Jay Leno and the Golden Age of Mediocrity

Excuse me, but didn't you used to be Jay Leno?

You’d probably question the motives of an architect who forever groused about the high cost of building materials, and be suspicious of a surgeon who constantly worries out loud about the expense of all those darned gauze pads. Therefore, you need to wonder why NBC, the television network, has taken to carping about the exorbitant investment incurred in order to broadcast quality television programs.

Let me disclose, before we go any further, that I own shares in the General Electric Company, which operates NBC — although this is nothing to brag about, believe me. As a stakeholder, whose stake is currently worth quite a few drachmas less than I originally paid, I naturally support management’s efforts to improve shareholder value, if that is the appropriate phrase to use when you actually mean, “Give me back my god-damned money, you imbeciles.”

The network’s programing gurus determined that the guru-like move was to stop trying to fill the 10 p.m. slot with shows that no one wants to watch, and, by the way, cost an arm and a leg to produce. They wondered: Why not just show a test-pattern? Why not sell the hour to the Hair Club for Men?

Then some better-grounded executive ejaculated, no, no, we can’t do that, but why not move Jay Leno’s Tonight Show up to 10, and put that Conan guy in Leno’s old spot? Brilliant, the management team exclaimed.

Bud Collier: Never ashamed to pay you to watch his TV program

Apprised of these developments, and determined to keep an eye on my investment, I tuned to the Leno program during its first week in the new time, and found it encouraging in its flagrant mediocrity. It was so dreary, I deduced, that it’s going to drive viewers to other, more compelling, entertainment options: nightly re-runs of Beat the Clock shown on the Bud Collier Channel, or viewing pornography on the Internet, or staring at a dripping faucet, or perhaps reading a library book of modern poetry published in the original Italian. Well, forget the last one.

Faced with this outcome, GE would be bound to sell NBC to Rupert Murdoch, or some other pigeon, and perhaps several of the many billions that will change hands may trickle down in the form of a shareholder dividend. (Yes, I know: highly unlikely that GE’s Jeffrey Immelt would let loose of any portion of the mazuma, but a fellow can dream, right?)

Moving Leno to ten-oh is one of those classically dumb corporate decisions that will rank up there with Ford’s exploding Pinto and Schlitz’s additive-enhanced beer. I can’t remember how your charming host used to come across when he was regularly seen around midnight — but, to paraphrase the old Mickey Gilley song, he don’t get any prettier when you’re fully aware that closing time has been extended by an hour-and-a-half.

In truth, it’s just plain unsettling to watch Leno anxiously pitching his repertoire of lame topical jokes, effusively greeting the predictable queue of has-been actors promoting their tired old projects, and basking in the over-rehearsed adoration of his studio audience of casually-turned-out mongoloids. There are some zany stunts larded in, as well, but it’s best to pretend these didn’t occur.

To say something positive, however, the spectacle shows every sign of having been put together on the cheap — which, after all, was the founding premise.

Having grown up watching a fair bit of Canadian television, I’m familiar with the visual symptoms of this rigid adherence to budget, as well as the underlying logic, which is: (1) “Why use two cameras, if you can get away with one?”; and (2) “Where does it say you need three musicians for a trio? Fire that sax player.”

If you’re accustomed to the usual showbiz aggrandisement, this will seem unorthodox. We’re used to generations of promoters inflating the value of their attractions in order to impress the yokels, from Sam Phillips introducing Elvis, Jerry Lee, Johnny and Carl Lee as his Million Dollar Quartet, or George Hamid calling his Atlantic City amusement joint the Million Dollar Pier. But even adjusting for decades of hyper-inflation, NBC’s Leno hour seems like The Seven Hundred Dollar Talk Show, and that would probably include the budget for the store-brand cookies and fruit punch served nightly in the Green Room.

Since NBC seems determined to emulate a Canadian standard of mediocrity in its daily schedule, the broadcasting colossus may want to import another tactic from their media colleagues north of the border. Canadians, much like citizens of other nations, haven’t been spending as much time as previously watching the listless nonsense on commercial television. This resulted in lower ad revenues — an obvious problem for Canada’s TV networks — so the station owners did what they’ve always done, and went to the national capital and demanded that suckers’ money be used to support their failing for-profit ventures. The federal broadcasting regulator obligingly sent a platoon of mid-level bureaucrats outdoors to help load bags of funds into the trunks of waiting limousines.

I’m reasonably certain that the Obama administration would respond similarly, if asked politely. Think this through: When, inevitably, NBC is driven out of business through the Leno misstep, and forced to hand over the keys to the studio to Rupert Murdoch, what will follow? Roger Ailes will run the NBC News department, Glenn Beck will take over the Leno slot, and President Obama will see his war against Fox television being fought on two fronts. Who needs that? Better to simply provide a generous federal subsidy to the TV networks, same as to the banks and auto industry.

That would be my suggestion, which I offer not as a GE shareholder who may stand to turn a buck from a bail-out, but as a concerned television viewer and supporter of the President.

Oh, well. Why pretend? It’s my suggestion only because I want GE stock to remain in double digits, at least until such time as I can unload it. If you were seeking altruism, I’m afraid that you may have been inadvertently reading the wrong blog.

Yo, newspapers: Don’t disrespect us by talking about Baby Boomer stuff

I was doing a small bit of public speaking a couple of weeks ago, which is not my usual thing, and, needing to quicken the pace, I found myself blurting out a reference to “talking like the K-Tel Guy,” which earned some blank stares. The K-Tel Guy, as everyone must know, was Phil Kives, the Winnipeg entrepreneur who gained enduring fame by speed-yapping his way through TV pitches for wacky products.

Okay, the commercials haven’t aired for, let’s see, must be about three decades, if you’re counting, but Hair Wiz and Kitchen Magician — “It slices; it dices!” — must live on in our collective memory, right? 

The expressionless faces in my audience answered the question. I made a note to myself, to examine my aging stockpile of cultural references, which are likely to be increasingly obscure to the current demographic. 

Confirming my decision this morning is Ralph Keyes, who writes for the newspaper industry’s trade publication, Editor & Publisher. Mr. Keyes cautions journalists against their predilection for what he calls ‘retrotalk‘: phrases and references that are unlikely to be understood by those not of the Baby Boom generation.  

Many of the examples Mr. Keyes provides refer to TV programs of the 1960s, such as “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Andy Griffith Show.” He cites numerous instances where discussions of current public affairs lead serious commentators to invoke mentions of Eddie Haskell or Mayberry. He also explains what is meant by dropping those two names (Haskell, a synonym for insincerity; Mayberry, a locus of rubes), which probably shouldn’t be necessary when dealing with a halfway-informed reader of any age or origin. 

The problem, it strikes me, may not be as Mr. Keyes suggests, that this habit of mentioning antique texts poses too much of a challenge or an irritation to some nitwits. I was born well after the Golden Age of Radio, but understand exactly what is meant by Fibber McGee’s closet, and find Mel Blanc’s 60-year-old transcribed invocations of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga to be unfailingly side-splitting. The erudite newspapermen of the past, say, Mencken or Liebling, were no less a delight because you couldn’t directly relate to their evocation of names and events of their childhoods. 

If Mr. Keyes is proposing that yuppie reporters and commentators are lazy and rely overly on the convenience of using TV imagery to make their points, I won’t argue. If his point is that newspapers have thinned the ranks of the kind of experienced desk staff who once might have noticed and corrected the overuse of cheap metaphors (such as “thinned the ranks”), he’s smack on.   

You're looking lovely this morning, Mrs. Cleaver

If, however, he’s proposing that today’s young ‘uns aren’t reading newspapers because they don’t know who Eddie Haskell is, I’d respond, in the style of Old-Time Radio, “Puh-leeze, Mr. Keyes.”

Newspaper readership is sinking for a bunch of reasons, some relating to a generational change, but that trend won’t be reversed by requiring reporters to quit talking about Bob Dylan and begin to cite the wisdom of P. Diddy and cohort. I’d say the problem comes down to contemporary newspapers containing little but crap, and readers who have moved on to rituals other than reading newspapers. 

Marshall McLuhan — and I’m sorry about referring to another Ancien Régime figure — said newspapers would endure because they’re like a warm bath. What he meant by that, I think, was that print is meant to be tactile, reassuring and comforting, something into which you’d always wish to immerse yourself. 

He was wrong. Stayed in a post-modern Hotel Indigo, or one of those funky new Hilton properties? No bathtubs; just showers. And to drive the message home, yesterday the Marriott chain, the lodging industry leader, announced they plan to stop the practice of plopping newspapers in front of the doorway of every guestroom. Somehow I don’t think they’ll revisit their decision if Rupert Murdoch promises to start wearing hip-hop gear and drinking smoothies.

Newspapers are your grandfather’s Oldsmobile, or perhaps Hupmobile. 

Mr. Keyes is certain not to like this, but I’ll offer one concluding bit of retrotalk in response to the plaintive question asked hourly by newspaper publishers of ex-readers, “What do you want us to do?” At the risk of alienating some, let’s quote Goldfinger, a character in a 1960s movie, the name of which you probably won`t remember: “I want you to die, Mr. Bond!”