Tuned In
Tuned In+782 days ago

TV Tonight: Men of a Certain Age

By James Poniewozik

I took some ribbing from some female associates when I reviewed The Good Wife earlier this season and said the show turned out to be much, much better than I thought it would be. My low expectations were as much about the fact that it was a courtroom procedural as about its chick-centricity, but fair [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 782 days ago

The Morning After: Danke Schoen, Darling

By James Poniewozik

(Warning: vaguely worded spoilers for The Amazing Race follow.) If I have been remiss in recapping The Amazing Race this season, it is because The Amazing Race has been remiss in making me want to. The show still has a great premise and is capable of drawing me in with a team like Mike and [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 785 days ago

The Morning After: FlashForward Hits Pause

By James Poniewozik

Still a while yet before I complete my duty-watching of the “fall finale” of FlashForward. But I thought I should get a Morning After post up for the interested, not least because I’ve technically already run out of morning. Did the episode make you more eager to see FF when it returns? And what do [...]

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Tuned In+785 days ago

CBS's Dirty Frosty: Snow Joke or Leaves You Cold?

By James Poniewozik

The holidays really do bring people together! Mediaite and conservative media watchdog Newsbusters find themselves united today in one belief: CBS shouldn’t have messed around with Frosty. The two sites knocked the network for some mashup promos that intercut the perennial kids’ cartoon Frosty the Snowman with rather adult dialogue from How I Met Your [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 785 days ago

NBC Comedies Watch: HD Is a Cruel Mistress

By James Poniewozik
Tuned In
Tuned In+786 days ago

JP-AM/FM 2: More Shameless Radio Promotion

By James Poniewozik

I’ll be on The Takeaway Friday morning a smidge after 7:30 a.m. E.T. (More public radio! For I am a man of the people!) Subject: More NBC-Comcast. (Question: do regular actual humans find this merger nearly as interesting as media people do?) Find a local station or listen online (scroll down for a link). Expect [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 786 days ago

Stephanopoulos a Good Choice for GMA?

By James Poniewozik

Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post is reporting—as has been buzzed about for months—that ABC is offering the job as Diane Sawyer’s replacement on Good Morning America to George Stephanopoulos. Now I am all for anything that shows a difficult-to-spell last name is no impediment to rising in the media. But is this the best [...]

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Tuned In+786 days ago

JP-AM/FM: Shameless Radio Promotion

By James Poniewozik

I’ll be on KCRW radio’s excellent talk show To the Point today, lowering the level of reasoned discourse with my thoughts on the NBC-Comcast merger. My interview’s at 2:45 p.m. Eastern, but you may want to check with your local public radio station for airtimes. Or get the podcast. Or ignore it entirely.

Tuned In
Tuned In+786 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: I Swear After This I Am Done With Tiger Woods, I Think

By James Poniewozik

In the coming print edition of TIME, my Tuned In column is about your two big media distractions of the week, and how Tiger Woods and the Salahis respectively represent an old- and new-fangled strain of celebrity: the attention-controller and the attention-seeker. Not that this was a particularly good week for either group. Dear celebrities and [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 786 days ago

The Morning After: The Good "Son"

By James Poniewozik

I get the sense that most of Tuned Inland’s Friday Night Lights fans are waiting to watch it on NBC, so most of the readers who weighed in asked that I wait until the NBC run to post about season 4. For various reasons—mostly personal laziness—I’ve abided by the request. But last night’s episode, “The [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 786 days ago

Glee Watch: Once Upon a Mattress

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Glee coming up after the jump:

Tuned In
Tuned In+786 days ago

NBC-Comcast: A TV Deal for the Post-TV Era

By James Poniewozik

Giant cable-TV provider Comcast has reached a deal with GE this morning to take over giant entertainment company NBC Universal. This means big changes ahead for 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy, who will have to adapt his core competencies from selling microwave ovens to pushing upgrades on DVR cable boxes. But what does it mean for [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 787 days ago

TV This Evening: NBC Tree to Get Lit After All

By James Poniewozik

Tonight’s annual NBC tree-lighting special—a.k.a. The Reason It Was a Good Idea to Work At Home and Not At Time’s Rockefeller Center Office Today—will go on after all. A union of broadcast technicians rescinded a strike threat against the network, which had threatened to pull the plug on Christmas in Rockefeller Center. The network and [...]

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Tuned In+787 days ago

Diane Sawyer to Take Over World News, Very Quietly

By James Poniewozik

ABC has announced that Dec. 18 will be Charles Gibson’s last day anchoring World News; he’ll be replaced, as announced in September, by Diane Sawyer shortly afterward. (ABC hasn’t made an official announcement of her start date yet, but it looks to be the following week.) Sawyer’s ascension isn’t news. What’s interesting is the timing, [...]

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Tuned In+787 days ago

TV Tonight: "The Body" of Evidence

By James Poniewozik

We live in the age of paranoia: Presidential birth certificates, Vice-Presidential-candidates’ grandkids, terrorist attacks, flu vaccines—there is nothing that cannot become the stuff of conspiracy theory. So it is prescient thinking, if not spectacular TV, that TruTV enlisted wrestler-turned-governor-now-turned-TV-star Jesse “The Body” Ventura to host Conspiracy Theory, which debuts tonight.

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Tuned In+News Media | 787 days ago

"Personal Sins Should Not Require Press Releases"

By James Poniewozik

Well, it would be nice to think so. The fact that Tiger Woods just released a statement on his website apologizing for “transgressions” and saying “I let my family down” shows that Woods has discovered over the past week that the reality is otherwise. One question that Woods’ phrasing raises, though, is: to what extent [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 787 days ago

Sons of Anarchy Watch: Just a Shot Away

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for the season-two finale of Sons of Anarchy coming up after the jump:

Tuned In
Tuned In+788 days ago

¡Viva Perdidos!

By James Poniewozik

Courtesy of New York magazine’s Vulture blog (and denisermorris on my Twitter stream) comes this excellent Lost season six teaser from Spain. (Though, like its American cousins, it has no new footage to offer.) How do you say “I cannot freaking wait” en Español?