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Rupert Murdoch's Tale of Two Peters

Gabriel Snyder — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:39:42 EDT

Rupert Murdoch shook up Fox's movie and TV businesses today, his first moves since News Corp. deputy Peter Chernin stepped down. The biggest winner: Peter Rice, who's going from overseeing Slumdog Millionaire to American Idol.

As always with Murdoch, personal loyalty trumps business. The biggest loser in the reshuffle is Peter Liguori, who's been pushed out as the entertainment chairman of Fox Broadcasting, overseeing the Fox prime time schedule. It was Chernin who put Liguori in the job in 2005, promoting him from the job overseeing the FX cable network.

Replacing him is the Brit ex-pat Rice (on the left with Danny Boyle), and currently the head of specialty film label Fox Searchlight. For a studio exec, Rice is well-liked and affable enough. Also, Searchlight has been one of the only companies to consistently profitably play the Oscar game, backing this year's Slumdog Millionaire and last year's Juno.

But he struggled to succeed outside that boutique business. When Rice was approached in 2006 to take over Paramount's specialty business, Murdoch was so set on keeping him that he let him launch a whole new film division, Fox Atomic, which was meant to court young men. But the venture quickly proved to be a bust; its first film, a remake of Revenge of the Nerds was cancelled in the middle of production. Last year, the unit was scaled back dramatically, and today's memo doesn't bother mentioning it.

What Murdoch's memo also doesn't mention is that Rice's father was a friend and business partner of Murdoch's back in England and it was that connection that landed Rice his first Fox job back in 1989. Murdoch writes in his memo, "Peter has the vision, creativity and determination to grow and remodel our television network." Rice has never worked in TV, so who knows? But Murdoch has always been more comfortable running News Corp. as a family business than the conglomerate that it is. Apparently, he still is.

Kevin Reilly In At Fox, Where He's Now Sworn To Wipe NBC's Class From The Face of the Earth

Mark — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:48:41 EDT

It's official: the much-rumored-about Fox reunion of former FX pals Peter Liguori and recent NBC Memorial Day Massacre victim Kevin Reilly (pictured above slipping his business card to Liguori at a luncheon two years ago, knowing he'd one day have to hit up his old boss for a job) has come to pass, with Reilly, as expected, taking over the crucial programming responsibility of shouting at panicked underlings, "I don't care how the fuck we do it, but I want American Idol on every night from now until the Earth hurtles into the sun!" Variety notes the irony that Fox's new hire will now have the opportunity to turn the power of that aforementioned Nielsen Death Star against the schedule he meticulously crafted for NBC shortly before his ouster, watching through bittersweet tears as each crass Idol installment wipes out his classy primetime children one by one.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Fox names Reilly president [Variety]
Previously: Report: Kevin Reilly Already In Talks To Class Up Fox [Defamer]

Report: Kevin Reilly Already In Talks To Class Up Fox

Mark — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 13:23:47 EDT

Even as NBC janitors continue to scrub away at stubborn blood stains and collect overlooked skull fragments left over from the Memorial Day Massacre that enabled rock-star Ben Silverman's ascendance at the Peacock, freshly whacked president Kevin Reilly is reportedly in talks to reunite with former FX boss Peter Liguori at Fox, an attempt to recapture the magic of a previous collaboration which, in the words of Variety, elevated the then-obscure channel "to a basic-cable equivalent of HBO with cutting-edge fare."

The rumors hold that Reilly's still-undefined job might involve him assuming programming responsibilities at Fox, allowing Liguori, whose greatest accomplishment of the past two-plus years has been resisting the deliciously suicidal impulse to cancel American Idol just to see if his entire operation instantaneously disappears into a Nielsen-generated black hole, to take on a "broader role overseeing the network." Still, we worry that the men have grown apart since their FX days, as Reilly's self-destructive obsession with low-rated "class" will almost certainly come into conflict with Fox's maniacal dedication to the smoothing of demographically desirable brains. Then again, maybe their outwardly differing philosophies will create some kind of unexpected synthesis, with Reilly bringing over Aaron Sorkin to preside over a hit gameshow in which contestants are kicked in the genitals following each failure to correctly answer questions about current events of geopolitical import.

Kevin Reilly in talks to join Fox [Variety]
Reilly heading for Fox reunion? [THR]

Fox To Try And Prove Their Programming Executives Are Smarter Than A Fifth Grader

Mark — Thu, 17 May 2007 15:31:02 EDT

It's Day Four of the upfronts, that special mid-May week during which network executives lure advertisers to fancy venues, use elaborate presentations about their Fall programming to trick the media buyers into believing that spending their money on unproven shows is any less risky than letting their entire budgets ride on a single roulette-wheel number, and then retire to after-parties to toast their mutual delusions with free booze. Today, Fox wraps up the festivities with the announcement of their slate of new shows, coyly refusing for a fifth straight year to abandon their largely useless development process and switch to a year-round, all-American Idol format.

They did, however, go heavy on reality for the Fall, hoping that series like Idol-spin off The Search for the Next Great American Band, Hell's Kitchen spin-off Kitchen Nightmares, and Nashville (hot people trying to make it in country music, we think) can help stave off ratings Armageddon (especially if those pesky writers wind up going on strike) until the Nielsen Death Star arrives in January to eradicate their primetime competition. Also: There will be more Are You Dumber Than A Fifth Grader, Tough Guy? Thank you, Peter Liguori. Our lives would feel empty without watching allegedly college-educated people squinting their eyes so tightly in concentration that blood trickles down their faces while they try to call to mind the number of sides on an isosceles triangle.

The full schedules, spanning the Fall, January, and Spring seasons (remember, they're redefining the programming paradigm! Or something.) follows, presented in ALL CAPS [via THR]

FALL
MONDAY
8:00-9:00 PM PRISON BREAK
9:00-10:00 PM K-VILLE

TUESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM NEW AMSTERDAM
9:00-10:00 PM HOUSE

WEDNESDAY
8:00-8:30 PM BACK TO YOU
8:30-9:00 PM 'TIL DEATH
9:00-10:00 PM BONES

THURSDAY
8:00-9:00 PM ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 5th GRADER?
9:00-10:00 PM KITCHEN NIGHTMARES

FRIDAY
8:00-9:00 PM THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN BAND (working title)
9:00-10:00 PM NASHVILLE (working title)

SATURDAY
8:00-8:30 PM COPS
8:30-9:00 PM COPS
9:00-10:00 PM AMERICA'S MOST WANTED: AMERICA FIGHTS BACK

SUNDAY
7:00-8:00 PM THE OT (NFL post-game)
8:00-8:30 PM THE SIMPSONS
8:30-9:00 PM KING OF THE HILL
9:00-9:30 PM FAMILY GUY
9:30-10:00 PM AMERICAN DAD

JANUARY 2008
MONDAY
8:00-9:00 PM K-VILLE (January)/PRISON BREAK (Spring)
9:00-10:00 PM 24

TUESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM AMERICAN IDOL
9:00-10:00 PM HOUSE

WEDNESDAY (January)
8:00-8:30 PM BACK TO YOU
8:30-9:00 PM 'TIL DEATH
9:00-10:00 PM AMERICAN IDOL

WEDNESDAY (Spring)
8:00-8:30 PM BACK TO YOU
8:30-9:00 PM THE RETURN OF JEZEBEL JAMES (working title)
9:00-9:30 PM AMERICAN IDOL Results Show
9:30-10:00 PM 'TIL DEATH

THURSDAY
8:00-9:00 PM ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 5th GRADER?
9:00-10:00 PM CANTERBURY'S LAW

FRIDAY (Spring)
8:00-9:00 PM BONES
9:00-10:00 PM NEW AMSTERDAM

SATURDAY
8:00-8:30 PM COPS
8:30-9:00 PM COPS
9:00-10:00 PM AMERICA'S MOST WANTED: AMERICA FIGHTS BACK

SUNDAY (Spring)
7:00-7:30 PM KING OF THE HILL
7:30-8:00 PM AMERICAN DAD
8:00-8:30 PM THE SIMPSONS
8:30-9:00 PM FAMILY GUY
9:00-10:00 PM THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES

Fox gets real this fall, 'Chronicles' due midseason [THR]

Trade Round-Up: HBO Totally Insane For Gabriel Byrne

Mark — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:59:44 EST

· Columbia Pictures and David Koepp, writer of the first Spider-Man's script, have begun the process of trying to agree upon on the presumably huge number that would bring him back to do the screenplay for Spidey 4. [Variety]
· Foreign moviegoers' love affair with Ben Stiller shows no sign of slowing down, with Night at the Museum topping the international box office yet again with $14.4. million. [THR]
· At the TCAs, Peter Liguori says networks are feeling the "chilling effect" of FCC indecency rulings, and that the "regrettably restrictive" climate they've created could stand in the way of his dream of one day hearing House call one of his medical underlings a "a total fucking incompetent." [Variety]
· HBO picks up the Lily Tomlin drama 12 Miles of Bad Road to series, and orders 40 (!) more episodes of the Gabriel Byrne therapy comedy In Treatment, bringing its commitment to the show to 45 half-hours. [THR]
· A high-level Italian court rules that the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted movies and music isn't a crime if the downloader doesn't profit from it, prompting the MPAA to announce its intentions to lobby Congress to immediately invade Italy before it becomes a safe haven for the pirate menace that threatens to bring down Hollywood. [Variety]