I want to be a panelist

I want to be a panelist on a TV show.

This has always seemed like the greatest job ever.

And by “always” I mean, since I was a kid.

Back in the Stone Age there were live game shows in prime time. Relics like WHAT’S MY LINE?, I’VE GOT A SECRET, and TO TELL THE TRUTH. Take any one of them – let’s say I’VE GOT A SECRET...

For years this show ran on Monday nights at 8:00 from New York

My comments on your comments

My Super Bowl Commercials post has generated a lot of comments. Worth checking them out. Mind if the ol’ blogmeister responds?

Reader Carol thought the kid kissing the girl at the prom was inappropriate and disturbing. When I was ten there was a girl in my class I had a huge crush on. One day, for unfathomable reasons, I decided to approach her during lunch and give her a big kiss. She

Super Bowl commercials were not funny

How many times did you laugh at a Super Bowl commercial yesterday? Three times? Five maybe?

Now let’s do the math: Each 30 second spot cost $4,000,000. The production value on all of these commercials was lavish. Safe to say at least $1,000,000? Probably closer to $2,000,000. So think of all the commercials over a four-hour period and hundreds of millions had to be spent on them.

For those who don't know who Paul Harvey is

Here's a repost from 2009 when Harvey passed away.  His Super Bowl commercial was so good that I'm becoming a farmer.

On Friday night I signed off my radio show on KABC at 7:00 and was followed by Paul Harvey News and Comment. It wasn’t actually Paul Harvey, it was someone filling in for him doing a woeful impression. But I drove away feeling very proud that I was on the same radio

The "Lost" CHEERS Super Bowl scene

For several years I've been talking about the "Lost" CHEERS scene. David and I wrote it for the 1983 Super Bowl Pre-game show to promote our fledgling series. They ran it just before game time and it was seen by 80,000,000 people. Nothing we've ever written before or since has been seen by that many eyeballs at one time. But the scene was never repeated. It never appeared on any DVD's. It

The best way to watch MASH

When we did MASH back in the Dark Ages (the 1970’s), it was a pre-digital world. The show was shot in 35 mm film. All of the editing was done by physically splicing film. Today everything is edited on computers. Point and click.  You watch the process on monitors. But back in the ‘70s (when dinosaurs still roamed the earth) the only way we could see a rough cut of an episode was to go a

Friday Questions

My posts on writing this week elicited quite a few Friday Questions. Thought I’d answer them while the subject matter is still fairly fresh.

Ron asks:

If you're writing a spec script should you target network or cable and also a specific network, i.e., TBS or FX, etc

Write the best pilot you can and then decide whom it’s best for, not the other way around. Don’t try to outguess the