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“If creaky old NCIS can draw 20 million viewers, imagine what the combination of money, creativity, smart casting, production values, and an innovative broadcast-network programmer could do.”
With the right breaks? I’m guessing, oh, maybe 10 million.
Cynicism aside, I highly recommend Mark Harris’ take on the many troubles of NBC in …
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It’s a sign of how much the broader cable universe has matured that the big Sunday-night finale we’re talking about was on AMC, and HBO’s shows are the afterthought. But last night’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and (especially) the season finale of Bored to Death were very good in their own right.
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The surest sign that MTV had hit the big time was that it stopped airing music videos. Ditto VH1. The more of a mainstay Food Network became, the more it aired shows that weren’t about cooking. The big money for cable news channels is not in news, but in opinion.
Cartoon Network has hit something of a slump in the ratings …
In an interview with TIME, the prolific author reflected on his ten most monstrously large books.
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SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, call up some old friends you haven’t seen in a while and watch last night’s Mad Men.
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Mad Men‘s third-season finale airs Sunday night, and because of Matthew Weiner’s understandable desire for secrecy, it’ll be the first episode of the season critics won’t be seeing in advance. So I’ll be watching on plain, old-fashioned TV, like the little people do.
What does this mean for my post-show reviewing? I may end up doing …
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Spoilers for last night’s 30 Rock coming up after the jump:
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Spoilers for last night’s The Office coming up after the jump:
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My column in this week’s print TIME expands on a bullet point from my post a week ago, on the Pew Research poll that asked TV viewers whether they believed the networks they watched had a liberal or conservative bias. The problem with this dichotomy, used not just by Pew but media critics all over, is that it overlooks what is the …
The Dia Art Foundation is a unique thing, a non-profit that collects a limited roster of artists in depth, especially Minimalists and Conceptual artists, and gives them the kind of long term exhibition space their work requires. This can get tricky when you’re talking about something like Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room, a big …
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That TV-critics’ Twitter debate I mentioned in my Modern Family post this morning was kicked off by a simple but tough question: what’s the best comedy on TV right now? I don’t want to misrepresent anyone by saying who picked what and why, but it’s something I’m wrestling with right now, as I start to work on my best-of lists for 2009. …
Last month we learned what artworks the Obamas had chosen for the family quarters of the White House and the West and East Wing offices. One of the pictures that caught everybody’s attention was Watusi (Hard Edge) by Alma Thomas, a lesser known Washington, D.C. area artist who died in 1978. But now that picture has been handed back …
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Speaking of liberal indoctrination by edutainment programs, Michelle Obama’s efforts to turn us all into communist vegans is not stopping at Sesame Street. Food Network announced that Iron Chef America will be airing a special two-hour episode Jan. 3, taped at the White House, featuring the First Lady and her much-publicized kitchen …
