Jack Myers On the Road

For the first time in longer than any current TCA member can recall, hundreds of television critics from across the United States and Canada assembled to learn all they could about the new series set to debut during the upcoming television season without seeing pilots for most of those shows.

The broadcast network portion of the Summer 2008 Television Critics Association tour has run surprisingly smooth these last eight days, given that three of the five networks - ABC, The CW and NBC -- had no pilots to show the press prior to sessions with the producers and casts of their new shows. The critics have been good sports about it, conducting interviews and filing stories with far less information than usual to go on.

It seemed as if every moment of The CW's morning at the Summer 2008 Television Critics Association tour throbbed with the influence of the two-year-old network's first true signature show, Gossip Girl. From the sessions for 90210 and Privilege, two new scripted dramas with canvases largely populated by wealthy and attractive young people, to the presentation of a new reality series about young people competing for a job at a fashion magazine that caters to the wealthy and the attractive, to a press conference with CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff, The CW's day at TCA felt as if it were all Gossip Girl all the time.

The 2008 Summer Television Critics Association tour has been notable for showcasing an unprecedented number of successful scripted basic cable series. A press conference with the cast of AMC's Mad Men and, one week later, an unforgettable field trip to the show's set, where critics eagerly explored the offices of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. A party with the casts of TNT's The Closer and Saving Grace. Press conferences with the casts of FX's Damages and The Shield (and the opportunity to talk with most of the actors in both casts at Fox's spectacular party Monday night on the Santa Monica Pier).

I have watched a number of personal publicists express extreme displeasure with journalists during my almost 20 years of covering TCA tours, but I have never seen anything like the assault Tuesday night on Hal Boedeker, the hard-working and very well liked television critic for the Orlando Sentinel.

Something major is going to happen to Katherine Heigl's character, Dr. Izzie Stevens, when Grey's Anatomy returns for its fifth season this fall.