In the Trades Today

Goodbye, TelevisionWeek

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Television Week, the publication formerly known as Electronic Media, is ceasing publication and will continue as a website.
This is sad news for me. Back in the late 1980s, I was a reporter for Electronic Media. My biggest scoop was breaking the news about Paramount's revival of STAR TREK as first-run syndicated series — a story which the studio initially denied (USA Today later picked up my story and then Paramount reluctantly confirmed it). I also reported extensively about the birth of the Fox Network. It was an exciting time for me and I learned a lot about the nuts-and-bolts of the television business. Electronic Media catered to station programming execs and the syndication marketplace and often went into far more depth than either Variety or the Hollywood Reporter on TV biz stories. I don't think Electronic Media ever got the attention or respect that it deserved for its business journalism…though I often saw newspapers using their stories as jumping off-points for articles of their own. 

UPDATE 5-6-2009: The Franklin Avenue Blog has a detailed remembrance  & appreciation of EM.

The Price isn’t Right

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Lots of scripted shows in recent years have moved their production from Los Angeles to New Mexico, North Carolina, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and even Bogota, Colombia . But you know things are really getting bad when even the cheap, non-scripted shows are fleeing the state. The LA Times reports today that the gameshow "Deal or No Deal" is saying "no deal" to California and high-tailing it to Connecticut.

The syndicated game show, hosted by comedian Howie Mandel, has been based out of the Culver Studios in Culver City for the last 3 1/2 years. But the show, which is produced by Endemol USA and distributed by NBC Universal, will shift production this summer to a studio in Waterford, Conn., to take advantage of that state's film and TV production tax breaks. Most of the 250 people who now work on "Deal or No Deal" will lose their jobs.

Connecticut offers a 30% production tax credit for films and digital media productions. NBC Universal, whose corporate parent General Electric Co. is based in Fairfield, Conn., already has announced plans to move three of its talk shows into a new production facility in Stamford, Conn.: "The Jerry Springer Show," "The Steve Wilkos Show," both from Chicago, and "Maury," from New York.

What's next to go — "The Price is Right?" "Ellen?" "The Tonight Show?" This is very bad news for all sectors of the entertainment industry in Southern California.

ABC Announces Renewals

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TV Critic Alan Sepinwall reports that ABC has renewed just about everything on their schedule except their midseason shows (CASTLE, IN THE MOTHERHOOD, UNUSUALS, etc.) and two sitcoms — SAMANTHA WHO and SCRUBS. But the missing shows, with the exception of LIFE ON MARS, haven't been given the ax just yet. Pick-ups for those bubble shows still could come once the network announces their new schedule in late May.

The full list of those shows that will definitely be on the air for the 09-10 season: "America's Funniest Home Videos," "The Bachelor," "Brothers & Sisters," "Dancing with the Stars," "Desperate Housewives," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," "Grey's Anatomy," "Lost," "Private Practice," "Supernanny," "Ugly Betty" and "Wife Swap."

Scarpetta Movie is Bourne Again

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Fox has nabbed the movie rights to Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta books as a potential theatrical "franchise" for Angelina Jolie. But Variety reports that they aren't going to adapt the books, but rather use them as inspiration for new tales in the same way that the Bourne movies have used the original Robert Ludlum novels. In other words, they'll be taking the titles and not much else…which makes some sense, since the forensics that seemed so cutting edge when "Post Mortem" first came out have been done to death on the small screen with the three CSI series, NCIS, etc. 

The movie rights to the Scarpetta books have been optioned many times, and actresses as diverse as Helen Mirren and Demi Moore have been attached, but the project has always stalled (as have attempts to make Thomas Perry's Jane Whitefield and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels into movies). It will be interesting to see if this one actually goes forward.

Variety Slams Bloggers

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Today, Variety is taking potshots at the industry bloggers who, over the last year or two, have made the daily trade magazine irrelevant and, worse, revealed how beholden it is to the studios and networks it fails to objectively cover.

Sadly, all Variety is showing with their pitiful whining, and their desperate plea to still be taken seriously, is how right the bloggers are. They are particularly bitter about how Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily frequently breaks stories that Variety either didn't notice, failed to cover, got wrong, or completely hushed-up. Variety is trying to make the case that bloggers are reckless and mean, Finke in particular. Cynthia Littleton reports about one dust-up as an example:

Nothing is too minor or petty to spark a verbal fusillade. And next to bashing their own kind, there's nothing Web newsies likes better than hammering the veracity and integrity of the traditional media. Variety has certainly found itself in the crosshairs, as have the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, among others.

On March 11, Finke posted an item saying Summit Entertainment was eyeing Juan Antonio Bayona to direct "Eclipse," the third installment of its "Twilight" vampire pics.Variety got an off the record confirmation of the deal, and reported it in a story that ran only online.

March 12: Goldstein, in the L.A. Times' Big Picture blog, debunked the Bayona hiring. Goldstein quoted his lunch partner of that day, Summit president of production Erik Feig, as denying that anyone had been hired to direct "Eclipse."

Goldstein's post took Finke and Variety to task, alleging the stories ran without getting confirmation the story.

Finke's response to Goldstein was swift, even demanding an apology from Feig. Shortly before 10 p.m. that night, her update featured Feig claiming to have been misquoted by Goldstein, at least according to Finke. 

March 13: Goldstein responds with a post saying that he and Feig had been "bludgeoned" by Finke, and he even linked to another blogger's take on the Finke vs. Goldstein spat.
March 15: Goldstein added a "Sunday update" that quoted Feig giving a mea culpa to Finke, after which Goldstein took yet another swipe at Variety for supposed journalistic recklessness.

So, in other words, Finke was right, the LA Times was wrong. So what point, exactly, was Variety trying to make?
In another Variety story, Michael Fleming recounts this anecdote:

A little over a year ago, I found out Brad Pitt might fall out of Universal's "State of Play." The studio's toppers argued that a Variety story would cement his exit. They asked for a couple of days to let it play out, a request that seemed reasonable. Days later, Variety.com broke Pitt's exit. (Later that day, Deadline Hollywood Daily wrote about my sitting on the story and cited it as proof Variety was in the pockets of the studios.)

In other words, Finke was right. Fleming sat on the story because the studio asked him to. He put their business/PR interests above his responsibility to report news. He cow-towed to an advertiser. The only point Fleming is making here is how compromised Variety's reporting has truly become (which was obvious to anyone who read the trades during the Writers Strike).

I think the Daily Beast sums it up best:

This weekend, Variety launched an extraordinary three-part attack that was ostensibly aimed at blogging in general but clearly was aimed at one influential online journalist in particular.[…]Thanks in part to a loyal cadre of sources and to the enormous vacuum she filled during the writers’ strike, Finke’s column has become a must-read in Hollywood. And clearly, Variety’s Bart cannot take it anymore.[…]The fact is Variety—like the Los Angeles Times (which has also taken an increasing number of shots at Finke lately)—too often lags behind the news. How is it possible, to pick just two easy examples, that both well-staffed institutions missed the Silverman-to-NBC story and the Chernin-is-out story? Perhaps, as they claim, they’re handicapped by their desire to verify information before slapping it up on the web. But maintaining a high journalistic standard hardly explains the type of anemic coverage too-often found, or not found, on the pages of either Variety or the Times. Bart’s attack—indeed the whole whiny Variety package—sounds too much like the enraged cry of an old-media dinosaur trying to defend what’s left of its terrain.

(Hat-tip to Denis McGrath for leading me to the Daily Beast post)

UPDATE:  Nikki Finke is reporting today that Daily Variety's publisher Neil Stiles made overtures to buy her out on February 27 and bring her into their fold. The deal didn't happen. 

Stiles admitted that his company had done a survey only to find that DHD was a bigger showbiz destination site on the Internet than Variety. He also noted that Variety was embarrassed when the trade publication missed the Peter-Chernin-resigning-from-News Corp story which I had broken a few days earlier. (It took Variety several hours to get online with a matching story…) Stiles' idea was that I would remain independent, but Variety would own DHD and link to my scoops, etc.[…]

She reports that Bart wasn't consulted about the offer and was furious when he found out, immediately ordering not one, but three articles trashing her. How embarrassing…for Variety.

TelevisionWeek folding?

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Nikke Finke reports that Crain Communications' mag TelevisionWeek, formerly known as Electronic Media, may be folding. This is sad news for me. I was a reporter for Electronic Media twenty years ago. Even then, the weekly occupied a strange niche, primarily serving station programming executives. It was certainly the most informative publication out there when it came to syndication news (I was the first to break the news about Paramount reviving "Star Trek" in first-run with a whole new cast, an item that was picked up by newspapers around the country). In the mid-to-late eighties, first-run and off-network syndication was still very big-business and there were plenty of glossy, full-page, full-color ads to justify the magazine's existence and support its editorial offices in LA, Chicago, NY and DC. The magazine could never successfully compete with Daily Variety or the Hollywood Reporter when it came to "breaking news," so what they offered was more indepth business reporting…offering the story behind the news. And, for the most part, they did it very well…and got very little credit for it, though their stories were often poached by the other trades and newspapers. I didn't read TV Week much over the last few years, but whenever I did stumble on a copy, I was impressed with the detail and depth of their coverage…even if they were clearly stumbling for relevancy in a TV landscape that has changed massively since the magazine's inception.

Money Won and Lost today for Novelists in Hollywood

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There was lots of news today about money being made…and lost…by crime novelists in Hollywood. 

Informant Media has optioned the late William Diehl's novel HOOLIGANS as well as the screenplay adaptation that he wrote. Diehl is perhaps best known for his novel SHARKEY'S MACHINE, a remake of which is in development at Warner Brothers as Mark Wahlberg project. Diehl's novels EUREKA and 27 are also in active feature development. It's a shame he wasn't this hot while he was still alive to enjoy it.

Clive Cussler probably wishes he'd never got a call from Hollywood.  He was just ordered by the L.A. Superior Court to pay Crusader Entertainment $14 million in legal fees after losing the lawsuit he filed against the studio over the film version of his novel SAHARA. The pricetag doesn't include the $13 million he's already paid his own lawyers. Naturally, Cussler is appealing. It must be nice to be able to afford to spend that much on lawyers.

Patricia Cornwell is someone who probably knows what it feels like to be that rich. She's just signed a deal with Munich-based Tandem Communications, which will produce movies for Lifetime based on her books AT RISK and THE FRONT. 

All You Need to Get a Movie Deal is an Old TV Guide, baking soda, and Richard Dean Anderson.

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MacGYVER is the lastest old TV series being developed for the big screen. Raffaella De Laurentiis, Dino De Laurentiis, Martha De Laurentiis and series creator Lee Zlotoff are producing for New Line. 

"We think we're a stick of chewing gum, a paper clip and an A-list writer away from a global franchise," said New Line's Richard Brener.

Recession a boon for books?

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According to the Telegraph in London, some publishers see opportunity in these dark financial times.

Publishing is not immune to tough times. This week Random House announced 5 per cent redundancies. Agents are shaking their heads over the reduced advances. Paper costs have risen. Books are being delayed from 2009 to 2010 to stretch budgets. Booksellers are cautious about almost anything without a TV tie-in. But publishers aren't, like ITV, dependent on advertisers. And readers are addicts. They will not stop reading to stare at the telly. Indeed, publishing can benefit from recession.

"At staff presentations, if people are looking gloomy," says John Makinson, chief executive of Penguin, "I tell them that the 1930s were the golden age of publishing in Britain. Many major publishing houses started then and Allen Lane, who launched paperbacks for sixpence, vastly expanded the market.

"Book sales correlate well with the market for takeaway pizzas," says Makinson. The idea – born out by industry-wide figures showing a rise in sales since this time last year – is that staying in is the new going out. Paperbacks cost less than a cinema ticket and provide many more hours of amusement.

Don’t Mess with Perry Mason

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PERRY MASON reruns have been playing on a Portland, Oregon TV station every day for 42 years.:

When Patrick McCreery was named general manager at Portland’s Fox KPTV six months ago, corporate bosses gave him a free hand as long as he followed an unwritten 42-year-old rule: Don’t mess with “Perry Mason.”
“It’s untouchable,” McCreery said. “We can add shows and take others off the air, but ‘Perry’ is nothing to fool with.”
[…]Managers don’t know of another U.S. station that’s continuously broadcast “Perry Mason” as long as KPTV, where the show debuted 15 days after ending its nine-year run on CBS. It’s among the least-expensive shows to buy, even as KPTV has moved from showing it on film reels to 1-inch tapes to digital tapes and now digital with closed captioning.
“Most markets don’t want it,” Dunevant said. “They figure that with high-definition sets and 5.1 stereo sound, what viewer is going to want to watch an old black-and-white show? We’ve found very loyal viewers. It’s the linchpin of our daytime programming.”