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CBS Upfront Update: Dog and Pony Show, Minus the Pony
May 14, 2008 10:03 PM
Partway through the CBS upfront presentation at Carnegie Hall, Entertainment President Nina Tassler promoted one of her network's new summer entries, a reality series called The Greatest American Dog, by having an actual dog run across the stage and greet her, then wait for its cue to exit, stage left.
It was a typical network dog-and-pony show -- only without the pony.
Instead, there was Craig Ferguson of The Late Late Show, who hosted the event with much more enthusiasm and humor than it may have deserved. After a lengthy presentation by others about the "multimedia cyber experience," a complementary approach embracing TV, the web, mobile devices and video games, Ferguson retook the stage and said, "Thank you, guys, who are very enthusiastic about things I don't understand."
The place I was looking to be enthusiastic was when CBS showed actual clips from the shows on its new schedule. For summer, it's noteworthy that CBS made room to present its dog show, but not to risk showing its controversial, upcoming free-love 1970s-vintage Swingtown to the assembled advertisers.
And for midseason, CBS showed scenes from Harper's Island -- and instantly popped whatever magic bubble that might have been generated by the show's description earlier in the day. That's why getting these first impressions is so helpful --- and, often, is so depressing.
For the fall season, CBS unveiled five new series -- two comedies, three dramas -- and, as noted in the last blog, made one of its biggest scheduling moves by attempting a second night of sitcoms. The crowd at Carnegie Hall reacted very positively to one comedy, Worst Week.
To me, though, I'll have to reserve judgement on that comedy, and on a couple of the dramas, until I see the entire pilots. So far, I've yet to see a single new series whose first taste was so intoxicating that it earned the "most promising" honor right out of the box.
But there's still Fox, so there's still hope. Last year, ABC's Pushing Daisies wowed me that early. The year before that, so did NBC's 30 Rock.
All I want -- all I'm looking for -- is another first-impression thrill like that. Stay tuned. I am.
Upfront Update: CBS Dims "Moonlight," Embraces "Mother"
May 14, 2008 11:13 AM
CBS, at its press breakfast this morning, announced the addition of five new series to the fall schedule, and the re-establishment of a Wednesday night comedy block. The biggest news for fans of current series, though, is that How I Met Your Mother made the final cut, and Moonlight did not.
"We had a very passionate fan base," CBS President Nina Tassler said of Moonight, "and that's a good thing." To fans of the show, though, her using the past tense is a bad thing. Tassler acknowledged that what happened to Jericho -- with its very vocal cult fan base that shrank significantly after the series was renewed -- played a part in her decision.
"It was a factor, obviously," she said, adding, "I love the vampire. What can I tell you?"
On the brighter side, Tassler said CBS had "a fantastic comedy year," and senior executive v.p. Kelly Kahl said, "We loved what we saw coming out of the strike," where the CBS Monday comedies were some of the few programs to improve over pre-strike levels. Hence, How I Met Your Mother lives for another season.
(Those Britney Spears appearances sure didn't hurt... and her mini-cliffhanger paves the way for her return next season as well.)
Also getting a reprieve is Rules of Engagement, which will return at midseason. And The New Adventures of Old Christine, at last getting the respect it deserves, opens the new Wednesday comedy block.
I'll detail the new series after I've seen clips at this afternoon's upfront. Meanwhile, the comedy Worst Week has some strong advance buzz, and one of the network's midseason offerings, Harper's Island, has an intriguing twist. Tassler describes it as a mix between Ten Little Indians and Scream, with 35 people invited to an exclusive event -- with one character dying each week. Instead of being fired, they're retired -- permanently.
I should point out, for those with faint hearts or low expectations of TV, that Harper's Island is a scripted series, not a reality show.
Stay tuned. The CBS upfronts are held in a few hours...
What's New at the Network Upfronts? So Far, Less than Usual...
May 14, 2008 4:51 AM
In past years, the network upfront presentations have been all about unveiling not only the fall schedules, but the long roster of brand new series. This year, at least at ABC and CW's Tuesday upfronts, not so much. As Jimmy Kimmel joked, "Here at ABC, we are very excited about BOTH our new shows!"
Those new fall shows, as it turns out, seem pretty familiar anyway. Based on the short teaser clips, Opportunity Knocks is a game show that goes on location to neighborhoods and tests families about their knowledge of each other -- a kind of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition meets Amne$ia. And David E. Kelley's Life on Mars is an Americanized version of the familiar British import about a modern cop transplanted, somehow, into the early 1970s.
The clips didn't make this new Mars seem all that exciting, but there are two exciting prospects buried among the show's credits. One is the return of actor-turned-director Richard Benjamin in a supporting acting role. Also, one of the show's many executive producers is super-gifted TV director Tommy Schlamme, and the combination of Schlamme and Kelley could prove very potent. (Other Kelley news: Boston Legal was renewed, but for what was announced as its final season. Sigh.)
ABC had so little new fall stuff to promote that it spent a chunk of time showing samples from its imminent summer schedule. Be afraid. Be very afraid. It includes such unscripted competition series as Wipeout (a sort of combination water park, life-size video game and humiliation factory) and I Survived a Japanese Game Show, in which contestants are flown to the Far East to compete in such challenges as "Duck Before Komodo Dragon Eats Your Face."
We should all think about preparing t-shirts proclaiming: "I Survived an ABC Post-Strike Summer Season."
Now the good news. Midseason at ABC includes the return of Scrubs -- which, though I'm pleased my that prospect, prompted Kimmel to joke, "It's always a good idea to borrow shows from the people in last place." Other good news: The return of Lost in January for an unbroken weekly run, and the renewal of Pushing Daisies, last year's best new broadcast network series.
This year's best new broadcast network series, though, doesn't seem to have made an appearance just yet. It certainly doesn't seem to be at the CW, where virtually all the buzz is coming from its remake of that generational TV touchstone, Beverly Hills, 90210.
"You wanna live in the zip," intoned the announcer during the 90210 preview clip, "you gotta live by the code." Yes, he actually said that. Original cast member Jennie Garth will have a recurring role, but the 2.0 version of 90210 is all about the young and gorgeous. In this regard, it has made at least one very smart casting choice. AnnaLynne McCord, who played the devilish teen temptress Eden on Nip/Tuck this season, is one of the regulars on CW's high-profile companion to its East Coast equivalent, Gossip Girl.
Other new CW shows seem similarly status- and fashion-obsessed. Surviving the Fllthy Rich stars Joanna Garcia from Reba as a young woman given the responsibility of tutoring, and mentoring, two pampered teen girls. And Stylista, from the clips, looks like a reality-show version of The Devil Wears Prada. And looks, at first glance, every bit as bad as that sounds.
Midseason news includes the return of Reaper, and of CW's two best shows, Smallville and Everybody Hates Chris, will be back in the fall -- but last year's best new comedy, Aliens in America, wasn't renewed. As everyone at CW seems to be saying these days, OMG.
Next stop in this pared-down upfront tour? CBS, which starts today with the traditional, and always informative, CBS press breakfast. I'll report highlights shortly after that, then update following the upfront presentation once I've seen the clips of the new shows.
I'm searching for the potential gotta-watch gems... and so far, I haven't found any.
ABC Rescues NBC's "Scrubs," While NBC Launches First Fall Promo and NBC NY Anchor Drops the 'F' Bomb
May 13, 2008 8:41 AM
Today I'm diving into New York's upfronts, and will report later from ABC's presentation late this afternoon, so please check back for updates and first impressions of the new series. Meanwhile, among ABC's morning announcements to the press are two very welcome returns by veteran series -- while, last night on NBC, two promos broadcast during NBC's telecast of Medium definitely got my attention, for very different reasons.
The best early news out of ABC is this: One, the network has picked up NBC's Scrubs, a wonderful sitcom that still has lots of life in it. Two, ABC renewed Boston Legal, the David E. Kelley series that is one of the most outrageous, and certainly is the most topical, shows on network prime time today. And among ABC's new lineup is Kelley's adaptation of the British series Life on Mars. Good news all around.
Now for the NBC promo news.
The nationally televised promo was for Christian Slater's My Own Worst Enemy, a new series scheduled to premiere on NBC in the fall. It may be the first new show promoted on air by any broadcast network, so give NBC credit, at least, for trying to build buzz early. The networks all would be wise to follow suit: Audience levels have fallen so much this season because of the strike, the networks should start promoting the concept of a big fall launch before viewers vanish for the summer.
The other promo worth noting was local, an on-air ad for the upcoming 11 p.m. ET newscast -- but since WNBC-Ch 4 is the East Coast satellite NBC affiliate for DirecTV, millions of other viewers, outside the New York area, also got a chance to see it. And to hear it, which, in this case, was a lot more significant.
Channel 4 co-anchor Sue Simmons was promoting a consumer story about food prices, and saving money on grocery bills, when the on-air image shifted from grocery items to a ferry boat. Simmons clearly -- VERY clearly -- could be heard saying, "What the F... are you doing?" Except her expletive wasn't deleted.
Simmons apologized, during the 11 p.m. newscast, for the "unfortunate incident." Call it a "dialogue malfunction" -- and wait for the FCC to be all over this one. If even one complaint is filed -- and, in this case, it should be -- Simmons' angry outburst could cost WNBC a lot of money in FCC fines, and could cost Simmons a lot, too, by tarnishing her station's "happy news team" reputation.
My Own Worst Enemy, indeed...
Being Up Front With the Network Upfronts
May 12, 2008 7:04 AM
This is Upfronts Week, the week in which the networks (except for NBC, which jumped the gun last month) unveil their fall slates for advertisers. Starting tomorrow with ABC, I'll be there -- but, for the first time, reporting for my website, not for a newspaper.
It's the latest phase of my post-career transition, as I set out to redefine what it is I do and how it is I do it. Before, I was at the New York Daily News, competing with the other big-city dailies to deliver and analyze the respective network schedules for the next day.
But now that I'm on a website, am I competing with wire services instead, trying to get out all the news as fast as possible? Do I still need to break down each network's full proposed schedule? Or should I do something different now, and hone in on finding and championing what look to be the most enticing new shows?
The truth of the matter is, I'm not sure, and I won't know until I get there. I may post several times a day with breaking news, or I may present daily wrap-ups. I don't even know which shows might grab my attention. Sight unseen, the most exciting prospect, to me, is the return of Joss Whedon -- of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly fame -- to series television, with Fox's Dollhouse, starring Eliza Dushku, who played Faith on Buffy and Angel. But that's sight unseen.
This week, clips of that show, and most others, will be sights seen -- though the strike had some series sold on the basis of only a script or pitch. Whatever the sights are, and the most interesting offerings, I'll report them here. I'm just not sure how, or exactly when.
Please stay tuned -- and beginning tomorrow, keep checking back. There's a new RSS link to the site, if that'll help. And if you know what that is.
(If you do, perhaps you could explain it to me some time.)
The Aloha TV Season: You Say Hello, I Say Goodbye
May 9, 2008 7:25 AM
In Hawaii, "Aloha" means both hello and goodbye. Consider 2007-08 the Aloha TV Season, because just as we've welcomed our favorite shows back to the schedule, it's time to say farewell again.
Last night, Scrubs and 30 Rock presented their NBC season finales. Survivor calls it quits for the season Sunday with its traditional live climax, Brothers & Sisters also bows out, and next week offers a long now-you-see-them, now-you-don't parade of series making their last bows until fall.
Samantha Who? and Medium vanish after Monday. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is gone after Tuesday. Thursday serves up the final 2007-08 installments of My Name Is Earl, Smallville, Supernatural, ER and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. A week from tonight is the final Moonlight, while Saturday Night Live stops going live after a week from Saturday.
And next Sunday, nine days from today, marks the season's final fresh episodes of Desperate Housewives, The Simpsons, Aliens in America and Everybody Hates Chris.
Aloha as in goodbye, Desperate Housewives. The next day, Aloha as in hello, American Gladiators.
Oh, poi...
HBO's "Hear and Now" Is A Treat for the Eyes -- and Ears
May 8, 2008 8:23 AM
Geese.
That's the image, and the sound, I can't shake after watching HBO's Hear and Now, the evocative, emotional, breathtakingly personal documentary by Irene Taylor Brodsky.
The documentary, premiering tonight at 8, is Brodsky's up-close-and-super-personal study of her own parents, Paul and Sally Taylor, both of whom have been deaf since birth. At age 65, they decided to risk the same operation and get fitted with cochlear implants, giving them the chance to hear, for the first time, the world and people around them.
Hear and Now spends more than a year with them. Home movies let us know how they met and married as young adults and spent their lives together, raising a hearing daughter and outfitting their lives with inventions generated by Paul, a professor. Brodsky films her parents taking a solitary winter walk, shortly before undergoing the operation.
Overhead, geese fly by and make that unmistakable honking sound. Well, unmistakable to us -- inaudible to them. Brodsky achieves exactly what she set out to do there: to make us notice the sounds we take for granted, and to imagine what life would be like without them.
And then, on the flip side to imagine what it would be like to hear those sounds, and others, for the first time. The daughter and her camera are in the room when her parents have their implants turned on for the first time, and hones in on their faces as they absorb their firs auditory experiences. He hears an electric tone, and his eyes widen with amazement. She says "Hello," to herself, and can't believe what she's hearing. Or that she's hearing.
"What does it sound like?" the doctor asks Paul, the professor.
"That's a tough question," Paul replies deliberately (subtitles help us understand what they're saying when their speech patterns aren't clear). "It's like, how do you describe what green looks like?"
Because this is real life, and because Brodsky is an unflinching filmmaker, Hear and Now has its sad moments as well as its happy ones -- plenty of them, in fact. But late in the film, when the two of them go out on another winter walk and discuss whether the geese are communicating by honking, well, it's a moment I'll never forget.
And I'm guessing it's a moment they, and their daughter, will never forget, either.
CBS Calls Indiana for Clinton, Then Sweats Hours Waiting for a Second Opinion
May 7, 2008 7:44 AM
For a while Tuesday night, and into Wednesday morning, there were fewer than 15,000 votes between CBS and a potentially huge embarrassment.
Almost six hours after Katie Couric presented a prime-time newsbreak awarding North Carolina to Barack Obama and Indiana to Hillary Clinton, no other network had yet called a winner in the Indiana race.
Couric called the races at 8:09 p.m., projecting the results, at it turned out, correctly. But in Indiana, the margin was so small, and the amount of missing votes from one key county so crucial, that as time went on, the race tightened, and tightened, and tightened. So, I suspect, did some of the sphincters at CBS News. (Sorry. Couldn't resist. And I'm talking biologically, not insultingly.)
At CNN, Larry King complained to John King about the missing votes, which stretched the suspense to the other side of midnight, wondering why they just couldn't call and get them. At Fox News, Karl Rove started doing his complex math as the first tallies from Lake County finally came in, and announced with surprise that, if Obama held to those percentages, he might actually win the state. And at MSNBC, the "A" team of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann went off the air at 1 a.m. ET, with the race, for a few more minutes, still undecided.
Finally, more than six hours after the Indiana polls closed, the cable networks began to call it for Clinton. Politically, Clinton's win in Indiana, by the thinnest of margins, avoids an avalanche of really bad press. Obama's decisive victory in North Carolina erased Clinton's gains in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in delegate and popular counts, but her narrow victory allows her to save face and keep going.
The same is true for CBS and Couric. Had Gary, Indiana gone a little stronger for Obama, and had he claimed a late-night, 11th-inning upset, CBS would have been scolded fiercely today, and for a long time to come, for letting competitive eagerness get in the way of journalistic accuracy. It wasn't exactly "Dewey Defeats Truman!," or even "It's Ford!," but CBS risked a big chunk of its credibility by reporting so firmly so quickly.
This time, it's no harm, no foul. But next time there's a race that close, will CBS be out there alone again? And if so, does that mean its analysts and pollsters are more accurate than the competition -- or just more reckless?
"Two and a Half Men" Spoofs "CSI" -- But Not for the First Time
May 6, 2008 9:03 AM
Even by sweeps-month TV standards, it's a bizarre crossover stunt: writers on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men and the drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation taking a stab at writing an episode of each other's shows. The CSI version of Men aired last night, and the more comedic version of CSI airs Thursday.
So far, it's a fun stunt. But it's not the first time Two and a Half Men has tweaked this particular CBS drama franchise.
More on that in a minute. First, some observations about last night's Men...
It's too bad that Robert Wagner, as the brothers' brand-new father-in-law, was enlisted as the corpse. He was lots of fun on this show. But the casting of Jamie Rose, as the detective investigating his mysterious death, was perfect -- a dead-on (so to speak) tribute to Marg Helgenberger's sexy, red-headed detective on CSI.
Also perfect was the end-of-show Chuck Lorre vanity card, a weekly feature which, this week, was turned over to the writers from CSI, who described their transfer into the strange new world of the situation comedy -- "a world where the only rule is whether or not it makes you laugh, where actors say exactly what's on the page so it better be funny right down to the syllable, and where puns are the lowest form of humor." The CSI writers thanked everyone at Two and a Half Men "for making us all feel stupid," and closed by saying, "We look forward to returning the favor this Thursday night at 9."
Very funny. Even funnier, though, was an episode from a previous season of Two and a Half Men, in which Alan's sexy young bride at the time, Kandi (played by the delightful April Bowlby), auditioned for, and won, the part of a forensics investigator on a new TV crime series. That episode of Men ended with Alan and company watching her TV debut in disbelief, especially because of the blatant display of cleavage.
And what was the name of that new, sexed-up CSI spoof? Look below...
CBS Goes to the Dark Side of the "Moonlight" Promos
May 5, 2008 7:43 AM
Viewers tuned to CBS last Friday night may have caught something that made their jaws drop. I know my jaw did...
It was the CBS on-air promo for next week's Moonlight, which warned that there were only two first-run episodes left in the season -- and basically threatened viewers with the show's impending absence.
"You'll miss them when they're gone," CBS warned of these last remaining romantic vampire dramas. "So don't miss them when they're on."
What colossal nerve.
First, I won't miss Moonlight, thanks. It's not that good a show. But what this ad is doing is saying, basically, that these shows presented on broadcast TV are precious jewels. If we don't watch them, it's our fault.
Sorry, but in a strike-crippled season, especially, that's not the way it works. Moonlight won its time slot last week, but overall prime-time broadcast viewership is down since the writers' strike began in November. Millions of people, literally millions, went elsewhere for their entertainment. In a few weeks, when the May sweeps end and summer programming begins, they'll repeat, and probably increase, that driven-by-boredom migration.
The question now becomes, or ought to: Can the broadcast networks field a compelling enough lineup in the fall, and promote it properly enough, to woo those lost viewers back to the fold? Here's a hint, networks. To do so, make better programs than Moonlight -- and promote them better than by scoldng viewers that they have a duty to watch.
If watching TV is a duty, not a pleasure, the networks are the ones at fault.
"You'll miss them when they're gone" is a harsh, threatening line that can be repeated right back to the networks -- referring to their viewers.
