Author: Will Harris (Page 39 of 261)

Will is a member of the Television Critics Association and has written for Decider.com, the Onion A.V. Club, The Dissolve, Indiewire, Rhino.com, TV Week Magazine, The Virginian-Pilot, Popdose.com, and EW.com along with writing for Bullz-Eye.com and Premium Hollywood.

Conan ain’t interested in NBC’s 12:05 AM pitch – UPDATED

January 12, 2010 /

Although NBC has, in the wake of their decision to cancel Jay Leno’s prime-time show, spoken openly about their desire to restructure their late-night line-up to offer a half-hour of Leno, then “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” it’s taken until today for Conan to break his silence on the matter…with a great big “no.”

The New York Times’ Media Decoder column has offered up the full text of O’Brien’s formal statement, and you should absolutely read it in full, as it’s a ballsy missive that’ll make a whole lot of his fellow comedians (not to mention quite a few TV critics, including myself) stand up and cheer. But if you’re just looking for the highlights, here they are:

* “It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule.”

* “I sincerely believe that delaying ‘The Tonight Show’ into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. ‘The Tonight Show’ at 12:05 simply isn’t ‘The Tonight Show.’ Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the ‘Late Night’ show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.”

* “I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of ‘The Tonight Show.’ But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction.”

* “I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.”

Okay, first of all, as I said above, this makes me want to stand up and cheer, because Conan’s getting screwed by NBC, plain and simple, and I think it’s awesome that he’s not just going to bend over and take it. But with that said, I can’t see the network doing anything other than saying, “Oh, you’re not going to do it? Fair enough, then we’ll put Jay back into ‘The Tonight Show,'” because they’re certainly not going to give Leno his walking papers.

What do you think Conan should do?

UPDATE: I just popped over to see what was being said about the matter at Deadline.com, and it seems as though there’s a meeting going down at NBC-Universal…or, at least, there was at 1:45 PM PST. According to Nikki Finke, “On one side of the room are NBCU bigwigs Jeff Gaspin and Marc Graboff. On the other side of the room are O’Brien’s reps: manager Gavin Palone, WME agent and board member Rick Rosen, and the newest member of Team Conan — Hollywood litigator Patty Glaser who was hired on Sunday and is WME’s legal shark of choice.”

Per Ms. Finke…

My insiders say O’Brien’s reps didn’t want him to do (release the statement). “They were not thrilled. They told him it would undercut his negotiating leverage,” one source revealed to me. “But Conan wouldn’t listen to them. He wanted to make it.” When Conan read the statement to the staff, “he broke up. He began to cry,” one of my insiders reveals. “Because for 17 years he was working towards The Tonight Show, and now he says he’s prepared to walk away from it. That’s an amazing thing. An amazing thing. But he takes very seriously the fact that The Tonight Show baton was passed to him.”

Here at Premium Hollywood, we can sum up our position on the matter in three words:

‘Nuff said.

External Entertainment, External TV, News, TV, TV Comedies

Breaking TCA News: Simon Cowell to leave “American Idol”

January 11, 2010 /

Fox’s executive panel at the TCA Press Tour was very late beginning this afternoon, but as Peter Rice (Chairman of Entertainment) and Kevin Reilly (President of Entertainment) took their seats, Rice assured the gathered group of television critics, “We have a good reason for keeping you waiting.”

He was right.

Minutes later, surprise guest Simon Cowell had stepped onto the stage, taken pen in hand, and officially signed the paperwork to bring his popular UK series, “The X Factor,” to Fox in 2011. He will serve as the show’s executive producer as well as a judge. There is, however, a down side to this development: it means that this will be Cowell’s final season as a judge on “American Idol.”

Prior to Cowell’s surprise arrival, Rice had acknowledged that Cowell’s future on Fox was directly connected to whether or not the network would pick up “The X Factor,” a series for which he has long established considerable passion.

“There has been a lot of speculation, partly because we didn’t have an an agreement,” said Cowell, after taking his seat. “We reached an agreement at about half past ten this morning.”

“More like half past eleven,” corrected Rice, with a laugh.

“I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with Fox,” Cowell continued. “We did talk about me staying on both shows, but then when we looked at the practicalities of that, it was just impossible. I made a commitment to staying on the show in the UK, and I didn’t think it was right for me to also do two shows in America. I can barely manage to do ‘American Idol’! We had a lot of discussions about it, a meeting with Peter in October, but it was done very gentlemanly, the whole thing.”

As far as Cowell’s departure from “American Idol,” he likens it to having a good player on a good football team: they work well together, but when the player retires, the team is still successful. In the end, it comes down to the fact that “American Idol” is not Cowell’s show, whereas “The X Factor” is.

“It’s still close to me,” he said, “and I made sure that ‘Idol’ would be protected. The show could last for ten or twenty more years. I’m confident that it will continue to be the #1 show, and everyone’s committed to keeping it that way.”

Rice described Cowell as “irreplaceable,” taking a pass on making any comment about who the network might be pursuing to fill his spot on the series while offering assurances that the network is fully aware of the necessity of maintaining the same level of energy for “American Idol.”

American Idol, External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Reality

TCA Tour: Undercover Boss

January 11, 2010 /

During her comments in the executive session, CBS’s President of Entertainment, Nina Tassler, couldn’t say enough good things about the network’s new reality series, “Undercover Boss,” which they’re opting to premiere immediately after the Super Bowl. It’s an act that’s either a sign of unabashed confidence in the series or a total Hail Mary pass, but despite how apropos the latter might be for the timeslot, having seen the pilot episode, I can absolutely see why they would be confident. Tassler said that “everybody who is sitting and watching the Super Bowl, be you 8 or 80, can stay right there and enjoy the program,” and she’s on the money with that assessment: who can’t get behind the idea of a boss coming down from his or her ivory tower and mixing it up with the frontline employees in the company? Everyone can relate to that…which, as it happens, is exactly what its creator, Stephen Lambert, had in mind.

“I was very keen to do something in the world of the workplace,” he said. “There’s so many scripted shows that are set in the workplace, but not that many set in the real workplace in the reality space on network television, and it seemed to me that it’s very relatable. Anybody who has had a boss who has worked in the company will understand this show, and for the person in charge to be able to see what their workers, their employees, are really doing seemed like an exciting idea.

“This is a show where the boss is on a dual mission,” Lambert explained. “One, he wants to find out what’s really going on on the front line, things he can’t see when he’s back at headquarters. Second, he’s looking for the unsung heroes of the company, so he’s looking for people that deserve some kind of thanks, maybe a promotion. It’s the mixture of kind of comedy that comes from the boss trying to do the front-line jobs and the emotion of these people, these coworkers that he spends time or she spends time with having that recognition that can be extremely emotional, and that was the idea behind the show.”

The first boss to go undercover on the show is Larry O’Donnell III, the President and COO of Waste Management (you’ve no doubt seen their trucks cruising around your neighborhood at one point or another), and when you watch the episode, you’ll see him doing everything from picking up trash to cleaning out Porta-Potties. Now, if you’re wondering how undercover he really is, given that he clearly has a camera crew following him, all they know is that he’s just this guy who’s working these frontline jobs…and, to hear him tell it, they got used to the camera’s presence pretty quickly.

“When I first went into this and I actually talked to our senior leadership team, I thought the most difficult part was going to be for me to be able to maintain my undercover status where the employees didn’t figure out who I was,” he said. “There were some managers along the way that recognized me, and I was able to get them off to the side and tell them to go home or stay in their office. You know, people ignored the cameras within about…it seemed like certainly within the first half hour. It was like they weren’t even there.”

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External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Reality

TCA Tour: Comedy Showrunners Q&A – “The Big Bang Theory” / “Two and a Half Men”

January 10, 2010 /

During the TCA tours, there’s an understandable tendency for the networks to pimp their newest programming, but once in awhile, they do manage to offer us a panel that shines the spotlight on an established show. In this case, it was actually two shows: “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men.” On the panel were Chuck Lorre (co-creator of both series, executive producer on both shows), Bill Prady (co-creator of and executive producer on “The Big Bang Theory”), and Lee Aronsohn (co-creator of “Two and a Half Men,” executive producer on both shows). I’m not going to tell you that I wouldn’t rather have had actual cast members on the panel, but given the comedic credits of this trio, it was unsurprising to find that we got quite a few laughs during the course of the conversation.

First, though, let’s go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room right away, shall we? You know that someone had to ask about Charlie Sheen, and while they did, one must applaud the restraint of the collected TV critics that the question didn’t come up until several minutes into the panel. Predictably, the guys went for the joke before offering up a proper answer.

“I’m sorry, what happened with Charlie?” asked Lorre, innocently.

“I don’t know,” said Aronsohn, poker-faced. “Something happened?”

Lorre then slipped into serious mode. “We put on a show last night, and it went extremely well,” he said. “We had a great week, and the audience was wonderful last night, so we’re just going about our business. Charlie is a consummate pro. He shows up and he delivers, and last night was one of our strongest episodes. It was just terrific.”

Okay, let’s get into the meat of the panel a bit more, which was – thankfully – far more about the shows themselves rather than the sordid personal lives of one of their stars.

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External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Comedies

TCA Tour: NBC Executive Session

January 10, 2010 /

I think it’s fair to say that there wasn’t a single member of the Television Critics Associate who wasn’t chomping at the bit to see how this session was going to go down. With all of the controversy breaking about the reported cancellation of “The Jay Leno Show” and rumors of its host moving to a half-hour slot at 11:35 PM, thereby moving the other members of the late-night line-up – “The Tonight Show starring Conan O’Brien” and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” back by an hour, everybody wanted to know how NBC was going to handle damage control.

“I see we have a full house,” said NBC Universal TV chairman Jeff Gaspin, as he walked onto the stage and stood before a ballroom filled with TV critics, many of whom were poised to pounce. “I heard there were some scalpers outside.”

The levity quickly went by the wayside, however, as Gaspin went into the recitation of what one can only presume was a well-tweaked statement, confirming that, starting February 12th, “The Jay Leno Show” will no longer air at 10 PM. He admitted that, although the series performed at acceptable levels for the network, it did not meet the needs of the network’s affiliates, hence the change in programming strategy. He also stated that NBC’s goal was to keep all three of its hosts as part of the late-night landscape – “The Jay Leno Show” at 11:35 PM, “The Tonight Show starring Conan O’Brien” at 12:05 AM, and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” at 1:05 AM – while acknowledging that this plan was in no way a done deal and that talks are still ongoing.

“It’s a fluid situation,” said Gaspin. “Everybody has the weekend to think about it, and we’ll see what happens when we start the new week tomorrow.”

While he would not confirm the hosts’ specific reactions to the new plan, Gaspin said that all three gentlemen were “incredibly gracious and professional” and that they acknowledged that they knew it was a difficult situation. As for anything else that went down during the discussions, he merely described it as a “private conversation,” adding, “When it’s all settled, you can go and ask them what their feelings were.”

Gaspin expects that the new late-night line-up will be in place by the time NBC’s coverage of the Olympics begins in February.

Unsurprisingly, the critics’ claws were soon out, with one wanting to know exactly what happened with the network’s assurances during the summer TCA tour that the success or failure of “The Jay Leno Show” would not be determined fully until the series had run for a full 52-week cycle. Gaspin maintained that the 52-week plan still would’ve been his preference but again cited the affiliates’ concerns as being the driving force behind the comparatively-quick removal of the series from its prime-time berth.

“Starting in November, the affiliates started calling, saying that local news was being affected more than expected,” said Gaspin. By the end of the month, the stations which utilized people meters for their ratings continued their complaints, now citing statistics where, in some cases, #1 local news broadcasts had dropped to #3. Gaspin continued his constant dialogue with the affiliates, requesting that they wait and see how the show would do against repeats…and, indeed, “The Jay Leno Show” did do better, but only by about a tenth of a rating point, still coming in second to either CBS or ABC on a regular basis. When the smaller affiliates without people meters got their November book numbers, “the drum beat started getting louder,” Gaspin said, and as it became progressively more clear that they were only going to be getting more vocal about their displeasure, throwing around comments about possible preemption, “we realized things were not going to go well if it was kept in place.”

Gaspin continued to clarify, however, that despite the feelings of the affiliates, NBC did not feel that “The Jay Leno Show” was a disappointment on a network level. “It was working at acceptable levels financially, making money at 10 PM,” he said. “For the network, it was not a wrong decision.”

He also underlined that, insofar as he was concerned, the reason behind the limited viewership had nothing to do with the show or its level of quality. “There’s a lot of choice at 10 PM,” he said. “We thought it could be everybody’s second choice, but there were just so many other choices that people thought were better.” In the end, Gaspin conceded that “The Jay Leno Show,” while being easy entertainment, simply wasn’t the first or even second choice of enough viewers.

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