NBC’s “Biggest Loser” hits the road…

OK, normally, I am not the kind of person to gloat when bad things happen to jerky people (even if they totally deserve it!) but when I heard that NBC Universal’s much-maligned entertainment co-chairman, Ben Silverman was fired today, I gotta admit, I kinda cheered!

That’s right, amigos, the man who brought you such immortal classics as “My Own Worst Enemy”, “Kings”, “Crusoe”, “Kath & Kim”, the crazy-expensive (not to mention totally unnecessary!) remakes of “Bionic Woman” and “Knight Rider”, and Survival Sunday cheesefests like “Meteor” and “The Storm”, has finally been shown the door. Hooray!

In his defense, Silverman was a well-regarded producer of such hit shows as “Ugly Betty”, “The Office”, and “30 Days” before taking the reigns at NBC, so, when the network brass hired him to lead NBC out of the crapper in 2007, he seemed like an inspired pick.

But it was soon clear to everyone involved that Silverman was not the “rock star executive” he promised to be. Not only were many of his big ideas just plain lame — hello, “Rosie Live!” anyone? — but by making crass product placement a way of life at the network, greenlighting expensive duds left and right, and calling writers “the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school” during the dark days of the WGA strike, Silverman really was his “Own Worst Enemy”.

My old NBC strike squad actually made up Silverman-specific chants during the strike…of course, I’ve forgotten most of them, but, trust me, they made our Carson Daly chants look friendly!

In fact, at one point, there was talk of staging a Ben Silverman prom in honor of his statement about us “ugly writers” trying to “cancel the prom” when we threatened to bring down NBC’s telecast of that year’s Golden Globes. And though we never held the actual prom, we did get the Globes downgraded to a “news event”, and, as you can see, we crafted some pretty cool paraphernalia in preparation for it…so, suck it Silverman!

But prom or no prom, the good news today is that the cheesy-ass king of all things crappy at NBC is finally gone. Yay! Now, if we could just do something about those annoying “Jay Leno at 10PM” commercials…yikes…

“Rosie Live!”

Judging from the ratings, I think Christine and I were the only losers who actually watched this train wreck of a TV special last week. And considering that Christine stopped watching after the opening number with Liza Minnelli, I guess that means I’m the only loser who watched it all the way through. And, let me tell ya, it was God-awful…

No offense to mis hermanos at Telemundo, but “Rosie Live!” was like a Mexican variety show minus the subtlety. Not only was Rosie herself spectacularly unfunny, but the line-up of guest stars was beyond unholy.

Of course, I expected NBC stars like Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski, and even Conan O’Brien — who appeared just long enough to have a pie thrown in his face by Baldwin! — to show up to shamelessly promote their own shows. But who in their right mind thought of inviting Rachel Ray to wordlessly trot across the stage with a giant fake turkey?

And trust me, Ray was on the normal end of the spectrum. The rest of the show reads like a laundry list of bad ideas: Clay Aiken chatting Rosie up in his full-on “Spamalot” togs, Harry Connick Jr. playing Santa, Ne-Yo cheesing out with the “Solid Gold” dancers, Alanis Morisette going totally goth, a troupe of acrobats spinning to a crazy techo remix of Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)”, Gloria Estefan singing with dancing Thanksgiving food, and last, but not least, Kathy Griffin inexplicably dressed as (and lamely spoofing) that old CNN harpie, Nancy Grace.

Seriously, NBC, who thought any of these things were gonna pull in the big numbers? I think the funniest thing about this whole debacle is now that the show has reportedly been canceled after one airing, NBC is retroactively referring to “Rosie Live!” as a “special”. Ha!

How a show widely-touted as a new series one week is downgraded to a one-off special the next is beyond me, but no matter what they call it, “Rosie Live!” was jaw-droppingly bad television. And I watched every lame minute of it. Yikes…