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After the Winter Olympics—the beautiful, beautiful dream amid which NBC can believe it is the leading network in broadcast television—NBC in March will launch its midseason schedule. Only two new shows will debut on it (because things are going so well!): the long-awaited and -delayed Parenthood and Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy-reality …
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I’ll be on The Takeaway Friday morning a smidge after 7:30 a.m. E.T. (More public radio! For I am a man of the people!) Subject: More NBC-Comcast. (Question: do regular actual humans find this merger nearly as interesting as media people do?)
Find a local station or listen online (scroll down for a link). Expect lots of 30 Rock references.
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I’ll be on KCRW radio’s excellent talk show To the Point today, lowering the level of reasoned discourse with my thoughts on the NBC-Comcast merger. My interview’s at 2:45 p.m. Eastern, but you may want to check with your local public radio station for airtimes. Or get the podcast. Or ignore it entirely.
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Giant cable-TV provider Comcast has reached a deal with GE this morning to take over giant entertainment company NBC Universal. This means big changes ahead for 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy, who will have to adapt his core competencies from selling microwave ovens to pushing upgrades on DVR cable boxes. But what does it mean for you as a TV …
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Tonight’s annual NBC tree-lighting special—a.k.a. The Reason It Was a Good Idea to Work At Home and Not At Time’s Rockefeller Center Office Today—will go on after all. A union of broadcast technicians rescinded a strike threat against the network, which had threatened to pull the plug on Christmas in Rockefeller Center. The network …
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When The Jay Leno Show premiered, the parlor game was guessing how well it would do against its big-network competition. Now it’s guessing which basic-cable show will beat it next. Jay’s been topped so far by Monday Night Football, Sons of Anarchy and SpongeBob (that last one not a direct competitor but still no badge of honor). In …
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“If creaky old NCIS can draw 20 million viewers, imagine what the combination of money, creativity, smart casting, production values, and an innovative broadcast-network programmer could do.”
With the right breaks? I’m guessing, oh, maybe 10 million.
Cynicism aside, I highly recommend Mark Harris’ take on the many troubles of NBC in …
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TNT made it official this morning: it’s reviving the cop drama Southland, discarded by NBC. Well, sort of reviving. The cable network will air the first seven episodes shot last season, as well as the six that were made for NBC before the network pulled the plug (the rebroadcast starts Jan. 12). After that, we’ll see.
In principle, I …
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If I had gotten around to reviewing USA’s White Collar, which debuts tonight, I’d probably have said what I’d have said about USA shows like Royal Pains or Psych or Monk. It’s a light, funny caper. (The premise: a con man ends up working for the FBI to help them catch other con men.) It’s brisk and slick and fun and competently made, …
Tuned InTV Ratings
A month into his run on the air, it’s about the time for observers to start weighing in on NBC’s Great Leno Experiment at 10 p.m. But as I alluded to the other day, the problem is determining what constitutes success and failure for The Jay Leno Show. Since it is a cost-containment measure before anything, it can’t be judged by the same …
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Sometimes networks cancel low-rated shows after their first season, and sometimes they cancel low-rated shows in their second seasons. NBC, after adding The Jay Leno Show this fall, shows itself willing to continually innovate with new and creative ways to get rid of dramas: it renewed cop show Southland at the end of last season, then …
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The first few minutes of Trauma, the paramedic drama that debuts tonight on NBC, seems determined to show where the network put some of that money it’s saving with The Jay Leno Show. Depicting a crisis/rescue/disaster on a rooftop high above San Francisco, it starts with a guy getting fried …
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The Jay Leno Show debuts tonight at 10, and with it begins the biggest gamble in TV in years. In my cover story, I said he and his show would represent the (downsized, cheaper) future of TV whether it succeeded or failed.* Which is just as well, because I absolutely suck at predicting whether anything will succeed or …
