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A bronze
Fonzie (Arthur Fonzarelli, Happy Days) statue is now a part of the east
side of the Milwaukee RiverWalk on Wells Street. A welcome fun addition to our
city and a sight-seeing attraction for all tourists who come to Milwaukee and
you can be sure there will be many Happy Days fans that will come just to
see the Fonz. At the statue dedication there was a man who came all the way from
Italy to participate in the celebration. He was the president of the Happy
Days fan club.
In January my husband and I
went on a trip to Albany, Georgia and across the street from our hotel was a
huge statue recently erected of Ray Charles, piano and all. It very slowly
rotates around in a circle and is located on the Flint River; it was gorgeous.
What was really neat was about four foot black and white piano keys lined the
river bank on both sides of Mr. Charles. We went over to take some photos and
there I met a gal who was a part of a club that travels around the country just
for the purpose of viewing celebrity statues. Honest, it’s true.
The Viewers Voice TV Show
celebrated its 300th program in August. The local access show airs
once a month on Channel 14 in West Allis on Monday nights at 6:00p.m.
Producer and host Sharon Rhode
started the show in 1992 and has had on many celebrity guests from the
entertainment and sports world including local celebrities.
In the television industry Sharon
has interviewed Barbara Walters, Jane Seymour, Joe Lando, John Ritter, Sharon
Gless, Tyne Daly, Stephen Collins, Rosie O’Donnell, Kyle Chandler, Scott Wolf,
Matthew Fox, Ben Affleck, Dana Delany, Mario Lopez, Bob Urich, Jason Bateman,
Jim Belushi, Ray Romano, Henry Winkler, Cindy Williams, Gary Marshall, Barbara
Eden and many more. She has also taken her viewers on the sets of many different
TV shows: Cagney and Lacy, Arrested Development, Medium, Party of Five,
According to Jim, Everybody Loves Raymond, Early Edition, Dr. Quinn, Medicine
Woman, Any Day Now and 7th Heaven to name a few.
The most important woman in the
history of broadcast journalism visited Milwaukee in May. Barbara Walters (The
View), a person I have admired for many years for all that she has
accomplished in her career. She was in town to discuss her new book, Audition,
as part of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops,’ Live series at Alverno College.
My camera people, Gary
Saugstad and Michelle Kasar and I arrived at Alverno College’s Pitman Theatre on
a Thursday evening with the hope of getting possibly some footage of Ms. Walters
press interview and some of her on stage discussion about her book in front of a
paid audience.
“Brewers
on Deck” is a fan appreciation day that the Milwaukee Brewer organization puts
on to show their appreciation to their faithful fans. This year it was held on
Saturday, March 29, two days before opening day. The event was done a little
different than in past years. For just $10.00 the fans received admission to the
event where you had the opportunity to get autographs, enjoy interactive games
and a ticket to an exhibition game with the Kansas City Royals. The fans again
turned out with great enthusiasm and the lines for autographs were long as in
the past. You could feel the excitement in the air and the expectations for the
new Brewer season.
The
writers strike is over but how many of our favorite shows will still be hurt and
possibly gone. The ones that are having a problem with their ratings and on the
bubble of being canceled are ABC’s Men In Trees, Women’s Murder Club and
Boston Legal; CBS’s Jericho, which was already canceled once and brought
back by popular demand; CW’s The Reaper, Aliens in America and The
Wild; NBC’s Bionic Woman, Las Vegas and Scrubs. Other shows that will
not return until September may find that there audience is no longer interested
because the longer the series is off the air the more the viewer is likely to
forget about it and find other programs of interest. ABC’s Private Practice
and Pushing Daisies are good examples of shows that could lose
valuable viewers. There are other shows that are on the bubble of being canceled
or are canceled but I listed the series that Viewers Voice is getting the most
feedback on.
Which is a
good lead-in to Cavemen. This show caused me a lot of pain, mostly
because my mother was a lot less interested in watching it than I, and spent
half the show shouting for me to turn it off. This is the story of a caveman,
his brother, and his pal. The show is based on the Geico “so easy a caveman can
do it” commercials. It was a lot like watching the commercial, except that it
didn’t end as quickly. There are a lot of great character actors in the show;
it’s always fun to try to guess if I’m recognizing someone from Star Trek,
Freaks and Geeks (those guys are everywhere these days), or 80’s action
TV fare. This show is good for that. The writing had potential, once they finish
with the never-ending jokes about anti-cavemen stereotypes. At the least,
Cavemen answers the age-old question, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if this
commercial went on for 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds?” I’ll withhold my
answer.
I’m
getting a jump-start on writing about the Milwaukee Brewers this year because I
really believe this is our season to make the play-offs and give the other teams
a run for their money. Of course that’s providing we can keep away from the
injuries that have plagued us in recent years. Of course we have to think
positive and it wouldn’t hurt to say a little pray for our team.
There have been many
changes in the Brewers look this season and one of them was getting a new
television play-by- play announcer, replacing Daron Sutton. Daron accepted a
contact to be part of the television team for the Arizona Diamondbacks. At first
I was disappointed because I thought Daron and Bill Schroeder did a dynamic job
of broadcasting the Brewer games. Then I did an interview on my Viewers Voice TV
Show with Brian Anderson, who was a commentator on the Golf Channel and now a
new member of the Brewer organization. I was so impressed with him I came away
feeling he was going to make a fantastic edition to the Brewers television team
and will have no problem finding his way into the hearts of the Milwaukee
viewers.
Viewers
Voice Board Member and Author, Brenda Scott Royce is riding high on the
success of her book Monkey Love and is in the process of writing a sequel
called Monkey Star. The book is scheduled to be released in the summer of
2007.
If you haven’t had a chance
to read Monkey Love it’s an exciting fiction adventure about Holly
Heckerling, a single gal who lives in New York and working to succeed as a
stand-up comic. The book had me laughing out loud. I am so looking forward to
reading the sequel.
As an old friend of
Brenda’s I could see a lot of her in Holly. She always had a great sense of
humor and would sometimes perform at our Viewers Voice banquets. Once at one of
our functions she rode a unicycle though the banquet hall and I thought when she
finally managed to get up on it she was going to ride it right through everyone
seated at tables into the pool outside the room.
Happy New
Year! Our new TV season is already half way through and a few of the good shows
have already been canceled. That’s not a surprise since these shows just don’t
get the proper time to prove themselves. Sometimes I have to wonder how many
series
like Cheers, All
in the Family, Hillstreet Blues, Cagney and Lacey or The
Fugitive are we being deprived of watching because the networks haven’t the
patience to let shows developand pick up an audience. Money, money and
ratings are the key and we don’t as viewers really matter, especially if we’re
not in the right demographics.
The
new television season is already under way. Remember I’m not a television critic
and don’t claim to be but this is the best season of new shows that I’ve seen in
a long time. Rather than try to tell you about all the new shows I’m going to
pick out the ones I enjoyed and let you decide from there. Watch the new series
for yourself and don’t let the critics sway your decisions. I’ve found from
experience that critics have a tendency to just look for quality and not if the
shows entertaining and fun to watch. Besides we all have different tastes and
quality really doesn’t define what everyone considers quality. I hope that makes
sense to you but I think you get the idea. In other words judge these shows for
yourself and not what a critic tells you what’s good, after all it’s just their
opinion.
In
my last column I did the first part of an interview with Sharon Gless and would
like to continue with it in this column. First I would like to comment that the
Sharon Gless’ sitcom Thick and Thin that we talked about in the first
interview will probably die somewhere in the NBC vaults and never be heard from
again. It’s a real shame because I just got through watching their new shows for
the fall and I haven’t seen anything that looks any better. The least the
network could have done was show the finished episodes this summer and let the
viewers decide if it was any good. To me that just shows how much they don’t
really care about your opinion. They listen too much to the TV critics and push
too hard to satisfy the younger demographics. Now that I’ve expressed my opinion
lets continue with the second part of the interview.
Last
October at our Viewers Voice Conference I interviewed an old friend of Viewers
Voice; Sharon Gless. Sharon came over to The Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel in Studio
City, California to talk about a new series she was doing for NBC called
Thick and Thin.
I first met Sharon when she
was in a series for CBS called Cagney and Lacey, a drama that is still
considered by many as one of the best shows ever to hit the tube. Before that
woman were just considered tokens in a man’s world. Of course there were a few
exceptions where women were permitted to be friends but it was usually in the
field of comedy. Christine Cagney (Gless) and Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly) were
more than friends they were New City police officers which at that time was
reserved for male characters.
In
my last column I promised an interview with a young actress from the hit NBC TV
Show, Medium (Mondays, 9:00-10:00 p.m., CST).. When we were in California
in October we had the privilege of going on the set of this chilling drama
series. We presented the creator and executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron with
the Viewers Voice Award for Favorite New Series of the 2004-2005 seasons.
Besides getting a tour of the set and meeting the cast of Medium, I did an
interview with a very talented young actress who plays Ariel DuBois on the
series, Sofia Vassilieva.
In a
previous article I had told you that The WB canceled 7th Heaven
after ten years on the air and still one of their top watched shows.
Viewers Voice still held out hope that maybe with UPN and The WB becoming the
new CW Network in September that maybe they would re-consider canceling this
excellent family show that was so loved by so many viewers. Dawn Ostroff,
currently President of UPN, will become President of Entertainment and feels the
show has run its course. So May 8 we have to say goodbye to 7th
Heaven, the longest running family drama in television history.
In
my last column I discussed what a great family show 7th heaven
was and that The WB would be foolish to cancel it even if they were in their
tenth season. The series is still their number one show and there are still many
stories to be told. The Camden grew up with their audience and still growing.
Guess what, The WB did cancel the show, or I should say that the President of
Entertainment for The WB, David Jangler didn’t like the show and had it pushed
to be canceled because it was a thorn in his side. He wants to put his efforts
into promoting their new series Related. I’m not putting down Related
because it’s not a bad show but it’s no where close to being the excellent
family entertainment that 7th Heaven has brought to Monday
night television. The fight for network family programming is getting harder and
harder and forcing viewers to find what they want on cable or their DVD players.
A bronze
Fonzie (Arthur Fonzarelli, Happy Days) statue is now a part of the east
side of the Milwaukee RiverWalk on Wells Street. A welcome fun addition to our
city and a sight-seeing attraction for all tourists who come to Milwaukee and
you can be sure there will be many Happy Days fans that will come just to
see the Fonz. At the statue dedication there was a man who came all the way from
Italy to participate in the celebration. He was the president of the Happy
Days fan club.
