The CBS sports commentator who concluded, “Tonight the City of New Orleans embraced football,” doesn’t know the first thing about television reception. On Superbowl Sunday 2010, viewers saw how a football team has embraced a city and its culture for decades.
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Tags: New Orleans, Saints, sports, Super Bowl
Posted in Current Events, TV | 4 Comments »
After weeks of controversy and speculation, Focus on the Family's 30-second Super bowl spot featuring Heisman Trophy-winner Tim Tebow was as decidedly uncontroversial as CBS claimed it would be.
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Tags: abortion debate, pro-choice, pro-life, Super Bowl ad, Tim Tebow
Posted in Current Events, TV, TV | 28 Comments »
Some quick thoughts about the season 6 premiere of Lost - spoilers abound!
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Tags: Lost
Posted in Columns, Current Events, Lost Wednesdays, TV | 14 Comments »
Clearly, people are once again watching the telecast, even if one cannot be certain that most viewers ‘care’ about the popular artists and their music in the same way that they did in days gone by.
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Tags: Facebook, industry, internet, music, ratings, television, Twitter
Posted in Celebrity/Stardom, Industry, Internet, Music, Perspectives, TV | 6 Comments »
On Saturday night, 23 year-old Caressa Cameron became Miss America 2010, earning $50,000 in scholarship money, a really big crown, and an even bigger anachronistic title.
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Tags: feminism, Miss America 2010
Posted in Current Events, TV | 6 Comments »
Sony's new reality TV program on the PlayStation Network continues to raise questions about audience/player (mis)perceptions of labor and production in the games industry.
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Tags: labor, reality television, Sony, video games
Posted in Current Events, Games, Industry, TV | 3 Comments »
Five thoughts on the film adaptation of the Saturday Night Live sketch MacGruber.
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Tags: film
Posted in Current Events, Film, TV | 14 Comments »
The US television coverage of Haiti has me thinking about the role of media in a humanitarian crisis.
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Tags: Haiti, news, television
Posted in Current Events, TV | 9 Comments »
Simon Cowell is leaving American Idol. But ironically to keep the "American" in American Idol, the show needs Simon, or at least an angry, pompous, belittling Brit judge like him.
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Tags: American Idol, FOX, nationality, Simon Cowell
Posted in Celebrity/Stardom, Current Events, Music, TV | 2 Comments »
Canadian characters and jokes seem to be all the rage in American sitcoms, but why is 30 Rock missing the mark?
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Tags: 30 Rock, Canadians, comedy, How I Met Your Mother, Jews
Posted in Current Events, TV | 8 Comments »
A deal that will indelibly alter our media landscape, throw the future of broadcast into question, promise new distribution models, expand interactive and “addressable” advertising… a deal that will fundamentally redefine television. No, I’m not talking about the Comcast-NBC Universal announcement that made waves last week. This was the hype surrounding the...
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Tags: Information superhighway, interactive television, mergers
Posted in Current Events, Industry, Internet, Perspectives, Technology, TV | Comments Off
The world stops spinning September 2010! It's not the apocalypse, but it is the end of another Procter & Gamble, long-running soap opera with a loyal fan base. What does this mean for the future of the daytime "sudser"?
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Tags: canceled, soap opera
Posted in Current Events, Industry, TV | Comments Off
It's official: Comcast has purchased a majority share of NBC-Universal from parent conglom GE, owning 51% to GE's 49%. Today's New York Times reports that the papers have been signed and the deal has been made, though the purchase still needs to be approved by regulatory bodies--a process that could take up to...
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Tags: cable, GE, industry, Jack Donaghy, NBC, NBC-U, regulation, TV
Posted in Current Events, Film, Industry, TV | 6 Comments »
With the first sweeps weeks of the television season now behind us, the numbers suggest that it was a pretty lousy month. Indeed, far more shows experienced their lowest ratings of the season than did better.
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Tags: Nielsen, ratings, TV
Posted in Current Events, Industry, TV | Comments Off
I don’t know if I’m the only Jew who watched this episode of Family Guy while residing in the Palestinian Territories, but I’ve got a suspicion that if we all got together we’d have trouble making a minyan. In any case, it’s a good opportunity to offer up a new gimmick for Antenna: ...
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Tags: Israel, Palestine, race/ethnicity, religion, Seth McFarlane, TV
Posted in Current Events, Politics, TV | 4 Comments »