Odds Are Show's Title Starts 'Tyler Perry's...'

Looks like filmmaker Tyler Perry, whose Tyler Perry's House of Payne on TBS is cable's No. 1 sitcom, has another TV show in the works — possibly also headed to the “Very Funny” network.

House of Payne is distributed by Debmar-Mercury, which is owned by the movie studio Lionsgate. During Lionsgate's fiscal first-quarter conference call last week, CEO Jon Feltheimer let the cat out of the bag. “We have important Tyler news coming on the television side that we expect Tyler and Debmar-Mercury will be announcing in the next few weeks,” he said.

Officials at TBS and syndicator Debmar-Mercury declined to comment. But Wall Street sources expect Perry's new show to be for TBS, with some speculating that it will be a spinoff of his blockbuster (about $42 million box office, per Variety) movie Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns. But, again, no one is going beyond Feltheimer's comment.

Turner Broadcasting's TBS also owns the right to air Meet The Browns after its window on Showtime, Variety reported.

TBS's deal in 2006 for House of Payne was for an unprecedented initial order of 100 episodes, later ordering another 26 installments.

The 100th House of Payne episode on TBS aired earlier this month, pulling in 3.8 million viewers at 10:30 p.m. With that magic number of shows in the vault, House of Payne goes into broadcast syndication in September.

Lionsgate also has partnered with Perry on box-office winners including Diary of a Mad Black Woman. In July, Perry and Lionsgate did a three-year deal in which he will produce at least three more feature films for the studio, in addition to Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, which opens Sept. 12, and Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail, set for release in February.

Mrs. McSlarrow Not On NCTA's Payroll

It's been said that Sen.John McCain, age 71, isn't Internet-savvy.

But the (no doubt, young) people running his slick campaign Web site (www.johnmccain.com/) can't rely on McCain's alleged digital deficit to justify a goof that caught National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Kyle McSlarrow by surprise.

In the spirit of full disclosure, McCain is posting the names of his top fundraisers, including their address, occupation and employer. McSlarrow, for example, is there among the dozens of people who have raised $100,000 to $250,000 for the Arizona Republican.

The surprise for McSlarrow was that his wife, Alison, who raised between $50,000 to $100,000, was listed as an NCTA employee.

Is Alison McSlarrow really on the NCTA payroll? We asked the cable trade group's top spokesman, Rob Stoddard. Answer: No.

“[Kyle McSlarrow] will be contacting the campaign to ask them to correct the Web site,” Stoddard said.

'Colbert' Gig Can Pay Fundraising Dividend

Election statisticians may have a new metric to measure the success of Congressional candidates: the “Colbert bump.”

Democratic candidates for the House and Senate can see their fundraising in the months after an appearance on The Colbert Report rise by up to 40% compared to before then, according to an article in July penned by James H. Fowler, a professor at the University of California San Diego. By contrast, appearances on the show represent a “Colbert bust” for Republicans.

Fowler, a fan of Stephen Colbert's show, explained his thesis in the July issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association. He based his conclusions on data from the Federal Election Commission by congressional Democrats and Republicans.

He said the analysis was for fun and advised against reading too much into his conclusions. That said, he notes that despite being a comedy program, The Colbert Report exercises a “disproportionate real world influence” on fundraising, likely due to its audience's “elite demographic.”