Commentary
The Republican Presidential Reality Show Dreams Up Trump Holiday Special
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 8, 2011
What happens when an ongoing TV series like the Republican Presidential debate tour runs two days after Christmas?
You hope and pray that some really boring football games piss off viewers who want to survey some key political issues -- and some really weird hair.
On Dec. 27, mini-broadcast network ION Television, will handle the next Republican candidate word-fest. And if you are looking for some entertainment insurance, you have only to look at Donald Trump, who has accepted the job as moderator.
That’s causing plenty of mock glee from the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert -- and no doubt David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien will be doing the same.
This reality show keeps moving because candidates continually need more financing for bigger media buying war chests they'll need down the road. You might wonder when this show might get cancelled, or when more characters might get written out of it. The Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary will take care of that.
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Of course, some of those characters don't want to appear on this special holiday edition -- because, well, it could be one of the lower-rated debates so far. Not necessarily because of getting Trumped.
The ION debate, coming after a recent one on CNN, is bound to get fewer viewers. Almost anything airing between Christmas and New Year's positions gets subjected to one of television’s weakest viewing periods. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman have already pulled out.
All this feels like the early to middle to episodes of a cable reality competition -- the the ones you would have no problem missing. If you are already bored just thinking about the debae, you can always come back to... The Donald.
We are ready for him to say "You're Fired" to someone. We welcome it. And so will some of the candidates, creating some news content for CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" in the customarily weak news week between Christmas and New Year's.
Stewart's response to Trump's participation wasn't that hard to figure out: "Thank You, Jesus!"
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
That isn't "mock glee" from Stewart and Colbert but real glee. Any debate where the moderator will make sure that HE is the star rather than the participants ensures an uninformative mess. BTW, Stewart and Colbert will be on holiday during that period. Seems to me that the republican debates are going on smaller and smaller networks. Now, if only they would do one on Current TV and moderated by Olbermann!