Monday, February 15, 2010

Knowing When to Say "BuhhBye!"

Betty White is amazing.
She's never stopped working in the more than six decades she's been in Hollywood.
And yet, at 88, she's still remarkably hip, funny and appealing to people of every age.
Most recently, she starred in one of the hottest commercials on the Super Bowl telecast and now a Facebook page has gathered more than 150,000 fans who want her to host "Saturday Night Live."
But White is the exception. The truth is that most public figures simply don't wear as well as this feisty old character actress. Sadly, they don't know when to leave the stage.
Here are a few of them:
To read the rest of my column from today's Philadelphia Daily News click here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, let's see.

Executives run the NBC network.

Executives want to make money for themselves and the network.

Jay Leno was topping the Tonight Show ratings, making money for the network.

He was asked to step aside for Conan. He did.

Conan O'Brien took over the Tonight Show. He didn't make very good ratings.

Jay Leno didn't make very good ratings at ten.

Executives didn't like Conan's ratings on the Tonight Show. THEY decided they wanted to move Jay back to 11:35 for half an hour.

Jay said "ok." Conan went ballistic.

Conan quit. Jay didn't.

Executives offered the Tonight Show back to Jay.

Jay accepted.

So this makes Jay a bad guy? How?

On numerous occasions, Jay asked to be let go. But the executives wouldn't let him go.

Again, how does this make Jay a bad guy?

Dan Cirucci said...

Yes, Jay's just a wonderful person.
He's simply a swell guy.
I'm sure he'd never harm a flea.
Even after all these years in the cutthroat world of network TV, I'm sure he's free of any envy or malice or hubris -- not to mention schadenfreude.
Yes, yes, yes.

Anonymous said...

You can bet that NBC will tell Jay Leno to say "BuhhBye!" if he screws up Tonight as much as Conan did. Yes, Jay did a bad job with Tonight for the first several years, but that was then and this is now. NBC has already invested the money and time letting him become "good." If he still works, they've cut their losses and made the best of a bad situation. It doesn't matter who's "good" and who's "bad" -- all that counts is making money!