2011 Year in Review

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Special Reports

  • NAB 2012: Everything you need to know about broadcasting's biggest tech event of the year.
  • Gearing Up For NAB 2012: The top tech trends and issues.
  • FCC Watch: 18 Topics In 244 Words Or Less: Get briefed on what's happening at broadcasting's favorite regulatory agency by top Washington communications attorneys David Oxenford and Brendan Holland.
  • 2011—Year In Review: Revisit the year’s top developments in business, programming, journalism, technology, regulation and more.
  • Audience Measurement: The state of ratings is examined in three parts: an interview with the head of the Media Ratings Council; the growing presence of Rentrak; and the search for a better local ratings currency.
  • Traffic Reporting: This four-part TVNewsCheck Special Report focuses on what it takes to stay on top of the growing commuter gridlock across the country.
  • Remembering 9/11: TVNewsCheck looks back 10 years after the attacks with a series of five articles.
  • TOP 30 TV STATION GROUPS: Fox Television Stations is No. 1 in the revenue-based rankings, followed by the groups of the other major broadcast networks: CBS, NBC and ABC, with Tribune rounding out the top five.

Industry Calendar

May 2012
Mo
28
Memorial Day
Holiday
June 2012
Mo
11
NAB Education Foundation
Celebration of Service to America Awards
Washington, DC
Tu
Th
12-14
PromaxBDA
The Conference 2012
Los Angeles, CA
Th
Su
14-17
Investigative Reporters & Editors
IRE 2012
Boston, MA
Sa
23
NATAS
Daytime Emmy Awards
Los Angeles, CA

Station Directory

Net Essentials

AP Breaking News

Our Advertisers

Year in Review, Part IV
A Year’s Worth Of Innovation And Invention
TVNewsCheck, Dec 22, 2011, 11:55 AM EST
This year’s major technology’s stories included growing acceptance of channel-in-a-box systems, slow progress in mobile DTV, work on the next-generation digital television broadcast standard, finally getting rules from the FCC on loudness, a potential cure for stations’ lip sync problems, growing use of Skype by station newsgathering operations and cautious use of the cloud. In addition, the move to high def continued, but hundreds of stations still haven’t made that upgrade. Full Story | Comments (1)
Fade to Black
Saying Goodbye: TV's 2011 Honor Roll
TVNewsCheck, Dec 21, 2011, 12:51 PM EST
Dan+Burke
Dan Burke
Andy+Rooney
Andy Rooney
Throughout 2011, TVNewsCheck reported the deaths of outstanding men and women who shaped television as actors, lawmakers, producers, business people, journalists and on-air personalities. Here they are in chronological order of their passing as Part III of our Year in Review Special Report. Full Story | Add comment
Year in Review, Part II
2011 Big Deals: Oprah, Couric, Social Media
TVNewsCheck, Dec 21, 2011, 6:58 AM EST
Part II of TVNewsCheck's annual roundup of the major news of the year (complete with links to earlier stories) covers programming — both network and syndication (adjusting to life in a post-Oprah world), journalism (Katie Couric’s exit at the network level and a news resurgence in local markets) and new media (the exploding use of social networks). In Part I, which appeared yesterday, you can review the year's happenings in business, retrans, management, multicasting as well as regulatory and legal developments in Washington and elsewhere. Part III, which appears later today, remembers the electronic media luminaries who died during 2011. And Part IV, tomorrow at noon, will recap the year's technology highlights. Full Story | Add comment
Year in review: Part I
2011's Strong Start Couldn’t Last The Year
TVNewsCheck, Dec 20, 2011, 8:11 AM EST
As TVNewsCheck looks back over this year, we find that it didn’t quite fulfill the hopes that many had for it as 2011 began. What follows is the first part of a four-part yearend summary (complete with links to earlier stories) that covers business, retrans, management, multicasting as well as regulatory and legal developments in Washington and elsewhere. Tomorrow in Part II we'll reprise the major developments in programming, journalism and new media and in Part III highlight those the industry lost in 2011. The year’s big stories in technology will be featured in Part IV at Thursday noon. Full Story | Comments (2)

Today's Top Stories

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The Market

Symbol Last Change (%)
Nasdaq 2839.38 -10.74 (-0.38%)
NYSE 7552.36 +11.46 (+0.15%)
S&P 500 1320.68 +1.82 (+0.14%)
Updated 05/24 5:23p ET Quotes delayed at least 20 mins.
Source: Financial Content

Ratings

Overnights, adults 18-49 for May 23, 2012
  • 1.
    6.1/18
  • 2.
    2.6/7
  • 3.
    2.0/6
  • 4.
    1.5/4
  • 5.
    1.4/4
  • 6.
    0.4/1
Source: Nielsen
Reviews
Opinions
Features
  • David Wiegand

    Fans of Sex and the City have finally gotten their wish: Their beloved sex-focused sitcom is back on the air ... sort of. The four women have become four men, of course, and the writing isn't as good. Oh, and the laugh track so annoying, it's offensive. And did I mention that the costumes would be considered fashionable if you were holding a yard sale? Men at Work on TBS is almost quaint, it's so old fashioned. If it had any meat on its bones, you'd be tempted to say it's the sadly ignoble epitome of TV's long-festering emasculated-men syndrome. But it's so much of a big, forgettable, innocuous shrug, it's not even worth any actual vitriol.

  • Mike Hale

    The USA Network's motto is "Characters Welcome." Apparently they're especially welcome if they resemble Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. Already stocked with Odd Couple knockoffs in Psych and White Collar, USA adds to its inventory Common Law, another comic crime-fighting show about mismatched partners. But this latest entry exhibits very little of that kind of spark as it tries to wring laughs from the juxtaposition of counseling and police work. It looks too flat and schematically plotted to succeed as the type of lightweight summer fun we’ve come to expect from USA.

  • Joanne Ostrow

    Johnny Carson: Fantastic entertainer, miserable human being. That's the lasting message of Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, the new PBS American Masters film, a rich history of a rare product of television who dominated the small screen for decades. Unprecedented access to personal archives plus all existing episodes of The Tonight Show (1962-92), distinguishes this film by Peter Jones. Telling interviews with family and colleagues, including second wife Joanne Carson, former Tonight Show executive producer Peter Lassally and a number of biographers sharpen the picture. The clips are carefully selected to illustrate specific personality traits, the performance highlights are given context and meaning beyond funny lines and memorable moments.

  • Hank Stuever

    AMC's The Pitch is a sharply-made if slightly off-putting reality series that follows different advertising agencies each week as they compete for new accounts. The inspiration for the show — made clear by its own ad campaign — is to harness some of the verve generated by the network's acclaimed Mad Men. The Pitch has a way of making the ad world seem like a real downer — a repugnant exercise in egotism laced with depressing bouts of creative compromise.

  • Tim Goodman

    HBO's Veep stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as former Sen. Selina Meyer, who accepts the vice presidential duty and regrets it almost immediately: She has no real power and gets muscled by the Senate, Congress and the (so-far-unseen) president, who delegates all the truly crappy jobs to her. Louis-Dreyfus has found perhaps her best post-Seinfeld role and takes to it with such fervor — the constant swearing, the barely veiled desire to become president, the unhappy give-and-take with other politicians and a delightful disdain for average citizens — that you can't help but applaud what is clearly an Emmy-worthy effort. Her work alone makes Veep a gem, but there's even more to like.

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