PASADENA, Calif.–Are there nights Dan Rather thanks his lucky stars he’s not hosting the CBS Evening News anymore? Especially because there’s no way he could keep a straight face reporting on Donald Trump? The 84-year-old newsman, who has been hosting The Big Interview on AXS TV for four seasons, took my cheeky question with his usual
The Beverly Hilton-based TCA press tour has wrapped up for another summer and for the first time in years I didn’t gain any weight. That’s because, as mentioned here before, I went to the cottage this summer instead. The tour was packed as usual with sessions but the two-and-a-half week gathering always seems newsier when you’re
I have eleventy-million-billion hooks or so in my laundry room at home. For years now they’ve been filled with tote bags hauled across the border from TCA press tours. I have a zillion PBS bags and quite a few from networks that don’t even exist anymore, like CBC. I’ve tried giving them away, even handed them out
There is always plenty to deal with every session of every day at the annual winter TCA press tour. Reporters need five hands these days just to raise them for questions, type stories, tweet snark, surf for press info and fill our bellies with food and candy. The daily tasks leave little time to reflect on
TV Media Insights’ resident expert Marc Berman asked me to join him for a second videocast covering the just-concluded TCA 2015 winter press tour. Follow this link to the videocast here. Marc asks what my highlight was from the tour. Skipping over all of the meals and the weather, I mention the final ever Mad
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif.–There’s nothing like visiting with the cast of a series who a) know critics like their show b) are fresh off a major award win and c) provide grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Such a set visit occurred Tuesday. A packed busload of critics were shuttled down to Raleigh, a relatively modern studio facility once the home
Screening a bunch of pilots before, during and after the summer TCA press tour and then weighing in with reviews is pretty much judging a book by its cover. The networks discourage it with “work in progress” labels suggesting major elements are still to be added. (Usually that’s an over-statement, unless you count a occasional
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.–Who turned out the lights? That’s what everybody was asking shortly after Saturday nights’s 30th annual TCA Awards. It was as if once all the stars left from the post awards party, they took all the electricity with them. With elevators out of commission, the party simply moved downstairs to the dimly-lit Trader