Hot Off The Press! The Latest Television News and Info [Text View] - Page 54

fredfa

07-13-06, 05:33 PM

Obituary
Red Buttons, 87

By Dennis McLellan Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 13, 2006

Red Buttons, the impish former burlesque comic who became an early TV sensation and an Academy Award-winning character actor during a career that spanned more than seven decades, has died. He was 87.

Buttons died today at his Century City home after a long battle with vascular disease, publicist Warren Cowan said.

A product of New York's Lower East Side, Buttons had already performed in Minsky's Burlesque and in Broadway plays and musicals by the time he became an overnight hit on television in 1952 with the launch of "The Red Buttons Show" on CBS.

A comedy-variety show, it featured the likable Buttons' monologues, dance numbers and sketches with regulars and guests. Among the comic's recurring characters were a punch-drunk prizefighter named Rocky, a juvenile delinquent called Muggsy, and a dumb "dialect" German named Kleeglefarven.

The diminutive comic — 5 feet, 6 inches and 140 pounds — inspired children around the country to mimic him singing his signature "Ho Ho Song," in which he hopped around singing, "Ho Ho! Hee Hee! Ha Ha! Strange things are happening."

The Academy of Radio and Television Arts and Sciences named him Comedian of the Year in 1954.

But Buttons' time at the top on TV was short-lived.

The show, which moved to NBC when CBS canceled it after its second season, became a sitcom and was off the air a year later.

After his show was canceled in 1955, Buttons said years later, "I couldn't get arrested." Indeed, as he said at the time, "I found out how tough show business can be."

Over the next two years, he worked only 14 weeks, primarily in nightclubs, with only three guest shots on "The Perry Como Show" and a role in a "Studio One" production.

But in late 1957 he was unexpectedly back on top with his dramatic supporting role in the screen adaptation of the James Michener novel "Sayonara," starring Marlon Brando as an Army major who falls in love with a Japanese woman after he is assigned to an air base in Japan during the Korean War.

Buttons' role as the tragic Airman Joe Kelly, an enlisted man in Brando's company who marries his Japanese sweetheart despite a military policy forbidding interracial marriage, earned him an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best supporting actor

"I'm a little guy," Buttons said at the time, "and that's what I play all the time — a little guy and his troubles."

Buttons appeared in more than 30 movies, including "Hatari!," "The Longest Day," "Harlow," "Stagecoach" (the 1966 remake), "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," "The Poseidon Adventure," "18 Again!" and "It Could Happen to You."

In 1966, he starred in the short-lived situation comedy "The Double Life of Henry Phyfe," in which he played a bookkeeper who is asked to pose as a secret agent.

Buttons never equaled his early TV success or the high of his Oscar win, but he also never again stopped working. He appeared in TV movies and specials and made frequent series guest shots. He had a stint on "Knots Landing" in the 1980s and recurring roles on "Roseanne" in the '90s and in the Showtime series "Street Time" in 2002.

In the 1970s, he made frequent appearances on "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" shows, in which Buttons would begin his portion of the proceedings by noting, "Some of the most famous people in history never got a dinner!"

A popular guest at testimonial dinners over the years, Buttons offered up one-liners, including: "Alex the Great, who said on his wedding night, 'It's only a nickname'." and "George W. Bush, who said to Pope John Paul II, 'Give us a visit and bring the missus."

"You think you can reach a peak and stay there, but that's not what happens. I've been coming back continuously," Buttons said in a 1987 interview. "I've had a Humpty Dumpty career. It's been a roller coaster ride."

Born Aaron Chwat Öin New York City on Feb. 5, 1919, Buttons spent his early years in tenements on the Lower East Side, the same poor neighborhood that had spawned legendary figures including Eddie Cantor, George Burns, Jimmy Durante, Fannie Brice and George and Ira Gershwin.

"I don't know," Buttons once said. "It must have been something in the seltzer."

His father, a Polish immigrant who made hats for a living, sparked his early desire to get into show business.

"He was a clown who liked to sing and dance," Buttons told Newsday in 1995. "I picked that up from him. I noticed he made people happy, smiling, laughing, and that's what I wanted to do."

As a kid, Buttons sang for pennies on the street, encouraging donations by wearing a small sign that said, "I am an orphan."

"That was my gimmick," he recalled. "People were nice to orphans."

Buttons' family, which included his brother Joe and sister Ida, moved to the Bronx while he was still in grammar school.

At 12, billing himself as Little Skippy and singing "Sweet Jennie Lee," he won an amateur night contest at a local movie theater.

At 16 in 1935, he landed a job as a bellboy and singer at Dinty Moore's Tavern on City Island in the Bronx. Customers, eyeing his red hair and uniform festooned with brass buttons, gave him the nickname that became his professional moniker.

That summer, Buttons made his first appearance on the Borscht Circuit. In exchange for room and board, he entertained at Greenfield Park in New York's Catskill Mountains.

During a summertime stint at Loch Sheldrake in the Catskills after he graduated from high school in 1938, Button was spotted by a talent scout for burlesque impresario Harold Minsky. That led to a 17-week engagement at the Gaiety Theater in New York, followed by time on what was known as the Western Wheel circuit.

Buttons made his Broadway acting debut in a supporting role in "Vickie," a farce at the Plymouth Theatre starring Jose Ferrer and Uta Hagen. He followed that by joining the "Wine, Women and Song" vaudeville-burlesque company at the Ambassador Theater in 1942.

After being inducted into the Army in 1943, Buttons joined the cast of "Winged Victory," playwright Moss Hart's Army Air Forces play to benefit Army Emergency Relief.

After 212 performances in New York, he re-created the role in the 20th Century Fox film version. That was followed by a 28-week "Winged Victory" tour.

He also had a stint with another Army unit in Europe in 1945, and that year he performed and served as master of ceremonies in a show for President Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin at the Potsdam Conference.

Back in New York after his discharge, Buttons appeared on Broadway in George Abbott's musical "Barefoot Boy With Cheek" in 1947 and the 1948 musical "Hold It," in which he impressed New York World-Telegram critic William Hawkins, who wrote: "The best out and out performance of the evening is Red Buttons, who comes into his own He can dress up comedy lines."

Forty-seven years later, in 1995, a 76-year-old Buttons was still dressing up comedy lines with "Buttons on Broadway," a one-man show filled with old stories and old jokes.

"I love to make 'em laugh. I love to hear 'em laugh. I love to entertain," he told Back Stage magazine. "That's my life. It's always been my life."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-071306buttons,0,2944901,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

fredfa

07-13-06, 05:54 PM

TV Notebook
To live and heal in L.A.

Jenelle Riley Back Stage West

Why do we love shows set in hospitals? Because they've long been breeding grounds for great actors. Before he was a dual Oscar winner, Denzel Washington cut his teeth as the charismatic Dr. Philip Chandler on "St. Elsewhere." Washington was in good company: His co-stars on the NBC series included character actors William Daniels and Ronny Cox, and then-rising stars Ed Begley Jr., Mark Harmon, and David Morse. Currently, there are three hit programs on network television shot in Los Angeles (though all are set elsewhere) that revolve around the chaotic lives of physicians. And while they may be very different in tone and style, they all have one common thread: supremely talented actors playing doctor.

When "ER" premiered in 1994, it was one of two highly touted hospital shows of the new season. On paper, "ER" didn't have the prestige of the David E. Kelley-created "Chicago Hope." It starred George Clooney, an actor with multiple failed series behind him, and Anthony Edwards, not seen in the limelight since 1986's "Top Gun." Of course, the program went on to become a pop culture phenomenon, rising to the top of the ratings and making megastars out of unknowns Julianna Margulies and Noah Wyle.

"ER" has continued for 12 seasons through its ability to cast charismatic performers who earn the audience's interest despite the fast pace of the show. When Clooney departed the series, producers tapped actor Goran Visnjic to join the cast as broody Dr. Luka Kovac. At first it felt like the show was simply replacing its resident heartthrob with a generic hunk who bore more than a passing resemblance to Clooney. But the classically trained Visnjic, who was playing Hamlet at age 21 in his native Croatia, soon came into his own, erasing any lingering memories of his predecessor.

Visnjic was well-aware of the pressure on him, as he told Back Stage in 2004, but his fears were allayed by none other than Clooney himself. "I remember meeting George when I was coming to my first day of work on 'ER,' " he recalled. "He walked by and introduced himself and was really nice. He said, 'Don't worry, it's going to be great, it's a great group of people, it's a great show. Just relax and do your job.' It was quite a big deal for me to be on the show. He'd just left, and I was one of five new cast members, and [English] was my second language, and it was a big medical show. So he actually made me feel much better after that."

Another smart move was snatching Maura Tierney to play nurse (now doctor) Abby Lockhart after the cancellation of Tierney's series "NewsRadio." Bringing an inherent realism to any part she plays, Tierney's natural, effortless acting style keeps the show grounded during the jumpy camera work and nonstop action. The same can be said of Laura Innes, who plays prickly Dr. Kerry Weaver, one of the most fascinating female characters on television today. In a medium in which many networks insist that their leads be likeable, Innes doesn't hesitate to play Weaver with all her rough edges intact.

Because of the nature of the program, with its frenetic pacing and reluctance to delve too deep into patients' lives, the acting styles on "ER" tend to blend together. It can be difficult to hold one's own or stand out in a large cast of people whose main job is to shout nonsensical medical dialogue while running down hallways. This could be why the cast doesn't garner the same attention it did when it premiered. But make no mistake, actors such as Linda Cardellini (as jaded nurse Samantha Taggart) and the compulsively watchable Mekhi Phifer (as overachieving Dr. Gregory Pratt) could hold their own against Margulies and Edwards any day.

On the other end of the spectrum from "ER's" "just the facts" style of storytelling is "Grey's Anatomy," the often soapy, sometimes silly ABC hit that has become the water-cooler show of the season. While it may resemble the early seasons of "ER" in ratings and magazine covers, "Grey's" isn't afraid to get personal, proudly detailing the hookups, breakups, and make-ups at the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital.

Who would have guessed, 20 years ago, that Patrick Dempsey, star of the teen comedy "Can't Buy Me Love," would mature into a charismatic leading man as Dr. Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd? Or that Katherine Heigl, best-known as eye candy in the TV show "Roswell," would be such a revelation as model-turned-doctor Izzie Stevens? It's great to see established character actors Isaiah Washington and James Pickens Jr. shine alongside new discoveries such as Ellen Pompeo (as title character Meredith Grey) and T.R. Knight.

Perhaps no one has garnered more praise - including this year's Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards - than Sandra Oh, who tears into the role of difficult but brilliant Dr. Cristina Yang. While tough and outspoken - she says all the things we wish we could - Yang also reveals surprising moments of vulnerability.

And therein lies perhaps the show's greatest achievement: making the audience adore characters who frequently behave badly, who have very real flaws, and who can occasionally be downright unlikeable. As tough-as-nails Dr. Miranda Bailey, Chandra Wilson has quickly become a fan favorite even though she spends most of her time verbally dressing down her interns. And as resident lothario Alex Karev, Justin Chambers is rapidly becoming the guy we love to hate. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the sympathy and dignity Kate Walsh has brought to her role of Dr. Addison Shepherd, Derek's unfaithful wife, who has gone from resident bitch to the woman we root for to find happiness.

But there's another TV doctor whose audience's adoration seems to increase based on how inappropriately he behaves: Dr. Gregory House of Fox's drama "House." As played by established British comic Hugh Laurie, House's atrocities include purposely infecting one of his staff with a deadly contagion, torturing a teenage girl until she hallucinated, and stealing his ex-girlfriend's private records from her psychiatrist's office. And we savor every minute of it.

The character is inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but Holmes would be nothing without his Watson, a role that is ably filled by theatre vet Robert Sean Leonard as House's patient, co-dependent friend Dr. James Wilson. Woefully underused in the first season, Leonard is always a joy to watch interacting with Laurie, constantly finding new levels of disgust to play. As House's underlings, the trio of Omar Epps - who, interestingly, got his TV start on "ER" - Jesse Spencer, and Jennifer Morrison is an unqualified example of differing styles that jell into a flawless ensemble.

Most of all, it's a treat to see the always-sensational Lisa Edelstein butting heads with Laurie as hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy. Edelstein has always stood out in supporting roles, whether as a Washington call girl on "The West Wing" or in the short-lived sitcom "Leap of Faith," and with Cuddy she at last has a permanent home on television. She landed "House" after another coveted role fell through: Edelstein tested for "Desperate Housewives," in the part that eventually went to Felicity Huffman. "Housewives" loss is "House's" gain, as Edelstein effortlessly embodies the no-nonsense boss, sharing terrific chemistry with Laurie as the two trade barbs like 1940s movie icons.

Edelstein also speaks to a situation any actor can relate to when playing a physician. "As for the advantages of being a doctor on TV, it has actually gotten in my usual know-it-all way," she told Back Stage. "I love medicine and have always been the one to try and diagnose my friends. Now, however, just as I'm getting into my groove regarding the presented symptoms, someone will inevitably say, 'What, do you think you're a real doctor? You just play one on TV. Ha, ha, ha.' Boy, does that joke get old."

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/tv/articles/0713tvdocs.html

fredfa

07-13-06, 06:01 PM

Washington Notebook
The Adelphia Fact Sheet

(source: F C C)

Adelphia/Comcast/Time Warner License Transfer Review Conditioned Approval Fact Sheet

Summary of Conditions (each lasting six years)

Affiliated Regional Sports Networks:

• A Regional Sports Network is defined as any non-broadcast video programming service that (1) provides live or same-day distribution of sporting events within a limited geographic region of a sports team that is a member team of Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, NASCAR, NCAA Division I Football, or NCAA Division I Basketball, and (2) in any year, carries a minimum of either 100 hours of programming that meets the criteria of subheading 1 or 10% if the regular season games of at least one sports team that meets the criteria of subheading 1.

• Neither Comcast nor Time Warner may offer an affiliated Regional Sport Network on an exclusive basis to any MVPD.

• Neither Comcast nor Time Warner may unduly or improperly influence (i) the decision of any affiliated Regional Sports Network to sell programming to an unaffiliated MVPD; or (ii) the prices, terms, and conditions of sale of programming by a affiliated Regional Sport Network to an unaffiliated MVPD.

• If an MVPD and an affiliated Regional Sports Network cannot reach an agreement on the terms and conditions of carriage, the MVPD may elect commercial arbitration of the dispute.

• The above conditions apply regardless of the means of delivery. Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, however, is not subject to the conditions, except to the extent that the service is already being carried by MVPDs other than Comcast.

Independent Programming:

• If an unaffiliated Regional Sports Network is unable to reach a carriage agreement with Comcast or Time Warner, it may elect commercial arbitration of the dispute.

• If an unaffiliated programming network is unable to reach an agreement pursuant to the Commission’s commercial leased access rules with Comcast or Time Warner, it may elect commercial arbitration of the dispute, where the arbitrator would be directed to resolve the dispute using the rate formula specified in the Commission’s rules.

http://www.fcc.gov/

fredfa

07-13-06, 06:32 PM

The New York Times Obituary
Comedian Red Buttons Dies at 87

By Mervyn Rothstein The New York Times July 13, 2006

Red Buttons, a Borscht Belt comic who rose to instant television stardom on his own variety show in 1952, descended to obscurity three years later after his program was canceled, and then rebounded to win the Academy Award as best supporting actor in 1958 for his dramatic performance in “Sayonara,” died today at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.

The cause was vascular disease, his publicist Warren Cown told The Associated Press.

Mr. Buttons took the Oscar for his portrayal of Sgt. Joe Kelly, an American serviceman in Japan after World War II who is ostracized by the military for marrying a Japanese woman. Miyoshi Umeki, the actress who played his wife, was also awarded an Academy Award for her role in the movie, which starred Marlon Brando, was directed by Josh Logan and was based on the James Michener novel about prejudice and interracial marriage.

Six years earlier, CBS executives, looking for a program to compete with Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” on NBC on Tuesdays at 8 p.m., turned to Mr. Buttons. At the time he was a 33-year-old comedian who had gained nationwide notice in October 1951 on an episode of the “Suspense” television program about Joe E. Lewis, a nightclub star whose throat had been cut by gangsters during Prohibition.

They gave Mr. Buttons, who had also made several guest appearances on the Berle show, his own half-hour variety program, which began Oct. 14, 1952. Later that evening, switchboard operators at CBS reported one of the biggest and most enthusiastic responses to a single program they had ever received. Critics praised him, too; Jack Gould, in The New York Times, declared that Mr. Buttons was “easy to like.”

The next week, though, just before air time (programs were live in those days) Mr. Buttons collapsed from the exhaustion of strenuous rehearsals, and that evening’s show was canceled at the last minute. He quickly recovered, and in the ensuing weeks ratings soared.

Audiences were amused by Mr. Buttons’s comedy routines and his characters. He was Rocky Buttons, a punch-drunk prizefighter with a heart of gold; Muggsy Buttons, a juvenile delinquent with a core of kindness; Keeglefarven, a German military officer presented in dialect; and the Kupke Kid, a child laborer who aroused in others a compulsion to pick him up after first knocking him down. For the role Mr. Buttons wore a kupke (Yiddish for stocking cap), a prop he had brought with him from his burlesque days.

“I’m a little guy, and that’s what I play — a little guy with a little guy’s troubles,” said Mr. Buttons, who stood 5 feet 6 and, in his prime, weighed 140 pounds.

Between bits this puckish, almost elflike comedian would cup his ears and sing, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, strange things are happening,” providing different strange things each week. Soon “strange things are happening” became a catch-phrase among the nation’s teenagers.

At the end of the first year, Mr. Buttons told an interviewer: “Friends have been asking me what my future plans are now that the TV show has been going so well. You know what? I don’t have any other plans. I’ll be plenty happy just to see this thing last. I’m a guy who never uncrosses his fingers.”

It didn’t last. As the second season began, television audiences suddenly and inexplicably lost interest in Mr. Buttons, and a strange thing began to happen: his ratings dropped.

Frantically seeking to rediscover a winning format, he hired and fired writers almost every week — among them Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon.

“I kept firing writers one after the other,” Mr. Buttons recalled. “I never could get quite what I wanted. When a guy does a TV show every week, he is only as good as his scripts.” The revolving door for writers — 163 of them over two years — became a standing joke in show business. But nothing helped. The ratings kept plummeting, and his CBS show was canceled.

NBC, however, picked him up, and in the third year a situation-comedy format was tried in a new time slot. But the ratings failed to reach anything like their first-year levels, and in May 1955, his sponsor, Pontiac, canceled the program.

For the next two years, Mr. Buttons appeared primarily in nightclubs, and although he would make an occasional television guest appearance, he was essentially a nonentity on the small screen. He was 36 and rich, but newspaper profiles at the time called him a “has-been.”

But then Josh Logan, after some initial misgivings about using a comedian in a dramatic role, asked him to join the cast of “Sayonara.” An eager Mr. Buttons went off to Japan. While on location, he sent his agent a postcard of Kyoto’s snow-covered hills. On the front, he harked back to his early days playing stand-up dates in the Catskill, writing, “Hey, look, you’ve got me working in the mountains again.”

Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on Feb. 5, 1919, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was the son of Michael Chwatt, a millinery worker, and Sophie Chwatt, a housewife. Aaron and his family — an older brother, Joe, and a younger sister, Ida — lived in a tenement apartment on Third Street between Avenues A and B. It was a tough neighborhood, and Mr. Buttons said that he would get into a fight every day.

“On my block you either grew up to be a judge or you went to the electric chair,” he often said.

He first attended P.S. 104 on East Fourth Street, but then his family moved to 176th Street and Marmion Avenue in the Bronx. He made his first stage appearance at age 12 under the name “Little Skippy,” dressed in a sailor suit and singing “Sweet Jennie Lee” in an amateur contest at the old Fox Corona Theater. He won.

While attending Evander Childs High School, Aaron got a job as a bellhop and singer at Ryan’s, a bar on City Island in the Bronx. It was there that he got the name Red Buttons: since he wore a bellhop uniform, he was naturally called “Buttons,” and at the time his hair was red. The name stuck, even though for some unknown reason his hair turned dark brown as he got older. (Josh Logan had him dye it red for “Sayonara.”)

His first job in the Catskills was in the summer of 1935, as a singer at Greenfield Park. “My voice cracked, so they made me a comedian,” he recalled. He began working in burlesque, at Minsky’s, at the Gaiety on Broadway and 46th Street, and in Western Wheel, the Midwest burlesque circuit, doing comic numbers like “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long.” In 1940 he married a stripper known as Roxanne, but the marriage was annulled two years later.

In 1941, Jose Ferrer discovered him and cast him in a Broadway-bound comedy called “The Admiral Takes a Wife.” The play received good out-of-town reviews, came into New York on a Sunday in December and was scheduled to open the following day. The comedy, however, was a satire on life at a naval base in Hawaii — Pearl Harbor; the Sunday it arrived was Dec. 7, 1941, and the show never opened.

Mr. Buttons joined the Army in 1943 and spent the rest of World War II in its entertainment unit, appearing in a hit show called “Winged Victory,” which was written and directed by Moss Hart and was turned into a movie in 1944. Other future stars in the show included Mario Lanza, Karl Malden, Barry Nelson, Louis Nye, Peter Lind Hayes, John Forsythe and Gary Merrill. They were recruited by Irving Lazar, who would acquire the nickname “Swifty” and become one of Broadway and Hollywood’s leading agents.

After the war, Mr. Buttons returned to nightclubs and appeared in an occasional Broadway turkey. Then came the “Suspense” episode, stardom, his descent, and the Oscar.

In 1966, he starred on a short-lived television series, “The Double Life of Henry Phyfe,” as a meek accountant-turned-spy. His other movies included “Imitation General” (1958), “Hatari!” with John Wayne (1962), “The Longest Day” (1962), “A Ticklish Affair” (1963), “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969), “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), “Gable and Lombard” (1976) and “It Could Happen to You” (1994).

In the mid-1970’s he was a regular on the NBC comic tribute series “Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roast”; he portrayed the White Rabbit in the 1985 musical miniseries “Alice in Wonderland,” and in 1987 he played the recurring role of Al Baker on “Knots Landing.” He also made guest appearances on “Roseanne” and “E.R.”

In 1995, he celebrated his 60th year in show business by presenting a one-man show, “Buttons on Broadway,” at the Ambassador Theater. Ben Brantley in The Times wrote that Mr. Buttons, “trim and agile at 76,” was “able to command a stage for nearly two hours with a medley of Borscht Belt and burlesque shtick, songs and impersonations.”

As a stand-up comic, he was known primarily for his contributions to Friar’s Roasts. For several years, he was perhaps seen most often as the spokesman in an advertising campaign for the Century Village retirement communities in South Florida.

“I’ve been a performer all my life,” Mr. Buttons once said. “It’s a very satisfactory profession. You get paid off on the spot. When they cheer, that’s payment.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/arts/13cnd-buttons.html?ei=5094&en=06af70757eb13f59&hp=&ex=1152849600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

VisionOn

07-13-06, 06:34 PM

Many of you have indicated your unhappiness with my postings on the “Rescue Me” rape controversy.
So I am listening to you and posting very little on it from the TCA tour.

I hope I wasn't one of them. I was referring to the media coverage being over the top, not your news items. In my opinion just keep on doing the usual great job, no matter what the subject matter.

fredfa

07-13-06, 06:37 PM

Thanks VisionOn.

123HDTV

07-13-06, 06:45 PM

A separate thread warranted perhaps?

I'd like to know what's coming out of TCA about it. I'd like to know how they thought it fit into the series. I realize it'll probably become crystal clear why in the last episode but there could be tidbits coming out.

fredfa

07-13-06, 07:50 PM

OK, OK, I surrender.

And as they are posted I'll add some more posts regarding the "Rescue Me" controversy.

fredfa

07-13-06, 07:59 PM

A Remembrance
Red Buttons

By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog July 13, 2006

There's an obit for Red Buttons on www.tvtattle.com, and it pains me to see it.

Buttons was a genuinely funny man, fast on his feet, abrasive and all-around cool.

And he gave TV critics who weren't even born during his heyday a reason to recognize that just a year ago.

PBS was touting a special about TV legends, and Mickey Rooney had all but hijacked a press conference tied to the show.

Buttons was also there. He took over. (You can read a longer account from my blog then in ''Hail, Red'')

He proved that his comedy was still sharp -- and basically timeless.

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:01 PM

A Remembrance
Hail, Red

By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog July 13, 2005 (exactly a year ago today)

Before I tell you why Red Buttons is so great, I have to talk about Mickey Rooney.

On Tuesday, there was a press conference for a PBS show called ''Pioneers of Primetime.'' It airs in November, and seems ripe for pledge breaks, but that's another story.

To promote the show, PBS had a press conference that included Mickey Rooney, Rose Marie, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Red Buttons and longtime director William Asher.

Combined age: About 500. Every one of them is over 80. Rose Marie and Asher arrived in wheelchairs, and a frail-looking Caesar carried a cane.

Now, Rooney was an enormously talented actor.

But he also loves to talk about himself, even when he is not the subject being discussed.

Years ago, I saw him turn a press conference into a pitch session for himself and for projects he would like to do.

On Tuesday -- with his wife loudly applauding almost every time he spoke -- Rooney pontificated, reminisced and generally tried to steal the show from the other show-biz veterans.

At one point, when a reporter asked about Milton Berle and Fred Allen, Rooney said, ''Can I answer that?''

"I would be amazed if you didn't,'' a weary Reiner interjected.

Which brings me to Red Buttons.

At 86, Buttons was the oldest person onstage. He was also the funniest and the most entertaining.

He not only imitated James Cagney, he stood up and imitated Cagney dancing like George M. Cohan. And, as a smart performer, he read the room -- and quickly sensed the impatience with Rooney.

He began needling Rooney for laughs, with Reiner joining in.

A lot of the lines have a you-had-to-be-there quality on the page, and they don't include Buttons' facial expressions.

But it was astounding, as well as mean. When Rooney introduced his wife from the stage, Buttons said, ''Introduce your mistress, too.''

Some of Buttons's jokes were ancient.

(Recalling wartime service with Rooney, Buttons said, ''One day, he saved our entire outfit. He killed a cook.'')

But he did not really need Rooney as a foil. He also had jokes about his days in burlesque (''I was the youngest comedian in the history of burlesque. ... I billed myself as the only comedian with teeth.'') and other topics.

Most importantly, he had a sense of what worked at that press conference, with that crowd. Didn't matter if the jokes wouldn't work on the printed page, or even in the retelling by someone without Buttons's timing.

That wasn't where Buttons was playing.

He was working the room. And he knew how to work it.

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/2005/07/hail_red.html

AFH

07-13-06, 08:11 PM

Many of you have indicated your unhappiness with my postings on the “Rescue Me” rape controversy.
So I am listening to you and posting very little on it from the TCA tour.
But this Scott Collins piece seems better than most:

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Why FX Dodged Rape Issue

By Scott Collins Los Angeles Times Staff Writer in the Channel Island TV Industry blog July 13, 2006

FX really blew it on this one.

This was an opportunity for the network to state its case in a public forum, and engage in a freewheeling debate over the emotions aroused by the show. Why hasn't Landgraf been front and center, defending the show and explaining the backstory, until now? And I realize "Rescue Me" is still in production, but couldn't star Denis Leary or the producers have spared a day to address the biggest controversy ever to hit this show?

From a purely mercenary standpoint, such a decision probably would have helped the show's marketing and ratings prospects as well.

What a waste.

http://hollywoodhotline.typepad.com/watcher/

I thought that Leary and the director or producer already addressed the issue at hand. I guess they didn't address it to the satisfaction of some in the media. Obviously, Leary's previous explanations didn't help the show from a marketing standpoint. It probably made things worse. I guess it was a waste b/c Scott Collins couldn't have his time to sink his teeth in Leary.

I don't blame Landgraf one bit for not bringing the cast. The discussion would have mainly focused on that rape episode and why this and that was done or said and so on and so on. It has been discussed ad nuasem and all of the critics that cared have given their opinions. What else is there left to say? I guess Landgraf just wanted to focus on other things that FX has going on. Maybe some of the critics there had their own agenda when it came to wanting to question FX at the presentation. Just let it die already. This thing is like the ex-girlfriend who won't go away. She's always showing up even though you guys broke up months ago.

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:17 PM

Given the nature of the topic, Antonio, I might have chosen a slightly different analogy for your final two sentences! :)

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:21 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Truckers 'n' Chomsky 'n' such

From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune blog “The Watcher”

The surprise of Thursday’s session was how darn hilarious Comedy Central’s “Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show” session was. Much of the point TCA, for television networks anyway, is to build buzz for shows no one has heard of or even seen yet. In the case of “Naked Trucker,” which stars Second City veteran David Koechner (one of the stars of “Talledega Nights”) and Dave “Gruber” Allen, not a single person in the room, I’m willing to guess, had even heard of the show. In any case, it’s one of the fall shows I’m most excited about now.

It’s nearly to impossible to convey why a naked guy (Allen) playing guitar while a guy with a greasy comb-over (Koechner) sings country-fried tunes that reference everything from John Negroponte to Noam Chomsky to the drug crank is funny, but trust me, Koechner and Allen killed at TCA.

“Don’t mistake us for hillbillies,” Koechner said (in character as T-Bone) during a panel discussion on the show. “We’re just ne’er do wells. Dandies about town.” Who like to reference Chaucer and whose politics, in the words of T-Bone, are “left of Hegel, right of Marx.”

And he took mock offense at an obvious question, regarding their thoughts on the movie “Deliverance.” “If you’re asking straight out if we like to have sex with men tied to trees…” T-Bone/Koechner answered. He would have finished his room, but the room was in an uproar of laughter.

Comedy Central also unveiled an online-only show that’s basically about, well, the adventures of man parts. There are two of them. I will not say more. But you know what? My mom reads this stuff, and I’m just not going there.

http://tempo.typepad.com/entertainment_tv/

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:24 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
"South Park'' celebrates, Mr T offers philosophy

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News in his blog July 13, 2006

• On the eve of the 10th season of "South Park,'' show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are still feisty, unrepentent and willing to take risk no one else will take. Talking to reporters today to promote the milestone -- the season starts Oct. 4 -- the bad boys of 'toon world lobbed grenades all over the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, gleefully slicing and dicing everything from Tom Cruise to "Family Guy'' to their own cable channel, Comedy Central.

As a sample, Stone and Parker gleefully announced that their infamous "Trapped In the Closet'' episode (above) -- which roasted Cruise and Scientology -- will be back on the "South Park'' repeat schedule next Wednesday. After the episode aired once, it was pulled from the air by Comedy Central, reportedly because Cruise was threatening not to promote "Mission: Impossible III,'' made by Paramount which is part of the same Viacom empire as Comedy Central. (Although everyone denies it publicly, Parker and Stone both believe the story to be true.)

One reason the episode is back: It was nominated last week for an Emmy. In fact, it was the only episode Parker and Stone submitted to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for consideration.

Said Parker: "I don't think it was our best show of last year by any means, but it was certainly the most controversial." And Stone quickly added, "We just did it to be dicks."

Doesn't sound like the pair has lost any of their subversive edge going into Season 10.

• Also on stage this morning: the immortal Mr. T who will have a new reality show on TV Land in which he will dispense personal advice to those in need. It may take a while for you to get your brain around the T as a self-help guru but the ex-"A Team'' star was full of wit and wisdom while answering reporters' questions.

Asked at one point, "Why do you pity the fool,'' he replied:

"You pity the fool because you don't want to beat up the fool. You see, pity is between sorrow and mercy. See, if you pity them, you don't have to beat them up. With fools, you've got to give them another chance because they don't know no better. That's why I pity 'em."

Class dismissed.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/charlie_mccollum/index.html

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:27 PM

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:31 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Matt, Trey, Tom Cruise and 'South Park'

From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune blog “The Watcher” July 13, 2006

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of "South Park," view their recent rift with Comedy Central as "water under the bridge," but they’re still disappointed in the network’s recent decisions regarding the show’s inability to depict the image of Muhammed.

Regarding another "South Park" controversy, the pair had threatened to end their relationship with Viacom, the corporation that owns Comedy Central, over the cable network’s decision in the spring to pull a repeat of “Trapped in the Closet,” the November 2005 episode that mocked Tom Cruise and Scientology. Recently Comedy Central scheduled a re-airing of the episode for July 19.

“Getting that episode on the air [in the fall], the Scientology one, was no problem at all,” Stone said. “It wasn’t a big deal. It was kind of after it aired the [poop] hit the fan.”

Still, though the pair remain convinced that Cruise, who was in the midst of promoting Viacom’s “Mission Impossible 3” during the spring, was responsible for the yanking of the repeat, they said they’ve had no fallout from any Scientologists.

“We haven’t had any contact at all,” Stone said. “I’m sure they’re not happy with us.”

As for wading into subjects that are controversial – in addition to having an episode involving the attempted visual depiction of Muhammed, there was the infamous one exploring the beliefs of Scientologists, which also showed Tom Cruise and John Travolta trapped in a closet together, and another controversial recent outing was called “Bloody Mary” and angered some Catholics – Parker and Stone said that they don’t sweat taking on those issues.

Doing shows on those topics doesn’t cause stress in and of itself, they said. Their main worry every week, they said, is getting the show done on time.

“Almost every single week, we think we’re not going to make it,” just due to time constraints, Parker said. Their other worry, they noted, was whether or not the fans would like the particular show in question. The worry isn’t “random psychos” or threats to their safety, but whether or not fans are going to understand what they were going for.

Still, the decision to yank the image of Muhammed from a recent episode, they said, was very disappointing. And they said that they realize the decision didn’t really come from Comedy Central head Doug Herzog, but from “really high levels of Viacom,” Stone said.

“We thought we could do something really important,” Stone noted, adding that Harpers magazine not only recently reprinted the controversial Muhammed cartoons that caused rioting in various parts of the world. (Harpers also asked the “South Park” creators if the magazine could run the image of the prophet that the pair had wanted to put on the air, but Comedy Central said no.)

“Harpers is in every Barnes and Noble, every Borders in the country, and nothing happened. The risks were totally overestimated,” Stone said.

“Did we overreact? …. History might show that we overreacted,” said Herzog, who wasn’t on stage with Parker and Stone but was seated at the back of the auditorium with other executives and public relations staff. “It’s a judgment call made on behalf of a big media company. … In a perfect world, we would have liked to have done it.”

“It was like we were witnessing… a new taboo being creating out of almost nothing,” said Stone, who noted that an old episode of “South Park” which depicts Muhammed is still airing on Comedy Central and in syndication. “It was so opposite of the way it’s supposed to work.”

In the hourlong interview with journalists, the pair talked about a wide range of topics, including the reaction to their episodes that mercilessly mocked “Family Guy.” The two said that they didn’t hear from “Family Guy” creator Seth McFarlane, but they did get flowers from the “Simpsons” staff and heard from the “King of the Hill staff that they were “doing God’s work,” Stone said.

http://tempo.typepad.com/entertainment_tv/

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:39 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
The Stench of Tom Cruise

By Susan Young Oakland Tribune in her “Unscripted” blog July 13th, 2006

“We didn’t do any press when all the things were going down with Tom Cruise, because you didn’t want to be in a headline with him and start getting that Tom Cruise stink on you,” says Matt Stone.

He’s referring of course to the controversial Emmy-nominated episode of “South Park,” “Trapped in the Closet,” that slaps around Cruise and his beliefs on Scientology. The episode will air again July 19.

Stone and “South Park” co-creator Trey Parker took the stage at the TV critics press tour today to talk about the 10th anniversary of the show.

Of course, all we wanted to talk about was the Cruise episode.

Despite the jeopardy of getting some Cruise stink on them, we wanted to know if it was true that Isaac Hayes gave up his role as Chef because they took aim at his religion of Scientology.

Parker says Hayes asked that they not do the episode. They did the episode. They heard he was going to quit over it. They weren’t surprised when he did. But he was surprised when Hayes started attacking them

“Chef hasn’t been a big part of the show for years, ” Parker said. “So we thought he quit, that’s the end of it. Then he called us bigots and we thought, wow, you thought the show was fine until now and suddenly we are bigots?

“So, game on mother (word they can’t even say on ‘South Park’).”

And the boys are really tweaked about the Mohammed episode last season. The network refused to let them show Mohammed after the uproar with the Dutch cartoon lead to threats of violence.

“Four years ago, we showed Mohammed could turn himself into Superbeaver, and that episode has rerun on Comedy Central and in syndication, but now we can’t?” Parker said. “So a new taboo was created out of nothing.”

And Stone pointed out that “South Park” could show Jesus defecating on President Bush, and any number of outrageous things, but not show a picture of Mohammed.

“It’s open season on Jesus,” Parker says sarcastically. “You can do anything to Jesus on TV.”

http://www.ibabuzz.com/unscripted/

fredfa

07-13-06, 08:53 PM

TV Notebook
USA Will Open Dead Man’s Chest

By Jim Benson Broadcasting & Cable 7/13/2006

In a 4 1/2-year deal valued at $20 million-$25 million, USA Network has acquired the debut fall 2008 television window for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which opened this past weekend with the highest-grossing three-day box office total in history at more than $135 million.

The NBC Universal network is expected to wind up paying about 12% of the domestic box office gross for the cable rights to the sequel. USA had been considered the front-runner since it has the cable rights to the first Pirates movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl, which debuts at 8 p.m. Saturday.

Once Buena Vista Television hammers out the broadcast-network component of the deal, the duration of the various cable windows will be determined.

In announcing the acquisition at today’s Television Critics Assn. press tour in Pasadena, Calif., Jane Blaney, USA’s senior VP, programming, says “no film fits our brand better than Pirates.”

The latest Pirates movie from Jerry Bruckheimer Films, which reunites Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, surpassed the previous three-day record-holder, Spider-Man, by almost $21 million.

It also smashed more box office records than any other movie in recent history, including biggest single-day haul and opening day ($55.5 million on Friday). Pirates is the first film to rake in $100 million in two days.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6352974

fredfa

07-13-06, 09:01 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
'South Park' at 10: Respectable?

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog

“South Park” reaches its 10th anniversary in the fall, which surprises its creators most of all.

“We were surprised it made it after the first seven,” said Trey Parker, appearing with co-creator Matt Stone at the TV Critics Association’s summer press tour Thursday.

By now the crude cartoon on Comedy Central has earned enough respect to get it an Emmy last year, and another nomination this year.

“That was like our worst nightmare, winning the Emmy,” Stone says.

“It’s like you are the punk rock kid at school and suddenly you’re the Student of the Month,” Parker says.

Losing edge is “a constant fear,” Stone says. “It’s hard to be the old guy at the club after a while. And you worry about it. But in the last year we had some good shows to compensate for it.”

The two have been preparing a DVD release of their favorite episodes due out this fall; most of the episode came from the most recent years.

“South Park” showed it still had an edge this year by doing a Scientology episode its network pulled – though after being nominated for an Emmy, it will be rerun for the first time next week.

When riots broke out over cartoons depicting Mohammad in Denmark, the two could rest on their laurels. “We did Mohammad three years ago,” Parker says.

Accompanying the 10th anniversary this fall will be a travel sweepstakes, games, merchandise and ringtones. The new season begins Oct. 4.

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/

fredfa

07-13-06, 09:26 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Simmons Family Values

The Kiss bassist follows in Ozzy's footsteps with "Gene Simmons Family Jewels."
By Maria Elena FernandezLos Angeles Times Staff Writer July 13, 2006

It took Gene Simmons and his family to explain what celebrities mean when they say that something happens to them when they come on stage--and they just light up.

Simmons and his family--Shannon Tweed, the woman he's been "happily unmarried" to for 23 years, and their children Nick, 17, and Sophie, 14--were backstage at the TV industry's press tour being held at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena Thursday. They were waiting their turn to promote their new A&E reality show, "Gene Simmons Family Jewels" when the proud poppa introduced his children. Sophie smiled politely and Nick asked what a press conference was. Nice kids, created by the union of the KISS Rock God and Ex-Playboy Bunny.
An hour or so later, a different personality seemed to inhabit Nick, who exclaimed on stage about his parents:" He doesn't cheat on her. He just goes out and squeezes breasts. He doesn't cheat on her. He's just too chicken." The son later added about his father: "Outside, he's a God among insects."

Thank you, Ozzie Osbourne and familia for starting the trend of supreme family exposure for supreme financial gain. (The Simmons clan isn't the only one. The Carters--as in Nick and Aaron and their siblings--will have their own reality series on E!)

The entertainment press was treated to much insight about the Tweed-Simmons: Simmons showed us his KISS VISA, peddled his wife's new book, "Kiss and Tell," etc. But as wacky and wild as Dad may present himself, they actually came across as a stable and cohesive family.

At one point when Simmons was going on and on and on about how marriages end in divorce and while he and Tweed have never been married, they've also never been divorced, his sweet daughter said: "She's obviously not after your money. She loves you very much."

Simmons credits the "delectable Canadian Miss Shannon Tweed" for his children turning out the way they have. He said they both focus on protecting them and making sure their needs are met. She said she doesn't worry about the small stuff--like making them pick up clothes or comb their hair.

Asked why, after spending so many years not letting anyone see him without his KISS make-up, he would let reality television cameras into his home to follow his family for a year, Simmons replied: "You get past a certain point, there's nothing left to prove to anyone. It's OK to say this is who I am off stage and who I am on stage."

"Also, the fans got older," his son noted, without missing a beat.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-simmons13jul13,0,5682465.story

fredfa

07-13-06, 09:38 PM

Remembering Red Buttons
Chaos Agent

By Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger in his TV blog “What’s Alan Watching”
(first posted July 13, 2005)

Mickey Rooney once was, as he will eagerly tell you, the No. 1 box of fice attraction in the world. To that, he can add another distinction: centerpiece of the most surreal news conference in the history of the Television Critics Association press tour.

Rooney, 84, was on stage to discuss PBS’ "Pioneers of Primetime," a documentary about the early days of television, scheduled to run in November. Since Rooney appeared so infrequently on television back then that he’s not even in the documentary, no one could quite understand what he was doing on the panel — not even the Pioneers producer could explain it — but he proceeded to do his best to take over the joint.

For more than an hour, Rooney interrupted other panelists — including genuine TV pioneers like Sid Caesar, 82, and Rose Marie, 81 — answered questions not directed toward him, and randomly digressed into stories about people he had worked with in the movies and on stage.

All that stood between the critics and total conversa tional Armageddon were Carl Reiner, 83, and Red Buttons, 86, who alternately tried to get the discussion back on track or take Rooney down a few pegs.

The trouble began early, when a question about changing standards of taste in TV comedy led Rooney to get philosophical.

"I think everybody in the entertainment world is special," he said, "because God gave them that talent to move forward and to go with the good, the mediocrity of things and the good things. And people who say that they never made mistakes, dont you believe it. Everybody makes mistakes and they’re nothing to be ashamed of. But, in entertainment, you try your best not to make any mistakes. Sometimes, it’s good. Sometimes, it’s fair. Sometimes, it’s not even worth going. But all of these people on this venue today have worked with good taste, good taste, and thats what we’re all proud of."

A startled Buttons asked, "What the hell did Mickey (just) say?"

"I don’t know," Reiner replied. "I was about to ask if somebody had written it down because I want to make a sampler out of that. I want to have that on my couch."

After a Rooney anecdote about the legendary producer and director Cecil B. DeMille that only Caesar seemed to understand, Buttons asked, "By the way, Mickey, was Lincoln a nice guy?"

This didn’t have the desired effect, as Rooney started discussing Civil War generals whose last names also belonged to his own relatives. As the reporters and other panelists broke down in astonished giggles, Rooney insisted, "I don’t know why you’re laughing. It’s true!"

When Rooney began to answer a question asked of Caesar, Reiner said, "You’re not Sid Caesar," and tossed the question back to his old boss from "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar’s Hour."

Later, Rooney began listing all the actors with whom he’d worked at MGM, and likely would have kept going for several minutes if Buttons hadn’t interrupted to start talking about his love of Rooney’s Andy Hardy movies, inventing new ones like "Andy Hardy and the Hasidic Housewife." Rooney then took this as a cue to explain to the audience that Lionel Barrymore had played Judge Hardy in the first Hardy picture.

"I’m so glad I came!" Reiner dryly exclaimed. "I would not have known that!"

"Pioneers of Primetime" deals at length with the vaudeville backgrounds of many early TV stars, and Rooney made sure everyone understood that vaudeville was pre-dated by burlesque, going so far as to dust off old burlesque jokes like "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and "That was no lady, that was my wife!" as Buttons groaned, "Oh, my God."

When Rooney interrupted Buttons’ story about being on stage during the moment of the infamous 1942 police raid of Minsky’s, Buttons griped, "Mickey, I’m on."

"I’ve never seen you get off," Rooney retorted.

"It’s hard to work in stereo," said Buttons. "It really is."

A few minutes after, Buttons was listing TV stars with a background in sketch comedy, such as Caesar, Jackie Gleason and Phil Silvers, when Rooney non-sequitur’ed into an appreciation of movie immortal Jimmy Cagney. Buttons, unable to resist, launched into his Cagney impression, and all of a sudden both Buttons and Rooney were on their feet, shadowboxing in a way that only seemed half-playful. (You can guess which half was which.) To defuse the tension, Reiner launched the room into a sing-along of the title number from the Cagney musical "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

Rooney sat down, but his Cagney discussion went on for several more minutes — including him reciting lines from the 1935 version of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" where Rooney played Puck and Cagney played Bottom — until "Pioneers" producer Steve Boettcher begged the reporters, "Jump in, jump in. Don’t be shy."

"I was a young girl when this panel was started," cracked Rose Marie.

A reporter wondered if anyone on the panel had a theory about why Milton Berle became a big TV star while his vaudeville contemporary Fred Allen didn’t.

"Can I answer that?" Rooney asked.

"I would be amazed if you didn’t!" said Reiner.

As the session was coming to an end, Reiner declared, "I want to say one thing in defense of Mickey," and as the audience cackled, Reiner went on at length about Rooney’s many talents.

"What I’m saying," he concluded, "is that Mickey Rooney should be forgiven for all his madness up here today because he is a genius. He’s a genius performer."

Buttons, not quite as sincerely, also tried to defend Rooney, pointing out they served in the Army together during World War II.

"One day, he saved our entire outfit. He killed a cook."

http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2005/11/oh-mickey-youre-so-fun.html

fredfa

07-13-06, 09:44 PM

TV Review
Angela's Eyes

(Lifetime, Sun. July 16, 10 PM ET)
By Brian Lowry Variety.com

Everyone is so eager to develop their own crime procedural (and hear that lovely "ka-ching!" sound) that they continue to trot out variations with the most dubious of twists -- in this case, an attractive young FBI agent (aren't they all?) who, for reasons the pilot opts not to disclose, can immediately discern when people are lying. Silly, poorly cast and full of clunky dialogue, "Angela's Eyes" is even burdened with a peculiar title, though to be fair, "The Closer" and "Psych" were taken, and "The Human Lie Detector" probably didn't clear legal.

Soap star Abigail Spencer plays Angela Henson, whose troubled history has led her to an FBI surveillance unit, where she employs her "gift" but also takes perilous chances, as her partner (Lyriq Bent) and boss (Rick Roberts) huffily remind her.

In the premiere, Angela is tapped to investigate a missing-woman case, although given her unique abilities, it's confusing why she simply doesn't haul all the suspects in for questioning, interview the witnesses and solve this damn thing in 10 minutes.

Ah, but then who would stay put through the commercial breaks? So Angela is outfitted with a sordid past -- her parents having been convicted for spying against the U.S. government, while a screwed-up brother is alluded to but not shown in the opener. In addition, she's in the early stages of a relationship, allowing writers Scott Shepherd and Dan McDermott to have some fun with the amusing notion that romance and the ability to see through lies are basically incompatible.

Spencer is pretty enough but wholly unconvincing as a hardened, daredevil FBI agent. It's OK when our TV cops look like shampoo models but not when they sound like them, too.

Indeed, the show delivers occasional moments that almost feel like a spoof of '70s detective shows. In the third episode, for example, Angela snaps at her brother that their mother is "in federal prison serving life for treason," to which he emotionally replies, "She's still mom!"

The introduction does leave a few narrative doors ajar thanks to the ashes of Angela's hard-to-bury past and her family issues. But initially, anyway, nothing here seems fresh enough to distinguish the series from a crowded (and generally better) pack.

"You've been watching too much bad TV, honey," one suspect tells Angela during interrogation.

And that, at least, is no lie.

fredfa

07-13-06, 10:38 PM

Satire
Jon Stewart on Sen. Ted Stevens

If you haven’t seen this, it is priceless.

Jon Stewart of Comedy Central takes on the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee on the new telecommunications act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClkE64nFDY&search=daily%20show%20stevens

fredfa

07-13-06, 10:52 PM

Top 20 most TiVo-ed TV shows (Week Ending July 9)

# Show Title Network % TiVo'd
1. "So You Think You Can Dance" Wed. FOX 10.75
2. "Big Brother 7" Thu. CBS 8.81
3. "America's Got Talent" Wed. 9 p.m. NBC 8.19
4. "So You Think..." Thu. FOX 7.96
5. "Windfall" Thu. NBC 6.05
6. "Grey's Anatomy," Thu. ABC 5.70
7. "Rock Star" Wed. CBS 5.43
8. "Grey's Anatomy" Thu. CBS 5.28
9. "CSI: Miami" Wed. NBC 4.60
10. "CSI" Thu. CBS 4.12
11. "The Office" Thu. NBC 3.86
12. "My Name Is Earl" Thu. NBC 3.84
13. "Law & Order" Wed. NBC 3.83
14. "...Got Talent" Wed. 8 p.m. NBC 3.80
15. "House" Tue. 8 p.m. FOX 3.73
16. "House" Tue. 9 p.m. FOX 3.60
17. "Rock Star" Thu. CBS 3.51
18. "Saturday Night Live" Sat. NBC 3.48
19. "Treasure Hunters" Mon. NBC 3.45
20. "Dateline NBC" Fri. NBC 3.38

Source: TiVo

fredfa

07-13-06, 10:56 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Breathing a little easier

By ED BARK The Dallas Morning News

PASADENA, Calif. – The cast of Entourage, without any entourage, filed unceremoniously toward a hotel ballroom stage Wednesday evening when they had every reason to strut.

HBO's hottest show continues its cool cruise through a third season, with its characters straddling the no-longer-great divide between pop fiction and fact. So much so that a TV critic wondered how their Hollywood-dwelling characters might prepare for a meeting with the nation's TV critics.

"I hate to say it, but I'd probably be smokin' a joint," said Jerry Ferrara, who plays horn dog Turtle.

"Did you smoke a joint today?" the critic pressed.

"Absolutely not."

Actually it was a pretty fair question. On Monday, CNBC anchor Joe Kernen told his viewers that Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean sequel had broken Aquaman's three-day box-office record with a take of $132 million. He also reported that Aquaman had just claimed the record from Spider-Man, which had held it for four years.

Fact check: Aquaman is the fake box-office blockbuster that isn't really directed by James Cameron but does star Entourage dreamboat Vincent Chase (played by Adrian Grenier). That completes our Pirates of the Caribbean Disneyland ride through a funhouse mirror. But HBO is still very much enjoying this ride; its press materials included a 12-page "Entourage Guide to Los Angeles" that listed actual hot spots where the show's four unattached bachelors have dined, shopped, clubbed, etc.

In real life – here we go again – Mr. Ferrara and Kevin Connolly (Eric Murphy) both have steady girlfriends while Kevin Dillon (Johnny Drama) is married with a small child. Only Mr. Grenier is available at the moment. But he had a ready one-liner when asked about that.

"I live vicariously through Vince," he said. "By the end of the day I'm pooped. I just go to bed."

Sorry, but that's just not believable.

Press clippings

• Filmmaker Spike Lee preceded the Entourage ensemble to talk about his four-hour HBO documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Aug. 21-22).

Premiering a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Requiem is a "living, breathing story" intended to deliver a punch to the gut.

"When people are mad, they curse," Mr. Lee said. "They're profane. And I don't want to censor in any way the things people want to say. We wanted to record the raw feelings of those people."

The director and a small crew began filming in New Orleans late last November and have made seven trips since.

"Many people have Katrina fatigue, but we must remember that this could happen to anybody," he said. "Right here in California, you guys can go anytime."

The film will revisit early but widely discredited suspicions that the levees in New Orleans intentionally were blown up, unleashing lethal floodwaters into some of the city's poorest neighborhoods.

"We touch upon it, but it's not four hours of that," Mr. Lee said. "But if you're an African-American, you don't put anything past the U.S. government."

Close to 100 people were interviewed, many of them everyday citizens. Notables include Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien, activist Al Sharpton, actor Harry Belafonte and rapper Kanye West, who chose a nationally televised benefit for Katrina victims to say, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Not surprisingly, Mr. Lee is inclined to agree.

"What America does a very good job of is disguising poverty," he said. "Hiding it. Putting it in the background."

• And now for something completely different – at least for Larry Hagman.

The former Dallas star who made J.R. Ewing an internationally famous double-dealer will play a wealthy man in search of testicular implants on the fourth-season premiere of FX's Nip/Tuck.

Instead, he buys the cosmetic-surgery clinic run by Drs. Christian Troy and Sean McNamara (Julian McMahon, Dylan Walsh). It's 70-year-old Burt Landau's (Mr. Hagman) gift to his much younger African-American wife, Michelle (Sanaa Lathan), who becomes the surgeons' new boss.

Scott Seomin, FX's vice president of media relations, confirmed Wednesday that Mr. Hagman will be featured in at least the first four episodes of Nip/Tuck, which is scheduled to resume in September. Other guest stars in future episodes include Kathleen Turner and Brooke Shields.

http://www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/columnists/ebark/stories/DN-presstour_0713gl.ART.State.Edition2.24c5bf9.html

fredfa

07-14-06, 12:43 AM

TV Q&A
Ask Matt

(from the Ask (TV Critic) Matt (Roush) column at TVGuide.com
By Matt Roush TVGuide.com TV Critic

Question: Six of one, half dozen of the other, huh? So much for the "improved" Emmy nomination process. It seems that just as many glaring omissions were made this time around as before, just different ones. Now, rather than the overlooked performers from small shows getting shafted, the respected stars from equally respected shows got the pie in the face. How any panel of humans viewing televised programming could find five more deserving fellow Homo sapiens than Hugh Laurie in the best-lead-actor category boggles the mind. Yes, Denis Leary, Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart got welcome nods, but the rest? Sheesh! No James Gandolfini or Edie Falco, but Martin Sheen and Geena Davis? No Jason Bateman or Lauren Graham, but Kevin James and Stockard Channing (for Out of Practice, no less!)? Just when you think Channing's rote nomination days for The West Wing were over, the Emmys find another way. (Maybe we should get those people on the alternative-fuel issue, pronto.)

I mean, just look at TV Guide's Dream Ballot choices. Fourteen out of 50 became reality, from my estimation, and just one per category in seven of the eight acting categories. Since the ballot was rightfully deemed a dream, were the nominations a nightmare? Save for a few minor aberrations, nothing really changed all that much in the "new" Emmys. Not surprising, but disappointing nonetheless. — Todd S.

Matt Roush: "Nightmare" is a pretty good word for it. Inexplicable nightmare, more like. For my own analysis of the Emmy nominations, check out my Dispatch from last week. Todd sums it up pretty well when he describes a flawed process that didn't exactly improve itself under a new system. It's true: They just made different mistakes this time, affecting some of the players that we would have thought inviolable. I can say with confidence that on the day of the announcements, I didn't get a single piece of mail praising what had transpired on Thursday morning.

________________________________________

Question: I just need to vent to someone who understands. As I watched you Thursday morning on Good Morning America, I was so glad they had an expert to analyze the noms. After they announced the names, and I stopped screaming at the TV (never more so than at Lost's omission), I was trying to read on your face all the things I was feeling. It seems like what was supposed to be an experiment for good (the new voting system) was a catastrophe. It was finally going to give the Lauren Grahams and Kristen Bells a real shot.

In the end, not only did they not benefit, but Lost, James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Hugh Laurie and a host of others that would surely have been nominated under the old system were excluded. It seems ridiculous that a show that won last year's Emmy for best drama, and was generally just as well-received by critics in its sophomore year, was totally snubbed. I was already nervous the night before when Tom O'Neill predicted that Lost would not be nominated because that panel didn't "get" the episode that was submitted. It seems really unfair that out of up to 24 hours of compelling television, a show can submit only one episode for judging by a jaded panel that is not really familiar with the show. I really think it should be up to people like yourself, Robert Bianco and others who watch and discuss TV all year long. Thanks for listening. — Marc H.

Matt Roush: Thanks for writing. And for watching. (I admit I was in complete shock and panic during the live GMA broadcast. As they handed us slips of paper with the various nominees on them, I kept thinking, "Surely this is a misprint. This can't be right.") One of the flaws of the Emmy process, as we've often said, is that the people doing the judging are the people who watch less TV than almost anyone else in the country, because they're all too busy making TV. If it's true that an episode of Lost was judged as too dense and baffling to be appreciated, then woe to all shows that step outside the box and into the genre of the weird and fantastic.

________________________________________

Question: I really need to voice my complete disgust at this year's Emmy nods. As a huge fan of Lost, you must also be repulsed by the fact that the show isn't nominated. The series experienced no real decline in quality, and it's as much favored by audiences and critics as ever. What is the motivation behind snubbing it this way? Also, I know your opinion of Desperate Housewives has soured this season, but even at its worse, its quality is far greater than the completely mediocre Two and a Half Men, yet for some reason Men got the nomination.

Marcia Cross did the best work of her career this season. In fact, toward the end of the season, she was basically carrying the show on her shoulders, yet the nod went to Alfre Woodard! Woodard is a fine actress, but this is a mere sympathy vote. She barely had any Emmy-worthy moments during her run, and her performance wasn't even comedic! I'm sure you share my pain. — Adam

Matt Roush: Do I ever. There's some feeling that Lost may be getting punished because of a sense that it's not moving forward fast enough or maybe even going anywhere in particular. That's probably overstating the case, but of course it isn't true.

It's a shocking snub, as is Marcia Cross being left out of the running for best comedy actress. She's not in the same category as Woodard, but even so, Woodard's nomination is a joke. The character was so dreadfully conceived not even Meryl Streep could have salvaged it, and at times it looked like Woodard wasn't even trying. I'm actually OK with Housewives not making the best-comedy list, but shows like Entourage and especially My Name Is Earl should have taken that slot instead of Men. I actually like Men, just not enough to give it an award.

________________________________________

Question: After the Emmy nominations were announced, I was angrier than I've been any other year. The new voting system and the greatness of some shows gave me hope to see some new faces on this year's list. I can overlook the mistake of no Kristen Bell. I can see why Lauren Graham and Kelly Bishop didn't make the cut. And I could have predicted that no Lost stars were going to be nominated.

But what I can't stand is the fact that Marcia Cross wasn't on the comedy-actress list. In a year when Housewives was terrible, Cross' Bree was the only thing that kept me watching. She delivered the most amazing performance on the show, carrying the torch of a once-hilarious dramedy. The fact that Stockard Channing, Lisa Kudrow or even Debra Messing earned a spot over Cross is the biggest insult the Emmys made this year. And Hugh Laurie was overlooked in place of Christopher Meloni. I am sorry, but this makes no sense to me. For the first time in several years, I won't be watching this awards show, because I am tired of such unfair nominations. — Marvin

Matt Roush: Given that the Emmys will be airing August 27 (it's early because NBC is carrying the show and has no Sundays free in September, thanks to football), I imagine a lot of folks will be ignoring the broadcast this year. Certainly the bizarre nature of the nominations makes it easy to dismiss, I agree. Going through the mail, I'd have to say that the Marcia Cross and Hugh Laurie snubs lead the pack where outrage is concerned.

________________________________________

Question: Wow. What a disaster. Way too much Will & Grace and The West Wing (and I am a big fan of The West Wing). No Lost? No Battlestar Galactica? But to me the big kicker is the lack of Jason Lee and Ethan Suplee. Did no one watch My Name Is Earl? I'm happy for Jaime Pressly, but Lee and Suplee are the reasons that show should have been nominated for best comedy. — Erin

Matt Roush: The omission of Earl and its hilarious male stars was one of the bigger and unhappier shocks to me as well. I thought it was a shoo-in.

________________________________________

Question: As we have all heard, the Emmys were screaming to the world that they had changed their selection process this year, and after seeing the nominees this year, I have to ask: What changed? — Gregg G.

Matt Roush: An excellent question. It's like they tried to fix something that was broken and, if they didn't make it worse, they exposed new and possibly even more damaging flaws. We've been screaming for new blood in the nominations for years, but now we've traded one set of gripes for another. Given the number of deserving nominees that were excluded this year, I'm wondering if another trip to the drawing board isn't called for. (Not that anything can truly fix this system.) Now moving on to a few more select topics, to appease those who are over the Emmy madness (and who can blame them?)....

________________________________________

Question: Not a question, just an "attaboy" for getting it exactly right regarding Rescue Me. This is the best show on television, and the only thing I watch regularly. You said, "Leary has so much charisma that he keeps you (or at least me) glued to his story, alternately amused and appalled. If he were any less horrible, he and the show would probably be a lot less interesting." Exactly. I don't think the rape scene with Tommy and Janet was meant to glorify spousal rape. I think the writers wanted to show just how dysfunctional this couple is, and that she will never really be his redemption.

Sure, there's still love there, and plenty of lust and history, but too much hurt and too much anger to ever work (sorry, Dr. Phil). Every week I watch this show and there comes a moment when I think, "That line or that moment could not be any truer or more real than it is, no matter who played it." There are also several moments when I say little "please god, let this stay on the air" prayers. Great acting, great writing, great directing, funny and dark. It doesn't get any better than this. — Jana

Matt Roush: Couldn't agree more, but thanks for the backup. And here's this from Michael S.: "Matt, I'd like to use your column as a makeshift patent office. I'm going to start calling Rescue Me by the name 'NYFD Blue.' When that catches on and everyone starts using it, I'll at least have your column to prove I said it first. Deal?" Deal. And an excellent point to boot. I've often likened Tommy Gavin to Andy Sipowicz, and it's a fact that this firehouse is just as volatile a workplace as the 15th Precinct.

________________________________________

Question: I was just wondering if you have any reaction to the shocking, sad and truly tragic death of Aaron Spelling, who I believe to be one of the most important figures in pop culture in the last 60 years. How do you think this will affect the future of television? — M.C.

Matt Roush: For my tribute to Aaron Spelling, check out my recent Dispatch. His pop-culture legacy is tremendous, to be sure, but I'm not sure how his passing affects TV. He'd already pretty much slowed down, though he never truly retired. I just hope there are others out there with his indefatigable love of TV. We can never have too many guilty pleasures, and that's where Spelling was truly a master of his craft. He will be missed, there's no doubt.

________________________________________

Question: Have you heard anything about the new show Caprica, set in the Battlestar Galactica universe? (I won't call it a spin-off, since none of the characters will be the same.) I've heard the basic plot, and I know Ron Moore and David Eick are involved once again, but that's about it. Has a pilot been filmed? Are any actors attached? Any time frame for this show to be seen? I can only hope for a day when the end of my week is filled with Battlestars. — Chip

Matt Roush: You and me both. When I conducted a BSG panel in early June at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, the producers said the script for this prequel series was still being finished and hadn't yet been turned in, though it wouldn't be long. Since then I've heard nothing. (But it's been a busy summer.) Once, or if, it gets the actual green light for production, and casting gets underway, I'm sure it won't be kept a secret. But certainly there's no projected airdate yet.

________________________________________

Question: I heard that Kim Raver will be getting her own show this coming season and will not be on 24 any longer. Is this true? — Rosanne

Matt Roush: It's true that Kim Raver is in the cast of the excellent new ABC drama The Nine. How that affects her role as Audrey Raines on 24 remains to be seen. If, in fact, Jack Bauer leaves L.A. for the coming season, maybe geography can explain her absence (and maybe she can do some cut-ins by phone, since cell batteries never die on 24, unlike some characters).

http://tvguide.com/tv/roush/askmatt/

jabbathespud

07-14-06, 01:30 AM

Isn't that a repost of #13000 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7973066&&#post7973066)?

fredfa

07-14-06, 02:05 AM

You are correct, jabba.
I'll try to replace it with Friday's in the morning.
Usually the new Ask Matt appears about midnight ET.
I thought this one sounded a bit familiar!
Thanks for noticing.

fredfa

07-14-06, 02:12 AM

News clips for sale on custom-made DVDs

By Gary Levin USA Today

Have a favorite 60 Minutes segment you just can't get enough of?

A new division of Internet retail giant Amazon.com is selling customized, 90-minute DVDs to viewers. It was launched Thursday, and initial choices are limited to archived material from TV's top newsmagazine and the CBS Evening News.

But Amazon's Sean Sundwall says the company expects to broaden its menu: "While CBS is kind of our launch partner, we're looking to expand the content available in the make-your-own format," he says. "We're confident ... this model will work long-term."

CustomFlix, an Amazon division, allows customers to select from "thousands" of clips dating as far back as 1990, from one-minute Evening News reports to 16-minute 60 segments, sorted by topic area (amazon.com/60minutes). Once ordered, up to 10 clips, or 90 minutes of footage, is burned to the DVD and mailed to customers for $24.95 ($2.99 shipping).

The footage has little value elsewhere —60 Minutes segments were featured earlier on CBS' now-defunct Eye on People cable channel — so the experiment is a low-risk proposition. But the project eventually could expand with others to make-your-own DVDs of entertainment programming if rights issues can be settled; many shows already are sold in syndication, on DVDs and online. "It's extra-sticky with some situations, but not others," Sullivan said, declining to elaborate.

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock called the arrangement "strictly a CBS News deal."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-13-cbs-news-dvds_x.htm

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:03 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Pity the Fool

By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer in her blog “Moraes On TV”

Critics didn't seem much like partying on the fourth night of Summer TV Press Tour 2006.

Maybe it's because, while they expect to suffer though a certain amount of TV suit blah, blah, blah-ing as the price of the drink and food, this party -- thrown by NBC Universal to celebrate the 10th anniversary and 200th episode of Sci Fi's "Stargate SG-1" series -- seemed unusually Academy- Awards-Acceptance-Speech-from-Hell.

"Celebrating the 200th episode is like celebrating a 200th birthday," show producer Brad Wright said, standing on fake stone stairs with members of the cast and Sci Fi suits in the garden of Pasadena's Ritz Carlton Huntington hotel.

"Except the 200th episode is harder. When people turn 200, they don't get cancelled if not enough people are watching."

And though there are 14 remaining days of press tour, which means 14 more party speech opportunities it's going to be very hard to top that one for sheer badtastic-ness.

But the mood wasn't all Brad's fault. Today had been the semi-annual TV Press Tour Bait and Switch Day, and critics were pretty sore.

Every six months, usually during one of the cable days at the tour, critics are fooled into rushing to the first session of a media conglomerate's two or three-hour block of presentations, having seen on the schedule that things are kicking off with a very hot Q&A session.

This time, MTV Networks had said "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker would kick things off at 9 a.m. today. "South Park" has had a particularly controversial year, what with Comedy Central yanking the rerun of the Scientology episode that savaged Tom Cruise -- an episode that received an Emmy nomination just one week ago -- and censoring an image of Muhammad from another episode.

So critics who'd stayed too long at WE's late night "Dirty Dancing" party the day before to oggle leggy women in very tight, very short dresses, dragged themselves out of bed and raced to the morning's first Q&A so as not to miss one quote-worthy second. Only when they settled in they learned the truth, and they felt like fools. Driving home the joke, MTV had scheduled as the first Q&A of the day "I Pity the Fool" -- Mr. T's new series for TV Land.

Show after show, presentation after dreary presentation, critics waited for the "South Park" guys to show. By the time David Cross and H. Jon Benjamin came on stage to take questions about their new animated series "Freak Show," critics were in a foul mood. Fortunately, Cross and Benjamin were real jerks so there's no need to pity them.

When Cross asked one guy to wake up the critic sitting next to him, misinterpreting a glower for a nap, the glowering critic snapped back that he'd been waiting for a long time to see the "South Park" guys.

"Oh yeah -- that's a shock" Benjamin said.

"There's a distinct split schism in what I am seeing, by people who kind of are humored by us, find us somewhat sort of likable, charming, and then people who really do not like us at all, really don't are for us. We are wasting [their] time," Cross said.

"He hates us more than the people that dislike us," Benjamin added.

It's hard to believe, but things could and did go downhill from there. Until finally, Cross decided to throw in the towel.

"You know, let's do everybody a favor -- Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the creators of 'South Park'," he said.

And out they came.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:04 AM

The TV Column
“South Park' Plug Goes a Little Haywire

By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 14, 2006; C01

PASADENA, Calif., July 13--Viacom suits want to promote the upcoming DVD of the creators' favorite 10 episodes to coincide with the 10th anniversary of "South Park." Viacom wants to make sure it sells like gangbusters.

So Viacom's Comedy Central cable network schedules "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker to plug the 10th anniversary and DVD before a couple hundred TV critics and reporters at Summer TV Press Tour 2006 here on Thursday.

Only, Stone and Parker are still angry that Comedy Central in May yanked a repeat of the "Trapped in the Closet" episode lampooning Scientology and its most famous member, Tom Cruise.

At the time they were told it was being pulled because suits at Viacom, which also owns Paramount, thought it could turn people off Cruise and his upcoming Paramount flick "Mission: Impossible 3." (Turns out Tom was quite capable of doing that all by himself without Matt and Trey's help.)

Fortunately, what with "M:I3" come and gone, the episode is no longer such a corporate issue. So, the day before Stone and Parker appear at the press tour, Viacom announces through trade paper Variety that Comedy Central finally will rerun the "Trapped" episode next week.

Quel coincidence! And no, there is no way to be too cynical when covering the super-vertically-integrated entertainment industry.

"First of all, we can't take any questions about Tom Cruise or Scientology or 'South Park,' " Stone cracked right off the bat at the Q&A.

"How much did you wrestle with the Scientology episode?" was the first question.

"Since that pertains to 'South Park' we can't answer," Stone responded.

Comedy Central spokesman Tony Fox, who was also up on stage, told the reporters the episode was pulled so that they could instead air an episode paying tribute to Chef, played by Isaac Hayes.

(Hayes, who is a Scientologist, quit the show on which he had not been much of a presence the past five years, in May. He said he was quitting because Matt and Trey were disrespectful of religion and spirituality. Did I mention that the episode had already aired multiple times?)

"That's our story and we're sticking with it," Fox said -- a sort of "we all know what's really going on here" wink -- after tossing that mountain of horseradish all over the reporters in the room.

"Nicely done," Matt or Trey sneered from his seat onstage. The two applauded Fox; the reporters giggled.

Stone said they dodged the news media back in May when the "Trapped" episode was scrubbed because "you didn't want to be in a headline with him and start getting that Tom Cruise stink on you," even though they were on the other side of the argument.

Then, he said, when the network asked them to decide which episode they'd like to submit for Emmy consideration this year, they chose that episode only.

"We just did it to be [male prides], really," Stone said.

As it turns out, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences liked the idea, and the episode is among this year's animated series nominees.

Parker said they're not that surprised. "You can't pick anything where people are more on your side. This entire city, except Scientology, were like 'Yeah! Go get em!' "

"It's that Tom Cruise stink," Stone added.

Afterward, Comedy Central chief Doug Herzog told The TV Column that the episode was pulled to pay tribute to Chef and that it's running now because "it's its time." He added something about the normal cycle-through of episodes, and that "we reserve the right to air them when and where we see fit." Very scary corporate stuff.

Stone and Parker also admitted they were stunned when, right around the same time, Comedy Central refused to let them show an image of Muhammad in an episode lampooning the so-called "cartoon wars" -- the violence that broke out in Europe and several Muslim countries over Danish cartoons that protesters said were blasphemous because they depicted the prophet.

Stone and Parker were particularly surprised since, a few years earlier, the network had run an episode in which Muhammad was portrayed as a superhero who could turn himself into a beaver.

In the newer episode, instead of Muhammad's image, viewers saw a black screen with the words "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Muhammad on their network."

At the time the network said, "In light of recent world events we feel we made the right decision."

"A new taboo was created out of nothing," Parker said Thursday.

During the Q&A, Herzog told the TV critics that it had been a tough situation and a "judgment made on behalf of a big media company" and that "history might show we overreacted and we're willing to live with that." Then he noted that the image of Muhammad was there -- "it's underneath the black screen."

No kidding -- he really did. He added, "We're looking forward to the day when we can uncover it."

Stone noted that last month Harper's magazine ran the Danish cartoons and nothing bad happened.

After the Q&A, Herzog insisted there was "a difference between a journalistic endeavor" and the satire of "South Park."

But, the "South Park" creators noted, Harper's had asked for the censored frame of Muhammad from "South Park" to include in its "journalistic endeavor."

Comedy Central wouldn't let the magazine have it, they said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/13/AR2006071301849_pf.html

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:10 AM

Sports Media and Business
MLB Postseason Potluck May Return

By Richard Sandomir The New York Times July 14, 2006

The possibility that TBS or ESPN will get the rights to show a League Championship Series from 2007 to 2013 is a reminder of the television setup 11 years ago when the major leagues’ divisional playoff and L.C.S. games were regionalized.

Yes, regionalizing two league championship or four divisional games is different from shifting games to a cable network from a broadcaster. But each creates deprivation.

In the 1995 misadventure that went under the name of the Baseball Network, no viewer witnessed a postseason game nationally until the World Series, a first in the sport’s TV history.

Few fans complained when that arrangement was first announced, but as they focused on the postseason, many turned irate. The division series was a brand-new curiosity, but instead of getting access to all games, states were chopped up; parts of Ohio saw the Reds play, other parts saw the Indians.

The L.C.S. had been seen nationally since 1969, but it was divvied up in that infamous October like college football on any given Saturday.

If baseball fulfills its financial destiny by moving the L.C.S. to a cable network, some fans will be disenfranchised. Cable networks are not seen in as many homes as broadcasters. Between cable and satellite distribution, TBS and ESPN are in about 90 percent of 110 million TV households, but that is 10 percent less than the reach of Fox, CBS, NBC or ABC.

It is inevitable that people whose buildings do not receive cable and those who cannot afford cable or satellite will not be unable to see the L.C.S. on TBS or ESPN. That may be a negligible number of sports viewers in the vast TV universe — and maybe they are lower-income or older viewers that advertisers care little about. But when fans lose what they have depended on getting, such a dislocation should not be ignored.

The shift by the N.B.A. of nearly all conference finals games — the equivalent of baseball’s L.C.S. — to ESPN and TNT from NBC Sports in 2002 shows the broadcast-to-cable risk. The league gladly took the risk because ESPN, with gobs of subscriber and advertiser cash, paid far more than would NBC. The league has since felt that even with its smaller TV universe, ESPN offers a roster of media platforms that serve its fans more deeply than NBC could. But research to prove that assertion, or whether ESPN is creating new viewers, is still in the embryonic stage.

The N.B.A. simply could not avoid losing some viewers as it increased its reliance on cable. In the four years since ESPN and ABC joined TNT to carry the N.B.A., the most widely viewed conference final on cable was a Timberwolves-Lakers game in 2004 on TNT that drew 9.4 million.

In the four years leading up to NBC’s departure — all after Michael Jordan’s retirement from the Bulls — its most widely viewed game was in 2002 when a Lakers-Kings conference final lured 23.8 million.

From 2003 to 2006, with ABC, as the N.B.A’s broadcaster, showing many fewer conference finals games than NBC did, the network had its highest viewership, 8.2 million, for a Detroit-Miami game almost two months ago.

So the pattern is set for a viewership decline for a cable-carried league championship series. Had the classic 2004 A.L.C.S. been carried on ESPN (which has a huge commitment to baseball), who knows how many fewer viewers would have watched the Red Sox storm back to beat the Yankees?

Game 7 of that series on Fox drew an astonishing 31.5 million viewers, a figure that is alien to a cable network.

Fox will retain the other L.C.S. and it remains possible that the network will play a role in the one that is destined for cable. But Fox’s entertainment division would prefer that its sports division stick with one of the series to maintain continuity in the network’s prime-time schedule, which will get additional freedom from baseball pre-emptions next year thanks to TBS’s acquisition of the rights to all division series games.

TBS or ESPN may be baseball’s only options to buy the second L.C.S.

NBC did not pursue a baseball deal with any ardor, and CBS Sports coveted only the World Series but made only a modest offer for it. It is conceivable that ABC Sports might enter the mix if its commanding officer within the Walt Disney empire, ESPN, outbids TBS for the dangling L.C.S. But right now, it appears that TBS wants it more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/sports/baseball/14sandomir.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:14 AM

(Over the next few days a few critics, whose papers were looking to save some money, will arrive late at the TCA tour and have to play catchup with their peers.)

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Riding the TV preview assembly line

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic Friday, July 14, 2006

Entering a pool area encrusted with fake blue glaciers, 11-year-old Pete and his 4-year-old pal Penny were honored guests at the Hallmark Channel party. Short as the pair was, they became the evening's biggest stars, outshining the likes of Mrs. Partridge (Shirley Jones), Mrs. Cunningham (Marion Ross), John Boy (Richard Thomas) and Woody the Child-Diddling Mayor from "Veronica Mars" (Steve Guttenberg).

By the way, did I mention that those youngsters were, in fact, Magellanic penguins? Tuxedoed and plump, they slowly weaved their way down the blue carpet, no doubt disoriented by the strains of Robbie Van Winkle's "Ice Ice Baby" blaring over the loud speakers. A tasteful choice. The creatures showed up in celebration of Hallmark scoring the television premiere of "March of the Penguins," waddling our way during the holiday season.

Real penguins poolside, on a summer night in Southern California.

Hello again from Pasadena, Calif., one plant in the dream-factory chain. Yeah, I realize the "dream factory" idea is beyond cliche, but it's oddly accurate when you're talking about the Television Critics Association's fall preview sessions, which we call the "summer press tour."

The shows you'll see in the coming months on cable and network TV will be finished products, all the ugly bits housed in gleaming casings, begging viewers to welcome them into their homes. Most of them will be shunned, a few unjustly.

Odds are that if you're reading this, though, you care enough to know what those innards look like. That's why the 200-plus critics from the U.S. and Canada have come here. We're examining the gears, pulleys and wires within every network and each series marching before us so you won't have to. Sometimes we get a flightless bird in the bargain. This being L.A., spotting brainless birds of the acting variety is far more likely.

To be fair, the stargazing here can lead to some special moments. At the Hallmark party, I found myself enjoying the company of Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), there to support his fiancee. Gruffudd lamented A&E's decision to sink "Horatio Hornblower" in favor of reality trash like "Mindfreak," but took comfort in being one of Burberry's celebrity faces. His is the kind of life plain old folks dream of having. In Hollywood, he is plain old folks. "Fantastic Four," Burberry, eh, it's a living.

Compared to the way many of us here are earning our paychecks -- tapping our keyboards through this entire experience, robotically downloading the most useful and funniest happenings onto the Net -- it's pure luxury.

Remember, broadcast and cable networks are sending untested and very expensive merchandise out into dangerous territory. Think about that. It takes stones to face stacks of dead and lame shows each May, projects that cost millions upon millions. But that's what network executives do. With the optimism only the inordinately powerful can muster, they say, "Ladies and gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. Our network's lineup will be better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster."

Some tinkering here, and few wise pick-ups there, and a network that ended the season on the scrap heap can leap to the top of the ratings in the fall. The TV business being what it is, though, you're less likely to get a prime-time schedule that moves with the grace and power of Steve Austin than a beakless robot chicken with no sense of direction.

Failure is the norm in this business, and the suits know it. They're just hoping we don't notice, which is why they go to great lengths to sell us the bull. Producers can be even sadder, poor dears. Most of them have no idea that all their hard work has gone into producing a soft stinker that's likely to be flushed weeks after its premiere.

Granted, all of this sounds like Willy Wonka's confectionery. Some people think they'd love to be exiled to the Ritz-Carlton for two weeks, with the fakery, the drunk egomania, the out-of-control boobs -- and the plastic breasts, too.

But spend about a week locked in here. It's cold, and everyone's some degree of miserable.You begin to understand why countless action movies end with the battered, bloody hero limping through a dark foundry, sparks flying and automated drills whirring, hunting or being hunted by a psychopath.

So which are we, Terminator or Sarah Connor? Depends on the context. At some network parties, we're clearly the hunters. Stories abound of actors and actresses showing up to drink when they're really supposed to be there to be interviewed, and when this happens, they perform some major acrobatic feats to avoid being trapped by a jerk wielding a tape recorder.

At the other end of the spectrum it seems my fellow critics made Shannen Doherty and Dan Rather cry on Day Two. The average person would feel terrible about that. Except for the fact that, well, we're talking about Shannen Doherty, Mistress of Crocodile Tears. Watch out for the teeth, kids. Rather choked up at each mention of Edward R. Murrow.

Me, I'm tying back my hair, taking off the gloves and keeping the aspirin close. I'm at my factory station, friends. Let's get to work.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/277505_tv14.html

harley1

07-14-06, 09:16 AM

Time Warner has to share Bobcats

Instead of exclusivity, games would be made available to others

MARK WASHBURN
TV/Radio Writer

Time Warner Cable would lose exclusive rights to Charlotte Bobcats games under a ruling Thursday from federal regulators approving the takeover of bankrupt Adelphia Cable.

Time Warner and Comcast Corp. got the OK from the Federal Communications Commission to move ahead with the $18 billion takeover, which will divide Adelphia's assets between the two cable giants. But the FCC ordered regional sports networks be shared with other providers like satellite TV.

In Charlotte, Time Warner carries the NBA Bobcats games on its News Channel 14. Under the terms of the ruling, the games would have to be made available to other cable providers in the area or satellite providers like Dish and DirecTV.

It would also open the door for local telephone companies that are trying to provide cable TV to pick up the games, said Kevin Martin, the Union County native who was named chairman of the FCC last year.

"If your competitor doesn't have the same access, it makes it hard to compete," he said.

This season, Time Warner carried 50 games exclusively and WJZY (Channel 46) aired 15 others.

Time Warner, the dominant cable provider in the region, is seeking to take over Adelphia's local system, which serves the Lake Norman area of northern Mecklenburg and parts of Iredell County. The FCC decision removes the last major hurdle to closing the deal.

"We're working hard to make this changeover as seamless and invisible to Adelphia customers as possible," said Susan Breckenridge, Time Warner's vice president of public affairs in Charlotte.

She said that after upgrades to the Adelphia system, the company would have a broader audience for its high-tech services like Road Runner internet and digital phones.

The FCC approved the deal 4-1, with Commissioner Michael Copps voting against. Copps said he feared that the purchase could deter competition.

"This decision is about Big Media getting bigger, with consumers left holding the bag," Copps said.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/entertainment/television/15035388.htm (http://)

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:18 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Mr. T, putting the T in TV Land with "I Pity the Fool."

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog

Funny. Some people drink to excess at the tour's evening events -- open bar, top shelf liquor, flightless birds milling about, why not? -- but I don't. I'm not just saying this to make my boss happy, I really don't. It's hard enough to bust out these missives without adding inebriation to the mix.

It took a heroic effort to haul myself out of bed this morning nevertheless. Mind you, I was better off than many of my colleagues, several of whom were duking it out with the hangover devil this morning on top of everything else. We had all rushed out of bed to catch the "South Park" guys, who were alleged to be first up in MTV Networks portion of the big show. But um, oops! Did they say first? They meant last.

That's what I call inappropriate humor. All -- or most -- was forgiven once we found out Mr. T was going first.

The mohawked icon, famous for starring in "The A Team" (which my husband considers to be Chicken Soup for His Soul) as well as creating a kids cartoon, and endorsing a crispitty delicious breakfast cereal that bore his name, is set to sock some advice our way in TV Land's "I Pity The Fool."

He may have abandoned the gold dookie chains, rings and muscle tees for a sharp suit, but he still rocks a 'hawk -- even though, he admitted, he's losing his hair. With Mr. T, what you see is pretty much what you get. And it's hard not to like what he puts out there. Charming, talkative and unintentionally hilarious most of the time, Mr. T just opens his mouth and a stream of good intentions and funny stuff pours out at a fast clip. The man may lack formal training, but the advice racket could use a strong cup of T. (Sorry, I know ... it's still early in this long, long walk.)

Although TV Land is referring to Mr. T as a social scientist, the '80s star will be the first to tell you that's a load of jibba jabba. His skills were honed in the school of hard knocks; and his professor in the Common Sense department was none other than his mama. So, he stressed, Dr. Phil and Tony Robbins have no reason to worry.

"Let me explain to you. My show ain't no Dr. Phil where people sit around crying" -- he paused to affect a boo-hooing whine -- " 'What's wrong with me, Dr. Phil? What's wrong with me, Dr. Phil?'"

"You are a fool! That's what's wrong with you!"

Refusing to give any direct examples from the series --he wants us to watch, suckas -- Mr. T went on to give dispense theoretical advice. For example, what if someone were afraid to fly, just like Mr. T's "A-Team" character B.A. Baracus was?

"I just gotta tell him, 'Straighten up and stop being a coward! Don't be no fool! Get on that plane, fool, and fly.' That's my advice to him, B.A. style."

"I got a list coming," he added later. "I don't want to do it right now. You know me -- but see, either you're a fool or you're not....There's no big or small. If you get on my fool list, that's it, you know."

Consider yourself warned.

However, one question for which we received no concrete answer was what the T in his name stands for.

"For the women and children it stands for tender; to the bad guys and thugs, it stands for tough," he said at first.

But wait. "What helped me in my career?" he said later. "To be on time. That's it. That's what was the T stands for -- on time, baby! Definitely."

What about his success rate in the advice business? "I always will do my best. That's what I always do. I bring it. I bring the heat! I tell people, the T stands for temperature!"

Other things the T stands for: Being nice. Manners. Being polite. Working hard. Loving thy neighbor. Feeding the hungry. A nice guy.

All of it fits him to a -- well, you know.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/print.asp?entryID=104985

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:24 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Who Wants To Be In A Costume - And NOT Think It's Funny

By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine” July 14, 2006

There weren't a whole lot of things more ridiculous than Bravo claiming it was still an arts channel - that's not just hilariously delusional, it's sad - but the sight of a bunch of unironic wannabe superheroes in costume came pretty close.

And not just any costume. The MonkeyWoman costume - which was basically a bathing suit with bananas and a rope. (See her picture below)

She can actually climb a tree pretty swiftly.

Yep, the Sci-Fi Channel was here. Now, in the channel's defense, it has been doing some vastly improved programming and getting a lot of critical acclaim for it. And it may have something in its new series, "Who Wants to be A Superhero," a reality series where "normal" people become superheroes complete with costume (they all live in a house and do tasks and comic book master Stan Lee winnows them down). The winner gets..."immortality." Which means their own comic book, drawn by Lee, and an original movie on Sci-Fi. (One would assume that they'll also get a bad cut on each and be replaced by better actors, but that's just being cynical, which is really my only superpower of note).

There was also Fat Momma who has a belt lined with doughnuts and Lemuria whose costume at the party was a lot more revealing than the one you see here and a bunch of others superheroes, including a guy who could easily have been called Backne or BALCO Man. But he wasn't.

It was certainly a lot funnier than the contestants let on, or realized, until it became clear that it was really pretty important to be seen in costume and get the alloted 15, no matter how potentially embarrassing the journey. It wasn't as bad as, say, a Star Trek convention, but then again it was all unfolding at the Sci-Fi party, which had a 50 foot giant "Stargate"...uh, gate. But it looked like a plastic wheel with lights on it. Or an elaborate portal that was unable to get me out of that party as fast as I wanted to escape.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:28 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
A detective crossover? And Mr. T pities the fool

From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune blog “The Watcher”July 14, 2006

Bits and pieces from Thursday's press tour:

• In a panel for the entirely charming new USA Network show “Psych,” creator Steve Franks said he’d be very willing to have his stars do a crossover with “Monk,” which would of course be a natural fit, and also with “Dead Zone,” a spookier USA show that features a “real” psychic. Network head Bonnie Hammer was also quite enthused by the idea. Frank also said that he created the comedic detective show, which has been a huge hit for USA, in part as a reaction against all the “CSIs” out there. “They’re all so dark and disturbing.” And he wanted to do a show that wasn’t all “plot, plot, plot.” Word.

• I spoke Thursday with “Everwood” creator Greg Berlanti, who’s developing pilots for fall 2007 at the moment. He’s working right now on an hourlong show that he describes as “‘Field of Dreams in a law firm.” It’s set in San Francisco and has an element of spirituality to it. The other show is a half-hour, single-camera comedy about a 14-year old boy, with flavors of “Malcolm in the Middle” and “The Wonder Years” to it. It’s called “Welcome to My Life.”

• Berlanti, by the way, is a recent but ferocious “Battlestar Galactica” fan. He called it the best-written show on television, and said that the show’s shutout in the most recent round of Emmy nominations left him stunned. “It’s the best example of why the Emmys are [expletive].” He used a profanity, but let’s all pretend he meant the word “ridiculous,” which is really the best word for much of the 2006 Emmy nomination results.

• Peter Krause of “Six Feet Under” has signed on to star in a new Sci Fi Channel miniseries called “The Lost Room.” It premieres in December.

• Bravo announced Thursday that the Season 3 premiere “Project Runway” garnered to 2.4 million viewers and was “up 161 percent over the Season 2 premiere in total viewers.” It was the highest season premiere in Bravo history.

• An upcoming Sci Fi Channel wizard detective drama, “The Dresden Files,” is set in Chicago. So, of course, it’s filmed in Canada. I asked the producers of the show, Hans Beimler and Robert Wolfe (both writers for one of my fave sci-fi shows ever, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) about that, and they said they looked very hard at making the show in Chicago, but just couldn’t make it work. They decided to take the “suitcases full of $100 bills” they’d save by shooting north of the border, and set up shop in Toronto. Well, at least they’re not filming in Vancouver.

• On Thursday, there was a TV Land presentation for Mr. T’s new reality show, which is called (c’mon, you knew this) “I Pity the Fool.” I had to ask Mr. T when, exactly, he began to pity the fool. Was it when he was growing up in a tough neighborhood in Chicago? Not so much, apparently. “The pity started a little later,” Mr. T said. “In Chicago, it was survivor, you know. That's what you're about. If you can make it Chicago -- it's like New York. You can make it everywhere. … Even though I used to live in the ghetto, I looked downtown at the tall building, and I said, ‘One of these days I'm going to have that. I'm going to do this for my mother. … I tell people, ‘When you're looking at me, you're looking at nothing but a big overgrown tough momma's boy.’ Why? Because I loved and respect my mother.” Awww.

• Speaking of Vancouver, one of my favorite parts of Aaron Sorkin’s fall NBC drama “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” is one character’s rant against Vancouver. Now, I know that Canadian city is full of very skilled actors, directors and technicians. But still, I had to say a big ol’ “word” when Bradley Whitford’s character yelled, “Vancouver doesn’t look like anything!”

• One final bit about Vancouver: “Psych” is filmed there, it emerged during the show’s panel discussion. Who knew? It really did look like Santa Barbara, where the show's supposed to be taking place.

• One more thing regarding Greg Berlanti: He has “no hostility toward the CW at all for not picking up” “Everwood” for another season. And he emphasized that “our show was not canceled because another show was picked up.” He knows that many fans are mad that “Seventh Heaven” was picked up for the CW’s fall schedule and “Everwood” was not, but he notes that his drama could have easily taken the slot now occupied in the CW’s fall schedule by an “America’s Next Top Model” repeats. “Everwood” was just canceled (sniff) and that’s that, and that didn’t have anything to do with “Seventh Heaven.” He adds that he would have come back to oversee the first 13 episodes of a new “Everwood” season, but he was, in another way, ready to move on. “That may have been in part because I saw the writing on the wall.”

• Finally, Berlanti says that if fans of “Everwood” want Seasons 2 through 4 to come out on DVD, they should continue writing to Warner Home Entertainment and buying the first-season DVDs.

• Just a minute ago, Frances Berwick, a British Bravo executive, was speaking. Another Brit executive from Sci Fi Channel, Dave Howe, spoke a few minutes ago regarding that network’s fare. And those are just a few of the English execs we’ve seen at this press tour (the Discovery networks seem to be especially thick with them). What’s up with that? What’s with these foreigners taking American jobs? OK, maybe I should tone down that rhetoric. A confession: I’m married to a Brit.

http://tempo.typepad.com/entertainment_tv/

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:31 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
HBO Steps Over to the 'Curb' One More Time

By Ray Richmond The Hollywood Reporter in his blog “Past Deadline” July 14, 2006

HBO chief Chris Albrecht wouldn't quite confirm it on Wednesday, but I will: the Emmy-nominated "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is definitely coming back for another season of 10 episodes. Count on it. I have it on good authority. The deal is all but done. Just a couple of "i's" to dot. I think the "t's" already are crossed (although maybe it merely seems that way after getting such a dizzying dose of Mr. T on Thursday morning).

Word is that star and guru Larry David is gearing up for a fall production start on season six and hopefully an airdate in the early part of 2007. David was said to be all but sure he'd had his fill of the show, which is why he called the season five finale "The End" and found him dying on the table and journeying briefly to the pearly gates (where he ran into Dustin Hoffman and Bea Arthur). But David had notably left the door open a crack, and over the past several months the crack has expanded into a wide berth.

This is good news -- for HBO (which is already mourning the imminent loss of "The Sopranos") as well as for us. I wasn't in the group that thought "Curb" slipped last season. In fact, I believe it was better than the previous year: more absurd, more twisted, more gloriously dark and cranky. And after croaking and coming back in the show, it'll be interesting to see what television's most accomplished misanthrope does for an encore.

http://www.pastdeadline.com/

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:36 AM

The Business of TV
Cable Giants Cleared to Buy Systems of Adelphia

Time Warner will serve 98% of the L.A. city market after the sale and a swap with Comcast
By Jim Puzzanghera and James S. Granelli Los Angeles Times Staff Writers July 14, 2006

WASHINGTON — The cable TV market in Los Angeles is poised for a radical makeover after federal regulators Thursday approved the sale of Adelphia Communications Corp. to Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp.

Time Warner will become Southern California's largest cable TV provider under the deal, acquiring Adelphia's 1.2 million subscribers in the region along with 500,000 from Comcast in a complicated swap of assets arising from Adelphia's collapse into bankruptcy in 2002 amid an accounting scandal.

With the switch, customers can expect enhanced programming and services, notably faster high-speed Internet service. Time Warner said any price changes would mostly "be favorable" to subscribers, but consumer advocates warned of higher bills down the line.

Time Warner's share of the Greater Los Angeles market will jump from 15% to 75% as its subscribers in the area balloon to 1.9 million. In the city of Los Angeles, the company will control 98% of the market when the deal closes, most likely by the end of the month.

New York-based Time Warner plans to spend millions of dollars to promote itself in the L.A. area, said Roger Keating, the company's head of Los Angeles cable operations.

"When you only serve 15% of the Los Angeles area, it's hard to justify buying newspaper, TV and radio ads," he said. "We have been out-shouted by satellite TV and phone companies that have spent $15 for every dollar we've spent in marketing."

After checking its inherited networks and fixing any problems, Time Warner plans to start launching new services by October, including faster Internet service, more high-definition channels and free on-demand programming, as well as additional Latino-oriented content, Keating said. Digital phone service is expected to be available by December.

"There's a lot of work to be done," said Keating, who would not reveal how much Time Warner planned to spend. "This won't all happen overnight, but we're sure that if our customers see that we're honest and posting progress every day, they will be patient."

The 4-1 vote by the Federal Communications Commission removed the last hurdle to the $17.6-billion sale of Adelphia. Comcast and Time Warner, the nation's two largest cable TV providers, agreed as part of the deal to divvy up the subscribers of No. 5 Adelphia and to swap some of their own to consolidate each buyer's operations in several areas nationwide.

In addition to Southern California, Time Warner will bulk up its presence in New York, Ohio and the Carolinas. Comcast will grow in Boston, Pittsburgh, South Florida and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Concerned that Time Warner and Comcast would have more clout, the FCC included several conditions in its approval. The companies will be prohibited from trying to lure viewers by refusing to distribute their regional sports channels to rival providers such as satellite TV systems. In addition, independent programmers will have the right to binding arbitration if the cable systems decline to carry their channels.

"It's a mixed day for the cable guys," said industry analyst Blair Levin of Stifel Nicolaus & Co. "They got it done, but they don't like the conditions."

Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin said the deal promised to improve cable service significantly for Adelphia's approximately 5 million subscribers. The company has fallen behind other operators in improving its systems since filing for Chapter 11.

"Comcast and Time Warner have committed to make long-needed upgrades to those systems to enable the rapid and widespread deployment of advanced services to Adelphia subscribers," Martin said. In Los Angeles, Time Warner is vowing to spend millions to offer residential phone service and high-speed Internet access.

Executives at Time Warner and Comcast said they were pleased that the FCC had approved their purchase of Adelphia, which had been before the commission since June 2005. But they declined to comment on the conditions imposed.

Those conditions were not enough for Commissioner Michael J. Copps, who voted against the deal because he said he feared that reduced competition would lead to higher prices for some customers.

"This decision is about big media getting bigger, with consumers left holding the bag," said Copps, one of two Democrats on the Republican-controlled commission.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a Washington-based public policy law firm, said the conditions made the deal more acceptable, but he predicted it would lead to higher prices.

Time Warner plans to boost basic cable modem Internet connection speeds for Adelphia customers by a third to 6 megabits per second, or more than 100 times faster than standard dial-up service. It will increase Comcast's high-end service from 8 to 10 megabits per second. The company plans to keep contracts in place so that third-party providers such as EarthLink Inc. can offer Internet service on Time Warner's system.

Cable companies believe that the lack of a dominant player in Southern California has allowed satellite TV to capture 28% of the pay TV market. DirecTV Inc., the biggest satellite firm, disputed that assertion.

"It's not so much the splintered market as it is more about consumers seeing the value and choice they receive when compared to cable," spokesman Robert G. Mercer said. "They want choice and value — more channels at a fair price — and we've been able to deliver that."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-adelphia14jul14,0,3955385,print.story?coll=la-home-business

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:39 AM

Yikes

There apparently is no new “Ask Matt” column – at least it hasn’t been posted yet.

So you’ll have to make due with the recently re-posted Monday version. Sorry.

fredfa

07-14-06, 09:49 AM

Sports On TV
Gammons improving, to begin rehab soon

By Barry Jackson Miami Herald July 14, 2006

Updating several developing stories during a year of tragedy, tumult and turnover in TV sports:

• Peter Gammons, one of the best and most distinguished baseball reporters in history, remains in the intensive care unit of a Boston-area hospital after surgery for a brain aneurysm June 27. His wife, Gloria, told The Boston Globe that he's conscious, conversational and increasingly mobile.

On Thursday, ESPN's Jon Sciambi was one of several ESPN employees to receive an e-mail with additional information. The e-mail said Gammons will leave the hospital Monday and transfer to a rehabilitation center on Cape Cod, closer to his home. He will be doing primarily physical rehabilitation, such as improving strength. The e-mail also said, ``Doctors believe there has been no permanent damage to his brain and are optimistic he will make a full recovery.''

Besides his work as an ESPN commentator, Gammons had a weekly segment with Sciambi on 790 The Ticket.

''The day it happened, he was supposed to do the show,'' Sciambi said. It was out of character for Gammons not to call in that day. Then Sciambi heard the news.

It was a stunner not only for him, but for baseball fans everywhere who appreciate Gammons' passion for his job, work ethic and knack for breaking stories.

• NFL PrimeTime without Chris Berman and Tom Jackson? The unthinkable is about to happen.

ESPN confirmed this week that after an 18-year run on Sunday evenings, NFL PrimeTime will move to 6 p.m. Mondays and feature a new cast ( Stuart Scott, Ron Jaworski and Mike Ditka). No, ESPN hasn't lost its mind. Instead, it's making the best of an unfortunate situation.

NBC's new contract for Sunday games prohibits ESPN from carrying PrimeTime anytime on Sunday nights. But ESPN has found a clever way around that rule: having Berman and Jackson narrate NFL highlights on the 90-minute SportsCenter at 11 p.m. Sunday. Berman and Jackson then will join Michael Irvin, Steve Young and Chris Mortensen on ESPN's Monday Night Football 90-minute pregame show at 7 p.m.

• TBS without Braves games? The unthinkable will happen in 2008, when a national Sunday package replaces Braves games. TBS also acquired all first-round playoff games beginning next year.

So will TBS choose its announcers from its group of Braves voices ( Skip Caray, Pete Van Wieren, Joe Simpson, Chip Caray and Don Sutton)? Turner Sports president David Levy said it's too early to tell. But Sutton deserves the analyst role for TBS' Sunday package.

• As Monday Night Football makes the transition from ABC to ESPN, we eagerly await Tony Kornheiser's Aug. 14 debut, an Oakland-Minnesota exhibition.

An ESPN official who heard one of the two rehearsal games for ESPN's new team said Kornheiser challenged Joe Theismann, sprinkled in humor and asked questions that the typical analyst wouldn't.

In one instance, Mike Tirico mentioned ex-George Mason 6-7 basketball player Jai Lewis, who is hoping to become an NFL tight end. Kornheiser asked Theismann if basketball players can make that transition (like San Diego's Antonio Gates has), could Shaquille O'Neal become a defensive lineman? (Theismann was more skeptical than Kornheiser about that.)

Kornheiser had the perfect whimsical response to Sports Business Daily when explaining that people have told him to be himself: ``I say myself is sarcastic and subversive and it has gotten me suspended. I can't believe they want me to be myself.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/15034771.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

fredfa

07-14-06, 10:03 AM

The Business of TV
Most Everyone Happy With FCC's Adelphia Decision

(skyreport.com)

After the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved the takeover of Adelphia assets by Comcast and Time Warner Cable, those closely watching the deal at the Portals said they are happy with the outcome.

Even some early critics of the transaction appeared to be OK with the FCC's approval of the deal, which included conditions governing competitor access to regional sports networks affiliated with the cable giants (more on the conditions is in today's second story).

DirecTV said conditions related to RSN access would help foster competition.

"The FCC's decision ? allows video competition to flourish throughout the country and recognizes the need to protect consumers' right to root for their home team," DirecTV said in a statement. "With the sole exception of Philadelphia (home of Comcast's RSN), the FCC has proactively ensured that people in over 9,000 communities across the country can watch their home team games without being deprived of the right to choose their video provider. We applaud the FCC's action."

Consumer advocacy group Media Access Project also hailed the FCC decision and the conditions placed on the deal.

"The commission's conditional approval of the sale of Adelphia's cable systems represents a significant accomplishment for the media reform community," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and CEO at the Media Access Project. "Viewed in light of the initial predictions that this transaction would receive prompt and complete approval, the FCC has actually looked long and hard at the issues and imposed significant conditions on the deal."

EchoStar's feelings were mixed about the Adelphia approval.

"While we are pleased that the FCC adopted a program access condition, we are disappointed that the condition only applies to sports programming," the satellite TV company said in a statement. "We are also concerned that allowing Comcast to continue to monopolize affiliated sports content in Philadelphia is the wrong answer for consumers in that market; the City of Brotherly Love deserves better."

Others aren't at all happy with the outcome at the agency.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was the lone dissenter at the commission on the Adelphia deal. In remarks he fretted about the cable giants' concentration in specific markets and saying "consumers will see their cable bills climb higher."

Copps added, "This is not a consumer-friendly transaction."

Time Warner said things are in good shape to close the transaction by the previously announced target date of July 31.

"We look forward to providing our new customers with Time Warner Cable's advanced, digital products and services as well as high-quality customer care," Time Warner said.

Cable Deal Requires RSN Conditions

While the FCC approved the transfer of licenses from Adelphia to Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the agency also imposed conditions on the deal it said aim to address issues tied to competitor access to regional sports networks affiliated with the cable giants.

The commission said the conditions mirrored those imposed on News Corp. when it took a controlling stake in DirecTV in 2004.

Specifically, the FCC adopted a condition allowing unaffiliated RSNs unable to reach a carriage agreement with Time Warner or Comcast to seek arbitration. This would force Comcast into arbitration with Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which carries Washington Nationals games. Both sides have been unable to reach a carriage deal.

Also, the cable giants are prohibited from engaging in tactics that would make affiliated regional sports programming unavailable to rivals, such as satellite TV. Also, any regional sports network affiliated with Comcast or Time Warner Cable must go to arbitration if there's a dispute.

Left out of the regulatory mix is Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia. The FCC ruled that Comcast may retain exclusivity with its hometown RSN.

mike_somd

07-14-06, 12:26 PM

Sports On TV
Gammons improving, to begin rehab soon

By Barry Jackson Miami Herald July 14, 2006

Updating several developing stories during a year of tragedy, tumult and turnover in TV sports:

• TBS without Braves games? The unthinkable will happen in 2008, when a national Sunday package replaces Braves games. TBS also acquired all first-round playoff games beginning next year.

So will TBS choose its announcers from its group of Braves voices ( Skip Caray, Pete Van Wieren, Joe Simpson, Chip Caray and Don Sutton)? Turner Sports president David Levy said it's too early to tell. But Sutton deserves the analyst role for TBS' Sunday package.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/15034771.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

TBS without the braves will suck, I have been watching the braves on TBS since I was 10 years old. However I hope they use the braves broadcast crew for their national games and the division series. In my opinion they are heads and shoulders above Fox's announce crew. I cannot stand Fox's announce crew. I wish Fox would get out of the sports broadcast business entirely since they only hire inept broadcasters.

DrDon

07-14-06, 01:46 PM

CBS Is Murder on Thursday Competition
Crime reruns score; 'Talent' results don't

Fast National ratings for Thursday, July 13, 2006

As is the case most Thursdays, CBS' crime dramas powered the network to a ratings win, although FOX was competitive among younger viewers.

CBS averaged a 6.0 rating/11 share for the evening, easily beating FOX's 4.1/7. ABC finished third at 3.9/7, followed by NBC at 3.4/6. The WB, 1.4/2, edged UPN, 1.3/2, for fifth.

FOX managed to tie CBS in the adults 18-49 demographic, where both networks drew 2.6 ratings. NBC took third with a 1.8, topping ABC's 1.6. UPN and The WB tied at 0.8.

The eviction of Alison on "Big Brother: All-Stars" delivered a 4.7/9 for CBS at 8 p.m. Reruns of "My Name Is Earl," 3.8/7, and "The Office," 2.9/5, gave NBC second for the hour. "Master of Champions" scored a 3.1/6 for ABC. An hour of "That '70s Show" averaged 2.4/5 for FOX. The WB's "Smallville" finished in a virtual tie with UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris" and "Love, Inc."

"CSI," 6.8/12, scored the night's biggest audience for CBS at 9 p.m. FOX jumped up to second with "So You Think You Can Dance," 5.8/10. A second "Earl," 3.2/6, led into the "America's Got Talent" results, which drew only a 4.2/7. "Grey's Anatomy" improved ABC's fortunes slightly to a 3.5/6. "Supernatural" was fifth for The WB. UPN ended its night with "Eve" and "Cuts."

"Without a Trace," 6.4/11, completed the CBS sweep at 10 p.m. "Primetime" averaged 5.1/9 for ABC, and "Windfall" came in at 3.3/6.

DrDon

07-14-06, 01:54 PM

Sinking feeling: 'Master of Champions'

ABC reality contest pulls a 1.2 in 18-49s

By Samantha Melamed
Jul 14, 2006

What with reality competitions doing so well this summer, a trend powered by the ratings successes of NBC's "America's Got Talent" and Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance," ABC probably figured it couldn't go wrong with its own summer competition series, "Master of Champions."

But wrong it's been: "Champions," which aired last night at 8 p.m., has been trending ever downward since its June 22 debut to a 2.0 rating among adults 18-49.

Last night marked the series' worst performance yet, a 1.2 rating and 4 share. That placed "Champions" behind CBS's relatively low-rated "Big Brother 7: All-Stars," Univision's "Premios Juventud" and slates of reruns on NBC and Fox.

The program drew just 4.3 million viewers, a poor showing in a summer when reality competitions have been hot. Part of the problem may be viewers' difficulty in grasping just what "Champions," based on a Japanese game show, is all about.

The rules are unclear, as are the means of selecting a winner. The tasks are random and often obscure, constituting more freak show than talent show: a competition of remote control model airplane pilots, a pizza-tossing competition.

The judges, who include the likes of Ukrainian figure skater Oksana Baiul, might not have the charisma of the judges on some other shows. And, viewers who are normally drawn by the opportunity to vote for the winner don't get to do so here.

Meanwhile, "Dance" performed to help Fox win the night among adults 18-49 with a 2.6 rating and 9 share, followed closely by CBS at 2.6/8. Univision was No. 3 at 2.2/7, ahead of NBC at 1.8/6, ABC at 1.6/5, WB at 0.8 /3 and UPN at 0.8/2.

At 8 p.m., CBS's "Big Brother 7: All-Stars" was No. 1 at 2.6, ahead of
Univision's "Premios Juventud" at 2.3, NBC reruns of "My Name is Earl" and "The Office" at 1.7, Fox "That '70s Show" repeats at 1.6, ABC's "Master of Champions" at 1.2, WB's "Smallville" rerun and UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris" and "Love, Inc." reruns at 0.8

At 9 p.m., Fox jumped to No. 1 for "Dance" at 3.7, followed by CBS's "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" repeat at 2.8, Univision's "Juventud" at 2.4, NBC's "My Name is Earl" repeat and "Talent" results show at 1.9, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" rerun at 1.5, WB's "Supernatural" repeat at 0.8 and UPN's "Eve" and "Cuts" reruns at 0.7.

At 10 p.m., CBS's "Without a Trace" rerun at 2.4 led, followed by ABC's "Primetime" at 2.2, Univision's "Juventud" at 2.1 and NBC's "Windfall" at 1.8.

Among households, CBS led with a 6.0 rating and 11 share, followed by Fox at 4.1/7, ABC at 3.9/7, NBC at 3.4/6, Univision at 2.5/4, WB at 1.4/2 and UPN at 1.3/2.

123HDTV

07-14-06, 01:55 PM

Fred,

Thanks for finding that Gammons update. I'd been looking around but didn't find anything.

Marcus Carr

07-14-06, 05:36 PM

MASN to enter arbitration

By Tim Lemke
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 14, 2006

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday passed a measure allowing the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network to enter into binding arbitration with Comcast Corp. to resolve a dispute that has left many cable customers unable to watch most Washington Nationals games.

The FCC approved the move as a condition tied to its approval of a deal between Comcast and Time Warner to buy the assets of bankrupt Adelphia Communications Corp. It also ruled Comcast and Time Warner must make their regional sports networks, such as Comcast SportsNet, available to other cable and satellite providers.

Comcast has refused to carry MASN, the Nationals' television home, because of a dispute between Comcast SportsNet and Orioles owner Peter Angelos over the rights to broadcast Orioles games. The cable company has also argued MASN is asking too much to carry the network, especially because it offers no programming other than baseball. The battle has left Comcast customers without access to Nationals games over the last two seasons.

"Protracted negotiations and legal wrangling between the parties somehow have failed to produce televised coverage of 75 percent of this season's games for the 1.3 million Comcast subscribers in the Washington D.C. market," commission member Robert McDowell said.

He said the ruling will "provide for a timely and long-overdue decision that will break the long- standing impasse between MASN and Comcast. One way or the other, a decision will be made."

MASN, which had petitioned the FCC numerous times over the last year, viewed the possibility of arbitration as a victory.

"This is a great day for sports fans in Washington and Baltimore," MASN spokesman Todd Webster said. "We applaud the FCC for standing up for sports fans and the public good. This is a huge step."

MASN representatives said they believe they have an edge during an arbitration proceeding, because they would point out five other cable providers carry the network on terms identical to those offered to Comcast.

"We think Comcast would be in an awfully bad position," said Hal Singer, an economist who helped write MASN's complaint to the FCC. "We're not far from carriage."

A Comcast spokesman praised the FCC for approving the Adelphia acquisition, but said the company was still reviewing the commission's condition regarding MASN and declined further comment.

People following the ruling yesterday said they believe the FCC allows Comcast and MASN a short period before arbitration could be requested. But it was still unclear last night how long that period would be.

MASN is available in this region on Cox, Charter and RCN cable, plus DirecTV satellite and Verizon's FiOS television service. That distribution reaches about 2 million households -- about half of what MASN could reach if Comcast also carried the network.

MASN is scheduled to air both Nationals and Orioles games beginning in 2007. The network, which is owned largely by Angelos, was created with the assistance of Major League Baseball in early 2005 as part of an arrangement allowing the Nationals and Orioles to share a broadcast territory. The Orioles had been awarded the exclusive television rights to the Washington area in 1981.
Angelos owns about 90 percent of MASN, but is paying the Nationals $20 million in rights fees this year. The Nationals ownership stake will eventually increase to 33 percent.

Meanwhile yesterday, MASN revealed it will begin offering around-the-clock programming beginning July 31, with details to be revealed soon.

http://washingtontimes.com/sports/20060714-121723-3658r.htm

Whitearrow

07-14-06, 06:52 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
MI-5

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In”

PASADENA, Calif. -- For all the fans who have e-mailed me about "MI-5" on A&E, mark your calendars: A&E will finally air the next season of "MI-5" at 11 p.m. Fridays beginning Sept. 15.

I've had my ups and downs with this show, but season 4 is completely terrific -- the first few episodes in particular, but really, the whole season. It's has shocks that are as huge as those in season 3, and that's saying something.

I can't suggest watching it on A&E -- due to their editing 60 minute episodes down to 45, you lose a lot (really -- almost all) of the character development that make the show as good as it is. Wait to rent it when the region 1 DVDs are released instead, and see the full, uncut episodes.

It's a real shame that A&E has basically ruined this show for Americans with the horrible editing. They should have run it uncut in 90 minute time slots -- or something. Anything would be better than the route they've chosen.

keenan

07-14-06, 07:05 PM

I've had my ups and downs with this show, but season 4 is completely terrific -- the first few episodes in particular, but really, the whole season. It's has shocks that are as huge as those in season 3, and that's saying something.

I can't suggest watching it on A&E -- due to their editing 60 minute episodes down to 45, you lose a lot (really -- almost all) of the character development that make the show as good as it is. Wait to rent it when the region 1 DVDs are released instead, and see the full, uncut episodes.

It's a real shame that A&E has basically ruined this show for Americans with the horrible editing. They should have run it uncut in 90 minute time slots -- or something. Anything would be better than the route they've chosen.
If one has a Region-free DVD player getting the UK discs is the way to go.

GeorgeLV

07-14-06, 07:24 PM

If one has a Region-free DVD player getting the UK discs is the way to go.

Especially if your tv accepts PAL (a lot of the more generic HDTVs do) or you have an HTPC. 576i looks nicer than 480i on a HDTV.

keenan

07-14-06, 09:03 PM

Especially if your tv accepts PAL (a lot of the more generic HDTVs do) or you have an HTPC. 576i looks nicer than 480i on a HDTV.
Using a DVDO VP30 in the chain, does a wonderful job, while not HD, some of it can look dang close. One of these days I'm going to post a list of the shows I've watched and my thoughts on them, there's some real good stuff. Just got done watching "Doc Martin", a dramedy that's as funny as anything on US TV, hilarious. Most of it is cop/spy stuff, and some of it can be very intense, much more so than almost anything I can think of on US TV.

"Messiah", "Sea Of Souls", "Wire In The Blood", all great stuff. Descriptions can be found at Amazon UK.

AAF

07-14-06, 10:44 PM

"Messiah", "Sea Of Souls", "Wire In The Blood", all great stuff.

Agree on Messiah and Wire in the Blood. Sea of Souls doesn't do it for me.

How about Waking the Dead?

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:20 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
It's Showtime, Boys and Girls:

Softshoe Routines, Verbal Vamping and Sweet Nothing Answers
By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog

Continuing to have faith in Showtime feels a little like giving a kind-hearted, well-meaning relative who simply can't get his act together a second chance -- for the 72nd time. Showtime, he's really a good guy. You don't want to be too tough on him because he's been trying mighty hard to succeed, especially recently.

Sadly, he's notorious for mishandling his business, while the competition grew, and grew, and ultimately obscured him completely. What accomplishments of his that weren't forgettable were harebrained and kooky. So now, when Showtime has managed to do something right against all expectations, nobody wants to pay attention.

Showtime's underdog complex is tiresome. But what can we do? It is...well, not family, but definitely something we can't get rid of.

Showtime's not going anywhere, and as long as we critics don't disown television, we can't turn our backs on it. There have been times we wished we could. Then the channel came up with "Weeds," which was pretty good. Miniseries "Sleeper Cell," which was even better. Finally, it came as close to perfection as it ever has with "Brotherhood," a drama about an Irish family in Providence, R.I., with one foot in organized crime and the other in state politics. "Brotherhood" made us come into Showtime's session ready to forgive.

But wouldn't you know, it messed up again! A glimpse of Damon Wayans' "The Underground," debuting Sept. 14, was so awful that the promotional cutdown made my intestines corkscrew. The law of such clips is to pull the funniest bits out of even the worst episodes -- you know, to fool people into thinking it might be good. That's how abysmal this thing was.

Wayans later revealed he didn't pitch his latest disaster, he just shot it and shopped it. That puts the fault for its continued existence squarely on Showtime's shoulders.

Once again, though, we have grounds for absolution. "Dexter," a new series about a serial killer cop (based on the novel "Darkly Dreaming Dexter") premieres Oct. 1, bringing "Six Feet Under's" Michael C. Hall back to television. The pilot was pretty good. Then we have "Sleeper Cell: American Jihad" premiering in December.

Will anyone watch? Well, when "Sleeper Cell" executive producer Cyrus Voris was asked whether he had a sense of how popular the first season was when it ran, he could only tell us that people had heard about it, but not seen it yet.

Maybe "Brotherhood," which premiered last weekend as Showtime's best reviewed drama in its history, will prove to be another late bloomer.

I wish I could report some ratings here, but sorry. Whenever we've asked Showtime's entertainment head Robert Greenblatt to tell us how many millions (or, to come back down to earth, hundreds of thousands) watched it, he always candy-asses around with an answer that sounds like, "Oh, well, that's hard to explain because we don't measure ratings in the standard rahbahbahbahbahbahbahblabbityspit."

That's what you say when you're a 30-year-old premium channel with premieres that don't break the million viewer mark.

Tomorrow, CBS is running a PG-13 version of "Brotherhood's" first episode at 10 p.m. (on KIRO/7 in Seattle) to expose it to more people who, they hope, will recognize its magnificence and, if they're not yet subscribers, dial up their local cable operator to get the hook-up.

Ain't gonna happen. Saturday's a losing night during the season; what miracle are they praying will help change that in the dead of summer?

Great television deserves to breathe and thrive; on Showtime, either of those tasks will be an uphill battle. Give these series all the help they can get.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/archives/105010.asp

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:21 AM

Thanks DrDon for posting the ratings while I was on the road!

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:26 AM

TV Notebook
Aaron Barnhart On Why TV Entertainment Thrives, While TV News Struggles

Outside Voices

Each week at CBS Public Eye, we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large.

This week, we asked Kansas City Star television critic and TV Barn blogger Aaron Barnhart to offer up some of his ideas.

Here, he wonders why the same forces that have made television the best outlet for entertainment haven’t been able to mimic that success with television news.

As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Here's Aaron:

I am typing these words from inside a refrigerated ballroom in Pasadena, Calif., where I am pretty sure it would be legal to sell eggs. I'm at the semi-annual gathering of the Television Critics Association, where the networks present their new shows to 150 ink-stained but increasingly wired scribes, many of whom are relaying the proceedings in real time to their readers through their blogs, if only because it keeps their fingers warm.

I started at the Kansas City Star 10 years ago, three years after I began writing about television "on the Net," as we called it back then. Before "the Web," before "the blogosphere," before "pajamas media," you published by e-mail, on texty bulletin boards and to something called Usenet that people today mostly stumble over on a Google search.

Something else has changed dramatically on my beat in the last decade. In the 1990s television was widely considered a secondary beat, with not nearly the stature of film. Through a convergence of events no one anticipated -- not just technological, like the invention of DVRs and DVDs, but imaginative, like the creation of "24" and the hiring of Jerry Bruckheimer -- that has changed. Television is now America's storyteller of choice.

Here inside the Ritz-Carlton ballroom, we may be suffering from chills, bloggerhea and other work-related ailments, but we're not kidding ourselves: We know our jobs are great.

And that's because it's a pleasure to write about TV shows that, on the whole, are now better made and better written than movies are. Every day, thousands of people walk out of the store with a home theater and soon discover the joys of staying at home as opposed to the cineplex, where their choices have dwindled thanks to the divide-and-conquer demographic madness that has gripped Hollywood. (If only the Caribbean pirates would wear Prada, as my friend Gary Dretzka recently joked.)

Prime time television is more entertaining, more satisfying and -- as Stephen Johnson convincingly argued in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You -- more challenging than it has ever been. We're living in a golden age for TV entertainment.

So why is it that the situation for TV news is trending in exactly the opposite direction? Why is it more insipid, sensational and facile than ever? Why are Americans who rely on television as their main source of information less informed than ever?

This topic came up more than once this week, as two lions of network journalism paid their respects to the TV critics. Dan Rather and Ted Koppel have each, in the past year, gone from working for publicly traded media conglomerates to privately held cable companies, Rather moving to Mark Cuban's HDNet after his unceremonious exit from CBS and Koppel to Discovery after his retirement from ABC. On cable, these men can only hope to retain a fraction of the audience that watched them on the networks, but each sounded as though they were salvaging a much larger chunk of their self-worth as journalists.

"So much of journalism, particularly television journalism, has become focused on sound bites and spin," said Rather. "There's a place for the sound bite news, celebrity news, the Hollywoodization of news, but that place is not going to be 'Dan Rather Reports' and not on HDNet."

Koppel, likewise, has been vocal about what's happened to network journalism. He told us, "I think the marketplace is exerting a far more dangerous influence on what gets on and what doesn't get on television news programming these days than any sense of fear of political repercussions or consequences."

Surely, though, both Koppel and Rather realize that they face just as daunting a task on cable television, where the budgets and audiences are a fraction of what they once enjoyed on network TV. And look what's on cable: “Headline News” and three "24-hour news channels," led by Fox, that are mostly just talk radio with pictures.

The most welcome trend in cable journalism is the one to which Rather and Koppel will now be contributing: the explosion in documentaries.
Films like Why We Fight, shows like "30 Days" and the ongoing experiment that is Al Gore's Current TV all celebrate individual reporting forged from personal, often idiosyncratic visions. Overall, though, these are no substitutes for organizational news.

As a critic, the failure of TV news appears to have the same two handmaidens as the success of TV entertainment. Technology has not improved the scope or span of the average American news consumer's diet. This chapter is not fully written, of course, because video on the Web is still in its relative infancy, and once it matures we may, in fact, see the convergence that Wall Street bet on disastrously in the late 1990s.

Mostly, though, the arrival of cheap digital equipment has not been reflected in wider, or deeper, news content, because the industry still insists on measuring itself by the ratings system that was created for the entertainment side of media. In his essential book News Is People, Craig Allen, a professor at Arizona State's journalism school, persuasively showed that when the government put pressure on local stations in the early 1960s to prove their "community service," it effectively wedded newsrooms to Nielsens. And that put local TV on the road to what we have today: highly profitable, if often un-illuminating, electronic journalism which the big networks, and later cable news, imitated.

And the failure has been imaginative as well. In network entertainment today we have the one-hour procedural, the action serial, and the reality show. None of these forms existed in any meaningful way 10 years ago. Now they dominate the prime time schedule. And yet, news still continues to be expressed through the same shopworn genres -- the magazine, the nightly news, the chatty cable channel -- that have been around for a generation or longer. No wonder people under 40 prefer "The Daily Show."

So that, in a very broad and breezy way, is the problem. I know it sounds abstract, so I'll give one example of why the situation is really kind of dire. Koppel made the point on Wednesday that no American network, as far as he knows, has a correspondent permanently stationed in India, even though it is one of the world's emerging powers and a potential exporter of blowback. "For this, at all times, to be the time when network news divisions feel that they can't afford to have active news bureaus in some of the most important overseas locations I think is not only a travesty, I think it's something we're going to be paying for for years to come," Koppel said.

I'm a critic, so I'm looking mostly from the outside in. Still, it just seems to me that with the right mix of people, technology and imagination, we can reverse the backslide of TV journalism and make it as vital to our democracy as DVDs of TV shows are to the entertainment economy.

Here are three broad areas where the problem could be addressed head-on:

1. Public television is broken. We can fix it. I have come to believe, along with others, that private citizens can and must respond to the crisis in television news through aggressive funding of noncommercial outlets. And it's not as if a worthy recipient isn't in plain sight.

"The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" is everything commercial network news
isn't: civil, rational, meaty, global. Why isn't an entire 24-hour schedule built on it? Public radio has reinvented itself since the 1980s thanks to its emphasis on substantive broadcasting of news. But radio is cheap compared with TV. And Congress, going back to the days of Democratic rule, has never shown the interest in funding a large-scale news operation to rival those of Canada, Great Britain, or other state-run networks.

So billionaires will have to step up to the plate. I like Mark Cuban, but he is a businessman and an individualist. What public television needs is a group of civic-minded donors like Joan Kroc, who bequeathed $200 million to NPR, to build a very large endowment for PBS so it can begin to invest in news.

2. Newspapers are poised to redefine local news -- with or without cross-ownership. Congress and the FCC want to relax media ownership rules so one company can own the daily paper and a TV station in the same market. But I'm talking about something else: namely, the rapid growth of online video at most daily papers' Web sites. Although still mostly in the experimental stage, online news video is less sensational and more informative than typical local TV news segments.

As such, it is a possible answer to a question Allen asks in his book:
Why has there never been an alternative to the dominant local TV news format? I thought it was going to be the automated 24-hour news approach pioneered by News 12 Long Island and various Time Warner Cable outlets across the country. But the momentum of local cable news has fizzled.

With their large newsrooms and commitment to supplying depth to their readers, newspapers are a natural to enter the video market. First, though, they have to get their content off computers and onto TV sets.
And that's where the technology of video on demand (VOD) has so much potential. The ability of a computer to assemble a 10-minute, 30-minute or hour-long newscast out of segments produced at the newspaper, then called up anytime on the consumer's cable system, is one of those paradigm-busting ideas that almost makes too much sense.

For it to be fully realized, unfortunately, requires a piece of equipment that costs each cable operator about $100,000 -- not to mention getting VOD-equipped cable boxes into the 50 percent of customers' homes that don't have them.

3. Entertainment may get lost in translation, but news doesn't. One way to address Koppel's challenge of that missing Indian reporter is to simply import English-language news from India. Sounds nutty, until you consider that public TV already makes considerable use of foreign-produced news, especially from Britain's ITV network. If you have satellite TV, you may know about a Peabody-winning program called "Mosaic," a daily half hour on the LinkTV satellite channel that is compiled from various newscasts throughout the Middle East. Foreign news not only gives us information our domestic newscasts don't, but something just as important: the point of view of foreign journalists, which can be starkly different from our own.

LinkTV, a modest operation run out of San Francisco, would not have been possible without a congressional set-aside of satellite spectrum for educational and informational purposes. A similar set-aside -- say, 6 megahertz, the bandwidth of one analog channel -- imposed on cable and satellite, could bring a dozen compressed English-language news services from around the world. Maybe this would finally be the incentive Rupert Murdoch needs to begin carrying his acclaimed Sky News service in the U.S., a move that (rumor has it) was stoutly opposed by the Fox people when it was proposed a few years back.

I've thrown a lot of ideas out here, so perhaps the core thought should be restated: The television industry has done an extraordinary job in making TV the culture's dominant creative entertainment medium.

That only makes its failure in TV news that much more glaring and tragic. But as a born optimist, I have reasons to believe that situation will change course just as dramatically in my next 10 years on the job.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/07/13/publiceye/entry1802838.shtml

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:34 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Matt and Bob’s Fireside Chat

By James Hibberd at Broadcasting & Cable’s Cable Press Tour blog bcbeat.com

HBO and Showtime dislike being compared to each other, and for the same reason: HBO feels they are above Showtime. While Showtime also feels HBO is above Showtime. Either way, the networks don’t feel they come off well being lumped together.

But at TCA, it’s difficult to avoid comparing the two, who seem like the yin and yang of premium cable. Chris Albrecht’s master of the universe Q&A performance at the podium is the polar opposite of the low-key chat by a seated Chairman and CEO Matt Blank and Entertainment President Robert Greenblatt.

In recent Press Tours, critics have gone downright rapid while questioning the executives. I have a theory as to why this is: Most consumer critics probably don’t know whether Discovery Channel, BBC America or Comedy Central is up or down for the most recent quarter. But everybody knows that, among premium cable networks, HBO bests Showtime. Suffering by comparison leads to more aggressive questions about performance than is typically endured by any other network. Or maybe they just don’t like “Huff.”

So when Blank and Greenblatt took the stage, they kept their tone mild mannered, made no sudden moves and were profusely polite. “We know this is a difficult week for you,” Blank assured, as if speaking to a cornered grizzly. “But we appreciate you taking the time and showing up.”

Blank announced a rather nifty plan to have different bands perform the title sequence each week for the next season of “Weeds,” with acts as diverse as Death Cab For Cutie and Engelbert Humperdinck. He then ran a trailer for their upcoming series “The Tudors,” where Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays a young Henry VIII. It’s impressive, but also looks exactly like the sort of lavish historical drama that HBO recently decided to stop doing after burning through mountains of money on “Rome,” “Carnival” and “Deadwood.”

During the Q&A, most of the critics questions were refreshingly free of bloodlust, save one asking about CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves’ recent quote comparing Showtime to an “off-off Broadway play” that’s “interested in critics more than audiences.” In other words: even your new boss thinks you suck.

“Leslie was taken out of context … he was talking about the Showtime of the past … I think that was an unfortunate reprehension of something he really wasn’t saying,” Blank said. “We will always try to please you.”

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=3

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:38 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails

"This Is The Real Story of 9/11." And Breakfast With Andre 3000. And My Good Friends At CNN
By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine”

It's Day 6 for me, Day 5 officially, but who's counting? Besides, there's a Pie N' Burger trip coming up! All's well, except for the lost voice thing and the nagging cough (air conditioning, booze?). Anyway, I'm a wily veteran and it's going to take a lot more to drag me down, though I suspect CNN could probably do that.

This the last day of cable. I say amen to that. Cable is a slog. There are no writing breaks. One session ends, another begins, then another, then another and pretty soon you think, "Why are you even in business?" But at least of late we're into the Big Boys of cable. Big Dogs?

Today is the Turner Dynasty, which started with TNT ("Saved"), then TBS (a new comedy called "My Boys" about a female sportswriter which went much better than expected, primarily because Jim Gaffigan is a funny man); Cartoon Network (a new animated series starring Andre Benjamin, known as Andre 3000, so the show is called "Class of 3000"); Court TV (which trotted out, not unexpectedly, another documentary about Sept. 11, since we are approaching the 5th anniversary), and now CNN, where Christiane Amanpour is here touting her new documentary, "In the Footsteps of Osama bin Laden," one of many takes on the Al Qaeda leader you're likely to see across the dial in the coming months.

Apparently CNN had to make a last second plea to get Amanpour here because, like everybody else in the news business and Anderson Cooper at her own channel, she wanted to head off to Israel. I guess that's what makes a good foreign correspondent - you want to stay at the Ritz-Carlton for a night and eat shrimp or do you want to go witness The End of the World? Luckily, we TV critics don't have to make that choice and even if we did, it seems pretty clear to me. World = in a lot of depression-causing trouble. TCA press tour = what world?

You know, Mark Eitzel, one of my heroes and the frontman of American Music Club has a lyric that says, "Outside this bar, there's no one alive." You kind of get that insular feeling here as well, not to mention that drunken, sullen, emotionally spiraling feeling as well. Not in the middle of the day, mind you. But I digress.

BBC America follows, then Lifetime (or as I like to call it, "Pie N' Burger Time"), then three hours of Showtime to close out the cable portion, followed by a massive party from Showtime at a private residence somewhere in the Pasadena hills, very, very far away from the Middle East, followed by a post-party cable blow-out that will all but ruin any good blogging for Saturday, is the going guess.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:47 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
'Rescue Me' and the future of FX

From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune blog “The Watcher”

I had no desire to write about “Rescue Me” again.

For those who haven’t been following the debate swirling around the FX drama, in the show’s June 20 episode, the firefighter character played by Denis Leary, Tommy Gavin, had an argument with his wife that resulted in rape. And not only did he force sex his estranged wife, Janet but she appeared to enjoy it by the end of the act, and he exited her house with a smirk on his face.

What all that meant -- whether it turned Gavin into a sociopath and whether what happened was indeed rape -- has been the subject of almost endless debate among the hundreds of television critics, executives and writers gathered at a hotel in Pasadena, Calif., for the bi-annual rite known as press tour, in which cable and broadcast networks present what they think is their most promising upcoming fare to critics, and execs and actors answer questions about their shows.

The debate among writers and executives here in Pasadena, as well as among viewers who’ve shared their thoughts in online discussions on the topic, has been illuminating and interesting. And the discussion has lasted this long not just because of what the scene says about “Rescue Me’s” attitude toward women – and opinions there vary widely – but because it points out that in an era in which networks compete to be the most edgy destination for scripted programming, the edge can be in different places for different people. And sometimes when a network is near the edge, it can fall off.

Still, after nearly a week in Pasadena and three weeks of debate over “Rescue Me,” I’d gotten a little tired of the topic.

Until I read this comment by Denis Leary, which was leaked to the media around Thursday and appears in the July 24 issue of TV Guide: “If people were really watching the show, they wouldn't be calling it the ‘rape episode,’” he told the magazine. “The knee-jerk reaction is, ‘Oh my God, he raped his wife, and he's condoning spousal rape.’ I'm sorry, I've got female friends who have been through it and don't think it's an unhealthy situation. And anybody that says different has either not been through it or is just politically correct and should probably be switching the channel.”

OK. I’m done. I will be switching the channel.

There are only so many times I need to be told to get lost. So I’m no longer going to watch “Rescue Me.” I do think a man holding down a woman and forcing sex on her is rape. And if Leary thinks I’m a P.C. shrew for thinking so, fine. And if he thinks his female friends are indicative of a vast array of women who don’t think rape is “an unhealthy situation,” all I can say is, I profoundly disagree.

I had a talk with another female television critic about how, when it came to reviewing “Rescue Me,” you wanted to be the cool chick. The one who “got it.” You didn’t want to be perceived as the shrill harpie who called the guys out on their jerky ways.

And because the show can be so funny and is generally so well-acted, and because most of us had gotten used to the fact that this was never going to be a Lifetime series about life’s tender moments, it was relatively easy to just let the show’s often tone-deaf, juvenile portrayal of women go, though my most recent review of the show did express dissatisfaction over so many of the show’s women turning into “clingy, whiny turnoffs.”

After a Wednesday presentation on the new season of “30 Days,” John Landgraf, head of FX, talked to some writers who stuck around for almost an hour. Regarding “Rescue Me,” he defended the creators’ artistic choices, and said that later this season Gavin would suffer “a version of the same fate” as Janet Gavin. And he also talked about how he wanted to change the direction of his network.

Landgraf said he recognizes that though FX, along with HBO, was swimming against the tide when it debuted a string serialized, dark dramas about renegades and bad boys (“The Shield,” “Nip/Tuck,” and “Rescue Me”) several years ago, it’s time for his network to change course. Many broadcast network pilots for fall have similar themes, and the bad-boy cable drama has become, unfortunately, a cliché.

“HBO had a massive advantage when they were the only channel doing this kind of programming,” Landgraf said. “And they exploited it brilliantly, with shows like ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘The Sopranos.’ They lost some of that advantage when we got in the business, doing this kind of programming. I think Showtime’s been more of a factor too [in recent years]. So now we’re in the same situation, we’re losing some of that advantage and everybody’s batting average is going down.”

“We’re really trying to take the network in a very different direction, in terms of what we put on the air next, because of that,” Landgraf said.

One of FX’s upcoming shows is “Dirt,” which will star Courtney Cox as a tabloid editor. But the pilot script that Landgraf read had a male photographer as the lead.

I said, ‘You know, I just don’t want to see this.’ [Cox] was an executive producer, she wasn’t developing it as a vehicle to star in. And I said, ‘You should make the woman the lead,” Landgraf said, who added that his goal with “Dirt” was to “create a really compelling female equivalent of what we put on the air.”

“The broadcast networks are cadging everything we do, in terms of character, in terms of serialization,” Landgraf said. “And then simultaneously, there are, I think, almost 30 [cable] networks producing or saying they’re going to produce scripted series.”

So if FX doesn’t try something new, he said, “we’re done.”

What follows is a transcript of remarks made by FX president John Landgraf to several reporters after FX's Wednesday session on '30 Days.' Though official TCA panels are recorded and transcribed by a service hired by TCA, since this discussion took place after the panel, it was transcribed by me. Some reporters'questions have been combined or reworded, because my tape recorder did not catch every reporter's question in full.

[The first question was a general one on that June 20 "Rescue Me" scene.]

"I knew about that event [the rape] within the context of the entire 13 episode arc of the season.

"I’m not an idiot I run a network when we put things on the air that are controversial, there might be a lot of debate about them

"Like anybody who does my job, I’d prefer less of [controversy] than more of it. I’m not thrilled with that.

"Like a lot of events on ‘The Shield’ and ‘Nip/Tuck’ and ‘Rescue Me’ ramifications of those events keep coming back over a long period of time. You still haven’t seen yet on air, the comeuppance.

"Within a typical broadcast television scheme, not necessarily with a serialized show like maybe ‘Lost’ or ’24,’ but in a typical one, you have to have comeuppance, you have to have justice within the context of an episode most of the time. I don’t believe that’s the way life works. … Ramifications are very complicated [and can take hours, months, or years to kick in].

"For me, it’s not that our shows are amoral, it’s that the morality of them exists in the long, arcing consequences of how human life is lived. I look at all of those very, unbelievably dysfunctional characters on ‘Rescue Me’ me as part of the same sort of large system, and the question isn’t, what happens in a given week, the question is, how fair are we in terms of how we’re treating the actions and reactions and consequences of those individuals over time.

"And then frankly, even though I would prefer less controversy, I really, really believe in freedom of speech and creative expression. I really do I’m willing to take risks and put my own job on the line, because I really respect the creative people working on our network. And within reason… I mean, we have a lot of conversations about broadcast standards. Virtually every female senior executive at FX saw that episode before I agreed not to cut the scene and to put it on the air. At the end of the day, unless I have a compelling reason as a business person not to do something – which I do sometimes, I say ‘Absolutely not’ – unless I do I’m going to let it rip, because I think it’s a great show."

I’m curious about the conversations that went on [at FX about how about how the scene played out]?

"Some of you, I think you, Alan [Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger], have talked a lot about the fact that he seems to be sort of relishing what he’s done and grinning when he leaves the house."

He’s grinning, and triumphant rock music is playing, which is also sort of the show commenting on it, as opposed to just Tommy having that reaction.

"I think what the show is doing is being ruthlessly honest about where its character is at that moment in time. We had a long conversation about, should we have Tommy smile or not? Should them to use that music cue or not? It makes Tommy into more of an unrepentant jerk, that he’s smiling, with that music. Once again, that’s who the character is. This character is compelling and funny and wildly charismatic and occasionally really moving, and he does some really good things and he saves people, but he is kind of an unrepentant jerk.

"I respect that you feel that ‘The Sopranos,’ for example, takes a more judgmental point of view toward its characters than ‘Rescue Me’ does. I respectfully disagree with that. … I think that [David Chase] loves his characters. I think the guys at the Bada Bing are wildly charismatic and unbelievably funny, and I think you adore them at the same time that you’re horrified by their behavior. And I think that’s the same thing that’s going on with ‘Rescue Me.’

But David Chase writes his women as well as his men. [“Rescue Me” is not like that].

"I disagree with you. I just do. I respect your opinion, but I disagree with you. As exhibit A, I will tell you that this show was about 60 percent male in year 1, about 55 percent male in year 2, and it’s 50 percent male in year 3.

"I think this show gives as good as it gets to all of its male and female characters. I think it has affection for its characters, but I think it portrays a lot of very dysfunctional and sometimes anti-social behavior from all of its characters, male and female.

But the men are funny. And the women aren’t, especially since Diane Farr left.

"I don’t agree. I think Callie Thorne is hilarious on the show, and I think that Marisa Tomei is hilarious on the show. And I don’t agree that it treats its women differently than its men. … this is a show that’s become more female every year, it’s now equally male and female [in its viewership]. With due respect, if it hates women and portrays women in a resolutely negative light, why are more women watching the show year after year?

You said before you’d put your job on the line [for the network’s shows]. Has this caused any real headaches for you in the organization?

"No. It causes me tsuris and sleepless nights. Look, I don’t think people use television as a primer on how to behave. I don’t think people watch ‘The Sopranos’ and say it’s OK to kill someone as I take my daughter [to visit a college]. But do I like being criticized for supporting anti-social behavior? My mom is as feminist. I work with a lot of women. I love and respect women. I get upset when I hear people say we’re putting misogynistic shows on the air.

"But I think if you do shows like ’30 Days,’ ‘Nip/Tuck,’ ‘The Shield,’ ‘Rescue Me,’ you’re going to foment disagreement. I guess one of the things I feel, leaving you guys aside, you really don’t like the episode and you went after it, but you’re a journalist and you went after it in a way that was honest. You’ve watched every episode and that’s your job. I read most of what you wrote and I respected it, though I disagreed with it.

"However, if guys watch the way the media works, what you have to know is that when you start wagging your finger, a lot of people who are in the business of wagging their fingers and who don’t watch our show at all … who only want to grandstand and get on a soapbox and go on a feeding frenzy. I don’t mind a robust intellectual debate about whether we’re doing the right thing or not. Because I think you know that we’re not cynical people. Whether we’re succeeding or not…

"And by the way, can you run a network and put out 80 episodes of TV a year and do it year after year and never step over a line or never make a mistake? No, I don’t think you can do that."

But what happened is an example of a problem on “Rescue Me” [regarding women].

"I think that there’s a culture of men and women in America who are very un-PC and have viewpoints that I don’t personally agree with. … I don’t think we’re speaking only to racists and rednecks with ‘Rescue Me,’ I know who talks to me about that show and who watches it and they’re a fairly sophisticated group of people. Are there racists who like the show? Sure, there might be. Are there some sociopaths who watch ‘The Sopranos’ and say, ‘Yay’? Yeah, there are.

"But I personally, and this is why I do what I do for a living, I believe in freedom of speech and expression. I believe that we should not go back to the 50s, I don’t believe we should censor everything that’s on television. I think there’s a legitimate place for people to say things that are unpopular. …

"Right now, sometimes, it’s unpopular to let people to say things that are offensive to some people. And we do. We try to do it in a context that’s, overall, responsible. I had a long conversation with those guys about whether that was an isolated incident or whether it was part of a larger context and what was the show about this year. I’m comfortable with it in that context. And some people are not.

"What I see is a show that started out being about men and only men and it started out being about men stuck in grief, men who are inarticulate and dysfunctional stuck in grief… as its evolved, it’s become a show that it’s more about dysfunctional family.

"This is the show in which there are now 5 major female characters on the show. … Now, I think what you start to see it’s not just dysfunctional men, and the women that love them, it’s that the dysfunction is on both sides of the equation. …. The women actually as the season goes on, they’re not just patsies, they’re not just victims. They start to swing back.

"I thought the women in the earlier going were more just like functionaries and patsies who were just basically the whipping girls of, or the people around these men. I think as the show has evolved, the women are moving ever closer to the center of the show and you’re starting to see their dysfunction and their behavior."

But we don’t see their point of view. It’s always “Crazy Chick Call-In Day.”

"I don’t agree that you don’t see their point of view. I think you really do see Susan Sarandon’s point of view by the end of the arc. I think you really see Marisa Tomei’s point of view by the end of her arc. … Sheila’s arc starts to emerge [in upcoming episodes]."

But my problem with it is that, we can debate all day on whether it was rape or not, but in the end, the storytelling choices in that episode did not deepen the show in a way that they could have. The Janet Gavin we had come to know, I thought, would get up off the couch and give hell to Tommy with both barrels. And what if Tommy Gavin had left the house not with a grin, but with a look of horror or had cried in his car?

"What I think that was about, I think it was about his unending cycle of ego and revenge between him and his brother. And it’s bound up in his brother’s ex-wife. I think Tommy was trying to enact revenge. … and he was reasserting the [sexual] aspect of their relationship. And I think she’s somewhat a part of that. She doesn’t like him and respect him, but she has very strong feelings for him.

"So that whole thing was not a tender moment between two people, it was an awful, horrible expression of all the dysfunction and all the vengeance and all the screwed up stuff that goes back to high school."

There are a lot of times when Rescue Me flirts with being deeper than it is, and what bugs me is that Tommy Gavin gets tiresome to me. After three years, take me somewhere else.

"Well, I can tell you as someone who’s a superfan of ‘The Sopranos’ … that I get really bored and frustrated with Tony sometimes. Sometimes I think the scenes with Melfi, he’s just marking time… Then all the sudden something will happen that will make the saga of Tony’s journey maybe toward some sort of conscience and humanity new for me again. I think what David Chase is doing, and I think in many ways he and ‘The Sopranos’ were the pioneers of this, I think that show is Macbeth or Richard III. It’s Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean tragedy about a bad guy coming to terms and reckoning with his actions and maybe achieving some form of enlightenment before comeuppance and punishment of that comes down. It’s spread out over 90 episodes instead of five acts.

"I think if you do that, you’re not going to have every episode be dynamically about that. You have to have other stories and other things to keep it going. My question about ‘The Shield’ and ‘The Sopranos’ – I’m really interested in how David Chase finishes the Sopranos. I’ve had endless conversations with Shawn Ryan [of ‘The Shield’] about where the show finishes up and how to bring that whole saga all the way around.

"And when we get into wherever ‘Rescue Me’ finishes up, we’ll have the same conversations, I’m going to try as best I can – I don’t created these shows or write them -- to have them be wonderful novelistic documents.

"I think they’re depicting a culture that is bizarrely sexy, funny, just rage-filled, violent, loyal, passionate, inarticulate, dysfunctional. It’s a culture that confounds you. There are times when it seems what Tommy and other people on the show seems so violent, so self-destructive, so life-destroying, just anti-social. And then they do things life-affirming. Is every moment perfect? But is that some reasonable depiction of some culture that I think exists somewhere? Yeah, I do.

"I don’t think we’re trying to push the edge of the envelope, I think we’re trying to support bold and innovative storytelling. And sometimes if you’re going to do that, you’ve got to push the edge of the envelope, otherwise you have to do a lot of censoring. Because artists are going to take thing in directions that make uncomfortable sometimes. A lot of it, well, what’s the audience doing, ‘Rescue Me’ is up in women and up about 10 percent in viewers this year from last year.

"I did read your article, by the way, and you might think that somebody who does what I do for a living is callous or arrogant. I take what you guys write to heart. The question is, is it valid to portray an occurrence in which people have a different opinion. … All I can tell you is, keep watching the show. I think you’ll see Denis does know something about what happened there. And I think [put his character] in a position to suffer the same fate, a version of the same fate.

"Denis Leary is a defiant, cocky guy. When he got on CNN, which frankly did a smear job, that was an awful piece of journalism. When he got on, did he handle it correctly? Was he cocky and defiant? Yeah, he was. That’s the guy. Look at the guy’s work over time and then tell me that he doesn’t understand.. as much as he may defend Tommy… talk to any actor playing any part, it may be [the role of] a child murderer, they’re going to defend their character within the context of their work. But I think as an executive producer, he’s ruthless with this character."

But that’s the point. Leary and Tolan can make whatever show they want, with Tommy doing whatever terrible things they can think of, but for me, my investment in this character went from “troubled guy” to “sociopath.”

"We lost you, at that point."

Well, yeah. Now, watching the show, there’s that voice in my head the whole time, “Look at who this guy really is.”

"But Michael Chiklis [his character on ‘The Shield’] shot another cop on the face in the pilot episode. Maybe we should have protected the character [of Tommy] more. We try not to protect our characters. He just did something [terrible]. Let’s let him be an [expletive]."

But here’s the thing. Even in summer now, there’s a lot of TV to watch. Everyone’s putting out new shows, cable and broadcast networks. I have my roster of what I have to watch, and it’s moved down in a category. I just don’t feel any need to watch it right away, if at all.

"I constantly ask people what they watch, what they like. I’ve spoken to 10 people who said that after [Tony beat someone to death]. If you watch the trajectory of ‘The Sopranos,’ they might have permanently alienated some [viewers] – by the way it’s still a massive hit – but it may have permanently alienated some portion of its audience. And we have done that.

"I had a long conversation with Steven Bochco about ‘The Shield’ and he turned off on that show after the pilot. I said, ‘Have you ever watched another episode?’ And he said no. I said, ‘I can only tell you that the last episode “The Shield” will be dealing with the consequences of that first episode.’ Part of it for me, and I don’t know, I’ve never met David Chase, but if you’re going to put a sociopathic character on the table or [someone who is] at least so narcissistic that he’s a borderline sociopath – you’re asking yourself the question, is a sociopath a healable personality type, [and] I think it’s kind of incumbent on you to not protect that character. Otherwise if you’ve got kind of a charming anti-social guy.

"For me, making sure that the abject misery of… People who are charismatic, sexy, funny, smoking, drinking, womanizing brawlers have a lot of joy in their lives. They also have an incredible amount of misery. And the consequences of their decisions are pretty severe over time.

Just for fall this year, there’s so much serialized drama on the broadcast networks. And you guys have been doing that kind of drama for years. How do you keep people coming back?

"I don’t know. I don’t know whether Chris Albrecht will admit that he’s worried about this, and I don’t know that he is, but the I’d be shocked if he isn’t. Because the truth of the matter is that we jag left when left when we jag right. And they jagged right into procedural, close-ended dramas, and HBO jagged left into serialized drama, and then we followed them in. There can be disagreement about this, but serialized drama is the best drama, in my opinion. It’s the best form. Sometimes I think of it as a series of novels, five books in the series of novels and each book comes in 13 chapters. ‘24’ kind of followed HBO into the form."

But ‘24’ and ‘Alias’ were on the edge of cancellation until DVD sales really kicked in.

"[They] were unviable from an economic standpoint. [Regarding the situation now] I’m really worried. There are two things happening simultaneously. The broadcast networks are cadging everything we do, in terms of character, in terms of serialization. And then simultaneously, there are, I think, almost 30 [cable] networks producing or saying they’re going to produce scripted series. And there’s about 60 [cable networks] doing originals [of scripted or unscripted]. That won’t work. I don’t know how it’s going to work. For one thing, where’s the syndication market? If everybody who buys syndication series isn’t going to buy them but make their own, who’s going to buy series in syndication?

"I think it’s going to take time for it to be a bloodbath, but I think it’s going to be a bloodbath."

For the viewer, they’re just being inundated already with so many new cable shows. Is it harder to break through, is that what’s causing you the most worry?

"It is. HBO had a massive advantage when they were the only channel doing this kind of programming. And they exploited it brilliantly, with shows like ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘The Sopranos.’ They lost some of that advantage when we got in the business, doing this kind of programming. I think Showtime’s been more of a factor too [in recent years].

"So now we’re in the same situation, we’re losing some of that advantage and everybody’s batting average is going down. HBO’s batting average has gone down. ‘Over There’ was one thing, it was a show we were very proud of, we tried something really risky and original. A big audience showed up, and then a lot of them left, because it was too bracing for them I think, it was too hard for them.

"‘Thief’ was a different thing. ‘Thief’ is the first series FX has ever put on the air in its history that did not generate a big tune in. That includes ‘Lucky,’ that includes everything. ‘Thief’ just never generated any kind of critical mass. And it’s not as if we didn’t market that show really hard, it’s not as if critics didn’t support it. It was a commercial genre. I couldn’t tell you why that is.

There’s such a flood of new programming on cable, that some good things may be getting lost in the shuffle.

"Yeah."

One thing that is troubling to me, though my two favorite shows are “The Shield” and “Battlestar Galactica,” two really complicated and dark shows – it seems like, in the cable universe, and even when the networks imitate cable, “edgy” always translates as “violent” and “male-centered.” I don’t necessarily think that’s always innovative.

"I couldn’t agree more."

I think one thing people don’t understand about “Grey’s Anatomy” is that it doesn’t condescend to women and isn’t afraid of them. I wish I saw more of that elsewhere. But cable seems to want edgy, and somehow “edgy” got watered down to “guys smashing the crap out of each other.”

"Well, when I got to the network, the first show I worked on was ‘Rescue Me.’ But immediately I was working on ‘The Shield’ and ‘Nip/Tuck’ too [which were already on FX]. There were a number of things I noticed, there were a number of things I noticed, and that was that ‘Nip/Tuck’ was our highest rated show and our most female-skewing show. Another was that almost all the posters of our shows had white men on them. I was really instrumental in going and getting Glenn Close for ‘The Shield,’ because I hoped to bring more women and ‘Thief’ was written for an African-American protagonist, but when I got there, the decision had been made to make it a white protagonist. And I said, ‘No, we’re going to make it the way it was.’ I did want to make ‘Over There,’ but the cast was [multiethnic].

"What I felt really when I picked up last year’s pilots was, ‘Let’s not ghettoize ourselves. Let’s really go in a different direction.’ So [“Dirt,” the network’s upcoming drama about a tabloid editor has] a female anti-hero starring Courtney Cox. And the Eddie Izzard pilot, Eddie and Minnie [Driver] are really co-equal entities.

"So I couldn’t agree more. We’ve grown enormously as a network for women. We’re in the top 10 in all female demographics."

But there’s this cable staple now, all over the place – the troubled bad boy.

“I worry that it’s overexposed. Between ‘Sopranos,’ ‘Deadwood,’ the three shows we have on our air, and House and whatever, how much room is there [for more of this]?

"In my lifetime, there’s been a whole range of male [film] actors who’ve made brilliant careers of playing anti-heroes. Not one woman. Maybe Sharon Stone, but is that really a career. But [the roles played by] Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, that’s an archetype that’s completely disappeared. I think society is more judgmental about women’s anti-social behavior. And [the network's new series, 'Dirt,'] will be really an experiment.

"She wasn’t the lead character, Lucy Spiller [Cox’s character]. Originally it was a male lead. And we developed it and I said, ‘You know, I just don’t want to see this.’ [Cox] was an executive producer, she wasn’t developing it as a vehicle to star in. And I said, ‘You should make the woman the lead, that’s how it should be.’ All the tabloid editors that I know are women. Let’s not make the male tabloid photographer the protagonist, let’s the female tabloid editor [the lead character]. And let’s try to create a really compelling female equivalent of what we put on the air."

It would be nice to see flawed, interesting female characters on TV, women who’s ambitions and ideas are not patronized. There’s this massive glut of TV right now, and more to come, but there’s really not a lot of that. There’s a lot of bad-boy dramas though.

"I agree. We’re really trying to take the network in a very different direction, in terms of what we put on the air next, because of that."

And if you start copying yourselves…

"We’re done."

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2006/07/rescue_me_and_t.html#more

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:54 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Stars of the cable show

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News in his blog

On The Tour:

The cable portion of The Tour largely finishes up today (a couple of stray cable presentations, including one for FX's "Nip/Tuck,'' are still to come) so here's a quick guide to what looks hot, a kind of best of show:

• "Life On Mars'' (BBC America, debuts on July 24): A very different cop drama in which a modern detective finds himself back in the London of 1973 after a car accident. Is he in a coma and dreaming? Has he gone back for real? Or is he crazy? It's a thoroughly mesmerizing show that's already been sold to American TV which may well make a mess out of it. In other words, catch it now in the original form.

• "The Wire'' (HBO, returns Sept. 20 although it will be available on Video On Demand the previous week): David Simon continues his enthralling, richly dramatic examination of urban life in modern America, this time mixing the crime elements with a look at the state of urban education. The first episodes are grabbers.

• "Dexter" (Showtime, Oct. 1): Hard to convey just how creepy but thoroughly gripping this series about a police forensic scientist who is also a serial killer is in its opening episode. Based on the novel "Darking Dreaming Dexter'' by Jeff Lindsay, the drama is like nothing on American TV right and features a riveting performance by Michael C. Hall ("Six Feet Under'') as Dexter Morgan.

• "On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report'' (Court TV, Aug. 21): In a flood of 9/11 anniversary show, this show comes off the best at first glance. (I've seen only a cutdown version at this point so take that into account.) Produced by NBC News veteran Linda Ellman, it's a powerful mix of personal stories and examinations of public policy.

Next up on The Tour: CBS which comes in this weekend with a few new shows and a much-anticipated appearance by Katie Couric. We'll be there.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/07/on_the_tour_sta.html#more

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:59 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
'Stargate SG-1,' 'Galactica,' and 'Sleeper Cell'

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In”
(Rob Owens is President of the Television Critics Association)

I walked through a Stargate last night at a Sci Fi Channel party, but it didn't take me to an alien planet. Maybe it's because this was the "location" Stargate, the one used for filming outside of the studio.

Actually, the party guests were an odd mish-mash of "Stargate SG-1" talent and reality stars from Bravo's "Tabloid Wars" and "Work Out." (Publicists from TNT and BBC America were also spotted.)

White has been the theme of many of the press tour parties so far, including this one, which featured white sofas set up on a clear floor erected over the grassy lawn of the Ritz-Carlton's Horseshoe Garden (AKA the hotel's "the backyard"). Alien-looking glass flowers mingled with real flowers in decorative centerpieces set on tables.

The party, to celebrate "Stargate's" 200th episode that premieres tonight, included appearances by the entire cast and the show's former lead, actor Richard Dean Anderson ("MacGyver"). I have to admit, I don't watch "Stargate," but I did watch "MacGyver," so I figured I could ask Anderson some questions without betraying my "Stargate" ignorance. He was sitting with his young daughter, eating pasta, as I approached. At press tour parties, celebs eat and chat simultaneously all the time, but not MacGyver.

"Can I ask you a few questions?" I said politely.

"Not right now," he replied, looking at me like I was a crazy man to suggest such multi-tasking.

Nevermind. I'd rather talk to "Stargate" star Claudia Black anyway. Of course, I'm more interested in talking to her about "Farscape," a sci-fi series I loved.

Black, who gave birth to a son 7 months ago (not that you could tell looking at her thin waist), has also given birth, as her "Stargate" character Vala, to an evil spawn.

Black said she enjoys the ability to play comedy as Vala, something she didn't get much experience with as Aeryn Sun on "Farscape."

"Aeryn is an iconic character in science fiction and she carries on," Black said, even if her role in "Farscape" is done. Black said in her last conversation with "Farscape" executive producer Brian Henson, he was waiting to see how "Firefly" spin-off "Serenity" did in theaters before trying to do the same with "Farscape." "Serenity" was a box office dud, so a "Farscape" movie may be a long shot.

Black said she and "Stargate" co-star Ben Browder, who played the lead in "Farscape," joke about how they may someday be asked back to play the parents of the next generation of "Farscape" characters.

I also chatted with Mark Stern, Sci Fi Channel's executive vice president of original programming, about "Battlestar Galactica," arguably the best drama currently on TV. He said October's third season premiere will be two hours in length and the 18 hours to follow will air consecutively with just a short break around the Christmas holidays. That's a much better programming plan than airing 10 episodes in the fall and another 10 in the spring.

Stern said he recently read the pilot for the proposed "Galactica" prequel, "Caprica," and he was pleased that the script achieved the network's goal of standing on its own two feet and doesn't rely on accumulated knowledge of the "Galactica" series.

" 'Caprica' is the next generation of where we should be going in terms of space opera," Stern said. "It really is a terrestrial show."

"Caprica" is set 30 or 40 years before the events in "Battlestar Galactica" and the script for the two-hour pilot concludes with an explanation for how the name "Cylon" was coined ("Cybernetic, something, organism" was as much as Stern could remember). The proposed series would feature Commander Adama at age 9 and show how Cylons were created.

"Caprica" would be set in a time frame that's similar to where we, as a society, are today, or will be in 10 or 20 years, Stern said, whereas "Galactica" is 120 years ahead of our time.

"We really want to see 'Caprica' happen," Stern said. "We hope to make a decision in a few months."

• • • • • • • • • • •

Showtime's "Sleeper Cell" is in production on its second season ("Sleeper Cell: American Jihad" premieres Dec. 10), which seems unlikely given that most of the terrorists died at the end of the first season and their leader was imprisoned. But Oded Fehr, who played terror cell mastermind Faris al-Farik, was at the press conference, so he's back on the show, imprisoned as the season begins.

Muslim FBI agent Darwyn Al-Sayeed (Michael Ealy) infiltrates a new terrorist cell, while former cell member Ilija Korjenic (Henri Lubatti) is on the run and in disguise (he's now a platinum blond).

Executive producer Ethan Reiff said the writers were thinking ahead to season two even as they gave closure to the story in season one. This season there's a new female terrorist, Mina (Dutch actress Thekla Reuten).

Reiff said, like in the movie "Heat," the second season of "Sleeper Cell" will be structured following Darwyn and al-Farik on separate, parallel paths that may cross in the final act.

http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/

fredfa

07-15-06, 01:02 AM

TV Notebook
ABC, NBC send anchors to Mideast

By Paul J. Gough The Hollywood Reporter July 15, 2006

NEW YORK -- ABC and NBC announced plans Friday to send its anchors to the Mideast for them to be in place by Monday's broadcasts.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams will report from the region beginning Monday. Plans were still being finalized late Friday.

ABC News said Friday afternoon that Charles Gibson would head to the Mideast over the weekend, anchoring "World News Tonight" from Jerusalem on Monday.

CBS had no immediate plans to send an anchor to the region although several correspondents, including chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan, were in the region.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/television/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002839922

fredfa

07-15-06, 01:23 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
It's basic cable's time to show off

Expanding viewership. Emmy nods. Diverse networks, once less flashy, score new successes.
By Lynn Smith Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 15, 2006

Rising from their status as television's country mice, basic cable networks arrived this week at the semiannual meeting of the Television Critics Assn. in Pasadena in a critical glow, sporting recent Emmy nominations and increased ratings, signaling their new strength in the television family.

Critical honors and record-setting viewership figures indicate networks such as TNT, FX, USA and Discovery have found a cultural sweet spot between the often bland fare on networks and the boundary-pushing — and some would say insider-driven — content of pay cable. Unlike their competitors, basic cable networks are free to experiment (within regulatory limits, of course), and are available without the premium charged for pay cable.

Viewership for top basic cable shows often far exceed those for even the most popular pay cable offerings. TNT's "The Closer" drew a record 9.2 million viewers for a second season episode; by comparison, such well-regarded HBO shows as "Entourage" and "Deadwood" get only a fraction of that number. And basic cable scored big in this month's Emmy nominations, with TNT's miniseries "Into the West" receiving more nods than any single show on network or cable.

Basic cable has been energized by a spurt of creative energy, from recognized artists such as Grammy-winning musician Andre Benjamin, who will compose original music for each episode of the Cartoon Network's "Class of 3000" debuting in November. The basic cable networks are also attracting big name Hollywood talent: Ridley Scott will produce "The Company," a six-part miniseries about the CIA for TNT in 2007; Kevin Costner and Hilary Swank are narrating Court TV's 9/11 documentary, "On Native Soil," premiering in August. Reality-show guru Mark Burnett and DreamWorks Television will produce "Devil's Advocate" for the Sci-Fi Channel, which plans seven weekly original scripted drama series.

Programming on basic cable ranges from FX's edgy firehouse drama "Rescue Me" to highly rated reality shows on Bravo such as "Project Runway" to USA Network's tandem of crime comedies, the award-winning "Monk" and its new series "Pysch," which fared well in its debut last week, to popular history, science, shopping and gardening shows.

"Popular taste is much more diverse than it used to be," said Robert Sharenow, vice president of nonfiction and alternative programming at A&E, which has been aggressively pursuing a younger audience with shows like "Criss Angel Mindfreak," a series based on magic that nearly doubled its ratings in its second season and has been picked up for a third.

"There are very few shows out there now like 'American Idol' that everybody watches," Sharenow added. "There are so many cultural choices it's hard to build an enormous national consensus around music, film or a TV show. As a result, everything is a little bit niche."

Unshackled by the networks' demand for high and instant ratings success, basic cable can afford to experiment with individual interests from history and mystery to horse racing.

Gary Marsh, president of entertainment for Disney Channel Worldwide, said that its breakout hit this year, "High School Musical," was not only the channel's most successful original movie but had become a cultural phenomenon, generating a No. 1 album, a top-selling DVD and six Emmy nominations.

The Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel had "double digit" ratings increases, not to mention multiple Emmy nominations for its programs, including — who would have guessed? — "Deadliest Catch," a show following Alaskan crab fishermen. It is Discovery's highest rated series, averaging 2.6 million viewers in its second season.

The public's interest in history has been growing and expanding the number of the History Channel's viewers, said Carl Lindahl, the network's vice president of historical programming. Producers of historical reenactments such as a special on the Mayflower in the fall also have raised the bar by taking advantage of new, sophisticated techniques, Lindahl said. So instead of using a Rand McNally map and a head shot of an expert, producers use more dramatized storytelling and computer graphics with animation to give viewers a feeling of the time and place.

Basic cable networks have worked with cable and satellite providers to improve content, according to Ryan O'Neal, president of the TV Guide Channel. That channel itself has evolved from a listings service to one that provides original programming such as "The Watercooler," a talk show about television, to keep pace with the industry it covers.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-basic15jul15,0,4352189,print.story

fredfa

07-15-06, 03:16 AM

Here it is, at last:

TV Q&A
Ask Matt

(from the Ask (TV Critic) Matt (Roush) column at TVGuide.com
By Matt Roush TVGuide.com TV Critic

Question: What's with the diss of Stockard Channing? She was brilliant on Out of Practice. I'd rank her comic timing right up there with the comedy legends. Can you seriously see Lauren Graham playing the role so well? I can't. Comedy requires a particular ability and talent that dramatic and "light" comedic actresses can't do. Face it. Graham belongs in drama, not comedy. Channing is right where she belongs. — Jennifer

Matt Roush: I've got no beef with Stockard Channing, generally. She's a class act and is especially adept at the highly theatrical and sardonic sort of clowning she was called upon to do on the short-lived Practice. Even so, in my opinion (and clearly fans of this show will disagree), she has done much better work elsewhere — as is the case with everyone on that show, from her costars to the writers.

I may have missed an episode or two that showcased her best work on this so-so series, but my impression was that she was pushing it a bit, forcing the sometimes cringe-inducing material. Not that she didn't score some excellent zingers, but I saw nothing new here, and certainly nothing Emmy-worthy from anyone in the cast. It's possible that part of my negative reaction to her nomination could stem from how ubiquitous she has become at these awards, including nominations from seasons of The West Wing where she barely appeared outside of the credits. But that might be unfair, and it's true that this category isn't exactly bursting with choices.

To address your other issue: Could I see Lauren Graham holding her own in a classic farce as opposed to the screwball comedy she now plays? Absolutely. Just because she plays it more naturalistic on Gilmore Girls doesn't mean she can't (and doesn't) get zany. Which isn't to say that Graham didn't err by submitting a dramatic episode for the judging panel. To put it mildly, this isn't the only category where the new system came up way short.

Kim also wrote in to defend Channing: "I'm right there with you on Lisa Kudrow, but I disagree about Stockard Channing. Both were amazing. Kudrow gave her character such a deep inner life and infused all her performances with great pathos and subtext. Channing has some of the greatest comic timing I've ever seen. She knows how to deliver a line, and does so in ways I'd never expect. Any actor will tell you comedy is the most difficult kind of acting, and Channing is frankly brilliant at it. I'd have been surprised had she not been nominated. I'm actually perplexed by your kudos for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who seems to be trying too hard in the role of Christine. She needs to tone it down, a lot."

Can't win, can I? Too tough on some, too easy on others. Compared to Out of Practice, I found The New Adventures of Old Christine a more satisfying comedy, and Christine a most endearing character, one that fits Julia beautifully, even when it compels her to go over the top, acting too silly in her desperation to get back into the dating pool while trying to pretend her ex's new relationship doesn't bother her. Neither of these comedies is a classic, but if I had been filling out the ballot, I would have put Louis-Dreyfus, Graham and Weeds' Mary-Louise Parker over Channing. But that's just me. Knowing the Emmys, watch her win.

________________________________________

Question: Hey Matt, I'm curious about something. All year long, critics have said great things about Neil Patrick Harris as Barney on How I Met Your Mother, and yet no one mentioned him come Emmy time. What's up? Did I miss a fall from grace or something? Really curious! — Catherine

Matt Roush: I guess there were just so many outrages on this Emmy list that he got lost in the shuffle. Barney was one of the season's true breakout characters, a terrific departure for the former Doogie, and he joins excellent company (Donald Faison and John C. McGinley of Scrubs, John Krasinski of The Office, to name just a few) in being grievously overlooked in this category.

________________________________________

Question: Why should we care about the Emmys? Every year people in the entertainment news media complain of the innumerable shows that were unjustly snubbed, and grumble that the Academy is too conservative, oblivious and ill-advised. I don't disagree with them. To wit: The mom from Malcolm in the Middle was nominated this year. That show is still on? I mean, do actual TV critics vote on the Emmys? It seems the entire body of voters is made up of my grandma.

And every year the same news outlets hype up the Emmys like crazy, as if they actually meant something. It's tragic that the Emmys don't take advantage of what they could do — promote and save underwatched shows, expose viewers to innovative programs they wouldn't otherwise watch. I, for one, refuse to watch an awards program that honors the familiar and mediocre (ahem, Two and a Half Men) and consistently ignores truly great TV, like this year's snubs Battlestar Galactica and Veronica Mars. — Luke G.

Matt Roush: I wondered how long it would take before this contrary point of view would be expressed. (Happens every year around this time. And by the way, forgive the Emmy obsession in this week's columns. It did tend to dominate the traffic this week. I promise to move on to fresher topics soon.) We care for the same reason we care about the Oscars, the Grammys or the Tonys. It's the primary award ceremony in which the industry rewards its own, however imperfect the process is.

I don't know how many times I've advised readers not to take the Emmys too seriously or to rely on the nominations to validate their sense of a show's worth. Cult shows like Battlestar and Veronica are never going to get their due, any more than Buffy ever did — even the unforgettable musical episode, which was ignored in music categories! The real crime of the Emmy-nomination process this year is that in some key categories, it all seems to have boiled down to who watched a single episode, as if that's the way TV series ought to be judged. If judges went into a room so oblivious to Lost that they couldn't make sense of the episode they screened, they had no business signing up to judge that category in the first place. It's a debacle this year, even more than usual.

________________________________________

Question: I may have been out of the loop, so help me out. When I watched the Emmys in the '80s, there was no competition from HBO. When did HBO get in the picture for Emmys? Cable should have their own awards shows. If it weren't for cable shows, maybe Lauren Graham would be nominated among other snubs. — Nick

Matt Roush: Once upon a time, there was something called the Cable ACE Awards, which bestowed prizes on cable achievement during a time when cable shows weren't allowed to the Emmy party. That seems like ancient history now. Wiser heads prevailed, and while it may seem unfair that cable (especially pay cable) operates on a less restrictive playing field, to exclude cable programming from the Emmys would invalidate the results even more than the shoddy and counterintuitive nomination process has this year. The good news is that, thanks to the spur of great cable achievement, network TV has upped its game lately, and with shows like 24, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, House, Scrubs and The Office in the mix, the networks are taking back some of the turf they conceded to cable for a while.

________________________________________

Question: Wouldn't it be better for television critics like yourself to get together and have a voting process for the Emmys? The top five vote-getters would become the nominees, and then the network would submit an episode to a private panel, who would then choose a winner. What do you think? Do I have something here? — Fabian

Matt Roush: It would certainly be nice to include in the process people who actually watch TV regularly. Until then let me steer you toward a little thing known as the Television Critics Association Awards, which will be announced July 23. You may not agree with all of the choices, but I guarantee they were made with a great deal of consideration and perspective.

________________________________________

Question: Could you name for me some of Alfre Woodard's finest comedic moments on Desperate Housewives? Her nomination for best supporting actress in a comedy just goes to show how much of a scam it was for them to submit the show as a comedy last year, which they basically did only because they felt they could win more easily. I think it ultimately came back to bite them, because Season 2 had even less to laugh at than Season 1 did. — Brad L.

Matt Roush: Good point. These hybrid hourlong comedies (with dramatic elements) are especially tough sells. Of all the questionable nominations, Alfre Woodard's for the most problematic element of Housewives last season is the biggest joke (and I'm a big fan of hers, just not in this poorly conceived and haplessly executed role).

________________________________________

Question: Finally Denis Leary gets his long-overdue nomination for his terrific performance on Rescue Me! I am now torn between whether I want Denis (a hometown favorite for me) to win or Kiefer Sutherland, who so rightly deserves this as well. I guess I will be happy with either, but it's such a hard decision. Let's just hope the Emmy voters don't mess this up. I'll admit that it would be nice to see Martin Sheen finally win, but we must look at this past season, and both Kiefer and Denis had the best performances. Let's hope that if Denis loses the Emmy race, then he wins a Golden Globe. Although I am a little puzzled as to why Michael Chiklis was left off the list, along with The Shield for best drama. — Alex

Matt Roush: There probably wasn't room for two shows from the upstart FX network, and FX put more muscle behind campaigning for Rescue Me this year. I agree, though. This last season of The Shield, building to the tragic finale, was among its strongest ever, but the drama category is just so crowded with fine choices, you'd have to expand the pool to at least seven or eight shows in order to acknowledge all the truly outstanding ones. As for Denis vs. Kiefer: that is such a tough call. Kiefer and Martin Sheen are so overdue, and I've been pulling for Jack Bauer for years. But Denis embodies a character of such dangerous and tragic dimensions that I think this is probably his year — or at least it should be. (I can't help but wonder if that controversial rape scene from the current season is going to work against him.)

________________________________________

Question: I keep reading how TV critics are upset about actors they think were snubbed, like Kristen Bell and Hugh Laurie, but as an actress myself, I'm really not surprised. Both are perfectly cast in their roles, but neither part requires much range or versatility. Bell is cute and sweet, and has a wry way of delivering certain lines, but she doesn't do anything I don't think a thousand other actresses could do as well, or better. Likewise, Laurie as House is insufferable and endearing despite his gruff exterior, but he is not required to stretch. I liken their performances to Candice Bergen's as Murphy Brown: perfect casting, but not Emmy-worthy (yes, I know she won several, but that was before the new system was in place). She's always had a wooden quality to her acting, but it worked with Murphy Brown.

In fact, the only snub I don't understand is Edie Falco's (even critical darling Lauren Graham's lack of a nomination doesn't surprise me, based on her submission of a heavily dramatic episode in the comedy category). I guess my point is that I think many TV critics are mistaking great characters for great actors. The two are many times mutually exclusive. — Nancy

Matt Roush: How can I say this respectfully? Hogwash. To not acknowledge the emotional range that Bell brings to Veronica, who masks great pain and alienation with her witty bravado and courage, is to patronize her for her youth (which the Emmys are expert at doing, harking back to Sarah Michelle Gellar). And you tragically simplify Laurie's work as House, which again reveals a depth of character that goes way deeper than the gruff sarcasm on the surface. These are star performances, as is Graham's. These people inhabit their roles so deeply that I'm frankly astonished an actor would condescend to them by making it seem that they're somehow being cast for type, and that what they're doing isn't all that distinguished because it seems so effortless. The mind reels. And this really is my last word on the Emmys this week.

________________________________________

Question: What do you think about the new season of Rock Star? I was surprised how good the first week was. Last season it took the singers a few weeks to start sounding good, but this season it seems like just about every one of them has the potential to win, especially some of the very talented female singers. I'm glad I've finally been able to find some quality summer viewing not on cable! — Dan

Matt Roush: And how refreshing that they spared us those insipid and humiliating audition episodes by jumping right into the competition. I agree: The first week's performances, especially from the women, blew me away. Unlike American Idol, which props up icky losers like Kevin Covais way past his expiration date, the cast of Rock Star all seem to deserve to be there. The eliminations are going to be excruciating a little further down the line, because these people almost all have star potential. Because I'm on the West Coast for the next few weeks, covering the TCA Press Tour and focusing on the upcoming fall season, I'm not going to try to keep up with the various reality shows (DVRing only Project Runway) until I get back home at the end of the month. But I figure this one will be a priority for me to rejoin once I'm back to my usual routine.

________________________________________

Question: After reading the July 7 Ask Matt column, I'm wondering where your readers get all their information about the fall schedules and all the new shows. Isn't it a little early to be comparing everything and deciding which shows are going to come out on top of the ratings? — Laurie

Matt Roush: Of course it is. But my readers, and this column's correspondents, are known to be frighteningly obsessive about their passion, TV. How can I help but indulge them? As for where they get their info, I imagine TV Guide and TVGuide.com are as good a resource as any, but these fans lap up news, gossip and video clips wherever they can find it. I'm just glad they keep coming back to my little cybercorner to mix it up. Meanwhile, keep an eye on my Dispatches over the next two weeks as I use the TCA Press Tour as a tool to analyze the new season (shows, strategies, the outlooks) in more detail.

http://tvguide.com/tv/roush/askmatt/

fredfa

07-15-06, 03:32 AM

The final few critics are now finally unpacking and getting ready to file from Pasadena….

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Critics' posse heads West, where it'll have TV execs surroundered

By Gail Pennington St. Louis Post-Dispatch Television Critic 07/16/2006

Twelve summers ago, when I first headed to Los Angeles for the Television Critics Association's July press tour, I was a newbie on the beat, packing a fresh reporter's notebook and summer clothes suitable for sunny Southern California.

Wrong. I quickly learned that LA is cold at night, even in July, but not so cold as the hotel ballrooms where I'd be spending long days, with the lights lowered and temperatures hovering in the 60s.

Now, I take sweaters, and I still carry that reporter's notebook, but it feels more and more like a relic.

These days, nobody merely writes a column. Oh, we write columns, and feature stories and big-picture analyses, but we also blog. And we don't just blog; we bring our laptops into the ballroom and - connected to our Web sites by Wi-Fi - blog Q&A sessions while they're in progress. ("Wentworth Miller, wearing a blue shirt, seems thirsty. He's taking another sip of water....") We stalk stars and network suits with tiny digital voice recorders to capture their every sound bite. In our spare time, we may even podcast.

Count the words in that paragraph that didn't even exist back in 1994, when I had a nifty new laptop but no e-mail or Internet access, and certainly no Google. Some people carried heavy reference books then, but there's a tradeoff in having instant information at your fingertips. The rush to remain relevant makes the days even longer than they used to be. Today, a scoop is only a scoop for moments, and it's easy to work around the clock.

But despite the long hours, despite the sore bottoms from endless days in hotel folding chairs, despite missing family and home, the 200-plus members of the Television Critics Association (TCA) now gathered in Pasadena, Calif., know there's no better place to be for two weeks in July.

Since 1978, press tour has given people who cover TV equal access to the people who make TV. Critics working in Los Angeles and New York, or those who write for power publications, may be able to get a network president on the phone anytime. But press tour puts the industry's movers and shakers in the same room with all of us from flyover country. Just like the people from The New York Times and Daily Variety, I can ask CBS boss Les Moonves or uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer a one-on-one question and get a one-on-one answer.

Here's how it works: After four days devoted to dozens of presentations from cable networks big and small, the broadcast networks roll into press tour headquarters (this summer, the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena) and set up. Each of the Big Four gets two days to show off its wares, with one day for the new CW (created by the merger of the WB and UPN) and two days for set visits and other TCA activities.

A typical day might mean press conferences, one after the other, spotlighting new and returning shows. Lunch is often a working event; most every evening, there's a get-together of some kind, from a mixer with network executives to a full-fledged "stars party" - always the best place to get scoops from people who may have enjoyed a cocktail or two.

Then it's back to the hotel room sometime before midnight to blog or turn out another column before starting all over the next morning at 9. CBS apologizes this year for having its sessions on Saturday and Sunday, but in fact there are no "weekends" for press tour attendees. This all goes on seven days a week.

Starting Wednesday, you'll find my "Postcards From Hollywood" weekdays in Everyday, with more coverage Sundays in A&E. For the latest scoops, check out my Tube Talk blog (www.stltoday.com/tubetalk) beginning Monday. And if you wonder why my column picture now shows me wearing sunglasses - it's to hide the circles under my eyes.

Here are some things I'll be writing about:

-- CBS goes first, offering a Q&A with new "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric; the announcement of the new "Amazing Race" cast; and sessions on new CBS series, including "Shark" (with James Woods) and "Jericho" (in which a small Kansas town survives a nuclear event). CBS also plans a "happy hour" mixer with the cast of "How I Met Your Mother" and a stars party at the Rose Bowl.

-- The CW's first press tour introduces entertainment president Dawn Ostroff, formerly of UPN, and David Rosenthal, the new executive producer of "Gilmore Girls." Sessions will feature "Veronica Mars" and the new drama "Runaway," starring Donnie Wahlberg and Leslie Hope.

-- ABC will bring in Charles Gibson, the new "World News Tonight" anchor, and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who promises to run the grill at a "Kimmel-Que" lunch. Sessions will feature the new Ted Danson sitcom "Help Me Help You," the Taye Diggs drama "Daybreak" and the ensemble series "Brothers & Sisters," marking Calista Flockhart's return to TV. ABC's "all-star party" is at the Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena.

-- NBC opens with "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams and follows up with Aaron Sorkin for his new "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." The guest list also includes Megan Mullally for her new NBC Universal talk show and Tina Fey for her sitcom "30 Rock."

-- Fox plans a "Hell's Kitchen"-themed lunch, which sounds a bit ominous, and sessions for "Prison Break" and the new thriller "Vanished," among others. FX's "Nip/Tuck" also earns a spot on the Fox schedule, and eight finalists from "So You Think You Can Dance" will turn up and, presumably, dance.

TCA reserves two days for itself, the first devoted to off-campus activities - this year, set visits to "The Shield" and "Grey's Anatomy" and a jaunt to ASI Entertainment, where the networks do audience testing. The second TCA day is always a highlight, featuring the association's meeting, a reception with members of the Writers Guild (just like us, only writing for TV) and the TCA Awards. Think Emmys but smaller, with the winners - last year, "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," among others - showing up to collect their trophies.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/columnists.nsf/gailpennington/story/E8B778B78882EFF6862571AA00325B2A?OpenDocument

jim tressler

07-15-06, 09:08 AM

If they really want to see it happen.. why do they need to "make a descision?" - lol

looks like another cool show as well

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
'Stargate SG-1,' 'Galactica,' and 'Sleeper Cell'

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In”
(Rob Owens is President of the Television Critics Association)

"We really want to see 'Caprica' happen," Stern said. "We hope to make a decision in a few months."

• • • • • • • • • • •

http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/

fredfa

07-15-06, 09:49 AM

The TV Column
The Picture's A Little Fuzzy At Showtime

By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 15, 2006; C01

PASADENA, Calif., July 14 When reporters quoted CBS chief Leslie Moonves as saying at the Morgan Stanley media investor conference in May that he's going to make Showtime "more commercial," that it has been "a little bit too much of an off-off Broadway play" and is "interested in critics more than audiences," they were -- you see this coming, right? -- quoting him out of context.

"I think Leslie was taken out of context and was talking about his view of Showtime in the past," Showtime CEO Matt Blank told the Reporters Who Cover Television on Friday at Summer TV Press Tour 2006.

Showtime has made significant changes since Bob Greenblatt came on board as programming chief three years ago, Blank said.

Greenblatt noted that Showtime literally used to telecast off-Broadway shows.

Moonves-run CBS Corp. wound up with the cable network last January, when it split from Viacom.

According to news reports, Moonves also told conference attendees in May that he intends to shake things up at Showtime. "Anybody who knows me knows that audiences are the thing. I'm a populist. You can take your reviews and stick 'em -- just give me big audiences," he said.

Of course, as we now know, he was speaking of the Showtime of at least three years ago.

These days, Showtime has been "very successful" putting on things that are more commercial. Except reporters have to take the network executives' word for it, because every six months when a reporter at the TV press tour asks a suit how many people are watching Showtime's program [Fill in the Blank], the suit always says they haven't tabulated the numbers yet because on-demand viewing is an increasingly important part of their business model.

And hey -- they did it again on Friday.

Moonves is "awesome in casting -- his instincts are amazing," Greenblatt said. "He can give you reaction to something very quickly. We're going to try to pull as much of that out of him as we can," he said. Also, they plan to "stay on track being a premium network" that's "unique and bold" and "hopefully . . . bring more people into the tent."

During his chat at the Morgan Stanley media investors confab, Moonves noted that Showtime is profitable but HBO brings in three times as much cash. Showtime has about 14 million subscribers -- about half as many as HBO.

Shortly after Moonves spoke, Showtime canceled its series "Huff," starring Hank Azaria as a messed-up shrink -- is that redundant?

Friday, Greenblatt said that decision was a "tricky" call and that he wished they could have doubled the show's audience.

On the other hand, Moonves is a fan of "Weeds," the Showtime execs noted.

And he has thrown his support behind Showtime's gritty new drama "Brotherhood," about brothers on opposite sides of the law. His CBS broadcast network announced earlier this week it would air the series' pilot episode Saturday night. "The CBS television network provides an unparalleled platform to expose this critically acclaimed new Showtime drama to new viewers on a large scale," Moonves said at the time, having momentarily forgotten his official position on critical acclaim.

• • • • • • • • • • •

The Showtime suits refused to discuss terms of the controversial deal brokered with the Smithsonian Institution that took effect this year.

The Smithsonian signed a semi-exclusive 30-year contract with Showtime Networks, Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small told a House oversight committee recently. The pact guarantees the Smithsonian $500,000 a year if a new cable network, Smithsonian on Demand, is successful. It would offer Showtime programming based on Smithsonian archives. The Smithsonian can do six TV programs a year with other filmmakers outside the Showtime contract.

Filmmakers, historians and members of Congress have blasted the deal, but Showtime suits insisted Friday that there is "zero indication" the deal would prevent outside producers from getting access to Smithsonian archives.

"Then why demand exclusivity?" one reporter asked. A reasonable question.

"Because we are investing a lot of money," said Matt Blank. (Small has characterized the investment as "tens of millions of dollars upfront," according to a Washington Post report.)

Then why is Showtime allowing the Smithsonian to do six shows with other filmmakers? Why does my head always start to hurt when I write about Showtime?

"We have said all along it's a pretty simple issue of the Smithsonian not doing a good job with its oversight" committee, Blank said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401953_pf.html

fredfa

07-15-06, 09:52 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
An alternative to spanking, courtesy of "Dexter's" Julie Benz

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog

One reason people love coming down here is that you get to hear famous people, the same beings who would step over you if you were bleeding to death in the street (unless we're talking about Mr. T or Sean Penn) share funky little childhood stories with us, a roomful of strangers.

Why they do this, I have no idea. Maybe they think it humanizes them. In rare cases, such as that of Julie Benz (known as "Angel's" Darla) it does. Benz plays a sociopath's love interest on Showtime's "Dexter." Lacking much in the way of things to ask her or anyone else other than Michael C. Hall, an enterprising person dug into her press kit bio.

He noticed that Benz once had designs upon becoming a hot and sexy doctor, but gave it up after she witnessed a surgery. Pressed, she volunteered the charming details.

"I was 13 when I watched a real surgery," she said. "It's pretty traumatic, and" -- here's where it got interesting -- "it was hemorrhoid surgery."

Hello, nurse.

Oddly, this trivia sliver sat on the sidelines for most of the session, as if teenage audiences at butt surgeries are as common as a "High School Musical" rerun. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one bothered by that tease, so later, Benz was asked to elaborate, and she obliged us with a story that left a few of us, um, clenching.

"My father is a surgeon, and I got in trouble for something. And my parents are kind of quirky, a little, and as a challenge, my father said, 'Okay. You can be grounded for two weeks, or you could sit here and watch hemorrhoid surgery,' because he was watching a tape of it," she explained. "And there was a dance that weekend that I wanted to go to, and I had a date with a boy. So I thought, 'I can sit here and watch the hemorrhoid surgery, no biggie.'"

"Yeah. That changed my life forever."

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/archives/105020.asp

fredfa

07-15-06, 09:56 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
"Angela's Eyes'' and some inside baseball

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News in his blog July 15, 2006

On The Tour:

First, some inside baseball. There is a new Lifetime series starting Sunday (10 p.m.) called "Angela's Eyes'' (right) that if the cable channel's promos are to be believed is brought by the producers of the Oscar-winning "Crash.'' Problem is that most of the producers of "Crash'' -- including director and co-writer Paul Haggis -- don't want you thinking they have anything to do with "Angela's Eye.'' (The fact that Haggis and the film's other writer, Bobby Moresco, have a new series coming out on NBC called "The Black Donnellys'' may have something to do with that.)

Anyway, they have filed suit to stop Lifetime from using "from the producers of 'Crash''' tagline in its promotional campaign. The show may be produced by two people who did worked on "Crash'' but the promos infer that Haggis and the others are involved.

The internal battle within the "Crash'' production team has been going on since before the Oscars and, frankly, it's one of those Hollywood battles that only people in The Biz care about.

But I have to say that I see why Haggis and the others want no part of "Angela's Eyes.'' This crime drama could be one of the worst cable series to come along in a while (cable world has actually been on a pretty good run of late) with some really bad writing and a laughably unconvincing performance by soap actess Abigail Spencer as detective Angela Henson. It's a lousy ripoff of "The Closer'' and it's kind of embarrassing that Lifetime -- which used to do some decent stuff -- even put it on the air.

Oh, yeah, and it's not from most of the producers of "Crash.''

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/charlie_mccollum/index.html

fredfa

07-15-06, 10:40 AM

TV Notebook
Summertime Blues

By J. Max Robins Broadcasting & Cable 7/17/2006

“A New Low Water for Broadcast Television” was the headline from last week's Associated Press story on the dismal network ratings from the July 4th week. Audiences traditionally take a TV holiday around Independence Day, but this year, viewership plummeted deeper than it did during the same week a year ago.

It's probably no mere coincidence that Hollywood enjoyed an overdue bonanza that same week, thanks to record-breaking grosses from the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel and the still soaring Superman Returns. But the Big Four networks have only themselves to blame for the precipitous drop-off in broadcast-TV audiences.

Simply put, the networks have shown that they are unwilling to spend the dough on launching solid original programming in the summer. Despite recent pledges, most conspicuously from NBC, to commit themselves to developing scripted shows 365 days a year so as to keep up with year-round cable programming, networks are still letting viewers slip away to find fresh product elsewhere.

During that lackluster week for broadcast, USA Network's new buddy comedy Pysch went toe-to-toe with ABC's 20/20 and CBS' Numb3rs in the same time slot. Several cable series in first-run, including FX's Rescue Me and TNT's The Closer, are drawing viewers looking for scripted shows they haven't already seen. In virtually every week this summer so far, cable is up from a year ago, while broadcast is trending down.

Cable, not broadcast, has been the place for big-event TV, like AMC's record-breaking, critically acclaimed miniseries Broken Trail and TNT's Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, which had a great debut last week with its first installment drawing more than 5.2 million viewers.

All told, some 50 new series are expected to debut across the cable landscape this summer, along with new episodes from returning shows like USA's Monk and The 4400.

Save for NBC's surprise hit America's Got Talent, the broadcast networks' anemic slate of reality rehashes has failed to stick. And with few promising prospects on deck for the remainder of the summer, that's a plainly foolhardy programming strategy.

Not only are the networks seemingly unwilling to learn from cable's example, they're unwilling to learn from their own past successes.

Remember that CBS' Survivor and Fox's American Idol and The O.C. started as summer experiments before going on to become primetime hits. If the networks want to staunch the Nielsen bleed-out, they need to spend the requisite money to up the episode orders on existing series or give more new shows a chance to get in the game during the warm weather months.

Over the next week at the Television Critics Association confab in Pasadena, Calif., broadcast networks will attempt to entice the assembled with the shiny new series they'll begin rolling out in the fall.

I've seen pilots for most of what's being pitched, and a surprising number of them show promise—ABC's Ugly Betty, CBS' The Class, NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Fox's Til Death. As with such well-crafted pilots as Desperate Housewives and Lost from a couple years back, it looks as if the networks may be willing after all to invest money in quality in order to find the next generation of hits.

So why do we have to wait until the fall to see them? I say, put some on now.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6353649

fredfa

07-15-06, 10:45 AM

The Business of TV
Adelphia Winners Divvy Up Gains

By Mike Farrell Multichannel.com 7/17/2006

Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. will further dominate the cable landscape after they cross the finish line in their acquisition of Adelphia Communications Corp.

The two media giants will control 58% of the total cable subscribers in the country.

But as the July 31 sale deadline approaches, the two are getting more than just Adelphia's 4.9 million subscribers out of the deal.

Time Warner finally takes charge of the long-fragmented Los Angeles market. Comcast, while beefing up market clusters in Florida, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, will also unwind its interest in several regional cable partnerships with Time Warner. Also unwound will be its 17.9% interest in Time Warner Cable and its 4.7% interest in Time Warner Entertainment.

Time Warner also gets control of a national backbone network from Adelphia in the markets it acquires. That should help it cut some costs, as it currently leases backbone from a variety of carriers.

Owning your own backbone is nothing new in the cable industry. But it is becoming more important as operators begin to roll out phone service.

“The world seems to be moving in that direction,” said Sanford Bernstein & Co. cable and satellite analyst Craig Moffett. “It probably makes sense for them to take a lot of these costs in-house.”

But savings may be minor. He pointed to Comcast's deal last year to lease a backbone for voice traffic from Level 3 Communications. That deal was worth about $20 million over five years, Moffett estimated.

Time Warner may see more significant savings in its negotiations with programmers for content. Programming cost increases at the cable systems have averaged about 12% annually over the past three years, according to its financial statements. That compares to Comcast, which has averaged increases of about 5% to 6% during the same period.

Now, Time Warner — already one of the two big operators in New York City — will control Los Angeles. It also adds 3.5 million subscribers, putting its total to 14.5 million. That increased scale and control of two major advertising markets should give it a lot of leverage to keep programming costs down.

“Comcast has been the 900-pound gorilla in the cable market for the last four years,” Moffett said. “Time Warner is vaulting up to sit right alongside them.''

The acquisition should unleash about three years worth of pent-up innovation at Adelphia, Moffett added. In bankruptcy for the last four years, the Denver-based operator has yet to roll out video on demand or telephone service on a wide scale.

Marketing efforts will step up in newly consolidated markets, such as Cleveland or Minneapolis.

“Minneapolis was sliced down the middle between Comcast and Time Warner,” Moffett said. “With the systems swaps, suddenly Minneapolis will be an all Comcast market. That will make it possible for Comcast to do a lot of marketing that wouldn't have been cost effective at a half-city scale.”

But Moffett said the biggest change could be evident in the Los Angeles market.

The addition of Adelphia's 1.1 million subscribers in Los Angeles and another 640,000 from Comcast will give Time Warner control of about 75% of the L.A. market, the second-largest media market in the country.

“It goes from a balkanized jigsaw puzzle to sort of a cornerstone market for Time Warner,'' said Moffett. “Things like buying local broadcast TV to advertise high-speed data or phone service never would have been possible in Los Angeles with the map drawn the way it is today.”

Also likely: Increased spending to beef up the Los Angeles cable plant, long neglected by Adelphia and its predecessor, Century Communications Corp.

One question is how satellite operators will react to Los Angeles' new owners. Satellite penetration in Los Angeles is around 26%, compared to about 22% for the rest of the country.

DirecTV Group and EchoStar Communications likely won't spend huge amounts to retain Los Angeles subscribers, said Janco Partners analyst Matt Harrigan said.

“Both of those companies are pretty wary about excessive promotions,” Harrigan said.

After the Wait
How — and where — the top two U.S. cable operators will grow, after waiting more than a year to take over assets of Adelphia Communications Corp.:
Time Warner Cable: 14.5 million subscribers.
Before: 11.0 million
Gains control of: Los Angeles, Dallas, Cleveland
Comcast: 23.3 million subscribers.
Before: 21.5 million.
Gains control of: Minneapolis-St. Paul, Miami-Palm Beach, Pittsburgh

Source: Multichannel News research

http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleid=CA6353658

fredfa

07-15-06, 11:25 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Many ‘Little Boxes’

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog

The second season of “Weeds” on Showtime will feature the same distinctive theme song, Melvina
Reynolds’ “Little Boxes,” but as done by a different contemporary artist every week.

Among those tackling the ’50s folk song lampooning growing surbubia will be Elvis Costello, Death Cab for Cutie, Regina Spektor, McGarrigle Sisters, Ozomatli, Englebert Humperdinck, Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree, and Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher of Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Snoop Dogg will be part of the second season of “Weeds” that begins Aug. 14, but not performing the title track. He’ll be doing a guest appearance, playing himself recording a song about the main commodity of the show. Another guest this season will be Zooey Deschanel.

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/

fredfa

07-15-06, 11:30 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Critics Shrug at New Media

By Anne Becker Broadcasting & Cable 7/17/2006

If multiplatform news breaks in a roomful of TV critics, does it make a sound? Only if your network devotes an entire panel to broadband programming that includes a “buddy comedy” about a pair of testicles.

At the Television Critics Association (TCA) gathering that kicked off last week in Pasadena, Calif., Comedy Central unveiled the testicular comedy Baxter & McGuire as one of 20 shows in development for Comedy's broadband channel, MotherLoad. But apart from Comedy's decidedly sophomoric presentation, new-media initiatives generally failed to impress a crowd that was clamoring to ask Oxygen star Shannon Doherty why she is so widely reviled.

After a spring upfront season abuzz with the advertising possibilities of broadband and wireless, multiplatform news yielded to meat-and-potatoes programming at the TCA confab. Even as the networks touted new digital efforts, their executives largely tempered their enthusiasm for—and occasionally dismissed outright—emerging platforms.

E! Networks President/CEO Ted Harbert's presentation detailed plans for an August relaunch of the E! Online Website, which will feature several embedded broadband video players, a tenfold increase in celebrity photos and a new gossip column.

But he gamely stepped aside to give critics an unobstructed view of Nick Carter, the former Backstreet Boy and star of new E! reality show House of Carters.

MTV Networks announced a new broadband site for vintage-series haven TV Land (see Now Streaming, below). But critics were more interested in Mr. T, star of TV Land's new reality series I Pity the Fool, and why he wasn't wearing his trademark gold chains.

After fixating initially on the anatomical aspects of Baxter & McGuire, critics finally ventured questions about the broadband medium itself. “What cable was to broadcast television 15 years ago, broadband is to television now,” said Lauren Corrao, Comedy's executive VP, original programming and development.

Lou Wallach, Comedy's senior VP, original programming and development, noted that short, inexpensively produced broadband videos “play into that kind of viral user-generated kind of quality and feel of the form itself.”

To be sure, critics were never the target audience for the networks' recent digital puffery. One network marketing executive said her channel considered scrapping its digital announcements for fear they'd be ignored. But some executives seemed downright disparaging of the new-media hype.

Speaking on a panel with his channel's new hire, former CBS anchor Dan Rather, HDNet founder Mark Cuban lamented the industry's lack of focus on traditional media thanks to “a bad case of Internet- and broadband-itis.”

HBO Chairman/CEO Chris Albrecht reaffirmed the premium cable network's commitment to good old linear TV with a swipe at the new platforms.

“You won't be seeing HBO throwing new episodes up on iPod,” he said, taking pains to point out that HBO's subscriber-based, DVD-supplemented business model made such extensions unnecessary—even as HBO Mobile, in partnership with Cingular Wireless, launched a series of original, mobile-phone mini-episodes of its Entourage (see Now Streaming).

Bullish behind the scenes

In interviews outside the presentations, however, executives were more bullish about digital platforms and the added exposure they have provided for the networks' linear-TV content.

Discovery Networks President Billy Campbell said this year's cable upfront is the first in which advertisers have been primarily interested in his company's digital platforms. Discovery recently reached a broadband-only deal with an automotive advertiser.

Gary Marsh, president of entertainment for Disney Channel Worldwide, lauded Disney's new broadband player as a new programming window. The site drew 37.7 million unique visitors to the site in its first month, up 42% from last year, and, in at least one case, helped boost viewership on the linear channel with a streamed episode of teen-twin comedy The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. The TV replay that evening earned more viewers than the 11 other episodes that ran in a series marathon that day.

Comedy's Wallach says he was “thrilled and validated” by the reaction that his Mother Load panel got from critics. It was a way of telling critics, “Hey, we're doing both of these things [linear and broadband content],” he says, adding, “I figured if I was doing them, then [critics] better be writing about them. And their readers should know about them.”

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6353589

fredfa

07-15-06, 11:41 AM

So how does the nation's second-largest cable operator plan to fight the telcos and DBS companies for video supremacy?
More HD you say?
Sorry.
Read it and weep about what cable thinks are the most important ways to grow.

The Business of TV
Forget Dishes, Hook ’Em With 'One-Bill Simplicity’edia

By Steve Donohue Multichannel.com 7/17/2006

Now facing video, phone and Internet competition from Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., Time Warner Cable executive vice president and chief marketing officer Sam Howe is running faster these days, trying to win — and keep — customers. The hook? Not just bundling of voice and other services — but “one-bill simplicity.’’ Missing? Anti-dish rhetoric. Multichannel News editor of digital news Steve Donohue caught up with Howe recently to talk about Time Warner’s marketing strategy.

MCN: You’re seeing competition from Verizon in Texas and other markets. What kind of an impact does that have on your marketing strategy?

Sam Howe: As in all things competitive, you’re much faster. With regards to pricing, we haven’t had to make any great moves. We’ve been out with a $29.95 [monthly] introductory Road Runner [high-speed Internet access] offer for over a year. In the first quarter, we had our best quarter ever for Road Runner. And over three quarters, we’ve lost no share [to telephone companies’ digital subscriber line services], and where the industry has been losing about 1 point per quarter, we’ve been rock solid at 62% share in all of our markets.

So competitively, what we’re trying to do is make sure we keep our media spend and advertising message fresh; not make any big pricing moves. I will say the same for phone.

And I will say a different thing on video that may surprise you: We’ve de-emphasized ads knocking dish [satellite providers DirecTV Inc. and EchoStar Communications Corp.’s Dish Network]. The reason we’re not doing that is because sometimes those ads only serve to remind people what they don’t like about cable, and we’re really not winning the hearts and minds of people that have left us.

What we’re discovering is the best competitive move we can make to get people back from dish is to have a conversation about phone and high-speed data with them. And that’s why we’re turning away from pure knocking ads.

MCN: In the long run, are you concerned about a price war, especially once AT&T finally deploys its U-Verse video service and other products nationwide?

SAM HOWE: Sure. We’re definitely worried about pricing pressure, and I don’t suggest that it won’t be there. But what we do believe we’ve got going for us are a couple of things.

We think we’re ahead on getting people bundled. We’ve done some focus group research that suggests it would take up to a $20 difference to have someone move [to another provider’s bundle of services]. We think that’s such a significant gap, that our competitors at the moment aren’t prepared to go there.

MCN: Could we ever see Time Warner or another operator offer the same price on each system nationwide?

SAM HOWE: Unified offers are certainly an area we’re exploring actively, because we can create greater tonnage through all channels against that. I don’t think that we’ll need to go to uniform pricing.

It’s really hard to achieve, and it actually has too much risk in making that transition, when we could achieve most of the impact of it from perhaps doing a national promotion where we have a similar promotion that we pull into retail. That’s the area that we’re going to explore for the third and fourth quarter.

MCN: Last time we talked, Time Warner was experimenting with pitching “phone first” to nonsubscribers. Are you still doing that in San Antonio and other systems?

SAM HOWE: Instead of trying to create a de facto mantra nationally around that, divisions are moving much more to using phone just as a conversation starter. We’ve really now moved to promoting the bundle more in our national advertising — meaning advertising we organize nationally and do with our divisions.

I think “phone first” is no longer the thing, but phone is most often the thing that we pitch to customers first.

MCN: When it comes down to the overall breakdown of the products that you’re pitching, are you primarily focused on marketing the bundle?

SAM HOWE: We’ve maintained really our level of single-product promotion for Road Runner and Digital Phone, and we’ve modified some of the video [ads] to be much more toward HD, and a lot less toward anti-dish. Layered on top of that, we have quarterly national promotions organized nationally that now have pretty much a bundle message, which is promoting one bill in simplicity. And that’s really the hook.

MCN: After the Adelphia transaction closes, will that give you enough of a footprint to run spots on national broadcast and cable networks?

SAM HOWE: It will give us greater key markets –– we’ll be 85% of Los Angeles, instead of being 15%. We’ll be all of Dallas. That allows us definitely to look at region-wide common promotion and advertising, and the same in the Carolinas. But the natural big metros is where we’re really looking — Houston, which was there, L.A., New York City, Buffalo, Cleveland — those are big metros that will really get some opportunity. Ironically, even in a place that seems small like Maine, while we’ve been a presence in Portland, now we’ll cover most of the state and be able to effectively buy Portland and Bangor TV stations.

MCN: Could we expect to see more ads for your Start Over service on Time Warner systems in the next few months?

SAM HOWE: Yes. Six divisions have it now. 80% of subscribers use it on average about four times per month. It’s quite startling, and most [of the response] comes off the back of a bug on the [TV] screen — not because we promoted it.

People intuitively start using it when prompted. We’re about enabling the TV set, and less about our brand being about entertainment, less about all the VOD content. We’re into our innovation enabling people. That’s what Start Over is about. That’s what caller ID in the TV is about. And we think those are the things that refresh the bundle – not screaming that we’ve got more video streams coming their way. What we’re seeing is giving people more control — absolute control of the TV set, like with Start Over. We think that’s really where we’re putting our chips.

http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleid=CA6352946

fredfa

07-15-06, 11:46 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
A Respite

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog

Weird and ugly things can happen at press tour. The crass commercialism and bad shows can dismay your heart. The blue of the big pool doesn’t help much; nobody has time to take a dip.

But occasionally there can be a wonderful moments. One came as when, on the way back to our rooms, long after the hotel bar had closed, we happened upon the talented young group of young people who populate the anticipated fourth season of “The Wire.”

This season, the focus of the excellent HBO series set in Baltimore shifts to the public schools where Tristan Wilds, Julito McCullum, Maestro Harrell and Jermaine Crawford were gathered around a grand piano that the Ritz-Carlton had placed in near the elevator bank, as if that was the place where it wouldn’t bother people.

There, in the wee hours, Maestro lived up to his name by sitting at the big instrument playing thee expansive music of “Ordinary People,” as Tristan handled the John Legend vocal.

We paused a moment to listen. It was a nice moment.

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/

CPanther95

07-15-06, 11:47 AM

TWC inserts cable bugs and ads over programming? :eek:

fredfa

07-15-06, 11:52 AM

Hard to believe, isn't it?

fredfa

07-15-06, 11:57 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Living in the fast lane

'Driving Force' tracks hot-rod racer's family

By Richard Huff New York Daily News TV Editor July 15, 2006

Ashley Force knows people watch celebrities on reality shows to see some of their uncelebrity-like actions.

So when the drag-racing daughter of John Force, the National Hot Rod Association's funny-car superstar, was asked about being on a reality show for A&E - "Driving Force," starting Monday at 9 p.m. - she had a few reservations.

"I was a little nervous about it," said Force, a 23-year-old who spends weekends going upwards of 300 mph. "But at the same instant, I thought, here's a really cool chance that not many people get."

It also helps that she's a huge reality-TV fan, admitting addictions to "The Hogan Family," "Newlyweds" and "The Simple Life."

The Forces are not, shall we say, the typical family, either. John Force is a fast-talking, even faster-driving, character on the NHRA circuit whose outsized personality is so strong, he and his wife live in different houses.

"I can only take him a few hours at a time," his wife, Laurie, says in the first episode.

The Forces' three daughters - Ashley, Brittany and Courtney - have all followed him into drag racing.

John himself hardly watches TV, let alone reality shows, according to Ashley.

"It was really hard for him," she said. "When they first came to us, they said, it's not a show about racing, it's about a family in racing. He had a hard time understanding it."

But he was persuaded, and cameras started tracking the family members as they went about their daily lives and as they raced.

"We don't really know what to expect," Ashley said of viewer reaction.

People working on the show have prepared them for being picked apart, she said.

"When it comes down to it, we're not out to run Hollywood or get Hollywood," she said, "we're here to race."

Producers told the family that it would take two weeks of having the cameras around before the Forces got used to the setup.

"It got to the point where we'd totally forget we were being filmed and totally forget we had a mike on," Ashley said.

Of course, the cameras captured some not-so-pleasant moments. "Yeah, there's the fights we have," she added. "Recently, we got yogurt together and we got into a big fight, my dad and I. I totally went off on him. Then I went, 'Crap, this is going to end up on the show.'"

It's the kind of everyday family moment that might get people who aren't racing fans to watch.

"In the end," she said, "it really did bring my family together."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ent_radio/story/435140p-366629c.html

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:05 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Cast changes on 'Law & Order: CI'

By Nellie Andreeva The Hollywood Reporter

There will be a new assistant district attorney on NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" next season.

Nona Gaye has joined the Wolf Films/NBC Universal TV series as the new no-nonsense character. Courtney B. Vance, who played assistant district attorney Ron Carver since the series' launch in 2001, has left the show.

Also leaving "Law & Order: CI" is recent addition Annabella Sciorra, who played Detective Carolyn Barek since 2005.

Vance is the first original cast member of "Law & Order: CI" to depart the crime drama, which stars Vincent D'Onofrio, Chris Noth and Kathryn Erbe.

"Law & Order: CI" marks the first foray into television for Gaye, whose feature credits include "Crash," "Ali" and "XXX: State of the Union."

http://www.askmen.com/women/galleries/singer/nona-gaye/picture-4.html

keenan

07-15-06, 12:45 PM

Agree on Messiah and Wire in the Blood. Sea of Souls doesn't do it for me.

How about Waking the Dead?
"Waking The Dead" is good, it's like a "Cold Case" although I like "Messiah" better, it's more intense. For lighter stuff, "New Tricks" is a cop show that has good plots and is funny to boot, some great one-liners. Just started watching some Lynda LaPlante stuff like "The Commander", I guess she's one of the UK's premier TV drama writers, very good stuff.

"Hustle" was mentioned in an earlier article here about being on A&E, I think it was, I have both series of that here on DVD, probably watch them in the next week or so.

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:47 PM

TV Notebook
The Skeleton Crew

'Odd Couple' Breathes Life Into D.C.-Based Drama
By Kathy Blumenstock Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, July 16, 2006; Y05

Along with other summertime visitors to the nation's capital, Emily Deschanel plans to stop by the Smithsonian Institution.

But unlike most tourists, the star of Fox's "Bones" is driven by professional curiosity.

"I'd love to just go and talk to someone who works with the bones there, about forensic anthropology and all of the things the artifacts can tell us," said Deschanel, who plays Temperance Brennan, a Washington forensic anthropologist tapped by the FBI to help crack baffling cases. "My character is passionate about finding out who did something and why."

Nicknamed "Bones" for her ability to cull clues from the cuts, breaks, bruises and poisons present in skeletal remains, Brennan works at the fictitious Jeffersonian Institution, where she collaborates and clashes with FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz). The former Army sniper is skeptical of Brennan's exacting methods -- the opposite of his own crime-solving style, which involves shoe-leather investigating and interrogating the living.

Boreanaz called his character "a hardball, out-on-the-street kind of guy" who "loves memorabilia and is mistrustful of science." And because of the characters' contrasting styles, "it makes the two of them like Bonnie and Clyde meets 'The Odd Couple,' " he said.

Boreanaz believes some of the show's appeal comes from the give-and-take between Brennan and Booth, who are at odds professionally but are drawn to each other personally. The sexual tension between them is "something you don't want to do too much of," Boreanaz said. "You want to keep it at bay. That will be explored, but to what extent, I'm not sure."

"Bones," returning for its second season this fall, is a procedural that also is "very much about the characters and their relationships with each other. It's true to life in its tone," Deschanel said.

Show creator Hart Hanson wanted "Bones" to break out of the prime-time pack of forensic dramas with its own distinctive details.

"We partnered her with a federal cop so she could go anywhere," he said. "The show is set in Washington, a grand and beautiful city, where there are secret places everywhere and there is something going on all over. And while the bodies are pretty gross, it is mostly bits of body or skeletons that she is working from, not recognizable humans, so we can have a dark sense of humor about it."

In addition to doses of dry humor, the show includes a back story about the disappearance of Brennan's parents and a brother who's in and out of her life.

"She is prickly about people, but you understand why she behaves as she does," Deschanel said. "She has put up a wall around her heart to protect herself because the people she loves have all left her."

The program was inspired by the suspense novels of Kathy Reichs, a real-life forensic anthropologist (see box below). "The character on the show is not based on Temperance Brennan in the books, but on Kathy," Hanson said.

To avoid confusion, he initially gave Deschanel's character another name. But Reichs, a show consultant, wanted a connection for fans of her fiction. Another nod to the author: The television Brennan writes mystery novels, featuring a protagonist named Kathy Reichs.

Deschanel has spoken with Reichs and other professionals in preparation for her role, but she's stopped short of visiting a morgue. "I did not want to be affected too much. Tempe has seen everything; she doesn't smell the smells or get emotional," Deschanel said. "She's a woman in a powerful position with two different careers, one that men would faint at.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201662_pf.html

fredfa

07-15-06, 12:55 PM

Friday’s network prime-time ratings are now at the top of RATINGS NEWS (the first post in this thread).

fredfa

07-15-06, 02:14 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Goodbye cable, hello CBS

By Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic TV Critic in his Critic’s Tour blog 07/15/2006 10:04:49

PASADENA, Calif. -- There's a great Charles Addams cartoon that I can't post here -- not for legal reasons, but because I can't find it online -- in which a matronly teacher is being tied up by her rowdy students.

"Children, creative play period is over," she says.

That's how it feels at the TV tour. Four-and-a-half days of cable are over; CBS is here. Despite CBS execs adopting somewhat more casual dress -- think sport coats but no ties -- networks are a lot more formal.

But the last day of cable went out with a bang. BBC America is a great channel, one that doesn't get nearly enough publicity (sorry about that) but has a lot of great shows.

And their TV tour sessions are a scream. They should have one a day.

Friday's featured sessions for Life On Mars, The Street and Cracker. Even though the shows are dramas, the sessions were hilarious. This is probably a gross generalization, but the British actors and producers as a rule are much more forthcoming than their Hollywood counterparts.

For instance, Robbie Coltrane, who plays Fitz in Cracker, said he had this big idea for the car the character would drive. Nope, Jimmy McGovern, who created Cracker (and The Street), informed him. Fitz is in some ways based on him, McGovern said, and McGovern doesn't drive. Why not?

"I'm a drinker."

Sit back for a moment and imagine any Hollywood producer -- with the exception of David Milch, maybe -- saying such a thing to a room full of reporters.

Then wake up.

And snap back to the real world, where I am now, where Nina Tassler, the president of CBS Entertainment, is tying herself in knots talking about whether viewers really care if a show is serialized, and thus might be cancelled before there's a resolution to whatever it is that drives the show. A bomb goes off in Jericho, for instance, one of CBS' new shows. What if the show gets cancelled before we find out why?

"Well, hopefully the show will make it to the end of the season," Tassler said.

Good answer! If you work for CBS. Otherwise, not so much. We kept at it. Seriously, won't viewers be ticked if the show gets yanked midway through the season and they never find out what happens?

"Hopefully not," she said. "As I said before, hopefully we’ll get there and to year two as well."

Can't argue with that logic.

In her defense, Tassler has loosened up a little since January, and a lot since last summer, when she might as well have worn a straightjacket. And when you get questions like, "What were your hopes for the Dynasty reunion," well....

When someone asked -- seriously -- a question about Joan of Arcadia, which was cancelled A YEAR AGO, she laughed. "You're kidding, right?"

He wasn't. And she gave a nice little answer that, of course, offended no one, but gave us a nice little chuckle.

Hey, it's network TV. That's about all we can ask for.

http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5&blogtype=Entertainment

fredfa

07-15-06, 02:20 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS's serial shenanigans, tip-toeing through Showtime CBS

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In” July 15, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first press tour tempest in a teapot. These happen all the time. Sometimes it's about violence or language, other times it's been about government involvement in programming. This time, it's serialized shows. And honestly, it didn't need to be a big deal if CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler were more adept at answering questions rather than dancing around them like Angelina Ballerina.

When asked if the network trend toward serialized shows was going to result in failures, the correct answer was "Yes, many will fail, but the best will survive." It was that simple. Instead, Tassler offered wan platitudes, including, "Hopefully, the show will get to the end of the season." She also ignored questions about how networks are turning off TV fans by airing serialized shows and canceling them before there's a revelation about the mystery behind the show (ABC's "Invasion," Fox's "Reunion," CBS's "Threshold").

"In success, those questions will be answered," was the best Tassler could offer. "I don't think audiences make a decision about whether to commit to a show one way or another whether it's serialized or not."

And though I think that may be true in the case of some viewers, I have plenty of e-mail to the contrary from more savvy viewers.

Eventually Tassler got around to a better response, saying with multiple platforms there may be ways to answer viewer questions even after a show has been removed from the broadcast lineup, but only after she was exasperated by the continued questions.

"Just last year we talked about, 'We have enough of the crime dramas,' now, oh my God, it's, 'Enough with the serialized dramas,'" Tassler said.

Hey, we're just asking the questions. The reality is the TV industry has swung from one extreme (procedurals) to another (serialized shows) in the course of that one year, largely due to the success of "Lost," "Grey's Anatomy" and "24."

The serialization debate was followed by questions about canceled series "Joan of Arcadia" ("Are you serious?" Tassler asked, rightfully bewildered that a show canceled more than a year ago would still be an issue) and "Love Monkey" and, jokingly, "George & Leo." But this was the kicker: "I've gotta ask about 'Tuesday Night Book Club,'" one critic said. "I was a little disappointed not to know how it turned out."

Tassler seemed rightfully embarrassed by the awful "Tuesday Night Book Club."

"It was an attempt to do something different," she said. "We're sorry it didn't turn out."

• • • • • • • • • • •

Good guy award: James Woods, star of CBS's "Shark," turned up more than an hour before his panel. Rather than hiding out in the green room like most celebs, he joined TV critics in the Ritz Carlton ballroom lobby for breakfast.

Woods also proved to be charming when the "Shark" press conference kicked off, proving to be an articulate, charming and funny presence, joking about how he's the old guy surrounded by a bevy of hot, young actors in this show about a shark-like defense attorney who becomes a prosecutor.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Showtime's panels were an exercise in the odd, beginning with the new Damon Wayan's sketch comedy "The Underground" (Sept. 14), which I haven't watched but evidently features a skit called "The Real Vagina Monologues" that features a talking, well, you get the idea. I'm not even allowed to describe the line of questioning that followed.

A funnier exchange came with Murrysville native Julie Benz, who stars in "Dexter," a new drama starring Michael C. Hall ("Six Feet Under") as a forensic expert who secretly moonlights as a serial killer with a strict moral code.

Benz's bio indicated she once considered a career in medicine but she couldn't stand watching a surgery at age 13. Her father, Dr. George Benz, a general vascular surgeon who now lives in Arizona, had her watch a surgery on videotape.

"It's pretty traumatic. It was a hemorrhoid surgery," Benz said, getting laughs over the type of surgery. "I got in trouble for something and my parents are kind of quirky and as a challenge, my father said, 'OK, you can be grounded for two weeks or you could sit here and watch hemorrhoid surgery.'

"And there was a dance that weekend that I wanted to go to, and I had a date with a boy, so I thought I can sit here and watch the hemorrhoid surgery, no biggy. And yeah, that changed my life forever."

• • • • • • • • • • •

BBC America rocks. While all the other cable networks, including HBO, have press conferences of varying quality, BBC America almost always gets it right. That was certainly true yesterday with three panels for what appear to be smart, quality dramas, including the return of "Cracker," last seen in 1997.

Robbie Coltrane returns as the title character in the new "Cracker" movie, scheduled to air in October. He said he's offered American series all the time, but doesn't want to commit to 22 episodes a year for five years for a show based in Los Angeles.

"I've got children who like to live in Scotland," Coltrane said. "I don't really see myself -- well, it sounds so ungrateful. You think of all those people who hitchhike to Los Angeles in the hopes of having a small part in something, and, 'Oh, so Mr. Big Guy from Scotland can't be bothered.' I'm sorry if it sounds ungrateful."

Coltrane said he feared the sight of his children with a platinum credit card summoning a maitr'd.

"Now they are going, 'It's raining here again, Daddy, I think we'll put on our heavy boots.' That's more of the childhood I'd like my children to have," Coltrane said.

http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/

fredfa

07-15-06, 02:30 PM

TV Notebook
"Angela's Eyes" and instincts worth a peek CBS

By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post TV Critic

Abigail Spencer graduates from "All My Children" and a slew of primetime guest roles (including "CSI," "Gilmore Girls") to her own hour-long drama, "Angela's Eyes," on Lifetime beginning at 9 PM ET Sunday.

Spencer isn't a household name unless you're a soaps fan, but that could change with "Angela's Eyes," a better-than-average Lifetime effort.

Upon learning that her seemingly "average" American parents were actually CIA agents who gave information to the Eastern Bloc in Europe during the Cold War, Angela Henson (Spencer) joined the FBI. Her parents are in prison for treason; she's locking up bad guys thanks to her innate ability to tell when someone is lying.

A consequence of her troubled family history is an inability to trust - a problem when it comes to romance.

Spencer is surrounded by men - a tough partner, a tech genius, a stern boss and a boyfriend - but it's her intuition that saves the day. This program is on Lifetime, after all, where a woman's sixth sense counts for more than hard fists and a handgun. Also, because it's Lifetime, the fact that Angela is emotionally unavailable to her boyfriend will be a large part of the story.

The hour comes with impressive credentials - the producers of "Crash" had a hand in the series - and Spencer is a promising lead. Angela/Abigail does have fetching eyes, and the story hints that it may evolve into something more complex.

Are her parents trying to send her coded messages? Is her younger brother Jerry (Paul Popowich) right to believe in their parents' innocence? The FBI agent wrestles with long- repressed Mommy and Daddy issues, all in a day's work.

This series doesn't intend to pack the action-adventure punch and violence of the realm of Sydney Bristow of "Alias."

The problem is that Angela, with her truth-seeking eyes, runs around seeking her own personal truth and family history in a sort of "Closer"-lite, making like Kyra Sedgwick but without the nuance.

Why do we get that sinking feeling every time a Lifetime hour veers into personal, emotional terrain and away from a supposedly urgent storyline that consultants have assured the network that this is what women want?

Why is it so hard to balance the two, the way Sedgwick's "The Closer" does?

For now Lifetime has scheduled the hour neatly paired with reruns of "Medium." Created by Dan McDermott ("The Omen") and executive produced by Tom Nunan and Cathy Schulman ("Crash"), "Angela's Eyes" deserves a peek, even if only a squint.

http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=4042350

fredfa

07-15-06, 02:37 PM

TV Notebook
Want a date with Jessica Biel?

By Manny Gonzales Denver Post Staff Writer

A date with "The Sexiest Woman Alive" will be up for auction during a fundraiser to help an East High School graduate run over by a limousine on prom night.

Boulder native and actress Jessica Biel has agreed to go on a date with the highest bidder at an auction Tuesday at Rock Island Club for Molly Bloom. The money raised will help Bloom's family pay for medical expenses, event organizers said today.

"I sincerely hope you can attend to help Molly and her family as they deal with the challenges ahead," Biel said in an audio message on http://www.dosomethingthatmatters.com/.

Biel, who was named the sexiest woman alive last year by Esquire Magazine, will not be attending the fundraiser because she is on location shooting a movie.

But she will return to Colorado for the date next month. "Come on, it's Jessica Biel. What guy wouldn't want to win a date with her?" said Dmitri Lee Natali, 19, a friend and former classmate of Bloom's. "My mom happened to be able to contact (Biel's) parents, and they had heard about Molly's tragedy. They said 'yeah, I bet she'll do that."'

And for the ladies, there will be a number of men also on the auction block, he said.

The event, dubbed Mollypalooza, starts at 7 p.m., at the club, 1614 15th St.

"It was a horrible accident she suffered but this is an opportunity for her classmates and community to come out and have fun and show their support," Rock Island owner David Clamage said.

Bloom celebrated her 18th birthday on Wednesday at Denver Children's Hospital, where she is undergoing rehabilitation.

http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=4047989

fredfa

07-15-06, 02:42 PM

TV Review
“Angela’s Eyes”

The Agent in ‘Angela’s Eyes’ Doesn’t See Dead People, She Just Eyes the Living
By Anita Gates The New York Times

Angela Henson sees things. Not exactly like Allison DuBois on NBC’s “Medium,” who has dreams, most often about murders. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that Angela knows things. Like Adrian Monk of USA’s “Monk,” the Holmesian detective who sees clues where mere mortals draw a blank. Angela is never wrong. Like Dr. Gregory House of Fox’s “House.” If he makes a diagnostic error, that means the whole episode is a dream.

Angela (the gorgeous Abigail Spencer) is the F.B.I. agent heroine of Lifetime’s new drama series “Angela’s Eyes,” which has its premiere on Sunday night. And Lifetime would love nothing more than for her to take her place alongside those infallible television favorites.

She proves herself in the first episode by becoming fed up with an uneventful three-day stakeout, barging into a diner and confronting the man who she knows is harboring a terrorist. She can even tell where the terrorist is by the movement of the man’s eyes when he lies about it. And when he puts a gun to her poreless forehead, she is so sure of his intentions that she is able to say, coolly: “Wow. Scary.”

It would be nice if Angela’s persona were truly distinctive, but, played by Ms. Spencer, she may turn out to be just another very pretty face.

In the first hour, she looks lovely, working with her partner, Leo (Lyriq Bent), figuring out whether a millionaire really killed his missing wife. The investigation touches on escort services, a secret lesbian affair and organized crime in the construction business. There’s a big finale in Chinatown, and you know how dark that sort of thing can get.

But it’s clear that Angela’s personal journey will be just as central to this series as the cases of the week. It’s difficult for her to date because she can always tell when a guy is lying. She is so distrustful that when she meets a great man and spends the night with him, she follows up by bugging his cellphone.

Then she decides to trust him and reveal her dark secret. Her parents are the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of their generation, wasting away in prison for having sold American secrets to hostile governments. The estimable Boyd Gaines makes an appearance as her father.

Meanwhile the series works hard at establishing Angela’s confidence and power. One male colleague asks, “What’s she doing?” Another replies, admiringly: “What she always does. Whatever she wants.” In her private life, the morning after an assignation, she’s the one who wakes up and gets out of bed first.

“Are you leaving?” her sleepy lover asks. She reassures him: “I have an early meeting. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Behind the scenes, some puppetry or animation fan seems to be having fun. Angela shares a last name with the late Muppet king Jim Henson, her colleague Leo’s surname is Jetson, and their techie is Dozer (Joe Cobden), possibly a tribute to the Doozers (tiny construction workers) of “Fraggle Rock.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/arts/television/14ange.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-15-06, 03:18 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Is Showtime in trouble?

By Aaron Barnhart Kansas City Star in his blog “TV Barn” July 15, 2006

Healthy state of denial is one thing. Saying that week-old fish is the catch-of-the-day ... that's another matter. Such was the situation on Friday when I asked the longtime CEO of Showtime Networks, Matt Blank, about a recent comment his new boss, Leslie Moonves, had made about Showtime's shows being way too "off-off-Broadway" and "more interested in pleasing critics than viewers." Now, I had expected Blank to take a little edge off Moonves's remarks. Instead, he denied that what had been said had even been said.

First of all, we always try to please you. But I think Leslie was taken out of context in the -- you know, was talking about his view of Showtime in the past. And you know, we made a significant change three years ago. I think we had -- Bob (Greenblatt) did his first TCA for Showtime. Was that three years ago? Oh, no, he didn't come, but he started this week three years ago. And that was a recognition of our belief that, you know, we've done a lot of good things, but we wanted to do things that might be a little more commercial, might attract a bigger audience, might get more attention. And we think we've been very successful in doing that, particularly this year. And I think Leslie would agree with that. As he said, he's a big fan of "Weeds." I believe he likes "Sleeper Cell." He was delighted with the response to "Brotherhood." And he's been extremely, extremely supportive, even to the point of allowing "Brotherhood" to appear (in a repeat) on CBS tomorrow night. So I think that was an unfortunate representation of something he really wasn't saying.

OK, OK. First, Showtime hasn't been "very successful" in growing its audience, because it just cancelled "Huff," its highest-profile and most-nominated series. Second, here is what Moonves actually said at the Morgan Stanley media conference. Judge for yourself whether he was taken out of context:

Look, HBO has done a terrific job and obviously it is the goal of Showtime. HBO is more than three times as profitable as Showtime. Having said that, Showtime is very profitable and having brought it into our fold about eight months ago, we have been able to incorporate it into our system and make it more a part of the CBS system. ...

One of the things we're going to do with Showtime is take (our) television production facility and make Showtime more commercial. There is no reason Showtime can't have the next Sopranos. HBO has made their bones with Sopranos, Sex in the City. Showtime was a little bit too much of an off-off Broadway play. They were interested in critics more than audiences. Anybody who knows me knows that audiences are the thing. I am a populist and you can take your reviews and stick them. Just give me big audiences.

Kudos to Broadcasting & Cable for quoting Moonves in the first place (and for sending me the transcript when word got out of Blank's remarks).

But this does raise the issue of how big a shakeup of Showtime is ahead. I think their current development slate is dreadful: a complete bummer of a show about a creepy, sexless forensic pathologist who stalks serial killers at night and a sketch comedy show with Damon Wayans that is, as my colleague Rob Salem succinctly put it, "nasty." Two words should suffice for now: talking vagina.

Who knows, maybe none of us really knows what "commercial" is in the alternative-pay-cable universe. Talking vaginas may be commercial. Moonves may have been taken out of context. Showtime may soon be standing smack in the middle of Broadway, flagging down traffic. But I'm guessing .... not.

http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2006/07/is_showtime_in_.html#more

fredfa

07-15-06, 04:03 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Grieving "Rome

By Matthew Gilbert The Boston Globe TV Critic in the Globe’s “Viewer Discretion” blog

Two bits of unfortunate news came out of HBO’s sessions at the TV press tour this week. First, “The Sopranos” will not be back in January 2007, as originally planned. Instead, the series will return next March at the earliest, in part due to James Gandolfini’s knee surgery. And, well, you know, so what, I guess. HBO and “The Sopranos” always make us wait for the goods, and they always make the wait worthwhile.

But the second fact really bums me out. Turns out that the second season of “Rome,” due in January, will be the show’s last. Apparently, “Rome” has become too expensive for HBO and its co-producers, the BBC and Italian broadcaster Rai. The first season reportedly cost $100 million, but drew only a modest 2-3 million viewers per episode.

Come on, HBO! The money was very well spent, since “Rome” is one of the all-time great takes on the times of Julius Caesar. It’s beautiful, gritty, soapy, funny, sexy, tragic, politically intriguing, addictive, suspenseful, well-acted, and I could go on. Maybe try re-appropriating some of the cash being wasted on “Dane Cook’s Tourgasm” and “Lucky Louie”?

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/

fredfa

07-15-06, 04:14 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
James Woods, Fantasia and A Wayans Brother

By Kevin D. Thompson Palm Beach Post Television Writer in his blog

With the cable portion of the Summer TV Tour over -- it ended last night with a ho-hum Showtime party at some fancy, schmancy Pasadena estate -- the broadcast networks are taking center stage.

First up: CBS. One star I've been looking forward to hearing was James Woods. That's because Woods has a reputation for being -- oh, how can I put this delicately? -- scary intense. And Woods didn't disappoint during his 45-minute press briefing to promote Shark, his new series in which he plays a cutthroat prosecutor.

Woods, as expected, was in rare form. When someone asked if his character would ever lose on the show, Woods bolted out of his chair and shouted, "You been droppin' acid first thing in the morning? I'm the hero!"

Later, Woods was having trouble with his mic and wondered why we were having problems hearing him.

"Hard to believe I've done 120 movies," he cracked. Then Woods simply kept talking and talking and talking. Good stuff, mind you. The man knows only one speed -- super fast. As one of the cast members keenly observed, "There's never a dull moment" with Woods on the set.

And in a press conference.

• • • • • • • • • • •

It takes a lot for us hardened TV critics to be moved. But just about everyone in the room was touched by American Idol s Fantasia Barrino as she quietly talked about what it was like playing herself in Lifetime's upcoming movie, The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life Is Not A Fairy Tale.

As clips of the film rolled, tears streamed down Fantasia's cherubic face.

"I didn't think it was going to be tough going back and playing myself," she said quietly. "But it was because I had to relive those moments."

One of those moments included getting raped as a teenager and becoming a mom at 16. But Fantasia doesn't regret putting her life story on the small screen because she hopes her tough upbringing will inspire others.

"I went through all those things, but I knew I wanted to share my life," she said.

The film is scheduled to air Aug. 19 at 9 PM ET.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Damon Wayans thinks he's funny. But I don't.

Wayans has a new Showtime sketch comedy series called Underground that premieres in September. From the clips I've seen, the show takes low brow humor to a new low. I have a problem with comedy sketch shows that pay more attention to being vulgar and envelope-shoving than they do with being funny. Just because you can use profanity and get away with all sorts of dirty jokes doesn't mean you should.

I can't even repeat some of the bits you'll see in Underground because this is a family-friendly blog. Let's just say they include talking female body parts.

You could do better, Damon. And you should.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/thompson/entries/2006/07/the_summer_tv_t.html

fredfa

07-15-06, 04:17 PM

Just a thought.

While I realize it must be really, really fun to be in the same room with James Woods, perhaps one critic could blog some important information . Like --

WHEN DOES THE FREAKIN' CBS SEASON START?

That might not be as sexy as penguins and reducing Shannon Doherty to tears or hearing Mr. T be funny, but it would be information that some people who enjoy TV might actually find useful.

But maybe that is just me. As I noted, it was just a thought.

fredfa

07-15-06, 04:21 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
James Woods touts “Shark” … and other CBS stuff

By Diane Holloway Austin American-Statesman in her TV blog Saturday, July 15, 2006

There’s nothing like kick-starting your Saturday morning with James Woods, an actor whose energy level is sky high even on a slow day.

He was VERY eager to talk about his new CBS series, “Shark.” Too much caffeine? Nope. That’s just Woods, who talks loud, fast and smart. In other words, he’ll wear you out in no time.

In “Shark,” he plays a wildly successful defense lawyer named Sebastian Stark who decides to switch teams and work for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. At some point, he will evolve into a person who cares more about justice than winning, but that’s pretty far down the road. Judging from the pilot, “Shark” is 100 percent about Woods’ character, and if you don’t enjoy his hyperkenetic style of acting, well, this show won’t float your boat.

“He’s a guy with overwhelming narcisism and ego,” Woods sputtered gleefully, crossing and uncrossing his legs, running his hands through his hair and going on and on about “moral relativism.”

Woods grew up in Rhode Island, which he refers to as “the parking lof for the mafia,” and went to M.I.T. He has lots to say about everything, but occasionally manages to stop and laugh at himself. He’s been in dozens of movies but says TV is the place to be now. And he says he didn’t have to turn to TV because he’s “independently wealthy,” thanks to a non-entertainment related business deal.

“Movies seem to be scared,” Woods said. “TV is like a teenager feeling his oats.”

Talking but not saying anything …

Nina Tassler, president of entertainment for CBS, can dodge questions more annoyingly than any exective I’ve ever been around. Most execs aren’t exactly forthcoming, but they manage to find a way to provide non-answers in a way that at least provides a bit of info and maybe a quote or two. Not Tassler.

The big topic of the press tour is the number of serialized dramas that are cropping up on all the networks, including CBS. “Jericho” is one of the network’s most eagerly anticipated new shows, a serial about a nuclear attack in a small town in Middle America.

“We don’t tell the creative community what kind of shows to bring to us,” Tassler said this morning. “If the audience likes a show, they’ll continue to watch.”

But what about all the serialized shows competing for viewers’ commitment? Won’t this trend wear out loyalty and cause viewers to stay away from serials in the future?

“We don’t think about it like that,” Tassler responded.

Asked at least a dozen times about the impact of the serial trend, Tassler danced around the issue until someone brought up the prospect of shows getting yanked before their dramatic conclusions. What about the fans who watched, as fans did with ABC’s axed “Invasion,” only to be left hanging by cancellation? Aren’t they miffed?

“When that happens, it’s unfortunate,” Tassler said. “No programmer wants to piss off the audience.” So there.

In other CBS news:

• Tassler says she thinks “CSI,” the top-rated drama last season, will be the “underdog” when it goes up against ABC’s relocated “Grey’s Anatomy” on Thursdays in the fall.

• CBS also announced the contenders for “Amazing Race 10,” which will air Sundays in the fall. There’s not a single Texan among the 12 teams. There’s the usual mix of ordinary folks — teachers and insurance salesmen — plus a coal miner, a motivational speaker, two male models and the reigning Miss New York (who also happens to be a Rockette).

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/tvblog/

keenan

07-15-06, 05:01 PM

keenan

07-15-06, 05:04 PM

fredfa

07-15-06, 10:44 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails

CBS: Don't Ask Us About Serialized Shows Because We Don't Really Understand Them, Though We Like Them This Year...So Far
By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine”

It wasn't really CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler's fault that she was bombarded with questions about serialized dramas. She's just the first broadcast network president we've seen so far and the issue of serialized dramas - open-ended dramas like "Lost" and "24" that essentially require a season-long commitment - is a pretty big deal for critics because a certain segment of our group partakes in failure analysis and, well, the networks could really be heading in that direction this year.

For years, television executives believed that dramas worked best when the story ended in the 59th minute, a tidy conclusion that didn't ask viewers to come back again next week for another piece of the puzzle. In the hectic lives of viewers, this made a lot of sense. And programmers rightly believed that it was very difficult and very dangerous to attempt to create "appointment television" by dropping crumbs instead of just being good week to week.

Also, as Tassler admitted, close-ended TV shows - which dominate CBS's schedule - are good for business.

Serialized shows don't repeat well. Close-ended shows repeat "incredibly well," she said. Networks make a lot of money on repeats. So something that does "incredibly well" will always please the money people "incredibly well." Now, it's also true that if you can get a "Lost" or "24" to fly, you can make a lot of money on DVDs. (Ah, the ancillary marketplace.) But it's mostly true - emphasis on mostly - that programmers worry about losing viewers by dragging out storylines.

Television is full of wonderful options all across the spectrum and temptation plus opportunity equals someone getting fired.

Now, if we take those as Rules To Live By, there's also this rule that never seems to go unbroken: Everbody copies a hit. And so it is that as serialized dramas have become hits of late now we (or you, soon enough) will be drowning in them.

But the math doesn't add up to success. Even with DVRs on overdrive, who has the time to follow a plethora of series that absolutely demand your dedication to 22 episodes - and even then you might not find the resolution you're looking for and have to come back THE NEXT SEASON?

This is the Issue Du Jour, folks, and the reason it's of concern is that it's going to kill the fall schedule. Dead.

Now, CBS only has a couple of these and, given that the network is clogged with close-ended series, Tassler need not have been hassled relentlessly about it as she was. But again - she was first. And more important - she didn't believe the premise.

You must agree with us - or else. (She didn't cry, however. She's pretty tough.)

"I don't think audiences make a decision to commit to a show, one way or the other, based on it being serialized or not," Tassler said. "I think it's purely about the quality of the programming. And if they like it and the show is good, they'll continue to watch."

Which might be true in a programmer's head, but that also conveniently leaves out the numbers game that happens five episodes later when half the audience loves it, half the audience decides to do something else that night and there's not enough audience left to keep it on the schedule the following week.

This happened to a handful of shows last year and it leaves loyal viewers frustrated because the story - the mystery, the conclusion - is never revealed.

Critics went around and around with Tassler on this subject, reminding her of failed serial dramas from this past season from all the networks - without much movement.

"As I said before, the issue about what happens at the end of a serialized show - that show would still be on the air if the audience was there."

Uh. OK. But what does it do to network television when you have, say, 20 shows that are serialized and half, or more than half, end up getting canceled before the end of the season?

"No programmer wants to piss off their audience," Tassler said. "Creating and building viewer loyalty is why we do what we do. When that happens, it's unfortunate." So, yes, she gets it, but she also - like other network heads we'll meet in the coming weeks - believes failure is not going to happen to HER shows.

And finally, this being the 21st century and the advent of new "technology platforms," there IS a solution and Tassler, probably weary from all the identical questions, had it.

"Look, if anything, in this climate right now with as many different changes that are happening in multi-platform, there may be opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms on shows that don't continue on broadcast."

Meaning, if they kill it, maybe they'll air the rest of the episodes online, or you can buy them from iTunes. Given all the serialized dramas coming this fall, you better increase your bandwidth - and your bank account.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24

dad1153

07-16-06, 02:13 AM

I am looking forward to Woods in the fall...

We are talking about JAMES Woods, right keenan? :eek: ;) :D

keenan

07-16-06, 03:55 AM

We are talking about JAMES Woods, right keenan? :eek: ;) :D
Yes, I not that old yet that I have to plan for that sort of thing. :p :D

fredfa

07-16-06, 04:22 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Having a Little Too Much Serial For Breakfast

By Ray Richmond The Hollywood Reporter in his blog “Past Deadline”

It was Saturday morning of week one of the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, and on the hot seat was Nina Tassler, the capable, if bland, president of CBS Entertainment. That means she's the one who makes all of the decisions in primetime, like when to cancel "The Tuesday Night Book Club" (pretty much immediately, as it turned out). Anyway, Tassler was feeling her oats, having had a few of these little strategic dances with a room of 200-plus snarling beasts under her belt, and carried an air of confidence.

However, it quickly became clear that Tassler had neglected to eat her Wheaties this day. She made the mistake of allowing a critic to pierce her armor, and once the scent of blood enters the water the feeding frenzy begins -- ironic, considering that her network has a new drama series called "Shark" coming on this fall. Here was Tassler's error: she tried to sell the idea that audience members really don't differentiate between serialized (i.e. open-ended) dramas and ones that serve up self-contained weekly storylines when making their longterm viewing commitment decisions.

"I think it's purely about the quality of the programming," Tassler maintained.

The original questioner was making the point that viewers may think twice about investing time and energy in a show with a recurring story when they've gotten burned in the past by a network pulling said show from the schedule early -- leaving viewers hanging forevermore. It happened last year on CBS with "Threshold," "Surface," "Invasion" and "Heist." And the network has two more serial hours (the forthcoming season's hot trend) in "Jericho" and "Smith" coming up. Turns out they really like their one-word titles over there at CBS.

"If the show is successful, it will continue to run and people will continue to watch," Tassler noted, appearing to have trouble embracing the point.

The battle had officially been joined.

"You're saying that people at the end of the first season of 'Twin Peaks' didn't care that there was no revelation of who killed Laura Palmer?" continued another critic, picking up the ball. "Because I have to say, there's just an awful lot of evidence that you're not correct about that."

"Obviously we know people care," Tassler acknowledged. "...I'm saying that I don't think the average audience sits at home and says, 'Gee, this is a closed-ended episode. I'll watch this' versus 'Oh, this is a serialized show. I'm going to watch that.' It doesn't happen that way."

"But it wasn't so long ago that you guys were saying the reason why all of these 'CSIs' were so successful was the fact that people knew they were going to get a payoff at the end of the hour," continued yet another critic.

"I think you really have to look at the content of the show itself," Tassler defended. "...The point is, it's really first and foremost about the story you're telling and what best facilitates communicating that story to the audience. That's it."

Finally, a critic summed it up succinctly: "You're pissing off people, like two and three million at a time. And how often do you build that up before it really hurts you and the genre?"

Tassler embraced that as "a very legitimate question" and offered that with the changes in platforms adding things like on-demand and computer downloads to the viewing options, "there may be opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms for shows that don't continue on broadcast...Ut behooves us to find a way to provide those answers. I understand"

This is obviously a complex issue. The truth is Tassler perhaps could have handled it better initially. But it was also refreshing to see such a high ranking network exec get a little frustrated and even mildly hot under the collar while veering from her carefully calibrated message. Going off-script requires some genuine passion to seep through. So I emerged from the session respecting Tassler more, not less, for thinking on her feet and sticking to her guns while risking group wrath.

http://www.pastdeadline.com/

fredfa

07-16-06, 04:26 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Television critics unite to hammer CBS

By Suzanne Ryan The Boston Globe TV Writer in the Globe’s “Viewer Discretion” blog July 15, 2006

Hello from Pasadena, California. I'm at a summer conference where television critics and Hollywood come together to talk about the upcoming television season.

Each day, a different network gets a chance to trot out the stars of their new shows and we television critics get a chance to fire away with tough questions.

Nina Tassler, the president of entertainment for CBS, opened up today's session bragging about how great things are at the network.

Boring! Her quotes were bland and the critics began to grumble among themselves about how much they miss Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS who used to do all the talking on this stage. He knew how to give a good quote.

It was probably out of sheer boredom that a series of questions arose about how Hollywood is handling its new favorite genre, serialized dramas.

Shows like "Lost" are great, the critics said, but what about the programs that don't survive? Last season "Reunion," "Threshold" and "Invasion" were all cancelled without their story lines being resolved. Is that fair to the 2 to 3 million people who invested time every week? In the future, will CBS plan a conclusion for all serialized shows, even if they fail?

No, Tassler said.

"People don't make a decision to watch based on whether [a show is]seralized," she said.

But in this era of multimedia competition, people are starting to hesitate and not watch too many programs, especially if they think those shows will never be resolved, the critics said.

"You have to look at -- what story are you telling? It's about the writer, the writer's vision," Tassler said.

Huh?

Increasingly irritated by the non-stop questions on the topic, she snapped, "No program wants to piss off their audience. When that happens, it's unfortunate...In this environment, there may be an opportunity to [conclude] a show on another platform."

Finally, a good answer.

She didn't elaborate but I'm assuming that means CBS may offer an edited DVD of the series or perhaps a final episode broadcast on the Internet. Of course, that will cost money and we all know the networks are in the business of making money.

This fall for the first time, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" will compete head on Thursday nights with CBS's baby, "CSI." Already, Tassler is conceding significant ratings slippage.

"Who'da thought that 'CSI' would be the underdog?" she said. "We expect to be dinged... It will be incredibly competitive."

"Are you kidding?" a critic asked.

No, she said. "Because 'Grey's'is a very good show. They are in their second year....It's going to be a fight."

I love a good fight. Do stay tuned.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/

fredfa

07-16-06, 05:01 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS' Tassler: Cancelled Series Could Continue on Other Platforms

By A.J. Frutkin MediaWeek.com July 15, 2006 -

A barrage of questions surrounding the return of serialized programming took CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler by surprise at the network’s executive session today, which kicked off the broadcast portion of the TV Critics Association annual convention in Pasadena.

Early on in the CBS session, Tassler was asked whether the untimely failure of shows like Fox’s Reunion this past season--and the subsequent lack of closure for its devoted viewers--have sparked CBS to take any proactive measures with something like its doomsday drama Jericho, which many critics already have predicted is particularly vulnerable to early cancellation this fall. “Well, hopefully, the show will get to the end of the season,” Tassler answered to muted chuckles.

But the attending press corps at the Ritz Carlton Hotel wasn’t satisfied. In fact, Tassler’s answers to several more questions on the subject seemed only to fuel some journalists’ ire. “Are you saying that people who watched Fox’s Reunion last fall, didn’t care that they didn’t find out who the murderer was, that that was not important to them?” asked a reporter. “I’m sure it was important to them,” Tassler said. “But that show would still be on the air, if the audience was there.”

Several reporters, at that point, seemed to conflate the issues of ratings success and failure with serialized programming versus close-ended programming, confusing this line of questioning for Tassler even more. That is, until another reporter questioned broadcasters’ wisdom in alienating viewers of a failed series, by not wrapping up those stories for them before the show is pulled from the air.

“No programmer wants to piss off their audience. Creating and building viewer loyalty is why we do what we do,” Tassler replied. “In this climate right now, with as many different changes that are happening on multi-platforms, there may be opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms on shows that don’t continue on broadcast.”

Finally, the waters had been calmed. And then came the question from really far out in left field. “Can you just say something about Joan of Arcadia,” one critic asked about the CBS drama cancelled two seasons ago. Tassler’s reply? “You’re kidding, right?”

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840047

fredfa

07-16-06, 05:10 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS president avoids controversy

By David Kronke Los Angeles Daily News Television Critic 7/16/2006

CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler is adept at avoiding being provocative and the network is operating on unequivocally solid footing. Hence, Tassler's press conference Saturday morning during the Television Critics Association's semiannual press tour threatened toward blandness to the extent that reporters began posing joke question about such long-shelved projects as "George & Leo," "Love Monkey," "Joan of Arcadia," "Tuesday Night Book Club" and a once-threatened "Beverly Hillbillies" reality show.

"Business is good at CBS," Tassler declared, and there's no point disputing that. The network has boasted the most viewers for several seasons, renewed six series that debuted last season (usually, one to three is the norm) and only required four new shows for its fall lineup.

One of those series, "Jericho," inspired the most questions. "Jericho" is a serialized series focusing on a small town coping with isolation from the outside world after an undisclosed number of nuclear blasts hit America.

Even though "Jericho" is CBS's only strictly serialized series by contrast, NBC has two, Fox at least three and ABC a whopping seven Tassler was nonetheless besieged with questions ominously forecasting viewer burnout from viewing so many series in such a committed fashion.

And each time, her response was more or less the same. "I don't think audiences make a decision to commit to a show, one way or the other, based on it being serialized or not," Tassler said. "I think it's purely about the quality of the programming. If they like it and the show is good, they'll continue to watch."

After the umpteenth time the question was posed, Tassler almost demonstrated a little pugnacity. "It's so funny, just last year we talked about, Are you going to put more crime dramas on? We've had enough with the crime dramas,'" she said. "Now we've got serialized dramas. You've got something different. It's like, Oh, my God, enough with the serialized dramas.'"

Tassler was asked about ABC's bold move to schedule its hit "Grey's Anatomy" opposite CBS's hit "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

"We expect to be dinged a little bit," she admitted. "It's going to be very competitive. But as we know from the past, two big hit shows or more can occupy the same time period. We are going to be very aggressive in terms of strategizing with the show this year, with story lines. So we will be incredibly competitive, but we do expect to get dinged."

When Tassler suggested that "CSI" was the underdog in that fight, she was called on it. "I can't qualify loss,'" she said. "Look, it's going to be very competitive." She repeated the "dinged" thing.

Tassler was also asked about the network's decision to flip the Monday time periods of returning sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" and new sitcom "The Class" (yes, this is what qualified for controversy on Saturday). The implication, of course, is by moving "Class" to 8 p.m., CBS is subtly signaling it considers it a stronger show.

No, no, no: "We really saw it as an opportunity to open the night big with The Class,'" said Tassler. "It was a decision to keep How I Met Your Mother' in its time period and just let it bask in the halo of the promo from The Class.'" Which is sort of what that's saying, but in a very discreet, benign way.

Tassler said the network has begun to massage pilot ideas more patiently that it had in the past.

"We're continuing to develop a pilot we shot last year," she said. "We liked it a lot. It had a lot of great elements, but just a couple of tweaks we wanted to work on, and that was a pilot from Chuck Lorre called Big Bang Theory.' We're going to continue to rework that through the summer."

She also pointed to current series "Numb3rs" as a series that went through a lot of retooling before making it to the air.

http://www.dailynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=4057543

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:05 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Passing the Baton

By Christopher Lisotta at Broadcasting & Cable’s blog “Critical Eye” Saturday, July 15th, 2006

When I found out TVWeek wanted me to blog from the TCA press tour this summer, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. We had a bit of a dry run with blog postings in May for our advertiser upfront presentation coverage, which went surprisingly well considering we didn’t really plan a lot for it.But for TCA, we had time. And thanks to my colleague James Hibberd’s terrific coverage of the cable portion of the tour, we now have expectations. Last week I’d pull up James’ coverage of everything from a tearful Shannen Doherty to Hallmark’s penguins to the “South Park” guys to a picture of James with Playboy bunnies and feel a cold sweat as I stared at my monitor. Bunnies and penguins? How do I top that? Well, here goes.

It’s Saturday morning and the broadcast portion of the tour has kicked in at the Ritz Carlton. First some clarification: While several cable networks make presentations over the course of one day, most broadcast networks have two days to present, which mean individual network shows get as much time as entire cable nets do.

Thankfully, broadcasters and their assembled talent are just as brilliant, ridiculous, contentious and nervous as their cable counterparts, so here’s hoping I’m in the right place at the right time to capture some of the fun stuff. But if you get bored, feel free to scroll back to the cable blog shots of the penguins and bunnies. I probably will.

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:08 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
For the last time, ‘Joan of Arcadia’ is Dead, Dead, Dead

By Christopher Lisotta at Broadcasting & Cable’s blog “Critical Eye” Saturday, July 15th, 2006

Years after the “talk to God” show was cancelled, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler still has to put on a brave face and discuss the drama “Joan of Arcadia.”

For what seems like dozens of press tours, poor Tassler has been asked about the status of the show. Which was cancelled. Like, almost two years ago.

The critic who asked what’s up with “Joan” was apologetic about the question, which didn’t prevent most of the other critics from groaning audibily.

“It’s questions like that that give us a bad name,” one critic whispered to another.
“You’re kidding, right,” begged Tassler. Taking a moment to convince herself the question was serious, Tassler went into network president mode, laying out the appropriate response. “It was a wonderful show and it’s nice that it’s held in such high regard,” she said, with a look to the assembled critics that suggested this is all she had left for the dead and buried “Joan.”The “Joan” question prompted another critic to jokingly ask Tassler about the fate of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Tassler waited just a moment to make sure it was a joke. At press tour, you’re never quite sure.

I’m Mad as Hell and I Can’t Take it Any More

Some critics actually asked CBS’s Tassler questions about projects that have a chance to make it on the air, including the TV version of the classic 1970s feature film “Network,” which former TV dreamboat George Clooney turned Oscar darling George Clooney wants to develop for CBS.

“It’s long term,” Tassler said of the project’s chances of actually making it on a network. “George’s schedule got very busy.”

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:13 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Like ‘Friends,’ but More People and No Central Perk

By Christopher Lisotta at Broadcasting & Cable’s blog “Critical Eye” Saturday, July 15th, 2006

David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, the creators and executive producers of the CBS comedy “The Class,” were going for a different feel with their ensemble comedy. A co-creator of NBC’s “Friends,” Crane said one of the goals of the show was to make it feel more like a reality series, which have more characters than traditional sitcoms.

“The thing that was really exciting for us is to approach the show differently,” Crane said, “to really make it feel more like life.”

Klarik, his partner in the show and in life, showed Crane how many characters they were following and invested in as fans of reality series.

“Look at Janelle on ‘Big Brother,’” Klarik said. “At first I thought she was a big floozy. But she’s so interesting and smart. I love the idea of character that you can’t pigeonhole.”

Unlike most sitcoms, there will be no primary gathering place where the characters will congregate, and the characters will have various levels of involvement depending on the specific episode story line.

“This isn’t one of those shows wherever everyone hangs out and talks,” Klarik said. “There are eight separate storylines that do intersect.”

Going in this direction was not an attempt to go in a different direction from the behemoth “Friends,” Crane said.

“Once we decided there were going to be eight characters, and at least four major supporting characters, it was inevitable,” he said.

That structure has been a nightmare for Crane and Klarik’s line producer, who is responsible for setting up the logisitics of having numerous sets and no standing, central set to build around.

“That’s part of the challenge,” Crane said, nothing that there is a financial pressure on “The Class” for the studio producing the show. “How do we tell the story without totally freaking Warner Bros. out?”

One critic asked why “The Class,” which profiles a group of people from the same third-grade class who are reunited as adults, has no people of color in the cast.

“It is something that is unfortunate,” Crane said somewhat sheepishly. “It happened because when we wrote the script we wrote color blind. We auditioned for six months. We saw a huge range of diversity. At the end of the day these were the eight actors who were right for the parts.”

Crane and Klarik are going to add more diversity in successive episodes. The sisters in the series, Kat and Lina, who are Caucasian, will have adoptive Korean parents. The gay character Sean’s partner is Latino, and the character Nicole will have a biracial step-daughter.

Still, another critic pressed the issue of “color-blind” casting, which in many cases seems to produce all-white casts, who later on have to be forced to diversify. In hindsight, Crane said, not writing characters with a specific ethnicity might have helped in terms of diversity.

“If we had to do it over again we wouldn’t,” he said of color-blind casting. “But I wouldn’t change out these eight actors.”

One of the gags in the pilot surrounds the gay character Sean and his high school girlfriend Holly, who still holds anger over catching him with another guy. Holly introduces Sean to her husband, who can best be described as “nelly as the day is long.”

A critic asked if the husband, Perry, is also gay.

“Don’t you know some guys like that?” Crane asked, pointing out there are many happily married effeminate men.

“Some are probably like that in here,” he added to a few guffaws and a substantial amount of nervous laughter from the married effeminate men who are in good supply at TCA.

“The fun of the character remains that he is one of those guys where you go, ’seriously?’”

On the witty TCA banter front, actors Lucy Punch and Sean Maguire have already set the bar high. When asked about why she would do a series in the U.S., the British Punch said that kind of work would only increase her professional profile. Maguire and Crane quickly jumped in:

Punch: I don’t have a profile here.

Maguire: You have a lovely profile.

Punch: Darling!

Crane: Like a Noel Coward play!

With that kind of reference, Crane himself is raising the bar high.

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

harley1

07-16-06, 10:16 AM

Would CBS wrap up a canceled serial drama?

LYNN ELBER
Associated Press

PASADENA, Calif. - The flood of serialized dramas hitting television has created a quandary for viewers when shows fail in the ratings and are canceled, leaving key plot points eternally unresolved.

Fans of ABC's hit "Lost" don't have to worry about the show solving puzzles (as it creates new ones), but what's a fan of Fox's vanished murder-mystery drama "Reunion" to do?

It's a problem that throws networks, too, at least based on CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler's response when queried about it Saturday at a meeting of the Television Critics Association.

She was pounded on the issue over and over when her answers left reporters unsatisfied, with the result being a sort of impromptu serialized drama of its own.

If CBS' new fall drama "Jericho," about a town plunged into chaos by the possibility it's the only U.S. city to survive a nuclear disaster, failed, would CBS provide a wrap-up for those who did watch?

"Well, hopefully, the show will get to the end of the season," Tassler replied.

Asked if viewers might start to sour on such programs if they're repeatedly disappointed by cancelations, Tassler dismissed it as irrelevant, saying she didn't think audiences made viewing choices that way.

Reporters then asked if Tassler was saying the viewers didn't care about being left in the plot lurch. After taking a couple of stabs at the question, the network executive said she recognized that viewers do care.

But in relation to CBS' own series, she said, "in success, those questions will be answered."

Her assertion that viewers don't weigh the possibility a serialized drama could be yanked in deciding whether to watch prompted a disbelieving question from one reporter: "Are you serious?"

As the line of questioning continued, Tassler finally conceded that it was legitimate to ask if audiences could become disenchanted by too many truncated serials and suggested there could be solutions on the digital horizon.

"If anything, in this climate right now with as many different changes that are happening in multiplatform, there may be opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms," she said. "It behooves us to find those answers."

She didn't offer details, but presumably was referring to online options or video on demand.

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/15048109.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

I do make a decision on serialized shows differently than regular dramas.

I watch the pilot than ask "Is this show worth making a commitment to watch every week?"

keenan

07-16-06, 10:40 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Television critics unite to hammer CBS

By Suzanne Ryan The Boston Globe TV Writer in the Globe’s “Viewer Discretion” blog July 15, 2006

Shows like "Lost" are great, the critics said, but what about the programs that don't survive? Last season "Reunion," "Threshold" and "Invasion" were all cancelled without their story lines being resolved. Is that fair to the 2 to 3 million people who invested time every week? In the future, will CBS plan a conclusion for all serialized shows, even if they fail?

No, Tassler said.

"People don't make a decision to watch based on whether [a show is]seralized," she said.

But in this era of multimedia competition, people are starting to hesitate and not watch too many programs, especially if they think those shows will never be resolved, the critics said.

Is she kidding..?? Clueless...

"You have to look at -- what story are you telling? It's about the writer, the writer's vision," Tassler said.

Huh?
What? Is she saying that all of a sudden the writer's vision is more important than the size of the audience? This is from a commercial broadcast TV network? HBO apparently cares more about audience size as opposed to the "writer's vision", but CBS does? Tassler is not very good at this media Q&A thing is she?

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:53 AM

Nina Tassler does seem a little more scattered than last year.

But maybe Ms. Ryan got it a bit off kilter.

I think Tassler was saying that before anything else, it is the story(line) that hooks the audience. (Although maybe I think that because I tend to agree.) :)

The cast of CSI certainly would not have been predicted to become big TV stars, nor would those starring in Without A Trace or Cold Case (sticking with CBS shows here).

While last year -- or maybe it was two years ago -- Tassler was saying that procedurals were better for CBS because the audience found it comforting to know they would get a resolution in each hours, now she has to back track a bit.

I think the writer's vision is what --pretty directly -- leads to the size of the audience. Obviously there can be other factors (network intereference, time slot disasters, poor casting, etc) but it all starts with the execution of the writer's vision.

To me Shonda Rhimes of Grey's Anatomy is the perfect example of that. You may or may not enjoy the program, but is exquisitely cast, written, directed and Ms. Rhimes says she knows exactly what the story arc is for the entire series!

It will be interesting to see, as she begins to spend time on other projects, if and how quickly Grey's will lose her tight and well-disciplined focus.

fredfa

07-16-06, 11:01 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS: Executive Session Scrum

By James Hibberd at Broadcasting & Cable’s “Critical Eye” blog Saturday, July 15th, 2006

It’s a time honored press tour tradition for critics to rush the stage after the network executive sessions to try and get quotes that won’t be shared with the whole room. Usually a dozen or so of the more aggressive types (usually the boy critics) plus trade reporters looking for more exclusive copy that will be fresh for the weekly issue (ahem) bound up to the executive with such force it is wonder everyone doesn’t end up in a 30-yard tackle.
The same happened to CBS’s Nina Tassler after her session.

While most of the questions were follow ups form what was asked in the room, some new information did pour from the scrum.

• On why modest ratings success and creatively challenged suburban legal drama “Close to Home” was one of the last series to get picked up for next season:

“It was a little bit of a bubble show. There were some creative elements that we wanted to take a look at and see if we could improve on this year. Because of our relationship with [prolific executive producer Jerry] Bruckheimer, we valued our relationship, and we wanted to make sure it got a great deal of thought and consideration. At the end of the year last year, they came in and gave a fantastic pitch on this is where the show is going to go next year.”

Besides adding “JAG” alum David James Elliott to the cast, “Close” will have more “ripped from the headlines” storylines next season.

• On whether actress Aisha Tyler asked out of the Friday night drama “Ghost Whisperer” or was her character killed for creative reasons:

“It was a creative decision, and it was a part of what they had been talking about during the year. Aisha was a really significant part of [the show], but they were really looking to do something with the story that would have a big impact.”

• On what CBS needs to figure out before the network has a viable business model to run telenovela-like programming:

“The number of episodes that you do. How many times a week you’re going to air the episodes. Also, where we were going to shoot the show. I mean, all these things were in flux. And doing that with arcing out 18 to 24 episodes, we just weren’t ready. A telenovela is a very unique form of storytelling. In adapting it for our network we had to make certain adjustments.”

• On whether there will be two cycles of “The Amazing Race” this season:

“We have only ordered one so far.”

• On whether CBS’s new video Web site innertube would be a place to let cancelled shows play out any unaired episodes:

“It does give us an opportunity to extend brands, to continue to promote the product. It’s there, and right now we’re very supportive, and they have been very supportive of us.”

Spokesman Chris Ender noted that CBS is trying to get the canceled series “Love Monkey” on innertube, as long as the show’s music rights can be cleared for the Internet.

• On whether the apocalyptic drama “Jericho” is a science fiction series:

“If that audience responds to the show, that’s great, but I think the beauty of it is that it has a much more classic and broader appeal. The circumstances that play out are incredibly relevant.”

• On whether crime drama “Smith” will feature a different heist each week:

“Over the course of the year, you’ll see only three or four big crimes. It’s not every week they steal another painting.”

• On whether CBS is talking to its creatives about toning things down dues to the recent FCC scrutiny of broadcast content:

“We have Standards and Practices. We have a legal department. We have a process we go through. It is a system that has been in place.”

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

keenan

07-16-06, 11:10 AM

I suppose I was taking her responses a little too literally when it comes to serialized shows. I've seen plenty of well written serialized shows bite the dust because the network wasn't getting the ratings it wanted and in that respect, it didn't really matter what the writer was doing.

I guess what I'm saying is that don't try and tell me that anything other than ratings is the deciding factor of whether a show makes it or not, the impression I got was that Tassler was putting a certain amount of weight on the actual writing of the show as a determining factor in keeping it on the air. True, good writing can produce big audiences, but in many, many cases even shows with great writing have bitten the dust, I could list a dozen off the top of my head.

I just think she was being a bit disingenuous about the importance of the writing when it comes to serialized shows. Shakespeare himself could write for TV, but if the ratings aren't there, the show won't be there for long either.

BTW, in my mind, "Grey's Anatomy" is not really a true serialized show in that each episode usually has a resolution to the subject du jour.

fredfa

07-16-06, 11:13 AM

TV Review
The Next Great Sci-Fi Show? I have Found it!

This one takes us into a top-secret village of Einstein-smart people.
By Aaron Barnhart Kansas City Star July 16, 2006

F rom the moment I saw a preview of “Eureka” (9 PM ET Tuesday, SciFi Channel) six months ago, I knew I would love it. Something else I love: when I’m right.

Hilarious, delightful and smart, “Eureka” is an old-fashioned whodunit set in a newfangled town that’s even weirder than Jessica Fletcher’s bizarrely murderous Cabot Cove. Eureka is a top-secret village of geniuses sequestered by the U.S. government so they can concentrate on making the world a safer place. You know, like Los Alamos did.

And there you will find Jack Carter (played by the versatile Colin Ferguson), a U.S. marshal transporting a fugitive — as it turns out, his rebellious teen daughter Zoe (Jordan Hinson) — back to her mom, from whom he is separated. But they are sidetracked in Eureka, where it soon becomes clear that everyone in town has the Einstein gene, even though they hold mundane jobs.

Henry (Joe Morton), a happy-go-lucky tinkerer, drives a tow truck when he’s not rebuilding the wormhole machine from “Contact.” The dogcatcher (played by Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer) seems to be busy on some mad gadget in his spare time, though currently all it does is wreak havoc on cows.

While waiting for his car to get fixed at Henry’s shop, Carter gets roped into a missing-person case. He solves it quickly, gaining the attention of key superbrains in town, notably the alluring Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), who identifies herself as a Defense Department official. Defense? Well, yes, for as Carter soon learns, there’s a laboratory just outside town that’s so high security, you need to pass through a force field to get there.

At first he tries to shrug it off: “I’m from L.A.,” he tells Allison. “Nothing shocks me.” That’s before she drives him through the force field.

“I think I’ve gone blind!” he cries afterward.

“Relax,” Allison says. “That almost never happens.”

Meanwhile, Zoe, whom Jack has locked up at the local pokey, becomes best buds with her jailer, Lupo (Erica Cerra), an ex-Special Forces soldier.

Before you slap the “quirky” label on this show, know that most of the relationships are normal and real and are conveyed with an economy of words. Like when Jack is trying to explain why he and Zoe’s mom have split.

“Some people just don’t work,” he says.

Zoe’s reply, “Dad, all you do is work,” suggests that at least she has the symbolic-analytic skills for this brainy little burg.

There’s a touch of conspiracy and more than a hint of sensuality here. And some of both come wafting from the general direction of Debrah Farentino. The siren from “NYPD Blue,” “Hooperman” and “EZ Streets,” Farentino plays Barlowe, a sexy shrink who also runs a bed-and-breakfast andknows secrets that you can’t learn even with military clearance.

At a press event last January, someone rudely asked (that’s what we do) Farentino if playing a really smart person was a stretch. Very sweetly, she began her reply, “These characters are brilliant, but I finished my last series five years ago and went back to school to get my degree in molecular biology …”

What?

” she explained, “and I found myself reading “Well, The last series I worked on was ‘Get Real,’ Scientific American ” and other scientific magazines (on the set) and thinking, ‘I know there’s something out there for me (that’s) different.’

An episode that airs next month shows that “Eureka” may have the gumption to become the best sci-fi show since the late lamented “Farscape.” It’s a story about a weapon that can create short-term memory loss and, by extension, long-term regrets. It’s a throwback to the old days, when science fiction was less about gizmos and more about the human propensity for madness. In other words, documentary in disguise.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/columnists/aaron_barnhart/15032650.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

keenan

07-16-06, 11:16 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS: Executive Session Scrum

By James Hibberd at Broadcasting & Cable’s “Critical Eye” blog Saturday, July 15th, 2006

• On whether crime drama “Smith” will feature a different heist each week:

“Over the course of the year, you’ll see only three or four big crimes. It’s not every week they steal another painting.”

Case in point, CBS thinks enough of this show to put it on the air. It appears to be a serialized drama. Now, is CBS going to let the show run it's course so that the season is completed, all the heists have resolution..? Somehow I doubt it.

keenan

07-16-06, 11:20 AM

fredfa

07-16-06, 11:36 AM

TV Review
Plot twists make 'Eureka' turn

By Joanne Weintraub Milwaukee Journal Sentinel TV critic

There's something odd about the town of Eureka, and it's not just the exploding cows.

It's also the absent-minded sheriff, his tiny pit bull of a deputy, the PhD-smart car mechanic, the snarling dog catcher and the seductive psychotherapist. It's the fact that all the little kids are geniuses and that all the government officials - who seem to outnumber the private citizens by about two to one - are so secretive they might actually be hiding weapons of mass destruction in their office cubicles.

Well, actually, some of them are. But they wouldn't dream of using them. Probably.

Although it's seen on the Sci Fi Channel, "Eureka" - like quirky-small-town series "Picket Fences," "Northern Exposure" and even "Gilmore Girls" before it - is more about what makes people tick than about what makes cows explode. And if some very hush-hush federal projects make some Eurekans tick like Geiger counters in the presence of a uranium strike, that just makes things all the more interesting.

In fact, if this new hourlong series can maintain the glib, quick-witted charm and twisty plotting of its 90-minute opener, it could become as much of a classic as those earlier comedy-dramas. I'm pretty sure it can't maintain the level of the opener's very cool special effects, but more about that shortly.

We see this Pacific Northwest hamlet through the eyes of its newest arrival, U.S. Marshal Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson, "The Opposite of Sex"), who gets stalled here while escorting his wayward teen daughter, Zoe (Jordan Hinson), back to Los Angeles.

Much of the premiere's charm comes from the hapless Jack, who has a zinger for every awkward situation. It's bad enough, he tells the equally smart-alecky Zoe, that she's a juvenile delinquent, but did she have to tell the waitress in that last restaurant that "I was touching you funny"?

Ferguson has a leading man's looks and a comedian's timing, and the rest of the large cast is winning, too, especially Joe Morton ("Smallville") as that mysteriously overqualified mechanic, Debrah Farentino ("Earth Two") as the therapist, Greg Germann ("Ally McBeal") as the nutso head of a government think tank, Matt Frewer as the even more off-kilter dog catcher and Maury Chaykin ("Unstrung Heroes") as the sheriff.

Of the series' two creators, Jaime Paglia is a relative TV newcomer, while Andrew Cosby has only the interesting but quickly canceled "Haunted," with Matthew Fox, to his name. But you'd never know it from their polished writing and deft plotting.

Another early episode sent out for screening shows that the writing in this week's premiere wasn't a fluke, and the casting, of course, remains solid. It looks, though, as if an awful lot of the production budget went into those first 90 minutes; the visual quality falls off sharply in that future episode.

That won't keep me from revisiting "Eureka," though. I like an intriguing subplot and a good wisecrack just as much as an exploding farm animal.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=466810&format=print

fredfa

07-16-06, 11:57 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
One For the Rose

By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog July 16, 2006

Tonight's activities -- well, mine, anyway -- ended at the Rose Bowl, where CBS had its party for press tour reporters and the stars of its shows. There was a greeting to us on one of the big screens, and another on a Goodyear blimp flying overhead. Members of the UCLA marching band played as we walked in -- the ''Jeffersons'' theme for the group I was with. (Former Clevelander Robert Patrick, now co-starring on ''The Unit,'' said he tried to get the band to pay the Ohio State fight song, and the band refused.) It was a cool-job moment -- hey, I was standing on the field at the Rose Bowl!

I had chats -- with ''Two and a Half Men's'' Conchata Ferrell, about working with Paddy Chayefsky on ''Network,'' for example, and with Jason Ritter about when the second season of ''Joan of Arcadia'' will be on DVD. (All he knows is that he hasn't been asked yet to do any commentary; I'm trying to get an answer through another avenue.) I did interviews: Robert Patrick, for one, and Skeet Ulrich of ''Jericho.''''

I chatted up Thom Barry of ''Cold Case,'' at first because his CBS bio says he's from Cleveland, so he was a local connection. Only he told me he isn't from Cleveland. He's from Cincinnati.

Asked why the confusion, he said, ''I can only figure it started with the IMDB'' -- the much used, much cited Internet Movie Database, which listed him as Cleveland, with other people picking that up. ''You know what? Especially out here in the West, most people know Cleveland, Ohio. If they do know Cincinnati, they probably try to block it out because of the rivalry between the Reds and the Dodgers.''

He's not the only one to see geography scrambled. Earlier in the tour, a producer of the Oxygen movie ''Fight Girls'' referred to finding one of the fighters in Ohio. She's from Indiana.

As Barry summed up the view for Californians: ''It's back there somewhere.''

All that was at the end of a day that had also included CBS executive Nina Tassler, James Woods and the rest of the people from ''Shark,'' Ulrich and the rest of ''Jericho,'' Ray Liotta and the other stars of ''Smith.'' I had one-on-one conversations with Carter Bays, the former Shaker Heights resident now producting and writing for ''How I Met Your Mother,'' and Brian Bedol, another old Buckeye who now runs CSTV.

It's Sunday morning now as I write, and I've been transcribing some of the material that has filled up my audio recorder, to make room for more. The morning's marquee event is Katie Couric, the afternoon has the cast of ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.'' And late this afternoon I'll be on the set of ''Rock Star: Supernova'' for a taping of the show.

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

07-16-06, 12:48 PM

For the early adapters among us:

TV Technology
High-def DVD: Why you should hit ‘pause’

(Consumer Reports, August 2006 issue)

Call it a decided delay in DVD development. Until this year, the disc that dominates prerecorded movies was strictly a standard-definition medium. The introduction of high-definition DVD was delayed by limited disc capacity and a host of other issues. Though standard DVD images look impressive enough on an HDTV, their quality falls short of the set’s potential to create dazzingly detailed images.

Now, finally, two competing (and incompatible) high-¬definition DVD formats are beginning to hit the market. There’s HD DVD, introduced by Toshiba and supported by movie studios including Universal and HBO; and Blu-ray, led by Sony and backed by Disney and others.

As we expected, in preliminary tests HD DVD delivered sharper, more detailed images than regular DVD, and Blu-ray promises a similar improvement. (As of early July, the first Blu-ray players were not yet on the market.) Both formats also allow for greater interactivity than regular DVDs.

Before beginning to make the popcorn, though, consider these seven sobering realities about high-def DVD. Together, they render the new technology more a development to track than a technology you should invest in now.

Beware the format war. Home-entertainment history suggests that only one format will be left standing. That’s what happened in the VHS vs. Betamax battle, the 1970s videotape-format fight in which consumers who invested in the latter format were left with obsolete tapes and players. Even if both high-def DVD formats survive, most movies will be available in only one or the other. A few major studios--so far, Warner Bros. and Paramount--will offer titles in both. But no combination HD DVD/Blu-ray players are currently available. True movie buffs will have to buy both HD DVD and Blu-ray equipment.

It’s not cheap. Stepping up to high-def DVD might be more tempting if it didn’t cost so much more than its ¬standard-def sibling. But player prices start at $500, compared with $100 or less for many standard DVD players, and discs cost upward of $25, almost double the price of many standard DVDs. Drives for both formats are being added to computers, but such models cost at least $3,000.

You can get a more versatile high-def DVD player if you can wait until November. That’s when Sony is supposed to roll out its PlayStation 3 video-game console, which will include a Blu-ray drive. But it will cost $500.

Improvements in image quality may vary by HDTV. In our side-by-side tests, the HD DVD version of “Phantom of the Opera” (2004) looked much better than its standard DVD version when viewed on a typical HDTV, which used a native resolution technology known as 1080i. But the HD DVD “Phantom” looked especially sharp and detailed when viewed on a set with 1080p native resolution, a technology on expensive new sets that makes the most of HD signals.

Expect some glitches. High-def DVD players are much like computers in many ways, though early testing suggests not in the best ways. HD DVD players we tested took longer to load their discs and skip chapters than regular DVD players, and digital connections were finicky.

Some features of high-def DVDs are yet to arrive. Both formats promise Internet access and video-game-style interaction with movie characters. However, most of the first high-definition discs have only the same extras as their standard-definition siblings.

Availability is tight. HD DVD players and discs, which appeared in April, are in short supply. Sony has hinted that the same may hold for the first Blu-ray players. And while titles are steadily being added, the number of movies available in high-def DVD remains limited--no more than about 50 titles in each format.

Other sources of HD movies are growing. The short¬falls in availability of high-def DVD might be a blessing, since even movie aficionados should for now resist the call of the new technology. As time goes on, the format war may be resolved, prices will drop, and availability of HD movies and players (and eventually recorders) will increase.

Cable and satellite TV providers vow to increase their offerings. Other new providers may deliver movies in high-definition to computerlike set-top boxes using the Internet.

The upshot: Viewing movies at home in HD has nowhere to go but up, but it’s an open question how many of those movies you’ll get on DVD. Having waited so long for high-def DVD, we may eventually discover we don’t really need it.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/high-definition-dvd-8-06/overview/0608_hi-def-dvd_ov.htm

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:09 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Critics fret: Is fall lineup too good?

Ambitious new shows are a welcome switch, but may be too demanding
By Josef Adalian Variety.com Sun., Jul. 16, 2006

The nation's TV critics seem to be in an unusually good mood.

With just six weeks before the nets start rolling out their new fall wares, early buzz indicates journos are more upbeat than usual about what the webs are cooking up. They may not be desperately in love with many shows, but they like a lot of what they've seen--and, more interestingly, they say the number of flat-out dogs may be at an all-time low.

But there's a dark side to the critical hosannas: Some scribes worry the nets may have been overly ambitious in crafting new shows.

That's right: After years of bitching about the death of the sitcom and staged "reality" shows, the scribe tribe now frets TV this fall may be too good for its own good.

"The pendulum has really swung from the easy-to-understand procedurals to these very ambitious serials," says Alan Sepinwall, TV columnist for the Star-Ledger of Newark (N.J.). "I don't know that people are necessarily going to have time to watch them all."

USA Today's Robert Bianco chimes in with his fear that webs "are making a regrettable number of demands on viewers' attention and patience" by turning out so many serialized shows like dueling missing-person dramas "Kidnapped" and "Vanished," or ABC's year-in-the-life laffers "Big Day" and "Notes From the Underbelly."

"You just wonder if people want to (make long-term TV commitments) when they know they already have shows like 'Lost' and '24' coming back," Bianco says.

But Bianco is quick to add that he has no desire "to play junior programmer." Even if they don't end up working, he and his peers seem mighty impressed by the overall level of quality of the new shows.

"The bar keeps getting raised," says TV Guide chief critic Matt Roush. "Even the shows you don't have much faith or interest in are much better done than before. And there are very few shows that are on the level of, say, 'Killer Instinct' ... that trigger that 'What were they thinking?' "

As for what crix are thinking, a few clear trends emerged during conversations with a half-dozen leading scribes:

Ugly is the new pretty

ABC's hourlong comic serial "Ugly Betty" is, as Roush puts it, "the critic's darling" this year.

"I was expecting something different," says Newsweek's Marc Peyser. "It was much more bittersweet than I thought, which was nice," he says.

The Star-Ledger's Sepinwall says "Betty" gets "the campy tone right, which is really hard to do."

"By the time I got to the end of it, the biggest thought in my head was, 'Why is this not Sundays at 10?' I haven't seen 'Brothers & Sisters,' but I can't imagine it being a better fit with 'Desperate Housewives.' "

Roush agrees, urging ABC not to let the show die in its current 9 p.m. Friday slot. "It's a show that needs to be protected," he says.

Laffers live

Comedy continues to make a critical comeback, with scribes welcoming the shift away from the old sitcom formulas. More than a few crix echoed Peyser, who found himself surprised by his reaction to CBS' "The Class."

"I liked it more than I thought I would," he says. "It was very sweet."

Eye laffer about a group of elementary school friends reunited seems to be one of the top frosh comedy picks for many scribes, along with ABC's "Knights of Prosperity" (nee "Let's Rob..."). The Boston Globe's Matthew Gilbert says he likes the Alphabet laffer, in which a group of blue-collar guys plot to rob Mick Jagger.

"It's hard to know where they'll go with it, but it had a lot of promise," he says. "Mick Jagger was great, and if he can keep making fun of himself, it could be a lot of fun."

ABC's "Big Day" also has its share of fans, while Fox's marriage laffer " 'Til Death" seems to fall into the love-it-or-hate-it category. And while some wonder if it's too insider, many crix seem intrigued by Tina Fey's "30 Rock."

The numbers game

Of the myriad dramas about disparate people thrown together by circumstance, ABC's "The Nine" seems to have emerged as a favorite.

"Of all of those shows, it really stood out to me as having more possibility to expand and build," Bianco says.

Adds Roush, "It's the one show I can't stop thinking about."

Crix are more reserved when it comes to the J.J. Abrams-produced "Six Degrees," also for ABC. "I'm not sure these six people have enough degrees of interest for me," Roush sighs.

Peyser, however, is a fan: "It felt different, and I'd forgotten how wonderfully JJ creates for women."

Sorkin soars

Gail Pennington of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says the show most people are asking her about is Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." And crix said they were anxious to see what "The West Wing" guru had cooked up.

Early reaction is mostly positive.

"It's not just Sorkin's writing style, but the way his characters are so steeped in the drama of their own work lives," Gilbert says. "I definitely thought it was very promising."

While sudsy skeins like "Studio 60" or "The Nine" will no doubt generate lots of heat this fall, crix also praised the nets for not totally abandoning the procedural beat. Fox's "Justice," for example, seemed to be a pleasant surprise for many scribes.

Top of the class

As evidenced by the number of its shows getting raves, ABC easily ranks as the net with TV's best development slate in the eyes of many crix. Scribes now find themselves gushing about the Alphabet in much the same way they once praised NBC.

"Their shows are each so different and distinctive," Roush says.

But close behind ABC this year is NBC, whose favorability rating seems to be going up under entertainment prexy Kevin Reilly.

"This was finally the year where I could say, 'OK, I can see the hand of Kevin Reilly,'" says Newsday scribe Diane Werts. "They're good and solid and interesting shows."

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:12 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Katie in the Morning

By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog

I'm in the morning's meeting room, where the air conditioning is blowing hard; breakfast was a variety of egg dishes, tied to a publicity push CBS plans that involves putting promos on eggs. Really.

I've had my eggs, chatted with colleagues and am now waiting for the arrival of Katie Couric. The room is filling up pretty quickly; Katie's a must-see -- and a must-file -- for just about everyone here.

The room is full now, 15 minutes after the press conference was supposed to start, and still no Katie.

And herrrrrrrrreeeeeee she is. She's gotten really blonde. (The delay is blamed on the omelet-making setting off the fire alarm. Don't think so.) CBS News President Sean McManus says he feels ''really good'' and that the broadcast will be ''intelligent, relevant and transparent.'' Also new and fresh

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:14 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails

Sunday, Perky Sunday: Katie Couric Live Blog
By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine” Sunday, July 16, 2006

Well, the fresh face of CBS News in the new corporate and ratings driven celebrity news world is here, phalanx and all, and no doubt she'll be perky and professional in what amounts to her biggest press conference since she got the job.

I'm going to be as nice as I possibly can. Open-minded, even. It's Sunday after all. Of course she's not on stage yet so that's easy to say.

The fire alarms are going off. Looks like CBS's ratings are smoking hot already, so that salary is already money well spent. You know, networks hate when this happens. Even though it's not their fault, they somehow think it ruins their elaborate plans. And believe me, getting Couric here and running her through the preparation process - what questions we're likely to ask, how not to respond if baited (innocent, I swear) and what tone to strike is, indeed, one elaborate process.

Fire alarms are off. Dan Rather in custody. (Oh, the laughter never ends...)

New, fresh, relevant and intelligent. That's what Sean McManus, who heads the CBS News and Sports department, said the newscast will be like. He's spinning before introducing Couric.

"I'm excited to stop talking about this and to do the job."

She said she and CBS News want to "offer people something a little different and attract them to the program...We're hoping to give them something they can't get other places.

"We may manage the time a little different than it's been managed heretofore." What does that mean? We'll have to wait and see, she said. Oh, yeah, that's always a great answer.

Couric begins anchoring on Sept. 5, by the way.

McManus agreed with a theory that too much attention has been paid to the celebrity portion of who is reading the news rather than the news iteself. "Listen, it's a positive, it's bringing a lot of attention to our program." But, he said, the show will have to deliver with substance to keep viewers.

"They want more perspective, they want news stories in more context," Couric said of viewers she's met along her travels. People also want to know how is this relevant to their lives and I think we can do a better job of that."

"I think people are hungry and interested in the gray areas of reporting. It doesn't have to be a representation of extreme views from one side or the other," Couric said.

"I do believe if you build it they will come. Quality attracts people." Well, cliches aside, that hasn't actually been proven true over time. She's with an historically well-respected news organization and it hasn't actually dominated the ratings.

"The deal in hundreds of thousands. We deal in tens of millions. They have a different product." - McManus talking about cable news.

"I think that's an absurd thesis, to be honest with you." McManus on Dan Rather and Ted Koppel's assertion that broadcast news doesn't cover international news enough. "I think we do a terrific job in doing that." McManus wasn't happy about that and said he had people rushing to Israel and the Middle East. But he may have missed the implication that you don't parachute reporters in when a hotspot flares up, you actually have a full-time bureau there.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:27 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Suicidal sitcom guy, robbing-murdering guy … And CBS hypes with eggs?

By Diane Holloway Austin American-Statesman in her TV blog Sunday, July 16, 2006

CBS churned through a packed day of presentations Saturday afternoon, including a press conference for the new sitcom, “The Class,” which had at least a dozen cast and creative executives present.

Jason Ritter, son of the late John Ritter, was the only fresh face most folks recognized, and he didn’t say much. Good smile, though.

The show is about a group of twentysomethings who were in third grade together and decide to have a reunion. Do you even remember third grade? I don’t, and I certainly haven’t kept up with anyone. But maybe I’m just anti-social that way.

Anyway, the pilot has its moments — like the scene in which Ritter’s character calls up a former classmate, played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who is about to gulp a handful of sleeping pills to commit suicide when the phone rings.

It’s a funny bit, in a dark kind of way, but we wondered how funny a deeply depressed, suicidal twentysomething would be in the long haul of a series.

“Well, he’s suicidal and depressed — but in a sitcom kind of way,” Ferguson quipped.

On a less hysterical note, the creator of CBS’s new serial drama, “Jericho,” about the aftermath of a nuclear bomb on a small town in Kansas, says he was inspired by ABC’s landmark TV movie “The Day After.”

“I saw that movie when I was in college,” said Jon Turteltaub. “That was 25 years ago. Seems like a long time since we’ve done a drama about something as timely as nuclear bombs.”

Later, John Wells, who created CBS’s new crime drama “Smith,” was reminded that his show, about a professional crook and his semi-normal home life, sounds a lot like the recent flops “Heist” and “Thief.”

What makes “Smith” different, besides having Ray Liotta as the hero/villain?

“I hope it’s better,” said Wells, who confessed he has always found law-breakers more interesting than law enforcers.

In Liotta’s mind, the professional crook he plays is just like any other hard-working guy — even though he kills a museum security guard in the pilot before heading home for dinner.

“He loves his wife and provides for his kids,” Liotta said. “He just has a ‘jones’ for stealing.”

Apparently, he doesn’t mind a little collateral damage either.

Cracking wise in hype-land

Wanna hear something sad? My favorite tidbit from CBS yesterday was their new advertising campaign, dubbed “egg-vertising.”

In September, CBS will stamp slogans, series logos and air times on 35 million eggs that will be sold in grocery stores. EggFusion, the company that stamps laser coded expiration dates on eggs, is handling the messages.

“We’re egg-cited about this egg-clusive opportunity,” crowed the always imaginative George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing.

Among the slogans: CBS Mondays, Funny Side Up; “CSI,” Crack the Case on CBS; “The Amazing Race,” Scramble to Win on CBS; and “How I Met Your Mother,” Find Your Chick on CBS.

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/tvblog/

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:40 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails

Sunday, Perky Sunday: Katie Couric Live Blog (Continued)

By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine” Sunday, July 16, 2006

Corporate ownership won't bother Couric she said because there's a "hands off policy" in place. But there is pressure of some sorts, she acknowledged, though - surprise - she didn't think that would affect the news. McManus said "it's non existent" when talking about corporate influence. "It's a specious argument. It doesn't exist."

"Being the first woman was not the motivating factor" for Couric taking the job, she said. "It's an added honor to go with the job." Instead, it was the rarity of the open seat, she said. "They just don't come available that often. It was the job itself."

"This was one of the most civil transitions in network history," she said of her switch from NBC to CBS. "Everybody realized this was a terrific opportunity."

"Yeah, of course I want to be there," Couric said of the Middle East, where her competitors are. "If it's going to help the story, serve the story, I want to be there."

"Yes, it was my opinion to exclude reporters," in the Town Hall events she went on throughout the country. "It was really much more for (the ordinary people) who were there." She wanted to get information from people, get the pulse of the people. "It wasn't a photo op or a press opportunity." Apparently not.

"I'm trying to get Martha Stewart to do a cooking segment every evening. Kidding. Joke." Couric said about what she wants to bring to the Evening News from her morning hosting past.

The biggest challenge? "To use the time as best we can." Also to keep the CBS News tradition going. But she will be attempting to "try some new things...take some risks." No real details on that, of course. Couric has said this is a competitive business and she doesn't want to give out trade secrets. Uh, there are trade secrets to this business? Really.

By the way, you have to understand that there is no narrative flow to these sessions. There's a LOT of people in here and even though only about two or three people have a microphone at the same time, everybody has a question and very rarely do they dovetail. You get one good question, then another, then something stupid, followed by an argument for the microphone and yelling, followed by a good question. But it's hard to get follow up questions to answers Couric - or anyone else who has ever been in these sessions - give.

"Hopefully there are occasions where I can interact with people and have fun," she said, in answering the questions about her personality lacking gravitas because of her morning show past. "It's almost as if you do the fun stuff well you can't be serious...We have done countless very important, very penetrating and very newsworthy interviews on that program."

"It was a very different time and a very different set-up," she said of Barbara Walters' time in the anchor chair. The two have talked, but it's apples and oranges, apparently.

"It's somewhat nebulous in its job description" she says of the managing editor title she gets. But what it means is she has input about what goes on the air. "It was very important to me that I have a voice in the process."

There will be a new set for Couric. "It's going to be a set that integrates the newsroom," McManus said, and be modern without looking like a spaceship. "It's modern, clean, but has a lot of traditional elements as well...the real goal is for people to talk about the show and the content of the show," McManus said. If you're curious, there will be new graphics and new music.

If she was in the Middle East anchoring right now, she'd want to give viewers more background information on the history, the groups, etc. "I think for a lot of Americans, Hamas and Hezollah, it might as well be Greek." Of course, that may be perceived as dumbing down.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:50 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Job Insecurity

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog July 16, 2006

The subject of the summer press tour is TV, but the talk of the sessions are as often as not newspapers and their future.

In addition to fall pilots, reporters are talking about staff and budget reductions, ownership changes and the relentlessness of blogging – once a novelty that is now a round-the-clock responsibility added to many TV reporters – and the very future of traditional dailies.

Even the dean of the TV critics, the respected and long-running Ed Bark, a practical source for network trends for decades, is having his job threatened as his paper, the Dallas Morning News reportedly toys with having their TV and movie critics write only local items, nonsensically using wire for everything else.

The newsroom chill could be felt at otherwise innocuous sessions for new sitcoms as well.

Because an upcoming comedy for TBS, “My Boys,” concerns the romantic life of a young woman who has a lot of male friends and works as a sports reporter for a Chicago newspaper, the questions popped up that said more about the reporters’ life than the sitcom’s.

“How secure is she in her job?” asked one. “Have you heard about the cutbacks in the newspaper industry?”

“We don’t have any plans to have her lose her job,” said executive producer Betsy Thomas. “You know, this is a fantasy where journalists keep their jobs.”

Answered the reporter: “It’s not funny.”

“Will she blog?” another reporter wondered.

“Will she what?” asked Thomas.

“Blog.”

“Blog?” cast member Michael Bunin asked.

“Blog.”

“We were talking about that actually,” said Jordana Spiro, who stars in the comedy.

The questioner: “Do you know how much of her life it will eat up?”

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/2006/07/job_insecurity.html#more

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:53 PM

You didn’t really think all these TV stars showed up uncoached to face the TV critics, did you?

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Talking Points Revealed

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog July 16, 2006

The press conferences at the TV critics association can seem like perfectly natural, honest and completely spontaneous exchanges, where the producers and cast of new shows freely express their opinions to the assembled journalists.

But one cable network’s three-page document urgently briefing participants with talking points and do’s and don’ts when facing reporters shows that isn’t quite true.

A memo of “TCA Briefing Points” for the participants of the press conference scheduled for the TNT series “Saved” obtained by TV Eye warned what exactly the participants were getting into and how they could best serve their interests:

Some journalists will ask questions directed at one person. Some will throw a question out to any actor who wants to answer it. If this happens, DON’T BE SHY! We would much rather see three people talking over each other at first rather than everybody being so polite nobody speaks up.

Another urgent bullet point:

Do NOT give away any plot twists. If asked a specific question, the best answer is ‘you’ll have to wait and see.’

The talking points suggest that producers be thinking of some good nuggets/teasers for upcoming episodes, including the finale – do not give too much away, but drop some intriguing, compelling tid-bites to peak [sic] the writers’ interest.

A whole list of more than two dozen sample questions that the cast and producers may hear then follows.

In addition to the now-standard inquiries of “what drew you to this project?” and “What drew you to a cable television series?” the memo includes slightly more expansive sample questions than they actually got:

Why are flawed heros [sic] so intriguing to audiences and what makes the people root for the heros in ‘Saved’?

“How important is authenticity to a show like ‘Saved’ and what is done to ensure medical procedures are portrayed as accurately as possible?”

and a question you’d never hear:

What makes ‘Saved’ a great dramatic series?

The cast and producers are meant to cull their answers from their talking points that remind them:

SAVED is a character-driven drama. It’s about these characters, their lives, their stresses and their relationships against the backdrop of a medical show. Each character is flawed, making them more believable and relatable.

SAVED is shot very stylistically, using innovative music and editing to tell its story, including flashback still shots of patients that often tell an unexpected history prior to the paramedics arriving on the scene.

And

SAVED is much like an ambulance ride – fast, bumpy and full of the unexpected.

Nobody said those things though. Probably because the actual questions fell short of the network’s predictions:

Hi. I’m just wondering since the name of the series is ‘Saved,’ is everybody going to be ‘Saved’ or are we going to lose one or two people along the way?

And

Over here for David Clennon . . . Hi. For a while you had gotten out of the business of playing sons of bitches and hard asses. And here you are again. What is it about, you know, that people look at you and say, ‘We need a son of a bitch, let’s get David Clennon.’

And

Quick question for Tom [Everett Scott] and Elizabeth [Reaser]. The sexual tension of your characters, was that more of a plot point in the initial stages of the show, or how much more will that develop as the show goes on?

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/2006/07/talking_points_.html

fredfa

07-16-06, 01:57 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails

Sunday, Perky Sunday: Katie Couric Live Blog (Part 3)
By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine” Sunday, July 16, 2006

Couric said that in her Town Meetings she didn't hear much about news bias. "I think you do the best job you can and that's what most journalists are doing today." She quoted Abe Lincoln about not being able to please all the people all the time and said she talked with Walter Cronkite and he said there will always be people on both sides who have issues about bias.

"It's a media frenzy now...I think that media frenzy will die out" and focus will be on the news instead of Couric taking over, McManus said. "I don't think (people) are nearly as interested as you all are," Couric added.

"I think that's a great question for Sean," Couric said about how CBS handled Rather's departure. "As a journalist I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment on something I wasn't involved on...I don't really have the fully story, to be honest...I wish Dan well, I'm excited about his new opportunity...I don't mean to not answer your question but I don't feel comfortable making a statement or judgement."

McManus: "I didn't think there was enough meaningful work to keep Dan Rather at CBS News...I made that clear early in the process" and then lawyers got involved, McManus said, and from there things went pretty sideways. They did meet and McManus did tell him that the end was near. "History will judge that. It was my decision." He said they parted amicably. "He wants to do hour documentaries and that's great. We don't do a lot of that at CBS News." McManus was sorry that it played out so badly in the press.

"You're kidding, right?" - Couric when asked if she put any thought into what she was going to wear.

McManus: "Are you going to ask Charlie Gibson that question?" Everybody said yes. But Charlie Gibson hasn't come here yet. My guess is he won't wear sweaters, like Rather did for a bit. If you're interested, Couric is in a tan suit. It's subtle and professional.

And now we're done here.

Like many sessions, there's a scrum on stage now after it has all ended, as people jockey to get more questions. My level of interest precludes making that effort.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24

fredfa

07-16-06, 02:00 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
A few 'CSI' notes (more to come)

From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune blog “The Watcher”

CBS president Nina Tassler also addressed the massive controversy over the season finale of “CSI.” Actually, despite the ferocious, ongoing debate over that ending, in which Gus Grissom and Sara Sidle were shown in a bedroom together, Tassler didn't indicate that she was aware of any controversy over the ending.

“We are going to see more of Grissom and Sara, which was hugely embraced by the audience last year. You will definitely see that relationship evolve,” Tassler said.

Hardcore “CSI" fans have been flooding many Web sites, including this one, with their thoughts on that ending, and there’s a sizable faction of fans who disliked the ending. Clearly those fans don’t have Tassler’s e-mail address.

The opening up of the personal lives on “CSI,” by the way, is not a reaction to going up against “Grey’s Anatomy,” Tassler said.

”We've been sort of teasing that during most of the year last year. And then the finale, which we just got a tremendous response from the audience, tremendous response,” Tassler said.

She added that there are some interesting “casting ideas” floating around for “CSI,” though she wasn’t specific.

There’s a session on “CSI” Sunday afternoon, with the cast and executive producers, and we may learn more there.

By the way, it’s interesting in its own right that CBS is scheduling a panel with the “CSI” cast; though I’m a newbie at press tour, veterans tell me it’s highly unusual for a veteran show to get a showcase at tour.

CBS executives may be lowering expectations regarding the Thursday night competition to come, but clearly CBS clearly doesn’t want “CSI” to be buried in “Grey’s” hype come fall.

All I can say is that I'm glad that "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," Aaron Sorkin's new NBC drama, is no longer going up against those two shows come fall. It's by far my favorite pilot for the new television season.

http://tempo.typepad.com/entertainment_tv/

fredfa

07-16-06, 02:11 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Remaining Schedule

Today: CBS
Monday: The CW
Tuesday, Wednesday: ABC
Friday, Saturday: NBC
Monday July 24, Tuesday, July 25: Fox
Wednesday, July 26: PBS

fredfa

07-16-06, 02:15 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
"CSI" gets more personal

By Hal Boedeker Orlando Sentinel Television Critic in the Sentinel’s TV Guy blog Posted on July 16, 2006

Did you love the last scene of "CSI" last season? You remember the revelation that Gil Grissom (William Petersen) and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) are in a romantic relationship? CBS has more steamy stuff planned.

"We are going to see more of Grissom and Sara, which was hugely embraced by the audience," Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment, said Saturday. "You will definitely see that relationship evolve."

Was that plot a reaction to ABC's super sexy "Grey's Anatomy," which is moving into the same time slot?

Tassler said no. "We've been sort of teasing that during most of the year last year," she said. "Then the finale, which we just got a tremendous response from the audience."

CBS is positioning "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" as the underdog to "Grey's Anatomy" after several industry analysts predicted victory for ABC. Why lower expectations for your own show?

"'Grey's' is a very good show, and they're in their second season," Tassler said. "It's going to be an interesting, competitive hour of television."

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2006/07/csi_gets_more_p.html

fredfa

07-16-06, 03:27 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
McManus: CBS Misplayed Basketball Video on Youtube

By Christopher Lisotta at Broadcasting & Cable’s “Critical Eye” blog Sunday, July 16th, 2006

In the “hindsight is always 20/20” department, Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, admitted the network may have reacted too strongly in forcing the video sharing site YouTube from taking down a CBS News clip earlier this year.

The clip featured an upstate New York high schooler with autism having the basketball game of his life. The video became an online sensation and featured multiple shots of the student’s unbelievable performance. The story became so big President Bush visited with the high schooler.

“You’ve got to find the fine line between the great promotion YouTube gives a network, and protecting our rights,” McManus said. “Our inclination now is, the more exposure we get from clips like that, the better it is for CBS News and the CBS television network, so in retrospect we probably should have embraced the exposure, and embraced the attention it was bringing CBS, instead of being parochial and saying ‘let’s pull it down.’” CBS Sports has learned several things about online video in recent months, including a lesson or two from its move this past March to offer video streams of NCAA final mens basketball games on its Web site for free, he said.

One thing he now knows: College ball is unique from other sports.

“So much of takes place on Thursday and Friday afternoon,” he said. “So much of it is regionalized, unless you have a satellite, you can’t see the other games. The most important lesson is, and was, if you offer it for free a lot of people will use it. We did the year before on subscription, for, I think, $14 or $15, and we got 12,000 people to subscribe. We did it for free and we had millions of people, the biggest Internet event in history.

But for non-tournament events like football, McManus is concerned about cutting into on-air ratings.

“On the tournament, we felt it was additive, and not cannibalized,” he said. “NFL is probably too risky. That’s why there’s DirectTV.”

With football on either broadcast or cable in prime time four nights a week this season, CBS’s head of news and sports Sean McManus said Sunday afternoon is still the place to be..

“We’ll find out more after this season,” McManus said at a CBS Sports/CSTV open bar at press tour Saturday.

“The package on the NFL network, I don’t think will cannibalize the network ratings. I still believe the single most important football window is on Sunday afternoon, either on Fox on CBS. That’s the game that always gets the best ratings of the week…the fact there’s an extra game in prime time, I think it will potentially affect our schedule marginally, but I feel good about our schedule.”

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

fredfa

07-16-06, 04:42 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS: Couric, 'Mother' and 'Race'

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In” July 16, 2006

PASADENA, Calif. -- A TV critic friend noted that with both Rachael Ray and Katie Couric in attendance, this could be the perkiest day in the press tour.

But Couric, dressed in a beige suit, was not perky, she was more reserved, almost somber. I suppose she might see us as the enemy for all the coverage of her move from "Today" to the "CBS Evening News" and speculation from some quarters that she doesn't have the gravitas to do the job.

She did crack a smile eventually and even joked ("I'm trying to convince Martha Stewart to do a cooking segment every night -- KIDDING!").

Couric said becoming the first solo woman anchor of an evening network newscast was not her motivating reason for taking the job.

"It's an added honor to go with the job, but I think women have achieved so much in broadcast journalism," Couric said. "I got into this business in 1979 and I can't tell you how different the newscast looks today than when I was fresh out of college."

Couric said it was the job itself that led her to leave NBC's "Today" show.

"It was the opportunity to be part of a new creative process," Couric said. "Taking on a new challenge and trying something new, giving it my best shot, those are the things that made me want to do it."

She's pleased it turned out to be "one of the most civil transitions in network history," with a high-ranking General Electric executive (E is the parent company of NBC) giving his blessing for her new venture.

"We've seen other transitions not handled as well," Couric said. "I feel very fortunate everything went so smoothly and the folks at CBS were great about not gloating, even though you know how it works in this business, and NBC could not have been more gracious about allowing me to make this move."

More from Couric in tomorrow's Post-Gazette.

• • • • • • • • • • •

"How I Met Your Mother" ended its first season on a down note as lovebirds Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) postponed their wedding, and the second season will pick up with the pair living independent of one another.

Executive producer Carter Bays said the scene was "heartbreaking for fans but it was so exciting for us because we get to write about such a fruitful area. We're excited to see how Marshall and Lily handle it."

Meanwhile, Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) finally get together.

"Ted spent the first season chasing after Robin and now he gets to find out what it's like to get the girl you've been chasing," Bays said. "It won't be the fantasy he thought in his head."

And then there's breakout character Barney (Neil Patrick Harris). Bays said he'll be "more of a human being, much to our chagrin, because we like him being a cartoon character." Bay said viewers will meet some of Barney's relatives and see his apartment.

This was all news to Harris, who joked, "I wouldn't be surprised if Barney didn't end up with some herpes. Maybe we'll see some doctor's appointments and Barney getting salve."

• • • • • • • • • • •

David Crane, executive producer of new sitcom "The Class," said he and writing/life partner Jeffrey Klarik ("Mad About You") began thinking they'd make a single-camera comedy without a laugh track, but ended up making the show as a traditional, multi-camera sitcom (laugh track intact).

"It's less like making a movie and more like doing a tiny play," Crane said of the traditional format. "That's what we love."

• • • • • • • • • • •

The 10th running of "The Amazing Race" will kick off this fall in Seattle with 12 teams, including male model friends who have been through rehab together, a woman with a prosthetic leg, Muslims from Cleveland and a lesbian who runs the race with her estranged father.

Executive producer Bertram Van Munster said the show, which normally sends the cast east to start, will send them west at the outset, making the show more difficult more quickly as racers descend upon China, Mongolia, North Vietnam and Kuwait.

Van Munster said government officials in the Communist countries demanded to look at dailies before producers could leave the country with their footage, but nothing was confiscated.

"They wanted to see if there was anything damaging to their hospitality," Van Munster said.

This season, which covers 40,000 miles in 28 days, also sees the show move to a new time slot, 8 p.m. Sunday. Producers think that earlier time period (the show started at 10 p.m. Tuesday in its most recent cycle) will help draw back viewers who strayed from the series.

Producers said they continue to consider an "Amazing Race: All-Stars" edition, but nothing has been decided about going forward with such a season.

• • • • • • • • • • •

I'm friendly with Lynn Marie Latham, who created my all-time favorite series "Homefront" with her husband Bernard Lechowick, so that was the only reason I attended a press conference for CBS's "The Young & the Restless," where she's now head writer. But it was actually a pretty informative press conference, even though I don't have time to pay much attention to daytime TV.

Latham, who took over at "Y&R" in the past six months, said she didn't do a full-scale housecleaning as some new daytime executive producers do.

"I have leaned very heavily on the actors, too, to help me fill in on the story," she said.

Actor Don Diamont, who plays Brad Carlton, said that's rare.

"To Lynn's credit, by the way, that's not something you'll come across? with every head writer," Diamont said. "Lynn said, 'Can we have lunch? I want to meet each and every one of you and hear what you have to say about the character you've been playing for 20 years. Who is he?'And that's a rarity."

• • • • • • • • • • •

CBS will stamp ads for its TV shows on 35 million egg shells in grocery stores this September, including such slogans as "CBS Monday: Funny Side Up" and "CSI: Crack the Case on CBS."

• • • • • • • • • • •

It's a relief to be to the network portion of the press tour. On cable days, we're constantly running from press conference to press conference. We do a lot of that on broadcast network days, too, but it's not quite as chaotic. There's more time to craft theme stories (I'm planning one for Wednesday's column), more time for critics to chat with one another and just more time to breathe and think before writing.

Though still nursing that press tour cold (it's now settled in my throat, giving me laryngitis that makes conducting interviews a challenge), I got on the shuttle for CBS's press tour party at the Rose Bowl last night. The Goodyear Blimp flew over the stadium with a message on its side that read, "CBS, Americas most-watched network and home to Super Bowl XLI, welcomes TCA members to the 2006 summer press tour."

As we entered the field, the speakers blasted the theme song from "One Tree Hill," which, since that's a show on The CW (formerly The WB), didn't make a lot of sense, but it was quickly drowned out by members of the UCLA Bruins marching band who struck up the theme song from an old CBS gem, "The Jeffersons."

Usually I try to get to parties early enough to eat before the stars arrive, but they beat me this time. The biggest CBS star, head honcho Leslie Moonves, was already holding court, so I decided it was best to ask him questions before the hordes descended. That's not easy though because every pushy personal publicist (the bane of every reporter's existence) wanted his or her client to have a picture taken with Moonves. One by one the stars came to genuflect and kiss Les' ring: Virginia Madsen, Ray Liotta, David James Elliott.

Eventually I got my questions answered by Moonves and then it was time to move on. I chatted with CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler, who's much more direct in person than when she dances around questions in press conferences. Tassler is a smart, savvy executive who I first got to know when she headed CBS drama development when "The Guardian" premiered.

I did a double take when I saw a guy wearing a shirt (a bowling shirt, I think) that read "McKeesport B'nai B'rith." It was Pittsburgher David Conrad, who said he wore the shirt, purchased in a Wilkinsburg second hand shop, so I'd notice him. It certainly worked.

Conrad didn't make it to the MLB All-Star Game in Pittsburgh last week because he's already back at work on CBS's "Ghost Whisperer," though he did catch the red eye back to the Burgh last night to drive a car in the Vintage Grand Prix today.

This season on "Ghost Whisperer," Camryn Manheim joins the cast as Jennifer Love Hewitt's new best friend (Aisha Tyler will be back as her deceased character for the first couple of episodes) and Jay Mohr joins as a professor who studies the paranormal.

Conrad said his role remains pretty much the same as in the first season: "Stand around, hug, kiss, don't say much."

http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/

fredfa

07-16-06, 04:44 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Couric Flacks for 'Evening News'

By Scott Collins Los Angeles Times Staff Writer in the Channel Island TV Industry blog July 16, 2006

Katie Couric came to Pasadena Sunday to tell reporters about what will happen when she takes over "CBS Evening News" in September. But the former "Today Show" co-host sounded less like a journalist than the suavest corporate PR person who ever oiled her way across a stage.

Take, for instance, this month's Hillary-esque "listening tour," where she held town-hall meetings (by her choice, closed to any reporter except herself) with plain folks around the country, listening to their thoughts about TV news. What did Couric learn? "I got the sense they want us to go a little deeper," she told reporters at the Television Critics Assn. press tour. "People want to know, How is this relevant to their lives?"

And this: "People say news is too depressing. I think we should be more solution-oriented." OK, but how might that view be in conflict with going deeper? Couric didn't say.

Why should viewers watch her newscast? "Hopefully we're going to provide something they can't get other places." No details yet, though. Not even one. "We're still very much in the planning stages," she explained. "You'll have to wait till September to see the actual product."

So what does she think of her predecessor Dan Rather's stormy departure from CBS? "As a journalist, I think it's not appropriate for me to comment on something I wasn't involved in," she said. "I wish Dan well - I'm excited about his new opportunity."

She's excited by his new opportunity? That's all she has to offer - a meaningless homily that could as easily have been uttered by the chief of CBS' PR department? Couric is hardly as uninvolved in Rather's exit as she wants us to believe. After all, she's taking his old job - and it may not be coincidental that CBS finally kicked Rather to the curb once the ink was dry on Couric's new deal.

As anchor (and often offscreen, too), Rather was weird and slippery. His frozen delivery made "Evening News" hard to watch. You often got the sense he raced to the world's hot spots just for the sake of planting himself in front of a camera, rather than trying to get to the bottom of what really happened. But you never doubted that he was a reporter, that he at least wanted to give people the relevant headlines.

His successor? Well, we'll have to see the actual "product." But the focus-group prototype needs a lot of work.

http://hollywoodhotline.typepad.com/watcher/

fredfa

07-16-06, 05:26 PM

James Woods, star of "Shark," chatty and ready to box.

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog

It doesn't make much to make James Woods talk...and talk and talk and talk. Asking him a question is like attaching hummingbird wings to his speech center. Throw a sugar cube, give it a spank and watch it go!

At this point in our multiweek sentence, that quality is platinum to tired shlubs like us. Especially at a press gang bang like the one for "Shark" on Saturday. Not only did it follow the world's dullest executive press conference, but it went down on Saturday morning.

Who likes to work on a Saturday?

So Woods high entertainment valule was more than appreciated, it was anticipated. In "Shark," he playes Sebastian Stark, a Robert Shapiro-style defense attorney who suddenly grows a conscience and become a prosecutor. Now Stark has to mentor cubs in the public defender office, in the hopes of transforming them into predators. A role like this allows Woods to let his cynical sense of humor and crisp delivery run amok.

The night before, one of my colleagues was already giddily planning the question he was going to ask him, which ended up being the morning's first. "How would you say that your character's opinions on truth and justice in the entire legal system differ from your own?"

Go, Jimmy, go!

"Actually, they don't, not one bit. When I was a kid, my aunt was secretary to the public defender for 28 years and I was around the legal system and she was sort of the Switzerland of Rhode Island and Rhode Island was what we used to call the parking lot of the Mafia so whenever the Mafia wanted to talk to the feds or the superior court judges or whatever, they always did it through my aunt."

(deep inhale)

"And I learned early on that justice is a lot about negotiation. It's not dissimilar from our business. It's full of a lot of strange and scurrilously awful people who somehow manage to keep the wheel going. One of the things that I asked of Ian (Biederman, "Shark's" executive producer and creator) when he gave me this remarkable script for the pilot, I said, would you do me one favor and write the opening sequence so that the first word I ever say in the series is the word 'justice,' because it's really what it's about."

Just a reminder, this is still the answer to the first question.

"And I don't care who you are, no matter how jaded or sick of what you are doing you become, like a lot of these big dream team lawyers, I think fundamentally you would not -- and I suppose I'm dreaming by saying this -- but on some fundamental level, there was a time in your life when you believed being a lawyer was about justice and at some point, in this shocking reversal of this man's life, he faces once again the issue of, 'What does it mean to render justice?' And our story will be about a man with overwhelming narcissism and ego who has knocked down so many pegs from where he started and finds his way back by believing in justice. So I'm very moved to play the part, because I think it will be an inspiration somehow to see a guy who went the wrong way for so long find his way back by believing in something."

I think he covered all of this in about 15 seconds.

Like I said, a pleasant, fun filled chat -- until moments later, when someone else asked how often Stark would lose.

"Lose?" He shot out of his seat. "I'm going to kick the crap out of you. Are you dropping acid first thing in the morning? What are you doing? Lose? I'm the hero! Didn't you watch this thing? I want names and numbers taken. Do we got anybody tough here?...You, go over and kick the crap out of him."

OK, nothing to be alarmed about here -- Woods was joking. He's a talented man, of course, but also a gent with a lovely, self-deprecating sense of humor. He would not, for example, allow one reporter to refer to his younger castmates as "baby actors."

"You think this is easy? Five young, smart, hot-looking people, and old fat Jim coming out every day?" Later he threw in, "We're going to stop calling them the kids now, okay, because everybody does that. They are all fighting menopause and we are calling them 'The kids.'"

Alexis "The Kid" Cruz took it in stride, though. Asked if working with Woods has helped him develop as an actor, he haltingly said, "Yeah....he's....got a very soft hand and he puts the talcum powder on us real nicely. So you just have to appreciate that."

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/

TommyK

07-16-06, 08:21 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour Re: Cancelling Series CBS
"No programmer wants to piss off their audience," Tassler said. "Creating and building viewer loyalty is why we do what we do. When that happens, it's unfortunate." So, yes, she gets it, but she also - like other network heads we'll meet in the coming weeks - believes failure is not going to happen to HER shows.

And finally, this being the 21st century and the advent of new "technology platforms," there IS a solution and Tassler, probably weary from all the identical questions, had it.

"Look, if anything, in this climate right now with as many different changes that are happening in multi-platform, there may be opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms on shows that don't continue on broadcast."

Meaning, if they kill it, maybe they'll air the rest of the episodes online, or you can buy them from iTunes. Given all the serialized dramas coming this fall, you better increase your bandwidth - and your bank account.

The often staggering cost of producing an hour of quality primetime television is probably the number one reason that programs are cancelled if their ratings are poor. When a particular show is pulled off the air, the entire production of it also ceases, whether it be in its 13th episode, 10th, 6th or 2nd.

Yes, it's all a very nice to thought that a network might be willing to make available to viewers, via alternative media, unaired episodes and therefore provide resolution to cancelled series. That is if the network is also willing to subsidize all of the production costs associated with producing the remaining episodes they never intend to broadcast.

I don't think networks would care about their audience that much... not when it came down to the obligatory bottom line.

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:21 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Party central: Rose Bowl

By Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic TV Critic in his Critic’s Tour blog

PASADENA, Calif. -- Weird: CBS' choice of intimate venue for its party: the FLOOR OF THE ROSE BOWL. Subtle. Last year it was Dodger Stadium. What's next year? The Parthenon?

Weirder: A blimp hovering overhead, with lights spelling out a welcome to critics, who reached the field by walking through fire-extinguisher smoke and a gauntlet formed by the UCLA band, which was playing Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It when I strolled by.

Weirdest: The bartenders and wait staff wearing NFL replica jerseys, with one bartender decked out in a Matt Leinart Cardinals jersey.

Wow. Already.

They showed them a pile of jerseys before the party, he explained, and when he saw Leinart's he had to have it. (Note: he doesn't get to keep it.) So he's a Cardinals fan now? Uh, no. Minnesota Vikings fan, actually, but there weren't any Vikings jerseys available.

Still. How long's it been since there was a big-enough buzz around a Cardinals player that you saw someone somewhere else wearing a jersey? The Jake Plummer days, maybe? And Leinart hasn't yet played a down (and may not this season). Granted, Leinart has a lot of fans in this town (despite the outcome of the last game he played in the Rose Bowl). But this is a good sign. Better than the Carson Palmer bartender, certainly, who said he pretty much just got stuck with his jersey.

Now, just win a few games this fall, maybe.

The party was the usual mix of food and stars, some followed around by bigger crowds of critics than others. Always good to chat with Les Moonves, the president and CEO of CBS Corporation. Here's a fashion note: Moonves was wearing a green Polo shirt and khakis, and when I spoke with him, was talking to a critic wearing the exact same thing. Odd.

Another fashion note, this one more alarming than curious: evidently the big thing for actresses here is wearing a dress with a belt hiked up right below the bust. I'm no Mr. Blackwell, but seriously, not a good look.

Anyway, the star turnout was maybe not quite up to the usual CBS level, which is typically outstanding. But Ray Liotta was wandering around, as was Jeri Ryan. Jennifer Love Hewitt posed for pictures on the red carpet. James Woods hung out, talking, of course.

All in all, not a bad night. More than anything, it made me look forward to football season.

http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5&blogtype=Entertainment

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:25 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
“Smith's" Simon Baker on being a likable sociopath: 'You're either interested, or you're f---g not.'

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog

The CBS Stars Party took place in the Rose Bowl, or as I referred to it earlier on Saturday, when outside temperatures had reached broiling levels, God's Wok.

Though I feared we'd be stir fry minutes into the event, the air cooled off considerably between getting on the bus and reaching the stadium. For that I give credit to our driver, who got lost in the parking lot, delaying our arrival until the sun set a tad.

Be that as it may, I had to laugh as I walked onto field because a brass band heralded our entrance with -- and I kid you not -- a live rendition of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It." Really. I set foot on the grass, the conductor went "Two! Three! Four!" and the horns kicked it out.

CBS made a football theme out of the evening complete with heart attack food (hamburgers, ribs and pizza) and field goal kicking area. Not exactly a fan of any of that. What I did like, however, was "Smith's" pilot, particularly because it had Simon "Hot, Hot, Hottie McHotterson" Baker in it.

To ensure that the evening had a point, I cornered Baker for a 10 minute conversation, not only because he's lovely to gaze upon, but because he shifted uncomfortably in his chair throughout most of "Smith's" panel, which reporters turned into a long, prickly discussion about likability. Had to ask him about that.

Discussing the likability of a character can be a dangerous game because the definition is a little weird and gray these days. What, exactly, are the qualifications for persuading viewers to like a character? We like Tony Soprano, and he's a philandering murderer. Vic Mackey's OK to root for on "The Shield," and don't even get me started with his list of problems.

Yet many guys had problems envisioning audiences getting into Baker's Jeff, a handsome, athletic fellow who will put a bullet in your skull if you look at him wrong. In fact, that's how we first meet Jeff in "Smith's" pilot. A couple of tough guys threaten the surfer boy, and his response is to calmly walk to his car, pull out his rifle, mount a scope, and sent them off to that great luau in the clouds.

A fantastic, cinematic scene, and one that touched off several mild but unmistakably apoplectic fits during the session.

Back to the party, where a friend and I cornered Baker, who looked less than enthusiastic about chatting at first. Then it registered in his brain that he was looking at two women who probably paid full price to see "Something New" at the theater -- trust me, not many people did -- and he proceeded to charm us for more than 10 minutes of friendly, funny conversation.

The highlight was when the topic turned to the debate concerning Jeff's you-know-what.

I mean his "likability," of course. (What did you think I meant?) The fuse was lit.

"What was that about? Who was asking that, someone from the fundamentalist Christian right?" he said with a smirk. "We're not trying to save the world here, we're just making an entertaining TV show. I don't know if you could tell, but I was getting quite annoyed with all of that."

Let's see -- tense adjustment of eyeglasses, stiffened torso, pouty mouth -- yeah, we could tell. "Contrary to whoever it was that was concerned about it, I think my character is likable. I also think my character is a good guy. I just think he's a f----g nutcase."

By the way, although Baker knew I worked for a newspaper, he had no problem f-bombing with abandon. For instance, here's his take on being burglarized, something that's happened to him a few times.

"You just feel violated. Even with the smallest things, you feel like, f--k, someone came through and went through my s--t and stole that?! F---k!"

Baker was a bit more delicate when I asked him if he drew upon any caper films to build his character. "No, but I like the genre. When it's done well, I like it. When it isn't done well, it sucks. Just like anything else, I guess... When it's done well, you can see all facets of the character.

"And that, kind of, was sort of something I wanted to say today. People were just polarized. If it's done well, you're looking at the nuances of the character -- not, 'Is he good,' or 'Is he bad.' How do you articulate that in five words or less? It's humanity. You're either interested or you're f---g not."

That's nine, but we'll take 'em.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/print.asp?entryID=105045

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:30 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Nice guys finish last?

By Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger in the “All TV In Hollywood” blog

Though the members of the TCA share certain universal opinions ("The Sopranos" is brilliant, "Amazing Race: Family Edition" was awful), we're not a hivemind. There are certain TCA Awards nominations each year I'm not happy to be associated with, and sometimes a press conference takes on a tone so contrary to my own take on a show that I almost feel the need to apologize after. Yesterday's session for "Smith," a CBS drama starring Ray Liotta as a master thief hoping to get out of the game after a few more scores, was a classic example.

Produced by John Wells and Christopher Chulack from "ER," it's very dark and uncompromising by CBS standards, if not compared to similar stuff on FX or HBO. During the course of the heist in the pilot (minor spoilers to follow), Liotta and his sidekicks kill an innocent security guard. And in a scene that was a particular bone of contention, Simon Baker (from "The Guardian"), playing a sociopath marksman, is on a surfing holiday in Hawaii when two natives kick him off the beach and knock down his surf board. Smiling and whistling a jaunty tune, Baker walks back to his pickup truck, pulls out a sniper rifle and kills both guys for messing with his vacation. In a later scene, he even kicks a cat.

Personally, when I saw the surfing scene, my attention perked up and I said, "Now that's something you don't see every day on CBS." But where I saw that as a positive, a lot of the other critics had a problem with it and spent most of the session asking Wells and the actors questions about likability and relatability (Why should viewers root for these guys? Will viewers want to watch characters like these every week? etc.). Someone even asked whether they felt they were being held to a different standard than "Rescue Me" or "The Sopranos" because this is on CBS.

Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and there have been plenty of times where I'm in the majority on something and can be surprised when one or two voices in the room make it clear they disagree with what I think. But at an informal cocktail hour shortly after the session, I made a point of approaching Wells and Chulack to let them know that the uncompromising approach to the characters was something I had really enjoyed about the show.

As we stood around talking about different details in the pilot, Liotta wandered over, fuming about the way the session had gone. I can't quote most of it, but suffice it to say he felt the room was being a little harsh. So I said, "Well, not everybody. I was just telling John and Chris that the scene where Simon kills the surfers is the best thing in the whole pilot."

And in a half-second, Liotta's mood completely shifted as he said, "I wouldn't go that far!" and launched into the famous cackle that every "Goodfellas" fan knows by heart.

The moral of the story: actors prefer praise for their projects, especially when it's directed specifically at them.
http://www.nj.com/weblogs/tv/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_alan/archives/2006_07.html#161674

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:32 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
What to wear?

By Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger in the “All TV In Hollywood” blog

So far, the three-day streak of panelists threatening to beat up critics seems perilously close to ending just as abruptly as the whole crying thing did. CBS only has a couple of panels left today, one with executives talking about digital media (microscopic potential for fisticuffs) and a panel with most of the "CSI" cast, who are a little too collected for that sort of thing.

Still, I inadvertently came close to provoking someone today: Katie Couric.
Katie was here, naturally, to plug away for her new job as "CBS Evening News" anchor. It wasn't the most exciting press conference, since Katie and CBS News boss Sean McManus couldn't go into too much detail about the form and content of the new newscast once she takes over from Bob Schieffer in September.

Given how much certain members of the media tend to focus on Katie's hair, her wardrobe and her legs, I was trying to think of a tactful way of asking whether she'd be changing her look now that she's moving from morning to evening news. But as the session kept moving along, I couldn't think of anything -- and, besides, everyone else was fighting for the mic to ask much less frivolous questions.

But then, with a few minutes to go, McManus said, "For the first few days, the focus will be on what the set is, what Katie is wearing, how things are different from Bob Schieffer..." and I knew I had my opening. Since the questions were dying down anyway, I got the mic and reminded Katie not only of what Sean had said a moment ago, but about the weird furor over that period in the '80s when Dan Rather started doing the newscast in a sweater instead of a suit. In light of that, I asked, had she given any thought yet to what she was going to wear.

"Are you serious?" she asked, ticked. McManus, equally non-plussed, wondered if I had asked Charlie Gibson that question yet. As several other reporters rose to my defense and shouted out, "He hasn't been here yet," I promised to ask Gibson about his wardrobe choices when he shows up for ABC in a few days.

Afterwards, a CBS publicist mimed kicking me in the shins for asking it, and I pointed out, again, A)that when male anchors like Rather make unconventional wardrobe choices, they get noticed; and B)Katie's fluctuating wardrobe and hairstyle was such a big part of her tenure at "Today" that the show devoted a whole montage to her evolving look on her final show. And, besides, it was at the very end of the session, the point at which sillier questions are almost supposed to be asked.

I think I managed to escape having someone brand the word "SEXIST" across my forehead, but we'll see. The trick now will be to make sure I get the microphone first for the Gibson press conference, because I don't want anyone else beating me to the punch on this most hot-button of topics.

http://www.nj.com/weblogs/tv/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_alan/archives/2006_07.html#161674

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:40 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Punt the Interview and Pass the Pizza

By Jim Benson of Broadcasting & Cable at bcbeat.com Jul 16 2006

On entering the field of the Rose Bowl Saturday evening in Pasadena for the CBS Summer television press tour stars party, Julie Chen-a.k.a. Mrs. Leslie Moonves-was less than thrilled to run the gauntlet of the UCLA marching band blaring its fight song.

Chen's displeasure was understandable, according to her husband, the CEO of CBS Corp. The host of Big Brother and co-host of The Early Show on CBS is a graduate of UCLA's cross-town rival, USC. A disheartened Chen remarked that CBS made a valiant attempt to get the Trojan marching band, but it was booked.

She was among a parade of CBS talent appearing at the party, which was held in soaring temperatures approaching 90 degrees even as the sun set.

While a blimp hovered overhead welcoming CBS partygoers, including Shark star James Woods and Two and a Half Men's Charlie Sheen, a perspiring press corps tried to look cool as they paired off for mid-field interviews over the length of the gridiron--tough to do with sweat dripping down many a forehead, with the only cold thing in sight gelato being served far off in the end zone.

A few brave souls dared to take CBS up on its offer to act like football stars and show off their ability to punt, pass and kick.

But most chose for the more physically challenging feat of balancing a plate full of barbeque and pizza in one hand and a tape recorder and drink in the other.

http://broadcastingcable.com/blog/1380000138.html

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:43 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Still Katie After All These Years, Even If the Perky Is Missing in Action

By Ray Richmond The Hollywood Reporter in his blog “Past Deadline” July 16, 2006

The Perk Line Express pulled into Pasadena on Sunday for a session at the CBS portion of the Television Critics Association summer press tour. Yes, Katie Couric -- with a notable reduction in her famed perkiness to better fit a new button-down image -- met with the press to sell her heavily hyped new gig as The Savior of CBS News (aka anchor and managing editor of "The CBS Evening News" effective Sept. 5 and a correspondent in her free time for "60 Minutes").

Because sexism remains the prism through which a woman infiltrating the heretofore exclusive domain of men must unfortunately be viewed -- at least initially -- let's first dispense with the inevitable. Couric wore a conservative, restrained and anchor-boring tan suit. The hair was straight with a little flip at the end. There were smiles from her, but few. This was the coming-out party for Dignified Katie. Formal Katie. Sophisticated Katie. Katie with an Ed Murrow makeover (Dan Rather just started to quietly sob).

It was also, at the risk of sounding too harsh, the official launch of Evasive Katie. She couldn't very well share trade secrets or anything with CBS News President Sean McManus sitting beside her, but she's also clearly been coached well to keep a low-key lid on things. Her marching orders on Sunday appeared to be "Divulge nothing that can be turned into a soundbite and twisted into a negative spin in advance of the launch party." Couric obviously learned her stay-on-message directive well. Less than two weeks after walking through the CBS News door, she proved to be a master of saying nothing with bland skill and dexterity.

That we as journalists care so deeply about Couric's job transition speaks to some degree about the misogyny that continues to ride shotgun with we media types. It's somehow a humongous big deal that a woman should be the most visible personality at a network news organization, or that said woman should be judged on criteria (fashion, hair, makeup, wholesomeness quotient) that have nothing to do with trust or journalistic credibility. The seeming belief is that if World War III erupts, Couric's job would be to hold the nation's collective hand and preside as The Electronic Mommy, abdicating the heavy lifting in coverage to her male counterparts.

Indeed, the most pressing question going into Couric's outrageously overblown new gig appears whether she has the chops to sell herself as a serious newscaster. I have a feeling she'll be able to read that TelePrompTer just fine. Couric will no doubt even be a convincing enough reporter when crisis coverage merits it, because she'll have help and clearly isn't a dummy. So the "Can a woman pull this off?" issue is obviously ridiculous. The more relevant point surrounds whether the viewing public cares about the New Adventures of Katie even 10% as much as the press seemingly believes it should. My guess: it's probably closer to 5%.

There's also the very real possibility that giving up her day job stands to haunt Couric. The smart money says her long run on the 'Today" show is the best-suited and most successful thing she'll ever do. We know she's good at the smile and the twinkle. We're less certain of her ability to bring fresh perspective and attract attention while navigating a middle-aged white man's world. This notion of looming apathy stands as the great unknown. When Couric spoke Sunday of giving "The CBS Evening News" a makeover -- "how it can be different and look different, and yet also not alienate (the) core viewers -- it conjured a vivid image of heading to Ikea to pick up some new pieces for the Titanic's deck.

Under Couric, McManus maintained Sunday, the broadcast will be "new...fresh...intelligent...relevant...And it will be transparent." I wasn't entirely sure what the CBS News chief meant by the "transparent" part -- news you can see through? -- but it would seem there are only so many ways to attach wheels to this bus. Couric joked that one of the first changes to the news would be to recruit Martha Stewart for a nightly cooking segment. But I mean, you know, why should that be dismissed as so preposterous? Heading down a more feature-y road only makes sense when the evening broadcasts have long since ceased serving as the essential distiller of the day's events.

Neither Couric nor McManus could supply much in the way of specifics as to what they'll do to spiff up the broadcast, such as the establishment of a pep squad (The Katie-ettes!) to spur on-set excitement after a particularly good story read. Right now, it seems they're only saying things will be different because saying it's gonna be the same damn thing comes across as somehow less prudent.

Both star anchor and boss seemed a lot more definite on Sunday about the best approach for dealing with aging newsmen who have logged decades of loyal service to your news organization. If his name is Dan Rather, pretend that you care about him and his legacy when you knee him in the groin and dump him by the side of the road. If his name is Bob Schieffer, treat him like the sage veteran he is and accord all the respect denied Rather.

Couric: "I wish Dan well..."

McManus: "I tried to (part with Rather) in a respectful and an honest way. It played out perhaps differently in the press. I'm sorry it did."

Message to Katie: relish your moment presiding over what's already become the Couric Broadcasting System. Trust me that if this thing doesn't work out, the resulting carnage won't be pretty. Or perky.

http://www.pastdeadline.com/

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:46 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
James Woods is a one-man show

By Suzanne Ryan The Boston Globe TV Writer in the Globe’s “Viewer Discretion” blog July 16, 2006

I got a chance to check out James Woods this weekend at the Television Critics summer conference here in Pasadena, California.

What a character! For all these years, I thought he was "acting" with all his physical drama. No, in real life, he's high energy. He talks non-stop and without pausing to breathe, somehow. He's an exhausting personality to spend time with.

It just so happens that he grew up in Warwick, R.I. and attended M.I.T.

This fall, he's starring in his own TV show "Shark" on CBS. It's about a super-confident, highly successful defense attorney who has a change of heart about his career after he successfuly defends a wife- beater who then turns around and kills his wife.

So the Shark decides to become a prosecutor instead.

Why would an Academy-Award nominated actor like Woods turn to TV instead of film?

"Every week, somebody in the 'L.A. Times' or wherever is wondering why movies are going backwards somehow in terms of box office...I think one of the reasons is that you are getting more and more corporate thinking in making movies and you are getting more parochial thinking.

..And I'm always offered stuff to do, but I don't want to play the middle-aged guy in a suit who is the head of the evil corporation. You know, it's not very fulfilling as an actor.

"There seems not to be as much breadth to the imagination in the movies these days. They are very careful. Movies seem to be scared, whereas television seems to be like a teenager feeling his or her oats. You know, let's take this on and that.

"When I did 'Family Guy' this year, I thought Seth MacFarlane.. is like a genius. This stuff is as funny as anything I've ever seen in a movie in my life, and it's an animated series.

"Television is more sophisticated, more dynamic, more gut-wrenching to me today than the movies. If I had a choice, and I did, because I'm sort of independently wealthy now from this other venture -- I chose this job for no other reason than it was the best thing I've read in 10 years."

What is the venture that made you so rich?

"It was outside the business."

And?

"It was just another..a private business I have with two other guys that just did fine."

Details?

"I was selling enriched uranium to the Nigerians," he joked.

"Shark" premieres this fall on Thursdays at 10 p.m.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:48 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
John Ritter's legacy

By Suzanne Ryan The Boston Globe TV Writer in the Globe’s “Viewer Discretion” blog July 16, 2006

I saw Jason Ritter this weekend at the Television Critics conference in California. He's here to promote his new CBS comedy "The Class."

The show has a thin premise: a group of people who attended third grade together unite for a reunion and then stay in contact throughout the series. Right. I can't even remember one soul from my third grade. But anyway...

Looking at Jason reminded me of his father, the late John Ritter. I had lunch with John in this very hotel in 2002. He was so excited about his new show, "8 Simple Rules...for Dating My Teenage Daughter." That lunch was a delight.

A year later, John passed away.

Now his son is at this conference.

Life is an interesting cycle. Enjoy the ride.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/

fredfa

07-16-06, 08:53 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
When Couric Broadcasts the News, Some Radio and Web Sites Will Too

By Deborah Starr Seibel The New York Times July 17, 2006

PASADENA, Calif., July 16 — When a network evening newscast passes the anchor’s baton, viewers have come to expect an overhauled set, music and graphics. But for Sept. 5, when Katie Couric takes over on “The CBS Evening News,” the network is planning more widespread changes, including fanning the newscast out across different media, including radio and the Web, to capture a wider audience.

Taking questions from more than 200 television critics gathered here on Sunday for their semiannual meeting, Ms. Couric and Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, outlined some of what Mr. McManus calls “expansive and in many ways unprecedented” changes that will come when Ms. Couric takes over from Bob Schieffer and becomes the first female sole anchor of a major network newscast.

“The CBS Evening News is going to be showcased on the radio,” said Mr. McManus, “which is new and it’s different and I think will further expose our product to a lot of people.”

The multiplatform strategy will involve simulcasting the first segment of the evening news on CBS Radio News, which will be made available to its more than 500 affiliated stations around the country. Already committed to the simulcast are WCBS-AM in New York, WTOP radio in Washington and WBZ in Boston.

The strategy will also include on-demand, extended Webcast interviews (done by Ms. Couric or CBS correspondents) and daily on-camera Web rundowns of the news lineup for the television broadcast that evening.

“Our goal on Sept. 5 is that whether you’re in your car, on your computer, commuting, listening on your cell phone, or, God forbid, at home watching television, that the CBS news will be available to you,” said Mr. McManus.

Additionally, it was announced that CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer, who has not only stabilized the newscast but attracted some 300,000 new viewers, will be staying on as a contributing correspondent based in Washington. He may also be assigned a role as commentator, according to Mr. McManus.

Ms. Couric appeared relaxed, in good spirits and ready to take on a crowd of eager reporters.

Her meeting with the television critics came one day before the end of her six-city “listening tour,” a series of town hall meetings and cancer fund-raisers closed to the new media that were designed to ease her transition from NBC to CBS and to foster goodwill with important CBS affiliates such as Dallas, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco.

“I took the entire month of June off,” said Ms. Couric. “I found that sleep is very underrated and it was a great time for me to relax and spend quality time with my children.”

As for what she had heard this week from her viewers in the town hall meetings, Ms. Couric said, “it reinforced, happily, the view that there are a lot of highly intelligent, very engaged people in this country who are very interested in serious subjects and the news of the day.”

What she learned, she said, is that people want longer news stories and they want to know how the stories are relevant to their lives. They also feel, she said, that the news is too depressing.

Ms. Couric says that the her broadcasts will be a work in progress. “We have a lot of work ahead. I’m really excited to get started, to stop talking about this and to actually start doing the job.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/business/media/17cbs.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-16-06, 09:12 PM

You could argue this is too far off-topic. You might be right.
But I think it brings up some very interesting points, especially given all the strong opinions we read from TV critics – and people who post their own very sharp views about TV and programming on this thread and others.

Commentary
The Critics Hated 'Pirates of the Caribbean.' So What?

In movies, books, TV and theater, audiences know what they like, no matter what mainstream critics say.
By Kyle Pope in the [b]Los Angeles Times July 16, 2006
(Kyle Pope, a former writer and editor for the Wall Street Journal, writes about business and the media)

Last weekend’s opening of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" was the latest installment in what has become an almost surefire summer script: Big-studio movie opens to much marketing hoopla, critics slam it to the ground — and audiences trample the turnstiles to get in.

In the case of "Pirates," audiences loved the movie to the tune of $132 million, setting a weekend box office record. This despite reviews that were, at best, lukewarm ("It would take more than just one bottle of rum" to while away this movie, snipped Slate).

But the gap between the lackluster "Pirates" reviews and its remarkable box office is no different from what we've seen with Hollywood's other popcorn hits this summer: "The Da Vinci Code," "Mission: Impossible III" and "X-Men: The Last Stand" were all generally dismissed by reviewers, yet they've done well enough in theaters to challenge last year's conventional wisdom — that Hollywood was entering a prolonged slump.

You could chalk all this up to a predictable, long-established summertime standoff between high-brow critics and low-expectation moviegoers who want little more than an easy escape that gets them out of the heat. But there's something more going on here. What we are watching is nothing less than the demise of the mainstream entertainment critic — a reordering that will last well beyond the return of more serious movies this fall.

In movies, books and television, critics who once dominated the national discussion are being marginalized, replaced by a confetti of micro-tastemakers on the Web and elsewhere.

Although this empowers consumers — who now can go out in the world and seek their own critics — it soon may affect the quality of what we see, hear and read — and not necessarily in a good way.

There will be no critical consensus of what constitutes quality. Rather, art and entertainment will be judged largely on the basis of popularity, an "American Idol" sensibility that could spread the summer-blockbuster phenomenon into every corner of pop culture.

Already, the profusion of critical opinions — on Wikipedia.comand Amazon.com and Huffpost.com, among other places — has become more influential collectively than any movie or TV critic in the New York Times. It's no anomaly that John Updike's recent novel, "Terrorist," is both his bestselling and worst-reviewed book in years, or that crowds lined up around the block in New York to see "Three Days of Rain," a drama starring Julia Roberts that was blasted by critics.

Sensing the prevailing wind, movie studios increasingly are bypassing critics, doing away with review screenings before opening day. Nearly a dozen movies have premiered so far this year without critics getting a sneak peek.

Producers of "The Da Vinci Code" didn't go quite that far, but they did sharply limit early press screenings. Movie reviewers wailed at the slight. Moviegoers ignored their bad reviews — "Da Vinci" already has raked in more than $350 million globally.

"They voted with their feet," said Amy Pascal, movie chief of Sony Pictures, which released "Da Vinci."

Meanwhile, in Pasadena this week, some of the nation's most prominent television critics will be AWOL from the TV industry's twice-annual schmooze-fest, victims of cost-cutting at their newspapers. As someone who has attended these TV "press tours," as they're called, I can attest that the number-crunchers didn't make an entirely bad choice. The two-week event is notorious for mind-numbing dullness, bad PR spin and gratuitous boozing by reporters.

It's also possible that the editors at home realize what the audience already knows — that their critics aren't the arbiters of taste they used to be and probably won't ever be again.

Complaints by critics that they are being ignored or marginalized are as old as newsprint.

In the 1970s and 1980s, New Yorker writer Pauline Kael earned her critical stripes by writing about the sorry state of the movie business — a decline caused at least in part, she contended, by filmmakers who ignored the advice of Kael and her acolytes.

A decade ago, Susan Sontag picked up the mantle, publishing her much-reproduced essay "The Decay of Cinema." That piece, and a slew of others that followed, laid down the themes that help define the current disconnect between movie reviewers and the people who go to the cineplex. "The commercial cinema has settled for a policy of bloated, derivative filmmaking," Sontag wrote, calling the 1996 batch of commercial flicks "astonishingly witless."

But it was the release of "Titanic" a year later — and the critical undertow that followed — that marked the beginning of the end of conventional media criticism. Reviewers found the movie, already famously over-budget and over-hyped, to be overwrought. Writing in The Times, critic Kenneth Turan said that audiences had become so desperate for entertainment that they were "sadly eager to embrace a film that, putting the best face on it, is a witless counterfeit of Hollywood's Golden Age, a compendium of cliches, that add up to a reasonable facsimile of a film."

"Titanic" director James Cameron was having none of it. In a 1,200-word response, he went after Turan, setting forth many of the frustrations that have since led audiences to search out their own entertainment and analysis. His complaint — that audiences are treated "like little children who do not have the sense or experience to know what is good for them" — is the foundation of the long-standing disconnect between consumers and the mainstream media.

What's changed in the last 10 years is that technology now allows the audience to do something about it.

Steve Jobs has fashioned a career as a corporate windmill-tilter, helping Apple Computer become a technology titan. Marketing for iPod and iTunes borrows heavily from Napster, which sought to foment a music-sharing revolution among its users. By giving people the ability to collect and assemble their own music, rather than buying it prepackaged from a store, consumers can get a sense of being in control.

Similarly, satellite radio and television companies give their customers such a wide array of choices that users feel like they're in command of what they see and hear, as opposed to having to listen to the records or watch the shows that critics deem most worthy.

Today, it's mass opinion that's deciding what we see. "American Idol" and "America's Next Top Model" do this in a raw and obvious way. But soon, videos on YouTube.com will morph into movies, all because of the number of clicks they receive on the website.

The question now is what this user-generated decision-making will mean for our entertainment.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, filmmakers actually cared what critics thought, and some of them adjusted their next film accordingly. You could argue that movies were better as a result.

But now, with raw popularity increasingly calling the entertainment shots, there is no uniform standard of quality. It is the prevailing theory of our blogging-Wikipedia age that enough opinions, cobbled together and collated, congeal into a broader truth.

Sometimes that's legit. But sometimes all we get is trash that happens to be popular.

As much as we like to think of ourselves as independent thinkers, resistant to the taste-making imposed by others, sometimes having a thoughtful outsider tell us what to think can make us all just a little bit smarter.

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-op-pope16jul16,0,2055620,print.story?coll=cl-tvent

fredfa

07-16-06, 09:29 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Couric's ready to 'start doing the job’

By Gary Levin USA Today July 16, 2006

PASADENA, Calif. — Even Katie Couric, no stranger to celebrity, is surprised at all the press hoopla over her move to anchor of The CBS Evening News Sept. 5.

Do viewers care? "I don't think they're nearly as interested as you all are," she told a crowd of TV critics here Sunday. "I'm really excited to stop talking about this and start doing the job."

But the promotional campaign for the former Today anchor is only just beginning. In the midst of a six-city blitz of "town meetings" that wraps up Monday in San Francisco, Couric says "the whole week was extremely instructional" and "will inform the way we approach the news come September."

Viewers told her they want more perspective and "a better understanding of the ramifications of the news," she says. "I got the distinct sense they want us to go a little bit deeper" with historical background and "how is this relevant to their lives. (And) we heard from many people the news is just too depressing. Obviously, we can't sugar-coat what's going on, but there are cases where we can be more solution-oriented."

Some thought the media portrayed a "polarizing of the country that they don't see," thought TV news "abdicated its role, really talking about facts and information rather than points of view," and want "more thinking, less spewing."

Despite pre-Katie promises of an evening news overhaul, don't look for radical changes, which could prove "too jarring" and turn off loyal, often older news viewers, CBS News president Sean McManus says. (Couric's newscast will also go multiplatform, with Web video, a blog, podcasting and radio simulcasts.)

The network's first goal is to gain a larger share of current news viewers: Under Bob Schieffer, the Evening News has already done so, adding 300,000 viewers this year, the only network newscast to increase its audience. Still, CBS remains a distant third, and "paltry" lead-ins from weaker local stations may make gains hard to come by, he says.

CBS chairman Leslie Moonves says it will take at least six months to judge if his investment in the $15 million woman will pay off. But in some ways it already has, overshadowing the usual new crop of fall shows: "No matter what you say, this is the biggest event of the fall."

Schieffer, who wanted out of the anchor chair, isn't going away: McManus says he'll appear several times a week as a Washington analyst and will do a weekly commentary.

But it was Couric's day to shine. The only time she bristled was when a critic asked what she planned to wear in the anchor chair. "You're kidding, right?" she said. The future anchor, clad in an ivory pantsuit, joked, "I've actually gone to Charlie Gibson's stylist."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-16-couric_x.htm

fredfa

07-16-06, 09:34 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Katie Faces the Press

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog July 16, 2006

When “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” makes its debut Sept. 5, it will come with a new theme (being composed), new graphics and a new set that will be modernized to look like what the CBS News president calls “much updated and much more contemporary” without being “wildly modernistic.”

Its most important aspect will be the person at the center of it -- Katie Couric, who made a much heralded departure from NBC’s “Today” show to become the first woman to host a network evening newscast.

Appearing before assembled TV writers Sunday morning near the end of a week where she’s been meeting with the public in five cities, Couric said she didn’t take the anchor job because of the historic significance, though.

“Being the first woman was not the motivating factor for me,” she said. “It's an added honor to go with the job. But I think that women have achieved so much in broadcast journalism. I got into this business in 1979, and I can't tell you how different the landscape looks today to me than it did when I was fresh out of college in the newsroom at ABC.”

More motivating was the opportunity of an open evening anchor chair. “These seats are occupied for very lengthy periods of time,” she said. “I just don't think that they become available that often.”

While there is great curiosity about what her approach will be in her new evening news program, Couric said, “it’s still very much in the planning stages.”

“We've been talking a lot about how can the evening newscast be different and look different, and yet also not alienate its core viewers, she said.

“We hope that they'll leave the broadcast feeling more educated, more enlightened. They'll have a greater perspective on what's going on, a better understanding of the ramifications of what's going on.”

From what she has garnered in her private “town hall” meetings (which were criticized by reporters Sunday for having shut out the press), viewers want more historical perspective, more context to stories and information made relevant to their lives. They also want less polarizing reports and more thoughtful discourse.

They also want more good news, she said.

“Obviously we can't sugarcoat what's going on in the world,” Couric said, “but there are cases where I believe we can be a little more solution-orientedwe can’t sugar coat the events of the day.”
Can such an approach attract viewers? “I do believe if you build it they will come, Couric said. That quality attracts people.”

Bob Schieffer, who has been has interim anchor since May 2005, will continue to “a regular and prominent role,” CBS News president Sean McManus said. contribute to the program from Washington.

“He will be a regular contributor from Washington giving his views on the news of the day,” McManus said. But he made a distinction by adding, “He may or may not do a commentary.”

Couric said she hopes to continue some of his best traits. “I think Bob is very accessible,” she said. “He speaks plain English, and I think that there's a comfort level with him. I think you feel as if you are learning about the world around us with him, not that he's necessarily imparting news to the public from the mountaintop and he's some omniscient all-knowing person.”

No one mentioned the word “gravitas” or lack thereof, mentioned when the long running co-anchor of the “Today” show was named for the more serious anchor job. But Couric said in answer to a question about some of her stunts on “Today,” “obviously this is a very different venue. But hopefully there are cases where I can interact with people and I can occasionally have fun doing a story or being out reporting a story.”

With the anchor job comes the title managing editor, which is important to Couric in order to ensure “significant input in the editorial content of the news.”

Couric says she wouldn’t have a problem originating the news at the site of a breaking story internationally, as her colleagues are doing this week in the Middle East.

But she wouldn’t comment on the departure of Dan Rather from CBS News last month after 44 years.
“I don’t have the whole story,” she said.

“I wish Dan well. I’m excited about his new opportunity,” Couric said. “But I don’t feel comfortable making a statement or a judgment about how this whole thing went down.”

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/2006/07/katie_faces_the.html#more

fredfa

07-16-06, 09:58 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Searching for the CBS’s Next Reality Touchdown

By Christopher Lisotta TVWeek.com in the “Critical Eye” TV Press Tour blog Sunday, July 16th, 2006

CBS is focused on finding its next reality hit, the network’s Entertainment President said Saturday night at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. As some her top executives and on-screen talent sailed footballs into the end zone as part of the network’s TCA stars party, Tassler admitted finding another reality performer is an issue.

“It’s hugely important,” she said. “It is a priority for us. Part of it has been when you achieve that level of success, we haven’t had to be as aggressive in trying to find the next big hit. Also, we have a very strong schedule where those reality shows are going to go is certainly a topic of conversation.”

Tassler has a point. The network’s two reality veterans “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” are still performers, particularly with young adults. The “Big Brother” summer franchise is currently in its seventh season, while the modest success “Rockstar” is back for a second summer outing.

Still, no matter how successful a network is, it is always looking for more hits, reality or otherwise. In terms of recent momentum, other broadcasters have run with the ball (look, the party was set at the Rose Bowl, so I’m going with every football-related image I can think of). NBC had a surprise hit in December with “Deal or No Deal,” ABC has “Dancing With the Stars” and Fox is enjoying the success of both “Hell’s Kitchen” and “So You Think You Can Dance?” Even The CW will enjoy the still young “Beauty and the Geek” franchise inherited from The WB when the network debuts in the fall.

Some of CBS’s recent forays into the genre have been lackluster, at best. “Tuesday Night Book Club,” which many critics derided as a ripoff of the cable series “The Real Housewives of Orange County” got yanked from the schedule after a few scant airings.

The biggest step Tassler has taken to remake CBS’s reality playbook (football again!) was to hire Ghen Maynard, who most recently worked at NBC as a senior development executive. Maynard is credited with shepherding “Survivor” through development back when no one knew if competitive reality would work on broadcast TV. Bringing Maynard back into the fold is a sign how seriously the network is about creating new non-scripted assets.

Maynard is a “huge plus for us, so we’re very excited,” Tassler said.

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:10 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
James Woods Doesn't Seem Like a Particularly Shy Man

By Ray Richmond The Hollywood Reporter in his blog “Past Deadline”

I love James Woods. Just adore him.

Even though he's an unapologetic Republican and therefore a man with certain judgment issues. What I am most in awe of with this guy is his child-in-desperate-need-of-Ritalin level of hyperactivity.

He displayed this uncanny penchant for wall-bouncing energy Saturday morning at the TCA press tour event in Pasadena, where he was promoting his forthcoming CBS fall legal drama "Shark."

He didn't just control the room. It was a case of channeling the room's essence and attaching it to his very DNA.

At the same time, he's no garden variety loudmouth. He's brash and self-deprecating and keenly intelligent -- and he effortlessly slays any audience (as he did this one) with his razor-sharp wit.

All you really need to do is ask the right question of Woods and it's off to the races very much like a runaway freight train. Like this one:

Critic: "Mr. Woods, over here on your left. (CBS Entertainment President) Nina Tassler told us this morning that all sorts of agents are coming up to her saying all sorts of big movie stars want to do TV. Is that the case? And why is that the case?"

Woods: "I can tell you exactly why in my case. I
actually had always said I didn't want to do a series --
and not because I was a snob about television. As you
know, television has been, I think, probably as important
in my career as feature films.

"Can you guys hear me okay with this mic? Yes or no? Oh,
it dropped. That's why. Sorry about that. I thought I
wasn't being heard. How about that? Hard to believe
I've done 120 movies, isn't it? Can you guys hear me with this microphone?"
(Motioning that the mic had been on the floor.)

"I just didn't want to play, really, the same character
again and again and again because I thought it would be
hard to imagine how he could evolve. But because of the
very, very important second -- and I don't mean
secondary, but second story in 'Shark' -- which is my
relationship with Danielle Panabaker, who plays my
16-year-old daughter who chooses to have custody with me,
which is a surprise to all of us in the storyline -- this
character will really evolve a lot, and also because of
the changing face of justice. This show works on a very
visceral level, which I like.

"I don't think there's a person in this room or anywhere in this
country, whatever his or her opinion may have been or
may still be, who didn't get a kick in the gut by the O.J. verdict.

You know what I'm saying?

Or by the Michael Jackson verdict or the Robert Blake verdict.

So these big Dream Team cases have a very visceral effect.

"As far as movies versus TV, every week it seems Patrick
Goldstein or somebody in the L.A. Times or wherever is
wondering why movies are going backwards somehow in terms
of box office. And I'm sitting next to one of the
greatest movie producers in the history of the business.

And I'm not saying that because we are all friends and
because we work together. And we've talked about this
issue. And I think one of the reasons is that you are
getting more and more corporate thinking in making
movies, and also you are getting more parochial thinking.

"And just about the time when I was offered 'Shark,' it
was at a time when I was having another business venture
go very, very well, so I didn't have to do it for the
money. And I'm always offered stuff to do, but I don't
want to play the middle-aged guy in a suit who is the
head of the evil corporation. You know, it's not very
fulfilling as an actor.

"And I looked at the Oscar movies this year, and I thought
they were very parochial. I mean, you have your
'Brokeback Mountain' and 'Transamerica' and 'Capote' and
so on, and they were very specific movies, all with sort
of the same tenor and tone.

And I thought, there seems
not to be as much breadth to the imagination in the
movies these days. They are very careful. Movies seem
to be scared, whereas television seems to be like a
teenager feeling his or her oats. You know, let's take
this on and that. You look across the board at
television now and you look at shows like 'Arrested
Development,' just as an example, very off-beat strange
show.

"When I did 'Family Guy' this year, I thought Seth
MacFarlane-- it's a completely different network -- not
different network, but a different show from ours and so
on, but I thought, this guy is like a genius. This stuff
is as funny as anything I've ever seen in a movie in my
life, and it's an animated series.

"I mean, the stuff that we are going to deal with on our
show, I can tell you, is not only ripped from the
headlines, but big moral issues. One of the things we're
developing is sort of like the Anthony Pellicano stuff
that's going on. And, you know, the more you read about
it, it's like Lewis Carroll, it gets curiouser and
curiouser.

And, I mean, television is more
sophisticated, more dynamic, more gut-wrenching to me
today than the movies. If I had a choice, and I did,
because I'm sort of independently wealthy now from this
other venture...

"Serously. I mean, I chose this job for no other reason
other than it was the best thing I've read in 10 years,
period. So I said, well, this is where the action is;
this is where I want to be.

And you look around at
television now, and it's just hands down, time after
time, event after event, moment after moment, it's just
better than the movies."

One day, hopefully soon, poor James will emerge from the confining shell that keeps him so bottled up.

http://www.pastdeadline.com/

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:14 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Sheen takes shine to press tour

By Ann Oldenburg USA Today Posted 7/16/2006

PASADENA, Calif. — Charlie Sheen is surrounded.

It isn't an ugly paparazzi scene. It's a polite pack of press — those attending the Television Critics Association press tour, which is held each summer to hype fall shows.

CBS kicked off the network portion of the confab with a party at the Rose Bowl Saturday night featuring stars from new and returning shows, including Sheen's hit comedy Two and a Half Men.

The actor said he expected the CBS scene to be "crazy, judgmental. There's a whole negative potential to an environment like this." Sheen, 40, is in a bitter custody battle with estranged wife Denise Richards, 35, over daughters Sam, 2, and Lola, 1.

What he discovered? "None of the stories I wrote in my head coming here are true. People are happy to see me; I'm happy to see them."

Amid a marching band, food and football-throwing, he said: "Things are going great. They're as good as they can be. I guess. I'm not living under a bridge.

"There's a bridge nearby if I need one," he joked.

While Sheen made the best of his difficult split, James Woods, 59, and girlfriend Ashley Madison, 20, were very much together, chatting about everything from the margaritas ("I recommend them highly," Woods said) to his fall drama Shark ("It's so compelling and smart and everything that Jimmy is," Madison said).

Madison appeared with Woods recently in a cameo on HBO's Entourage and is "looking for work" as an actress. She believes a walk-on role in Shark "is definitely in the cards" and added: "Maybe I could play a ditzy secretary, I don't know. We'll figure something out."

She predicted Woods was going to love series TV. He has been up for Emmys for a guest role on ER and for TV movies (winning two), but the brash lawyer is his first starring role in a series. "He's going to have a lot of fun," she said. "It's going to take a lot of our time away, but you know what? It's better than playing poker or stuff like that. If he's happy, I'm happy."

Another actor known for big-screen roles, Virginia Madsen, kicked off her black Manolo Blahnik heels and sat on a picnic bench not far from the punt, pass and kick area of the field. "I don't have the shoes for that," she said. "I consider myself athletic, but I'm not a jock by any means."

She stars in the new fall drama Smith, about professional criminals, with Ray Liotta and Simon Baker.

Baker didn't plan to take part in the games, either. The Australian actor said his game was rugby: "The NFL's a bit slow for me."

As for Liotta, "I played soccer."

But Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan kicked a field goal from 30 yards out. "I might have to take my jeans off," he joked later, to try to kick it farther. "These are kind of tight."

Jennifer Love Hewitt, whose career got a boost last season from spooky series Ghost Whisperer, was most interested in whispering about her show.

She said May's finale, in which co-star Aisha Tyler's character died, was a shock to the cast as well as viewers. "We didn't know what the ending was. We read our script, and it said you'll get your ending later."

She teased that all might not be as it seems: "People think that was the ending of last season, well, maybe they should wait and see."

Hewitt also noted that Camryn Manheim and Jay Mohr would join the cast this season. Manheim will play a woman haunted by a ghost. Mohr will arrive in the second episode, executive producer Kim Moses said, as a professor with expertise in demonology.

"He's not quite a believer," Moses said. "He's going to help Melinda understand some things, and she's going to help him realize that what he's studying is real."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-16-sheen_x.htm

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:29 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Katie Couric Speaks!

By Kevin D. Thompson Palm Beach Post Television Writer in his blog July 16, 2006

There was a palpable buzz at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel this morning as us People Who Watch TV For a Living waited for Katie Couric, CBS News’ new crown jewel, to arrive for her 9:30 a.m. press briefing.

I check my watch. It’s 9:40 a.m. Still no sign of the former Today co-anchor. Couric’s in the hotel, though. She was spotted about 40 minutes ago.

“I saw her with an entourage of about 20 people,” one critic said.

Folks are starting to get anxious – and angry. When you’re being paid as much as Couric is to anchor the CBS Evening News, you figure she could afford a watch – and be on time. Perhaps that whole diva rep Couric acquired in her last few years at Today was greatly deserved. That's certainly what all of us are thinking.

Couric finally arrives at 9:45 a.m. looking tan and rested after being on vacation for a month and spending time with her two kids. Couric’s crème colored suit goes well with her bronze tan and blonde streaky hair.

As Couric settles in with Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, the network’s flack apologizes for the delay.

“Evidently the omelette making (equipment) set off the fire alarm,” she cracks.

No one laughs.

Couric’s first day as anchor will be Sept. 5. Both Couric and McManus admit the newscast will be a work-in-progress.

“We want to provide something that you can’t get other places,” Couric said. “But it’s still very much in the planning stages. We hope viewers leave the broadcast feeling more educated and enlightened.”

Couric admits she plans to follow Bob Schieffer’s lead.

“He personified some of the things I was thinking,” she said of the CBS Evening News's outgoing anchor. “He’s very accessible, he speaks plain English…there’s a comfort level with him. He’s very comfortable and easy to watch.”

But Couric wan’t always easy to watch on Today as she often monopolized interviews and wouldn’t stop yapping. So I was glad to hear Couric admit that she’ll need to tone down her perky morning persona if she’s going to have any success anchoring an evening newscast.

Couric said biggest challenge will be keeping the basic elements of the CBS Evening News intact while revamping the show.

“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “But we want to take some risks and try some things.”

But neither Couric nor McManus would divulge much details. Trade secrets, you know. But we do know they’ll be a new set McManus promises will be updated and contemporary.

“It won’t look like a spaceship,” he promises. “It’ll be modern, clean and have a lot of the traditional elements.”

Couric said being the first woman to ever anchor a network news program wasn’t the main reason why she left Today after 15 years. The move was more about “the opportunity to be a part of a new challenge.”

Couric also said NBC was extremely accommodating while she was being wooed by CBS.

“It was one of the most civil transitions in network history,” she said. “NBC couldn’t have been more gracious.”

In the last six months, you couldn’t pick up an industry paper or magazine without seeing Couric’s name in it. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know if she was leaving NBC or staying put. Couric, who looked rather uncomfortable with a bunch of tape recorders jammed into her face after her press conference, said she was surprised there was so much media attention.

“I thought there would be some interest,” she said. “I thought it was a little excessive.”

Later in the conference, someone asked if Couric had given any thought to what she was going to wear on her first show.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said. “You know, I’ve actually gone to Charlie Gibson’s stylist and discussed this at length.”

See ya in the fall, Katie.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/thompson/entries/2006/07/the_summer_tv_p_3.html

NOTE: Of course Kevin meant Katie is the first woman to be a permanent solo weeknight anchor of a network news program.

Barbara Walters (Harry Reasoner-ABC) and Connie Chung (Dan Rather-CBS) preceded her as weeknight co-anchors.

And there have been many of women who have substitute anchored, or anchored on a regular basis during the weekends.

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:36 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Whence 'Deadwood'?

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog July 16, 2006

A friend writes:

Too bad the HBO meetings occurred right away. I still feel in the dark about what exactly happened to 'Deadwood' 's future and (even tho your blog entry makes it clear the topic was broached) feel whatever did happen was under-reported and definitely not on the radar at all till AFTER it was a done deal. Was it Milch or HBO that wanted out, really? Why didn't this happen with 'The Wire' or 'Six Feet Under'? Was 'Deadwood' particularly expensive to produce or esp. lacking in some target demographic that HBO wanted? If so, why in hell do pay cable networks care about demographics?

Worse than not knowing any of that though, is Albrecht's generalized 'answer' to these sorts of questions invoking 'Carnivalé'. I get that he was saying 'I've already been through worse backlashes than this one' but mentioning the two series in the same breath makes him seem VERY dim as to their relative quality or compelling reasons to continue and in turn as if anything excellent that's happened while he's been giving the okays was pure accident! What ACTUALLY happened? And screw Milch if he thinks ANYTHING about surfers is going to be as touched by fire as 'Deadwood'.

Here's the entirety of HBO President Chris Albrecht's answer to a question about reaction to the sudden last season for David Milch's 'Deadwood.' It indicates that what happened may have been the result of a single day's misunderstanding.

Q: I got a lot of e-mail after the 'Deadwood' thing, and some of it was actually quite scary. What's your e-mail been like?

Albrecht: My favorite one was, 'May you never take an easy dump again.' I sent that to a few friends. But being Italian, that was not a problem. I knew it would never be a problem for me. I got a lot of 'Deadwood' e-mails too. But I'll tell you, a fraction of what I got for 'Carnivale.' So it really goes to show how there's not always -- what is that ringing? Do we know? Is that just in my head?

There is a disconnect often between what's written about a show in terms of the appreciation for the quality of a show or the content of a show and the audience's feel for it. What happened with 'Deadwood,' and I think we would all like to revisit the phone call that I had with David Milch, was David pitched a show that I hope you will agree when it goes on, is so unique and very exciting. I knew that there were at most 12 more 'Deadwood's.

I said to David, let's do six and start the new show earlier because there's only a finite amount of time David Milch has to do all of the work that he does on the shows. David Milch, David Simon, David Chase, all these guys, Alan Ball, they are so involved in what they do from the writing process through the end of the editing process. Have to pry the shows out of their hands to get them on the air. And David at that point says, 'Ah, you know what? It's enough. Let's just move on. You're right.'

And I said, 'David, think about it over the weekend,' and he called some actors and the story got out of hand, and I think everybody wished they had that Friday to think about it again because it was really just, you know, 12, 6, 8 -- I know the world thinks that 12 more hours of 'Deadwood' is the exact number to end the story exactly correctly, but maybe in a conversation we could (find) out a way to do that a little differently.

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/2006/07/whence_deadwood.html#more

fredfa

07-16-06, 10:57 PM

(From Marc Berman’s Sunday, July 16, 2006, Programming Insider column at Mediaweek.com )
TCA Summer Press Tour 2006: C B S

Welcome Back to the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel & Spa

Although the trip to anywhere in Los Angeles from Pasadena is a schlep, it is fair to say there is no place like the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel & Spa, which for many TV critics is like a second home. If only our primary residences were like this! Unlike the Television Critics Association (TCA) Winter Press Tour when finding a hotel guest outside of a TV critic was like locating a needle in a haystack, the hotel is bursting at the seams with guests for the summer tour. And the early controversy, at least initially, is word that Fox is potentially barring photographers from their sessions on Monday, July 24 and Tuesday, July 25. CBS president Nina Tassler referring to CSI as an “underdog” also created a stir (see next section). Something is always brewing at TCA!

I was not present for the four-day cable portion of the tour, but what had early tongues wagging (and blogs bursting) was a teary eyed Dan Rather discussing his new gig with HDnet (five rounds of tears, I understand), Shannen Doherty (who is hosting Oxygen’s Breaking Up With Shannen Doherty) talking candidly about the way she is perceived in the press, another comeback for the troubled Danny Bonaduce (this time as a GSN game show host), and HBO mob drama The Sopranos. While we were initially told the final eight episodes would kick-off in January 2007, now it’s March, or later for Tony, Carmela and company. All together now…what a damn rip-off!.

Since I took a 7 a.m. flight out of JFK on Friday and arrived in Los Angeles at 10:30 a.m., I managed to get to the Ritz-Carlton in time for the session with my favorite American Idol winner, Fantasia Barrino, who is headlining Lifetime made-for, Life is Not a Fairytale: The Fantasia Barrino Story. Say what you want about Fantasia, but I doubt we’ll ever see bio-pics on Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Carrie Underwood or Taylor Hicks. There is only one Fantasia! And the party circuit kicked off for me with a shindig from Showtime across from the hotel at a private residential home. Bear in mind, of course, that when I say a private residential home in Pasadena, I mean a mansion where 200 or so guests could comfortably hobnob with their peers.

As we begin the network portion of the press tour, the first up is the most-watched network, CBS.

CBS:
• Opening Executive Comments

Although there is not much you can criticize CBS for given the strength and consistency of its primetime line-up, the first of two items of controversy resulted in a question to CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler about the network’s loyalty to viewers. Is it fair for a serialized drama that fails to generate enough audience interest to disappear without providing any sort of resolution? Or does the failure of a series mean that the network is not responsible for the limited audience that was actually watching?

Asked one member of the press:

“What I am wondering about are the people who love these individual shows who weren’t enough to make then succeed. To put it succinctly, you are pissing off people, like two or three million at a time. And how often do you build that up before it really hurts you and the genre?”

“No programmer wants to piss off their audience,” responded Tassler, who avoided giving a clear answer initially. “Creating and building viewer loyalty is clearly what we want to do. When it happens, it’s unfortunate. With many different changes that are happening in this multi-platform world, there are many opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms on shows that don’t continue on broadcast. I completely respect our audience. When you build that kind of loyalty and you have an audience with legitimate questions about resolution, it behooves us to find a way to provide those answers.”

In other words, does that mean that if, and when, upcoming drama Jericho gets abruptly axed (and, trust me, it will), there will be some sort of resolution offered? Sadly, I still personally doubt that. Networks care about the size and age of the audience; not necessarily each individual viewer.

While it was predictable that the subject of CSI versus ABC’s relocated Grey’s Anatomy would come up (the other item of controversy), no one would have assumed that Tassler would refer to the No. 1 scripted series in all of television as the “underdog.”

“Who would have thought that CSI would be the underdog?,” noted Tassler. “We expect to be dinged a little bit by Grey’s Anatomy. It’s going to be very competitive. But as we know from the past, two big hit shows or more can occupy the same time period. We are going to be very aggressive in terms of strategizing with the show this year. There is some interesting creative casting going on now. So we will be incredibly competitive, but we do expect to be dinged.”

Yes, CSI will lose some steam. And so will Grey’s Anatomy, which should be considered more of the underdog simply because it is the show relocating (and losing its Desperate Housewives lead-in).

As for Tassler describing the network’s Saturday night line-up (drama repeats from 8-10 p.m. billed as Crimetime Saturday, followed by 48 Hours Mystery at 10 p.m.) as “fine,” considering the solid shape CBS is in, now would have been the time to be more aggressive. It’s not fine; it’s lazy, and a sad reminder of what has happened to a night once populated with the likes of All in the Family, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and The Golden Girls. Now, those were the days!

Finally, on the subject of the first full development season with digital platforms, here is what Tassler had to say:

“I think these platforms really represent a great opportunity for us at the network. It’s an added opportunity to get your content wherever the audience is. It’s also interesting in that the talent has had a shift in their attitude about developing in multi-platform and having the opportunity to expand their brand to audiences wherever they are. I think what started as fear has been replaced by enthusiasm and excitement and really to reach the audience wherever they are, whenever they want to watch their programs. They see this as an opportunity to enhance the relationship between the viewer and the content, and expand the brand.”

SHARK Thursday 10:00 p.m.

The Premise

A high powered, celebrity defense attorney in Los Angeles (James Woods) switches gears and becomes a prosecuting attorney for a squad of inexperienced lawyers at the District Attorney’s office. Jeri Ryan (Boston Legal) co-stars.

Lead-in: CSI
Competition: Six Degrees (ABC), ER (NBC)

Who Was on the Panel:
James Woods, Jeri Ryan, Sophina Brown, Sarah Carter, Alexis Cruz, Sam Page, Danielle Panabaker, executive producer/creator Ian Biederman, and Brian Grazer.

The Scoop:
To anyone wondering why two-time Academy Award nominee James Woods is starring in his first regularly scheduled TV series, here is what he had to say:

“I looked at the Oscar movies this year, and I thought they were very parochial. I mean, you have Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica, Capote and so on, and they were very specific movies, all with sort of the same tenor and tone. And I thought, there seems not to be as much breadth to the imagination in the movies these days. They are very careful. Movies seem to be scared, whereas television seems to be like a teenager feeling his or her oats. You know, let's take this on and that on. You look across the board at television now and you see a show like Arrested Development, which is very off-beat strange. When I did Family Guy this year, I thought Seth MacFarlane was a genius. This stuff is as funny as anything I've ever seen in a movie in my life, and it's an animated series.”

Added Woods:
“The stuff that we are going to deal with on our show, I can tell you, is not only ripped from the headlines, but with big moral issues. Television is more sophisticated, more dynamic, more gut-wrenching to me today than the movies.”

The Reality:
Although Grey’s Anatomy at 9 p.m. is sure to siphon some viewers away from lead-in CSI (and also provide an ample lead-in support for new drama Six Degrees), the built-in familiarity of the subject matter and star power of James Woods makes this new legal drama the one sure thing of the new crop of entries.

Chance of Survival for Shark (Based on a scale of 1-1 to 10-1): 1-1

Did You Know?:
Two-time Academy Award nominee James Woods cut his early acting chops in episodes of Kojak, The Rockford Files, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rookies, Barnaby Jones, Police Story, and Welcome Back, Kotter.

THE CLASS Monday 8:00 p.m .

The Premise

In this Friends-like sitcom, a group of young adults in their 20s who were in the same third grade class, and have not seen each other since, are reunited at a surprise party. Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia) leads the ensemble cast.

Competition: Wife Swap (ABC), Deal or No Deal (NBC), Prison Break (Fox), 7th Heaven (CW)

Who Was On the Panel:
Jason Ritter, Andrea Anders, Lizzy Caplan, Heather Goldenhersh, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Sean Maguire, Lucy Punch and executive producer/co-creators avid Crane and Jeffrey Klarik.

The Scoop:
If you think The Class is just a clone of Friends (and the comparisons are indeed positively familiar), here is what the producers had to say:

David Crane:
“One of the things that's exciting about The Class is this isn't one of those shows where everyone just hangs out and talks and they're all buddies. No, it's not that. There are eight very separate storylines but they do intersect. And that's part of the fun of it, is how that happens.”

Jeffrey Klarik:
“We deliberately chose not to even have a place where they could all hang out. There's no coffee house. There's no restaurant. I don't think we will see the eight of them together the entire season, but we will see four here or six here or two, but never all together again. I guess like in any party, you don't want to know a lot of the people you see there.”

The Reality:
Although The Class was originally scheduled out of the relocated (and over-rated) How I Met Your Mother, CBS was wise to move early critical favorite The Class into the Monday anchor spot. Despite facing NBC’s currently hot Deal or No Deal and Fox’s Prison Break, among others, if subsequent episodes of The Class are as good as the laugh-out-loud pilot, CBS is sure to prove that the sitcom genre is far from dead in 2006-07. And, fans of Friends who miss their coveted comedy, will have something new to sink their teeth into. No matter what the producers say, The Class is like Friends. And that, of course, is a good thing.

Chance of Survival for The Class (Based on a scale of 1-1 to 10-1): 2-1

Did You Know?:
Prior to Three’s Company, John Ritter (Jason’s Dad) cut his small screen chops on drama The Waltons as kindly Rev. Fordwick from 1972-77. With two uneventful seasons under his belt on the feel-good Joan of Arcadia, Jason is likely to follow in his father’s comedic footsteps.

JERICHO Wednesday 8:00 p.m

The Premise

After a mysterious nuclear mushroom suddenly appears in Jericho, Kansas, fear of an apocalypse prevails when the town becomes isolated with no help from the outside world. Skeet Ulrich and former Simon & Simon and Major Dad star Gerald McRaney (Delta’s aging better-half) lead the ensemble cast.

Competition: Dancing With the Stars (ABC), 20 Good Years and 30 Rock (NBC), Bones (Fox), America’s Next Top Model (UPN)

Who Was on the Panel:
Skeet Ulrich, Gerald McRaney, Alicia Coppola, Sprague Graydon, Lennie James, Eric Knudsen, Pamela Reed, Ashley Scott, executive producers Jon Turteltaub and Carol Barbee, and executive producer/co-creator Stephen Chbosky.

The Scoop:
Since ABC’s Lost launched in the Wednesday 8 p.m. hour two years ago the comparisons were inevitable. Here is what Jon Turteltaub had to say to address that:

“On a creative end, nobody ever sets out to do a show like another show. You always set out to do a show unlike something else. If we're being compared to a successful, extraordinary show, that's good. And it's possible that there are similarities thematically in that you have people relying on themselves to survive. And there is, in an odd way, almost a wish fulfillment in seeing what it would be like if you were tested and put in the most extreme circumstance, and how much of your good side would come out. Other than that, you know, I think Lost is more science-fiction. Lost is more of a fantasy show. It's a little larger than life, and there's a bit more of a kind of crazy unknown of who knows what will happen next to it. We are, in contrast, focusing on the reality of human nature and the reality of coping, as Americans, with how we overcome our own vulnerabilities.”

The Reality:
Considering the track record for new science fiction dramas this season (remember ABC’s Invasion and Night Stalker, CBS’ Threshold and NBC’s Surface?), you have to wonder why CBS went back to the well for another new drama in the category, and why it decided to schedule it at 8 p.m. Is a show about a nuclear threat in our country really the subject matter for an 8-9 p.m. series? And will viewers relaxing at midweek really be ready for something this serious in nature this early in the evening? Although it worked for ABC’s Lost in 2004-05, this is no Lost, and Jericho could very well be the first cancellation of the season. How about scheduling a nice, feel-good family drama as its replacement, CBS?

Chance of Survival for Jericho on a scale of 1-1 to 10-1): 10-1

Did You Know?:
Gerald McRaney’s last new primetime project, 2004 WB sitcom Commando Nanny, never even got on the air!

SMITH Tuesday 10:00 p.m.

The Premise

Told from the criminal point of view, a diverse group of criminals plan to carry out high-stake robberies across the country. Ray Liotta and Academy Award nominee Virginia Madsen (Sideways) lead the ensemble cast.

Lead-in: The Unit

FONT=Arial Black] Competition: [/FONT] Boston Legal (ABC), Law & Order: SVU (NBC)

Who Was on the Panel:
Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Simon Baker (The Guardian), Frankie G., Michelle Johnny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, executive producer Chris Chulack and executive producer/creator John Wells.

The Scoop:
Since the lead characters on Smith are not law abiding citizens, one member of the press was concerned if viewers would embrace the characters. According to John Wells:

“I think that people are interested in complex characters and what makes them tick and how they work. There's a long tradition in entertainment of exploring those types of characters. And there are lots of very successful movies, and lots of successful series about just this thing. Since we haven't had it recently, that is one of the reasons why I'm hopeful that people be interested.”

The Reality:
Opposite NBC’s beginning-to-fade Law & Order: SVU and out of sleeper success The Unit, Smith could be the unexpected new hit of the season. Since than one half of CBS’ schedule is already of a crime solving nature, it’s refreshing to see the focus on the bad guys.

Chance of Survival for Smith (Based on a scale of 1-1 to 10-1): 5-1

Did You Know?:
Ray Liotta’s first regularly scheduled primetime series was the 1983 TV remake of classic theatrical Casablanca on NBC.

Press Tour Tidbits: Notes of Interest

CBS “Outernet” Marketing Strategy:
CBS will introduce several marketing initiatives in an attempt to reach consumers outside of their homes, during their daily routine, or while traveling next season. This will include CBS programming campaigns featured on or in Royal Caribbean cruise ships, supermarkets, postage stamps, autonet and watercoolers; and the continuation of CBS’ “Eye on American” programming, which will provide exclusive in-flight entertainment to over 30,000 flights per month. In addition, an RV wrapped in Amazing Race decorations will travel the country promoting its new time period.

Egg-Advertising Campaign on CBS:
The CBS Marketing Group has entered an exclusive partnership with EggFusion to promote the new CBS fall series on laser coded eggs. Beginning in September, over 35 million eggs marked by EggFusion will be inscribed with network logos and the following slogans:

-CBS Mondays: Funny Side Up, Leave the Yolks to Us, Shelling Out Laughs or Make’em Go Over Easy
-CSI: Crack the Case on CBS
-The Amazing Race: Scramble to Win on CBS
-How I Met Your Mother: Find Your Chick on CBS
-The Class: New Grade-A CBS Comedy
-Smith: Professional Poachers
-Shark: Hard-Boiled Drama
-Jericho: Unbeatable Television

Multiple Platform Strategy for the CBS News with Katie Couric:
When the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric debuts on Tuesday, Sept. 5, CBS is going to every measurable step to make sure viewers tune-in. In addition to the traditional nightly half-hour 6:30 p.m. telecast, daily digital reports featuring extended interviews with the day’s newsmakers will be posted on CBSNews.com by mid-afternoon, and will be available for video podcasts via all CBS Radio news affiliates. Couric will also provide a web-exclusive rundown on-camera from the newsroom each afternoon, and a daily blog will explore the day’s developments through links to exclusive free video, and contributions from CBS news correspondents from around the world.

“Given the rapidly evolving ways consumers get their news, a key element of our planning for the new broadcast has been to make its content available to as many people as possible in as many practical ways as we can,” said Sean McManus, president, CBS News and Sports. “We are excited about what we’ve developed so far, but this is only phase one. We expect to make more announcements as we get closer to the debut of the program. Our goal is to make it possible for our audience to get its news from CBS wherever they are – in their homes, in their cars, on their computers or on their cell phones.”

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/newsletters/proginsider/index.jsp

fredfa

07-16-06, 11:48 PM

TV Notebook
Couric Listens, but Who Will Watch?

By David Carr The New York Times July 17, 2006

Minneapolis is just the kind of place that Katie Couric had in mind when she decided to go on a six-city “listening tour” to build anticipation for her fall debut on the “ CBS Evening News.”

A well-read place with a virulent streak of civic-mindedness, Minneapolis is one of those middle places where news is discussed, consumed and analyzed. And, although Ms. Couric had never previously found a reason to visit, Minneapolis is a splendid place to live if you disregard that six months a year you need to wear a spacesuit against the cold. She even made a pilgrimage to the statue of Mary Richards, the hat-throwing newswoman played by Mary Tyler Moore — the implication being that Ms. Couric is “going to make it after all.”

So what did she hear? We don’t know for sure, because reporters were not among those handpicked — including many local notables and functionaries — to listen to all the listening in a private room of the new Minneapolis public library.

In spite of the lack of access, or perhaps precisely because of it, there were a few bumps in the séance of Minnesota Nice. Matt Bartel, a blogger for the local MNspeak.com, who had been invited, posted from his BlackBerry that he was in the audience. Press agents for WCCO television, the local CBS affiliate, came up and asked for his reporter’s notebook. After some negotiations, according to The Star Tribune and Mr. Bartel, they settled on confiscating his pen, for what that was worth when you realize that they left him still in possession of his BlackBerry. Regardless of what she learns on her listening tour, Ms. Couric’s engagement with new media could use a little work. (To everyone’s relief, the pen was returned after the event.)

Fortunately Ms. Couric, I was in Minneapolis for the week, so I was able to help CBS out with a listening tour of my own in the local self-serve laundries, restaurants and bars. Give or take the dozens of people who declined to talk to me — Minnesotans are famously proud of their humility — I found some very encouraging news for Ms. Couric.

It turns out that people here, all kinds — black, white, young, old, liberal and, well, liberal — adore her. And why not? She is, by all accounts and evidence, funny, smart, nice and pretty.

But there was also some discouraging feedback: many of the younger people I asked about Ms. Couric or the evening news responded as if I were an archaeologist inquiring about a quaint custom dating back centuries. Unless Ms. Couric was planning on setting herself on fire every night, few people thought they could find a way to be home at 5:30 in the evening (Central Standard Time) to gather around the television set.

Chris Campanella, who works at a nightclub in downtown Minneapolis, had stopped by Eli’s Bar and Grill on Hennepin Avenue to work his way through a plate of chicken wings. He dropped the kind of quote that should warm the cockles of every corner office at CBS headquarters.

“I have no problem with her doing the news,” he said, “She is smart and informed, with a well-known history of being a quality reporter. There is a world of reasons to try it. Network news has been too masculine for too long. You know, Rather, Jennings and Brokaw.”

Still, Mr. Campanella, who seemed pretty smart and well informed himself, had no idea that Dan Rather had been nudged out, that Tom Brokaw had retired or that Peter Jennings had died.

But then, that may be part of what is driving Ms. Couric’s ascension and her listening tour. Millions of people who have not watched the evening news in years will tune in come September, and even those who are there to check hair and make-up may find something relevant enough to stick around on the following nights.

Tom Madryga, a local trucker who was doing his laundry in southwest Minneapolis, will stop by for a look, even though he has already made up his mind on Ms. Couric.

“I don’t care for her. She’s too liberal for me,” he said. “But I will be watching in the beginning, because I’m curious just like anybody else. It seems like a big jump to me.”

A few machines away, Liz Post, who runs a personal shopping business, was hustling to get through a few more loads. She lives in a news-interested household and is looking forward to a new reason to watch a form that has changed little in decades.

“Maybe they will stop repeating the same story over and over,” she said. “Maybe they have to do that, but it is pretty dumbed-down to begin with. It’s like, ‘I get it, let’s move on.’ ”

At the Dunn Brothers coffee shop a few doors away, Bill McGill — he’s more an Economist magazine man than a TV watcher — displayed a shocking level of cynicism about the shocking level of cynicism that he says he thinks is driving the listening tour.

“It’s clear she came for show,” said Mr. McGill, who owns an executive search firm. “She isn’t going to use what she has learned, it’s just soft promotion. It seems very much like what a politician would do.”

There may be a reason for that. Ms. Couric’s personal publicist, Matthew Hiltzik, organized Hillary Rodham Clinton’s listening tour when she was considering running for the Senate in New York. But it is worth recalling that Ms. Clinton, who seemed to start from a very deep hole, got off to a remarkably productive, popular start once she was elected.

Ms. Couric’s tour — which also had stops in San Diego, San Francisco, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver and Tampa, Fla. — left some wondering who was listening to whom.

“How can regular people participate in something they only read about the day after?” said Patrick Lopez de Victoria at the coffee shop, giving the item about the visit in the daily paper a loud flick with his finger. “If they wanted regular people, they should have held a public event on the Nicollet Mall or the Mall of America.”

Leon Trawick, a lawyer from Minneapolis who stopped in for a drink at J. D. Hoyt’s, a steakhouse in downtown Minneapolis, said the opinions he was interested in seeing expressed should be on the newscast itself.

“Africa is a mess, the Middle East is blowing up, but I don’t see any teeth in any of these stories,” he said. “People are already informed. You have to give me something more — tell me what you think the truth is — to expect me to take the time to tune in network news.”

It is clear that the battle that Ms. Couric will be confronting this fall is less uphill than up against a wall — one composed of real-time data that leaves very few stones unturned by the end of the day.

“I like her. I watched her this morning,” said Stephen Paul, an investment banker who was at the bar at J. D. Hoyt’s, warming up for dinner. “I have Bloomberg, CNN and all of the information coming at me over the Internet every day. By the time I get home, I pretty much know what I need to know and could use a little peace and quiet.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/business/media/17carr.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-16-06, 11:52 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Remaining Schedule

Monday: The CW
Tuesday, Wednesday: ABC
Friday, Saturday: NBC
Monday July 24, Tuesday, July 25: Fox
Wednesday, July 26: PBS

DoubleDAZ

07-16-06, 11:55 PM

TV Notebook
Couric Listens, but Who Will Watch?
I sure won't. I've already had my fill of Couric in this thread. :)

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:24 AM

TV Notebook
NBC Keeps Fingers Crossed for ‘America’s Got Talent’

By Bill Carter The New York Times July 17, 2006

NBC executives have every justification in calling “America’s Got Talent” — the singing, dancing, juggling and ventriloquizing new reality talent competition — the most successful new show of the summer.

The only remaining question is: Is it a hit?

“America’s Got Talent,” the invention of Simon Cowell, the main force behind the success of television’s biggest show, “American Idol,” and featuring Regis Philbin as host, has posted solid ratings in each of its four outings on NBC this summer. Two of those weeks “Talent” was the most-watched show on television with about 12 million viewers; it also ranked first in the category NBC cares most about, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, the group many advertisers pay a premium to reach.

All that certainly sounds like great news for NBC. Mr. Philbin said in a telephone interview last week, “It has felt like a hit to me from the beginning.” That’s a feeling Mr. Philbin is thoroughly familiar with. He started the trend toward summer reality hits with the ABC game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in 1999.

But the numbers for “America’s Got Talent,” while strong, have been just tenuous enough to leave some doubt about whether it will be the commodity that NBC desperately needs: a summer reality series that can break through as a genuine hit in the regular season.

NBC has made no secret of how badly it wants “America’s Got Talent” to make that leap. When the network announced its schedule for the new season last May, it plugged “Talent” into the 8 p.m. Sunday slot starting in January, a time period that will be occupied in the first half of the television season by NBC’s new lineup of National Football League football games. That certainly seemed to indicate a level of expectation of how the show would perform this summer. Of course, had it bombed, that plan would have gone up in smoke. Now that NBC has four weeks of ratings to look at, it should have a better idea of the show’s chances to return in the regular season.

But all NBC will say at this point is: “We feel confident it’s going to come back.” That was how Craig Plestis, the senior vice president for alternative programming for NBC, put it in a telephone interview. He added, “We’re hopeful we’ll see some growth in the numbers as the summer goes on.” The caution is probably merited. As well as “America’s Got Talent” has performed so far, it has not out-and-out electrified the nation, not the way previous reality hits have in summers of the recent past. The new talent show is not emulating the track record of its most obvious forebear, “Idol,” nor other shows that made monster summer waves, like “Survivor” on CBS, or last summer’s reality breakthrough, “Dancing With the Stars,” on ABC.

In all those cases the shows burst onto the scene, created an instant level of national fascination and grew week by week until by the end of the summer their finales were indisputable must-see events.

“America’s Got Talent” has been more a steady-as-you-go performer. In each of the past three weeks its ratings have been around the same level. (Things got a bit murkier last week when the first of the series’s “results” shows — when the audience vote from the previous night is announced — performed poorly after being bizarrely scheduled at 9:30 p.m. Thursday with little notice.)

One reason for the absence of upward momentum: the show has competed head-to-head every week on Wednesday night with the second-favorite reality show of the summer, “So You Think You Can Dance,” on Fox. The two shows have staged their own pas de deux of competitive scheduling over the past month.

Fox expanded “Dance” to two hours, from 8 to 10 p.m., for the first three weeks the new NBC show was on the air. Last week, when Fox had planned to drop back to an hour starting at 9 p.m., NBC, at the last minute, expanded “Talent” to two hours, starting at 8. Fox responded at an even later minute by inserting a repeat of “Dance” at 8 p.m.

Executives at both networks dismissed the idea that they are playing scheduling chicken with each other. Mr. Plestis said, “They will do what’s best for their show, and we’ll do what’s best for ours.”

Sure, and it probably doesn’t matter a bit to Fox that Mr. Cowell offered “America’s Got Talent” first to Fox, which passed on buying it. One Fox executive acknowledged, long before “Talent” went on, that Fox executives were feeling regret that they had let the show slip away and were concerned that it might work for NBC.

Still, it was NBC that slotted “Talent” on Wednesdays at 9 p.m., which was already occupied by the Fox dance show. NBC could have chosen a different night, something that the scheduling rulebook would recommend because reality shows almost always damage each other when forced to compete at the same hour.

But this summer the rulebook seems to have been tossed onto the barbie. Not only have the two talent competition shows butted heads all summer, but two weeks ago CBS decided to start its own reality talent competition, “Rock Star,” on Wednesday nights as well. And this week, ABC will jump in on Wednesday with the second of two weekly editions of yet another talent competition, “The One: Making a Music Star.”

How did Wednesday night suddenly become the O.K. Corral of summer reality shows? Network scheduling executives claim things simply worked out this way. The real explanation is that the track record of recent summer reality efforts indicates that only the shows that play on midweek nights seem to work. So Wednesday has drawn a singing and dancing crowd.

The question facing NBC with “America’s Got Talent” is whether it has a nice summer success on its hands, one that can be repeated in future summers, or whether it has a show it can gamble on resurrecting in January, when the competition figures to be much stiffer.

The networks clearly need something to work in the summer. Most of the repeats of scripted series have fared worse and worse every year, especially serialized hits like “Lost” on ABC, which has performed disastrously in repeats this summer. Meanwhile cable networks continue to introduce new scripted series with impressive results.

The TNT drama “The Closer” has embarrassed almost everything the networks have to offer this summer with audiences that have reached 8 million viewers. USA Network seems to have found another drama hit with “Psych.”

The latter was good news for its parent company, NBC Universal. But nothing would surpass finding a true hit this summer for its struggling broadcast network. That’s where “America’s Got Talent” is supposed to come in.

Last week’s ratings were awaited with breathless anticipation inside NBC. One significant concern was whether the show would hang on to the audiences it had already attracted, because it was moving into a second phase. The early editions, following the formula of “American Idol,” were all auditions, and so included equal time for adept and inept performers. Starting last week the competition began to be narrowed down to the better contestants.

Mr. Plestis conceded that some viewers of talent series like to tune in to see what he called “the good, the bad, and the ugly” among the performers. The latter two categories have included contestants who lifted refrigerators on their chins, a rapping grandma and a diorama involving, inexplicably, a pirate and a donkey.

The test for “America’s Got Talent” will be to keep up viewer interest after the wackier acts have been eliminated. NBC’s competitors expressed doubt that “Talent” will be able to sustain that interest all summer, never mind spawn a regular-season edition.

But if not fully confident, NBC at least feels encouraged. “We’re happy where the numbers are right now,” Mr. Plestis said. “If it does come back in January it’s going to be bigger and better. We’ve learned a lot this summer. We know we can do it even better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/arts/television/17tale.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:36 AM

Sports On TV
MLB Looks to Sell One More TV Rights Package

By John Consoli MediaWeek.com July 17, 2006 -

ESPN, Turner's TBS, Fox's FX and Comcast's OLN are all interested in getting the TV rights to the remaining Major League Baseball American and National League Championship series games that are up for grabs beginning next season and running through the 2013 season.

At least three of those cable networks want just the Championship series games; the MLB, however, is looking to package those games with regular season games and even a new nightly baseball news/results show which MLB could co-produce with a network.

In the latter scenario, OLN might be the network to get the entire package, though it would be a pricey one and maybe too rich for its blood.

Tim Brosnan, executive vp for business, at MLB, said the league is still looking at its options while negotiating price.

Brosnan would not discuss ongoing talks with specific networks, but ESPN and Turner confirmed to Mediaweek that they are interested only in the remaining Championship series games, while sources outside of MLB familiar with the discussions said Fox wants to put those games on FX but only if it gets all of the games. Fox would also be interested in adding some of the Championship series games each year, splitting them with another network.

“We are excited about our new Sunday package and the Divisional Series rights we got,” said David Levy, president of Turner Sports, “ but I’m not interested in any more regular season baseball. I am interested in getting more post-season games (the remaining Championship series games) and at the right financial price I would do a deal for those.”

Likewise, Len DeLuca, senior vp, programming and acquisitions at ESPN, said, “We are comfortable with the level of regular season baseball we have now, but we would be interested in the [remaining] Championship series if we could acquire it in its entirety.”

What’s delaying ESPN from doing that deal? “Price,” DeLuca said.

While DeLuca would not comment on MLB’s asking price for just the Championship series, nor would MLB, sources familiar with the negotiations said MLB is asking about $70 million. A source also said while FX is interested in acquiring the Championship series games, it is not interested in carrying a regular season weeknight package.

Brosnan said MLB is unlikely to split the Championship series games among networks, but another scenario, which he wouldn’t comment on is that Fox get the remaining Championship series games to split on Fox and FX.

NBC has also been mentioned as being interested in the Championship series games but that network will have Sunday Night Football on beginning this fall from September through December, meaning Sunday night post-season baseball games in October would have to air on its cable entity, Bravo.

Brosnan called the remaining Championship series games “jewel event programming,” and said the league is looking at all of its strategic opportunities with both those games, another regular season weeknight package, and the new news/results show.

While not mentioning networks by name, Brosnan said an all encompassing package of regular and post-season games plus the show would immediately put a network on the map as competitive baseball telecast player. With ESPN, Turner and Fox already signed to new deals with lots of baseball rights, that would seem to leave Comcast’s OLN as the target for this all-encompassing baseball package. Right now the holdup could be price.

Brosnan would not comment on why OLN did not pony up enough to get the entire Divisional Championship Series package, which went to Turner, but he did say that OLN is a viable option for a baseball rights package, particularly now that parent Comcast having gotten approval to acquire rival cable operator Adelphia. That would put Comcast/OLN in some 30 million cable homes. “OLN is a legitimate outlet for baseball,” Brosnan said.

“We consider it a viable outlet for our programming. The Comcast folks are very smart people.” An OLN spokesperson said the network would have no comment.

Brosnan said while ESPN’s Baseball Tonight is the pre-eminent baseball results show, MLB believes there is room for another show that would air outside the Baseball Tonight window, whose format would be a bit different than Baseball Tonight. Brosnan said in addition to giving game results and highlights each night, Baseball Tonight is more of a “baseball chat” type show, and a new show could offer more broader news surrounding developments in baseball, something that ESPN’s Sports Center does, but that show does not focus just on baseball.

Brosnan said the creation of this show is “subject to negotiation,” but added it could either be produced by a network that gets the rights, or could be co-produced by MLB. “We have an award-winning production facility that is ramped up to do it,” he said. “Our production facility could produce it and provide content and the network could put its own spin on it. We have produced programming for many of the regional sports networks, including the YES (Yankees Entertainment and Sports) network for a while now. We have a lot of creative, qualified people here who could do it.”

Asked if creating a new baseball show to compete with ESPN would be a slap at one of its TV rights partners, Brosnan denied that and said there is room for more than one nightly baseball show. ESPN’s baseball tonight airs at 10 p.m. on the East Coast and is repeated at midnight, and has those time windows exclusively, according to ESPN’s DeLuca.

DeLuca added that if MLB went this route, “the competition would only make us better. Much like there is only one 60 Minutes, there is only one Baseball Tonight, which we have established as the baseball show of record. MLB has recognized that baseball news and result shows are good.”

Some industry observers feel MLB may have reached a critical mass with the deals it has done so far. ESPN under its new $296 million per year deal, has the rights to an exclusive Sunday night game, plus Monday and Wednesday night games. Fox, in its new $250 million per year deal, has the rights to an expanded Saturday afternoon schedule, plus the All-Star game, World Series, and the ALCS and NLCS in alternating years through 2013. And Turner, under its new deal, said to be worth about $120 million, has an exclusive Sunday afternoon schedule of national games, in addition to a Sunday pre-game show, plus all the MLB Divisional Championship games through 2013.

But baseball still has Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to sell the rights to if it desires and has the interest among the networks, or can put a package together including one or more of those nights.

Brosnan does not feel a critical mass situation has been reached. “We have the advantage of the calendar with our season,” he said. “June, July and August, in the heart of our season, are slow months for television sports, unlike April and May [with the NBA and hockey playoffs] and September/October [with the NFL]. We have robust competition in the spring and fall but not as much during the summer.”

Brosnan noted there are no deadlines for getting the remaining deals done. “We are in no rush. We are still trying to determine what remaining [regular season] games we should sell. We are examining a lot of possibilities.”

What MLB has on its side is solid ratings. ESPN’s exclusive Sunday Night baseball game through 14 games this season is averaging a 1.9 household rating and 1.7 million homes, both up 19 percent over last season. Its Monday night game through 11 games is averaging a 1.2, up 50 percent, while its Wednesday night baseball through 8 games is averaging a 1.0, up 43 percent. ESPN’s telecast of the 2006 Century 21 Home Run Derby, the night before last week’s MLB All-Star game on Fox, produced a 5.4 household rating, up 10 percent over last year, with 6.7 million viewers, up 7 percent.

Fox’s ratings for its Saturday afternoon national baseball game telecasts is about flat with last season at a 2.4, while its All-Star game rating was up 15 percent this year.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840062

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:46 AM

TV Notebook
ABC's `Lost,' HBO's `Sopranos' Tie for Favorite Show in TVWeek Survey

By James Hibberd TVWeek.com

Two titan dramas battled for first place in the semiannual TelevisionWeek Critics Poll, and the result is a draw.

ABC's "Lost," winner of the past three Critics Polls, tied for first place with HBO's "The Sopranos," which has won five previous polls. With "The Sopranos" off the air for the past two years, the summer 2006 survey is the first time the dramas have gone head to head.

Fifty-three critics participated in the poll, which ranks critics' favorite and least favorite TV series, movies and networks. In addition to "Lost" and "Sopranos," other top shows included ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and Fox's "24" and "House." Critics' choices for worst shows were Fox's "Unan1mous" and "The War at Home" and HBO's "Lucky Louie." Among networks, Fox was named most improved and NBC least improved.

More on those later.

First, back to the "Lost" vs. "Sopranos" fight: Both shows enjoy the distinction of winning every previous poll for which they were eligible. ("Sopranos" was ranked lower on some yesteryear winter polls, before TVWeek excluded programs that did not air originals in the current season.)

For the second season of "Lost," critical consensus held that the show provided high-quality writing, great characters and engaging mysteries. A few critics took issue, however, with ABC's presentation of the series, accusing the network of over-milking the cow. "It's not the show's fault that ABC interrupted it with repeats, clip shows and pretty much every gimmick except a televised online chat," wrote Rick Kushman of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee. "People can be ticked at ABC, but 'Lost' did its job with class."

Melanie McFarland of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer left this heartfelt message for the series: "You strung me along. You abandoned me for weeks! But whenever we'd meet up, it was magic-pure magic. 'Lost,' I'm hooked, but on some level, I just know you're going to end up breaking my heart … call me!"

For the penultimate sixth season of "The Sopranos," critical praise was mixed despite its high ranking. Some critics felt this season's introspective and tangent-filled story line derailed the show's momentum, particularly sidelining protagonist Tony Soprano in the hospital for several early episodes. Even those who rated "Sopranos" No. 1 felt obligated to address the skeptics.

"I won't abide by all the complaints that it's fallen in quality somehow-a gripe that usually equates to 'There's not enough whacking,'" wrote Roger Catlin of The Hartford (Conn.) Courant. "David Chase and his team are only being more subtle and thoughtful as the clock winds down."

Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic agreed, writing: "Either you found it challenging, difficult and disappointing, or challenging, difficult and rewarding. I'm in the latter camp."

And one critic did the unthinkable, ranking "The Sopranos" as the worst show on television. "I put it on [the worst] list for how far it has fallen compared to how high it soared in every season prior," wrote Marisa Guthrie of the New York Daily News. "It's utterly mind-boggling that the same team that gave us episodes including 'Long Term Parking' and 'The Pine Barrens' is sleepwalking through stories about Hollywood swag rooms and defective rides rented for a street fair."

In the No. 3 spot is ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," up from fourth place in the winter poll and No. 12 a year ago. "This show is so brave in so many ways," wrote Shelley Gabert of Emmy Magazine and FilmStew.com. "It features strong, flawed, independent women who have sex when and with whom they want-not relegated to appendages or girlfriends or mothers."

Fox's action-drama "24," a longtime Critics Poll favorite, came in at No. 4. "Forget DVRs," wrote Matt Roush of TV Guide, who gave "24" top marks. "This needed to be watched live or on the same night it aired, because no one who watched could keep their mouth shut the next morning. In a fantastic year for network dramas, '24' blew everything else away."

Meanwhile, Fox's medical drama "House" continued to climb in the standings, landing at No. 5. "Just when we think we've seen it all, the next episode is bigger, more shocking and more compelling than the last one," said Victor Balta of The Herald in Everett, Wash.

NBC's "The Office" made significant gains in its second season, both among viewers and in the poll. A year ago it was tied for 19th; this year it climbs to the No. 6 spot. "When the American version premiered, I thought it was a weak imitation of the British classic," Mr. Goodykoontz wrote. "But the show got better and better. It handles the interoffice romance better even than the original."

Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica" was another gainer, leaping from 23rd a year ago to 11th place. "Finally, a series that not only takes the shame out of being a sci-fi nut, but tackles profound political and social issues," Ms. McFarland wrote.

The remainder of the top 20 had a couple of new additions and one severe plummet.

The highest-ranked newcomer was HBO's latest drama, "Big Love," which was 12th. "Television's most incisive look at marriage came this season from the most unlikely of sources: a family of middle-class polygamists in Utah. Beautifully written and acted, it deserves all the love it can get," wrote Ellen Gray of The Philadelphia Daily News.

Second among new shows was Comedy's Central's "Daily Show" spinoff, "The Colbert Report," which came in at No. 15. "Colbert's blinkered diatribes are among the most artfully crafted writing on TV today," wrote the Los Angeles Daily News' David Kronke.

But the most dramatic shift in the poll was ABC's "Desperate Housewives." A year ago the drama was No. 2. This year it's No. 23. Most striking were the lack of comments, positive or negative, about the show. One year after nearly every critic put the show in the top five, very few had anything to say about it.

"I love how people are bitching about ['The Sopranos'] being in a creative slump," wrote TV Guide's Michael Ausiello. "Um, have they seen 'Desperate Housewives' this past season? That, my friends, is a creative slump."

Networks, Movies, Worst Shows

Among networks, Fox supplanted ABC as "most improved" while NBC retained its "least improved" mantle.

"Fox still has to find a few decent comedies to fill the holes in its schedule, but you have to give Peter Liguori some credit," Ms. McFarland wrote. "He's slowly building the network into something to be taken seriously, and he hasn't had to fall back on reality stunt programming as heavily as his predecessor did."

Though critics named NBC as least improved, most did it without comment, a testament to the dead horse nature of its ongoing slump as a topic of interest. Most critics wanted to talk about ABC-ranked neither best nor worst, but frequently criticized as resting on its laurels.

"Not one of ABC's new fall shows from last season has survived, the midseason shows did even worse and behind-the-scenes bungling turned 'Commander in Chief' from its biggest out-of-the-box hit to a humiliating embarrassment," wrote Brent Furdyk of TV Week Magazine, British Columbia. "When 'What About Brian' is your only new 'hit,' I'd call that a bad year."

Shifting to movies, miniseries and specials, HBO's "Elizabeth I" was named the best program. "The first half sizzled, the second half fizzled, but Helen Mirren was spot-on in her various bouts of eagerly restrained sexuality, paranoid defenses and dejected old age," wrote Doug Elfman of the Chicago Sun-Times.

NBC's "10.5: Apocalypse" was picked as the worst program in the category. "Actually, it wasn't bad as a comedy," wrote Tom Jicha of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

But more than a couple of critics had to rack their brains to think of entries to include for either category. "Were there any good ones?" asked Tim Clodfelter, Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal.

On the worst shows list, Fox took the top honor with the reality show "Unan1mous," in which contestants were locked in a bunker and given the task of voting on which one would walk away with $1.5 million. "Fox is proud that it subjected its participants to such psychological torture," Mr. Kronke wrote. "I thought this sort of thing had been banned after Stanley Milgram's behavioral studies."

Added Mr. Roush: "Almost made me miss 'The Swan.'"

http://www.tvweek.com/article.cms?articleId=30195

fredfa

07-17-06, 01:22 AM

The TV Column
An Eye on America, And Your Pen
By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 17, 2006; C01

PASADENA, Calif., July 16 Like Mentos in a Coke bottle, "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric sprayed humility across a packed ballroom of press, set off by the subject of her departure from NBC's "Today" show, the state of TV journalism and the ouster of Dan Rather.

Joined on Sunday by CBS News chief Sean McManus at the Ritz Carlton Huntington Hotel, Couric was making the final stop on her whirlwind "Eye on America" tour. She embarked on the trip with her entourage to hear what preselected little people and local celebs had to say about the state of evening news -- and to get her picture taken, stop at the local CBS station in that market and, according to press reports, confiscate the pen of a blogger who attended one "listening" session.

Couric said it was her idea to ban the press from the tour because it was an "internal exercise" and she didn't want the pre-screened audience of suburban moms and politicians to think CBS was using them "as some kind of promotional device" -- "didn't want them to feel nervous about being videotaped."

"It wasn't a photo op or a press opportunity, and that's the way we wanted to handle it," she said of the listening tour, on which, she said, she learned that viewers think "the news is just too depressing," want "more perspective" and "greater context," "want us to go a little bit deeper" and would like to be told "how this is relevant to their lives."

"I think we sometimes get a little bit sucked into this world where we think everybody's living and breathing what we're doing," Couric said of the frenzy of press coverage about her move from NBC to CBS and the kerfuffle about the closed-door tour. "Americans are dealing with things that affect them much more directly."

While the reporters, critics and bloggers attempted to swallow that one, she told them her transition from co-host of NBC's morning infotainment show "Today" to the anchor of the CBS evening newscast was "one of the most civil transitions in network history."

She said Jeff Immelt, chief executive officer of NBC parent General Electric had a meeting with her and told her: "I get it." And the "folks at CBS were great about not gloating even though I'm . . . whatever," she said, catching herself just in the nick of time. "You know how it works in this business and NBC couldn't have been more gracious."

On replacing Bob Schieffer -- who's been anchoring the CBS evening newscast for 16 months to buffer Katie from CBS's tawdry push-out of Dan Rather, Couric said, "Bob didn't want this job indefinitely; he's done a superb job and happens to be one of the nicest people I've ever met."

She didn't want America to get the impression she was the "new kid" bumping him out of the chair, and in one of those coincidences that really buck up those covering the TV news business, McManus had announced at the start of the press conference that CBS News had recycled a new long-term deal with Schieffer, who would continue to play a large role on the evening newscast and they were still on talks about whether he'd do regular commentary for the program.

"Bob personifies some of the things" she hopes to impart as anchor of the evening news, Couric said.

"Bob is very accessible. He speaks plain English." He also gives people a "comfort level" and viewers feel they are "learning about the world with him" instead of him "imparting news from the mountaintop."

But when asked to comment on the circumstances of Rather, the man she really replaced, Couric said, "As a journalist I don't feel it's appropriate" to comment on "something I wasn't involved with, to be honest with you."

But what did you expect her to say, really?

McManus said that when he was named president of CBS News seven months ago, he decided quickly that there wasn't enough "meaningful work" for Rather, what with "60 Minutes II" having been canceled and Rather stepping down from the evening news. So he let Rather's reps know early, after which lawyers got involved. McManus told the room that he'd twice tried to get together with Rather but two scheduled lunches were canceled and the day he had his first lunch with Rather was the day Rather was scheduled to leave the network, darn the luck. He said he explained his decision to Rather and that he told Rather he wanted to stay in touch with him to get his advice on this and that.

"I do wish we could have figured out a way to keep Dan at CBS," he said, but Rather wanted to do "long-form programming," which "we don't do a lot of . . . anymore at CBS."

"I have nothing but the warmest thought about Dan and hope we stay in touch," he said.

After choking that down, critics ruminated on Couric's insistence that the opportunity to become the first woman to solo anchor a Big Three newscast was not the reason she took the job. It was the "paucity of occasions" on which these jobs become available, though she said her two young daughters were "like Helen Reddy" round the kitchen table when she was in talks, telling her she had to do this because she'd be the first woman "and I thought, 'Where did you come from?' "

Couric said women had come a long way in TV journalism since she got into the biz. And if they needed proof: It was a man who asked Couric what she planned to wear on her first night anchoring the "CBS Evening News." And he was immediately chastised by McManus, who wanted to know whether the guy put the same question to Charlie Gibson before he became anchor of the ABC evening newscast.

The reporter has since noted that it's too late, since Gibson has already taken over that anchor chair, but has promised to ask Gibson why he wore what he wore when Gibson appears at the press tour later this week.

We'll keep you posted on this important development as part of a TV Column push to add more perspective and greater context, go a little deeper and be less depressing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/16/AR2006071600961_pf.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 01:36 AM

TV Notebook
‘Law & Order’ Meets the Law of Supply and Demand

By Jacques Steinberg The New York Times

For Dick Wolf, the burly former advertising executive who created the “Law & Order” franchise 16 years ago, the news this past spring was often as grim as the yellow-taped crime scenes depicted on the original series and its various spinoffs and imitators.

In early May, NBC canceled his most recent offering, “Conviction,” about life among young prosecutors in New York City, after only a 13-week run — and only a year after the network pulled the plug on a predecessor, “Law & Order: Trial by Jury,” that had explored similar dramatic territory using the same stage sets in Astoria, Queens.

Later in the month, when the final Nielsen numbers were tabulated, Mr. Wolf could surely celebrate the ratings for one of his three remaining series, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” which were up for the year, propelling it to a Top 20 finish among prime-time network shows. But any good feelings were leavened by the dwindling audience for the original “Law & Order,” which was down 15 percent over all from the previous season and down 30 percent over two years. The viewership for another spinoff, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” the lowest-rated in the franchise, also receded substantially.

Those last two performances have raised questions about whether there is still a critical mass of network television viewers for three hours of original “Law & Order” programming each week, especially when increasing numbers of them are flocking to other so-called procedurals — including three iterations of “CSI” as well as “Without a Trace,” “NCIS” and “Cold Case.” All six of those crime dramas are on CBS, and each drew more viewers last season than any version of “Law & Order,” according to Nielsen Media Research.

And yet when Mr. Wolf, 59, maneuvered his 6-foot-4 frame behind a table at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan for breakfast recently, his mood was ebullient, his enthusiasm for his surviving shows seemingly undiminished. The main reason, at least at that moment, was a front-page headline in that morning’s New York Post, which blared: “KING OF BLING BUSTED — JACOB THE JEWELER IN COKE-CASH RAP.”

Paraphrasing the story for a visitor, Mr. Wolf described how Jacob Arabo, an immigrant from Uzbekistan whose creations had draped Madonna, Diddy and other performers, was being accused of laundering money for a drug network in Detroit. “That,” he said with assurance, “will be a ‘Law & Order’ next year.”

While Mr. Wolf was signaling that he will continue, as he has from the inception of “Law & Order,” to rely on real-life headlines to seed the plots for the coming season, many other elements of the shows will be unfamiliar to regular viewers. During this summer’s hiatus, “the brand,” as he is fond of calling the original and its spinoffs, is undergoing its most sweeping makeover since “Law & Order” first appeared on NBC in September 1990.

Among television dramas, its uninterrupted run is second only to that of “Gunsmoke,” which ran from 1955 to 1975 on CBS. Little wonder that it is now seeking an infusion of energy sufficient to lure back old viewers and win new ones.

“It did start to show some age last year,” Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, said in an interview, referring specifically to the ratings for the original “Law & Order,” though he could well have been talking about the brand as a whole. “I just think next year it could use a little bit of an ‘x’ factor to make it pop.”

Thus when the mother ship, as the original “Law & Order” is known backstage, sets sail on NBC again this fall, two stars, Dennis Farina and Annie Parisse, will be gone. They are being replaced by two actresses cast by Mr. Wolf: Milena Govich (late of “Conviction”) and Alana De La Garza (whose character on “CSI: Miami” was killed off last season).

The show will also move from Wednesdays at 10 to Fridays at 10, where it will no longer have to go up against “CSI: NY,” which, with an audience of about 14 million, outdrew “Law & Order” by about three million viewers a week last season.

On “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” which is more centered on the psychology of crime than the original, Vincent D’Onofrio and Chris Noth will again alternate episodes playing lead detectives. But Mr. Noth’s character will have a new partner (Julianne Nicholson of “Conviction,” who replaces Annabella Sciorra). And both characters will report to a new commanding officer (Jamey Sheridan is leaving but has not yet been replaced) and will deal with a new assistant district attorney (Nona Gaye, who replaces Courtney B. Vance).

Even “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” the most popular show in the franchise with a viewership just shy of “CSI: NY,” will undergo a short-term casting change. Mariska Hargitay, who has received Emmy nominations over the last three seasons for her portrayal of a sex-crimes detective, will miss six of the first nine episodes. She recently gave birth to her first child, and her character will be replaced temporarily by a warrants detective played by Connie Nielsen.

“I see all of this as an opportunity,” Mr. Wolf said before being consumed by a wheezy, self-deprecating laugh. “It’s an opportunity, unless you choose badly.”

While the scale of those casting changes may be unusually high, Mr. Wolf has long been regarded as among the most skillful producers at helping acclimate audiences to new characters — whether it was Paul Sorvino replacing George Dzundza in the role of detective after Season One of the original series (followed by Jerry Orbach the following year), or Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy breaking in no fewer than four assistant district attorneys over the last decade. “If the past is any example,” said Mr. Waterston, who joined the cast in 1994, “it’s always been fresh wind coming out of these changes, though it’s been crummy to say goodbye.”

Mr. Wolf seemed less sentimental. When Ms. Parisse, whose character served as Mr. Waterston’s most recent sidekick, approached the producers last season to say she wanted to leave to pursue a movie career, Mr. Wolf said, his reaction was blunt. “It was: ‘Oh, thank you for coming in early. You don’t mind if we kill you, do you?’ ” he recalled. In the season finale, viewers saw Ms. Parisse’s character end up dead in the trunk of a car, a casualty of a drug-and-murder investigation left unresolved in anticipation of next season.

One element of “Law & Order” that sets it apart from many of its competitors is Mr. Wolf’s insistence that the show limit references to the main characters’ back stories, to keep the focus on the crime du jour. Thus over the course of 12 seasons viewers have learned little about Mr. Waterston’s McCoy beyond passing references to his love of the Chicago Bulls, his divorce and his daughter. Mr. Wolf noted that on “NYPD Blue,” by contrast, Dennis Franz’s Andy Sipowicz, an alcoholic, lost a wife and son to violence.

“Those shows had to keep raising the bar,” he said. “When you flirt with getting into much more character-driven stuff, you end up having to go higher and higher to get the same effect. It’s like drugs.”

And yet with two new characters appearing this fall on the mother ship, Mr. Wolf said he had little choice but to devote some time to telling audiences who they are. Early on, viewers will learn that the detective played by Ms. Govich had a father and two brothers on the police force and that she herself got her gold shield with lightning speed. “Saturday morning at 9 o’clock, she’s getting her hair done,” Mr. Wolf said, setting the scene staccato-style. “A guy comes in to rob the salon. Starts pistol-whipping the girl at the front desk. She pulls her gun. He turns on her. And she drops him.”

In addition to the relative inexperience of Ms. Govich’s detective, Mr. Wolf said the writers would mine the racial tension between her character, who is white, and her partner and boss, who are black. Similarly, the writers will emphasize that the assistant district attorney played by Ms. De La Garza is Hispanic.

“Now, for better or worse, half the cast is female, and half the cast are diversified, to use the NBC word,” Mr. Wolf said.

In creating the “Law & Order” brand, Mr. Wolf drew heavily on his experience in his 20’s as an advertising executive in New York City, where, he says, he was responsible for such slogans as “You can’t beat Crest for fighting cavities.”

He later moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter, a period in which he satisfied his curiosity about true-crime stories by following a homicide detective around. “I wanted to see one of every different kind of murder,” he said, adding that his research took him to 15 crime scenes. That fascination eventually led to jobs as a writer on “Hill Street Blues” and as the show runner — a show’s day-to-day manager — on “Miami Vice.”

A native of Manhattan, Mr. Wolf now splits his time between an apartment in New York, where “Law & Order” is produced, and a home in Santa Barbara, Calif., near where it is written and edited. Mr. Wolf, whose two previous marriages ended in divorce, was married last month to Noelle Lippman, a fashion publicist.

That Mr. Wolf remains a hands-on executive producer, even after nearly two decades, was made clear to Ms. Govich during the casting for “Conviction” last year, when he ordered her to report at 6:30 one morning for a screen test on the “Law & Order” set in New York.

“He came in, took a look at the monitor as we were shooting and gave me some adjustments — more this way, more that way,” she said. “It was very helpful to know the man in charge is telling you what he wanted.”

Mr. Wolf’s high level of engagement may give the shows a unified voice, but it can also be wearing on those network executives responsible for putting them on the air, and occasionally taking them off.

“Dick is passionate, particular, demanding — very demanding, extremely demanding,” said Mr. Reilly of NBC Entertainment, who first worked with Mr. Wolf as a network development executive during the series’s first season. “He also probably has the best understanding of the broadcast business of any show runner I’ve ever come across. Which sometimes makes it difficult to debate with him or to maneuver over him with network hocus-pocus.”

Both men acknowledge that when Mr. Reilly telephoned Mr. Wolf last year to tell him that the network was canceling “Law & Order: Trial by Jury” after only half a season, the conversation was volatile. “I wouldn’t say it was a high-water mark for the relationship,” Mr. Reilly said. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about it.” Mr. Wolf said only that he was disappointed that NBC did not market the show as aggressively as he would have liked.

This past season, Mr. Reilly agreed to support “Conviction” with far more promotion than had been the case with “Trial by Jury.” But Mr. Wolf said the series was ultimately doomed by its time slot, on Friday nights, when few of the young viewers the network was trying to attract, à la “Grey’s Anatomy,” were home to watch.

Still, said Mr. Wolf, “It would be unseemly to complain when you’ve got three other shows on the network.” He might have added that reruns of “Law & Order” and its offshoots, all owned by NBC Universal, have at times fed three of NBC’s cable channels — USA, Bravo and even Sci Fi — as well as TNT, all of which have combined to make Mr. Wolf very wealthy.

And yet, in an interview last month, he could not resist nipping at the hand that rewards him so handsomely. “Did you see the N.H.L. numbers?” he asked in reference to the ratings for the National Hockey League finals on NBC on a recent night. “Do you know what NBC did at 8 o’clock?” he asked. “A one” — meaning one ratings point, or about 1.3 million viewers between 18 and 49.

Similarly, he said the losses experienced by the original “Law & Order” and “Criminal Intent” were at least partly attributable to the weak lead-ins they received from NBC’s anemic prime-time schedule, which finished the season ranked fourth among the four major broadcast networks for the second year in a row, after a decade at No. 1. (And “Criminal Intent” had to compete not only with “Desperate Housewives” but also with “The Sopranos” for part of the year.)

For all the tinkering he has been doing this summer, Mr. Wolf knows that the fate of his franchise may ultimately be out of his hands, determined instead by the performance of the network’s new slate of fall shows, including a comedy from Tina Fey called “30 Rock” and a drama from Aaron Sorkin called “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.”

“As soon as they get a couple of hits, there will be more promo time,” he said, meaning that spots on the new shows could be used to help boost the old. “I hope it works.”

“You have to understand,” he added, “I am the biggest rooter for anything that ends up working on the network.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/arts/television/16stei.html?ei=5087%0A&en=af77cfde297da066&ex=1153195200&pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:26 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
On The Tour:

"The Amazing Race,'' "CSI,'' "Close to Home'' and other partying with the CBS stars

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News in his blog July 17, 2006

OK, The Tour is sometimes known as the Bataan Death March with cocktail parties and it's time for the first party report. With all due respect to the bashes thrown last week by cable, the first really cool evening affair came over the weekend when CBS did its show on the floor of the Rose Bowl (where Michael Young reigned supreme over USC back in January). It included the Goodyear blimp, the UCLA marching band (or at least a part of it, doing -- among others -- rendition of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It") and a punt, pass and kick competition.

Of course, it was also a great opportunity to do all kinds of work including interviews and gathering nuggets of news. (Note to my colleagues at the Mothership: I'm not blowing smoke here, honest.)

And, of course, you learn some and observe things you just have to share:

• The producers of "CSI'' and "Grey's Anatomy'' -- the two blockbuster shows that will do mortal battle at 9 p.m. Thursday in the fall -- met for the first time last week. Carol Mendelsohn of "CSI'' says she and Shonda Rhimes of "Anatomy'' didn't talk smack (too bad) although she did tell
Rhimes that she has watched the ABC show every Sunday so she can talk about it on Monday. "I guess I can talk about it on Fridays too,'' she says.

• David James Elliott really has come back from the dead after "JAG.'' He was on hand promoting his new role on "Close to Home'' as a love interest for Jennifer Finnigan's Annabeth Chase who lost her husband at the end of the show's first season. By the way, Finnigan is still engaged to Jonathan ("The Single Guy'') Silverman who was on hand at the Rose Bowl. Lucky guy.

• Even television stars get the blues. The co-star of a CBS series, who shall remain nameless because he really is a great guy, is still getting over a breakup with his equally-famous actress girlfriend more than a year ago. It's so obvious when he talks about her that you just want to give him a big (but manly) hug.

• Some TV folks have talents you don't expect. Phil Keoghan, host of "The Amazing Race,'' showed some strong leg as he drilled a couple of field goals from 40 yards out and barely missed a couple more. (Best I could do was hitting the upright from 20 but, hey, Phil's younger.) He also gave up his secret about keeping from sweating through his shirts in warm locales on "Race.'' It involves sanitary pads and that's probably more than you want to know.

• Sometimes it's hard to get the top executives on the same message. CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler had spent much of the day, trying to lower ratings expectations for "CSI'' in its fall battle with "Anatomy.'' It's a page of Fox's "viewership for American Idol has to drop sometime'' playbook. (Before you think I'm dissing Tassler, I should say that she is witty, intelligent, TV-loving and much more candid in one-on-one conversation.)

The problem: Leslie Moonves -- the president and CEO of all things CBS -- repeatedly sang a slightly different at the party. He told a gaggle of reporters (and I'm paraphrasing here) that "CSI'' will do its usual 26, 27 million viewers, "Anatomy'' will do its usual 23, 24 million, there's plenty of room for two blockbuster shows in one time period and both CBS and ABC will end up very happy. Of course, he also pointed out the shows will suck the air out of the 9 p.m. Thursday hour and Fox, NBC and the CW won't be happy. He didn't say this but if I were a member of the cast of the once-hot "The O.C.'' -- which will enter this battlefield after Fox finishes its commitment to baseball in November -- I'd start looking for a new gig.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/07/on_the_tour_the.html#more

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:44 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
“CSI” secrets and Rachael Ray’s new talker

By Diane Holloway Austin American-Statesman in her TV blog Monday, July 17, 2006

In the May cliffhanger for CBS’ “CSI,” Capt. Brass was lying in a hospital bed, recovering from a barrage of gunshot wounds, and Grissom and Sara were in an off-job situation hinting that they’ve been romantic for quite some time.

Surprise! This hinted-at relationship between Griss and Sara will heat up next season. And of course Brass will survive, but the romance is a hotter topic as the show heads toward its Thursday showdown with ABC’s super-hot “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Jorja Fox declined to “kiss and tell,” but creative producer Carol Mendelsohn said fans will learn the juicy details about this twosome soon. First, that their Vegas relationship precedes Vegas and actually started when they both lived and worked in San Francisco. Second, that their “CSI” colleagues will be in the dark about the twosome.

Perhaps oddly, Fox said the intensely personal scenes, dropped into the middle of a case-focused procedural drama, can be nerve-wracking to play.

“There’s a certain calm and peace in doing a procedural,” she said. “These personal snapshots are exciting and terrifying. There’s safety in sticking with the fiber and flies.”

Rachael Ray at the range …

Touting her new fall syndicated daytime talk show, Rachael Ray decided the food in the luxury hotel here just wasn’t comforting enough for the nation’s TV press corps, so she whipped up hundreds of miniburgers — beef, turkey and veggie.

“Let’s go to the ballroom and have burgers,” Ray announced after she quipped and guffawed her way through an hour-long lovefest with reporters. “We can keep talking, but I need a snack.”

How does this bundle of energy manage to write more than a dozen cookbooks, host several TV shows on the Food Network, keep a whirlwind speaking tour AND launch a new daytime talker?

“Starbucks,” she snorted. “It helps me find a lot of time, and you just reorganize.”

Ray insists her show won’t be a sit-on-the-couch-and-tell-me-your-woes show.

“Nobody would take me seriously,” she howled. “I mean, I’m a bobblehead! There’s going to be nothing serious going on.”

Plus, she says her No. 1 rule is “no crying … and no finger-wagging. I don’t like a lot if experts.”

Oprah Winfrey is backing Ray’s show, which means it has deep pockets. But what will make it succeed is Ray’s down-to-earth, food-oriented, kitchen-chatter approach to life.

“I’m probably the only show in daytime that has a driveway and a garage,” she chuckled. “I’m pretty proud of that.”

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/tvblog/

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:52 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Is nightly news a tough sell? Not with Couric, CBS hopes

By Phil Rosenthal Chicago Tribune Media Columnist July 17, 2006

PASADENA, Calif. -- At CBS News, far more than its network rivals, the past always has had a presence.

That meant one thing when its past was Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, something else when its past came to include such a polarizing figure as Dan Rather.

So, seven weeks ahead of the launch of "The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric," the network is not just selling Couric as the new face of CBS News.

It is trying to sell a new CBS News.

"There should have been a time, maybe before the last couple of years, when we should have said: `All right, we can't rest on these laurels. We've lost audience. How do we fix this thing?'" said Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS Corp. who installed CBS Sports boss Sean McManus atop the news division to spearhead the makeover while he wooed NBC's Couric, 49, as his anchor star at $15 million per year.

"Things had been bad for way too long. There wasn't enough momentum and enough change. It should have been done earlier," Moonves said. "[But] I think the perception has already changed."

Whatever one thinks of CBS News--for which Couric will anchor the evening news, report for "60 Minutes," anchor a radio newscast and contribute Internet content--it will look and sound different, though, obviously, that is not necessarily the same as actually being different.

Five new senior producers have been hired for Couric's evening newscast, and one of her old producers at NBC has been recruited as an executive charged with nothing but attending to graphics and "the look" of CBS' news programs.

So, beginning the day after Labor Day, transplanted "Today" co-host Couric can take her place in front of a prompter on a new set, with new graphics and new theme music.

She noted she does not intend to sing, as she did occasionally on "Today." But her give and take at a media event here Sunday suggests she still can dance quite nimbly.

"We've been talking a lot about how the newscast can be different and look different and yet also not alienate its core viewers," said Couric, taking her pitch to reporters as she stages a series of off-the-record "town hall meetings" in key precincts around the country to solicit--or at least appear to solicit--viewer input.

The first priority is a bigger share of the 25 million people, mostly old, already making time to watch one nightly network newscast or another. "So to put on a show that's so jarring and so different to the audience that's used to watching our program would be a mistake," McManus said, touting Couric's newscast with such marketing-friendly "-nt" words as "intelligent," "relevant" and "transparent."

Couric took the credit/blame for shutting reporters out of her six-city focus groups, listening tour or whatever it's to be called, saying she thought participants would be more forthcoming that way. "It just wasn't a photo op or a press opportunity," she said of the campaign swing set to end Monday in San Francisco.

But she nonetheless reported that recurring themes on the tour included a desire for more context, depth and critical thinking in reporting. Oh, and the news is too depressing.

"Now obviously we can't sugarcoat what's going on in the world," Couric said. "But there are cases where I believe we can be more solution-oriented."

Whether being more positive was why Couric tried to dodge a question about what she thought about Rather's ouster after 44 years at CBS isn't clear. She said that "as a journalist," she didn't think it was "appropriate" to comment, which left journalists in the crowd unimpressed.

When a reporter brought up comments here last week by Rather and former "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel about the need for more international reporting on the networks, McManus called that "an absurd thesis," noting that at least 15 network correspondents are in the Middle East covering the Israel-Hezbollah fighting.

McManus also dismissed the idea that CBS News pays a price in the Nielsen ratings for a perception of being left-leaning, saying "The CBS Evening News" trails "NBC Nightly News" and ABC's "World News Tonight" not because of "bias or lack of bias," but because of "our lead-ins around the country, which are paltry compared to what ABC or NBC have."

Still, Couric unquestionably benefits as anchor from succeeding not Rather, but Bob Schieffer, whose folksy approach has helped CBS gain 300,000 viewers.

"Schieffer certainly restored credibility, respect, trust," Moonves said, and McManus said Schieffer will have a prominent role in Couric's newscast.

Even as she sat on a stage in a hotel ballroom, Couric claimed to be miffed to be considered big news. ("I'm really excited to stop talking about this and start doing the job.") But when asked to address her appeal, the one-time "Tonight Show" guest host called her approach "a bit more accessible."

Asked what her anchor attire would be, with a reporter noting that Rather's brief adoption of sweaters caused much discussion, she acted as though it was a ridiculous question.

Later, having joked that she'll use Charles Gibson's ABC stylist, she relented, acknowledging "it's a visual medium" and "women have more choices and it's a little more interesting" when it comes to clothes, but it's not something she spends a lot of time thinking about.

Whatever she wears, the main thing is that people see CBS News differently.

"Financially, it is still a very important part of the network; however, the image of a network is very much tied to its news division," Moonves said. "I've probably gotten more congratulations about signing Katie Couric than from anything else I've done at this network."

Having sold her on CBS, she now has to sell America on CBS News.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0607170124jul17,1,2078723,print.story?coll=chi-business-hed

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:56 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
GE's Immet Sees Brighter Days for NBC, Aided by "Fantastic" Cable Nets

By Anthony Crupi MediaWeek.com July 17, 2006 -

The chief executive of General Electric on Friday said that while NBC Universal remains “a drag” on the company’s operating results, the television division is “making progress.”

Speaking to analysts and investors during the company’s second quarter earnings call, GE chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt said that NBC Universal profits dropped 10 percent versus the same period a year ago, meeting GE’s earlier projections. NBCU posted a net profit of $882 million on the quarter, down from $979 million a year ago.

While NBCU continues to weather the rough reception its broadcast network received in last year’s upfront––NBC revenues fell by approximately $900 million versus the 2004 upfront––Immelt said he expects to see a turnaround beginning with the fourth quarter of this year.

“When you look forward at NBC, we feel good about the progress,” Immelt said. “If you look at the pieces, we feel that the upfront and the buzz around the prime time is going to allow us to stabilize the network, which is all we really had to do, given the other momentum we have in the rest of NBC Universal.”

Whatever the buzz NBC is generating with its fall prime-time lineup, the network has struggled to retain a young audience. The network ended the 2005-'06 TV season in fourth place among the 18-49 demo, marking its second consecutive year in the basement.

Immelt said that while NBC needs to improve, its cable networks, which include USA Network and the Sci-Fi Channel, have been “fantastic.” The chairman also singled out the NBCU cable news networks, which saw operating profit increase 28 percent in the quarter.

While the cable upfront remains logjammed, Immelt said that CPMs have generally been up thus far in the season, while broadcast closed down 5 percent. Immelt estimated that NBCU’s total upfront take for the 2006-‘07 season––including all day parts, plus cable and the NFL––will tally $3.85 billion. That total is flat versus the revenues NBCU registered in the second quarter of 2005.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840280

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:03 AM

Sports On TV
Tirico buckles up for British golf marathon

By Michael Hiestand USA Today 7/17/2006

Mike Tirico, about to ease out of hosting golf because of ABC/ESPN no longer carrying PGA Tour action next year, will wind down with a marathon this week. TNT host Ernie Johnson is off for cancer treatments, so Tirico will host TNT's all-day British Open coverage — 7 a.m. ET to 7 p.m. ET — Thursday and Friday, then handle ABC's weekend action. "Once Ernie told me his chemo treatments would be taking place during the Open," TNT executive producer Jeff Behnke says, he asked ABC/ESPN about using Tirico and got an OK "within an hour."

"All I know is I get over there, sleep, drink coffee, do golf, then it's dark," says Tirico, who hosted four-day British Open coverage when early-round action used to be on ESPN. Tirico, stepping up to Monday NFL games this fall, knows TV grinds — he had seven weekends last fall where he called Thursday night and Saturday afternoon college football games, then Sunday ABC golf. Still, his heavy workload hasn't led to mistakes. He says his biggest on-air screw-up was saying, "Somebody sprained their 'left mid-foot.' "

But in airports, where he's sometimes mistaken for other announcers, he's sometimes left speechless: "One time I got mistaken for (CBS') Jim Nantz," says Tirico, whose ancestors include African-Americans and Italians. "I thought that was disturbing."

Darts debut:

It's purely intentional that ESPN will premiere its made-for-TV World Series of Darts series as a lead-in Tuesday to its latest World Series of Poker. Darts, ESPN Original Entertainment executive producer Joan Lynch says, could be the next sedentary Everyman game to be big in TV sports: "We think, in terms of production values and storytelling, there's a big connection between darts and poker. And we'll produce darts exactly like we produce poker!"

That means the action will be heavily edited to create, well, action. And just as putting cameras under cards made TV poker more palatable, ESPN hopes putting cameras in dartboards will help. Lynch says that view is a "fantastic new element." And seeing darts in slow-motion replays, she says, will be "a key element in creating storytelling." That, she suggests, is sorely needed: "A lot of people don't know about darts. They think you just go up and throw."

One pities such ignorance. Fortunately, this TV darts was taped before a savvy studio audience. "They got really worked up. You'll be surprised by the passion."

Spice rack:

TNT's Wally Dallenbach, on driver Tony Stewart being steamed after leading Sunday's Nextel Cup race on lap 91, only to hit the wall after being bumped: "That smoke is not from the tires — it's from Tony's helmet." ... Fox's Tim McCarver, on the Chicago White Sox-New York Yankees game Saturday, talked about Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina having a high IQ and being a deep thinker on the field. Fox's Joe Buck drove home that point by zeroing in this telling detail: "Look, Tim, he even walks off the mound intelligently." ... After Shane Mosley beat Fernando Vargas on HBO pay-per-view Saturday, HBO's Larry Merchant asked Mosley about his next move. "Right now I'm thinking about my tooth," Mosley said. "It's loose. May need dentures." First things first.

Racy:

After a deal formally announced Friday between CBS Sportsline and Maxim.com billed as "representing an intuitive cross-pollination of each site's respective strengths," CBS' sports website Sunday had "hotties downloads" and "hotties by state" and "hotties bedroom secrets." Charming. ... NBC's Dan Hicks, on NBC's American Century celebrity golf Sunday, noted actor Anthony Anderson played in a kilt. Said Hicks after an Anderson shot: "Not a bad swing for a man in a dress." Sounds like a reality TV show.

Running numbers:

Fifaworldcup.com, the official World Cup website, drew more than 4.3 billion page views during the monthlong soccer tournament, ComScore Media Metrix says- more than double the 2002 Cup total. About 25% of site traffic came from the USA, the research firm says, and those users averaged 52 page views a day — above the worldwide average of 35 a day. One explanation for that usage was many games were played during U.S. business hours, giving U.S. fans an attractive alternative to actually working. ... OLN's Tour de France ratings, understandably, have dropped in the post-Lance Armstrong era. OLN's live coverage is averaging less than 0.1% of OLN's households in 21 of the 55 urban markets used in overnight ratings. What Memphis, Tulsa and Louisville have in common: Fewer than 100 households, on average, are tuning in to OLN's Tour.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2006-07-17-hiestand-tirico_x.htm

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:15 AM

TV Q&A
Ask Matt

(from the Ask (TV Critic) Matt (Roush) column at TVGuide.com
By Matt Roush TVGuide.com TV Critic

Question: I find the 9 pm/ET time slot on Thursdays this fall very interesting. The race for winner is between Grey's Anatomy and CSI, but I really don't know who's going to come up on top. Nor do I care that much. What I find interesting is the effect these two shows will have on the others in the time slot. Deal or No Deal has a loyal audience that tunes in two to three times a week to watch a boring show — but hey, it pulls in the ratings and the right demos. What do you think Deal's effect will be on Grey's and CSI? Will both Grey's and CSI succeed, albeit with lower ratings, or will they cannibalize each other? If so, would that leave a greater chance for Supernatural and The O.C.? I think the loser for the time slot will probably be one of the two latter shows. What's your opinion? — Sonya

Matt Roush: This is the killer hour of the entire week, that's for sure. ABC moving Grey's Anatomy to this critically pivotal and financially lucrative night is one of the potential game-changers of the season. I'm not very gifted at ratings predictions, but I would bet there's room for CSI and Grey's to share the time period, though the numbers for both will be depressed a bit from what either could achieve against lesser competition, with (my guess) CSI outranking Grey's in total viewers, while Grey's wins in the key demos.

The addiction to the witless Deal or No Deal completely escapes me, but it's a low-risk alternative, and the Thursday installment will probably perform fine, if not spectacularly. Where this leaves the rest? In the dust. The expectations for Supernatural are really only to hold on to a fair amount of the Smallville lead-in, and that it will probably do. From my mail, I know Supernatural has a solid, loyal fan base that CW will be happy to attract on Thursdays, and it's a fun, creepy show that deserves to stick around a while. The real loser in all of this is likely to be The O.C., which didn't exactly build momentum last season and is widely thought to be on its way out after this year. Unless, of course, the show's revamp in the wake of Marissa's death pays off. Which I kind of doubt.

________________________________________

Question: I know Medium first got a 22-episode order before getting pushed back to mid-season. Will it still get 22 episodes? Medium is one of NBC's few hit series. Why would they bump it into mid-season? — Nicholas

Matt Roush: It got bumped as part of a programming shuffle once the rival networks set their schedule. (NBC went first during upfront week.) Medium vanished to make room on Mondays for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which NBC wisely realized would be slammed if kept in its originally scheduled Thursday slot (once ABC put Grey's there). If NBC had decided in its reshuffle to move Medium to Fridays, where it might have to face something like Ghost Whisperer, you'd be kvetching about that as well. NBC regards Medium as a solid utility player, ready to return when needed and when an appropriate time period emerges. If one of NBC's newbies is a quick failure, Medium could be back sooner than expected. Hard to say. But its renewal is for a full season, as far as I can tell, so I wouldn't worry unduly about this one just yet. Or maybe we should consult the real Alison. She might have seen something we haven't.

________________________________________

Question: Now that we are about halfway through summer, I am almost caught up on The Office. I am a huge fan of the British version and only started watching the American version out of curiosity, but I am glad I did. The show is hilarious and has done a wonderful job of becoming more than just "the American version."

While I have tried to stop comparing it to its predecessor, I can't help but compare the Tim-Dawn relationship with the Jim-Pam relationship. I loved how the British series ended with Tim and Dawn finally getting together, and wonder if maybe it is too soon for Jim and Pam. (Just to clarify: I am not suggesting it was a Jump the Shark moment!) I am torn, because I thought every aspect of the season finale was brilliant, but simply can't imagine an Office with Jim and Pam actually together. The best part of both shows has always been watching these characters struggling to hide their feelings for each other. What do you think? — Amy

Matt Roush: I think there are going to be plenty of obstacles before Jim and Pam become a public workplace couple. They acted on their feelings, and it was a wonderful, emotionally charged moment, but I doubt they've hit that happy-ending point that it took Tim and Dawn the end of the original series to achieve. This kiss between Jim and Pam may serve to increase the tension in the office between them and the others, or at least I hope so. Because as you said, it is too early for this part of the series to move forward so quickly and irrevocably. It's still my favorite part of the show — that and any situation that allows the entire ensemble to interact. I'm fairly confident The Office will get the Emmy for best comedy this year. Though talk about your literal crap shoots.

________________________________________

Question: In 2002 John Doe opened with a naked man curled on his side in a clearing. It moved to a close-up of his eye as it opened and looked around. In 2003 Stargate SG-1 opened its seventh season with a naked man curled on his side in a clearing. It moved to a close-up of his eye as it opened and looked around. Now in 2006 we have Kyle XY which opened with a naked man.... I know TV repeats itself, but this is a bit much. Were the same writers on all three shows? Or did everybody just like this scene so much we have to see it again and again? — Donna

Matt Roush: Not being familiar with the Stargate setup, I would just say the similarities between the John Doe and Kyle XY premises go beyond the naked-hunk-in-the-woods image, though it is a striking one. Even a classic one. Which is why it's fair game to try it again, because the fact is that this image works. Kyle seems to be getting some mileage out of it. Producers often express surprise when confronted with a scene or a shot that copies something that came before, but in this case, I can't imagine Kyle's creators being unaware of such an iconic shot as the one that also opened John Doe. Think of it as an homage, not a rip-off. And enjoy the show. It's kind of cute.

________________________________________

Question: I'm delighted to see that BBC America will be showing Life on Mars later this month, but I heard that ABC wanted a U.S. remake. I know most U.S. versions of scripted U.K. shows haven't been too successful recently (The Office is the only nonreality show I can think of that has), but given the differences in policing in the U.K. and the U.S. in the '70s, I think this one could stand a chance of being different but good in its own right, rather than a pale imitation. What do you think? Have you heard anything more about the U.S. version? — Elle

Matt Roush: All I know is what the trades originally reported, that David E. Kelley was interested in developing this provocative premise for American TV. Backing up for those unfamiliar with the show, which premieres on BBC America July 24: Despite the title, Mars isn't a sci-fi show, though it does have a heavy fantasy element. It's about a detective who is hit by a car and wakes up back in 1973, where he's still a cop, but now operating in a scrappier time without modern forensics. Is he dreaming? In a coma? Is any of this real? And why does the case he's initially assigned to seem to have echoes of the case he was working on when this time warp occurred?

I've only seen the first two episodes of the BBC America series, but I'm already hooked. And I agree, it could be very cool to give an American version a real Starsky & Hutch sheen. I haven't heard any updates about when or if an actual pilot will get a green light, but I'd love to see Kelley give it a try. (If only for the music, which Kelley is always a master at. The title refers to a David Bowie song. He has it on his iPod at the time of the accident, and later, it's being played on a rickety 8-track. Remember them?)

________________________________________

Question: I was reading about how Six Degrees is the first U.S. series to air in the U.K. during prime time in nine areas, and I wondered, "What if it's a hit there but a bomb here?" I know you don't always like the hypotheticals, but would ABC stick with it longer with that added investment from the BBC? (I mean, they did renew What About Brian.) Or if it were canceled here, would it also be canceled there, even if it was a U.K. smash? — Josh

Matt Roush: If it doesn't work on ABC, it won't matter how well it's playing overseas — Six Degrees will be zero degrees. It's not going to stay in production just to satisfy other markets, unless of course it decides to make history or something. Which, having seen it, I strongly doubt. It's intriguing, but a bit pretentious, nebulous and terribly contrived. I'm curious to see what J.J. Abrams will do with this one, if he has time and gets the chance.

________________________________________

Question: In last Friday's column, someone asked about the new shows on Monday night. You passed over Heroes, but later mentioned that it "had its work cut out." I was wondering what you thought about the quality of the show. I find its current advertisements very intriguing, and it is definitely the fall show I am looking forward to the most. — Mike

Matt Roush: I'm in limbo over Heroes because NBC only sent out a partial pilot (not even including all of the primary characters) for what I have to imagine will be a two-hour launch. What I saw didn't grip me. It seemed awfully heavy-handed, and I found it hard to get into the characters (normal people with extraordinary powers) at first, with a bit too much yada-yada about fate and destiny. It does have "cult TV" written all over it, that's for sure. And we saw how well that worked out for Surface, Threshold, Invasion, etc., last season. I'm going to wait until I hear from NBC's network execs and the show's creative team at the end of press tour this week before I form any stronger opinions. At the very least, it's fair to be skeptical that one of the major networks will nurture a show like this, given the evidence last season.

________________________________________

Question: In reaction to your remark about Aaron Spelling, "We can never have too many guilty pleasures," I'm pretty sure that's not true. I do know that we can have too much, and Aaron Spelling (no offense to him as a person) was responsible for an inordinately large percentage of the crap that has infected our TV screens in the last few decades. His loss is certainly a sad thing for his family and the hundreds of people for whom his shows provided employment. But I don't think it was much of a creative loss. I wish I could say that TV is better without his input, but a glance around the dial would prove me wrong. He was pretty good as a bit player on Dragnet. — Rick

Matt Roush: This is such a breathtakingly ungenerous assessment of Spelling's impact on TV, disregarding the great enjoyment his shows gave millions of viewers. I wouldn't trade those few great seasons of Dynasty, Melrose Place and (harking back to my adolescence) that first year of Charlie's Angels for anything. And for those who were there at the time, having The Love Boat and Fantasy Island on Saturdays for several seasons may have been a huge step down from the CBS glory days of the '70s, but as harmless escapism, they were essential.

Few of his shows may actually have been great, but many were great fun, and quite a few tapped a chord that resonates in the culture to this day. Anyone who can't appreciate the appeal of a guilty pleasure in its place and time, especially when so many of his productions helped define the time, fails to understand what network prime-time TV is all about. There should be something for all tastes (or even lack of taste), and Spelling had a knack for populist entertainment that sometimes was good and often was painfully mediocre. Without him, the TV landscape would have been a lot less interesting.

________________________________________

Question: I am so glad to read that you're watching So You Think You Can Dance! During the fall, I watch dramas like Lost and Veronica Mars (and shun American Idol), so I don't know why I find Dance so appealing. Well, maybe I do — the dancing is fantastic, and it's great to see trained dancers instead of the Dancing with the Stars amateurs. Plus, they've done a brilliant job casting talented, likable contestants. (Benji and Donyelle are delightful!) And, as you pointed out, the judges seem like true assessors of merit, rather than simply a sideshow. I hope you'll post a Dispatch after the finale and let us know how you feel about the winners. — Jill

Matt Roush: Because of the ongoing press tour, I'm going to let reality TV slide for the next few weeks (everything but Project Runway, which I'm recording), but I promise to rejoin Dance for its final weeks. (And Benji and Donyelle had better be there when I get back; they're my faves as well.) I imagine I'll be covering many of the summer-reality finales, especially for these performance-based shows, as they reach their big finishes in late summer and early fall.

________________________________________

Question: I'm sorry I'm a little late on this one, but I for one am thrilled about this year's Emmy nominations. Lost and Desperate Housewives had their chance last year; it's time to move on. I think it was completely fair to honor shows like The West Wing and Will & Grace in their final seasons. And you can't pretend you're totally surprised by that: The West Wing practically owns the deed to the Emmy Awards by now. I wish everyone would stop complaining and deal with it. This isn't even half as bad as the 2006 Oscars. Reese Witherspoon? Come on. — Skye

Matt Roush: Hello, calling the logic police. If it's time to move on (already?) from Lost and Desperate Housewives (the latter snub not so much an outrage, given its decline in quality), how then is it still appropriate to reward Will & Grace with all those nominations, when the entire world had already moved on? I wasn't in the least surprised at the West Wing nomination, and given the show's much-improved final season, I'm not even that chagrined. The point to be made in all of the Emmy analysis (and aren't you glad I waited this long to bring this subject up in this week's column?) is that while we complain about repeat nominees and winners year after year, some shows deserve to make the cut if they sustained quality from season to season. In my (and many others') book, Lost earned that nomination. To be passed over based on the submission of a single episode exposes the incredible, gaping flaws of this nomination system.

Still on the Emmys, here's this from Rob: "Given this year's list of nominees, it is safe to say I will not be watching. What are people smoking not to nominate Edie Falco or Marcia Cross, the two best performances all year! I just hope this year's Emmys have the worst ratings they have ever gotten and more people like myself boycott it. The Emmys are supposed to honor the best, not the mediocre. Will you actually watch this year?"

Yes, I'm going to watch. It's my job. Even if it weren't, I'd probably tune in out of curiosity over how they try to make the proverbial silk purse out of an especially rotten sow's ear. The fact that so many of my presumed front-runners in certain categories aren't even nominated lessens my usual rooting interest in many of the races. Predicting this year's winners will be a chore, a shrug and an absolute toss-up. But the Emmys, however damaged, are still a big deal, and ignoring the big night is not an option — for me, anyway. Given the late-August airdate, I imagine there will be many millions of regular Emmy viewers who will be otherwise engaged. And these nominations aren't giving them much reason to care, that's for sure.

http://tvguide.com/tv/roush/askmatt/

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:46 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
On the mend.

By Jonathan Storm Philadelphia Inquirer Television Critic July 17, 2006

CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, seriously injured May 29 in Iraq by a car bomb that killed her camera- and soundman, should be out of the hospital and into rehab this week, CBS News President Sean McManus reported Sunday.

Having lost 30 units of blood, "Kimberly has no real reason to be alive," McManus said. She has use of her legs "and no mental effects," he said, praising military physicians who have ministered to her and calling her recovery "miraculous."

"She's going to make it and continue to be a good reporter for our team," McManus said.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/15054031.htm

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:54 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Red Carpet

By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer in her blog “Moraes On TV”

A Goodyear blimp hovers over the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, welcoming critics to the CBS Summer TV Press Tour Punt, Pass, and Kick party.

Another sports-themed CBS party -- another opportunity for CBS to serve hotdogs to critics.

Photographers are lined up outside the stadium at Gate A, next to a sad little strip of red carpet which has been laid down on the asphalt next to a chain-link fence, over which a white plastic backdrop plastered with the CBS "eye" logo has been hung.

It's 100 degrees in the shade and there is no shade, but stars of CBS sitcoms and dramas, getting out of their stretch limos, get into line, where they will wait in the heat for their turn to be photographed, faux-spontaneously arriving on the red carpet.

The celebs hug each other and chat while they wait in line. Some continue to hug, hang out and cut up on the red carpet. The cast of CBS's new sitcom "The Class" squeeze together on the red carpet so as to all be in the same shot.

"[Expletive] retards - they don't get it - do they want these published?" one photographer grumbles.

"They joke around and then the woman pushes them through," he says, referring to a female wrangler who appears to be employed by CBS and who shepards the on-air talent through like a border collie on sheep.

"We've got talent that will definitely publish, but they're not doing singles," the photographer complains to the wrangler after "The Class" cast have left.

"If it's a new show sometimes they want a group shot," the wrangler explains.

"But it will never run," the photographer snaps.

Jeri Ryan, who's starring with James Woods in CBS's new drama "Shark," arrives with her publicist, who insists on standing too close to her for the photographers, even when they shout at him to move away from her. They figure he's trying to get into the shot.

"I have never seen a publicist more in the way - and he's wearing a green shirt!" one photog complains.

Holland Taylor, who plays the mother of Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer on "Two and a Half Men," arrives; she's a real pro on the line.

"Is it Holland Taylor or Taylor Holland?" one photographer asks another. They have to identify each photo.

Melanie Lynskey, the stalker chick from "Two and a Half Men" arrives, wearing a sort of Grecian red dress with plunging neckline. She goes straight into arrivals-at-the-party pose: chest out, ankles crossed, pouty smile.

"We've got Charlie, guys!" one photographer shouts to his colleagues as Sheen gets out of a limo.

Sheen's playing it cool, standing a few feet away from the strip of carpet, making the photographers wait. After the carpet's been empty for a few minutes and he has their undivided attention, he steps on to the carpet, hands shoved into his jeans pockets. He stops, arches his right eyebrow and faces the cameras.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:56 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Color-Blind Casting

By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer in her blog “Moraes On TV”

"Friends" exec producer David Crane came to Summer TV Press Tour 2006 over the weekend to promote his next all-white ensemble sitcom about a bunch of people living in an urban East Coast setting - this time Philly.

It's called "The Class," it's for CBS, and it's about a group of 20-somethings who have known each other since third grade and who get together for a reunion of sorts.

"Why aren't there any people of color in this show set in 2006?" one critic wanted to know.

"It is something that is unfortunate," Crane said, putting on his Sad Face.

"It happened because when we wrote the script, we wrote it color-blind... and then we auditioned. For six months we saw just a huge range and diversity of actors and at the end of the day these were absolutely the eight actors who were absolutely right for the parts."

Wouldn't you think that, in this day and age, the TV industry talk on the West Side of Los Angeles would have labored long and hard to come up with something fresher than that old line? Crane and gang were using this one back when "Friends" debuted in the mid 90's.

We weren't the only member of the press who found it lame:

"When the word 'color-blind' casting is almost always used, is it possible that color-blind casting isn't working and you need to think about some other way? Because color-blind doesn't seem to do it," one critic cracked

"Having gotten to the end of the process, I would say 'yeah.' If we had it to do over again, I think we wouldn't. I think we would have approached the piece differently," he said, which also sounded suspiciously familiar.

"Is it possible that it has to start in the writing?" the critic continued.

"I'm absolutely agreeing with you. I think whatever we do next -- hopefully we won't have too much opportunity to, because we'll be busy doing this -- but whatever we do next, yeah, I think that is absolutely the case."

And, he promised, we'll see some actual non-white characters in future episodes of the series. Turns out, twins Kat and Lina were adopted by Korean parents, while Nicole's stepdaughter has an African-American mother.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:07 PM

Sunday Overnights in the 18-49 Demo
Sunday bomb for CBS's 'Big Brother'

Timeslot debut draws a weak 2.1 in 18-49s
By Toni Fitzgerald MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer July 17, 2006

CBS moved “Big Brother” from little-watched Saturday to Sunday in part to attract a bigger audience for its marquee summer show. But as with so many of the network’s programming decisions this summer, this one didn’t work very well.

Last night’s Sunday premiere of “Big Brother: All-Stars” averaged a 2.1 adults 18-49 overnight rating, tying for third place amid a sea of reruns in the 8 p.m. timeslot.

What’s more, the show improved by just 11 percent on the Saturday premiere rating for last year’s sixth edition of “Brother,” which averaged a 1.9. It was the lowest-rated episode of the show, which also airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, thus far, half a point behind Thursday’s 2.6 average for the most recent episode.

“Brother” finished behind NBC’s “Dateline” at 2.8 and Fox’s two reruns of “The Simpsons” at 2.5. It tied for third with ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

And the show provided no leadoff punch for the newly rejiggered CBS Sunday lineup, which also made its debut last night. “Cold Case” moved back an hour, to 9 p.m., and averaged a 1.8, on par with its average the previous week.

Thursday’s “Without a Trace” took over the 10 p.m. timeslot and averaged a 1.8, just 0.1 ahead of NBC’s third-place “Crossing Jordan.” Of course summer repeats are not a good indicator of how a show will perform come fall, but CBS will undoubtedly be disappointed that “Brother” could not provide at least a bit more ratings punch.

The show’s average through four episodes is 2.6, down 13 percent from last summer’s 3.0 at this time.

It has been a disappointing summer in general for CBS, whose 18-49 average is down from last summer. The network has already yanked one show, “Tuesday Night Book Club,” off the air and has seen disappointing results from “Gameshow Marathon” and “Rock Star: Supernova.”

Meanwhile, Fox led the night among adults 18-49 with a 2.1 rating and a 7 share, just ahead of NBC at 2.0/6, ABC at 1.8/6, CBS at 1.8/5 and Univision and the WB both at 0.8/2.

At 7 p.m., NBC was No. 1 for the first hour of a "Dateline" rerun at 1.8, followed by Fox's repeats of "Malcolm in the Middle" and "King of the Hill" at 1.5, CBS's "60 Minutes" at 1.4, ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" repeat at 1.2, WB's pair of "Reba" repeats at 0.8 and Univision's "Hora Pico" at 0.7.

At 8 p.m., NBC was No. 1 again for the second hour of "Dateline" at 2.8, followed by Fox's "The Simpsons" and "American Dad" reruns at 2.5, CBS's "Big Brother 7: All-Stars" and ABC's "Home Edition" repeat at 2.1 and Univision's "Cantando por un Sueño" and WB's "Charmed" rerun both at 0.8.

At 9 p.m., Fox's repeats of "Family Guy" and "War at Home" led at 2.5, followed by NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" repeat at 1.9, CBS's "Cold Case" rerun at 1.8, ABC's "Desperate Housewives" rerun at 1.5, Univision's "Cantando" at 0.9 and WB's "Charmed" rerun at 0.7.

At 10 p.m., ABC was No. 1 at 2.4 for a "Grey's Anatomy" rerun, ahead of CBS's "Without a Trace" rerun at 1.8, NBC's "Crossing Jordan" repeat at 1.7 and Univision's "Cantando" at 0.9.

Among households, NBC won the night at a 5.4 rating and 10 share, followed by CBS at 4.7/8, ABC at 3.5/6, Fox at 2.7/5, and Univision and WB both at 1.2/2.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_6024.asp

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:11 PM

Sunday’s network prime-time ratings are now at the top of RATINGS NEWS (the first post in this thread).

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:15 PM

If I owned a station in a small market, I would be afraid, very afraid of news like this:

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS Ponders Digital Versions of Lineup

By Jim Benson Broadcasting & Cable 7/16/2006

As the industry moves closer to reaching a solution over the issue of digital programming rights, CBS is creating separate digital storylines for its new apocalyptic 8 p.m. Wednesday fall drama, Jericho.

The network is exploring doing the same with all of its comedies and dramas, said Nancy Tellem, president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group, Sunday at the Television Critics Assn. summer press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

While the specially crafted digital Jericho brand could be extended to CBS.com, other original programming crafted from network series could appear in a variety of venues-ranging from CBS' recently created ad-supported, Web-based Innertube to iPods, cellular phones and other new wireless technologies in development, depending on the best fit.

CBS has had discussions with all of its series producers, who Tellem said are "interested in finding organic ways to be on the internet."

While she was not ready to specifically single out any shows other than Jericho that are ready to go, Tellem pointed to younger-skewing Monday night comedies, such as incoming The Class and sophomore How I Met Your Mother, as two examples of the type of formats that could be applied to the digital world.

Tellem also revealed that she is "very optimistic that over the next few months" the studios and networks "will come to some kind of understanding" for placing programs on digital distribution platforms.

Such a move, which follows CBS recently coming to terms with its affiliates on the issue, would drastically speed up the migration of network programming from outside suppliers to the Web, cellular and wireless distribution devices. To date, the effort has been hampered, as a majority of the fare being repurposed elsewhere has come from in-house produced network programming.

At issue has been the allocation of the revenue split between the studios, which own the content, and the networks, which spend millions to license, schedule, promote and market it.

The impetus to reach a solution resulted from a change in attitudes in recent months, with the industry now realizing that it is a "priority" for programming to appear on as many platforms as possible, Tellem said.

A turning point, according to CBS Digital Media President Larry Kramer, may have come during college basketball's March Madness championship series this spring. That's when huge demand for CBS'on-demand iPod and Web coverage of the games from its College Sports Television Networks (CSTV) finally forced advertisers to take a serious look at digital as a mass marketing tool.

Once networks and studios can hammer out an accord, the next step will be to figure out a formula agreeable to the unions. Digital rights could be a huge issue when the industry's negotiations begin next year with the Writers Guild's West and East Coast branches over a new contract, with the actors and directors guilds to follow.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6353669

fredfa

07-17-06, 12:28 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Marg Helgenberger Got Slipped a Roofie, But It’s Not a Bad Thing

By Christopher Lisotta at Broadcasting & Cable’s “Critical Eye” blog Monday, July 17th, 2006

Actress Marg Helgenberger is excited for the seventh season premiere of the procedural drama “CSI.” Helgenberger talked about her anticipation at the show’s TCA session Sunday afternoon. The two-part opener takes place behind the scenes at the Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil stage show “Ka.” At first she was coy, letting critics know her character will experience “something very significant that is stretched out over two parts,” that puts her and her family “in jeopardy.”

But Helgenberger went further, telling critics she and actor George Eads’ character Nick Stokes go to a bar, only to have her character Catherine get slipped something into her drink.

The loyal audience of “CSI” appears to be split 50-50 between approving this past season’s developing Gil Grissom-Sara Sidle romantic relationship, while the other half wants the show to focus on the forensic cases, said Jorja Fox, who plays Sara.

Since “CSI” has focused so much on the procedural elements, “there are so many interesting stories we could still show” on the emotional side.

Fox has been with the “CSI” since its second episode, but notes the Grissom-Sidle romance has been in the work for the past six seasons. The breakdown, or sheets given to actors describing the characters they are auditioning for, described Sidle as a potential love interest six years ago when Fox first went out for the part.

Executive producer Carol Mendelsohn said there have been “raging debates” among the show’s writers over the relationship.

“Since I’m the show runner I won the debate,” she said.

The relationship also changes the usual dynamic between viewers and the characters, Mendelsohn said.

“In this one instance the viewers will be ahead of the CSI’s,” she said.

One critic wanted to know if the producers and cast, like CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler, thinks of “CSI” as an underdog against the show’s new time period competition this season, ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“In the beginning we were certainly the underdog,” Mendelsohn said, noting that the first night the show aired the network didn’t call to congratulate the writers the day after on its impressive ratings performance, since CBS executives thought “the computer at Nielsen was broken.”

“We’ve always been underestimated by everyone but the fans,” Helgenberger said. “Our network underestimated us, the critics underestimated us, but the fans have not.”

http://blogs.tvweek.com/?cat=5

fredfa

07-17-06, 01:14 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CBS's Fall Schedule, From the Chicken's Butt to Your TV Screen

By James Poniewozik Time Magazine television critic in Time’s Tuned In blog Monday, Jul. 17, 2006

The term "scrambled signals" is about to take on new meaning. CBS is announcing today that it has discovered a new medium to advertise its fall schedule on: your breakfast. Namely, millions of chicken eggs, on which it plans to stencil numerous corny promos for its shows. (To wit: "Crack the Case on CBS," for CSI.)

The technology apparently involves laser-imprinting the logo and slogans onto the eggshells, though I prefer to imagine it as a combination of advanced genetic modification and forcing chickens to watch episodes of The New Adventures of Old Christine in their tiny wire cages. (Whole Foods customers would be able to choose eggs from free-range chickens who watch Frontline.)

There's a serious, well semi-serious, issue behind this goofy promo idea. The networks are still wed to a system of launching most of their high-profile shows at roughly the same time in the fall, but with so many media products competing for attention in so many media outlets, you apparently cannot find a good place to grab people's attention anymore without looking up a chicken's egg shooter. You'd think the solution would be to move even more toward year-round programming, allowing good shows a better chance to stand out, but both the ratings calendar and the entrenched system of selling billions of fall ads at once at the spring upfronts militate against it.

So until someone finds a better way to fix the network television business, it's Two and a Half Men blurbs over easy for you. Whacking an egg against the side of a frying pan has never been so satisfying.

http://time.blogs.com/tuned_in/

fredfa

07-17-06, 01:52 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Networks' fall lineup isn't ugly

By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post TV Critic

Sometimes the little things say the most about the wrongheadedness of network television.

ABC, in its wisdom, changed the name of its most promising one-hour fall comedy, switching from clever and whimsical to overly simple and off-putting, starting the dumbing-down process early.

"Betty the Ugly" was the original title of the series about a homely but endearing young woman (America Ferrera of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"), who enters the fashion business. That title captured the story's mythic grandeur, as well as its telenovela origins. After being pushed through the network wit extractor, the series is now called "Ugly Betty," a title lacking both humor and truth. A committee of expensive suits watching a focus group has done its work.

So, is the TV schedule half

empty or half full? Thankfully, there are a number of decent pilots on tap this year, even if there's no single breakout buzz-maker like "Desperate Housewives" or "Arrested Development" of seasons past. Do we let ourselves believe in the possibilities of this crazy business and risk a broken heart? Or do we turn to NetFlix in disgust?

Once again, cockeyed optimism reigns.

As the networks parade their wares in Los Angeles this week in a festival of hype and cocktails known as the TV critics' summer press tour, the glad-

handing is transparent, the critical grousing predictable. Still, there's always the chance a minor creative miracle will withstand the grueling development process to become a favorite source of continuing entertainment - maybe even a pop-cultural phenomenon.

Banking on that hope, producers, writers, cast members, studio executives and the network folks who greenlit their projects submit to grillings by reporters in a semi-annual symbiotic dance. Everyone knows the slates will bear many more misses than hits. But one hit can surpass the gross national product of many third-world nations.

A few reasons for hope: James Woods is magnetic as a shark of a lawyer, and David Crane ("Friends") has written a smart, brilliantly cast new ensemble comedy, "The Class," about grown members of a long-ago third grade, both on CBS.

"Betty" is agreeable no matter what they call it. ABC also has the most anticipated hour on the schedule: "Brothers & Sisters." A family soap about grown siblings, it hasn't been distributed to critics. With Ron Rifkin ("Alias"), Rachel Griffiths ("Six Feet Under") and Calista Flockhart ("Ally McBeal") in the cast, it's the year's best unseen hope for a hit. Confirming the notion that "Brothers & Sisters" is internally considered the network's best shot, ABC gave it the post-"Desperate Housewives" timeslot.

NBC has "Friday Night Lights," inspired by the book and movie, following a Texas high school football team. In January, the network brings us "The Black Donnellys," Paul Haggis' drama about four brothers in New York.

A slew of "Lost" wannabes - mysterious,

convoluted stories, huge casts and intricate back stories - may turn up a worthy contender. The trend is away from crime procedurals like "Law & Order" and "CSI," and toward serials like "Lost" and "Prison Break."

ABC boasts the ensemble soap "Six Degrees" about interconnected strangers in New York, and "The Nine," about the suddenly linked survivors of a bank heist. CBS pitches "Jericho," following a small town after an apocalyptic explosion. NBC touts "Kidnapped" starring Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany as parents whose teenage son is abducted. Fox has "Vanished," exploring the disappearance of a senator's wife.

On the "Saturday Night Live" deconstruction beat, NBC has two offerings: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," from Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing"), and "30 Rock," Tina Fey's take on the backstage action. Odds are against both surviving.

At least the interviews won't be dull: Anne Heche will promote her new series, "Men in Trees," in which she plays a romance specialist with a mess of a personal life; Ted Danson will explain why he needs an undistinguished sitcom like "Help Me Help You" at this stage in his career, and Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson will talk about making the leap from perky morning show hosts to their respective anchor chairs.

Beyond pushing programs, network chiefs can be expected to acknowledge new ways of distributing shows - iPods, laptops, cellphones - and discuss what the evolution means to their business. Questions about indecency and what the federal regulators have in mind will be debated as producers complain of censorship in the wake of Janet Jackson's infamous reveal.

Two new networks also make their cases. The CW joins the fray with "Runaway," about a family using fake identities trying to outrun the legal system that unjustly convicted the dad, played by Donnie Wahlberg. And the News Corp.'s MyNetworkTV, for stations no longer affiliated with the defunct UPN or WB, unveils it's all-telenovela lineup, starting with "Desire" and "Fashion House."

All we ask is one good series. Until further notice, optimism.

http://www.denverpost.com/ostrow

fredfa

07-17-06, 02:17 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
‘CW Unveils Fall Schedule

By Ben Grossman Broadcasting & Cable 7/17/2006
The new CW network will launch with a two-hour America’s Top Model on Wednesday, September 20 and then roll out the remainder of its schedule over the next two weeks.

It will follow with Friday Night Smackdown on Friday, September 22, and then come back with a more regular lineup of season and series premieres on Monday, September 25.

CW President Dawn Ostroff says the network is still finalizing plans for the early days in which no new show in on the air, such as Monday and Tuesday, September 18-19 and Thursday, September 21. Among possibilities are last season’s finales of returning shows, as well as a special the network is developing that will feature both its new and returning shows.

“We just want a few days to iron out all the kinks and make sure everything is up and running,” Ostroff says of the network launching on its new affiliate lineup. “We are just going to work through it.”

The network has two new shows on the fall schedule in drama Runaway and comedy The Game, and also has new drama Hidden Palms and the returning Reba to use for mid-season or if a hole in the schedule arises during the fall.

Ostroff predictably declined to offer any ratings targets or projections.

“It will take us time in the beginning to get everybody into the house, but as the year goes on, I think we will end up with strong ratings,” she says. “Initially its going to take time to find the network.”

Ostroff also shrugged off questions comparing her network to the new MyNetworkTV.

“The people at Fox are very smart, but I do think it’s a very different business model than what the CW is going to be,” she says. It’s a very different way of watching TV, they are doing two soap operas, I think the budget for those shows is about a million dollars for the week. We are very different. The budgets are very different and the business model is very different. Maybe they’ll do well, I don’t know, it’s just a very different formula.”

The following is the full announced schedule:

Wednesday, September 20
8:00-10:00 p.m. Special Two-Hour Premiere of AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL
Friday, September 22
8:00-10:00 p.m. FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN
Monday, September 25
8:00-9:00 p.m. 7TH HEAVEN
9:00-10:00 p.m. RUNAWAY
Tuesday, September 26
8:00-9:00 p.m. GILMORE GIRLS
Wednesday, September 27
9:00-10:00 p.m ONE TREE HILL
Thursday, September 28
8:00-9:00 p.m SMALLVILLE
9:00-10:00 p.m. SUPERNATURAL
Sunday, October 1
7:00-7:30 p.m. EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS
7:30-8:00 p.m. ALL OF US
8:00-8:30 p.m. GIRLFRIENDS
8:30-9:00 p.m. THE GAME
9:00-10:00 p.m AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL (Encore Presentation)
Tuesday, October 3
9:00-10:00 p.m. VERONICA MARS
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6353834

keenan

07-17-06, 02:30 PM

Maybe CP will update his schedule with the start dates.

fredfa

07-17-06, 02:37 PM

Is that a hint? :)

keenan

07-17-06, 02:43 PM

Let me be more direct, "Hey, CPanther95, let's get that schedule updated already, what's taking so long, the season starts in two months." :p :D

fredfa

07-17-06, 02:49 PM

Hard to believe but CP95 might actually have a life, Jim!

fredfa

07-17-06, 02:52 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Keith Marder Returns for an Encore

By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog

…The CW's day on press tour… managed to carry over a tradition from the old days of The WB and UPN: introductory remarks from Keith Marder, then with The WB, now with CSTV. The CW brought him back for an appearance and here are a few of his lines:

''It was a crazy development season. Even the White House pitched a show: 'Stop or My Vice President Will Shoot.' ''

''Later today, the CW will unveil its strategy, including its new marketing slogan: 'Two wrongs DO make a right.' ''

''The landmark announcement regarding the formation of the CW was one of the best-kept secrets in Hollywood history. But they could have been even more clandestine. They could have broadcast their meetings in episodes of 'Pepper Dennis.' ''

''Star Jones quit 'The View' four months after they fired her.''

''The only show with more profanity than 'Deadwood' is 'Lucky Louie.' Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can't tell them apart -- except for the fact that 'Deadwood' is funnier. ... Notice they didn't call it 'Funny Louie.' Or 'Charming Louie.' Or even 'Remotely Interesting Louie.' ''

''You know what's exactly like 'The Sopranos'? World Cup soccer. The Italians won, everybody watched, and now they go away for four years. ... It was Germany's best finish in an international competition since the invasion of Poland.''

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

07-17-06, 02:56 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
The CW has critics seeing green

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In Monday, July 17, 2006 - Noon PT

PASADENA, Calif. -- I'm blind! I'm blind!

No, my dreaded press tour cold hasn't advanced to my eyes, though I'm croaking like Michigan J. Frog and my voice is cracking like Peter Brady in that "Brady Bunch" episode (embarrassing when one tries to interview network executives). My blindness is caused by the lime-green jackets worn by The CW pages, young women and men who look more like models than gophers (slogan on the back of the jacket: "Free to be helpful;" but maybe it should say, "Free to be hot.").

I was curious to see which culture -- buttoned-down CBS/UPN or cool, hip WB -- would prevail in launching The CW. There's less ostentatious branding (score one for UPN), printed press materials rather than a flash drive (even CBS offered flash drives this time around) but they brought back the basket of yummy caramels made by a former WB publicist (score one for The WB) and hip, cool music plays on loudspeakers between panels (score again for The WB).

Most of The CW publicity department is made up of former WB employees, so I think The WB culture is winning out (hooray!). Even the new network's signature color, bright green, brings to mind the deceased WB mascot (Michigan J. Frog).

Though the network's name is more CBS (CW sounds like a country and western channel), CW Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff said execs explored the prospect of changing the network's name, but 48 percent of the audience was already familiar with The CW brand.

Former WB publicist Keith Marder, now with CBS-owned CSTV, returned with his stand-up routine to kick off the morning.

"I told you UPN would never last," Marder said. His slogan for The CW: "Two wrongs DO make a right."

http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/

fredfa

07-17-06, 02:59 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Ostroff Tested by Skepticism Over CW

By Scott Collins Los Angeles Times Staff Writer in the Channel Island TV Industry blog

Among reporters who cover TV, Dawn Ostroff is known as the corporate version of Sleepytime Tea. No matter what you ask, she can brew an answer formulated to lull you to a deep, home office-approved slumber. Even her off-the-cuff remarks sound as if they were pounded out by committee at a weekend retreat. Like Walt Disney Co.'s Anne Sweeney, another press-conference cyborg, Ostroff must have a TelePrompTer hard-wired into her brain.

Such a skill is useful for the person now charged with running The CW, the new network forged by CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. Television from the remnants of UPN and the WB. But even Ostroff, former chief of UPN, was put to the test by all the skepticism directed at the coming venture on Monday morning.

Speaking at the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Pasadena, Ostroff tried her best to brush off questions about how UPN and WB went about winding down their meager businesses. But the CW's devotion to a new advertising scheme called "content wraps" -- essentially longer-than-usual commercials that feature stories and are paid for by a single sponsor -- left reporters perplexed and Ostroff struggling to dispel the doubts.

"We've been talking to advertisers about how to engage viewers in a different way," Ostroff said. "They're looking at more subtle ways of reaching the viewer." She added that the "wraps" would be "a reason for viewers to stay involved the whole night."

"I don't get it," one reporter objected. "The programs aren't enough?"

"This is an experiment," Ostroff said.

Later, another journalist wondered exactly which American viewers want more advertising tossed their way.

Ostroff lost some of her poise, if that's the right word for her usual demeanor. "Why wouldn't they want advertisers to reach them in a different way?," she asked, almost pleadingly.

The CW chief was no more persuasive talking about the bottom line. One reporter mentioned that Garth Ancier, chairman of the WB, explained a decision to cancel the drama "7th Heaven" by saying the show would lose $16 million this past season. So why did the CW reverse that decision and how can the show possibly make money now?

"We're not going to lose anything on '7th Heaven,'" she said. "That show has such incredible support from fans." That's undoubtedly true, but it was also true when Ancier made his remarks. Was he wrong? Or is there some reasonable explanation that Ostroff left unspoken?

Why was "Everwood," a fan favorite, canceled?

"It was an agonizing decision," Ostroff said. "The fans were so devoted."

So, the "7th Heaven" fans were critical in bringing that show back, but somehow the "Everwood" fans weren't persuasive enough? How does that work exactly?

Ostroff even found herself at odds with reporters over the exact color used in the CW's new logo, with one journalist dubbing it "John Deere green." "I thought the John Deere green was a little darker, but maybe I don't know," Ostroff said.

It didn't take much of this for even a practiced press-spinner to crack. Ostroff noted that Hayley Duff, who is joining the cast of "7th Heaven," will play a character who enrolls at a seminary. Asked what the character will be studying there, Ostroff seemed to have trouble containing her exasperation.

"Religion," she said.

http://hollywoodhotline.typepad.com/watcher/

fredfa

07-17-06, 03:03 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CW Unveils Fall Schedule; Will Lean on Established Shows

A.J. Frutkin mediaweek.com July 17, 2006

With only two new shows to promote on its fall schedule, CW seems to be depending on the color of its marketing material to stir up buzz for the network. “I think the green has done a lot for us,” CW entertainment president Dawn Ostroff told reporters at the annual TV critics convention in Pasadena today. “I have to say, people who see the green everywhere, have said it really stands out.”

Ostroff elaborated further on the subject, noting green is a “happy color. It represents fun&hellipit really stands for a lot of what the network is about.”

With the drama Runaway, and the comedy The Game, the only new series on the CW schedule, several reporters at the CW session questioned Ostroff on why so few new programs were picked up. “The strategy all along was to depend on established franchises to help bring in viewers,” Ostroff responded. “You have to realize we have a very tall order. We need to communicate to all of these viewers, and all of these devoted fans, a new network, and, in many cases, a new channel to find their favorite shows.”

Ostroff added that about 60 per cent of the country will have to migrate from their UPN stations to their old WB stations, and about 28 per cent of old WB viewers will have to migrate to what was the UPN affiliate in those regions. In other cases, there will be a station carrying CW that carried neither UPN nor the WB. “So we knew the best way to communicate that was to depend on the shows that people loved and knew,” Ostroff said.

Ostroff also revealed several upcoming story lines on the new season of 7th Heaven. Among them, Haylie Duff, who plays Sandy Jameson, joins the show as a regular character, and will be entering seminary school on the series Also, patriarch Eric Camden, played by Stephen Collins, will suffer from a life threatening heart ailment.

In other announcements, Whoopi Goldberg will appear in two episodes of the Sunday night comedy Everybody Hates Chris. The story arc featuring Goldberg premieres Oct. 1, at 7 p.m.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840530

keenan

07-17-06, 03:14 PM

Hard to believe but CP95 might actually have a life, Jim!
No way!! He's not allowed to, he didn't ask permission..... :p :D

fredfa

07-17-06, 03:40 PM

The nation's TV critics have been sequestered in a luxury Pasadena hotel (or Rose Bowl or, well, you get the picture) for over a week now.
And many of them seem to be getting a little testy.
Even the normally mild-mannered (except for when questioning Katie Coric, of course) Alan Sepinwall seems to be feeling the strain:

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Clearly wasteful

By Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger in his TV blog “What’s Alan Watching”

(Here is) my attempt to liven up the CW's spectacularly dull inaugural press tour session with a bit of quasi-livebloging.

Network new(s)

It's not every day that you see a brand-new broadcast network have its first-ever day at press tour. Been 11 years, in fact, since UPN and the WB both showed up at the same tour (before my time). But since today's newbie, the CW, is a combination of both those channels, its first session was more devoted to old business. A roughly chronological accounting of the CW's meeting of the press:
9:10: WWE wrestler Ken Kennedy appears under a harsh spotlight and gives a Michael Buffer-style introduction to critic-turned-publicist Keith Marder, whose opening stand-up comedy routines were a WB tradition for years. For Keith, we break our unspoken tradition of not applauding panelists.

9:11: Keith's best joke: that the CW's slogan is "Two wrongs do make a right."

9:20: After Keith's routine plus some introductory comments by the actual head of CW publicity, network president Dawn Ostroff enters and plays a long clip reel about the network, its new website, its plans for an online community of CW fans, specially-designed commercial breaks called Content Wraps (or, natch, CW's). One critic mutters, "Is this a network or a religious cult?"

9:30: The first of what will no doubt be several "Everwood" questions. TV critics, you see, loved "Everwood," and are annoyed not only that it was the only bubble show on either network to not survive, but that Dawn chose to renew "One Tree Hill" instead. Dawn deflects it into a discussion about how all of their shows have such devoted fans.

9:40: Asked which "7th Heaven" castmembers will be back, Dawn is vague on details, but does note that, "Hayley Duff is going to be a reular this year, and she's going to enter seminary school." Woo-hoo!

9:41: "Dawn, how does renewing 'One Tree Hill' fit into your strategy of picking up the best shows?" This could get ugly, folks.

9:53: A critic from a midwestern paper notes that in his area, "CW" stands for Country & Western, and that the network's new green color resembles a John Deere tractor. Dawn claims that they never intended to keep CW (for CBS + Warner Bros.) as the permanent name, but when they did focus group testing on potential names, they found out that 48% of their potential audience already knew CW because of all the press coverage.

9:54: "And the green?" the critic asks again.

"Green is also a happy color," says Dawn, "it also represents fun, happy, a lot of what the network is about."

9:56: "There's quite a bit of discussion of what green is this?" Who would have thought the number of green color questions would so far outnumber the "Everwood" questions?

Oh, and per Dawn, there are several greens: "It is a lime green, there's a darker green in there, there's an entire palate, there's obviously yellow and white..."

Really, at this point, the only thing that comes to mind is a line from Shelley's "Ozymandias": Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!

http://www.nj.com/weblogs/tv/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_alan/archives/2006_07.html#161913

fredfa

07-17-06, 03:41 PM

On second thought, having read a half dozen reports on the Ostroff performance, I think I would be getting far more testy.

Whose idea was this network? And exactly what needs is it fulfilling?

fredfa

07-17-06, 03:46 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CW Roasts in Pasadena Heat

By Ben Grossman of Broadcasting & Cable at bcbeat.com July 17 2006

Familiar face Keith Marder kicked off the CW’s TCA presentation with his trademark comedy routine.While the former WB PR staffer has now moved on to the CSTV network, since CSTV is owned by CBS, Marder was back to roast the television world once again.

Some of Marder’s best shots:

“The White House even pitched a show, Stop or my Vice President will shoot.”

On David Blaine: “You want magic, try making two networks disappear.”

On the CW’s marketing slogan: “Two wrongs do make a right.”

Wondering why Vito was killed off from The Sopranos: “Who better to whack a guy than a gay mobster?”

“The World Cup was like The Sopranos: the Italians won, everyone watched, and now it will go away for four years.”

On the aged appearance of American Idol winner Taylor Hicks: “He looks like George Clooney’s father.”

On MyNetworkTV: “It’s not mine.It’s not a network.My Network? My ass.”

http://broadcastingcable.com/blog/1380000138.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 03:47 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
TCA Offers Those "Oy Vey" Moments

By Ben Grossman of Broadcasting & Cable at bcbeat.com Julyl 17 2006

While sitting through panel after panel for parts of three weeks during the cable and broadcast portions of TCA, after awhile all panels begin to sound alike.

That is why you are thankful for what I call those “Oy vey moments,” when a television critic breaks the monotony with a question so – um, interesting - that it makes you almost sprain an eyeball from rolling it so hard.

Luckily on Monday morning, we had a few OVM’s in the first session, the executive panel with CW chief Dawn Ostroff.

A few of them came from questions about the green color scheme the network has chosen to employ – from the hue of the set on the stage to the color of the jackets of the decidedly pretty pages working the floor.

One writer who must work in NASCAR country asked if the network already is using two letters that many viewers in his region already associate with “country music,” why they would use a “John Deere green” color scheme.

Another writer wanted to bring the funny – always a potential OVM – when he asked the following about the returning One Tree Hill: “How does that fit into your strategy of picking the best shows from both networks?”

And maybe the best was one writer asking about the cancelled Everwood, clearly with the intention of bringing up the fact he knew about a fan protest in which addicts are renting a ferris wheel and putting it by the network offices for one last show of support. Apparently the last scene of that show was set in or around said amusement park ride.

All together now: Oy vey.

http://broadcastingcable.com/blog/1380000138.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 04:12 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
More on "Everwood"

By Hal Boedeker Orlando Sentinel Television Critic in the Sentinel’s TV Guy blog July 17, 2006

Still mourning the cancellation of "Everwood"? The woman who axed the family drama feels your pain. Sort of.

"It was an agonizing decision," said Dawn Ostroff, president of entertainment at The CW. "The fans were so devoted."

Even so, "Everwood" died along with the WB. The drama isn't jumping to the new CW, which combines the WB and UPN and starts Sept. 20.

Ostroff said her network wanted to air "Runaway," a new drama that's sort of a family version of "The Fugitive," and give it the best possible lead-in. So "Runaway" will follow "7th Heaven," which starts its 11th season on Sept. 25.

The programmer said her job was a "dream come true -- selecting the best shows from both UPN and the WB." She discussed the lineup before the nation's TV critics, who are previewing the fall's offerings. One critic wondered how the WB's "One Tree Hill" fit into her strategy of picking the best shows.

"'One Tree Hill' is not a critics' darling," Ostroff said. "But it has a great audience for us."

On "7th Heaven," Stephen Collins and Catherine Hicks will continue as regulars. Other characters will come in and out of the story. Collins' character will have a life-threatening heart ailment. Haylie Duff's character will enter the seminary. The WB said it lost $16 million on "7th Heaven" last season. But Ostroff said The CW wouldn't lose anything on the show, because it's produced by Paramount, a sister company to The CW.

One critic wondered why the network is called "The CW," which means country-western in his area, and uses a John Deere-green in its promo. "Green is also a very happy color," Ostroff said.

I wondered why Ostroff grouped her African-American comedies on Sunday rather than letting them stay on Monday or Thursday.

"We knew that '7th Heaven' had been a huge anchor on Monday night and wanted to keep '7th Heaven' there," Ostroff said. She added that the Monday comedies on UPN had been counterprogramming to ABC's football. Now that football is moving to Sundays on NBC, The CW decided to move the comedies there.

"Fox and the WB have both been very successful with comedies on Sunday," she said. "When you look at what goes on Sunday there's not a lot there for families."

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2006/07/more_on_everwoo.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 04:18 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Grissom and Sara: Should They or Shouldn't They?

Roush Dispatch
By Matt Roush TVGuide.com TV Critic

Actually, that question is kind of moot by now. But the debate rages as to whether CSI misstepped by showing Grissom (William Petersen) and his underling, Sara (Jorja Fox), in an intimate moment in the final scene of last season.

The producers admit the staff always argue about personal story lines intruding on the forensic meat of the show. During a press conference for CSI on Sunday, the producers acknowledged there's a 50/50 split in the audience over whether they prefer more or less of this sort of thing. And I suspected exec producer Carol Mendelsohn was being a bit disingenuous when she described (according to her personal mail) what she called a 60/40 split in favor of the Grissom-Sara reveal.

Afterward, I cornered exec producer Naren Shankar to share my long-standing conviction that despite all of this, CSI was in no danger of turning into a soap opera, was it? "Please write that!" he begged. (OK, I have.)

He assures me, "You have to understand we're not changing the DNA of the show." Having crossed this Rubicon, however, Shankar says, "We realized that it opened up other possibilities for us as writers."

Case in point: somewhere around the fourth episode, Archie from the crime lab is going to try to set up Sara on a date with his roommate. "It's one of those awkward moments where she's gotta come up with 20 different reasons why she doesn't want to go out with this guy, who's got a great body and is super nice. Archie can't understand it, and Sara finally has to say, 'Leave me alone.' For the audience, that's a funny scene. For Jorja, it's fun as well. For Archie, it's just another strange moment in the workplace. It opens up possibilities, because the audience knows what's underneath it, but the other CSIs don't."

Shankar says the producers sat down with Petersen at the end of last season to discuss the implications of this twist. "From our perspective, when a guy like Grissom makes a move like this, to bring somebody into his life in a personal fashion, it says something pretty profound. Here's a guy who's been very guarded, kept people at a distance. When a person like that is letting someone into his life, what is he saying? What it's about is a guy who's reaching out."

"After six years, he's no longer a mentor teaching a bunch of raw recruits. The people that he started with are now almost teachers in their own right. So you get to a point in your life when you get a little bit older and you go, 'Is this all I am? Am I just the guy that solves the crossword puzzle?' And if the answer is no, the question is, 'Do you want to share that with somebody?' And with Sara, he's saying just that. Part of Grissom's journey this season is going to be to ask what else is he? Is there anything else out there for him? Is he only going to be that guy who is bailing out the ocean with a thimble? Because there's always going to be another murder."

As midlife crises go, Grissom's is a doozy. And I imagine we'll be arguing about its fallout all season long.

http://community.tvguide.com/forum.jspa?forumID=700000048

fredfa

07-17-06, 04:37 PM

TV Notebook
Shallow Digging in Rubble of 9/11

TV once brought home the nightmare of the 2001 crisis, but it just doesn't seem to be asking the right questions anymore.
By Scott Collins Los Angeles Times Staff Writer in his Channel Island TV Industry column July 17, 2006

Her Court TV documentary based on the Sept. 11 commission report doesn't air till next month, but Hollywood-based director Linda Ellman is already anxious that no one will bother watching.

"I think people have stuck their heads in the sand," she railed self-servingly to reporters Friday, "rather than pay attention to the most important thing in their lives, which is national security."

Activist Mary Fetchet, whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks and who helped promote Ellman's "On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report," agreed: "I do think there's been a lack of sense of urgency, and not just on the part of government."

That's hogwash. The initial shock of the attacks has ebbed, but Americans still care deeply about Sept. 11 and its aftermath. They just may not care for the way TV continues to frame the issues, just as they've increasingly tired of the Punch-and-Judy style of political debate on cable news.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll last month, for example, found that one-third of Americans feel the country is less safe today than before Sept. 11; only 24% said U.S. citizens are much safer. Asked how the campaign against terrorism is going, 41% said "not too well" or "not well at all." Those are hardly views of people who've buried their heads in the sand.

On that awful day five years ago, TV was our salvation, our unifying town forum, even when it gave us pictures and audio too dreadful to comprehend. And in the months after the attacks, when the memory was still raw, TV seemed to do a better job documenting the event, perhaps because the interpretive demands were lower. Six months after the attacks, for example, CBS aired the documentary "9/11," which featured surreally horrific video from filmmakers Jules and Gédéon Naudet of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center and of firefighters scrambling in the lobby as falling bodies crashed outside. Ric Burns' "The Center of the World" was a magisterial account of the life and death of the World Trade Center that ran on PBS' "The American Experience" in 2003.

But now, in struggling to make sense of the attacks, television is slipping back to its all-too-frequent caricature, the eyeball with no brain attached. In the space of five short years, the medium that rose to one of its finest hours bringing home the nightmare of the attacks to viewers everywhere is leaving some of the most important questions unasked.

Good luck if you and yours are determined to avoid any visual reminders of the 5th anniversary of the tragedy. The commemorative frenzy may mark the media's biggest collective remembrance of any historical event since the American bicentennial 30 years ago.

Sept. 11 docudrama already has a dime-a-dozen taint. ABC's long-gestating miniseries "The Path to 9/11" arrives Sept. 10 (NBC announced a similar project two years ago but never made the film). That project will arrive more than a month after Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" hits the cineplex; "United 93," about the hijacked jet whose passengers rebelled on Sept. 11, was a modest hit this spring.

The nonfiction field is crowded too — although not with projects likely to alter viewers' perception of events. In addition to Court TV'S documentary, there's CNN's two-hour documentary "In the Footsteps of Osama Bin Laden," hosted by Christiane Amanpour; and National Geographic Channel's "The Final Report: Osama's Escape," a sequel of sorts to the network's "Inside 9/11." The History Channel has "The Miracle of Stairway B," a nonfiction account of a dozen people who survived the collapse of the North Tower. And expect a forthcoming flurry of announcements for news specials in various stages of preparation at ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and elsewhere.

It's worth noting that none of the TV projects seems to spend much time examining why tens of millions of Americans still feel so frightened.

Instead, struggling to find new angles on Sept. 11, TV producers are too often dressing up the same old material in new clothing. History Channel's "Miracle of Stairway B" repeats a tale already told on "The Miracle of Ladder Company 6," a segment on NBC's "Dateline."

CNN's Amanpour is as tough and experienced a foreign correspondent as exists in TV news today, but even she was evidently hard-pressed to discover many new things viewers didn't know about Bin Laden outside of interviews with some long-ago teachers and schoolmates. "This is not an attempt to understand the man; it's an attempt to provide more information," she told reporters at the Television Critics Assn. press tour Friday in Pasadena. She should be applauded for her candor, but such an admission doesn't exactly urge viewers to drop everything and tune in.

But then, maybe worrying about how many tune in is the bigger issue. America's broadcast and cable networks are so freaked about ratings and profit margins these days that sustained scrutiny of a sprawling life-or-death topic like Sept. 11 may be beyond their ken.

Executives and producers — including those in news divisions — think too much about what viewers want rather than what they should know. Asked about the dramatic music used to spice up "On Native Soil," Ellman replied that her film is based on a commission report that many bought but never read. "We had to do something to make it compelling," she said.

What keeps Sept. 11 compelling for Americans isn't a soundtrack, of course, but the ongoing battle over what the attacks meant and the lingering fear that we may awaken one morning soon to an even greater atrocity. True insight and real news can still break through: The July 10-17 New Yorker relates the frustrating and depressing story of how squabbles with the CIA probably thwarted FBI agent Ali Soufan's globetrotting efforts to stop Al Qaeda's Sept. 11 plot.

Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel voiced his own post-Sept. 11 complaint last week, but it had nothing to do with Americans sticking their heads in the sand. "There was the impression — perhaps it was only a hoping expressed as an impression — that as a consequence of 9/11 that the network news divisions would now focus once again as seriously as they once did on foreign news," Koppel said during the press tour. "That, I'm afraid, has not been the case."

Indeed it hasn't, and that's partly why Koppel has migrated to do documentaries for Discovery Channel. His first, "Koppel on Discovery," premieres Sept. 10. Maybe the former "Nightline" mainstay now has the clout and freedom to bring new vigor and depth to post-Sept. 11 reporting. But the outlook for TV journalism overall is a lot cloudier.

The medium that five years ago dominated the 21st century's first international turning point may wake up to discover that it's too late to do it again.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-channel17jul17,1,4437291,print.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews

fredfa

07-17-06, 05:01 PM

The Business of TV
Equity Fund, Internet Stars in Spotlight at Sun Valley Schmoozefest

Media deals remain big at the event. Among the rumors: Murdoch is about to get EchoStar
.
By Sallie Hofmeister and Thomas Mulligan Los Angeles Times Staff Writers July 17, 2006

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Since it began in 1983, the annual conference for top money managers and investors sponsored by Wall Street power broker Herbert Allen Jr. has been a barometer of the shifting sands of the media landscape.

In the early days, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and maverick cable TV tycoon John Malone were the top draws of the exclusive event. At this year's event, held last week at the Sun Valley Resort, Internet billionaires were the belles of the ball.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was on everyone's to-meet list in 1999 — his first appearance at the five-day event. And two years ago, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were the hottest tickets.

Holding a full dance card this year: Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube Inc., a website with an extensive, searchable video library. In recent months it has surpassed the traffic of such leading Internet news providers as ABC.com and CNN.com because of the popularity of the clips in its library.

The 29-year-old newcomer, however, was not the only guest in the limelight this year, signaling perhaps another trend in media.

Jonathan Nelson, chief executive of Providence Equity Partners Inc. of Rhode Island, was in the spotlight this year, emerging as the media industry's leading deal maker.

"He's the big cheese of the moment," said one guest, who did not want his name mentioned because Allen likes to keep the goings-on at the conference a secret.

In the past, big deals have gone down here such as Disney's $19-billion purchase of ABC Inc. and ESPN, and its later $5.2-billion acquisition of what is now known as the ABC Family channel.

But as traditional media companies have struggled with maturing markets and sagging stock prices, private equity funds have emerged as a rich source of buyout capital. Providence and several other private equity funds, for instance, bought out Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. in a $5-billion deal that was in the works here last year.

And it was Providence that last month led a group of investors in a $12-billion bid to buy Univision Corp., the nation's leading Spanish-language broadcaster.

At the conference, the agreement was on display again Wednesday night. Providence's Nelson was huddled in a resort lounge with his Univision partner, Los Angeles billionaire Haim Saban.

One subject under discussion: whether to invite onto their team another company that had made the trek to Sun Valley, Grupo Televisa.

Televisa not only was the losing bidder for Univision but also is the largest supplier of programming to the broadcast network. After losing the auction, Televisa said it wanted to sell its 11% stake in Univision.

But sources in the know in Sun Valley said that the network's prospective new owners were in talks with Televisa. In a meeting here with Nelson, Televisa's top management proposed contributing Internet and video-on-demand programming rights that Univision does not now control — as well as about $1 billion in cash.

In exchange, sources said, Televisa wants to hike its ownership of Univision to 25%, the maximum stake in a U.S. broadcaster that a foreign entity is legally allowed to own.

Providence was expected to confer with its partners over the weekend and get back to Televisa before a board meeting scheduled for today. At the meeting, Televisa is expected to weigh the proposal against two alternatives: selling its Univision stake or mounting a new bid.

On Thursday in Sun Valley, as other guests attended the morning panels, the Univision talks continued. Televisa Executive Vice President Alfonso de Angoitia was locked in a discussion at a table by the resort's duck pond with banker James Lee of JPMorgan Chase.

Univision was not the only piece of business for Nelson. As other guests went fly-fishing, hiking and biking Thursday afternoon, Nelson took a couple of hours out of his schedule to play golf with CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves.

Strictly pleasure? Not a chance. Moonves has made no secret of his interest in making movies at CBS. Some say MGM, within Providence's portfolio, could be in his sights.

Other snippets from the conference:

• Several titans in attendance speculated that Murdoch was working on a deal.

"Rupert is very preoccupied this year," said one of his competitors. "He's working on something."

Some top money managers here were convinced Murdoch was close to making a deal to buy EchoStar Communications Corp., the nation's second-ranked satellite TV provider and the sole rival to Murdoch's DirecTV Group.

Echostar founders Charles and Candy Ergen, here with four of their five children, tried to purchase DirecTV three years ago but were blocked by federal regulators worried about a monopoly. Murdoch seized control afterward.

DirecTV chief Chase Carey acknowledged during his stay that "an argument could be made" to Washington that the pay-television landscape has changed now that Comcast and Time Warner control a majority of the nation's cable customers and phone giants such as AT&T and Verizon are pushing into the business.

Murdoch, in a brief interview Wednesday night, dismissed the idea that Ergen would sell. But others at the conference said the wily Ergen had been telling guests that a merger could save $3 billion in expenses.

He has a financial incentive to back a merger. Cable has stemmed the migration of subscribers to satellite by offering services such as phone and speedy Internet access that DirecTV and EchoStar are not technically equipped to deliver. This has contributed to a dramatic decline in the Ergens' net worth — to about $8 billion.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fi-sunvalley17jul17,0,1735431,print.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews

fredfa

07-17-06, 05:02 PM

The Business of TV
News Corp. Talk Hikes Dish Stock

By Linda Moss & Mike Farrell multichannel.com 7/17/2006

EchoStar Communications’ stock rose Monday on speculation that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. was looking to acquire the second-largest direct-broadcast satellite provider and merge it with his DirecTV, the dominant player.

EchoStar, parent of Dish Network, saw its stock price hit a new 52-week high of $32.52 per share (up $1.89 each, or 6.2%) Monday, beating the previous mark of $32.41 per share.

The shares rose in the wake of a Los Angeles Times story on Herbert Allen’s Sun Valley, Idaho, media conference, which said rumors were swirling there that Murdoch was hatching a deal to buy Charlie Ergen’s EchoStar.

The Times quoted Ergen, EchoStar’s founder and CEO, as saying that such a merger “could save $3 billion in expenses,” while DirecTV CEO Chase Carey chimed in that the current regulatory environment might be more amenable than it has been in the past to a merger of the two DBS players.

EchoStar tried to buy DirecTV a few years back, but that deal was derailed in 2002 by the Federal Communications Commission. Ultimately, News Corp. stepped in, and it now owns 38% of DirecTV.

In a note Monday, Wachovia Securities analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote that the “takeout price” in any deal with be an issue, because “we would suspect that Ergen would want at the very least $40 per Dish share.”

Wlodarczak also wrote that he believes the regulatory hurdles to a DirecTV-EchoStar merger are still high, given the reasons why the FCC rejected EchoStar’s bid for DirecTV back in 2002.

“The main sticking point was that the market would have been reduced to two competitors in most markets, and to one competitor in millions of rural households,” he wrote. “The development of an RBOC [regional Bell operating company] video offering seems to have solved the former, but the latter [a monopoly in a material percentage of the 32 million U.S. rural households] is still likely an issue.”

Officials at News Corp. and DirecTV declined to comment Monday, and EchoStar couldn’t be reached for comment.

Wlodarczak wrote that a key argument for a Dish investment was a potential takeout or leveraged buyout of the company.

“We think DirecTV is a logical suitor, as well as a leveraged-buyout deal given CEO Ergen's 60% stake in Dish and low leverage,” he wrote. “We believe that a combined Dish and DirecTV entity would be worth more than the two companies as stand-alones based on various synergies that could be realized and the effective elimination of one competitor [especially in the United States -- 30 million rural households].”

http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleid=CA6354056

fredfa

07-17-06, 05:53 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
"24'' adds a new president

By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News in his blog

The most intriguing press announcement of the day comes from Fox, letting the world know that DB Woodside will back when "24'' returns in January as Wayne Palmer, the brother of President David Palmer, and Regina King ("Ray'') will play his sister, Angela. Now, this wouldn't necessarily be the biggest news in the world -- although Woodside and King are fine actors -- except for the fact that when clock restarts on "24,'' Wayne Palmer will be the new president of the United States, a sort of Robert F. Kennedy to his assassinated brother's JFK.

By my count, that means the show will have gone through four presidents by the start of season 6: one shot, one crippled when his plane was shot down, one hauled away in disgrace by federal agents and the newest President Palmer. If I were Wayne, I'd stay as far away from Jack Bauer as humanly possible but, of course, that ain't going to happen.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/charlie_mccollum/index.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 06:16 PM

The Business of TV
Is GE's Immelt Dropping Hints About NBC?

By Scott Collins Los Angeles Times Staff Writer in the Channel Island TV Industry blog

You may have noticed last week that General Electric posted a net quarterly income of $4.8 billion, but what bears watching in the TV biz are comments chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Immelt made about the company's underperforming NBC Universal unit.

Due in large part to lousy ratings at NBC's broadcast network, the unit's profits slipped 10%.

Here's what Immelt told investors in a conference call: "A lot of good work inside the company was offset by a drag within the company in NBC Universal and plastics."

This might not seem all that significant, but remember that this is GE. Major changes are often telegraphed through winks and nods by the boss. Immelt has always expressed support for NBC in the past.

For example, here he was quoted in a January Newsweek story about NBC's travails and TV boss Jeff Zucker's continuing efforts to right the ship:

"I think we can drive consistent earnings growth and consistent returns" at NBC Universal, he (Immelt) said when addressing Wall Street analysts last month.

But now Immelt's hindquarters are clearly beginning to get chapped by the situation. He actually singled out NBC for public blame in hurting good work done elsewhere by other units.

If that's what he's saying public, you have to wonder how it goes in private. It can't be good.

http://hollywoodhotline.typepad.com/watcher/

fredfa

07-17-06, 06:46 PM

The Business of TV
Kimberly Dozier’s Miracle

By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog

A last minute question at a session dominated by the impending new star of “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” was given to the miraculous progress of CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, whom CBS News President Sean McManus says was left for dead after being hit by enemy fire.

“It's a miraculous story,” McManus says. “Kimberly has no real business being alive right now.”

Dozier, 39, wounded May 29 in an explosion that killed four others including her photographer, “lost 30 units of blood and went through an incredibly difficult initial period in the field hospital and in Lanstuhl in Germany,” McManus said.

She’ll be back to work soon, ,McManus said Sunday.

“She's at Bethesda Naval Hospital right now. She's going to be released, I think, within the week to a rehabilitation firm -- or unit, rather. She'll have, I think -- I don't want to give a medical report -- but I think she'll have good use of her legs.

The good news is she has really no mental effects from the accident. She's sharp as a tack. I've talked to her a number of times. She's going to get good rehabilitation so that she can function well physically, and then she's going to be back as a reporter for the "CBS Evening News" and CBS and we've got some, I think, really good specific ideas of what her role is going to be. But yeah, she's going to make a full recovery.

“It's miraculous,” he said. “Talk about all the news being bad. It's one of the really good stories that we've been associated with.”

“Here's a great reporter, an intrepid reporter who couldn't wait to get back to Iraq. Every time she left, she couldn't wait to get back and tell that
story.

And because she's a fighter and because she's gotten incredible medical care from the armed services, she's going to make it and she's going to continue to be a good reporter and a good member of our team. It's one of the good stories we can report.”

http://www.bloglines.com/public/TCABlogs

CPanther95

07-17-06, 07:42 PM

Let me be more direct, "Hey, CPanther95, let's get that schedule updated already, what's taking so long, the season starts in two months." :p :D

What the hell - another schedule shift ?!?

keenan

07-17-06, 07:57 PM

What the hell - another schedule shift ?!?
Yeah, start dates..you're slackin' dude... :p

Actually, by the end of August everything should be set so we'll allow you to have a life until then. :D

fredfa

07-17-06, 08:28 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
That's Why They Call Him Marder the Magnificent

By Ray Richmond The Hollywood Reporter in his blog “Past Deadline”

It generally wouldn't represent a big deal that a onetime WB public relations exec should be invited to open the festivities Monday morning during the inaugural Television Critics Association event for The CW. But Keith Marde is no ordinary PR dude. It stood as a nod to tradition that he'd be given the honor and predictably emerged as a genuine highlight of this TCA event.

Marder, you see, was once himself just another obscure TV critic. He labored for the Albany Times-Union, scratching out a living but not a particularly great one. It didn't surprise a lot of people when he took that leap to The Dark Side to become a publicist for The WB some seven years ago and -- with the bust-up of WB in the CW transition -- Marder was hired as director of communications for CSTV, the new CBS-owned college sports outlet.

He wasn't a bad critic. But Marder was a great publicist: accomodating, affable, accessible, funny, gregarious. And beyond that, he pretty much instantly became renowned at press tour time for his genuinely hilarious stand-up comedy remarks kicking off the WB portion of the semi-annual TCA gathering. It grew to become a hotly anticipated piece of merriment. We're not talking funny and clever for a PR guy but professional level wit, period.

So it was consequently met with great enthusiasm from a group known for sitting on its hands when Marder made his surprise appearance prior to The CW's executive session with entertainment president Dawn Ostroff.

"Well, I told you UPN would never last," Marder began, conveniently neglecting to note that his own network had some survival issues of its own. "...Later today The CW will unveil its strategy including its new marketing slogan, 'Two wrongs do make a right'."

Marder was just getting warmed up. He quipped that in hindsight, the secret talks that led to the departure of the WB and UPN and their gettong spun into The CW "could have been even more clandestine. They could have broadcast their meetings in episodes of 'Pepper Dennis'." He added that Shannen Doherty is one of the many women filling in these days on "The View."

"You have to hand it to the show," he said. "They even found a way to make Rosie O'Donnell look good."

Then: "You know what's exactly like 'The Sopranos'? World Cup soccer. The Italians won. Everybody watched. And now they'll go away for four years. The World Cup was Germany's best finish in an international competition since the invasion of Poland."

And finally: "Young Suri Cruise has yet to be seen in public. One school of thought is that the parents are just being protective. Another is, do you nkow how hard it is to find a kid that looks like Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes? Casting continues, and three children have received callbacks."

Good morning, you've been a wonderful audience!

You've got to admire a guy who risks falling flat with original comedy material performed in front of the toughest room in...well, maybe anywhere. But it's likely that Marder won't be hurting for material during forthcoming CW events at TCA. It may in fact be just the career break the man was looking for.

http://www.pastdeadline.com/

CPanther95

07-17-06, 09:09 PM

Yeah, start dates..you're slackin' dude... :p

Actually, by the end of August everything should be set so we'll allow you to have a life until then. :D

Thanks, hate to lose pool time with temps in the high 90's. ;)

keenan

07-17-06, 09:16 PM

Thanks, hate to lose pool time with temps in the high 90's. ;)
You too huh? Been in the 90's for the last week and it looks like at least another week to come here in NorCal. Santa Rosa Creek never felt so good. :D

GeorgeLV

07-17-06, 09:17 PM

Net plans to go out with a bang
By Michael Schneider, Josef Adalian Variety.com June 30, 2006

The Frog is planning one last hurrah before it croaks.

The WB will sign off the air forever on Sunday, Sept. 17, by rebroadcasting the pilot episodes of several of its signature skeins, including "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," "Felicity" and "Dawson's Creek."

-------------------------------------

I wonder how many people will ever see the WB signoff. Here, My Network TV is replacing the WB and they sign on September 5.

fredfa

07-17-06, 09:34 PM

That's a big problem George.

There will be very, very few stations actually carrying WB programming by signoff day.

fredfa

07-17-06, 09:39 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
The CW's Dawn Ostroff says, "Come, watch!"

Question is, will enough people pay attention?

By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog July 17, 2007

The last time Dawn Ostroff talked to TV critics was in January, and she knew that The CW was in the offing but gave us absolutely no indication she had something her sleeve. And that something caused shockwaves when it dropped. The collapse of two networks into one, announced only days after Winter Press Tour ended, took everyone by surprise.

Do not play poker with this woman. Because she's going for green -- as in the color, and your money.

Monday morning, the ballroom was awash in a hue someone referred to as John Deere green, but it resembled grass more than a mower. Think of a lawn that's had toxic fertilizer religiously dumped on it. Lovely, yes, but unnatural, and a vile color for the jackets The CW's fresh-faced male pages, all securely within the channel's 18-to-34 target demographic, were forced to model.

On their backs it says, "Free to the Helpful." These are not going to be popular choices at the Salvation Army's thift store. The women got off more easily – white jackets, lime lettering.

It's all part of a campaign to draw attention to the new network that will spring from the remains of UPN, which ceases to be on September 15th, and The WB, dropping dead on 17th. The CW starts on the 20th; what's going to air on affiliates on the 18th and 19th have yet to be worked out. (My vote: A tap-dancing red-headed orphan singing, "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya! Tomorrow! You're always a day away!")

As for the series you care about, "Gilmore Girls" will be back for a new season Sept. 26, and "Veronica Mars" third round of mysteries begins Oct. 3.

The CW's motto -- the first of many, you can be sure of that -- is Free to Be. Free to be loved! Free to be fierce! Free to be geeks! Free to be family! zoomed across the monitors, along with stills of Tyra Banks growling at us, and Kristen Bell, wide-eyed and blowing bubblegum bubbles.

Also, viewers will feel Free to be spending freely, if Ostroff has anything to do with it.

The CW, as part of CBS Corp, is doing everything it can to get more cash into advertiser pockets. (The photo of the chick that I talked about in a previous post referred to a CBS promotional campaign. They're going to print slogans tied to series on 35 million eggs. Wow.) Ostroff talked a lot about integrating ads into programming and web-content more effectively.

Because, I don't know about you, but I need more advertising in my life.

Can't blame the network for trying. The television business is about making cash, first and foremost; pushing products on you is the tradeoff for watching your favorite shows. And as Ostroff pointed out, the 42 million consumers between 18 and 34 years old buy a lot of firsts: car, home, couches, shoes, jeans, etcetera. I doubt you'll see ads for Metamucil or Rogaine on The CW. Viagra, maybe.

What they don't quite get is that putting two networks into one slot doesn't guarantee double the viewers. "There's nobody who is targeting the 18-to-34 year old demo now," Ostroff said. Well, except for MTV, MTV2, VH1, Comedy Central, SpikeTV, and pretty much everything on cable besides Ovation and local government channels. Yeah, yeah, cable is different from network, but not in the minds of your average person between 18 and 34.

Don't count The CW out before the game has begun, though. This kid is coming to play.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/print.asp?entryID=105076

fredfa

07-17-06, 09:42 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Scrumming Lauren

By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog

''Gilmore Girls'' and ''Veronica Mars,'' two of my favorite shows, had press conferences today. My favorite moment may have been when Lauren Graham agreed with my assertion that Lorelai was a wuss last season. (She also said she didn't like that, although she had no power to change it, and she did like that Lorelai-and-Christopher ending.)

But I am not alone in caring about ''Gilmore.'' And Graham is not attending a press party tonight for stars and producers from CW shows. So, in order to get in some extra questions after the press conference, we had to form a scrum around her. A very tight scrum, as it turned out.

Now, most of us know each other and we're willing to both crowd in and respect each other's space (in addition to accepting the occasional audio recorder overhead, as a reporter in the back reaches out like the branch of a tree to pick up the conversation in the center of the scrum). But a woman known for her agressiveness leaned into my back so hard and persistently that I began to think I was being prepped for a colonoscopy.

Since the bride is the only person allowed that close, I tried to inch forward as much as the rest of the crowd allowed. The other reporter just inched closer. I ended up moving laterally; the other reporter got a better vantage point while I lost mine. But at least I regained full possession of my kidneys.

http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/

fredfa

07-17-06, 09:48 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Changing Of The “Gilmore” Guard

By Ellen Gray Philadelphia Daily News in her TCA blog July 17, 2006

Some "Gilmore Girls" fans may be losing sleep -- or brain cells -- over the departure of show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her executive producer husband, Daniel, but star Lauren Graham seems to think change is good.

So far, at least.

"If you write anything that makes it sound like I said something negative about Amy and Dan then I will be upset," said Graham, sitting beside David S. Rosenthal, who's replaced the Palladino as show-runner for the "Girls'" for the coming season.

"It’s just we have scripts early and I’ve gotten to meet the writers," she said. While she's already seen one script for the coming season and an outline for another, it was common in the past to get scripts the night before filming began, she said later.

Moreover, it sounds as if Graham thinks her voice might be heard somewhere beyond the soundstage.

Some show-runners "don't want anyone else's opinion and some do and some shows are better for it and some aren't," Graham said. With Rosenthal in charge, "it's more of an open-door world."

So without bad-mouthing Amy or Dan, let's just list some of the things Graham didn't like about the "Gilmore Girls" in the past couple of seasons (honk if you agree at any point):

-- Her character, Lorelai, being what one TV critic called a "wuss" in letting Luke (Scott Patterson) call the shots in keeping her separate from his newfound 12-year-old daughter. "It wasn't my favorite stuff to play, to kind of be dictated to by Luke, but again, I think, you know, it was a...believable conflict…and that’s why the end [when Lorelai ended up in bed with her ex, Christopher] to me made perfect sense.”

-- The long separation between Lorelai and Rory (Alexis Bledel) the season before.

-- Paul Anka (the dog, not the singer). "I'm just not a fan of dog comedy," she said.

"We're not killing the dog," said Rosenthal.

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/ellengray/archives/003620.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 09:51 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
The CW: Up from the ashes

By Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic TV Critic in his Critic’s Tour blog 07/17/2006

Everything old is new again.

That seems to be the idea behind the CW, the oddly named new network built from what's left standing at the WB and UPN.

"It's obviously an understatement to say that things have changed since we last met just a few months ago," Dawn Ostroff, the CW's entertainment president, said. Yeah, no kidding. Just days after critics went home in January, they announced creation of the new network, something they worked hard to keep under wraps. Working pretty hard to publicize things these days, including -- yes -- the official color of the network! Which is green. A nice shade, really, though we got mired in a bizarre string of questions about just what color, all that. Happens sometimes. Kind of like a loop that you can't get out of. Yawn.

In addition to telling us how not having all the low-rated shows on the WB and UPN going up against each other ought to improve things -- though not too much: "That doesn't mean that Supernatural and Veronica Mars will suddenly reach massive heights because they're on the same schedule," which is actually too bad -- Ostroff said the CW will change the way it shows commercials, as well.

On Tuesday nights, instead of regular old commercials, it'll have "content wraps," which are, and this is a little hard to follow, but bear with me, little mini-shows in three parts that will, for now, follow a blind-date sort of plot with real people. So instead of hawking cars or beer or whatever, advertisers will sponsor these mini-shows.

Sounds forward-thinking, innovative, doomed to failure. But that's just me.

In truth, the CW will sport a pretty cool lineup on some nights. Gilmore Girls followed by Veronica Mars on Tuesdays, for instance, or Smallville followed by Supernatural (yay) on Thursdays. That's four hours I'm in for.

The network is only debuting two new shows, so there is some legitimate concern that it's too dependent upon shows that have run their course -- 7th Heaven has already had a finale, for instance, but it's coming back anyway. But what the heck. Think of the network's schedule as kind of a greatest-hits album. There are some clunkers (One Tree Hill) along with some gems (Everybody Hates Chris), and you wonder about what's coming next. But this'll do for now.

http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5&blogtype=Entertainment

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:24 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CW to launch Sept. 20 with 'Top Model'

By Kimberly Nordyke The Hollywood Reporter July 18, 2006

PASADENA -- The new CW network will officially launch Sept. 20 with a two-hour premiere of the reality show "America's Next Top Model" at 8 p.m.

CW president of entertainment Dawn Ostroff made the announcement Monday at the Television Critics Assn.'s summer press tour at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel, where she was pressed by reporters on topics ranging from the decision on which shows to cancel and which to bring back in the fall, executives' measure for success for the new network, the advertising elements being referred to as "content wraps" and the decision to stick with the name CW.

In addition, the CW said Monday that Whoopi Goldberg will appear in two episodes of the comedy series "Everybody Hates Chris," which will have its second-season debut Oct. 1 along with fellow comedies "All of Us," "Girlfriends" and the new series "The Game." In "Chris," Goldberg will portray a woman who moves in next door to Chris' family and whose granddaughter is the latest object of his affections.

During the session, the CW announced the premiere dates for all of its series. Following the seventh-cycle debut of "Top Model," "Friday Night Smackdown" will debut Sept. 22; "7th Heaven" and the new series "Runaway" will premiere Sept. 25; "Gilmore Girls" returns Sept. 26; "One Tree Hill" follows "Top Model" starting Sept. 27; "Smallville" and "Supernatural" make their CW debuts Sept. 28; and "Veronica Mars" has its third-season premiere Oct. 3 in the post-"Gilmore" slot.

Because the network's affiliates officially switch to the CW on Sept. 18, Ostroff said, viewers will see a combination of repeats and season finales of the shows making the switch from WB Network and UPN before they have their new-season premieres.

In her opening remarks, Ostroff again emphasized the network's strategy for reaching its target demo of adults 18-34. Among the initiatives are anchoring every night of programming with established series, making a concerted effort to program to a multicultural audience and striving to reach viewers through a highly interactive Web site that includes a section called the CW Lab, where viewers can create their own promos, as well as an online community dubbed the CW Lounge.

Some confusion arose when Ostroff tried to explain the network's "content wraps," which are fully sponsored mini TV shows with a beginning, middle and end that run in place of national spots on certain nights. After the break, the network showed a video explaining the content more visually.

"We've had a great response from advertisers, who are always looking for new ways to engage viewers and get (advertisers') messages across. ... Why wouldn't (viewers) want to see advertisers reach them in a different way?" Ostroff asked.

Ostroff also was grilled about the CW's measure for success in terms of ratings, a line of questioning that continued during off-stage comments to reporters.

"I don't know if we'll have twice as many (viewers)," she said. "I think that ultimately we'll wind up with more viewers than either network (with the merging of WB and UPN). It's going to takes us time in the beginning to get everybody into the house and to communicate that there's going to be a new channel that they are going to find their favorite shows on. But I do believe that as the years go on, we will wind up with stronger ratings."

She added that one reason she expects the CW to be successful is because no other network is focusing solely on targeting the 18-34 demo.

Ostroff also was asked about MyNetworkTV, the other new network launching in September. "The people at Fox are very smart, but I do think it's a very different business model than what the CW is going to be," she said, referring to MyNet's schedule consisting solely of two drama strips and their recap episodes. She also said she believes that the budget for those series is a lot less than what the CW is spending on its shows.

The executive also was interrogated about the decision to cancel "Everwood" while bringing back "One Tree Hill" as well as the process behind the choice to renew "7th Heaven" after having already canceled it. She noted that "Everwood" was the oldest-skewing show off both WB and UPN's schedule and would "never be able to anchor a night," but execs wanted to give "One Tree Hill" a chance to grow.

Ostroff said that one reason "Heaven" was brought back was because of the "devoted and loyal" fans. She added that there will be new characters along with returning cast members including Stephen Collins, Catherine Hicks and Beverley Mitchell but that the status of some of the other regulars is still being worked out. Haylie Duff, who made appearances this past season, also will become a regular next season.

Asked about the timing of the new network's announcement in January, coming just after the WB and UPN sessions at the Television Critics Assn. that same month -- where a new network hadn't been alluded to -- Ostroff said that nothing had been finalized until "literally the night before" the network was announced.

One reporter asked why the network's executives had decided to stick with the name CW, which might make many people automatically think "country and Western." (The moniker combines the first letters of the network's parent companies, CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. Entertainment.) He then went on to point out the network's logo and visual branding elements, describing the color as "John Deere green."

Ostroff responded that they had intended to "explore" other titles after the announcement of the new network in January. But once the execs did some research, they were "shocked" to find that 48% of the target demo of adults 18-34 already knew what the CW was and were inclined to watch the network.

"When we looked at changing it, it was really hard to justify because it was already so established," she said. "It would have costs us tens of millions of dollars to ever get that kind of brand recognition if we had started over."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/television/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840797

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:27 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
DVRs 'enhance' nets, CBS' Poltrack says

By Kimberly Nordyke The Hollywood Reporter July 18, 2006

PASADENA -- CBS Corp. executive David Poltrack argued Monday that digital video recorders are helping boost viewership for broadcast network series, and that in turn is offering more value to advertisers who purchase commercial time.

Poltrack, chief research officer at CBS Corp. and president of research unit CBS Vision, gave a presentation at the Television Critics Assn.'s summer press tour at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel that addressed Nielsen Media Research's plan to provide commercial ratings data.

Nielsen is planning to begin providing the average commercial minute ratings per program based on Live plus 7 measurement starting in November.

(Nielsen Media Research is owned by VNU, parent company of The Hollywood Reporter.)

Poltrack said his company has been studying the data for some time to determine the percentage of viewers who stick around for the ads and that there shouldn't be any surprises when Nielsen starts providing the numbers.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/television/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840794

CPanther95

07-17-06, 10:31 PM

PASADENA -- CBS Corp. executive David Poltrack argued Monday that digital video recorders are helping boost viewership for broadcast network series,

No question.

and that in turn is offering more value to advertisers who purchase commercial time.

No way.

keenan

07-17-06, 10:37 PM

No question.

No way.
It's funny seeing these ad execs deliberately ignoring the obvious since the truth would hurt their sales.

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:38 PM

The New York Times Obituary
Carrie Nye, 69

Actress, Wife of Dick Cavett
By Campbell Robertson The New York Times July 17, 2006

Carrie Nye, a stage, film and television actress and a fixture at the Williamstown Theater Festival, died Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 69.

The cause was lung cancer, said her husband, the television host Dick Cavett.

Ms. Nye, known for her dry wit and Mississippi drawl that inevitably attracted comparisons with Tallulah Bankhead, made her Broadway debut in 1960 in “A Second String,” an adaptation of a novel by Colette. Five years later she was nominated for a Tony Award for playing a society lady in the musical “Half a Sixpence.”

Other Broadway productions included “A Very Rich Woman,” a play written by Ruth Gordon, and a 1980 revival of “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Among her Off Broadway credits were Michael Cacoyannis’s 1963 production of “The Trojan Women” and a 1972 production of Tom Stoppard’s “Real Inspector Hound.”

But the core of her acting career was in regional theater. She came to the Williamstown Theater Festival in northern Massachusetts a few years after it opened, in 1955, and continued to return throughout the 1960’s and 70’s, playing the leading roles in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “The Skin of Our Teeth” and “Nude With Violin.” With the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., Ms. Nye performed “Troilus and Cressida” at the Kennedy White House.

She continued acting in Off Broadway and regional theater in the 1980’s and 90’s, performing in plays by Ibsen, Chekhov and Tennessee Williams with the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival in Madison, the Adelphi Festival Theater in Garden City, N.Y., and the Phoenix Theater Company in Purchase, N.Y.

Along with her theater work, Ms. Nye also acted in many television movies, including a two-part 1973 movie starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor called “Divorce His” and “Divorce Hers,” an experience she later described hilariously in an essay in Time magazine.

Ms. Nye had the opportunity to play Ms. Bankhead in the 1980 television movie “The Scarlett O’Hara War,” for which she was nominated for an Emmy.

She continued her three-pronged career in the 1980’s, acting in films that included “Creepshow” and “Hello Again,” in regional and Off Broadway productions and, briefly, on the soap opera “The Guiding Light,” before her character fell into a pit of quicksand. (Ms. Nye told Time magazine that her preferred death for her character was “to be impaled on a hatpin.”) She returned to “The Guiding Light,” as a different character, in 2003.

In a 2003 interview with The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Ms. Nye was asked to name the favorite role of her career. “None of them,” she said. “I only became an actress so I wouldn’t have to cook or make a bed.”

Carolyn Nye McGeoy was born on Oct. 14, 1936, in Greenwood, Miss., the daughter of a bank president and a homemaker. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., and then went to the Yale Drama School, where she met Mr. Cavett. After Ms. Nye graduated, in 1959, she and Mr. Cavett went to Williamstown for the summer theater festival. They married in 1964; her husband is her only immediate survivor.

In the 1960’s, Mr. Cavett and Ms. Nye rented and then bought Tick Hall, a Stanford White house in Montauk, at the tip of Long Island. After it burned in 1997 Ms. Nye enlisted architects and preservationists to build an exact reproduction of the house, down to the doorknobs, a feat that was recorded in the 2003 documentary, “From the Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/arts/17nye.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-17-06, 10:49 PM

Obituary
Mickey Spillane, 88

Creator of Detective Mike Hammer
By Dennis McLellan Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 17, 2006

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Mickey Spillane, whose Mike Hammer private eye novels generated a post-World War II storm of literary criticism for their level of sex and violence and made Spillane one of the bestselling authors of the 20th century, died today. He was 88.

Spillane, who lived more than 50 years in the South Carolina coastal fishing village of Murrells Inlet, died "peacefully at his house with his family," said Brian Edgerton of Goldfinch Funeral Home.

The cause of death was not disclosed.

A former comic book writer and Army Air Forces veteran, the Brooklyn-born Spillane arrived on the literary scene in 1947 with the publication of his first novel, "I, the Jury," which introduced his tough guy New York City private detective.

With his wartime best friend having been found murdered as the novel opens, Hammer vows to find out who did it and let the killer have it the same way his pal got it, with "a .45 slug to the gut, just a little below the belly button." The book concludes with what has been called the most infamous ending in hard-boiled fiction.

After discovering the killer is the seductively beautiful woman he has fallen for, Hammer plugs her with a .45 slug to her naked belly. The book's final three lines:

"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.

"I, the Jury" was blasted by critics. Mystery authority Anthony Boucher called it a "vicious glorification of force, cruelty and extra-legal methods." And the Saturday Review magazine denounced its "lurid action, lurid characters, lurid plot, lurid finish."

For his part, Spillane let the critical barbs roll off him like Jack Daniels over ice.

"I pay no attention to those jerks who think they're critics," he proclaimed in one interview. In another, he said: "I don't give a hoot about reading reviews. What I want to read is the royalty checks."

First published in hardback by E.P. Dutton, "I, the Jury" did not become a worldwide phenomenon until it was released as a 25-cent Signet paperback; by 1952, some 4 million copies reportedly had been sold.

Its success led to a dozen more Mike Hammer mysteries over the decades, including, in quick succession, "My Gun Is Quick" (1950), "Vengeance Is Mine!" (1950), "One Lonely Night" (1951), "The Big Kill" (1951) and "Kiss Me, Deadly" (1952).

With Hammer, Spillane secured his place in the pantheon of such mystery greats as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. But Spillane was said to have an edge over the more critically acclaimed creators of private eyes Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.

As Otto Penzler, founder of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York, told the Washington Post in 2001: "While Hammett and Chandler were successful and well-known, they never approached the kind of success in terms of readership and recognition that Mickey has had."

Indeed, Spillane's success spawned a Mike Hammer radio show, a cartoon strip (written by Spillane) and three TV series, one starring Darren McGavin in the late 1950s and two starring Stacy Keach in the 1980s and `90s.

There also were a couple of Mike Hammer TV movies in the 1980s and a handful of earlier motion pictures, including Robert Aldrich's 1955 film noir classic, "Kiss Me, Deadly," starring Ralph Meeker, and "The Girl Hunters" (1963). In the latter, Spillane donned a trench coat and fedora to become the only mystery writer ever to portray his own fictional sleuth on film.

The stocky 5-foot-8 writer with a bull neck and trademark crew cut had a theatrical flair for self-promotion. He played himself as a detective hired by wild animal trainer Clyde Beatty to solve a circus mystery in the 1954 film "Ring of Fear," and he played a bestselling writer threatened with murder on a 1974 episode of "Columbo." He also occasionally posed as Hammer on the covers of paperback editions of his mystery novels.

But Spillane achieved his greatest fame as a pop-culture icon when he spoofed himself, again outfitted in the traditional private eye garb in more than 110 commercials for Miller Lite beer from 1973 to 1989.

Spillane's celebrity status prompted a succession of fans to seek him out at his home in Murrells Inlet, just south of Myrtle Beach.

He once pointed his shotgun at the pilot of a helicopter hovering overhead to give its tourist passengers a close look at Spillane's house. "He took off and never came back," Spillane told the Los Angeles Times in 1989, laughing at the memory.

But he typically welcomed fans — at least those who approached by land — and he was more likely to reach into an ice chest and offer an uninvited guest a cold beer.

"I have no fans," Spillane told the Washington Post in 1984. "You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friend."

Despite his wealth, Spillane was a man of simple tastes, one who enjoyed fishing from his 24-foot boat and driving a Ford pickup truck that he called his "Carolina Cadillac."

He did boast of owning a 1956 Jaguar XK-40, but it was a gift from John Wayne for Spillane's uncredited rewriting of "Ring of Fear." The car, the author was fond of recalling, came wrapped in a big red ribbon and a note that said, "Thanks, Duke."

Spillane lived up to his colorful persona. He dove for buried treasure in the Florida Keys, once rode with moonshiners and revenue agents in Appalachia, raced stock cars and toured as a trampoline artist with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. He was even shot out of a cannon.

But contrary to his tough-guy image, Spillane was a father of four children and a Jehovah's Witness convert who has been described by journalists as being soft-spoken, affable and articulate — a man who spiced his conversations with phrases no more offensive than "by golly," "my word" and "son of a gun."

"I'm actually a softie," he conceded in a 2004 interview with the The Times when he was nearly 86. "Tough guys get killed too early."
________________________________________
FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story cited Spillane's 2004 interview with The Orange County Register. The interview was with The Times.
________________________________________

The only child of an Irish-Catholic bartender father and a Presbyterian mother, he was born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn on March 9, 1918. He was given the saint's name Michael when he was baptized in the Catholic Church and his father thereafter called him Mickey.

Spillane grew up in a tough neighborhood in Elizabeth, N.J., and began writing as a teenager. He said he "turned pro right out of high school," writing short stories for Collier's and other "slick" magazines as well as "pulps" such as Dime Detective.

After three years at Fort Hays State University in Kansas, he returned to his birthplace of New York and ultimately landed a job as a scriptwriter-assistant editor at Funnies Inc., where he proved to be the company's most prolific writer. Whereas other writers took a week to produce an eight-page story, Spillane churned out his stories for "Captain Marvel," "The Human Torch" and other titles in a single day.

Joining the Army the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Spillane served as a cadet flight instructor in Florida and Mississippi and rose to the rank of captain. In 1945, he married the first of his three wives, Mary Ann, with whom he had his four children — Kathy, Ward, Michael and Caroline.

In 1946, with the comic book business in a postwar slump and needing $1,000 to buy a parcel of land near the Hudson River community of Newburgh, N.Y., Spillane came up with a way to raise the money: Write a novel.

Inspired by Mike Danger, a two-fisted private eye character he had developed for a comic book whose publication was waylaid by Spillane's enlistment in the Army, he began writing.

In what has variously been reported as either nine, 16 or 19 days, he completed "I, the Jury."

"I knew it would be a hit," Spillane told the Ottawa Citizen in 1999. "Paperback reprints were huge during the war, and I saw a market for originals. All those soldiers coming back. A little sex wouldn't hurt, and they'd seen violence. I got a comic book distributor to guarantee a paperback reprint and got a $1,000 U.S. advance from Dutton for the hardcover."

Literary critics weren't the only ones who criticized Spillane and his writing, accusing him of sadism, hating women and other offenses. Ministers and editorial page writers also denounced Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, and his work was criticized in Senate hearings investigating juvenile delinquency in the 1950s.

While acknowledging that his books were the "chewing gum of American literature," Spillane basked in his success.

"I'm the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne," he'd say, pointedly adding: "And they're all dead."

He never failed to take delight in recalling the time, during the early years of paperbacks, when "some New York literary guy" approached him at a dinner party and said, "I think it's disgraceful that of the 10 best-selling books of all time, seven were written by you."

To which Spillane replied: "You're lucky I've only written seven books."

A two-fingered typist who pounded out his books on a manual Smith-Corona, Spillane always said he was a "writer," not an "author."

"What's the distinction? A writer makes money," he'd say.

His philosophy, as he told the Washington Post in 1984, was to "only write when I need the money. I hate to work. If I got enough money, I don't write. What's the sense of making it if you can't spend it?"

In all, Spillane wrote 53 books, which reportedly have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, and include his Tiger Mann spy series. He also wrote a couple of children's books, including "The Day the Sea Rolled Back," which won a Junior Literary Guild Award.

In 1995, Spillane received the Mystery Writers Assn.'s Grand Master for Lifetime Achievement award.

Spillane divorced his first wife in 1962 and was later married to actress Sherri Malinou, whom he divorced. In 1983, he married Jane Rodgers Johnson, a fitness teacher 28 years his junior who had been the first runner-up Miss South Carolina in 1965.

A list of survivors was not immediately available.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-071706spillane,0,6034250,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

More on Mickey Spillane here:
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/spillane.html

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:02 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Life on "Mars"

By Diane Werts Newsday Staff Writer

Never let it be said that viewers' internet reactions can't influence the course of their favorite TV shows.

"Veronica Mars" creator Rob Thomas said here he keeps an eye on viewer comments at fan-interaction sites like Television Without Pity "to see where they're standing on a mystery" like last season's convoluted bus-crash-et-al saga. He could tell two-thirds of the way through the season that its extended complications were losing viewer interest, though at that point things were already starting to wind up anyway.

So we'll finally see what Thomas learned from his mistakes when the critically beloved cult fave starts its third season Tuesday, Oct. 3 at 9 p.m. on the new CW network created from the merger of "Veronica's" UPN home with rival WB.

"Two concurrent mysteries stretching over 22 episodes had way too many suspects and way too many red herrings," Thomas said, "and I'm going to rein that in."

This "cleaner" fall season kicks off with a nine-episode mystery that's scheduled to air straight through, without repeats or pre-emptions. (Loose ends from last season will be tied up within its first two episodes.) He's further planning arcs of seven and six episodes that are "tighter and more focused," as Kristen Bell's shrewd teen sleuth moves on to college -- though she'll still be living at home with crack detective dad Enrico Colantoni and navigating the social divides of their new-money California enclave.

Thomas will "also give the new audience more jumping-in points," hoping to hold additional viewers from the show's more compatible new Tuesday night lead-in, ex-WB mainstay "Gilmore Girls."

"We're actually in a make-or-break time now," Thomas says, figuring if his cool show can't build an audience the first half of this third season, then it's never going to happen. That would break his heart. Thomas has invested much more of himself in the funky layers of "Veronica" than in other offbeat short-runs like "Cupid" and "Snoops," where he figured their failure he just meant he'd move on to something else that better satisfied him. "Veronica" is it, he says. "You don't know how rare it is to get the right ingredients together to do something you're proud of."

Actually, we do, Rob. "Veronica" fans can feel the love in every episode. We're just hoping the affection spreads.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/TCABlogs

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:30 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Rocking 'Gilmore,' 'Veronica' rocks

By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In”

PASADENA, Calif. -- The big question going into the "Gilmore Girls" session was whether or not someone would have the guts to ask new executive producer David Rosenthal, who replaces series creator Amy Sherman Palladino, about whether his personal history makes him an appropriate show runner for the series.

As reported in a 2001 New York Observer profile that's been quoted all over the Web, Rosenthal took a bit of a siesta from life, family and career five years ago when he wrote an angry play about wanting to have sex with Heidi Klum.

There's no way I was going to have the guts to ask the question, at least not until the scrum after the press conference, but another reporter did bring it up, and was immediately shot down.

"My personal life is not an issue here," Rosenthal said.

"It has nothing to do with anything," star Lauren Graham added tersely. "Next!"

When you bring someone with that kind of baggage onto a quasi-family show like "Gilmore Girls," I think it is a legitimate question. That Rosenthal was not forthcoming on the topic is no surprise, but he also had little to say in general about the series, which ended its season on a fan-infuriating note as Lorelai (Graham) slept with Christopher, the father of her daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), but not the man she's been intended for since the start of the series, diner owner Luke (Scott Patterson).

"That's the stuff of good drama," Rosenthal said of the cliffhanger he has to write his way out of. "[Palladino] left us with a very full plate."

What that plate is full of, Rosenthal did not elaborate, except to say that Lorelai's decision to sleep with Christopher is "a big deal" that the writers intend to explore fully.

As for the future of the series beyond this year, Rosenthal said he's not writing "Gilmore Girls" like it's the final season even though Graham's and Bledel's contracts are up at the end of this year. Both stars have indicated in the past they're ready to move on, but today they left room for negotiation.

"I support David and I hope we have such a great season it feels like there's reason to keep going," Graham said. "I don"t want to be in a situation where I feel sorry for me. I've seen that happen to actors and to shows where the thing is done, let it be over, but I don't know if we're in that situation yet."

When the show comes to an end, Rosenthal said he would consult with Palladino, who's said she knows how the series should end for years (supposedly with two words, Graham said).

Graham said she's excited for the "structure change," as Bledel called the departure of Palladino. Graham said last season's Luke-Lorelai estrangement over his daughter "wasn't some of her favorite stuff to play," nor was the Rory-Lorelai estrangement from the year prior.

"I am a huge fan of Amy's and [Palladino's writer husband Dan, who also departed the show], but I also think there is room to grow," Graham said. "I've been in situations where I disagreed with them; it's never perfect and it should be some kind of collaboration, a back and forth, because we have ownership of who these people are."

She was quick to add, "If you write anything that makes me sound negative with Amy and Dan, I will be upset. They gave me the best job I've had, but they really like to run things in a certain way that was specific to the two of them, that was more hands-on. Things are different. We have scripts early and I've gotten to meet the writers in a more everybody-sit-down-and-talk-about-what-your-feeling-is way. That's different. But every show runner has the way they do it and some of them don't really want anyone else's opinion and some do. It's a more open-door world."

Read between those lines.

• • • • • • • • • • •

On the other hand, the "Veronica Mars" press conference was a veritable lovefest with members of the press offering themselves up to play extras on the series.

The press conference began on a high note as star Kristen Bell, who proved herself smart, funny and charming in prior press tour appearances, saw the picture of herself as Veronica in a white tank top, leaning toward the camera, which led her to quip, "Oh honestly, I am so over it. Can we get a new picture?"

Series creator Rob Thomas acknowledged that season two of "Veronica Mars" became too convoluted and he's going to rectify that in the upcoming "do or die" season by breaking it into three uninterrupted mysteries of nine, seven and six episodes each.

The first one will surround the rapist at Hearst college introduced last year.

Tina Majorino, who plays Mac on the show, will be upped to series regular status, and somehow Dick Casablancas will have made it into Hearst College as well. The town sheriff will also become a series regular, while Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn) will not return.

Weevil (Francis Capra) will turn up in the third episode of the new season and viewers will learn he went to prison for assault, but not the murder of Thumper which remains (and apparently will continue to remain) unsolved. Weevil is now working at a car wash.

The cliffhanger of what's in the briefcase will be resolved in the first two episodes of the season and Charisma Carpenter will be back for at least one episode.

The CW has ordered only 13 episodes of "Veronica" so far, but if the ratings are decent, Thomas expects an order for the final nine.

"If we're struggling in our third year, I don't imagine the fervor of our fans and the kind of [positive] response from the press will buy us another year," Thomas said. "We're in a make or break time now."

Thomas and Bell said they were nervous about whether or not the series would get renewed for a third season this past May, but Bell said she had faith.

"I know, and don't tell this to all the other kids, but we are [CW Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff's] favorite," Bell said. "I had confidence she would do what was right, what we all knew was right, which was getting us back on the air."

• • • • • • • • • • •

Best, snarkiest question to CW Entertainment president Dawn Ostroff: "Could you talk just for a second about the decision to bring back 'One Tree Hill' and how that fits into your strategy of picking the best shows from either network?"

http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/

fredfa

07-17-06, 11:35 PM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Final fight

By Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger in the “All TV In Hollywood” blog Monday, July 17, 2006

Well, there goes another streak. The CW's day came and went with nary a celebrity threatening to beat up a critic. The closest we came was when a reporter repeatedly asked new "Gilmore Girls" showrunner David Rosenthal about the period in his life when he quit his marriage and his job to write a play about his desire to sleep with Heidi Klum -- which prompted annoyed "Gilmore" star Lauren Graham to snap, "It has nothing to do with anything. Next!" But she remained seated and otherwise composed.

Rumble or no, that "Gilmore" session was the liveliest of the day, and one in which the celeb vs. critic dynamic was briefly replaced by critic vs. critic -- and I was one of the critics.
Press tour is a marathon (I'll be here 16 days total, and I'm not doing 100% of the tour), and every now and then you hit a wall. Today was a wall day for me, and at the start of the "Gilmore" session, I went a little caveman. I had the microphone and was trying to ask the first question. So was another writer on the other side of the room. Because there are multiple mics floating throughout every press conference, there's this odd dance when two people try to ask a question at the same time. Sometimes the person with the loudest voice wins, and sometimes one person just chooses to bide his or her time and yield the floor. But in this case, neither of us wanted to give. I don't know about the other guy, but I was suddenly gripped with this competitive fury, and I kept talking and talking and talking, as Graham, Rosenthal and Alexis Bledel scanned back and forth across the room, almost entertained by the whole thing.

Long story short: I won, and when I was done asking Rosenthal his thoughts on the controversial cliffhanger that "Gilmore" creator Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote (Lorelai dumping fiance Luke and sleeping with ex-boyfriend Christopher) before she quit the show and left him to clean up the mess, the other writer stepped in to ask his own variation on the same question. (This is, as I've said before, a popular press tour tactic: keep asking the same thing in slightly different ways until you get the exact quote you want. "If I can come at that from a different angle" is a popular question preamble.)

After that weird spectacle, I sat back and took notes on a session in which much was said and little was said at the same time. Graham and Bledel, whose contracts are up at the end of this season, were both vague on whether they want to stay with the show after that. Rosenthal talked about upcoming plotlines in only the vaguest of terms.

At one point, one critic asked about the rumor that Graham can't stand working with the dog that plays Lorelai's neurotic pet, Paul Anka. She copped to it (while expressing a deep fondness for the human Paul Anka), and said she'd rather the dog never appear again. One of the few concrete answers Rosenthal gave was that the dog would, sadly, continue.

In the Scrum with Graham afterwards, Graham was asked about the long-standing rumor that she and co-star Scott Patterson (who plays Luke) don't get along, and whether that had anything to do with the decision to break up Luke and Lorelai.

"I can't kill the dog!" she protested. "What power do you think I have? I don't have any kind of influence on the story like that. I think it is one of those Sam and Diane relationships where, if they're together for too long, the show has to end. So that's not true."

There was fierce debate afterwards about whether the "that's not true" was her debunking the rumor about her disliking Patterson, or just her debunking the rumor that because she dislikes Patterson, she asked Amy to split up the two characters. If the latter, it was as artful a non-answer as I've heard on this tour.

http://www.nj.com/weblogs/tv/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_alan/archives/2006_07.html

Marcus Carr

07-17-06, 11:43 PM

fredfa

07-18-06, 12:00 AM

I agree.

But it is the network's highest-rated show.

fredfa

07-18-06, 01:39 AM

The TV Watch
NBC’s Web-Only Episodes Offer ‘The Office,’ a Little at a Time

By Alessandra Stanley The New York Times July 18, 2006

The Webisode is to network television what an M&M’s Mini is to candy: it can please, but can’t satisfy.

NBC is currently showing several two-minute vignettes of “The Office” on its Web site, the first in a series of Internet-only segments that add up to an original episode: an accounting mystery at Dunder Mifflin.

The company books are short $3,000, and while the boss, Michael Scott (Steve Carell), is the most likely suspect — he once claimed a $50 lunch with a client, then submitted a receipt from J. Crew — protocol demands that the other employees be interrogated first. Most of the secondary characters are featured, but Mr. Carell, the star of the show, does not make an appearance, which makes the video shorts look a little like outtakes swept up from the remainder bin.

That aside, NBC’s niblets are better than most. ABC, USA and other networks vaunt original Internet videos (“All new!”) that are actually just promos for existing and future shows. But even Webisodes of “The Office” can be a chore to watch. These slivers of a sitcom are overpowered by NBC’s larger moving canvas of advertising. Unlike television commercials in the age of TiVo, the FedEx or Toyota ads that precede each “Office” Webisode cannot be skipped or fast-forwarded.

And Internet commercials are more in-your-face, because your face is that much closer to the screen.

Someday soon, all television will be available on cellphones, iPods and laptops, and a better balance between content and commercials will presumably be found. Right now, network Web sites are a piercing shriek of visual noise.

The “Office” vignettes are boxed on a Web page teaming with promos, pop-up ads, games and fall season previews that make every viewing attempt feel like a game of Pac-Man, a race to get to the desired image and enlarge it before being bounced backward or gobbled up by a carnivorous video blob. (Sometimes it is hard to find the “enlarge” icon.)

Broadcast television has lagged behind consumers who make their own videos and find their own hit shows on Web sites like YouTube.com — without mass advertising or executive groupthink. NBC is trying to co-opt some of that video anarchy by forming a strategic cross-promotional alliance with YouTube. The NBC site offers a contest, also flaunted on YouTube, for the best amateur 20-second promo for “The Office” to lure young audiences.

Now every network is racing to embrace television’s new frontier — and beyond, sometimes full circle back to ancient hieroglyphics. CBS says it plans to place laser imprints of its trademark eye insignia, as well as logos for some of its shows, on at least 35 million eggs this fall. (The network calls it “egg-vertising.”)

CBS News, which has the oldest viewers of any network, will revamp this fall’s evening news program with Katie Couric into what the network calls a “multiplatform” show. The evening news broadcast will be on radio, on the Web site and on cellphones. CBS also plans to put its new anchor on an interactive daily blog.

Even PBS has caught the bug. Its Internet site offers Webisodes of its documentary series “Freedom: A History of US.” Actually, the only video on it is a brief introduction by the narrator, Ms. Couric. The rest is text that is implanted, rebus-style, with tiny icons that lead to audio snippets or letters, paintings and other primary source material.

Progress looms, but at the moment Internet programming is surprisingly unwieldy, more like the early days of radio than 21st-century television. Mac users who post complaints about the hurdles to downloading NBC’s Internet videos on the network’s blog make the process seem as tricky as trying to tune into the BBC from Nazi-occupied France.

Webisodes like “The Office” make sense for the networks — a cheap, easy way to keep shows in the public consciousness during the sleepy stage of summer reruns and to promote new fall offerings. They are intoxicatingly open territory for advertisers who fear that TV technology will make broadcast and cable commercials obsolete.

Viewers, however, may not be as excited by the hot-button phrase of Internet programming: “Your free video is loading.” Nobody expects to pay to download a sitcom, let alone a fraction of one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/arts/television/18watc.html?pagewanted=print

fredfa

07-18-06, 01:42 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Poltrack: Network Advertising Model Still Strong

By Ben Grossman Broadcasting & Cable 7/17/2006

With digital video recorder penetration on the rise and Nielsen soon to institute ratings for commercials, CBS Corp. Chief Research Officer and CBS Vision President David Poltrack made his case Monday that the network advertising model is still strong.

Poltrack made the pitch to a gathering of reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena.

Poltrack cited research saying that primetime viewership during commercials drops only five percent on average during a network television show, while that number is as high as 10 percent on cable. However, the figures he cited were from the recent May 2006 sweep, so the gap may be a bit smaller when using year-round totals.

Outside of prime time, daytime has the least amount of drop-off at only 1%, mornings average 6%, late night 9%, evening news only 2% and sports 4%.

Poltrack also echoed the view of other networks that the new Nielsen system of making ratings during commercial breaks available will have little effect on the model, as those figures have actually been available to networks and advertisers since the 1980’s and are already factored into the marketplace.

Poltrack also said that within households with DVRs, only 10% of viewing is done in playback mode overall, though that number rises to 18% in prime-time. He said that was much less than the 40% number that many had projected previously.

Poltrack also said that the average network show actually sees a 5% bump in audience due to DVR playback. Therefore, even with the large amount of people who fast forward through commercials, Poltrack said that commercial viewing numbers re up 4% overall thanks to DVRs.

“The message is clear,” he says. “Broadcast networks will offer advertisers more exposure for their advertisements as more people get DVRs.”

Poltrack put the current DVR penetration figure at 9%

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6354112

fredfa

07-18-06, 02:54 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
CW seeks young audience

Diversity is also a top priority, new network's programming chief says
By Joanne Weintraub Milwaukee Journal Sentinel TV critic July 17, 2006

Pasadena, Calif. - Its stars are models, wrestlers and Gilmore girls, its signature colors are lime green and lemon yellow, and its name is one that executives hope you won't forget, especially if you're in the magic 18-to-34 audience demographic.

The youth-seeking CW network - stitched out of remnants of the old WB and UPN, with lots of shiny green and yellow sequins sewn on - will take to the air in September on Milwaukee's Channel 18 and around the country.

Monday, in a ballroom decorated in Vitamin C colors, complete with young staffers in bright green blazers, CW programming chief Dawn Ostroff announced the premiere dates for the new season.

Ostroff also announced that "Chris," the former UPN hit based on the boyhood of Chris Rock, has signed guest-star Whoopi Goldberg for multiple episodes.

Well before its launch, the green-and-yellow network has been criticized for largely segregating its so-called black shows from its white ones.

"Chris," "All of Us" and "Girlfriends," all comedies from UPN with mostly African-American casts, will air on Sunday nights, followed by a new sitcom about football wives, "The Game," which also has a largely black cast, headed by Tia Mowry ("Sister, Sister").

White stars, in contrast, dominate dramas "Veronica Mars" (from UPN), "Supernatural," "7th Heaven," "One Tree Hill," "Smallville" and the comedy-drama "Gilmore Girls" (all from the WB).

The CW's only new drama, "Runaway," stars former New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg and Leslie Hope ("24") as parents of a family fleeing from the husband's wrongful murder charge.

In remarks to critics, Ostroff said diversity was very much on her mind, particularly given the young audience the CW hopes to attract.

"One-third of America's 18-to-34-year-olds identify themselves as a minority, so to be successful it's a top priority for us to ensure that our viewers see their multicultural lives reflected on the screen," said Ostroff, who previously headed UPN and, before that, was programming chief at Lifetime. "Over the last few months, I've personally met with every producer on the CW to discuss diversity."

Another priority, Ostroff noted, is interactive TV. Among other gimmicks, the network will introduce "Famous for :15," in which viewers are invited to submit personalized 15-second video montages for broadcast between shows.

Asked to comment on the WB family drama "Everwood," which, to the distress of fans, did not make the CW schedule, Ostroff said it was "an agonizing decision" to cut the show loose. She added that its audience was the oldest on either UPN or the WB.

Later in the day, Rock held forth at a comedy producers' discussion that also featured Jada Pinkett Smith ("All of Us"), Mara Brock Akil ("Girlfriends," "The Game") and Ali LeRoi.

Almost immediately, someone in the audience wanted to know if Rock was miffed at being "ignored" by this month's Emmy nominations.

"Naaah," Rock said with a smile. "We know (the show) is good. (Expletive) the Emmys."

He's certainly not ignored, he added, by fellow comedians, who congratulate him for the show's success and, now that he's a producer, pitch him their own projects.

"It's 'Happy Days' meets 'The Love Boat' with a little bit of 'Cedric,' " he said of a typical comedy pitch.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=469853&format=print

fredfa

07-18-06, 09:47 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Save-our-show stunt appeals to CW chief

By Ellen Gray Philadelphia Daily News July 18, 2006

PASADENA, Calif. - There's nothing more charming to a network executive than the stunts thought up by passionate fans trying to save a favorite show.

Assuming, that is, that the network's also interested in saving the show.

Dawn Ostroff, the former UPN entertainment president who's now at the helm of the new CW network, loves "Veronica Mars," which she championed at UPN and is scheduling behind the soon-to-be-former WB's "Gilmore Girls," which she hopes will give it a ratings boost.

"These fans are so passionate," she bragged yesterday. "The 'Veronica Mars' fans hired a plane to fly over my office."

But when a reporter asked Ostroff about a different stunt scheduled for this Friday - in which fans of the canceled "Everwood" plan to set up a Ferris wheel near Ostroff's office - she appeared to feign ignorance.

(For the uninitiated, a Ferris wheel was featured prominently in the show's finale. Given the logistics of getting a Ferris wheel through traffic anywhere in Los Angeles, fans might have been better off if the finale had involved something a bit more portable.)

"Fans are so devoted and loyal," she said, without committing to taking a spin on the wheel.

Clash of the titans

There's always a certain amount of spinning that goes on before the fall shows debut, as execs from rival networks try to psych out their opponents by diminishing the same expectations that seemed so great when they were touting their shows to advertisers a few months earlier.

Still, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler raised more than a few eyebrows over the weekend when she referred to "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" - which is now going head to head with ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" - as an "underdog."

If last season's most-watched scripted show is an underdog, then David and Goliath is a story about a fearsome bully with a slingshot who picked on a gentle giant.

Still, Tessler's probably right to think that "CSI" might get "dinged a little bit by 'Grey's,' " even if history's shown that two popular shows can share a time slot without destroying each other.

One fan who'll apparently still be tuning in to "Grey's" is "CSI" executive producer Carol Mendelsohn.

"I met ['Grey's Anatomy' creator] Shonda Rhimes the other day for the first time," she told reporters Sunday. "I love her show. I talk about it on Mondays. Now, I told her, I'll talk about it on Fridays. But it's exciting... for us, and you guys are writing about us more than you normally do because there's increased competition."

They've got a secret

Shows set in small towns full of quirky characters aren't new - and you'll see at least a couple of such burgs on the broadcast networks' fall schedule - but "Eureka" (9 tonight, Sci Fi Channel) puts the quantum physics in quirky.

Colin Ferguson stars as U.S. Marshal Jack Carter, who's in the process of taking his runaway teenage daughter, Zoe (Jordan Hinson) back to her mother when he has a car accident just outside Eureka and gets stranded there just long enough to stumble upon the town's big secret - that just about all the residents are, as Hanna-Barbera might have put it, smarter than the average bear.

Or, for that matter, the average U.S. marshal.

Ferguson, who briefly co-starred in the NBC version of "Coupling," seems to be a bit more of a stiff here than even the role requires, but the rest of the cast is fun, from Debrah Farentino as a sultry, secretive psychotherapist to Joe Morton as a local mechanic whose skills far outshine Mr. Goodwrench's.

Best of all, Eureka's sci fi-friendly secret should put a smile on the faces of even the most dour conspiracy theorist.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television//15062342.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

fredfa

07-18-06, 10:23 AM

(From Marc Berman’s Sunday, Tuesday, July 18, 2006, Programming Insider column at Mediaweek.com )
The CW: Opening Executive Comments

First off, I have to begin my commentary by congratulating former WB PR guru/comedian Keith Marder, now of CSTV, by surprising the critics with a return opening engagement for the CW. Some of this year’s standout Marder zingers included:

“Later today The CW will unveil its strategy including the new marketing slogan, ‘Two Wrongs Do Make a Right.’”

“Shannen Doherty is one of the many people filling in as host on The View. You have to hand it to the show. They even found a way to make Rosie O’Donnell look good.”

“It started going downhill for Star Jones when she threw her pre-gastric bypass weight around using her television exposure to get sponsors to pay for her wedding. I guess she’ll have to pay for her own divorce.”

And since no Marder joke-fest is complete without a reference to Tom Cruise:

“Young Suri Cruise has yet to be seen in public. One school of thought is that the parents are just being protective. Another is, do you know how hard it is to find a kid that looks like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes?”

As for the executive conference with the always optimistic Dawn Ostroff, president, entertainment, the CW, the underlying thought in the room was, of course, this notion of a “new” network. Will two disappointing broadcasters -- UPN and the WB -- equal a hit? And can the now No. 5 network carve a permanent spot for itself in a growingly competitive technological broadcasting environment?

“Nobody is targeting the 18-34 demographic right now,” said Ostroff. “There were two networks (UPN and the WB) going after the same audience, so this was a great opportunity to combine all of the shows, all of the knowledge, and create a new look for this audience. The one thing that is really fascinating is that we are going to be targeting Gen X and Gen Yers. And when you look at those two generations together, it’s about 120 million Americans. When you look at the 18-34 segment of that, it’s about 42 million Americans. And that’s the second largest group of young Americans coming up, second only to the Baby Boomers. So there is a great opportunity there to reach a huge segment of the population.”

Although you might have thought the definition of “new “would have resulted in bringing in more than just two freshman fall series, the CW will launch on the strength of the established franchises like 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, America’s Next Top Model, Smallville, Girlfriends and Everybody Hates Chris to bring in more viewers.

“You have to realize that we have a very tall order. We need to communicate to all of these viewers and all of these very devoted fans that there is a new network and, in many cases, a new channel to find their favorite shows. About 60 percent of the country is going to have to migrate from their UPN station to the WB station -- the old WB station -- and about 28 percent of the old WB viewers will have to migrate to what was the UPN affiliate. And then, in some cases, there is going to be a station that was neither UPN or the WB. So we knew the best way to communicate that was to depend on the shows that people loved and knew. All along we knew we were going to probably only announce two new shows, because we probably could not support more than that. But we do have several shows already waiting for midseason, and there may be a few more that we're going to announce.”

That said, while you can’t argue the notion of familiarity, you have to wonder why the one new comedy, The Game, is a spin-off series (hence, not necessarily entirely new), and why the network needed to populate the Sunday 9 p.m. hour with a repeat of America’s Next Top Model. Couldn’t it support three new shows and bench the second unnecessary visit with Tyra and the wannabe models on Top Model? And as for the plans in midseason, only one new serial (Hidden Springs) and the return of Reba (which is riding on year two of a two-season renewal) have been announced. So don’t expect too much necessarily new on the CW in 2006-07. But, given the combined inventory, there is every reason to think ratings will increase.

Finally, regarding everyone’s feel-good drama, 7th Heaven, apparently not every little Camden will be present for the 11th season. David Gallagher (Simon) and Mackenzie Rosman (Ruthie) are still not confirmed to return. So, does that mean not-so-little Ruthie will be shipped to TV boarding school? If so, how about Eastland?

On the CW Panel Front:

RUNAWAY Monday 9:00 p.m.

The Premise:
After a man (Donny Wahlberg) is falsely convicted of murder, he and his family change identities and go on the run until he can prove his innocence. Leslie Hope, late of 24, co-stars,

Lead-in:
7th Heaven

Competition:
The Bachelor Rome (ABC), Two and a Half Men and The New Adventures of Old Christine (CBS), Heroes (NBC), Vanished (Fox)

Who Was on the Panel:
Donny Wahlberg, Leslie Hope, Nathan Gamble, Dustin Milligan, Sarah Ramos, and executive producers Darren Star, Chad Hodge and Ed Zuckerman.

The Scoop:
Although Darren Star, of course, is known for creating the soapy Melrose Place and the saucy Sex and the City, here is what he had to say about Runaway:

“I think what's satisfying about the show is that it's really character-based. It's as much about these characters and their growth as people and as a family as it is about the story. So it's not just about twists and turns of the storyline; although certainly that's an aspect of the show. That's not really what makes Runaway special, as far as I'm concerned. I think it is the fact that we have a wonderful cast playing wonderful people that you really come to care about.”

The Reality:
If you can overlook some of the implausibility’s, Runaway offers an hour of solid suspense blended with family drama, and it’s a good start in the drama department for new network the CW. Unfortunately, you have to wonder if the feel-good Camdens of 7th Heaven (which got a last-minute reprieve) is a compatible lead-in. And given the track record of failed dramas not named Everwood airing out of 7th Heaven (remember Hyperion Bay, Safe Harbor and Roswell, to name a few?), and the caliber of the competition, Runaway is likely to be run off the airwaves by midseason. The CW might have been better off keeping the time period warm with the should-have-been renewed Everwood, canceling the fading One Tree Hill (which is moving to Wednesday at 9 p.m. out of America’s Next Top Model) and replacing it with Runaway.

Chance of Survival for Runaway (Based on a scale of 1-1 to 10-1): 8-1

Did You Know?:
Hot Pursuit, a similar appeal drama about a young couple on the run after the woman is falsely framed for murder, lasted on NBC for just three months in the fall of 1984.

THE GAME Monday 8:30 p.m.

The Premise:
A group of females and their relationships with professional football players (including an interracial couple) is the focus of this spin-off from Girlfriends.

Lead-in:
Girlfriends

Competition:
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (ABC), The Amazing Race (CBS), Sunday Nigbt Football (NBC), American Dad (Fox)

Who Was On the Panel:
Coby Bell, Tia Mowry (Sister, Sister), Hosea Chanchez, Brittany Daniel, Pooch Hall, Wendy Raquel Robinson, and executive producer Mara Brock Akil.

The Scoop:
In terms of dealing with the subject of an interracial marriage, according to Mara Brock Akil:

“I wanted to deal with it right away. I wanted people to know that this is a show, and when you tune in we are not afraid of the more provocative areas that everyday people are dealing with. The show is not about race, but there's an aspect that we will talk about. I think that is ripe for discussion in a half-hour situation. So, yes, I want to talk about race.

Another reason I wanted to do this series is because I love introducing stereotypes and then breaking them down. And even with the Kelly character and even the couple of Kelly and Jason, that image is out there -- a black man married to a white woman -- and for me not to present it, I think, would have been false.”

The Reality:
With room on its inaugural schedule for only two new shows, you have to wonder why the CW chose a spin-off of an existing sitcom. Although the fit out of parent series Girlfriends is flawless, the show does not seem to be that new. And airing on the tail end of the CW’s’s relocated (and now unproven) sitcom block opposite considerable competition (including young adults magnet Extreme Makeover: Home Edition) makes The Game a definite long-shot.

Chance of Survival for The Game (Based on a scale of 1-1 to 10-1): 7-1

Did You Know?:
Tia and twin sister Tamera are not the only Mowry siblings. Younger brother Tahj starred in WB sitcom Smart Guy from 1997-99.

Press Tour Tidbits: Notes of Interest

Whoopi Goldberg Guest Stars on Everybody Hates Chris:
Academy Award winner Whoopi Goldberg will appear in two episodes of sophomore sitcom Everybody Hates Chris as a woman whose granddaughter is the latest object of Chris’ affections.

The Scoop on Veronica Mars in Season Three:
To the fans of Veronica Mars who might have thought this season’s mystery dragged on endlessly, season three will feature the first mystery in nine episodes, with (promises, promises) no pre-emptions or repeats. The second mystery will be seven episodes long, and the final one of 2006-07 six episodes. According to executive producer Rob Thomas:

”We almost worked Kristen (Bell) to death in season one. And the whole Logan long-term mystery of what happened on the night of the bridge was largely conceived to give Kristen Bell some much-deserved and much-needed time off, but it had the effect of putting two concurrent mysteries lasting 22 episodes with way too many suspects, way too many red herrings. We are going to do shorter unbroken arcs, which I'm really excited about.”

Rachael Ray Update:

As a precursor to upcoming King World talker The Rachael Ray Show, Rachael and Terry Wood, president of creative affairs and development for CBS Paramount and King World, were featured on a panel on the second CBS day addressing the daily hour. Premiering in September, bubbly Rachael Ray, who is poised for success given the exposure on Oprah and full fledged clearances (both in the morning and afternoon/early fringe), describes the show as follows:

“That accessibility factor is hugely important to me. I want people to be really relaxed and happy when they're watching the show. We want celebrities to come on that like to story-tell outside of addressing, you know, a clip. And I really love to play games, so we want somebody to show us the side of them that's more like us and not like Hollywood. Like, you know, playing foosball, shooting some hoops, making some food, breaking bread, having a cup of Joe, etc. I'm really tired of seeing makeovers and hidden date things."

Adds Terry Wood:
“There are so many things about Rachael that viewers don't know; her curiosity, her sense of adventure, her sense of humor, and her ability just to sit down and talk to people. She spends most of her time on 30 Minute Meals and even Tasty Travels talking to the camera. They don't know how good she is with people. And so the show is somewhere right in the middle of that. It's what you know and love about her already, and what we know that you don't yet. And it's right in the middle, and it's perfect for her because it still allows you to be who you are.”

As for Rachael potentially facing Martha Stewart’s talker:
“I think Martha and Rachael are two very different people,” said Wood. “And I think the audience views them that way. And I don't look at it as who I'm up against. I compete for one thing: the audience's attention. And that's who I keep right in front of me every day. It doesn't matter who I'm up against. I'm after the eyeballs.”

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/newsletters/proginsider/index.jsp

fredfa

07-18-06, 10:29 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
“Veronica Mars”

Kristen Bell, Rob Thomas hope The CW switch solves the mystery of why "Veronica Mars" hasn't caught on.
By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog

The "Veronica Mars" panel began with Kristen Bell's signature photo dominating the screens in front of us. Fans know the one – she's leaning forward, hand on her knee, face locked in a "take no guff" expression, a white tank showing off her sinewy biceps as her hair blows back. One would say she's looking Free to Deliver a Beat Down, but the still has been around since season one – much to Bell's dismay.

Sitting beside series creator Rob Thomas, she immediately started to protest when she saw the picture.

"Oh, honestly. I am so over it." She shook her head. "Can we get new pictures?"

Bell is a Serious Actress, understand. Though "Veronica" has made her famous, and she loves the character, she's ready to move beyond the teen idol gig. By the time you read this she'll have turned 26, officially taking her closer to her 30s than her teens.

Fortunately, Bell's an actress who looks perpetually 19 – fortunate, because Veronica is going to be a freshman at Hearst College in the fall.

College life isn't the biggest change "Veronica Mars" has to deal with. This season will have three big mysteries solved at different points in the season as opposed to one spread over 22 episodes. The first will be solved in the season's initial nine episodes, with no pre-emptions and no repeats. The second is spaced over seven episodes – again, no pre-emptions, no repeats.

And the last whodunit happens over the final six episodes of the season.

Thomas realized by talking to network head Dawn Ostroff and reading Television Without Pity that viewers got too confused by his original model. This new format allows virgin viewers to jump in at any point in the season.

"That's spoken with the confidence of a man who thinks he's going to 22 episodes," Thomas said.

Yeah, about that...

Unfortunately, the criminally low-rated "Veronica" only got a 13-episode pick-up this season, a wait-and-see move on The CW's part. The hope is that pairing it with "Gilmore Girls" on Tuesday will expand "Veronica's" audience, since they're no longer competing for the same viewers.

But "Veronica's" fans are such a loyal crew that they rented a plane to fly a "save our show" message by The CW's offices. Stephen King recently joined Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith in professing his great love for the series, although he wasn't available to do a cameo.

"If you say you like 'Veronica Mars,' there's a good chance you'll be asked to be on it," Thomas said.

As for the cast changes Wallace (Percy Daggs III), Logan (Jason Dohring) and even dumbbell Dick Casablancas (Ryan Hansen) are joining Veronica at Hearst. Daggs told us earlier that Wallace will be involved in one of the season's big mysteries.

We'll meet two new series regulars as well: A character named Stosh Piznarski will become Wallace's roommate. And Mac (Tina Majorino), often called the Willow to Veronica's Buffy, will get a roommate that Thomas says is "everything Mac is not."

"She will be bubbly and effervescent and listen to a lot of Nellie Furtado in the room," Thomas said. "And they won't hit it off right away, but she'll have a heart of gold.

And as anyone who saw Duncan Kane orchestrate a hit from a beach in Mexico probably guessed, Teddy Dunn, the actor who played Veronica's first love, is done with the series.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/print.asp?entryID=105095

fredfa

07-18-06, 10:31 AM

TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails

The "Gilmore Girls" Are Dead - Long Live "Veronica Mars"

By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine”

This country's fifth network, the CW, came and went on Monday with a rush of activity, given that it only has two new series to offer. There was much frittering about and hope in the air now that UPN and the WB have merged. Important people believed, or at least spoke out loud, their opinion that the best of two networks would now make one network very strong.

Not that anyone really cared about that (first, prove it, second, we'll believe it when we see it and only after it's been independently verified by the black-gowned Jesuits or whatnot in the Catholic Church who investigate miracles).

What people really wanted to know about were two series central to the CW existence: "Gilmore Girls" and "Veronica Mars." Nothing else mattered, even if CW entertainment president Dawn Ostroff summed up the power of obsessed-fan theatrics by shrugging at the mere mention that "Everwood" fans set up a ferris wheel near her office to help save the show. The look on her face was this: What in the world are you talking about, you freak? So, ultimately: no power. Honestly, it hurts a lot to think about it because viewers invest so much in shows and characters, but the television business is just that - a business. If shows don't get ratings, they die. If shows skew older than the network wants, they die. If shows cost more than they're worth, they die. If a network wants to go in a different direction - wink, wink, watch me blink - then it will go in a different direction and your show will die, ferris wheel and outraged internet bloggers be damned. Helpful reminder: It's a business.

This was also illustrated elsewhere in CW's day. Chris Rock was funny in a kind of laconic, do-I-really-have-to-be-here kind of way, mostly because he's funny no matter what he does. He also talked, with "Everybody Hates Chris" co-creator and writer Ali LeRoi, about race and how it plays in television. Now, LeRoi is smart and funny and he totally gets the business. Which means, he knows television is a business first, a righter of moral wrongs last, and if not last, then 107th at least. So, after being repeatedly prompted about a lack of black dramas on television and what to do about it, he said this:

"The only reason that Hollywood even exists is because Jewish people couldn't be on Broadway. They decided to make another business where they could do what they wanted to do. So if somebody wants to see a black drama, then (author) Tyler Perry is the model. He goes, look, I know how to market to these people. I know what they want. I'm going to find a medium and a forum where I can do a piece of work that these people like, because they'll buy it. You know, hey, if you don't like dealing with network executives, then write a book. Nobody has the right to be in show business. Nobody has the right to be on a TV show. We all argue about, you know, I'd like to see more representation about this and more representation about that. But at the and of the day, dude, you got to sell some soap. And if you are not selling soap, they got no interest in you. So black drama, smack drama. Man, I don't care. It's about making a good show for the audience that's buying the product. Find your audience and sell them what you can sell them."

It was an impressive recitation of both the limits of moral obligation in television and the need to do rather than complain. It may not have made anyone feel good about the industry, but it was spot on.

And yet, even with that, most of the obsession surrounded the dream pairing of the WB's "Gilmore Girls" with UPN's "Veronica Mars," two excellent series often neglected by viewers and Emmy voters but brought together on the CW to show The Man that he's made a terrible mistake and has an egregious lack of taste. So what did we find out? Well, there were inside-baseball references to cast changes and story arcs and new producers and such, but all of that takes so very long to type. What you really need is a seasoned veteran to tell you What It All Means.

And based on the performances of the two panels, coupled with some tea-leaf reading of Ostroff's earlier executive session, here goes:

"Gilmore Girls" is on this planet for one thing only - to drive viewers to the better show, "Veronica Mars." More people watch "Gilmore Girls" than "Veronica Mars" so this is sound programming sense. But the cold hard facts are that "Gilmore Girls" hasn't been very good for - being generous here - two seasons, the stars desperately want off the show (which they will be granted after the season) and the only reason Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel came YET AGAIN to another press tour is because the people who created the show in the first place and then ruined it are now gone, and the stars want to give new executive producer David Rosenthal a chance, despite his somewhat kooky and worrisome past.

Their session here was dismal. Graham couldn't hide her distaste for twists and turns her character has taken recently, though she fiercely defended Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator and writer whose artistic control of the series faltered so badly late in the game and who led Graham's character down a crooked path of false behavior. Bledel's disinterested approach to the proceedings reaffirmed long-held critical beliefs that her best personality trait is one someone else writes for her. Rosenthal? He did little to disprove the notion that he's been hired to steer the series away from the cliff it's approaching and into one of those freeway dividers filled with sand, which will contain as much damage as possible so that the show will finish the season and continue to funnel viewers to "Veronica Mars."

Honestly, it was that bad. In summation: Two actresses who looked like they were trapped, one producer hired to put a tourniquet on a horse's head he found in his bed and a network that knows the end is near but would really love the haggard old veteran to help the spritely new kid.

In comparison, "Veronica Mars" star Kristen Bell and series creator and writer Rob Thomas were enthusiastic, upbeat and ready to get to work. In fact, Thomas said he had a plan for the coming season that offered up three fully-contained mysteries, each separated into nine, seven and six episodes, each rerun-free. It was a beautifully eager 22-episode breakdown despite the fact the series has only been renewed for 13 episodes. What it showed was confidence and commitment and an understanding that last season "Veronica Mars" was WAY too complicated. He knew it. He admitted that was a mistake. He said he wanted to make it easier to follow and more readily contained even BEFORE Ostroff asked him to, which is exactly the answer you give when you have 13 episodes and really want Ostroff to give you nine more.

It's the cycle of life, TV-style. One show limps badly to its end, another steals enough viewers from it to live another day.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24