Tuned InUncategorized
PBS doc-maker Ken Burns is the next subject of a TIME 10 Questions interview, and time.com is soliciting questions for him right now. Burns’ next documentary is The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, a twelve-hour, six-part series starting Sept. 27.
I’ve been watching it, and while it’s full of staggering nature-porn footage—it’s a …
Tuned InUncategorized
President Obama will be on five-count-them-five political talk shows Sunday, on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Univision. I picture him hurriedly fishing one interview, running off, being handed a cup of Gatorade and dumping it over his head, dashing into the next studio…
Then on Monday he’ll be appearing on Late Show with David Letterman, …
Over the weekend the Austrian culture ministry announced that the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna is facing an attempt to reclaim one of its most important works, Vermeer’s The Art of Painting — or as it’s also known, The Allegory of Painting — which has been at the museum since 1946.
It’s already a picture with a fraught history.
Tuned InTV Ratings
Last night, the first broadcast of The Jay Leno Show drew a whopping 17.7 million viewers, many of them with their original teeth. As the guy who wrote the story with the “Future of TV” cover line, I should probably just leave it at that and call it a day. But let’s take a look at what does and doesn’t matter about that number, in ways …
Tuned InUncategorized
The Jay Leno Show, NBC has been telling us all summer, was “comedy at 10,” not simply a second Tonight Show. Instead, what we got was a monologue, a couple taped comedy bits, an interview, a musical act, another interview and Headlines.
Somebody refresh my memory: what was The Tonight Show again? …
The Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight has a hilarious (and perfectly valid) follow-up today on Glenn Beck’s recent attempt to draw sinister inferences of fascist and communist content in the 30s-era artwork around Rockefeller Center. I posted about Beck’s tirade just before I disappeared last week on a long work trip. …
Tuned In
The Jay Leno Show debuts tonight at 10, and with it begins the biggest gamble in TV in years. In my cover story, I said he and his show would represent the (downsized, cheaper) future of TV whether it succeeded or failed.* Which is just as well, because I absolutely suck at predicting whether anything will succeed or …
Tuned InUncategorized
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcuE9ghAgFM&feature=player_embedded]
It all comes back around to Jay Leno today.
It doesn’t take a journalism degree to realize that this week public outbursts achieved the Rule of Threes, making them an official trend. Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at President Obama; Serena Williams had a …
Tuned InTuned In
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, make a plate of hash and eggs, open a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, and watch last night’s Mad Men.
Tuned InUncategorized
So we’ve developed a mini-ritual of watching a little of the U.S. Open with the Tuned In Jrs. before bed. Last night, we started watching the beginning of the Federer match on TiVo. Meanwhile, I checked my Twitter feed, where people were Twittering in real time about Federer having having made an amazing shot at the end of the match. We …
Tuned In
Unless the producers come to their senses, I will be appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday morning, around 10:40 a.m. ET, to talk about Jay Leno and possibly some other media things. And Monday morning I’ll be on the Today show, somewhere in the second hour (I’m told 8:18 a.m. ET, seriously), to talk about Jay Leno and possibly some …
Tuned InRemembrance
TV, movie and theater writer Larry Gelbart died today at age 81. The war comedy M*A*S*H was not the sum total of his career—he also wrote for Sid Caesar, wrote the movie Tootsie and the Broadway comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum—but it’s what I’ll remember him for. Because, of course, it was a landmark comedy; it …
Tuned InUncategorized
This Sunday, Fox’s King of the Hill airs its last two episodes. Year in and year out, for thirteen seasons, it has quietly been the best family comedy on TV, despite being overshadowed for many reasons: because people (and Emmy voters) have a hard time taking a cartoon seriously (compared with the funny but much more cliched and …
