Eric Deggans
Celebrities from Beyoncé to Arnold Schwarzenegger sold products with a wink.
Advertisers spent up to $7 million for every 30 seconds of airtime during Super Bowl LVII. Here’s a sampling of what worked – and didn’t – in the most expensive ad showcase on American television.
The commercials during this year’s game weren’t serious or poignant enough to speak to the modern moment.
Average prime time viewership was just 15.5 million people, down from an average 26.7 million for the Rio Games in 2016. But NBC’s broadcast ratings ranked second only to its Sunday night football.
Tonight’s ceremony closes out the longest and most unconventional awards season in Hollywood history. Several presenters and nominees will appear in person, and there’s even a red carpet of sorts.
Chicago police charged Jussie Smollett with disorderly conduct after he allegedly filed a false report about being attacked. The story has been wracked with controversy since it emerged last month.
Advertisers were careful about which messages they showcased this year, and the results felt handcuffed — so cautious that they were was just, well, disappointing.
Super Bowl 52 was a terrific football game to watch. Our TV critic says the halftime show and the commercials were worth watching, but not quite as exciting as the on-field action.
Showtime debuts a show created by Emmy-winning writer Lena Waithe, who is also an executive producer. The Chi is a coming-of-age drama about a group of people living on Chicago’s South Side.
Comedian Hari Kondabolu’s new documentary, The Problem with Apu, unearths an essential truth about Hollywood: “Success justifies everything.” Even racism.
The broadcast, cable and streaming networks have a lot on tap for the remainder of 2017. The Pop Culture Happy Hour team, joined by NPR TV critic Eric Deggans, has a roundup.
Executive producers Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman spoke to NPR’s Eric Deggans to push back against the notion the show will be “a celebration ... of slavery.”
The athlete, celebrity and murder suspect was the focus of an intensely covered trial, and two recent TV series that set him at the center of America’s diciest topics: race, wealth, justice and fame.
The former Fox News star’s debut on NBC featured an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Neither Putin, nor our television critic, was impressed.
Lynch has assembled a rambling, surreal story that vaults from a spiritual limbo to towns all over the country. But as any Twin Peaks fan can tell you, the story really isn’t the point.
Netflix’s hit show, with its incessant and incisive look at race at a fictional Ivy League college, doesn’t really focus much on white people at all.
The adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel is a horror show revealed in slow motion — and the true horror of its brutal, patriarchal future theocracy is how possible it seems today.
The third season of American Crime debuts this week on ABC. It’s one of a number of interesting anthology series on TV now. NPR takes a look at the pros and cons of anthology series.