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ABC Drops the Atom
June 23
The Emmy Award. A culmination of the intercourse between art, represented by the
muse, and science, represented by the atom she holds in her golden hands.
The Daytime Emmy Award. A culmination of a noon-time quickie between art and
science. And as anyone who's ever experienced a noon-time quickie can attest to,
there's little time for passion or romance. There's just time for penetration
and a stop off at McDonalds afterwards.
Which brings me to this year's Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony, broadcast by ABC,
which certainly has a storied history in the annals of daytime programming...
even though it didn't have a decent nominable game show on since "Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire" left its airwaves in 2002 and one to which it did proper
justice since "Family Feud" left its airwaves in 1985.
And that brings us to this year's quandary of a program. Steve Beverly, good
friend of the site, good friend of mine, called this year's kudosfest "A
squealfest for soap opera groupies." Amazing statement, that. And dead on.
My assessment echoed Steve and most of the game show fan nation... The show as
broadcast last Friday was two-fold...
1) "Absolute crap"
2) "A complete waste of time."
I'm going to take it a step further and suggest that last Friday's show was
ABC's golden opportunity to play both pimp and whore.
NBC in daytime... a non-entity. CBS is known for being THE daytime leader,
starting with, of course, the longest-continuously-running game show on American
TV. Then there are the cablers, that put up many offerings in the niche
categories that you don't see on broadcast television save for a few moments
before the break.
ABC right now is known for two things. Soaps and "The View".
"The View" was nominated in the talk categories, as was "Live with Regis &
Kelly" produced by ABC's flagship station and distributed by its
television-distribution arm. Then throw in the Lifetime Achievement Award,
which, even if it wasn't given to Regis Philbin, you have to include it because,
hell, it's a big deal.
BUT, after including the game show awards for the last ten or so years (I
remember graduating high school, rushing home that night after dinner at CiCi's
Pizza, and watching "Win Ben Stein's Money" take the full monty), this year...
NOTHING. That's because unless you were paying attention to the trades, you
didn't know that the game show awards were given out in Manhattan Friday BEFORE
last.
The winners...
- Best Makeup: "The Price Is Right"
- Best Game Show: "Cash Cab"
- Best Game Show Host: Alex Trebek.
We did however get a heaping helping of soap awards and a preview of SoapNet's
newest original series, "MVP". Should be noted that SoapNet is owned by Disney.
Sonia Lai, another good friend of ours, wrote on her blog...
"It could just be ABC's FAULT too. After all, ABC owns SoapNet, so they would
want to devote most of the award air time to soap awards like they did LAST time
they showed the Daytime Emmys. That was a complete disaster too. There was
absolutely nothing memorable about that Emmy broadcast either!"
And if I was a betting man, I'd even go so far as to say that were it not for
Regis' Lifetime Achievement Award, ABC wouldn't even broadcast THAT.
Face it, ABC. You dropped the ball big time.
Game Show Alphabet & 25 Days will return next week. E-mail Chico Alexander at
chico@gameshownewsnet.com.
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