Tuned In+Uncategorized | 192 days ago

CW at Press Tour: Sarah Michelle Gellar and I Are Getting Older

By James Poniewozik
The CW
The CW Network Summer 2011 TCA. RINGER Panel Session. The Beverly Hilton. Beverly Hills, California. Pictured: Sarah Michelle Gellar from RINGER Photo Credit: Joe Magnani/The CW. ©2011 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

This is what the TV obsession with demographics hath wrought: at TCA press tour session for the new thriller Ringer, Sarah Michelle Gellar, a 34-year-old woman, was fielding questions that implied she might be too old to be starring in a show on the CW network.

The meme began when one reporter at the panel began a question by mentioning he was “surprised after all these years” to find that Gellar was only in her early thirties. “What did you think?” she laughed. “That I should be, like, 70?”

Which led into the question: would Gellar be doing as many of her own stunts as she did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer? “Well, due to my advanced age,” she said dryly, “they’re cutting them down a little bit because we are a little worried about the osteoporosis.”

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 270 days ago

Upfronts 2011: Sarah Michelle Gellar Is Back, and Other Familiar Sights from The CW

By James Poniewozik

The CW is TV’s newest major (if you want to call it that) broadcast network, even if you count the predecessors it was formed from—The WB and UPN—which date back to the mid-’90s. But it’s old enough by now to have a history, and the new shows it announced today, rounding out the broadcast upfronts [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 563 days ago

TCA Roundup: Joey Was the Setup, Here's the Punchline

By James Poniewozik

Though the Television Critics Association press tour approaches two weeks (and used to go on longer), some critics would save time and money by jetting in only for a few days of big-network presentations. The conglomerates who own those networks have learned to counter this by bundling their smaller networks’ dog-and-pony-shows in with their big [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 634 days ago

The CW's Schedule: More Adding Than Subtracting

By James Poniewozik

The CW was the last broadcast network to announce its fall 2010 slate today, and while Melrose Place is no longer for this world, the news was more about additions: for the first time the network will air originals every night (of the five nights it programs), rather than using “encores” of shows like America’s [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 900 days ago

Who Cares About a Melrose Place Remake?

By James Poniewozik

As the New York Times told us yesterday, only the olds use Twitter. Readers of Tuned In are uniformly young and beautiful, and so you have no idea that, over on Twitter, some of us elderly TV critics—breathing the stench of the grave with every tweet—have been debating how the new CW remake stands up [...]

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Tuned In+922 days ago

Today's TCA Roundup

By James Poniewozik

As the TV critics’ press tour continued in Pasadena, CBS (along with sibling network The CW) wrapped up its presentations and NBC has just begun its portion. Some headlines:  * NBC’s Angela Bromstad answered—or judging by early press reactions, evaded—questions about Jay Leno, Ben Silverman, Kings, Paula Abdul, Chuck and more at NBC’s executive session [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 971 days ago

Melrose, Placed: The CW's Fall Sked

By James Poniewozik

The CW announced its fall premiere schedule, and it’s a relatively straightforward, unfancy one, with all the debuts wrapped up by the end of September, just like networks did when CW viewers’ great-great-grandparents watched TV in the 1970s. As 90210 did last year, the Melrose Place remake gets a start ahead of most broadcast premieres. [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 998 days ago

The CW Rolls Out More Glampires

By James Poniewozik

  By rights, The CW should be one of the hugest success stories on TV. This is, after all, the heyday of the Twilight books and movie(s), whose moody, romantic vampires have bewitched the young women in precisely The CW’s demographic.   The CW–in its previous incarnations of The WB and UPN–was doing spooky-romantic before [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1357 days ago

Corporate Press Release Theater: CW's Outsourced Sunday

By James Poniewozik

One more bit of post-upfront fall-schedule news: The CW has announced its Sunday-night lineup, which it contracted out to studio Media Rights Capital. On tap, dirty jobs, family comedy—and a whole lot of product integration:

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1370 days ago

The CW, CWickly

By James Poniewozik

The cast of 90210 (sans the “Beverly Hills”). / Frank Ockenfels/ The CW I had to bail on The CW’s schedule presentation after ABC’s last night, but having heard that there were no clips of the 90210 remake—the main thing I would have wanted to see—I don’t feel quite so bad. But here’s the roundup [...]