"I swear I could see the blood drain from Hammer's face"

July 11th, 2003, 01:33 PM

Press Tour follies

Matt Zoller Seitz reports from the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles.

Thursday, July 10, 2003

WHEN PEOPLE ask me what the Television Critics' press tour is all about, I usually tell them it's a chance for television columnists at newspapers and magazines around the country to meet network executives, producers, writers, actors and other entertainment figures, discuss previews of upcoming shows and get a better sense of what TV is going to look like in the very near future.

But the essence of Press Tour is actually much simpler: TV people try to get reporters to give them publicity without criticism of any kind, and reporters do what they can to get these same people to wander off script.

It's not easy. Networks and cable channels spend millions to make and promote the new fall shows, and with that kind of money at stake, they go the extra mile to make sure their people follow a prepared, at times rather mechanical script.

Executives and PR bosses often mediate these news conferences, ostensibly to take responsibility for what happens, but more likely because they dig being the center of attention as much as their actors do. They usually start by reading rah-rah statements about how their channel had its best year ever, posting one hundred thousand zillion percent growth in ratings categories that sound important until you read the footnotes at the bottom of the page ("*Single women aged 24-27 named Brenda").

At Press Tour, every actor tells reporters that the cast of his current show was the best he ever worked with, and every producer insists the director he hired is a genius.

Certain TV organizations gain a reputation for being more frank than others. The HBO, CBS and UPN sessions, for instance, are usually about as honest as corporate media presentations can be; CBS honcho Les Moonves , in particular, is legendary for letting you know if he thinks certain shows are good or bad, or fated for success or failure.

The rest are guarded and boring, practically shellacked by public relations prep work. A favorite pastime among TV reporters is getting together to analyze the word choice and body language of network executives the way DC-based financial reporters pick apart the behavior of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan .

When someone wanders off script at one of these sessions, excitement courses through the room like a surge of AC current. You can literally feel the room pep up, and you hear pens scratching on paper and microcassettes being loaded into recorders that journalists reasonably figured they'd have no good reason to use.

At a Sci-Fi channel session on Tuesday promoting a miniseries remake of the short-lived ABC program "Battlestar Galactica," star Edward James Olmos , who plays starship commander Adama, went off script in a big way.

Sci-Fi president Bonnie Hammer was mediating the discussion when a reporter asked if the miniseries, scheduled to premiere in December, was just a glorified pilot for a regular weekly show.

Olmos admitted what everyone in the room already knew that the original show was terrible, that the miniseries remake was a backdoor pilot for a series, and that he and the other actors had already signed contracts saying they'd return for more shooting. Then he warned fans of the original not to watch the new version because creator Ron Moore's radically realistic scripts would break their hearts.

"A person who really has a strict belief in the original, I would not advise him to watch this program," Olmos said. "Buy yourself the new DVDs that they are putting out of the original episodes, and whenever we come on, just put that one in. Don't watch (our version) because it will hurt."

Olmos said fans of the original, which ran from September 1978 to August 1980, are "very angry" about the new version. "And I know that Sci-Fi Channel wants to say that everybody's going to enjoy it. They're not."

I was 12 rows away, but I swear I could see all the blood drain from Hammer's face. "Kill me now," she said.

"They're not going to like the program," Olmos repeated. He then complained about "tens of thousands of people who write to each other for 25 years over a program that is not on the air and is not even being rerun."

-- Matt Zoller Seitz

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledg...1844321520.xml

E-mail him at
alltv@starledger.com

captmiloman · July 11th, 2003, 07:10 PM

I can see the sweat pouring down her face. She'd better stock up on Ban, Secret, or whatever she uses.

Senmut · July 12th, 2003, 01:23 AM

"Everybody knew the show was terrible"? I wonder just who is paying this reporter's cab fare?????

Micheleh · July 12th, 2003, 09:30 AM

"He then complained about "tens of thousands of people who write to each other for 25 years....."

Did he say *tens of thousands*?

*blinks*

So much for no one remembers, eh?

Sept17th · July 12th, 2003, 10:04 AM

My Note to Matt

Thanks for bringing this to your readers. For to long Bonnie Hammer and company have wanted to hide that this mini-series has virtually no fan support. I also owe Mr. Olmos a word of thanks for his candor.

The original was not terrible but suffered badly from poor scripts when ABC decided to rush it into a weekly series at the last minute. We wanted a “darker and racier” updated show but this Battlestar Galactica strips away nearly everything that made the original special television. In the original series these people we’re our brothers from a distant star based on the ancient astronaut story, Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica is just the US Navy in space. It is not good escapist television for the whole family. For the record Mr. Seitz we “real-real”, and “purists” fans are mostly professionals, artists and parents who have no desire to go back to the 70’s with Disco hair and robot dogs.

Thanks again.

Jon Rogers