Late Night on the Great White Way

Fresh from doing a nice job hosting the Emmy Awards this past August 29, Jimmy Fallon announces today that all next week (leading up to Jimmy's -- and my -- birthday on Sept 19), his show will be hosting a cadre of the biggest stars on Broadway.

Check out today's NBC press release, below.

NBC's 'LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON' BRINGS BROADWAY FROM NYC TO YOUR TV WITH ITS FIRST EVER BROADWAY WEEK

NEW YORK September 10, 2010 - "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" is excited to announce its first ever LNJF Broadway Week. The week will showcase all the biggest hits the Great White Way has to offer, from pounding punk rock to 60s swing. Starting September 13th, Jimmy will welcome a different Broadway musical to the Late Night studios each night .

The curtain will go up on Monday when David Bryan from Bon Jovi introduces a performance by the cast of "Memphis." The musical explores the underground dance clubs of the 1950s with explosive dancing, irresistible songs and a thrilling tale of fame and forbidden love. The show was the winner of four 2010 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

Tuesday brings "Promises, Promises" to the Studio 6B stage. This revival of the 1968 musical is based on the Oscar-winning Billy Wilder film "The Apartment" and it stars Emmy Award winner Sean Hayes.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day arrives to introduce the Tony Award winning musical "American Idiot" when they makes an appearance on Wednesday, telling the story of three lifelong friends, forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia. Their quest for true meaning in a post 9-11 world leads them on an exhilarating journey.

Thursday will feature "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." Cheered by the New York Times and Rolling Stone as "the season's best musical", the show began its life at the Public Theatre (which birthed "Hair" and "A Chirus Line") and begins performances on Broadway next Monday.

Make sure to tune-in to see what other Broadway inspired surprises Jimmy has in store!

In Memoriam

With all the amazing talents we lost in 2009 -- as we've all noted, seemingly more this year than in any typical other --Sunday night's Emmy telecast contained a particularly moving In Memoriam segment, accompanied by Sarah McLachlan singing "I Will Remember You."

Thanks to a viewer who, it seems, uploaded the segment to YouTube from Canadian TV, here, again, In Memoriam 2009:

So about those Emmys...

I'm not going to get into how much everyone's saying that, with some notable exceptions like Ricky Gervais and Don Rickles, the telecast sucked. Or how this 60th anniversary show, which should have been more celebratory about TV, notched the Emmys' lowest ratings in history -- even lower than the previous record-holding year, 1990.

What I want to ask is, did anyone else notice a disturbing misogynist note to the whole affair? First the script called for several males to rip the outfit off of their sole female cohost, Heidi Klum. Later in the evening, another bit called for poor Tom Bergeron, a genuine nice guy, to drop her to the floor. And then there was that moment -- again, pre-planned! -- with Craig Ferguson's hand supposedly on Brooke Shields' ass. (Have I missed any more?)

Did we really need to stoop to that? To take Brooke Shields, a smart, accomplished, beautiful woman on a hit show, and turn her into a 6-foot cheesecake model to be groped for a joke? Do we men, now that our economy is a mess and our banks are failing, suddenly need to reassert our "power" and dominance over our women to make ourselves feel better? And do it on national TV, as an example for the next generation?

All I can say is, thank god nobody trivialized or objectified my girl Tina Fey -- at least that I could see on camera. Nobody puts multiple-Emmy winning genius Tina in a corner!

Sam Page Goes "Mad"

If you were watching last night's Emmy Awards, you must have realized that AMC smartly held off on airing a new episode of Mad Men, pushing the show's schedule back by one week so as to avoid head-to-head competition with the awards show -- on which Mad Men ended up winning the top prize for best drama.

And if you watched Mad Men the week before, you must also have noticed the adorable actor playing Joan's fiance, Dr. Greg Harris, and wondered why he looks familiar. Back when Sam Page was a regular during the first season of the now-cancelled James Woods procedural Shark on CBS, I had the chance to interview him over lunch for CBS' Watch magazine. Click here for a link to the story, for some more info on this cute new guy to whom my fave secretary Joan is betrothed.

Mad Men

Sundays at 10 PM Eastern

AMC

In Honor of The Emmys

In honor of the 60th Annual Emmy Awards Telecast, which airs Sunday at 8 PM on ABC, I thought I'd drag out a fun clip from the archive -- The Archive of American Television, to be exact -- of a true TV pioneer.

After having grown up in Illinois and then LA, Betty White got her start in local TV, and was quite literally in front of the camera when they first turned it on in the 1940s. She won her first Emmy for her 1952 sitcom Life With Elizabeth, and in a vintage '70s clip in the video below, wins her second 22 years later for her role as the Happy Homemaker/Neighborhood Nymphomaniac Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. (She would go on to win two more -- one for playing Rose Nylund The Golden Girls, and another for playing herself playing Rose Nylund on an episode of The John Larroquette Show.) My favorite part? How Betty refers to Zsa Zsa Gabor chummily as "Zsazh." Is Hollywood a small town or what?



Emmy Archive: Betty White



The 60th Annual Emmy Awards
Sunday, September 21
8 PM Eastern
ABC

Radio Recap, September 10, 2008

It's time for a RADIO RECAP
"Must Hear TV" on "The Frank DeCaro Show" on Sirius OutQ 109
Wednesdays, 1-2 PM

In news from today's "Must-Hear TV" report...

• In week 2 of season 2, Gossip Girl continues to show signs of improving ratings, and of ruling Monday night -- as least as far as young women are concerned. The show, along with sixth-season lead-out One Tree Hill, powered the CW network this past Monday to its second consecutive win among Women 18-34, Females 12-34 and Female Teens. That represents impressive gains for both shows in these key, advertiser-craved demos. Of course, the shows' real network competition won't show up for battle for a few more weeks now, but with these results, CW is hoping that by then, Gossip will have become a habit.

• NBC-owned USA Network has announced an unusual approach to the upcoming eighth season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Lately, the show has exhibited sort of a split personality, with differences in tone depending upon which of its two leading-man-and-lady combos shows up that week. Now, the split is becoming even more formal: the show will now be written by two separate writing teams. One team will tackle writing for the Vincent D'Onofrio/Kathryn Erbe partnership, while the other takes on new cast member, Academy Award and Emmy nominee Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Nicholson. We'll see the results when Criminal Intent returns to USA, on Thursday, November 6 at 10 PM Eastern.

• This year, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is giving the general public a voice in its Emmy Awards Telecast -- sort of. No, we won't be voting on Best Actress in a Comedy (I couldn't decide between Tina Fey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus anyway!) -- but we can weigh in on TV's top 10 comedic and dramatic moments of all time.
  
  Along with Ken Ehrlich Productions and a select group of journalists, The Academy originally selected a list of 40 possible winners; with more than 100,000 votes already cast by the public, the list has been narrowed down to 20, with 10 candidates in each category. According to the Academy's press release, "the list includes many of TV's highest-rated moments, as well of some of its most emotional, funny and dramatic scenes," as varied as The Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the entire Cosby family singing a Ray Charles song, hearing the "Good night"s on The Waltons, and the disappearance of the island on Lost.
  
  Voting continues through September 15 at emmys.abc.com, with winners to be announced in a special segment on this year's 60th Primetime Emmy Awards telecast, airing live on ABC on Sunday, September 21 at 8 PM Eastern.

Well that's it for me -- my theme music is playing me out. Tune in next Wednesday for the next installment of...

"Must Hear TV!"