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
Jan
30
 
 
After 15 years of traveling the country, paying all of his own expenses and looking at countless wannabe valuables for 12 hours or longer at a time, it's easy to think the routine of an Antiques Roadshow appraiser might get older than even the best of the items he looks at...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Jan
21
 
 
Decades before Neil Patrick Harris was Barney Stinson, the prodigal, he played Doogie Howser, the prodigy. Since late last year, lucky viewers have been learning that -- hot as "How I Met Your Mother" may be -- Harris shined even more brightly in his first series, "Doogie Howser, M.D." The entertaining and thoughtful writing, bullseye casting and enlightened production of this four-season comedy about a boy-genius physician give it a singular spot on the list of extraordinary TV...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Dec
4
 
 
Were there a logical answer to the following, finding lasting world peace wouldn't be far behind: Why are there three seasons of Keeping up with the Kardashians available for sale on DVD, but none for Brooklyn Bridge, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, The Wonder Years and Ed -- and only partial video releases of Newhart, St. Elsewhere and The Paper Chase? Now is the season of, among other things, give and get. Great news for people who want to drink endlessly from the well of Kardashian w
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Nov
30
 
 
Successive American presidents in the '60s and '70s ordered all-out bombings in Vietnam as an arguably oxymoronic weapon of peace. Peace, of course, lost. In a smaller scale of carpet bombing, CBS News presidents, stretching back to the '60s, have ordered repeated obliterations of the network's morning-news troops. The latest happened Tuesday...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Oct
28
 
 
It's pretty safe to assume that wherever a voter in the upcoming election falls on the Red-to-Blue political spectrum, that person may be a little wary of the efficacy of America's voting system. A story on Friday's "Need to Know" on PBS might give that suspicion bug additional shelf life...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Oct
22
 
 
If more television commercials had been made by the people profiled on Tuesday's "Independent Lens," there would have been no need to invent the mute button. "Art & Copy" premieres Tuesday, Oct. 26 on PBS, and it offers a satisfying look at what could be called advertising's hall-of-famers -- the people who create commercials we don't want to ignore...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Oct
16
 
 
It's neither cool nor civilized to criticize someone who has recently died, and that's not the purpose of this effort. But the death Saturday of Barbara Billingsley, at age 94, brought to mind all the criticism and parody the moms of the Golden Age of Television attracted as the world slowly enlightened to the role of women as people versus patterns...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Oct
15
 
 
By Tom Brinkmoeller PBS's lead affiliate station in Los Angeles, KCET, is dropping its network membership because of the amount of dues it was being asked to pay. Several public TV stations have decided to furlough employees to prop up weak budgets. One public-TV station in Texas and another in Michigan, each formerly owned by educational institutions, have been jettisoned, reportedly for reasons that include money. For public television near the end of 2010, that's only the top of the prob
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Oct
12
 
 
Last week in this space, Ed Bark convinced me and a lot of others, I hope, to watch "Michael Feinstein's Great American Songbook," a first-rate, three-part PBS series which premieres its second segment Oct. 13 at 8 p.m. ET. Feinstein has been collecting, preserving and archiving 20th century American popular music for almost 50 years...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2010
Sep
29
 
 
It was easy to wonder whether something of a gastronomic nor'easter was brewing last week in the exclusive East Hampton community in which Ina Garten lives, after "30 Rock" trained its parody rifle on The Barefoot Contessa herself and her husband...
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 

Tom Brinkmoeller

I wrote about television for a daily newspaper (The Cincinnati Enquirer) in the '80s, but what drew me to covering it was how good this young medium so often was. So much of what was good then came from MTM Enterprises and its alumni. When I left the beat, MTM was still setting high standards with drama series like St. Elsewhere and comedies like Newhart. Because general TV standards have dropped a great distance since then, it's no reason to capitulate. My role here is to find and spotlight programming that still honors high standards.
 
 
 
 

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