Tweaking Dennis Miller's show

Not too long ago we posted a story on A Town Called Podunk, expressing great anticipation for the new Dennis Miller show on CNBC. Long a fan of the caustic comedian, it was thought his brand of satire and pointed barbs, would find a ready made target in the political and financial world. Launched to take on CNN's Larry King show, many thought that the hipper more in touch Miller would quickly cut into the King's audience. But after a month, it would seem the King is safe in his reign for a while yet.

This has been a rough little month for Dennis, and a painful one for Podunk to watch. He's seemed unusually unsteady in his present set up, the hour long program chopped up into disjointed segments, many of which not only fail to inform, hell they fail to entertain.

His comedic observations many of which are brilliant, tend to be greeted by uncomfortable silence or light giggling by the stage hands on site for the show. No audience was included in the original design of the show, thus his rapier like wit went mainly un-noticed, the odd viewer at home might have chuckled a bit, but the group guffaw of a studio audience was never there, a dead zone for any comedian.

His guests for the most part haven't been particularly helpful either, many of them probably don't know what to make of a wise cracking host asking them pointed questions about terrorism or financial malfeasance. You find that they tend to offer up nothing resembling an indepth answer or analysis, some appeared to be clinically dead.

The Varsity panel has had potential, but far too often it seemed as though the Republican's and Conservative thinkers, not only outnumbered the Democrats and Liberal believers on the panel, but tended to act like bullies in a school yard with no principal to be found. It only reinforced the stereotype of Republicans being rude and obnoxious, something not normally associated with Miller's comedy for thinkers.

Miller has experienced a political epiphany of sorts, coming out now as a Proud of Bush kind of right wing wiseguy, which is ok, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but the old Dennis Miller of SNL days would be mocking the new one unmercifully. And that's before we get to the chimps, the first one got the punt after about a week on the show, replaced by a new, larger and more active one, with a penchant for the Howard Dean scream button, which it pushes with relish. An inside joke by Miller at the expense of Democrats. But the image of an ape pounding away on a button just distracts you away from the content of the show.

Now comes word that the chimps and a few other things might be deep sixed (for the benefit of the SPCA, that is just a figure of speech). Miller will take a two week hiatus, while the producers work out some new ideas, move things around and scramble to find 100 seats for a studio audience. Realizing that a comedian with topical material needs feed back, they plan on having a studio audience in attendance for the taping of the show each night. The plan is to give things more of a nightclub feeling.

If things don't improve pretty quickly, they may want to improve on the nightclub feeling with happy hour drinks for guests and host. It won't hurt the content that much, and you never know, somebody might end up saying something interesting.