Stan Lee gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, January 4. The unveiling ceremony (which will include a speech by Todd McFarlane) commences at 11:30 AM but if I were you, I'd get there at least a half hour before that. It's free and it's in front of the Live Nation Building at 7072 Hollywood Boulevard, they say. I have a meeting that will prevent me from being there so if anyone reading this attends, send me a report I can run here.
Gee, it's been at least three hours since I plugged the fine performances of my pal Frank Ferrante, who tours this continent in the guise of Julius "Groucho" Marx, replicating the master comic actor in a one-man (plus pianist) show. He must be good because I receive a steady stream of e-mails from folks who say they went to see Frank on my recommendation and that he was everything I said he was. Like you, I love being told I'm right.
The only problem with Frank's act is that he rarely does it where I can see it...or even where some of you can see it. So we have to be ever-vigilant and keep consulting his touring schedule to see when he'll be coming our way. His 2011 calendar is now posted on his website — not that there won't be more dates added in the future but you might want to check now. If you're in or around Glen Allen, Virginia or Vincennes, Indiana or Holstein, Iowa, you're in luck. He'll be nearby in January. If you're anywhere else, go ascertain as to whether your burg is on his itinerary. And if it is and you go see him, say the Secret Words ("I read about you on Mark Evanier's blog") and Frank will pose for a photo with you after the show.
Remember that Vegas heist a few weeks ago where a motorcyclist made off with some $1.5 million in chips from the Bellagio? Many were of the $25,000 denomination and the hotel has now announced that they're discontinuing that model of chip; that holders of them have until April 22, 2011 to cash in any they have in their possession. So is that an admission that the hotel didn't have some sort of tracking info embedded in their $25,000 chips? Or is it an attempt to get the thief to think his aren't easily identifiable and he'd better hurry up and bring them in for conversion to real money? I'm going to guess the latter...and maybe there's another reason beyond all that.
A place like the Bellagio feeds off "whales" — gamblers who come to town now and then, stay there and gamble away huge sums of cash. If anyone is holding onto a batch of legit $25,000 chips, it's a whale...and the hotel is always looking for ways to lure whales back to the gaming tables. I can just imagine each one now receiving a cheery call: "I wanted to make sure that if you're holding onto any of those 25K chips, you get them redeemed by April...and yes, of course you could FedEx them to us and we'd credit your account here but wouldn't this be a great time to come visit us again? Your favorite suite is available in February..."
In other Vegas news: You may recall a few days ago, an item here about someone who robbed the Salvation Army there of over $13,000. Well, the Station Casinos chain has come forward and volunteered to replace the loss. Good for them.
Back in this deathless posting, I said, of the Late Night Wars, "It's not that easy to say how right or wrong NBC was to oust Conan O'Brien from The Tonight Show and reinstall Jay Leno. You have to theorize as to where Conan's ratings would be if he still had that gig." Jonathan Andrew Sheen takes issue with me...
I think that leaves something out. You also have to think about what would have happened with NBC, Jay, and the 10:00 ratings. The relationship with Leno was clearly important to NBC, and his 10:00 show was clearly not performing up to standards NBC could live with. ("Tanking" seems far to mild a word. What Leno was doing was to a Tank what the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier is to a Tank, IIRC.) I've always seen that particular dance as having as much to do with saving 10:00 PM as with boosting the ratings of Tonight.
And now, I'll take issue with Jonathan Andrew Sheen: I don't think that's quite it. That is, I think too much was made of how the failure of Leno's 10 PM show impacted Conan's 11:35 numbers.
Keep in mind, foist of all, that the Conan O'Brien Tonight Show went on the air June 1, 2009. NBC was probably unhappy with the ratings by the end of the second week and that wasn't because of Leno's 10 PM show. It didn't even debut until September 14. Yeah, Leno's failure at ten didn't help but it's not like Conan was doing great before Jay came on and then plunged.
The thing to remember here is that NBC has long had a severe 10 PM problem. When Jay was hosting The Tonight Show, he had lousy lead-ins. He has lousy lead-ins now. He will probably have lousy lead-ins next season, as well. It comes with the job. One of the main reasons NBC even offered Jay the 10 PM time slot is that they knew they didn't have anything else to put there that was going to knock off the competition. The idea with The Jay Leno Show was basically, "Hey, if we're going to flop at 10, let's flop with cheaper programming." In that context, Leno's show made a little more sense.
It actually performed close to expectations insofar as the network was concerned. The problem was that no one had anticipated the dire impact it would have on the newscasts that followed, thereby costing the affiliates a key portion of their incomes. A friend of mine in programming (not at NBC) said to me, "If Jay had done well and Conan had done poorly, it would have been bad but not a total catastrophe. Same if Conan had done well and Jay had bombed. It was having both fail at once that created an intolerable situation for the affiliates." They were used to losing at 10 PM. They weren't used to losing at 11:35.
My friend went on, "They didn't know how to fix 10 PM. They still don't. In some ways, it's worse than ever there. But they thought they knew how to fix 11:35...reinstate the guy who used to routinely win the time slot." Leno's not winning as clearly as he did before but he is winning...usually. The last week or two, he was #1 in total viewers and he tied Conan's numbers for the same week in 2009 with the 18-49 demographic. That ain't bad. I am less and less a fan of what Leno does on The Tonight Show but he is doing the job of pulling in the numbers...even, some nights, with lead-ins as weak as or weaker than The Jay Leno Show.
December 29, 2010
