The Class Of 2023
The Newest Batch Of Hall Of Famers
The announcement of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame Class Of 2023 came out mere moments ago, so obviously I have only had enough time to take a brief look at the list. I’ll have a lot more to say, particularly about the side category inductees, in Friday’s newsletter. Needless to say, there are some disappointing omissions. In the interim, here are the honorees. Discuss among yourselves.
Artists:
Kate Bush
Sheryl Crow
Missy Elliott
George Michael
Willie Nelson
Rage Against the Machine
The Spinners
Ahmet Ertegun Award:
Don Cornelius
Musical Excellence:
Chaka Khan
Al Kooper
Bernie Taupin
Early Influence:
DJ Kool Herc
Link Wray
Congratulations to all of the winners, and special congrats to the fans of those winners. This was a stacked ballot; some very deserving candidates will need to wait at least one more year. Hopefully their times will come sooner rather than later.
Charles Takes The Crown
As I’ve aged I’ve tried my best to avoid policing what others like or dislike. We only get so many trips around the sun, so why not take enjoyment in the things you like? That’s why I’ve never been a fan of the phrase “guilty pleasure.” Like what you want to, no need to apologize. Sure, I love to recommend things, but if something I like is not your bag, no biggie. And if you like something that I don’t, who am I to tell you you shouldn’t enjoy it? There’s one slight exception I can think of to that policy.
For the life of me, I cannot understand anyone’s fascination with monarchy. Not only is the concept such an anachronism, but it is the exact reason for which we fought a revolution. Now, I’m not a monster. If you are a parent of a child in the midst of their princess phase, then waking up in the early morning to watch a royal wedding with your kid is a wonderful bonding moment. And I give points to monarchs from a grand duchy or a principality; that seems so adorable. And if you still brand yourself as the heir to the throne of a country that no longer exists, congrats. You do you. Otherwise, I am completely puzzled over celebrating out of touch snobs that have been inbred for generations who believe they’re better than everyone else simply because of the family into which they were born.
Which is why I do not intend to pay any attention to Charles III’s official coronation ceremony. There’s an additional crucial reason why he lost a lot of points in my eyes. Because this will be the first British coronation in my lifetime, there are a lot of elements of royal protocol that I never had any reason to know. I only learned following Elizabeth’s death that one’s royal name does not necessarily need to be their first name, it only needs to be one of their given names. Charles’ full birth name is Charles Philip Arthur George. We could have had a King Arthur! But no, he took the easy way. F*** that guy.
Let Them Finish
The networks will soon announce their fall schedules, an event that used to be a much bigger deal than it is now. There are a couple of major reasons for this. First, the conglomerates have many outlets, of which the flagship broadcast is only one part. Cable outlets and streaming services are as important to bottom lines as the legacy broadcast networks are, and the networks seldom air the more exciting programming. Second, these days new shows are more likely to be held for midseason rather than premiere in the fall. It took networks years to realize it made no sense to collectively throw out a couple of dozen new shows in a simultaneous free for all in the hope of finding an audience. Gradually rolling them out is a better option.
The more noteworthy outcome of Upfront Week is to see which veteran series get cancelled. This is a minor pet peeve of mine. In a lot of cases final decisions are not made until the last minute. As a result, creators often don’t know if they are working on a show’s final season and therefore cannot plot things out accordingly. I don’t know how many times I’ve read a quote from a showrunner along the lines of “this could serve as either a season finale or a series finale.”
This phenomenon is largely confined to the networks. Netflix has grown more cancellation crazy in recent years, but generally cable networks and streaming services make early renewal calls, so creators have a better idea of how much time they have to fully tell their stories. Not so much with the networks. Keep in mind that even a fairly low-rated show has a million people that watch it week after week and have gotten invested in the characters and stories. My general rule of thumb is that if a show has run for 4 seasons or more then it has earned the chance to have a splashy final episode that wraps everything up.
Now, not every show has a structure that allows for a logical endgame. A perfect example is the original run of Law & Order. It ran for 19 seasons, yet NBC unceremoniously made the call to cancel it without giving them a final episode opportunity. It’s not as if they could have ended the show by having a detective wipe a whiteboard dry as the final unsolved murder in New York gets solved. But with notice they could have done something. There was a recurring plot in that final season as Van Buren was undergoing cancer treatment and in the season finale she received word that it was in remission. I have to believe they would have done something differently (give her a major promotion?) had they known it was going to be the final season. Of course, NBC revived the show more than a decade later so that’s all moot.
As fall schedule announcements come out next week, it will be interesting to see which series get those short-notice cancellations. And with the writer’s strike it bears watching to see how much space on the fall schedules will be reserved for reality shows or other programming not as reliant on writers.
WGA Strike
In a related note, as expected, the Writers Guild is on strike. Analyzing the demands from both sides is a bit out of my pay grade, so it’s not my place to examine either side’s arguments other than to say that my natural inclination is to take labor’s side. People love to focus on the small percentage of writers who are quite wealthy, but they are the rare exceptions. Writing for movies and television is a brutal way to make a living; job security is practically nonexistent and scribes are far down on the totem pole. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage; pay these people what they’re worth.
The effects of the strike are immediately apparent. The late night talk shows have already gone dark, the same will be true this weekend for Saturday Night Live and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver among others. Summer TV is usually filled with a lot of game shows and reality programming, so there won’t be any noticeable difference. If the strike lasts long, it would affect the fall schedule as well as the rate in which streamers release programming. Networks and streamers had already prepped for this possibility, as they had held back on premiering some of their content so that there could be a reserve batch of fresh programming ready to go. But if the strike lasts a long time, even that inventory will start to run short.
The last time the writers struck it lasted 100 days. Let’s hope that the producers do the right thing and offer the writers a fair contract so that everyone gets back to work quickly. A bunch of artists going on strike may seem insignificant, but a shutdown of such a massive infrastructure trickles down to so many other industries. This is an important story.
The Incestuous Fallacy Of Draft Grades
I always get a kick out of seeing writers assess draft grades after all of the selections have been made. I understand why they do it; fans and editors alike expect this type of content. There is one huge issue, however. Any grade is dependent on the writer’s pre-draft expectations. In other words, when putting together a mock draft, writer A expects team B to choose player C. Instead, team B drafts player D. Writer A believes team B has made a poor choice, and gives the team a failing grade. Essentially, a writer is not judging the quality of a team’s draft; the writer is judging how closely a team affirmed the writer’s preconceived notions.
Of course it’s possible that team B’s scouts saw something in player D that suits their needs better than player C does, or their scouting staff may have found a diamond in the roof that other teams overlooked. And realistically it takes at least 2-3 years until one can accurately judge the quality of a team’s draft. The writers who have to publish their grades column are fully aware of this; it’s what the job requires so they have to go through with it. It’s just something to keep in mind when you read all of those morning after stories.
The Grand Finale
And that wraps things up for another day. Thanks for reading and be sure to tell all your friends and neighbors about Tending The Herd. See you on Friday.