Monthly Archives: December 2008

As mentioned here a week or two ago, GSN has started rerunning old episodes of the game show, To Tell the Truth in its overnight time slot. I don't find these nearly as entertaining as vintage What's My Line? or I've Got a Secret but on some, there's someone of special interest up there who's surrounded by two impostors. The episode that airs tonight (or tomorrow morning, depending on how you look at it) has Arthur Marx, the son of Groucho. The one the following night features legendary disc jockey Alan Freed. And the one after that has the famous fan dancer, Sally Rand. I'll try and alert you as other interesting people come along but I'll probably forget.

According to this article, the Polaroid company is going to stop making film for its instant cameras. (It doesn't say it in the piece but it's kind of assumed you know they stopped making the cameras a year or two ago.)

This is sad but inevitable. It's also stunning in a way because I can remember when the Polaroid Land camera was one of the great success stories in the history of American industry. My Uncle Aaron used to brag that he'd had the foresight to buy Polaroid stock when it was a dollar a share. Okay, so he didn't tell people that he'd only bought around twenty shares and that he'd sold them when the price of the stock doubled. The point was that "I bought Polaroid stock when it first came on the market" was a tremendous boast.

I still have Uncle Aaron's old 1950-something Polaroid camera here somewhere. It used a kind of film which only came in black-and-white (and involved the application of a messy fixative) which they stopped making in the mid-seventies or thereabouts. Somewhere here, I also have one of their most popular late models, the SX-70, which I haven't used in at least ten years. That's a photo of an SX-70 (not mine) above.

It came in handy here and there, occasionally even for taking pictures of women with their clothes on. I was surprised to learn it could do that. What's more, it could take photos of raccoons in my backyard and also of the car that ran into the front of my house one night. It came in very handy until I got my first digital camera. The advantage of the digital is not just that it gives a clearer picture which you can easily e-mail to someone. There's that but with the digital, it doesn't cost a buck and a half every time you press the shutter.

I'm not sure where my SX-70 is but when I find it, I'm not tossing it out, even if I can't buy film for it. It's a piece of history so I think I'll put it in the closet right next to my Betamax, my Laserdisc Player, my Wordstar manuals, my 8mm projector, my reel-to-reel tape recorder, my Playboy Club card and my first agent. None of them are good for much of anything anymore, either.

Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame talks of his love for Disneyland. He gets the year it opened wrong (the place first welcomed visitors on July 17, 1955, not in 1953) but all his other comments should strike a note with most of you.

I'm sure you've all read and heard about Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, and his arrest for what U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called a "political corruption crime spree." I don't know anything about the guy or what he may or may not have done. I kinda thought being corrupt was part of the job description when you were governor of Illinois.

Only three things interest me about this. One is that right now, every late night and topical comedian in the world is wishing the guy had an easier last name to pronounce. There's no way to deliver a crisp punchline with "Blagojevich" in it.

Secondly, I'm wondering. The guy had like a 6% approval rating before this scandal broke. What do we think it is now? Is there such a thing as a negative approval rating where less than 0% think you're doing a great job?

Lastly: One of the corrupt scenarios he was working involved selling the Illinois senatorial seat to someone who would step aside later and allow him to take it over, thereby positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016. Shouldn't your approval rating be over 10% before you start planning to be elected to the highest office in the land? In an odd way, I admire that stubborn denial of reality. It comes from the same place as his statement today that he would never resign.

An actor sent me the following. He didn't ask that I withhold his name but I'm going to, anyway…

Hi. I had a similar discussion on Facebook and I disagree slightly with you. Leno's new show will eliminate 4 hours of jobs for actors, a big number. With the glut of reality shows and now this, where will we actors get jobs? Perhaps cable and/or the web. Or maybe Leno's show will be a variety show and we can work as comic actors in sketches. But now, it's disappointing as a job source.

Perhaps. But it's disappointing for an L.A. actor when the networks do more production in Toronto or New York. It's disappointing for all actors when they put on more hours of game shows, "reality" shows, awards show, news shows or football games. One football game can displace three hours of acting jobs. We don't yet know if giving five hours per week over to Leno means that NBC will buy fewer dramatic shows and sitcoms or if it means the Deal or No Deal models will all be on street corners with signs that say, "Will smile and open cases for food."

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic but it's the nature of show business that trends change and the amount of work expands and contracts and changes. Once upon a time, there were a lot of guys who wrote westerns and one day, when the pendulum swung over to variety shows and sitcoms, many of those writers saw their careers end. Years later, they would be joined by many of the folks who wrote variety. That's kind of how the game is played.

My understanding is that Leno's new show will not be a variety show in the Carol Burnett tradition. It'll be more like The Tonight Show with more comedy pieces. That may mean more jobs in sketches for actors, including some who aren't Gilbert Gottfried. It may also mean that thespians will have to look elsewhere.

There will always be jobs for actors…though never enough for even 5% of those who want to act. A lot of those opportunities will be in what we now call "new media," and the tragedy there is that AFTRA took a bad deal in that area, and SAG is going to have a hard time not taking the same terms. If I were an actor, I'd be a lot more disappointed in that than in Jay's new gig. At least once Leno starts at 10 PM, if you do star in a movie, you'll be able to go on in prime time to plug it.

The more I mull it over, the more sense NBC's new deal with Jay Leno makes to me. It's a gamble but not an illogical one. As the prime time audience shrinks, this kind of gamble is going to become more and more thinkable. It really marks a turning point for network television in that NBC is recognizing that the old dynamic of prime time is going away.

Despite reports that similar arrangements were once suggested for Johnny Carson and David Letterman, I don't think either of them actually got a real offer to move their shows into prime time, at least not five nights a week. (Jack Paar, after he left The Tonight Show, did a nearly-identical show for NBC in prime time for a while, but only once a week.) An earlier hour may have been dangled at Johnny or Dave because that was something the network had to dangle at that moment of negotiation, but NBC wasn't ready then to give up on the idea of competing head-to-head with CBS and ABC in the grand arena of prime time.

It is now. They're in fourth place, the economy is bad, money is tight. What NBC is doing, in essence, is deciding that they'll pour all their energy and funds and strongest prime time shows into the 8-10 PM slots…and then from 10 to 11, they'll just try to make whatever money they can. They can't possibly expect Leno to beat the strongest things their competition can schedule at 10 PM every night but he could beat the weaker ones and easily show a substantial profit for them finishing in second, third or even fourth place. A hit hour-long drama these days can cost $2-3 million an hour to produce. Even paying Leno the fortune he's going to clear from this, his shows will run them a lot less than that.

The costs can't be compared exactly since Jay is reportedly going to do 46-48 weeks of original programming per year and I'm wondering if part of the plan also includes rerunning those shows elsewhere, either late at night on NBC or the next day on MSNBC or CNBC. (I'm also guessing that NBC might experiment with putting other programming in, as opposed to reruns, during the weeks he takes off.) Back in the seventies, Johnny Carson had NBC stop rerunning an old Tonight Show each weekend, as they'd been doing, because he feared he was getting overexposed.

Someone's got to be pondering if that'll sink Leno and also if rerunning him at other hours will cause viewers to think, "Oh, we don't have to watch Jay tonight at 10. We can watch that show we like on CBS and catch (or tape) Jay's rerun tomorrow." I believe they pulled day-old Conan O'Brien reruns off CNBC a few years ago because they felt too many people were watching him then instead of when it mattered more to the network.

I said that this idea of putting Leno on earlier had occurred to a lot of people but it was so radical that no one said it aloud. A few friends of mine wrote to remind me that they had when we'd discussed it (so did I in those conversations) and David Carroll, who anchors local news down in Chattanooga, wrote to remind me that in this article in July of '07, he floated the notion.

Carroll was thinking Leno could either air at 10 PM or local stations could move their late news broadcasts there and then air Jay from 10:35 to 11:35. Will they have the option of doing the latter under the new configuration? If they do, NBC may try to head it off by having Jay do a "throw" at the end of each show, similar to the way Jon Stewart sometimes ends a Daily Show with a live hook-up to Stephen Colbert. Since Conan O'Brien will be doing his show from the same coast — from the Universal lot, about three miles away — it would be simple for Jay to end each show by saying, "Let's check in with Conan and see what he's got for you, following your local news."

They may do this even if local stations can't move Leno to just before O'Brien. I would imagine will see a lot of stunt-connections…some bit that will start on Jay's stage and conclude on Conan's, some guest who will do both shows the same night, etc. (Anyone remember the night Jay was doing his program from New York and at the end of it, he got up and a camera followed him as he walked downstairs and onto Conan's set to be a guest on that show?)

Obviously, a lot of this is new and unprecedented and there's a certain fun to all this speculation. Another question that occurs to me is that if all the shows underperform in this new configuration, does NBC have the option of just shifting them all back to their old time slots? Does Jay have anything in his contract about getting The Tonight Show (or just 11:35) back at some point under certain conditions? So many questions. Maybe I like the idea just because it shakes things up and it'll be fun to see what happens.

I think the Coyote may have finally caught and devoured the Road Runner. All evening, Road Runner High-Speed Cable — which brings me to you and vice-versa — has been going on and off, with the 'net inaccessible for hours at a time. If you can read this, it's working at the moment but may not be for long. E-mail has also been erratic. It's strange how much some of us come to rely on this thing. Every five minutes, I found myself thinking, "I need to look that up on the Internet" and then realizing I couldn't.

Wait…it gets worse. I decided to see if I could get my dial-up connection, which I haven't used since the Clinton administration, to work. I should have that capability in case, one of these days, the cable modem goes kablooey for some extended period. Well, it didn't work…and when I was trying to figure out what was wrong, my first thought was: "I know! I'll look it up on the Internet!"

That's right! I'm going to use the Internet to figure out why I can't use the Internet!

It's time to go to bed. Maybe in the morning, things will have stabilized around here.

And here's another commercial produced by Jay Ward's outfit. This one's for Quisp and Quake and it's kind of interesting because it features villain Simon LeGreedy and a heroine who are very much like Snidely Whiplash and Nell Fenwick from Ward's Dudley Do-Right cartoons. They even have the same voices…from Hans Conried and June Foray. Quisp's voice is Daws Butler, Quake's is William Conrad and the announcer at the end is Paul Frees.

If this article is correct — and many sources suggest it is — NBC will announce tomorrow that Jay Leno will stay with the network when he leaves The Tonight Show next May. At some as-yet-unspecified date, he will move his hour long show to 10 PM each night, probably renaming it The Jay Leno Show or something of the sort.

Of all the options that had been discussed in the media — Jay going to ABC, Jay going to Fox, Jay doing specials for NBC, etc. — this probably makes the most sense from the network's point-of-view. They've had trouble filling their time slots lately and have been looking for programs that don't cost two million bucks an hour to produce. In fact, Jeff Zucker (who runs NBC) had been floating trial balloons for the idea that NBC might offer its affiliates fewer hours of network programming per week and let local stations fill some time slots. The affiliates will probably like this better, especially if Leno delivers a strong lead-in to the local 11:00 newscasts.

But this is such a radical change that no one had suggested it out loud. It will make Leno the most visible star ever on a network. No one has ever filled five hours per week of prime-time network programming. He is undoubtedly to receive staggering amounts of money if this works…or even if it doesn't.

The move will piss a lot of people off, including producers who'd been hoping to sell new shows to NBC. Leno's going to consume five hours that could have been available for their wares. And you have to wonder how Conan O'Brien's viewing it since he'll still be second-in-line for the big guests…and now that he'll be in Hollywood also, that may make it very difficult. The folks behind Jimmy Fallon's new program, which will take over Conan's old time slot, have to be wondering if viewers will really want to watch three talk shows in a row. There are a lot of things to think about here and it's all so unprecedented, it's hard to know what to think.

Anyway, congrats to Mr. Leno. I'm going to be at his taping on Wednesday and I'll report back if he says anything about this to the studio audience. And I'm sure I'll be back with more thoughts as this whole concept settles in. It's a major sea change for network television.

Jonathan Handel has a long piece here on the issues in the AMPTP-SAG stalemate. I'm not sure I agree with all his conclusions and deductions but the article is informative in many ways.

I never ate an Aunt Jemima waffle in my life but I really liked the animated commercials they once had Jay Ward's company produce. Here's one. That's Bill (Bullwinkle) Scott as the voice of Wallace the Waffle-Whiffer and Daws (Everybody Else) Butler as the Professor type guy who narrates.

Jeff Abraham sends me this link to a program (or rather, programme) on BBC Radio 4 — a half-hour history of The Three Stooges. I haven't been able to get the link to work so let me know if you do. And hurry. It says the show will only be online for a few more days, you knuckleheads. Thanks, Jeff.

Richard Howe has taken approximately 11,000 photos of street corners in Manhattan. 7,322 have a Duane Reade drugstore on them but all are fascinating.

The AMPTP has posted on its website what its spinmeisters are saying is a fabulous offer for the Screen Actors Guild…and the last they're ever going to get. This is how the game is played. They make Absolutely Final Offers and act like some force of science makes it humanly impossible for the terms to be any better.

How is this offer? Entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel doesn't think much of it. Neither does my friend Bob Elisberg. As I've been saying here for some time, the studios got AFTRA (the other actors' union) to take a mediocre deal and now they're insisting that this year's labor negotiations are a settled matter and SAG has to fall in line and take it.

Obviously, SAG doesn't. Just because one union takes a lousy deal — or in some cases, a deal that's acceptable for them but wouldn't be for you — that doesn't mean you have to take it. The AMPTP is especially skilled at structuring an offer that is good for Union A and bad for Union B. The Directors Guild has made most of its gains over the last few decades by being Union A in that situation.

Obviously, SAG might. The solidarity a union needs to mount an effective strike does not seem to be there. Rumors abound that various ***Big Stars*** oppose a strike and those rumors are not causing that solidarity to appear. One of the wise things the Writers Guild did before it hit the bricks was to do an outreach to "A" list screenwriters and TV Show Runners and to get most of them on board. Presumably, SAG leadership is currently attempting something comparable and I wish them well. It really is a crummy offer.

Rob Hansen sends the following regarding this message which I posted earlier…

Reading last night's missive to you when you posted it, I spotted a small but very significant typo on my part. Actually, the first London convention was held in 1938, not 1939. Sigh, this is why writing emails last thing before turning in for the night is not a good idea.

As it happens, the second ever London convention was held in 1939 at Druid's Hall (full name: The Ancient Order of Druids Memorial Hall), amid a large papier mache model of Stonehenge, apparently. It's always amused me that the building erected on this site after the war later housed the Aliens Registration Bureau.

In the meantime, Anthony Tollin sends this…

My late friend Sam Moskowitz put on the first American science fiction convention in Newark, New Jersey on May 29th, 1938. The following year, 1939, Sam ran the first World Science Fiction Convention, so named because it was originally to be held on the grounds of the New York World's Fair, over the 4th of July weekend. Julie Schwartz, a friend of mine whom I believe you knew too, chronicled that weekend (and 4SJ's participation) on pp. 49-52 of his memoir, Man of Two Worlds.

Well, of course I knew Julie very well…too well at times, but that's another matter. He kept explaining the history of science-fiction fandom to me and getting me more and more confused with each explanation. I hosted a couple of panels over the years and attended meals where he and Forry Ackerman and sometimes Ray Bradbury reminisced over "those days" and it always resembled the scene in The Sunshine Boys where they're arguing whether Sol Burton was the manager of the Belasco or the Morosco.

As I said, I really am not an authority on this aspect of fandom…when and where the first conventions were. I defer to you and Mr. Hansen. I just want to know who invented panels at conventions and how many more I have to host before I have the record.