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If Only NBC Had the Guts Carrie Underwood Has

As predicted by just about everyone on the planet, Carrie Underwood sang beautifully on last night’s live version of NBC’s “The Sound of Music,” in a production that was torpedoed and sunk by her lack of acting experience. To call…

Dec 6, 2013

Jeff Zucker: The Blurring of Fact and Fiction

Reading CNN President Jeff Zucker’s comments yesterday about the future of CNN, I was struck in particular by one paragraph. Here it is, quoted from CapitalNewYork: “The 48-year-old Zucker initially faced internal resistance to his experiments beyond the realm of…

Dec 5, 2013

Dan Rather, JFK, Edward R. Murrow and the Business of TV News, Part 3: Is a Dream a Lie If It Don’t Come True or Is It Something Worse?

[Today’s entry is the final part of our series that we began last Friday. It ends as it began, with Dan Rather. We started our longish — yet still abbreviated — journey through the history of CBS News with documentaries…

Nov 26, 2013

Dan Rather, JFK, Edward R. Murrow and the Business of TV News, Part 2: Is a Dream a Lie If It Don’t Come True, or Is It Something Worse?

[In part 1 of this piece, posted last Friday, Nov. 22, 2013, we spoke about the bad blood that continues between Dan Rather and CBS News. This led into a discussion about the sometimes very contentious relationship between CBS corporate…

Nov 25, 2013

Dan Rather, JFK, Edward R. Murrow and the Business of TV News, Part 1: Is a Dream a Lie If It Don’t Come True or Is It Something Worse?

Dan Rather is still clearly upset that he was fired from CBS News after working there for 44 years, and there remains bad blood between him and the network. Most recently he’s pissed that CBS didn’t mention him in the…

Nov 22, 2013

A Conversation With Daytime TV Powerhouse Queen Latifah

Just two months out of the gate and in the midst of her first November sweeps, Queen Latifah is more than holding her own with her eponymous syndicated daytime talker. It’s a competitive landscape with rivals including Bethenny Frankel, Ellen…

Nov 19, 2013

PBS Serves Up a Riveting Take on Legendary Guitar Player Jimi Hendrix

From the very first notes of "Wild Thing" electrifying the crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 Jimi Hendrix fans will be riveted by a new two-hour "American Masters" documentary, "Jimi Hendrix — Hear My Train a Comin’," premiering…

Nov 5, 2013

Advice to the Ad Community From an Unlikely Source: John Lennon

John Lennon sure had it nailed when he sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I think of that this morning in the context of advertising. It must have been well over 20 years…

Oct 15, 2013

You Know That Executive the Network Just Hired? What an A-Hole!

Well, that was pretty simple. Name-calling that’s easy for me as a columnist/blogger to do, and a terrific attention grabber. Thanks for clicking on this piece. So who’s the asshole I’m referring to in the headline? Don’t have one in…

Oct 7, 2013

For the Women of ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ It’s All About the Love — Passionate, Violent Love

It may be the men of "Sons of Anarchy" who suck all of the air in the room when they hold secret meetings in their clubhouse, but it is the women who provide much of the motivation for the adrenalized…

Oct 1, 2013