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

 
 
2011
May
24
 
 
The 2011 Peabody Awards presentation Monday at New York's Waldorf-Astoria was a celebration of excellence, attended by recipients and subjects whose sheer variety exemplified the wide-ranging Peabody standard. Over there, Yoko Ono. Over there, Julianna Margulies. And over there, Spike Lee, Timothy Olyphant, Patrick Stewart and Temple Grandin...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
23
 
 
Right after I type this, I'm hitting the road to head north to New York and today's Peabody Awards presentation.... I'll provide coverage of what happened today at TV's most prestigious awards presentation -- as well as quotes from my recent conversation with Peabody Awards director and pioneering TV historian Horace Newcomb...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
21
 
 
Leave it to HBO to not only tackle this daunting, sex-less numbers game, but to somehow make it dramatically interesting. Not spectacularly entertaining, mind you. But a bravura lead performance by William Hurt and some early heavy lifting by James Woods give "Too Big to Fail" (Monday, May 23 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO) enough currency to carry it through this complex tale of 2008's near-collapse of the U.S. economy...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
19
 
 
The ratings "sweeps" months, used to set advertising rates for local stations for the coming quarter, used to be hotly contested events, full of miniseries and TV movies, attention-getting series cliffhangers and loads of special events. But for the May 2011 sweeps, which end next Wednesday, the biggest event of all comes not from a broadcast network, but from a syndicated show...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
17
 
 
So much for my presidential prognostication skills. Though I thought I had predicted the perfect game plan with which Donald Trump could mount a presidential run over the summer -- just long enough to get attention without having to disclose his financials -- The Donald scuttled that idea yesterday and threw his hat out of the ring in a way that was very, well, up front...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
17
 
 
I'll never forget the time George Foster Peabody made Jon Stewart cry. Well, in manner of speaking. It was back in May 2006. Mr. Peabody, by then, had been gone from this mortal coil about 68 years. Stewart, the incorrigibly irreverent host of The Daily Show, was on stage at the Waldorf-Astoria's grand ballroom, overseeing the presentation of the awards that bear the late, great philanthropist's name...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
16
 
 
I interviewed Dick Cavett last month to write a story for TV WORTH WATCHING. You may have read it. You might have liked it. At any event, in our conversation, Cavett provided many wonderful quotes that didn't fit the topic at hand, but were too good to ignore or bury. So here they are...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
16
 
 
The newest PBS American Experience documentary, Freedom Riders, tells of a key moment in the history of the Civil Rights movement that took place 50 years ago -- yet tells it in such a gripping, present-tense way that it plays more like a retro episode of 24. Premiering tonight (Monday, May 16) at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings), it's a two-hour history lesson that's as exciting as it is important...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
14
 
 
It's a bit odd to think about the politically incorrect comedies of the '60s, knowing that a show about a Nazi prisoner camp (Hogan's Heroes), or about the American Army fighting the Indians in the Old West (F Troop), couldn't be made today -- but that Jersey Shore and Las Vegas Jailhouse can...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
May
12
 
 
Just when it seemed as though Fox's American Idol had weathered the storm of revamping its judging panel... the long-running musical competition show shot itself in the foot, and maybe the heart, Thursday night by refusing James Durbin entry to the Final Three. The fatal Achilles' heel of American Idol, may well turn out to be its own voters...