Tag Archive for: TV

The case for binge watching television


It’s not uncommon for a college student to spend a lazy Sunday sitting around, watching Netflix and catching up on episode after episode of his or her favorite show. Whether it’s Friends, Pretty Little Liars, or whatever the obsession is that  week, quality time spend lying in bed enjoying the same show back-to-back can prove […]

Billboard markets ideas not materials


Traffic. Even as the source of many Angelenos’ collective frustration, it surprisingly provides the only time we get to sit in one place. And when we get stuck bumper-to-bumper, we try to find other modes of entertainment. If we simply sit in the car and let our eyes roam, they will undoubtedly fall on the […]

TV becomes a celebrated medium


Three and a half months ago, my first tack in trying to come up with a name for this column involved attempting to riff off some of television’s more colorful nicknames. Dispiriting as it was to discard a slew of admittedly horrible ideas, it wasn’t nearly as disheartening as the realization of what some of […]

TV campaigns find signature promotions


If a show airs in its time slot and no one is tuned in to watch it, does it make a sound? It’s an “if a tree falls in a forest” question that most network executives would be perfectly happy going their whole careers without ever discovering the answer to. Countless dollars are spent every […]

Television explores economic identities


Any talk relating to the politics of representation in the media generally focuses on a handful of characteristics that a person would have from birth. Race and sexual orientation in particular are the cause of the lion’s share of hand-wringing over representational issues: Are minorities underrepresented in How I Met Your Mother, for instance, or […]

Mad Men demonstrates television’s nostalgia for the past


It was the first cable show to take home the Emmy for outstanding drama series three years in a row and last September, Mad Men did it again. It sired a wave of nostalgia that one backward-facing period drama after another hoped to ride into the ratings’ promised land. The show’s ratings are by no […]

Modern TV lacks stability, certainty


Television has had many ups and downs in recent weeks with returns, delays and cancellations, giving way to the widespread instability in modern television programming. This holds particularly true as Tuesday falls squarely between the long-delayed midseason return of NBC’s gleefully eccentric gang comedy Community and the even longer delayed season five premiere of AMC’s […]