Even established stars like Matthew Perry and Paul Reiser have to do more than take a meeting and toss out some ideas for a TV series these days.

Many TV projects currently getting greenlit involve fully-scripted pilots (plus even additional episodes), full-season story arcs, attached talent and/or showrunners.

Read the whole article at Daily Variety.

Hollywood discovers India and more of the latest old news from the television networks courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter.

What's getting greenlit this year?

Lots of people who have been on TV before in shows about cops, doctors, remakes of TV shows that have been on before and... the return of comedies?

Also next year watch for... more stuff from England.

Check out this article by David Carr from the New York Times, one of the old media organs that has managed to create a really meaningful new media presence:

Historically, young women and men who sought to thrive in publishing made their way to Manhattan. Once there, they were told, they would work in marginal jobs for indifferent bosses doing mundane tasks and then one day, if they did all of that without whimper or complaint, they would magically be granted access to a gilded community, the large heaving engine of books, magazines and newspapers.

Beyond that, all it took to find a place to stand on a very crowded island, as E. B. White suggested, was a willingness to be lucky. Once inside that velvet rope, they would find the escalator that would take them through the various tiers of the business and eventually, they would be the ones deciding who would be allowed to come in.

According to eHow, "the single most important task of running a TV show is delivering scripts". But we think it might be getting hired.

Here's the latest hopeful/depressing assessment from the Hollywood Reporter:

Read it here and/or read in situ at HR and/or get their free pdf on this season's TV showrunners.

Showrunners: The green room

By Nellie Andreeva

Showrunners don't get much greener than Matt Nix. Before being handed the reins of USA Network's "Burn Notice" in 2007, he had never even set foot in a writers' room. When he convened his scribes for the first time, Nix walked up to the whiteboard and started writing down ideas.

At least, until one of his hires told him that was an assistant's job.