DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2009
Sep
15
 
 
America may still be able to fall asleep watching Jay Leno. His 10 p.m. premiere showing on NBC Monday night was a showcase for bad television and an embarrassment for a network trying so hard to create a marketing "event" that it forgot Leno's talents: A powerful gimmick in the variety show/talk show toolbox is real or illusionary spontaneity, not a video screen featuring a "surprise" appearance by Oprah Winfrey. God, that was painful...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Apr
21
 
 
When J. Max Robins became the editor in chief of Broadcasting & Cable magazine in 2004, his role was to goose the place into the 21st century. He often told us that before he took over, he had read a lead in the magazine that referred to Jimmy Durante, and that was a cultural reach-back that bothered him a lot. B&C was just too damn old to appeal to younger readers...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Apr
10
 
 
I hardly ever watch The Tonight Show, and in fact I believe, probably too tenaciously, that Jay Leno ruined the franchise, and his move to 10 p.m. ET will damage Conan O'Brien's chances to create a Tonight Show that will allow him to thrive. For O'Brien, an eminently decent human being, the Leno move proves that Life Is Unfair...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Mar
19
 
 
You may have read Stuart Elliott's advertising column in The New York Times Monday (3/16), in which he reported that in July the Sci Fi Channel will rename itself -- or respell itself, I guess -- and become Syfy. The trouble, as Elliott relates, is that executives concluded spelling Sci Fi like that was limiting -- Sci Fi, the channel, is also about superheroes and reality shows, which are, in their minds, just cousins of science fiction...