CBS at TCA: Executive Session Live-Blog

Nina Tassler is about the hit the Press Tour stage to talk about all things CBS. Keep refreshing to find out the latest of what she has to say…

9:07 AM: Tassler acknowledged the big INTELLIGENCE audience drop in week 2, but says they’ve seen 11 episodes and they’re happy with the story they’ve seen so far.

9:12 AM: We just saw a little preview of UNDER THE DOME season 2: two characters won’t make it through the premiere, there will be new characters, new alliances, and new romances. (The show returns June 30th at 10 PM.)

9:16 AM: Tassler says that while she heard Kevin Reilly’s “getting rid of pilot season” mantra, they’ve had a couple of good experiences with things working out for the best because of pilot pressure: THE BIG BANG THEORY originally was made without Kaley Cuoco, but they looked at it after the fact and realized it needed to be rejiggered.

9:19 AM: “Dave [Letterman] is an icon at the top of his game, so internally, we’ve been preparing for that move for a while,” Tassler says of NBC’s upcoming shift and what that will do to their own late night lineup.

9:20 AM: “HOSTAGES certainly had its challenges, but we stuck with it,” Tassler says of their miniseries/limited show models.

9:21 AM: Tassler says that HOSTAGES won’t dissuade them from doing more serialized shows during the season. “We felt there were a lot of great elements to the show,” she says. But she notes there’s a “knee-jerk” reaction from the industry to try and analyze why something does or doesn’t work.

9:23 AM: The next JESSE STONE movie won’t air on CBS, and Tassler says that right now, they’re looking for more limited series events.

9:24 AM: “It was about falling in love with a piece of material,” Tassler says of their return to limited series. They won’t just model all limited series the same way.

9:26 AM: Les Moonves has pushed to get advertisers to pay for Live Viewings+30 days of playback, and Tassler jokes that Les is like the DAMN YANKEES song (“Whatever Lola Wants”) is basically how Les is — “Whatever Les Wants (Les Gets).”

9:28 AM: Tassler says she was “mortified” by the BIG BROTHER racist comments that were made last summer. But she notes it’s a social experiment, and the comments that are made become part of the storyline, they make it to air. (Which is why some of the racist comments that were made solely on the livefeed never made it to air.)

9:33 AM: There are two CBS midseason shows that have yet to get premiere dates, so they’re not here. Tassler says they’ll have 13 episodes in the can before they need to schedule them.

9:34 AM: “Jonah Nolan came in last year and told us he was going to kill Carter, and I almost killed myself,” Tassler says. She notes that years ago, you didn’t kill off characters like that, and if the show was working, you don’t break things. But Nolan explained why it was essential to do this, even though he dearly loved Carter’s portrayer, Taraji P. Henson.

–

And that’s it!