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Conan O’Brien has been tapped to host Carson On TCM, a showcase of Hollywood interviews from Johnny Carson’s three decades as host of The Tonight Show. The series is set to air Mondays at 8 Pm beginning July 1. O’Brien, host of Conan on TCM’s sister network TBS, will introduce five interviews each week on the series. Carson On TCM is a joint effort between Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jones (Johnny Carson: King Of Late Night, TCM’s Stardust: The Bette Davis Story) of Peter Jones Productions and Jeff Sotzing of Carson Entertainment Group, which controls the Carson archives. The July 1 show will open with Johnny Carson’s 1982 interview with then-7-year-old Drew Barrymore. It will also feature interviews with Kirk Douglas (taped in 1988), Mary Tyler Moore (1978), writer Neil Simon (1980) and George Burns (1989). The July schedule for Carson on TCM will also feature interviews with...

Chicago – Any list of the most influential and important people in the history of television that doesn’t include Johnny Carson is simply incomplete. He was Such a force in the medium, coming into the homes of millions every night. That’s why so many luminaries came out to speak about the man in the excellent “American Masters” documentary “Johnny Carson: King of Late Night,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD.

Blu-ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Is there anyone else in the world that could bring out such a powerful group of people as David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Conan O’Brien, and essentially every other major voice in TV comedy that’s still alive? There’s something about the awe that celebrities have for Carson, an average guy who knew how to turn his everyman qualities into something bigger than life. By blending insightful interviews with clips from the show...

ABC's "Modern Family," Fox's "Glee," HBO's "In Treatment" as well as Kermit the Frog and Craig Ferguson were among the 36 recipients of Peabody Awards unveiled this morning by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The winners, chosen by the Peabody board as the best in electronic media for 2009, were named in a ceremony in the Peabody Gallery on the University of Georgia Campus.

The latest Peabody winners reflect great diversity in genre, sources of origination and content. The recipients included the aforementioned "Modern Family," ABC's droll, perceptive comedy about a multicultural extended family; HBO's "Thrilla in Manila," a doc that probes the hype, mythology and meaning of the politically charged Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fights in the early 1970s; and "The Great Textbook War," a fair, balanced radio doc from West Virginia Public Broadcasting about a 1974 skirmish that presaged "cultural wars" still raging in America.

By Calvin Naito

The TV documentary “Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times” had the potential to have a big impact, but it probably will not, given its limited audience on PBS and the filmmaker’s elitist and inaccurate storytelling approach. Despite having rich raw material, Peter Jones crafted an overly nostalgic and ultimately depressing product.

In spite of these flaws, every person in the Los Angeles-area and beyond should see this film, for embedded beneath the surface is an empowering message that can make an everlasting difference in all of their lives.<...