TV Guide: Shepard Smith

Top Moments: The Drapers Spar, Racers Cry, Dancers Get Dirty and More!

TV Guide — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:56:00 -0500

This week demonstrated that not everyone on TV is cynical. Mad Men's Don Draper finally came clean with his wife. A One Tree Hill investigation uncovered a cruel deception. Amazing Race's Mika had a panic attack. And it would take a real cynic to think that Shepard Smith wasn't being real in calling for more balance in Fox News Channel's political coverage. This Halloween, we're removing our masks and embracing genuine human emotion. Welcome to Top Moments: Cynicism-Free Edition.

Balloon, Boy Rivet Nation

TV Guide — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:02:00 -0500

The balloon drama that transfixed the nation — and left viewers terrified at the grim possibilities — ended happily and a bit absurdly Thursday with the discovery that the young boy once thought to have been carried across the Colorado sky had never taken to the air.

Cable news channels followed a helium-filled balloon thought to carry the 6-year-old boy, whose family was featured last year on ABC's Wife Swap, and the coverage continued for hours. The balloon landed softly, with the aptly but bizarrely named Falcon Heene not inside. That led to endless vamping and filler as reporters and experts tried to guess where he was, whether he was alive and whether it might have been a hoax.

At one point CNN broke ...