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Breaking Bad vs. The Sopranos

September 7, 2014 Bryce Zabel 4

Critics and audiences seem to agree in large numbers that the greatest continuing one-hour series ever to air on American television is either the recently departed masterwork Breaking Bad or the groundbreaking show that aired in the previous decade, The Sopranos. Both are gruelingly suspenseful and violent neo-noir crime stories interwoven with searing family drama, intense action and bizarre black comedy. Between them they’ve garnered numerous Emmy awards for their incredible casts, directors and writers. […]

Stephen Colbert Photobombs Jon Stewart at the Emmys

September 25, 2012 Movie Smackdown 1

“Why,” Stephen Colbert must be thinking, “am I always in Jon Stewart’s shadow?

“Anyone can see that my hair is as better than Stewart’s grandfatherly silver mane. (And it’s WAY better than Bryce Zabel’s, the Movie Smackdown guy who seems to be sprucing up his ‘do with a lovely red tiara in this picture.) ”

Colbert has a long way to go before he catches up with his stable mate’s record-setting ten consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Variety Series, but in terms of subversive attitude, he’s lurking right there over Stewart’s shoulder. Photo by Lauren Zabel. (Cont.) […]

Hollywood in Wartime: Remembering the 2001 Emmy® Awards

September 4, 2011 Bryce Zabel 11

Since the Emmy Awards came into existence in 1949, they had never been postponed or canceled until 2001. In that year it happened twice.

I was elected Chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in August 2001, almost a month to the day before 9/11. The Emmy broadcast was scheduled for September 16 of that year. Five days from the worst act of terrorism in history to a walk down the red carpet with Hollywood celebs was simply impossible to imagine.

As everyone re-plays the “Where were you?” moment that the horrific events became for all of us, my own memories combine the moral outrage at such a hideous act of mass murder with the POV of show business struggling to cope with this new reality of terrorism. It was a terrible time for the nation, one that I still think about often, and the most challenging professional moment in my career. […]