#also NBC air your games at an earlier time so people LEAVE

[jocelynships]

Finally made it home

Tonight was a fuckin’ mess

But at least my coworkers were as supportive as they could be and I really do appreciate the fact I seem to have some good people around me

[leafs-lover]

Because Two People Got Drunk: 29

Series Masterlist

Chapter 29

A/N: I am not a doctor and have no medical training (besides 13 seasons of Greys). Italics represent a flashback and some of your thoughts. This chapter is written from Fred’s POV. 

Summary: The high you’re feeling from winning the second round comes to an abrupt end.

Warnings: Swearing, angst, mentions of car accident

Word Count: 7600

Fred’s POV

“Good game tonight Fred” Kyle the NBC sportscaster says. You run your hands through your hair damp with sweat having just gotten off the bike.

“Thanks, yeah the boys really came together and played a full 60 minutes and we pulled out the W” you answer. You grab your towel and wipe the sweat from your forehead “the boys did a good job at limiting their chances and keeping them away from the slot, kept my job pretty easy” you chuckle slightly.

“Yeah it was a good effort all around. You looking forward to a couple days off before the conference finals?” he asks you. The other matchup being Toronto and Tampa is tied after 4 games, they play game 5 tomorrow night, but the series will need at least 6 games to be decided.

“Yeah it will be good for us to have a few days without games. Be able to allow some of the boys to rest, I know some of them got a little banged up this series” you explain shifting around on your feet, hoping to wrap this up to jump in the shower to get home to (Y/N). Tonight is the first day she has been willing to talk and you don’t want to miss any time with her. You bring your water bottle up to your lips taking a sip of Gatorade while the interview continues.

“What did you think of the power play? Sidney alluded to some issues and needing some work if you want to be successful in the conference finals.”

“Yeah well I think you guys have mentioned it a lot in interviews and post game coverage. We know there is some work needed in that aspect of the game. So we can use the next few days to refocus and figure out how to generate some momentum from that. Both Toronto and Tampa have a very good P.K. so we need to have success on our power play to advance to the finals.”

“Well thank you and good luck Freddie” Kyle says.

“Thank you” you respond smiling.

Him and the other sportscasters turn their attention to the coach and you finally head into the showers. You look at the clock and see it’s about 45 minutes after the game. Wanting to get home quickly you decide to have a quick shower at the rink, and have a full one later. You can’t wait to cuddle up beside (Y/N) for the first time in weeks, feel your boys kick while you breathe in her fruity conditioner. While you know there is some difficult conversations still to be had, you just want to wrap yourself around her for a few hours first.

After a quick shower you throw your game day suit back on. It’s your navy three piece suit with a light grey vest, it’s (Y/N)’s favourite and you like to think it brought you good luck tonight. You leave the top button of your white dress shirt undone, reaching  for your tie.

A few hours ago you were in the bathroom finishing getting ready when Oliver came running in with a present for you. It was something he and (Y/N) saw online and ordered a couple weeks ago and it just came in. He had the biggest smile on his face, carrying the box with a simple grey bow.

(Y/N) was leaning on the doorway watching the exchange with a small grin on her face, you could see it reflecting back to you on the mirror. Her hair was in gentle waves, no makeup on her face. She had on a pair of track pants with a black tee that was a little too small, the bottom of her bump exposed. All you wanted was to kiss her, but you didn’t want to push her limits; even if she did give you a soft kiss a few hours ago.

You opened the box and revealed a black silk tie with Toy Story characters in various poses stitched into it.

“It’s lightyear and woody!” your son cheers smiling and you chuckle lightly, this being one of his favourite movies.

“Wow, thanks Ollie this is great” you say running your fingers on the fabric.

“I was actually looking at ties for him for the wedding this summer, when he saw this one and he loved it. I asked if he wanted it, and he said daddy would” (Y/N) explains walking over to the vanity resting against the counter a few inches from you.

“Well you’re right” you say smiling at Oliver “I love it buddy!”

“Wear it daddy” Oliver exclaims.

“You think I should wear it to the game tonight?” you ask him.

He nods his head with a  huge smile “yeah!” you can feel the excitement radiating off of him.

You look at (Y/N) who raises an eyebrow at you with a light chuckle. You don’t exactly have a reputation for wild or colourful suits, leaving that style to the younger boys. You set the box down and turn back to the mirror, you begin to loosen the navy blue one you normally pair this look with. (Y/N) walks forward a few steps and picks up the tie, removing it from the packaging and putting the fabric around your neck.

She begins to effortlessly tie your tie for you, she smiles at you her face a few inches from yours. You smell her conditioner, and don’t break eye contact with her while she tucks the tie in your vest. You see the faint freckles on her nose, the pinkness to her cheeks and take a gulp having missed her touch more than you even noticed. She has a slight smile on her face while she adjusts your collar and smooths the fabric making it straight and stepping back “what do you think Ollie?”

“It’s perfect” he exclaims jumping into your  arms. “Good luck daddy” he says wrapping his arms around your neck. You holds his tiny body against your chest, his legs dangling while you kiss his cheek.

“Thanks bud, I’m going to have so many saves because of my new tie” you say setting him down. He brings a hand up, giving you your pre-game fist bump before leaving the bathroom.

You turn your attention to (Y/N) who steps in front of you, she places her arms on your biceps and leans in close to your ear. Goosebumps build feeling her breath on your neck “good luck Fred” she whispers and you shiver, feeling her words sending a tingle to your spine.

She pulls her face back, now looking up into your eyes, without thinking you bring your lips down to hers and your hands down to her hips. She steps into your embrace, wrapping her arms around your neck opening her mouth to allow you entrance. Her hands tangle into your hair, and you are tempted to slide your hands down to give her ass a light squeeze but you don’t want to push your luck. You settle with your hands resting on the small of her back.

Your tongues fight for dominance, a soft moan slipping from her lips has you almost gets you hard. She finally pulls back smiling while you take a gasp of air. She places another soft kiss on your lips before stepping back to the counter with a smirk.

“Thanks (Y/N)” you say wiping the side of your mouth.

“Talk to you later tonight” she says while you lean in to place a kiss on her cheek. She grips your arms and pulls away “you’re going to be late” she says softly causing you to groan before turning around and heading out for the game.

You smile running the smooth fabric through your fingers remembering the exchange from earlier that day. You loosely wrap it around your neck, not bothering to tuck it into the vest. You know there are some extremely difficult conversations to come tonight and over the next few days, but you are extremely grateful (Y/N) is willing to talk. Her showing up at the game shows how lucky you are to have this amazing woman. She could have just asked Kathy or Christina to bring him, but her coming gives you hope for how the next few days will go.

After gathering your belongings from your stall you open the dressing room door with your cell phone in your hand. Assuming (Y/N) left after the game you unlock your phone expecting to see a “congrats” text from her, but your screen display is empty.

“Daddy” you hear a voice identical to Oliver’s call out. You look up, gazing the room for the child and see your son in his Andersen jersey and red curls running towards you.

“Hey Oliver” you say bending down to hug him. His arms wrap around your neck while you stand up holding him against you. “What are you doing here?” you ask scanning the area for (Y/N) surprised she would wait with how she has been feeling.

“You were so good daddy!” he squeals ignoring you. “Maybe you will play Uncle Auston and Uncle Mitch!”

You laugh lightly making your way through the crowded hallway, you begin to head to the lounge assuming she found a comfortable spot to wait for you.

“Hey Fred” you hear a voice call from beside you, you turn to your left to see Kathy. “(Y/N) wasn’t feeling the best so she left after the first period.” She pulls out a set of car keys and hands them to you.

“She took the car home? She must have been super uncomfortable to get in that thing” you laugh. “Thanks, how was this guy?” you ask shifting him on your hip. You look at your son and see his eyes getting heavy causing a light smile to cross your face. Oliver rests his head on your shoulder as Kathy responds “he was great. He was very into the game, his eyes were glued to the ice the entire time. He also ate a lot of popcorn”  she further explains. You laugh lightly at that and kiss his forehead “but he was great. Never stopped smiling”

“That’s awesome, thanks again Kathy. He has been laying the guilt on (Y/N) for not going to games, I’m sure he was thrilled to get to stay.” You wrap your free arm around her giving her a side hug “well I’m happy to bring him with me anytime.”

“You say thank you to Kathy for keeping an eye on your tonight?” you ask Oliver.

“Thank you Kathy” your soon coos on your shoulder.

“Anytime Ollie” she smiles “have a good night Fred” she says smiling and turning down the hall to find Sid. You head to the car Oliver resting his head on your shoulder, you hear his soft breathing thinking he has fallen asleep against you. You buckle Oliver into his car seat and pull away looking at him, you see his brown eyes are open, very heavy but open.

“Hey bud” you say wiping his hair from his face “you tired?” you ask him. He still has a big smile glued to his face, even if his eyes are struggling to stay open.

“No daddy” he mumbles shaking his head. You place a quick kiss on his cheek and get into the driver’s seat, you adjust all the settings and get comfortable. You start the short drive home, knowing traffic will be light at this late hour.

“You have fun tonight?” you ask Oliver driving down the street slowly, avoiding the fans who are celebrating on the street. You see brake lights ahead, which is unusual for this time of day, but sigh slowing the car.

“Yeah daddy, so much fun!” he cheers from the back seat as you stop. You look in the review mirror and see him looking out the window at the surroundings.

“Well make sure you thank mommy for taking you” you say smiling.

“I will daddy” he says, you see him smile before you turn your attention back to the road. There is 3 streetlights before you get on the onramp, and the lights ahead of you have switched from red to green a few times, yet you haven’t moved. You want to turn the radio on for an update on traffic, but you also don’t want it to keep Oliver awake. You shift slightly in your seat as you pull up a few car lengths, approaching the first intersection.

“Daddy why aren’t we moving?” you hear him mumble from the backseat.

You look into the review, and his eyes are barely awake while his head nods on and off. You chuckle and decide to not answer, knowing he is seconds away from passing out. You tap your finger on the steering wheel and begin to advance closer to the first light.

You see a police officer in the middle of the intersection directing cars to turn at the intersection, likely because of an accident; a bad one if they are diverting traffic away from the area. You groan, knowing your quick drive will be longer but follow the flow of traffic around the corner.

About 15 minutes later you are finally back on track, merging onto the freeway. You scan the review mirror and see Oliver fast asleep, his head leaning back and mouth wide open. The only good thing about the delay getting home is that Oliver will be fast asleep when you get home, and there is no chance of you waking him up putting him in bed.

The rest of your drive is smooth and you finally pull up and open your gate. While making your way slowly up your driveway, you take in the scenery that is illuminated by the full moon while the garage gradually opens. When it finally opens you notice the BMW isn’t parked in there. You stop and look around the driveway trying to see if (Y/N) parked outside and you didn’t notice it but don’t see anything.

You put the SUV in park you check your phone and don’t see any missed calls or texts from (Y/N).

F: Hey babe, just got home and you’re not here. You okay?

You carefully scoop Oliver up from his car seat, resting his head on your shoulder making your way to his room. I’m sure she just went to her grandparents, it’s closer to the arena you think setting Oliver down on his bed. You gently strip the jersey off, and pull his shoes off his feet; you decide to leave him in his pants and t-shirt he was wearing underneath in order to not wake him.

“Goodnight Ollie” you whisper placing a kiss on his forehead gently pulling his Penguins comforter up to his chin tucking him in. “Love you” you say pulling the door, but leaving it open a crack to allow in a little light from the hall.

You pull your phone out and see no new notifications, you click back on your conversation and the message hasn’t been delivered yet. You scowl lightly knowing every car has a charger in it, so her phone isn’t dead. You walk down the hall to the bedroom, sitting on the bed wrinkling the duvet slightly pulling your tie off your neck and tossing it beside you.

F: If you’re still mad at me babe I understand. If you regret earlier or aren’t ready to forgive me I get it.

You sigh hoping that isn’t the case, if she did regret kissing me would she have come to the game? You stare at the conversation seeing the second message still hasn’t delivered. You lock the phone and stand up tearing the rest of your suit off. Normally you would carefully place them on the hanger and back in the closet, but tonight you just throw them onto your crinkled sheets.

You know they will wrinkle, just as the duvet under them but you don’t care. You know you should hang it up, put it away so it isn’t strewn across the bed when (Y/N) gets home but with every second (Y/N) doesn’t pull into the driveway or answer her phone you start to think she won’t come home. You run your hands through your hair, letting out an exasperated sigh you walk to the shower turning it on. You lean against the counter and unlock your phone once more, calling her this time. After one ring you hear:

“Hey you’ve reached (Y/N) sorry I missed you” you mumble a fuck under your breath and hang up not bothering to listen to the remainder of her voicemail. You scroll through your contacts and hit the call button, after a few rings you hear Debbie, (Y/N)’s grandmother, answer the phone.

“Hello” she mumbles into the phone barely awake.

“Hi Debbie, I’m sorry to call so late” you say into the phone while she clears her throat. You hear a bit of a commotion on the other end of the phone, and can hear John mumbling about someone calling at this hour.

“It’s Frederik dear” she says away from the mouth piece, you can hear John muttering in the background. “Is everything okay?” she asks turning her attention to you.

“Is (Y/N) there?” you ask.

“John, is (Y/N) here?” she asks him. “He’s gone to check, what’s going on?”

“(Y/N) came to my game but left after the first period, but she isn’t home. I thought maybe she decided to crash at your place instead of doing the drive home” you explain.

“I see” she says and silence falls over the line. “John says she isn’t here” she says and you feel your heart drop as panic sets in. You take a gulp and run your hands through your hair, leaning backwards feeling your back hit the mirror.

“Okay thanks” you manage to croak.

“I’m sure she is fine dear” she tried to reassure you, but you don’t think she even believes it knowing this in unusual for (Y/N). And you have a pit in the bottom of your stomach that says otherwise.

“Yeah…thanks. I’ll let you know when I hear from her” you explain hanging up the phone. You walk over to the shower and feel the steam hit your face, you reach in and turn it off trying to think who else might know where she is, who you could call. It’s unlikely she called her friends from home about where she went, and the women all saw her leave after the first period. If Kathy knew something she would have told me after the game. And if she hadn’t heard from her by the end of the game none of the other women would have. And no matter what she would have called me, even when she wouldn’t talk to me she was delayed at her hair appointment and still text me so I wouldn’t worry. No matter how she is feeling towards me she wouldn’t just take off.

You slowly walk into the closet and pull out a pair of track pants and a t-shirt from your drawer. You pull them on and unlock your phone once again.

F: I just want to make sure you’re okay. Please answer me

F: I love you xox

As you hit the send button you sigh again seeing your messages still aren’t being delivered. You are pulled from your trance by your main gate buzzer going off. You run to the speaker in the bedroom and press the button.

“Hello (Y/N/N)” you practically yell into the speaker, not even realizing that she wouldn’t need to be buzzed in.

“No sorry, this is Officer Black from Pittsburgh P.D. Is this the address of (Y/F/N) (Y/L/N)?” the unfamiliar voice asks back. You take a few deep breaths, releasing the buzzer and hitting the open button. Your heart rate begins to pick up, the pit in your stomach grows while you almost fall down the stairs running to the front door.

Your hands shake as you reach out for the door handle. You see the police cruiser parked through the frosted glass, and two figures approach the door. You grip the handle, maybe that second figure is (Y/N) you think. Disappointment and fear fill your body when you open the door to see two officers approaching you, no sign of (Y/N).

“Hi I’m Fred, I’m (Y/N)’s boyfriend” you say as they approach the door. “Where is she, is she okay?”

“I’m Officer Black, this is Officer Taylor. Can we come in?” one officer asks.

“Where is she?” you ask feeling your voice crack.

“She is in the hospital but is okay” the second officer says to you “she was in a car accident at Logan and Wylie.”

That was the accident I was diverted around on my way home. You go numb while the officers wait for you to respond. You take a gulp and brace yourself against the door frame, your heart beats out of your chest.

“Maybe you should sit down” one of them says gently guiding you into the office. You lean against the arm of one of the red chairs (Y/N) bought. While this room is rarely used, you still notice the details she put into it. There is a large canvas pictures of the 3 of you above the fireplace, and pictures of your families framed on the desk. She spent hours finding the pillows for the window bench that matched the chairs perfectly. The bookshelves are filled with all the books from her childhood that were previously in storage, multiple candles are scattered around the room.

All these minor details that she spent hours planning, make this house a home. Normally you would feel close to (Y/N), sense her in the space but in this moment you have never felt further from her. Tears are building in your eyes, you look at the officers through blurred eyes “you said she’s at a hospital?” you whisper.

“UPMC Presbyterian” they respond.

“The babies? She is pregnant” you say wiping the side of your eyes sitting upright.

“We don’t have any more of an update just that she is in critical condition and they are working on her” he says to you. “Do you need a ride there?”

“No I can get myself there, just have to get my son” you whisper lightly and stand up. The officers leave your house while you head upstairs pulling out your phone to call Debbie back. You tell her about the accident and she says John will meet you at the hospital and take Oliver back to their house. You hang up and open the door to his room, the light slowly approaching the bed.

You see your son lying on his stomach, blue tucked tightly under his arm. You freeze in your tracks seeing your son, your first son with (Y/N) and immediately break down praying everyone is okay. You fall to your feet and sob thinking of the worst case scenario, losing (Y/N) and the twins, having to raise Oliver alone without a mother.

No I can’t think that way, she will be fine. I just have to get to the hospital. (Y/N) is fine, she is fine. Y/N is fine.

You keep repeating that to yourself, trying to make yourself believe it. Finally after a few deep breaths you find the strength to stand up wiping the tears from your eyes. You shake your head and spot the bag (Y/N) packed beside his door.

You planned on Oliver going to John and Debbie’s when she went into labour. Since Dr. Morris put her on steroids she packed two bags weeks ago. One bag full of items for the two of you and the twins and the second is Oliver’s bag to take to their house with some clothes and books; knowing they have lots of toys there. You walk over to Oliver and sit on his bed, pulling his body against your chest. You kiss his head, your hands stroking through his hair. You need to get to the hospital, you need to check on (Y/N) and the twins, but in this moment you need this.

You gently rock him side to side, his small body resting in your arms causes you to relax slightly. You hear him mumble and stir slightly in his sleep as you gently set him back down. You walk over to his duffle bag and throw it over your shoulder and carefully grab him and blue.

The drive to the hospital is a blur, you are almost sure you shouldn’t be driving in your state. You park in the parking lot staring down the building; the building that can change your future. You didn’t expect to be here for a few more weeks, not until the day (Y/N) gave birth.

You get out and walk to the backseat of your car, unbuckling Oliver and grabbing his bag, when you realize John won’t have a car seat. You gently set Oliver down on the spare seat reaching over him to remove the car seat. You feel a hand touch your back and you jump up, hitting your head on the ceiling of your car.

“Fuck” you mumble under your breath, rubbing your hat over your scalp while stepping out of the vehicle. You see John and practically fall into his arms, letting out a sob while he wraps himself around you.

”Sorry” he whispers. You aren’t sure if he means for scaring you or about the current situation. Your body shakes while he holds you against him for a few minutes. You are brought back when you hear him calling your name.

You pull away and see his bloodshot eyes, glossed over with tears. “Hey John, how are you doing?” you ask him wiping your tears away.

“Alright, been better. Same as you I’m sure” he says looking behind you to the building. You only nod in response, realizing the last time he was rushing to a hospital in the middle of the night was when his son and daughter-in-law died.

“Did the police give you any information?” he asks turning his gaze back to yours.

“No they didn’t have any at the house and I just parked a minute ago” you explain.

“You should get inside” John whispers trying for his voice to not crack “I can get the car seat Fred.”

You nod and hug him once more “I’ll keep you updated” you say. You pull away and place a kiss on Oliver’s cheek before running into the hospital’s emergency room.

“Hey” you say running up the admittance nurse “hello I’m Frederik –“

“Hi Frederik, you need to sit down there are people ahead of you waiting to see me” the nurse tells you looking down at the computer in front of him. You look behind you and see 3 people sitting on chairs and turn back to the nurse “you don’t understand I’m not here for a doctor. My girlfriend was in an accident and brought here, I don’t know where she is” you spew out at the nurse.

The man stops typing and looks up you “what’s her name?” he asks.

“(Y/F/N) (Y/L/N)” you say to the nurse who enters the info into the system.

“Follow the blue line to the elevator, take that to the 3rd floor, follow the blue line to room 307 she is in there” he says to you.

“Thank you” you say tapping your hand on the desk and taking off down the hall. Once in the elevator you look at the index for the floors, surgery is 7th, labour and delivery in on the 5th so that has to be good she isn’t in either. Floor 3 has trauma rooms, the ICU and imagery .

The door dings to the 3rd floor and you sprint down the hall ignoring the calls from staff to stop running. When you find 307 you practically throw the door open, it crashes into the wall causing some of the staff to turn their attention towards you.

“Sir you can’t be in here” you hear a nurse say to you, but you ignore her and walk in. You hear the scattered beeping of machines, when you see one of her hands limply hanging off the bed. You bring a hand up to your mouth gasping at what you see.

You see the bracelet wrapped around her wrist; the bracelet you bought her in the beginning of the season. It was during your first long road trip. Oliver was giving her a hard time, he was struggling with you being gone and there was nothing you could do to help besides leaving and going back to Pittsburgh, which wasn’t an option.

While walking through the warm streets of L.A, you passed by a jewelry store and it immediately caught your eye in the window. You thought of her and walked inside and bought it without even looking at anything else. Through everything she never took it off. The once beautiful white gold bracelet, is now stained red with her blood.

She has monitors hooked up all over her, you can see her hair is wet with blood, blood stains her clothes that have been cut off her and are lying on the floor. The jacket she finally wore to a playoff game, the black denim jacket with your name embroidered in the back, the jacket she was so excited to get when you clinched is in pieces never to be worn again. You can see that a pool of blood has collected between her legs as you sniffle stepping forward to her. She looks cold, a shell of the woman she once was as you see the ultrasound machine being set up.

You feel a hand grip your arm firmer than before “sir you can’t be in here” you hear a voice say and you try to brush it off, trying to get closer to (Y/N).

“She’s my...that’s my” you struggle to form words looking over her body, you watch as someone squeezes some jelly onto her stomach “those are my babies. Are my babies okay?” your hands run through your hair watching the scene unfold around you.

“Yes, we have the fetal heartbeats on that monitor there” they say nodding to one of the machines “a little erratic but right now holding steady. She has some abdominal bleeding we are monitoring right now” the person with the wand says to you as the woman beside you attempts to guide you into the hall.

“You have to leave sir” she says more firmly.

“Please” you croak out “I need to know” you say and the doctor sighs and nods to the nurse beside you. He places the wand over her stomach adjusting it to find the babies, you swallow even though your throat is dry. The heartbeat fills the room and you see one of the babies faces on the screen causing you to chuckle and wipe your eyes. You are so relieved hearing the heartbeat of one of your sons. The doctor moves the wand some more finding the second baby and you just stare at the monitor, hearing their tiny hearts beating gives you back some hope and optimism.

“Sir we’re going to take care of your wife, that’s our job” you hear someone say to you. “But you have to let us do our job, so please let us do our job.”

“Okay” you whisper and nod while two nurses help guide you out of the room and shut the door behind you. You step off to the side and slide down the wall, ignoring the nearby seats. You land on your ass, bending your knees. Your rest your elbows on your knees and your head falls into your hands. You take a deep breath, you didn’t realize how much you had been holding in trying to process everything. You have been taking advantage of her always being there and now she might not be anymore.

You don’t know how long you sit on the floor for, could be minutes could be hours when the door opens and a bunch of the staff leave. You don’t think you can move from this spot yet somehow rise to your feet, when the last nurse stops in front of you.

“She’s doing okay for now, the doctors are ready to talk to you when you’re ready” she gently squeezes your arm and walks away carrying some of the supplies.

You take a deep breath and walk into the room even though your feet feel anchored to the ground. “Hi I’m Fred” you say walking in to the room.

“Hi I’m Dr. Lang a pediatric surgeon and this is Dr. Cooper a trauma surgeon”

“How is she?”

“Your wife is stable, but she has a cracked ribs and some internal bleeding. She sustained a pretty serious gash to her head, but we don’t see any bleeding or swelling in her brain, likely has a concussion. She sprained her left wrist but otherwise just bumps and bruises” the female doctor explains to you.

“Your babies are holding steady, it’s been a little touch and go but they are both stable right now” you hear the other doctor explain. “She had some uterine bleeding caused during the accident which appears to have stopped on its own for now but we will keep monitoring it.”

“You said she has internal bleeding?”

“We are monitoring the internal bleeding, if it corrects itself then the babies can stay in, hopefully for a few more weeks” Dr. Cooper explains. “But if it doesn’t stop she’ll need surgery.”

“And the babies? What then?” you ask.

“We would likely have to do an emergency C-section at that point. We got the file from her OB and they have given her prenatal steroids, with that and their weights we are optimistic they would be okay with an early delivery. We also have her on some more drugs to try and encourage their growth, any time we can get is important.”

The doctors talk to you for a little while longer before leaving you alone in the room with (Y/N). Her body looks so small lying in the room, you feel a ball catch in your throat while you pull a chair up beside her bed, gripping her frail cold hand.

“Oh my god (Y/N)” you whisper “I can’t believe this happened to you.”

You bring her hand to your lips, kissing it around the tape holding the IV in place. You hold her hand to your lips, tears fill your eyes as you sit there listening to the beeping. You can barely look at her, the once vibrant woman full of life, now unconscious machines connected, lines everywhere.

After sending some update messages to her grandparents  you adjust in the chair. You try to get comfortable knowing you are in for a long night, you close your eyes attempting to sleep. Between the nurses checking on her, the beeping and the uncomfortable chair you are barely able to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Around 7am you feel (Y/N)’s hand twitch and the monitors begin beeping erratically. You squeeze her hand calling out for her as she squirms in the bed.

“(Y/N)” you call out as nurses flood the room pushing you out of the way. The two doctor’s rush in the room, as your chest tightens. “No please” you cry out feeling your eyes glaze with tears “(Y/N).  The nurses continue to try to usher you out of the room while you keep calling her name. The door is slammed in your face and you can hear scattered conversations and rushed actions from inside the room.  

You pace in the hallway, adjusting your hat. What is going on in there?

You pace around finally sitting in the chair in the hallway you can hear the controlled chaos from inside the room; all you want is to open the door and see (Y/N). You hear your phone ring, you shake the tears from your eyes and see Debbie’s name on the screen. You bring the phone to your ear “hey Debbie” you say choking on your tears.

“How is Oliver doing?” you ask after a couple minutes of updating her on (Y/N)’s status.

“He is okay, just finished breakfast. He was a little confused why he woke up here and where you guys were. He wanted to talk to you” she says. You know that you need more than just his voice, so you switch the call to FaceTime.

“Hi daddy” he says, his face lights up seeing you.

“Hey buddy” you chuckle wiping your eye, his face helping to repair your heart.

“Where are you?” he asks getting really close to the screen and you can only see his mouth; Facetime and cameras not being his strong suit. Both you and (Y/N) have countless “selfies” he has taken of himself which is just a close up of his eyes and nose.

You sigh for a second and take a deep breath, adjusting your hat on your head “I’m uh…I’m at the hospital with mommy. Mommy got hurt but the doctors are taking good care of her” you explain to him.

“Mommy got hurt?” he asks, you can hear his voice break a little bit.

“Yeah but she is okay buddy” you say into the phone. You want to reassure him but you don’t know how much of it you believe right now.

“Can I see her?” he asks pulling back and you can see more of his face on the screen.

“Not right now” you say and you see his face fall a bit “she is sleeping. But she would love it if you drew her some pictures.”

“Okay daddy” he says and the door opens while the staff begins to exit the room.

“I got to go see mommy, I love you” you say wiping the few remaining tears from your eyes.

“Love you daddy” your son says before you disconnect the call.

You walk into the room and see Dr. Cooper checking some of the monitors. “She is okay, her blood pressure is rising and she is still bleeding but okay for now. The babies are becoming too stressed, if their heart rates don’t drop we’ll have to deliver them. We’ve been giving them medication since she was admitted to try and lower them but so far it’s not working. Some studies say hearing the dad’s voice can help” she says shooting you a soft smile and walking out of the room.

You walk back to the chair and sit down gripping her hand, and your other slides to her stomach. You lightly place it on her belly, around the monitors.

“Hey boys” you whisper stroking them slightly. “I know you want to come out, but it would be better if you didn’t. I need you to stay put inside your mommy a little while longer. God I can’t believe we’re here right now, never thought this would happen” you feel tears begin to fall and release her hand to wipe them away.

“You know (Y/N) people keep calling you my wife” you chuckle shifting to look at her. A big bandage is in her hair, her face is partially swollen, lower lip cracked, but the woman you love is there, underneath all that. You rub your hand over her stomach, a strangled chuckle leaving your throat “and god I don’t know why you’re not. I said I wanted to wait and you said you were fine with having more kids first, but that just seems ridiculous now. Why would I wait when I have the most amazing woman in my life. You should be my wife, but god I don’t deserve you. You are way too good to me, and if the past few weeks have shown anything it’s that I need to be better. I need to be better for you, for Ollie, for these two” tears are streaming down your cheeks, eyes completely blurred while your hand rubs (Y/N)’s stomach gently. “Make it through this and I will spend every day trying to be the man you deserve.”

You stand up and press your lips to her forehead “please be okay (Y/N), please be okay so I can make you my wife and get you that puppy you haven’t stopped talking about. I’ll get you 5 dogs if it means you’ll be okay.” You feel one of the babies kick causing you to laugh through your tears “he seems excited for 5 dogs.”

A few hours later you are on a conference call with the coach and GM, you sent them a text explaining your absence from practice. There is up to a week before the conference finals begin, but they are preparing for Jarry to start those, you can’t see yourself being back for that. You look out the window, watching the rain stream down the glass, lightning illuminates the sky. Normally the sun would be preparing to set over the city, but a large storm rolled through making your worst day even more miserable.

You hold a cup of crappy hospital coffee in your hand while they prepare the press release on your absence. In this moment though you don’t care about the quality of coffee, any source of caffeine is appreciated. The hospital brought you a cot to sleep on, but you couldn’t leave her side, opting to hunch awkwardly in the chair and you can’t see yourself  sleeping in the cot tonight.

Apart from sleep deprivation your back and neck are sore, but that pain is nothing compared to the emotional roller coaster you have been going through. There was multiple instances where (Y/N)’s blood pressure or the babies would get erratic and you have been ushered out of the room. The doctors say she still has some internal bleeding which is causing the babies levels to increase, which causes (Y/N)’s to rise. They don’t think it can continue like this for much longer before they have to deliver the babies and address the bleeding.

The team says you can come out with the goalie coach for private sessions any time if you’re feeling up to it. But you can barely handle leaving (Y/N) to get a coffee, let alone a few hours to get out on the ice; and in this moment you have no desire to play. The one constant in your life, the thing that has calmed you, always been there for you and now you can’t imagine ever doing it again.

“I got to go” you say quickly hanging up the phone and rushing across the room. (Y/N) eyes flutter open and her heart rate monitor begins to beep faster as she gasps for air.

“Hey (Y/N)” you say so excited to finally see her eyes open again. You grip her hand and run your other up her arm. Her eyes struggle to stay open while you squeeze her hand “you’re okay skat” you say softly trying to reassure her.

Her heart is racing while she squirms in the bed “Fred” she mumbles opening her eyes again. Tears pour down your face, you didn’t think you would hear her beautiful voice again.

“(Y/N) you need to lie down, you can’t move” you hear a nurse say walking into the room as the beeping continues to increase, (Y/N) gasping for air. The nurse presses a button and you hear feet running into the floor while you are pushed out of the way, body going numb while you watch them inject something into her arm.

She begins to relax her body and falls back into the mattress, eyes closing in the process. You didn’t even notice she was bleeding until a nurse lifts the blanket and reveals a small pool between her legs. “Oh my god” you whisper as Dr. Lang comes running past you.

You watch the scene unfold, stumbling backward into the wall. You put an arm on it, bracing yourself trying to catch your breath. The voices and sounds are barely audible, all you can hear is the hustle and eagerness of the staff. You watch them pull her arm railings up and begin to wheel her out of the room.

You feel a hand touch your arm, and you turn your head to the left and see Dr. Lang. He is talking to you, but you can’t focus on the words having watched your entire world leave. You feel as though you are outside your body, watching everything unfold around you.

“Fred” he calls touching your arm again, his touch returns you to the surface.

You blink through your tears and wipe them away. “Fred did you hear me?” he asks as your eyes focus on his face.

“What?” you whisper, bringing the back of your palm up to wipe away the tears.

“The bleeding isn’t correcting itself, (Y/N) needs surgery now. I’m going to do an emergency C-section and then we’ll take them to the NICU to monitor them. After the C-Section Dr. Cooper and Dr. Muzek a general surgeon will operate on (Y/N). We need you to consent to the surgeries” he explains pushing a clipboard in front of you.

“Yeah of course” you say grabbing it and signing the form.

“She is in good hands, we’ll keep you updated on the progress” he says giving your arm a light squeeze before taking off down the hall toward the elevator.

Next Chapter

[talesofafangirlwithadvr]

APRIL PICKS!

And we’re back with new picks for the month!! Man, this has been some strange times we’re living in. I saw a post that said March felt like 300 days, while April feels like 3. I could not agree more. I’ve watched a lot this month, which isn’t a shocker due to our current circumstances. There’s a pretty big range, so there might be something here that you can check out during quarantine.

Here come the spoilers! 

THE SOCIETY

I’m going to start with my latest watch from Netflix, The Society. Wow. I really enjoyed this one. Going into it I knew it would be like a Twilight Zone meets Lord of the Flies show, but there was so much unexpected stuff that occurred. Much like Degrassi the Next Generation, they went there. The students from New Ham, Connecticut go off on a field trip, but the buses don’t get too far due to the storm. This forces them back into town only (maybe) a couple hours from when they left. No one is home when they get back. No adults, kids, or others who were not on the school trip. The town is theirs and there is no way out. At first it’s all partying, but things take a dark turn fast and the teens must come up with laws for there to be some sort of order in this new world if they want to survive and find a way back to their real home. The 10 episodes go by really fast. It leaves a nice cliffhanger for season 2 (which is supposed to be in the works, but I don’t know if Corona affected that at all). This show definitely contains a lot of surprising twists including one very early on that is hard to predict. If you have watched this show previously or are interested in giving it a shot know one important thing. 

This is the BEST character on the show. 

I have not met one person who doesn’t love Grizz. He is the greatest. (The fan love for him really reminds me of the love for Stiles in Teen Wolf.)

DC’S TITANS- Season 2

At the start of April, I started the second season of Titans. As someone who does not have the DC streaming service I have to wait till the seasons are accessible on DVD. I watched the first season back in December and loved it, so I couldn’t wait to watch season 2. I was excited to see all the characters they were adding to the team. As someone who LOVES superheroes, but gets most of their knowledge through watching TV and movies rather than the comics, I went in not knowing a lot, which made it even more exciting. I would say my only main issue with this season was the staggering of plots. Because there were so many characters to follow and so much going on there were a lot of times when I was excited to start the next episode (because the previous one always ended on the BEST cliffhangers) only to have the episode involve a completely different story-line. While Deathstroke was the main villain for the season, sprinkling in CADMUS and finishing off Raven’s dad at the start felt like a lot for me. Most of the side conflicts added up to involving Slade, but looking back (because I did watch this at the beginning of April) it often felt like a lot in the moment. Some of the moments that were my favorite were finally getting the Nightwing reveal, seeing Bruce and Dick interact, being at Titans tower, hearing Hank sing and all of Connor. I think he was my favorite addition to the show. (I could be biased because I’m a Superman fan.) I’m upset with the ending and they better find a way to reverse it!! I would also like to see more of the team together next season because I really missed that too. 

On a lighter note....

NAILED IT!

This is the PERFECT show for the crazy times we are in. It takes your mind off the repetitive news and is a great stress reliever, plus it is super funny and you will find yourself laughing uncontrollable. Maybe more in some episodes than others. Nailed it is the baking game show for people who strive to be better bakers in the kitchen, but are struggling when it comes to appearance (or taste...or both). In the half hour show there are two tasks for the three contestants to perform in order for a chance at the Nailed It trophy and $10,000. They are both often very difficult, with the second creation much harder than the first. Watching the contestants is hilarious as well as their reactions to baking and not having any clue what to do sometimes. I also love the judges. Nicole Byer is too funny and Jacques Torres is one of my new favorite people. 

Plus Wes is just beautiful and I loved when Nicole called him the human form of Simba from the Lion King. 

Continuing on with more comedy... 

I know of several people who quote John Mulaney’s comedy specials on the regular, plus his gifs are EVERYWHERE. So it was about time I watched his specials and what better time than right now when I can use all the laughs I can get. I watched The Come Back Kid and New in Town and was laughing all the way through. If you’re already familiar with his stand-up you can enjoy some of these moments again below. If you aren’t then I HIGHLY suggest you check them out on Netflix or by simply YouTube-ing some of his best moments. (My computer cannot stop putting them in my suggested now.)  

Returning to some of my past favorites this month....

(Some of these should not come as a shocker)

ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST

One of my February Picks is back (not that it ever really left). Zoey’s is the show that I can’t stop talking about and even if this past Sunday’s episode (not the one airing tonight because I obviously haven’t watched it yet-while he’s been bothering me I can’t wait to hear Max’s rendition of ‘Bye, Bye, Bye’) gave me issues because everyone was blowing up at each other and there were times I wanted to shout at the TV, I would still suggest this show to anyone. This dramedy has so much going on from captivating (and sometimes heartbreaking) plots, to realistic and lovable characters and songs you will quickly want to add to your personal playlist. It’s honestly just a feel good show that usually puts me in such a great mood (again, despite last week’s...) With only a few more to this season I cannot wait to see what happens next!! (If you enjoy the show check out my other posts on this page!) 

NANCY DREW

The CW retelling of Nancy Drew is in the top 2 of shows that I currently cannot stop talking about. It’s still a little shocking to me that I have grown to like Nancy Drew SO MUCH. If you told me that at the start of the season I would have been like ‘really?’ But as this first season has progressed I really fell in love with the show and the characters. While we ended on an earlier cliffhanger than was intended it was still an AWESOME one that has left me with so many questions. I am so happy this show was renewed and I cannot wait till they can start filming the second season. Because I need more of these kinds of moments:

I’m pretty sure I ended my last post this way too. But come on these two are the cutest and deserve to be endgame!

Just like with Zoey’s check out this page for more detailed reviews if you are also a Nancy Drew fan!

I DIDN’T DO IT

I am SO HAPPY that this show is now on Disney Plus. I have talked about this show since it got canceled from Disney Channel far too soon (much like many of their great shows on that channel). But at least they had gotten 2 seasons and both are now available to watch on the streaming service as much as you’d like. (I think I already made it up to episode 12). In my personal opinion season 2 is stronger than season 1 mainly because it doesn’t follow the classic structure of the “I didn’t do it” episode. What I mean by this is starting the episode out with some sort of hi-jinks and having the 5 best friends exclaim they “didn’t do it” or this isn’t how they thought things would go. Then we flashback to events either earlier in the day or week, etc, leading up to the first scene’s events. This style can get very repetitious, but with funny plots and likable characters certain episodes work better than others. However, by season 2 this structure was gone completely and I think the show strongly benefited from it. I truly believe this group of friends felt like a teenage “Friends” sitcom. They had a hang out at a smoothie cafe, two of them were siblings (here twins) and each member of the group resembled a character from the classic NBC show. They even had the two that felt like Ross and Rachel like each other romantically. Who knows where the show would have gone if it wasn’t cancelled. Check it out and let me know if you find more comparisons.    

And Last But Not Least...

WORLD ON FIRE

The most recent show I’ve started watching is currently airing on PBS after previously airing on the BBC. This drama throws us into the beginnings of WWII as we follow several characters from different parts of the globe, from England to Germany and Poland. I’m really loving the diverse cast and seeing through the eyes of so many characters during this turning point of history. While I have only watched 2 episodes so far, I already feel very invested in each of their lives and cannot wait to see what happens next. Already so many twists and turns have occurred in such a short amount of time. The episodes go by really fast and will have you thinking a lot after. If you are a fan of a lot of other Masterpiece’s Classics I would highly suggest checking it out. 

I hope everyone is staying safe and well! 

[go-redgirl]

Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace

When Ellen DeGeneres returned from a summer hiatus to open the 18th season of her daytime talk show in September, she came armed with an apology. “I learned that things happen here that never should have happened,” she said. “I take that very seriously. And I want to say I am so sorry to the people who were affected.” Those remarks came in the wake of reports of workplace misconduct at “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

Viewers tuned in for the apology: This year’s season opener had the highest ratings for an “Ellen” premiere in four years. And then they tuned out. “Ellen” has lost more than a million viewers since September, according to the research firm Nielsen, averaging 1.5 million viewers over the last six months, down from 2.6 million in the same period last year.

The decline has come at a time when workplace behavior, in Hollywood and elsewhere, has come under intense scrutiny against a backdrop of protest and social change. It is a startling setback for one of daytime television’s most successful franchises and for Ms. DeGeneres, who was at the forefront of an earlier cultural shift when, as the star of a prime-time network sitcom in the 1990s, she announced that she is gay.

The show’s loss of more than a million viewers translates to a 43 percent decline, representing a steeper drop than any of its competitors. This TV season, “Ellen,” the winner of dozens of Emmys since its start in 2003, is no longer in the same league as traditional rivals like “Dr. Phil” (3.1 million) and “Live: With Kelly and Ryan” (2.7 million). Now it finds itself uncomfortably close to shows hosted by Maury Povich (1.4 million), Kelly Clarkson (1.3 million), Rachael Ray (1.2 million), Tamron Hall (1.1 million) and Jerry Springer’s former security guard Steve Wilkos (1.1 million).

The loss of viewers includes a 38 percent decline in her core audience, adult women under 54, according to Nielsen. And it appears to have put a dent in the show’s ad revenue. From September to January of the 2019-20 season, “Ellen” brought in $131 million from advertisers, according to the research firm Kantar. That has fallen to $105 million for the same period in 2020-21, a drop of about 20 percent.

Ms. DeGeneres, 63, has publicly mused on the possibility of leaving the show in recent years, and the spotlight on her workplace troubles has added to the questions about her future. Her talk-show contract runs through next year. Warner Bros., the division of AT&T’s WarnerMedia that produces “Ellen,” confirmed that the show would return for a 19th season in September, after her usual summer hiatus. A spokeswoman for Ms. DeGeneres declined to comment when asked if the 2021-22 television season would be her last.

“‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ remains one of the top three highest-rated syndicated talk shows this season,” David McGuire, an executive vice president of programming at Telepictures, a Warner Bros. subsidiary, said in a statement. He suggested other reasons for the decline, like changing viewing habits during the pandemic.

“While broadcast is down across the board and Covid has been challenging for production, we are looking forward to bringing back our live audiences and a 19th season filled with all of the hilarious and heartwarming moments that have made ‘Ellen’ one of the longest running and most successful talk shows in history,” he added.

Whether or not the next season of “Ellen” is its last, WarnerMedia and Ms. DeGeneres are together for the long haul. In 2019, the company made a deal with her to produce four programs for its HBO Max streaming platform, including a home-design challenge series; a dating show; an animated show, “Little Ellen”; and a documentary series on inventors made in conjunction with the Albert Einstein estate. (In another deal, she recently signed a multiyear pact with Discovery to produce natural history documentaries and series.)

Public perception of Ms. DeGeneres started to change in July when BuzzFeed reported that several of the show’s former and current staff members said they had confronted “racism, fear and intimidation” on the set. Several staff members also said producers had sexually harassed them. Warner Bros. investigated the workplace and found “deficiencies.” Three high-level producers were fired, including Ed Glavin, an executive producer; Jonathan Norman, a co-executive producer; and Kevin Leman, the head writer. Ms. DeGeneres apologized to her staff before addressing her viewers in September.

Some observers believe the accusations may have weakened Ms. DeGeneres’s relationship with her audience. The host built her show as an oasis from the outside world, a place of goofy dancing, light jokes, cash giveaways to surprised audience members and high-wattage celebrity guests. Several years ago, she adopted “be kind” as her motto, in response to the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a gay college student who took his own life after being bullied.

“Her brand is not just being fairly nice — it is ‘Be Kind,’” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of film and media arts. “She’s chosen two words to stamp herself. You cannot have hypocrisy better defined than when you’ve chosen those two words to define yourself and everyone is seeing the opposite is true inside your show.

“The reason the incident with the producers was such a difficult and perilous moment is it’s the first time where something surfaced to indicate that a family — Ellen’s own professional family — was dysfunctional,” he continued.

Ms. DeGeneres referred to her motto in her on-air apology. “Being known as the Be Kind Lady is a tricky position to be in,” she said. “So let me give you some advice. If anyone is thinking of changing their title or giving yourself a nickname, do not go with the Be Kind Lady.” She added that she was indeed the cheerful person she appeared to be on television, but was also someone who experienced moments of sadness, anxiety and impatience.

In addition to her daytime show, Ms. DeGeneres is also a prime-time star for NBC — and her show for that network, “Ellen’s Game of Games,” also a Warner production, has lost 32 percent of its viewers this season, as well as 35 percent in the adult demographic important to advertisers.

Even with the complications affecting all talk shows during the pandemic, “Ellen,” with its loss of 43 percent of its audience, has suffered a steeper decline than its rivals. “Dr. Phil” is down 22 percent, and “The Kelly Clarkson” show has lost 26 percent of its viewers. Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest’s show has just lost 3 percent, and “Tamron Hall” is down 9 percent.

Ms. DeGeneres beat the odds to make her show a success. There is a television graveyard filled with the comics, actors, anchors and reality stars who have taken a crack at syndicated talk shows only to be yanked off the air because of low ratings. And when “Ellen” premiered, she also had to overcome the hesitancy of affiliate managers who thought an openly gay person could not connect with the women who make up most of the daytime audience. Her quick wit and approachable manner earned her millions of fans and ultimately a plum late-afternoon slot in most markets. As recently as a few years ago, the show was drawing roughly three million viewers an episode.

As Ms. DeGeneres fights through a loss in popularity, she has turned to celebrity friends to help her make the case that there is not much difference between the on-camera Ellen and the real Ellen. When Michelle Obama was a virtual guest last week, she spoke warmly about the time she went to Ms. DeGeneres’s house and they played a piano duet together. A video clip of the pair at the piano was shown.

Another recent guest, Jennifer Garner, also appearing remotely, raced to her hotel room balcony at the host’s request to tell passers-by how much she adored Ms. DeGeneres. “I love her!” Ms. Garner shouted. “She’s kind! She’s a humanitarian! She loves animals!”

By John Koblin

The post Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace appeared first on New York Times.

[lookbackmachine]

Disney Afternoon Part 2

The Disney Afternoon Pt 2

Subscribe: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

0:00:00 Speaker 1: The Disney Afternoon hit an unexpected hiccup a few years earlier that was finally starting to rear its ugly head. Eisner and Katzenberg would try to strong-arm their former boss Barry Diller, which would lead to unexpected new competition. In 1988, Eisner bought a television station in Los Angeles that eventually became KCAL. With his new station, he obviously wanted to air Disney product. There was a problem. They were already airing the Disney Afternoon on Fox affiliates, Barry Diller's network.

0:00:32 S1: According to DisneyWar, Eisner had Katzenberg call Diller. In Diller's recounting of the discussion, Katzenberg said, "We want to renegotiate the Disney Afternoon, and we're taking away the LA market." Diller was shocked. They had a contract. "That's not fair," he protested. "I know you bought an LA station, but give us two or three years to replace this. Let's be reasonable." Diller called Eisner, who refused. "We were there for you when you needed us," Diller reminded him, pointing out that he'd bought the original programming for Disney Afternoon. Eisner still refused. "Okay then, we're out of business," Diller said. Fox promptly dropped the Disney Afternoon from all of its wholly owned stations and encouraged its affiliates to do the same. Still, that wasn't what put Diller over the edge. Even though he felt Eisner had betrayed him, it was when Disney sued Fox on antitrust grounds claiming Fox was trying to monopolize children's programming and then complained to the FCC that Fox was a morally unfit broadcaster with programming like the Simpsons.

0:01:35 S1: When Disney lawyers approached Diller about a possible settlement, Diller said the only settlement he'd consider was an apology. Disney ended up dropping the suit in 1992, but Diller told David Geffen, "I'm never going to speak to him, Eisner, again." Fox would launch its own kids programming in 1990, which would eventually cut into Disney's ratings with the cultural phenomenon Power Rangers, not to mention Batman, the animated series, and Animaniacs. Power Rangers was a show that no one wanted. It was turned down by everyone, and then became the show everyone wanted and wanted to replicate. Premiering in August of 1993, by December it was the biggest kid show by far. According to the Baltimore Sun, it was averaging a 12.5 on weekends with kids two to 11. Fox's X-Men was doing a 10.0. And it was first on weekdays. It was doing a 7.5 rating. Second was Fox's Animaniacs with a 5.6, and the highest rated non-Fox show on weekdays was Bonkers with a 4.5. Also in 1994, Power Ranger toy sales would reach nearly a billion dollars. At their highest height, Ninja Turtles had done only $450 million in sales.

0:02:50 S1: The butterfly effect was now spreading its wings, and the Disney Afternoon would take a hit, as did the future of syndication as networks realized they should be promoting their own IPs instead of other companies. It would even happen to Fox when Warner Brothers would take its popular hits, Batman and Animaniacs, and put it on their own WB network. And it wasn't just network competitors anymore, cable had entered the market as well. Nickelodeon had popped into the world of animation and their first three cartoons, Ren and Stimpy, Doug, and Rugrats had all been big successes. The syndication window was closing in the not too distant future, but for now Disney Television Animation was about to change with the times.

[music]

0:03:43 S1: Greg Weisman, creator Gargoyles.

0:03:46 Greg Weisman: The pitch for Aladdin, that I pitched to Eisner, it was just one poster shot of Aladdin and the Genie and three words, "Aladdin the series". He's like, "Sold." That was it. And I knew that. In other words, going in, it was like I could have given this whole pitch on Aladdin, but I thought anything I say would only give him a reason to say no. Aladdin's this huge movie. Let him imagine what the show is.

0:04:11 S1: Tad Stones, creator of Darkwing Duck.

0:04:14 Tad Stones: At the end of Darkwing, I said, "Okay, now Darkwing worked much closer." I think I can get even closer with my next show, which was going to be a science fiction show. Again, a comedy. The staff loved it, but the boss did not. I never got to pitch it to Michael and Jeffrey. You know, had a meeting, I said, "Oh, I'm gonna get a chance to do it." And it was like, "No." They wanted me to do Aladdin. Now, Aladdin was done by Ron Clements, John Musker. I said, "I used to room with... In the same office as Ron Clements." I mean I was literally four feet away from him. "Let me talk to those guys." With Aladdin there was the other thing that I did the first direct to home video, Return of Jafar. And all I was trying to do was keep our budgets up. And I thought, if there's one more source of revenue that comes in from our shows, this would be the excuse to not cut budgets or give us the money we need to pull off some of this stuff. I called up Home Video and said, "Technically, when I do this four part episode pilot to set up the show, technically it's the sequel to Aladdin. Are you interested?" And the guy took it to the higher ups and they were not.

0:05:25 TS: Then they put out Aladdin on video. Again, it broke records. They made a huge amount of money, and I called the guy back and again restated what I was doing. And this time he took it to the top and they were very interested. And we had a story meeting with my boss where he gave all sorts of notes. And I said, "Well, we got... That's a lot to pull off. We have to do that by March 14th or whatever the date was." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, Home Video was willing to put this out on literally video at that time." And he said, "That's gravy. Do these notes and if you get them done in time, that's fine." And I had to be told this later by people who were in the room 'cause I had forgotten that I had said, "Okay we have to take those notes, but it also has to be done by this date so I can get it to Home Video."

0:06:11 TS: We did. And Return of Jafar was made for $3.5 million and it made something between $180 and $200 million domestic out on video. This may be apocryphal, but I was told that it was the first quarter where the company wouldn't have grown. Well, I don't know what, ten percent or whatever the number was, and I guess a bunch of executives had bonuses tied into profit growth. Evidently that was the first quarter that there wouldn't be bonuses, and then suddenly everybody got a bonus, and it was because of Return of Jafar, that out of nowhere this thing came in and making all this money. And that started the whole direct to video thing.

0:06:53 TS: All I was trying to do was to keep our budgets up. The stories involving the bonuses, they tried to do things like Lucas had with Star Wars had given everybody involved points or some sort of bonus, so they had X amount of money and they divided it up so everybody got something. And what that led to is whoever was last in line, some of the lower level people, got a bonus, a check of $50 or $100, whatever. People who basically were in the department who didn't work on the show, and all that did was piss them off 'cause they knew how much the movie had made. I got $14,000 and I told that to Ron and John. Now I was not an idiot. I knew that the only reason why the movie made that much money is because they had done an incredible Aladdin, and I remember telling that to them and their reaction was, "You got ripped off." And I realized, yeah, in live action terms, if you do a crappy spinoff of something that made a lot of money and your crappy spinoff makes a ton of money, you get a five picture deal and a new car in your driveway as a present from the studio. In animation, I was happy to get the bonus. But get a pat on the back and then you move on, do something else for us.

0:08:09 S1: Jymn Magon, writer.

0:08:11 Jymn Magon: Disney's had a definite style there for a while, of... I think we cornered the market in the comedy adventure genre. When Disney execs felt like they needed to branch out, I felt like the formula fell by the wayside. And it's like, "Hey, look what John Kricfalusi is doing on Ren and Stimpy. Let's do something like that. Hey, look what Warner Brothers is doing with superheroes. Let's do something like that." And I felt like, "Oh, this is interesting." Obviously, we're branching out, trying new things. But it felt weird to me that where we had before had been sort of chopping our way through the jungle, creating our own path. Now we were sort of following other people's paths, copying them. And that always seemed odd to me. But anyway, department does what the department does over the years, and the changes, and the new policy, and it gets worse or it gets better. And is it Disney? Yes, because it's Disney TV Animation. They're Disney and this is the show they're doing. It becomes part of the canon, you know.

0:09:15 S1: In 1994, Variety reported that Disney was spending $50 million to boost its afternoon, which resulted in two new series, Shnookums and Meat, and Gargoyles. Gargoyles, Aladdin, and Shnookums helped cut into the lead of Fox, but there was a larger problem that television animation was about to encounter. Disney's syndication contract with networks ran only through 1997, meaning that other networks could produce their own shows and make more money. This would leave Disney Animation without a home because Disney didn't own a network. In fact, earlier in the year, they had tried to buy NBC but failed. Total viewership was also in decline during this period, which had to do with VCRs, computers, and video games offering alternatives to television. And to add to the uncertainty of 1994, Jeffrey Katzenberg left the company and he left because he was fired by Michael Eisner.

0:10:12 S1: In a walk in Aspen together, according to Katzenberg, Eisner promised him that if anything happened to Frank Wells, Katzenberg would take over Wells's role as president. Eisner would later say that Katzenberg misunderstood this conversation. Unfortunately, something did happen to Wells. He was killed in a tragic helicopter crash on April 3, 1994. But business stops for no man, and Eisner went back on his word and did not put Katzenberg in Wells's position as president, nor did he name him as his successor. To make matters worse, in a white glove slap to the face to Katzenberg, Eisner took on the role of president himself. This led to a further deterioration of their relationship and Eisner gave Katzenberg his walking papers. Eventually Eisner also refused Katzenberg part of his contract, which stated Katzenberg would get two percent of all profits from any of the projects he had worked on at Disney.

0:11:08 S1: So, like all great Hollywood love stories, they went to court. At one point it came out that Eisner had said he hated that midget, referring to Katzenberg. The case could have been settled for $90 million at one point, but instead it was eventually settled for $280 million in Katzenberg's favor. And then to further complicate matters, Katzenberg went on to form DreamWorks with Spielberg and David Geffen. In the midst of all that, Shnookums and Meat, a funny cartoon show, was being made. Bill Kopp, animator.

0:11:40 Bill Kopp: And then I got a call from Disney Television, which I had never heard of. I didn't even know they had it. And Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston made me an offer. They said, "Hey, we need some new funny stuff and we really think your eat show is funny, and can you come and do a funny show?" And I was like, "Well, like what?" And they were like, "Whatever you want." Seriously. I didn't have to pitch anything. They were just like, "Just come over and we'll do whatever comes out of your head." It was incredible. So I had a sketchbook full of stuff, and I just came in. And they said, "Well, how about a cat and a dog?" I said, "Okay." We started with that, and that must have been 1992 or 1993, something like that. I forget. Pitching at Disney now. I'm not saying [0:12:22] ____. I mean, it's legendarily hard. It's like running a gauntlet. There's all these people in these giant buildings and you just got to carve your way through. And then once you do get into development, you're gonna be there for a year or two just trying to get it through. My experience was, we had lunch and the next week I was there with a contract.

0:12:40 BK: There was no feeling of pressure or ever like, "Oh my God, the wheels are coming off." It never was like that. And we had a saying that Disney [0:12:49] ____. It's like, "Well, if something's... If something crashes, well, I'll just throw money at it." You know. Nobody bothered us. When they said, "You can do whatever you want," they never brought it up. I remember sitting in the editor room with Gary Krisel, who was a great guy, and he'd look at some of the rough animation coming back. He'd look at me and he'd go, "Is that funny?" And we're like, "Yeah, that's funny." He just trusted us, and it was awesome. Now, Jeffie came over one day, as he frequently did, while we were kicking it around. And I said, "The cat's kind of abrasive. So let's give him the opposite kind of name," you know, Shnookum, 'cause he was kind of a dick. And then we were just like, "What the fuck are we gonna call this dog?" We had no clue. Just nothing. And Jeffie came up with the name, and I think we were actually barbecuing something, which we also frequently did. And I think he just said, "Meat." And we had the design already. And I said, "Fuck, that's it."

0:13:40 BK: Shnookums and Meat. A little confusion came when they made the SpaghettiOs though. I had a can of them around here, they finally just deteriorated. I had to get rid of it, it was gonna explode. And it said, "Shnookums and Meat." It was like SpaghettiOs. The lawyers were like, "No, no, no, man. You gotta say that it's not meat. It's not a meat product."

0:13:58 Shnookums: Hey, what happened to your head?

0:14:00 Meat: Hey, what happened to your head?

[music]

0:14:07 Shnookums: Oh my gosh, my brain's gone.

0:14:10 Meat: Oh no, mine is to. What we gonna do Shnookums, what we gonna do? We don't have any brains.

0:14:21 Shnookums: Now, let's stay calm. I don't think you have too much to worry about, but I know I do. They couldn't have gone far.

0:14:27 BK: Right after the first two shorts went on to [0:14:29] ____ said, "Okay, let's make it a whole half hour. What else do you got?" And I just pulled out the Pith Possum, and the Tex Tinstar bit was gonna be a space serial called Guy Guy and the Space Vigilantes. We were all set to go, and then I got a call from John Kricfalusi, and I had Fontanelli there, you know, all of Kricfalusi's guys, [0:14:47] ____ was there. A couple... Eddie Fitzgerald. And John called me. He goes, "Hey man, I heard you're expanding your show, but can you maybe not do a space thing?" Actually, it was like getting a call from the Godfather. He was like, "Yeah, don't do a space thing." And I was like, I go, "Why?" And he goes, "Well, 'cause I'm working on one. I've been working on it for a while." Actually, Fontanelli brought that up to me too. So I just turned it into a western, which was easy because I was happy to accommodate. But I guess he never sold his space thing.

[music]

0:15:14 Speaker 8: Pith Possum. At one time an ordinary laboratory possum. He was changed forever by an experiment gone wrong, an experiment that endowed him with ultra possum-like abilities, turning him into Pith Possum, super dynamic possum of tomorrow. Maintaining his secret identity by cleverly disguising himself as Peter Possum, copy boy for a great metropolitan tabloid. He defends truth, justice, and the forest critter way for the good citizens of Possum City.

[music]

0:15:56 Speaker 9: Let me just grab what I have in store for you. The rope that holds you up Tinstar, will soon be burned through by that candle. When you fall, you'll land head first on this trampoline, which will send you flying into the pen full of rabid badgers. As you go down the ramp inside the pen, this torch will be knocked over, igniting the trail of gunpowder burning toward that cannon. Your barrel will roll toward that cannon and your head will become stuck. The gunpowder will burn the cannon's fuse and the cannon will fire. The blast will ignite the waterproof fuses on the dynamite surrounding your head. The cannon will shoot you through the roof of the barn, and then down into this giant tank full of man-eating sharks. The sharks will eat you. Then the dynamite will explode. The whole mess will be blown skyward and your remains will fall into this envelope, which I will place on a boat bound for Tunisia. So long, Tinstar.

0:16:48 BK: Anyway, and that was Shnookums and Meat, but again, that was so busy and I was the only writer. I wrote all 39 of those because I didn't know any better. After the show was on the air and we were done, Jeffie and I sat around. I went to Hawaii for six weeks to recuperate. I came back and they were just like, "Well, we don't know about the second season." And I mean, Shnookums and Meat was not... It was amazing that they let us do it 'cause it's not Disney, really. Well, it's not out of line, but it's weird. So we were just sitting there waiting to get the word, and I mean the writing was on the wall. I was like, "Yeah okay, there goes that. What are we gonna do next?" And I was there still getting paid. I developed other stuff. Jeffie and I were like, "This is gonna crack, man. What are we gonna fucking do now?"

0:17:34 BK: We didn't have a plan. And then, what happened was they said, "Oh, sorry boys. You're through." And we were like, "Ah fuck, okay well, at least we got that out." I mean that was three in one, dude. You got Pith and Tex, and Shnookum and Meat was actually our weakest link in the thing. And that was the only part that was foisted on us. But right after they canceled it, that was when Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston left to go to Dreamworks, and we were like, "Ah." And it was like a sad goodbye and stuff.

0:18:06 BK: A new executive moved in, and we just weren't part of their plan. Because... And rightfully... They didn't know what to do with us. We were like a weird thing that, they were like, "Huh? Now what with these guys?" But we had a good time. I think we sort of knew in the back of our heads, it was like, "Wow, this will never last here." It isn't Disney material. The real story of that time was they were trying to keep up with Margaret and Fox Kids, and they were right to try crazy things. To their credit, they really, they stuck right by it. And then they... And Gary and Bruce did the same for us at DreamWorks when we went to do Toonsylvania.

0:18:42 S1: Greg Weisman, creator Gargoyles.

0:18:44 GW: We had the Disney Afternoon, which we viewed as sort of like the dragon that you had to feed a virgin to every six months. So every six months, we'd go up in front of Michael Eisner. In those days, Michael personally chose the shows. And we would pitch him six or seven shows. And he knew he always had to pick one to put into production. He could pick more than one, but he had to always pick at least one.

0:19:10 S1: Jymn Magon.

0:19:11 JM: Yeah, what we would do is every week, we would have this writer's meeting that I think it was Wednesday mornings, and it was like any new writers out there, any new talent, any new ideas, it was always looking for what are we gonna pitch? What's the next big thing? And of course, like everything in Hollywood, it was basically, what was the most recent hit film? With Star Wars, Indiana Jones, whatever. But people would come in and they'd pitch all kinds of things. And the things that were noteworthy would get... I'm not sure we did artwork on all of it, but at least we had a list of shows that we would take to the meetings with Eisner and Katzenberg and say, "Okay, this is called Wonder Weenie. It's about a guy in a hot dog suit that gets kidnapped and taken to another planet, where they think he's a hero 'cause of his television commercials." And it was like, Gong. [chuckle] "No, next." And we would just do that. We would come up with these sort of one, two sentence pitches and they would go, "Nah, or yeah."

0:20:13 S1: Greg Weisman.

0:20:14 GW: We were all sort of keeping an eye on Batman, and sort of seeing was this going to be a success or not? It was a serious drama on cartoon, and would that work? Because the conventional wisdom is it always has to be comedy, and often it's a pendulum and that conventional wisdom swings back into the forefront all the time. But Batman was working, it was working so well they tried it in prime time, and then it didn't work in prime time. And so the desire for us to do something along those lines sort of waxed and waned, often with Batman's ratings. And we didn't have superheroes in our camp so to speak, so we didn't wanna do Batman, we didn't wanna copy that, but we wanted to try and do something different. But that's not how Gargoyles came about at all. Those are almost two separate discussions that dovetailed later.

0:21:08 GW: Gargoyles was initially developed as a comedy adventure, very much inspired by and along the lines of Gummi Bears, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, which was a show we were really proud of, created by a guy named Jymn Magon. We thought was great. It had this very rich backstory and we thought it didn't get enough respect, and we thought that the main reason for that was because there was brand confusion with Care Bears. Care Bears was a sort of sacchariney sweet, kinda awful show, from my point of anyway. But the brand confusion was understandable because both shows featured cute, cuddly, multi-colored bears. Gummi Bears wasn't that. It was an adventure show. It was funny. It was exciting. It had a great comedic villain in Duke Igthorn and great sidekick in [0:21:54] ____, and great characters, and just a lot of fun. So we set out very consciously to create a show in that vein with the same sort of rich backstory, but that would get more respect. So everything in the 90s, the sort of buzz word was everything had to be edgy. Instead of doing cute, cuddly, multi-colored bears, we did cute, cuddly, multi-colored gargoyles. Gargoyles having been something that fascinated me since I was in high school.

0:22:23 GW: And we thought that's edgier. And instead of setting it in medieval times, we'd have this rich medieval backstory, but we'd set it in the present. We'd have gargoyles have a spell cast on them and they'd wake up in the 20th century, and that seemed edgier too. And so we thought, we can do this kind of show and have this fun comedy adventure with Gargoyles. So we put together a pitch, and we pitched it to Michael Eisner, and he passed. But we really liked the show and my bosses, Bruce and Gary, both really liked it. And they were like, "Well, take another pass at it." So I showed it to a number of people, just the original comedy pitch, to try and get some feedback and see what else I might do with it. One of the people I showed it to was Tad Stones.

0:23:06 TS: Gargoyles had a long history of things that are in a direct line that ended up with Gargoyles. And some of them didn't involve Gargoyles at all. They were gremlins, or whatever. The last thing I'd been playing with I think was a Three Musketeers version of these gargoyles. I had just seen the rough cut of Beauty and the Beast. So again, I'm instrumental. I'm not a genius, at least not in that meeting. Greg had asked me in just to talk about things and be in the discussion with his assistants basically. Again, he was an executive. And I said, "What if he was the last of the gargoyles? This could be your Beauty and the Beast 'cause you've already got the female there." He is one of the fastest thinkers I've ever seen. While he's watching a movie, he is analyzing, dissecting it. And walking out of a movie he'll have all sorts of comments, where I'm going, "Well, I thought the colors were nice." Anyway, he was on to something, he kind of said to his assistant, "Okay, you follow up on the Three Musketeers angle. I wanna work on this."

0:24:07 GW: And that really clicked for me. And so I created the character of Goliath with the artist Greg Guler, and we took the whole show, the whole comedy development and put it through the prism of Goliath and came out the other side fundamentally with the show that made it on the air. And we were so enthusiastic about it, we came up with all these concepts for villains and adventures and stories and put together this huge long pitch and pitched it to Eisner six months after we'd pitched it the first time. And he passed, killed it. And so I thought it was done. We tried. It wasn't the first time I'd pitched a show and it had gotten killed. And the next day we had what we called a postmortem meeting. In those days, Jeffrey Katzenberg was... And Michael ran the whole company, but Jeffrey Katzenberg was head of the studio. And so Jeffrey had been in the meeting with Gary and Bruce and I, and we were having this postmortem meeting where we were discussing actually the shows that Michael had said yes to and what the next steps would be. And so after having this discussion about the yes shows, we all got up to go. And as I'm about to go, Jeffrey said to me, "Oh, and you're gonna work on Gargoyles some more, right?"

0:25:20 GW: And Bruce and I sort of looked at each other, and I was like, "Well no, Michael killed it. He killed it as a comedy. He killed it as a drama. I don't know what else we'd do with it." And Jeffrey said, "Oh, Michael didn't kill it, he just thought it needed more work." Now I had been there the day before, and I knew that he had killed it. But what this was telling me was that Michael may not have liked it, but Jeffrey liked it. And in those days Jeffrey wasn't gonna contradict what Michael had said, but he still felt it was worth pursuing. I also found out later that Gary had talked to Jeffrey about the need to diversify the Disney Afternoon from the standpoint of all we had in those days were very similar, funny animal comedy adventure cartoons, and that if we just kept doing that over and over again, eventually the audience would get bored with those kind of cartoons. No matter how good they were, they'd just get bored with them. And we had to bring other types of things in, which led to shows like Goof Troop, which was really more sitcom than comedy adventure. Shows like Shnookums and Meat, which was more sort of Tex Avery short cartoons, and Gargoyles.

0:26:36 GW: And so we went back to the drawing board for a third time to try and figure out how we were gonna pitch Gargoyles for a third time. And we looked at the show that we had, and we thought, "Nope, this is the show. We don't wanna change the show at all." So the problem isn't the show, the problem is the pitch. And what you realize is that we had just put way too much into the pitch. It had diffused it all and gotten confusing and we hadn't been crisp and clear. So we just pulled things out, things that we eventually did use in the show, but we pulled all these elements out and really narrowed it down to the key idea, which frankly, was the Beauty and the Beast idea.

0:27:16 GW: It was this relationship between Goliath, the lead gargoyle, and Elisa, the cop, who befriends him in the 20th century after he wakes up. And we very much played it like Beauty and the Beast, which actually was a movie that had done very well for Disney recently. So six months later, we pitched it to Michael a third time, and this time they bought it. We had added nothing to this pitch, we just subtracted. I'd reordered a few things. We may have redrawn a card or two just to clarify an idea, but there was nothing new, it was just shorter. Jeffrey turned to me and said, "You added a lot to that pitch didn't you?" And I said, "Yes, I did." And that was history. We went on and made the show.

0:28:03 Speaker 10: One thousand years ago superstition in the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness, it was a world of fear, it was the age of Gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night. We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken and we live again. We are defenders of the night. We are Gargoyles!

0:29:01 GW: And so, yes, relative to Goof Troop it's dark, but I don't think of it as dark. There's tons of humor in that show. The color palette is rich, full of blues and purples and magentas and neon. It's not a dark show either visually or thematically. It's fundamentally a show about a guy, Goliath, who's an optimist, who believes that the world can be a better place, that bad things happen but they can be fixed, that the next generation can do better or that we can make it better. And so it's got a fundamentally optimistic tone to it. In terms of supervision, the advantage there was that I'd been the executive at Disney for five years when we went into production. I often compare it to a lunatic asylum, TV animation, in that there are inmates and then there are trustees, and the trustees are actually also inmates, but they're considered by management to be less crazy.

0:30:07 GW: So they give the trustee a stick, a baton to keep the other lunatics in line. And so that's how I sort of see my role on Gargoyles. I was the lunatic most trusted. So because of what was going on, both in the larger company and at TV Animation, there were a lot of shows in crisis for various reasons. And because of that and because I was in charge of Gargoyles, which I produced with Frank Paur, we were both producers, but from an executive standpoint it was still me. I was the lunatic most trusted at Disney TV Animation, so they kinda left us alone. And I remember at one point, Frank and I had lunch with Gary during season two and Gary said, "I wanna apologize to you guys. I have not been paying attention to Gargoyles at all. We've had other things going on. How is it going? What's going on? How's it going on the show?"

0:30:54 GW: And we said, "Well, it's going pretty good. Schedule's tough, but we're managing and we're happy with how things are turning out." He's like, "Great. What kind of stories are you doing?" So we started telling him about that and at one point we told him about Xanatos and Fox getting married and having a baby. And he goes, "Whoa, whoa. I wouldn't do that. You can't have the bad guy have a baby. You can't have the bad guy raising a kid. You gonna take the kid away from him? That'll be bad. And if you don't take the kid away from him then you got a villain raising a kid. Don't do that one."

0:31:23 GW: And we were like looking at each other and then I say to him, "Well, we already did it." So there was this long pause. And Frank and I are both sort of like what's gonna happen here? Is he gonna still reject it and force us to sort of tear the whole show apart and start over? And you could sort of tell he's thinking the same thing, like he doesn't like this idea at all. But on the other hand, this was the one show that was going smoothly, and if he rips it all apart, then he's gotta get another show in crisis. So after this long pause, he says to us, "Well, don't dwell on it." I said, "Okay, we won't dwell on it." Whatever the hell that meant, but so we didn't. I mean we didn't do it, we didn't change anything, but that was the kind of thing, we had very little supervision because of where I had come from. We pretty much made the show that Frank and I wanted to make and had almost no interference whatsoever.

0:32:25 GW: Gargoyles was sort of superheroes done without flagging that they're superheroes. No tights, no capes. For all intents and purposes that was the genre we were doing. A year or so later, I was in a meeting with Eisner where he announced his desire to buy Marvel, and I watched his corporate strategic guys talk him out of it and say, "Marvel's a disaster. They've got their rights sold all over the place. So you'd buy the company and then find out you can't make a movie about Spiderman because they've tripled sold the rights to three different companies. And Fantastic Four is being held by this company. And blah, blah, blah, blah."

0:33:05 GW: Now of course, years later Bob Iger just bought it anyway, and yeah, couldn't do X-Men, couldn't do Fantastic Four, couldn't do Spiderman, at least not at first, bought it anyway. Of course, it's been a huge success for Disney. But Eisner was talked out of it that day. So he turned to us, to Gary and Bruce and myself and says, "Can we use Gargoyles to start a Disney superhero universe?" And I said, "Yeah." And we began developing spinoffs, which we would do backdoor pilots for during season two of the show. But by the time those things got on the air, Jeffrey had left the company. Rich Frank had left the company. Frank Wells had died. Bruce had left the company. All the main supporters of Gargoyles had gone, and so that notion of using Gargoyles to launch Disney's own superhero universe sort of fell away.

0:34:01 GW: But for, I don't know, three or four months, it was like this is what we've got to do 'cause we can't buy Marvel, and Warner Brothers has DC. And on one level, and I don't think we even appreciated it at the time, but the great thing about Michael himself picking the shows was that everyone in every division got on board or got out of the way. In the years that followed, when Michael stopped picking the shows personally, those decisions began being made by committee. You found you had to get literally unanimous vote in order to sell a show. You needed not just one important person to say yes, or two or three, but literally you needed something like eight or nine people to say yes. And if even one said no, the others would jump off the show. And it became much harder to sell. So Michael was sort of the last of the moguls from my point of view, and we didn't appreciate it at the time 'cause there were so many shows he passed on that we thought were great, but what we didn't get was yeah, that may have been so but the shows he picked we got to just make. And that hasn't been the same in most places since then.

0:35:12 GW: I think what happened was, is that over time, there was this sort of sense within the corporation that Michael was micromanaging, not from us per se. I don't think it had anything to do with TV Animation, but just in general. And there was this sense that he had to start giving some things up. One of the things he gave up was choosing the animated series, but he didn't invest that power in another individual. Again, sort of became a decision by committee, a committee where any one person could derail something.

0:35:40 Speaker 11: Five-eights today to close at 42 and five-eights, one day after the company announced the resignation of Disney studio's chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. While rumors run rampant about where Katzenberg will end up, Disney chairman Michael Eisner said today, the company will likely produce fewer films.

0:35:57 GW: Jeffrey left. Rich Frank left. A lot of this was in the wake of Frank Wells's death, which was a tragedy in it's own right, but also destabilized the company. Roy Disney was not happy with Jeffrey. Ultimately, not happy with Michael either. So ultimately, both departed and Gary had at least a couple job offers that I know about, maybe more. I think Jeffrey wanted him at DreamWorks and had an offer out to him, and then when Bruce Cranston left to go to Dreamworks, Gary decided that DreamWorks would be a good place to sort of work with Bruce again and reform that team. So Gary also picked DreamWorks. So you had Jeffrey, Gary, and Bruce all at DreamWorks. Those were the three guys who I'd worked with. So at Disney, everyone sort of assumed that I'd be going to DreamWorks.

0:36:50 GW: When my deal was up at the end of the second season of Gargoyles, that I'd leave and go to DreamWorks. And I didn't actually want to. I wanted to stay and do a third season of Gargoyles. But it became this self-fulfilling prophesy. They were so sure I was gonna go to DreamWorks that they stopped inviting me to meetings, 'cause they thought of me as I was already spying for DreamWorks or something. It was kind of ridiculous. But they didn't make a job offer to me until a week before I was leaving, at which point, I did end up going to DreamWorks because I didn't have any other job offers. A week out they finally made an offer to me too late. So I went. And they really kind of made it clear that I wasn't welcome there anymore.

0:37:36 GW: In November of 1995, I wanna say, they came to me, and said they wanted me to do the third season of Gargoyles but they were offering me a demotion from producer to story editor. They said the show was going to be animated at Deak, but Deak had a very bad track record in those days in terms of the look of the thing, and that it would be pre-produced there as well. And they gave me a schedule in November of 1995, where the first script was due in October of 1995. And I looked at the schedule. I said, "Well, do you have a time machine? Because I don't know how I'm supposed to go back and deliver a script in October when it's already November and we haven't started." And they're like, "Well, we know that schedule's gotta be adjusted, but we wanted you to see where it had to end so you'd have to catch up. Not instantaneously, but by the end of the season you'd have to catch up." And so it felt to me like they were asking me to preside over the demise of the show. That they were reducing the budget, reducing the quality of the animation, reducing the quality of all the preproduction, giving us an impossible schedule, and then asking me on top of all that, to take it to motion.

0:38:57 GW: And we didn't even talk about money. That... We didn't even get to that. I just said, "Look, I need the weekend to think about this." And they said, "Great. Take the weekend." And then I came in Monday and they had hired my replacement already. And I said, "What the hell?" And they said, "Oh well, you can still say yes. You're a... We just figured we needed someone in case you said no." Which basically said they were trying to get me to say no. They were trying to make the deal so horrible that I'd say no. So I just said, "Fine, I'll walk away." And so I winded up going to DreamWorks, and they all sort of patted themselves on the back and said, "See, we knew he was gonna go to DreamWorks." But of course they're the reason I went to DreamWorks 'cause they basically kicked me out. Not literally, but basically.

0:39:44 GW: I ended up writing the first episode for them, which they gave to other people to add it into whatever. So the version that got on TV was, I thought, a mess, but still better than the other 12, which were done by good people, but good people who didn't know the show and didn't have time to familiarize themselves with the show. And so those last, that last season of Gargoyles, the fans and I just don't even count it as canon to the series. And we look at the comic book series that I did years later as the sort of true third season. I watched the third season. I watched every episode exactly once. That's not quite true, I watched the one that I wrote more than once, not a lot, but the other 12 I watched exactly once each and made myself do it. I don't know why, but I did. It was very painful for me on a lot of levels, not just again, not just because I didn't think they were very good, which I didn't, even though I know a lot of good people worked on them, but characters were just behaving out of character. And the stories just weren't up to our standards. And it was just a different show.

0:40:57 S1: The original Mighty Ducks movie was made because Eisner's kids liked hockey. So it got a green light. And based on the success of the movie, which the company termed market research, Eisner bought an expansion NHL team and promptly named them the Mighty Ducks. And with that purchase came an addition to the television line up. The Mighty Ducks, the Animated Series, premiered in September 1996, and Joe Barruso, and animation veteran, served as a director and supervising producer.

0:41:27 Joe Barruso: The reason I was able get a job at Disney, and went from Deak to Disney I think had more to do with the fact that the show that I had directed and produced, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, had won an Emmy in '95 as the best children's animated program. And it was one of the first shows that they called edutainment because it had this emphasis on providing real information, whether it was historical or science, in combination with an entertaining story. It was a detective-type story where a couple of younger kids were pursuing Carmen Sandiego. It was based on a computer game that was very popular at that time. They were looking for someone specifically for Mighty Ducks at the time. They needed a producer and director. And so yeah, I went and interviewed specifically for that project.

0:42:20 JB: In the initial meetings they showed me what they had done to that point and it wasn't a lot. It's funny, thinking back on it, it had started because Friends was very popular at that time, hugely successful at that time, so they wanted something like Friends. I remember them pitching it to me that way, and I thought, "Oh well, that's interesting." In the development that I'd seen to that point, when it was the Friend's concept, it was like we had in the show ultimately, it was human characters with duck heads, so it was sort of breaking with Disney tradition in terms of DuckTales and things that were clearly Donald Duck type characters. This was a new twist on the ducks for them. And that wasn't tremendously interesting to me, but then I can't recall at what point it shifted and became more sci-fi based, you know heroes in the image of sort of Ninja Turtles. And that's when David Wise, the editor, came on board.

0:43:22 JB: It was clear it was gonna go that direction. He had had a great deal of experience with Ninja Turtles, editing those shows, so he brought all that thinking and that expertise in terms of that particular genre, in going in that direction. He bought all that. That's when I was excited about... Sci-fi had always been a big interest for me and then anime was just getting really a lot of attention at that time. It really caught my interest, so that when we started talking that way, I was like, "Oh well, this will be great. We can use anime influences on this." But yeah, I think the old school that was there, because it was ducks, was a little uncomfortable. But our character designer, Greg Guler, he had had a longstanding relationship with Disney TV, and so he had done it all. He really knew it inside out. At the same time he had a great interest in superheroes. His background, he had originally come from comic books, so his first love was superheroes. So here he had a chance to combine Disney ducks with superheroes, so it was really a perfect opportunity for him. He was just a fantastic artist. So it all sort of came together.

0:44:32 JB: I was relieved that it was moving away from sort of a Friends sitcom to something more sci-fi and hero based. All our influences in terms of doing the art were harder edged. We never really got to go as far in that sci-fi direction as we would have liked to, but the way it's done is in terms of the development and art direction, it's sort of a consensus. So you have to put it in front of a whole bunch of people. And that included at the time, that included Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz. We had meetings where they reviewed the artwork, and so they would have their input. I was kind of reaching for one end of the spectrum, and them pulling us back to something that was a little more comfortable. I was pleased that we were able to go as far as we did, given what they had done with ducks to that point.

0:45:24 Speaker 13: Six hockey playing ducks appear out of nowhere and suddenly six vigilantes in comic book get-up start showing up whenever there's trouble. Spill it. Where are they from? Another planet?

0:45:36 Speaker 14: Not another planet babe. A whole 'nother universe.

0:45:40 S1: And in this universe, there's a planet inhabited entirely by ducks.

0:45:45 Speaker 15: They called it Puckworld in honor of their greatest hero, the legendary hockey player, Drake DuCaine. He was the ultimate team captain. He saved Puckworld from a horde of conquering aliens, called the Saurian Overlords, hundreds of years ago.

0:46:00 JB: Michael Eisner, he was excited about it because he was excited about the hockey team. So here was just an opportunity to promote it.

0:46:07 Speaker 16: Well, this is sad news indeed for Duck fans. It looks like the Mighty Ducks season long winning streak may be coming to an end. They're tied with the Maine Quahogs with forty seconds remaining at Quahog Center. John Luke [0:46:20] ____ is aiming to score again. Oh, a spectacular save by the Mighty Ducks goalie, Wildwing. You know, not only are these ducks mighty, they're really ducks.

0:46:36 JB: Interesting thing that we did, which was sort of unconventional, was after the shows would come back animated, we would of course assemble them. It was decided that they were not funny enough. I would spend large amounts of time each day sitting with two comedy writers who would rewrite the shows. And rewrite jokes into the shows. And we would sit and we would have to make sure, because the shows were already animated, we would have to make sure that the new lines would work with the mouths that we already had. So, it was a grueling exercise of... They're trying to be funny, trying to... Coming up with jokes, but we had to make sure that they could work in the animation, as it was already completed. That was different, yeah, maybe one in ten were actually worth all the time and energy.

0:47:29 S1: So these hockey playing ducks were attacked by a dinosaur named Dragaunus. Am I hearing you right?

0:47:36 S1: You're bright, you got it babe.

0:47:38 S1: Beautiful. I could have stayed home watching sci-fi chiller theater, but this is much funnier. All right, what happened next?

0:47:48 JB: It was kind of disappointing that it went away just after 26 episodes 'cause there really was a big push behind it. The Disney marketing machine and merchandising machine was behind it entirely. And Mattel was on board entirely for the toy line. And I guess it was the second largest toy line in Canada, second only to Star Wars at that time, which makes sense 'cause it was hockey. And I know for a fact that Mattel was disappointed that it went away 'cause they had planned years of it. It never did horribly, but some weeks it would be just average, but other weeks it would be doing really well, so it was a surprise when we didn't get more episodes. I had worked my whole life towards the point of having the opportunity to do the traditional look, and a big thrill for me was to finally be at Disney, which was a personal goal. And so I was happy that I was able to do Mighty Ducks and sort of kick it up a notch in terms of duck properties.

0:48:47 S1: Jymn Magon. The last show the Disney Afternoon would produce was Quack Pack, a descendant of DuckTales, but with the nephews as teenagers and Donald as the parental figure instead of Uncle Scrooge. It should have been a perfect ending to Disney's run, but some things are not meant to be.

0:49:04 JM: I did move after the Goofy Movie into development on Duck Days, which eventually became Quack Pack. By that time, the whole mindset of the studio was changing. People that were valuable before were being sort of pushed aside and people that weren't valuable were being elevated and there was a lot more what I call baby suits showing up, middle management who were making decisions, creative decisions about things, people who had never made a single frame of film were making decisions. And it just got very strained, and it got so strained that I eventually said I need more money or I'm gonna go somewhere else, which was very, very difficult for me because I loved Disney. I thought I would retire from Disney, and it just didn't happen.

0:49:58 JM: From then on it was just like, I can't even follow what they're doing anymore. Well, it was part of the deal breaker. We were trying something new. We said, "How are we gonna do a series with Donald Duck when nobody can really understand Donald?" He's fine in a short where he goes, "Oh brother," or, "What's the big idea?" That kind of stuff. But to do dialogue is crazy. To try and hang a show on someone that you can't understand was gonna be very difficult. And we had some radical ideas and management looked down their noses at us. And I remember at one point our producer on the show, Larry Latham, was listening to management spouting about something or another. He looked over at me and he just, he did the throat cut, like cut, I'm out here.

0:50:51 JM: And shortly after that Carl Gears and I, who were the executive producers on the show, we just said, "We're happy to continue working on this, but we can't be running the show because management doesn't believe in it." And management said, "Okay fine." They never even called us and said, "What's wrong?" Accepted our statement and, which was basically a big, you know, forget you. And it was like, "Well, they don't care about us anymore." Like I said, that was sort of a turning point, for me anyway. I think it was a turning point for the department as well. But anyway, and I left shortly after that. We had a terrific run, and then just things felt... Started to get weird, that's all.

0:51:36 JM: And again, I can't put my finger on it, but to me, it had a lot to do with we stopped doing what we were good at and started following other people's leads. Every show we did was like number one in its slot, and so it wasn't like, "Oh ratings are slipping, let's do something different." To me, that genre, that style of Disney comedy adventure could still be going as far as I know. But it was like, "No, let's do Shnookums and Meat, and let's do Gargoyles. Let's do things that look like other studios." It just felt wrong to me. But again, I'm not in charge, I don't make those calls, I just, I'm a stupid ass show developer and story editor. I don't get to make the big decisions.

0:52:18 S1: Dean Stefan, writer.

0:52:20 Dean Stefan: And then of course Quack Pack was originally called Duck Days. The way I hear it, and I don't know, 'cause you know. It could be not exactly true, but I think it's true. Jymn Magon and, I think, Carl Gears were set to develop it, and much like Tad Stones was locked in his office for about six months or so when I first started, coming up with Darkwing Duck and all the artwork or whatever. Jymn and Carl were figuring out the show for Duck Days or Quack Pack. And at the time, Home Improvement was a big hit for Disney ABC, and they got the idea that Donald would be like the Tim Allen character. And he would have Huey, Louie, and Dewey, much like Tim Allen was the harried dad of the three kids. And the conceit was gonna be 'cause Donald couldn't really, he didn't have that many phrases he could say that... Disney actually had a list from the 30s they would hand to us, say, "These are the phrases that are recognizable, that Donald said." Because there just weren't that many words that you could make out, the way he talked.

0:53:26 DS: So their conceit was that he would have been a tailgunner in some kind of war and nobody could understand his instructions, so the military sent him to allocution school. And he would learn to speak clearer so that now he could do the sit-comy stuff with the kids and they can interact and stuff like that. So they had this whole thing worked out based upon the harried dad interacting with... And the way I hear it, they went to pitch to Katzenberg and the whole table of Disney suits. And they said, "Okay so, in this Donald, he went to allocution school because nobody could understand him in the military. Now he can speak a lot clearer." And that's about as far as they got.

0:54:07 DS: And Katzenberg says, "Wait, you wanna change the duck? You're gonna change the way Donald Duck talks?" And that was pretty much the end of the pitch, so that was it. So six months of work down the drain, 'cause without that they didn't really have a show. So then it became just really harried and it became Daisy Duck would be a roving reporter, and the kids would be tagalongs and Donald would almost be comic relief. You'd cut to him in the hammock doing gags and stuff like that. And it was a weird time at Disney 'cause we were between shows. And I think I wrote the Bible for Quack Pack, but I guess the show was okay. I'm not sure how it did in relation to the other ones. I don't think of it as one of the great ones.

0:54:49 S1: Jim Peterson, writer.

0:54:51 Jim Peterson: The origin of it is kind of muddled a little bit 'cause it kinda went through a whole bunch of different creative hands. So there was, I think it was originally Jymn Magon's project, and then he ended up leaving Disney. And Carl Gears took over. And then Carl got taken off the project and it was turned over to Kevin Hopps, who was our original story editor on Darkwing. And on the artistic side, Toby Shelton was running it, and they had kind of very different views of just between the two of them, how they wanted the series to run. And Toby really loved classic Donald Duck cartoons, and he kinda wanted to take it that way. And Kevin was more, it seemed, more on the sit-comy kind of stuff. We came in. There had already been a couple scripts written, but we ended up rewriting on what would become essentially the first episode, which was where Donald Duck gets drafted back into the Navy, of course, for some bizarre reason.

[music]

0:56:14 JP: The one that came out, kind of was still watchable was an episode called "The really Mighty Ducks". In it Huey, Dewey, and Louie become superheroes and Donald becomes a super villain called the Duck of Doom. And the whole battle is just about Donald trying to get the boys to clean their room, and they're doing everything humanly possible to, or duckly possible I suppose, to avoid cleaning their room.

0:56:41 Donald Duck: Clean this room or else.

0:56:47 Speaker 20: Clean our room? The nerve of some people.

0:56:50 Speaker 21: We're much too busy.

0:56:52 Speaker 22: We got a million things to do.

0:56:55 S?: We got nothing to do.

0:56:57 JP: And when Duck Days was winding up, it was an era where Disney was letting go of all of their staff writers. During the Bonkers run, they were also doing a couple other series at the time. So there were like 51 staff writers at that point, at Disney TV Animation. And when we finally left at the end of Duck Days, there were less than ten. So part of the reason was that Disney lost their market when Fox acquired the rights to the NFL. And a lot of stations that were independent and carrying the Disney Afternoon, signed up with Fox and had to drop the Disney Afternoon for the Fox cartoons. But at the time, that was our perception on the executive explanations for why the affiliates were dropping the Disney Afternoon. So that and also, at the same time, Turner acquiring Hanna-Barbara. Then he let go of all of the staff writers and decided to go freelance, and Disney kind of followed suit on that 'cause there were a bunch of writers available on the freelance market that didn't used to be available.

0:58:01 S1: In 1997 Disney purchased ABC, which was the final nail in the coffin for what had been known as the Disney Afternoon. Not only was that over, syndication was basically over as well. With their new network, Disney went full Nickelodeon, even bringing in Geraldine Laybourne who headed the Nickelodeon network. And Disney Television Animation changed quickly in response.

0:58:24 S1: In an attempt that the press called The Nickelodeonization of Disney, they bought Doug out from under Viacom and brought in Joe Ansolabehere who helped develop Hey Arnold! And Paul Germain who co-created Rugrats, to launch Recess, which became the flagship show of Disney's One Saturday Morning. With One Saturday Morning, Disney would retake the title of the number one kids block. The shows were far different than what had been done in the past, and the familiar faces that had transformed television animation like Gary Krisel, Greg Weisman, Mark Zaslove, and Jymn Magon, no longer wandered the halls. But a few were still there. Tad Stones.

0:59:02 TS: They had a luncheon at the rotunda restaurant where they invited the key people in the department, key creative people in the department were all there for the executives to introduce themselves. And Jerry Laborne, [0:59:17] ____ that she's talking about her direction. And she says, and obviously they had worked this out before. Says, "Dean, I hate ducks." And then that was Dean Valentine, and he replied. "I hate ducks too." Which was basically crapping on 80 percent of the people in the room, to say nothing of you would not have been offered a job because there would be no job to be had if it wasn't for those shows that you're currently crapping on. I was luckily on vacation during that luncheon. I don't know how I would have reacted. I wouldn't have said anything, but I might have walked out, which would've had the same effect. But it was totally disrespectful.

1:00:00 TS: You can certainly say, "You guys have done a fantastic job. And now the market's changing, we want to do something entirely different and we're looking for new ideas, and here's the ideas we're starting with." It's like, "Why do you have to piss on something to move forward?" So that was, again, this... They had a pitch, they had a strategy. Upper upper managment had signed off on it. So it's just basically, here's our show runners and some of you are gonna be working on these shows and some of you are not. So it's just a management thing. It's not like a slow evolution. It is just, "Hey, this is what we're doing now." And it's like, "Okay, are we doing any more of that?" "No, we're not gonna do any more of that, but we're still gonna do those feature spin-offs 'cause they're still doing well."

1:00:45 TS: That's that, you know.

[music]

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-look-back-machine/id1257301677?mt=2

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY on WHAT’S MY LINE?

1954-1965

“What's My Line?” was a panel game show that aired on television from 1950 to 1967 on CBS. The game requires celebrity panelists to question a contestant in order to determine his or her occupation with panelists being called on to identify a weekly celebrity mystery guest. Guests entered and signed-in on a chalk board. The contestants' occupations were seen by the home and studio audience. Cards flipped by the host told the audience how much money the contestant had earned by stumping the panel. It was traditional that the panel introduced each other in turn.

For all of its 17 years on the air, the show aired on Sunday evenings at 10:30pm from CBS Broadcast Center in New York City.  

For all but four episodes, John Charles Daly was the host. It was directed by Franklin Heller for all but a handful of its 870 episodes. 

Arlene Francis was panelist for 824 of those episodes, the most of any panelist. Several mystery guests appeared seven times: Hedda Hopper, Peter Lawford, and Jerry Lewis.  

As a rule, a person could not appear as a Mystery Guest more than once in a calendar year. However, there were four exceptions:

Paul Newman on January 25 and November 8, 1959

Carol Burnett on May 7 and December 17, 1961

Steve Allen on March 8 and October 4, 1964

Lucille Ball on March 7 and July 25, 1965

“What's My Line?” is the longest-running prime time network television game-show in history. The show won three Emmy Awards for Best Quiz or Audience Participation Show in 1952, 1953, and 1958 and the Golden Globe for Best TV Show in 1962. In 2013,TV Guide ranked it #9 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever.

February 21, 1954 ~ S5;E25, #195

Although sponsored by Remington-Rand, the program ends with a live commercial for Stopette Deodorant, their associate sponsor.  

The Panel (left to right)

Dorothy Kilgallen is a popular columnist whose “Voice of Broadway” appears in the Journal American and papers coast to coast.

Steve Allen a humorist who stars in his own television show on another network five nights a week. More than thirty years later, Allen would guest star as himself on “Lucy Calls the President” (1977). 

Arlene Francis has her own show “Talent Patrol” on another network on Thursday nights.

Deborah Kerr (Guest Panelist) is the star of the film From Here to Eternity and the play Tea and Sympathy. She is sitting in for regular panelist Bennett Cerf, who is California. Kerr appears on behalf of the New York Lighthouse for the Blind.

John Daly (Host) was previously a news reporter for CBS radio's “You Are There.” As an actor, he also played a news reporter in the short-lived TV series “The Front Page” (1949-50).  

Dick Stark (Remington-Rand Spokesperson)

Arlene Gray (Stopette Deodorant Spokesperson)

The Contestants

Frances Vaughn sits on the movie censor board in Kansas. Mrs. Vaughn stumps the panel and wins $50.

Clifford Olson from North Carolina sells maternity clothes. Deborah Kerr guesses his occupation but Daly gives Olson the full prize anyway.  

Tom Wiswell from Brooklyn is a World Champion checkers player. They run out of time before the panel can guess, so Daly gives him the full prize. 

The Mystery Guest

Lucille Ball uses the same voice she created when she played a Martian at the top of the Empire State Building in “Lucy is Envious” (ILL S3;E23). Daly tells the panel that Lucy is speaking Martian. The episode was filmed on February 16, 1954 just five days before this appearance. It aired on March 29, 1954. When Dorothy Kilgallen asks Lucy if she sings, Lucy says “eeew” and shakes her head no. Arlene Francis (in collaboration with Deborah Kerr) guesses that it is Lucy by asking if she's lately had to take advantage of the last contestant's products [maternity clothes]. The year prior, Lucy Ricardo gave birth to Little Ricky and Lucille Ball to Desi Arnaz Jr. Lucy puts in a pitch for donations to the Heart Fund. After Lucy leaves, Daly reminds the audience that Desi Arnaz was also on the show [November 2, 1952].

October 2, 1955 ~ S7;E5, #278

In 1955 the panel's 'pre-guesses' have been eliminated and the main questioning begins immediately.

Guest air transportation was supplied by American Airlines.

The Panel (left to right)

Dorothy Kilgallen  is a popular columnist whose “Voice of Broadway” appears in the Journal American and papers coast to coast.

Robert Q. Lewis (Guest Panelist) is the star of his own show on this network everyday [“The Robert Q. Lewis Show”]. He is substituting for Fred Allen.  

Arlene Francis promotes the new home game What's My Line.

Bennett Cerf is a columnist and publisher who was mentioned on “I Love Lucy” in “Lucy Writes a Novel” (ILL S3;E24): “You had your chance, Bennett Cerf!”  In two episodes of the series a copy of Cerf’s book Try and Stop Me (1944) can be seen among the Ricardo's reading matter.

John Daly (Host)

Dick Stark (Remington-Rand Spokesperson)

The Contestants

Raymond Fadden operates the scoreboard at Brooklyn's Ebbetts Field. Dorothy Kilgallen guesses Mr. Fadden's occupation and says he must be very busy these days as the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers are in the midst of the World Series. [The Brooklyn Dodgers will go on to win their one and only series against the Yankees.]  

Victor G. Perry is from London, England. He is a professional pickpocket in a nightclub act. The panel is stumped. Daly flips the cards over when Mr. Lewis blurts out that Mr. Perry is a pickpocket. Mr. Perry wins by default and Daly relates that Mr. Perry performed for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, who quipped “Wonderful. It's a good thing you're honest.” Before leaving, Perry returns Daly's billfold.

The Mystery Guests

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Robert Lewis succeeds in identifying Lucille Ball, but the panel can't discern that there are two people. Mr. Lewis is so sure he's seen Lucille Ball on television earlier in the evening, but it's Miss Francis who identifies the couple. In conversation with Mr. Daly, the Arnaz's mention that the fifth season of their hugely popular "I Love Lucy" sitcom will premiere the following evening ["Lucy Visits Grauman's" ILL S5;E1]. The couple says that Mr. Lewis was correct - there was a rerun of an "I Love Lucy" episode earlier that day. They were in New York City to appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show" earlier that evening.  

After Lucy and Desi leave, Dorothy Kilgallen (mindful of black and white television) tells female viewers that Lucy's blouse was pink mink. Humorously, Robert Lewis tells the male viewers that Desi's tie was blue.

January 1, 1961 ~ S11, #545

This is the first show to be sponsored by All-State Insurance.

Due to Faye Emerson’s leg injury, the panel does not enter and stays seated throughout. 

The Panel (left to right)

Arlene Francis is billed as the “delightful star of stage and television.”

Shelley Berman is a comedian opening at the Empire room in New York City. 

Faye Emerson (Guest Panelist) was an actress who did a play at the Bucks County Playhouse with Shelley Berman in the summer of 1960. Emerson is substituting for Dorothy Kilgallen, who has a sore shoulder. Emerson was mentioned in “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” (ILL S1;E30) in 1952 by Fred Mertz (William Frawley).  

Bennett Cerf is a columnist and publisher who was mentioned on “I Love Lucy” in “Lucy Writes a Novel” (ILL S3;E24): “You had your chance, Bennett Cerf!”  In two episodes of the series a copy of Cerf’s book Try and Stop Me (1944) can be seen among the Ricardo's reading matter.

John Daly (Host) talks briefly about his recent trip to Hawaii.

The Contestants  

Ike Eisenhower and John Kennedy are girdle salesmen, their high-profile names notwithstanding. In January 1961, Massachusetts politician John F. Kennedy was just three weeks away from his inauguration as the 35th President of the United States. Dwight D. Eisenhower (aka Ike) was his predecessor in the White House. Faye Emerson guesses their jobs correctly.

Ruby Logsdon is a house wrecker (not a home wrecker!) from Louisville, Kentucky. She owns the Blue Grass Wrecking Company. Arlene Francis guesses it very quickly.  Almost too quickly!

Mary and Creighton Coleman are husband and wife judges. Mary Coleman was also a Miss University of Maryland. Time runs out, but Faye Emerson guesses correctly at the last minute. Emerson is in disbelief: “That lady's a JUDGE!?!?”  

The Mystery Guest

Lucille Ball uses a low, hushed voice to answer. At the time, Ball was appearing on Broadway in the musical Wildcat. Faye Emerson guesses by saying “Are you a red-headed wildcat?” Lucy says she's lost twelve pounds doing the musical. She says how much she owes to “I Love Lucy.” Faye Emerson reminds everyone that Lucy and Bob Hope have a new film coming out, The Facts of Life.  Emerson suggests it could be up for an award.  [The film later earned five Oscar nods - none for acting - and won for Edith Head’s costumes. Ball and Hope were nominated for Golden Globes for their performances.]

May 5, 1963 ~ S14

The show has a new main sponsor (Geritol) and a new set.

The Panel (left to right)

Arlene Francis is introduced by Johnny Olson as starring in the Broadway play Tchin-Tchin. [She had taken over two weeks earlier from the play's original star, Margaret Leighton. The play closed two weeks later.]

Buddy Hackett is a comedian opening soon in Philadelphia. Joey Bishop walks out instead. Hackett tells him he's on next week. Bishop shrugs and leaves without a word. The evening prior, Hackett guest starred as himself on NBC's “The Joey Bishop Show” which also featured Corbett Monica. Hackett says that he and Bishop are in town to see Monica perform at The Latin Quarter. [Five years later, Hackett will play a scam artist on a 1968 episode of “The Lucy Show” (S6;E19)].

Dorothy Kilgallen is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Journal American.

Bennett Cerf is introduced as “the publisher panelist.” He was mentioned on “I Love Lucy” in “Lucy Writes a Novel” (ILL S3;E24): “You had your chance, Bennett Cerf!”  In two episodes of the series a copy of Cerf’s book Try and Stop Me (1944) can be seen among the Ricardo's reading matter.

John Daly (Host) mentions the New York Mets at the end of the show. The team had just started its second season of play, their final at the Polo Grounds before moving into Shea Stadium in 1964. On May 5, 1963 the Mets played a double header, winning their evening game against the San Francisco Giants.

Johnny Olson (Announcer)

The Contestants

Sonja Tyler gets a few wolf whistles from the studio audience. She is a dog catcher in Prince George's County, Maryland. Bennett Cerf guesses it just before the cards are turned over.

Eleanor Hansberry also gets some wolf whistles on her entrance. From Hollywood, Florida, Mrs. Hansberry makes 'diet bread.'  Arlene Francis guesses bread, but not that it is diet bread. Hansberry says it has 46 calories and contains 7 vegetables.

William Olsen works for the city of New York buildings department inspecting and testing rides at Coney Island Amusement Park. Time runs out so Daly turns over all the cards.  

The Mystery Guests

Bob Hope and Lucille Ball sign in as Bob Ball and Lucy Hope. Dorothy Kilgallen guesses correctly on the third question:“Is one of you red-haired and the other ski-nosed?” They are there to promote their new film Critic's Choice, which premiered three weeks earlier. Lucy and Hope are on a promotional tour, the eleventh of their 19 cities. Cerf also plugs Hope's new book I Owe Russia $1,200. A week earlier, the final episode of the first season of “The Lucy Show” was aired but Lucy says she is going back [to Hollywood] to do “her show” with Vivian [Vance]. [Lucy and Hope had just come from being on “The Ed Sullivan Show” earlier that evening, also to promote Critic's Choice.]

March 7, 1965 ~ S16;E27, #754

The show is sponsored by Supp-Hose Stockings. There is no advertising on the panel's desk or on the cards.

The Panel (left to right)

Arlene Francis is introduced by Johnny Olson as the “delightful star of stage and television.”

Buddy Hackett is starring in the musical comedy hit I Had A Ball on Broadway.

Dorothy Kilgallen is a nationally syndicated columnist for The New York Journal American. Hackett says she has never abused the freedom of the press.  

Martin Gabel (Guest Panelist) is starring in the hit musical Baker Street. He is substituting for Bennett Cerf, who is on vacation. [Gabel played Moriarty to Fritz Weaver's Sherlock Holmes. The musical won a Tony Award for costumes.]  

John Daly (Host) Gabel introduces him as the “Rolls Royce of moderators.”   Daly says he is going to write a new musical called “I Had a Ball on Baker Street.”

Johnny Olson (Announcer)

The Contestants

Pete Sa from Edison, New Jersey, makes pizza. He owns a business called 'Wot A Place: Pete Sa's Pizza' in Metuchen, NJ. Buddy Hackett guesses right.

Scott Tutt is 19 years old and originally from Doylestown, PA, but now working in New York City. He makes artificial snow for Metropolitan Ski Slopes, Inc. which fabricates snow for use at Van Courtland Park, NY. No one guesses it and Daly turns over all the cards.  

Benita Caress is an agent in the US Passport Office in Rockefeller Center. She is from from Little Neck, Long Island. Time runs out and Daly turns over all the cards without anyone on the panel venturing a guess.

The Mystery Guest

Lucille Ball signs in merely as ‘Lucy.’ She does a nasal Woody Woodpecker-type voice, even doing the character's unique laugh from time to time. Buddy Hackett asks her if she's a male. She replies “Mostly no.” Lucy admits she has a television show on at present and Arlene Francis guesses that it is “dazzling redhead” Lucy Ball. Daly tells the audience that she is this year's Easter Seals Chairman. Lucy says she had to beg to get on the show because there were a lot of stars in town. Lucy tells a story of her visit to the White House on behalf of Easter seals to meet President Johnson. She relates that she stood in a long receiving line practicing her thank you speech, but LBJ shook his hand and moved onto the next guest before she could get the first word out. Lucy and Daly put in a pitch for Easter Seals donations. [The next day, “The Lucy Show” aired “Lucy and Arthur Godfrey” (S3;E23). Also, a half hour after “The Lucy Show,” Ball appeared on “I've Got A Secret,” a sister show to “What's My Line?” which was also was done in New York City.]  

July 25, 1965 ~ S16;E47, #774

The show is sponsored by Poli-Grip.  

The Panel (left to right)

Dorothy Kilgallen is introduced by Johnny Olson as a popular columnist whose “Voice of Broadway” appears in papers coast to coast.

Mike Douglas (Guest Panelist) is introduced by Kilgallen as the “delightful star of television and records.” This is Douglas' first appearance on the show.

Arlene Francis is introduced by Douglas as having spent a week with him on his show [“The Mike Douglas Show”] and opening at the Mount Tom Playhouse in Massachusetts in the new play Mrs. Dally Has a Lover. [When the play moved to Broadway in September 1965, the title was shortened to Mrs. Dally. It ran 60 performances and earned a Drama Desk Award. It was produced by former “What's My Line?” panelist Martin Gabel.]

Bennett Cerf is introduced by Francis as one of the “joys of Sunday night” and Random House publisher.  

John Daly (Host) hosted the Miss Universe pageant in Miami the previous evening.  

Johnny Olson (Announcer)

The Contestants

Drew Frazer sells Sauna Baths (Finnish Dry Heat Baths). He works for The Viking Sauna Company in New York City and his saunas sell for $1200 to $2500 and reach an average temperature of 185F to 190F.  Arlene Francis says that he builds them, but Cerf quickly capitalizes on her error and guesses he sells them.

Edward Arenson Jr. makes fudge at the New York World's Fair. He is known as 'Eddie the Fabulous Fudge Maker' and his candy business is in the Wisconsin Pavilion. He is originally from Toledo, Ohio, and is a pre-med student at Cornell University. The show runs out of time and no one correctly guesses. [The World's fair opened in April 1964 and closed in October 1965. The Fair was mentioned in episodes of “The Lucy Show” as well.]

The Mystery Guests

Ginger Rogers and Carol Channing are there to promote the fact that Rogers is replacing Carol Channing in the leading role of Broadway's Hello, Dolly! Their names are already on the chalk board as they enter and they put a check mark in a box above their name. The pair alternate answering in a squeaky, high pitched “Oui!” and “Non!” Bennett Cerf's wife is Rogers' niece, so when Cerf (not knowing it is two people) asks if she is related to his wife, Phyllis Fraser, Channing squeaks “Non!” The Broadway-savvy panel finally guesses it is a duo and their proper identities. Daly adds that while Ginger holds down the Broadway company, Channing will go on tour with the show, eventually to London. Ginger notes that they made the film The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) together. Carol says it was a terrible picture. She says they called it “Death of a Saleslady” and that they succeeded in closing RKO. “That's not easy for two little girls to do all by themselves.”  [In 1957, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz bought RKO studios, renaming it Desilu.] Cerf requests that the pair sing the last line of “Hello, Dolly!” together, which they do (in two vastly different keys). Carol credits Thornton Wilder (the playwright who created the character), Gower Champion (their director), and David Merrick (their producer) for their success.  

[In November 1965, Lucille Ball will impersonate Channing as Dolly Levi on “The Lucy Show” (S4;E10). Lucy Carmichael dressed in the character's costume and even sang a bit of the show's title song. Ball and Rogers did five films together at RKO in the 1930s. She would play herself on a 1971 episode of “Here's Lucy” (S4;E11).]

Lucille Ball signs in with her full name. She answers the questions with the same voice she used as Queen of the Gypsies in “The Operetta” (ILL S2;E5) and the fairy tale witch in “Little Ricky's Pageant” (ILL S6;E10).  Dorothy Kilgallen asks if she has bright red hair and Mike Douglas guesses Lucille Ball. Lucy is in New York City to work on the series premiere of “The Steve Lawrence Show.” [Airing September 13, 1965, the show only lasted seven episodes. Lawrence will appear on “Here's Lucy” with with his wife Eydie Gorme in 1973]. Daly tells viewers that Lucy's show [which he mistakenly calls “The Lucille Ball Show”] will be on a half hour earlier in the fall, moving from 9pm Mondays to 8:30pm.  

[wrestlinglegends-blog]

10 80's Wrestling Legends

History of WWF

Through the World Wrestling Federations heyday they had many different product autos. You can buy buying and selling playing cards, lunch boxes, video video games, attire, tickets, VHS tapes; you identify it and you would pretty much guarantee that the WWF had a product for it. Again within the 80's you'd discover many overt promos for all of these merchandise. Fifteen second spots would air selling the products, the announcers would have them, followers with the product would be proven on TV and even the wrestlers themselves would carry the product or "gimmicks" to the ring.

Whereas many of those products still exist, the very best sellers for the company are T-shirts, video video games, & wrestling figures. And the advertising of these merchandise is more tongue and cheek than previously, as standard mentions are caused in a comical method.

Taping Format

wrestlers where are they now

As of late on Monday nights the WWE tapes a one hour web and international market present named Heat, followed by the 2 hour reside version of Monday Evening Raw. On tuesdays ECW is taped and is immediately adopted by a taping of Friday Night time Smackdown. As you may see, each taping includes one week of TELEVISION for 2 different reveals.

The past format was drastically completely different. Utilizing long blocks, the WWF would run TV tapings for 4+ hours. Typically they'd tape 4 one hour episodes back to again, each episode representing per week's worth of TV. Many wrestlers would seem three or four instances per present. Clearly this is able to change into a bit of tedious for the followers in attendance. As was the norm, the vast majority of the tapings included the aforementioned "jobber" matches. On top of this they would also normally tape one or two matches that had been exclusive to the WWF's home video tape library, Colosseum Video.

Goals of TELEVISION

The structure for the enterprise was different again then than it is right this moment. For example, today's WWE television is geared towards rankings & PPV purchase rates. In the past, while important, scores weren't as huge of a priority. The principle income sources for the WWF got here by way of home show (off TV reveals held in native towns) and in PPV income.

The standard for right now options at the least two big matches per TV. Within the mid 80's there would often be a group of jobber matches, matches during which large title stars had been positioned in opposition to no-identify expertise, with the celebrities set to get "put over" or to destroy these no-title wrestlers on a weekly foundation. This system would often change, in most situations throughout the WWF's late saturday night NBC hit dubbed Saturday's Evening Foremost Event.

In October 2006, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released its annual 'Living Planet Report' - detailing the global influence on pure assets and the declining numbers of animal species which can be dependent upon them. It also provided options on the right way to reverse the downward developments in these areas. This year's report additionally explores the impression of human activity on the planet and concludes that the world's pure ecosystems are being run down at a price by no means seen earlier than in human historical past.

The 'Dwelling Planet Report' makes the terrifying inference that the world's population of vertebrate species have declined by a third since 1970, thus confirming the worst of human fears: that humanity is utilizing up the planet's sources at a a lot faster rate than which they can be produced. Carter S. Roberts, President and CEO of the WWF, commented:

"The underside line of this report could not be extra clear - for twenty years we've lived our lives in a approach that far exceeds the carrying capability of the Earth. The alternatives we make right now will form the possibilities for the generations which comply with us. The truth that we dwell beyond our means in our use of pure resources will certainly limit alternatives for future generations to follow.

In actual fact, the USA, because the world's foremost client society, is seen to be on the forefront of what the WWF report calls 'resource overshoot' - the use of extra assets than is sustainable by the planet. This makes it all the extra essential for institutions within the USA - including the government, parents and teachers - to show our kids (the "future generations" that Roberts talks about) with such concern of precisely how dangerous human behaviour will be to the planet.

In an attempt to try to educate kids, there has, thus far been a variety of efforts made by totally different sources on how finest to protect the setting for future life. For example, the United Nations Surroundings Program (UNEP) runs a kids's instructional useful resource referred to as TUNZA, which goals to work in partnership with youngsters the world over in an effort to equip them with the tools wanted to maintain the setting for their very own kids in turn.

With environmental and wildlife awareness having become so much extra prevalent in fashionable tradition over the last ten years - by sources as extensive ranging as The Body Shop's 1990s product packaging, by means of to Al Gore's recent film 'An Inconvenient Reality' - many larger organisations that aren't traditionally associated with schooling have jumped on board. As an illustration, Doubletree inns runs a program known as 'Educating Youngsters to CARE®' - a special educational initiative that goals to convey wildlife and environmental awareness to the forefront of the classroom.

With the continued initiation of this and different, similar programs both in America and the world over, there's the likelihood that such packages will allow a reversal of the downward development of environmental damage; maybe allowing for the WWF's Residing Planet Report to predict a much more promising future for the world in future years.

As lobby teams and environmental organisations continue to push governments the world over into taking drastic measures to curb the acceleration of world warming, it is maybe fair to say that different environmental points may be in peril of being pushed aside. People have to do not forget that local weather change is not the only scourge to the health of our planet; the safety of endangered species, for instance, remains a paramount concern to many individuals intent on the preservation of natural wildlife the world over.

What makes a species 'endangered'? Generally talking, a species can be mentioned to be in peril of extinction if it is few in quantity or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters. The twentieth century saw the importance of defending sure species from extinction - particularly with the pioneering efforts of organisations just like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which has been defending endangered species since its inception in 1961.

The UN estimates that almost one hundred species are misplaced on daily basis - a staggering statistic. The major species protected by groups like the WWF embody: tigers, great whales, marine turtles, elephants, gorillas, of which fewer than 650 are left, and big pandas, of which only 800 are estimated to exist in the wild immediately.

Nonetheless, these are only a choice of the 1000's of endangered species that exist the world over. Their survival is essential for quite a few reasons - including that they function umbrella species; which means their survival additionally helps quite a few other species that dwell in the same habitats.

The early efforts of organisations just like the WWF were essential in passing crucial legislation for the protection of endangered species; this consists of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 in America, which was designed to protect plant and animal species from becoming extinct. Since this time, world consciousness of the importance of defending endangered species has skyrocketed. Within the late Nineties, high road retailers started to see the importance of animal safety - retailers like The Body Shop, for example, designed an entire range of products on the safety of endangered species, and saw their recognition enhance dramatically.

Climate change is a pure strategy of the earth, any mammoth or dinosaur would have the ability to tell you that, nevertheless the rate at which it is at the moment occurring is unnatural. In the event you had been to consider a course of your physique goes by means of when a mosquito bites you; you get an itchy-chunk, for a couple of days have a small purple bump and then finally it goes away. This can be a natural process if it was left alone. However we don't leave issues alone; in fact humans have a popularity of improvement, change, development and become involved in issues when maybe generally things should just be left alone. So we itch, we scratch, we infect. The itchy-chunk turns an offended crimson and develops into something a lot more extreme than it ought to have been.

The 12 months 2010 is the International Yr of Biodiversity, the yr that new species proceed to be found, but there are extra tigers in captivity than there are within the wild. Right here in Africa our trademark beast, king of the jungle, the lion is now an endangered species, with specialists predicting its extinction in 20 years. These are occasions taking place in our life-time.

Based on the Dwelling Planet report in 2007 alone man-form used 2 planets price of sources. We already over-shoot the biocapacity of our planet by 50% in 2007 and the carbon footprint has elevated by 11 fold since 1961. seventy one countries are experiencing stress on blue water sources and right here in South Africa we are already predicting water-scarcity issues and a few rural and small towns are already experiencing them.

As per the ripple effect, biodiversity loss has an affect on ecosystems, causing damage, degrading and finally leading to a whole collapse. Threats of habitat loss, alteration and fragmentation, over-exploitation of untamed species populations, air pollution, climate change and invasive species in flip destroy the services that ecosystems give humans totally free; regulating companies of natural processes, reminiscent of water filtration, waste decomposition, local weather regulation and crop pollination. Services resembling assist for regulation of fundamental ecological capabilities and processes for instance nutrient cycling, photosynthesis and soil formation.

"Crucially, the dependency of human society on ecosystem services makes the loss of these services a severe risk to the future effectively-being and development of all individuals, all all over the world" - Residing Planet Report; 2010.

Globally there was a 30% decline in biodiversity. A few examples of individual species include the blue-fin tuna, a fish made famous not just for tuna salad and pasta however by the latest menace of its breeding floor caused by the BP Gulf oil spill earlier this 12 months, has decreased in population by 5.eight%. One other instance is the leatherback turtle, one other species affected by the BP Gulf oil spill, which has declined by 20.5%.

In the report's biogeographical realms, South Africa is part of "Afrotropical" which exhibits signs of recovery for the reason that 1990's where the Residing Planet Index was at minus 55%. The statistics differ for every country as in America and Arab Emirates need four.5 planets to keep up with carbon emissions and consumption used. In India they want much less then 50% of a planet.

In an try to seek out 'greener' fuel by using bio-gas, palm oil crops have elevated by eight fold over 20 years, converting 7.eight ha by 2010. This land conversion included forests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the home of the Orang-utan. Their population has decreased by 10-fold in two species populations because of the deforestation and habitat degradation.

Nonetheless the report does say that each one shouldn't be lost. The minimum standards for sustainability primarily based on obtainable biocapacity of the planet and the human growth index "signifies that it is in reality potential for international locations to meet these criteria, though main challenges remain for all nations to satisfy them.

Minimalist structure moto "Less is More" strategy is needed, not solely in structure and artwork but from the person, to nations, to the world. The stability wants to change us getting all the things and nature nothing, to nature getting more, more in protected areas, extra in conservation, extra in funding to recover the injury that has been created over the years and us to getting less and slightly utilizing the assets we've already captured.

[erickmalpicaflores]

Erik Malpica Flores Erik Malpica Flores recommends: MANIFEST: Josh Dallas and Melissa Roxburgh Tease Their New Mystery Series |

Josh Dallas leaves Prince Charming behind and is turning to MANIFEST, a new NBC mystery series also starring Melissa Roxburgh. The series, created by Jeff Rake, revolves around Montego Air Flight 828. On board the plane are Ben Stone (Dallas), his sister Michaela Stone (Roxburgh), and his son Cal Stone. The three of them caught the flight after their other family members headed home on an earlier flight from their family vacation. But somehow, while in the sky, the plane “disappeared” for more than five years and all of the passengers aboard the plane were presumed dead. No time at all had passed for the people aboard the plane, so when they touch down they find out that their family members mourned them and moved on. Now the Stones aboard the plane have to deal with reuniting with the people who moved on from them, as well as deal with the mystery of what happened to them in the air — and why they can sudden hear voices.

“One of the interesting things about the premise of this show is that we tear a couple of relationships apart and then bring them back together in a way that is incredibly complicated, but without moral culpability,” Rake said. “There are two relationships triangles at the center of the show. There is a marriage in which a wife has understandably moved on. There is a broken engagement in which the fiance has understandably moved on. And now everybody comes back together again. No one is to blame and yet it’s incredibly complicated and affections are torn and the heart is pulled in all of these different directions. And as we launch into series, those who had been left behind are dealing with the consequences of a passage of time — having mourned the loss of lovers, of children, [and then] heeled. [They] moved on with their lives, only to have the past come back in their faces. So that’s half the equation. On the other hand those who were on the plane have had no passage of time. For them it’s been a day and so they come home to this incredible shock to the system where the rest of the world has moved on, loved ones had moved on, but their heart and head are in the same place that they were yesterday.”

As we get deeper into the mystery of the show we’ll learn more about the voices that Ben and Michaela hear. Rake exaplained that what these voices are is “at the heart of the mythology of the show. Has what happened to these people stemmed from something supernatural or has it stemmed from something scientific? Has it stemmed from something divine? And the two heroes of the show — Michaela and Ben, brother and sister — represent the two competing points of view: science versus faith. Josh Dallas’s character, Ben, he’s kind of my Richard Dreyfuss from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS — kind of a scientific mind, digging for answers, tenacious, certain that something earth-bound can explain what happened. On the other hand his sister, Mikayla, she’s kind of a lapsed person of faith. Her mother was incredibly religious, her mother has passed away during the interim when she was on the plane. And so she’s grappling with the loss of her mom, and yet can’t help feeling the spirituality that her mother had tried to infuse in her throughout her life. This science versus faith conversation will play out in the series as they try to search for answers. By the end of our first order, halfway through through hopefully season 1, there will be data points that have come forward that seem to support both schools of thought. And that will be an ever-evolving question in the series.”

In general, the mystery of what happened to the plane and the side-effects for the passengers is part of a show with “one ultimate mystery with an end game that will carry us through the seasons,” Rake hinted. “We are not resetting season to season. The show is not an anthology. This will be one series long novelistic event mystery for the audience to follow. But I think of it as having chapters. There’s an endpoint in chapter 1. In fact there’s an endpoint halfway through season 1 around episode 13 that’s going to give us a significant pivot in our mythology. And then by the time we get to the end of season 1 there will be another pivot point, and then by the time we get into season 2 will have blown open our mythology in a significant way. Another interesting component about the show, which I think will be satisfying for viewers, is that even while the show is a serialized mystery and the relationship drama that obviously inches a long week to week, there will be closed-ended missions, if you will, on a week-to-week basis. So the audience will have an opportunity to kind of enjoy a satisfying closed-ended be story if you will each week even while we are following serialized stories elsewhere in the episodes.”

Ben is a “man of science, he’s a mathematician, so he thinks in concrete answers and he wants the truth,” Dallas says about his character. “This is not a perfect family. This is not a perfect marriage. It’s complex like any kind of family dynamic. Families are complex and there’s always things to navigate. Ben is an obsessive mind, he can get very obsessive and forget about everything else that’s around him and that can cause problems, that can cause friction, that can cause resentment and all those kind of things, [but] there’s still love there.”

One of the things that Ben was very obsessive about before the “accident” was his son’s illness. Ben was obsessed with trying to cure his son, even though his diagnosis was terminal. “When they lands there is a cure for his son that was also developed by another passenger that was on the plane so that’s another mystery that we’re going to have to try to figure out — what is that connection? ”

Dallas explained that “this is a story about very ordinary people in very extraordinary circumstances. It’s about hope, it’s about second shances. [Ben] also has a twin daughter who is now 16 years old, [and] he’s missed out on five and a half years of her life. He’s going to have to try to rediscover her. Try to rediscover his wife and try to figure out what his life is now and try to get it back…if he can ever get it back.”

Roxburgh describes her character as “very strong-willed before and after the [plane ride]. She kind of goes to the beat of her own brum. So she’s Ben’s younger sister and she’s kind of always grown up in the shadow of him, so I think because of that she’s learned to just do things herself and be a bit of a rebel that way.” The clip above shows us Michaela reuniting with her former fiancé, Jared. Roxburgh said that “they did work together in the police force. So obviously that will kind of come together again of them interacting at work. It’s really tragic because I think the two characters really love each other a lot. You don’t expect someone to wait around for 5 years so obviously things have moved on but no love is lost between them, which makes it even harder.” And it complicates things that Jared went on to marry Michaela’s best friend, Lourdes, during the five years that he thought Michaela was missing. “It’s going to be the difficult. I mean as one does when your best friend marries your fiancé. But we’ll see. There might be some redemption there,” Roxburgh hinted.

Expect to see flashbacks for all of the characters — “You’re going to see family life before. You’re going to see family life in the middle. You’re just going to get more of the history, more of the story about who these people are and what makes them so emotionally rich,” Dallas said. Roxburgh also hinted that “we get to meet Lourdes and Mikaela in their happier days.”

Finally, both the government and the noterity of what happened on the plane will continue to “haunt” these characters. “There’s a lot of eyes on this family. There’s a lot of eyes on the passengers that were on the plane. There’s an intrigue. This is an extraordinary thing. Are these people somehow ordained? Are they the chosen ones? Is this some sort of Wormhole? Is this spiritual?There’s a lot of eyes on this family from onlookers, from government entities, there’s a lot of stuff going on and Ben’s going to do his best to try to keep his family as safe as possible, which is going to become very difficult,” Dallas said.

MANIFEST premieres on Monday, September 24 at 10/9c on NBC.

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[blogwonderwebsites]

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum http://www.nature-business.com/business-reliable-sources-kavanaugh-gives-unprecedented-interview-to-foxs-martha-maccallum/

Business

Business A version of this article first appeared in the Reliable Sources newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

Business Kavanaugh speaks

If you thought this was unprecedented, you were right: “It is unheard of for a Supreme Court nominee to give interviews during the confirmation process.”

That’s according to WaPo’s recap of Brett and Ashley Kavanaugh’s emotional interview with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.

From the standpoint of the Trump White House, going with MacCallum made a ton of sense: MacCallum is a well-credentialed female anchor who hails from the news side of Fox, not the opinion side.

I’d love to know Bill Shine’s level of involvement in the interview. It aired in full at 7 p.m. ET, but I noticed that Fox shared several clips from the interview in time for the network evening newscasts…

Business Behind the scenes…

Via CNN’s Kevin Liptak: “One WH official says Trump has been pushing to take a more offensive approach in defending the nomination and that this was how aides interpreted his command. It’s not clear that he specifically instructed Kavanaugh to sit down with Fox (though it’s possible) but it was the result of his desire to be assertive in combatting the claims rather than just playing defense…”

Business “Not a good look for the Supreme Court…”

Law prof/CNN contributor Steve Vladeck texts me: “The interview is a microcosm of everything that’s been wrong with this confirmation process. We shouldn’t prevent nominees from speaking publicly, but to do so under these circumstances, in that context, and in a manner calculated to exacerbate the partisan divide over the nomination, is not a good look for the Supreme Court in the long term, even if it helps the political calculus for the nominee in the short term. It reinforces the view that nothing in this process matters at all except getting 50 votes by any means necessary…”

>> Another view, via CNN contrib Matt Lewis on Twitter: “People are more likely to rally to your defense if they see you’re fighting, instead of being passive.” So the TV interview was wise for Kavanaugh. “He hasn’t controlled the narrative for a week, now…”

Business Latest developments

— WaPo’s Erik Wemple tweeted: “I would have liked to see Martha MacCallum press Kavanaugh on his relationship with Mark Judge. In all, though, I thought she did a good job — and certainly didn’t serve up only softballs, as many predicted.”

— Brian Fallon, one of the left’s leading anti-Kavanaugh organizers, tweeted that “MacCallum is pressing Kavanaugh more than I would have guessed…”

— Perhaps the most memorable Q&A was about Kavanaugh’s virginity… He said he didn’t have “anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter…” Of course, intercourse isn’t at issue here…

— The TIME’S UP initiative just came out and said “the time has come” for Kavanaugh to withdraw…

— Earlier in the day, Mitch McConnell said “Judge Kavanaugh will be voted on here on the Senate floor…”

— A WaPo reporter found Mark Judge “holed up in the house of a longtime friend in Bethany Beach, nearly three hours” from DC…

— Trump’s best/worst typo ever? At 10:37 p.m. ET, he tweeted that the Dems are pushing “False Acquisitions.” He meant “false accusations.” He deleted and reposted the tweet…

Business Debating the New Yorker’s decision

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer spent much of Monday explaining and defending their reporting about Deborah Ramirez. Charles C.W. Cooke, channeling many conservatives’ reactions to the story, said it “looks reckless beyond all reason.” Drudge’s Monday evening headline asked, “RONAN MISFIRES?”

Beyond the partisan battling, many journalists raised questions about the lack of corroboration of Ramirez’s account, and the fact that it took time for Ramirez to assess her own memories. Some suggested that their news outlets would not have published the story. Mayer rejected that — and pointed out that she “found a classmate who heard the identical story at the time.” Farrow said on “New Day” that “this is a fairly high level of evidence for this kind of a case.” And David Remnick noted that the pair “wrote with fairness and transparency about what doubts there might be.”

Other arguments in the mag’s favor: Ramirez agreed to go on the record. And Democratic senators were aware of the allegation and were already looking into it. So the debate continues…

>> The NYT said that it “had conducted numerous interviews but was unable to corroborate” Ramirez’s story. Some folks tried to turn this into the NYT v. TNY. But the paper dismissed that, noting that it “did not rebut her account and, unlike The New Yorker, was not able to obtain an interview with Ms. Ramirez…”

>> BTW: Given Farrow’s very public dispute with NBC News, Monday’s TV rollout made sense: Mayer was on NBC and MSNBC’s morning shows while Farrow was on ABC and CNN. Mayer also did CBS…

>> Correction: Yesterday I said that this was Farrow and Mayer’s second co-production. It was actually their third story together…

Business “The weaponization of haste”

Megan Thomas emails: This is a really good one from The Atlantic’s Megan Garber on “#WhyIDidn’tReport and the weaponization of haste.” This line stands out: “The game clock, the time bombs, the midterms, the calendar, the fleeting moment, the lifetime appointment, the mechanical tickings of political partisanship…”

Business All eyes on Rod Rosenstein

I was on a plane half the day, blissfully free of WiFi, so when I landed and loaded Twitter, I was super confused. There were tweets about Rod Rosenstein resigning, not resigning, thinking of leaving his job, staying in his job, etc. The tweets were out of order, of course, because of Twitter’s terrible algorithmic timeline. News apps were a much better way of finding out what really happened. By the end of the day, the NYT and CNN had excellent tick-tocks…

Business Thursday, Thursday, Thursday

Trump is set to meet with Rosenstein on the very same day that Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford are set to testify.

>> Jim Acosta on “AC360” Monday night: “It’s almost going to be like watching tennis, looking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

>> NYT’s James Poniewozik had the tweet of the day: “Thursday would be a good day for CNN to launch CNN8, ‘The Ocho.’”

Business “Anyone’s guess”

Maggie Haberman on “AC360:” “What will happen on Thursday is anyone’s guess. People I’ve spoken to around the president are not certain what will happen. They’re not certain whether Rosenstein will really walk in and say ‘I’m resigning…”’

Business FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

— Ed O’Keefe called this a “metaphoric moment at the White House today.” While he was live on CBSN, “discussing a false alarm shakeup at the Justice Department, they tested the alert system on the White House grounds. It was only a test. All of it…” (Twitter)

— “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, have resigned and plan to leave the company in coming weeks,” Mike Isaac scoops… (NYT)

— A must-read: Robert Silverman on the “culture of online hate” promoted byBarstool Sports… (Beast)

Business SiriusXM is Pandora’s savior

They’re billing the combo as “the world’s largest audio entertainment company.” SiriusXM is paying $3.5 billion in an all-stock deal for Pandora that had been foreshadowed for a while. As Chris Isidore reports here, “Pandora’s ability to stay an independent company was very much in doubt. SiriusXM had already invested $480 million to buy 19% of Pandora’s stock last year, and it was widely reported to be looking at a full purchase…”

— Peter Kafka tweeted: “Giant satellite audio company buying giant internet audio company could be an antitrust problem, but this one seems to pass what economists call the Trump/Murdoch test…”

Business Telegdy and Cheeks promoted at NBC

“Two veteran NBC executives — George Cheeks and Paul Telegdy — were named co-chairmen of NBC Entertainment on Monday, replacing Bob Greenblatt at a time of upheaval in network television,” the LAT’s Meg James writes.

It was reported on Friday that Greenblatt was ready to step down, and was going to talk with Steve Burke about it over the weekend. “But if his departure is not a surprise, the suddenness is. His last day is Monday, the same day the 2018-19 television season begins,” the NYT’s John Koblin writes.

Greenblatt said something similar in interviews with both Timeses: These jobs are challenging and tiring, and he’s ready to try something new…

>> Other factors noted by Koblin: “Greenblatt wanted to see if Comcast’s last-minute bid for 21st Century Fox’s properties would work and could possibly expand NBC’s portfolio. (It did not.) And two of Mr. Greenblatt’s close friends — the producer Craig Zadan and the Broadway star Marin Mazzie — have died in the last five weeks…”

Business Lowry’s take

Brian Lowry emails: Telegdy’s promotion at NBC Entertainment reflects a slightly wider lens in terms of the path to top entertainment jobs at the broadcast networks. Telegdy comes out of the reality/alternative area, just as CBS Entertainment prez Kelly Kahl rose through the ranks in scheduling. Both are paired with a veteran development executive, in Telegdy’s case, Cheeks…

Business NBC gets a huge Tiger bump

Frank Pallotta emails: Tiger Woods’ first victory in five years came with a huge ratings boost for NBC. The network’s coverage of the Tour Championship on Sunday earned a 5.2 overnight rating, a 206% spike over last year’s tournament. 206%! The telecast peaked at a 7.1 rating as Woods finished his round, ending his long victory drought. As a golf fan, I’m happy to see Tiger back but likely not as happy as NBC execs…

>> USA Today’s Dan Wolken: “Tiger Woods’ first win in five years feels like a new beginning, not the end…”

Business FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

— Ryan Broderick’s latest: “Reddit’s largest pro-Trump subreddit appears to have been targeted by Russian propaganda for years…” (BF)

— “Sky shareholders are having a great day. Comcast investors? Not so much.” Here’s Hadas Gold’s full story… (CNN)

— “James Lipton is leaving the Actors Studio.” The program’s new home on cable, Ovation, says “a rotating roster of hosts still to be determined will replace Lipton,” effective next fall… (EW)

Business ABC touting its nightly news win

Nightly news #’s for the full 2017-18 broadcast TV season will officially come out on Tuesday… ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” will be celebrating its second yearly win in the total viewer category… “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” remains #1 in the 25-54 demo (22 seasons in a row!), but ABC has been making gains in the demo too…

Read more of Monday’s Reliable Sources newsletter… And subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox…

The big picture: Some of the 6:30 viewership gains of the past few years have dissipated. CBS has lost both total viewership and demo audience in the past year. NBC is basically flat in total viewership and down a bit in the demo. ABC is up year-over-year in both measurements…

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 25, 2018: 12:12 AM ET

Read More | Brian Stelter,

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum, in 2018-09-25 07:44:33

[blogparadiseisland]

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum http://www.nature-business.com/business-reliable-sources-kavanaugh-gives-unprecedented-interview-to-foxs-martha-maccallum/

Business

Business A version of this article first appeared in the Reliable Sources newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

Business Kavanaugh speaks

If you thought this was unprecedented, you were right: “It is unheard of for a Supreme Court nominee to give interviews during the confirmation process.”

That’s according to WaPo’s recap of Brett and Ashley Kavanaugh’s emotional interview with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.

From the standpoint of the Trump White House, going with MacCallum made a ton of sense: MacCallum is a well-credentialed female anchor who hails from the news side of Fox, not the opinion side.

I’d love to know Bill Shine’s level of involvement in the interview. It aired in full at 7 p.m. ET, but I noticed that Fox shared several clips from the interview in time for the network evening newscasts…

Business Behind the scenes…

Via CNN’s Kevin Liptak: “One WH official says Trump has been pushing to take a more offensive approach in defending the nomination and that this was how aides interpreted his command. It’s not clear that he specifically instructed Kavanaugh to sit down with Fox (though it’s possible) but it was the result of his desire to be assertive in combatting the claims rather than just playing defense…”

Business “Not a good look for the Supreme Court…”

Law prof/CNN contributor Steve Vladeck texts me: “The interview is a microcosm of everything that’s been wrong with this confirmation process. We shouldn’t prevent nominees from speaking publicly, but to do so under these circumstances, in that context, and in a manner calculated to exacerbate the partisan divide over the nomination, is not a good look for the Supreme Court in the long term, even if it helps the political calculus for the nominee in the short term. It reinforces the view that nothing in this process matters at all except getting 50 votes by any means necessary…”

>> Another view, via CNN contrib Matt Lewis on Twitter: “People are more likely to rally to your defense if they see you’re fighting, instead of being passive.” So the TV interview was wise for Kavanaugh. “He hasn’t controlled the narrative for a week, now…”

Business Latest developments

— WaPo’s Erik Wemple tweeted: “I would have liked to see Martha MacCallum press Kavanaugh on his relationship with Mark Judge. In all, though, I thought she did a good job — and certainly didn’t serve up only softballs, as many predicted.”

— Brian Fallon, one of the left’s leading anti-Kavanaugh organizers, tweeted that “MacCallum is pressing Kavanaugh more than I would have guessed…”

— Perhaps the most memorable Q&A was about Kavanaugh’s virginity… He said he didn’t have “anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter…” Of course, intercourse isn’t at issue here…

— The TIME’S UP initiative just came out and said “the time has come” for Kavanaugh to withdraw…

— Earlier in the day, Mitch McConnell said “Judge Kavanaugh will be voted on here on the Senate floor…”

— A WaPo reporter found Mark Judge “holed up in the house of a longtime friend in Bethany Beach, nearly three hours” from DC…

— Trump’s best/worst typo ever? At 10:37 p.m. ET, he tweeted that the Dems are pushing “False Acquisitions.” He meant “false accusations.” He deleted and reposted the tweet…

Business Debating the New Yorker’s decision

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer spent much of Monday explaining and defending their reporting about Deborah Ramirez. Charles C.W. Cooke, channeling many conservatives’ reactions to the story, said it “looks reckless beyond all reason.” Drudge’s Monday evening headline asked, “RONAN MISFIRES?”

Beyond the partisan battling, many journalists raised questions about the lack of corroboration of Ramirez’s account, and the fact that it took time for Ramirez to assess her own memories. Some suggested that their news outlets would not have published the story. Mayer rejected that — and pointed out that she “found a classmate who heard the identical story at the time.” Farrow said on “New Day” that “this is a fairly high level of evidence for this kind of a case.” And David Remnick noted that the pair “wrote with fairness and transparency about what doubts there might be.”

Other arguments in the mag’s favor: Ramirez agreed to go on the record. And Democratic senators were aware of the allegation and were already looking into it. So the debate continues…

>> The NYT said that it “had conducted numerous interviews but was unable to corroborate” Ramirez’s story. Some folks tried to turn this into the NYT v. TNY. But the paper dismissed that, noting that it “did not rebut her account and, unlike The New Yorker, was not able to obtain an interview with Ms. Ramirez…”

>> BTW: Given Farrow’s very public dispute with NBC News, Monday’s TV rollout made sense: Mayer was on NBC and MSNBC’s morning shows while Farrow was on ABC and CNN. Mayer also did CBS…

>> Correction: Yesterday I said that this was Farrow and Mayer’s second co-production. It was actually their third story together…

Business “The weaponization of haste”

Megan Thomas emails: This is a really good one from The Atlantic’s Megan Garber on “#WhyIDidn’tReport and the weaponization of haste.” This line stands out: “The game clock, the time bombs, the midterms, the calendar, the fleeting moment, the lifetime appointment, the mechanical tickings of political partisanship…”

Business All eyes on Rod Rosenstein

I was on a plane half the day, blissfully free of WiFi, so when I landed and loaded Twitter, I was super confused. There were tweets about Rod Rosenstein resigning, not resigning, thinking of leaving his job, staying in his job, etc. The tweets were out of order, of course, because of Twitter’s terrible algorithmic timeline. News apps were a much better way of finding out what really happened. By the end of the day, the NYT and CNN had excellent tick-tocks…

Business Thursday, Thursday, Thursday

Trump is set to meet with Rosenstein on the very same day that Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford are set to testify.

>> Jim Acosta on “AC360” Monday night: “It’s almost going to be like watching tennis, looking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

>> NYT’s James Poniewozik had the tweet of the day: “Thursday would be a good day for CNN to launch CNN8, ‘The Ocho.’”

Business “Anyone’s guess”

Maggie Haberman on “AC360:” “What will happen on Thursday is anyone’s guess. People I’ve spoken to around the president are not certain what will happen. They’re not certain whether Rosenstein will really walk in and say ‘I’m resigning…”’

Business FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

— Ed O’Keefe called this a “metaphoric moment at the White House today.” While he was live on CBSN, “discussing a false alarm shakeup at the Justice Department, they tested the alert system on the White House grounds. It was only a test. All of it…” (Twitter)

— “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, have resigned and plan to leave the company in coming weeks,” Mike Isaac scoops… (NYT)

— A must-read: Robert Silverman on the “culture of online hate” promoted byBarstool Sports… (Beast)

Business SiriusXM is Pandora’s savior

They’re billing the combo as “the world’s largest audio entertainment company.” SiriusXM is paying $3.5 billion in an all-stock deal for Pandora that had been foreshadowed for a while. As Chris Isidore reports here, “Pandora’s ability to stay an independent company was very much in doubt. SiriusXM had already invested $480 million to buy 19% of Pandora’s stock last year, and it was widely reported to be looking at a full purchase…”

— Peter Kafka tweeted: “Giant satellite audio company buying giant internet audio company could be an antitrust problem, but this one seems to pass what economists call the Trump/Murdoch test…”

Business Telegdy and Cheeks promoted at NBC

“Two veteran NBC executives — George Cheeks and Paul Telegdy — were named co-chairmen of NBC Entertainment on Monday, replacing Bob Greenblatt at a time of upheaval in network television,” the LAT’s Meg James writes.

It was reported on Friday that Greenblatt was ready to step down, and was going to talk with Steve Burke about it over the weekend. “But if his departure is not a surprise, the suddenness is. His last day is Monday, the same day the 2018-19 television season begins,” the NYT’s John Koblin writes.

Greenblatt said something similar in interviews with both Timeses: These jobs are challenging and tiring, and he’s ready to try something new…

>> Other factors noted by Koblin: “Greenblatt wanted to see if Comcast’s last-minute bid for 21st Century Fox’s properties would work and could possibly expand NBC’s portfolio. (It did not.) And two of Mr. Greenblatt’s close friends — the producer Craig Zadan and the Broadway star Marin Mazzie — have died in the last five weeks…”

Business Lowry’s take

Brian Lowry emails: Telegdy’s promotion at NBC Entertainment reflects a slightly wider lens in terms of the path to top entertainment jobs at the broadcast networks. Telegdy comes out of the reality/alternative area, just as CBS Entertainment prez Kelly Kahl rose through the ranks in scheduling. Both are paired with a veteran development executive, in Telegdy’s case, Cheeks…

Business NBC gets a huge Tiger bump

Frank Pallotta emails: Tiger Woods’ first victory in five years came with a huge ratings boost for NBC. The network’s coverage of the Tour Championship on Sunday earned a 5.2 overnight rating, a 206% spike over last year’s tournament. 206%! The telecast peaked at a 7.1 rating as Woods finished his round, ending his long victory drought. As a golf fan, I’m happy to see Tiger back but likely not as happy as NBC execs…

>> USA Today’s Dan Wolken: “Tiger Woods’ first win in five years feels like a new beginning, not the end…”

Business FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

— Ryan Broderick’s latest: “Reddit’s largest pro-Trump subreddit appears to have been targeted by Russian propaganda for years…” (BF)

— “Sky shareholders are having a great day. Comcast investors? Not so much.” Here’s Hadas Gold’s full story… (CNN)

— “James Lipton is leaving the Actors Studio.” The program’s new home on cable, Ovation, says “a rotating roster of hosts still to be determined will replace Lipton,” effective next fall… (EW)

Business ABC touting its nightly news win

Nightly news #’s for the full 2017-18 broadcast TV season will officially come out on Tuesday… ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” will be celebrating its second yearly win in the total viewer category… “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” remains #1 in the 25-54 demo (22 seasons in a row!), but ABC has been making gains in the demo too…

Read more of Monday’s Reliable Sources newsletter… And subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox…

The big picture: Some of the 6:30 viewership gains of the past few years have dissipated. CBS has lost both total viewership and demo audience in the past year. NBC is basically flat in total viewership and down a bit in the demo. ABC is up year-over-year in both measurements…

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 25, 2018: 12:12 AM ET

Read More | Brian Stelter,

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum, in 2018-09-25 07:44:33

[internetbasic9]

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum https://ift.tt/2N0KtN5

Business

Business A version of this article first appeared in the Reliable Sources newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

Business Kavanaugh speaks

If you thought this was unprecedented, you were right: “It is unheard of for a Supreme Court nominee to give interviews during the confirmation process.”

That’s according to WaPo’s recap of Brett and Ashley Kavanaugh’s emotional interview with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.

From the standpoint of the Trump White House, going with MacCallum made a ton of sense: MacCallum is a well-credentialed female anchor who hails from the news side of Fox, not the opinion side.

I’d love to know Bill Shine’s level of involvement in the interview. It aired in full at 7 p.m. ET, but I noticed that Fox shared several clips from the interview in time for the network evening newscasts…

Business Behind the scenes…

Via CNN’s Kevin Liptak: “One WH official says Trump has been pushing to take a more offensive approach in defending the nomination and that this was how aides interpreted his command. It’s not clear that he specifically instructed Kavanaugh to sit down with Fox (though it’s possible) but it was the result of his desire to be assertive in combatting the claims rather than just playing defense…”

Business “Not a good look for the Supreme Court…”

Law prof/CNN contributor Steve Vladeck texts me: “The interview is a microcosm of everything that’s been wrong with this confirmation process. We shouldn’t prevent nominees from speaking publicly, but to do so under these circumstances, in that context, and in a manner calculated to exacerbate the partisan divide over the nomination, is not a good look for the Supreme Court in the long term, even if it helps the political calculus for the nominee in the short term. It reinforces the view that nothing in this process matters at all except getting 50 votes by any means necessary…”

>> Another view, via CNN contrib Matt Lewis on Twitter: “People are more likely to rally to your defense if they see you’re fighting, instead of being passive.” So the TV interview was wise for Kavanaugh. “He hasn’t controlled the narrative for a week, now…”

Business Latest developments

— WaPo’s Erik Wemple tweeted: “I would have liked to see Martha MacCallum press Kavanaugh on his relationship with Mark Judge. In all, though, I thought she did a good job — and certainly didn’t serve up only softballs, as many predicted.”

— Brian Fallon, one of the left’s leading anti-Kavanaugh organizers, tweeted that “MacCallum is pressing Kavanaugh more than I would have guessed…”

— Perhaps the most memorable Q&A was about Kavanaugh’s virginity… He said he didn’t have “anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter…” Of course, intercourse isn’t at issue here…

— The TIME’S UP initiative just came out and said “the time has come” for Kavanaugh to withdraw…

— Earlier in the day, Mitch McConnell said “Judge Kavanaugh will be voted on here on the Senate floor…”

— A WaPo reporter found Mark Judge “holed up in the house of a longtime friend in Bethany Beach, nearly three hours” from DC…

— Trump’s best/worst typo ever? At 10:37 p.m. ET, he tweeted that the Dems are pushing “False Acquisitions.” He meant “false accusations.” He deleted and reposted the tweet…

Business Debating the New Yorker’s decision

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer spent much of Monday explaining and defending their reporting about Deborah Ramirez. Charles C.W. Cooke, channeling many conservatives’ reactions to the story, said it “looks reckless beyond all reason.” Drudge’s Monday evening headline asked, “RONAN MISFIRES?”

Beyond the partisan battling, many journalists raised questions about the lack of corroboration of Ramirez’s account, and the fact that it took time for Ramirez to assess her own memories. Some suggested that their news outlets would not have published the story. Mayer rejected that — and pointed out that she “found a classmate who heard the identical story at the time.” Farrow said on “New Day” that “this is a fairly high level of evidence for this kind of a case.” And David Remnick noted that the pair “wrote with fairness and transparency about what doubts there might be.”

Other arguments in the mag’s favor: Ramirez agreed to go on the record. And Democratic senators were aware of the allegation and were already looking into it. So the debate continues…

>> The NYT said that it “had conducted numerous interviews but was unable to corroborate” Ramirez’s story. Some folks tried to turn this into the NYT v. TNY. But the paper dismissed that, noting that it “did not rebut her account and, unlike The New Yorker, was not able to obtain an interview with Ms. Ramirez…”

>> BTW: Given Farrow’s very public dispute with NBC News, Monday’s TV rollout made sense: Mayer was on NBC and MSNBC’s morning shows while Farrow was on ABC and CNN. Mayer also did CBS…

>> Correction: Yesterday I said that this was Farrow and Mayer’s second co-production. It was actually their third story together…

Business “The weaponization of haste”

Megan Thomas emails: This is a really good one from The Atlantic’s Megan Garber on “#WhyIDidn’tReport and the weaponization of haste.” This line stands out: “The game clock, the time bombs, the midterms, the calendar, the fleeting moment, the lifetime appointment, the mechanical tickings of political partisanship…”

Business All eyes on Rod Rosenstein

I was on a plane half the day, blissfully free of WiFi, so when I landed and loaded Twitter, I was super confused. There were tweets about Rod Rosenstein resigning, not resigning, thinking of leaving his job, staying in his job, etc. The tweets were out of order, of course, because of Twitter’s terrible algorithmic timeline. News apps were a much better way of finding out what really happened. By the end of the day, the NYT and CNN had excellent tick-tocks…

Business Thursday, Thursday, Thursday

Trump is set to meet with Rosenstein on the very same day that Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford are set to testify.

>> Jim Acosta on “AC360” Monday night: “It’s almost going to be like watching tennis, looking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

>> NYT’s James Poniewozik had the tweet of the day: “Thursday would be a good day for CNN to launch CNN8, ‘The Ocho.’”

Business “Anyone’s guess”

Maggie Haberman on “AC360:” “What will happen on Thursday is anyone’s guess. People I’ve spoken to around the president are not certain what will happen. They’re not certain whether Rosenstein will really walk in and say ‘I’m resigning…”’

Business FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

— Ed O’Keefe called this a “metaphoric moment at the White House today.” While he was live on CBSN, “discussing a false alarm shakeup at the Justice Department, they tested the alert system on the White House grounds. It was only a test. All of it…” (Twitter)

— “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, have resigned and plan to leave the company in coming weeks,” Mike Isaac scoops… (NYT)

— A must-read: Robert Silverman on the “culture of online hate” promoted byBarstool Sports… (Beast)

Business SiriusXM is Pandora’s savior

They’re billing the combo as “the world’s largest audio entertainment company.” SiriusXM is paying $3.5 billion in an all-stock deal for Pandora that had been foreshadowed for a while. As Chris Isidore reports here, “Pandora’s ability to stay an independent company was very much in doubt. SiriusXM had already invested $480 million to buy 19% of Pandora’s stock last year, and it was widely reported to be looking at a full purchase…”

— Peter Kafka tweeted: “Giant satellite audio company buying giant internet audio company could be an antitrust problem, but this one seems to pass what economists call the Trump/Murdoch test…”

Business Telegdy and Cheeks promoted at NBC

“Two veteran NBC executives — George Cheeks and Paul Telegdy — were named co-chairmen of NBC Entertainment on Monday, replacing Bob Greenblatt at a time of upheaval in network television,” the LAT’s Meg James writes.

It was reported on Friday that Greenblatt was ready to step down, and was going to talk with Steve Burke about it over the weekend. “But if his departure is not a surprise, the suddenness is. His last day is Monday, the same day the 2018-19 television season begins,” the NYT’s John Koblin writes.

Greenblatt said something similar in interviews with both Timeses: These jobs are challenging and tiring, and he’s ready to try something new…

>> Other factors noted by Koblin: “Greenblatt wanted to see if Comcast’s last-minute bid for 21st Century Fox’s properties would work and could possibly expand NBC’s portfolio. (It did not.) And two of Mr. Greenblatt’s close friends — the producer Craig Zadan and the Broadway star Marin Mazzie — have died in the last five weeks…”

Business Lowry’s take

Brian Lowry emails: Telegdy’s promotion at NBC Entertainment reflects a slightly wider lens in terms of the path to top entertainment jobs at the broadcast networks. Telegdy comes out of the reality/alternative area, just as CBS Entertainment prez Kelly Kahl rose through the ranks in scheduling. Both are paired with a veteran development executive, in Telegdy’s case, Cheeks…

Business NBC gets a huge Tiger bump

Frank Pallotta emails: Tiger Woods’ first victory in five years came with a huge ratings boost for NBC. The network’s coverage of the Tour Championship on Sunday earned a 5.2 overnight rating, a 206% spike over last year’s tournament. 206%! The telecast peaked at a 7.1 rating as Woods finished his round, ending his long victory drought. As a golf fan, I’m happy to see Tiger back but likely not as happy as NBC execs…

>> USA Today’s Dan Wolken: “Tiger Woods’ first win in five years feels like a new beginning, not the end…”

Business FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

— Ryan Broderick’s latest: “Reddit’s largest pro-Trump subreddit appears to have been targeted by Russian propaganda for years…” (BF)

— “Sky shareholders are having a great day. Comcast investors? Not so much.” Here’s Hadas Gold’s full story… (CNN)

— “James Lipton is leaving the Actors Studio.” The program’s new home on cable, Ovation, says “a rotating roster of hosts still to be determined will replace Lipton,” effective next fall… (EW)

Business ABC touting its nightly news win

Nightly news #’s for the full 2017-18 broadcast TV season will officially come out on Tuesday… ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” will be celebrating its second yearly win in the total viewer category… “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” remains #1 in the 25-54 demo (22 seasons in a row!), but ABC has been making gains in the demo too…

Read more of Monday’s Reliable Sources newsletter… And subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox…

The big picture: Some of the 6:30 viewership gains of the past few years have dissipated. CBS has lost both total viewership and demo audience in the past year. NBC is basically flat in total viewership and down a bit in the demo. ABC is up year-over-year in both measurements…

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 25, 2018: 12:12 AM ET

Read More | Brian Stelter,

Business Reliable Sources: Kavanaugh gives unprecedented interview to Fox’s Martha MacCallum, in 2018-09-25 07:44:33

[racingtoaredlight]

The degenerate’s guide to 2017 college football TV watch ‘em ups: week 9

This is by far the biggest weekend of the college football season so far and for some reason all of the “important” games are on at the same time. Lucky for me since I won’t be able to watch the evening games.

Last year on this weekend I missed watchin’ ‘em up because I was getting married. This year I’m missing a sizable portion of the watch ‘em ups because other people are getting married. Fortune is on my side though, since I should get pretty much through with all of the ranked matchups by the time I’ve got to leave for a night of wedding revelry and all-night horror movie watching (those are separate events.)

As per usual, the times are eastern, the lines are from Vegas Insider, and the game info is from FBSchedules. Off-day (Tuesday through Friday) games aren’t included here. If you have even a shred of degeneracy in your body you can find them. Good luck, you bunch of frauds.

(I meant that for you, the commenters, but can also mean it for all of the teams.)

Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017

Matchup                                                        Time (ET)                   TV

Buffalo at Akron                                           11:30 am                  CBSSN

Since Buffalo is a part of the SUNY system I would love to hear everybody’s thoughts on Buffalo’s right, as a city, to be considered upstate New York.

Arkansas at University of Mississippi, Oxford  Noon                SECN

Garbage game between two garbage teams and the one player you might theoretically want to check in on is out for the rest of the season.

(8) Miami, FL at North Carolina                   Noon                        ESPN2

For everybody who doubts Miami’s legitimacy as a top 10 team there is only one thing this game can possibly do: reinforce your opinion that Miami is fraudulent. UNC has been unbelievably bad this year. So bad that injuries can’t really explain it all. They’ve executed so poorly this far that it’s almost impossible to believe. If Miami doesn’t at least clear the 20.5 point spread the chorus of jeers will be insufferable until they either beat Virginia Tech or just fall apart completely.

(11) Oklahoma State at (22) West Virginia  Noon                         ABC

This is a relatively great matchup that’s only hindered in my mind by its very Big XIIness. Okie State has a really strong defensive backfield and are dotted with future pros up and down the roster but I have the impression this will be decided by QB play and Will Grier > Mason Rudolph.

Rutgers at Michigan                                     Noon                        BTN

Can’t wait for Michigan to score 85 points and move back up to #15 in next week’s polls.

Texas at Baylor                                              Noon                      ESPNU

Texas might be messy enough to lose to Baylor but Baylor might be legitimately bad enough to lose by 50. I think it’ll be Buechele under center for the Horns and I have this unshakable hunch that, in the long run, he’s a better QB than Sam Ehlinger.

(5) Wisconsin at Illinois                                Noon                        ESPN

Wisconsin is favored by 27 in one of the last 5 games before their schedule gets really tough.

Louisville at Wake Forest                             12:20 pm                 ACCN

Great matchup (no sarcasm) between Lamar Jackson and Duke Ejiofor. In some form or fashion this is a revenge game for Wake Forest after that whole Wakeyleaks thing from last year but how much can anybody really give a shit about Wake Forest playing for revenge? Louisville is a bad team hanging on for dear life to Lamar Jackson to carry them to a halfway decent bowl appearance.

Virginia at Pittsburgh                                    12:30 pm            RSN/ESPN3

I didn’t think I had it in me to be truly disappointed by UVA football but then they got run the fuck over by Boston College last week and I was effectively shocked. I didn’t think the Hoos were actually good but I was sure they were better than that. I was sure every team in America was better than that.

California at Colorado                                   2:00 pm                  Pac-12N

Antifa vs. The Promise Keepers in a classic that nobody will see because Pac-12 Network is only in a handful of homes. I bet at least one of these teams makes it to a bowl game that will be watched by about the same number of people as this game.

FIU at Marshall                                                2:30 pm                Stadium

Check out Marshall with the three-score line. That’s a big bounce back for one of the occasionally most fun programs in college football.

Air Force at Colorado State                           3:00 pm                 CBSSN

And here’s Colorado State in a similar situation to Marshall. CSU has a kind of boring uniform that I really like. Air Force wore some pretty cool threads last week or the week before but I can’t find their schedule of alternates. This game should be bad but for some reason the money seems to be coming in for Air Force and the line is down to 10 most places.

Kansas State at Kansas                                  3:00 pm                   FS1

This heated rivalry between traditional doormats always seems to produce the same level of buzz every year.

San Jose State at BYU                                    3:00 pm           BYUtv/ESPN3

This game is an abomination against god and sport. Which makes me like it but also know that it will be terrible.

Appalachian State at UMass                           3:30 pm              11 Sports

I would have guessed App State was a double digit favorite but I would have been wrong. Is UMass really within 4 points of these Mountaineers?

Florida vs. (3) Georgia (in Jacksonville)          3:30 pm                 CBS

It’s no longer the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party in official parlance but what the hell else are you going to call it? I don’t think UF is bad enough to score their largest loss in series history but they might be. I guess the question is whether Georgia can actually put up 75 on them.

Georgia Southern at Troy                               3:30 pm                ESPN3

Troy beat LSU but hasn’t really been all that great otherwise. Georgia Southern has beaten literally nobody so far. The line is 25 and that seems like a decent value to my pea brain.

Indiana at Maryland                                         3:30 pm                  BTN

You don’t have to do this to yourself.

Louisiana Tech at Rice                                    3:30 pm                 FloTV

This game does it right by being on FloTV when nobody was going to watch it anyway. Rice is horrible this year, as per usual, but they might be just good enough to keep it close with the Karl Malones.

(16) Michigan State at Northwestern             3:30 pm                  ESPN

Sparty is the most paper tiger seeming team in the country to me. Northwestern is bad but might be good enough to spring the upset here.

(14) NC State at (9) Notre Dame                       3:30 pm                 NBC

Help us, Bradley Chubb, you’re our only hope! These teams aren’t worlds apart in terms of talent but I’m a little shaken by how much the Irish tore through USC last week and I don’t want to proffer any advice at all here.

(2) Penn State at (6) Ohio State                        3:30 pm                FOX

Whoever wins this game has a pretty clear path to the playoffs. More so for Penn State than Ohio State but let’s not pretend like Michigan should beat the Buckeyes this year. Ohio State got mauled by Oklahoma earlier this year but, like almost every season of this decade, they’re loaded with talent on both sides of the ball and they’ve gotten some time together after losing a bunch of guys to the NFL last year. I can’t shake this feeling that outside of Saquon Barkley all of Penn State’s star players are kind of shitty in a prospect context.

(4) TCU at (25) Iowa State                                   3:30 pm    ABC/ESPN2 (RM)

Even the second-tier matchups are all in the same time slot. I think I took Iowa State to win this game in one of the pick ‘em entries but that’s just throwing shit at the wall.

UCLA at (12) Washington                                    3:30 pm     ABC/ESPN2 (RM)

UDub fucked up badly in their last game but I’ve got a feeling they’ll take out a lot of frustration on UCLA.

Houston at (17) USF                                            3:45 pm             ESPNU

See what I mean about the second-tier games? This is getting some burn as an impactful matchup because USF could possibly lose but I think that’s giving Houston way more credit than they’ve earned this year. USF should put this one to bed early.

Vanderbilt at South Carolina                              4:00 pm              SECN

I think you should take Vandy and the under. This is probably the lock of the week? For me. With my gambling tout prowess. Definitely. I guess.

Florida Atlantic at WKU                                       4:30 pm             Stadium

/checks watch

Hurry the fuck up, Lane. We are not here for you to be lovable and well-liked.

Austin Peay at (18) UCF                                       5:00 pm              ESPN3

This is awesome because UCF can win 100-0, drop in the rankings, and beat a team that’s better than FSU or UF. Florida’s big three - Miami, USF and UCF - are really dragging a bunch of dead weight around to make the old capital state of football at least stay in contention for what used to be a birthright.

ULM at Idaho                                                         5:00 pm              ESPN3

It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Idaho will go out on a high note as a bowl team in their final year at the FBS level but they are favored in this game.

Utah at Oregon                                                      5:45 pm             Pac-12N

Oregon seems to folded up shop on offense after losing their QB a couple of weeks ago but they might have enough defense to hang with and maybe even beat Utah. This is a weird season.

Texas State at Coastal Carolina                           6:00 pm             ESPN3

All of the 3:30 kicks are probably all bunched up because schedule makers thought they needed to leave the later space open for bangers like this.

Old Dominion at North Texas                               6:30 pm             ESPN3

ODU vs. the 096ers is the Drugs Bowl if I get to name it and since nobody else will ever realize this game took place I think I do in fact get to name it.

Minnesota at Iowa                                                 6:30 pm                 FS1

I don’t get what’s gone wrong with Iowa since they came within 2 seconds of upsetting Penn State but they look like that game was their peak. They peaked in a home game that they lost. Josey Jewell is expected to be in the lineup which could be the difference in this one. I still wouldn’t trust Iowa to cover 7 points.

Missouri at UConn                                                 6:30 pm              CBSSN

Missouri beat the hell out of Iowa last week and now they’re a 13.5 point favorite this week. What a pile of garbage UConn is to be a 13.5 point home dog to Missourah.

UAB at Southern Miss                                           7:00 pm             CUSA.TV

Southern Miss is on the cusp of bowl eligibility for the third straight year. I don’t what the hell Ellis Johnson did to make this program into an 0-12 sinkhole but the damage seems to be in the past now and Southern Miss is back to their comfy mid-major not-exactly power status. Maybe they’ll make it all the way back to the giant killer years of the 80s.

Mississippi State at Texas A&M                           7:15 pm                ESPN

I’m not the only one with no idea what to expect from this game - the line has gone from -1.5 aTm to -2 Miss State and I’m not sure why that is. How does anybody trick themselves into putting money down on this.

Duke at (13) Virginia Tech                                     7:20 pm                 ACCN

This might be the best of the evening games. There are other contenders but what the fuck with the bottleneck at 3:30pm when this might be the best game to kick from 7pm-8pm?

Nebraska at Purdue                                               7:30 pm                  BTN

Purdue and Nebraska have the same record and Purdue is favored. What makes this even more embarrassing for Nebraska is that the record they share is 3-4. 

New Mexico at Wyoming                                        7:30 pm              ESPNU

Money has been flooding in for UNM for some reason. I’m not sure if that’s an over-reaction to how bad Josh Allen has been this year or an appropriate response. I’m leaning towards appropriate.

Tennessee at Kentucky                                          7:30 pm              SECN

The good Josh Allen goes head-to-head with the bad Josh Allen for 7:30pm supremacy. The late games are a star-studded cavalcade of disappointing former powers.

Arkansas State at New Mexico State          8:00 pm  ALT/ESPN/AggieVision

Somebody explain this to me because it seems anomalous to me but I’m an idiot: effectively ALL of the money is coming in for Arkansas State but the line has moved 2 points towards NMSU. Why and how does that happen?

Georgia Tech at (7) Clemson                                8:00 pm  ABC/ESPN2 (RM)

Clemson might struggle more with the option than a 14 point line would suggest. I think the Wreck can keep it relatively close if they can get outside the edge. Clemson defensive backs are severely limited in their play recognition from what I’ve seen and that kind of thing tends to let drives keep going. Of course, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that the Clemson front 4 knocks the OL around and makes it immaterial if the back 7 can read the pitch or not.

Texas Tech at (10) Oklahoma                                8:00 pm  ABC/ESPN2 (RM)

Oklahoma has no business getting 20 points over anybody right now. I keep hearing Coach Ryan Gosling is on the hot seat but TTU has no reason to expect more than 7 wins per year. If the Red Raiders win against Oklahoma does he get an extension instead?

UTSA at UTEP                                                           8:00 pm               KMYS

UTEP is a full on disaster this year. O/U seems low to me but UTSA -14 seems pretty safe.

(15) Washington State at Arizona                          9:30 pm             Pac-12N

Here they are, your first place Arizona Wildcats! This is Pac-12 After Dark to the extreme but there’s another game with huge in-conference implications starting 75 minutes later! I feel like Wazzu being favored is a mistake based on name recognition more than recent results.

Boise State at Utah State                                        10:00 pm           CBSSN

Boise is a tough read. No idea what to expect from one week to the next. I think Utah State can wreck Boise’s passing game but the Potato Horses or whatever should be able to run on the Utah State... Also the Utes?

UNLV at Fresno State                                               10:00 pm        ATTSNRM

Fresno is 5-2 and in the driver’s seat in the MWC. I did not see that coming with their early schedule but things are going swell for the Bulldogs these days. Either Vegas Insider is broken or Fresno opened as 11.5 point underdogs but are now 21.5 favorites. A 32 point swing sounds fake.

(21) USC at Arizona State                                         10:45 pm            ESPN

USC is looking up at Arizona State in the standings. The Trojans got bombed by Notre Dame last week and ASU isn’t great but they are 3-1 in conference. Nobody knows what version of Sam Darnold you’ll get in a given week.

San Diego State at Hawaii                                        11:15 pm           ESPN2

I guess ESPN dictated the early start for this one (Hawaii home games customarily kick off at 11:59pm Eastern) but here’s a great chance to feel completely disoriented by bright sunlight in a live sporting event that’s starting in the middle of the night. SDSU really fell off the pace from when they were the prospective big bowl team from the sisters of the poor but they should have enough to beat the hell out of Hawaii. Two of the top 5 rushers in the country are facing off in this degenerate’s classic.

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/drake-not-done-j-lo-shes-busy-balling-rod/

Drake not done with J-Lo but she's busy balling with A-Rod

While he is no longer in relationship with Jennifer Lopez, Toronto-born rapper Drake is still talking about her – well, singing about her. On Saturday, March 18th, Drake released his highly anticipated album More Life. Featuring 22 new songs and a bunch of big name collaborators, such as Kanye West, 2 Chainz, and Travis Scott, the artist’s new album is already generating tons of buzz. One of the songs on the album’s track list that is getting plenty of attention, in particular, is the song “Free Smoke.” In the song, Drake sings out lyrics that refer to his former flame, Miss Lopez. In “Free Smoke,” Drake candidly raps, “I drunk text J. Lo/ Old numbers so I bounce back/ Boy Wonder gotta bounce back” – implying that he no longer has a valid phone number for his ex. Although Drake alludes to not staying in touch with Jennifer in his lyrics, sources close to the star claim that they are actually on good terms. An insider recently revealed to E! News, “[Drake and Jennifer] have just cooled things off a bit…they are in each others’ lives, just doing their own thing now.” Meanwhile, while Drake is busy with the release of his new music, Jennifer is busy with her new beau Alex Rodriguez. Just a few days ago, Jennifer was seen spending quality time with Alex in Miami. You can now listen to Drake’s album More Life in full on most music streaming services. Take me out to the ballgame, A-Rod. You got it, J-Lo. Back at spring training with the New York Yankees as a guest instructor, Alex Rodriguez watched part of Saturday's exhibition game against the Baltimore Orioles in a suite with singer-actress Jennifer Lopez. The two are said to be dating. A-Rod has been linked romantically to other Hollywood stars in the past, including Kate Hudson and Cameron Diaz. Rodriguez was released by the Yankees last August with more than a season left on his $275 million, 10-year contract. The 41-year-old former slugger began his first stint as a guest instructor with the team last month and said his playing days are over. Fox recently announced a multiyear deal with Rodriguez that expands his broadcasting role with the network. A-Rod hit 696 home runs during 22 years in the big leagues, leaving him fourth on the career list. He was suspended for the 2014 season for violating Major League Baseball's drug agreement and labor contract. Late on Wednesday, young model Kendall Jenner’s home in Hollywood Hills was burglarized. An unknown thief (or group of thieves) managed to break in and get away with around $200,000 worth of her jewelry. Inevitably, the starlet was not happy with the whole situation and has since opted to fire the security guard who was on duty at the time. New reports about the incident have since been released by media outlet TMZ. It turns out that Kendall was actually hosting a group of friends at her house on Wednesday evening and she just briefly stepped out, while a number of her guests stayed in her home. Law enforcement believes that the robbery took place during the time that Kendall had left her residence, despite the fact that she still had [thought-to-be trustworthy] guests hanging around. With these new details revealed, it does appear that the robbery was an inside job. However, this did not stop Kendall from taking immediate action – starting with her security team. According to TMZ, Kendall fired the security guard who was on duty Wednesday evening. This guard was stationed in front of her property and reportedly let in an uninvited guest to the 21-year-old’s home during the brief period of time in which she had stepped out. Fortunately, Kendall has a complex security camera system set up and police are utilizing the surveillance footage from the night to try and find whoever is responsible for the theft. While it is not clear what exactly was stolen from the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, TMZ reports that the intruder(s) got away with at least a Rolex and a Cartier watch. Katy Perry revealed on Saturday night that she’s done more than just kiss girls. The pop star was honored at the Human Rights Campaign Gala in Los Angeles where she revealed she explored her sexuality as a teenager. “How was I going to reconcile that with a gospel singing girl raised in youth groups that were pro-conversion camps?” Perry, 32, shared while accepting the National Equality Award, according to E! News. “What I did know was I was curious, and even then I knew sexuality wasn’t as black and white as this dress,” she said. “And honestly, I haven’t always gotten it right, but in 2008 when that song came out I knew that I started a conversation and a lot of the world seemed curious enough to sing along, too.” Because of her religious upbringing — both of her parents are pastors — she spent much time praying “the gay away in my Jesus camps.” Her perspective on sexuality shifted after she made the leap from Gospel music to the mainstream. “I found my gift, and my gift introduced me to people outside my bubble and my bubble started to burst,” Perry said. “These people were nothing like I had been taught to fear. They were the most free, strong, kind and inclusive people I have ever met.” Tim Allen says that living in Hollywood right now is akin to Nazi Germany. The comedian made the claim while appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” “You gotta be real careful around here,” Allen noted. “You get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody else believes. This is like ’30s Germany.” Allen, 63, plays an outspoken conservative on the sitcom “Last Man Standing” and is one of the few actors in Hollywood to profess having right-wing leanings. When Kimmel asked him about attending the inauguration ceremony the “Home Improvement” star’s eyes bulged and he stammered: “I was invited, we did a VIP thing for the vets, and went to a veterans ball, so I went to go see Democrats and Republicans.” “Yeah I went to the inauguration,” he added. According to Blac Chyna, her and Rob Kardashian are just going through a rough patch. “I feel like every person who’s in a long-term relationship, or who is committed to their person, goes through ups and downs,” she told Cosmopolitan South Africa. “Everything isn’t always going to be peaches and cream.” Chyna, the cover star of the magazine’s April issue, says the two are “fighting for each other – even though they’re living apart. “I’m in it for the long haul,” the 28-year-old insisted. “I feel like everything isn’t going to be perfect, but I know we love each other, and the people we surround ourselves with are rooting for us.” And despite the pair’s on and off again status, their daughter Dream remains a priority. “We have a whole other human being that looks up to us, so we have to make sure she’s taken care of,” she's said of their baby who was born in November. The sole son of the Kardashian family – who turned 30 on Friday – is “a wonderful dad.” “I think it’s because he had such a great father,” Chyna said. Josh Duggar and his wife Anna are looking to the future. “We are delighted to share with you that we are expecting a new baby boy later this year,” the couple said in a statement on the Duggar family’s website. “Beauty comes from ashes and we cannot wait to see and kiss the face of this sweet new boy!” While the announcement didn’t mention the 29-year-old Josh’s sordid past, the couple acknowledged a “breach of trust.” “For nearly the last two years, we have quietly worked to save our marriage, focus on our children, and rebuild our lives together as a family. Doing so is never easy after a breach of trust,” the statement read. “We’ve learned that a life of faith and rebuilding a life together is simply done one day at a time.” In 2015, Josh admitted to molesting five girls as well as cheating on his wife via the affair enabling website Ashley Madison. In the time since the scandal rocked the “19 Kids and Counting” family, the reality star has attended a faith-based rehab and worked with a counselor to salvage his marriage. The couple is already parents to Mackynzie Renée, 7, Michael James, 5, Marcus Anthony, 3, and Meredith Grace, 1. Earlier this month, the religious brood showed support for Josh on his 29th birthday “We love you, your amazing wife and sweet children. We pray that you diligently follow and serve the Lord with your whole heart all the days of your life and that this year is a wonderful year for you and your family,” the family said on Facebook. While you wouldn’t know it from the tabloid headlines, which are filled with stories about her new relationship, superstar Jennifer Lopez actually has other notable things going on in her life right now. In fact, the starlet just got the word that she will be returning to the small screen as the star of NBC’s hit crime drama Shades of Blue. On Friday, the Entertainment President at NBC, Jennifer Salke, announced that the network has renewed Shades of Blue for a third season. This is a particularly big accomplishment for Jennifer Lopez, and the rest of the show’s cast, as the second season of the series just started airing a mere two weeks. In the official statement announcing the series’ renewal, Jennifer Salke noted, “[We here at NBC are] so hugely appreciative of everything Jennifer [Lopez] and Ray [Liotta] do, and know it is due to their dedication, as well as the hard work of our incredible cast and producers, that Shades of Blue has so clearly and compellingly earned a third-season renewal.” The NBC executive went on to add, “The show continues to mine powerful stories that always leave us hungry for more.” In addition to Shades of Blue, NBC also just recently announced the renewals of several other shows, including: This is Us, Superstore and The Good Place. You can catch Jennifer in Shades of Blue when it airs on Sundays at 10/9c on NBC. On Thursday, it was announced that supermodel Tyra Banks would be returning to her role as host of the reality competition America’s Next Top Model. In 2016, after hosting 22 seasons of the show, Tyra shocked fans when she decided to step down from her hosting gig. For season 23, singer and media star Rita Ora took over the reigns and judged a brand new batch of hopeful models, alongside a panel of fashion experts which included stylist Law Roach, model Ashley Graham and Paper magazine’s Creative Consultant Drew Elliot. While Rita did fairly well in the role, especially considering the enormous shoes she had to fill, she will not be returning as host for season 24. Executive producer of America’s Next Top Model, Ken Mok addressed Tyra’s unexpected decision to return after just a short, 1-season absence. Ken told the press, “Tyra has always been the heart and soul of the franchise and her absence was deeply felt by our fiercely loyal fans who missed their Queen of the Smize. We’d like to thank Rita Ora for being a great partner and total pro. She infused this new iteration of ANTM with passion and creativity, and we wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors.” Although Tyra has officially stolen back the ANTM spotlight from Rita, there is no bad blood between the two beauties. Following the announcement on Thursday, Tyra and Rita exchanged some kind words over Twitter. Tyra posted, “Mizz [Rita Ora], you exemplify Business Boss Brand to the fullest! Thank you for all the amazingness you brought to ANTM,” in which Rita replied, “Thank you, Tyra! Was such an honor and pleasure being on your show. Everyone welcome Tyra back!!” Rita & Tyra, Twitter posts: https://twitter.com/tyrabanks/status/842497262802554881 https://twitter.com/RitaOra/status/842501937664729088 At this point, it has not been revealed who will be joining Tyra on the judging panel for season 24. Stay tuned for more ANTM updates! While she may be doing a lot better and is [somewhat] back in the spotlight these days, former Disney starlet Selena Gomez is definitely not looking to be wrapped up in the craziness of Hollywood for the long haul. In the latest issue of Vogue magazine, Selena talked candidly about what her late-2016 stay in rehab was like, as well as her desperate desire to live a more normal life. The Spring Breakers actress said in her interview with the publication, “You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls [in the rehabilitation program]. Real people who couldn’t give two s*** about who I was, who were fighting for their lives. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it was the best thing I’ve done.” Selena also went on to address her toned down presence on social media, as she explained, “as soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out. It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about. I always end up feeling like s*** when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.” In terms of maintaining her star status, Selena admitted that she is looking forward to the day she is no longer one of the most famous celebs in the world. Selena candidly told the magazine, “I just really can’t wait for people to forget about me.”

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