Monday, June 16, 2008

Meet the Pressure

Many throughout the blogosphere are speculating on who'll be the new host of Meet the Press, replacing the late Tim Russert. My impression is that most folks are expecting it to be David Gregory and wishing it would be Chuck Todd. Jonah Goldberg endorses Todd but also has this to throw into the discussion...

All of that said, I think the show should return to a panel, at least for the time being. What's wrong with bringing three or four hard-hitting journalists to ask questions the way they used to?

Well, for one thing, a lot of politicians today think they can have very successful careers as long as they never sit down opposite three or four hard-hitting journalists. How often have you see the kind of folks who should be interrogated that way put themselves in that position? One of the things Mr. Russert brought to the job was that he had a lot of good will in Washington and newsmakers weren't that afraid of facing him. Take a look at all the leaked memos and such where folks in the Bush administration suggested Meet the Press as a great place to get their message out. Once in a while, Russert did manage to hold someone's feet to the flames but those instances were the rare exceptions...and they probably surprised the heck out of the person who got nailed.

By the time this election is over, Barack Obama will have gone on Fox News just often enough to say he wasn't afraid to do so...and John McCain probably won't venture within six blocks of Keith Olbermann. I think it would be great to have a show where a group of take-no-prisoners reporters asked the hard questions. I just don't think there'd be anyone there to answer them.

• Posted at 4:18 PM · LINK

The Tonys: The Day After

In an e-mail, Jon Delfin pointed out something I hadn't noticed about last night's Tony Awards telecast: No Obit Montage. Plenty o' theatrical figures have passed away since the last Tonys, including Kitty Carlisle Hart, Alvin Colt, Paul Scofield, Beverly Sills, Deborah Kerr, Robert Goulet, Michael Kidd, Gretchen Wyler, Alice Ghostley, Myoshi Umeki, Tom Poston and the guy in the banana suit, Charles Nelson Reilly. Still, someone made the decision not to bring the proceedings to the usual grim halt by playing sad music and rattling off the list of the departed.

Ratings-wise, it didn't help a lot. The telecast averaged a 4.9 rating and an 8 share, which was down a bit from last year. Still, that's not terrible. CBS has renewed series that get numbers like that...and which sponsors are less eager to buy time in. The audience for the Tonys may be small but it has a nice "buying" profile and demographic so it's probably not in any danger of not being on CBS for years to come.

The folks behind the Tonys are probably satisfied that the audience is sufficiently large...and comprised of folks who are likely to buy tickets to Broadway productions. That is, after all, the main goal of the broadcast — to serve as an infomercial for shows in New York. It will be interesting to see what shows announce their closings in the next few days. There are usually a few marginal ones who hang around long enough to see what, if anything, the Tony show will do for their ticket sales.

• Posted at 2:08 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Should Barack Obama pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate? I have the feeling he won't. If that were even a solid possibility, I would think we'd currently be seeing photo-ops of the twosome, trying to expunge the image of them as fierce rivals.

But would it be a good idea? I dunno. Here's an article by Ed Kilgore who says yes and another by Thomas F. Schaller who says no. Neither is wholly convincing but each makes some good points. I think if I had a say — and you just know how often they consult comedy writers in this kind of decision — I'd suggest the "unity" factor is not going be as necessary as it might now seem and Obama can pick someone who better stands for change and a reversal of policy for Iraq.

• Posted at 2:29 AM · LINK

How to Accept an Award

Here, for the record, is the speech Mark Rylance gave at the Tony Awards when he won for his performance in the current revival of Boeing-Boeing. This is from the writings of a poet named Lewis Jenkins...

When you are in town, wearing some kind of uniform is helpful, policeman, priest, etc. Driving a tank is very impressive or a car with official lettering on the side. If that isn't to your taste, you could join the revolution, wear an armband, carry a homemade flag tied to a broom handle, or a placard bearing an incendiary slogan. At the very least, you should wear a suit and carry a briefcase and a cell phone, or wear a team jacket and a baseball cap and carry a cell phone. If you go into the woods, the back country, someplace past all human habitation, it is a good idea to wear orange and carry a gun, or depending on the season, carry a fishing pole, or a camera with a big lens. Otherwise, it might appear that you have no idea what you are doing, that you are merely wandering the earth, no particular reason for being here, no particular place to go.

That was the man's acceptance speech. No mention of the play or his co-stars or director or his family or his agent or anything. He just performed that. And the audience loved it.

• Posted at 1:56 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

What was this preoccupation some producers had with putting Charles Nelson Reilly in ghastly costumes? You all remember him as Hoodoo on Lidsville and as Uncle Croc on Uncle Croc's Block. Here he is selling Bic Banana pens. Let's all try and imagine the meeting in which one advertising guy said to another, "Hey, you know what would sell these crayon things? Charles Nelson Reilly in a banana suit!"

Then the other guy says, "Great! And let's write a song for him to sing and make sure we make the word 'gay' very prominent in it, even if it doesn't exactly rhyme!"

And then the first guy yells, "Brilliant," and they make this commercial...

• Posted at 12:44 AM · LINK