‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ has been Mentioned on ABC 449 Times Over the Past 2 Months

Norman Weiss December 11, 2015, 9:00 pm

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been mentioned on ABC 449 times over the past 2 months

Corporate synergy has played a big role in promoting the Disney franchise on Disney-owned ABC, especially on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Good Morning America. By TV Newser’s count, The Force Awakens has been mentioned 449 times on ABC, 111 times on ESPN and 93 times on ESPN2 since the Monday Night Football debuted one of the Star Wars film’s trailers in October. PLUS: Here are 15 shows that showed love to Star Wars.

HBO and Kathryn Bigelow are developing a Jihadi recruitment drama

The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty is teaming with rapper/poet K’naan Warsame on a timely Minnesota-set drama that “will draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment.”

Urban Cowboy pilot is dead at Fox

The network has opted not to go forward with a remake of the 1980 John Travolta-Debra Winger film.

Fargo creator: We’re making a movie, not a TV show

Entertainment Weekly shadowed Noah Hawley for two days in March as he filmed Season 2, learning that Hawley actually researched the amount of shooting time True Detective got (100 days for eight episodes) vs. Fargo (82 days for 13 hours). That’s because Hawley doesn’t consider Fargo a TV series. “TV is usually the best you can do in the time slotted, but I believe we’re making a movie and it needs to be perfect,” Hawley said. “We just don’t have HBO’s money. We gotta run harder and faster.” PLUS: How Fargo picks its groovy music, and 9 reasons why Fargo is TV’s best show.

Survivor: Caramoan winner John Cochran is developing a sitcom for CBS

Cochran is teaming with his mentor, My Name is Earl creator Greg Garcia, on Bob’s Your Uncle, about a hot-shot lawyer who takes his nephew under his wing.

Jon Stewart’s demands will be met, promises Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

McConnell guaranteed Friday that the 9/11 first responders bill Stewart has been pressing him on will be renewed. “We’re certainly going to finish, both that and the tax bill,” he said.

Dr. Ken is hosting a Community reunion with Joel McHale and Danny Pudi

Ken Jeong’s former (or current) castmates will appear on the Valentine’s Day episode of his ABC sitcom.

Will Marvel’s Iron Fist be white or of Asian descent?

The martial arts warrior superhero is white in the comic book, but recent campaigning to make the character Asian-American has reached the ears of Marvel and Netflix, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But the series is now leaning toward keeping the character white.

“Television is becoming a truer reflection of who we are and where we’re going”

So says Robert Lloyd, who notes that we may not live in a post-racial world, but TV has become noticeably diverse over the past year. He adds: “Something is happening, a subtle rearrangement of the medium’s DNA that better represents both who we are now, collectively and variously, and where we are hopefully headed. The popular arts have always been a harbinger and an agent of change, positing the world that the world grows into.”

“Impossibly,” says Joshua Alston, “the show’s second 10-episode batch surpasses its first, and it does so by widening its focus on the Pfefferman family while keeping Maura’s journey central to the story. It’s a subtle yet powerful distinction from season one, which carefully fleshed out Sarah, Josh, and Ali, but because they were understandably consumed by Maura’s announcement, Transparent’s perspective hewed close to its punny title. The other characters always operated, to some extent, as cameras that each provided their own distinct perspective but stayed trained on Maura. With the reveal out of the way, Transparent blossoms into a more balanced show about an average family, each member of which is struggling to triangulate their identities.” PLUS: Season 2 is deeper, darker and funnier, the Pfefferman’s Season 2 travails would make Downton Abbey or Scandal jealous, Transparent benefits from never overstaying its welcome with bloated episodes, Season 2 is a stunning take on human existence, Season 2 is bleaker and harder to love, Transparent is facing a problem: “at what point is their selfishness no longer entertaining?,” Jill Soloway describes how the Transparent writers room works, meet Transparent’s transgender writer Our Lady J, and Jill Soloway insists Transparent is “not a cult — “it’s feminism.”