I'm producing a reality show that I hope will be picked up as a midseason replacement. Because the television networks have been cutting costs, I'm putting my detective show on hold.
All the networks have passed on my crime show about an alcoholic bipolar homicide detective and his sexy young female partner who work the streets of South Central L.A. looking for murdered tourists. Even filming in Vancouver would be too expensive, so although CBS likes the pilot script, it's just too expensive to film, especially if I get my first choice, Christian Slater, who commands a high salary. ABC was initially interested. They wanted Pauly Shore for the lead, but he wanted too much money and his own trailer, so they passed.
It's all about the budget, so that's why I'm switching to reality shows. I'm pitching my new show, called "Dumb Factor," a spinoff of "Fear Factor," which ran on NBC from 2001-2006 and is returning tonight on the same network, which promises even scarier and more daredevil stunts. I've been trying to get the networks interested in my show for the last few years, but for some reason, they weren't interested. Now that "Fear Factor" is returning, it is the perfect opportunity for me to promote my show.
For $5,000, contestants will bungee-jump off a freeway overpass with an extremely frayed rope. The cars will run over the contestants until someone is stupid enough to get out and help, also getting splattered onto the pavement in slow-motion. This scenario will keep repeating until the commercial break. All that we'll see after the commercial will be a bunch of dead bodies and a massive pile-up of Camrys. The winners will now compete for the second stunt, jumping out of an airplane with a placebo parachute, after which an Internet poll will be taken for the viewer to guess the winner.
For those wanting to be a contestant, sign-ups will be on our website at www.stupididiot.com . This show will be perfect for NBC's schedule, because they're in the process of canceling all scripted shows.
Showing posts with label NBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NBC. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Forrest Gump and Donald Trump: The Oliver Stoning of America
It's been a roller coaster month for important news stories, and the media has been there to cover it: Osama bin Laden is killed; the flooding Mississippi River submerges Memphis; gas prices climb to all-time highs, while oil companies continue to reel in record profits; politicians continue to fight over how to reduce the federal budget deficit; mostly peaceful revolutions in the Middle East turn violent, as an insurgency against Moammar Gadhafi's reign in Libya fails to prompt the defiant leader to resign, even with the help of NATO air strikes; the Israeli Prime Minister rejects Obama's call to return to Israel's 1967 borders; Donald Trump drops out of the 2012 GOP presidential race... Wait a minute. Why is that news?
The fact that Trump's announcement was news at all puts a spotlight on the media's role in blurring the line between news and entertainment. While CNN was sending 400 reporters to cover the royal wedding, after only sending 40 reporters to cover the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the real news seemed to be that Charlie Sheen was no longer in the news.
If this is getting confusing, let me put this all in perspective, so I can get back to my usual activities of watching funny videos of cats on the Internet.
Back in November of 2010, Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America that a presidential run “could be fun”... And fun it has been – if you're a fan of idiotic gibberish. It was obvious from the start that this was not a real news story. Trump was “running” for president to boost the ratings for Celebrity Apprentice, the popular reality show in which he got to show his presidential credentials by moderating fights between Meat Loaf and Gary Busey, and other C-list actors, has-beens and musicians.
When it looked like the media was losing interest in Trump, and comedians had come to the end of funny jokes about his hair, Trump came up with the perfect campaign strategy. In early April, he demanded to see President Obama's long-form birth certificate, saying he doubted that Obama was born in the United States. He claimed that he had sent investigators to Hawaii. “I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they're finding”, Trump said in an interview on NBC's Today Show. Calling it potentially one of the biggest scams in the history of politics, Trump jumped to second in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of potential Republican nominees, tying Mike Huckabee with 17% behind Mitt Romney's 27%, showing that either the American public is incredibly stupid, or these polls don't accurately reflect the views of the voting public. Or maybe the pollsters wait until happy hour to ask their questions.
As Trump continued his attack on Obama's citizenship and lack of foreign policy credentials, he continued to rise in the polls, hovering near the top. He came up with catchy sound bites such as: “I love this country, but this country is going to hell... The world laughs at us. They won't be laughing if I'm elected president.” His ego is so big, and his narcissistic personality made it impossible for Trump to realize that the world was in fact already laughing at him.
Obama strategically produced his long-form birth certificate, and with perfect political timing orchestrated the killing of Osama bin Laden, announcing the news during a prime time showing of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, causing the show to be interrupted. But the night before he got bin Laden, the President appeared at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, an annual event that gives the president a chance to do some stand-up comedy. George W. Bush wasn't so funny when he was president, but Obama has shown that he can hold his own with professional comedians, including Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers this year. The President's monologue poked fun at various politicians and the media, but he reserved his best jokes for Trump. For example, after a week when Trump incredibly took credit for the fact that Obama turned over his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate, Obama joked that Trump could now focus on the serious issues, from whether the moon landing actually happened to “where are Biggie and Tupac?” It was funnier in person, from Obama's deadpan delivery, to Trump's stone-faced look, caught by the television cameras as the audience laughed hysterically.
As uncomfortable as Trump looked to be during Obama's zingers, he seemed even less amused as Meyers picked up where Obama left off. “Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican,” said Meyers. “I just assumed he was running as a joke.” Close-up of Trump as he looked as though he was about to throw his chair at the stage. Again, it was funnier in person, and as is usually the case in comedy, the truth is sometimes the funniest. The fact is, and pretty much the whole audience that night as well as the television audience knew, he was running as a joke. Trump obviously knew.
The media also knew that Trump was running as a joke. So why did they continue shoving microphones and television cameras at him every time he uttered another stupid comment? Let's see, after he took credit for getting to the bottom of Obama's birth certificate, saying he was “honored” to give the American people an answer to this important question, Trump decided to continue to find new ways to sound like a racist. The man who said he has a good relationship with “the blacks” went on to question Obama's college degree. You would have thought the birth certificate fiasco would have knocked him out of his fake campaign right then and there. But no, the nation's most famous snake-oil salesman was becoming the leader not of the GOP but of the Society of Village Idiots by demanding that Obama release his records from Occidental College.
While Obama was secretly plotting to take down Osama bin Laden, Trump was plotting his next brilliant political maneuver, designed to convince us that he was a serious candidate. His new campaign promise was to get to the bottom of the question of how Obama made it into the Ivy League, transferring from Occidental to Columbia, and then going to Harvard. How could a black man of Obama's inferior intellect, Trump wondered, get into the Ivy League. Drum roll please: affirmative action.
So the media hung on Trump's every word, no matter how stupid and implausible. The reason, as is has been the growing trend in this so-called journalism, is because of ratings. Entertainment sells - the wackier the better. And it didn't just start with Charlie Sheen, who, like Trump, turned the media into his own private publicity machine.
It wasn't always this way. Long before Sheen had a public mental breakdown for profit, and Trump waged a fake presidential campaign to boost ratings for his reality show, there were real newscasters delivering real news. Entertainment was presented as entertainment.
Years ago, the adults used to watch Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News while the kids played with toy guns, Lincoln Logs, Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes. It was a simpler time. Nobody knew Rock Hudson was gay or what drugs Doris Day was hooked on - and nobody cared. In fact, they preferred it that way. The American Dream was 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence, not 10,000 followers on Twitter and a Facebook page showing pictures of your chance encounter with Erik Estrada.
Now we have 24-hour news coverage with the help of the Internet and mobile devices that keep us connected. We have instant access into the lives of Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, and other celebrities who have gone on to make us forget about Robert Downey, Jr.'s drug-induced meltdown or Winona Ryder's shoplifting spree.
Before Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central became the primary source of news for young people, news and entertainment were separate. Things started changing in 1978, when ABC started a news program called 20/20. The show was a ratings disaster, until they realized that instead of interviewing world leaders and other news makers and important people, the only people viewers were interested in were movie stars and rock stars. That was inevitable. Television is an entertainment medium, and has always had to fight the urge to not entertain us. That leaves newspapers, and with modern technology, who needs them?
So we jump a few years forward to Dateline NBC, which started out as a copy of 20/20 in 1992. The show evolved into an investigative series looking into things like food safety, but quickly found ratings gold in 2004 when Chris Hansen began catching pedophiles on To Catch A Predator.
Not only did Hansen's investigative reporting examine a serious news issue, but by using Dateline's signature hidden-camera techniques, Hansen was able to insert himself into the story, becoming sort of a modern day G-Man of sex crimes. Audiences were mesmerized as our superhero Hansen saved us from the most heinous criminals around. It was better than Law & Order: SVU.
For a while, NBC had a hit on its hands, even beating one of the most popular comedies, The Office, in the ratings. Then, in 2006, one of the predators that Hansen caught shot himself in the head while the NBC News cameras waited outside his home. Some people started to wonder whether this whole Peeping Tom era of hidden cameras had gone overboard. These were definitely sick people, and were the worst type of criminals out there, but their crimes were hypothetical, and they wouldn't even have been there if NBC hadn't lured them there.
This game of entrapment lasted a few more years until NBC pulled the plug in 2008, but not because the pedophile that Hansen brought into our living rooms to entertain us shot his brains out. The show was canceled because it had become so popular that was impossible to attract potential predators to the location where a particular show was being filmed. It turned out that the show was a favorite among pedophiles. But the show never seems to die. Repeats continue to air occasionally on MSNBC, and a new spin-off called Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes continues with previously unseen footage containing additional commentary by Hansen.
The progression from shows 20/20 to Dateline's To Catch A Predator evolved into Comedy Central's Daily Show making fun of the media. But somewhere in between, Hollywood caught on to the popularity of news as entertainment, as Oliver Stone made us believe things were true even though they weren't, for the sake of making real events more entertaining. He wrote and directed movies like JFK and Nixon, and when things started to get slow in the screenplay, Stone freely made things up.
Another form of entertainment that became popular in film started around the time Forrest Gump met John F. Kennedy. At that time, television commercials starred dead people. Along with the Oliver Stoning of America, the line between reality and news and entertainment was becoming blurred beyond recognition. And now, with every young person schooled in Photoshop, seeing is no longer believing.
True events and real people like Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen, however, continue to capture the really big television ratings and Internet chatter. Leading up to the Internet takeover was the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case, which was known as "the trial of the century", but was really the biggest takeover of the airwaves ever, at least up to that point. The Los Angeles Times covered the O.J. case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders, and the major television networks gave more air time to the trial than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing case combined.
The O.J. Simpson case was immediately followed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which led to the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and high ratings for news channels, with its perfect mix of sex, politics, and lying and cheating.
The high point of media madness had not yet occured, however, until June 25, 2009. That was the day that Michael Jackson died, and anyone doubting the sanity of the news media only had to watch CNN's Anderson Cooper go on the air with a feature about Jackson's former pet "Bubbles the Chimp". My faith in the news business, and Anderson Cooper, went down a notch.
But Cooper is not normally known for reporting on celebrity pets. In addition to his long-running show Anderson Cooper 360, his most recent gig is CBS' 60 Minutes, where he interviewed Eminem and Lady Gaga in addition to Afgan cops. Cooper has become the model for the modern day reporter who is also a celebrity who interviews other celebrities who think they are reporters. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, and George Clooney, among many others, have made an art form out of the celebrity as serious newsmaker. But in reality, they are actually using their celebrity to do good - unlike egomaniacs like Donald Trump, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's richer than he really is - or Charlie Sheen, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's saner than he really is.
Although Anderson Cooper has been sidetracked by celebrities, both human and chimp, he has redeemed himself with some solid reporting on at his desks at CNN and CBS. However, the lunatics have seemingly taken over the asylum elsewhere. Fox News leads the way with nut jobs like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity anchoring, along with a list of correspondents that belong in a Will Farrell comedy, not on a major cable news network. The network trademarked the slogan "Fair and Balanced", just in case anybody questioned them. Fox News spends its time defending people like Donald Trump, and was a big supporter of Trump during his very important search for President Obama's birth certificate.
When President Obama took credit for giving the order to raid Osama bin Laden's compound, Fox News gave special thanks to members of the military and, of course, the true mastermind, George W. Bush. At the time, Donald Trump was still a candidate, and just as Fox News was trying to figure out a way to give Trump credit for taking out bin Laden, Trump dropped out of the race.
On May 16th, NBC announced the shows it was picking up for next season. On that list was Celebrity Apprentice. That was, not coincidentally, the day that Donald Trump dropped out of a presidential race that he was never actually in. It was a bad day for comedians. Jon Stewart and his joke writers were saddened by Trump's departure, so Stewart begged him to come back.
The media is no longer repeating every goofy thing Donald Trump says, and the in-depth coverage of how he gets his hair to look that way - which was first reported by Time Magazine and picked up by the major news media – has come to an end.
When we got Osama bin Laden, it looked like the news was actually news. Not so. The White House lost control of the story and the media began to focus on what was actually a small news item in the scheme of things: the collection of porn found on bin Laden's computer hard drives. Finally, when we got back on track with the news of what else was found on the hard drives, the American public got bored.
We have moved on to more important news. In a bombshell announcement, Arnold Schwarzenneger admitted that he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff ten years ago. That was a few days after he separated from his wife. New revelations come out daily. Today's headline: "Mother of Schwarzenneger's Love Child Revealed!"
Other news that competes with the Schwarzenneger revelation: Lindsay Lohan sentenced to "shoplifting alternative school"; a man eats his 25,000th Big Mac; the Royal Couple go on a $720,000 honeymoon; Gwyneth Paltrow furthers her musical career by turning to rap; the Apocalypse is scheduled for May 21st; the Apocalypse is rescheduled until next year; the top two contestants are revealed on American Idol; Stephen Hawking announces that there's no heaven... Wait a minute - that sounds like news to me.
I must admit, sometimes I fall for all this entertainment masquerading as news. But I'm not letting the media get away with their charade this time. I want to know what's really happening - what's really affecting our lives. The only news that matters right now is Oprah's farewell spectacular, airing on May 23rd and 24th.
When that's over, I'll go back to watching funny videos of cats on the Internet. That is, until the next celebrity goes off the deep end, or the world's most wanted terrorist leaves behind a collection of porn. After all, Oprah just doesn't have the same entertainment value as Charlie Sheen, Osama bin Laden, or Donald Trump.
The fact that Trump's announcement was news at all puts a spotlight on the media's role in blurring the line between news and entertainment. While CNN was sending 400 reporters to cover the royal wedding, after only sending 40 reporters to cover the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the real news seemed to be that Charlie Sheen was no longer in the news.
If this is getting confusing, let me put this all in perspective, so I can get back to my usual activities of watching funny videos of cats on the Internet.
Back in November of 2010, Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America that a presidential run “could be fun”... And fun it has been – if you're a fan of idiotic gibberish. It was obvious from the start that this was not a real news story. Trump was “running” for president to boost the ratings for Celebrity Apprentice, the popular reality show in which he got to show his presidential credentials by moderating fights between Meat Loaf and Gary Busey, and other C-list actors, has-beens and musicians.
When it looked like the media was losing interest in Trump, and comedians had come to the end of funny jokes about his hair, Trump came up with the perfect campaign strategy. In early April, he demanded to see President Obama's long-form birth certificate, saying he doubted that Obama was born in the United States. He claimed that he had sent investigators to Hawaii. “I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they're finding”, Trump said in an interview on NBC's Today Show. Calling it potentially one of the biggest scams in the history of politics, Trump jumped to second in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of potential Republican nominees, tying Mike Huckabee with 17% behind Mitt Romney's 27%, showing that either the American public is incredibly stupid, or these polls don't accurately reflect the views of the voting public. Or maybe the pollsters wait until happy hour to ask their questions.
As Trump continued his attack on Obama's citizenship and lack of foreign policy credentials, he continued to rise in the polls, hovering near the top. He came up with catchy sound bites such as: “I love this country, but this country is going to hell... The world laughs at us. They won't be laughing if I'm elected president.” His ego is so big, and his narcissistic personality made it impossible for Trump to realize that the world was in fact already laughing at him.
Obama strategically produced his long-form birth certificate, and with perfect political timing orchestrated the killing of Osama bin Laden, announcing the news during a prime time showing of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, causing the show to be interrupted. But the night before he got bin Laden, the President appeared at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, an annual event that gives the president a chance to do some stand-up comedy. George W. Bush wasn't so funny when he was president, but Obama has shown that he can hold his own with professional comedians, including Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers this year. The President's monologue poked fun at various politicians and the media, but he reserved his best jokes for Trump. For example, after a week when Trump incredibly took credit for the fact that Obama turned over his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate, Obama joked that Trump could now focus on the serious issues, from whether the moon landing actually happened to “where are Biggie and Tupac?” It was funnier in person, from Obama's deadpan delivery, to Trump's stone-faced look, caught by the television cameras as the audience laughed hysterically.
As uncomfortable as Trump looked to be during Obama's zingers, he seemed even less amused as Meyers picked up where Obama left off. “Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican,” said Meyers. “I just assumed he was running as a joke.” Close-up of Trump as he looked as though he was about to throw his chair at the stage. Again, it was funnier in person, and as is usually the case in comedy, the truth is sometimes the funniest. The fact is, and pretty much the whole audience that night as well as the television audience knew, he was running as a joke. Trump obviously knew.
The media also knew that Trump was running as a joke. So why did they continue shoving microphones and television cameras at him every time he uttered another stupid comment? Let's see, after he took credit for getting to the bottom of Obama's birth certificate, saying he was “honored” to give the American people an answer to this important question, Trump decided to continue to find new ways to sound like a racist. The man who said he has a good relationship with “the blacks” went on to question Obama's college degree. You would have thought the birth certificate fiasco would have knocked him out of his fake campaign right then and there. But no, the nation's most famous snake-oil salesman was becoming the leader not of the GOP but of the Society of Village Idiots by demanding that Obama release his records from Occidental College.
While Obama was secretly plotting to take down Osama bin Laden, Trump was plotting his next brilliant political maneuver, designed to convince us that he was a serious candidate. His new campaign promise was to get to the bottom of the question of how Obama made it into the Ivy League, transferring from Occidental to Columbia, and then going to Harvard. How could a black man of Obama's inferior intellect, Trump wondered, get into the Ivy League. Drum roll please: affirmative action.
So the media hung on Trump's every word, no matter how stupid and implausible. The reason, as is has been the growing trend in this so-called journalism, is because of ratings. Entertainment sells - the wackier the better. And it didn't just start with Charlie Sheen, who, like Trump, turned the media into his own private publicity machine.
It wasn't always this way. Long before Sheen had a public mental breakdown for profit, and Trump waged a fake presidential campaign to boost ratings for his reality show, there were real newscasters delivering real news. Entertainment was presented as entertainment.
Years ago, the adults used to watch Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News while the kids played with toy guns, Lincoln Logs, Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes. It was a simpler time. Nobody knew Rock Hudson was gay or what drugs Doris Day was hooked on - and nobody cared. In fact, they preferred it that way. The American Dream was 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence, not 10,000 followers on Twitter and a Facebook page showing pictures of your chance encounter with Erik Estrada.
Now we have 24-hour news coverage with the help of the Internet and mobile devices that keep us connected. We have instant access into the lives of Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, and other celebrities who have gone on to make us forget about Robert Downey, Jr.'s drug-induced meltdown or Winona Ryder's shoplifting spree.
Before Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central became the primary source of news for young people, news and entertainment were separate. Things started changing in 1978, when ABC started a news program called 20/20. The show was a ratings disaster, until they realized that instead of interviewing world leaders and other news makers and important people, the only people viewers were interested in were movie stars and rock stars. That was inevitable. Television is an entertainment medium, and has always had to fight the urge to not entertain us. That leaves newspapers, and with modern technology, who needs them?
So we jump a few years forward to Dateline NBC, which started out as a copy of 20/20 in 1992. The show evolved into an investigative series looking into things like food safety, but quickly found ratings gold in 2004 when Chris Hansen began catching pedophiles on To Catch A Predator.
Not only did Hansen's investigative reporting examine a serious news issue, but by using Dateline's signature hidden-camera techniques, Hansen was able to insert himself into the story, becoming sort of a modern day G-Man of sex crimes. Audiences were mesmerized as our superhero Hansen saved us from the most heinous criminals around. It was better than Law & Order: SVU.
For a while, NBC had a hit on its hands, even beating one of the most popular comedies, The Office, in the ratings. Then, in 2006, one of the predators that Hansen caught shot himself in the head while the NBC News cameras waited outside his home. Some people started to wonder whether this whole Peeping Tom era of hidden cameras had gone overboard. These were definitely sick people, and were the worst type of criminals out there, but their crimes were hypothetical, and they wouldn't even have been there if NBC hadn't lured them there.
This game of entrapment lasted a few more years until NBC pulled the plug in 2008, but not because the pedophile that Hansen brought into our living rooms to entertain us shot his brains out. The show was canceled because it had become so popular that was impossible to attract potential predators to the location where a particular show was being filmed. It turned out that the show was a favorite among pedophiles. But the show never seems to die. Repeats continue to air occasionally on MSNBC, and a new spin-off called Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes continues with previously unseen footage containing additional commentary by Hansen.
The progression from shows 20/20 to Dateline's To Catch A Predator evolved into Comedy Central's Daily Show making fun of the media. But somewhere in between, Hollywood caught on to the popularity of news as entertainment, as Oliver Stone made us believe things were true even though they weren't, for the sake of making real events more entertaining. He wrote and directed movies like JFK and Nixon, and when things started to get slow in the screenplay, Stone freely made things up.
Another form of entertainment that became popular in film started around the time Forrest Gump met John F. Kennedy. At that time, television commercials starred dead people. Along with the Oliver Stoning of America, the line between reality and news and entertainment was becoming blurred beyond recognition. And now, with every young person schooled in Photoshop, seeing is no longer believing.
True events and real people like Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen, however, continue to capture the really big television ratings and Internet chatter. Leading up to the Internet takeover was the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case, which was known as "the trial of the century", but was really the biggest takeover of the airwaves ever, at least up to that point. The Los Angeles Times covered the O.J. case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders, and the major television networks gave more air time to the trial than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing case combined.
The O.J. Simpson case was immediately followed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which led to the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and high ratings for news channels, with its perfect mix of sex, politics, and lying and cheating.
The high point of media madness had not yet occured, however, until June 25, 2009. That was the day that Michael Jackson died, and anyone doubting the sanity of the news media only had to watch CNN's Anderson Cooper go on the air with a feature about Jackson's former pet "Bubbles the Chimp". My faith in the news business, and Anderson Cooper, went down a notch.
But Cooper is not normally known for reporting on celebrity pets. In addition to his long-running show Anderson Cooper 360, his most recent gig is CBS' 60 Minutes, where he interviewed Eminem and Lady Gaga in addition to Afgan cops. Cooper has become the model for the modern day reporter who is also a celebrity who interviews other celebrities who think they are reporters. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, and George Clooney, among many others, have made an art form out of the celebrity as serious newsmaker. But in reality, they are actually using their celebrity to do good - unlike egomaniacs like Donald Trump, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's richer than he really is - or Charlie Sheen, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's saner than he really is.
Although Anderson Cooper has been sidetracked by celebrities, both human and chimp, he has redeemed himself with some solid reporting on at his desks at CNN and CBS. However, the lunatics have seemingly taken over the asylum elsewhere. Fox News leads the way with nut jobs like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity anchoring, along with a list of correspondents that belong in a Will Farrell comedy, not on a major cable news network. The network trademarked the slogan "Fair and Balanced", just in case anybody questioned them. Fox News spends its time defending people like Donald Trump, and was a big supporter of Trump during his very important search for President Obama's birth certificate.
When President Obama took credit for giving the order to raid Osama bin Laden's compound, Fox News gave special thanks to members of the military and, of course, the true mastermind, George W. Bush. At the time, Donald Trump was still a candidate, and just as Fox News was trying to figure out a way to give Trump credit for taking out bin Laden, Trump dropped out of the race.
On May 16th, NBC announced the shows it was picking up for next season. On that list was Celebrity Apprentice. That was, not coincidentally, the day that Donald Trump dropped out of a presidential race that he was never actually in. It was a bad day for comedians. Jon Stewart and his joke writers were saddened by Trump's departure, so Stewart begged him to come back.
The media is no longer repeating every goofy thing Donald Trump says, and the in-depth coverage of how he gets his hair to look that way - which was first reported by Time Magazine and picked up by the major news media – has come to an end.
When we got Osama bin Laden, it looked like the news was actually news. Not so. The White House lost control of the story and the media began to focus on what was actually a small news item in the scheme of things: the collection of porn found on bin Laden's computer hard drives. Finally, when we got back on track with the news of what else was found on the hard drives, the American public got bored.
We have moved on to more important news. In a bombshell announcement, Arnold Schwarzenneger admitted that he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff ten years ago. That was a few days after he separated from his wife. New revelations come out daily. Today's headline: "Mother of Schwarzenneger's Love Child Revealed!"
Other news that competes with the Schwarzenneger revelation: Lindsay Lohan sentenced to "shoplifting alternative school"; a man eats his 25,000th Big Mac; the Royal Couple go on a $720,000 honeymoon; Gwyneth Paltrow furthers her musical career by turning to rap; the Apocalypse is scheduled for May 21st; the Apocalypse is rescheduled until next year; the top two contestants are revealed on American Idol; Stephen Hawking announces that there's no heaven... Wait a minute - that sounds like news to me.
I must admit, sometimes I fall for all this entertainment masquerading as news. But I'm not letting the media get away with their charade this time. I want to know what's really happening - what's really affecting our lives. The only news that matters right now is Oprah's farewell spectacular, airing on May 23rd and 24th.
When that's over, I'll go back to watching funny videos of cats on the Internet. That is, until the next celebrity goes off the deep end, or the world's most wanted terrorist leaves behind a collection of porn. After all, Oprah just doesn't have the same entertainment value as Charlie Sheen, Osama bin Laden, or Donald Trump.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Donald Trump: His candidacy is as fake as his hairline
The world's most famous comb-over resides on his head. What's inside it is another matter. I'm talking about Donald Trump. He wants you to think he's running for president. He's not.
The reality show candidate has taken over the media lately with his non-stop ranting about President Obama's birth certificate, or rather his lack of one. To downplay any question as to whether he is playing a very dangerous race card, Trump claims “I have a great relationship with the blacks”. In order to further his great relationship with “the blacks”, Trump goes on to say that Obama is the worst president ever, even worse than Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, all of whom Trump previously gave the honor.
Trump's surge to the top of several recent polls has given members of the media a chance to hyperventilate, and given Trump's ego a chance to inflate even more than it's usual grandiose level. And comedians everywhere have been given new material, the kind that can only be called stranger than fiction, and of course funnier, especially to Democrats.
Democrats have gotten a good laugh at this Republican sideshow, while Trump's popularity in the polls has left his rivals dazed and confused. None of Trump's potential opponents have been particularly specific or consistent on policy issues, and Trump has been especially bizarre and prone to hyperbole when he isn't babbling about Obama's birth certificate.
An example of Trump's foreign policy strategy: re-invade the Middle East and take control of Iraq's oil fields. In a recent interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump rationalizes that because we spent $1.5 trillion in Iraq ousting Saddam Hussein, we've earned the right to Iraq's reserves of crude oil.
“So we steal an oil field?” asked Stephanopoulos, trying to keep a straight face.
Trump responded: “Excuse me. You're not stealing. Excuse me. You're not stealing anything. You're taking – we're reimbursing ourselves – at least, at a minimum, and I say more. We're taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.”
This type of wacky psychobabble is calculated to grab headlines. Unlike Charlie Sheen, who also recently brought the media to a frenzy, Trump is not delusional and is not showing signs of mental illness. He has always talked like this, being prone to outlandish statements and embellishments of the facts. He doesn't really seem like he cares about facts or substance. He's obviously more interested in the delivery. He craves the spotlight.
If you agree with what Trump is saying, well, you're the one who's delusional, not him. He's just another carnival huckster looking for publicity. The facts are irrelevant. The joke's on you.
Trump is content taking his clown act to the airwaves, urging his paranoid followers to take up his crusade demanding that Obama prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not a Kenyan-born Muslim out to destroy America.
It's fun to watch Trump MC a fight between Gary Busey and Meat Loaf, but do you really want the reality show host setting Middle East policy?
There will always be a fringe group of right wing crazies who think Trump is up for the job, but when reality sets in, the Republican party will settle into politics as usual, which means there will emerge a candidate with a normal hair line and some semblance of rational thinking.
Like most of the Republican field, Trump has not yet confirmed that he is a candidate. But even if he were to decide to run, there is no way he would win the nomination. A well-known publicity addict, when Trump sees a microphone and camera, he can't contain his bluster. But it's all a publicity stunt, and nothing more, which explains why Trump is announcing his decision about whether he will seek the nomination on the season finale of “The Apprentice”.
It's all about the ratings, not only for Trump and his NBC show, but for the media, who are following his every word as if he's the second coming of Charlie Sheen, which he is. But as for Trump, it's all a stunt used to increase his show's ratings, sell his bottled water and signature mail-order steak, bring people to his casinos and golf courses, and feed his giant ego.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But if Trump becomes president, I'm moving to Kenya.
The reality show candidate has taken over the media lately with his non-stop ranting about President Obama's birth certificate, or rather his lack of one. To downplay any question as to whether he is playing a very dangerous race card, Trump claims “I have a great relationship with the blacks”. In order to further his great relationship with “the blacks”, Trump goes on to say that Obama is the worst president ever, even worse than Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, all of whom Trump previously gave the honor.
Trump's surge to the top of several recent polls has given members of the media a chance to hyperventilate, and given Trump's ego a chance to inflate even more than it's usual grandiose level. And comedians everywhere have been given new material, the kind that can only be called stranger than fiction, and of course funnier, especially to Democrats.
Democrats have gotten a good laugh at this Republican sideshow, while Trump's popularity in the polls has left his rivals dazed and confused. None of Trump's potential opponents have been particularly specific or consistent on policy issues, and Trump has been especially bizarre and prone to hyperbole when he isn't babbling about Obama's birth certificate.
An example of Trump's foreign policy strategy: re-invade the Middle East and take control of Iraq's oil fields. In a recent interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump rationalizes that because we spent $1.5 trillion in Iraq ousting Saddam Hussein, we've earned the right to Iraq's reserves of crude oil.
“So we steal an oil field?” asked Stephanopoulos, trying to keep a straight face.
Trump responded: “Excuse me. You're not stealing. Excuse me. You're not stealing anything. You're taking – we're reimbursing ourselves – at least, at a minimum, and I say more. We're taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.”
This type of wacky psychobabble is calculated to grab headlines. Unlike Charlie Sheen, who also recently brought the media to a frenzy, Trump is not delusional and is not showing signs of mental illness. He has always talked like this, being prone to outlandish statements and embellishments of the facts. He doesn't really seem like he cares about facts or substance. He's obviously more interested in the delivery. He craves the spotlight.
If you agree with what Trump is saying, well, you're the one who's delusional, not him. He's just another carnival huckster looking for publicity. The facts are irrelevant. The joke's on you.
Trump is content taking his clown act to the airwaves, urging his paranoid followers to take up his crusade demanding that Obama prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not a Kenyan-born Muslim out to destroy America.
It's fun to watch Trump MC a fight between Gary Busey and Meat Loaf, but do you really want the reality show host setting Middle East policy?
There will always be a fringe group of right wing crazies who think Trump is up for the job, but when reality sets in, the Republican party will settle into politics as usual, which means there will emerge a candidate with a normal hair line and some semblance of rational thinking.
Like most of the Republican field, Trump has not yet confirmed that he is a candidate. But even if he were to decide to run, there is no way he would win the nomination. A well-known publicity addict, when Trump sees a microphone and camera, he can't contain his bluster. But it's all a publicity stunt, and nothing more, which explains why Trump is announcing his decision about whether he will seek the nomination on the season finale of “The Apprentice”.
It's all about the ratings, not only for Trump and his NBC show, but for the media, who are following his every word as if he's the second coming of Charlie Sheen, which he is. But as for Trump, it's all a stunt used to increase his show's ratings, sell his bottled water and signature mail-order steak, bring people to his casinos and golf courses, and feed his giant ego.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But if Trump becomes president, I'm moving to Kenya.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
How I'm spending my winter vacation
There is no perfect crime. We live in an imperfect world. But Gerald Applethorpe thought he could come close (but not too close, or there'd be no story).
A gun would be too obvious; an axe too uncommon for contemporary mayhem. No, it would be something easily available, perhaps a shovel. A large one. The gardener comes on Wednesday.
So begins my novel.
I will be taking my annual winter break from writing this blog. For the next month I will be working on my other writing projects.
In addition to my novel, I'm currently working on a rewrite of a screenplay with my writing partner Vincent Blanco. I can't disclose the details of it right now, other than the fact that it's a romantic comedy set in the worlds of advertising and coffeehouses. It will be low budget, similar to all the crap that Tyler Perry puts out, only funnier - and with Jewish people. Don't expect any car chases or explosions. Here's a rundown of my other projects:
I’m producing a reality show that I hope will be picked up for the 2010-2011 season. Because the television networks have been cutting costs, I’m putting my detective show on hold. All the networks have passed on my crime show about an alcoholic bipolar homicide detective and his sexy young female partner who work the streets of South Central L.A. looking for murdered tourists. Even filming in Vancouver would be too expensive, so even though CBS likes the pilot script, it’s just too expensive to film, especially if I get my first choice, Christian Slater, who commands a high salary. ABC was initially interested. They wanted Pauly Shore for the lead, but he wanted too much money and his own trailer, so they passed.
It’s all about the budget, so that’s why I’m switching to reality shows. I’m pitching my new show, called “Dumb Factor,” a remake of “Fear Factor,” which ran on NBC from 2001-2006. For $5,000, contestants will bungee-jump off a freeway overpass with an extremely frayed rope. The cars will run over the contestants until someone is stupid enough to get out and help, also getting splattered onto the pavement in slow-motion. This scenario will keep repeating until the commercial break. All that we’ll see after the commercial will be a bunch of dead bodies and a massive pile-up of Camrys. The winners will now compete for the second stunt, jumping out of an airplane with a placebo parachute, after which an Internet poll will be taken for the viewer to guess the winner. For those wanting to be a contestant, sign-ups will be on our website at www.stupididiot.com . This show will be perfect for ABC’s schedule, because they’re in the process of cancelling all scripted shows.
The tall, gray-haired man in the tan trench coat made his way up the elevator and stopped at the fourth floor. The receptionist said "hello". The man didn't look up. Something was wrong. He didn't belong there. It was clear by his demeanor.
An uneasy silence came over the room. All the people looked downward, trying to avoid eye contact. Then the man pulled out a shotgun and killed everyone in the room.
To be continued...
I'm also writing a light-hearted book of short stories about life in the San Fernando Valley, the area known for tract homes laid out on asphalt grids which make up part of the northern edge of Los Angeles, where the smog settles in like cheap hairspray and you can fry an egg on the streets during the summer.
As you can see, I have a very busy schedule. When I return from my break, this blog will continue on an as needed basis, so that I can devote time to my other projects. I look forward to your comments and feedback on my articles.
My blog, started in April 2009, originally appeared daily, until I realized that I didn't enjoy writing every day, and instead preferred to sit around the house eating Cheez Doodles and watching "Law and Order" reruns.
Thank you for the unprecedented support for my blog. Many readers have asked for more information about me. I graduated from Hudson University in New York with a B.A. in criminal justice. I started my writing career at the Los Angeles Daily News where I honed my skills writing obituaries and getting coffee for the city desk editor. I was fired for making fliers for my band on the company copying machine.
After many years in the music business playing trumpet and keyboards, I quit to work full time as a freelance journalist. After that, I became a consultant and news commentator. I then took off a year to try to sell my television scripts and reality show ideas. Now I'm concentrating on my screenwriting career. The media can contact me through my representatives.
Parts of this article were reprinted from my July 20, 2009 and September 2, 2009 blogs at www.paulsolomon.blogspot.com. It's not just that I'm lazy. I want my new readers to catch up on my earlier works. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I'll steal from myself.
A gun would be too obvious; an axe too uncommon for contemporary mayhem. No, it would be something easily available, perhaps a shovel. A large one. The gardener comes on Wednesday.
So begins my novel.
I will be taking my annual winter break from writing this blog. For the next month I will be working on my other writing projects.
In addition to my novel, I'm currently working on a rewrite of a screenplay with my writing partner Vincent Blanco. I can't disclose the details of it right now, other than the fact that it's a romantic comedy set in the worlds of advertising and coffeehouses. It will be low budget, similar to all the crap that Tyler Perry puts out, only funnier - and with Jewish people. Don't expect any car chases or explosions. Here's a rundown of my other projects:
I’m producing a reality show that I hope will be picked up for the 2010-2011 season. Because the television networks have been cutting costs, I’m putting my detective show on hold. All the networks have passed on my crime show about an alcoholic bipolar homicide detective and his sexy young female partner who work the streets of South Central L.A. looking for murdered tourists. Even filming in Vancouver would be too expensive, so even though CBS likes the pilot script, it’s just too expensive to film, especially if I get my first choice, Christian Slater, who commands a high salary. ABC was initially interested. They wanted Pauly Shore for the lead, but he wanted too much money and his own trailer, so they passed.
It’s all about the budget, so that’s why I’m switching to reality shows. I’m pitching my new show, called “Dumb Factor,” a remake of “Fear Factor,” which ran on NBC from 2001-2006. For $5,000, contestants will bungee-jump off a freeway overpass with an extremely frayed rope. The cars will run over the contestants until someone is stupid enough to get out and help, also getting splattered onto the pavement in slow-motion. This scenario will keep repeating until the commercial break. All that we’ll see after the commercial will be a bunch of dead bodies and a massive pile-up of Camrys. The winners will now compete for the second stunt, jumping out of an airplane with a placebo parachute, after which an Internet poll will be taken for the viewer to guess the winner. For those wanting to be a contestant, sign-ups will be on our website at www.stupididiot.com . This show will be perfect for ABC’s schedule, because they’re in the process of cancelling all scripted shows.
The tall, gray-haired man in the tan trench coat made his way up the elevator and stopped at the fourth floor. The receptionist said "hello". The man didn't look up. Something was wrong. He didn't belong there. It was clear by his demeanor.
An uneasy silence came over the room. All the people looked downward, trying to avoid eye contact. Then the man pulled out a shotgun and killed everyone in the room.
To be continued...
I'm also writing a light-hearted book of short stories about life in the San Fernando Valley, the area known for tract homes laid out on asphalt grids which make up part of the northern edge of Los Angeles, where the smog settles in like cheap hairspray and you can fry an egg on the streets during the summer.
As you can see, I have a very busy schedule. When I return from my break, this blog will continue on an as needed basis, so that I can devote time to my other projects. I look forward to your comments and feedback on my articles.
My blog, started in April 2009, originally appeared daily, until I realized that I didn't enjoy writing every day, and instead preferred to sit around the house eating Cheez Doodles and watching "Law and Order" reruns.
Thank you for the unprecedented support for my blog. Many readers have asked for more information about me. I graduated from Hudson University in New York with a B.A. in criminal justice. I started my writing career at the Los Angeles Daily News where I honed my skills writing obituaries and getting coffee for the city desk editor. I was fired for making fliers for my band on the company copying machine.
After many years in the music business playing trumpet and keyboards, I quit to work full time as a freelance journalist. After that, I became a consultant and news commentator. I then took off a year to try to sell my television scripts and reality show ideas. Now I'm concentrating on my screenwriting career. The media can contact me through my representatives.
Parts of this article were reprinted from my July 20, 2009 and September 2, 2009 blogs at www.paulsolomon.blogspot.com. It's not just that I'm lazy. I want my new readers to catch up on my earlier works. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I'll steal from myself.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Paul Solomon Takes His Annual Summer Break
There is no perfect crime. We live in an imperfect world. But Gerald Applethorpe thought he could come close (but not too close, or there'd be no story).
A gun would be too obvious; an axe too uncommon for contemporary mayhem. No, it would be something easily available, perhaps a shovel. A large one. The gardener comes on Thursday.
So begins my novel.
I will be taking my annual summer break from writing this blog. For the next two weeks I will be working on my other writing projects.
In addition to my novel, I'm currently working on a rewrite of a screenplay with my writing partner Vincent Blanco. I can't disclose the details of it right now, other than the fact that it's a romantic comedy set in the worlds of advertising and coffeehouses. It will be low budget, similar to all the crap that Tyler Perry puts out, only funnier - and with Jewish people. Don't expect any car chases or explosions. Here's a rundown of my other projects:
I’m producing a reality show that I hope will be picked up for the 2009-2010 season. Because the television networks have been cutting costs, I’m putting my detective show on hold. All the networks have passed on my crime show about an alcoholic bipolar homicide detective and his sexy young female partner who work the streets of South Central L.A. looking for murdered tourists. Even filming in Vancouver would be too expensive, so even though CBS likes the pilot script, it’s just too expensive to film, especially if I get my first choice, Christian Slater, who commands a high salary. ABC was initially interested. They wanted Pauly Shore for the lead, but he wanted too much money and his own trailer, so they passed.
It’s all about the budget, so that’s why I’m switching to reality shows. I’m pitching my new show, called “Dumb Factor,” a remake of “Fear Factor,” which ran on NBC from 2001-2006. For $5,000, contestants will bungee-jump off a freeway overpass with an extremely frayed rope. The cars will run over the contestants until someone is stupid enough to get out and help, also getting splattered onto the pavement in slow-motion. This scenario will keep repeating until the commercial break. All that we’ll see after the commercial will be a bunch of dead bodies and a massive pile-up of Camrys. The winners will now compete for the second stunt, jumping out of an airplane with a placebo parachute, after which an Internet poll will be taken for the viewer to guess the winner. For those wanting to be a contestant, sign-ups will be on our website at www.stupididiot.com . This show will be perfect for ABC’s schedule, because they’re in the process of cancelling all scripted shows.
As you can see, I have a very busy schedule. When I return from my break, this blog will run once a week instead of every day, so that I can devote time to my other projects. I look forward to your comments and feedback on my articles.
Thank you for the unprecedented support for my blog. Many readers have asked for more information about me. I graduated from Hudson University in New York with a B.A. in criminal justice. I started my writing career at the Los Angeles Daily News where I honed my skills writing obituaries and getting coffee for the city desk editor. I was fired for making fliers for my band on the company copying machine.
After many years in the music business playing trumpet and keyboards, I quit to work full time as a freelance journalist. After that, I became a consultant and news commentator. I then took off a year to try to sell my television scripts and reality show ideas. Now I'm concentrating on my screenwriting career. The media can contact me through my representatives.
A gun would be too obvious; an axe too uncommon for contemporary mayhem. No, it would be something easily available, perhaps a shovel. A large one. The gardener comes on Thursday.
So begins my novel.
I will be taking my annual summer break from writing this blog. For the next two weeks I will be working on my other writing projects.
In addition to my novel, I'm currently working on a rewrite of a screenplay with my writing partner Vincent Blanco. I can't disclose the details of it right now, other than the fact that it's a romantic comedy set in the worlds of advertising and coffeehouses. It will be low budget, similar to all the crap that Tyler Perry puts out, only funnier - and with Jewish people. Don't expect any car chases or explosions. Here's a rundown of my other projects:
I’m producing a reality show that I hope will be picked up for the 2009-2010 season. Because the television networks have been cutting costs, I’m putting my detective show on hold. All the networks have passed on my crime show about an alcoholic bipolar homicide detective and his sexy young female partner who work the streets of South Central L.A. looking for murdered tourists. Even filming in Vancouver would be too expensive, so even though CBS likes the pilot script, it’s just too expensive to film, especially if I get my first choice, Christian Slater, who commands a high salary. ABC was initially interested. They wanted Pauly Shore for the lead, but he wanted too much money and his own trailer, so they passed.
It’s all about the budget, so that’s why I’m switching to reality shows. I’m pitching my new show, called “Dumb Factor,” a remake of “Fear Factor,” which ran on NBC from 2001-2006. For $5,000, contestants will bungee-jump off a freeway overpass with an extremely frayed rope. The cars will run over the contestants until someone is stupid enough to get out and help, also getting splattered onto the pavement in slow-motion. This scenario will keep repeating until the commercial break. All that we’ll see after the commercial will be a bunch of dead bodies and a massive pile-up of Camrys. The winners will now compete for the second stunt, jumping out of an airplane with a placebo parachute, after which an Internet poll will be taken for the viewer to guess the winner. For those wanting to be a contestant, sign-ups will be on our website at www.stupididiot.com . This show will be perfect for ABC’s schedule, because they’re in the process of cancelling all scripted shows.
As you can see, I have a very busy schedule. When I return from my break, this blog will run once a week instead of every day, so that I can devote time to my other projects. I look forward to your comments and feedback on my articles.
Thank you for the unprecedented support for my blog. Many readers have asked for more information about me. I graduated from Hudson University in New York with a B.A. in criminal justice. I started my writing career at the Los Angeles Daily News where I honed my skills writing obituaries and getting coffee for the city desk editor. I was fired for making fliers for my band on the company copying machine.
After many years in the music business playing trumpet and keyboards, I quit to work full time as a freelance journalist. After that, I became a consultant and news commentator. I then took off a year to try to sell my television scripts and reality show ideas. Now I'm concentrating on my screenwriting career. The media can contact me through my representatives.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
R.I.P. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox
The "Summer Preview" issue of TV Guide is out. In the old days, summer meant nothing but reruns. But TV Guide lists 52 of the "hottest shows" coming out this summer. The magazine lists 35 scripted shows and 17 reality shows. Of the 35 scripted shows, only three are on a major network, and all three belong to NBC: "Merlin," the adventures of the legendary sorceror as a young man, "The Listener," about a paramedic who can read minds, and "The Philanthropist," about a suave billionare adventurer, who, you guessed it, tries to do good deeds involving his money. I hope they're better then they sound. That leaves 32 scripted shows on cable channels out of the 35 that TV Guide believes deserve recognition - shows like TNT's "The Closer" and "Leverage," and AMC's "Mad Men." Other shows mentioned are on channels like Lifetime, the Sci Fi Channel, USA, HBO, and even the Cartoon Network, which is coming out with "Total Drama Action," an animated satire of reality shows like "Survivor." In its list of 52 hottest shows, TV Guide lists 17 reality shows. Seven of them are on major broadcast channels - shows like NBC's "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" and CBS's "Big Brother 11." Cable has its share of reality shows - Bravo's "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" is going into its 5th season - but the lack of scripted shows on the major networks is what is driving the best writers and actors to turn to cable. Stars like Kyra Sedgwick ("The Closer") and Timothy Hutton ("Leverage") are on TNT. Mary-Louise Parker stars on Showtime's "Weeds," and she will be joined this season by guest star Jennifer Jason Leigh, who's playing her estranged sister. The star-power continues on cable as the new show "Dark Blue" comes to TNT starring Dylan McDermott and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the most successful movie and TV producers on the planet. When Jay Leno comes to NBC in the fall, another five hours of scripted shows go with it, so look to cable for quality programming that involves writers and actors - as opposed to talk shows, game shows, talent shows, and other types of reality shows where regular people make fools of themselves at a very low cost. The major networks will be saving money in the short-run by programming cheap reality shows and dropping shows that are expensive to produce. But they will pay for it in the end, when viewers discover cable and never come back. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox - rest in peace.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Reality Shows Sell More Products
Scripted TV shows bring in younger and higher income viewers than reality shows, according to a new survey by the marketing research firm Experian Simmons. Reality shows, however, are cheaper to produce, and according to the web site MediaPost.com, they do a better job of engaging the viewer. For example, reality shows such as "American Idol" and "Survivor" are more "inspirational" and "life-enhancing" than scripted shows, and viewers experience a better "personal connection." Because the viewer connects on a more personal level with reality shows - "Britain's Got Talent's" Susan Boyle is an example of a reality contestant who jumped continents to inspire viewers with her unusual life story - the Experian Simmons survey notes that "advertisers that buy time on broadcast reality programs have a better opportunity of getting their products noticed and ultimately purchased than if they advertised on broadcast dramas." This is not good news for those of us with a higher education and a higher income, who like to come home from a long day at work, pop open a cold Bud Light, and watch CBS's long-running "Without a Trace" or NBC's quirky new cop show "Life". The reality of reality shows is that they are cheaper to produce, and a report showing that they are more effective at selling products, if indeed true, will only mean less scripted shows and more moves like the NBC strategy of putting Jay Leno on 5 nights a week beginning in the fall at 10 p.m. If this type of programming is effective, look for more. Primetime will become a mixture of talk shows and "Celebrities Trying to Get Out of the Jungle" shows. Cable is the last frontier, but look for more shows to get the ax like TNT's "Trust Me," which lasted a season, as opposed to shows like AMC's "Breaking Bad," which is being given time for its audience to grow. But there will always be a need for scripted shows, because if the Experian Simmons survey is accurate, people with higher incomes favor scripted shows. And these people spend more on premium cable channels, so there will always be room for shows like Showtime's "Dexter" and HBO's "Entourage" and "In Treatment." These are on pay TV, so there's no need to worry about advertisers. And as scripted shows disappear on broadcast channels, the ratings are going up on premium cable. The previously mentioned "Without a Trace" (CBS) and "Life" (NBC) were both canceled. But luckily, "Dexter" will air this fall on Showtime. Until then, I'll be watching Major League Baseball on ESPN.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Supreme Court Nominee Called Racist By GOP
Sunday, May 31, 2009: I woke up around 10 a.m., jumped on the exercise bike, and watched CNN as I peddled. Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, is being labeled a racist by right-wing Republicans Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. The Hispanic nominee stands by a speech she made in 2001, although she probably would like to take back one sentence. She said that a "wise Latina woman" would make better decisions than a white male. Many Republicans are dodging the "racist" label by saying "no comment" when asked about Sotomayor's "Latina woman" comment. President Obama came to her defense in an interview with NBC news: "I'm sure she would have restated it," Obama said of the offending words. "But if you look at the entire speech, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through. That will make her a good judge." Even with the hysterical rhetoric by the Republicans, Sotomayor is expected to sail through the confirmation hearings. In other news, Susan Boyle came in second to a young dance troupe on "Britain's Got Talent." I got off my exercise bike, turned off the TV, and prepared my usual breakfast of coffee, oatmeal and a banana. I read Time magazine as I ate. But I ate quickly. It's Sunday, and I've got places to go, things to do. I'm headed to Trader Joe's to get some bananas. I've got to vacuum the living room. There's weeds in the plants in the back yard. My cell phone needs a battery. Then it's off to the museum. Oh no! I forgot to wash the car.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Nielsen Ratings Include Pets
Follow my blog Monday through Friday. I'm taking the weekends off. One interesting thing, though: I went out last night and came back to find my dog Nina watching TV. Because she doesn't know how to work the remote, she was watching "Southland" on NBC, instead of her favorite "House Hunters" on the Home and Garden network. The Nielsen ratings are coming under criticism lately because the new technology is making its system of calculating the number of people watching certain shows obsolete. DVR's and online Internet viewing are skewing the numbers - some estimates indicate that the Nielsen ratings are off by as much as 11%. One group that is getting counted: pets.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Major Networks Cut Costs
The major TV networks have announced their plans for the 2009-2010 season. It looks like many of the final decisions were not based on ratings, but on a strange mathematical formula. For instance, the popular drama "Without a Trace" was canceled by CBS after seven seasons primarily because it is too expensive to produce. "Chuck," because of a massive Internet campaign by its loyal supporters, was renewed by NBC for a third season, but at a price. The budget was cut so heavily that besides asking everyone associated with the show to take a pay cut, the show is reportedly firing at least two writers and scaling back on the number of episodes various supporting cast members appear on. It is also being reported that a major cast member will be eliminated. Then there's ABC. The channel that canceled quality shows like "Life on Mars" and "Pushing Daisies" because of low ratings has given the ax to "Samantha Who?" It wasn't about the ratings. The show was the top new comedy on TV its first season, following "Dancing With the Stars." "Samantha Who?" won the People's Choice Award for "favorite new TV comedy" and co-star Jean Smart won an Emmy for "supporting actress in a comedy series". Star Christina Applegate was nominated for an Emmy for "lead actress in a comedy series". She was also nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe, a Teen Choice Award and others, including the Television Critics Award. The reason "Samantha Who?" was canceled was not because of ratings, however, but because of the high production costs associated with using a talented cast, shooting in L.A. (as opposed Vancouver, for instance), the cost of a quality writing staff, and paying a highly skilled and expensive crew. The show was originally a hit, but then was buried in the schedule by network executives who, despite getting gigantic raises of their own, thought the show was too expensive, compared to the new shows it has lined up for next season. In fact, the producers of "Samantha Who?" were asked about the possibility of trimming $500,000 a week from the budget. One idea was to use a multiple-camera format in front of a live audience instead of shooting on film. But in the end, it came down to money. Even with all the cost-cutting measures, it still wasn't worth it for the fat cats in the suits. "America's Funniest Home Videos" is being picked up for its 20th season, and "The Bachelor" continues to roll along. "Dancing With the Stars" is a big hit, so look for another 15 or 20 seasons. But while TV executives take salaries in the millions, then sit back and wait for a raise of another million or two, they set their fall line-up based on the bottom line. It's good to see "Chuck" given another chance, but it's too soon to know if there will be any major difference in the quality of the show after the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cutbacks per episode. If the show succeeds, look for this to be the standard operating procedure for the major networks. Scripted shows will be given the green light only if they are operating on a tightened budget, meaning fire most of the writing staff, cut back on series regulars, and ask the crew to take a pay cut. Even then, it's cheaper to produce a reality show, so look for more of shows like "Survivor" and "America's Got Talent". Or maybe watch "Scrubs," which was originally on NBC, then was picked up by ABC for one last season. Or so we thought. "Scrubs" has been picked up, but with a new and cheaper cast plus other cost saving measures. I never liked "Scrubs" anyway, so I'll be sticking to my cable shows. Most scripted cable shows, it should be noted, start out with a relatively low budget, but at least they are given a chance to find their audience. AMC, for instance, has stuck with critically acclaimed shows like "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," despite ratings that would be considered low on the major networks. But because of the continued manic behavior by the major network executives, viewers are switching to these quality cable shows, and it's being reflected in the ratings. The networks are losing their audience at the expense of cable. Well, actually because of their own stupidity.
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