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Media Decoder: PBS Demands, and Gets, More Reporting in a Film

May 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

On Tuesday, PBS’s “Frontline” will broadcast the film, but not quite the same one, after “Frontline’s” producers, in an unusual move, asked the filmmakers to return to Pakistan to do additional reporting to answer a number of what they called “serious journalism” questions.

The film, in both versions, examines what happens when Pakistani girls and women pursue legal justice for rape charges. Over several years, it followed Kainat Soomro, who was 13 when she said she had been gang-raped by four men, and the efforts by those accused to clear their names.

Habiba Nosheen, 31, and Hilke Schellmann, 34, both based in New York, said in a telephone interview that, like many independent filmmakers, they used their life savings, family loans and a grant to get the film to the festival circuit. Money was so scarce they could not afford to translate all of their interview footage.

“Frontline” agreed to broadcast the film, but Raney Aronson-Rath, the series’ deputy executive producer, said “absolutely not,” when asked if she would have used the original version, which she called a “point of view film.” Instead, “Frontline” gave the filmmakers more money; Ms. Nosheen said the figure was “four times” the film’s budget, which she declined to disclose.

In February, the filmmakers returned to Pakistan, with a list of what Ms. Aronson-Rath said, by phone, were 30 or 40 questions from the “Frontline” producers about the legal investigation.

The filmmakers tracked down a new character, a cleric who seemed to back the accused men’s defense that Ms. Soomro had married one of them. Later, when the filmmakers translated all their footage, they found a startling quote, in which the man who said he was Ms. Soomro’s husband had threatened to kill her.

The extra money was “such an important thing for us; reporting is very expensive,” Ms. Nosheen said. “It was remarkable to us how much of an important and bigger story we could tell by the new information we gathered.”

The new version is “much more nuanced,” Ms. Schellmann added.

“When you do journalism, what emerges is a more powerful portrait for Kainat,” as well giving the men’s side its due, Ms. Aronson-Rath said. “It’s not that what they did was untrue,” she said of the filmmakers’ original version, “it just wasn’t the whole story.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/business/media/pbs-demands-and-gets-more-reporting-in-a-film.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Seth Meyers to Succeed Fallon on ‘Late Night’

May 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Meyers, the longtime head writer on “Saturday Night Live” and host of its “Weekend Update” segment, will succeed Jimmy Fallon, who is moving up one hour to take over NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

NBC made the appointment, which had been widely expected, one day before Mr. Meyers was to be introduced to advertisers at NBC’s presentation of its new programming lineup at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

The assignment will keep Mr. Meyers under the production leadership of Lorne Michaels, who will continue to serve as executive producer of “Late Night” as well as serving in the same position on Mr. Fallon’s “Tonight Show” as it moves to New York. (And of course, he will remain in charge of “SNL.”)

In an interview before taking the stage on Saturday’s edition of “SNL,” Mr. Meyers said, “Working at ‘SNL’ requires 100 percent of your mental capacity — on easy weeks. And so I had not really spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to do next. Obviously I can’t quit Lorne. So this seems like a pretty good deal that I have an opportunity to keep working with him.”

Both hosts are expected to start their new shows around the time of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics from Russia next February. Mr. Meyers will stay on “SNL” through the fall season before he starts his preparation — most likely in January — to take over on “Late Night.”

Mr. Michaels said, “The thing that’s staggering to me is that since 1982 there have been only three hosts, and Seth will be the fourth. And when you look at the company, it’s all pretty good company.”

Mr. Meyers will be the next in a line that includes David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Mr. Fallon.

“I am aware of the history,” Mr. Meyers said. “Each chapter of my life has sort of been spent enjoying each of the guys who had the job. Letterman was sort of my first introduction to late-night television. And Conan was all through college and postcollege years. Jimmy, obviously, I think, does it as well as anyone could ever do it.”

Mr. Michaels said there was “complete agreement” at NBC on the choice of Mr. Meyers. “The only name that kept coming up was Seth.” He said of Mr. Meyers, “I think he radiates intelligence. He has a background as a performer and a writer. And because I think he doesn’t like to copy anyone, I think he will find a way to make the show different and distinct and not a mirror of “The Tonight Show.”

No decisions have been made yet about whether the format of the show will change in any substantial way, Mr. Meyers said – not even whether there will be a house band.

“I don’t want to make any broad pronouncements about how the show is going to be, whether it’s going to be the same or different,” Mr. Meyers said. “But I have to draw on my background in improvisational comedy and sketch comedy and stand-up comedy and try to find some mix of that.”

One move Mr. Michaels is making to smooth the transition is keeping Mike Shoemaker as the day-to-day producer of “Late Night” as he has been under Mr. Fallon. “He and Seth are friends,” Mr. Michaels said. “He comes from ‘SNL.’ We will make sure that the show has all the people on it who are the best people we can put on the field.”

The connections to “Saturday Night Live” on NBC’s late-night lineup will never have been more pervasive. Mr. Fallon was a performer on the show and anchored the “Weekend Update” segment, like Mr. Meyers.

The “Late Night” show will remain in New York even with “Tonight” moving back to the city. With “SNL,” all three shows will be housed in studios in NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. That will keep them all close to Mr. Michaels, who will now be in charge of all of NBC’s important late-night franchises.

“It’s all in the same building,” he said. “ ‘Saturday Night Live’ will be more than the majority of my time, as it always has been. Both other shows will be run by people who know what they’re doing, and who I obviously believe in; and we all have a shorthand.”

Mr. Meyers said one thing he would like to bring with him from his “Update” segments is what he called “a two-shot with talented, funny people.” These are his interviews with comedy guests who stop by the anchor desk. “A company of writer-performer hybrids who can come on and do stuff on the show,” was how he described the idea. “We’re in the very early stages of thinking about all this, but that’s very interesting to me.”

Though his selection had seemed all but inevitable, given his skills and his association with Mr. Michaels, Mr. Meyers said he found the idea of separating from “SNL” a bit difficult to embrace.

“It always seemed like a logical next move,” Mr. Meyers said. “It was just competing with the very emotional idea of leaving a place I have been for a very long time. But if you are going to do that, it seems like you might as well just move a hallway or two.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/media/seth-meyers-to-succeed-fallon-on-late-night.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

CBS Details Its Broad Overhaul of ‘The Early Show’

November 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Pain is evident in the voice of the CBS News chairman, Jeff Fager, when he talks about the ratings performance of “The Early Show,” the network’s long-suffering morning news broadcast.

Distant third in the ratings? That’s “a phrase I hate hearing,” Mr. Fager said Tuesday as he announced another revamping of the network’s morning strategy.

Effective Jan. 9, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose will join the anchor Erica Hill for the 7 a.m. hour, and the talk show host Gayle King will lead the 8 a.m. hour on the broadcast, which will be given a new name and be marketed as a more serious alternative to the popular morning shows on NBC and ABC.

Referring to the success of the CBS network in prime time, Mr. Fager said, “It’s amazing, really, that the No. 1 network in television by far, by far, isn’t doing better” in the mornings.

It has been this way for decades. What’s different this time, Mr. Fager asserted at a news conference on Tuesday, are the people involved, like Mr. Rose, who said he would rely on decades of A-list contacts to book guests, and Ms. King, who said she would ensure that the program be smart and entertaining.

Morning television, Ms. Hill noted, “is very much about who you want to wake up with.”

Chris Licht, the former producer of the MSNBC ensemble “Morning Joe,” will be the executive producer of the program, said David Rhodes, the president of CBS News. Mr. Licht joined CBS in June as the news division’s vice president for programming, and he will retain that role.

Mr. Licht said the program would not imitate its rivals. There will be no cooking segments and no couch on the set. “Where will the weatherman sit? Oh wait,” he said jokingly, since there will be no weatherman. (Local stations are already inserting their own weather segments into the sobered-up “Early Show.”)

Within the television business, there is widespread skepticism about whether a hard news bent will help bring in viewers in the morning.

Mr. Fager, who is also the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” said that while the morning program would emphasize hard news just as that Sunday newsmagazine does, “it’s not going to be all serious.” He said it would cover pop culture as well as political and economic news, describing it as a mixture of what’s important “and sometimes what’s just plain interesting.”

Mr. Rose said he would continue to host his PBS and Bloomberg interview program. But Ms. King will not continue to host her talk show on OWN, the cable channel owned by her best friend, Oprah Winfrey. OWN said Tuesday that Ms. King would “join us from time to time as her schedule allows.”

Mr. Fager would not make predictions about ratings. “It’s been tough in the morning at CBS,” he acknowledged. “A lot of times we replaced people without really re-thinking from the ground up” about the structure of the broadcast.

And this time? After the news conference, he walked with reporters through an old reference library at CBS that is being rebuilt as a newsroom and studio for the newscast. The past, he said, doesn’t matter. “We have an opportunity to start fresh.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=922d0d2ea8f83f643a905162c9dd15f9

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