Now that Robot Fingers has moved away from my friend's Apple servers into the warm all-embracing embrace of Google's blogspot, I am now able to make my posts directly, unfiltered, without having to email her first. Meaning what exactly? Well, meaning I can get more Robot Fingers content to you in less time! Meaning my posts will now be a bit rougher around the edges, a little more in yer face, a little bit raw, a little bit edgy, a little bit full on, eh! EH!
In other words, a little bit crappier, perhaps? Forsaking quality for quantity, as goes the platitude. But no! (or, hopefully not) I am not the cynical type (today anyway), I will not give in to this crisis, I will look at it as just the opposite - a crisortunity! Instead of bemoaning the loss of this particular check and/or balance, I will take a page from one of my many TV heroes, Mr Conan O'Brien.
As Late Night host for 16 years and Tonight Show host for almost two months now, Conan presents an hour of entertainment five nights a week, 40-something weeks a year. An hour! Sure, there's some guests plugging their wares, and if he's lucky he won't have to coax them through some dull story. Plus a music guest or a comedian to fill the last five minutes of the show. Oh and 18-20 minutes of commercials of course. But still, thats a lot of time to fill.
And sometimes, despite him assuring us in the opening monologue that they have a great show for us, it isn't. Sometimes the monologues fail, sometimes the sketches go over the head of the audience, sometimes David Duchovny brings the show to a screeching halt with a series of horribly stilted anecdotes. (Ok I only know of that happening once, but it seemed to just go on forever).
But them's the breaks. Comedians tell bad jokes. Musicians play sour notes. Engineers design faulty bridges. Pornographers make bad pornography. The difference is... or, one of the many and varied differences is that Conan's bad shows are televised and watched by millions of people. The mistakes are right there, in the public record, for all who'd care to see... to see. Such is the nature of the business, such is the nature of late night television.
Lucky for him and his production stuff, as well as for fans who count on him to wind down the day with some light, offbeat humour, the very next day brings another episode, and an opportunity to do better. Every night is a fresh slate, even if some of the jokes and the bits aren't particularly fresh. Maybe the next night the audience will be more in tune to his style, maybe he'll be in a better mood, maybe he'll be helped along by Norm MacDonald in the guest chair - maybe he'll just be funnier, who knows. Necessity being the mother of invention, if you need to make five hours of entertaining television a week, you find a way to make five hours of entertaining television a week. You rise to the occasion, you make the best of the crisortunity!
Of course, Conan's show is hardly the only one that has an inordinate amount of time to fill. The American television landscape is full of examples of crisortunitys.
My next few posts (how many exactly depends on how many I can think of) will look at some of the other examples of such crisortunities and maybe y'all will forgive me if there are a few more typos from here on out. Or if I start ending sentences with prepositions.
-hobospaceman
you go on ahead
