Saturday, June 6, 2009

Today's Video Link

If you're readying your TiVo for the Tony Awards tomorrow, you might also want to snag Mr. Prince, a documentary/interview about the great Broadway producer-director, Harold Prince. It debuts tonight on the Ovation network and reruns many a time over the coming weeks. I've haven't seen it but the man's career has been so interesting, it's hard to imagine this show won't be.

What's that you say? You don't get the Ovation network on your set? Well, you might want to check and make sure because I didn't think I did, either. Turns out I do. I just found out about it and gave its schedule a quick once-over. Looks like a good channel to have if you love infomercials and a minimal amount of actual programming.

Here, if I've embedded it properly, is a preview of Mr. Prince...

• Posted at 3:54 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Dan Shahin has a question. Let's see if I have an answer...

I won't ask what you thought of Conan's show, but I was hoping you might address something that's been bugging me. Why do they start The Tonight Show and The Late Show at 11:35 in some markets? What does that extra five minutes do for the lead-in news shows, and don't you think that it probably hurts the shows? I mean if it's 11:30 I can start watching The Colbert Report and get sucked in quickly enough that I might never even think to turn to one of the network shows. What am I missing?

The reason local stations like it is that it allows them to stick one extra commercial break into their newscasts. That yields an awful lot of money for most of them.

This started back in the Carson era. Stations were suggesting it. Johnny fought it for a while but finally gave in. At the time, he didn't have the kind of competition that The Tonight Show has today...or that he'd have before he left that institution. But it wasn't that big a concession back then so he allowed it and every local station on every network began expecting it. The trouble, of course, was that once local stations had that extra source of revenue, it was unthinkable to suggest taking it away from them. Supposedly, Mr. Letterman when he went to CBS asked about an 11:30 start and was told it would just cause too much ill will with the affiliates.

The part I don't get here is how Saturday Night Live has been able to resist it.

• Posted at 12:58 PM · LINK