For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

WATCH THIS: PaleyFest salutes 'Dr. Horrible,' TV shows

Even as TV Land loses interest in "our TV heritage" (finely eyed in David Bianculli's Cougar post), some folks still value what's good, even as it's still going on.

PaleyFest 2009 is the annual festival of terrific tube hosted by the Los Angeles branch of The Paley Center for Media (formerly The Museum of Television & Radio), and its current run (April 10-24) is saluting everything from Big Love to The Big Bang Theory to Battlestar Galactica. Episode screenings and lively panel discussions with the shows' creators/cast make for an annual snapshot of what's hot and what's innovative in TV today.

And online, too -- Joss Whedon's direct-to-web musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was honored Tuesday night. [See photo.]

You can track the goings-on at the PaleyFest blog of The Hollywood Reporter, among other coverage, as well as at the Paley Center's own site, which includes video highlights and a Twitter feed. (And if you're in L.A., you might consider heading to a panel or two.)

Video clips from previous PaleyFest panels can be found at the center's Screening Room -- among them, last year's Buffy the Vampire Slayer reunion and mailer vidal cavett.jpg 2007 salutes to Dexter and Jericho. Also streaming: excerpts from other Paley panels (the evolution of the sitcom) and flashbacks to TV history highlights (Dick Cavett remembers his talk show's incendiary Norman Mailer vs. Gore Vidal "intellectual" smackdown, which you can then watch here).

Head to a Paley Center facility in Manhattan or Beverly Hills for an even more amazing TV wallow -- more than 140,000 TV and radio shows (including commercials, sports, news, etc.), available for screening at personal consoles. You can search that collection here.

Or check out Paley Center live events including Kristin Chenoweth's April 16 New York chat or an April 22 panel on radio theater's history and future. See event calendar/details here.

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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