Roger Catlin | TV Eye

Repurposing the Grammys

This may be how TV looks in a few months: IN between reality shows and reruns there will be cut up versions of old awards shows, repackaged as new events.

"My Night at the Grammys" Friday on CBS was meant to the the first in what may be a long salute to the 50th anniversary of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ annual event.

It wasn’t a bad idea. Unlike the performances on the MTV Music Awards, which are rerun incessantly the week of the event only to live on in website archives, the often bigger Grammy performances come and go the night of the live broadcast.

There are far worse ways to spend a Friday night than hearing Aretha Franklin soar on Nessum Dorma once more, or Marvin Gaye return to sing "Sexual Healing."

One time only events on the Grammys  from Elton John’s duet with Eminem to tributes to the Clash were great to see again – though a bunch of Americans (Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Little Steven) trading verses with one Brit (Elvis Costello) on "London Calling" was rather odd. Despite the 50-year mark, nothing went further back than the 1980s.

It would have been great, too, had we been able to bask in these full performances, rerun in their entirety one more time. But they were by and large truncated tapes, and even when they were playing, somebody would be popping up in a little frame telling us what a great performance it had been (well, if we could hear it, we might have that same reaction).

Faith Hill, Melissa Etheridge and Alicia Keys tried their hands as co-hosts of the look back (and for their trouble they were each awarded a clip in the top 25, no matter how well deserved).

There was less insider history than I'd expected. But there were little vignettes of acceptance speeches, some sweet presentation moments (including one involving John Lennon and Paul Simon giving an award to Olivia Newton-John that was accepted by Art Garfunkel). And there was a tiny glimpse of provacative fashion. But in an indication of how much permissiveness has changed on TV this century, that green peekaboo dress that J-Lo wore in 2000 that was much photographed and reproduced, could only be seen again on prime time CBS with her décolletage blurred out (and no, Janet Jackson was not in the Top 25).

And how about that final list of favorite ever Grammy performances? The 25 chosen from a bank of 50 clips online were pretty representative at the predominance of recent clips to choose from (reunions by the Police and Simon & Garfunkel didn’t make it). And while divas of a recent vintage tended to bunch up at the top of the list, the No. 1 performance, essentially the best Grammy performance ever is one that the act wouldn’t even admit was one of its better performances.

Check the list on the jump.

PBS, MTV Bolt; Winter Press Tour May Be Off

The Writers Strike has so far meant a shortened winter press tour for the TV Critics Association, with the networks iffy and NBC definitely out should pickets still be out in January.

Friday, that picture changed sharply as both PBS and MTV bolted from the tour as well, leaving a big hole in a week that had been cobbled together featuring just cable and public broadcasting. Now the whole winter tour is in question.

If the writers strike is still on in two weeks, the winter press tour will have to be called off, TCA President Dave Walker told TCA members Friday. Hopes of a strike tour were dashed when PBS pulled out, citing reluctance of its talent to take part in the event with pickets up.

A press tour was held during the last writers' strike in 1988, when most networks (again, except NBC) agreed to take part, and having producers talk about upcoming shows wasn't seen as a strike violation. Indeed, oldtimers remember a newsier than usual press tour that year.

At any rate, it seems sad but clear: Strike on, no press tour; strike off by Dec. 15, and they still may be able to get one up and running for the Jan. 8 planned start.

The Purpose of Television

Rik Gobeille writes:

The other evening I was returning from the grocery store when I my car had a flat tire.  After pulling off the road, and discovering there was no lug wrench in the trunk, I crossed the street to a well-lit home to ask if I might use their telephone (No, I do not walk around with a cellphone held up to my head most of the time). 

While waiting for the auto club to show up, the lady of the house (who is a secondary school educator) and I began discussing her preferences in TV viewing.  She, like me, is disgusted with the number of commercials on the programs that she does watch.  She then told me that her Comcast technician told her that television's sole purpose is to advertise goods and services, and that programming is only the stuff they stick in between the ads.

Did I suddenly skip a few decades?  I was always of the opinion that television ads were the necessary evil that the viewers were forced to endure in order for their favorite TV programs to have their productions funded properly.  Have I missed something?  Is the tail now wagging the dog?  Has advertising now become SO dominant in our lives that the ad agencies now see their clients' commercials as the real reason for people to turn on their television sets?

What this nice woman said to me really shocked me.  I really had no idea that things had gotten so completely out of hand.  Please -- tell me I'm wrong!

I can only hope that there was a mistranslation in retelling the story. Advertising was always the engine that paid for the programming (and there was an incentive to make programs good to so boost audiences so they could raise the price of ads).

The cable technician apparently hadn't heard of premium channels, where income is derived from subscriptions.

Philo T. Farnsworth didn't invent TV to hawk ads any more than Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone for telemarketers (though Aaron Sorkin's play about Farnsworth that opens Tuesday may shed light on this).

There are more commercials than ever these days it seems. There's only 44 minutes of program per hour of prime time -- much less if you count the incessent bugs that pop up during shows. You and the kindly lady really ought to get a TiVo or other DVR device to enable you to speed through unwanted ads. It really will change your life!

Playlist 11-30-07

Back to a 90 minute show, played a generous portion of Gorillaz' "D-Sides," went on to some Ween and Go! Team. Then rock from The New Amsterdams, Thank God for Astronauts, Hives and Babyshambles.

Closed out with women, including a couple from Lily Allen and the Thievery Corporation.

Here's what I played on the radio this morning:

The 'East Coast Playboy Mansion' -- in Farmington

For those around these parts who've always wondered exactly how overdone the Farmington mansion is that was built by world class chiseler Jonathan Sisto and later bought by boxer Mike Tyson, got their chance Thursday when current owner 50 Cent’s edition of "MTV Cribs" finally ran.

From the looks of his tour of the endless yet austere building, it looks as if he bought the $17 million mansion just so he could show it off on "Cribs."

And not just a regular edition of "Cribs" in which typically two entertainers get to show off their digs. "I’m not going to do ‘Cribs’ unless I can take over the whole thing," he says at he start.

And since he has the largest house in the state with 51,657 square feet on 17.6 acres, with 19 bedrooms and 35 bathrooms, it can certainly fill the extra time.

Suffice to say there’s never been a "Cribs" of a bigger house by any performer they’ve don’t in hundreds of episodes over the years.

But increasingly as 50 Cent goes through the place, seemingly as huge as the hotel in “The Shining,”  it’s clear he spends little to no time actually living there.

Showing off the big formal dining room early in the show, he finally has to come clean:

"I'm going to tell you the truth," he says. “We never ate at this table. But it look nice, don’t it?" (He especially likes the chairs he got from Tyson, presumably as part of the sale.)

Likewise the huge kitchen, with a refrigerator full of Vitamin Water (it’s one of the product he endorses). It’s one of six kitchens in the house bigger than hotel and when he opens the oven, it’s still full of boxes.

"Look in this: nobody every cooked in there," he says, peering into the oven for possibly the first time, before he asks, "You on to me yet?"

Yeah, I think we are.

He enters a living room as if it’s the first time he found the cavernous room, like the others done up with white walls and solid-color furniture, with rugs over the marbel flooring, warm and homey as his Vitamin Water vault.

"This is supposed to be a sitting area," he says, "where you can sit and maybe read something."

As if.

He keeps calling it the "East Coast Playboy mansion" more than once. And yet there’s something very empty about the place. In shots of the swimming pool grotto (modeled after the Playboy Mansion west) or the nightclub styled basement with stripper poles, the women who populate it seem to be hired models (hey, rap videos look less fake than this “Cribs”).

Various members of the G Unit have their own rooms hither and yon, down long hallways and all similarly white, sparsely furnished and scarcely lived in.

Fiddy himself seems lonelier than Charles Foster Kane (who has a similar entrance gate at Xanadu). He sits on one of the dozen or so leather recliners in the movie room and punches at the remote screen. Big screens keep him company everywhere, especially in his typically oversized bedroom, with a projection screen that pulls down on one end and a flatscreen plasma set up on his footboard.

"On the TV here at the foot of the bed I like to watch MTV," he says. "But there ain’t enough videos on it."

Still, he has his hopes. And there seems to be both a flatscreen outside the shower and nearby the toilet, just in case MTV does start showing music videos again (instead of shows like "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," "The Hills" and, well, "Cribs."

The Latest Impasse

There was hope in the striking entertainment world this week, when last night, the stagehands agreed to settle in New York and instantly lights were on for the two dozen Broadway shows that had been shut down for 19 days.

Would that there was as much optimism for the 25-day-old TV writers’ strike. The week started with optimism, with the Writers Guild going to the table with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers Monday for the first time since the strike started Nov. 5.

Even through the agreed news media blackout, what little leaks there were remained optimistic – both sides had been sincerely working toward a compromise.

Tonight, the blackout broke when the AMPTM released details of its plan it offered to writers, possibly as a way to get an edge in the marketplace of ideas.

The so-called "New Economic Partnership" was touted as including "groundbreaking moves in several areas of new media, including streaming, content made for new media and programming delivered over digital broadcast channels" and offering "more than $130 million in additional compensation above and beyond the more than $1.3 billion writers already receive each year."

That is, it should be noted, how much the 10,500 writers receive as a group, not individually.

The union called the offer a pittance, saying it includes plans to pay less than $250 in a single fixed payment for an hour-long program streamed over the internet for a year; if the same show were rerun for a year, writers would be due more than $20,000.

The guild is asking for 3 percent growth in salary covering new media at a time when it says company revenues are projected to grow at a rate of 10 percent annually.

They’re stuck, in other words, and not planning to meet again until next Tuesday, giving members a long four day weekend to read the plan.

The union claims the studios had offered a single, fixed payment of less than $250 for a year's reuse of an hourlong TV program when streamed over the Internet, which the WGA said compared with "over $20,000 payable for a network rerun."

Come on people. Mideast leaders went to the tables this week to talk peace; let’s settle this.

Alas Poor Gravedigger

What if you had both hidden immunity idols on "Survivor" and refused to use them? Well, even if you hunt and fish and work for the whole tribe, and are aligned to most of them, eventually they are going to kick you out.

That’s what happened to James, the standout castaway and hulking Southern gravedigger Thursday on “Survivor: China.”

Sadly, he didn’t see it coming and may have put up too much trust in the weird alliance led by Todd, whom he kept calling the stewardess (come on, he’s a flight attendant).

It was a victory for P.G., who had a big old target on her; the only other member of her old tribe hanging around, Erik, was safe because he was wearing the main immunity necklace from the star-throwing challenge (where we expected Denise to have done better, considering her karate training).

Denise, the lunchlady from Boston with the accent the rest like to make fun of, was fully rejuvenated this week, having been chosen to go to the hidden Shaolin temple to see a full on kung fu demonstration in the land where it was invented. P.G. had chosen her and Erik along when she won a quiz challenge that was the second part of tribal council from two weeks ago, where Jeff Probst said there were further business and we’ve been hanging ever since, right through last week’s Thanksgiving night summary show.

Next week, Denise looks to be the swing vote as the tribe splits further, with Amanda suddenly going AWOL from the Todd alliance.

Look Up, Way Up

Wonderful to hear the theme to the long forgotten children’s show "The Friendly Giant" on recorder the other day on the Canadian news radio show "As it Happens."

Unless you grew up in a U.S. city bordering Canada (or are young) you may not remember the kindly children’s show, shot as if it were in a giant’s castle, with camera angles exaggerating the height of giant Bob Homme, especially as he interacted with the resident puppets Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe.

"Look up," the giant would implore. "Look way up."

Once you’ve adjusted to the scale, he’d set the stage the same way in each show, placing furniture around huge mockups of his boots. "One little chair for one of you, and a bigger chair for two more to curl up in," he’d say. "And for someone who likes to rock, a rocking chair in the middle." All this before Rusty and Jerome stop by.

The whole bunch of them were back in the news this week, when the family of Homme demanded their original Rusty and Jerome puppets back, and that the "The Friendly Giant" display dismantled from the CBC headquarters in Toronto this week after a Canadian awards show poked fun at the puppets in a not particularly funny sketch about vintage characters’ behavior in homes for aging puppets (apparently a lot of smoking, drinking and sex).

Well, that’s not how the family of Homme remembers it, and they didn’t think the impersonations of Rusty and Jerome were that great either, so the Canadian Broadcasting Company lost their rights to house the classic puppets.

What will happen to the puppets now? As far as opportunities for the public seeing them again, things are looking down, way down. 

GOP Meets YouTube

Months after the Democrats had to endure the newfangled embarrassments of a YouTube debate, the event came to Republicans Wednesday in a Florida event that eventually led to the most spirited exchanges of the campaign.

It’s all because of the season – not the holidays, but the Iowa caucuses, looming just after the New Year.

Some 5,000 questions had been received for the Republicans – 2,000 more than the Democrats got. It wasn’t clear immediately why this was so: Are Americans more curious about Republican stands or was there just an extra few months to accumulate more videos?

At any rate, most of the novelty videos were absent – though moderator Anderson Cooper couldn’t resist showing some of the ones he said they wouldn’t be showing (although of course he was showing them anyway) – of a claymation showman, a cartoon animation of an alien, various talking dogs and dollars, a number of Abe Lincolns and that guy who sings questions.

Well that guy really was featured – in a song that took more time than most candidates were allowed for individual answers. (It really was embarrassing – gather all these prominent candidates in one place, gather a national audience and you have this goofball come on and sing for a couple of minutes on one of those lo-fi clips?).

By and large, though, the questions submitted that were chosen for use were by and large succinct, probing and in many cases smarter than those that would have been asked had the queries come from a panel of pundits. When that happened at the last Democratic debates, all they could do was quote back smack talk on eachother and get them to respond to it, as if they were trying to get them all in a fistfight.

Give the people access to candidates and god bless them, they ask real questions.

Except that goofball with the guitar.

Heather Goes Home

She posed for some of the most striking pictures on "America’s Next Top Model" and was a consistent winner in the viewer-voted Cover Girl contest., representing something different than the cookie cutter model.

There were questions, though, too, that Heather Kuzmich, 21, from Valipariso, Ind., may have been treated differently because she suffers from Asberger’s syndrome, a high functioning form of autism that undercuts her social skills and sometimes short circuits her thinking.

Lines were fed to her during a spokesmodel challenge last week that she still blew; others didn’t have that opportunity. Tyra Banks seemed to be coddling her a bit to show how open her forum is for models, and how she is expanding the definition of high fashion models (though she kicked out a plus sized model for losing too much weight).

But Heather’s time ran out Wednesday, as she couldn’t find her way to many model appointments that was the candidates’ challenge in Shanghai. And at the one designer she did find, couldn’t provide eye contact (another aspect of Asperger’s).

She was the greatest of the candidates this seasons, and each of the others showed how small they were by making fun of her or not coming to her aid. Still, she was well loved by them for just how innocent she was. Too bad show won’t get to see the Great Wall, when the final four travel to Bejing next week.