facebook_pixel Press "Enter" to skip to content

Looking to start your TV writing journey?

Posts tagged as “Colbert and Stewart”

Crazy picks

Interesting new TV deals were made today (isn’t MIPTV great?) :

De Niro (yes) will co-exec with Jane Rosenthal up to three pilots inked in a deal between CBS and Tribeca. The deal basically guarantees that at least one of the three scripts will be made into an actual series pilot.
The first of the three shows will be penned by The Departed’s Oscar-winning writer William Monahan and will be set in New York.
If picked up, the show would probably premiere next season on CBS.

As for more sorta-tech-savier TV show news:

NBC will be making the “first ever green-screen drama developed for prime time”, the drama being none other than a “new take” on Jason and the Argonauts.
Just to see how original this “Jason” idea is, DreamWorks (who is now in bed with Universal) has also a project named “The Argonauts”, while Zak Penn (probably the guy that is going to write The Avengers movie) is also writing and producing his own version of the tale for 20th Century Fox.
Oh, and what about Sanctuary? Isn’t that a prime time green-screen drama?

Speaking of computer tech, you might have heard of a webseries named “MoCap, LLC” which is basically a mockumentary look at a fake small MoCap (short for motion-capture) studio. The show was shopped around by Worldwide Biggies and Spike TV has just ordered from them six half-hour episodes, scheduled to premiere sometime around January.

From webseries to TV series: is that a leap that will grow more and more common?

I’m also unsure about CNN’s move to make a D.L. Hughley-hosted news show (à la Daily Show/Colbert Report).
Are they just trying to get some young viewers back or what?

Fight to the ratings

First, some general TV/Movie news:

Samantha Bee and Jason Jones, from this show called “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (what the hell is that show anyway?), are signed to co-create and write a CBS sitcom (yes, you read that right) about the cooking world, Jones being a celeb chef and Bee one of the two women running his cooking empire (So like Bree’s Andrew?).

Also, Jonathan Prince (creator of A&E’s The Cleaner) has inked a first-look 2-year contract with CBS Paramount TV where a first series is already planned, centered around “bright and self-confident 22-year-old college grads who enroll in a medical school with an unusual program that forgoes years of book study to throw the youngsters into the trenches at a teaching hospital where they’re faced with life-and-death situations”.
I may jump out on a limb here, but isn’t that like Grey’s Anatomy without the “steamy” romance?

And what the hell is this news about Don Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard in Iron Man 2?

Now down to business.

I have been known to talk on occasion about ratings and how they might relate to, you know, the survival of a show.
THR put up today a couple of article around ratings, cable and DVRs.

The first is this one, a basic comparison between cable and broadcast ratings.


As the article says:

The cable networks are making their biggest push yet into fall with original scripted programming, but whether they can hold their own against the broadcasters remains to be seen.

I tend to agree with what Kimberly Nordyke notes.
That cable networks can win over the Summer is now obvious. After all, the Big Five are just starting to realize that original content works, even during hiatus, and they are now trying to put that content on air, during “hiatus season” for instance. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the idea of round-year original TV content is happening, whether the major networks want it to happen, or not.
Now, the main question is whether or not cable can keep its momentum going during fall and perhaps even winter. They could even take the sweeps in the (very) long run…But probably not.
Still, although the fact that the Big Five’s ratings are declining is undeniable (due to various circumstances -read “technology and cable”-), I’m not sure of a viable scenario where cable would outperform either CBS, NBC, FOX or ABC (they wouldn’t have a problem with The CW) when fall season is in its full swing.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see…On our DVRs.

Speaking of DVRs, the other THR article I was talking about is this one (technically a blog post). It’s all about DVRs boosting premiere ratings…although not by much it seems.

TV is being revolutionized.

In other, totally unrelated, news, I think I found the coolest website of the week.

The end is not nigh, it is now

The world has gone mad.
Mad I tell ya, maaaad!
And I’m not (necessarily) talking about the coming current financial apocalypse.

A talking Chihuaha is still number one at the box-office.
A shot-by-shot remake of a Spanish horror movie is the other winner of this week’s BO.
An Oscar-nominee’s movie starring an Oscar-winner and another Oscar-nominee tanked.
And saying that City of Ember (with William Murray and Tim Robbins!) has also tanked would be the understatement of the millennium.

It’s a sad day.

Maybe there’s even going to be another H-Wood strike on our hands (in addition to B-Wood’s).