Ellen's new show: A field report
Where would we be without the loyal readers of TV Barn? Face down in a virtual alley clutching a fifth of cyber-gin, that's where. Instead, however, we've got readers like Chris Valin, who attended the taping of the pilot of the new Ellen DeGeneres sitcom for CBS and passes along this account:
"It's a show-within-a-show, similar to 'Larry Sanders,' except it's half an hour and a variety show instead of a talk show. Picture the Carol Burnett show, including questions from the audience, plus all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Ellen, as you can imagine, plays herself. Anne Heche was in the audience, as was Kathy Najimy and Ellen's mom.
"Her guest was Tim Conway, who was very funny. I've seen him in many things since the Carol Burnett days, but I never thought he was as good after that. He seemed to be back in his old groove. I recognized two out of three of the cast members, but I can't remember their names. They all did well, but one of the guys played a woman in the last skit and did a particularly good job.
"The twist was that Ellen takes a crew out on the street ahead of time and asks apparently real people what they want to see on the show. Then they create skits based on the responses. The skits were okay, but just as on the Carol Burnett show, they were funniest when mistakes were made and the cast members started to crack up. But I wondered whether they'll air the takes that had the flubs or go with the clean ones.
"I laughed quite a bit, but I have a feeling a lot of the funny bits will be edited out for CBS. For example, during the Q-and-A she pointed to a female audience member and said, 'I'm going to call you "Blue Shirt."' The woman replied, 'You can call me anything you want,' and yes, it did come across the way you might think. After laughter and a round of applause, Ellen said in her trademark chipper way, 'CBS — welcome home!' ...
"After the show, she interviewed the audience members on the way out, and I heard that the best of those interviews would appear on the show as well. At one point Ellen got into a golf cart and rode alongside the audience members walking back to their cars.
"Unfortunately, as with the rest of the show, the funniest parts probably won't be aired."
Dropping anchor
Local TV news outfits are famous for copying segments done by other news teams in other markets. Especially during sweeps. You know the genre: "Is your restaurant safe?" "Is your hotel room clean?" "How can you escape a car under water?"
But we may be seeing the start of the latest TV news fad going on behind-the-scenes: stations suing their anchors. The stations say it's because the talent has gotten out of control. The talent says the stations are just trying to weasel out of their high-priced contracts. So far the tally includes:
As they say on the news, "Keep it here for all the latest developments on this story." (And thanks to Mike James at NewsBlues, the world's best site on the local-TV biz, for calling our attention to this.)
Pick To Click: Purely by Occident
The best TV in America this weekend may well be British — and no, we're not talking about that "Millionaire" import. "Masterpiece Theatre" (9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on PBS; check local listings) unveils a new adaptation of the Dickens classic "Great Expectations." Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith and Ian McKellen are just some of the talent stocking this two-night presentation. Like PBS, the Discovery channel often co-produces its shows with public-TV networks in other countries. The latest collaboration is "Walking with Dinosaurs" (7 and 10 p.m. Sunday, Discovery), a you-are-there re-creation of the reign of Earth's most towering creatures. The 3-hour special was co-produced with the BBC. Computer animation and contemporary wildlife footage were painstakingly fused to make "Walking With Dinosaurs"; you can see how they did it in a one-hour behind-the-scenes special 9 p.m. Monday on Discovery.
The daily digest ... for April 14, 2000: Watching the repeat of VH1's "Divas 2000" special that premiered earlier this week, it occurred to me that there may be a market no one has tapped yet: Diana Ross fright wigs ... If you're a regular Letterman watcher, you've doubtless wondered if the "Late Show" bothered to register that URL it promotes every night during the "Campaign 2000" segment, www.drivemehomegrandma.com. Nope: It belongs to a faithful Letterman viewer named Bob Massengill in Knoxville, Tenn., who flew up out of his chair the first night Alan Kalter called out the address, ran to his computer and registered the URL. But why? "I have no idea," he laughed while answering my phone call in his car. "It was just something that grabbed me." Massengill, whose company benetworked.net builds intranets, was also worried that someone might grab the address and "hold it ransom," adding, "I would let the show have it for absolutely zero." Although if "Late Show" didn't even bother registering the URL before the show, what are the odds they would be interested in paying any kind of ransom for it? At any rate, Massengill has finally got the site up — with a self-made Top Ten list, natch — and as of this posting it's gotten 17,000 hits ...And didja hear about the enterprising Esquire magazine staffers who descended on the audience line outside the Ed Sullivan Theater on Wednesday and handed out copies of the May issue with Bill Zehme's essay on Letterman on the cover? A TV Barn reader attests that CBS pages played Grinch and announced that anyone holding the magazine would not be admitted to that night's taping. Maybe that's why the crowd for Dave's birthday show seemed so glum ... And did you see what Jay Leno had to say after reading Zehme's piece? According to Zehme, who spoke to the New York Daily News, Leno groused, "Dave didn't work to get the show. If you want to go to the prom, you have to show up for school." Yikes! I think someone just lost a few votes in the race for homecoming king.
Previously on TV Barn:
13 April: Reader mail
12 April: "Freaks and Geeks"
11 April: "Star Trek" protests
10 April: Zehme on Letterman
7 April: CBS's loaded sked; "Phantom Menace" on video
6 April: ReplayTV and TiVo
5 April: "Wonderland" protests; Fox hits new low
4 April: "Falcone" v. "Sopranos"; new sci-fi stars
3 April: iCraveTV; BET v. Univision
31 March: Video kiosks; Tavis Smiley; Peabody Awards; quit griping about Oscar
Coming up next ... subject to last-minute changes:
Monday: TBA
Tuesday: Sci-fi loft
On this date... April 14: in 1956, the Ampex Corporation shows off the first sound and picture commercial magnetic tape recorder. But don't rush to your Sharper image Store yet; the $75,000 gizmo is not only the size of your freezer, it needs five 6-foot racks of circuitry.
April 15: in 1990, Fox offers up "In Living Color" as a dose of April foolishness for weary tax filers. After being stood up for a meeting with the film department, the TV division tells "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka" writer/producer/star Keenen Ivory Wayans they're desperate to reach a black audience and will put on just about any idea he can give them. Wayans thinks back to the fun he and his friends had improvising and writing sketches a dozen years earlier at the home of Robert Townsend, and Fox decides to hire the whole bunch, plus some white guy named James Carrey.
April 16: in 1978, NBC "roots" its ethnic garden in the 9-1/2 hour miniseries "Holocaust," with all but one member of the Weiss family (played by Meryl Streep, Sam Wanamaker, Fritz Weaver, Blanche Baker, and James Woods) being sent to the Nazi death camps. Michael Moriarty, meanwhile, is a young German lawyer who's "just a guy looking for a job" but rises through the ranks to oversee the murder of millions. The broadcast nets eight Emmys including statuettes for Moriarty, Streep, and Baker. -- Tom Heald
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