Hollywood Babble On & On #1224: It's Just A Joke.

First South African comedian Trevor Noah was tapped to be the replacement for Jon Stewart at Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

Second came increased interest in this guy who most Americans have never seen, since he had only three Daily Show appearances before being crowned heir apparent. More people were tweeting about Noah than actually watch The Daily Show.

Then came the inevitable event for any comedian, close scrutiny of Noah's Twitter feed uncovered jokes, but not just any jokes, jokes that offended some people, by going outside the list of pre-approved subjects and targets.

Naturally this led to outrageous outrage that a comedian would dare to joke about something that might hurt the feelings of someone somewhere. Then comedian Patton Oswalt stepped in with an epic Twitter rant mocking those outraged at mockery.

Leading to Oswalt to be declared "Problematic" yet again by the authors of many an online think-piece.

This controversy taught me three important things.

1. It explains why Jon Stewart avoided doing ANYTHING where every single word he said wasn't pre-written and pre-scrutinized by a staff of 20 professional writers, producers, and probably a few lawyers. He learned to avoid talking or joking off the cuff, because it was nothing but trouble. Better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak, and remove all doubt, even better to have professionals do all the heavy lifting for you.

2. The post of Daily Show anchor is extremely important to the people who staff the Twitter outrage machine. This is because whether they actually watch the show or not, they use the Daily Show, and the hundreds of almost daily on-line think-pieces it inspires, to determine who or what they're supposed to be outraged at while not feeling like a censorious prig because they're the right kind of hip for following The Daily Show. For a host-apparent to violate their shibboleths must feel like a horrible betrayal.

3. If Noah gets the same ratings as Jon Stewart, but doesn't get paid the exact same money that Jon Stewart got for the exact same job, then Comedy Central is irredeemably racist.

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Hollywood Babble On & On #1218: Who Weeps For Stewart

Jon Stewart announced that he's leaving his fake-news-comedy program The Daily Show and the media promptly wet itself with grief. For days afterwards everyone with an internet connection was bombarded with people wailing and rending their garments over losing the voice of the younger generation.

Which makes this article on Five Thirty-Eight very intriguing since it boiled down the numbers of who watched and listened to Jon Stewart to see just who he was influencing.

Turns out Stewart was looking at declining ratings, declining influence, and an aging demographic where the average age went from 35 to 40. It seems Stewart's most devoted audience was his colleagues in the media and they were the secret of his success and his supposed influence.

The only times I went a week without seeing someone somewhere posting a think-piece about how Jon Stewart "destroyed" some politician he didn't like was when he was on vacation. The people in the media loved him, and they proclaimed this love from every rooftop.

This created the impression of influence far beyond the actual people he was influencing, the majority of them probably already voted his way anyway.

He achieve a perfect state of being what I call a "Media Appealer." A celebrity whose success is based almost entirely on their appeal to their colleagues in the media.

His emergence as a media superstar was perfectly timed. Rivals Jay Leno and David Letterman were on a long decline. Both had lost interest in their work and their guests, and seem most interested in outlasting the other by any means necessary except being the most entertaining.

The critics and media navel gazers needed someone to talk about. They already looked down on Leno, and knew Letterman was only interested in proving that he was somehow better than his guests and the audience, and needed someone to love.

That someone was Jon Stewart.

Their adulation was how Stewart could sneak in and become the highest paid host in late night television, earning $25-$30 million a year double the salaries of Leno and Letterman, despite averaging half their  numbers in real audiences, even during his peak times at election years. Comedy Central thought they were paying the most influential man in the country because everyone in their social circle told them he was.

However, all good things must come to an end. Leno is out, Letterman is on his way out, new blood is getting into late night, including his former colleague, channel-mate, and fellow media darling Stephen Colbert, and at any moment any one of them could snatch the media's precious love from Stewart.

Stewart's a smart man, and he probably saw that this new competition was going to make Comedy Central take a long hard look at his numbers in relation to his salary, and figured it was best to go out while he was still the media's favourite.

Because in comedy, timing is everything.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1144: Where Did These Ideas Come From?

Today I'm taking a moment to talk about two ideas that are making me wonder where the hell they came from.

GREEN ACRES: THE REVENGE!

There are feature film and Broadway musical versions of the 1960s sitcom Green Acres in the works.

In case you're under the age of 40 Green Acres was about a rich big city lawyer played by Eddie Albert, who has some sort of a stroke, or a brain tumour and decides to drag his glamorous shopaholic wife, played by Eva Gabor, to go to a town called Hooterville, whose smartest citizen is a pig named Arnold, and become farmers. The rest of the series is based on the premise that the easily conned city lawyer would do farm chores not only incompetently, but while wearing a three-piece business suit.

The show ran for six seasons without any characters other than Arnold learning anything, and was a modest ratings winner but that couldn't save it from the infamous CBS "Rural Purge" that stripped the cornpone from the network in favour of more urbane and urban-set fare.

The show ran for a while in syndicated and cable re-runs, but faded quickly from the public zeitgeist to anyone else but the most extremely nostalgic baby boomers.

Which is probably why someone in Hollywood thinks it would make a good movie. The same thinking that made Mr. Peabody & Sherman such a smash for Dreamworks Animation costing them a whopping $57 million write down. They look at stuff that they have the rights to and figure that's good enough because it's thought to be safer than doing something original.

What a load of something Eddie Albert would have shovelled while wearing a three piece suit.

SPIKE DOING TUT?

Spike TV the channel for 18-34 year old males who are interested in storage locker auctions and bar management has given the green light to a scripted event series on the life of Egyptian child-pharoah Tutankhamen.

Where did this idea come from?

I'd really like to know because it illustrates what I think is a fundamental flaw in Spike's management, they don't know what the hell they're doing.

The format of the channel is supposed to be shows aimed at males ages 18-34. Sounds simple, but it isn't or we'd all be hearing how Spike's the centre of the young male zeitgeist. I don't know how Spike USA is run, but Spike's broadcasts in Canada are a dog's breakfast. New shows are hyped, but not aired for months, then dumped in a one-day marathon and never shown until months later at the next one-day marathon, and shows that were cancelled years ago still being rerun three times daily until the tape wears out.

If the American Spike channel is anything like the Canadian one I wonder how they're able to get anything to last more than a handful of episodes.

Which brings me to my question about the King Tut series.

Why?

It sounds like a project more befitting The History Channel, and something that would drive away Spike's usual audience of people wanting to see other people yelling at each other. Spike is better known for chasing the lowest common denominator  in scripted shows like Stripperella while being unable to close the deal on actually reaching that denominator because there are limits to what a basic cable channel can show.

Which means that audiences who might be interested in King Tut's story aren't likely to trust Spike TV to tell that story.

Which brings me back to Why?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1138: Apres Colbert Les Deluge?

Okay, we all know that Stephen Colbert is replacing David Letterman, that's a fact, and some are already prepping excuses for him to pull in low ratings, which is probably a given. But this is not what this post is about.

What this post is about is the half-hour gap Colbert will be leaving on Comedy Central between The Daily Show and @Midnight. For those who don't know The Daily Show is where Jon Stewart earns $25-$30 million a year, more than the $20 million earned by Leno and Letterman, for about half of their viewers. @Midnight is a mock game show hosted by nerd-king Chris Hardwick where comedians and other smart-alecs crack wise about crazy stuff the show's writers and producers find on the internet. Now @Midnight's been seeing a very steady rise in viewership thanks to its aggressive online word of mouth campaigns on social networks, and some say it often beats The Daily Show in key demos.

So what should go in between them?

Well, Comedy Central is not really known as the best run of networks, at least from what I've heard. One story I heard involved a producers and cast waiting over a year to find out if their show had been renewed because someone somewhere forgot to make a phone call. So don't expect any decisions being made as swiftly and surely as CBS did with Colbert/Letterman.

Basically, the management style is that if you're one of the flagship clique who deliver either big ratings or lots of kudos they will give you the moon, if you don't you're a punching bag.

Which brings us to who and what will get Colbert's Comedy Central time slot?

Now political humour these days is pretty thin, there are too many areas that are more or less off limits to political comedians barring a shift in who runs Washington. 

So doing another political show to replace a political show to reiterate what their main political show just said would just be flogging a dead horse.

Perhaps a more mainstream talk show format would be best, but then the host would be key.

Now if Comedy Central was smart, they'd set up a show where a funny host, or rotating roster of funny hosts, recruited from podcasts, have half-hour chats with other funny people. Include audience participation via the internet, segments, video sketches, and other nonsense.

But Comedy Central will probably just sign the show over to Chelsea Handler in the hope that she'll bring more than her usual 500,000 female fans with her from the E! Network.

It's the safe choice from their point of view.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1086: That's Where The Money Is...

Epix is a cable/satellite network owned by a partnership between Viacom/Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate that was founded in 2009. Epix specializes in showing movies, boxing, and stand-up comedy specials. 

However, the head honcho of network partner Lionsgate has announced that the network is now planning to produce and/or license original scripted content for their channels.

Now just a few years ago people who claimed to be in the know said that "reality TV" was going to be the future. All shows were going to be about celebrities, skanky debutantes, pawn shops, car restoration, and a hundred other topics.

So why is everyone rushing toward scripted programming?

First, experience has proven that while about 5% of reality shows can be whopper hits, like Duck Dynasty, 95% of reality shows are just filler. Even the modestly successful ones are usually watched simply because they're on, and the competition in the 1000 channel universe is pretty thin.

Now add competition.

"Al A Carte" packaging in cable/satellite providers is probably inevitable, and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon means that you need something that will attract subscribers and/or viewers.

Reality programming is not a selling point, quality storytelling is.

Think about it, what's the first thing a child asks for that doesn't involve food or a diaper change?

The little bastards look up at you and say: "Tell me a story."

People love stories, they crave stories, and while interactive material like games are all well and good, there's nothing like a good story well told.

People will pay for good stories, reality TV, not so much.

"But what about movies?" you ask, furrowing your brow in a feeble attempt to understand. "Movies have stories."

True, but there are too many channels and not enough movies those channels are willing to air. Most channels balk at airing black and white movies, because they don't think kids will watch them. So there goes hundreds, if not thousands, of movies that can't get aired outside of Turner Classic Movies.

Then there's the fact that these channels are owned by studios, and they want the films in their libraries being given precedent. Then comes all the other factors that go into scheduling, and most of it is the sort of internal corporate politics & penny-pinching bullshit that ends up putting some less than stellar films on a perpetual loop.

People won't subscribe to movie channels that only show the same cluster of movies into infinity. Especially since so much of Hollywood's recent output can be described as lacklustre at best.

Another case for original scripted programming.

So let's all wish Epix luck. More scripted programming means more work for writers, actors, and directors, and if the shows are good, it's a win for the audience as well.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1067: TV Tidbits

Time for some TV tidbits.

DOES COMCAST KNOW WHAT IT'S DOING?

All last year we heard how Comcast was going to rebrand its G4 Channel, which specialized in tech, games, geeky stuff and reruns, into the Esquire Channel, which will be a more upscale lifestyle brand, in association with the magazine Esquire, natch. They cancelled all of G4's original programming, fired all the employees, and generally burned their bridges with everyone associated with the channel.

Now, in a fit of whimsy, they decided that the fashion-centric Style Channel would now be the Esquire Channel instead.

So what about G4?

It looks like nobody knows. Not even Comcast.

WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.

There are now four Wizard of Oz themed shows being slapped onto the airwaves.

First came....

1. Emerald City on NBC which puts Dorothy and her adventures in modern day New York City, because New York is cheaper and easier to work in than either Los Angeles or Oz.

2. Dorothy on CBS which is apparently some sort of medical drama.

3. Warriors of Oz on SyFy which is going to be some sort of post apocalyptic action adventure show that will no doubt have the same class and quality as Sharknado.

And now...

4. CW's adaptation of a novel called Dorothy Must Die, which is about Dorothy becoming the dictatorial ruler of Oz, and the rebels who seek to overthrow her.

What do you think about this 19th Century English Gentlemen?

That's what I think too.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1062: More Little Thoughts From My Massive Brain

First A Question?

This is for any British readers I might have.

I watch an inordinate amount of British TV shows and I've noticed a bit of a mystery. How come every British show with a lead character that's a single driven career woman have an unwanted pregnancy storyline? Is it laziness on the part of the writer looking for drama with little creative effort? Some sort of BBC mandate? Or are British women really bad at birth control?

Twerk It Don't Work It!

Everybody's talking about former Disney starlet Miley Cyrus shaking her bony, tramp-stamped ass to the tune of Robin Thicke's "Is That My Roofie In Your Martini" at the Video Music Awards on a channel that doesn't show music videos.

The ratings were okay, but they didn't set any records, but that's not stopping people from the MTV Publicity Department Parent's Television Council to MSNBC to declare that civilization is coming to an end unless heads roll. It doesn't matter that Thicke was singing the new anthem for the Bob Filner's of the world, an ex-child star was next to nikked.

This isn't the end of civilization. It's more like Hollywood announcing they're doing a remake of a really crappy movie, with the same crappy script, the same crappy director, same crappy editor, same crappy cinematographer who can't keep the boom mikes out of the shot, but this time they have a different star, so it can't possibly be crappy this time.

Miley's merely doing what other teen starlets try when their careers hit the skids after tasting mega-fame thanks to the stupidity of tween girls. They try to go "adult" by getting tramp stamps, wearing skanky clothes and doing skanky stuff on things like the MTV VMAs.

Her attempt at a movie career is pretty much over. Even at her peak the only film to crack that precious $100 million "can be a real movie star" line was an animated family film.  I could do a voice in an animated family film and crack $100 million and it wouldn't make me a movie star. And let's not forget her last movie:

Which was judged so bad by the producers they literally sat on it for over a year, and only gave it the bare minimum release they were contractually obligated to do. They preferred to lose their entire budget rather than be publicly associated with that big steaming pile.

What does she have left?

Shameless publicity whoring on the VMAs which exists solely for shameless publicity whoring for MTV.

It won't work. Her album won't sell, and her future movies won't sell, so all she's got left to do is take up drugs, mental illness, and get a gig as a judge on a reality talent show after her parents put her through rehab and under a conservatorship.

Double Feature Follies!

Paramount is rereleasing their really expensive hits World War Z and Star Trek Into Darkness as a double feature.

It'll be called the "We Spent Too Much On Them Night At The Movies."

NBC Has A Fever, & Instead Of More Cowbell It Wants More Germs!

NBC has made a deal with ex-ER executive producer John Wells to develop a pilot based on the 1990s disease thriller Outbreak. If you don't remember, Outbreak was about an outbreak of an ebola type disease in a small town thanks to an evil monkey, and while Dustin Hoffman and his team struggle to save the day, an Army General played by Dustin Hoffman keeps trying to blow it up because that's what Army Generals do when they're bored.

Now Outbreak was a hit when it came out, 18 years ago, and NBC had tried doing something similar in 2005 with a show called Medical Investigation, which lasted one truncated season.

But I'm sure it'll work this time.

What do you think about this Nineteenth Century English Gentleman?

I thought so.

Hollywood Babble On & On #993: Paramount Returns To Television

That's right, Paramount is getting back into television.  

Now you're probably wondering "When did they get out of television?"

Well, they got out of it in 2006 in a big shuffle that requires a little history lesson.

Paramount Television began as an independent company called Desilu Productions which was founded in 1950 by entertainers turned producers Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez. 

In 1957 Desilu bought the RKO studios which set them up as a major player, not just in the booming field of television, but in Hollywood in general. During the 1960s the company produced big hits like Mission: Impossible, and cult classics like Star Trek. Their success and clout made Desilu an attractive takeover target, and Gulf+Western bought them in 1967, and remade the company as the TV division of the then struggling Paramount Pictures that they had also recently purchased.

And thus Paramount got into the TV game big time.

Now Paramount had mixed results in television. Their productions for networks were fairly hit and miss, but the company enjoyed more success in syndicating shows to local stations. Star Trek died on the network, but went to heaven in syndication, which in turn led Paramount to expand their syndication operations into original first-run syndicated programming like Entertainment Tonight, and Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as its assorted spin-offs.

Paramount Television reached its peak in the 1990s when its parent company Viacom started UPN, the United Paramount Network, which was all Paramount all the time, and the company's answer to the Fox Network, and the WB Network from Warner Bros.

UPN wasn't a success. It started small, and it pretty much stayed small throughout its existence.

That existence ended with a major shake up at Viacom. The UPN was merged with rival mini-network The WB to become the CW Network. 

Paramount network sister CBS was also spun off from Viacom as its own independent company, and part of that spin-off was that all of Paramount Television's past and ongoing productions became part of the newly CBS-Paramount Television, which soon became just CBS Television Studios.

Paramount Pictures was now pretty much completely out of the TV business, but now they want back in.

Why?

Why does any business do anything, because that's where the money is.

In recent years Paramount has slashed its feature film output, giving them a shrinking piece of an already collapsing market, and they've recently licensed the home video rights to over 600 of their past titles to Warner Brothers, which means whatever profits those movies make, now have to be shared.

If Paramount is going to continue as a viable entertainment company they need the regular, predictable revenue that a studio can only get from having shows on television.

Now Paramount CEO Phillipe Dauman said some things that have me worried. He said that the first show will be based on a pre-existing Paramount property, and will require "very little investment."

That's scary because it's giving me a frightening vision of a really cheesy movie based reality/competition show, like Mission: Impossible Meets Survivor or Star Trek Idol.

*shudder*

Update: Looks like Paramount's TV comeback will be the Beverly Hills Cop series instead of it being done by CBS Productions. Bit of a relief after the nightmare scenarios that Dauman's comment put in my head.

Phew!

Hollywood Babble On & On #960: 2 Business Bits

IS VIACOM VIABLE?

A prominent stock analyst is giving media mega-corporation Viacom a downgrade to "under-performing" because of the poor performances of their Nickolodeon and MTV channels. Ratings first plunged at Nickolodeon which used to be an unstoppable juggernaut in the field of kid's entertainment.  This caused panic at Viacom, forcing them to pump millions into the struggling channel, which is now being blamed for a massive drop in the ratings at sister-channel MTV.

I think there's more to it than just where they've been shuffling money but with the fundamental business plans of the channels as a whole, especially at MTV.

I can remember when MTV used to be a music channel. It's specialty was music videos, concert specials, and anything else that could be loosely associated with rock and roll.  It's other specialty was a form of mild-corporation and focus group approved rebellion.

Over time the big wigs at Viacom figured that music videos weren't the way to go. So they started phasing out the videos in favor of, at first, game and reality competition shows, and then they hit what they thought was the magic formula.

That formula was to start a reality show stocked with the most obnoxious, narcissistic people that they could find and convince them that they're going to be massive stars for all time. Use the outrage caused by the cast's obnoxious on and off camera behavior and bloated salaries/lifestyle to attract a comparatively small, but demographically appealing audience of malleable and marketable teenagers. Then you take everyone on that show and put them in either every other MTV show, or in their own spin-offs until that once malleable audience is sick of the sight of them, and once the show is unprofitable, drop it like a hot potato, but keep rerunning the old episodes as filler until the tape wears out.

Now it's like an entertainment based Ponzi scheme, you can't really keep it going, because sooner or later the audience is going to start asking "Where's the Beef?" and flip the channel. 

As for Nickolodeon, I'm not really that much of an expert on its programming. However, one can assume that it suffers from a similar affliction to MTV, depending on a shrinking talent pool because new creators of new material either feel unwelcome, unwanted, or unfairly treated by Viacom.

Still, they're in better shape than Stan Lee Media...

STAN LEE MEDIA PREPARES TO MEET THEIR DOOM!

First thing I have to state clearly at the beginning is that Stan Lee, the man credited with creating most of Marvel's superheroes has NOTHING to do with Stan Lee Media.

He started the company in the late 1990s with businessman Peter F. Paul to take advantage of the dotcom hysteria. It was supposed to create web-based entertainment for the world, but like every other business Stan Lee put his name to since he left Marvel it crashed and burned.

The company burned through its $370 million market capitalization incredibly quickly, Lee left, his partner Peter F. Paul fled to Brazil, hoping to dodge various charges, including stock manipulation, but was eventually extradited and convicted. Peter Paul's currently in prison and isn't up for parole until 2014.

Now bankruptcy and criminal charges hasn't stopped Stan Lee Media from operating. It just has a new business model and the key to that business model has been lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

Now most of these lawsuits have either been lost or dismissed, but that's not stopping them, and now Stan Lee Media is going after the biggest target.

Stan Lee Media is filing suit against the Walt Disney Company, and Marvel Comics claiming that they own the rights to all the Marvel Comics superheroes and are demanding BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in damages.

Disney and Marvel's lawyers will eat them alive.

Seriously, do they honestly think that Disney didn't done their due diligence when they spent several billion dollars on?

I fully expect Disney to come down on SLMI like Thor's hammer on the head of an ant.

The one thing I can't figure is where does a bankrupt company keep getting the money for the lawyers. There are a lot of billable hours going into these cases.

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