As the New York Times reports—and the constant stream of network-news PR emails hitting my inbox attest—TV is going all out to provide coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20.  HBO will carry a free inaugural celebration. CNN will be at the Newseum. MSNBC will be on the Mall. And Fox News will be [...]

Barack Obama to Name Dr. Sanjay Gupta Surgeon General: Onion headline or actual news? According to The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, it’s fact, and as long as the CNN doc can accustom himself to making White House money rather than cable-news money, he’s expected to accept.  The jokes write themselves, and hey, I’m not above [...]

A good thing, since he’s a TV critic for Entertainment Weekly. Since returning from from a stint as movie critic at New York magazine, Tucker has contributed to ew.com, but now he’s doing a daily blog for the site. The premise: Tucker watches TV every night. Then he writes about what he watched. Simplicity itself.  [...]

I’m writing about the season premiere (or season re-premiere, or second-half-of-the-season premiere, or whatever) of Battlestar Galactica. The problem I’m having is that I cannot write anything about the show without spoiling or otherwise ruining something major. The first return episode is pretty much packed with highly explosive spoilerage, and that’s after Sci Fi deleted [...]

So what do TV critics watch when they’re on vacation? For my part, largely what my children let me. Tuned In Jr. the Eldest, for instance, is in a game-show phase, which means I’m becoming reacquainted with Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune after a long, long time.  On the TV beat, you tend to focus [...]

So I’m back from vacation. (Yes, I was gone.) And better yet, TV is too, almost. Yes, it’s still staggering to its feet—last night we got servings of Million Dollar Password and the debut of Superstars of Dance—but this month sees the return, among others, of Damages, Scrubs, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Big Love and Flight [...]

The title is self-explanatory. What overused words or phrases need to be banned from the English language in 2009? I’ll start you off with a few: * Game-changer * “Throw _____ under the bus” * Locavore * Anything “-ista” This is Robo-James’ last day on the job, by the way. I’ll see you Monday. If [...]

While I’m away, Robo-James has been programmed to generate some daily discussion posts. But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Consider this your daily open-topic post to write about what was on TV last night, what’s in the news today, or what you’re looking forward to tomorrow. Just play nicely, announce your spoilers, and use the [...]

Happy New Year’s. If all has gone according to plan, today is the day that the Tuned In household hosts its annual New Year’s Day open house / lasagna party. (Why lasagna? Why the hell not! It was good enough for Garfield!) There’s usually a football game on at some point during the festivities, but [...]