Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 837 days ago

When Should Chuck Come Back?

By James Poniewozik

One side effect of NBC’s announcement last week that it would cancel Southland before season two even aired was a report from Michael Ausiello that the network might bring back Chuck before its planned March debut—maybe as soon as the end of this month. You might think that Chuck fans would all react as Ausiello [...]

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Tuned In+TV Ratings | 837 days ago

DVRs Give Dollhouse a Lucky 13

By James Poniewozik

Following up on yesterday’s news about Dollhouse’s increase in viewing from DVRs comes news—prompted by that 50% ratings increase—that Fox is committing to at least air all 13 episodes of Dollhouse’s season two. As for season three, we’ll see later. I would not make plans at this point. Yesterday’s release of the DVR info led [...]

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Tuned In+837 days ago

NBC vs. Glee: Battle of the Network Stars

By James Poniewozik

What with all the singing and dancing and costumes, you would think that the cast of Glee and a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float would go together like turkey and cranberries. But you would be forgetting that the Macy’s parade airs on NBC, which reportedly forced Macy’s to retract an offer to the kids from [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 837 days ago

HIMYM Watch: Ménage à Quatre

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for How I Met Your Mother coming up after the jump:

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Tuned In+TV Ratings | 838 days ago

Can (and Should) DVRs Save Dollhouse?

By James Poniewozik

The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd has a breakdown of the DVR-viewing figures for TV premiere week. Among other things they show that Dollhouse’s rating goes up 50% when you add in timeshifted DVR viewing. Mind you, that’s 50% of precious little, lifting it from an anemic 1.0 rating to a slightly less anemic 1.5. DVR [...]

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Tuned In+TV Ratings | 838 days ago

Is Leno a Success or Failure? And How Do You Tell?

By James Poniewozik

A month into his run on the air, it’s about the time for observers to start weighing in on NBC’s Great Leno Experiment at 10 p.m. But as I alluded to the other day, the problem is determining what constitutes success and failure for The Jay Leno Show. Since it is a cost-containment measure before [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 838 days ago

Mad Men Watch: Promise Me the Moon

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, watch last night’s Mad Men, and be sure to keep track of whether they aired all the commercials.

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 841 days ago

NBC Takes Southland's Badge. What's Next?

By James Poniewozik

Sometimes networks cancel low-rated shows after their first season, and sometimes they cancel low-rated shows in their second seasons. NBC, after adding The Jay Leno Show this fall, shows itself willing to continually innovate with new and creative ways to get rid of dramas: it renewed cop show Southland at the end of last season, [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 841 days ago

The Morning After: Moving Forward?

By James Poniewozik

As I mentioned last week, I haven’t given up on FlashForward, not quite yet, but it is distinctly in my I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-get-to-it category. I know it’s the kind of show that demands next-morning analysis, though—isn’t it?—so feel free to DIY it, and I’ll either update or sound off in the comments if I have something to [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | 841 days ago

Fox News Awards Nobel for Pumpkin Throwing

By James Poniewozik

After getting to my desk and seeing word that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I turned on cable news to see the reaction. In particular, Fox News, the #1 cable news network and recent White House bete noire, whose reaction and coverage you might think would be interesting. It was, mainly [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 841 days ago

Office Watch: Getting a Little Misty

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s episode of The Office coming up after the jump:

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Tuned In+841 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Dave in the Hot Seat

By James Poniewozik

Because I am a TV critic and it is the law, my column in this week’s TIME is about David Letterman, where the scandal may go from here and how Dave is unlike (and like) the politicians he jokes about. Thus it re-encapsulates some of the things I’ve been writing about Letterman here this week, [...]

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Tuned In+842 days ago

TV Tonight: Ring My Bell

By James Poniewozik

Fringe is turning out to be even more like The X-Files than I suspected when it started—structurally, anyway, in that it’s breaking down between monster-of-the-week episodes, which I might enjoy but don’t feel compelled to watch right away, and mythology episodes, which focus on the overarching parallel-universe storyline and which I drop everything to watch. [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 842 days ago

South Park Watch: Shut Up, Billy Mays!

By James Poniewozik

[Update: I deleted the embedded video here because it was causing some browsers to crash, and playing unprompted on my own browser, which annoys the crap out of me. But you can see it, other clips—and the full episode—at the South Park Studios website. Apologies.] While we’re on the subject of product placement this morning, [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 842 days ago

Reality Redemption for Michael Vick?

By James Poniewozik

This is really turning out to be the week of scandal comebacks. Michael Richards returned to TV on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Don Imus returned to TV on Fox Business. David Letterman—well, that one’s still in progress. And now, reports the L.A. Times, Michael Vick is getting his own reality show. The Michael Vick Project (tentative [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 842 days ago

The Morning After: Buy It In Bulk

By James Poniewozik

I highly recommend everyone go read Choire Sicha’s outstanding op-ed in the New York Times this morning about product placement in America, which among other notes that the film version of The Road even managed to work a plug for VitaminWater into a movie about the Apocalypse. (The Coca-Cola scene he mentions, by the way, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 843 days ago

TV Tonight: Secret Girlfriend: Who Do You Think You Are?

By James Poniewozik

Comedy Central, like any good targeted network with a young male audience, is constantly asking itself, What do guys like? Guys like comedy. Guys like the Internet. And guys like point-of-view porn and Girls Gone Wild videos. Ahem, so I’m told. The channel has combined these great tastes together in a fascinatingly bad comedy debuting [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | 843 days ago

Gourmet: A Magazine TV Show Sans Magazine

By James Poniewozik

File this under Department of Unfortunate Timing: last week I got a screener in the mail for the public-TV show Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth, a food series with Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl. On Monday, publisher Conde Nast announced that Reichl would have no magazine to edit, as it was closing the venerable food bible. The [...]