On Harvard Time reporter Derek Flanzraich, he was interviewing American hero Frances Martel. This time he's upped the ante, and somehow got Karl "they stamped my passport to let me into Massachussetts" Rove to appear on the program. Needless to say, Flanzraich didn't lob softballs. Watch the video below. He asks Rove to help him celebrate Gaypril! Gaypril! (via Wonkette)

In our pretty, pret-ty, pret-tay harsh criticism of Harvard-Radcliffe TV, we firmly believe that we've been more justified than a certain debut album. But we're not totally unfeeling, and we know that actual humans with actual (if Ivy-distorted) senses of self-worth work there. And so now, with trumpets, we blare to the heavens that there is a clip on their web site that is hilarious! And original! And doesn't make our life hurt!

It's a single take of Harrison Greenbaum '08 performing standup at the Comedy Studio (a brilliant Chinese restaurant attic of a comedy club where half of us spent our high school weekends getting a real education). You might recognize him as the one funny guy from Monday's comedic Titanic; we actually thought about calling him out for praise then, but decided it wouldn't be fair if we didn't also call out that Francesca chick for being so damn pleased with herself after every punchline. Anyway, enjoy it, HRTV folk; and to the rest of you, we pledge to not revisit this topic for a long while.

These are dark days for Harvard-Radcliffe Television. First, they gave you Love|Hate, a Harvard version of Best Week Ever that somehow failed to retain any of the positive qualities of Best Week Ever. Now they've applied the same winning formula to that holy of holies, The Daily Show.

We haven't seen any actual episodes of On Harvard Time -- and we fully intend to keep it that way. The five-minute trailer alone, watchable (only in the most literal sense) below, nearly made us pull an Oedipus and reach for the darning needles. A full half hour of this stuff and we'd probably emerge nothing but a mumbling husk, rocking back and forth, eyes distant.

The sad part is, On Harvard Time could have worked. Just look at something like The Onion TV, which gets the tone right. Unfortunately, OHT is a lot closer to Fox's tragic attempt at political satire, The Half Hour News Hour, only without the ideological bent. Sure, experimentation is important. It also takes courage to put yourself out there, especially in the arts. But some dogs -- even puppies like On Harvard Time -- just need to be put down out of mercy.

P.S. -- Negativity is bad for your health. Will someone please e-mail us about some good campus shows?

Ever since Gutenberg brought the pain to monks, scribes, and the dudes who pimped out their drop caps, the written word has been the way society operates. And certain things follow from that: we know how to spell, we know letters usually need salutations, we know about semicolons and chapters and the inverted pyramid and whether it's possible to read 200 pages in an afternoon. We are, in other words, literate.

Now, we're not nearly saying that viral video is on par with the printing press. But being able to create a short movie is inarguably becoming a crucial skill, in a time when one dude can create this -- 2.7 million views and counting.

Philip de Vellis, the "Vote Different" guy, is clearly the new kind of literate. And at Harvard, the people who make "Love|Hate" just as clearly are not. In January we wrote about their execrable pilot; only one commenter made it past the 2:34 mark. Here's their second effort, and while it's better -- on account of being 12 minutes shorter -- it still just fundamentally makes our life hurt, to borrow a commenter's phrase. We're not even talking about production values necessarily, although the echoes do bring to mind the San Fernando Valley's finest. It's that "Love|Hate" is not compelling, original or necessary in any way, and we say that as people who would absolutely buy Ball In A Cup if that commercial ever actually aired.

Some of the greatest loves in history were never meant to be. Shakespeare's RoMo and JuCap, undone by fate and feud ... Titanic's Jack and Rose, whose impervious love was on a pervious ship ... and Ivory Tower's Lisa Thompson and Adam James, cursed by Harvard's regulations on peer advisor-advisee relations.

It's time for another episode of the Harvard soap opera, and you know what that means! More echoey audio, strained dramatic timing and the most uncomfortably filmed sex since Dakota Fanning's latest. Look for no fewer than five queasy kiss scenes; if you'd like your libido back, stay tuned after the credits for a funny male striptease that'll make you forget what you just saw.

In general, we have a policy not to hate on projects into which students sink time, energy, and personal savings. College is a time for experimentation, and experimentation means mistakes. But when the word "hate" is actually in the name of the project in question ...

"Love|Hate," a new show screening on Harvard-Radcliffe Television, does for VH1 clip revue shows what Columbia's The Gates did for soap opera: make you wish they enforced age requirements for video cameras like they do for guns or rental cars. A panel of Disney-ready hosts throw out topics of discussion from crocs to Mark Foley to Larry Summers' resignation, with guest commentators riffing on each. First let's focus on the positive: Its hosts are enthusiastic and attractive. Its attitude is harmless. And it's only 19 minutes long.

But around a minute and a half, the thought will dawn on you: They're not joking. That is to say, they're telling jokes ... but they're not joking. Describing it is pointless, just watch:

Remember that Columbia soap opera we told you about last week? Get ready for a big shock: Harvard was doing it earlier, and Harvard was doing it better. Here's episode one of the latest season of Ivory Tower, the nation's longest-running college soap. The humor is more subtle (we hope that was irony, at least), the acting a little more inspired (Julia Gudish '10, call us!), and overall, this is a show with a lot more polish. Behold, or don't: