New Year, New Me?

Well not really (again, Hertz should be paying me for these constant plugs!) but I am excited for the year upcoming and all the posts to this blog that will accompany it. To start things off I want to thank our hosts for New Years (you know who you are) as both Mr. Blogger and his wife (Mrs. Blogger) had a great time with friends and hope to do it again soon.

Now speaking of New Year’s I want to take a moment to take issue with the so-called “New Year’s Eve” programming that the networks (both broadcast and cable) trotted out this year to entertain those of us sitting at home. Every year, it seems, these bastions of mindless entertainment out do each other in the vapid, idiotic, and down right OUCH they manage to program into a few hours every December 31.

Here is just a sampling of what I saw: (in alphabetical order)

ABC

Dick Clark is alive, we get it. He looks pretty good for a man his age especially considering his recent health scare. However, to hear him talk for even a few moments is intensely painful and reminds us that even before the stroke people accused him of being a robot with human skin. Well to their credit he looks even more so now, only this time around his speech matches his amour plating.

I realize that taking Mr. Clark off the air entirely would leave the job up to Ryan Seacrest (Out) but it might be worth the sacrifice. At least this way I could skip the American Broadcasting Company’s programming all together. Seacrest had some in depth observations when talking to New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. When the mayor said he wouldn’t run for President (I still don’t believe him), Seacrest stood there with the “err…what do I say to this guy now?” look on his face. He did however seem more at ease with Carrie Underwood and the Jonas brothers (who?????)

CNN

Pretty-boy Anderson Cooper hosted from New York and other then the timeouts for national news (the same national news that had been airing since 12pm in the afternoon) was just as painful. Perhaps its my high aspirations for national news networks that they might find better stories in the “crowds” of Times Square then the broadcast networks do but alas, even the mighty CNN went with the “we’ve found a lady and her kids here who are immigrants and she just became a US citizen….” Boy am I excited! WAAA-WOOOO and junk. STOP NOW….

ESPN

To it’s credit at least the “4-letter” didn’t have a correspondent in New York broadcasting live from the ball drop telling us about all the sports celbs in attendance. They also didn’t go live to Alex Rodriguez as A-Rod conveniently dropped by the NBC Carson Daily show (read the whole story here ) to let everybody in America know how much he “loves” New York (and managed to really make me ill with his “makeout session” with his wife at the stroke of Midnight). No instead ESPN took us live to the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. You know the one, behind “The Strip” on the other side of the expressway, that bastion of Cool and Hip (and cheap….this is one of the places that you get those $30 room specials on-line). There at a specially designed site, we could watch a world record attempt at motorcycle distance jumping. All of that might have been well and good if the show when started at 1130pm EST got right down to the jump and then we could have tuned into another station to see the ball drop in NY. No. That was not the plan. Instead we had to be introduced to 4 “co hosts, “ all of whom were washed up former athletes who nobody in the audience (including their own families) cared anything about. Then we were treated to an hour, that’s right the damn jump didn’t even occur at midnight (in any time zone!), of packages on the preparations for the jump, how the physics of the jump would work, and oh yes, how the “jump measured up to other events in the world of sport that featured supreme acts of athleticism!”

I beg public television to get it’s HD hat in the ring. Please get a camera on the clock and the ball, leave it there and then just after all the confetti is done falling, go to the celebration in the next time zone (Chicago or something). It’s either that or next year I’m going to stick my head in the sand and wait for the tap on the shoulder that it’s now 2009.

Blogger man… OUT!