CBS and Showtime Have Very Different Executive Encounters at TCA

Ed Martin Live from TCA - "Special from Jack Myers Media Business Report"

The winter 2011 Television Critics Association tour will be remembered for its lack of stimulating press conferences with broadcast entertainment presidents, which are historically among the most newsworthy events at these twice-annual gatherings.

The overall dullness of these sessions wasn’t always the fault of the networks involved. Take the press conference Friday morning with CBSEntertainment President Nina Tassler. Often one of the most engaging and quotable broadcast executives at any TCA tour, Tassler gamely took the stage to field questions from the crowd. Unfortunately, the only subject of any concern to reporters that morning was the recent bad behavior of Charlie Sheen, the star of CBS’ long-running hit Two and a Half Men. Sheen’s recent private-time exploits in New York City and Las Vegas have been widely chronicled in the media; hence the understandable interest in what concerns CBS and Tassler may have in his behavior.

The first question of Tassler’s session was indeed all about Sheen. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t expect that question this morning,” she joked, evoking memories of Thursday’s session with Kara DioGuardi for her new Bravo series Platinum Hit, during which it became abundantly clear that she hadn’t properly prepared for questions about her departure last year from the series that made her a star, American Idol. “I’m really taken by surprise,” Tassler added with a smile.

When the laughter died down, Tassler spoke in the manner of a smart executive about her concerns for Sheen and his family. Then she moved away from his personal life. “Charlie is a professional,” she said. “He comes to work. He does his job extremely well. We are taping tonight [Friday].”

As the session continued it began to feel like a TCA executive conference of yesteryear. Tassler was asked about the viability of running comedy shows at 10 p.m., something with which ABC and NBC are currently experimenting; upcoming contract negotiations with NCIS star Mark Harmon; upcoming scheduling moves; Paula Abdul’s dance competition series Live to Dance (oddly absent from CBS’ tour offerings); cast changes at Criminal Minds, and other good stuff like that. All was well.

And then, all of a sudden and with no good reason, the session prematurely flat-lined. An entire ballroom full of reporters suddenly went silent. There were no more questions from anyone, serious journalists (an endangered species at TCA tours), bitty bloggers and tittering tweeters alike.

“Are we done?” a surprised Tassler inquired. The room remained still. “That’s it?” she asked. Then she exited, stage left, with a polite, “Thank you.” A few reporters dashed to the stage to question her further about Sheen and Abdul, but that was it.

Press conferences with network entertainment presidents almost never end before their allotted time. They have been known to drag, especially if the executive on stage isn’t on his or her game or isn’t particularly quotable. But this group likes Tassler and has always enjoyed asking her questions.

So what went wrong? It may be that CBS presented its panels on the tenth day of a very busy tour, and the morning after NBC’s epic party, arguably the busiest and most crowded event of the entire tour. As a result, many TCA members on Friday morning had all the energy of the walking dead, though it should be noted that a late-morning Q&A with The Good Wife star Julianna Margulies and the creators of that series provided a much needed jolt of energy, as had a panel for Community at the end of NBC’s very long day. (The broadcasters really need to add more panels for critically acclaimed established series to their tour days. They really do work wonders.)

Another problem was that Tassler didn’t open her session with any announcements. When executives break news about scheduling changes, guest casting or pilot pick-ups they always generate all kinds of easy questions that get their press conferences rolling. Tassler, like ABC’s Paul Lee and Fox’s Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly before her, largely took to the stage and jumped right into questions without effectively warming up the room.

As noted above, in general it was a bad tour for executive sessions. NBC and HBO didn’t even put their executives on stage. The CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff briefly appeared at the start of her network’s segment of the tour, and she offered a few info-bits about its programming and its online success. But she left the stage without taking questions, choosing instead to talk to reporters during a cocktail reception that followed.

The best executive session of the tour was the TCA debut of new Showtime Entertainment President David Nevins, who had obviously been well prepared. Nevins began by breaking all kinds of programming news, such as new season start dates for a number of established series, production information about a new series titled Homeland with Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin that has just begun shooting in North Carolina, casting for a new comedy pilot titled House of Lies, and a new scheduling strategy that will find fresh episodes of two or three of Showtime’s “A-level” series running every week of the year. He also made one of the most interesting announcements of the entire tour: Showtime and Major League Baseball are producing an unscripted series that will chronicle the professional and personal lives of the 2010 World Series champions, the San Francisco Giants.

Showtime is available in a lot fewer homes than the broadcast networks, but there was no shortage of interesting questions for Nevins throughout his press conference and there were no dead zones during the four programming panels that followed.