Forget the shows - vicious execs make better story Friday, July 27, 2007
The book has closed on another television critics' press tour. The Death March With Cocktails is over. All kinds of cable channels, PBS and the five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW) traipsed through the Beverly Hilton hotel for the better part of three weeks. Here's a small portion of what we learned:
There's animosity in the executive offices. Oh, man, it is on. Kevin Reilly was always an odd fit for NBC. It was clear to anyone who understood corporate politics and the mentality of weasels that after Jeff Zucker essentially drove NBC into the rocks - then got promoted by the GE lightbulb geniuses for his efforts - there was only one guy to take the blame. Yep, Reilly. Despite Reilly having added quality shows to the NBC stable like "The Office," "Heroes" and "Friday Night Lights," Zucker and company opted for Ben Silverman instead. Now, Silverman is a wonderful packager of shows ("The Office" being a prime example), but he has no real hands-on executive skills. We'll see, eventually, whether that's important. The hiring, however, has created a battle among three of the Big Four networks. NBC, Fox, ABC...
NBC had the audacity to try to sell people who are jaded by nature (that would be the critics) that it didn't actually fire Reilly, that really he left when Silverman was hired. That's about as rich as it sounds. Meanwhile, when Silverman met the critics for the first time early in this tour, he played the smiley, "I just got here" card, which infuriated ABC entertainment President Steve McPherson, a good friend of Reilly's. Said McPherson, on Wednesday, of Silverman's coy act: "Be a man."
Reilly has walked an impressive line between spilling the truth about being stabbed in the back at NBC and working for visionless bean counters and saying he'd rather talk about the new possibilities at Fox, where he's now entertainment president, having walked across the street to his new gig after a few days of unemployment (and a fat check from NBC - so maybe being the pawn of dullards ie Zucker? has its own rewards).
The only people not putting their fingers into this mess is CBS, which has always preferred to distance itself from the great unwashed, and the CW, which is in shock over the fact it has some shows that critics are talking about.

Buzz show for fall is -- get ready -- a documentary from PBS Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Television Critics Association summer press tour is under way, and the halls of the Beverly Hilton -- where critics from around the country and Canada will spend roughly the next three weeks dissecting the new fall season and masses of cable fare -- would normally be filled with chatter about ABC or CBS. But this year, only one or two fall shows are popping up regularly in conversation. Most of the early discussions have been about how disappointing the series are, or about how wrongheaded a particular network seems to be (CBS wants to be edgy; Fox wants to be CBS).
If the network shows haven't created much buzz, the networks themselves certainly have. Fox made official on Monday what Daily Variety was reporting last week -- that ousted NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly has been hired in the same capacity there. Hey, it's not every day that you can be bounced, collect a handsome severance package and then walk over to a rival network for a little payback. It might be odd for Reilly to program against a schedule of shows he created. But then again, maybe those shows aren't any good.
In Hollywood, this is a big story for a couple of reasons. First, Fox has managed to unite Reilly with Peter Liguori, a duo that helped put the FX cable channel on the map. Liguori will now step up from Fox entertainment president to entertainment chairman, and Reilly assumes the same title he had at NBC, where he was rudely dumped during the Memorial Day weekend. And it means that Reilly can now come to the press tour and tell us all about it.
A lot of critics believe that Jeff Zucker, former NBC entertainment president and now NBC Universal chief executive, never let the well-respected Reilly put his own stamp on the Peacock. Zucker jumped at the chance to hire Ben Silverman, a brash producer best known for repackaging foreign shows ("The Office," "Ugly Betty") and being an agent -- but not exactly a network-caliber programmer. With Silverman not shy about his own ability -- and willing to say so -- and Reilly now free to bash Zucker, the press tour just got a whole lot more interesting. Shows? What shows?

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