OLBERMANN RETURNS — AS IF HE NEVER LEFT

The oft-fired/oft-hired Keith Olbermann, lastly with MSNBC, returned to the cameras Monday night on Al Gore’s cable channel Current TV — and television critics agreed that it was as if he had never been gone. “He is the same fast-talking, hard-charging, unapologetically self-righteous defender of his version of liberal ideology that he always was. Only [...]

PELLEY MAKES LOW-KEY DEBUT ON CBS EVENING NEWS

Scott Pelley took over the anchor chair on the CBS Evening News Monday and relegated the story that most newspapers headlined and NBC led with — the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal — to No. 3 on his list of top stories, nine minutes into the newscast. “Good for Pelley and CBS News and their sense [...]

CRITICS ON 83RD OSCARS: SAME OLD, SAME OLD

One would be hard-pressed to blame Deadline.com’s Nikki Finke’s early release of the full run-down of Sunday night’s Oscar telecast for the fact that not a single surprise materialized during the entire show. “Predictable” was the description used by many TV columnists in their assessment of the affair. Virtually all of the favorites won: best [...]

TV REVIEWS: OUTSOURCED

The premise may do more to impact the ratings of NBC’s season opener of Outsourced — a young American is sent to manage an outsourced call-center in India — than the content, which most critics agree is funny — in some scenes, outrageously so. “But whether intercultural relations can generate enough hilarity to sustain an [...]