Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

By Seth I went to my brother’s house (Studio 60’s Nate Corddry) for a party, and then my wife and I had a couple slices of pizza and went home and watched it from home, and went to bed. And woke up in the morning—and I don’t know what your experience was—but it must have been a horrible time to work at Defam...

By Seth We review all this as introduction to quite possibly the most exciting online development to roll across our virtual desktops in quite some time. Aaron Sorkin, or someone who has gone to a great deal of effort to convince others he is Aaron Sorkin, has emerged from his self-imposed, blogop...

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By Mark · Onetime NBC Messiah Aaron Sorkin has signed on for a three-picture deal with DreamWorks. First up is a script for The Trial of the Chicago 7, a period political piece about the clash between protestors and police at the 1968 Democratic convention that Sorkin was able to adapt from an unair...

By Mark You may not have realized it, but at just a couple of minutes before 11 p.m. last night, the final credits rolled on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, ending Aaron Sorkin's bold, ill-fated experiment in melding the light-hearted Hollywood world of late-night sketch comedy shows with the absur...

By Mark As the TV upfronts are intended to be a weeklong celebration of possibility and hope, there is generally no place in a network's presentation to advertisers to pause briefly and remember the once-beloved projects that won't be going forward into the Fall season; accordingly, it took a r...

SATURDAY 8-9 p.m.: "Dateline NBC" 9-11 p.m.: Drama Series Encores SUNDAY (Fall 2007) 7-8 p.m.: "Football Night in America" 8-11 p.m.: "NBC Sunday Night Football" NBC announces schedule, shows [Variety]No new comedies on the peacock's fall schedule [THR]

By Mark NBC's website quietly brings good—nay, great, shout-Huzzah!-to-the-heavens-and-slaughter-the-fatted-calf—news to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip's legion of affluent, upscale, and long-suffering fans: The show will return to the airwaves on Thursday, May 24, presumably to bur...

By Mark While arriving a little late to the Studio 60 parody party, Conan O'Brien's Studio 6A effort of last Friday night makes up for its lack of timeliness (especially considering the possibility we may never see another new 60 episode outside of a complete first-season DVD release) with its s...

By Mark From the very moment that NBC controversially decided to greenlight two different series (one hourlong, one a half-hour) set behind the scenes at an SNLesque sketch comedy show and named for the numbered structures (one fictional, one real) in which they were produced, the fates of Stu...

These have been sad days indeed for the dedicated fans of Studio 60, multiple Emmy-winner Aaron Sorkin's unflinching look into the dark soul of late night sketch comedy programming: As the still-healing scars on the underside of our forearm representing each squandered Monday night t...

By Mark Despite the fact that Studio 60 will eventually return from its indefinite, Haggis-enabling hiatus to triumphantly claim the Nielsen validation it so richly deserves, pragmatic showrunner Aaron Sorkin is nonetheless preparing for a post-60 existence. A recent career brainstormin...

By Mark This morning brings ominous news for Studio 60's legion of upscale, affluent, and Nielsen-confounding, TiVo-time-shifting fans: Variety reports that NBC is moving up by a week its previously announced indefinite yanking of the series following the show's worst ratings to date, han...

By Mark In what might be the first shot fired in East Coast/West Coast Half-Hour/Hourlong Funny/Unfunny War between NBC's dueling behind-the-scenes-at-a-sketch-comedy-show primetime series, 30 Rock's Tina Fey offered this one-liner at the expense of presumed NBC Messiah Aaron Sorkin:...

By Mark · CBS's Super Monday promotion successfully tricks viewers into thinking the Super Bowl is a two-night event, giving the network a Monday night win over strong Deal or No Deal and Heroes performances on NBC. In other ratings news, an estimated 7.2 million people watched Timothy Busfield c...

By Mark Showing a renewed commitment to journalistic fairness in the aftermath of Aaron Sorkin's shocking exposure of their anti-Sorkin agenda last week, in which the Studio 60 showrunner decried the paper's unacceptable reliance on negative quotes from "disgruntled" individuals whose l...

By Mark We missed this pretty dead-on Mad TV parody of Studio 60 back when it originally aired in November, due largely to the fact that we had no idea that Mad TV is still on the air. (Usually when we say that, we're just being wiseasses, but we genuinely thought the show was canceled two years ago—hey...

By Mark We hate to return so quickly to the Golden Globes nominations, but since we made a point of spotlighting Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip creator Aaron Sorkin's hope that a Globe nod would elevate his Little Serious-Minded Sketch Comedy Drama That Could from a "critical hit" into the type of h...

By Seth · The WGA nominations were announced today, and HBO is the only TV network (not that it's TV) with two series in each of the major categories (Deadwood and Sopranos/Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage). NBC, meanwhile, picks up four of the five nominees for best new series, pitting 30 Rock a...

By Mark It's the usual Monday night Nielsen drill for NBC: viewers tune in for people shouting at briefcases, stick around to watch indestructible cheerleaders, then flip to another channel before 10 pm momentum stopper Studio 60 has a chance to capture their hearts with a monologue about the a...

By Mark Heroes puts up the best 18-49 demo ratings that NBC's seen all season, throwing a spotlight on the momentum-stopping performance of Studio 60's Very Special Episode on the evils of product placement. [Variety] · Nearly three years later, the FCC and CBS are still fighting over Janet Jack...

By Mark Those affluent and upscale enough to still be watching Studio 60 will undoubtedly recognize the name of Pahrump, Nevada as that of the sleepy desert town where the series' most recent pair of episodes was memorably set, a multi-part farce about the ostensibly hilarious collision of sno...

By Mark · Studio 60 ticks up slightly in the ratings, improving to 7.8 million upscale, affluent viewers from last week's count of 7.7 million, a gain that will have NBC considering whether or not to order another five seasons to reward the public's obvious recognition of their faith in the show. Mea...

By Mark Good news both for genuine fans of Studio 60 and for those who derive their primary enjoyment from the series from their spirited Tuesday morning discussions about why Jesus running a network Standards & Practices department isn't actually funny: Despite our spies' forecast of an...

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By Mark Yesterday, THR columnist Ray Richmond interviewed beleaguered showrunner Aaron Sorkin and gave Studio 60 fans hope that their favorite, serious-minded weekly examination of the culture-salvaging possibilities of late-night sketch comedy shows is on the verge of a season-comple...

By Mark The rest of the exchange is here. And if you're still not satisfied, there's always TV writer Ken Levine's recent conception of what might happen if Sorkin turned his dramatic attention to our national pastime. AARON SORKIN VISITS A DENTAL HYGIENIST [McSweeney's]

By Mark The Slug blog thinks it sees evidence of creeping Jordan McDeere-ism in fledgling network abomination The CW's hiring practices, throwing together this side-by-side-by-side to illustrate how current programming VP Gayle Hirsch and drama development VP Joanna Klein (or some combi...

By Mark Friday Night Lights easily outperforms the "ratings troubled" Studio 60 during its (alleged) one-week tryout in Studio's Monday night timeslot (with an episode titled "GIT'ER DONE," no less—is there no end to Aaron Sorkin's pain?). Draw whatever dire conclusions you wish about the fa...

By Mark We usually reserve our speculation about Studio 60's chances of being allowed to continue to trumpet the socially redeeming power of unrelentingly serious-minded sketch comedy shows until the disappointing Tuesday morning ratings numbers for NBC's little momentum-stopper come i...

By Mark Meanwhile, NBC took the 8 p.m. hour with "Deal or No Deal" (15.5 million, 4.4/12). [...] But NBC's momentum was stopped cold at 10 p.m., when "Studio 60" (7.7 million, 3.2/8) was beaten by CBS' "CSI: Miami" (17.5 million, 5.9/15). ABC's "What About Brian" (6 million, 2.7/7) fell week-to-week.

By Mark It's probably for the best that the online queries seem limited to the kinds of generic ones ("Do you find the relationship between Matt and Harriet completely unbelievable, moderately unbelievable, or somewhat unbelievable? Please give reasons for your answer.") that assist a netwo...

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By Mark While it was previously believed that Aaron Sorkin's much-discussed, edgy reworking of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Major-General's Song" in the cold open of the fictional Studio 60's first episode under the Albee/Tripp regime owed a creative debt to David Hyde Pierce's performance...

By Seth In today's spectacular calvacade of stars: Jack Nicholson; Aaron Sorkin; James Woods; Lindsay Lohan, Mandy Moore, Minnie Driver, and George Lucas; Sumner Redstone, Brad Grey and Emeril Lagassi; Bruce Willis; Steve Carell; Michael Cera; Nicole Richie; Jules Asner and Steven Soderb...

By Seth Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog notes that on an improv theater internet message board discussing the merits and missteps of frequent Defaker fodder Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, an astute Sorkinologist had an acute moment of déjà vu when Sarah Paulson's character storms in on M...

By Mark At 10 p.m., the season premiere of "CSI: Miami" scored the night's biggest audience with an 11.2/17. "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" averaged a decent 8.6/14 for NBC but lost a significant number of viewers in its second half-hour. ABC was third with "Supernanny," 4.8/8.

By Mark Not to put too fine a point on it, but next Monday's series debut of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, fourth-place NBC's extravagant show of faith in troubled-but-gifted West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, is easily the most important moment in the network's history since an infamous 1949 epis...

By Mark Shouldering the burden of a fourth-place network's comeback dreams must be a psychically draining undertaking for even the most stable television producer, to say nothing of one who once sought refuge from TV's pressures by curling up with a call girl and a warm, homemade rock of cocain...

By Mark Shortly, NBC will be the first network to announce its fall schedule at this week's "upfront" presentations to advertisers in NY, when it is widely expected that the network will formally anoint Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and the new, highly buzzed-about drama Studio 60 On Th...

By Mark · In a move that surprised absolutely no one, NBC picked up Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes-at-SNL pilot Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. leaving the network to decide whether or not there's also room on its schedule for Tina Fey's still untitled behind-the-scenes-at-SNL pilot. [Variet...