Music impresario Don Kirshner, dead at 76, may not be remembered best for catapulting Kansas to stardom in the 1970s, nor for launching the career of the Monkees and launching the animated chart-toppers The Archies in the 1960s. Those accomplishments – even to the most die-hard, discriminating popular music critics – should be enough for us to mourn his passing today.
The era of big television series that much of the nation watched together—which lasted for more than three decades— is officially over, according to blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack, writing at newteevee.com: Internet video is growing at a significant pace. It has not yet taken a chunk out of the broadcast and cable audiences, but the trend is there. Shows on the web are infinitely more targeted than the shows broadcast and cable companies deliver. There are shows for old Jews who like jokes. There are…
Why NBC canceled Law and Order and immediately ordered a season of Law and Order: Los Angeles is one of those mysteries only the wizards at the Peacock Network can answer. Actually, why they canceled Law and Order is obvious: the ratings had been falling for quite some time. As to why NBC thought people would like an LA version, I don’t know, but the new show is actually doing all right with audiences so far. Last week’s episode finished second in its timeslot (Wednesday,…
If you’re interested in watching The Whole Truth, the new ABC legal drama (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT), you might want to tune in tonight. It may not last long. The show is on life-support after debuting to an anemic total of 4.8 million viewers. It might last a little while, since it’s from Jerry Bruckheimer Productions, the makers of the successful CSI franchise and numerous other hit shows but also several unsuccessful series in recent years (such as Miami Medical and The Forgotten), but the…
TV time-shifting is becoming the norm.
I have long argued that contemporary U.S. entertainment offers a much greater variety of ideas and points of view than conservatives usually seem to realize, pointing out that many TV shows, movies, and music releases convey very sound values and ideas that traditionalists and lovers of liberty should appreciate. But there are still plenty of times when the producers of even good series that aren’t usually political (in contrast to, say, the intensely political Law and Order) have to take their jabs at the dangerously…
It began with an eye opening. It ended with an eye closing. In “The End,” love conquered all. It’s a cliche, of course, but a time-honored one and it worked to brilliant effect in the series finale of “Lost,” which aired Sunday night on ABC. (This isn’t a recap, but spoilers will follow…) Millions of us followed these characters, led by Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox), for six seasons as they struggled first to leave, and then to return, to the mysterious island where Oceanic 815…
In a move that bodes well to strengthen TV programming overall in both primetime and late night, NBC has confirmed that Jay Leno will be moved back to his original 11:30 slot and his 10 p.m. show canceled on February 11, as rumored over the past week. USA Today reports: Under the new plan, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon would move from 12:35 a.m. to 1:05. (Carson Daly‘s talk show, which now follows Fallon, would be canceled, though Daly would remain under contract at the…
The ax has fallen on the first casualty of the new TV season. S. T. Karnick explains why.
A new study in the scientific journal Pediatrics confirms that sexual media content increases the likelihood of teen pregnancy.
Homosexual activists are applauding the rapidly increasing numbers of "transgender" characters and people on television, but they say there’s much more work to be done.
As the movie studios and TV channels and production companies contemplate the writers union’s demands, they might want to take a serious look at the lackluster performance of this year’s film releases and the horrible ratings for the current season’s new TV shows. The latter are simply disastrous and aptly reflect the lackluster quality of most of the new series. Although the new season has brought a continuation of the gradual increase in moral seriousness of new shows evident during the past few years, the…
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has declared that the U.S. television networks are not "gay" enough but that Disney-owned ABC is getting close. The organization, which has been highly successful at bullying corporations into supporting a radical pro-homosexual agenda, issued its first report on the matter after analyzing "the number of ‘impressions,’ or occurrences, of gay characters, discussions or themes counted during 4,693 hours of programming examined from June 2006 through May 2007," according to Reuters:
The media are exposing children to too much overly sexual and violent content, but parents are increasingly finding ways to shield their children from programming of which they don’t approve. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Los Angeles Times reports:
As we noted two weeks ago, CBS television has been contemplating resurrecting the series Jericho through some means or another, so as to give loyal viewers a satisfactory ending to the long-from narrative. The network cancelled the show this spring after one season, and loyal viewers inundated the network with dismayed complaints and requests that the net do something to provide them with some resolution of the program’s story line. CBS announced that they would do something of the sort, but provided no details at…
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