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.
NBC’s Unkind Olympic Cut
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 …
CNN’s President to Step Down, Calls for “New Thinking.” But Does CNN Want That?
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 …
TCA 2012: ABC Has No News on Modern Family, But Bristol Palin for DWTS
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 …
TCA 2012: Katie Couric Starts Again, Again
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 …
TCA 2012: ABC’s Tea Party Screw-Up Overshadows a Ratings Win
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 …
TCA 2012: TV That’s Not On TV Edition
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. …
TCA 2012: Palins, Monkey Join NBC Media Circus
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 …
Sherman Hemsley, Jeffersons Star, Dies at Age 74
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 …
TCAs 2012: NBC’s Monkey Business
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. …
TCA 2012: Fringe—They Did It Their Way(s)
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 …
TV Tonight: Vito
I’m traveling today and didn’t have time to do a longer review in advance of Vito, HBO’s documentary about the film scholar and gay rights activist Vito Russo, but I highly recommend it to anyone interest in pop culture, in civil …
Programming Note: TCA, Here I Come
The Television Critics Association summer press tour in LA began over the weekend, two weeks of presentations, panel interviews, screenings and schmoozing with the makers and stars of new and returning fall TV shows.