“I’m sure Simon Cowell has a target on my back,” Levitan said. Jokes aside, news of the blow against reality TV came with some satisfaction. Levitan posted on Twitter: “It’s extremely gratifying that a scripted comedy finally beat an overhyped karaoke contest. Thank you, #Modern Family fans!” As if to crystallize “Modern Family’s” pop cultural impact, Apple even featured the series in its iPhone 4S presentation this month.

“That’s what happens in Hollywood,” Levitan said. “It’s just weird when you’ve got the show people want to imitate. How many times did people try to re-create ‘Friends’?” It’s not like we’re the holy grail. Something else will come along eventually. We were just lucky to have created the right show at the right time.”

As family men themselves, Levitan and Lloyd thought creating a show that reflected the lives they were now living might translate to success. “There’s something to be said about writing what you know,” Levitan said. “We were both living this life — raising kids, dealing with very contemporary issues specific to these times.”

Read the full story on LA Times

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• Written Interview: Steve Levitan (“Modern Family”) and Dan Harmon (“Community”) (gointothestory.com)

A producer of ABC’s hit sitcom “Modern Family” said an episode that prominently featured Apple’s iPad went overboard in hyping the product.

“It may have gone a little too far in hindsight,” said Jeff Morton, a “Modern Family” producer who was speaking Saturday at the Producer Guild’s Produced By 2010 industry conference on the Fox lot.

Source: LA Times

“Modern Family” co-creator Christopher Lloyd told THR that the show’s heavy use of Apple’s iPad wasn’t paid product placement and explained how the episode came about.

Said Lloyd:
“In fact, there was no product placement. This was widely assumed, and everybody was wrong. We wanted to do a show about Phil getting very excited about a new product and it seemed the perfect one to use, since it was debuting [April 1]. We approached Apple about getting their cooperation (using the product, for example, and they are notoriously secretive about their products prior to their being launched) and they agreed and gave us a few other small concessions. But there were no stipulations as with normal product placement, i.e. we give you X dollars and you have to feature our product such-and-such a way and say such-and-such nice things about it. We are not angels — we have made those agreements with other companies. But that was not the deal with Apple. It was all story-driven.”

I guess the rumors about Justin Kirk were true – see the pic from @jessetyler tweet