Television

If you like mysteries, it never got much better than this on TV. What made it special, other than the commanding presence of Peter Falk, was the central premise. Viewers knew from the beginning of the episode who committed the murder; the joy was not just watching Columbo catch up with us as he built a case, but also learning what it was that made him zero in on the right suspect despite a lack of any obvious evidence.

Ouch, this hurts: "The evening news, a tradition born at a time when evening newspapers were important, has one of television's oldest audiences."

Well, are you going to call Comcast and demand that it carry Al Gore's new TV network? Gore is aiming his programming at young people and must not think highly of their attention spans:

Based on material previewed on its Web site, Current TV at first glance seems like a hipper, more irreverent version of traditional television newsmagazines.

It is said that the deaths of famous people come in threes. And it happens just often enough to make it a good ghoulish game. Bob Hope dies, or the pope, or a former movie star you thought was dead already, and the death watch starts: Who will be next? It especially adds to the believability of the Myth of Threes when there are themed deaths -- three musicians, three politicians, three people who made sex tapes with Paris Hilton.

This week, we've had three TV-related deaths: