Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1372 days ago

Fallon Upward

By James Poniewozik

Making months of speculation official, it is being widely reported that NBC will announce today (at a press conference scheduled noon-ish) that Jimmy Fallon will succeed Conan O’Brien as host of Late Night. It’s a brilliant, brilliant move. For Jimmy Fallon. For the rest of the parties involved, I’m not so sure. Granted, Conan O’Brien [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1372 days ago

The Morning After: Old Girls' Club

By James Poniewozik

Last night’s final four end the season’s wild ride. / Monty Brinton/CBS SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers for last night’s Survivor finale after the jump:

Tuned In
Tuned In+1375 days ago

Corporate Press Release Theater: Bravo Goes Green

By James Poniewozik

Remember Tuned In’s lengthy whine the other day about massively packaged TV-network mailings? We get results! BRAVO IS COMPLETELY GREEN WITH EMMY® Network Offers On-Air And Online Screenings That Include Friday Viewing Marathons And Downloads On BravoTV.com/Emmy NEW YORK – May 8, 2008 – Bravo is completely Green with Emmy – as the network announced [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 1375 days ago

Fox Newser Discloses Self Out of Job

By James Poniewozik

When Time’s not breaking news, we’re making news! After last night’s big Time 100 bash in Manhattan—which neither I nor fellow Timeblogger Lisa Cullen attended—a Fox News production assistant got her walking papers for telling Sen. John McCain she voted for him in the primary, reports TV Newser. (Link via Romenesko.) “I voted for you [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1375 days ago

Dept. of Does Not Exactly Surprise Me

By James Poniewozik

ABC News reports that college students get high and watch Yo Gabba Gabba!, the most awesome kids’ show on TV. (Via TV Tattle.) Makes sense to me—I get high by watching Yo Gabba Gabba!, but same difference. It only takes a few minutes watching the show’s surreal images, wacky monsters and talking food to draw [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1375 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Florida Forever

By James Poniewozik

In the paper version of Time magazine this week, my column looks at the upcoming HBO movie Recount, and how the 2000 electoral circus in Florida still looms over the psychology of politics—especially in a certain party that has a lot of members cheesed off about enfranchisement and Florida: After George W. Bush won Florida [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1375 days ago

The Morning After: The Taste of Solitude

By James Poniewozik

NBC Photo: Nicole Rivelli The secret to most good 30 Rock episodes is that they strike the right balance between character comedy and farce. That balance generally is: one, maybe two characters get to be real people, while the rest are free to be cartoons. (I love cartoons, by the way, so I mean that [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+1375 days ago

Lostwatch: Will the Real John Locke Please Stand Up

By James Poniewozik

Mario Perez / ABC SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, take your remote control, a compass, a knife—no, not the knife!—and watch last night’s Lost.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1376 days ago

Coming Attraction: Swingtown

By James Poniewozik

“Swing” don’t mean dancing! / Cliff Lipson/CBS Yesterday I posted about having finally gotten a screener of CBS’s summer drama Swingtown, which I’d been anticipating since CBS screened a trailer a year ago at upfronts. I’ve watched it, and I have to report that I’m disappointed. Disappointed because it’s good. Very good. Which means that [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1376 days ago

John McCain, Maoist

By James Poniewozik

Daily Show regular John McCain returned to TDS last night, this time as presumptive Republican nominee, and cited the inspirational words of Chairman Mao: I somehow get the feeling that people would be making a bigger deal of it had Barack Obama dipped into the little red book. In the second half of the interview, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 1376 days ago

TV Poll: What's Your TV Guide?

By James Poniewozik

In the New York Times, the new editors of TV Guide—which looks like it will be up for sale again already—explain why they believe the magazine still matters. It may, but the magazine itself recognized some time ago that if TV Guide matters, it’s not as a guide to TV, as least not as far [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1376 days ago

Coming Soon in the 2008-09 TV Season: The 2007-08 TV Season

By James Poniewozik

USA Today runs a walkup to next week’s broadcast network upfront, where the big trend in new TV will be: less new TV. The upfronts are usually an intense preview of the coming fall season, with the networks screening trailers of pilots that they mail out to advertisers and critics soon afterward. This year, there’ll [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1376 days ago

The Morning After: Idolimination

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: A few thoughts on list night’s American Idol elimination coming up—after the break!

Tuned In
Tuned In+1377 days ago

Corporate Press Release Theater: Breaking Good

By James Poniewozik

AMC announces a second-season pickup for Breaking Bad—yay!—giving the dark dramedy which had to cut its first season short because of the strike—boo!—a chance to complete a full season and do it right. Quotes from the release follow:

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1377 days ago

Calling It, Kind Of, for Obama

By James Poniewozik

I confess I didn’t stay up past midnight for the resolution of yesterday’s primaries—American Idol or the Democrats, people! I cover one election a night!—but former TV reporter Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times has a good roundup on the sudden and stark shift against Hillary Clinton’s chances after the final Indiana returns came [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+1377 days ago

Why TV Critics Fear Their Mail

By James Poniewozik

Nobody, understandably, pities TV critics for their work. It’s not exactly Deadliest Catch or factory work—we don’t run the risk of falling into freezing seas or having our arms sheared off by machinery if we’re not careful. (The chief hazard is strangulation by getting your necktie caught in the DVD-loading tray.) Nonetheless, we complain. One [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Music | 1377 days ago

If You Do It and You're Still Unhappy, Then You Know That the Problem Is You

By James Poniewozik

I just received, but haven’t yet watched, the pilot screener for CBS’s Swingtown, which debuts June 5. The ensemble drama is about a group of married friends and their encounters with the rising era of sexual experimentation in suburban Chicago in 1976. “The title Swingtown,” says a letter from the producers, “describes the ever-shifting ‘swing’ [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1377 days ago

The (Jingle-Jangle) Morning After: Idol Edition

By James Poniewozik

In fairness to Jason Castro, “Do do do do / do do do / do do do / do do do / do do” is an easier lyric to remember. / Frank Micelotta / FOX / Getty My American Idol reviews are up at time.com. At first I was surprised that it David Cook didn’t [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1378 days ago

My Paradise Is a Cow's Hell

By James Poniewozik

My grand tour of the new channels in my expanded HD lineup continued last night with the Travel Channel HD, which was airing something called Steak Paradise. (If there were a religion that named its afterlife Steak Paradise, I would join that religion.) You wouldn’t think that meat is something that benefits from high definition, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1378 days ago

The Media's Generation-Gap Gap

By James Poniewozik

A question to consider as the Indiana and North Carolina returns come in today: What’s the biggest determining demographic factor in the Democratic primary? It’s gender, right? God knows you can’t open a newspaper politics section, or even a style section, without reading about the great war between the boys and the girls in the [...]