Inevitably, there’s a lot more to the MTV Networks than music videos and VH1 programming, when you consider that cable channels CMT, Spike, Comedy Central and TV Land are in the orbit of this giant cable empire.

Not so long ago, TV Land was a repository for vintage TV series that stirred nostalgic memories, a place to showcase the golden age of television.

TV Land reverently presented the reruns of classic shows like “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gunsmoke” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Fortunately, TV Land is still the place to check out the wonderful Barbara Eden in “I Dream of Jeannie,” or you can find more recent classics like “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

At the gathering of the nation’s TV critics on the winter press tour, Larry W. Jones, president of TV Land, confirmed that his channel is going deeper into the original sitcom business because the success of “Hot in Cleveland” resulted in 2010 being the “highest-rated year in primetime since 2007 with our target audience of adults 25-54.”

In case you missed it last year, “Hot in Cleveland,” starring the enduring and legendary Betty White, along with Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick, turned into a big hit.

“Hot in Cleveland” resolves around three fabulous best friends from Los Angeles – Bertinelli’s novelist Melanie Moretti, Leeves’ eye makeup artist Joy Scroggs and Malick’s former soap star Victoria Chase – who find their lives changed forever when circumstances have them relocated to Ohio’s big city.

They rent a house that happens to come with White’s very opinionated caretaker Elka.

With Betty White still going strong at age 89, “Hot in Cleveland” returns on Jan. 19 for a second season, which picks up where season one left off with the three friends trying desperately to free Elka from jail, because she was arrested after a stash of valuable jewels – fenced by her mob-employed deceased husband – was found in her storm cellar.

TV Land’s commitment to new sitcoms gets off to a fast start when “Retired at 35” also premieres on Jan. 19, following “Hot in Cleveland” on the same night.

“Retired at 35” stars veteran actors George Segal and Jessica Walter as retired couple Alan and Elaine Robbins living in Florida.

The carefree retired lifestyle is soon disrupted when their grown son David (Johnathan McClain) comes for a visit and, after one too many hectoring phone calls from his boss, decides to leave the New York City rat race and retire to Florida.

The disillusioned businessman ends moving into his parents’ condo, which in turn sets off a chain reaction of unexpected events, such as his Mom suddenly deciding to move to Portugal to take up painting.

As unlikely as it may appear, David settles into the carefree retired lifestyle or, as his hedonistic Dad describes it, “college in slow-motion.” David finds that bingo night at the retirement community leads to unexpected sexual shenanigans.

CMT is well known for its music-based and reality programming. Speaking to TV critics, Brad Johnson, senior vice president for comedy development at CMT, observed that ratings and research indicated that “family and comedy” are two important things to the channel’s viewers.

Since comedies that the whole family can enjoy together are harder to find, CMT decided to fill the void with its own scripted series “Working Class,” starring Ed Asner as cranky manager Hank Greziak at a food market where Melissa Peterman’s Carli Mitchell is a co-worker.

The story of “Working Class” revolves around single mom Carli trying to give her kids a better life by moving them into an upscale suburb.

The transition to the good life is harder than she thought. Her only “career” prospect is a glorified deli job at the local grocery store, and the man she falls for not only already has a girlfriend, but he’s also her boss, Rob Parker (Patrick Fabian).

With her ladies-man brother Nick (Steve Kazee) to help her out when he’s not acting like a kid himself, Carli faces the comic challenges of parenting, dating and making friends in her new community by doing more with less.

Of all the channels in the MTV galaxy, Comedy Central is the most predictable place for new comedy. Sports fans addicted to ESPN programming are going to love the absurdity of “Onion SportsDome,” a 30-minute rundown of the silliest in sports news, analysis, scores, highlights, rumor-mongering and petty personal attacks.

Much like “The Onion” newspaper mastered the satirical skewering of culture and politics, among other things, “Onion SportsDome” turns the conventions of modern sports coverage on its head, mocking the overblown style of ESPN’s reverential coverage.

“Onion SportsDome” is co-anchored Mark Shepard (Matt Oberg) and Alex Reiser (Matt Walton), both of whom master the earnest reporting of the most mundane or inane sporting events.

I think ESPN’s “SportsCenter” is funny enough as it is when Chris Berman gets all lathered up in his overhyped and frenzied coverage of all things sports, but you can count on “Onion SportsDome” to go to the extremes, and that all alone makes it worth watching to sports fans of all stripes.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

Some of us are fortunate to find companions among the other creatures, and in this poem by T. Alan Broughton of Vermont, we sense a kind of friendship without dependency between our species and another.

Great Blue Heron

I drive past him each day in the swamp where he stands

on one leg, hunched as if dreaming of his own form

the surface reflects. Often I nearly forget to turn left,

buy fish and wine, be home in time to cook and chill.

Today the bird stays with me, as if I am moving through

the heron’s dream to share his sky or water—places

he will rise into on slow flapping wings or where

his long bill darts to catch unwary frogs. I’ve seen

his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs

fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun

and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep.

I only know this bird by a name we’ve wrapped him in,

and when I stand on my porch, fish in the broiler,

wine glass sweating against my palm, glint of sailboats

tacking home on dusky water, I try to imagine him

slowly descending to his nest, wise as he was

or ever will be, filling each moment with that moment’s

act or silence, and the evening folds itself around me.

Ted Kooser was US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. He is a professor in the English Department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He lives on an acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife Kathleen Rutledge, the editor of the Lincoln Journal Star.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by T. Alan Broughton from his most recent book of poetry, A World Remembered, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010. Reprinted by permission of T. Alan Broughton and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation.

Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

I realized a while back that there have been over 850 moons that have gone through their phases since I arrived on the earth, and I haven’t taken the time to look at nearly enough of them.

Here Molly Fisk, a California poet, gives us one of those many moons that you and I may have failed to observe.

Hunter's Moon

Early December, dusk, and the sky

slips down the rungs of its blue ladder

into indigo. A late-quarter moon hangs

in the air above the ridge like a broken plate

and shines on us all, on the new deputy

almost asleep in his four-by-four,

lulled by the crackling song of the dispatcher,

on the bartender, slowly wiping a glass

and racking it, one eye checking the game.

It shines down on the fox’s red and grey life,

as he stills, a shadow beside someone’s gate,

listening to winter. Its pale gaze caresses

the lovers, curled together under a quilt,

dreaming alone, and shines on the scattered

ashes of terrible fires, on the owl’s black flight,

on the whelks, on the murmuring kelp,

on the whale that washed up six weeks ago

at the base of the dunes, and it shines

on the backhoe that buried her.

Ted Kooser was US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. He is a professor in the English Department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He lives on an acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife Kathleen Rutledge, the editor of the Lincoln Journal Star.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2000 by Molly Fisk, whose most recent book of poetry is The More Difficult Beauty, Hip Pocket Press, 2010. Poem reprinted from The Place That Inhabits Us, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010, by permission of Molly Fisk and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation.

Scottish singer Jim Malcolm will perform at a benefit concert on Friday, February 4, 2011, in Lakeport, Calif. Courtesy photo.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Scottish singer Jim Malcolm is returning to Lake County for another night of Scottish songs and humor.

Malcolm will be performing on Friday, Feb. 4, at the Kelsey Creek Coffee Co., 930 N. Main St., Lakeport, in a fundraising benefit concert for Lake County Community Radio KPFZ 88.1.

The concert starts at 8 p.m.

Last year he wowed the audience with his tribute to Robert Burns. This year he will be sure to sing some Burns songs as well as songs from his brand new CD, “Sparkling Flash.”

If you haven't seen Malcolm perform before you are in for a treat. He has received numerous awards including the BBC Scots Traditional Music award for his singing and songwriting.

Tickets are available at Watershed Books, 350 N. Main St., Lakeport, and also at the door.

Tickets are $20 ($2 discount for KPFZ members).

For more information call 707-262-0525.