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The most spectacular success of the summer season on television may have come before summer has even started: the miniseries “Hatfields & McCoys” on the History Channel attracted a monster audience Monday night, 13.9 million viewers, the second largest for a cable program that did not involve sports. By comparison, the finale this month of NBC’s singing competition hit, “The Voice,” attracted 10.5 million viewers. Most hit shows on cable are in the range of two million to four million viewers, though “The Walking Dead” on AMC reached what seemed then to be an impressive nine million for its finale...

PORT FOURCHON, La. -- Kevin Costner added a bit of Hollywood glitz, but it was the bright orange barge full of equipment counted on to scoop oil from the Gulf of Mexico that was the real star Thursday. The Ella G, once an offshore supply barge, has been refitted to skim and separate oil spilling from BP PLC's blown-out well, making for a more efficient way to remove petroleum from the Gulf waters. It set sail for the first time Thursday. "I know a lot of times you have been down on the ground and stayed down," Costner told workers...

Mid May, actor Kevin Costner provided BP with oil separation centrifuges for testing in the Gulf of Mexico. After successful and extensive testing in actual sea conditions, plus modifications, BP teamed up with the 25 year old Canadian oilfield waste management company, CCS, and D&L Salvage to formally mount these centrifuges (temporarily mounted on the same barge for testing), using the CCS Contained Separation system for the first of their ocean going 80 thousand tank barrel barges to be deployed for clean up - the Energy 8001. According to the BP's Doug Suttles, the additional 32 centrifuges on order will...

Actor Kevin Costner today joins with BP officials to tout plans to finally start using a machine Costner has backed that can rapidly remove 99 percent of oil from water. Costner said it wasn't until this week that BP decided to put his machines into action. Costner still isn't happy it took this long -- since he helped develop the machine a decade ago -- and arrived to help with the Deepwater Horizon disaster less than two weeks after the explosion. "Twenty-first century technology has sat idly on the shelf for ten years when it could have been deployed as...

The U.S. Coast Guard has complained that there is not enough plastic tubing in the United States to construct the booms needed to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. And neither BP, the Coast Guard, nor any other part of the U.S. government seems to understand how to effectively clean up the fouled Gulf. A technology that could effectively and actively remove oil from the surface of the ocean in all weather conditions would be a huge advance for the efforts going on in the Gulf right now. In fact, such a technology was designed and tested in the...

(CNSNews.com) - Actor Kevin Costner told a press conference on Capitol Hill that if a machine produced by a company in which he is a partner had been used earlier to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, “we would be keeping that [the oil] offshore.” The machine, which Costner invested more than $20 million to develop, can separate oil from water to clean up oil spills.   Costner said that BP, the oil company whose damaged well is the source of the spill, had recently placed an order for deploying 32 of the machines. “We’re coming to this...

So I am sitting here in Baton Rouge thinking about he oil spill. Of course everyone here is worried. I love what God has created. The oceans, the mountains, nature. Numerous families in my subdivision derive their income from oil in the Gulf. I am far from an environmental kook. I grew up in Oregon and saw what happened to families and industry from the spotted owl fiasco but enough is enough! The gulf is dying and obama is playing golf? Maybe from now on we should say he is playing gulf. Here is my question to my brilliant brothers...

BP has agreed to test Ocean Therapy Solutions' centrifugal processing device that separates oil from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. John Houghtaling, CEO of Houghtaling and Williams (New Orleans, LA, USA), received word this afternoon after speaking with BP President Doug Suttles. Houghtaling partnered with movie star Kevin Costner and other local investors to promote the machines. Houghtaling and Costner formed Ocean Therapies in the wake of the Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. "The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate at unprecedented rates. They were developed from...

Could there be a happy Hollywood ending to the Gulf oil spill? Enter "Waterworld" star Kevin Costner, who has spent years and millions of dollars perfecting a device that cleans oil from seawater. British Petroleum - desperate for ideas - gave the okay to test six of Costner's gizmos this week, said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles. Costner's high-speed centrifuge machine has a Los Angeles-perfect name: "Ocean Therapy." Placed on a barge, it sucks in large quantities of polluted water, separates out the oil and spits back 97% clean water. "It's like a big vacuum cleaner," said Costner's business...

NEW ORLEANS -- A longtime Hollywood star is now in the Metro area and in the business of cleaning up oil. Motivated by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, Kevin Costner began assembling a team of scientists to construct a machine that could clean up massive spills. A decade and a half later, that technology might now be put to use off the coast of Louisiana. A massive oil slick creeping to the coast, vulnerable Louisiana wildlife just miles from its path, and Kevin Costner mingling on the lakefront. These are unusual times, and the Hollywood star is introducing his unusual machine...

Hollywood actor Kevin Costner has squandered more than £20million of his fortune on doomed investments to save the planet, he admits. The Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves star plunged the cash into "green technology", forming two companies to develop his passion. His first venture championed a revolutionary method to clean up major oil spills and the second tried to develop a successful non-chemical battery. But both projects failed and he lost the entire investment. Rough rider: Costner, seen here at his Colorado ranch, is unfazed by his losses He says in an interview in Live magazine: "I've invested enormous amounts in...

Kevin Costner is urging lawmakers to come up with a series of strict new gun legislation - even if it limits his own shooting time. The star admits he loves to hunt and often heads out with his dogs and a shotgun passed down through generations of his family, but he's the first to admit that America's gun laws are too weak. And following the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech college, where English student Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, Costner feels that legislators should get tough with firearms owners,...

Kevin Costner has waded into the debate about controversial new movie Death Of A President, insisting director Gabriel Range failed to consider how George W Bush's family would react to scenes of the US President being assassinated. The Dances With Wolves star was caught up in the controversy at the Toronto Film Festival in Canada at the weekend, where he premiered his new film, The Guardian, alongside the screening of Death of A President. Movie fans reportedly sat in stunned silence at the end of Range's screening, which featured doctored images of Bush getting shot, and Costner, who wasn't in...

Kevin Costner has been revealed as the celebrity accused of performing a sex act while having a massage at a prestigious hotel in Scotland, after a tribunal ruled there was not a strong enough reason to keep his name suppressed. The Hollywood star was accused of taking off his towel during the massage at The Old Course Hotel in St Andrews, Fife, in October 2004, exposing himself and then performing a sex act. An earlier legal ruling had prevented his identity being revealed, but the tribunal chairman Nicol Hosie ruled that following widespread newspaper and magazine reports outside Britain, as...

COSTNER: LEAVE MEL ALONE [KJL ] (KJL = Katherine Jean Lopez) An NBC press release: BURBANK, Calif. – February 27, 2004– In an interview with "Access Hollywood," actor Kevin Costner says that people "shouldn't be attacking" Mel Gibson for his film "The Passion of the Christ." The interview airs on "Access Hollywood," Friday, February 27, 2004 (check local listings for time and station). Costner says that Gibson doesn't deserve all the criticism that he is receiving for his film "The Passion of the Christ," which depicts Jesus' last hours. "We shouldn't be attacking a filmmaker like Mel Gibson who, number...

Good Things In August There are two good things to look forward to in the dog days of August. The Little League World Series will be running through Aug. 24, and a lot of it will be broadcast on ESPN or ESPN2. The other good thing is a Kevin Costner Western. I haven't seen the movie, "Open Range," yet, but I have faith in Costner. I have really liked all of the movies he's had control over — "Dances With Wolves," "Waterworld" and "The Postman." I especially liked "The Postman." And he's directing, as well as starring in, his new...

The CBS bosses are hunting some faboulous male type to sit aside Jane Clyson. (On the CBS 'Early Show') What have gotten thrwon around are names that until now will not have known that they were names that have gotten thrown around.Like Peter Gallagher.Handsome, personable, chatty.Yeah, he's in 'Noises Off' So? That's no eternal deal.Like a longtime major time movie box office star who at this millisecond isn't busting box office records.Like ready? Kevin Costner. Talks easily has a Rolo Dex that stretches from here to eternity.