James Hibberd

Rounding our the four syndicated talk show presentations presented at press tour this July, Warner Bros. entry Dr. Keith Ablow was the focus of lunch Sunday afternoon, giving a picture of what his new show will be like.
 

A forensic psychiatrist and best selling crime novelist, Ablow is working the Dr. Phil daytime “Help me Help you” angle, but from a different perspective.

One critic asked Ablow why viewers should watch him instead of tuning into Dr. Phil. Calling Phil an “exceptional behavioral therapist,” Ablow noted solving people’s problems is “not just about here and now, but the past.”

“Since you’re being a bad father, tell me about your father,” Ablow used as an example.
Ablow said he wants to tell stories in each show, a skill he used with great success at the lunch, where he compellingly explained some of the circumstances that led the seemingly happy Scott Petersen down the path to kill his wife and unborn child.
He also has his crusades. Ablow said he would love to show people that pharmaceuticals are not the only solution to their psychological problems.

That prompted a few smiles at my lunch table, where one person held up the notepad swag that had been placed on our chairs. It was a Dr. Keith Ablow note pad, designed to look like a doctor’s scrip pad. To be fair, the drug being prescribed was Ablow himself, since the pad was emblazoned with “Prescriptions for life!” and a reminder to “Refill: daily.”

 Sony Pictures TV had a good turnout for its Greg Behrendt breakfast early Sunday morning, luring about 50 critics out of their beds for pancakes, bagels and lox.

One critic was tragically dressed in a cut up version of her “free to be critical” CW t-shirt, which made for an unfortunate “Flashdance” look that was tied together with her denim short shorts. If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m kind of over many of my TCA colleagues.

Anyway, back to Greg—who was pretty funny and engaging considering the hour and rising heat. As the promo clip told us, if Oprah is the queen of syndicated talk, Dr. Phil is your dad and Ellen is your sister, then Greg is your cool brother, ready to tell you like it is.

Proving that life doesn’t work out the way you always expect, Behrendt said he “came to L.A. in 1993 to be a rock star, and now I’m a contributor to Cosmo.”

Author, stand-up and former “Sex and the City” consultant, said he plans to be a “friend,” “facilitator,” and a “listener” on his upcoming daytime talk show, which he said will go beyond his “He’s just not that into you” moniker.

There were a few female critics publicly working through some of their men issues when they asked questions, which excited Behrendt but unsettled some of the rest of us.

Noting that he has been dumped plenty of times, Behrendt—who has been in recovery for 10 years—said there was a clear reason why he doesn’t write something similar targeted at the guys.

“Men don’t buy books,” he said. “They get drunk, stand on their lawn, and then the cops come.”

It seems hard to believe, but a chance encounter on the Ritz lawn in hundred-plus degree heat can be the highlight of the press tour.

That's what I realized Saturday night at NBC's all-star party, after I had spent a few mintues trying to cool off by rolling a beer bottle across my forehead.

"Look, it's Phyllis!" he squealed. Sitting at a table was indeed Phyllis Smith, who plays customer sales rep Phyllis, one of the brilliant supporting case members of NBC's "The Office." Plus, she was sitting with Leslie David Baker, who plays paper salesman Stanley.

We basically forced ourselves on the gracious pair, who gave us paper to wipe the sweat off our brows. Smith and Baker have been enjoying their "Office" rides and the attention that comes with it.

"I had a screamer in the Ralph's the other day," Baker said. "Oh, I had your screamer too," Smith said noting that the same fan had approached her and told Smith she had also met Baker.

Getting the feel of working a crappy office job wasn't hard for either actor. Native Chicagoan Baker worked a number of places in cluding a few gigs with psychiatric patients.

Smith, who is originally from St. Louis, had to deal with similar personalities in her last job -- she worked in a casting office. Viewers feel they really know the characters, both actors said.

Baker noted that fans come up to him and regularly tell him they know what his character is thinking in the frequent reaction shots the show uses to play up the comedy.

"They don't know what I'm thinking," Baker said. "Most of the time I'm just tired because of the 5 a.m. call."

“Deal or No Deal” host Howie Mandel had no desire to talk about his well-reported obsessive compulsive disorder with critics or on the air at his show’s press tour session Saturday. Mandel, for example is so germ-phobic he doesn’t shake hands with contestants, but instead bumps closed fists with them. “I do that with a professional therapist,” Mandel said of discussing his OCD. “I don’t need a national TV show.”

Viewers shouldn’t be judgmental of players on the show, which seems simple but is much more stressful when you’re staring down the chance to go home a millionaire, “Deal” executive producer Scott St. John said.

“When they are out there, their heads explode,” he said.

Mandel is not one to be risky with his own cash, he admitted, noting that despite working Las Vegas regularly, he has “never put a quarter in a [slot] machine.”

“I drive a hybrid,” he said.

But it’s not an act when Mandel expresses concern for contestants who look like they are about to make an expensive mistake on the show.

“I’m legitimately a nervous wreck,” he said. “I watch these people and I live vicariously through them.”

Longtime “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels surprised critics at the “30 Rock” press tour session Saturday when he let slip that due to “massive budget cuts” impacting all of NBC, the longtime late-night comedy sketch show was going to have to make do with much less in terms of its own budget. “That makes some decisions simpler or clearer,” he said, noting that as part of the transition on the show, head writer and cast member Tina Fey was leaving “SNL” after nine years to work full time on “30 Rock.” A replacement for Fey as head writer has not been named.

He noted that transition has always been a part of the show’s history, but the comment about budget cuts had critics rushing for a post-session tour with Michaels.

“SNL” has been on so long that Michaels has been through the budget cutting process “three or four times” in the past.

When asked what percentage of a cut the show is suffering, Michaels would only say “a budget significantly less than last year.”

“It is never pleasant,” he added, noting that “SNL” would have a smaller cast next season, but keep the same episode order.

“I made the decision to stick with the 20 shows, and cut everything back,” he said.

A large proportion of the critics who spoke up at the Prime Time Emmy Awards press tour session Saturday afternoon had their collective panties in a bunch.

The group had major issues with this year’s nominee list, which ignored some past Emmy favorites for newcomers that critics didn’t consider up to snuff.

Critics are not the only ones who share concerns about the new nomination process for the Prime Time Emmys, but I won’t go into that here since I wrote about it extensively in our June 10 dead tree edition, which you can access online:

http://www.tvweek.com/article.cms?articleId=30163

TV Academy Chairman and CEO Dick Askin was on the panel, and addressed pretty much all the issues I collared him on in my previous story.

The non-repetitive bright spot in the panel was this year’s awards show host, Conan O’Brien, who responded to one critic who wanted to know why in certain Emmy nomination panels, judges only view one episode of a series, considering television shows play out over 22 episodes or so per season.

The critic forgot that nominees like O’Brien do a lot more that 22 hours of programming.

O’Brien wanted to know if judges in his categories should be required to watch “all 180 episodes I made throughout the year.” He suggested that they would have to be “sent to some sort of center or camp” to get the complete O’Brien season experience.

“Every day they watch 15 episodes of the show, and are fed injections of protein, like veal,” O’Brien imagined.

Another critic wondered if O’Brien could share some of the gags he has planned for the Aug. 27 ceremony. O’Brien kept that to himself, warning that telling a joke too early comes with consequences.

“Comedy, she’s a fickle lady,” O’Brien said wistfully.

The extensive on-field football shots in the NBC drama pilot "Friday Night Lights" were the real thing from the lead actors, up until the moment there were supposed to get tackled, series regular Zack Gilford said at the show's press tour session Saturday afternoon.

"We're running every play from the snap basically until the tackle occurs," Gilford said.

One of the jobs for the pilot's second assistant director was assessing the four lead actors level of athletic talent, and shooting scenes for them accordingly, explained co-star Scott Porter.

The show is not only going to be about boys and their balls, said Connie Britton, who was also in the feature film of the same name.

Britton felt the female story lines weren't given their due in the film, but executive producer Peter Berg graphically promised her the small screen version would also profile the ladies.

"Peter drew blood and swore we would do it on the TV show," Britton said. After the session, I did a sit-down interview with Berg about the series. Look for it in the print edition of TelevisionWeek the week of July 31.

David Goldberg, the president of production company Endemol USA, has faith in his ABC reality series "The One: Making of a Music Star." He's going to need a lot of it , considering the show's debut ratings Tuesday, which gave the network what several media outlets estimated was ABC's worst premiere in history.

After his Saturday morning press tour session on the Endemol gamer "Deal or No Deal" for NBC, Goldberg said the "One" ratings are similar to the drubbing the show took when the British version premiered.

"The first show was pretty much a disaster and they were able to build it, almost triple the ratigns," he said. "Now they are in their fourth season. I'm not saying that's going to happen [in the U.S], but we're trying to learn from the mistakes they made and try to fix that."

Since the show is currently in production and incorporates live elements, Endemol "didn't have the liberty of shooting for six monts and having all this great promotion," he said. For on-air promos, ABC sued footage o the Spanish version of "The One," which made it impossible for the show to introduce characters.

A "George Lopez" as a lead-in didn't help either. If "One" flames out, don't feel too badly for Goldberg.

There are three Endemol game shows about to go into production for the broadcast networks. And besides a Spanish-language version of "Deal" planned for NBC Universal-owned Telemundo this fall, Goldberg is looking for a 2007 launch for another version of "Deal" in first-run syndication.

Dan Abrams is fine with leaving behind hosting the MSNBC show "The Abrams Report" to instead run the struggling cable news channel. I chatted with Abrams at the Keith Olberman breakfast Saturday morning at press tour to see how he's been faring in his new gig as network chief.

"If I was really going to miss it I wouldn't have done this," he said of jumping into the executive ranks.

"I haven't reached a point where I'm saying, 'Oh my goodness, what did I do?' So far, so good, although it was a sacrifice I knew was coming."

The escalating crisis in the Middle East is putting pressure on Abrams's schedule change to documentaries at 10 p.m. (ET) and 11 p.m., but Abrams said MSNBC is sticking to its new programming and covering the day's news.

"We also said when there's big news, we were goign to have a crash team ready to go, that that team has been busy at work, crashign, and allowing us to cover this story with some tape at night," he said. "We're doing it a little bit differently, trying to do it in the documentary-type mold, but also recognizing this is an enormous story of enormous importance."

Soon-to-be syndicated talk show host Megan Mullally was the headliner at NBC’s Press Tour lunch Friday, which was originally scheduled to feature burgers. But after getting word that rival daytime talker Rachael Ray and late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel served burgers at their respective lunch sessions earlier in the tour, NBC wisely switched to a lovely spread of pasta, salad and seasoned chicken breasts, thereby dodging the bullet of being endlessly called an also-ran on overly critical blogs (ahem).

One critic had Mullally eating out of the palm of his hand after his microphone went dead: She accommodated him by sauntering down off the small stage and sitting right down at his table, making for the most intimate Q&A of tour.

Besides a recap of what to expect in the fall for the show—a curtain that pays homage to classic TV shows, sketches, a live band, both celebrity and non-celebrity guests—Mullally said she may get some extra help in promoting the show.

Thursday was Press Tour field trip day, during which many of the flyover critics headed to the set of the ABC fire-crotch medical series “Grey’s Anatomy” with hopes of getting some quotes from Dr. McDreamy. 

Meanwhile, a few of us ventured over to a presentation at the focus-group testing facility in North Hollywood run by marketing company ASI. We were escorted into one of ASI’s two test theaters, where we were shown the dreaded dial-test devices the company uses to test the favorability of TV pilots. Our host explained to us to turn the dial depending how much we liked or disliked the pilot, and press the red button as if we were at home and had changed the channel due to lack of interest.It was clear we were going to screen something, but what could they get their hands on that most of us, if not all of us, had not already seen?

Turns out they went back in time at least five years, with help from one critic who scored a busted pilot that mercifully had never been widely viewed. The gem we tested was a UPN drama that goes back to former network chief Dean Valentine’s days at the soon-to-be-defunct network.

The pilot featured an undercover beach volleyball team with the pouty-lipped Lisa Rinna as its leader. After the tragic murder of one of Rinna’s team members that involved a revolver, a bikini top and roller blades, the “breaking all the rules” Rinna goes to a female prison to find her next protégé. Of course, there’s an all-girl cage fight.

This recap skips so many of the elements that made the pilot special (Daisy Fuentes!), but things got short-circuited fairly quickly once the pilot started to screen. Half way through the opening beach volleyball scene, several critics started yelling “red button!”

I, for one, stuck it out through the prison cage fight. 

When Aaron Sorkin, creator of NBC’s behind-the-scenes-of-a-late-night-sketch-show series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” was asked about the network’s other behind-the-scenes-of-a-late-night-sketch-show series at his press tour session Friday morning, he innocently replied, “I haven’t heard that title before.”

There’s no conflict between him and “30 Rock” creator Tina Fey, or creatively between the two series.

When the fall 2006-07 season begins, Ben Silverman will be able to say something no other executive producer can: he is the only guy in broadcast television who has a drama, comedy and reality series on the network schedules.

While he is returning with NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” and “The Office,” he’s debuting a six-year passion project, ABC’s “Ugly Betty.”

Ever since Silverman was an agent at William Morris, he’d been trying to get the project—an English-language adaptation of one of the most successful Spanish-language telenovelas in history—on U.S. television.

The first attempt was as a half-hour comedy, but the tone was off. Another write couldn’t find the voice. But once Silverman added producer Salma Hayek and writer Silvio Horta, things took off.

While “Betty” is plenty campy and fun, there are some serious issues of race and class being discussed in the series, Silverman said after the show’s TCA session Tuesday. The modest Latin American family that title character Betty comes from is in stark contrast to the WASP-y media dynasty her boss stands for. For Silverman, it is a true picture of New York City.

“People cast in a hyper-P.C. way,” he said. Every arresting officer is Latin, every judge is black, and every criminal is white. They kind of reverted to a reverse PC. We’re showing a real issue here, in that her dad has issues with the HMO, they live in row houses in Queens. We’re not pretending to populate one world. The fact is there are issues that relate to being a first-generation immigrant that go deeper. It’s not like you wake up in America and you’re Warren Buffett. We want to show there are elements that make certain journeys harder, and to reflect that in an honest way. I just hate that you can’t have a dialogue. I’d rather live in the bull’s eye of ‘why are you calling it that’ or being provocative, if it enables people to have a conversation.”

The press tour session for the ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11” was a sober affair Wednesday afternoon, so sober, in fact, that network lackeys in the back of the Ritz Carlton ballroom didn’t clap after the video highlight reel.

A scripted version of the extensive report filed by the bipartisan 9/11 commission, the miniseries profiles the 10-year history that led to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the intelligence failures that played a part in allowing the attack to take place. Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, the commission co-chair, was there to fill critics in on what he thinks is the government’s lack of response to the commission’s recommendations, which unsettled many in the crowd.

One critic asked if the production, which was filmed in a number of locations around the world including Morocco, faced any anti-American sentiment.

“Overall it was a great experience,” director David L. Cunningham said. “In terms of the anti-American sentiment, maybe a little in Canada, but that’s about it.”

Critics at the press tour aren't exactly the most tactful bunch.

The critic that broached the question at the "Men in Trees" press tour session Wednesday afternoon was a little bit more delicate than I was in my headline, but series lead Anne Heche had no problem stepping up and answering the tough questions.

He started gently, asking for a "status report" on how Ms. Heche was "doing."

"It seems like you're totally … ," he paused, searching for the most respectful word.

"Sane?" Heche suggested.

"Sane," he confirmed, with more than a little relief that Heche herself had said it.

"I'll let myself speak for myself," she said confidently. "Obviously I'm sitting up here with a group of incredible people.

"I've worked very hard to get here," she said. Clearly, Heche is a long way from the place she was in 2001, when her alien language skills and penchant for skulking around California's Central Valley waiting for galactic visitors was making international headlines.

Besides Heche's improved mental status, a klatch of male critics couldn't let go from asking about the appearance of a raccoon in the pilot, which profiles a New York self-help book writer (Heche) who finds herself in a male-dominated small town in Alaska after she breaks up with her fiancé.

"Trees" creator Jenny Bicks confirmed that it was a real raccoon and not a CGI creation. The raccoon, Elvis, got rave reviews from Bicks for his professionalism.

"If anyone wants to hire a raccoon call me," Bicks said.

"Best actor I have ever worked with," Heche added.

But Elvis also had a double for a scene where his character had to run quickly. A terrier, Boomer, was a double for Elvis, complete with raccoon suit.

"He was local hire," Bicks said of the Canadian Boomer.

Bicks quickly realized she had missed an opportunity with the session.

"It's a mistake they are not here," she said of Boomer and Elvis.

Another critic asked co-star John Amos, who has seen his character killed on several series, if he was nervous that might happen again now that he's playing the owner of a local puddle-jumper airline.
When Amos protested, the critic said "Well, you do fly a small plane."

Amos said he thought the plane might shake in the third season when it's time to renegotiate his contract, but Bicks assured Amos his plane would be flying safely for a long time.