Greetings from the start of week 2 of the TV Critics Association Winter Press Tour.
Today it’s all about ABC!
Paul Lee, president of ABC Entertainment Group, announced during a morning session that ‘Modern Family,’ ‘The Middle,’ ‘Cougar Town,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Private Practice’ and ‘Castle’ have already been renewed for another season.
Congratulations to the cast & crew of “Cougar Town” for this great news!
It seems in TV Land, the fairer sex loses out this time. ABC has just announced that Courteney Cox’s underrated Cougar Town will be shelved for the time being, with a mid-season replacement in the 9:30 Wednesday night timeslot- Mr. Sunshine, starring Cox’s former Friends co-star Matthew Perry. Mr. Sunshine will run in the coveted post-Modern Family slot for the next 9 weeks until Cougar Town returns to run the rest of its season in April.
That’s right, no new “Cougar Town” until April 2011, folks! 
The year is coming to an end – it’s time to vote for the best TV shows and characters of the year in TV.com’s Best of 2010, and Cougar Town’s Busy Philipps has been nominated for Funniest Actress!
Head on over to http://www.tv.com/bestof2010/?p=2 to vote!
Busy Philipps is going to be a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday, September 29th! The show airs on the ABC network at about midnight, but make sure you check your local TV listings for exact air times in your area.
Back in the spring, I interviewed “Cougar Town” co-creator Bill Lawrence about the creative turnaround that show made over the course of the season. In that interview, Bill said that they had done research showing that the title was a severe turn-off – that some viewers (mostly women) had no interest in watching anything called “Cougar Town,” even though the show had long since stopped being about Courteney Cox trolling for young men. He said he hoped to petition the studio and ABC into agreeing to a title change before season two.
Last Friday, though, Lawrence told Michael Ausiello that the name change wasn’t happening, so when I saw Bill at ABC’s party last night, I had to get him to elaborate on the subject…
So what’s this I hear about you keeping the terrible title of your show?
Oh, dude. The only title I could think of that was any better was “Stay tuned for more ‘Modern Family,’” which would’ve crushed. “After this commercial break. We would’ve had to nail it to change it. And we didn’t come up with anything. We couldn’t use anything with the word “friends,” because it would seem like we were pandering. They made some good points, which is that branding of a show matters. Eventually you can overcome a shitty title. It may be the worst-titled show of all time, but it’s a fun burden to overcome. DVRs, you’d have to reprogram with a new title. That’s like 30, 40 people we’d lose right there with their season passes. I’d have to call them all personally.
The truth is, we never nailed anything we really dug that would make that wholesale change worthwhile. So now we’re wearing it like a badge of courage.
You couldn’t have even just gone with “The Courteney Cox Show”? It’s more than that now, but it wouldn’t be a turn-off.
It’s not good enough. It would have had to blow those guys away – because they researched all our suggestions – to make it worth changing. Here’s the double-edged sword, which I find interesting. Classic network television story, when they wanted to put a laugh track on “M*A*S*H.” Larry Gelbart did a test where he tested it with laughs and he tested it without, and he went to those guys and said, “Look, people responded the same way whether there were fake laughs in it or not.” And the network said, “Well, great. Then we’ll keep the laughs.”
In the same vein, the network and studio are actively considering it. The story is out there that I fucked up the title, and we were actively searching for a change. I just care if it remains exclusionary. Who gives a shit? We’ll call it “C-Town,” but that actually sounds worse.
Yeah, that’s almost dirtier.
Someone was suggesting “The Family Jules,” and I’m like, “Why not just call the show ‘Balls’? ‘Nutsack’? There’s no win.” But if I could go back in time, it would be “The Courteney Cox Show.”
From Hit Fix
IFC has picked up the complete series of Judd Apatow’s Emmy-winning high school comedy “Freaks and Geeks” (which ran for only 18 episodes) and college show “Undeclared” (17 episodes) from Paramount Pictures.
The two cult TV hits helped launch the careers of Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Seth Rogen and Jason Segel.
“Freaks and Geeks” will premiere on IFC on Friday at 11 p.m., and encore on Mondays at 11 p.m. and Sundays at 10 p.m. “Undeclared” will debut on IFC this fall. A previously unaired episode of “Undeclared” will make its U.S. TV debut on IFC.
From ONTD
Busy Philipps and Josh Hopkins have admitted that they don’t know whether the name of their show Cougar Town should be changed.
Executive producer Bill Lawrence has previously revealed that he is thinking of altering the title to reflect how the series has evolved.
“I don’t know if I think it’s a good idea or a bad idea,” Philipps told DS. “I think it’s an interesting idea. And I get it, because the title Cougar Town is not indicative of what the show is at the moment.”
However, Hopkins suggested that fans are used to the current name, saying: “It’s been branded. It’s Cougar Town. They put a lot of time and effort into calling it Cougar Town. But in another regard, it’s misleading. I believe that it’s limited – some people don’t want to watch a show called Cougar Town. They just assume it’s one thing that it’s not.”
The duo agreed that some viewers will refuse to watch the programme because of its current name.
“I don’t know about in the UK but in America a lot of people don’t like the term cougar,” Hopkins said. “They don’t find it funny, or it’s played out, it’s old. And I think they’ve done studies that showed some people will not watch the show because it’s called Cougar Town. And because it’s not really about that, I wouldn’t mind seeing them change the name.”
From Digital Spy
