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It’s nothing new in TV to encounter a reality show that is nothing new. Still, Paula Abdul’s Live to Dance, for CBS, was something of a milestone in the field of derivative reality TV: I’m not sure that I was able to identify a single original idea in it. There was the dance competition, of course, from So You Think You Can Dance. …
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American Idol is turning 1o. Few shows remain huge hits in their 10th year. Idol’s producers are aware of this.
There are things they can’t control: whether time, competitors, the departure of Simon Cowell, and changes in the culture have made their show less compelling and relevant. There are the things they can kind of control: …
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A hectic January in TV—I am currently working through 13 count-’em 13 episodes of Lights Out—which means a lot of midseason triage. I decided, for instance, thatI wouldn’t bother with a longer review of V unless the show had markedly improved from last season. It hasn’t.
That’s not to say that the show hasn’t changed. Now fully …
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When Fox signed up Simon Cowell to produce The X-Factor singing competition after leaving American Idol, it was perhaps not the ideal situation—how Idol will survive Cowell’s loss remains to be seen—but it made sense. Better not to risk someone else grabbing Cowell’s project and set up a competitor across the street: Fox would have …
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Spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother coming up:
A couple of things that distinguish How I Met Your Mother as a sitcom are its love of throwing in Easter eggs that reward attention, and its willingness to ground its comedy in serious, even dramatic, personal stories. “Bad News” showcased both traits, though not necessarily …
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Rounding up the year-end Nielsen ratings for 2010, The New York Times’ Brian Stelter notes that—despite all the alternative media and entertainment choices—viewers actually watched slightly more TV than they did in 2009. The overall balance of the viewing continued to shift more in cable’s favor, but that’s still a growing audience …
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I was on vacation last week. But thanks to the magic of publishing—and the magic of working double-time before vacation—I had a story in TIME anyway! I previewed Oprah Winfrey’s just-launched OWN network, which essentially atomizes the themes and content of The Oprah Winfrey Show across a 24-hour cable lineup:
A successful,
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I’m back from my vacation, in which I managed to do something I never thought I would: escape a blizzard by driving to Michigan. I had little problem keeping up with the snow news while visiting relatives, however, as the New York City whiteout was the lead story throughout local Detroit-area TV news. That’s the great thing about being
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