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 
UPDATE: You asked, I’ll answer. I’ve just learned that CBS has demanded that each existing TV show — even the hit ones – reduce their budgets for next year, if renewed. This may mean smaller writing staffs. Meanwhile, Hollywood has been speculating about the future of the new CBS feature division. I’m told, “All systems go”. Not only are there no layoffs, but there are actually additions as the division heads into production. Shooting begins April 7th on its first motion picture, a medical drama starring Harrison Ford. And its second pic, a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez, starts principal photography in May.
- Les Is Less: CBS Falls 17% On Downgrade
- Fishburne Is The $14 Million Man On CBS
- CBS Only Has Room For 3 or 4 New Shows; Producing 6 Less Pilots
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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This was inevitable from the first day of the Writer’s Strike. Anyone with sense knew the studios would find a way to eventually recoup their losses, and cutting writing jobs is the easiest, and perhaps most cruelly fitting way. Sadly, Verrone et. al. either didn’t see it, or chose to ignore it. Certainly current economic conditions don’t help, but this was in the cards one way or the other.
TV drama’s are dead. Long live TV drama’s.
A movie with Jennifer Lopez is a good investment? She’s got the box office appeal of Ted McGinley and Octo Mom.
Ditch the CW AND ditch the shows. Aside from “Supernatural,” there’s not a blasted thing worth watching on the whole network.
What was Les Moonves’ compensation last year — 50 million dollars?
What is going ON over there? Les is determined to be a movie mogul and yet spends time casting every CW pilot? Meanwhile the stock price is tanking cuz his best customers for ads are going bankrupt? Anyone hear that old fiddle playing? Oh, and is he taking a salary cut? Why no! Someone has to manage all this recession!
Sorry Ace, but TV viewership is up. It’s actually significantly up. Problem for the broadcast networks is that it’s more fragmented, lots more TV options.
As for the the internet…networks only see it as promo platform, a way to drive viewers back to their TV. It’s not like there’s NO money on the internet, it’s just not significant cash. And it’s never gonna be significant cash.
Anyone making things directly for the internet is just doing it on the hope that it’ll land on some TV exec’s development desk.
As for there being tons of professional writers with tons of great quality stuff just ripe for the pickin’…please…this is definitely the rant of an amateur. I’ve read nearly 100 original pilots in the last year…about six were great. Another 15 worth reading. And the rest were crap.
And by the way, that’s not a complaint from me, that’s actually an encouraging percentage. It’s not easy to write a great pilot and for those six who wrote great ones…my hat’s off to you.
Smaller shows? Sounds good to me. Smaller = usually better. I’m all about The Power of Small. No glut means a higher ratio of quality.
Ace and others hit the nail on the head. What we need to do is go back to the old ways of doing things. It is that the pilot needs to sell to one specific advertiser for endorsement purposes. All the network has to do is air the show while the advertising agency handles the creative end. True, there will always be a network representative in the production end, but s/he would be the middleman. The only way we went to the present model is because of the quiz show scandals of the 1950′s.
Oh good, another inane argument that reality tv is ruining television. How can that be CBS’s problem when they only have two (Survivor and Amazing Race) on the air? Do your homework before you criticize, Ace.
Well, NotRealitysFault, I wasn’t aiming that criticism at CBS, necessarily. I was commenting on ALL broadcast television. In fact, I understand that both Survivor and Amazing Race are relatively good shows. Still, they aren’t non-scripted. Those writers (uh, sorry, those producers *cough-cough*) and editors control what happens on all of those shows.
And yes, “reality” TV is killing television. Period. And if you think that’s an “inane” argument, you’re either a TV “reality show” wanna-be producer or you’re smoking crack. That is absolutely THE argument. By any barometer, “reality shows” have lowered the bar (and viewership) of televised entertainment. To wit: when “Jackass” Steve-O gets to appear on Dancing with the Stars (as if he’s a “star”), television is accepting being totally F’ed up. More monkeys in a cage, masturbating and throwing shit at each other. (Stand back, as the crowd *ooohs* and *ahhhs* at the drama!)
Is the entire TV-watching public growing or receding? Who really knows. But that bar is set by network TV – that is, NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX – which is what I was talking about. They are the benchmark(s) of how broadcast television is doing. The lesser (cable) networks have some spotty highlights, but they also have their own ratings scale (ask the ad council). It’s like the difference between the NBA and the WNBA. Do you think the WNBA garners the same ad revenue that the NBA does? Not hardly. Is the WNBA a good indicator of fans’ interest in professional basketball? Not hardly.
@ “a suit” – Bitch, please… TV viewership is NOT significantly up.
You do sound like a typical suit, though. A non-creative, money-driven, bottom-line, end-justifies-the-means suit. It’s widely known in this industry that “suits” aren’t creatives, and have no (or little, in some cases) creative talents or tendencies. That’s why God invented creative people – so that guys like you can have jobs. See, professional writers know a thing or two about what the audience (really) wants. I don’t have the time or space to enlighten you, but you shouldn’t dismiss their combined decades of experience and knowledge. That’s just foolish on your (executives’) part, and it’s a short-sighted approach.
You gonna take your new Benz to Pep Boys ™ to repair your suspension and get an alignment, just to save a few bucks? I doubt it. But you “suits” do that same kind of thing every day with regards to your own industry. You’ll pour cheap gruel into the very trough you eat from because you don’t think the cheap stuff will reach you before you fill up your bellies. (And because you demand to eat your fill before anyone else gets theirs.)
And although I don’t look forward to non-feature film entertainment moving to the net, it’s happening in leaps and bounds. I agree that many newbie wanna-be producers, writers and directors are putting their stuff out there (on the net) in hopes of getting picked up by the moguls. But that stuff ain’t migrating to TV, pal. Those same moguls will simply put that “new” content right back on the web, repackaged, where they don’t (currently) have to pay the creative guilds their fair share of profit participation. The moguls plan to save bundles of cash by manipulating and exploiting their presence on the net. And, when Steve-O lights an M80 bottle rocket out of his ass (online), the mogul producer(s) won’t have to pay his medical bills. Which is just fine for people with Steve-O’s kind of “talent”.
Internet money is “never gonna be significant cash”? More smoke and mirrors. Everybody, and I do mean everybody knows the internet is the future of produced entertainment media. Television will always exist (like VHS still exists) but it will soon take a back seat to the net and streaming media.
Those six pilots you read which you thought were “great” – did any of them get into development? About 20 of the 100 you read were (in your opinion) at least “worth reading”? That’s over 20 percent of what you read – a pretty damn good number for original pilots. But did any of those teleplays get stepped up into development? What, not enough dick jokes and double-entendres for the network suits to approve them as “funny” enough?
And yes, there is “significant cash” being made right now by the AMPTP moguls on the net – millions of dollars. Maybe not “significant” compared to TV ad money, but the independent studies have been done and it’s very clear where the ad-generated money is headed now and for the future.
Current TV programming is generally crap. But as Ricky Ricardo used to say, “You changed the sheets, now go take a nap!” (Translation: you made your bed, now go lay in it.) Well, Moonves has a maid to change his sheets. As long as he doesn’t have to do it himself and has someone else at whom to point the finger, he can claim “it wasn’t me”. But I digress…
re: D-Girls Go ByeBye???
I love how bad televsion is ALWAYS the fault of the creative executive. How about that the writing is BAD. Hate to break it to you but the executives DON’T WRITE THE SHOWS. And, the writers (the good ones anyway) listen to the notes and implement the notes that make the script or cut better and ignore the ones that do not. That’s how it works. This poster has obviously never actually worked in television but is somehow an expert. And, as far as shows that have NO creative involvement? Studio 60 did not receive ONE note from the network. What a success that was!!!! Thank god the executives didn’t tarnish that wildly successful show!!! Please. Writers need to take some responsibility for the crappy tv shows that are on. Hate to break it to you but it’s not all “Ben’s fault” or “D-girls” (which in and of itself is offensive but whatever).
Jessy S, Ace did not “hit the nail on the head”.As a person who knows what hitting the nail on the head looks like, I can assure you, Ace missed the nail completely, shattering his finger in the process.You might want to read the comment two space above yours.
TV viewership is up. It’s actually significantly up. Problem for the broadcast networks is that it’s more fragmented, lots more TV options.
Actually, that is not quite true. Overall combined ratings are up, and they will likely continue to rise as long as the economy worldwide is going south, but that does not necessarily mean what we could call “focused watching”. It merely means that a TV is running. Especially in America, but expanding globally, is a use of TV as background noise, having taken over that position from radio. Focused watching, i.e. the immersion into a show or program has been signifcantly down all across the board, especially with younger viewers, I am sad to say. That is probably what Ace meant (I am assuming) with “there is nothing on”.
As for the the internet…networks only see it as promo platform, a way to drive viewers back to their TV. It’s not like there’s NO money on the internet, it’s just not significant cash. And it’s never gonna be significant cash. Anyone making things directly for the internet is just doing it on the hope that it’ll land on some TV exec’s development desk.
While being a valid point, Mr. Suit (I wish I could give you a name, but… well), you unfortunately betray your “inside-the-box” thinking in the statement itself, both by stating that “networks only see it” and “is just hoping that it’ll land on some exec’s development desk”. It’s a valid point coming from inside the current system, however does not address the larger concerns facing that system itself. Internet distribution makes one accountable. Just as with advertising in newspapers, network TV blankets the entire viewership, with an actual decision-making by a consumer/audience member based on the view of a certain commercial being ridiculously low. The immediate countability of raised interest through internet advertising (as click-through etc.) makes a system based on advertising alone not very viable, since it allows advertisers to go “hey, why I should I pay an amount of x for an advertisment that only generates y click-throughs?”
That is the underlying problem of the current conglomerates: the audience has grown up and grown aware of its choices. The desperate attempts to control the distribution venues and(or leashing of things like NetFlix, combined with the urge to “brand” content in terms of studios/corporations overlooks the overall problem that the audience doesn’t care whether it is The Sony Channel, The Paramount Channel or whatever the marketing folks are trying to cook up in their Powerpoint presentation. Audiences follow stories, they may follow a star (although that is highly debatable, when one starts to look for the correlation between viewership success and a star name, just do a quick correlation analysis with people like George Clooney or Julia Roberts), but they do not follow a corporation.
The bigger issue, and that is the elephant in the room, ladies and gentlemen, is the faulty strategy media conglomerates locked into the past, that of “vertical integration”. In short, hey, look at us, we are not only the PRODUCERS of the product, we are also its DISTRIBUTOR and the overall Master of the Universe. While that may have made a certain amount of sense in the 1980s and 1990s, due to an iron grip of every distribution channel and looking at ways to cut costs and short-term profit increase, the technological evolution is beginning to show that, for the first time ever, audiences have the chance to pick and choose and, more importantly, VALUE the product that is given to them. In most case, they don’t. Sorry. They don’t think a lot of the content has any value to them. We can treat them as villains, as criminals (how’s that going, by the way?), or we can embrace them and try to treat them as grown-ups.
That, however, would mean a dissolution of the corporately owned vertical system, with studios doing what they used to do best, provide class-A products, but leave the distribution to those new players who WILL take the distribution away from you anyhow: the telecoms.
In my country, ipTV is already here, and it doesn’t cost more than cable (actually, it costs a lot less… TV, Internet flat rate plus phone flat rate for 49.95 Euros), and while still being in its infancy, it is growing fast.
Audience want a one-stop, and the chance to pick and choose. And no, again, I am sorry, they don’t care if the product comes from a Sony, Paramount, Warner or whatever platform. By fragmenting content through corporate lenses, all these conglomerates do is cannibalise themselves in the long run.
The elephant in the room has been standing there for a long time, and it’s the audience and how the choose to consume entertainment.
Les will try and “leverage” (get free shit) from all his other CBS properties to “control” the marketing costs for the film business. Four quadrant movies that appear they will appeal to zero quadrants. What a fine distribution and marketing team assembled with a solid business model in this economy. America’s Most Watched Network with the Least Watched Films Company
Partly, this is the new TV model:
When I show goes past 3-4 seasons, the networks will shake down the producers and say, “You pay everyone whatever you want. This is what we’ll pay you… LESS.”
Because everyone will (hopefully) make their money back in syndication.
As for the film studio, I guess they want to have a new way to hide money for write-offs.
Maria Faillace was a flunky at FOX 2000, bringing hits like Roll Bounce and Fever Pitch… oh boy, lets see how she does at CBS Films. Selling my stock now.
Maybe Les should hire Mary Parent away from MGM. That seems to be the only way his film venture just might survive. Surely the first two films out of the box are not going to sent the company shares flying much less reap the huge benefits of film profits. What film profits? That PR was just silly. If true, what is he thinking? Career suicide for sure!
Yes, “ACE”…yes mr. angry and bitter guy…all suits are idiots, all actors are narcissistic, all writers are neurotic, all directors are control freaks. That’s the way to do business, my friend. With an attitude like that you have a future as a…person who posts on a website.
And Jessy, I agree with the corporate sponsorship model, the only problem is that it’s very very expensive for one company to sponsor a show. I’ve tried that many times…for instance, as a way to get an important MOW or miniseries on the air…but the numbers just didn’t add up for the advertiser. And for a series it would even be more difficult.
But you never know. Maybe some sort of hybrid model could work.
Wow.
I’d say my I.Q. dropped about 80 points while reading most of these ill-informed posts.
If anyone thinks “Two and a Half Men” is not a hilarious show — they’re not actually watching it. It’s pretty brilliant. I can’t say the same for the rest of the hit or miss half-hours (including Lorre’s “Big Bang Theory”) but there’s a reason it’s the number one comedy on TV.
RnsW
Redmenace, read the comment below notreality’s fault.
It is another comment by ACE and I am 99.99999% certain that he didn’t miss with his original comment.
I am one more to say that TV ratings are up, but they are up for certain events/shows. Dancing with the Stars; ratings are up there. How about The Bachelor; this past season was the highest rated in a long time. CBS scored with The Mentalist so ratings are up there. Also, lets not forget that ratings are up for Bones and House over on FOX despite both shows moving, and expect BIG ratings for The Simpsons Movie when it airs in May. I haven’t even started to talk about The Olympics (Beijing Games), Super Bowl 43, and The Oscars which were all up from previous years. Even the Box Office is up which shows that somebody is watching. Other than that, everything is down which is pretty much how you feel after going on an all-night drinking binge complete with remorse and a throbbing headache.
This goes back to Ace’s original point that TV viewership is way down due to the crap that is fed to us. A lot of good quality shows don’t have time to build an audience unless a network boss has the patience of a saint which is what Rick Reilly had with “The Office.”
I simply agreed with that arguement and added that it is time to return to the format where the advertisers pick the shows by buying them and a network such as CBS would air those shows through their distribution while the advertisers would control the content in which they would interfere only when there is a conflict involving a certain episode of a TV show. One example is “I Love Lucy.” A third season episode couldn’t be named Lucky Bucks because Lucky is a name of a Philip Morris competitor in the 1950′s and at the time of the episode, Philip Morris was the show’s sponsor. The final episode title would be Bonus Bucks and includes Lucy having a hard time with the laundry.
Somewhere along the line, the networks began to take control of the production process as well as the distribution process which evolved into the upfront process we see today where the advertisers see the fall lineups of all shows and are forced to buy blocks of programming with the exception of special events such as The Olympics, Super Bowl, and Oscars.
I do have a point in this history lesson, and I am just using it to state the fact that Thomas R. Hart also hit the nail on the head. All I told you about “I Love Lucy” isn’t public knowledge because when everyone identifies with that show, they think Lucy, Ricky, Fred, Ethel, & Little Ricky. Next they would identify a certain episode they like such as the time the four climbed the Alps in Switzerland and Lucy had the last sandwich or when Lucy and Ethel pretended to be martians invading the Empire State Building or the episode where Lucy gave birth. The show’s sponsor or network where the show first aired isn’t on the mind of any person. Long after The Simpsons is done airing on FOX, most people will likely assume FOX is a competitor network to the network where The Simpsons aired.
Thomas is right. Vertical integration is killing the networks, but so is the fact that there isn’t any family programming on TV other than American Idol, but even that is losing its luster because votefortheworst.com has proven that the show is a fraud. In any case, the day is coming where vertical integration will die, and by cutting TV budgets CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and the CW are all making sure that death comes sooner rather than later.
As for my comment on Nikki’s entry, CBS is looking to adding more big events to their calendar.
So what do they have:
The 2009 Primetime Emmys, Check
Super Bowl 44, Check
The 2010 Grammys, Check
The 2010 NCAA Tournament, Check
The 2010 Masters, Pretty much a given Check unless Jim Nantz goes off the deep end this year.
The Feburary 2010 CSI Series Finale (possible), Check
The 2010 Olympic Winter Games, Oops, we better outbid NBC for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics which means that every scripted show will undergo cuts.
To suit,
The 1950′s model was a hybrid model. The main sponsor underwrote the program. Other national and local sponsors were also included.
In the old days, prodcos kept writing staffs (from EPs down to lowly staff writers) to a body count of about 6 or 7. Today’s writers’ rooms have 10, 15? And none of them come cheap. Between that excess and the quote system which gives actors compensation deals they don’t deserve based on pilot test options for roles they didn’t get, no wonder scripted bcast is doomed. Oh, and btw, has anybody noticed the off-net syndie market has collapsed and when the Tribune stations start defaulting, it will really implode. The only scripted show doing any numbers in off-net synd is Two and A Half Men. I grew up in an industry family and have worked my entire adult life in business affairs at very successful companies; I’ve seen it all. It’s very sad that it’s come to this. It’s not even fun anymore. And one last thing, I’ve been wondering how big was Leslie’s margin call. Too bad with his insider info he didn’t short it. THAT would’ve been very smart. Sorry I didn’t do it either.
Honestly, I watch a metric f#@%-ton of scripted television, 33 regularly scheduled shows a week by last count, and I only watch 3 on CBS (and I think this should be somewhat telling). As long as they leave Big Bang Theory and Mentalist alone I’m set.
Oh, and btw, has anybody noticed the off-net syndie market has collapsed…
Again, this is getting back to what Ace is talking about. The suits including Les Moonves are creating reality TV for a quick profit. Does anyone have any idea how much of a profit classic sitcoms like Cheers and I Love Lucy make on the open market? You can’t get that resale value with Survivor, The Amazing Race, and American Idol (even with Idol rewind.)