SPORTS
By David Zurawik, The Baltimore Sun | September 9, 2012
The Baltimore Ravens will probably never be "America's Team," as the Dallas Cowboys came to be known in the 1970s, thanks to their frequent appearances in nationally televised games. But with the Ravens appearing in prime-time matchups three of the first four weeks of the NFL season - starting with tonight's season opener of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" - no team will have a higher national profile during the first month of NFL play. What makes that all the more remarkable is that the defending AFC North champs are a small-market franchise in a world where media market size largely determines which teams are featured in night-time, national TV games.
SPORTS
By Kevin Cowherd | April 22, 2010
What's happening tonight is either the greatest development since the Internet or another sign of the apocalypse, depending on your point of view. Now instead of wasting your time watching "Survivor" or some dopey sitcom, you can waste your time watching beefy guys in expensive suits talk on their cell phones and become instant millionaires while a slew of network analysts drone on and on about how tough the beefy guys are and what a great "motor"...
SPORTS
By David Zurawik and The Baltimore Sun | August 5, 2012
NBC will air a one-hour look at the career of Michael Phelps at 7 tonight, the network announced late Saturday night. "Michael Phelps: America's Golden Champion" will feature what the NBC Sports is calling an "exclusive" interview by Bob Costas done with the Phelps at the end of his final day of competition Saturday. "America's greatest interviewer sitting down with the world's greatest Olympic champion makes for an inspiring piece of television," NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell said in a statement announcing the prime-time special.
ENTERTAINMENT
By David Zurawik and The Baltimore Sun | July 8, 2012
I did not think I'd ever see a better medical documentary series than the Emmy-Award-winning “Hopkins 24/7” that aired in 2000 or its sequel, “Hopkins,” which won a Peabody Award in 2008. The backstage access, immediacy and range of gripping real-life drama that ABCNews Executive Producer Terence Wrong and his team captured at Baltimore's world-renowned medical institution were landmark. But with “NY Med,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wrong surpasses his earlier work in terms of prime-time storytelling without sacrificing any of the cultural seriousness or grand reach of the Hopkins series.
ENTERTAINMENT
By David Zurawik and The Baltimore Sun | August 19, 2012
Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, the executive producers of "Homicide: Life on the Street," return to prime time tonight on BBC America with "Copper," starring Tom Weston-Jones. (That's Weston-Jones sitting with them in the picture above, taken in California where they were promoting the series.) Set in 1864 in New York, the series is cop drama meets frontier saga, and I like it. I loved "Homicide," "Oz" and Levinson's last TV effort, "You Don't Know Jack," a docu-drama look at Dr. Jack Kevorkian, starring Al Pacino, for HBO. But I hated "The Jury," a series the duo did for Fox. They've had some failed projects since "Homicide" and "Oz," but I think "Copper" could be a winner.
FEATURES
By David Zurawik | December 5, 2009
It didn't take long for Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon to become a national TV punch line in the wake of her guilty verdict. Thursday night, NBC comedian Jay Leno made her part of his monologue. "I love this story," Leno said near the end of a prime-time monologue filled with jokes about Tiger Woods. "The mayor of Baltimore, a woman named Sheila Dixon, found guilty this week of embezzlement. The mayor! The mayor! Embezzlement for spending $1,000 worth of gift cards intended for the homeless on herself."