Drinks on E!
When TV critics sat down for the E! session at Winter TV Press Tour 2007, each received a copy of trade paper Variety. Splashed across pages 2 and 3 was an enormous E! ad:
2006: Our Most Watched Year Ever
173,500,000 Viewers
Drinks are on us at Hyde Tonight.
Hyde is maybe the hottest club in Los Angeles, on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. You will never see the inside of Hyde -- it's very small and terribly exclusive. Maybe you've seen snaps of Britney Spears or Nicole Richie being carried out of Hyde. Which is why E! chose that location for giving out free drinks to exactly the people who don't need E!'s charity. Or their liquor.
Anyway, in small print at the bottom of the ad is an odd disclaimer:
"We wanted to give you alcoholic drinks, but the laws of California prohibit it. We can only offer a non-alcoholic drink (i.e. Shirley Temples)."
People don't go to Hyde to drink Shirley Temples. They go to Hyde to get fractured. Imagine Lindsay Lohan ordering a Shirley Temple or Paris Hilton asking for a Virgin Mary.
The disclaimer also said the offer applies only to the first 50 non-alcoholic drinks ordered and that the offer is good for only one day. The odds of 50 people ordering a non-alcoholic beverage in Hyde in one day are slim to none.
An E! rep at the press tour told us that they discovered only the afternoon of the day the ad went to print that it's legal for E! to offer free booze to people on a guest list at Hyde but illegal to offer free booze to so-called Paris-ites.
Comic Sarah Silverman deals harshly with TV critics who point out big plot holes in her new Comedy Central series.
In the pilot episode of "The Sarah Silverman Program," Silverman goes on a Seinfeldian journey to obtain batteries for her TV remote control, without having any actual money.
One critic noted that earlier in the episode, she had plastered loads of dollar bills on her television screen to cover the screen.
"Shut the [expletive] up!" she screamed.
"Jerk!"
Also in the episode, Silverman claims to have stubbed her vagina. One critic asked how that is done. Journalists have to ask these tough questions.
"It's easier than you would think," she shot back. "Opening letters. Get a letter-opener is all I can say. It's worth it."
By
Nancy Kerr
|
January 12, 2007; 8:32 AM ET
Winter 2007 TV Press Tour
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Posted by: Stu | January 12, 2007 10:09 AM
Wow, E! really goes all out.
I bet that *I* could afford to buy 50 non-alcoholic drinks for strangers, and I'm not even remotely rich or famous.
Posted by: Adam | January 12, 2007 11:18 AM
The bigger question is: who watches E!? What's even on E!?
Posted by: Alice | January 12, 2007 11:59 AM
You gotta love The Soup....
Posted by: Chasmosaur | January 12, 2007 1:01 PM
For me E! lost its cachet when it stopped running AJ Benza's Hollywood Mysteries and Scandals, which often dealt with unsolved City of Angels crimes of lon ago Tha was about the same time they decided that the Jon Benet Ramsey case was somehow an E! True Hollywood Story.
But as someone who has been in PR and advertising for about 30 years, I have to say this so called press event left me scratching my head. Why not just set up a hospitality room in the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, rather than insulting the press by saying, "Free diet coke to the first 50 comers." Is everyone that eager to see the inside of Hyde?
Posted by: Jack | January 12, 2007 2:02 PM
There isn't much on E!, except for The Soup, which is funny as all get out.
Posted by: Flavobean | January 12, 2007 8:46 PM
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Yay, yer blogging again, Oh mighty pookie! Please do so more often.