Rosie O’Donnell’s timing may be perfect for her updated take on the TV variety show airing this week. We’re starved for something light but smart, something hip but unifying after depending on Tina Fey and “Saturday Night Live” for comic relief.
The question is, will the public embrace a vaudeville-style lineup of professional entertainers the way it flocks to “America’s Got Talent”? The answer comes when “Rosie’s Variety Hour” airs live at 7 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 9.
O’Donnell, actor-producer, star of daytime, prime-time, film, Broadway, weblog and more, is a good fit for the project. This week’s special is a trial balloon for what could become a weekly show. That is, a pilot not called a pilot, waiting for ratings.
For her part, Rosie will perform a monologue, sing with Liza Minelli, pal around with Alec Baldwin and Jane Krakowski of “30 Rock,” and feature recording artists Ne-Yo and Alanis Morissette, plus “D-List” comedian Kathy Griffin. For Griffin’s mouth, a five-second delay may be in order.
The format worked for Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights from 1948 to 1971. It worked across decades, across generations and across genres. One minute he gave us opera, then a circus juggler, next a mouse puppet named Topo Gigio, then the Beatles.
Long before YouTube, it was the perfect answer for short attention spans.
(No matter how bad the plate spinner or ball juggler, they were no worse than today’s TV-show contestants bouncing off giant red balls into mud.)
In recent years, the variety format has proved tougher to crack. The industry theory has been that, with the multitude of channels and choices, the viewer was essentially creating his or her own variety show every minute. However, there’s something about the communal experience of watching a live show, not on DVR, DVD or vid on demand, that can’t be replaced. We know that, from election-debate nights. Now may be a time for communal entertainment on Sunday nights.
Rosie’s venture into a live primetime show comes just as the Federal Communications Commission is asking the Supreme Court to hear the Janet Jackson Super Bowl half-time wardrobe malfunction case — the story that will not die. A lower court found the FCC had been “arbitrary and capricious” in its application of indecency rules, and threw out the $550,000 fine against CBS stations that broadcast the live 2004 Jackson incident.
If modern comedy-variety on live network television isn’t doomed, the country is going to have to move past the more prudish restrictions of the FCC. Maybe the incoming Obama administration will have something to say about what does and doesn’t have to be bleeped, starting with the “fleeting expletives” uttered by performers on live TV.
Back to Thanksgiving Eve. Don’t expect cable-style language and politics from Rosie. She’ll be more like Ed Sullivan than the Smothers Brothers.
If Rosie’s gambit clicks, the network can order six more hours. She could become a live weekly fixture by February.
The pitch, per O’Donnell, is “old- time variety, live from New York with a nod to Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett and memories of Sonny and Cher.”
Plan on it being a really-big-sheew, as Sullivan would say, complete with Rosie’s ties to and continuing celebration of Broadway.
Upbeat, family-friendly humor and musical variety could be just what the country needs, particularly given the current economic woes. A little less abusive “reality” competition, a little more genre-crossing entertainment.
We have just survived 21 months of political suspense, punditry and satire — overall a superlative television experience. And we’ve come through a desolate fall decimated by the Hollywood writers strike, a less than happy prime-time entertainment experience.
What could be better for recovery than old-style TV variety?
Rosie promises that her monologue will be topical, not political. Remember, we’re not a nation of red states and blue states, we’re the United States — of deprived television viewers desperate for entertainment.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
