In a press release, the producers and star of Fox's medical series House have announced that the current season (the show's eighth) will be its last. "By April this year [we] will have completed 177 episodes, which is about 175 more than anyone expected back in 2004," wrote executive producers David Shore, Katie Jacobs and Read More
Hulu.com has expanded its space at 276 Fifth Avenue, adding 4,710 square feet on the fifth floor, the Commercial Observer has learned. Read More
The Seventh Annual New York Television Festival wrapped up its festivities Saturday night with an awards show unlike the Emmys or Golden Globes. Sure, Damon Lindelof and Jason Sudeikis were there, but Instead of handing out statues to shows already on the air, networks like Fox, IFC, and FX offered "guaranteed deals" to winning independent scripts.
One of the night's biggest wins came from FOX-NYTVF Comedy Script Contest, which offered a $25k prize in addition to a network development deal. The winning sitcom, Adulthood for Beginners, is the brainchild of New Yorker Robby O'Connor, who spent his former life as a book scout for Paramount and a development executive for Dimension Films. For the past two years he's held the occasional odd job as a nanny or personal assistant to subsidize script-writing.
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NBC played a snippet of the Friends theme song during the video preamble to their "upfront" presentation to advertisers on Monday, and one could imagine that the network missed the good old days. Robert Greenblatt, NBC's newly installed chairman of Entertainment, said during his opening speech: "In the past, nobody did it better than NBC. Read More
The intro to Rep. Anthony Weiner's video about how Fox described his remarks on health care, sum it all up.
The New York Television Festival is a September gathering not for established artists, like the Cannes Film Festival, but for young renegades, like Sundance (another difference: it's about TV). The festival announced today its annual search for new television writers with the Fox-sponsored contest to submit a pilot script. This contest, in its fourth Read More
This season of "American Idol," its tenth, began as it needed to, with an introduction to its new judges, Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez (who join game-hardened veteran Randy Jackson). But did it have to be so lengthy? Minute after minute was devoted to a montage of TV-news gossip about potential new judges from last Read More
This week, CNN celebrated Piers Morgan's ascent to Larry King's anchor chair with a bash at the apartment of NewsBeast editrix Tina Brown. By all accounts it was a good party, despite the fact that its location, WWD discovered, had been transformed into Tina's "brainstorming" bunker where she's "assembling the team" for the magazine's Read More
According to Reuters Hulu is hoping to raise $200-300 million in an IPO led by Morgan Stanley that would value the company at $2 billion.
Hulu is backed by GE (NBC), Disney (ABC) and News Corp. (Fox), so it's future will have a big impact on New York's media market.
The company claims to be profitable Read More
The Television Critics Association summer press tour came to a close on Monday with the Fox executive session, which meant only one thing: Deflections about American Idol. Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly, prepare to be translated.
On the rumors of American Idol deals with producer Nigel Lythgoe, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler
What Peter Rice Read More
Did you think that with the regular TV season drawing to a close, your DVR-and your eyeballs-would get a well-deserved rest? Think again. In their increasingly successful attempt to turn television watching into a year-round endeavor, the networks have conspired to pack the ostensible off-season with more programming than you can shake a pair of Read More
Advertisers are already buying spots for the Super Bowl (on FOX this year), which "bodes well" for the rest of the market. [NYT]
FOX will make American Idol a bit shorter; Glee will fill the precious post-Super Bowl slot. [LAT]
The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd snuck into a tech run-through of NBC's upfront at the Hilton and Read More
"What Leno is doing now is slimy,” said Thomas J. Kelly.
It was the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 18, and Mr. Kelly, a 33-year-old comedian, was standing on the outskirts of Rockefeller Plaza, catching his breath. For the past half-hour, Mr. Kelly had been striding back and forth in front of the NBC headquarters in Read More
"What Leno is doing now is slimy,” said Thomas J. Kelly.
It was the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 18, and Mr. Kelly, a 33-year-old comedian, was standing on the outskirts of Rockefeller Plaza, catching his breath. For the past half-hour, Mr. Kelly had been striding back and forth in front of the NBC headquarters Read More
This past Sunday morning, President Barack Obama was on everywhere you looked on TV--except, of course, on Fox (sorry, Chris Wallace!).
So with the booking advantage effectively neutralized, who would triumph in the ratings?
In the end, it was David Gregory who came out on top.
On Sunday morning, NBC's Meet the Press attracted 3,290,000 total Read More
