ARTICLE - Ain't So 'Grimm' in Portland, NBC

Portland, OR is my current home town. The feverish excitement the local film and television buffs have been exuding over having a third major television production shooting locally, namely NBC's newest offering Grimm, has been quite joyous in its fervor; (Portland is also home to the irreverent comedy Portlandia and TNT's crime drama Leverage). Grimm is the biggest fare yet, as it is a network show with all the customary high cost infrastructure a studio and network bring to their productions. And Portland could not be more excited.

What is perhaps even more exciting than that, is the size of the audience the premiere drew on Friday night. A Friday night that saw a Game 7 of the World Series being aired opposite. For those that know what this means, it had a 2.1/6 rating. Most would have been shocked if it hit 1.9./5 2.1?! Great news for NBC and great news for Portland, OR.

Nellie Andreeva of Deadline.com perhaps put it best:

It was by far the highest-rated NBC drama premiere this season and the highest-rated Friday non-sports telecast on any network since Dec. 31, 2010 (ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve). For NBC, it was the highest 18-49 rating in the Friday 9 PM slot in almost 2 years. And Grimm accomplished that with no help from its lead-in, the final season premiere of Chuck, which managed only a 1.0/3 in 18-49 and 3.4 million viewers, a series low.

How sweet it is. How sweet exactly for us television and film lovers who want to find work in the industry and would love to do so locally (i.e. me)? As a good friend of mine, one of the bigwig local production heads here in Portland put it; these things are like snowballs. The more you can get local talent experience, the more of a base you can sell to other productions looking for a home. The more other productions come and rave about their experience, the more other producers and execs will hear about it and come to the area because of what they've been hearing. These things build on each other. Portland is poised right on the verge of becoming the next Vancouver, Canada. If our legislature continues its dedication to drawing productions in with tax incentives and if they increase the base of those as an obvious way to infuse, literally millions of dollars, into the local economy then the future for Oregon's film and television production looks not very Grimm at all, but very very bright!

Go Portland!

ARTICLE - Remember 'Friends,' Content is King

Recently I began to rediscover what is likely the best 3-camera (more commonly know as "situation" comedy or "sit-com") television program ever. Friends. The premise was brilliantly simple. 6 friends living in New York. It was Universal. We all knew people like the characters, and we could all be identified as one or a combination of them. It was extremely well written. Its universality still holds up against a decade of time. And it was also, in fairness, extremely well acted. The best episodes are easily those with as little fanfare as possible, where it's just the six friends in Monica's apartment. Like a great piece of comedic theater.

I could easily make the argument that Friends  killed the 3-camera sitcom because it was just so dang good. See Modern Family's, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm's and the format for 'just about every comedy on television now''s single camera format and their corresponding popularity and the ratings for what three camera comedies are now airing. (How I met Your Mother being, admittedly, the shining star to date with 2 1/2 Men quickly deflating as the novelty of Ashton Kutcher wears off).

But none of them are Friends. That piece of genius was the brain child of Co-Creater Marta Kauffman. And it wasn't so long ago that between Friends and Seinfeld, NBC was the king of Thursday and the king of the ratings race among networks. It was a good time to be an NBC executive, I'm sure. But .. things have changed. NBC is now consistently among the bottom of ratings in overall, the key 18-25 demo and the adult 25-59 demo.

So, I must admit, I was slightly taken aback when it was announced today that Marta Kauffman just landed a huge deal over at NBC rival ABC.  Selling two premises for new shows: A kitchen musical, appropriately titled The Kitchen Musical and The Red Band Society based on young hospital patients. I'm not surprised she sold them, but that she sold them to ABC (in what sounds like a very lucrative deal for her btw). Because it was also announced today that NBC bought an untitled comedy from Andrea Savage (who?) and Jay Roach (of Meet the Parents) which is described as:

The untitled comedy centers on a woman who prides herself on her humor and edge and refuses to become typical after becoming a parent for the first time.

In other words, very similar to a million other comedies that have been tried and have failed a dozen times over. See every comedy bought this last season, or any other season, that was created by a female.

So ABC paid handsomely for what seems to be very "unique" content that you will not be able to find anywhere else, from a former NBC creative that gave NBC one of the biggest shows of all time, on the same day NBC bought a run of the mill comedy from Savage/Roach.

MY PREDICTION: One of the two shows by Kauffman becomes a hit. Possibly both. Savage/Roach's comedy might be ordered past the pilot if they can get a good writing team together, but the lack of originality in the premise keeps audiences away and it doesn't make it past the first season. If it even gets picked up for series.

Oh NBC. You were once must watch TV. What happened?  

UPDATE (3:00 pm): NBC buys Jim Gaffigan (who I love) "Family Comedy." 


Gaffigan will write and star in the project based on his life as a lazy man, married to a strong woman, raising 4 children in a 2 bedroom apartment in New York City.


Hm. ... That sounds REALLY unique doesn't it? (note my tone of sarcasm). NBC's one hope here is Gaffigan has enough of a fan base to pull in an audience. And he does have some stalwart fans, I'll give him that. But so did Hank Azaria, and that couldn't save a much more interesting and unique show about agents - Free Agents. *wah wah.* 

ARTICLE - Netflix. WTF Are You Guys Doing?!?!

As I am writing this, it's approximately 9:30 am on America's west coast, 12:30 pm on America's east coast and 1:30 am in Tokyo, Japan ... and the Netflix stock price has fallen $41.35 to $77.53, which is the price it was at in early 2010. That is a one day loss of 35%. 35%!!! Are you kidding me?! But you want to know what's even scarier - Netflix stock has fallen 72% over the course of the past three months.

Holy Crap!!!

Some of that has to do with some inside baseball, analysts of all stripes downgraded their projections for Netflix futures rather severely today. But, let's be honest, these guys didn't just downgrade their projections for the hell of it. The company lost 800,000 subscribers in the third quarter, that's over 250,000 more than they projected. But, what does seem to be counterintuitive, and worth noting, is the company has made about 1.8x as much as they did the previous year at this time, while revenue has increased 49%. But, honestly, analysts see the writing on the wall. These short term gains are nice, but long term. Netflix business model is deemed "DOA."

So what is Netflix doing to stem the tide?  Apart from tearing itself apart with now infamous price increases and announcements of company splits (DVD and Streaming Services) that are only then retracted days later - namely the ill fated, poorly named, poorly conceived and shockingly ill advised Qwikster announcement.

Well it's going international of course.  HA!  Please. Sorry guys, the DVD market isn't all that different in Europe and Asia and competition has already established their ground.

MY TAKE: Here's the long and the short of it.

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, is no fool. He's not a blubbering idiot, as the media has been so quick to deem him. Reed Hastings knows he's on a sinking ship. He actually knew it before the rest of us. And hence the attempts to save it.

He has tried price increases (which have as of now seemed to increase revenue at the expense of customer base). Why the increases in subscription prices? Some of which were unheard of 60% increases? Because they worked. See increases in earnings and revenue as discussed above.

But. The costs for content are also rising, and will rise sharply in the near future, as more of the content providers (studios, networks and other similar distribution companies) want a bigger chunk of what was a very profitable pie. The executives at these companies feel, and not necessarily unfairly so, that Netflix was built on their backs as they provided content via licensing agreements that were very lopsided because no one knew if Netflix was going to work when they were negotiated. And many of those licensing agreements are up for renewal and renegotiation. Starz, for example, a content provider for much of the "oscar caliber" films on the streaming service is already planning to be dumped by Netflix because of an inability to agree on price structures.

Starz content, btw, is most of what I watch when I stream a film off of Netflix. They may be adding another name to the list of 800,000.

So Reed Hastings knew he had to act. And he did something rather novel and creative. And he did what you want your CEO to do in these situations, he took an informed gamble. He decided splitting the company into two distinct services, streaming and DVD, would be the best way to save the Netflix brand. Then they could sell off one of the services and focus on the other. Some have speculated it was going to be the streaming to Amazon, others speculated DVD because it is no longer a viable business model. Now it's neither becuase of the massive backlash that ensued. Hastings gambled. And he lost. It happens.

Oh wait? What was that? DVD is dead? Yeah. You read that correctly. DVD is no longer a viable business model. Not DVD by mail. DVD. In fact, Reed Hastings himself has said "DVD will one day soon be like AOL dial up."

Streaming is the future. And Blu Ray is the now (and for Netflix to completely reinvest itself in Blu-Ray would be a gargantuan undertaking at this point. Almost too much. But it may be what they have to do in the end). But for a business that has created an empire around what is very soon going to be an outdated and outmoded technology, the future does look grim.

And the captain has tried every maneuver in his arsenal to avoid that iceberg, right ahead. But when the seagulls fly away and leave you all alone in the open sea, much like a 70% drop in your stock price, you know the end is nye. Time to man the life boats.

UPDATE (11:15 am): CNBC Video on Netflix, its competition and its future. They think people will come back eventually. I still have my doubts (pay special attention to Amazon's new streaming service and how it will impact Netflix's market share).

ARTICLE - Why Are Zombies Better Than Stewardesses?

An interesting thing happened last night in the television world. In fact, a record was set. "The Walking Dead" set a new record for cable viewers in the key 18-25 demographic. It knocked out much of the more accessible network competition, but most interestingly, OBLITERATED ABC's "Pan Am." You can read more about the ratings race here.

What does this all mean? Here's my take:

Audiences are finally becoming slightly tired of retread and recycled ideas. Pan Am, is essentially, "Mad Men" in a plane. But Pan Am's high flying cocktail has also been severely watered down to make it more palatable for the wider ranging and more protected network audience. Making it, frankly, less appealing to a very loyal Mad Men audience.

A Mad Men audience, by the way, that had to live through some very harrowing moments this summer while AMC found its sea legs as the new power house of interesting, unique and extremely popular content. Its negotiations with Showrunners and Creators of their new shows (AMC's hit line up includes: "Breaking Bad," "Mad Men" and "The Walking Dead") were not model. All of its hits are coming back, but not without some bad press first and, even in one case, some lost talent in the form of a showrunner. The Walking Dead's success despite this bad press, the seeming lack of network support for the creatives and fairly major budget cuts is a good sign for the rest of AMC's line up. But the networks should have been shaking in their booties as they watched the zombies march.

Well, maybe not shaking but they hopefully took notice. Studios and Networks like sure bets. Shows and movies are expensive when done on the scale they do it on. They want to know the ground they're treading is one that will lead to profit. But here's the thing. "Pan Am" is not a horrible show. It's actually kind of ... good. But audiences last night said, 'we would rather watch this completely unique thing that we cannot watch anywhere else. That is unlike anything playing anywhere else. That is well crafted and well conceived. Something fresh.'

Keep an eye on the numbers. If audiences continue to trend towards "unique," then this could be a real rude wake up call for the most recent calculus of "profit driven creative content via the sequel/retread" that has dominated Hollywood for the past ten-fifteen years.

Creatives rejoice and long live the zombies!

UPDATE (10/25/11 11:30 am): AMC announces it will renew "The Walking Dead" for third season and international audiences break pay-tv records as they flock to the zombies.