Tuned InTelevision
In the current print edition of TIME magazine, my new column (subscription required) is about how–while women candidates may not be as prominent in 2012 as in 2008–TV has become chock-full of women exercising political power. I …
Tuned InTelevision
Remember Mad Men?
If you’re reading a TV blog, I’m sure you do. But it’s been so long, I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t remember much. In my essay in the newest print TIME magazine (subscription required to read), I look at …
Tuned InTelevision
In my new column in the print TIME magazine, I review the HBO movie Game Change, about the vice presidential nomination and trainwreck campaign of Sarah Palin in 2008. I don’t think it’s a very good movie. Sarah Palin and her …
Tuned InNews Media
Last week, New York Times public editor (the equivalent of an ombudsman) Arthur Brisbane wrote a blog post asking whether, in covering the campaign, reporters should challenge in the body of their straight-news stories statements by candidates that are dubious, distorted or outright false. Or as he put it—in a headline that generated …
Tuned InTuned In
One reasonable definition of a good TV show is one that makes you see something familiar in a new way. That was particularly the case for me with All-American Muslim, a reality show debuting on TLC Nov. 13 and the subject of my …
Tuned InTelevision
In my print TIME column this week, I take a look at the much-photographed and -videotaped death of Muammar Gaddafi. (The column is behind TIME’s paywall, because TIME is a for-profit publication in the business of making people …
Tuned InTuned In
In this week’s TIME comes my disappointed review (subscription required) of the two-hour pilot of Terra Nova, which premieres Monday. This is a good time to repeat the caveat that a review is not a prediction of ratings: I will …
Tuned InTuned In
In this week’s issue of TIME (subscription required, but of course you have one, right?), I preview the fall TV season by looking—as several others have as well—at the many, many new shows this fall that have female stars or …
Tuned InTuned In
I don’t have a piece in this week’s TIME magazine, but this issue, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is a sweeping enough undertaking that I wanted to point it out. Rather than fill out the issue with stories and essays by bloviators like me, the issue focuses on the first-person stories of people who were in the …
Tuned InTuned In
For Labor Day weekend, this week’s TIME magazine includes our summer fall Arts preview. (Usual caveat: you need to subscribe to read the whole thing.) Because television must share space in it with the lesser arts, such as film, visual art and books, the TV section gets only a page in the magazine, and includes just a quick selection of …
Tuned InTuned In
This week in TIME magazine, accidentally but appropriately timed with a cover on the decline of Europe and coverage of the general lack of good economic news anywhere, I have a plus-sized column about cable TV’s hot genre with a fitting theme for the age of austerity: shows about making money off old junk. The shows—Pawn Stars, …
Tuned InTuned In
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q27BfBkRHbs]
This Dead Tree Alert is a bit of a cheat; there is no new issue of TIME magazine this week. But MTV turns 30 years old on Monday, and in the issue currently on newsstands, there’s a photo spread on 30 highlights from MTV’s 30 years on the air. And, for a bit more fun, time.com has put …
Tuned InTuned In
I loved the pilot of Wilfred when I reviewed it some weeks back, and I enjoyed the second and third episodes that FX sent out at the same time. But the main concern I had with the show was that it had the potential to either be a rewardingly weird and dark show or a more broad setup for one kind of dog joke after another. With the two …
