The dreaded pledge drive

When Colorado Public Radio’s latest pledge drive started recently, I remember thinking: “Damn, again – already?” The drives are annoying, for sure, because they cut into stuff we want to hear. But I also can’t help but feel sympathy for all those on-air folks who, no doubt, hate them more than the listeners do. Because no one ever likes asking for money.

I’m very cautious about subscriptions or any other recurring dings on my checkbook so I’m not a CPR “evergreen partner,” but I do contribute several times a year because I love CPR and public radio in general.

It just doesn’t seem fair that, once you donate, the pledge drive continues.

“I gave already!” I shout at the radio-like thing in my kitchen (I think it’s called a Google Home something-or-other). And then Ryan Warner says: “I don’t give a shit. You’re going to keep listening to us talk about this trip to Canada until the cows come home.”

Anyway, I got an email from CPR thanking me for my donation, signaling the end of the drive. The new one starts next week, I believe.

Tony Awards

This year’s Tony Awards air Sunday night, but they almost didn’t due to the Hollywood writers’ strike.

Millions of OffStage readers: Why do they need writers for an awards ceremony anyway?

We’re not sure, although there are certainly some prepared scripts and jokes for presenters and others. But, you would think, a bunch of theatre people would be OK winging it without lines, right?

Probably so. And they’ll fill up a lot of time with cast performances, which reportedly include stuff from “Camelot,” “Into the Woods,” “& Juliet,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” “New York, New York,” “Parade,” “Shucked,” “Some Like It Hot” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

This year’s ceremony isn’t taking place at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, as usual. Instead it’s going to be waaaay uptown and far from Broadway at the United Palace in Washington Heights. Most of the world will be watching the televised event on CBS, starting at 6 Mountain.

Millions of OffStage Readers: What is “CBS?”

CBS, an acronym for “Columbia Broadcasting System” is an old-timey TV network owned by Paramount Global. In other words, if you don’t have cable, you can stream the Tonys on Paramount+.

Even better: There’s a Tony Awards Viewing Party at the SIE Film Center, 2510 E. Colfax, starting at 6. The event is Co-Hosted by DenverFilm, Actors’ Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA and the Colorado Theatre Guild.

Reality TV

Speaking of the writers’ strike, it should come as no surprise that the longer this goes, the more we’ll be subjected to ever more ridiculous and/or insulting reality TV shows that, by definition, require little or no scripting.

The broader category of “unscripted” includes everything from quiz, talent and cooking shows to hidden-camera stuff, unsolved-mystery crapola and everything in between. Lately, the genre has been taking B- and C-listers and washed-up stars of the past and putting them in the field to do stuff like talk about their farm (“Growing Belushi”), explore their roots (“Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico”) and their recent colonoscopy (“Up the Wazoo with Donny Osmond”).

OK, I made that last one up, but someone would watch it, I’m sure. Many moons ago, I had an opportunity to be part of the reality TV world when a friend of mine hired me to work at SyFy (then just the Sci-Fi Channel). The gig was to sit around in a “lab” on Ventura Boulevard in Hollywood and come up with unscripted ideas for sci-fi shows. We pitched stuff like “The Galaxy’s Wackiest Home Videos” (technically an augmented reality show), “Alien Hunter,” some kind of cooking show with witches, a show where “experts” analyze dreams, another using past-life regression therapy, a conspiracy theory show with Dan Akroyd, and a candid-camera show where, instead of surprising people, you scare the shit out of them.

That last one actually was turned into a show called “Scare Tactics” that ran for a few seasons.

I remember at one point in the lab creating a big grid with unscripted show genres down one side (quiz/game, cooking, talk, etc.) and on the other axis, sci-fi genres like horror, aliens, time travel, witches, etc. That’s where we’d get silly ideas like a witch cooking show.

It was a great job, but when 9-11 hit and Hollywood shut down, I was low man on the totem pole and got laid off in 2002.

After I left the lab, I worked with a few other guys to pitch some shows, and I recently came across some of that material on my laptop. One of the ideas was called “Drag Race,” and I described it thusly:

Competitors on this hidden-camera competition show have to get a date in the least amount of time possible. But there’s one catch: they have to do it as a member of the opposite sex! Whoever gets the furthest first wins, and they must take it up to the point of the big reveal, where their date finds out their true identity.  They can gain points with their moves along the way, so even if they don’t win big, they can win something.

Comedy Central told us it was a stupid idea unless we could attach someone like RuPaul to it (this was 2002). RuPaul’s Drag Race started in 2009 and is a much different show than the one I dreamed up. Still, I sometimes wonder …

One of the demos we shot at Sci-Fi Lab was ‘Alien Hunter,’ and the actor playing a character I created named ‘Krabble’ was none other than Doug Jones, who later went on to play a lot of other aliens — from the monster in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘The Shape of Water’ to his latest role as alien dude Saru on ‘Star Trek Discovery.’ Nice guy!

The Sci-Fi Lab in Hollywood was decked out in a bunch of old stuff from the shuttered mental hospital in Camarillo. We had old wheelchairs around our conference table, and everyone got a kick out of them — including William Shatner, who came in to pitch a show to us once.