Tuned In

Like Some New Romantic Looking for the TV Sound

The vampire squid compels you with his hypnotic eye to watch Planet Earth. Discovery/Stephen Downer Is it worth spending $1000 or more to watch a single TV series? I’m generally as tightfisted as the next TV watcher, but if I hadn’t already loosened my deathgrip on my purse strings to buy an HDTV, Discovery’s Planet [...]

Gee, That was Fast

Just yesterday, after having spent days reading about the travails of the free spending Smithsonian Secretary, Lawrence J. Small, and then about the somewhat helter skelter collection and exhibition policies at the Smithsonian American Art Museums, I posted this fleeting thought: “What’s up with me? I just can’t seem to get into spanking big institutions [...]

Tuned In

Dead Tree Alert: Charles in Charge

In my TIME column this week: Charles Gibson is ascending, Katie Couric is floundering–and with her may be going the last ambitions that network TV news can ever draw in new, non-aged viewers again. Here’s a taste: Gibson’s success has been seen as a vindication of old-fashioned gravitas over flash. Which is fair enough; Gibson [...]