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17 articles from 2008

No Deal For NBC

26 November 2008 10:39 AM, PST | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

NBC's Deal or No Deal may have become the latest hit game show to fall victim to overexposure. The Howie Mandel-hosted show is being removed from NBC's primetime schedule (it's daytime version will continue) but may return occasionally as a special, NBC programming exec Mitch Metcalf told Daily Variety. Deal was conspicuously absent from NBC's schedule when it announced its post-holiday lineup. So, too, were Life, Chuck and Heroes (but NBC said that those shows would likely return in February) as well as My Own Worst Enemy, Lipstick Jungle and Crusoe (which are not likely to return). Mandel, the network said, will return with a new hidden-camera reality series titled Howie Do It. Other new NBC shows include Superstars of Dance, Momma's Boys, and a "couples" version of The Biggest Loser. Also returning to the schedule on Fridays will be Dateline NBC and Friday Night Lights (repeats of the episodes broadcast earlier in the season exclusively on DirecTV). Asked about the heavy load of reality shows on the schedule, Metcalf said in a separate interview with TVWeek: "This really is about reducing the number of repeats on our schedule and maximizing the number of continuous originals."

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When life imitates art in a bad way...

9 November 2008 11:13 AM, PST | From Fangoria.com | See recent Fangoria news

On November 1st I received a phone call from a friend- "Have you heard the news about Mark Twitchell?" he asked. The name rang a bell, but at first I didn't know why. "Twitchell? Why do I know that name?" I said. He replied, "He's the director of Secrets Of The Rebellion."

For the purpose of this blog, and to keep negative attention away from my friend, I'm keeping his name out of this. You see, Mark Twitchell was charged with murder in a now infamous case of life imitating art.

Last year, my friend worked on Sotr, a fan film set in the world of George Lucas' Star Wars. This was to be one of those "high-end" fan films. It had a budget of around $60,000 , featuring a huge cast and crew, elaborate special FX, sets, the works. Twitchell, the director, was said to be using it as a "calling card" piece,

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CBS News Shows Soar In Ratings

10 October 2008 10:37 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

CBS said Thursday that it is showing striking gains with all of its news program during the first weeks of the new season. Last Sunday's 60 Minutes, it noted, drew 16.65 million viewers, making it overall the third-highest-rated show of the week. Ratings for Face the Nation were up 33 percent. 48 Hours Mystery saw a 16-percent increase and was the highest-rated show on the air Saturday night. CBS Evening News with Katie Couric saw a 5-percent increase in its ratings, as did The Early Show. By contrast NBC has yanked all of its primetime news programming after airing as many as five hours of Dateline programming weekly during the summer, and ABC has pulled off Primetime temporarily, leaving only 20/20 as its sole primetime news program during the week.

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Pauley Campaigning In Indiana For Obama

3 October 2008 10:39 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Former Today show and Dateline NBC co-host Jane Pauley has been actively campaigning in her home state of Indiana for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. "I came home to visit Indiana because I am scared about my country's future and I believe in Barack Obama," Pauley told a group of 50 people in Warsaw on Wednesday. On Thursday, she told a group in Anderson that Indiana, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964, "is in play. Indiana is close." She predicted that when the November ballots are counted, Indiana would be blue: "The 21st century will have begun and Indiana will have started it." It was the first time in memory that a former network news personality (who wasn't married to a candidate) had engaged in active political campaigning.

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Palin Nabs Top Ratings On Her Own

15 September 2008 10:40 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Charles Gibson's one-hour interview with Sarah Palin on a special edition of 20/20 Friday night gave the ABC magazine its best ratings in six months and the highest ratings of the night for any program. The special also trounced the second hour of Dateline which featured a profile of Clark Rockefeller, the man accused of snatching his daughter away from his ex-wife. Other segments of Gibson's interview with Palin attracted big audiences for World News With Charles Gibson and Nightline.

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Tom Cruise to Play a Serial Killer?

5 September 2008 8:02 AM, PDT | From Cinematical.com | See recent Cinematical news

I bet when you woke up this morning, you thought the same thing I did: "When are we going to get to see Tom Cruise viciously murder a whole bunch of people on the big screen ... again?" Right? We're So on the same wavelength here, like internet, movie-related soul mates from outer space! That said, fellow soul mate, Variety tells us that Cruise and United Artists have acquired rights to The Monster of Florence, based on the book by Douglas Preston. Cruise will produce and possibly star, though there's no word on whether he'd play the killer or one of the men trying to crack the case.

This is actually a pretty crazy story, and I believe it was the subject of a recent 48 Hours Mystery (or Dateline) where these two guys -- Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi -- were on an intense search to find out who exactly

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Erik Davis

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Clark Rockefeller: I Miss My Daughter Very Much

21 August 2008 2:00 AM, PDT | From PEOPLE.com | See recent PEOPLE.com news

Clark Rockefeller, the controversial figure at the center of a number of criminal investigations – including, most recently, the alleged abduction of his own 7-year-old daughter – is about to shed some light on his mysterious past. In his first TV interview, to air next Monday and Tuesday on the Today show and in September on Dateline, Rockefeller speaks to Natalie Morales of NBC News about his identity, as well as his daughter and his own origins. His answers to questions are not always clear, however. Regarding his bloodlines – given that a genuine member of the Rockefeller oil family has disputed Clark's

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Stephen M. Silverman

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Talent's Got Ratings

30 July 2008 10:26 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

After being bumped off the top of the Nielsen weekly ratings list a week earlier by baseball's All-Star Game, NBC's America's Got Talent regained its leadership as America's most-watched summer show, with 13.2 million viewers. On the other hand, two new summer shows that were expected to perform strongly proved to be disappointments. Both aired on ABC. The game show Wanna Bet? and the High School Musical spinoff Get in the Picture attracted just 3.1 million viewers each. Sticking mostly with reruns, CBS nevertheless won the week with an average 4.1 rating and 7 share. Fox and NBC tied for second with a 3.5/6. ABC trailed with a 2.8/5.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research:1. America's Got Talent, NBC, 7.9/13; 2. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 6.4/11; 3. 60 Minutes, CBS, 6.3/13; 4. NCIS, CBS, 5.9/10; 5. CSI: Miami, CBS, 5.7/10; 6. Criminal Minds, CBS, 5.6/9; 7. Wipeout, ABC, 5.4/9; 8. So You Think Can Dance (Wednesday), Fox, 5.3/9; 9. Dateline (Sunday), NBC, 5.2/9; 9. House (Monday), Fox, 5.2/9; 9. So You Think Can Dance (Thursday), Fox, 5.2/9.

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More Viewers Making A Date With Dateline

28 July 2008 11:02 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

NBC's Dateline continued to post impressive numbers on Sunday, winning both the 9:00 p.m. hour and the 10:00 p.m. hour with back-to-back documentary features. The weekly news magazine has continued to dominate the two hours on Sunday since it was yanked from the earlier 7:00 p.m. hour last month, where it competed against CBS's always high-rated 60 Minutes. Sunday's first hour posted a 4.9 rating and an 8 share, beating Cold Case on CBS which pulled a 3.4/6. Dateline's 10:00 p.m. feature improved to a 5.5/9,nearly twice that of NBC's 10:00 p.m. Flashpoint which scored a 2.6/5.

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All-Star Game Scores For Fox

23 July 2008 10:27 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Some 14.5 million people were singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" last week, making Fox's coverage of Major League Baseball's All-Star Game the most-watched telecast of the week. (The figure represented only the primetime segment of the telecast, which stretched past 1:00 a.m. as the game went into extra innings. From 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., it averaged 11 million viewers, more than the number that watched any other show in primetime during the week.) The game also helped Fox win the week, making it a rare win for the network during the summer months. Its Wednesday edition of So You Think You Can Dance also made it into Nielsen's top ten. Fox averaged a 4.5 rating and an 8 share for the week. CBS placed second with a 4.3/8. NBC took third place with a 3.6/7, while ABC trailed with a 2.9/5.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research:1. Major League Baseball All-Star Game, Fox, 9.3/16; 2. America's Got Talent, NBC, 7.9/13; 3. MLB All-Star Game Pregame Show, Fox, 6.8/13; 4. Criminal Minds, CBS, 6.2/11; 5. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 6/10; 6. CSI: NY, CBS, 5.7/10; 7. 60 Minutes, CBS, 5.6/11; 7. So You Think You Can Dance (Wednesday), Fox, 5.6/10; 9. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 5.5/9; 10. Dateline (Sunday), NBC, 5.3/9; 10. (tie) NCIS, CBS, 5.3/10.

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High School Musical Hits Sour Note

21 July 2008 10:30 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Disney learned Sunday that its High School Musical brand has limits to its success. Only 4 million viewers tuned in to High School Musical: Get in the Picture, a talent competition that aired on Disney's ABC. The show placed dead last among the key demographic group of adults 18-49. Last year 17.24 million viewers tuned in to the Disney Channel for the debut of High School Musical 2. ABC was apparently so confident of big numbers for Sunday night's show that it scheduled a repeat for tonight (Monday). Continuing to make a strong showing on Sunday night was NBC's magazine show Dateline, which NBC recently moved to 9:00 p.m. from its former 7:00 p.m. time period where it competed head-to-head against CBS's top-rated 60 Minutes. A two-hour edition of Dateline led in both the 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. hours, beating reruns of such top regular-season audience grabbers as CBS's Cold Case and CSI: NY and ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Desperate Housewives. Overall ratings for the broadcast networks continued to look bleak, with NBC winning the night with just a 4.0 rating and a 7 share. CBS finished second with a 3.9/7. ABC placed third with a 2.7/5, which Fox trailed with a 1.8/3.

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NBC Removes "Predator" Story From Website

26 June 2008 10:38 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

NBC has removed all reference to NBC Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" sting in Murphy, TX during which Louis Conradt Jr., an assistant county prosecutor, shot and killed himself after police arrived at his house, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday). On Wednesday, the newspaper said that the network had reached a settlement in a $105-million lawsuit filed by Conradt's sister. Details of the settlement were not disclosed, but it was presumed that the removal of the "Predator" report from the NBC site was included in it. Other deleted material included a response to an investigation of the incident by ABC's 20/20 and a statement about the suicide written by Dateline correspondent Chris Hansen. The material remains available on other websites.

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NBC Paid Shriver To Stay Off Air, Report Claims

17 March 2008 10:21 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

NBC continued to pay former Dateline co-anchor Maria Shriver hundreds of thousands of dollars annually after she left the program following her husband's victory in the 2003 gubernatorial election, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Monday). The newspaper cited information about Shriver's "golden parachute" included in statements of economic interest that her husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is required to file. The payments, the newspaper said, were part of an exit agreement Shriver and NBC negotiated after network executives became uncomfortable with her working as a journalist for the news division while simultaneously serving as the state's first lady. "There is absolutely nothing unusual about her exit agreement with NBC," Daniel Zingale, Shriver's chief of staff, told the Times.

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'Dateline' Praised, Condemned at Awards Program

18 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Columbia University, which hands out the annual Alfred I. duPont Awards for Journalism Excellence each year, presented one award Wednesday night to NBC's Dateline and another award to a Texas TV station for a feature that condemned the NBC magazine show. Dateline received the award for an August 2006 feature titled "The Education of Ms Groves," about a neophyte Atlanta teacher's struggles with her first-grade class. Shortly thereafter, an award was presented to Dallas TV station WFAA, an ABC affiliate, for a feature titled "Television Justice," which condemned Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" series. TV Newser reported Thursday that several NBC executives, including NBC News President Steve Capus, walked out of the ceremony before the WFAA award was presented, then returned afterwards.

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NBC Is the Biggest Loser

14 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

NBC found itself besieged from all sides following its decision to air the Golden Globes presentation as a three-hour news special Sunday night. On the one hand, it was forced to cancel the original awards show when the Writers Guild of America threatened to picket it and when other entertainment industry unions said that they would observe the picket line. It was then attacked by numerous critics for tearing down the usual wall that exists between the operations of the entertainment and news divisions by insisting that the announcement of the winners at a news conference be covered live in primetime and that it be followed by a two-hour Dateline NBC program in which the nominees would be interviewed. (Although the biggest news about the Globes was that they had been broken by the WGA strike, the strike itself was not mentioned in any of the Dateline interviews.) NBC then failed to reach an agreement with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Dick Clark Productions that would have allowed it to broadcast the announcement of the winners exclusively. Anticipating lower ratings, it also agreed to return millions of dollars to advertisers who had purchased spots on the Globes telecast. It may not have anticipated just how low those ratings would drop. The Dateline program drew the lowest ratings of the two-hour time period, averaging a 3.2 rating and a 5 share. Viewers' reactions were probably summed up by Chicago Tribune columnist Maureen Ryan, who wrote: "No gowns? No half-drunk acceptance speeches? No thanks." The telecast of the awards announcements was only slightly higher -- pulling a 4.8/7, but still in last place. To make matters even worse, NBC's repeat of its hit American Gladiators series at 10:00 produced a minuscule 2.8/5.

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News for the Sake of Entertainment?

10 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

NBC is being taken to task for its decision to reconstruct the 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards show on Sunday as a news event that will include a two-hour Dateline documentary in which Matt Lauer will interview the nominees and a one-hour news conference during which the winners will be announced. Several former and current TV news correspondents depicted the night-long affair as an effort by the network's entertainment division to co-opt news programming. Former CBS and CNN correspondent Deborah Potter told the Los Angeles Times: "It's pretty clear there isn't much of a firewall between news and sales anymore, but my goodness, you don't want to bulldoze it." A former NBC News producer who did not want to be named told the newspaper, "Nobody believes the news division made the decision to carry it. ... It's serving the entertainment division's purpose. ... This is the way principles get chipped away, bit by bit." The Times said that the decision to move the Golden Globes from entertainment to news "was made at the highest levels of NBC Universal, in discussions led by CEO Jeff Zucker."

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Amid Strike Fears, Golden Globes Reduce Coverage

7 January 2008 | From IMDb News

In the wake of the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have proposed scaling back their coverage of Sunday's Golden Globe awards from a three-hour ceremony and dinner to a one-hour press conference announcing the winners. Fearful of WGA picketing, and a recent statement by the Screen Actors Guild that none of the 70+ acting nominees would attend the ceremony, the Globes made a mad scramble on Monday to come up with a contingency plan that would allow some kind of network television coverage (and thus save millions of dollars in advertisting revenue) without the fear of picketing or no-shows from high-profile celebrities. To insure that the show would go on in some way, NBC, Dick Clark Productions (which produces the Golden Globes show) and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have decided to cancel the traditional dinner and ceremony, and instead broadcast a press conference via NBC News (which is not affected by the WGA strike) to announce the winners, and bracket this one-hour special with a number of different news programs centering on the Globes.

At press time, while the WGA had agreed to withhold its picketing from the press conference, it had not given an official go-ahead for the additional coverage. Negotiations were said to be ongoing regarding the use of clips and the Globes party coverage.

According to the Los Angeles Times, NBC issued a statement late Monday afternoon that said Sunday evening would tentatively contain the following broadcasts (all times are Eastern):

7pm: A Dateline NBC special with interviews and clips of the nominees (initially scheduled for Saturday)

8pm: Tentatively, a retrospective/clip show to be produced by Dick Clark Enterprises

9pm: A NBC News press conference announcing the Golden Globe winners

10pm: An Access Hollywood-style Golden Globes party show

The new broadcast plan will allow for a certain amount of red carpet coverage and party coverage in addition to the press conference. Nominees and party attendees would be expected to go down a traditional red carpet, but they would then split off to various parties. Once the awards were announced, the winners would have an opportunity to give a statement or reaction from either a party site or the press room. So far, no potential attendees have confirmed or denied they would attend any of the festivities.

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2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1998

17 articles from 2008

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