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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In a country where each day seems to bring more “reality” with job losses and stocks plummeting, could TV watchers be looking for a little less reality television? This season’s ratings point toward “yes”.
According to the Los Angeles Times, several network mainstays are performing so badly that their futures are now in doubt. Fox’s “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?,” has lost nearly half its share of the 18-to-49-year-old demographic since last year, and viewership for NBC’s “Deal Or No Deal” has falled nearly 29 percent for its Wednesday show. Even ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” has lost 9 percent …read more

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You know that a remake of a foreign show is doing badly when it gets canceled in the country where the original hailed from. It only took “Kath & Kim” about three weeks to earn that.
Australian network Channel 7 has dropped NBC’s remake of the Aussie hit comedy after two weeks. According to News.com.au, the second week’s airing only attracted 729,000 viewers.
A spokesman for Seven said the re-airs will return later during the summer after the key ratings period.
“The figures didn’t stand up for its second outing,” the spokesman said.
For comparison’s sake, the premiere of the fourth season of the …read more

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NBC’s “Knight Rider” and Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” haven’t been winning over masses of viewers this season. But it appears that the networks believe the younger demographics of the action shows merit full-season pickups.
“Knight Rider” was given an order for the final nine episodes of the season by NBC executives. Despite the show spinning off of a hit NBC movie last year, executives were initially hesitant to pick up the show after lukewarm ratings during the first month of the fall season.
Last Friday, Fox ended speculation about the fate of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” by completing the order …read more

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- The Screen Actors Guild recently had a shakeup in leadership when the previous alliance in charge, Membership First, was largely ousted during national SAG elections. Membership First is getting a little business done before they go, though.
On Wednesday, the union’s negotiating committee recommended in an 11-2 vote that the national board authorize a strike vote against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
However, the matter will go before the newly-configured national board on Oct. 12, and according to the Los Angeles Times, it’s highly unlikely that the board or even the membership after that would seriously pursue a …read more

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- If you’re sick of “90210″ hype, then I’ve got some really bad news for you — the CW has picked it up for a full-season run. The show, which was originally ordered for 13 episodes, has managed to keep up its ratings enough for the CW to make the leap of faith. Another good sign is the addition of writer-producer Rebecca Kirschner, who worked on “Gilmore Girls” and  “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
- Fox has ordered 13 episodes of Imagine/20th Century Fox TV’s “Lie To Me”, which is slated to star Tim Roth as a human lie detector who can …read more

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Alan Ball’s time at HBO won’t be “Six Feet Under” anytime soon, as network execs announced Wednesday that they have ordered a second season of his new vampiric drama, “True Blood”.
Even though the show took a little time to gain critical traction, the premiere episode netted about 4 million viewers total. But the second episode of the show about futuristic Southern vampires who feast upon synthetic blood picked up 26 percent more viewers than the first, which was enough to qualify it as a success for the net.
The series, which is based on a series of …read more

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For the third year, NBC execs are trying to build buzz for their new and returning shows online.
Knight Rider, Kath & Kim, Crusoe and My Own Worst Enemy, along with several second-year shows, will be available on NBC’s Web site, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon Video on Demand, Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Zune, as well as on-demand from TV providers such as Comcast, Cox, Charter, Dish and Verizon Fios. Knight Rider and Lipstick Jungle, due Sept. 24, are available today.
Other networks have dabbled with online premieres in the past, but none have had the success that NBC has had. The Office and …read more

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The latest project by fandom fave Joss Whedon, “Dollhouse”, has halted production for a second time.
Fox Television execs told TelevisionWeek that the show, which stopped production last Thursday, will resume production on Sept. 25. The official reason given for the work stoppage was that Whedon simply wants the show to be better and that he was so preoccupied with directing two of the first three shows that he wasn’t able to focus on scripts. They also insist that the show won’t miss its scheduled January premiere date.
“We have tremendous confidence in Joss and his team, and we wholeheartedly supported his …read more

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It seems like there’s not enough reasons why “24” is still off the air. If it’s not a writer’s strike, then the main star is sent to prison. But now the writers seem to have run out of things to write about, apparently.
The exec-producer of “24″, Howard Gordon, told EW.com Monday that the show shut down production after Episode 18 of their seventh season because he was not happy with the scripts for the rest of the season.
“We had a couple of scripts that we weren’t happy with,” Gordon said to EW.com. “We just couldn’t get this direction to work, …read more

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