Modified On August 28, 2006
Is there a more cowardly bunch of people than local television executives? Is there a group of suits so totally political, so ridiculously (and so insincerely) hyper-sensitive to their consituency, or in this case, their viewership?
A commuter plane crashes in Kentucky Sunday morning. That evening, the Emmy telecast opens with a brilliantly produced package in which host Conan O’Brien is depicted flying to the Hollywood, on his way to the theater for broadcast. What follows is a chain of fantasies in which O’Brien finds himself trapped in various television shows. The first one of which is Lost (the entire story arc of which is predicated upon a plane crash). Of course, the depiction of a plane crash so soon after 49 people died on the runway in a commuter plane crash Sunday morning was too much for some folks.
WLEX’s president and general manager, Tim Gilbert, was home watching the telecast with his family and would have pulled the plug on the Emmy broadcast if only NBC network execs had had the sense to warn him ahead of time. “It was a live telecast– we were completely helpless,” Gilbert told the local newspaper. “By the time we began to react, it was over. At the station, we were as horrified as they were at home.” Gilbert said he’ll complain to NBC, but he said an apology won’t make up for insensitivity. “They could have killed the opening and it wouldn’t have hurt the show at all,” Gilbert said.
We suppose that, since the sketch also depicted O’Brien being mistaken for a child molester (as part of a parody of NBC’s Dateline spinoff To Catch a Predator), the network displayed insensitivity toward JonBenet Ramsey’s family! Maybe depicting Bob Newhart as captive in a sealed chamber was insensitive to the family and friends of the Austrian girl who recently escaped from eight years of captivity in an underground bunker.
Let’s face it, people: If we’re to blow out humor every time it accidentally overlaps tragedy, we’ll eventually outlaw humor. Or is that the eventual goal?
In addition to crocodile tears from news GM’s, we’re also reading similar honking and sputtering from television critics and Hollywood press blowhards like Nikki Finke.