Spotlight on: Monk
If it weren’t for Jackie Lyons, `’Monk” might never have seen the light of day. When Ms. Lyons, who used to develop drama series for ABC Television, jumped to USA Network in November 2000, she brought with her the idea…
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Spotlight on: SpongeBob SquarePants
Imagine this conversation among the executives at Nickelodeon: “How about a show about a yellow sea sponge who lives in an underwater pineapple? It’ll be a hit!”The premise sounds implausible, but `”’ has emerged as an unqualified success. In fact,…
Spotlight on: The Anna Nicole Show
She has been called busty, spacy, Twinkie-fattened and white trash. Anna Nicole Smith welters through her half-hour “reality” show each Sunday on E! Entertainment Television with a lawyer named Howard Stern, a devoted assistant named Kim, a frizzy poodle called…
Spotlight on: The Osbournes
One can’t really call “The Osbournes” a sitcom. It is, after all, unscripted. It’s not quite a reality show, either, because it’s sometimes edited like a sitcom. What the show is, though, is a hit, MTV’s biggest so far. Built…
Spotlight on: The Shield
`’The Shield” exemplifies the good cop/bad cop enigma, all rolled into one character. And audiences have taken a real liking to FX’s controversial police drama. The show is the top-rated original drama on ad-supported cable in total households and adults…
Broadcast feels HBO’s influence
Call it television’s new “Sopranos” tone.Come the second half of the TV season, you won’t need to look further than NBC to find HBO’s influence on its competitors, both broadcast and cable.That’s when the Peacock Network will debut “Kingpin,” a…
Cable’s signature shows
Behind the Music Years on air: 5, premiered Aug. 24, 1997, with “MC Hammer”Premiere ratings: “MC Hammer” premiered with a 1.4 household rating, representing 1 million viewers over 2 years of age (P2+).Ratings today: Prime-time installments averaged a 0.4 in…
The anatomy of a cable hit
When Roger Marmet is in an airport and hears passengers and passers-by talk about “Trading Spaces,” he knows he has a hit on his hands. The TLC show is indeed a hot property and has boosted the network’s ratings in…
Guest Commentary: Cable should get back to what cable does best
The beauty of cable television is without question its endless programming choices-a wide-open playing field where different genres and formats can flourish. In its early years cable offered “niche” channels designed to have their own distinct voices, separate from the…
‘Now what?’
To understand how a show like “Tanner ’88” could ever get off the ground it’s useful to know something particular about Bridget Potter, the HBO executive responsible for the project. During one of our early meetings, Bridget asked me if…