Raw, but c*nsored blabbing and blogging of a young journalista
and local news producer in Southern New England.
email topstorylive % at # gmail + dot = com

Saturday, January 25, 2003

Sounds I want my computer, my newscast, my TV station, to make:

* The doorbell from "Brazil"
* The "pong" that supposedly is heard in British airports just before a public address announcement, as heard in "A Potpourri of Python" on A&E's 2-DVD set "Life of Python"
* Clunk
* The "punctuation" sounds from the old Electric Company sketch... or was that Victor Borge?
* Splunge (or Semprini)

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/25/2003 07:18:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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ON "GOOD MORNING, MIAMI"

H.M. GOVERNMENT FILM #246: "HOW NOT(?) TO MAKE A FUNNY SITCOM... OR A SOAP OPERA(?)"

Narrator: "Mr. Mutchnick and Mr. Kohan of Los Angeles have presented us with a poser. We do not know whether their new show 'Good Morning Miami,' which follows their hit 'Will & Grace,' is awful, enjoyable, or both. But we can soon find out..."

((Three explosions ring out, with a groan after the third.))

"Yes, it was the middle one."

GMM as I've come to mark it on the tapes that now store it is, just as the "HOW NOT TO BE SEEN"* ripoff above indicates, definitely a poser. I can't decide whether it should have been cancelled in the round of early bloodshed that included David E. Kelley's girls club and ABC's quickly-hiatused That Was Then.

Picture it. You take a job that you know is going to be painful ONLY BECAUSE you fall in love with someone there in a matter of five minutes... EVEN THOUGH whether she will ever return your love is highly questionable?

I am just as ready to love Max Mutchnick and David Kohan as the next gay Emerson grad working in TV who loved Boston Common and now can't miss Will & Grace.

But this show smacks of desperation for a new sitcom idea.

Googling the show's title can reveal how that rings true. Today, I learned that Mutchnick and Kohan once produced the ill-fated ABC 10 AM show Mike and Maty. (And where are those two now?) Looking at Gavin and Lucia, this pretty much hits the bullseye to parody the hell KoMut purportedly endured. Furthermore, they apparently pitched the show to Jeff Zucker, once a news producer, now a powerhouse executive, originally from Miami. Enter male lead Jake Silver (Mark Feuerstein, formerly of Conrad Bloom and guest star on The West Wing), once a news producer, now a powerhouse producer, Harvard educated, going to Miami. That's "personal appeal" for you.

However, this show is even worse at thinking it's about a television show than The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Nobody at Good Morning Miami apparently works earlier than 9 or later than 5. Even if you're on the air at 10 in the morning, or 11 in the morning, are you sure that's wise to be getting to work just as many as two hours before air... and then presumably spending the rest of the day prepping for the next? And if it airs that late in the morning is it really qualified to "wake people up"?

But of course, nobody has done anything that really encompasses working on a television show in several episodes. Unless you count the episode where Penny (Constance Zimmer) revealed how she felt about Jake by typing on a teleprompter. Wonderful device; badly executed in show. (It was apparent that the entire set piece was thrown together at the last minute. They basically brought a table in from off stage, threw a keyboard and mouse on it, connected them to a Q-TV screen and prompter hood on wheels, and figured people would believe it. Yeah, whatever.

Good Morning Miami started out bogged down in this idea that Jake took the job because he was entranced by Dylan. Maybe if it gets around that it can start to do something. Instead, they appear to be EMBRACING this element. They're flirting with the Reggie-Veronica-Archie-Betty idea: Gavin is loved by Dylan who is loved by Jake who is loved by Penny who is loved by Frank.

Sister Brenda and Lucia had become unnecessary with that formula. Since both characters were offensive (to Catholics and Latinos respectively) they were obviously first on the list to face pink slips. Perhaps Brooke Dillman and Tessie Santiago can return later this season as different characters who just happen to look exactly like The Weather Nun and The Tortilla Latina Chica.

Suzanne Pleshette is definitely fun, even if she is also a stereotype. How did alcoholics become so funny? And how did the over-50 and still kicking get lumped into having high sex drives? And how did Pleshette wangle a cameo for her new husband, Tom Poston? And how WEIRD is all of this?

Yes, I'm thinking about this way too much.

My prediction continues to be that the show will be over by the end of the season. What will they DO when they don't have the Jake-Dylan issue to talk about?

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/25/2003 07:06:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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COMPUTERS, LOOK OUT!

The king of all hackers is being allowed back to the keyboard. Kevin Mitnick has wrapped up his probationary period of eight years of being barred from touching computers... after he used them to hack into big technology companies. That's according to the AP Los Angeles. Mitnick was at the Graybar Hotel for three years after he was convicted of the hacking crimes. The FBI said he cost Motorola, Novell, Nokia and Sun Microsystems millions. Of course, these days some hackers are PAID to hack into companies and governments. So his plans of starting up a computer security company are not likely to founder. If you want to get hacked, why not get hacked by the best?

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/21/2003 08:14:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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So now I've figured out what's going to be my downfall on this thing they call a blog. The [edit] button. I'll be editing the bits and pieces of my life forevermore.....

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/20/2003 07:31:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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Oh, god. I just had a producing nightmare.

Strangely enough, the control room was somehow in my mother's bathroom in our house in Oregon. Don't ask me how they got all the people and equipment in there.

It's like I took over a newscast -- the noon show maybe? -- with like an hour to air... but it was all done, practically. But then again it wasn't.... like the first few chyrons of the show were horribly wrong... For some reason that's really the only thing I can remember about the "show" itself. The dream fast-forwarded to that problem being discussed in the postmortem. Maybe that was the only thing that mattered. That and the manager who NEVER raises his/her voice or yells at anybody telling me off for not covering my own butt. Oddly enough, for about a second, it made me long for the days when I'd be called in the booth by an irate news director or executive producer and be yelled at while the show was going on.

Oooooohhhhh... remind me never to eat Doritos right before going to bed.

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/20/2003 06:48:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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As they would say on Monty Python's Flying Circus, Hello, and welcome to the show. TopStoryLive is still working out the bugs in its present form, at topstorylive.blogspot.com, in partnership with topstorylive.iboardplus.com and producer.tvheaven.com. We're still working on the following:

- getting the front page's tables to work without putting the text version of the navigator menu all over the place
- getting the navigator menu to appear
- getting the navigator menu to blend in with the black background
- getting the navigator menu to lead to all the right things
- adding "The Show" front page
- adding/revising a placeholder page for Linkage

as well as putting fresh and real CONTENT in here!

So, watch this space for more soon.

Bill

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/18/2003 10:51:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Oh, dear. We appear to be in um (ahem) BUSINESS!!!!!!!! OMYGOD!

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/11/2003 11:35:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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What? That's it? I have a blog now?

Well, now what? http://producer.tvheaven.com

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 1/11/2003 10:10:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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