• 'The View' From Here: All Eyes On Rosie O'Donnell As Revamped ABC Show Begins 18th Season
    "The View" is nothing if not personal. "Like bad gas, we have returned!" Whoopi Goldberg declared in one of the show's earthier moments Monday morning as she ushered in its 18th season. It was the long-awaited first installment in this ballyhooed season of change following a much publicized revamp over the summer.
  • Random Reflections On My Hindsight Experience With The TV Blog
    This column marks the end of my year writing the daily MediaPost TV Blog. Given the perpetual advances in digital technology, changing consumer tastes and lifestyles, demographic shifts and so much else, there is no predicting what TV will be year to year. TV may be an extraordinary platform today, but those of us who remember when three networks, PBS and a handful of local stations were more than enough know how lucky we were to be able to experience it then. Those were certainly grand times for advertisers as well. But these are glory days for programming too.
  • The Hard Life Of The Ad Executive, As Explained In The Classic Cop Drama 'Adam-12'
    Has the life of the advertising executive always been a tough one -- one so demanding that it even prevents spending time with one's children? According to a storyline in an episode of the classic cop drama "Adam-12" recently telecast on the invaluable retro channel Me-TV and first seen 40 years ago, advertisers and their families have never had it easy.
  • MSNBC's Riveting Annual Replay Of NBC's Real-Time 9/11 Coverage
    More than any documentary or news program that I can think of, this replay that runs for three hours and six minutes immediately transports me back to the experiences of that fateful day. I don't think we would be any better off with exponentially more coverage, much of it certain to be unbearably graphic and invasive. In that respect I'm glad technology in 2001 had not yet begun hyper-accelerating in the way that it would just a few years later. And yet I'm awfully glad we have the documentation that we do, and I applaud MSNBC for running its extended …
  • Is Fox's 'Utopia' The New Season's First (Epic) Fail?
    The 2014-15 television season doesn't officially begin until September 22, and already it has yielded its first apparent fail: Fox's reality series "Utopia." Given the intended scope of this series, perhaps the overused expression "epic fail" applies.
  • Great News! James Corden Is Set To Take Over As Host Of CBS' 'The Late Late Show'
    A little over one month after the rumors began, CBS yesterday formally announced that actor, writer and producer James Corden -- a giant entertainment personality in the United Kingdom -- is going to become the host of CBS' "The Late Late Show" sometime in 2015 -- presumably sooner rather than later, since longtime host Craig Ferguson will be leaving the program near the end of 2014.
  • A Fond Farewell To Joan Rivers
    Friday night just didn't feel right without Joan Rivers. There was special programming that paid tribute to Rivers three nights ago on a number of networks, but there was no new edition of the late entertainer's unfailingly funny Friday night series "Fashion Police" on E! Her passing seemed incomprehensible. How could Rivers no longer be with us, shocking us and making us laugh as she had with unparalleled consistency for over five decades?
  • National Geographic Channel's Unforgettable Premiere For '9/10: The Final Hours'
    For the last 12 years, most of the annual early-September programming tied to 9/11 has offered looks back on the day itself. But I can't recall a news show or documentary that focused intently on the events of Sept. 10, the last day of relative "normalcy" any of us will ever know -- at least in what had been the traditional sense. On Sunday, Sept. 7, National Geographic Channel will do exactly that with "9/10: The Final Hours," a two-hour documentary that tells the story of what was happening in New York on Sept. 10 and what was on the …
  • The New Niche Appeal Of 'Dancing With The Stars'
    It's a tired cliche dating back several years to laughingly note that the problem with ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" is that it no longer delivers on the promise of its title. That really hit home for me as I watched the unveiling of the upcoming "Dancing" cast this morning on the network's "Good Morning America." My first response to the new "Dancing" crew was, who are these people? Looking at them as a group, I could not imagine that the mainstream broadcast audience that has always embraced this show would be interested in this cast.
  • NBC Has Already Begun Promoting 'Peter Pan'
    I got a bit of a lift earlier today from all the publicity NBC is suddenly generating about its upcoming live musical "Peter Pan," slated to be telecast on Dec. 4, at the tail end of the November sweep and the start of the holiday season.
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