LENO AND LETTERMAN TAKE BIG RATINGS HITS

It was not an auspicious start-of-the-season week for either Jay Leno or David Letterman. With DVR use way up and more and more viewers watching shows via cable’s on-demand technology or via Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services, or catching hipper, less restricted hosts on cable, like Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien, the two late-night […]

THURSDAY NIGHT: VIEWERS CAME, SAW, LEFT

Thursday night — which generally draws more television viewers than any other night of the week — saw a big drop in viewers versus the first Thursday night of the season last week. In particular, Fox’s The X Factor saw its numbers drop 12 percent from last Thursday, while NBC’s Whitney plummeted 24 percent and […]

CONRAD MURRAY TRIAL APP RACKS UP BIG SALES

Ordinarily trial coverage by local television stations does not usually generate much ad revenue — if any at all. Advertisers generally don’t regard such coverage as a fitting environment for sales pitches. And then there’s the problem of where and when to run such ads. But KTTV, the Fox-owned station in Los Angeles that is […]

AL-JAZEERA ENGLISH HONORED BY ONLINE JOURNALISM AWARDS

It may still be struggling to find outlets on most cable systems, but al-Jazeera English has been attracting viewers, critical respect, and numerous awards, especially for its coverage of the recent Middle East unrest. Its latest honor comes from the Online Journalism Awards, which gave it its top award for al-Jazeera’s coverage of the uprising […]

BRITISH TV REGULATOR WARNS ABOUT SEXY CLOTHES, DANCES

OFCOM, Britain’s TV watchdog, has warned broadcasters about showing “sexualized clothing and dance routines” before the 9:00 p.m. watershed hour, when children are likely to be watching. “It is important to note that in pre-watershed content, OFCOM would not expect to see singers and dancers wearing clothing that does not adequately cover their bodies (in […]

LION KING RETURNING FOR THIRD WEEKEND

Given its unpredicted success over the past two weeks, Disney is keeping The Lion King 3D in theaters this weekend, where it could very well retain its throne as the box-office leader for the third weekend in a row. Originally, the studio had planned to give the 1994 movie a two-week revival, primarily to help […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER?

Producers of What’s Your Number? have dialed the wrong one with this latest R-rated raunch-com aimed at women and starring Anna Faris and Chris Evans, most critics argue. They suggest that except for good looks the two leading characters are not individuals whom you would want to spend 106 minutes with — not in real […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: 50/50

50/50 are the odds of surviving a rare form of cancer that the main character in the movie with those odds in the title is diagnosed with. It’s loosely based on screenwriter Will Reiser’s personal experiences. Given its premise the odds of its being praised by critics were probably a lot lower than those in […]

LION REMAINS FEARSOME EVEN DURING MIDWEEK (Update)

The Lion King is going out with a roar. Even though it was unlikely that families would be going to the movies together on school nights, Monday and Tuesday saw ticket sales of $3.22 million for Disney’s animated film, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. Converted to 3D in advance of next week’s bow on Blu-ray disc (The […]

ANOTHER DISNEY MOVIE GETS NEW LIFE ONSTAGE

Transposing a failed movie musical to the stage may seem like a fool’s errand, but Disney’s theatrical unit may have pulled it off in the case of Newsies, the company’s 1992 effort to revive the traditional live-action musical. Harvey Fierstein has rewritten the original screenplay by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White about an 1899 newsboy […]

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