Tuned InUncategorized
The broadcast of the 2006 Winter Olympics, NBC reminded us from the get-go of the Opening Ceremonies, was going to be a triumph of technology. Hundreds of hours of coverage, all broadcast in HDTV for the first time! (The wonders of which will not be relayed to you by your correspondent, who watches a 20-inch box purchased sometime around
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Tuned InUncategorized
The broadcast of the 2006 Winter Olympics, NBC reminded us from the get-go of the Opening Ceremonies, was going to be a triumph of technology. Hundreds of hours of coverage, all broadcast in HDTV for the first time! (The wonders of which will not be relayed to you by your correspondent, who watches a 20-inch box purchased sometime around
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Tuned InUncategorized
Tonight, Fox airs its last four episodes of the Emmy-award-winning sitcom Arrested Development at 8 p.m. E.T. Barring the still — possible intervention of another network (most likely Showtime), they could be the last ever for this acerbic series about a wildly dysfunctional, wealthy real-estate family.
I’ve written enough on
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Tuned In
That distant screeching sound you heard this afternoon was the sound of cable and media companies, collectively squealing like stuck pigs at a new report from the Federal Communications Commission, arguing in favor of "a la carte" pricing for cable. "A la carte" cable does not, alas, mean the ability to have your cable box deliver a
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Tuned In
That distant screeching sound you heard this afternoon was the sound of cable and media companies, collectively squealing like stuck pigs at a new report from the Federal Communications Commission, arguing in favor of "a la carte" pricing for cable. "A la carte" cable does not, alas, mean the ability to have your cable box deliver a
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Tuned In
Two thoughts, neither of them wholly baked, about last night’s episode of Lost (The usual spoiler-alert, avert-thine-eyes dictum applies here):
(1) Maybe no big-network show has asked viewers to identify so closely with so many characters who are, by most TV’s moral lights, pretty bad people. There’s Eko, for instance, who ran drugs
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Tuned InUncategorized
Pop quiz: You’ve just placed an ad at Super Bowl XL.
When it’s done, you want the viewers to associate your product with (a)
a cavity search; (b) Leonard Nimoy; (c) being "brown and bubbly."
If you answered "any of the above," you should be
directing a corporate ad budget. These were the dubious messages of (a)
a Sierra Mist spot, (b)
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Tuned InUncategorized
It’s a truism among media-critic types that Fox News Channel is the "conservative" cable outlet. But every now and then, FNC airs something that makes you hit the TiVo rewind and pause buttons, repeatedly. Take this morning, on Fox News Live, when anchor Jon Scott did a hard-hitting interview with two models, in cleavage-baring halter
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Tuned InUncategorized
In recent seasons of Survivor, it’s become a ritual to see what new twist the producers would introduce into the game: bringing back former players, splitting the groups into multiple tribes, hiding immunity idols in the wilderness. In Survivor: Exile Island, Mark Burnett and crew have created a season with more twists than a challah
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Tuned InUncategorized
In the State of the Union address tonight, President George W. Bush said that America was "addicted to oil." He called for new teacher-training initiatives, congratulated new Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito and called on the country to compete vigorously with economic rivals like China and India.
Guess what? I wrote that whole
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Tuned InUncategorized
Speaking to The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz recently, ABC’s Bob Woodruff talked about the fact that he planned to continue to report from the field as coanchor of World News Tonight. "The great danger is to overemphasize the story simply because the anchor is there," Woodruff told Kurtz.
The anchor became the story yesterday when
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Note to self: never, ever, embarrass Oprah Winfrey. The most powerful woman in daytime television and publishing brought James Frey on her show today, after he was caught having fabricated parts of A Million Little Pieces, the memoir she had selected for her book club, and subjected him to a public flogging. No, scratch that. Flogging is
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Tuned InUncategorized
SPOILER ALERT: This post discusses last night’s episode of Lost; if you Tivoed or taped it, you may want to watch it first — and, you know, stop clicking on links with the title Lost in them in the meantime.
It was a slow night at Lostwatch headquarters, as the show devoted an episode to the character we care least about on the
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