ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE NEWS

Can a show that’s hung around for 14 years — during which it’s been nominated for the animated-program Emmy seven times and won twice — be underappreciated? Did you know that “Futurama” is starting its last batch of episodes on Wednesday night? Case closed. Matt Groening’s blackhearted but good-spirited science-fiction spoof, created in 1999 to capitalize on the success of “The Simpsons,” started strong (19 million viewers!). Then it faded as Mr. Groening and Fox feuded over content, and the show was taken from the Sunday animation block and sent to Tuesdays. Fox dropped it after four seasons, but its [...]

There is already way too much happy talk on morning television. So it’s a little worrisome that on the Monday premiere of CNN’s revamped morning show, “New Day,” Chris Cuomo responded to a report on the Supreme Court by his co-anchor, Kate Bolduan, by saying: “My mom says my tie is not on straight. How does it look? Look all right? Is it better now? All right, Mom, better?” On the other hand, the first outside guest interviewed on “New Day” was Representative Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia and the majority leader, so it’s not as if CNN were [...]

A few years ago, 3-D was hailed as the next big thing in television, the logical successor to high definition. But viewers in the United States did not buy the hype, and now the eye-popping format is seen as an expensive flop. That impression was cemented last week when ESPN, the nation’s largest sports network and an early adopter of 3-D technology, said it was turning off its three-year-old 3-D channel. A spokeswoman said the decision was “due to limited consumer adoption of 3-D services to the home.” The news spurred debate about whether anyone would be left watching in [...]

You might not instinctively choose as drinking buddies two women who found fame with the McNuggetini: vanilla vodka shaken with a chocolate milkshake, poured into a martini glass rimmed in barbecue sauce and adorned with a Chicken McNugget. Or, “dinner, dessert and booze in one chalice of multitasking,” proclaims Alie Ward in the video that earned her and Georgia Hardstark a gig as the Cooking Channel’s “Classy Ladies.” A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics. How classy? The 1950s housewife-channeling Los Angelenos met cute outside a dive bar, where Ms. Hardstark [...]

Ken Solomon, the chief executive of Tennis Channel, thought until late last month that he was on his way to winning a big and lengthy legal battle — one that would greatly enhance the channel’s business. He believed that Comcast would soon make Tennis Channel as widely available on its cable systems as Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network, which it owns. But last month, a three-judge panel of a federal appellate court ruled that Comcast had not discriminated against Tennis Channel by giving it far less distribution than Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network, and was not obliged to [...]

— The “PBS NewsHour,” the signature nightly newscast on public television, is planning its first significant round of layoffs in nearly two decades. Facing a multimillion-dollar shortfall in the program’s budget, the show’s producer, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, will close its two offices outside of the Washington, D.C., area — in Denver and San Francisco — and lay off most of the employees there. The company, which is based in Arlington, Va., will also eliminate several of what it calls “noncritical production positions” at its main offices. The cutbacks were described in an internal memorandum on Monday from Linda Winslow, the executive [...]

Edward Hotaling, a television reporter whose question about racial progress ended the career of the CBS sports commentator Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder in 1988, but who may have made a more lasting mark by documenting the use of slave labor in building the nation’s Capitol, died on June 3 on Staten Island. He was 75. The cause was a heart attack, his son Greg said. He had lived in a nursing home since suffering serious injuries in an auto accident in 2007. Mr. Hotaling (pronounced HO-tail-ing) was a television reporter at the NBC affiliate WRC-TV in Washington when he interviewed [...]