Steve Harvey Boosts FOX On ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’
Mariah Carey’s comeback and the mercury’s dip proved a potent combination for ABC’s “Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” as viewership soared over last year’s telecast.
ABC averaged 10.5 million viewers and a 3.0 rating/12 share in the adults 18-49 demographic, a spike of more than 50% in both measures over the 2017 telecast, for the 8-10 p.m. ET portion of the annual special.
From 10-11 p.m., the crowd swelled to 15.7 million viewers and a whopping 5.2/20 in the key demo — up 35% and 39%, respectively, from last year. Those numbers marked the highest scores in that hour since the Ryan Seacrest edition of the “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” special bowed in 2000.
Specific viewership figures for the 11 p.m.-midnight hour when Carey performed won’t be available until Tuesday. But it’s clear that America showed up to give the singer another chance after a technical debacle last year led an angry Carey to make a hasty exit from the stage.
Meanwhile, Fox also saw a big bounce in viewership by planting Steve Harvey in Times Square for a live special. Compared to last year’s Pitbull-hosted event from Miami, “Fox’s New Year’s Eve With Steve Harvey” attracted nearly five times the crowd (5.8 million from 8-10 p.m. compared to 1.4 million).
It didn’t hurt that an NFL overrun fed a much larger audience into Harvey’s special than repeats of drama series “Bones” and “Lethal Weapon” did last year for Pitbull. Preliminary Nielsen estimates indicate at that Harvey had a lead-in of at least 10 million viewers from “The OT on Fox” in the 7 p.m. ET hour.
The Harvey special pulled in a healthy 1.8/8 in adults 18-49 from 8-10 p.m. Fox carried the live Harvey special from 8-10 p.m. After an hour break for local news on Fox affiliate stations, Harvey returned for the big countdown to 2018 from 11 p.m.-12:19 a.m. Ratings for the final segment won’t be available until Tuesday.
Source: Variety
Netflix Renews Spike Lee’s ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ For Season 2
Netflix has given a second season order to the half-hour series “She’s Gotta Have It,” based on the 1986 movie that launched Spike Lee as a filmmaker.
Lee announced the renewal on New Year’s Day through an Instagram video. Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, thanked fans for supporting the show in a brief New Year’s Day video message. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Spike Lee said.
The series produced by Netflix has been picked up for eight episodes. Spike Lee, Tonya Lewis Lee, Barry Michael Cooper and Lynn Nottage are executive producers.
The series stars DeWanda Wise as the central character of Nola Darling, a Brooklyn artist who happily juggles romantic relationships with three very different men. Cleo Anthony, Anthony Ramos and Lyriq Bent co-star.
The 10 episodes of “She’s Gotta Have It” Season 1 premiered on Nov. 23. Spike Lee directed all 10 episodes.
Source: Variety
Nick Cannon Defends Working With Chris Brown
Nick Cannon has teamed up with Chris Brown for his new indie film, She Ball, which focuses on a women’s street basketball team, and the famed entertainer is getting flack for his decision to cast Brown. People online were scolding Cannon for giving Chris, who was convicted of felony assault for beating Rihanna, a chance.
When TMZ caught up with Nick at the airport to ask him about the wave of backlash, he said that the media loves to cast a negative light on black entertainers. Cannon asked, “What about Sean Penn? They ever hate on his past and the movies he did?”
Nick was referring to allegations surrounding Sean Penn hitting his then-wife Madonna, which the “Like a Virgin” singer denies.
TVCheck out more of what he had to say in the above clip.
Source: TMZ, Youtube, Vlad TV
Jay-Z Releases ‘Family Feud’ Directed By Ava DuVernay On Tidal
Jay-Z released his video for his single “Family Feud” last night exclusively on Tidal, although it was more than a standard music video premiere. Much like anything else he and Beyonce create, it was a cultural event to punctuate 2017 with the most inclusive, woke A-list cast you will ever see in a music video.
Helmed by Ava DuVernay, the seven-minute-plus video is a short film, serves up some sci-fi, futuristic realness that can very well be a taste of what’s to come in the celebrated director’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. Joining Jay-Z, Beyonce and the heiress to their throne Blue Ivy includes an inspiring roster of actors from every part of the color spectrum: Michael B. Jordan, Trevante Rhodes, Thandie Newton, Jessica Chastain, Irene Bedard, Omari Hardwick, David Oyelowo, Emayatzy Corinealdi, America Ferrera, Aisha Hinds, Henry G. Sanders, and Storm Reid — who is the star of Wrinkle in Time. Rounding out the cast is the “founding mothers”, which feature Mindy Kaling, Rashida Jones, Rosario Dawson, Janet Mock, Brie Larson, Constance Wu, Niecy Nash, and Susan Kelechi Watson, who, as the video shows, are different women from all walks of life who are enlisted to change the country’s constitution.
Even though there is a cinematic scope to the video, which was co-written by Jay-Z and DuVernay, it is highly personal for the Grammy-nominated rapper, who uses the track from his critically acclaimed 4:44 album to confess his sins to his wife and all-around queen of everything, Beyonce. Where Beyonce used her visual album, Lemonade as a platform for working through her personal issues with Jay-Z, he used 4:44 to respond and tell his side of the story. In other words, it’s an artistic way of saying, “Yea, I messed up.”
Jay’s track serves as an atonement and one key lyric sets the tone for the short film: “nobody wins when the family feuds.” Of course, he is referring to his familial relationships, but it goes beyond that and applies it to feuding within the country and the world. There’s layers of meaning in the short that starts off with a poignant James Baldwin quote and goes into a Godfather-meets-Game of Thrones scene, moments of war, moments reflecting today’s volatile political climate, and a group of empowering females looking to build a utopian rather than dystopian future.
Source: Deadline
Showtime Cancel’s Freshman Comedy ‘White Famous’!
White Famous wasn’t able to raise its profile quite enough. Showtime has canceled the comedy after just one season.
Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the pay cabler opted not to move forward with the Jamie Foxx-produced Jay Pharoah vehicle right before the new year — not an atypical time to drop bad news. A Showtime rep was not immediately available for comment.
The series’ cancellation does not come as a huge surprise, considering fellow freshman half-hour SMILF was quickly renewed a month ago amid radio silence on White Famous‘ own future prospects. Produced by Showtime alongside Lionsgate Television and Foxx’s Foxxhole Productions, the comedy was greeted with mixed reviews and courted a weekly audience of 1.8 million viewers once all platforms were tallied. (By the cabler’s standards, that’s fair to middling.)
What White Famous did give Showtime was a not-so-terribly common half-hour comedy for the network. The pay-cable outfit is better-known for such flagship hourlong as Homeland and Shameless. Its only new half-hour on the immediate horizon is Jim Carrey’s buzzy TV effort Kidding, on which he will star alongside Catherine Keener.
In addition to Pharoah and guest appearances by Foxx, White Famous counted Utkarsh Ambudkar, Cleopatra Coleman, Meagan Good, Stephen Tobolowsky and Michael Rapaport among its players.
The series’ first season will live on at Showtime’s various streaming platforms.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
On This Day In Comedy… In 1944 Comedian, Actor, And Director Tim Reid Was Born
On this day in comedy on December 19, 1944, Comedian, Actor, Director, Timothy L. “Tim” Reid was born in Norfolk, Virginia.
Reid got into comedy as a duo. He was working for the DuPont Corporation when he met Caucasian insurance salesman, Tom Dreesen. They reluctantly partnered on an anti-drug program for local schools to try and make a difference. It was 1968 – what can I tell you? People cared about society back then. Anyway, they basically had to go around and preach about the evils of drugs. The difference with these two was they had a sense of humor. They engaged the kids with skits and stand-up. It was working, and Tim and Tom were pleased merely being good members of the community. To them they were just helping inform the youth. That is until a kid asked them if they ever thought about being a comedy team. The thought had never crossed their minds, but now that the idea was in front of them they went for it and became the first inter-racial comedy team in American history. They appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson numerous times and toured extensively, but the country wasn’t really ready to see a white man and a black man making fun of being a white man and a black man, so the team dissolved after five years and Reid moved more towards comedy acting.
Tim Reid broke into television guest starring on sitcoms. He worked on That’s My Mama, Rhoda, Fernwood 2 Night, The Richard Pryor Show, and What’s Happening!! Then he got his big break on WKRP in Cincinnati in the role of ultra-cool radio disc jockey, Venus Flytrap. The CBS hit lasted for six seasons. When that show was canceled he stayed on CBS in the light-hearted detective show, Simon & Simon (Reid was not one of the Simon brothers). He played the part of Lieutenant Marcel “Downtown” Brown. In 1988 he starred in the critically acclaimed, Frank’s Place. On this (CBS) program Reid had the part of a professor who inherits a restaurant in Louisiana. The realistic depiction, stellar acting and outstanding writing might not have been rewarded with longevity (the show was short-lived), but received well-deserved accolades. Frank’s Place won Reid the “Best Actor in a Quality Series” award and an NAACP Image Award for “Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series”.
Reid was always in our face. He was Ray Campbell on the Tia and Tamara Mowry sitcom, Sister, Sister from 1994-1999. Then he had a recurring role from 2004-2006 as William Barnett on That ‘70s Show on Fox. And when we didn’t see him we still felt his touch. As a director, Reid helmed feature films as well as television programs. Going full circle from his roots, he created an after-school special called Stop the Madness. It was an anti-drug project.
For his various outstanding and distinguished contributions over the years, Tim Reid was named to the board of directors of the American Civil War Center in 2011 and in 2014 he received an honorary doctorate from VCU.
On This Day In Comedy… In 1987 ‘Eddie Murphy: Raw’ Was Released!
On this day in comedy on December 18, 1987, Eddie Murphy Raw was released by Paramount Pictures.
Filmed in the Madison Square Garden complex and directed by Robert Townsend this stand-up comedy concert film was Eddie Murphy’s second such effort following Delirious, but his first with a wide theatrical release. Besides being a highly acclaimed critical and box office success, Raw lives up to its title and held the record of most “f**ks” (223) in film (beating out even Al Pacino’s Scarface) until Robert DeNiro’s Goodfellas came along several years later.
Raw opens with a sketch (featuring Tatyana Ali) of a young Eddie Murphy telling a joke and merrily cursing his way through it. That’s the theme of the film as grown-up Murphy emerges from behind the see-through curtain illuminating his posed silhouette. Once the thunderous applause dies down Murphy launches into a series of bits reflecting his station in life and show business. He talks about celebrities (Mr. T, Michael Jackson) who didn’t like what he said about them in Delirious. He riffs on fans who didn’t like his gay jokes from the same film. He clowns Bill Cosby for criticizing Murphy’s act as being too scatological and how Murphy got advice from Richard Pryor to tell Cosby to shut the f**k up.
Murphy goes on during the 93 minutes to discuss’ his love for Pryor and his influence on young Eddie. He talks about non-English speaking people only yelling out his curse words to him; the perils of strange tail diseases and marriage; divorce and costly alimony; the need to find a sheltered woman from the bush who knows nothing about alimony; the need to keep her sheltered so American women don’t hip her to alimony; the surprising fact that men cheat and women will do the same; eating burgers made by your mama as a kid and not McDonald’s like the other kids; uncoordinated white people; overly-aggressive Italians and drunk relatives round out the set.
Raw was written by Eddie Murphy and Keenen Ivory Wayans (the opening sketch). Ernest Dickerson did the cinematography and the film made $50,504,655 at the box office.
On This Day In Comedy… In 1979 Comedian, Actor, And Writer, Milton “Lil Rel” Howery Was Born!
On this day in comedy on December 17, 1979, Comedian, Actor, Writer, Milton “Lil Rel” Howery was born.
A native of the West Side of Chicago, The Lion’s Den in East Chicago gave birth to the stand-up comedy career of Howery. He was soon proficient enough to expand his horizons and competed in NBC’s Last Comic Standing in 2007. Turns out he liked TV and more importantly TV liked him. Howery’s next televised break came on the FOX reboot of the ‘90’s hit sketch star maker, In Living Color. The revival lasted less time than you could spell the word, but Howery didn’t go unnoticed.
Lil Rel landed a gig at truTV on another sketch comedy show. He wrote, produced and co-starred in Friends of thePeople in 2012. Several years later he got the breakout part he’d been looking for thanks to another young comedian.
Jerrod Carmichael was also making some noise on the comedy circuit. So much so that NBC greenlit a self-titled sitcom, The CarmichaelShow featuring Loretta Devine and David Alan Grier as the star’s parents. Howery got the part of his recently divorced brother, Robert; more affectionately known as Bobby. His ex-wife was played by another comedy sensation – Tiffany Haddish.
In 2016 he performed on his own stand-up special on Netflix. Kevin Hart Presents: Lil Rel: RELevent streamed nationwide and exposed Howery to yet another medium. Next was film as he played the friend and eventual hero in Jordan Peele’s surprise hit of 2017 – Get Out. The role of TSA officer, Rod Williams earned Howery the MTV Movie & TV Award for “Best Comedic Performance”.
On This Day In Comedy… In 1965 Comedian, Actor, Writer, J. B Smoove Was Born
On this day in comedy on December 16, 1965, Comedian, Actor, Writer, J. B Smoove (Jerry Angelo Brooks) was born in Plymouth, North Carolina
Smoove grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, then headed to Virginia where he attended Norfolk State University. There he took the route of most students, he studied hard, worked a job printing T-shirts and tinkered with model trains and he got into stand-up comedy. That’s why he had to change his name from Jerry Brooks to J. B. Smoove. He looked more like a J. B. than a Jerry.
Following a memorable appearance of HBO’s Def Comedy Jam and several high profile tours, Smoove’s explosive style of physical comedy caught the industry’s eye and he became the king of the recurring characters. He had the recurring role of Leon Black on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as roles on Everybody Hates Chris and Saturday Night Live. On the latter Smoove was also a writer.
B. Smoove also got to sit at the big table. He was a full cast member on the Brad Garrett / Joely Fisher sitcom, ‘Til Death on Fox. He was featured on The Millers for CBS. Smoove was a cast member on the sketch show, Cedric the Entertainer Presents and hosted the Russell Simmons stand-up series, Stand-Up at the El Rey.
However, Smoove’s more than a creature of television. Kicking things off with 1997’s Lesser Prophets (in th role of Chucky), Smoove was omnipresent in films; appearing in With or Without You, Pootie Tang, Mr. Deeds, Date Night, Hall Pass, The Sitter, We Bought a Zoo, The Dictator, A Haunted House, Think Like A Man, Clear History, Top Five and many others.
Smoove’s animated personality allowed him to be used extensively. He’s been a pitchman for various products. He’s lent his voice to animated fare (The Simpsons, American Dad, Smurfs 2, Black Dynamite, and Robot Chicken). Smoove was instrumental in reviving the Wanda Sykes produced version of NBC’s stand-up comedy competition, Last Comic Standing. He served as its energetic host. Smoove’s one of The Replacers in the video game Call of Duty: Black-Ops II and provides the voice of Dr. Ray D’Angelo Harris, host of the Chakra Attack radio show in Grand Theft Auto V. He even transcended his own celebrity and has played versions of himself in a number of projects including Kevin Hart’s reality show, Real Husbands of Hollywood.
In 2007 JB Smoove earned the Writers Guild of America award for Best Comedy/Variety Series and his first comedy special JB Smoove: That’s How I Dooz It premiered on Comedy Central in 2012.
On This Day In Comedy… Director, Writer, And Producer Reggie Hudlin Was Born
On this day in comedy on December 15, 1961, Director, Writer, Producer, Reginald Alan Hudlin was born in Centreville, Illinois.
Hudlin burst onto the entertainment scene with a project he developed in college. House Party was originally a student film he directed while at Harvard University. It not only got him noticed but earned him multiple awards, one being the top honor at the Black American Cinema Society Awards. He would later team up with his older brother, and fellow director/producer, Warrington Hudlin to bring a feature-length version of the short to the big screen in 1990, starring rap sensations, Kid-N-Play and comedy phenomenon, Robin Harris.
The Ivy Leaguer kept his eye on the lens. Hudlin directed the Eddie Murphy hit, Boomerang in 1992. He helmed The Great White Hype with Damon Wayans, The Ladies Man with Tim Meadows and 2002’s Serving Sara. He also kept a hand in television directing episodes of Modern Family, The Office, The Middle, Outsourced and numerous episodes of The Bernie Mac Show where he was also a producer.
Hudlin continued to stretch his artistic tentacles. From 2005-2008 he was the President of BET. During that same period, he penned the Marvel Comics series, Black Panther and kept his hands in animation as the executive producer of the Aaron McGruder smash hit, The Boondocks. In 2012 Reginald Hudlin received an Academy Award nomination as a producer of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. He later served as executive producer of the NAACP Image Awards, garnering the show its highest ratings ever on NBC (2013) and the highest rated program in the history of TV-One (2014).
