CONAN TO BE INTERVIEWED ON “60 MINUTES”

Conan O’Brien has granted his first post-Tonight show interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the New York Times reported today (Wednesday). Speaking with the newspaper, Steve Kroft, who conducted the interview, said that while it will highlight O’Brien’s description of the events surrounding his decision to leave NBC, he remains under legal restrictions not to disparage [...]

LETTERMAN LETS ZINGERS FLY AT LENO AGAIN

Goaded by guest Dr. Phil McGraw, David Letterman Tuesday night returned to tweaking his late-night rival, Jay Leno. The CBS late-show host acknowledged that he enjoyed every minute of NBC’s Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno fiasco earlier this year. “It was great fun,” he said to McGraw. “And I love Jay summing the whole thing up. ‘Yeah, [...]

BBC CHANNELS OFFERING MOSTLY REPEATS, SAY CRITICS

The publicly funded BBC (owners of TV sets in the U.K. are required to pay an annual “license fee” to underwrite its operations) has come under attack for loading its four TV channels with thousands of hours of repeats. The London Daily Express today (Wednesday) published figures indicating that last year 84.4 percent of programming [...]

MANY BLU-RAY PLAYERS WON’T PLAY “AVATAR”

Although 20th Century Fox has been boasting this week about record-breaking Blu-ray Disc sales for Avatar, it has also been fending off complaints from many buyers that they are unable to play the discs. A complaint page created on online retailer Amazon’s website on Tuesday quickly filled with more than 100 messages from frustrated buyers. [...]

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION’S PROFITS FALL WHILE ITS STOCK RISES

Despite reporting a 70-percent drop in first-quarter profits on Tuesday, DreamWorks Animation’s stock was up fractionally for the day even in the face of a big slide in the market overall. The studio’s profit drop was explained by the fact that, unlike last year, it had no major home video release during the quarter. DreamWorks [...]

EARLY REVIEWS ENOUGH TO RUST “IRON MAN”

Iron Man 2 is unquestionably the kind of movie studio executives like to call “critic proof,” and judging from early reviews, that’s a good thing. Each of the two principal Hollywood trade publications has slammed the movie. “Everything fun and terrific about ‘Iron Man,’ a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel,” wrote [...]

WILL SHEEN’S TROUBLES KILL “TWO AND A HALF MEN”?

If Charlie Sheen is unable to return to Two and a Half Men next season because of his personal and legal difficulties, Warner Bros. TV plans to discontinue producing the show, according to RadarOnline. The website quoted what it described as a well-placed Warner Bros. source as saying, “There has been absolutely no discussion about [...]

MUSLIM LAWYER SAYS HE LOVES HIS RELIGION — AND HIS “SOUTH PARK”

CNN’s website on Monday posted a commentary by Arsalan Iftikhar, whom it identified as an international human rights lawyer and founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, who wrote that he was both a Muslim and a fan of South Park. Iftikhar maintained that the thinly veiled threat against the lives of South Park‘s creators, Trey Parker and Matt [...]

NBC STANDS BY CONTROVERSIAL “DATELINE” FEATURE ABOUT DETROIT

NBC has rejected complaints from the Detroit chapter of the National Assn. of Black Journalists and several community activists that it presented an unbalanced and sensationalized portrait of the city on a recent Dateline program. “NBC News is proud of Dateline‘s recent hour about Detroit, ‘America Now: City of Heartbreak and Hope,’ reported on by [...]

HISTORY CHANNEL DRAWS RECORD RATINGS FOR “AMERICA” SPECIAL

While audiences for the broadcast networks continue to dwindle, those for some cable networks continue to expand. The latest example: Sunday night’s premiere episode of America, the Story of Us on the History Channel, which drew 5.7 million viewers, making it those most-watched special ever broadcast by the channel. In a statement on Monday, History [...]

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