Tuned In+Tuned In | September 21, 2011

R.E.M. TV: They Stood in the Place Where They Lived

By James Poniewozik

Word of warning: for the next day or two, those of us who attended college in the ’80s and ’90s are going to be insufferable. The news has come out that R.E.M., after a three-decade run, are breaking up. Get ready for the reminiscences: this is an unprovable thesis, but R.E.M.’s music was especially intimate and inward-looking for a supergroup’s (compare U2, for a contemporary), so it feels to me like my generational peers will feel this one especially personally.

I will save for the unfortunate Tuned In Jrs. the reminiscences of Daddy learning the intro to “Driver 8″ on his first guitar in high school, or seeing them (with the dBs opening!) on the Document tour. But for the purposes of this blog, it’s worth noting that there was a period, around the band’s peak of popularity, that it was not just an omnipresence in music but also a presence on TV.

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | March 10, 2011

Nostalgia Marches On: '90s Kid Classics Return to TeenNick

By James Poniewozik

Twentysomethings: welcome to old age! TeenNick—Nickelodeon’s teen channel, formerly The N—is planning to bring back a block of Nickelodeon kids’ shows from the 1990s in a late-night block, aimed at the original fans who are now college-aged, or older. Much older—like me, because I went through a period of obsessive fanhood for the surreal, indie-rock-laced [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | February 3, 2011

The Dream of the '90s Is Alive: Beavis and Butt-Head Returning to MTV

By James Poniewozik

Kids, you’re probably too young to remember it, but there was a time when it was considered somewhat outrageous to say that something “sucked” on TV and when mocking a channel’s content on that channel itself was unusual, rather than the default mode of 90% of cable. That time was the ’90s, and the prime [...]