Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
Remembering Gilbert Gottfried....
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, April 12th, 2022.
REMEMBERING GILBERT GOTTFRIED
Gilbert Gottfried has died at age 67 and if you just knew him for his wacky voice and appearances in a multitude of animated movies, then you missed out on a lot. He was a brutally funny stand-up and one of the least intimidated stand-ups I've ever seen. He could be surprisingly dirty and had this twinkle in his eye when he knew he was causing trouble.
I was only lucky enough to work with him once when I was doing stand-up, but it was a memorable week. He was headlining a new club in downtown Chicago, if I remember correctly it was somewhere around the Merchandise Mart. The audience was a bit upscale, mostly tourists and business people. And they loved him. He was getting huge laughs from the moment he hit the stage. On the first night, this goes on for maybe a half hour until he starts telling this story about how intimidated he is around famous people. And he talked about seeing Jackie Onassis Kennedy at a party and how he ended up talking to her. He explained that he was nervous and didn't know what to say, so he used the same icebreaker he always used in similar situations. "So tell me Jackie, do remember where you were when JFK was assassinated?"
Not only did the crowd not laugh, the mood of the room turned on a dime. It was the weirdest thing, you could feel the tone of the room change after that joke and they really disliked everything he did after that.
Now, most comics would drop the joke or perhaps try and figure out a punchline that didn't evoke hatred from the crowd. Not Gilbert. He proceeded to move the joke earlier in his act every night, until by the end of the week he was telling it maybe five minutes into his set. He would eventually get the audience back a bit, although it would take maybe 20 minutes of scattered chuckles before that happened. And not only was he not annoyed, Gilbert thought the crowd's response was hilarious.
Gilbert Gottfried was one of a kind.
FIFA LAUNCHES AN AD-SUPPORTED STREAMING SERVICE
FIFA is the organization that oversees the World Cup and given the number of rights deals already in place, you might think that an ad-supported app and streaming service wouldn't have much content available.
That appears not to be the case with FIFA+, which launches worldwide today on the web and the app stores (with apps for the various platforms coming soon).
According to the organization, by the end of 2022, FIFA+ will be streaming the equivalent of 40,000 live games per year from 100 Member Associations across all six confederations, including 11,000 women's matches. Granted, most of those games will be from smaller territories such as Angola, Denmark, Mexico and Poland. But FIFA+ also includes 3,000 clips taken from the FIFA archive at launch and every World Cup match ever filmed also available on the platform by the time the competition starts in November.
There are also a number of original programs, with an entire library of documentaries, behind-the-scenes, longform and shortform films planned. On launch, a number of originals will be available, including a feature doc about former Brazil and Barcelona legend Ronaldinho, a docuseries about the world’s most decorated player Dani Alves, plus series about former World Cup Golden Boot winners, the biggest game-changer of the women’s game, footballing academies, World Cup captains and footballer hairdresser Sheldon Edwards.
This seems like a smart move and as someone who has a soccer loving teenager, I can tell you from first-hand experience that there is an audience for this type of service.
TELL ME STREAMING SERVICES HAVE A PROBLEM WITH CHURN WITHOUT TELLING ME THEY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH CHURN
Hub Research says more than one-third of consumers have signed up for a TV service to watch one show or movie. Among young consumers and those with kids, the proportion rises to half.
NEXT UP, A DARK REBOOT OF CAP'N CRUNCH
Hollywood went through a reboot phase where the default approach to bringing back a familiar franchise was to do a gender swap. The current phase involves taking well-known characters and rebooting the show with a darker, more adult premise. But for every Riverdale, there are a dozen efforts that didn't work. But it's still the easiest approach for producers and this week brings word of another dark reboot, this one a live-action version of Casper The Friendly Ghost:
Peacock is developing Casper, a live-action, horror/adventure series, which reimagines the origin of Casper in a coming-of-age story that explores what it means to be alive. Set in high school, Casper is written/executive produced by The Ghost Bride head writer Kai Yu Wu. In it, when a new family arrives in the small town of Eternal Falls, Casper finds himself entangled in a mystery uncovering dark secrets that have been buried for over 100 years.
One fun tidbit in the story is the number of mergers and acquisitions that had to take place for Universal to own the Casper character:
In 2001, Harvey Entertainment was acquired by Classic Media. In 2012, Classic Media was bought by DreamWorks Animation, which in turn was acquired by Universal Pictures parent NBCUniversal in 2016.
TWEET OF THE DAY
ODDS AND SODS
* NBC is bringing back the classic game show Password this summer, hosted by actress Keke Palmer.
* Apple TV+ has ordered a new drama starring The Great British Baking Show co-host Noel Fielding.
* Season three of Breeders will premiere May 9th on FX.
WHAT'S NEW FOR TUESDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
CMT Campfire Sessions: Little Big Town (CMT)
Hard Cell Series Premiere (Netflix)
Invisible Valley (Fuse)
The Creature Cases (Netflix)
Unsellable Houses Season Premiere (HGTV)
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Series Premiere (BritBox)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU WEDNESDAY!
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.