Nov 29 2008
Rosie O’Donnell will never, ever do another Variety Show
Rosie O’Donnell had her shot at a live variety show on Wednesday evening. It was totted as being the variety show, to end all variety shows, and maybe; that is exactly what the viewers thought too. Rosie’s show came to an end, on a flat note with the numbers.
The ratings for Rosie’s live variety show were not that great, in fact they were pretty bad. Ironically, Rosie O’Donnell’s adversary of the moment, Barbara Walters, really beat her out; with over 11 million hits for her interview with the president-elect, Barack Obama, on ABC’s “20/20. Rosie’s variety show only garnered about 5 million viewers.
I watched Rosie’s live effort this past week. My take on her live variety show seems to echo what a few other critics had to say. Rosie’s live effort tried too hard to approach the variety shows of yesteryear. Rosie’s show felt scripted, they overworked the formulas that made shows like “The Ed Sullivan Show”, The Red Skelton Hour” and the others, such big hits famous.
After the show flopped, Rosie O’Donnell declared that she will never again do another variety show. Rosie didn’t need a translator to spell out the stats for her. She commented on her blog, that there will be no more shows. The ratings were bad, the reviews were bad.
Personally, I hope that this effort does not sink other efforts of live variety shows as future projects. There is plenty of room in the prime-time sectors of network television, to try other approaches.
A live variety show, hosted by Sarah Palin each week could really boost NBC’s ratings in the Wednesday 9PM time slot, don’t you think?
