What do I think of HOT IN CLEVELAND and other questions?

I’m falling behind on questions so am tossing in a few extra days this summer to catch up.

Max Clarke gets us started:

Ken, what was the first time you got paid for writing something?

In 1969 I was hired by KMPC radio to write sportscasts. They weren’t very funny, but then again they were paying minimum wage. I once got in trouble during a college football scoreboard report for writing “Texas A&M puffed Rice” and “Oklahoma beat the Jesus out of Oral Roberts”. The sports director was not amused.

I did get a chance to write comedy material for Gary Owens who was on the station at the time. He offered to pay me but I refused. Having him as a mentor and letting me go on the air to perform the material myself from time to time was payment enough.

In the early 70s I sold some jokes to Joan Rivers for $5.00. Don’t know if she ever used them. For all I know she’s still using them. By the way, there’s a documentary about her called PIECE OF WORK that’s out in some markets that is terrific.

Anonymous (please leave your name) wants to know:

Why don't more TV writers write comic novels? The only one that pops into my head is SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK by Gail Parent, many years ago. I'm sure there are others but why so rare?

Simple. They’re almost impossible to sell. For whatever reason publishers consider comic novels death. You can get away with it in chick lit sometimes but by and large editors would rather get Anthrax in the mail than comic manuscripts.

I suppose if you’re Dave Barry you could sell one so I would change my name to Dave Barry.

When I read John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece, THE CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES (a book that was rejected by every editor in New York, drove the author to suicide, and posthumously won the Pulitzer ), I was inspired to try writing a comic novel myself.

I got about two hundred pages in when I made the mistake of going back and fixing things. It became the chair with one leg always shorter. I got the job at CHEERS and happily put the project down.

A few years ago I stumbled upon the unfinished manuscript and started reading it. God, it was awful. I had absolutely no idea where the story was going or even where I thought it was going at the time. Usually something will jog your memory – a plot turn, a scene, an obvious set up. Nope. Nothing. It’s as if someone else wrote it. I wish someone else had.

No, I’m not going to share chapters.

From Dudleys Mom:

I don't think you've talked about "Hot in Cleveland". What do you think about that show, Ken?

It’s very well done. I adore Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick. And that old lady who plays the caretaker? Wow. She’s a real find!

And finally, this Anonymous question:

What are the non-writing producers who aren't the line producer doing on the show?

They’re giving notes, drawing a fat salary, and taking a piece of the back end profits leaving the writing producers to do all the real work and put in all the long hours. They go to Laker games while the staff stays up till 4 fixing the script. It’s hard to believe that for fifty years talented writers could actually make hit shows without them.

Tomorrow: some questions delving into our partnership. What do you want to know?

Paula Abdul may be returning to AMERICAN IDOL

That's right, the Sarah Palin of reality television might be returning. That's the latest internet rumor. And you KNOW, if you hear about it on the internet it has to be true. What do you think about that? To help you decide, here's one of Paula's finest moments.

One of the great scams of all-time

Continuing from yesterday, while furiously writing spec scripts at night with David, I got a day job at the KiiS Broadcasting Workshop – training young people to enter the exciting and stable world of radio.

Today it would probably be called the KiiS Podcast Workshop.

They did have a great gimmick however. The owner went to KiiS radio, a floundering AM station, and offered a partnership. The station would get a cut of the action. The school could use their name, would base their operation in the same location as the station, and this was the genius stroke – the school would operate the radio station from 2-4 every morning (when no one was listening… although no one listened at any hour). The students would actually get to go on the air in Los Angeles. That’s like letting DeVry students run the control tower computers at LAX for two hours a day.

The only trouble was, none of the vaunted faculty members wanted to work from 2-4 in the morning; certainly not for the scraps we were getting paid. So save for the on-duty engineer asleep in the control room, these students were pretty much on the air unsupervised.

We were located in the Playboy Club building on the Sunset Strip. We shared the top floor with a Playboy photo studio. One day I was giving a tour to new prospective coed students. We stepped out of the elevator and there in the lobby were four or five giant 7-foot dildos; props from a recent shoot. They all gasped. But every one of them signed up.

So for eight hours a day I would instruct kids on how to cue up records; a skill today that is as utterly useless as how to clean your clothes on rocks.

All of the teachers were dating the students (except the teacher who was 90). For some reason it got brought to the owner’s attention that I was sleeping with one of the pupils. I was summoned to his office where he was shocked and outraged. I was jeopardizing the integrity of the institution. I was breaking a sacred ethical law. I said, “Are you kidding?! This isn’t Harvard Law. Do you think she’s going to get a job at WGN Chicago because I gave her an “A” in Record Segueing?” To me (and the rest of the esteemed underpaid faculty) this was the only perk of this stupid meaningless job.

So I gave him three choices. He could fire me, raise my salary from $650 a month to what garbage collectors made, or keep me on the same pay scale and just look the other way. He thought for a moment and said, “Just don’t fuck her on the equipment”.

A major component of any trade school is job placement. We had an employment counselor. He actually did a pretty good job of finding entry-level on-air jobs for these students. They were in markets like Elephants Breath, Georgia and Bumfuck, Iowa but still.

And then one day he hit the jackpot.

He received a call from a man saying he represented the Ford Foundation. The following year would be the bi-centennial and Ford wanted to hire a young woman who would go around the country and guest on radio shows talking up the rich history and heritage of America. (CBS television that year aired hourly “Bi-centennial Minutes”, capsulized snippets of U.S. History.) The job would pay $50,000 and all expenses would be covered. Talk about a sweet gig!

The rep came into town and conducted interviews for a week in his hotel room at the nearby Continental Hyatt. Then he disappeared. Turns out he slept with at least five of the applicants. Probably a few others were too embarrassed to admit it. The whole thing was a scam. (I’m sure some of you are horrified; others are cursing that they'll be too old to pull the same thing during the tri-centennial.)

Now that did jeopardize the sacred integrity of the institution. Lawsuits were flying. The station was not pleased. In a stroke of good timing David and I sold a script and I was able to extricate myself from this pillar of academia.

Here’s the sad thing: those girls who slept with the Ford guy, they’re probably the only students the KiiS Broadcasting Workshop ever had who actually learned something useful about the business.

Photos from Gary Thereaux

Jobs before my writing jobs

Here’s another installment in how David Isaacs and I got started in the business. Comedy writing career launches are like snowflakes. No two are ever the same and most eventually turn grey.

It’s the fall of 1974. I’m a disc jockey at KSEA San Diego, an FM top 40 powerhouse that is getting killed in the ratings by the airport traffic station. Our studios are in the bowels of a suburban shopping mall adjacent to the loading docks. I’ll save the KSEA stories for my other running feature -- my ersatz radio career. But on the weekends I would drive up to LA and David and I would work on our spec MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. At the end of the year the ratings came out and there were more people listening to air raid sirens. So a week before Christmas they threw out the format and all of us.

This was a turning point for me. I decided to move back to LA, get a job doing anything and seriously try to become a comedy writer.

With no foreseeable income I figured I’d need either a roommate or a blanket and cozy doorway. Larry B., my best friend from college and I decided to rent an apartment together. We checked the Westside and found two-bedroom furnished places to be waaaay more expensive than we were willing to spend. So we expanded our search. The farther you got from the ocean and the closer to power lines the less the rents were. Still disheartening. David and his roommate at the time, had a place in the valley right next to an on-ramp of the Ventura Freeway. Drivers could literally peer into his bedroom and read things on his desk. I couldn’t afford that place.

But then one day we see this apartment and it’s amazing. Nicely furnished (the paintings of matadors were surprisingly tasteful), spacious, and unbelievably cheap. The two of us went down to the landlord, signed the lease, and couldn’t believe our good fortune.

Only after we moved in did we discover why the place was such a steal. We were in the middle of West Hollywood, which was (and is) practically all gay. That said, it was a great neighborhood! Fun neighbors, a million cool restaurants, and I could play my Pat Suzuki “Broadway 59” album without having to listen on headphones.

But now I needed a job. Unlike today, there actually WERE jobs. Not good ones but still. I didn’t care as long as I could make the rent and have nights and weekends free. David was in the film can schlepping department at ABC. I spent about a month knocking on doors, filling out applications, taking interviews (“My qualifications for selling ties? Um, I’m wearing one?”). I figured worse comes to worst I would draw caricatures of tourists for money on the Redondo Pier. One always needs a safe fallback career.

I saw an ad in a radio trade rag for the KiiS Broadcasting Workshop, a broadcasting school. I thought, “Hey, I could teach kids how to announce the weather.” The “campus” was located in the Playboy Club building (classy!) practically around the corner from me. So I went in and applied for a teaching position. They were very impressed with my resume. Not only had I worked in radio, I had worked in it within the last 35 years! One of their instructors had been the announcer on Orson Welles’ “War of the World” broadcast… in 1938. So I joined the esteemed faculty of the KiiS Broadcast Workshop for $650 a month. But I was on a tenured track.

To be continued….

Kiis photo by Gary Thereaux

Open letter to AMERICAN IDOL producers

I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people are offering their suggestions on how to resurrect AMERICAN IDOL. So why listen to me? Simple. I produced AfterMASH.

IDOL is very much at a crossroads. Last year was a disaster and you’ve lost the only real reason to watch the show, Simon Cowell. Trust me, people don’t tune in to see the 30th heavily tatted boring belter from Arkansas with a baby out of wedlock and a dad in prison attempt to sing the theme from ALADIN.

First off, I applaud you. You’ve already taken two very bold but necessary steps – firing Kara Dioguardi (every guy’s ultimate nightmare blind date) and firing Ellen DeGeneres (Oh, right, she “resigned” because IDOL was occupying “too much of her time” – three whole hours a week). I’m not worried about either of them. Ellen can go back to hosting her daytime show (which she does with considerable charm and ease) and Kara can return to writing inspired song lyrics like this:

Ooh, ooh baby
Touch me and I come alive
I can feel you on my lips
I can feel you deep inside
Ooh, ooh baby
In your arm's I finally breathe
Wrap me up in all your love
That's the oxygen I need, yeah

So what you’re left with is Randy Jackson, and that’s like going off to do the MASH sequel with Father Mulcahy.

You can change the set, the format, lower the age requirement to 10, revise the voting procedure, have the kids do Kia commercials instead of Ford, order Ryan to come out of the closet, whatever you want – it’s not going to make a difference.

Who you hire as judges – THOSE are the most important decisions you will ever have to make. Everything else you can fix. But if you hire the wrong people, you’re dead. The audience will tune in initially out of curiosity. But it’s not like before where they’d stick around for half a season or more until you finally drive 'em away with Sinatra Week. If the new arrangement isn’t clicking, they’re gone. Jewel as guest mentor isn’t going to keep them.

You need real personalities. You need distinctive characters. Not just names. Not just celebrities. Number of number ones don't mean anything. Neither is having your own line of perfume. Be a star on MTV or QVC, not Fox.

The names I hear you’re interested in are Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. Now I’m willing to give them both a chance but honestly, I’m skeptical.

J-Lo? What exactly does she bring? Other than the fact that she’s a Scientologist so she’s a certified loon. Is she funny? Opinionated? Outrageous? What? From what I understand she’s the richest person of Latin American descent in Hollywood. That makes her qualified to judge THE APPRENTICE not AMERICAN IDOL. Yes, she’s versatile. She’s an actress and a singer. She’s slept with Puff Daddy and Ben Affleck. But the only time I’ve ever heard her speak is on red carpet arrival shows and when Sam Rubin and Kathy Ireland come off with more personality you reeeeeally gotta wonder.

And Steven Tyler from Aerosmith? Isn’t this just Ozzie Osbourne with slightly better diction?

Obviously I’m not on the inside. I don’t know who you’ve contacted and who has passed other than Howard Stern (I’d enjoy that but I worry he’d send ever tweener screaming back to the Disney Channel) and Elton John (who I think would be Captain FANTASTIC). I’m sure a lot of qualified candidates realize it’s a suicide mission. Good luck being prepared to Simon. Personally, I would consider Neil Patrick Harris and Harry Connick, Jr. Both were sensational as guest judges. But for all I know you did consider them and neither was interested. Oscar Levant would be another great choice but unfortunately he has a conflict. He’s dead.

I may be wrong and I hope I am because I loved AMERICAN IDOL when it was good. But I get the feeling with Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler that you’re settling. And you can’t afford to. Not now. Not anymore. You can no longer survive missteps like Ellen and Kara. As Simon would say, “you have to nail it.” Otherwise, this year America is going to vote off YOU.

The final total is....

Let's go to the tote board now where the cardboard cut out of Ed McMahon is standing by. The final total of new Twitter followers is...140,947!!!

Okay. 112.

But I appreciate each and every one. And you can still sign up. This was my first telethon and I learned a lot. The plate spinner killed me. And Lulu didn't help. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Tomorrow morning: My open letter to AMERICAN IDOL.

The invasion of the TV critics

For the most part I’ve gotten along with TV critics. Okay, Tom Shales once blamed me personally for the downfall of television but he may have been right. Plus, in my capacity as blog wise-ass, I’ve done my own share of TV critiquing. So I have empathy for them. When some stink burger crosses my screen I can turn it off. They have to watch it…along with four additional episodes that are even worse. Hell, just the TEN COMMANDMENTS mini-series would kill me.

Currently the nation’s TV critics have gathered in Beverly Hills (adjacent) for the bi-annual spin fest called the TCA Convention. Here networks, show runners, and stars ply them with shrimp and Bloody Marys hoping to get good reviews and favorable press. On the surface it sounds like a good deal. Free trip to LA, comped room at Merv Griffin's Beverly-Hilton (right next door to an abandoned department store). But then you realize what’s expected of them. Sitting in a conference room eight hours a day for two weeks hearing one dog and pony show after another. Imagine being trapped in a room while the producer of WIPE OUT talked for an hour about how groundbreaking and important to society his show was. If networks gave out an ice pick as swag you’d jam it in your skull.

On the other hand, this TCA dance is no fun for producers either. Three times I have had the pleasure of sitting on stage touting my shows. I looked out at a room of 100 bored restless people who dared me to say anything they hadn’t heard fifteen times already… that day.

For one of our sessions we followed a producer who insulted all of the critics, made fun of one member’s accent, and listed every euphemism for vagina he could think of. He had some that weren't even on CBS' list. By the time we got up to speak there was almost a mutiny.

Another time we confronted them after our studio’s crack PR department gave them swag so cheap and insulting that we became the laughing stock of the convention. We got questions like, “Will your show be in color?”

Only once did we have a good session, and that’s thanks to actor, Kevin Kilner. It was the first year of ALMOST PERFECT. Along with fellow co-creators David Isaacs and Robin Schiff, the show’s stars, Nancy Travis and Kevin Kilner joined us on the panel. For the first half hour it was the usual -- they asked rote questions and typed our rote answers even before we gave them. Finally, one reporter asked Kevin Kilner what his background was. He said that before he became an actor he was an accountant for a chicken farm. And then he said, “Do any of you guys know how they slaughter chickens?” I thought, “Oh Christ, we’re so dead.” But the critics all woke up. Suddenly a topic they hadn’t heard. So Kevin described in graphic neck-snapping detail how chickens are killed and for the next fifteen minutes we held them in rapt attention. And ALMOST PERFECT got the best reviews in our career.

So the lesson here is if you’re a producer scheduled to meet the press later this week, talk about anything other than your show. I think the topic of what goes into hotdogs is still open.

And if you’re one of the critics, the conference room now has Wifi. Go to pogo.com. There are hundreds of free online games.

And we’ll see you again in January and do it all over again. With fifty great NEW shows, much better than the 50 great new shows that are premiering now.

Saturday night was their TCA Awards. I don't know what the statue is -- maybe a golden replica of a free buffet ticket -- but congratulations to these winners: GLEE, MODERN FAMILY, BREAKING BAD, Julianna Margulies, Jane Lynch, LOST, THE PACIFIC, James Garner, YO GABBA GABBA, and LIFE. And special congratulations to Gene Reynolds and Burt Metcalfe, winners of the Heritage Award for MASH. I would have been there myself but Tom Shales won't allow me in the room.