Now that the Tetris tiles of the 2013–14 TV schedule have dropped into place, a number of intriguing programming showdowns await. With 51 new scripted series slated to premiere in the coming season, the newcomers will be fighting for their lives against established hits and fellow freshman shows. Here are the five time slots that are likely to kick up the most dust:
Read MoreDirecTV is weighing a potential bid for Hulu, the latest company to show interest in the six-year-old video site, according to a person familiar with the matter. Hulu’s owners, including Walt Disney Co., News Corp., and Comcast Corp., are considering various strategic options for the site including a sale. Other firms that have bid or expressed interest in Hulu include cable operator Time Warner Cable Inc., Guggenheim Partners, Yahoo Inc. and former News Corp. president Peter Chernin’s investment group. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreMany TV networks have been partnering with Twitter to capitalize on the social media zeitgeist, but Comcast's USA Network is going rogue in the quest for cross-platform audience engagement. USA will aggregate real-time conversations about its programming on Twitter and Facebook and incorporate them into its own revamped website and mobile platform, The Wall Street Journal reported . The cable channel plans to integrate social media conversations with USA's own content and run ads alongside. Advertisers will be able to run ads on the TV and website simultaneously. USA already has its own forum, Character Chatter, which draws 30,000 viewers at a time. The network hopes to monetize this audience, augmenting it with fans pulled from social media. Jesse Redniss, senior vp of digital at USA Network, thinks that network partnerships with Twitter might be shortsighted, telling the Journal that Twitter is "kind of encroaching" on networks' relationships with their audiences. "We want advertisers to be able to come to us and say the best experience around this show is going to be on USA's properties," he said. Though Twitter is the indisputable hub of TV hubbub, cable channels including Bravo , MTV and TBS have integrated social media into their own Web and mobile platforms.
Read MoreIn what has become a somewhat hoary upfront tradition , Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday took the stage at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and gleefully skewered the broadcast TV business. “Let’s call the upfronts what it is: Throwing a bunch of shit at a wall to see what sticks. And guess what? You guys are the wall,” Kimmel told the assembled media buyers at the tail end of ABC’s upfront presentation. As he’s done for the past 11 years, the late-night host teed off on the network’s rivals, likening Fox to the Titanic and suggesting that only a lobbying effort to impose immigration reform would save NBC from an advancing Univision. Of course, ABC received its fair share of abuse, as Kimmel reminded buyers that they were on the verge of investing “$4 billion in a network that rolled a 400-pound comedian off a diving board last week.” (Later, he would return to the bellyflop that was the celebrity diving competition series, Splash, suggesting that ABC would drain the pool next season and rename the show Splat.) For all that, ABC actually assembled its most promising prime time schedule in years, introducing a horde of new dramas and comedies designed to free it from broadcast’s ratings basement. (While no one directly acknowledged that ABC will once again finish last among the Big Four in the race for adults 18-49—entertainment president Paul Lee instead focused on the intangibles, describing ABC as the “No. 1 brand in network television”—the proof was there for all to see in the radical reconfiguration of its nightly lineup.) With only two freshman shows returning in the fall, ABC has plenty of opportunities to try and reinvent itself. Tuesday nights have been utterly transformed, and over the course of the season, the network will introduce no fewer than a dozen new scripted series. Chief among these is Josh Wheedon’s much-anticipated Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. , which leads off Tuesdays in the 8 p.m. slot. Born of the $1.5 billion Avengers theatrical, S.H.I.E.L.D. should bow to monster ratings if ABC cross-promotes the absolute hell out of it on sibling net ESPN
Read MoreIn January, Aereo drew ire from broadcast networks by announcing plans to expand to 22 cities . Atlanta will be Aereo's third market, after New York and Boston, CNET reported . Aereo will launch in Atlanta on June 17 for pre-registered users and June 24 for everyone else. The Atlanta region encompasses 5.3 million potential new customers. Aereo—which faces ongoing legal battles with broadcast networks like CBS, ABC, NBCUniversal and Fox—allows users to stream television via internet-connected devices. Consumers pay $8 per month to access live TV as well as Aereo's cloud DVR service. Aereo is set to go live in Boston tomorrow.
Read MoreSpecs Who David Muir Age 39 New gig Co-anchor of ABC’s 20/20 (with Elizabeth Vargas) Old gig Continues on World News With David Muir on weekends How did you get started in the news business? It’s embarrassing when I go back that far, but I was the 12-year-old who wrote the letter to the local news guy—the Walter Cronkite of the town I grew up in. The line in the [reply] letter was “competition in the television newsroom is keen, but there’s always room for the right person and it could be you.” So you took them up on it? I was a 13-year-old news intern [at CBS’ WTVH, Syracuse, N.Y.]. They’d measure how much I’d grown year to year. When I graduated, that was my first job, anchoring and reporting the news.
Read More"There's no such thing as a comfortable No. 2," Telemundo president Emilio Romano said at a press conference last week, and indeed, the network is trying to take market share away from its juggernaut competitor Univision—up to a 30 percent share to Univision's 60 percent, according to its own research. The broadcaster has a slew of new programming landing in the fall—five primetime novelas including a show called Camelia la Tejana, which Romano touted as the successor to the company's successful La Reina Del Sur . Ryan Seacrest Productions also has a new show on the net— Superstar Showdown , featuring established musical acts in a sing-off in front of a voting audience. Daytime will feature court show Caso Cerrado and dating gameshow 12 Corazons. The network will also host event programming, including a special on Billboard's Mexican Music Awards, distinct from the Latin Music Awards, also on the network (Full disclosure: Billboard is owned by Adweek parent company Guggenheim Digital Media); and the Miss Universe pageant. Plenty of the network's other live event programming will be World Cup-related in preparation for Telemundo's takeover of the popular event in 2015. Telemundo is also starting a billingual production studio called Fluency, which will handle content aimed at younger, acculturated Hispanics who speak to each other in both languages. Telemundo showed off two projects in progress at the mini-studio—La Buena Mala, a Freaky Friday-ish show about a young woman and her novela protagonist lookalike who swap lives; and ISA, a science fiction mystery show.
Read MoreThere’s an uncommonly large crowd on hand for this taping of SportsCenter, as some 2,000 observers are huddled around as anchor Hannah Storm winds down the 9:30 a.m. segment. Throwing to a taped interview with what appears to be a retired Ivy League linebacker, Storm introduces her virtual guest as Peter McDonough, the chief marketing and innovation officer at Diageo North America. This particular installment of SportsCenter isn’t being broadcast beyond the confines of New York’s Best Buy Theater, and McDonough hasn’t suited up to chat about Penn’s third conference title in four seasons. (For one thing, he’s a Cornell man.) Instead, as part of ESPN’s 2012 upfront presentation, he’s agreed to offer a testimonial on how the network’s sales team has delivered significant results for Diageo over the last several months. As part of a yearlong deal, the liquor distributor signed on as a presenting sponsor of the ESPN series Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn . The “Diageo Happy Hour” execution put the company out in front of legions of younger male viewers while throwing a spotlight on its Guinness Black Lager brand. But the sponsorship didn’t end there. “What was really exciting was how it would satisfy a second objective we had, which was reaching the multicultural consumer,” McDonough said, adding that a similar strategy was used to pitch Captain Morgan Rum to Hispanic viewers of ESPN Deportes. “I couldn’t be more excited about this partnership.” This marks the third year in which ESPN will thread client testimonials into the fabric of its upfront presentation. Previous participants included Gatorade, Taco Bell and Goodyear. The sports giant will have three more brands in the wings (Macy’s, Cheez-It and Subway) when it unveils its 2013-14 slate on Tuesday, May 14. A nod to the mutual trust between the network and its clients, no money changes hands when ESPN books its testimonials.
Read MoreSince ER flatlined in 2009, NBC’s Thursday night lineup has been the Drunk Uncle of prime time television. But in a radical move to reclaim its movie-night mojo, the Peacock is planning a major overhaul of the three-hour block. Beginning this fall, the criminally underwatched Parks and Recreation will lead off NBC’s Thursday night roster, leading into three new sitcoms and the well-received drama, Parenthood. At 8:30 p.m., the Sony Pictures Television sitcom Welcome to the Family takes the spot vacated by the canceled Up All Night. Starring Mike O'Malley, Mary McCormack, Richardo Chavira and Ella Rae Peck, WTF is a culture-clash comedy about Anglo and Latino families who’ve been thrown together in the wake of an unanticipated pregnancy.
Read More
