TUESDAY
SEPTEMBER 2
2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

ABC, Check local listings

The impact of national network broadcast news, in the digital age, has dwindled substantially in importance and reach – so much so that tonight’s latest changing of the guard, from ABC’s Diane Sawyer to former ABC weekend anchor David Muir, also comes with a reduction of power in the primary prime-time anchor seat. Before tonight, on broadcast TV, the evening news anchor was the one who led virtually all breaking news and election coverage – but under the Muir regime, those duties will go to Good Morning America and This Week host George Stephanopoulos, who’s been given the title of “chief anchor.” The move may require more teamwork and deference than ever before at ABC, but it’s also a shift aimed at a slightly younger demographic: Muir is 40, Stephanopoulos 53, and the departing Sawyer is 68 – three years older than Walter Cronkite was when CBS took away his chair and gave it to Dan Rather.

 
  
 
 

ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET

Of course this ABC special, because ABC is owned by Disney, is wholly and blatantly self-promotional as well as self-congratulatory. But so was Disneyland, the weekly series ABC launched 60 years ago, and that certainly was worth watching, and proved very, very durable as a pop-culture entity. So, I suspect, will Frozen, which, 50 years from now, is likely to have little girls singing along to “Let it Go” with their three-dimensional holographic Disney playmates.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

TCM has an especially rare double feature in prime time tonight. It would be noteworthy enough just to schedule 1927’s The Jazz Singer, the Warner Bros. movie credited with officially making the shift from silent to sound cinema. That movie, starring Al Jolson as a rabbi’s son who forsakes a career path as a cantor to pursue popular music stardom, is shown at 8 p.m. ET, and watching it is all but mandatory for cinephiles– as all my Rowan University Film History & Appreciation I students will learn very shortly.  But at 9:45 p.m. ET, TCM follows that with a Jazz Singer version I’ve never seen – a remake (pictured) from 1952, starring Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee. Can’t wait.

 
  
 
 

Showtime, 9:00 p.m. ET

SEASON PREMIERE: This series has proven to be one of cable’s most durable original series, surviving even a move from HBO to Showtime over the years. And the years go back to 1977, with tonight’s show launching the start of Season 25. And beginning tonight with “2014 Week 1,” it has to survive some even more drastic shifts: the move from Wednesdays to Tuesdays, and the loss of Cris Collinsworth, the most dynamic, outspoken and entertaining part of the show for many, many seasons. Both of these moves have to do with Showtime’s corporate sibling, CBS, launching its new sports franchise, Thursday Night Football. So NBC’s Sunday Night Football analyst Collinsworth and others are out, and CBS’s Greg Gumbel and others are in. But it’s also a move to employ younger players and ex-players, such as Brandon Marshall, to attract younger viewers, which has its merits – it’s just that someone as glib and perceptive as Collinsworth should always have a showcase like Inside the NFL.

 
  
 
 

Syfy, 9:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s episode features a “Judge Match” – which sounds like a grudge match, and is, sort of. The special-effects makeup experts who, on other weeks, judge the efforts of contestants, this time team with them to compete against teams led by their rival judges. It’s not the sort of thing they’ve yet done on, say, Project Runway – but they should.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.