Brad Garrett, 'Til Death
After attending the networks' upfront presentations all week, the Biz has this analysis of the coming season. (Click here for next fall's grid and new-show descriptions.)
CWYou've got to wonder what went wrong in CW's new-series development process if the network had to bring back 7th Heaven — even though the show lost a reported $16 million for WB this past season.
But the decision to have CW's inaugural schedule made up of established shows from WB and UPN may end up being a blessing. Many of the shows have small but rabid followings, and promoting new shows on a new network will be tough. The fans of shows like One Tree Hill and Veronica Mars will track them down on their own. Viewers in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic that CW targets don't watch networks, they watch shows. (According to recent survey, only one in four 1
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Jon Stewart, the 78th Annual Academy Awards
For complete minute-by-minute Watercooler coverage of the Academy Awards ceremony and of Joan and Melissa's live preshow, click here.
ConvictionI've had many obsessions in my life — love, shiny jewelry, chocolate — but none as devastating as Law & Order. My addiction to Dick Wolf's franchise (save for the deservedly short-lived Trial by Jury) has distracted me from finishing freelance assignments, deprived me of adequate sleep and even chased away a boyfriend or two. That said, Wolf's new series Conviction — which technically isn't part of the L&O family, even though it stars Special Victims Unit's cast
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Conviction, a series about hot young New York prosecutors, is not, sorry to say, the next great legal drama. It’s merely the next — as in (sigh) yet another.
What a weird little mutant this show is, too, with Law & Order’s Dick Wolf shifting gears, trying to mimic David E. Kelley’s style. It’s not a good fit. A far cry from Boston Legal or even The Practice, this is so clumsy in its mix of the procedural and the personal
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Everybody Hates Chris
Executive Session
9:09 "We’re thrilled to see everyone except Michael Ausiello today," UPN’s top PR gal, Joanna Massey, announces to the room. She might just as well have said the middle part ‘cause I know she was thinking it. As one insider recently confided to me, "You’re on UPN’s [poopy] list ever since you did that interview with [Veronica Mars creator] Rob Thomas." That probably explains why they didn’t deliver Snapple to my room like they did last year. I suppose I should be grateful I got the press binder.
9:11 Network chief Dawn Ostroff, in bragging about UPN’s impressive year, cites a 13 percent surge in viewership among the women 18-34 demo. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure
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Checking out of ER was no great loss for Sharif Atkins. During his three seasons as boring Dr. Michael Gallant, he never really became one of the hospital drama's breakout characters. We're talkin' zzzz....
When last seen, Gallant — who paid for med school as an Army reservist — was shipped off to active duty in Iraq. Just before leaving, Gallant nobly took the fall for Parminder Nagra's Dr. Neela Rasgotra, whose professional screwup resulted in a patient's death. So it seems pretty darn safe to say Gallant's gone for good, which is just fine by his portrayer, who's trading in cold Chicago winters for the sunny shores of Hawaii! NBC's newest cop show kicks off Sept. 1 and co-stars Atkins as Honolulu police detective John Declan.
"There's worlds of difference [between the characters]," Atkins says. "John Declan is one of those guys who's born to do what he does. He never thinks he's not gonna catch the bad guy.
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What do Heather Locklear, Matt LeBlanc, Drea de Matteo and Debra Messing have in common with, well, me? We all spent Sunday at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles for the Television Critics Assoc. press tour. (Actually, I spent most of the day next door at the St. Regis, but that's another story for another time.) Anyway, it's NBC's final day of the tour and up first is the session for this fall's most anticipated new sitcom, Joey. Here's my minute-by-minute rundown of yesterday's most memorable moments:
JOEY9:50 am The cast — featuring new brother-sister team LeBlanc and de Matteo — walks out on stage and... Oh my God, Adriana's alive! For the love of God, she's
alive!
9:54 "It wasn't properly conceived," exec producer Shana Goldberg Meehan says of Ashley Scott's next-door-neighbor character. As a result, the role is currently being revamped and recast. An anno
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