The Massachusetts SpyVolume CCXXXVI, Number 182 October 11, 2007 

That was entertainment!

NBC BREAKS
FROM ITS PAST

By Roscoe Arbuckle
Entertainment Editor
with Nollie Tangere '03 in Old Sludgebury, Mass.

BEAUTIFUL DOWNTOWN BURBANK, Cal. – NBC's decision to close its legendary Burbank studios has overshadowed an even more decisive break from the network's past made official this week.

As a result of cost pressures imposed by its stagnating parent, General Electric, and what it perceives as shifts in popular tastes, NBC has announced that it will not only abandon its Burbank facility, it will abandon all efforts to provide entertainment by the end of the decade, in favor of cheaper "reality" programming.

While some network watchers were shocked by the decision, announced today by network executives staking out the Los Angeles Family and Criminal Courts hoping to fill airtime by taping drug-addled partly-dressed slaggers crawling out of their cars, other note that the decision should in fact have not come as a surprise.

Art Fern and the Matinee LadySome date NBC's decision to abandon its historic function from the last sign-off of "Tea-Time Movie" in 1992

These long-time media watchers note that NBC's decision to withdraw from its historic mission of providing entertainment dates at least to the retirement of Johnny Carson in 1992 and his replacement by the eager if rarely funny Jay Leno. The trend, they add, will reach its logical culmination in 2009 when Leno in turn is replaced by the gratingly untalented and unfunny Conan O'Brien. 

They also note that NBC's other late-night standby, "Saturday Night Live," ceased to entertain in 1989, but is nonetheless still on the network schedule.

Long time tube rats who retain fond memories of entertaining NBC shows such as "Hill Street Blues," "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,"  and "ER" [Isn't that one still on? – Copy Ed.] will no doubt mourn the passing of entertainment from the Peacock Network.

Fortunately, until the phase-out is complete, entertainment fans will be able to enjoy the remaining shards of amusing NBC television, such as "The Office" and "30 Rock."

NBC executives have outlined what the network's prime time schedule will look like once the decision to drop entertainment has been fully implemented. They point to their exciting slate of reality shows in development, including "America's Next Great Tattoo Artist," "Who Wants to Cook for Donald Trump?" and "The Bachelor – O.J. Simpson."

They also promise to add innovative but at the same time cost-effective sports programming to the web's schedule, including "Monday Night Dogfight with Michael Vick," "Battle of the Disgraced Steroid-Gulping Athletes," featuring Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, and "Extreme Massacre – Baghdad Edition," produced by Blackwater Television.

NBC's new talentNBC has vowed to replace by 2009 its remaining entertaining shows like "The Office" with reality crap in development, including "America's Next Great Tattoo Artist"

Nor will NBC neglect daytime in its effort to scrub its entire schedule of entertainment.  The suits said that by 2009, "Today" would run for nine hours, with at least two hours a day devoted to nonexistent "advances" in breast cancer treatment, worthless diet and health "tips," sponsor-provided "fashions," the wit and wisdom of Al Roker and many other entertainment-free features.

Reaction to NBC's decision to drop entertainment was mixed.  Some viewers, based on NBC's current prime time lineup, had assumed that the decision had been made several years ago and had long ago stopped looking to NBC for entertainment. "Hey, ever since I got the premium cable all I watch is Cinemax," said studley but untrustworthy Old Sludgebury fireman Jimmy Burke. "Kind of reminds me of that weekend we spent at Foxwoods if you know what I mean, Nollie?" [When is she going to get over this guy? – Ed.]

Others told the Spy they would miss the simple pleasure of finding something entertaining to watch on NBC. "I still miss those handsome boys and their dad riding their horses in living color," recalled Mrs. Kathleen Burke. "And I always wondered how they got that fire to burn backwards."

Her husband, James T. Burke, nine-term mayor of Old Sludgebury, asked: "How come they don't have that Karnak guy on anymore? That to me was funny."

HELL, IT COULDN'T SUCK ANY WORSE THAN JOHN FROM CINCINNATI 



Jackie Hoffman just wants to be Jackie Hoffman.

But with a movie option. Or a television series. Or at least an HBO special, for crying out loud.. . . .

For now, though, New York is keeping Ms. Hoffman busy. Her one-woman show, “Jackie With a Z,” opened in February at Joe’s Pub and has been extended most recently for two additional nights, April 8 and 15. She is joining three other female comics in “The J.A.P. Show, Jewish American Princesses of Comedy,” which opens April 18 at the Actors’ Temple. And she will play Calliope, muse of epic poetry, in the musical “Xanadu,” opening on Broadway this summer.

At its most chaotic, this convergence means “The J.A.P Show” at nights at the synagogue-cum- theater, on top of six-day-a-week “Xanadu” rehearsals, all on top of those extra Joe’s Pub shows.

“Nutzoid,” she said.

And Ms. Hoffman knows from nutzoid. As she sings in “Jackie With a Z,” tightly sheathed in a black-sequined bodice-turned-skirt, “I almost had cancer.”

She didn’t. She did, however, have a benign tumor, and in December — right in the middle of another show, “Regrets Only, ” at the Manhattan Theater Club — she went in for a hysterectomy at age 46.

“I said to the doctor: ‘But I’m in a play! I’m in a play!’ ” Ms. Hoffman said, slumping backward and imitating her doctor’s shocked response. “He stared at me like I was nuts.”

She was back in three weeks, with a cot backstage for whenever she wasn’t singing or talking.

“That hospital experience was an absolute blessing,” Ms. Hoffman said. “And everybody said the same thing: ‘You’re going to get material out of this, you’re going to get at least a half-hour.’ That’s what I told myself. It was like, ‘If I don’t get a show out of this ... .’ ”

“Jackie With a Z” soon followed, and “the big C,” as Ms. Hoffman calls cancer, factors heavily into her routine of singing, joking, moaning, groaning, stomping and clomping. .  . .

In her current show Ms. Hoffman unleashes her cheerful rancor on the Joe’s Pub crowd, imitating everyone from a toddler to a self-satisfied Upper West Sider. The performance ends with Ms. Hoffman and her uterus singing a duet.

“Now watch,” she tells the audience. “Someone from HBO will be here, and my uterus will get a series.”

–  The New York Times, March 28, 2007 via nytimes.com.