Former NBC News reporter John Hockenberry now a Distinguished Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab writes an interesting piece in the January/February Issue of Technology Review about his time at the network’s Dateline NBC. He claims that Dateline really cared about ratings and how it would mesh with the other shows on the NBC schedule. None of this is really a shock, nor is his tale of how a proposal to go......

Chung chung! NBC and producer Dick Wolf have hashed out a deal to keep Law & Order on the air for the next four years. Variety reports (subscription only) that as part of the deal, Law & Order: Criminal Intent will be moving to USA. Yes, USA (which NBC owns) will now have the first run episodes of Detective Robert Goren's histrionics, and then NBC will air repeats of L&O:CI. Interesting! NBC Universal head......

After last year's mess of an awards show and this year's joke of nominations (where is love for Lauren Graham, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences?), we were going to swear off this year's Emmys. But then we realized Conan O'Brien was hosting, so we must watch and liveblog. And there's the hope of a good Steve Carrell bit, not to mention awkward reaction shots of Candy and Tori Spelling during the Aaron Spelling tribute.......

Even though the network media upfronts don't mean anything - except to advertisers - because schedules can be shuffled and shows killed between now and fall, Gothamist is still excited, because it's about hope (Tina Fey's new show to be good, Veronica Mars to be picked up) and new seasons of shows we love (The Office, My Name is Earl...and, heck, we can't help but watch Grey's Anatomy). Anyway, there are a lot of NYC-set......

Way back in 2004, the city announced its super duper special NYC Tax Credit Program for film and TV producers (as well as commercial, music video, etc.) in order to motivate productions to happen here, versus Los Angeles or (gasp) Toronto. And it worked really well: Lindsay Lohan made a movie, Martin Scorsese shot a set-in-Boston movie mostly here, CBS brought us Love Monkey (then cancelled it), there's another Dick Wolf TV, plus countless......

In a re-election year stumping opportunity, the Mayor visited Conan O'Brien's talk show last night and asked him to bring the Tonight Show back to NYC. And Gothamist says, "Please, do!" The AP says that Mayor Bling "jokingly tried to make a deal," offering to give O'Brien a park permit for the Late Night softball team if he stayed in NYC. Conan said, "It's not up to me, I work for the man. If......

Yesterday, people from TV, film, and Broadway, as well as the public, gathered to pay tribute to the dearly missed Jerry Orbach. The attendees included Angela Lansbury, Al Pacino, Benjamin Bratt, Chris Noth, Jill Hennessy, Jane Alexander, Karen Ziemba, and Dick Wolf, plus many regular New Yorkers who cherished Orbach's contribution as an actor. Former Mayor David Dinkins was there, and Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the crowd, saying, "Briscoe exuded the life of the city......

Look forward to seeing some either John Shaft or Popeye Doyle lookalikes running around the city, because the tax breaks that the city and state put into place to lure more film & TV business have paid off. If you think that NBC deciding to a shoot a pilot here, versus Toronto, about 1970's police officers called NY70 is a pay-off. NBC President Jeff Zucker said, "We decided to go ahead and commit to doing......

Former NBC president Scott Sassa is now CEO of Friendster. The Hollywood Reporter writes that his main job will be "building the online success of Friendster into a profitable business by expanding its services and user base." Yeah, like, fixing those damn servers! Sassa himself said, "The Internet and digital technology are turning the entertainment business upside down. Friendster's mass appeal, viral growth and stickiness will make it one of the brands that will redefine......

It seems that the networks want to take a page from the HBO playbook and run shorter flights of series, say a 13 week series that runs without repeats, vs. the traditional 22-24 week series stretched out over much longer 30+ weeks. ABC will roll out the 13 week Stephen King series, Kingdom Hospital, and Fox points to its success with The O.C.'s debut in the summer. What we get to look forward to: More......

With many shows that "suck," NBC will premiere Tracy Morgan's sitcom, The Tracy Morgan, in the Tuesday 8PM time slot on December 2. Take a look at NBC's description of The Tracy Morgan Show: Morgan stars in the sharp-edged family comedy as father, husband and small-business owner Tracy Mitchell, who, with his beautiful, no-nonsense wife Alicia (Tamala Jones, “Head of State”), share their modest apartment with their two kids, 13-year-old Derrick (Marc John Jefferies, “The......

Great picture by Chris Carlson for the Associated Press. It looks like Jeff Zucker got a Peacock transplant, a must when one is the President of NBC. Zucker is the wunderkind who helped turn the Today Show into the powerhouse it is today, then he worked on the Evening News while still working on the Today Show, he battled cancer, and now has managed to resign the cast of Friends to another season - a......