Still in the process of finding its post-Steve Carell sea legs, "The Office" has sailed into two new questions about its longterm future — namely the possible migration of two longtime Sabre/Dunder-Miffliners, Mindy Kaling and Rainn Wilson, to projects in development.

Kaling (Kelly Kapoor) is starring and exec producing in a Universal TV pilot for Fox, while a potential "Office" spinoff featuring Wilson's Dwight Schrute (seen in the clip above) is reportedly in the works for 2013. These would seem to be deathblows to a show that some would say can't afford them — if it isn't well past that point already. Was "The Office" really meant to be shuffling its cast into a second decade and launching spinoffs like some latter-day comedy "Law & Order"?

Such grim thoughts, however, ignore the reality of what "The Office" is and has always been.

1) "The Office" has always thrived on generating discomfort.

From the very beginning, unapologetically awkward characters and situations have been the bread and butter of "The Office." I still remember blogging after Jan (Melora Hardin) had her "Dinner Party" meltdown — this during the show's heyday in 2008 — in the wake of some saying that the show had taken her too far off the deep end. For years, how many times did Michael Scott push the envelope to the point where many viewers were saying it was too much?  And in retrospect, how lovingly are those episodes remembered?

Without a doubt, "The Office" is only as good as it is funny and/or meaningful. Gratuitous, unrewarding craziness does not go down well, and to be sure in 2011-12, there have been more than a few moments of that. Some scenes, even entire episodes occasionally, have been plain clunkers. At the same time, I think some of the negative feelings toward the post-Carell "Office" resemble the very same negativity that sometimes sprung up for Carell himself. But without Carell there to shoulder the burden, and with the show's creative zenith in the past, it becomes easier to dismiss the enterprise entirely.

The most recent new episode, "Pool Party," was a 600,000-gallon tub o' weirdness, with inappropriate behavior spilling out almost from the start, and three male cast members spilling out of their swimsuits at the finish. And yet, it took risks, gave us a number of laughs and not only came together as a story, but as a story unlike anything you've ever really seen on TV (see clip below). In other words, it was anything but an episode of a show that should be tossed in the dustbin — certainly not by NBC, which has much bigger major ratings and creative issues to deal with.

2) As important as Carell was to "The Office," turnover in the cast has been prevalent.

Roy. Jan. Karen. These are just a few of the many characters who, even if they weren't all series regulars, played an integral role in "Office" stories on a weekly basis but are now years into the show's past. No, "The Office" isn't the same without Carell (who, by the way, deserved way more awards recognition than he received over the years, including at Sunday's SAG Awards). But the show was always bigger than Carell, always an ensemble more than a one-man tour de force, and always a series that benefited as much as it suffered from cast members coming and going. (It's worth noting at this point that Kaling's onscreen role is already pretty minor at this point, while Jenna Fischer's Pam has been largely absent from the entire 2011-12 season because of pregnancy.)

If anything, there's a strong argument to be made that turnover in the acting ranks would help "The Office" more than it would hurt. Jim (played by John Krasinski, who has a burgeoning film career) has struggled for inspiration at this stage of his "Office" career; a farewell arc for him and Fischer could be every bit as rewarding as Carell's was a year ago. Conversely, the addition of quirkmeister Robert California (James Spader) has added zest, even if his unpredictability sometimes smacks of the writers needing him to act a given way in a given moment. Without Spader, you don't have the great conclusion to "Pool Party."

Change for the sake of change is no answer to any problem — success depends on execution, and there are a lot of ways things can go wrong. Season-six addition Gabe (Zach Woods) has been mostly insufferable from the get-go. But clinging to the status quo isn't an answer either. The relocation of Dwight, Kelly or any others could create new and potentially fruitful paths.

Those of us who became fans of "The Office" fell in love with the characters, the humor and the decidely roundabout take on life and society the show offered. If the show ended this season, some former fans would barely take note, and few would say it was a departure that came too soon. But in my mind, it remains a franchise that has more to offer.

I remain curious to see what comes next. If "The Office" tries and fails, we still have the earlier episodes to cherish. And if it essentially becomes NBC's halfhour "Law & Order," believe me, there are worse sins in this TV world.

ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW are ordering pilots in a blur, to the point that you might be wondering why you haven't sold one. Variety has ongoing, extensive coverage of pilot season, but for those who need a quick checklist of some prominent names to date, here's but a sampling.

Comedy

Exec producer	Known for …	2012 pilot	Network	Briefest logline
Bill Lawrence	Cougar Town	Like Father	Fox	Dad moves in with adult son
Charlie Grandy	Saturday Night Live	Jimmy Fallon project	NBC	Three immature guys parent
Dan Fogelman	Crazy, Stupid, Love	Dan Fogelman project	ABC	Neighbors from another planet
Demetri Martin	Important Things with Demetri Martin	Demetri Martin project	Fox	Animated: Couple in rural town
Greg Daniels	The Office	Friday Night Dinner	NBC	Based on U.K. series
Jon Favreau	Swingers	Tweaked	CBS	Single parents' dating scene
Kari Lizer	The New Adventures of Old Christine	Kari Lizer project I	ABC	New stay-at-home mom
Kari Lizer	The New Adventures of Old Christine	Kari Lizer project II	NBC	Best friend gets married
Louis C.K.	Louie	Louis C.K./Spike Feresten project	CBS	Struggling young dreamers
Marco Pennette	Caroline in the City	The Manzanis	ABC	Italian family goes suburban
Mike Royce	Men of a Certain Age	Little Brother	Fox	Long-lost brother moves in
Nick Stoller	The Muppets	Nick Stoller project	CBS	Guy works near ex
Rob McElhenney	It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia	Living Loaded	Fox	Odd couple host radio show
Roseanne Barr/Eric Gilliand	Roseanne	Downwardly Mobile	NBC	Mobile-home park setting
Sarah Silverman	The Sarah Silverman Show	Sarah Silverman project	NBC	Newly single gal
Scott Silveri	Perfect Couples	Go On	NBC	Sportscaster in therapy

Drama

Exec producer	Known for …	2012 pilot	Network	Briefest logline
Bryan Fuller	Pushing Daisies	The Munsters	NBC	Herman and friends reimagined
Candace Bushnell	Sex and the City	The Carrie Diaries	CW	Carrie Bradshaw in high school
Derek Haas/Michael Brandt	3:10 to Yuma	Chicago Fire	NBC	Chicago Fire Department setting
Greg Berlanti	Brothers and Sisters	Arrow	CW	Green Arrow tales
Jason Katims	Friday Night Lights	County	NBC	L.A. hospital (with Jason Ritter)
Kevin Williamson	The Vampire Diaries	Kevin Williamson project	Fox	Escaped serial killer
Michael McDonald	MadTV	Beautiful People	NBC	Androids resemble humans
Roland Emmerich	Independence Day	Roland Emmerich project	ABC	Astrophysicist fights evil
Shaun Cassidy	Invasion	The Frontier	NBC	Heading west in 1840s
Shawn Ryan	The Shield	The Last Resort	ABC	Renegade crew in nuclear sub
Shonda Rhimes	Grey's Anatomy	Gilded Lillys	ABC	New York hotel in 1895

 

The Internet-TV crossover flows both ways.
Bobby Lee, former cast member of the defunct late-night Fox series “Mad TV,” has signed with Maker Studios, one of the most popular Internet-only programmers. His own comedy channel, branded BobbyTV, will launch late Friday as one of YouTube’s new channels.
It’s a reversal of the occasional manner in which YouTube serves as a discovery platform for the entertainment establishment to find talent. And Maker would know considering one of the company’s principals, Lisa Donovan--better known online as LisaNova--was plucked from the Internet where she built a cult following to briefly join the cast of “Mad TV” back in 2007.
But Maker has become a comedy destination in its own right, bringing together top Internet talent to its YouTube network The Station for billions of views each month. Lee, who has also been seen in “Pineapple Express” and the “Harold and Kumar” films, could be betting that in time Maker will be as financially lucrative for him as a TV series.
Lee will get a proper Internet introduction as guest host tonight of YouTube’s reigning star--and Maker member--Ray William Johnson.

Among writers for television, David Milch is acknowledged as one of the masters. "NYPD Blue" and "Deadwood" are just a few of his creations, and his latest series, "Luck," comes to HBO on Jan. 29 with a big marketing push, as Variety's Stuart Levine writes. But it's time the pay cabler question whether what sets Milch apart may be what's keeping him from a wider audience.

What's distinctive about a Milch series is the way it thrusts you into the unique subculture he's depicting, whether its a New York City police precinct or, in the case of "Luck," the seedy underbelly of a race track. If you're the kind of person who plays the ponies, the characters and setting are rendered so faithfully to what they sound and look like in real life that it's almost as if Milch has made a documentary.

But what about the 99.5% of the population with only a passing familiarity to the intricacies of galloping and gambling? To them--and of course, I count myself among "them"--"Luck" will be something of a disorienting experience. From the second this series gets out of the gate, every line of dialogue seems filled with jargon understood by few outside the horseracing world, and there's little exposition to help you decipher the story.

Don't be surprised if you understand the horses more than the humans.

That's no accident on Milch's part. He's calculating there's more value in bringing life to a scene as vividly as possible--even if it comes at the expense of the viewers understanding what's transpiring. Milch is making a conscious creative choice to bypass what is probably a bigger problem in TV: bogging down scripts with explanations from characters who would never talk that way in real life.

But Milch is overcorrecting the problem in a way that practically dares all but the most patient viewer to tune out. What's worse, many critics have noticed that it takes multiple episodes to really understand "Luck," and that's asking a lot in a world where viewers have so many choices as to what shows they want to devote hours to watching.

That MIlch is allowed to employ this style of narrative at HBO is no coincidence. The network is famous for letting producers realize their visions with minimal interference from the suits that TV showrunners love to blame for spoiling the broth with one too many chefs in the kitchen.

But "Luck" seems to be a case where HBO is giving a producer enough rope to hang himself. Maybe with a few of those pesky creative notes the network doesn't like to give, Milch could have struck a better balance between maintaining his creative integrity while making some slight modifications that could have repelled less viewers.

Back when "NYPD Blue" was on, the series sprinkled just the right amounts of cop vernacular through memorable characters like detective Andy Sipowicz. But the further Milch has drifted from the heavy oversight of broadcast TV, the more inscrutable he's become.

On "Deadwood," Milch's love of florid language seemed OK. Given the Western takes place in a long-ago age, it almost seem right to not totally understand what was being said. But their last collaboration, "John From Cincinnati," indulged much more so in the same esoteric approach and suffered the consequences: a rare one-season failure that squandered a lead-in from the finale of "The Sopranos."

It wouldn't be surprising if "Luck" follows in "John's" footsteps (though to be fair, "Luck" isn't as impenetrable as its predecessor). While the series is hardly the first on HBO to test viewers' patience, maybe the network needs to re-examine whether it can afford to be as demanding on its audience at a time when the competition seems to be catching up with every passing day.

HBO already has another deal in place with Milch to adapt the works of William Faulkner, who wasn't exactly the John Grisham of his day. The performance of "Luck" may give the network some pause in how to approach such difficult material.

There's a huge middle ground between authenticity and accessibility. Maybe it's time Milch and HBO find it.

From Sam Thielman, our man at NATPE:

"Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan made a brief cameo during the the tribute video to Matt Weiner at the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Awards on Tuesday evening. "He was obsessing over the size of the apples (on 'Mad Men')," Gilligan said admiringly. "It was that level of attention to detail.

"So now," Gilligan said, brandishing a small baggie of white powder, "I always weigh the meth on the show to the 100th of a gram. This is the fake s--t." Then he held up a full gallon Ziploc to the camera. "This is the real stuff."

Lionsgate's TV distribution honcho Jim Packer sat down with Variety to talk features, digital and "Anger Management" (see related), and he took a victory lap for the banner's "Margin Call," which earned a best screenplay nom from the Academy today. "We did day-and-date with theatrical for 'Margin Call,'" he said. "It worked with theaters, it worked with VOD, and now it has a best screenplay nomination. You had pundits saying, 'it's not a real theatrical movie!' Well, yes it is." The VOD promotion, he said, was just good sense for a brainy indie film. "Could you have spent $25 million advertising for P&A (promotion and advertising)? Well, maybe if money was silly and you didn't care, but there are a lot of great movies that just won't justify a $25 million P&A spend."

***

At a Tuesday NATPE session in Miami, Viacom Entertainment group prexy Doug Herzog admitted to an aud of TV industryites that the company had gone in the wrong direction with guy-centric cabler Spike. "We were so focused on young guys that we chased everybody else away," he said. "We were too young, and too guy." The net, he said, is in unscripted-only mode until its financials start to look up, and it's looking into content that will appeal to a broader base. On a lighter note, Herzog said the hardest thing about running Comedy Central was trying to be funny. "I found that being cool at MTV was a lot easier," he laughed. "I could fake that."

***

This year's Tartikoff honorees all held court on Wednesday after the gala awards cermony. Matt Weiner's Wednesday session was among the best-attended of the confab. The "Mad Men" creator talked about how the indirect inspiration for his hit series - Reganomics. "I was going to college during the Reagan eighties and all these people who had grown up in the sixties had gotten very conservative and were still talking about how they had invented sex." College, he said, was a weird experience in that environment, especially after the AIDS crisis hit. "It's not still the sexual revolution when they give you a dental dam in your freshman orientation kit," he said ruefully. "I'm not kidding."

He also gave with the show's direct progenitor - "The Great Gatsby." "It's like the Bible now," he said. "It's not a bad thing to say that you've been influenced by or stolen from, but if Fitzgerald was here now he'd be like, 'Hey, you stole my story!'"

Weiner also said that incorporating season-long arcs had helped ground the show, and that the sometimes absurd power plays between characters that drive a lot of TV drama weren't for him.

"There are people who do it amazingly, but I can't do it," he said. "Don would have been an astronaut by the end of the season. Really, he would have been. 'The space program is calling, Don!"

Last night's Brandon Tartikoff Legacy awards took place at the Fontainebleau's Glimmer Ballroom, one of the hotel's larger venues, with a bar placed strategically outside the ceremony so attendees could sneak out and fortify themselves mid-speech.

The Tartikoff Awards at NATPE are the biggest event on the official conference schedule; folks may or may not get to go to the various network parties, but the Tartikoffs are open to all attendees, and they are actually not boring. Let's be honest: there are a lot of awards ceremonies out there trying embarrassingly to be the Oscars, but the Tartikoffs are not among them. They tend to go to the people behind the scenes, and those people tend to have had interesting lives and interesting friends who introduce them.

Dick Ebersol's econium for his friend and former colleague Dennis Swanson was particularly heartfelt; Swanson's professional career has included the discovery of Oprah Winfrey, revolutionary changes at ABC Sports that affected the way the Olympics, baseball, and football are played, and exec jobs leading to his current post as prexy of station operations at Fox TV Stations.

For Ebersol personally, though, Swanson's most important contribution was emotional: When Ebersol and his son Teddy were involved in a plane crash that killed the son and badly injured the father, it was Swanson who sat by his side. "The person who came to the receiving line (for Teddy) when I was doped up to the gills and made sure nobody hurt me or grabbed me the wrong way was Dennis," Ebersol said hoarsely.

"Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner was also among the honorees, and was also the recipient of easily the best video tribute, created by friends and colleagues from "Mad Men" and featuring some great deadpan from Jon Hamm. "You know what, Matt? You can take all of your Emmys and awards put them on top of your head," he said, then pointed to his own face. "It's never gonna be this."

Weiner was also moved. "I can't believe people took all that trouble. On my set. Without my knowledge," he said. Weiner told the aud that he'd been forbidden to watch weeknight television because of his grades as a kid, but "Thank God that my grades were eventually good enough that I was able to go to college and spend four years watching TV."

"If you get good grades, and you do all your homework - and I want to see it," he told the aud, "you can come downstairs at ten o'clock and watch the show."

Other highlights included Simon Cowell's video intro for FreeMantle Media North America topper Cecile Frot-Coutaz, in which he described the soft-spoken, diminutive executive as "what would happen if you merge a kitten and a shark, and they have a baby. She's kind of cute, but she bites you;" and the introduction of RCN exec and "Ugly Betty" creator Fernando Gaitán as "a tiger, not because he's fierce, but because he makes love every 20 minutes."

A mermaid in a clamshell top perched at the edge of the swimming pool some ten stories below the hotel room, resting her shoulders on its tiled rim and allowing her long tail to trail away in front of her, the pool's underwater lights shining onto it and casting an odd shadow on the blue concrete at its bottom.

Another girl in a tiara stood poolside in a dress with a long train. She climbed into a table with with a hole in the center. The long train became a tablecloth and the girl stood patiently as other young women in form-fitting white dresses arranged champagne flutes and wine glasses around her hips. My friend Alex opened the little map of the resort we'd been given consulted the key to find the name of the outdoor club we could see below us.

"Yup, that's ArKadia," he said. "That's Charlie Sheen."

There is an agency/event planning concern in Miami called Zhantra Entertainment that throws enormous parties like this one, for Sheen's new show "Anger Management," with twentysomething women milling around solely to beautify the place in interesting ways. Its founder, a modestly dressed woman with flaming red hair named Bengy Cid, said that most of her talent have a dance background - it takes a certain amount of stamina to stand in one place without moving for two solid hours while people select drinks from around your waist - and that "It's very hard to find the whole package - tall beautiful, polite, friendly..."

She paused as a tall man in a sport coat and slacks begged our pardon and shouldered through the crowd between Cid and the pool carrying a second smiling mermaid, her arms wrapped around his neck, and tossed her gently into the water where her partner had climbed partway out to pose with a long line of smiling (male) station buyers.

Cid, it turns out, is shopping a show of her own at NATPE - a reality series about her offbeat company. It's called - what else? - "It's Not Easy Being Sexy." "It's just an eight-minute sizzle reel, but it looks great!" she said.

About an hour and a half into the party, Sheen finally arrived at the Debmar-Mercury cabanas located across the water from thoe hotel (one of the odd quirks of the Fontainebleau resort, where NATPE is held, is that while the rooms are advertised with "ocean view" and the shops and restaurants seaside themed ad nauseam, it is actually almost impossible to get to the beach). Instantly, a swarm of gawkers, well-wishers, ill-wishers, and press converged on his tent, hemming him in, and for a while it looked like press were going to have to make do with the mermaids. Then, after a few minutes of frantic calls and texts, he agreed to talk.

Sheen doesn't answer questions, exactly, but he is extremely candid, which makes for a better interview. Here's a transcript of my favorite part:

Variety: All this publicity seems a little rough.

Sheen: Yeah, but I don't really care. I don't take it personally. It's just words, you know? Coming from people who don't know anything about me, so how much stock can you put in it, you know? I mean, a stranger's random opinion? It's like getting mad at a three-year-old. Plus, I never read anything anymore, because all that happens is you get upset. And then you hear from a buddy, 'Ooh, great story' so you know what's out there, and I know what I said. I'll do a lot more press once we shoot some shows and really get this thing moving. I'm not gonna talk about it as a real project, now it's kind of amorphous.

Variety: Mostly I just meant that this seems like kind of a punishing circuit of handshaking and interviews. I didn't mean that people are badmouthing the show.

Sheen: Oh, fuck! I'm like a fucking beaten dog over here!

Variety: Bless your heart.

Sheen: No, this is fine. It looks like chaos but everybody is happy to see me, has nothing but kind words to offer. You know, they're pretty great problems. Everybody's very cool about it. People that had the other show and want the new one now have their college educations and mortgages paid off. You never know what you're doing in this little microcosmic fantasy oasis. You never know who it reaches and how it gets to them. It's really a trip. I was in a store the other day - this is a true story, I couldn't believe this one - and this woman says to me, 'Oh, Mr. Sheen, I gotta tell you, my mother died in April,' I said, 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'Nono, it's not about that, she was 97.' She looked at me and she said, 'She was such a fan of the show that she said, "Oh, I hope that Sheen boy gets another job..." and died.' And I said, 'You spent your whole lives together! She should have spoken you as her last words!' And she said, 'Ah, that's just Mom.'" [chuckles] Just when you thought you'd heard everything.

Variety: Do you have "Winning" tattooed on your wrist?

Sheen: I do, yeah.

Variety: That's amazing.

Sheen: Well, I'm getting my watch fixed. My watch usually covers it. But just to have survived that whole odyssey and to have lived in the middle of that whole... that... whatever that thing was... I had to emblazon something.

Sheen says he "wouldn't have been as vocal" if he had the whole Chuck Lorre imbroglio to do over again, but the memory of it clearly still stings. "I was a little out of line," he says. "But I was so mad. They were so wrong. They were so fucking wrong. And I knew I couldn't lose. When you're in a position like that, sitting on four aces and a joker, you gotta keep pushing the pot, you know? I couldn't even get a phone call, you know? You put $400 million in a guy's pocket and he can't even call you to say, 'Hey, dude, you got to go.' I'm not bitter."

And now? "If I saw Chuck now, I'd give him a hug. And I'd say, 'That's for the first seven years. Not the eighth.'"

Ashton Kutcher? A guy with a difficult job, similar to the job Sheen did when he replaced Michael J. Fox on "Spin City." Kutcher's breakup? "Everybody's talking about the curse of "Two and a Half Men" with San Diego and the divorce," Sheen sighs. "No, man - that show was eating marriages from season two. Chuck, John, me twice."

About "Anger Management," Sheen has nothing but praise, although he's reticent to say too much beyond Sheenian hyperbole about how it's the best thing since gravity, except that he likes Bruce Helford and he's enjoying the casting process. "It's a smarter show," he says. "It's a more adult show."

Yahoo! exec Ross Levinsohn and News Corp's digital CEO Jonathan Miller are old buddies, and they were comfortable enough during today's NATPE conversation to handicap the current state of digital video. It was a fun panel - the pair started off with a bet (egged on by the moderator) on who would win the Super Bowl. Miller (a Pats fan) and Levinsohn (who backs the correct team) each agreed to fly the other to Miami for stone crab if his team lost. "Premium content" was the buzzphrase of the day - the pair agreed that the industry has more or less stopped kidding itself about monetizing user-generated content in the same way it monetizes professionally created material. Some quick hits from the back-and-forth:

[DISCLAIMER: I took notes on this session, rather than recording it. Quotes are as close to verbatim as I can get 'em.]

Miller on the bottom line: "Consumers want video and you have to give it to 'em. It's a simple statement but it opens up all kinds of conversations about rights, about screens, about different kinds of product." (and piracy and SOPA, but the pair mostly avoided that discussion)

Levinsohn backhanding YouTube without actually saying its name: "I like watching the cat on the skateboard chasing the laser pointer like everyone else, abut it's impossible to monetize and if I was a big premium advertiser I'm not sure I'd want my name next to that."

Miller on why advertising and the internet are made for each other: "You now have these global platforms that never existed before. They're going to be in the billions (of users) soon. You could go to Ross and make a deal that could literally reach 700 million people, and that's never been possible before."

Levinsohn on why they're not, really, unless you're controlling every way someone watches your content: "You can tell your boss that you've bought an ad on the internet, but good luck trying to find it."

Miller on the bottom line, again. Also, STRATEGY GIVEAWAY!: "Be in the video business. We're pushing brands like the WSJ to be more in the video business."

Levinsohn on why Facebook's going to have a Myspace problem at some point: "After the second or third cycle where the ads aren't returning, ad buyers start to question you, and that'll start to happen at Facebook. The difference is that Facebook has controlled the data so well that it's all very, very predicatable. The problem with that is my Facebook page is mine. I do it on their platform, but its mine and I don't want to be associated with some big-ticket advertiser unless I want to. But they're going to have to do that if they're going to go on to the next level."

Miller on Netflix: "They had a tough 2011 but they still got 20 million subs. They used to be a film library company and now they're competing for near-first-run television. The battleground in the industry has shifted from film library product to television product, which is Hulu's value. Companies are going as close to current as they can and trying to cherry-pick the series they need - because you can't buy it all - for their business model."

Miller on why television has supplanted film as the medium of choice for distributors: "I'm catching up on 'The Wire,' which is five seasons long. If you get me hooked, you've got me for a LOT of time."

Protesters black-bar the offices of Chuck Schumer and Kristin Gillibrand, two NY senators among the co-sponsors of PIPA

Here are my notes from Wednesday's nerd-centric rally, some of which were used for this piece by my excellent colleague Ted Johnson and myself. Ted's folo, chronicling the bill's delay, can be found here.

*****

Hundreds of protesters turned out Wednesday to cheer on speakers from Silicon Alley outside the Midtown offices of New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, where techies and well-wishers chanted anti-SOPA/PIPA slogans. The controversial antipiracy bills (sponsored by the pair, among others) are now wending through Congress, but petitions and protest strikes by sites like Wikipedia have created so much antipathy to the proposed laws that compromise legislation is being drafted as of press time.

The Gotham event was a far cry from the raucous crowds that gathered a few months ago for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. A sense of calm prevailed, with protesters mostly refraining from chanting too loudly, and a few police herding compliant onlookers into well-maintained protest zones. Third Avenue was blocked off between 48th and 49th streets to allow for the protest.

The speeches, however, were rousing: “The Stop Online Piracy Act will not actually do much to stop online piracy!” said NYU teacher and “Cognitive Surplus” author Clay Shirky, who proposed that the name of the legislation be changed to the First Amendment Sunset Act. “You can’t just shut people up if you don’t like what they’re saying!” he told the cheering aud.

Hollywood took its lumps at the rally, organized by the networking org New York Tech Meetup. One placard read “Pander to the people, not Hollywood;” another had a picture of a cat holding the Bill of Rights and the slogan “I can has freedom?”

“When Hollywood lobbyists show up with $94 million as they did last year, both Democrats and Republicans line up,” said Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. MoveOn.org’s Eli Pariser was even more adamant: “You have groups like MoveOn all the way over to groups like (conservative coalition) Red State who think this is a bad idea,” he said. “The only people who think this is a good idea are the crumbling old legacy media who want to go back to VHS tapes and CDs and congresspeople.”

Despite a generally laid-back vibe, some speakers couldn’t resist a little OWS-style rabble-rousing. Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman introduced each speaker by asking the aud “What does democracy look like?” and getting back a chorus of “This is what democracy looks like!” — more or less the same chant from the Occupy rallies late last year. Wednesday’s protesters cast themselves as innovators trying to move forward, while a conservative government protected antiquated technology in order to keep its pockets lined. Particular scorn was reserved for media companies that spent decades or centuries profiting the same old material. “Copyright-holding organizations have been gaming the system for decades,” said Meetup chairman Andrew Rasiej.

Many protesters saw a connection between the Occupy movement and SOPA/PIPA. “I’ve watched everything that’s led up to this,” sighed Joan Boyle, a freelance researcher who relies heavily on the web and came to the rally to show her support. “Income inequality, Citizens United, that whole raft of things that have happened over the last few years.”

Still, there weren’t many venture capitalists at OWS. Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures criticized the both the legislation and the entertainment industry, which he saw as its proxy creator. “They’re very, very broad, they’re very poorly worded, and they’re designed to suck as many companies into them as possible,” he said of the two bills. And Hollywood? “The entertainment industry thinks of users as either customers or crooks,” he said.

Of all the speeches, it was Shirky’s final line that earned the most applause: “What they’re saying to us is this,” he said of Schumer and Gillibrand, “‘Everyone’s got a choice: the Internet, the First Amendment, corporate control of public speech. Pick two.’”

Everyone is reading Jason Zinoman's excellent profile of just-fired Letterman comedy booker Eddie Brill and calling this graf the smoking gun:

"Among some comics 'Late Show' has a reputation for favoring a certain profile. 'The types they seem to like are middle-aged white men from the Midwest,' the comic Amy Schumer said. Only one woman (Karen Rontowski) was booked in 2011. 'There are a lot less female comics who are authentic,' Mr. Brill said. 'I see a lot of female comics who to please an audience will act like men.'"

But this is probably what got him canned:

"But there are also questions about conflicts of interest, particularly since only 22 comics, including Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld and less famous performers, were lucky enough to get segments last year, and comedians presumably take his classes hoping for an edge in getting on the show. 'He trades on the name of the show,' the young comic Anthony Jeselnik said. 'He has workshops, a festival. He has the market cornered. I can’t believe Letterman lets him do it.'"

Speaking at the Television Critics Assn. press tour Saturday in Pasadena, AMC senior veep of programming, production and digital content Joel Stillerman touted the network's journey from two original series annually to nine (including three unscripted series) in two years' time.

However, Stillerman spent plenty of time being contrite about reaction to the loose ends left at the finale of the first season of "The Killing" last year.

"I want you to know that we learned a lot from your response to season one," Stillerman said. "We heard you, and we clearly didn't sufficiently manage expectations."

Stillerman said that the resolution of the Rosie Larsen murder set up in the series premiere would be revealed at the end of season two, then added, "Be nice," when the assembled media chuckled.

"As you may recall, the two-season arc is taken directly from the very successful Danish series, which also ended season one with a cliffhanger and solved the murder at the end of season two," Stillerman said.

"You should also know that after we saw the reaction to season one, AMC potentially explored veering away from the Danish template. We looked at all our options, and thought about whether we could conclude the story early in the season or at other points. But at the end of the day and after significant discussion, we decided that in order to do justice to the story we fell in love with in the first place ... resolving the murder at the end of season two was the best creative option."

Perhaps appropriately, "The Killing" second-season premiere will be April Fool's Day.

AMC series "Mad Men" and "The Killing" will each have two-hour season premieres a week apart, on March 25 and April 1 respectively.

The long-awaited fifth season of "Mad Men," which hasn't aired a new episode since 2010, will launch at 9 p.m. before settling into its 10 p.m. slot the following week after the second season of "The Killing" unfolds. "Killing" will normally air at 9 p.m.

"The Walking Dead" had its third season extended to 16 episodes, up from 13. "The Walking Dead" is returning with a new episode Feb. 12, followed by the premiere of unscripted series "Comic Book Men" exec produced by Kevin Smith.

Taking on the role of Sarah Palin in HBO's latest presidential election film venture, "Game Change" (premiering March 10), was every bit as risky for Julianne Moore as you can imagine.

"I did a tremendous amount of research," Moore said at the Television Critics Assn. press tour In Pasadena today. "It's a daunting task to play somebody who's not only a living figure but an incredibly daunting one, so the thing that was most important to me was accuracy." 

Moore said that she, like much of the rest of the country, had "a collective gasp" when Palin was introduced to the national stage, but she necessarily had to move beyond that when playing the part.  

"I certainly have profound respect for the historical nature of her candidacy," Moore said. "From where she was taken there was tremendous amount of pressure, and that was one of the things I was trying to capture." 

For most Americans, especially those who haven't read the film's source material of the same name (written by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann), the impact of that pressure on Palin herself might come as a surprise.  But screenwriter Danny Strong, adapting the book after having success on HBO's "Recount," said that the film's goal isn't to present a new Palin, just a dimensionalized one. 

"It's not designed to change anybody's minds," said Strong, who added that his 25 interviews for the project included every critical person associated with the 2008 Republican presidential campaign except Palin, John McCain (played by Ed Harris) and speechwriter Mark Salter. "It's designed to show you the truth. 

"When you dive into a subject the way you do (on "Game Change"), you get a perspective that is so much more profound than the caricature."  

The combination of Palin's charisma and her lack of preparation for the role gets nuanced treatment in "Game Change," which also stars Woody Harrelson and Sarah Paulson and is directed by "Recount" helmer Jay Roach -- though the filmmakers would have liked Palin's participation in the project. 

"I personally on behalf of the (movie) reached out to Sarah Palin and made a personal request," Roach said. "I wrote a long letter explaining that I thought we would just do better at getting this story right if she would talk to us, and that our main motive was to try to tell the story as faithfully and authentically as we possibly could.

"I got a very quick e-mail back from her attorneys saying, 'I checked. She declines.' 

Without giving anything away, there's a moment, a single, silent reaction moment, in the pilot episode of upcoming HBO series "Veep" that is so pitch-perfect, no new TV series in 2011-12 might have a better hook.

This presidential election year threatens a risk of political comedy overload, particularly with "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" operating at full-throttle, but it looks like you'd better make room in April for "Veep," starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as vice president Selina Meyers and exec produced by Armando Iannucci of savvy British film comedy "In the Loop."

In some ways, folks involved are positioning "Veep" as the anti-"West Wing." Though they are striving for authenticity, the halcyon days of Pres. Bartlett are behind.

"I love 'The West Wing,' but I think that portrayal of Washington as a good and noble heartland wouldn't wash right now," the Glasgow-born Iannucci said at the show's press session at the Television Critics Assn. winter gathering in Pasadena today.

"You don't need a political degree to watch. ... We never mention the party; we never name the president. It's not about the minutiae of policy, it's about how people operate in these circumstances."

Louis-Dreyfus seems well at ease in and with her role, which offers a combination of idealism and pragmatism, ego and humility.

"Her platform isn't phony," Louis-Dreyfus said. "She does have a desire to have a clean jobs task force, as we call it, but she does have to make some compromises. She doesn't  have a phony set of ideals, but she wants to stay alive as a political animal."

Not a week goes by--OK, a day--where my wife and I fail to fight over what we should be watching on the TV in our living room. Sure, there's other screens in my home where I could skulk off and watch "Lady Hoggers" all by my lonesome, but that kind of defeats the whole togetherness thing that kinda comes with couplehood.

Little did I know Samsung has come up with an ingenious solution to save my marriage and countless others, no doubt. 

If you've paid any mind to the Consumer Electronics Show wrapping up in Las Vegas, you've probably heard about the organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, monitors that have a clarity and color palette that make HD look downright fuzzy. What's been virtually ignored is a feature Samsung wants to bring to market on those sets.

It's very simple: Imagine if two different people could watch two different TV shows on the same set at the same time without split-screen.

Samsung has a pair of active shutter glasses with speakers embedded in them that can do just that. You and your significant other can sit next to each other on the couch and be looking at two completely different HD video feeds simultaneously. The glasses not only block one program of your choosing while absorbing another, but the speakers right by your ears mean you're not hearing another program either.

Talk about doing a doubletake: I saw a demonstration of the so-called "dual-view and dual-sound" technology on a tour of the Samsung booth this week. Looked at with the naked eye, you see the image of one video feed superimposed over the other. But that visual mess gets cleaned up once the glasses are on your head without a trace of "crosstalk," when one image blurs into the next.

Just imagine households across the nation with husband and wife sitting calmly hand in hand watching ESPN and Bravo in tandem. Now if Samsung could just do something about my wife's choice of radio stations in the car, it might be time to consider nominating the company for the Nobel Peace Prize.

At this point, Stephen Colbert doesn't just make better speeches than half the candidates in the Republican primary, he has more presidential campaign experience.

On Wednesday evening, the comedian ran a clip on "The Colbert Report" of Fox News's Shepard Smith informing Jon Huntsman that he was polling behind Colbert in the latter's home state of South Carolina. In a Public Policy Polling survey, which included Colbert on the strength of his showing as a write-in candidate, the comic earned a full 5% of the vote, beating out the former Utah governor, who has trailed his fellow GOP hopefuls in nearly every poll.

“Everyone in the Republican field has already had their ‘I’m not Mitt’ moment,” Colbert said after the clip finished. “It all makes so much sense - I am so not Mitt!" He paused, so viewers could take a look at Romney's face next to his own clean-shaven, square-jawed, perfectly coiffed countenance. "I’m the one with the glasses,” he clarified.

 

 

Colbert went from wonky satirist to semi-official politician last year. After the landmark Citizens United vs. the FEC ruling, which created a special kind of "super" political action committee that can accept unlimited funding without disclosing its sources to the public, he set out to found a super PAC of his own. In June, he announced that the Federal Election Commission had given him permission to form The Stephen Colbert Super PAC, a.k.a. Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

The PAC allowed Colbert to receive unlimited donations from any group except Viacom, Comedy Central's parent company - and then to use that money to endorse whatever candidate it chose, so long as it didn't "coordinate" with that candidate. In part, the super PAC is a joke designed to point out the flaws in a political system that allows it to exist. It's had real-world effects, however - the FEC's scrutiny of Colbert's PAC set precedent, making it against FEC rules for, say, News Corp to fund Karl Rove's super PAC Crossroads GPS, since Rove is on the News Corp payroll as a Fox News contributor just as Colbert is employed by Viacom.

On Thursday evening, Colbert transferred ownership of his super PAC to Jon Stewart, who sent out an email to PAC contributors requesting that they now refer to the group as The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC. ("They have already begun updating all of their letterhead with sharpie," the email assures)

This frees up Colbert to form an exploratory committee to seek the presidency, but it also means that money the PAC has been using for joke ads (and the occasional anti-Rick Perry attack ad, after Perry ran the now-infamous "Strong" spot, which appeared to blame gay servicemen for the ban on school prayer) can now actually be used to promote a Stephen Colbert presidency. It's administrated by Stewart, funded by viewers who are in on the joke, and might actually be wealthy enough to see Colbert through a primary or two, because nobody outside the PAC knows exactly how much money is in the thing.

Colbert ran for president in 2008, first as a Republican, then as a Democrat when he discovered that he would be subject to stricter FEC regs if he paid the $35,000 fee to be listed on the ballot (FEC excuses candidates who spend less than $5K from the committee rules on the grounds that they are merely "testing the waters"). The S.C. Democratic Party executive council refused to include Colbert's name on the ballot and refunded his money - a $2,500 fee - and that was the end of his campaign.

Now, as Colbert sets up his South Carolina campaign, we'll see a whole new set of regulatory minutiae aired. Can Stewart pay Colbert's $35,000 ballot fee without "coordinating" with him? Can the PAC run the entire campaign without Colbert having to lift a finger to buy more than a round of non-coordinative thank-you beer for Stewart?

Colbert has upped the ante with his super PAC, and now he and Stewart are basically daring the FEC to shut them down and, in the process, kneecap every other candidate who relies on soft money funneled through what we used to call shell companies.If Colbert and Stewart ARE found to be in violation of FEC regs and set precedent for every other campaign, they'll have won a major political victory.

If they don't...

Hell, I'd vote for him.

Full email from the Colbert Super PAC:

Dear Super PAC Super Members, 
Hi there. I'm Jon. It looks like I'm running this thing now. All the details are in the press release below. Quick question: does anybody know where the key to the Super PAC bathroom is? 
Thanks, 
Jon Stewart President Pro Tem Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow 

FOR REALLY IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Under New Management!

BASIC CABLE, USA – Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, an FEC registered Super PAC, today announced the addition of Jon Stewart to its executive board (along with the subtraction of Stephen Colbert). 
With this change the group, which had been known colloquially as Colbert Super PAC, can now be referred to as The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC. They have already begun updating all of their letterhead with sharpie. 
"I am excited to take the reins of this completely independent organization, and begin to air ads in South Carolina," said New President and Noncommunication Director Jon Stewart. "But I want to be clear: Stephen and I have in no way have worked out a series of morse-code blinks to convey information with each other on our respective shows." 
Colbert is currently exploring a run for President of the United States of South Carolina. Because of this, he cannot be associated with any Super PACs, although he has asked Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow to forward any periodicals of an "adult nature." * 
Americans A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow is an independent, expenditure-only committee founded by Stephen Colbert in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, then handed down to Jon Stewart like a pair of old dungarees. 
### 
For Press Inquiries Contact:

Alberto Rèalnamè

Communications Director, Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC

alberto.realname@colbertsuperpac.com 

* Including the periodical "Adult Nature". 

 
Paid for by Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

www.colbertsuperpac.com

Got a copy of Jenni "Jwoww" Farley's "The Rules According to Jwoww" in the mail and thought I'd quote its best passage, in terms of both literature and utility:

"The publisher and author advocate safety when it comes to drinking and sex and specifically disclaim any and all liability for outcomes, consequences, and damages (including property damage, physical injury, or death) that may occur as a result of attempting any of the activities described in this book."

Former CNBCer Trish Regan made the jump to Bloomberg TV last month. It's not a conventional move, in many respects - most correspondents and anchors working within the NBC family try to move up the ladder at that org, or head over to one of the big cable nets or the broadcast competition. Bloomberg TV doesn't have the ratings footprint of CNBC (it doesn't subscribe to Bloomberg and is assumed to be quite small), but it has a much larger newsgathering operation. And that, for Regan, was the clincher. Today, she starts work on the relaunch of "Street Smart," produced by fellow CNBC vet Jason Farkas.

[Please note: some of my own questions are slightly paraphrased in order to make the coversation read more clearly. Ums, ahs, ers, and hmms are deleted on everyone's part, mostly mine. Regan's comments are verbatim, or as close to it as I can get]

Variety: Does it feel to you like people are paying closer attention to business news now than they have in the past?

Regan: Here's what I'd say about that: Americans have an appetite for finacial news that is unprecendented right now. They want to understand what's going on right now and they want to know when the employment rate is going to go down.

Variety: So it's important to keep an eye on everything, if you can.

Regan: Yes. I think another aspect of my personality is that I'm very interested in both micro and macro economics and linking the two. I don't think you can look at a particular stock, for example, without talking about the sector and what it's saying about the economy as a whole.

Variety: Do you think people will get more interested in the economy as the campaign moves forward?

Regan: The horse race is very interesting; people vote their pocketbooks, and it's going to come down to who they believe has the best economic policy. [For a reporter,] it's an opportunity to really scrutinize at a very detailed level. That's the responsible thing to do as a journalist; as a financial journalist, that's the skill set that I bring to the table. [...] I'm going to do a new segment on the show called Reganomix, to sort of mix it up and talk about these different policies.

Variety: It sounds like fun, honestly.

Regan: Maybe I'm a bit of a wonk and a dork, but I really enjoy it. In an election year, we're looking at everything through an economic lens. Just look at this past year, all the volatility was incredible, and we ended up at exactly the same point at the end of the day. All the concerns came from the downgrade of the US debt, and [the question of] what's going to happen next in Europe.

Variety: Do you sort of wish people had been paying closer attention to business news a few years ago? I remember reading, "the housing market will probably crash, yup, it's gonna crash, whoops, it's crashing, now it's crashed." And people said, "How could we have foreseen this?!"

Regan: I gotta say, as much research as I was doing back then, and as concerned as I was in 2005, I don't think people knew how bad it could get. This is the worst-case scenario, and rarely does that happen. It was very interesting going through all of that, and now we're almost seeing the sequel to that movie with Europe.

Variety: So we have an opportunity to learn from it?

Regan: When you look at what happened - what are the policies that took place that helped us? What policies didn't work? And frankly, European leaders need to understand it right now. We've seen a version of this movie before.

Variety: How did you get started in journalism?

Regan: I have a strong background in journalism - my Mom was a reporter and I used to go out with her in the field when I was five years old. One thing I want to do with this show is take it outside the studio. I want to understand not just the leaders, but what the people are experiencing as well.

 

 

Keith Olbermann tweets: "FYI taking preplanned vacation this week; now w/ matter resolved I'll be working during it planning the rest of my Current campaign coverage"

David Carr chronicles the discontent between Olbermann & bosses here, Olbermann tweeted after the column ran (presumably to stick it to the NYT, with whom he's been in a frankly embarrassing Twitter spat after Brian Stelter broke the Olbermann/Current standoff story last week) that he WOULD, honest to gosh, be working on Current coverage of New Hampsire.

For the entire tempest, head over the teapot.

The new year brings a new strategic path for Netflix, which announced Tuesday the launch of its first original series next month. "Lilyhammer," a Netflix co-production with Norwegian companies Rubicon Tv AS and SevenOne International, is an eight-episode series starring Steve Van Zandt as a mobster who enters the witness-protection program. Hiding out in the Norwegian city the winter Olympics made famous, he finds himself resorting to his old ways to make a new life for himself.

From the looks of the trailer, it's as if Van Zandt is practically revisiting his "Sopranos" character, but crossing it with the plot of that forgotten Steve Martin comedy "My Blue Heaven" and the setting of the Al Pacino drama "Insomnia." With a thick rug of jet black hair, Van Zandt even look likes Pacino, though this is played for laughs. "Lilyhammer" will be the first of a series of originals Netflix will trot out over the next few years, including the adaptation of BBC drama "House of Cards" and the revival of the Fox comedy "Arrested Development."

After the disastrous decisions that damaged its business in the final months of 2011, it could be just the thing Netflix needs to put some distance between that rough period and a bright, shiny future. BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield certainly thinks Netflix is moving in the right direction. In a research note (subscription required) issued Tuesday, praise of the strategy led a list of 12 trends he predicted would remake the media world in 2012: "We expect Netflix’s push into original programming to be a positive surprise for investors in 2012 and expect it to create a new form of 'buzz' around the Netflix brand that has been missing since the serious missteps of Q3 2011."