In the new print TIME, my Tuned In column looks at the now-former governor of Illinois’ media tour this week:

It is somehow perfect that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich would begin his media self-justification-and-jury-pool-influence tour at the same time that American Idol has returned to TV. Like the bad auditioners who spring anew

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Why don’t more people watch the evening news anymore? One commonly blamed culprit is schedules. People are busy at 6:30! Gotta work late! Soccer practice! Put the news on later, when people are home, the thinking goes, and they’ll have time to tune in.

Except that then, they want to watch American Idol. Last night, CBS experimented …

I’m preparing for my annual Super Bowl Ad review extravaganza this Sunday night (in which I TiVo the game, watch and review every ad on the spot, and fast-forward through the entire game itself; the reviews usually post, with video, early Monday morning). As part of that, the good folks at DreamWorks and Pepsi sent me 3-D glasses to use …

When I screened the pilot of Joss Whedon’s upcoming sci-fi series about humans with erasable memories, the subsequent post got picked up and eagerly pored over within the Whedonverse. So I feel a kind of obligation to my public, and to my traffic reports, to note that Fox has sent me a second episode.

I’m going to be a bit of a tease …

Here we go again. The New York Times is reporting that ABC has considered the idea of moving Jimmy Kimmel into Nightline’s 11:35 p.m. slot to compete against Conan O’Brien, when Conan assumes Tonight from Jay Leno (and Jay Leno assumes 1/3 of primetime from the NBC entertainment division).

So far, the scuttlebutt—

I watched the first three episodes of Damages last month; now that we’re into the thick of midseason TV and FX has aired the fourth, I am officially behind. I’ll get to it eventually, but am throwing the thread open for anyone who wants to dissect it.

Also last night saw the post-Lost return of Life on Mars, with an appearance by …

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, fill it with lead, encase it in concrete and bury it until you watch last night’s Lost. 

Word is just out that Domino magazine is going out of business. That sucks. Domino was an unabashedly consumerist magazine (it was the home-design sister to shop-centric Lucky magazine), but it never felt like a glorified catalog; it had taste and an aesthetic and tight but well-thought-out features. (My favorite, well, is still around, …

I had forgotten that the new cable movie channel from Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate was coming, but it still is, and it reportedly now has a name: Epix. But the New York Times reports that it’s having a hard time finding a cable distributor.

How could that possibly be? Could it have anything to do with the fact that there is not a …

…it’s another episode of Lost, the last of three screened for critics in advance. It’s good—maybe my favorite of the three.

If you don’t want to encounter the merest hint of a spoiler as to what might happen tonight, read no further.

If you do want a little tidbit to exercise your minds with while you’re waiting… well, you may …

It is snowing up and down the eastern half of the country this morning; as I type I can hear the precipitation—having changed over to rain in Brooklyn—adding a creme-brulee-like crust of ice to the overnight snowfall. Despite that, I brought the Tuned In Jrs. to school this morning; there was no snow day declared in New York City, …