American Idol – You Are Sooo Busted!

I have it! I’ve figured it out. It’s taken me nine seasons and many weeks of heavy thought, but I’ve suddenly realized how they fix American Idol. And now I feel just plain stupid for not hitting on the answer sooner. And ridiculous for wasting weeks of heavy thought on something so trivial. Still…

Some while ago, I posted my theory about why I believe the whole Idol elimination process is rigged to favor contestants that the producers think will sell the most albums once the season has wrapped up and all the mediocre performers have gone home and been forgotten about. Since then, consistently, week after week, that theory has held up. I made a prediction about which kid would leave, and sure enough, that kid left. It was flawless and dead-on.

Until this week.

This week Big Mike Lynche was sent packing. My pick had been Casey the Hair, who has minimal discernible talent, but great hair, a shaven chest, and tons of girlie appeal.

However, it was this apparent crack in my system that revealed the clue I’d been looking for. For a while I couldn’t work out how it was done. Now I’m more sure than ever that American Idol is rigged. Let me explain. Dim the lights. Here we go.

Ryan comes on at the start of the show and says how many fools wasted money this week on texting a vote, or repeat-dialing the show’s premium phone lines. This time it was a season high, 37 million.

Then we work down through the contestants one at a time over the course of an overpadded hour – an hour that could be reduced to four minutes; the rest is filler – whittling it away until we have our bottom three.

But then after that, there is no reference made during the show to who got the lowest number of votes, have you noticed? Something Seacrest fudges very handily by saying, “America voted and Big Mike is going home.” Or he’ll have two people standing there, as he did last night, and go, “After the nationwide vote, the person who’ll be in the final three is….Crystal Bowersox.”

See? No mention of Big Mike receiving the lowest number of votes. Why would there be? He didn’t, right?

In fact, now I come to think of it, it’s been like that on more than one occasion. “After the nationwide vote…” – not “…the person with the lowest number of votes…” So it looks like America gets to choose the bottom three, but if America acts like a dweeb and dumps the wrong person, the producers step in and pick the one they think should leave. I betcha I’m bang on the money with this.

My guess is that Casey the Hair tanked this week. But the tweens like him a lot and some of them may even buy his album, the one he records before he’s dropped by his label.

Of the four contestants left, Big Mike is the most generic, the least likely to endure as an artist and make money for the producers in coming years, and also the least likely to keep the girlie audience tuning in next week at a time when ratings are plummeting anyway. Bowersox and DeWyze are this season’s real talents. Big Mike is talented too, but squandered his advantage early on by not doing very much with anything and seeming kinda lame. That said, he was better all-round than Casey the Hair. No matter – Mike had to go.

And there you have it. Zero correlation between who got the lowest number of votes and who leaves. Furthermore, if the producers are challenged on this, they can throw up their hands in shock like a swooning coquette in a Victorian drama and claim, “But we never said Big Mike got the lowest number of votes, only that he was going home.”

Ta-daa. Am I right or am I right?

American Idol, you are sooo busted. Looks like it’s all about money. Selling albums, keeping sponsors, maintaining ratings. Ethics? Pah – not so much.

TV Swami – he feeling smug about this theory but extremely miffed at American Idol.

How I almost appeared on The Tonight Show.

Casual Friday. It’s already hot and sticky in L.A., and I’m writing this naked. Those are the facts, people. Just accept them.

On Casual Fridays I like to bunk off work and hand the Swami over to someone who writes better than I do, or at the very least has something better to say. Today that honor falls to a guy whose name I will have to cut and paste, because I can neither pronounce it nor spell it: James Poniewozik.

He’s written a fantastically informative article for Time magazine about the future of television. And right now, he posits, the future seems to rest on what happens next week when Jay Leno launches his new show five nights a week on NBC, replacing their old, costly, lumbering, expensive dramas that nobody was watching.

Most people are expecting this experiment to be a flop. The bulk of variety shows do, after all, go into a rapid tailspin and disappear. In the 1950s, we used to enjoy watching a mixed bag of crap. Nowadays, less so. Unless there’s a talent show element to it at least, such as American Idol, in which case we’ll watch crap forever.

Witness the Osbournes variety special – The Osbournes Reloaded – which Fox was extremely cockahoop about at the time, and which was meant to be the first of a series of six. Unfortunately, the premier was so mind-numbingly dreadful that the rest of them were never shown. Here’s a taste.

So now we’re getting Jay Leno, trying to salvage his post-Tonight Show glory.

I once received a phone-call from The Tonight Show, inviting me to be on as a guest. Somebody had dropped out, it was late in the day, and I lived close to their Burbank Studios. This was when I used to do handwriting analysis. One of Leno’s producers had seen me on The View, apparently, and thought I’d be fun. But first they needed me to do a quick audition please. “Sure,” I said. “Easy.”

I didn’t drive in those days, so I traveled to Burbank by bus. And I bet not many of Jay Leno’s guests ever did that!

When I arrived, I was taken into a small room by the producer who had me analyze her handwriting. The girl in question was a mess. She had huge emotional problems, I recall, and somehow it didn’t seem right or responsible, even for an audition, to make light of them. So I gave her a straight reading, which was pretty damn accurate, just not especially entertaining.

Midway through, the room darkens. This taller, older woman walks to the door, stands there with her arms folded, listens for five seconds, then blurts out “No” in a stern voices and strides away.

That was it. I was promptly shunted out, given a handshake – “Sorry.” – and told to leave. Clearly, I wasn’t Tonight Show material.

To make matters far worse, when I got home I took off my trousers and found a massive brown skid-mark down the back. Seems I’d sat in something on the bus! One of the many hazards of using the L.A. public transit system. Most times you spot it before you sit down; but sometimes you’re preoccupied with an audition and possibly appearing on The Tonight Show and you forget to look. Oh god. Nothing could have been more embarrassing. I’d walked around their offices, meeting people, saying hi, doing quick handwriting analyses for anyone who asked…and all the while I looked like I’d shat my pants. I still cringe even now.

Anyway, who knows if I’ll be invited onto Leno’s new show. Maybe that old bag who said no to my gifts before has retired now.

Of course, I don’t do handwriting stuff any more, but that’s okay. I have other talents. Yesterday, for instance, a producer emailed me, asking if I’d like to do the voice of the lead character in a cartoon for the web. A fun character. He’s a talkshow host. “The guy has a gun for a nose,” the producer explained, “and explosives for a chin….it’s called Gun Nose.”

Of course it is. What else?

I said maybe. But I’m not hopeful for it. Gun Nose? Really? Why on earth would a producer dream up a character called Gun Nose, then automatically think, “You know who’d be good for this? That guy who does reports on NPR. I forget his name…the idiotic one.” Weird. And a hoax, I’m sure.

In the meantime, take a look at the Time article. All very interesting. And don’t forget to watch when Jay invites me on his new show later this year as a guest. “Next we have a very funny and original man. Author, handwriting analyst, NPR contributor, and the voice of Gun Nose….Cash Peters.”

I thank you.

www.cashpeters.com

Never Abdul Moment.

The secret to talking is in knowing when to shut up, so I think I’ll shut up today on the subject of Fox executives kamikhazically allowing Paula Abdul to leave American Idol, and let Josef Adalian from The Wrap try to explain the details. 

Here are the bare bones and the maybes:

• Everyone’s favorite incoherent, spaced-out talking doll has Tweeted that the party’s over, she won’t be back on Idol next year. “With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return to IDOL. I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all…being a part of a show that I helped from day1 become an international phenomenon.”
• Maybe she’s had a better offer from talent shows on other networks: ABC’s So You Think You Can Dance, for instance. Or NBC’s America’s Got Talent (owned and produced by Simon Cowell).
• Maybe it was a plot from the start. Bring in a fourth judge last season – another female, one who could speak in whole sentences without stopping every couple of words – just to remind Abdul that she’s not indispensable and to quit messing around. Then use that as a negotiation tool to gradually phase Abdul out when the time came.
• Maybe it was Abdul’s new manager and Fox’s new TV chief flexing their muscles, mano a mano. In which case, what a disaster for both.
• Maybe it’s one final act of brinksmanship, just another stage of the circus that is American TV contract negotiations, but one that will resolve itself at the very last split-second, and Abdul and Fox will make their peace, enabling her to return to the show.

Nobody knows as of today. But here’s the article:

“Where do we go from here?

Now that the No. 3 star on America’s No. 1 show has decided to up and quit, the aftershocks will continue for days, weeks — maybe months. This story isn’t exactly the death of Michael Jackson, but let’s put it this way: The Obama administration has one more giant media circus to compete with as it tries to sell its health care plan.

First, an update on what went down.

Fox still isn’t talking beyond its statement, but people familiar with the situation insist that the network very much wanted Abdul to stay. These sources say the network and producers were willing to up Abdul’s salary by a huge 30 percent.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Abdul had been making between $2 million and $4 million per year. If you believe the high end of those estimates — because, really, $2 million sounds way low — then Abdul stood to pull down around $5.5 million per year. And since these deals always run for multiple seasons, Abdul just walked away from around $11 million to $17.5 million.

Yes, Ryan Seacrest is reportedly making almost that much each year of his new three-year pact. But his deal includes monies from multiple other projects he works on for 19 Entertainment. And he has a much more vital role to the show (even if he doesn’t have as passionate a fan base). 

That’s what we know right now. What’s next?

— The backlash. Fox can expect to get slammed by the mainstream media, which won’t understand how the network could let the Beloved Paula slip away. Wags will predict the show won’t be the same, that viewers will rebel and that the network is risking its most important franchise.

While multiple executives have been involved in the talks, Fox chief Tony Vinciquerra almost certainly took a lead role in guiding the negotiations, according to people close to the situation. It’s one of the first big deals to happen (or not happen) since Peter Chernin stepped down from News Corp.

Vinciquerra is the ultimate no-B.S. executive. Given the antics of Team Abdul recently (Twittered demands, press attacks from her manager), it’s not surprising things broke down.

But Vinciquerra also had to look at Fox’s overall bottom line. An extra $10 million for Abdul might not seem like much, except when…”

Read the full article HERE.

Read TMZ follow-up HERE.

www.cashpeters.com.  But why stop there? Follow him on Twitter @cashpeters.

See Cash’s movie HERE.

Read Cash’s latest book HERE. 

Paula Abdul versus the skunks. Allegedly.

The fuss over Paula Abdul returning to American Idol (or not) brings back so many tragic memories for me, not to say some bitterness that I work at controlling but can’t, about what total weasels TV people are and the terrible way they behave towards one another. Even now, a full three years after my own TV show ended, it still makes my skin crawl.

According to Abdul’s agent, she’s “hurt and angry” that Fox is playing hardball with her salary, indulging in powerplays, and refusing to negotiate. As a result she may not be back on the show next season. 

I couldn’t hear what else he said because of all the cheering. Most people, as far as I can tell, are probably with Fox on this one, they don’t want her back.

Currently, Paula receives $2.5m per year, which, given what she does and what a laughing stock she is, seems fair enough. But she wants more. How much more is the cause of all the debate. Estimates says it’s as high as $20m, and that’s why Fox is balking. Though more realistically, it’s probably a lot less – around the $5m mark. And that, if true, is also why Fox is balking.

Paula Abdul is not worth $5m a year on American Idol. Anyone with a TiVo who fastforwards through everything she says each week will tell you that.

Still, Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest, both of whom are sitting pretty with substantial pay increases of their own and shouldn’t really care, are backing her and saying they are confident she’ll return for the ninth season. Auditions are already under way, a decision has to come soon. It’s all very touch and go.

However, this rather tacky public stand-0ff reminds me once again what a shark tank the TV world is. Riddled and rife with dishonesty, needless game-playing, and shenanigans, it’s a parallel universe to our own. A place where nobody can ever be straight about anything. Where everybody feels compelled to lie all the time, even – and especially – when they don’t need to. Where people stab you in the back, not because there’s any call for it, but because they’re presented with an opportunity to do so and can’t resist. And where you can never get a direct, up-front, word-of-honor answer to any question you ask, in case the reply – a simple, helpful, uncontaminated yes or no – somehow comes back to bite the various parties in the butt at some later date.

It’s a ghastly industry. Fun, but ghastly.

In television, you encounter some of the shiftiest, slimiest, slipperyest, most spineless individuals you’re ever likely to come across. Unless, that is, you venture into politics or the movie business, where I hear they’re wall to wall.

Worse, TV executives are geniuses of shameless deception. They wear sharp suits and have great dental work and hair and friendly personalities, and they’ve mastered the art of seeming genuine and honest and caring when in fact, behind the bared smile, lies a calculating shark mind turning constantly, figuring out all conceivable consequences of what’s about to be said and ensuring that it works to their own advantage, not yours.

An example of their shiftiness would be something I call “the Hollywood No.”

A Hollywood No happens when a spineless TV executive wants to say no to your request, inquiry, invitation, or proposal, but doesn’t have the balls. So instead he says nothing. There’s no call-back, no reply to your email, no letter in the post. Nothing. Just an ominous silence, from which you are meant to deduce, after a period of time lasting days or weeks, that your request, inquiry, invitation or proposal was turned down. In other words, the burden is placed on you to mentally refuse it yourself. The spineless TV executive had nothing to do with it, his  hands are clean.

It’s playing David Copperfield with the truth, and it sucks.

Oh, and if the two of you meet again at some point – you and him; executive and…er…executed, I guess you’d be – convention says that both sides must pretend that the Hollywood No never happened. Do not dwell in the past, goes the rule. Even if the past was about ten minutes ago. Move on, overlook any perceived slights, and don’t bring it up ever again. The transgressor must be allowed to get away with his crime. That’s just how it is.

It’s certainly considered very bad protocol to shake the executive’s hand the next time you see him and say, “Hey, you douche, how come you didn’t reply to my request, inquiry, invitation, or proposal?” Breaking the code of silence around the Hollywood No and reminding people what double-crossing skunks they are to their face can actually cost you friendships, jobs, and, in some cases, whole TV series. Trust me, I know.

It isn’t only the Paula Abdul crisis that brought this back to me, by the way. It was being emailed by that TV producer the other day (see HERE).

Our interaction was brief. A couple of lines each way, that’s all. But I was struck even then by what a slippery eel the guy seemed to be. I’d ask him a question, he’d reply within minutes with a statement that bore no relation to what I’d asked. I’d make a statement; in return he’d ask a question, again totally unrelated. Ducking and weaving, dodging and dancing. All so devious, so icky. I don’t know him at all, but I thought I could feel the gooey oiliness of his yellow character oozing from the monitor like parasitical Jell-O. There was nothing straightforward about our ‘conversation’, nothing direct or honest, nothing a real – ie. non-TV – person could get a grip on or hold him to. A typical TV executive, in other words. I have no doubt he’s very successful.

So, as much as I personally don’t want Paula Abdul back on American Idol,  I sympathize with her plight and must necessarily take her side. If Fox executives are anything like their scheming, lying counterparts all across the rest of the industry – and since it’s Fox after all, how can they not be? – then they’re playing this for sport, torturing her because they can, filling her days with uncertainty, false starts and Hollywood Nos, merely because…well,  they’re TV executives and that’s what they do.

I hope she wins.  Go Paula.

TV Swami – he say NO to Fox. And possibly “Go to hell”, but he not sure yet.

 www.cashpeters.com

Read Cash’s book, Naked in Dangerous Places, HERE.

Aren’t you glad a Moron didn’t win?

 

What a crazy, unforeseen turnaround.

Only a few weeks ago, I was declaring that the final of American Idol would be nothing without Lil Rounds, and everyone else, except for Adam Lambert, was a loser who’d go nowhere and wouldn’t be missed. Well, I was wrong.

All too soon, Lil is no more. Voted off. Outclassed and outlasted by lesser talents: the guy who’s cute but in a sinister way; the sixteen year old with her hair on the wrong way around; and even that guy with the miserable mouth and the mole on his forehead that you wish he’d either pick off or allow someone else to.

The reason for Lil’s expulsion? Inauthenticity. Week after week she was trying to be something she wasn’t. Relevant, cool, a star, a diva – nobody was sure, not even her, I suspect. All she had to be was the pre- Idol Lil – down to earth, raunchy, forceful, real, and belting out songs like she’s hailing a cab at an airport. But someone got to her, and she blew it.

Of course, last year I thought David Archuleta was the best thing ever, and look what happened there. In 08, he was the Mormon golden boy with the smoky voice (not naturally; he had an operation) and the magical green eyes who could do no wrong. 

Then he went and did wrong. He had one hit – Crush – during the post-Idol euphoria when he was flying high, then followed this up with an album that was so blah, so inadvisably anemic, so nothing by contemporary music standards, that he left thousands of fans dangling, and the rest of us in utter despair, as one of the most promising careers ever on that show sputtered, fizzled and dived nose-first into a hedge.

Mind you, once it was revealed that the Mormons, to their eternal shame, were the chief sponsors of the Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage movement in California, anyone tarred with the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints brush was doomed and cursed in my eyes. A church that sponsors and actively campaigns for division, hate, inequality, and bigotry? The very things Jesus himself was against? Wow, time to remove someone’s tax exempt status, it strikes me – and fast. Or drop the m and let’s refer to them as Morons from now on.

Archuleta was on the show last night too, back from obscurity for one last burst, breezing in to let us know why his mainstream career had gone nowhere by singing one of the blah songs from his blah album. He’s going on tour to the UK this week. Good luck, Britain! Remember, he’s a Moron. And the Morons promote hate and division and bigotry. Don’t let the cuteness and the nice teeth fool you.  

Actually, aren’t we all relieved now that he didn’t win? Cute as he is, goofy and daffy as he seems, and even with the Mormon albatross hanging around his neck – when you put that feeble dimbo on the same stage as the towering commercial giant that will be Adam Lambert after he wins this thing (or even if he doesn’t, frankly), it frames everything in a new perspective. At that point, the relative insignificance of an Archuleta or a Lil Rounds or an Anoop Desai, or whoever else you can name (and soon won’t be able to), becomes truly apparent.

I promised faithfully that I would not – not – watch another season of American Idol, and this may yet be my last, but I’m so glad I got sucked in. I wouldn’t have missed Lambert’s performances this year for the world.

Already I have money set aside to buy his album, money I’d planned to spend on something important, like food. Because I don’t need it. His talent alone is nourishing enough. There is protein in every note; he exudes carbohydrates of magic from every pore. Quite honestly, Adam Lambert could do next to nothing on his album – hum, groan, make noises, bang saucepans with a spoon – and I’d still buy it. He is utter magic.

So goodbye Lil Rounds. It’s over. You didn’t stand a chance. Please put David Archuleta in your backpack and leave, then sit back and watch how the professionals do it.  

 

American Idol still, infuriatingly, gets five magic carpets out of five.

TV Swami – he say YES.

www.cashpeters.com.

Attention! Celebrity Neighbor Alert.

Pssst. Listen up.

So last night I go for my usual evening walk. Around 9.30, after American Idol, to calm down and get my sanity and sense of perspective back. Anyway, I’m coming home again, mind wandering, mouth snacking its way on automatic through a bag of 65% reduced fat Kettle chips, when a car whizzes by and shudders to a stop some way off, just past Rachel Bilson’s house.

A yellow car.

A yellow two-seater Mercedes convertible car. With the roof down.   

And we all know who that belongs to, right?

Hayden Christensen!!! The Star Wars guy. Natch.

So immediately I do what anyone would do. I cross over the street to make sure I pass by as closely as I can. For research purposes.

It’s pretty dark at this point, therefore details are hard to come by. Also, I guess he’s on the look-out for paparazzi or reporters, being as he’s marrying Rachel Bilson ‘n’ all and those scuzzy press seem to care about the both of them way more than the rest of us do. All the same,  he sees me heading his way and hurriedly puts his roof up. One of those roofs that rich people keep in their trunk, and which unfolds at the press of a button, like an awning.  Or the weapons shield on an X-wing fighter, which I guess he’s more used to.

Now, bear in mind, he’s sort of parked in the middle of the street at this point, about twenty feet past his fiancees’s home. All very strange. And I’m walking towards him faster than the roof is closing.

Having sped up to beat the roof, I now slow down again for full effect, while pushing Kettle chips into my mouth in a remarkably casual way, like I’m waaaaaay too hungry right now to bother about celebrities sitting in the middle of the street in cars with the roof kind of open like an envelope flap. But then, suddenly – and here’s the thing – at the last second, when he thinks I haven’t seen him, I swivel my head and stare right into the vehicle. Bang boom bang. Just like that.

It’s like a scene from Star Wars, only without the drama, dark deeds, seductive dialogue, or rip-roaring green screen fights and special effects.

Quite obviously, he’s shocked by this turn of events. Maybe he was going to wait until I’d passed, then reverse into Bilson’s driveway. If so, he scotches that plan immediately and tears off down the road in a panic, disappearing from sight.

But wait! That’s not all.

When he turns at the end of the street, he turns right, not left. That’s a key sign. Left would take him towards the city. Right, on the other hand, takes him in a full circle around the block, bringing him back to where he started – Bilson’s house, only this time without all the hassle of passers-by walking along, eating Kettle chips, staring in his window and thinking, “Oooh, Hayden Christensen, you look so different when you’re not surrounded by droids.”

And that’s it. My exciting celebrity neighborhood exclusive for today.  There may have been more, but I had to rush into the house to pee. Made me think, though – what kind of life is that? Where you can’t even pull up at your fiancee’s house in the dark when there’s nobody around without fearing that that guy eating chips over there is secretly following you and about to pounce? I mean, come on. As it was, his instincts were right on and his fears totally justified. Still, that’s no way to go about things. That’s not freedom, it’s celebrity enslavement. I felt quite sorry for him, actually.

Of course, it might not have been Hayden Christensen at all. That’s possible. It might have been some guy in a yellow Mercedes convertible identical to Hayden Christensen’s who just happened to stop in the street outside Rachel Bilson’s home to put his roof up.

All the same, I am expecting competing bids from People magazine and US and Entertainment Weekly for rights to use this in their next issue.  And you know what I’ll say when they call? I’ll say, “No. This is for TV Swami. Please stop calling me.” And as I put the phone down I’ll be all cocky and puffed up with pride, followed by thoroughly despondent for the rest of the day when I realize how much money I’ve just lost by saying that.

I’m such an idiot sometimes.

TV Swami – he say NO to the pop media jackals.

 www.cashpeters.com

PBS. Today’s excuse for not writing a blog

I’m snowed under. Truly.

Finishing book, finishing promo film, working on radio piece, doing taxes, sorting out insurance people after car crash, worrying that the right contestants might not get through on American Idol when clearly an Adam Lambert-Lil Rounds finale in May will make everyone’s life complete and possibly usher in a new era of international co-operation among warring nations…. I have a lot going on.

So I’m not doing a blog today. Bottom line.

In fact, I’m beginning to think that bloggers are people who resort to  writing down their thoughts as a handy alternative to doing anything useful or constructive. Watching TV would be one example. Whereas all I seem to do every day is write down my thoughts in one way or another. I make a living from it. So to then do it in a blog as well is beginning to seem kinda superfluous somehow.

Also when I blog I’m doing it for free. And every time I watch PBS, America’s version of BBC TV, I’m reminded what a bad business model ‘doing stuff for free’ actually is.

PBS – also known as The Begging Channel – is freely accessible to all. Each day they show a range of taped shows, from news hours to concerts to lectures, and whatever else they have lying around the office.

They’re also notorious for introducing Americans to truly mediocre Britcoms such as A Fine Romance and Are You Being Served? that were ratings winners when  I was about nine years old, and convincing them somehow that they are a freshly-minted example of the state of British entertainment today. In fact, it can’t be long before a British variety series I helped write when I was 15 and still in school – The Two Ronnies – gets shown over here, billed as the latest comedy craze. 

“Hang on, run that by me again. A short guy and a fat guy performing skits together? Really? Oh, you crazy goddamned English!”

The reason PBS is known as the Begging Channel, though, returning to my point, is because they proudly broadcast all their shows for free.

F-R-E-E. 

Including classical concerts by puffer fish chanteuse Sarah Brightman, and really excellent self-help lectures by such people as Wayne Dyer and that Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy. Which is fair enough. Who among us doesn’t like free stuff?

But then – then, they go and spoil everything by interrupting the shows with pleas for money. Every twenty minutes or so, some frumpy woman with a bad hairstyle, who wouldn’t be allowed on any other network with those looks and that dress sense, turns up to ask viewers to stump up cash for these so-called free programs. Pledge a financial donation of up to $300, she implores us, so that PBS can keep showing a wide range of “quality programming” – vintage comedies, stimulating lectures, and beautiful concerts by shrill, posturing divas with mannequin hands that we promise will be interrupted every twenty minutes next time as well with even more begging.

Meanwhile, in the background, a coachload of pensioners with similar fashion sense stare at a bank of phones that sound like they’re ringing off the hook but which nobody appears to be answering.

And they go through this ritual repeatedly. Week in, week out, year upon year, interrupting their shows with cheesy panhandling. No matter how much we send them, they’re never satisfied. They never have enough money, it seems, with which to broadcast their free programs. 

I, of course, have never sent them a penny, I can proudly tell you. My view is this: if you’re stupid enough to operate a TV network without advertising or other visible means of support, don’t then come to me and expect me to give you money for a service I can get for nothing. It’s not going to happen.

So that’s PBS. Now, extrapolating this money-pit scenario to my blog…

I write books. I get paid for that. I do radio. I get paid for that. I write material for a blog, for which I receive praise, comments, criticism, and attention, but never any money.  I mean, where’s the sense?

In short, ladies and gentlemen, I am not Sarah Brightman and will not be treated as such. Thank you and good day.

 

PBS gets three magic carpets out of five, simply for showing up.

TV Swami – he say NO to blog-writing.

No blog. Car wreck. Sorry.

Normally,  I sit here merrily drinking coffee, eating cake, carping about US TV shows, and loving it. This morning I can’t. 

Yesterday some freak totaled my car on the freeway. I walked away shaken and dazed but unhurt for the most part, which was lucky. It means, though, that I have to spend the morning attending to more boring matters.

If you’re new here, welcome. Sorry our relationship’s beginning on such a sour note. But hey, we’re adults, we’ll push past this. In the meantime, why not take a look at a few of the previous entries, written in more innocent times?

The blog will return Monday.  

Oh, and in the time-honored tradition of this page: Rachel Bilson, Hayden Christensen, Hugh Laurie, and American Idol.

Dead dogs and Englishmen

Well, that didn’t go well, did it? Last night’s BBC thing, I mean.

If you were listening, you’ll know that a relatively light-hearted chit-chat about the quirkery of American television devolved within no time at all into a quagmire of dead dogs, multiple rapists, broken legs on Dancing with the Stars, and Rachel Bilson’s marriage (which, by the way, I put on the same level, interest-wise, as the previous three.)

As a result, I fear my stint on Up All Night may be over. Or, if not over, then drawing to a premature end. One of those premature ends that, quite honestly, is probably long overdue.

After all, it’s been eleven years. In fact, the eleventh anniversary was this very week, though I forgot to mention that in my haste to talk about not one, but seventeen dogs being burned alive in a propane explosion.

Doing TV reviews was not a job I applied for, by the way. I got it by nepotism. A friend of mine used to host the show in the mid-90s and he called me up one day with sad news: the previous guy had died. Or absconded. Or simply not shown up for work and proved himself unreliable. “Will you fill in this week for three minutes? You can do it on the phone.” He made it sound easy, which to me is important, so I said yes, despite the fact that I didn’t watch any television and had to get all my information from magazines in our local supermarket. And when the guy failed to show up the following Monday (the Slot used to be on Mondays) I filled in then, too. And it just grew from there, as these things tend to if you let them. Eleven years later, it’s now half an hour long and broadcast from a real studio in downtown Los Angeles with music and sound-bites and everything. Only one thing hasn’t changed: I still don’t watch television. Well, who has the time?

However, last night’s outing may be, if not the last, then the red flag that signals the beginning of the end. There’s nothing funny about rape or dogs being burned alive. Nothing at all. It just came out that way.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had problems either. Back in January, when I embarked on the Master Cleanser and fasted on maple syrup and fresh lemons for two weeks (the movie of this debacle is on my Facebook page, if you’re interested!), I dared go on the BBC and gush about the benefits of fasting, and the following day almost drowned beneath a tsunami of complaints, one or two of them from doctors who claimed it was irresponsible of me to talk about such ridiculous and dangerous things on air, and thoroughly irresponsible of the BBC to broadcast that kind of holistic drivel. The same doctors who will be dying of blocked arteries, distended colons, and damaged livers years from now, I predict. Though of course you can’t tell them that. Bloody know-it-alls.

Quite frankly, I thought my number was up then. But we soldiered on. Last night, though, was another low, and honestly I’m worried.

My Slot could so easily go the way of the rest of the economy. Cutbacks, downsizing. “Sorry, but we’re taking the show in a new direction, one that involves accuracy and sticking to the topic and not distressing listeners.” At which point that will be it. I’ll be no different to a laid-off mill worker in Ohio or a kennel owner in Pennsylvania whose business  just burned down in a propane explosion.

Not that I need to worry. I’m plenty busy. New book coming out in April, another book just completed, a TV travel show to shoot in May, plus all the American radio stuff I do. Still, after eleven whole years of showing up for something week after week –  I mean, man, that’s like an addiction. It locks you into a groove you can’t easily snap out of, even though I know the day must come at some point.  

One of the reviewers of my new book Naked in Dangerous Places wrote, “Cash Peters is our generation’s Alistair Cook…”  Seriously? Didn’t he report from America for the BBC for 48 years or something preposterous like that and die at the microphone during a propane delivery?  I’m hazy on the exact details.

Last night, I came home after the show with a heavy heart. You can tell how affected I was: I remained completely unconcerned for the safety of the blind contestant on American Idol. Walk too far in the wrong direction, drop into the orchestra pit – I didn’t care.  (He’s going to be voted off soon anyway; he’s outclassed by almost every one of  his sighted rivals) And I wasn’t even as downright appalled as I should have been by a trailer for the upcoming Osbournes Reloaded, a variety show that promises to be a trashy, calamitous disaster, hosted by Ozzy and Sharon, and which seems to involve Sharon being strident and irritating for an hour and Ozzy shaking and being incoherent. What’s reloaded about that? That’s exactly how I remember them from last time.

No, last night, not even the sparkly baubles on American TV could make me feel superior and better about myself. I turned it off, dimmer and even more depressed.

Now at last I know how the Up All Night audience feels after my Slot.  

NOTE: Inside Out, the short movie I made about the Master Cleanser is available to watch on my Facebook page, and only on my Facebook page.

The BBC Slot is available to hear again on http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j2dr7/Up_All_Night_11_03_2009/. Have painkillers ready.

American, idle. An addict reaches out.

I’m furious at myself for getting hooked again.

After Season 7 of American Idol I was an emotional husk – ask my friends, they’ll tell you – having invested waaaaay too much time and energy in performers who, a few weeks later – actually, minutes in some cases – and removed from the ethereal glow of the spotlight, seemed pretty rubbish. Aside from the occasional Jennifer Hudson or Kelly Clarkson, the only time we hear about these guys again is a couple of years later when their house is being repossessed or they’re dropped suddenly by their management company and are releasing songs through a MySpace page.

So last year, especially when the right David didn’t win, I quit cold turkey. That was it. Finished. No more American Idol for Sir.  It was like a New Year’s resolution, only in May.

But oh, how soon we forget.

January. More out of curiosity than anything else. Just to check out the level of talent on offer. And also because I report on these things for the BBC – I mean, I have to stay in touch. I stopped by one of the Hollywood shows. A casual glance one evening when nothing else was on TV. And goddamnit, I got hooked all over again! 

You have no idea how angry I am at myself right now.

Tonight it’s the wild card round. They’re about to give three more people I won’t remember in a year’s time the chance to be forgotten by millions of others as well, by joining the twelve-step program that the show becomes from now until the finale, when the dozen will be whittled down to one, the wrong contestant will be crowned the winner, and we can all thankfully resume our normal lives once again.

The favorites are already obvious. There’s…

The guy with the Danny Wallace glasses who lost his wife and is never done milking it, hoping, I guess, to secure the granny vote, but alienating everyone else. Unfortunately, he blows you away when he sings, so he’s staying; 

The tall guy with the ridiculous black manga hairstyle and the screeching voice that will cause your  fillings to drop out. Very talented, but he’s way too theatrical and screechy, and dental work is costly; 

Lil Rounds. Slick, talented, and will probably win, mainly because her name is so catchy, though I doubt she’s distinctive enough to succeed big-time in the real world later on. In the cold light of day, even the most gifted performer on American Idol can seem like a washed-up hooker singing karaoke between tricks. But the judges are swooning. So, of the girls, Lil’s in with the best chance. And if her career takes off too afterwards, wonderful;

The blind guy. He’s absolutely hopeless in dance routines and has to be led everywhere by his brother. Good voice, though, and excellent when you direct him to where the piano is and place  his hands on the keys – it’s just that he’s excruciating to watch. I find myself on edge the whole time, yelling, “Don’t leave your stool!” One week he’s going to drop off the stage, and I don’t want to see that. He’ll get the pity vote for being a tryer, but I so hope he doesn’t win;   

And my favorite right now, Jorge – pronounced Horhay – from Puerto Rico, who has a lazy eyelid that’s going to require surgery at some point, and who sobs in Spanish every time something good happens. But he has a lovely voice, he’s tricky when he dances, and he keeps smiling at me – at me, mind, not you – every time he’s on screen. I love this guy and I’m going to vote for him ’til my fingers bleed.

One note to God, if he’s listening: during tonight’s wild card vote, please remove Tatiana del Toro and send her packing. She’s the coquettish little drama queen they’re setting up to be this season’s Sanjaya. She has a hideous tittery laugh, a tendency to sob more than Horhay does (and that’s a lot of sobbing), and is far more interested, it seems, in how she looks on the studio monitors than how she sounds in my ears. If this little screamer makes it to the top twelve this year…..God, I know you move in mysterious ways, but that would be almost too strange and you need to rethink it.

In fact, if Tatiana’s not booted off tonight, I almost think it could be the last straw. The one shock event I need to snap me out of my American Idol addiction once and for all. I am not watching this show if she’s in it. That’s it. Finished. No more American Idol for Sir

Well, y’know – until next week.