Spring Break Shark Attack
How do you take on a hot show like Desperate Housewives? With some vampire bats, a time bomb and a serial killer, of course. And if those don’t do the job, there’s always a "superstorm" to destroy the world.
Welcome to the new CBS Sunday Movie, long the network-TV home for the tearjerker or spiritually uplifting Hallmark Hall of Fame film. A steady diet of those movies simply isn’t doing the job to attract younger viewers away from ABC’s Sunday lineup. CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said at the Television Critics Association press tour on Tuesday that it’s time to change course with more B-movie-esque thrillers.
"We know we’re up against a juggernaut on Sunday nights," she said. "As a result, we’re trying some high-concept and popcorn movies to go along with our traditional female films and star-driven vehicles. You’ll also see a somewhat different scheduling strategy."
In other words, Tassler will put those movies
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John Roberts
The news division of CBS, which once flirted with the idea of merging with CNN, has expanded its website, CBSNews.com, into a 24-hour news service for Internet users with high-speed connections.
It isn't a "linear" news network where an anchor sits at a desk reading news and introducing video packages, says CBS News president Andrew Heyward. It's going to be your job to pick and choose what you want to see. It won't just be reports that have already aired. CBS News will continuously post its reporting on the site, and some of the coverage will be live. And if a correspondent has something to report before the CBS Evening News airs, you'll see it sooner on the broadband channel.
Heyward says the on-demand aspect of the service means CBS News doesn't have to be "live for live's sake" and to fill up time the way cable news channels do. It will offer an online version of the CBS Evening News with Bob Schieffer and regular original features, such
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Commander-In-Chief
We're still two months away from the new TV season, but TV research chief Steve Sternberg of the ad-buying firm MAGNA Global has already issued his picks for the fall. Why should we listen to him? Last year he touted Desperate Housewives and Lost, the two ABC megahits.
He's a bit more cautious this year. In fact, he dispensed with his annual list of hits and misses for his report on the 2005-06 fall season. "In today's TV world of low-rated renewals and increased network ownership of programming, it is more difficult than ever to try to figure out which new shows will last the full season," he says. Besides, he adds, "our hits and misses labels were more relevant to the press than our clients, anyway." Thanks, Steve.
But Sternberg's report does list what new shows he likes most. Here they are, along with his take on how they'll fare.
Commander-In-Chief: ABC's White House drama, starring Geena Davis as president of the Un
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So what are you watching when Dancing with the Stars isn't on? Probably TNT. The cable network topped rerun-laden broadcasters UPN and WB in viewers aged 18 to 49 during the month of June. Overall, TNT was the most-watched cable network for the month with all viewers, averaging 3.3 million, and with the coveted 18-to-49 crowd.
Monday-night cop drama The Closer, which stars Kyra Sedgwick, is now the most-watched original series on cable. Steven Spielberg's Into the West ranks next, just edging USA's sci-fi hit The 4400.
Here's a look at what's hot and what's not on cable this summer:
Rescue Me: Game 6 of the NBA finals dinged the second-season opener of the FX firehouse drama. It scored 2.9 million, down 21 percent from its premiere of 4 million last summer, but the audience level was on par with what the show was doing throughout last season.
The Closer: The TNT hit has settled in at 5.4 million view
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Cable business channel CNBC has been getting bashed lately for having ratings lower than dot-com stock values, but that hasn't stopped it from doing some award-winning journalism. This past year CNBC's original documentary team won a Peabody Award for The Age of Wal-Mart, an insightful look at the retailing behemoth.
The same crew is back again on June 29 at 8 pm with The eBay Effect — Inside a Worldwide Obsession. Veteran CNBC correspondent David Faber looks at how the Internet auction company grew into a Wall Street juggernaut, a pop-culture touchstone and a means of livelihood for thousands.
Inside the company's network operations center, we learn how eBay's online traffic dips when American Idol is on. There's also a fascinating fly-on-the wall look at a meeting of the company's "Rules, Trust and Safety Team," which decides what kind of items should be sold on the site. ("I'm kind of uncomfortable with the notion of people renting out th
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Dancing with the Stars
This could be another one of those "Who knew?" TV summers.
Ballroom dancing? Evander Holyfield? Seinfeld's J. Peterman? Trista Sutter! It's an unlikely mix that helped make Dancing with the Stars last week's No. 1 show, with 15 million viewers. It also led the competition in viewers 18 to 49.
If you've missed it, here's the premise: Each week a celebrity (and that term is used loosely) performs with a professional ballroom dancer who has helped train them in the rumba, cha-cha and other steps that haven't been seen on the networks since the advent of color TV. Then viewers and a panel of experts judge the pairs and award the winners a trophy. That's right, a trophy.
Dancing with the Stars has given ABC its best summer ratings for an original episode of an entertainment show since Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was still on fire in 2000. Despite its unlikely format, the show has been a huge hit in the U.K. (as S
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Ted Koppel
When longtime Nightline anchor Ted Koppel announced last week that he'll leave ABC News in December, there was heavy speculation that it meant the end of his late night news program. While ABC News execs plan to revamp Nightline, the thinking is that Disney won't be able to resist the temptation to bring in more advertising dollars with a late-night entertainment show. But Koppel — who has every reason to be skeptical of company promises since Nightline's near-death experience a few years ago — believes the show will still be on the air two years from now.
"I do," he told the Biz last week. "I think that it's not as easy as people think to create an entirely new broadcast that has any kind of legs. I'm old enough and have been around ABC long enough to remember how many times the network tried to put on a program at 11:30 at night that failed. When you finally have a broadcast that's survived for 25 years, I think you need to expend all the energy
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