Weekend Funny: Jack McBrayer insists he doesn't resemble Bobby Jindal while resembling Bobby Jindal

If this is an example of the sketches Jimmy Fallon has up his sleeve, this may be a pretty cool late-night show, after all:

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Quizzing the Roots' Questlove: Can the man who reinvented rap music revolutionize the late-night TV band?

The first time I met the newest guy to take on the mantle of late-night bandleader, Roots drummer/producer/leader Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson was holed up in a phone booth in Italy, midway through a tour with noted '70s soul inconoclast Gil Scott Heron, wondering why the readers of Modern Drummer magazine would be interested in a drummer who works so hard to sound like a drum machine.

Thirteen years later, he’s trying to revolutionize late-night music the same way he revolutionized what musicians could achieve in rap music, leading the band powering NBC’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. See a great St. Petersburg Times interview with Questlove here.

We’ll all get to see the fruits of Quest's labor Monday night at 12:35 a.m. on WFLA-Ch. 8, when Fallon's show makes its debut -- with a revamped version of the Roots' Here I Come as its theme song.

But I have a story in Sunday's Floridian about the massive task Thompson is taking on; here's an excerpt from the interview that backs that story.

ME: So tell me about how this gig came about. How’d you get this?
Questlove: Well, technically, a good friend of mine, my former employer, is Neal Brennan. He was co-creator of Chappelle's Show. He was slated to be on board to help create the Jimmy Fallon show but I guess because he had so many options after the Chappelle Show –- movies were calling him … he just did a movie with Jeremy Piven -– he wanted to stay in Hollywood and just do movies. That said, he’s still a creative consultant and sort of … I guess he recommended that we … kinda just halfway joking and halfway just …
E: Yeah, I just got off a conference call with Jimmy and he said that Neal said, oh, you’ll never do it.
Q: Yeah, and, you know, since this is the age of irony, that’s exactly what I did. I decided to do it just to spite Neal Brennan’s intuition. His intuitions have low self-esteem now.
E: Why do you think Neal would say that you wouldn’t do it?
Q: People underestimate us and we’re always doing stuff that we shouldn’t do. You know, we wanted to get into the hip-hop game and do we do it the traditional way or do we stick out like a sore thumb and play instruments? I always choose the hard way, we chose instruments, you know, or six album covers after our biggest success and, you know, do we capitalize on the Grammy and going platinum? No, let’s make an art record. Alienate ‘em, you know. And then they get it about a year and a half later. Almost to the point where an album like Phrenology, which seemed so radical in 2002, is almost like normal stuff … you know, normal by today’s standards.
E: Did you have a sense, when the offer came, how you could do this differently or, you know, what felt like a challenge to you?
Q: Well, I instantly just started having creative ideas. I know that the idea of a late-night band is sort of the story line of a neutered musical experience, if you will. If you hear Branford Marsalis tell it and things like that. But I see the endless possibilities in it, you know, and I think at the very least, we’ll try and be one of the more memorable bands in late-night history. But it’s also two monsters that we’re dealing with. One is the 20-million people that are watching in America that only get to see the eight-second spurts in between commercials and the theme. And then there’s the industry and the 300 people that come in the studio every night after night. It forces … it forces, you know, like, a new challenge, especially for us. This is a new challenge, like we’re rehearsing more than ever and we’re preparing more than ever.

E: What will you play? Everybody else plays cover tunes. Are you gonna do that?
Q: No, new tunes.
E: Oh, wow.
Q: Technically, NBC is not gonna pay for publishing … for outside publishing. You know, it can get expensive, you know, but a show like David Letterman can afford to, you know … let’s say if Barack Obama comes on and Paul decides that he wants to do, you know, Give Peace a Chance or All You Need is Love, then, you know, as Barack Obama walks out, you know...they could charge you $60,000 just for that three-second sound bite. It’s almost … it’s like a larger form of sampling. So this is forcing us to write songs for the show. It’s so funny 'cause I talked to a few of the cats about late-night TV, and their challenge is trying to sneak an original composition past the producers. And now we’re gonna have these opposites. Now, you know, the producers want … (they're asking) 'This is not derivative of any other song, is it, Ahmir?'
 

E: So, now, Jimmy talked about having a meeting where he felt like he had to sell you on doing this. But it sounds like you're excited.
Q: We came here at the right … sort of the crossroads of our career, you know. I mean, instead of doing this since November of 1992, we actually managed to outlast a lot of the bigger rap groups that were bigger than us, you know. We managed to outlast 'em all. And I just feel like … I don’t know. Maybe Mercury is in retrograde or something. I don’t know, but I do know that he presented us with the idea. We coughed for about maybe six or seven … seconds. And then we said, we’ll think about it. We did the official yea in December of 2008 and I came home the next week and we basically started prepping.

Rocky Mountain News closes; is this just the beginning?

News that Denver's Rocky Mountain News closed its doors today after failing to find a buyer has hit the journalism world like a death in the family.

The implications are obvious: As the No. 2 paper in a substantially sized metropolitan area, the Rocky closes as a warning to news consumers. The few cities lucky enough to have two newspapers are on notice that the situation may not last long, including Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis and, of course, the Tampa Bay area.

Industry experts have looked at our market -- which houses the Bradenton Herald, Lakeland Ledger and Sarasota Herald-Tribune in addition to the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times -- and wondered how one metropolitan area could support so many newspapers. The Associated Press notes that Joint Operating Agreements which allowed secondary newspapers to share resources with the market leaders are likely endangered. 

It's also an uncomfortable reminder of how our current media structure stretches like a pyramid in reverse -- with a wide-ranging spread of platforms and products based on the information unearthed by the only business that still sends out dozens of reporters to dig up stories in a community: the local newspaper.

As a photojournalist friend of mine noted this morning, Google added insult to injury by choosing this week to start displaying paid ads on its Google News site -- making money from the acres of free newspaper stories it aggregates for readers from the Web sites of newspapers all over the world. It's a new wrinkle on an old story; newspapers need to be on the Internet, because their readers are there, but no one wants to pay for online newspaper content, and once the information is released there, any entrepreneur can grab it for their own moneymaking schemes.

The Rocky -- Colorado's oldest newspaper, closing a few months shy of its 150th birthday -- fell victim to the same economic forces buffeting all newspapers these days.

Circumstance has produced a perfect storm of calamity, with online sources demolishing the classified ads business just as the recession hit major advertisers such as auto dealers and real estate; changing reader tastes have pushed consumers online where newspapers receive a fraction of the advertising revenue; and expenses such as health care, newsprint and pension benefits skyrocket.

After losing $16 million last year, the Rocky's owner E.W. Scripps Co. tried to sell the company to no avail. At a time when recent months have seen four owners of 33 newspapers declare bankruptcy, the Denver newspaper's end came swiftly, with a handful of staffers hired by the surviving Denver Post and promises to pay those left unemployed until April.

More than 15 years ago, I worked for another Scripps paper that died an untimely death, the Pittsburgh Press, then the city's biggest newspaper. What killed the Press was a high-profile attempt to displace the Teamsters as our delivery drivers and transition to the system of independent contractors every newspaper now uses. The Teamsters called a strike in a union town, and the resulting controversy forced Scripps to sell to the competition, the Post-Gazette.

I was among a lucky 85 or so staffers who transferred. But I'll never forget helping one displaced columnist carry her stuff to her car -- a couple of boxes filled with mementos accumulated over nearly 40 years working there. It felt a little like walking someone out to a firing squad.

And as much as I hope it doesn't get uglier than this for newspapers, I've got feeling we're at the precipice of a seriously difficult time. Check out this video on the newspaper's final days below.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

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Oprah Winfrey to feature subject of Times story 'The Girl in the Window' on Tuesday

The queen of all media, Oprah Winfrey, will devote an entire hourlong episode of her widely watched daytime talk show Tuesday to the story of a feral child first read about in the St. Petersburg Times, The Girl in the Window.

Times feature writer Lane DeGregory racked up massive online viewership levels and drew nationwide attention last year for her story on Danielle, a Plant City, Fla., girl who was discovered by police living in filth at age 7, surrounded by cockroaches, dirty diapers, human waster and worse, with no language skills and little sign she'd been nurtured at all.

She was that rarest of finds: a true feral child whose isolation and deprivations raised questions about whether she could ever have a normal life.

(Photo: courtesy of Harpo Productions Inc./All Rights Reserved/Photographer: George Burns.)

Winfrey's producers saw the Times story and pulled together an hourlong episode on Danielle featuring DeGregory appearing via the Skype online video system, photos by Times photojournalist Melissa Lyttle and appearances from a host of people in the child's life -- including her adoptive parents Diane and Bernie Lierow (shown above with Winfrey) and the police officer, attorneys and doctors who helped her into a new life.

The show was recorded in the fall, but Winfrey's Harpo production company took a while to put the show on the schedule.

As one major American newspaper closes and others teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, it's heartening to see that quality print journalism can still make a difference. See the episode at 4 p.m. Tuesday on WFLA-Ch. 8.

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Paula Abdul is right: American Idol's fourth judge isn't working

This is a sentence I never expected to write as a professional arts critic: I agree with Paula Abdul.

My sudden, scary simpatico with American Idol’s most wigged-out judge came after seeing an interview she supposedly gave to OK! magazine — when it comes to tabloid mainstays like OK!, you always have to say allegedly or supposedly about their quotes — in which she questioned the effectiveness of Idol’s new four-judge format.

“It takes up so much time for each of us to give our opinion that it slows down the pace of the show,” she said in a widely quoted blurb reprinted everywhere from the Huffington Post to the New York Post.

The Los Angeles Times theorized that positive press reviews for DioGuardi may have sparked the comment; seems obvious Abdul's having a tough time disguising her frustration with the show as she finishes the last year of a hefty contract.

I think we're seeing veiled negotiations: Abdul is trying to get a better deal, Idol producers are making it plain they have a replacement waiting in the wings if she doesn't straighten up. But I'm convinced -- and i write this as someone who has had lots of fun lampooning Abdul when she jumps on the crazy train -- if Idol bounces her for the less-compelling dioGuardi, they'll be making their biggest mistake yet.   

The comment was quite an about-face from an exchange we had in Los Angeles weeks ago, when Abdul insisted she had never expressed any reservations about newly hired fourth judge Kara DioGuardi or the show. Nevermind that Abdul once accused the show’s producers of putting a woman in an audition who had stalked her, even after she warned them. (The woman late committed suicide in a car in front of Abdul's home.)

Still, I think Abdul is on to something. Next week, DioGuardi and the three other judges will pick three contestants in a “Wild Card” episode to round out the 12 semi-finalists competing in earnest for the Idol crown, so the real competition is about to kick in.

Before it all takes off, here’s my list of Stuff That’s Not Working So Far on American Idol:

The Fourth Judge — Sorry Kara, but your gal pal on the judges’ bench got it right. You don’t know when to speak and your opinions aren’t distinctive enough to make your perspective matter. You’d think an award-winning songwriter would have more insight, but so far, her joke about Simon Cowell wearing the same shirt every day has been the biggest highlight.

The Freakazoids — This year, it’s more obvious than ever which contestants were brought along for good television (yes, Nick “Norman Gentle” Mitchell and Tatiana Del Toro, I’m talking about you). Unfortunately, such tactics leave viewers feeling manipulated and the show looking silly. If the borderline psychotic Del Toro gets popped back into competition by the judges next week — which I predicted around Times Idol Headquarters weeks ago — we will know how desperate they truly are.

The Performers — Doesn’t make much sense to expand the number of singers at this stage to 36 people if so many of them are so bad. My heart melted for 16-year-old Allison Iraheta, who struggled to hold a brief conversation with host Ryan Seacrest; at least her powerful take on Heart’s Alone Wednesday offered the first glimmer of quality, halfway through an interminable, two-hour program.

The Judges' Bias — Even at this early date, the judges are starting to settle on favorites, regardless of how the singers actually perform each night.

Exhibit A for me last week was tattooed font designer Megan Joy Corkrey, whose tentative, awkward version of Corinne Bailey Rae’s Put Your Records On was treated like a major achievement — mostly because the judges already liked her from past performances.

This sort of thing led Cowell to champion Michael Johns last year, and it only makes the judges look clueless when America sniffs out the real talent by public vote.

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NBC gets my memo about age, adds Justin Timberlake to Jimmy Fallon's Monday debut

Perhaps I should get a consulting fee from NBC.

Last week, I noted that NBC seemed to have an awfully old-skewing roster of guests for the inaugural week of its new 12:35 a.m. talk show, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Names like Robert De Niro, Van Morrison and Donald Trump were star-studded enough, but seemed more like Leno's late-boomer demographic.

Lo and behold, the network sends out a release today noting that youthful pop legend Justin Timberlake has joined the batting order, parachuting into Fallon's debut show with De Niro and Morrison to pull down the average age of the guests south of the half-century mark.

(Remember, this is the star who pulled together a last-minute duet with Al Green to help out the Grammy awards when Chris Brown opened a can on Rihanna, scotching their planned performance.)

Also joining the week's roster, Gossip Girl co-star Chace Crawford and the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Looks like somebody's worried about keeping young eyeballs off their Wii consoles and away from rival Craig Ferguson -- who will spend prime time and late-night Monday hanging with youthful sex kitten Paris Hilton.

The struggle for 20-something hearts, minds and viewing habits has begun in earnest. And, of course I was joking about NBC "borrowing" my idea.

Though, if they rip me off again, I just hope they remember to give me credit.

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Click below to read NBC's release:

 

Will Tampa native JoAnna Garcia's CW series Privileged survive?

When the CW announced its list of series pickups for next season -- Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, America's Next Top Model, Smallville, 90210 and Supernatural -- one title was conspicuously absent.

Tampa native JoAnna Garcia's ambitious dramedy Privileged aired its last show of the season Tuesday night, with producers, cast and crew still unaware whether the show would get another season.

The series, featuring Garcia as a quirky girl who winds up as a live-in tutor for two spoiled sisters in a Palm Beach mansion, has foundered in the ratings, drawing an average 765,000 viewers to date this season and landing below the Top 100 broadcast TV series, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The show's producer, Rina Mimoun, wrote a cliffhanger into last night's episode to prod the CW into picking up the show, though my experience has indicated that rarely forces networks to keep airing a series if they lose confidence.

In the end, Garcia's character is shown getting a call from a longtime flame as she's lying in bed next to a new man -- what will our spunky heroine do?

And will the CW let any of us find out?

It should go without saying that seeing the renewal of every other major remaining drama -- outside of the network's black-centered shows and its disastrous, outsourced Sunday lineup -- is not a great sign. So fans of the show who have itchy writing fingers better put pen to paper soon; there may not be a lot of time left.   

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WFTS-Ch. 28 weather forecaster Linda Gialanella leaves; new weekend newscast begins April 4

Longtime area weather forecaster Linda Gialanella has left Tampa ABC station WFTS-Ch. 28, departing Monday after her contract ended.

Gialanella hadn't been seen on air much since October, when the station moved morning forecaster Wayne Shattuck to weekend evenings -- a post she had filled for years. The change bumped Gialanella to fill-in work, appearances on the station's Web site and its secondary all-weather digital channel.

Staffers learned Tuesday that she had left the station in a memo released after her last day; executives said Gialanella requested the announcement be held until then. The forecaster has worked at many bay area TV stations, coming to the area in 1993 to work for WTSP-Ch. 10; later, she worked occasionally for Bay News 9 before settling in at WFTS in 2003.

Station general manager Rich Pegram also revealed WFTS's new weekend morning newscasts are slated to start April 4. But Pegram wasn't ready to announce who would be anchoring the newscast, saying the deals haven't yet been finalized.

The news comes as WFTS owner E.W. Scripps Co. seeks to reinvent its newsrooms and announced plans to cut salaries, suspend 401(k) contributions and freeze pensions to save $20 million this year.

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Andy Richter rejoins Conan O'Brien on new Tonight Show

Network TV's late-night wars are beginning to pick up, with news that onetime Conan O'Brien sidekick Andy Richter will rejoin his old boss on NBC's new Tonight Show in June.

Welcome as it is to see a funny voice like Richter's return to TV, it's a puzzling move for O'Brien, who really seemed to come into his own when Richter left the show in 2000 after seven years.

In a way, its a back-to-the-future move that may make the new Tonight Show stand out. These days, none of the competing network TV talk shows actually has a sidekick -- either bandleaders serve that function (David Letterman, O'Brien and Jay Leno), or, as with Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, the guy makes up his own cast of characters.

  Over on CBS, Ferguson will meet the late-night challenge by starring in a host of short sketches airing during prime time next week touting his interview with Paris Hilton on Monday and an appearance by Big Bang Theory co-star Jim Parsons. Not-so-coincidentally, Monday is also the first day Ferguson's competition, Jimmy Fallon, starts his new late-night talk show.

Ferguson's boss, David Letterman, is already featuring rockers U2 every night next week in hopes of building up a good lead-in to combat Fallon. Wonder what these guys will do when O'Brien finally unveils his new tonight Show on June 1?

Click below to read NBC's release on it all.

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Tampa's Joel Rush earns second placein ABC's buzz-less True Beauty

The only thing worse than losing an obscure reality TV show may be almost winning it.

That's what happened to Tampa salesman Joel Rush, whom viewers on Monday night saw come close to taking the crown in ABC's buzz-less beauty competition, True Beauty.

The show, ostensibly convened to pick America's most beautiful person -- with the Big Twist being that the model-pretty competitors weren't told they would be judged on their inner beauty as well -- never really caught fire with viewers, landing around 70th place in the ratings.

Unfortunately, Rush's aggressive confidence too often made the 27-year-old look a little insensitive -- telling People magazine's Jess Cagle that, for someone as good-looking as him to spend time befriending ugly people would be like catching fleas from a dog. So the judges instead turned to 23-year-old pageant queen and magician's assistant Julia Anderson as the most beautiful, inside and out.

For me, a red flag popped up when co-producers Ashton Kutcher and Tyra Banks were so scarce; as a result, the show lacked the watch-a-celebrity-humiliate-the-little-people vibe that can make Banks' America's Next Top Model such twisted viewing.

It didn't take long to realize True Beauty was mostly about finding the least offensive person among a group of attractive, mostly self-centered, surprisingly unsophisticated competitors. The real game seemed mostly about making us schlubs in the audience feel better about ourselves -- we might not have a contestant's piercing blue eyes or perfect body, but we don't spend hours thinking about our eyelashes or pecs, either.

Rush competed against nine other beautiful people over six weeks in LA., evaluated by host/judge Vanessa Minnillo (TRL, Entertainment Tonight), 60-something supermodel and judge Cheryl Tiegs and judge/fashion consultant Nole Marin (America's Next Top Model). Only after a contestant was eliminated was the truth of the competition revealed to them.

Anderson eventually walked home with three great prizes: $100,000, a spot in People magazine's "100 Most Beautiful People" issue and the sense that she got something for six weeks of humiliation.

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