In what amounts to Super Bowl Sunday for theater queens everywhere, tonight CBS will air the annual Tony Awards. This year, getting noms are the usual crap-for-the-masses like "Billy Elliot," "Rock of Ages" and "Shlock (um, SHREK) The Musical." So, we were inspired to establish our very own honors, singling out the very best and worst in media in recent memory. We think we'll call 'em "The TONYS of All Media" ... that is, till organizers of the REAL Tonys catch wind of it and fire off a cease-and-desist. In the meantime, enjoy!
*** MOST OVERPLAYED NEWS STORY (4-way tie) ***
The Ascension of Barack Obama
First came the endless TV and print coverage that greeted the election and inauguration. More recently, the media would not shut UP about his first friggin' 100 days in office ... and that hideous pet pooch's arrival at the White House ... and what Michelle's wearing any given moment ... and the big trip to the Middle East and Europe ... and how (if you're Fox News) the prez is singlehandedly destroying the country, including his bringing swine flu back from Mexico and threatening to kill us all. We voted for the dude, we think he's great ... but enough!! God knows there's much more IMPORTANT stuff going on in the world right now, like ...
The Swine Flu 'Pandemic'
What would the media do without a scary plague to hype?? Even if, as it turned out, it proved about as deadly as the ingrown toenail.
The Global Economic Crisis
We've a sneaking suspicion, as others have pointed out, that it might not have been quite AS bad and far-reaching without the media's nonstop, gloom-and-doom coverage, which, aside from probably making the downturn worse, also served to make us all feel like shit along the way. Nobody can make a mountain out of a molehill quite like our pals the Times, Rupert Murdoch and Katie Couric.
Jon & Kate
Oy.
*** MOST OVERHYPED TREND (3-way tie) ***
The Rise of Twitter
We've already kind of exhausted ourselves with our nonstop trashing of this excruciating little social-media phenom beloved by supergeeks, shameless self-promoters and God (aka Oprah). It's been called the CB radio and Pet Rock of our time, as well as (our favorite) "the digital Macarena." But speaking at a media conference last week, even its creator, Jack Dorsey, seemed to suggest its ultimate pointlessness, admitting that all those narcissistic ramblings could greatly benefit from "a cohesive narrative" and a shot of "journalistic integrity." Finally, a message worth tweeting!
The iPhone 3G
Yeah, works just great, as long as you're standing on a street corner or at the top of the Empire State Building ... which is terrific, except during a blizzard in January. Too bad, coz it is, hands down, without dispute, the very BEST mobile device known to man, with the very coolest apps. Let's hope once Apple's ill-advised exclusive pact with AT&T Wireless ends next year, all will be as God intended.
Gay Storylines in Daytime Dramas
Oooooh, shirtless, well-built, panting young dudes discovering their love for one another. How SCANDALOUS!! How RACY!! How ORIGINAL!! (Yeah, when "Dynasty" did it in the early EIGHTIES!!) You soap writers DO realize there's such a thing as Internet porn now, right?
*** SADDEST MEDIA STORY ***
The Death of Newspapers
First the horse-and-buggy and the railroads and the telegraph, and now the daily newspaper. Everything's already been said that there is to say about this most lamentable development. R.I.P. print.
*** MOST SHAMELESS POWER PLAY ***
The New York Times Co. vs. The Boston Globe
In a word, despicable.
*** FAVORITE MEDIA DARLING ***
Anne Hathaway
OK, so she kinda resembles a horse ... those big teeth, that braying. But the gorgeous and talented Anne snagged an Oscar nom, the covers of Vogue and a zillion other magazines ... and all after a particularly humiliating, much-publicized episode in which her Italian lover turned out to be a crook and got hauled off to the poky. Through it all, she held her head high. Despite the haters, we LOVE her and cheer all the good fortune that's come her way. And we predict a long, successful career ... IF her agents will keep her away from crap like "Bride Wars."
*** MOST ANNOYING MEDIA DARLING (tie) ***
Michael Phelps
We KNEW he was too good to be true ... and it took just one snapshot of an ill-timed bong hit to prove it! Not that we think smokin' a doobie is any biggie ... it's just that the dude-held-up-as-a-god thing we cannot abide. Yes, the media drives it, but the subject is also complicit, and Phelps most certainly got a swelled head ... and was cruisin' for a take-down. And when these gods and goddesses do inevitably fall, we can't help but smirk just a little. (Can you just imagine the tears of Phelps and his handlers as those multimillion-dollar endorsement deals threatened to get put straight in the trash bin?) Enough of this guy already ... till the next Olympics, duh.
This "thing" called Lady GaGa
We're still not convinced this oddball, iTunes-dominating songstress, she of "Just Dance" and "Poker Face" fame, is NOT a tranny.
*** BEST CELEBRITY FLAMEOUT (3-way tie) ***
Michael Phelps and Miss California
How fitting that these two were schtupping each other ... we smell a VH1 reality series.
The Jonas Brothers
The seemingly unstoppable NAMBLA fodder saw their big-screen debut do a big bellyflop. And if we have to hear ONE MORE THING about how they're "saving themselves" for marriage we're gonna puke. Let's hope it's not too much longer before they go the way of Nick Carter ... or, more likely (for at least one of them), Clay Aiken.
*** BEST TV SHOW (tie) ***
"The Soup"
What would we do without our fix of this quick-witted take on the week's best/worst TV moments, hosted by the supremely talented Joel McHale? Who knew a cheaply produced basic-cable clip show could be so much fun?
"Chelsea Lately"
Who says girl comedians aren't funny? While all the media attention has gone to NBC and the boys (with Leno jumping to prime time, and Conan O'Brien's and Jimmy Fallon's ascension in the wee hours), this sharp-tongued, basic-cable babe is who's kept US up late at night. And to boot, chick scored with a funny book that ruled the best-seller lists for months. Even though she's attracted her share of haters (we acknowledge that she does have quite the edge to her ... think of her as pretender to the throne of Joan Rivers), we will always root for old Chelsea ... and we mean "old" (she claims to be 34 ... more like 44, we think). This, even though she doesn't necessarily NEED us rooting for her, since she's makin' the beast-with-two-backs with the guy who runs E!'s parent Comcast Networks, Ted Harbert. Now THAT'S what we call job security! (Not that she needs it ... her ratings are through the roof and she's signed up with the network through 2012.)
*** WORST TV SHOW (tie) ***
"Today"
Whenever we want to get our hate back, all we gotta do is flip on any of this morning show's excruciating FOUR hours. From mimbo Matt Lauer and the grating Meredith Vieira to the colossally annoying, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard antics of Ann Curry, Willard Scott and Kathie Lee Gifford, just call it the TV equivalent of having a nail gun piercing your skull over, and over, and over ...
"Jon & Kate Plus 8"
Televised child abuse, great idea.
*** BEST TV PERSONALITY (tie) ***
Joel McHale, "The Soup"
We were happy to see the clever, grimacing host get his series "Community" picked up by NBC for this fall (even though we have our doubts about its prospects, since it also stars TV's equivalent of box-office poison, the terminally unfunny has-been Chevy Chase). We were so relieved to learn that Joel won't be giving up his day job on "The Soup," since (as stated) as we find it one of the most reliably entertaining half-hours on television week after week.
Keith Olbermann, "Countdown"
Yeah, Olbermann is nuts most of the time, and really full of himself. But we love his politics and how it shows. His relentless needling of Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly, that oxycontin addict Fat-Boy Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing douche-o-sphere makes for a most satisfying way to spend every evening at 8. His impassioned editorial comment in support of gay marriage was truly a TV moment to behold. Newcomer Rachel Maddow gets all the ink, and while she's certainly good (and a dramatic improvement over her predecessor, the unwatchable Dan Abrams), she lacks the half-bubble-off-plumb quality that makes Keith, for us, the one not to miss. (And if you haven't caught Ben Affleck's uproarious "SNL" take on Keith, we highly recommend you check it out on YouTube.)
*** WORST TV PERSONALITY (tie) ***
Anybody from the "Today" show
(see above)
Tyra Banks
All the appeal of a yeast infection.
*** BEST TV AD (tie) ***
GM's "Reinvention" campaign
OK, so we're only at the very beginning of this whole effort to try and resuscitate the once-great General Motors. So, maybe it's a bit premature to be heralding the automaker's well-crafted, minute-long TV ad (launched just last week), whose aim is to simply remind consumers that the company's NOT dead ... that it KNOWS it effed-up big-time ... and that, by god, it's going to turn the ship around. (The spot has met with mixed reviews. BusinessWeek's Jon Fine called it "deeply strange," commenting that it was the first commercial he could remember that used the rather unpoetic term "cost structure.") Not only do we admire the ad's artistry, but in our humble opinion, GM deserves some praise for doing that rare thing for a marketer: telling the unvarnished truth.
SoBe Lifewater
A simple little 15-second spot featuring the NFL's Matt Light (which grew out of the popular, buzzy Super Bowl campaign), prancing around with cute, animated little critters and morphing into SoBe's lizard mascot at the end. Quick. Attention-grabbing. Original. Sillier-than-silly. Genius.
*** WORST TV AD ***
New York City Health Department Anti-Smoking campaign
OK, UNCLE!!!! We get it: Smoking is bad for you, and you really want us to stop. Just when you thought those ads featuring charred lungs and people talking through their necks couldn't gross you out any more, along comes this woman from the Bronx, "Marie," showing off the various amputations she's endured because of her nasty habit. These ads first appeared last year, but recently have made a big comeback and are fairly hard to escape on NY1 and other basic-cable channels. We feel for this poor woman, truly. And we understand the concept (probably quite effective) of shocking people into changing their bad behavior. But if we have to look at Marie and her fingers ONE MORE TIME (and now that we think of it, those other horrible ads showing abused animals with the suicide-inspiring Sarah McLachlan playing in the background, and that polar bear stranded on an ice floe) we're gonna LOSE it!!
*** BEST WEB SITE ***
The Huffington Post
Despite the haters and the pretenders, we still think HuffPo is the perfect mix of news and opinion about politics, world events, pop culture and the media universe. Our morning isn't complete till we've checked in with Arianna and Co., who have become our single most dependable go-to source of information.
*** WORST WEB SITE (tie) ***
The Daily Beast
Tina Brown's sad rag of a web site, a costly and, no doubt, ultimate failure of an attempt to be Arianna Huffington. As we've said before, Tina really needs to go back to writing her schlock little bios of English princesses. You've had your moment in the sun, honey. Time to move on.
Wonderwall
Hollywood powerhouse BermanBraun's entertainment-news site for MSN, while visually unique and sort of interesting, is also kind of a mess. WHO the devil ever thought reading a site with a checkerboard layout, running across a horizontal spread with whiz-bang graphics popping at you left and right, was a good idea?? Every visit makes us feel like we're having a seizure.
*** BEST MAGAZINE (tie) ***
Good
This aptly named title is this is the smart little mag that could, a must-read for people who give a shit about the world around them. We learn something new and useful in every single issue ... and what magazine these days can you say THAT about?? Looks cool too.
New York
Even with print media's prospects in the toilet, Adam Moss continues to make this legendary weekly a highly entertaining, wholly relevant read. (With the rare exception, the most recent being the cover story this past week on Si Newhouse and Conde Nast, one of the singularly most boring, least illuminating pieces we've come across in some time. Maybe Adam had the week off?)
*** WORST MAGAZINE ***
Conde Nast Portfolio
Newhouse's outrageously expensive, stupendous failure of a project set out to be Vanity Fair for the business set ... and ended up about as sexy and relevant as the Poughkeepsie Business Journal. Ill-conceived, even-worst-executed little exercise in hubris from beginning to end.
*** BEST MAGAZINE EDITOR ***
Adam Moss, New York
Again, we ask, HOW does he do it? Damn near every issue, week after week, is a must-read. He does more on a near-impossible weekly deadline than most EICs do on a monthly. When we grow up, we want to be Adam Moss.
*** WORST MAGAZINE EDITOR ***
Joanne Lipman, Conde Nast Portfolio
A highly talented business journalist is cast, with horrific results, as a glossy magazine editor in what has to be one of the worst magazine-industry marriages since Tina Brown told Si Newhouse to toss off and ankled with Shrek-lookalike Harvey Weinstein for that other disaster of colossal proportions, Talk magazine.
*** BEST MAGAZINE MAKEOVER ***
Reader's Digest
We still have absolutely no use for this magazine, and have no real confidence it can rebrand itself as anything other than your granny's favorite periodical (its recent, continued plunge in circ and ad business bear that out) ... but we have to admit, it comes off a helluva lot better these days, so we'll give 'em points for at least trying to read and look like something not produced in 1955.
*** WORST MAGAZINE MAKEOVER ***
Rolling Stone
The ONE thing this way-past-its-sell-date mag had going for it was that it stood out physically, with its big trim size highlighting those great, iconic cover shots. Then, they shrunk the thing practically to the size of one of those pocket-size little horoscope guides at the supermarket checkout, so that it gets lost in the mix with all the other crap entertainment rags on newsstands. Way to go, Jann! Between that dog Rolling Stone and your quickly faltering Us Weekly and Men's Journal, you are sinking that business your ex-wife's family set you up in faster and faster.
*** BEST PRINT AD ***
Madonna for Louis Vuitton
Now THAT is what we call the effective use of Photoshop! Leave it to the creative geniuses of the ad world to make a 50-year-old, shriveled hunk of haggis look like an 18-year-old picture of porcelain perfection. (And the fog-machine special effects and Vaseline lens didn't hurt either.) In fact, if you squint and hold the magazine far enough away, you can't tell whether it's Madonna or Dakota Fanning. But seriously, what lovely oil paintings these ads are, really some of the most lush, beautifully styled and photographed print ads we've seen in some time ... making us want to rush right out and stimulate the economy by buying up one of those $3,000 bags.
*** WORST PRINT AD ***
Kohler's "Save Water America" campaign
It has, of course, become quite common for corporations to tout their environmentally friendly ethos via their ad campaigns. And we're all for it ... except when the advertiser so obviously doesn't practice what it preaches. In a costly, stunningly shot, four-page spread in the May Vanity Fair, Kohler, the faucet maker, muses on and on about the importance of fighting global warming and preserving fresh-water sources (by using Kohler's own high-efficiency toilets and low-flow showerheads, natch.) Its message may be all about selling potties and saving the icebergs ... but clearly, the advertiser ain't so interested in saving trees, as the ad is printed on especially thick, glossy, anything BUT green paper stock. (Wouldn't the message have been more effective, say, if printed on recycled paper, as so many of those eco ads are?) Who knew environmentalism could be so ugly?
*** BEST MAGAZINE COVER (tie) ***
The New Yorker, Obamas as Radicals
You'll recall that a mini-firestorm raged last July after The New Yorker characterized Barack as a militant Muslim and Michelle as an afro-donning, gun-toting revolutionary inside the Oval Office, replete with burning flag in the fireplace and portrait of Osama bin Laden overhead. (We were surprised that so many didn't get the joke, even taking into account what a stupid country this is.) We thought it was one of the cleverest illos in the magazine's long, storied history of iconic covers.
V Magazine, Grace Jones
We couldn't take our eyes off the cover of this past March's V, sporting a Jean-Paul Goude shot of a snarling Grace Jones, cigarette clinched in teeth and flaunting a Philip Treacy bowler festooned with Swarovski crystals. Could very well be our favorite mag cover of '09 so far ... a real work of art. (How many magazine covers have you said THAT about lately?)
*** WORST MAGAZINE COVER (tie) ***
Vanity Fair, Jessica Simpson
Remember when you had to be a really BIG star to make the cover of Vanity Fair? You know you should have rethought putting this big fat nobody on the front of your magazine when your own flack has to field calls from media reporters demanding that it be defended. (Is Graydon trying to NOT sell magazines these days?)
Conde Nast Portfolio, Sarah Palin
OK, so it's really a challenge to select just ONE crappy cover from this thankfully now-departed disaster of a business rag. God knows there are so many possibilities. We almost went with the infamous, much-trashed, tone-deaf choice of American Apparel founder Dov Charney from last fall ... just as the economy was really beginning to convulse (or, as Gawker put it, "greeting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression with a story about a t-shirt vendor"). But no, we think we gotta go with, from this past April, that boring, stock shot of a fur-clad Sarah Palin standing in a snowdrift ... FIVE MONTHS after Election Day!! About as timely and relevant as putting Mamie Eisenhower on the cover. We swear, every issue of that mag was more painful than the one before it. Which brings us to ...
*** THE T.O.A.M. GRAND PRIZE FOR VERY WORST MEDIA MOMENT ***
Conde Nast Portfolio
Duh.
