NBC re-aired the first Saturday Night Live last night in memory of the show's first host, George Carlin. Here's the first minute of his opening monologue:
Carlin made one of his trademark play-on-words jokes regarding the hashmarks on a football field, and then he said he thinks Americans like football because it's a game of land acquisition.
That monologue is a reminder that Carlin was, as King Kaufman wrote, one of the best sports humorists around. Carlin was remembered last week for his brilliance in skewering politics and religion and language, but sports were also a major source of material for one of America's great comedians.
Michael Strahan is such a charismatic guy that despite announcing his retirement from the New York Giants and walking away from a 2008 salary of $4 million, he'll undoubtedly find a job on TV that pays him almost as much as he made in the NFL.
"I would never do 'Dancing with the Stars,' " Strahan says, trying to stifle a laugh. "I just picture Emmitt Smith as a football player, and he was a tough player. Then I look and he has some freakin' tassles around his biceps. It's not the same, it's just not the freakin' same."
My first inclination is to agree with Strahan there: It does nothing for the tough image of an NFL player to see him dancing around on TV.
And yet, Dancing With the Stars is such a popular show that does so much to help players reach a broader audience that really, can you blame a guy for doing it? I'm sure there will be an NFL player on Dancing With the Stars every year, even if Strahan refuses to appear.
Watch this video (from TheFightins.com) and see if you can find anything offensive about it:
That was a panel of Philadelphia sports reporters discussing the Eagles' minicamp. At the end of the clip, the longtime Philadelphia newspaper columnist Bill Conlin said in response to an e-mail from a viewer, "Amazing that guy would leave the blueberry harvest to send that off." The other panelists then laughed before one said, "Don't mock the blueberry harvest, mister."
I didn't get what was so funny about Conlin's comment that all the panelists laughed, but I also didn't see anything offensive about it. Apparently some people did find it offensive, though, because after the jump we have a video from the following day of the station's apology.
After announcing his retirement on Monday, former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan appeared on Live With Regis and Kelly:
After Regis noted that Strahan had 141.5 sacks in his career and the NFL record of 22.5 in a season, co-host Kelly Ripa posed an important question to Strahan:
"Can I ask a stupid question? What is a half a sack?"
Strahan pointed to Regis and said, "If you were a quarterback, and Kelly and I both hit you at the same time, we split the sack." And just like that, millions of American housewives learned what half a sack is.
The current issue of Entertainment Weekly has a roundup of the ratings for every single show on network television in the 2007-08 TV season. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about TV ratings that NBC's Sunday night NFL games did very well, losing in the ratings only to American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, House and CSI.
But Entertainment Weekly goes beyond just the ratings and reveals something fascinating about why the NFL is such a dominant force in American television. The complete list also includes the portion of viewers of each show who watched the show on their DVRs, and it turns out that just 1% of Sunday Night Football viewers watched on DVR, the lowest percentage of any show on TV. (The rates for other top shows were 9% for CSI, 6-7% for different versions of Dancing, 12-13% for different versions of Idol, 13% for Desperate Housewives and 15% for House.)
What that means, from the network's point of view, is that advertisers are more likely to get their commercials seen on NFL games than they are on other shows, because DVR users usually skip past commercials. And that's yet another reason that the NFL is the single most valuable content provider in American television.
Fox, which benefited from airing the Super Bowl this season, is up 5% vs. last season -- it's the only network showing gains. CBS, which had aired the Super Bowl a year ago, is down the most (19%), while ABC and CW are off 14% and NBC 10%.
Those multibillion-dollar NFL rights deals don't just guarantee huge ratings on Super Bowl Sunday; they also allow the networks to use the Super Bowl to promote their programs. Only the Olympics can rival the NFL in guaranteeing ratings gold, and the structure of the Olympics -- nonstop for two weeks and then gone for two years -- doesn't lend itself to using the Games as a promotional vehicle the way the NFL does.
And that leads to why I don't think the news that NFL owners have opted out of the labor deal with the players' union is anything to worry about. There's so much money to be made in television that while there might be a fight over how that money is divided, there's no way either the owners or the players are going to shut down the league and keep the money from flowing.
One of the contestants on this season's installment of The Bachelorette is Ryan Hoag, a football player who is best known for being Mr. Irrelevant -- the last player chosen -- in the 2003 NFL draft. Here's Hoag introducing himself, via The Sports Point:
"Christianity is first and foremost in my life," Hoag said. "I don't drink. I don't use cuss words. I don't have sex. I'm not going to do that until I'm married. So I have wondered about DeAnna in terms of how she'll deal with the fact that I'm a virgin. I don't know how she'll deal with the fact that I hold faith as the number one thing in my life."
Hoag has never played in an NFL regular-season game, but he was drafted by the Raiders and has had stints with the Giants, Vikings and Redskins.
(Via Shutdown Corner) "A couple of my close friends, we have this little slogan: Looking for someone low-maintenance, that looks high-maintenance, but they're really not," Owens said. "I like the model type. Just the hot girls. ... I want to roll over, look at her when I get up, like, 'How did you get here?'"
The Super Bowl isn't only the biggest day of the year in football, it's also the biggest day of the year in advertising. That has been true for a couple of decades, but at the Super Bowl next year, NBC is going to do something unprecedented: Charge $3 million for 30-second commercials.
The Wall Street Journal reports that by charging $3 million as a starting point for negotiations for the sale of 30-second commercial slots during the game, NBC is raising the price by 10%. Fox got $3 million from a couple advertisers for this year's Super Bowl, but the average price was about $2.7 million for 30-second ads.
NBC says this year's huge ratings mean that even though the economy is slowing down, companies will be willing to pay $100,000 a second for Super Bowl ad time. The NFL may be a recession-proof business.
That was Miami Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor's performance during the Latin round on Dancing With the Stars last night, dancing to the Monday Night Football theme song. I can understand, I guess, the choice of song, even if I don't really think "Latin" when I hear the first four notes of the MNF theme. But did Taylor really need to wear the eye black? That just looked stupid.
Taylor is currently in first place on the show, ahead of Olympic figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.
