2013 OCR TV Archive Stories

WATCH THIS"American Idol" 8 p.m Fox What a long, strange, contentious and sometimes downright ugly trip it has been this season, as "American Idol" has watched its viewers flee while the singers bored us and the judges fought.And yet after all that we will watch tonight; "American Idol" isn't nearly as good as it was

With broadcast networks unveiling their new schedules, the television industry is focused on potential ratings hits next season.But TV programming remained largely status quo last week with CBS maintaining its decisive lead, Nielsen Co. figures showed Tuesday.CBS' decade-old smash, "NCIS," held onto the No. 1 position, drawing more

"Survivor" ended a strong season Sunday night with a worthy winner in John Cochran and plenty of drama and false teeth, so why am I so unhappy Monday morning? The reunion show. Historically, that extra hour is one of the best parts of the season. We get to see all the players together for the first time since episode one, and at

I fear that most of us think of Roseanne Barr as a professional annoyance today, but there was a time when she was one of America's favorite entertainers. Her sitcom, "Roseanne," was the No. 1 series of 1989-90 and finished No. 2 in three other years. And in those days, a top-rated show put up viewership numbers that seem impossible toda

WATCH THIS "Castle" 10 p.m. ABC One of the most pleasant surprises of the current season has been how well "Castle" has fared despite having taken the usually fatal step of letting its central couple get together. Despite a few overwrought story lines (Alexis' kidnapping? Come on!) this has probably been the strongest seaso

The television audience appears to have made its choice of serial killers. Fox's Joe Carroll beats NBC's Hannibal Lecter in viewer interest.Last week's Nielsen Co. ratings make that clear. "The Following," the gruesome series that debuted on Fox in January, is a hit. With 7.8 million viewers, it was Fox's most popular program last week af

A weekly roundup of reality-competition shows. "The Amazing Race" ended another season in disappointing fashion Sunday night, spoiling what had been a competitive revival for the show. After losing country singers Caroline and Jen at the end of a strong leg in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Race took the final three teams to Wash

WATCH THIS "Manhunt," 8 p.m. HBO The cheetah-quick Navy Seals operation that eliminated Osama bin Laden was preceded by an agonizing decade of tortoise-slow pursuit by the CIA, relying on the work of mostly female analysts and mostly male field agents. This documentary, based on journalist Peter Bergen's book of the

A 1-2-3 finish by "NCIS," "The Big Bang Theory" and "NCIS: Los Angeles" helped CBS become the most-watched network for the ninth consecutive week and 15th time in 16 weeks. In a week that included the first four days of May sweeps, CBS had seven of the eight most-watched scripted series and averaged 8.71 million viewers for its prime-tim

And now it's time to say goodbye. May marks the end of the network season, and we will be spending most of the month watching finale episodes. We arrive with a ton of questions: Can Cochran win one for the nerds and take "Survivor: Caramoan"? (We hope so.) Will "The Amazing Race" get its third set of female winners? (Probably not

Hannibal Lecter is back, but even such a notorious villain is having a hard time getting noticed in the crowded world of serial killers on TV. America's favorite cannibal must jostle for attention with Joe Carroll of "The Following," budding monster Norman Bates of "Bates Motel," Red John from "The Mentalist," the serial killer of the we

Each week, TV Rewind recalls a show from the past that we can still watch in reruns, on disc or from a streaming service. 'THE TUDORS' We'll be seeing a lot of Natalie Dormer soon. Along with her regular role on "Game of Thrones," the British actress will play Sherlock Holmes' personal kryptonite, Irene Adler, in three upc

Every so often a show arrives that is so bad that you can almost admire its awfulness."Ready for Love," NBC's new matchmaking show, is one of those rarities, but if you want to experience the depths of its badness, you'll need to move quickly. The show will end after tonight's third episode, bringing a merciful conclusion to some tragical

We live in boom times for television drama. When there are so many good dramas on cable that the broadcast networks can't even manage an Emmy nomination and it takes all week just to watch all the shows you recorded Sunday night, we really don't have much cause to complain. But we will, anyway. Even on the best series, th

The deadly Boston Marathon bombings and the massive manhunt for two suspects helped television news, with Fox News Channel leading all cable networks in prime-time ratings for the first week since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Fox averaged 2.87 million viewers in prime time last week, topping the USA network, which had 2.62

Radio personalities, pet advocates and friends gathered Friday in Santa Ana to remember Register radio columnist Gary Lycan, who died April 9 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. Former radio personality and "Forgotten Hollywood" author Manny Pacheco said Lycan was "a real icon of our business." "He championed the world o

The murder-for-hire case of Sandra Jessee will be featured tonight in Investigation Discovery's true-crime series "Blood Relatives." Sandra Jessee's husband, Jack, was murdered in the couple's Placentia home in 1998. Six years later, Orange County sheriff's investigators arrested Sandra Jessee, her son Thomas Aehlert and Aehlert'

WATCH THIS "Which Way Is the Front Line from Here?" 8 tonight, HBO Tim Hetherington, a well-regarded war photographer and co-director of the award-winning Afghanistan war documentary "Restrepo," was killed in 2011 while covering the civil war in Libya. His co-director and close friend, Sebastian Junger, put together this 7

In the name of my queen, Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen, of the blood of old Valyria, mother to dragons, I set quill to parchment to declare ...Ahh, I can't do it.First, I don't have a quill or a parchment, and even if I did, I don't have a raven handy to dispatch it.Second, it's just not the right way to tell the people of We

CBS' coverage of the NCAA men's basketball tournament and Academy of Country Music Awards helped the network to its most-watched week since it aired Grammys on Feb. 4.CBS had each of the five most-watched prime-time programs April 1-7 and Sunday, topped by "The Big Bang Theory," which averaged 17.24 million viewers, and averaged 11.26 mil

Channel surfing with the Watcher ... Howls of protest went up from "Mad Men" fans when the season six premiere revealed that after a season of fidelity, Don Draper had gone back to his philandering ways. To which the Watcher asks: What show have you been watching? Remember, Don is the "protagonist." That's not the same as

"American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest loves to boast to viewers about the millions of votes they cast or the dozens of hit records that the show's alumni have produced.But there is one statistic we are unlikely to hear Seacrest crowing about this season: the ratings."American Idol," the nation's No. 1 TV show for a record eight consec

Planning on having one of the Keno brothers give you a six-figure appraisal on great-grandpa's desk? Time to get a move on. "Antiques Roadshow" is coming to the Anaheim Convention C

The return of the singing competition "The Voice" enabled NBC to edge Fox for third place last week, ending its nine-week streak in finishing last among the four major networks in the prime-time ratings. With the Monday episode of "The Voice" finishing fourth among the prime-time broadcast and cable programs shown between March 25 and Su

The term "critics' darling" gets thrown around a lot, but rarely has it found a better fit than with "Mad Men," the AMC drama that begins its sixth season Sunday.In its five previous outings, "Mad Men" has won the Emmy for outstanding drama a record-tying four consecutive times, was nominated for a fifth, and everywhere has drawn the kind