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TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Pity poor 'CSI' and 'Grey's' on Thursdays
By Rick Kushman Sacramento Bee TV Columnist
PASADENA -- The biggest showdown on TV this fall will be the head-to-head match at 9 p.m. Thursdays between CBS' "CSI," the No. 1 drama last season, and ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," the hottest drama as the season ended.
That's why it was a little strange this week to watch TV executives put their egos in a closet -- which takes a considerable-size closet -- and undersell their chances.
In politics, they call it "lowering expectations." The hope is that, if a candidate does well, news stories will say the campaign has momentum. In TV, it's the same story. The nets want to tell advertisers their shows got "surprisingly good ratings" and have ol' mo' on their sides.
(By the way, Sacramento is the only major market in the country where this won't matter. Channel 13 runs CBS' prime time a hour early, so in Sacto, "CSI" will slaughter a pair of new ABC comedies at 8 p.m., and "Grey's Anatomy" will gut a new CBS lawyer drama called "Shark.")
Anyway, this positioning has been fun to watch, particularly when the usual act during the TV critics press tour here is for network execs to say how great their shows are and how weak everyone else's look.
But when CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler met the press, she was positively retiring about "CSI's" prospects.
"Who would have thought that 'CSI' would be the underdog?" Tassler said. "We expect to be dinged a little bit."
She was asked if she seriously was calling powerhouse "CSI" an underdog.
" 'Grey's' is a very good show and they're in their second year," Tassler said. "It's going to be an interesting, competitive hour of television."
A couple days later, ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson had ABC's sob story.
"I heard Nina was playing the rope-a-dope," he said. "It's kind of funny. I mean, 'CSI' and CBS have dominated that night, so I think they are the champions without question."
Here's what's really going to happen. Both shows will do very well. And, as McPherson said later, when he was talking about overall season ratings, it doesn't really matter who wins, particularly if they both get good ratings.
"We don't sell (ad rates based on) first, second, third or fourth," he said. "We sell (demographics) and shows and time periods. I think it really is just an ego-measuring contest. It's not about business."
Ego measuring. Now, we're back to the Hollywood we know.
• • • • • • • • • • •
For "Lost" fans, ABC said it's keeping its promise not to bog the show down with repeats next season. But since there will be only 22 episodes made, like every other show, the plan is to split the year.
So, "Lost" will start its third season on Oct. 4 and run for six weeks straight. Then, ABC will air a new drama called "Day Break" in the 9 p.m. Wednesday time slot for 13 weeks, also without repeats (though there will be an occasional break during the holidays). That means "Lost" will return sometime in February and air without reruns until the season ends in May.
McPherson said it's the best solution he could come up with, given the time and effort it takes to make each "Lost" episode.
"It's a very, very difficult show to produce," he said. "If we could run 22 straight in the fall, we probably would. But we just can't get the shows done in that amount of time."
Given the realities of TV, it's about as good a solution as viewers can expect. "Day Break" stars Taye Diggs as a cop who gets framed for murder and will keep living the same day over and over until he solves the weird mystery.
Think "Groundhog Day" meets "The Fugitive," and, yes, it sounds idiotic, but the pilot is actually pretty good. Plus, McPherson said the repeating Groundhog-like day will end and the first mystery will be solved within 13 weeks.
There's probably a joke in here somewhere about using a repeating day to avoid repeats, but, sorry, I got nothing.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/columns/kushman/v-print/story/14280236p-15088633c.html
TV Notebook
NBC to revisit Tubbs and Crockett in original 'Miami Vice' pilot
By Tom Dorsey Louisville Courier-Journal Saturday, July 22, 2006
NBC to revisit Tubbs and Crockett in original 'Miami Vice' pilot
Ho hum, another Saturday night full of reruns. But NBC has a real golden oldie tonight.
That network will show the original 1984 TV pilot for "Miami Vice" from 8 to 11 in a joint effort to boost its parent company's debut of a "Miami Vice" movie in theaters next week.
The newest Hollywood film to remake an old TV series stars Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell as undercover vice cops Tubbs and Crockett. Those characters were played by Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson on TV more than two decades ago.
The new "Miami Vice" is being made by Universal Studios, which is now part of NBC-Universal, so it's an all-in-the family promotion with Foxx and Farrell showing clips of the movie during the rerun of the 1984 TV pilot.
The big question is whether those two guys can make the kind of drama, fashion and music statement that the hot NBC show did in the '80s.
In those days NBC entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff dashed off a memo saying what the network needed was a pair of "MTV cops" to snare younger viewers. The result was this slick, sometimes comic, often brutal tale of drugs and mobsters in Miami.
Crockett was a guy who made beard stubble macho. He lived on a sailboat guarded by an alligator named Elvis, and he crashed around town in a Ferrari. Tubbs was an ex-New York City cop on a mission to get even with whoever killed his brother. The twosome crossed paths and joined forces when they were both after the same drug dealer.
Besides its dark plots, "Miami Vice" made it safe for guys to go sockless and wear T shirts under pastel sports coats and loose pants. The Italian look that Johnson and Thomas sported became the fashion trend of the time. The music scores attracted rock legends of the era such as Phil Collins to join in.
The series also was known for introducing guest stars that would make it big later, such as Bruce Willis, Jimmy Smits, Ving Rhames and Dennis Farina. It won an Emmy for Edward James Olmos.
The show was produced by Michael Mann, who is also doing the new movie. He's widely known for his intense dramas, such as "Manhunter" and "Heat," so it's probably a safe bet that his big-screen edition of "Miami Vice" will be a winner.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20060722&Category=COLUMNISTS15&ArtNo=607220314&SectionCat=FEATURES07&Template=printart
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
A work in progress
New ABC show has a lot of unanswered questions
By Dave Walker New Orleans Times-Picayune TV writer Saturday, July 22, 2006
HOLLYWOOD -- ABC obviously thinks very highly of the new show "Brothers & Sisters," handing it the plum post-"Desperate Housewives" time slot as "Grey's Anatomy" shifts from Sunday to Thursday.
But for reasons not entirely clear, the network has not let TV critics see the pilot for the show, starring Calista Flockhart ("Ally McBeal"), Patricia Wettig ("thirtysomething"), Rachel Griffiths ("Six Feet Under"), Ron Rifkin ("Alias") and Sally Field ("ER").
Field was added to the cast since the pilot was shot the first time. Extensive re-shooting is under way, so maybe that's it.
The premise -- big, sprawling family soap -- appears intact, re-shoots considered, and due to debut Sept. 24.
A short clip of "Brothers & Sisters" was screened before the show's cast and creators -- "thirtysomething"-star-turned-producer Ken Olin and playwright Jon Robin Baitz -- met with assembled members of the Television Critics Association, for many of whom the phantom pilot is a harbinger of trouble.
Suspicions that are perhaps and probably completely unfounded, but still. Can't tell. Pretty good cast. We'll see.
In the show, Flockhart plays a conservative pundit, a point that required considerable parsing.
"She's not Ann Coulter," Olin said. "She's not insane."
"No, I think she's a thoughtful conservative," Baitz added. "She's ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She's also a humanist.
"She's not someone who is apologetic about being a conservative. But it's very, very interesting and compelling to us to try and understand this, to leave behind some of the smug presuppositions of the two coasts, . . . to look at evolving patriotism and evolving traditionalism.
"For years and years, the left has looked at the right in complete incomprehension and felt, 'We just can't connect.' And maybe there's an effort in the show to try and bridge that in some way.
"Because, in fact, the family is in some ways America (in its) diverse opinions and the diversity of beliefs. The differing attitudes (among family members) about business and money represent the country in some way."
Field plays mother to the Flockhart character. Her father is played by Tom Skerritt ("Picket Fences"), who in the short clip appeared in some immediate domestic peril, falling into a swimming pool at its conclusion.
Asked one critic: "In the clip, we see him topple into the swimming pool. Does that mean that his demise will come in the first episode?"
Marti Noxon, executive producer: "Or he learns to swim."
Later: "Is that character not dead?"
"The pilot is different," Olin said. "We had the opportunity to learn about some of the storytelling that was not working, where there were actually too many things that we were trying to accomplish in 42 minutes and, frankly, where some of the chemistry, in terms of the family, wasn't working. I wouldn't hold on to what you saw, in terms of the literal story or the structure of the pilot."
Later still, there was yet one more attempt to expose Skerritt's role in all this, and Olin said, "We don't have a deal with Tom Skerritt to be a regular on the show."
Finally, a critic read this aloud, the third sentence of the show description on ABC's Web site:
"The adult children of Henry Walker (Tom Skerritt), along with their respective families, have gathered to celebrate a birthday. What they don't know is that tonight the patriarch will die."
"They are my bosses," Olin said, his exasperation evident. "If that's what it says, that's what it says."
What this all probably means is that Olin will write Skerritt back into the show, though perhaps as a ghost à la the dad on "Six Feet Under," just out of spite.
With all of the obvious thespian chops in the cast, matched with Baitz's bona fides -- he's written tons of acclaimed plays, plus episodes of "The West Wing" and "Alias" -- drama will come easy to this show whether the family patriarch makes spectral visitations or not.
But, asked one critic, what of comic relief?
Who will provide levity amidst the familial anguish?
"Tom Skerritt," Olin said. "It's a drama. That's what happens. You are funny, and then you are in the pool."
http://www.nola.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/living-0/115354732883610.xml&coll=1
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Death March With Cocktails
Just A Reminder: I'm Still Here
By Tim Goodman San Francisco Chronicle in his TV blog “The Bastard Machine” July 22, 2006
I'm as surprised as anyone. Send help.
A Hot Party. No, Really. Everybody In The Pool!
I was thinking about live blogging this Emmy session because it has Conan O'Brien in it and that might be funny. I love Conan. But let's not kid ourselves. You've got your head in a sink full of ice or you're somewhere (one would hope) away from, say, the heat of your own computer. So, no one would be reading this blog. I'm too hot to even write it. If I pass out and the sentence ends, try Olivia Wu's blog. It's gotta be cooler in China. Maybe not. It's not even cool at the British Open. Apparently the planet is on fire. And that's not counting the Middle East.
Anyway, the sun has not had an adverse effect on NBC's panels for two reasons: 1) They're pretty good in and of themselves, even for a Saturday 2) They take place in air-conditioned ballrooms. (Which are no longer as cold as they once were; apparently the system is being taxed pretty hard so the actors' make-up doesn't melt off their faces...not long ago, everyone was wearing jackets in the hotel because it was like an ice-box; now we're sweating like the pigs we really are.)
Of course, some people have given up entirely and can now be found out at the very crowded pool. Their names and papers will be run here shortly. No, I'm kidding. Because this Emmy session is now a total disaster (not enough Conan; too much debate on how screwed up the new voting process is and/or was), and I'm heading to the pool at the next possible opportunity.
It's 108 degrees here. Not long ago NBC made an announcement that the evening party, scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m., has been pushed back to 7 p.m. and will be "very casual." Yeah, that extra hour ought to fix things completely. And something tells me that Conan is not going to show up in shorts.
On the other hand, maybe everybody will just toss vanity aside and make a rush for the pool. A John Madden cannonball? I'll let you know.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=24
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Hot enough for you?
By Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic TV Critic in his Critic’s Tour blog.
PASADENA, Calif. -- It's hot here.
I know how that plays in Phoenix -- soon to be a puddle -- but still. Kevin Reilly, NBC's president of entertainment, started his executive session Friday with this little joke:
"Anybody mind if we move this meeting outside? I think it's supposed to be a pleasant 115 today. Let's go."
This on a day when it was 118 in Phoenix. These people don't KNOW hot.
Wait. Maybe they do. I am NOT getting the temperature break to which I've grown accustomed. I checked in on weather.com earlier today and the temperature was 107 both here and in Phoenix. Which is kind of normal for Phoenix, I guess, but just blazingly hot for Pasadena.
Come to think of it, 107 is pretty blazing anywhere.
It's becoming a source of near-constant comment. Cris Collinsworth, co-host of Football Night in America, NBC's upcoming Sunday night game, was walking outside and made some sort of hot-out-here crack (he did, at least, have the good sense to remove his blazer, but he was still stuck in a long-sleeved shirt and tie).
NBC's party for tonight is scheduled for 6 p.m. -- sun still up, air still hot. Be interesting to see how the stars dress. Can plastic surgery melt?
Detecting good (and bad) shows
These sessions would be so much better if they made the stars and producers wear lie detectors.
NBC has some good shows set for fall. Twenty Good Years is not among them -- if it's not the absolute worst pilot we've seen, it's on the short list of the conversation. Very short list. John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor, two guys with a strong track record, star as two aging guys who decide that, statistically speaking, they've probably got 20 years left to live, so they might as well live for the moment. The premise isn't bad, but man, the show is. Not funny. Stick around for the Speedo shots. Or not.
So why would these two guys sign on for the show (other than the obvious: barrels of cash)?
The script spoke to him, Lithgow said.
"And I also thought it was a fantastic comedy," he said.
Really?
"I always think that the best comedy has a string of anxiety and panic and fear in it. And that's one thing that I've always loved about this premise and about the writing."
Zzzzzzzzzzzzpppppttt!
"The script really made me laugh," Tambor said. "And they are telling this story, not in a trite and stereotypical way, but they are telling it in a really -- my friend down here, my writer friend (Marsh McCall), he hit it right out of the park."
Zzzzzzzzzzzppppppttt!
Now, truly, no one expects actors and producers who must know they're trapped in a dog to talk about how bad the show is. (And who knows, maybe they really do think the show's great, though that's too grim to contemplate.) A big part of their job is to tell what they're in. Sometimes that takes some creativity -- maybe that's really why they get paid so much.
"I've shown this to my children, and I have a teenage son who loved it," producer Tom Werner said.
Note that he didn't say how the other kids reacted. Maybe they're the ones with good taste.
Crucial party update
NBC just announced that, due to the excessive heat, the party will be moved back to 7 p.m.
Makeup artists all over town are breathing a sigh of relief.
This would NEVER happen if this were held in Phoenix. They'd have to move it back to November.
http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5&blogtype=Entertainment
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
America's Got Hasselhoff
By Joanna Weiss The Boston Globe TV Writer in the Globe’s “Viewer Discretion” blog July 22, 2006
Let's take a moment to talk about David Hasselhoff. He was here yesterday to pitch "America's Got Talent," wearing a wrist cast from his now-famous shaving injury. His vocal cords were apparently unharmed. As reporters watched in mostly-stunned silence, the Hoff talked about loving the show, loving the buzzer, not caring about the jokes. ("I'm a big punching bag.") His biggest achievement: Broadway. (Not "Knight Rider?") He has ambitions to put on "David Hasselhoff: The Musical." (He appeared to be serious.) He doesn't care that America doesn't think of him as a crooner. "I've got a song now, 'Jump in my Car,' which is possibly going to go on the top 10 in London. If it breaks over here, fine. If not, I love London. I love Europe. I love the world."
But the weirdest and best moment came when Hasselhoff was asked about his biggest recent claim to fame: the moment he was caught sobbing in the audience when Taylor Hicks won "American Idol." Here, the Hoff got indignant. "Yeah, that's old news," he said. "I really don't want to go into that, but I'll tell you what, I'll go into it real quick."
Uh-oh.
Then he launched into his story, designed for maximum guilt. "The guy sitting next to me, it was his birthday. It's my best friend. He has brain cancer."
Uh-oh.
When Taylor won, "he looked at me and . . . said, 'Isn't it good to be alive?' And this guy here happened to use that shot. I was crying out of happiness that my best friend was alive. And so now, I've had to go and explain this and I find it incredulous in this country that if a heterosexual man cries, it's like, 'Film at 11.'"
Oh, Hoff, we have misjudged you.
Where's that buzzer?
http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/blog/
DoubleDAZ
07-22-06, 10:00 PM
Thanks, Fred. As a Phoenix Letter Carrier, I needed a good laugh this week. :)
Always glad to be of help, Dave! :)
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Emmys, aka the awards you don't care about
By Aaron Barnhart Kansas City Star in his blog “TV Barn”
Normally Conan O'Brien has no problem making himself the center of attention — I mean that in a good way! — but this afternoon's session with the press to promote the upcoming Emmy Awards telecast found him uncharacteristically sitting on his hands.
Instead, it was fellow panelist Dick Askin, president of the academy that hands out the Emmys, who did most of the talking, as unhappy critics fired questions at him about the recently completed and allegedly reformed Emmys nominations process.
Askin, who apparently hasn't been reading our clips, at first tried to deflect questions about the supposed changes to the process that resulted in few changes in the nominees' names. "When you only have five slots," began a typical response, "there are always going to be people who deserve blah blah blah."
After a couple more exchanges like this, Dick got an audience member involved: namely, John Leverence, who oversaw the nominations "reform" this year, who said perhaps the most sensible thing in the session, regarding the possibility of letting judges view entries from home so as to give every entry a fair shake: "This year we lost 23 administrative days in the competition, from June 1st to the presentation of the awards on August 27th. And the opportunity, therefore, to expand perhaps to an at-home judging for that second part of the nominating process simply was not there this year, but maybe it will be next."
So that seemed to settle us down. And then Ken Ehrlich, who will produce the Emmys this year along with Conan's producer Jeff Ross, went and stepped in it:
QUESTION: Ken, you touched on this a second about the viewers seeing some different names. There's going to be all kinds of things written probably Monday in the press. How does this controversy, so-called controversy, help promote the show? Or does it? Do you think the viewer really cares about the inside voting?
KEN EHRLICH: I'm not sure that the viewer really does care. I think the viewer tunes in a show like this because of the entertainment value, because of the star quality, because of what they're going to see over the course of that three hours.
Oh, yes, the star quality of Stockard Channing, Martin Sheen, Debra Messing, Jane Kaczmarek, Peter Krause, and other oft-nominated stars of shows that are off the air mostly because people stopped watching them. Yes, that is ratings adrenaline right there.
As I was composing this, I received an email from a reader:
I want to know what happened to The Shield this year and how was Forrest Whitaker overlooked. Every episode I watched I kept saying he's going to win an Emmy award and then he wasn't nominated and the show was overlooked. I'm really upset about the same tired old people being nominated again after all the promises about Lauren Graham, Kristin Bell and some of the others. I think I'm still reliving the sorrow of never seeing Buffy, the Vampire Slayer properly recognized. I think if a program wasn't good enough to stay on an entire season (Gina Davis' show-I can't even remember the name of it) how can the star be so great. Nothing against Gina Davis or Alison Janney, but I don't think they deserved to be nominated.
Quarrel with the spelling but the observations are dead-on accurate. The sentiments are real. The viewer cares.
http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2006/07/emmys_aka_the_a.html#more
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
More Saturday
By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog July 22, 2006
Because of the heat in Pasadena, NBC's evening event was delayed for an hour, which gave me a chance to take a longer-than-at-first planned nap from which I have just emerged. I don't think I'm alone in feeling dragged either. Even during press conferences for shows a lot of people like, the pace has felt slower, the undercurrent of crankiness a little stronger.
Still, the potential argument over the Emmys was less intense than it might have been, say, the day after the nominations were announced. Not that people didn't care. More that any admission of real wrongdoing on the Emmy people's part -- let alone contrition -- was obviously not going to happen. The TV academy has a system that bases nominations on a small sample of what a show or actor has actually done, and then offers those choices to viewers and critics who have spent far more hours following a show, often for an entire season.
The key dialogue went like this:
Reporter: ''Do you honestly believe that the Emmy nominations represent the best of television
last season?''
Emmy Mouthpiece: ''I believe that the Emmy nominations really represent the best works that were submitted (for Emmy consideration) ... for last season.''
http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/
RussTC3
07-22-06, 10:54 PM
How can you NOT get Hooked on a Feeling (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJQVlVHsFF8&search=david%20hasselhoff) and want to Jump In The HOFF's Car (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgX-hiQdfFw&search=jump%20in%20my%20car)?
OOGA CHAKKA! HOOGA HOOGA!
:D
dad1153
07-22-06, 10:57 PM
:D :D :D
Oh my God, I haven't laughed this hard since I saw this (also on YouTube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xItR-nh9cYM&search=Farting%20Preacher. Thanks, gotta love the Hoff's complete lack of shame! ;)
Great stuff, Russ...thanks!
dad1153
07-22-06, 11:28 PM
What am I fred, chopped liver? ;)
Not at all, dad...didn't see your contribution.....
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Miss a show? No problem
As it launches six new serialized dramas, NBC also plans websites to help anyone who needs to catch up later
By Maria Elena Fernandez Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 22, 2006
NBC President of Entertainment Kevin Reilly has grown weary of the "Dear Moron" letters, so he's got a plan. And, yes, it does address the discontent with serialized television.
A relaxed Reilly — he's been sailing in Mexico recently — appeared during the television industry's press tour at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena on Friday to tout his new programming for the upcoming season. NBC has six new star-studded dramas, which also happen to be serialized — a genre that critics here keep harping on because they believe viewers are being asked to commit to way too much television.
Reilly responded that viewers will be given a helping hand: The new shows will all launch with their own websites, which will include weekly video recaps of every episode as well as written summaries. Reilly is especially upbeat about this endeavor because advertisers seem to be responding in a big way to the approach. To the tune of "several hundred million dollars," he said.
The TV press also seemed to like the idea of catching up with a favorite show online because, as one critic in the audience pointed out, "the fish show" — also known as last season's "Surface" — let down those viewers who stuck with its complicated story arc only to find out that the show wouldn't return to the schedule this year.
Reilly was sympathetic. He joked that he had written to the "two viewers" who were disappointed when he canceled "Heist," but added that he does take the issue seriously.
"We don't like [alienating] our customers," Reilly said. "I get the e-mails, OK? I wake up in the morning and I get 'Dear Moron.' We know that takes a toll, but the nature of television is that when you're taking risks, you hope you're taking risks, you may wind up with 'Heist' or you might end up with 'Lost' or 'My Name Is Earl.' "
By the way, Reilly added: "That's not unique to serialized shows. Any show that gets canceled has had people who are upset or people who are angry who have invested in it. That's just the nature of what we do."
http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-nbc22jul22,0,7960677,print.story?coll=cl-tvent
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Poking fun at TV's inner workings
By Ed Bark The Dallas Morning News July 22, 2006
PASADENA, Calif. – Punching the NBC peacock in the gut is standard practice for Earth's lowest form of life: the TV critic.
Now ace producer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Sports Night) is throwing a few uppercuts, too. His new Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip includes jabs at Fear Factor, Donald Trump and the overall veracity of those running the shows at network TV's highest levels. So let's hear it for recovering cocaine addict Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford), who's trying to resist an offer to return as co-executive producer of Studio 60's fictional late-night sketch comedy show.
"I have no reason to trust you and every reason not to," Danny tells newly appointed NBS president Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet), who's doing the wooing.
"Why?" she wonders.
"You work in television."
Please hold your applause until after real-life NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly (played by himself) explains why he loves this show.
"Aaron just had the ability to capture an authentic environment," he told TV critics Friday. "And we laughed at anything that cut close to the bone. We appreciated the quality, and we wanted it ...We didn't take it personally. I think he's looking at this backdrop as a broader context to make social commentary about the culture at large and pop culture in particular."
Spoken like a true network executive. Mr. Sorkin likewise tried to be diplomatic at a later interview session Friday. But he ran afoul of his own ad-lib after being asked, "Do you object to networks that have people eating worms and emulating Donald Trump?"
Mr. Sorkin said he's never seen either Fear Factor or The Apprentice. But he agreed that TV is "a terribly influential part of this country and that when things that are very mean-spirited and voyeuristic go on TV, I think it's bad crack in the schoolyard."
Pause, one-two. "Why did I use that word?" Mr. Sorkin asked himself.
"That opens up a new line of questioning," added Mr. Whitford, referring indirectly to Mr. Sorkin's much-publicized 2001 drug bust at the Burbank airport, for which he was remanded to a "drug-diversion" program.
Actually, it opened up the floodgates to like-minded cracks throughout the session.
Co-star Matthew Perry, who plays comedy writer Matt Albie, waited for an opportune time to deadpan, "I think it's mostly like bad Vicodin in the schoolyard."
In Studio 60, Mr. Perry's character is heavily dependent on Vicodin. While on Friends, Mr. Perry himself became addicted to the same drug and later talked about it on CNN's Larry King Live.
Another Studio 60 regular, Steven Weber, later threw another log on the fire.
"It's like Excedrin and old-fashioned cloth diapers in the schoolyard," he said.
Speaking of cloth diapers, NBC has another new TV-centric fall series, Tina Fey's weekly 30 Rock sitcom.
"I'm sure it's going to be different from our show," Mr. Sorkin said. "My intention is to take Tina's ideas, use twice as many words, and turn them into our show."
Mr. Reilly noted that more viewers than ever are "media savvy." Still, "if these two shows get caught up in the inner workings of TV, we're dead," he said.
"He's wrong," Mr. Whitford half joked after asking rhetorically, "Isn't CSI a little inside the coroner's office? ... I don't worry about it."
Mr. Sorkin said Studio 60 indeed will be more about its characters than their workplace, as was West Wing.
Former ABC entertainment president Jamie Tarses, a friend of Mr. Sorkin's since Sports Night's days at the network, is a consultant on Studio 60 and a partial inspiration for the show's Jordan McDeere character.
"I needed someone who could school me on the inside of a network," he said. "So she's told me that she likes the show, but I pay her."
Mr. Perry, who had a recurring role on West Wing after 10 seasons on Friends, said he didn't plan on returning to series TV this soon. "I'm here mostly because of how good the script is and how bad The Whole 10 Yards was," he said.
Press clipping
David Hasselhoff, one of three judges on NBC's ongoing America's Got Talent, would still like to bounce a few things off the Dallas Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki. The two became entwined in the popular culture when Mr. Nowitzki said he sometimes relaxed himself at the foul line by thinking of Mr. Hasselhoff's late-1980s German hit, "Looking for Freedom."
Mr. Nowitzki hails from Wurzburg, Germany, where Mr. Hasselhoff has been.
"I've played it. It's on my tour shirt," he said. "He must have seen me when he was 11 years old or something."
The former Knight Rider star journeyed to Dallas to watch Mr. Nowitzki and the Mavs against the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. ABC showed him on camera, but Mr. Hasselhoff didn't achieve his ultimate goal.
"I wanted to meet him, but they nixed it," he said. "Avery Johnson said, 'You can't interrupt us.' "
Mr. Hasselhoff – whose sister, Diane Martin, lives in Dallas – said he's a friend of Heat star Shaquille O'Neal, who some might say shoots free throws about as well as Mr. Hasselhoff sings.
"So it would have been kind of tough to go down there," he said. "Then I saw on television all these guys holding up my picture while Dirk shot free throws. So I'm glad I didn't go to Miami, but what publicity! I was going, 'This is great!' "
http://www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/television/stories/DN-presstour_0722gl.ART.State.Edition2.22971be.html
Inundated
07-23-06, 01:16 AM
Oh, dear. Russ, I shouldn't have watched that this late...I'm going to have nightmares. :D
RussTC3
07-23-06, 01:28 AM
Oh, dear. Russ, I shouldn't have watched that this late...I'm going to have nightmares. :D
Not only that, try to get "Hooked On a Feeling" out of your head now.
Your welcome by the way. ;)
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Conan O'Brien, shut down
By Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic TV Critic in his Critic’s Tour blog July 22, 2006
PASADENA, Calif. -- What a waste of a potentially good session.
Conan O'Brien was here Saturday afternoon to talk about the Emmy Awards, which he's hosting, along with the producers of the awards show and the chairman and CEO of the Television Academy.
I've interviewed O'Brien before, and attended other sessions he's done. He's hilarious. Just flat-out funny, and along with Jon Stewart the quickest wit I've ever been around. (Another candidate: Rodney Anonymous, lead singer for the Dead Milkmen, but I saw him at a picnic and I had mono, so my memory on that might not be as reliable.)
So how did we spend our time? Peppering the Television Academy guy, Dick Askin, with endless questions about why so many good actors and shows got left out of the Emmy nominations. Conan spent most of the time just sitting there, staring off into space, making bored faces.
Now, I get that it's important to find out why shows like Lost and actors like James Gandolfini and Edie Falco got snubbed. (Askin maintained that being left off the nomination list wasn't a snub. So what would you call it? A promotion?) I get that Askin wasn't going to give the unvarnished answer, which is that the new system they set up to choose nominees didn't work. And I get that the purpose of these sessions is not simply to entertain critics, but to inform us.
But geez, do those things have to be mutually exclusive?
The more Askin danced, the more times we asked similar questions in slightly different ways. Lo and behold, he didn't say that he's tossing all the nominees and starting over, which probably would have been the only thing to appease us. Nor did he admit that the Academy's nomination process was about as accurate a barometer of what's best on TV as holding glamor shots of all the actors and actresses in Hollywood in front of a dog and nominating whoever's picture he barked at twice. That would have been nice, too.
A sample of what might have been: Someone made the suggestion that perhaps shows shouldn't be judged on a single episode, since that's not really how people watch TV.
"Would that mean that someone would have to watch all 108 episodes that I made throughout the year?" O'Brien asked.
Sure, why not?
"That's a great idea. They're sent to some sort of center or camp, and every day they watch about 15 episodes of my show. And like veal, they're fed injections of protein, kept in a dark room."
More:
"We have a lot of different ideas right now," he said of hosting the show. "We have some ideas I'm excited about. But comedy, she's a fickle lady, is a phrase I like to say every now and then. I don't say it often. It's pretty bad."
He said it enough to be funny. Wish he'd said more.
http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5&title=conan_o_brien_shut_down&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Why I REALLY Like Being Here
By Rich Heldenfels in his Akron Beacon Journal TV blog
I've posted from press tour about being in nifty places, and dropped some names of the people I've talked to. Those are fun things and, as I have said before, I have a cool job. But when I tell those stories, what may get lost is that the cool stuff can lead to something of value to readers.
When you're at these things, you get to see how people's minds work. Sure, there's a big load of nonsense tossed around at press conferences -- answers that are pat or evasive or flat-out untrue. But almost as often, you can get at a real emotion, and have a feel for what the people in television do. And, outside of those press conferences, you may get a chance to ask other questions in a more casual setting, and get a little deeper into how people think and feel.
Last night, for example, I stood and talked with John Madden about his going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I had expected a few quick questions and answers. But Madden is really excited about going into the hall; he offered a wonderful description of what it was like when he was waiting for the news -- and how thrilled he was when he finally got it.
That -- or sitting for an hour with Ray Wise, and hearing him explain how important ''Good Night and Good Luck'' was to him -- gets you into people's hearts. Then, tonight I sat at a table with Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, and talked to him about the issues in a couple of projects I'm working on. (I'll save the specifics for closer to when the stories run.) We talked somewhat about his shows, but there were bigger issues to kick around as well, and he was more than willing to do some kicking.
The odds are a lot longer that, sitting in Akron, I could pick up a phone and talk to Reilly. And even if I did, it wouldn't be the same as sitting a couple of feet from him, watching him wrestle with an issue that should be interesting, if not important, for readers.
It was a good moment. It wasn't the only good moment of the night; on an entirely different plane, I had a nice chat with three of the models from ''Deal or No Deal.'' But my conversation with them will probably intrigue some readers, too, and make them look at TV in a little different way. Which is, after all, what this job is about: talking about TV, and thinking about it, and wanting it to be better, and trying to see if there are better ways to look at it. And I wouldn't spend this much time away from my family if this didn't make me do a better job.
http://blogs.ohio.com/beacon_tv/2006/07/why_i_really_li.html
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
10 ways to fix TV
From reruns to tough guys
By Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic TV Critic Jul. 23, 2006
PASADENA, Calif. - For weeks at the Television Critics Association tour, we listen to network executives. They spin so furiously about the glories of their success that it's a wonder they don't bore holes in the ground.
But, on occasion, they listen, too. Last season viewers complained, to each other, to TV critics, to ABC about all the Lost reruns. And the network caved, setting up a structure that requires no reruns next season.
It worked once, it can work again. Not to get greedy, but why stop with Lost? We'll give some retroactive credit where it's due and start here:
1-We demand a sane rerun strategy.
That's first on our list of 10 things that executives need to know if they want to make television better. Yes, it means a chunk of the season with no Lost at all, but at least when it's there, you know what you're getting. There's also the 24 method - start in January and run straight through. Nothing is foolproof, but at least it shows the networks are thinking. Doesn't happen as often as you'd think.
2-We appreciate the truth.
When a show is canceled, tell us it's canceled. No more "on hiatus" when what you really mean is, "How can we somehow make viewers forget that this show was ever affiliated with this network, or on television at all?"
We're not stupid (even if you might think so from the boffo ratings for America's Got Talent). We know what's going on. If a show gets dirt-poor ratings for a couple of weeks and then we're seeing Cold Case reruns, we know what has happened.
Just say so. Tell us why. Bad ratings? Check. Terrible show? Noted. It all comes out eventually, anyway. Of course, there are massive egos involved. But you know what? So are massive salaries. They'll get over it. We will, too.
3-We like complexity.
Take a hint from Lost and get creative with complex cross-technology marketing. Sure, you can download episodes of a lot of shows on iTunes, and ABC has had good luck streaming its shows online after they air.
That's no longer enough.
Lost employs, among other things, an official Web site to keep up with clues (insidetheexperience.com); tons of unofficial sites are out there, as well. But the show also made reference on-screen to a book, Bad Twin - and then the book appeared in bookstores.
Other shows use blogs. Want to know how Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes came to kill off Kyle Chandler during the bomb episodes? Go to greyswriters.com to find out. (It pained her greatly, evidently.) Supporting cast members of such shows as The Office and Rescue Me blog at tvguide.com.
Here's a thought: Offer episodes with commentary, like we get on DVD releases. Or perhaps deleted scenes.
Not every show is intricate (or good) enough to justify all this. But it's clear that savvy viewers will dig deeper for shows they really like. Networks should take advantage of it.
4-We hate cluttered screens!
Not the shows themselves, though some certainly qualify. I'm talking about the promotions for other shows on the same network. Viewers hate it - I hear their pain, often - and they've got a great point. It's ridiculous to be watching Shaquille O'Neal brick a free throw during the NBA playoffs and suddenly see a diminutive Kyra Sedgwick stroll into the picture and start rolling out police tape to remind us that TNT airs The Closer. I like the show a lot, but please, we're watching a game here.
Last time I checked, networks were perfectly free to use their own commercial time to promote their shows. Use it, and leave us to our basketball.
5-We reward patience.
And not just with the good shows. Seinfeld legendarily started out slowly and got great, both in quality and in ratings. Fine.
But what gets forgotten sometimes is that, when it started, Seinfeld's ratings weren't so great because it wasn't so great. Let's not pretend that quality trumps ratings (read: money) in television. Please. But given the chance, who knows, maybe something like Fox's not-quite-there Free Ride would have improved. Eh. Maybe not. Still. I'm not saying make us suffer through According to Jim for several seasons. But if there's a sliver of promise, nurture it. We'll stick around.
6-We want consistency online.
You can find a lot of shows at iTunes. You can find some shows streaming online after they've aired (and on rare occasions, as with the recent Blade: The Series on Spike TV, before). And you can always find the funniest thing on Saturday Night Live posted on YouTube.com, until NBC makes them take it down.
But the network attitudes are changing. NBC has signed a deal with YouTube, which is, so far at least, the easiest-to-use, most-consistent clearinghouse for video. (If you want a non-TV-related treat, search the site for "Prince" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" - genius.) YouTube will have an NBC "channel," and NBC will, in turn, promote the site.
Viewers are obviously taking more control of how and when they watch TV. Eventually every network will have a similar deal. Why wait for the future?
7-We like our bad guys really bad.
And on occasion, our good guys, too.
Cable has great luck with this. Tony Soprano, for instance, is a guy who cares about his family, works hard at his job and is an absolute monster, a man who kills and orders killings, among other crimes. Yet we still usually root for him; certainly we watch him.
But Tony's a mobster. We expect bad things. FX has gone even farther with Rescue Me. Despite his flaws - drunken, mean, sexist, the works - Tommy Gavin kinda, sorta had a good heart. Certainly it showed up in his work and, in a bizarre way, with his family.
But things changed a couple of weeks ago, when he basically raped his ex-wife. It was a brutal, ugly scene, one that profoundly changed the way we think about Tommy. Yet it didn't make the show any less compelling. If anything, it's more so; there's no way to redeem Tommy from this, so where does it go from here?
Imagine if, say, Horatio Caine had some sort of grim secret in CSI: Miami - and not the kind that's resolved by the time the credits roll that Monday. That's a show I'd be interested in, a lot more interested than I am now.
8-We like seeing the little guy make it big.
In real life, that is. That's why it's so rewarding when a guy like Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets a chance. So good as the dying heart-transplant patient in Grey's Anatomy and as the dad in Supernatural, just a guy who's fun to watch, Morgan was rewarded with a starring role in Rhimes' new show.
Great. I actually liked Morgan better in Supernatural, particularly in the season finale when he was possessed (good bad guy). But whatever you liked best, he was good enough in both shows that he deserves a shot.
And you know what? So do some other people, including Eric Close from Without a Trace (though he had a shot with the short-lived Now and Again), or Garret Dillahunt, who played two weirdos on Deadwood, Jesus in The Book of Daniel and a lobbyist in The 4400. I'd certainly give a show starring Jenna Fischer of The Office a try. What drama wouldn't be worth checking out if CCH Pounder (lately of The Shield) was its star?
Maybe they soar. Maybe they fail. Either way, it beats another Jenna Elfman vehicle.
9-We don't like surprises.
At least not with our scheduling. First off, if you're stitching together a highlight reel and throwing a little fresh narration over the top, that does not constitute a "new episode." That constitutes a "rerun," or "clip job," which makes us "angry." It's not that these shows aren't worthwhile - they're effective at wading through the dense forest of plots in Lost on occasion, and keep you up to day with who's sleeping with whom on Desperate Housewives. But be up front about what they are.
What's more, if you're going to schedule a show for, say, 8 p.m. Tuesdays or whatever, how about actually showing it at 8 p.m. Tuesday? Every Tuesday. Don't just up and move it to Thursday because it fills a scheduling hole, leaving us to mistakenly wait for new episodes on Tuesday. Don't get me wrong - loyal viewers will follow a show, up to a point. But don't make it a scavenger hunt.
10-We want women in strong roles.
Note: Attractive sitcom wife to schlubby sitcom husband does not constitute "strong." We're talking about dramas here, with women in either lead or strong supporting roles, and the fact that there aren't enough of them.
Edie Falco more than holds her own with an exceptionally strong male cast on The Sopranos. Kyra Sedgwick is the only reason to watch The Closer, really. Kristen Bell's great as Veronica Mars, and then there's . . . there's . . . who? Television is typically a little more generous with roles for women than movies. At least it has been in the past - think the late, great, Nancy Marchand in The Sopranos first season, or Allison Janney in the first few seasons of The West Wing (before C.J. became chief of staff). More, please.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/0723goody0723.html
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Too Much Tube?
By Diane Werts Newsday Staff Writer in her TV Press Tour blog
Maybe you remember the delirious moment in the pilot of "Everybody Loves Raymond" that signaled this sitcom was just warped enough to play through the ages. Doris Roberts' mother character, horrified to learn her son has generously signed her up for the fruit-of-the-month club, goes into a full-tilt frenzy.
"There's too much fruit in the house!!" she panics to Ray Romano's disbelief.
That's pretty much how critics feel about TV at this summer's three-week press tour. We love this tube fruit, it's delicious and everything, often even good for us. But being inundated by hoards of it, willy-nilly and unbidden, makes us go a little nutso.
It isn't enough, for instance, that NBC presented nine separate half-hour interview sessions with cast/crew/network executives, plus an evening get-together with NBC/NFL honchos, on the first of its two allotted days at the Television Critics Association's annual fall-season fly-by. That's more than enough to keep us running morning to night right there.
But the network even loaded up the foyer outside the hotel ballroom where the sessions are held. Nine computer screens were set to demonstrate the different NBC web sites. NBC-owned Universal DVD had a desk touting home video releases of series like "House" and "Surface." A "digital living room" beckoned to show us NBC on cell phones, PDAs, video-on-demand, HD-DVD, podcasting and internet applications, even X-Box.
Hey, we're here because we love TV.
But THERE'S TOO MUCH TUBE IN THE HOUSE!
TV has expanded at an astonishing rate that our brain cells simply can't keep up with. Nobody's really sure which of these "platforms" are going to endure yet, so they're throwing it all at the wall – at consumers, at critics – to see what sticks.
It's made the job we do totally crazy. We're writing stories about press tour events for the pages of tomorrow's papers. And for our blogs. We're banking interviews for future stories. Trying to spot people and shows worth taking a deeper look at. Collecting string on trends for our brains to cogitate on developing down the line. Heading crosstown to visit sets, studios and producers for location features. And now, getting up to speed on a variety of technology developments.
It's like a sportswriter trying to singlehandedly cover every game in town, all day, everyday, with no down time. And oh, yeah, write about stadium development, too.
Our heads are about to explode.
Is technology making TV better? Heck, is it making us better? We hear Dan Rather and Ted Koppel talk about the push for instant news today, about daily ratings and profit pressures, and critics nod their heads that "real" news sometimes gets overlooked in the rush. But half the critics now sit at the hotel ballroom's conference tables, no longer looking panelists in the eye asking probing questions and assessing the answers, but instead hunkered down behind wireless laptop computer screens, typing away like stenographers, hot to trot for filing that quotable quote online to feed the ever-hungry grazers of the internet. Isn't that sort of like the flashy sound bite we so decry on the tube? Where's the depth and perspective we're always extolling?
Press tour offers an astonishing opportunity for give-and-take with literally hundreds of movers and shakers from all the TV landscape -- a personal immersion that helps us understand it all, in a way very few beat reporters get the chance to peek inside the industry they cover. We can ask direct questions to analyze what goes on the air and, before plenty of witnesses, hold these folks accountable for it.
Or we can just listen for amusing tidbits to feed the apparent cultural appetite for momentary online amusement. Are we being true to ourselves and the cultural consequence of the medium we cover? Or just knee-jerk chasing the latest cool fad? Maybe both? Who knows?
What's interestingly clear here is that network TV has responded to its own uncertainty about diminishing audiences and shifting technologies by getting back to the basics. The new fall shows are the most solid bunch we've seen in a long time, with few outright clinkers of the kind so widespread a couple of seasons back. (Heather Locklear's "LAX," anyone?) The pilots are, if anything, too ambitious, depicting diverse characters and provocative situations, with depth, in significant backdrops. The genres may be small-town soaps or kidnap adventures, but their character landscapes are textured with smart portrayals of culture, religion, race, ambition and other contemporary concerns.
Today's cluttered, corporate media world can create a climate of panic where it's easy to lose focus. With onetime ratings titan NBC now climbing back up from fourth place, we probably saw some program decisions made from fear the last couple seasons. Now programing chief Kevin Reilly exhibits a new clarity that's borne out in the quality of his pilots this fall. He said here he thinks success is "born on leading-edge TV -- taking a step outside, trying to hit a nerve, trying to be honest and authentic. The NBC nature of being mass and class -- they don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can reach a huge broad audience and still be a little smarter, a little bit better, make the audience reach a little bit."
Reilly learned that in his days at FX developing the likes of "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck." Now he's expanding on that one-show-at-a-time model for the all-original prime time demands of network TV. He's concentrating on "the quality and the diversity of the ideas and the high level of talent we are bringing both in front of and behind the camera. All of the shows represent the personal points of view and vision of their creators."
That's acting, not reacting, forging your own identity rather than following the crowd, stepping back long enough to understand who you are, what you do and how you can make your own fresh and distinctive mark. The quick fix often triggers quick cancelation. While there's still some trend-chasing this fall, there's also an overall attitude that the best way to lure viewers isn't flash and knockoffs but just smartly invented, solidly produced series, staying true to themselves.
When it comes to all that media competition, Reilly said, "I hope it continues that how we're going to choose to deal with it is to get even more creative and make even better television." Improving the core product – wow, what a concept.
That's a fruit so juicy, we can never have too much.
http://newsday.typepad.com/entertainment_tv_tour/2006/07/too_much_tube.html
TV Notebook
Anchored in TV History
By Kathy Blumenstock Washington Post Sunday, July 23, 2006; Page Y03
For a generation, he was television news, delivering word of John F. Kennedy's assassination, updates on the space race and the latest from the Vietnam War.
Walter Cronkite, who began his journalism career as a wire service reporter and was widely considered "the most trusted man in America" as anchor of the CBS Evening News for 19 years, is the focus of a new "American Masters" documentary.
The program, which explores Cronkite's life and career, includes vintage film footage from the earliest days of television news: a cramped newsroom, rapidly clattering typewriters, and a much younger Cronkite, stopwatch in hand, timing his copy as he read aloud to prepare to go on the air. Back then, he said, "when we signed off and knew we had pulled it together despite . . . all that could go wrong with television at that time, that was about the most fun moment every day."
Of the documentary, Cronkite said, "I'm highly honored, but also felt a little bit wary about what they'd find in my life to put on TV."
The program features commentary from longtime colleagues Don Hewitt, Andy Rooney and Mike Wallace, columnist Molly Ivins, former president Jimmy Carter and others. Narrated by Katie Couric, who takes over the CBS Evening News anchor chair in September, the film includes Cronkite's coverage of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969, an event he called "the greatest achievement of mankind in my lifetime."
A longtime space buff, Cronkite had immersed himself in material about the space program, but when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon, "I was actually speechless," he said.
"I sat there in the studio saying, 'Golly, wow, well, oh boy,' and it wasn't what you'd call a very well-organized broadcast. But I like to think it was genuine."
• • • • • • • • • • •
AMERICAN MASTERS
Wednesday check local PBS listings
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901058.html
TV Notebook
PBS show chronicles Cronkite on job
By Bill Goodykoontz The Arizona Republic July 23, 2006 12:00 AM
The young reporter, who had made something of a name for himself as a World War II correspondent for United Press, didn't know what to think all those years ago when the fledgling network called to ask him to join its news team.
"I said, 'I don't know anything about television,' " the reporter would recall years later. "And they said, 'Neither do we.' "
The man was Walter Cronkite. The network was CBS. Together, from that modest starting point, they helped pioneer television news coverage. And the rest, as Cronkite might have said in his trademark delivery, is history.
"Right man, right time, right place, right instrument," David Halberstam says in Walter Cronkite: Witness to History, a presentation of PBS' American Masters (check your local PBS listings. In many cities it will be broadcast on Wednesday July 26). (The shows) follows Cronkite's journey from TV novice to the exalted position of Most Trusted Man in America, a news anchor whose influence and reach will never be equaled. Toward that end, it's also a reminder of a media landscape so different from today's as to be unrecognizable.
Forget 24-hour cable channels - forget cable, for that matter - and Internet reporting and a steady stream of bloggers. Cronkite was as much dinner guest as news anchor, appearing in homes every night as families gathered around the television for their one dose of daily national news coverage, something to tide them over till the newspaper arrived the next day.
It sounds quaint today, and maybe it was then. But that sells short the power Cronkite wielded, helping through his reporting not just to inform a nation but in many ways to give voice to it. Lyndon Johnson famously told an aide, after Cronkite said that fighting in Vietnam was doomed to end in a bloody stalemate, that if he'd lost Cronkite, he'd lost America.
No one would say that today of Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric. Then again, none of them has built the level of trust with their audiences that would allow them to make such a pronouncement. (In a nice bit of synchronicity, Couric, who takes over the chair Cronkite once occupied at CBS News in September, narrates Witness to History.)
Cronkite built that trust over years of reporting on remarkable turbulence. He, of course, announced to a shocked nation that John F. Kennedy was dead, pausing and taking off his glasses to compose himself, a moment about which William F. Buckley says, "There was a lot of poetry written in it."
There were bumps in Cronkite's career, and they're chronicled, as well. Trailing Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, CBS pulled him from the anchor chair for a 1964 political convention, something Tom Brokaw calls, "One of the dumbest moves I've ever seen." Cronkite reported from the floor; CBS quickly reinstated him.
Witness to History includes some of Cronkite's earliest Vietnam reporting, when, particularly after riding along on a bombing mission, he appears enthralled by the war. For those who haven't seen it and are familiar only with Cronkite's eventual denunciation of the fighting, it's a jarring scene.
Cronkite retired in 1981, replaced by Dan Rather - who is curiously missing among the talking heads interviewed for the film.
"He typified what the best of television news could be - and no longer is," Andy Rooney says of Cronkite.
Strong words, but they're given weight by Cronkite's response to White House attacks on the media when Watergate coverage increased. In footage from a speech, Cronkite says he and others aren't simply defending their jobs.
"What we're defending is the people's right to know," he says. "And we have to be in the front line of that battle at all times."
At a time when many consider unflattering or damning reporting nothing short of treason, those, now more than ever, should be words that we live by.
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/tv/articles/0723cronkite0723.html#
(Photo courtesy of PBS)
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Too good TV?
Can it be? Critics say the fall class of shows has so many promising newcomers that some are doomed to go unseen.
By Jonathan Storm Philadelphia Inquirer Television Critic July 23, 2006
PASADENA, Calif. - Bad news about the fall TV season: It's too good.
The critics gathered here for the Television Critics Association annual summer press tour have found rare consensus: The TV mug this fall will be filled to overflowing with sweet shows.
There's no buzz at this press tour, just the drip, drip, drip of new series spilling onto the floor.
"Even though I'm not sure there's a really great show, this is by far the best year cumulatively in my memory," says Tom Jicha, TV critic for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Among the 125 or so critics at the press tour, Jicha is an elephant, attending his 25th.
"We're always clamoring for shows that push and stretch," says TV Guide's Matt Roush. "I wonder if we're being pushed to the breaking point."
With nary a new series that stands up and demands attention, each one in the bushel of the almost-excellent is easy to ignore, especially in a schedule already stuffed with such crowd-pleasers as Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, CSI, 24, House, Survivor, The Amazing Race, and Prison Break, not to mention favorites on the new CW network and cable.
"There are not enough hours in the day," says the Denver Post's Joanne Ostrow.
Do not mistake the critics for a monolith. Even when they give out their annual awards tonight, there will be plenty of grousing in the ballroom about the stupidity of that pick or the blindness of this one.
Terry Morrow of the Knoxville News Sentinel isn't crazy about the new crop of comedies, but he does single out 20 Good Years, an NBC show starring John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor, calling it "probably the best new comedy."
"20 Good Years doesn't even have 20 good seconds in it," retorts Susan White from the Oakland Tribune.
And so it goes, as the critics grab a quick bite between the innumerable sessions staged by the networks to present the new shows' stars and producers or argue deep into the evening as drinks loosen tongues.
No one ever comes to blows, but this year's gathering is surprisingly passionless.
On the series themselves, there seems only one sad bit of agreement. Everybody dislikes Fox's falsely frantic Happy Hour. The fall looks grim for Fox. Its other new sitcom, 'Til Death, starring Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett, is also high on most "worst" lists.
Among dramas, some don't mind CBS's Smith, starring Ray Liotta as an apparently heartless leader of a gang of thieves, but most agree with USA Today's Robert Bianco: "I think the characters are uninteresting, which is a far worse TV sin than being unlikable."
Ugly Betty, in which an indomitable though appearance-challenged young woman makes her way in the fashion world, lines up as the critics' favorite. Says the Orlando Sentinel's Hal Boedeker about its star, "America Ferrera is the find of the season, and I'm so happy to see somebody who doesn't look like an emaciated starlet breaking out."
Still, many agree with Jicha, who calls himself "neutral" on Ugly Betty, ABC's sweet and funny adaptation of what's touted to be the world's most popular telenovela, a Latino genre of soap opera. "There's a show I'll probably never watch," he says.
NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a take on Saturday Night Live by Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, and ABC's The Nine, about people whose lives are changed when they are taken hostage in a bank robbery, make many critics' list of favorites.
Popular, but less frequently mentioned: CBS's sitcom The Class, about a group of people who reunite 20 years after third grade, and NBC's drama focusing on a town consumed by high school football, Friday Night Lights.
"I liked nine out of the 10 shows from ABC that I watched," said Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle. "They are so much better than anybody else."
He and other critics also prominently mention ABC's Men in Trees, a semi-remake of Northern Exposure, starring Anne Heche as a city girl in small-town Alaska, and two sitcoms, Help Me Help You (Ted Danson as a psychotherapist) and The Knights of Prosperity (bumblers take up burglary).
Those two also fall on many critics' phooey list. Of Prosperity, Boedeker says simply, "I detested it."
"The comedies," muses Gail Pennington of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. "They suck, don't they? As usual." Like many critics, however, she did admit a soft spot for NBC's 30 Rock, former head writer Tina Fey's sitcom take on SNL. "It's weird and funny," Pennington says. "You couldn't tell where it was going, and you laughed a lot."
Challenging serials - only three of 16 new dramas close the case at the end of each show - have caused controversy at the press tour, where, a few years ago, people complained about the glut of procedural crime shows.
"Nobody has time," says Goodman. "People want to watch Lost. They want to watch 24. That's fine. But if you want to add nine or 12 new shows that say, 'Hey, you need to stick around for 22 episodes,' no one's going to do it. Those shows are going to die. Good dramas are going to die."
"So we deride these people for doing the same old thing every year," retorts Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, "and now you're deriding them for swinging for the fence. Shouldn't they swing for the fence?"
Pennington mentions the disappointment of mid-story cancellations, a certainty when 13 new shows are serials and the average series success rate is less than 25 percent.
"When you start a serialized show, you promise an end, and the networks are not coming through on that. People are really mad at Fox about Reunion, and rightfully so. It stopped right in the middle. Invasion stopped right in the middle. I wouldn't blame people if they just say, 'No thanks. I would like this show, but I don't trust you.' "
Why so many serials? Aside from the success of Lost and Desperate Housewives and 24, Dave Walker of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, has a theory:
"I think a lot of this is the influence of the digital video recorder. Everybody who's making these shows and critiquing these shows has one. Everybody who's watching these shows does not. But these serial shows are much easier to watch if you can record the whole thing. You don't have to be sitting in front of the television every week to see them."
But DVRs are not the answer when you can't stop time, and there is simply too much to watch.
TV Guide's Roush, like many critics, is a DVR virtuoso. It will be no help where two above-average new series, ABC's Six Degrees and CBS's Shark, both scheduled at 10 p.m. Thursday, are concerned.
"On Thursdays, I'll watch Grey's Anatomy live at 9 p.m. and CSI, which I'll be recording, at 10. Then, My Name Is Earl and The Office [also prerecorded] at 11 because I'll be watching Survivor at 8. That's my full night of TV right there. There's no room for me to watch Six Degrees. I have no intention of ever watching Shark, a perfect CBS series and a great star vehicle for James Woods."
And what of those who don't record?
"There are a lot of new dramas that I'm eager to see another time," says Oakland's White. "But when you ask me to take aside time from my day and watch them, commercials and all, a lot of the things I say as a critic go out the window."
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television//15091154.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Tonight the Television Critics Association will announce its annual awards.
Here is a story, detailing the nominees, written by TCA President Rob Owen back in May when the awards were first announced:
TV Notebook
Crix pick hits
By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette TV Editor in his blog “Tuned In”Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Whenever anyone tries to crow about how out of touch television critics are, I just point them to the Nielsen ratings: The list of top-rated shows and most acclaimed series are usually pretty identical, as this year's Television Critics Association Awards nominations show.
(Full disclosure: I'm currently TCA president, which means I just have a lot more work to do.)
The Television Critics Association represents more than 220 journalists writing about television for print and online outlets in the United States and Canada.)
Here's this year's list of nominees:
PROGRAM OF THE YEAR
"Grey's Anatomy" (ABC)
"Lost" (ABC)
"The Office" (NBC)
"The Sopranos" (HBO)
"24" (Fox)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN COMEDY
"The Daily Show" (Comedy Central)
"Everybody Hates Chris" (UPN)
"My Name is Earl" (NBC)
"The Office" (NBC)
"Scrubs" (NBC)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DRAMA
"Grey's Anatomy" (ABC)
"House" (Fox)
"Lost" (ABC)
"The Sopranos" (HBO)
"24" (Fox)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT MOVIES, MINI-SERIES AND SPECIALS
"American Masters: Bob Dylan: No Direction Home" (PBS)
"Elizabeth I" (HBO)
"Masterpiece Theatre: Bleak House" (PBS)
"Sleeper Cell" (Showtime)
"Viva Blackpool" (BBC America)
OUTSTANDING NEW PROGRAM OF THE YEAR
"Big Love" (HBO)
"The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central)
"Everybody Hates Chris" (UPN)
"My Name Is Earl" (NBC)
"Prison Break" (Fox)
INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN COMEDY
Steve Carell ("The Office")
Stephen Colbert ("The Colbert Report")
Lauren Graham ("Gilmore Girls")
Jason Lee ("My Name Is Earl")
Jon Stewart (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart")
INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN DRAMA
Alan Alda ("West Wing")
James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos")
Hugh Laurie ("House")
Kiefer Sutherland ("24")
Kyra Sedgwick ("The Closer")
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CHILDREN'S PROGRAMMING
"Dora the Explorer" (Nickelodeon)
"Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" (Cartoon Network)
"High School Musical" (The Disney Channel)
"Nick News" (Nickelodeon)
"Sesame Street" (PBS)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN NEWS & INFORMATION
"American Masters: Newhart" (PBS)
"Broadway: The Golden Age" (PBS)
"Frontline" (PBS)
"Frontline: Country Boys" (PBS)
"60 Minutes" (CBS)
HERITAGE AWARD
"Hallmark Hall of Fame" (CBS)
"The West Wing" (NBC)
"Will & Grace" (NBC)
http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/tunedin/
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Spend time on 'Mars'
By Aaron Barnhart Kansas City Star in his blog “TV Barn”
Here’s the concept: Cop is hit by a car while investigating a murder. When he comes to, it’s 1973. He awakens in period clothes, gets in his period car and drives back to the dusty, smoke-filled station where nobody, period, has heard of solving crimes with DNA.
And that’s just the kickoff to “Life on Mars,” an addictive cop show imported from our political and television allies in Great Britain, premiering at 9 p.m. CT Monday on BBC America.
It’s the story of Sam Tyler (John Simm), who we gather is lying in a coma back in the parallel universe where he started. Every now and then he receives a message from that world — sometimes through the police radio, sometimes through one of the massive state-owned telephone receivers imposed on the citizens of Manchester in 1973. And sometimes Sam is jarred from his sleep by the odd little girl who appeared on the BBC’s test pattern after signoff. (You do remember when TV stations signed off, don’t you?)
Every time, the message is the same: Fight, Sam. Fight for your life.
But while Sam hangs onto his existence in 2006 by a respirator, in 1973-land he is a man solving crimes for a brute named Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister). Hunt, an aggressive, hard-drinking inspector, embodies the pre-“CSI” school. He considers Sam, with his fascination for examining corpses and adherence to procedure, a bit of a patsy.
“I trust my instincts,” Hunt huffs, and when Sam challenges him with logic, his boss responds the only way he knows how — by pummeling Sam with his fists. Forensics in 1973 strikes Hunt as theoretical rubbish, a waste of time for today’s modern detective. He constantly overrules Sam’s explanations with his own harebrained but internally logical substitutes, like the deduction that the first person to mention the crime is the one who did it.
The culture clash between these two men is a source of ongoing entertainment on the show. So is the soundtrack, of which the 1973 David Bowie single “Life on Mars” is just the beginning. The songs featured here would make for a terrific long-playing record ... I mean, podcast.
If the show were just “Tops of the Pops” salted with Diet Coke and Playstation jokes, it would be a mere confection. (That reminds me to mention that David “Ally McBeal Boston Legal” Kelley owns the U.S. rights to “Life on Mars.”)
This BBC version is more. It’s an ambitious and ever-shifting examination of the lack of foresight in a culture addicted to rapid change.
Sam at first fails to recognize that he has some baggage, and that he must unpack it at the Hotel Throwback before the present day will readmit him and let him close that case he was working on.
When a hostage taker tells him, “Some people walk among the living dead, and don’t even know it,” Sam doesn’t quite grasp that he’s talking about Sam, not himself.
But “Life on Mars” is not all psychodrama. In one episode Sam breaks up a nascent soccer gang and realizes he has diagnosed an early case of soccer hooliganism.
In another he’s gobsmacked when he pulls up to a textile factory.
“I live here,” Sam says. Maybe someday he does, but for now the factory is still in business, though its workers are already struggling to keep it open. Sam’s sense of unreality is heightened when he spots a 1973 version of himself walking the streets of Manchester. If little Sam Tyler is in his world, does that mean the boy has clues that will solve the mystery of why he is here?
You get the sense that Sam’s character is not lacking for courage but insight. He wants to fight; he’s just not sure who, or what, he should be fighting.
That is the life-or-death mystery that binds “Life on Mars” to our own age, as we stumble through the fog of culture rife with information and short on wisdom.
http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2006/07/spend_time_on_m.html#more
TV Notebook
Netlets fade to black
Execs have little precedent as they struggle with closings
By Michael Schneider Variety.com July 23, 2006
Series die virtually every other week. Executives are routinely fired. Ratings bounce around. But networks are built to last -- until now.
The WB and UPN are about to become the first major programmers to disappear since the DuMont Network went belly up in 1956. Since then, a handful of minor cablers have bit the dust (CBS Cable, CNNfn, the Nashville Network). But the industry has never seen the shutdown of a major national programming outlet in this modern era, let alone two.
"How do you end a network?" asks Garth Ancier, topper of the WB.
It's such an anomaly that Ancier says he hopped on the Internet to bone up on how DuMont pulled the plug 50 years ago.
"I tried to do as much research as I could," Ancier says. "I Googled 'DuMont shutdown' and tried to get some info on how they did it."
But with no real playbook on closing a broadcast web, the execs behind the WB and UPN figured it out as they went along.
Save for original episodes of UPN's "WWE Smackdown," programming on both nets of late has been repeats, or burnoffs of episodes of shows such as the WB's "Just Legal," pulled early in the past season.
The demise of the WB and UPN, spurred a shuffle in the affiliate world as stations switch to new networks CW and MyNetworkTV. Stations have been forced to spend extra marketing dollars to rebrand their identity.
Kansas City's KSMO-TV, for example, is shifting from the WB to MyNet, and will switch its brandname from "The WB Kansas City" to "My KSMO TV."
"It covers everything from stationery letterheads to how you answer the phone to what kind of position you try to occupy in viewers' minds, and how to promote that," says the station's general manager, Kirk Black. "I personally believe that this fall's broadcast season will be the most confusing that we've seen in years."
At the WB's headquarters at Warner Ranch in Burbank, department heads were asked to draft a list of every detail, large and small, that would have to be addressed before turning out the lights.
Over the past several months, Ancier says he's had to deal with major issues -- such as informing staffers whether they'd have a job come summer -- and the minutia, including what to do with a massive, welded metal WB flashing-light sign that was used in most of the net's on-air campaigns (no decision yet).
Across town, shutting down UPN has been a slightly easier affair. For starters, that net's staff was already small, with many of its functions overseen by CBS.
There's also less institutional memory at UPN, which is on its third set of top execs. Many of the WB's brass, on the other hand, had been there since its 1995 launch -- making it a much more emotional farewell.
Still, it wasn't easy for execs at either shuttered weblet to decide which staffers would be asked to join the new CW net, and who would be handed a severance check.
The CW will employ around 150 people; the WB boasted a staff of around 300 and UPN had about 100. That meant a majority of staffers at both weblets were out of a job.
"Many positions had two qualified candidates for one job," says WB chief operating officer John Maatta, who is taking the same title at the CW. "It was a hard process to go through the roster and decide who was going to go with the new venture."
In accordance with California law, staffers at both the WB and UPN were sent letters notifying them of the shutdown soon after the CW announcement was made in January.
"It's the equivalent to a plant closing," Ancier says. "Just like we were manufacturing cars, we'd be finished on a certain date."
That led to an awkward period of time when execs who weren't invited to join the CW were still needed to operate the existing netlets, while others down the hall were working on the new net's first fall schedule.
By summer, only skeleton crews were left at both netlets. At the WB, Ancier has stuck around to help schedule the Frog's remaining weeks of programming (including a final-night retrofest on Sept. 17; UPN has yet to announce its final night.)
And there are still legal documents to sign (such as quarterly company statements) and the tricky issue of figuring out how to make sure the WB is still seen in at least 80% of the country during its last two weeks of programming. That's because Rupert Murdoch's MyNetworkTV launches Sept. 5, taking over many former WB and UPN affils, but the CW doesn't bow until Sept. 18.
"It's important to stay above 80% coverage for national advertisers," Ancier says.
"It's going to be an interesting period in network TV history -- you've never had two networks going off the air, with one launching (MyNet) and another about to launch."
Maatta and Ancier say the WB headquarters have been slowly stripped of Frog mementos, as staffers take a few souvenirs out the door. Remaining WB items may make it into the Warner Bros. archives, or perhaps even onto eBay.
Once the CW's Burbank offices open (in the Pinnacle Building, between Warner Bros. and NBC), the remaining staffers holed up in the WB's Warner Ranch headquarters (which will be taken over by Warner Bros. Animation) and UPN's Brentwood building will leave.
But Ancier, who's also ankling, doesn't intend to let the Frog go quietly into oblivion. He's throwing a wake for all the WB's stars and execs on its last night of programming, when the netlet is slated to broadcast the pilots to several of its signature shows, including "Dawson's Creek" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=print_story&articleid=VR1117947201&categoryid=14
And now for a completely different view of the TCA tours. It is from iconoclastic (and well respected) reporter Nikki Finke of LA Weekly:
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Mo' Reasons Why TV Critics' Assoc Blows
By Nikki Finke LA Weekly in her deadlinehollywooddaily blog
I love Hollywood Reporter TV bloggist Ray Richmond's "10 Iron-Clad Unwritten Rules" http://www.pastdeadline.com/2006/07/at_the_tv_criti.html of those dreadful TV critics' dog-and-pony shows put on by broadcasters for them.
For newbies, the Television Critics Association represents more than 220 journalists writing about television for print and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
Personally, I consider being a buttboy like that no way to report the beat, but I recognize that podunk papers have a harder time getting to the big guys.
(What's amusing is that RR's rules also apply to those derelict types who attend those equally dreadful movie junkets.)
In my opinion, the best summary of everything that's wrong with the TCA was done by Sharon Waxman for the American Journalism Review back in 1998 -- Spoon-Fed News. http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=2593 (Interesting factoid: knowing that Waxman was writing this piece, the TCA cracked down on their rules regarding gifts.) Actually it's telling to look at my (typically) loud-mouthed quotes from back then and see that I, and my opinions, haven't changed:
"But eliminating the freebies does not address the bigger problem: Worse than eating what the networks serve for lunch (and breakfast and dinner) is swallowing their spoon-fed news. "It's ludicrous," says Nikki Finke, [then] New York magazine's West Coast editor and a veteran Hollywood reporter.
Finke refuses to attend the meetings, saying they provide no useful information. "It's always the same. If you're the No. 3 network you're moving up. If you're No. 2 you're almost at the top, and if you're No. 1 you're staying there." ... Finke says that many of the journalists who go to the press tour meetings (and the editors who send them) are just plain lazy, content to fill their notebooks with quotes that will provide fodder for a couple of months' worth of feature stories and TV columns ... Is this any way to cover the most influential medium of popular American culture? Finke says it isn't.
"If you're interested in TV as a business, you'll have sources... There are agents, managers, producers, lawyers, studios--there is a whole range of people who run the industry," she says. "But those journalists never talk to the other people."
Ouch. She has a point. The meetings seduce journalists into thinking that they're doing real reporting, when in fact real reporting only happens as an adjunct to the main event. The networks keep you so busy with "news conferences" (read: promotional events) that it's easy to forget that the reporter's objective is not the same as the networks'. ..
But Finke scoffs that even the better reporters at the TV meetings are playing the networks' game. She counters: "I've compared interviews I've done with executives and producers on their own, and they have literally said things 180 degrees different than what they said at the TV critics' thing. Because it's bogus. Who's going to speak honestly when all their bosses are standing right there?"
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Turn on, tune in, use brain
TV's fall serials a demanding lot
By Joanne Ostrow Denver Post TV Critic
Television critics like to complain, but this year's lament is unusual: There's too much good stuff on the fall schedules.
Specifically, there is an overabundance of complex serial dramas with large casts and huge "back stories" or mythologies that require time and regular, chronological attention.
It's true. The demands network programmers will make on viewers are extraordinary.
If you already keep track of "Lost," "Prison Break" and "24," for instance, you may be hard pressed to add another handful of convoluted plot lines to your weekly TV rations.
Expect an embarrassment of riches this fall as network TV aims higher.
Can it be? Programmers have heard the clamor for smarter, more literate television, and they have responded. (Disclaimer: Nobody is saying all these shows will hold up past the pilots, but a significant number of pilots are better than ever.)
A couple of seasons ago, the procedural drama, notably "CSI," prompted every director to zoom through the microscope in the grisly crime lab. CBS claimed viewers liked how each hour offered a payoff.
This year, the overcloned programming type is the serial. Not since the golden age of radio - when "The Lone Ranger," "The Shadow" and "Dragnet" hooked listeners - has there been such an abundance of serial dramas.
NBC offers "Kidnapped," a high-stakes drama about a wealthy Manhattan couple whose teenage son is abducted. Fox has "Vanished," in which a senator's wife goes missing.
ABC boasts "The Nine," about strangers forever linked by a hostage situation, and "Six Degrees," about interconnected strangers in New York. CW introduces "Runaway," a "Fugitive"-like suspense series about a family that goes on the lam after Dad is wrongly convicted of murder.
And CBS gets into the game with "Smith," a serial tale of master criminals who plot high-
risk heists across the country, and "Jericho," an exceedingly intricate post-apocalyptic suspense serial.
Producers acknowledge the intricate plots demand greater audience attention. The fact is, television isn't just for zoning out anymore.
Take ABC's "The Nine."
"You have nine people, their worlds, their lives, all the guest cast that interact with them," noted producer Hank Steinberg. "It's a very ambitious, very complicated show."
On "Runaways," producer-creator Ed Zuckerman promises "enough recaps so you know where you stand."
On "Daybreak," 13 episodes chronicle one day with numerous flashbacks, akin to the movie "Groundhog Day." Producer Paul Zbyszewski said viewers shouldn't be afraid to join "Daybreak" in progress, since "every week we are going to have elements that are self-contained. I mean, yes, the nature of the show is serialized, but we do have a beginning, a middle and an end to every episode."
Thank goodness television is getting so ambitious!
Oh no, television is getting too ambitious!
On stand-alone hours like "Law & Order," it's possible to skip episodes and rejoin without missing a beat. We know the characters, we tune in to see their latest dilemma, which wraps in 44 minutes. Heavily serialized dramas like "Lost" don't let us whip up the evening casserole while watching.
Another complaint from critics concerns loose ends. Too often the serials die young and unresolved, leaving viewers hanging. "Invasion," "Surface," "Threshold," "Heist" and "Reunion" are among the hours canceled with dangling threads. Audiences may eventually refuse to invest time in a detailed serial that looks like work and may never be resolved.
CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler acknowledges that programmers don't want to anger audiences. The answer, she said, may lie on the Web.
"With the many different changes that are happening in multiplatform, there may be opportunities to provide resolution for audiences in other platforms on shows that don't continue on broadcast," she said.
CBS already plans alternative storytelling for "Jericho" on the Internet, expanding on the ambitious TV experience.
http://www.denverpost.com/ostrow
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
The deal with "Deal"
By Hal Boedeker Orlando Sentinel Television Critic his TV Guy blog
NBC's "Deal or No Deal" will return in September and dangle a total of $22 million before players in one week.
"We just saw how much money we had in our pockets and decided that was what we could afford," said David Goldberg, president of Endemol USA, which produces the game show.
The top prize the show gave away last season was $464,000.
"Without giving anything away, we started taping, and we're breaking some records now," host Howie Mandel said Saturday. "The most exciting shows to date were just put in the can in the last 24 hours."
The game show will start its new season with a two-hour special on Sept. 18. Other editions will air Sept. 19, 21 and 22.
The top prize starts at $1 million in the first game and grows to $6 million at week's end.
"As a way to launch a season or as a stunt vehicle, it makes a lot of sense," Goldberg said.
He defended the decision to rest the high-rated game show this summer, so producers could concentrate on casting players and building excitement.
"We're coming back with what we think, undoubtedly, are our best shows to date," Goldberg said.
What about an all-star version of the show? Don't count on it -- for now.
"We really see the show as kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said executive producer Scott St. John. "That's one of the very first things I tell people when we get them to the stage and we're briefing them. Your objective should be to win the greatest amount of money you can."
But the show might bring back its biggest losers for another shot.
"If you won five bucks, you are the most unlucky character to date and we want to give you another chance -- that might be fun," Goldberg said.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2006/07/the_deal_with_d.html
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
“Friday Night Lights” proud to call Austin home
By Diane Holloway Austin American-Statesman in her TV blog
“Friday Night Lights” is calling Austin home, at least through its first season and, with luck, well beyond.
Many of my critic colleagues loved the pilot, which was shot in and around Austin, but they wonder if a show about high school football will find a larger audience. I think it will. Small towns and high school football aren’t just Texas phenomena. There’s a universal appeal to intimate drama.
Creator Peter Berg, who also directed the 2004 movie that inspired the series, thinks the NBC show will be able to explore some of the deeper issues that were in H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger’s book. Set in Odessa in the ’80s, the book stirred a ruckus with its exposé of the pressure on the team to win as well as the racism bubbling beneath the surface.
“We’re using football as a baseline to look more at the culture of athletics and small town life,” Berg said.
The pilot, which is set in the present, uses Pflugerville High School for the football scenes and will return to the high school on a regular basis. The show’s production will film its own scenes on an old, unused football field in town and blend that footage with scenes shot of the Pflugerville Panthers’ football games.
“They like the exposure, and we’re not all that intrusive,” Berg said. The production also is making an “unspecified donation” to the school in exchange for using the location.
The fictional team will be known as the Panthers, but for legal reasons, Pflugerville will be called Dillon.
“Filming in Texas is a no-brainer,” Berg said. “This is about Texas football. It would have been so bogus to have a bunch of Canadians running around with southern accents. And Austin is a fun city. It’s a small big-city with great music and a college campus. There are great local crews and a good filmmaking infrastructure.”
Filming begins in August for the show’s Oct. 3 debut. As an indication of NBC’s support for the show, the network’s big end-of-press-tour star party was billed as “A Texas-Style BBQ.” Well, it was as “Texas” as the LaLa Land caterers could muster, which is to say, not very.
Conan preps for the Emmys
“Late Night” host Conan O’Brien will host NBC’s telecast of the Emmys on Aug. 27, and he says his monologue for the awards show probably will not be much different than his regular gig.
“My sense of humor is pretty well known,” O’Brien said. “It’s fairly silly and, for the most part, a waste of time. Comedy, you know, is a fickle lady.”
Whatever that means.
http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/tvblog/
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Tina Fey's Weekend Update: Aaron Sorkin calls her out!
By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog
Yes, a bit of false advertising there, but "Studio 60" creator Aaron Sorkin did run into "30 Rock's" Tina Fey at the NBC barbecue on Saturday night. We critics, a bunch always on the prowl for a scandal or a brawl to gossip about, wondered if seeing Fey's "30 Rock" on the fall schedule ruffled Sorkin's feathers, since his "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" has a similar premise.
The two series peel back the curtain on the backstage politics of making a television series. Sorkin's is a drama, while "30 Rock" is a comedy, and as "30 Rock's" executive producer Lorne Michaels pointed out, one has a 60 in the title, and it's an hour, while the other has a 30 in it, and it's half an hour. "I think people will be able to clearly distinguish which is which," he quipped.
Probably so. Back to the party where, in spite of our concern, no feelings were bruised or tears shed. While a group of us had Fey cornered, Sorkin and his entourage zipped by and yelled out, "Stay here with '30 Rock.' That's the 'it' show!"
Fey shared that Sorkin sent her a lovely bouquet of flowers once the announcement was made at the upfronts. Later when she saw him in person, she said, "I didn't think to thank him because I was so convinced it was somebody at 'SNL'... trying to trick me into bragging about it."
"I finally thanked him tonight."
Well, some people might not be thanking Fey and her co-star Rachel Dratch after today: She announced at a Jay Leno taping that she's leaving "Saturday Night Live" to focus on the show full time.
That was a foregone conclusion for most of us, but I'm sure somebody held out hope. Like, say, the women who have slaved behind the scenes in television comedy. Fey is an inspiration -- she joined "SNL" in 1997 as a writer, then was bumped up to head writer in 1999. And her stint on "Weekend Update" for the past couple of years has been among the few bright spots on the aging sketch show.
"Mean Girls" showed all of us that she was ready for something else, and now we have "30 Rock" to look forward to. Along with Dratch, she's taking Tracy Morgan along for the ride, and even got Alec Baldwin to sign on. That's power, baby.
But she conceded that the workload could be a bit too much to handle when I asked her about the perils of playing star, head writer and showrunner of her own sitcom.
She likened it to hearing cautionary tales while she was pregnant, "They keep telling you what's going to happen when the baby comes. And you go, 'Uh huh, uh huh.' And yet you refuse to hear that...you're going to poop on the table."
She paused for a beat before adding, "I didn't poop on the table, by the way."
Someone pointed out that working on "30 Rock" might make her do that, metaphorically speaking. But we hope not.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/archives/105252.asp?source=rss
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
“Friday Night Lights” proud to call Austin home
What would really be cool is if this show used some "Explosions in the Sky" music like they did in the movie. Even if the show stank I could turn the display off and just listen to the audio. :D
http://www.explosionsinthesky.com/albums.html
Explosions In the Sky
I guess I am going to have to rent the DVD, jim.
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
Fey plays, well, Fey in new sitcom
NBC's football team appears in high spirits, and the women on 'Grey's Anatomy' are tiny in real life
By Joanne Weintraub Milwaukee Journal Sentinel TV critic
Pasadena, Calif. - Critic's notebook from the second week of the TV industry's fall preview marathon, a unique combination of hype, hoopla, news conferences and celebrity ogling opportunities:
Tina Fey may be "out of the fake news business," she said here Saturday, but the longtime anchor of "Saturday Night Live's" immortal "Weekend Update" faux newscast can't bring herself to say so long to "SNL" forever.
"I'll never, ever not be there in some way, (whether it's) calling up to offer an opinion or writing something during hiatus" from her new prime-time comedy, "30 Rock," Fey said.
The show, which will debut Oct. 11, stars the former "SNL" head writer in a slight variation on, well, Tina Fey: the head writer of a network sketch comedy called "The Girly Show."
"SNL" vets Tracy Morgan and Rachel Dratch play "Girly Show" cast members, and frequent "SNL" guest host Alec Baldwin is a pushy executive.
In addition to writing and starring in the show, Fey will produce Internet-only "webisodes."
Though she's known as a prolific writer, she admitted: "I probably do not understand the train that's about to hit me."
• • • • • • • • • • •
It was a love fest here earlier in the day when the Peacock people trotted out their new "NBC Sunday Night Football" team, starring John Madden - newly acquired from ABC - and "The Bus" everyone wants to catch, 2006 Super Bowl champion Jerome Bettis, fresh from 13 seasons with the NFL.
Finishing his career with the victory as his Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks in his native Detroit, Bettis, who'll do analysis for NBC's new "Football Night in America" 6 p.m. studio show, said: "The last six months have been a joy ride for me."
There was the whole Super Bowl thing, of course - and "I did get married recently," he added a little hastily. "See? I have the ring on today."
The Bus said he was nervous when his playing career ended this year. Who'd want to hire a guy whose main skill was ranking fifth on the NFL's all-time rushing list?
But then "I went on (Jay Leno's show) and mentioned that I didn't have a job," he said. "It turned out to be a (job) interview on the air. (NBC Sports producer) Dick Ebersol saw it (and hired Bettis). I have to thank Jay for that."
Madden was also in a jovial mood. But when is Madden not?
Someone asked the former all-conference college player, Philadelphia Eagles rookie and Oakland Raiders head coach why he was still working with his 70th birthday and football Hall of Fame induction both around the corner.
"It's my life, and I love it," Madden answered. He added that when he heard the reference to his age, "something just shot through my body and I thought, 'Where the hell did the time go?' I (feel like) I've been 17 all my life."
The size of things
Eighteen-time Emmy winner Bob Costas, who'll host NBC's Sunday-evening studio show, was uncharacteristically quiet at the session. Maybe he was feeling overshadowed: Seated on the stage next to the imposing Bettis and not far from the larger Madden, Costas looked to be about the size of a hobbit.
In fact, objects on TV often do appear larger than in real life, and that goes for people, too.
Sally Field, who came Wednesday to promote ABC's drama "Brothers & Sisters," looked tiny, but cast mate Calista Flockhart looked tinier.
Thursday, 50 or 60 critics visited the set of "Grey's Anatomy" during the second day of shooting for the new season.
The women, in particular, looked elfin in their blue surgical scrubs and sneakers.
From not too far away, stars Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh and Katherine Heigl could have been schoolgirls playing doctor.
Chandra Wilson, who'll go up against Oh next month for a best supporting actress Emmy, appears to be at least a head shorter than the surgical resident she plays, Miranda Bailey. Most likely Bailey's T. rex personality adds to the perceived height of Wilson, who's an even 5 feet.
Both the character and the performer were bigger in a very real sense last season: Dr. Bailey gave birth in the spring, while Wilson had her third child and first son, Michael, in October.
Though Chandra and Miranda shared a pregnancy, the actress had an easier time of it than the doctor
On the soapy and hugely popular ABC show, nothing comes easily. In real life, Wilson said, delivery was no big deal.
"I worked up until the night of my labor," the actress recalled. "It felt better to stand on my feet than to sit around."
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=475465
I guess I am going to have to rent the DVD, jim.
Well, the band is a personal favorite of mine but that's not to say they are all that popular, my tastes run to the esoteric, eclectic so it may not be for everybody. They are what you might call a post-rock group, a rock group in form, and the music could be called rock, but it's so much more, almost symphonic in construction but minimalistic in presentation. Give it a try though you might like it. At it's best, you'll get the sense that you're somewhere in a hot and dusty west Texas town.
As far as the film itself, yes, watching it will definitely give you an idea about what the show is probably about. It will give you a sense of what Texas high school football is all about, where the state high school championship is bigger than the Super Bowl to those folks.
I've been to a high school game in West Texas.
It is an incredible experience, when the high school stadium seats three times as many people as live within ten miles of it.
TV Critics Summer Press Tour
What does the viewing public want?
By Brian Lowry Variety.com Sun., July 23, 2006
EVERY SUMMER WHEN TV critics convene to cross-examine executives, producers and stars, there is an inevitable attempt to translate the primetime lineups into Freudian analysis of the collective public psyche.
Do viewers want the distraction of silly comedies, or sci-fi escapism? Do they want cathartic crime dramas like "CSI" because they find and punish bad guys in an hour? Are they hungry for stories about Sept. 11, or burned out by them?
"What does it say about the public and the media," one reporter asked Katie Couric last week, "that both of them are 20,000 times more interested in who is reading the news than what the news actually is?" As a member of both the public and the media, let me be the first to say I really do care more about what the news actually is.
Such questions are amusing, but they have never sounded more irrelevant.
For starters, the discussion presupposes that harried executives analyze the public consciousness when cobbling together their schedules. Most are moving too fast for such contemplation, trying to identify which successful formats to replicate, with a twist, fast enough to prolong their jobs.
The more misguided thread, however, hangs on the