May 13, 2008 10:42

Local-News Bloopers Are Always Funny, Cont'd

Via The Huffington Post, anchor Sue Simmons (whom non-NYCers may know from a reference in Fountains of Wayne's Traffic and Weather) busts out Ron Burgundy-style with a profanity in the middle of a 11 p.m. news tease (NSFW, unless you curse a lot at work):

In fairness to Simmons, it is possible that randomly screaming "What the f___ are you doing!" is a way to get more for less at the grocery store.

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May 13, 2008 10:22

ABC's Schedule: Old Shows, Old School

ABC announced its new fall drama in a Manhattan press conference this morning. That is not a typo: its new fall drama, singular, is a remake of the British show Life on Mars, in which a modern-day cop has a car accident and wakes up in what appears to be 1973. The network's new reality show—singular—is Opportunity Knocks, a game show in which the hosts show up unannounced at the contestants' homes. There are no new fall comedies, unless you count Scrubs, which, if you didn't watch it on NBC, is New to You! [Update: Actually, Scrubs is midseason, so the fall-comedy count remains 0.]

Every broadcast network has had to deal with the fact that it did not have time, after the writers' strike, for a traditional pilot season. NBC's Ben Silverman used this as an opportunity to remake the development process into a from-the-gut affair, picking up new shows on the basis of a script, a star or a concept, without shooting pilots at all. ABC's Steve McPherson, on the other hand—though he's known to have a decent programming gut himself—said this morning that "we don't really feel comfortable picking up stuff" without a conventional pilot. So while ABC reloads, it's main strategy for next fall is essentially a do-over of last fall as the network relaunches many of its decent but not-commercially-overwhelming fall 2007 debuts for a second time.

Good luck with that, I say.

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May 13, 2008 8:37

The Morning After: Brit Invasion

HIMYM and Spears continue their marriage of convenience. / Cliff Lipson/CBS

In a bit of good upfront-week news, How I Met Your Mother was picked up for another season on CBS. That's something to keep in mind when sitting through an episode like last night's, with Britney Spears, who probably had at least a little to do with the decision after she juiced the show's ratings in her first guest spot.

Britney's first appearance, in which she played Ted-besotted receptionist Abby, was actually perfectly good, partly because Abby had a small enough subplot role that the whole Britneyness of Britney wasn't distracting. "Everything Must Go" didn't work nearly as well, and I can only blame Britney in part. I don't think she quite syncs with HIMYM's cast and its pace, but she wouldn't make a bad sitcom actress. But the storyline and character the writers have contrived to shoehorn her into the show—kind of an extreme version of the borderline crazy-obsessives that characters on Friends were always hooking up with—just made her seem like she had wandered onto the wrong sitcom set.

The A-plot about Lily's painting was a fair enough standalone episode, though, even redeeming what seemed like an overly cliched gay couple with Lily's GCWOK patrons. At first I was disappointed that the writers went there, with GCWOK #1 drooling over Marshall as he came to recover the painting, until we saw that the cliches came from Marshall and Ted's retelling of the story—each of them being Queer-Eye-era metrosexuals who crave the validation of gay men (Marshall for his body, Ted for his fashion sense). And a welcome guest spot from Larry Wilmore as a veterinarian; can he be Barney's fake girlfriend next time?

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May 13, 2008 7:14

NBC's Upfront Experience: Death by Media

NBC Universal readies to battle for your advertising dollar. / NBC

When you enter the NBC Universal Experience, the first thing you see is a wall of screens, none of them playing anything someone ten years ago would have recognized as TV. There are in-supermarket video/advertising displays and in-taxi displays. NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker poses in front of a stand of multicolored ticker screens that are spooling marketese catchphrases: "Local Media... CONTENT package..." There are cellphone displays and touch screens. There is a screening room showing clips from NBC Universal movies like the upcoming Mummy sequel.

And every once in a while there's a hint—a picture of Michael Scott from The Office, a video recording of Masi Oka from Heroes, to remind you that, deep within this multimedia pitch to advertisers, there is a television network in there somewhere.

Welcome to the future of TV as NBC Universal sees it, or at least the future of selling TV.

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