Halftime Show

No one seems particularly interested in the halftime show. The shooting contests, held every halftime at many area schools, are meant to get the crowd into the game. They are seen as a way to pump up the excitement and get the fans going. Last Friday's spectators in Columbia certainly didn't need any extra pumping up. An hour before the Maryland 2A South region final between Gywnn Park and Oakland Mills began, the game was sold out.  The gym was at capacity before the teams had even taken the...

Remember when makeover shows were the hot, new thing in reality TV, and TLC's "What Not to Wear" was at the head of the class? TLC announced Wednesday that it will close out its longest-running prime-time show at the end of its coming season, which is set to premiere in July, running Friday nights. TLC General Manager Amy Winter said Wednesday that she thought it was "the right time" to end the show. "This show changed me and the trajectory of my life," weighed in star Stacy London, who's done more than 325...

Super Bowl Sunday is the day of the biggest football game — and biggest television show — of the year. Last year, an estimated 111 million people watched the game. Watching the Super Bowl on TV has become an American tradition, like watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Lots of kids (and even some adults) watching the big game may not be football fans. So here's a quick guide for watching Super Bowl XLVI. (The National Football League, or NFL, uses Roman numerals to identify each year's...

CBS made television history Sunday night when it aired not only the third-most-watched broadcast of all time, but also the fourth. The No. 3 show was Super Bowl XLVII, which averaged nearly 109 million viewers — a crowd size surpassed only by last year's Super Bowl XLVI (111.4 million viewers) and 2011's Super Bowl XLV (111 million). The fourth-most-watched broadcast in TV history? Sunday's Super Bowl blackout. Number-crunching Nielsen Media has broken out Sunday's 34-minute game shutdown in New Orleans as a...

Reviews for Madonna's Super Bowl halftime performance have ranged from stellar to scathing, with fans heaping lavish praise on the singer's mix of old hits and new releases, to detractors who found it a pathetic attempt at a come-back. But the wide array of comments is really nothing new for the pop icon, who has been wooing as well as angering crowds for more than 20 years. But for TV critic Hank Steuver , the singer provided one of the only exciting and new elements to the night of entertainment: ...

Remember when makeover shows were the hot, new thing in reality TV, and TLC's "What Not to Wear" was at the head of the class? TLC announced Wednesday that it will close out its longest-running prime-time show at the end of its coming season, which is set to premiere in July, running Friday nights. TLC General Manager Amy Winter said Wednesday that she thought it was "the right time" to end the show. "This show changed me and the trajectory of my life," weighed in star Stacy London, who's done...

Super Bowl halftime shows often burn more vivid images into the American conscience than the most-watched football game of the year, and can claim millions more viewers. They can also ignite controversy, as Janet Jackson did with her halftime "wardrobe malfunction" in 2004. Last year, performing with Madonna, British-born hip-hop star M.I.A. gave the finger to 114 million people. Outraged by the raunchy behavior, or simply to capture some of the Super Bowl's supersized audience, some religious programmers are...

For the first time since Janet Jackson's infamous 2004 breast baring, a female solo artist under the age of AARP eligibility will headline the Super Bowl halftime show. Next year's halftime performance will be by Beyonce. Coincidentally, it will be broadcast by CBS — the same network that aired the halftime show in which, as Jackson sang, bumped and ground her way through "Rock Your Body," Justin Timberlake ripped the bodice off her costume, debuting her right breast to a...

Watching Super Bowl XLVI When: Kickoff is at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, but the pregame coverage will start much earlier. Super Bowls often last close to four hours (in part because the halftime show is long), so be sure to talk to your parents about whether you can stay up past your bedtime to watch the whole game. Where: NBC (Channel 4 in the Washington area).

The cause of Sunday night's 34-minute power outage at the Super Bowl remained a mystery Monday, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the incident would not harm New Orleans's chances of hosting an 11th NFL championship game in the future. "This will not affect the people's view in the NFL about the success of the game here in New Orleans," Goodell said at a news briefing Monday morning. "We know that they have an interest in future Super Bowls and we look forward to evaluating that going forward.

The cause of Sunday night's 34-minute power outage at the Super Bowl remained a mystery Monday, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the incident would not harm New Orleans's chances of hosting an 11th NFL championship game in the future. "This will not affect the people's view in the NFL about the success of the game here in New Orleans," Goodell said at a news briefing Monday morning. "We know that they have an interest in future Super Bowls and we look forward to evaluating that going forward.

A power outage that plunged half the Superdome into darkness and stopped game play for 34 minutes put a damper on Sunday's Super Bowl ratings, which came in behind the 2012 and 2011 games — making it the third most-watched broadcast in TV history. An average of 108.4 million people watched Sunday's game, which morphed from a pre-blackout walkover into a post-blackout squeaker, as the Baltimore Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31. An estimated 111.4 million people watched the New York...

Super Bowl halftime shows often burn more vivid images into the American conscience than the most-watched football game of the year, and can claim millions more viewers. They can also ignite controversy, as Janet Jackson did with her halftime "wardrobe malfunction" in 2004. Last year, performing with Madonna, British-born hip-hop star M.I.A. gave the finger to 114 million people. Outraged by the raunchy behavior, or simply to capture some of the Super Bowl's supersized audience, some religious programmers are...

For the first time since Janet Jackson's infamous 2004 breast baring, a female solo artist under the age of AARP eligibility will headline the Super Bowl halftime show. Next year's halftime performance will be by Beyonce. Coincidentally, it will be broadcast by CBS — the same network that aired the halftime show in which, as Jackson sang, bumped and ground her way through "Rock Your Body," Justin Timberlake ripped the bodice off her costume, debuting her right breast to a...

Andy Williams, whose languid crooning style and disarming presence propelled him to recording and television stardom in the 1960s, with hits including "Moon River" and the inescapable holiday jingle "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," died Sept. 25 at his home in Branson, Mo. He was 84. He died after a year-long battle with bladder cancer, his publicist, Paul Shefrin, said. Mr. Williams's entertainment career spanned eight decades, starting when he was an 8-year-old singer performing at church...

For the third time in as many years, Sunday's Super Bowl has been crowned the most-watched television broadcast ever. An estimated 111.3 million people watched the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots, 21-17, Nielsen said Monday. Of course, it also means a record number of people saw rapper/singer M.I.A. flip off America during Madonna's halftime show . NBC and the NFL are engaged in what is not yet quite a war of words — maybe a kerfuffle of words — over that...

T-Mobile's relationship with the NBA will continue through much of 2011. The carrier renewed its sponsorship deal, it first negotiated in 2005, for three more years,Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal reports . T-Mobile has made some big media buys with the NBA, including rights to TNT's NBA halftime show. With an $11.9 million spend on national TV advertising from November 2007 to April 2008, T-Mobile spends the most among all NBA advertisers, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus data.

In the last three minutes of Sunday's Super Bowl matchup between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, an average of 10,000 people — about one-seventh of the spectators that fit into Indianapolis's Lucas Oil Stadium — per second were sharing their thoughts about the game on Twitter, the company revealed in a Twitter message shortly after the game. At its peak, the highest number of tweets per second reached 12,233 at the very end of the game when the Giants held on for a 21-17 win over New...

Reviews for Madonna's Super Bowl halftime performance have ranged from stellar to scathing, with fans heaping lavish praise on the singer's mix of old hits and new releases, to detractors who found it a pathetic attempt at a come-back. But the wide array of comments is really nothing new for the pop icon, who has been wooing as well as angering crowds for more than 20 years. But for TV critic Hank Steuver , the singer provided one of the only exciting and new elements to the night of entertainment: ...

Why did we get sucked in? We knew what was going to happen, didn't we? So why didn't we all skip the second and third quarters Sunday night and come back late in the fourth, when the game really began? The Patriots were the favored team, the home team — because the National League won the All-Star Game — and the team most seemed to think was going to win despite having, I don't know, seen them play in the postseason. The Giants . . . well, the Giants lost twice to the Washington Redskins ...