Tag Archives: The Blacklist

5 Predictions From TV Networks Execs Last Year That Were Way Off

The networks will play a variety of pop hits during their TV upfront presentations next month, but the only song that really should be part of the soundtrack that is The Lego Movie’s “Everything is Awesome.” After all, each of the the network executives who take the stage will be full of optimism that their new crop of shows will finally be the ones that take them to the top.

But as I wrote at Adweek, everything is not awesome, even for the top network in adults 18-49 (which will again be ABC). Before we hear a new batch of (at least partially) empty upfronts promises, I looked back at the five worst predictions from last year’s presentations. Among them: then Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly’s declaration that Jump of the Century and Hieroglyph will be airing soon on the network:

Reilly was far from the only one to disappear from Fox shortly after the upfronts. He touted two programs to advertisers that were canceled before they ever made it to air: straight-to-series pickup Hieroglyph (Fox pulled the plug a month later) and Jump of the Century, in which two rival stuntmen would attempt Evel Knievel’s failed jump across Idaho’s Snake River Canyon (it was scrapped last July). “The power of broadcast really shines through when there’s urgency to view,” Reilly said of Jump of the Century. Of course, it also really shines through when the shows are actually broadcast.

There’s a lot more silly predictions where that came from, so sure to read the rest of the story.

5 Predictions From TV Networks Execs Last Year That Were Way Off

‘Scandal’ vs. ‘The Blacklist’: Inside This Season’s Biggest, Bloodiest Time Slot Battle

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Red Reddington and Olivia Pope are two of TV’s most fearsome, cunning figures, and woe to the person who ends up opposite either of them on the battlefield.

But starting tonight, they’ll be facing off against each other, as NBC shifts The Blacklist to Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, opposite ABC’s Scandal, setting up this season’s biggest, bloodiest time slot battle: NBC’s top-rated scripted show in adults 18-49 (Blacklist averages a 3.32 rating this season), pitted against ABC’s number two scripted show in 18-49 (Scandal’s 3.21 average is behind only Modern Family‘s).

Yes, the brutal time slot competition seems somewhat illogical, especially given that NBC is the number one network in 18-49 this season, in part because of Blacklist’s robust Monday night ratings. But NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt explained last month that Blacklist offers NBC its best chance to claw back into contention on Thursday nights, which the network had dominated for years. “It’s an important night for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is it is a great, desirable night for advertising,” he said.

Indeed, it’s essential for the broadcast networks to be competitive on Thursday, which is primetime’s most lucrative night. While Thursday actually has the week’s third-lowest viewership, advertisers of movies and other weekend-themed products pay handsomely to run their commercials on Thursdays, and NBC is tired of missing out on its share of the dough.

Thursdays “used to be the big night of television for NBC,” said Greenblatt, as the network’s Must-See TV lineup ruled the Nielsens for decades. But as NBC’s stalwarts went off the air — Friends in 2004, Will and Grace in 2006, ER in 2009 — the network lost its luster on the night. Now Thursdays are more like a graveyard for NBC, riddled with dead shows walking like The Michael J. Fox Show, Bad Judge and A to Z. “Putting comedies we love there and having them fail started to feel like the definition of insanity,” entertainment president Jennifer Salke said last month.

This isn’t the first time a network has shifted a big show into Thursday night to successfully establish a foothold there. In 1990, Fox moved The Simpsons from Sunday to Thursday, opposite the then top-rated The Cosby Show, and the animated series more than held its own for years, before returning to Sundays in 1994. As CSI began taking off in its first season, CBS made a midseason shift in 2001, relocating it from Fridays to Thursdays, where it dominated for the next decade. And when Grey’s Anatomy returned for its third season in 2006, ABC moved it from Sundays to Thursdays, where it helped lay the foundation for what ultimately became its powerful TGIT lineup.

“It’s a risky, but necessary, move for us to make,” said Greenblatt. “The only way to really reinvigorate that night is to jumpstart it with something like The Blacklist. If you don’t start that move at some point, you’ll never get there.”

And both shows arrive at tonight’s battle loaded for bear. NBC gave The Blacklist its coveted post-Super Bowl berth, where Sunday’s episode drew a series-high 25.72 million viewers (and an 8.4 rating), and ended with a cliffhanger that will be resolved in tonight’s episode. The show also is running a $25,000 sweepstakes for viewers who watch tonight; in essence, NBC is paying viewers (well, one viewer, at least) to tune in to its Thursday debute.

Meanwhile, Scandal returned from its midseason hiatus last Thursday with one of the show’s best episodes ever, featuring a tour de force, give-her-the-damn-Emmy turn from star Kerry Washington which also ended in a cliffhanger that will pick up tonight. That episode also generated 527,335 tweets, one indication that it should likely have the edge in live viewing among audiences that watch both shows.

That’s one of the reasons that Greenblatt doesn’t expect Blacklist to win the ratings battle, at least at first. “I expect it’s not going to be everything we hope it’s going to be right off the bat, but I also think you have to plant the seed and over time, grow it and water it and nurture it, and hopefully rebuild it,” Greenblatt told me.

That said, he’ll only be so patient, especially if Blacklist’s ratings quickly crater. “If it doesn’t work, and I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but if it’s a disaster, we won’t just live with it,” Greenblatt told me. “We’ll try to correct it, sooner than later.”

Let the battle begin…

NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt on Super Bowl Promo Plans, His Risky ‘Blacklist’ Move and ‘SNL 40’

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When you’re the first place network in the 18-49 demographic, there’s nowhere to go but down. But NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt likes the view from on high, and doesn’t plan on relinquishing the top spot anytime soon. And thanks to the huge events lined up February, he likely won’t have to. First up: Super Bowl XLIX, this Sunday.

Then, two weeks later NBC will air SNL 40, a three-hour live special celebrating Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary. Plus he’s making a huge gamble by moving The Blacklist, NBC’s top-rated scripted series, from Monday nights after The Voice to Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, where it will square off against Scandal beginning next week.

Before diving into NBC’s biggest month of the year, Greenblatt spoke with TV & Not TV about the network’s plans for February — and next season.

You’ve got the Super Bowl on Sunday. How will you be promoting your shows to an audience of 100 million-plus?

It’s one of the great things that we have every three years, and we couldn’t be happier to have it this year as we go into this midseason with all these new shows. To have that huge audience see these promos is a great thing. We try to promote everything that we can, and hopefully there’s retention. There’s a lot of stuff going on that day for people, but I know the commercials actually are embraced by the audience, so hopefully we’ll also get some of that love. We also are making new, fresh Super Bowl commercials for many of our shows. There’s a special Blacklist commercial, there’s a special Voice commercial and I hope they’ll be noticed just like the great Budweiser and Pepsi commercials that are in there.

Super Bowl XLIX coordinating producer Fred Gaudelli told me it will be a “huge disappointment” if the Super Bowl doesn’t end up as the most-watched telecast in history. Do you agree?

Everyone’s fixated on record-breaking and numbers and stuff. Even if we don’t break the record — like we didn’t with Peter Pan and we didn’t with the Golden Globes this year — to aggregate 100-plus million people for an event like that for all those hours, is going to be phenomenal. Whether it’s 100,000 viewers more than last year, or 2 million less!

You made a good case for why you’re moving The Blacklist to Thursdays opposite Scandal, and why you need to be patient to build the night back up. That said, if the show is soft on Thursdays and Mondays are hurting without it, how tough will it be to stuck to your plan?

We’ll have to play it by ear. If it doesn’t work, and I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but if it’s a disaster, we won’t just live with it. We’ll change things around. I expect it’s not going to be everything we hope it’s going to be right off the bat, but I also think you have to plant the seed and over time, grow it and water it and nurture it, and hopefully rebuild it. But if it’s a big miss, then we’ll try to correct it, sooner than later.

All your focus right now is on the Super Bowl, but just two weeks later, you’re doing SNL 40 on Feb. 15. Very little has been revealed so far. How are things going, and will it be similar to the big 25th anniversary special in 1999?

Lorne [Michaels] is still putting it together. It’s going to be a big, three-hour, live event, in Studio 8H, with a lot of people who’ve been on the show or been involved with the show over the decades. Some very exciting live things are going to happen. It’s not going to be a preponderance of clips; there’s going to be a lot of stuff happening in the studio. To try to celebrate 40 years in three hours is not going to be easy, but it’s going to be a big event and we’re going to make a big noise.

It’s going to be featured in the Super Bowl. We have several big priorities happening before Feb. 15: the Blacklist episode after the Super Bowl, the Thursday move, the launch of The Slap [Feb. 12] and Allegiance [Feb. 5]… So there’s a lot to do, but SNL 40 is going to be a big agenda for us. I think it’s going to do well.

The Voice returns on Feb. 23. As you look ahead, do you still envision sticking with two cycles each year?

Look, there’s been some erosion there, as we knew there would be, as we play it again and again. But I’m really proud of the quality of the show, and I think the last cycle we just had was as good as any cycle we’ve had in the last seven cycles. As long as the creative stays really strong and we keep monitoring the erosion, we’ll keep doing it.

That said, it’s not inconceivable that we could decide to cut it back to one a season. But it still does better than almost anything else we have, even at the level that it’s at now. So selfishly, it’s hard to say, oh, for half a season, we’re going to give up that rating. We just have to keep watching it. I don’t know if the ratings are going to go up if we do it one season a year. We’ll see. I think the next cycle will tell us a lot, and then we’ll make a decision for next season.

Earlier this month you said that your next December live musical will either be The Music Man or The Wiz. Given how essential you said Carrie Underwood was to boosting The Sound of Music Live!’s audience in 2013 compared with Peter Pan Live! in December, will the decision come down to casting? Or will you pick the show first, then cast it?

I think it could be either. For something like The Music Man, we really need a central star to play the role of Harold Hill. But for The Wiz, I don’t think it’s as necessary to have one featured star, because there are six iconic characters that we know and love. So I actually think in case of The Wiz, we could build an ensemble of really interesting actors that maybe aren’t superstars.

Resurgent NBC Sets Sights on Two Remaining Weak Spots: Thursdays and Comedies

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NBC has clawed its way back to first place in 18-49, but entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt knows the network has two big problems to fix if it wants to remain on top: addressing its comedy woes, and restoring luster to Thursday night, the onetime home of Must-See TV. As I wrote at Adweek,

While the refocus on comedy will take months or years to bear fruit, NBC is taking more immediate steps to save Thursdays, which “used to be the big night of television for NBC,” Greenblatt said. “It’s an important night for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is it is a great, desirable night for advertising.”

But the network has languished on the night with low-rated, quickly canceled comedies like The Michael J. Fox Show and this season’s Bad Judge and A to Z. “Putting comedies we love there and having them fail started to feel like the definition of insanity,” said entertainment president Jennifer Salke.

Instead, Greenblatt is making a bold but perilous gamble, moving his biggest scripted series, The Blacklist, to Thursdays at 9 p.m., where it will face-off against Scandal on ABC beginning Feb. 5. “It’s a risky but necessary move for us to make,” said Greeblatt, who pointed to other big Thursday-night shifts that seemed potentially disastrous at the time but paid off, including Fox’s The Simpsons, CBS’ CSI and most recently Grey’s Anatomy, which laid the groundwork for ABC’s TGIT.

Greenblatt also talked about his big development deal with Dolly Parton, getting out of his big development deal with Bill Cosby and which two shows are in contention for NBC’s next live musical broadcast this December.

Resurgent NBC Sets Sights on Two Remaining Weak Spots: Thursdays and Comedies

‘The Blacklist’s’ Frustrating Fall: Keen’s a Keeper, but Red Regresses

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At The Daily Beast, I check back in on The Blacklist, which aired its fall finale last night. I wrote last spring that James Spader was single-handedly keeping the show together with his virtuoso turn as Raymond “Red” Reddington, and the NBC drama should wipe the slate clean of his costars and reboot with a group more worthy of sharing the screen with Spader.

Amazingly, the show did almost exactly that in the offseason, but the problems still exist. As I wrote at The Daily Beast,

So why does Season 2—which just had its fall finale Monday night—feel like such a disappointment so far? Because in focusing on all those necessary fixes, producers lost sight of the show’s raison d’être: Spader. Two steps forward, two steps back.

The Blacklist’s Frustrating Fall: Keen’s a Keeper, but Red Regresses

‘The Blacklist’ is Dead Without the Psychotic Red

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Few shows have been as agonizingly schizophrenic this season and NBC’s The Blacklist, which is unmissable whenever James Spader is on screen as Raymond “Red” Reddington, and unwatchable whenever he is offscreen. As I wrote at The Daily Beast, the producers have done a superb job at dialing back on Red’s camp from the pilot:

Rather than going over-the-top, Spader has chosen a markedly more intriguing route. While he’s always the only one on screen having fun, he’ll frequently pull back the curtain to reveal the heartache and torment lurking underneath, especially in a rapt monologue about the torment of discovering his wife and child’s murdered corpses, or a recent conversation with Keen about how one comes to terms with taking a person’s life. More heart than ham, Red has become an intriguingly complex character, a 10-course-meal the likes of which broadcast television rarely concocts these days, and Spader has dug into each new dish with relish.

The rest of the show, however, is a mess, and I propose some radical changes that would help fix the series — and make Red even more compelling.

‘The Blacklist’ is Dead Without the Psychotic Red

James Spader on His ‘Blacklist’ Character: ‘He’s Going to Make You Feel Very Uncomfortable’

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At Parade, I spoke with James Spader about his new NBC drama, The Blacklist. He told me that his character, Raymond “Red” Reddington, might turn out to not be as bad as he first appears:

I think there’s no question that the audience is going to be wrong about things, [and that] a presumption is going to turn out to be just that. Hopefully just when you’re starting to feel comfortable, he’s going to make you feel very uncomfortable in a startling way. But the opposite is true as well, I think.

James Spader on His Blacklist Character: ‘He’s Going to Make You Feel Very Uncomfortable’

Fall’s Top 10 New Shows

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At TCA summer press tour in July/August, I spent a lot of time speaking to the stars of fall’s most anticipated series — including several of my favorite freshman shows, like The Blacklist, Masters of Sex and Brooklyn Nine-Nine — for this Parade roundup of Fall’s Top 10 New Shows. Look for more extended Q&As with each star in the weeks ahead.

Fall’s Top 10 New Shows