The 2007 Tabloid Baby Awards

The Tabloid Baby Person of The Year award has been about as anticipated as Time magazine's copycat honors, but we make it a habit to not necessarily bestow it every twelve months. For us, it all began in 1999, when Steve Dunleavy and Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D. were given the first special Tabloid Baby public service awards, and debate and controversy would follow as honors were handed out in the years to follow. Who could forget the uproar among "serious" journalists when Tabloid Baby alone cited NYPD Blue actress-turned-CNN anchorette Andrea Thompson for her courage and style in the transition from sexy scriptreader to sexy TelePrompter reader and named her Person of The Year in 2001?

And debate still rages after the controversy that erupted when CNN's "anchorman" Anderson Cooper won the honor in 2005 for representing the end of the Hestonian "anchorman" era with his groundbreaking "Brokeback Anchor" style. We saw him as the herald of more than the gay sensibilities of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, but the new brand of ironic, unauthoritative newsreaders like Katie Couric and silly, posturing Brian Williams. But neither Katie nor Bri-Bri won the honor for 2007-- not as Tabloid Baby's Person of The Year, nor even its Journalist of The Year for 2007. There are two separate honors this time around. We'll get to them soon enough.

But first... the Tabloid Baby team has come up with others who stood out in the Tabloid Baby universe in 2007 (and notice how we don't make the decisions in November like some people):

ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Neil Innes

Neil Innes is the greatest musical satirist of the past fifty years. For most of that half century, he's made a monumental, if deliberately subtle, impact on popular culture, music and comedy. Having made his mark on rock 'n' roll, television, art, publishing, children's programming and philosophy, Innes was hard at work this year, overseeing pristine reissues of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Rutles catalogue, recording and releasing the first new Bonzos album in 35 years (earning four stars in MOJO), and completing filming of the musical documentary about his life and work. Innes set the stage this year for what will surely be a time of recognition and appreciation as Frozen Pictures’ film, The Seventh Python, brings the world up to date on this brilliant artist.

TELEVISION & FILM PERSONALITY
OF THE YEAR
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D.

After decades as a cult figure thanks to his fascinating pubic access show Mysteries from Beyond The Other Dominion, Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D. finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of Hollywood stardom in a year of mainstream breakout performances on network television, on film, and on the Internet He’s been a regular on The Tom Green Show web phenomenon, done featured acting roles on television series like The Ghost Whisperer, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Sunset Tan and Mad Men, appeared in films including Nothing But The Truth and even inspired a character in The Bigfoot Gang, the followup from the creators of Napoleon Dynamite.

COMEBACK OF THE YEAR
The Hudson Brothers

Twenty five years after they went their separate ways, the Hudson Brothers reunited for their first group photos in twenty years and their first group project, albeit behind the scenes, in producing and supervising the music for The Seventh Python. The Hudsons, an influential rock ‘n’ roll group whose career was elevated yet stymied by success as a network television musical comedy team in the Seventies, is the rare act from that decade that has not cashed in on the VH1-TVLand nostalgia market, but individually blazed new trails in music, television and film. With their classic television series about to be released on DVD and talk of an onstage reunion, we look forward to more Hudson Brothers activities in 2008—as well as a potential boycott of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and its parent, Rolling Stone magazine, if the contribution continues to be ignored.

RADIO PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR
Danny Bonaduce

Danny Bonaduce may be best known on the national stage as a tabloid trainwreck, a steroid-fueled angerball whose lack of self-control and past addictions to drugs and alcohol had the former childstar on a balls-out death ride on the Highway to Hell. But radio aficionados others know Bonaduce as an experienced, hard-working professional personality whose career reached a welcome pinnacle after he as hired a year ago as co-host of the failing, flailing Adam Carolla Radio Show that was filling Howard Stern’s timeslot. Bonaduce’s forced entrance into the mix of fawning worship of the dullard Carolla injected an adrenalyn shot of relevance and raw-nerved reality that peaked when his wife, known to millions from their reality TV show, announced her intention to divorce. While Bonaduce reached Sternsian levels of greatness, he was quickly muzzled by a jealous Carolla, and recently cut from the show after a six-month on-air backstabbing campaign by Carolla and his acolytes. KLSX, which treasures Bonaduce, has given him an afternoon slot. Watch that show expand in 2008 as Carolla fades from the dial.

OVERLOOKED
INTERNATIONAL NEWS STORY
OF THE YEAR
The Israel Baseball League

The story of the first season of the Israel Baseball League may have been a pleasant footnote in sports history if not for what transpired after the final pitch of the season, when Our Man Elli in Israel (Elli Wohlgelernter to those in the journalism world) wrote an article about what really when on during that season in the sun, uncorking a flood of allegations, outrage, whiles setting off a chain events that included a federal fraud lawsuit against the league’s founder, the resignation of the league’s commissioner and much of its advisory board, the creation of a rival league, and announced plans for a second season in 2008. Remarkably, nearly every step in this incredible international saga of mismanagement, betrayal, intrigue and broken dreams was broken exclusively here, on Tabloidbaby.com, while the mainstream media either followed our lead or ignored the story altogether. While the official spin continues this month with the brief arrival of a IBL booster blog, and a naïve, inaccurate Bleacher Report story naming the IBL’s feelgood PR report of the first season as “The Best Sports Story in 2007,” the behind-the-scenes soap opera is far from over.

His work on the story made Elli Wohlgelernter a candidate for Tabloid Baby’s Journalist of the Year. But was it enough to grab the honor?

Tabloid Baby's Journalist of the Year and Person of the Year for 2007... are ahead...