The governor, who has made several appearances on national talk shows, follows Laura Bush and Sarah Palin as political figures who have been guest co-hosts on the morning show.

Christie has spent this week as promoter-in-chief with a series of events designed to boost tourism ahead of Memorial Day weekend, when crowds usually start flowing to the beach.

The show is to be broadcast from Seaside Heights, where the storm swept a roller coaster into the ocean, making for one of the superstorm’s iconic images.

The roller coaster was taken away this month, but Casino Pier, the seaside amusement park where it used to sit, plans to have 18 rides open this summer.

Up and down the coast, some boardwalks have been rebuilt — though not the one here — and beaches are open, though many of them are narrower this year. Southern New Jersey resorts such as Ocean City and the Wildwoods had relatively little damage.

When the storm hit in October, New Jersey sustained an estimated $37 billion worth of damage, with 360,000 houses and apartment units damaged.

Boosting the shore is important to New Jersey because tourism brings in more than $35 billion per year.

But some Democrats are complaining that Christie, a Republican, is promoting the shore as a way to promote himself as he seeks re-election this year. They take aim especially at a $25 million federally funded ad campaign for the shore. Christie and his family appear in a TV commercial as part of the campaign. He has said that not being in the ad because of fears of political criticism would have been a mistake.

The White House announced that President Barack Obama will tour the coastline with Christie on Tuesday.

New Jersey businessman Eric Sambol sold the works by Andrew, Jamie and N.C. Wyeth at Christie’s on Thursday.

They included three by Andrew, two by Jamie, and one by N.C.

The highlight of the sale was N.C. Wyeth’s “Norry Seavey Hauling Lobster Traps Off Blubber Island.” The 1938 oil of a fisherman off the coast of Port Clyde, Maine, sold for nearly $844,000.

The Wyeths summered in Maine and lived and worked in Chadds Ford, Pa.

Sambol began his collection in 2000. He’s a nature photographer and owns a construction company in Toms River, N.J.

The publishing site released a statement Thursday announcing it had posted an annotated transcript of the film ahead of its Friday release.

No author is cited for the statement that accuses the film of inaccurately portraying the relationship between WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier who provided hundreds of thousands of classified American documents to the site. The statement asserts that no one recently associated with WikiLeaks participated in the documentary.

Gibney was not immediately available for comment.

Organizers say Shelton’s “Healing in the Heartland” benefit concert will be held May 29 at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City. The event will be televised live on NBC.

And Underwood is donating $1 million in proceeds from her recent Blown Away Tour to the Red Cross, which assists in disasters such as the one that devastated Moore, Okla., and killed 24 people Monday. Underwood grew up in Checotah.

Shelton, a resident of nearby Ada, announced plans for the benefit after Tuesday’s episode of “The Voice.” A lineup and more details will be announced Friday.

___

Online:

http://carrieunderwoodofficial.com

http://blakeshelton.com

On his memories of Liberace

I met him once, briefly, when I was 12. At the time, my father (Kirk Douglas) owned a house in Palm Springs, close to Lee Liberace’s home. One sunny day, this Rolls Royce stopped in front of the house and Lee stepped out. He was wearing lots of gold and the sunlight was reflecting off his jewelry… He was a sort of pre-Elton John. He invited that style. He was a charming man.

On Soderbergh’s offer

In 2001, when we were filming Traffic, Steven (Soderbergh) asked me, ‘Have you ever thought of doing something about Liberace?’ I wondered how that character could possibly make him think of me… I was a bit paranoid at the time, so I tried to thank him and slip away!

“But then, years later, Steven came across this book, Behind the Candelabra. Richard LaGravenese, the scriptwriter, showed it to Matt Damon, telling him he would be (Liberace’s lover) Scott (Thorson) and I, Liberace. This happened right after my cancer, and offering me this role was a great gift. I will be eternally grateful to Matt and Steven for waiting until I got better.”

On his identification:

“I normally play the bad or ambiguous guy.  But once you start doing your research on Lee, you realize that he was a generous man. It’s the first time that I play a famous character.”

Flying under the radar though are smaller-scale flicks like Old Stock.

The Canadian film follows Stock, played by Noah Reid, a troubled teen who’s chosen to withdraw from life’s rat race by hiding out in a retirement home with his grandfather.

“It’s beautifully absurd,” says Reid of the film’s premise.

“(The) writing is offbeat and wonderful.”

Reid describes Stock as “an intense guy,” and, “an old soul,” something the social-media averse actor can sympathize with.

But Stock takes it to a whole other level. “People have things in their lives that they have trouble moving past,” he says.

But Stock’s approach — to essentially drop out of life — might not be the best strategy.

Stock’s world is thrown into flux after an incident triggered by his past results in his eviction; at the same time he meets the home’s dance instructor Patti, played by Melanie Leishman.

“Patti is immediately drawn to Stock,” says Leishman. Reid agrees.

“I think there’s something about a troubled guy that appeals to a certain kind of woman.”

Patti can see herself in Stock’s situation.

While tent pole super hero and sci-fi epics certainly pack theatres, there’s a growing audience for films like Old Stock as well, says Leishman.

“It’s the size of the story,” she says, comparing the movie to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, a film near and dear to Old Stock’s director James Genn.

Like Stock, that movie’s main character, Max Fischer, is flawed but ultimately filled with good intentions.

“It’s small, endearing and charming,” he says of the film.

Crowdfunding cult series

Leishman is probably best known for her role as Hannah on the cult series Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. Much to the chagrin of its loyal fans, the show was cancelled last year, but now an Indiegogo campaign is on to raise funds for a Todd animated feature, called the End of the End.  “The creators wanted to finish telling the story,” says Leishman. “It’s a cool way to wrap it up.” And it’s likely to work; the show’s creators are just $10,000 short of their $75,000 goal with three weeks to go. Not that that’s a surprise to Leishman. “The success of the show was based on dedicated people watching it.”

Henry Holt and Company announced Thursday that Rick Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and reporter, plans a trilogy covering the years 1775-1781.

Atkinson recently completed an acclaimed trilogy of World War II books with “The Guns at Light,” which came out last week. He won a Pulitzer for the first volume, “An Army at Dawn,” published in 2002.

The 60-year-old Atkinson is a former Washington Post reporter and editor. No title or release date has been set for his first book on the American Revolution.

The French-German co-production “Crossing Lines” is among the new series being touted by the public broadcaster, which admits the cop drama contains no Canadian funds, locales or characters.

But it does feature Canadian star Donald Sutherland in its cast, and CBC programming boss Sally Catto said that was enough to satisfy the broadcaster’s Canuck-focused mandate.

“It’s not our preference,” Catto admitted Thursday of adding the European drama to the schedule.

“We’re only in our second year of three years of cuts and so we just don’t have the funding to fill our complete schedule with original programming. But we really feel this is a wonderful complement.”

The cop series will air on NBC this summer and features an international cast, including U.S. actor William Fichtner, France’s Marc Lavoine and Germany’s Tom Wlaschiha.

It centres on a special police unit that investigates crimes that cross European borders.

“We usually do one acquisition a year and … it doesn’t have to be Canadian content for that one acquisition,” said Catto, pointing to last year’s “Titanic: Blood & Steel” as a recent example.

“Donald Sutherland for us is a big draw, being such a prominent Canadian, and also Kim Coates is in this season. … And the fact that it’s global and international we felt was relevant to our audiences. It may not be Canadian, but it’s relevant to our audience in the same way ‘The Tudors’ was to our audiences.”

Of course, “The Tudors” was partially Canadian funded. And “Crossing Lines” will air on CBC months after its debut on NBC.

Catto, executive director of commissioned and scripted programming, dismissed suggestions that delaying the debut would cut into CBC’s potential audience.

“Summer is traditionally not the highest viewing time, but is it a factor that we need to consider? Yes, it is. But for us it makes sense in the fall,” she said.

“It depends how you look at it. Our commitment is to prioritizing our shows — we’re not going to move ‘The National’ to air a drama. But we can’t be all things to all people. We really have limitations with our cuts.”

The CBC touted the prime-time addition at its annual fall preview earlier this week, when it also announced returning homegrown dramas “Murdoch Mysteries,” “Republic of Doyle” and “Arctic Air.”

Court documents show the Internal Revenue Service filed a notice of a lien on the nine-time Grammy Award winner Feb. 7. That was two days before the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul was honoured at a pre-Grammy party in Los Angeles.

Blige and husband Martin Isaacs have a home in Cresskill, N.J., about 15 miles north of New York City.

Court documents show as of the date of the IRS notice Blige owed more than $574,000 for the 2009 tax year, more than $2.2 million for 2010 and more than $647,000 for 2011.

A Blige representative said Thursday she’s working “with her new team to resolve all these issues as quickly as possible.”

The traditional television season ended Wednesday. Though that marker is losing its meaning with more fresh programming airing during the summer, it’s still a good time to take stock on where the industry stands.

For the 10th time in 11 years, CBS was the nation’s most-watched network, the Nielsen company said Thursday. CBS’ margin of victory was wider than any other network in 24 years and it won among 18-to-49-year-old viewers, a group coveted by advertisers, for the first time in 21 years.

In prime time through May 19, CBS averaged 11.85 million viewers this season. ABC was its closest competitor, at a full 3 million viewers behind. Fox finished third and NBC was fourth, Nielsen said.

The “American Idol” streak of nine years as the nation’s most popular television entertainment program ended this season. Its popularity had been sliding for the past few years — typical of most shows that have been on for a long time — but accelerated this year with a cast of judges that didn’t click and the emergence of NBC’s “The Voice” as a strong alternative.

No other show in television history has come close to such sustained dominance. Three other programs have had four-year reigns as the top program in household ratings: the comedy “I Love Lucy” in the 1950s, the western “Gunsmoke” heading into the 1960s and “The Bill Cosby Show” in the 1980s, Nielsen said.

The new No. 1 show depends on how you look at the ratings.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” telecast is technically the narrow winner, but many in TV say that a live sports telecast should not count in the rankings. The Tuesday night CBS drama “NCIS” is the top program otherwise, its first win.

TV’s top comedy is “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS, averaging 15.6 million viewers per week. That’s up from 9.4 million viewers during the 2008-09 season, a testament to how the show has grown in popularity with the help of reruns that air frequently on TBS and elsewhere.

The weakness of “American Idol” was the biggest factor in Fox’s viewership dropping 20 per cent from last season. Both ABC and NBC were down 6 per cent, with ABC’s drop slightly steeper among the youthful viewers that both networks aim for. CBS was up 1 per cent, its ratings helped because this was the year it telecast the Super Bowl.

CBS officials said they still would have won among 18-to-49-year-old viewers even with the Super Bowl counted out. That’s a particular point of pride for the network because their rivals often deride them for having the oldest audience in network TV.

CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves had plenty to crow about last week when he appeared before advertisers to introduce the network’s fall schedule.

“No matter how many times I tell our success story, I never get tired of it,” Moonves said. “It just gets better and better.”

The network’s success breeds stability — 20 series were renewed for next season — and means only the very best of the new shows that it develops can find room on the schedule.

That will make CBS hard to beat in the next few years, said Brad Adgate, an analyst for Horizon Media. To unseat the network, CBS would have to see its schedule falter and a rival will need some unusually fruitful years in development, like when ABC introduced “Lost,” ”Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” in the same year.

“I don’t see it happening in the foreseeable future,” Adgate said.