He's a ding-dong and she’s a dipsy-doodle. Together,
they're “Live With Dipsy-Doodle and Ding-Dong”!
Heard the news? ABC or Disney or Kelly Ripa or whoever is running the show over at “Live
With Kelly” has taken the very unbold step of hiring Ryan Seacrest as Kelly’s co-host. Who cares? Almost no one.
I can’t even believe
we’re still doing these kinds of TV shows. Few genres on television are as consistently insipid and stupid as these air-headed celebrity “talk” shows.
It’s a form of TV that has been with us for decades, maybe even from the very beginning. Their durability has proven them to be the cockroaches of TV – a species that seemingly
cannot be killed even as the world around them collapses.
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Incredibly, there are still people who will watch this kind of phony, insincere celebrity happy
talk whose sole purpose is to promote upcoming movies, TV shows or other projects.
Fine, knock yourselves out -- go ahead and waste an hour of your day every
morning watching Ryan Seacrest and Kelly Ripa babble on about their lives, followed by a series of bubble-brained encounters with various famous people.
Look! Here comes What’s-his-name or What’s-her-name fresh off an appearance less than an hour before on “Good Morning America” or some other show! Let’s hear
the banter they rehearsed for the entire weekend at home before embarking on this New York TV publicity tour.
They’ll repeat themselves more or less
verbatim on show after show for three or four days and, after that, more likely as not their new movie will bomb. So much for the awesome power of dim-witted celebrity promotion tours.
It just seems to me that the time is past for this kind of TV. Aren’t we more sophisticated now? Don’t we expect more from our TV shows and personalities in
this day and age?
Blame it on the ongoing fragmentation of TV audiences. On the one hand, you have personalities such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who
found audiences who appreciated them for exhibiting at least a certain degree of intelligence.
On the other hand, apparently there are still enough people
out there who don’t necessarily value intelligence or skepticism, but instead are fine going along with TV personalities who do little more than gush over their celebrity guests.
“Live with Kelly and Ryan”? Where’s the diversity in that? I can’t believe there’s been no hue and cry over this.
Maybe Ryan was paired with Kelly because of the pending arrival of another Kelly in the 9-10 a.m. time period next fall -- Megyn Kelly on NBC. NBC News reportedly confirmed
this week that Megyn will set up shop next fall in the time period, although no other details – such as a title or the nature of the show – was confirmed.
Despite the lack of these niggling little things known as “facts,” we now know that this mid-morning hour is shaping up to be a real Kelly-fest, with a Ryan thrown in for good
measure.
Oh, shoot, wouldn’t you know it? I just checked a 2018 calendar and found out that next year’s St. Patrick’s Day falls on a
Saturday. Begorrah! Oh, well, I will mark my calendar for Friday, March 16, 2018, to see what happens.
Let the record show that I fully appreciate that Kelly
Ripa’s and Ryan Seacrest’s success in the TV biz has a lot to do with intelligence that they undoubtedly possess. And yes, there is a “skill” involved in the activity of
play-acting and pretending you’re nice on national TV everyday. Nevertheless, the staying power of this kind of television dumbfounds me anyway.
As for
Seacrest, he really has done the impossible. On New Year’s Eve, he has become the new Dick Clark. And now, on weekday morning, he aims to become the new Regis. There’s only one thing left
for him now: Seacrest for President.