Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Set the TiVo (Quickly!)

The Animal Planet network is rerunning a couple of shows that may be of interest to cartoon fans. Animal Icons has an episode tonight (and it reruns Saturday morning) called "Animated Animals" that includes interviews with June Foray, Billy West and other great voice folks. There's also an episode about Garfield, which I haven't seen, which runs tomorrow and again on Saturday afternoon, and one on Star Wars creatures and one on Japanese movie monsters. Thanks to George Karlias for reminding me about this stuff.

• Posted at 6:48 PM · LINK

Dave Tebet

Recently, when Howard Morris passed away, I directed you to this video link to watch what some have called the funniest sketch ever done on television — The Sid Caesar take-off of This is Your Life. If you remember the sketch (or go watch it now), you'll note that before Carl Reiner "surprises" Sid in the audience, he briefly hovers over a slim gentleman seated in an aisle seat. That man was David Tebet, who was then the publicist for Mr. Caesar's program.

Not long after, Mr. Tebet was hired by NBC where he quickly became Vice-President in Charge of Talent. He was the guy in charge of luring Big Stars to the network and keeping them happy once they were there. His job involved stroking large egos, fielding complaints, distributing compliments and keeping out of the ugly side of negotiations. Rumor had it he was empowered to bestow an endless array of gifts whenever he thought appropriate, and RCA products were the most frequent present. Johnny Carson once joked that at his funeral, the graveside services would be interrupted as a truck pulled up and delivered a Color TV from Dave Tebet. As far as I know, this did not happen.

Tebet was often credited with being the guy who suggested Carson for the Tonight Show post. Others claimed it as well, but Tebet seemed to have the strongest claim. In the seventies, when Johnny negotiated for ownership of that show (for the length of his tenure) and set up his own production company, he hired Tebet away from NBC to help him run it. The network, it was said, suffered for the loss. When a star was irate about something, they no longer had Dave Tebet to go in and smooth things out. This especially applied to disputes with Mr. Carson.

Dave Tebet died on Tuesday at the age of 91. If Carson were still around, he'd probably send a Color TV to the funeral.

• Posted at 5:24 PM · LINK

Good News

Nice to hear that Bob Costas will be an occasional substitute host for Larry King. Costas is one of the best interviewers in the field and I'd love to see him graduate to a regular daily show where he could get the kind of guests that Mr. King is able to get. Maybe that's what this will lead to.

• Posted at 1:09 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Andrew Barkus writes to ask...

That is, indeed, an interesting statistic about GWB's approval rating. Could you cite a source for the stat? Friends that I have mentioned it to seem to think it is a bit far-fetched.

Sure. In fact, I said Bush's approval rating was 20 points lower than Clinton's was on the day he was impeached. It could actually be said to be more like 25. Bush's current approval rating is at 48% according to both the ABC News/Washington Post Poll and the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Some polls, as you can see on this page, have him even lower.

As you can see here, right after Bill Clinton was impeached, his approval rating was at 73% in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. (There were other polls that had it more like 68%, which is where the 20 point gap comes from.)

By the way: I don't think approval polls tell the whole story, especially at only one moment in time. There were certainly points where Clinton's ratings were lower than 68% and Bush's have been higher than they are now, and may well go up again. I don't think though that Clinton ever got below around 55% in the major polls. Here's a rundown of Clinton approval numbers.

• Posted at 12:56 PM · LINK

Game Show Watching

This morning, GSN reran another episode of the 1990 To Tell the Truth. One of the segments was about a priest who gave up the priesthood to marry a nun. One of the impostors who were impersonating the ex-priest was a young entertainment lawyer named Tom Mesereau. What is Mr. Mesereau doing these days? Well, today he's waiting for a verdict on his client, Michael Jackson.

• Posted at 8:19 AM · LINK

Go Read

Speaking of the National Cartoonists Society shindig: Scott Shaw! provides a thorough and accurate report on the proceedings.

• Posted at 7:23 AM · LINK

Foto Blogging

Yes, it's another photo from the National Cartoonists Society gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona. On the right is Lalo Alcaraz, who does a very funny newspaper strip called La Cucaracha. On the left is Sergio Aragonés, proving once again that anyone can look good if they have a tux.

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK

Tony Numbers

I mentioned in my Tony Awards review that with the exception of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, none of the musical numbers presented on the broadcast made me want to see the shows. I dunno if this is proof but it comes close: La Cage aux Folles, which won the Tony last Sunday night for Best Revival of a Musical, has just announced it will close later this month. Obviously, there was no stampede to the box office in the last few days.

(On the other hand, this article says that ticket buying for Spelling Bee, Light in the Piazza, Doubt and Spamalot were up. It's just odd to see a show win Best Revival and then close.)

So how were the ratings for the Tony telecast? It depends who you ask...

• "If last year's Tony Awards slumped among viewers 18-49, Sunday night's show positively bombed. It was down 7 percent from last year's already anemic 1.5 adults 18-49 average to a 1.4 for CBS, according to Nielsen overnights." (Media Life Magazine)
• "The bad news for last night's Tony broadcast on CBS was that ratings did not increase from 2004. The good news was that they didn't really shrink either." (BroadwayWorld.com)
• "CBS, which broadcast the three-hour show, was cheered Monday by the overnight ratings, which climbed a bit, attracting 6.62 million viewers, up from 6.46 million last year." (Chicago Tribune)

So they were down, they were unchanged, they were up. However you score it, they still got beaten by a lot of reruns of cop shows.

• Posted at 12:17 AM · LINK