By Lisa de Moraes
Friday, October 24, 2008
CNN's D.L. Hughley-hosted comedic news show will debut this weekend with former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan announcing he's backing Barack Obama for president.
McClellan made the endorsement during a taping of "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," which premieres Saturday at 10 p.m.
McClellan's announcement isn't earth-shattering. Since leaving his gig at the White House, he penned a critical tell-all book and he's not even the first former member of the Bush administration to endorse Obama. Former secretary of state Colin Powell beat McClellan by several days, announcing Sunday that he supports the Democrat. Still, the McClellan announcement falls under the category of "news," so it will get picked up on the news circuit, which, in turn, helps the launch of Hughley's show.
During the taping yesterday, Hughley chided McClellan: "You haven't endorsed anybody. . . . I'm a new show, and your endorsement probably would mean a lot.
"Don't look at the fact that I'm black . . . no pressure. Endorse somebody, damn it!"
McClellan told him that "from the very beginning, I've said I'm going to support the candidate who has the best chance of changing the way Washington works and getting things done. I will be voting for Barack Obama."
Hughley previously hosted the current-events talker "Weekends at the DL," which lasted just 28 episodes on Comedy Central, back in 2005.
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It's official: Sarah Palin is the darling of TV.
The Republican vice presidential candidate's "Saturday Night Live" appearance exceeded all expectations, with 15 million viewers tuned in last weekend, according to final stats finally out. That's the NBC late-night show's biggest audience in 14 years.
This means Palin's appearance was last week's fifth-most-watched program, behind only prime time's "CSI," "NCIS," "Dancing With the Stars" and "Desperate Housewives." It outranked CBS's new "The Mentalist," ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," CBS's "Two and a Half Men" and even the matador-goring edition of "60 Minutes," as well as about 190 other shows that populate the prime-time landscape. Given how many fewer homes watch TV in late night than in prime time, this is quite an accomplishment for "SNL" -- and for Palin.
The crowd of 15 million is also the franchise's third-biggest audience since September '87, when viewership levels became available via people-meter technology.
Among the 18-to-49-year-olds the networks target, Palin's appearance came in No. 3 last week, behind "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives."
The Alaska governor appeared twice on Saturday's "SNL." First, she was seen backstage with exec producer Lorne Michaels, watching Tina Fey play her onstage. (Palin recently told Time magazine that when she does her imitation of Tina Fey, she plays her as a bubblehead, too. Oh snap!) Later, Palin sat behind the "Weekend Update" anchor desk, chair-dancing while Amy Poehler played Rapping Palin. A moose came out to dance, too, and was shot.
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And here's some material for the next "SNL": "The View's" token conservative, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, announced she's going on the campaign trail with Sarah Palin.
"I was called by the McCain campaign and Governor Palin asked me to be with her this Sunday to introduce her at the rallies in Florida," Hasselbeck told the daytime talk show's audience yesterday. "And I am more than honored to be there. So I will be flying there to travel with her and meet some pretty interesting people, I have a feeling. So that's an honor. I'm excited to do it, and I'll have stories, I'm sure, on Monday."
"Take some pictures -- I want to see her wardrobe," co-host Joy Behar cracked, regarding the media's state of general knicker-knottedness about the $150,000 the Republican Party spent on Palin's clothes and makeup since she was named Sen. John McCain's running mate. It got so nuts, some reporters on the campaign trail even called "Saturday Night Live" demanding to know Tina Fey's wardrobe budget for her four appearances to date playing Palin on the show.
"You had asked [Elisabeth] what she was going to wear," Earth-Is-Flat "View" correspondent Sherri Shepherd jumped in, addressing Behar.
"I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll borrow something," Hasselbeck responded.
"I say a Hefty bag with shoulder pads; that's as far as you should go," Behar shot back, totally missing a great opportunity. And, shoulder pads? What is this, the '80s?
"With one giant diamond necklace," moderator Whoopi Goldberg added.
Presumably, Palin is looking to Hasselbeck to . . . oh heck, it's inexplicable. Given that Palin is even hotter in person (we have it on good authority from Alec Baldwin) and that she generates huge crowds everywhere she goes (her debate with Democratic veep candidate Joe Biden, who acknowledged to late-night host Jay Leno that he'd been just a bit player in that Palin-starring event, clocked a record 73 million viewers), it's tough to see what Hasselbeck brings to the party. More "Survivor" fans?
Most navel-gazers were going with "more women" after Hasselbeck made the announcement, with some noting that this week, an ABC News-Washington Post poll showed 56 percent of women who responded saying McCain's choice of Palin makes them less confident of his judgment. Apparently Hasselbeck is going to make them more confident. Or at least so distracted they forget about questioning his judgment.
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Good news for all you Jay Mohr fans out there: CBS is going to give its new Wednesday night sitcom "Gary Unmarried" a short run in its Monday comedy block, starting next week. The network will rerun the "Gary" pilot episode after "Two and a Half Men," TV's most watched comedy series, on an all-rerun night.
"Gary" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine" are not shaking the Wednesday 8 p.m. hour in CBS's latest attempt to launch a comedy block there, but "Gary," which stars Mohr as a newly single dad, showed some signs of ratings life this week when Fox took "Bones" out of the time slot for baseball.
A stint on CBS's Monday comedy lineup is a no-brainer. "Gary" may even do better there than the new "Worst Week," if only because "WW" is a single-camera, laugh-track-less comedy, while "Gary" is a multi-cam, laugh-tracked sitcom, just like the other three shows on CBS's Monday slate.
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