News Roundup: Feds, Business, What’s on TV

I know what's gonna happen

Hello, all. Here’s your news:

• Maybe you’ve heard about that whole Scarlett Johansson nude photo business? Well, they’ve literally made a federal case out of it.
• USA was still on top this summer.
• Hulu’s advertising model doesn’t fly in Europe.
• The Voice winner Javier Colon will be playing Ray Charles on The Playboy Club.
• CBS just bought a TV adaptation of Source Code, which now that I think of it probably would work a lot better as a CBS series than it did as a movie.
• The schedule for Bones‘ seventh season just got even weirder, with Fox ordering four extra episodes to air during the summer or something.

NBC’s Diversity Flop

Okay, how did The Playboy Club become the most diverse show on NBC’s fall lineup? And yet, as the LA Times notes in a let’s-call-it-mixed appraisal of the network’s record on diversity, the show features the network’s only minority character in a leading role, Cuban-American Eddie Cibrian. (It’s also their only show to actually bring up race issues in its promo, if you really want to stretch the argument.)

Now, far be it for me to suggest that NBC would sabotage the rest of its programming just to make The Playboy Club look better, but this is getting ridiculous. (I maintain that NBC’s plan for The Playboy Club is not contingent on people actually watching it — they’re probably more interested in getting people to write articles that mention The Playboy Club three times in one paragraph.)

This matters for a couple reasons. Last year NBC launched quite a few new shows with heavily minority casts — Undercovers, The Event, Outlaw, Outsourced — but then turned around, canceled all of them and replaced them with shows about white people. Also, back when Comcast was trying to convince everyone that its taking over NBC to form a new superconglomerate was totally a good thing, improving the network’s record on diversity was one of their promises.

News Roundup: The More Things Change

It's all perfectly simple, really.

Good afternoon, kind readers. Let’s take a look at the stories of summer.

• Variety got someone over at Community to write us an entire column for us in which Abed handicaps the Emmys. Seriously. Read it.
• THR sat down with Covert Affairs creators Matt Corman and Chris Ord for a Q&A ahead of the show’s new season. Also, Piper Perabo and White Collar‘s Matt Bomer hinted on Today that a crossover might be in the works for the upcoming season.
• NBC will be keeping the Olympics for a while longer: Despite a bidding war with Fox and Disney, Comcast won the rights to keep showing the Games through 2020.
• After a fun couple weeks of totally unverified reports, we finally got official confirmation that Cheryl Cole is out of The X Factor, which is only really news insofar as it freed up Simon Cowell to talk about it a bit. Plus, THR is reporting that Cole may end up on a British version of The Voice.
• Would you like to see even more Green Lantern footage? Cinema Blend can help you with that, with a new eight-minute clip of Hal Jordan fighting Parallax. It’s a good thing this movie’s coming out next week; else they might end up releasing so many previews that we could piece the whole thing together from the clips.

News Roundup: We’ve Got A Plan

How're we doing so far?

Afternoon, all. Here’s another look around the world of what’s on the news while our shows aren’t on TV:

• The rankings for the past season’s TV shows are out: TV By The Numbers has it broken down for both overall viewership and the 18-49 demo. Basically it was another good year for reality shows and singing, and The Voice saved NBC again.
• The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman argues that Friday Night Lights is the only truly great drama series on network TV. But that’s okay.
• Jane Lynch is apparently warming up for her Emmy routine, taking a turn as Acting CEO of News Corp. while Rupert Murdoch is away and making some passable jokes about Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.
• Remember how Warner Brothers gave themselves a Hangover hangover by not getting options into their stars’ contracts before they knew the movie was huge? And then doing it again? Lionsgate isn’t taking that chance: They’ve worked out a four-picture deal for the cast of The Hunger Games, despite the fact that it’s based on a three-book series.

News Roundup: Let’s Try This Again

Yep, we did it again.

Hi, folks. We’ve got another look at how the entertainment landscape is shaping up for the fall — and beyond!

• Warner Brothers are probably wishing they’d planned a little farther ahead: The studio just greenlit a second sequel to The Hangover after Part II broke records for the Memorial Day weekend. Trouble is they didn’t have options for Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms, who already won huge pay multipliers to make the sequel. (There’s also the matter of making Part III actually worth watching, but who thinks they’re worried about that right now?)
• NBC announced that The Voice will get the prime post-Super Bowl spot on next year’s schedule.
• TVLine has the lowdown on some of the plot threads we can expect in Parenthood‘s third season. Hint: There’s babies.
• Also, Patrick Dempsey will not be back on Grey’s Anatomy after next season.
• Hollywood Reporter sat down with Connie Britton, Julianna Margulies and five other actresses in on the hot list for Emmys this year for a roundtable about success in the business.

Fox Stays the Course

Also making its upfronts presentation today was a network that isn’t currently in last place. Fox is keeping its schedule more or less intact, except for some time changes and all those shows it canceled. TVLine has the details, and TV Guide has video from some of the network’s presentations. Keep reading to see how it breaks down.

What’s Next at NBC

Well, NBC’s got the trailer thing down, I’ll give them that. You can peruse the network’s new fall lineup over at nbc.com, to remind us that NBC has probably the best web presence of any network. (Unless you count tv.com as part of CBS’s. But anyway.) I wouldn’t exactly call it solid, but does look like the strongest lineup the network has produced in years. Hit the jump for a rundown.

News Roundup: Beyond the Schedules

Are we learning something?

News time, everybody! While we’re waiting for ABC to cancel Off the Map or for CBS to announce CSI: Detroit or whatever, let’s take a look at what else is going on around TV Land this week.

• Apparently the American Idol judges got the message from all those poor, confused voters and decided to start being more critical after all. Except it seems they’re only being critical of Haley. Baby steps? (Turns out Lauren Alaina is a big fan, though.)
• NBC is kicking its live shows of The Voice up to two-hour episodes, because they just couldn’t help themselves. I get the logic from a financial perspective, the fact that they didn’t want me to sit through two hours back to back was one of the things I liked about the show.
• TV.com talked to Rainn Wilson ahead of tonight’s episode of The Office, when Dwight finally gets a turn as branch manager. Apparently nobody has any idea what’ll happen next season, but he’s sure it’ll be great.
• Apparently having their show canceled hasn’t hurt Life Unexpected showrunners Patti Carr and Lara Olsen much: It looks like they’ll be taking over 90210 for the show’s fourth season.
• Vulture spent this week predicting how the networks would pitch themselves at upfronts next week.  Today they reminded us that CBS is No. 1 for a reason, yesterday they examined how ABC can turn itself around before slipping into NBC territory, Tuesday they asked how Fox would change its luck with new scripted programming, and Monday they looked at how NBC could change its luck with everything.

News Roundup: Details

Sometimes, you get what you need.

Hello, folks. Some new developments today:

• Looks like House got its eighth season. TVLine is reporting that Fox and Universal managed to work things out — although they haven’t exactly said if everyone will be coming back. Of the show’s current cast, Lisa Edelstein and Jesse Spencer apparently don’t have return deals yet, so we can’t quite stop holding our breaths yet.
• I guess the way you know you have a new hit is if there’s a bazillion stories trying to figure out why people are watching your show. To wit: The Voice gets its format analyzed in the LA Times — they say it works because of the coaches’ chemistry — while TV Guide looks at how they went out to find talent and skip the bad singing phase of American Idol. Meanwhile, Tje Austin talked to EW and compared the two shows’ auditions processes from a contestant’s point of view.
• I kind of knocked Glee for helping Matthew Morrison hawk his album in its season finale, so I guess I’ll link to this interview he did with TV Squad in the interest of balance.

Sanity at NBC?

Gotta start somewhere.

At the end of its prognostication about how NBC will make its first post-Jeff Zucker pitch during upfronts this week, Vulture tosses in this note about the show’s handling of The Voice, the network’s lone unambiguous success story this year:

Under Zucker and Ben Silverman, several press releases filled with obnoxious self-congratulatory quotes would’ve already been issued declaring the show a monster hit. The series would have been expanded to five hours per week, and execs would have sat for interviews with several publications explaining just how they made the show a hit.

Woah. Could NBC really be growing up?