ALAS, THE GHOST OF OLD MAGGIE DUMONT THRIVES

The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) January 9, 2000 | JEFF SIMON So you think 25 years is an unseemly length of time to dodder on and keep these annual Dumont Awards afloat? That’s nothing. As of this column, I have now, officially, been writing about television, off and on, for 30 years straight. (In other words, I’ve been at it longer than almost everyone on the WB network has been alive.) TV makes it easy. It is, all things considered, the richest subject in America. Like an allergy, it always gets worse — and it always gets better. There are always mind-boggling new lows and new highs from stubborn people who refuse to accept toxic waste as our daily viewing portion. go to website pokemon diamond pokedex

I named these annual Dumont Awards after two things: the old Dumont Network, which helped put TV on the air back in the pre- Cambrian era, and Margaret Dumont, the huge, lorgnette-wielding, lovelorn but lovable woman who was the Marx Brothers’ favorite patsy. (When they performed in live comedy, she would sometimes turn to Groucho backstage and yodel “JUL-ius, what are they laughing at?”) In her ramrod stiff cluelessness, old Maggie — as the Marxes called her — was a figure of both fun and endearment, both a grande dame (pronounced the French way) and a grand dame (pronounced the Brooklyn way).

Surely, I thought, she is so redolent of another era that she isn’t even metaphorically relevant in the age of Pokemon, Diamond Dallas Page and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then, with grand and heroic cluelessness, a ramrod stiff network will do something like spend umpteen million dollars on a new morning show for Bryant Gumbel or treat “NYPD Blue” like a delinquent brother-in-law who needs bail money. At such moments, I’m grateful that the Dumonts have survived for a quarter of a century (from Mary Tyler Moore to Jennifer Love Hewitt), and that the ghost of old Maggie still thrives. (Bryant Gumbel still probably doesn’t know what we’re laughing at.) The 1999 Dumonts:

Guilty Pleasure of the Year: “Hollywood Squares” at 7 p.m. nightly on Channel 2. There are no funnier people regularly appearing on television than Gilbert Gottfried, Bruce Vilanch and Caroline Rhea — not even Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” An Even Guiltier Pleasure: “National Enquirer TV” or The Bada- bing Club version of “Entertainment Tonight.” See Channel 49 every night at 11.

The Guiltiest Pleasure of the Entire Decade: Howard Stern on the E! Channel every night at 11. If you can name two or more of his regular studio mates and can give a full account of what the Houston 500 is, you should be ashamed of yourself (and probably already are).

How Would You Like to Be a Blithering Idiot?: The catch phrase in the whole quiz show inundation shouldn’t have been Regis Philbin’s maddeningly protracted “Is that your final answer?” (preceded by a pause long enough to contain Wagner’s entire “Ring” cycle) on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” It should have been Chuck Woolery asking: “Do you feel the need. . . . Do you feel the need for Greed?” (At which point we in the TV audience for Fox’s “Greed” are supposed to be yelling at our TVs, “Yes! Go for it, you chicken- livered twink.” Our common denominator is never so low that TV, in its genius, can’t figure out a way to lower it a little more.) Well, Yeah, But Remember That Woman Who Used to Go Into Convulsions Every Time She Heard Mary Hart’s Voice: Fox was all set to put “Manchester Prep” on the air until “Entertainment Tonight” visited and found one of its actresses doing a scene in which she discovered pleasures in horseback riding that Liz Taylor never discussed in “National Velvet.” Mary Hart was publicly appalled. Fox hemmed and hawed and finally decided to cancel the series before it ever aired.

Fox Follies, Part 2: “Action.” It might have worked on Showtime or HBO. Or even on another night.

Fox Follies, Part 3: “Ally,” the half-hour version of “Ally McBeal” in which they took out all the peculiarity that gave the show flavor and made it look like another godawful sitcom — in reruns, no less.

Fox Follies, The Miniseries: “Harsh Realm.” It wouldn’t have worked anywhere — another network, another night, another planet.

Hugh Just Probably Calls It “E.D.”: If there has ever been a worse TV bio-movie than the USA Network’s “Hefner: Unauthorized,” history has yet to record it. site pokemon diamond pokedex

Maybe He Might Have Survived Without the Hat: Matt Drudge, the self-styled “mod muckraker” and Walter Winchell of the Internet, was downloaded off the Fox News Channel as soon as the Oval Office Follies were over. Without presidential secrets to track, he had nowhere else to go.

Are You Sure Edward R. Murrow Started This Way?: “60 Minutes” suffered “The Insider” at the movies. “60 Minutes II” was just another generic network news magazine, despite its brand name. And ABC’s Sunday Morning show “This Week” shed one of its most articulate and incisive commentators — Bill Kristol — when the show’s ratings took a serious dive. (Moral of the story: it’s OK to be politically incorrect if your ratings are good. If they’re not, nothing can save you.) Just a Thought: OK, so ABC wants to liven up the pol-chat on “This Week.” How about getting Don Cherry of “Hockey Night in Canada” during the off-season? Or Rowdy Roddy Piper? Who needs civility?

Adolescence Without Acne: On “Dawson’s Creek” and “Felicity” everyone’s skin is perfect and everyone talks in complete sentences, more or less. And they’re both pretty good shows, too. (see “Guilty Pleasures” above.) Adolescence With Acne — Braces and Changing Voices, Too: NBC’S “Freaks and Geeks” is so true to some kinds of adolescent experience that for many of us it’s utterly unwatchable.

From Now On They’ll Be Called “Why? Chromosomes”: After getting a look at this year’s idiot version of “Guy TV” (see “The X-Show,” “The Man Show” and “Craig Kilborn”), men might think the operative rule should be “Boys do cry.” No Jokes, Just Great Television: On the other hand, any piece of furniture that can bring you “The Sopranos,” “The Practice,” “The West Wing” and “NYPD Blue” every week, deserves to be in the center of your living room.

JEFF SIMON