MagneticMediaFed

I’ve been over The Daily Show for some time now, though given my current state of nothing-to-do-ness I’ve been watching just about every night if for no other reason than for there to be another voice in the apartment (and thus keeping me from going completely insane). At this stage of the game, the show is what it is — perhaps too big to be as subversive as it once was, maybe a tad cocky to boot. Regardless of its macro-affect there is one reason above all overs to tune into The Daily Show: John Oliver. That Brit makes me laugh. Perhaps this is because of everyone on the show (Hodgman excluded), Oliver tends to be the silliest. Check out the video above for proof. The second part available after the jump…

(more…)

Pencils down?

Last night I was watching the return of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Both shows came back without their writers despite desperately trying to make their own deal with the union, and one could tell… kinda. Your typical episode of either of those programs is highly written. Last night it felt like the shows were half-written. The hosts were clearly out there trying to make something out of nothing, but at the same time, there were plenty of well-timed jokes and video pieces and by damn if it didn’t seem like there was at least some sort of script they were going by. Frankly, I found the whole thing very confusing. Was there writing taking place? Is this aloud? Doesn’t even a little writing kind of hurt the writer’s cause? The rules seems so complex. Originally I was thinking these late-night shows were really going to crack this thing wide open and make the AMPTP go back to the table. They would expose the hideousness and hypocrisy of the network stooges, but instead Jay is doing the same show he’s always done, Letterman has the artillery but isn’t turning the screws and now Stewart and Colbert are producing a half-wattage show that appears to neither sting the opposition nor illustrate a world where they simply can’t survive without their writing staff. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Is it wrong to think the shows that were forced back on the air without their writers should be taking a dive — that the hosts should be intentionally tanking to force everyone back to the bargaining table? Oh, I should say here that I am not a professional labor negotiator.

Last night I watched both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for the first time in 2007. I had been watching Colbert pretty religiously into February before taking a break. TDS, on the other hand I had quit watching sometime last fall. Given that sweeps is in full bloom I figured I might as well see how things are sitting over there in Comedy Central’s late-night division.

As it turns out, both shows are more or less how they were when I last watched, which I suppose is as comforting as it should be. The Daily Show did get a new set. It seems like the program is single-handedly keeping New Yorks booming set-building-industry operating at full steam.

The good news is that the increasingly early political season should provide a much-needed jolt of humor in what had otherwise turned into a pretty dire half-hour of comedy. I mean how many times can you sit back and laugh at the non-joke of the United States’ one-time blissful ignorance. Luckily, presidential primary candidates know how to bring the funny (at least Kucinich).

At the bottom of the hour The Colbert Report is still comedy packed, but the character’s freshness seems dated. His dual-mug gracing the cover of GQ this month is probably a year late. This isn’t to say the show shouldn’t be watched. It clearly provides much more of a venue for creativity than TDS, simply based on the format. The thing is neither of these programs are really designed to be watched every night — well, they are and they aren’t. Obviously the programs themselves want you to tune in and want to reward those who tune in often (The Late Show is masterful at paying off long runners, but we’re not talking Letterman here), but anyone who insists on watching hundreds of episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report day in and day out is really no different from the person who watches Headline News all day or insists upon seeing Jeopardy before the night can really begin. I say this because I am that guy and I can spot our own.

I just finished reading an interesting article over at Blogcritics Magazine about a tech writer who was recently interviewed for a Daily Show correspondent segment. His name is John Bambenek and he was used in a piece about Daylight Savings Time. He details how it all went down…

The way The Daily Show operates is somewhat different than the news. For instance, they won’t really let you know where they are going until they’re running tape. They like getting “first reactions” for their segment. In this case, it wasn’t a big deal because I ended up being of the same mind that they were about the DST controversy… it was mostly media hype over little more than minor inconveniences for us IT guys.

Read Aclockalypse Now: My Appearance on The Daily Show

Here are the following questions that I thought to myself while watching last night’s airing of The Half Hour News Hour on Fox News:

-Why didn’t they hire comedy writers?

-Who is the target audience for this? And does that audience actually exist?

-Does Fox News still harp about all of that “Fair and Balanced” nonsense, and if so does putting a comedy show on a news channel finally dispel those thoughts that they aren’t, in fact, a right wing mouthpiece?

-Have the creators of this show ever seen The Daily Show?

-Why is it that actually having a real live audience still can’t make it sound like real live people are actually laughing?

I didn’t think FOX could ever produce something as unfunny as Happy Hour. Now I just don’t know what to think. It was so monumentally awful writing anything about it just seems unnecessary. Did anyone else watch? What did you think?

I work for a local news station. We were live last night– election night– until midnight. This is, obviously, not unheard of in the world of television news. I didn’t get home from work until well after 2am. The first thing I did was watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report’s special “Midterm Midtacular” on my DVR. The Daily Show side was mostly funny, but the Colbert Report half was nothing shy of brilliant.

After watching, I flipped around the cable-news channels a bit to see what was happening at 3:30 AM in the land of über-news. All three networks, FOX, MSNBC, and CNN, were live. This is not a surprise as there are still two senate races that are too close to call. What was interesting was that MSNBC still had the “A” team on the set. Chris Matthews, Pat Buchanan, Bob Shrum, etc, all sitting at a desk commenting on what I can only assume they had been commenting since yesterday morning (fact: I watched Buchanan and Shrum in the exact same positions talking with Joe Scarborough yesterday afternoon around 2). Keith Olberman had been on set as late as 2:30 AM. The obvious question: “Why?”

Sure, on the west coast, the time would be just after midnight, but who cares? There gets to be a point in these races where you reach a deadlock and simply need to give things a day or two to sort themselves out. There isn’t a reason to keep your top talent on the set for that long, especially if you’d like to use them the next morning, or at the very least the next day.

EXCEPT!

If you’re MSNBC and you’re the third ranked cable-news channel you can show up the competition by claiming that you delivered the most comprehensive coverage. One has to assume that the only person watching election results at three in the morning are the die-hards and television bloggers, and seeing familiar faces at such an ungodly hour would definitely keep you watching and might even win you over the next time you’re looking for information. It’s kind of an interesting political maneuver in their own right.

None of this answers the real quesiton of the night, “why do we need all of this coverage anyway?” Have we really learning anything that we couldn’t have just found out in the morning?

On a related plane, at what point does CNN’s election night set get its own AI, revolt and then reek havoc on greater Atlanta?

Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star publishes the ratings for the most recent late-night period. Check it out. It’s interesting. Especially the numbers for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Adult Swim– not exactly industry shifting figures (though it is the dead of summer).

John Hodgman was on The Daily Show Wednesday night talking about the Net Neutrality Act. It makes this blog due to its crossover in being not just about television BUT ALSO the internet.  See, that’s how MMF rolls, y’dig?

It is nice to see TDS being up on this legislation– it seems to be slipping through the cracks in most of the mainstream media (is The Daily Show considered mainstream media now? I suspect it draws more viewers than most of the shows on the 24-news networks).
Read more about it here.

For those still trying to come to terms with last week’s Rescue Me your best bet is probably going to be Alan Sepinwall’s cutting-to-the-chase interview with Denis Leary and Peter Tolan. Leary does a good job of addressing the concerns by many about the shows apparent misogyny.

“The truth of the matter is that on the job guys are extremely resentful that they had to go through a physical exam that involved so many difficult things, including running up seven flights of stairs with 100 pounds of equipment strapped to you and picking up a 150-pound dummy and carrying it, running down seven flights of stairs with it. If you can’t do that, you can’t do the job, so when these women and other people are legislated into the job, it pisses these guys off to no end, because it puts their lives at risk, as well as the people they’re saving. And that’s an issue that will never go away, it’s only going to get worse…”
-Denis Leary

Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star writes his recent column on Dan Rather’s departure and its relation to Harry Shearer’s radio program Le Show. Shearer has been doing an impression of Rather in sketches called “Bad Day At Black Rock” for years. (Barnhart also posted the audio of his Shearer interview.)

And over at Channel Island Scott Collins posts about how The Daily Show is destroying the very fabric of democracy after a recent report claims that the show is making young people cynical about politics. I’m not sure who said it, but it’s probably politics that is making young people cynical about politics.

And finally.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia starts in THREE days.

A full-page print ad for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart appearing in the June 5 edition of Hollywood Reporter reads:

“We had fake news years before CBS hired Katie Couric.”

Via Cynopsis (thanks Greg)