Monthly Archives: October 2003

As others have noted, The Hallmark Channel is now running episodes of M*A*S*H uncut. Each night starting at 10 PM (7 PM for those of us on the West Coast with satellite dishes), four shows are run and in order to accommodate the usual cable channel number of commercials, the shows run longer than a half hour. The first starts at 10:00, the second at 10:36, the third at 11:12 and the fourth at 11:48.

Interestingly, though TiVo and most of the online guides seem to know about this, the Hallmark Channel's website seems utterly unaware. It presently has the shows starting at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00 and 11:30…and then the show after starts at 12:30, which is also wrong. Actually, the show following starts at 12:25 and runs for two hours and four minutes, ending so that the show after that (usually a Rifleman rerun) which is listed as starting at 2:30 starts at 2:29.

To further confuse people, the same four M*A*S*H episodes are run twice a day and in the earlier airing, they are cut. Tomorrow at Noon, you can tune in and see "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (that's the one about a cold snap making everyone in camp miserable) in a half-hour slot, which means that they'll cut four and a half minutes to accommodate more commercials. Then later that evening, you can tune in and see "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in a 36-minute slot with nothing cut.

You wonder where all this is heading. Is this a test to see if uncut episodes will draw a larger audience? If the response shows that people really like the shows without the trims, will Hallmark or some cable channel experiment with reducing the number of commercials (and charging more for the ones they do run) and putting the shows in half-hour slots? Or might we be heading towards a day when they'll run everything uncut and let shows start and end whenever they start and end?

In the meantime, Game Show Network is going the other way with this. They used to run three old black-and-white game shows early in the A.M., uncut but each in a 40 minute slot. Starting next week, those two hours will be filled with four shows, so there will presumably be some cutting. I don't know what the thinking is behind this but if it's because the ratings on those shows have been going down, I think I know the reason. Both the I've Got A Secret and What's My Line? shows have gotten a bit stale from being rerun over and over, and the few commercials, which repeat ad nauseam during the two-hour block, have long since passed the saturation level. During them, I'm now tempted to grab up the phone, call the 800 number and offer to buy a dozen of those damn dog grooming brushes if they will just limit the commercial to two runs per night. And I don't even have a dog.

Here's a link to an obit for Pete Morisi in the newspaper, The Staten Island Advance.

Don Novello is better known to most folks as Father Guido Sarducci but he's also known to many of us as the bizarre Lazlo Toth, author of several books of silly letters to famous people. He appeared this afternoon on Crossfire to plug it and I laughed out loud when he said the following with regard to George W. Bush…

First he said Saddam, he can run but he can't hide. He's running good. Couldn't find Saddam. Couldn't find Osama. Couldn't find Saddam. Can't find weapons of mass destruction. Can't find anthrax. Couldn't find Chandra Levy. Only person these people have found is Tommy Chong.

Novello's new Lazlo Toth book is called From Bush to Bush and I just ordered a copy from Amazon…as you can do by clicking on the underlined name. I'll let you know how it is when I receive it but if it's even a third as wonderful as his first two books, it'll be well worth the purchase. The first two are still in print, by the way.

If (like me) you're fascinated by the set of presidential scandals that went under the general heading of Watergate, you'll want to visit this new site that gives a good overview of it all. There are also some great links to audio clips, including the infamous "Smoking Gun" tape that caused most of Nixon's defenders on the Judiciary Committee to turn on him.

David Broder writes one of those columns where the title says it all: "Fiscal Doomsday in the Offing."

Barney Frank tells how he will vote on Bush's request for $87 billion to rebuild Iraq…and why.

Frank Rich compares the California recall election to Disneyland. Guess which he finds more rooted in reality.

I mentioned in a posting a few weeks ago that when I was over on the Disney lot, I was strangely touched to see a "We love you John" banner added to a big billboard for John Ritter's show. Alan Light calls my attention to a website that put up a photo of that billboard. I don't know why I thought this was so appropriate but I did…and do.

An editor at the Los Angeles Times defends his paper's coverage of the claims that Arnold S. groped a lot of ladies against their will.

Jay Leno is still getting a little heat for his role in the Schwarzenegger campaign. I wonder if folks realize how long those two guys have known each other. Somewhere in some tape vault, there's a copy of an old ABC Wide World of Entertainment taped at the Playboy mansion around 1975. It would have been one of Leno's first-ever TV appearances, done back when he had a huge "afro" haircut and was wearing a leisure suit. The main feature of the show, of course, was Playboy models strutting around in bikinis but they stuck in a muscleman in a tiny Speedo who wandered about and spoke with such a thick accent you couldn't understand him. Guess who. I seem to recall a little sketch where Jay was hitting on a lady and Arnold wandered by, flexed a few deltoids and took her away from him.

One advantage Arnold had by running in such a short campaign was that there wasn't time to track down all the embarrassing footage of him that's around, and Equal Time rules restricted the amount that could be aired. I'm not suggesting it would have impacted the vote but there are a lot of things he's probably glad haven't resurfaced. One other one that comes to mind is a time he was on The Tonight Show with guest host McLean Stevenson. This was back when the main feature of a Schwarzenegger appearance was that he would take off his shirt, and often his pants as well, to display his physique. Mr. Stevenson, who was actually a terrific host the first few times he sat in for Johnny, showed uncommon self-esteem or courage or something. After a brief interview, they sent Arnold backstage to strip down to his skivvies, and McLean announced, "Okay, first I'll show you what a normal, healthy male body is supposed to look like," and McLean took off his shirt. Then they brought Arnold out for a pose-off, with McLean imitating whatever the future governor did and…well, it was very funny. I remember at the time thinking that Stevenson had made the bodybuilder look pretty ridiculous but the spot worked because he [McLean] made himself look even more ridiculous.

And of course, there's the movie where Arnold (billed as "Arnold Strong" and dubbed) played the alter-ego of mousey Arnold Stang. And plenty of other stuff. I suspect we'll be seeing a good deal of this material in the months to come.

Getting back to Jay: I don't think his monologues have been slanted and even if they were, so what? The guy's entitled to his politics, which are not as easily categorizable as most folks probably make them out to be. Some folks would really like to see the late night comedians use their shows as bully pulpits to advance certain positions. A few weeks ago when Conan O'Brien was making the rounds to promote his anniversary special, he did an interview on Buchanan and Press, and all Pat Buchanan could ask him about was using his show to influence voters. O'Brien's answer, and I presume Leno's would have been much the same, was that he was doing an entertainment program; that he did the jokes he thought were funny and couldn't afford to reject good material in order to advance a personal agenda or candidate. I think what some folks don't get is that pushing your political views is not always Job One for a lot of people. It was all that mattered to Buchanan but to someone in Leno's or O'Brien's position, it's probably a very low priority…if it even matters at all. I'm sure it's more important to Leno that his show maintain its ratings, which to some extent means being a venue where any "hot" celebrity will feel welcome. When asked to appear at Arnold's victory party, I suspect Leno's only concern was not whether it would be perceived as a political endorsement but whether it would compromise the Tonight Show's ability to book other high-profile guests. Answer: Of course not.

I do think the press gave Arnold a free ride but I don't think Jay Leno should be faulted for that. Jay's show is not where candidates are supposed to be ruthlessly interrogated and held up to public scrutiny. Let's ask the folks who at least claim to be real newspeople why they don't do more of that…to all candidates and not just the one.

Want to see what a hundred thousand dollar bill looks like? Well, either pick Jerry Seinfeld's pocket or visit this webpage.

Back in 2001, both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were saying that Iraq did not have "weapons of mass destruction" and was not a threat to the United States. This page has online video footage of them saying this. Looks like they were right the first time.

If you're trying to decide how to dress for Halloween, you might want to consult this site which displays a collection of kids' costuming. Or if you just want to see the grotesque ones, here's a link to a page of the all-time worst.

The widow of the late William Steig tells us about her late husband.