40 years ago today my life changed forever. And, ultimately, so did a lot of yours, too. I had just taken the reins of the research department of 20th Century FOX Television, and I was beginning to devote my days (and nights) to copiously tracking our syndicated sitcoms, including the reboot of 9 TO 5 … Read more
The thermometer says otherwise, and Starbucks and Home Depot declared Halloween season open during August, but Labor Day weekend is to me still the actual end of the summer season. For creatives–especially moviemakers–it’s the beginning of the long and arduous road to more significant seasons than fall–the next summer box office, to be sure, but … Read more
If I had a nickel for every outreach I’ve gotten from a one-time “feudal media” journalist now aligned with a digital platform asking for my “mere pennies a day” to support their continuing endeavors I might actually be able to afford more than a handful of them. Between consolidation, AI and downright cheapness there are … Read more
My FX career was in hindsight shorter than a lot of others’ but it could have been way shorter than that had the kind of human resources policies that seem to be in vogue today been in place then. Shortly into my tenure, I was hauled into a daunting conference room where a prissy outside … Read more
Regular readers would be correct to observe that I’ve dedicated a disproportinate amount of musings to the foibles of S.W.A.T. Guilty as charged. It was a priority project when I was settling into my gig at Sony and getting it successfully renewed and sold was an ongoing battle pretty much through the end–and beyond. It’s … Read more
The 90s were a great time for television. Thanks to the outsized success of THE COSBY SHOW at a point when NBC and situation comedies were both in dire straits, the genre was resurrected and became prolific both in prime time and in rerun syndication. There was an explosion of newly signed on and maturing … Read more
There’s only so much social media that even I can find the time to consume and engage with, and I’ll admit that my least visited platform is TikTok. Not merely because I’m clearly not in its generational sweet spot, or the fact that one of the few videos I’ve uploaded was when my friend’s teenage … Read more
NOTE: This musing also appears today on our sister site THE DOUBLE OVERTIME. Please visit it regularly for coverage of sports of all sorts plus occasional coverage of business and technology. When the world literally beats a path to one’s doorstep it’s hard not to possess an outsized amount of pride in one’s home, no … Read more
We’re now a little more than two weeks into the local news apocolypse. At least, that’s what those most immediately affected by the events we mused about earlier this month lamented when the first of Scripps’ local TV stations to wave bye-bye to human anchors took the action which NCS’ Michael P. Hill reported on … Read more
There’s a darn good reason for you to find the time and funds to take yourself to a movie theater this weekend, and it’s not just because their air conditioners tend to be functioning way better than mine. Because every dime you spend toward supporting the feel-good effort of the summer–and perhaps longer–makes the decision … Read more