COURT TV GOES TRU After all the public service it did with the O.J. Simpson trial, Court TV is changing its name to truTV and becoming more action-adventure orientated. Um, things seemed pretty action packed on Law & Order. Anyway, our only opinion on this is official misspellings are never cute. [AP]
Star Jones only recently admitted that Pilates alone was not responsible for her triple digit weight loss. Yesterday she hit up Court TV to explain that thin people still hurt on the inside. She explained:
It hurts my feelings to think that people never came up to me and said, 'You don't need to gain any more weight' but they sure as heck will say, 'You don't need to lose any more.
Got that? It hurt Star's feelings that no one encouraged to her become morbidly obese.
Maybe she needs to meet some Jewish mothers. They’re always in favor of weight loss.
If you want to know what's wrong with Star Jones, the new self-titled show on Court TV (excuse us, TruTV), you could read Dahlia Lithwick's multiple paragraphs in Slate, or revisit our two video clip posts (a one and a two) that made all those points already.
It's Day Two for Star Jones, the former View host's solo attempt on Court TV. And today, she introduced a new regular segment: "She Party." It is not, in fact, a tranny sleepover, but a chance for Star to sit around and gab about important issues – like Hillary Clinton's wardrobe – with her girlfriends, one of whom happens to be Page Six's Paula Froelich. (Paula, meanwhile, was introduced as a "lifestyle and entertainment contributor" for the show, though she is not actually paid to appear, we're told.)
So what'd we end up with? Let's just say we've missed being able to attach Star Jones' name to "group of women shouting over each other on daytime TV."
Meanwhile, when it comes to her Dustin Diamond interview, let's forgive Star for being a pregnant pause late to the whole "celeb sex tape" thing.
Star Jones' Court TV debut today included the much-touted interview with Isaiah Washington, but how much more can be said about his getting fired from Grey's Anatomy? Exactly.
Which is why the part of the show that most interested us was the closing segment, "Open Letter." Here, promises Star, is her chance to get real with you about something that she's loving (sorry, "so joyous it makes me want to dance in the street"), hating, or her PA can write a script for. Today's debut topic? Second chances, as in the one she's living right now.
Choosing Isaiah Washington as her first guest isn't going to make or break Star Jones' new Court TV TruTV show, but it will set the tone. Already, the gays are lashing out — and once you lose the gays …
But as Star learned about her gastric bypass surgery, some talking points are just too choice to leave untouched, especially when you've got the little issue of "generating buzz" hanging over you. Isaiah knows it too: In just over a month, Bionic Woman premieres on NBC, and he's written into the script for just five episodes.
So perhaps today's live 3pm debut of Star Jones is the merger of two opportunistic equals. Or, as the race-baiters will undoubtedly conclude, they're just protecting their own. Either way, we're looking forward to hearing Isaiah apologize for the 451st time!
How does Time Warner go about rebranding one of its television properties that's best known for The Smoking Gun's website? That's the dilemma they faced with Court TV, which they announced in March would lose its name and focus. (With all those Judge Judy shows, who has time for moderately less sensationalized courtrooms?) Out were courts and cops, in were real-life CSI rip-offs.
So after all that hemming and hawing, what'd we end up with? CONTINUED »
While Court TV may have cleaned up its heinous marketing ploy of a site SaveMyHusband.com – catch up here – they've done little to clean up their ad campaign promoting the site. The network is running ads (like the one here, from Blogads) that make no mention that all of this is a ruse to collect your personal (and marketable) information.
"It's really a disgusting promotion," snipes a TV insider from a competing network. "You think they would've taken it down by now, but Applebee's and Suzuki are probably paying a fortune to be a part of it, and they don't want to have to cancel the whole thing and have to run a make-good."
After Thursday's muted outrage over SaveMyHusband.com, Court TV has added "dramatization" disclaimers on its videos.
The website, of course, is where a one "Christina Goodis" pleads with visitors to help find her kidnapped husband. And even though Court TV's branding (and Applebee and Suzuki sponsorships) could be found on the site, an unknowing visitor could be tricked into thinking the site was actually about a woman who needs your help finding her husband. There's the fake footage of said husband being kidnapped, and video cries from "Christina" herself.
Except now Court TV has gone the extra step to make sure you're (a little) more aware of what you're getting yourself into.
Visitors logging on to SaveMyHusband.com would be hard pressed to miss the "Court TV, Seriously Entertaining" bulletin board item on the homepage. Even still, we've heard from some TV insiders (at competing networks, of course) that the site – which features video pleas from a one "Christina Goodis" whose scientist husband "Andrew" has been kidnapped, and she needs your help – hasn't done enough to separate fact from fiction. CONTINUED »
Remember Ashleigh Banfield? No? Don't worry, you're not crazy, you're just a typical American whose cable news attention span is as paltry as cable news execs think it is. Some of you might remember her as the MSNBC anchor who was a sure-fire rising star … who suddenly disappeared from the network. As of 2005, you could find her on Court TV, that channel that just signed Star Jones and that Nancy Grace just ditched.
Anyhow!
None of that is important, because Ashleigh just had a baby! His name is Ridley Banfield Gould, and it's Ashleigh's second son with husband Howard Gould. And through it all – the marriage, the job changes, the babies – we're just glad to see she's carried on with her square eyeglass frames. Something's gotta stay constant.
(Oh, and Norah O'Donnell had twins.)
Cha-cha-ciao, Nancy Grace. The CNN Headline News anchor is severing ties to Court TV, which put her on the map as a TV personality. (Thanks for nothing, Steve Brill!)
After 10 years of service, she's done with Closing Arguments, which of course has nothing to do with the fact that Court TV slashed the show from two hours to one after they inked a deal with Star Jones.
Grace's exit, of course, arrives just after Catherine Crier was axed and in the midst of the network's repositioning itself to focus on reality-based action shows. Oh, and their ditching of the whole "Court TV" name.
And just when they're launching The Room, a show about police interrogations, which Nancy would have had oodles to gab about.
• After seven years on Court TV, Catherine Crier Live is no longer. Must be something to do with those action-packed reality shows they're going after.
• Tom Ford gives private tour of new store to fashion editors, where even Cathy Horyn was welcome.
• More about FNC's Red Eye than you probably care to know.
• Time Out New York's Eat Out Awards honor the restaurants you've learned to avoid.
CONTINUED »
• XM and Sirius may team up to spread Howard Stern, Oprah, Ellen, and satellite cancer waves together.
• Bonnie Fuller insists Courteney Cox's new show Dirt is wholeheartedly different than what goes on at Star. Which must be true, as some staffers of the fictional Dirt tabloid actually love coming to work each day.
• Unwilling to pay increased carriage fees, EchoStar's Dish satellite TV service sees CourtTV pulled, upsetting both customers.
• Star confuses Ashley and Mary-Kate, just like David Katzenberg and us.
• Upper echelon journos freak out at possibility of their peers being forced to testify.
• NYT national desk assistant editor Dana Canedy took over yesterday's front page to test out new design guidelines on news vs. commentary.
• Billy Bush looking to ditch.
• NBC's sports division claims ratings turnaround is due to the whole lotta people watching NFL games.
• Wired magazine moves to extend brand into TV. Viewers await Miss Seventeen levels of suspsene.
• So many changes around CourtTV, but one thing remains constant: The network's execs remain stingier than their staffers when it comes to helping the homeless.
• Your days of freebasing and blowjobs at the Roxy are, at long last, coming to an end.
• Rachael Ray's cooking show that involves celebrities preparing their favorite dishes is, allegedly, someone else's idea. Though not a hard one to come up with.
• Billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad make a play not just for the LAT, but for the entire Tribune Co.
• The point of a launch party is not to try the product, but to show up for a glass of bubbly, have your photo taken, and leave for a better soiree.
• President Bush trades one old white guy for another.
Hot off its decision to cut programming from an excruciating 30 minutes to a more manageable 15 minutes, Court TV is ramping up its buzz with a new marketing gimmick to push its new series Murder by the Book. Planting an fine-tuned audio device in select book stores, the network has combined one part "cool military-style technology" with three parts "this isn't gonna be good for the crazies."
"Hey you, over here. Don't turn around," the voice warns. "Can you hear me? Do you ever think about murder, committing the ultimate crime?" [...]
The effect is achieved by focusing a beam of sound much like a laser. Someone standing in the beam can hear the voice loud and clear, while someone standing just two feet away can't.
So when your child goes hunting through Barnes & Noble looking for the last Harry Potter book, no need to feel too surprised when he shits his sheets for weeks to come.
Last month came the announcement that TBS and TNT head Steve Koonin would be taking over Time Warner's CourtTV — and pumping in much-needed cash for a slate of new original programming. While viewership was on the rise under chief Henry Schleiff (who stepped down in May when Liberty Media sold its stake in the network to TW), Koonin sees room for improvement. And how's he gonna do it? By catering to our already dwindling attention span with a new gimmick reminiscient of those 5-second advertisements.
Betting that shorter shows will keep viewers watching more, Court TV is developing a short-form programming block called Rapid Fire. The hour-long block, envisioned as four back-to-back 15-minute shows, is slated for late first quarter or early second quarter 2007. [...]
With short-form video sites like YouTube skyrocketing in popularity, Court is hoping the shorter shows will appeal to viewers’ evolving media-consumption habits.
But until they can knock it down to the 10-minute mark a la Judge Judy, they've lost our viewership.
• A sneak peak at the upcoming Spy book reminds us that all the clever FOB pieces of Radar and New York have been done before. [Very Short List]
• Rubenstein PR resorts to the dirty tricks of newspaper journos. [Daily Intelligence]
• DeBeers and the diamond industry are doing all the promotion for Leo DiCaprio's upcoming flick Blood Diamond. A scandal is forever. [The Envelope]
• Esquire doubles its fiction offerings. Though that's literary fiction, not "The best sex comes after 50!" fiction. [NYP]
• Jon Friedman almost feels guilty for loving New Yorker editor David Remnick so much — interesting because of all the people Friedman fawns over, Remnick is perhaps the only one we're willing to give him a pass on. [Marketwatch]
• Leave it to Time Warner to take the "Court" out of CourtTV. Whatever it takes to attract those young viewers defecting to MySpace. And XTube. [WSJ]
• CBS shall not utter Devil speak. And by Devil speak we mean the word "gay." [Good As You]
More shake-ups continue at the recently Time Warner adopted Court TV. The executive VP and ad sales manager at the channel is departing, in light of another series of Cour TV cuts. Charlie Collier, along with about a dozen other staffers in the sales and legal departments have been Time Inc-ed. (That's just our new way of saying "fired.")
Ad sales, legal and human-relations chores will be handled by the staffs at TW's Turner Broadcasting. Court TV now reports to Turner. In June, about 50 staffers in affiliate relations, corporate communications finance and accounting were let goes as turner eliminated job redundancies and cut costs.
Turner Broadcasting has about 30 ad sales position open and Court TV ad sales staffers have been asked to apply for those posts.
Sure, but now they have the additional competition of the Teen People sales staff to go up against.
Court TV Ad Sales Chief Collier Departs [TV Week]
When it didn't happen right away, we were shocked. Then, after a couple months passed, we thought maybe it wouldn't happen at all. Alas, the inevitable slashing at Court TV has arrived.
About 50 jobs got slashed today at Court TV in the corporate communications, affiliate relations and finance and accounting departments. Turner is expected to "finish trimming staff" in the next few months.
As a consolation prize, Court TV's New York staffers were offered positions at the Atlanta headquarters, but obviously turned those down.
"As anticipated, in the course of integrating Court TV business operations into the Turner Broadcasting organization, we have identified some job redundancies in areas that overlap with existing Turner infrastructure," Turner Broadcasting said in a statement. "As a result, some Court TV positions are being eliminated. We are work closely with affected employees to provide transition support and resources."
One of the few departments being spared for now is the Ad Sales staff — obviously firing off the only staff members that actually pull in money during upfronts would absolutely moronic. Guess we'll find out when they finish trimming in 60-90 days.
Cable Network Cuts 50 Workers [Jon Lafayette, TV Week]
Earlier: Turner Takes Over Court TV, Doesn't Pass Out Pink Slips
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