neps: May 2009 Archives

Phone Rider is a neat little app, available from Apple's App Store for $0.99.

This app does one thing, and does it quite well - take the audio from your microphone and symulate it through a voice modulator interface that echos either of the Knight 2000 interfaces or KARR. It's really quite slick, with custom graphics that echo the Season 1 & 2 dash.

Check out our quick video review above. First 15 people to comment on this post with a valid email address will receive a free copy of this app, courtesy of p13development!

As we mentioned last month, Knight Rider Festival is set to return to Las Vegas on March 19th and 20th, 2010. The Festival and artist Nick Nugent have finalized the design for this years logo. Check it out above and visit the Festival website for a pretty slick animation.

In the months ahead, as the preshow preperations begin, we will be sure to keep you updated on Knight Rider Festival 2! In the mean time, check out our pictures and videos from this years event.

Tonight at 8pm is a new episode of Knight Rider for viewers in the UK! The episode is called "Journey to the End of Knight" and it airs as always on SciFi!

MIKE MUST INFILTRATE A RACING GANG WITH THE HELP OF AN OLD ARMY BUDDY Mike reunites with a former Army buddy to bring down a drag racing gang that is smuggling weapons overseas. Sarah joins Mike and KITT on this dangerous undercover mission, much to her father's dismay.

You can find more information including the trailer for tonights episode as well as photo galleries for this episode on it's episode guide page.

Please continue to keep Knight Rider such a positive success in the UK!

Finally after much rumor and some delay, the first season of the new Knight Rider will be released on July 28th. TVShowsOnDVD was first to break the news today of it's release date.

A month or so ago we had told you that Amazon put up the pre-order, but no further information was available at the time. Last year, NBC had planned to release the two hour pilot separately but that was canceled once the show went to series. After that, Fry's made it available as a promotion if you bought another dvd. But this will be the first time it's available for all.

You can pre-order it at Amazon for $41.99 through our Amazon store and a percentage of your purchase will go back to support KRO.

This will be a 4-DVD set running 802 minutes, presented in anamorphic widescreen video. Audio is English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, and English subtitles will also be provided. There will also be a few bonus features:

* The Icon Reborn
* K.I.T.T. - From 2000 to 3000
* Knight Rider - Legacy
* Knight Rider 2008 Commentary With Executive Producer David Bartis and Stars Justin Bruening & Deanna Russo

Package art isn't available yet, but here is the studio description of this release:

An iconic TV classic is back and better than ever in the reinvented, updated, and super-charged Knight Rider Season One. From executive producers Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity franchise), David Bartis (The O.C.) and Glen Larson (Battlestar Galactica) comes this action-packed series about the coolest car ever created, K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Three Thousand), that's equipped with artificial intelligence capable of hacking into any computer, the weapons system of a jet fighter, and incredible custom body technology that allows it to transform into other vehicles. Relive every Season One episode as an elite team of crime-fighters work with K.I.T.T. to track down elusive, high-tech villains. You won't want to miss this fast-paced ride to the wild side!

Read the rest at TVShowsOnDVD

**UPDATE** Added new box art - thanks to TVShowsOnDvd

Last Weekend, George Barris hosted the Culver City Car Show and several KITT replicas were on hand. Check out these threads one or two, for more photos and reports from the event! Knights of the West Coast were on hand with their replicas, as was Michael Scheffe and Catherine Hickland and other friends of the Knight Rider community! Looks like a great time was had by all.

photo by 1991firebirdkitt. thanks to him, IHeartKITT and Victor Kros for sharing their stories and photos.

In the UK this week, they saw the 2 hour pilot of Knight Rider that originally aired here in February 2008. It was SciFi channel's highest rated program for the evening.

From SciFi UK:

Knight Rider is ratings winner for SCI FI

London, 13 May 2009: NBC Universal Global Networks today reveals that the premiere of brand new Knight Rider has delivered its SCI FI channel's best series ratings since the first run of Heroes in 2007. Over half a million viewers tuned in for the high-octane, feature-length pilot which guest starred David Hasselhoff.

The premiere made SCI FI the #1 non-terrestrial entertainment channel amongst all adults in digital cable and satellite homes.

SCI FI also enjoyed a steep uplift amongst young adults, with 33% of viewers aged 16 - 34, up nearly 60% on the channel's average. Surprisingly, women aged 16 - 24 outnumbered their male counterparts in the same age group by 6 share points, proving that cars aren't just for the boys.

Jon Farrar, Programming Director (UK), NBC Universal Global Networks commented, "We've always said that the return of K.I.T.T. is an historic TV moment and the viewers have clearly agreed with us. We're thrilled with the ratings and really proud to bring such an iconic series back to life on the SCI FI channel. We've introduced the show to a whole new age group... a generation of young viewers can finally understand why us over 35s get so excited about a talking car."

The series is based on the 1980s vehicle which helped drive actor David Hasselhoff to worldwide fame, but has been completely updated for the 21st century audience. K.I.T.T. is now voiced by actor Val Kilmer and boasts state of the art weaponry, plus the ability to transform or change colour. At the wheel is Justin Bruening, an actor new to UK audiences but a well-established heart-throb in the USA after starring in soap opera All My Children. Bruening plays Mike Traceur, the son of original character Michael Knight.

The series will continue to premiere on SCI FI every Tuesday at 8pm and is also available in high definition on SCI FI HD (available on the Sky platform). Following the feature-length pilot last night, Knight Rider will continue in one hour instalments and go back-to-back with the UK premiere of DOLLHOUSE, another highly anticipated fantasy from Buffy creator Joss Whedon, which starts next Tuesday 19 May at 9pm.

The 2 hour movie replays at 5pm, 11:10 pm tonight and 7:20 pm Sunday. On our Knight Rider 2008 pilot movie page, you can see some photos and videos from this premier as well as links to a lot of our exclusive interviews from that time with the cast & crew.

This weeks episode is A Knight In Shinning Armor, be sure to check out our episode guide for more details on that and our teaser from the US below:

[Thanks to Knight Rider Archive for uploading the UK Teaser! As a UK based site, they will sure to be ontop of the UK promotion of the series, so be sure to watch them too!]

Last night, the UK channel Sci-Fi finally premiered the new season of Knight Rider! They started with the two hour pilot and will follow through with the rest of the series each week. We think it will be a pretty interesting trip for the viewers, as they'll go from Andron's TV Movie to Gary Scott Thompson's series in much shorter time. We had nearly seven month break between the two, so the changes seemed more natural.

If you are in the UK - let us know how it was! And did you watch the series already via the internet? If you missed it's airing last night, it will be repeated at 5pm on Saturday and 7pm on Sunday.

Here are a few articles from the UK that was sent to us by Matt. Be sure to check out our Knight Rider 2008 section for synopsis, teasers and screenshots from all the episodes.

From Orange UK:

To men of a certain age, David Hasselhoff will forever be the epitome of leather jump-suited cool and absolutely not a washed-up alcoholic who’s never quite lived down that claim to have single-handedly dismantled the Berlin Wall. And sure enough, The Hoff crops up for a cameo at the end of this series opener, albeit in a scene emitting a more pungent stench of cheese than a 60-year-old slab of Stinking Bishop.

Continue Reading

Today NBC began to reveal it's fall lineup of programing as it began the process of it's "up-fronts". Today they focused on many of the new programs coming to NBC this fall. Missing from this announcement was many fan favorites, including our personal favorite Knight Rider.

This has been the day that many fans of Knight Rider both feared and hoped for. We knew things were not going well for some time as ratings declined after the Obama special in November, and NBC reduced the episodes of the season from 22 to 17. When the final episode of the season aired in March, many critics who had been negative towards Gary Scott Thompson's initial re-imagining of David Andron's Backdoor Pilot, started to smell the blood in the water. They began to write that Knight Rider was canceled, when in fact NBC had never publicly provided that confirmation.

They still haven't.

So what now? Well, NBC announced some of their fall schedule - but they wont be revealing it all until May 19th, still a few weeks away. Knight Rider is in good company in limbo land, as popular shows like Chuck, Law & Order and My Name is Earl, also do not know their fate. There are several ways that Knight Rider might still ride on.

While many of the shows announced today are for the fall, it is common practice for networks to also announce midseason replacements. Take last year, the show Friday Night Lights, thought by many to be canceled, survived for this year (and now two more) thanks to sponsorship by DirecTV. This is similar to Knight Rider's case, as the show might not have ever made it to a season had it not been for the promotional and financial support of Ford. Will Ford pick up the tab for another year? Yes, the automotive industry in America is in bad shape, but Ford is looking better than all of them. Will Ford save Knight Rider like DirecTV did for FNL...

Knight Rider is a 25 year old show, with millions and millions of fans around the globe. Just now, the show is starting to air regions across the globe. Regions like Germany, that some say single handedly gave Knight Rider the original support it needed and launched David Hasselhoff to singer stardom. If the ratings in these countries do so well that they ask NBC for more shows, it's quite possible it might happen...

Many shows in the past left NBC to thrive. The peacock hasn't been that affectionate to foster it's original programming. Take Seinfield that was nearly canceled several seasons before it finally found it's grove. Baywatch started there too, but thanks to Hasselhoff and financial backers, it moved to syndication and became a pop culture phenomenon. Viper is another that had several years in syndication. While NBC aired the show, Universal (NBCs parent company) owns it, and if NBC decides to pass on the series, Universal might find it still worthy enough to syndicate or move to another channel like Sci-Fi...

But none of this can happen, without you and without me. Our collective voices need to be heard now more than ever. We've been preaching this for sometime, but if you want Knight Rider, if you need it in your life, show it. Tell NBC, Tell Ford, write letters, sign the campaign and tell your friends. Knight Rider doesn't, and probably will never have, the critical support that these types of campaigns succeed with - we need the numbers of support to tip that balance. We can all make a difference, if you want it.