UPDATE: NBC not to blame for Writing Emmys snub

Well, TV fans, I have bad news, and I have even worse news.

The bad news? The Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series Emmy award will still not be presented on prime time television, which I wrote about yesterday.

The worse news? NBC cannot be blamed for this (and let me tell you, since I get a real high out of hating the Peacock, this is a real buzzkill for me).

According to Deadline Hollywood, this Emmy category, and other writing nominations were pre-arranged by the Emmys and the Writers Guild of America to only air in prime time every other year. It just so happens that this is the year in which these categories will be presented during the Creative Arts Emmys, or the Schmemmys, as Kathy Griffin refers to them, one week before the prime time show.

When Conan writer Deon Cole Tweeted after finding out that his nominated category would not appear in prime time (the Schmemmys will air on E! one week before the prime time awards), many took it to mean that NBC was cutting the category out of the show as a conspiracy against Conan. It's not like that isn't something that NBC would do, as petty as they are. Unfortunately, NBC cannot be blamed for this oversight. Rather, the union that is working for the writers is downgrading their members' publicity by agreeing to appear only on the Schmemmys.

So, I think the two points I made yesterday still stand: the prime time telecast will lose one of the few highlights of the show (the nomination videos), and it's unfair that the writers are delegated to the Schmemmys. As the Deadline Hollywood article notes, NBC probably isn't too thrilled about losing such a highlight in the telecast (then again, as I said yesterday, they'll just use that extra time to shameless promote their soon-to-be-canceled shows).

Also, I want to note, I don't mean to downplay winning a Schmemmy (to be honest, my ridiculous dream in life is to win ANY Emmy award, Schmemmy or not). It's just that this arrangement seems strange. How unfortunate would it be to be nominated for a writing Emmy in an even-numbered year, when you will only be featured on cable and in industry chatter, but to be shunned in an odd-numbered year, when those nominated people will be shown on prime time? It should be an all-or-nothing setup, not this peculiar arrangement.

It's a shame that Deon and Conan's fellow writers won't be able to be recognized for the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (since it's their only year for that show to be nominated) and that the other nominees won't be recognized on prime time. It's also sad that the audience will lose such a fun moment in the show. But the biggest shame of all is that it can't be blamed on NBC.

Outstanding Variety Series Emmy awards removed from telecast, likely due to Conan O'Brien

^I don't think anyone could have summed up the latest Emmy news better.

Last week, I blogged about how exciting it was that the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien was nominated for Emmys this year, even after all of the controversy with NBC. NBC executives were probably shaking in their boots, because if Conan and/or his writing staff won awards, they would have to suffer the awkward indignation of airing the acceptance speech of someone they so unceremoniously booted off of the network.

So, it doesn't come as too much of a surprise that, according to one of Conan's writers, Deon Cole, the 2010 Emmy broadcast, which will air on NBC this year, will not feature the Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program. Continuing their long-standing reputation of acting like petty 14-year-old girls, the network has decided to eliminate any possible way for Conan or his writing staff to appear on camera to accept an award at the Emmys, in their ongoing mission to pretend as though he never existed. Deon said that it wasn't NBC who made this decision, but I have a feeling that the telecast producers were largely influenced by the network (Jeff Zucker, in particular) to make the cut, and that he was just being polite.

This bothers me a lot, for two main reasons. First, the removal of this category will remove from the Emmy telecast what is typically the best part of the show - the nominee videos for the category.







I always enjoy seeing what the writers of the nominated shows come up with each year, and it bothers me that we will not be able to see the nominee presentations this year. Instead, knowing NBC, they'll use the extra time in the telecast to have Jay Leno on the show, complaining about how he wasn't nominated, or spending time shamelessly previewing the future failure fall shows on NBC. Even if the Tonight Show didn't win the Emmy (typically, the Daily Show wins, but Late Night did win in 2007), NBC apparently couldn't risk Conan and his writers using the nominee portion to take a dig at the network. I'm sad that we won't be able to see the Conan team's videos, as well as videos from the fellow nominees (the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live and Real Time with Bill Maher).

The second reason this bothers me is that in NBC's increasingly pathetic attempts to do damage control, they are unfairly hurting the nominees. Outstanding Writing award doesn't just honor the show, but the people who help to put it together, the names that many people don't pay attention to when the credits roll. For that one second, their names, and possibly faces, can be featured on a prime-time show, and they can be publicly honored for their accomplishments. NBC is now taking away that honor for the writers of all of the nominated writers of all of the nominated shows. The writers for the shows should not be punished for NBC's failure to run their network. I like to see writers in the spotlight, and this Emmy category is a great chance for people to recognize their talents.

It's not that I feel sorry for Conan, but his writers, and the writers of all of the nominated shows. I feel sorry for Emmy viewers, who will be robbed of a show highlight. With award show ratings going down the toilet, you would think networks would want to do whatever they can to keep highlights in the show. Then, I remember, this is NBC we're dealing with, and everything makes sense.

I now wonder if Conan and his staff will even be invited to the Emmys this year. If they aren't, I hope some party crashing goes on, not to vindicate Conan, who has constantly reaffirmed that he does not want sympathy, but for the sake of the shunned writers. Plus, it would be a great middle finger to NBC.

This is why we can't have nice things, because the trolls at NBC will find a way to ruin it. It's what they do best.

Emmy nominations, LeBron James' tackiness and Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert's brilliance

It was quite the day for television Thursday, and there's a lot to discuss.

First up - the 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Award nominations were announced bright and early yesterday morning. The nominations feature a fair share of stalwarts, snubs and surprises, as always.

Plus, LeBron James inflates his ego by punching Northeast Ohio in the face on national television.

As if that weren't enough, Steve Carell made his first appearance on the Colbert Report, and the word "epic" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Jay Leno now delivers lower ratings than Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show run

I hope my American readers enjoyed their Independence Day (and today, if you got the day off for the holiday). Shame it was so hot here in Toledo that it was unbearable to be outside, hopefully the heat didn't ruin the day for everyone.

In the "News that even Helen Keller could have predicted" department (side note, Helen and I share a June 27 birthday. I love that. However, I also share it with Khloe Kardashian, so you win some, lose some.), Jay Leno is kind of failing.

After 4 months back on the Tonight Show, Jay's ratings are even lower than Conan O'Brien's were during his Tonight Show tenure. After starting off strong back in March, viewership has dipped 20 percent, and Nightline now beats both his and David Letterman's numbers.

Apparently, Jay's desperate attempts to be painted as the clueless victim didn't go over so well with people. Or, people have lost their taste for Jay's stale comedy after all these years.

I'll let Conan express my feelings for me:



It's so ridiculous. NBC "punished" Jay by putting him back in his coveted late-night spot, and in the processed, punished Conan for garnering lower ratings than Jay, who is now failing. Now, he's doing even worse, NBC still has to shell out money for 10 p.m. weekday shows and they have yet another fantastic story from a public relations perspective. I bet they're thrilled.

As the above article points out, NBC kept Jay and his team because he would have been more expensive to buy out than Conan. However, Jay's show is much more expensive to maintain than Conan's was and would have been had he stayed at NBC. Now, since decreased ad revenue is likely going to result from this, they're still losing big time, and have foolishly severed all ties with such a strong network icon, all because they impulsively acted out of panic in late 2009 as a result of their own stupid decisions.

Since I love some schadenfreude, especially when NBC is the one experiencing the misfortune, I'm writing this entry with a big grin on my face. I used to be neutral towards Jay and his team, but this whole debacle and his smarmy attitude after it (such as when he claimed that Conan ruined the Tonight Show franchise) has resulted in my reveling in his failure. If there's anyone I feel bad for in this, it's Jimmy Fallon and his show, which has vastly improved since last year. His ratings are suffering as well, and I think Jay is partially to blame.

Is that immature? Yes, probably. Should I feel bad for Conan since he's still a multi-millionaire? Probably not. But that's not the point. This whole incident came from an unfair and illogical decision from a tired network, and it still baffles and annoys me. In television, if your show fails miserably, as Jay's prime time show did, it's canceled, not rewarded with a better spot, that's just the way it should go, and didn't in this case.

I haven't watched the Tonight Show since Conan's last rerun aired in February. It's going to be tough not to watch Thursday, when Steve Carell and Jane Lynch are on the same show, but I won't, out of principle (one that is semi-irrational, considering I'm sadly not a Nielsen household, but still).

Are you the same way, or have you gone back to the Tonight Show?

Conan O'Brien returns to TV in November

It's rare in this day and age for any major business deal to go undiscovered and unannounced. Thanks to the Internet, it seems as though any inside deal, particularly with the media, is leaked days, weeks or months ahead of time. That's why Conan O'Brien created quite the anomaly Monday (you know, other than the anomaly of being a six feet tall, gangly, redheaded pale hero, or, depending on who you ask, sex symbol to an entire generation).

For months, it seemed as though, after defecting from longtime home NBC in January, O'Brien was set to start a show on Fox in the fall. Every day on ONTD, I'd read "insider" post after post about the various stages of O'Brien's contract negotiations with the network, and it seemed as though fans were just playing the waiting game until Fox made the official announcement.

That was until O'Brien Tweeted that he inked a deal with TBS to begin a show in November. Both the general public and media industry workers were stunned; TBS was never considered a serious contender in the quest for O'Brien. Plus, as many were keen to point out, O'Brien's deal to have a show weeknights at 11 p.m. would push George Lopez's "Lopez Tonight" an hour later to 12 a.m.; in other words, he was doing to Lopez what NBC and Jay Leno did to him.

However, the stakes are different for Lopez, I believe. Lopez's show does very well already, and its lead-ins are syndicated television shows and movies, not brand-new comedy content. Imagine the types of ratings he can receive with a boost by O'Brien's high-profile show right before, as his fans will likely stick around to watch "Lopez Tonight." It's not like NBC, where an already failing show ("The Jay Leno Show") would be rewarded with a better time slot, to harm O'Brien's "Tonight Show". Instead of harming the current show, it can help it.

Lopez apparently realized this as well. According to an interview with Turner Entertainment Networks President Steve Koonin, Lopez called O'Brien personally to convince him to make the deal, and has coined the new lineup "LoCo," combining the two names. I'm not a fan of Lopez's comedy, but I have to give him credit for being savvy about his prospects, and for personally trying to make this happen. Plus, TBS deserves a lot of credit for taking such a risk and just making an attempt to court O'Brien. They saw an opportunity and took it, and they did it while blindsiding the media and public, making the story all the more exciting.

Reading Koonin's interview gives me so much hope for O'Brien's show. TBS clearly believes in O'Brien, and realizes that he is a funny man who can bring a lot of attention to the network and its programming. They know what to do with O'Brien and his brand of comedy, something NBC (and, arguably, O'Brien and his staff) lacked when O'Brien made the switch to "the Tonight Show." As Koonin said, "He can do whatever he wants to do here. We think he is an incredibly talented artist and we want him to make his show and if he wants it edgier, we are 100 percent supportive." I always preferred O'Brien's sillier antics on "Late Night" to his watered-down "Tonight Show" bits (which isn't to say that he wasn't funny on "the Tonight Show"), and if he can use this cable platform to regain some of that irreverence, it would be for the better.

This seems like a winning situation for O'Brien, his staff, TBS and their shows, as well as O'Brien's fans. While I'm not thrilled about having to make the painful choice of watching O'Brien's show versus "The Daily Show" and "the Colbert Report" at the same time (thank God for Comedy Central's 1:30 and 2 a.m. reruns of those shows), it's still exciting.

In other O'Brien news, Monday night, he also began his hyped (but too short, Midwest-ignoring) live tour last night in Eugene, Ore. To add insult to injury, and to make me all the more jealous of those people who are seeing him on this tour, Twitter user Robert Kremers has posted pictures of the event, such as this one, featuring O'Brien and one of my favorite actors/people on the face of the Earth, Jack McBrayer of "30 Rock" pulling the "Chuck Norris, rural policeman" lever (similar to O'Brien's "Walker: Texas Ranger" lever, which he likely had to change the name of thanks to his exit deal with NBC to give up certain creative properties):

Plus, guitar playing? I don't mean to sound whiny, but why am I not at this show?

(Images via TweetPhoto)

What do you think about O'Brien's new show? Will you watch? Are you crying yourself to sleep tonight knowing you're missing O'Brien's epic tour, like I probably will tonight? Leave a comment!