Results tagged “jeffzucker”

While Six Sigma's goal-oriented blather and obsession with measuring everything was jarring, it was also weirdly familiar, inasmuch as it was strikingly reminiscent of my college Maoism I class. Mao seemed to be a good model for Jack Welch and his Six Sigma foot soldiers; Six Sigma's "Champions" and "Black Belts" were Mao's "Cadres" and "Squad Leaders."

Continue reading "Television Watching: Dateline Exposed?"

Chung chung! NBC and producer Dick Wolf have hashed out a deal to keep Law & Order on the air for the next four years. Variety reports (subscription only) that as part of the deal, Law & Order: Criminal Intent will be moving to USA. Yes, USA (which NBC owns) will now have the first run episodes of Detective Robert Goren's histrionics, and then NBC will air repeats of L&O:CI. Interesting!

After last year's mess of an awards show and this year's joke of nominations (where is love for Lauren Graham, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences?), we were going to swear off this year's Emmys. But then we realized Conan O'Brien was hosting, so we must watch and liveblog. And there's the hope of a good Steve Carrell bit, not to mention awkward reaction shots of Candy and Tori Spelling during the Aaron Spelling tribute.

Even though the network media upfronts don't mean anything - except to advertisers - because schedules can be shuffled and shows killed between now and fall, Gothamist is still excited, because it's about hope (Tina Fey's new show to be good, Veronica Mars to be picked up) and new seasons of shows we love (The Office, My Name is Earl...and, heck, we can't help but watch Grey's Anatomy). Anyway, there are a lot of NYC-set shows coming in the fall season; NBC has Kidnapped and The Black Donnellys. Things we're wondering about:

Way back in 2004, the city announced its super duper special NYC Tax Credit Program for film and TV producers (as well as commercial, music video, etc.) in order to motivate productions to happen here, versus Los Angeles or (gasp) Toronto. And it worked really well: Lindsay Lohan made a movie, Martin Scorsese shot a set-in-Boston movie mostly here, CBS brought us Love Monkey (then cancelled it), there's another Dick Wolf TV, plus countless others. But now it turns out that the film credits were maybe too much of a good thing: The NY Times reports that the film credit program will be revised because the $50 million allocated for the program over four years has been sapped away in just 13 months! Who knew, a city program that was too good to be true?

In a re-election year stumping opportunity, the Mayor visited Conan O'Brien's talk show last night and asked him to bring the Tonight Show back to NYC. And Gothamist says, "Please, do!" The AP says that Mayor Bling "jokingly tried to make a deal," offering to give O'Brien a park permit for the Late Night softball team if he stayed in NYC. Conan said, "It's not up to me, I work for the man. If he says 'yeah,' we're fine. So we'll talk." Is the man Lorne Michaels in this case? Or Jeff Zucker, which sounds like "hooker," not "f***er," as we learned when watching Fat Actress? When O'Brien was announced (finally) as Jay Leno's successor, the NY Times' Bill Carter suspected Conan and the gang would move to LA. Gothamist hopes that in the meantime, CBS develops another LA talk show, in the post-Letterman era, and The Tonight Show will have to stay in NY. For starters, Conan will need LOTS of sunblock if he's living in LA.

Yesterday, people from TV, film, and Broadway, as well as the public, gathered to pay tribute to the dearly missed Jerry Orbach. The attendees included Angela Lansbury, Al Pacino, Benjamin Bratt, Chris Noth, Jill Hennessy, Jane Alexander, Karen Ziemba, and Dick Wolf, plus many regular New Yorkers who cherished Orbach's contribution as an actor. Former Mayor David Dinkins was there, and Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the crowd, saying, "Briscoe exuded the life of the city in all its moxie...Jerry came to personify New York in both body and soul." NBC President Jeff Zucker and L&O producer Dick Wolf presented Orbach's widow Elaine with a $1 million check for Sloane Kettering's Cancer research fund as well.

Gothamist on NYC in the 1970s.

Sassa worked for Ted Turner, so he's certainly familiar with manic personalities that will be Friendstering him now - he's user 6,724,953! And just out of curiosity, how many people out there check Friendster on a daily basis? These days, Gothamist seems to use it to see if the random, unwitting names du jour, like the girl who crapped her pants at the Fox upfront, are on Friendster.

When Gothamist first read this, we thought, "Great, but how about just developing programs that are good, overall?" Of course, the argument isn't as simplistic as that (there are other variables of production and talent costs, amoritization, likelihood to capture the largest share of audience or target demographic...) but when it comes down to it, network executives picking shows that are not solely driven by achieving a cookie cutter formula would be a step up. There's a reason why we didn't watch Coupling, Jeff Zucker.

Morgan stars in the sharp-edged family comedy as father, husband and small-business owner Tracy Mitchell, who, with his beautiful, no-nonsense wife Alicia (Tamala Jones, “Head of State”), share their modest apartment with their two kids, 13-year-old Derrick (Marc John Jefferies, “The Haunted Mansion”) and 7-year-old Jimmy (newcomer Bobb’e J. Thompson). While at work at his auto garage, Mitchell is responsible for his other more dysfunctional family of mechanics -- Spoon (John Witherspoon, “The Wayans Bros.”) and Bernard (Heavy D, “The Cider House Rules”). Every day, they remind Tracy of the headaches of running a business as they contend with neighborhood characters and would-be customers such as Freddie (Katt Williams, “The Friday After Next”).

to another season - a brilliant stall tactic while trying to figure out how to find programs that will maintain the audiences that Friends brings in. I'll be sending him my sitcom script shortly.