Your mother should know

Who Is Paul McCartney?!

Apparently Twitter had a surge of live-tweeters during the Grammy awards who had no idea who this "legend" was supposed to be. I guess they didn't stick around for the end of the show.

I'm trying to imagine how my generation would have reacted in 1972 (that's the year that Carole King, Tapestry and "You've Got a Friend" owned the show) if the Grammys had trotted out Frederick Loewe, Richard Rodgers or Meredith Willson for some kind of recognition, all of whom would have been approximately the same age McCartney is now. I can't honestly claim we would have acted any differently. Possibly we would have welcomed Willson, whose "Music Man" was still recent enough to be on people's minds.

P.S.: Okay, I'm sentimental. She made me cry.

Well, it DOES say "Advertisement"

L.A. Times Replaces Front Page With Fake 'Law & Order' News; L.A. Times Readers Really Pissed - The Consumerist

An advertisement that appeared to be the front page of The Times took readers by surprise Wednesday morning. Many of them called or sent e-mails to protest the fake news reports of vandalism and murder at NBC in Burbank. As of noon, The Times had received 61 e-mails, all but one of them critical, and 51 phone calls.

Well, that adds up to a significant percentage of their readership these days, doesn't it?

The ad, which readers discovered after unfolding the page, was for the TV show “Law & Order Los Angeles.” The actual front page, with a lead story about the debate between gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, was just behind the ad.

Our top story tonight: Another TV show is set in Los Angeles. Film at 10:00 pm on NBC.

"Worst Super Bowl party ever"

via youtube.com

How it was done.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Laugh track - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charley Douglass’s famous invention was properly tested in 1965 when producers were trying to launch Hogan's Heroes. CBS screened two versions of the same episode to measure audience reactions; one contained the laugh track, the other was silent. As Hogan's Heroes required cerebral viewing, the audience watching the silent version were left confused, and the episode failed miserably. The version with the canned laughter succeeded and CBS gave the show a green light. After this incident, no sitcom went on the air without a touch-up from Charley Douglass’s laff box.^[2]

via en.wikipedia.org

Wait. "As Hogan's Heroes required cerebral viewing..."? Say what?

How remarkable that this incident should be the "proper test" that has cursed nearly every comedy since with a canned audience. I'll certainly accept that the premise of Hogan's Heroes was such that, without the laughter, the audience might not understand the show was intended as a light comedy, which knowledge would certainly affect the reception the show received. But it doesn't seem a fair test of the need for "laffs".

Douglass captured many of his recorded "laffs" from the live audience of the Red Skelton Show during Red's weekly pantomime skit. How odd that a feature called the "Silent Spot" should contribute to the lack of silence on television for the following forty-five (and counting) years.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Humor impaired

Okay, here's another thing I don't get.

Just yesterday, Mark Evanier linked to a YouTube video--well, seven linked videos, actually, comprising an entire episode of The David Letterman Show from 1980. This is the NBC daytime program that predated his tenure on NBC's Late Night and CBS' The Late Show.

This program usually described, by those few who have seen it, as (at best) the wrong show in the wrong time slot. Some commentaries make that sound like a compliment. Evanier says:

You get the feeling that he doesn't even take his own show seriously so why should you? Plus, he feels all alone out there...no sidekick, no bandleader with whom he has any rapport, etc. Doesn't it feel like half the staff didn't show up for work that day but they made Dave go out and do his show anyway? Add to this the largely non-responsive studio audience...

I admit it. I did not watch this video all the way through. I think Mark would agree that this version of the show really underscores just what Paul Schaffer brings to the show.

Other than Paul, though, this looks like the same show Letterman has been doing all along. It's really amazing how little his essential Dave-ness has changed. A lot of it wasn't all that funny then, and still isn't, really.

The consummate professional

What does it mean to be a professional actor?

It means that you give it everything you've got, even when you're giving it to a felt-tip pen.



Can you imagine any other actor (that is, any other actor who didn't really need the money) throwing himself into this with such gusto?

The gayness of Charles Nelson Reilly was perhaps the worst-kept secret in Hollywood. He was told it would keep him from getting work. Some weeks you could spin the dial and Reilly was on every channel at the same time. Thank God he was gay, or it would have been All Charles Nelson Reilly, All The Time.

(Saw the clip at Mark Evanier's News From Me.)

What else is she qualified to do?

A monthly talk show.

The young Austrian lady who managed to escape from the windowless basement cell in which she'd been imprisoned for eight years since her abduction at age 10...will premiere on Vienna's Puls4 Sunday night.

I can't decide if this is a triumph of the can-do human spirit or an obscene exploitation of fame.

Young woman held in underground cell gets talk show
[AP / Cnews]

VIENNA, Austria - Television was once her only window on the world. Now Natascha Kampusch - still adjusting to life after spending 8 1/2 years in an underground cell - is starting an improbable new career as a TV talk show host.

Less than two years after staging a dramatic escape while her captor was distracted with a phone call, the young Austrian woman whose ordeal stunned people worldwide is going prime time.

"Natascha Kampusch Meets ...," a chat show featuring local celebrities, debuts Sunday evening on Puls4, a new private cable channel.

A Puls4 trailer shows Kampusch typing on a laptop computer, pouring herself a glass of mineral water and grinning as makeup artists give her a final touchup on the set. She wears her long blond hair down and sports a sweater and a floral-patterned skirt - both in purple, her favorite color.

You think you're fed up?

You haven't been fed up until you're fed up on live television.

Doctor...tell me, is he...?

glumbert - He's Dead Jim

Where Should I Plug This In?

Where Should I Plug This In?
Originally uploaded by Jessica :)

If "Simon Says" ever becomes an Olympic event, it'll be because someone watched Lou Goldstein run a game and thought, "You know, that's really hard." This session is from Battle of the Network Stars.


Here's something else that's really hard: How do you train a dog to do absolutely nothing? You may think you've mastered it, but it's harder than it sounds. You'll remember Bob Williams and his dog Louie as soon as you hear the phrase, "He's...thinking about it." (Starts about a minute in.)



Both clips found at Mark Evanier's News From Me. If you saw something on TV decades ago and remember it fondly, chances are Mark has talked about it.

Monday Media: Hydro Train

Just a little something to spice up that morning commute. I don't know if it makes you wish you rode the train, or makes you glad you don't.

But that wasn't the point...

You mean Mythbusters actually did the airplane-on-a-conveyor-belt thing?





Wait, the pilot didn't think it would fly? That's not very reassuring. Look, dude, the plane doesn't get its forward motion from the landing gear. The wheels don't drive the plane, OK? The propeller does. That's why they call it that. It propels the plane. The plane won't sit still just because it's sitting on a moving surface. I thought the Navy doped this out years ago before they spent so much money building aircraft carriers.

(While filming "Six Days, Seven Nights", Harrison Ford [who actually can fly a plane] had to explain this to the director, who wanted Ford to taxi around without starting the propeller. He's good but he's not that good. While you're at it, see about holding the tide back too. Let me know how that goes for you.)

The question I thought this was about, which I think probably still is a good question (and is probably what some people thought the stunt was actually about), is whether the propeller, all by itself, can move enough air over the wings to generate enough lift to fly the plane without actual forward motion. I'm reasonably sure the answer to that one is "heck, no", but wouldn't it be neat to be proven wrong?

There Are Brains in California...

...but I think they're outnumbered.

Here, for your amusement, is an article by Rob Long (writing for the WSJ OpinionJournal.com), documenting a painful realization:

You see, out here in Hollywood, we like to feel useful. And to be useful, we must first feel important. But it's hard to feel important when the biggest terrorist of them all, Osama bin Laden--really, let's face it, the guy who practically defines the A-list of villains--hasn't had the common courtesy to so much as name us in a fatwa.

And, as if to pound the point home that Los Angeles Really Does Not Matter, Steve Lopez (of the Los Angeles Times) shares what passes for judgment by KCAL's news director:

The first story on the 10 o'clock news was about a Britney Spears concert in Anaheim. ... No one in their right mind expects to be enlightened or informed by local television news. But in more ways than one, what we were watching had nothing to do with the news. We were witnessing the triumphant resurrection of bad taste.

A day or two ago Virginia Postrel and I had an exchange about Los Angeles' influence on the rest of the country vs the domination of Serious Commentary by the pundits in New York. I tried to stick up for LA, but they're not making it very easy for me. Does a "mere" serious journalist stand a chance?

Harry Potter and MSNBC

I won't often get this specific here, but I must warn you not to watch the "special edition" of MSNBC's Headliners and Legends spotlighting Harry Potter.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last five years -- or unless you've avoided the Potter phenomenon on the advice of your minister -- you already know all the "secrets" this hour reveals. If you're new to the party and you want to be caught up to speed, you won't want the spoilers this program presents, most especially the dramatic surprise in book four (as tragedy strikes one of Harry's friends).

The approach this program takes -- that Harry Potter is a real person, and J. K. Rowling merely his biographer -- gets very old, very fast. Even the children who are Harry's primary market know better than that. The rhyming "when we come back" voiceovers that lead into each commercial break are excruciating.

Clips of Rowling speaking are moderately interesting -- although if you're going to tell people that her British publisher insisted she use her initials in her byline (the better to market the book to boys who might not like it if they know a woman wrote it), it seems conspicuous not to reveal what the initials stand for. She's the second-richest woman in England, it can do little harm now. (Joanne Kathleen. You're welcome. I just scooped MSNBC!)

Never mind. Just change the channel.

Truth in Advertising

All right, maybe I'm being too picky. I just saw a commercial for Walgreen's that explained how easy it is to do Christmas shopping there. Well, that's as may be. (For myself, if you have to do your Christmas shopping at the corner drugstore, just get me a card.)

But the commercial concluded with a counter-level shot of purchases being passed over an under-counter scanner at checkout. They were careful to show the product logos to the camera, of course.

Let me repeat that. The camera, with a scanner-level point of view, is seeing the *front* of the packages.

UPC symbols are typically on the *back* of retail packages.

Therefore, sound effects to the contrary, *none* of these packages were actually being scanned.

I'm just detail-oriented enough to be distracted by that. I mean, I *know* I'm being lied to, I just resent being lied to ineptly.

How Old is History?

That is, how long is long enough before a given event is no longer a Current Event?

Well, according to the History Channel's President and CEO, Nickolas Davatzes, it's two weeks. I'm sure that played a part in the channel's decision to run a program documenting the construction of the Twin Towers on October 17.

The feature was completed before the attack, and originally intended to run in December. I can't fault the decision to run it earlier: If History is only two weeks old, then the WTC might be ancient history by December.

No, no, I'm only kidding. I think. I'm told it was a fine show (we don't get cable in the Purple household). I'm just wondering when the other end of history is. How old does something have to be to be so remote as to be completely irrelevant?

I feel a need to ask my children's teachers that question.

Next You'll Be Telling Us Wrestling is Fixed

For years I've been telling everybody I know not to believe everything you see on television. In some contexts I've insisted that you shouldn't believe anything you see. But I have to admit that even I, skeptical as I am, am taken aback by this story from Electronic Media Online, in which we learn that you can't even believe the word "live".

This could have been a trivial story, but that the implications are so dramatic. It seems many television stations own a gadget they call a Time Machine (manufactured by Prime Image). The Time Machine allows them to perform time-compression on a live program, on the fly. Given that our homes are being invaded by TiVo technology (which allows consumers to "pause" live television and record multiple programs simultaneously), the existence of such a machine really shouldn't be much of a surprise. The article doesn't explain what this gadget's intended, legitimate use might be.

But it seems that KDKA Pittsburgh was using the machine to "create" additional local commercial time in the Steelers / Chiefs game on Oct. 25. This might have gone unnoticed if a reporter (Dimitri Vassilaros of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) hadn't been watching the game on TV and listening to the radio play-by-play -- and noticing that "live" television was running about 30 seconds behind the "live" radio.

Even so, the only thing CBS seems to be worried about is that KDKA is contracturally forbidden from altering the programming the network offers them. The machine's existence itself isn't challenged, just the legal obligations inherent in the network / affiliate relationship. There are deeper issues here, unaddressed. Does CBS use a similar machine to regulate the length of commercial breaks in live events? The temptation must be strong: How else can you be sure that a time-out will last long enough to use two 30-second spots?

Is it used for programs other than football games? If Ellen DeGeneres sounds more like a chipmunk than usual, it is because a 24-minute "The Ellen Show" has been compressed into a 22-minute hole? Timing is everything in comedy: How can a producer be sure the network isn't fnorking the show itself to make room for another "Survivor" promo?

The same article reports that a 64-second break in the Oct 26 "King of Queens" repeat actually ran 94 seconds on KDKA. And a similar 64-second break in "Becker" stretched to 154 seconds on WJZ Baltimore. The local stations are being hung out to dry over this, but is CBS doing the same thing on a network level? How can we know?

What is "live"?