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There are so many things to like about Britney Spears -- she's so darn pretty for one thing, even when she's chewing gum, which is still pretty much all the time. She's got the same sort of mile-wide smile and joyous laugh that made Julia Roberts a big star. She sings pretty well for a pop star, and she moves her butt like no one's business. But even after more than a decade in the business, she seems disturbingly stalled in adolescence. Those tuning into "Britney: For the Record" on MTV Sunday in search of a sadder but wiser Brit...

At least one broadcast network and one Web site said Monday that they could foresee signaling to viewers early Tuesday evening which candidate appeared to have won the presidency, despite the unreliability of some early exit polls in the last presidential election. A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, determined from a...

Visitors to MTV’s new online music video site can listen to songs with plenty of crass and vulgar lyrics, but may be surprised to find that certain other language had once been deemed too nasty for broadcast — that is, the names of the file-sharing sites Morpheus, Grokster, Limewire and Kazaa, all of which have been the bane of the music industry. The foul-mouthed musician swept up by MTV’s speech code is Weird Al Yankovic, whose lyrics to “Don’t Download This Song,” a tongue-in-cheek complaint about file-sharing first released in 2006 included those so-called offensive terms. (Since then, two of...

October 15, 2008 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Today, KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, PA, the oldest radio station in the country, and a CBS affiliate, censored Kevin Miller, one of its conservative talk show hosts while he was on the air.

CBS) The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain is now even at 42 percent to 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted Monday-Wednesday of this week. Twelve percent are undecided according to the poll, and one percent said they wouldn't vote. This is in contrast to a poll conducted last weekend, where the Obama-Biden ticket led McCain-Palin by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent. McCain has also closed the enthusiasm gap some with Obama, but it still exists. Fifty-five percent of Obama's supporters are enthusiastic about their choice, and now so are 35% of...

It was a video that was supposed to elicit soaring patriotism and real emotions about the Pledge of Allegiance. But to do that, it used fake soldiers and a staged military funeral instead of the real thing. On Tuesday night, 15-year-old Victoria Blackstone, a sophomore at the St. Agnes School in St. Paul, led the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in the Pledge of Allegiance. The audience heard her 434-word essay, “Pledging myself to the Flag of the United States of America,” an essay she’d entered it in the “Wave the Stars & Stripes” essay contest and won. The...

I thought Palin's speech was quite good: well-written, well delivered. And, as I said earlier, I think she's a genuinely engaging person, and comes across very well. There were just a couple of problems. One, which I have seen people notice, but which I suspect won't be a big deal for a lot of voters, is that it had very little substance. The other, which the commenters I saw on TV for some reason neglected to mention, was that she told a lot of lies. A few that stood out for me, or that I spotted in my quick run-through...

I’m not sure this is even worth mentioning. I’d think nothing of it…except McCain’s top 10 list from the day before is still there. If you remember the list was “The 10 Ten Signs Obama is Overconfident About The Presidential Campaign”: 10. Proposed bill to change Oklahoma to “Oklobama” 9. Offered Bush $20 for the “Mission Accomplished” banner 8. Asked guy at Staples, “Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?” 7. The affair with Barbara Walters 6. Having head measured for Mount Rushmore 5. Guy sits around eating soup all day 4. He’s voting for Nader 3. Offered...

The Media Mob has learned that a team of Hollywood insiders is currently working on a screen adaptation of Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power—the 2005 book by former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, in which she defends the 60 Minutes II story by Dan Rather about President George W. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, which ran on CBS in September 2004 and eventually led to her ouster from the network. Who would want to turn "Rathergate" into a feature-length film? According to sources familiar with the situation, Producer Mikkel Bondesen,...

Breaking: The judge in Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS has issued a motion to dismiss most of the case. CBS News confirms. Developing... > More: TVNewser has learned most of issues of the lawsuit have been dismissed. What remains is the contract dispute: whether Rather was utilized appropriately in the remaining months of his deal as a correspondent on 60 Minutes. Jim Quinn, lead counsel for CBS tells TVNewser, "We're thrilled with the results. The core of the allegations of fraud and fair dealing have been thrown out. What's left is a garden variety contract dispute." In the meantime, the...

Argh, my girlfriend and I were watching the Jackass marathon this weekend on MTV. They constantly played spots featuring West (whose racist and socialist past it was up to me to elaborate upon of course) and the idiotic "truth.org" anti-smoking ads. The biggest "Jackasses" weren't on the show. At least Margera, Knoxville, et all were funny-on-purpose.

'My support among young people will grow,' she says. 'It is really picking up a lot of energy and steam.' Hillary Clinton pulled out a shocking win at the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, but amid all the pandemonium at her victory shindig, she made sure to give thanks to a key demographic: people like you. Not long after her upset — and firing up supporters with a victory speech at the Southern New Hampshire University gymnasium in Manchester — Clinton chatted with us about the role young people played in her win and their involvement with politics,...

NEW YORK - "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will resume production on Jan. 7 without their striking writers, the Comedy Central network announced Thursday. "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" rely far more on scripted material than those shows, which are more centered around interviews and musical guests. In a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: "We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence." A spokesman for Comedy...

Nickelodeon is considering a special for its young audience about sex and love following the news that 16-year-old "Zoey 101" star Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The television network has made no announcement about the future of "Zoey 101," its popular program aimed primarily at youngsters aged 9-14. Filming for the show's fourth and final season has finished, and episodes are scheduled to begin airing in February. For the special, Nickelodeon said it's talking with veteran newswoman Linda Ellerbee, the veteran newswoman who has stepped in frequently in the past with shows on talking to children about difficult issues in...

Jamie Lynn Spears, 16, has confirmed to OK! Magazine that she is pregnant. Oh. My. God. A source tells us the interview, which hits stands tomorrow, is six pages and is on the record with Jamie Lynn and her mother. She tells the mag that the father is Casey Aldridge, who she has been dating for some time and first met at church. Brit's younger sister, star of Nick's "Zoey 101," says she's keeping the baby.

November 23, 2007 — Adbusters, the Canadian culture jamming magazine largely responsible for propagating Buy Nothing Day, has once again been rejected in its attempt to buy advertising on MTV in promotion of the anti-consumerist holiday. MTV's Advertising Standards representative, Elisa J. Billis, didn't deny that the rejection was based soley on the message of the ad, simply saying that "the spot goes further than we are willing to accept on our channels." The ad features a burping animated pig and seeks to illustrate the divide in the amount of waste produced by the richest and poorest countries in the...

But it was another type of slime that hit the Nickelodeon screen during a segment of Nick News, hosted by Linda Ellerbee. Presented as a news program for kids, the recent episode “Rebels with a Cause”, featured, among others, two anti-war teens.

Abstinence advocate calls on CBS to apologize Program ridicules Christians, has hypocrites stone club member The leader of an organization that advocates abstinence is demanding CBS apologize for portraying Christian members of an abstinence club as sexually active hypocrites who stone another member to death. "CBS should apologize to America for its reckless episode," said Leslee Unruh, president of National Abstinence Clearinghouse. "With visibility comes responsibility, and CBS didn't take that into account when airing this tainted show. Abstinence education works." The episode at issue is of the CBS crime show "Cold Case," which depicts presumably devout Christian teens in...

The celebrities will be on risers along the side of the hall, while the main floor, emptied of seats, will be given over to fans, to roam and hoot and jeer as they please. Which raises the question: What if some wild fan abandons his network-designated station and rushes toward the beautiful people? “He should be encouraged at all points to storm the stage and to create a television moment that people will talk about at the water cooler the next day,” said Hamish Hamilton, one of the producers. “Or even better, that people will download and put on...

(AP) NEW YORK -- No one knows how to throw a party like MTV. So there must be quite a bash planned for Aug. 1, celebrating 25 years on the air. Right? Sorry. MTV is staying in that night. There are no plans to even mention the birthday. When your average viewer is 20 years old — too young to remember Martha Quinn, not even born when Madonna buckled on her "boy toy" belt — perhaps it's wise not to mention you're 25. MTV wants to be the perpetual adolescent. On a relentless mission to stay hip, MTV casually discards...