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So much for ‘Smash’: Broadway series is doomed

February 23, 2012

By ADAM BUCKMAN

It will go down as one of the biggest debacles in the history of television — a hugely expensive flop that NBC hoped would trigger a turnaround in its low-rated prime-time lineup.

That hasn’t happened so far with “Smash,” but even more importantly, it’s not ever going to happen.  Three weeks into its run, it’s tanking.

Here’s the rundown:

In its premiere (Monday nights at 10) the night after the Super Bowl when it got promoted like crazy (see story below), it drew 11.44 million total viewers, and scored a 3.8 rating in the “young” demo, 18-49.

In Week Two (Feb. 13): 8.06 million viewers, 2.8 in the demo.

In Week Three (Feb. 20):  6.47 million, 2.3.

Here’s the thing about ratings: The trends are just as important as the numbers.  And downward trends don’t usually reverse themselves.  In fact, to be even more blunt, they almost never do.

Instead, they just indicate the obvious: Viewers are abandoning “Smash.”  They’re simply not finding it enjoyable enough to return the following week to see what happens.  And that means the show is toast.  It will probably stay on until its season ends in May, but don’t hold your breath waiting for Season Two next fall because you’ll suffocate.

Why did it fail?

Here are a few reasons:

The show was one big cliche:  They should have just named it “TV Show: The Musical” — that’s how generic this thing was.  Here’s a litany of some of the cliches this tired show trafficked in: The dream of Broadway stardom (more on this below), a musical about Marilyn Monroe (c’mon, really?), and the macho, authoritarian director who tries to seduce the young female contestants for the lead role in his show by laying some line on them about how they must free themselves from their inhibitions.   Excuse me for bluntly leveling an accusation here with no real proof but that one came straight out of “Black Swan” (which did it a whole lot better).

Nobody cares about Broadway: At least not in numbers sufficient to support a TV series that is supposed to draw the kind of viewership that is supposed to save an entire network.  Sure, the tourists flock to the shows in and around Times Square, but that’s because they’re in New York — it’s one of the things you do when you come here.

It’s a lot of fun too, and Broadway, generally speaking, is very profitable these days.  But that’s because of the peculiar characteristics of Broadway and its shows — they’re live, they’re in theaters, and they’re something you do so that when you go back home, you can tell your friends and neighbors that you saw a Broadway show while you were in New York.

A TV show about Broadway is just not the same thing at all.

It’s almost a certainty that the decision-makers who said yes to “Smash” went through a thought process that went something like this: They observed the crowds in Times Square just before curtain time and noted what they read about box-office receipts.  Then they considered how many aspirational talent shows are on TV nowadays, from “American Idol” and “The Voice” to “Glee.”   So they decided they would make a drama series combining all these elements (in the hope that high ratings would become their version of robust ticket sales).

That didn’t happen, for the simple reason that Broadway shows are for viewing once or twice in a lifetime on a rare trip to New York City, not for watching every Monday night at home.

Of course, I could have told them this, but nobody asked me.  On the other hand, what do I know?  Before it premiered, I predicted that “Smash” would be an 8 million-viewer show.  I was correct where the series’ second episode was concerned, but in Week Three, “Smash” proved me wrong.  How wrong?  That all depends on how low it goes next week.

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NBC promo ploy pays off for ‘Smash,’ ‘The Voice’

February 7, 2012

Megan Hilty in NBC's "Smash" (Photo: NBC)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NBC smashed its way to victory in the ratings Monday night — a huge turnaround for the network on a night where it suffered mightily all season.

The reason: A one-two punch of series that were highly promoted during the Super Bowl – “The Voice” and “Smash.”  It was a promotion ploy that paid off — promoting both shows during the big game that was watched by 111 million people, and also premiering the new season of “The Voice” directly following the game on Sunday night.

By the time Monday rolled around, America was apparently ready to check in with “The Voice” for a second consecutive night, and also primed to sample “Smash,” the widely promoted Broadway drama that NBC hopes will ignite a comeback for the entire network in the ratings.

Well, the jury’s still out on whether “Smash” will revive NBC’s entire lineup, and it also won’t be known ’til next Monday if this week’s “Smash” viewers will return next week.  But for now, NBC execs are likely popping champagne corks over the 11.498 million viewers the “Smash” premiere drew at 10/9c Monday night.  While they had probably hoped for an even bigger audience on opening night, that number is far, far better than anything NBC had aired previously in any time slot on Mondays this season, including shows such as “Chuck,” the ill-fated “Playboy Club” and the Brian Williams news magazine “Rock Center.”

And the news for “The Voice” was even better.  The talent-competition series found itself in “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” territory Monday night with a two-hour average from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. (7-9c) of 17.686 million viewers, according to the Nielsen overnights — the kind of audience tally for a regular series that NBC hasn’t seen in years.  It also bears mentioning that the “Voice” numbers far outpaced Simon Cowell’s “X Factor” on Fox earlier this season.  In fact, the second hour of “The Voice” Monday night drew a monster-sized audience Simon can only dream about: 19.295 million.

That figure was more than enough to clobber the usually dominant sitcoms on CBS – “Two and a Half Men” at 9/8c (which drew 12.898 million Monday night) and “Mike & Molly” at 9:30/8:30c (11.015 million).

NBC won every prime-time hour Monday night.  Among the other shows on the other networks, “The Bachelor” on ABC averaged only 8.243 million viewers over its two hours (8-10/7-9c).

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Posted in Adam Buckman, AdamBuckman.com, NBC, Nielsen ratings, Smash, The Voice, TV, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

Here comes the judge: Howard Stern on ‘AGT’

December 15, 2011

Howard Stern on NBC? Yes, it's happening.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NBC finally made it official Thursday morning: Howard Stern’s been hired as the third judge on “America’s Got Talent,” replacing the departed Piers Morgan.  Stern will be seen on the show starting next summer.

There are likely many people who are scratching their heads over this hire, people who don’t see how on earth Howard Stern, the notorious radio personality whose conversations with guests on his Sirius XM radio show are often X-rated, will now be seen on one of our biggest TV networks in a show that, if nothing else, is suitable for the whole family.

Sure, on the face of it, he doesn’t seem compatible with this show at all.  But, in fact, he’s a great choice.  Here’s why and how it happened:

1) Stern’s adaptable: One thing many people other than his most ardent fans fail to realize — Howard Stern is a very gifted broadcaster.  Whether you enjoy the subject matter of his conversations on the radio or not, he is still one of the best there is at talking, which, believe it or not, is a skill that only a few have.  And among his skills is this: Putting the potty talk on hold when it’s necessary to do so — on late-night shows, for example, and also when he used to voice commercials for sponsors of his radio show; those commercials were second-to-none.  On “AGT,” Stern will clean up his act accordingly because, while I know this is difficult for many to believe, the guy is a consummate professional.  Yes, it’s true.

2) NBC needed him: How badly?  Enough to move heaven and earth — and the show from L.A. to New York — to get him.  And it will be worth it too — Stern will not only be very entertaining week after week, but the man is an electro-magnet for media attention.  His utterings on the show will be widely covered, at least initially, and “AGT” will reap the benefits in publicity.  In fact, with Stern on board, there’s little reason, other than timing, why this show shouldn’t air during the regular season on NBC, instead of the summer.  It would certainly do better than “The Sing-Off” or “The Biggest Loser,” competition shows that NBC had on its fall lineup this season that performed terribly in the ratings.

3) Stern “needed” this gig: Not in the sense that one “needs” a job in order to make money to support his family.  Stern’s rich enough to never have to work, but I suspect that an offer like this was irresistible to Stern, if it could be arranged.  Ever since he left terrestrial radio for Sirius, Stern has not been nearly the center of attention he once was in the heyday of his national morning show on old-fashioned broadcast radio.  With this “AGT” gig, he gets an opportunity for exposure in what is probably the most mainstream environment of his career — a G-rated talent show on one of our major TV networks.  Plus, he gets to feel relevant again, a media personality who still has the clout to get a network to roll out the red carpet for him, even though his history on television is mixed at best, and at worst, dismal.

Howard Stern on “America’s Got Talent”?  Our prediction: “AGT” is now poised to become the most talked-about TV show of 2012.

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TV Howl bonus: My own misadventures with Howard Stern

From my personal memoir titled “Jerk: My Life as a Columnist on the TV Beat” by Adam Buckman (all rights reserved), Chapter 3: “The King of All Media.”  Read all about it, starting right here:

Chapter Three:

The King of All Media

I.

The phone rang early on a Wednesday morning while I was still in bed.   It was a producer from Howard Stern’s radio show.  He wanted to know if I would talk to Howard on the air about my column in the paper that morning.

I said no, muttered something about still being asleep, hung up and slept some more.

Meanwhile, it was 6:30 a.m. and Stern was throwing a temper tantrum.  He had already spent a half-hour berating me on the radio …

Please click here to continue . . .

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‘Entourage’ series finale: A Hollywood ending

September 12, 2011

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN': Adrian Grenier in "Entourage" (Photo: HBO)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

HBO’s “Entourage” ended its run Sunday night with Hollywood endings for all concerned. 

Well, that was a dirty trick – ending the final episode of “Entourage” with “Going to California,” Led Zeppelin’s iconic song about the lure and promise of southern Cal.

The song framed a finish full of elaborate happy endings for the show’s principal characters – four of whom were once boys from New York who followed their dreams to California and, by the looks of it Sunday night on HBO, attained them.

The Led Zeppelin song came as they were gathered in an airplane hangar preparing to take two separate private jets on trips abroad – and at least three of the five were embarking on new lives representing a newfound maturity that was not much in evidence in this fun-loving, free-wheeling show’s previous seasons and episodes.

Why was the Zeppelin song a dirty trick?  Because it happens to be a beautiful song, and thus elevated a series that was never long on sentiment to something with meaning – at least for its final moments.

Of course, the neat tying up of all the show’s loose ends in one 35-minute final episode was as much of a fantasy as the way the show’s various storylines were wrapped up for each of the characters:

Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier): After one 24-hour date with the new love of his life – the journalist Sophia Lear (Alice Eve) – Vince declared they would marry that very evening in Paris, bought a ring for more than a million dollars and lined up a private jet to whisk everyone abroad.

Eric “E” Murphy (Kevin Connolly): Thanks to Vince’s largesse – not to mention his charismatic powers of persuasion – Sloan (Emmanuelle Chriqui) agreed to meet E at the airport for their own private jet flight anywhere in the world.  With Sloan already pregnant with their child, we’re left to assume they will live happily ever after.

Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven): Ari did the unthinkable: He threw over his job as co-owner of the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood – the occupation that always seemed as vital to his survival as the blood coursing through his veins – in order to reconcile with Mrs. Ari (Perrey Reeves).  With the help of a young trio of Italian opera singers, the gambit worked and Mr. and Mrs. Ari joined the group for the trip to Paris.

Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon): There were no marriages or new loves for these two – their happy endings were sealed a week earlier, with Drama getting the TV-movie role of his dreams and Turtle becoming a multimillionaire thanks to Vince’s safe-keeping of Turtle’s investment in the tequila company.

Lloyd (Rex Lee): We were glad to see that a consideration of Lloyd’s future was included in the “Entourage” finale.  He was a great character and, in the end, when he fretted about what he would do at the agency without Ari to guide him, Ari told him, rightfully, that he possesses all the tools now to go in there and make his mark in the firm – and not as an Ari clone either, but as his own man.

“Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams . . . ”  “Going to California”?  Why not?  I wrote back when “Entourage” began in 2004 that, at its heart, it was a series about California – specifically, southern California (by which we mean L.A. and Hollywood) – about the fantasy and the reality of the place, and how the two are sometimes difficult to distinguish.

As for the series finale, whether you buy into the neat and tidy happy endings that creator Doug Ellin and his team conjured for the episode, as a time capsule of life in La La Land in the years 2004-2011, “Entourage” got it right.  And we’ll miss it.

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‘Rescue Me’ finale: Leary series goes out on top

September 8, 2011

R.I.P. Lt. Lou Shea: John Scurti in "Rescue Me" -- his character was eulogized, hilariously, on the series finale Wednesday (Photo: FX)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

The series finale of  Denis Leary’s “Rescue Me” Wednesday night on FX was darn near perfect.

Tommy Gavin didn’t die.  Instead, it was Lou, his best friend and perhaps the most likable of all the characters on “Rescue Me.”

A tragedy to end the firefighters’ series run?  Yes, but not completely.  Though Lou’s death was certainly tragic, leaving all of his surviving colleagues to question their futures in the New York City Fire Department, most of the one-hour series finale seen on FX Wednesday night played like a comedy.

That happened to be this show’s signature: Premiering in July 2004 and ending its run this week as the nation prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “Rescue Me” at its heart was a drama about one New York firefighter’s reaction to the loss of 343 FDNY brethren in the collapse of the Twin Towers that day in 2001.  That’s a weighty subject, to be sure, but since that firefighter, Tommy, was played by comedian Denis Leary (who also co-created, co-wrote and co-produced the series), much of the series was given over to Leary’s dark sense of humor.

Such was the case in the finale Wednesday night titled “Ashes.”  The ashes in the title were all that remained of sweet Lou (played to perfection for all seven seasons by John Scurti) after he was killed a week earlier in a warehouse fire (the location recognizable to all who ride the New York subway system’s elevated No. 7 train through Long Island City in Queens).  The collapse of that building left the survival of any of the firefighters in question leading into the finale.

And as the final episode began, it seemed as if at least five of them had succumbed.  But no — it was a dream conjured by Gavin, a dream in which Lou was seen eulogizing the five men with a rousing speech about the nature of firefighting — a grand piece of screen-writing, by the way, as was much of this final episode.

Certainly, it had been speculated that Tommy himself would be among the dead — a novel and striking way to end a series: Having the all-important main character, who’d been seen in virtually every scene of the show for seven years, get killed off.

But it was Lou who died, and his sendoff was a masterpiece, particularly in the choreography of the sequence in which two windows in Tommy’s SUV were opened simultaneously — because Tommy ordered Franco and Black Shawn to toss out their chewing gum — and the sudden cross-ventilation caused Lou’s ashes to suddenly explode out of their box, covering driver, passengers and the entire interior of the vehicle with his earthly remains.

Then, in a perfectly balanced combination of sentiment and black comedy, Tommy poignantly read a letter left to him by Lou (in case of Lou’s death), and then tossed his “ashes” — actually a box of Betty Crocker cake mix that Lou’s brethren bought at the 11th hour to stand in for his ashes — over a cliff and into the sea (it looked like Long Island Sound).

Other scenes were laden with comedy too, such as the scene where Tommy, contemplating life as an FDNY retiree, battles with a group of parents at a politically correct playground (filmed in lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City, about half a block from the World Trade Center site) over the sharing of kids’ toys in the sandbox.  Forget about “Rescue Me” — that was like a scene out of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” only better.

In the end, Tommy didn’t retire, but nor did he assume Lou’s lieutenant’s role, which was his right as senior firefighter in the house.  Instead, he let the promotion go to the gung-ho Franco.

As the episode came to a close, Franco and Tommy were seen exhorting a group of new FDNY recruits on the meaning of belonging to a select group of people of run toward and into burning buildings when everyone else is running out and away from them.

In the show’s touching last scene, Tommy was seen behind the wheel of his SUV having a jovial conversation with an old friend seated in the passenger seat — the ghost of Lou.

This episode was one of the best-written episodes of any single TV show seen in years.  Our hope for Leary and his team is that they get recognized for it.

Dennis Leary in "Rescue Me" (Photo: FX)

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Posted in 9/11, 9/11 10th anniversary, Adam Buckman, Denis Leary, FX, Rescue Me, TV, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

9/11 commemorative TV shows? I think I’ll pass

September 7, 2011

BEFORE: In this light-hearted postcard from before 9/11/2001, the World Trade Center was just another landmark on the New York City skyline. (Source: Author's collection of World Trade Center postcards.)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

NEW YORK — You can’t escape 9/11 on TV this week, though it would be nice if you could.

Turn on the tube and there it is, all served up on multiple channels so you can have the opportunity to relive the horror of that day:  The visual — as impossible to believe then as it is now 10 years later — of airliners flying directly into each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the resultant smoke pouring out of the gaping holes after the great buildings seemed to swallow the big jets, the poor souls who chose to jump a hundred stories to their deaths rather than be burned alive, the eventual collapse of each tower and the debris clouds that overwhelmed lower Manhattan and billowed out over the Hudson River.

Want to wallow in the memory of it all?  Go right ahead, but I think I’ll pass.  I have no need to relive that day and the days that followed, though judging from all the special retrospective material now airing in advance of this Sunday’s 10th anniversary, plenty of people seem to have a need to relive it, and also to talk about it, to tell the rest of us where they were when it happened, what they felt then and how they feel about it now, how the terrorist sneak attacks changed “us,” and on and on.

I guess I’m not much of a wallower.  I was at home when the attacks occurred, two miles up Greenwich Street from the Twin Towers.  And that’s all you’re going to learn about what I experienced that day.  If offered a microphone by a roving reporter from a local radio or TV station to relate my experiences for broadcast, I would politely decline.  But plenty of people around here are saying yes to such invitations.  If you live in New York, you’re seeing and hearing their testimony all over the place these days in commemorative segments on all the news shows and cable channel specials.

Local newscasts this week can’t go to a commercial break without a 9/11 interlude — some somber music and the words “Remembering 9/11″ on the screen, and a brief interview with some passerby who tells us how he or she was on his or her way to work downtown that day and saw the planes hit or, less dramatically, still soaking in a tub somewhere else, perhaps not anywhere near any of the 9/11 attack sites at all, hearing the shocking bulletins on the radio or TV.

These people seem to find the opportunity to tell their stories impossible to resist — a way of thinking in line with social trends.  Everyone wants to tell his or her own story these days, right?  So they take to Facebook and Twitter and tell everyone they know what they’re eating right now.

Not me, though.  My 9/11 memories are private.  My feelings about that day are too.  Sorry, but it’s just nobody’s business.   I’ll admit this: I’m not big on anniversaries as a basis for TV commemorations.  Maybe it’s because I once had an editor, when I was at a formative age, who prohibited anniversary stories.  It wasn’t real news, he’d say, whenever a reporter came to him with a pitch from a TV network publicist ballyhooing some milestone reached by a TV show — a fifth season, or a 100th episode, or the 20th consecutive week as TV’s top comedy or drama.

As news “hooks,” such milestones were contrivances unworthy of our stations as journalists.  I got his point, and I agreed with it too.  However, you’d be correct to point out that this 9/11 anniversary is more notable than some TV show’s fifth week as the top-rated comedy on Thursday nights.

Judging by all the hours of TV programming that have been produced for the occasion, the people running the nation’s TV stations, broadcast networks and cable channels must believe the public is eager to share in a kind of telethon of national remembrance.  But you also can’t help wondering at times such as this if all the programming produced for the occasion begets all the interest, instead of the other way around.

Or, to put it another way, if TV didn’t pull out all the stops to present you with constant reminders of 9/11 this week, would you miss it?

AFTER: World Trade Center postcard from after 9/11/2001 -- the late great Twin Towers draped in elongated American flags. (Author's collection)

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TV Howl’s Adam Buckman on ‘Showbiz Tonight’

August 31, 2011

Watch my insightful commentary about Ashton Kutcher, Charlie Sheen and “Two and a Half Men” on HLN’s “Showbiz Tonight” right here:

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Last coconut phone call for Sherwood Schwartz

July 13, 2011

Sherwood Schwartz (right) and the character he created, Gilligan, played by Bob Denver.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Spend enough years as a journalist on the same beat and it’s inevitable that many of the people you met along the way will die eventually.

And if you’ve been around as long as I have, you run the risk of beginning to sound like that scene in “The Sunshine Boys” where the only subject the elderly former comedy partners Lewis and Clark (George Burns and Walter Matthau in the 1975 movie) seem to talk about is the death of someone they knew.  Maybe you remember this pointless conversation — it went something like this: “Where’d he die?”  “In Variety.”

So I try and avoid these kinds of blog posts, but when Sherwood Schwartz died the other day at age 94, I somehow retrieved a dim memory of having lunch with him.  And since cobwebs were forming here on TV Howl (my last post was a while ago), I decided it was time to make a new contribution.

I’m pretty sure it was in May 2000 or thereabouts — at the Waldorf Astoria, in the ballroom, where many a TV industry event is held in New York.  Nick at Nite (or maybe it was TV Land) was putting on some sort of presentation of its then-new lineup of old shows.  The only record I possess of this event is a photo taken backstage of Mr. T and me.

One of the only other memories of this event: Tina Yothers, formerly of “Family Ties,” singing in a rock band.

Somehow, I was assigned to the same table as Sherwood Schwartz and his wife.  I dimly recall engaging him in conversation by asking him about his various shows — “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Dusty’s Trail.”  I was particularly interested in how he arrived at the number of characters for these shows — seven for both “Gilligan” and “Dusty’s Trail” and nine for “Brady Bunch.”

I don’t recall the details, but his answer indicated that those numbers were shrewdly chosen for their versatility and potential for myriad storylines.  For that’s one of the problems the producers of TV shows always come up against: Dreaming up enough stories to sustain the scenario they created through an entire season (which, in the days of “Gilligan’s Island,” was 36 episodes) or multiple seasons.

Judging by his age when he died, Schwartz must have been 82 or 83 when I met him that day.  He was an energetic guy — a funny little old man.  At one point during the presentation that was underway on-stage after lunch had been served and eaten, a “phone” made of coconut halves — like something the Professor would have devised on “Gilligan’s Island” — was delivered to our table.

A single spotlight then cut through the darkened ballroom and shone on Sherwood as the ringing of a phone was suddenly heard.  That was apparently Sherwood’s cue to answer this “phone” and speak into it.   And since the phone had a hidden microphone, Sherwood’s voice was heard over the ballroom’s speaker system saying something about “The Brady Bunch.”

I was delighted to have witnessed this “performance” from the chair right beside him.  All in all, it was a great day, having my photo taken with Mr. T and then sitting beside the creator of “Gilligan’s Island” as he took a call on a coconut telephone.  What more could a TV columnist ask for?

May he rest in peace.

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TV Howl bonus sidebar: The day I met Gilligan.

Bob Denver, the titular star of “Gilligan’s Island,” told me in 1993 that he made just $1,200 a week at the height of the show’s popularity on CBS in the mid-’60s.

He claimed he wasn’t disappointed that his contract didn’t call for residual payments in perpetuity, just in case “Gilligan” enjoyed any kind of an afterlife in syndication after its initial network run ended in 1967 after three seasons.

As it happened, reruns of “Gilligan” ran for decades and would have made Denver and his co-stars fabulously wealthy.  “There’s not a lot of shows that run 30 years,” Denver, then 58, said when I interviewed him in midtown Manhattan, in a conference room in the offices of the publishing company that had just released his memoir, “Gilligan, Maynard & Me” (the second name in the title referring to his role as the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”).  “If you knew in ’63, when I signed the deal, that things would run 20, 30 years, and didn’t get a deal, then you’d be really upset.”

When he died in 2005, I wrote that he was “the mellowest cat I had ever encountered” in the TV business.

Many actors who became identified with a single, iconic TV character eventually came to loathe the character that made them famous.  They would blame the character for their inability to find steady work in the years afterward, when their agents would inform them that producers were taking a pass because the actors were too closely associated with their previous roles and the producers felt audiences wouldn’t accept them in any new ones.  If Bob Denver ever felt that way, he never let on when I interviewed him.

He was a good enough sport that he always remembered to wear the one Gilligan sailor hat he still possessed when he made public appearances.  “I love to hear people say, ‘Is that really one of the show’s hats?’  They are almost in awe,” he told me.

[Excerpted from "Jerk: My Life as a Columnist on the TV Beat" by Adam Buckman.  All rights reserved.]

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Posted in Adam Buckman, Bob Denver, Gilligan's Island, Mr. T, Sherwood Schwartz, The Brady Bunch, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

Katie in the afternoon: You be the judge

June 11, 2011

Katie Couric's coming to daytime but no one knows how she'll do (Photo: Disney/ABC)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

A lot of people want to know lately: How will Katie Couric do on daytime TV?

My answer?  I have no idea.  It’s not because I’m at a loss for words or can’t quite generate an opinion.  I’ve never had those problems.  Just on the face of it, I think that generally speaking, the odds don’t favor her making a big splash with a daytime talk show.  There are just too many variables afflicting daytime television these days to state with certainty that she’s a slamdunk to emerge with a hit talk show on her hands.

Not that it’s impossible, but this is a time of day that is seriously in flux nowadays as far as television is concerned.  Based on everything that’s going on now in daytime, this new Katie Couric talk show is a huge gamble that could go either way.

Here are the factors at play, in no particular order, as Couric prepares to enter the daytime arena about 15 months from now:

1) What exactly is daytime television?  One thing it’s not: A place where any former network news anchor has ever set up shop and succeeded.  A personality with Couric’s news background might be expected to attract newsmakers as guests, for conversations about stories or subjects in the news.  The problem with that: No one’s ever attempted that in a syndicated afternoon talk show.

2) The cable news channels own that kind of news/talk on weekday afternoons.  They’ve owned it ever since the 1990s, when the O.J. Simpson trials, the Clinton impeachment, and stories such as the Elian Gonzalez saga and the 2000 presidential election recount riveted viewers in afternoons.  Broadcast networks began to notice: These “real-life” soap operas were stealing their audiences.

3) So maybe there’s an opportunity for Couric, a newsperson, to siphon off some of the audience for news/talk in the afternoon.  Maybe, but is that audience really big enough to sustain her show?  That’s doubtful.  It should be noted that Anderson Cooper is poised to do the same thing — start an afternoon talk show.  So it’s clear some people in the TV business think the afternoon is ripe for this kind of thing.

4) But is the afternoon audience ripe for it, whoever they are?  Sure, everybody’s focusing on Oprah Winfrey leaving daytime, and then, theoretically, leaving an opportunity for someone like Couric to come in and grab the “serious” afternoon TV viewer.  But are there really enough of them?  Take a look at daytime TV — Oprah was an exception.  Most of the shows on daytime are low-rent judge shows and talk shows like “Maury” and “Jerry Springer” (and yes, Ellen Degeneres holds on somehow, with ratings are that pretty low, but apparently just enough to keep her show profitable).  Will the audience for all these other shows suddenly flock to Katie Couric?  Probably not.

5) Katie’s no Oprah.  And that’s the crux of the matter.  Even Oprah’s audience was in decline, and she’s Oprah.  That’s probably why she decided to leave daytime syndication and stake her future on cable TV.  Judge Judy was beating her in the ratings and she knew it.  The question is: Do people like Katie Couric?  Once upon a time she was America’s sweetheart at “The Today Show.”  Then, something happened — I don’t know what it was, but nowadays she doesn’t seem as beloved as she once was.  In fact, that’s an understatement.  In some quarters, Couric is so polarizing a personality that she’s on par with Sarah Palin in the kinds of reactions she draws from readers of blog posts like this one.

6) Daytime is so unpredictable these days that even the traditional soap operas — the long-time backbone of daytime TV — are on life-support.  Under the circumstances, it’s just too chaotic to figure out whether Katie Couric can come along and plant her flag on this shaky ground.  Fact is, she’s a very capable broadcaster, but the savior of daytime TV?  Who came up with that idea?

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Business as usual at CBS News as Pelley era begins

June 11, 2011

THE NEW GUY: Scott Pelley takes over as anchorman on "The CBS Evening News" (Photo: CBS News).

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Scott Pelley didn’t mark his debut as the new anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in any special way Monday evening.  Instead, he chose to anchor the broadcast as if his first day was nothing special.

He made no self-referential remarks, made no speeches about what he’ll do or how the newscast might change in the Pelley era or how honored he is to be installed as only the fifth CBS evening-news anchor since 1948.

The approach was refreshing actually.  It was also unexpected since we’re not accustomed to TV personalities refraining from talking about themselves, especially on days that are very special to them personally.  Certainly, Monday must have been such a day in the life of Scott Pelley, a 53-year-old CBS newsman who had reached the pinnacle of his field, which happens to be one of the most competitive in the world.

And yet, Pelley didn’t mention it.  Instead, he anchored the news – introducing stories (10 of them) and, on occasion, exchanging a few remarks with CBS correspondents.  Perhaps the approach was deliberate.  Maybe it was meant to convey the idea, without Pelley having to spell it out, that he didn’t intend to rock the boat as the broadcast’s new anchor.

Or maybe he’s saving the boat-rocking for some future newscasts.  Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t let us in on it.  Instead, he read his copy flawlessly and, when it was time to end the show, he said simply, “For all of us at CBS News all around the world, good night.”

The Pelley era was under way, and as the week wore on, Pelley continued to underplay his own role in the broadcast.

Personally, I happen to love the old-fashioned CBS approach to news — the attention to detail, the flawless reading of the copy, the care and professionalism with which the stories are presented.  It’s all so fastidious, but in today’s world, do news viewers look for fastidiousness and attention to detail in their TV newscasts?  Other than me, does anyone really care about these qualities anymore?

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Oprah’s farewell: Long good-bye takes three days

May 26, 2011

HASTA LA VISTA, BABY: Oprah Winfrey waves good-bye. (Photo: (c) 2011 Harpo, Inc./George Burns)

By ADAM BUCKMAN

OPRAH Winfrey said good-bye — finally!  Though it seemed as if this long good-bye would never end, it finally did end Wednesday.  Here’s what happened:

The final “Oprah Winfrey Show” Wednesday consisted of little more than Oprah standing on her stage and talking.

For her millions of loyal fans, this must have been heavenly.  For the rest of us, who tuned in to her final show (the 4,561st, as Oprah herself pointed out) expecting a bit more excitement – perhaps some fireworks, a big cake, a brass band – the show was a bit of a letdown.

On the other hand, as Oprah said repeatedly, this particular show wasn’t really for those of us who didn’t regularly ride the Oprah train to inspiration, validation and self-fulfillment over the last 25 years.  This show was for those who did ride along with Oprah on this “journey” (her word) that began back in 1986.

With the Paul Simon song “10 Years” (the one he converted to “25 Years” in her honor earlier this season) playing as a theme in and out of the show’s commercial breaks, Oprah took her stage at Harpo Studios in Chicago for the last time.  Dressed in a simple pink dress, she stood for the whole hour (though a white chair was there in case she needed it) and spoke to the audience.

“This last hour is really about me saying thank you,” she said when she took the stage.  “It is my love letter to you.”

“I wanted to spend this last hour telling you what you’ve meant to me,” she said, one of many times she would thank her viewers in the course of this hour-long speech (some might call it a sermon), in which she shared details from her life story (as she’s done many times before), imparted various life lessons, and even preached about the meaning of God.  “God is love and God is life!” she exclaimed. “And your life is always speaking to you, first in whispers . . .”

And so it went.  There were no celebrity guests, though Tyler Perry was recognized from his seat in the audience because of his participation in a show earlier this season about men who had been sexually abused in boyhood.  Oprah’s fourth-grade teacher was in the audience too – the one who Oprah still calls “Mrs. Duncan” – and who apparently had a profound impact on the young Oprah.

If there was any central theme to this show, it was nothing less than the meaning of life, which is a lot for any one person to take on.  And yet, Oprah doesn’t shy away from such challenges.  She advised her viewers to “use your life to serve the world.”  She talked about the Golden Rule and the importance of “validation.”

“There is a common thread that runs through all our pain and suffering and that is unworthiness,” she preached, advising viewers to “validate” the ones they love.  Tell them: “What you say matters to me!” Oprah beseeched.

Toward the end of the hour, the commercial breaks came more frequently.  After all, television is a business and the breaks near the end of this particular show were valuable indeed.  Finally, after one last break, the end was near and Oprah said her final words.

“I thank you for sharing this yellow brick road of blessings,” she said.  “I thank you for tuning in everyday . . .  I thank you for being as much of a sweet inspiration for me as I’ve tried to be for you.  I won’t say good-bye.  I’ll just say, Until we meet again.  To God be the glory.”

She then strolled out of the studio, stopping briefly for a few hugs and greetings, then continued walking down a narrow corridor lined with members of her staff.  At the end of this gauntlet, she encountered her small dog Sadie.  Lifting the dog into the air, Oprah declared: “Sadie, we did it! We did it, Sade! We did it!”

And then Oprah, with Sadie under her right arm, disappeared behind a pillar and was gone.  Until we meet again.

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As seen on TV (CNN): TVHowl.com. Watch it here

May 21, 2011

TVHowl was on CNN.

Check it out HERE:

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Read my list: The greatest sitcom lineups ever

January 31, 2011

WHICH LINEUP WAS NO. 1? Here's a hint: "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- with Moore and Ted Knight -- was a big part of it.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

What were the greatest comedy lineups ever assembled for TV?  I did the research and came up with this incredible list:

What makes a sitcom lineup great?  It’s a question I’ve set out to answer now that NBC has taken the unusual step of cramming six comedies on to the air in a single night on Thursdays – starting with “Community” at 8/7c, followed by the new “Perfect Couples,” “The Office,” “Parks & Recreation,” “30 Rock” (at 10/9c) and “Outsourced.”

So what are the best comedy blocks ever assembled?  I established my own subjective criteria: For my informal study, a lineup had to have at least four comedies in a row to qualify (before 1962, comedies were not strung together in any number greater than three); preferably, the lineup would remain more or less consistent for at least two seasons; and the shows had to be either high-rated or at least well-remembered, if not beloved.  Here’s what we came up with:

Runners-up: Before I get to my Top 10, some honorable mentions – Fall 1964, Thursdays on ABC: “The Flintstones,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “My Three Sons,” “Bewitched”; Fall 1965, Wednesdays on CBS: “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show”; and Thursdays on CBS: “The Munsters,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “My Three Sons”; Fall 1987, Mondays on CBS: “Frank’s Place,” “Kate & Allie,” “Newhart,” “Designing Women.”  Incredible, isn’t it?  “The Munsters” and “Gilligan” back-to-back on a single night?  Who wouldn’t love that?

And now, my Top 10:

No. 10: Fall 1986, Saturdays on NBC: “The Facts of Life,” “227,” “Golden Girls,” “Amen.”  Marla Gibbs, Sherman Hemsley, the “Golden” gals, plus “Mrs. Garrett” all in one night?  That’s TV heaven.

No. 9: Fall 1985, Fridays on ABC: Speaking of incredible TV pairings, how about Emmanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman on the same network on the same night: “Webster,” “Mr. Belvedere,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Benson.”

No. 8: Fall 1978, Thursdays on ABC: Another great lineup – future comedy greats Robin Williams (“Mork & Mindy”) and Billy Crystal (“Soap”), plus the beloved characters of “What’s Happening” and the legendary ensemble of “Barney Miller.”

No. 7: Fall 2007, Sundays on Fox: Talk about staying power – it had never been done, or even tried, before Fox strung together these animated powerhouses: “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” “Family Guy,” “American Dad.”

No. 6: Fall 1975, Monday on CBS:  Of these four sitcoms, three were spinoffs: “Rhoda” and “Phyllis” (from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”), and “Maude” (from “All in the Family,” which preceded “Maude” at 9 p.m.).

No. 5: Fall 1978, Tuesdays on ABC: “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Three’s Company,” “Taxi.”  ABC definitely had a comedy winning streak going on in fall 1978 (see No. 8, above).  What can you say about a Tuesday lineup that included Richie Cunningham (future director Ron Howard) and The Fonz; Laverne, Shirley, Lenny and Squiggy; John Ritter and Suzanne Somers (plus Norman Fell and Don Knotts); and the whole gang from “Taxi”?  It seems impossible, but all that talent was available on free network TV in a single evening way back when.

No. 4: Fall 1991, Tuesdays on ABC: Many seasons later, ABC struck gold again on Tuesday nights with one of the highest-rated comedy lineups of all time – “Full House,” “Home Improvement,” “Roseanne,” “Coach.”

No. 3: Fall 1984, Thursdays on NBC: This is the comedy lineup that ushered in an era of comedy dominance for NBC that lasted into the early 2000s.  Behold: “The Cosby Show,” “Family Ties,” “Cheers,” “Night Court.”

No. 2: Fall 1993, Thursdays on NBC: Some might quibble with this lineup’s inclusion of “Wings,” but that series emerges as the best of all the sitcoms NBC tried at 8:30/7:30c on Thursdays.  And what can you say about a lineup that also boasts “Mad About You,” “Seinfeld” and “Frasier”?

And the No. 1 TV comedy lineup of all time is: Fall 1973, Saturdays on CBS: Few will argue with our choice for No. 1, particularly those old enough to have watched this incredible, never-to-be-duplicated collection of legendary megahits, four of the most critically acclaimed comedies of all time, followed by the most uproarious variety show ever made – “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show.”  All I can say is, Wow.

 And don’t miss my interview about the list on WGN-AM, Chicago:

Please give it a listen here!

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This might be the greatest music video ever

January 24, 2011

By ADAM BUCKMAN

You might recognize this song — “Remind Me,” by the Norwegian group Royksopp — from one of the Geico caveman commercials (the one in an airport), but you must see the original, mind-blowing video.  Watch it above  (click on play a couple of times).

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And so, the Olbermann story runs its course. Alas.

November 10, 2010

KEITH RESURRECTED: Before you knew he was gone, he was already back.

By ADAM BUCKMAN

It was fun while it lasted.

Oh, well.  All good things must come to an end.  And so it was with the story of Keith Olbermann’s “indefinite” suspension which lasted all of four days.  What did Keith have to say about it?  Read my recap on his first show back:

Talk about glee!  Keith Olbermann was clearly happy to be back on the air Tuesday night after an “indefinite” suspension that lasted only four days.  But he was even more ecstatic – downright gleeful, you might say – about all the attention he received during his brief exile.

That was more than evident in the remarks he made about his experience, in the final segment of his MSNBC show, ‘Countdown,’ on Tuesday.  That’s the show on which Keith “counts down” the five biggest stories of the day.  And on this night, story Number One was the one about himself.

“I’d like to close tonight by discussing something that I’m sure has happened to you dozens of times in your own life,” Olbermann said, launching into one of the longest run-on sentences in the history of broadcasting.  “You know, when there’s a petition supporting you and it winds up being signed by 300,000 people and you get 21,000 tweets in a 72-hour period and then you’re invited to be on television because you aren’t on television because they want you to be the lead story on ‘Good Morning America’ and ‘Larry King’ and ‘Letterman’ and you break the traffic record on the Huffington Post and you’re on the front page of the New York Times without being dead, or in jail or Charlie Sheen or something!”   Whew!

“Well, maybe you’re used to it,” Keith went on, knowing full well we’re not used to it, that such things don’t happen to any of us mere mortals at home watching this champion of 72-hour tweets on TV.  “But for me, it was kind of a surprise,” Keith said with a huge grin.  “And all I can seriously say is I’m stunned and grateful and it still feels like a universal hug!”  Awww.

He apologized to his viewers for “having subjected you to all this unnecessary drama.”  And then he apologized, somewhat awkwardly, “for not having known by observation, since it’s not in my contract, that NBC had rules about getting permission for making political donations even though any rule like that in any company [is] probably not legal.”  Come on now, Keith – everybody knows that ignorance of the law (or corporate rules) is no excuse!

He admitted to making the campaign contributions to three Democratic candidates a few days before Election Day that resulted in his suspension last Friday.  He then played some videotape – very gleefully – of Jay Leno and Jon Stewart joking about him on ‘The Tonight Show’ and ‘The Daily Show,’ respectively.  And he thanked the many thousands who reportedly “signed” an on-line petition for his reinstatement.  “I’d like to thank all 300,000 signatories to that petition, but obviously I can’t,” he said, feigning humility and then adding this punchline: “And anyway, 99 percent of them were my relatives!”  (For the record, that would mean Olbermann, a stickler for accuracy when he criticizes his rivals at Fox News Channel, is claiming 297,000 relatives – a pretty large family.)

The cleverest part of the whole show was the opening, in which Olbermann’s empty desk was shown on screen for such a long period of time (at least by TV standards) that you couldn’t help wondering if he was going to show up at all.  Then he suddenly appeared, standing right before the camera, where he made his first remarks on the controversy.

“I need to address one thing right now,” he said.  “I read in a couple of places that this has to have been a publicity stunt.  This was not a publicity stunt!”

Well, if it wasn’t a real publicity stunt, for Olbermann it was the next best thing.  Said he, “Of course, if I had known that all this would happen, I would have done this years ago!”

Did you watch the show?  If so, what did you think of Keith’s return?  Are you glad to have him back?  Or more to the point, are you glad this whole suspension controversy is now over and done with?

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Why, you! Stooges toss pies, poke eyes on IFC

October 20, 2010

'THREE OF THE BEST PLUMBERS WHO EVER PLUMBED A PLUMB': Three Stooges Moe (right), Curly (center) and Larry wreak havoc in "A-Plumbing We Will Go" (1940). Photo: IFC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

The Three Stooges on IFC, a respository of high-brow indie films?  Well, why not?  The cable network’s chief exec explained to me why the Stooges are a perfect fit.

What on Earth are the Three Stooges doing on IFC?

They’re doing what they usually do: Slapping, punching, poking eyes and throwing pies.  But what we really mean is: How do the Stooges, who are now being featured in mini-marathons every Saturday on IFC, fit in with the rest of the programming on this cable channel formerly devoted exclusively to showcasing independent films?  It’s enough to make an IFC fan exclaim, “Why, you!”

Well, why not?  As the channel’s chief executive explains, IFC feels these legends of slapstick comedy conform completely with the cable net’s current tagline, “Always On. Slightly Off,” particularly the latter half of that slogan.

“These were the first guys who were ‘slightly off’,” said Jennifer Caserta, executive vice president and general manager of IFC.  “We have been moving into this alternative comedy genre in a very significant way.  And if you look back at what we’ve done, particularly over the past year – for example, we brought ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ and a lot of the Python films onto the network [and] we reunited the Kids in the Hall for a series called ‘Death Comes to Town’ – what we’re realizing is there’s something to be said about some very nostalgic properties that transcend the generations.  [The Three Stooges] were kind of the first alt-sketch comedy troupe if you really look at it like that.”

Fair enough, but there was another reason why IFC picked up the Stooges for these mini-marathons that first turned up in August and then returned this month, running every Saturday from around 9:30 a.m. ’til 2 p.m. (this Saturday’s lineup begins at 9:35 a.m./8:35c): They were easy to get their hands on since IFC’s co-owned cable channel, AMC, has owned the broadcast rights to the Stooges’ short films for about a decade and air them all over the place, mainly as 20-minute fillers between movies.  The difference: IFC’s Stooges run without commercial interruption.

The Three Stooges starred in so-called “two-reel” comedies (about 20 minutes in length) produced by Columbia Pictures from 1934 to 1959.  The team – Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard and later, Shemp Howard and Joe Besser – made about 190 shorts for Columbia, a portion of which began airing in television syndication in 1958.  They’ve been on more or less continuously ever since, entertaining generations of kids – 99 percent boys (and immature adult men).

So far, the Stooge mini-marathons running this month on IFC have been almost entirely from the Curly era, which ended in 1947 when Curly had a career-ending stroke on the set of ‘Half-Wits’ Holiday,’ one of the shorts that happened to air last Saturday.  His older brother, Shemp, replaced him as third Stooge until Shemp’s own death in 1955.

This Saturday’s lineup of 12 consecutive Stooges classics includes the 1934 hospital comedy ‘Men in Black’ (10:45 a.m./9:45c) – the only Stooges movie ever to be nominated for an Oscar (they lost); and the Art Deco-infused ‘Slippery Silks’ from 1936 (1:20 p.m./12:20c), which was Moe’s personal favorite.

IFC’s Caserta admits the Stooges are definitely a guy thing.  “I have observed over the years how guys go nuts for the Stooges,” she said.  “I have yet to meet a woman who gets them.”

So how about it?   Is she right about the great Stooges gender divide?  Are there any women out there who “get” the Stooges?  And for those of you who love ’em, here’s the question that always sparks discussion among Stooge fans: Who do you like better – Curly or Shemp?

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‘Mad Men’ 10/17/10: Don in love? Yeah, right

October 18, 2010

THE THINKER: Don Draper in another moment of contemplation over the meaning of his life in the fourth-season finale of "Mad Men." Photo: AMC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

The fourth season of “Mad Men” ended much too soon.  Don in love with Megan?  Do we really have to wait until next July to learn what’s up with that?  Oh, well — the season finale was one of the richest episodes yet.

Don Draper in love?  That appeared to be the case Sunday night as ‘Mad Men’ ended its sensational and oh-so unpredictable fourth season on AMC.

Unpredictable?  It was impossible to foresee that swinging bachelor Don (Jon Hamm) would suddenly flip head over heels for his willowy secretary Megan (Jessica Pare), confess that he’s in love with her, and then present her with a diamond engagement ring that he just happened to come by a few days earlier (left to him by the late Anna Draper).

Hey, Matt Weiner, what have you done with our Don Draper?  Up until this season-ending episode, it didn’t seem possible that Draper – who we’ve gotten to know all too well as a hard-drinking hard case who conquers and discards women like he’s James Bond – would ever fall this hard for anyone and then decide to get married and return to the kind of domestic situation he fled when his marriage to Betty (January Jones) fell apart.

And speaking of Betty, the shoe now seems to be on the other foot.  As Don contemplated a future of wedded bliss with bright-eyed, French-speaking Megan, Betty’s marriage to Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) appeared headed for the rocks.

Their status was left up in the air as the season finale came to a close on Sunday, but earlier, Henry angrily confronted Betty for firing Carla, the Draper household’s long-time nanny and housemaid, and not telling him about it.  Icy Betty abruptly fired Carla after Carla permitted troubled neighbor boy Glen Bishop (Marten Holden Weiner) to go upstairs and say a quick good-bye to Sally (Kiernan Shipka) before the family moved.  Betty, who earlier banished Glen from seeing Sally, ran into him as he was leaving the house.  “Just because you’re sad doesn’t mean everybody has to be,” Glen told Betty before running off.  By the end of the episode, Betty was completely alone, hauling off the last box from the home she shared with Don, after hearing his news that he’s getting married and settling down again.

Reactions to Don’s engagement news varied according to gender.  His male partners at the ad agency congratulated him heartily, as did his chief copywriter and protégé Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss).  But privately, Peggy expressed herself more candidly when she bonded over cigarettes with Joan (Christina Hendricks) in one of the episode’s best scenes.  Peggy had almost single-handedly landed a new client, Topaz pantyhose, but her achievement was over-shadowed by Don’s engagement news, and Peggy decried the fact that one young woman’s engagement was more important than another young woman’s victory in the business world.

The fourth-season finale – titled “Tomorrowland,” after the then-futuristic Disneyland attraction – seemed to be aimed chiefly at setting things up for Season Five, particularly where Don and Betty’s respective home lives are concerned.  For Don, blasting off for his own personal Tomorrowland meant severing his budding romance with Faye Miller (Cara Buono), who didn’t take his engagement news well at all, and getting his financial affairs in order with the selling of two houses, his own former home in Ossining, N.Y., and the late Anna Draper’s house in southern California (during a trip to Disneyland with his children and Megan as temporary nanny).

With most of the episode given over to Don’s love life, the season’s most critical storyline, the future of the struggling ad agency, was left unresolved.  To find out what happens there, we’ll now have to wait all the way ’til next summer for Season Five.

What did you think of the ‘Mad Men’ season finale?  Are these 13-week seasons too short or what?  And what do you think about having to wait until next July to find out what happens next?  Wouldn’t it be great if ‘Mad Men’ could return sooner?

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Verbal rasslin’! Jesse Ventura blasts Sarah Palin

October 15, 2010

LITTLE GREEN MEN: Jesse Ventura takes a moment to contemplate the heavens during a UFO investigation this season on his TruTV series "Conspiracy Theory." Photo: Hopper Stone

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Maverick pro wrestler turned Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura didn’t mince words when I asked him about Sarah Palin in an interview this week marking the return of the Governing Body’s TruTV series “Conspiracy Theory.”

There’s no conspiracy here: Just an outspoken former pro wrestler turned Minnesota governor who’s now hosting a TV series that purports to expose secrets the government doesn’t want you to know.  You got a problem with that?

He’s Jesse Ventura, once known as “The Body” in his wrestling days and now holding forth on TruTV on his show, ‘Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura,’ which starts its second season Friday (Oct. 15) at 10 p.m./9c.

The governor is passionate about conspiracies.  Last season, The Governing Body and his team investigated the persistent rumors that the U.S. government had a hand in planning the 9/11 terror attacks; that the CIA has a “Manchurian Candidate”-like program to turn ordinary citizens into assassins; and that a remote government-run facility in the wilds of Alaska is being used to develop a secret super-weapon capable of altering the weather.

In a free-wheeling phone interview from his Minnesota home, Ventura insisted that his show is turning up evidence of government wrongdoing that you can’t refute.  We also got the 59-year-old ex-gov to talk politics in this turbulent election season, and you won’t believe what this maverick of gubernatorial politics had to say about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Do you consider ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to be an information show or an entertainment show? 

Gov. Ventura: It’s an entertainment show, but it is based upon facts.  Originally, when we had the concept for the show, we were going to show both sides of the conspiracy and allow the viewer to pick.  Well, when one side won’t cooperate in any way, shape or form, it makes it difficult to show their side.  And then I also felt, Hell, well, everybody knows the government’s side.  Why do we need to show that?  Let’s show the alternative side.  And I can unequivocally state this: In every conspiracy that I’ve done, the evidence seems overwhelmingly to support the conspiracy rather than the government when those two go head-to-head.

Before you became involved in the show, were you a person who was interested in the subjects that you’re now covering on the series? 

The only conspiracy that consumes me is the killing of [President] John Kennedy.  And the reason that happened was from wrestling, in a way.  Wrestling changed in the mid-’80s from us driving cars to flying in planes.  Well, if you’ve ever done a lot of plane-flying, you know that it’s so boring.  I mean, you’re in airports and planes everyday.  Well, I read.  I found a way to counteract that boredom is to read.  And so I got hooked on reading about the assassination of Jack Kennedy and every book I could get on it, I’d read on the plane.

‘Conspiracy Theory’ will tackle the JFK assassination later this season, but what can you possibly report that hasn’t been reported already about this story?

Here’s what’s new: On the episode this year, you will hear an audio, visual and written confession from a person who was involved [in the assassination plot] on his deathbed to his son.  Most people don’t lie when they’re dyin’!

On the premiere episode this Friday, about the mysterious government bio-research lab on Plum Island off the coasts of Long Island and Connecticut, you make quite an effort to go to the island by boat, even though the authorities frown on it.

I didn’t actually want to go to it.  I just wanted to get a closer look at it.  I didn’t want to set foot on this place.  There’s no telling what you’d catch.  . . .  Here’s the thing with Plum Island that irks me: It was created by a freakin’ Nazi!  [The show posits that the facility was founded in the early 1950s by a former Nazi bio-warfare scientist named Erich Traub who was recruited by the U.S. government after World War II.]  And nobody seems to care.  And this guy’s expertise was what?  Infecting ticks and mosquitos with biological weapons to unleash upon another country!

What is the aim of ‘Conspiracy Theory’?  OK, so you expose these conspiracies.  Then what?  Do you expect this exposure to effect change somehow?

I hope that it wakes people up to not sit and listen to mainstream media and our government – what I call soundbite news.  They don’t investigate nothing [sic].  And the point is, many of these stories have a lot more to them than what you get on soundbite news.  And I’m hoping to make people question it, to say, Are we being lied to?  And the other thing I want to show people is that you’re not allowed to ask the government a question and expect an answer.  Why?  Don’t we pay their salaries?  Don’t they work for us?

Let’s talk politics, governor, because it’s an election season, and a pretty dramatic one so far, due in part to the Tea Party movement.  Is it accurate to say that you still follow politics pretty avidly?

Oh, God, yes.  I have to doing this show.  I’ll put it to you this way about the Tea Party: Anybody that would put Sarah Palin to the top of their list will never get me.  She’s a quitter.

You’re not a fan of hers.  Why – because she quit her job?

You’re damn right.  She quit in the middle of her term.  That’s the contract you have with the voters.

Did you feel differently about her before she quit?

Well, I felt she was completely unqualified.  I had more qualifications than she did.  I had served as a mayor of a town [Brooklyn Park, Minn.] of 60,000 – hers [Wasilla, Alaska] was 10,000.  I had served as governor for two years when everybody wanted me to run for president in 2000, and I said I’m not prepared to be the president.  I haven’t even completed office as a governor yet.  Now, she never completed her office as governor.  She didn’t even get two years in hardly!  And she quit to get money.  Jesus, how do people not see that!  She saw greener pastures, said, Screw the people of Alaska, and went on to collect.

Maybe you can do an episode of ‘Conspiracy Theory’ about her.

I wouldn’t waste my time.

Would you ever consider a return to the political arena?

Well, you never say never.  I’ve learned that after 59 years.  Now, do I have any aspirations to do that at this moment?  No.  I’d rather do this TV show.  I feel I’m being as effective with this TV show as I would be if I ran for office because, remember, I’m an independent, so let me explain what it’s like for me in Washington.  I’m like the redheaded stepchild that shows up on the day they read the will.  That’s how welcome I am.  I now proudly state this: When I hit Washington now, people run faster from me than they do Michael Moore.

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‘Mad Men’ 10/10/10: Inside Don’s bold PR plan

October 11, 2010

AD AGENCY ANGST: Don Draper (Jon Hamm, left) performed a financial rescue for Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser, center), but Don's bold strategy for restoring the agency's reputation seemed to drive senior partner Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) into a sudden retirement in this past Sunday's episode of "Mad Men" on AMC. Photo: AMC

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Don Draper hatches a plan to get the ad agency back on its feet, but his partners don’t get it.  Do you?  Want to know what it all means?  Read this:

Was Sunday night’s ‘Mad Men’ episode really only an hour?  So much happened to so many of the show’s characters that it seems impossible that all that plot development could occur in 60 minutes.

But it did.  In a very complicated turn of events, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) appeared to find inspiration in a heroin-induced painting for a p.r. plan aimed at improving his dying agency’s image in the Madison Avenue advertising marketplace.  The plan involved a full-page ad, written by Don, that he placed in the New York Times without consulting any of his partners at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

The ad sought to reverse the perception that SCDP was being abandoned by its clients, especially Lucky Strike, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of the agency’s income before quitting the firm a couple of episodes ago.  In addition, the firm tried to land a new tobacco client, Philip Morris, which was planning to launch a new cigarette brand aimed at women (presumably the brand that would become Virginia Slims), but lost to another agency.

So Don’s full-page ad declared that SCDP didn’t want cigarette clients anyway, that the agency refuses to be in business with companies that manufacture and market such a dangerous product.  The ad was aimed at burnishing the agency’s reputation, but by the end of Sunday’s ‘Mad Men’ episode on AMC, it had succeeded only in alienating Don’s partners, who didn’t seem to understand his strategy.  One of them, senior partner Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), appeared to quit the agency for good.  Is the eccentric Cooper really out?  Let’s hope not – he’s one of the show’s best characters.

Meanwhile, the rest of the agency’s senior staff set about firing people in a bid to slash costs.  Then, in an effort to sustain the agency, the partners all agreed to kick in up to $100,000 apiece to ensure that the bank continues the firm’s line of credit.  This put Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) in a bind as wife Trudy (Alison Brie) forbade him from emptying their bank account to save the agency.  Incredibly, Don Draper saved the day, secretly paying Pete’s share of the money.

As if all of the drama about the future of SCDP was not enough, the show returned to Don’s former Westchester home front, to the home of ex-wife Betty (January Jones), where the creepiest kid in all of TV – lonely neighbor boy Glen Bishop (Marten Holden Weiner) – was pursuing a “friendship” with Don’s daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka).  Glen is the boy who vandalized the Draper home earlier this season, and a couple of seasons ago seemed to pursue an icky, inappropriate relationship with Betty, who seemed to come perversely close to acquiescing to his advances.  Now, Betty’s seeing the same child therapist who’s treating her daughter, even refusing to see a shrink better suited for an adult.  What can we say about Betty?  She is one damaged individual.

Perhaps the episode’s biggest surprise was the sudden reappearance of Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt), the bohemian artist from Greenwich Village with whom Don carried on an affair in Season One.  Now she’s a wraith-like shadow of her former self, an unsuccessful artist and heroin addict who allows her addict “husband” (we’re not sure if they’re really married) to pimp her out for drug money.  In fact, drug money was the whole reason she staked out Don in the first place.  He felt sorry enough for her to give her some cash and take the abstract painting off her hands that somehow inspired his p.r. scheme.  He did not feel like having sex with her, however, though she offered it freely.

Only one more episode left to go in the fourth season of ‘Mad Men,’ and once again the agency is up against the wall.  Will Don’s p.r. strategy wind up saving the agency and make him a hero to his partners?  Or will he fail?  What do you think will happen next Sunday?  How on earth will they wrap everything up in a single hour?

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Howling wolves: Max Weinberg, HBO’s ‘Chalky’

October 10, 2010

FASCINATING INTERVIEWS!

CONAN’S LONG-TIME BANDLEADER;

TOUGH-GUY ACTOR MICHAEL KENNETH WILLIAMS

Conan O’Brien’s bandleader for 17 years reveals why he isn’t following Conan to TBS:

By ADAM BUCKMAN

Why did bandleader Max Weinberg decide not to follow Conan O’Brien to TBS?

Blame it on the irresistible lure of the Garden State.  In the final analysis, this lifelong Jersey boy says he just couldn’t pull up stakes in his home state at age 59 for a new life in La La Land, though he did follow Conan there for his short-lived stint as host of ‘The Tonight Show’ on NBC – a gig which abruptly came to an end last January.

The famed drummer – a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band since 1974 (since Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run”) and a fixture in late-night TV as Conan’s musical director (and sometime comic foil) for 17 years – talked about his decision to withdraw from late-night, revealing for the first time that he underwent life-saving open-heart surgery just two weeks after the demise of Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’ last winter and how this “life-changing” experience influenced his decision to stay put on the East Coast.

The occasion for the interview was the pending premiere Thursday of a new documentary about Springsteen on HBO – ‘The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town’ (9/8c).  Weinberg, who appears often in the 90-minute film, shared his own memories of the lengthy process from which the ‘Darkness’ album was born – three years after ‘Born to Run’ turned Springsteen and his bandmates into international rock stars.

It was finally confirmed a week or so ago that you’re not joining Conan on his new TBS late-night show.  What happened there?  Will we ever see you on TV again, other than documentaries about Bruce Springsteen?

[Laughs] I’m sure you’ll see me on television again.  You won’t see me on an episodic show, that’s for sure.  I did my time.  I loved it.  It was great.  Frankly, I do prefer living in New Jersey and that was one of the problems I had.  I love playing in L.A., but my kids and my wife are back east, and we live part of the time in Italy, so it was hard to structure my life [and have a job in Los Angeles].  I can tell you – I can make a little news here, which I haven’t talked about to anybody, but on Feb. 8, I came to the end of a 26-year watchful, waiting odyssey that culminated in 12 hours of massively invasive open-heart surgery.

Was it a bypass?

[No] I had valve repair.  I found out about this 26 years ago and I knew about it and I monitored it.  At the time, there was not much they could do and it wasn’t as serious as it became.  As I got older, it got worse.  Fortunately, the protocols for dealing with it became much more advanced and I found a wonderful doctor in New York who specializes in repairing valves.  Two years ago, it became life-threatening and I had to do something about it sooner or later.  I did it two weeks after [Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’] went off the air.

I’ll tell you it was a life-changing experience emotionally and spiritually.  I owe my life to these doctors.  If you can remember back to how moved David Letterman was when he got back on the air [in February 2000] – he had quintuple bypass surgery.  [In valve-repair surgery] they stop your heart.  I was on the heart-lung bypass machine for close to seven hours.  Did it play into my decision to remain where I am?  Maybe.  I mean I had three months of very difficult recovery.  When I say it was life-changing – I’ve always been a person who smelled the roses, but everything looks a little brighter.  Everything looks a little bit more manageable.  Nothing is really that big a deal to me anymore.  I’ve never felt better.  I thought I had energy before [but] I’m a thousand percent better.  I’m playing better than I ever did.  I’m not looking backward.  I feel wonderful about where I’m at – physically, personally, professionally.

Do you have anything to add to the story of what happened to Conan?  Were you as shocked as anybody else that his ‘Tonight Show’ went south that way?

It was very dramatic.  At my age, just being in this business for as long as I’ve been, nothing really surprises me, particularly in the landscape of television.  [But] any abrupt ending to anything is shocking.  It was very weird and awkward and, of course, I felt really bad for some of the people who moved out there – over a hundred people from New York who really took the hit, people who had purchased homes.   I know of one case where the day this news broke, which I think was Jan. 5 or 6, this individual had just closed on a house and that’s a real shame.

Let’s talk about the HBO documentary about ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town.’  Why are we singling out this album for documentary treatment?  What’s so special about this one?

Of course, I have a somewhat prejudiced opinion – that all of Bruce’s albums are special.  This record, as the next project that was done after ‘Born to Run,’ to me, is extremely reflective of what was going on in music at the time in the late ’70s.  If you contrast ‘Darkness’ and its sound with the sound of ‘Born to Run,’ it’s quite different.  And I knew at the time that Bruce had begun to crystallize what it was he wanted to write about.  I always viewed my role and the rest of the musicians as: We’re colors in Bruce’s palette and I can recall on that record they wanted the drums to be very austere.  I think the best example of that is probably the title track, ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town.’  Why ‘Darkness’ now?  Well, why not?  It’s 33 years later and it’s sort of like the old Orson Welles line: ‘No wine before its time.’  There was footage that was filmed, it’s steeped in history and [so many years later], there’s a deeper resonance.

The movie traces the creation of the album and it goes into detail about the painstaking length of time that it took.  How do you remember it?  Was it satisfying, frustrating, tedious?

I remember it as a full range of emotion – definitely not tedium.  Now, I’m not the guy sitting in a room writing the songs.  Prior to actually going into the studio in, I believe, June of 1977, we rehearsed everyday at Bruce’s house – from like 2 o’clock to 7 o’clock almost everyday and we’d rehearse four or five songs and get them playable.  Then he’d come back the next day with four, five or six new songs.  That went on for two years!  Bruce had to do everything.  He had to write the songs.  He had to sing the songs.  He had to think about what he was trying to say as he was writing it. Really, to be the boss you do have to pay the cost.  And that was the cost that he did pay.

Will you watch Conan’s new show when it premieres Nov. 8 on TBS?

Absolutely.  I hope they do wonderfully well.  I’m sure they will.  I put a lot of time and effort into creating our little world over there, you know, with the band and the musical direction and what the band contributed, and I trust and I hope that the band retains the profile they had.  [Conan] is a brilliant, hard worker.  I’ve been fortunate to have people like Bruce and Conan – you don’t run into guys like that very often.

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You know him as “Omar,” the toughest thug in Baltimore on “The Wire,” and now, he’s a crime figure of a different sort in “Boardwalk Empire,” HBO’s new series about Atlantic City gangsters at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s.   Meet Michael Kenneth Williams, HBO’s Chalky White.

CHALK UP ANOTHER ONE: Michael Kenneth Williams as Chalky White in "Boardwalk Empire." Photo: Craig Blankenhorn

Chalk up another one for Michael Kenneth Williams.

He’s the Brooklyn-born actor who riveted audiences for five seasons on ‘The Wire’ in the role of Omar Little, the most-feared of all the thugs, gangsters and street toughs on that hallowed Baltimore-based HBO series.

And now, Williams is back on HBO in a series that’s shaping up to be an even bigger hit than ‘The Wire.’  It’s ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ the sprawling series from executive producers Terence Winter and Martin Scorsese about Prohibition Era gangsters in Atlantic City, N.J, at the dawn of the Roaring ’20s.   The series stars Steve Buscemi as the town’s all-powerful political boss and Williams plays dapper Chalky White, also a key local figure whose power stems from his ability to marshal the African-American vote for the city’s white political machine.

In this Sunday’s episode (9 p.m.8c on HBO), Chalky has his most important scene yet, and Williams gets to deliver an unusually long monologue that reveals a harrowing and tragic episode from Chalky’s past.

Williams, 43, talked about the scene, about Chalky, about Omar Little, and how the actor came to receive the facial scar that, for better or worse, has helped define the characters he plays.

That’s a long speech they gave you in this Sunday’s episode of ‘Boardwalk’.  How many pages of material is that?

Williams: That was actually three pages.  That was the longest speech I’ve had in my career thus far.  There was someone I’d seen do a speech [and] I always admired her performance and it was Epatha Merkerson and she did this speech in this film we did together called “Lackawanna Blues.”   And I always remember saying, God, if I had the chance to rock a speech [like that] – just the way she embodied that spirit and the character in that scene, it just blew my mind.

What was the effect you were trying to achieve in the scene, particularly as it pertains to the other participant in the scene, a Ku Klux Klan leader tied to a chair and at the mercy of your character?

It’s 1920.  It’s a whole different era.  You know, for a black man to be in a white man’s face with that type of confidence, it was a rarity.  It wasn’t like a cockiness.  It was from pain, ancestral pain, if you will.  I wanted that hardcore pain to come across in that scene.

Tell us more about the character of Chalky.  Is he a stone-cold gangster?

He’s not a stone-cold gangster.  He’s a businessman first.  But he had to learn how to have a tough skin in order to [obtain] the finer things in life.  He wanted the American dream and he had to learn how to deal in the water filled with sharks and he had to kind of become like that to achieve it.  He’s like Omar, in a sense.  He has a sense of code, he’s loyal, he’s not a backstabber – you’ll see that come out.

You pointed out how Chalky and Omar are similar.  How are they different?

You know, Omar was in it for the thrill of the hunt.  He didn’t care about the money or the fortune or the fancy house and the jewelry and the cars.  He just did it for the love of the hunt.  Chalky ain’t in it for the hunt, as long as you bring good business by his way, you ain’t got no problems outta him.  But you gonna cut him in whether you like it or not.  He’d rather just do business and keep the peace, where Omar just liked to stir the pot.

How did you come to get cast on ‘Boardwalk’?

I had worked with Martin [Scorsese] – Marty, as good friends call him [he laughs] – back in ’98 on a film called “Bring Out the Dead” with Nic Cage and Marc Anthony.  So there was a familiarity there. I’m quite sure that everybody and their father was going up for this role so [there was] a lot of competition – but I think that [producer/director] Tim Van Patten was my ace in the hole.

When all was said and done, the seemingly invincible Omar Little was fatally shot by a child while Omar was purchasing a pack of cigarettes in a convenience store.  What did you think of the ending they wrote for the character?

I mourned Omar like I lost a best friend.  He was a part of me.  It was definitely a surprise that no one expected, and it spoke to [the one weakness of] Omar, his Achilles heel.  Everybody who was trying to kill him couldn’t get to him and it took a little kid to catch him completely off guard.

How important is ‘The Wire’ to you?

‘The Wire’ changed my life, personally and professionally.  It opened me up [to a greater awareness of society’s problems].  It made me more aware of the social issues.  You know, me comin’ from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, I was exposed to just my ’hood, but there’s a “wire” in every city in this country, it opened my eyes up to that.

Would you tell us the story behind your scar?

I was 25 – my 25th birthday.  I was in Queens, N.Y.  I had been drinking.  I had that liquid courage in me and so some words got exchanged with some other guys and, you know, normally something I would have ignored, and I got jumped and one of the guys had a razor in his mouth, a straight razor in his mouth like they do in jail, and he pulled it out and he started slicin’ me.

Well, it doesn’t seem to have stopped you in the pursuit of your career.  You just did a fashion spread in the October issue of GQ (posing on the Atlantic City boardwalk in a series of designer suits  http://www.gq.com/style/suit-guide/201010/michael-kenneth-williams-three-piece-suit#slide=1)

I don’t take too much credit for anything.  I’m just pretty fortunate.  There’s tons of talent walking around here on the streets of New York.  It wasn’t like I did anything great.  I’m just truly fortunate and grateful for my opportunities.

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Posted in Adam Buckman, Boardwalk Empire, Conan O'Brien, HBO, Late-night TV, Max Weinberg, Michael Kenneth Williams, TV Howl, TV Howl by Adam Buckman, TVHowl.com | Leave a Comment »

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