Saturday, January 22, 2011

Mason Jarred

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, currently running on Broadway, is still in previews and will be until (they claim) March 15. How many other plays ran a long time under the mantle of "previews" before opening? Not many. This article will tell you about one that Jackie Mason attempted as both star and co-author back in 1969. It ran 97 previews before it finally opened and critics gave it the finger. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for calling this to my attention.

• Posted at 8:26 PM · LINK

The Next Day

I sense some muted glee on Conservative websites about the abrupt end of Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC. There is, of course, the hooting and huzzahs that come when any enemy suffers a loss...but there's also the underlying worry that it's unlikely Olbermann is going to disappear from this planet and not resurface somewhere, perhaps where he will do them more harm. On MSNBC, his audience had settled down to a bit more than a million viewers per night on his initial broadcasts, a little more than half that on the first of his two nightly rebroadcasts and around 300,000 on his second rebroadcast. On a good night, his combined viewership might hit around two million people...an inarguable fact from the actual ratings books but one fiercely denied anyway by his detractors. The leading anti-Olbermann website, while hammering him for any statement that could possibly be twisted into an inaccuracy, routinely has said his audience could be measured "in the tens of thousands." Newsflash to all who aspire to work in TV, even on basic cable: You do not get repeated renewals of a contract that pays you up to $7 million a year if your audience can be measured "in the tens of thousands."

Mr. Olbermann has made no statement about why it's over or where he's going. The prevailing theory out there today seems to be that he anticipated that with the pending takeover of MSNBC by Comcast, things would be changing around him and so formulated a list of demands. He went to them, the rumor is, and said in effect, "Guarantee me these or let's settle my contract now" and they opted for the latter. I don't think anyone expects that MSNBC will continue its block of left-oriented political programming for long. Even if they want to stay that course, yanking Olbermann outta there will probably cause the whole thing to crumble like a big game of Jenga. This all leads to the speculation that some other network — or maybe a group that wants to start one — will see an opportunity to launch a full-press Liberal News Network with Olbermann as its anchor.

MSNBC has sometimes been called the left-wing version of Fox News but to the extent that's true, it's been a tepid mirroring. So many key hours are given over to non-political programming, much of it with an odd fixation on prisons. Their key morning show gives us three hours of programming toplined not by unabashed partisans like on Fox but by a former Republican Congressman who hovers slightly right of center. Someone has to be mulling the notion of really launching a network that would skew as much to the left as Fox News does to the right. I dunno if the advertising revenues would be there...though Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have never had any trouble in that area. The problem is that it could take years to develop enough on-air talent and to build an identity...and if it's a brand-new network, to get enough cable companies to agree to carry it. Starting something like that takes a lotta time and a lotta money.

Air America, the failed attempt at a Liberal Talk Radio Network, never had enough of either...never had enough clearances, never had many shows that even hardcore Liberals wanted to follow. A friend of mine who auditioned unsuccessfully for a slot there said, "The trouble is that Rush Limbaugh over the years learned how to do Conservative Talk Radio, creatively and financially, and set up a model for others to follow. Liberals have no such model and no one who, politics aside, is as compelling a talker." (The flip side of that may be that Conservative TV programmers would love to cobble up a right-wing version of The Daily Show but they have no right-wing model comparable to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.)

Olbermann's settlement with MSNBC reportedly involves a waiting period that will keep him off the air for a period of time. It may, like Conan O'Brien's settlement with NBC, also prevent him from doing interviews or lashing out at his former employers. As of this moment, he has not even Twittered, "Thanks to all for the good wishes" or anything of the sort. Since we don't know how long that exile might be or what other offers he may already have been exploring, it's pointless to speculate on what will happen. Somehow though, I don't think he's going to be going back to ESPN and the wild 'n' wacky world of sports.

• Posted at 2:28 PM · LINK

Great Photos of Buster Keaton

Number sixteen in a series...

• Posted at 1:27 PM · LINK

Today's Real Estate Bargain

Author Gore Vidal is attempting to sell his Hollywood Hills home for $3.49 million dollars. That may seem like a lot of money but apparently it comes with him included.

• Posted at 11:37 AM · LINK

Code Broken

Most news stories about DC Comics dropping the Comics Code said (and I repeated) that only Archie Comics and Bongo Comics still carry that seal. Many have since informed me that Bongo Comics dropped it a year ago and that Archie Comics will be dropping it next month.

So is that it? Am I missing something or is that the end of the Comics Code?

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's one you probably won't want to watch in full — it runs 88 minutes — but you might care to sample. It's Bob Hope's 1967 Christmas Special, chronicling his tour that year to entertain our troops overseas. There was some controversy about these shows a few years after this...about whether Hope was doing them because he cared about the soldiers or because he pocketed a helluva lot of money from the TV specials that resulted. I recall the debates were generally based on the premise that it had to be either/or; that both could not possibly be true to some extent.

I always thought the joy of the soldiers was pretty much the answer. If it could make that many servicemen and women happy, who cared about Mr. Hope's motives? As it turned out, I later spoke to a couple of folks who went on one or more of these tours and they all said Hope's attitude was along the lines of "I gotta do this...those boys'll be so disappointed if I don't." The money was kind of a happy bonus. I'll also add for what it's worth that even if there was no financial reward, very few entertainers would ever have turned down the chance to headline or even be a part of something like this...

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK

January 21, 2011 • Current • January 23, 2011