Saturday, May 2, 2009

Online Pick of the Week: Entertainment Tonight (5/1)

The clip chosen this week shows one of my true guilty pleasures of being online. I have so much fun looking for vintage TV shows, openings, closings, promos, etc. It is from September 14, 1981, and it features the closing of an World News Tonight broadcast and towards the end, the opening of the very first episode of Entertainment Tonight. This was of course before Mary Hart joined the program.

I was watching some of the episodes of the show this week for tidbits about Bea Arthur’s recent passing. One of the reasons why I’m so turned off of the show these days is because of how tabloid-ish the show has become. It’s just been way too much more about the celebrities’ personal lives and in the recent past they’ve been stretching things way too far (i.e. Anna Nicole Smith‘s death/paternity drama), which eventually led to me hardly watching the show at all.

But I have to give Entertainment Tonight some credit this week… they’ve done a pretty decent job in handling Bea Arthur’s death. Speaking with Rue McClanahan and Betty White over the phone, showing clips of Golden Girls bloopers and a rehearsal from one of the earlier episodes, airing some of a couple of her older interviews, and on Friday interviewing her TV daughter from Maude, Adrienne Barbeau. Now while I obviously hate for a death to occur, it makes me wish that the show would handle things more like this all the time. Make it more like it used to be… more about entertainment and less about celebrities’ personal lives and gossip.

The opening to the series premiere of Entertainment Tonight… my online clip of the week!

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