Lewis Jacobs/NBC
Tuned In+Television | 3 days ago

The Morning After: NBC, Finally Something to Sing About?

By James Poniewozik

After a post-Super Bowl promo, NBC got a huge number of new fans to tune in for the second season of The Voice. To my surprise, I'm one of them.

+Advertising | 4 days ago

The Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials of 2012

By TIME Staff
360_ent_super_bowl_ads_0205

Animals, beer, women in bikinis—all the things that one would expect from Super Bowl commercials were present. TIME grades the Super Bowl XLVI ads

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 24 days ago

In Previews: NBC Is Going to Make Damn Sure You Sample Smash

By James Poniewozik
NBC

NBC is aggressively sneak-peeking the pilot of the musical that its midseason hopes are riding on. If you’ve seen it online, give us your opening-night thoughts.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 57 days ago

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 | 87 days ago

Intermediate Suspended Animation: NBC’s Midseason Slate Puts Community on Hold

By James Poniewozik
Lewis Jacobs/NBC

NBC says the inventive comedy will be coming back before long. And TV, after all, is a business. But this is still the opposite of Batman.

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 151 days ago

Rock Center with Brian Williams: When Bad Titles Happen to Good Anchors

By James Poniewozik

This morning, NBC announced the title for its long-awaited primetime newsmagazine: Rock Center with Brian Williams, which will debut later this season, marks a big entry into the nighttime news business, with the network throwing its primary anchor and some of its greatest resources into a—oh, stop. I can’t do this. Because all I can [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 178 days ago

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+Uncategorized | 184 days ago

Turns Out Gloria Steinem Not a Fan of The Playboy Club

By James Poniewozik

One of the more comical incidents of the recent TCA television critics’ press tour was the attempt by the makers of The Playboy Club to defend its romanticization of its eponymous Bunny hutch as “empowering” to women. A lot of the critics assembled laughed it off. But you know what would really help to bolster [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 192 days ago

NBC Day at Press Tour: Up All Afternoon

By James Poniewozik

I arrived at the Beverly Hilton for TCA press tour in the middle of the afternoon, so I missed the first half of NBC’s day of presentations, in which we learned that The Playboy Club is actually about the empowerment of women and that new programming chief Robert Greenblatt would like to bring a little [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 218 days ago

NBC Sets Its Dates for Fall

By James Poniewozik

NBC became the last of the major broadcast networks to announce its fall premiere dates yesterday, and it like its peers (despite NBC’s ratings, I’ll still use the term “peers”) is debuting most of its new shows in the traditional late-September premiere week. Among the shows not on this schedule is 30 Rock, which, as [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 248 days ago

NBC Keeps Olympics, Will Air Them (Sort of?) Live

By James Poniewozik

NBC, which has had every Olympics the last two decades save 1994, has kept the games through 2020, despite competition from Fox and ESPN. Unlike its rival bidders, NBC had not promised to air the games live (and has in past years insisted on saving events for primetime on tape-delay). But after winning the bid [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 270 days ago

Upfronts 2011: NBC Hopes for Turnaround, Trump Not Running for President (UPDATED with Video)

By James Poniewozik

The headline first: At NBC’s upfront schdule presentation to advertisers today in New York, Donald Trump announced that he is not running for President. (As I told you in February.) The announcement, which may have stunned political reporters who forgot that Trump did the same thing in 1988 and 2000, was brief: “as much as [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 271 days ago

Upfronts 2011: A Dozen for NBC

By James Poniewozik

NBC announced its 2011–12 schedule today, the first of the big networks to show its hand for Upfronts Week. (Click here for clips of all the upcoming shows.) I’ll have some thoughts on the previews we see after the upfronts presentation tomorrow, but here are some highlights, followed by the schedule: * NBC launches six [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Tuned In | 274 days ago

Prime, Chuck: NBC's Pickup News for Next Year

By James Poniewozik

It wasn’t quite the dramatic blitz of announcements that Fox had for us the other day, but NBC‘s 2011–12 schedule is starting to take shape. Among the new series ordered for next season are Smash, a musical described as a kind of grown-up Glee (we’ll see if that’s a contradiction in terms) and the remake [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 303 days ago

Why Wonder Woman's Costume Really Worries Me

By James Poniewozik

Some projects come to television heralded by all manner of advance coverage and fan buzz, like Sunday’s debut of Game of Thrones, which has been written about—here among other places—when it was only a twinkle in HBO’s eye years ago. And some projects are greeted by intense scrutiny and advance buzz… of a less flattering [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 309 days ago

Presidential Apprentice: Donald Trump's Birtherism, Sponsored By NBC

By James Poniewozik

Donald Trump‘s appearance on the Today Show this morning was a trifecta of self-promotion for NBC Universal. It gave a platform to the star of Celebrity Apprentice, one of NBC’s few minor hits. It gave Today a buzzed-about interview (MSNBC’s Morning Joe also had The Donald on this morning). And it helped publicize an new [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+330 days ago

NBC Renewals: Community (Yay!), Parks and Rec (Yay!), The Office (Duh!)

By James Poniewozik

NBC spared a lot of fans a lot of nailbiting this afternoon and announced that it is bringing back Community, Parks and Recreation and The Office for another season. 30 Rock was already renewed as of last fall. As for the other Thursday comedies: there is a very, very low ratings bar at NBC right [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 358 days ago

NBC Casts Wonder Woman, Prime Suspect. Good Actress = Good Show?

By James Poniewozik

I usually don’t bother reporting casting news on this blog, because I’d end up doing little else, but yesterday came reports that NBC had found actresses to re-create two iconic, if very different, classic-TV roles. In its remake of Prime Suspect, Maria Bello (A History of Violence) will reportedly take on the role of a [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 388 days ago

Good News for Kabletown: U.S. OK's Comcast-NBC Merger

By James Poniewozik

Comcast has federal approval to combine with NBC, after the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department both approved the deal this afternoon. Besides providing clarity for 30 Rock storylines going forward, the decision makes possible the first acquisition of a major broadcast network by a cable company. (TIME’s parent, Time Warner, owned a cable [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 392 days ago

TCA Roundup: Headless Peacock in Hotel Bar

By James Poniewozik

Another round of headlines from the Television Critics’ Association winter press tour, which is winding down at the lovely Langham Hotel in Pasadena, and it was NBC’s turn to face the critics and reporters… * …except no executives were on hand to do so. NBC has a new team coming in to run the network [...]