By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
The CW announced early pickups of six series for next season but, of course, the real news is that there is going to be a CW network next season. The network is averaging only about 2.6 million viewers this season, down about 20 percent from last season at the same time, and a mere 750,000 viewers -- and no, that's not a typo -- in the 18-to-34 age bracket the network targets, a plunge of about 25 percent year to year.
Anyway, if you're a fan of "America's Next Top Model," it will come back next season for its 11th and 12th editions, but you weren't really worried because it's the network's most watched program.
"Gossip Girl" is the only freshman series mentioned in the announcement.
"Supernatural" is coming back for its fourth season, "One Tree Hill" for season No. 6 and "Smallville" for -- who'd have believed it -- Season 8.
CW noted that "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill," like "Top Model," are the top-ranked television shows in terms of concentration of 18-to-34-year-old women. Loosely translated, "concentration" means that while, hypothetically, only 25 people may be watching a series, 24 of them are chicks between 18 and 34.
"Everybody Hates Chris" is the only comedy on the list of early pickups CW unveiled yesterday, which may explain why the network yesterday laid off its comedy department, according to trade paper the Hollywood Reporter.
If you're a fan of freshman series "Reaper" or "Aliens in America," we've got nothing for you -- the network was mum on their fate.
If it's "Reaper" you love, we suggest you drum up some more viewers for the five episodes that will air starting April 22.
But if you adore "Aliens in America," which has finished airing its 18-episode order, your only hope is one of those mail-in-useless-stuff- to-network- suits campaigns -- preferably something CW parent CBS can use in a "Big Brother" episode -- like those "Jericho" peanuts that got that show brought back from the dead. Dirt Devils, maybe?
If you're mad about "Life Is Wild," "Online Nation" or "CW Now," all we can say is -- really? Anyway, all three are dead.
Last month, CW said it would not renew its faux-wrestling series, "Friday Night SmackDown." Last week World Wrestling Entertainment announced the franchise was moving to MyNetworkTV -- a consortium of stations, including some that aired "SmackDown" when they were part of the UPN network, which lost that affiliation when UPN and WB merged to create CW.
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NBC has kinda sorta pulled out of the annual "Upfront Week," when the broadcast networks take turns unveiling their prime-time slates for next season to advertisers and reporters in Manhattan. The network instead will be one act of the NBC Universal 2.0 Big Top presentation of all its media properties on its traditional day of Broadcast Upfront Week in mid-May.
Suits from the other networks are falling all over each other in the race to declare their upcoming upfront presentations the cheapest and most lacking in bells and whistles of any planned by any broadcaster that week.
Into this death march, enter Turner Entertainment, which announced yesterday it would crash Upfront Week, traditionally the exclusive purview of the broadcast networks. Turner Entertainment is going to unveil its TNT, TBS and TruTV lineups the same day CBS usually holds its dog-and-pony show in the afternoon at Carnegie Hall.
Turner Entertainment Networks President Steve Koonin said Turner is making this move to demonstrate its lineup of networks "is the strongest on television in terms of solid branding, reach and audience deliveries."
Besides, he added, "everyone in the industry realizes the broadcast business has been on a steep decline for years -- this year in particular." He's assuming advertisers sucking up shrimp and downing martinis at the networks' clambakes that week will notice "our networks provide an alternative that is getting better and better."
Contenders for TNT's lineup include the recently greenlit lawyerly drama "Raising the Bar," from Steven Bochco, and modern-day-Robin-Hoods drama "Leverage," from Dean "Independence Day" Devlin. TNT also is considering "Truth in Advertising," starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh; a multigenerational family drama, "Generations," from John Sacret Young and Robert Redford; and a small-Midwestern-town-in-the- 1950s drama from the "Hoosiers" and "Rudy" team of Angelo Pizzo and director David Anspaugh. Plus, "Technophobia," a drama about a bucolic town where technology is scaring the locals, and an untitled crime drama based on Tess Gerritsen's novels. And, a DreamWorks drama about a female newspaper reporter who discovers a magic lamp with an actual genie inside and uses it to discover how different people use the lamp's power to make wishes come true. Hopefully, she'll start with the guys in charge of the paper's circulation.
TBS, the comedy network, is developing a sitcom adaptation of Jane Ganahl's best-selling memoir "Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife." If it were being developed for a broadcast network, the story of "one woman's roller-coaster ride through middle age" would be changed to a roller-coaster ride through her late teens. But it's not, and Elaine Pope ("Seinfeld") is adapting. Also in development, a comedy about a woman whose husband walks out, leaving her with two kids and a struggling business. TBS is also developing late-night shows with the Jim Henson Co. and Robert Townsend.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on the night before potentially make-it-or-break-it primaries in Texas and Ohio, chose to make her last televised push on . . . Comedy Central.
She appeared live via satellite on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," her first appearance on the faux news show since 2003.
Stewart called today's primaries the Ultimate Last Final Showdown, unless Clinton wins Texas or Ohio.
"Tomorrow is perhaps one of the most important days of your life and yet you've chosen to spend the night before talking to me," he said. "As a host I'm delighted; as a citizen I'm frightened. Your response?"
"It is pretty pathetic," she said, smiling into the camera.
Wasting no time, Stewart got down to the Big Issue: Is Barack Obama being lobbed softball questions by a smitten press? It was the theme of Clinton's campaign appearance over the weekend on NBC's "Saturday Night Live," which had opened with a sketch re-creating one such debate -- on NBC's own MSNBC, naturally. Synergy is a wonderful thing.
"A lot has been made recently about the media's role in this, that they've been a little soft on Barack Obama. Apparently there was a skit on 'SNL' you participated in," Stewart sniffed. "Do you think if you had been the one that had had the kind of run he's had, the victories . . . would you be asking for him to get out?"
"Well, those are a lot of questions, Jon," Clinton chided.
"I think what we're going to find out tomorrow is we're still in a very close contest in terms of the popular vote and the number of delegates," she said, noting that her husband didn't wrap up the nomination until June.
Another thing we learned from Stewart's interview: Clinton loves Texas and Ohio.
"My first job in politics was in Texas . . . helping register voters," she said.
"And Ohio is real salt of the earth," she added, noting that yesterday morning she went to the 5:30 a.m. shift change at one of the big plants in Toledo.
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