TCA Press Tour - Jan. 27, 2007

ON SCREEN:
THE TELEVISION CRITICS ASSOCIATION
PRESS TOUR
Pasadena, Calif.

BOTTOM LINE:
A FEW NEW GEMS – AND MANY MORE CHANGES.


When opportunity knocks

Some have a gloomy outlook on TV's future. Others regard the shifting sands in the TV landscape as an exciting circumstance to be seized.

By Eric Kohanik

The Television Critics Association’s semi-annual network press tour is many things to many people.

Held in Los Angeles every January and July, the event brings together 200 reporters, critics and columnists from media outlets across the United States and Canada. For them, it’s mostly a chance to preview new shows, talk to network executives and mingle with stars.

For producers and networks, meanwhile, the TCA press tour is often a chance to crow about plans for the future – that is, when there’s something good to crow about. Even when there isn’t, though, networks put the best spin possible on what lies ahead.

This year’s January press tour had its share of that. With traditional TV viewership in a continued decline while alternative platforms continue to grow as a home for programming, the sands of the TV landscape are continuing to shift. Some see it as a gloomy scenario; others see positive aspects.

“The only things we can be certain of in our business, entertainment in general, in the next five years is that people will go to watch movies in dark rooms with other people,” executive producer Mark Burnett quipped at a press conference for The MTV Movie Awards, which he will oversee, and turn into a live broadcast for the first time, on June 3. “[But] I think there’s nothing certain about the future of the type of television we’re going to watch.”

The creative force behind such TV franchises as Survivor, Rock Star and The Apprentice, Burnett has also had success recently with Gold Rush, an online interactive game “show” he created last year.

“Whatever [television] is in the future, it’s some convergent, interactive experience,” Burnett declares. “Things are happening so fast in technology. But I don’t have any doom and gloom. You know something? I see only opportunities. That’s not a bullsh--answer. That’s how I really think.”

As for the TV opportunities viewers face in the short term, this month’s TCA Press Tour rolled out a lot of dismal offerings. But there were a few gems thrown in as well.

CBS has one of the most promising entries in Rules of Engagement, which premieres Feb. 5. It’s a comedy that casts Oliver Hudson as an engaged guy who gets a few oddball lessons in love from a jaded married neighbour (?Seinfeld grad Patrick Warburton) and a footloose single pal (David Spade).

Rules of Engagement is everything that Brad Garrett’s Fox sitcom, ’Til Death, has tried to be this season, with one significant difference: this one is actually good.

As for what other good things may await TV, Burnett sees it in a five-year time frame.

“Going five years ahead,” Burnett says, “nothing in television will be the same. [But] I don’t think anyone can dictate what that is.

“I don’t know in five years. And, honestly, beware of the people that say they know.”

Prison Break / Heroes - Jan. 20, 2007

ON SCREEN:
THE PRISON BREAK
Monday; Fox, Global
HEROES
Monday; NBC, Global

BOTTOM LINE:
Back to business.


Shuffling the deck

Networks have been doing a lot of tinkering with their schedules this season. In the end, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

By Eric Kohanik

Although most of us are still mired in the depths of winter, Hollywood is already focusing on next fall.

Mid-January usually marks the beginning of pilot season, when American networks actually start assembling the new programming they hope will become part of their schedules next fall and winter. Pilot season stretches all the way to May, when the networks unveil their fall lineups to advertisers at splashy presentations in New York City. Between now and then, the TV world will be a flurry of activity, deal-making and, of course, schedule-shuffling.

The big American nets have already been shuffling the deck pretty frequently this season as they scramble to dump programming misfires and try to find saviours that will keep viewers coming back.

In October and November, a slew of serialized dramas, both newcomers and returning shows, went on hiatus. In some cases, it was meant to keep viewers on the hook until the hot shows come back. In other cases, the move was simply designed to get rid of really bad shows before they do even more damage.

In any case, those serialized dramas are now starting to trickle back onto schedules. Fox brings new episodes of Prison Break back to the tube on Monday, picking up the elongated story of Michael (Wentworth Miller), Lincoln (Dominic Purcell), T-Bag (Robert Knepper) and the rest of those prison fugitives where things left off at the end of November.

NBC, meanwhile, has steadily been teasing viewers with reruns of Heroes over the past month in order to whet the appetites of that show’s loyal fans. The network finally stops messing with those folks this week and brings the rookie fantasy drama back with new episodes on Monday night as well.

There’s plenty of other shuffling going on. A lot of networks seem to have so few good shows that they end up filling gaps in their lineups by running the same episode of their hit shows twice. ABC has been following that practice on Fridays almost all season long, rerunning instalments of its Thursday gems – Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy and Men in Trees – on Fridays in an attempt to plug the holes in what continues to be a leaky primetime schedule.

Network programmers at Fox, meanwhile, are trying out Brad Garrett’s struggling new comedy series, ’Til Death, on Sunday this week, in hopes that the network’s high Sunday viewership (thanks to The Simpsons and company) might get viewers to return and check the sitcom out in its regular slot on Thursdays. In fact, Fox will be trying that double-pump tactic again next week, too.

Sometimes, though, there really is no amount of schedule tinkering that will actually fool viewers into believing that a bad show is actually good.