Actress Farrah Fawcett, who was launched into instant pop culture stardom in 1976 with a best-selling wall poster and a featured role in a new ABC series Charlie's Angels, is dead at 62. She was a TV presence in our lives right to the end.

Fawcett, who battled anal cancer for several years, was seen last month in an NBC documentary that she herself produced and helped tape with a digital camera. The film, Farrah's Story, which chronicled her struggle with the disease, was a ratings success for the network, and she vowed to continue with a second TV documentary.

More than any other actress I knew -- and I first interviewed her in 1976 for a story on that poster -- Fawcett was a creature of the medium. It made her famous, and I was not surprised to see her final days depicted in a self-produced TV special. Nor was it surprising to hear from her longtime companion, Ryan O'Neal, that as sick as she was, the first thing Fawcett asked on the morning after her special aired was how it did in the ratings.

(Pictured: Farrah Fawcett as she appeared in 1977 ABC publicity photo) 

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Posted by David Zurawik at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Network TV
        

Ed McMahon, who for 30 years rode shotgun to Johnny Carson on NBC’s legendary Tonight Show and became the model for a generation of talk show sidekicks, is dead at 86.

Mr. McMahon died at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Westwood, Calif., according to NBC, the network for whom he worked more than three decades. The entertainer and TV pitchman had been seriously ill for several years. He had been at the UCLA medical facility for the past three weeks being treated for pneumonia, according to a spokesman. He also had been diagnosed with bone cancer.

With all the change in late night TV theses days, it is hard to remember what a reliable, inviting and reassuring place Mr. McMahon and Mr. Carson made their faux couch and desk set seem like from 1962 to 1992 — one of the longest and most successful runs in TV history. Mr. McMahon played a large role in that popularity with his deep voice, ready laugh and trademark "Heeeeeerrrrrreeee’s Johnny" nightly introduction.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Network TV
        

As we approach another version of what I have come to think of as network-White House co-productions,  the TV press desperately needs to step back and question how it is covering President Barack Obama.

Next Wednesday night at 10, ABC News will offer the president an hour of prime time -- as well as prime real estate on all its newscasts throughout the day -- to sell his landmark health care plan.

The need for such self-scrutiny should be all the more apparent in light of the president's complaint Tuesday about one media outlet (read: Fox News) "attacking" his administration. I am no less troubled than I ever was about the way Fox and MSNBC have turned all-news into all-partisan opinion TV in prime time, but thank goodness at least one TV outlet, Fox, is questioning Team Obama as it pushes for the kind of massive change in American life not seen since the era of Franklin Roosevelt.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (58)
Categories: Network TV
        

Faced with the threat of an advertiser boycott and protests outside the theater where he tapes his show, CBS comedian David Letterman Monday night aplogized to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters for a crude joke he made about one of the teenager during his monologue on June 8. And this time, he seemed to mean it. Read my previous reporting on the controversy here and here and here.

Refererring specifically to a coarse quip he made suggesting that one of Palin's daughters had a sexual encounter with New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez while she and her mother attended a Yankees' game during a recent trip to New York, Letterman said, "It wasa kind of a coarse joke -- there's no getting around it. The joke in and of itself cannot be defended... I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception."

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Posted by David Zurawik at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)
Categories: Network TV, Talk Shows
        

The fall schedule for CBS will include six new series featuring such familiar TV stars as Julianna Margulies and Jenna Elfman. There will also be a spinoff of NCIS starring LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell, as well as another season for Cold Case, a Sunday night staple that was on the bubble.

The network is expected, however, to say goodbye today to two of its most expensive dramas, Without a Trace and The Unit, as it joins other networks in trying to cut costs.

The new drama with Margulies, The Good Wife, is one of the season's more promising with the former ER star playing a stay-at-home spouse who is forced back into the workplace as an attorney. Elfman will star in the sitcom Accidentally on Purpose as a film critic in San Francisco who becomes pregnant after a one-night relationship with a much younger man.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: CBS, Network TV
        

ABC announces a fall schedule today loaded with stars of former hit network shows -- Courteney Cox, Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton.

Cox, formerly of Friends, will star in Cougar Town as a single mother raising a 17-year-old son.

Heaton will also be playing a mom, this one from the Midwest and the middle class - hence the title, The Middle.

The most promising new series of the trio looks to be Grammer's Hank, which will feature the former star of Frasier as a one-time Wall Street player returning against his desire to a small-town home. 

As you can see, there's a lot of "former" and "one-time" in the "new" ABC schedule. The most noteworthy cancellation is Samantha Who, but most analysts expected that to happen.

Continue reading "ABC goes for the old: Cox, Grammer and Heaton" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: ABC, Network TV
        

The upfronts aren't what they used to be. But what's left of them start today in New York with Fox presenting its fall lineup. Most of what will be canceled and renewed is already known, and you can read it here on the jump of this post.

Tuesday comes ABC, and on Wednesday it's CBS. CW clocks in Thursday with its version of the annual ritual in which TV networks show their upcoming schedules to potential sales clients in hopes of selling advertising time "upfront" for the season starting in September.

Only the ritual has lost much of its potency. NBC, for example, announced last year that it was ditching the practice, and so, it won't be participating this week. Fox, meanwhile, has long ago ditched the big fall rollout of new shows. Its season really starts in January with each cycle of American Idol.

Continue reading "Dollhouse, other freshmen dramas renewed by Fox" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Network TV
        

First the poor reviews, now the ratings -- this is not good news for Jimmy Fallon and his latenight show on NBC.

It was only by an eyelash, but the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson topped Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in total viewers for the first time.

Ferguson's show also tied Fallon's in adults 25 to54 years-of-age for the first time, according to Nielsen live plus same day ratings for the week ending May 8.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Network TV, Ratings, Talk Shows
        

As a TV critic writing for a newspaper, I have long argued this case. But I never had evidence like the data gathered by group of University of Pennsylvania scholars who compared the ways in which newspapers covered their declining readership versus how TV news reported (or didn't report) on declining viewership.

Newspapers are far more conscientious in reporting their own bad news than TV is in telling viewers about its loss of audience. Across a nine year span, the Penn researchers found 900 instances of newspapers reporting the story of declining readership. On TV news, meanwhile, only 22 stories appeared.

You do the math, and form your own conclusions about which medium has been more trustworthy in handling a hard story.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Cable and Network News, Network TV, Newspapers
        

Since his debut in December as Tim Russert's replacement on Meet the Press, David Gregory has seemed to understand the enormity of the job he inherited -- even if some of his critics didn't.

Not only does he have replace a beloved journalist and serve as steward for a cherished journalistic institution, he has to do so at a time when the industry is faced with such monumental shifts in technology and audience behavior that standing pat is not an option -- even for the number one ranked show on Sunday morning television.

And, oh yeah, all of a sudden, there is more competition from John King on CNN, and veteran  hosts like ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Bob Schieffer on CBS are making a charge.

"Look, this is a competitive environment, and I get that people are gunning for us. But I think that's always been the case and I think it's going to make us better," Gregory said in a sit-down interview Tuesday. "Make no mistake, we expect it of ourselves, and it is expected of us to stay on top. And that's what we're going to do."

Just shy of five months into job, Gregory says he has no illusions that the transition has already been successfully made. But he feels good about where he and the show are, and he has some ideas on how to bring his generation of younger viewers into the Meet the Press tent on Sunday mornings. Part of that strategy includes a heightened anchoring presence on sister channel MSNBC and lots of new media.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Network TV
        

It was the repeated play of TV ads for the Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato Planter that finally drove the point home: The recession is changing the look of TV advertising these days -- and not for the better.

It has been going on for months (Snuggie ads were all the rage around Christmas), but I was in denial. The moment when I could longer deny reality came for me Sunday during CBS coverage of professional golf from the Quail Hollow Country Club. There were Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and most of the other big hitters on the course, but during the commercial breaks instead of ads for luxury cars, investment advisers and life insurance -- the long-time staples of Sunday afternoon network golf targeting older affluent men -- there were spots for this goofy-looking tomato contraption.

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Posted by David Zurawik at 6:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Network TV
        

For the most part, audiences continued tuning out network programming as the May sweeps started this week with one of the poorest opening nights in years.

Network programming was down across the board year to year, and both veteran and rookie series drew their smallest audiences ever.

ABC's Grey's Anatomy won the night, but with the lowest ratings for an episode in the series' history. NBC's widely-publicized new cop drama, Southland, continued its slide, while CBS's Survivor scored its lowest numbers ever for an original episode.

A bad month of May is going to mean worse months of June, July, August and September for the networks -- and there is simply nothing on the programming horizon for May to alter that equation.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Network TV, Ratings