Le Blog

Jimmy Kimmel’s Back.  For Now?
Media Musings

Jimmy Kimmel’s Back. For Now?

How desperate are media reporters who believe they “know how their audience thinks” for clicks and engagement these days?  The return from scheduled summer vacations for two late night TV hosts both warranted breaking news coverage. For Jimmy Kimmel, who has turned his annual summer respite into an homage to the days where Johnny Carson

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An Affair To Remember
Media Musings

An Affair To Remember

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

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It’s Festival Season For ALL.
Media Musings

It’s Festival Season For ALL.

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

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One More Order Of Crow.  This Time, With A Side Of My Words.
Media Musings

One More Order Of Crow. This Time, With A Side Of My Words.

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

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Lack Of Closure Is The Biggest Mis(s) Of Any Trial
Life Lessons

Lack Of Closure Is The Biggest Mis(s) Of Any Trial

In calmer and simpler times the only trials I paid attention to were the ones that took place in Bedrock.  The Flintstones did spend a disportionate amount of time in courtrooms considering they were a) cavemen and b) supposedly existing in a time long before even The Code of Hammurabi was written.  But the show

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Zero Tolerance?
Media Musings

Zero Tolerance?

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

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Sure Helps To Have Friends In High Places
Media Musings

Sure Helps To Have Friends In High Places

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

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A Hill To Die On?
Media Musings

A Hill To Die On?

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

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I’m Just Exercising My (September) 1st Amendment…
Media Musings

I’m Just Exercising My (September) 1st Amendment…

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

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