Tuned In
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 …
Tuned InUncategorized
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 …
Tuned InUncategorized
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 …
Tuned InUncategorized
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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Tuned InUncategorized
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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Tuned InMusic
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m2PB4yo424]
OK, New Year’s Day is actually tomorrow. I am posting this nonetheless because:
* It is New Year’s Eve, and why are you on the Internet at all but to blow a few minutes on a diverting music video from the ’80s
* I am old, and this U2 video reminds me of a time when I was younger, …
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Having spent a lot of time this past couple of weeks looking back on 2010 here, it’s time to look forward. TV doesn’t have the same kind of lead time that, say, movies do: this time last year, we did not know what the broadcast fall schedules would be, or that Conan O’Brien would end the year with a talk show on a different network …
Tuned InUncategorized
We’ve covered the best and the worst of TV in 2010: now for the biggest. After the jump, a selected list of some of the stories that shaped TV (and by which TV shaped the culture) in 2010, and your invitation to suggest more:
Tuned InUncategorized
You may not believe it to read this blog, but I do other things besides watch TV and write about it. (Eat and sleep, for instance!) And Tuned In’s readers, I know, are diverse and catholic in their interests too. So I’m throwing open this discussion robo-post for you to talk about your favorite works of any medium—Books, movies, music, …
Tuned InUncategorized
When the iPad was first announced early this year, I wrote a post explaining why, media junkie and Apple acolyte that I am, I was not running out yet to buy one. If you had “eight months” in your betting pool as to how long it would take me to finally cave, you win.
I had my reasons. I was taking a trip (the trip I am on right now) to …
Tuned InUncategorized
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98x9FwsqzHQ]
In retrospect, it’s surprising the idea wasn’t done earlier: if you want someone to deliver a Christmas Past, Present and Future, you could do worse than Doctor Who. Tomorrow (Christmas Day) at 9 p.m. E.T., BBC America debuts Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol, a stand-alone update of the …
Tuned InUncategorized
A 1920s gangster, a football coach (and maybe not the one you’re thinking of), a therapy patient in a strange land. Like my list of great TV quotes from 2010, this one is incomplete in the extreme. But think of it as a starting point for discussion, and in the comments, let the rest of us know: what do you say were TV’s best …
