Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 738 days ago

Leno Speaks: I'm Taking the Tonight Show for My Staff's Sake

By James Poniewozik

Last night on The Jay Leno Show, Jay gave his side of the Tonight Show takeover in terms that were his most direct yet. The bit where he gave a pained sigh before deciding, “Yeah, I’ll take the show back”? [About 3:30 in.] Don’t think it was meant to be a laugh line. In a [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 739 days ago

Jay Leno, Politician

By James Poniewozik

Because it’s been making the rounds, here’s an unusual Funny or Die clip. It’s not “funny because it’s true,” it’s just, well, true. It’s simply a verbatim Jay Leno talk, from 2004, on how he didn’t want an ugly fight over the Tonight Show, would graciously hand over the desk to Conan in 2009, and [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 739 days ago

Big Love Watch: Golden Moment

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s Big Love coming up after the jump:

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 739 days ago

NBC's Globes: When It Rains, It Pours

By James Poniewozik

You had to figure that NBC, the Sanjaya of broadcast TV networks, would not emerge un-roasted from its own presentation of the Golden Globes last night. But you might not have expected that the roughest stretch of the broadcast would come not during the monologue or the acceptance speeches, but on the pre-show red carpet. [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+742 days ago

Your Tuned In Tune-In Alert

By James Poniewozik

I’ll be on NPR’s All Things Considered tonight (I’m told around 5:30-6:00 p.m. ET), and on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday morning (I’m told around 10:25 a.m.) to discuss, what else, the Jaypocalypse and NBC’s Conanundrum. I shall endeavor not to swear. But if I do, just pretend I really said “Zucker.”

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 742 days ago

Jaypocalypse Then: From the Archives

By James Poniewozik

According to The New York Times, the struggling new host of NBC’s Tonight Show feels disappointed and betrayed that the network is considering dumping him, after less than a year, for a replacement. Admittedly he got off to a rough start, but things are going smoothly now, he says, and he deserves more time. Speaking [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+742 days ago

TV Weekend: Jack Takes Manhattan

By James Poniewozik

I don’t have a full-fledged review for you of the four-hour double-shot premiere of 24, which begins Sunday night. That’s partly because the kickoff, though it brings Jack Bauer to my city of New York and recruits Katee Sackhoff to CTU, does not have enough in it to convince me that the show has rebooted [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 742 days ago

Jay Leno: Seabiscuit or War Admiral?

By James Poniewozik

The other day, I suggested that, since Jimmy Kimmel agreed to do the “10 at 10″ segment on last night’s Jay Leno Show, he must not actually have much bad feeling towards Leno, despite his brutal hourlong imitation of the chinny host earlier this week. I may have been mistaken. Kimmel started the segment gamely, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 742 days ago

NBC Comedies Watch: The Stars Come Out At Night

By James Poniewozik
Tuned In
Tuned In+743 days ago

NBC's Post-Jaypocalyptic Primetime: L&O, Reality, Reruns

By James Poniewozik

And so begins the long, grim task of rebuilding NBC’s schedule after The Jay Leno Show rips off its mask and admits it was really The Tonight Show all along. (If you needed further evidence that that was the endgame, People reports that next week is likely to be the last for Conan O’Brien’s Tonight [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 743 days ago

TV Tonight: Archer

By James Poniewozik

Though I’ve fallen behind on The Venture Brothers, I tend to watch more Adult Swim than I blog about here. Partly because so many of the late-night toons are difficult to describe to the uninitiated, partly because people who love them already really love them, and people who don’t, or wouldn’t, tend to tune out [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 743 days ago

Modern Family Watch: "You Want Different"

By James Poniewozik

Last week I defended Modern Family from the charge that the show isn’t as good when the three families are kept separate. Fair’s fair; last night’s episode, which kept the three storylines largely separate, wasn’t as strong. But it wasn’t because the families were separate or because the stories weren’t thematically connected: the tete-a-tete between [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+743 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Jaypocalypse Now, the Print Version

By James Poniewozik

My print TIME column this week, it should surprise no one, is also about the Jaypocalypse at NBC. Since it needed to close on deadline—and who knew who was going to be working where by the time it came off the presses—I used the column to big-picture the issue. Namely: NBC’s problem is pretty much [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 743 days ago

Conanundrum: Shaming the Shameless

By James Poniewozik

Can NBC be publicly shamed into keeping Conan O’Brien at the Tonight Show? No, probably not. Let’s get that out of the way. These are TV-businesspeople we’re talking about. Still, the level of public mockery and pressure that NBC has come in for in the last few days has been impressive—and it could have benefits [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 743 days ago

Jaypocalypse: Your Morning NBC-Bashing, 1/14/10

By James Poniewozik

This morning, courtesy of the home office in Wahoo, Nebraska: Two thoughts: 1. It must feel good for Dave to vent nearly two decades’ worth of pent-up Jay bashing. See also his monologue last night. (“Jimmy Kimmel was so convincing as Leno that today NBC canceled him.”) 2. Jeff Zucker’s taking a lot of heat, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 744 days ago

Jaypocalypse / Conanundrum: We Have a Winner!

By James Poniewozik

David Letterman has been killing it the past few nights when it comes to the Jaypocalypse, in which he has a long-standing personal investment. But the most audacious and outrageously funny late-night take on the situation yet belongs to Jimmy Kimmel, who did his entire show last night as Jay Leno. See it here in [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 744 days ago

The Morning After: Simon Shows Us What We're Losing

By James Poniewozik

Last night’s American Idol debut was the first episode sans Paula Abdul, and the first since Simon Cowell’s blockbuster announcement that he will leave the show after this season to launch another singing competition for Fox, The X Factor. The first audition episode dealt directly and upfront with the drama that led to Paula walking [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 744 days ago

Jay Leno, Martyr

By James Poniewozik

In all the NBC late-night drama, I’ve made a point of not treating Jay Leno as the bad guy. I was not a fan of The Jay Leno Show nor of his Tonight Show, but a lot of other people were, and he did a good job making a show that they loved. He didn’t [...]