Category — Television

The idea for “The Price is Right” came to the late Bob Stewart “while standing in front of a store window in Manhattan in 1955,” reports Dennis Hevesi in the New York Times (5/7/12). His fellow window shoppers were guessing at how much the furniture in the window cost and the idea just “popped into his head.” At least that’s one version of the story. According to Stephen Miller in The Wall Street Journal (5/8/12), Bob “got the idea for ‘The Price is Right’ while watching a storekeeper in New York, who attracted a crowd by selling souvenirs through an auction instead of using set prices.”

Either way, the show became a hit when it aired in 1956 and “is still on the air for an hour each weekday on CBS,” notes Dennis. Contestants try to “guess the price of an item — a boat, a refrigerator, the cost of house cleaning for a year. The contestant who comes closest without exceeding the actual price won.” Bob got the idea for another hit game show, “To Tell The Truth,” after walking into a crowded elevator and wondering about the occupations of his fellow travelers. The resulting game involved “three people, all claiming to be the same person, trying to befuddle a panel of four celebrities.”

Bob’s other big hits included “Password” and “The $10,000 Pyramid,” originally starring Dick Clark. Bob explained that all his shows were essentially about communication. “Once you cause somebody at home to talk to the set aloud, even by himself or herself, then you’ve got a good game show, he once said. “You want them to say, ‘It’s number 2! It’s number 2! It’s number 2!’ before the moment of truth comes out.” Or, as he confided to the Washington Post in 1978: “By the time they find out that what they are watching is crap, they’ve already watched it.” Bob Stewart was 91 when he died last week in Los Angeles.

Writer-director and comic-book geek Kevin Smith has bought himself a comic-book shop and is making a television show out of it, reports Dave Itzkoff in the New York Times (2/5/12). Kevin’s “filmmaking career took off with the 1994 release of Clerks,” which, like a later film, Mallrats, “mocked the anonymous and dehumanizing aspects of service-industry professionals.” Kevin says that Clerks cost just $27,575 to make, so when he was able to snag Comicology, a comic-book shop in Red Bank, NJ, for $30,000, he jumped on it.

Kevin figured that was only about $2,500 more than he had spent on Clerks and he could have his best comic-book-geek friend, Walt Flanagan run it. Ever since Clerks, “he began thinking of ways to pay back the friends who inspired his movies.” He re-named the store Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash (after characters in his films), and turned it into a combination “mini-museum” of his film career, a hangout for regulars, “a place for staff members to record podcasts; and a site for poker games … it is also, occasionally, a place where business is transacted.”

Most recently, it has become the “subject of an AMC reality series, Comic Book Men, which, “at heart is a celebration of the deeply particular personalities involved when geeky merchandise changes hands.” As Kevin explains: “Both the purchaser and the seller are very interested in the item. If you go to a grocery store, whoever checks you out ain’t necessarily interested in the Cocoa Puffs.” Or as Walt Flanagan observes, “I don’t know if there’s many memories to be had of typing into a search engine, looking for this special book, as opposed to finding it in some hole-in-the-wall store you never were before.”

"The fastest-growing and wealthiest segment of the population has been ignored or forgotten by Hollywood’s broadcast and cable networks," reports Joe Flint in the Los Angeles Times (1/22/12). That segment would be "senior citizens," and John Erickson hopes to change their world with "a cable channel designed for the AARP-adjacent." John "made his fortune building large retirement communities," and got the idea for a seniors-specific television after building TV studios for residents and noticing how engaged they became in programming their own television station.

"What amazed me was the interest level of the residents in their own lives and how much attention they paid to this little television channel," he says. And so he developed RLTV (originally Retirement Living TV but now known as Re-define Life TV) and "bought a block of afternoon time on a few Comcast systems in the Northeast," as well as time on DirecTV along with some other distributors. He’s also recruited some familiar former network-television stars such as Joan Lunden (61) and Sam Donaldson (77) as well as Florence Hendersen (also 77!) to host shows.

Most of RLTV’s programming focused on healthcare, finance, politics and travel, although programming chief Elliot Jacobson hopes to launch a boomer version of American Idol soon, too. "It’s important for us to be advocates for the demographic we serve," he says. Senior power "can’t be ignored. According to the 2010 census, there are more than 99 million Americans older than 50. The over-50s are also one of the fastest growing groups on Facebook … And they have money. The AARP, citing information from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey, says adults over 50 spent $2.7 trillion on consumer goods in 2010."

Dane Boedigheimer has this fruity idea that he can bypass Hollywood on the way to the television screen, reports Brooks Barnes in the New York Times (10/3/11). Dane is the seed of the YouTube sensation otherwise known as the Annoying Orange, a series of short animations that have peeled off "more than 800 million views on YouTube" over the past two years. He’s already planted this pop-culture success in licensed merchandise that will go on sale at Toys R Us, Radio Shack and JC Penney this Christmas. Dane would also like to see the fruits of his labor on television, but Hollywood isn’t biting.

"The reaction is always, ‘I see why it resonates in a bite-sized way on the web, but how is this a full-blown TV show?’" says Dan Weinstein of the Collective, the management company for the Annoying Orange. Some say it’s hard to translate "short, unpolished bursts … into the kind of longer-form content that flows through Hollywood’s traditional piping." Others say Hollywood wastes too much time and money and generally squeezes the juice out of good ideas: "The entertainment industry’s senior ranks are still populated with people who, deep down, believe that the audience does not tell them what it wants; they tell the audience."

Usually, Hollywood takes about two years and a million dollars to create a pilot. So, Dane and the Collective, are making their own damn pilot, at a cost of "a few hundred thousand dollars" and then shopping it to the networks themselves. The target audience is kids 6-12. The shows are full of puns and sophomoric humor and "typically showcase a guest food getting chopped to bits." Dane says he hopes the pilot will prove that the Annoying Orange can keep its "attitude and charm" while going for a bigger audience. "People respond because it’s simple and silly," he says. "That, and people like to see talking food get hacked in half. Everybody needs a good kersplat once in a while."

Television is alive and well for advertisers who innovate and collaborate. By Cindy Jolicoeur. (more)

"Odd jobs always seem to find me," says Bobbie Battista, the former CNN news anchor, now with the Onion News Network, reports Tim Arango in the New York Times (6/22/09). It’s been eight years since Bobbie left CNN and she admits she hesitated to sign on with ONN, "the online video arm of The Onion, the satirical newspaper." She explains: "It occurred to me that some would say, ‘Oh, how the mighty have fallen … I thought about that, but I said, ‘Hey, why not?" The thing is that what passes for news on CNN is often not all that different from the parodies on ONN.

"You watch the news today and you don’t know what is real," says Bobbie. "When I was doing newscasts at CNN, people would come up to me and say, ‘That story can’t be real.’ Now the lines are really getting blurred." She makes her point by citing a recent segment on CNN about "lingerie football" (video). Says Bobbie, "My mouth was hanging open. How does this belong on the news?" So, it’s not much of a stretch when Bobbie deadpans an ONN story about "Despondex, a drug for those who are too happy," for instance, "a huge step forward in the battle against exuberance." (video)

Sometimes viewers don’t realize it’s a joke. A story headlined, "Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation With Wish for Unlimited Wishes," resulted in a fundraising spike for the foundation (video). For Bobbie, the biggest hurdle was reading the stories "with seriousness and gravity," and resisting an impulse to be sarcastic. ONN executive producer Will Graham says an earnest delivery is essential: "The more plausible it is, the funnier it is," he says, adding, "At this point it’s like MSNBC, Fox and CNN are so ridiculous themselves, we just want to be on the other side of that."

For Howard Zieff, success in advertising was all about finding the right faces, reports Dennis Hevisi in the New York Times (2/25/09). Howard, who died about a week ago, made his name by casting "common folk, not the stereotypically attractive." His heyday was the 1960s and 1970s, a time when, as he explained, "Everyone was blond and perfectly proportioned; I didn’t want that." In one of his most famous efforts, the "You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye," campaign, featured an "American Indian, a Chinese man and a black child."

Howard says he "saw the Indian on the street; he was an engineer for the New York Central … The Chinese guy worked at a restaurant near my Midtown Manhattan office, and the kid we found in Harlem. They all had great faces, interesting faces, expressive faces." He also admitted, "Look, for the Levy’s ad, I shot many photos that failed. They weren’t the kinds of faces that gathered you up when you went on the subway. That’s what I wanted, faces that gathered you up." Actually, Howard’s most famous commercial was his 1970 spot for Alka Seltzer.

In that spot, the actor repeatedly flubs his line, "Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball," requiring him to "chomp down on meatball after meatball" (link). Howard also excelled in the movie-making business, most notably, Private Benjamin, a 1980 film starring "Goldie Hawn as a suburban princess who forsakes a mansion with a live-in maid to find life’s meaning in the Army." As Vincent Canby noted, in a New York Times review, Howard put a similar sensibility to work: "Mr. Zieff demonstrates great skill in keeping gags aloft and in finding new ways by which to free the laughs trapped inside old routines …" ~ Tim Manners, editor.

“They’re like little gifts with purchase, and I love them,” says Nicole Bugna-Doyle, commenting on the brief messages writer Chuck Lorre posts following each episode of his hit sitcoms, reports Katherine Rosman in the Wall Street Journal (5/14/08). Chuck’s sitcoms are “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory,” and his messages are delivered in “what many in the industry call ‘vanity cards’ — an image flashed on the screen at the end of a TV show.” Vanity cards typically “just identify a show’s creator or production company.” But Chuck uses his card to publish personal essays of up to 200 words, which you can catch on CBS, Monday nights at 8:29 p.m. and 9:29 p.m., Eastern.

Sometimes Chuck vents about network executives, as in: “I received a phone call from a mid-level CBS exec who began the conversation by saying he wanted to give me a head’s up. Having been in this business a while I knew ‘head’s up’ is code for ‘we’ve decided to s—— you.’” Then there was the vanity card he wrote hours before marrying his second wife: “I’m riddled with fear to the point of mind-numbing disassociation.” In other cases, Chuck simply comments on society in general: “Don’t hug men while shaking their hand … The shake/hug (shug?) is probably something Roman guys did when their empire was in decline.”

Chuck has been posting these messages since 1997, starting with “Dharma & Greg,” with his early offerings mainly featuring “existential wonderings and explanations of his personal beliefs.” He has since “written more than 200 cards,” (archives here) a total of four of which have been censored (including this reference to bad behavior by a Catholic priest). Most of the messages are too long to be read in the two-seconds afforded to vanity cards, but Chuck’s fans simply record them and hit the pause button (naturally there’s a Facebook group here dedicated to this). Says Chuck: “These vanity cards have tracked couple of nervous breakdowns, a divorce … You can watch my psyche collapse, rebuild itself and collapse again.” ~ Tim Manners, editor