Adweek : Television

No Major Surprises as CBS Unveils Fall Lineup

Anthony Crupi — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:40:10 +0000

As befits its status as the most-watched television network on the dial, CBS is also the most stable. While its rivals scramble to fill holes and put out fires, CBS prefers to leave the drama on the screen.

With just four time slots to accommodate this fall, CBS has lined up three new dramas and one comedy. (By comparison, the rest of the Big Three have eight new sitcoms prepped for the fall.) Of the three freshman dramas set to bow in September, CBS has slotted two for the 10 p.m. time slot.

Joining CBS’ powerhouse Monday night block is Partners, a workplace/buddy comedy with a weirdly familiar premise: two bros work together in an architecture firm; their friendship is tested when one of them gets engaged. (In 1995, Fox bowed the short-lived Partners, a comedy about two young architects and the woman who comes between them. Jon Cryer and Tate Donovan starred.)

Partners moves into the Monday 8:30 p.m. time slot, bumping sophomore comedy 2 Broke Girls up a half-hour. This in turn sends former 9 p.m. occupant Two and a Half Men gliding off to the Thursday 8:30 p.m. slot, where it will be reunited with The Big Bang Theory.

While returning drama Person of Interest remains in the 9 p.m. Thursday slot, it will no longer lead into The Mentalist. Simon Baker and Co. are off to Sunday nights, where they will close out the 60 Minutes/Amazing Race/The Good Wife block.

In place of The Mentalist comes the new drama Elementary, a 21st-century refresh of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated detective series. Jonny Lee Miller stars as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu plays Dr. Joan Watson in this Manhattan-based procedural.

Perhaps the most promising new drama on the slate is Vegas, a period piece based on the life of Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a fourth-generation rancher charged with the unenviable task of bringing order to Sin City in the 1960s. Nick Pileggi (Casino, Goodfellas) wrote the pilot and is an executive producer of the series, which stars Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis. Vegas fills the Tuesday 10 p.m. time slot left vacant by the canceled Unforgettable.

Having survived the battle of CSI spinoffs, CSI: New York bows in the Friday 8 p.m. slot, where it will lead into the third new CBS drama, Made in Jersey. Starring Janet Montgomery as the street-smart law student Martina Garretti, Made in Jersey is reminiscent of a distaff My Cousin Vinnie. Expect operatic speeches punctuated by exuberant hand gestures.

After renewing 18 series in March and finalizing a deal with Two and a Half Men on Sunday, it’s no surprise that CBS’s fall roster is light on new material. Consistency trumps novelty. With two weeks left to go in the 2011-12 broadcast season, CBS has a stranglehold on reach, averaging 11.8 million viewers to runner-up Fox’s 8.88 million. That said, with an average 3.2 rating among adults 18-to-49, Fox is sure to win the demo crown for the eighth consecutive season, edging CBS (3.0).

CBS officially unveils its 2012-13 lineup at Carnegie Hall this afternoon (Wednesday, May 16 at 4 p.m.). The fall schedule is as follows (new series in bold):

MONDAY
8-8:30 p.m. — How I Met Your Mother
8:30-9 p.m. — Partners
9-9:30 p.m. — 2 Broke Girls
9:30-10 p.m. — Mike & Molly
10-11 p.m. — Hawaii Five-0

TUESDAY
8-9 p.m. — NCIS
9-10 p.m. — NCIS: Los Angeles
10-11 p.m. — Vegas

WEDNESDAY
8-9 p.m. — Survivor
9-10 p.m. — Criminal Minds
10-11 p.m. — CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

THURSDAY
8-8:30 p.m. — The Big Bang Theory
8:30-9 p.m. — Two and a Half Men
9-10 p.m. — Person of Interest
10-11 p.m. — Elementary

FRIDAY
8-9 p.m. — CSI: NY
9-10 p.m. — Made in Jersey
10-11 p.m. — Blue Bloods

SATURDAY
8-9 p.m. — Crimetime Saturday
9-10 p.m. — Crimetime Saturday
10-11 p.m. — 48 Hours Mystery

SUNDAY
7-8 p.m. — 60 Minutes
8-9 p.m. — The Amazing Race
9-10 p.m. — The Good Wife
10-11 p.m. — The Mentalist

Turner Unveils a Slew of Scripted Series

Sam Thielman — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:54:28 +0000

It's crime time again at TNT. Turner held its annual upfront breakfast at the Hammerstein ballroom this morning, unveiling new shows for TNT, a ton of new products for TBS and hefty development slates at both.

The network also announced a major partnership with "Funny or Die," making it the latest traditional media organization to team up with a digital video provider. The partnership seems to be a little more suited to this evening's Adult Swim upfront, so expect to hear more about it tonight.

The presentation opened with a very funny video—all but signed in the corner by Conan O'Brien—extravagantly apologizing for last year's technical foul-up, in which the power went out mid-presentation and everyone from Conan to Ray Romano to Steve Koonin came out and told jokes while the problem was fixed.

"I'm sure you've learned from your mistakes," O'Brien told Koonin. "You're not going to have it at 9:30 in the morning again, are you?"

Silence from the boss.

"You're not holding it at the Hammerstein Ballroom again?"

Sheepish shrugs.

"It's at an on-ramp to the Lincoln Tunnel!"

Ad sales honcho David Levy got the worst of it. Shaquille O'Neal made him climb over the bathroom door in one segment. "Oh man, you guys made me do this last time and it wasn't even locked," Levy said. The video ended with Koonin in a headlock, Levy hung on top of the door, and the slogan "You're in good hands."

TNT is going the Great Books route: the network has series in the works from thriller writers David Baldacci (a private investigator series called King and Maxwell), William Brinkley (a Michael Bay-produced show about a battleship that survives a pandemic), Tom Clancy's Homeland Security, and Lew Archer, a procedural created by the The Closer creator James Duff from crime novels by Ross McDonald. Then there's Legends, from Rober Littell's novel. That's actually not even the end of the development slate—Stephen Bochco and Ron Shelton have a murder mystery project and a family drama in development, respectively.

TBS had a shorter dev slate, but Conan O'Brien's name was on two of the three scripted programs—Most Likely, a buddy comedy from the writer of Hot Tub Time Machine, and and sci-fi comedy Zone Lord.

Koonin was bullish on the networks' off-net material, asserting that "our acquisition of The Big Bang Theory has helped grow the audience not just for our movies, but for original content." The jury is out on whether Big Bang will be able to sustain TBS, but Koonin said the network's acquisitions slate will continue to renew, as well. Big Bang and Family Guy both received plenty of love during the presentation, all touted as lead-in fodder, though it's been true for years that broadcast series have boosted the comedy net's ratings.

Discovery U.S. Hispanic Amps Up Offering

Sam Thielman — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:53:57 +0000

Like the rest of the Spanish-language media, Discovery U.S. Hispanic is aiming to ride the wave of heightened interest in its programming demographic all the way to the bank. Along with Univision and Telemundo, the American Hispanic arm of Discovery Communications picked Tuesday to roll out its new programming and woo ad buyers, never mind ESPN or ABC (which also had upfronts on Tuesday).

As with most ad buyer presentations, you can tell how important a network is (or occasionally how much trouble it's in) by the presence of company brass. For Tuesday's presentation, Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav told audience members at the Four Seasons that he and the company "love this space," something he's been saying in one form or another for a while as Discovery has renewed its emphasis on Hispanic viewers.

Discovery en Espanol, the division's flagship channel, will have redubs of existing Discovery series including North America and Earthflight, but it will also feature original series, including a second season of future-focused show 2111 and new series Batalla de Ingenios, Hard Kicks, and Vivir para Contarlo.

"Our content...travels really well," Ivan Bargueiras, general manager of Discovery U.S. Hispanic, told Adweek. The company, he said, has resources that give it an edge. "We can do double-shoots, we can do things for US Hispanic, because we have the scale, that some competitors may not have."

More specifically, Bargueiras said that the company had expanded and relocated its advertising unit, transplanting it to Miami where it worked on both Discovery's international properties in Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic market. "We launched a solution team in Latin America and we moved it to Florida," he said. "We expanded it, leveraging the success we'd had in Latin America. The heads of that team are all U.S. Hispanic."

Bargueiras was also happy to report that the parent company was putting more capital into the division. "The idea is that there's a lot of momentum," he said, "that everyone understands the new investment, the further investment that our organization is placing on this segment. We are very aware of the importance of U.S. Hispanics and we're applying more resources."

The executive also said he anticipated "zero correlation between us and what's happening in the market," as far as the expectations around the overall upfront season (which is expected to be flat or even slightly down) are concerned.

Telemundo Looks For Its Own Voice

Sam Thielman — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:47:28 +0000

Telemundo pulled out all the stops on Tuesday evening after a day of Hispanic media pitches from larger rival Univision and cable company Discovery U.S. Hispanic. The presentation took place at the Al Hirschfeld Theater on 45th street, which seemed appropriate given some of the Spanish-only quirks of the show. For one thing, the presentation included brief performances of dramatic prologues for the novelas; for another, the fan base in the theater was notably more enthusiastic than at the English-langauge upfronts.

Mexican singer Jose Jose got the loudest and longest cheers, but the network's biggest news was that it would be sending to series a new spinoff of NBC hit The Voice, called La Voz: Ninos. The series will be a kid-centric version of the celebrity-starring competition series, with Spanish-language performers teaching aspiring Latin music stars how to sing.

After network president Emilio Romano finished touting the new programming (including a serious pitch for the World Cup, which Telemundo wrested away from Univision for the first time in history), ad sales head Dan Lovinger told buyers that audiences are glad to be able to have more than one option: "[our] momentum is due to one factor: choice." The subtext, of course, was that buyers have a choice, too.

After the pitch, buyers adjourned via branded pedicab to the Edison Hotel, which hosted a large crowd of diners almost entirely unfamiliar from the set visiting the other broadcast networks this week. Perhaps it's understandable; the ABC presentation today would have been more or less back-to-back with Telemundo, had buyers tried to attend both.

Kimmel Skewers ABC Rivals in Traditional Upfront Bit

Anthony Crupi — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:08:04 +0000

In what has become a snarky rite of spring, ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday afternoon affectionately skewered his network, before turning his sights on the competition.

Speaking at the tail end of ABC’s 2012-13 upfront presentation, the star of Jimmy Kimmel Live wearily upbraided media buyers, telling the likes of Mindshare CEO Antony Young and MagnaGlobal chief Tim Spengler that he was getting tired of having to deliver his annual message to the advertising community.

“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of new shows. I’m sick of the old shows. I’m sick of research. I’m sick of demographics. I’m sick of Anne [Sweeney]. I’m sick of Paul [Lee], and I’m getting sick of you,” Kimmel beefed. “How many times do I have to tell you that this is bullshit? This is bullshit.”

With that, the comic launched into a five-minute bit that saw him ridicule some of ABC’s more egregious miscues. According to Kimmel, the jaw-droppingly awful comedy Work It signaled ABC entertainment group president Paul Lee’s inherent disdain for Americans. (Aping Lee, who is British, Kimmel tutted, “It’s utterly asinine! I reckon the Yankee nitwits will gobble it up! Pip pip!”)

Of course, Kimmel reserved his sharpest barbs for the other broadcast networks. NBC got the worst of it, as Kimmel mocked the network’s newly minted monkey star and the gimmickry that underlies The Voice. “Spinning chairs and a monkey—this truly is the golden age of television,” Kimmel joked, adding that the capuchin co-star of Animal Practice was NBC’s first feces-hurling diva “since Gary Busey appeared on Celebrity Apprentice.”

Kimmel also scored a few points against CBS, which enjoys unparalleled reach but also is the oldest-skewing network on the air. (Per Nielsen, the median age of the CBS audience is 57 years, or about 11 years older than Fox. Then again, at 53 ABC is no spring chicken either.) “CBS: they really do have their finger on the pulse … of viewers who have almost no pulse,” he said.

Also getting a laugh was Kimmel’s assertion that CBS leads the industry in delivering “the coveted 18 to 49 trips to the bathroom demographic.”

Kimmel’s been lampooning the desperation of Upfront Week for years, and this time around his shtick was particularly well timed. Like NBC and Fox before it, ABC has gone all gooey over comedy, ordering up four new sitcoms and launching a third night of laughs.

Starting in November, ABC will pair sophomore comedy Last Man Standing and the new Reba McIntire multicamera series, Malibu Country. Both shows are broad family comedies and could find an audience on Friday nights opposite NBC’s more lacerating battery (Whitney-Community).

Midseason comedies include the TV Guide listings editor’s worst nightmare, How to Move in With Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life), and The Family Tools. The “boomerang generation” comedy stars Sarah Chalke as a beleaguered single mother who is forced to live with her folks (Elizabeth Perkins and an ominously earringed Brad Garrett), while Family Tools appears to be a somewhat more manic gloss on Home Improvement.

Over on the drama side of the ledger, Revenge is moving from Wednesday nights to the Sunday 9 p.m. slot, where it will lead out of freshman hit Once Upon a Time, while veteran hospital series Private Practice will be shuttled from Thursdays at 10 p.m. to the late Tuesday stretch. There, it will lead out of the apt pairing of the rambunctious ensemble comedy Happy Endings and the hilariously amoral newbie, Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.

Both Happy and B---- had spent time as the Modern Family lead-out, but the two acerbic comedies didn’t mesh well with the sweet-and-sour (and occasionally saccharine) antics of the Pritchett-Dunphy clan. Claiming the plum post-Modern Family slot is the aliens-among-us comedy The Neighbors.

The only trouble with the Happy B---- is that she’s about to face a rash of competition in that Tuesday 9-10 p.m. slot, going head-to-head with NBC newcomers Go On/The New Normal, and Fox’s established hit New Girl and lead-out The Mindy Project.

Of the six new dramas on ABC’s plate, the most accomplished appears to be The Last Resort, a Shawn Ryan-penned thriller that stars Andre Braugher as the captain of a nuclear sub who’s been ordered to fire on Pakistan. When he refuses, Braugher and his crew make a run for it. Also promising is 666 Park Avenue, a horror/suspense offering that gives off a sort of Upper East Side Rosemary’s Baby vibe. Lastly, the sudsy musical drama Nashville pits country crooner Connie Britton (in the Shelby Lynne role) against Auto-Tuned upstart Hayden Panettiere (think Bizarro-World Taylor Swift).

While country music is the most popular genre in the U.S., it’s probably the most polarizing as well. According to Networked Insights research, that innate prejudice could prevent people from sampling Nashville. At the same time, Britton is one of the most popular TV actresses of the day, thanks to her roles in Friday Night Lights and the recent fright fest American Horror Story, and her appeal could cancel out the mixed reactions many viewers have to Panettiere.

The three mid-season dramas are the estrogen-soaked Mistresses, starring Alyssa Milano and Yunjin Kim; the woman-with-a-past mob thriller Red Widow (Radha Mitchell); and The Zero Hour, a globetrotting mystery that marks Anthony Edwards’ return to prime time.

One franchise you won’t see on ABC this year is the long-gestating Guillermo del Toro/David Eick adaptation of The Incredible Hulk. Lee said the project wasn’t ready in time to earn a place on the 2012-13 schedule, but added that he hopes that Hulk and another Marvel franchise might make it to ABC at some point in the following year.

While the real dance between buyers and sellers isn't likely to begin until early June, Kimmel warned the assembled agency heavies that he wasn’t in the mood to hear them cry poor. “We know you have $9 billion to spend … and we want it.”

ABC Shakes Up Prime Time

Anthony Crupi — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:31:43 +0000

Fans of hit ABC series like Revenge and Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 will need to rearrange their fall social calendars, as Emily Thorne and the comely sociopath Chloe are moving to new digs.

After a season of holding down the Wednesday 10 p.m. time slot, the sudsy thriller Revenge will jump to Sunday nights at 9 p.m., where it will lead out of freshman phenom Once Upon a Time. Revenge will take up shop in the newly vacated Desperate Housewives time slot.

Through 20 episodes, Revenge is averaging 7.86 million viewers and a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demo. In moving it to female-friendly Sunday night, ABC is hoping to build on the success of Season 1.

And Once Upon a Time could prove to be a killer lead-in for Revenge. In its first season, the fractured fairy tale averaged 9.94 million total viewers and a 3.1 in the demo, making it the highest-rated new drama series of 2011-12.

Meanwhile, the dysfunctional Apt. 23 gang will forsake their cushy Modern Family lead-in, making way for a new series that seems to have established itself as the in-house favorite. Like a Garden State version of 3rd Rock From the Sun, The Neighbors is about a gated community full of oddballs who weep tears of gelatinous green goo and get their nutrition from books. (Spoiler alert: Everyone in the place is an alien.)

In departing Wednesday night, Apt. 23 will form a power couple with like-minded sitcom Happy Endings. Both quirky, slightly risqué series failed to hold onto Modern Family’s incredible ratings, but together the two should offer a unique voice in a Tuesday 9-10 p.m. hour that’s wall-to-wall comedy. (Fox counters with New Girl and its freshman comedy The Mindy Project, while NBC has a pair of new projects lines up in Go On and The New Normal.)

On the drama front, ABC is battening down the hatches with Last Resort, an Andre Braugher thriller about the crew of a nuclear sub that establishes its vessel as an independent nation-state. Last Resort bows Thursdays at 10 p.m.

Also in the works is the supernatural drama 666 Park Avenue, which stars Lost alum Terry O’Quinn, and Nashville, a countrified musical drama that’s a bit like Smash with steel guitars and twangy vocals. Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere star.

ABC officially unveils its 2012-13 prime-time lineup on Tuesday afternoon. The fall roster is listed below; new series are in bold:

MONDAY
8-10 p.m. — Dancing With the Stars
10-11 p.m. — Castle

TUESDAY
8-9 p.m. — Dancing With the Stars (results show)
9-9:30 p.m. — Happy Endings
9:30-10 p.m. — Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23
10 p.m. — Private Practice

WEDNESDAY
8-8:30 p.m. — The Middle
8:30-9 p.m. — Suburgatory
9-9:30 p.m. — Modern Family
9:30-10 p.m. — The Neighbors
10-11 p.m. — Nashville

THURSDAY
8-9 p.m. — The Last Resort
9-10 p.m. — Grey’s Anatomy
10-11 p.m. — Scandal

FRIDAY
8-9 p.m. — Shark Tank
9-10 p.m. — Primetime: What Would You Do?
10-11 p.m. — 20/20

SATURDAY
8 p.m. — Saturday Night College Football

SUNDAY
7-8 p.m. — America’s Funniest Home Videos
8-9 p.m. — Once Upon a Time
9-10 p.m. — Revenge
10-11 p.m. — 666 Park Avenue

Oops!...Fox Did It Again

Anthony Crupi — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:57:42 +0000

It was perhaps the worst kept secret in the business, but when Simon Cowell on Monday afternoon introduced Britney Spears as one of The X Factor’s new celebrity judges, the crowd at the Beacon Theater let out quite a whoop, y’all.

“This year, we are going to seriously kick butt,” Cowell told the crowd of media buyers and advertisers assembled for Fox’s 2012-13 upfront presentation. “I promise you…we are going to make this the best series we’ve ever made.”

In what marked their first promotional appearance on behalf of The X Factor, Spears and fellow Fox newcomer/former Disney princess Demi Lovato greeted the audience alongside Cowell and X Factor veteran L.A. Reid. “I am so excited about this whole experience,” Spears said. “It’s going to be so much fun and so different from anything I’ve ever done. I’m ready to find the true star.”

Lovato chimed in, telling clients that she is “totally stoked” to work with the rest of The X Factor cast.

Cowell stopped short of making any guarantees about The X Factor’s ratings prowess—before the show bowed last fall, the acerbic Brit boasted that anything shy of 20 million viewers per episode would be “a disappointment”—but curiosity seekers and fans of Spears and Lovato should provide a significant early lift.

If The X Factor fell short of Cowell’s boosterish projections, Season 1 was hardly a bust. The premiere cycle averaged 11.4 million viewers and a 3.8 in the demo, making it the eighth highest-rated series on the tube.

The two new stars replace original panelists Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger, who were relieved of their duties shortly after Season 1 wrapped.

As was the case in its inaugural season, Factor will air as a two-hour competition show (Wednesdays) and a one-hour results program (Thursdays). The latter installment will lead into Season 4 of Glee, which moves over from its Tuesday 8 p.m. slot. Glee will also reap the benefit of an American Idol lead-in after Cowell and Co. close out the season in late December.

Like everyone else in the broadcast space, Fox is getting down to funny business. Encouraged by the success of the live-action ensemble comedy New Girl, Fox entertainment chief Kevin Reilly has ordered a two-hour Tuesday night comedy block. Raising Hope will anchor the night, leading into the new strip Ben and Kate (formerly known as Ben Fox Is My Manny). At 9 p.m., Season 2 of New Girl will set the table for Mindy Kaling’s new series, The Mindy Project.

Ben and Kate is the sort of off-kilter family comedy with which Fox has had success in the past (see also: Malcolm in the Middle, Raising Hope). Kaling’s show may be the most anticipated of the new season, given the writer/actress’ social media bona fides (1.73 million Twitter followers and counting) and her legacy as the originator of Kelly Kapoor on The Office. According to Networked Insights, people are also abuzz about upcoming Mindy Project guest stars Bill Hader and Ed Helms.

On the drama front, the renewed Kiefer Sutherland series Touch moves from Thursday to Friday night, where it will lead into the final 13-episode run of Fringe. After a sneak preview on Jan. 25 delivered 12 million viewers and a 3.9 rating, Touch has fallen sharply, averaging 6.84 million viewers and a 1.9 rating last Thursday.

One new drama appears on Fox’s fall roster; the Jordana Spiro thriller The Mob Doctor will lead out of Season 8 of Bones. The Kevin Bacon serial killer drama The Following bows in midseason.

Earlier this morning, Fox Networks Group chairman Peter Rice told reporters that he was no fan of Dish Network’s new Auto Hop feature, a new wrinkle that essentially functions as commercial-avoidance software. Rather than fast-forward through the spots (zipping, in old VHS parlance), Auto Hop zaps them out of existence altogether. Obviously, the technology only works in playback mode, but it so effectively eliminates commercials that it’s practically a middle finger thrust in the face of the entire broadcast model.

Rice said Fox is “evaluating” legal action that might put a stop to Dish Net’s disruptive service. ReplayTV, a similar offering launched in the early days of TiVo, was legislated out of existence in 2001 after ABC, CBS and NBC teamed up to bring a lawsuit against its parent company.

Rice isn’t the only broadcast exec who’s fuming over the threat of Auto Hop; on Sunday, NBC broadcasting chairman Ted Harbert characterized the service as an attack on the network TV ecosystem and an “insult to our joint investment in programming.”

At one point during the Fox upfront presentation, Rice pointed out that 20 percent of the New Girl audience is derived from nonlinear viewing, i.e., on-demand or online. But among the core group of viewers that still watch live broadcast TV, Fox remains the top source for original series content.

Per Nielsen, Fox is about to wrap up its eighth consecutive season as the No. 1 network among the all-important 18-to-49 demo. The network is currently averaging a 3.2 rating in prime time, while the nearest runner-up, CBS, is drawing a 3.0.

NBC Plots Comedy-Driven Revival

Anthony Crupi — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:33:21 +0000

NBC on Monday returned to its Radio City upfront stomping grounds, laying out a 2012-13 prime-time schedule designed to tickle viewers’ funny bones. But before the network could get the ball rolling on its comedy-heavy slate, NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt had some sobering news for 30 Rock fans.

Speaking to a crowd of media buyers and clients, Greenblatt said that the fall run of 13 episodes would be 30 Rock’s last, adding that the series will end after seven seasons with a one-hour finale.

Greenblatt said he thinks 30 Rock creator Tina Fey is a comedic genius. “We hope she has a home at NBC for years to come," he said.

Greenblatt’s announcement was a bit of a reversal of comments he made on Sunday afternoon when he told reporters that a decision on the fate of 30 Rock was still up in the air. During that same call, the NBC exec said that the exiled Community could earn a longer order if it draws a crowd in its new Friday 8:30 p.m. time slot.

While fans may have been surprised by the news, 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin last month intimated that the much of the NBC prime time lineup was on its last legs. “The truth of the matter is that NBC is in its predicament,” Baldwin said at an April 16 National Press Club luncheon. “But unfortunately to [get out of it] they’re probably going to have to cancel most of the shows they have on their air now.”

With 10 comedies on the roster, including four new entries, NBC is practically doubling down on sitcoms. In the fall of 2011, the network had six comedies on its prime-time schedule, although that number would fall to five with the Oct. 5 cancelation of Free Agents.

The crowd reacted generously to clips from the new batch of comedies, with the biggest laughs being doled out for the Matthew Perry series Go On and the antic Justin Kirk effort Animal Practice. NBC entertainment president Jennifer Salke noted that Animal Practice co-star Crystal, who plays “a bundle of mischief named Dr. Zaius,” was the highest-testing new NBC character of this development season.

For the uninitiated, Crystal is a capuchin monkey.

The new comedies will air on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and Greenblatt hopes all four series will get a lift from NBC’s one-two punch of Sunday Night Football and an autumn cycle of The Voice.

That said, Thursday nights remain a bit of an enigma, with 30 Rock retaking the anchor slot, leading into Up All Night, The Office and Parks and Recreation. While The Office is NBC’s top-rated scripted program, the rest of the lineup underperforms. And while 10 p.m. Thursday was once the home of stalwart dramas Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and ER, NBC has thrown in the towel in 2012, slotting the newsmagazine Rock Center With Brian Williams into the former “Must See TV” capstone.

The peripatetic Rock Center is averaging 3.82 million viewers and a 0.9 in the adults 18-49 demo.

Incidentally, while NBC aired just three Thursday 10 p.m. dramas from 1980-2009, this season alone has been marked by three failed launches in the time slot: Prime Suspect, The Firm and Awake.

Clips of NBC’s midseason comedies look less promising. Save Me stars a hypercaffeinated Anne Heche as a woman who braves a near-death experience only to emerge as some sort of latter-day prophet, while frat fave Dane Cook helms Next Caller, a single-camera strip about an edgy satellite radio host.

The most buzzworthy new NBC drama is J.J. Abrams’ Revolution, which inherits the plum post-Voice slot from Smash. (The sophomore musical drama is being tucked away until winter 2013, when it will air in 15-18 consecutive episodes.)

“We went to the man who’s synonymous with ‘outside the box,’” Salke said. Abrams’ previous NBC series, the 2010 spy drama Undercovers, was canceled 11 episodes into a 13-episode run.

Also earning a production credit on Revolution is Supernatural creator Eric Kripke. According to research firm Networked Insights, “Kripke is generating the majority of the positive viewer interest” behind Revolution. That said, J.J. Abrams fatigue may have set in among viewers who sampled Undercovers or this season’s Alcatraz (Fox), and the failure of the recent NBC psychodrama/procedural Awake suggests that complex serial dramas may no longer have a home on broadcast TV.

Wrapping up the network’s drama slate, Greenblatt noted that principal photography on Mockingbird Lane, NBC’s reboot of The Munsters, will begin next month. Instead of a 30-minute sitcom, the new effort will be reimagined as a one-hour drama.

Early in the presentation, Greenblatt sounded a familiar refrain. “I keep harping on how long it’s going to take to rebuild this network,” he said. “But we’re going to do it, I promise.”

For a comprehensive rundown of NBC’s fall schedule, click here.

Comcast Files Patent to Halt DVR Ad-Skipping

Melissa Hoffmann — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:34:15 +0000

Comcast is seeking a patent for new technology that will force subscribers who fast-forward through DVR-recorded shows to view advertising anyway, according to FierceCable, an online publication for cable network execs.

The cable operator is doing the exact opposite of what Dish announced last week. Dish's new Ad Hop technology allows viewers to totally skip ads during DVR playback of prime-time broadcast programming—an idea that, for obvious reasons, is unlikely to please advertisers.

Comcast subscribers who hit fast-forward on their remotes would receive an alternate ad displayed in the center of their TV screens, which could be partially transparent, FierceCable reported, citing a U.S. patent application for the technology. The patent application also reportedly details a strategy for targeting alternative ads to skip-happy subscribers based on demographics and viewing habits.

Some have pointed out that Dish's Ad Hop feature is limited in that it only allows viewers to skip ads during prime-time programming from four large networks—ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.

However, with the average cost for a 30-second spot climbing again—now at $111,500, according to TVB—the ad industry still will have to figure out how to count Dish's 14 million subscribers during CPM negotiations during the upfront.

MSNBC noted that DVR company TiVo tried something similar to Ad Hop in 1999, letting viewers skip ads, but pulled the plug on the plan after networks expressed outrage.

Mad Med Minute Ep 9 Dark Shadows

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:38:31 +0000

Mad Med Minute Ep 9 Dark Shadows