Results tagged “ferguson”

There was some great TV on last night, with "Sons of Anarchy" continuing to get back on track after some silliness a couple weeks ago. On the more depressing side of things, "Frontline" continued to remind us that we are still riding a unicycle on the precipice of economic disaster. Look forward to more stark details from PBS as Margaret Warner, correspondent for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", is traveling in Pakistan with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and will be reporting on the region tonight and all this week.

Weekend Edition

Shark Week Ending :-( NBC is going for the young urban crowd on the opening night of Jay Leno's show with guests Rihanna, Kanye and Jay-Z. We're kind of thinking that this won't work so great as the older crowd that was Leno's base has left the network for Letterman. --- Advertisers bought 15% less ads from the Big 4 networks for the 2009-2010 season and the minutes they did purchase, they paid less for. Less money for programming means, what, nothing but reality TV?

So remember when everyone was taking a dump on Dan Rather in 2004 and CBS sold him down the river just to, seemingly, stay chill with the Bush Administration? Now Dan's specifically suing Les Moonves and CBS News President Andrew Heyward and the network for $70 million. --- Also in news (god we're desperate), CNN is trying to "negotiate" a change of attitude for Lou Dobbs, who is now airing a lot of "birther" hype in addition to his anti-immigrant rants. Evidently they still want him to be a crank but not too psycho a crank.

"American Idol" fans listen up, your favorite judge, Paula Abdul, might not be returning according to her new manager. It would be a real tragedy for late night TV as about 50% of their material seems to be based on her during the "American Idol" season, and it would be a real tragedy for Paula Abdul as it seems unlikely that she has any other employment prospects other than to be the butt of late night TV jokes.

Check out "The Daily Show" tonight as we have a USC professor as a guest, and check out Letterman who has a very strong lineup.

Tour de France coverage: In offline discussions with readers and friends, the subject of Versus' TdF coverage has come up repeatedly with some people enjoying and appreciating the evening edition with others appreciating the classic live commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin. The prevailing opinion is, however, that Versus throws too many gimmicks at the evening edition - tone it down boys, and stick to the cyclists on the road.

So how about those Lakers? Better yet, what is your opinion on the coverage of the NBA finals? Who provided the best/worst commentary? What do you want to see in future basketball TV coverage? How about what kind of post-championship street riot coverage you'd like to see? Also - how about the season premiere of "True Blood"? If the HBO series stays true to itself, this will be a great season as indicated by last night's episode. We particularly enjoyed the imaginative flashback scenes of the Sam Merlotte character. Did you watch "True Blood"? What did you think?

This trend of creating multi-hour season finales of TV reality shows has got to stop. Among other finales, Sunday's 3 hour finale of "Celebrity Apprentice" was unnecessarily drawn out with tons of footage that should have been cut, resulting in subjecting the audience to almost 1/2 hour of additional commercials. Tonight's 3 hour finale of "The Biggest Loser" promises more of the same.

Keith Olbermann wants to take up Sean Hannity on an offer to undergo waterboarding - Obermann is offering $1000 for every second Hannity undergoes the procedure. It's time to man up Sean.

Weekend Edition

The TV Junkie Plan: "SoCal Connected", "Parks and Recreation", "The Office", "30 Rock", "Southland", Kimmel, Fallon.

Weekend EditionLast night the TV Junkie was very fortunate to be invited to the taping of "The Soup" which will air on E! tonight at 10pm. It was a fantastic experience made all the more special by a great special guest and some hilarious shenanigans. Charming and kind host Joel McHale and executive producers KP Anderson and Edward Boyd (very fun men in their own right) gave us a few minutes for a video piece that will be posted later tonight. "The Soup" has always been a weekly gem and to see it being put together before one's eyes was an amazing experience. We're so fortunate to have this team at E! process and present a week's worth of TV and pop culture for us with just the right perspective of smart and biting humor. Watch it tonight, it's even better than usual.

The TV Junkie Plan: "Parks and Recreation", "The Office", "30 Rock", "Fine Cut: KCET's Festival of Student Film", "The Daily Show", Leno, Ferguson

We love comedians Jim Gaffigan and Jamie Kaler so therefore we just kind of have to like TBS' "My Boys" which has its season premiere tonight. While the show isn't any less funny than any of the big network shows, Jim Gaffigan's bits are the highlight of every episode - we wish TBS would build a show around him as the lead, c'mon already.

Our friends over at BBC America's "Top Gear" have really done it - they have achieved unprecedented success with "Project Sipster": the creation of a car that gets 84mpg , goes from 0-60mph in 7 seconds, and whose cost was to be $7000 or less. You can see more in this video. Suck it Tesla and watch "Top Gear" on BBC America tonight at 8pm.

According to the LA Times, about 1 in 4 TVs were tuned to "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" when President Barack Obama made an appearance last week. Leno has had higher ratings only 3 other times in the past, but the media space is a lot more crowded than it was even 4 years ago, so it was a stellar night for NBC.

Ad spending in the US dropped by 2.6% in 2008, with only cable increasing ad revenue for the year. TV and cable still retained a leadership position as the preferred media, taking more than 60% of all ad dollars.

Today in the web TV world, Josh Schwartz's (Gossip Girl, The O.C., Chuck) music-themed web series, "Rockville CA" premieres on TheWB.com. The show features both indie favorites and up-and-coming bands such as Eagles of Death Metal, The Broken West, and Bishop Allen. “Rockville CA” is set in a fictional Los Angeles rock club and was shot on location at The Echo, which is an actual, real rock club, that you might have heard of if you have a heartbeat.

The TV highlight of the week occurred last night with the appearance of CNBC's Jim Cramer on "The Daily Show". Jon Stewart trotted out several video clips of Cramer pontificating about how to game and mislead the markets and how rewarding it is to do so. A lot of footage was cut in order to fit the show's 1/2-hour format so if you missed the airing and/or want to see the entire interview, you can get it all at "The Daily Show".

Today NBC launched a 24-hour cable channel in New York called "New York Non-Stop", replete with expanded news coverage, on-location stories, and interactive elements. When can LA expect the same investment?

If you thought that the local news was boring claptrap that only idiots watch, then you are outside of the ever-increasing popularity of the local newscast - Nielsen is reporting a 20% year-over-year increase in viewership. For TV, a fractional percentage change is big news but 20% is incredible.

Critics are being rather forgiving of Jimmy Fallon's (only slightly shaky IMHO) "Late Night" debut: they brought out DeNiro who is always a tough interview and Fallon kind of made it work, and Timberlake kind of saved the first show - not sure why they had Van Morrison on, are they trying to reclaim the age 55-and-up demographic?

Today AMC launched the beginning of a series of webisodes for its excellent series, "Breaking Bad", in advance of its new season starting on March 8th.

Controversial contestant Joanna Pacitti has finally been pulled from "American Idol" after it was revealed that she had friendships with multiple executives with "Idol" co-producer 19 Entertainment. For fans of the show who couldn't believe that she had made the cut after performing poorly and fumbling lyrics to several songs during the Hollywood rounds of auditions, it will be assumed that she had moved ahead due to these personal relationships and not merit.

Last week we went to a sneak preview of Demetri Martin's new show on Comedy Central, "Important Things With Demetri Martin", which premiere's tonight at 10:30pm. The show has been in the works since last Spring so we are happy to see it make it on air.

This December, online video viewing surged over 13%, DigitalMediaWire says:

Truth is stranger than fiction - or life imitates fiction? Something like that: Anna Torv and Mark Valley, the stars of FOX's "Fringe", have married in real life. Fringe also did pretty good in yesterday's Nielsen numbers, with a 10+% increase in viewership over last week, but that increase is getting attributed to the popularity of its lead in, "American Idol".

More post-Super Bowl hype: Nielsen says 95 million watched, NBC says 148 million watched, and Tuscon Comcast subscribers got 30 seconds of porn during the Super Bowl (that's so wrong in so many ways, if you're going to prank me with porn, you'd better provide more than 30 seconds of it).

A lot of our sport fan/fiend friends are convinced that this Sunday's Super Bowl event will be a boring blow out - "the Cardinals will win how?" is oft heard. But for a lot of media dorks, ourselves included, the Super Bowl is all about the ads. We already know that GoDaddy and PETA have had their ads denied (as must have been planned for). Adweek's Barbara Lippert analyzes past Super Bowl commercial foibles as well as a list of all expected advertisers for XLIII. On Saturday, CBS also takes a trip down memory lane with a program on the "best" commercials of years past.