Tuned InUncategorized
Cartoon Network announced a host of new series and specials at its upfronts this morning. The most problematic for me: Scooby-Doo–Mystery Inc., yet another series in the unkillable dog-detective franchise. The Tuned In Jrs. are just winding down from a major obsession with the various generations of the series, which I’d just barely …
Tuned In
The programming note first. Thanks to the exciting season finale of Barack Obama Takes Over Your TV Week, American Idol‘s performace night was bumped back to tonight. The same night as Lost. Which leaves me with blogging obligations that are irreconcilable. (Well, irreconcilable by means other than staying up far later than my lazy …
Tuned InUncategorized
Speaking of Barack Obama Takes Over Your TV Week, it’s going to be the subject—sort of—of my column in TIME this week. And one thing I’d been doing in prepping for the column was to go back and listen to some of FDR’s fireside chats, which are repeatedly held up as a model for Presidential outreach.
One point I make is that the …
Tuned InUncategorized
Barack Obama Takes Over Your TV Week came to a conclusion last night with the President’s hourlong press conference. A few thoughts:
* A reasonably good round of questions from the press, with nothing as egregiously daffy as the Washington Post’s steroids inquiry from Obama’s first primetime presser. Well, I did think Ann Compton’s …
Tuned In
EW reports today that NBC focus groups have trashed the pilot for Amy Poehler’s upcoming Parks and Recreation. EW’s PopWatch then concludes, rightly, that we should not give a crap what a focus group thinks. I haven’t seen the pilot, so for all I know it could actually be a dud, but any TV critic can tell you stories of the steaming …
I took a look recently at Guest of Cindy Sherman, a documentary co-produced and directed by an ex-boyfriend of the artist Cindy Sherman, the ultimate New York postmodernist. It’s about the pleasures and humiliations, mostly the humiliations, of being the not-quite-significant other of a much more famous person. It’s been making the …
Tuned InUncategorized
Last night, David Letterman, late night’s most-confirmed not-really-a-bachelor bachelor, announced to his studio audience that he finally married girlfriend Regina Lasko, after 23 years. He’s just about grown-up now.
In other late-night news, TBS has announced an 11 p.m. talk show starting in November for George Lopez. Apparently they …
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Spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother coming up after the jump:
Tuned InTV Ratings
On Friday I lamented the overlap of Battlestar Galactica’s finale with the paradigm-shifting relaunch episode of Dollhouse. But it turns out that maybe a rising tide lifts all spaceships / human-personality-imprinting facilities. BSG did score a big sendoff, with its highest ratings in three years. But Dollhouse not only held fairly …
Tuned InNews Media
Having recently written a column on the anti-Obamism of CNBC in the past couple of months, it’s worth noting that the network seems to be having something of a love-in for the President, his administration and their just-announced toxic-assets plan today.
Mind you, I’m not an expert on the markets or bank policy; I’m not going to judge …
If you’ve spent any time in Chicago then you know that whole stretches of that city can seem like a beautifully curated architectural collection. Which is why I was dismayed (and a little puzzled) last month when an Illinois appellate court handed down a peculiar ruling that the state’s landmarks preservation law was unconstitutionally …
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Before you read this post, turn off that home-shopping network and watch last night’s season finale of Big Love.
Tuned InUncategorized
I’ll be doing a Watch on the Big Love season finale later, but because I’m recuperating from a stomach bug and looking at a to-do list the length of a Greek diner menu, it may be a while. In the meantime, did anyone stick around for the second week of Kings? Given the ratings for the first week of Kings, it may be a moot point, but I’m …
