The Critics Strike Out
KITMAN, MARVIN
OnTelevision THE CRITICS STRIKE OUT BY MARVIN KITMAN I did not vote in the first TV Critics Circle Awards (CBS, April 11) because they didn't nominate my favorite show, Animals, Animals. Instead,...
...Death Defiers was outrageous, insane, dumb, pure television...
...I will have more to say about this cultural phenomenon next month...
...Or am I being redundant...
...Still, their eagerness to establish a cozy relationship with Susskind makes one question their judgment...
...Later that night the sports segment of the local news likewise offered Evel's fall...
...Death Defiers was unbelievably bizarre...
...she kept asking worriedly...
...Wait a minute," you say...
...They, in turn, hired a production staff and paid them hundreds of thousands for their work...
...Still, it wasn't all a failure...
...T and Tina and Ball Four in the running...
...Moreover, Paramount made him run seven film clips of future studio movies in exchange for the free talent it had supplied...
...The hoopla was picked up by 22 cameras...
...Finally Cavett said that he was being "humiliated," right on nationwide TV...
...But that's what you get for being a multi-talented person...
...Someday leaping across a saltwater pool filled with man-eating sharks may be a standard sports event...
...Then the elements betrayed the producer: It started to rain...
...The story behind the wonderful event began on January 8, 1977, when 19 TV critics were invited to New York by Susskind to establish the circle that bears their good name...
...The hero and model today is probably Irv Kup-cinet of Chicago, who pens a dreary column for the Sun-Times and conducts an equally dreary talk show...
...I objected to the whole spectacular on grounds that it was ridiculous...
...As I watched that rare example of PBS's live coverage capability, the words of Fred San-ford ran through my mind?Elizabeth, this is the big one...
...the categories could include best schizophrenic, best obsessing by a nervous person, best passive-aggressive personality, and best paranoiac...
...You can object and object, but the people can't seem to get enough of those gold-plated statuettes...
...A fellow named Joe Gerlach risked his life by jumping off an eight story platform into a "minis-cule sponge"—about 34 feet long...
...I guess they simply wanted to become, as Marshall McLuhan would put it, "involved in the process...
...In any case, it did achieve something...
...There is, I suppose, more prestige and money in being on television than in writing about it...
...I took exception to some of the nominees...
...I demand a recount...
...Instead, I mailed my ballot to the Broadcasting Hall of Fame for enshrimement alongside Tex Antoine's smock...
...I'll have to mention the idea the next time I chat with David Susskind, executive producer of TV Critics Circle...
...There has never been a more complete state-, ment of where the medium's glorification of violence is taking us...
...Evel crashed, broke his hand and almost poked out the eye of a cameraman when he slammed into the cameras during rehearsal...
...Those critics seemed as silly as therapists voting for the top patient of the year...
...This had to be the least widely anticipated show of its kind since the one and only Annual Fashion Awards (1975), yet it managed to rank 16 out of 67 programs in the weekly A.C...
...No doubt about it: Both these sitcoms deserved to be in the bottom 10 of the 1976-77 season...
...T and Tina (ABC), and Ball Four (CBS...
...So you can imagine how chagrined I was when Ball Four wasn't chosen...
...Naturally, the show starred Evel, the great motorcyclist (of Grand Canyon fame) leaping across what the network said was the world's "largest saltwater pool filled with 13 man-eating sharks...
...He had it in reserve for an emergency...
...and by 9:37 my verdict was in: TV Critics Circle may have been the worst award show of the year...
...I don't mean to impugn the critics' integrity...
...a he Big Party" tried to accomplish something, too...
...The program began at 9 p.m...
...Naturally, he overbooked...
...Kisselburg's "Russian Death Chair" had to be the greatest new variety act not on The Gong Show...
...You mean the rumor that television critics, those defenders of culture and exquisite taste, were handing out awards to sitcoms and the like was true...
...Nielsen ratings...
...And who could forget the man who sat on four sticks of dynamite...
...Give credit where credit is due...
...With the great majority vying for the top, the best, number one, almost nobody is shooting for the bottom and making it...
...The gist of the ad was that this whole business undermined the adversary relationship between the press and producers like David Susskind...
...The Gong Show was actually the finest game show of the year...
...Anyway, with The Gong Show, Death Defiers and the "Big Party" mischosen, that left Mr...
...It's almost as if CBS was trying to assure us that the medium hadn't let success go to its head, that it hadn't lost its old touch...
...Art follows life...
...surely it was no less an achievement than public television's The Queen's Dinner, the Robert McNeil report on Queen Elizabeth's visit to the White House during the Bicentennial celebrations...
...Yet apparently they were grateful: Susskind himself won some kind of award, and it seemed that virtually every category had a Hemion-Smith show nominated for best something or other...
...Everybody made money on the deal except the critics, without whom none of this would have been possible...
...This season's nominees for "Program Non-Achievement"—n circumlocution for worst show—were The Gong Show (ABC), Evel Knievel's Death Defiers (CBS), "The Big Party" (an episode of The Big Event, NBC), Mr...
...Who knows...
...I think his name was actually Orval Kissel-burg, although under the circumstances, with Orval flying 30 feet out of his chair, no one cared what his name was...
...After getting the money from the network, Susskind hired Dwight Hemion and Gary Smith for roughly $75,000-$ 100,000, as producers of the august occasion...
...It was pretty ironic, then, that during the two hour broadcast a single critic got on the air: Terrence O'Flaherty of the San Francisco Chronicle...
...He began booking talent to cover the time on the air, in case his guests decided to go somewhere else...
...The organization's first official act was to announce an award show for the home screen—a little fast off the mark maybe, but nothing dishonest...
...I don't see how the judges could call Evel Knievel's Death Defiers a non-achievement...
...The award went to Evel Knievel's Death Defiers, a miscarriage of justice if ever I saw one...
...The way McNeil and his crew handled the meeting of two great leaders, I suspected the boys from Monty Python had taken over public TV...
...This enormous and talented group of writers came up with lines for Cavett like, "Hi, Lauren" . . . "Let's go to Sardi's" . . . "Over to Madison Square Garden...
...You can fail in two fields at once...
...No joke...
...Yes, I'm afraid it was all too true...
...After all, three of them withdrew after learning who was buttering the bread...
...The others are tied for worst...
...I don't understand those guys: If you're going to sell out, you should at least get something for doing it...
...He ad-libbed it," the fellow replied bitterly...
...Not winning the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and the TV Critics Circle award in the same year can upset a man...
...The premise was that they would film this big party going on live in New York at places such as Sardi's and Madison Square Garden...
...There's no denying, though, that in televisionland you live for recognition...
...The fantasy says that if he could just get on the screen he regularly denounces in his columns, life would be joyous...
...Although the event was supposed to be live, CBS continually played the tape of the accident during the broadcast, sometimes in slo-mo...
...It went on the night of January 31, while everybody was talking about Roots...
...Jill St...
...Unfortunately, the producer—like all party hostesses —had this nagging fear that nobody would come to his bash...
...It had some of the best rain seen on television, and at least it tried something different—a live party...
...It soon turned out, however, that the expenses of this constitutional convention were underwritten by David Susskind's Talent Associates, which reportedly had a commitment—and, it is said, $600,-000—from CBS to televise the spectacle even before the organization was formed...
...The Non-Achievement Award can confer this on you...
...Every television critic has a fantasy of someday being on TV, or in it...
...They did it on TV—and people watched...
...I felt Ball Four had an especially solid chance of winning, and I urged cocreators Jim Bouton, a former sportscaster on a New York TV station, and Vic Ziegel, the New York Post sportswriter, to have their acceptance speeches ready...
...He bombed...
...Next, Lauren Bacall wouldn't do any interviews with host Dick Cavett after the producer had hired many wordsmiths to write witty, spontaneous dialogue...
...This was followed by the sponge-plunge...
...With all the moral qualms I had, I was not the most objective viewer that night...
...It is definitely a leading contender for next year's Non-Achievement Award...
...I asked one of the high-priced writers...
...It was the biggest live event in network history...
...There really was a non-achievement award, one of the few original categories...
...Besides, it would be like trying to impugn the integrity of the Archbishop of Canterbury...
...John, the cohostess, was very supportive when the dynamite went off: "Are you all right, Sidney...
...Did he write that line himself...
...Come to think of it, though, that might not be so bad...
...I was a co-creator as well, but I thought it might have been a conflict of interest to be on hand to accept an award when I had taken out an ad in Variety attacking the ceremonies...
...Winning this prize proves that you don't follow the crowd...
Vol. 60 • May 1977 • No. 10
