Why Arsenio Hall Matters Now.

This morning I was watching the replay of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. And as I was watching Jay's monolouge I was thinking back to the PBS special about Johnny Carson.

And I was thinking that as the years have gone on, how Johnny Carson matters now as he was so superior to any of the four men and one woman hosting late night television at this time. I was really going to type in something like "Jay could hold Carson's shoe lace, bla bla bla..."

Then...this happened.....


 

And when he came out....he almost did it.  The crank-up.

And for two seconds, it was 1992.  It was stage 29 at Paramout Studios.  It was the Night Thing and "Let's....get....bizzzy" all over again.

And the last line that got the biggest response.  That a network could hire a black man to host a late night talk show.  It should.  This man.

My case was made through four years of the most innovative, aware late-night programming. The Aresenio Hall Show was truly the first late night series that spoke to a generation that did not think all entertainment came from Vegas, Broadway, and the Borscht Belt.  While Carson had on Vic Damone, Aresenio hosted Tupac.  Carson would bring out Joe Namath, Arsenio hosted Magic. Carson would trade one-liners with Reagan, Aresenio all but created Bill Clinton.

And Hall had no problem put it all on the line to put on a guest no one else would put on....Louis Farakkan.



Not to mention, that Hall cared about people and the community.  On the night of the Los Angeles riots, Hall did a show like none other before or since (why that show is not available on You Tube or anywhere is is, IMHO, a sin and a shame).  Famous names and average folks from the community were in the house.  It was bare bones. But people wanted to be there to help Hall try to calm a community.

Afterward, Hall went to the First A. M. E. Church.  A KNBC crew was there and talk to Hall and Rev. Cecil Murray.  Here you get a bit of the heart of a man at a time when heart was needed.



And we are at that point now.  With almost every side of every point of society at war with each other, we need that heart before we go to bed.
Hall is 56. He would be younger than Leno or Letterman. He can still reach a younger audience than Leno or even Letterman. And if you are, say, Fox Broadcasting, Aresenio would definatly put you back in the late-night game.  If you're ABC, you'd probably think, you can get rid of two albertross' around your neck, Nightline and JKL.

The bottom line, the time is right, the man is hot, and boy...do we need him now.

Crank it up.  Let's get bizzy.

Bad Xian Btches

By now you know how much I HATE the American Family ASSociation.  If you have followed my blogs you know that my tracking of false prophets started when they successfully censored the NBC series Book of Daniel. Their goal is simple: if you or any part of the culture does not fit into their narrow, bigoted view ofthe world, you will be targeted until you are destroyed.

Their main weapon is financial blackmail.  Threaten advertisers with boycott until they remove their spots from the offending program. You know, the same strategy used to try to get Rush Limbaugh off radio.  And you know how THAT worked out.

You see evil only works when evil wields it.

Take the TV series GCB, the spoofy soap that poked gentle fun of Dallas' Righteous Flock.  Problem is that the AFA can't take a joke.  So they sent out their own good Xian bitches (Actually, the original title was to be Good Christian Bitches...I refuse to give these Tupelo bovines any connection with the actual "C" because...well, refer to Galatians 6:7. GCB mocks hypocrites, not Christ) to terrorize advertisers.

Again, it worked.

ABC dumps anti-Christian 'GCB' show after one season

Fleeing advertisers and low ratings doomed show from the start

May 14, 2012


Dear Donald,
ABC network has announced it is cancelling "GCB" and will not run it for a second season.
A Christian-bashing version of ABC's now defunct "Desperate Housewives," GCB centered on a recently divorced mother of two who moved back to the affluent neighborhood where she grew up to find herself in the whirling midst of gossip, Botox and fraud.
In later episodes, ABC didn't miss an opportunity to show its bigotry and hatred toward Christianity.

AFA led the efforts against GCB with an initial petition to ABC, asking it to not air the mockery. It was signed by 130,000 Action Alert supporters.

After the series began airing, AFA's OneMillionMoms.com ministry regularly contacted advertisers, who pulled advertising support from the show, resulting in lost revenue by the network.

Suffice it to say, the OneMillionCows....errrr Moms are effective (except when it comes to Ellen Degeneres.....but that's another story...).

Now lets talk about those ratings for a second.  According to Nielsen, GCB was averaging 7.4 million viewers per week. That was on par with Desperate Housewives and only slightly smaller than Once Upon a Time. But compare that 7.4 with the dismal 3.7 million the show that was in that spot Pan Am was getting, then it could not possibly be ratings.

The AFA/OMM blackmail campaign has worked again.  I wonder, though, if these heavenly hucksters will be as enthusiastic about ABC's replacement.  666 Park Avenue, basically where the rental agreement is truly a contract with the devil.

Yes. They replaced God with Satan on the ABC schedule.  And if the OneMillionMoms are not up in arms about this.....makes ya wonder who really IS controlling the AFA.

Oh...one other thing, if you want to help get GCB back on the schedule, go to www.savegcb.com. I'm not usually a fan of online petitions, but these people seem to have the right heart about it.  Mention the numbers we quoted and the OMM's blackmail campaign...and pass it around.  As of this blogging, they have nearly the 38,000 of the 100k signatures they're looking for.  Even Perez Hilton has come on board.

The Tupelo Twits love to "send a message" with their boycott threats.  It would be nice of, for once, they get the proper reply.

Ben Gazzara on the Dick Cavett Show (with Cassavettes and Falk)

As you know, the actor Ben Gazzara died yesterday at 81.  My main remberence of him was as an intense actor doing a series for NBC called Run For Your Life, their answer to ABC's The Fugitive.

Between that was Anatomy of a Murder before and Husbands after. Husbands, a collaboration with close friends John Cassevettes and Peter Falk, was a breakthtough drama that, in 1970, ushered in the beginnings of American independent film.

In that year, to promote Husbands, Gazzara, Cassavettes, and Falk appeared as the sole guests on ABC's The Dick Cavett Show.  This 45-minute edition was timed such because of Monday Night Football.  The end result is the raucous, out-of-control show we present below in its entirety. I think it gives you the essence of who Gazzara and his fellows truly were.

V Clip

What no twitter link? C'mon Anna.....Diana would have taken care of that...

Welcome to Cougar Town

I do get nervous anytime I see a new series, but after 10 minutes of Cougar Town, I'm hooked.

By the way, as much as I love Courtney (and she is playing a key role in my Heroes fanfic ;-)), Busy Philips is a stone fox!

Enjoy.

Finally!

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First Imus......now this...

Rosie Falls from View

By by Gina Serpe Today at 1:10 am

After one season, four public feuds, a few hundred thousand viewers and countless headlines, Rosie O'Donnell is calling it a day on daytime.

The larger than life View cohost announced on Wednesday morning's show that her first season as moderator of the femme-fueled coffee klatch would also be her last, with her tenure scheduled to end in mid-June.

"This has been an amazing experience and one I wouldn't have traded for the world," O'Donnell said. "Working with Barbara, Joy and Elisabeth has been one of the highlights of my careers, but my needs for the future just didn't dovetail with what ABC was able to offer me."

ABC confirmed that the departure was not due to O'Donnell's high-profile wars of words with the likes of Donald Trump, Kelly Ripa, Bill O'Reilly and the Chinese-American population, but rather on the network and O'Donnell's inability to come to an agreement on a one-year contract extension.

Barbara Walters, O'Donnell's boss, cohost and unwitting Trump feud participant, stressed that the split was an amicable one, despite the Koosh ball-loving TV vet's outspokenness over the past year.

"I induced Rosie to come back to television on The View even for just one year," Walters said. "She has given the program new vigor, new excitement and wonderful hours of television. I can only be grateful to her for this year.

"We will all miss Rosie on The View and hope she will be back with us often next season. She remains for me a cherished friend and colleague."

Reports of O'Donnell's exit strategy surfaced almost immediately after she first took over for Meredith Vieira ast September. Aside from only being contracted to head up the show for one year, there were persistent rumors of potential prime-time gigs (i.e., a full-time part on Nip/Tuck). And she seemed to be racking up more enemies than Star Jones did wedding freebies.

But all the controversy didn't hurt. The View's viewership has been up throughout Rosie's run, including a more than 15 percent year-to-year increase during February's all important sweeps, and the numbers continue to climb. The O'Donnell-powered show is also vying for Outstanding Talk Show and Outstanding Talk Show Hosts at Daytime Emmys on June 5.

Despite the success, O'Donnell has hinted that her View sojourn would be brief. In comments on her punctuation-averse blog, she admitted she was having difficulty making the transition from solo host to one of four opinionated personalities.

As recently as Tuesday, O'Donnell hinted that the end was nigh in a video blog posted to rosie.com, saying, seemingly out of nowhere while answering viewer queries: "Listen, the blog's gonna continue. Remember that. It's not going away."

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times said that an announcement on O'Donnell's future was imminent, after a reporter overheard O'Donnell field a question about her future on the show with an audience member.

When asked whether she would continue airing her grievances, and interviewing celebs, on the morning staple, O'Donnell reportedly told the audience member, "I don't know. We're going to have a family meeting at the end of May to see what's going on, and every kid gets a vote."

Apparently, the vote took place a little sooner than expected.

ABC said it has no current plans to name a new cohost.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news_print;_ylt=AuPi0QE3g7T3qu3nDVrwIqmGo9EF?id=urn:newsml:tv.eonline.com:20070425:c68183374d06_4e54_8176_512bb53137a1__ER:1

And you say I am paranoid.