Cash Windfalls For WME Agents, Assistants 
A&E IndieFilms Sets ‘Happy Valley,’ … 
Hot Cannes Property: Natalie Portman, Lynne Ramsay Team On … 
Brad Pitt Hits Cannes With ‘Killing Them … 
CNN Hits 20-Year Weekday Primetime Low 
Longtime TV Exec Rod Perth Named NATPE President & CEO 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘House’ Ends Run On High-Ish … 
Does Cable News Clarify Or Confuse The Public’s … 
Mark Burnett’s Company Launches Scripted Unit, Taps … 
‘Mary Mother Of Christ’ In Lionsgate Deal 
Icon UK Group Joins ‘The Butler’; Forest … 
Best Buy Shares Up Pre-Market As Q1 Earnings Beat Estimates 
HBO Developing Comedy Series Starring Catherine Keener And … 
Will ‘Paperboy’ Heat Domestic Buying At Cannes? … 
Millennium Films Buys Spec Thriller ‘Playing … 
Will ‘American Idol’s’ Jessica Sanchez … 
Legendary’s Thomas Tull Among Just 3 Contenders … 
Harvey Weinstein Unveils ‘The Master’, … 
CBS’ ‘Rules Of Engagement’ Renewed For … 
Facebook Shares Fall Below Offering Price Even As Market … 
UTA Signs ‘Intouchables’ Star Omar Sy 
Kudos to NBC Universal for not trying to claim that the research summary I reported for the network’s rough-cut pilot of its forthcoming sitcom Parks and Recreation was fake. Instead, Ben Silverman defended the mockumentary which stars Amy Poehler and comes from The Office‘s Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, and premieres on April 9th. “All of the research we do around initial rough cuts is negative,” Silverman said to EW. “If you had seen the initial research on all of ours and our competitors’ successful shows, it tends to be like that.” Ben is absolutely correct: poor test scores like this are quite common. Because most of the stuff in network primetime is crap, and most of the testing takes place in loser venues like Las Vegas. And yet the idiot network execs keep using the research to torture every show’s writers, producers and showrunners. Especially at NBC. Go figure.
Problems With NBC’s ‘Parks & Recreation’
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
“Guys, how idiotic are you? What, do you think the testing companies recruit their samples from The Bellagio and Circus Circus on the Strip?!?”
Actually from the MGM, where they set up a specific site in the hotel (on the way to the pool) to do the testing. No joke.
Oh, and they tell the testers that the feedback dial will turn off unless they turn it once every ten seconds. So people go from “love it” to “hate it” back and forth so they can keep participating. Great system.
None of the new AFTRA shows will do any good. They all look like crap. Its the off-putting picture quality of digital.
Production quality does matter, despite what the studio beam counters think.
Digital ain’t cheaper either. I just finished a project shot with the super expensive Panavision Genesis. It took so long to prep every shot, to even out the light, that the studio spent more money than if they had just shot on film. The High Def monitor was miss calibrated too, so we now will be doing reshoots.
After hours and hours in front of a computer in post, the show MIGHT approach the quality of a filmed 35mm TV show.
Actually – they most likely go to Vegas because it’s as far as they want to go from LA while still feeling like it’s a reasonable, if not half assed, attempt at sampling outside of the LA hyperbaric chamber.
How can you really judge a show by 1 episode? You don’t get the real feel of the show or anything.
And it’s previewed in Vegas? Are they drunk & all partied when they watchit?
This post reminds me of the Studio Reader Stan strip (http://www.studioreaderstan.com/SRS%20Web%20Pages/Week121a.htm) that caused a fuss at the Complications Ensue blog.
I was at Vegas this weekend and asked to view and provide feedback for an upcoming test show for 15$. I wasn’t interested, but asked the people a bunch of questions about the process out of personal curiosity. I definitely took away from it that it’s a waste, there’s no way the feedback is solid. There has to be a more effective and less expensive way to test shows.
I actually think one of the ways the business can be streamlined is to eliminate “testing”.
I’ve been on both sides of this in my career. I was a tester and later on something I was involved in was being tested and I can tell you that the people in the room tend to feel like a cross between Queen Elizabeth I, a Roman Emperor and Roger Ebert.
They don’t sit back and relax and enjoy the show. They sit there and make notes at every single moment and line w/o having taken the entire show in context.
It’s a pointless procedure.
I believe in testing a film to get an idea how it plays to an audience and seeing how they react while watching it, but I don’t believe in putting people in a room and giving them the chance to be a critic.
A lot of times they don’t even know how to say what they want to say and the moderator leads to them a conclusion they weren’t intending to make.
There’s also the pack mentality when you have one opinionated person in the room and the rest of the lemmings decide to go along.
The movie/TV industry needs to streamline it’s costs. Eliminating testing would save money across the board.
The reason why it will never happen is then guys like Silverman would be held accountable.
Shows would get on the air based on the decisions of top execs alone and they wouldn’t have the life jacket of “it tested off the charts” to explain their brainfarts.
The business needs a common sense overhaul and it needs some innovators with balls who are willing to stand behind their decisions and go bat to for them.
I give Silverman credit in sticking with Parks, but I also know he’s got his built in excuse if the show tanks by letting this information go public about the show not testing well.
Either way he’s a hero.
If the show’s a hit, he’s the brilliant exec who stood by it.
If it’s a bomb, well the public hated it and at least he gave it a chance.
I don’t think Nicki or anyone else getting the leaked feedback of this show was a mistake. It was done on purpose.
Of course Ben Silverman will say it’s normal. All his shows have tested negatively…….
Having worked on plenty of shows which have suffered premature deaths, it’s nice to see any exec say anything like this. Maybe Parks & Recreation is crap, maybe not – but it takes a little time for many shows to grow into something that will succeed…
Attn H’wood. Please ditch the mockumentary style. Completely. Please. Everyone. Please. Just stop. It was cute the first several dozen times. Now it’s just a crutch for lazy writing. Chris Guest what hast thou wrought?
” They all look like crap. Its the off-putting picture quality of digital.”
yeah, shows shot digitally look like crap
like
Battlestar Galactica
Supernatural
The Office
Survivor
and movies too
Benjamin Button
They look awful. Blech!
If the show is bad, regardless of how it’s shot, people won’t watch. It has nothing to whether or not it looks like “35″. In fact, the people in Vegas don’t even care what the means.
Digital ain’t cheaper either.
Heh. I’m still wondering why, amidst all he hacking away at budgets like there’s no tomorrow, almost nobody will admit this.
PS – Kodak’s Vision2 stock looks great to me.
Amy Poehler is a funny woman with real talent, so I’ll watch anything she’s in. However, if this show is anything like The Office US version, then I might pass. Seriously, that show is way way way over-rated, and not all that funny, frankly, it is more annoying than funny most of the time. it’s a tragedy that NBC/Silverman is milking so much from just one comedy with mediocre rating (it’s as high as Heroes in demo, lol) because they have no good shows. I’d think after canceling the okay-performing Las Vegas (the show, without proper series finale,) and ordering awful Knight Rider and Kath & Kim, Silverman would be gone already, yet, he’s still here. what gives…
I say BULL SHIT
I had two of my pilots tested, first by the studio then the network.
If a bad score was had in the studio test, the studio would have thrown us back in the editing room to fix it… or else.
If we didn’t get an positive score at the network test, the net execs were honest in saying, “why should we air a show the audience doesn’t like?” True that.
But here, it’s NBC we’re talking about. They’re programing for margins, not market share, audience appeal, or to regain being the leading network. When you’re led by a beta males, being a beta network suffices.
Now watch…. in the FAll, Beta Ben’s shows start tanking and he’ll whine, “The audience didn’t like our shows? How was I suppose to know?”
Seems like Nikki’s going for low-hanging fruit here:
1. likely scenario, show fails, as do a great majority of them, then we get a “toldja so”
2. less likely, it succeeds, then we either get silence or a diatribe about how inaccurate results are in these test/focus groups…with a windaround…and a big ole “toldja so”.
I’m just going to bitch slap myself now in penance for whichever of 1 or 2 comes about, because I know that she is just that prescient.
These tests are pointless. The only test that counts is when the show airs and either it’s original and funny, or it’s a total “The Office” rip off with Amy Poehler playing Michael Scott.
We’ll know soon enough.
The movie Benjamin Button to be totally accurate was not shot 100% digital. According to the D.P.:
“When we needed to shoot at high speed, such as a war sequence, we shot on film. We went to the Caribbean, and to be nimble on our feet we shot film.”
“Variety’s Todd McCarthy termed “Button” “absorbing, even moving, but an emotionally cool film.” McCarthy raises a fascinating issue–is “Button’s” chilliness a direct result of Fincher’s sensibility, or is it possible that “the picture might have been warmer and more emotionally accessible had it been shot on film.” Digital, McCarthy argues, is a cold medium while celluloid is a hot one, leading him to wonder if the film, “with its desired cumulative emotional impact, should be shot and screened on film to be fully realized.” ”
The same will be said of The new Michael Mann film. Cold dead video look. What a terrible waste.
“When we needed to shoot at high speed, such as a war sequence, we shot on film. We went to the Caribbean, and to be nimble on our feet we shot film.”
Heh!!
“the picture might have been warmer and more emotionally accessible had it been shot on film.”
When I was doing a film for Sting, I asked him about removing the hiss from a live guitar track in one of the songs. His answer?
“Leave it in, it reassures people.”
Kings tested through the roof on NBC. Nobody’s watching, it’s a fucking flop.
Seinfeld tested horribly. Mary Tyler Moore Show tested horribly.
They should test testing. Maybe then they’ll understand the data that supports the fact that testing is 100% worthless.
Love Amy Poehler and accordingly would give a good amount of leeway to any pilot she’s in.
That doesn’t apply to this pilot, the promo for which looks dreadful. To think that this promo, was fully vetted, and rolled out on-air, is just the umpteenth indicator that the monkeys at NBC have zero clue. Two thoughts:
1) The Office has been mediocre for at least two seasons. No one’s watching because of the format, nor for the writing, but because we all bought in years ago (when there was an All-Star cast of writers), love the characters and PRAY every damn Thursday that this show will screw it up and actually provide a good episode. Why emulate The Office then when making a new pilot?
2) Is there any correlation between NBC’s poor showing with “comedies” and the fact that there isn’t one remotely funny exec at NBC? Wouldn’t it help to HAVE a sense of humor, for them to know what’s funny?! It’s like meeting with funeral directors over there.
Embarrassing.
You want actual focus group testing, I’ll give you actual focus group testing. This test description is from a actual episode of The Simpsons.
In this episode, Bart and Lisa are picked for focus group testing where they, and other kids get to see a few episodes of Itchy & Scratchy. The first one sees them playing pool. Itchy knocks Scratchy’s eyes out with the cue ball and replaces them with the “6″ and “9″ balls. Everybody likes this and turns their knobs to the right.
The next cartoon sees Itchy and Scratchy on an Island with a musclebound man whom Milhouse likes because Nelson turned his knob to the right.
In any case the results are that the kids want a realistic, down-to-earth show… that’s completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots. This leads Lisa to comment that television characters don’t have the impact that they once had regarding the show.
As a result, the Itchy & Scratchy team created a new character in a dog named Poochie which was voiced by Homer Simpson. However, the dog was a total failure and written out. The only thing that wasted time was the focus group. I am very very sure that if FOX listened to focus group testing, The Simpsons would have never made it.
To all the testing haters:
I’ve seen several test results in my career. One thing that often happens, that no one here has written about, is that good test results often get a show on the air that net execs hated. More often than not, those shows have had multi season runs.
So you can cherry pick the Seinfelds of the world as evidence that testing is not worthwhile, but those are very few are far between.
There’s some validity to properly done focus groups, but all stats have a +/- degree of error. It’s a tool that should go in the tool box with a lot of other tools in developing television. The problem with it isn’t that it is bad, it’s how people use the tool.
I’ve been to the Vegas facility and it’s a good system and the rationale for Vegas is valid. It’s the one location where you can sample a cross section of Americans from all over the country. It isn’t a loser concept or sight. It works.
Kings did not test through the roof at NBC. Totally false. It tested poorly. Only the “production values” tested well.
Las Vegas is a convenient cross-section of America with people from all states and different socioeconomic/educational levels in one place to be recruited. Plus they can break out scores between affluent people, non-affluent, and so forth, depending on the priorities of the network.
Testing can be a good tool: If something’s unclear or very slowly paced, it’s usually fixable, and preferable to fix early on. I would rather know about that than not. Where testing sometimes fails is with a new type of program or storytelling style or a potentially controversial subject matter. It isn’t the end-all be-all, but when used right, it can help a show to get better. Then again–some bad network execs don’t know how to address testing and in fact make the program only worse by forcing certain “fixes” upon the creators.
I’d be concerned about the testing on Parks and Recreation (certainly there have been better tests for shows that have succeeded–not all rough-cut tests are as bad as Silverman tries to say, although most are bad–because they are bad shows that ultimately don’t get picked up or fail if they do). But it isn’t necessarily the end of the world either; it doesn’t look like the worst test either. Sometimes shows take time to grow, and hopefully there’s enough in it for audiences to come back in following weeks as the show figures itself out. We’ll see!
Kevin Reilly pushed and pushed for The Office even though it tested with only 17% liking it.
Well, practically the rest of NBC shows would be lucky to get 17% of the 18-48 audience for The Office.
Kath & Kim would agree that Ben Silverman is one of the Kings of guys being his Own Worst Enemy.