Saturday, August 16, 2003

Can't Bear It...

Andy Ihnatko pulls an Emily Litella with regard to the "Fair and Balanced" weblog campaign.

• Posted at 11:47 PM · LINK

Big Fat Hairy Deal

I get about three e-mails a week asking me where one can see Garfield and Friends, a TV series I wrote for much of a decade. Some folks also want to know if and when the last 48 episodes, which have never been in syndication, will be in syndication. I don't know about that last part but the first 73 continue to be syndicated to some cities and not others, and they'll be running on Toon Disney starting some time next month. Last I heard, they had us scheduled for 3:00 in the morning which means our main competition is Jeffersons reruns, the commercial for the Scooter Shop, and an informercial for blemish creme. I think we can take them.

• Posted at 11:30 PM · LINK

Feiffer

Jules Feiffer draws up a nice little comic strip recalling the 1965 blackout in New York. Here's the link.

• Posted at 9:21 PM · LINK

Going Dotto

I vaguely recall watching (and enjoying) Dotto, a game show that was on both CBS and NBC in 1958. It is now best remembered as the first quiz program to be outed for giving the contestants the answers in advance. This triggered a cascade of similar revelations about shows like Twenty-One and The 64 Thousand Dollar Question — the infamous Game Show Scandals. Here we have a good article about Dotto and what happened there.

• Posted at 3:20 PM · LINK

Today's Beef

Here's an example of something that annoys me about reporting these days. The headline on this story and many others in this morning's newspapers is "Poll shows Bustamante leading Schwarzenegger." The story then goes on to tell us that according to a Field Poll released on Friday, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante holds a three-point lead over Arnold Schwarzenegger among those likely to vote in the Oct. 7 recall election.

Okay. But way down at the end of the article, one might notice this line...

The Field Poll, conducted by telephone from Sunday to Wednesday, interviewed 629 registered voters. It has an error rate of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

So Bustamante has a three-point lead in a poll with a five-point margin of error. Doesn't that mean that they're tied? That Schwarzenegger could even be ahead of him?

One could argue that the poll is inaccurate or that it's way too early for a poll to be meaningful. But leaving such questions aside, shouldn't its findings be reported for what they are, which is kind of a dead heat?

The other interesting thing here is that the folks running the September 17 debate have said they'll invite the top six contenders, as determined by the polls. If the numbers of this Field Poll hold up, that would mean Bustamante, Schwarzenegger, McClintock, Simon, Ueberroth and Huffington. But remember: This poll has a five-point margin of error. So Larry Flynt, Gallagher, Angelyne and all those folks who currently have 1% or less could actually be ahead of Arianna Huffington, who has 4%. Betcha Flynt's lawyers could do something with that.

• Posted at 12:05 PM · LINK