This Week Around the Industry in Comedy: The Turner Upfronts Edition
This week the IBang headed out to the Turner Upfronts at Madison Square Garden, where we got to watch what’s coming up at Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, and truTV as well as Turner Sports, HLN, CNN and Boomerang. This was our first upfront, so it was all fun, but especially great to see how much love the Turner networks are showing for comedy, and how much focus they’re putting on giving a home to new comedy talent. It was also the first time Turner presented all of their channel/brands together in one program, and the result was great energy. The theme was “Turn it Up” and the message was young and original, and all about Generation X and Millenials. There’s so much to talk about but why bury the lead, here were our five favorite things about going to the Turner upfronts.
. . . . .Everyone was talking about this being one of the biggest and best upfronts they’ve seen with a level of energy and excitement usually not seen at the upfronts and we have to give credit to Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal who hosted the show with an on-stage Inside the NBA desk presence and a pre “game” analysis, a halftime look, and a final wrap to the morning presentation. They were flawless hosts, and funnier than most awards show hosts even if some of them were caught napping on the job. Could there be an Inside the NBA team hosted Emmy awards one day? No, but if there was, we wouldn’t miss a second of it.
. . . . .We had a blast seeing the superstars of Turner, like Sharon Stone, Anderson Cooper, Conan, Samantha Bee, Jason Jones, Billy Eichner, Noah Wylie, Rashida Jones, Ed Burns, Rebecca Romijn, and Jack McBreyer but the biggest star sighting was Triumph the Insult Comic who stole all the laughs in the morning presentation. Triumph should be invited to every event where people tend to take themselves too seriously. Instant cool factor.
. . . . .At a post-presentation lunch we got to mingle with some of the talent and were very excited to talk with a certain very tall redhead whose name we won’t mention. Turns out he has a very funny and slightly unexpected prank side, and shared a story with us about having some fun with some journalists who may have been taking themselves too seriously jotting down every word the unnamed talk show host said, including a crazy story about a moving room (aka elevator) and Jack McBrayer. All of this made us very glad that our pens never left our bag during the lunch. Wait did we just get pranked? Shit.
. . . . .We got to talk with Samantha Bee and congratulated her on the new upcoming TBS late night show. The buzz is through the roof — more on that below. We also talked with Robert Smigel who was the hit of the morning’s presentation. He had big news, in addition to the return of the Jack and Triumph Show. He also shared that the fundraising for the Night of Too Many Stars had huge results– including over 1.5 million dollars raised from one auction item alone– the chance to win seats to Jon Stewart’s last show.
. . . . .The celebs were scattered throughout the room, but the real action was over at table 15, where you could find the young stars of truTV’s Impractical Jokers, and the members of the Grawlix Comedy Troupe who have their own show coming to the channel in 2016. These are names you want to know if you love comedy. The Impractical Jokers have gotten such a giant following from their truTV show, that they said they can’t go to restaurants anymore. Everyone thinks they’re being pranked. Waitresses won’t take their order and everyone is looking for the cameras every time. We also found out the real story about how they came up with the name for their comedy troupe- The Tenderloin. Apparently they like to tell everyone a different origin story, and swore we were getting the real one, but we’re not buying it. We do finally know what a Grawlix is though, and it’s not a mythical beast-like creature like you’d think. It’s actually a string of characters used in a comic strip to indicate swearing, like this: “@#$%&!”. So we bonded with the Grawlix over our mutual love of using weird punctuation to name things and then shared a giant fortune cookie.
So on to the real news at the upfronts, what’s coming next in comedy for the Turner Networks.
. . . . . The biggest news of the day, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of Conan outside the studio, with six major remotes planned, starting with Comicon in July. Conan’s trip to Cuba was such a giant success that everyone wants more. Nobody is saying where Conan is going –that’s all very tightlipped right now– but it seems like the plan is to go large and keep making some history.
. . . . .Also in late night, and also giant news, Samantha Bee is coming and as we mentioned above, we’re ready to see what she’s bringing! There is so much excitement and curiosity surrounding the new late night talk show coming to TBS hosted by former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee. Nobody is saying what details will be, but even just watching the upfronts promo for her show, we can’t wait to see what’s in the works. In her promo, you see Samantha admiring a portrait gallery of all the current late night hosts….Fallon, Kimmel, Corden…you get the idea. Studying them carefully, she declares that its all very interesting…but something’s missing. Enter a waiter with a tray of giant sausages offering Ms. Bee a taste. No thanks, she says. I’m done with sausage.
. . . . . We’re most excited about things happening on truTV where the focus is on finding the next big comedy stars. Sketch comedy is a big deal at truTV and getting bigger this year. The Impractical Jokers show is hotter than ever, getting their fourth season on the channel and three brand new specials for Joe Gatto, “Murr” Murray, Brian Quinn and Sal Vulcano. Friends of the People has gotten started on Season Two of their show, and the show is so funny, and completely original, and you can’t read enough good things about the soon-to-be giant stars like Lil Rel, the Lucas Brothers and Jermaine Fowler. We’re heading over to watch them film later this week, so much more about them to come. And now truTV is adding a third sketch-related show to their line up with Those Who Can’t. The new show isn’t actually a sketch show, in fact it’s the networks first scripted series, but it will feature the giant talents of the Denver-based Grawlix sketch group sensation with Andrew Orvedahl, Adam Cayton-Holland and Benjamin Roy. The show is about three high school teachers who find themselves in the principal’s office more than the kids they teach. These guys are being talked about all over the country right now, and recently appeared at SXSW and the Bridgeport Comedy Festival. We know the show is going to be big for the troupe and the network.
. . . . . We’ll also be checking out The Carbonaro Effect, which is getting a new season but we haven’t seen yet, but looks great, and Billy Eichner’s truTV debut with all new episodes of Billy on the Street and two new series, Adam Ruins Everything which is a brain candy kind of learn while you laugh show, and The Drivers Seat about what people talk about in their cars. And we were super excited to find out that truTV greenlit a pilot from one of our favorite comedy couples– Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky.
. . . . .The upfronts had a ton of comedy to promote across the other channels– A new show Wrecked which looks a lot like a comedy version of Lost, a road-trip-gone wrong comedy called The Detour, a star filled Angie TriBeCa starring Rashida Jones with a promo that showed glimpses of Bill Murray and Adam Scott, and The Group, a new comedy pilot about alien abductees from executive producer Conan O’Brien.
. . . . .From Adult Swim, the message was that everything is amazing. The Jack and Triumph Show will be back along with other network hits Rick and Morty, Mike Tyson Mysteries, Black Jesus and the Emmy®-winning Childrens Hospital. Live action comedy specials from Brett Gelman and Jon Daly, a new miniseries form Jon Glaser, and a new animated series TV Sucks from Brad Neely are all coming to the channel this year.
. . . . . .LiveNation is pairing with Turner to offer the first ever Live Performance awards which seems like a natural. The presentation focused only on music, but it would seem that including comedy in the awards would be a natural fit.
And those are only the highlights. Lots more to come!
