David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Obligatory TV Press Tour Item
Yes, it’s that time of year again. PBS is presenting today, and it turns out that “Masterpiece Theatre” has gone without a corporate underwriter for so long that the reporters pretty much don’t expect it to get one. Consider this exchange from today’s “MT” session:
QUESTION: … is there any sort of corporate underwriter in the wings …?
REBECCA EATON (series executive producer): No.
QUESTION: OK.
Later, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger was asked what’s up with that, anyway?
PAULA KERGER: “Masterpiece Theatre” will stay on public broadcasting and we are continuing to look for corporate underwriters.
No follow-up. You’d think one of the shiniest, most colorful feathers in PBS’s cap would be able to track down someone in that big soulless corporate universe to gain themselves a little cultural cachet by tossing them some pocket change (I hear Halliburton is pretty flush these days). Or, you’d wonder what it says about the state of culture in America that advertising dollars pour into the coffers of “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” but a nominally highbrow, usually middlebrow show like “Masterpiece Theatre” is reduced to Dickens’ Oliver Twist, pleading on street corners for a ha’pence.
Your Mayor would’ve posed such a query, but I think I’ve been banned from asking questions since asking Courtney Cox if she was glad that San Francisco TV critics have declared her worthy of self-gratification fantasies.
And herewith, I have stumbled from “Masterpiece Theatre” into discussions of masturbation in a mere one paragraph. Such is one's state of mind during TV Press Tour.