Has NBC Given Up On Sci-Fi and are they blaming "Kings?"

By Graeme McMillan

At an appearance at the Television Critics Association Press Tour this week, NBC's Angela Bromstad said that Kings failed because it was "too highbrow and sophisticated" to sell to their audience. But is that the show's fault, or the network's?

Talking about the failure of Kings on the network, president of prime time entertainment Bromstad told the audience,

"I think that it was an amazingly big swing and a great production, and Michael Green is a phenomenal writer... I think our challenge now-and hopefully what you see with the new shows is in a really crowded marketplace-you have to sell something. People want to know what something's about. That was a very complex idea. It was a show that was originally developed when I was there before [with] Laura Lancaster. We thought it was too highbrow and sophisticated to sell in a 30-second spot. It doesn't mean we're not looking for big ideas, but they have to be big ideas an audience can grab onto and relate to."

Maybe it's just me, but there seem to be a lot of things that seem wrong with that quote (Kings was "too highbrow and sophisticated" to sell in 30 seconds? Really? Don't get me wrong, I think that it was a wonderful show, intelligent and, yes, sophisticated, but at the same time, it could easily have been sold on the family drama aspects, the religious/spiritual aspects or even the wartime political aspects - the fact is that NBC didn't do any of these; saying that it was too hard without even trying sounds like false justification after the fact), but the most worrying is the message it seems to send that NBC has given up on programming that doesn't appeal to the lowest common denominator, and that because of that, SF is in trouble on the network.

Looking at the shows on offer from that network, there's some evidence to support that theory. Heroes and Chuck - as much as I like them both (And I genuinely do like Heroes, despite the snark) - are both firmly in the populist category, far from the sometimes obtuse Lost or willfully discordant Dollhouse, for one thing, and also tend to stay away from the occasional uncomfortable questions offered by the otherwise-cuddly Fringe; the danger is never too real (whether in terms of tension or scale), the status quo always within one reset. That shouldn't necessarily be a surprise; NBC drama in general is softer and more comforting than what you'd see on Fox, after all, and the network has already taken enough hits in terms of attempts at SF edginess - even if the results were Bionic Woman and My Own Worst Enemy, in addition to Kings - that you could see why they'd want to turn away from the idea.

(It's strange that a network that can produce - and support, despite weaker ratings than expected at launch - shows like 30Rock and The Office is so resistant to doing the same thing to non-comedy shows that are equally less-likely to stick to stereotypes and expectations.)

Additionally, NBC has given up the 10pm slot by stripping Jay Leno's new show across the week at that time, surrendering what used to be their time slot for high profile serious drama. It's the time slot that, ideally, Kings would've been in, a sign that the show had more to it than the obscure advertisements that NBC managed to produce for it after being confounded by how highbrow and sophisticated it ended up being, but it's hard to stifle the thought that perhaps the Sunday time slot it started with was a sign that the show was already being dumped as a result of confusion over what to do with it.
All of this makes me concerned for Day One, Jesse Alexander's new series launching next year. Closer in tone to Lost than Heroes, and asking more of the viewer than an episode of Law & Order, Day One is the kind of smart, engaging show that Kings was... and, worryingly, Bromstad is already making comments about a willingness to consider the show a mini-event, as opposed to an ongoing series. To be fair, she's made these comments before, and Alexander has already responded by pointing out that "[i]f the audience is there, we'll stay on the air," but it's bad buzz that the show doesn't need before it's made it to air.

That said, Day One has a lot of things going for it that Kings didn't: A defining opening event, for one, giving the show a "what if?" hook that can be summed up in one line, as opposed to Kings' alternate world scenario. The potential for more crowd-pleasing action scenes than Kings offered, for another. And - currently, at least - a better time slot and the backing of a network that should know better than to move new series two weeks into their run because they're worried that ratings are all. Day One has the potential to be a great series in the same way that Lost is, or Battlestar Galactica was; I just hope that it's allowed to fulfill it.

McG on McG

McG is busily listening to critics of Terminator Salvation and setting up straw-man arguments to respond to:

"I listen to everything. It's interesting because a lot of people don't like me, but a lot of people just don't like my name. I can't take that too seriously because that's been my name my whole life. It's not something that I prescribed myself."

Really? Your parents really called you "McG"? You didn't come up with that one yourself?

Look, if your movie is bad, if your movie didn't live up to par, can't you just say "okay, this is what didn't work and why people felt this way was because...yada yada yada, we'll get it right next time."

Fair Use?

by Ben Parr

We’ve known that the Associated Press has some odd policies in regards to social media and the web for a while. The AP social media policy says that employees need to control not only what they said on Facebook, but what their friends said as well. We also got wind last week of the AP’s plan to find where anyone uses AP material online in an attempt to stop what it considers unauthorized use of its content. To say it’s causing controversy would be an understatement.

Part of the AP’s plan is to charge for use of its articles if you quote 5 words or more. They signed a deal with iCopyright in April last year to accomplish this goal. iCopyright is a widget that handles not only print and email, but republishing as well. Well the widget’s starting to get some attention, if only for the jaw-dropping starting price the AP is charging for quoting its stories: $2.50 per word.

The process goes like this: you copy and paste the excerpt or article you want to reprint. Next you pick your price, ranging from $12.50 for five words to $100 for 251 words or more. Here’s the price list, if you are not an educational or non-profit organization (they get a discount):

While this isn’t particularly shocking, it’s still part of a series of disturbing statements and actions the AP has taken in terms of web content.

________________________________________
This plan’s going in the wrong direction.
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Let’s first be fair to the AP before we heap on the criticism. They’re the source of a lot of our news and a valuable journalistic asset. They are also trying to protect their content from what they see as illegitimate copying and unfair use.

Still, the entire policy is a battle against the direction of progress, and the price point is way off. Social media helps spread information faster and to more people, which is the point of a wired service like the AP. The company’s complaint is that blogs and news aggregators (i.e. Google News) are taking its content and making all the advertising revenue. What they forget is that they provide a great deal of traffic and attention to content creators in the process.

We don’t know the answer to this conundrum. But we do know that the AP’s current plan is riddled with holes. Laws protecting fair use come into play and are essential to freedom of the press. The AP really needs to define their policy on fair use vs. reprinting. It also seems obvious that no small-scale publisher is going to pay $12.50 to quote a line from an article. when quoting and linking on the web are common practice.

What do you think? Is what the AP’s asking for fair? Or is the price absurd?

Hollywood Hubris

Over at io9, Greame McMillian wrote an interesting piece about James Cameron's upcoming Avatar and why it "can't fail"...

WHY "AVATAR" CAN'T FAIL

You can tell that a lot is riding on James Cameron's Avatar by the fact that people are already talking about the backlash. But are Cameron and the movie studio the only people who can't afford it to fail?

2009 has been a hard year for fans, let's face it. Two high-profile movies had successfully wooed them with trailers, internet teasers and big promises from press junkets, and then failed to deliver when they finally appeared. To add insult to injury, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was dealt a death blow after finally convincing doubters that it had a reason to exist that didn't rhyme with Bummer Blau. Even the renewal of Dollhouse couldn't stop the pain (And, for some, just made it worse in a "Why this and not that? Why is the universe so random, oh God, why?!?" way, to be honest), and even a summer full of Star Trek and Transformers was overshadowed by the potential hall of suck that GI Joe is rumored to be (Although it may surprise us all, and the anti-hate backlash has begun, bizarrely and happily enough). In all the rush to talk about the technical successes of Avatar, one thing seems to be being overlooked: We need this movie to be a success as much as anyone else does. The alternative will be too heartbreaking.

In a way, Avatar itself is almost secondary to the whole thing. I mean, yes; we want to see it and we're excited about seeing it and the footage that's been screened is what we're all talking about and getting excited by, but it's like Watchmen and Terminator Salvation; we're buying into the hype and the promise that this won't just be a good movie, but one that will change our lives in some way. There's every potential that the movie can be good, even amazing, and still seem like a disappointment (It'll be interesting to see what Watchmen will seem like, years later, when it can finally be viewed away from the hyperbole that surrounded it). It's not enough for Avatar to be a good movie anymore; it has to be the best movie starring Sam Worthington about alien warfare in space that we've ever seen.

Where did this pressure come from? Why do some films become avatars (heh) of the hopes and dreams of collective nerddom, and suffer from those raised expectations when the movie is finally ready to be seen by the world? Some movies actively seek to become the nerd grail - Hi, Tron Legacy! - in a way of building enough buzz to try and cross over into the mainstream through noise and net presence as much as anything else (Call it The Dark Knight effect, I guess), but it seems to me that, just like Amy Winehouse's love, it's a losing game: By baiting fans continually with teases and hints and promises that they've never seen anything like this before, they're actively creating a million fictional movies in a million different heads that will be more exciting and personal than the real thing could ever be. The only way to win by doing that is by doing something that isn't what fans expect; getting back to Dark Knight for a second, the structure of the movie and the machismo nihilism - while both were frustrating - came out of left field, and in surprising the audience, deflated whatever expectations they may have gone in with. Watchmen didn't have the luxury to try that, and Terminator Salvation... well, we don't like to talk about that anymore.

Getting back to my point, though; Avatar could still win. So much of the movie is still shrouded in secrecy, and it's that element that allows Cameron and his crew the opportunity to deliver something that we really won't be expecting. What people have seen so far shows that one of the concerns everyone had - that the visual effects would disappoint - isn't really a problem anymore, but even though finding that out raises the stakes slightly (Now we get the "They conquered the effects! What could go wrong now?!?" euphoria, for one thing), we still don't really know enough about the movie itself to come up with a version in our heads that we could fully expect to see.

I hope that they manage it, and that the finished movie lives up to all of their promises and hype; the last thing we need to finish the year is another example of our selfish dreams gone sour.

So... where does that leave the rest of us?

Chris Thilk Dismisses that “Twitter effect”

Here’s my biggest problem with all the emphasis and analysis that’s been devoted to Twitter and its perceived impact on movie marketing efforts: It’s the very definition of missing the point. Any studio that’s now throwing someone full time at Twitter with nothing else is probably missing half of, if not more, of the conversation. I’m not just talking about blog monitoring here, I’m talking about Flixster. I’m talking about Facebook. I’m talking about the dozen other places that people can post their opinions about the movie they just saw. Don’t focus on Twitter – focus on the online conversation. Do your research, figure out where the buzz around a movie seems to be centered. Figure out a conversation strategy that’s based on that research. Don’t get blinded by Twitter. Keep your eyes open for the whole thing.

- Chris Thilk (Move Marketing Madness)

On my shelf - Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series on Blu-Ray

At a time when spending should nothing but on an "as needed" basis, I have done something I have been preparing for since the trumpets announced it's creation months ago; I have bought Battlestar Galactica: The Completer Series on Blu-Ray and I have to tell you all, money well spent. (Although I do not consider it "complete" since the epilogue telefilmThe Plan was not included on it... errrr) I sold off almost all of my remaining DVD collection (the times have hit us all hard), including the individual seasons of Battlestar Galactica, in order to purchase this sweet gem.

Why on blu-ray? Well, let me address this question first by addressing a comment a fellow fan of the show had made. "What's the point? it all looks grainy" Yes, it does, but only in the first season and a half and only on purpose. In a recent interview about the release, Producer David Eick stated that they added the grain in the early seasons to make everything look more gritty. When the HD technology become available to them [the show] around the end of Season 2 they made the transition. After watching the earlier pre-HD seasons on blu-ray I can tell you first hand that a lot of the grain (but not all) has been cleaned up and the HD seasons are BREATHTAKING. The final episode of the series is so crisp and gorgeous that I thought Roger Deakins had shot it, but no, it was Stephen McNutt. He and his team did an amazing job, I simply can not wait until he works on something else that gave him that kind of freedom.

The other major reason to own the set is that is contains 95% of all the extras, special features and bonus content of the previous DVD releases as well as online videos and footage, over 10 hours worth, but it lacks the recent "Face of the Enemy" webisodes that aired online during the Season 4 mid-season break. Regardless, its worth the buy.



I also recently came across a copy of Season 4's Soundtrack- the best of the series to date- and some of its tracks have made their way onto almost all of my playlists. Bear McCreary is a musical genius. Sadly, he was overlooked by the Emmy board and not nominated (like most of the show every year so far) but trust me, he is a outstanding. I recommend that as well.

More "Oh no": Seattle Film Org Makes Urgent Plea: $70,000 by August 15th

by Eugene Hernandez via indiewire


The clock is ticking at Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum. Facing a budget shortfall the organization needs to raise $70,000 by August 15th or the fifteen year old non proft will be forced to cut programs and services.

Executive director Lyall Bush sent out a plea to his group’s ten thousand person email list just over 24 hours ago and he told indieWIRE today that more than $10,000 has already been donated.

“People are emptying their piggy banks,” Bush said this afternoon, noting that small donations have been coming in steadily the past day.

He’s both optimistic, but realistic about their ability to raise another $60,000 in two weeks.

“I am writing to you to ask for your help,” Lyall Bush wrote in his email message yesterday, “I am asking you for $10, the price of an average movie ticket. The Film Forum has done many great things this year, but much like other organizations our income is off by 30%. And while we remain scrappy and imaginative in tough spots, this time is different.”

Bush attributed the shortfall to a recent drop in donations and gifts from individuals and foundations in the wake of the ongoing international economic crisis. Meeting with his staff recently to decide how to address the financial problems, someone suggested putting out a plea to their constituents and they settled on asking just $10, the cost of one movie ticket.

Founded in 1995, NWFF screens some 200 films each year at a two-screen cinematheque that also includes office space, a library, worskshop space and a 1,000 title film vault.

“We are in business to fill a need,” Bush told indieWIRE today, touting NWFF “To provide an aesthetic, emotional and intellectual epxeorence, to suppprt an emerging film commmunity here. It’s a pretty beautiful thing [what] this organization has offered this city for 15 years.”

If they can’t raise the money to cover the budget, Bush said, the organization will face cutting its expenses for film retrospectives, filmmaker travel, classes for emerging and aspiring filmmakers and children, as well as equipment rental for filmmakers.

“Across the board, from our screens to our classes to our filmmaker support, the whole community would feel it and the whole city that we serve would feel it,” he said today, reiterating that solving the budget problem is within reach. “Ten dollars from ten thousand people solves our problems.”

As of late morning local time today, Bush estimaged that about 220 people had donated something so far, with gifts ranging from $7 to $500. The exact total raised since sending out the plea was $10,500.

“I am asking you urgently,” Bush concluded in his email plea to the community, “If you have benefited from our equipment, from the images on our screens, from our classes, from our network of people, from our famously great parties, we are asking you to say yes, you believe, yes you can give $10. Yes.”