fox

The bland, middle-of-the-road network is getting a ratings boost. Call it the Trump Effect.

Last night’s winners, losers and what the Emmys tell us about the psychology of television right now

Two shows have already been cancelled. Can diversity fix the network sitcom? Jaime J. Weinman and Adrian Lee discuss.

From the archives: Marvel Comics is cancelling the Fantastic Four series—proof that it may just be willing to sabotage its own properties to spite a rival company

So exactly what do broadcast networks do to get some hits again? Jaime Weinman has a few ideas

Hint: Nobody is actually watching it

Movies like “Avatar” have been huge hits, but on the small screen, the genre’s not doing that well

Fox tonight was the first network to announce some of its 2010-11 pickups and cancellations – mostly cancellations. I don’t think Fox fully deserves its reputation as the evil cancellation-happy network; they’ve stayed with many shows through mediocre or worse ratings. But they’ve definitely decided to clean house this time, except for Fringe, which has already been renewed.

Fox’s midseason schedule is, as usual, incomprehensible without a secret decoder ring, but it’s a pretty smart schedule all the same. The big move is American Idol, which moves to Wednesday/Thursday. No one knows how much Idol will drop without Simon Cowell, but if it does drop more than expected, then at least the network won’t have killed Glee‘s momentum by moving it in the middle of its emergence as a breakout hit, just for the sake of giving it a post-Idol slot that it no longer needs. And the competition at 8 o’clock on Thursdays isn’t that tough (there’s only one hit show between the other three networks) meaning Idol won’t have as much standing in the way of its continued dominance.

Sun TV’s Canadian-content promise might be its best selling feature

I’ve been thinking about luck recently, especially that species of chance that philosophers call “moral luck”. This is the idea that praise or blame, success or failure, are due to circumstances over which the agent does not have complete control. In the most influential essay on the subject, Thomas Nagel identified three main types of moral luck: resultant, circumstantial, and constitutive (there’s a fourth, but it just causes problems so I’ll ignore it). Resultant luck is the one we’re most familiar with — I run a red light and nothing happens, you run one and take out a family of four. Circumstantial luck refers to the way our moral outcomes are shaped by the broader events and situations in which we find ourselves embedded — that’s what I’ve been getting at with my little pieces on Sidney Crosby recently.

It’s not just that he’s leaving the world’s No. 1 hit show. It’s where he’s going that’s the threat.