The Late "Late Show"

CBS canceled Stephen Colbert.

Colbert, the host of "The Late Show," will no longer deliver his witty, barbed comments about Donald Trump on late-night television.  It's not just Colbert that's going off the air; "The Late Show" is ending completely once Colbert is gone.

Almost as soon as the news came down, many observers quickly accused CBS, which infamously settled with Trump over a bogus lawsuit involving Kamala Harris's "60 Minutes" interview before its parent company completed a lucrative merger, of bending the knee to Trump to prevent him from further trying to extort the network by canceling Colbert.  Just like when CBS axed "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" in 1969 to appease President Richard Nixon, who was always offended by les freres Smothers' jokes about him and their opposition to the war in Vietnam.  "We weren't canceled," the late Tom Smothers said, "we were fired!"  

Good point - if it were true.  But the actual truth is that CBS's continued endeavor in late-night programming was a drain on the network.  Colbert's ratings, as MSNBC host-turned-podcaster Keith Olbermann pointed out, had been in decline for years and the show was generating less revenue for CBS as more young people - the demographic most advertisers aim at - were tuning out and opting for streaming and the like.  Given that, it's only a matter of time before the two Jimmys - Fallon at NBC and Kimmel at ABC - follow suit.

Besides, if Colbert were being canceled because of Trump, why is he being allowed to continue on TV until his contract expires - in May 2026?  If Colbert is being given ten months to say anything he wants to about Trump, then the idea of him getting fired for making fun of Trump doesn't hold water.

Some reporters do believe this has to do with Trump.  Jonathan Alter told Al Franken on Franken's podcast that he personally believes Colbert is being let go because he is constantly making fun of Trump and the MAGA movement. What Alter, a friend of Colbert's and like Colbert a resident of Montclair, New Jersey, did not mention was that his (Alter's) wife is a booking agent for Colbert's show. 

So much for full disclosure.

Stephen Colbert isn't really going anywhere.  This time next year, he'll likely have a podcast of his own in which he'll continue to ridicule Trump.  Meanwhile, CBS will for the first time since 1993 have no late-night programming at 11:35 PM Eastern, freeing the local CBS stations to go back to airing sports-extra report shows or maybe some old movies.  Or maybe CBS will bring back older reruns of current shows that haven't had any earlier episodes syndicated yet, a practice both CBS and ABC employed back in the seventies when Johnny Carson was at his peak.  I have no idea what will happen to the Ed Sullivan Theater, but chances are CBS will sell it to some young hotshot who doesn't know who Ed Sullivan was and who will likely convert it into a sports bar.

A Source Run Dry

Chris Licht, who took over from Jeff Zucker at CNN after the creation of the Warner Brothers Discovery media company promised big changes for the cable news channel, and he is starting with, of all people, Brian Stelter.

CNN is canceling Stelter's program "Reliable Sources," which has been on the air since 1992 and which Stelter has hosted since 2013.  Stelter himself is leaving the channel.  Airing on Sundays at 11 AM Eastern, "Reliable Sources" has long been required viewing for anyone eyeing or pursuing a media career or just wanting to know what goes into reporting a story and presenting it in today's fragmented media.  Many of Stelter's observations of the news media have been tough but fair, and he has complimented them for their work as well as critiqued it.  But this self-analysis of his own profession apparently tended to look like navel-gazing to Stelter's new and soon-to-be former bosses, and so Licht has made "Reliable Sources" his first casualty following the termination of CNN+, with many more to come.  

Some folks are afraid that Licht's agenda could weaken CNN's news gathering, while others fear that he may be trying to please some of Warner Brothers Discovery's more Republican-friendly investors and make CNN stand for the Conservative News Network.  Whatever the reason for this decision, the loss of "Reliable Sources" is a major blow toward anyone who appreciates an incisive look at the media and understanding the "story behind the story."  It's as if the mainstream media don't want anyone to know how a story is framed and how biases seep in.  Because what John Mayer once said in one of his songs several years ago - when Big Media own the information, they can bend it all they want.  

I'm going to miss Stelter for his excellent media analysis.  I wouldn't worry too much about the fact that he won't be around anymore to call Fox News out on their misleading and untrue propaganda masquerading as news and commentary. if only because other CNN personalities and virtually everyone at MSNBC will be doing the same.  Still, this loss is comparable to Eric Sevareid's retirement from CBS and Soledad O'Brien's dismissal from CNN.   It leaves a big hole in its wake.   

Stelter's last broadcast on CNN is today.    

Ordinary Show

After the TV drama series Parenthood" ended its run on NBC in 2015, "This Is Us," about to end its own run on NBC after six satisfying seasons - pretty much became the new "Parenthood."  When "Ordinary Joe," an NBC drama series showing a character named Joe Kimbreau and how his life can take three different paths based on the choice he makes after he graduates from college, debuted in the fall of 2021, some critics said it might become the next This Is Us."

The series premiere episode shows Joe at his college graduation and how his decision on how to celebrate leads to different outcomes . He can go with his family to dinner, which leads him to become a police officer like his father before him, go with his girlfriend Jenny, which leads to Joe marrying her and becoming a nurse, or go out with Amy, a fellow graduating classmate, which leads to Joe marrying her instead and becoming a successful singer-songwriter.   named Amy, which results in the two marrying and Joe becoming a successful musician. The series showed how each of these parallel lives worked out.

I used past tense in the last sentence of that paragraph for a reason; "Ordinary Joe" has been canceled.  I think I know why.  There was little drama in this drama series.   I really couldn't get into it.  It just seemed so clichéd.  One thing I noticed about this series is that, no matter which path he chose, Joe still ran into the same people he hadn't met before graduating from college.  The first episode shows Joe encountering Bobby Diaz, a New York City congressman, in all three timelines.  How is it that Joe was fated to meet the same guy no matter which life path he chose?  I'm sure that's not how fate works.  Fate brought me to meet top models from the 1980s like Nancy Donahue, but if I hadn't started a blog devoted to beautiful women like Nancy, which is how all of those women discovered me, or if I did something on the Internet other than blogging - gaming, for example - would I have still met any of those women?  I don't think so.

Anyway, enough viewers apparently agreed with me, and "Ordinary Joe" is no more.  And I'm not going to miss it, because it was nothing special. Mike Hale of the New York Times said it best: "Once you've figured out the plots . . ., you see that they're all generic dramedy setups . . .  and the triple plotting doesn't give the actors time to build real characters." 

A TV series has to have a special, unique quality to make it a success, like "This Is Us."  As for that show's impending finale, I'll cover that later.

I hope NBC at least renews "American Auto."

Auto Show Blues, Part Four

Forget the 2020 New York International Auto Show.

After postponing it from Easter Week to the week before Labor Day due to COVID-19, the organizers of the auto show have decided to just plain cancel it altogether, saying that they could not guarantee people's safety by holding the show in the middle of the pandemic despite the fact that New York and neighboring New Jersey have the virus under control.  Because who knows what it will be like at the end of August. Also, many people at the show would be from Michigan, a state that's still trying to slow the spread of the virus.  It's amazing that, apart from Hitler, nothing could stop the New York Auto Show before.  The Persian Gulf War didn't stop it.  The aftermath of 9/11 didn't stop it.  But a microscopic spiked ball of pathogen matter did.

Even without the pandemic, the 2020 New York Auto Show was still going to be a bummer.  Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen's Audi luxury brand both pulled out of the show even before the virus made the jump from China to the Western world, and BMW, having skipped the 2019 New York Auto Show, was planning to eschew the 2020 show as well.  True, Volkswagen was committed to the show, and it even planned to debut the ID.4 electric crossover in New York this year, but with Volkswagen Americanizing its lineup to cater to the ongoing monster wagon craze, I am certain that VW's display would have sucked, especially given the lack of attention given to anyone still interested in the Golf and given the fact that an all-new GTI (the base model appears to be on the chopping block for American VW dealers, a decision I'm still protesting against on my Mark 8 Golf blog) won't come out until September 2021.   

And because of the monster wagon craze, that's pretty much all you'd see at the displays from most of the domestic brands, except for pickup trucks.  The Asian brands still have hatchbacks and sedans - real cars.  And even though some of the vehicles that come out of Detroit are cars in the strictest sense of the word, let's face it.  After everything I've just said, is it really worth going to an auto show if all you're interested in is the new mid-engine Corvette?

The 2021 New York Auto Show is still on for Easter Week of next year, the same time it's always been since it moved in 1987 to the Jacob Javits Convention Center (which was turned into a COVID field hospital this past April, when the auto show would have taken place), but if going there means keeping six feet apart from people and wearing a face covering and not seeing the big German marques, I want nothing to do with it.  The pullout by Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW are an indication that the auto show isn't what it used to be, as more auto manufacturers find new, more technologically savvy ways to market their products, and big exhibitions don't matter so much, so why bother with any of that?  The pandemic accelerated an already ongoing trend against the traditional auto show, which means I'd better not look forward to going to an auto show in Geneva or Munich - both of which were on my bucket list - after the pandemic is over.  But then, so what?  The old days and old ways of international auto shows are gone.

Caught In the Devil's Bargain

The Woodstock 50 concert, scheduled for the third weekend in August 2019 at the Watkins Glen International Speedway in upstate New York, has been canceled. Thank God. This had to be one of the dumbest ideas in popular music history since Woodstock '99.

As I recall, the original Woodstock was a spontaneous, harmonious event that worked largely because of good music, good vibrations and plain luck. The concertgoers at the original 1969 festival arrived in greater numbers than the organizers could handle, but they defused the situation by making it a free concert and allowing people to camp out and chill out. And the concertgoers were in such a laid-back mood that they proved, much to the delight of Max Yasgur, whose dairy farm was employed for the festival, that they could come for three days of peace and music and have nothing but three days of peace and music. And thanks to great acts with innovative music like the Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and Richie Havens, along with plenty of marijuana, the good vibrations and good feelings were inevitable.

And how could Woodstock 50 compare to all that? I mean, the acts scheduled included Miley Cyrus, the horrible band Imagine Dragons, Chance the Rapper, and Beyoncé's husband – hardly the voices of positivity and good vibes. It would have been a perfect festival for those who like nasty hip-hop, mindless auto-tuned pop, and overblown alt-rock, but it wouldn't have been Woodstock. The Black Keys, one of the few twenty-first-century rock bands that achieve anything resembling greatness, pulled out of Woodstock 50 when it became apparent that it wasn't worth their while. Many other bands and solo artists scheduled to appear didn't even bother to publicize their planned sets there.

I sort of knew that Woodstock 50 was doomed when I saw that David Crosby would be there with his own backing band rather than with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young. I've been led to understand that Crosby urged his old groupmates to join him at Woodstock 50, but they weren't interested. Perhaps they knew that they weren't going to re-create the magic of the original Woodstock – certainly not on a racetrack (remember Altamont?).  Also, John Fogerty was scheduled to perform, but without Creedence Clearwater Revival who appeared at the original Woodstock, it would never have been the same. Santana, one of the other old-time acts booked for Woodstock 50, would likely have been the only connection to the original festival, and I have a feeling that there would have been little if any of the 1969 Santana lineup there in 2019.

The 1969 Woodstock festival worked not just because of the music but because of the hope in the future for a more peaceful and more socially and artistically involved civilization and the communal spirit that the music represented. Today, so many people are so divided over politics and popular culture that no one can find common ground anymore. You have rap fans dismissing rock fans as racist for protesting the idea that rap is music, and you have rock fans resentful over how their music is disappearing . . . and then there are country and pop fans who don't give a twit about any of that. No one can even seem to agree on what sort of future we should be striving for and what sort of country we ought to be living in. And truth be told, Woodstock wasn't such a big deal.  It was a weekend outdoor concert -like Tanglewood, but hipper.  I sometimes laugh at how people were there remember what a wonderful experience it was, even though they camped out in the mud, they couldn't hear much of the music, and they got to see legendary rock bands like Blood, Sweat & Tears, Sweetwater and Sha Na Na. Maybe if we stop memorializing historic concerts like they were as essential to our past as the adoption of the Declaration of Independence – does anyone care anymore, for example, about Jenny Lind’s U.S. concert tour in the 1850s? – we can get serious about what sort of a world and a culture we can have going forward.

Trump's Politics and Policy

Donald Trump is a masterful politician, though that doesn't make him a good policy guy.  But he's already hit the ground running with some high-profile actions as President-elect.  He helped negotiate  a deal with the air conditioning company Carrier to keep jobs in the United States - specifically, Indiana, where incoming Vice President Mike Pence is the outgoing governor.  So what if Carrier got a sweetheart tax break and will still be allowed to send some jobs abroad?  As long as it looks like he saved some jobs in the United States - and he did, after all, just not as many as people think - that's all that matters.  

Then there's his decision to cancel a Boeing contract to build new Air Force One planes, citing a $4 billion price tag and choosing to try to save the government some money.  So what if the actual contract was $170 million and his misinformation destabilized Boeing stock?  So what indeed, if even Karl Rove thought it was irresponsible for Trump to go after Boeing the way he did?    "The impulse — that we want to save the taxpayers money — that’s admirable. But this was fire, ready, aim in my opinion," Rove said.  But as long as Trump looks like he's saving taxpayers even twenty-five cents, he looks like a hero.

I actually have to give credit to Trump for appointing retried general James Mattis Secretary of Defense.  Yes, he's known as a fighting man - they call him "Mad Dog" - but he's also against torture, he supports a two-state solution to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and he backs the Iran nuclear agreement despite having been opposed to its adoption because he believes it should not be reversed now.   In addition to being a serious scholar of military history, Mattis is known to have compassion for the rank-and-file service personnel. So, yes, I give Trump credit for that.

But his appointment of Oklahoma Attorney General fossil-fuel-industry stooge Scott Pruitt to head - wait for it - the Environmental Protection Agency (!!!) wipes out that credit.  :-(    

Derailed

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has demonstrated his knack for understanding the price of everything and the value of nothing. This past Thursday, after $600 million had been spent to begin a new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River to relieve congestion in the existing 100-year-old train tunnel to Manhattan, Christie announced he was cancelling the project because cost overruns had made the price tag on the project - which he supported during the 2009 gubernatorial campaign - from less than $9 billion to about $14 billion. Christie explained that New Jersey can't spend money it does not have.

Except that the rail tunnel would create six thousand construction jobs and 45,000 permanent jobs once completed by the 2018 target date. It would also get 22,000 cars off New Jersey highways and relieve congestion in the Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and New York City. Christie also was ready to throw away $3 billion in federal money for the project, which cannot be allocated to other projects. Democrats in the New Jersey legislature and the state's two Democratic U.S. Senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, tried unsucessfully to get Christie to reconsider. Appropriately enough, it took a Republican - Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation - to get Christie to grant the project a two-week reprieve in an attempt to revive it. Some of have expressed speculation that Christie is trying to use the threat of stopping the project as a bargaining chip to renegotiate the costs.

The tunnel plan was not perfect. It does not connect commuters directly with the new Moynihan Station being built out of the old Pennsylvania Station in New York, and a planned connection to Grand Central Terminal was scuttled. But the benefits of the connection far outweighed the flaws, and Jeff Tittel, the director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, has suggested the reprieve be used to correct the plan's weaknesses.

Despite the need for new transportation infrastructure in this country, Christie's bid to cancel this rail tunnel project is likely to enhance his standing in the national Republican party as a disciplinary cost-cutter. Republicans in other parts of the country, after all, don't have to worry about commuting to New York by train. But it could also help Christie in New Jersey. First, he wouldn't have to raise any transportation taxes - least of all the gasoline tax - to pay for it. Second, most New Jerseyans wouldn't be affected by the cancellation of the project. Most New Jerseyans commute by car to suburban office parks in places like Paramus, Parsippany, Piscataway, and other godawful sprawlscapes whose names begin with the letter P. Thirdly, many New Jerseyans were unaware of the rail tunnel anyway.

Christie does not have New Jersey's interests at heart. All he cares about is saving money for himself and his rich cronies. And to think his petty, miserly agenda - which he has pushed through like the arrogant bully he is - is winning plaudits nationwide.

Jay Xed

Late word from NBC is that Jay Leno's prime time talk show has been canceled, and it will air its last show next month. Its time slot will be temporarily filled by Winter Olympics coverage from Vancouver, which will likely result in lower ratings for that slot.

Perhaps they have have some dramas to fill the 10 PM Eastern time slot after the Vancouver Games are done, but NBC still has the aftermath of this failed late-night talk show experiment to sort out. With Leno out of prime time and O'Brien in worse shape by actually still being on the air, and with everyone having acknowledging that Leno should have been left on "The Tonight Show," how does NBC right itself without doing more short-term damage?

Simple - it can't. NBC's troubles with late-night talk began, interestingly enough, with an emphasis at short-term ratings and the expense of long-term thinking. They were in a rush to drop Jay Leno in 2004 when his ratings slipped against Letterman at CBS, but when his ratings improved as it came time for him to relinquish "The Tonight Show" to O'Brien, the network bent over backwards to keep Leno from moving to ABC. They still hoped to keep Conan O'Brien and somehow thought that late-night talk overkill would be the way out of last place in the overall ratings. The damage has been so great from this experiment that, if either comedian chose to leave NBC now, he would re-enter the job market with less heat than before. How is it that ABC is owned by Disney, yet NBC is acting like a Mickey Mouse operation?

Oh yeah, the bottom line. That was actually the best part of Leno's prime time show; it was actually making money for the network, despite its low ratings, because it was so cheap to produce and air. But its poor performance with Mr. Nielsen and company affected the local news reports of the affiliates that followed Jay Leno in numerous regional markets. I'm no media economist, but, if I'm not mistaken, that makes advertising time on NBC in the 10 PM Eastern slot less valuable. in fact, some affiliates had threatened to air the local news at 10 PM Eastern / 9 PM Central and then air Leno's show afterwards, which would have made selling advertising time really difficult for the network.

The idea now is to move Leno to 11:35 Eastern for a half-hour show, followed by O'Brien at 12:05 AM Eastern, with Jimmy Fallon remaining at "Late Night." This is supposedly to keep both Leno and O'Brien and avoid bruised egos, but does NBC do that when they're halving the running times of both the Leno and O'Brien shows? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the television equivalent of "troubled assets."