FIELD TRIP: The Museum of Television and Radio

This Saturday, Ian and I took a trip down to Beverly (Hills, that is -- swimming pools, movie stars) to visit The Museum of Television and Radio. Now that, my friends, is my kinda museum.

I'm glad Ian suggested it, because not only had I never been to the museum before, I had never even been to Beverly Hills before. Which, considering I've lived less than two hours away most of my life, is kind of odd. Although, really, what reason would I have had for going to Beverly Hills? I'm not exactly a Versace/Louis Vuitton/Armani kind of guy. I'm a flannel and dirty jeans kind of guy. In fact, while we were walking around, I was afraid we were going to be arrested for violating the dress code. (By the police who are too good for normal police cars: all the ones we saw were either on bikes, or driving SUVs. Weird.)

I mean, look at this Google description for the Versace website: "Versace is a cutting-edge fashion designer of luxury goods, fragrances, accessories and lifestyle for men and women." You just have to say "luxury goods," and I'm already out. I fold. But designer of lifestyles? Criminy! How frickin' rich do you have to be to pay someone to design your lifestyle? Here's my lifestyle designer: my paycheck. It dictates how much I can spend on fun stuff while still maintaining the lifestyle to which I am accustomed, i.e.: poverty plus. Wouldn't it be nice to have enough money to tell someone: "It doesn't even occur to me to worry about surviving rent and food expenditures for the month. Foist upon me your most expensive rugs, your most bejeweled of watches, your solid gold Slinkys."

Anyhoo. We were walking around BH (as we cool-ass mofos like to refer to it) because the Museum was overbooked for the early afternoon, and we couldn't get into the library for a couple of hours. We looked around the building for a while, especially at the plethora of Al Hirschfeld prints adorning the walls. (Count the "Nina"s!) And then we walked the streets for a while to kill time. And I was endlessly amazed, what with all the super-duper-upscale boutiques, the fancy-shmancy sidewalk cafes, and the ridiculously trendy outfits of the average pedestrian. I mean, there was a frickin' 10-year-old girl with a be-tassled, rhinestone-covered, spaghetti-strapped top. That has to be an omen of the next Great Flood. I kept thinking, "So this is the L.A. you see in the movies all the time!" Because I've only ever seen the crappy L.A., the one you see on the way to the airport. (Although Ian suggested, "I don't think Beverly Hills thinks of itself as part of L.A.")

Then back to the Museum. There's a room full of computers, on which you select the programs you'd like to watch (out of the 120,000 available -- which, surprisingly, is scarcely a drop in the bucket of the history of television), and then you move to the viewing area, outfitted with headphones, at which you watch a videotape of your requested programs, controlled with VCR-style <<, >, and >> buttons.

We had to wait until 3:00 to get into the library, and the Museum closed at 5:00. So we could only select two hours of programming. And I sat there at the computer for minutes on end, wishing I had put even the slightest amount of thought into the trip. I had no idea what I wanted to see. Finally, I settled on WKRP In Cincinnati, because I wanted to see an episode with the original music intact. My search turned up a seminar held at the Museum in 1994 (which was right after the demise of The New WKRP in Cincinnati), with the entire cast plus various writers and producers in attendance, prefaced by two uncut episodes: "Clean Up Radio Everywhere," which is an extremely well-written and thoughtful episode about a religious group (the eponymous C.U.R.E.) that wants to censor WKRP's rock 'n roll playlist, yet is portrayed as earnest and genuine, rather than corrupt opportunists, with the station's employees also finding themselves on different sides of the dilemma; and "Turkeys Away," which has to be counted as one of the five funniest TV shows of all time -- "As God is my witness, I though turkeys could fly," is every bit as immortal a TV comedy line as "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants," or, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

I was disappointed with the very poor quality of the host of the seminar. It seemed like they just pulled someone off the street, or grabbed a first day intern, to run the proceedings. When he started things off by introducing "Lori Anderson," I actually blurted, "Oh god" out loud in the library. (Fortunately, like me, everyone else was wearing headphones.) How in the FUCK do you host a panel on WKRP and not know Loni Anderson's name? Fortunately, most of the seminar consisted of fielding questions from the audience. The one question I was most interested in -- "What's up with the music rights?" -- was answered briefly and almost dismissively. In 1994, home videos of TV shows had barely begun to materialize, and DVDs were non-existent. When the shows were first made, one producer answered, music rights could be purchased for five years, or in perpetuity. They made the grave mistake of purchasing them for five years. When that time was up, the renewal rights had gone through the roof, so, for syndication, it was decided that most of the music could be replaced. Big mistake. So many episodes depended on the original music; without it, the episodes are hollow shells of what they should be. I tell you what: if I ever win the lottery, I'm going to donate a huge chunk of it to music rights for WKRP. Because, without a similar kind of intercesssion, that show will never be released on DVD. And that would suck ass.

The other show I watched at the Museum was a seminar on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The seminar was in 2000 (before the election, and the brilliant Indecision 2000 coverage), when Stewart had only been the host for 10 months. And still had brown hair. (Damn, he went grey fast!)

The host of this seminar was even more incompetent than the one for WKRP. He kept ignoring Stewart, and looking to producer Madeleine Smithberg for answers, to the point where Stewart was getting demonstrably pissed. Smithberg was at the end of the row of attendees (which also included Stephen Colbert, Vance DeGeneres, and Paul Mercurio), and Stewart was at the head, right next to the host. After being neglected for minutes on end, Stewart finally said to Smithberg, "Do you want to switch seats? I mean, I took a fucking taxi to be here." After which, the host still ignored him and favored Smithberg. The douchebag. It was a tremendously poor showing by a host who should've been able to just step back and let his interview subjects control the program. He wasn't able to do that, and it resulted in a seemingly endless, The Office-style unintentional awkwardness and humiliation.

Despite the bad hosts: I loved seeing those seminars. I'd love to see more, like those conducted earlier this year (which have not yet been submitted to the library) for Lost, Desperate Housewives, and, most coveted of all, Deadwood. Even better, I'd like to see one of those seminars in person. It appears the seminar series is done for 2005, and won't start again until 2006. Now that Ian has helped me discover this Museum, I plan on paying close attention to next year's schedule. And I plan on returning to the Museum's library very soon. I just need to think about what I want to see before I go.