By: Valerie Milano – Pasadena, CA (Hollywood Today) 1/11/12

                 At Wednesday’s Television Critics Association executive session with Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment, Tassler began by celebrating the successful year. “We had a phenomenal year,” she said. “You have the stats. They’re really remarkable. And we’re incredibly proud.” She continued by listing the year’s success stories, including the relaunch of Two and a Half Men, transitions on CSI, new hit show 2 Broke Girls, and ratings growth for NCIS, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory and Mike & Molly.  She also praised showrunners that she had not worked with in the past. “Michael Patrick King is just a gem and a true talent,” she said. “We have wanted to work with J.J. Abrams for many years. And we just hit the lottery with Jonah Nolan and J.J. They’re great together. Being back in business with Ed Redlich, who is a dear friend, on Unforgettable is personally very rewarding. And Neal Baer was someone we worked with years ago on ER, and it’s great to have him back on “A Gifted Man.” She also hailed network TV’s ratings in general, stating that it will be a challenge to stay in  “that dominant position.”

                Regarding the question of moving The Good Wife to Sunday night, specifically given the conflicting football schedule, Tassler responded, “Well, I think the interesting part has been we do hear from a lot of viewers about the overruns, but that means we’ve got a very passionate and engaged audience. The show feels like a better fit on Sunday night. We’re thrilled with the critical response and the awards and the attention the show gets. More importantly, the audience that does watch the show on Sunday night, it’s very upscale. It’s very female. And they’re very engaged. So we feel it was a very good move.”

                Asked about NYC 22 and its future, Tassler explained, “Well, everything is fine. It’s probably going to have a later spring launch. That being said, we didn’t want to announce it now with a date and a time until closer to when we were going to get our air date. Part of the reason why it’s later in the season is we had a very successful fall. And as audience is continuing to grow for the shows that we launched this fall, we want to make sure that we fortify the audience, make sure we continue to support the new shows. And then we’ll give it its own sort of very special launch later in the spring and using basketball as a platform to launch it.”

                Pushed about the diner scenes in 2 Broke Girls and possible improvement, Tassler allowed, “Well, first of all, I think that they’re an equal-opportunity offender. Everybody gets digs. And I think that our comments and our dialogue with Michael (who announced later today is Gay) is, yes, continue to dimensionalize, continue to get more specific, continue to build them out. But again, our track record shows that we do know how to build comedy hits. We’ve done that with all of the comedies that are on the air, and we’ll continue to do that to 2 Broke Girls as well.”

                On the topic of talent competition shows and if CBS plans to expand beyond Survivor to join the fray, Tassler rebutted, “Well, first of all, we’re in the fortunate position of having successful, long-running franchise shows. That is the reality of reality.” She continued, “We’re very proud of the success of our franchise shows, but we do have a very, very, a very diverse roster of shows. And there are some competition. There are some performance shows. There are elimination shows. There are closed-ended, serialized, excuse me, sorry. So you’ll see our focus, as I said before, has been diversify. It’s not necessarily follow the path that everybody else goes down.”

                Despite mulitple pushes to discuss the topic, Tassler avoided addressing in detail the firing of Leah Remini and Holly Robinson Peete and replacement with Julie Chen on The Talk.  Before moving to the next question, Tassler did allow, “I think you look at the fact that the ratings have stayed virtually the same. If not, we’ve had a little bit of the bump periodically during the season. The content of the show has changed. Audience is responding to that. The format may continue to evolve over time. Other talk shows on other networks have had host changes as well, and it’s sort of par for the course. And I think the most important thing is the content, and I think it’s important that you make sure that your topics are relevant and the discussion stays spirited and that there is great chemistry among your hosts.”

                Looking ahead, Tassler offered, “We have a number of shows in development in the unscripted space that we have early triggers on so we can get them ready and we can have them on the air in fall.”

                Person of Interest, according to Tassler, is performing very well, however, Tassler also told the audience that CBS has “reached no decisions about next fall” regarding the show, but did offer, “We have very high hopes for the show.”

                Tassler closed the discussing by speaking on NBC’s new musical series Smash and Fox’s Glee. “As far as Smash goes, in my heart I love musical theater,” she said. “I love musicals. I’m a big Glee watcher. I hope it does well for them. I think that, I think it’s important that in all of our respective jobs that we continue to explore, try to do new things. I feel looking at development for us into the fall we’ve got some really unique, clever ideas, some with music, some not. But what’s most important not only for Smash but for Glee, for 2 Broke Girls, Person of Interest is that as networks, we continue to explore, expand, try new things but always, again, very respectful of our audience and keep our focus on making sure that we fortify the existing hits and continue to introduce hits every season.”