http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl? http://www.eblah.com en http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368993686/ http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368993686/#num1 The Coming Cast Crisis at ‘Saturday Night Live’

Hader and Meyers may not be the last to leave but don't panic just yet

By Andrew Wallenstein
Editor-in-chief
Variety.com
Digital@awallenstein
May 19 9:31 am

              
                                      Bill Hader

It wouldn’t be a “Saturday Night Live” season finale without the bittersweet moment that comes when a veteran cast member makes a final appearance. Last night it was Bill Hader’s turn to say goodbye, just as Kristen Wiig had done the previous season.

Given the revolving door at “SNL” has never seemed to stop moving over its 38-season run, the exit shouldn’t be cause for concern. Hader made a strong case for cast MVP over 2012-13, but Wiig also ended her run as “SNL’s” top player. And yet the show seemed to have enjoyed a solid season without her and another high-profile defector, Andy Samberg.

But 2013-14 could very well shake out to be one of those tricky transitional seasons that every now and then seems to threaten “SNL” over a history that has seen its share of low points.

Consider the already announced departure next season of head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor Seth Meyers, who plans to transition to his own NBC late-night show by next January. Add to that the increasing likelihood that Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen may not be with the series much longer; a New York Post report suggests this season will be their last, and the finale’s last sketch didn’t explicitly send them off, though it was certainly hinted.

But don’t panic. The prospect of losing at least four prominent cast members before 2013-14 might seem dire, but students of “SNL” history will note that past mass cast defections tend to be like forest fires: While the damage done is seemingly devastating, it actually has a counterintuitively restorative effect, clearing the way for future growth. And what’s more, the seeds for the next generation of SNL already seem to be sprouting in the current cast.

The prospect of a mass exodus shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Sudeikis was originally intended to exit midway through the current season only to inexplicably stay on for the duration. Armisen also seemed to signal one foot out the door by relinquishing Obama impersonation duties to Jay Pharoah. Armisen and Sudeikis have had truly great runs at ‘SNL,’ but both seemed to be used less this season than in previous years, only accentuating the feeling that it’s time for them to move on.

To prevent this talent drain, “SNL” impresario Lorne Michaels will likely do whatever he can to forestal their exits, but it’s a short-term solution at best considering Sudeikis is eight seasons in, Armisen is on his 11th and yet another stalwart, Kenan Thompson, is on his 10th.

Michaels clearly has his work cut out for him in the off-season. But he’s been through this so many times he may not even be sweating.

The most direct comparison might be the 2005-06 season ,when “SNL” lost five cast members including “Update” anchor/head writer Tina Fey. But that was a breeze compared with the mass exoduses that rocked the franchise in 1985-86 and 1994-95.

But a funny thing happened in both of the seasons that followed: “SNL” experienced bumper crops in new cast additions. 1986 brought Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Kevin Nealon in one fell swoop. 1995 delivered Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, Cheri Oteri, Chris Kattan and Colin Quinn. All in one season.

But 2013-14 doesn’t necessarily require a fresh infusion of talent to salvage “SNL”; the series did a fantastic job of grooming in-house this season.

Two bright spots in the “SNL” men’s room: Taran Killam and Bobby Moynihan. Both of these guys grew tremendously in 2012-13. Moynihan’s rise was actually something of a surprise given his first four seasons seemed to indicate he was headed for second-class status in the cast. His Drunk Uncle character may be the biggest draw on “Update” now that Hader’s beloved Stefon is gone.

As for Killam, he’s as close as “SNL” is going to get in terms of replacing Samberg’s singular weirdness, and he may have even more range than Samberg. In time, clearing the decks of all these male vets may actually give Killam room to shine.

Still, “SNL” desperately needs to bring in new male blood in the off-season. Beyond his much-improved Obama personation, Pharoah continues to be under-utilized and there’s little sense that’s going to change. Sole freshman addition Tim Robinson is not star material; he’ll be lucky to last a few seasons on “SNL.”

The female side of “SNL” might seem even more challenging given a franchise that was something of a boy’s club for so many seasons became dominated by women like Wiig, Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph more recently. And yet the unsung story of 2012-13 for “SNL” may be how quickly they managed to refuel.

Kate McKinnon, who joined at the tail end of last season, is probably second only to Pharoah when it comes brilliant celebrity mimickry, from Martha Stewart to Ellen DeGeneres. And Cecily Strong may be the “SNL” Rookie of the Year, demonstrating a versatility that may make her a breakout talent in no time.

With the “Update” anchor chair emptying next year, it’s tempting to hope Michaels will turn to one of his up-and-comers for what would be an instant status booster. That said, the good money is that chair will go to John Mulaney, an “SNL” writer who had a pilot in contention at NBC this year. He didn’t get a series order, which could be the best thing to happen to “SNL.”

While there’s every indication “SNL” is on the verge of a serious manpower outage, don’t fret yet. There’s already a lot of talent waiting in the wings at Studio 8H.


http://variety.com/2013/tv/new.....gn=breakingnewsalert]]> Sun, 19 May 2013 13:01:26 clockwatcher http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368758659/ http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368758659/#num1 7 Charts That Show Why Fox Is The Most Dominant Force In Cable News


By Walter Hickey
        
      May 16, 2013

While most people know that Fox News is a huge deal when it comes to cable news, it's remarkable how dominant the network has become compared to its cable-news rivals MSNBC and CNN.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report has exceptional charts showing the layout of the cable news battleground.

The report shows that Fox News is the clear winner among four cable networks, including HLN, for several reasons.

While CNN hemorrhages daytime viewers, Fox has steadfastly dominated daytime cable news, especially since the beginning of the Obama administration:



Fox News Hannity dominates cable in the primetime 9 p.m. slot, beating out MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and blowing CNN's Piers Morgan out of the water.



Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren also increased viewership for the network during the 10 p.m. slot between 2011 and 2012:



Across the board, Fox is the profit leader:



Fox surpassed CNN in revenue around the beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign and has posted consistent growth ever since:



Fox's revenue per subscriber has been rising steadily as the network demands higher rates. If you get Fox on your cable package, around a dollar per month goes to the network:



Fox also spends more than its competitors. Star hosts bank upwards of seven-figure salaries, exclusive deals are inked with well-paid popular commentators, and other on-air talent is notoriously well compensated:



State of the Media


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-charts-show-why-fox-201818743.html
.]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 19:44:19 On Air http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368725436/ http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368725436/#num1 Six Ways The Office Mattered
      
(Photo: Chris Haston/NBC)

By James Poniewozik
     TIME Entertainment
              May 16, 2013

If any TV show is lucky enough, it will last to the point when it will seem tired, repetitive, business as usual. The Office, which ends its last season after nine years tonight, may arguably have reached that point; however well it ends, it will have been punching the clock for a long time. But it’s worth remembering, however much we’re used to the show’s style and comedy now, that network-TV sitcoms were a different breed when the American version of the show came on the air in 2005.

Tomorrow, we can talk about how good or bad its finale was. Today, let’s remember some of the ways it influenced the sitcoms that came after it:

It Adapted Scripted TV to the Reality-TV Era.

The Office’s mockumentary format had been used before it in movies, like Christopher Guest’s comedies. But to NBC’s primetime audience, its signifiers–the confessional interviews, the cameras rushing to keep up with the action–were more immediately familiar from reality TV, which in 2005 people were talking about replacing sitcoms altogether. Instead, The Office–and then shows that followed it, like Modern Family–used these tropes as a new language for telling stories and explaining characters.

Like many of the accomplishments of The Office (USA), this one was preceded by The Office (UK). And Arrested Development had a quasi-documentary format in 2003. But maybe one of the reasons it didn’t last longer was that audiences weren’t used to the format yet. Whether or not The Office did it better, it at least had better timing.

It Brought Back the Single-Camera Sitcom.

For non-TV-geeks: What’s a single-camera sitcom? A show that’s shot, like a TV drama, with one camera at a time, allowing it to use various locations and settings and to look more “movie-like.” (A multi-camera comedy trains multiple cameras on a stage set, usually with a live audience; think Friends or The Big Bang Theory.)

You’d think that single-cameras would offer more creative options, but since the heyday of M*A*S*H they were superseded by multi-cams, which looked like theater and offered the helpful cue of audience laughter. Before The Office, shows like Undeclared (and, again, Arrested Development) were funny, but to an audience used to multi-cams, they didn’t feel funny. By drawing laughs from interviews—and broad slapstick—The Office showed audiences they could laugh even when the TV didn’t tell them to.

(Update: A commenter on Twitter pointed out after I posted this that Scrubs was doing single-cam successfully on NBC earlier–true, and that wasn’t the first show to use single-camera either. The same could apply to many of the points here—as with pretty much every TV trend, no single show does it alone—but The Office happened to be a hit show at the crux of a lot of them.)

It Brought Drama Back to Comedy.

Here’s another way The Office harkened back to sitcom traditions of the early ’70s, when Norman Lear’s hugely popular comedies could also deal with dead-serious issues (without Very Special sentimentality) and M*A*S*H killed off Col. Henry Blake. The Office wasn’t political per se, but it was one of the first big comedies since Roseanne to present its characters with big stakes and to treat them seriously when it needed to.

Michael Scott was ridiculous and inappropriate, but he was also sympathetic; when his heart broke, yours did for him. In the office, there were mergers and business downturns, and people were genuinely worried about losing their jobs and not having money anymore. The Office showed that it could be escapist without being, entirely, an escape.

It Helped Mainstream the Cringe.

There were a few actual jokes in The Office, and plenty of pranks and slapstick. But from its early episodes, The Office specialized in a kind of humor–a scene that’s so uncomfortable you have to laugh–which used to be the specialty of cable comedies like The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

This had partly to do with The Office’s semi-dramatic strain (see previous item); it got many of its laughs by worrying the tender boundary between absurdity and pathos. It didn’t do this alone, of course; in the movies, there were movies like Judd Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which elevated Steve Carell’s stature just as The Office was getting started. But The Office as much as any TV show was responsible for making so-painful-it’s-funny humor standard procedure on network sitcoms.

It Showed That Comedy Stories Didn’t Need to Be Simple to Be Popular.

The Office debuted in midseason 2004–05, the same season that Lost revived the idea of complex, even convoluted, serial storytelling in a broadcast network drama. The Office may not have had flash-forwards (that would come with sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother, which debuted the next fall), but it was more dedicated than most big mainstream comedies before it to ongoing stories: Pam and Jim’s courtship, the various corporate changes at Dunder-Mifflin, Michael Scott’s romances, Jim’s attempt to start his own business.

The series also proved itself willing to complicate the way it presented its characters. It had sympathetic leads, antagonists, buffoons, and eccentrics, but it was also willing to flesh out and dimensionalize its whole ensemble. Michael could be an ass, but he was also driven by a deep loneliness he felt from childhood. Angela was a prude, but became sympathetic when her closeted politicina husband abandoned her. Characters revealed tics and traits over the years, like Oscar’s pedantic streak. And maybe most refreshingly, even as the show gave Pam and Jim a genuine, stirring romance, it also occasionally reminded you that their coworkers thought the lovebirds could be kind of irritating.

It Brought Hard Reality—a Little—to the Workplace Sitcom.

True, the employees of Dunder-Mifflin often seem to be too busy holding Office Olympics or paper-airplane contests to actually keep a business running. But the show’s storylines did keep a foot in the modern real world of white-collar paper-pushing and economic anxiety.

The employees dealt with the benefits package (as when Dwight chose a healthcare plan in the first season), sensitivity-training sessions, and human resources consultations. There was an awareness that–like many of our workplaces–the Scranton branch was subject to the vicissitudes of a larger company and larger economic forces. It was merged with another branch, which led not only to the Jim-Karen-Pam love triangle but to downsizing and layoffs. The corporation once nearly went under, then was upended by a poorly executed buyout by a printer company. Possibly the series’ best arc, in season 5, came when Michael started a rival paper company, which ended in a small triumph–a modest buyout–but also dashed Michael’s romantic illusions (like the rest of his, drawn from pop culture) about the plucky little guy winning big.

The Office was in the tradition of workplace comedies that are about “surrogate families”–its big stories were about friendship, personal challenges, romance. But to its credit, it never forgot that, in the end, sometimes a job was just a job.


Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/16/six-ways-the-office-mattered/#ixzz2TTe8XYbL



.]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 10:30:36 Airwaves http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368634771/ http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368634771/#num1 Battered Networks Blow Up Traditional TV Schedule to Take on Cable, Streaming Rivals

Fox rolling out a huge show next season... in May

  

By Tim Molloy
TheWrap.com
May 14  8:46 pm


One of the biggest television shows next season won't air until the season is nearly over – and that should tell you something about broadcasters' wavering loyalty to the traditional September-May broadcast season.

Fox plans to debut its 12-episode "24" revival in May, and use it to launch another much-hyped, limited-run series, M. Night Shyamalan's "Wayward Pines." The network is following the lead of NBC, which used an unconventional April launch date for "The Voice" in 2011 to build it into a hit.

Gone are the days that broadcast networks bet the house on shows by debuting them at the start of the season with plans for a 22- or 24-episode run. Like their cable rivals, they are taking a year-round approach to programming -- and it's changing the way they unveil their schedules to advertisers at the upfront presentations in New York.

The traditional season, with regularly scheduled sweeps periods, is still useful to advertisers and networks. But some of the old ways are clearly losing their appeal to network programmers, who are coping with falling ratings and increased competition from cable and online.

Midseason replacements used to be just  that – replacements. Now, networks are holding promising shows for midseason – or late midseason. Or summer.

Fox entertainment chief Kevin Reilly goes so far as to say he'd "like to strike the phrase midseason from our lexicon, frankly."

"The cable networks roll things out and use all their resources to focus on a couple of shows at a time, and we do these mass releases at once," Reilly told TheWrap. "It's a bit, I think, beyond its usefulness. … It doesn’t mean the business is broken, it just means it's time to break from the pack."

Networks are also ordering fewer episodes of scripted series – or ordering limited-run series that they could, if viewers really twisted their arms, turn into regular shows. It saves them from big commitments and big failures.

There's nothing new about limited-run series – aka "miniseries" -- even if they disappeared from the networks for a few years. Jimmy Kimmel joked at ABC's upfront Tuesday that ABC had several miniseries recently – then listed shows the network had canceled.

The short-order approach to episodes is new, however. It worked for Fox this season with "The Following," one of the year's few successful new shows. It aired just 15 episodes.

Fox will take the same approach with some shows this coming season, and ABC is adopting it with the 13-episode, juicy drama "Betrayal," slated for fall. First-place network CBS, meanwhile, ordered just 15 episodes of its upcoming Monday drama, "Hostages." And CBS is launching the Stephen King limited-run series "Under the Dome" (left) on June 24.

Broadcasters are more risk-averse – and more desperate to cover their bases year-round – because ratings are down dramatically in the last five years. This season, the four biggest networks have all slipped in the key 18-49 demographic, and every network but CBS, which is up slightly, have slid in total viewers. One executive at Univision's upfront Tuesday said ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC "used to be called the Big 4 networks."

Now networks are taking lessons from the cable networks eating into their audiences. Cable learned long ago to program some of their strongest shows in the months when broadcasters didn't have much to offer. Now the grid is so filled with so many shows year-round that networks can no longer essentially take summers off.

Online offers yet more options. Viewers can watch Netflix shows like "House of Cards" and "Arrested Development" – premiering May 26 – whenever they want to. Never before has so much high-quality, original programming been available to viewers whenever they want it. (Netflix rubbed that fact in network's faces by setting up an "Arrested Development" banana stand near the NBC and ABC upfronts.)

Even if year-round programming destroys, as Reilly hopes, the concept of midseason, fall will remain the anchor of the TV year for the time being – partly because of football. NBC's "Sunday Night Football" is easily the most-watched primetime show, and the NFL brings in huge ratings for Fox, as well.

And debuting shows at unusual times of year doesn't always work the way it did for "The Voice." People still need to want to watch the shows.

ABC premiered "Duets," its answer to "The Voice," "American Idol" and "X Factor," last May – and it disappointed.

Just like countless shows that air in the fall and midseason.


http://www.thewrap.com/tv/arti.....reaming-rivals-91611]]> Wed, 15 May 2013 09:19:31 clockwatcher http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368546964/ http://www.pugetsoundradio.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1368546964/#num1 McCain: Pay TV Business Is Rigged Against Consumers


                                                                 Win McNamee/Getty Images

May 14, 2013
7:50AM PT

GOP senator uses Senate subcommittee hearing to push a la carte legislation

by Todd Spangler
Variety.com

Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) tubthumped his proposed legislation to force pay TV providers to give Americans the option to buy cable TV channels individually, calling the system “rigged” against consumers.

“I truly believe a lot of Americans are fed up with the size of their cable bill,” said McCain, testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet’s “State of Video” hearing Tuesday morning.

McCain’s Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013 bill, introduced last week, would encourage wholesale and retail unbundling of TV programming, penalize broadcasters if they “downgrade” their over-the-air service and eliminate the sports-blackout rule for events held in publicly financed stadiums.

“A la carte options are the right thing to do, in large part because of dramatically rising cable prices, which exceed the cost of living,” the senator said.

McCain called out sports as a key culprit for rising pay TV bills, which he pointed out have risen 6.1% annually for the last 16 years. “I’d never go without ESPN, but the fact is the majority of consumers have no interest in sports programming and shouldn’t be forced to pay for it.”

Analysts are doubtful McCain’s a la carte bill will go anywhere, citing staunch industry resistance and lack of co-sponsors for the legislation.

Also speaking at the hearing was Michael Powell, head of cable trade group National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., who disputed the notion that government-mandated a la carte is needed.

“It’s a very serious question mark whether consumers would have lower bills or cheaper service as a result of a la carte,” he said, citing past studies including one by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004. Powell also said the cable model supports a wide range of niche-interest channels that potentially “wouldn’t be able to survive on their own.”

While Powell said the 1992 Cable Act that governs the industry is “frayed” and “increasingly incomplete and out of sync” with the market, he said now is not the time for a comprehensive rewrite of the law.

“While some surgical changes to the law may be appropriate, a broad rewrite is not necessary and could even be counterproductive by introducing uncertainty and displacing or skewing the marketplace rivalries” that provide “unparalleled choice” to consumers, Powell said in his prepared remarks.

Consumer-interest activist group Public Knowledge supports McCain’s bill, which wouldn’t outlaw TV bundles but would simply give people choice, said senior staff attorney John Bergmayer.

“There’s room in the marketplace for bundles of content,” Bergmayer said, noting that Netflix’s service provides a bundle of content for a fixed price. “What people want is a lot more choice. It’s not bundles per se — it’s the feeling that they’re getting ripped off.”

Dish Network exec veep and general counsel R. Stanton Dodge fingered TV broadcasters as partly to blame for higher bills, telling subcommittee members that pay TV providers need protection against demands for higher retransmission fees. Standoffs between cable and satellite operators and broadcasters have resulted in 91 local TV blackouts in 2012, up from 12 in 2010.

“Consumers are the victims of these one-sided negotiations,” Dodge said.


http://variety.com/2013/tv/new.....gn=breakingnewsalert]]> Tue, 14 May 2013 08:56:04 clockwatcher