• A very Salon-y piece about why the current “golden age” of television is a dangerous distraction  (salon.com)

Open a window on social media during prime time, and you’ll find young journalists talking about TV under Twitter avatars of themselves in MSNBC makeup. Fifteen years ago, these people might have attended media reform congresses discussing how corporate TV pacifies and controls people, and how those facts flow from the nature of the medium. Today, they’re more likely to status-update themselves on their favorite corporate cable channel, as if this were something to brag about.

• Are the days of cancelled TV shows a thing of the past? (avclub.com)

• Last night The Simspons featured an entire episode as Legos. While it had whiffs of corporate synergy and co-branding, it was actually pretty good — especially for a latter day episode. Watch it online. (hulu.com)

• To mark the 25th anniversary of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Bryan Raftery sat down with the show’s creators and actors to compile this “definitive” oral history. (wired.com)