Trump’s WH – a gift or a curse for TV comics?
O’Brien to host special on opioid crisis
LOS ANGELES, Sept 13, (RTRS): If you thought the election of Donald Trump has been a gift for comedians, think again.
Just as news media outlets struggle to keep pace with the controversies and personalities at Trump’s White House, comedy writers, producers, and talk show hosts have scrambled to process material that a year ago appeared to be a comedy gold mine, but which some no longer see as a laughing matter.
“People say, you comedians must be so happy about Trump”, said Miles Kahn, writer and producer on Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal” television show on TBS, a unit of Time Warner Inc.
“I don’t think any of us are. We’re scared. We get very anxious, we’re kept on edge and when you’re anxious it’s really hard to concentrate and write something funny”, Kahn said.
“Full Frontal” is competing on Sunday for a variety talk series Emmy — the highest awards in television — in a tight race that includes late-night shows featuring Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Bill Maher, who all have relentlessly attacked Trump and his policies.
Asked about the plethora of Trump material, Bee told reporters last week, “As citizens, we would actually ask for less ... We have what we have, so we make what we can out of it”.
Colbert’s skewering of Trump sent ratings soaring for his “The Late Show” and helped win him the job of hosting Sunday’s primetime Emmy Awards show.
After its most-watched season in 23 years, sketch show “Saturday Night Live”, got 22 Emmy nominations. Melissa McCarthy’s impersonations of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer brought her a guest actress Emmy last Sunday, while Alec Baldwin’s take on Trump and Kate McKinnon’s spoofs of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway are in the race this weekend.
In a nation divided by the 2016 presidential election, comedy fills a vital role, even if laughter is sometimes being replaced by outrage, said Dannagal Young, associate professor of communications at the University of Delaware
“Comedy has a history of making light of tragedy. A lot of people are looking to these shows to make sense of the political world, to find some kinship with other people watching and in recognizing the insanity for what it is”, Young said.
TV comics like Bee, Colbert, Oliver and Seth Myers, host of “Late Night with Seth Meyers”, have been so hard-hitting that their material sometimes “comes close to being didactic, and not cheerful”, Young said.
In August, Meyers called Trump a “lying racist”. In May, Colbert said Trump has “more people marching against (him) than cancer”.
Writers on topical shows are constantly being outpaced by news from the White House and Trump’s freewheeling Twitter habit.
“Pretty much on a weekly basis we are throwing out something that we wanted to talk about. After we have rehearsed the show and are in rewrite, we are constantly checking the news to make sure we are not missing anything”, said Kahn.
Meanwhile, shows like White House comedy series “Veep”, which is bidding for its a third Emmy, and nefarious Washington drama “House of Cards”, a contender for best drama series, are in danger of being sidelined.
Young questioned whether the once farfetched premise of such TV shows is still compelling.
“I have been a huge fan of ‘House of Cards,’ but I’ve not even started watching the new season because I don’t have room for the fictional version. I’m already overflowing with the real version”, she said.
LOS ANGELES: Soledad O’Brien will host an hourlong Hearst Television special on Wednesday focusing on the opioid crisis.
Sen Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), Sen Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Rep Greg Walden (R-Oregon), and Chuck Rosenberg, director of the Drug Enforcement Agency, will be featured in the program, along with a number of physicians.
O’Brien said that the special will address the epidemic, but also try to highlight solutions.
“We take a look at a number of people who don’t have access to what we know works”, O’Brien said, noting that “doctors and scientists know what will work — medication combined with behavioral therapy”.
The special, titled “Matter of Fact: State of Addiction”, is part of an overall effort by Hearst Television to address the opioid crisis. It will originate from the Newseum in Washington, where O’Brien hosts the syndicated weekly series “Matter of Fact With Soledad O’Brien”. It will feature live segments from Hearst station news anchors talking about the crisis in their cities, as well as reports from around the country. The program will also stream live on Hearst station websites.
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LOS ANGELES: Former CBS Entertainment head Glenn Geller has set up another drama project at CBS, Variety has learned.
The potential drama series is currently titled “Innocent” and is based on a soon-to-be-published book by James Patterson. It follows three siblings — an NYPD Detective, an ER resident, and an Assistant District Attorney — try to navigate a new family dynamic when their estranged father is released from prison after serving 18 years for a murder he didn’t commit.
Siobhan Byrne O’Connor, an executive producer and writer on the CBS series “Blue Bloods”, will write and executive produce “Innocent”. Geller will executive produce along with Patterson, Bill Robinson, and Leopoldo Gout. CBS Television Studios will produce. Robinson and Gout are the co-presidents of James Patterson Entertainment, with both serving as executive producers on the CBS’ summer drama “Zoo”, which is also based on a Patterson book. They will also executive produce the upcoming Patterson CBS drama “Instinct”.
This is the second drama project Geller has set up at CBS in recent weeks. Previously, he and “Madam Secretary” creator Barbara Hall sold a CIA drama called “Family Business”, which would follow a multi-generational CIA spy family, told through the eyes of its youngest generation.