LOS ANGELES — The producers of the Academy Awards telecast announced on Friday that they were going back to a prominent television star, Ellen DeGeneres, to host the movie industry’s biggest event, the annual Oscar ceremony.
Those producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, drew questions last year when they gave the hosting job to Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the Fox show “Family Guy.” Mr. MacFarlane then set off a loud backlash with some of the material in the show, especially a song about women’s breasts.
But ratings went up, especially among the younger viewers the Oscar telecast had been losing. The show was up 20 percent among young adults.
Ms. DeGeneres has even less to do with the movie business than Mr. MacFarlane had. (His film “Ted” preceded his appearance.) But she is well liked in Hollywood, and her turn hosting the Oscars in 2007 was widely praised.
Still, the selection of a television comic with a daily syndicated talk show touched off some surprise here at the annual tour of the Television Critics Association — one of several small-screen developments to cause a stir here — because ABC, the network that broadcasts the Oscar show, has its own star with that exact résumé, Jimmy Kimmel. Ms. DeGeneres does have a history with ABC. Her situation comedy, “Ellen,” which made national news when both she and her character came out as gay in 1997, was broadcast on ABC.
In typical fashion, Ms. DeGeneres released a jokey statement: “I am so excited to be hosting the Oscars for the second time. You know what they say — the third time’s the charm.”
FOX STICKS UP FOR ‘DADS’ One new series always sets off the most negative response among critics gathered here, and this year’s “winner” — hands down — is a coming Fox comedy called “Dads.”
The show is about two friends, played by Giovanni Ribisi and Seth Green, who experience generation shock when their fathers, played by Martin Mull and Peter Riegert, come to live with them.
Going into the new season, “Dads” seems likely to be the target of mass condemnation for crude humor based on sexism, in addition to some racist remarks.
The cast appeared here for a news conference, accompanied by several producers (a group that coincidentally includes Mr. MacFarlane, though he was not present). Their defense ranged from suggesting that there would be “things we’d like to tweak” in future episodes (from the producer Alec Sulkin), to citing examples from the writers’ lives in which older relatives blurted out profanities.
Mike Scully, an executive producer best known for “The Simpsons,” joked that a certain expletive “was part of our regular dinner conversation — and that was during grace.”
The top Fox entertainment executive, Kevin Reilly, tried to defuse the furor by noting that comedies often experiment before they find the right tone. He then read out a litany of corrosive comments that the same group of critics had made about an earlier sitcom, complete with suggestions that the show might have been the worst comedy of all time.
Then he revealed the show: “The Big Bang Theory,” now the biggest hit comedy on television.
All of which was meant to underscore the idea that critics are often wrong about shows.
But not always, the Fox executives would surely argue. Among critics gathered here, the favorite new comedy of next season is one called “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” That, too, will be on Fox.
FX FINDS INSPIRATION IN ‘FARGO’ Fox’s sister cable channel, FX, will continue adding to its ambitious lineup with a series inspired by the Oscar-winning movie “Fargo.” The network announced here on Friday that the show would star Billy Bob Thornton.
The show will have none of the characters from the movie. Mr. Thornton will play a con artist who tries to manipulate a small-town insurance salesman.
Joel and Ethan Coen, the filmmakers behind “Fargo,” were involved in this project and will be listed as executive producers. John Landgraf, the FX chief executive, said here that the brothers read the pilot script and asked to do a rewrite. That consisted of half a dozen new pages, Mr. Landgraf said, because the material fit the Coens’ original vision for “Fargo.”
This show is part of the new genre of “limited series,” akin to FX’s “American Horror Story”: The series, also called “Fargo,” will wrap up in 10 hours, though it may continue in future seasons with new stories and characters in the same setting,
“Fargo” has long been the object of television ardor. There have been several tries at adaptations, with one, in 2003, getting as far as a pilot. That one used the film’s central character, Marge Gunderson, played (still pregnant), by Edie Falco.
CBS DEFENDS STRATEGY CBS offered a research presentation here that reinforced the network’s belief that too much attention is paid to viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, and argued that more advertisers were moving away from slavish devotion to that demographic.
Leslie Moonves, the network’s president, has fought that fight for years because CBS has been dominant both in total viewers and in the 25-to-54 group.
But this past season, CBS even topped its rivals in that 18-to-49 audience. “I didn’t think it would take this long” to win in that category, Mr. Moonves said. “It helped when ‘American Idol’ crashed.” Despite the win, he said CBS still believed in appealing to a mass audience, not just those under 50. “But it’s good to be able to say we won there, too,” Mr. Moonves said, “and to finally shut everybody up.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/business/media/surprise-at-tv-critics-gathering-degeneres-is-to-host-the-oscars.html?partner=rss&emc=rss