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THE LATE AARON SPELLING was modest and courtly to a fault. So when asked about his storied career at the TV Critics Assn. tour years ago, he gave most of [...]

Falling movie ratings lead b'casters to series It's an episode in TV history that gives the movie companies nightmares: During the entire 35-week broadcast season of 1997-98, CBS slotted a […]

Heard the buzz about the upcoming TV season? If so, congratulations: You're about the only one who has. While bitching about just how bad the new fall shows look is [...]

Success of other genres squeezes primetime newsies Television newsmagazines are facing a story they may not be able to handle -- their loss of standing as a primetime fixture. Schedule-friendly, […]

After a successful summer run, the family sitcom 'The Carmichael Show,' created by and starring comedian Jerrod Carmichael, returns March 13 for its second season on NBC. Its second time [...]

As Asia reels from the enormity of the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed at least 150,000 and left millions homeless, the media in the area have responded with […]

FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS column, I will be playing Brian Lowry, a witty, urbane, sometimes caustic critic for a trade newspaper. Think George Sanders in "All About Eve," with […]

HOLLYWOOD It's hard to imagine any drama--well, at least one whose title doesn't string together the letters "C," "S" and "I"--making much of a dent in NBC's Wednesday warhorse "Law […]

After he turned in the pilot for HBO's 'Six Feet Under,' creator Alan Ball got a curious note from Chris Albrecht. It was about the way the first episode wrapped [...]

Two new TV series skedded for fall have inadvertently set a paradigm for the nets' upcoming season. In ABC's 'That Was Then' and the WB's 'Do Over,' the shows' lead [...]

After a summer of rerun purgatory, judgment day for the networks finally arrives next week. More than in any season in recent years, the broadcast webs -- especially the Big […]

Everybody else seems to be in spring-cleaning mode, so this is a good time to once again clear out the ratings notebook: One year later, who would have thought NBC […]

JOHANNESBURG Many South Africans are dearly not happy with the way they look, judging by the thousands of entries of all sexes, colors and ages for paybox M-Net's makeover reality […]

HOLLYWOOD You didn't need a Ouija board to predict that NBC's future was looking cloudy on the heels of a flat fall, but as often happens in the biz, one […]

As the movie and music industries continue their legal assault on peer-to-peer networks, one TV show is embracing file sharing as a distribution outlet--and as a plot point. "The Scene" […]

MUMBAI With the launch of Walt Disney Television Intl.'s (India) Disney and Toon Disney channels Dec. 17, rival kidvid players are bribing the ankle-biters to hang onto their ratings. Turner's […]

THE TECTONIC PLATES ARE shifting in network TV, and the media landscape is suddenly offering up new vistas. For those nets whose tilt is suddenly upward, execs are hailing the [...]

Cromosoma pioneered 3-D toon-making in Spain and produced traditional animation 'The Triplets.' One of the most successful loon series in Spanish TV history, it has been broadcast in 141 countries. [...]

As proof that Michael Frayn's farce "Noises Off" was a hair's breadth away from fact, theater buffs should check out British doe "The Shakespearean Job." Show airs Sept. 19 on […]

HOLLYWOOD A trip to the ballpark, the boxing ring and even Oklahoma are in store for viewers of the six new Tuesday offerings this fall on the broadcast nets. But […]

HOLLYWOOD Is romance dead in primetime? A wave of dating shows that began more than three years ago with Fox's hugely popular 'Temptation Island' and crested with the likes of [...]

LONDON Once upon a time, running Channel 4, famous for its freewheeling creativity, was seen as the best job in British television. Now competition and other pressures on its advertising […]

Peacemakers" got shot dead. "Lucky" wasn't. And "Breaking News" couldn't break a single episode. The track record of original dramas on cable hasn't been impressive with flops outnumbering hits. Despite […]

MADRID Until recently the most popular Spanish pica on local TV were trips down a very long memory lane. In 2002, the highest-rated local pic on TV was 1974's "El […]

SYDNEY Turning water into fire is a neat ratings trick--if you can pull it off. Yet that's exactly what top producer John Edwards plans to pull off this year. The [...]

The debut date: Aug. 25, 2002 The cast: Uma Thurman, Gena Rowlands, Juliette Lewis A supposed slice-of-life drama about three working class women looking for love and stability in 1980s [...]

The debut date: Jan. 10, 1999 The cast: James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Nancy Marchand, Stevie Van Zandt, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Robert Iler, Dominic Chianese. The mob life, [...]

While Chris Albrecht has basked in the glow of 'The Sopranos,' the darling of critics has come with its share of headaches as well. The most public flare-up came in [...]

The debut date: June 3, 2001 The cast: Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall, Frances Conroy, Lauren Ambrose, Freddy Rodriguez Mathew St. Patrick, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Jenkins. 'Six Feet Under' represents [...]

The debut date: Feb. 7, 1997 The host: Chris Rock Budding' comedy superstar Chris Rock came out firing in the launch of his five-week HB0 series that combines sketch comedy, [...]

Buffy, begone. Almost two years after 9/11, the TV biz is birthing a new breed of mystical show giving everyday people--mostly ambivalent young women--the power to correspond with the universe [...]

It has fueled national passions more than any TV show in the history of pan-Arab TV. It has made the front pages of papers all over the Middle East. The [...]

HOLLYWOOD By all accounts, crime rates in this country are down, but you'd never know it by training on your television set. For the first time, TV's most-watched series is […]

SYDNEY Australia's TV networks are not known for being innovative, but lately their copycattery has scaled new heights. Last year four of the five nets launched new local drama skeins--two [...]