The once-foundering CW Network is offering a few indications this fall that it may have found a key to survival: high school kids in expensive clothes.
The CW marketing philosophy was old-fashioned and basic: do not give the show to anybody. Not to Web sites that might stream it or critics who might savage it.
Among the new entries on the fall television lineup and the lists of projects in development, a significant percentage started with an idea hatched in some distant locale.
Getting U.S. stars like Michael Phelps to perform live in prime time was just one of the moves that set up the spectacular success NBC achieved in the Beijing Games.
The days of creating big reality-show hits in the summer may be over. Still, at least one expert in the field, a gentleman named Simon Cowell, would beg to differ.
Since the start of the year NBC’s “Today” is up about 3 percent, leading ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which is down 6 percent, by about 1.2 million viewers a week.
The new channel will de-emphasize the identity of NBC’s flagship station, WNBC, Channel 4, rechristening it a “content center” and making it one part of a larger media presence.
Days after announcing it would replace its chief series programmer, HBO has canceled a series before broadcasting it. The network said on Tuesday that it would not go ahead with “12 Miles of Bad Road,” a satirical “Dallas”-like series created by Linda Bloodworth Thomason, whose last big hit was “Designing Women,” which ran from 1986 to 1993. “12 Miles,” starring Lily Tomlin as a wealthy Texas matriarch, had shot 6 of a planned 12 episodes before HBO executives decided it was not up to HBO standards. Two recent HBO shows, “John From Cincinnati” and “Lucky Louie,” did not perform well. Several other networks have been approached about picking up “12 Miles of Bad Road,” most recently Lifetime. A Lifetime executive said on Tuesday that the channel was not interested.