The TV News Thread (Spoiler-Free, Please)

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While trying to find out the answer to a question thread by E (thread cross-promotion!), I thought, hm, maybe it'd be useful for us to have a TV news thread to help decrease the postage bulk of the All About TV Shows thread.

So here it is, a TV news thread for all of us. Please keep it spoiler-free or at least minimize spoilers by leaving references to plot resolutions as cryptic as possible.

NBC has recently greenlit "Kings," a contemporary soap loosely based on the story of King David, the Biblical king of Israel. Francis Lawrence, the director of Constantine and I Am Legend is set to direct a one-hour pilot based on a script by Michael Green (Heroes co-executive producer).

Hollywood Reporter said:
Set in present day, "Kings" centers on "a regular small-town guy who gets mixed up with the upper crust social and political elite of a monarchy and eventually would become the new king," Green said. "It's a Cinderella story and a story of struggle for power."

"Kings" stems from an idea Green had carried for a long time: "To retell these sort of sex- and war-crazed Bible stories for a world that's convinced the Bible is all about virtue," he said.
Click the above link for more.
 
I thought this was a thread about TV news shows.

*disappointed*
 
I thought this was a thread about TV news shows.

*disappointed*

All you need to know about TV news shows can be learned by reading Nightly News.

Kings sounds interesting. Labeling it as a "soap" might put me off it a little, but I like things like that which adapt stories with modern twists.
 
All you need to know about TV news shows can be learned by reading Nightly News.

Kings sounds interesting. Labeling it as a "soap" might put me off it a little, but I like things like that which adapt stories with modern twists.

I read that and thought, "hehe... nipples."
 
All you need to know about TV news shows can be learned by reading Nightly News.
:rockon: :rockon: :rockon:

Kings sounds interesting. Labeling it as a "soap" might put me off it a little, but I like things like that which adapt stories with modern twists.
It seems to me that people apply the term 'soap' very liberally in labelling TV shows, since it seems that both Desperate Housewives and The O.C. are regarded soaps by some. Which is true to an extent, but also not.
 
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According to TVSquad, TV Guide reports that House might be up for a musical episode if the cast can convince the writers and producers to do it:
TV Squad said:
First Buffy, then Scrubs, eventually Ugly Betty and maybe House? TV Guide reports that the cast of FOX's House would like to do a musical episode.

Jennifer Morrison, who plays Allison Cameron, claims that since most of the actors on the show have some sort of musical background, they have been poking the writers to have the doctors break into song!
 
I really can't stress just how much I hate musical episodes of sitcoms. Scrubs surprised me by being much better than I was dreading, but it's still my least favourite episode by a longshot.
I generally don't mind them, as I find them fun, but I totally get why you'd say so.

I think musical episodes are when a show is getting ready to jump the shark. It hasn't jumped the shark YET, but the shark is crouching its knees already.
 
I generally don't mind them, as I find them fun, but I totally get why you'd say so.

I think musical episodes are when a show is getting ready to jump the shark. It hasn't jumped the shark YET, but the shark is crouching its knees already.

I dunno, it varies. I recall the That 70s Show one being with in the first couple seasons or so, and although the episode was just..... beyond.... awful..... the show still had a few more seasons before it actually hit the ****house.
 
I dunno, it varies. I recall the That 70s Show one being with in the first couple seasons or so, and although the episode was just..... beyond.... awful..... the show still had a few more seasons before it actually hit the ****house.
Hm. You speak the truth.

Though technically speaking a musical episode isn't out of the ordinary for a show in which every episode is broken up by psychedelia intermissions and features kids who dope up every week.

It's not like making a musical episode is being 'gimmicky' and contrary to the show's tone.
 
Brian Stelter of The New York Times' TV Decoder talks about how things don't look good for NBC's Bionic Woman:
Brian Stelter said:
Before its debut on NBC, the remake of the 1970s classic had "hit" written all over it. NBC had high hopes that "Bionic Woman," starring 23-year-old Michelle Ryan, would become this year's "Heroes" and made the show its centerpiece of "Bionic Wednesdays" beginning Sept. 26.

TV Guide called it "the fall's most talked about new action drama" and NBC poured tens of millions of dollars into promotion. In preseason polls, the show ranked No. 1 in the "would definitely watch" category and in measurements of audience awareness, it scored almost 80 percent ­ higher than any other new show this fall.

Then the program premiered. It delivered a solid 13.6 million viewers, suggesting a high level of sampling. But many people never returned: if the show's ratings were plotted on a chart, they would show a dramatic and consistent weekly decline.
The people at TV Squad draw a comparison between Bionic Woman and another show experiencing great disparity between ratings and hype: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:
TV Squad's Bob Sassone said:
It was hyped, though I don't know if TV Guide calling something "the fall's most talked about new action drama" means anything. Did a lot of other action dramas premiere this fall? I think that the attention it got was based on two things: it was from the Battlestar Galactica people and people had nostalgia for the original. That's why it polled so well and the first episode numbers were so good.
 
That is very interesting, because I wonder how much of that had to do with NBC pulling its shows from iTunes?

I'm pretty sure the 1st episode was on there, and don't think many more were after it. For a while they were leaving shows on but not putting up new ones....the other day they removed everything completely.

Remember that iTunes is credited with saving shows like The Office and a couple of others. I wonder if it's the same type of effect.
 
Yahoo! sources a Hollywood Reporter article reporting that the Wayans brothers are producing an Entourage-type scripted series for VH1:
Yahoo said:
The Wayans brothers -- Keenen Ivory, Marlon and Shawn -- are making their first foray into cable series with "The Life and Times of Marcus 'Felony' Brown," a VH1 project described as an edgy urban comedy.
ADVERTISEMENT

The cable network has ordered a pilot, which just wrapped principal photography. Marlon and Shawn Wayans developed "Life and Times" with producing partner Rick Alvarez. The three are executive producing the show with Keenen Ivory Wayans.

"Life and Times" centers on a up-and-coming hard-core East Coast rapper (Darius McCrary) who, after his debut album goes platinum, must relocate to Los Angeles to record his follow-up. Along for the ride are his self-hyping hype man, E-Z (Vince Green); jet-setting manager, Cash (Jon Abrahams); and hard-partying bodyguard, Tiny (Marcello Thedford). Affion Crockett plays Seville, Marcus' personal barber, while Toni Trucks is Tia, Marcus' assistant.

VH1 is relatively new to the scripted genre. Its first efforts in the area have included the Tori Spelling vehicle "So Notorious," "Acceptable TV" and "I Hate My 30s."
 
NBC unveils the first trailer for the new Knight Rider: http://jalopnik.com/337239/first-tr...+fied-kitt-flashing-red-lights-and-will-arnet

TV Squad asks the following questions:
KITT is no longer a TransAM, but rather a Ford Mustang. The other big news that might come as a shocker --- it's no longer Michael driving KITT, it's Mike. That's right, Knight Rider, welcome to the name-shortening 21st century! There are other questions that we can only guess at until the show premiers in February...

1) Will KITT's new owner be as fond as showing his chest hair as David Hasslehoff used to be? Or, for that matter, will this new driver even have chest hair? As a student of pop-media, I've noticed a considerable decline in the amount of chest hair in prime-time television and I expect the trend to continue in the Knight Rider update. For more information about it, you can read my book From Magnum to ManGrooming: The Defoliation of the American Male.

2) Will each episode go to commercial with a badass shot of KITT driving in some anonymous desert while the Knight Rider theme plays?

3) Will there be a KARR? A Goliath? A spunky African-American late-season sidekick improbably named RC3? A Garthe Knight (or, in keeping with the shortening of the lead's name, a Gar Knight)? Will the intelligent vehicles from Team Knight Rider show up? Will Bonnie and April finally make-out like they do in my erotic fan-fiction?
 
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I really can't stress just how much I hate musical episodes of sitcoms. Scrubs surprised me by being much better than I was dreading, but it's still my least favourite episode by a longshot.

Ditto , the only one I've loved (not a sitcom though) was the Buffy the vampire slayer musical "once more with feeling" I thought that was handled very well , explained the singing better than say scrubs were it was "oh yeah ... someone just thinks everyone is singing .... yeah that's it" Instead they gave a good reason that was thought out

Also it had them singing stuff like "I've got a theory" which was a song about "why the hell are we singing" :lol: :lol: It was great and could possibly my favourite musical of all time
 
TV Squad got a sneak peek at Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
TV Squad said:
This show is done by the same company that was behind Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the upcoming Terminator 4. It was originally to be titled The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I guess the creators were concerned that nobody would recognize the franchise without the word "Terminator". Such title ambiguity did not hurt Smallville, but I digress.

The show begins in 1999 between the second and third movies. Sarah Connor (played by Brit actress Lena Heady) is on the run with her son John (played by Thomas Decker). They have to be very careful about not revealing their true identities to anyone or anything because if they leave any sort of clue as to their location in history, Sky net will send back Terminators from the future to kill them. This exact same premise has been used in the Terminator comic books.

Sarah is trying to live a quiet life in order to keep her son John safe so he can eventually save the world while avoiding their heavy, metal stalkers from the future. Sadly, they're not careful enough and the bad Terminators find them. But, as we learned in T2, not all Terminators are bad. A good Terminator (played by Serenity's Summer Glau) finds and protects them. She even finds them by pretending to be a student at John's school, thus achieving a level of subtlety and humanity that Arnold's Terminator could never hope to achieve. Hell, Arnold's character was never even given a name beyond "Terminator" or "T-101". Summer's Terminator is named Cameron (get the reference?). She's quite the combination of grace and ***-kicking.
More in the link above.
 
Tim Goodman comments on David Letterman's deal for his show to comeback with writer support, despite the WGA strike:
Tim Goodman said:
Perhaps the biggest hurt the television industry has suffered since the start of the still-roiling Writers Guild of America strike was the immediate cessation of late-night programming. There's a lot of money to be made in late night - in fact, a lot of money to be made for everyone in the entertainment industry, not just the TV networks - but nothing was happening since the first night of the strike when sets went dark from Los Angeles to New York.

And now, everyone is coming back - with the distinct advantage going to Letterman, who brokered a deal late Friday with the WGA to come back with his full writing staff intact. While everyone else will be ad-libbing and - one would hope - comically killing time, Letterman will have a full monologue and his famed Top 10 list to work with. Perhaps more importantly, he'll also have Williams and, soon after, a cavalcade of A-list Hollywood stars. It's a good bet every other host won't.

Why? Because unlike Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien or Jimmy Kimmel, Letterman actually owns his shows (including "The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson"). All talk shows owned by what the WGA calls "struck companies" - meaning all of the networks - will continue to be picketed. And word has gone out to actors that if they want to go on Leno or any of the other shows, they'll have to cross picket lines to do it.
More in the link above.
 

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