Media Scribbler

Jay Leno is about to shake the television landscape merely by changing timeslots.
According The New York Times writer Bill Carter, who wrote an incredible book called “The Late Shift” about Leno’s original ascent to The Tonight Show after a protracted public battle for the slot with David Letterman),  the longtime Tonight Show host is signing a new deal with NBC to host a show every weeknight, only 90 minutes earlier.

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If anyone out there has put a bet on how long it would take for Hollywood to greenlight some sort of project based on the life of President-Elect Barack Obama, hope you took the under on 48 hours.
HBO announced Tuesday that they have acquired the rights to an as-yet-untitled documentary (anyone want to lay a bet on it being named “Yes, We Can” or “Change Has Come”?) directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sam and produced by Edward Norton and his production company, Class 5 Films.
The movie will document the journey taken by Obama in moving …read more

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Ever thought about how much more  you’d watch CNN if they had Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on as analysts for the debates?
Let’s face it — until they toned it down a month or so ago, MSNBC had the unintentional comedy troupe of Olbermann, Matthews, Buchanan and Maddow. But over at CNN, they’ve been relying on mostly the star power of their political team and all their Twittering.
But now D.L. Hughley is headed for the cable news net to launch something completely new — a panel with Hughley and guests waxing wise on politics, entertainment, sports and pop culture.
Part of …read more

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First off, I apologize for not putting up a daily TV post today. My day job ended up slashing my time to post. But the listing would’ve almost been irrelevant after President George Bush scheduled an Oval Office address smack in the middle of prime-time concerning the economy. Not a knock on him — this is a time when a lot of people are more worried about their jobs than the premiere of “Til’ Death”.
However, the really big story of the day was Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain announcing he’s suspending his campaign to return to Washington to work …read more

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It’s very hard to talk about something as seemingly frivolous as television today, as Galveston, Texas slowly floods and Hurricane Ike eyes Houston as it moves ashore (as of 7 p.m. CST, it looks like the eye will go east of there, but there’s still about six hours to go before anyone knows.)
Since the National Weather Service has predicted “certain death” to anyone who stays anywhere near Galveston’s coast, most of us can only watch correspondents who are either brave or foolhardy enough to do coverage from the Texas coast.

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For the cable news networks, the national Presidential conventions are like the Olympics in ratings. CNN is going gangbusters with their Democratic National Convention coverage, and pulled in averaged 5.38 million viewers from 10 to 11 p.m. Wednesday, when VP nominee Joe Biden spoke and Presidential nominee Barack Obama made a “surprise” appearance. That was only slightly less than NBC’s 5.8 million viewers for the same time period, and CNN’s average for the night was up 95 percent over their coverage of the same night during the 2004 convention.
Unfortunately for the folks who make the programming decisions at CNN …read more

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CBS is betting that with a hot and heated presidential matchup in the works, they can win their own ratings gold medal on their Web site. Katie Couric has high hopes for her own all-around medal, even if she’s the underdog.
According to TV Decoder, CBS is planning to live-stream additional Couric-anchored coverage. They are only planning to show an hour of her on the network each night, but say she will remain on CBSNews.com and CNet.com for at least another 30 minutes.
I expect other networks will do similar things (and really it’s going to be hard to compete with Anderson …read more

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Since half of what people talk about these days is related to gas prices (and the other half’s on NBC), ABC has decided to turn lemons into promotional lemonade.
According to Variety (via TV Decoder), ABC’s campaign to draw viewers to their fall season premiere week of fan faves like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Ugly Betty” by dubbing it “National Stay at Home Week“.
Personally, this concept only applies to me if it’s also “Stay at Home Week” at my workplace. But since for many of us that would also be “I’m Now Unemployed and Broke Week”, that will merely remain as much …read more

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The WGA strike has impacted the financial outcome for television networks. MediaWeek report on a recent analysis of ad sales by media agency TargetCast tcm. Ad sales were down across the board for all the major television networks. The average ad unit for the Big Four was down 12% versus the same time last year.
The average unit cost for a prime-time ad spot on NBC was $77, 893, down 24.7% from the same time last year. CBS: $112, 641, down 11.9%. ABC: $122,509, down 9.5%. Fox: $237,237, down 9.2%.
Gary Carr, senior vp, director of broadcast services for TargetCast, thinks …read more

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