I can’t help it.
I know it’s too glib, too self-indulgent, but I can’t stop myself from repeatedly singing “Ding Dong” after hearing Joy Reid, my choice for the most odious program host on television, is losing her 7 p.m. weeknight program of MSNBC, “The ReidOut.”
I wouldn’t wish personal ill on Reid, as “Ding Dong” implies, but may she live, be well, and relatively silent away from the platform a national television show at 7 p.m. weekdays provides.
Of all of the commentators on all of the biased and unauthoritative networks, and that includes every one of them, Reid was the most frequent purveyor of outlandish opinions, ideas and prognostications.
She could be counted on 100 percent of the time for statements that served her further-left-than-progressive point of view and willingness to use fear and implications of wrongdoing or unwelcome consequences to rouse MSNBC’s left-leaning viewer base.
More than once, I dubbed her despicable for her over-the-top commentary, and it is a blessing to see her ushered from the air.
I don’t care if someone has a different opinion from mine or tends to be on the opposite side of a political question.
The criterion Reid constantly violated was that of putting ideology and its propagation ahead of anything that smacked of sound, reasoned judgment.
I read and listen to lot of opinions from all sides of the political spectrum. I take in articles from The Nation and The New Republic, peruse the Guardian and the New York Post, follow various writers on Substack and The Free Press, both of which provide content on several sides of an issue, look at Politico and The Hill, and read editorials from The Washington Post and The New York Times as well as The Wall Street Journal.
It takes this kind of overall sampling to ascertain even a semblance of what might be true, what might be accurate, what might be fair to consider in this age of partisan, pandering, propagandistic news organizations.
At least from the 17th to early 20th centuries, publications admitted their allegiances.
Today, the people who support a government weeding out “misinformation” are the most egregious peddlers of it.
Joy Reid was the worst of the bunch.
She was far from being alone — I don’t give much credence to conservative Tucker Carlson either — but I considered her the most feckless and least journalistic of all the voices I find summarily dismissible on television news, cable and network.
So ding dong, and good riddance.
Reid’s cancellation — in television not “social justice” terms — is alleged to be part of a shake-up at MSNBC by its new president, Rebecca Kutler, who replaced Rashida Jones last year.
Kutler can see that MSNBC has a stake in the being the opposition voice to President Donald Trump. Its primetime numbers, which plummeted between Trump’s election and inauguration, have increased markedly since he took office.
Maybe Kutler, and I say “maybe” because I don’t know, realized more reasonable voices than Reid’s might be more effective in maintaining those new lofty ratings, judged by some to be a boost of 77 percent.
I am not excited about the trio the industry says is poised to replace Reid at 7 p.m.
They are the current hosts of a Sunday program that has developed a following, “Weekend”: Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez.
Sanders-Townsend came to light as the press secretary for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. She also worked in the Biden administration and as an advisor to Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign.
She is not as shrill as Reid, but I would not judge her to be objective.
Steele is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland who was chair of the Republican National Committee in the late teens but endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020.
Menendez is more to the center that her micmates. She is the daughter of former N.J. Sen. Robert Menendez, who was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison last month for bribery and other charges, which I must add doesn’t discredit Alicia Menendez.
I would want to see the group in action in primetime before judging them.
In other MSNBC news, Alex Wagner will no longer occupy the 9 p.m. weeknight slot she was holding while Rachel Maddow takes a break and appears only once a week.
Industry word is Kutler is high on former Biden press secretary, Jen Psaki, and that Psaki might find herself in one of the glossier primetime slots.
Of witless writing and a good commercial tune
Mostly because of the Eagles’ dominant performance, Super Bowl LIX sticks with me even as another week passes.
I also think about television’s entire role in bringing the game and Super Bowl experience to home audiences around the globe.
With an Oscar broadcast coming up within two weeks, some of what I saw on the Super Bowl broadcast worries me.
Primarily it concerns writing.
During the Super Bowl, the NFL presented two public service messages, one delivered by Brad Pitt, the other by Tom Cruise, who, between the two, is aging better or had better makeup.
Both messages stank and for the same reason.
Many for more than one reason because I can’t remember distinctly what either star was droning on about.
Probably something about the NFL’s commitment to fairness and community involvement, admirable efforts if active language and conversational diction replaced high-sounding but low impact platitudes in the telling.
Listening to whatever Pitt or Cruise said, I wondered through both their orations, “Who writes this crap?”
I think the same thing when I hear presenters at show business award ceremonies, especially the Oscars, describing what the nominees in a particular category do, whether it be animation or sound design.
The copy, or script, is so overwritten and sanctimonious. It’s as if the writers were competing with one another to compose the plummiest, most innocuous yet obnoxious prose.
The trouble is those category introductions are so uniformly bad that in the 21st century manner, all the writers win the honor for who wrote the worst.
I’m interested in movies and how they’re made, and I simultaneously laugh and cringe at the verbal offal presenters are asked to say.
Superserious to the point of being superficial. Aiming for profundity and landing on the unintentionally funny or downright fatuous.
I keep waiting for some star with clout to look at the twaddle on his or her prompter, refuse to say it, and move on to the business at hand, announcing nominees and a recipient.
I am particularly amazed when a pair of presenters, provided with contrapuntal dialogue that doesn’t make it past “drivel” status, agrees to embarrass themselves by continuing with the lame bit.
Melissa McCarthy always seems to be caught in this kind of debacle.
I felt sorry for Pitt and Cruise having to delivering the NFL’s bilge, just as I felt sorry for several presenters at the recent Golden Globes for the gobbledegook they were given to read.
What happened to wit?
What happened to just talking to an audience instead of lecturing it?
What happened to writing that makes sense and generates interest rather than boring/amusing folks with allegedly intellectual rambling?
As I mentioned, the Oscars are usually the biggest offenders.
This year, that might be a bigger problem than usual because we may have a return to presenters and recipients indulging the urge to spout political messages.
I’m quivering already at what “Emilia Pérez’s” Jacques Audiard might say when he collects at least one inevitable statuette two Sundays from now.
I’m steeled myself all weekend for what Jane Fonda might say while accepting the Screen Actors Guild award for Lifetime Achievement. Deadline comes before I know whether the angst was worth it.
Which brings us to commercials.
Most of those designed to wow us during Super Bowl LIX overreached or smacked more of a decent idea unrealized than an example of clever, let alone effective, salesmanship.
The writers seems to suffer from an epidemic of juvenile thinking that registers as funny when conceived but bombs big time in actuality.
That’s why the best commercial during the Super Bowl is the same as the single best commercial playing anywhere at this time.
It’s Volkswagen’s minutelong spot for its ID.Buzz battery-powered mini-van.
Forget the car, which is seen riding around various beachy and lively terrains. It’s the accompanying song that matters, a kicky, exuberant rendition of a 1930s tune called “Are You Having Any Fun?”
I don’t know about Volkswagen, but the commercial has made me some money or more often a free “Guinness-aged Jameson neat in a tumbler, no ice.”
By betting that people won’t believe me when I tell them the artist who’s singing it.
The answer is Elaine Stritch.
I know she’s been dead for more than 10 years, and was an Irish girl from Detroit and not a Latin firecracker, as her accent in the song suggests.
What? No fiery activist screaming, “appropriation?”
She was also one of the great performers of all time. I consider myself lucky to have seen her do “Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunch” (Forrest Theatre, 1971) and “I’m Still Here” (“At Liberty” on Broadway, 2002, Philly 2003) live.
“Are Having Any Fun?” is originally from a 1939 Broadway show, “George White’s Scandals.”
It’s written by Jack Yellin and Sammy Fain, and its original hit record was by the Tommy Dorsey band with Edythe Wilson doing the vocals.
The version Volkswagen uses is from Stritch’s 1956 album, “Stritch,” by now a collector’s item.
You can hear the entire song, which never loses its wit or zest, on YouTube, unfortunately without a visual of Miss Stritch performing.
More upheaval in Philly market radio
Bex, who presided over contemporary sounds from 3 to 7 p.m. on WIOQ (102.1 FM) for more than three years, is among the latest laid off by iHeart Radio.
She received the news while on maternity leave from the show she shares with a longtime micmate, Buster.
Bex is also known as Rebekah Maroun, Buster as Brandon Satterfield.
Buster will continue on the afternoon drive show solo for now.
In other local radio news, David Field, who was president and CEO of Philly-based Audacy for 27 years, resigned from his position.
Days after, Rich Schmaeling, Audacy’s chief financial officer, resigned from the post he had held for a year of his six-year tenure at the broadcast entity once known as Entercom.
Field is replaced temporarily by Audacy board member Kelli Turner.
Field leaves his position after guiding Audacy to a period of solvency following its Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. One of the investors who helping Audacy financially is leftist activist George Soros.
Locally, Audacy owns KYW Newsradio (103.9 FM and 1060 AM), WPHT (The Big Talker, 1210 AM), WIP Sportstalk (94.1 FM), WOGL (98.1 FM), WBEB (101.1 FM) and WTDY (96.5 FM), the station listened to by 80 percent of the Uber drivers who chauffeured me during my recent recuperation.
Audacy, iHeart and Beasley account for most of the ownership or management of local radio stations.
More and more, the concern is for the survival of live and local radio. It exists on some stations, but recent layoffs, such as Bex’s and Andre Gardner’s at WMGK (102.9 FM) make the attrition clear.
What I’m finding is more and more local stations are airing programs that have been taped in other markets and broadcast here as if they were new and fresh or that the people left at local stations, like WIOQ and WMGK, are taping pre-packaged programs that can air on in other markets.
This way, owners, who one could argue are looking out for a dwindling bottom line as radio becomes less and less important as a mass medium, can use fewer hosts and deejays to provide programming for a welter of markets at once.
The problem with recent layoffs is they reduce the individual voices that are heard anywhere.
With those voices go distinct personalities, the kind that lead to followings.
Bex, for instance, established herself in Philadelphia before she went to and came back from Boston from about 2019 to 2021, while Gardner was a well-liked fixture for more than 20 years at a couple of stations before he settled into the ‘MGK role where he continued his popularity.
I doubt unknown, sporadic voices from far-flung random markets can impress, build a listenership, or entertain as they did.
Source: Berkshire mont
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