Much like the working-class citizens of Dillon, the small Texas town in which it is set, Friday Night Lights hasn't had it easy during its three years on television. It has never commanded high ratings, it has never enjoyed the support of Emmy voters and it would not have survived...

As I watched Tina Fey promote the season premiere of 30 Rock Wednesday on CBS' Late Show with David Letterman and Thursday on ABC's The View I couldn't help but wonder: Why did NBC see fit to forbid the cast of Fox's Glee from performing in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day...

This was supposed to be the autumn of NBC's talk-show success, with low-cost episodes of The Jay Leno Show energizing the network's failing primetime fortunes while Conan O'Brien refreshed The Tonight Show and pumped a growing young audience into Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Instead, NBC is flailing while David...

Congratulations to CBS, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, producer Don Mischer and producer-host Neil Patrick Harris for putting together the most entertaining Emmy telecast in memory.

That said, the future still looks bleak for this beleaguered awards franchise. Even at its best it seems to run on forever,...

The new television season officially begins on Monday -- and it can't get here soon enough. Perhaps the excitement of all those new shows, some of them quite promising, will take my mind off the bad decisions and boneheaded moves by network executives, powerful show-runners and ego-crazed celebrities that have...

Watching the 36th annual Daytime Emmy Awards on The CW during the dog days of August confirmed what I already knew: These are dark days indeed for the daypart overall and for soap operas in particular.

It's not that the telecast was all bad: I actually prefer smaller venues for...

TheWB.com's latest original series, a teen drama titled The Lake, is hardly groundbreaking as scripted entertainment, but it is a very effective centerpiece in a grand platform for advertisers. At a time when traditional and experimental media are colliding and business models are in perilous play that makes it a...

There were more parties at Comic-Con than anyone could count, the two most spectacular being the annual Syfy/Entertainment Weekly bash at the Hotel Solamar (more on that to come) and the Wrath of Con party on the...

The annual announcement of the Primetime Emmy Award nominations is generally one of the most contentious events of the year for anyone who works in, writes about or cares about television. Nomination Day usually falls right in the middle of the annual July Television Critics Association tour, so for the...

The annual orgy of fall season premieres seems less exciting with each passing year. Could it have anything to do with the fact that summer television keeps getting better and better? Here are the best of the season's new and returning series so far, along with a couple of teases...

The not-unexpected passing of Farrah Fawcett and the shocking sudden death of Michael Jackson on Thursday stir all kinds of emotional responses - among them wistful nostalgia for those decades in which they both became pop-culture icons. Those were the days -- when talented people worked for years to become...

Voting members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences this week are poring over their 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards ballots, selecting up to six individuals or programs in each category that they feel are worthy of nominations. Surely, few if any of them watch as much television as professional...

CBS once again emerged as the class act of Upfront week.

After a brief stumble in 2008, when the network stripped its presentation down to near-ABC proportions and cancelled its traditional after-party, the No. 1 broadcaster was back in fine form last Wednesday, informing and entertaining its audience of advertisers...

When it comes to Upfront presentations, you have to hand it to Fox - this is one network that still knows how to put on a show while putting across a message.

The message this year was all about the new 2009-10 series Glee, a comedy-drama with music about a...

My cable provider in recent days reached into my home and rudely removed a number of basic cable channels from several rooms - including MSNBC, which hit me like caffeine withdrawal Monday morning when I tuned in for my daily dose of Morning Joe.

In recent months I have increasingly...

As NBC prepares to announce next week the remaining details of its 2009-10 schedule, I can't help but wonder, What if the beleaguered network were to strip Jay Leno's new primetime program at 8 p.m. ET, rather than 10 o'clock? The more I think about it, the more I ask...

As hot as American Idol may be, it is not necessarily the best singing competition on television this spring. That distinction may go to a two-year-old British import titled Any Dream Will Do over on BBC America.

Dream is actually a follow-up to the hit 2006 British search-for-a-star singing competition...