It’s in the net

9 hours to go …

6 hours to go …

… OK, ESPN, we get it. Stop it! You’re not MTV (yet).

***

Most writers are more interesting when they’re reporting than when they’re just shooting off their mouths. I’d all but given up reading Eric Alterman after enduring a one year subscription to The Nation that felt more like two years. But his piece in the new Atlantic Monthly about the Hollywood liberal-political fundraising complex is terrific, with lots of reporting and observation from Alterman’s visits with the rich, famous and politically powerful in Tinseltown.

In it, you learn that while celebs often show up at fundraising galas to be seen, people in showbiz are remarkably tight with their money; that Rob Reiner is virtually the only celebrity who wields considerable political clout without being a major donor (he’s simply a good operator); that Hollywood donors are unique in that they give purely out of ideology and not because they’re seeking political favors; and that one of the biggest donors is someone you’ve never heard of and is so uninterested in publicity that he refuses to talk to the media and even blew off Alterman.

There are yet more fascinating insights into what has become one of the most unusual success stories in that town — that of Larry and Laurie David, newly empowered and politicized by “Seinfeld” moolah. (Larry goes to great lengths to distance himself from Laurie’s environmental politics, even telling Alterman that if anyone suggests he’s driving a Toyota Prius to help Mother Nature, “I’ll punch them in the mouth.”)

I want to quote one story from the article. Alterman is visiting with Bradley Whitford, aka Josh on “The West Wing,” who with his wife Jane Kaczmarek have leveraged millions of dollars by hosting Democratic fundraising soirees. We join the story as Alterman writes that Whitford “… has not yet taken the step of making fundraising calls himself. He has, however, made his own anti-Bush commercial. Excitedly he described the ad: Cue mansion with palm trees in the background, music swelling as in the post-9/11 Bush commercials. Whitford greets the viewer: Welcome to my home. Hi. I’m very fortunate to be working on a television show right now. In this age of terror and soaring budget deficits, when our President has proposed cuts in veterans’ benefits and funds for children, I got a tax cut of over a hundred thousand dollars! Support the Hollywood elite. Please. Re-elect George Bush,”

***

Inevitably, it seems, no matter what people on the tvbarn2 mailing list are talking about, sooner or later the conversation turns to the topic of Dave and Jay. Kevin Marousek, the red-headed former NBC page and Peace Corps volunteer to Kazhakstan, has taken up the gauntlet of defending Jay Leno, his work ethic and his style of late-night TV.

Earlier, the discussion had been of NBC’s strategy to plaster its airwaves with Olympics coverage (and not just its air, either), and someone (OK, me) observed that “The Tonight Show” would not even get six minutes for a monologue, as Leno had done during the 2000 Games. And someone made a wisecrack about NBC having to buy Leno a motorcycle to ease his pain. And that’s where Kevin jumped in.

“A lot of people make fun of Leno’s work ethic,” he Kevin. “I think the difference between Leno and Carson (OK, one of many) is that Carson didn’t dream about replacing Jack Paar. Carson was an entertainer; he took a gig which allowed him to earn a living doing that. He had outside interests.” By contrast, Leno only wants to be host of “The Tonight Show.”

This single-mindedness, he allows, has made Leno pale by comparison next to other hosts. “Whereas Carson had a seemingly infinite curiousity about people famous and otherwise, Leno clearly doesn’t. Life beyond the walls of Studio 3 matter very little to Leno. It’s also why his monologue, though considerably longer than Letterman’s, is limited in scope. The latest celebrity drug addict, the latest silly statistic, the latest box office bomb, etc. As an NBC Page we called the jokes the Leno 25; we had a list of fill in the blank jokes, sort of like Mad Libs.”

The whole thread begins here; there’s a topic tree at the bottom. It’s worth a read.

***

I finally caved in and ordered my cable company’s high-definition premium tier to go with the high-definition channels I was already getting for free*. I had read about Greece’s amazing run to the Euro Cup title last month and the In Demand channel INHD was carrying it. I watched the semifinal with the Czech Republic, which Hellas won 1-0, and then the final against Portugal, which Hellas won 1-0. In fact, practically every match the Greeks played in the Euro Cup ended 1-0. The rest of Europe, it seems, was greatly incensed by the Greek team’s play, which involved a lot of defense and very little offense other than counterattacking. The Greeks’ play looked fine to me, but what do I know. Dazzling offensive machines like the Brazilian team often win 2-0 or 3-1. That still leaves 86 minutes when people are not celebrating goals. Anyway, if America can get used to the Detroit Pistons, Europe can get used to defensive football.

(* “Free” means renting a second digital box equipped with an HDTV tuner.)

While the Euro Cup final was playing, Freddy Adu’s team, D.C. United, was also in action on HDNet, also newly available to me two channels down. Flipping back and forth, I was reminded of how far the Americans have to go to catch up with Europe. I’m not referring to their play — the U.S. team is rapidly reaching parity with the rest of the world — but to their television coverage. HDNet was only a slight improvement on ABC because the game was in HDTV. But the camera shots were way too wide and there was a pitiful lack of replays. I tuned in just after a San Jose striker had scored what one of the announcers called a “stunning” and “primal” goal. I’m sure there was a replay of this momentous score, but I missed it. The final was 2-nil. Was it really so vital not to break away from such a high-scoring affair so that we could relive those two scores again?

It wasn’t just that the Euro Cup final was inherently more interesting. Any football match carried by Sky Sports seems to be much better than anything telecast by U.S. networks. (American fans can enjoy Sky games in standard definition on Fox Sports World. The sun never sets on Rupert Murdoch’s empire.) You may, in fact, already be familiar with the matchless play-by-play of Sky announcer Martin Tyler. I’ve always been struck by how much Tyler manages to say with so few words. He knows his primary audience is football-savvy and needs only to hear the names of players as they get their touches, a few observations about the mood and tone of the match, and that anything more is just getting in the way.

And the replays! Even if you have an overactive bladder, you would never miss a single exciting moment from a Sky match, because at any stoppage of play the director cues up a replay. We saw endless replays of not only the match’s single goal — Hellas upset Portugal by the familiar tally of 1-nil — but of the incident toward the end of the match when a fan got onto the field and led the security goons on a low-speed chase into the opposing team’s goal, ending with him hurling himself into the Greek net. (Tyler made the good guess that this was a Portuguese fan imploring his team to put the ball right here.)

Now, when something like this happens in the U.S., how do TV directors react? They switch to a reaction shot, or of players standing around looking at the scene taking place off-camera. And the announcer tells the viewers, rather patronizingly, that they don’t want to “glorify” the intruder by putting his face on camera. OK, how many fan incidents a year do you suppose that actually prevents? My guess is “none,” because the fans are usually performing for the people in the stadium, including the newspaper people who are always looking for something out of the ordinary to write about.

The British say bollocks to our idea of decorum. Sky showed the intruder over and over and over, from various angles, running, being pursued, hurling, and then being carried out, pallbearer-style, by at least eight bouncers. Afterward, the Internet fan boards debated what the intruder’s real message was. In other words, he was grist for the mill, like everything else on a televised game. Works for me.

***

Several readers read my story about the impending, and completely undeserved, demise of the Trio cable channel. They live in areas served by Comcast — Berkeley, Chicagoland, greater Denver — and they get Trio on their digital cable boxes. Just to clarify: Other cable operators carry Trio. But only Time Warner has made a systemwide commitment to getting Trio on digital cable. According to a Trio spokesman, that accounts for four-and-a-half million of Trio’s eight million non-dish subscriptions. Had Comcast, Cox and other operators pushed Trio more aggressively, and promoted it as one of those Only On Digital Cable offerings that makes the extra monthly fee so worthwhile, then not only would it be in a lot more homes today, and not in danger of being killed off by NBC, but a lot more people might be holding onto their digital cable boxes instead of turning them in.