More Media Bashing & Further Ranting

Remember when TLC was The Learning Channel? And A&E was Arts & Entertainment?

Alas, I'm old enough to recall those sylvan days of yesteryear, when these programs had educational content and cultural programming. Now, TLC stands for The Lowest Common-denominator and A&E stands for Anomalies & Exhibits--it's become the modern equivalent of the old Sideshow 10-in-one freakshow, with Dog the Bounty Hunter, Little People Big World, The Mermaid Girl, The Lobster Boy (and God help the world if those two marry and spawn the Crawdad Kid) seemingly endless programs about conjoined twins and the men/women who love them, Tattooed people, motorcycle people, Criss Angel, who wasn't even a magician but a rock musician turned universe's biggest douchebag and whose fanbase was apparently too ignorant to know the difference between a good, polished conjurer and a lisping moron who relied on the very-forgiving medium of television magic to cover his lack of even the most basic skill; programs about obese people, addictive people wallowing in their own vomit, people who (Gawd help us) don't dress stylishly.

Now here is the most frightening aspect of this many-faceted jewel of dazzling delusion: In between this parade of horrors we have entire programs whose premise revolves around people doing their jobs. Okay, some people might have interesting jobs, but selling houses, cooking food, driving trucks, sawing down trees, and draining septic tanks do not rank anywhere near the top of a resume of beguiling professions. But since apparently people (astonishingly enough) watched these content-devoid and cheaply-produced programs, we were offered the ultimate vapid program in an act of dazzling chutzpah that astounded even me, a person who has studied the greatest scams in history: programs consisting of nothing more than people working on their house.

Now listen to me. Listen well. Nobody likes to work on their house. I used to own a house. Activities like hanging wallpaper, sanding floors, digging holes, painting, mowing lawns, laying carpet--involve hard work, You don't want to do it. You pay other people to do it so you can do something interesting. But by Neptune's shinbone, put it on television with snappy music and flashy graphics and for some reason people will watch it.

In brief, the entire program line of both TLC and A&E makes me pull at my already thinning hair and shout at my cat: "Jesus Christ--WHO CARES?"

I'll give you my own experience with TLC. My friend Alain Nu, a very talented performing artist, nailed a contract for four television specials for TLC. He called me, elated over the news. I asked, "Uh, have you seen the programming on TLC lately?" He called me back a few days later, a little less elated. "This used to be the Learning Channel. What happened?" This was the first time I used my "The Lowest Common denominator" reference I think, which you have to admit, is pithy and winsome.

We had high hopes for that special. I was brought on as a creative consultant for that series, along with a few other very creative people, at a wage so low it was appalling. Low budget was the excuse. I basically did it as a favor for my friend and for the experience working for TV. I found myself thrown into one of the most dysfunctional scenarios you can imagine. The production team eviscerated our scripts, for one thing. They sucked the life from them. We wanted to bring emotional content to mentalism. The wanted to appeal to the masses.

Apparently our initial ideas, especially mine, were too "literary" for their conception of the drooling, trailer-park microcephalopods they imagined constituted their audience base. You would not believe the contempt with which they spoke of the television-watching public. The problem was these arrogant bastard's conception of the masses--which means you and me--was of an intelligence so abysmally dull and ignorant it would make a neanderthal seem like Steven Hawking. After working with these rocket-scientists for a while, I later decided the psychological term for this was "projection."

As for the direction team, they were, to put it mildly, insane. Constantly yelling, ordering everyone around, and supplanting our vision with theirs--which was basically a pastiche of David Blaine specials and a hip image which was about fifteen years younger than our star. As far as I could tell, neither the director nor her husband had read a book between them in their combined lives. One day they took our star out clothes shopping and basically transformed him into one of the New Kids on the Block. Here the problem was our star already had a well-established, likable persona of his own and they were not only clueless of this, they didn't even care to take the time to get to know him. They decided their "ideas" --really just bytes they assimilated from every other magic special they ever saw--would be far better than something new and better.

Our star, realizing this Justin-Timberlake-meets-Jackie-Chan ensemble was in no way reflective of his true identity, showed up at the set the next day dressed more sensibly. The director freaked out and began screaming at everyone. This was typical; she had at lest five meltdowns a day. There was constantly a false sense of drama on the set. Everyone associated with TLC were self-important, narcissistic and quick to yell at anyone they thought they could get away with. The creative team basically were reverted to third wheels and treated as hired help. Which I anyway, was not. Not hired help, that is. I was a consultant, and a very necessary one at that. I will tell you that hellcat yelled at me ONCE. I told her privately if she did it once more for any reason, I would not show up ever again. It never happened again, but she was very cold to me after that, which was fine with me.

The whole project was an exercise in incompetency. Entire shoots had to be scrapped because of camera crew malfunctions and other glitches. I was never so glad in my life when this project was over. I realized that somewhere along the line, TLC and A&E had been taken over by new owners, who decided the American public was just too dumb for quality programming. I decided right there that if anyone ever offered me a shot at television, I would refuse them point-blank. No way would I work with television people again.

Now the punchline is that after union fees, insurance, tax deductions and expenses, and other mysterious deductions I couldn't decipher even with my Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, I wound up losing money on this deal. Furthermore, the TLC bookkeeping department made such a mess of their paperwork that the W2s they sent me raised a red flag with the IRS and I was audited. Yes, my accountant said the only reason he could see my return was singled out was those suspicious W2s from TLC. They were a mess.

Hey, maybe I could get a TV series from the whole trip? I don't know. It was very interesting to get a look at the inside of these two stations, which are both owned by the same company if you haven't noticed by now, and see just how they work. In spite of it all, the specials turned out very good and I recommend you watch them if you get a chance.