Tonight is the last “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Although he’s not leaving our screens forever — he’ll be on in a new show at 10 p.m. this fall — I thought I would watch the finale and write a mini-review.
It won’t be available until early Saturday, but if you have any thoughts, please feel free to leave them here.
Personally, this will be the first Jay Leno show I’ve watched all the way through in about five years (I last watched all the way through when the Watersmeet Nimrod basketball team was on — in 1994). I just never thought “Tonight Show” was appointment viewing (especially when I have primetime shows stacked up on my TiVo).
What do you think?
Tag: TV
Everybody’s talking about … ‘Supertrain’?
In what is probably one of the year’s biggest headscratchers, I’ve noticed a number of bloggers writing about the failed 1970s NBC TV series called “Supertrain.”
Haven’t heard of this “Love Boat” on rails? Neither did I, until I stumbled upon a post from sitcom writer Ken Levine. Here’s how he described it:
Television at its worst but cheese at its very best.
This landmark example of how not to create a TV show was also mentioned by prominent blogger Jason Kotke and The Infrastructurist.
I’ve seen the first 10 minutes of the pilot and it’s pretty bad. I broke out laughing during the teaser with the train company’s leader launching the Supertrain concept. It wasn’t the line that the train would be powered by an “atom powered steam turbine machine” that cracked me up. It was the leader’s “reassuring” response to a critic’s charge that the train was a huge gamble that could ruin the company.
“So you think it’s a gamble, do you? Well, gentlemen … Since I can count my remaining years on the fingers of one hand, from my point of view, it’s not much of a gamble at all.”
How is that supposed to be reassuring in any way?
Other than the fact that the pilot is exquisitely cringeworthy (Steve Lawrence gets top billing), I have no idea why it’s still getting mentioned 30 years after the show went off the rails. Perhaps discussions of creating regional high-speed rail networks has sparked some fond memories of bad television. It also might be better than most of NBC’s fall schedule, but I’m hoping not.
Here’s the first 10 minutes of the pilot. The remaining nine segments are on the Infrastructurist blog.
Photo: NBC publicity still originally provided to J. Morrissey and hosted on the NBC Supertrain Web site.
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More on the “New York” Olympics
As I noted earlier, NBC is having announcers in New York do the call on events happening half a world away. I’m not the only that’s noticed, The New York Times did a story titled “New York-Based Crews Just Call It as They See It” looking inside the Peacock’s New York broadcasting center — set up on the stages of “Saturday Night Live.”
It’s an interesting story that answered a lot of questions I had about the New York operation, including the number of sports being broadcast in this fashion (13) and the reason why they did it (because NBC agreed to send fewer people to the Games).
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Live from New York … it’s the Beijing Olympics
Watching the overnight, live coverage of the Olympics on USA Network has been interesting. One huge thing caught my eye, or rather my ear. When equestrian dressage and soccer started, the NBC announcers took care to note that they were watching the action “along with the audience” from the NBC studios in New York.
It struck me as odd that at least two live events would be called out of a broadcasting booth 6,800 miles away. I wonder how many events will be aired like this.
Part of me thinks its a little ridiculous. If these announcers are “watching along with the audience,” why have professionals do the call at all? Wouldn’t an equestrian enthusiast perhaps have an equal chance to provide some interesting insights to a general audience? Especially when I’m fairly sure they spend a considerable amount of time trying to explain their sport to people.
Still, I can think of a couple possible reasons why they would do this. It might be the best way to cover some of the less-mainstream events when the alternative is to not cover them at all. I can scarcely imagine how much NBC is paying to produce its coverage when the license fees cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe not flying some staff to China helps save costs.
I’m sure there are a few dirty secrets about airing a huge sporting competition halfway around the globe. Sometimes the announcers don’t record their play-by-play until after an event ends when they know it’s going to air later on tape. Also having broadcasters do a play-by-play far removed from the playing pitch is a trick that goes back to the days when there was just radio.
Ultimately, I guess it’s a good thing that they’re noting that the announcers aren’t on-site. Although the Internet and other near-instantaneous media have their advantages, I think someone who’s actually present has a unique perspective that a broadcast booth in Rockefeller Center can’t match.
The live Games – Part of me really wants to get into badminton and equestrian dressage, but the tired, up-since-9-a.m. part of me just wants to go to bed. Still, kudos to Katerina Emmons of Croatia for winning the first gold of these games for an air rifle event. She won shortly after the West Coast airing of the Opening Ceremonies ended.
The Opening Ceremonies – I didn’t get a chance to watch much of the ceremony while I was at a house party. There were some pretty rabid Oakland Raiders fans who wanted to watch a pre-season game instead of a show recorded 15 hours ago.
One thing stood out as I watched Yao Ming and Lin Hao, his young companion who survived the Sichuan earthquake. Lin Hao’s Chinese flag was upside down, which is either a sign of protest or distress in the United States (it most often generates ire when it’s flown in protest). Repeated displays of such an image stood out in what was otherwise a carefully and beautifully choreographed event.
The glances that I saw of the 4.5-hour event were pretty spectacular and I managed to see the climatic cauldron lighting. Good thing there’s a repeat of this taped event airing right now so I can catch up.
Online – Have I mentioned that you can keep up with the Games with ChicoER.com’s Olympics section? I’m just saying. 😉
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Major bummer
When I lived in Michigan, I felt like I was on a different planet — far away from a “big city.” Chicago was 10 hours away and it took 14 hours to drive through Michigan. It was pretty isolated.
Moving to Chico was a huge step up in some ways. San Francisco was three hours away. Sacramento was practically next door 90 minutes away.
I sort of felt that isolation last week. My spirits were raised when TV Guide announced that they had some passes to see “Battlestar Galactica” on the big screen. The theater company hosting the screening has theaters in San Francisco.
Much to my dismay, the passes were only going to be available in six cities, and San Francisco wasn’t going to be one of them. And TV Guide was only going to give away two sets of passes in each city.
Needless to say, my balloon was burst. Ultimately, it’s not a big deal, but it would’ve been nice to see Battlestar on the big screen.
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BSG is on Friday – Time to party
My user name is “Galactican” and yet I’ve done next to nothing about my fav show “Battlestar Galactica.” Well, no more. Here’s a bulletin because I’m sorta hosting a party on Friday.
– Season 3 Premiere is Friday night on Sci Fi. The first act is already online. It is a great piece of television and definitely makes me want to see the whole episode.
– If you want to see if there’s a Friday viewing party in your area, check out FrakParty.com. Someone set up a party in Chico.
– The preseason “Resistance” web episodes concludes today at Sci Fi’s Web site. For short 3-minute episodes, they were pretty good once the story got underway.
If you haven’t given the show a chance, I highly recommend you do. It’s a pretty dramatic show following human refugees fleeing the destroyers of their homes. There are some sci-fi elements, but it’s a pretty good, yet grim, drama.
You can get caught up with Sci Fi’s Story So Far primer. There are 3- and 42-minute video recaps of the show to this point.
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Date with history
I’m bursting with excitement about my previous hometown’s pending television date. For 3.5 years, I worked in Houghton, Mich. in the rural Upper Peninsula. One of the highlights of my time there was the pleasure of taking part in the 100th anniversary of the birth of professional ice hockey in the town.
On Sunday, Canadian TV viewers can see Houghton’s role in the evolution of a sport beloved by millions. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. will air the first two parts of the ten-part Hockey: A People’s History. The second episode, “The Money Game” details how a game previously dominated by amateurs transformed into a sport where athletes are paid.
Here’s part of the blurb from the CBC site:
Pro hockey is born in the heart of Michigan’s mining country, while heavy-handed amateur bosses drive Canada’s top talent south of the border.
The Daily Mining Gazette, my former newspaper, has the story.
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False advertising
My frakking username is “Galatican” but I haven’t posted one lick of BSG commentary since the second half of Season Two started. Is that false advertising or something else?
I just haven’t felt the great urge to write about BSG on this space, although maybe I should. Still, there’s other things I could write about. I don’t know, I never seem to capitalize on these sorts of sites.
OTOH, my real blog is hopping compared to this one. A whole whopping seven posts in the last 30 days.
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Tube Talk: Super show
I was going to take off after the Big Game ended, but ABC started airing “Grey’s Anatomy” pretty quickly. I hadn’t seen the show since the first episode left me uninterested. Although I was only vaguely familar with the show or its characters, tonight’s episode drew me in.
After opening with a rather pedestrian woman feeling down after a romantic situation ended badly, the show was off to the races. There were a dozen plot threads running almost to the point of implausabilty (for example, the cranky, pregnant head doctor in labor while her husband is going through brain surgery after an accident en route to the hospital), but darn if it wasn’t good TV with a engaging mix of comedic and dramatic moments.
Things were moving so fast, I told my friend that it was a two-part episode to minimize the bummage factor when the inevitable cliffhanger came. And it was a doozy — finding one of the main characters holding an embedded explosive in place in a victim’s body.
I didn’t say it to Joel at the time, but I really liked the bright image from his HD TV. True, the local ABC affillate wasn’t airing an HDTV feed, but the broadcast via Dish looked pretty clear. I must definitely mention this when I see him again. I’d be very interested to see how BSG looks when it airs on the NBC Universal HD channel.
OTOH, the remote for the DISH DVR looked like a control panel on a 737. There’s a ton of buttons and I still don’t know what a third of them do.
And lastly, I probably shouldn’t have been talking so much during the broadcast. People didn’t seem annoyed, but it’s probably a little rude and annoying. Also, my hit-to-noise ratio was probably a little low (although there was one good laugh somewhere).
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Destroying my belief system
Pluming the depths of MySpace, I rediscovered “The Gleib” — aka Ben Gleib (name seems shorter than I remember from college). Anyway, Gleib is a comedian and is responsible of dispelling two beliefs that I’ve held for a while — that Screech from “Saved by the Bell” is funny and that dating shows are real. Sadly, Screech (Dustin Diamond) was dreadful live a few years back and “Blind Date” seems capable of pulling fast ones over its audience. More on my random thoughts on TV and music, here.
Grrr, why is MySpace’s music utility so lame? Where can I mark that I’m listening to the deleted tracks from The Blues Brothers soundtrack — specifically their cover of Johnny Horton’s “Sink the Bismark”? (BTW, you can download the songs from The Digital Bits’ review of the movie). It’s true that they recently rediscovered the missing tracks (they were on a reel deleted from the final cut of the film), but there’s no Blues Brothers listing at all. It’s crazy lame (just like MySpace eating this post). I don’t think Tom is truly my friend. 🙁
