Posts Tagged ‘ NBC ’

‘The Office’ Is Dead, Long Live ‘The Office’ Reruns

September 26, 2011
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‘The Office’ Is Dead, Long Live ‘The Office’ Reruns

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 into the show. Great. I’m intrigued. He was hilarious in his one episode that tried to find a replacement manager for Michael Scott. And then, all summer, NBC airs previews promising that Robert California will be back. Yet, when the new season premiere beings, I see “and James Spader” at the end of the opening credits, I start to worry. It’s obvious that Spader is just making a few cameos. Uh oh. Then you write into the show that Robert California is the new CEO. And how did he get the job? He talked Kathy Bates’ character “Jo” into giving him the keys to the castle she spent a lifetime building and loved running. It

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Behold: Libertarian Ron Swanson’s Pyramid of Greatness

September 7, 2011
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Behold: Libertarian Ron Swanson’s Pyramid of Greatness

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 of the people. In a recent episode, a repeat, Ron explained to a fourth grader who John Locke was. And by helping himself to 40 percent of the girl’s lunch, how taxes work. Her assignment was to write an essay on “Why does government matter?” After a few hours with Ron, she handed in a two-word essay to her teacher: “It doesn’t.” It made me smile, and of course Ron Swanson was beaming from ear to ear. He is the best sitcom character on TV—a libertarian who is not mocked but is instead the sensible one on this popular NBC sitcom. This is on network TV! I have a feeling the Hollywood writers who created

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NBC’s ‘Chase’ Strong on Moral Issues, Crime Show Formulas

October 18, 2010
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NBC’s ‘Chase’ Strong on Moral Issues, Crime Show Formulas

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 p.m. EDT), is up against a big challenge: Monday Night Football on CBS, the established hit cop show Castle on ABC, and the new hit cop show Hawaii Five-0 on CBS. Add to that a relatively weak lead-in from The Event (which is getting killed in the ratings by ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and CBS’s Two and a Half Men), plus a lackluster reaction from those who have seen the show (a C+ rating in the USA Today audience poll—14th out of the 21 new shows), and things do not look good for Chase. That’s a pity because the show has some good things to offer. The central character is Annie Frost, a U.S.

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NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

September 29, 2010
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NBC’s ‘Undercovers’ Is Appealingly True to Formula

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 (note the high-flown titles of these series). Even last season’s Tonight Show debacle can be seen as part of this trend, an attempt at innovation and specialness on the cheap. This approach has failed at least as often as it has succeeded—NBC’s ratings were seldom spectacular under Weaver; CBS tended to rule the roost then, as today. In fact NBC’s greatest success in the post-Weaver years was the Brandon Tartikoff era, when the former ABC program exec wedded  the network’s typical ambition and thirst for innovation with a smart quest for personable actors and entertaining concepts. With Zucker now on the way out and Jeff Gaspin installed as board chairman, NBC appears to be trying

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NBC’s ‘The Event’ Sets Record: Jumps the Shark in First Episode

September 21, 2010
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NBC’s ‘The Event’ Sets Record: Jumps the Shark in First Episode

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 slot, according to TV by the Numbers: It was NBC’s best non-olympic performance in the time slot since February 2, 2009 and it rose from a 3.5 rating with adults 18-49 in the first half hour to a 3.9 in the second half hour. But, OK, you may be wondering, should I watch it? Will it be worth my time? Short answer: probably not, at least if the pilot episode is any indication. One distinctive element of The Event is the show’s narrative structure: the story jumps back and forth in time and from one place to another. I didn’t find that to be a problem, but others might not find that aspect of The

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Broadcast Audience Aging Faster Than Population

August 20, 2010
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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.

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‘Rockford Files’ Remake Shelved

May 14, 2010
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‘Rockford Files’ Remake Shelved

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. I don’t doubt that NBC will keep pursuing the idea, with different personnel continuing to cycle through the process, but this was definitely not the right group of people for the show. The Rockford Files was obviously a labor of love for all the parties involved, and that seems to be what made it successful despite—and indeed because of—the show’s eccentric nature in blithely ignoring genre conventions and TV traditions while confirming the audience’s basic values. The people at NBC/Universal would be smarter to hand the project over to the USA Network, where they have a clue about developing successful new TV dramas. To repeat that success, the new project should be led by people with

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Jack Bauer Is Dead. . . .

March 27, 2010
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Jack Bauer Is Dead. . . .

… 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 after the fifth season), Fox was paying an incredible $5 million an episode for this year’s installments. Let’s see … 5 million times 24 episode equals …. A LOT! But Jack Bauer himself, as he’s proven countless times on “24″ is hard to kill: Yet for fans of Jack Bauer, there remains hope. Studio 20th TV is developing a theatrical film that takes Bauer to Europe, and showrunner and executive producer Howard Gordon says other possibilities are being explored as well. “There are other possible iterations of Jack Bauer and his world,” Gordon said. The producers of “24″ have long begged off shifting Jack Bauer to the big screen because it would screw up the

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NBC’s ‘Community’ an Exemplary Sitcom

March 5, 2010
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NBC’s ‘Community’ an Exemplary Sitcom

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 genuinely amusing moments per episode, but it also takes its characters seriously to some degree, which makes it more than just a string of gags. In the first episode, Winger ends up leading a Spanish-language study group even though he has little grasp of the language. The various members of the group are comically beset by a multitude of emotional, social, and functional problems. Winger, however, very quickly (and somewhat implausibly) turns the group into what he describes as a “community.” The tables are soon turned on him, however, as he is revealed to all as a shallow, selfish, conceited moral relativist. This is not characterized as a good thing. Taking up this theme of

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New ‘Rockford Files’ Lead Actor Announced

March 4, 2010
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NBC has announced that Dermot Mulroney will star as the title character of the upcoming Rockford Files series remake. Story here.

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Leno’s ‘Tonight Show’ Return: Controversially, No Surprises

March 2, 2010
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Leno’s ‘Tonight Show’ Return: Controversially, No Surprises

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, has almost certainly been a primary reason for Leno’s success: he amuses viewers without overwhelming them with sensational material such as O’Brien’s masturbating bears and potty-mouthed dog and Letterman’s aggressive non sequiturs. Leno is clearly out to amuse, not to change the world, and that is exactly the sort of programming most people seem to want in that 11:35 time slot. As a result, Leno returned to his Tonight Show helm last night after a hiatus of several months in which NBC tried moving him to primetime and shifting O’Brien from The Late Show at 12:35 a.m. to the Tonight Show at 11:35. As has been well-documented, the change was a predictable disaster both for

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It’s Official: Leno Back to 11:30, Competition Could Be Strengthened Across Board

January 12, 2010
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It’s Official: Leno Back to 11:30, Competition Could Be Strengthened Across Board

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 network.). There are details yet to be worked out, however: But “as much as I would like to tell you we have a done deal, we know that’s not true,” Gaspin said. “The talks are still ongoing.” NBC expects to resolve O’Brien’s fate, one way or the other, by the time the Winter Olympics begin Feb. 12. The Olympics are expected to deliver a big audience the network plans to use to promote its rebuilt prime-time and late-night schedules starting March 1. Update, 4:2o EST: O’Brien says that he will leave NBC, Tonight. The new 10 p.m. schedule will likely include a return to scripted dramas. Insiders argue that cost-cutting

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