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At the height of the protests following Iran's controversial presidential election this summer, a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran. Her death -- filmed on a camera phone, then uploaded to the Web -- quickly became an international outrage, and Soltan became the face of a powerful movement that threatened the hard-line government's hold on power. In A Death in Tehran, FRONTLINE revisits the events of last summer, shedding new light on Neda's life and death and the movement she helped inspire. In response to the international outcry over Neda's death...

Equalizer Actor Edward Woodward Dies Actor Edward Woodward, famous for his roles in The Wicker Man and The Equalizer has died today. Actor 'never lost his brave spirit' The 79-year-old had been suffering from various illnesses, including pneumonia.

Paul Wendkos, who directed the 1959 surfing classic "Gidget" and two sequels, died early Thursday at his home in Malibu... His feature film credits include 1961's "Angel Baby," with George Hamilton and Mercedes McCambridge, and 1971's "The Mephisto Waltz," starring Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bisset...

At the height of the protests following Iran’s controversial presidential election this summer, a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran. Her death -- filmed on a cameraphone, then uploaded to the web -- quickly became an international outrage, and Agha Soltan became the face of a powerful movement that threatened the hard-line government’s hold on power. With the help of a unique network of correspondents in and out of the country, FRONTLINE investigates the life and death of the woman whose image remains a potent symbol for those who want to...

How did this show get past the ABC censors? How did the folks in Hollywood—good Progressives, all—let this program sneak onto the air? Were movie studio heads so distracted by attending yet another Washington fund raiser that a genuine alternate viewpoint was allowed to air? We may never know, but we can be grateful for the remake of V. Because it turns upside down every well known Left Coast trope. A Catholic priest (Joel Gretsch) has doubts. No, not those kinds. He distrusts the milky language of the Visitors and says so in his sermons. A Monsegnior insists the Vs...

(NaturalNews) Television viewing before bed is a significant contributor to chronic health problems, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. Although most adults need at least seven to eight hours of sleep per night, as many as 40 percent of U.S. adults fail to get this much. Lack of sleep is a major contributor to chronic health problems, including obesity, heart disease and depression. In an attempt to find easy ways for people to get more sleep, researchers surveyed 21,475 people over the...

With the news that Oprah Winfrey may take her daily talk show away from broadcast affiliates and to her own OWN cable network, that got us wondering: should Glenn Beck, now the #2 show on cable despite airing in he afternoons, be Oprah's syndicated replacement? Beck is well-rounded. Between his #1 best-selling books and comedy shows he's a three-dimensional talent that could easily adapt to daytimes. He could also use his radio audience to promote to local affiliates. Just yesterday, the New York Times reported novelists are considering Beck to be the "New Oprah," when it comes to endorsing political...

She is known for her unconventional choices and now US first lady Michelle Obama is setting another precedent by the first presidential wife to appear on a reality TV series. The First Lady will make a guest appearance on the popular series 'Iron Chef America' which features British cook Nigella Lawson as a judge, reported Daily Mail online. The episode of the popular series, which pits well-known chefs against each others, has been filmed at the White House and will be aired in the New Year. Many of the ingredients for the meals prepared in the show were chosen from...

NEW YORK – On-air promos for a sexual threesome on an upcoming episode of "Gossip Girl" have spurred the Parents Television Council to ask affiliates of the CW network to pre-empt the show. Airing the teen tryst, which is being teased in an ad as a "3SOME," is "reckless and irresponsible," said PTC president Tim Winter in a statement Wednesday. The threesome involves three main characters in the show but they are not identified in the promos. The PTC has urged CW affiliate stations not to air the episode, scheduled for Nov. 9. In a letter to the affiliates, Winter...

V” got off to an out-of-this-world start Tuesday night for ABC and put the Alphabet just a fraction behind CBS in the demo race. Eye edged out a win with new episodes of its “NCIS” franchise and freshman drama “The Good Wife.” But execs at ABC are all smiles as sci-fi skein “V” drew a 5.0 rating and 13 share, with 13.9 million viewers tuning in, making it the highest-rated series debut of the new season. Reviews for the Warner Bros. show were stellar and audiences clearly checked in at 8 o’clock to see what the hype was all about.

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.

Despite the fact that Fox News draws more viewers than CNN, MSNBC and Headlne News combined, the White House has announced its intent to boycott Fox for the next several months. In order to make up for the viewer shortfall, the White House will vary its appearance schedule to include "non-traditional" cable outlets.

WPGA severing ties with ABC networkBy Mike Stucka WPGA is dropping its affiliation with the ABC network, leaving the local FOX affiliate to add ABC to a new channel, a WPGA official said today. Lowell Register, president of WPGA, said the changes will come at midnight Jan. 1, when his station becomes independent. Viewers will still see syndicated favorites such as Martha Stewart, but they won’t see ABC programming such as “Good Morning America” and its primetime lineup, Register said. Register said he’s been having more disagreements with ABC over its programming, though he declined to give specific examples. He...

Glenn Beck TV show for Friday, 10-23-09 is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbxeaHt5TZE&feature=channel The YouTube channel is called BuckFarack, and it has the show in five segments with good quality audio and video.

Soupy Sales died at age 83 yesterday. He hosted an afternoon kiddie show that reached its height of popularity in the mid-1960s. He was totally unlike other kids-show hosts of that, or any other, era. He wasn’t soft-spoken, like Mr. Rogers; he wasn’t grandfatherly, like Captain Kangaroo; he didn’t want to teach you anything, like Mr. Wizard. What Soupy was was a unique combination of silly and hip. He mixed slapstick with self-conscious irony. He was forever getting a pie thrown in his face. He talked to puppets, especially two — White Fang and Black Tooth — that were really...

The comedy icon made pie-in-the-face gag a pop-culture phenomenon: It was a simple gag, but one that made Soupy Sales a household name: a pie in the face, or 20,000 pies, to be exact. That slapstick comedic trick, along with a warehouse of goofy faces and wacky characters helped elevate Sales (born Milton Supman) to one of the country's most beloved comedians in the late 1950s. Sales died on Thursday at the age of 83 at a hospital in the Bronx, after several years of declining health... With his loose-limbed physicality and malleable face, Sales honed his craft on children's...

DETROIT – Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, has died. He was 83. Sales died at Thursday night at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, Usher said. At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.

Officials at the Moose Lake Sex Offenders Program began unbolting the two dozen 50-inch plasma television sets at the center on Tuesday, just hours after Gov. Tim Pawlenty called the purchase "boneheaded" and ordered a search to find out who made the decision. The TVs, costing $1,576 apiece with $706 mounting brackets, were ordered last October and installed at the new $45 million treatment center when it opened in July. State officials said the televisions, which were mounted in common areas, made it easier to supervise patients at the 400-bed facility. But when Pawlenty learned of the purchase in a...

Even though Robi Boscarino lives a world away, the 17-year-old Australian still manages to tune into CBS' "NCIS" seven nights a week. Earlier this month, the Perth resident visited the hit crime procedural's sound stages in Valencia and caught his favorite character, DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), in action. "Back home, everybody likes him," said Boscarino, who has Hodgkin's lymphoma and whose big dream to visit the set was made possible by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. "He's one of the most popular TV actors, for sure. This is more than I expected, to be honest. I didn't expect him to be like he...

MSNBC uber-dork Keith Olbermann has done it again. The cable channel's principal pontificator -- in naming syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin "the worst person in the world" on Wednesday night -- blasted her "total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred, without which Michelle Malkin would just be a mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it." AirAmerica.com blogger Megan Carpentier found Olbermann's remarks more than slightly misogynistic, and said, "By attacking Michelle Malkin's politics with an assault on women of every political persuasion, and then indicating a desire to see her physically harmed, a person might understandably get the idea that...

The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions. On Tuesday, executives and consultants for the Arlington, Va., trade group asked members of the California Energy Commission to instead let consumers use their wallets to decide whether they want to buy the most energy-saving new models of liquid-crystal display and plasma high-definition TVs. "Voluntary efforts are succeeding without regulations," said Doug Johnson, the association's senior director for technology policy. Too much government interference could hamstring industry innovation and prove...

Experts are warning child care centres to drastically limit the amount of time children spend watching television or ban TV altogether. Research by the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital suggests children under the age of two should not watch any TV at all. The researchers have now written guidelines for the Federal Government as part of the Get Up and Grow guidelines to reduce childhood obesity. They are designed specifically for child care centres but also provide some advice for parents. Statistics show that four-month-old infants watch on average 44 minutes of TV each day and children under the age of...

I'm not kidding. B.O. did a commercial for the George Lopez show right in the middle of the play-offs. The EGO has landed again.

She’s Madge the manicurist for the new millennium. Stephanie Courtney, also known as “Flo,” the perky Progressive Insurance salesgirl with the red lipstick, is the commercial break’s new sweetheart. And in an age when the DVR is said to have killed the television pitchman, Courtney is attaining TV ad icon status.

Get a hit drama in here, stat! Just a couple weeks into the fall television season, the prognosis is not looking good for NBC. To wit:

Bangladesh on Wednesday awarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats and launched a monthlong campaign nationwide to kill millions more, to protect crops and reduce the need for food imports. Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a first prize of a color television for killing some 83,450 rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country's capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof. "I am so happy to get this honor," Islam told The Associated Press after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers...

From Cloris Leachman to Evander Holyfield, Tatum O’Neal to Jerry Springer , Priscilla Presley to Steve-O. You’d think we’d seen it all on ABC TV’s “Dancing With The Stars.” But those crafty “Dancing With The Stars” producers just keep surprising us with something unusual each season. The contestant choices are designed to keep us on our toes, but more often I think they just keep our fingers on the remote. In the interest of better judgment, here are ten celebrities I hope we never, ever have to see as “Dancing With The Stars” contestants! Britney Spears: Haven’t we had just...

The numbers are in for President Obama’s carpet-bombing of the Sunday TV talk shows. Obama drew fewer viewers than the shows normally draw His numbers (with last season’s averages in parenthesis):

Somebody at FoxNews is keeping Obama on instead of Glenn Beck's show and I think Obama is purposely blathering on about nothing just to keep us from watching Glenn Beck's show.

CBS scored an across-the-board ratings triumph with its new cops & lawyers combo. The series debuts of new procedurals "NCIS: Los Angeles" and "The Good Wife" delivered impressive premiere ratings and won their hours, while returning veteran "NCIS" was the night's highest-rated show. The second day of the broadcast season was marked by an unusual quartet of two-hour blocks: Two hours of NBC's "The Biggest Loser" vs. two hours of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" vs. two hours of Fox's "Hell's Kitchen" against two hours of CBS' "NCIS" (well, "NCIS" and its spinoff). Starting off the night for CBS, the...

An appearance by president Barack Obama gave David Letterman his largest overnight rating in four years. Monday's season-opening episode of CBS' "Late Show" received a 5.6 metered-market household rating and 14 share -- a dizzying 195% higher than NBC's "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" (1.9, 5). Not that it matters (except it makes a nice talking point), Letterman also beat NBC's 10 p.m. "Jay Leno Show" by 27% among households. The last Letterman episode to post a higher rating was when Oprah was his guest in 2005. Note though, when Obama was on "Tonight" back in March with Leno at...

What do you think?

Chris O’Donnell seems pretty robust for a guy who went down in a hail of gunfire a few months ago. Between takes on the set of “NCIS: Los Angeles,’’ the actor looks relaxed, if a little gruffer and buffer than in his “Scent of a Woman’’ days...he admits, he was a little concerned that CBS wasn’t actually picking up the “NCIS’’ spin-off when he saw how many hits he was taking in a two-part episode of the original series... “I was a little shocked,’’ he says with a chuckle, “because that was a lot of bullets.’’ O’Donnell lived. And if...

President Obama will appear on a record five TV networks on Sunday -- the morning talk shows of ABC, NBC, CBS and sit for interviews with CNN and Spanish-language network Univision. Since becoming president, Obama will have done 124 print, broadcast and radio interviews, according to a tally by Maryland's Towson University -- three times more than George W. Bush did by the same point in his presidency. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the interviews are "an attempt by the president to speak to as many different people as he can on an issue that's as important as something...

Reporting from Sacramento - Concerned that the growing popularity of big-screen televisions could make it harder for California to keep pace with electricity demand, state energy regulators are poised to crack down on energy-guzzling sets despite opposition from a powerful electronics trade group. The first-in-the-nation TV efficiency standards would require electronics retailers to sell only energy-sipping models starting in 2011. Even tougher efficiency criteria would follow in 2013. The California Energy Commission is slated to unveil the new standards today, followed by a 45-day public comment period. The commission is expected to approve the measure in early November. The rules,...

I thougbt it would be fun to have a thread where we talk about the TV season premieres.

Tonight "America's Got Talent" crowned Kevin Skinner as the winner of season four. After a video synopsis of last night, Nick asks the judges for predictions about the winners. Piers says he has no idea this year. Sharon says tonight is bittersweet but she can't wait to see who America has chosen. The Hoff makes more "Hoff" puns while being dressed like an extra from "Dick Tracy."

TUCSON REGION Tucson Time Capsule : Tonto at old Tucson Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.11.2009 On Sept. 11, 1974 Jay Silverheels, perhaps better known as Tonto, was in town. But he wasn't here with his trusty sidekick — that Masked Man — to fight evil in the Old West, he was filming a commercial at Old Tucson. This wasn't his first trip to Tucson; he and Clayton Moore, the Lone Ranger, had been here in the late 1950s filming "The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold." Given the chance, Silverheels would gladly reprise his Tonto role; he was...

If Jay Leno Wants Better Reviews He Can Start By Removing the Lapel Flag by John Nolte Critics love David Letterman. They love him because he’s mean and liberal and does everything they demand: further the leftist agenda through the brutal use of humiliation to target any public figure (or their child) who might derail Leftist causes. And contrary to conventional wisdom, Letterman’s not edgy. In fact, he’s just the opposite. Doing exactly what those who can criticize you want you to do is not edgy. Kissing the big Manhattan/Los Angeles bi-coastal ass of the elite is not edgy. He’s...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A Southern California couple who went on national television to brag about making $100,000 shoplifting toys and selling their loot on eBay has pleaded not guilty to federal conspiracy charges in San Diego. A federal grand jury indictment unsealed Monday says authorities seized more than 500 boxes of stolen toys when they raided Laura and Matthew Eaton's home in San Marcos with a search warrant in March. The couple was arrested Friday and faces at least 27 months in prison if convicted of conspiracy to transport stolen property. The Eatons appeared on the "Dr. Phil" show...

Its melodramatic, twisting plot and apocalyptic overtones were tailor-made for western audiences. Now Lost, the US television series about plane crash survivors stuck on a remote island, is to be put on commercial release in Iran following soaring sales of pirated black-market DVDs. Silver Screen, the country's leading home video distributor, is to market the award-winning show's first three seasons – a total of 15 episodes – after buying the broadcast rights and commissioning Iranian actors to dub it into Farsi. It has also started talks with the state broadcaster, IRIB, with a view to airing Lost on nationwide television....

The health care system is broken. Young people are the most uninsured population in the country. The status quo is no longer an option. We need bold, real reform and we need it now. Sign the pledge to act. You should mean it because we're going to ask you to get in the game by making a phone call or two, sending a letter to the editor, or emailing your Senator. It is important and we need your help!

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann is looking for dirt on Fox News' Glenn Beck. "Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes," Olbermann posted on The Daily Kos. (Burguiere produces Beck's radio show; Ailes is the head of Fox News.) Read about the top 5 talk-show controversies of 2009 Olbermann's request for fact-finding was a somewhat cheeky reply to Beck's own similarly phrased, ALL-IN-CAPS request, on his Twitter feed, for his followers to dig up some dirt on Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd and Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's nominees to fill the positions of the head of...

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Guess who's not pleased about Van Jones middle-of-the-night-on-a-holiday-weekend resignation? Perhaps you never would have seen this one coming, but no other MSNBC "Countdown" host and provocateur Keith Olbermann himself. Bitter and seeing red? Perhaps. In a post on the Daily Kos dated Sept. 6, Olbermann urged the half-crazed liberal Kos readers to go digging for dirt on Fox News host Glenn Beck, Beck's radio producer Stu Burguiere and Fox News president Roger Ailes. (h/t Morgen of Verum Serum) "I don't know why I've got this phrasing in my head, but: Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and...

I just heard on Fox that today is a special day in history in that the last episode of "Gilligan's Island" was broadcast on this day in 1967. And it's been downhill for American culture ever since.

BERLIN--We're here at IFA at the Sony press conference, where Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer reckons the "3D train is on the track--and we're the ones to drive it home." 3D is Sony's big push, but we're more interested in the announcement of a movie-download service for PS3 and PSP, via the PlayStation Network. Sony has announced its first 3D-compatible Bravia LCD TV, to arrive in 2010. It promises a high frame rate and 1,920x1,080 pixels per eye to give what Sony describes as "high-definition, high-quality 3D images." 3D-enabled Blu-ray players are set to follow and even the PS3 will...

Michelle Malkin: Independent TV documentarian Jan Helfeld asks California Democrat Rep. Pete Stark about the national debt and the economy. Stark tells him repeatedly to “shut up,

Dear Principal: In a recent interview with student reporter, Damon Weaver, President Obama announced that on September 8 — the first day of school for many children across America — he will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of education.........so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens. This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's school children about persisting and succeeding in school. We encourage you to use this historic moment to help your students get focused and...

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” —Abraham Lincoln The battle lines continue to be drawn, and in this article I will discuss one that you can, and should, draw now. Glenn Beck ought to get the Medal of Freedom, and Fox News deserves America’s heart-felt gratitude. Without Fox News, and Beck in particular, we would largely be...