Thought Dan Rather (doing long pieces at HDNet) and CBS (stuck with Katie Couric) had moved on from the National Guard memo imbroglio? Think again: Rather has filed a $70 million lawsuit against the network for breach of contract in the manner that it handled his departure. According to the New York Times report, Rather [...]

CBS, you may have read, is refusing to screen the premiere of controversial reality show Kid Nation for critics. That depends, however, how you define “critic.” Turns out the network did screen the show for audiences of children in several major cities–and there just happened to be TV crews on hand from the local CBS [...]

Patrick Harbron/The CW I’ve already reviewed Gossip Girl once, and really twice, considering that the impressions from my Test Pilot preview this summer pretty much hold up. So I’m not going to review it a third time here, because of (1) deadlines and (2) what am I, a sucker? But here’s a public-service reminder to [...]

Sam Jones/FOX In 1994, a successful network TV producer, having just sold a pilot in the then-boom market for sitcoms, decided to celebrate by pursuing a lifelong dream: climbing Mount Everest. Setting out with an experienced crew of climbers and sherpas, and taking the only videotape of his completed pilot with him, he ascended what [...]

HBO photo: Doug Hyun TV is a medium made for showing the little things–small gestures, facial inflections, tiny shadings of meaning. It’s better suited to this than theater because that’s what moving pictures make possible: tight closeups, for instance, that eliminate the need for broad gestures and voices that project. And serial TV is better [...]

I’m falling behind in my TV viewing because of fall screeners, but I hope to give you a Tell Me You Love Me Watch shortly. Even though nobody asked. Even though all reports are that none of you are watching it. (I may well be the only person in America who’s watching the show twice.) [...]

I promise this will be my last post about Sally Fieldgate, because I have no desire to turn the former Flying Nun into freaking Aung San Suu Kyi over one discombobulated podium rant at the Emmys. But the New York Times has a nice postmortem about Fox’s night of the itchy dump-button finger. The most [...]

Brett Somers has died. She follows Charles Nelson Reilly, who passed away in May; I looked back on Match Game then, and Somers (who debuted on the show doing a guest stint with husband Jack Klugman) was an indispensible, combative part of it. (If I had based my top 100 TV list solely on my [...]

Robert Sebree/FOX There are things you want to do and things you have to do. I want to review K-Ville for the show it could have been–a cop drama that portrays post-Katrina New Orleans by showing the struggle to maintain order. I have to review it for what it actually is: an unimpressive police procedural [...]

The most memorable moment of last night’s Emmy awards was from an acceptance speech we didn’t hear. Or part of one, anyway. Having won best drama actress, Sally Field launched into a passionate, flustered speech about playing a mother and dedicating her performance to mothers in wartime. “If mothers ruled the world,” she said, “there [...]

7:28 p.m.: I’d like to take this moment to thank Mrs. Tuned In. Not because I’ve won anything, but because she is, as I type, in the midst of putting Tuned In Jr and Tuned In Jr Jr to bed, solo, so that I can “work” by watching a TV show and typing about it. [...]

That’s right. Keep watching it. Keeeeeeeep watchin’. All weekend. Hey! You looked away! I said, keep… OK, you can look away in a second, but first: if you can manage to balance your margarita and chips atop your laptop, join Tuned In Sunday night for a liveblog of the Emmy awards. I probably won’t cover [...]

Lara Spencer and Pat O’Brien, neither of whom I actually met. / THE INSIDER Jessica Simpson will be on The Insider tonight. And so will I–although not in the same room–talking about that top-100 list you wish I would shut up about already. Good thing I decided not to put Access Hollywood on the list. [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Watch Mad Men before reading this post. Residents of Illinois, fast-forward through all the laxative ads. AMC At last, a good Betty episode. In my Kid Nation column today, I have a paragraph comparing hands-on modern parenting to the way Mad Men shows the kids of 1960 as having more separate (and much [...]

MONTY BRINTON / CBS Mad Men Watch will be slightly delayed today, and this time it really is due to deadlines and fall-screener backlog. (Get used to that excuse. You’ll be hearing it a lot for a few weeks.) In the meantime, I refer you to my column in the brand-new TIME print magazine, about [...]

The TIME presidential candidates’ spouses poll, summarized from an entirely TV-centric perspective: * Bill and Hillary watch Grey’s Anatomy together. Which demands the follow-up: Team Addison or Team Meredith? * The Kuciniches do not watch television, just like President Bush. After the campaign, they’ll have to have George and Laura over for seitan burgers. * [...]

You know, it occurs to me that they’re going to be handing out Emmys Sunday night, and I haven’t done any walk-up posts. Bad TV blogger! I could blame magazine deadlines or fall-TV-screener overload (The War is 15 freaking hours! Ken Burns is trying to kill me!), but who would I be kidding? The truth [...]

Add to My Profile | More Videos There was a time, before the rise of blogs, MySpace and Facebook, when people wanting to immerse themselves in the hyper-self-conscious navel-gazing of the self-aware and highly educated had to depend on the TV shows of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick. Now the people who brought you thirtysomething [...]

It is a momentous day for three major world religions. Muslims begin the celebration of Ramadan. My people mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. And in the dominant American religion of television worship, we observe the anniversary of the day, two years ago, that a plucky home-design-empire CEO strutted out of jail and onto [...]