Monthly Archives: June 2011

Neil Patrick Harris is hosting the Tony Awards again on Sunday and he says they're having trouble figuring out which number from The Book of Mormon might be suitable for television viewing. There's apparently going to be a number on the broadcast from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark even though it hasn't opened yet and therefore isn't up for anything.

I send great luck and winning vibes in the direction of my friends, Bill and Cheri Steinkellner. They're up for Best Book of a Musical for Sister Act. I haven't been back to see the show yet but if it's even half as good as other things they've written, they probably deserve the award.

Here's a poll on how folks in this country view our deficit and spending problems. One cannot help but note the response to the question of raising taxes on wealthier folks. This solution is favored by two-thirds of all Americans, half of all Republicans and 0% of all elected Republicans.

Kathy Griffin presents her Top 10 Naughty Emmy Speeches.

On the other hand, we can use all the Chuck McCann we can get. I have been remiss in not linking you to the online-only TV series which my pal Chuck is hosting in his wonderful in-home movie theater. There are tech problems galore but Chuck is great and his guests are great and the clips he shows are beyond great. He does it live every Thursday evening and I hope to get up there and be part of his studio audience soon. (Tonight, I'm going to a ceremony to help present an award to another pal, a brilliant cartoonist named Phil Mendez.)

Chuck did a show on May 26 but they lost their Internet connection so it didn't stream live. You can watch that episode, which runs 56 minutes, at this link.

And then Chuck did a show on June 2 which you can watch in two parts. Here's Part One and here's Part Two and together, they run about 72 minutes. On Chuck's website, it says the show will be about 30 minutes long each week.

I assume he's doing another one tonight and that you can watch him live at 8 PM Pacific Time…and I also assume it'll run a lot longer than 30 minutes. So if you read this in the next 3 hours and ten minutes or even after the show starts, be prepared to click over to this link and watch the fun live. I'll post a link to the archived edition in case you miss being there when it all happens. It's almost as much fun as being with Chuck himself.

If you TiVo and you want to record Keith Olbermann's new series, you should know that according to TiVo, it's called Keith Olbermann, not Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Also, a Season Pass is tricky. I don't know if it's going to be like this forever but on my feed, which comes to me via DirecTV on Channel 358, the first show airs at 5 PM, 8 PM, 11 PM, 1 AM the next day, then 4 AM, 7 AM, 9 AM, Noon and 3 PM. I assume that's like an introductory offer and that it will later scale back to 3-4 times a day. My TiVo is apparently very Liberal since I tell it to record Keith Olbermann and it wants to record every single airing. No one needs that much Keith Olbermann.

There are a lot of interviews around with Keith Olbermann as he promotes his debut on Current TV. Here's another one. Olbermann's new show debuts June 20 and I just took a Season Pass for it on my TiVo.

Here's my prediction. I think he'll have arguable success with it. The argument that he isn't successful will be that he'll be reaching fewer viewers and that there will be whole areas where his show is not available. The argument that he is successful will be that he will boost the profile of Current TV and increase its overall reach to the point where its investors will be very happy they snagged him…or at least will say they are. And I'll also predict some controversies where Olbermann will claim that pressure is being exerted on certain cable companies to drop or not add Current TV in order to suppress his program.