David Levy’s relaxation technique is pretty simple. “Every time I get too stressed I look out across here and there’s not an ad in sight,” he said, gesturing to the vast, Emmy-lined window of his corner office in New York’s Time Warner Center. It’s true. The only recognizable brand from Levy’s perch is Central Park. The president of sales, distribution and sports for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., will need to stay loose in the coming months. He’s preparing for some major changes at his flagship networks this fall. “We’re not abandoning scripted,” he cautioned. “But we are going to start getting involved in unscripted for both TBS and TNT.” A heavy emphasis on unscripted would be a serious change in the weather for both networks, which historically have relied on acquired syndicated content to serve as launch pads for their original scripted series. Sometimes the strategy has worked. TNT’s syndication of Law & Order has helped to buttress shows like The Closer and its spin-off, Major Crimes. But sometimes it hasn’t
Read MoreHallmark Channel is making good on its promise last year to bring more long-form originals to its bandwidth. It starts with the network's first scripted ongoing series, Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove, announced last year and now set for a July 20 premiere; then comes new special When Calls the Heart, based on the Janette Oke novel and debuting in October. The network has had to move the timelines back for both projects—originally Cedar Cove was scheduled for this month and When Calls the Heart was slated for June—but there's more scripted material in development from another writer beloved of the network's demographic: Mary Higgins Clark, whose short story collection My Gal Sunday is being considered alongside Dead Letters, a series developed by Touched by an Angel exec producer Martha Williamson. Hallmark Channel also has an ongoing "Wonderful World of Disney"-style venture with Narnia Chronicles production company Walden Media, which began its family-film partnership last week with Return to Nim's Island, a sequel to its theatrical film. The network's revitalized slate would seem to point up exactly how much its partnership with Martha Stewart Omnimedia drew from its coffers. Stewart's show was produced on a revenue-sharing model, through which Stewart received all the producing costs on the show and Hallmark got the overage
Read MoreSpecs Who Jake Johnson Age 34 Accomplishments Stars as Nick Miller on Fox’s New Girl (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.); appears in the upcoming film Drinking Buddies with Olivia Wilde; UFC aficionado Base Los Angeles What’s the first information you consume in the morning? I’ll go through emails. And then I’ll go to the basics— CNN.com and ChicagoSports.com . You’re pretty active on Twitter. What are your favorite accounts to follow? For a while, it was Jose Canseco . He’s a true maniac. There was a whole period where he would just say, “I complete you,” and there was no punctuation. Every time, it made me feel weird. What does that even mean? Are you a TV junkie or on an airtime-restricted diet? I’m a TV junkie. I watch everything, from Breaking Bad to Storage Wars. The show I’m currently obsessed with is The Ultimate Fighter on FX . Do you watch New Girl? I do, yeah, for two reasons: One, just to see what got in—when people are seeing it for the first time, that’s when I’m seeing it—and two, I like to go back and forth on Twitter with fans of the show while they’re watching and ask a basic question like “What’s jumping out?” to see an immediate response. For example, when Nick and Jess kissed , I got over 20,000 followers from that moment to 24 hours after that.
Read MoreThere has been a rash of odd reports today about a hacking attack against networks in North Korea. Just a few minutes ago, the research firm Renesys, which tracks the overall health and working order of the Internet, came out with confirmation that indeed something has been going on. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — or DPRK, as North Korea is generally known — has officially accused the U.S. of carrying out the attack, which is said to have disrupted that country’s connectivity to the wider Internet, such as it is. The DPRK has only one Internet provider supplying it with outside links, known as Star JV, Renesys says. Star in turn gets service from China Unicom and Intelsat. Star JV is a joint venture between North Korea’s Post and Telecommunications Corporation and a Thailand-based firm called Loxley Pacific . Renesys says it tracked disruptions that knocked North Korea’s four networks — yes, there are only four — off the global routing table early on March 13. The disruptions recurred into March 14. It’s as yet unknown what the cause is, and frankly it’s kind of hard to figure out what the point of such an attack might be other than simply to get attention. It’s not as if much of North Korean society is all that dependent upon the Internet to get anything done, and those few who do have access are either elite members of the Communist Party or the inner circle of the regime of leader Kim Jong-Un, or foreigners. In fact, Foreign Policy , citing some educated guesses of foreigners, estimates the number of North Koreans with access to the Internet as ranging from perhaps a few dozen well-connected families to no more than 1,000 people, tops. For others, there’s a domestic Intranet that looks nothing like the Internet we’re accustomed to. So if indeed there has been an attack, and if it was sponsored by someone acting on behalf of another government, the main question would have to be, “Why bother?” With luck, more will be revealed about all this in the coming days.
Read MoreIn a prelude to the show’s inevitable cancelation, NBC will shift the mortally wounded Smash to Saturdays beginning April 6. While the move to the night with the lowest HUT levels constitutes a burnoff, NBC has said it intends to air all 12 episodes remaining in Smash’s Season 2 order. The decision to maroon Smash in the Saturday 9 p.m. slot comes as the Broadway musical drama failed to deliver so much as a 1.0 in the 18-49 demo for the fourth consecutive week. Last night, Smash averaged 2.9 million viewers and a 0.9 in the dollar demo, bringing its average deliveries for the season to 3.28 million viewers and a 0.9. It’s an
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