The LA Times' Paul Brownfield offers his best and worst for the year. And Michael Eisner gets a "best," which is really a "worst":
"Best use of my television for your personal hobby: CNBC's 'Conversations With Michael Eisner' and Dane Cook's 'Tourgasm' on HBO (a tie). Which was the comedy, and which involved narcissists droning on and on into a camera? We'll let you play around with that one."
TCG confesses that it didn't know for sure that Eisner's show was still on CNBC. Well, now I know that it is, and that at least one person is watching it. Probably not many more than that, however. I had gotten the impression that CNBC was trying to clean up its act, after such notable fiascoes as John McEnroe and Tina Brown. But evidently, CNBC despite its spiffy new website, still has air time to burn.
Remember the days when CNBC was the hot cable channel? When it had what then-chief Roger Ailes called "the all stars of talk"? John McLaughlin? Chris Matthews? Geraldo Rivera? Cal Thomas? You didn't have to like all those characters to appreciate that CNBC was, in the early-to-mid 90s, the hot showcase for new news talent, eclipsing CNN, even then. But then there was the big exodus of Ailes and many key staffers to the new Fox startup in 1995-6, and poor CNBC has never recovered. And the fact that a self-indulgent has-been like Eisner--who is not even a nice guy, even now that he's out of a job--is till on its air is proof that CNBC is still in denial, as opposed to anything that might resemble recovery.
