All next week I will be reporting often from New York City. It's upfronts time.
To accompany my preview (see below) of the 2006 network upfront presentations -- which start Monday with NBC at Radio City Music Hall -- I chatted with Bill Carter. He's the New York Times TV writer whose new book, Desperate Networks, tells the surprisingly turbulent backstories of a half-dozen monster hit shows and how they somehow, against all odds, made it onto the prime time schedule.
The reason I talked with Bill is that, (a) I loved his book, and (b) he opened both Desperate Networks and his previous book, The Late Shift, at a network upfront.
Here's an edited podcast of our chat: Bill_Carter.mp3
Nikki Finke has the latest pilot rundown (except of course for CBS, whose battening-down of leaks would make Donald Rumsfeld proud):
Link - Deadline Hollywood Daily.
Most surprising news from there? I suppose it would be the renewal of "What About Brian?" Also I'm a little surprised to see Tina Fey in the running, though perhaps the show she is pitching has less to do with "Studio 60," the Aaron Sorkin number NBC has already picked up, than we'd been led to believe.
My leader piece from today's Star is on the jump.
Up in the air
It’s high drama and camp in New York as the networks set fall schedule
By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star
Next week the five leading television networks will each put on a show unlike any you’ll see on TV.
It combines the pageantry of a mandatory corporate retreat with the excitement of a PowerPoint presentation. With a few celebrity cameos thrown in.
It’s upfronts week in New York City, where NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and the new network amalgam known as “the CW” will present their fall schedules to advertisers in advance of selling them billions of dollars of commercial time for the 2006-07 TV season.
And if I appear to exaggerate the boredom level of these spectacles — somewhat — let me add that at some point during the four-day marathon, something invariably breaks through the monotony and makes the whole heavily scripted charade worth seeing in person.
I started attending upfronts in my third year at The Star, in 1999, so I wasn’t on hand when Johnny Carson stepped to the stage of Carnegie Hall in 1991 and announced that he would be leaving the “Tonight Show” in one year — bombshell news that left everyone, including NBC executives, shaken. (Almost as shaken as you are, realizing that TV has been Carson-free for 14 years now.)
But I was there in 2004 when thousands of ad buyers, media and ABC station executives were treated to the riveting preview of a new adventure series called “Lost.” We weren’t sure what the heck it was about — some of us still aren’t — but we all made sure to tune in.
I was there a few years earlier, when Mandy Patinkin, having shown up to promote what was billed as the “new and improved” relaunch of his failing hospital drama “Chicago Hope,” dropped his trousers on stage, then spoke for four minutes in his boxers while CBS president Leslie Moonves, unsmiling, looked on. It was clear Moonves wished a trap door would open under Patinkin’s feet.
And I was eyewitness to last year’s show-stopping performance by Marc Cherry, the man responsible for “Desperate Housewives,” at Lincoln Center.
Decked out in tux, tails and top hat, Cherry belted out the Sondheim standard “Beautiful Girls” before a chorus line. At the end of the number the “Housewives” joined him on stage as the crowd cheered.
The upfronts, in short, serve as a milepost for every show on network television. For some, it is the beginning of the journey to fame and fortune; for others, it is a final farewell to the audience that keeps the money rolling in. For still others, it is a chance to celebrate stellar Nielsen ratings and urge sponsors to keep the love coming.
All of which makes the week much more than an industry event. It forms part of the narrative of show business that Americans seem to grow more interested in every year, whether they are going online to play the new “Lost” computer game, listening to commentary tracks on the “Arrested Development” DVDs or searching for the latest gossip about the “West Wing” retrospective that was supposed to air Sunday (it was cancelled, according to Variety, because the cast wanted too much money).
Bill Carter, who covers television for the New York Times, has been attending upfronts for the last quarter-century. He wrote the best-seller The Late Shift in 1993, about the Jay Leno-David Letterman battle to succeed Carson on NBC.
His new book, a page-turner called Desperate Networks, tells the fascinating backstories of TV’s biggest hits, like “American Idol,” as they barely scraped their way onto the prime-time schedule.
Both of Carter’s books open at a network upfront: The Late Shift at Carson’s dramatic walk-on in 1991, Desperate Networks at Cherry’s triumphant song-and-dance last year.
Carter says that the upfronts are inherently dramatic because they are “a new start for each television network, where they (have to) present themselves with their best foot forward. They’ve gotta get these advertisers to cough up money to buy shows even when they’re not doing well. There’s a begging aspect to it that’s interesting to watch.”
The upfronts are also the time of reckoning for a handful of shows.
As I write this, for example, programs like ABC’s “Invasion,” NBC’s “Surface,” CBS’ “The King of Queens,” and UPN’s “Veronica Mars” have been neither canceled nor renewed, officially. No news will be bad news for these shows when the network schedules are revealed.
For other series like WB’s “Reba,” ABC’s “Commander in Chief” and Fox’s “Bernie Mac Show,” I’ll spare you the suspense: They’re history. But what will take their place? We’ll find that out next week, too.
Critics will get a first glimpse at the new shows that have survived the gauntlet known as development season, when hundreds of prospective scripts are whittled down to a few dozen pilots, of which only a half-dozen or so are picked up by each network and put on the fall schedule.
We’ll see previews of each pilot, for an early sense of what next seasons’ breakout hits will be. Last year, “Commander in Chief” and NBC’s “My Name Is Earl” wowed the upfronts. They would ride that hype into the fall and draw large crowds for their debuts. Twelve months later, though, only “Earl” is still standing, and on somewhat wobbly legs at that.
The week will begin, as it always does, at NBC’s upfront presentation, scheduled this year for Radio City Music Hall, next to the network’s offices at Rockefeller Center.
There’s little suspense left at the fourth-place network. NBC has already announced it will be adding NFL football to Sunday nights, and three new series including “Studio 60,” a new effort from Aaron Sorkin, creator of “The West Wing,” based loosely on the early years of “Saturday Night Live” and starring Matthew Perry.
ABC will take the stage Tuesday at Lincoln Center. Carter says third-place ABC will have the most to prove to advertisers, because “not one of its scripted shows” this season made a dent in the ratings — quite a turnabout considering that ABC put on TV’s three hottest shows the previous season in “Lost,” “Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Moonves will hold court at Carnegie on Wednesday for CBS (ranked second among young viewers coveted by advertisers) and again at Madison Square Garden on Thursday morning as he introduces the new CW network, which will cherry-pick some shows from the soon-to-be-defunct WB and UPN networks.
Upfronts week will wrap up that afternoon when the top-rated Fox network takes over the New York Armory with a presentation that is likely to feature a performance (via satellite from L.A.) by the two “American Idol” finalists, who will have been determined the night before.
Look for my reports every day from upfronts in FYI and more news on my blog at TVBarn.com.
I have heard that Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen will be returning to television shortly on the Fox network -- in a weekly teen musical that will spoof the success of Disney Channel's "High School Musical." My daughters have grown up with the twins, and are big fans of them, as is the rest of our family, so we are wondering if this might be true?
Posted by: Aaron | May 29, 2006 at 07:35 AM