Stern Return? Howard confirms our prediction!

We predicted it last month. Now Howard Stern has confirmed it.

Stern told his listeners on Sirius satellite radio that he's been offered a "major deal" to come back to regular radio-- just like his longtime enemies Opie & Anthony.

"The joke could be on them if I get good and worked up [because] I got offered a major deal to go back to terrestrial and stay on satellite at the same time," Stern said. “Can you imagine if I go across town against them in all those markets and just kick some ass? That would really be cool."

Stern now plays to about a tenth of his former audience. As we wrote in April: "...Stern has become instantly irrelevant... as far as American culture and the everyday agenda is concerned, he’s dead. Gone... As his girlfriend’s fame begins to eclipse his own hard-fought glory... Howard has become Rupert Pupkin, doing a show in his basement."

The New York Post reports that if an offer was actually made to Stern, it most likely came from Citadel Broadcasting, which is in the process of acquiring Disney/ABC's radio division.

As we complained yesterday, morning radio in America, and especially Los Angeles, has been dreary since Stern took the money and ran. Stern’s replacement Adam Carolla is flopping wildly, taking the “ego” from the Stern book, but not the insight, wit, humour or honesty. Most bizarre are longtime morning hosts Mark & Brian (see Tabloid Baby, Chapter 16), who actually spend hours playing a pop quiz game like two lonely men in a waiting room.

It’s astounding to realize just how entertaining, compelling and so far beyond the competition The Howard Stern Show managed to be. Stern was delivering something better than radio.

Even more astounding? Tabloid Baby’s ability to stay on top of the trends and predict the future! We’ll keep you posted.

Carollawatch: Rachel's gone; new gal for dog collar

Charming newsreader Rachel Perry disappeared from the Adam Carolla radio show last month, within days of our story that singled her out as the sole bright spot on the show that replaced Howard Stern in L.A. and a few other markets— and revealed that she’s depicted wearing a dog collar and chain on the Carolla show website.

Official word was that she was off taping a TV pilot. Today, her dog collar photo is gone from the Carolla site, and in between ridiculing the accent of an immigrant named Oswaldo, Carolla announced that Perry’s been replaced by a gal named Teresa Strasser.

A check of the net shows Strasser to be a part of the Carolla-Jimmy Kimmel "family" already-- an actress and TV host who worked as a writer on Win Ben Stein’s Money , the game show that featured Kimmel in a supporting role. She’s got a website that shows her to feel pretty good about herself, but that’s bound to change as Carolla will systematically grind her into powder on the air, trampling on any jokes she might throw out, and trumping her witty asides with his long-winded, monotonous stream-of-consciousness “comedy” monologues.

Strasser ‘s no sex kitten. Physically, she’s cut from the Sara Silverman mold and seems to consider herself a smartypants. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of sexy shots the Carolla team digs up for their site.

Radio is very different in wake of the Howard Stern era. It will be interesting to see who’ll replace Carolla when his show is canceled. Maybe a simulcast version of Stern’s satellite show, which is listener challenged, though not nearly as seriously as Carolla's…

The de Jonge Code: Secrets behind a best seller

There’s a new James Patterson book in the stores-- and supermarkets, hardcovers in cardboard display cases as big as The Da Vinci Code's-- ready to be stained with sunblock this summer. Well, almost a James Patterson book. The advertising mogul turned thriller tycoon has turned to co-writers in recent years to keep the machine running and product flying off the shelves. Beach Road is his third book with Peter de Jonge.

We figure this one and others in the series are actually written by the co-writer and merely polished by Patterson, which in practice is more honest than many of the big writers who use a team of ghostwriters to keep the brand name going.

Peter de Jonge’s name gets equal size on the dust jacket cover, but it's not on the spine. And his picture doesn’t make the flap. In fact, we had to search long and hard to find any picture of de Jonge on the Internet, and it’s only this big:
But we’re certain the co-author is well-rewarded. And there’s a good Tabloid Baby story to go with this latest success:

More than twenty-five years ago, three young newspaper reporters shared an attic office over a real estate business in downtown Wilton Connecticut. Within a year, all three had separately headed off to New York City to seek their fortunes.

Tom Gilroy moved to Brooklyn, sought work as an actor and began writing plays. Burt Kearns moved to Greenwich Village, and launched a career in television news. Peter de Jonge took up residence on the Upper West Side. He got an advertising gig at the J Walter Thompson agency. On the side, he wrote articles for the New York Times magazine.

Over the next twenty years, each would make his mark.

Gilroy (right) became an actor known for a role on Sex & The City, hip downtown playwright, and as writer-director of the independent film, Spring Forward. Kearns, we know, blazed a trail in tabloid television and documentaries, wrote the influential bestseller Tabloid Baby and produced and wrote the current motion picture comedy, Cloud 9 (now available on DVD).

de Jonge’s advertising work paid off big time when he began writing books with his boss, James Patterson.

Their 2002 best seller, The Beach House, featured a tribute of sorts to his newspaper days, as he named a number of characters after colleagues he worked with in Wilton and on other Acorn Press newspapers.

But the tribute led to scandal! As it reverberated through the book world, media and Internet, The New York Post’s illustrious Page Six was right on top of it:

NAMESAKE IRKS TV EXEC
BEST-selling author James Patterson has ticked off TV producer Burt Kearns by tweaking him in his new novel "The Beach House." The potboiler about a murder in the Hamptons features a fictitious East Hampton Star reporter named Burt Kearns, described as "small and round, with fat, freckled hands." To make matters worse, the Kearns character is fired from the weekly. The real Kearns, who helped launch "A Current Affair" and "Hard Copy" before he got into documentary filmmaking, never worked for the East Hampton paper. Nor is he small or round. "People have been calling me asking if I ever worked at the East Hampton Star," Kearns says. "It's kind of embarrassing, because I've been fired from much more prestigious institutions. And my colleagues keep looking to see if I have freckles on my hands." Kearns suspects the prankster is Patterson's co-writer Peter de Jonge, who worked with Kearns 24 years ago at a Connecticut paper. De Jonge says he didn't mean to diss Kearns: "He's a heroic character in the book who gets fired for doing the right thing."

Of course, it was all an act! Kearns wasn’t angry at all. He was flattered to be name-checked and translated into many languages in an international best seller, fat fingers and all. He saw the literary feud as a way to get publicity for everyone.

de Jonge didn’t share his enthusiasm.

A quick peruse of Beach Road shows that the Burt Kearns character does not make a heroic return.

Shucks. We would’ve bought two copies!

(Meanwhile, which of the three will be first to tackle the real-life story of the Bulletin years: a tale of suburban angst, sex, local politics, death, betrayal, desperate housewives and small-town tabloid journalism--see Tabloid Baby-- with cameos by Sterling Hayden, Linda Blair, Rodney Dangerfield, June Havoc, Nature Geezer Jack Sanders and Ace Frehley of Kiss, among others? Stay tuned...)

Norville hates tabloid, gave Jeremy Piven a boner

Deborah Norville swears she’ll never host a show from a whorehouse.


Deborah Norville yearns to get back to “real news.”

Deborah Norville says she’s trying to make chicken salad out of the (fill in the blank) she’s been handed.

Deborah Norville gave Jeremy Piven a boner.

Deborah who?

You remember Deborah Norville. She was the female host of the Today show for fifteen minutes, the young cutie who moved in when Jane Pauley was pushed out for being too old.

Back in 1990, on the day she and Pauley actually hugged and kissed on live TV as the coup went down, A Current Affair's Wayne Darwen produced a segment that went down in tabloid television history for its outrageous hilarity and commentary.

Basically all he did was run the Norville-Pauley video and intercut vintage footage of a silent movie comedian puking.

Sixteen years later, Deb’s replacement, perky spunkball Katie Couric is actually taking over Dan Rather’s job and Deborah Norville is in her eleventh year hosting Inside Edition.

You remember Inside Edition. That’s the tabloid TV show that was created with a rib of A Current Affair back in 1989 (read the true story here). It’s the last tabloid TV show still standing (if you don’t count Entertainment Tonight— what’s up with the Buttafuoco-Fisher showdown—that’s entertainment?), having slid under the radar for more than a decade since Bill O’Reilly left the show and reinvented himself.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer runs an interview with Norville today. She’s just as out of it was she was back in the 80s when she was a morning newsreader, known for the best lips in the industry (and check out her weird website). Bottom line, Deborah Norville and her producers still don’t have a grip on what tabloid television is all about. After all this time, she doesn’t think she’s doing “real news.” She’s befouling her nest, a show that pulled her out of the cable TV wildnerness because she was a still-hot blonde.

Norville on Tabloid Television:

"When Katie Holmes had the baby, I jokingly said to my producer, "Would it be inappropriate for my lead to be, 'Our long national nightmare is over'? He said, 'No, save that for Brangelina.'

"But that's the way I feel about it, I guess we have to tell the people, but do we have to dwell on it? The answer apparently is yes, we do."

There’s more:

Q: I heard Jeremy Piven has a huge crush on you. He used to watch you on the news when he was a kid, growing up in Chicago.

D.N.: "I have no idea why he even had this fixation on me! ... But it was a little 12-year-old boy thing. Which really makes me feel old."

But look at it this way: You got a 12-year-old boy to watch the evening news! What television newsroom can say they're doing that these days?

“That's true! Everybody's worried. It would be great if we could get 14-year-old boys to watch. But I don't know how to do it.”

Given your experience, would you ever go back to network news, or are you happy doing a syndicated news magazine?

“With those bosses deciding who they're going to put on shows, there are two factors based on recognizability and likability. Well, they all knew who I was, and they hated me deeply. (Laughs.) Put Deborah Norville on a show? Hell no! It wasn't gonna happen! And I knew that. ... And I never thought I'd work in the business again.”

So what did you do?

“I went into a major depression. I totally spiraled down. …At 31, I was washed up. If I turned on the television, I either wept because I was looking at video images of these poor women in Iraq whose lives had been devastated by the war, or I would weep because there was somebody else doing an interview about these poor women in Iraq whose lives had been devastated by the war, and it ought to have been me.

“So, would I want to go back? I thought I had a little bit, when I did the MSNBC show. But it was really two things. One, you cannot do two full time jobs at the same time. It was impossible, and it was killing me. ... And increasingly, they wanted the show live. They wanted it live because Laci Peterson's mother might cry at the trial. You know, the show they have on now has a lot in common. And I'm sure Rita Cosby is a very hardworking woman, but you will never see Deborah Norville anchoring a show from a whorehouse. I don't think that's the definition of news in this country.

“... So would I go back? You bet. If it's really news. Not everything in the world is pretty. Some of what's out there that's happening is very ugly, and we have a responsibility to tell the people."

Have you thought about what the next step would be?

"No, because I'm under contract."

I get it. ... (If) you're thinking, you're not thinking out loud.

"I don't overthink too much, because my career was such an accident... I've been so busy keeping up with the great opportunities that have happened, or with the disasters that have happened, and trying to make chicken salad out of what I've been given, that I don't overthink it a lot."

That sound you hear is Wayne’s 1920s comedian puking.

TV Land steals show title from sex series

The nostalgic, family-oriented TV Land network has announced a slate of original TV programming, including a show that “looks at the roles that changed the lives of Hollywood’s biggest names.” The six-part series debuts June 28.

It’s called My First Time.

Ha! My First Time is the name of the recent 26-part Showtime series in which dozens of women related the stories of the first time they had sex. And it was hardcore (the talk, at least)!

The docudrama series, subtitled “True Stories of Love & Sex,” featured a now-legendary talk-dirty maraschino cherry-themed opening sequence and filmed, R-rated re-enactments of the women’s tales which were raw, real and sexy indeed.

It all gives the TV Land series a lot to live up to with its probable tales of Vinnie Barberino, Dr. Doug Ross and the like. And here's something to chew on: according to Variety, the TV Land series was originally sold as "My Big Break." Makes us wonder if the name was changed to make it sound "sexier."

The orginal My First Time was set to be the lynchpin of Showtime’s 2003 late night Fall weekend schedule, replacing the tired, dated Red Shoe Diaries fare with a jolt of reality and re-creation. And (as these stylish production stills attest) it worked.

But longtime Showtime chief Jerry Offsay left the network two months before its premiere!

New boss Bob Greenblatt scrapped Offsay’s lineup, delayed the show's debut til January 2004, buried it at 3 a.m., and went the lesbian and marijuana route to success (My First Time has the distinction of being the last project of the halcyon Offsay era).

My First Time was produced by the guys at Frozen Pictures, along with their partner Albert S. Ruddy. The trio next wrote and produced the Burt Reynolds comedy movie hit, Cloud 9. Ruddy went on to win his second Best Picture Oscar for Million Dollar Baby.

Stay tuned for Frozen Pictures' next move. You’ll see it here first.









It's not the end! Click here to see
more sexy stills-- and video--
from the original My First Time.

A serious problem while driving in Los Angeles

A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to Ted Rall and L.A. Citybeat.

John & Ken: Dangerous douchebags

LOS ANGELES (TB) We don’t sign petitions. We don’t jump on bandwagons. Let’s start a petition and start the bandwagon rolling to remove those racist buffoons “John & Ken” from Los Angeles radio.

The afternoon drive team on KFI 640 AM are dangerously out of touch. They’re dangerous. They actively spread hate toward the majority of our Los Angeles-area neighbors.

And they suck!

Back in November, we referred to them as "a couple of assholes, boobs who like to pick on poor people: Chardonnay racists, cappuccino bigots, cynical blue collar blockheads who cater to the misplaced anger of middle-class male commuters in Mercedes, while kissing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ass because he’s in power."

Not bad. And though profanity appeared in the book, Tabloid Baby, we can only be provoked to use it in this public forum. However, "John & Ken," radio performers on reactionary KFI radio, continue to stir hate, and deserve the most basic description.

Their performance this evening, amid immigrant demonstrations in their city, took them over the top and down the drain. They've proven themselves to be shameful, hateful douchebags.

What's worse? They're phonies.

As we know by now, the demonstrations went off with almost nary a hitch. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, undocumented immigrants, illegal aliens-- whatever you want to call them -- people who help raise our kids, wash our dishes, blow our leaves, pick our fruit, people who are a vital part of the reality economy of Southern California-- took to the street in an All-American rally to protest the prospect of being treated as felons. We raise our glass.

Like many Angelenos, we'd approached the day with caution, expecting traffic jams and riots in the streets on the drive to the office. We’ve lived through riots and traffic jams, quakes and thunder showers. In what turned out to be the best case scenario, we found the 10 freeway from the beach into Hollywood was a clean shot this morning, because many of our neighbors took the day off, in solidarity or because they were afraid of what they might confront in “town.”

Mornings, we live on car radio. This morning, Mexican immigrant and hero (and Cloud 9 star) Paul Rodriguez tried to get a word in edgewise with Adam Carolla. Mark & Brian played their weird pop quiz, two guys waiting for a train.

At 8:59, Paul Harvey covered the protests in his final “For what it’s worth” item: angry, making it clear that non-citizens did not deserve his lead story while citizens die in Iraq. He’s old. He’s Paul Harvey. He was drummed out of the Army on a Section 8. Something's happening here and we can't expect him to know what it is. We hit the Herb Alpert CD.

Yeah, the traffic was light. Because the rest of us altered our driving schedules and routes.

Heading home: AM radio. No excuse for scumbags “John & Ken,” who dedicated important airtime to ridiculing the protesters, Mexicans, Mexican culture, Mexican Americans, and our neighbors-- and encouraging KFI newspeople to do the same. Two rich white wimpy radio stars making fun of the families who took to the streets in defense of their livelihoods and worth, people who make John & Ken's upper class lives so comfortable (“John,” the straightman of the pair, once rode in our town’s July Fourth parade, so we know of his comfort and its support).

The “callers” they put on the air were despicable; especially the woman who identified herself as a school teacher, happy she could teach a class on a day the Spanish-speaking kids stayed home.

What’s most disgusting is that these two wimpy pot-bellied balding nerds don’t mean it.. They’re doing hate radio for ratings. Dividing the city and inflaming someone to possibly drive a pickup truck into a crowd of families for ratings Michael Savage is good radio because he’ s gloriously unhinged. Same with Janeane Garafalo. Phil Hendrie is a legitimate politically incorrect angry genius. These two guys are punks.

Proof? Tune in Fridays when Ken, or maybe John, reads his “movie review” of the week. He or someone who works for him writes a high-school-level movie review and he reads it like a kid trying not even to be Ebert but Roeper, all sincere and revealing his white middlebrow not-even-radical tastes and views. Mr. Big Hatemonger is simply a Hollywood wannabe nerd.

That about says it all.

Do we need this hate in Los Angeles today?

KFI AM 640
3400 W Olive Ave Ste 550
Burbank CA 91505
Business Office: (818) 559-2252

L.A.'s hidden racism (hidden in plain sight) contest

What popular eating and drinking establishment in Santa Monica quietly yet boldly features a racist caricature front and center in its reception area and dining room?

Now this placard, which is also for sale, is under the counter, to be sure, but in clear sight of seated diners and drinkers.

First reader to get it right wins a copy of Tabloid Baby, autographed by the boss.

From Ferris State University's Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia:

The Golliwog (originally spelled Golliwogg) is the least known of the major anti-Black caricatures in the United States. Golliwogs are grotesque creatures, with very dark, often jet black skin, large white-rimmed eyes, red or white clown lips, and wild, frizzy hair. Typically, it's a male dressed in a jacket, trousers, bow tie, and stand-up collar in a combination of red, white, blue, and occasionally yellow colors. The golliwog image, popular in England and other European countries, is found on a variety of items, including postcards, jam jars, paperweights, brooches, wallets, perfume bottles, wooden puzzles, sheet music, wall paper, pottery, jewelry, greeting cards, clocks, and dolls. For the past four decades Europeans have debated whether the Golliwog is a lovable icon or a racist symbol…

The Golliwogg was based on a Black minstrel doll…

May Day!

Monday is bound to be a very lively day in Los Angeles. When a half million people gathered in support of immigration reform a month ago, folks who don't listen to Spanish-language radio didn't hear about it until the following day-- because the rally was on a Sunday-- and in deserted downtown L.A.

Monday, they're taking to the streets on the way to the Beverly Center in the middle of a workday. If all goes according to plan and the weather is fine, the turnout will be bigger, no one will be working the valet parking stands, restaurant kitchens or residential yards, all Hell will be breaking loose and a lot of people will have found an excuse to stay home from work.

Canadian makes USA's first Bush protest album

Listen to Neil Young's latest here.

So why now, after his Grammy for "Devils & Dust," his failed Kerry push and his Sopranos-success-by-association, does everyone's hero Bruce Springsteen leave the "protest" out of his Pete Seeger tribute album, making it as ambiguous as "Born in the USA"-- and, New Orleans nods aside, even more dated?

Young's “Ohio” was written following the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970, and was a staple of anti-war rallies in the 1970s. Young was still performing it 20 years later, by which time he often dedicated it to the Chinese students who had been killed at Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Tabloid Baby poll: Was Bruce pissing on the flag on the Born in the USA cover?

Phil Hendrie sells out

Now it’s safe to kill your radio.

First Howard. Now this.

Phil Hendrie, radio’s one true mad genius, is giving up the greatest show on the airwaves for a crummy sitcom career.

He's quitting radio to pursue acting.

For more than fifteen years, Phil Hendrie has run the wildest, most creative, most satiric show in any medium, creating and voicing characters that call in as if they’re listeners, debating himself and morons who think the characters are real (hey, we thought it was real the first night we tuned in, driving through the Valley, trying to figure out what he was doing and how he was doing it) and pulling off real comedy and comment in the process. Unique. Twisted. Totally gone. And totally suited to radio.

But Hendrie wants more. All radio stars do. Ask Bob Crane. And now that he’s getting a taste of the TV business with the middling NBC show, Teachers, we'll be getting more of him, and less--seeing him, and losing him.

We understand the radio industry can be a frustrating box for an artist and that the numbskulls who run it don't know what to do with a cranky treasure like Hendrie. We also understand that money talks. But we don't watch sitcoms. And we look forward to finding him and his characters on the radio. Bad news. Last show: June 23rd.

So what's the story behind the Maury suit?

Maury Povich today says, "We will defend this lawsuit vigorously!"

We know Maury to be a stand-up guy, and though we don't know the 28-year-old female producer who's hit him and his syndicated talk show with an embarrassing $100 million sexual harassment suit, we do know that she has more than a few problems that $100 million would surely help ease.

Bianca Nardi’s own lawsuit states that she’s in psychiatric treatment (allegedly because of the harassment) and has gained fifty pounds (because of the stress, not the Haagan Daas).

It's also been reported that the woman’s mother died from necrotizing fasciitis, the flesh-eating bacteria, which could have added to her personal traumas.

Nardi's mother, Robin Miller, was the Republican registrar of voters in Stonington, Connecticut, and 52 years old when she died in 2003.


(What will she look like when
she's crying on the stand?
Click here to see video
of Bianca's tearful interview
after her mother's death.)


Hey, we don’t stick up for sex harassers, nor do we go after the victims. But we know that Maury Povich is no Bill O’Reilly (interesting that they were once competing tabloid television hosts, when Maury starred in A Current Affair and pre-pompous O’Reilly fronted a competing show). Before O'Reilly was sued for sex harassment, there had been gossip about his phone sex predilection and knowledge of his bullying manner. When the charges were made public, there was shock but no surprise.

Despite its salacious onscreen content, there’s been no scuttlebutt about the Maury show. Our own Doug Bruckner was a guest on the show twice this year and reports only on the professionalism of Maury Povich and his production staff.

Of course, sexual sparks fly behind the scenes in the high-pressure business of television series production, especially on a daily television show, like Maury’s, that runs and succeeds with sexual topics from porn to phone sex to hookers. And on shows like these, young female producers are often given the chance to jump ahead in the game by bringing hidden cameras into sex clubs or other volatile situations. And they jump at the chance. Or they don’t. Or they quit.

Or, thanks to Bill O’Reilly and his quick quiet payoff, they sue because they realize they’re getting older and won’t be moving up much higher than they are— and could resent that gal who’s producing the show because she must be screwing the host or she wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Anyway, Maury and his wife Connie Chung are good people. They even showed up, as planned, for a live interview in Washington D.C. today to face the music and the kind of tabloid baby frenzy that Maury himself helped invent.

Maury said he’d fight. And Connie was right by him.

So as the suit sorts itself out, we at Tabloid Baby repeat what we wrote on January 4th:

Maury and Connie are two of the coolest people in the business, real straightforward, and very fun on television. They are the tops.

(...and read Maury's story here.)

Thumb Guy reports from Lost set in Hawaii!

Tabloid Baby has received a message in a bottle from our 'Lost' correspondent, Doug "The Thumb Guy" Bruckner, who's surfaced in Hawaii with news that Lost star Michelle Rodriguez opted for jail time over community service on a drunk driving rap:

Greetings from sunny Hawaii!

Yes, the Thumb Guy is here on “Police Beach” on the North Shore of Oahu, where the Lost crew is setting up a location.

Everyone here gave us the “Thumbs up!” and sends their greetings to fans in America, the UK, France and around the world!

As for scoops?

Our girl Evangeline Lilly has reportedly moved in to Hobbit Dominic Monaghan’s house in Kaneoke, where Michelle Rodriguez went to court... and where today Michelle opted for jail time--five days!-- over community service on that DUI charge!

Hang in there, Michelle. No confirmation on reports they’re writing you out of the show!

See you on the Mainland soon!

Wish you were here!

The Thumb Guy!

Police Beach-- so named because it once had a locked gate and gave access only to current and retired cops!

On the set-- The Thumb stays in the picture!

Mr. Eko's Trailer!