A selection of guests scheduled on today's talk shows:...

By Philip Hersh About a week before the 1994 Winter Olympics, after it had become apparent the Tonya-Nancy affair was going to drive CBS' Olympic ratings through the roof, a friend who worked for the TV network jokingly told me,...

Why does the word "melodrama" get such a bad rap? If the word is used as an adjective, it's usually meant as a warning sign. Yet the terrific new season of “Damages” (9 p.m. Wednesday, FX: three and a half stars) proves just how entertaining well-made melodrama can be. You’re unlikely to find yourself caring deeply for these characters and getting choked up over the small and large tragedies that affect their lives. If you’re in the mood for that, “Friday Night Lights” returns to NBC on Jan. 16.

Years ago, before Obama was Obama, the up-and-coming State Senator appeared on an up-and-coming public TV show, WTTW's "Check, Please!" As the story goes, if I remember correctly, Obama was so erudite and eloquent that ... well, it didn't...

As we mentioned earlier today, the Chicago Cubs could be close to being officially sold. Meanwhile, one man who many fans and players favored for the team was Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who's bid took a hit with the announcement last fall he was being investigated by the S.E.C. for insider trading. Today, Cuban took to his blog to discuss the Cubs, his proposal, the obstacles to his bid, and the credit crisis. An excerpt is below, but you can check out the whole thing here. My sense of th

i love this place for many reasons... cheap pizza & free pop, the fact that they show trash-talk shows on the TV (i have no shame, sign me up for some maury povich & pizza on my lunch break!), cheap…

CHICAGO ??? Every time we think we that we may have hit the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reality show television, someone, usually at The CW, figures out a way to scrape just a little bit lower.The crack creative souls at The CW have dug up “13: Fear is Real,” a ridiculous blend of “Saw” meets “Survivor” that could have had some B-movie thrill to it if it didn’t take itself so damn seriously. Have you ever wanted to watch people in a haunted house instead of going through one yourself? D

(Crain's) — Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has opened a probe into whether a new type of TV service offered by AT&T violates state law. Ms. Madigan's spokeswoman confirms that the office is studying whether AT&T is improperly short-changing public and educational access channels -- ...

Like the previous review, I found this place from the "Check Please" TV show and it sounded fantastic. Always up for a BBQ road trip, I headed out for lunch on a Sunday. After a half hour wait for a…

CHICAGO – The complex, twisted world of FX’s excellent “Damages” returns this week with a spectacular set-up for what promises to be another riveting season of twists and turns down the alleys of legal ethics and questionable moral behavior with an even more impressive ensemble than the one that won Emmys for its highly lauded first season.The character played by Zeljko Ivanek, Emmy winner for Supporting Actor, may be dead and gone, but the rest of the cast, including Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Tat

Actor John Mahoney says the criteria he uses for selecting his movie, television and stage projects is a "simple formula." "Is it a good project?" "Will it entertain me and the audience?" "Will I be ...

A selection of guests scheduled on today's talk shows:...

Episode: 472 - Mark DeRosa is Traded, Aaron Miles is Signed, Milton Bradley is about to Sign and Jason Marquis is about to Leave, plus MLB TV Debuts and Hockey at Wrigley Field (January 5) - 2009 Season Podcasts - Cubscast.com - Hosted By: Lou, Sheps & Sneetch

CHICAGO – The largely improvised “10 Items or Less” returns for a third trip to the grocery store on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 on TBS with what looks like another hit-and-miss season of occasionally inspired humor surrounded by generally boring characters in an overall mediocre show.More “Sorta Funny” than the one-time TBS slogan of “Very Funny,” “10 Items or Less” is a reasonable diversion, a series that has more chuckles than some of the lackluster comedies on television this season but never

CHICAGO ??? After recently lamenting the decline of “Nip/Tuck” in my review of the Season Five, Part One DVD, no one is more shocked than I am at the creative success of the mid-season premiere, airing January 6th, 2009 at 9pm CST on FX. Perhaps the creative spark on display can be credited to the return of creator Ryan Murphy, who clearly knows these characters better than anyone in the history of the show, with his first writing credit since the season premiere. Or perhaps the entire team liste

CHICAGO – The medical staff at Sacred Heart have picked up their surgical tools and switched networks from NBC to ABC with the eighth season premiere of “Scrubs” as two episodes of the Zach Braff comedy air back-to-back on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 8pm CST.The cast of “Scrubs,” including Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, Judy Reyes, Ken Jenkins, and Christa Miller, have made the move for what is reportedly the final season of the show on ABC and they broug

From MSNBC.com Obama appeared on Chicago's popular public television show "Check Please!" in August, 2001 when he was an Illinois state senator but the episode was never broadcast. Now, WTTW-television officials say they've found the episode and it will be...

This winter, we'll face not only ice and snow but a non-stop barrage of new and returning TV shows, many of them high-quality series whose returns were delayed by the 2008 writers strike. Here are the most notable shows you'll be seeing in the next couple of months (for an even more extensive list of January returns and debuts, check out critic Ellen Gray's excellent rundown): "Scrubs" returns Tuesday on ABC: New network, same old bunch of lovable chuckleheads at Sacred Heart Hospital (plus some

From the L.A. bureau, something different here to jump start your new music appetite for 2009.

Allthecoolkids (and some not-so-cool ones) have been tripping over each other to re-create the recipes from the Alinea cookbook that it set us thinking, "What cookbook would be the complete opposite of Alinea that could we utilize the same approach?" For us, only one came to mind.One of our most prized cookbooks is the spiral-bound tome pictured above. White Trash Cooking was an unlikely New York Times best seller in 1986 by Ernest Matthew Mickler. Born in 1940 to a shrimper father and a cook

What a 30-second spot cost on 10 randomly chosen TV shows in 2008, according to data from Ad Age.*Show: America's Funniest Home VideosCost: $90,044*Show: 30 RockCost: $104,178*Show: CSI: MiamiCost: $182,101

Brad Spirrison: As television stations complete their transition to digital broadcasting next month, all signals point to the Internet serving as the ultimate entertainment intermediary to the living room. Our favorite shows will soon be viewed more easily over the World Wide Web than through very high frequencies. Now we just need a better way of finding them.

That would be the show formerly known as Meet The Press that of coarse the late Tim Russert used to host u9ntil his untimely death,which has now been handed over to David Gregory, leftward loon Bush hater hence the new title "Meet The Moron".Last week Filthy Harry Reid came to the news forefront when he pulled his own race cards in the Blago Senate derby when a claim of a letter sent by Reid to Blago surfaced that makes Reid look like quite the racist. In it he supposedly gives Blago a couple of

Ha ha ha I'm watching their show on tv right now and its a riot.

A few days after this year's Winter Classic, and the ratings are in. The prognosis? Good. Very good. Better than last year, in fact. It earned the NHL's best overnight ratings in 13 years and increased 12 percent over last year's game. This year's outdoor game between the Blackhawks and Red Wings earned a 2.9 overnight rating and a 6 share. Each overnight ratings point equals about 735,000 TV homes. Last year's game featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres had a 2.6 overnight rating a

Good place to watch a football game because it's a more upscale sports bar. It's long and narrow but each table has its own plasma TV which is cool. It gets really, really crowded and loud in there.…

The Feb. 17 transition from analog to digital television broadcasts looms and as many as 8 million households are still unprepared, but the government program that subsidizes crucial TV converter boxes is about to run out of money. People who still rely on analog TV sets to pick up over-the-air signals -- whether it is through rabbit-ear aerials on TVs or antennas on the roof -- will see their screens go dark when the changeover happens.

I resisted stuffed pizza for nearly three years before I finally tried it. WHAT WAS I THINKING??? When i saw it on tv..... all i could think was HEARTBURN. soooo wrong. I get heartburn everytime I…