COURTESY NBC

How do you know a network is in bad shape? When it starts telling you how much the TV critics love it. Kicking off NBC’s upfront presentation at Radio City Music Hall, when a more robust network might have trumpeted its ratings and demographics and glossy magazine covers, was a clip reel of scenes from its boutique comedy

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You’re a once-powerful, now struggling TV network, one of whose many, many problems is a late-night comedy show, still pulling in viewers but widely regarded as mediocre for most of the past decade or two. What’s the solution? More of it! Twice–no, three times as much!

To be fair, Saturday Night Live is still capable of

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You’re a once-powerful, now struggling TV network, one of whose many, many problems is a late-night comedy show, still pulling in viewers but widely regarded as mediocre for most of the past decade or two. What’s the solution? More of it! Twice–no, three times as much!

To be fair, Saturday Night Live is still capable of

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Tuned In will be spending this week at the upfronts — the week, once every year, when the broadcast networks rent out Manhattan venues like Radio City Music Hall and Lincoln Center to unveil their fall schedules to their advertisers. There are musical numbers, skits and plenty of song-and-dance, at least the variety that involves

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There have been several insinuations over the years that the voting on American Idol is rigged. If it is, we learned last night that it is not rigged nearly well enough, as America chose to vote leather-lunged rocker Chris Daughtry–long pegged as a favorite to win–off the show.

I’m not crying for Daughtry, who (1) got spectacular

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SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading now if you don’t want to learn that last night’s show revealed that Eko is actually the reincarnation of the polar bear killed in the pilot episode. Just kidding. Although it would be cool. But seriously, stop reading.

Last night’s episode of Lost was titled "?," which if nothing else is truth in

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Tuesday’s overnight Nielsens are in, and it turns out that four times as many people would rather hear Taylor Hicks bleat his lungs out with a torturous version of Elvis’ "In the Ghetto" than watch people cough their lungs out while suffering the torturous symptoms of avian flu. ABC’s exploitative made-for-TV movie Fatal Contact: Bird

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If you’re like most people, when you think "comedy" you think one thing: an interminable, bloody military occupation deteriorating into civil war. At least that appears to be the hope of two cable channels, which are separately developing comedies about the war in Iraq–yes, the current, in-the-news,

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In a disappointment to TV watchers across the nation, David Blaine failed to drown last night. Inside the water-filled sphere that he’d spent the last week submerged in, the magician-shaman-huckster  held his breath for 7 minutes and 8 seconds, nearly 2 minutes shy of the world record of 8:58, but [gasp] better than your current blogger

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Spoiler alert: If you haven’t watched last night’s Lost yet, you’re looking at the wrong set of pixels.

It’s been a long time since there was a good "Holy Crap!" moment on Lost, but the show made up for Lost time with three holy-craptastic moments in gunshot-quick succession–coinciding, of course, with the beginning of May sweeps.

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Was he funny or not? Days after Stephen Colbert performed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, this has become the political-cultural touchstone issue of 2006—like whether you drive a hybrid or use the term "freedom fries." For those of you who haven’t seen the performance, Colbert, in character, launched into a scathing (by

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The post-9/11, Too Soon To era in American culture has been over for a long time. The brief period when it was deemed Too Soon To have movies and TV shows blowing up people, planes and buildings lasted, what?, 15 minutes? And last weekend the movie United 93 was rewarded with a strong 2nd-place debut for invading the sanctum sanctorum of

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Like a Supreme Court vacancy, an empty seat on the View roundtable is something a democracy can not long abide. ABC and Barbara Walters confirmed late today that America’s long national daytime nightmare is over: Rosie O’Donnell will replace Meredith Vieira, who will replace Katie Couric, who in September will replace Bob Schieffer in

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