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In July, TBS announced that, after seven seasons, "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" would not be returning, and Desus Nice and The Kid Mero disclosed that their Showtime show, "Desus & Mero," was ending. That news came just months after James Corden revealed that he'd be leaving "The Late Late Show" and about a year after Conan O'Brien decided to say goodbye to late-night after almost 30 years. If late-night television had a true golden age, we probably passed it sometime in the past decade. After a period of what looked like unchecked expansion, with new late-night shows popping up...

Please help bring sanity into my routine. The lock-down is beginning to act like a disease - not a horribly bad one - but a disease nevertheless. What programs are on Netflix (my brother's account, not mine) or Amazon Prime that are worth the time. I wish we could get Poirot here in the states. Thanks for any suggestions.

A record-low 16 percent of Americans said that watching television was their favorite way to spending the evening, according to a Gallup poll conducted in December. Since the 1960s, Gallup has periodically asked Americans what is their "favorite way to spend an evening." In 1966, watching TV hit a high of 48 percent. Since then, that option has been on a generally downward trend. [...] People 55 and older (25 percent) are more likely to say watching television is their favorite way to spend an evening than are people in the younger age brackets of 18-34 (10 percent) and 35-54...

It's house-cleaning time for the major networks as the cancellation ax falls in order to make for new additions in the fall. Some shows, such as NBC's "State of Affairs" and "Constantine," have been off the air so long that it feels they'd already been cancelled. But the formal notice falls just as hard even when if it is long expected.

The broadcast network announced “an unprecedented effort to discover fresh comedic voices” on Tuesday by launching a national campaign offering aspiring comedy writers from around the country the chance to pitch their sitcom ideas. [snip]

Got an idea for a sitcom? NBC wants to hear from you. The broadcast network announced “an unprecedented effort to discover fresh comedic voices” on Tuesday by launching a national campaign offering aspiring comedy writers from around the country the chance to pitch their sitcom ideas. “We are taking a bold, alternative approach in what we hope will uncover original comedy minds who are looking for a way to get into the television business,” said NBC entertainment president Jennifer Salke. The initiative, dubbed “NBC Comedy Playground,” pledges to reach beyond the traditional talent labs of film schools and comedy...

Without having even seen an episode, CAIR’s Los Angeles branch pressured the network to rethink the project. The activism of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has been well documented by many sources over the past several years. Whenever the group senses the slightest insult against the Islamic, it demands the offending party immediately cease whatever activity has been deemed inappropriate. While Christians and Jews routinely face hateful attacks on their faith, they are expected to absorb such abuse based on America’s First Amendment protections. Most believers understand this; and, though the pejoratives might sting, they generally respect the constitutional right...

- Big Hollywood - http://bighollywood.breitbart.com - Smut TV: Hollywood Doubles Down On Their Crusade to Sexualize Your Children Posted By Charlie Richards On February 3, 2010 A USA Today story informs us “Viewers are about to see full-frontal male nudity, heterosexual, homosexual and group sex, and graphic scenes rarely — if ever — seen on mainstream TV.” A few years back, I got a real taste for how silly Hollywood’s obsession with force feeding America a steady diet of filth had become. I sat across from a Fox Family exec, pitching programs for kids. I’d been in this chair many...

''Seinfeld'' scribe reports on pilot season -- Peter Mehlman writes about the annual ritual in which writers pitch shows to network execs -- and pray by Peter Mehlman TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2003 Spent afternoon lolling around the DreamWorks animation campus in Glendale, Calif. The place is like Berkeley, warm and full-blooded with youth and grass and dreamy. ''Mehlman!'' Wheel around: It's Jonathan Berry, junior member of the three heads of DreamWorks Television. ''Peter, I was going to call you. It's almost pilot season.'' Ignore the rumors. L.A. does have four seasons: earthquake season, fire season, riot season, and the most...

Agenda-driven Entertainment Posted: December 3, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com "When pitching shows for kids, I met with studios, networks and writers. The most disappointing were the writers – many of whom clearly didn't care what parents thought or how their work affected kids. I wish parents could meet them. If they did, there's no way they'd trust them to babysit their children. They wouldn't trust their kids' minds to these people for even 10 minutes." – Charlie Richards There's just no such thing as a passive sitcom. Most folks I know (OK, other than the ones I...

<p>POSTED: Jan. 8, 2003 9:15 a.m.</p> <p>WHITESBURG, Ky. (AP) - An Appalachian advocacy group placed ads in some of the nation's largest newspapers Tuesday, criticizing a proposed CBS reality TV series that it says is demeaning to rural people.</p> <p>The show, which is being called "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," places a poor Appalachian family in a Beverly Hills mansion. Casting for the show is being conducted in the Appalachian states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.</p>

At the Weather Channel, the heavy snow and bitter cold that swept the Northeast this winter was cause for celebration as its wall-to-wall coverage helped lift ratings to their highest level in years. But none of that mattered in the spring, when Verizon Fios dropped the channel from its offerings to more than 5 million subscribers. In a letter to customers, Verizon said that people want to get their reports from the Internet and apps on their phones these days, not TV.

Kenya Barris, creator of ABC’s “black-ish,” was motivated to write the comedy about an African-American family’s efforts to honor its heritage in part by the unreality of what he grew up watching on television. “I saw ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ and thought, ‘What part of New York is this?’” recalled Barris, who is black. “It’s not about being diverse. It’s about being true to the world.”His show comes 15 years after civil rights groups, galvanized by a lineup of new network series almost entirely devoid of minority characters, sought and ultimately won agreements from major broadcasters to put programs on the...

As Americans trimmed the tree last week and hung their stockings with care, many viewers turned away from TV screens. During a week of mostly reruns, total prime-time viewership of the Big Four networks dipped by 25 percent from the week before. Even so, CBS retained its customary lead position, claiming 12 of the top 20 programs, according to the Nielsen Co. Only football scored big, with NBC’s faceoff between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, the week's most watched program, seen by nearly 21 million viewers, and ESPN’s coverage of the Denver vs. Cincinnati clash drawing 16 million viewers to take third...

Commentary: Easy to watch anything on the Internet on your TV*****************************************************Thinking of C-SPAN from their Archives.*********************************By Carol Kopp Here’s what all the noise was about on Monday morning. At Netflix headquarters, people were cheering. At the big cable companies , they were shaking in their boots. At Amazon , one executive might have been trying to explain what went wrong. At Google , they were just quietly smiling. It was all about a thumb-size, $35 gadget called Google Chromecast that came out last week with little fanfare, almost as an afterthought to the announcement of a new version of its...

Speaking at a gathering of digital advertisers in New York City last night, Mr Schmidt refused to forecast when internet video would displace television, instead declaring: "That's already happened." "It's not a replacement for something that we know," he added. "It's a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms." YouTube recently surpassed the milestone of a billion unique users a month. Only the Google search engine and social network Facebook are frequented more often by those browsing the internet worldwide. However, the video site lags behind traditional television in the UK,...

If you stopped watching network television awhile ago because it had gotten so bad, you made the correct decision. It has continued to get worse. A few years ago, network television became dominated by cheaply made reality TV shows and talent contests, sitcoms with hyperactive manic characters, and socially liberal themes. Television has always pushed the edge when it comes to socially progressive themes. But at what point does it go too far? Perhaps when there are no other options left during prime time network TV. The top ten most popular TV shows last fall contained few choices for traditional...

Is Letterman that oblivious?

Which is worse? Network execs too scared to change a successful formula. Or network execs too willing to turn everything on its head. It's clear that Conan's version of NBC's cash cow The Tonight Show is just more of the same old/same old. And that's how O'Brien's longtime exec producer Jeff Ross and boss Jeff Zucker want it. But while they were golfing together this weekend in a foursome at Riviera Country Club (Ross, who just moved out here, is the better player, while Zucker has a 14 handicap and can barely keep up), they both worried how to prevent...

Heidi Pratt was tortured by NBC to the point she was "convulsively throwing up" -- that's what some people on the set of "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" are telling TMZ.