Evening kids, it's your good old pal Sketch E. Whiteface reporting from his new home to pollute the beloved Internets with a mass of text to be read by one person who will spend six hours after crying for reading so much about something that could be very mundane. Please take this moment the stretch your eyes after that eyesore and the coming one. For those who don't know how to stretch your eyes, sorry, but you're on your own.
Hit the jump for the full article.
Hit the jump for the full article.
And we press onward to the meat of the matter, the heart of it if you will. For a while now I've been hearing complaints from everyone I know saying how there's nothing original being put out in TV, music and more specifically movies and how the content that IS being put out is very stupid. I've also heard from people, and neither this nor the previous is anything new, that people are stupid and therefore the content is geared toward them. Although I disagree with the first half of that statement, the second part is spot on. What's being put out sucks not because audiences are stupid but because the powers that be green lighting this thinks we're stupid.
On October 1, 1993 comedian Bill Hicks was scheduled to appear on "The Late Show with Dave Letterman" to fill in last minute for a guest who had canceled, ironically he had been bumped from the show the week prior. (This would be his final television performance as he would die from pancreatic cancer five months later.) He did an eight minute long set before a live studio audience recorded for the show. Cut to a few hours later, Hicks' set was not included in the broadcast having been removed by Letterman and the producers who denied being responsible. Although the show or CBS never commented on why it was removed Hicks stated, amongst other reasons, that they felt the viewers at home were too stupid to realize that "they're just jokes" even though the studio audience laughed at his material. The following is a phone call Hicks received to let him know his set had been removed by CBS' "Standards and Practices," a mere hour after the taping had finished, taken from Hicks' 23 page hand written letter to John Lahr.
"Well why do you think the crowd at home is different than the one in your studio? They're all watching your show," said Hicks.
"Bill, you have to understand our audiences," said producer Robert Morton.
"What do you grow them on farms? Your audience is comprised of 'people', right? Well, I understand 'people,' being a person myself. People are who I play to every night, Bob, and we get along fine."
...
"We taped the show the show at 5:30 in the afternoon, and your audience had no problem with the material then. What... does the audience become overly sensitive between the hours of 11:30 PM and 12:30 AM? And by the way, Bob, when I'm not performing on your show, I'm a member of the audience for your show. Are you saying my material is not suitable for me? That doesn't make sense, why do you underestimate the intelligence of your audience?"
