TMC1982

As a replacement of sorts, comes what is known as Bone The Fish. Not only does it discuss TV shows, but musicians, celebrities and film series.

Bonnie Hammer makes me think of a post that I just found on another forum: Has the SciFi channel abandoned Scifi?

Granted, Crockett was the president of the NWA at the same time he was struggling (and ultimately failed) to keep up with Vince in the '80s. Lets say, Crockett decided to pull out of the NWA just after gaining the TBS slot in 1985. Therefore, he could continue obtaining all of the top talent and terrorities without having to answer to anybody above him like Vince. In the process, Crockett could continue carrying the NWA legacy (much like Ted Turner did with WCW) with no strings attached. Instead, Jim Crockett found himself virtually having to buy out the entire NWA. It didn't help matters that Vince was simply a more ambitious and savvy business man than Crockett.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/ar...html?_r=1&8dpc By JACQUES STEINBERG Published: February 23, 2009 Early in his tenure as chairman of the Walt Disney Company, Michael Eisner said he became so frustrated with the competitive advantage that Nickelodeon held over the Disney Channel among young cable viewers that he set about poaching a cadre of Nickelodeon executives, including Rich Ross, who now oversees the Disney Channel. “Although Disney has its own ethos,” Mr. Eisner said in a recent interview, “Nickelodeon was a model.” For Nickelodeon, it seems, turnabout has been fair play. Cyma Zarghami, the longtime president of Nickelodeon, has been fighting some of the recent successes of the Disney Channel — including the hit series “Hannah Montana” and the “High School Musical” movie franchise — with some Disney fairy dust of her own. This summer, in its prime-time Nick at Nite program block, Nickelodeon will introduce “Glenn Martin DDS,” an animated series about the dysfunctional family of an eccentric dentist that was presented to Ms. Zarghami by Mr. Eisner, who left Disney in 2005 and now works part time as an independent producer. Next month Nickelodeon will introduce “Penguins of Madagascar,” a Saturday-morning animated series featuring some of the characters of the “Madagascar” movies, which was brought to Nickelodeon by Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is now chief executive of DreamWorks Animation but who was for many years the head of Disney Studios. And in the most direct, tip-of-the-mouse-ears to its rival, Nickelodeon began trying to build its own “High School Musical” when “Spectacular” — an original, feel-good musical about a high school show choir — had its premiere on Nickelodeon on Feb. 16. “I think they tapped into a genre that had been sleepy,” Ms. Zarghami said, referring to the global audience that Disney has corralled with “High School Musical.” “Now, it’s a genre that is open for everybody.” While much of Nickelodeon’s daytime and weekend night programming is aimed at children 2 to 16, those efforts — which Ms. Zarghami, 46, has led for nearly a decade — have produced grown-up revenue. Viacom, the parent of Nickelodeon, does not disclose the channel’s earnings, but the research company SNL Kagan estimates the combined revenues of Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite to have been $2 billion in 2008. That, by Kagan’s math, represented an increase of nearly $140 million, or 7.4 percent, over 2007, and $240 million, or 13.7 percent, over 2006. And yet, however much she may be nodding to Disney, Ms. Zarghami’s broad strategy for the main Nickelodeon channel has centered on the philosophy that has guided Nickelodeon since soon after its founding three decades ago: capturing viewers from “cradle to grave,” as Judy McGrath, the chairwoman of MTV Networks (and Ms. Zarghami’s boss) put it in a recent interview. As “Hannah Montana” became a phenomenon on the Disney Channel, Ms. Zarghami found a means of counterattack within Nickelodeon’s own stable: she built a show, “iCarly,” around the actress Miranda Cosgrove, then 14 and a co-star of the hit Nickelodeon series “Drake and Josh.” That move has paid off: last year, according to Nielsen Media Research, each episode of “iCarly” drew an average of 2.6 million viewers, nearly 350,000 more than “Hannah Montana,” though still not as many as “SpongeBob SquarePants,” the goofy cartoon that has anchored the Nickelodeon lineup for a decade. (Because both channels show multiple episodes from their series throughout the day, those averages include original episodes and repeats.) In an effort to build on the success of “iCarly,” Ms. Zarghami introduced the series “True Jackson VP” last fall. It stars Keke Palmer as a 15-year-old executive in a fashion company. With each episode drawing an average of 2.2 million viewers since September, according to Nielsen, the audience of “True Jackson” has itself been competitive with “Hannah Montana.” “True” has, however, lagged behind “The Suite Life on Deck,” a recent spinoff of Disney’s “Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” In a further indication of how hard it can be to replicate the Disney buzz, the estimated 3.3 million viewers who tuned in to the premiere of “Spectacular!” on Nickelodeon on Feb. 16 represented about 1.3 million fewer than watched the premiere of a competing original movie, “Dadnapped,” on the Disney Channel at the same time. Meanwhile, to ensure that the parents of children tuning in to Nickelodeon’s daytime fare gather together in front of the TV at night, Ms. Zarghami added the syndicated series “George Lopez” to the Nick at Nite lineup in September 2007. It was originally shown on ABC but struggled to find an audience. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/ar...ed=2&8dpc&_r=1 To put the success of Ms. Zarghami’s bet on “George Lopez” in perspective, consider that the 1.4 million viewers who, on average, watched each episode of the series on Nick at Nite in 2008 represented more than twice as many as watched “Sex and the City” in syndication on TBS, and nearly three times as many as watched “The Sopranos” on A&E, according to Nielsen. When asked by phone recently whether he could have imagined doing so well against such competition, Mr. Lopez said, “I’m not as beautiful as the women on ‘Sex and the City,’ but I am as dysfunctional.” He added, “It was a risk that a show that wasn’t incredibly successful in production could have a life in syndication, and that decision right there was the big one Cyma made.” In an attempt to extend the association of the Nickelodeon brand to two sister cable channels, Ms. Zarghami is expected to announce soon that it intends to change the name of one channel, the N, which is aimed at teens, to TEENick, and that another, Noggin, will henceforth be known as Nick Jr. Ms. Zarghami brings to Nickelodeon the perspective of a lifer: she joined the channel in 1985 as a data-entry clerk, a year after graduating from the University of Vermont. Since then she appears to have been guided as much by the shows she watched growing up as by the tastes of her family. (She has three sons, ages 12, 6 and 2, with her husband, George, a former Nickelodeon production executive.) Ms. Zarghami is the second-oldest of four children of an Iranian-born doctor and Scottish-born nurse, and was born in Iran, before moving eventually to Englewood, N.J. “Ours was the typical Friday night of my generation,” she said. “It was ‘Love American Style,’ ‘The Partridge Family,’ ‘The Brady Bunch,’ ‘The Odd Couple.’ ” Mr. Katzenberg, the DreamWorks executive, said that “being a mom is so invaluable” to Ms. Zarghami’s “understanding of her constituency out there.” But he added that in watching her response to the Disney Channel, he had noted other traits. “She will look at that and say, ‘Nice for them, here’s how I’m going to beat them,’ ” he said. “She then puts on the flak jacket and the crash helmet, puts the bayonet in between her teeth and heads into the trench to do battle.”

John McNamara of the Boston Red Sox in Games 6 and 7 of the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets: *Taking Roger Clemens out, when Clemens was still pitching effectively (although McNamara claimed that Clemens wanted out because of a blister). *Using Mike Greenwell to pinch hit for Roger Clemens in Game 6 instead of Don Baylor. *Leaving Bill Buckner at first base in the bottom of the tenth of Game 6 instead of pulling him for Dave Stapleton. *Putting Calvin Schiraldi back out in Game 7 (where he got shelled to the point in which the Mets managed to come back from a 5-3 deficit) after struggling in Game 6. McNamara could've used Oil Can Boyd, who was initially scheduled to start Game 7 instead of Bruce Hurst.

He's the classic Meddling Executive and has ruined many a movie by his insistance on them being PG and having a run time of 90 minutes. It has gotten to the point where many high profile directors simply refuse to work with FOX anymore. Dragonball Evolution and Wolverine are his latest in a long line of atrocities. What were the others? X3, Fantastic Four 1 & 2, Alien vs. Predator, Daredevil, Kingdom of Heaven, etc. There are really too many to name them all. Don't forget Die Hard 4 being PG-13 (meaning that the trademark "Yippie Ki Yay..." had to to be obscured ).

He's the classic Meddling Executive and has ruined many a movie by his insistance on them being PG and having a run time of 90 minutes. It has gotten to the point where many high profile directors simply refuse to work with FOX anymore. Dragonball Evolution and Wolverine are his latest in a long line of atrocities. Tom Rothman really needs a thread of his own around here to better analyze the garbage that he has done at FOX.

If you had the chance to play fantasy TV executive, what certain changes would you implement in hopes of improving a specific TV network's sports coverage at the moment. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time listing what each network currently pays rights fees over, so I'm just going to list the networks and you give me your input. I'm not going to focus on speciality channels like MLB Network, NFL Network, NBA TV, NHL Network, Speed, Golf Channel, Tennis Channel, etc. right now. I'm also not going to try to focus on regional sports outlets like YES, MSG, NESN, SNY, MASN, etc. Broadcast network: ABC (even though technically, it and ESPN are at the moment, one of the same) CBS FOX NBC Cable: ESPN HBO Turner (i.e. TBS and TNT) Showtime Versus

Jeff Zucker is like the major league version of Dawn Ostroff in the sense that he like Ostroff, manages to still be employed despite doing an excellent job at royally fucking up the network.

To me, the sign that CBS was heading in the wrong direction was when they managed to lose the National Football League package to an upstart FOX network (which in the process, gave FOX instant credibility) in late 1993. You know that you really f'd up big time if the NFL had been on your network since 1956 and you manage to lose it to a network that wasn't even ten years old yet! CBS also managed to lose $500 million on their four year Major League Baseball contract. By 1995, CBS Sports was going into the abyss without the NFL, MLB, the NBA (which they gave up in 1989-90 to NBC in order to make room for MLB), and college football (having lost the CFA package in 1990) on their plate.

Was Lloyd Braun at ABC during the period in which they were overexposing Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

And allegedly over O.J. fucking Simpson! Don Ohlmeyer was also the genius who thought that it was a great idea to put Dennis Miller in the booth for Monday Night Football. Don't get me wrong, Dennis Miller is a pretty smart and funny guy, but he was an absolutely horrible fit on that show (at least before Tony Kornheiser came around ). Ohlmeyer while he was at NBC, also publically wished that the 1997 World Series end in a clean sweep so that it wouldn't disrupt NBC's entertainment schedule.

All of that is negated by whoever it was getting American Idol so..whatever. My vote goes to whoever thought it was a bright idea to merge the WB and UPN and then break it apart again with MNTV and CW which both suck worse than WB and UPN ever did. shortly behind that is whoever at CBS decided they wanted to be the Crime Broadcasting System. Merging the WB and UPN wasn't a bad idea in theory (combining the bests of WB with the bests of UPN). The problem was that CBS and Time Warner were foolish enough to allow Dawn Ostroff run the network.

It could either be from the past or present, cable or broadcast. Which major TV executive was the most incompetent at the job, and did the most damage to their respective network's reputation and/or progress (for example, Fred Silverman during his time at NBC in the late 1970s-early 1980s)?

No way you're dissing Joss Ackland's awesome South African accent... And clearly, the best line/scene in Lethal Weapon 2 is Danny Glover & Joe Pesci going into the Consulate, using the diversion of 'My friend wants to emigrate to South Africa' schtick! Well, I did think some of the comedy in that movie was pretty good, but I just don't find the movie enjoyable as a whole at all. Still, I always wondered what the hell was up with that one scene where Riggs says "You guys better get outta here, cause I'm gonna fuck your ass!" I always thought that line was so awkward, and I end up laughing at it every time. Maybe Mel Gibson should do a movie with the Iron Sheik!