I am increasingly concerned that the syndicated reruns of The Office will continue to be the best of the show. And after watching the premiere of the new season, I’m actually worried that the new season will spoil even those good shows in my head. (For me, The Office started getting the water skis waxed up for the shark jump after Jim and Pam had a baby. Yet, for this new season, I held out hope. That hope is fading fast.) You bring James Spader…
If you are not familiar with the show Parks & Recreation on NBC, I highly recommend it. One of the heroes of the sitcom is a character named Ron Swanson, played by Nick Offerman. Ron Swanson is a staunch libertarian, and his “meta joke” for the show is that he’s the head of the Parks Department in the town of Pawnee, Indiana—and his goal in life is to shut down that department (and most others) because they are useless wastes of time and the hard-earned money…
Both NBC and Jerry Bruckheimer Productions have hit some hard times in recent years. Bruckheimer’s signature programs—notably the CSI franchise—are past their prime, and recent series such as The Forgotten and The Whole Truth have failed to generate the hoped-for audiences. NBC has been mired in fourth-place among the broadcast TV networks and is struggling to recover from a series of blunders exemplified by last season’s Tonight Show disaster. Bruckheimer’s latest new series (one of two this year), the police drama Chase (NBC, Mondays, 10…
As the fourth-rated broadcast TV network, NBC has made plenty of mistakes during the past few years, under now-ousted CEO Jeff Zucker. These failures actually arose from NBC’s longtime corporate culture and mission, which have been in place since the 1950s: an emphasis on specials and spectacular ideas as opposed to creating solid entertainment. It was NBC’s ambitions, inherited from the innovative TV programmer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver in the 1950s, that led to expensive, high-concept shows such as Kings, Heroes, The Event, and the like…
NBC’s The Event has probably been one of the most widely anticipated new series of the current season. The network ran countless promotional spots intended to entice viewers to wonder precisely what the title occurrence might be, and what it might mean. Of course, big hype means big expectations, and it’s an open question whether the show can live up to them. The ratings last night were good but not as high as NBC might have hoped, with the show finishing third in its time…
If you don’t watch ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox, you’re in luck: you’re aging more slowly than those who do. At least, that’s the gist of this poorly worded AP headline: “Broadcast audience aging faster than population.” We knew the cable networks embraced the youth culture, but who knew they could actually help one maintain that youthful shine longer.
NBC has stopped work on its proposed private-eye series The Rockford Files—as we had suggested would happen. As Deadline.com reports: NBC was underwhelmed by the completed pilot. It then underwent major recutting, which was reportedly done by the editor of one of NBC’s top drama pilots this year, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Chase. But, while an improvement vs. the original cut, the new version of the pilot still didn’t impress NBC brass enough to muster a series order. Still, a redevelopment of the concept is a possibility.…
… at least on Fox come May after the conclusion of it’s eighth “day,” otherwise known as a season. From The Hollywood Reporter: Tick, tick, tick … and done. After eight seasons, Fox’s “24” is coming to an end. The groundbreaking action drama will air its final real-time episode in May, the victim of a confluence of circumstances: a swelling budget, declining ratings and creative fatigue. BOOOOO!!!!! Apparently, due to the fact that salaries spiral upward dramatically the longer a show is on television (especially…
In addition to its well-publicized, disastr0us experiment with moving Jay Leno to primetime, NBC has done some good things this year. Perhaps the best of these is the new sitcom Community. The concept is simple but rich in characters and potential comical situations. Suspended lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) has been sent back to college because his academic degree was discovered to be phony. Now he’s stuck at the local community college—which he describes as a “school-shaped toilet.” The show includes at least a few…
NBC has announced that Dermot Mulroney will star as the title character of the upcoming Rockford Files series remake. Story here.
If you want to identify the most controversial person in television, forget about Glenn Beck and Keith Olberman. The answer is obvious: Jay Leno. The once and newly restored host of NBC’s Tonight Show has incited hostility and outright hatred for many years, simply by virtue of being more commercially successful than rivals David Letterman and Conan O’Brien. In particular, fans of his competitors have derided Leno for being overly conventional and failing to challenge late-night viewers by pushing the boundaries of taste. That, however,…
In a move that bodes well to strengthen TV programming overall in both primetime and late night, NBC has confirmed that Jay Leno will be moved back to his original 11:30 slot and his 10 p.m. show canceled on February 11, as rumored over the past week. USA Today reports: Under the new plan, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon would move from 12:35 a.m. to 1:05. (Carson Daly‘s talk show, which now follows Fallon, would be canceled, though Daly would remain under contract at the…
Press reports and even jokes on last night’s Jay Leno Show point to the likelihood that NBC’s experiment with moving Leno from late night to prime time is over, and that the instigator of the changes, Conan O’Brien, will have to accept a diminished role as a consequence of his successful campaign to force Leno out of his 11:30 slot.
Conan O’Brien played it safe in his debut as host of NBC’s Tonight Show last night. That’s a good choice, actually. Will it last? S. T. Karnick writes.
The excellent TV drama series Friday Night Lights returns to the air tonight at 9 EDT—but not on the network where it began. The season premiere of Friday Night Lights on the DirecTV channel The 101 represents a new step in the satellite company’s efforts to bring first-run programming to its subscribers, and is another step in NBC’s attempts to find cheaper programming options.
Recent Comments