The Insider
Producer Tom Fontana tossed a party last week in honor of B.D. Wong, the actor (Law & Order) who proves to be an utterly charming, engaging, inventive and affecting writer in Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man…
In Depth
Breaking News Archives
Judge Rules on DirecTV and Pegasus A federal judge late Thursday limited the issues at trial in a dispute between No. 1 digital broadcast satellite provider DirecTV and Pegasus Communications and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative. The conflict arises out…
Breaking News Archives
Upfront Estimates May Set Record A buyers feeding frenzy is fueling a broadcast-upfront market that looks likely to set a volume record, with early network and advertising executives estimates exceeding $9 billion and perhaps reaching $9.3 billion. And NBC, the…
Breaking News Archives
Fox Declares Sweeps Victory Fox Entertainment Group Chairman Sandy Grushow declared a sweeps victory in adults 18 to 49 with one day left to go on a conference call with reporters Wednesday. Fox and NBC are tied at a 4.4…
Breaking News Archives
Moonves Touts CBS’s Sweeps Sweep CBS Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves, on a conference call with reporters today, declared a “sweeps trifecta” with the network’s May sweeps victory in total viewers. For the first time in 15 years, the network…
Missing in Action
Action hours, once a staple of first-run TV syndication, are going the way of the dinosaur. The latest evidence is the imminent cancellation of two shows, Adventure Inc. and Once A Thief. In addition, not one new scripted action hour…
A Player in Prime Time
ABC’s “50th Anniversary” is really a misnomer. Its prime-time programming dates back more than a half-century. The company began producing programs in 1946, piecing together an ad-hoc network of independent stations for shows such as Play the Game (1946) and…
Newsmakers
BROADCASTINGCheryl Young to director, human resources, WNBC-TV, New York, from human resources director, NBC Television Stations Division.Blanca Razo to news business manager, WBBM-TV, Chicago, from finance and operations manager, ABC Network News Bureau, Chicago. Also, Tom Schnecke to director of…
News Briefs
A potential showdown between some big AOL Time Warner shareholders and the media giant’s management was largely averted Friday, as the slate of 13 nominated board members won approval at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.Though the actual threat of a…
‘Dark Shadows’ Seized Viewers Like a Bat Out of Hell
As teenagers in the late ’70s, baby boomers raced home from high school or dashed to student union halls to watch ABC’s General Hospital. They were in practice. Ten years earlier they had run home from school to watch Dark…