James Poniewozik

Part of growing up is learning to accept that sometimes even the yahoos can be right. Today, the yahoos in question are the FCC regulators who are trying to push an anathema idea on cable companies: giving their customers more choices.

Most cable viewers buy dozens, even hundreds of channels, even if they don’t watch most. (Studies

…

Ted Koppel left Nightline last night after 25 years. His last episode, devoted to Morrie Schwartz, the professor and subject of Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, was a typical, graceful signoff: thoughtful, modest and unsentimental. It was the sort of gesture that obliges a TV critic to thank Koppel for his service. Or it would,

…

With the word out that Arrested Development is as good as canceled — Fox cut back the Emmy-winning sitcom’s episode order from 22 to 13, the point at which most shows start ordering the liquor for the wake — fans are going through the traditional stages of TV death. From denial and anger, we’ve commenced bargaining, with TV critic Tim

…

You could have predicted that Democratic Rep. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) would win last night’s live West Wing debate over Sen. Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). Not because of the candidates’ oratorical record or their stances in the campaign: Santos had to do better because it would make a better TV. Vinick led the campaign by 9 points going

…

When CNN announced that Anderson Cooper would take over Aaron Brown’s 10 p.m. slot and that Brown would leave the network, it was tempting to call it youth over experience. Or male-model looks over, well, less-than-male-model looks. (No offense to Mr. Brown. The present author will not be doing any Details spreads anytime soon either.)

…

In the premiere of the cartoon series The Boondocks (Cartoon Network, Sundays, 11 p.m. E.T.), a black servant at a garden party—jealous of new black neighbors who’ve ingratiated themselves to his white boss—takes the stage and does an impromptu song: "Don’t Trust Them New Niggers Over There." One young white woman looks at

…

Usually, a major American tragedy isn’t a major American tragedy until the entertainment industry overreacts to it. After the Littleton school shootings, TV executives pulled scenes of violence; after 9/11, movies and TV shows featuring terrorism and spectacular explosions were held until it was deemed safe (and profitable) to scare

…

Between the news tickers, stock numbers, story captions and "BREAKING NEWS" screamers, we’ve already gotten used to our cable news channels being lit up like the Ginza at midnight. But the newest addition to cable-news screens is the picture-in-picture inset, the video box in the lower-right corner that tracks an image from one story

…

Like a new fall show that you would have expected to be canceled by now but has managed to escape the axe, Tuned In is staying on the air, but with some scheduling changes. Now that the deluge of debuts is over, I won’t be blogging on the same daily (or near-daily) basis. But I’ll keep posting—when there’s a new show worth

…

Today Apple computer announced
its long-awaited video iPod, which will no doubt, like every
new Apple release, be thoroughly coated in the slaver of admiring
journalists before it hits the shelves. What most grabbed my attention,
though, was a new feature that has the potential to iTunes-ify network
TV. Thanks to a deal with ABC, iPod

…

The most notable accomplishment of Freddie (Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m. E.T.), the sitcom vehicle for Freddie Prinze, Jr., is that it manages to be bad in two entirely different ways. On the one hand, it’s as lame and inane as its high-concept premise: a swinging bachelor’s life changes when his female relatives move in with him. There’s a

…

Say whatever you want about Hot Properties (ABC, Fridays, 9:30 p.m. E.T.): it strikes a resounding blow for feminism. The brainchild of a female creator (Suzanne Martin), it proves that women can stereotype themselves as well as any man.

Following on the high, pointy heels of Related, this sitcom, set in a New York City real-estate

…

Sex and the City is the Velvet Underground of TV shows. Everyone who bought the VU’s first album, it is said, started a band. And sometimes it seems like everyone who saw Sex and the City created a TV show. Take Related, (The WB, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), a comedy-drama about four loving, bickering young sisters. Let’s tick off the

…