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Last week's NewsNews article for the week of 1/31/10. Conan O'Brian Moving
On With the Great Late Night Talk Show Shakeup of ’10 just beginning one host is ready to move on to the next big thing. While brushing off casual questions a few comments have hinted that Conan O’Brian is looking to lead the way into a new era of TV. As Reality TV begins to become stale – the long awaited day of someone dying on television for entertainment purposes is now officially one year late – executives are on the hunt for the next big movement in a medium that is rapidly losing out to the internet, home entertainment centres and even live theatre after a spate of heart attacks and one poisoning on Broadway renewed interest. Rather than keeping up his old format, which may be eliminated at any moment, Conan O’Brian is retooling his show into guests, talk and torture. The precise routine is unknown, early torture devices brought in have been low in terms of labour intensiveness and complexity. So far Conan has been seen inspecting racks, thumb screws and something involving a car battery and a bucket of frogs. While more elaborate methods, such as iron maidens (the spiked device, not the band and not the early model robot love dolls), Chinese water torture, or karaoke may be used in the future Conan O’Brian is aware that he is breaking new ground and does not want to rush things. Conan is also shaking up things by going with a new guest format. First up on his guest list for this new form of televised entertainment is Rush Limbaugh, followed by Pat Robertson. When asked if the new torture based format led to the new breed of guests or if the guests fuelled the format producers of the new show stated that while Limbaugh had some reservations about being tortured live on air, especially since it had not been specified to be to the death or not, Robertson had volunteered some of his own equipment. Critics are divided, on the one hand there are those calling this the latest in avant guard adventurism, pushing the boundaries of entertainment by introducing an old element as a new feature to reignite a waning medium. On the other hand there are those who see this as nothing more than the next step in the long and tragic saga of painful exploitation and public humiliation of people willing to do anything for attention. Rush Limbaugh immediately attacked these critics, stating that he was neither an attention whore nor a philanderer. When some poor fool made the mistake of pointing out that no one had directly called him an attention whore and no one referred to him as a philanderer Rush Limbaugh launched into an hour long explanation of how attention whore and philander had been subtly worked into every article and then gave a ninety minute explanation as to why he was neither. The body count is presently in the low twenties, something of a record for Limbaugh as there were only nine people in the room. |