Tv | featured news

The new season of the medieval fantasy “Game of Thrones” serves up plenty of wartime posturing, a seemingly endless number of would-be rulers and the usual sex and violence.

Last week, Geraldo Rivera made headlines by blaming a hoodie for slain teenager Trayvon Martin's death.

The judges deemed the premiere the series' "best ever," so did the stars buckle under pressure? No, but the panel didn't dish out the love either.

After 18 months of waiting, an average of 3.5 million people tuned in Sunday to watch “Mad Men’s” fifth-season debut. That’s a series best for the show — and about 600,000 more people than watched the fourth-season debut in July 2010. “Mad Men” had been off the air since October 2010, following the fourth-season finale, as the studio, the network and the creator wrangled over this and that — product placement within the show, adding another ad break, creator’s salary, blah, blah, blah.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel just got a prime-time gig: Host of the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards. The star and executive producer of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will host the Emmy Awards ceremony on Sept. 23 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. "I hope to be able to do for the Emmys this year what Eddie Murphy did for the Oscars," Kimmel joked, referring to the comic actor who pulled out as host of this year's Academy Awards. This is Kimmel's first time hosting the Emmys.

Karilyn Bales tells Matt Lauer in an interview on NBC's "Today" show the charges that her husband killed 17 Afghan villagers are "unbelievable."

This post-episode mini-analysis of “Mad Men” could have focused on the already dysfunctional marriage between Don and Megan Draper, a relationship that — as Sunday’s season five premiere, “A Little Kiss,” demonstrated — apparently involves Don’s usual callousness, upward career mobility for Megan and your standard make-up sex prompted by half-naked house cleaning.

The advance copy of the new episode of “Mad Men” — the first in too many moons — arrived the other day. It was handsomely packaged, of course, and closely trailed by an e-mail plea from its meticulously controlling creator, Matthew Weiner, who asked critics not to tell you anything that happens when the show returns for a fifth season, two-hour premiere Sunday night on AMC.

There must be some reason the folks at “American Idol” think that the best way to find tomorrow’s pop star is to have them sing songs that were popular a generation ago as opposed to, you know, actual hit singles from today. We’ve gone from Whitney Houston/Stevie Wonder to Songs from Your Birth Year to ... Billy Joel. When do we get Lawrence Welk week?

GSN announced Wednesday that it had signed Mitt Romney’s new BFF, Jeff Foxworthy, to host “The American Bible Challenge.” For one hour, Foxworthy will grill contestants on their knowledge of the Bible, GSN — which once stood for Game Show Network — told advertisers Wednesday morning in Manhattan.