So, Fox News has just posted its highest ratings ever in 2009? This is hardly a surprise to those of us who cover the television industry. We're used to lousy programming doing well in the ratings. It's almost an article of, well, faith.
The Huffington Post...

Usually at this time each year, my fellow TV critics across the nation assemble our Ten Best TV Shows of the Year lists. But this year, many are issuing their lists of Top 10 best shows of the decade about to end.

Here's this critic's holiday "gift"...

I found my first newspaper job 40 years ago through a classified ad in Editor&Publisher that was lying around our college daily's office.

That's where everyone in the newspaper business looked for work - and where we usually found it - all these years.

If you ever...

This weekend's tragic murder of four Seattle-area police officers has blown away one of the NRA and gun nuts' major -- if ancient and tired -- arguments.

A few weeks ago, we asked here why there were few media stories about where -- and why -- the Fort Hood...

Several polls have shown recently that even the most popular radio talk-show hosts (the Limbaughs and Dobbses) who trade in politics on their shows would never get elected to public office.

(OK, except for maybe in two or three Congressional districts in Texas or South Carolina.)

And...

The best word to describe bejoweled Lou Dobbs? "Droneologist."

It's more elegant than "preening, pompous windbag."

As a longtime TV and radio newspaper critic, I've been chronicling Sweetheart Lou's cable antics for the better part of two decades.

I can hardly wait for Lou's appearance with Bill...

A radio talk-show host once confided: "If you want to light up the phones, just talk about abortion or gun control."

It works for blogging, too. My piece here earlier this week, saying that the key issue, handgun control, has been largely neglected in cable's saturation coverage...

Our current lack of health insurance for all is a national disgrace. But so are our handgun laws -- or lack of them.

You'd think you might have heard a bit more about our heedless national pistolero mentality in the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tragic shootings at Fort...

If you need a rejuvenating Barack Obama fix to lift your spirits and remind you why you voted for the President, don't miss an insightful new cable documentary premiering Tuesday -- almost exactly a year after Obama's election.

By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, airing Tuesday on...

You've no doubt heard the blustering calls to talk radio shows, both right and left.

A righty know-it-all will snort, "We don't need another government bureaucracy," or, "The government will bungle up health care like it messes up everything else."

Air America host Thom Hartmann...

It's amazing someone hadn't thought of this before: Raising money for worthy charities by...playing video games. And if your boss sees you gaming at work, now you can tell him you're not goofing off, you're raising money for a good cause.

Good luck with that. (Even though you're telling the...

I'm lucky. I got to see Monty Python before most Americans - both on TV and live.

Over the years, this long-time newspaper TV critic has been asked: What's your all-time favorite series? Without hesitation: Monty Python's Flying Circus, the brilliant BBC series marking its 40th birthday...

"Insurance companies aren't playing nice any more," read the HuffPost lead paragraph of Monday's story detailing the latest extortion threats of this disgraceful, thieving lot.

Since when have these thieves ever "played nice?"

They're the same crowd who sent busloads of drooling, misguided and uninformed flunkies out to town halls...

It's some of talented NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel's best reporting yet, and it couldn't have come at a more timely moment.

Engel's documentary airing Sunday night at 8 on MSNBC, Richard Engel: Tip of The Spear, comes on the eighth anniversary of the U.S. war in...

It's not often I find myself in Juneau, Alaska. This was the first time, in fact. When I saw a city-limits sign, I was tempted to spray-paint "Now Palin-Free," but, being well past prime tagging age, I demurred.

Juneau seems so quiet now. But a year ago, it was...

My new media hero: Fla. Rep. Alan Grayson. His bravura performance on CNN's usually tepid "Situation Room" this week was one of the highlights of the year in media - and a rare compelling moment on all-too-often lackluster CNN.

"Not many politicians who say things like this...

We couldn't have picked a better time to start watching my advance press copy of Ken Burns' new PBS series on the national parks: We'd just visited Glacier Bay in Alaska. It may well be the ultimate gem of the National Park system, even though relatively few ever get up...

What's that sulfurous smell emanating from ABC-TV these days?

It's not that network's usual crappy new fall prime-time lineup, although it's pretty stinky.

No, it's Toxic Tom DeLay, aka The Exterminator, the unctuous little weasel now making a fool of himself (again) on ABC's dismal enterprise called "Dancing With The...

Are you ready for some football?

Um, don't we already have way too much?

Sure, I'll watch some NFL this fall. But...eight games at once, like some of those TV ads for satellite packages have been touting?

Sorry, but we've...

Here's the problem if President Obama is indeed using, as some have suggested, a "rope-a-dope" strategy on his loudmouthed political and health-care opponents in Congress and especially, in the media:

There are at least four dopes punching him. Muhammad Ali only had one.

...