Category: News

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 11/15/12

“Of course I write for the love of it. If I wanted money I’d be a #$%! lawyer!” (Anonymous Award-Winning TV Writer Person)

  • Nastaran Dibai (RETIRED AT 35, ACCORDING TO JIM) has taken over as showrunner/head writer of MALIBU COUNTRY, replacing Kevin Abbott, who’s moved on to rehab.
  • It ain’t television, but this is too important to too many TV viewers for us to ignore it: Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, TOY STORY 3) is writing the screenplay for Disney’s upcoming STAR WARS: EPISODE VII. Not bad for a guy who started his career as an assistant.
  • This ain’t television either, strictly speaking, but we find it profoundly significant that writer Dan Davison (People’s Pilot 2010 1st Runner-Up with partner Anil Sthankiya) is now followed on Twitter by none other than Mark Cuban ($$$), who quite properly respects Dan’s financial acumen.
  • Henry Colman (THE LOVE BOAT) died November 7th at 89. Our condolences to his family and friends.
  • John Quaintance (WHITNEY) & David Feeney (2 BROKE GIRLS) have been elevated to co-showrunners of BEN AND KATE, replacing Garrett Donovan & Neil Goldman who have left because of “creative differences.” We assume that the entity they differ with is Fox Network, since BEN AND KATE is the lowest-rated of Fox’s Tuesday night comedies.

The New HAWAII FIVE-O is Reshooting an Original FIVE-0 Teleplay

…But we’d feel a lot better about this project if rather than “consulting” with the original writers of the Emmy-winning episode, Rod Baker and Glen Olson, the producers had hired them to write it as well.

Instead, current Executive Story Editor Joe Halpin did the job, for which he got paid his weekly salary plus the script fee, which is about five times what it was 40 years ago when “Hookman” was first produced. (That would be 1973.) read article

TVWriter™ Christmas Gift of the Day

Yeah, we know it’s not quite the season, but this is an early bird special for all those people we meet who, when we tell ’em what we do (“I, uh, try to write for TV”) invariably reply, “Oh, I never watch television:”

Sceptre X408BV-FHD 39-Inch 1080p 60HZ LCD HDTV (Black)

by Sceptre Inc.

List Price: $499.99 read article

60% of the YouTube “Original Channels” Are Being Cancelled

And you thought TV networks were ruthless!

A little less than a year ago YouTube started approximately 160 “YouTube Original Channels” to encourage major interweb players to make their own videos, load ’em up on YouTube, and split the cut with them. read article

CHICAGO FIRE Picked Up For Full Season on NBC

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that “CHICAGO FIRE continues to burn bright for NBC. The network has given a full-season order to the freshman drama”

What does this mean to us? Well, besides the fact that we know we’ll have something interesting and at least a bit out of the ordinary to watch until next spring, the renewal means that our good buddy, Spec Scriptacular winner Ryan Harris, will continue working for awhile! read article