John Koblin

Fox announced on Tuesday that it had renewed its hip-hop drama “Empire” for a sixth season, but the network said there were “no plans” for Smollett’s character, Jamal, to return to the series in the fall.

However, the network also announced it had negotiated an extension for Smollett’s option, which leaves the door open that his character, the gay musician son of the head of Empire Entertainment, could return at some point next season.

The decision essentially buys the Fox broadcast network and 20th Century Fox Television, the studio that produces the show and which is now owned by The Walt Disney Company, more time to decide Jamal’s ultimate fate.

Smollett made national news when he told the police that two men jumped him around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29 on a Chicago street, yelling racist and homophobic slurs, along with “This is MAGA country!,” a reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.

After poring over hundreds of hours of surveillance footage, police homed in on two brothers who had provided physical training to Smollett. After many hours of questioning, the brothers told detectives that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the attack, and Smollett was charged in late February with filing a false police report. The Chicago police said he had faked the attack to gain publicity because he was upset with his “Empire” salary.

Smollett maintained his innocence. A month later, prosecutors dropped all charges without much explanation, angering Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the city’s police superintendent.

State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx, who removed herself from the investigation after initially interceding on behalf of Smollett’s representatives, is fighting an attempt to appoint a special prosecutor to review the case. At Foxx’s request, the Cook County inspector general is performing its own review.

Last week, Smollett’s fellow “Empire” cast members — including its stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson — signed a letter asking Fox executives and producers of the show to bring him back next season.

The announcement on Tuesday suggests that executives and producers are nowhere close to providing that level of commitment.

A representative for Smollett said in a statement: “We’ve been told that Jussie will not be on ‘Empire’ in the beginning of the season but he appreciates they have extended his contract to keep Jamal’s future open. Most importantly he is grateful to Fox and ‘Empire’ leadership, cast, crew and fans for their unwavering support.”

Fox had little choice but to provide a status update on Smollett. On May 13, Fox will host its annual showcase for advertisers at the Beacon Theater, where it will unveil its fall prime-time lineup for the 2019-2020 season. Network and studio executives would have been bombarded with questions from the media and advertisers on whether Smollett would be coming back.

When Jamal was last seen on “Empire,” he had just gotten married. Whether his departure will be for a number of episodes or permanent remains in the air.

“Empire” is a fading hit. It is ranked 17th among broadcast entertainment shows — the first time in its five-season run that it has dropped that low — but it still draws the third-highest ratings of any Fox show, behind only the zany reality competition series “The Masked Singer” and the drama “9-1-1,” according to Nielsen.

Fox executives will also have more than Smollett on their mind when they make their pitch to advertisers. With Disney’s purchase of most of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets, the Fox broadcast network is now divorced from its accompanying television studio. Fox’s new executives will have to make a case that a leaner broadcast network can make inroads with Hollywood’s creative community and still command a large prime-time audience.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/arts/jussie-smollett-empire-fox.html" id="461af85b-90c0-3ed1-a8c8-9c9a9ed88aaa">The New York Times</a>.

Jussie Smollett is not returning to “Empire” — for now.

Jussie Smollett's Future on 'Empire' Is in Doubt

Smollet made national news when he told the police that two men jumped him around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29 on a Chicago street, yelling racist and homophobic slurs, along with “This is MAGA country!,” a reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.

According to Variety, a representative for Smollett said in a statement: “We’ve been told that Jussie will not be on ‘Empire’ in the beginning of the season but he appreciates they have extended his contract to keep Jamal’s future open. Most importantly he is grateful to Fox and ‘Empire’ leadership, cast, crew and fans for their unwavering support.”

“Empire” is a fading hit. It is ranked 17th among broadcast entertainment shows — the first time in its five-season run that it has dropped that low — but it still draws the third-highest ratings of any Fox show, behind only the zany reality competition series “The Masked Signer” and the drama “9-1-1,” according to Nielsen.

This week’s episode had 17.8 million viewers on Sunday, setting a new single-night record for the series, beating the previous series high from two weeks ago, HBO said. That figure includes viewing from HBO’s digital channels like HBO Now.

The third episode of the show’s eighth — and final — season ran at 1 hour and 22 minutes and featured the long awaited battle sequence with the White Walkers.

On television, 12 million people watched the episode on Sunday, narrowly missing the record set by the seventh season finale in August 2017, according to Nielsen.

HBO also said on Tuesday that the eighth season premiere episode has now been watched by more than 38 million viewers, a staggering figure at a time of declining ratings and fragmented viewing. The most recent season of “Game of Thrones” had an average of 32.8 million viewers.

There are three episodes left in the show’s final season. The finale will run on May 19.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/arts/television/game-ratings.html" id="af80b518-d9a4-3f4f-a473-e52b2ee92c22">The New York Times</a>.

“Game of Thrones” keeps breaking records.

'Game of Thrones' Breaks Its Own Ratings Record

Consider that in the streaming era, the number of scripted shows airing in the United States has shot up 86 percent, from 266 in 2011 to 495 last year.

Yet amid this glut no series has had more influence or created more industrywide envy than “Thrones,” which begins its final season on HBO on April 14.

Everyone wants its awards: “Thrones” has won more Emmys than any other dramatic series ever (including best drama three times).

Everyone wants its reach: It’s the most popular show in HBO’s history and one of the most watched shows of the last decade (when including digital viewership, its most recent season averaged more than 30 million viewers an episode).

Everyone wants its scale and scope: The series was one of the most influential in an era in which television budgets for dramas have ballooned from $3 million an episode to, in some cases, $10 million or more.

Everyone wants its boldness: “Thrones” famously killed off the face of the show, Sean Bean, before its first season was over and has repeatedly redefined assumptions about what’s possible on TV, both tonally (sexposition, shocking violence) and technically (dragons, sweeping battle scenes).

“We used to have a different experience for movies and the television business,” said Gary Newman, the recently departed co-chairman of the Fox Television Group. “Now you can feel it melding. I give ‘Thrones’ a lot of credit for that.”

And everyone, including newer outlets like Hulu and Apple, have been looking for the next “Thrones,” a series that can define a network, and help persuade people to hand over $10 or $15 a month for subscriptions.

Three years after “Thrones” debuted, Netflix ordered its own high-budget epic series “Marco Polo” about the Mongol empire (which was a flop). Amazon bought the TV rights to make a “Lord of the Rings” series and spent north of $200 million to do so (and still needs a script). Apple has a big-budget fantasy drama starring Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard about what happens when to humanity after everyone goes blind (which still needs a premiere date).

There have been lots of mixed results so far.

“It has made everyone say, ‘OK, where is our ‘Game of Thrones’? Which is the exact wrong way to find your next ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” said Casey Bloys, president of programming at HBO. “Just to set out and say ‘Well we’re going to make our next “Game of Thrones”; we’re going to do a real giant show with a huge budget,’ well that doesn’t allow for all the other things that have to go right for a show to really resonate with a viewer.”

Which is why HBO has been, as Bloys put it, “deliberate” in finding its “Thrones” successor from the universe of George R.R. Martin’s books. HBO will shoot a pilot for a “Thrones” prequel, created by Martin and Jane Goldman, in June.

Still, “Thrones” has helped open up a big fantasy universe for the network. In the coming months, it will air an adaptation of controversial epic “His Dark Materials.” Likewise, “Leftovers” co-creator Damon Lindelof is creating an adaptation of the comic book series “Watchmen.” And HBO has other science fiction series coming from J.J. Abrams and “Avengers” director Joss Whedon.

If such big-ticket genre series were once unthinkable for the network that made “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” well, little of television looks the way it did eight years ago.

“Thrones” began in April 2011 on HBO, just a few weeks after Netflix gave a David Fincher-directed drama “House of Cards” a straight-to-series order. Today, Netflix makes more original programs than any studio or network and has spurred the dizzying spike in the number of television series made. It will spend at least $10 billion on content this year.

“Thrones,” which had a budget that started at $5 million an episode but ballooned to as much as $15 million an episode in the final season, helped create the current era of enormous spending, even for shows without CGI dragons, White Walkers and direwolves.

For instance, Apple committed to two seasons of a morning TV show dramedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston that the company has allocated $240 million to make. At the time, Apple made the pledge even though the show had no script.

“‘Thrones’ certainly accelerated it, raising production value to an incredible place,” Newman said.

“That used to be reserved just for HBO, and that’s clearly no longer the case,” he continued. “Netflix and Amazon and now even the broadcast networks and the big cable networks like an FX, TNT are doing it. They’re all realizing they have to raise their game with things that feel more epic and with greater scope to compete with what HBO and other premium services are doing.”

Bloys might think that an emphasis on bigness — big budgets, big productions — is the wrong lesson to take from the success of “Thrones.” But he does allow that it was a significant part of the formula.

“‘Thrones’ was the first show that demonstrated you could produce a show with real cinematic scope,” Bloys said. “That you could think bigger — both in terms of character and drama and in special effects. That it would work, that taking shots and spending real money and putting it on the screen would pay off.”

Now all someone has to do is find the next “Thrones.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/arts/television/game-of-thrones-television.html" id="56f89298-5e62-3b9c-aad1-f243cbe5fd51">The New York Times</a>.

In the eight years since “Game of Thrones” went on the air, the television industry has been upended. We can thank Netflix for that.

How 'Thrones' Made TV Climb Higher

<h1>On Wednesday and Thursday nights, as the first two Democratic debates wind down around 11 p.m. ET, viewers seeking postgame reaction can watch supersize panels on cable news or scroll through Twitter.</h1>

Or they can tune into the late-night shows.

Back in the old days — that would be four years ago — the presidential primary debates were of so little concern to late-night hosts that they happily taped their episodes hours in advance. They only addressed candidates sparring on a stage some 25 hours later.

For the first time, “The Tonight Show” will go live in its entirety after a major political event. “The Daily Show” will go live for two consecutive nights for the first time. And in what is believed to be a first, two 11:30 p.m. network late shows — Jimmy Fallon’s on NBC and Stephen Colbert’s on CBS — will go head-to-head live for a full hour. Seth Meyers’ hourlong 12:30 a.m. show will also be live both nights, allowing on-air jokes and jabs to continue into the wee hours.

“That’s the urgency that this event calls for,” said Jim Bell, the executive in charge of “The Tonight Show.” “And that is rather striking that’s where we are in 2019 compared to previous election cycles.”

Producers have decided that going live — something streaming platforms do not do — provides a competitive advantage. They also believe that interest in the debates during this election cycle will match the enthusiasm for the 2016 election, when primary debates shattered ratings records.

That belief is rooted, somewhat, in a man who will not be on the stage in Miami: President Donald Trump, whose presence in 2015 helped ignite ratings and who, producers believe, will elevate interest in the candidates challenging him.

In this ever-accelerating news cycle, the people behind late-night television believe it is vital to cover prime-time events as quickly as possible.

“You’re competing against what people see on Twitter, and if you’re talking about something on the show that happened from the day before, it almost feels like ancient history at that point,” said Dan Amira, the head writer of “The Daily Show.”

But Election Day 2020 is still 17 months away. This week’s late-night schedule, which is beginning to feel like the new norm, could also be setting up a long march of deadline comedy news. (There were a dozen Republican debates in the 2016 election cycle.) Jokes have to be written immediately. The chances of mistakes ramp up. Staff burnout is a real consideration.

In 2016, the late-night shows did not bother with live shows until the conventions and the presidential debates.

Several shows, including Colbert’s, “The Daily Show” and Meyers’, have done live specials during Trump’s first term, including on the nights of the midterm elections and the State of the Union address.

Primary season did not use to command this kind of attention. Jon Stewart’s final episode as host of “The Daily Show” aired the night of the first Republican debate in 2015. The episode was taped hours before the debate and did not include any material from the 10 candidates sparring. That debate, which aired on Fox News, went on to draw a record 24 million viewers.

“I imagine we’ll go live for many, many more events in the next year,” said Jen Flanz, an executive producer of “The Daily Show.”

The live trend started with “The Daily Show” and Colbert’s “The Late Show.”

Chris Licht, a veteran of television news who was brought in as executive producer in 2016 to help reorient Colbert’s late-night show, broached the idea of going live for the entire eight-day stretch that covered the Republican and Democratic national conventions in July 2016.

“It was actually really simple,” Licht said. “If our mission is to talk about what everyone’s talking about and the main thing that people will be talking about is happening after you normally tape, you should do it live.”

The show went live for two weeks and Colbert received a wave of strong reviews and a significant ratings boost.

Months later, Colbert’s show topped Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” for the first time in total viewers, a streak that continues nearly 2 1/2 years later. Licht and Colbert have both cited the live shows as the beginning of that turnaround effort.

Likewise, in the summer of 2016, Trevor Noah was less than a year into replacing Stewart’s legendary run at the helm of “The Daily Show.” Political coverage, especially after the program’s much ballyhooed “Indecision 2000” coverage, became the show’s hallmark.

Noah was still finding his footing when “Daily Show” producers came to a similar conclusion: They should go live after Trump’s speech and Hillary Clinton’s speech at each party’s convention. Under Stewart, the show only went live on election nights.

During the program’s first live show in July 2016, a prepackaged piece went haywire on the air. Noah was left on his own when it stopped playing.

“The piece just stopped and we went back to Trevor and he was so much more cool and collected than the rest of us,” Flanz said, remembering how Noah riffed and fed off the audience’s reaction to the technical glitch. “It was that point I was like, ‘Huh, this guy. He likes this.’ And then it was like: ‘Oh yeah, we can do this all the time.’”

Most late-night shows will be tightly focused on politics during these live post-debate shows. But Fallon might do something else entirely. Bell, the executive in charge of “The Tonight Show,” was encouraged when the program went live just for Fallon’s monologue after Trump’s State of the Union address in February.

Bell said that the monologue will reflect the night’s debates, but that the show overall will “give people a chance to take a most welcome break from the madness of politics.” A channel away, Colbert has several political guests lined up for Wednesday and Thursday, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Fallon is going in another direction.

“We have Nicki Minaj booked for Thursday,” Bell said. “I can think of no better debate palate cleanser.”

The two broadcast late-night shows that will not be live — ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and CBS’s “The Late Late Show” — will not have new episodes at all: They will be in repeats.

If the ratings are there, both for the debates and the late-night shows, live shows will most likely become a regular part of the election cycle.

“A Democratic debate — two of them no less — is now the kind of an event that people will collectively watch,” said Mike Shoemaker, a producer for “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” “That’s why it warrants it. It’s not like all of a sudden we decided this was interesting. People became interested in it.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/us/politics/fallon-2020-democratic-debates.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Late-Night shows go live for post-debate analysis

Back in the old days — that would be four years ago — the presidential primary debates were of so little concern to late-night hosts that they happily taped their episodes hours in advance. They only addressed candidates sparring on a stage some 25 hours later.

The revival of “Murphy Brown” finished in 65th place among broadcast network shows among adults younger than 50, the key demographic for advertisers. That put it in the same company as CBS’ “Hawaii Five-0” and NBC drama “The Enemy Within.”

The 13-episode revival began in September, two decades after the original run of “Murphy Brown” came to an end.

In the new season, Murphy, played by five-time Emmy winner Candice Bergen, returned as a host of a cable news television show in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election. Most of the original cast, including Joe Regalbuto, Faith Ford and Grant Shaud, returned as well.

The “Murphy Brown” producers said before the show began that Trump’s election, and fresh attacks on the media, is what spurred them to bring the show back — and what they felt made it relevant as ever.

“This isn’t a money grab,” Steve Peterman, a producer of the show, said in an interview in August. “This isn’t a ‘let’s go out for one more swing at the fences.’ This was: We need to do this show.”

The producers were hopeful that the show would come back for another season. But the ratings were sluggish, and the reviews were decidedly mixed.

There were many challenges from the get-go. Several of its lead actors had all but retired and were out of show business. The show was unabashedly anti-Trump, which could have been a hard sell for the audience of a network that plays well in Middle America with prime-time programs like “NCIS” and “Blue Bloods.”

When “Murphy Brown” originally ran, its celebration of television journalism was still en vogue — newsmagazines like “Dateline” and “20/20” populated the prime-time lineup, and approval ratings for the media were relatively steady. The media today, however, has much dimmer support with the public.

And older episodes of “Murphy Brown,” which prominently featured Motown songs, were locked away and unavailable to stream thanks to expensive music rights, leaving old and newer viewers alike unable to catch up.

The show also filmed in New York, which made it a slightly more expensive proposition for the network.

“Murphy Brown” originally ran from 1988 to 1998, scored strong ratings and won the best comedy Emmy twice.

CBS cancels 'Murphy Bbrown' revival after one season

CBS pulled the plug on “Murphy Brown” on Friday, bringing an end to the revival of a beloved sitcom that proved to be a ratings flop this television season.

CBS cancels 'Murphy Brown' revival after one season

O’Brien devoured the second, third and fourth volumes of the still-growing series, and across his 26 years as a talk-show host, he put in numerous requests to interview the Pulitzer Prize winner. Caro found time over the years to appear on shows hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but he always said no to O’Brien.

On Tuesday, there was a happy resolution.

“I’m anxious,” O’Brien said as he rode in a black SUV from the Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, where he tapes his TBS show, to Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, where he would interview Caro. “It’s very unusual to meet somebody whose work you’re so familiar with.”

In an interview with The New York Times last year, O’Brien said, “The Lyndon Johnson books by Caro, it’s our Harry Potter,” and described in detail his many thwarted attempts to get Caro on his show. The author finally caved on the occasion of his tour for “Working,” his new, relatively slim book on his writing and research methods.

At 83, Caro is enjoying a moment of appreciation, and he has appeared recently in Austin, Texas; Philadelphia; and New York, his home city. O’Brien acknowledged that he had not exactly landed an exclusive.

“People keep saying, ‘I heard him on this podcast,’” he said. “‘He dropped in at Coachella.’ ‘He opened a mall in Paramus.’”

The SUV turned onto North La Cienega Boulevard. O’Brien pointed at a building.

“That’s where I got started in this business,” he said. “The Coronet Theatre. I took improv classes there with a talented young person named Lisa Kudrow. If you had told me then that 33 years from now I’d be in a car with a writer from The New York Times on my way to interview Robert Caro, I would have said, ‘That sounds about right.’”

In the rabbi’s study at Temple Emanuel, he didn’t have to wait long for Caro.

“They probably told you,” O’Brien said. “I’m a fan to a disturbing level.”

“I want to say, if I’ve ever been asked to be on your show, my publisher never told me,” Caro replied.

“I like this way better,” O’Brien said. “I respect you too much to have you on my show.”

After a handshake that lasted 30 seconds, they sat at a conference table. Then something strange occurred. Caro effectively started interviewing O’Brien. What was his thesis at Harvard? After O’Brien said it was on the works of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, Caro asked him if he had ever spent time in the South and followed up by asking the host what he thought of the region’s relationship to the larger United States.

“Wow, I love that you’re asking my opinion on anything,” O’Brien said.

The conversation tilted toward President Donald Trump.

“You don’t know if this is an aberration or not, if Trump is something outside, and he’s going to lose, and we’ll forget,” Caro said. “Or, is he the first of the mad Roman emperors?”

They briefly went over Caro’s appearance on O’Brien’s new podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” which was scheduled for the next day. “We have a very young audience,” O’Brien said. “I want them to hear about work ethic.”

They stepped out of the study and into a standing ovation from the 550 people who had paid $20 for general admission or $38 for a seat and a copy of “Working.” O’Brien called the event, which had been organized by Writers Bloc, a nonprofit literary series in Los Angeles, the “thrill of a lifetime.” He added, “I also want to thank you, Mr. Caro, for finally writing a book that’ll fit on my night table.”

O’Brien gave a shout-out to Caro’s wife and longtime working partner, historian Ina Caro, who was seated in the front row. He noted the dedication she displayed in agreeing to move with her husband to the Texas Hill Country, where Johnson was raised, back when Caro was looking for insights into his subject’s early years.

O’Brien added that his wife, Liza Powel O’Brien, who was also in attendance, wouldn’t have gone along with such a thing, but Ina Caro, he said, was completely on board.

“Not exactly,” Ina Caro whispered to the person seated next to her.

O’Brien and Caro dug into Lyndon Johnson’s life. His father. His mistress. His ambition. They also talked at length about Caro’s writing process. As the discussion went on, O’Brien found himself far from the talk show format. Caro spoke the way he writes, answering questions in shapely monologues that lasted five or six minutes.

An hour in, O’Brien asked the author how he felt about the Horace Mann School, his high school alma mater in the Bronx, having named a prize after him.

“No one has ever asked me that,” Caro said.

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” O’Brien replied.

The host then asked Caro if he agreed with Ernest Hemingway’s comment that a writer should not “exhaust the fuel tank in one writing session,” so that it’s easier to start again the next day.

“Yes, and you’re the first person that ever mentioned that,” Caro said, before noting that he had written his thesis at Princeton on Hemingway.

“Why am I in comedy?” O’Brien said.

Did Caro ever take breaks? Sneak away from his desk to an afternoon movie?

“See the new ‘Avengers,’” O’Brien suggested. “Ina doesn’t have to know about it.”

“Never in my entire life,” Caro replied.

O’Brien proposed coming by Caro’s office one day and taking him to a matinee.

“If I don’t answer,” Caro said, “it’s because I’m so deep in the work.”

After a Q and A session and another round of applause, Caro seemed pleased. “I thought these questions tonight were exceptional,” he said in a side room. “Incisive.”

To think, the event had almost been scuttled.

On Tuesday morning, Caro’s flight from Austin to Los Angeles was canceled. Caro said he immediately thought of O’Brien. “That was in my mind,” he said. “I said, ‘He’s never going to believe it if I said the flight got canceled.’”

His publishing house, Knopf, had to make a decision: pull out of the interview or find a way to make it happen. The publisher quickly booked a charter flight — Caro described it as an eight-seater jet — to Van Nuys Airport.

“The downside of canceling the event was disappointing Caro’s legion of admirers,” said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman at Knopf. “Additionally, the prospect of sending Conan into an irrevocable tailspin did not sit well with me. God knows, he’s waited long enough for this to happen.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="0dccc380-8e70-35af-a777-5b7e0575d3df" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/style/conan-obrien-robert-caro-interview.html">The New York Times</a>.

A Fan's Love, Requited at Last: Conan O'Brien Lands Robert Caro

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Conan O’Brien fell under the spell of historian and biographer Robert Caro when he was a student at Harvard in the 1980s. The book that made him a fan was “The Path to Power,” the first installment of the multivolume epic “The Years of Lyndon Johnson.”

A fan's love, requited at last: Conan O'Brien lands Robert Caro

Still, “Thrones” has helped open up a big fantasy universe for the network. In the coming months, it will air an adaptation of controversial epic “His Dark Materials.” Likewise, “Leftovers” co-creator Damon Lindelof is creating an adaptation of the comic books “Watchmen.” And HBO has other science fiction series coming from J.J. Abrams and “Avengers” director Joss Whedon.

How 'Thrones' made tv climb higher

<h1>On Thursday morning, Jussie Smollett was arrested by Chicago Police and prompted a denunciation from President Donald Trump.</h1>

By late Thursday afternoon, Smollett was back at work on “Empire,” according to a person involved with the Fox series who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel moves.

The Chicago Police Department’s arrest of the “Empire” actor, and his subsequent return to work, could have been taken straight from an episode of the show, which has had plot lines involving murders, kidnappings, car bombs, comas and memory loss.

Instead, the latest bizarre twist in a case in which Smollett was charged with orchestrating and staging an assault on himself will prompt a series of awkward decisions for Fox, including determining the fate of “Empire,” which, as of a month ago, was a fading but still respectable hit for the network.

The questions Fox must now wrestle with include deciding what to do about Smollett’s character and weighing the potential blowback if they keep him on the show. There are still two episodes left to be shot over the next month for the show’s fifth season, according to the person involved with the show. When Smollett returned to work Thursday he was prepared to film scenes from the season’s second-to-last episode, the person said. It is still an open question whether Fox will use the footage when the episodes ultimately air.

“Empire” has not yet been renewed for a sixth season, so its ultimate fate still hangs in the balance.

For four years, Smollett has played Jamal Lyon, the openly gay middle child of a hip-hop dynasty. Although the show is far from the monster hit it was when it made its debut in 2015, it still draws 7.1 million viewers a week, and Smollett’s character has been a fan favorite. “Empire” is also one of Fox’s highest rated shows and is in 10th place among all network entertainment shows, on par with ABC’s “The Bachelor,” according to Nielsen.

As recently as Wednesday, Fox had praised Smollett as a “consummate professional” and insisted he was not being written off the show. But the network was more muted Thursday.

“We understand the seriousness of this matter and we respect the legal process,” Fox said in a statement after the arrest. “We are evaluating the situation and we are considering our options.”

The Chicago police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, said that Smollett staged the assault last month to create publicity because he was dissatisfied with his salary. In the most recent season of “Empire,” Smollett reportedly earned between $65,000 and $100,000 an episode. “Empire” makes 18 episodes a season, and Smollett had not previously raised objections to Fox regarding his salary, according to three people familiar with the show’s finances.

Smollett is not the biggest star on “Empire” — the show’s leads are Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson — but he remains vital to its success.

“He is the third lead and one of the most beloved characters on the show,” the show’s co-creator, Danny Strong, tweeted last week. “Writing him off the show has NEVER even been discussed.”

The producers of the series could avoid making a final decision about the fate of Smollett’s character for a few months. Fox will have until mid-May to assemble its fall schedule, which gives the network nearly three months to renew or cancel “Empire.” If the show is renewed, executives do not have to pick up options for actors’ contracts until the end of June, and filming would probably begin again in late July.

Complicating matters is the fact that 20th Century Fox Television — the studio that produces “Empire” — is weeks away from being folded into The Walt Disney Co. after Disney’s deal to purchase many of Fox’s entertainment assets finally closes. How Disney feels about Smollett will become a more urgent question in the weeks ahead.

Once the Fox broadcast network is separated from the television studio that produces the series, the future of “Empire” will ultimately be left to Fox’s new chief executive of entertainment, Charlie Collier.

If Smollett is written off the series, it will not be the first time that real-world actions have forced the hand of a TV show’s creative team.

When ABC canceled “Roseanne” last year — after a racist tweet by the show’s star, Roseanne Barr — it made the decision to spin off the series without her. Writers and producers of the spinoff, “The Conners,” had to confront how to remove Barr’s character from the series in a way that wasn’t too sympathetic. Ultimately, the character died from an opioid overdose, and critics have mostly praised “The Conners.”

“Writers are experienced with devices that get rid of a character either for a little while or a long time,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center for media and society at the University of Southern California. “Anything from a tragic car accident to ‘he took a walk in the woods and no one knows where he is.'”

Charlie Sheen was fired from the hit CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men” in 2011 following several episodes of bad behavior. Sheen’s character was hit by a train, and Ashton Kutcher joined the cast. The series lasted for four more seasons.

Producers for “House of Cards” fired its star, Kevin Spacey, after he was accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. His character was killed off by a medication overdose, and the show had one final season on Netflix without him. The 1980s sitcom “Valerie” eventually became “The Hogan Family” after the show’s star, Valerie Harper, was fired because of a salary dispute. Her character was killed off in a car accident.

This article originally appeared in <a id="2868683f-8093-46e5-9d77-b72bcae74475" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/arts/jussie-smollett-empire-fox.html">The New York Times</a>.

After arrest, Jussie Smollett returns to work on 'Empire'

By late Thursday afternoon, Smollett was back at work on “Empire,” according to a person involved with the Fox series who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel moves.

<h1>But, as with most streaming shows, no one knows how broadly popular it is.</h1>

Now there is some semblance of an answer: fairly popular, at least by the standards of cable television comedies. Also, most of its viewers live on the coasts.

The insights come courtesy of Nielsen, the 96-year-old company that has only recently started tracking streaming viewership. This is the first time it has released numbers for an Amazon series.

The second season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” averaged 1.9 million viewers during its first seven days on the service, according to Nielsen. The first episode had an average audience of 3.3 million viewers over that week, Nielsen said.

Those numbers suggest the show would perform well among the more popular comedies on cable. The FX critical darling “Atlanta” averaged 1.5 million viewers over seven days for its most recent season, while “The Last O.G.,” the TBS series starring Tracy Morgan, had 2 million. (Both series have many more viewers on average when digital viewing is factored in.) There are many cable dramas that have a much bigger audience.

Nielsen has spent the past few years trying to find a method to measure viewership for streaming services. The step is a critical one for the research company, which is facing something of an existential threat as people increasingly abandon the bread-and-butter viewership habits that Nielsen has long tracked.

Over the last 15 months, Nielsen has publicly released occasional viewership statistics for Netflix series. It also releases more extensive numbers to media companies that pay for the service.

There are several caveats to Nielsen’s streaming numbers. It measures only in the United States, and it uses audio recognition software to discern if a Nielsen household is watching a series. The service does not track out-of-home viewing that might be done on a laptop, a phone or an iPad.

Amazon said last year that it had more than 100 million global subscribers.

Netflix has rejected Nielsen’s numbers in the past. Amazon declined to comment for this article.

In a statement, Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s senior vice president of product leadership, said the company released streaming figures that “might be engaging and topical for a broader audience.”

But the disclosure has come when Netflix is finally starting to disclose some statistics on its own. It declared two new shows, “You” and “Sex Education,” “huge hits,” saying each was on track to be sampled by 40 million households within four weeks of becoming available. Several television executives privately groused that those numbers were meaningless.

Many television executives are hopeful that a reliable third-party tracking service will eventually become available. Nielsen is trying to prove it is in the pole position.

According to Nielsen, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was more popular than the final season of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” which debuted in November. That had an average of 1.5 million viewers over its first seven days, with the season premiere watched by 2.9 million.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” about a 1950s New York housewife turned comedian, is particularly popular among wealthier viewers, Nielsen said. The median income of a household watching the series is $95,000 — higher than for any other streaming show for which Nielsen has released statistics, including “The Crown,” “13 Reasons Why” and “Stranger Things.”

Nielsen also said “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was overwhelmingly popular on the coasts, with 51 percent of its viewers in the Northeast and in Pacific territories.

Nielsen has not yet released figures for other stand-alone services like Hulu, which streams “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or CBS All Access, which has “The Good Fight.”

Numbers are in for 'marvelous Mrs. Maisel,' courtesy of Nielsen

PASADENA, Calif. — Amazon Prime’s original series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has received warm reviews and scored big at the Emmys and the Golden Globes.

John Koblin

Articles written by the author

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