television Page 17 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Bill Simmons's New HBO Show Debuts With Insane Ben Affleck Ballghazi Rant
Any Given Wednesday, Bill Simmons’ new weekly sports talk show, debuted this evening on HBO. It was ... exactly what you’d expect. It opened with a segment on the NBA Finals and LeBron’s greatness (featuring a Teen Wolf comparison less than two minutes in) before Charles Barkley joined the show to l...
Why Your Children's Television Program Sucks: <i>Jake And The Neverland Pirates</i>
A look at the awful children’s programming you’re forced to endure before you can finally kick the kids out of the TV room to watch sports for eight hours. ...
Is The Live Sports Rights Bubble Finally Bursting?
Over the past decade, television broadcasters have bet that DVR-proof live sports will remain highly profitable, and shelled out tens of billions of dollars to acquire broadcast rights to the NFL, NBA, MLB, Olympics, World Cup, college football and basketball, and all other sports imaginable. Fox, C...
Why <i>Veep</i> Can't Let Selina Be V.P. Again
Season 4 of Veep ended with Selina Meyer, the titular VP, as president—but just barely. Having ascended to the highest office in the land without actually ever being voted president by the people, she faces an uncertain re-election. But at the end of the night—and the end of the season—her future is...
Sources: CBS, Turner, NCAA Agree To Extend March Madness Broadcasting Contract
The NCAA has agreed to extend their 14-year, $10.8 billion March Madness television contract with CBS and Turner Sports, according to multiple sources close to the process, though they caution that no announcement is imminent. The original deal, signed in 2010, lasts through the 2024 tournament. The...
Why Your Children's Television Program Sucks: <i>Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood</i>
It’s time to crash Deadspin’s ongoing series surveying the awful shows you’re forced to endure before you can finally kick the kids out of the TV room to watch sports for eight hours to watch reruns of The Americans. ...
WatchESPN Shows 10 Minutes Of This Guy Standing Around In A Studio Instead Of Warriors—Clippers
Maybe you booted up WatchESPN last night to catch the Warriors beat the Clippers. Maybe you wanted to watch Golden State try to win without a center, or Chris Paul yip at people. Instead, you got this....
Why Your Children's Television Program Sucks: <i>PAW Patrol</i>
It’s time once again for our ongoing series surveying the awful shows you’re forced to endure before you can finally kick the kids out of the TV room to watch sports for eight hours....
NHL.tv Updates Service (To An Unusable Pile Of Shit), Threatens Users Who Try To Circumvent Blackouts
We’ve been getting tips all week from frustrated NHL.tv customers who installed NHL.tv’s new upgrade this week, only to see the entire service dissolve into an malfunctioning mess of blackouts. At pretty much any time when games are on, the @NHLTVSupport account’s mentions are full of hordes of comp...
ESPN's Uncertain Future Is Already Here
The television industry is still working through the period of upheaval it entered during the mid- to late-aughts, when a variety of rival technologies all began to seriously affect business. DVRs achieved ubiquity, allowing viewers to skip commercials; streaming services like Netflix and Hulu grew ...
MLB's Blackout Rules Improved By Class Action Lawsuit Settlement
Major League Baseball’s antiquated blackout rules were rewritten Tuesday, after the league reached an agreement in a class action lawsuit that alleged collusion between teams and television networks in erecting boundaries around where certain games could be aired. The settlement resulted from a numb...
Why Your Children's Television Program Sucks: <i>Mickey Mouse Clubhouse </i>
It’s time once again for our ongoing series surveying the awful shows you’re forced to endure before you can finally kick the kids out of the TV room to watch sports for eight hours....
I'm Alan Sepinwall, Author of <i>The Revolution Was Televised.</i> Let's Chat!
We’re now joined by Alan Sepinwall, author of The Revolution Was Televised, a fantastic book about the origins of The Sopranos, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, and other dramas that laid the ground for the current golden age of television. It’s now out in a new edition, featuring new material on how...
<i>Empire </i>Is Back, And More Ridiculous Than Ever
The second season of Empire opens with a #FreeLucious concert staged as a show of support for incarcerated Empire Records CEO Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard). Bill Clinton is said to be in the crowd (“if he wants his wife to get elected”), Swizz Beatz is onstage, and Al Sharpton is backstage, along w...
Tracy Morgan's Emmys Speech Dusted Off One Of His Best, Bawdiest Jokes
At the 2014 Emmys, Jimmy Kimmel promised us that Tracy Morgan would be back onstage next year, and last night, Morgan made good on that promise, presenting the final Emmy of the night. Of course, his touching speech focused on the June 2014 car accident that put him in an eight-day coma, and the 15 ...
IFC's <i>Documentary Now!</i> Is A Serious Parody Of A Too-Serious Genre
Tonight, IFC premieres Documentary Now!, a new parody series from Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Myers. Its first target? Grey Gardens, the 1976 classic about mother-daughter socialite shut-ins and Kennedy relatives. It’s pretty spot-on, as these things go....
Letterman Guests: "Top Ten Things I've Always Wanted To Say To Dave"
David Letterman’s final Top Ten list featured some of the late night host’s most legendary guests each announcing “something they’ve always wanted to say to Dave.” Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Barbara Walters, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peyton Manning, Tina Fey, and ...
"I'm Not Getting <i>The Tonight Show</i>"; Watch Letterman's Final Monologue
Tonight is David Letterman’s last show after 33 years of hosting late night television. Here’s his final opening monologue, in which he looks back on his decades of work. ...
<i>Game Of Thrones</i> Is Gross, Exploitative, And Totally Out Of Ideas
At this point, it’s disingenuous for anyone to complain about Game of Thrones being too violent or disturbing—the series’ five seasons have had a fair share of rape scenes and tremendous acts of violence—but the final frames of last night’s episode, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” were emblematic of ev...
<i>Mad Men</i> With The Dialogue Removed: Episode Two
Just like last week, we’ve selected key scenes from last night’s Mad Men episode to illustrate the role sound design and music play in setting the tone for prestige TV (and because, well, it’s neat). Last night’s episode once again featured music by David Carbonara, with sound mixing by Peter Ben...