Cougar Town : More Nudity and More Boobs, say Cast Members - Ed Martin

Ed Martin Reports from the 2013 Winter Television Critics Association Tour will be published exclusively for Jack Myers Media Business Report members throughout the next two weeks. Today's report covers the TCA presentations by Turner, NatGeo, A&E, HBO and Hallmark.

Pasadena, CA -- The Winter 2013 Television Critics Association tour started first thing Friday morning in uncommonly lively fashion, with a session for a series that is particularly beloved by members of this organization – the sassy sitcom Cougar Town, which this week begins a new season on a new network, TBS.

The show with the famously problematic title was dumped last year after three seasons by ABC, where its' mediocre-for-broadcast ratings never matched up with the outsize support it enjoyed in the press. Apparently, it is largely because of that seemingly ceaseless enthusiasm critics and reporters have for Cougar Town that it was able to relocate to a new home. Indeed, before the Cougar Town session began Turner Entertainment Networks President Steve Koonin told me that the ongoing interest from "people in this room" had a lot to do with the network's decision to pick it up.

Moments later, series creator and executive producer Bill Lawrence echoed Koonin's comment. "I truly feel that some of the writers here that have helped us and championed the show are at least partly responsible for the show staying on," he said from the stage. "As a result, it's kind of ourthing." Moments later, waiters dashed into the room offering celebratory mimosas for all, in a nod to an unusual event at the 2012 Winter tour that also found TCA members and Cougar Town talent drinking together. Last January, shortly before Cougar Town began its final season on ABC, Lawrence memorably took over the Tap Room bar here at the Langham Huntington Hotel, long the home of Winter TCA tours, and invited critics to hang out with the cast and producers of his show, without any network or studio suits or publicists around to interfere in their conversations. This deceptively simple effort on his part resulted in dozens of columns and hundreds of tweets and online communications about Cougar Town, which certainly caught the attention of the industry.

I have to wonder why executive producers of other struggling series that are critical favorites don't make similar efforts to save their shows (and propel them toward lucrative syndication deals). Perhaps this latest chapter in the story of Cougar Town will motivate them to do so.

The relationships that Lawrence, series lead Courteney Cox and the rest of the cast have with TCA members is so relaxed and informal that one never really knows if they are providing honest answers to reporters' questions or if they are good-naturedly goofing around. That said, Cox and others suggested that with the show's transition from broadcast to basic cable there will be a smattering of nudity in upcoming episodes. Also, Lawrence noted, there will be more shots of Cox's cleavage. "You will not see one scene that I don't show my boobs,">The opening day ended with the annual Winter tour dinner hosted by Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel. In just three years the Hallmark dinner has become the most eagerly anticipated event at Winter TCA tours. This year's festivities took place at the nearby Huntington Museum. As is always true of a Hallmark event, a couple dozen stars, most of them best known for TV series from the last three decades, were on hand to freely mingle with critics. A look at TCA activities to come over the next two weeks suggests that the Hallmark dinner will remain the standout event of the tour.