It's So Fox
At the end of the day, it’s still going to be very difficult to say goodbye to Jack Bauer. (Losing Renee was hard enough.)
At Fox’s upfront presentation–during which Keifer Sutherland made somewhat infamous remarks last year, just after his Met head-bashing incident, the network was clearly moving on from ’24.” This time, Hugh Laurie and Jane Lynch were the talent with speaking roles, with Laurie charming the packed Beacon Theatre and Lynch having some fun at Kevin Reilly’s expense. “That weatherman hair! Those chalk white teeth!”
This woke up the crowd from the charts and demo-graphs presented to convince the media buyers that broadcast TV was still the place to be, and Fox in particular.
Reilly got in a dig at former employer NBC, by saying being a top dog can make a company a complacent target.
Meanwhile, Fox did not announce Simon Cowell’s successor on American Idol, saying it would take away from his final season (and of course, he’ll be back with his other show in Fall ’11.)
Several teaser trailers for new shows got a big response, including Mixed Signals, Lonestar, Raising Hope and Ride-Along, a new cop show from The Shield’s Shawn Ryan set in Chicago. And then there was the Spielberg extravaganza “Terra Nova.” Avatar as a series? We’ll see. But not much could top the Glee cast performing a rousing “Like a Prayer.”
And then it was off to the rollicking bash at Central Park’s Wollman rink, where there was no prayer of getting out of there without getting a little bit toasted.
