A Question I'm Getting…

Ten folks have written me since the previous post to ask what I think the odds are that Letterman's replacement will be either Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien. I'd say they're about the same as the odds of his replacement being Chiang Kai-shek or me.

Both Leno and O'Brien, talented though they may be, are Old News…of no use to a network that's looking for a guy (or it could be a gal) who can capture the youth market and establish a franchise there for another decade or two. Leno might get better ratings than his competitor for a little while…but for the long run? I also don't think Leno would do it.

Moreover, networks don't like picking up another network's discards. They do it very rarely and never for something as important as this. It's just embarrassing for a network to admit it couldn't find and groom anyone who'd be as good as a guy NBC got rid of.

Conan, especially. Apart from a few weeks there when America was tuning in to watch him trash NBC for firing him, when was the last time Conan O'Brien demonstrated any ability to attract a big audience? His 12:35 show at NBC did fine when he had Leno as his lead-in…but the last year or so of it, he was getting tied (usually) or beaten (sometimes) by Craig Ferguson, who had a show with a much worse lead-in, very few Big Star guests and an operating budget about a fourth as large. I do not believe that in 2004, NBC would have promised O'Brien The Tonight Show in 2009 if they'd imagined what his ratings on Late Night would have been in 2008. The network probably deserved some points for not reneging on that deal.

Since O'Brien went on TBS, his ratings have been acceptable but way below what he and the network hoped to achieve. Does anyone really think that's the guy on whom CBS is going to bet its entire late night schedule?

I don't know who they have in mind other than that it's probably someone young enough to do the show for 20 years if he or she clicks and someone who's comfortable with social media and the Internet. And like I said, it would not shock me if they already have a handshake and maybe a contract.

And Now, Dave's Retiring

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Details are sketchy about David Letterman's announced retirement in 2015 so I thought I'd get an early jump on the speculation to come. Can't wait to see how CNN will tie this in with the missing Malaysian plane.

Why is Dave quitting? Well, first of all, is he quitting? His ratings versus Fallon and Kimmel have not been great. He's generally been finishing second in total viewers, third in the 18-49 bracket. It's not hard to imagine him losing both contests soon but it is hard to imagine anything reversing the trend. America has long since decided how much they feel like watching Dave at night and the new, younger viewers are not drawn to him. So that's a decent reason to retire but it's also a fine reason for CBS to suggest that strongly. My guess would be it's both. And someone probably feels that Dave's only real chance of getting his numbers up at all is a year of "farewell" shows, trotting out the best guests and reprising the best bits.

Then again, it's important to remember that the reasons for a decision like this may not all be visible to us. Maybe it's just Dave's mood or Dave's family or Dave's health. When someone leaves a great job, it's kind of a cliché for them to say they weren't fired; that they resigned on their own accord to "spend more time with the family." That usually means they were fired…but not always.

Who's going to replace him? Beats me. If I were CBS, I'd send a Dodge Viper filled with cash to Stephen Colbert's door to see if he's ready to abandon his Comedy Central show and the character he plays on it. But I don't think it'll be Colbert. I think they're going to want someone fresher…and it wouldn't surprise me if it was someone more skilled at Social Media and YouTube than delivering a great monologue.

I don't think it'll be Craig Ferguson. Some reports say Ferguson has (or had) a succession deal in place while some say otherwise. If he had a deal guaranteeing him the time slot, I assume CBS will exercise some sort of escape clause. Ferguson didn't do well against Fallon at 12:35. Why would he be competitive at 11:35?

(I'm still a big fan of Mr. Ferguson, by the way, even though I rarely watch his show. I think he's one of the brightest, quickest humans on television and when he's really interested in a guest, a better interviewer than any of his competitors unless you count Jon Stewart. But lately, Ferguson has been trending in the same direction via which Conan O'Brien lost me: Too much mugging and dancing and making the show about how much he can make the studio audience love him. I've given up O'Brien because he seems way more interested in topping his guests and talking about himself than he is in helping them to score. Craig is drifting the same way.)

(One more aside before I get back to Dave: For April Fools Day, Ferguson and Drew Carey traded jobs. Carey hosted The Late, Late Show and Ferguson hosted The Price is Right. Neither did that well but Carey did better with his assignment than Ferguson did with his. I don't think Craig knew how to split the difference between getting laughs and running a game. You can't be too silly on a game show since you don't want to interfere with anyone's ability to win that new car and given that restriction, I don't think Craig knew what tone to take. I still think the guy's brilliant but it didn't work. It was interesting though to see him go the other direction, being too subdued instead of not enough. End of aside.)

One thing I suspect about Letterman's replacement: CBS already knows who it'll be and probably has paper signed. They may not want to announce it right away. It'll make Dave's departure seem less like he was elbowed aside if they don't announce the new person too quickly. But the selection has probably already been made.

What intrigues me more than that person's identity is So what is Dave going to do?

A person who was close to Carson told me that when Johnny retired, he honestly wasn't sure what, if anything, he'd do in the public eye. He thought some options would present themselves…and some did though he didn't like any of them. Letterman worships Carson but I can't see him disappearing the way Johnny did. I also can't see him going out and doing stand-up like Leno or guesting on other shows or…anything. He's a very funny, popular man and it would be such a waste if he didn't do something. I'm wondering what it will be…and it wouldn't surprise me if he's wondering, right along with the rest of us.

More as this story develops.

Today's Video Link

Here's what happens when you board a flight and the cast of the Disney musical of The Lion King just happens to be aboard…

Recommended Reading

Jonathan Chait on the good news for Obamacare. I suspect the program still faces possibly-lethal court challenges and a whole lot of tweaking…but the predictions that it could never work, that it would never meet sign-up projections are starting to look a lot like Dick Morris's assurance of that Romney landslide. Actually, they remind me of a producer I once worked for who told me that a certain project was definitely going to be picked up for production. I asked her how she could be so sure and she said, "Because I need it to be." It wasn't…but if it had been, it would not have been because of that.

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Michael Hiltzik debunks the claims that the White House is fibbing about the enrollment success of Obamacare. People are going to believe what they want to believe — I still get messages from a guy who insists it's been "inarguably proven" that Obama's birth certificate is bogus — but I think the tide has turned on the Affordable Care Act. Not that some people won't give up without a fight…

Today on Stu's Show!

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Today (Wednesday), Stu Shostak has another of all his always-lively discussions on the state of the TV industry with his resident TV critics, Steve Beverly and Wesley Hyatt.  As Stu's website says, "First, we'll pay tribute to game show hosts Jim Lange and Geoff Edwards.  Then we'll discuss DirecTV dropping The Weather Channel (and nobody except TWC seems to care), the Comcast-Time Warner merger and what it means for we poor consumers, the latest on the Aereo streaming TV lawsuit (and what that means for we consumers), the surprise ratings bonanza Jimmy Fallon is experiencing (and how long it will last), and GSN doing it again with another lame series pickup…" And on and on from there…

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  Great shows at a great price.

Something New: A Plug for Frank Ferrante

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This is to remind my friends in the Southern California area that Frank Ferrante will be doing An Afternoon With Groucho at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, April 13 at 3 PM. Go here to get tix because they may not be available for long…and it will probably be a quite a while before the next time Frank does his show in our neck o' the woods.

For those of you new to this blog: Frank is this incredible actor I met who gets on a stage and miraculously transforms himself into the one, the only Groucho Marx. He sings. He dances. He tell stories. He heckles the audience. I'm not a big fan of "impersonator" shows but this is a lot more than an impersonation. I've seem him about a dozen times so I may skip this chance…but you shouldn't.

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Recommended Reading

Our friend Shelly Goldstein wrote a piece on Fred Phelps that summarizes what a lot of people feel about the man.

A friend of mine who is personally opposed to same-sex wedlock (but accepting of its inevitability) sent me a message recently that said he was happy to see the guy die. My friend wrote, "Every time someone thinks that opponents of Gay Marriage are emotionally disturbed homophobes, we have Fred Phelps to thank for that." Well, him and some others.

Today's Video (and Audio) Link(s)

Here at long last is the second excerpt from Allan Sherman's 1965 TV special…but before we get to it, we need to discuss and maybe view another clip.

One of the guests on the special was Lorne Greene, who was then a pretty big star. Bonanza was just about the most popular TV series in the country and Mr. Greene had a hit record — a western-themed ballad called "Ringo." On the special, Greene performed the song in western garb. The tune was slightly abridged from the record but it was done with the same seriousness and style. Then he exited and Allan Sherman walked out in western garb and performed his parody version on the same set.

This excerpt from the special begins with Sherman's parody and omits the Lorne Greene performance he's spoofing. So here, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is Lorne Greene and "Ringo," as heard on the record…

VIDEO MISSING

Then imagine Greene exiting the screen, Sherman walking in wearing much the same outfit and assuming the same opening pose and — well, go ahead and click…

VIDEO MISSING

As you've just seen, the special continued after the "Ringo" number with a few other items. Mr. Sherman sang a serious song called "His Own Little Island," which was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for the 1961 Broadway musical, Let It Ride. The show was not successful — it closed after 68 performances — but like many non-hit musicals, there was one song that outlived the show, and a number of artists recorded it. Sherman's version had lyrics that differed slightly (but not to be funny) from some of the others but it's kind of a nice recording. You can listen to it right here…

AUDIO MISSING

Livingston and Evans, of course, had a pretty good joint career despite the failure of Let It Ride. Among their many hits were "Buttons and Bows," "Silver Bells," "Mona Lisa," "Que Sera Sera" and the song you can hear in the player below. It was sung by Mr. Livingston himself…

AUDIO MISSING

Sherman's recording of "His Own Little Island" has an interesting story. The man was not happy being a fabulously-successful recording artist with his parody albums. Almost immediately upon going overnight from unemployed TV producer to wealthy superstar, Sherman began pushing Warner Brothers Records to let him do an album of serious songs. They fought him all the way for obvious reasons but it was hard to say no to their biggest star. Grudgingly, they agreed to release a single (not an album) of a serious song Sherman had written years earlier as a love letter to his wife — the one he divorced not long after.

It was called "Oddball" and since records have two sides, he sang "His Own Little Island" as the "B" side, the side a lot of buyers never bother to play. In the era of CDs, it has become a lost phenomenon but it was not unusual back then for someone to record a single and to sweat and work and to have all sorts of great expectations for the "A" side…and then have the "B" side, which was chosen and recorded almost as an afterthought, become the hit. The Livingston-Evans hit "Mona Lisa" was the throwaway "B" side of a Nat King Cole record that no one remembers.

Anyway, neither side of Sherman's single got much attention but almost 100% of what notice it did get was for "His Own Little Island," and he took to singing it often in concerts and night club appearances. It became kind of a personal theme for him and since the song's origins were so obscure, a lot of people thought he wrote it.

One other thing about the special before I let you go…

As I mentioned the other day, I audio-recorded this special when it appeared and played that tape over and over. A few years ago when I finally got a DVD of it, I was eager to check out the writing credits, which I hadn't noted back in '65. It turned out to have been written by Sherman, David Vern, Sam Bobrick, Bill Idelson and Roger Price…all names well-known to me.

Starting at the end and working backward, Roger Price was the inventor of Droodles, a funny gag panel which I wrote about back here. He was also (a) an occasional collaborator with Harvey Kurtzman and a contributor to MAD, (b) the editor-publisher of Grump, a good but unsuccessful and generally-forgotten humor magazine that tried to be MAD for an older audience; (c) a frequent TV panel member and the host of a short-lived TV series based on Droodles, (d) the co-creator of the game, Mad-Libs and (e) a co-founder/owner of Price-Stern-Sloan, a major publisher of silly books. A very funny, prolific man.

Sam Bobrick was — and still is; he's still with us — a very prolific author and co-author of TV shows and plays (including the oft-performed Norman, Is That You?). Bill Idelson was a former radio actor who became a successful TV producer and writer, best known for playing Herman Glimshire — or however you spell it — on The Dick Van Dyke Show.)

And then there's David Vern, a man I don't know a whole lot about but he seems to have had a fascinating career. He was an old pulp writer with hundreds of credits under a dozen names in science-fiction and mystery magazines. He worked a lot in television, including a number of game shows. Just before Allan Sherman hit it big with his record, My Son, the Folk Singer, he was producing a game show for CBS called Your Surprise Package. David Vern was one of the writers for it and he seems to have worked on other TV shows, occasionally changing his name. He wrote for Sam Levenson, Red Buttons, George Gobel and many other TV comedy stars of the fifties.

His birth name was David Levine but his main professional name was David Vern Reed and when he wasn't writing TV or pulp magazines, he was writing comic books, mainly for DC and sometimes for the editor there who had once been his agent, Julius Schwartz. His first comic book credits seem to be for Batman around 1949 and he wrote quite a few of them and also many Superman stories, scripts for the mystery and war books and others. He was away from Batman for a long time but in the mid-seventies, did a long string of stories under the name "David V. Reed." He was a pretty good writer, I thought…someone we need to keep in mind someday for the Bill Finger Award. He died in 1989.

I never met the man but I was a fan of his comic book writing. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered he was one of the writers on this TV special I remembered so fondly. Maybe one of these days, someone will post the rest of it.

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