Tuned In
There was a great episode of South Park in which the environment is threatened by a massive “cloud of smug” generated by hybrid-car drivers. Some of the shows on the celebrity-obsessed eco-channel Planet Green—the subject of my latest print Time column—generate a cloud of smug so vast it threatens to blot out the sun:
One of Planet
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Tuned In
Also in this week’s Time, I have a quick-blurb review of The Jonas Brothers’ Camp Rock, which premieres tonight on Disney Channel:
The Jonas Brothers — those three words being all the review the tween audience needs — get a feature that might as well be titled High School Musical 2 II. (Summer vacation, evil rich
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Tuned InNews Media
My latest Tuned In column in Time arose from some conversations I’d been having lately with colleagues about how much influence new media (blogs, online news, YouTube, etc.) is having in this year’s election coverage as opposed to old media (newspapers, TV news, Time magazine, etc.). This issue has come up in every election since there’s …
Tuned InUncategorized
In this week’s Time, I review Showtime’s high-priced escort comedy (the escort is high-priced, though I guess Showtime isn’t cheap either), Secret Diary of a Call Girl, about a London hooker (Billie Piper) whose real name is Hannah but whose trade name is “Belle.” Showtime has …
Tuned InMovies
In this week’s print Time, I joined in the summer arts preview, which you might recognize as pretty much the summer arts preview that ran on time.com. In addition, I reviewed the Sex and the City movie, filling in for Time movie critic Richard Corliss, who was in Cannes when the review needed to close for the magazine. (Tough life.) My …
Tuned In
In the magazine business, we have a thing called “lead time.” It means that many of the pieces you read in a print magazine like Time—especially anything not having to do with breaking news—gets written and put to …
Tuned In
Eleswhere at time.com, I and other Time critics were enlisted to blurb four things in our respective fields that we’re curious about / looking forward to this summer. Readers love this, because it allows them to plan their summer entertainment calendars! Advertisers love it, because it means they get critics to write quasi-positive …
Tuned InUncategorized
In the paper version of Time magazine this week, my column looks at the upcoming HBO movie Recount, and how the 2000 electoral circus in Florida still looms over the psychology of politics—especially in a certain party that has a lot of members cheesed off about enfranchisement and Florida:
After George W. Bush won Florida in
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Tuned In
In this week’s Time, it fell to me to write The Moment—the mini-column that opens the magazine—on Miley Cyrus. Think of it as a last-minute asterisk on her Time 100 entry, written before the Vanity Fair incident, by the frighteningly prescient Donny Osmond (“Miley’s fans are not thinking about the fact that she will grow up too. As …
Tuned In
In the current issue of the magazine, my column is about the contrast pointed up by the current election, and by Katie Couric’s reportedly impending departure from CBS News: the presidential field is more diverse than the people—or at least the marquee news anchors and primetime cable hosts—covering it and asking the questions at the …
Tuned In
Two count them two articles in this week’s print Time magazine. My Tuned In column expands on this earlier riff about TLC’s new show Date My House to look at how cable’s empire of real-estate shows are dealing with—and even profiting from—the collapse of the same …
Tuned In
In the print edition of TIME this week, my column looks at Fox News, which became the top cable news channel almost exactly concurrent with the first Bush inauguration, and now needs to figure out what it’s going to be come 2009:
Fox is still the top-rated news channel, but there are signs it’s plateauing. Its ratings started to lag in
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Tuned In
It’s looking like a light posting day, partly because I’m on a deadline, partly because Good EidFridayPurim has made this a Bring the Tuned In Jrs. to Work Day. In the meantime, I invite you to entertain yourselves by reading something you already read …
