Your daily roundup of strike-related bummers, which actually begins with a bit of kinda good news: * Conan O’Brien just announced that he’s returning to the air, sans writers, Jan. 2; reports have been predicting a wholesale return of talk shows around that time, so this may be the first of a flurry of announcements [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Stay far, far away if you don’t want a hint as to who won Survivor: China last night. My rooting interests in Survivor: China ended when Jeff Probst snuffed out Peih-Gee’s torch, leaving us with bitchy Todd, his hanger-on Courtney, pushover Denise and Amanda, trailing that eternal cloud of pixellation over her butt. [...]

Per ABC’s just-released midseason schedule, Lost returns Thursday, Jan. 31, at 9 p.m. Yes, I said Thursday–but assuming we’re not going to have new episodes of The Office for a while anyway, I’m OK with that for now. (And Mrs. Tuned In will be glad not to have to stay up until 11 for Lost.) [...]

HBO photo: Ray Burmiston There’s a special problem writing about the highly praised. Once somebody has achieved greatness, any criticism thereafter is either taken as further confirmation of their brilliance or as a backlash. Once you’re known for getting standing O’s, applause is an insult. So when I tell people that I like Extras, the [...]

This week’s print TIME includes a special section of Top 10 lists for 2007, which is pretty much the same as the ones you’ve already seen online, except: 10. Fewer lists 9. Fewer words 8. On paper 7. You have to pay money to read them 6. You can take them to the bathroom 5. [...]

News flash: the late-night TV hosts, the New York Post reports, may be coming back before the writers’ strike is over. Newsier flash: they may actually do so with their striking writers’ blessing. How will they manage that? For starters, by not having acted like absolute tools to the writers who make their shows possible. [...]

Steroids in baseball is not exactly under the jurisdiction of this blog, but what the hell: it’s Friday, Time.com doesn’t have a sports blog, and it seems to be all anyone wants to talk about today anyway. So for your argumentative pleasure, here’s an essay I wrote about steroids in 2004, in my pre-blog days. [...]

NBC Photo: Nicole Rivelli How good is 30 Rock? So good that it can make an episode guest-starring Buck Henry, Elaine Stritch and Andy Richter, and you’re so lost in it that you don’t spend it thinking, “Wow, that’s Buck Henry, Elaine Stritch and Andy Richter!” On the one hand, like most episodes of 30 [...]

Via ComingSoon.net, behold the theatrical trailer for season 4 of Lost. The trailer-makers know what Lost fans like: lots of flashing split-second images to slo-mo, frame-grab and geek out over. Speaking of which: Is that who I think it is in that very last screen flash? You may now commence freaking out!

The writers’ strike may hobble the Golden Globes and other awards shows, but the WGA awards go on, and the nominations just came out. Whatever your opinions about the strike, the writers definitely know their writing, giving generous love to Dexter, FNL, FOTC, Mad Men, The Office, 30 Rock, and, in particular, The Wire. (No, [...]

People tend to forget that the Golden Globes also honor TV. Those people evidently include the Hollywood Foreign Press Association; as I write, their main nominations web page includes only film noms. See their press release for the full list–scroll down, natch, for TV. But TV is more central to the Globes than usual this [...]

The CW/ Michael Desmond I owe you an apology–I never got around yesterday to warning you not to watch Crowned. This isn’t knee-jerk reality-TV snobbery: when I originally heard “mother-daughter beauty pageant,” I was there. But the first episode, unfortunately, went the American Idol auditions route of mocking the freakish side of the pairings rather [...]

MTV It’s not like MTV needs a strike as an excuse to load up on reality shows, but yesterday it announced that The Hills, coming off a high-rated season 3, will get a bonus eight episodes next year that will follow Lauren and Whitney to Paris. (In case you missed the most recent show, Teen [...]

ABC The New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff reports that critics across the country are discovering that ABC’s Cavemen is not quite as awful as everybody was assuming it would be. I point this out, partly to give credit to an insightful, well-written article, and partly–oh who am I kidding, almost entirely–to note that Tuned In [...]

I took some guff for praising WPIX’s Yule Log as one of my seven essential holiday TV programs earlier, but apparently someone else also thinks there’s still some heat in that old stick. Through January 4, Comcast is offering a new, HD version of the log through its On Demand service. It’s not the same [...]

Elizabeth Carrillo/The CW I’ve been unfaithful to America’s Next Top Model this season. For four or five seasons it was a never-miss for me, and then I burned out on it. Maybe it was the bulimia modeling competition, but at some point the challenges started seeming more and more contrived, and the Tyra-worship more and [...]

As part of my ongoing effort to use my video iPod to ensure that I never have to read on the subway again, I’ve been sampling video podcasts–this morning, the Mosaic newscast from linkTV.The Peabody Award-winning show, which compiles news reports from around the Middle East, has been available for some time on satellite TV [...]

The things I learn watching CNN with the sound off on the elliptical trainer in the morning! The above clip comes via a report this morning that Delta Airlines has been using short video to indoctrinate passengers about airline courtesy. This clip is called “Middleman”–you’ll see why when you watch–and the Planeguage campaign’s YouTube page [...]

This time they’ve gone too far! The writers’ strike has officially crippled TV critics’ ability to sit in a hotel ballroom in L.A. and ask questions of the stars of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The Television Critics Association has officially announced that it has cancelled its planned January press tour, owing to a lack of [...]