Commentary

If LeBron Really Did It, Entertainment Execs Prone Also

Did LeBron James really start weeping? No way. Not the cocksure Miami Heat dominator. Especially after a basically meaningless, regular-season loss. Sure, his team is struggling, but it wasn't the NBA Finals.

Nonetheless, it's enticing to ponder James and waterworks. After Sunday's loss, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra indicated there were tears in the locker room. He didn't name the players welling up, just said a couple of guys were overcome. Then on Monday, the coach said the media made way too much about his comments.

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James is a performer, endorser and media executive, hitting every touch point of the entertainment business. So, if he didn't cry, who among his extended peers, might be these days? Obviously, not Charlie Sheen, who could be less prone to self-doubt than anyone. But if not geysers from others, surely there have been some emotional outbursts. Secret, of course.

Some candidates ...

--NBC executives: Ben Silverman, who failed at the job leading entertainment at NBC, partly blamed his struggles on an entrenched culture unwilling to evolve. Also, a failure to bring in his own team. He praised new head Bob Greenblatt for shaking up the line-up. Programming head Angela Bromstad has departed and now long-time scheduling chief Mitch Metcalf has gone the way of "Studio 60." L.A. Times essentially asked: who's next?

--Chuck Lorre: There are wonderful pictures of the "Two and a Half Men" creator with Sheen over the years. So, Lorre has to be wondering where this all went so wrong so fast. A little rehab, or at least the pretense of, on Sheen's part and the money would keep flowing for both. Lorre found himself the target of troubling rants from Sheen. He has other hit shows and should continue to do fine, but there is a certain level of betrayal from Sheen that no doubt stings.

--Cable/satellite/telco strategists: For a while in the distribution vs. content battle, it seemed as if the distributors could at least claim a draw. Not anymore. The nauseatingly trite phrase "content is king" has proven true. Even as some lose subscribers, operators will increasingly pay more for content. And while not as robust as traditional outlets (yet), networks have alternate distribution avenues to find audiences, from the Internet to Netflix.

--Owners of the CW: There's no way CBS and Time Warner will abandon the beachfront property of a broadcast network, but this one needs some renovation. When was the last breakout hit? "Gossip Girl" ratings are down. Capable entertainment president Dawn Ostroff is stepping down. Reality series on Bravo and elsewhere seem to have captured much of the CW's young female audience. Let's hope Ostroff's replacement doesn't succumb to the "reality drug" and overload the schedule with the genre as a quick fix.. Of course, that could defeat how the CW benefits CBS and Time Warner: it might lose money, but builds shows that have value in after-market sales.

--Media buyers: Subject to CBS head Leslie Moonves' annual "Kickass Upfront" tour. Seemingly weekly, the CEO suggests pricing in the annual ad bazaar will rise faster than the price of gas these days. He'll say, dear buyer: At CBS, the scatter market is searing, the shows are phenomenal, so just pay us what we're demanding! And if you decide not to in the upfront, get ready to suffer next January, when your client absolutely has to promote the best mousetrap ever. (To Moonves' credit, he had admitted to posturing, noting during upfront haggling, networks say pricing is way up, buyers say way down and the truth is somewhere in the middle.)

Derivatives of the "There's no crying in baseball" phrase have become ludicrous. But oh well, maybe there is crying in entertainment.

 

  

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