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The 2007-2008 Season
Well-Known Secret:
Grey's Anatomy' Spinoff for ABC
By Edward Wyatt The New York Times April 28, 2007

LOS ANGELES, April 27 Like a doting parent trying to hide a child's Christmas bike under the bed, ABC has been pretending to hope that no one notices what could be its biggest winner in next fall's television season, a spinoff of its hit nighttime soap opera Grey's Anatomy.

On Thursday night the network will broadcast a two-hour episode of Grey's titled The Other Side of This Life, in which Addison Montgomery, the neonatologist played by Kate Walsh, will travel from Seattle Grace Hospital to Santa Monica, Calif., in search of a new life and, mostly likely, new loves.

If all goes according to plan, the episode will set the stage for a new series beginning in September that will feature Ms. Walsh and a new cast of kooky physicians including the actors Amy Brenneman, Tim Daly, Taye Diggs, Merrin Dungey and Paul Adelstein in private practice in the oceanside environs west of Los Angeles.

But despite the buzz being generated by a potential spinoff of its highest-rated scripted show, executives at the ABC network and its television studio have refused to talk publicly about the new venture. Actors in the new series, which has been called Private Practice in news reports, appear to be under strict orders of silence. And a publicist for Grey's declined to comment on the show's potential title or even to confirm reports of the new characters' names.

Until we know if the show is picked up for the fall schedule, said Amy Astley, the chief publicist for Grey's Anatomy, we're not talking about it.

Except, of course, when they are talking about it. ABC has sent out a steady stream of news about casting and production of the show, including naming Marti Noxon, best known for overseeing the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the WB and UPN networks, as the executive producer who will be in charge of day-to-day production of the new series.

Representatives of Ms. Walsh and Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of Grey's Anatomy and the writer of Thursday's special episode, declined requests for interviews to discuss the potential spinoff.

But the Internet is abuzz with speculation about the cast and the potential series, in which Ms. Walsh's character goes to California to visit a couple, friends from medical school who she apparently believes have a blissful marriage.

In fact, the pair's relationship has pronounced fissures. The wife, played by Ms. Dungey, is a fertility specialist, opening up myriad possibilities for Ms. Walsh's aging yet childless character. The husband, played by Mr. Diggs, is a health guru, author and television personality, and the two have surrounded themselves with other doctors whose defining characteristics qualify them as much for group therapy as for a medical clinic.

Ms. Brenneman, for example, late of Judging Amy on CBS, portrays a self-doubting therapist, and Mr. Adelstein, who this season starred on Fox's Prison Break, portrays a lovelorn gynecologist who, in production photographs from next week's episode, is holding an ice pack to his face the morning after a date.

Like Grey's, whose hunky male stars are regularly referred to by swooning nicknames like McDreamy and McSteamy, the new series offers its female fan base plenty of buff eye candy. Mr. Daly portrays what is said to be a bed-hopping widower and specialist in alternative medicine; he can be seen leering seductively at Ms. Walsh in production photographs.

And Chris Lowell, the 22-year-old heartthrob seen recently in CW's Veronica Mars, plays a receptionist/surfer who commutes to the medical office directly from the beach, first showing up in the office shirtless and carrying his surfboard.

But the series will also have a distinct difference from Grey's Anatomy. While that show began as a group of people who did not know one another well and who were thrown into a stressful situation and resorted to sex to ease the anxiety of professional life, the new series will be about a group of people who know one another intimately and who resort to sex to ease the anxiety of personal life.

For all the secrecy, few people in the television industry doubt that the new show will be given a prominent place on ABC's fall schedule, largely because the network desperately needs a boost.

With a month to go before most prime-time series end their run of new episodes, ABC is mired in third place among the top four broadcast networks, according to Nielsen Media Research, behind Fox and CBS both in average total viewers so far this season and among adults age 18 to 49, the demographic group that attracts premium advertising dollars.

Except for Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters, most of the new scripted series introduced by ABC last fall are either far down in the ratings or have been canceled altogether. Among the flops were the dramas Day Break, which starred Mr. Diggs, and The Nine, and the comedies The Knights of Prosperity and Help Me Help You.

Even some of the network's bigger hits, like Desperate Housewives and Lost, have slumped in the ratings this year, attracting far fewer viewers than in their first two seasons.

Yet Grey's can seemingly do little wrong. Even after going so far as threatening to kill off its lead character, the medical intern Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo, in one episode this winter, the series has ranked first or second among adult viewers for all scripted shows this season.

With Ms. Rhimes easily the brightest star at ABC, the only surprise would be if the Grey's spinoff fails to keep viewers and advertisers entranced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/ar...gewanted=print

TV on DVD
Hawaii 5-0
Dragnet' With Leis, and the Occasional Ghost
By Greg Evans The New York Times April 29, 2007

Steve McGarrett, the Brylcreemed leader of the elite state police unit that gave Hawaii Five-0 its name, was the kind of guy who knew what to do when duty demanded a necktie but whose maverick nature Hawaii's, his own whispered lei. He wore both. And when romance and opportunity presented him with a sandy From Here to Eternity moment, McGarrett did what McGarrett should: he kept the necktie.

Overconfident do-rights of McGarrett's stripe don't get love like they used to. Even an authoritarian's pipe dream like 24 demands that its saviors show some small capacity for doubt and reflection. A viewer could get through all seven discs of the DVD set of first-season Hawaii Five-0 episodes and discern barely a second thought. Beads of sweat? Not in McGarrett's Honolulu. So what accounts for the show's oddball allure? Certainly television produced few leading men stiffer than Jack Lord, who played McGarrett as a Big Kahuna only occasionally more genial than a wood-carved idol. The surprise here is that he proves just as durable. You watch Mr. Lord the way you listen to the show's immortal, brassy theme song, predicting every beat but caught up in the swell just the same.

Mr. Lord, who appeared in the entire run of the series, from 1968 to 1980, took to McGarrett with the intensity of a not-so-young actor who knew he had just found his career. The show's setup had McGarrett answerable only to God and the governor, as one character notes, a crime-fighting carte blanche that allowed the men of the Five-0 and the actors who played them an expanse of adventure that would overwhelm the specializing nitpickers of today's CSIs. Red Chinese supervillains? Check. LSD-dosing hippie gurus? Check. Quack doctors bamboozling desperate patients with room-size computers that might have been lifted from the Batcave? Five-0 was on the case.

The outlandishness of the capers in this first season might surprise viewers who remember Hawaii Five-0 as Dragnet with lehua blossoms. Though as tightly structured as any Law & Order, Hawaii Five-0 could, and often did, get delightfully loopy. Smart writing usually kept things from veering too far afield, but not always: the final episode of the season is a ghost story so ludicrous it would have fans of Scooby-Doo rolling their eyes. Most weeks, though, the show's scripts took fine advantage of the heady Hawaiian atmosphere and earnest '60s vibe.

Long before Dick Wolf was ripping from the headlines, the producer Leonard Freeman was commissioning stories like Tiger by the Tail, an episode plainly riffing on the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. The story lines, whether gritty or fanciful, showcased some of the era's most productive character actors (Sal Mineo played the Sinatraesque abductee). In one of the more delirious turns, Gavin MacLeod tears into the sweaty role of a predatory, sexually ambiguous convict (nicknamed Big Chicken, no less) as if relishing his remaining moments untethered to Murray Slaughter's manual typewriter.

McGarrett's lieutenants (Kam Fong as Chin Ho Kelly, Zulu as Kono Kalakaua) offered steady if not always electrifying support, while lesser roles were often filled with local nonactors, lending more diversity than skill. Only James MacArthur's Lt. Danny Williams, also known as Danno, could hold his ground with Mr. Lord week after week. (Readers wondering how this review could get so far without mentioning Book 'em, Danno! should note that the catchphrase made fewer appearances in Season 1 than might be expected.) In one Danno-centric episode here, Mr. MacArthur's character suffers a crisis of conscience his boss barely understands. Danno, it seems, was a cop just waiting for Steven Bochco to happen. He could do worse than passing his time in Hawaii.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/ar...gewanted=print

TV Notebook
Studio 60 to Return
By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his TV Eye blog April 28, 2007

It hasn't been on the air since February, and little had been said of its future since then.

But NBC announced last week that the Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip will return to air May 24.

The bad news is that it's a day after sweeps ends, meaning the network doesn't want the show to drain it's already shaky fourth place numbers.

There are six episodes remaining to be seen this season, and whether or not it's on the fall schedule will become clear, too, next month, when the network unveils its plans during the annual upfront presentations for advertisers.

Originally, Studio 60, which has only averaged about 8.4 million viewers by February, went on hiatus to make way for The Black Donnellys, a limited series that actually did worse, and was pulled before its season was completed (the even bigger dud, The Real Wedding Crashers is in the post Heroes slot now).

When it returns, Studio 60 will air on Thursdays, where it was originally scheduled before ABC decided to move Grey's Anatomy there.

Studio 60 was one of two new NBC shows this season that concerned life backstage at a Saturday Night Live type sketch show; the other one, 30 Rock, has averaged smaller audiences than Studio 60, (6.4 million viewers) but has already been picked up for a second season.

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catli..._60_to_re.html

It is a bit odd that CBS will be done with its regular schedule, for the most part, 10 days before the end of the May sweep.

TV Notebook
Powers Boothe Talks 24
(And Ponders Deadwood's Fate
by Joseph Hudak TV Guide April 29, 2007

Few actors are as adept at conveying downright intimidation as Powers Boothe, currently fearsome as acting president Noah Daniels as he steamrolls through the U.S.' latest bad day on Fox's 24 (Mondays at 9 pm/ET). TV Guide caught up with the Texas-born, gravel-voiced actor who won an Emmy in 1980 for his TV portrayal of People's Temple leader Jim Jones to discuss his 24 alter ego's intentions, as well as to bet on the fate of HBO's Deadwood and riverboat gambler Cy Tolliver.

TV Guide: Do you see 24's Daniels as essentially good but misguided?
Powers Boothe: I don't think he's misguided at all. You had a nuke go off in [California], and people are sitting around wringing their hands. He feels like he has to do something. Rather than having an agenda, I think he feels a tremendous burden to save the country, no matter what it takes.

TV Guide: Is your performance inspired by any real-life politician?
Powers Boothe:I think I'm pretty politically informed and I find myself watching Senate hearings on C-SPAN. But I don't know if there's any particular individual. I was raised a Democrat and now I'm an Independent. I wasn't interested in playing a zealot. The sanctity of the office is what's more important to me.

TV Guide: Do you think 24 makes a political statement in any way?
Powers Boothe:If they do anything, it's to present the problem and put up various solutions without getting on a stump about any of them, and I think that approach is brilliant. As I understand it, we have as many liberal fans as conservative fans.

TV Guide: You play powerful, intimidating men like Daniels really well. Why are you so adept at conveying intimidation?
Powers Boothe:[Laughs] Oh, I don't know. I think it's just something I was born with.

TV Guide: But with a name like Powers, I guess you can't play many wimps. What are its origins?
Powers Boothe:A friend of my father's was killed in World War II and that was his first name. When I was starting out, I'm sure a lot of people thought I was a pretentious little s--t. [Laughs]

TV Guide: Do you gravitate to intimidating roles?
Powers Boothe:No, no. One role leads to another. For the first 10 years [that] I was a professional actor, all I did was Shakespeare. And the show I did in New York that brought me out [to L.A.] was a flat-out comedy. And they never let me do comedy. [Laughs]

TV Guide: How do you view your time spent on Deadwood?
Powers Boothe:I think I've been incredibly fortunate to be associated with a writer and a creator of the caliber of [series creator] David Milch. What David did with Deadwood was not only groundbreaking, but he also created a kind of new genre. For me, it was almost like doing Shakespeare.

TV Guide: I imagine your Shakespeare background made Milch's dialogue a little easier to handle.
Powers Boothe:Well, it certainly helped. It was like doing Shakespeare in that if you had one word out of place, the dialogue just flat didn't work.

TV Guide: What do you think of Deadwood going out the way it is?
Powers Boothe:I, like everyone, was stunned, because when we left the third season, it wasn't a matter of, "Are we going to do a fourth?" They were negotiating a fifth. And then I got the call from [Milch] that it was all over. I was like, "Are you kidding me?"

TV Guide: Why is Cy Tolliver so clearly tormented?
Powers Boothe:David explained it to me like this: [Cy] was raised in a whorehouse. So you can imagine watching your mother turn tricks and what it does to your thoughts on women. He's a con man, a gambler and a pimp. He's a businessman. And the one thing he can't do is have emotions. But he has feelings for Joanie Stubbs. And he tries to justify them and why she doesn't come back to him. It feeds on his psychosis about his youth and women in general. He has god issues, too. He faced his death and came through it. I think of all the characters and David told me this Cy is the only character whose hole card hasn't been revealed yet. I keep waiting for it to happen.

TV Guide: What's the state of the supposed finales?
Powers Boothe:We're planning on doing two two-hour movies this summer. They're talking about [starting production in] June, but I'll tell you, honestly, as much as I hope it happens, I'll believe it when I see it. When a cast splits up, it's hard to bring them back together.

TV Guide: Do you mean that the fate of the movies is in jeopardy?
Powers Boothe:If we don't do it in June, I don't think it'll ever be done, because, look, various people have pilots for other series. I have other commitments, and I know Ian [McShane] has other commitments. That [June] time slot is kind of it. But I think if any show ever deserved at least that much, it's Deadwood.

http://www.tvguide.com/News-Views/Interviews-Features/Article/default.aspx?posting={79940130-DF1A-

I am not sure the consensus opinion has any relevance to the real reason, rebkell.

I suspect only Milch and HBO know for sure.

But it seems ominous to me that Boothe talks about shooting in June in a rather nebulous way.

If shooting were scheduled for June, you would think that schedules would already have been sent to the cast members.

Saturday's fast national over night prime-time ratings - and Media Week Analyst Marc Berman's view of what they mean -- have been posted at the top of Ratings News the second post in this thread.

More importantly, I think, ratings are now available for more than 70% of the population on an overnight basis.

There is no real need anymore to stack the deck three times a year - although the smaller market stations (which only get rated during sweeps) will miss the network sweep programming which helps their ratings.

And when Nielsen gets its commercials rating system up and running later this year, the whole TV commercial world may change even more dramatically.

How many more are left, rebkell, do you know?

There were six episodes remaining when ABC pulled the show.

Nielsen Notebook
In Progress: Network May Sweep Numbers
(Numbers crunched by Dumont demo) at Marc Berman's Programming Insider blog:

After three nights of A18-49 trending in the May Sweep vs. last year's first three nights:

ABC 2.9 vs 1.8, +60%
FOX 2.1 vs 2.0 +5%
CW 1.4 vs 1.4 even with WB
CBS 2.8 vs 3.9 -27%
NBC 2.0 vs. 2.8 -27%
MNT 0.3 vs 1.0 -70% from UPN (Thurs. comparison only)

Source: Nielsen Media Research data

NBC's numbers will pick up as the week wears on, but it's Thursday to Saturday line-up just barely eked out an average in the bottom rung of the 2's.

http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/t...m/15610584/p/1

I couldn't agree more, dad. The Friday 10 PM time slot was the kiss of death.

Perhaps if "Studio 60" and a few of the other new shows had performed well it wouldn't matter.

But now NBC is in a world of hurt and it has wounded -- perhaps fatally -- a show which should have several more productive years left.

Critic's Notebook
The Donk-Donk Dynasty
As Law & Order founders, SVU still thrives, thanks to sex, sadism, and two very screwed-up cops.
By John Leonard New York Magazine, May 7, 2007 issue

Since the sex-crimes wing of Dick Wolf's Heartbreak Hotel is the only Law & Order still doing a brisk business, and thus the only one of the triptych already renewed for another year by NBC, it may be worth wondering why Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) are still gladly received in our homes. After all, Jack McCoy seems to have worn out his welcome, and Robert Goren, the Hunchback of Nostradamus, gives most of us what Don DeLillo in Great Jones Street called the neon creepies. I'd like to think that their first namesOlivia Benson and Elliot Stablerhave something to do with this. Olivia and Elliot sound less like tough cops than febrile poets or drawing-room-comedy characters. It's as if these softer, kinder sounds were secret selves and dream identities.

But probably not. Because, mostly, Benson and Stabler are out of their minds with grief and rage. She is always working out the fraught algebra of her mother's rape. He spends so much time imagining all the terrible things that might happen to his daughter that we begin to suspect him of repressing personal kinkies. Even when they work on a low-key case of teenage alcoholic drinking and Website party circuits, as in the recent episode called Responsible, they invest so much raw emotionthey take everything, including the vagaries of a judge, so personallythat we worry about their health.

The stakes are higher this Tuesday night, May 1, when Benson discovers

I am sorry to say that John Munch (Richard Belzer) and Odafin Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) have no part to play in either of these hours, although it's easy enough to imagine what they'd do and say if called upon, since both of them are so frozen into temperamental ticsthe Ramsey Clark conspiracy rant, Miles Davis mercury-cooledthat they might as well be Popsicle shticks. I'm also sorry to say that Dr. George Huang (B. D. Wong) does have a part, opening his mouth to explain to Stabler that family annihilators are the ultimate narcissists. Thanks, Doc. It's always been hard to decide whether Wong's Huang is more insulting to Asians or to psychiatrists. And some other time we will ask ourselves just why so many television medical examiners, like Tamara Tunie on L&O: SVU and Khandi Alexander on CSI: Miami, happen to be gorgeous black women. Angels of death? The morgue as Bat Cave?

Still, we may have wearied of the Law & Order prototype (in which, week after ripped-from-the-headlines week, in spite of Sam Waterston's hangdog exasperation, justice is denied by pettifogging, hairsplitting, bleeding-heart judges), and of its Criminal Intent sibling (in which even Eric Bogosian finds himself gasping after Vincent D'Onofrio eats all the air in the room). But Benson and Stabler keep us watching SVU. No other creatures in the Dick Wolf stable are allowed such emotional dishabille. It probably doesn't hurt that almost every episode of SVU can be counted on to obsess about and drool all over occasions of rape and/or pedophilia.

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/31247/

Thanks again for the reminder -- and for saving me $100.

No muss, no fuss (and three more CBS HD games each week!).

Great!

The Business of Television
Buyers, Sellers Debate Impact of DVRs Impact on Negotiations
By John Consoli (with Anthony Crupi) MediaWeek April 30, 2007

With an average 2.3 million viewers each week watching prime-time network programming in time-shifted mode this season, according to Nielsen Media Research data, DVR viewing is going to have a major impact on the upfront ad-buying process next month, buyers and sellers agree.

Just how much credit the networks should get for that time-shifted viewing fuels the ongoing debate between the two sides, however. Some media agencies say they will not allow the networks to include DVR viewers in their totals unless the nets offer ratings guarantees for their clients based on commercial ratings rather than program ratings.

But several off-the-record conversations Mediaweek had with agency and broadcast network sales executives revealed that this compromise, at least in this year's upfront, might not be that hard to agree upon. That's because when DVR viewership is factored into live ratings, the ratings declines this season are mitigated by about 5 to 6 percentthe same percentage of viewers who tune out of commercials while watching live TV.

Much has been written in the last few weeks about hefty declines in live ratings this season, and the potential problems they create for the networks during upfront negotiations. But agency executives argue that the networks should be more focused on selecting the correct negotiating currency.

It is difficult to make program ratings comparisons to last season because the composition of Nielsen's audience sample is different and this season includes DVR homes, when last year it didn't, said Steve Sternberg, executive vp of audience analysis at Magna Global USA. Since DVR homes have much less live viewing, it's driven down the live-viewing numbers this year. If you compare live-plus-7 this season to live last season, you see a much more typical decline in audience compared to past years, with four of the five networks relatively stable.

Some of the larger media agencies are on the same page as some of us in regard to reaching a compromise on the program ratings/commercial ratings/DVR viewing issues, but other agencies haven't decided what position they're going to take, said one broadcast network sales exec. The entire industry wants to go to commercial ratings at some point as a negotiating currency, but we need to do it intelligently and not create confusion. We are the ones taking all the risk because we have to give ratings guarantees months in advance.

It's clear how many viewers are actually watching in time-shifted mode, based on the Nielsen data. Of the average 45.5 million weekly broadcast network viewers, 2.3 million (5.1 percent) watch programming in playback within seven days. Of the 19.4 million viewers 18-49, 1.8 million (8.3 percent) watch in time-shifted mode. And on Thursdays, TV's highest-viewing night, 10 million of the 137 million people who watch all Big Three network shows view in time-shifted mode.

The most-watched show in playback this season is Fox's American Idol, with 2.2 million viewers watching the Tuesday edition via DVRs, and 2.1 million watching Wednesday. That's about 10 percent of its total audience. Among scripted shows, ABC's Lost is tops. Fox's 24 is next with 1.7 million, followed by NBC's Heroes and Fox's House with 1.5 million time-shifted viewers apiece.

Donna Speciale, president of investment and activation at MediaVest USA, reiterated a vow made earlier this year that MediaVest will give no broadcast network credit for DVR viewing if it offers guarantees based on live-only ratings. She said the networks will have to agree to offer commercial ratings guarantees to get DVR viewer credit. Because to her, there's still a question about viewership of ads in time-shifted viewing. The broadcast networks should be getting credit for DVR playback viewing, but 60 percent of those viewers don't watch the commercials at all, and it is up for debate how much credit they should get.

Speciale also said MediaVest will not offer cable networks credit for DVR usage. There are only a few original cable shows that air in first run, and a lot of repeats, she explained. And repeats get almost no DVR viewing.

One cable exec begs to differ. John Landgraf, president/general manager, FX Networks, argued that DVR playback of his prime-time originals has accelerated exponentially since first quarter 2006, when premiere episodes of The Shield were time-shifted by just 4 percent of the total audience. Fast-forward 15 months, and premiere episodes of the two newest FX dramas, Dirt and The Riches, are averaging playback rates of 23 percent and 21 percent of the shows' total viewership, respectively.

Landgraf grudgingly noted that in a DVR universe, advertisers are getting bonus impressions they aren't paying for, and it's not really fair. That said, there's not much anyone can do about it. It's a market that moves as a whole, and the dynamics are beyond the control of any individual network, he added. Even though some of us may have a more favorable negotiating currency than others, in terms of our brands and our ratings, there's still not a thing we can do about it. Fortunately, we have a dual revenue stream that lifts us, but yes, if you're buying cable, you're getting DVR viewing for free.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/rec..._id=1003577827