NPR's Wait Wait ... Heading to Television

Emergency Alert System gets first national test at 2pm Eastern

(NEWSER) - Turn on the tube or radio tomorrow at 2pm Eastern time, and you’ll be witness to the first-ever nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System. It's expected to last about 30 seconds. Though the system has been used locally for concerns like weather alerts, this is the first time it will be tested at the national level, ABC News reports. More»

Critics bid farewell to softballs, suspenders

(NEWSER) - Tonight is Larry King’s final show on CNN—Bill Maher and Ryan Seacrest will be in the studio with him, and word has it he’ll be receiving a taped sendoff from President Obama and chat with more than a dozen other mystery guests via satellite. Some 50,000 interviews later, what the critics are saying:

• King’s career “eternally careened between pinnacles of wild success and pits of utter catastrophe,” writes Glenn Garvin in the Kansas City Star . But “it's hard to find anyone of any significance in the past half-century who hasn't sat across the table.”

Ombudsman says firing mishandled; DeMint want to cut funds

(NEWSER) - NPR’s chief has apologized for suggesting Juan Williams keep his feelings about Muslims between himself and “his psychiatrist or publicist,” the station’s website notes. “I spoke hastily and I apologize to Juan and others for my thoughtless remark,” said Vivian Schiller. In a separate memo to member stations, Schiller wrote that Williams’ behavior was misguided because he was an analyst and not “a commentator or columnist.” More»

(NEWSER) - John Forsythe, a versatile actor who gained lasting fame as Blake Carrington on the pioneering prime-time soap Dynasty and as the voice of the mysterious Charlie on Charlie's Angels, died yesterday in California. He was 92. Best known at the time as the affable star of Bachelor Father, Forsythe played a villainous judge in the 1979 Al Pacino vehicle And Justice for All, demonstrating he had the chops to channel the scheming Blake Carrington. More»

(NEWSER) - Obama adviser David Axelrod took the bait and appeared for a taping last night of NPR’s quiz show, Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!—with by turns earnest and hilarious results, Politico reports. When host Peter Sagal asked if he’d been in on the presidential pooch decision, Axelrod demurred. “I was only called in for the final three, and one was Miss California,” he said. More»