'Dragnet' (the 1951 original, transferred nearly intact from radio) served as a veritable template for all cop shows to come. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' occurred in real time and was a benign and bewitching example of pure television. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
A fellow with the inventiveness of Albert Einstein but with the attention span of Daffy Duck. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
You do have to wonder how Jack Bauer, maverick hero of '24,' can stay hidden for so long when no matter where… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Maybe it's the hair. Maybe it's the teeth. Maybe it's the intellect. No, it's the hair. — Tom Shales Hair Copy Share Image
By a twist of fate rather than anything approaching journalistic enterprise, I did the last major interview with Johnny Carson. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Tom Snyder was big enough to fill the night with talk and his own persona. The Snyder we saw on TV was… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Crime dramas will never go away as long as people turn to television for, among other things, reassurance and comfort. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Tom Snyder was born to broadcast. He loved television and it loved him back. In that, he was a member of a… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the… — Tom Shales Book Copy Share Image
The once inviolate frame within which programs or commercials were displayed on television - always separately - has been violated to a… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
I always thought I'd buy my mother a house if I ever became successful - a big, beautiful house on the nicest… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
From a producer's point of view, of course, 'Law & Order' presents an ideal - a show that is almost entirely actor-proof,… — Tom Shales Actor Copy Share Image
No matter how much programming improves, however, media savants tend to see the medium living out numbered days. It's feared that the… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Obviously neither 'American Idol' nor 'Dancing With the Stars' is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
“Chris Rock, Cast Member: How can anyone hate the guy? A lot of people have problems with Lorne. A lot of people… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
The fault is in our stars, dear Brutus: not the glass screen through which we see them. — Tom Shales Astronomy Copy Share Image
The perils of credit and debt, especially perilous in the computer age, have long been acknowledged in pop culture, but very infrequently… — Tom Shales Age Copy Share Image
Late-night television is like the cereal aisle in the supermarket: too many choices. Also, too many 'different' brands that really aren't different… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
'Leave It to Beaver,' which ran from 1957 until 1963, was one of the strangest, sweetest, most distinctive domestic sitcoms of television's… — Tom Shales Age Copy Share Image
Jimmy Kimmel still comes across like a guy who crashed a party and got caught at it, yet adamantly refuses to leave. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Larry David's armor is his dissatisfaction with the world down to the smallest detail, and up to the whole ghastly arrangement. He… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Larry King's show got to be an increasingly lonely outpost of humane civility in a mephitic menagerie of hotheads, saber rattlers, cretins… — Tom Shales Civility Copy Share Image
Like sugar and, oh - let's say the most tabloidy and gossipy reality television programs - credit is, for millions, genuinely addictive. — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
If the networks can get audiences to tolerate pop-up promos by the dozens, maybe they'll start selling pop-up commercials, too. — Tom Shales Audience Copy Share Image
Jerry Seinfeld is amazing in many ways, not the least of them his ability to find humor, and convincing us to find… — Tom Shales Ability Copy Share Image
For those who don't like Dave Letterman, there's Jay Leno; and for those who like neither, there's Craig Ferguson; and if you're… — Tom Shales Craig Copy Share Image
'American Idol' is sometimes lumped with reality shows and it has that element - folks-next-door battling it out in a contest. But… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
“Keith Richards I remember. There was a horse backstage that week, and I was in my dressing area and I saw Keith… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Robert Osborne either has the best job in the world, or comes very close. As millions of viewers know, Osborne is the… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
In the best traditions of American comedy, from its beginnings through the crash-bang comedies of the 1990s and 2000s, Leslie Nielsen skewered… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
You know you're getting older when - well, first off, when you read almost any story that begins 'You know you're getting… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Perhaps Western civilization is in a post-decline phase, or maybe the decline is just taking a really long time, like the Roman… — Tom Shales Christian Copy Share Image
Somewhere around the turn of the century, it stopped being hip to say you never watched TV. Adults are much more likely… — Tom Shales Adults Copy Share Image
'I Love Lucy,' the first classic, really belonged more to the Wacky Woman genre than the domestic sitcom; 'My Little Margie' and… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
Revisiting 'Leave It to Beaver,' and seeing it in the pristine visual clarity of digital restoration, are mood-altering if not quite mind-altering… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
"More fun than a barrel of monkeys." Has anyone ever stopped to think how cranky, if not downright vicious, a barrelful of… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
In the realm of pop celebrity, the bar has been lowered so far that there is no bar. People can be famous… — Tom Shales America Copy Share Image
The original and very basic 'Law & Order' series has always seemed to me to be 100-percent exposition, with no filler, no… — Tom Shales Copy Share Image
