Following on this morning’s politics of The Wire post: maybe someone forgot to tell them he was a fan?

* One bright side of the stock and credit markets going all to hell: the networks are reportedly being more patient with struggling shows because of the rough economy. * The exception being The Ex List.  * And speaking of the economy and struggling shows: Barack Obama declines to make ABC part of his multimillion-dollar [...]

So fine, smartass: If we’re not supposed to declare the election over already, what are campaign journalists to spend their time doing over the next week? Well there’s always the “Candidates’ favorite [pop-culture item here]” story! Men’s Vogue has taken a crack at it, this time about TV. If you follow both TV and politics [...]

God help me, I think I actually agree with Matt Drudge about something. In a banner headline this morning (since replaced) Drudge ran together the names of a bunch of news organizations (including TIME) and asked, “Can They All Be Wrong?” The question wasn’t specific, but since it including pretty much everyone who’s been polling [...]

  Yesterday saw another exciting World Series game, so that meant, naturally, that I was watching Jon and Kate Plus Eight, followed by 17 Kids and Counting, on TLC. Jon and Kate, for those of you unfamiliar, is about the Gosselins, a family that was blessed/cursed with a set of twins, followed by sextuplets; 17 Kids is [...]

Disney Channel’s High School Musical franchise has moved on from a TV to a movie property, which means that it is officially, if I can help it, No Longer My Problem—at least until the Tuned In Jrs. get older. But it’s worth noting that HSM3 cleaned up at the box office this weekend the same [...]

Last Saturday night, CNN debuted D.L. Hughley Breaks the News. I know what you’re thinking: he just put that headline on this post because D.L. Hughley’s a black guy. But the news-comedy show that he produced, at least the first time out, was at least as race-conscious, if not more, than David Allan Grier’s Chocolate News [...]

An asteroid hit Time’s blogs Friday before I got a chance to link to my column in this week’s print Time, about the campaign rhetoric over “real” Americans and the way the media helps feed those myths. It starts a little more personally than usual, because it’s an issue I feel a little more personally [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers for Mad Men coming up—right now! Because I haven’t figured out yet how to do a jump page in the new blog platform. [Update: Fixed it!] So climb into your bomb shelter and watch the season finale of Mad Men if you haven’t already.

If you’re reading this, you’ve managed to find the Tuned In site—which is more than I could say for myself for several hours after the Time blogs came back online Friday. We’re up and running again, though not at full capacity. Here’s an update, in brief, of the status as far as I understand it:  [...]

Back after the 2000 election was resolved, Will Ferrell as George W. Bush introduced himself as President to the American people: “And keep in mind. That’s for a whole year.”  Ah, has it really been that long? Ferrell came out Thursday night for a curtain call, with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, offering Darrell Hammond’s [...]

Faithful TIME.com blog-readers may have noticed something odd today: the blogs kind of disappeared. Long story short, we’ve had major server problems, and as a result we’ve had to re-launch all of our blogs on WordPress. The upside is a faster, better, more stable platform. The downside is we’ll need a few days to get [...]

Miss me? Time’s blogs have been down for the day after a combination meltdown/switchover to a new publishing platform. If you are reading this, I have managed to publish on the new platform without blowing up my computer. You may notice a few things missing as we get the new version up and running, but [...]

The TV networks are making critics feel less special all the time. Here I thought I was all that because I’d seen a DVD of 30 Rock’s (very good) premiere episode airing next week. And then NBC goes and puts it on Hulu / MySpace Primetime: NBC also sent me the second episode. So I [...]

The death of the network evening news has been postponed, at least until after the election. Riding an increase in buzz (if not in actual ratings), Katie Couric will be hosting a double-sized hourlong edition of the CBS Evening News. Well, for one night, anyway, the day before Election Day: Katie Couric will anchor an [...]

I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this, but I have seen the series finale of The Shield. For fear of spoilerizing anything, I’m not going to so much as fleetingly characterize it for now—sorry—but anyone who watched this week’s episode can see that Shawn Ryan is paring down the storylines and setting [...]

…and thanks to chelsea15jk in an earlier thread for pointing out that the Dark UFO website has posted a promo for season 5 of Lost: [Update: I haven't actually seen this air on ABC, by the way—I don't watch a lot of ads generally, thanks to Tivo—but unlike some of the homemade "trailers" floating around [...]

David M. Russell/The CW Last night, most of America watched the first game of the World Series on Fox. Some of the less athletically minded of us watched Stylista on The CW, in which young fashion aspirants compete to become an assistant at Elle magazine. Being a go-fer for a fashion magazine is actually probably [...]

I’m tempted to just post that headline and let the Comments section fill up by itself. But there’s an actual news peg. The Pew Research Center has done a study of campaign coverage since September, and found that 36% of stories about Obama were positive in tone, 29% negative and 35% mixed. For McCain, it [...]