Author: Ellen

Michael Phelps Suspended for Six Months After DUI Arrest

Ellen

10/6/2014   The Hollywood Reporter   by Hilary Lewis

USA Swimming said his behavior violated the organization’s code of conduct

USA Swimming is suspending Michael Phelps from all of its sanctioned competitions for six months following the three-time Olympian’s DUI arrest last week.

The organization said that his behavior violated USA Swimming’s code of conduct by engaging in activities “detrimental to the image or reputation of USA Swimming … or the sport of swimming.”

In addition to his suspension, Phelps will not be allowed to represent the U.S. at the 2015 FINA World Swimming Championships in Russia from Aug. 2 through 9.

USA Swimming will also stop paying Phelps his monthly stipend during his suspension period.

“Membership in USA Swimming, and particularly at the national team level, includes a clear obligation to adhere to our code of conduct. Should an infraction occur, it is our responsibility to take appropriate action based on the individual case. Michael’s conduct was serious and required significant consequences,” USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus said in a statement. “Michael has publicly acknowledged the impact of his decisions, his accountability especially due to his stature in the sport and the steps necessary for self-improvement. We endorse and are here to fully support his personal development actions.”

Phelps was arrested and charged with his second DUI last Tuesday after allegedly speeding and crossing double lane lines while he was driving along I-95 in Baltimore.

After apologizing, Phelps announced over the weekend that he entered an in-patient rehab program that will keep him from competing at least through mid-November.

Phelps has won 22 Olympic medals, including 18 gold. He retired after the 2012 Summer Games, but in recent months he’s been competing again in preparation for another Olympic run.

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-phelps-suspended-six-months-738483#sthash.c1naYua7

Turning a Book Tour Into a Literary Circus (and a Hot Ticket)

Ellen

9/28/2014   The New York Times

By ALEXANDRA ALTER

Last month, the writer, actor and producer Lena Dunham started an ambitious project. Nearly 600 people responded to an open call for video auditions on her website, including a sand artist, a ukulele player, a cappella singers, gymnasts, performance artists and stand-up comics, even some exceptionally charismatic babies.

The seven who made the final cut won’t be making cameos in “Girls,” Ms. Dunham’s HBO show about Brooklyn 20-somethings. Instead, they’ll be the warm-up acts — performing free of charge — on an elaborately produced, 11-city tour to promote Ms. Dunham’s new book, “Not That Kind of Girl.”

“Three of the videos were disturbing, but the rest were super awesome,” Ms. Dunham said, adding that she spent several hours screening the auditions in bed.

In an era when author tours and splashy book parties have grown increasingly rare, Ms. Dunham has organized a traveling circus of sorts that seems more like a roving Burning Man festival than a sober, meet-the-author literary event. Prominent comedians and writers, such as the “Portlandia” star Carrie Brownstein and the novelist Zadie Smith, have thrown their weight behind Ms. Dunham and will appear on her tour as part of a carefully curated cast of artists, along with live music, poetry readings and, naturally, food trucks.

“I found the idea of a traditional author tour, where you go and stand behind the lectern and talk about yourself, I found it a little bit embarrassing, a little blatantly self-promotional and a little boring,” Ms. Dunham said. “I wanted it to have an arts festival feel, which is why we now have all these remarkable, special weirdos who I found on the Internet.”

Ms. Dunham’s critics are likely to see these highly produced spectacles as an over-the-top marketing stunt or yet another example of her inflated sense of self as an artist. Her fans are lining up, though. In less than a week, the tour sold around 8,000 tickets, which are selling for $38 at most locations. Tickets include a $28 signed hardcover of “Not That Kind of Girl,” which Random House is releasing on Tuesday. Ms. Dunham said she tried to buy a scalped ticket to a coming event in Brooklyn herself, so that she could give it away, but the ticket holder wanted $900 in cash, in person, and “My mama taught me the word no,” she wrote on Twitter.

The tour is also a way for Ms. Dunham to shed her TV persona and rebrand herself as an author. By putting her onstage alongside seasoned writers like the memoirist Mary Karr and the novelist Vendela Vida, Random House hopes to cast Ms. Dunham as a major new literary talent, not just a celebrity who leveraged her fame for a big book deal.

“We’re trying to establish her as a writer, a very serious literary writer, so we put her in conversation with authors who are very literary,” said Theresa Zoro, director of publicity for Random House. (In another signal of literary legitimacy, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, which publishes her essays, and his wife, Esther Fein, are hosting a book party for Ms. Dunham at their Upper West Side apartment.)

It is unclear whether the tour and the publicity blitz can generate enough momentum to turn the book into the kind of mega-best-seller that Random House needs it to be. Ms. Dunham reportedly received more than $3 million for the book, a collection of personal essays detailing her struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, her string of emotionally abusive boyfriends and humiliating early sexual experiences, and her creative evolution. Though the book touches on universal issues like the challenges of becoming an adult, those themes are filtered through her very particular sensibility, and her stories might not have the broad appeal of popular writers she has been compared to, like Nora Ephron and like David Sedaris, who gave the book a glowing blurb.

Random House is planning a first printing of 225,000 copies, a big first run in today’s sluggish publishing climate, but still a relatively small number given the size of the advance. Tina Fey’s 2011 best seller, “Bossypants,” for example, had a first print run of 700,000 hardcover copies. It went on to sell more than three million copies and was hugely profitable for Little, Brown, which paid somewhere between $5.5 and $6 million for the book, according to Publishers Marketplace.

To break even, Random House probably needs to sell at least 500,000 copies of “Not That Kind of Girl,” publishing sources say. Since Random House bought only United States publication rights, it can’t recoup any of the advance by selling foreign rights. (Ms. Dunham’s literary agency, Inkwell Management, has sold the book in 24 countries.)

Memoirs and essays from TV personalities have been a publishing industry staple for decades, but the stakes have gotten higher lately as publishers compete for a handful of titles with blockbuster potential. Nineteen publishers bid for “Not That Kind of Girl” in a frenzied two-day auction. Publishers aren’t just fishing for hits; they’re also struggling to remain culturally relevant in an era in which TV dominates popular culture.

This year, Alfred A. Knopf published “One More Thing,” a short-story collection by B. J. Novak, a writer and star from “The Office,” as part of a seven-figure, two-book deal. Penguin paid about $3.5 million for “Parks and Recreation” actor Aziz Ansari’s forthcoming book about dating in the digital era, according to Publishers Marketplace. Next month Dey Street Books will release Amy Poehler’s first book, “Yes Please,” a cheeky mix of memoir, humor and advice, with an announced first printing of 500,000 copies. Next year, Mindy Kaling will publish another book, “Why Not Me?” “The halo effect from television is enormous,” said Russell Galen, a literary agent. “The mere fact that someone is successful in this vastly larger medium makes publishers and editors go all aquiver at the prospect that we may be able to tap into this behemoth world that we’re normally cut off from.”

The gambles don’t always pay off. For every “Bossypants,” there’s a celebrity book that fizzles. (The much-hyped memoir from Jane Lynch, the comedian who plays a catty coach on the television show “Glee,” sold only 20,000 hardcover copies, according to Nielsen BookScan.)

The tour for “Not That Kind of Girl,” which starts in New York on Tuesday at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square with the comedian Amy Schumer, is one effort to form an army of evangelists for the book. Random House chose some cities, like Seattle; Austin, Tex.; and Portland, Ore., because they are areas where “Girls” fans are concentrated. (Last season, “Girls” drew an average of 4.7 million viewers per episode, according to HBO.)

Ms. Dunham’s co-stars on the tour may bring their own followers. Curtis Sittenfeld, author of the novels “Prep” and “American Wife,” who will share the stage with Ms. Dunham in Iowa City, said she planned to ask about how Ms. Dunham juggles writing books and running a TV show. The mutual admiration — and cross-promotion — was apparent last week in a Twitter exchange between the two.

“I’m not the first to say it & won’t be the last but: I really, really, really loved @lenadunham’s Not That Kind of Girl,” Ms. Sittenfeld wrote.

“Thank you,” Ms. Dunham replied. “This means so much to me and I am so excited to see you.”

 

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/arts/turning-a-book-tour-into-a-literary-circus-and-a-hot-ticket.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&referrer=

WTF is an MCN?

Ellen

9/26/2014   Digitday by E 

The land grabs started roughly four years ago, when YouTubers began pulling in real money. Almost overnight, organizations sprung up around the booming Web video economy, with major tech and entertainment executives peeling off to start or join a digital video network. Their pitch to creators: Turn your video-making hobby into a lucrative career.

Today, they’re called multi-channel networks, or MCNs. Similar to how United Artists led Hollywood talent to wrest control of their livelihood from a rigid studio system, MCNs help deft, young creators navigate and profit in a complicated digital landscape. Here’s what that entails:

WTF is an MCN?
MCNs collect and represent talent — folks with popular YouTube channels — and package them for advertisers in exchange for a slice of their income. Offerings differ across each MCN, but they tend to help creators build and share audiences, provide access to production resources and seek sponsors for branded content opportunities.

Who can join an MCN?
Anyone with a sizable YouTube following, basically. Some MCNs are focused on specific content areas. Machinima is centered on gaming culture, DanceOn around the dance community. Other MCNs have a more general array of content. There’s a lot of variation in size and exclusivity, too: A network like Fullscreen serves up 4 billion video views each month across its 50,000 video makers, while Collective Digital Studio draws 1.5 billion monthly views with just 700 creators, which implies the average Collective DS creator has a significantly larger following.

That’s a big gap. What does that entail for folks who sign up?
It means smaller MCNs like Collective DS can pay more individual attention to their creators. Larger MCNs rely more on their creator platforms, where members can access a suite of audience generation and monetization tools. Fullscreen is hands-on with its top members, like comedy duo The Fine Brothers, which have over 10 million YouTube subscribers. At that level, artist management and sponsorship sales become a much more substantial part of the relationship.

What do brands get from working with MCNs?
While YouTube doesn’t own or endorse MCNs, they tend to be trustworthy sources of high-quality YouTube content. Working with an MCN takes a lot of the legwork out of finding relevant channels on which to advertise. MCNs also facilitate branded-content opportunities with top YouTubers.

So MCNs are completely dependent on YouTube?
YouTube is a huge piece of the MCNs’ audience generation and monetization strategy and will be for the foreseeable future. But the top MCNs are becoming broader media entities less dependent on a single platform. Defy Media, for example, represents YouTube comedy group Smosh, which inexplicably has close to 19 million subscribers on the platform. But the majority of the Smosh-related revenue Defy rakes in comes from videos viewed and merchandise sold on Smosh.com, which the MCN operates. The recent Smosh movie deal with Defy investor Lionsgate surely didn’t hurt either.

Wait, Lionsgate? What do big entertainment companies have to do with goofy YouTube videos?
Just as MCNs seek out popular YouTubers, media giants have begun to invest in or even acquire top MCNs. Otter Media, a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group, just acquired Fullscreen. Disney paid $500 million for Maker Studios in April and could shell out as much as $450 million more if the company performs well. Dreamworks spent $33 million for AwesomenessTV last year, with performance incentives that could push the total to $117 million by 2015.

What’s the catch?
Well, in the best case scenario, everyone wins: YouTubers build their brand and make more money, advertisers benefit from the consistent exposure, and MCNs (and their owners or investors) take home a fair but sizable cut. But it doesn’t always turn out that way. MCNs like Maker Studios and Machinima have been criticized for their onerous contracts.

Such as?
Machinima came under fire in 2012 after contributor Ben Vacas discovered he had signed away the rights to anything he posted on YouTube, for life, “in perpetuity, throughout the universe, in all forms of media now known or hereafter devised.”

What’s the solution to these contract disputes?
Who knows. But one thing is certain: always read the fine print.

 

http://digiday.com/publishers/wtf-mcn/

The secret to BuzzFeed’s video success: Data

Ellen

9/24/2014   Digiday

BuzzFeed Motion Pictures wants to be your best friend.

And by all accounts, it’s well on its way: Like the rest of BuzzFeed, the 40-person video department has centered the majority of its content around a cheerful, upbeat tone, an ethos that has helped BuzzFeed become one of the fastest-growing digital video publishers, having just started a video division in 2012. Unlike many text publishers that have pushed into video, BuzzFeed’s videos aren’t boom and bust. They regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. For example, the last 10 videos BuzzFeed created have view counts between 221,000 and 1 million on BuzzFeed’s primary YouTube channel, BuzzFeedVideo.

Andrew Gauthier, newly promoted to executive producer of BuzzFeed Video, is one of the main forces behind BuzzFeed’s impressive foray into video content. Gauthier, BuzzFeed’s first full-time video employee, now oversees all of the company’s non-sponsored video content. In a recent conversation, he talked with Digiday about BuzzFeed’s video operations and ambitions. Excerpts:

What’s the new role?
I’ve been at BuzzFeed for a little over two years. We’ve obviously grown a lot since 2012: Now we have 40 talented video producers that are making over 30 videos a week. In my new role, I’m focused on establishing short-form video as the engine that runs BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. As we experiment with doing longer-form, serialized content, short-form BuzzFeed video will be the place where we test out new characters, topics, storylines and styles, with the opportunity to bring those things into longer videos and serialized videos.

Following the $50 million Andreessen Horowitz investment, BuzzFeed renamed its video division BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. Does that mean long-form content is a major new focus for the company?
The scope is going to grow in a very organic way, where we’re going to test certain lengths of videos, characters, and topics. In terms of stuff we’re experimenting with, we’ve started an unscripted development team that’s being headed by Henry Goldman. That documentary-style content may run for five to seven minutes or longer.

How are you using data to inform video production?
Data influences every stage of production. In the pre-production stage, we’re very conscious of existing conversations on the Internet, about topics or identities or certain styles that appear to be resonating with people. Everybody that works here lives on the Internet, so it’s this very natural thing to say, “Oh, I’ve noticed that a lot of my friends are posting this type of thing on Facebook.” We’ll talk about why certain things went viral, then we’ll incorporate that into a larger conversation.

And after a video is released?
We pay close attention to how viewers are interacting with our videos. We look at share stats on Facebook, comments on YouTube and BuzzFeed.com, and through those metrics, we will learn about what types of things in the video resonated with viewers, and also how viewers use the video interact with their friends whether they share on Facebook or Twitter or elsewhere.

Do you have an example of data-driven content creation?
We made a video called Weird Things All Couples Do. It got a ton of shares, and we noticed by looking at the comments and shares that a lot of couples were sharing it with each other. Now we’ve done a number of follow-ups. We did Weird Things All Couples Fight About, which has well over 1 million shares and 30 million views on Facebook — and that’s just the Facebook player. Then we did Weird Things Couples Do On Date Night. We have a number of follow-ups in the works about being best friends, siblings, cousins.

Looking at the analytics dashboard, what surprises you, and how do you use that data?
We are continually surprised by the reach of our videos internationally. Our video team is based almost exclusively in Los Angeles. Because a lot of us that are making stuff are American and are based in the U.S., we naturally create stuff for an American audience. But I am continually surprised by our reach beyond the U.S. and beyond English-speaking countries. Specifically, we continually get a lot of viewers from the Philippines, and that’s not something we have consciously targeted. It’s just perhaps certain elements to our viewers that have resonated with people in the Philippines. Videos about friendship and family have done particularly well with our Filipino viewers. We have done a couple of videos that were specifically about being Filipino, about growing up as part of a Filipino family, and we have a couple people on staff here who are Filipino-American, so they were able to build off their personal background to make videos that resonated with millions of people. We are continually surprised by our reach beyond the U.S. and are always looking to expand that to create content that not only American viewers want to share but also international viewers want to share.

Which social platforms have been the best distribution channels for BuzzFeed video?
A significant percentage of our views come from YouTube, but we’ve seen an incredible amount of growth and viewership through the Facebook player. Facebook is a lot more about personal identity and interacting with friends, while YouTube is a lot more about consuming video, so they have pretty different audiences.

Different how?
On YouTube, we recently had a video pass 10 million views: If Disney Princes Were Real. And on Facebook, we’ve had a number of videos that have more than 10 million views, and also some videos have a million shares. That’s really exciting for us. Shares are obviously a big part of what we consider when we’re attacking new platforms and looking at what resonates and what doesn’t.

There isn’t a perfect formula for virality, of course, but BuzzFeed has been remarkably consistent in making videos that are highly shared. What’s the secret?
Our video is a unit of conversation. After we make a video like 13 Things Only Siblings Understand, as an older brother, I’ll share that with my sister, and I don’t really have to add words to it, because in a small way, it sums our relationship. We strive to make videos that include pieces of truth. Hopefully, people feel they need to share it with their friends or family because it adds a certain amount of truth to their lives.

Is that tone something the video department learned from BuzzFeed editorial?
We’ve applied the BuzzFeed voice that our editorial team has established over the years to video. It’s not just positive; we approach the reader or the viewer from the standpoint of being their ally or their proxy. As we develop storylines, we want viewers to say, “That’s so me” and really see themselves in the characters.

How is the video department organized? How do you decide what content to make?
We don’t have a conventional division of labor here, in that we don’t have writers and directors and camera people and editors. We have a bunch of people that do everything. We call them producers, but effectively, they will create a video from beginning to end: write it, shoot it, direct it, edit it. If you have one person making a video from beginning to end, it gets infused with their personal passion.

 

How do you prevent the whole operation from sliding into chaos?
To some extent, chaos is great. We learn a lot by working in an environment where anything is possible, where we walk into work with the desire to take on new challenges.

Any hints about what’s coming up next?
We’re always pushing forward, testing new formats, new characters, new styles. We launched a channel, BuzzFeed Violet, a little over a month ago. The goal there was to establish a handful of characters and to really test characters and establish a community around the characters, similar to what you’ve seen with other personality-driven YouTube channels — the types of people you don’t commonly see on TV and movies but that exist in the world — and use them to tell many, many stories.

 

 

http://digiday.com/publishers/inside-buzzfeed-video/

Hearing That Things Can Change Helps Teens Dodge Depression

Ellen

9/24/2014   NPR   by Maanvi Singh

Hearing from older students that high school gets better may help teenagers avoid depression.

Depression is common in teenagers, with 11 percent being diagnosed by age 18, and many more having depressive symptoms. Social and academic stress can trigger depression, and rates of depression tend to peak in adolescence around the age of 16.

It doesn’t help that stressed-out teens often fall into hopelessness, says David Yeager, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. “When kids have hard things happen to them, they think it’ll be like that way into the future.”

Researchers started noticing back in the 1980s that many teens felt that social and personality traits were immutable — that someone who is once a loser is always a loser.

So what if we could convince kids that things can change for the better — would that help mitigate the high rates of depression? Yeager tested that out. The results of his latest study, published Monday in Clinical Psychological Science, suggests that it does.

The study divided 600 ninth-graders into two groups. Half participated in a brief intervention program designed to help them understand that people and circumstances can change. These teenagers were shown several articles, including one about brain plasticity, and another about how neither bullies nor victims of bullying are intrinsically bad.

“We didn’t want to say something to teenagers that wasn’t believable,” Yeager says. “We just wanted to inject some doubt into that problematic world view that people couldn’t change.”

The students also read advice from older students reassuring them that high school gets better, and they were asked to draw from their own experience and write about how personalities can change.

Nine months later, the researchers checked up on all the students. Among those who didn’t participate in the intervention, rates of depression symptoms such as feeling constantly sad and feeling unmotivated rose from 18 percent to 25 percent — about what the researchers expected, Yeager says. The group that participated in this intervention showed no increase in depressive symptoms, even if they said they were bullied.

Of course this is a fairly small study. And the intervention doesn’t treat clinical depression. At most, it helps kids who may be prone to depression cope better.

“I would say the research is at an early stage,” says Gregory Walton, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University who wasn’t involved in the study. “But this is a fairly promising start.”

For one, the intervention is pretty easy to start and scale up, Walton says.

And Yeager’s previous research indicates that the intervention also helps with aggression and general health. Other researchers have found that similar interventions help teens do better academically.

Like teens, many adults tend to feel that people and circumstances don’t change, Walton says. “But adolescence might be a good window of opportunity to target that belief.”

Anything that could help prevent the onset of depression in teens is worth testing and trying out, he says. “Depression is a recurrent disorder. Kids who have an episode of depression in adolescence are likely to have another episode as adults,” he notes. So intervening early could make a huge impact in a teenager’s future.

 

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/24/350933822/hearing-that-things-can-change-reduces-depression-in-teens?sc=17&f=1001&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app

Can Thursday Night Save Network TV?

Ellen

9/11/2014   New York Magazine   By

Here’s how big Thursday-night TV used to be: During the mid-’90s, when NBC populated the evening with Friends and Seinfeld and ER, some 75 million Americans made a point of watching at least a portion of that lineup every week. Two decades on, like everything else in TV, the numbers for that night are a whole lot smaller. Last season, the combined average audience on Thursday for ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox was around 33.5 million viewers — or about the same as the audience for ER or Seinfeld alone at their peaks. More distressing for the networks, nearly 7 million viewers had abandoned Thursdays in just the previous year. With dramatic declines like these now common throughout the week, after decades of Chicken Little predictions about the impending demise of network TV (or the notion of one or more of the Big Four moving to the somewhat friendlier climes of cable), it seems as if the sky is finally falling.

Yet even though fewer of us are watching on Thursdays, the night remains critical to broadcasters for a basic reason: It’s where the money is. Or, more precisely, where certain kinds of ad revenue can be found. Because most feature films open on Fridays, movie studios will still drop a lot of money for ads that air just before people make their weekend plans. And retailers, including automakers, also look to Thursday programs to prime shoppers for weekend deals. This, in addition to its massive ratings, is why CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, which airs on Thursdays, charged more for a 30-second spot — about $317,000 — than any other scripted show on TV last season. And why, of the 20 costliest shows on which to buy ad time last season, seven aired on Thursdays, according to Ad Age. For all the talk about time-­shifting in TV these days, timing still matters — and no one is more invested than the networks in making sure that remains the case. “Since I’ve been at CBS, since I’ve been watching television — it’s been a dominant night,” says CBS Entertainment chairman Nina Tassler.

Executives are carefully readying their spin in case the results are disappointing again this year, though. Tassler points out that her boss, CEO Leslie Moonves, has talked in recent months about how the network is less dependent on ad dollars as it increasingly mines other revenue sources, including selling its shows to streaming outlets such as Amazon. “Every night is a battleground now,” says Fox TV Group chief operating officer Joe Earley. “If you look across the week, almost every time period is competitive.” Perhaps. But it’s impossible to look at all the moves the networks are making on Thursdays this season — every network has some of its biggest guns out for this fight — and not come away convinced that what we’re witnessing is the networks making one last, swaggering stand for cultural hegemony rather than admitting defeat and becoming little more than glorified cable networks. The night NBC once promoted as “Must-See TV” is now where the networks are most loudly begging viewers: Don’t flee TV. Below, how each of the four is attacking the problem.

 ******************

CBS
The incumbent powerhouse that’s spending big to hold its lead.

It’s rare for a network to keep a winning lineup on the bench, but that’s exactly what CBS is doing with its Thursday schedule this fall. The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Elementary — none of them will be seen in their regularly scheduled late-week time slots when the new TV season kicks off later this month. Instead, Thursday Night Football has taken up temporary residence on the network through the end of October. CBS shelled out a reported $275 million — or $34 million per game — for the eight-week NFL package, all on the proposition that it will help solidify the network’s stranglehold on Thursdays, a night it’s won every season but three since the start of the century.

And odds are the NFL on Thursdays will be massive, or at least big enough to let CBS defeat all rivals early in the season, both in overall viewers and among key demo groups like young men. But while the network will gladly take the ratings boost it will get from the NFL, what it’s really banking on is a much less certain halo effect — that viewers who come to CBS for football in September and October will stick around for its Thursday lineup of sitcoms, a bid to replicate the success NBC had through most of the ’80s and ’90s — and a surprisingly vexed one.

Since The Big Bang (far and away the most-watched comedy on TV) moved to Thursdays in late 2010, CBS has been unable to find a comedy to follow it — three of the four new sitcoms scheduled behind it at 8:30 have been pulled after one season or less despite the lead-in. Last year, things improved slightly: The Will Arnett–led The Millers was still the season’s No. 1 new comedy despite disappointing ratings (and is getting a second chance this season). By the end of the season, CBS will have to worry about Two and a Half Men disappearing, but in the short term, that show remains a key asset, and Tassler predicts it will get a boost from the hoopla surrounding its final season. She’s hoping that Men, plus the millions of viewers who will come to CBS for football, will help the night’s only newcomer, The McCarthys. It’s a standard CBS family sitcom, centered on a Boston brood (including a gay son) obsessed with sports. “It’s a sports-themed show on what will be a sports-themed night,” Tassler says.

******************

ABC
Going after women with more soapy drama from TV’s top producer.

The network’s Thursday strategy begins and ends with Shonda Rhimes. The superstar showrunner behind Thursday staples Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy is taking over a third hour on the night, adding the Viola Davis–led legal thriller How to Get Away With Murder to her roster. Not since the legendary Aaron Spelling controlled Saturdays for several seasons during the ’80s has a single ABC producer so dominated one night. “She’s [our] new president of entertainment for Thursday night,” jokes ABC’s actual entertainment chief, Paul Lee. In fact, Lee believes in the producer’s power so much, he had ABC run internet ads over the summer in which Rhimes  appeared alongside her on-camera stars to discuss their shows’ upcoming seasons. “We live in such a postmodern world,” the Lee says. “I would argue that most of our core audiences know Shonda … they love Shonda, they know what she promises. And it provides real value. Her brand is a very valuable brand.”

While the power of Grey’s and Scandal has been enough to allow ABC to finish a consistent No. 2 on Thursdays (and a strong No. 1 with young women), the network hasn’t had any other recent hits that night despite trying a slew of scripted shows — retro trifles like Pan Am and a male-skewing thriller, Last Resort. Shifting Grey’s to the leadoff hour and sliding Scandal back an hour to 9 p.m. solves a bundle of problems at once: It guarantees ABC will dramatically improve its 8 o’clock numbers, puts the network’s top show at the center of the night, and gives Murder time to build a following in the slightly less competitive 10 p.m. hour.

If there’s a downside to ABC’s Thursday thinking, it’s that ignoring guys potentially shuts out a whole class of advertisers. Last season, ABC’s lineup ranked first among adult women under 50 but a distant fourth with men of the same age — easily the biggest gender gap of the four major broadcast networks. While it’s certainly better to be very strong among one group than none at all (see: NBC), ABC increasingly resembles a cable network, focusing on one segment of the audience rather than casting a wide net.

******************  

NBC
Abandoning comedy after a decade of decline.

NBC heads into Thursdays this fall finally ready to concede what’s been obvious for some time now: “Must-See TV” as we’ve known it is dead. “We haven’t had a strong comedy presence on the night for a while,” admits Jeff Bader, the network’s president of program planning. While 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Recreation are beloved by critics and loyal niche audiences, none ever broke out in the same way as NBC’s last true Thursday-night comedy hit, The Office. An attempt to go broader last fall with star vehicles for Michael J. Fox and Sean Hayes didn’t work out, either. And so, for the first time since 2006 — and for only the third time since The Cosby Show debuted in 1984 — the network will begin the fall with just a single hour of comedy on Thursdays. The 8 p.m. hour will now be occupied by long-running reality competition The Biggest Loser, while at 10 p.m. Parenthood will play out its final 13 episodes. The lone comedies, both new, will air from 9 to 10: Bad Judge (Kate Walsh plays a … bad judge) and A to Z (Broadway vet Cristin Milioti and Mad Men’s Ben Feldman play mismatched lovers at the very start of their relationship). Those shows won’t have long to prove themselves, however. Starting in February, they’ll vacate their time slots to make way for The Blacklist, the James Spader–led crime-procedural surprise hit from last season, which was NBC’s most-watched first-year drama since ER and the network’s biggest new show of any kind since The Apprentice. And among viewers under 50, it ended up with bigger numbers than almost every other drama on TV last season, including its new time-slot rival, Scandal. Moving it gives NBC two powerful platforms from which to promote new dramas, with the Katherine Heigl–led State of Affairs now following The Voice and conspiracy thriller Odyssey set to air after The Blacklist. Plus, last season, the Spader show gained 6 million viewers each week via DVRs — more than any series on TV. Bottom line, says Bader: Shifting Blacklist to Thursdays “was the strongest move we could make with a potentially small amount of downside.”

******************

FOX
Older viewers (and an old show) are the future.

Like NBC’s, Fox’s Thursday lineup is a concession to reality — in this case, that there’s almost no way the network will be able to finish first or even second on the night. After anchoring Thursdays for several years with music competitions, the network will start rebooting this season. The X Factor has been canceled, and American Idol will air far fewer hours. The new game plan: murder-mysteries. At 8 p.m., Fox will lean on Bones, a reliable warhorse since 2005. It will be followed by Gracepoint, a remake of the rapturously reviewed British series Broadchurch. The gritty procedural elements of both shows distinguish them from ABC’s soapy dramas or CBS’s comedy lineup. But more important, Fox thinks they’ll appeal to both men and women — unlike ABC’s Shonda block or, early in the season, CBS’s NFL games. “We are playing off of the fact that other networks are going one way or the other,” explains Earley. (Like the NFL, it’s a game of inches: Bones’ audience last season was still 62percent female, which seems high until you realize that 74 percent of Scandal’s viewers are women.)

Beyond demographics, Fox’s Thursday lineup relies on some pretty basic scheduling theory. In a time slot with established demographic powerhouses, Fox has slotted Bones, a show that has a fiercely loyal audience willing to watch (or DVR) it whenever it airs. By contrast, Gracepoint is more of a departure. It’s the network’s attempt — minus the nudity and bad words — to mimic what non-broadcast networks and streaming-video services have done so well over the past decade with their highly serialized, feature-film-like dramas. Event series like Gracepoint “create noise [and] cut through the clutter, Earley argues. “It helps us compete with cable.”

The twists and turns promised by a limited series also encourage viewers to watch as close to live as possible, something ABC’s Scandal has mastered with its weekly barrage of “OMFG” moments. And that’s key at a time when a growing number of viewers, abetted by DVRs and Netflix, no longer think of TV in a linear fashion. Advertisers are willing to pay networks for audiences who don’t watch commercials in real time, but only to a point — three days after the fact is accepted as the cutoff (though some deals are being written based on tune-in up to a week out). Most of the Big Four’s Thursday moves are designed to add urgency. The makeovers won’t solve all the problems facing broadcast TV. But for now, the networks aren’t quite ready to give up trying to persuade us to watch on their timetable.

*This is an extended version of an article that appears in the September 8, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.

 

http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/can-thursday-night-save-network-tv.html

What’s Behind the Rise of Transgender TV

Ellen

09/25/2014   THR   by Natalie Jarvey

Gay couples? Gay kisses? Yawn. New sexual boundaries are being broken as Amazon’s ‘Transparent’ is the latest to tackle a once-taboo topic

Television viewers looking for transgender characters traditionally had to settle for periphery prostitutes or psychopathic serial killers. But with the Sept. 26 premiere of Transparent, Amazon Studios is betting that audiences are ready to watch a transgender character take center stage.

It’s a bold move for Amazon, which entered the original content game in 2013 with mainstream fare — the political satire Alpha House and the workplace comedy Betas — that failed to register with critics and awards tastemakers. But Jeffrey Tambor‘s portrayal of family patriarch Mort and his transition into Maura is earning the streaming service and show creator Jill Soloway their best reviews yet. And Transparent is just one of several trans-themed projects breaking one of TV’s last sexual barriers.

Just as gay and lesbian characters moved into the spotlight in the 1990s with such shows as Ellen and Will & Grace, transgender characters increasingly are in the spotlight, from Alex Newell as Wade “Unique” Adams on Fox’s Glee to Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black (for which she made history in the summer as the first openly transgender Emmy acting awards nominee and snagged a Time magazine cover). “There have been trans people represented on TV for a very long time,” says Cox. “But people are having empathy for these characters. That’s part of this moment that shifts things a bit.”

Amazon comedy head Joe Lewis says he didn’t set out to make a transgender show, but he concedes that the hook is a big part of Transparent‘s allure. “It allows you to tell a story that you haven’t told before,” he says. “I think that makes it more exciting to watch.” Whereas featuring unmarried couples or gay characters might have once felt fresh or edgy, it takes a lot more to surprise or intrigue today’s audiences. “It’s the role of art in any society to look forward and break down walls and really assess what’s happening in the present,” adds Lewis.

The trend is a marked difference from past trans portrayals, which GLAAD says are overwhelmingly negative. In fact, of the more than 100 episodes with nonrecurring transgender storylines that the media watchdog group tracked from 2002 to 2012, 54 percent contained negative representations, and another 35 percent were classified as ranging from “problematic” to “good.”

It’s no coincidence that instead of airing on TV networks, many of these new trans-friendly shows have found homes on digital outlets such as Amazon and Netflix. The latter is prepping an upcoming sci-fi drama, Sense8, from Andy Wachowski and transgender sibling Lana Wachowski that will feature trans actress Jamie Clayton. Soloway explains that the nontraditional greenlight processes at these outlets open the door for shows with unconventional stars. “With the networks, everything that’s made is questioned with: Who will buy ad time on this?” says Soloway. “Whereas, Netflix and Amazon only need to appeal to people.” Adds GLAAD entertainment media director Matt Kane, “The very nature of how they’re creating the shows and how they’re delivering them lets them break a lot of the old molds.”

At the same time, cable and other digital outlets also are jumping on the trans bandwagon. MTV, which is introducing an “intersex” character (who has both male and female chromosomes) in season two of its teen drama Faking It, will air Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, a documentary that will tell the stories of seven transgender youths. HBO is prepping Three Suits, a documentary from executive producer Lena Dunham about the transgender clients of a bespoke Brooklyn tailor. And AOL has True Trans with Laura Jane Grace, a docuseries that follows the trans Against Me! lead singer as she meets with trans fans while on tour. In many cases, scripted depictions of trans characters have paved the way for these projects. “In scripted and comedy, there’s a way to introduce topics and make us comfortable with them,” says AOL originals vp Nate Hayden, citing Cox’s Orange character. “It gets sneaked into the cultural awareness and really does open our eyes.”

Still, despite TV’s progress, transgender characters are largely niche fare. And the challenge for Transparent will be in finding an identity beyond the hot-button themes it addresses. The show, which has a number of trans people in the cast and in the crew, has received some backlash for casting Tambor in the role of Maura instead of a trans actor — a critique that Soloway brushes off by explaining, “Jeffrey was always this role.”

But Amazon, which doesn’t reveal ratings numbers or even how many people subscribe to its Prime video service, doesn’t necessarily need to worry about going after a large audience. If Transparent turns into the kind of transformative show that House of Cards was for Netflix, the risk will be worth it. Says Lewis: “We’re not going to be judged by over-night ratings. We’re going to be judged by the impact that we have on television.”

 

This story first appeared in the Oct. 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/whats-behind-rise-transgender-tv-735016#sthash.WCIzBNGY

Penguin Random House Inks First-Look Deal With Universal (Exclusive)

Ellen

09/24/2014   THR   by Rebecca Ford

Random House Studio president Peter Gethers will oversee the new agreement

Peter Gethers

Universal is taking more pages from Random House books — literally. The studio has inked a two-year, first-look production deal with Penguin Random House, whose Unbroken and Fifty Shades of Grey it already has adapted.

Future projects will include the pub­lisher’s entertainment division, Random House Studio, as a producer. RHS recently renewed its partnership with Universal division Focus Features through 2016, but the new pact will expand “the scope of what we’re able to do,” says RHS president Peter Gethers, who will oversee the new agreement. “Universal has a broader mandate and the ability to get bigger projects and bigger authors.”

The film adaptations will be derived from recently published, upcoming and backlist titles published by Penguin Random House imprints, as well as original ideas.

Gethers adds that his team already is exploring titles that could create film franchise possibilities: “If you look at the books that are selling the most right now, they all seem to be movie tie-ins. It’s a huge plus for the authors and for Penguin Random House’s bottom line if we come up with one or two books that can be turned into a series of movies.”

Universal is distributing two hot projects in the next six moths based on Penguin Random House imprints. The first, the drama Unbroken, which chronicles the life of Olympian and war hero Louis Zamperini, was directed by Angelina Jolie and will be released in theaters on Christmas Day. The second is the hotly anticipated adaptation of EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, set for release on Feb. 13, 2015.

Random House Studio launched a co-venture with Universal’s specialized division Focus Features nine years ago, which led to the production of films including Reservation Road and One Day.

UTA repped Penguin Random House in the deal.

 

A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/penguin-random-house-inks-first-735212

Hillary Clinton’s Hollywood Backers Mobilize for Expected Presidential Run

Ellen

09/24/2014   THR   by Tina Daunt

Clinton with Seth Meyers at the Clinton Global Citizen Awards on Sept. 21 in New York

She likely will announce a second bid after the November midterms as Howard Gordon and Dana Walden begin to rally: “People have been very ‘Let’s wait and see’ until now. People are starting to get excited,” says Gordon

It’s back to the future for Hollywood’s Democratic activists, many of whom are convinced that former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will run again for president and are lining up to show support.

As Clinton, 66, was in New York on Sept. 21 for the annual Clinton Global Initiative gathering, the leading pro-Clinton super PAC held an event for more than 70 supporters at the Pacific Palisades home of producer Howard Gordon and wife Cambria. The event was organized by the Ready for Hillary super PAC, which bills itself as a group “encouraging” Clinton to run while laying the financial “groundwork” for a campaign. Several of those at the gathering, co-hosted by producer Ryan Murphy and husband David Miller, told THR that they believe Clinton likely will declare her candidacy soon after the November midterm elections.

Murphy, a key Barack Obama fundraiser, says he wasn’t hesitant to join “Team Hillary” this time. “It’s very important to get a woman in the White House,” he says. “That’s why I’m supporting her. I’ve been inspired by her tenacity. I’ve been inspired by her grace under pressure.”

Clinton was blindsided in the 2008 race when prominent Hollywood Democrats — including David Geffen, who had backed her husband, Bill — sided with Obama. Gordon, who supported Hillary in 2008, says he believed showbiz would rally around Hillary this time but was surprised by the strong turnout for the super PAC event. “People have been very ‘Let’s wait and see’ until now,” says Gordon. “People are starting to get excited.”

The event, which featured a concert by Gordon’s neighbor Burt Bacharach and an appearance by Sen. Barbara Boxer, was Ready for Hillary’s largest West Coast fundraiser so far. (Tickets were priced from $1,000 to $2,500.) Among those in attendance were Fox’s Dana Walden, screenwriter Billy Ray and former Fox president Gail Berman. Michael Douglas, who was out of town, sent a contribution.

“People have been whispering about this for so long, it would be so disappointing if it doesn’t happen,” says Walden, adding that friends with ties to the Clintons have told her Hillary definitely is running. “There’s a huge groundswell of support that’s starting already.”

 

This story first appeared in the Oct. 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hillary-clintons-hollywood-backers-mobilize-735273