Tuned In+News Media | April 2, 2012

You’re Sorkin in It: HBO’s Newsroom Trailer Looks Pretty Familiar

By James Poniewozik

Taking advantage of the tune-in audience for the season premiere of Game of Thrones, and the built-in overlap between fans of fantasy epics and cable news, HBO previewed a trailer for its Aaron Sorkin drama The Newsroom last night.

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Tuned In+News Media | June 16, 2011

So Why Shouldn't Anthony Weiner Get a TV Show?

By James Poniewozik

The Anthony Weiner twimmolation saga ended today with all the dignity began with: a heckler (Benjy Bronk from The Howard Stern Show) shouting his resignation speech down, cable-news anchors saying the word “sexting” repeatedly and Weiner saying he would step down “most importantly, so that I can continue to heal from the damage that I [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | May 2, 2011

Bin Laden's Death, Reported By a Media His Attacks Shaped

By James Poniewozik

When Osama bin Laden sponsored the attacks against America in 2001, there was no YouTube, blogs were just rising as a medium, and TV was shaped by the aftermath of the mass killings. But the news of his death was broken last night on Twitter, a medium that didn’t exist on 9/11. Keith Urbahn, chief [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | March 11, 2011

Quake/Tsunami Takes Over TV News (Mostly), Will Test Foreign Depth

By James Poniewozik

TV news and social media snapped to attention early this morning (U.S. time) as news came of a 8.9 earthquake that hit off the coast of northern Japan and the tsunami that caused massive devastation and rolled across the Pacific. As I write, most news and broadcast networks are wall-to-wall in coverage—as well as The [...]

+Uncategorized | February 3, 2011

The Night Shift: Aasif Mandvi's Searing Satire — Why All the Cable News Fear Over This Particular Revolution?

By Steven James Snyder

Even before the protests in Egypt turned violent, the top names in cable news started speculating: What will happen to Egypt if U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarek is removed from power? What are the implications of America losing its biggest Arab ally? What does the turmoil mean for U.S. foreign policy, for Israel, for oil supplies? On [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | January 24, 2011

Is Cable News Going to Get Sorkin-ized?

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann may be out of a job now, but there’s a possibility that he—or a fictional character bearing his likeness—may end up getting the Jedediah Josiah Bartlet, or Mark Zuckerberg, treatment on HBO. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and likely soon-to-be Oscar nominee for writing The Social Network, has told the BBC [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 16, 2010

Olbermann Jousts Koppel in Battle of High Horses

By James Poniewozik

The Germans should have invented a word that’s like “schadenfreude,” but describing the feeling that comes when someone expresses something in a such a way that you feel vaguely uncomfortable agreeing with them. Schaden-noddin’, maybe? Whatever the word, it would roughly describe what I felt last night as Keith Olbermann made some  convincing points in [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | June 23, 2010

Who Do You Have to Sleep With to Get a CNN Show? Ask Eliot Spitzer!

By James Poniewozik

So it’s official: Eliot Spitzer, one of America’s top ten favorite former governors forced from office by sex scandal, will be co-hosting a nightly opinion roundtable show on CNN. (His co-host: conservative political columnist Kathleen Parker.) To sum up: expressing hugely unpopular opinions about Israel = media-career-ender. Getting it on with a hooker = media-career-maker! [...]

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Tuned In+April 23, 2010

Dead Tree Alert: CNN Feels the Squeeze

By James Poniewozik

And speaking of when media companies attack (themselves), my print column this week looks not at TIME but another unit of Time Warner: CNN, its nosedive in the primetime ratings and its plight as cable-news viewers increasingly turn to more-partisan hosts on Fox News and MSNBC. I’d like the channel to focus less on being [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | December 7, 2009

Fox News, Talk Radio Hosts Strike Gold

By James Poniewozik

If you watch a lot of TV news, you become well aware of the consumer options for free credit reports, health-care products for the elderly and—if you watch Fox News in particular—gold. A fascinating story up at Politico examines the symbiosis between the conservative talkers peddling disaster and the various companies peddling the yellow stuff.

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | October 30, 2009

Who Says TV News Is Biased? TV News Viewers Do!

By James Poniewozik

The Pew Research Center has issued a study about the public perception of TV news which finds shockingly—shockingly!—that TV audiences see Fox News as the most ideological network. But beyond that, the study is a trove of curious data points showing that people find ideology in a lot of places—and they don’t necessarily mind it. [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | October 16, 2009

Balloon Boy on Larry King: "We Did It for the Show"

By James Poniewozik

For a few horrifying hours yesterday, TV news and its audience thought they might be witnessing the death of a child in real time. Instead, it turned out we were literally distracted by a shiny object. The silvery experimental balloon hurtling through the air over Colorado did not, it turned out, hold six-year-old Falcon Heene; [...]