Index
Adweek : Television
Mad Men Minute Ep 10
Hulu has added 10 new series to its slate, including Spoilers, a new half-hour show about movies hosted by Clerks writer/director Kevin Smith. Other additions to the digital video company's stable of series include the previously announced Up to Speed by Dazed and Confused filmmaker Richard Linklater, and scripted comedy We Got Next.
Smith's take on the traditional movie-review show is predictably unconventional. "I have always wanted to do a show that provides an open forum for real fans to discuss real movies in real time, and that's what Spoilers is about," Smith said in a statement. "As a filmmaker and lover of movies, I understand that ultimately it's the fans who make the film. So in this show, we do not review movies; we revere them."
Hulu also has several U.S. premieres ready to drop. There's Rev., a new series about a vicar (In the Loop star Tom Hollander) who moves from a rural parish to inner-city London (that one's from BBC Worldwide Americas); HBO Canada mockumentary The Yard; and a new series called Derren Brown: Inside Your Mind from titular mentalist Brown.
The rest of the slate is taken up with Pramface, about pregnant teenagers; The Promise, a drama about the Middle East conflict; and Little Mosque, a comedy that follows a Muslim community who rent out the parish hall of a small-town church.
General Motors has decided to punt on its annual Super Bowl investment, saying the price of admission to this year's broadcast is simply too high.
"We understand the reach the Super Bowl provides, but with the significant increase in price, we simply can't justify the expense," Joel Ewanick, vp and global chief marketing officer of General Motors, said in a statement.
CBS is carrying the upcoming NFL championship tilt, set to kick off in New Orleans on Feb. 3, 2013. Earlier this year, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves told investors that he anticipated commanding as much as $4 million for a single spot in this year's broadcast, a 14 percent increase from NBC's asking price in Super Bowl XLVI.
GM last year purchased four in-game spots, a buy that included a 30-second ad during the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter. Per Nielsen, that Cadillac ad coincided with peak viewership, reaching some 117.7 million viewers.
The GM Super Bowl buy was augmented by two postgame ads. All told, the company spent an estimated $21 million on inventory in and around the Giants-Patriots showdown.
While GM's announcement may have caught CBS off guard, the automaker did not have a formal commitment with the network. And while only Anheuser-Busch InBev and PepsiCo have spent more money on the Super Bowl in the past decade-per Kantar Media estimates, GM purchased $82.8 million on the game between 2002 and 2011-the decision is not without precedent. In 2009, the company passed up the opportunity to invest in the broadcast, a call it reiterated the following year.
As was the case three years ago, GM's decision to sit out the CBS broadcast was prefaced by a major revision of its TV ad strategy. Just days before its ads aired in Super Bowl XLVI, GM acknowledged that it had opted out of 50 percent of its second-quarter upfront commitments, the maximum allowable under the terms of network ad sales contracts.
While significant, GM's defection shouldn't leave CBS shorthanded. For one thing, the network began selling inventory for the big game back in January. Moreover, the last two years have seen unprecedented demand from the automotive category; in Fox's broadcast of Super Bowl XLV, a record nine brands spent a staggering $77.5 million on in-game ads. (Previously, the most robust auto spend was $29.74 million, in 2010.)
NBC's 2012 broadcast was also marked by a glut of auto spots. Among the manufacturers that suited up for the Giants-Pats contest were GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda and Hyundai.
At any rate, CBS still has a solid eight-and-a-half months to find a replacement for GM. Barring some unprecedented and unforeseen catastrophe, it's extremely unlikely that GM's absence will prevent CBS from selling out.
GM's announcement was made just days after the company pulled out of some $10 million in Facebook ads.
In January, GM consolidated its global media planning and buying services with Carat, a move that Ewanick said will save the company as much as $2 billion over the course of the next five years.
In 2011, GM spent $4.48 billion on advertising, marking an increase of 5 percent from $4.26 billion in the year-ago period.
Cable networks have griped for years that it's past time they achieved parity in ad rates with broadcasters-and at some conglomerates (namely, NBCU), cable outshines broadcast. But despite cable's sturm und drang about showing the big boys who's boss, it all hinges on CBS' CPM gains, says Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser, formerly lead forecaster for Interpublic. "The negotiation for the cable players is relative to that number," he explains. "If you believe you deserve a premium, it's a premium to that number." Following are upfront week highlights among cable's key players.
NBCU
NBCUniversal Cable is a dual-pronged operation. On the NBC Cable Entertainment side, chairman Bonnie Hammer oversees perennial success story USA (which is ramping up new unscripted content like The Choir) and E!, which launched a major rebrand that's less Kardashian-centric. SNL Kagan predicts a slight bump of about $81 million for USA-but we'll see what new NBCU cable sales president Linda Yaccarino, the Turner vet known to drive a hard bargain, has to say about that. Syfy is stepping out on a limb with expensive new video game-scripted hybrid Defiance, a project that will either create a whole new genre or become a campfire story used to scare the wits out of adventurous development executives. On the Entertainment and Digital Networks side, headed by chairman Lauren Zalaznick, Bravo continues to leverage its Housewives franchise, while Oxygen still flails. The network is stuck with The Glee Project, a competition show offering as a grand prize a spot on ratings- challenged Fox dramedy Glee, as it pushes hopeful franchise starts such as Girlfriend Confidential in a bid to create new anchor shows.
News Corporation
News Corp doesn't have a huge linear cable portfolio in the U.S., but its two biggest cable holdings, FX (part of Fox Networks, which includes FUEL and the National Geographic suite of networks) and Fox News Channel, punch well above their weight class. FNC will likely see gains of about 7.6 percent in ad revenue-small for an election year, but then again, Fox's mammoth ratings don't fluctuate with the news cycle as wildly as its competitors' do. FX is on track to gain 12 percent in ad dollars on the strength of new content-namely, the Charlie Sheen vehicle Anger Management, which the network is promoting without having shown a single scrap of footage (though it fared well with test audiences).
Disney
Kenny Mayne of ESPN's Wider World of Sports was the most entertaining part of the network's upfront presentation and delivered one of the week's most memorable lines: "It's through the support of viewers like you that we manage to keep our programming on the air. That and seven dollars a cable subscriber." The figure is actually $4.69, far and away the highest sub fee in cable. But the point remains: ESPN doesn't rely as heavily on ad dollars as other players. Disney's other big ad-supported property, ABC Family, gets the ratings, yet SNL Kagan predicts modest ad growth of about 4 percent this year.
Turner
Poor Turner. It's been less than competitive lately for perennial top 10 networks TBS and TNT-especially the former, which was off 11 percent in prime-time 18-49 ratings for 2011 (TNT was down 3 percent). This, as rivals like History and FX continued to climb. TBS rebounded early this year, but TNT did not and is now pinning its hopes on Dallas, a sequel to the classic nighttime soap, and still more police procedurals. TBS has several new series queued up for fall, and not a moment too soon. Viewers can watch marathon after marathon of The Big Bang Theory for only so long before flipping over to USA for first-run off-net Modern Family episodes. Clearly, the network has fingers crossed that one of the newbies sticks firmly enough to anchor other series. An important development: TBS is this close to letting Conan O'Brien run the asylum. The TBS host produces one new series for 2013 (Deon Cole's Black Box) and has another two in development. But the jewel in Turner's crown, at least in prime time, is Adult Swim. The network (which, incidentally, throws utterly surreal upfront parties, leading otherwise fearless cable TV reporters to suffer nightmares about giant rabbits) was among the top 10 networks in adults 18-34 and 18-49 last year, well above its 2010 performance. What changed its fortunes? Patton Oswalt, perhaps? Still more projects are in the pipeline, none buzzier than a pilot order for a cartoon from Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Dan Harmon, creator of NBC's Community.
Viacom
For better or worse, Viacom has set itself up as the youth option on linear television-a format whose followers are getting older by the minute. Nowhere is that fact more pronounced than on Nickelodeon, the king of kids' networks, where ratings have tumbled and its flagship property SpongeBob SquarePants is older than most of its viewers. That, of course, puts advertisers in a choice position. One buyer says she is thrilled to have some leverage over the cabler. Meanwhile, Comedy Central is attempting to grow new properties, including the underrated Key and Peele, that can eventually stand side-by-side with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The network has a knack for picking up off-net rights to underappreciated broadcast shows like Futurama (now back in originals on Comedy Central), and recent acquisition Community seems like a solid bet. MTV continues to push progressively younger-skewing shows, but the offering attracting the most attention looks to be Jersey Shore spinoff Snooki & JWoww. Kagan predicts reasonable gains for the networks this year-about 5.9 percent at MTV and 6.2 percent at Comedy.
AMC Networks
For the newly public cable outfit, AMC continues to be the mouse that roared. Kagan predicts a major increase in ad revenue at the net ($426.5 million, up 15.9 percent). Its conservative programming development (it green-lit two pilots this year, an unusually large number) seems to be paying off. Recall that Mad Men was the great series nobody watched until its March premiere, when it finally started seeing real ratings (but nowhere near as high as the net's other ratings juggernaut, The Walking Dead). Comedy-focused IFC just replaced president Evan Shapiro with Jennifer Caserta Priore, so the jury is out on what that net will look like in a few years. Sundance has big plans for Push Girls, a show about beautiful women in wheelchairs. One buyer asked if this reporter had gone to AMC's upfront. "What presentation? We didn't get invited," was our reply. "Oh, I meant the Mad Men premiere party," said the buyer. Exactly.
A+E Networks
Even in what promises to be a flat upfront market, it's hard to imagine A+E Networks won't get some serious traction from History, which continues to gain strength. (In April, five of the 10 most-watched TV shows among all viewers were on the nonfiction network, most notably Pawn Stars.) The jury is out on the group's much-vaunted relaunch of Lifetime, but Nancy Dubuc-who led History to the front of the pack and now heading the women's network-will likely give buyers some confi dence. A+E knows this and is not shy about touting it. Abbe Raven, A+E's CEO, opened this year's upfront presentation by calling down TLC, truTV, Discovery and TBS for copycatting and relying on off-net content to boost ratings. ("We've already heard from Discovery!" crowed one exec at the post-presentation party.) Immediately thereafter, ad sales head Mel Berning told buyers in no uncertain terms that they weren't going to get off lightly this year. The company pulls in some $3.1 billion per year and is on track to have a more streamlined dual ownership, rather than a triumvirate, when NBCUniversal cashes out its 15.8 percent stake later this year for a needed cash infusion. Big picture: A+E Networks is on track to reap $1.9 billion in ad sales across all 10 of its networks this year.
Discovery Communications
One thing you can always count on during upfront season is that any network in a position to fling some mud will wear out its throwing arm. "For sale: controlling interest in OWN. $10 or best offer," cracked Conan O'Brien at the Turner upfront presentation. Discovery Communications' beleaguered Oprah Winfrey cable network has dominated headlines since the moment the venture was announced, but there's much more to the company than a single joint venture. Whether or not OWN goes down in history as a serious money pit remains to be seen, and yet the company's formerly minor property Investigation Discovery has seen its ratings skyrocket this year-so much so that Sharon O'Sullivan, head of ID ad sales, will ask for a major CPM boost this year, especially for advertisers seeking a nearly pure female audience (which should also help it move volume). The company's flagship channel will have the forthcoming North America to drive ratings, which should bode well coming off the success of its most recent BBC co-production, the costly Frozen Planet (which Discovery spent millions of dollars to promote). This, as unscripted programs Bering Sea Gold and Gold Rush overperform among men.
Scripps Networks Interactive
Ad integration is the name of the game for Scripps Networks Interactive, the company behind Food Network, the Cooking Channel, HGTV and Travel. The Knoxville, Tenn.-based group is bullish on tailor-made campaigns and product placement, and a stable of talent including Anthony Bourdain has helped it push those integrations. (Food is one of the most profi table properties in television.) Guarantees are going to be difficult to predict with ratings ping-ponging up and down the Nielsen rankings. (It's been suggested more than once that new measurement methodology has something to do with that.) In 2011, Food was down in the adults 18-49 dollar demo for three consecutive quarters year on year, with HGTV right behind it. But the former rebounded by the end of 2011 and continued its upward trend in Q1 of this year. April saw Food break into the top 10, while HGTV is flat. And while the company may have trouble goosing CPMs here and there, its unflagging willingness to work advertisers into series should aid inventory movement.
Trying to gauge the quality of a 22-episode television series by watching three minutes of foot-age culled from the pilot is akin to declaring your major when you're in kindergarten. And yet, this is what media buyers and clients do every year in May, when the five English-language broadcast networks host their respective up-front presentations in New York.
Sure, even an untrained eye can spot a stinker from the cheap seats in Avery Fisher Hall. Last year, an audible groan rose up after ABC teased the cross-dressing comedy series Work It, an outburst that was followed in short order by a good deal of nervous giggling. But a hit? That's another story altogether.
Only a handful of new series really seemed to distinguish themselves this year, a limited roster that includes NBC's apocalyptic drama Revolution, CBS' cops, mobsters and casinos period piece Vegas and the Fox midseason thriller The Following.
On the comedy front, clients are abuzz about Matthew Perry's latest NBC effort Go On and Fox's The Mindy Project, a tour de force created by Mindy Kaling.
This could all change once the pilots begin circulating in a week or so, a deluge that coincides with the period in which clients will begin registering their TV budgets. And even if the National Football League is the only must-buy on the tube, most clients still tend to invest in individual series.
"The programming mix is still a priority," said Chris Geraci, president of national broadcast, OMD. "Some clients are more concerned with atmospherics and the particular programming environment, and of course we often have our own reasons for aligning brands with certain shows."
Analysts believe the 2012-13 marketplace should be healthy, though it's unlikely it will top last year. For one thing, scatter is nowhere near as strong as it was in the first and second quarters of 2011. And in the absence of registered budgets, trying to estimate demand is a matter of guesswork.
"Across all the agencies at SMG, we're having a more difficult time getting confirmed, approved budgets from clients," said John Muszynski, chief investment officer, Starcom MediaVest Group Exchange. "We probably won't get a gauge on where the budgets will be until after Memorial Day weekend, and until that happens, we won't have a handle on where pricing will be."
Muszynski added that while it's possible a few early deals could close before the end of the month, they would likely be "protection deals," holds placed without establishing any actual pricing.
While it's too early to predict exactly how the upfront will play out, the smart money says Fox will kick-start the market. "They'll go out early to the auto and studio categories," Muszynski said.
For his part, Geraci believes that there's one surefi re way to get the ball rolling: "The network that goes for share and not price could move very quickly."
NBC
The most beleaguered broadcast net hangs its hopes on Christina Aguilera and a monkey.
Leading off the Peacock's exhaustive-and exhausting-upfront pitch, NBC broadcasting chairman Ted Harbert on Monday threw cold water on the proceedings, delaying the start of the morning's entertainment in order to lecture the Radio City crowd on the industry's outdated currency.
"The conversion of the sales metric to C3 a few years ago was an important fi rst step" in getting a handle on time-shifted viewing, Harbert told the assembled, before adding that live commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback don't provide a full picture of American viewing habits. "When you consider the fact that over one-third of all prime-time programs have at least 40 percent of their weekly viewing time- shifted, it's time to consider moving to a C7 metric," he said.
If Harbert's words seem a challenge to parse now, they weren't much clearer in real time. Beyond the thicket of knotty math (what exactly is 40 percent of one-third?), the Ted Talk struck a discordant note with media buyers on hand.
"He picked a really odd time to bring that up," said Sam Armando, svp, director of strategic intelligence at Starcom MediaVest Group Exchange. "NBC had a lot to convey about their programming and it's a shame that nine out of 10 people who walked out of there were talking about C3 versus C7 rather than, say, Revolution." While Harbert is correct to point out that the ratings system is far from ideal, C7 is a nonstarter. Ninety-eight percent of prime-time viewing takes place within the first three days of playback, a majority that effectively renders the additional four days of little consequence.
Even Harbert seemed to recognize that there are better ways to warm up a crowd.
Before handing off to entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt, Harbert acknowledged the audience's forbearance. "Thank you for putting up with my sermon," he said. "I think I just proved that I'm the worst opening act ever."
With 10 comedies on the roster, including four new entries set to premiere in September, NBC is practically doubling down on sitcoms. In the fall of 2011, the network had six comedies on its prime-time schedule, though that number would dwindle to five with the Oct. 5 cancelation of Free Agents.
The crowd reacted generously to clips from the new batch of comedies, with the biggest laughs being doled out for the Matthew Perry vehicle Go On and the antic Justin Kirk effort Animal Practice. NBC entertainment president Jennifer Salke noted that Kirk's co-star Crystal, which plays "a bundle of mischief named Dr. Zaius," was the highest-testing new NBC character of this development season. (For the uninitiated, Crystal is a capuchin monkey.)
The new comedies will air on consecutive nights, with Go On leading into The New Normal on Tuesdays and Animal Practice setting the table for the family comedy Guys With Kids on Wednesday. This is emblematic of NBC's new high-risk strategy; slotting freshman comedies back-to-back is a big gamble, as it's a long-held notion that the most effective way to build an audience for a new strip is to place a familiar sitcom before it.
If NBC has anything resembling a sure-fire hit, it's Perry's Go On. The man who inhabited Chandler Bing for 10 seasons can still open a series- even the slipshod ABC comedy Mr. Sunshine enjoyed strong sampling out of the gate-and those who have seen the entire pilot say that it features the actor's strongest comedic work since Friends.
Meanwhile, almost anything is bound to be an improvement on this season's Wednesday night schedule, a weak stew of low-rated series like Up All Night and Whitney and flatliners like Free Agents, Are You There, Chelsea? and Bent. For the last two months, Geriatric Jackass, aka Betty White's Off Their Rockers, has been responsible for NBC's biggest midweek deliveries-but even it scored a 1.6 in the demo.
The one night NBC seems to have suffered a failure of nerve is on Thursdays, which Greenblatt and Salke essentially left fallow. Sure, The Office is the network's top-rated scripted series, and shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation draw a particularly well-heeled demo. But with nary a new series on the night and the quiet shrug that is Rock Center With Brian Williams effectively serving as a newsy test pattern at 10 o'clock (the peripatetic series is averaging 3.82 million viewers and a 0.9 in the demo-this in the time slot that once housed ER), there appears to be no way for NBC to actually grow its ratings on this high-demand night.
Thus far, the most buzzworthy new NBC drama is J.J. Abrams' Revolution, which inherits the plum post-Voice slot from Smash. Also earning a production credit on Revolution is Supernatural creator Eric Kripke. Networked Insights lead analyst Sean Reckwerdt says Kripke is "generating the majority of the positive viewer interest" in Revolution.
With the monolithic Sunday Night Football set to kick off in September and a fall cycle of The Voice in the works, NBC has two huge nights lined up. And a Tuesday results segment of the singers-in-spinning-chairs hit should draw new blood to a night that had been given over to a dwindling Biggest Loser.
Make no mistake: The industry is rooting for an NBC rebound. "It's in the best interest of everyone that they turn it around," said one national TV buyer, adding there's an undeniably sentimental element that informs the NBC conversation. "We grew up on NBC," the buyer said. "Our clients grew up on NBC. We all want this to work out."
ABC
The slate is a little bit country, a little bit kinfolk, but lacking in that Modern Family magic.
For a network on the verge of finishing last among the Big Four in the all-important 18-49 demo, ABC certainly likes to fl ap its gums.
In what has become one of the most anticipated highlights of upfront week, ABC last Tuesday took the muzzle off Jimmy Kimmel, siccing the late-night host on anything that caught his fancy. Addressing the huddle of media buyers gathered at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, the star of Jimmy Kimmel Live merrily laid into everything from his own network to the perverse logic underpinning the advertising business.
An equal-opportunity offender, Kimmel took shots at his boss, ABC Entertainment Group president Paul Lee, who last month was the subject of overtures from overseas. "I actually have a question for Paul: Did you really have an offer from the BBC, or was it one of those things when you send flowers to yourself at work?" Kimmel cracked, before adding that the affable Brit elected to stick with Disney because of its superior dental plan.
The fun began in earnest when Kimmel started in on the other broadcast networks. As one might imagine, NBC got the worst of it, though Kimmel also scored a few points against CBS, which, as he said, beats all comers in "the coveted 18-to-49 trips to the bathroom demographic." (The following morning, CBS Corp. CEO Les Mooves allowed that, while he likes Kimmel, the comic needs to work up some new gags. "Somebody should tell Jimmy that ABC is so far behind us in the demo that the joke went stale 10 years ago," Moonves said. "He should freshen up his material a little bit.")
For all the fun that was had at the expense of the broadcast business, Kimmel's monologue spoke to some of the ad industry's more baffling underpinnings. For example, while a casual observer might expect that ratings declines would necessarily result in lower pricing, the opposite holds true, thanks to elementary supply and-demand principles. This, as Kimmel helpfully pointed out, is "bullshit," adding, "We don't know what we're doing. Why is this so hard for you to understand? If we had any idea what people want to see, we wouldn't have an upfront; we'd just put the shows on the air and you'd mail us a check."
The yuks Kimmel drew from ABC's ad partners may not be matched in prime time. Like NBC and Fox before it, ABC made a major investment in scripted comedy. Trouble is, none of what was screened last Tuesday appeared to offer the sweet-and-sour complexity of a Modern Family or the black-hearted anomie of Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23.
Buyers were particularly puzzled by The Neighbors, a self-consciously gruesome sitcom about a gated community populated by shape-shifting extraterrestrials.
Bequeathed with the plum post- Modern Family slot on Wednesday night, Neighbors feels more like failed satire than a fully realized family comedy. "I already put in a request for a copy of the pilot," said one buyer, who hastily added, "That was sarcasm."
Starting in November, ABC will pair Tim Allen's sophomore comedy Last Man Standing with the new Reba McEntire multicamera series Malibu Country. Both shows are broad family comedies and could fi nd an audience against NBC's schizophrenic Friday 8-9 p.m. battery (Whitney and Community).
Midseason sitcoms include logorrheic "boomerang generation" comedy How to Move in With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life) and The Family Tools, an Americanized take on the U.K. series White Van Man.
Of the six new dramas on ABC's plate, the most accomplished appears to be Shawn Ryan's The Last Resort. Also promising is 666 Park Avenue, a horror/suspense offering that is reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby-if The Dakota were transported across Central Park to the Upper East Side. Lastly, the soapy musical drama Nashville could build a following among country music fans, or viewers who can't wait for NBC's Smash to return in January.
While it's difficult to make an informed assessment on a series' likelihood of success based solely on a few minutes of carefully cultivated video clips, buyers say they're cautiously optimistic that a few ABC shows will have an impact. "There's nothing on the schedule that really jumps out at you," said Armando. "There's not that ‘a-ha' moment like we had in years past, like with Grey's Anatomy and Modern Family." He added, "We're a little underwhelmed, but we're holding out hope that something will pop."
CBS
For a net that's enjoyed success with high drama, ratings gold is Elementary.
In a development no one could have anticipated, the 125-year-old English detective Sherlock Holmes last week murdered Horatio Caine, and in so doing sentenced the hammy Miami cop to an eternity of syndication.
With very few holes to fill in its prime-time lineup, CBS last week opted to close the books on CSI: Miami after a 10-season run, thereby freeing up the Sunday 10 p.m. time slot for the more popular series The Mentalist. With Simon Baker out of the way on Thursday nights, CBS now has a plum spot available for its newest procedural drama, Elementary.
One of just three new dramas on the fall docket, Elementary is a postmodern interpretation of the Holmes-Watson mysteries. Starring Jonny Lee Miller as a detective struggling with drug addiction (recall that Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes was an uninhibited cocaine enthusiast) and Lucy Liu as the "sober companion" meant to keep him out of harm's way, Elementary shares strands of DNA with the former occupant of the Thursday 10 p.m. time slot. Chief among these is Holmes' flair for deductive reasoning and unconventional investigative techniques.
In an era of British leads, Miller may be the only Englishman who's allowed to declaim his lines in his native accent. (CBS is all over the linguistic map. An Australian, The Mentalist's Baker speaks in the standard mid-Atlantic accent, while Michael Emerson of Person of Interest is an Iowan who seems British.)
With the benefit of a Person of Interest lead-in, Elementary should have no trouble drawing a crowd. The broadcast competition on Thursday night amounts to ABC's Scandal, which has drawn a consistent 2.0 rating in the 18-49 demo since it premiered in early April.
Buyers are particularly enthusiastic about Vegas, a period piece based on the life of Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a fourth-generation rancher charged with the unenviable task of bringing order to Sin City in the 1960s. Nick Pileggi (Casino, Goodfellas) wrote the pilot and is an executive producer of the series, which stars Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis. Vegas fills the Tuesday 10 p.m. time slot left vacant by the canceled Unforgettable.
"That one looks really good," said a national TV buyer. "There aren't too many 10 o'clock shows that are developed with a male audience in mind, and it's going to run up against two really ‘girly' shows. Private Practice is maybe three-quarters female and Parenthood is two-thirds. This could be big."
While period pieces seem to have a hard time finding an audience on broadcast TV-Pan Am and The Playboy Club are only the latest in a string of historical dramas that failed to live up to the hype-Vegas appears to be that rarest of animals: a network series for adults.
According to Networked Insights lead analyst Sean Reckwerdt, CBS' decision to deviate from its procedural-heavy model could prove to be a winner. "While there is not nearly the same amount of conversation as there are for the all the other networks, the Vegas conversation trends very positively," Reckwerdt said, adding that viewers are eager to see Quaid square off against mob heavy Chiklis.
Having survived the battle of CSI spin-offs, CSI: New York shifts back an hour to the Friday 8 p.m. slot, where it will lead into the third new CBS drama, Made in Jersey. Starring Janet Montgomery as a street-smart Italian- American lawyer, the series will compete with a mixed bag of dramas, including NBC's Grimm, Fox's Fringe and The CW's Nikita.
Given its unparalleled stability, CBS' biggest moves have less to do with adding new series to the lineup and more to do with shifting established shows. Freshman phenom 2 Broke Girls will push Two and a Half Men from its Monday 9 p.m. slot, forcing Ashton, Ducky and the pothead kid to Thursday nights at 8:30 p.m. In reuniting Men with The Big Bang Theory, CBS programming chief Kelly Kahl said he has created a "super comedy hour."
Men and Bang are the two highest-rated comedies on TV, but at the same time, both shows are getting long in the tooth. As such, the move to consolidate the ratings on Thursdays also presents an opportunity for growth on Monday.
Joining the powerhouse Monday night block is CBS' lone new half- hour of the fall, the workplace/buddy comedy Partners. The new strip will lead into 2 Broke Girls, which closed out its first season with an average delivery of 11.3 million viewers and a 4.3 rating in the dollar demo.
CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves has never been shy about projecting his goals for the upfront bazaar (as in years past, he's already proclaimed that his network will command double-digit CPM increases), but buyers strongly suggest that the market simply will not support that kind of extravagance.
"The speed of the market is closely aligned with how far apart either side is on a number," said Chris Geraci, president of national broadcast for OMD. "There are expectations that won't be realized, and that will probably take some time to set in."
Fox
Remains the home of young viewers, adds Britney Spears to The X Factor to seal the deal.
On pace to claim its eighth consecutive full-season victory in the 18-49 demo, Fox doesn't have an awful lot of hoops to jump through or plates to spin.
Its upfront pitch was essentially an opportunity for programming chief Kevin Reilly to remind everyone about how Fox is the go-to destination for the under-50 set, and he drives the message home by trotting out a stable of youthful series regulars.
It's a remarkably effective strategy, and even a casual observer can see what a little star power can achieve. Take, for instance, the moment when Simon Cowell introduced Britney Spears as one of The X Factor's new judges: Not only did a whoop go up inside the Beacon Theatre, but advertisers scrambled to record the moment with their iPhones.
This seemingly effortless marshalling of its forces extends to Fox's programming strategy for 2012-13. Reilly's master stroke was to maintain the status quo; in fact, one of the few moves that qualifi es as a biggie was the decision to shift Glee to the Thursday 9 p.m. slot, where it will lead out of The X Factor's one-hour results show.
Linking thseries to the song-and-dance drama showcase should help ensure that most elusive of qualities on broadcast TV: flow. And the shift is a huge win for Glee, as it will also reap the benefit of an American Idol lead-in after Cowell and Co. close out their second season in late December.
So consistent is Fox's fall schedule that it will bow just three new series in the fall. On Tuesday night, the freshman hit New Girl will be the meat in a sandwich of the off-kilter family comedy Ben and Kate and The Mindy Project, the much-ballyhooed series from the former writer and star of The Office Mindy Kaling.
The latter half of Fox's new two- hour comedy block goes head-to-head with a pair of other hilarity-heavy hours: ABC's Happy Endings and Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23 and NBC newbies Go On and The New Normal.
Some media buyers have said that the three-car comedy pileup will make planning a bit of a chore.
"The networks generally haven't had more than a few hours of comedy overlap here and there, and now all going to be a little more challenging to decide where to put down some of the money because you don't necessarily want to buy everything. It's a famine-to-feast situation."
The CW
The net banks on hunky bad boys to keep female viewers hooked.
The CW's 2012-13 schedule is a glittery, sexy paradox, a collection of high-impact, cinematic dramas that appear to have been created in a laboratory in order to reach the greatest number of women 18-34.
Everywhere you look, the network has cast brooding, chiseled hunks, damaged boys who need the healing touch of a good woman and perhaps some kind of serum to prevent them from turning into ravenous monsters.
As a bonus, nearly 90 percent of the network's female stars are pretty yet unthreatening brunettes. The one identifiable blonde lead is Mamie Gummer, the sunny spitting image of mother Meryl Streep. Unthreatening!
So what's the problem? Well, as The CW president Mark Pedowitz has been saying since the day he took the reins, the network's viewers are all but ignored by Nielsen, as they simply do not consume their TV content in the time-honored manner. Instead, they're watching online streams or on iTunes or via other ancillary platforms, and The CW just doesn't get credited for those impressions.
While the network is developing a separate measurement system designed to demonstrate its relevance, the show must go on at the linear network. To that end, it will premiere three new series in the fall- Arrow, Emily Owens, M.D. and Beauty and the Beast, all of which will be joined in midseason by the Sex and the City prequel, The Carrie Diaries.
Rather than introduce its new series in the midst of the early-fall premiere fray, The CW will delay its season launch until October.
One thing you won't see on The CW this fall is scripted comedy, though Pedowitz said the network is inching closer to picking up a 30-minute series. "There were two scripts we were hot on that we will probably put into development," he said, before adding that the priority was to "restabilize the schedule. And drama was the way to do it."
MONDAY 9-10
ABC Dancing With the Stars vs. CBS 2 Broke Girls/ Mike & Molly vs. FOX The Mob Doctor vs. NBC The Voice
As much as you never want to drag a knife through the innards of the golden goose, you also don't want to let the plucky little revenue source sit around and get too fat to lay eggs. Little surprise, then, that NBC chose to return The Voice for a fall cycle. Not only is it the network's top-performing entertainment property, it's literally the only viable lead-in for the new drama Revolution.
Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, The Voice should dominate this particular part of the night. Heading into its 15th cycle, Dancing With the Stars is on the downhill slide, dropping from a 4.5 rating in the 18-49 demo in 2010-11 to a 3.2 this season. And while 2 Broke Girls is the top-rated freshman comedy, it closed out its first campaign at a series low of 3.3. Moreover, 2BG no longer will enjoy the benefit of the How I Met Your Mother lead-in. Instead, the show will be required to build on the new comedy Partners.
Of course, nobody ever got rich by underestimating CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler, so it's possible that Partners will help maintain 2BG's big deliveries. (Thematically, the two shows would seem to lock into one another like Lego.)
As it's the only game in town, Fox could steal share among people looking for drama. Newcomer The Mob Doctor shares DNA with its lead-in, Bones, though that drama is beginning to exhibit signs of osteoporosis.
TUESDAY 9-9:30
ABC Happy Endings/Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23 vs. FOX New Girl/The Mindy Project vs. NBC Go On/The New Normal
A few short years after resignedly tying a toe tag on the sitcom, the networks are channeling Dr. Frankenstein. Last week, buyers heard any number of variants on the "It's alive!" theme. The genre is so hot, in fact, that 16 of 36 new scripted series are comedies.
In what could prove to be the most time-shifted block on the grid, three of the Big Four nets are airing sitcoms in the 9 p.m. hour, creating what amounts to a snarl of chuckles. Speaking on behalf of the lone drama holdout, CBS programming chief Kelly Kahl last week predicted that the competition was steering into a "comedy SigAlert," a nod to L.A.'s dreaded severe-traffic advisories.
The goofball antics of Happy Endings and the merrily profane Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23 are complementary Tetris tiles, while the New Girl/ Mindy Project pairing off ers further evidence that the era of brilliant female showrunners has only just begun. But while Fox assures a victory among younger viewers (New Girl's median age: 35), NBC could win on reach. Those who have seen the Go On pilot say it is Matthew Perry's best comic turn since Friends. Generous sampling is all but assured.
WEDNESDAY 10-11
ABC Nashville vs. NBC Chicago Fire
Oh, to have seen the look on Denis Leary's face when he was told that NBC was about to revive the long-dormant firehouse drama. The sandpaper-nerved comic's searing FX vehicle Rescue Me had been off the air a little more than eight months when NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt announced that Dick Wolf's Chicago Fire would introduce the neglected genre to a new generation of viewers.
The first look at Chicago Fire was about what one would expect from the man who brought us the Law & Order franchise: workplace drama, blue-collar grit, grim-faced stoicism in the face of danger. Plus, there's a guy who takes his shirt off every chance he gets, no doubt catnip for the considerable number of those who fetishize fi refi ghters.
At first blush, ABC's Nashville seems like the Music City version of Smash. This sudsy musical pits country crooner Connie Britton (in the Shelby Lynne role) against Auto-Tuned pop tart Hayden Panettiere, who portrays a sort of Knight Rider evil twin version of Taylor Swift. Nashville has a good shot at finding an audience in the post-Grey's Anatomy time slot, though so much has to go right if the show is to sidestep the inherent pitfalls of the genre.
THURSDAY 8-9
ABC The Last Resort vs. CBS The Big Bang Theory/ Two and a Half Men vs. FOX The X Factor
Just when things are at their most insuff erably claustrophobic aboard the nuclear sub Colorado, the crew sets up shop on a tropical island. But this is no beach party. On the run from the U.S. government (skipper Andre Braugher refuses an order to rain hot death on an unsuspecting Pakistan), the rogue seamen establish what is eff ectively an independent nation state.
Shawn Ryan's premise may be hard to swallow-and an early look suggests The Last Resort might be better served at 10 p.m.-but it's one of a handful of promising new dramas. A victim of its own hype, The X Factor may have missed its initial ratings guarantees, but it was still one of the season's rare new hits. With the addition of Britney Spears and Demi Lovato to the judges' panel, Simon Cowell promises the coming season will "kick butt." Unless viewers fall prey to talent-show fatigue, the V-necked Brit is probably onto something.
Somewhere in the Deep South, there's a crossroads where Chuck Lorre sold his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal comedy success. Pairing the veteran series The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men may be less about creating a Thursday night juggernaut than clearing the way for future success on Tuesdays (2 Broke Girls will assume the 2.5 Men slot ahead of newbie Partners), but it's hard to argue with the kind of numbers these shows generate.
FRIDAY 8-9
CBS Made in Jersey vs. NBC Grimm
Given the atrophied HUT levels, expectations are modest on Friday nights, and even a relatively tiny rating will buy a show a renewal-provided it doesn't air on CBS.
Case in point: NBC picked up procedural-fantasy- horror mashup Grimm for a second season, even though it was drawing a 1.5 in adults 18-49. It has since stumbled even further, averaging a 1.2 in the dollar demo on May 11.
Still, Grimm has a vocal base of dedicated fans, and the show nearly doubles its live deliveries upon application of DVR playback data. And the competitive landscape isn't much to speak of: ABC airs its airless primer on venture capitalism, Shark Tank, opposite Grimm, while Fox and the CW broadcast the on-their-last-legs drama series Fringe and Nikita.
Cue a needle scratching an LP as CBS' winkingly formulaic Made in Jersey makes its noisy entrance. TV execs have an enduring love for legal dramas and Garden State Italian-Americans-and Madonn', does this show hammer that home. If CBS can get a Nielsen box in my Aunt Angie's house, this will be the biggest Friday hit since Numb3rs.
SUNDAY 9-10
ABC Revenge vs. CBS The Good Wife vs. NBC Sunday Night Football
If Revenge is a dish best served cold, it also goes down a lot smoother with a big, dramatic lead-in. ABC is shifting its pulpy Emily VanCamp thriller from Wednesday to Sunday, where it will benefi t from a cozy association with fellow sophomore drama Once Upon a Time.
While Revenge was a modest success for a network desperate to establish a few big hours (Season 1 delivered an average 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demo), Once Upon a Time is a runaway hit, brewing up nearly 10 million viewers every week and a 3.1 where it counts the most.
Along with its bewitching new lead-in, the move to a much more female-friendly time slot should boost Revenge's profile, though it will likely do so at the expense of The Good Wife. The Emmy-winning legal drama has faced more plot twists than Alicia and Kalinda combined, maintaining a 2.1 rating in its third season despite the ravages of its stuttered starting times. In the fall, The Good Wife-along with the entire CBS Sunday lineup-was often delayed by as much as half an hour due to NFL games going beyond their allotted time.
CBS programming chief Kelly Kahl says The Good Wife is more than up to the challenge, noting that the show held up against ABC's Desperate Housewives. But both shows are essentially fi ghting for second place; per Nielsen, one-third of the gargantuan Sunday Night Football audience is female.
Adult Swim typically throws the best party of the upfront season, as much for the decor as for the entertainment. This year at the Hammerstein Ballroom, the top-ten primetime network brought in southern rapper T.I., who played a full two-hour set for the packed crowd. The bar was set pretty high-last year the company brought in Jay-Z and M.I.A. headlined the event in 2010, so people expect to have a good time when they show up.
The network has a mammoth slate set for next year. Upcoming series include Before Orel, a prequel to Dino Stamatopoulos's darker-than-dark claymation comedy Moral Orel; a blaxploitation animated comedy called Black Dynamite (based on the movie), and a Robot Chicken special with DC Comics. On May 26, the network will bring back Toonami, its popular anime block. It's a wonder more networks don't do this, by the way-it's a wildly popular genre and if you can market it correctly, young people flock to it.
The real juice was in the development slate, though. Upcoming cartoons include a project from Community creator Dan Harmon and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies writer Seth Grahame-Smith, and a Harold and Kumar show. There's also Freestyle Love Supreme from Tony-winning In the Heights star/composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But seriously, the decor. Guys and gals in giant owl, rabbit and cat masks wandered around posing with people and simulating sex (fully clothed-overly clothed, even) in the peep show booth. Again, this is part of the Adult Swim's new arms race with itself. For M.I.A., the peep shows were hilarious/frightening taxidermy dioramas. Now we have furry sex. There was also quite a bit of neon around the room-signage with blinking dollar signs or messages like "FREE HOLE," a Muppet-pelt orifice through which prizes were dispensed.
Harmon, SNL cast member Abby Elliott, Kristen Schaal, Seth Green and perhaps a dozen other comedians attended; by the end of the evening there was a little knot of comedy writers and performers in the back of the room, drinking and dancing. The funniest piece of gossip gleaned at the party? Apparently there's a loud contingent at Adult Swim that wants-no fooling-to bring Dolly Parton to play next year.
USA bats cleanup during upfront week, and while it's not necessarily the most desirable position in the lineup, the top-tier network makes the most of it. "This event will remain executive-free!" announced Suits star Patrick J. Adams.
The network's new Sigourney Weaver/Ciaran Hinds drama Political Animals got the biggest reaction from the standing-room-only crowd at Lincoln Center's Tully Hall. The series stars the pair as a political couple with problems suspiciously similar to those of the Clinton family. The promo was structured like a campaign interview showcasing Weaver's acting and widely-praised Irish stage actor Hinds' perfect good-ol'-boy accent, which can only be described as "Texish." Also of note: USA joins Turner in adding unscripted programming to its slate. While its competitor is playing it more or less safe with Boston Blue on TNT (a network with a few police procedurals on it already), USA is going the uplifting route with new show The Choir, about a choir director who "united and transforms unsuspecting communities with music." The network also has an untitled series in the works from Top Chef and Bravo-era Project Runway producers Magical Elves.
The other news likely to change up the cable game was that the network will be running Raw for three hours on Monday, effectively ceding its entire primetime to the professional wrestling program. John Cena came out to make the announcement-perhaps the most natural and comfortable of the teleprompted thesps.
Except for Bruce Campbell.
True to form, the presentation was a talent-only affair, and Campbell, who stars in Burn Notice, endured a certain amount of heckling from the audience (which is more or less a USA tradition at this point) and then took the stage mostly to talk to Weaver ("Sigourney, you're new to USA, so you won't realize how badly you're being screwed for a couple of years. Or maybe you know now, maybe you've got good people, I don't know.") and to inform ad buyers that he knew they were drunk. He left the stage to wild applause and a cue for Erykah Badu, who opened a brief jazzy set with "Fever."
In the lobby near the bar, network co-president Jeff Wachtel (with a lot of prodding from colleagues) eventually reavealed that he and Weaver go way back. "I directed her in 'A Delicate Balance,' which is a play by Edward Albee, when I was in college," he said. "She broke the rules! She wasn't supposed to do an undergrad production, but she liked my production of 'The Homecoming' (a play by Harold Pinter)." This, by the way, puts Wachtel in the loose crew of Ivy Leaguers that includes Weaver, playwright Christopher Durang and Meryl Streep, better known during the 80's and 90's as the Yale Mafia. Who knew?
"She starred with another actress who was also about six feet tall," Wachtel recalled. "They were like the Twin Towers."
Specs
Age 45
Accomplishments Head writer and executive producer of Futurama, which premieres on Comedy Central on June 20 at 10 p.m.; former writer on The Simpsons
Base Los Angeles
What's the first information you consume in the morning?
I guess it would be the time and how late I am for work.
What do you read or watch or listen to at the breakfast table?
I watch my 5-year-old daughter spilling cereal on her face.
What occupies your mind in the car?
My big thing now is books on tape-actually books on download-because I have this long commute like everybody in L.A., and I was wasting it listening to the five-minute news cycle. So suddenly, I actually listen to books on tape coming and going. If there's one key change in my information diet, it's audio books.
Are you a TV junkie or on an airtime-restricted diet?
When I do watch TV, it's pre-recorded and DVRed. We have a joke on Futurama here and there about other TV shows, but I guess just because of the epic nature of our sci-fi stories, we tend to reference movies.
What do you consume on television?
Game of Thrones is my thing right now. I've been given all the books as a birthday present, but I don't want to read them because I don't want to ruin the show.
What do you bite into on the way home?
I just started listening to a science-fiction trilogy-Peter Hamilton's Void Trilogy-and I just finished Stephen King's JFK book 11/22/63. I quite enjoyed it, even though it felt like sci-fi for people who don't read sci-fi.
What tech from Futurama would you most like to see show up in the real world?
I just read about someone starting a company that claims to build transport tubes that can send you around the world in a tube like a letter in an old '50s office building. I think that would be cool-to just shoot over to Japan for a day in a tube.
Give us the skinny on your favorite app.
Oh, here's a good one: the Samsung TV remote app I downloaded, which I can use as a remote for my TV from anywhere in the house. So I can change the volume and stuff from another room and annoy people. It's one I was waiting for because the smartphone seems to be putting devices out of commission one by one, and the remote control just seemed ripe for that. My flashlight is gone now.
With such a bloated media universe, how do you cut out the fat?
I'm not good at cutting out the fat, but my schedule makes it a moot point. I have to be in a room talking to the writers all day, every day. My brain doesn't have the capability to do that while reading online. I do that every now and then, but then I see people looking at me saying, "Why aren't we working?" It's peer pressure, honestly.
Like someone joggling a Magic 8-Ball in order to elicit a more positive result, The CW has shaken up its prime-time schedule, sending four of its signature programs to new nights and prepping five new series.
Franchise dramas 90210 and Gossip Girl will be reunited on Monday nights, with the West Beverly crew leading into the Upper East Siders. While this will mark the final season of Gossip Girl, a definitive episode order has not been established.
Speaking to reporters today after the network's upfront presentation, CW president Mark Pedowitz said his team is in the midst of deciding on how best to close out Gossip Girl. "Our goal is to run it in the fall and end it in the fall," Pedowitz said, adding that the show's creators have been instrumental in coming to a decision on the final order. Odds are, the season will run between 11 and 13 episodes.
Pedowitz promised an "OMFG" ending for Gossip Girl, which came into being at the same time texting and Facebook were transforming the teenage cultural apparatus. (The impact the series has had on the New York subset of Generation WTF was apparent by the screaming throng of young girls camped out across the street from the Midtown venue where The CW gave its upfront pitch.)
With Gossip Girl moving up to the Monday 9 p.m. time slot, sophomore series Hart of Dixie jumps to Tuesday night where it will set the table for the new medical drama Emily Owens, M.D. Starring Mamie Gummer (a dead ringer for mommy Meryl), Emily Owens suggests that working in a hospital is a lot like high school, but with a lot more thoracic surgery.
As the schedule progresses into the heart of the week, it becomes apparent that The CW is looking to expand beyond the young-female demo. At 8 p.m. Wednesday, the dark superhero/action series Arrow will draw a bead on a greater cohort of male viewers although the requisite beefcake should satisfy traditional CW die-hards.
Based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow, the new series also taps into the nation's newly realized craze for archery (see also: Katniss from The Hunger Games, Hawkeye of The Avengers renown, nearly every character in NBC's upcoming drama Revolution).
The midseason drama Cult should also cast a wider net. A meta-fiction about a reporter investigating a TV show that attracts a deadly audience of enthusiasts, Cult shares some thematic DNA with Kevin Williamson's serial-killer strip, The Following (Fox).
Rather than introduce its new series in the midst of the early-fall premiere fray, The CW will delay its 2012-13 launch until October.
The new series that seems most likely to draw a crowd is The Carrie Diaries, a prequel of sorts to Sex and the City. Set in 1984, the show introduces a larval-stage Carrie Bradshaw, a 16-year-old who's grown out of Big Bird but is nowhere near mature enough for Mr. Big.
In a nod to the HBO series' framing device, The Carrie Diaries features a voiceover accompanied by the image of Ms. Bradshaw recording her thoughts and impressions on paper. (True fact, CW demo: We didn't have computers back then. The few who did-like Carrie's future husband, David Lightman-owned 8-bit systems with flashing green cursors. You have no idea how good you have it.)
The Carrie Diaries will inherit the Monday 8 p.m. time slot after Gossip Girl wraps.
Once again, the one thing you won't see on The CW this fall is scripted comedy although Pedowitz said the network is inching closer to picking up a 30-minute series. "There were two scripts we were hot on that we will probably put into development," he said, before adding that the priority was to "restabilize the schedule. And drama was the way to do it."
Before concluding his Q&A session, Pedowitz said the cancelation of the much-ballyhooed series Ringer does not spell an end to the network's relationship with Sarah Michelle Gellar. "She will be back on The CW in some form, whether as a producer or an actress," he said. After a promising premiere, Ringer was hampered by a two-month hiatus. "It's unfortunate," Pedowitz said. "The show went away in November and came back in January, and the audience had moved on somewhere else."
The CW's fall prime-time schedule is as follows (new series in bold):
Monday
8-9 p.m. - 90210
9-10 p.m. - Gossip Girl
(The Carrie Diaries premieres January 2013)
Tuesday
8-9 p.m. - Hart of Dixie
9-10 p.m. - Emily Owens, M.D.
Wednesday
8-9 p.m. - Arrow
9-10 p.m. - Supernatural
Thursday
8-9 p.m. - The Vampire Diaries
9-10 p.m. - Beauty and the Beast
Friday
8-9 p.m. - America's Next Top Model
9-10 p.m. - Nikita
