today : why letterman is annoying etc

American TV. With the huge growth in digital TV here in the UK we have started to get more and more American TV. I mean, we have always had mainstream dramas, crime shows and sitcoms. But what we're now getting is entertainment shows, talk shows and reality TV. These days I can watch The Daily Show 24 hours after it is broadcast on Comedy Central as well as the mainstream talk shows like Letterman and Conan O' Brien. Of course, they are slightly edited because we have less commercials over here. Turns out that The Daily show, without commercial lead ins and outs, is only two minutes ten seconds long.

Letterman annoys me. In fact, maybe not Letterman himself, but Paul Schaffer. And the format. We get an edited version with only one commercial break and it really shows up the fact that the first sections of the show are simply padding with lots of plugs for the guests. If you watch closely, most of the padding is pauses, pointless musical crecendi and obvious interruptions from 'Artie Fufkin'. It's almost like Schaffer's comments are designed to explain to the everyman, unsophisticated flyover state viewers, the machinery of obscure silliness, irony and sarcasm that makes up most of Letterman's schtick. It seems that you don't have to say much to be funny in New York. Letterman himself spends as much time pausing, mugging and eye-rolling to roars of laughter, as Leno does with his stage-polished and carefully crafted set ups and punchlines. It's very much like the crowd laugh not becuase he is very funny, but because they are in the audience at one of Letterman's shows and look! there he is! in person!

People have tried for twenty years to launch a British Letterman and it just doesn't work. Anyone who's up that late over here is usually watching Newsnight.

We also now get to see American reality shows. Everything from The Amazing Race through the Bachelor, Fear Factor and The Apprentice. We even get the outer limits of reality, shows like The Swan or ANTM.

The daddy of them all, is, of course a British show. Idol. We don't have it any more in the UK. We have variations on a theme. I get to see the Tuesday show and the results show in one Friday Night mini-marathon. And I've watched almost all of them so far. The themes idea is interesting, even though the themes and the star guests themselves are baffling to me. I also like seeing how many new variations on telling people they are safe or in the bottom three they can come up with (Taylor, you sang Bhoddisatva, will you do a handstand against this wall? Kelly you sang Trans Europe Express, make a teapot shape at the far end of the stage). This season has been close. I did start watching the season that Fantasia won a couple of years back. It was scheduled all over the place and was quite difficult to follow. So I gave up. It was also clear that Fantasia was going to win from the very start, so there was no tension.

This year is more difficult to call. I can confidently predict that any one from Taylor, Kat or Kelly could win. And even the others aren't bad and should all get a career out of the show because they can all sing, apart from Ace (is anyone really called Ace, or Bo?) who can become a stand in for that guy guy who used be Chris in the morning in Northern Exposure. In fact Elliott sings the best, but looks a bit odd so he won't win. I also worry about his teeth. They are defiantly non-hollywood and I fear that if he has them fixed then it will affect his tone.