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It looks like College Gameday is not tied to the location of the Primetime game on ABC after all. This week College gameday is at Ohio State which is a 3:30 game on ABC.
I think it will switch around from ESPN and ABC game sites.
And has been previously mentioned, on rare occasions it actually comes from sites not being broadcast by Disney.
But in these days of total synergy, and with ABC/ESPN broadcasting six-eight games a week, I think those days ecumenical might have ended.
The New Season
'Kidnapped': A top-notch thriller with a killer cast
From Maureen Ryan’s Chicago Tribune blog “The Watcher” September 19, 2006
Several new dramas, including the apocalyptic "Jericho" and the hostage drama "The Nine," attempt to mine entertainment from terrifying scenarios, but none does it with more style and panache than "Kidnapped" (10 PM ET/PT p.m. Wednesday, NBC).
Thanks to a top-notch cast and unusually intelligent writing, “Kidnapped” is among the more promising of many new shows that pay homage to the granddaddy of the current suspense boom, “24.”
There are few things that frighten a parent more than the thought of a child’s disappearance, but “Kidnapped” effectively distances us from this terrifying concept by its setting: a moneyed realm recalling the pages of luxury magazine The Robb Report, not most people’s everyday reality.
Conrad Cain, played with melancholy subtlety by the perfectly cast Timothy Hutton, is a Manhattan master of the universe, a multimillionaire who can afford a palatial apartment as well as a bodyguard for his son, Leopold. That cocoon of privilege proves insufficient, however, when Leopold is snatched on his way to school, in a scene that recalls Jack Bauer’s adventures in its suspenseful execution. Still, Cain and his wife, Ellie (Dana Delany), can afford to bring in the best to track down their 15-year-old boy.
Enter the enigmatic Knapp (Jeremy Sisto), who recommends not alerting the authorities to Leopold’s disappearance. Nevertheless, Latimer King (Delroy Lindo), an experienced FBI agent who’s about to retire, soon figures out what’s going on and steps in to help the stunned family.
What drives “Kidnapped” is not just the search for Cain’s son, but the conflicting agendas of Knapp, King’s team and the Cains, as well as the unknown motives of Leopold’s captors (the viewer gets hints that they may want more than just money).
To ensure the safe return of the boy - which is his only goal - Knapp has to dig up the Cain family’s most private secrets, and there appears to be a fair amount of dirty laundry the Cains would rather wasn’t known. As for the FBI agents , they would like to bring the boy back - possibly even alive - but apprehending the bad guys is equally important to the feds. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Knapp and King used to work together.
Early on, it’s clear Leopold is not content to let the chips fall where they may, which adds yet another wild card to the mix, as does a mysterious Knapp adversary glimpsed in the second episode. He turns out to know more than he should about the Cains’ crisis.
There are many big stars headlining shows this fall, but “Kidnapped’s” cast is exceptional. Delany is alternately furious and despondent as Ellie, and she and Hutton can do more without words than other actors can do with pages of dialogue. They’re absolutely convincing as rich, complicated Manhattanites and as parents who come face to face with the scary reality that they can’t always protect their kids.
Lindo, as always, is effortlessly charismatic as the canny King, and Sisto’s brusque, anguished vibe perfectly suits this enjoyably tense chronicle of anxiety and suspense.
A story line in the second episode about the Cains’ daughter wobbles a bit and threatens to veer into melodrama. But the “Kidnapped” writers display admirable intelligence and, thankfully, they don’t foist truckloads of expository dialogue on the cast (one of the risks of any densely plotted show).
And in a season in which the networks have spent lavishly on set design and cinematography, “Kidnapped” still stands out; its New York locations look real and the Cains’ apartment is suitably regal.
I wish this promising drama wasn’t going up against another fine new serialized thriller, “The Nine,” which premieres next week, as well as the powerhouse procedural “CSI: NY.” “Kidnapped” is so intriguing that it would be a shame for it to go missing.
http://tempo.typepad.com/entertainment_tv/
Last week’s updated top 10 prime-time program ratings are now toward the bottom of RATINGS NEWS -- the first post in this thread.
TV Notebook
What If News Wasn't A Profit Center?
By P.J. Bednarski Broadcasting & Cable in the BCBeat blog Sep 19 2006
Otherwise in journalism—I mean outside TV journalism-- there are big stories about the editor and publisher of the Los Angeles Times defying their corporate owners, Tribune Co., which wants the paper to make even more staff cuts than it has already. And at Tribune’s Hartford Courant, the staff seems openly contemptuous of Tribune Co.
Likewise, the Belo-owned Dallas Morning News dealt off a sizeable number of its editorial staff, some of whom then took some parting shots at the joint. Knight-Ridder sold off its newspapers to satisfy stockholders after its previous modus operandi--taking once great papers and settling for pretty good, didn't fly with the public. Not surprisingly, as newspaper companies diminish their product, they lose readers, which causes another round of layoffs and so on. If newspaper owners made Snickers’bars, they’d now be about the size of a Hershey’s Kiss about now, and yet, they‘d argue, they’d be just as good as they used to be.
I worked for the Chicago Sun-Times in the mid-80s an early 90s, and so in a way, all of us who were there then learned about downsizing long before most of the rest of the print world. A staffer died of a heart attack at work (admittedly, in the smoking room) and the editor of the paper suffered a heart attack in his office. I left when the hopefully-soon-to-be-extremely-incarcerated Conrad Black’s Hollinger International bought the Sun-Times and had this great idea to make it competitive with the dominant Tribune: Reduce staff. What a concept! Back then, the story that went around was that Conrad Black’s top managers liked to visit their new newspaper properties at night when no one was around, count the desks and then divide by three. That way laying off staff wasn’t a personal thing, you know. I left before they did their long division.
A version of all this happened at the networks in the mid-80s, when all (then) three networks were sold to corporate owners, and all of them reduced their news staffs. Since all those cuts came at about the same time, no network newscast seemed noticeably shabbier. They all sold out together. It was brilliant. You wonder if at that time the networks had tried to improve newscasts by adding resources (not the same as adding programs) if today network news would still be “relevant.” Could it be the cult of personality that makes Couric/Gibson/Williams the focus of the broadcast networks news divisions is because besides 60 Minutes, nobody kicks ass anymore? That leaves the anchor as the sole remaining distinguishing characteristic.. I don’t say this meaning to demean the good work of network news divisions. But the old crotchety thing to say is true: They’re not as good as they once were.
A few months ago, Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post group, commenting on the sale of the Knight Ridder chain, suggested that publicly traded news companies kindly inform their institutional investors that they aren’t in the a business where leapfrogging profits are possible and/or good business, and invite those get-rich-quick money managers to split. Since news media companies (TV certainly included) still produce enormous profit margins and could benefit from developing their Web sites, new investors not intent on making a killing could still inherit a sound investment if the expectation were to be that the stock price would improve, but not dramatically. Their dividend would be knowing their investment meant news organizations would be figuring out ways to do more, not less. But you know, in the process, maybe they’d get filthy rich again.
The real trouble with Main Stream Media isn't that it's Main Stream, but that it's just concerned about cash flow.
http://broadcastingcable.com/blog/1380000138.html
Why is Fox News worth $1, when its operating costs are probably less than 1/3 of ESPN? I believe ESPN bundles their service as a suite for the $3 or so per sub. I personally hope Cablevision balks and lets Fox News leave. I'm tired of my bill rising. For that $1/sub fee, I'll pay $2-3 more per month.
VisionOn
09-19-06, 06:36 PM
TV Notebook
Death Watch
Bravo.com has a “Death Watch 2006” website for picking which new shows will be cancelled.
At the moment, here are the odds:
Happy Hour Fox 3-1
Men In Trees ABC 4-1
Ugly Betty ABC 10-1
The Knights of Prosperity ABC 14-1
Help Me Help You ABC 25-1
Vanished Fox 35-1
Jericho CBS 38-1
Standoff Fox 44-1
Friday Night Lights NBC 52-1
Brothers & Sisters ABC 53-1
30 Rock NBC 59-1
The Game CW 59-1
Justice Fox 60-1
http://www.brilliantbutcancelled.com/deathwatch/
that's pretty funny. Sadly the odds for relatively decent shows are not good, while some bland programming is probably going to live on.
So it looks surprisingly accurate.
I have spent years in control rooms and in various meetings (after meetings after meetings), Jim, and I don't think the show really loses anything by deleting the f***, etc.
You HAVEN'T been in control rooms in a while!! ;) All that went out when the harassment laws got tough in the 90's and all of the employers held all day long sessions on what is will get you fired and what will get you kicked off the planet. All of the playful banter that made those jobs fun are gone. All business. And if you mutter a "damn" or a "hell" it better NOT be aimed at someone or said in such a way that it offends ANYONE ANYWHERE or you will find yourself on a fast trip to HR.
Man I know a bunch of people who miss the fun days of TV production.
Why is Fox News worth $1, when its operating costs are probably less than 1/3 of ESPN? I believe ESPN bundles their service as a suite for the $3 or so per sub. I personally hope Cablevision balks and lets Fox News leave. I'm tired of my bill rising. For that $1/sub fee, I'll pay $2-3 more per month.
That is apples and oranges.
Like why is HBO charging $10 or so and ESPN gets $2.60 or so?
A better example would be to compare Fox News (25 cents) to CNN (45 cents) and MSNBC (30 cents).
Given the viewership, why shouldn't Fox News get at least as much as CNN and MSNBC combined? I suspect FNC would gladly take 75 cents a sub.
Remember, too that cable (and satellite) providers get to sell local spots in these networks. So often, especially in the case of premium channels like TNT, USA, ESPN, and others they get a good portion of their sub fees back.
The cable/sat guys rarely remind us of that when they raise our rates.
The Business of TV
Murdoch Confirms DirecTV Talks
By Mike Farrell MultiChannel News 9/19/2006
New York – News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch added fuel to speculation that its 38% controlling stake in DirecTV Group Inc. could be a bargaining chip in its negotiations to buy back News Corp. voting shares owned by Liberty Media Corp., telling an audience at an investor conference here that any deal involving the satellite giant would have to protect News Corp.'s existing content deals.
Last week, several published reports said that News Corp. may be willing to give up its interest in DirecTV in exchange for Liberty’s 19% voting stake in News Corp. News Corp. has been trying to buy back that stake -- second only to the Murdoch family -- for nearly two years.
“We are in active [negotiations], more active negotiations than before,” Murdoch told the audience at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia on Tuesday. “I don’t want to get into what assets we’re talking about there. If DirecTV was to be involved at all, we would certainly be protecting ourselves for the future with that. We’re very proud of what we’ve done with DirecTV.”
Asked if by protection, he meant favorable treatment on affiliate fee increases and set a high bar as far as new channel launches, Murdoch said, “That would be the ultimate.”
But he added that News Corp. channels don’t currently receive favorable treatment from DirecTV.
“You must remember that we only have 38%,” Murdoch added. “It’s got a very tough management, and although a lot of them come from us, they see themselves as serving all the shareholders of DirecTV, so we don’t get any particular favored treatment. There are friendly relations, but we don’t get any favored treatment.”
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6373594.html?display=Breaking+News
The Business of TV
Murdoch Speaks On Liberty Media Deal
DirecTV: 100 Channels of HD By Christmas!
(TransmitterNews.com)
Covering a variety of topics ranging from HD Television offerings to the Liberty Media talks, News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch answered questions today at the Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s Communacopia Conference.
On the topic of being more aggressive in buying back News Corp. stock, Murdoch said if the purchase from Liberty Media were a reality it would be “one of the biggest buybacks in our history.”
Murdoch’s statements seemed to indicate the Liberty Media deal is a real possibility when he said News Corp was “saving our firepower for that.” During the conference, which was also web cast, Murdoch said, concerning John Malone’s Liberty Media exchange, “we are in more active negotiations than before.”
Murdoch refused to say if the DIRECTV arm of News Corp would be included as one of the assets in the swap saying, “If DIRECTV were to be involved at all, we would be protecting ourselves for the future.”
While calling the management of DIRECTV “terrific” he also said the amount of customer churn is “too high” and DIRECTV needed to “wind that down if we can.” Murdoch also said the slower acquisition of new DIRECTV customers is due to credit restrictions that have been put into place.
Murdoch also said DIRECTV customers should see “100 channels of HD by Christmas.”
http://www.transmitternews.com/NewsWire/91906newsletterupd.html
Posty-McPost
09-19-06, 08:29 PM
Murdoch also said DIRECTV customers should see “100 channels of HD by Christmas.”
I would guess LiL stations are included in this number. But it's very positive news anyway.
But DirecTV already has more than 200 HD channles if you count LILs, with 53 markets and the RSNs....
I know the skeptics are saying he must have been referring to HD LIL, but I suspect he was talking of RSNs and everything else available -- maybe even VOOM, INHD etc.
Unlike others, Rupert rarely speaks without knowing precisely what he is going to say and how it will be received.
By the way, posty, thanks for bringing the story to my attention. Frankly, until your PM, I had never even heard of transmitter news.
Next time feel free to just post it!
Posty-McPost
09-19-06, 08:55 PM
Me either. Full credit to sat guys for digging that up.
Regardless of what's included in the "100" D* looks ready to roll out 30-40 more LiL channels (not markets, channels) this year and E* will roll out 3, maybe. I'm no seismologist but...
The New Season
Terrorism surrounds a town in 'Jericho'
Mysteries mushroom after a nuclear attack isolates a Midwestern burg and its already enigmatic inhabitants in the new CBS serial.
By Robert Lloyd Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 20, 2006
Like a land-locked "Lost," the new CBS serial series "Jericho" (Wednesday, 8 PM ET/PT, CBS) strands a town full of people right in the middle of the country, out on the Great Plains, as a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon and all communication is lost. And the important thing here, as in any puzzle show, is not knowing what happened but not knowing what happened.
Snippets of radio broadcasts hint at nonspecific escalating "global violence" and "extreme reaction" and the heard-not-seen president (vaguely Bush-like) burbles the word "terrorism" just before turning into static. But there are no specific details offered, nor enemy proposed. It's probably not Joshua, at any rate.
Overlaid on this scenario, or vice versa, is the evergreen tale of a prodigal's return. (That's "evergreen" in the sense of, like, an artificial Christmas tree.) The mysteries begin early — pre-apocalypse, or whatever it is — as wayward son/black sheep Skeet Ulrich returns to his hometown of Jericho, Kan., via a montage of handsome location shots, after five blank years away. He's out to claim some money his grandfather left him; what plans he has for it doting mother Pamela Reed seems to know, but neither mother nor son speak them aloud, and Ulrich has a different story for everyone he meets as to where he's spent those five years. So, you know, something's up.
Standing between Skeet and his money is father (and Jericho mayor) Gerald McRaney, who was "Major Dad" some TV generations ago. Grandpa was mayor too, and within two episodes Ulrich is well on his way to becoming Alpha Male in the New Town Order — not that it's a job he's running for — having already rescued a good portion of the citizenry from one disaster or another. He seems to have a lot of special knowledge too — he performs an emergency tracheotomy on a schoolgirl using a penknife and a bunch of juice-box straws and has a working familiarity with dynamite.
Also strangely in the know is Lennie James, the only black man in sight (and one of a surprising number of British actors playing American this year), which makes him mysterious to begin with. James' character, Robert Hawkins, is new in town and seems to know just about everything you're supposed to do in case of a nuclear attack and just about everything else too, including Morse Code. So you'll want to keep an eye on him.
Surprisingly, no one has yet screamed "We're all going to die!" Though it's been some time now since thoughts of nuclear war furrowed my brow, there is still, for someone raised on drop drills and zones of impact, something spooky about seeing it realized. (The digital mattes are very prettily done.) And the armageddon "Jericho" seems to propose is oddly closer to the one I was raised on than the current scenarios of dirty bombs and exploding shampoo.
But this is not an ideological drama, like John Milius' 1984 paranoid patriotic romp "Red Dawn," in which plucky American youth defend the Homeland from invading Russians. Nor is it an attempt to realistically portray the aftermath of a nuclear war, as in "The Day After," the ABC TV movie — also set (partly) in Kansas and watched by an audience of something like 100 million — which cost me a couple of nights' sleep back in 1983. (Ah, how carefree those days seem now.)
If the Awful Truth of the Global Meltdown is the big carrot "Jericho" dangles before you, it is no more compelling than the question of which of the available good-looking girls Ulrich is going to get close to.
He's already exchanged shy smiles with school teacher Sprague Grayden ("Six Feet Under"), but he's got old business with golden-blond Ashley Scott too, and, though she's a longshot here and a little young for him, I wouldn't totally count out Shoshannah Stern ("Weeds"), the deaf kid sister of Ulrich's old best friend. It is nice to think that even after everything goes to pot, romance will survive.
Ulrich has a lazy charm not wholly obscured by the worried, distracted or pained expressions he's required to wear as he runs from here to there and back again. I can see that people might tune in to this thing just to look at and listen to him for an hour (or his portion thereof) every week.
McRaney too is pleasant company — "pleasant" seems a little out of context here, and in fact he's supposed to be a bit sharp, but he brings a bit of sitcomical wit into the mix and is a cool voice of caution and reason among the hysteria, like Brian Keith in "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" "Are we going to use our imagination to solve problems or to cause them?" he asks. You could ask yourself that every day, usefully.
http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-jericho20sep20,0,2160380,print.story?coll=cl-tvent
Me either. Full credit to sat guys for digging that up.
Regardless of what's included in the "100" D* looks ready to roll out 30-40 more LiL channels (not markets, channels) this year and E* will roll out 3, maybe. I'm no seismologist but...
Charlie has got to do something, because the tsunami is getting closer and closer.
And he still can't get the RSNs up. But then he really doesn't need them much before the NHL/NBA seasons start next month.
Scott does a good job over there, by the way. I wish I had more time to pay closer attention to his site.
TV Sports
USC Signals Its Displeasure
[Trojans complain to ESPN about disclosure by ABC's Musburger of what they consider privileged information during Saturday's game.
By Larry Stewart Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 19, 2006
USC, outraged over play-by-play veteran Brent Musburger's revealing during ABC's telecast of the Nebraska game what the Trojans contend was privileged information, fired off a complaint Monday to ESPN, which now oversees all sports programming on ABC.
With just over 9 1/2 minutes to play in the fourth quarter of Saturday's game and USC leading, 21-10, Musburger began describing on the air how USC quarterback John David Booty lets his receivers know he has spotted a certain kind of coverage.
"John David told us that his signal when he finds one-on-one and they're coming, it's that 'hang loose,' that familiar sign you've seen surfers use," said Musburger, referring to the sign where the thumb and little finger are raised.
That information had been gleaned from Booty on Friday during a standard production meeting. Announcers and producers meet with coaches and star players as part of their game preparation. However, much of what is said in those meetings is considered private, as background only, to help the announcers spot trends and potential plays.
USC sports information director Tim Tessalone, on behalf of the university, sent a formal complaint to ESPN/ABC game producer Bill Bonnell and a copy to the Pacific 10 Conference office in Walnut Creek, Calif.
"We're supposed to be partners in this," Tessalone said, "but this is certainly going to make us think twice about trying to help them have as good a broadcast as possible.
"What he did was unconscionable. In my 28 years, I've never seen such an egregious breach of trust. Brent is not a rookie at this, and he should know better."
Musburger late Monday, through an ESPN spokesman, issued this statement: "We've explained to USC that during our pregame meeting we discussed how we used replays to illustrate a specific signal the week before in the Ohio State-Texas telecast. In that context, we asked if USC has a similar way of communicating and the specific signal was offered.
"Clearly, there is a misunderstanding, and we regret the confusion. We look forward to working with USC on future telecasts as we continue to cover [its] great program."
The ESPN spokesman, Josh Krulewitz, also offered this company statement: "We are very mindful of what we learn in pregame meetings in terms in what is appropriate for broadcast and what is for our background. We're sorry this led to an unfortunate misunderstanding, which was never our intention."
Retired play-by-play announcer Keith Jackson, long considered the voice of college football on ABC, was told of the situation involving Musburger and Booty.
"I would have stopped in mid-sentence," Jackson said from his vacation home in British Columbia, referring to the Friday production meeting. "I would have told him I don't want to know."
It all began when the subject of secret signals came up in that Friday meeting. A replay of the Ohio State-Texas telecast on Sept. 9 had shown how Buckeyes quarterback Troy Smith taps the top of the helmet to let receiver Ted Ginn Jr. know he's noticed one-on-one coverage. Booty was asked if USC had a similar signal. At that point, he told Musburger about USC's signal.
Booty was surprised that it had become an issue by Monday. "Going in there the other day, I wasn't going in there to tell them what we were doing or what we were trying to accomplish," he said of the production meeting. "And I'm going to do the same thing the next time I go in there."
Coach Pete Carroll, asked what his reaction was when he heard about Musburger's on-air revelation, said with a laugh, "Just wondering what they're going to tell us next.
"I'm not worried about it. There's a million signals, a million ways to do it."
After Musburger mentioned Booty's hand signal, commentator Bob Davie, the former Notre Dame coach, said on the air: "I was surprised he told us that, particularly now that you've told all of America what the signal is."
Commentator Kirk Herbstreit added, "He can use it as an indicator next week." An "indicator," which can also be verbal, tells players whether a signal is for real or not.
Musburger responded, "Yeah, he can use it as an indicator. What the heck."
USC will appear on ABC at least five more times this season, including Saturday at 5 p.m. when the Trojans play at Arizona. But that is a regional telecast, and the announcers will be Dan Fouts and Tim Brant. Musburger may not work another USC game until Nov. 25, when USC plays host to Notre Dame. That game will be televised nationally on ABC at 5 p.m.
USC offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin is also taking it in stride. "It's not a big deal, " he said. "I'm sure people would think it would be, but we change our signals a lot. They're on film anyway."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-usctv19sep19,0,1176303,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
[b]Note: So the head coach, assistant coach, and QB are not upset. Because the Sports Information Director is ticked, the whole school is "outraged"? Come on.
The New Season
“Kidnapped”...
...May be a bit rich for viewers' tastes
By Kay McFadden Seattle Times TV Critic Wednesday, September 20, 2006
To understand why a serialized drama like "Kidnapped" has a higher-than-usual chance of going awry, it helps to be familiar with its creator, Jason Smilovic.
You may have heard of Smilovic, the guy responsible for the long-gone ABC series "Karen Sisco," which some people loved but most viewers ignored completely. He has an outstanding command of florid dialogue, mountains of complex ideas, an impressive store of cinematic knowledge. And he's young.
Check out a few lines from his letter to critics included in the "Kidnapped" press kit:
"I was hiding out in my room at the St. James Hotel in Montreal, following three weeks of production rewrites in a cell-like office, and avoiding weather that can only be described as vengeful," the letter says. "It was the middle of the night. I yanked the phone out of the wall, bolted the door, and randomly grabbed Akira Kurosawa's 'High and Low' from the dozen or so DVDs in my suitcase."
All righty, then. Within three sentences, the man describes bad weather as vengeful and reveals that he travels with Kurosawa DVDs. Intelligent? Cultured? No question. But maybe Smilovic needs to come out of his cell-like office and experience the real world.
This is a guy who would read a pizza recipe, see mushrooms on the list of ingredients, and come back from the store with a pound of black truffles.
Here's the thing. Plain old mushrooms taste better to most people. And broadcast television is, if nothing else, a Pizza Hut medium.
"Kidnapped," which gives us a frequently riveting story populated by intriguing, complex characters, is regular-grade TV trying too hard to be gourmet.
This is not to steer you away from it completely because, like "Karen Sisco" before it, "Kidnapped" can be delicious. It has substance, potential and it looks fantastic, even if much of the pilot has been lifted from any number of movies. ("Man on Fire" comes to mind first.)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/285666_tv20.html
The New Season
“Kidnapped”
Viewers should find it easy to break free of 'Kidnapped'
By Robert Bianco USA Today
It's a shame miniseries are out of favor, because producers certainly have some great ideas for them.
Take Kidnapped, a heavily serialized, 24-inspired drama that will spend the season following the kidnapping of the teen son of a wealthy family.
Sure, the plot has been used before by a million movies, but a strong cast compensates: Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany as the concerned parents; Delroy Lindo as an FBI agent pulled back from the brink of retirement; and Jeremy Sisto as the brooding special investigator called in by the parents.
Factor in a solid lineup of producers, including Karen Sisco's Jason Smilovic and Michael Dinner and Angel's David Greenwalt, and you can easily imagine yourself settling in with Kidnapped for six, eight, maybe even 13 episodes.
But 22? Sorry, no.
And that, in the end, is the strange bind this season's run of one-story serials have created for themselves: They force you to decide upfront whether you want to wait a year for the answer to the question posed by the pilot.
Every TV show, obviously, hopes to hook you on a weekly basis, but these shows are asking, not just for a week-to-week choice, but for an immediate season-long commitment. To make that kind of demand on an audience, you had better be incredibly compelling from the get-go. 24 was. Kidnapped isn't.
Kidnapped hopes to counter our serial suspicion (which includes a healthy doubt that all these shows will be around long enough to finish their stories) by resolving some small part of the plot every week. Don't expect much resolution tonight, but the practice does become clearer in next week's episode.
What also becomes clear, however, is that Kidnapped has already hit some of the same stumbling blocks that derailed the increasingly loony Vanished. In order to stop us from guessing where the plot is going, they're filling the screen with red herrings and ridiculous complications — so many that viewers are likely to either lose track or lose interest.
And what do these shows have against teenage girls? 24, Vanished and now Kidnapped: Do the daughters all have to be thorns in their families' side?
Still, within those confines, tonight's pilot is well acted and crisply told. Delany is one of those always-welcome TV stars, Hutton and Lindo are terrific, Will Denton is instantly sympathetic as the kidnapped boy, and Carmen Ejogo and Mykelti Williamson do well in smaller roles. As for Sisto, he's a bit one-note glum in the premiere, but his tone begins to vary by the second episode.
Maybe that's enough to get you to the third episode, but I wouldn't count on it. My guess is viewers are going to be free of these kidnappers long before that kid is.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2006-09-19-kidnapped_x.htm
The New Season
“Jericho”
A good idea mushrooms into a dull show
By Robert Bianco USA Today
If only every good TV idea gave birth to a good TV show.
And make no mistake, Jericho does have an intriguing idea at its core: An apparent nuclear holocaust cuts a small Kansas town off from the rest of the world. If nothing else, that premise already has given the season its signature image: that oft-repeated shot of the kid on the roof, watching the mushroom cloud rise in the distance.
Unfortunately, at least two major things went wrong on the road from idea to execution. First, nobody at CBS seems to have noticed that the premise is just a tad depressing, much more so than, say, being stranded on an island paradise after a plane crash. Second, having effectively trapped us in this Kansas town, no one bothered to throw in some characters we might conceivably want to be trapped with.
The downhill slide pretty much begins the moment we meet Skeet Ulrich as Jake Green, the town's carefully unshaven prodigal son. His plan is to drop by the old homestead, collect his inheritance and hightail it back to San Diego, where some not-yet-revealed project awaits.
Once home, he immediately launches into a fight with his brother (Kenneth Mitchell) and father, who is also the town's mayor (Gerald McRaney) — much to the dismay of his mother (Pamela Reed).
"When are you going to realize I'm 32 years old?" Jake shouts. "When you do," his dad shoots back.
It's around that time that you may start hoping that nuclear bomb hits Jericho and leaves the rest of us alone. The only way this family dynamic could be any more tired is if infidelity were thrown in the mix — which it is, starting next week.
Finally, the bomb drops, catching Jake on the road out of town. While there, he rescues a school bus full of children and their pretty teacher, played by Sprague Grayden, an excellent young actress who deserves better.
From Lord of the Flies to Lost, these kinds of stories are designed to explore the fragility of civilization. But they work only if we have some interest in the people struggling to maintain a sense of community. In Jericho, claustrophobia, paranoia and the threat of nuclear rain are merely an overlay meant to distract us from the mundane nature of everything else the town has to offer.
That mushroom cloud, though, sure is a great image. Too bad TV shows can't just spend an hour on freeze frame.
Now there's an idea.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2006-09-19-jericho_x.htm
Wednesday’s Premieres
8 PM ET/PT Jericho - CBS HD
8 PM ET/PT America's Next Top Model - CW
9 PM ET/PT Criminal Minds - CBS HD
10 PM ET/PT Kidnapped - NBC HD
10 PM ET/PT CSI: NY - CBS HD
Reminder: The New Season
Prime Time Reference Material
If you are new to Hot Off The Press and you are curious about the new network shows, there are many easy-to-use references to help you in this thread.
You can find all the network schedules, including which shows are being broadcast in HD in the second post of this thread here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4265637&&#post4265637
mini reviews and comments on the season’s new shows by many critics are here, in the third post in the thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4267598&&#post4267598
dad1153
09-19-06, 11:50 PM
If anybody missed the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip premiere and want to catch an encore (without having to squint at a computer monitor for a low-quality video stream) the Bravo Channel will repeat the 'Studio 60' pilot episode Wednesday Sept. 20th and Sunday Sept. 24th at 11:00PM ET/PT. It won't be in HD but hey, if you snooze you lose! :)
Even $0.75/sub is more reasonable if they toss in their upstart business channel. Fox News Channel is the big dog, but are they #1 by and large in NYC? Doesn't CNN bundle HLN and CNNi for that $0.45?
I can see HBO charging whatever they wish as they're ala carte. In the case of HBO et. all, doesn't the MSO and the networks split the sub fee 50/50?
That is apples and oranges.
Like why is HBO charging $10 or so and ESPN gets $2.60 or so?
A better example would be to compare Fox News (25 cents) to CNN (45 cents) and MSNBC (30 cents).
Given the viewership, why shouldn't Fox News get at least as much as CNN and MSNBC combined? I suspect FNC would gladly take 75 cents a sub.
Remember, too that cable (and satellite) providers get to sell local spots in these networks. So often, especially in the case of premium channels like TNT, USA, ESPN, and others they get a good portion of their sub fees back.
The cable/sat guys rarely remind us of that when they raise our rates.
DevOne: I think the $1 a sub is purely a bargaining posture.
But FNC certainly is in a far better position than its competitors.
And remember that it actually paid many systems, including Cablevision $10 a sub to carry the channel when it started up back in October of 1996.
I suspect it will get 70-75 cents a sub and another dime or so for the busines channel.
dad1153: thanks for the tip. Anyone who missed Studio 60 should make sure to catch one of the encore presentations.
The New Season
A class act in the thriller crowd
Moody 'Kidnapped' on NBC weaves many story lines around the abduction of a socialite's son..
By Paul Brownfield Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 20, 2006
"Kidnapped," a new thriller on NBC (10 PM ET/PT Wednesday), is like "The Nine," a new thriller on ABC: It means to hook you by beginning with a spectacular event of violence before traveling in all sorts of directions at once, creating a puzzle around the loose theme of deception, self-told and inflicted on others, until you feel you need to storyboard the thing to stay up to speed.
There's also "Vanished," a similarly themed new series on Fox involving the disappearance of a senator's wife, but "Kidnapped" is easily better. The spectacular event here is the abduction of a socialite's son, presumably for a hefty ransom, though little, it turns out, is exactly as it seems.
In this way "Kidnapped" is stylishly executed TV brain food, a little too moody for its own good but otherwise fine pulp. It stars Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany as Conrad and Ellie Cain, whose son Leopold (Will Denton) is nabbed in a coordinated attack on the SUV bearing him to prep school; his bodyguard Virgil (Mykelti Williamson) is seriously injured.
That's the appetizer; the main course arrives in the form of Jeremy Sisto, playing Knapp, a shadowy expert in the retrieval of kidnap victims who's hired by the Cains to recover their son. "From nothing comes nothing," he tells the Cains in their first meeting, explaining that if he doesn't bring back Leopold "intact" they don't pay him.
Sisto, who was irrefutable in "Six Feet Under" as Brenda's unhinged, self-absorbed and much-medicated brother, brings a kind of greasy sobriety to this role; I was quite certain, if one were to be in the same room with Knapp, that he might smell from lack of showering.
On the other hand there is also Delroy Lindo classing up the joint, playing FBI agent Latimer King, who is chasing after both Knapp and the missing kid, dragged back from imminent retirement into one more case.
There's well-worn convention in the cat-and-mouse between Knapp, the eccentric hired gun, and King, representing the feds, but the acting here makes you forgive it. It's not just the stars, either; "Kidnapped," shot in New York, has the feel of a "Law & Order" or "Sopranos," with roles that might otherwise be filler going to performers who, in their little scenes, convey pathos (i.e. Michael Mosley, playing a newbie agent).
In a show like this, at a time like this, the story, the "trust no one" foreshadowing, is ultimately the star. But "Kidnapped" collaborators Jason Smilovic, the creator, and Michael Dinner, executive producer-director, tip you off that they're also looking for character.
It's in details — the way, for instance, the Cain family conveys its class status by speaking French to one another when a stranger is present.
As things pick up speed in the second hour (Day 3, in the timeline of the kidnapping) and build to the kind of standoff that will inevitably punctuate each episode, there is a scene in a bar involving Sisto, Lindo and Mosley, the two vets praising the rookie for his action in the field that day. It's actually a scene about the giving of mutual support, and it doesn't come off as hokum. "To our ships at sea," Knapp says, raising his whiskey, as the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" plays.
There is action all over the place in "Kidnapped," but it's a scene like this — quieter and even refined — that conveys the sense that you're in capable hands.
http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-kidnapped20sep20,0,3602263,print.story?coll=cl-tvent
The New Season
“Kidnapped” and “Jericho”
From Chaotic to Mysterious, the Tales of Two Calamities
By Alessandra Stanley The New York Times September 20, 2006
Which is more important: the rescue of a teenage boy kidnapped from his limousine on the way to a Manhattan private school or the survival of a close-knit Kansas town that just might be the last patch of civilization left after a nuclear conflagration?
Hard to say.
Both “Kidnapped” on NBC and “Jericho” on CBS are sleek, hard-boiled mysteries in the newly minted tradition of “24” and “Lost.” Like so many other dramas this fall, they follow a serialized narrative for a reason: there is a market for DVD’s of television shows, and those that most artfully prolong the suspense sell best.
Both dramas are compelling. And both weave one man’s secret into a broader, unexplained conspiracy. So the choice, if choice is needed, could come down to personal taste: high-rises or grain silos, a few rich New Yorkers or a large community of middle-class Americans, one cleverly conceived crime or global warfare.
The last time a network delved so intently into the aftermath of a nuclear explosion was in 1983 when ABC broadcast “The Day After,” set in and around Lawrence, Kan. On the other hand, it’s not often that a network portrays scenes from a testy Park Avenue marriage, either. All things considered, “Kidnapped” wins hands down.
Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany star as Conrad and Ellie Cain, a high-wire financier and his socialite wife who maintain the kind of strained civility that only money can buy. They kiss and sit down to a family breakfast while a newspaper photographer is on hand, then go their separate ways in a penthouse the size of Bolivia. When the mother needs to reprimand her children in front of guests, she does it in French, the universal language of “cut it out.”
The Cains are rich and prominent enough to hire a bodyguard as well as a chauffeur, yet when their son, Leopold, is snatched on his way to school, neither is of much help. The driver is wiped out point-blank, and the bodyguard, who fights back with a machine gun tucked under his raincoat, is felled by a sniper.
The kidnappers, whoever they are, have money and high-level backing: even the lower-level thugs hired by a mysterious middleman have a certain surly flair. In a flashback to an interview, a granite-faced hit man is asked to talk a little about himself. “I’m a Pisces, this is my natural hair color, and I prefer the country to the city,” the hit man replies stonily.
The Cains are tough customers, too. When Conrad, conferring with his lawyer, explains that he is not calling the authorities because the ransom note instructed them not to call the police, Ellie says acidly, “I think the note always says, ‘Don’t call the police.’ ”
They turn to a private investigator, Knapp (Jeremy Sisto), who specializes in retrieving kidnapping victims: no cops, no questions asked. But the F.B.I. finds out anyway and wants in on the operation, which expands to an uneasy alliance between Knapp and his old boss at the F.B.I., Latimer King (Delroy Lindo).
Meanwhile, the upper-crust Conrad turns out to have roots in less savory social circles.
Family life is less grand but no less fraught on “Jericho.” The hero, Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich), returns to his Midwestern hometown after a five-year absence he refuses to explain, and finds his welcome a bit frosty. His father, Mayor Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney), considers him a black sheep, and so does his more dutiful and sanctimonious brother, Eric (Kenneth Mitchell). His old girlfriend, Emily (Ashley Scott), is engaged to a banker, and she too is suspicious about Jake’s disappearance.
Luckily, a mushroom cloud over Denver changes the subject.
Car radios die, television screens go snowy, cellphones jam, and the town of Jericho finds itself marooned in nuclear winter; just a few miles out of town, the roads are littered with charred animal carcasses.
The townspeople have no idea whether the explosion was an accident or an attack, but they dig out Geiger counters, clean out underground shelters and leaf through cold-war-era instruction manuals about the A-bomb. Mayor Green leads the mobilization, but it is Jake who saves schoolchildren trapped in a broken-down yellow bus. Convicts being transported across the state, on the other hand, manage to escape from their bus all on their own.
Nuclear Armageddon is a tough twist to top; on “24” Jack Bauer always seems to avert the worst just in the nick of time. The creators of “Jericho” deserve some credit for beginning where most thrillers end. But they rely too much on melancholy pop music to paper over weaknesses in the writing and characters. Radiation poisoning has its thrills, but it’s just a matter of time before viewers get restless and begin rooting for the enemy to fire up the missile silos and finish the job.
“Kidnapped,” which is filmed with a keener intelligence and elegant restraint, focuses on a much smaller catastrophe and finds more to say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/arts/television/20stan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=television&pagewanted=print
The New Season
“Kidnapped” and “Jericho”
By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog
There's a terrific short version of the abduction that is at the heart of "Kidnapped" (NBC, 10:01 PM ET/PT) but it's stretched out so long in the pilot as to lose its tension. And though we disdain those instant finds in shows like "Without a Trace," we fear the seasonlong search for the privileged son of Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany, involving investigative teams at cross purposes led by Jeremy Sisto and Delroy Lindo, will be similarly slack.
Another serial that depends on taking its time to reveal its details, "Jericho" (CBS, 8 PM ET/PT.) follows the progress of a small Kansas town following the detonation of a nearby mushroom cloud. By the end of the first episode we don't even know the background of one of the main characters (Skeet Ulrich) or if the bomb was accidental or an attack. What might be hardest to believe is the town's isolation from the rest of the world in this day of communication.
http://www.ctnow.com/tv/hce-tveye0920.artsep20,0,5795744.column?coll=hce-utility-tv
The New Season
“Sweet, soapy 'Betty' eyes clean breakout
By Cynthia Littleton The Hollywood Reporter
Thursday is the new Tuesday for the new season that begins tonight.
Tuesday was the hot spot in primetime last fall with NBC's "My Name Is Earl" coming on strong (before its move to Thursday), Fox's "House" taking root, ABC's "Commander in Chief" getting off to a fast start and CBS' "The Amazing Race" showing renewed spunk in the pre-"American Idol" leg of the season. For the 2006-07 campaign, all eyes are trained on the looming Thursday 9 p.m. showdown between ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," and the wild-card factor of NBC's "Deal or No Deal."
But thanks to scheduling shifts made during the summer, the Thursday 8 p.m. slot has become almost as competitive as its 9 p.m. neighbor, albeit in a different way. CBS' "Survivor" is the dominant incumbent (premiering last week to good numbers but no noticeable bounce from the controversy over the racially divided tribes), but otherwise it's looking like a four-way slugfest for second place among NBC's "Earl" and "The Office," ABC's "Ugly Betty" Fox's " 'Til Death" and "Happy Hour" and "Smallville" on the new-model CW network.
The peacock's comedy combo of "Earl" and "Office" likely has an edge if only for the buzz factor, aided by the latter's upset Emmy victory last month for best comedy series. However, "Betty" has its own hum building. Judging by the first two episodes, the Touchstone TV's show could click with the female audience that likes a good genre mash-up, a la "Desperate Housewives," "Gilmore Girls" and "Ally McBeal," as well as feel-good aspirational stories.
"Betty" is true to its roots as Colombian telenovela phenomenon "Yo Soy Betty La Fea" -- so much so that its executive producers alongside creator Silvio Horta are former telenovela writer Jose Tamez and actress Salma Hayek, who worked on telenovelas in her native Mexico; veteran drama showrunner James Parriott and producer-director James Hayman; and Ben Silverman, who's spent a lot of time of late adapting foreign formats (including "The Office") for U.S. tastes.
"Betty," set to bow Sept. 28, floats a half-dozen continuing story line threads in the pilot alone. Its biggest asset is a strong cast, anchored by America Ferrera as Betty Suarez, a blue-collar plain Jane who lands a job as the assistant to the editor-in-chief at a glossy fashion magazine.
At first blush, it seems as if there's too much going on in "Betty" -- the pilot plants the seeds of everything from a murder-mystery plot to a hint at a developing love triangle for Betty -- but it helps to remember that it's inspired by a telenovela, something the show does subtly by showing Betty and her family frequently watching over-the-top Spanish-language serials at their home in Queens.
For all its silly soapy-ness, "Betty" benefits from the kind of earthiness that made "Earl" and UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris" stand out last season. The show can't help but comment on the clash of cultures and classes that Betty encounters when she leaves her walkup in Queens for the high-rise and Town Car atmosphere of Manhattan.
Ferrera is ably assisted in both of her worlds by colorful supporting characters, particularly Vanessa Williams as the fashionista editor Wilhelmina, who schemes in between her Botox treatments because she was passed over for the editor-in-chief job, and Ana Ortiz as Betty's hot-tempered older sister Hilda. Nobody has ever dispensed with a pesky neighbor in primetime quite like Hilda does in Episode 2 with the command: "Bitch, out my house!"
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/tv_reporter_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003123135
Wednesday’s New Shows
“Jericho” 8 PM ET/PT CBS
The people of a small town in Kansas find themselves cut off from the world when a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon and the radios go out. (That Emergency Broadcast System they've been testing your whole life? Not so good, apparently.) Gerald McRaney, who was "Major Dad," is now Mayor Dad, trying to keep the citizenry from going all Lord of the Flies. Skeet Ulrich is his prodigal son now stuck at home, though with a lot of good-looking women around to keep the apocalypse interesting.
•By Robert Lloyd Los Angeles Times
(BEST NEW DRAMA) Nutshell: A small town in western Kansas is cut off from the outside world by what appears to be nuclear attack. Will the citizens of Jericho rally or turn on one another? Skeet Ulrich (pictured, with Ashley Scott) stars.
Aaron’s take: Of all the serial dramas airing this fall, none has a storyline of bigger consequence than “Jericho.” The pilot sent out mixed signals, but the second episode was stronger. At best, it could become something great — “Lost” meets Stephen King’s “The Stand” — but it could also dwindle into a soap opera that trivializes nuclear war. Given where this fictional burg is located, midway between Denver and KC, no way I won’t be watching.
Verdict: Appointment TV.
•By Aaron Barnhart Kansas City Star
After a series of ominous events, including the sight of a mushroom cloud on the horizon, residents of a town in Kansas find themselves cut off from communication with the rest of the country, and weird things begin to happen. Gerald McRaney, a.k.a. “Deadwood’s” fearsome George Hearst, plays the town’s mayor, and, because no drama is complete without a tortured father-son relationship, Skeet Ulrich plays his estranged son. It's creepy stuff, but viewers feeling burned by the axing of "Invasion" and "Threshold" may take a pass. By the way, I’m taking bets on whether they wait ’til the November sweeps period to use the “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” line.
•By Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune
"Jericho" doesn't bother with mere malaise, a condition that infests several new dramas, but instead goes all the way to the biggest bang in prime time: nuclear bombs sending mushroom clouds into the sky and apparently -- although the premiere isn't 100 percent clear on this -- obliterating Denver and Atlanta. Jericho is a small Midwestern town, and when residents see those clouds in the distance, they have to interrupt their hug marathon (it's the huggingest show on TV until then) and prepare themselves for the worst -- although no one is sure exactly what that will be. Serialized and serious, the drama seems to lack credibility and conviction, but maybe it will acquire some along the way.
•By Tom Shales Washington Post
Gerald McRaney and Skeet Ulrich play father and son in this postapocalyptic drama about a small Kansas town plunged into chaos when a mushroom cloud on the horizon leaves them wondering if they're the only people left alive after a nuclear attack.
• By Marisa Guthrie, The New York Daily News
Premise: It's the end of the world as we know it (maybe), and the citizens of a Kansas town that survived the nuclear attacks feel fine.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: Yes, and a second episode.
Why I like it: Though it's been compared to "Lost" (and airs in the original "Lost" timeslot), it's much more straightforward: no monsters, no cursed numbers, no elaborate clues that seem much more significant than they will turn out to be and, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, no obvious "mythology." Instead, the show focuses on the reality of what might happen in such a nightmare scenario, and it seems well built for the long haul.
Why I’m worried: Still not sold on Skeet Ulrich as a leading man, and there's a development in episode two that suggests Gerald McRaney (who gets a lifetime pass from me after playing George Hearst on "Deadwood") may not be as central to the action as I had hoped. Not that visually exciting; where a lot of the NBC and ABC dramas are going for a theatrical film look, "Jericho" looks 100% like a TV show.
• By Alan Sepinwall Newark Star-Ledger
Jericho (CBS). Some good twists in its view of a small town dealing with isolation after what looks like a nuclear war. Also at least one trite one in the pilot. Terrific performance from Gerald McRaney.
• By R.D. Heldenfels Akron Beacon Journal
Another new series dominated by its premise, this drama places the viewer in a small town in rural Kansas that may be just remote enough to escape the nuclear conflagration that engulfs the rest of the continent and perhaps the world. The implications of such a new life are many, maybe even enough for a sustained series, if this one sustains. Much of the drama is family-based but it is not exactly feel-good. The stars include Gerald McRaney (“Deadwood”) and Skeet Ulrich (“Scream”).
• By Bill Carter The New York Times
Could NBC be on an upswing? For real this time? Unlike the last few seasons, the network has rolled out a bunch of very good drama pilots this year. Why that is, I’m not really sure, but I’ll take the good stuff over another “E-Ring” any day. In any case, “Kidnapped” is a flawlessly executed thriller, in which Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany are the wealthy parents of a missing teen. They use both the police and a private negotiator (Jeremy Sisto from “Six Feet Under,” in fine form) to try to get their son back. The pilot of this stylish show a show is a crackling good ride, and I’m eager to see more.
•By Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune
A mushroom cloud appears on the horizon and a tiny town in Kansas finds itself cut off from the world. What happened? And why? Gerald McRaney and Skeet Ulrich are good in this grimly intriguing yarn. Grade: B+
• By Diane Holloway, Austin American-Statesman television writer
Wednesday’s New Shows
”Kidnapped” 10 PM ET/PT NBC
The missing person show that isn't "Vanished" (already underway on Fox), set in something that seems closer to the real world. (While there is undoubtedly more here than meets the eye, there is certainly less "more than meets eye" than in some of the season's other mysteries.) An excellent cast, including Timothy Hutton (the rich man whose son is abducted), Dana Delaney (his socialite philanthropist wife), Delroy Lindo (federal agent) and Mykelti Williamson (bodyguard), keeps things lively. Ricky Jay also shows his face.
•By Robert Lloyd Los Angeles Times
"Kidnapped" is another TV series that seems like it should be a movie. In fact, it was a movie, more than once: Parents wait anxiously for news of a child abducted by criminals. The versatile Jeremy Sisto is the standout in this version, playing a kind of freelance private cop who's an expert at retrieving kidnapped children alive. The suspense is intense, and the second episode takes surprising twists and turns, which suggest that the producers and writers (and an outstanding cast) will be able to keep the story going week upon week.
•By Tom Shales Washington Post
Nutshell: A hostage drama played out over one season.
Aaron’s take: Stylish and thrilling, with great casting decisions large (Dana Delany, Jeremy Sisto, Mykelti Williamson, Timothy Hutton) and small (Ricky Jay, Carmen Ejogo), “Kidnapped” could run off the tracks midway through. But so far, I like what I see.
Verdict: CSI who? Watch Gary Sinise in reruns and this live.
•By Aaron Barnhart Kansas City Star
The idea of this new drama is to trace a single kidnapping case over an entire season, with a new victim next year, if there is a next year. The plot is complicated. Questions abound about the rich family of the teenage boy who is snatched in a violent attack on his way to prep school. Much is not as it seems, as is now standard with serial dramas. Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany play the parents. Jeremy Sisto and Delroy Lindo play the heroes trying to catch the perps, and they will continue in those roles next season, when someone else will be kidnapped.
• By Bill Carter The New York Times
The best in the whole bowl of new serials. Tim Hutton and Dana Delany are the wealthy parents of an abducted teenage boy. Delroy Lindo is the cop trying to help; Jeremy Sisto is the professional helper working outside the law. The cinematic quality of this show is exceptional, as is the storytelling. Grade: A
• By Diane Holloway, Austin American-Statesman television writer
Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany play wealthy New York City parents whose 15-year-old son (Will Denton) is kidnapped by a nefarious cabal. They enlist the aid of Jeremy Sisto (in his first series role since "Six Feet Under"), a former FBI agent who now works outside the law. But his former colleague (Delroy Lindo), who is still at the bureau, is determined to do things (mostly) by the book. Carmen Ejogo, Linus Roache and Mykelti Williamson co-star.
• By Marisa Guthrie, The New York Daily News
TV Notebook
Couric's Appeal Raises Ratings for CBS O&Os
By Katy Bachman Media Week
CBS is touting the Couric effect for its local TV stations. Since the debut two weeks ago of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, 16 of CBS' 21 owned-and-operated CBS stations saw ratings jump for both the national news broadcast and their local programming, the company said Tuesday.
Collectively, household ratings for the Evening News on the 16 stations between Sept. 5 and Sept. 15 were up 44 percent, compared to the same two week period last year. Strongest gains were posted in New York on WCBS (up 67 percent); Los Angeles on KCBS (up 68 percent); Chicago on WBBM (up 65 percent); Philadelphia on KYW (up 58 percent); Boston on WBZ (up 60 percent); San Francisco on KPIX (up 33 percent) and Dallas on KTVT (up 44 percent).
Several CBS O & Os also saw ratings increases for their local newscasts, on average up 6 percent. WCBS in New York, which has been fighting to climb out of third place, had a 7 percent increase in household ratings for its local newscast at 6 p.m., while WNBC, NBC Universal’s owned-and-operated station and WABC, ABC’s O & O, were both down.
In Los Angeles, KCBS’ 6 p.m. news was up 18 percent and ranked No. 2, up from third place last year.
In Chicago, WBBM also climbed out of third place to No. 2 with a 13 percent increase in household ratings at 5 p.m.
Also climbing into the No. 2 spot was KYW’s local news at 6 p.m., up 8 percent compared to a year ago.
“The newscast has not only brought more viewers to the timeslot, but has fed into other dayparts as well, including our fringe, access and prime time schedules. We’re very encouraged by these early results, and we think the quality of the newscast and the resources that CBS has put behind it will keep that momentum going,” said Tom Kane, president of CBS Television Stations.
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003124467
CPanther95
09-20-06, 07:27 AM
I can see HBO charging whatever they wish as they're ala carte. In the case of HBO et. all, doesn't the MSO and the networks split the sub fee 50/50?
IIRC, the last time I saw the breakdown for HBO, it was something like $6 or $7 for the package plus HBO gets half of everything above $10.
Wednesday’s Premieres
8 PM ET/PT Jericho - CBS HD
8 PM ET/PT America's Next Top Model - CW
9 PM ET/PT Criminal Minds - CBS HD
10 PM ET/PT Kidnapped - NBC HD
10 PM ET/PT CSI: NY - CBS HD
Cable Nielsen Notebook
ESPN football, new spoiler on Monday
By Toni Fitzgerald MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Sep 20, 2006
“Monday Night Football” had a huge debut in its first week with two games featuring three mediocre teams and one good one.
With two potentially great teams slugging it out in week two, ESPN had its best-ever showing in its 27-year history.
Monday night’s game pitting the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers against the now 2-0 Jacksonville Jaguars averaged a 9.4 overnight Nielsen cable rating, up 8 percent over the 8.7 earned by last week’s Washington Redskins-Minnesota Vikings game. It also drew 9.81 million households. Final ratings are due out today.
It will likely be the second-most-watched program ever on basic cable, behind only CNN's 2003 NAFTA debate with Al Gore and Ross Perot seen by 11.17 million households.
Equally impressive, it was up 24 percent over the week two game of “Sunday Night Football” last year, which averaged a 7.6. Last year “SNF” aired on ESPN and “MNF” aired on ABC.
In fact, thus far “MNF” hasn’t been too far behind the opening-weeks averages from last year despite ESPN being available in roughly 30 million fewer homes than ABC. It just goes to prove that football fans will follow the games no matter where they are and don’t care whether it's cable or broadcast.
It is also a credit to ESPN’s promotion of the “Monday Night” switcheroo, which is really no surprise. The network has always excelled at self-promotion, and between its “Is it Monday yet” campaign promoting the change and extensive media coverage given to Tony Kornheiser’s addition to the booth, “MNF” hasn’t dipped as much in its new home as many media people thought it would.
The question that then raises is just what effect “MNF” will have on Monday nights overall. It will likely impact CBS, whose adults 18-49 average dipped slightly from last year on opening night, and Fox, whose “Prison Break” is the least-female-skewing show on broadcast on Mondays.
And it may already have hurt NBC’s new drama “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” which surely lost some sampling from would-be viewers who caught the show on the internet ahead of time in order to watch “MNF” live.
It may take weeks before “MNF’s” impact on the night is fully apparent. In the meantime, it looks like many of the viewers switching to cable are older men, according to a Magna Global U.S. analysis.
“Overall, it appears that the move to Mondays has drawn older male viewers to ESPN, but some younger male viewers have been lost in the shuffle,” a report issued last week says.
Meanwhile, in other cable ratings for the week ended Sept. 17:
Top five networks in primetime (18-49s):
ESPN
TNT
USA
FX
TBSC
Top five networks in primetime (total viewers):
ESPN
TNT
USA
Lifetime
Cartoon Network
Top movie (18-49s):
TNT’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” (Saturday, 8 p.m.) 1.919 million
Top sporting event (total viewers):
ESPN’s “Vikings/Redskins” (Monday, 7 p.m.) 12.57 million
Shows making the top 10 among 18-34s, 18-49s and 25-54s:
ESPN’s “Vikings/Redskins” (Monday, 7 p.m.), ESPN’s “Chargers/Raiders” (Monday, 10:22 p.m.) VH1’s “Flavor of Love 2” (Sunday, 10 p.m.)
Bravo’s “Project Runway” (Wednesday 10 p.m.)
ESPN’s “Sports Center” (Monday 1:14 a.m.)
FX’s “Nip Tuck” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.)
USA’s “WWE Entertainment” (Monday, 10 p.m.)
USA’s “WWE Entertainment” (Monday, 9 p.m.)
TNT’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” (Saturday, 8 p.m.)
Show on the rise:
Adult Swim’s “Robot Chicken,” Sunday 11:30 p.m. Seth Green’s animated show bettered its third-season premiere by 43 percent, averaging 725,000 adults 18-34 for its fourth-season bow Sunday.
Show on the decline:
TNT’s "Nextel Cup Racing/Loudon," Sunday 1:20 p.m. Now that racers have made the Cup chase, things are less compelling: Households viewing the race were down nearly 2 million from the previous week.
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/printer_7391.asp
Weekly Nielsen Notebook
For Fox's 'Happy Hour,' last call's nigh
By Toni Fitzgerald MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Sep 20, 2006
The question for “Happy Hour,” the poorly reviewed new Fox Thursday comedy, is when, not if, it will be pulled off the schedule.
The show, tabbed by a poll on BrilliantButCancelled.com as the show most likely to be axed first this fall, saw ratings declines from its already unspectacular debut in week two.
If it dips yet more over the coming weeks, chances are it won’t be back after a planned hiatus for postseason baseball. But don’t expect it to disappear immediately, a la “Head Cases” last year.
“Hour” averaged a 2.2 rating in adults 18-49 last week, the week ended Sept. 17, down 8 percent from its already-low 2.4 debut the previous week. It finished last among the Big Four in its timeslot, behind even reruns of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and NBC’s “My Name is Earl.”
Among total viewers, it fell to 5.38 million, losing more than a million from its debut. And this week it faces the premieres of NBC's "Earl" and "The Office" and ABC's highly anticipated "Ugly Betty."
"It looks like 'Happy Hour' may not be around very long," one buyer says.
Thursday night has been a problem for Fox for years. Though “O.C.” has performed decently there, the network has cycled roughly half a dozen companion shows through the night over the past three years without a hit. Now even “O.C.” is declining.
That’s why “’Til Death,” the highly touted new Brad Garrett sitcom, was put on Thursday. Had “Death” gotten strong ratings, it might have acted as a buoy for “Hour” and “O.C.”
But “Death’s” viewership thus far has been only so-so. Fox will no doubt want to keep the sitcom with the big-name actor around, and could benefit from pairing it with an already established show on another night or moving one of its popular Sunday shows to Thursday to prop it up.
Fox could also launch a new reality show Thursday to pair with “O.C.” or take one of its midseason dramas, like “Wedding Album,” and debut it early.
Either way, there may not be room for “Hour.” Yet Fox is in no rush to rejigger yet. After two seasons at No. 1 in 18-49s, it has room to take its time with such decisions.
"Today is the first day of the broadcast season and approximately 40 shows are launching this week," says a Fox spokesperson. "It's far too early to speculate on any show's future."
The network still thrived the last two seasons even with Thursday in disarray. The return of “American Idol” in January can make up for a lot of problems, and “Idol” will likely run a few Thursday specials to juice Fox’s ratings.
It’s not like last year, when Fox yanked “Head Cases” after just two outings because of horrifically bad ratings. So long as “Hour” stays above a 2.0, it should make it to next month, if no further.
Meanwhile, in English-language broadcast ratings for the week ended Sept. 17 (note that many UPN affiliates had already switched over to MyNetworkTV):
Among adults 18-49, CBS finished No.1 with a 3.1 average rating and 9 share, followed by ABC at 3.0/9, NBC and FOX tied at 2.8.8, WB at 0.6/2 and UPN at 0.3/1.
Among adults 18-34, Fox led with an average rating of 2.8 and share of 9, followed by ABC and NBC tied at 2.3/8, CBS with 2.2/7, WB at 0.6/2 and UPN last at 0.3/1
Among adults 25-54, CBS finished first with 3.7/10, ABC with 3.6/10, NBC had 3.3/10, FOX at 3.0/8, WB with 0.6/2 and UPN at 0.3/1.
Top five (18-49s): 1. NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” 7.4
2. CBS’s “Survivor Cook Island” 6.5
3. Fox's "House" 5.9
4. ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars – Tues” 5.7
Tie-5. CBS's "CSI – Thurs,"
CBS’s “CSI 10pm Special” 4.8
Top five (total viewers):
1.ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars-Tues.” 20.22 million
2. NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” 18.41 million
3. CBS’s “Survivor: Cook Island” 18 million
4. ABC’s “Dancing With The Starts Results-Wed” 16.23 million
5. CBS’s “CSI” 15.59 million
Bottom five (18-49s):
Tie-98. UPN’s “Love Inc.-Thurs,”
UPN’s “Everybody Hates Chris-Wed.,”
UPN’s “Eve-Thurs.,”
UPN’s “All Of Us-Wed,”
UPN’s “One on One-Mon.,”
UPN’s “All Of Us-Mon.,” 0.3
Tie-104. UPN’s “Cuts-Thurs.,” UPN’s “Veronica Mars-Tues., 9pm” UPN’s “Veronica Mars-Tues, 8pm,” 0.2
Bottom five (total viewers): 102. UPN’s “Cuts” 700,000
103. UPN’s “One on One” 694,000
104. UPN’s “All Of Us” 637,000
105. UPN’s “Veronica Mars Tues- 9pm” 498,000
106. UPN’s “Veronica Mars Tues-8pm” 446,000
Show on the rise: “Dancing with the Stars,” ABC, Tuesday 8 p.m. The third season of the reality hit drew its biggest premiere audience ever, 20.22 million total viewers.
Show on the decline: WB’s final night. It was a cool idea – airing pilots of seminal WB shows like “Felicity,” “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But with those shows readily available on DVD and cable anytime, fewer than 1.6 million total viewers tuned in for the network’s last hurrah Sunday night.
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/printer_7390.asp
The New Season
Kidnapped' Holds Viewers for Ransom
By Tom Shales Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 20, 2006; C01
"Sometimes, the world doesn't make sense," says a philosophical bodyguard named Virgil in tonight's premiere of NBC's "Kidnapped." Virgil has not only made the understatement of the week, but he's also helped set the tone for this superior, high-tension serialized drama about the proverbial "parent's worst nightmare" -- and how it affects not just the parents but everyone involved.
Making the strongest impression among those in an unusually sturdy cast is Jeremy Sisto, an intense young actor whose parts have ranged from the title role in the CBS miniseries "Jesus" to the disturbed boyfriend in HBO's "Six Feet Under" to a man with breasts (a transsexual in progress) in an obscure bit of weirdness called "The Crew."
Here, Sisto's a man known simply as Knapp, a roguish but no-nonsense freelance operative whose specialty is helping families recover kidnap victims -- alive.
"All I care about is retrieval; everything else is distraction," he tells the indefatigable Dana Delany and aging Timothy Hutton, who play Ellie and Conrad Cain, well-to-do Upper-East-Siders. Their brainy 15-year-old son, Leopold (Will Denton), is nabbed in a maliciously well-planned, recklessly violent operation that bodyguard Virgil (played by the formidable Mykelti Williamson) comes within heartbreaking seconds of preventing.
Why does a teenage schoolboy have a bodyguard in the first place? That's one of many tantalizing questions raised in the premiere, the abduction itself reverberating with an uncountable number of obvious and incipient complications -- motive, culpability and the possible involvement even of seeming "good guys."
Writer and executive producer Jason Smilovic, ably abetted by director Michael Dinner, crams the premiere with so many provocative complications that even a doubting Thomas can see how a drama about a single kidnapping -- wrapped up handily in such self-contained, two-hour movies as "Ransom" -- could sustain viewer interest over an entire season.
In the second installment, for instance, a Hannibal Lecter-like character is introduced. He's an unsavory source of possible use to Knapp, along with a new and scary bodyguard named Jimbo, who moves into the Cains' plush house. The kidnappers demand $20 million in untraceable, negotiable bearer bonds -- a term so familiar from so many films that one has to wonder: If whoever prints up those darn "untraceable, negotiable bearer bonds" just stopped making them, mightn't the number of robberies and kidnappings decline? Oh, probably not.
The series doesn't do much to help the ailing image of the FBI; it's ailing, at least, in movies and TV shows like this one. Casting Delroy Lindo as a top agent who comes out of retirement because of a vested interest in the case does somewhat help the image of the agency.
Knapp finds the FBI guys less a hindrance, going so far as to punch one of them in the gut after a bungled rescue attempt and telling the agent, "What you can't seem to understand is, you're the only ones playing by the rules." Agents naively imagine that they're dealing with nice, respectable kidnappers who'll keep their word and honor agreements.
Would "Kidnapped" be more gripping if the victim's family weren't so outrageously wealthy? Probably not, and credibility would suffer. Middle-class families aren't likely to have stacks of those bearer bonds lying around, for one thing, and a threat to the safety of a child is a subject that crosses all boundaries, socioeconomic being perhaps the least of them.
"Kidnapped" isn't the show to watch if you want your mind taken off your troubles (unless other people's troubles have a therapeutic effect). It reflects a trend toward the grim and even ghoulish in new fall dramas. But for what it is, it's an extremely accomplished piece of work -- unsettling in ways that few suspense thrillers manage to be.
'Jericho'
Chicken Little, sources say, might have been misquoted. Or taken out of context. When Little said, "The sky is falling," he could have meant, "Something awful is falling out of the sky!"
At least that's an errant thought inspired by "Jericho," the new season's gloomiest and doomiest drama.
In the series premiere tonight on CBS, America suffers the apocalyptic horror of a nuclear attack. And that's just for starters.
Where will the show's writers go from there? From the obliteration of Denver and other cities apparently vaporized but not shown? That's a good question for "Jericho's" executive producer, Jon Turteltaub, who reassured a reporter for Entertainment Weekly: "The show is not all doom and gloom where everybody gets boils under their skin and dies." Well, thank heaven. Nobody likes a nuclear holocaust without a little fun in it.
The title refers to a relatively small town in Kansas, one so quaintly pretty and serene that it looks like an ad for Hallmark. In the pilot, a young and sullen prodigal son returns to Jericho just in time to see the big awful mushroom clouds forming in the distant sky. Eventually, the townsfolk realize that Denver has disappeared, and all hell begins to break loose.
Well, not quite all hell. A mob overruns a gas station, basically. One assumes the rest of hell is being saved for serialized chapters to come.
CBS, meanwhile, must have its own Chicken Little on staff, perhaps as a consultant, running around the Television City parking lot in Los Angeles and shouting "You've got to get 'Lost'! You've got to get 'Lost!' " Meaning not "Get out of town before somebody drops a house on you," but rather "Develop a show like 'Lost,' ABC's big, mysterious hit about people marooned an island after their plane crashes."
The people in "Jericho" are marooned in -- what else? -- Jericho after a whole city crashes.
And it appears the same sorts of plot threads will be unraveled, the same kinds of murky back-stories told, and similar conflicts evolve among the various characters as Jericho faces dire prospects just over the horizon.
Skeet Ulrich plays the prodigal figure, a guy named Nick who left town under a cloud of his own -- not a nuclear cloud, of course -- and has returned after four years just in time to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a little girl trapped in a school bus. There's another bus to worry about: one formerly filled with prison inmates, all now running loose because their bus tumbled into a ravine.
Ulrich is so muttery and mopey in the lead role that the show seems gloomy even during the few minutes before the mushroom clouds form. But more damaging to "Jericho" is the fact that it's really a Cold War drama airing years after the Cold War ended. Perhaps it will evolve that al-Qaeda or the Iranians or North Koreans or -- the possibilities are too numerous -- get hold of nuclear weapons and go berserk, making the show seem more contemporary, but obviously we'll have to "tune in next week," or for weeks after that, to find out what's going on.
The drama seems dated in other ways -- among them, tiny details like a strange scarcity of cellphones in town. This is a writer's convenience; if people in Jericho, like everywhere else, had cellphones, then someone could have called the cops to tell them about the imperiled school bus. Instead, footage is eaten up by townsfolk traipsing around in search of the vehicle.
It might sound callous to say that "Jericho" has managed to make nuclear war look boring, but there you have it. Or don't have it, should you choose the seemingly sane course of steering clear.
As for comic relief, there is some, but it might be unintentional -- as when Gerald McRaney, as the town's nutball of a mayor, tries to calm the population by saying, "One explosion does not make an attack," even with the nuclear clouds clearly visible in the distance. That's not looking on the bright side. That's being a blithering idiot.
"Jericho" could use considerably less blither and considerably more believability.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901781_pf.html
The TV Column
The Week’s Winners and Losers
ABC Starts 'Dancing' And the Competition Reels
By Lisa de Moraes Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 20, 2006; C07
Abig return for "Dancing With the Stars" catapulted ABC to No. 1 the week before the official start of the TV season. It was the network's first win since it broadcast the Super Bowl in January. But with a lineup jammed with reality series coming and going, CBS took the trophy among the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers lust after.
Here's a look at the week's thriving and dying:
WINNERS
"Dancing With the Stars."
More than 20 million braved Tucker Carlson doing the cha-cha-cha, making the dance competition's third-season debut last week's most watched program. That's nearly 3 million viewers better than the second-season debut and nearly 7 million better than the first-season opener. That's also very good news for ABC, which plans to use "Dance" to launch several shows over the next few weeks (see "Men in Trees" below).
"Men in Trees." T
The "Dancing" debut drove nearly 12 million unsuspecting viewers to ABC's scary new universe in which Anne Heche is a relationship expert. Only 8.5 million got away; the other 11.7 million got sucked into the vortex, making "Men in Trees" the most watched show at 10 p.m. Tuesday. It drew nearly a third more viewers than its closest competitor, which, granted, was a rerun of "Law & Order: SVU." By Friday another 3.6 million viewers had been rescued by loved ones, leaving slightly more than 8 million viewers orbiting "Men in Trees" when it made its Friday time-slot debut. That still made it Friday night's most watched program.
Katie Couric.
Couric clung to her tiara in her second week as anchor of the "CBS Evening News," averaging 50,000 viewers more than NBC's Brian Williams and nearly 400,000 more than ABC's Charlie Gibson.
Crocodile Hunter exhumation .
Animal Planet's marathon of shows starring its dead Crock Hunter, Steve Irwin, logged 927,000 viewers in prime time Sunday -- 37 percent better than the network's year-to-date Sunday prime-time average. Crikey!
"Path to 9/11
." Sure it had no advertisers, which had to have cost ABC gobs of money. But you can't put a price tag on the delivery of more than 10 million viewers -- about twice ABC's summer Monday audience -- to those with whom a network wants to curry political favor.
LOSERS
[FONT=ARIAL BLACK][COLOR=deepskyblue] "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."
The debut of NBC's much-ballyhooed Aaron Sorkin series copped 13.4 million viewers this past Monday, taking a big bite out of CBS's "CSI: Miami" season debut. At 17.4 million, it was the second smallest debut audience ever for "CSI: Miami," and 2 million below last season's debut. But that's not what everyone was talking about yesterday. They were talking about the 2.5 million-viewer plunge from the first half-hour of "Studio 60" to the second -- the kiss of death for a new one-hour series. In this case, the drop probably had something to do with the utterly incompatible lead-in audience that NBC gave it -- fans of the babes-and-briefcases series "Deal or No Deal." For trivia's sake, the very first episode of Sorkin's "The West Wing" averaged 16.9 million viewers on Sept. 22, 1999.
"Survivor: Cook Island."
CBS suits brought a great deal of controversy on themselves when they turned one of broadcast TV's whitest reality shows into one of the most ethnically diverse so that they could then segregate the players based on their ethnic background. This appears to have cost them some advertisers, which is not unusual for a controversial bit of programming. The upside of all this is supposed to be lots more viewers -- and Thursday's debut logged the second smallest opening audience ever for "Survivor," behind only the first-season starter. CBS noted it was the week's second most watched show among 18- to 49-year-olds; it forgot to mention it was the lowest-rated "Survivor" debut ever among 18- to 34-year-olds, who are the Holy Grail of reality TV.
"Lucky Louie."
Turns out, HBO can do a three-camera sitcom just as badly as any broadcast network. Only raunchier. Which doesn't appear to attract more viewers. And so, after "Louie" premiered in June with an average of 1.5 million watching the first play of the episode, and regularly sloughed off about 1 million "Entourage" viewers over the course of its first-season order, HBO threw in the towel.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901666_pf.html
The New Season
'Kidnapped,' 'Jericho':
One will come tumbling down
By Jonathan Storm Philadelphia Inquirer Television Critic Wed, Sep. 20, 2006
The things you learn from television.
Hold your hands in front of you, palms out, fingers together. Stick out your thumbs. The hand that makes an "L" is your left hand, and you'll never get lost again.
Maybe everybody already knows that. Maybe my kindergarten teacher missed that lesson in teachers college.
What everybody knows for sure is that you can watch only so much TV, and of the two series premiering tonight, Jericho on CBS3 at 8 and Kidnapped on NBC10 at 10, only one, maybe, is good enough to fit into my overstuffed viewing schedule.
The networks have gone nuts with serials this year, after Desperate Housewives and Lost and 24 and then Grey's Anatomy did so well. Thirteen of the 16 new dramas have continuing plots, and Jericho and Kidnapped are as strongly serialized as any of them.
Jericho may have kiddie lessons, but it drips with doom, not from whatever nuclear menace has completely isolated the little Kansas town, but from the threat of early cancellation before poor viewers find out what's going on.
Kidnapped will spend the entire season answering the questions of who snatched rich kid Leopold Cain, will they be caught, and will he come back alive. Great cast and intriguing storytelling may get viewers, and, more important, network honchos, hooked.
Mom Ellie and the Cain kids have a secret language for when guests drop by - French. She uses it with little Alice to fool the New York Times reporter who has come to the Cains' Park Avenue residence, with a full-size swimming pool, to do a feature on the family.
Ellie cuts the kid off just as she's introducing the hulking African American man standing in the kitchen in a suit. Being from the Times, the ink-stained wretch isn't inquisitive enough simply to ask him who he is herself.
But that's OK. We know he's a bodyguard, and we never needed a kindergarten teacher to explain that TV doesn't always make sense.
Ellie Cain, played by the magnificent Dana Delany, has friends in high places. Daddy Conrad Cain, played by the terrific Timothy Hutton, we will learn, has relatives in low places. Did we mention they have a giant kidnapping insurance policy on their kids with Lloyd's of London?
They hire the world's best kidnap-foiler, aptly named Knapp (Jeremy Sisto), and he tells them not to call the FBI, but the feds find out anyway, which is great, because that means Delroy Lindo will be on the case, too.
There are plot twists aplenty. The crooks are murderous. In the first two episodes, we meet not one but two pale, skinny, creepy, cruel criminals, and everybody knows they're the worst kind.
But the kid's no slouch, either. Knapp finds a book on Buddhist epistemology (not even my college teachers told me what that was) in Leopold's room at home, and all the while, the teenager's working to escape the God-forsaken place, even if there is a crucifix on the wall, where he's being held.
With a plastic knife.
24 super agent Jack Bauer and Prison Break egghead Michael Scofield would be proud.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
There's tons of trouble in Jericho, and that starts with T and that rhymes with D and that stands for dumb. Not flat-footedly, spectacularly dumb, just a little bit too dumb to live up to its premise.
Take those little kids. They have to learn about left and right so they can go for gas after Skeet Ulrich, the mayor's prodigal son, performs an emergency tracheotomy on a little girl with a pencil and some juice-box straws after their school bus crashes because the driver didn't slow down when everybody saw a deer running alongside the road.
Skeet's a mystery man, back in town after five years with a different story for everybody he meets. But he's no more mysterious than that guy from St. Louis who seems to know way too much about terrorist attacks and civil defense.
He gets authorities to turn on the high-powered construction lights, which quells the chaos a little bit.
But the mayor (Gerald McRaney) has a better approach. "We can fight all enemies," he spiels as the sappy music fills, "if we work together."
And by that time, all the townspeople are snoozing peacefully in the square.
Well, maybe not, but you might be drifting off, if you haven't changed the channel by then.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/television//15559684.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
The New Season
“Kidnapped” and “Jericho”
By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his “TV Eye” blog
There's a terrific short version of the abduction that is at the heart of "Kidnapped" (NBC, 10:01 PM ET/PT) but it's stretched out so long in the pilot as to lose its tension. And though we disdain those instant finds in shows like "Without a Trace," we fear the seasonlong search for the privileged son of Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany, involving investigative teams at cross purposes led by Jeremy Sisto and Delroy Lindo, will be similarly slack.
http://www.ctnow.com/tv/hce-tveye0920.artsep20,0,5795744.column?coll=hce-utility-tv
I agree. How change you drag a kidnapping out longer than one season. This ain't 24 where there are a variety of storylines.
Also, isn't a show about a Senator's wife that is kidnapped?
GlendaleHDTV
09-20-06, 01:24 PM
Also, isn't a show about a Senator's wife that is kidnapped?
Yea, that's "Vanished" on Fox.
Is America's Next Top Model supposed to be in HD? The reason I ask is b/c I record, but I was looking at my guide and saw where it said HDTV in the Tivo guide.
Yea, that's "Vanished" on Fox.
Thanks.
Is America's Next Top Model supposed to be in HD? The reason I ask is b/c I record, but I was looking at my guide and saw where it said HDTV in the Tivo guide.
As far as I know it is not in HD.
The Tuesday prime-time ratings – and Media Week Analyst Marc Berman’s view of what they mean -- have been posted just under the HD Football listings near the top of Ratings News the first post in this
Overnights in the 18-49 Demo
ABC edges out Fox for a Tuesday win
Stars' tops CBS and NBC debuts in second week
By Toni Fitzgerald MediaLifeMagazine.com staff writer Sep 20, 2006
In another super-tight night, the second hour of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” gave the network the slight edge it needed to best Fox for No. 1.
ABC averaged a 4.6 rating and 12 share among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen overnights, just a hair ahead of Fox’s 4.5/12. While “Stars” finished behind Fox’s power-“House” at 8 p.m. in that demo for the second straight week, it peaked with a 5.9 and more than 20 million viewers in its second hour to push the network ahead for the night.
That awarded ABC its first nightly victory of the very young season, following NBC’s win on Monday night. But things could get more interesting next week, when ABC debuts new sitcom “Help Me Help You,” which will cut “Stars” down to 90 minutes.
NBC also had a strong debut night with its new 9 and 10 p.m. combination of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “L&O: Special Victims Unit.” The later won the 10 p.m. hour with a 5.1, slightly ahead of last season’s 5.0 average. “CI” took second behind “Stars” with a 4.0 at 9 p.m., up 25 percent over last season’s 3.2 average in its old Sunday 9 p.m. timeslot. That boosted NBC to a third-place 4.1/11 for the night.
But CBS did not have as strong a night. The network, which had the night’s only new show premiere, averaged a fourth-place 3.4 in 18-49s and, perhaps more alarmingly, finished only third among households and total viewers, behind both ABC and NBC and not too far ahead of Fox.
“Smith,” the well-reviewed Ray Liotta drama that debuted at 10 p.m., averaged a 3.5 18-49 rating and fell slightly in its second half hour, tying for third in the timeslot with ABC’s “Boston Legal.” “Smith” was also third in total viewers with 10.7 million, though it did finish ahead of “Legal” by 0.2 in 25-54s with a 4.4.
Meanwhile, Univision averaged a 1.7/4 for the night and the CW was last with a 0.6/2. The latter, emerging from the combination of UPN and the WB, does not make its official debut is not until tomorrow night, when “America’s Next Top Model” launches. Ratings for Sunday through Tuesday will not be included in any official estimates for the CW.
At 8 p.m., Fox’s “House” dominated with a 5.8, 1.4 ahead of ABC’s “Stars.” NBC’s “Deal or No Deal” special and CBS’s “NCIS” premiere tied for third at 3.3, followed by a 1.9 for Univision’s “La Fea Mas Bella” and CW’s 0.6 for a “Gilmore Girls” rerun.
At 9 p.m., ABC steamed ahead with “Stars’” 5.9, followed by NBC’s “CI” at 4.0, CBS’s “The Unit” at 3.5, Fox’s “Standoff” at 3.3, Univision’s “Barrera de Amor” at 1.9” and CW’s “Launch Party” at 0.5.
At 10 p.m., “SVU” led with a 5.1, followed by “Legal” and “Smith” at 3.5 and Univision at 1.4.
Among households ABC also led with a 10.6/7, followed by NBC at 8.0/12, CBS at 7.7/12, Fox at 6.6/10, Univision at 2.1/3, and the CW at 1.0/2.
• Source: Nielsen Media Research data
The Business of TV
Fox and Cablevision Headed for a Fight
By John M. Higgins Broadcasting & Cable 9/20/2006
Fox News and Cablevision are headed for a showdown over the network’s campaign to secure substantial increases in its license fees to cable and satellite TV companies. The news network is taking a characteristic hardball approach to the negotiations, with News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch personally calling out Chuck Dolan for a fight.
Fox News says it is looking to boost its license fees from around 30 cents per subscriber monthly to $1, arguing that if its audience is double that of rival news network CNN, its license fees should be as well. That’s a massive hike, especially at a time when operators are trying to clamp down on programming cost increases because they can’t readily raise basic cable rates.
Fox News went to war when it started the channel. Murdoch’s general aversion to government interference into the affairs of business didn’t stop him from enlisting the City of New York in a battle to secure carriage on Time Warner’s Manhattan system
“These are going to be very contentious negotiations; They’re gearing up for a possible battle,” says an executive with one cable operator.
Because Cablevision was one of the first operators to sign up for Fox News when it launched in 1996, the network is the first to be publicly targeted for attack. It started quietly last week when the network took out a legal notice in a Connecticut newspaper alerting Cablevision's customers there that they may lose Fox News when the operator’s deal expires Oct. 7. While cable systems are obligated to offer 30 days notice of a change in programming services, the network is simply trying to bring pressure on Cablevision.
Murdoch turned up the volume a bit by calling out Cablevision Chairman Chuck Dolan personally. Saying that Fox News hasn’t yet had “productive” negotiations with Cablevision, Murdoch said“Chuck Dolan has been a friend of mine for many, many years and I would hate that we had some big breach over this. But if we have to we will."
Murdoch warns that cable operators will face an onslaught from Fox News fans. “Our audience is passionate for Fox News. anyone who drops it off is going to be in mighty big trouble,” adding that "EchoStar and DirecTV are going to be right there picking over the bones.”
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6373776
Is America's Next Top Model supposed to be in HD? The reason I ask is b/c I record, but I was looking at my guide and saw where it said HDTV in the Tivo guide.
The CW
(Begins Monday, Sept. 18; 8 of 13 hours in HD)
MONDAY
8 7th Heaven Sept. 25
9 Runaway (new) HD Sept. 25
TUESDAY
8 Gilmore Girls HD Sept. 26
9 Veronica Mars HD Oct. 3
WEDNESDAY
8 America's Next Top Model Special two-hour premiere Sept. 20
9 One Tree Hill HD Sept. 27
THURSDAY
8 Smallville HD Sept. 28
9 Supernatural HD Sept. 28
FRIDAY
8 WWE Friday Night Smackdown Sept. 22
SUNDAY
7 Everybody Hates Chris HD Oct. 1
7:30 All of Us HD Oct. 1
8 Girlfriends HD Oct. 1
8:30 The Game (new) HD Oct. 1
9 America’s Next Top Model (Repeat)
Reminder: The New Season
Prime Time Reference Material
You can find all the network schedules, including which shows are being broadcast in HD in the second post of this thread here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4265637&&#post4265637
Remembrance
Thousands Remember 'Crocodile Hunter':
By DENNIS PASSA Associated Press Writer September 20, 2006 in the Los Angeles Times
BEERWAH, Australia -- Friends and fans, including Hollywood stars and Australia's prime minister, bid farewell to "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin on Wednesday at a service that veered from poignant tributes to belly laughs.
Irwin's 8-year-old daughter, Bindi, hailed him as her hero; his father, Bob, asked people to end their grieving, and fans were invited to laugh at his television antics one more time.
The ceremony was carried live on three national television networks and at least one radio station. Flags on the Sydney Harbor Bridge and throughout Irwin's home state of Queensland flew at half-staff, and giant television screens were set up for people to watch the service.
More here:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/sns-ap-crocodile-hunter,1,2657565.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews
The New Season
CW Network Faces Struggle to Find a Winning Strategy
By Meg James Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 20, 2006
CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. launch their new television network tonight with the latest installment of the Tyra Banks' contest, "America's Next Top Model." But in the coming months, the CW must do something trickier than strut down a runway in 4-inch stilettos: It must make money.
That mandate was set this year by CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves. It's a feat that the network's two predecessors — the defunct WB and UPN — were never able to consistently achieve. Throughout their 11-year histories, the rival operations together lost nearly $2 billion in their struggles to find a winning strategy. In January, the companies decided to cut their losses and agreed to form a new network with their most popular shows.
Although CBS and Warner Bros. no longer will have to scratch and claw for the same audience of teenagers and young adults, viewers these days still are not an easy catch. Internet sites such as YouTube and MySpace have become the coolest destinations around.
The CW has "got to build an identity and a sense of community," said Shari Anne Brill, programming director for ad firm Carat.
That could be difficult given the confusion generated by the consolidation. "We have a big challenge ahead of us," said Dawn Ostroff, the former head of UPN who is the CW's entertainment president. "Our first goal is to bring the viewers into the CW tent — bring in the audience that has always been there."
Although many of the CW programs already have a following, many viewers probably won't know where to find them. That's because the merger triggered a domino effect across the country as dozens of stations orphaned by the shutdown of UPN and WB scrambled to fall into line behind either the CW or an alternative prime-time telenovela network put together by News Corp. The CW will be available in 93% of the country.
The spine of the CW will be made up of TV stations owned by CBS and Tribune Co. Chicago-based Tribune, which publishes the Los Angeles Times, owned a minority interest in the WB network but won't have a stake in the CW. CBS owned UPN.
The station shuffle could frustrate some viewers with well-worn habits. For example, instead of flipping to UPN for "Top Model" or World Wrestling Entertainment's "Smackdown," fans of those shows might have to channel surf. In more than half of the country, former UPN viewers will have to switch to a channel previously occupied by the WB for their shows. This is the case in Los Angeles, where the CW will air on Tribune's KTLA-TV Channel 5. In a quarter of the country, viewers looking for such WB stalwarts as "7th Heaven," "Smallville" and "Gilmore Girls" will have to turn to the old UPN channel. Some viewers will find the CW on a channel that was neither a UPN nor a WB affiliate.
"It's going to take a little time for the dust to settle," Ostroff said.
For that reason, the CW will launch with 11 veteran shows and only two new ones. Network executives wanted to keep the schedule stable so that they could spend their marketing dollars promoting the network, not individual shows.
That saved tens of millions of dollars. The CW's programming budget is slightly less than the more than $500 million a year the WB spent on programming. Executives declined to provide financial details.
The CW's lineup includes the long-running WB family drama, "7th Heaven," which was scheduled to be sent packing in May because it lost $16 million a year for the WB. The CW was able to keep the drama alive because one of its parents, CBS, produces it. The studio reduced the cost by shrinking the size of the cast and slashing salaries of the actors.
Although Moonves vowed in January that the new venture would be profitable, the two executives charged with the day-to-day operations of the CW stopped short this month of saying it would be in the black.
"We are poised for much greater success than either the WB or the UPN," said John Maatta, the CW's chief operating officer and a former WB executive. "I expect lift."
To get aloft, the CW has hired about 250 people — about 50 fewer than the WB had but about 50 more than UPN. That means the merger resulted in the loss of about 250 jobs.
Winnowing the workforce "was the hardest part of the whole endeavor," Maatta said, adding that the new network had about an even mix of employees from the WB and UPN. Employees of the CW will move into its new Burbank office next week.
The network was encouraged by its commercial sales during the so-called upfront market. The CW's sales force pulled in more than $640 million in commitments for 85% of its prime-time advertising inventory this season. The network also initiated "Content Wraps," two-minute segments that blend entertainment and advertising and are woven throughout a night of programming. Up tonight during "Top Model" will be hair tips sponsored by Clairol Herbal Essence.
Bill Morningstar, the CW's sales chief, said a big challenge was to get advertisers to pay comparable rates for African American comedies airing Sunday nights, including Chris Rock's "Everybody Hates Chris."
"It took a lot of work, but we were able to get Sunday night priced at the same value as the rest of the network," he said.
Advertisers expect the CW's ratings to eclipse those of its predecessors. The WB and UPN each averaged about 3 million viewers a week. CW executives declined to divulge their goals, saying only they hope to surpass the ratings by the end of the season. The network is targeting young adults aged 18 to 34.
Said Brad Adgate of Horizon Media: "I don't expect them to double the ratings of the WB, but there should be some moderate increases."
Another challenge for the CW is to develop a niche for a generation weaned on unscripted shows and the Internet. Even more than the big broadcast networks, advertisers said, the CW must be nimble to embrace changes in consumers' tastes.
Taking a page out of MySpace's playbook, the CW has created its own networking hangout on its website called "CW lounge." Viewers can chat about their favorite show and submit their own videos. Ostroff said some would be selected for use as on-air promotional spots.
"You can't force a social network," said Laura Caraccioli-Davis of ad buyer Starcom USA. "That just happens. It's hard to say whether they will be successful. In some ways, it seems like they built the network for today, but I wonder whether it's the right model for tomorrow."
Ostroff doesn't share those doubts. "We're developing a lot of things in a traditional way and a nontraditional way," she said. "The Internet presents challenges, but people