Apparently former Evanstonian Stephen Colbert is a tad annoyed that Chicago musician Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak sits at the iTunes #1 spot while his own A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of All languishes at #14. .cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;}The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cOperation Humble KanyeColbert at ChristmasColbert Christmas DVDGreen ScreenBill O'Reilly Interview......

When it comes to watching sports, are you the ultimate couch potato? Really? If so, ESPNZone is giving you a chance to prove it. On January 1, four contestants will have the opportunity to prove that they can outsit anyone and win the title of Ultimate Couch Potato. The competition requires all contestants to plop down at 10am on New Year's Day and remain in their DreamSeat recliner inside the ESPN Zone's Screening Room, watching......

Local television stations will be participating in small, five minute test sessions tomorrow in order to help viewers prepare for the nationwide switch to digital broadcasting on Febrary 17, 2009. WGN Channel 9 viewers who are equipped to handle the digital signal will receive an on-screen confirmation, while those with outdated eqipment will see Bozo the Clown appear on their screens, saying, “It’s me, your ol’ pal Bozo, a big part of WGN’s glorious past,......

Lately Oprah’s Monday shows have been pretty heavy, so we were relieved to have something easy and fun to indulge in during this week's chilly start. Oprah and her O Magazine glam squad helped frumpy schlumpdinkas “get their sexy back.” (Are people still using that phrase? Well, Oprah is.) O always brings out the big guns when it comes to makeovers, but these were almost at the level of The Swan. (Without all the gruesome......

Did anyone else watch The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo? It followed the oh-so-theatrical daily life of the celebrity stylist and her two oil-and-water assistants as they weathered the storm of dressing stars for Hollywood red carpet moments. Sounds pretty shallow, right? Well, it was. And we were grotesquely enamored with it. It wasn’t so much Rachel’s glamorama lifestyle of rubbing elbows with celebs that kept us glued. It was her 1) her turns......

Stephen Colbert moves from Rush's prog-rock to Wiclo's prog-Americana (admit it, that's an apt description at this point) as he welcomes the Chicago superstars to his program Thursday night. No word yet on whether the band will be outfitted in Nudie Suits or not, but we're hoping Colbert will be sporting those stylish threads. [Pitchfork]......

Suze Orman again?? Who are we kidding. We can’t get enough of the Suze. This Monday there she was wearing the same gold earrings as always, but this time she was doing her “Can You Afford It?” thing from her show. Show me the money! Can a speech therapist mother-of-two afford to stay at home? No. Can a hip, young college grad afford an extravagant lifestyle? Hells no. Can a sales manager with a healthy......

It was all squeals right off the bat this Monday when Oprah brought out Nate “Dreamy Dreamhouse Maker” Berkus and announced someone in the audience would be taking him home for a free home makeover. Oprah followed this act of benevolence by doing the meanest thing ever: dragging an unsuspecting mother of 5 out of bed and throwing her on national television via Skype. Oprah had good reason, though, as Mom won a free home......

Bust out your puffy shirts, Jon Voight pencils, and garbage eclairs- the Seinfeld Campus Tour is coming to the University of Illinois next Thursday, September 18. Throughout the fall, a 60-foot, Seinfeld mini-museum bus is driving over 10,000 miles, stopping in 26 cities, and handing out 1,000 pounds of black-and-white cookies and candy. In an attempt to reach out to the 70 million people that make up the "millennial generation" the bus will have TV......

Second City alum Bonnie Hunt’s got a lot more at stake with her new talk series The Bonnie Hunt Show than mere redemption from her similarly titled primetime flop, Life With Bonnie (not to mention her other The Bonnie Hunt Show): if the new show takes off, Bonnie’s gonna bring production back home! Having filmed all its promos in Chicago, Hunt’s been building up the show as another nod toward her city upbringing, right up......

Were you going to watch the new 90210 tonight? So was I! Tough tacos, though: Our CW affiliate is WGN, and instead of airing 90210 from 7–9pm like I thought they were going to, they're airing the Cubs game. The teen drama is scheduled to air from 10:30pm–12:30am instead. You know. When teenagers are up. Grrrr.......

We've written about the onetime powerhouse lineup of the Loop, AM 1000 in a previous flashback. It's almost sad to see that, twenty years later, Jonathan Brandmeier never outgrew his "Wait'll Otis sees us" Delta House on-air persona (though for some it still works), Kevin Matthews became a right-wing nut and Garry Meier just imploded. Steve Dahl, on the other hand, matured both on air and off. He tackled his alcoholism and personal demons with......

Richard Roeper and critic-we-actually-like Michael Phillips will be on the upcoming season of Entourage, which returns Sept 7. [Deadline Hollywood]......

Even though it's been gone for forty-one years, folks who still went to Riverview Amusement Park speak of it with the romanticism afforded looking back at the past with rose-colored glasses. This documentary from 1984, courtesy of Fuzzy Memories, is no exception. Part two can be viewed here.......

Weigel Broadcasting, the local company behind The U, MeTV and MeToo, has announced that this fall it'll be partnering with MGM to produce a new, nationwide digital TV channel to be called This TV. When stations go all-digital in February, there will be many broadcasters that won't be able to fill the new subchannels, due to lack of funds and/or programming. This TV aims to fill the gap, available for lease to broadcasters who......

AT&T is set to enter the Chicago TV market, filing notice last week that "it may begin offering Internet-based high-definition television service in portions of Chicago in as soon as 10 days." All together now: Anything but Comcast. The Trib gave AT&T's service a six-week testdrive, and found "Comcast edges out AT&T in breadth of TV programming, but AT&T is much easier to use and has cleaner, modern on-screen graphics." Comcast has an ace up......

Bravo’s fashion designer throwdown show Project Runway is in its fifth season, and we have a hometown hero among the pack representing Midwest style. Woot woot! 39-year-old Terri Stevens hails from Chicago and is a Columbia College alum. Looking like a bit of a headbanger herself, Stevens describes her style as “if Aerosmith met Lauryn Hill met Michael Jackson.” So how did that Frankenrocker aesthetic parlay into the first challenge? As a throwback to Season......

Canadian prog-rockers Rush will appear on The Colbert Report tonight for their first American television appearance in 33 years. No word yet on whether Geddy Lee and host Stephen Colbert will engage in any terrorist fist bumps.......

Maybe it’s too much hullabaloo. Maybe the circus freaks were unionizing. Maybe the man’s just getting old and all the colors are making him dizzy. Whatever the reason, The Jerry Springer Show, now coming of age in its 18th season, will be taking a more focused approach to its programming this year. Lately the stage has run amok with a cast of crazy recurring characters including Reverend Shnorr, (whose role usually consists of marrying......

The towing business has a bit of a bad rap, a perception seemingly validated by new county legislation meant to put a damper on towing shenanigans. But Wrecked, SpeedTV’s new reality show premiering this month, features local legits O'Hare Towing Service. Business owners Bill and Marci Gratzianna hope the show will help to return some respect to the towing industry, as well as highlight its importance and incredible difficulty: "Marci and I hoped to......

Season two of Chicago-centric sitcom My Boys premieres tonight on TBS at 8:30pm. My Boys was created by Northwestern grad Betsy Thomas and centers around the social life of fake Sun-Times sportswriter P.J. Franklin and her "boys." The first season included shout-outs to the Art Institute, Billy Goat Tavern, The Hideout and Guthrie's Tavern (just to name a few) and while season two was shot entirely in Los Angeles we are reassured there will be......

Mike Kelley's new show Swingtown was supposed to premiere last winter, but the writer's strike shut down production. Instead the hour-long drama debuted on CBS last Thursday, and Kelley actually sees the delay as a blessing in disguise. The show is set in the summer of 1976, and as he astutely points out, it parallels this summer in the sense that tides seem to be shifting. Politics are reorganizing, minds are changing, and our ideals......

Tonight we'll find out if Stephanie Izard wins the title of "Top Chef" in part 2 of the season finale. Filmed in Puerto Rico last month, Izard pits her skills against progressive cuisine acolyte/fauxhawk wearing Atlantan Richard Blais and the mopey, attitude-filled Lisa Fernandes of New York. Lisa won no one over last week when, after the shocking elimination of Antonia Lofaso, she looked at her peers and said, "I know you're disappointed to see......

Welcome to Puerto Rico, Top Chef fans! We start off with Stephanie arriving at the P.R. airport in San Juan who tells us she has been spending the last few months in Southeast Asia. The envy. It burns. Next is Antonia who reveals her work ethic and child neglect (kidding, kidding). Richard arrives and bluntly states that it is good to see both Stephanie and Antonia and, oh yeah, Lisa will be arriving but really,......

This year Gay Pride Month in Chicago, a.k.a. June, kicks off with a brand new documentary premiering tonight on WTTW. Out & Proud in Chicago highlights almost 150 years of the city’s LGBT history – from the Civil War era through present day. The documentary serves to illuminate the path to liberation for Chicago’s LBGT community, coupling historical milestones with personal vignettes and individual reflection. From the WTTW pressroom: "We're working with voices and history,......

We start with an edited sequence that nearly makes us forget who was eliminated last week, although we know it isn't Lisa. There's a lot of chatter about how each chef wants to be in the top four and how they didn't come this far to be kicked out of the competition now. Richard rounds up the remaining troops and they move out. Quickfire: This one is in two stages. First, the chefs are heading......

Stolpman is in Europe for the next two weeks (lucky), so I'll be handling the recap duties until she gets back. Fear not, dear readers, for those of you who'll miss her as much as I do right now, I have two words for you. Balloon knot. That's out of the way. Let's get to recapping. For some, the thought of Tom Coliccho sneaking into your home and waking you up may be unnerving. For......

Sit tight, Top Chef fans, and enjoy a recap of this week's activities! We see the bleary eyed contestants slowly waking from a short sleep after what Richard says was more than 40 hours awake. Andrew's culinary morningwood instructs him to either "stab someone or make some amazing food." Quickfire. The chefs walk into the kitchen and see second season hottie, Sam Talbot. The chefs are told they must create a great, modern, "sexy" salad......

Welcome, foodies. Let's revisit last night's episode! We find Andrew and Spike curled up in bed, mourning the loss of The Hobbit. Do not despair, Merry and Pippin. He has returned to the Shire. More morning shots and we see Lisa has somehow picked up on the fact that she is a walking advertisement for hairnets. She ties her hair back in a bandana. Thenkew, Lisa, thenkew. Quickfire Challenge. No guest judge today. Tom is......

We'll let Mark Simmons get in his shots at Padma and company this week. Watch enough reality television and you have a sense of who's leaving at the beginning of the episode. As bad as many of you wanted to see Lisa be the one packing her knives last week, we knew that Mark was leaving as he was scraping his razor across his face; apparently in Middle Earth they teach men to shave......