Author: Brett

Next week are the Upfronts, when the broadcast networks announce their new shows for the coming fall season, which means that this week network executives are making their final decisions on which of their 100 or so drama and comedy pilots to pick up. To make this decision, much of their attention — as well as that of the producers and studio executives who created those pilots — is concentrated on the research reports based on audience testing and focus groups done on each pilot. Having produced between 35 and 40 scripted pilots (I lost count years ago), I am very familiar with this process. And like most producers, I’m of two minds when it comes to the legitimacy of audience testing on pilots: (1) It is an invaluable tool, proving when a pilot connects with the public, and it’s a good indicator that a show will succeed. I believe this deeply when my show has tested well. (2) It is a ridiculous and wasteful exercise, famously damning shows that end up succeeding and supporting others that fail miserably, while invalidating the judgment and experience of those the networks allegedly trust to create entertainment for their viewers. I am firmly of this mind when my show has tested poorly.

http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/tv-pilot-focus-groups-gavin-polone.html

Years ago, before the cable boom, before the rise of social media, before broadband and Apple TV and Netflix and ­iEverything were at our fingertips, “the ­future of TV” was the subject of endless Clinton-era gold-rush-fever speculation. We were told exactly what it would look like: One day soon, we’d be able to watch Friends or ER whenever we felt like it, simply by saying to our TV—or better still, our home computer, which would control everything—“Show me the latest episode.” Maximum consumer flexibility, maximum choice, maximum convenience. Tech nirvana.

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/mark-harris-tv-2012-5/

Remember when television was dismissed as a passive medium? I do, and every time I write a next-day review of a new episode, I grin as I recall those bygone days. Watching TV used to be a mindless experience to be shared with only those in the room (often just oneself); thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, it has become a group activity, practically a hive mind. On Sunday, TV’s blockbuster night, I decide which of the evening’s notable shows to watch live and which to DVR for later: This spring, the prime pickings included Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, Girls, Veep, The Killing, The Borgias, and The Good Wife. I keep my laptop open to see what other people have to say about them as they air; for a TV critic who can’t be everywhere at once, social media is like an amateur wire service. Then I settle in to watch Mad Men, a drama I review each week for New York’s Vulture, and any lingering doubts that I’m living in TV’s most exciting, engaged era dissipate like cigarette smoke.

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/matt-zoller-seitz-2012-5/

When the ABC sitcom Happy Endings finished filming its first season, the cast and writers did what any self-respecting sitcom crew would do: They rented a party bus and set course for Vegas. The bus had neon lights and a stripper pole and was outfitted to be a Damn Good Time. It ended up sitting in eight hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic while the cast—who had wrapped at 4 a.m., a mere handful of hours before the party bus departed the Paramount lot—tried with varying degrees of success to cover up the fact that no one really wanted to be going to Vegas. “Everyone was kind of like, ‘What are we doing?’ ” says Casey Wilson, an SNL alum whose character, Penny, is the show’s perpetual optimist. “People were nauseous and sick. Damon [Wayans Jr.] was lying down on the seats with pillows over his eyes trying to sleep. So it wasn’t quite like the party bus that you know and love.”

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/happy-endings-2012-5/

High in the Frank Gehry–designed IAC building on the West Side Highway, floor-to-ceiling windows flood the offices with blinding sunlight in the afternoon, which is when Barry Diller takes a seat to answer some questions. Wearing a light-gray sweater and black driving loafers without socks, his blue eyes alert behind delicate gold-rimmed glasses, Diller looks younger than his 70 years, probably a product of a life lived equally in the professional realm and aboard theEos, his 305-foot yacht named for the Greek goddess of the dawn. This curvaceous concrete-and-glass building resembles a ship, when you think of it, sails to the wind, and in the hallway a large replica of a sailing yacht rises from a carpet—a ­reminder, in case you forgot, that you’re about to meet the guy with the enormous yacht.

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/barry-diller-2012-5/

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118054214

The CW is doing its darndest across digital platforms to live up to its billing as the “first fully converged network.”

Rick Haskins, exec veep of marketing and digital programming at CW, indicated that 18% of all in-season consumption of CW series occurs on a combination of CWTV.com, Hulu Plus, which shares the next-day window with CW’s website, and the free component of Hulu, which gets episodes one week after the TV airdate.

Haskins said that since CW signed its deal with Hulu last October, the viewing that takes place on Hulu and CW is largely non-duplicated — to the point where frosh series “Hart of Dixie” did so much better on Hulu than the network’s own website that it factored into the renewal of the series, which had only lukewarm TV ratings.

CW also has a second deal with Netflix for post-season programming with Netflix, which, together with Hulu, were lucrative enough to compensate for the losses CW parent companies CBS Corp. and Time Warner have incurred.