This week, Mekeisha Madden Toby of MSN TV joins Jason and Joel to recap her experience at the TCA press tour. After she leaves to attend to work (and her daughter), we move on to other topics. But there was a lot to talk about from the TCAs:
- Mekeisha tells us what the overriding theme of the press tour was, and which network did the best and worst jobs of their presentations,
- We also get down to the truth of why the members were banned from taking photos after Sarah Palin showed up. It’s a little inside baseball, but it’s good insight into how we do our jobs there,
- Then the topic turns to the much-anticipated session with Aaron Sorkin about The Newsroom, why it was different than the grilling that Michael Patrick King got in January, and why it felt that some critics had a “let’s get him!” attitude going in,
- On that topic, we have a spirited discussion on whether TV critics are starting to take themselves too seriously, given that they’re, you know, writing about TV, not national security,
- After Mekeisha leaves, we talk about NBC’s continuing Olympic coverage, and why the heck they have Ryan Seacrest talking about sports in any way shape or form,
- We also wonder if the audience is being well served by the network’s continuing USA-centric coverage, something they’ve been doing for years now,
- We talk about Dan Harmon’s revealing interview this week, and whether the creator of Community needed to be more mindful that he works in a for-profit business,
- Finally, we talk a little about three fall shows: NBC’s Go On and Animal Practice (previewing this week) and CBS’s Elementary (Sherlock Holmes grafted onto a traditional CBS procedural).
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By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.
Joel Keller
Joel Keller is one of the co-founders of Antenna Free TV and co-hosts the weekly AFT Podcast. A long time ago, he left a career rebooting servers to write about TV and other fun stuff (though his ulterior motive was to write off his cable on his income taxes). At the time, he was writing for the late, great site TV Squad, where he eventually became editor-in-chief. Since those heady days, he's written about TV and other topics for The New York Times, The A.V. Club, TheAtlantic.com, Fast Company's Co.Create, Vulture, Zap2It and elsewhere.
