2018-19 Season TV Cancellations/Pilots: Perfectionist Horseman commits perjury, held In Contempt

Tagg said:

I should fucking hope that it gets renewed for a second season. They really should have greenlit three seasons from the start to ensure they cover the entire trilogy.

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RatskyWatsky said:

And the chances of them not doing the third and final season are super low at this point so they might as well just announce it too. (same with HBO and The Deuce)

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RatskyWatsky said:

Showtime's OTT service had 2+ million US subscribers in January.

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According to Showtime, it had its biggest weekend ever for subscriber acquisitions for its stand-alone streaming service, with Shameless and Kidding driving the single best series premiere day for sign-ups this year. As usual, the pay cable network did not provide figures with the statement.

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For the first time in 16 years, NBC will win the total-viewer race in the 52-week season to become the country's most watched network, while also winning the 18-49 demo crown for a fifth consecutive season.
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In the demo for the season that ends September 23, NBC generated a 38% margin of victory, with a 1.8 rating compared to CBS and ABC's 1.3, Fox's 1.2 and the CW's 0.5. That's the biggest percentage advantage at this point in the season for any network in the 31-year history of Nielsen's people-meter sample.

In total viewers, NBC's 7.8 million viewers edges out CBS' 7.7M.

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Jesse Alexander, who took over Starz's American Gods in February after original showrunners Michael Green and Bryan Fuller were pushed out, has been sidelined, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Insiders say Alexander was asked to stop working on American Gods, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel, about a month ago. The word "fired" was not used internally, and a representative for Alexander said that characterization was not accurate. But Alexander, an executive producer, is no longer working on the hyper-stylized drama as a writer or showrunner, and has been asked not to sit in on editing, be involved on set or participate in any other areas of production or postproduction. One source described Alexander's role as effectively "fired but not fired," as he has been relegated to the sidelines on season two but has yet to be replaced. Sources note that Fremantle, the show's studio, would rather exile Alexander than endure the negative attention that would come with dismissing a second showrunner in two seasons.

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Production on the drama, which is six weeks behind and recently was forced to go on a hiatus, is in disarray. Castmembers have not received copies of the script for the show's season two finale because, as one source put it, "there is no script." Another source says it's possible the crew has received a far-from-finished version of the finale script, but whatever has been partially distributed is almost guaranteed to go through extensive changes. Instead of shooting the season finale, which should have been in production already, American Gods has been filming pickups and reshoots of earlier episodes.

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Multiple sources cited ongoing friction between Starz and Fremantle, as well as efforts by author Gaiman to assert greater control over the drama, as the core sources of tension. Actors have been rewriting script pages, and Fremantle, which had hoped to trim the budget in the show's second season, is now spending frantically in order to simply finish the season. Due to all the issues that have bedeviled this saga of clashing deities, the second season of American Gods will not arrive until 2019 — two years after the first debuted to generally positive reviews.

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"Please, Baby, Please," which was supposed to air in the back half of the Emmy-nominated series' fourth season, was shot in wide angle, with very little score. Production is said to have upped its usual episode budget of $3 million or so, spending handsomely on rights and clearances for such things as the Sam Cooke ballad "A Change Is Gonna Come," which Barris personally met with Cooke's goddaughter to secure. He enlisted a high-profile illustrator, too, and hired his hero Spike Lee to do voiceover, since the episode took its title and inspiration from a children's book written by Lee and his wife. Rather than focus on the entire Johnson clan, as Black-ish typically does, the episode centered primarily on Dre and his interpretation of real-world events presented to his son as a form of catharsis. As a father of six, Barris has had plenty of experience calming children at bedtime.

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"We approached it with the network and the studio as, 'This is different,'" says the 44-year-old showrunner. "We certainly knew people would talk about it."

The episode did, in fact, get people talking, if not for the reason Barris anticipated. Mere days before its scheduled Feb. 27 air date, "Please, Baby, Please" was mysteriously and indefinitely shelved. While Barris is strategic with his choice of words — careful never to utter the phrase "censorship" as others throughout the industry do — the move turned out to be the last straw in his long-standing and already complicated relationship with The Walt Disney Co. "I don't know that I would have been as useful to them as they'd need me to be after that," he offers. Those in his cast are far less diplomatic. Tracee Ellis Ross has called the decision "frightening," while Anderson suggests it was a personal affront. "He'd given his blood, sweat and tears to [the episode], which they had signed off on every step of the way — from the outline, to the script, to the table read, to the point where they actually spent the money and made the episode," says the actor, who's also an executive producer. "And I don't know what those conversations were, but we entered into this partnership with the understanding that we would be able to tell the stories that we wanted to tell."

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Executives at ABC, more than any other network, have been forthright about their desire for more red-state programming since Trump's win — and with Barris' latest episode, they feared they'd be alienating the very population they'd tried so hard to court. That Disney brass wouldn't want to poke Trump himself just as the company was seeking Justice Department approval of its acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox is widely believed to have been a factor as well.

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His decision to move on, however, wasn't just about the shelved episode. It was an accumulation of realizations about the limitations of network TV and frustrations about his own inability to penetrate. While he was being lavished with plaudits and honors — to say nothing of being invited to dole out keynotes and speak at college graduations — not a single one of Barris' other projects moved forward at ABC.

The one that hit hardest was a 2017 comedy pilot titled Libby & Malcolm. It was the timeliest of Barris' offerings, centered on an interracial couple of two political pundits on opposite ends of the spectrum, played by Emmy winners Felicity Huffman and Courtney B. Vance. After multiple reshoots, at ABC's request, the network passed. The decision coincided with another of his pilots, a dramedy starring Toni Collette, not going forward; his spinoff Grown-ish being pushed to Disney's lesser-watched cable network; and Black-ish being moved out from behind Modern Family. The quadruple blow left Barris incensed.

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With Barris suddenly on the market, Warner Bros. made a play that's said to have been even richer than Netflix's, but he had reservations. "I worried that at the end of the day I was still gonna have to do pilots and I was still gonna have to do network television," says Barris. "It was the hardest decision for financial reasons because it was an amazing, generous offer, but if I was leaving ABC to go to Warner Bros. I feared I might be dancing to the same [song]." Netflix was an easier sell. He loved its "artist first" mantra, and the freedom to be able to tell other types of stories.

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The company's 130 million subscribers won't need to wait long. The prolific idea generator — who was still passionately pitching projects at ABC Studios even as he was negotiating his way out the door — is already hurling out new ones: a comedy special from Black-ish's Deon Cole; a potential series adaptation of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates' searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.

Barris keeps coming back to this idea of turning the family comedy on its head, too. He's cagey about what exactly he has in mind, though it's clear his family could be a treasure trove of material for the not-fit-for-Disney version, as it was for years on Black-ish.

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AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan on Wednesday touted the continued investment by his cable channels group to get bigger but insisted he had been prudent as his company competes against new industry forces.
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when asked about industry consolidation that has seen a series of mergers and acquisitions, added "there's been a rush to scale." Sapan said AMC networks had grown "roughly two-fold" to press ahead in a fast-changing media landscape with a smaller number of well-defined and strong networks.
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"We've been using the balance sheet for a careful, surgical and strategic M&A," Sapan then added, as he pointed to the continuing strength of his channel offerings to traditional platforms and an increasing array of virtual multichannel video programming distribution outlets.

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Asked about the weaker ratings for AMC hit show The Walking Dead, Sapan argued the popular series was more of a franchise. "The Walking Dead is a universe...and we have a plan to manage over the next decade, plus. That plan is a careful plan to respect the world of the fans of that world," he argued, as Sapan pointed to Fear of the Walking Dead as an extension of The Walking Dead franchise.

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Cornballer said:

HBO Boards 'His Dark Materials' BBC Series Based On Philip Pullman's Books

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Joni said:

And an update for one they still haven't revealed: unlikely pregnancy for a 2019 show: they revealed the network.

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The plan — which, as always, is subject to change — is for the character's baby bump to be unveiled when the show in question makes its anticipated return in (ugh) 2019."

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We're still not saying, but here's another clue to tide you over: The show in question airs on HBO.

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manchego obfuscator said:

I'm guessing it's Veep.

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RatskyWatsky said:

I thought the new thing for British broadcasters was wanting to secure global attribution for their homegrown series? I don't see how they'll achieve that by allowing HBO to take the non-UK rights.

At any rate, seeing as how British broadcasters don't have pockets as deep as Netflix, it makes sense that they would seek out co-producers/financiers for their more expensive shows. This also gives HBO an opportunity to increase their output, as per AT&T's wishes, without having to make decisions on their own pilots which may not be fully developed yet.

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"The issue is increasingly, whereas two or three years ago you could sell a great deal to Netflix and Amazon, they are investing less in us as broadcasters and we're going to have to go our own way with people who think like us," he said.

Hall highlighted Playground Entertainment's Anthony Hopkins-fronted adaptation of King Lear [pictured] and Bad Wolf and New Line's forthcoming eight-part drama His Dark Materials, which features stars including James McAvoy, Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The latter, which is written by Jack Thorne and directed by Tom Hooper, is co-funded by Anton Capital Entertainment with Endeavor Content co-repping U.S. rights, two relatively new partners for the BBC.

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HBO CEO Richard Plepler said on Monday that the premium video service will have "one global platform" for its over-the-top streaming services ready to launch sometime next year.

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HBO launched its HBO Now streaming service in the U.S. in 2015, after first testing the OTT waters in the Nordic region. The service, which is targeted to consumers who do not subscribe to a pay-TV service, provides on-demand access to HBO's full library of programming.

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NBC has put in development The Inn Crowd, a multi-camera comedy from Young & Hungry creator David Holden, Jim Parsons and Todd Spiewak's That's Wonderful Productions and Warner Bros. TV where the company is based.

Written by Holden, The Inn Crowd is inspired by Tony Horwitz's 1999 New Yorker article and centers around a gay couple who divide a small town when they open a very successful inn.
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The 1999 article The Inn Crowd, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Horwitz, chronicles the the controversy surrounding the Inn at Little Washington, in Rappahannock County, Virginia, owned by Patrick O'Connell and Reinhardt Lynch. It gets the small town in the rural, low-income county split over whether to support the O'Connell and Lynch's successful business, which is attracting big-name celebrities, or oppose the duo's ambitious expansion plans.

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