Tuned InTelevision
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, turn off that Three Stooges movie and watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
“Hazard Pay” broke almost neatly into two halves. The first was a kind of getting-the-band-back-together …
Tuned InTelevision
Last night at the Beverly Hilton, the Television Critics Association gave out the annual TCA Awards for the best in television at our annual summer meeting. And it may not surprise you that, since critics like me were voting, the …
Tuned InTelevision
Get used to seeing more of Charlie Sheen on your television. A lot more. Or, at least, get used to other people having a lot more opportunities to see Charlie Sheen on their televisions.
Tuned InTelevision
I saw the London Olympics opening ceremony late, on Pacific Time—my colleague Catherine Mayer reviews it elsewhere at time.com—but it was a spectacle and a hoot, in the best sense of both words. Where Beijing’s 2008 ceremony …
Tuned InNews Media
Big events like the Olympics’ debut are notorious for “news dumps”–less-than-flattering announcements that might be overshadowed by a bigger story. That may not have been CNN‘s intent, but it was perhaps not a bad day for the …
Tuned InTelevision
As TV critics waited for ABC’s Friday executive presentation at the Television Critics Association press tour, the big question was if the contentious Modern Family salary battle would be resolved in time for ABC chief Paul Lee …
Tuned InTelevision
Seven years ago, the TV business was abuzz over Katie Couric‘s reinvention of herself as a CBS news anchor, having spent years as the host of NBC’s Today Show. This year, she was back at the Television Critics Association press …
Tuned InNews Media
When ABC News scheduled a panel to open the Disney/ABC session of the Television Critics Association press tour, it was probably expecting to take a victory bow. It’s been a good several months in particular for the Good Morning …
Tuned InTelevision
One occasional theme of the Television Critics Association press tour is the slowly creeping awareness that it will eventually become the Whatever Comes After Television Critics Association. Usually, the discussions have to do with how traditional TV is expanding to or dealing with online: web streaming, online extras, cord-cutting, &c. …
Tuned InTelevision
When you have a successful lineup of acclaimed shows at the Television Critics Association, all you need to do to get attention is to bring out the talented stars and creators who made the shows. When your network is in a, er, “rebuilding year,” you haul out all the stunts you can.
At NBC’s “meet the stars” cocktail party, poolside at …
Tuned InRemembrance
Sherman Hemsley, the onetime stage actor who became a pop-culture fixture as dry-cleaning entrepreneur George Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons, has died at age 74.
As Norman Lear created him and Hemsley brought him to life, George was an example of how the same things that make sitcom characters outsized and hilarious …
Tuned InTV Networks
NBC, in the past several years, has not had a lot of ratings success. But at least it had some respect. The Office was a hit, and then when it wasn’t a huge hit, it still received praise for performances like Steve Carell’s. …
Tuned InTelevision
Fringe has never exactly done things the easy way. Having begun life, to all appearances, as a kind of early-X-Files anthology show about weird occurrences, the show got steadily more ambitious, involved and challenging–parallel …
