Commenter CMR writes:
Mr. Poniewozik, I know this is a political blog, but maybe you can squeeze in a post about MAD MEN’s ratings plunge
Happy to oblige! There are several schools of thought on this: (1) Low-information voters really don’t tune in until after Labor Day; (2) given the polarized, partisan electorate of…
Oh, I’m …
I’m a little late noting Current TV’s Naked China pre-Olympic documentary series, airing every night this week at 9 p.m. E.T., but Al Gore’s journalism-for-the-young-people network is also going to post the episodes online after they air. The five-part series looks at the contradictions of a country that is both officially communist and …
Jeez Louise—another freaking post about Barack Obama? If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re not alone. According to a new survey from Pew Research, 48% of respondents believe they’ve been hearing too much about Obama in the media. In contrast 38% say they’ve heard too little about McCain (compared with 10% who say that about …
…but it’s en Espanol. Capadocia, set in a fictional Mexican women’s prison, will run Wednesdays on HBO Latino starting Sept. 10. I don’t know if I’ll be seeing it before it airs—I personally no habla, but it will replay subtitled on-demand—but the network describes it thus: “Corruption runs rampant as prison rights attorney Teresa …
In the 2008 election, history books will record, age and experience defeated youth and change. I am speaking, of course, about the choice of moderators for the Presidential debates—Tom Brokaw, Jim Lehrer and Bob Schieffer—who are collectively nearly as old as America (and incidentally as white as Mount Rushmore). As Rachel Sklar …
Former TIME colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates has started blogging at The Atlantic this week, replacing the departed Matt Yglesias. There’s no real TV connection here; I just like his writing and always appreciated him for being the one person at Time with a name (arguably) as hard to spell as mine. And now that he no longer works with me, I can …
If you’re like me, no housing crash can suppress your obsession with the real-estate market and the TV shows that chronicle it. If you’re not like me—and you’re not—well, it’s August, so you may want to watch the return of Bravo’s real-esate reality saga, Million-Dollar Listing.
I hear the price was just slashed to a $799,000 …
HIMYM’s Marshall and Lily: what kind of example are they setting for the children? / Eric McCandless/CBS
The Parents Television Council issued a report today on sex on broadcast TV. The report, “Happily Never After,” you may not exactly be stunned to learn, finds there to be too much of it. In particular, the report finds, there’s much …
I’m aware, by the way, that it seems sometimes as if I blog about nothing but politics here nowadays. But it’s August, and it’s an election year and that means that by default the election is itself the watercooler show on TV, at least until the Olympics start.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask the producers of Last Comic Standing, for …
The panel on MSNBC’s Hardball yesterday offered a novel explanation of why John McCain has gone so sharply negative in the past week or so (link via Talking Points Memo):
ANDREA MITCHELL: I have maybe a counterintuitive view that John McCain also doesn’t like this kind of politics, went along with his new, tougher political advisers,
…
Although I Want to Work for Diddy sounds like it should be a show about people fighting each other to get a minimum-wage job, it is instead another entry in VH1’s vast raft of celebreality shows—in this case, one where aspirants compete to be P. Diddy’s personal assistant. The premise, at first, made me worry for Diddy’s career. After …
If I had mentioned TV One to you a few months ago, I’m guessing a substantial percentage of readers would have thought: What? You mean the guys who do news programs for elementary schools?
TV One, as political junkies have since learned, is an African-American-aimed cable channel that is not BET. And it became briefly notorious during …
In my latest Olympic-walkup column about how pop culture has largely ignored modern China, I mentioned very briefly that some cable documentaries and news shows have been trying—albeit with relatively small audiences—to fill in the gaps. So it’s only fair that I mention some of them. Last month, Discovery viewers saw Ted Koppel …