On The Media

I was expecting a commercial by Rice-a-roni...

Bob, meet me over there behind the carriage return...

Okay. Listen. I think you are very funny...but you have a niche.

"There are some stories that are so large and so terrible that the anchor has to be photographed in front of them."

THAT (from an earlier segment about Haiti) was a classically funny line from you: observant and dryly delivered with just a *touch* of sarcasm.

"Is that a sportcoat or superfund site?"

Even after taking into consideration that this segment is (I hope) "meta-humor," the line is not funny. It's unfunny. It's ant-funny. And don't even think that it is "so unfunny that it is funny." No. No. No.

The entire segment is not funny. And it's not funny in a way that's a bit sad because it provides a perfect foil for showing just how funny you can be.

There is a wonderful out-take of your show were Brooke accidentally says "A hairy prone companion" instead of "A Prairie Home Companion." Your natural humor that comes out as you needle poor Brooke (combined with the misstep itself) is hilarious. (Link: http://img.slate.com/media/20/Sound006.mp3 )

Now, please stop doing stuff like this segment. (In fact, perhaps you should avoid laugh tracks all together).

I think Ms. Katya Rogers gives you a little too much leeway when she edits the show. Brooke seems better at applying a tug on the leash when appropriate. (I'm sorry for that imagery...it was unintentional).

(As an aside, I'm loving your jingle and how you drop it into interviews (cue music): "Present and future business models for monetizing the newspaper industry"--that's funny.)

P. E. A. : Lighten up. Bob has a first order sense of humor. The problem is not from the speakers to your ears, rather from your ears to your brain! You might not appreciate this brand of humor, but many others do.

I'm with Hank. A regular show along the lines of Bob's audition would be very Monty Python, but better than the British version. Oh dear, they'll kill me, now! At the end of a quite rich show, it was the perfect spoof.

Garfield's 1993 spoof was hilarious and visionary. How the worm turns though - today the Daily Show does meet Bob halfway...

Hey, Didn't your show promo say you'd be talking about whether the John Edwards expose deserves a Pulitzer?

As Politics Daily explore here:

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/09/does-the-national-enquirer-deserve-a-pulitzer-for-breaking-the-j/

I couldn't wait to listen to this week's OTM to hear some incisive analysis of the unprecedented, disastrous, self-destructive week that NBC just went through only to get this throw away spoof segment.

I realize these late night programs are all fluff and entertainment but for better or worse, they are a part of the mediaverse and should be dealt with accordingly.

And I do agree with the previous commenters here, Bob is an amazingly talented journalist and humorist. But NO ONE bats a thousand.

Perhaps Brooke's absence is what lead to this tomfoolery to win out over a possible segment looking at these events more critically. And I'm not suggesting that Bob and Co. were slacking off while the parents were away. I wonder if being short-staffed might have been the reason to delay discussing the NBC situation more seriously.

There's lots to discuss...one can log on to Hulu and see the abuse NBC has subjected itself to. It's both laudable and surprising the network isn't censoring some of this stuff (although I did notice that the Leno interview with Jimmy Kimmel was only about a minute but the actual segment that aired was more like six).

But who cares what I think? Many of us (I'm guessing) would love to know what OTM thinks.

Ouch. I find OTM sketches to usually be quite skippable, and this one is no exception. I couldn't finish it.