M2tv

Rob Owen On The Big Box Zeitgeist; CSI:NY - When Stodgy Networks Try Kewl

A number of television characters work in mind numbing big box stores these days. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette critic Rob Owen takes a fun look at the big box zeitgeist.

Also, tomorrow night The Tiffany Network’s CSI: NY makes a faintly desperate bid for younger viewers by going “Second Life.” Det. Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) enters the virtual world of Second Life to solve a crime.

I hadn't paid much attention to this latest CBS gambit. I’ve made no secret of my dislike of the sleazy and gratuitous CSI: NY, with their chatter about pubic hair found on calendar pages, scantily clad dead women pinned to walls, and rock bands called Rough Sects.

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE STORY! (and a other little tidbits, including 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper and Nancy Grace)

From Katrina to Crushing Coke Cans: The Dumbing Down of Anderson Cooper

Just two years ago post-Katrina, the New York Times gushed over Anderson Cooper, the "anchor who reports with a heart on his sleeve....he's anything but slick and packaged."

I watched the last, interminable eight minutes of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 (or AC 360) the other night. After the inane banter between Cooper and correspondent Erica Hill which ended in Cooper crushing a coke can in an obviously scripted moment, my husband yelled from his office across the hall, "omg! it's the news equivalent of vaporware!"

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS STORY