Free Republic

A spaceship powered by nuclear bombs secretly launched in the 1960s. A colony ship on 100-year journey to spread humanity to the stars. These central themes of the SyFy Channel's epic "Ascension" miniseries this week sound like pure science fiction, U.S. scientists actually worked to build such a spaceship in the 1960s. In "Ascension," a three-part SyFy miniseries that launches tonight (Dec. 15), 600 people live aboard an Orion-class nuclear spacecraft on a mission to Proxima Centauri. The mission launched in 1963, when the Space Race was in full swing and the Cold War made the threat of global nuclear...

According to Nielsen, FOX News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier surpassed ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir in five key markets across the country in household viewers including Baltimore, Jacksonville, Ft. Myers, Providence and St. Louis. As a cable news program, this is quite an impressive feat for Special Report, as its rival World News Tonight is a broadcast program. With more than a double-digit advantage over Muir, Special Report easily beats World News Tonight. Baier also outperforms the broadcast program CBS’ Evening News with Scott Pelley in both Atlanta and Austin in household viewers. In cable news,...

Nielsen Ratings are going to finally factor in Netflix traffic. Reed Hastings thinks it's too little, too late.

....Roseanne Barr tweeted a photo of her face looking battered and bruised, joking that she got into a "tussle" with Bill Cosby. In reality, the actress had gotten a chemical peel. The media immediately pounced on the comedian's post, and she deleted it. Barr since regrets doing it -- not joking about Cosby but deleting her post.

“Saturday Night Live” last night mocked President Obama’s executive action to grant legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants by twisting a staple of the TV classic “Schoolhouse Rock!”

Great animated adaptation of the classic Kipling tale of a young mongoose and his struggles against a pair of vicious cobras. Animated. Narrated by Orson Welles.

....Jon Stewart is sitting outside his offices reflecting on his directorial debut, “Rosewater,” a drama about the unjust imprisonment of journalist Maziar Bahari in Iran.... It’s the morning after “The Daily Show” broadcast live for the midterm elections, including a sketch that reported from the campaign headquarters of the night’s big winner — Money, as played by a hard-partying Rob Riggle — and the desolate base of the night’s loser, Ideas. ....Stewart shot the film last summer in Jordan while on hiatus from “The Daily Show.” In extreme heat, working with a largely international cast and with a small budget,...

The mainstream media’s infatuation with the state-subsidized “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice” movie production reached new heights this week following reports from an anonymous blogger who posted photos of filming in East Lansing and Detroit. What hasn’t been in the media’s viewfinder is that the production may be collecting subsidies not just from Michigan but also from other states. Batman vs. Superman will be filmed in several states, and at least one of them says the film is eligible for its own film subsidies. In addition to the $35 million the film’s producers have been approved to collect from...

Animal rights group PETA has slammed the Discovery Channel's 'Eaten Alive' show, which claims it will show a man being eaten alive by an anaconda, as a publicity stunt that will torment the snake. Trailers of the show, which will be aired on Dec. 7 on the cable network, show naturalist and wildlife filmmaker and author Paul Rosolie donning a custom-built snake-proof outfit. "I am about to be the first person that is going to be eaten alive by an anaconda," Rosalie says in the trailer as his team is shown catching a snake. "I don't expect anyone to believe...

Ten senior members of North Korea’s ruling party have been executed after they were caught watching soap operas. The officials were killed on the order of dictator Kim Jong-Un, taking the number of senior government and military members executed this year to 50, South Korea's intelligence agency have said. The ten were ‘executed by firing squad for watching South Korean soap operas, bribery or womanising’.

This is Iraq under a future Islamic state, as imagined in “State of Superstition,” a hit comedy on state-run Al Iraqiya TV. The half-hour show turns a deadly serious subject — the reign of terror imposed by the extremist group Islamic State in parts of Iraq and Syria — into fodder for spoof and satire. The Beheader character is a comic takedown of Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph and Islamic State leader. An actor in a preposterously long and tangled fake beard — one of a couple of dozen fake beards glued on to characters each episode by an...

TLC's "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" is ending its run. On Friday, TMZ reported that the network has canceled the series in light of claims that the program's newly separated matriarch, June "Mama June" Shannon, is dating Mark Anthony McDaniel, a man who served 10 years in prison after being convicted of aggravated child molestation in 2004 and who is a registered sex offender.

Parents aren't happy that the toy store chain is selling drug dealer dolls, complete with bags of crystal meth and sacks of cash. Susan Schrivjer, a mom from Fort Myers, Fla., was a fan of the award-winning AMC show Breaking Bad.... Even so, she thinks it’s not such a great idea to sell action figures based on the show’s notorious crystal meth dealers Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in a store where the customer base is families with young children.

The BBC is adapting John le Carre's novel The Night Manager for a new six-part series. The book, published in 1993, is about a former British soldier who ends up going undercover as part of a sting against a black market weapons dealer. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston are set to star, according to the Hollywood Reporter, but the BBC said that was just speculation. US networks are also looking to pick up the series, the magazine reported.

Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie have another edition of ReasonTV out this week and it should be near and dear to the hearts of all of you libertarians in the audience. They previously generated a list of the best television shows for libertarians (which may or may not hold true for some of you) but now they’ve come up with their list of the worst. How does one judge television programs on this criteria? I suppose it should be based on the most nauseating examples of the nanny state being portrayed as a force for good as they meddle in the lives of...

A software bug has resulted in TV ratings being allocated incorrectly among broadcast and syndication programming since March, according to executives at Nielsen, the measurement service whose rankings form the basis of how advertisers pay for TV commercials. At issue is a process used by the company when it moves from its initial survey of national ratings to its final one. When Nielsen calculates its early “fast national” ratings, some sources of viewership are not properly labeled and the data is put aside as “all other television” until they can be identified and tabulated properly. But Nielsen has discovered that...

Hooks didn't barrel into your consciousness with catchphrases..... ...she was a team player who helped make SNL bigger than the sum of its cast list, by being week in and week out one of its best comic actresses ever. ....Hooks could turn herself into celebrities from Sinead O’Connor to Tammy Faye Bakker to Diane Sawyer. Born in Atlanta (where she had an early role on TBS’s Bill Tush Show), she had a special knack for channeling brassy Southern women..... Hooks could turn herself into celebrities from Sinead O’Connor to Tammy Faye Bakker to Diane Sawyer. Born in Atlanta (where she...

FNC celebrates a quarter with the most-watched primetime across the cable dial, while MSNBC slides below CNN in the demo. No one would say the summer of 2014 suffered any shortage of breaking news. From the crisis in Ferguson, Mo., to the cultural impact of Robin Williams' and Joan Rivers' sudden deaths and all the way up to recent round-the-clock coverage of U.S. strikes on ISIS, cable news has been heavily occupied. The last three months have been so big, Fox News Channel just clocked its first quarter with the most-watched primetime across all of cable in more than a...

Monday on CNN's "The Lead," host Jake Tapper said the man who beheaded his co worker in Oklahoma on Thursday, Alton Nolen, was "clearly an Islamic extremist." Tapper said, "Some call this a case of workplace violence. The suspect's devolution into the world of radical Islam is hard to ignore."

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The conservative co-host suggested she didn't enjoy working for Palin during a segment about the former VP's bar brawl scandal.“The View” co-host Nicolle Wallace explained on Monday how she was struck with fear after she heard Sarah Palin was speaking out for the first time since her family was allegedly involved in a bar brawl. “I worked for Sarah Palin,” Wallace said. “I have the political staffer version of PTSD, so whenever I hear that she's breaking her silence, my heart stops.” Whoopi Goldberg led off the “Hot Topic” segment by referring to Palin as a “crazy politician,” and the...