Networks Strive for Fresh Ideas for Fall Season (original) (raw)
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Fox will introduce “Terra Nova,” a lavish prehistoric epic featuring Steven Spielberg — and dinosaurs.Credit...Brook Rushton/Fox
- May 15, 2011
Acknowledging that the crop of new television programs last year was almost a complete washout, the networks are spending big this year to promise, if not genuine excitement, at least something different.
Some of the new series to be unveiled to advertisers in New York this week feature special-effects dinosaurs, an original musical, some period pieces and at least two importations of characters from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
The networks, conceding that last year’s shows generated yawns among many viewers, are hoping to reap a windfall of advance financial commitments. Advertisers are prepared to increase significantly, perhaps by more than 10 percent, their spending on the networks’ fall season shows. And the programmers are looking to send the message that they recognize they have to find something other than a new round of police procedurals and sitcoms.
“We were looking for fresh,” said Bob Greenblatt, the new president of NBC Entertainment. “I really want people to see the concept for a show and go: ‘Oh wow. What’s that?’ ”
Mr. Greenblatt joined NBC from Showtime, a channel known, like many in cable, for more ground-breaking ideas for series. In the case of Showtime those included “Dexter” and “Weeds.”
“This doesn’t mean I want to put serial killers or pot-selling soccer moms on the air,” Mr. Greenblatt said. “But I do believe a little bit of bold, attention-getting ideas need to get to broadcast television. I think the audience that found cable to be really irresistible also believes it.”
Paul Lee, the new president of ABC Entertainment, echoed that point, saying the lesson of last season was that the networks had to begin offering fresher ideas, or continue to have viewers drift off to cable channels.
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“Pan Am,” on ABC, follows pilots and flight attendants on the fabled airline.Credit...Patrick Harbron/ABC
Mr. Greenblatt and Mr. Lee are fresh ideas themselves, having taken over the entertainment divisions of NBC and ABC at a point where change certainly seemed necessary. NBC has suffered through one of the most severe droughts in prime time of any network in the last 20 years. And ABC has struggled to keep from ceding the advantage it gained from an influx of big hits seven years ago.
But all four major broadcast networks are turning up with a range of shows based on big, expensive ideas and talent.
Fox will introduce Simon Cowell’s latest talent competition, “The X Factor,” as well as perhaps the highest-cost drama ever in “Terra Nova,” a lavish prehistoric epic with Steven Spielberg — and dinosaurs — participating.
Mr. Spielberg is also one of the creative hands behind NBC’s “Smash,” a hugely ambitious fictional account of the process of mounting a Broadway musical — complete with original songs composed for the series by the Broadway stalwarts Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”). The series pilot has three original songs and the episodes will add more each week. Its debut will be later in the season.
“Those guys are a songwriting machine,” Mr. Greenblatt said.
Supernatural touches will be everywhere, from “Once Upon a Time” on ABC, a contemporary mystery populated by an anthropomorphized Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin and a host of other Grimm’s Fairy Tales characters, to “Grimm” on NBC, which will take a police detective into a dark world where he sees beastlike characters — like those in the fairy tales.
On Fox, “Alcatraz” will have mysterious missing figures from the famous prison’s past reappearing in the present. It is one of several new shows developed by J. J. Abrams of “Lost” and starring a “Lost” alumnus, in this case Jorge Garcia.
Even CBS, which generally steers clear of the supernatural, has turned to Mr. Abrams for a show its programmers are especially high on, called “Person of Interest.” It fits into CBS’s heavy rotation of crime procedurals in having a former C.I.A. officer trying to stop crime in New York; but the twist is that he is helped in stopping the crimes before they happen by a mysterious billionaire, played by Michael Emerson of “Lost.”
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Tim Allen, the star of “Last Man Standing” on ABC.Credit...Randy Holmes/ABC
Of course the networks are not entirely fleeing the familiar. Most of the new comedies — there are more this year than in any recent year — follow traditional premises of workplace comedies, romantic comedies, fish-out-of-water comedies and comedies based on the acts of stand-ups (Whitney Cummings on NBC) or about real stand-ups (Chelsea Handler on NBC) or comebacks by stand-ups (Tim Allen on ABC).
Mr. Lee talked about the need to offer viewers “some candy,” and that’s where the remake of “Charlie’s Angels” comes in. The season also has the usual spin-off, with Fox extracting “The Finder” out of a rib from “Bones.” NBC is also remaking the classic British cop series “Prime Suspect.”
The most-watched switch of the season will not be a show moved to a different night, but the substitution of Ashton Kutcher for Charlie Sheen on CBS’s biggest comedy “Two and a Half Men.” And NBC faces a switch of its own as it seeks a new lead to replace Steve Carell on its only true comedy hit, “The Office.”
But the message from the networks will not be all about change. CBS will emphasize how solid and dependable its schedule remains, while pushing its pre-eminence in drawing the most viewers overall, and Fox will brag about its leadership in attracting younger viewers.
“We’d like to see stability from the networks,” said Lisa Quan, a vice president and director of audience analysis at the media agency MagnaGlobal. “That’s always a good thing.”
Fox, which presents to advertisers on Monday, is keeping one of the sitcoms it introduced last fall, “Raising Hope,” and adding at least two new ones that appeal especially to women. It is also promoting special advertising packages on “The X Factor,” which Fox says will be the fall complement to the winter-and-spring tour de force “American Idol.” Analysts expect Fox to show “X Factor” two nights a week and nurture new sitcoms in its wake.
CBS, which presents on Wednesday, will bring back “Mike and Molly,” “Hawaii Five-0” and “Blue Bloods” from this season. The network is weighing whether to cancel one of the three “CSI” procedurals in favor of “Person of Interest.” Among its other new offerings is a sitcom titled “Two Broke Girls” about a pair of 22-year-olds who move to Brooklyn.
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On NBC, “The Playboy Club,” which is set in Chicago in the ’60s, mixes the glamour of the club with a mob story.Credit...John Russo/NBC
NBC, which revealed its schedule to reporters Sunday ahead of its presentation Monday, has wiped the slate almost clean, canceling all the dramas it tried last fall, like “The Event” and “Chase.” But it has renewed the David E. Kelley legal procedural “Harry’s Law” and the two-year-old “Parenthood,” and it is importing its holiday season hit “The Sing Off” to a regular spot from 8 to 10 p.m. on Mondays.
That reality show will lead into one of its prominent new dramas, “The Playboy Club,” which is set in Chicago in the ’60s and mixes the glamour of the club with a mob story.
In addition, NBC, in its first upfront since Comcast took it over, is adding a second comedy night, Wednesday, with two new comedies from 8 to 9 p.m., both about strained relationships: “Up All Night,” which stars Christina Applegate, and “Free Agents,” with Hank Azaria.
NBC is also developing a newsmagazine to be hosted by the anchor Brian Williams, but a time slot has not been set.
Like NBC, ABC is making sweeping changes to its schedule, which it will unveil during its presentation on Tuesday.
This season no new sitcom was able to take advantage of an adjacency to “Modern Family” on Wednesday night, and no new drama was able to gain traction, with the exception of the midseason medical procedural “Body of Proof,” which has been renewed. Long-running shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” continued to slowly shed audience.
Mr. Lee, who was hired in July, is expected to add 13 new series, including “Pan Am,” about pilots and flight attendants on that fabled airline; “The River,” about a documentary team searching for a lost explorer in the Amazon that encounters the supernatural; “Missing,” a drama with Ashley Judd as a former C.I.A. agent searching for a child who is missing in Italy; and a soap titled “Good Christian Belles.”
But it’s the sitcom category where ABC would like to take its biggest swing, creating a block of comedies, perhaps on Tuesdays, around “Last Man Standing,” starring Tim Allen, who helped to make “Home Improvement” a hit for the network two decades ago.
“It feels like people are looking for that next big hit in sitcom-land,” Ms. Quan said.
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