Why Won't Leno Work?

The biggest disappointment for me this fall TV season has been, I'm sorry to say, The Jay Leno Show. But it appears I'm not alone in feeling that way. NBC affiliates are griping about the poor lead-in to their local news. Viewers are tuning out. And even Jay made a glancing comment about his show's slippage in his Jay Leno's Garage website. If the current show was a car in Jay's collection, it would be the Stanley Steamer: it's taking an awful long time to get started.

Critics are taking their swipes, and Simon Domenco offers his reasons why the show is failing in Advertising Age. I agree with most of Domenco's points, although I argue that NBC didn't have much of a brand identity before now anyway, except maybe as the Law and Order channel. But from the point of view of someone who must sit through it along side the offerings of other networks five nights a week in master control, I can't help but notice certain things that maybe others don't. I offer these points.

NBC is not targeting the core audience. Who is Jay's audience? Widely defined, it's men and woman ages 35-64. These are people who grew up with Carson, SNL's early days, Monty Python, and remember Bob Hope Christmas specials and Dean Martin sliding down the pole every week. They turn up the volume when Don Rickles walks out, and they wish Robin Williams would just do a stand up routine. They like newer stuff, like The Office and 30 Rock, and maybe even take in the guilty pleasure of Family Guy, but they can't name a current stand up comic, (who can?) and they really have had enough of rap and hiphoppers.

But the core Leno audience is much easier to define: the guys who log in to Jay Leno's Garage. They're a fiftyish bunch who are generally middle class with hair gaining a touch of gray and collars stained slightly blue. Politically moderate to conservative, but still holding some liberal idealism in their hearts, they like political humor when it's funny, they can read and can interpret the news for themselves, and resent having everything on the air being some form of product placement. With that in mind, Leno is failing because...

*It's competing with The Daily Show and The Cobert Report. NBC was so worried about the other three broadcast nets they forgot there's a whole other world of media out there already filling the need for comedy at that time. (Or anytime) These shows are overtly political, pointedly satirical, and sharp as a knife. The hosts aim for the jugular, while Jay has to play softball. Take that interview Jay did with Rush Limbaugh. Total fluff. He spent the fist two minutes talking about Rush's weight loss. What is this, Valerie Bertinelli on Regis and Kelly? Come on, Jay, stick a fork in him! But no, Jay has to worry about offending somebody. Cobert does not. In fact, Rush would never set foot on Cobert's stage for fear of being barbecued. Now that's comedy in prime time.

*The production schedule is too tight. The show is taped in California at 5:00PM. (I could be wrong, as these things are subject to change, and there are occasional double-taping days where two shows are taped in one day in order to accommodate holidays, Jay's stand up schedule, etc...) That's 8:00 in the East. The show airs at 10. That means that there's an hour to "rewind the tape" as it were (Everything is on hard drive nowadays, but I'm sure they roll a backup tape as well.) and clean up any goofs and time the segments and get those timings to the affiliates so that your local station knows when the local breaks hit. That's assuming everything goes off without a hitch. No blown lights, no dead mics, all the guests are on time and don't drop the F-bomb on stage. The moment anything goes wrong and the director has to "stop tape" the segment timings are off, and the director has less than an hour to ram the show through post production to cut the F-bombs and edit the show segments into a viewable product. It's a meat grinder production line similar to Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, and I can't imagine a crew wanting to put up with this for any great length of time, and based on the number of times I haven't had timings for the local breaks, I'd say it's happening too often. Viewers are complaining the show feels "cheap." It's not cheap; it's just being thrown together with a deadline pressure almost as bad as your local news. It's the price you pay for trying to do a late show in a prime time slot.

*Knock off the name dropping. The guests are all big names for the sake of having big names on the show. The ultimate example is Michelle Obama on the Ten @ Ten segment. OK, that one is forgivable, but for the most part, these people have had nothing to say. Oh, and opening with the Kayne West apology... please. Everybody knew that was a set-up. And again, remember Jay's core audience. Did true Leno fans even know who this guy was? Book guests who can tell stories and be interesting. Please.

*Drop the plugs. Hell, there's even a segment called "Earn Your Plug." We know the guest is there to sell a movie or TV show or "latest project," but could we at least try to take the cynicism out of it? When it was time for a live spot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Ed handled the commercials because he was damn good at it, and it signaled to the audience "this is a commercial," and the audience responded with, "Oh, that's OK. I accept your commercial as a break from the show." Having guests race a Ford hybrid around a track should be more fun, but it somehow comes off as mere product placement to me. Maybe if they didn't do it every night...

*Put the show in a more intimate venue suited for Leno's style. Jay works nightclubs, comedy clubs, the courthouse square in Wilmington, Ohio. It's hard to be funny in that barn they've got him in now. The only time a comedian should be working a crowd bigger than 200 is when he's on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Oh yeah, and let's not forget the baseball playoffs are shredding viewing habits right now, and against Monday Night Football NBC should just roll a rerun and be done with it. It would certainly be cheaper. That was whole point of this Jay at Ten thing, right?

A Letter to Falcon

I have never told anyone about this. Not even my wife.

When I was in first grade, for whatever reason, we had some down time in the classroom. For reasons that escape all logic, our desks had been removed from the room, so the teacher told the students to arrange their chairs in a big circle. (It was 1969. Adults did weird things all the time.) And then we just sat there, talking and acting up while the teacher seemed to be doing nothing.

Now as it happened, my chair ended up separated from the kids I usually hung out with, so I was just kind of sitting there watching all this babble. And I got bored. And you know what happens when people get bored.

I don't know why I did it. It all seems so stupid, now. But for some reason, pushed on by boredom that had been brought on by adults creating a new way to waste time, I stood up, held out my arms, and not too loudly but loud enough went, "Tah-Dah!" You know. Like, "And now, on with the show." Well, it did look like we were in a big circus ring. And then I sat back down. And that was it.

What happened next probably really shouldn't have happened. I wonder if I had told my parents about it if there would have been one less teacher employed at my school after that. These days this sort of thing gets caught on video, makes the news, fuels an outrage, and causes people to hire lawyers. I'm sure you can relate.

The teacher silenced the room and told me to stand up. "OK, put on a show," she said.

Now remember, just seconds before the room was buzzing with the chatter, laughter, and messing around of about 30 kids. I knew, right then and there, I had been singled out. Up to this point, I had trusted her, felt like I could confide in her, and even drew pictures for her. I even felt like she had helped me overcome my playground fear of climbing the ladder to the slide. And now this. What was the deal? Why was she doing this?

But, right then and there, I decided to go with it. Make this work. I reached in my pocket, and took out the only prop I had. A tissue. It escaped my hand and fluttered to the floor. The kids laughed.

Gotcha.

I picked it up and dropped it again. Laughs.

I picked it up, manged to hold on to it, held it for just the right amount of time, and then dropped it again, watching it fall every inch of the way. Big Laughs.

The teacher told me to sit down.

I learned to few things from that, apart from improvisational acting and comedy. I learned that it takes little or even no talent to draw attention to yourself. It's easy. Anyone can do it. But once you get the spotlight, you might not like the results. If you want attention, be prepared.

I also learned what it feels like to follow instructions, do what you're told, and trust in an authority figure only to be betrayed and embarrassed. I never trusted another teacher for the rest of my school life. "Steve, if you don't understand something, why don't you raise your hand and ask?" said many other teachers in the years that followed. You just read why. I learned to look it up for myself and figure it out. And to this day, with the exception of my wife and a few others who have long since died, I find it hard to trust an adult. Any adult.

You don't have to be like me. It's hard to understand the chain of command sometimes, but if a teacher makes you feel bad, tell the principal, or the councilor, or a teacher you like. If an adult... any adult... tells you to do something that just doesn't seem right, tell an adult who isn't a narcissistic dillhole. Sorry. Tell an adult who shows better judgment.

And finally, avoid the media. These people aren't journalists wanting to tell your story as only you understand it. They want to make money off of you. There's a word for this. Learn it. Exploitation.

It's not going to be easy for you. You'll have to live with that "Balloon Boy" thing for the rest of your life. But eventually, you'll get past it. You can even make it work for you. You'll grow up, even if the news media doesn't, and you can make something of your life. I know you can. You've already blown the lid off a scam, and that takes courage. Be strong. Listen beyond the words. Think with your mind as well as your heart. Trust those who earn your trust. And love those who make you a better person. And may you become all that you dream.

And I hope you get to really fly in a balloon. It's actually pretty cool.

Under New Management

Search back through the archives and you'll find a blog where I bemoaned the state of Hamilton, Ontario's CHCH, a TV station that lost its way, and millions of dollars.

Now, read this. CHCH is under new ownership, and these guys get it. Most encouraging, they're adding to the news department, and encouraging local programming.

Could this be a harbinger of television's future? Stay tuned. And good luck, CHCH.

Answers

And now it's time to answer some of your

Frequently Asked Questions.

No. I don't mean the questions I get from this blog. I mean the questions TV station staff gets on the phone at all hours from people like- OK, not people like you. Let's just say people who own a phone.

* Why can't you run the game I want to see?

We get this at least once a weekend when the Ohio State Buckeyes are relegated to something called The Big Ten Network, which apparently is comprised of a handful of camcorders, a switcher in the back of an Econoline van, and two commentators who flunked the audition at Sports Time Ohio. After scanning the cable system up and down, you usually find this temporary channel sometime after the first touchdown. The audio is distorted, and the video looks like you're in Havana pulling in a Miami TV station with a coat hanger. So, naturally, the solution to this dilemma is to call a local TV station and ask them to fix it.

Believe me. We're just as baffled and disgruntled as you. Our NBC affiliate is stuck with a rodeo while the rest of the civilized world is watching college football. We are all victims of a system involving the NCAA, major networks, colleges, and advertisers that conspire to create a contraption even Rube Goldberg couldn't decipher. We're helpless. We just bring you the game our network sends us and take the phone off the hook. It would be easier to broadcast the Manchester United vs. Liverpool match - and the announcers would be easier to understand.

The NFL is no better. Their agreement with the networks stipulates that the affiliates broadcast the game that is closest to them - provided it's a sell-out. Thanks to this agreement, no matter how much you hate the Browns, if you live in the northern half of Ohio, you'll get the Browns. If you live in Toledo, you get the Lions, or the Browns, or the Lions AND the Browns. Remember, suicide is the last option.

* Why do all your news stories have to be so negative? Can't you put on some happy news stories?

This is a baffling question, considering our newscasts on Sundays typically lead with, and I'm not making this up, church picnics, festivals, or a magician performing at a nursing home. Getting hard news on a Sunday requires the news department to work on Sundays, and that's something the journalism programs at colleges instruct their students to avoid.

Graduates of these colleges are also instructed to avoid asking hard questions, so that when a state representative says, "Ohioans don't want a casino in their state," the reporter doesn't ask, "So all those Ohio license plates at the Argosy is some kind of optical illusion?" Or when a local Republican says, "I believe in the freedom of religion," the reporter shouldn't ask, "By 'religion' does that include Muslim and Wicca, or just the Christian Evangelicals who are funding your re-election campaign?" See? That's just not nice. That leads to people calling you a radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, a criminal. And then you start quoting Supertramp, and that's just wrong!

So, there's no need to fear. As long as news directors and consultants keep casting news departments like Dollhouse, and the journalism schools keep sending the fluff kitties our way, what's left of the negative news will soon be extinct. Just hang in there.

*How cum you done gon di-ju-tall? Ah caint git chew.

You got us. We can't hide it anymore. The digital conversion was all part of a vast Liberal conspiracy engaged by the Obama administration (in less than six months) to make sure only the intellectual elite could receive and watch broadcast television. For years, you've been led to believe that the eggheads only watch HBO and Bravo. Balderdash. We want Jerry Springer and Kathie Lee on the Today Show all to ourselves. Because we're like that. Bwah, ha, ha! And there's nothing you can do about it. The truth has been revealed! You can't stop me! You can't silence me! You can't---

We are experiencing technical difficulties with this blog. We apologize for any inconvenience. We now join the Lions vs. the Raiders game already in progress.

Happy Birthday, Scooby Doo

It was 40 years ago, believe it or not, that a certain Great Dane ran scaredy cat straight into the hearts of millions. Scooby Doo, Where Are You? (the full official title of the original show) debuted in its Saturday morning time slot on CBS on September 13th, 1969. Because local stations tended to tape the Saturday morning cartoons pre-feed in the wee hours of Saturday and shuffle the running order, I can't cite a specific time slot. You may remember it as a 9:00 show, while others recall it being on at a different time. Doesn't matter. Whenever it aired, it was the big hit of the '69 cartoon schedule.

And a good thing it was. Hannah Barbera Productions, then recently acquired by Taft Broadcasting of Cincinnati, needed a hit. The parents groups, most notably the national PTA, were out to demonize animation right out of existance. While the campy prime time Batman series may have spawned a superhero glut in Saturday morning, HB and others soon found themselves under fire for bringing too much violence to the screen. Arguably, it was mostly cartoon violence - ray guns blasting space ships or Space Ghost freezing a swarm of space locust, although the animated Lone Ranger was known to carry a pistol - but the perception took over all reality. And, watching some of those shows today on Boomerang, I can see they kind of had a point. The moral of many of these shows is basically he who has the biggest ray gun wins. On the other hand, I just caught an episode of The Space Cadets, a show I adored at the age of 3, where the villains showed great restraint after kidnapping the youngest cadet, saying, "Aw. He's just a little kid." The space pirate then takes out his frustration by bopping his pint-size assistant.

Justified or not, Saturday morning needed to clean up its act. And the producers of these shows such as Joe Barbera and Bill Hannah, veterans of theatrical animated shorts who had never been held accountable by any social group let alone the PTA, whose nearly 20 year run of Tom and Jerry featured painful sight gags and outright malicious behavior, not to mention at least one racial joke per cartoon, found themselves caught in a tangle only network television could create. Make them funny, but not too funny. Come up with a mega-hit, but keep it low-key.

And so, the networks called for more live action shows. The formula was simple: animated cartoon=bad, live action=good. If the hundreds of craftspeople dedicated to the art of animation wanted to keep their happy homes, somebody needed to disprove the theory.

(There's a great example of how the networks started calling the shots within the pages of "Tex Avery: King of Cartoons" by Joe Adamson, De Capo Press. During the interview with Michael Maltese we get some incidental insight into the painful pre-production process of the 1967 Moby Dick cartoon series.)

During the 1960's, Hannah and Barbera hammered out a new series where a group of teens solved mysteries. Sort of like Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, but with Maynard G. Krebs from Dobie Gillis. No ray guns. No super science. And villains wanted in six states, but with enough restraint to only cook up a haunted house ruse to scare people away, as opposed to shooting them. The Krebs character would have a beatnik sister with the up-to-date glasses and sweater look, and a far-out necklace. The other teens would be "normal" with good manners and a wardrobe right off of a Beach Boys album cover. They pitched the show to the networks. CBS showed interest, but it needed work. Some meddling kid executive at CBS suggested the show needed a dog. That executive's name was Fred Silverman.

Bill and Joe went back to the drawing board, put some white out over the glasses girl's necklace and made her the dateless brainy one and christened her with a name sure to get the point across: Velma. The ink and paint department was told to never color in Shaggy's soul patch. (By the time the show hit the air, Shaggy would've fit right in at most high schools' honor society.) And some dogs were auditioned.

The first was a sheepdog named Wayout, but he soon grew tiresome. Eventually, they found magic: a Great Dane big enough to do human things like fly a plane or sit at a table, but dog enough to be the gang's pet. But most important, he was the link to the audience, showing fear when entering a haunted house, and needing a pep talk or a Scooby Snack to boost his courage when the going got tough. This was no superdog. He was one of us. Scared when he ought to be, but courageous in spite of it. In other words, he was an antihero with a heart of gold.

Scooby Doo became the breakaway hit of the 1969 Saturday morning season. Today, Scooby is still one of the most recognizable and profitable properties in television, spinning off several new series and movies, along with DVD collections and endless reruns.

It ain't art. The animation was often hack work. The ink and paint quality declined unbearably as the series trudged on through the '70's, even the voice tracks sometimes seemed to be a recording of the first run-through. And we kids did notice at times. But the central idea overshadowed the show's shortcomings. And that oft quoted line that appeared at the end of a few of the original episodes brought it home. "Those meddling kids."

Let me tell you. In 1969, that "kids" line hit like a kick to the stomach. It was a different time, when the adults were "old" and stuck in their old ways, bringing war and pollution, and sweeping aside anything good just for another dollar or because they hated change. They made rules, and we were supposed to obey them just because they were adults and we were just "kids." Their job was to keep us in our place and protect us from new ideas and thinking for ourselves. Just follow along, kids, and do what you're told. These "kids" today are nothing but a bunch of trouble making hippies. Send the boy to Viet Nam. That'll learn him a thing or two.

Each week when Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma politely explained the villain's plot to the police, I got an electric thrill out of watching the wrong-minded adult brought down by those meddling "kids." Yeah, go ahead, mister. Get in your cheap shot at us "kids" before you go to jail. But we "kids" are the future. And you're just an old man.

Maybe I'm making too much of this, but I was six when the original Scooby Doo premiered. Maybe Scooby lives on because of that sense of rebellion. Young people watch it today, and for a time Shaggy and Velma were fashion statements - a just reward for the Velma's everywhere. Maybe those hokey pop tunes inserted in the chase sequences of the second season sound pretty good compared with the pop of today. I don't know.

But every once in a while, when somebody at work is pulling politics, or some mook tries to get under my skin, I still get a kick out of being that meddling kid.

Shouted Out With "Glee!"

I'm not sure what to make of this, but here's the latest word on the new season.

Fox's Glee clobbered the competition. According to Fox, the one-two punch of So You Think You Can Dance and Glee won the night with teens, and younger adults - the audience more likely to go out and buy things.

The competition? President Obama speaking to congress about health care reform on the Big 3 and the cable news outlets. Make of that what you will.

The big premier for Glee is great news not only for Fox, but for Lima, Ohio where the show supposedly takes place. Only scant evidence has turned up on the air to confirm the Lima link, like a porta potty sign in the pilot episode listing Bluffton (spelled wrong) Ada, and Uniopolis. Trust me on this; the only way Uniopolis gets mentioned on network TV is if one of the writers grew up there. We're wondering if Lima will get more of a starring role as the show progresses. Keep watching.

And Now For Something Completely Different

News from the Cincinnati Zoo.

“Sarah,” the Cincinnati Zoo’s eight-year-old female cheetah, is now the world’s fastest of all land mammals. Today, Sarah earned her spot in the record book when she crossed the finish line in the 100-meter sprint with a time of 6.16 seconds in her very first attempt, breaking the previous mark of 6.19.

This is great news, but what you may not know is that this record was set in Clermont County, Ohio. Now I grew up in those parts, so I just can't resist throwing in some jokes about this. And so, ladies and germs, here are a few you won't like.


Hey, folks, did ya hear? An eight-year-old cheetah set a new speed record in Clermont County. Yeah. Of course, if your eight-years-old in Clermont County and still a virgin, you learn to run fast.

They must've timed her while she was running away from her daddy.

But seriously, folks, in case you were wondering how they got her to run that fast, they used a lure tied to a string... a welfare check.

She got a citation from Guiness... and the Milford Police.

Sadly, five minutes later Sarah was arrested for doing donuts in a front yard in Amelia.

The last time anybody moved that fast in Clermont County, she was being chased by the klan.

Last week.

Thank you! Tip your waitress.