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TV Review
'GCB': It's not 'Desperate' enough
By David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle

With Sunday's premiere of "GCB," ABC adds another show to its prime time schedule about bitchy women.

Really, ABC? Really?

ABC isn't alone in thinking that women can't be funny or interesting without being bitchy - Kat Dennings slings nasty one-liners along with bad food as a waitress on "2 Broke Girls," for example. But ABC seems to be more stuck on grown-up mean girls than other networks.

In addition to Ana Gasteyer's character and her neighbors in "Suburgatory," Madeleine Stowe slithers magnificently on the wildly addictive "Revenge" and no one wants to run into "Once Upon a Time's" Lara Parrilla in a dark alley - or maybe even a well-lighted one, for that matter.

Maybe it's something like pre-partum jitters on the part of ABC as the series finale of "Desperate Housewives" nears. That might explain placing "GCB" on Sunday nights: It's like these nasty, big-haired Texas women are warming up in some mean-girl bullpen.

The show is based on Kim Gatlin's book, "Good Christian Bitches," but the network couldn't use that as the title, so we get the initials instead. Actually, there was an interim title, "Good Christian Belles," but that didn't really seem to work either. Now we can go about mixing up the initials of this show the way people do when they speak of Dick Wolf's "Law & Order: SUV."

I mean "SVU."

The trouble is that "GCB" may be someone's idea of Christian but it's not really good - just so-so - and one reason it's not good is that it's not really very bitchy - just annoying.

Gatlin co-created the show with Robert Harling, who has solid credentials as the author of the play "Steel Magnolias." That play and the resulting Herbert Ross film celebrated women standing up for themselves, which is more or less what Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb) does when she flees California after her husband dies in a car crash with another woman's face in his crotch and millions of dollars he's scammed in a Ponzi scheme in a satchel. Well, at least he wasn't texting.

Against her better instincts, Amanda and her two kids, Will (Colton Shires) and Laura (Lauran Irion), return to the mansion of her overbearing mother, Gigi (Annie Potts) in Dallas, where all of Amanda's former high school classmates still remember her as queen of mean.

The grown-up GCBs have plenty of reasons to make Amanda's life miserable. Carlene Cockburn (Kristin Chenoweth) was tortured by Amanda in school. Amanda stole and married Cricket Caruth-Reilly's (Miriam Shor) boyfriend. And Sharon Peacham (Jennifer Aspen) lost her chance for a major beauty pageant crown after Amanda launched a malicious rumor campaign against her.

As the daughter of a cafeteria worker, Heather Cruz (Marisol Nichols), wasn't part of the mean girl crowd in school, but now she's parlayed her ability to pick up on the latest dirt on everyone in town into a lucrative real estate career.

But Amanda has changed a lot in the 20 years since high school. She's not only been sober for 18 months, she's turned several pages in her life and value system. She is aghast when Gigi drags them all to church, saying she's encouraged her kids to develop their own spiritual beliefs, but the show's premise is that Amanda is now much more "Christian" than the bitchy regular church attendees who want to make her life miserable. Amanda's challenge is to get a job, maintain her distance from her mother and the "GCBs" and get her family back on its feet.

There are some funny lines here and there, but overall, the show lacks satirical teeth. If you're going to do this kind of comedy, take a page from "Suburgatory" and pull out a few more stops. Grounding the characters too deeply in whatever passes for reality on TV doesn't necessarily dampen their comedic potential, but in this case, that seems to be the result.

You also have to wonder where the show is going. In the first episode, the GCBs make their first attempt to get back at Amanda, forcing her to resurrect some of her own mean girl tactics to defend herself. Is that what's going to happen week after week? If so, we have to wonder if that's enough to make us come back.

The performances are adequate and two are better than that. Potts is always a welcome addition to a TV comedy, thanks to her skill at delivering Southern-fried deadpan ("God often speaks to me through Christian Dior"). Bibb ("Popular," "Iron Man"), who bears an appealing resemblance to the young Tuesday Weld, is someone you definitely want to root for.

Chenoweth hasn't always found her footing in TV, although she came close in her guest-star story arcs in "Glee." Harling and his writers try to tap into that sassy self-focus and may get there with time.

One aspect of the pilot that may want you to stick a fork in your ears is the country rock soundtrack that runs through virtually every moment of the show, an apparent attempt to make the show seem more fun that it really is.

"GCB" will follow "Desperate Housewives" for now, which potentially gives it a nice ratings boost as it tries to get off the ground. On the other hand, the show's scheduling proximity will draw inevitable comparisons to "Housewives" and, truth to tell, Wisteria Lane beats bougainvillea every time.


GCB
10 p.m. Sun. on ABC.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...DD1S1NCPD5.DTL

TV Notes
Cable's New Pack of Girls, Trying on the Woman Thing
By Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times - Mar. 4, 2012


The cast of the new HBO series, Girls: from far left, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet,
Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke. (Photo: Chad Batka for The New York Times)

Wasn't this supposed to be the television season of the young woman? It was only last September when the arrival of network sitcoms like Whitney, 2 Broke Girls and New Girl heralded the possibility that the urban exploits of women in their 20s, once largely invisible to television programmers, would become a genre as established as the gross-out crime procedural. But while those comedies found their followings, they also took criticism for their crassness, their fixations on punch lines about lady parts and their oddly inauthentic depictions of the women at the heart of those shows.

All of which has created an exciting if potentially perilous opportunity for Lena Dunham and her new HBO comedy, Girls. It comes two years after Ms. Dunham's film debut, Tiny Furniture, a comedy-drama that she wrote, directed and starred in, about a recent college graduate adrift in Manhattan. That film made a splash at the South by Southwest festival with its honesty and unsentimental sense of humor, and she has channeled that spirit into Girls.

Ms. Dunham, 25, the show's creator, plays Hannah, a post-college Brooklynite with big if uncertain ambitions, a perpetual lack of money and a coterie of friends with personal lives as jumbled and complicated as her own: the headstrong Jessa (played by her Tiny Furniture co-star Jemima Kirke), the seemingly perfect Marnie (Allison Williams) and the innocent Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet of Mad Men and Parenthood).

Girls, which will be shown at South by Southwest this month before making its HBO debut on April 15, arrives with the imprimatur of Judd Apatow, the Knocked Up director and Bridesmaids producer, who serves as an executive producer on the series. And it is unafraid to use its cable-television freedom to the fullest degree: its characters talk frankly about their relationships, their bodies and sex, while having plenty of it on screen, in ways that are even more awkward and bittersweet than audiences saw on HBO's Sex and the City. (That touchstone series gets name checked in the pilot episode of Girls.) The series is bound to be scrutinized, as much for its depictions of Brooklyn as for its blunt candor about youth and young womanhood.

Ms. Dunham; Jenni Konner, an executive producer; and the Girls co-stars Ms. Kirke, Ms. Williams and Ms. Mamet gathered recently to talk about their work on the show and the issues it raises. These are excerpts from that conversation.

Generation DIY

LENA DUNHAM The movie that made me want to make a movie was Funny Ha Ha by Andrew Bujalski. I felt like I was spying. I didn't know you were allowed to take a conversation that feels stilted and people are saying what they mean but sort of not. I really like all the new network girl shows. But someone once described the attitude of women on network TV as Check it out, guys: ladies be talkin'! And I think we were really careful about anything that rung false.

JENNI KONNER That's why I responded to Tiny Furniture. Judd makes the joke that I was the distributor of Tiny Furniture. I was such a huge fan that I would give out copies to everyone, like: You need to watch this movie. It's very important.

School's Out Forever

JEMIMA KIRKE My post-college experience was a bit not disastrous, but now I've said it, so it was. It's like you're on a boat, and you're used to the waves, and then you get off, and land feels really weird.

ALLISON WILLIAMS I graduated in 2010. That summer I floundered furiously and quickly. Like, All right, this is go time. I shot this video called Mad Men Theme Song ...With a Twist, and among the people who saw it was Judd Apatow, in the process of casting this show.

ZOSIA MAMET I didn't go to college, so I cannot say that I had a post-college experience. Having been in the working world since I was 17 and watching all my dearest friends fall off the face of the earth when college ended, I read the pilot and loved it, greatly. I was shooting a movie in upstate New York, and I ended up making a tape in a barn, literally, on a Sunday and got cast off of my tape.

KIRKE I got pregnant while we were making Tiny Furniture.

WILLIAMS I didn't know that.

KIRKE I didn't know it either. [Laughs] Then I was really pregnant, lying on the bed, and Lena's playing with my hair and rubbing my belly and she's like, Will you be in my TV show? At first I said no way. I was like: I'm going to be fat. I can't do that. But after some talking I realized this was no different than doing Tiny Furniture with her.

That's What She Said

DUNHAM The stuff that I'm naturally drawn to writing is stuff I've felt but haven't seen. I'd seen Gossip Girl, which was an aspirational high school story. And Sex and the City, which I grew up on and completely respect, was about women who had figured out the career, figured out their friendships and were really trying to lock the love thing down. To me there's this time of life where you don't even know what you want, and you don't know how to want it. It's much more abstract and wandering.

WILLIAMS Every time we would get sent scripts, I'd be reading it in my room and be like, [gasps] I can't believe that just happened.

KIRKE I read it, and I was like, You little thief. Because she would take things that we'd done or said, like, last week.

DUNHAM Half the time when I'm talking about something else I'm just trying to maneuver into a conversation about sex. Especially in your early 20s sex is a playground in which you're working out a lot of your insecurities, and people are in some ways in the most honest in those dynamics, but you also can't reveal yourself to people.

KIRKE Obviously we're not making a documentary here, and even if we were, it would be hard to make it honest. No, it's not Sex and the City, where it's a total lie. That's four gay men sitting around talking.

DUNHAM Every woman I know is such a bundle of contradictions. It was so important to me that there could be a girl who was confident but sex made her incredibly anxious, or a girl who respected herself but was using sex to push boundaries to understand herself better.

KONNER We have a lot of sex on the show and most of it is bad. We are trying to make truthful sex scenes about women who are young and inexperienced, with men who are young and inexperienced, and what that looks like.

WILLIAMS By the way, as an actor, it's a lot easier to film awkward sex scenes than really sexy ones.

DUNHAM Usually the sex scenes end up being some kind of character revelation or relationship shift. We've never had a scene that's like: We just want to show you how well these people are getting along. [Laughs]

Self-Exposure

DUNHAM I have a body that is outside of the Hollywood norm, and it's not the kind of body I ever thought would be seen naked on television. Part of Tiny Furniture is this video that I made at college, in my bathing suit, in the campus fountain. I met a lot of different girls and some men who told me that seeing me deal with my body that way on screen was very comforting for them. When people say it's brave, which is a compliment I appreciate, I say it's brave to do something that scares you, like bungee jump or fight a lion. There are so many things that do scare me and that has never been one of them.

The One About Abortion

DUNHAM Our big writers' room joke remains: Someone goes to the bathroom, comes back and you go, The abortion's back in. There was always an idea that we wanted to deal with it. We just didn't know whether we wanted to go through with it. Whether we wanted a more ambiguous ending.

KONNER I don't think we're scared about writing about abortion. We want to know someone when they have one. When you do see it depicted in fiction, it is very dramatic, which of course it is. But there's also this generation, which is like, Well, of course I'm not going to have a baby, I'm 23.

DUNHAM The abortion story, for us, was bringing up these girls' feelings about the possibility of being mothers, about their sexual health. It was much more about the feelings it elicited than the actual experiences of going through with it.

Other Girls' on the Block

KONNER I think it's good for the world that there are those other shows, and there's room for all of them. So what if they're using vagina as a punch line 100 times? Good. When I did a show on ABC, standards and practices would let us say penis but not vagina. The explanation was that it was too rough of a word.

DUNHAM People think of women in Hollywood as a zero-sum game. They got the shows so we can't have them. And nobody ever thinks, Hey, there's already three dude shows on TV, we're not going to be able to fit another. I'm just happy when there are women who are running things, and it helps that I really like those shows. I watch New Girl every single week.

Judd Apatow in the Ladies' Room

KIRKE He's like Charlie on Charlie's Angels. He calls in and you're like, Hi, Charlie.

DUNHAM If we went through the episodes and said, This is us, this is Judd, you would be shocked. He pushes for emotional moments. He wrote me this e-mail once that said, Why are you so afraid to write romance? Romance is hope.

KONNER He is responsible for some of that stuff in Bridesmaids, but the truth is he pushes everything to its furthest point, whether it is an emotional moment or a [penis] joke.

These Friends of Mine

MAMET We're friends, and we genuinely do love each other.

DUNHAM Whenever I read that in an article about actresses on a show, I always believe that they're plotting each other's murders. But that's my own problem. For me, being able to sit down in the director's chair and put my head on someone's shoulder is really lovely.

WILLIAMS It gets very intense. We shot a 16-hour day of yelling at each other. Between takes we would stroke each other and say sorry.

DUNHAM Allison and I would sometimes do an exercise on set, where we would do the sitcom version of the scene, where she'd bop her head and be, like, OMG, ladies!

WILLIAMS What's snappening?

DUNHAM That's our catch phrase that will never actually appear in the show.

Are We Not Women?

DUNHAM We were talking about how funny it would be if the show ran for 15 years, and everyone had kids and husbands and real jobs and they were still called Girls.

KONNER I went to Sarah Lawrence, so I'm sure I'll get a lot of e-mail about it, but I think we're trying to say something by calling them girls.

DUNHAM I don't think they would self-identify as women yet. I think if someone were to refer to them as a woman it would create a slight shock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/ar...ref=television

March 5, 2012
By SAM SCHECHNER And SHALINI RAMACHANDRAN

It was dubbed "TV Everywhere." But for many TV viewers, it has had trouble going anywhere.

Nearly three years after Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. kicked off a drive to make cable programming available online for cable subscribers, the idea of TV Everywhere remains mired in technical holdups, slow deal-making and disputes over who will control TV customers in the future.

Now some media executives say the effort, aimed at insulating cable television against a rising tide of cheap online video alternatives, risks getting left behinda concern that found voice last week at two different industry conferences.

more~
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...897421420.html

TV Notes
MundoFox makes KWHY-TV Channel 22 its Los Angeles home
By Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times - Mar. 4, 2012

Fox has struck a deal with Meruelo Group's KWHY-TV Channel 22 in Los Angeles to be the flagship station for the Spanish-language network it is launching later this fall.

MundoFox, a joint venture between Fox and Columbia broadcaster RCN Television, also unveiled deals with TV stations in more than 10 cities including Miami. It still does not have an outlet in New York City, one of the largest Latino markets, but plans to at some point.

With plans to program 16 hours a day, MundoFox will bet on a mix of telenovelas and teleseries, which are soap opera-type shows aimed at a more male audience.

Overall, MundoFox hopes to differentiate itself from Univision and Telemundo by targeting primarily younger Latino viewers, as opposed to Latinos of all ages.

We intend to be different in a way that the Fox network was different, said Hernan Lopez, president and chief executive of Fox International Channels, adding that MundoFox shows will strive to be edgier and bolder.

Many of the shows on MundoFox will be imports that air elsewhere around the globe. The network will also carry sports and reality programs.

Although Fox parent News Corp. owns an independent station in Los Angeles, KCOP-TV Channel 13, that in theory could have been a home for MundoFox, Lopez said the network went with KWHY because it already carries Spanish-language programming and thus is known to that audience.

While the content from MundoFox will cut into hours available for KWHY's own content, KWHY President Xavier Gutierrez said the vision of the station is to be Los Angeles' local Spanish-language channel. The station, which now has two hours of local news during the week and one hour on weekends, wants to expand, Gutierrez said.

The move conforms with an overall media market trend that seeks to capitalize upon the nation's growing Latino population, now estimated to be more than 50 million. Univision is the dominant player, followed by Telemundo. ESPN, Univision and Fox all have sports channels for Latino viewers as well. Last month Comcast Corp. announced two new cable networks looking to tap the growing market.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ente...eles-home.html

Did anyone happen to catch the Cartier commercial on The Good Wife tonight?

Now THAT'S how you get people to stop fast-forwarding through commercials.

It also showed during The Celebrity Apprentice. I spent a while trying to figure out what it was for and then I started to realize how long it went on. Cool, though.

If it's not on your DVR, you can view it here


http://www.odyssee.cartier.us/

Disclaimer, I'm not posting this as a commercial for Cartier, but as a "This is incredible, and you just have to see it" comment.

TV Notes
Monday's Highlights: 'The Lying Game' on ABC Family
By Los Angeles Times' 'Show Tracker' Blog - Mar. 4, 2011

[ALL TIMES LISTED ARE PACIFIC TIME]

IT'S WEDDING DAY on the season finale of The Lying Game." With Charisma Carpenter, Gerardo Davila and Adrian Pasdar.

SERIES

The Voice: Jewel, Lionel Richie, Alanis Morissette, Robin Thicke, Kenneth Babyface Edmonds, Ne-Yo, Kelly Clarkson and Miranda Lambert help the judges choose which vocalists will advance in this new episode (8 p.m. NBC).

Pretty Little Liars: The girls (Lucy Hale, Troian Bellisario, Ashley Benson, Shay Mitchell) may get the answers they've been seeking in this new episode (8 and 10 p.m. ABC Family).

2 Broke Girls: With winter approaching, Max and Caroline (Kat Dennings, Beth Behrs) realize that the horse can no longer live in the backyard in this new episode (8:30 p.m. CBS).

Bizarre Foods America: In the new episode Charleston, Andrew visits South Carolina's second-largest city, where he goes on a perilous voyage on a clamming boat, samples some amazing barbecue and meets a young chef who is single-handedly trying to keep old food traditions alive (9 p.m. Travel).

Smash: Karen uses her acting talent when she joins Dev (Raza Jaffrey) at a high-powered government party, and the drama between Michael and Julia (Will Chase, Debra Messing) heats up in this new episode (9 p.m. NBC).

MOVIES

Blue-Eyed Butcher: This 2012 docudrama tells the story of Susan Wright (Sara Paxton), a Houston wife and mother of two who seemed to be living the perfect life ... until her husband (Justin Bruening) is found dead and buried in the backyard. She admits to fatally stabbing him but claims that he abused her for years and she was acting in self-defense. Lisa Edelstein also stars (8 and 10 p.m. Lifetime).

SPORTS

Women's college basketball: Atlantic 10 Tournament, Final (2 p.m. ESPN2).

College basketball: CAA Tournament, Final (4 p.m. ESPN); MAAC Tournament, Final (4 p.m. ESPN2); West Coast Tournament, Final (6 p.m. ESPN); Southern Conference Tournament, Final (6 p.m. ESPN2).

Pro basketball: The Clippers visit the Minnesota Timberwolves (5 p.m. FSN); the Indiana Pacers visit the Chicago Bulls (5 p.m. WGN A).

Hockey: The Edmonton Oilers visit the Ducks (7 p.m. FS Prime).

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...bc-family.html

TV Notes
'The Voice' prepares to send singers into battle
By Bill Keveney, USA Today - Mar. 5, 2012

It's now every singer for himself or herself on The Voice.

On Monday, the second-season NBC competition enters its "battle rounds" phase (8 ET/PT), which pits singer against singer by way of duets. Over the next four weeks, half the singers from each of the four coaches' 12-member teams will be eliminated, leaving 24 finalists to compete for viewer votes on the live shows that start April 2.

"The battle rounds are great. That's where the blind auditions have been put to bed as far as getting people's attention purely on your voice, and then it's a matter of bringing a little bit of stage presence," coach Christina Aguilera says. "You see their competitive spirit come to bat."

Executive producer Mark Burnett says the battle rounds add drama. The coaches, who also include Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton, pick the song for each of their duets. Then they must decide which singer stays and which one goes.

"What makes it great TV is that every time there's a battle, someone is going forward and someone is going home. The toughest thing is everybody is so good," he says. "It's agony for the coaches. They get to know them, (which) makes it even more emotional."

In addition to the coaches, each singing dozen collaborates with two advisers from a group including Kelly Clarkson, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, Jewel, Miranda Lambert, Alanis Morissette, Ne-Yo, Lionel Richie and Robin Thicke.

Burnett says it was important to have top performers as coaches and advisers. "All the coaches had to in their own right be fantastic singers. The mentors (also) have to have great voices. I think there's a level of authenticity to the show which really translates through the screen," he says.

As for bringing on Clarkson, a winner on competitor American Idol, he says, "I think it's really cool. I love the fact that The Voice is so confident that we can do that."

Jewel, who's working with Aguilera's team, says she herself received valuable mentoring from Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and she likes the idea of offering help to rising artists.

"The show offers people the opportunity to get mentored, not just judged. It doesn't just say, 'Be less pitchy.' It says, 'Right here is where you are pitchy.' (It's) fixing the actual problem instead of just giving them a critique and expecting them to know what to do to fix it."

The critiques come without negativity, Aguilera says. "That's one thing all four of us said to Mark Burnett: 'We are not about to get involved in any kind of show that makes us make fun of and put down new and upcoming talent.' We're not tearing people down for ratings. The game has changed."

A different kind of battle is brewing in the ratings. The Voice's numbers are up , posing a challenge to long-dominant Idol, which is down. Not counting the high-rated post-Super Bowl broadcast, The Voice averages 16.8 million viewers a week, while Idol's two weekly episodes average 19.9 million and 18.7 million. The Voice is even closer in advertiser-coveted young adults.

"Look at what Idol has been going through since it came back, and X Factor, which did very well but not up to the hype. The Voice seems to be the hotter show at the moment," says David Scardino, entertainment specialist at ad agency RPA.

Aguilera says the coaches found their groove. "We've all absorbed like sponges what happened last year. (We) all kind of get the game and what it means to us as coaches. There's the friendly competitiveness we have, and sometimes, the funny, not-so-friendly competitiveness that occurs."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/televis...nds/53358504/1

That release has been known about for over 6 months. It was released the end of January (I got my copy a $ cheaper with free shipping at Amazon).

TV Notes
DVRs and Streaming Prompt a Shift in the Top-Rated TV Shows
By Bill Carter and Brian Stelter, The New York Times - Mar. 5, 2012

For almost a decade, identifying the most popular show on television has been easy: American Idol, case closed.

But that conclusion is not a given anymore, and not only because the numbers for Idol have plummeted this winter. The daily ratings are in many ways a mirage now, sure to change significantly once the people who time-shift their television viewing are taken into account.

In fact, because of that behavior, there has been a change in the standings. Among the group that determines much of the revenue of the television business, viewers ages 18 to 49, ABC's Modern Family now is the most popular show on television.

No other show on television comes close to that comedy in adding 18- to 49-year-old viewers who record shows and watch them later. So far this season, new episodes of Modern Family have grown from a first-day average of 7.1 million viewers in that age group to 10.2 million, counting seven days' worth of added viewing a gain of 3.1 million each week, according to Nielsen Research.

These time-shifters, though, cannot be counted in the overnight ratings, where Modern Family tends to trail both Idol and NBC's The Voice.

The overnights still set the tone and the agenda at the television networks, said Charles Kennedy, the head of research for ABC, influencing marketing and programming decisions. But we've had to build in this fudge factor, Mr. Kennedy said, when we know at least with shows that already have a track record that the total number will be significantly higher.

When the television season ends in May, what will matter most for both networks and advertisers is the ranking of shows once digital video recorder playback is included in the viewership totals. In a comeback victory for scripted shows, original episodes of Modern Family will most likely dethrone Idol this season as television's favorite show for those valuable 18-49-year olds just as the CBS drama NCIS will most likely beat Idol for the first time for most overall viewers with its original episodes.

On behalf of all the comedies that were wiped out by Idol' over the past 10 years, it's very gratifying, said Steve Levitan, one of the creators of Modern Family.

Total popularity does not perfectly correlate with profitability, however, since the networks all agree to sell ad time based on a metric called C3. It measures the average viewing of the commercials within a show within three days of the first broadcast, so it excludes people who wait to watch Wednesday's Modern Family until Sunday or Monday.

Still, advertisers are paying, happily so, for the three days that are counted.

We do like viewing in the playback mode, said Tim Spengler, the global chief executive of the media-buying firm Magna Global. We're finding that the viewers are more attentive. They are less distracted. They have picked a time when they have the opportunity for more engagement than they would have if their kids were bugging them or they had three things to do at once.

Mr. Spengler said many advertisers, like fast food restaurants, movie companies and some retailers, do not want to pay for ads beyond three days because what they have offered might be out of date. But, he said, other advertisers recognize there is some value to the four additional days of viewing that are not counted by C3 even among fast-forwarders, because they do see glimpses of messages here and there.

The networks would eventually like to sell ad time based on seven days of viewership, but most viewership happens in the three-day window; Paul Lee, the president of ABC Entertainment, said ABC is able to capture about 93 percent of the value of the Modern Family audience with the C3 ratings.

So we can now truly monetize appointment television, Mr. Lee said. He noted that in the past, Thursday night shows carried the highest prices in television, because advertisers paid a premium to reach people before their movie openings or weekend car sales.

Now they buy us on Wednesday, Mr. Lee said, the day that new Modern Family episodes are broadcast, and they know they are going to get Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We get that C3, and so do they.

DVRs are now in 43 percent of the American households that have televisions. The growth in DVR ownership is starting to slow down, but other manners of time-shifting like cable video-on-demand views and Internet stream views are speeding up, making it harder than ever to assess the total popularity of a show.

Three of the four most-watched TV episodes on Hulu in February were Modern Family episodes. All together, Mr. Kennedy said, the video-on-demand and Web streams amount to millions of additional viewers for Modern Family each week.

Mr. Lee and Mr. Levitan said that the comeback of the scripted shows this season has something to do with the glut of reality competition shows and the fact that, as Mr. Lee put it, reality television has lost the shock of the new.

Those competition shows also tend to be recorded and viewed later much less frequently, so the DVR has been a special enhancement to scripted shows. Among the prime-time hits that get a 40 percent or higher lift among 18- to 49-year-olds because of time-shifting: Fox's House, Glee, New Girl, and Alcatraz; ABC's Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice and Revenge; and NBC's The Office and Up All Night.

It used to be that you figured even the most ardent fans of a show saw only two of every four episodes, Mr. Levitan said. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think with DVR and other ways people can catch up more and more, people actually see the entire season of a show.

Mr. Spengler can support that hypothesis. He said he and his wife found some time last week and sat down for some viewing. We watched three straight episodes of Modern Family,' he said.

Mr. Levitan has heard that kind of anecdotal support in even bigger numbers this year, in the wake of his show's sweep of awards at the Emmys and Golden Globes. He was speaking by telephone from Disneyland, where the show was shooting an episode last week.

It's all good, he said. I'm literally in the middle of the happiest place on earth and I'm not going to lie to you: I'm one of the happiest guys on earth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/bu..._r=1&ref=media

The fact you can watch it online after the show actually undermines the reasoning in the first post.

Television commercials are by their very nature an unwanted interruption to something you do want to watch. They could be an epic of Shakespearean dramatics with an Avatar budget, but the fact they are taking place between usually important moments in something else, does not make them any more welcome.

If a theater started running commercials during a movie (and I'm not talking about an intermission) it wouldn't matter how clever or creative they are and I apply the same reasoning to television.

The only way I would not fast forward through a commercial is if it was no longer than 30 seconds. The time it takes me to pick up the remote and hit skip would negate the effort required to perform the task.

Make a clever and inventive commercial masquerading as a short film like the Cartier property and I will most likely watch it.

After the show I tuned in for.

It really is spectacular. Most point to the improved shots of the Enterprise, planets etc... , but seeing the original camera negatives looks amazing! Were it not for the 4:3 aspect ratio, it looks like it could have been shot yesterday.

The thing you want to watch would not exist if not for these "unwanted interruptions". TV shows were originally created to give advertisers a way to advertise to the masses. Except for maybe stuff on PBS every other shows that was ever created was created to MAKE MONEY. Networks don't create shows out of the goodness of their hearts to show to the masses for free.

That's irrelevant.

Having a heart operation to save your life isn't something that you welcome either. Nobody goes into the operating room cheering even if it means the outcome will be beneficial and nobody likes television advertising even if it pays for the show.

Especially since over the years it's become egregious and intrusive.

It was also on other channels last night and on the Today show this morning. I don't think that's the best way to advertise what they're selling.

Hey, at least we're talking about the company. And it's brand advertising, not advertising for a particular product. All they can hope for is that people think of Cartier when they go shopping for jewelry and perhaps we will after seeing the commercial...

It's a cool spot, but it doesn't change my opinion or awareness of their brand. Except that it's probably the only ad I've watched this year that wasn't on Hulu.

So there's that.

I still wouldn't watch it on television though.

I'm going up to NYC in a couple of weeks just to "do the city", and was looking forward to finding a nice Cartier knock-off.

See! And maybe before the commercial, you would have been looking for a Rolex knockoff. That's brand awareness, my friend!

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

Nielsen Overnights (18-49)
So-so start for new ABC dramedy 'GCB'
Averages a 2.2 in adults 18-49 at 10 p.m.
By Toni Fitzgerald, Media Life Magazine - Mar. 5, 2012

ABC's much-hyped new dramedy "GCB" got off to an okay start on Sunday night, drawing an unremarkable rating in its premiere, though it did improve sharply on former timeslot occupant "Pan Am."

"GCB" averaged a 2.2 adults 18-49 rating at 10 p.m., according to Nielsen, up from a 1.2 for "Pan's" final episode two weeks ago and ABC's best rating in the timeslot in five months.

But the show finished behind NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice," which averaged a 2.4 in the same timeslot, and it was well behind the 3.1 "Pan" earned in its premiere last fall.

To be fair, "GCB's" lead-in wasn't as strong as "Pan's" was in September, when the season premiere of "Desperate Housewives" averaged a 3.2. Last night's "Housewives" managed just a 2.5, and "GCB" held onto 88 percent of that rating, a strong retention rate.

If "GCB" fades in coming weeks, as has been the trend with most midseason new shows, then the show will be in trouble. But if it grows or stays steady, ABC may be satisfied.

Still, even with "GCB's" so-so numbers, ABC got a win on the night thanks largely to "Once Upon a Time," the season's top new drama. It was the night's No. 1 show by far, averaging a 3.4 in the 8 p.m. timeslot.

ABC finished first for the night among 18-49s with a 2.6 average overnight rating and a 7 share. CBS was second at 2.1/5, Fox third at 2.0/5, NBC fourth at 1.7/4, 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, which includes shows replayed before 3 a.m. the night before. Seven-day DVR data won’t be available for several weeks. Forty-three percent of Nielsen households have DVRs.

At 7 p.m. ABC was first with a 2.2 for "America's Funniest Home Videos," followed by CBS with a 1.6 for "60 Minutes." Fox and Univision tied for third at 1.2, Fox for a repeat of "Bob's Burgers" (0.8) and a new "Cleveland Show" (1.6) and Univision for "Parodiando," with NBC fifth with a 1.0 for "Dateline" and Telemundo sixth with a 0.3 for "Pa'lante con Cristina."

ABC led again at 8 p.m. with a 3.4 for "Time," while CBS remained second with a 2.8 for "The Amazing Race." Fox was third with a 2.3 for "The Simpsons" (2.5) and "Napoleon Dynamite" (2.0), Univision fourth with a 1.5 for "Nuestra Belleza Latina," NBC fifth with a 1.1 for a repeat of "Celebrity Apprentice" and Telemundo sixth with a 0.3 for more "Cristina."

At 9 p.m. ABC and Fox tied for the lead at 2.5, ABC for "Desperate Housewives" and Fox for "Family Guy" (2.8) and "American Dad" (2.1). NBC was third with a 2.2 for the first hour of a new "Celebrity Apprentice," CBS fourth with a 1.8 for "The Good Wife," Univision fifth with a 1.5 for more "Latina" and Telemundo sixth with a 0.4 for the movie "Eagle Eye."

NBC moved to first at 10 p.m. with a 2.4 for more "Apprentice," with ABC second with a 2.2 for "GCB." CBS was third with a 2.0 for "CSI: Miami," Univision fourth with a 1.1 for "Sal y Pimienta" and Telemundo fifth with a 0.3 for its movie.

CBS led the night among households with a 6.5 average overnight rating and a 10 share. ABC was second at 5.2/8, NBC third at 3.5/6, Fox fourth at 2.3/4, Univision fifth at 1.7/3 and CW sixth at 0.4/1.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/art...amedy-GCB-.asp

TV Notes
TV networks roll out 46 comedy hopefuls for next season
By Gary Levin, USA Today - Mar. 5, 2012

TV networks working on next season's new shows still are prepping plenty of CIA and FBI agents, hospital staffs and supernatural doings. But what they really want is comedy: 46 of them, a recent record, are vying for slots on the four major networks, all of which hope to increase the number of half-hour sitcoms they air next season.

The networks will say as much in program-development meetings with advertisers that begin today, among the rituals of the annual season of renewal and rebirth that precedes the fall schedule announcements that networks will make in mid-May.

It's no secret why networks are pining for laughs. Though almost every returning drama has lost viewers this season, eight comedies have posted ratings gains, led by CBS' The Big Bang Theory, up 21% in its fifth season, thanks partly to new exposure via syndicated reruns.

While ABC's Modern Family and The Middle are still growing, even long-in-the-tooth series such as CBS' How I Met Your Mother and Fox's American Dad, in their seventh seasons, are up over last year. So is Two and a Half Men, where Ashton Kutcher replaced Charlie Sheen in its ninth season.

CBS' 2 Broke Girls and Fox's New Girl are two of the season's top three newcomers among younger viewers. And most of fall's new comedies at least initially attracted decent ratings, while riskier dramas (The Playboy Club, Pan Am) flopped.

"Everybody's looking to fill out their schedules with more comedy," says Jay Sures, a partner at United Talent Agency. "When you look at what's happened in the syndication market and where the money's being made, there have been $1 billion assets created from Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. The numbers in drama don't come anywhere near those."

And while cable networks are competing aggressively with their own edgier original dramas, they've been slower to embrace comedies, which "creates a massive imbalance," Sures says.

The 20th Century Fox Television studio has a record 13 comedy pilots in contention, the most of any producer and its own biggest tally since 2005. With the exception of NBC, "everyone's gotten a taste of successful comedies," says chairman Gary Newman, which, in the grand TV tradition, only fuels appetites for more. "You can see (programmers) lean forward with comedy pitches and come after them strongly, offering commitments and license fees to attract us."

People need diversion

Network executives say the still-fragile economy and a fragmented, multitasking audience make comedies less demanding and more likely to break through, especially among the younger viewers that advertisers seek.

"It's uplifting kind of comfort food for people right now," says NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke, who has ordered 14 comedy pilots for next season, more than any other network, while reducing new-drama contenders to eight.

Starting this week, each network will have its own two-hour weeknight comedy block, and executives at all four major networks say they want more comedies next fall. Even CW which abandoned the genre in 2009 is eyeing a comeback for next year. On cable, MTV and FX are expanding their comedy lineups, and USA is preparing its first foray into half-hour series as a prelude to airing Modern Family reruns next year.

Most of the activity remains at the big broadcast networks. And there, the strategies differ: ABC has often embraced family shows; CBS has focused on relationships; NBC has veered toward arch workplace comedies, which have won over critics but not many viewers.

So NBC is moving away from that focus as it develops a fall crop. "I'm off, and have been awhile, the cynical things," says Salke, who joined the network last summer after developing Glee, Modern Family and New Girl at 20th Century Fox. Those shows, she says, "inspire you to want to reach, and have a positive emotional connection with the viewer." Among NBC pilots, Isabel stars Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Nealon as parents of a girl with magical qualities, and Save Me stars Anne Heche as a woman transformed after a broken marriage.

But the network, perennially in fourth place, is hedging its bets with promotable comedies. Roseanne Barr and John Goodman, who embodied blue-collar domesticity in the ABC hit Roseanne, are reteaming in the recession-inspired Downwardly Mobile as trailer-park proprietors. Out-there comedian Sarah Silverman will get her first prime-time network vehicle, while Friends' Matthew Perry will get another series shot as a sportscaster in Go On.Jimmy Fallon is producing a comedy about three immature pals who become fathers. And Glee producer Ryan Murphy has a half-hour comedy about a gay couple and the woman they enlist as a surrogate.

"We're trying to create buzz and excitement that can exist in the world of new media and fan bases of all those people," Salke says.

Familiar faces

ABC's 12 comedy pilots run the gamut from nuclear families to the less-traditional kind. "Family comes in many shapes and sizes," says senior VP Samie Falvey.

Judy Greer plays a suburban transplant who inherits a step-family through a new marriage in American Judy, and Reba McEntire plays a divorcée who moves her kids from Nashville to California in Malibu Country. In a more adult vein, The Smart One casts Portia de Rossi as a brainy woman who begrudgingly goes to work for her more-popular sister; Doris Roberts is among three older sisters working at a Texas diner in Counter Culture; and Sarah Chalke is another divorcée readjusting in How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life.

Aside from devotion to characters over plot, the common link is that "for our creators, these shows are incredibly personal to them," Falvey says. Living through some variation of the concept is "critical to their authenticity and specificity."

CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler, who has seven successful sitcoms, says the key in new prospects is "having those core relationships at the center of the show," and many prospects involve slackers battling adversity. "We have characters confronting bigger existential questions" while still getting laughs. Comedian Martin Lawrence is a jobless widower with two kids who enrolls in a police academy; Greg Grunberg (Alias) plays a guy who, after a cancer scare, realizes his platonic friend and business partner is his soul mate; and Ashley Tisdale is among a group of dream-seekers in tough financial times in a series co-written by Louis CK.

Fox will look for New Girl companions as it builds out its live-action comedies. One from writer Mindy Kaling (The Office) features her as a young doctor juggling work and dating; Mike O'Malley (Glee) stars in Prodigy Bully, about a child prodigy from a blue-collar background; Living Loaded, from the creators of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is about a hard-partying blogger turned public-radio host (Mike Vogel), with Donald Sutherland as his dad and boss; new family comedies led by Zachary Levi (Chuck) and John Stamos; and one from the creators of Mother, about three siblings vying for the inheritance of their demanding late father.

Though CBS has had a string of mass-appeal hits and The Simpsons keeps going, others haven't been lucky until lately. "Considering where comedy was three years ago, there's obviously a huge renewal of interest, whether it's the recession or whether it's cyclical," says ABC's Falvey.

The trick is finding the right alchemy of writing, casting and concept to ensure survival. "For the longest time, there was a dearth of comedy writers," says Lyle Schwartz of ad buyer GroupM. "It's not as easy to do well."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/televis...ies/53358584/1

I think SNF also has a shot at being the #1 tv show of the year 18-49 even counting Live+7....i think its 18-49 avg was about 10 milllion viewers.

The article says shows & you cant say its not a show as its #1 in the top 25 shows list each week.

The thing that hurts modern family is the reruns which i think do count hurt its season avg.

Back to boredom everybody (unless you like the NBC shows)..

Fox couldn't put the missing House episode tonight, that's sad...

I know I'm being nit-picky, but for those keeping score, I've highlighted a couple of mistakes in this article. On Counter Culture, Doris Roberts plays the three sisters' aunt, not one of the sisters. Margo Martindale of Justified and A Gifted Man is the first sister cast. And Greg Grunberg is not the lead in his sitcom, he plays the female lead's brother, Bryan Greenberg is the male lead in the untitled show from Greg Berlanti and Greg Malins. (Man, I pay entirely too much attention to pilot season! )

The show has three Gregs and both a Greenberg and a Grunberg? No wonder the author made a mistake...

Good point, I guess I should cut him some slack! Like I said, I was nit-picking, there is a lot of info to keep straight during pilot season.

TV Sports
NFL Network pulls plug on Vikings-Saints replay
By Mike Florio, PFT/NBC Sports - Mar. 5, 2012

The NFL currently is tiptoeing through a minefield of hazards that could have a variety of potential consequences ranging from the shattering of public confidence in the integrity of the game to a series of perp walks. And while the NFL must ensure that the response to the three-year Bayou bounty program is swift and decisive and sufficiently strong to ensure that, moving forward, players won't get as much as a candy bar for making a form tackle, the NFL can't afford to give credence to the notion that this is somehow a bigger deal than it is.

As to the latter point, the NFL has committed a major blunder.

A replay of the 2009 Vikings-Saints NFC title game had been set for Monday at 3:00 p.m. ET on NFL Network. And NFL Network yanked it.

Let's repeat that. NFLN yanked the game.

Correct or not, it creates the impression that the league has some concern about showing the game again. Which creates the impression that the league should be concerned.

And that creates the impression that the league fears the outcome of Super Bowl XLIV has been tainted, because it creates the impression that the league perhaps thinks that the Saints won a berth in the game via improper methods.

It was a horrible decision to drop the game, in our view. Though the news of the Saints' bounty program remains a big deal, the league's refusal to follow through with a pre-existing plan to re-air the game makes it an even bigger deal arguably a bigger deal than it should be.

And so now I'm going to try to find a tape of the game so I can see if there's something specific the league is trying to hide by not allowing the game to be re-aired. Even if there isn't, the change in programming creates the impression that there is.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...eplay/related/