Posts Tagged ‘television’
It’s Because Christiane Amanpour Is Leaving, Isn’t It?
Are You Still Watching CNN? (Because Nobody Else Is)
First-quarter Nielsen ratings are out, and everyone is talking about CNN’s (continued) primetime ratings free-fall. While Fox News remains No. 1, MSNBC and CNN’s sister network HLN are now regularly outperforming The Coop and his cohorts.
In today’s New York Times, Bill Carter gives a run-down of CNN’s sad state of affairs. According to Carter, Larry King not only had his worst quarter ever during the first three months of 2010, but is now threatened by View co-host-turned-primetime HLN talking head Joy Behar. Anderson Cooper isn’t faring much better: CNN’s silver fox saw his audience drop 42 percent in the first quarter and now finds himself occasionally losing to repeats of Olbermann and Maddow on MSNBC.
As you can see above, Fox News continues to be far and away the most highly watched news network in primetime. But MSNBC, which is also down in overall primetime viewers (but hasn’t been losing them as quickly as CNN), is now in second place.
I Am In Legal Drama Withdrawal (And, Like, 50 Years Old, Apparently)
I never thought I’d have to say this, but there are actually not enough Law & Order reruns on cable these days.
TNT, for instance, only has one episode scheduled for tomorrow. What the fuck, man? What happened to the days where you could find an old school episode of this show at any given time? It was like video-on-demand, but free!
And now I find out that new episodes of the mothership won’t even be back until March? Dude, come on.
(Also, Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent don’t count. Because SVU blows. Really fucking hard. And CI is good, but there’s a limit to how much Vincent D’Onofrio a guy can handle, you know?)
Maybe I’ll go watch that Hipster Grifter episode again…
Karen Walker Would Never Stand For This
Megan Mullally is now whoring margarine for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
How… unfortunate. I think at that point, I’d rather just have Sean Hayes’ career.
30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy is TV’s Most Lovable Misogynist
30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy embodies every appalling aspect of American corporatism: racism, classism, and — most overtly — sexism. Yet we love him anyway, no doubt thanks to Alec Baldwin (whose charismatic performance makes Jack most misogynistic moments memorable).
In the real world, we’d probably pull an Edie Falco and slap Jack for half the things he says. Instead, we laugh — either goaded by the joke’s shock factor, or in simple amazement that NBC has the proverbial balls to air such political incorrectness.
More puzzling is how we — despite the fact that he’s a condescending, chauvinistic, womanizing jerk — don’t just hate him.
