Limbaugh Rushes Into a New Deal
For those of you who can’t envision an election season without Rush Limbaugh’s fair and balanced political perspective, fear not.
On the eve of The Rush Limbaugh Show’s 20th anniversary, the conservative talk-radio host has signed an estimated $400 million deal with Clear Channel Communications that will keep him on the air through 2016, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
According to Limbaugh, that hefty sum includes a $100 million signing bonus. His existing $225 million, nine-year contract was due to expire in 2009.
“First and foremost, I’m a businessman,” Limbaugh told the NY Times Magazine recently, when asked about the very favorable terms of the new agreement, which amounts to the most lucrative contract in radio since Howard Stern inked an unprecedented five-year, $500 million satellite deal (which factored in production, studio and staff costs).
“My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience, so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.”
And buy a lot of stuff.
NPR’s Car Talk becomes PBS’s As the Wrench Turns
Though not the most obvious of translations, PBS has nevertheless transformed NPR’s hit radio series Car Talk into an animated series. The show, dubbed Click and Clack’s As The Wrench Turns, premieres July 9th at 8 p.m. ET and is set to run in two-episode blocks for five weeks thereafter. Click and Clack, the on-air alter egos of Tom and Ray Tappet, are as self-deprecating off-air about the series as they are on air. “I hope that people look at it mercifully,” said Ray, “It’s lame enough that people will laugh at some of the lame stuff.”
The brothers are the heart and soul of the radio show, which has become a huge hit for NPR, but the TV show is looking to spotlight a more expanded roster of characters. And while the two will be playing animated versions of themselves, and those versions will also host an auto talk show, the similarities really end there. You really have a more family-oriented animated show the creators say is more akin to Family Guy or The Simpsons than the radio show.
So while it looks to be a different monster from its source material, that formula’s certainly worked to great success already for the likes of Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld), Roseanne Barr (Roseanne) and Tim Allen (Home Improvement), though those were comedians bringing their schtick to life. If they’d gone for a more true translation we’d just have what we did when Howard Stern and Don Imus broadcast their shows. Or another Free Radio, if they go for a more comedic approach.
Beetlejuice in Transformers 2?
Lester “Beetlejuice” Green has supposedly been spotted on the Princeton set of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Many people know the little man with the even smaller head as one of the members of the Wack Pack on the Howard Stern Show. And anyone who reads the site knows I’m a huge Stern fan from wayyyy back (he gets me through my blogging day). There was a casting call for “a male little person, any ethnicity, age between 30 and 65.” Green (seen behind Michael Bay in the photo above) has appeared on the big screen before, in 2001’s Scary Movie 2 and Bubble Boy. Could he be making a cameo in Transformers 2, or is he just visiting the set?
PhillyFilmGirl also captured video of Frenzy attacking a car. Check it out.
source: TFLive
Jim Carrey and Lisa Lampanelli producing HBO pilot
Jim Carrey, Lisa Lampanelli, and Kario Salem are set to produce a half-hour HBO pilot. Lampanelli will star as a woman who inherits a famous comedy club in Los Angeles, presumably one like Shore’s Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip where Carrey himself got his start. According to Variety, “the central character is a Mitzi Shore type, a woman who unexpectedly becomes the owner of a comedy club and is forced to play a maternal role in the dysfunctional lives of the club’s clutch of resident comics.” This sounds interesting. I’m looking forward to Lampanelli in a lead role. I know she’s can be nasty but she’s very quick-witted and has great delivery.
Carrey is currently shooting I Love You Phillip Morris with co-star Ewan McGregor. He recently finished Yes Man, a Warner Bros. comedy, and A Christmas Carol, a Robert Zemekis film for Disney. Lampanelli, who has been a regular guest on Howard Stern and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, recently signed a deal with Harper Collins for a book entitled The World According to Lisa: The Queen of Mean’s Guide to the Universe.