The ravenous MTV network, always hungry for sweet teen blood, has found its next victims. Also today: Fox rules and other networks drool, Matthew Modine is rescued from oblivion, and Kevin Costner is headed into it.
Katie has left the building. After a five-year run as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric signed off for the last time this evening.
This week are the television upfronts, when the networks show ever-eager advertisers the programs they're working on for the fall season. The networks want to make money off these shows. We just want to pass judgment on them.
Everyone's favorite butt-kicker has had her own butt kicked a bit of late, but it looks like she's rallied and will be back on TV. Also today: more TV pickup and cancellation news, plus a Terrence Malick controversy.
It seems as though Ashton Kutcher is about to throw his hat back into the sitcom ring—and in a way you never saw coming. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the former That 70s Show star will return to primetime this fall—for a "big payday"—when he replaces Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, which is still somehow the top-rated comedy on television.
Oh, blah. CBS News has announced that scold-face white man Scott Pelley will be Katie Couric's replacement on the CBS Evening News. No surprise whatsoever. I guess CBS went with the surprise candidate last time, and that didn't turn out too well. Still, it's a shame that Watson the Jeopardy Robot won't get his chance.
It's true! Little girls and their older cousins (or moms? oh god, moms??) will soon be able to sit down at the same movie and feel those youthful tingles of chaste lust together. Also today: more Hunger Games news, some gay stuff, and various dismaying CBS news.
Network news divisions are still huge, relatively well-financed producers of some of America's best news coverage. They're also very slowly becoming dinosaurs. But hey—at least they're trying!
In your money Monday media column: the Pentagon sides with a general over Rolling Stone, The New Yorker's boring Facebook success, Sidney Harman's unfortunate goodbye column, Les Moonves is overpaid, Glenn Beck is moving, and a history of Fox.
In your dreary Tuesday media column: the National Magazine Awards announce nominees, News Corp's Shine acquisition is complete, Jeff Greenfield needs a new job, the Brit phone hacking scandal continues, content farms get aspirational, and media launches still exist.
Steve Martin isn't the only big star on David Letterman's Late Show this evening—Alec Baldwin's in the audience! Or was in the audience, that is. You see, once Baldwin found out Martin was on, too, he split.
Charlie Sheen is so winning that he didn't just file a lawsuit for $100 million against Warner Bros., which makes Two and a Half Men, but he did it for himself and the entire cast and crew. Oh, that Charlie. He's so generous!
