Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2406

Business Notes
Netflix Signs Dreamworks Animation To Streaming Deal
By Eric Savitz, Forbes.com - September 25th, 2011

At this point, Netflix will take good news wherever they can find it. Even from an ogre swamp.

Dreamworks Animation on Sunday said it has reached a deal to stream its films and TV specials on Netflix, the New York Times reports. The deal replaces a previous distribution agreement with Time Warner‘s HBO unit. Dreamworks produces the Madagascar and Shrek films, among others.

The story asserts that the deal is worth about $30 million per picture for DreamWorks – and that this is the first time a major Hollywood studio has chosen Web streaming over a pay TV channel.

Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told the Times that “this is a game-changing deal.”

Netflix will start streaming Dreamworks films in 2013.

This deal follows an agreement last week for Netflix to stream a variety of programming from TV networks owned by Discovery Communications; the company still has a long way to go to replace its expiring streaming deal with Starz.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavi...treaming-deal/

It's another typical case of Hollywood getting it wrong, then playing the woe is me card. from the bulk of reports I've read 3D is fading fast. TV manufactures and Hollywood bet big on 3D and lost. 3D is not the next big thing that will get people rushing into the stores or the theaters. I've been to my share of 3D movies and at this point won't waste my money on more. Avatar looked great because of the level of detail Cameron put into the planning. Taking a 30 year old+ movie like Star wars and trying to rejigger it to look good in 3D is an exercise in futility IMO.

TV Notes
Monday's Highlights
By Los Angeles Times' 'Show Tracker' Blog - September 25th, 2011

[ALL TIMES LISTED ARE PACIFIC TIME]

SERIES

Emeril's Table: In this new series, celebrated chef Emeril Lagasse sits at a table with five special diners to discuss food (11 a.m. Hallmark).

The Chew: Clinton Kelly, chef Michael Symon, Daphne Oz, Top Chef alumna Carla Hall and chef Mario Batali host this new food related show (Noon ABC).

Gossip Girl: The drama returns for a new season (8 p.m. KTLA).

Terra Nova: In 2149, a couple (Jason O'Mara and Shelley Conn) and their family are sent back in time to restart civilization from scratch in this new science fiction series (8 p.m. Fox).

Hart of Dixie: After being turned down for a fellowship a doctor decides to take a stranger up on his offer to work at his small Alabama medical practice in this new series (9 p.m. KTLA).

Mike & Molly: Molly (Emmy winner Melissa McCarthy), like most brides-to-be, is eager to start planning the wedding in the season premiere (9:30 p.m. CBS).

MOVIES

The Bling Ring: Two teenagers (Austin Butler, Yin Chang) find an unusual way to popularity: stealing clothes, shoes and jewelry from the rich and famous in this new fact-based drama. Jennifer Grey also stars (9 p.m. Lifetime).

SPORTS

Football: The Washington Redskins visit the Dallas Cowboys (5:30 p.m. ESPN).

Baseball: The Dodgers visit the Diamondbacks (6:30 p.m. FS Prime); the Texas Rangers visit the Angels (7 p.m. FSN).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...ighlights.html

TV Review
'Terra Nova' (Fox)
A Fierce Primordial Land Holds Mankind’s Only Hope
By Mike Hale, The New York Times - September 26th, 2011

Is Fox’s “Terra Nova,” with Steven Spielberg’s name at the top of its long list of executive producers, the best of a generally unremarkable bunch of new network shows this fall? Possibly, though to make that argument you need to work around the fact that it’s without doubt the squarest, most old-fashioned series to hit television since — well, since Mr. Spielberg’s “Falling Skies” on TNT this year.

While that show was like a less grim version of Mr. Spielberg’s film “War of the Worlds,” “Terra Nova” harks back to his “Jurassic Park” movies, with visual and thematic nods to other jungle tales like “Avatar” and “Lost.” This time it’s the humans who are miraculously inserted into the dinosaurs’ world, rather than the other way around.

The two-hour pilot on Monday night begins in a dystopian future, 38 years from now, when the atmosphere has turned poisonous, and young children have never seen white clouds or the moon. Lucky bands of colonists are being sent through a recently discovered “fracture in time” (like a Stargate but without the hieroglyphs) that deposits them 85 million years in the past, where they are starting human society over again in a stockaded agrarian settlement. Unlike our first set of ancestors, they live in tasteful housing units that wouldn’t be out of place in a pricey eco-resort, and this time around there’s a solid Caucasian majority.

Through the fracture comes a misfit family, the Shannons, led by Jim (Jason O’Mara of the American “Life on Mars”), who had to escape from prison to make the trip. This Time Family Robinson is the focal point of “Terra Nova,” and unfortunately we’ve seen it, and its issues, before: sullen, rebellious son; earnest, brainy daughter; button-cute younger daughter; headstrong but loving parents who look great in jungle-chic tight T-shirts.

The story that follows is lavishly produced by television standards, at a level of visual and technical sophistication that was partly responsible for the show’s taking nearly two years to land on the Fox schedule.

But it’s also so predictable that you might want to fast-forward through the domestic-drama scenes set inside the hilariously clean and orderly colony, stopping whenever you see something that looks like action or a dinosaur. Jim butts heads with the crusty but caring leader, Taylor (Stephen Lang, in a gentler version of his “Avatar” role). The son, Josh (Landon Liboiron), immediately falls in with the mildest, prettiest group of teenage rebels this side of a James Dean movie. The older daughter, Maddy (Naomi Scott), says embarrassingly nerdy things to a hunky young soldier.

Some clues to future mysteries are seeded in the pilot, but at this point they’re well in the background. It’s established early on that the colony exists in a separate “time stream” from the 21st century that the settlers leave, which should allow the writers to dance around the sort of questions that bedeviled “Lost” and are beginning to be a problem on “Fringe.”

Turning conventional, sentimental family soap opera into moving drama and taut suspense is a Spielberg hallmark, of course, but that happens only intermittently in the “Terra Nova” pilot, which was written by Craig Silverstein, Kelly Marcel, Brannon Braga and David Fury and directed by Alex Graves. It doesn’t help that despite a reportedly lavish budget, we don’t get to see an abundance of dinosaurs. The Australian jungle locations, meanwhile, are colorful but look artificial and too heavily computer generated compared with the more realistic Hawaiian scenes in “Lost.”

Still, several scenes involving dinosaur attacks are definitely longer, more complex and more suspenseful than the usual TV action sequences. It may be telling, though, that the best scene in the pilot is set not in Terra Nova but in the future that constitutes the show’s past. The Shannons’ illegal entry into the time fracture is genuinely tense and has an emotional punch; after it everything that happens is kind of a letdown. (The opening scene was even better in the version of the pilot Fox showed to critics in June, before eight minutes of scene-setting, explanatory material was added that makes it less moving and surprising.)

Mr. O’Mara, who acquitted himself well amid the gradual disintegration of “Life on Mars,” and Mr. Lang are more than adequate action heroes, and the British actress Shelley Conn brings a sexy, spunky intelligence to the role of the doctor mother, Elisabeth. The question is what they’ll be given to do going forward, beyond generic relationship material, domestic comedy and the occasional action set piece. The closing scene of the pilot — the Shannons, arm in arm, gazing up at a huge full moon out of “E.T.” — doesn’t necessarily bode well.

'TERRA NOVA'
Fox, Monday nights at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.

http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/art...ref=television

TV Review
'Hart of Dixie' (The CW)
Rachel Bilson stars as a driven doctor whose career is detoured to small-town Alabama
By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times - September 26th, 2011

What is it with surgeons and their cold, cold hearts? Last week, CBS sent a ghost to help Patrick Wilson's driven doc find his inner humanity on "A Gifted Man"; Monday, the CW sends the Manhattan-centric Dr. Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson) miles below the Mason-Dixon Line to find hers. ("Hart of Dixie," get it?)

The idea that a small town has a more charitable sense of community than a big city rings true mostly to big-city dwellers who have never lived in a small town, while the notion that the folks of Bluebell, Ala., are somehow more real than the folks of New York is a canard certain politicians have been enthusiastically shopping around for some time now.

Fortunately, "Hart of Dixie" creator Leila Gerstein and producers (and "O.C." veterans) Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are not asking you to think too hard or too much or at all really. "Hart of Dixie" is a stack of familiar scenarios stitched together to form a pretty if not terribly substantial quilt, of the sort Zoe encounters in Bluebell.

Where, of course, she never intended to end up. From the moment we meet her giving her medical school commencement speech, we understand that Zoe is Uptight and Driven. As she informs the kindly, older doctor who approaches her after the speech with a job offer in Alabama, she has a Plan. She will go with her med school boyfriend to New York, where she will win a coveted internship and become a cardio-thoracic surgeon just like her father, whom she will join in his practice.

Of course, we all know what happens to Driven Girls with Plans they get derailed. "Go into private practice and earn some bedside manner," the head of surgery tells her. Does she pause to wonder if this is because she is a woman? No, she does not; she applies cellphone to ear and calls Alabama to tell the ol' GP that she's a-comin'.

By bus no less, because apparently Bluebell exists in that part of Alabama not serviced by even a minor airport, and then by foot, because what is cuter than a woman in high heels dragging her luggage down a country road? Nothing! Nothing is cuter or more woebegone, and nothing else would enable Zoe to meet the town's handsome lawyer, Scott Porter (George Tucker), who gives her a lift in his pickup.

And so it goes. Zoe doing her Fish Out of Water thing and everyone else just as dutifully living up to stereotype. The no-nonsense assistant (Nancy Travis, who quickly decamped to "Last Man Standing"), Wade (Wilson Bethel), the rakish ne'er do-well; the fascist Dr. Brick Breeland (Tim Matheson) who shares Zoe's practice, and his Queen Bee daughter Lemon (Jaime King). Lemon is also engaged to the chivalrous Scott, who is Much Too Good For Her.

The only mildly interesting character (and apparently the only person of color in Bluebell) is the mayor, former football star Lavon Hayes (Cress Williams), but his part, in the pilot anyway, is small. JoBeth Williams also makes a couple of appearances as Zoe's nightmare mother who is, one assumes, the person to blame for all of Zoe's blind ambition. Which will be softened by a small Southern town that is lovely to look at but, like the show itself, is more about moving pieces around a set than telling a new or interesting story.

'HART OF DIXIE'
Monday nights at 9PM on The CW

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,4247258.story

TV Notes
Soap opera fans may be tough audience for 'The Chew'
By Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Friday, after 41 years, "All My Children" ended its run on ABC, going out with a flurry of return visits from favorite characters and tears from cast and fans.

On Monday, "The Chew" arrives, and the welcome could be chilly. The food-themed talk show puts on a happy face about its prospects, but soap fans threaten to shun any replacement for "AMC" and, in January, the also-canceled "One Life to Live." (A plan to move both shows online is still in the preliminary phase.)

"We hope that they will enjoy our show," Gordon Elliott, executive producer of "The Chew," says when asked about "All My Children" fans' disappointment. "We were asked to come and join the daytime lineup because daytime tastes have changed.

"Look, I understand completely how those viewers feel. I enjoyed those soaps for years, too. But I don't control the process that made that change. … I can just control what goes on our television show."

"The Chew" will be a party every day, suggests Elliott and his cast, who include co-hosts Clinton Kelly, Carla Hall, Daphne Oz, and chefs Mario Batali and Michael Symon.

"I think a lot of people tune in to soaps because they feel as though the cast are their friends," Kelly says. "What we can (do is) welcome viewers to hang out in the kitchen with us. We can't be soap operas to you, but we can be a group of people that you might want to hang out with."

Kelly is best known as a fashion stylist on TLC's "What Not to Wear," but before that he was a journalist who wrote about topics including food. He's also a passionate home cook who loves to throw dinner parties, he says.

In addition to Batali and Symon, who are "Iron Chefs" on the Food Network, "The Chew" also recruited fan-favorite Hall from Bravo's "Top Chef." Describing herself as "a recovering caterer," Hall promises that "The Chew" will feature plenty of cooking, "pulling somebody from the audience to actually cook with us."

She hopes much of the cooking will speak to busy people like herself.

"Fifteen minutes, 10 bucks, you can do a chicken, a sauce and a rice in a rice cooker, bada bing," she says.

Oz, the daughter of television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, takes a healthy approach to cooking and eating.

"Having had a lot of health information around me … I actually was about 180 pounds at 17," she says. Now, she's 'still dealing with the weight issues and dealing with trying to make healthy food a priority but not an obsession. But I want to be able to enjoy wonderful meals, and that's something that I think every red-blooded woman in America deals with on a daily basis."

"The Chew," which will air live at noon daily, is "a natural, living, breathing organism, which will present to America every day useful, relevant, honest and entertaining people and information that will give them something that they can use in their daily lives," Elliott says.

He promises a flexible format including "field pieces, extraordinary food, amazing food, food stories, the world through a food lens. A lot of the guests, the celebrity guests we'll have on every day," will talk food, too.

But, Oz adds, "We'll also have the best cake baker in Mississippi, so you get the local element there. We actually will be doing the kind of exploration that you might want to do in your own hometown."

Elliott goes on to rhapsodize about such ideas as nationwide "pie swaps" and about taking phone calls and using Skype to bring viewers into the conversation. Audience members and guests "will be coming and sitting at the table," Elliott says. "We'll be throwing food out at them."

As nice as that sounds, the idea is unlikely to pacify "All My Children" fans like the one (using a hunk of roast beef as an avatar) who posted on a Food Network blog:

"I'm not only boycotting ABC for canceling 'All My Children' but any chef/cook who dares to appear on this show will incur my wrath. The giant slab o' beef has spoken!"

'THE CHEW'
When: Premieres noon Monday
Where: ABC (More info: abc.com/thechew)

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainmen...56d6f4fad.html

Technology/TV Notes
Report: TV Station Newscasts Vulnerable As Viewers Turn To Smartphones For Local Info
By David Lieberman, Deadline.com - September 26th, 2011

The TV station business is becoming tougher by the day, but here's something that could make things painful: The broadcasters' biggest cash cow, their local newscasts, could lose lots of viewers as people discover that they can find the info they want more quickly and easily on mobile devices such as smartphones. That's one of the many sobering findings from a study that examines how people discover what's going on in their communities, out today from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Internet & American Life Project with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For some things TV matters most, for others newspapers and their websites are primary sources, and the internet is used for still other topics, says PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel. Newspapers satisfied the most needs with their coverage of issues including local government, taxation, and zoning matters but still ended up as the fourth-most-popular sources of news behind TV, word-of-mouth, and radio.

But here's the catch. Although 74% of adults watch TV newscasts at least once a week, viewers primarily tune in for just three things: weather, breaking news, and traffic. These might easily be replaced by mobile platforms that are even more accessible than TV, the report says. For weather, this may already be happening as roughly a third (32%) cite the internet as a primary source and 7% cite mobile devices. The report adds that for most of the local topics that require more deep reporting and analysis consumers already turn to platforms other than television. The phone survey of 2,251 adults was conducted in January and has a 2 percentage point margin of error.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/09/repo...or-local-info/

TV Notes
A hefty welcome for 'Mike & Molly'
The CBS sitcom was a moderate success its debut season
By Louisa Ada Seltzer, Media Life Magazine - September 26th, 2011

Any show that airs after CBS's "Two and a Half Men" has to be pretty happy right now. Last week in that timeslot the series premiere of "2 Broke Girls" became the highest-rated fall comedy bow in 10 years.

Tonight usual timeslot occupant "Mike & Molly" returns to the 9:30 p.m. spot for its second-season debut, while "Girls" relocates to its permanent 8:30 p.m. timeslot.

"Mike" drew respectable numbers in its first season, becoming one of just three new comedies to earn a second-season order while averaging a 3.0 adults 18-49 rating, according to Nielsen data analyzed by Horizon Media.

The show seems poised for even stronger numbers this season, the main reason being the overall strength of CBS's Monday night lineup, led by "Men" but also including "How I Met Your Mother," which posted the best debut in its seven-year history last week in the 8 p.m. timeslot.

"Men's" numbers will undoubtedly fall after the 10.7 for last week's much-hyped premiere, featuring the debut of Ashton Kutcher and the killing off of Charlie Sheen's character.

But even if it draws half as many viewers, the revamped show will still be stronger than it was last year at this time.

And "Mike" has another thing going for it.

Lead actress Melissa McCarthy, who plays an overweight teacher on the show, is TV's it girl of the moment.

She won the Emmy for best actress in a comedy last week and had a scene-stealing turn in this summer's surprise hit movie "Bridesmaids." That could inspire more people to check out the show this year.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/art...ike-Molly-.asp

TV Notes
Eddie Cibrian is a most mysterious 'Club' member
By Arienne Thompson, USA Today - September 26th, 2011

While his personal life has played out in the tabloids, Eddie Cibrian finds himself playing a man of mystery on NBC's ThePlayboy Club.

"He is a chameleon. He's very social, very liked by a lot of people. On the fa?ade, he seems to have it all," Cibrian says of his smooth-talking character, Nick Dalton, who appears to be playing both sides — good and bad. "He's very successful. He's dating the head Playboy bunny. He's one of the first keyholders at the Playboy Club, but he has a very mysterious past."

Part of that past includes ties to the Mob in Chicago, where the show films.

"During that time in Chicago, the Mob was extremely influential in everything. He was a part of that growing up, in some respects. We'll find out, without giving too much away, that he was raised by some members of the Mob," Cibrian says. "So, he's done some things in the past that he's not very proud of, and he's always been trying to break free from that. Now, he has an opportunity to actually really start doing good. You'll see he's going to start making a run for state's attorney, and that's going to bring him a lot of animosity from the underworld."

Cibrian, 38, who is married to country music star LeAnn Rimes, knows a little bit about animosity, as the couple are regular targets of the tabloids and paparazzi. They met on the set of a 2009 Lifetime television movie when they were both married to other people. He was married to Brandi Glanville; she to Dean Sheremet. The relationship that developed from the project led to highly publicized divorces from their spouses.

But Cibrian says the negative attention is still mystifying.

"We try to get away, and you just can't, unfortunately. It kind of follows you wherever you go; I'm not really sure why," he says of the interest in the couple, who wed in April.

Cibrian says he and Rimes try not to let the tabloids call the shots. "We still have to try to live our lives," he explains. "Once you let that affect the way you live, then people have won. So, do you not go to the beach anymore because somebody might be there to take a photo? … You just have to come to an acceptance that that's what it's going to be like — and it won't always be that way — but for now, that's what it is. You just have go about your life and make sure we are happy and that our family is happy. That's all we can really worry about."

For now, Cibrian's life is pretty regimented. Every weekend, he travels from Playboy's Chicago set back to Los Angeles to see Rimes, 29, and his two sons, Mason, 8, and Jake, 4, with Glanville.

But the prospect of success is worth the sacrifice for Cibrian, who got his start in the '90s as a bad-boy teen on the long-running soap The Young and the Restless.

"I've done many, many series, but this is the most high-profile show that I've been a part of. I've been doing this for so long now that I never listen to or pay attention to any hype or buzz. The nature of the TV business is very fickle and you don't know what is going to catch audience's attention," says the actor, who also appeared in TV's Third Watch, Invasion, CSI: Miami and Chase. "You just have to attach yourself to projects that, at the end of the day, whether it was a success or not, you were happy to be a part of it."

Of Playboy, he says, "This is so different than anything I've ever done, and it's different for TV, too, especially now. I really couldn't pass it up."

'THE PLAYBOY CLUB'
Mondays at 10PM on NBC

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/...lub/50548468/1

TV Review
‘Terra Nova’ full of dino-might
By Lori Rackl, Chicago Sun-Times

In the first episode of “Terra Nova,” Cmdr. Nathaniel Taylor welcomes the latest round of newcomers to his colony.

“Together, we are at the dawn of a new civilization,” Taylor says, pausing for dramatic effect. “No pressure.”

That same sarcastic quip can apply to Fox’s much-anticipated “Terra Nova,” the most ambitious of broadcast TV’s new scripted series, co-produced by Steven Spielberg.

Held back from its originally scheduled May debut for fine-tuning, “Terra Nova” finally takes off Monday with a two-hour premiere that cost somewhere in the universe of $15 million to make.

Featuring hungry dinosaurs, time travel and other whiz-bang visual effects, “Terra Nova” looks like it was made for the big screen, not the small one. It’s a futuristic tale set in the distant past, which holds mankind’s only hope for survival.

The story is part sci-fi, part adventure epic, part family drama. In other words, “Terra Nova” falls under one giant, T. rex-sized umbrella, suitable for ages 10 and up.

“It’s not just for a niche audience,” said Jason O’Mara (“Life on Mars”), whose acting chops shine as patriarch of the Shannons, one of the families chosen to travel 85 million years into the past to help settle the new colony of Terra Nova.

“It’s not ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ It’s not ‘Star Trek.’ This isn’t just about time travel and dinosaurs,” he said. “This kind of has that all-inclusive look and feel of a true Steven Spielberg production.”

If “Terra Nova’s” opening shot has the look and feel of a familiar place, that’s because it’s Chicago — a very grim Chicago in the year 2149. (Producers say they chose Chicago because “the Shannons are fighters,” and they wanted them to come from “a city with grit and a fighting spirit.”)

Looks like Mayor Daley’s efforts to make us a green city didn’t work out too well. Chicago 2149’s air is so polluted, people have to wear “re-breather” masks. Families are capped at four due to over-population. It’s a bleak, smoke-filled dystopia, where we learn that a piece of fresh fruit is a rare delicacy.

The planet is on its last legs. But scientists at Fermilab have discovered a way to send people to an alternate time stream, one that’s set in the Cretaceous period 85 million years ago.

The idea is to take intrepid settlers, such as the Shannons, on a one-way trip to this new, old world. The colonists are sent to Terra Nova to preserve the human race, to get a shot at a fresh start.

Science fiction isn’t the easiest sell on broadcast TV, which is why “Terra Nova” tries to keep it sci-fi lite.

“We’re asking the audience to make one leap of faith, make one buy: Believe that people could travel through time and end up here,” said showrunner and co-producer Rene Echevarria, whose lengthy list of credits includes “Medium” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

“Everything else that happens here is based on reality,” Echevarria added. “Nobody flies. Nobody has ESP. There are no aliens living with the dinosaurs.”

The Shannons — whose personal problems have them in need of their own fresh start — end up on the 10th pilgrimage to Terra Nova.

They arrive at what seems like utopia.

“Are those clouds?” their 5-year-old daughter Zoe asks, marveling at the unpolluted sky. “They’re so white.”

Making the most of the Queensland, Australia, scenery in which it’s shot, “Terra Nova” is full of gushing waterfalls, verdant hills and so much fresh air that newcomers’ lungs suffer from oxygen overload.

The colony is run by the charismatic Taylor, ably played by Spielberg’s first choice, Stephen Lang (“Avatar”).

Clues start dropping that the commander might rule with too much of an iron fist, and not everyone is on Team Taylor.

The Shannons are discovering that people still misbehave whether they’re in 22nd century Chicago or the Cretaceous era. Maybe Terra Nova isn’t the paradise they thought it was. Maybe it’s just as dangerous inside the colony’s fence — a fence designed to keep out the dinosaurs.

Ah yes, the dinosaurs. Let’s face it: They’re a big draw.

“They’re in every episode,” Echevarria promised. “They’re usually not the story; they’re a complication in the story. They tend to come along at the worst possible time.”

Spielberg’s trusty “Jurassic Park” paleontologist Jack Horner consulted on the realistic-looking, primeval beasts that give the show welcome bursts of adrenaline.

While the CGI dinosaurs look plenty scary from your living-room couch, it was a different story on the set, where actors had to use a lot of imagination.

“There’s something worse than a tennis ball on the end of a stick,” O’Mara said, citing the prop that usually fills in for an effect to come later. “It’s an Australian visual effects assistant running around [a field] with a cardboard dinosaur head cut off on the end of a stick while wearing shorts and sandals . . . and you’re supposed to look intimidated and scared to death.”

Between dinosaur escapades, time travel and the obligatory exposition of a mind-bender of a story, “Terra Nova” packed quite a bit into its two-hour premiere. The characters may have suffered as a result. So far, they come off a little stock: rebellious teenage boy, hot-headed but heroic cop, patient wife, power-hungry leader. Now that the premise of the show has been established, it would be nice to see more shades of gray and less black and white.

As for future plotlines, there’s certainly plenty of fertile ground to mine when the backdrop is a new world.

“We did an early episode about the first murder in Terra Nova,” Echevarria said. “We don’t really have courts or a prison. How are we going to deal with this? What does justice look like?”

But don’t worry about the philosophical stuff getting too heavy.

“Regardless of how human the stories become,” O’Mara said, “we’ll always have a healthy dose of dinos.”

'TERRA NOVA'
7 to 9 p.m. (Central Time) Monday on WFLD-Channel 32 (Fox)
Rating: ★★★ (out of four)

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainmen...ino-might.html

TV Review
'Hart of Dixie': City slicker changes tune
By David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle

There's not much new or, for that matter, believable about "Hart of Dixie," the comedy-drama premiering Monday on the CW, right after "Gossip Girl." But it's so naive and innocent in its all but total lack of originality, you feel kind of mean knocking it.

The show is about an overly committed young medical student, Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson, "The O.C."), who gets passed over for a thoracic surgery internship because no matter how brilliant and skilled she is, she has yet to learn that her patients are human beings. On the day of her graduation, she is approached by an elderly physician from a small Alabama town who invites her to share his practice. She politely declines, but of course, given the title of the show, we know she'll end up there anyway.

In "Dixie," we get a lot of sassy city girl in a small rural town, an icy reception from another local doctor, wary townsfolk who begin to be won over by the new doctor and, of course, the new doc gradually awakening to the notion that there's more to life than Manolo Blahniks and a career as a hot-shot city doctor. And there's a resident hunk, played by Scott Porter ("Friday Night Lights") who, of course, has been to the big city, so we know he puts his right shoe on his right foot and all. He happens to have another girlfriend, a mean-girl Southern belle who prances around in hoop skirts, but we pretty much know where that's going once he and Dr. Hart "meet cute."

There's more than a little resemblance to the Reese Witherspoon film "Sweet Home Alabama," although, in that film, Witherspoon's character left home, got citified, and came back home with all her highfalutin ways. Other than that, it was all country mouse versus city mouse, just like "Hart of Dixie."

The show is cozy, predictable, comfortable and, like a good ole' huntin' dog, not in need of serious housebreaking.

'HART OF DIXIE'
Comedy-drama, 9 p.m. Monday on The CW

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...DDE61L76QD.DTL

TV Notes
'Amazing Race' kicks off another season of travel porn
By Laura Bly, USA Today - September 26th, 2011

Ten years after launching the reality show that has inspired - or infuriated - millions of globetrekkers, Kiwi host Phil Keoghan is still peddling wanderlust on CBS' The Amazing Race.

The latest installment feaures four new countries (Belgium, Denmark, Indonesia and Malawi) and some travel-savvy competitors. Among them: Father and son sailors Laurence and Zac Sunderland (Zac was the youngest person to sail around the world solo, at age 17) and flight attendants Ron Zeitz and Bill Smith, who have 35 years of flying experience between them. ("They're not necessarily the fittest people, but certainly they've got knowledge of getting through airports and how travel works," Keoghan told TV Guide.)

survived Sunday's premiere, which took competitors from Los Angeles to Taipei, Taiwan for, among other location-specific challenges, a bit of dragonboat racing. And, in one stroke of suspiciously good luck,

As I noted in an earlier look at the Emmy award-winning show, I've got mixed emotions about its impact and message to world-be world travelers. I agree with Gadling's Melanie Renzulli that the show "sends the wrong signal that it is okay to speed through airports and train stations and villages," and "there's a certain hollow materialism to counting countries and treating cities like personal stats."

But the show has clearly sparked wanderlust: Being a featured location in 2005 "was like winning the lottery," Einar Gustavsson of the Iceland Tourist Board told me. The tourist office logged hundreds of new information requests a day after the show aired, and it worked with Icelandair on an eight-day "Trace the Race" package.The Amazing Race "is a lot more real than people give it credit for," adds Edward Hasbrouck, a veteran 'round-the-world traveler who blogs about the show."No matter how hokey the tasks, there's an underlying reality of what it's like to be on your own without the buffer of a tour," he says, "and it confirms the enduring hook of a trip around the world."

But it has clearly sparked bookings from entranced viewers: Being a featured location in 2005 "was like winning the lottery," Einar Gustavsson of the Iceland Tourist Board told me.

The Amazing Race "is a lot more real than people give it credit for," adds Edward Hasbrouck, a veteran 'round-the-world traveler who blogs about the show.

"No matter how hokey the tasks, there's an underlying reality of what it's like to be on your own without the buffer of a tour," he says, "and it confirms the enduring hook of a trip around the world."

THE AMAZING RACE
Sundays at 8PM ET/PT on CBS

http://travel.usatoday.com/destinati...-porn/548838/1

Technology/TV Notes
Fox Agrees To Movie And TV Streaming Deal With Amazon Prime
By David Lieberman, Deadline.com - September 26th, 2011

The news comes from a posting on the Amazon Prime site by the online retail company's CEO Jeff Bezos. Here's what he says:

I have big news for Amazon Prime members - we've just signed a deal with FOX to add a broad selection of movies and TV shows to our unlimited instant streaming service later this fall. The new additions from the FOX library include 24, Arrested Development, The X-Files, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and - available on digital video for the first time - The Wonder Years. We now have deals with CBS, NBCUniversal, Sony, and Warner Bros, and adding FOX will bring the total to more than 11,000 movies and TV shows available for unlimited instant streaming.

Since launching earlier this year, we have now doubled the number of titles available in Prime instant videos, and there's still more to come. Prime membership remains $79 a year, and of course features our unlimited free two-day shipping on millions of products. Prime is one of the best values anywhere.

Prime instant videos can be played on more than 300 HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/09/fox-...l-with-amazon/

That article didnt really give the specifics though.

The current plan is to first do star wars: ep I the phantom menace in 3D for feb 2012....then if its successful they will do another each year with ep II, ep III etc. as long as they deem them boxoffice wins....if not they will stop.

So they are starting off with a 12 year old movie not a 30+ year old movie.

Oh i guess im in the minority that love 3D.
Watching the star wars blus on the 2D to 3D conversion setting on the tv & alot of scenes really do look cool....obviously not as good as true 3D but is fun to see.

Technology Notes
Transforming the TV
By Rick Manning, Kentucky Courier-Journal

When you’re ready to build that home theater you’ve always dreamed about, I have the perfect television centerpiece. Panasonic’s high-definition HD plasma TV checks in with a 103-inch diagonal image.

The TV was the big attraction in Panasonic’s booth last week at CEDIA, the annual trade show in Indianapolis for home-theater designers and installers. The TV will display 3D video from Blu-ray discs or other sources. It weighs about 400 pounds and comes with a $65,000 price tag.

Too steep for your budget? Sony showed a new video projector coming in December that will cost a mere $25,000. It can display a picture that’s about twice the size of the Panasonic TV.

The Sony box is the first projector or TV to display images at 4096 x 2160 pixels. That’s about four times the pixel count of the image from a Blu-ray disc and 20 times the resolution of a standard DVD. It’s in essence the same resolution used by Sony’s professional digital movie cameras and in commercial movie theaters that have digital projectors.

But here’s the rub: There’s no 4K source material available for consumers. Unless you have the same equipment Sony uses to shoot feature films like “Straw Dogs,” you won’t get the benefit of that super-sharp video.

Sony says it wants to explore extending the resolution standard for Blu-ray discs. And, as one Sony rep put it, “You have to start somewhere.”

Some of the other new products that were generating buzz at CEDIA:

— A new soundbar from Atlantic Technology that produces deep and rich-sounding audio from a pair of 4-inch drivers and no subwoofer. Atlantic’s developers said the magic is in the 42-inch-long cabinet and digital surround processing. The H-PAS Powerbar 235 will be available this fall for $599.

— The Premier Elite set top box from TiVo mixes broadcast and Internet content into a single interface. Netflix and YouTube are merged seamlessly with NBC and ESPN in TiVo’s on-screen grid. The box holds up to 300 hours of recordings; with four tuners, you can watch one show while recording four others. It’s $499.

— Musiclites will turn any standard light socket into a loudspeaker. The device combines a Sylvania LED lightbulb with a small wireless speaker that picks up sound from a transmitter plugged into a computer, smart phone or TV. A remote control will dim the lights and adjust the volume. A starter kit with a transmitter and one bulb costs $350; adding a second bulb for stereo costs another $250.

http://www.courier-journal.com/artic...ransforming-TV

The 2011-2012 Season
After One Week, Which TV Shows Look Like Hits and Which Are on Death Watch?
By Josef Adalian, New York Magazine's 'Vulture' Blog

We're only a week into the new TV season, but it's not too soon to start making snap judgments about which new shows look like hits, and which look like they're not long for the airwaves. Forecasting success from a week or two of numbers can be tricky, as viewers sometimes check out early episodes of new shows and then bail. But the fact is, while networks always like to preach patience, sometimes viewers' Nielsen verdicts are so undeniable that attention must be paid (this is why Lone Star and My Generation were pulled within days of their 2010 premieres). Here's what Vulture has learned so far about the 2011-12 TV season:

Up All Night is doing surprisingly well and will almost certainly be picked up for more episodes. Last week's premiere behind America's Got Talent was impressive, but the show's big test came this week when it debuted in its regular Wednesday time slot opposite monstrous competition: The X Factor, The Middle and Survivor. Not only did the show hold up, but it also actually finished No. 2 in some key demo groups, such as women under 35. It also did better in adults 18-49 than several established 8 p.m. NBC series averaged last season, including Community and Chuck. There's already speculation NBC might shift Up to Thursdays at some point, but there's good reason to scuttle that plan: 8 p.m. comedy anchors are hard to come by, and NBC might want to try to build a new night of comedy on Wednesdays. Other shows off to encouraging starts: ABC's Revenge and CBS's Unforgettable.

America is ready for indie stars headlining network comedies. While we're not prepared just yet to declare New Girl or 2 Broke Girls smash hits, the fact that so many ordinary Americans under 50 took the time to check out series starring such alternative darlings as Zooey Deschanel and Kat Dennings indicates that, at the very least, we're a nation ready for unconventional sitcom leads. This would be a good time for Brooklyn hipster stand-up comics out there to start bugging their agents about TV work. Sure, you'll probably have to dilute your edgy comedy, but you'll get to keep your trademark haircut and possibly your speech patterns!

Also: Remember when everyone was pronouncing the death of comedy a few seasons ago? This week's debuts, plus the massive season three debut of Modern Family, boffo numbers for The Big Bang Theory and solid returns for The Middle and Raising Hope means we can declare the sitcom sufficiently resurrected. If only the trend could touch NBC's Community and Parks and Recreation, both of which stumbled out of the gate Thursday with tune-in of around 4 million viewers.

Free Agents and H8R are already dead, even if no decisions about their fates have been made. The NBC comedy dropped dramatically from Up All Night both times it aired; NBC will pull the plug sooner rather than later. As for H8R, an episode of Dora the Explorer on Nick Jr. tied it in viewers 18-34 this week. To be fair, maybe the babysitter/stoner demo is larger than we thought, but there's no denying it says something when adults would rather watch a kiddie cartoon than a Mario Lopez reality show. CW could easily flip H8R and its lead-out, America's Next Top Model, in order to limit the damage H8R does to Model. Longer term, it's hard to see why the CW would give this show more time. Also in trouble: The Playboy Club, which opened very weakly. However, NBC has lots of problems and may want to be a little patient with this show, perhaps even trying it on another night.

CBS is the Benjamin Button of broadcast networks its shows seem to get more virile with age. How I Met Your Mother, NCIS and NCIS: LA all premiered to bigger numbers this fall than in 2010; the first two have been on the air for at least six seasons. And while Two and a Half Men had an unprecedented "marketing" campaign behind it (thanks, Charlie!), it's still astounding that a series so aged could attract such a massive audience, even if much of the extra tune-in was likely due to rubberneckers who will likely disappear in the next few weeks,

Some key veteran series are off to rocky starts, including two of NBC's biggest tentpoles. Thanks to a very weak lead-in from Harry's Law (a show that seems destined to move back to Mondays or to Fridays or off the air altogether), Law & Order: SVU finished third in its 10 p.m. Wednesday slot and earned its lowest premiere ratings ever. Tuesday's The Biggest Loser also tanked, earning its least-seen premiere yet. Both shows had introduced major cast changes, but worse, both had been overexposed by past NBC regimes, which used them to plug holes throughout its schedule. The good news is, both series could easily bounce back once viewers check out the new competition. NBC also has to be thrilled with how well The Office held up Thursday, giving the network at least one successful anchor on the very important night.

Over at ABC, meanwhile, the network can't be happy with the 25%-plus declines for Dancing with the Stars. The show still has a big overall audience, but its average ratings for adults age 18-49 have fallen from huge to simply "big." That's a tough pill for ABC to swallow, since it needs DWTS as strong as possible in order to help launch the dozen or so new shows it plans to roll out this season. The good news is that DWTS could grow as the competition heats up; what's more, the right casting means the show can easily rebound in the spring. Meanwhile, Fox has to be bummed that Glee dropped by double digits with its decline and actually drew a smaller audience than lead-out New Girl. That said, the show is still strong overall (particularly for an 8 p.m. series) and is providing a great platform to launch Deschanel's half-hour.

Simon Cowell is not as big of a star as he thinks he is. Or, at the very least, he's not enough of a celeb to guarantee a big tune-in. There's no getting around the fact that most industry insiders expected much bigger things from The X Factor, which averaged about 12.5 million viewers over four hours this week that's about half the tune-in for American Idol, with fewer young adult viewers than watched the debut of The Voice. The good news for Fox is that viewers don't seem to be rejecting the show altogether: Night two of its two-night premiere held on to almost all of the debut audience. What's more, if X can hold on to this audience in the weeks ahead, Fox will still have a very successful series on its hand, one that gives it a solid anchor on two nights of the week. The downside: Thanks in part to Mr. Cowell's big salary, and lavish production costs, the profitability for X may be severely limited.

One mini-lesson related to this: Brand names don't always translate into ratings. Pre-season tracking showed Charlie's Angels had the highest audience awareness levels of any new show this season, and yet Thursday's premiere barely managed a 2 rating with viewers under 50. The iconic brand at the center of The Playboy Club didn't prevent the NBC show from falling flat in its premiere. And two seasons in, a reboot of the TV classic Hawaii Five-0 remains nothing more than a modest performer for CBS. By contrast, ABC's Revenge has no stars and a generic name, yet it attracted bigger under-50 tune-in than both Angels and Five-0.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment..._canceled.html

TV Notes
Crime, Sex, Politics and Regular Folks
By Neil Tesser, The New York Times - September 25th, 2011

Scene: The original Playboy Club, on Walton near Michigan Avenue, circa 1961, painstakingly resurrected at the sprawling Cinespace soundstage in Douglas Park 50 years later.

This sybarite's delight, with its cottontailed waitresses and simmering sexuality, is the setting for The Playboy Club, which had its premiere Monday night on WMAQ. It is a place where, in a different era, you would have found the philandering husband of The Good Wife, seen Sundays on WBBM. It probably would not be a hangout for Tom Kane, the Chicago mayor with the degenerative brain disorder in the coming Starz series Boss.

Neither Mike nor Molly, the rotund, blue-collar title characters of last year's breakout ABC comedy, would fit in, even if the actress playing Molly, Melissa McCarthy, were toting the Emmy Award she picked up last Sunday. Nor would the hardscrabble Gallagher family of Shameless, a British import transferred to the Lawndale neighborhood by Showtime. They probably couldn't even scrape up tip money for the bunny delivering their cocktails.

In the world of prime-time television, Chicago is home to rough-and-tumble politics, street-smart cops and robbers, and the sexiest nightclub of its time, as well as to plenty of down-to-earth folks who make you wonder how that nightclub arose in their midst.

That may not be the way Chicagoans see themselves, but it describes the city's image as viewed through the lens of modern-day television. Most Americans get their idea of the nation's cities from what they see on TV. The robust crop of series currently set here fits neatly into prevailing opinions of who we are, at least in the minds of television executives in Los Angeles and New York.

Walter J. Podrazik, co-author of 10 books, including Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television, said that Chicago often stands in for flyover country, using the slightly pejorative term for everything between the East and West Coasts.

By setting a show in Chicago, they're acknowledging that something exists in the middle, he said. Chicago is where you come for real people,' the salt-of-the-earth types who face believable situations in believable ways. This is not where you would set Dynasty' or Gossip Girl' or The Real Houswives.'

A show like Mike & Molly belongs to that tradition of Chicago television, Mr. Podrazik said. But there's also the image of Chicago as a crime mecca, which was established by the 1930s. He cited a link between The Untouchables, which ran from 1959 to 1963, and last year's short-lived police drama The Chicago Code. Meanwhile, a show like The Good Wife reminds viewers that in Chicago, politics is a blood sport, he said.

It may be tempting to see a new series like Boss as reacting to current events and trends. The show appears at a time of political upheaval in Chicago, with a new mayor as well as changes in county government. But that is a happy accident. The program was in development months before Mayor Richard M. Daley announced he was stepping down.

In fact, decisions to set a show in Chicago usually reflect more long-term impressions. The city's historic reputation for political high jinks helped place Boss here, said Carmi Zlotnik, managing director of the Starz network, who strenuously denied any similarity between the lead character and either Mr. Daley or Mr. Daley's father.

The rich history of the ward system, the factionalized interests, the different layers of society all thrown into this most American of cities' Chicago has a personality of its own, Mr. Zlotnik said.

The current love of all things '60s, not to mention those bunny costumes, has given The Playboy Club the most buzz. Among shows set in Chicago, it is an outlier in its emphasis on beautiful people and licentious behavior. But so was the real Playboy Club, said Chad Hodge, the show's creator and executive producer.

It was the most glamorous, sexy place on the planet, said Mr. Hodge, a Highland Park native who graduated from Northwestern in 1999. This show is researched and accurate, but the tone is very much a perfected memory. He augments the accuracy with appearances by Chicago jazz musicians like the trumpet star Corey Wilkes. The early Playboy Clubs were, in fact, employment havens for jazzmen.

Filming for The Playboy Club and Boss takes place in Chicago. But even the other Chicago-based shows, all of which film in Los Angeles, spend a fair amount of time in town, gathering exterior shots that root the action in local streets and architecture, as the producers strive to make the city itself an integral part of the story line.

The city is definitely a character on our show, said Andrew Stearn, executive producer of Shameless. He said he had considered other cities but found the setting he wanted on the South Side, where families still live in row houses.

Chicago feels like a confined space, Mr. Stearn said. You need to feel a little claustrophobic for our show, he added.

He also said he felt he had met the program's dysfunctional characters while working as a producer for the long-running drama E.R., which was set in Chicago. The Gallaghers are the kind of family that would have gone into County General, Mr. Stearn said, referring to the fictional E.R. medical facility.

Mr. Zlotnik of Starz said that despite the title and plot of Boss, setting it in Chicago had not been automatic. We looked at other cities some of which had slightly better tax rebates but when we thought of the city as a character, it had to be Chicago, with all the architecture, the neighborhoods, the ethnicity, the texture, he said.

For Mark Roberts, the creator and executive producer of Mike & Molly, it is less about the city as a character and more about the character of the city. I wanted to get some people on TV that you're not seeing there any more, people who were a little more realistic, Mr. Roberts said. Chicago had the right tone. It's a big city that has the friendliness of a smaller town.

To Mr. Podrazik, the television historian, that seems only logical. I don't think it's an insult to say that in Chicago some people weigh more than others, and some have lost a little more hair, Mr. Podrazik said. So if you're doing that show, why not set it where people like that are not so out of place?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us...ref=television

TV Review
Dino-Snore
By James Poniewozik, TIME - October 3rd, 2011 (Issue)

A year and a half in the making and costing a reported $20 million, the pilot of Terra Nova has been through so many overhauls and management changes that its credits boast 12 executive producers. What's surprising is that none of them is a 5-year-old boy--because that's who I imagine scribbling the pitch, with crayon illustrations:

I want to make a TV show about the future! It will have lasers and guns and computers and time travel! And but ALSO they are living in a jungle, and the bad people want to take them over! There's an army guy and a policeman, and they catch the bad guys! AND!!! DINOSAURS!!!

For Terra Nova is not just any TV show. It is, quite nearly, every TV show. It is, yes, a sci-fi-dinosaur-cop drama set in the future and the past. It is also a family drama, medical drama, conspiracy thriller, frontier western and teen soap. Though it does not have a 5-year-old creator, it has the next best thing: Steven Spielberg, who does not run the show day to day but lent it ideas and the gee-whizitude of Jurassic Park. What Terra Nova could use, however, is more of the character richness of Spielberg classics like E.T.

The year is 2149, which, with creative math, the opening titles call "the dawn of the 22nd century." The overpopulated, polluted earth looks like the Apple "1984" Super Bowl commercial.

People trudge under a brown sky wearing respirators and are limited by law to two kids per family. The only escape is to the Cretaceous Period, through a portal in space-time that scientists accidentally ripped open. (How? By doing science things. Terra Nova's technical rigor can become very nebulous when it needs to.) Through this one-way door, humans are building a space-age colony in dinosaur times. It's in an "alternate time stream," thus heading off any messiness about altering the future. Even 85 million years in the past, you cannot escape the lessons of Lost.

Enter the Shannons, who get a shot at making a "pilgrimage" because mom Elisabeth (Shelley Conn) is a medical whiz. After a geologic age of exposition, she, husband Jim (Jason O'Mara, left) and three kids (their youngest daughter smuggled in) arrive in the past, a modern Stone Age family. They find a military compound run by the strict but affable Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang of Avatar), where oxygen is plentiful, the people are industrious (though the teens get up to PG-rated hijinks) and the CGI dinos are strategically deployed. We meet a troop of brachiosaurs in a slushy whoosh of Spielbergian wonder music, but other species soon prove less cuddly. The real menace, though, is the Sixers--members of the sixth pilgrimage who have gone rogue--and ex-cop Jim is soon deputized in the colony's defense.

The contrast between the rich visuals and flat characters is striking. Jim is strong and willing to break the rules for his family. Elisabeth is more or less a saint. Teen son Josh (Landon Liboiron) is a bit of a rebel like his old man. Older sis Maddy (Naomi Scott) is a science nerd, which is, like, so embarrassing when she ends up looking smart in front of a cute boy! (Five-year-old little sis Zoe, played by Alana Mansour, is adorable luggage.) The Sixers are generic Road Warrior types who speak zingerese ("Welcome to paradise"). The humans here are by far the least impressive species.

Maybe it's the result of too many cooks and rewrites. Maybe someone decided that family entertainment must mean dull, familiar characters (contra The Waltons or, for that matter, The Simpsons). It's a shame, because a show with Terra Nova's near guaranteed buzz could have had cover to tell a sophisticated story about the beginnings of society.

Instead, it's cinematic, but in the sense that it feels built from spare tent-pole-movie parts. The pilot ends with a very generic family staring at a spectacular moon (which was much closer 85 million years ago). I wound up feeling about Terra Nova's premiere the same way I felt about the smog-ruined earth that opens it: It really is an amazing world. I just wish they'd given it to someone else.

'TERRA NOVA'
Two-hour premiere Monday Sept. 26 at 8PM ET/PT on Fox

http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/...4392-2,00.html

Here's a question: What would draw a bigger box office: releasing the original Star Wars trilogy in hamfisted 3D, or re-releasing the original, unaltered 1977, 1980, and 1983 theatrical versions of the films in theaters?

I know which I'd rather see.

On Monday September 26, 2011, 10:10 am

Amazon has signed a deal with Fox that will allow the former to stream Fox productions — including 24, Arrested Development, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and even The Wonder Years — via its Amazon Prime service.

With the deal, Fox joins the ranks of CBS , NBCUniversal , Sony , and Warner Bros. , all of which have signed content-licensing deals with Amazon. Fox’s contribution is expected to boost Amazon’s total library to 11,000 movies and TV shows, all available for unlimited instant streaming. Amazon has doubled the number of titles available on Prime since launching earlier this year.

A Prime membership costs $79 a year, and also includes access to free two-day shipping on select products. Prime videos can be played on more than 300 HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes, according to CEO Jeff Bezos. The news comes just as Prime’s main competitor, Netflix , announces new deals with DreamWorks and Discovery . Netflix’s streaming-only service costs users $7.99 a month for unlimited access to online content.

The New York Times reported Sunday that DreamWorks Animation and Netflix had signed a streaming rights deal for DWA films and TV specials, reportedly worth $30 million per movie to DWA. The deal essentially replaces the animation studio’s film output pact with HBO , which would have expired in 2014 had HBO not let DWA out of its contract two years early.

In Hollywood, the new deal is being touted as the first time a major content provider has chosen Web streaming over pay TV. “We are really starting to see a long-term road map of where the industry is headed,” DWA chief Jeffrey Katzenberg told the New York Times. “This is a game-changing deal.”

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos also notes that, with the deal, “You’re seeing power moving back into the hands of content creators. When a company like DreamWorks ends a long-running pay TV deal — when a new buyer in the space steps up — that’s a really interesting landscape shift.”

Netflix will begin streaming DWA movies in 2013.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Netfli....html?x=0&.v=1

I'd rather see the 77 film remade so Han Solo blows away a half dozen of those unarmed freaks in the cantina before sitting down with Greedo - just to show him he's a bad ass.

^^^ I'm only doing it for the eventual payout in women (chicks dig bloggers) and booze. Why else would I kill myself updating this turkey of an internet thread?

Nielsen Overnights (18-49)
ABC's 'Pan Am' takes off in premiere
New drama averages a solid 3.1 rating among 18-49s
By Toni Fitzgerald, Media Life Magazine - September 26th, 2011

The series premiere of ABC's new 1960s airline drama "Pan Am" neither soared nor crashed last night.

The new show averaged a very respectable 3.1 adults 18-49 rating in the 10 p.m. timeslot, according to Nielsen overnights, holding 100 percent of lead-in "Desperate Housewives'" rating and up slightly from the 2.9 rating pulled by "Brothers & Sisters" in the same timeslot last year.

That put it about in the middle of the pack of new show debuts during premiere week. Though it was well behind new hits "2 Broke Girls," "New Girl" and "The X Factor," it did have the second-best bow for a 10 p.m. drama.

It will be more telling to see whether "Pan's" numbers go appreciably up or down next week, but it didn't lose too much audience from its first to its second half hour, going from a 3.2 to a 3.0, a good sign.

"Housewives" did, as many expected, return to its lowest-ever premiere rating in its final season, a 3.1 at 9 p.m. That was off nearly 30 percent from last year.

It prevailed in the timeslot battle against CBS's similarly female-skewing "The Good Wife," which CBS moved from Tuesdays.

"Wife" averaged a 2.2 according to early numbers, but that rating is subject to change as a small number of CBS affiliates had an NFL runover that delayed the network's entire lineup by more than 15 minutes and thus skewed the entire night's numbers, as fast affiliate numbers measure timeslot and not actual program data.

Fox had the night's top two shows in 18-49s, the 8 p.m. "The Simpsons" (3.8, up 3 percent over last year) and 9 p.m. "Family Guy" (4.1, down 9 percent).

As usual, "Sunday Night Football" boosted NBC to a dominant win on the night with a 5.9 average overnight rating and a 15 share. Fox was second at 4.4/11, CBS third at 2.5/6, ABC fourth at 2.4/6, Univision fifth at 1.3/3 and Telemundo sixth at 0.3/1.

As a reminder, all ratings are based on live-plus-same-day DVR playback. Seven-day DVR data won't be available for several weeks. Forty-one percent of Nielsen households have DVRs.

Also, ratings for NBC's NFL coverage are approximate for the same reason that CBS's ratings are.

Fox started the night in the lead with a 6.2 at 7 p.m. for NFL overrun and "The OT," while CBS and NBC tied for second at 2.6, CBS for "60 Minutes" and NBC for "Football Night in America." ABC was fourth with a 1.3 for "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," Univision fifth with a 0.8 for "Los Tigres del Norte y Amigos" and Telemundo sixth with a 0.2 for "Videos Asombrosos" and the start of "El Albañil."

NBC moved to first at 8 p.m. with a 6.7 for NFL pregame and the start of "Sunday Night Football," followed by Fox with a 3.4 for "Simpsons" (3.8) and "The Cleveland Show" (3.1). CBS was third with a 3.0 for "The Amazing Race," ABC fourth with a 2.3 for more "Home Edition," Univision fifth with a 1.5 for "Mira Quien Baila" and Telemundo sixth with another hour of "Albañil."

At 9 p.m. NBC was first with a 7.4 for more football, with Fox second with a 3.5 for "Guy" (4.1) and "American Dad" (3.0). ABC was third with a 3.1 for "Housewives," CBS fourth with a 2.2 for "Wife," Univision fifth with a 1.6 for more "Baila" and Telemundo sixth with a 0.4 for the first hour of the movie "El Arracadas."

NBC was first again at 10 p.m. with a 7.0 for more football, followed by ABC with a 3.1 for "Pan." CBS was third with a 2.2 for "CSI: Miami," Univision fourth with a 1.2 for "Sal y Pimienta" and Telemundo fifth with a 0.4 for the second half of its movie.

Among households, NBC finished first for the night with an 8.9 average overnight rating and a 14 share. CBS was second at 6.9/11, ABC third at 5.6/9, Fox fourth at 5.5/8, Univision fifth at 1.6/3 and Telemundo sixth at 0.3/1.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/art...n-premiere.asp

SUNDAY's fast affiliate overnight prime-time ratings -and what they mean- have been posted on Analyst Marc Berman's Media INsight's Blog.

September 26, 2011

By BRIAN STELTER

LOS ANGELES Splashy premieres, extravagant budgets, yearlong advertising campaigns and mind-blowing special effects: the summer movie season may be over but Hollywood's all-or-nothing mentality has shifted to the small screen.

This fall the television networks are trying to lure jaded viewers with high-concept, big-budget shows like Terra Nova, which has computer-generated dinosaurs trying to kill off human characters, and The X Factor, Simon Cowell's manic sequel to American Idol.

To do that, they are spending years on development and marketing, and in some cases releasing trailers for new shows almost a year before they actually appear on TV. Terra Nova, which premieres Monday night, took two years to develop, a timeline more typical for the film industry than for television. The X Factor, also on Fox, was first promoted last Thanksgiving and was finally introduced last week.

It's true at other networks too. NBC's Smash, a drama set backstage at a Broadway musical, was first previewed in May, and it will not have its premiere until February.

Clearly, the hunt is on for blockbuster shows, the kind that will, as Kevin Reilly, the president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting, put it, get the hooks in deep enough. That's why Fox promoted a $5 million prize for The X Factor and budgeted $15 million to $20 million for the two-hour pilot episode of "Terra Nova.

The potential rewards are huge. According to industry estimates, The X Factor is charging up to $400,000 per 30-second commercial, an exceptionally high rate. Idol, which is nine years old and is the most popular entertainment show on American television, gets about $475,000.

But the risks are also substantial. That point was underscored when The X Factor attracted about 12.5 million viewers in its debut strong by almost any standards, but below the sky-high expectations for the singing competition.

Mr. Reilly said the network's willingness to swing for the fences this fall was in part an effort to avoid the malaise of stuff that comes out in a clump at the start of each new television season. If history is any guide, 70 percent of the shows that pop up this month and next (the new season officially started last Monday) will not survive long enough for a second season. The viewer just sort of shrugs each fall, Mr. Reilly said, and that's disappointing and expensive.

The alternative might be more expensive the judges on The X Factor command eight-figure salaries and the dinosaurs on Terra Nova don't come cheap either but it may improve TV's batting average. Marquee shows tend to be nurtured more carefully and promoted more aggressively, improving the odds that viewers will tune in at least once. The shows can be sold more easily overseas and to digital platforms like Netflix, making it easier to recoup the costs of production and turn a profit.

Steve Sternberg, an independent television analyst, said that CBS and NBC were playing it relatively safe this season, but that ABC was taking risks with the retro drama Pan Am, the fairy tale-inspired Once Upon a Time, and the soapy Hamptons-set Revenge, none of which are currently like anything else on broadcast TV.

When Paul Lee, the president of entertainment for ABC, took over the network's ailing prime-time schedule last year, he signaled that he wanted to empower the producers of individual shows to experiment.

Big failures come from that, and you have to be ready to fall on your face, he told reporters last winter. But brand-defining television comes from that. I encourage that; we don't want cookie-cutter television.

Risk-taking paid off for ABC in 2004 when it introduced Lost, the sprawling science-fiction show. But since then, it has spent heavily on shows like the time-bending mystery Flash Forward that have not attracted viewers.

A risk-taking attitude was evident in the halls of the Fox network on a recent visit, where marketers were furiously finishing Web ads for The X Factor, teasers for Terra Nova and billboards for a new sitcom called New Girl, which got high ratings in its premiere on Tuesday night.

Networks spend about $10 million on average to market a new show, but Fox is spending roughly twice that much to market The X Factor, in part because it will take up three to four hours in prime time each week. Fox flew representatives from almost 200 of its local stations to Los Angeles for a daylong conference with Mr. Cowell, who flew in from London, to persuade the stations to promote The X Factor on the air. And many have, sending news crews to audition sites for live reports and running extra commercials.

Fox is betting that viewers will tolerate both The X Factor in the fall and American Idol in the winter and spring. If X Factor' works at a hit level which we hope it will and we think it will it would probably make us untouchable for a while, said Mike Darnell, the reality TV chief for Fox. He marveled at the do-or-die ad campaign: I haven't seen any of my shows, except for Idol,' on the sides of buses in a decade.

Thinking like a movie marketer, Mr. Earley decided to run the first ad for The X Factor during a Thanksgiving Day football game, 10 months before the premiere; an eight-minute preview ran during a football game earlier this month.

In some ways, The X Factor takes care of its own marketing, since it has Mr. Cowell, one of the most polarizing figures in entertainment. Terra Nova is a harder sell because it has no A-list stars. The show's development was plagued by problems writer turnover, delays in rendering the special effects, even monsoon rains on the set in Australia. (One of the show's many producers, Steven Spielberg, insisted that it not feature the same kinds of dinosaurs as his famous film Jurassic Park, lest the two franchises look too similar.)

Asked about panic moments in the production, Mr. Reilly cracked, I've had many. As recently as a month ago, the dinosaurs looked a lot like comic book renderings.

Now, Mr. Reilly said, the effects are top-notch for television the kind that are expected by viewers who have splurged for big-screen, high-definition TV sets. But he sounded a note of caution, one that reflected the ever-more-complex competition for viewers' attention spans. The viewer is just measuring those against what they've seen in the movies, he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/bu...gewanted=print

Tech/Business Notes
Hollywood downloads a post-DVD future
The movie studio business model is poised for its biggest shift in years as Hollywood turns to Internet delivery as the only way to boost home entertainment revenues
By Ben Fritz, Los Angeles Times - September 25th, 2011

Across Hollywood, a quiet revolution is brewing that's about to transform living rooms around the world.

After desperate attempts to prop up the industry's once-thriving DVD business, studio executives now believe the only hope of turning around a 40% decline in home entertainment revenue lies in rapidly accelerating the delivery of movies over the Internet.

In the next few years, the growing number of consumers with Internet-connected televisions, tablets and smartphones will face a dizzying array of options designed to make digital movie consumption a lot more convenient and to entice users to spend more money.

With films that can be accessed on any digital device, downloaded as iPhone apps or shared on Facebook as easily as a photo, it may be the biggest shift in Hollywood's business model since the explosion of the DVD in the late 1990s.

"The days of baby steps on the Internet are over," said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures' home entertainment unit. "It's now critical that we experiment as much as possible and determine how to build a vibrant market for collecting digital movies."

Though the online movie business has been growing at a healthy clip for the last few years, driven in large part by the majority of Netflix's 24 million U.S. subscribers who stream video, it hasn't come close to making up for the rapid drop in DVD revenue. Insiders attribute that to the lack of selection thousands of movies available on disc still can't be found online and to the complexity of downloading a film on one device and watching it on another.

Studios are eager to change that by offering more movies in easier ways, but there's not yet a consensus on how. As a result, people who connect their TVs to the Internet or buy iPads will face a vastly expanded but potentially confusing menu of options to access films from different sources in various ways.

"What you have now is a lot of people pursuing a lot of different paths to figure out how to reverse the trends we've been seeing," Paramount Pictures Vice Chairman Rob Moore said.

One thing is certain: People who like inexpensive movie rentals are going to have to get used to waiting longer than they do now. Studios are beginning to use the Internet to slice up the market so that people who are willing to buy a movie or pay more to rent it can get it sooner.

Four studios have already experimented with so-called premium video on demand, in which consumers pay $30 to rent a movie only two months after it debuts in theaters. Recently Sony Pictures began selling some movies online two weeks before they become available on DVD.

At the same time, some studios that make Netflix and kiosk rental company Redbox wait until 28 days after a DVD goes on sale before they can offer it for rent want to lengthen that delay. They believe such a move will encourage consumers to pay more to buy or rent a movie digitally.

By next year, consumers may have to wait two months or longer after a movie goes on sale before they can get it in a Redbox kiosk or Netflix envelope. Those who want to stream films online for a flat monthly fee from Netflix, Amazon or Blockbuster will in many cases wait years until those titles have completed their runs on cable networks like HBO.

"I see movies going down a path over time from premium sell-through all the way to the lowest-price rentals," said Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. "If we get digital right, consumers are going to get what they're willing to pay for."

Until now, most people have been largely uninterested in buying movies online, no matter the price or timing. Purchasing digitally typically means downloading a file to a single device, less convenient than a disc that can be moved from a bedroom to a minivan to a portable DVD player. Research firm IHS Screen Digest estimates that Internet movie purchases will be flat this year compared to last, while online rentals will surge 41%.

Hollywood's solution is to put movies in the "cloud," creating virtual copies that people can access, after purchase, from any Internet-connected device. An initiative called UltraViolet will launch this year, when Blu-ray discs for films like "Green Lantern" and "The Smurfs" will come with free cloud copies. By next year, most online and DVD purchases will connect to UltraViolet's "virtual locker," and Apple's iTunes is expected to have a similar offering.

To encourage people to embrace the cloud, studios are even considering offering digital copies of DVDs they already own for a nominal fee.

"Historically when you bought a DVD you were really just buying the physical copy," said Edward Lichty, general manager of Wal-Mart Stores' digital service Vudu. "It's a profound development to say you own the movie itself and it can't be broken or lost."

Studios are rethinking not only how to sell movies online but where. The next frontier, many agree, is Facebook. Some have already started renting movies to people who click "like," but many executives hope to do more. People could use social networks to watch films with friends, share clips and play social games related to movies. They could also get recommendations based on the "likes" of people on their friends list.

Similarly, many in the entertainment industry are hoping that smartphones and tablets will be more than just another screen for watching movies. They're looking for ways to create movie-specific apps, as Warner Bros. has already done for titles like "Inception," and to use the devices as "second screens" with additional content such as director commentaries.

"On these new platforms we have to forget the way we have thought about movies as 'transactions' and think about them more as 'experiences,'" Lionsgate President Steve Beeks said.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles, the need for Hollywood to make the great digital leap was evident as customers searched for bargains at Rocket Video's going-out-of-business sale.

A mecca for L.A. cinephiles for more than 30 years, Rocket offered tough-to-find art-house and foreign films. But like giant chain Blockbuster, which shuttered more than 1,750 stores in the last year alone, Rocket saw revenue plummet as customers flocked to less expensive and on-demand alternatives.

"I used to buy a lot of DVDs, but since two years ago I've just been using Netflix and iTunes," said Katherine Canipe, a 26-year-old actress clutching a copy of "Pet Sematary" that she had just plucked off the shelf. "I hate to see places like this going away, but I know I'm part of the problem."

As he sold off the store's more than 50,000 DVDs and VHS tapes, longtime store manager Jeff Miller remembered the days when Rocket was packed on Friday and Saturday nights with young people stocking up for a weekend of movie watching.

"It just became obvious we weren't making as much as we used to and there was a shift to an older crowd," he said.

Now the remaining customers have been asking Miller what they should do.

"I don't know what to tell them," the self-professed technophobe admitted. "But recently I've been thinking even I have to figure out how to get movies on the Internet."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,6516807.story

Nielsen/Business Notes
Conan's Ratings Are Down, but He's Huge Online
The movie studio business model is poised for its biggest shift in years as Hollywood turns to Internet delivery as the only way to boost home entertainment revenues
By Brian Steinberg, Advertising Age - September 26th, 2011

This week Turner Broadcasting will be out selling Conan O'Brien with a new pitch: Forget the TV ratings, look at his online popularity.

It's a natural angle, considering the intensifying scrutiny around the weakened TV ratings-and the "make-goods" that have come with them-for Mr. O'Brien's late-night "Conan" show on TBS. Whether advertisers will buy into it, considering the original pitch was that he was worth at least as much as his late-night counterparts on broadcast, remains to be seen.

The strategy smacks of the one long employed by the CW. With his lanky frame and signature red hair, Conan O'Brien looks nothing like Blake Lively, the comely actress who plays buxom blonde socialite Serena van der Woodsen on CW's "Gossip Girl." And yet, Turner argues his show, like hers, skews toward younger audiences that don't necessarily make the boob-tube their first choice when it comes to sampling video entertainment.

Like "Vampire Diaries" and "Gossip Girl," two CW programs whose buzz outmatches their traditional TV viewership, "Conan" has a loyal following in the younger part of the audience advertisers covet, said Steve Koonin, president-Turner Entertainment Networks-people aged 18 to 34. That concentrated youth view is what makes the show compelling, no matter the overall ratings, he said. "We're never going to make 'Conan' into a big, broad multi-demographic hit, nor are we ever going to try," he said. "It's not why we wanted this guy, and, quite frankly, that's not why he wanted us."

Turner has reason to focus attention on Mr. O'Brien's pull in other media. When "Conan" launched last November after NBC cut him loose and returned Jay Leno to its marquee late-night spot, it represented the latest front in the late-night wars-and an aggressive step for any cable network. Turner, which is sinking a reported $10 million-plus annually into a crowded field, moved boldly to claim what it thought was its due: higher-than-expected ad rates that it insisted should be on par with what marketers paid for NBC's "Tonight" and CBS's "Late Show." In its early outreach to ad buyers, Turner sought between $30,000 and $40,000 for a 30-second spot in "Conan"-Mr. Letterman's and Mr. Leno's programs typically secure between $30,000 and $45,000, according to ad buyers-and guaranteed that Mr. O'Brien's ratings among audiences aged 18 to 49 would match those of Mr. Letterman and run about 15% below those of Mr. Leno.

Yet after seeing mammoth initial ratings due to the NBC controversy, Mr. O'Brien's TV viewership has begun to settle. While his first show scored around 4.2 million viewers, nearly 3.3 million of which were between 18 and 49, according to Nielsen, his average since then has been about 1.06 million overall, with approximately 769,000 in the 18-49 category. The summer has proven more challenging. Mr. O'Brien's average 18-49 audience was surpassed in August overall by every rival except Chelsea Handler on NBC Universal's E!

To compensate, Turner has offered "Conan" advertisers make-goods, or additional advertising time, and has adjusted rates for the second year of Mr. O'Brien's show. "We all would like and anticipate our ratings to be higher, and we're working on this," said Linda Yaccarino, exec VP-chief operating officer, Turner Entertainment ad sales-marketing and acquisitions. "Stay tuned."

Meantime, she said, advertisers should be aware that Mr. O'Brien's show lures hard-to-reach young adults via online and social media, not only on TV. "TV is only a fraction of it," she said.

That argument is one likely to emerge from other media outlets, all of which are committing more resources to new distribution methods such as streaming video, downloadable clips and social-media postings. "Obviously, the bulk of our revenue comes from linear television, and DVR viewing is a significant number," said Jeff Ross, executive producer of "Conan." "Now, we would be dumb to ignore the digital side, which in the last year has grown for us significantly. We have a pretty large investment, and we have a lot of people working on it. We're just trying to do both at the same time."

Turner is making the case that Mr. O'Brien's combined online and TV audience reaches 20 million people between 18 and 49, and telling sponsors they recall ad messages a few percentage points better than is the norm for people who watch late-night talk shows. The average time spent viewing "Conan" content on his website, TeamCoco.com, has increased 30% since the show launched, and the average time spent per visitor on the site has increased 103%, according to Turner. On Facebook Mr. O'Brien has 1.7 million "friends," according to the network-more, as it turns out, than his average TV viewership in his first year on the air so far.

Turner's effort, said Ms. Yaccarino, comes after receiving a significant number of requests in advance of upfront negotiations for ad plans that involved both TV and digital advertising. Every sponsor that committed to "Conan" in the upfront purchased both TV and digital inventory, she said; TBS sold out all of the opportunities it scheduled for marketers to be placed into the "Conan" show itself. AT&T, General Motors' Chevrolet and Kia have returned for a "Conan" presence, while Dr Pepper, Ford, Lowe's and Wendy's have signed up for new berths.

AT&T likes "Conan" for the connection it brings to a young audience, said Mark Wright, VP-media services and sponsorships at AT&T. While declining to comment on the show's TV ratings, he suggested there was an allure to "the extensive and extremely loyal online fan base that is engaged in content across multiple mediums."

TBS is in the midst of rebuilding itself into a network aimed at younger comedy fans who already know the outlet as a place where they can watch "Family Guy" and other edgy fare, said Mr. Koonin. He believes the addition of "Big Bang Theory," a popular CBS sitcom, before "Conan" on the schedule could build a better lead in for the show. "We look at this as a long-term play."

http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/...online/230031/

from the pricing,-duh dept by Mike Masnick

Mon, Sep 26th 2011

Back in April, when DirecTV officially announced its plan to let people see movies for $30 at home, we were not alone in suggesting the price was ridiculously high, and were somewhat shocked to see theaters complaining that they'd never be able to compete. Looks like our thoughts on the price turned out to be exactly right. As a few people have sent in, DirecTV has admitted that there's been very little uptake of the $30 movies, and he flat out admits that the price is too high:

The service is part of an attempt by studios to harness pay-TV as they seek new ways to sell movies and counter shrinking DVD sales. Few customers will purchase the premium rentals unless the quality of the movies improves and the price comes down, White said in an interview.

They're priced too high for consumers, White said. We didn't choose that price, but that's where the studios forced us to be.

Of course, the studios forced that price because they're petrified of pissing off the theater owners (who were already pissed off), because the big studios still think that the "movie business" is defined solely and completely by how well a film does in the theaters on its opening weekend. The theater owners, at the same time, don't want to have to compete and actually improve the quality of their service -- so they whine and complain any time the studios do anything to make accessing content outside of the theaters any easier.

The end result, then, is just a big question of why anyone bothered at all with this plan. It made no sense for anyone involved. If you're going to offer video on demand to consumers, offer them a reasonable product at a reasonable price or don't bother.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...vie-home.shtml