Tag / The Tonight Show

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NBC Upfronts

For the first time in 23 years, the NBA is returning to NBC and that was the focus of their new fall schedule, released on Monday.  The week gets off to a familiar start with The Voice returning for another round on Mondays, followed by Brilliant Minds, the sophomore medical drama starring Zachary Quinto.  Tuesday will start off in September with a second installment of The Voice followed by On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, an unscripted series where the boorish Tonight Show host staffs a premier marketing agency with “the most creative, clever and competitive go-getters he can find.”  When the NBA season begins in October, it will take over the night.

Wednesday and Thursday continue to be dominated by Dick Wolf franchises, with his three Chicago series running back-to-back-to-back on Wednesday and the two original entries in his Law & Order franchise the following night.  Thursday wraps up with another season of The Hunting Party.  On Brand with Jimmy Fallon will continue on Friday, followed by a two-hour block of Dateline.  The weekend is dominated by football, with the Big Ten or Notre Dame on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday.

Come November, things will shift again.  The two-hour Monday edition of The Voice will be shrunk to one hour to make room for the displaced Tuesday comedy block, which will be anchored by sophomore hit St. Denis Medical.  The Friday comedy block with also return, with fellow sophomore Happy’s Place back to lead off the night.  At this point, the second half of both hours is undetermined.

On the bench, NBC has three comedies and one nature documentary series. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins reunites Tracy Morgan with Executive Producer Tina Fey in a comedy where a disgraced former football player is on a mission to rehabilitate his image.  Stumble is from Jeff and Liz Astrof.  The final comedy is an untitled community center project from Sierra Teller Ornelas. In Surviving Earth, viewers will go back in time to see how life not only survived cataclysmic events but thrived.

Shows gone from our television sets include Found, The Irrational, Suits LA, Night Court and Lopez vs Lopez.

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ABC Upfronts

ABC is shaking up their lineup this fall, with changes on every night save Monday and Thursday.  The week gets off to a familiar start with Dancing With The Stars, followed by The Good Doctor.  Roseanne returns for another season to kick off Tuesday nights, followed by The Kids Are Alright, about a traditional Irish-Catholic family navigating the turbulent 70s, then black-ish and Splitting Up Together staying put.  The night ends with The Rookie, bringing Nathan Fillion back to the network in a familiar setting.

Wednesday starts the same, with The Goldbergs, American Housewife, and Modern Family starting the night, followed by Single Parents, a comedy about, well, single parents starring Taran Killam and Leighton Meester.  The night is capped off by A Million Little Things, about a group of Boston friends who re-examine their lives when one of them dies.  Thursdays stay exactly the same, with the three Shondaland shows remaining in place.  A revamped Friday kicks off with the re-located Fresh Off The Boat and Speechless, followed by Child Support and 20/20.  Sunday goes all reality, with a junior edition of DWTS sandwiched between America’s Funniest Home Videos and Shark Tank.  The night ends with The Alec Baldwin Show, the first prime time talk show since the unfortunate attempt to keep Jay Leno happy while Conan O’Brien hosted The Tonight Show.

Agents of SHIELD will return in summer of 2019, and American Idol and For The People will return at some point.  Also on the bench for mid-season are The Fix, a legal drama from Marcia Clark starring Robin Tunney, Grand Hotel, from executive producer Eva Longoria, and Whiskey Cavalier, about a partnership of FBI and CIA agents played by Scott Foley and Lauren Cohan.  The one comedy is Schooled, a spin-off of The Goldbergs.

Cancelled shows never to be seen again are Alex Inc., The Crossing, Deception, Designated Survivor, Downward Dog, The Great American Baking Show, Kevin (Probably) Saves The World, Inhumans, The Mayor, The Middle, Once Upon A Time, Quantico, Scandal, Somewhere Between, Still Star-Crossed, and Ten Days In The Valley.

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2014 Emmy Awards – Reality and Movies

Emmy_statueWith the Emmy Awards scheduled for Monday night, here’s day two of my predictions for the awards, today focusing on reality shows and made for TV movies.  I likely have seen not seen most (any?) of these, so I will probably not have an informed decision, but when has that ever stopped me.

Outstanding Reality Show Host

Jane Lynch, Hollywood Game Night

Betty White, Betty White’s Off Their Rockers

Tom Bergeron, Dancing With the Stars

Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, Project Runway

Cat Deeley, So You Think You Can Dance

Anthony Bourdain, The Taste

Tom Bergeron has won this in the past, and that seems like as good a reason as any for him to win it again.

Outstanding Reality Show Competition

The Amazing Race

Dancing With the Stars

Project Runway

So You Think You Can Dance

Top Chef

The Voice

The Voice broke The Amazing Race‘s winning streak last year, but I’m thinking the CBS adventure show takes back the crown this year.

Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series

The Colbert Report

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Jimmy Kimmel Live

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon

Real Time With Bill Maher

Saturday Night Live

The Colbert Report broke through last year and wrestled the award away from his pals at TDS.  Given that the show will be wrapping up soon so that Colbert can move over to CBS to take over for Letterman, I would think he will win another award as a going away gift.

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Book 1 (of 52) – The War For Late Night

The War For Late Night - Bill Carter

Jay Leno is a sad individual.  That is the one main takeaway from this, the tale of the late night showdown of 2009-2010, and author Bill Carter’s previous work, The Late Shift, which chronicled the first occurance when Leno’s people ousted Carson from The Tonight Show.  Jay is quoted numerous times as saying his only purpose in life is to “tell jokes at 11:30,” no matter who, or what, gets in the way.

In 2004, NBC had a (good) problem: two successful late night hosts who both wanted to host the same show.  In an effort to keep Conan O’Brien from moving to ABC or FOX and competing directly against Jay Leno, they promised him that Jay would retire and he would get The Tonight Show in 5 years.  This book tells the familiar story of what happened after those 5 years, when a hurt Jay Leno wouldn’t (couldn’t?) just walk away, a naive Conan O’Brien thought that his loyalty counted for something, and a happy David Letterman watching it all unfold from the sidelines.  We all know how the story ended, with Jay back on The Tonight Show and Conan off on TBS, but the destination is not as intriguing in this case as the journey.

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Book 3 (of 52) – The Late Shift

The Late Shift - Bill Carter

 Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  The host of the Tonight Show changes, NBC executives start to think they’ve made a huge mistake, and, while the new host is on the air, offers the job to someone else.  No, this isn’t the story of Jay Leno stealing the Tonight Show back from Conan O’Brien, but the original story of Jay Leno stealing the Tonight Show from Johnny Carson and then fighting off David Letterman.

It is a fascinating story, even more so within the context of nearly the same thing playing out 18 years later.  Jay Leno is the permanent guest host of the Tonight Showand his manager is working furiously to push Johnny Carson out of the way.  When Carson announces he is retiring, Jay had just signed a contract guaranteeing him the top spot.  Meanwhile, as NBC’s other late night star, Letterman assumed he would move up an hour once Carson retired.  NBC execs, wanting to placate both stars, split down the middle.  When Jay’s manager goes crazy, starting booking wars and alienating publicists, NBC decides they made a mistake a offer the job to Letterman, who instead decides to leave his home of over a decade and start over at CBS.

The behind the scenes look at these shows, and the men who host them, is intriguing.  Jay Leno comes off as someone with extreme mental disorders.  He is loyal to a fault, either to his manager who almost sabotaged his career or to the network he thinks of as home.  He seems to have trouble dealing with people in an adult manner.  His life appears to revolve around two things: hosting the Tonight Show and fixing old cars.  He is married, but it comes off as though it was done not out of love, but because when you reach a certain age, you are supposed to be married.  The famous story of Leno hiding in a broom closet for hours so he can eavesdrop on a call between NBC executives, and the glee it brought him showing off that he knew things he shouldn’t, makes you feel sad for him. 

Letterman comes off as the more together person, but that really isn’t saying much.  He is described as a bundle of neuroses, who is never satisfied with a performance and is overly critical and dismissive of his own skills.  He spent years bashing the network and his bosses and yet expected them to just know how much it would have meant to him to be the host of the Tonight Show.  The book ends with a triumphant Letterman on top, his Late Showon CBS winning the ratings war for the first year plus.  Unfortunately, for Letterman and his fans, this started to go the other way with Jay Leno, behind a resurgent NBC primetime lineup, overcoming Dave and holding on to the top for years.

As we know, the sequel would happen 18 years later, and Bll Carter is back with the sequel.  Hopefully, I don’t have to wait 18 years to read it.