facebook_pixel Press "Enter" to skip to content

Looking to start your TV writing journey?

Posts tagged as “YouTube”

Worse to come

The news on everyone’s mind is yesterday’s Emmy nomination list.
As some of you saw via my Twitter reactions, I was pretty pissed at some stuff that got on the list.

Let’s begin with Family Guy.
Now, I don’t hate the show, actually I watch it religiously.
My problem has to do with that it’s Family Guy getting the honors of being the first animated program to be nominated in the Best Comedy category in 50 years or so, instead of The Simpsons.
Also, I don’t believe the show is that good.
It might have been during the first few seasons but not currently.

I don’t appreciate the various writing noms this year either. And by various, I mean the complete opposite.
Four out of five comedy writing noms are for 30 Rock, and four out of five drama writing noms are for Mad Men!
Ridiculous.

My third problem is with another nomination, this time Drama-side: Lost.
Yet again, I’m a huge Lost fan (remember when I interviewed Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse? I sure do), I’ve been with the show since day one.
But this latest season was just atrociously bad, let alone majorly retcon.
Long story short, Lost‘s Season Five shouldn’t be worth the nomination.
Remember how four out of five drama writing noms were for Mad Men?
Well the other one is for, wait for it, Lost‘s The Incident (Season 5 finale).
Out of every drama hours from the past year, they chose this one?
Not even a tiny Breakind Bad episode?

Lost shouldn’t even be nominated for Best Drama, which brings me to my next problem.
With seven contenders this year, I would have expected some outsiders joining the show. Fortunately, Flight of the Conchords was nominated.
On the other hand however, Lost getting on meant The Shield‘s final season got the boot.
Not cool.
I would have liked to see In Treatment in there as well.
Hopefully, Breaking Bad will win.

A new category was announced as well, Outstanding Special Class – Short-format Live-Action Entertainment, also known as the ‘Online Stuff’ category.
With the exception of the Super-Bowl show, all the other noms are webisodes of some kind.
Obviously, Dr. Horrible was nominated.
One might wonder if this category was made just for Dr. Horrible.
It’s a given it will get the Emmy.
Speaking of, Scifi Wire has an interview up with Joss Whedon talking about this nomination, amongst other things.

Another major snub includes Michael Giacchino’s wonderful Lost score being completely ignored from the Outstanding Music Composition category.
Instead, such musical classic as Castle, Legend of the Seeker, and even Ghost Whisperer got the nom.

So much to complain about, I must have left out some other things.
In any case, yeah, I’m pissed at the 61st Emmy Awards.
And they haven’t even started yet.

A few previews have appeared for some interesting upcoming shows.

The first is AMC’s Rubicon starring James Badge Dale and Lili Taylor based on a Jason Horwitch script.
Check out this trailer:

FX meanwhile has made a 6-episode order for an animated comedy series named Archer and created by Adam Reed and Matt Thompson who previously worked on Sealab 2021.
As for what it is about, see the following extract:

And finally, two other TV tidbits.
First, some Station news. The FOX show produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour, not a network station.
John Goodman has been cast as the co-star alongside Justin Bartha on this series created by Kevin Napier about covert CIA operatives working on installing a new dictatorship in Central America.
The pilot will be shot by Role Model‘s David Wain.

Also, NBC has picked-up Persons Unknown, a 13-episode series Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar in 1994 for his Usual Suspects script.
The show, produced showrunner Remi Aubuchon, Christopher & Heather McQuarrie, revolves around strangers waking up in a deserted town with no recollection of how they got there. They must now work together to escape by solving puzzles.

I’m looking forward to all these four shows.

Leave Michael alone!

Leave Michael alone!

For a week now there has been non-stop coverage of Michael Jackson’s life.
All this media circus culminated in today’s memorial service.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Michael Jackson is probably (one of) the greatest entertainers in History.
But we’re talking about, hands down, the biggest broadcast event in History.
Bigger than Obama’s Inauguration.
Bigger than any other event in recent times.

Would you say that Michael Jackson dying is a Historical event?
Or is everyone treating it as a Historical event the event itself?

I think that a plane crash, an exodus in Somalia, massive protests and deaths in China, or even Palin resigning, are bigger news stories than this week’s 24:7 coverage of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits.

No offense to whomever might get offended, but this is ridiculous.

During this hommage, the poor man’s coffin was publicly displayed right in front of the stage like some kind of weird trophy.
I have never seen anything like this and probably will never again.

Just the entrance of the coffin under applause is enough to get chills down your back (not in a good way).

This isn’t just the biggest broadcast in History, it’s also one of the creepiest.

The final choir with the kids holding hands intersected with shots from London and people dancing to “We Are the World” mixed gaudy with crass.
Are people going to dance on his grave soon?

James Hibberd even declared (about the event itself, before it began):

Is it possible to have a pop star’s memorial service on this scale and not have it be, to a large extent, tacky? […] No matter how much it means to you, the setting turns it into camp. Who can regard an event soberly when you know there’s going to be folks selling T-shirts outside?

Honestly, is this supposed to be a concert with a coffin or a memorial service?

What was even more heart-breaking was seeing the family, especially the daughter, talking about their dead brother/father.

Though fans can grieve, this is a memorial service that in my opinion should have been held privately.
The mourning of a family towards a human being shouldn’t be shared with over a billion people worldwide!

Elizabeth Taylor earlier stated:

I’ve been asked to speak at the Staples Center. I cannot be part of the public whoopla. And I cannot guarantee that I would be coherent to say a word. I just don’t believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others.
How I feel is between us. Not a public event. I said I wouldn’t go to the Staples Center and I certainly don’t want to become a part of it. I love him too much.

The fans are grieving a celebrity.
Michael’s family is mourning a man.
This isn’t the same thing, and the media circus is only blurring the line.

I’ll end this post with a quote from the King of Pop himself:

It feels so good to be thought of as a person, not as a personality.

Let’s respect his wishes.
Please let Michael Jackson rest in peace now.

Follow-ups to the One Year

Follow-ups to the One Year

Time for follow-ups to some of the post from the last year.

Hopefully this won’t turn into another Jaws, trying to follow on follow-ups with other follow-ups and pointless sequels.



Let’s begin with, guess what, follow-ups to a couple of posts from way back.

In late September, Russian channel 2×2 was facing a criminal investigation following the broadcast of a South Park episode, Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics.
And now an update from ten days ago: the court has dropped the case against the adult cartoon channel.
Problem solved.

Now onto a much bigger problem, the FOX v. FCC Supreme Court case dating back to last November:

The case deals with swearing on live TV:
In March of 06, the FCC fined FOX for Cher and Nicole Richie saying “shit” and “fucking” during the 02 & 03 Billboard Music Awards, all due to a “new” FCC policy that allowed penalization even if the expletive is made only once, and live.

The case worked its way up to the Supreme Court and on Tuesday were heard the oral arguments for the case.

I forgot to talk about but finally a decision was reached at the end of last April:

The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on April 28, 2009 that the Federal Communications Commission had not acted arbitrarily when it changed a long-standing policy and implemented a new ban on even “fleeting expletives” from the airwaves. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, wrote: “The FCC’s new policy and its order finding the broadcasts at issue actionably indecent were neither arbitrary nor capricious.” In the dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens claimed that this decision was hypocritical given the presence of television commercials for products treating impotence or constipation.

You can read all about the decision over here.

Incidentally, “the Court explicitly declined to decide whether the new rule is constitutional, and sent that issue back to the lower courts for their review.”
So long story short, First Amendment rights are still up in the air.

Richard Kelly’s The Box (reviewed here) also has a few new updates.
The first trailer is now out:

And there is an interesting interview with Kelly on SciFi Wire.

Speaking of SciFi, given the backlash after the Syfy rebranding announcement earlier this year, there has been in the last month or so a few responses from channel president Dave Howe.
In a very recent TVGuide interview he said:

This wasn’t an option, it was a mandate. We made a commitment to grow into a global lifestyle brand. Sci Fi is a genre; it is like calling a TV network Drama or Sport. The default perception of sci-fi is that it’s space, aliens, the future. It’s Star Trek. The new name positions us as having our own attitude and personality, which gives us permission to do a broader range of sci-fi/fantasy shows and take us into the supernatural, the paranormal, action-adventure and mystery space.

I think it’s been pretty much established, if only by Star Trek‘s very recent success, that the clichéd opinions regarding science-fiction are gone.
We’ve seen pretty weak arguments regarding the brand change…
Broadcasting & Cable also has a piece up detailing Syfy’s upcoming branding strategy, including “Wyfy from Syfy”.

You can as well check out the future Syfy TV spots right here.

Continuing on the SciFi side of things, we have another article on the genre by STLtoday‘s Gail Pennington. Included in it is an interview with Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore.

Moving back to more serious issues, there has been some talk regarding the future of entertainment, and especially the future of broadcast.
TV Week‘s Brian Steinberg had an In Depth article on the conflicting visions of NBC and CBS:

NBC and CBS are at odds about how best to proceed at a time when the future of the business is under serious assault. Is the future of broadcast TV generating big audiences from early morning to late at night? Or is it picking the right spots, focusing instead on syndicating big-ticket programming — the Olympics or a favorite crime procedural — across a multitude of screens in exchange for advertising and other revenue?

It’s a very intriguing and interesting look at two network giants that are actually betting on opposite sides of what the future might be.

Well, that’s all the time we have folks.
Tomorrow is writing day so be sure to tune in.