[Here is where there would be a really pretty picture from Bionic Woman if Moveable Type were presently allowing me to upload photos.] Test Pilot is Tuned In’s semiregular summer preview of the pilots for new fall series. These aren’t reviews, because the pilots can be recast, reshot and improved (or ruined) before air. But [...]

I’m out of the print TIME magazine for a couple of weeks, owing to a long-term project, but even if I were in it, anything I could muster would be dwarfed by Eric Pooley’s massive profile of Rupert Murdoch, so I thought I’d link to it in case anyone wants to comment. The profile obviously [...]

As much time as I spend on this blog ranting about government regulation of TV content, I haven’t given much publicity to TV Watch, a group advocating for parents who want themselves, not the government, to decide what’s appropriate for their kids to watch. [Update: The group is supported by television networks, who make up [...]

It’s about time that someone took on the much-repeated charge that Lost is the TV show that “never answers any questions.” Last season, during the hiatus after the six-season episode fall run, IDG IGN wrote up a great, exhaustive list of 50 Lost Loose Ends, questions that had been raised but not answered by the [...]

They say when you reach a crossroad or turning point in life it doesn’t really matter how we got there, but what we do next after we get there. We usually arrive there by adversity. And it is then, only then, that we find out who we truly are and what we are truly made [...]

Shaq’s Big Challenge. ABC photo: ANGELO CAVALLI I just got a press release from an activist group I haven’t heard of, about a TV-discrimination issue that I’ve never heard voiced. Nation of Size, a group representing “persons of size,” has issued its first report card evaluating the representation of large people in prime time TV. [...]

Often lost in the excitement over Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to buy Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal is the possibility that the deal may not mainly be about a newspaper at all but about TV. CNN Money takes a look at the potential for the deal to provide instant brand recognition for Murdoch’s forthcoming [...]

I’ve been watching a lot of old DVDs and TV shows lately, and one thing that always does my heart good is hearing old theme songs. Not because they’re better or worse necessarily than today’s, but because they’re so long. This is the thing about TV that most tells you how the world has changed [...]

Senate hearings in support of TV-violence legislation began in Washington today, as the Parents Television Council aired a greatest-hits reel of TV gore to bolster the call of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) for government regulation of violence. The hearings also featured testimony from Peter Liguori, entertainment president of Fox, which produces 24. “To be [...]

Thomas is watching you. / Photo: HIT Entertainment In the New York Times, reporter David Barboza writes about his experiences as a prisoner of Thomas the Tank Engine, or more accurately, of the Chinese factory he was investigating after reports emerged of lead paint in Chinese-made Thomas toys. It’s not a TV story, exactly, but [...]

HBO photo: Lacey Terrell Big Love had kept us wondering for a while whether it was actually going to go the whole Brady-Bunch-forbidden-love route with Ben and Margene, and last night the show finally showed us that we weren’t the only ones who had noticed what’s been going on. I was glad, though, that their [...]

Tuesday, July 10, NBC debuts The Singing Bee, a competition, hosted by NSYNCer Joey Fatone and his Goatee of Death, in which contestants try to remember–or, preferably, misremember–the precise lyrics to pop songs. Which is greater: My embarrassment that I am totally going to watch this show? Or my chagrin that someone listened to Simon [...]

Over the weekend, CNN’s Larry King stepped into the breach of the Paris Hilton debacle and nobly accepted the burden of interviewing the celebutante after her release from prison. No longer will the voice of the underclass be silenced in the media! More interesting than the Larry King deal, though, was ABC and NBC News’ [...]

HBO I received three episodes of JFC for review, so at this point you’re caught up with me. If you’re still watching, which I realize is a big if. Looking back at my notes, this is the point at which I threw up may hands over the plot, conceded that the show was confounding, self-indulgent [...]

Everything is connected. The other day we discussed commercials selling sugary cereal to kids and a commenter wondered if someday they would go the way of cigarette commercials. Coincidentally, in today’s TIME my column discusses the AMC advertising drama Mad Men, which includes a fictional scene about the creation of the Lucky Strike “It’s Toasted” [...]

Last year, there was a lot of debate over whether YouTube sensation lonelygirl15 was real or an actress, and a lot of earnest discussion about what that question meant for online ethics and the new media’s effect on narrative. Well, it’s 2007 now, it turned out she was an actress, the ethical/narrative debate was like [...]

If you believe this morning’s reports, the news media continues to write checks to advance its liberal agenda, this time by… giving a million bucks to a screwed-up heiress? ABC, at least, is charging that it got outbid for an exclusive post-jail interview with Paris Hilton by NBC. NBC counters to the New York Times’ [...]

My Culture Complex column in this week’s TIME looks at whether commercials can be greater works than the shows they appear on. The hook is the pilot for ABC’s Cavemen, based on the Geico ads, which was nearly universally dismissed as soon as it was announced. As it turns out, the show looks much better [...]

Yesterday’s discussion about sugared cereal, commercials and Gen X nostalgia for our dangerous youth got me wondering about my favorite breakfast treat from when I was five or six years old. Behold, proof that everything is indeed on YouTube: Fun facts: * Freakies’ flavor = Quisp = awesome * Despite the art, the commercials’ animation [...]