Thursday, January 20, 2000

Losing heart, Critic awaits Dave's return

Already I'm in Letterman withdrawal. With Dave out for at least six weeks following last Friday's quintuple bypass cardiac surgery, CBS is stuck with "Best of Dave" reruns of "Late Show" all the way into the hotly contested February sweeps period.
   A month or more without fresh Top 10 lists. No quicky follow-up to last week's ratings-grabbing visit from Hillary. Week after week without Dave's latest digs at Rudy Giuliani, Al Gore, Donald Trump and his own CBS network bosses.
   It's too horrible to contemplate.
   It's enough to make me drink hot milk and turn in early.
   No matter what, I won't defect to Leno. The worst Letterman repeat is always better than the best live Leno.
   After seven years as host of NBC's "Tonight Show," Jay still shamelessly hogs the spotlight and doesn't let guests get laughs. His unfunny monologues drag on past the first commercial break. His stock comedy bits - Iron Jay, Mr. Brain - belong in the cornpone pile with skits from "Hee Haw."
   He's so insecure, he never takes a vacation and rarely allows reruns, as though he were still auditioning. There's something unpleasantly needy about Jay in the way he repeats every punchline twice, like he wants to make sure the audience heard it.
   Dave rules. Even when he's bitter, tired, stuck with a ditzy Farrah or Sarah Jessica in the guest chair, saddled with a stunt that's gone awry or just fed up with the whole talk show megillah, he's hilarious. Maybe especially when he's bitter, tired, etc. A frustrated Dave is a funnier Dave.
   If CBS were smart, they'd round up some big name guest hosts to keep Dave's chair warm while he's recuperating. Johnny Carson probably wouldn't do it, but what about Garry Shandling? Like "Larry Sanders" for real. Others who could sit in for Dave: Martin Mull, Regis Philbin, Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Allen, Conan O'Brien (OK, he works for NBC, but he did take over Dave's old timeslot so he owes him a favor), Jon Stewart, Norm Macdonald (did Dave to a T on "SNL"), Bill Cosby (already on the CBS payroll), Ray Romano (ditto) or Bryant Gumbel (not exactly pulling his weight for that $7 million he's getting for "The Early Show").
   Get well soon, Dave. Those February nights loom long and dark without you.
   The network anti-drug flap
   At first it seemed like a scandal, with a government entity trying to control the content of TV shows. That's how the early headlines played it in the New York and L.A. papers. But the story turned out to be much less interesting than the muckrakers had hoped.
   The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has for more than a year been rewarding TV networks that include anti-drug messages in shows like "NYPD Blue" and "ER."
   Using a complex accounting system, commercial time allocated to network-sponsored public service announcements can be resold to other sponsors if a network uses time within programming to deliver anti-drug plot points.
   The ONDCP's initial statements about the plan made it sound as if networks were submitting unproduced scripts to them for approval and then changing dialogue and storylines to conform to the government's suggestions in order to benefit financially.
   Not true, said ABC, NBC and The WB, who all took advantage of the commercial time swap.
   Their sales departments merely sent the ONDCP completed episodes of shows to see if they qualified as anti-drug enough to get the airtime rebate. No scandal. No Big Brother at work. This time anyway.
  
  

 
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