Gregory Peters / AMC
Tuned In+Television | May 21, 2012

Breaking Bad Returns for (Half of) Its Last Season July 15

By James Poniewozik

Walter White will be the one who knocks on your TV screen July 15, when Breaking Bad returns for its fifth and final season on AMC July 15. But you won’t have to say goodbye too soon, because the show will re-return for the same final season next summer: confirming what has been an open secret, the network is splitting the final run into two eight-episode chunks.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | February 21, 2012

Human Beings Rejoice! Community Returns to NBC March 15

By James Poniewozik
NBC

When NBC pulled Community from its schedule in December, saying it would bring the show back in midseason, fans began to spin all sorts of dark predictions as to what would happen to the show. Well, if you bet on “NBC will bring it back in midseason, just like it said,” get ready to collect: [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | December 15, 2011

NBC Announces: America’s Got Howard Stern

By James Poniewozik

Your chances of winning the next edition of America’s Got Talent for butt bongo just got better.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | December 2, 2011

Prison Break: Fox Slates Alcatraz, Idol, New Kiefer Drama for Midseason

By James Poniewozik
Justin Stephens/FOX

For the past several seasons, midseason—the stretch of the TV calendar starting in January—has been when Fox’s season really began in earnest, as it brought out powerhouses like American Idol and, back in the day, 24. That’s changed a bit as Fox has strengthened its fall-premiere schedule. (It now has some reliable scripted shows like [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | November 30, 2011

HBO Signs David Milch and His New Partner, William Faulkner

By James Poniewozik

HBO announced today that it signed a new contract with one of its favorite writers, David Milch, who created Deadwood, John from Cincinnati and various projects that never made air for the network, and whose horseracing drama Luck debuts next month. (A sneak preview will air Dec. 11.) In connection with the deal, the network [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | October 26, 2011

Can’t Stop the Zombies: The Walking Dead Gets a Third Season

By James Poniewozik

Since its second season debuted Oct. 16 to ratings that would (and I assume did) make broadcast networks envious, you should have expected this, but AMC made it official: The Walking Dead will swarm across your TV for a third season.

Tuned In
Tuned In+TV Ratings | October 17, 2011

Zombies Devour Ratings Record! 7.3 Million for Walking Dead

By James Poniewozik
Lincoln as Rick Grimes. / AMC

Amid the off-season drama over AMC’s The Walking Dead—in which the network cut the series’ budget and ushered out showrunner Frank Darabont—hung the question: was the network going to, er, cannibalize its zombie drama and biggest commercial hit?

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | September 8, 2011

Breaking News! HBO Picks Up Sorkin’s Cable-News Series

By James Poniewozik

While this may not count as the most stunning development in TV, HBO has made it official: it’s greenlighted a season of Aaron Sorkin‘s yet untitled drama set at a cable news network, starring Jeff Daniels as a talented but difficult high-profile anchor. With little to go on but the premise and Sorkin’s history, I’m [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | August 16, 2011

The Sing-Off Names New, Super-Sized Cast

By James Poniewozik

Because Tuned In aims to be your one-stop source of information on The Most Important Show on Television, The Sing-Off, I wanted to get you the list of the 16 competing groups for the new, longer version of the a cappella competition that will air starting in September. The main distinguishing feature of the list [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Tuned In | July 21, 2011

The Real Muslims of Dearborn: TLC Announces Islam Reality Show

By James Poniewozik

For a while now, people have batted around the idea of whether and when TV would give us a Muslim Cosby Show: that is, a TV series that would take a mass audience inside the family life of this cultural group for the first time, the way that the Huxtables were the first black family [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | July 11, 2011

May the Minifigures Be With You

By James Poniewozik

I’ve been busy today closing a feature on Breaking Bad (which will be in TIME Friday) and writing a review of George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons (which will post here tomorrow morning). So I have been a bad, bad blogger today. You deserve better than that, so here are some pictures of Lego [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Tuned In | July 11, 2011

TNT Is Remaking Dallas. Why Are You Remaking Dallas, TNT?

By James Poniewozik

TNT has ordered ten episodes of a remake of Dallas, to start airing next year. Why? I should issue the standard disclaimers. It’s all in the execution; I loved the Battlestar Galactica reboot; I hope to eat my words, &c. But Dallas seems to be less in need of remaking than even the usual unnecessary [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+March 18, 2011

It's Not TV, It's Netflix; Fincher/Spacey House of Cards Set for Late 2012

By James Poniewozik

It’s official: Netflix is getting into the business of producing first-run series. House of Cards, a remark of a British political thriller, from David Fincher and Kevin Spacey will debut in late 2012 on the—movie club? channel? things-you-watch-on-a-screen service? The timing, of course, will coincide with a U.S. Presidential election, but the bigger news that [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+March 2, 2011

Top Chef Masters Tweaks the Recipe

By James Poniewozik

I am not one to complain about more Top Chef in any form. I love the original, I liked Top Chef Masters, I even—in theory if not in first-season practice—liked Top Chef Just Desserts. But while I eventually grew used to the format of Top Chef Masters, I wished from the beginning that it could [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+March 1, 2011

ABC Announces DWTS Cast

By James Poniewozik

At this point, you could pretty much do the cast diagram of a typical Dancing With the Stars season yourself: some current/former athletes, a kids’ star, an old peoples’ star, some reality-show personalities, a where-are-they-now star, a minor pop/country singer or two—plus, in recent years, a wild card, like a controversial political figure or controversial [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+February 9, 2011

Olbermann Gets Company at Current: Docs, Nature, Smoke Jumpers

By James Poniewozik

Today, in a presentation conveniently following Keith Olbermann’s decision to join the network, Current TV announced a slate of new programming for the year 2011. It’s not the new, complementary news-and-views programming that (one assumes) new star and news chief Olbermann will recruit to air along with his primetime show. That will presumably come eventually; [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+February 3, 2011

Viacom Makes Hulu Deal; Snooki, Betty White More Elite Than Colbert

By James Poniewozik

Viacom, owner of MTV, Comedy Central and other valuable properties on the Monopoly board of cable TV, has finally cut a deal with Hulu to make its shows available on the online video service. But, for most of its shows, it’ll cost you. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will now be online free [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+January 25, 2011

International Incident: Jersey Shore to Shoot Season 4 in Italy

By James Poniewozik

That’s right: MTV has announced that the fourth season of its hit Jersey Shore will send Snooki and the gang to The Boot, as part of the series’ ongoing effort to promote positive images of Italian American culture. I am hoping that it will look something like this (see above). Excerpts from MTV’s announcement after [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+January 19, 2011

Wedding Bells at TLC, More British People Coming to Your TV Set

By James Poniewozik

There used to be an unspoken deal between the British and Americans regarding television. Their part of the deal was that they would be allowed on our programs either as reality-show villains or if they adopted unrecognizable mid-Atlantic accents like Hugh Laurie. Our part of the deal was, there was no our part of the [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | December 15, 2010

AMC Rolling with Hell on Wheels

By James Poniewozik

With Breaking Bad and Mad Men collecting awards hardware and The Walking Dead smashing ratings records, AMC is not letting up. Today, it announced that it is picking up to series Hell on Wheels, a Western about an ex-Confederate soldier after the Civil War who heads west to work on the Transcontinental Railroad and seek [...]