Tuned InUncategorized
Michael Jackson, TV star? It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the man, but he spent much of his career on TV. (Some of my earliest memories are of the groovealicious Rankin-Bass Jackson 5ive cartoon series in the ’70s.) But far and away his biggest contribution to TV was music video. MTV was just a baby when …
Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is well known in the museum world for his fund raising skills. He seems to have scored a coup this week by attracting some very affluent names to the LACMA board of directors. One is Gabriel Brener, CEO of Brener Interenational Group. The other two are higher profile …
Tuned In
CBS and NBC have become the last broadcast networks to announce their fall premiere dates, which is the earliest I recall the fall slate being settled in some time. Unsurprisingly, CBS is going with tradition, launching almost everything in the usual Premiere Week, a.k.a. the third week of September, while NBC is shaking things up …
Tuned InRemembrance
After a three-year fight with cancer, actress Farrah Fawcett died today at age 62. No one is likely to argue that Charlie’s Angels, the TV series for which she’s best known, was a masterpiece of video storytelling or a landmark for actresses (“There were three little girls…”). But Fawcett herself, as a star during her brief run on the …
Tuned InTV Ratings
The ratings are in for President Obama’s healthcare forum on ABC last night, and as they say on the doctor shows: we’ve checked the charts, and it doesn’t look good. Less than five million people tuned in for the earnest but dull Q&A session on the American health system, compared with the over nine million who watched NBC’s Brian …
Tuned InUncategorized
Again missed last night’s Top Chef Masters in order to watch/blog the healthcare forum, but I suspect many of you were more interested in it than in ABC’s health food, so consider this an open thread. Which I will do my best to ignore, since I won’t be watching until tonight, so do your best to be nice, and use the coasters.
Tuned In
Having sat through the entire ABC/Obama health care town hall last night, I stayed up to catch Jimmy Kimmel for the first time in quite a while. It began, as is typical, with a “live” (to tape) commercial for Jack in the Box’s Mini Buffalo Ranch chicken sandwiches. And it made me think: poor Jimmy Kimmel. Not only has he been almost …
Tuned InUncategorized
Soon after ABC announced it would devote a day to covering President Obama’s healthcare proposals, including a primetime townhall, Republicans began complaining that the program would be an “infomercial” for the President’s plans. And the event started on an auspicious note for the President’s argument that the healthcare system needed …
Tuned InUncategorized
Because movies are just so good. How can you pick just five?
It’s not a TV story, exactly, but the awards are televised—and, presumably, this means more clutter for the Oscars show to work in. Will there be twice as long an opening musical number?
So I’ll put it to you: is there some reason I’m overlooking why this is a good idea? I …
Tuned InUncategorized
If you’ve been wondering how AMC would follow on Mad Men and Breaking Bad (plus the miniseries reconception of The Prisoner this fall), wonder no more. The network announced it has ordered a 12-episode season of Rubicon. The thriller, starring James Badge Dale and Lili Taylor, is about a New York man “whose work leads him to uncover a …
Tuned In
If you don’t already know, ABC is airing the remaining new episodes of Better Off Ted on Tuesdays this summer. And what better time to remind you of that than the morning after it aired?
When Ted premiered earlier this season, I liked it but was left a little cold. I was a huge fan of creator Victor Fresco’s Andy Richter Controls …
Tuned In
Last night, on The O’Reilly Factor, fellow Fox News host Glenn Beck made an appearance to advocate a federal investigation, for purported voting fraud and corruption, of the group ACORN. Using Barbie dolls (video via Gawker):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3QWF1bZc3M&feature=player_embedded]
This, actually, is why I find it …
Tuned In
…of the ratings, that is. Last week, The CBS Evening News broke a new barrier, hitting an all-time low of fewer than 5 million viewers; ABC, chasing them at just over 6 mil, also hit its all-time ratings low.
The networks will argue, of course, that at a combined audience of under 20 million, that they still have greater reach than …
