The Daily Beast: "TiVo’s Top 20 Shows Watched Before Bed: Jimmy Fallon, Lost Girl, and More"

Just what are you watching before bed? Do you tune in to watch a 10 p.m. drama? A late-night talk show? Or reality television?

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "TiVo’s Top 20 Shows Watched Before Bed: Jimmy Fallon, Lost Girl, and More," in which I examine data obtained from TiVo about the top 20 shows that people watch before they go to bed, from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Revenge to Chopped and NCIS: LA.

It’s no secret that many Americans turn on the television as part of a nighttime ritual before bed. But what is surprising is just what they’re watching before their heads hit their respective pillows.

According to data provided by TiVo to The Daily Beast, the top program watched at bedtime was NBC’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, while TBS’s Conan was the most-watched cable show before bed.

“Perhaps it’s not surprising that many late-night talk shows are watched before bed,” Tara Maitra, TiVo’s general manager of content and media sales, said in a statement. “But we found it interesting that many people are also tuning into light-hearted reality shows before falling asleep.”

In fact, 22 percent of shows watched at bedtime are reality shows, with Bravo and HGTV appearing most often with 11 percent of cable programs represented (though Food Network’s Chopped crops up in the top 20), while the most-watched non-news or reality show watched at bedtime is Syfy’s Canadian import Lost Girl. Despite the fact that it went off the air in 2007, The King of Queens—now airing repeats in syndication—scored an impressive high spot at No. 23.

The top 10 recorded, rather than live, programs watched before bed included Glee, Modern Family, NCIS: Los Angeles, Smash, The Mentalist, Revenge, America’s Got Talent, American Idol, and Cougar Town. (Wait, Cougar Town?!?)

A few caveats first. The data provided by TiVo came from a sample group of 47,000 opt-in households who are TiVo or DVR subscribers and were generated by the last program—both live and recorded—that they watched after 10 p.m. on weeknights (Monday through Thursday). Multiple-day viewership was factored in as well, which is why late-night talk shows like Late Night and The Tonight Show ranked so highly here, as they air throughout the week. Finally, the percentage listed is indicative of the percentage of viewers (TiVo boxes) out of all boxes that watched at least one show during the four days of ratings analysis, including both recorded and live programs. (All times are ET/PT.)

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The Daily Beast: "What Happened to NBC’s Smash?"

While the pilot was a hit with critics, few have been happy with NBC’s Smash since. How could things have gone so wrong, so quickly?

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, in which I offer my take on NBC's Smash, which started out with such promise but has turned into a head-scratching mess of a show. (Also, said story is being advertised on the site as, "A Jace Lacob rant." Ha!)

What has happened to Smash?


Despite a pilot episode that was praised by critics, Smash went from must-see TV to stumbling, face first, into the orchestra pit in a matter of weeks. While the show will be back next season after a renewal last week, the show’s creator, Theresa Rebeck, won’t be returning.

That has to be a boon, given how uneven Smash has been. For every well-done and lavish musical number, there have been countless appalling elements each week.

One of the concerns about Smash going in was that it would be too insular: that its depiction of the rush to stage the Broadway launch of Marilyn: The Musical would prove to be too inside for a mass audience. But, in an effort to downplay the specificity of its world, Smash has instead spent the majority of each week’s episode focusing on the home lives of the characters and on the often tedious battle between the two would-be Monroes, jaded Ivy (Megan Hilty) and sunny ingénue Karen (Katharine McPhee).

Even in that retreat, Smash has proven itself to be weak-willed, attempting to cram earnest drama and over-the-top soap operatics into 40 minutes. When unstable Ivy began to suffer prednisone-derived hallucinations and fantasy musical numbers kept cropping up in the midst of rehearsals (not to mention that ghastly Karen-does-karaoke number in Iowa), well, that’s when the ability to suspend disbelief in Smash began to falter considerably.

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The Daily Beast: "Smash: Anjelica Huston on Her Husband’s Death, Her New Role, and Whether She’ll Sing"

Over at The Daily Beast, I talk with Anjelica Huston about her husband’s death, her formidable character on Smash, and the “cult of murder” on television today. You can read my latest feature, entitled "Smash's Scene Stealer," here.

It is impossible to miss Anjelica Huston when she walks into a room.

In this case, the room was the bar at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, California, a few hours before Huston was set to take the stage before a ballroom of television critics at the TCA Winter Press Tour to answer questions for her new show, the Broadway-set drama Smash, which premieres Monday on NBC.

With her raven Cleopatra cut, an armful of gently clanging bracelets, and her impressive height, Huston is unlikely to get lost in a crowd, but her considerable talents as an actress render that an impossibility. As she slinked into a club chair on a gray January morning, she exuded a sense of serenity and warmth that is deeply at odds with the troubled characters she often plays.

“Were you one of those kids I scared to death?” she asked, when the topic of The Witches arose; Huston starred in the 1990 adaption of Roald Dahl’s novel as The Grand High Witch, Miss Eva Ernst, and terrified a generation of young moviegoers when she removed her face to reveal a grotesque monster beneath the placid façade.

The Academy Award-winning actress, perhaps best known for her roles in The Royal Tenenbaums, The Addams Family, and Prizzi’s Honor, is no stranger to television—she starred in miniseries such as CBS’s Lonesome Dove, HBO’s Iron Jawed Angels, TNT’s The Mists of Avalon, and appeared in a seven-episode story arc on Medium in 2008—but it is the first time that she has taken on a series regular role. In the backstage Broadway world of Smash, Huston plays producer Eileen Rand, whose divorce from her lecherous husband has not only resulted in the freezing of her assets but the awakening of her sense of righteous vengeance.

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Smash premieres tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "Smash's Big Broadway Bet" and "11 Secrets of Smash"

Fifty years after her death, the mention of Marilyn Monroe conjures up familiar imagery: that whispery voice, the platinum hair, her vulnerability. From Michelle Williams’s recent embodiment to yet another reissue of Monroe’s last photo shoot, she’s still inescapable, and always exerting a gravitational pull on popular imagination.

In this week's issue of Newsweek, you can read my latest feature, "Smash's Big Broadway Bet," which looks at NBC's musical-drama Smash, launching February 6th, through the prism of both Marilyn Monroe's cultural impact and the stakes that the show faces ahead. Will this end up being The West Wing with music or Cop Rock? I talk to creator/executive producer Theresa Rebeck, Anjelica Huston, and NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt.

On The Daily Beast, the piece gets a companion story in "11 Secrets of Smash," in which I take a look at several questions surrounding the show including: What would the Showtime version have looked like? Can this show save NBC? Is it based on a book? What does the future hold for the show? Plus, much more.

Smash premieres Monday, February 6th at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Justified, Downton Abbey, Shameless, and More: What to Watch on TV This Winter

With the return of Justified, Downton Abbey, and Shameless, and the launch of Touch, Luck, and others, I take a look at what’s coming to your TV this winter over at The Daily Beast, in my latest feature, "What to Watch on TV This Winter." (To get right to my thoughts on the 18 shows included and bypass the intro, you can click here.)

January brings some fresh opportunities for the broadcast and cable networks to try and lure you back with new and returning programming. Among the highlights: costume drama fiends will be lined up for the Jan. 8 return of British drama Downton Abbey; FX’s Justified returns for a third season of Kentucky shootouts on Jan. 17; HBO’s cult comedy Eastbound and Down returns on Feb. 19; auteurs David Milch and Michael Mann unite for HBO’s Luck, launching Jan. 29; and Kiefer Sutherland returns to television with Fox’s Touch, which will get a preview broadcast on Jan. 25. (It officially premieres on March 19.)

Absolutely Fabulous, the outrageous British cult comedy that gave the world the fashion-obsessed Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), will celebrate its 20th anniversary with three brand-new specials this year, the first of which airs on both BBC America and Logo on Jan. 8 at 10 p.m. ABC will offer the globe-spanning espionage/revenge drama Missing, starring Ashley Judd as a former CIA agent in search of her son, who vanished in Europe, and Game of Thrones’s Sean Bean, beginning March 15. In the not-soon-enough category, Mad Men’s long-delayed fifth season is expected to turn up on AMC sometime this spring, possibly as early as March.

Elsewhere, the usual slew of reality shows—Fox’s American Idol (Jan. 18), NBC’s The Voice (in the coveted post–Super Bowl slot on Feb. 5), and CBS’ The Amazing Race (Feb. 19)—returns with new cycles, while AMC gets into the unscripted business with the Kevin Smith–produced Comic Men, launching Feb. 12. And ABC may have a contender for the worst television show of all time with Work It, a cross-dressing “comedy” starring Ben Koldyke and Amaury Nolasco that already has GLAAD up in arms. (It uses male anxieties, unemployment, and a relentless misogyny to wring jokes out of a stale, Bosom Buddies–like premise.)

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