Tonight, NBC makes good on its promise to give Jimmy Fallon an online tryout before he takes over next year as host of Late Night from Conan O’Brien. His five-minute webcast will go live at 12:30 E.T. The plan seems to have changed, from a sort of mini-late-show monologue to a “video blog” offering “behind-the-scenes [...]

Here’s one answer to NBC’s business woes: NBC Universal big cheese Jeff Zucker suggests the network could cut back its primetime by an hour (a la Fox, giving the hour to affiliates who may actually want it) or stop programming on Saturday (a la The CW)—or even Friday.  It won’t quell the NBC-is-dying talk out [...]

From the Wish-I-Had-Thought-of-It department, Newsday’s Verne Gay has a great post paralleling the troubles of NBC with those of its advertiser and former My Own Worst Enemy product-placer, General Motors.  There are so many ways you can go with this. I probably would have been much more glib: overinvested in a product line that was [...]

While chronicling my week in TiVo-service hell last week, there’s one thing I didn’t point out: I actually probably got better service than the average customer would have in the same situation. The average customer—as opposed to a TV critic—wouldn’t have had contact numbers at TiVo to call to get technical support after a morning [...]

I don’t think I’m one of those bitter critics who hates everything on TV. But in 2008, I sometimes felt like one, especially as it came time to compile my top-10 lists for the end of the year. This was the toughest year I can remember to fill out a list, and I can only [...]