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
Jul
29
 
 
In the current cover story of Broadcasting & Cable, Marisa Guthrie presides over a roundtable of TV critics, tossing out questions about the coming TV season and other things. Participating critics were Robert Bianco of USA Today, Matt Roush of TV Guide, Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News, Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune, and, representing TV WORTH WATCHING, yours truly...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
28
 
 
TV executives are people, too -- but unlike most people, especially in this economy, they have the uncanny ability to fail up, and parachute into increasingly lucrative deals once being forced or steered out of their jobs. So I don't feel sorry for Ben Silverman -- But I am happy for the potential future of quality TV at that network, because Silverman, in his NBC post, sure wasn't providing much of it...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
23
 
 
"Pushing Daisies" premiered on ABC in October 2007. I instantly hailed it as the best new series of the year, viewers embraced it, and all was well. Then, a month later, came the writers' strike, and the series never recovered. Once ABC burned through the programs already filmed, the network held off showing new episodes until the fall of 2008, by which time the series had lost its momentum. But now, on DVD, comes the complete 13-episode second season...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
22
 
 
When I put out a call (actually, an email) to our TV WORTH WATCHING writers for reflections about Walter Cronkite, one of them, Bill Brioux, turns out to have been unreachable for the weekend in some remote cabin. (Canadians will do that.) When he returned, and found what we'd done here, he wrote his own, and it's too terrific -- and R-rated -- not to share...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
20
 
 
We're a bunch of veteran TV reporters and critics here at TV WORTH WATCHING, and each of us has his or her favorite memories -- as viewers and as interviewers -- of iconic CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at age 92. So in a tag-team tribute to one of the finest and most important journalists in television history, today we present a string of salutes, stories and observations about The Most Trusted Man in America...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
16
 
 
The always conservative voters behind the Emmy nominations have welcomed some deserving first-timers this year, including Jim Parsons of CBS's The Big Bang Theory and Elisabeth Moss of AMC's Mad Men. But today's nominations also snubbed a LOT of deserving artists and programs...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
15
 
 
Yesterday I reviewed some of the intriguing completed TV series screened in Rome last week at RomaFictionFest, an international gathering of creative and executive types interested in scripted television. Today I'll detail the best pitches for shows that haven't been made yet -- covering everything from a musical biopic of a largely unexplored chapter in the life of Frank Sinatra, and the story of a pygmy from the Congo who was displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo a century ago...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
14
 
 
Tonight on the five commercial broadcast networks, there are a total of 14 hours of prime-time programming. Only four of them are scripted, and only one 30-minute program, ABC's "Better Off Ted," is not a rerun. That's why last week's RomaFictionFest is such a big deal. If quality scripted television is an endangered species, RomaFictionFest is a renewing, encouraging greenhouse...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
8
 
 
Just because I was in Rome, that didn't mean I couldn't watch the Michael Jackson memorial TV coverage...I was part of an audience she estimated as "tens of millions," and which CNN International later claimed was "more than 1 billion." All of those viewers saw something, at the very end, I'm not certain they should have...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2009
Jul
7
 
 
Last week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, an overview of the saturation media coverage of Jackson's death was capped by a reporter who noted, for the record, that Michael Jackson can only die once. Maybe...