Monday Morning Wrap-up 10th November

After a few missed Mondays, the weekend Wrap-Up returns! The weekend Wrap-Up sits in a funny place: origina;;y this was for all of the stories that broke just after the Saturday morning broadcast. Now there is no broadcast, I still feel I should do something with my mornings other than drinking at breakfast. Generally I go with a mixture of off-brand Gin (for thrift) and mouthwash (for the ladies) (joke stolen from here).

#1 Pushing Daisies Cancelled? [Defamer]

Word from an informant on the set of ABC’s long-struggling show hints that Daisies has baked its last pie. We can’t say we didn’t see it coming, but at least it died painlessly: The author who yesterday cited an anonymous sophomore series doomed by internal strife later assured us Daisies was not the victim — just another casualty of terminally ill ratings. Expect ABC to rerun the Obama infomercial in Daisies’ slot indefinitely until an official replacement is announced

Awwww….. gosh dang it, we’re never going to see this show here are we?

CHANNEL 10 has spent about $30 million on the broadcast rights for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. [The Herald Sun via TV Tonight]

It’s a massive coup for Ten, which has announced it will launch a 24-hour digital sports channel, to be called ONE, early next year.
Ten might be struggling for hits as the 2008 ratings year draws to a close, but the network has been on a major buying spree to ensure its sports event stocks are solid for next year and beyond.

It’ll never work. But, meh. What else are they going to do?

#3 Old, everybody and their mother knows about it: James Packer leaves family dynasty [Variety]

For the past 50-odd years, two families have dominated Australia’s media landscape: the Murdochs, with their newspaper empire, and the Packers, with top-rating Aussie web the Nine Network.

But all that changed last week when James Packer — son of the late Kerry Packer — quit the board of their company Publishing and Broadcasting.

What do rats leaving a sinking ship tell you about a falling media industry and the obsolescence of broadcasting?

#4 Oprah signing off in 2011? [Variety]

Is there an end date in the future of “The Oprah Winfrey Show”? Depends on who you ask.

During an ayem conference call on Friday, Discovery CEO David Zaslav said Oprah Winfrey will be ankling her syndie talk show in September 2011 to focus on OWN, the eponymous cable net that Winfrey and Discovery will launch as partners next year.

Interesting if true.

#5 Nobody cares but me: NBC orders full-season of ‘Life’ [Variety]

On Friday the Peacock gave Universal Media Studios’ struggling sophomore drama a full-season pickup.

Take THAT common sense!