Women Who Rock on PBS

PBS' WOMEN WHO ROCK, Premiers next Friday November 18, 2011, at 9:00 p.m. EST on PBS. It's a documentary about female musicians from the earliest trailblazers to today. Including Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson, Darlene Love, Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, Bonnie Raitt, Cyndi Lauper, Wanda Jackson, Mavis Staples, Deborah Harry and Kathleen Hanna of the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Also featured are songwriter Cynthia Weill and journalists/critics Ann Powers, Nelson George and Holly George Warren.

I got a chance to see some of these ladies at TCA last summer and their stories really are amazing. I wish they got as much visibility as their male counterparts.

Farewell Oprah

This is Oprah's farewell week on her talk show. I feel like I've grown up watching her. I remember coming home from school and watching her show, ok I was cutting school, but I was watching Oprah.
I was so lucky to be at the TCA OWN (Oprah's new channel) interview. It was amazing to be in the same room with Oprah. My grandmother use to tell a story about the time she met Amelia Earhart. I will definitely tell my grandchildren about the day I "spent" with Oprah.
I'm hopeful she'll be on air enough that I won't miss her too much.




In the mean time I have this picture of me and my blogger pals in her chair.

TCA

I spent the majority of the last week at TCA, The Television Critic Association. This is a conference where all the TV networks do panels of their upcoming shows for all the television critics. I am not a member, yet, but a few of the networks invited me as their guest, Showtime, PBS, and Discovery. Unfortunately, AMC and TNT were not there this time.
There were lots of fun things that happened, like meeting Ken Burns (pictured above with me and Mar Vista Mom). He was talking about his upcoming PBS show the 10th Inning. I also screwed up my courage to ask Kenneth Branagh a question about his second season of Wallender, also for PBS.
Showtime highlights included The Big C, which I wrote about last week. It really is a great show. I've had a chance to see a few of the episodes. The other show that I'm anxious to see is Episodes with Matt LeBlanc. It looks very funny.
The Discovery Channels, Animal Planet, Planet Green, etc...of course had a myriad of great looking science, animal, and human interest shows that I'll be waiting impatiently for.
I'll be rolling out posts on all the great shows I got to see this week as they get closer to their premiere dates. Sorry again for being MIA last week. But as you can see I was really up to my eyeballs.