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Kelsey Grammer threw reporters some red meat while on the panel for his new ABC sitcom “Hank.”
Grammer knocked Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly, suggesting he played politics with his sitcom “Back to You,” and criticized CBS chief Les Moonves over its handling of “Medium” (which Grammer executive produces).
“I thought we actually were onto something pretty good,” Grammer said regarding “Back to You.” “Then Fox hired – what’s his name? Reilly?”
“Kevin Reilly,” said “Hank” executive producer Tucker Cawley.
“Hired Reilly, who actually hadn’t bought the show,” continued Grammer. “We had pitched it to him at NBC. So I had bad feelings about that. Then we had the writers’ strike. We sort of like pre-empted the recession for ourselves and got in there six months early. There was very little … sense of continuity about the show and a sense of commitment. Because that’s just kind of the way they work with shows. It’s their thing. And we were at sea pretty much once ‘Idol’ came on. And finally, there was some friction between the guy that never wanted the show in the first place, who was now running Fox and our writers, and off we went.”
Regarding “Medium,” despite CBS rescuing the show from NBC’s cancellation and bundling the drama with the similar “Ghost Whisperer” on Fridays fall, Grammer seemed to harbor some ill will toward Moonves for not being supportive from the outset.
CBS Studios produces “Medium,” but sister network CBS passed on the idea. Once the program found success on NBC, Grammer suggested that Moonves undermined the show’s support at the network.
“Les Moonves, being the selfless, egoless man that he is, took the opportunity to claim that NBC was so bad at developing that CBS had to produce their only hit show that year,” Grammer said. “So that immediately relegated ‘Medium’ to the bad stepchild situation in which it has basically flourished. [NBC] would always say, ‘Well, we’re not going to put it on the schedule, but we’ll plug it in somewhere,’ which is what they did, and the audience found it. And I actually think it’s going to be a great boon to the show to have it scheduled in a regular place on Friday evenings.”
Still, sharing the night with “Ghost Whisperer” struck the actor as a bit ironic.
“I had pitched ‘Medium’ to Les previously, honestly, and he wasn’t interested – and then he spent the next four years trying to make the same show,” Grammer said. “When they said in their press release that ‘Medium’ could be a nice offspring of ‘Ghost Whisperer,’ I thought that was sort of disingenuous and misrepresentative.”
OK. But it seems like Grammer forgot one thing while griping about at least one of the network executives.
You know that guy, what’s his name? Reilly?
He’s the man at NBC who bought “Medium.”
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